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AI+for+Trading+Learning+Nanodegree+Program+Syllabus.pdf	Nanodegree Program Syllabus I N D I V I D U A L L E A R N E R S Artificial Intelligence for Trading S C H O O L O F A R T I F I C I A L I N T E L L I G E N C E Artificial Intelligence for Trading 2 Overview In this program, learners will analyze real data and build financial models for trading. Whether learners want to level up in finance, obtain new skills in quant trading, or learn the latest AI applications in quantitative finance, this program offers them the opportunity to gain mastery of valuable data and AI skills. Building a project is one of the best ways to demonstrate the skills students have learned learned, and each project will contribute to an impressive professional portfolio that will demonstrate learners newly acquired knowledge of quantitative finance. Built in collaboration with: Program information Learners need access to a computer running OS X or Windows; Python 3.7. A well-prepared learner should have experience programming with Python and familiarity with statistics, linear algebra, and calculus. 6 months at 10hrs/week* Estimated Time Prerequisites Required Hardware/Software Intermediate Skill Level The length of this program is an estimation of total hours the average student may take to complete all required coursework, including lecture and project time. If you spend about 5-10 hours per week working through the program, you should finish within the time provided. Actual hours may vary. Artificial Intelligence for Trading 3 Course 1 Course 1: Basic Quantitative Trading In this course, students will learn about market mechanics and how to generate signals with stocks. The first project is to develop a momentum trading strategy. Trading with Momentum In this project, students will learn to implement a momentum trading strategy and test if it has the potential to be profitable. Learners will work with historical data of a given stock universe and generate a trading signal based on a momentum indicator. Learners will then compute the signal and produce projected returns. Finally, learners will perform a statistical test to conclude if there is alpha in the signal. Course Project Lesson 1 Introduction Lesson 2 Stock Prices Lesson 3 Market Mechanics Lesson 4 Data Processing Artificial Intelligence for Trading 4 Lesson 5 Stock Returns Lesson 6 Momentum Trading Advanced Quantitative Trading In this course, learners will get to know the workflow that a quant follows for signal generation, and also learn to apply advanced quantitative methods in trading. Breakout Strategy In this project, learners will code and evaluate a breakout signal. Learners will run statistical tests for normality and to find alpha. Students will also learn to find outliers and evaluate the effect that filtered outliers could have on their trading signal. Learners will run various scenarios of their model with or without the outliers and decide if the outliers should be kept or not. Course Project Course 2 Lesson 1 Quant Workflow Artificial Intelligence for Trading 5 Lesson 2 Outliers & Filtering Signals Lesson 3 Regression Lesson 4 Time Series Modeling Lesson 5 Volatility Lesson 6 Pairs Trading & Mean Reversion Stocks, Indices & ETFs In this course, students will learn about portfolio optimization, and financial securities formed by stocks such as market indices, vanilla ETFs, and smart beta ETFs. Course 3 Artificial Intelligence for Trading 6 Lesson 1 Stocks, Indices & Funds Lesson 2 ETFs Lesson 3 Portfolio Risk & Return Lesson 4 Portfolio Optimization Smart Beta & Portfolio Optimization In this project, learners will create two portfolios utilizing smart beta methodology and optimization. Learners will evaluate the performance of the portfolios by calculating tracking errors. Learners will also calculate the turnover of their portfolio and find the best timing to rebalance. Learners will come up with the portfolio weights by analyzing fundamental data and by quadratic programming. Course Project Artificial Intelligence for Trading 7 Factor Investing & Alpha Research In this course, you will learn about alpha factors and risk factors, and construct a portfolio with advanced portfolio optimization techniques. Multi-Factor Model In this project, learners will research and generate multiple alpha factors. Then they will apply various techniques to evaluate the performance of their alpha factors and learn to pick the best ones for their portfolio. Learners will formulate an advanced portfolio optimization problem by working with constraints such as risk models, leverage, market neutrality and limits on factor exposures. Course Project Course 4 Lesson 1 Factors Models of Returns Lesson 2 Risk Factor Models Lesson 3 Alpha Factors Lesson 4 Advanced Portfolio Optimization with Risk & Alpha Factors Models Artificial Intelligence for Trading 8 Sentiment Analysis with Natural Language Processing In this course, students will learn the fundamentals of text processing and use them to analyze corporate filings and generate sentiment-based trading signals. Sentiment Analysis using NLP In this project, learners will apply natural language processing on corporate filings, such as 10Q and 10K statements, from cleaning data and text processing, to feature extraction and modeling. Learners will utilize bag-of-words and TF-IDF to generate company-specific sentiments. Based on the sentiments, learners will decide which company to invest in and the optimal time to buy or sell. Course Project Course 5 Lesson 1 Intro to Natural Language Processing Lesson 2 Text Processing Lesson 3 Feature Extraction Artificial Intelligence for Trading 9 Lesson 4 Financial Statements Lesson 5 Basic NLP Analysis Advanced Natural Language Processing with Deep Learning In this course, learners will get to know how deep learning is applied in quantitative analysis and get to use recurrent neural networks (RNN) and long short-term memory networks (LSTM) to generate trading signals. Sentiment Analysis with Neural Networks In this project, learners will build deep neural networks to process and interpret news data. They will also play with different ways of embedding words into vectors. Learners will construct and train LSTM networks for sentiment classification. Learners will run backtests and apply the models to news data for signal generation. Course Project Course 6 Lesson 1 Introduction to Neural Networks Artificial Intelligence for Trading 10 Combining Multiple Signals In this course, students will learn about advanced techniques to select and combine the factors that they’ve generated from both alternative data and market data. Course 7 Lesson 2 Training Neural Networks Lesson 3 Deep Learning with PyTorch Lesson 4 Recurrent Neural Networks Lesson 5 Embeddings & Word2Vec Lesson 6 Sentiment Prediction RNN Artificial Intelligence for Trading 11 Lesson 1 Overview Lesson 2 Decision Trees Lesson 3 Model Testing & Evaluation Lesson 4 Random Forests Lesson 5 Feature Engineering Lesson 6 Overlapping Labels Lesson 7 Feature Importance Combining Signals for Enhanced Alpha In this project, learners will combine signals on a random forest for enhanced alpha. While implementing this, learners will have to solve the problem of overlapping samples. For the dataset, we’ll be using the end of day from Quotemedia and sector data from Sharadar. Course Project Artificial Intelligence for Trading 12 Simulating Trades with Historical Data In this project, learners will build a fairly realistic backtester that uses the Barra data. The backtester will perform portfolio optimization that includes transaction costs, and learners will implement it with computational efficiency in mind, to allow for a reasonably fast backtest. Learners will also use performance attribution to identify the major rivers of their portfolio’s profit-and-loss (PnL). Learners will have the option to modify and customize the backtest as well. Backtesting In this project, learners will combine signals on a random forest for enhanced alpha. While implementing this, learners will have to solve the problem of overlapping samples. For the dataset, we’ll be using the end of day from Quotemedia and sector data from Sharadar. Course Project Course 8 Lesson 1 Intro to Backtesting Lesson 2 Optimization with Transaction Costs Lesson 3 Attribution Artificial Intelligence for Trading 13 Brok Bucholtz Instructor Brok has more than 5 years of software engineering experience from companies like Optimal Blue. Brok has built Udacity projects for the Self-Driving Car, Deep Learning, and AI Nanodegree programs. Cindy Lin Curriculum Lead Cindy is a quantitative analyst with experience working for financial institutions such as Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Ping An Securities. She has an MS in computational finance from Carnegie Mellon University. Eddy Shyu Instructor Eddy has worked at BlackRock, Thomson Reuters, and Morgan Stanley, and has an MS in financial engineering from HEC Lausanne. Eddy taught data analytics at UC Berkeley and contributed to Udacity’s Self-Driving Car program. Luis Serrano Instructor Luis was formerly a machine learning Engineer at Google. He holds a PhD in mathematics from the University of Michigan, and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Quebec at Montreal. Meet your instructors. Artificial Intelligence for Trading 14 Parnian Barekatain Instructor Parnian is a self-taught AI programmer and researcher. Previously, she interned at OpenAI on multi-agent reinforcement learning and organized the first OpenAI hackathon. She also runs a ShannonLabs fellowship to support the next generation of independent researchers. Arpan Chakraborty Instructor Arpan is a computer scientist with a PhD from North Carolina State University. He teaches at Georgia Tech (within the Master of Computer Science program), and is a coauthor of the book Practical Graph Mining with R. Elizabeth Otto Hamel Instructor Elizabeth received her PhD in applied physics from Stanford University, where she used optical and analytical techniques to study activity patterns of large ensembles of neurons. She formerly taught data science at The Data Incubator. Juan Delgado Instructor Juan is a computational physicist with a master’s in astronomy. He is finishing his PhD in biophysics. He previously worked at NASA developing space instruments and writing software to analyze large amounts of scientific data using machine learning techniques. Artificial Intelligence for Trading 15 Mat Leonard Instructor Mat is a former physicist, research neuroscientist, and data scientist. He completed his PhD and postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. Cezanne Camacho Curriculum Lead Cezanne is a machine learning educator with a master’s in electrical engineering from Stanford University. As a former researcher in genomics and biomedical imaging, she’s applied machine learning to medical diagnostic applications. Artificial Intelligence for Trading 16 Udacity’s learning experience Knowledge Find answers to your questions with Knowledge, our proprietary wiki. Search questions asked by other students, connect with technical mentors, and discover how to solve the challenges that you encounter. Workspaces See your code in action. Check the output and quality of your code by running it on interactive workspaces that are integrated into the platform. Quizzes Auto-graded quizzes strengthen comprehension. Learners can return to lessons at any time during the course to refresh concepts. Custom Study Plans Create a personalized study plan that fits your individual needs. Utilize this plan to keep track of movement toward your overall goal. Progress Tracker Take advantage of milestone reminders to stay on schedule and complete your program. Hands-on Projects Open-ended, experiential projects are designed to reflect actual workplace challenges. They aren’t just multiple choice questions or step-by-step guides, but instead require critical thinking. Artificial Intelligence for Trading 17 Our proven approach for building job-ready digital skills. Personal Career Services Empower job-readiness. • Access to a Github portfolio review that can give you an edge by highlighting your strengths, and demonstrating your value to employers. • Get help optimizing your LinkedIn and establishing your personal brand so your profile ranks higher in searches by recruiters and hiring managers. Experienced Project Reviewers Verify skills mastery. • Personalized project feedback and critique includes line-by-line code review from skilled practitioners with an average turnaround time of 1.1 hours. • Project review cycle creates a feedback loop with multiple opportunities for improvement—until the concept is mastered. • Project reviewers leverage industry best practices and provide pro tips. Technical Mentor Support 24/7 support unblocks learning. • Learning accelerates as skilled mentors identify areas of achievement and potential for growth. • Unlimited access to mentors means help arrives when it’s needed most. • 2 hr or less average question response time assures that skills development stays on track. Mentor Network Highly vetted for effectiveness. • Mentors must complete a 5-step hiring process to join Udacity’s selective network. • After passing an objective and situational assessment, mentors must demonstrate communication and behavioral fit for a mentorship role. • Mentors work across more than 30 different industries and often complete a Nanodegree program themselves. *Applies to select Nanodegree programs only. Learn more at www.udacity.com/online-learning-for-individuals → 12.02.22 \| V1.0	13,785
Indochine (Luke Nguyen) (Z-Library).pdf	ALSO AVAILABLE Acknowledgments In writing this book I have been taken on another wonderful and unique journey. Not only have I discovered more delicious dishes, I have also learnt so much more about the rich history and culture of colonial Vietnam. I am always amazed and appreciative as to where the love of food has taken me. Indochine would not have been possible without the love and support from four very special people: My mum and dad, who scouted all the wet markets of Vietnam in search of the freshest produce so we could cook and shoot each recipe. My beautiful loving partner, Suzanna Boyd, who keeps wowing me with her talents in photography, design and, now, food styling! I would have been absolutely lost without you. Alan Benson, you are incredible. Your photography is truly stunning and you seem to create these amazing images with such grace. I thank you for your professionalism and great friendship. Much respects to the publishing team of Kylie Walker, Hugh Ford, Kim Rowney, Leanne Kitchen and Livia Caiazzo. Big hugs to the entire Red Lantern Family; without your dedication, passion and hard work, I would not have found the time to complete this book. I thank you. To my wonderful family in France, thank you all so much for sharing your knowledge and love for French–Vietnamese cuisine and culture. Thank you also to all the cooks, restaurateurs, hoteliers and friends in Vietnam who were so generous with their time and knowledge; and lastly, thank you to Vietnam Airlines for your continuous support. This book is for my ever-supportive family: Cuc Phuong, Lap, Pauline, Lewis and Leroy Nguyen. Two wise men of Hanoi THERE’S NOT A BREATH OF WIND THIS morning and the jade- coloured waters of Hoan Kiem Lake are mirror flat. A motorbike pulls up in front of me; the young driver is selling chilled green young coconuts. I give him 10 000 dong (AUD 50 cents), he chops the top off with a large cleaver and then hands me the coconut. I sit down and sip on my refreshing juice and watch the world go by. I notice two elderly men, smartly dressed and wearing black berets, taking a stroll, the elegant bamboo walking sticks in their hands seemingly more for show than necessity. They stroke their long silver beards as they walk, nodding to each other in agreement as they talk. All the activity around me seems to stop as I watch these two men. They stop at a cart selling fresh soy bean milk, close enough for me to hear that they are not speaking Vietnamese but fluent French. It is not often that I approach strangers and ask to join them for a coffee, but on this particular day I feel so compelled to talk to these men, that this is exactly what I do. ‘Xin chao,’ I say a little nervously as I tentatively walk towards them. ‘Bonjour,’ they reply. I can’t speak French, so I continue in Vietnamese and ask if I can join them. They accept, so I order three Vietnamese iced coffees and ask them how they both came to learn the French language so well. ‘We both went to French schools,’ one of the men explains. ‘When the French occupied Vietnam, they divided it into three different ‘countries’, all with different administrative regions; the north was called Tonkin, the centre was Annam and the south, Cochin China. Along with Laos and Cambodia, Vietnam became part of French Indochina, or Indochine as it is often called. ‘Both our parents worked for the French, so we were given a French education. We are old school friends; we’re both in our late eighties now and many of our friends have passed, so we make sure we catch up every morning for our walk. Afterwards we usually head to our friend’s charcuterie store to buy freshly baked baguettes and pâté for our families.’ Baguettes and pâté… The French had such a profound impact on the Vietnamese way of life yet I’ve never stopped to really consider the culinary legacy they left behind, or how much influence it has had on my own and other Vietnamese families’ cooking techniques. I explain that I’ve only ever had a vague notion of this period of French occupation, that it lasted from 1862 to 1954, but that I’ve never delved deeper into it. As I sit in the park, drinking iced coffee and listening to two old men telling the stories of their youth, I realise a door is opening for me, that the seed of a new adventure has been planted. From that very moment, I commit to spending the next month travelling through Vietnam to discover how the French influenced what the Vietnamese cook and eat today, and how the French presence was felt in daily life and if it continues to do so. I’m barely able to contain my excitement as I tell them my plans. One of the men puts a calming hand on my shoulder. ‘Begin your journey first by simply walking through the old streets of central Hanoi,’ he tells me. ‘And as you walk, don’t always just look straight ahead but be sure to look up!’ As they send me on my way, I think how it is always the lives and stories of the people I meet who give such depth and heart to my research on Vietnam’s culinary arts. I have a renewed spring in my step, and I have those two wise gentle men of Hanoi to thank for that. CONTENTS Cover Also Available Title Page Acknowledgments Hanoi Dalat Saigon France Basics Glossary Index Copyright List of Recipes Hanoi beef soft noodle rolls Duck à l’orange Slow–cooked oxtail and beef brisket in aromatic spices Chargrilled jumbo garlic prawns with green papaya Chargrilled pork skewers in Vietnamese baguette Beef sirloin wok–tossed with garlic and green peppercorns Crab steamed in beer Crispy frogs’ legs Beef noodle soup Pan–fried cinnamon prawns Chicken and pork liver pâté Red braised pork belly Steamed Murray cod with passionfruit sauce Meringue et passion Fried chocolate truffles with pink pepper IT’S 5.30 AM; IT’S MUGGY BUT STILL BEARABLE, AND I’m slouched against the front gates of Lenin Park, not fully awake. Why am I here? I had to ask myself the same question as I stumbled bleary eyed out of bed this morning, but I’m here on good advice. ‘No visit to Hanoi is complete without checking out Lenin Park,’ my friend told me. ‘But be sure to get there early — it’s all over by 7.30 am.’ I can’t believe how busy it is; the sun is hardly up and already there’s a bottleneck getting into the front gate! The entrance is lined with sacks of freshly steamed corn sitting atop old bicycles, each cob selling for about AUD 25 cents. Morning joggers grab one on their way into the park for a quick, healthy breakfast. As I walk through the gates it’s almost like entering a different world, a tranquil oasis in the midst of this busy, hectic city. I’m taken aback by the sheer size of this great open space; magnificent aged trees tower over the large central lake, creating much-needed cooling shade. People are jam- packed in all corners of the park; both young and old are jogging, stretching, practising tai chi and martial arts, and playing cane ball and shuttlecock. The atmosphere is almost festival like, so much so that the buzz in the air soon snaps me out of my soporific state. I’m drawn to some pop music blaring from a set of speakers in the western corner of the park. I’m sure it’s a song from Modern Talking, a Europop band from Germany that was popular in the early eighties. Why they became so popular within Vietnamese circles around the world, I really don’t know. I remember my brother Lewis being such a fan, dressing like them and playing their songs over and over again. I arrive in time to catch the quirky sight of thirty or so men and women, all over the age of fifty, strutting their stuff to the beat, doing the cha-cha-cha, salsa and the lambada. The dancers are assembled in small groups, taking their cues from each dance leader, and I can’t help but laugh with joy at such a sight. I take a few photos and they begin to gravitate towards my camera, dancing even harder with more hip action and sass. I cheer them on and they love it! As hard as it is to draw myself away from them, I continue my walk, this time in search of something to appease my growling stomach. As I know only too well, where there are people there are food carts, but I have to be quick because they’ll soon pack up and go home. The locals come here at the crack of dawn when it is cool, they do their exercise, have their breakfast and then head off to work. There are noodle soups, tofu and sticky rice on offer — a perfect start to the day. For fifty years this enormous stone building showcased French power, a political statement symbolising French rule over Vietnam’s oldest city. Breakfast finished, I leave the park. Time has passed quickly and already it’s peak hour. A swarm of motorbikes buzz past me, and away from the cooling shade of the trees, I really feel the heat beginning to kick in. I walk towards town and arrive in an area known as the French Quarter. I stop smack bang in the middle of a busy intersection on Trang Tien Street and look up to see a building that I have seen many times before, but have always walked past, never thinking to stop or look up and admire its grandeur. It is the Hanoi Opera House, one of the city’s most striking landmarks. The Opera House was completed in 1911, and is often referred to as ‘little Garnier’ because it was built as a small-scale replica of the Opera House in Paris, designed by Charles Garnier. I enter the building through a grand entrance and then walk up ornate stairs, admiring the massive gilt-framed mirrors, luxurious red suede curtains and the Art Nouveau design on the walls and on the high domed ceiling. I feel like I am in Europe. Keen to see more French colonial architecture I move on a few blocks to Ngo Quyen Street where I find the Presidential Palace designed by French architect Auguste-Henri Vildieu in 1895 as the headquarters for the French Governor-General of Indochina. For fifty years this enormous stone building showcased French power, a political statement symbolising French rule over Vietnam’s oldest city. When Vietnam gained independence from France in 1954, Ho Chi Minh famously refused to live in the main palace, choosing instead to live in a modest cottage out the back. Today the palace serves as a strong reminder of French colonial rule, and it is where the Vietnamese government entertains and houses their official guests. Standing at the base of its magnificent staircase, looking up at its freshly painted green French shutters and its decorative wrought-iron glass porchway, I begin to think about what life must have been like during French colonial rule. The French may have left Vietnam over fifty years ago, but they certainly changed a nation in many ways. Madame Van at the Metropole A VINTAGE CITROËN TRACTION PULLS UP IN THE sweeping entrance of a grand building. The doorman, wearing a black suit and white gloves, opens the car door and helps his guests out, leaving their Louis Vuitton suitcases for the porter. He ushers them inside where they are greeted by elegant female hosts dressed in traditional ao dai. I can’t help but feel that I’ve just witnessed a scene from the cult film, Indochine. I cross the road to take a closer look. As I enter the legendary Sofitel Metropole, I feel as though I have slipped back in time. Built at the turn of the nineteenth century, this French colonial hotel oozes the nostalgic flair and charm of a bygone era, with its wood panelling, French doors, beautifully crafted furniture and low ceiling fans. As captivated as I am by the lobby, I naturally gravitate towards the restaurant. A long–time favourite for the city’s elite, Le Beaulieu Restaurant is renowned for its fine French food and magnificent old–world wines. The restaurant menu reads well: chicken cooked in red wine; carved leg of lamb with potato purée; roasted lobster with garlic butter and fresh pumpkin mousse; slow–cooked lamb shanks with white beans and honey roasted carrots… ‘Can I help you?’ the restaurant manager asks. I briefly tell him of my mission and ask if he knows much about French– inspired Vietnamese dishes and if the restaurant serves such food. He clicks his fingers and says in a charming French accent, ‘I have got just the right person for you. Please take a seat and wait a moment.’ He returns a few minutes later, holding the hand of a chef, enthusiastically leading her towards me. ‘This is Madame Van,’ he says. ‘She has been a chef here for almost twenty years and she knows everything about French–Vietnamese cuisine.’ I introduce myself to her and ask her to tell me a little about the hotel, how she came to be a chef here, and if she can give me some insight into the French influence on Vietnamese cooking. Madame Van speaks in a very clear, soft voice. She sits upright, the palms of her hands neatly placed on her knees. She speaks to me in English… ‘The hotel was built in 1901 and as soon as it opened its doors it became the place to stay for the colonial society, heads of state, ambassadors, famous writers, actors and the well–to–do. Well–known guests included Charlie Chaplin, Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, who wrote most of The Quiet American while staying here. So when I got a job offer here, I was so excited. Initially I wasn’t employed as a chef, but as a French interpreter. I majored in French at university and my job was to translate the cooking instructions and techniques from the French chefs for the local Vietnamese cooks. Not many Vietnamese spoke any English or French back then, but even with my perfect French and Vietnamese, it was still quite difficult for me to verbally explain these techniques and recipes to the Vietnamese. So I ended up practising the recipes myself so I could show the chefs how to make the dishes, step by step. This made my job so much easier, but I actually ended up being able to cook the dishes so well that the hotel scrapped the interpreter role and gave me a job as head chef.’ I majored in French at university and my job was to translate the cooking instructions and techniques from the French chefs for the local Vietnamese cooks. I am so impressed with her achievements and blown away by her talent. She tells me that her cooking career has taken her to over ten countries, allowing her to showcase Vietnamese cuisine to the world. I ask her what dishes she cooks that she thinks may have borrowed ideas from the French. ‘There are so many,’ she says. ‘Take vit nau cam for example, which is very similar to duck à l’orange. The Vietnamese traditionally only ate duck boiled or in noodle soups, but now we grill it, roast or flash–fry it. When we made stocks, we used to add uncooked vegetables for a clear soup, but now, for our beef broth in particular, we chargrill or roast the vegetables before we add them to the pot — this is a typical French technique. ‘There is a dish that I cook often, bo sot vang, which is beef cooked in rice wine. The Vietnamese never used to braise their meats in wine, but now we even use red wine in our cooking. Today in the streets of Hanoi you can find ladies selling pho sot vang, beef noodle soup in a red wine broth. And did you know that before the French came to Vietnam, the Vietnamese people hardly ever ate beef or buffalo? The French arrived and saw an abundance of cattle and buffaloes in the fields and wondered why we didn’t eat them. We considered these animals as working animals; they ploughed the rice fields for us and thus helped to provide our staple — rice. But the French eventually had their way and, sure enough, beef soon became the much– loved meat it is now.’ We talk some more, then it’s time for me to leave. I feel quite overwhelmed with how much I’ve learnt in such a short time. Madame Van scribbles in my notebook the name of a place where I might find some good street food, quickly says her goodbyes and returns to the kitchen. I glance at what she’s written. It simply says ‘corner of Hang Cot, under the railway bridge’. I tuck it into my pocket — a little food–discovery adventure awaits. Hanoi beef soft noodle rolls SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED STARTER I was so excited when I discovered this Hanoian dish. It is pure genius — just like a beef pho but rolled into noodles. When buying fresh rice noodle sheets, make sure they are at room temperature and not refrigerated, as they need to be soft to roll well. If they are cold, they will simply break into pieces. INGREDIENTS 300 g (10½ oz) beef fillet, very thinly sliced (1 mm/1/16 inch thick) 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) fresh flat rice noodle sheets (20 x 10 cm/8 x 4 inches) 1 bunch Asian basil 1 bunch sawtooth coriander 1 bunch rice paddy herb 2 long red chillies, julienned 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) dipping fish sauce (nuoc mam cham) MARINADE 1 tablespoon fish sauce 2 teaspoons sugar pinch of salt ½ teaspoon ground black pepper 1 lemongrass stem, white part only, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 red Asian shallots, finely chopped 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds ½ teaspoon sesame oil 3 tablespoons vegetable oil METHOD To make the marinade, combine the fish sauce, sugar, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the lemongrass, garlic, shallots, sesame seeds, sesame oil and vegetable oil and mix well. Add the beef and turn to coat in the marinade, then cover and set aside at room temperature for 20 minutes. Heat a frying pan or chargrill pan over medium heat. Working in two batches, add the beef and sear for about 30 seconds on each side, or until browned. The beef should be cooked to medium. Once all the beef is cooked, place a rice noodle sheet on a chopping board, with the shorter end closest to you. Now place some Asian basil leaves, sawtooth coriander leaves and a piece of beef along the base of the rice noodle sheet. Place a stem of rice paddy herb and a piece of chilli on top, positioning them so they are sticking out of the roll a little. Fold the rice noodle sheet up to enclose the herbs and beef, and continue to roll towards the top to form a nice tight roll. Repeat this process for the rest of the rice noodle sheets. Serve with the dipping fish sauce. Duck à l’orange SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL This Vietnamese adaptation of the classic French dish is amazingly moreish, and I actually prefer it to the traditional version. Try to source fresh young coconut water for this recipe, because the tinned variety has a bit of added sugar, which will make the dish far too sweet. INGREDIENTS 1.5 kg (3 lb 5 oz) whole duck 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 4 red Asian shallots, chopped 6 garlic cloves, chopped 2 lemongrass stems, white part only, bruised 2 star anise 2 cinnamon sticks ¼ teaspoon five–spice juice of 5 oranges grated zest of 1 orange 2 tablespoons shaoxing rice wine 3 tablespoons fish sauce 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 700 ml (24 fl oz) young coconut water (approximately) Vietnamese baguettes, to serve METHOD To chop the duck into quarters, use poultry scissors or a large sharp knife to cut down each side of the backbone, then remove and discard the backbone. Remove the legs by cutting through the thigh joint, then cut the breast in half lengthways through the breastbone. Rub the duck pieces with salt. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat, then add the oil and sear the duck, skin side down first, for 3 minutes on each side, or until browned. Remove the duck from the pan and set aside. Drain the fat from the pan, leaving about 2 tablespoons in the pan. Return the duck to the pan again over medium heat. Add the shallots, garlic, lemongrass, star anise, cinnamon and five–spice and cook for 3 minutes, or until fragrant. Add the orange juice, orange zest, rice wine, fish sauce, sugar, pepper and enough coconut water to cover the duck. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a low simmer. Cover the pan and cook for 2 hours, or until the duck is tender. Transfer the duck to a serving platter. Bring the liquid in the pan to the boil and cook for 10 minutes to reduce the sauce. Pour the sauce over the duck and garnish with the star anise and cinnamon sticks. Serve with baguettes. Thirty-six streets and lost I ALWAYS GET LOST IN THE CONFUSING NARROW STREETS and lanes of the Old Quarter, but this is often when I discover new things and different street foods. I glance at my map, but quickly fold it up again as I’m not very good with maps either, so I randomly pick a direction and start walking. The Old Quarter is just north of Hoan Kiem Lake, and it is a completely different experience walking around here compared to the French Quarter. It’s chaotic; the streets pulsate with life, and you find yourself having to walk on the narrow roads, dodging traffic, because the footpaths are crammed with street stalls and parked motorbikes. I guess this is the main reason why I never have the chance to ‘Look Up’ as I’m walking, but this time I will — but with great caution. Hanoi has had various names throughout its long history: Tong Binh, Dai La, Ke Cho, Dong Do, Dong Quan and Thang Long before it was given the name Hanoi (meaning ‘within the river’) by King Minh Mang in 1831. As the names of the city evolved, so too did the architecture of the Old Quarter, which today still reflects its rich and eclectic past as a great trading city, with some ancient buildings and pagodas dating back to ancient Chinese dynasties. Truong Dinh Tuyen and his wife The Old Quarter is the historic heart of Hanoi, home to thousands of years of history. Hanoi sits on the right bank of the Red River, so named for its reddish-brown colour, but the river once ran through the city centre, down canals and winding waterways, which were built to allow cargo boats better access to the city. Later, the French colonists filled in the canals, creating a network of winding streets known as the ‘thirty-six traditional handicraft streets’. If you have been to the Old Quarter you will notice that most streets start with ‘Hang’, which doesn’t mean ‘street’ as you would expect, but actually means ‘merchandise’, as each is usually named after the commodity that was once sold there. Still today, these streets retain their French translations. There’s Hang Bong (Rue du Coton), which sells cotton; Hang Bac (Rue des Changeurs), selling silver; Hang Duong (Rue du Sucre), selling sugar; and Hang Non (Rue des Chapeaux), selling hats. I come across a street called Cha Ca, which translates to ‘fried fish’, and sure enough almost all the restaurants on this street serve cha ca, a traditional Hanoian dish of snakehead fish or catfish marinated in turmeric and dill, cooked at the table and served with soft vermicelli noodles. I am stopped in my tracks by a group of French people who walk past me and into one of the cha ca restaurants. An elderly Vietnamese man at the door greets them in French, which immediately grabs my attention. I enter the restaurant and wait to be escorted to a table, then take a seat and watch for a chance to engage the old man in a chat. I order the local speciality. Out comes a clay brazier with burning coal and a plate of bite-sized marinated catfish, deep orange in colour from the turmeric; a platter filled with vibrant fresh dill, spring onions, bean sprouts and chilli; a bowl of fluffy vermicelli noodles; some roasted peanuts and some nuoc cham, for dipping. I am given a pan and told to start cooking. The fish is already partially cooked so I’m really only finishing it off in the pan. I throw the fish in, the oil sizzles and splatters all over the table then, when it’s almost done, I throw in the dill. I pile some noodles into my bowl, add the fish, some fresh herbs, then all the toppings. I drizzle over the nuoc cham, mix it all together and eat. Hanoi’s Old Quarter Wow! The dish has everything: great colours, wonderful textures, varying temperatures and incredible contrasting flavours. The dill is abundant but subtle and the turmeric and galangal are very well balanced — not overpowering at all. This dish may well become one of my favourite Hanoian dishes. The old man brings me some mam tom, a shrimp paste dipping sauce, which he says adds more depth to the dish. He sits down next to me while I eat and we begin to chat. His name is Truong Dinh Tuyen and he was born in 1923. Quite tall for a Vietnamese and very handsome, Tuyen is still strong and nimble for his age, and has a smile that warms the room. He tells me that this recipe is almost a hundred years old and has been passed down from generation to generation. ‘When I was a boy, we used to serve this dish a little differently,’ he says. ‘We served the fish on large trays on bamboo skewers; you could eat as many as you wanted. At the end of the meal I would count the empty skewers then charge accordingly.’ This got me thinking about the possible French origins of the dish. Usually Vietnamese eat fish in cutlets, with bones and all to savour the sweetness; it wasn’t typically Vietnamese to fillet the fish or pan-fry it — this seemed more like something the French would do. ‘So is this dish influenced by the French?’ I ask. He thinks for a minute then replies, ‘No, I don’t believe so. They may have possibly influenced the way we eat it now, but it has always been a Hanoian dish. What I do know for sure is that the French love to eat this dish in winter; it has been a favourite of theirs for over fifty years.’ Hanoi’s Old Quarter I ask about dill and how that came to be used, as dill is native to Europe, not something used in traditional Vietnamese cooking. Mr Tuyen’s daughter rushes over and says sternly, ‘This dish is not French, it is Vietnamese! Come in here, I’ll show you!’ She takes my hand and pulls me into her kitchen. ‘This is catfish, straight from the strong currents of the Red River, which is why the flesh is lean and firm. I clean the fish, blanch it in boiling water for a few seconds, then cut it into chunks. Our secret family marinade is a mixture of turmeric, galangal, spring onions, red shallots and shrimp paste. I cut the fish into chunks so I can fit it between bamboo sticks; no other reason. I then chargrill it over special charcoal that I buy from Huong Pagoda. It’s a charcoal that does not smoke and it imparts a much better flavour. I take the fish off the heat when it is almost cooked, then take it out to the customers to finish off the cooking themselves. Now, I don’t think there is anything French in that, do you?’ Mr Tuyen and his family I sensed that I might have offended Mr Tuyen’s daughter, as she is quite adamant that the cha ca dish was not influenced by the French at all — like most Hanoians, she is so very proud of her culture and her regional dish. However, the French did undoubtedly introduce dill into Vietnam, but whether it was a French or Vietnamese person who first used dill in this dish, we might never know. Mr Tuyen secretly hands me a piece of paper with a name and phone number on it. ‘This lady is an old schoolmate of mine. Give her a call; she has a great knowledge of food. Tell her I sent you.’ Slow–cooked oxtail and beef brisket in aromatic spices SERVES 6–8 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL This is a great example of how the Vietnamese have turned a traditional French stew into a classic Vietnamese dish. There are many versions of bo kho throughout Vietnam, and this one is the northern version. I use sarsaparilla in this recipe as I find it complements the star anise, but if you can’t find sarsaparilla, use stout instead. INGREDIENTS 3 star anise 2 cloves 1 piece of cassia bark ½ teaspoon five–spice 2 teaspoons shaoxing rice wine 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce 170 ml (5½ fl oz/2/3 cup) sarsaparilla 700 g (1 lb 9 oz) beef brisket, cut into 5 x 2 cm (2 x ¾ inch) pieces 700 g (1 lb 9 oz) oxtail, washed 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 red Asian shallots, chopped, plus 4 extra, peeled and left whole 3 garlic cloves, chopped 4 tablespoons tomato paste (concentrated purée) 2 tablespoons annatto oil 2 litres (70 fl oz/8 cups) beef stock base for pho 250 g (9 oz) carrots, peeled and thinly sliced 1 handful Vietnamese basil leaves Vietnamese baguettes, to serve METHOD Heat a small frying pan over low heat and dry–roast the star anise, cloves and cassia bark separately for 2–3 minutes, or until fragrant. Allow to cool, then grind the spices using a mortar and pestle. Combine the ground spices and the five–spice in a large mixing bowl, then add the rice wine, hoisin sauce and sarsaparilla. Add the beef brisket and oxtail and mix well. Cover and place in the fridge to marinate overnight. Place a large wok over medium heat, then add the oil, chopped shallots and garlic. Stir–fry for about 3 minutes, or until the shallots become translucent. Working in two batches, add the beef brisket and increase the heat. Continue to stir–fry until the meat is sealed on all sides. Remove to a large saucepan or stockpot. Add the oxtail, tomato paste and annatto oil to the wok and stir–fry for 4 minutes. Remove from the wok and add to the saucepan with the brisket. Place the saucepan over medium heat. Add the stock and bring it all to the boil, skimming any impurities off the surface, then lower the heat to a slow simmer. Add the whole shallots and cook for a further 2 hours, or until the meat is very tender. Once the beef is cooked, add the carrots and cook for a further 10 minutes. Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with the Vietnamese basil. Serve with the baguettes. The last of the Mohicans I STEP ONTO THE STREET OUTSIDE MR TUYEN’S restaurant, the number for his old friend on a piece of paper in my hand. I decide to call her straight away. Her name is Delphine and she agrees to see me. She lives only ten minutes away and I’m excited at the thought of soon meeting her. I hurry down Thuoc Bac Street, breathing in aromatic wafts of ginseng, cinnamon and dried ginger as I walk past the many Chinese herbal medicine shops that line the street. It is insanely hot and my cap is dripping wet, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m keen to get there. Madame Delphine’s house is directly across the road from a stunning jade- coloured lake called Thien Quang, on Nguyen Du Street. It is in the groovy part of town, a well-to-do area dotted with funky cafés, modern restaurants and brand-name stores. I note how appropriate it is that her house is next door to an international clothing store called French Connection. I press the button and seconds later the heavy door screeches open, then slams loudly behind me as I walk up the narrow spiral metal stairs. ‘Xin chao,’ a woman’s voice calls out from a nearby room. ‘Madame Delphine is expecting you.’ The housekeeper leads me into the house, pointing at my shoes to make sure I take them off before entering. The room is dark, hot and musty; it is bare except for a few wooden stools, a small electric fan and an altar table with a few sticks of smoking cinnamon-scented incense. The walls are covered in old black-and-white pictures, blanketed in a thick layer of dust. I blow the dust off one to reveal a photograph of Ho Chi Minh sitting with a family in that very room. As I lean in to study the picture more closely, I’m a little startled by a soft voice that speaks to me from across the room. ‘Welcome Luke, I am Delphine. I am pleased to meet you.’ I turn to see a woman’s silhouette sitting cross-legged on an oriental day bed in the corner. ‘Open a few shutters and let some light in,’ she says. The room fills with dust-speckled light and she reaches out to me. Gripping both my hands tightly in hers, she runs her fingers across my palms. Madame Delphine’s parents ‘I can see that you are a good person with a very bright future,’ she says, her fingers lightly tracing the lines in my palm. ‘You are young but you have an old soul and you are always striving to learn more. Take a seat next to me, Luke. Here, have some tea.’ She lets go of my hands and while she is busy pouring the tea, I sneak a sideways glance at her. There is such a regal presence about her; she sits with great posture and each of her movements is slow and considered. I look at her short silver hair, kind almond eyes and her worn, petite hands. She taps me on my thigh. ‘So what would you like to learn today my son?’ I tell her the story of my life, about how my family fled Vietnam in the late seventies, arriving in Thailand, where I was born. I tell her about our life in the refugee camp before coming to Australia, where I was raised. I talk about how I have spent most of my life cooking and studying regional Vietnamese food, travelling the country from north to south to discover age- old recipes and cooking techniques. ‘I want to find out more,’ I explain. ‘I want to learn what life was like in Vietnam during the colonial rule, what the Vietnamese used to eat then, what the French brought over to this country and how they have influenced Vietnamese cuisine. I can only learn this from people like yourself and your friends such as Mr Tuyen, who lived through this period.’ ‘Well it’s a good thing you are doing this now Luke, because Mr Tuyen and I are ‘the last of the Mohicans’ — we might not be around for much longer!’ She chuckles to herself then begins to tell me her story… Madame Delphine’s family villa ‘My birth name is Ho Thi Thuy Tan. I was born in 1932 into a very noble family. My grandparents were the king and queen of Tonkin and Annam. My grandfather governed all of the northern areas and was the head of the largest French college in Vietnam, called Albert Sarraut College, named after the first French governor. This is where all my uncles, aunties, siblings, both my parents and I were educated. We were taught only in the French language and were all given French names — mine was Delphine. ‘My parents were arranged in marriage to each other at the age of eight, which was quite normal back then. They both later became advisors to the French, known as Vietnamese mandarins. Our whole family lived like the French; we ate the same food they did, dressed like them, spoke their language and were even given French citizenship. My parents travelled by ship to Paris often, for two months at a time, to complete their masters and doctorates in law.’ She stops and points to one of the photographs. ‘Believe it or not, those men are all my great uncles, but they could be easily mistaken for being French. We lived a very fortunate life, travelled all over Vietnam for holidays, staying in one of the many villas we owned. But this all changed in 1945 when Ho Chi Minh and his National Liberation Committee called for the August Revolution, declaring independence. This was the beginning of the Franco-Viet Minh War. In 1954, the French eventually lost the nine-year battle and were forced back to France, and many of my uncles and aunties went with them. ‘Although we had lost all our possessions and all our homes, my parents decided to stay in Hanoi to raise their children. I was already married, but my husband and I were virtually penniless; we worked hard to pursue our studies and get good jobs, so that we could give our own five children their education. Today they are all doctors and lawyers living happily with their own families in Europe.’ As Delphine is speaking, I look up again at all the photographs on the wall; they really take me back to those colonial times. I feel very lucky to be having this unique experience and I don’t want to leave, so I ask her if she thinks cha ca, the fried fish dish of Hanoi, was inspired by the French. ‘Dill was definitely brought over by the French,’ she says. ‘So I guess any Vietnamese dish with dill in it was influenced by the French in some way — but that doesn’t mean the French created that dish. My grandfather, on one of his trips back from Paris, brought a kohlrabi vegetable with him to Dalat. It was he who introduced this vegetable to Vietnam. He loved the texture of it and enjoyed eating it raw in salads or wok-tossed in a simple stir-fry. You’ll be surprised as to just how many traditional Vietnamese dishes have French roots — you will have an amazing journey discovering all this. ‘Take charcuterie, for example. There are countless stores in Hanoi still selling these products. I go to a store in the Old Quarter particularly for their pàté; that store has been there for over a hundred years. You also have all the wonderful bakeries and patisseries, as well as the street food vendors selling pork-filled baguettes. And don’t forget all our salads, which the Vietnamese call xa lat; they are all dressed with various types of vinaigrettes, which are typically French.’ I feel so honoured that I have met this wonderful and interesting woman. Before I leave, she gives me the address of her favourite charcuterie shop, then she sends me on my way. Delphine’s great grandfather Chargrilled jumbo garlic prawns with green papaya SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL When chargrilling or deep–frying prawns, I always leave the head and tail intact as I enjoy their crispy texture. Please be adventurous and give it a go. INGREDIENTS 2 tablespoons oyster sauce 1 tablespoon fish sauce 1 tablespoon light soy sauce ½ teaspoon sesame oil 2 tablespoons sugar 6 garlic cloves, chopped 1 bird’s eye chilli, finely chopped 6 raw jumbo prawns (shrimp), peeled and deveined, heads and tails intact 1 green papaya, peeled and julienned 5 perilla leaves, sliced 5 Vietnamese mint leaves, sliced 5 mint leaves, sliced 1 tablespoon crushed roasted peanuts 1 tablespoon fried garlic Vietnamese mint sprig, to garnish METHOD Combine the oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, sesame oil, sugar, garlic and chilli in a mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the prawns and toss to coat in the marinade, then set aside at room temperature for 20 minutes. In another mixing bowl, combine the green papaya, herbs, peanuts and fried garlic. Set aside. Drain the prawns, reserving the marinade. Place the marinade in a wok or small saucepan and bring to the boil, then cook for 4 minutes until reduced and slightly thickened. Meanwhile, heat a barbecue grill or chargrill pan to medium–high heat. Chargrill the prawns for 3–4 minutes on each side, basting the prawns with the marinade every minute or so. Add the cooked prawns to the papaya mixture, drizzle 2 tablespoons of the marinade into the bowl and toss all the ingredients together. Transfer to a serving platter and garnish with the Vietnamese mint. Chargrilled pork skewers in Vietnamese baguette SERVES 6 There is an array of delectable fillings designed for the Vietnamese baguette; this one is my new personal favourite. Wandering around the small streets of old Hanoi, I see ladies selling these pork-filled baguettes. The smoky aromas coming from their chargrills lures me in every time. INGREDIENTS 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) pork neck 6 spring onions (scallions), white part only, sliced 4 tablespoons fish sauce 1 tablespoon honey 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 6 Vietnamese baguettes, split 1 Lebanese (short) cucumber, sliced into batons 2 large handfuls coriander (cilantro) sprigs sriracha hot chilli sauce, to serve hoisin sauce, to serve METHOD Thinly slice the pork neck across the grain into 3 mm (1/8 inch) thick slices, then set aside. Using a mortar and pestle, pound the spring onion to a fine paste. Combine the fish sauce, honey, sugar and pepper in a large mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the pork, spring onion paste and garlic. Toss to coat the pork in the marinade, then pour the oil over the top. Cover and place in the fridge to marinate for 2 hours, or overnight for a better result. Soak 12 bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes to prevent them burning. Thread the pork onto the skewers. Heat a barbecue grill or chargrill pan to medium–high heat and brush with some oil. Add the skewers in two batches and chargrill for 2 minutes on each side, or until browned and cooked through. Place two pork skewers into a baguette, pull out the bamboo skewers, then add some cucumber, coriander, chilli sauce and hoisin sauce, to taste. Repeat with the remaining pork skewers. Beef sirloin wok–tossed with garlic and green peppercorns SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL When the French arrived in Vietnam, they were surprised to see that the locals did not eat beef often, as cows were regarded mainly as working animals. This recipe is the Vietnamese version of the popular French dish, pepper steak. INGREDIENTS 1 tablespoon hot water 3 tablespoons oyster sauce 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1 teaspoon caster (superfine) sugar 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) beef sirloin, trimmed and cut into 1.5 cm (5/8 inch) dice 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 garlic clove, crushed ½ small onion, cut into large dice 10 fresh green peppercorns (or use peppercorns in brine, drained) 50 g (1¾ oz) butter pinch of salt generous pinch of cracked black pepper 1 sprig fresh green peppercorns, to garnish light soy sauce and sliced chilli, for dipping Vietnamese baguettes, to serve METHOD Combine the hot water, oyster sauce, sesame oil and sugar in a mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the beef and toss to coat well, then set aside to marinate for 10 minutes. Remove the beef from the marinade and drain well. Place a wok over the highest heat until smoking hot. Drizzle the oil around the top of the wok; the oil should ignite into flames, so take care. Add the beef in batches and seal it on all sides, shaking and tossing the beef in the wok. The beef should be charred and the wok flaming. Add the garlic, onion, green peppercorns and butter to the wok and continue to stir-fry for 4 minutes, constantly moving the ingredients around in the wok with a wooden spoon. Add the salt and cracked black pepper, then turn out onto a serving platter. Garnish with the sprig of green peppercorns. Serve with a small bowl of soy sauce and sliced chilli for dipping, and with baguettes. Bikes, beer and the story of a nation I’M ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A RIDE TO TAKE me back to my hotel. Four motorbike taxis shout ‘Xe om, xe om,’ beckoning me to go with them. One man grabs my arm in desperate need for business, so I show him the address and he agrees to take me there, but then attempts to charge me triple the usual price. I shake my head and walk away, and try to wave down a cab instead. He takes the bait and quickly stops me, agreeing to my price. It works every time! I hop on the back of his bike and secure my helmet. ‘Business is hard these days, you know,’ he says over his shoulder as he revs up the bike. ‘Sometimes I spend hours in the scorching heat without getting a fare. There are too many cab companies opening up in the city; competition means they are getting cheaper, and they’re all air-conditioned, too. How can I compete? Fuel just gets more and more expensive, and some days I am left with only a few dollars in my pocket at the end of the day. I’ve got five kids to feed!’ We arrive at the hotel and because I feel extremely guilty for haggling over just a few bucks, I cave in and agree to give him his initial asking price. I ask him if he’d like to join me for a coffee. He introduces himself as Cuong and asks me where I’d been that day. I excitedly tell him about my visit with Madame Delphine. He looks at me, squinting his eyes with confusion. ‘Why are you so interested in the French colonisation? Don’t you realise what they did to our people? You talk as if they did wonderful things for our country and introduced great Western ways to Vietnam. Well, you are wrong. In fact, the establishment of the colonial administration created a huge burden for our country. The costs of having French officials and military here were very high and who do you think paid for all that? The Vietnamese people did — my grandparents, your grandparents — with outrageously high taxes. ‘Now if you think that was criminal. In 1902 the French decided to monopolise the making and selling of alcohol. They made drinking of alcohol compulsory by law. Every village in Vietnam had to drink a set amount of alcohol each year and, of course, the French made it illegal for anyone to privately distil their own alcohol, something that has been part of the Vietnamese way of life for many years. If you were caught distilling your own, you would be imprisoned. ‘Once the French owned the alcohol market, they moved on to salt production. The administration bought salt directly from the producers, and then would sell it to the Vietnamese for triple the price. If that wasn’t enough, the French then gained control of all the poppy fields and encouraged the Vietnamese to smoke opium, resulting in a huge increase in the number of Vietnamese who were addicted to this drug. ‘With alcohol, salt and opium sales and increasing high taxes, the colonial administration’s income soared. All profits were taken back to France, while the Vietnamese were exploited and treated like slaves, with millions dying from starvation and malnutrition.’ He stops, trying to calm his emotions, then looks at me intently. ‘Now, do you think all that was worth it, just to get some cooking tips off the French?’ Thankfully, the coffees arrive at that moment, giving me time to choose my next words carefully. I explain to him that I realise that Vietnam has had a very long history of war and hardships — ruled by China for a thousand years, then the French for eighty years, and then the American War. These tough times have shaped Vietnam into the country it is today; it has survived and grown stronger, and has evolved into a hard-working nation with a fast- growing economy. Look at all the different genres of art, music and theatre that have been created in the last few centuries, the varying styles of architecture just in Hanoi alone, and then there’s the fabulous food! And look at what we are drinking right now — coffee, introduced by the French. The Vietnamese people have taken all things great from China, France and America and have adapted them into their own culture. Cuong shakes my hand and smiles. ‘I apologise if I got worked up,’ he says. ‘All my ancestors have always experienced famine and poverty, many were slaves to French rubber companies, some fought in the American War, and some died at sea attempting to flee the country. Then, there’s me. I’m almost fifty and I’m still only a motorbike taxi driver. But I should stop being so bitter; at least my kids are all at school and my family eat well.’ He stands up to leave. ‘Come on, I’ll show you a place that you might find interesting.’ We hop on his bike and ride through a tangled web of tiny streets and narrow lanes, stopping at a busy little intersection on the corner of Luong Ngoc Quyen and Ta Hien streets. We sit on miniature plastic stools, beside a keg of beer with a small sign that reads, ‘Bia Hoi — 3000 dong’. ‘This place is known as Bia Hoi corner, and this is where I come most days after work,’ he tells me. ‘Bia hoi means fresh beer, and I’m told that it’s the cheapest beer in the world. I brought you here because I was thinking about what you said about coffee and it being a large part of our culture. Well, I think beer is too. Vietnam now has a huge beer drinking culture, and I guess we owe that to the French. Take one of our most famous premium beers in Vietnam, 333. This beer was actually introduced by the French when they started a brewery in Ho Chi Minh in 1893, but then it was called 33. When the French got booted out, a Vietnamese company took over the brewery and changed the name to 333.’ We drink a few beers together and watch as the street begins to fill with people, both local Vietnamese and tourists, all keen to try this cheap beer. A young backpacker stands up and shouts, ‘Beers are on me!’ Everybody claps and cheers. Sixty beers and it cost him AUD 9.00, or 15 cents a glass. For the price, the beer isn’t too bad. It’s low on alcohol and slightly carbonated, as it spends very little time in the fermentation process, usually going straight from brew tank to keg. Street vendors push their carts along the street, selling grilled dried squid, green papaya and dried beef salad, and pork skewers in crisp baguettes — the perfect drinking food. There are so many Vietnamese dishes that are steamed in beer, cooked in beer or have a beer sauce, that I figure if beer was introduced by the French, then it was the French who influenced these very dishes. I voice my thoughts to Cuong who shakes his head, has a bit of a giggle and continues to drink. We sit on that crazy corner of the Old Quarter and share a few more beers and many more stories. I go to pay but he pushes my hands away. It is customary for him to pay as it was he who invited me. He wishes me all the best on my journey of discovery through Vietnam. Crab steamed in beer SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL After coffee and baguettes, beer is the next greatest thing that the French introduced to Vietnam. Not only has it become one of Vietnam’s favourite beverages, but it has also become widely used in the kitchen for cooking. INGREDIENTS 4 raw blue swimmer crabs 1 teaspoon sesame oil 2 tablespoons oyster sauce 1 tablespoon fish sauce 6 garlic cloves, chopped 2 teaspoons sugar pinch of salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 200 ml (7 fl oz) Asian beer 6 spring onions (scallions) 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 50 g (1¾ oz) butter 1 onion, cut into wedges 4 red Asian shallots, chopped METHOD Remove the upper shell of the crab, pick off the gills, which look like little fingers, and discard them. Clean the crab under running water and drain. Place the crab on its stomach and chop the crab in half lengthways with a heavy cleaver. Now chop each half into 4 pieces, chopping each piece behind each leg. With the back of the cleaver, gently crack each claw (this makes it easier to extract the meat). Repeat for all the crabs. Combine the sesame oil, oyster sauce, fish sauce, 1 tablespoon of the garlic, the sugar, salt and pepper in a large mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the crabs and toss to coat in the marinade. Set aside to marinate for 20 minutes. Place the crabs in a large metal or bamboo steamer and cover with the lid. Sit the steamer over a wok or saucepan of rapidly boiling water and steam for 5 minutes. Remove the lid and pour the beer over the crabs, then cover again and continue to steam for a further 10 minutes. Trim the spring onions and then chop the white part into 4 cm (1½ inch) lengths. Thinly slice the green part of 3 stems. Heat a wok over high heat, then add the oil and butter, then the onion, shallots, the remaining garlic and the white spring onion lengths. Stir-fry for 2 minutes until fragrant, then add the steamed crabs and wok-toss for a further minute. Transfer to a serving platter and garnish with the spring onion greens. Serve with Asian beer. Crispy frogs’ legs SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL INGREDIENTS 2 tablespoons shaoxing rice wine 1 teaspoon sugar pinch of salt and pepper 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) frogs’ legs 1 litre (35 fl oz/4 cups) vegetable oil, for deep-frying 50 g (1¾ oz/1/3 cup) potato starch 30 g (1 oz) butter 1 spring onion (scallion), thinly sliced 2 red Asian shallots, chopped 1 bird’s eye chilli, thinly sliced 3 garlic cloves, chopped SALT AND PEPPER SEASONING MIX 1 tablespoon salt 1 teaspoon sugar 1 teaspoon ground white pepper 1 teaspoon ground ginger ½ teaspoon five–spice METHOD Combine the rice wine, sugar, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the frogs’ legs and toss to coat in the marinade, then cover and set aside at room temperature for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, to make the salt and pepper seasoning mix, combine the ingredients in a bowl and set aside. Heat the oil in a wok or deep-fryer to 180°C (350°F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds. Remove the frogs’ legs from the marinade and drain. Working in batches, dust the frogs’ legs with the potato starch, shake off the excess starch, then add them a few at a time in quick succession to the oil. Deep-fry for 3 minutes, or until lightly golden and crisp, then carefully remove from the oil and place on kitchen paper to drain. Drain off all but 2 teaspoons of oil from the wok, then return the wok to the heat. Add the butter, spring onion, shallots, chilli and garlic. Toss to combine, then return the frogs’ legs to the wok. Continue to toss while sprinkling over 2 teaspoons of the salt and pepper seasoning mix, or more to taste. Serve immediately. Hidden streets of Hanoi THE SKY IS BLACK; THE MOON IS NOWHERE to be seen. I’m on Nha Tho Street, which is strangely deserted. I stop in the middle of the empty road and look up at St Joseph’s Cathedral, the oldest church in Hanoi, towering above me. It was built in the late 1800s and was one of the first buildings erected by the French colonists, who demolished an ancient pagoda to do so. It is an eerie but spectacular gothic-looking structure. I see why people call Hanoi ‘little Paris’ — St Joseph’s bears many similarities to the Notre Dame, which it was intended to replicate. At the end of a narrow lane, I notice the glow of burning charcoal and like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn to its light. A boy sits beside the fire, grilling whole shallots, garlic and ginger. ‘What is all this for?’ I ask him. ‘It’s for my mother’s pho broth. We have to prepare it now so it’s ready for our noodle stall tomorrow morning. Come back at 6 am and it’ll be ready then.’ I remember Madame Van from the Metropole telling me how Vietnamese cooks have adapted to the French technique of chargrilling their vegetables for their beef broths. I ask him if I can stay and watch. He points to a small house nearby. ‘You’ll have to ask my mum.’ From the main street you’d never guess that this neighbourhood even exists. The tiny hobbit-like houses with their doors in shades of light green, pastel blue and purple surround a deep water well, shaded by several large tamarind trees. I’m so happy that I’ve discovered this hidden gem. At the house, an elderly lady squats on a concrete floor, slicing onions on a wooden chopping block, while a teenage girl slices spring onions by the bucket load. I tell them that I am a cook from Australia and ask if it’s okay if I watch them cook their broth. ‘Sure thing!’ the older woman says, then the two look at each other and burst into hysterical laughter; it’s quite unusual to meet a young Vietnamese male who wants to learn how to cook street food. The older woman hands me a tiny chopping board, a blunt rusty cleaver and a red plastic colander full of fresh sirloin. ‘Start slicing!’ she says, trying her best to stifle her giggles. Unfazed, I grab the tools and wedge myself in between them. Their home is the smallest I’ve ever seen in Vietnam; it’s like a doll’s house — there is barely enough room even for the three of us. His mother wears a back brace, which she tells me she puts on as soon as she wakes up. I tell her that crouching on the floor all day will only hurt her back more, that she needs a work bench to prepare the food on. She looks around her cramped house and tells me she has nowhere to put it. ‘I have been cooking this dish for over thirty years. I used to do all the preparation myself, but now I need my children to help me. Nowadays my back won’t allow me to even lift the pot onto the small burner.’ Her son returns with the blackened shallots, garlic and ginger. She takes them from him and peels the skin, then thinly slices them. ‘Grilling these aromatic vegetables helps bring out maximum flavour and aroma,’ she explains. ‘It brings out their natural sweetness and also imparts great colour to the stock.’ Her son lifts a large pot onto a clay charcoal burner, his mother adds some oxtail and beef brisket, then the chargrilled shallots, garlic and ginger, and a spice bag filled with roasted cassia bark, cardamom, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander seeds, peppercorns and star anise. The son fetches water from the well then pours it in. She brings it to the boil, reduces the heat, then lets it simmer, allowing it to release all of its magical aromas overnight while they sleep. Beef noodle soup SERVES 8 INGREDIENTS 4 tablespoons salt 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) oxtail (chopped into 3 cm/1¼ inch pieces) 1 garlic bulb, unpeeled 4 large onions, unpeeled 150 g (5½ oz) ginger, unpeeled 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) beef bones 2 kg (4 lb 8 oz) beef brisket 185 ml (6 fl oz/¾ cup) fish sauce 80 g (2¾ oz) rock sugar 1.6 kg (3 lb 8 oz) fresh rice noodles, 1 cm (½ inch) wide (you will need about 200 g/7 oz per person) 400 g (14 oz) trimmed sirloin, thinly sliced against the grain 4 spring onions (scallions), sliced ground black pepper coriander (cilantro) sprigs, to garnish 230 g (8 oz/2 cups) bean sprouts 1 bunch Asian basil 2 bird’s eye chillies, sliced 1 lime, cut into wedges SPICE POUCH 2 teaspoons coriander seeds 2 teaspoons sichuan peppercorns 2 teaspoons cumin seeds 2 teaspoons fennel seeds 8 cloves 5 star anise 2 x 10 cm (4 inch) pieces of cassia bark 1 tablespoon black peppercorns 40 cm (16 inch) square muslin cloth METHOD Fill a large saucepan with cold water, add 3 tablespoons of the salt, then submerge the oxtail in the water. Soak for 1 hour, then drain. To make the spice pouch, dry-roast each ingredient separately in a frying pan over medium–low heat, shaking the pan constantly, for 1–2 minutes, or until fragrant. Cool, then coarsely grind using a mortar and pestle or electric spice grinder. Add the ground spices to the muslin square and tie up tightly in a knot. Set aside. Heat a barbecue grill or chargrill pan to medium–high heat and grill the unpeeled garlic bulb, onions and ginger, turning often, for 15 minutes, or until all sides are blackened. Cool slightly then, when cool enough to handle, peel off the blackened skins and discard them, and then roughly chop. By doing this, the garlic, onion and ginger become sweet and fragrant, releasing more flavour into the stock. Put the oxtail, beef bones, brisket and 6 litres (210 fl oz) of cold water in a stockpot and bring to the boil. While the stock is boiling, constantly skim any impurities off the surface for 15 minutes (this will ensure a clean, clear broth), then reduce the heat to a low simmer. Add the fish sauce, remaining 1 tablespoon of salt, rock sugar, garlic, onion, ginger and spice pouch. Cover and simmer for 4 hours, or until the stock has reduced by a third. Strain the stock through some muslin into another pan. Remove the brisket, set aside to cool, then thinly slice. Skim any fat off the stock and discard it. Divide the noodles into eight equal portions. Working with one portion at a time, blanch them in boiling water for 20 seconds. Drain, then transfer to a serving bowl. Place 3 or 4 slices of brisket on top of the noodles, followed by 3 or 4 pieces of raw sirloin. Pour over the hot stock to cover the noodles and beef. Garnish each bowl with 1 tablespoon of sliced spring onion, a pinch of pepper and a coriander sprig. At the table, add bean sprouts, Asian basil, chilli and a squeeze of lime. Pan–fried cinnamon prawns SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL INGREDIENTS 1 tablespoon fish sauce 1 teaspoon oyster sauce 2 teaspoons sugar ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon ¼ teaspoon ground cumin ¼ teaspoon red curry powder (I like to use Ayam brand) 300 g (10½ oz) raw large prawns (shrimp), peeled and deveined, tails intact 2 tablespoons vegetable oil 2 cm (¾ inch) piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced 2 teaspoons chopped garlic 2 red Asian shallots, chopped 6 spring onions (scallions), cut into 5 cm (2 inch) lengths 1 long red chilli, sliced steamed jasmine rice, to serve METHOD Combine the fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, cinnamon, cumin and curry powder in a mixing bowl. Add the prawns and toss to coat in the marinade, then cover and place in the fridge to marinate for 10 minutes. Heat the oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the ginger, garlic and shallots and fry for 1 minute, or until fragrant. Add the prawns and cook for 1 minute on each side. Add the spring onion and 2 tablespoons of water and toss for a further minute. Transfer to a serving plate and garnish with the chilli. Serve with steamed jasmine rice. Mrs Chan’s 150-year-old charcuterie store I AM WALKING AIMLESSLY UP AND DOWN Hang Bong Street in the scorching heat, and have been doing so for twenty minutes now, desperately searching for Madame Delphine’s favourite charcuterie store. I’m about ready to give up. I gulp down some more water and pour the rest over my head, then watch as steam rises from my shoulders. It’s then that I notice a little store across the road, sandwiched between two handicraft stores, a queue twenty deep curling out the front door. The sign above says ‘Quoc Huong’. Finally, I’ve found it! The counter is stacked with pork terrines wrapped and bound in banana leaf, the shelves behind are filled with jars of pork floss and every type of pickle imaginable. Open trays of mayonnaise, pork and chicken liver pàté have wooden spatulas in them, perfect for scooping up as much as you need. Some people stock up on whole terrines and containers of pàté, while others are here for just a few steamed fish cakes or pieces of dried beef to snack on. The store has charm and character, a real artisan feel to it. Towards the back there is a cooking area, the benches lined with old blackened ovens. Cane baskets and plastic colanders are piled high, with containers of spices and ingredients scattered on any available floor space. Woks set on portable gas stoves are his sing and simmering with their lids on; I’m intrigued as to what is cooking beneath. An elderly woman stands behind the counter, greeting each of her customers by name. Her name is Mrs Chan and she proudly tells me that her store is over 150 years old, a small family business passed down through four generations. She introduces me to her two sons and three daughters. There is such a gentle warmth in this room, and I can sense the passion that each has for this wonderful store. Noticing my curiosity, the eldest daughter tells me what’s cooking in the woks: it’s the family’s age-old recipe for dried beef. ‘The beef is first marinated overnight in secret herbs and spices. It is then cooked in a simmering stock for one hour. It is cooled then sliced super thin and stir-fried in a dry wok for half an hour. After that we put it in the ovens on low heat to dry for two hours, then toss it in a mixture of medicinal herbs.’ She gives me a little piece to taste. Though it’s dried, it is still moist; the texture is nice and chewy, with the perfect balance of saltiness and sweetness and just the right amount of spice. She tells me that this isn’t the kind of dried beef that is kept for months in the pantry, but is designed to be eaten right away, put in green papaya salads or simply eaten as a snack, and because of the medicinal herbs that are tossed through it, it’s also good for sore throats. Her mother passes me an old family photograph, giggling girlishly. ‘That’s me when I was just a few years old,’ she says, pointing to the young girl in the photo. ‘And the lady carrying me is my aunty. She is now 103 years old and still going strong. See what eating good food can do for your health!’ I ask her if the family were making pàté and pork terrines 150 years ago, or if that was something that was introduced when the French arrived. She’s not sure so she calls her aunt. ‘My aunty says that the family have always been making terrines, pork floss and dried beef, but pàté came at a much later stage, about the same time the French were here, when the Vietnamese people also began to eat baguettes.’ Pàté and baguettes — they have become such staples in Vietnamese cuisine that I find it hard to imagine life without them… Chicken and pork liver pâté SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL Pàté is found everywhere throughout Vietnam, seemingly on every street corner, and always served with a crisp baguette, another culinary legacy of the French occupation. INGREDIENTS 200 g (7 oz) pork livers 200 g (7 oz) chicken livers 100 g (3½ oz) butter, softened 100 g (3½ oz) minced (ground) pork 2 red Asian shallots, finely chopped 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons brandy or Cognac 4 tablespoons pouring (whipping) cream 1 teaspoon sugar 2 teaspoons salt ½ teaspoon ground white pepper Vietnamese baguettes, to serve METHOD Clean the livers of fat and sinew. Cut the pork livers to match the size of the chicken livers. Wash under cold water, dry well with kitchen paper and set aside. Put 2 teaspoons of the butter in a large frying pan over medium heat. When the butter starts to bubble, add half the livers and fry for 1–2 minutes until browned, then turn them over and brown the other side for 1–2 minutes, making sure the livers remain pink in the middle. Remove to a plate, then repeat the process with a little more butter and the remaining livers. Add 1 tablespoon of butter to the pan and gently cook the pork mince for about 2 minutes, or until cooked through but not browned. Remove and set aside. Wipe the pan clean with kitchen paper, then add 2 teaspoons of butter and gently fry the shallots and garlic for 5 minutes, or until very soft and slightly caramelised. Increase the heat, then return the livers and pork to the pan, pour over the brandy or Cognac and ignite the alcohol. Once the flame subsides, pour the liver mixture into a food processor and process until smooth. With the motor running, add the remaining butter and the cream. Season the pàté with the sugar, salt and white pepper; taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Pour into a container and refrigerate for about 2 hours, or until set. Before serving, remove from the fridge and let stand at room temperature for 30 minutes. Serve with baguettes. Red braised pork belly SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL Local Hanoians line up for hours for Mrs Chan’s red braised pork belly, which they take home and stuff into freshly baked crisp baguettes along with some pàté and mayonnaise. INGREDIENTS 1 kg (2 lb 4 oz) boneless pork belly ½ teaspoon Chinese red food colouring 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon five–spice 1 tablespoon salt 1 litre (35 fl oz/4 cups) young coconut water METHOD Place the pork in a dish. In a small bowl, mix the red food colouring with 1 tablespoon of cold water, stirring to dissolve. Brush the mixture all over the pork until well coloured. Combine the garlic, soy sauce, five-spice and salt. Massage this mixture into the pork, then cover the pork and place in the fridge to marinate for 1 hour. Bring the coconut water to the boil in a large saucepan over high heat. Place the pork flat on the work surface, skin side down, and roll up tightly from the narrow end, from the bottom up. Tie the pork with kitchen string at 2 cm (¾ inch) intervals, then place the pork into the boiling coconut water. Cover the pan, then reduce the heat to low and simmer for 1½ hours, or until tender, turning the pork regularly during cooking time. Once cooked, allow the pork to cool in the liquid before slicing the amount you require. Serve with rice, vermicelli noodles or in crisp Vietnamese baguettes. The pork will keep for up to 4 days in the fridge. Chef Didier Corlou IT’S 5 PM AND THE SUN IS BEGINNING TO set. It’s the perfect time to chat to a chef: lunch service is finished and preparations for dinner are almost complete. The evening sky is a stunning purplish pink and there’s a rare cool breeze in the air, so I decide to walk. I’m on my way to meet Didier Corlou, a master chef originally from Brittany in France. I have heard so much about Didier, but have never had the chance to meet him in person. Didier’s restaurant, the much-renowned La Verticale, is located on a quiet tree-lined street called Ngo Van So, not too far from the city centre. My jaw drops as I arrive and take in the sight before me. What a dream to have a restaurant like this, set in a classic art deco 1930s four-storey French villa, a building steeped in so much history and with so much charm! I pick up the perfume of aromatic spices as I enter the front room. I feel as if I’ve walked into an Asian apothecary as I find myself surrounded by huge coils of cinnamon, jars of star anise, sichuan peppers and coriander seeds. There is an assortment of aged fish sauce, pink nuoc mam salt, Phu Quoc peppers, home-made goat’s cheese, curry powder concoctions in test tubes, and shelves stocked with Didier’s cookbooks. The building retains its original tiles and walls; the kitchen is the only modern thing in sight. I spot Didier from afar; he is being interviewed by a camera crew. He stops and waves at me, signalling that he won’t be long. Minutes later he greets me and asks if I want a glass of wine. He looks exhausted but his energy is contagious. He speaks at a million miles an hour with a thick French accent, which keeps me on the edge of my seat. ‘I’ve spent the last three days with two different camera crews from France. We’ve gone to th markets, eaten street food, and tomorrow I go to Quy Nhon to meet up with seafood suppliers,’ he says without hardly stopping for breath. ‘I’ve just opened my latest restaurant, Madame Hien, a few months ago, it is bigger, busier, non-stop — still smoothing things out there, but it is good. I have a function for the French consulate tonight, and I’m working on a new menu. So… how are you?’ We talk about life in general for a bit, then I get down to what I’ve come for: I ask him to tell me how he ended up in Vietnam. ‘I spent many years as Executive Chef at Pullman Hotels in France, before getting transferred to Hanoi in 1991 to set up the new restaurants at the Sofitel Metropole. I was there for fifteen years before setting up my own restaurant. I initially started out introducing Vietnam to French cuisine, blending French sauces with Vietnamese flavours, but as the years go on and Vietnamese cuisine evolves, I find that Vietnamese food now influences my French cooking. ‘I have worked and cooked all over the world, but nothing beats living in Vietnam. I fell in love with it as soon as I arrived. The people are wonderfully hospitable, the landscape so beautiful, the produce is fantastically fresh, the culture is strong and the food…well… what can I say, it’s the best in the world! I think that both cuisines are quite similar: both the French and Vietnamese love subtle flavours, focus on fresh produce and both eat similar things — offal, eel, frogs, smoked ham, cured sausage and even snails. The two cuisines work in such harmony together.’ I ask him about pho noodle soup and if it has French origins. Didier explains that he did a series of seminars on pho many years ago and released a booklet to discuss the topic and the possible origins of the soup. He grabs a copy of the booklet and passes it to me to read… Pho is essentially a soup, served with noodles, consommé, thinly sliced beef and sometimes onion. Each diner adds some fish sauce, chilli, fragrant fresh herbs and spices, and a squeeze of lemon. Traditionally, pho was only served in the morning and Hanoians only ate the soup on Sundays or in times of poor health, but nowadays it is eaten at any time of day, most often as street food. While pho is known andloved all over Vietnam, it is claimed that Hanoi is the best place to go for pho. As I had suspected, the exact origins of pho are a mystery and no one seems to know for sure if it wasa Vietnamese creation or if it was adapted from a blend of culinary traditions, although most will agree that there are definite French and Chinese influences. The presentation of the food is truly exceptional, the balance of flavours and textures is incredible … For me, this meal is the perfect representation of the evolution of Vietnamese cuisine. Didier’s booklet explains that Nguyen Dinh Rao, president of the Unesco Gastronomy Club in Hanoi, insists that the birthplace of pho was in Nam Dinh city, in the Red River Delta in northern Vietnam. He claims that at the beginning of the twentieth century a large textile industry was established there, and many of the new city workers and French and Vietnamese soldiers all wanted a dish that was less rustic than the traditional soups of the area. The bouillon and the rice noodles are distinctly Vietnamese he claims, but to meet the taste of the Europeans, beef and other ingredients were added. One theory is that the word pho comes from a corruption of the French feu, meaning fire. Others agree that pho was inspired by the boiled French dish, le pot au feu. Didier agrees, pointing out that pot au feu and pho stock are both made using marrow bones and charred onion to give a better colour and flavour. After reading the excerpts from Didier’s booklet, my respect for the man grows tenfold. Never have I met a person as knowledgeable and as passionate about Vietnamese cuisine and culture as he. I could spend all night chatting to him but Didier has to get back to his kitchen. Instead of rushing off I decide I will stay for dinner. I walk up the spiral staircase to the main dining room, glancing at the framed black-and-white pictures of Didier’s Breton family on the wall, of his Hanoian wife, their two children and his Vietnamese in-laws. I realise then that his new restaurant, Madame Hien, is named after his mother-in-law. I have a quiet corner table to myself. It is set not only with a wine glass, knife and fork, but also with chopsticks, salt, pepper, ground chilli, star anise and black cardamom. Like the table setting and Didier’s cooking, the room too reflects both Vietnamese and French influences. Antique tiles and thick stone columns work nicely with wooden red chairs and contemporary Vietnamese artwork. I don’t need to order the food, it begins to arrive in a slow procession: coconut palm rice paper rolls with chives and black truffles; Dalat artichoke with clams and vinaigrette dressing; sea bass fillet fried with sweet chillies, bok choy and fresh star anise; and goat’s cheese with truffles and sprouts marinated in pollen liquor. The presentation of the food is truly exceptional, the balance of flavours and textures is incredible and the colonial ambience — brilliant. For me, this meal is the perfect representation of the evolution of Vietnamese cuisine. Stephan, Tin and the Green Tangerine HANOI ON A SATURDAY NIGHT — I HAVE NEVER seen anything like it. The streets are heaving with people and motorbikes. It’s anarchy on the roads: the motorised do as they please, riding up onto the footpaths, honking their horns and bullying the pedestrians out of their way. I am one of those on foot and even I can barely walk, yet despite the snail’s pace at which we all move, no one complains. Saturday night is market night. The surrounding streets of the Old Quarter have been closed and vendors are now free to sprawl their goods onto the streets. Fake Gucci boots are up for sale alongside flash-fried nem rolls filled with crab, prawns and pork; frogs’ legs, chilli and lemongrass are tossed in a flaming wok beside a stand that sells propaganda postcards. A balloon seller pushes past, struggling to control a bunch of balloons so large that I wonder why they haven’t lifted her up into the clouds. Everything is happening here and there’s nothing you can’t find. I manage to break free from the human traffic and head towards my destination. I have arranged to meet one of Hanoi’s leading restaurateurs, and we’ve planned to meet at a popular food stand. Stephan and his wife, Tin, are already there, sitting kerb side with a beer in hand. I notice that they’re both smartly dressed; very appropriate attire I think to myself, as street food is such a theatrical experience. This place serves only two dishes: bo nuong vi, marinated beef cooked at the table, and bo sot vang, beef slowly braised in wine. This is the French-inspired dish that Madame Van recommended to me, and I have been waiting to try it all week. A boy drops a portable gas cooker on our table, turns it on high, then places a heavy iron plate on top to heat up. The waiter brings out an enormous platter of finely sliced beef, which has been marinated in garlic oil, sesame oil and lemongrass. There’s another platter laden with various fresh mint leaves, star fruit, bean sprouts and rice paper. We sit in the open air, chatting, drinking and chargrilling our beef, a thick cloud of fragrant smoke rising above us. Stephan is French–Vietnamese, and both he and Tin are the owners of Green Tangerine on Hang Be, a restaurant set in a beautifully restored French townhouse. I wanted to meet up with them to learn about Stephan’s family history and to hear more about their very successful restaurant. ‘My father was a captain in the French army,’ Stephan tells me. ‘He met my mother in Hanoi where they eventually married. When colonial rule ended, my parents were forced to go to Brittany, where I was born. We only spoke French at home; we were forbidden to speak Vietnamese. The only time we heard Vietnamese spoken was when my parents would fight and argue. Because of that we began to believe that Vietnamese was an ugly language, so we didn’t want to learn it anyway. We knew nothing about Vietnam or my mother’s heritage, and we were forbidden to find out. I left my job and began to cook more and more, re-creating all the wonderful food my parents cooked in France, using imported French ingredients to cook Vietnamese food. ‘The only positive thing we knew about Vietnam was its food. Every day, my parents used French ingredients to cook authentic Vietnamese dishes. As I grew older I began to wonder why we weren’t allowed to talk about Vietnam yet we were eating Vietnamese cuisine on a daily basis. Determined to discover my heritage, I rebelled. At family gatherings I would ask uncles, aunties and grandparents about Vietnam’s culture and traditions. When they were all gathered together as a family, it was so obvious that there was more Vietnamese cultural energy than there was French. So why were they all in such denial? ‘In 1993 I signed on for a job as an engineer in biology. We travelled to Vietnam to screen for hepatitis and HIV. My family ordered me not to go, but we all do what we are told not to. ‘My work eventually took me to Hanoi. At that stage I had been in Vietnam for almost two years and I enjoyed every moment of it. One night my friends and I visited a restaurant that served Pan-Asian cuisine; it was new and different so I had to check it out. The food was delicious and the business was run really well. It was owned by Tin and her family, and that’s where we met. We had the same passion for food — and for each other. We married not long after. ‘As my love for food grew, I left my job and began to cook more and more, re-creating all the wonderful food my parents cooked in France, using imported French ingredients to cook Vietnamese food. So the idea of Green Tangerine was born. Tin’s mother hits the markets at 4 am every day, sourcing the freshest produce and, like Vietnamese cuisine, Green Tangerine is constantly evolving.’ The next dish arrives and Stephan opens his arms wide as if about to embrace it. ‘Street food is king!’ he says as the waiter sets down a basket of crisp baguettes and individual bowls of bo sot vang. The sauce is thick, deep in colour from the red wine and annatto. Star anise, cinnamon and five-spice release aromas that we can’t resist. We pick up our baguettes, tear off pieces and quickly drown our bread in it. The brisket is soft, moist and tender from being cooked for many hours. It is refined and so delicious. It is indeed a meal fit for royalty and we are feasting like kings and queens. Steamed Murray cod with passionfruit sauce SERVES 4 Stephan and Tin are very proud of this dish as it displays both Vietnamese and French cooking techniques and flavours. INGREDIENTS 4 x 200 g (7 oz) Murray cod fillets, skinned (or other skinless firm white fish fillets) ½ bunch dill 28 English spinach leaves 370 g (13 oz/2 cups) steamed jasmine rice, warm 300 g (10½ oz) passionfruit, juiced with seeds 80 g (2¾ oz) sugar juice of 1 lemon METHOD To mould the fish and the spinach parcels you will need four 4 cm (1½ inch) and eight 12 cm (4½ inch) round pastry cutters. To steam and mould the fish fillets, first place four greased 4 cm (1½ inch) round pastry cutters into the middle of four greased 12 cm (4½ inch) round pastry cutters. Place a fish fillet in between the two cutters so that it becomes a circular shape. Sprinkle the fish with some dill, salt and pepper. Repeat with the other three fillets. Line a large bamboo steamer with baking paper and punch a few holes in the paper. Place the fish fillets (still in the pastry cutters) in the steamer and cover with the lid. Sit the steamer over a wok or saucepan of rapidly boiling water and steam for 8 minutes. Remove and set aside. Meanwhile, blanch the spinach in boiling water for 30 seconds, then refresh in iced water and drain. Divide the spinach leaves over the remaining four 12 cm (4½ inch) pastry cutters, overlapping the leaves slightly to form a star-like shape. Divide the warm steamed rice into four portions and mould the steamed rice into the spinach-lined cutters, then enclose the leaves around the rice and press down firmly to make a neat parcel. Set aside. In a small saucepan, combine the passionfruit, sugar and lemon juice. Cook over medium heat for 5 minutes, or until the sugar dissolves and the sauce thickens a little. Set aside. Place a spinach parcel onto each serving plate, then remove the pastry cutters. Place the steamed fish on top of the spinach and carefully remove the pastry cutters. Pour 1 tablespoon of passionfruit sauce over the top and garnish with a sprig of dill. Meringue et passion SERVES 4 INGREDIENTS 2 eggs, separated 170 g (6 oz) caster (superfine) sugar 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) strained passionfruit juice (about 8 passionfruit) 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) milk 1 tablespoon plain (all–purpose) flour 100 g (3½ oz) mascarpone icing (confectioners’) sugar, for dusting (optional) METHOD Preheat the oven to 150°C (300°F/Gas 2). Line a baking tray with baking paper. To make the meringues, use an electric mixer to whisk the egg whites until soft peaks form, then slowly add 130 g (4½ oz) of the sugar. Whisk until the meringue is shiny and stiff peaks form. Spoon the meringue into four large mounds onto the prepared tray, spacing them apart. Use a palette knife to smooth them into neat balls. Alternatively, pipe the meringues into four large mounds using a large piping (icing) nozzle. Place in the oven and cook for 45–50 minutes. Remove from the oven and set aside to cool. To make the passionfruit sauce, put the passionfruit juice and 20 g (¾ oz) of the sugar in a saucepan, stirring occasionally until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes, or until reduced and thickened. Remove the pan from the heat and place in the fridge to cool. Heat the milk in a small saucepan. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks and the remaining 20 g (¾ oz) of sugar until pale and thick. Add the flour and beat well, then transfer to a small saucepan. Slowly add the warm milk to the egg yolk mixture over very low heat, stirring until thickened. Remove the pan from the heat, cover the custard directly with plastic wrap, and set aside until cooled to room temperature. When the custard has cooled, add the mascarpone and 2 tablespoons of the passionfruit sauce and stir to combine. Fill a piping bag with the passionfruit custard. Using a small spoon, gently scoop out a small hole from the base of the meringues and then pipe the passionfruit custard into the hole. Place each filled meringue onto a serving plate. Combine the remaining passionfruit sauce with 3 tablespoons of water to thin it a little, then pour the sauce around each meringue. If you like, dust with icing sugar before serving. Fried chocolate truffles with pink pepper SERVES 4–6 This is one of Green Tangerine’s signature desserts. It would have to be the most unusual chocolate dessert I have ever seen, which is why I love it! TRUFFLES 100 g (3½ oz) dark chocolate, chopped 30 ml (1 fl oz) thickened cream 20 g (¾ oz) unsalted butter 1 teaspoon ground pink peppercorns BATTER 2 eggs 50 g (1¾ oz) sugar 100 g (3½ oz/2/3cup) plain (all–purpose) flour 25 g (1 oz) unsweetened cocoa powder, plus extra to serve vegetable oil, for deep–frying METHOD To make the truffles, melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Add the cream, butter and pink pepper and mix well until smooth. Remove the bowl from the heat and press a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface of the chocolate to prevent a skin forming. Chill the chocolate mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes, to firm up a little. After this time, roll the chocolate into small marble-sized balls, or use a melon baller to scoop the mixture into small balls, and arrange them on a tray lined with baking paper. Place the tray and chocolate balls in the freezer for 1 hour. To make the batter, combine the eggs, sugar, flour and cocoa powder in a mixing bowl. Mix together well, making sure you get rid of any lumps, then slowly add 50 ml (1¾ fl oz) water, mixing well to form a smooth, thick batter. Cover and set aside at room temperature for 10 minutes. Half-fill a medium-sized saucepan with the oil and heat to 180°C (350°F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds. Using an oiled tablespoon, coat each truffle ball, one at a time, with the batter, then transfer into the hot oil, pulling the spoon away from you to the other side of the pan — the batter will slide off the spoon, creating a long teardrop. Deep- fry the truffle for 30 seconds, then carefully transfer to kitchen paper to drain. Repeat this process with the remaining chocolate balls. Before serving, sprinkle a little cocoa powder over the top of the chocolate truffles. List of Recipes Chargrilled beef and asparagus mustard rolls Green mango and pomelo salad with soft shell crab Quail cooked in orange and coconut water Pumpkin flowers stuffed with prawns and dill Rabbit in red wine Beef tongue slow-braised in red wine Coq au vin Heart of palm and tomato salad with Vietnamese herbs Dalat artichoke and pork rib soup Wok-tossed cabbage with garlic Warm beef and watercress salad Asparagus wok-tossed with Asian mushrooms Caramelised pork belly with quail eggs Vietnamese baguette Baguette with steamed pork balls Green tea-smoked duck I’M ABOVE THE CLOUDS, FLYING OVER SOFT FLUFFY puffs of white; if only I could jump out, spread my arms and lay on them. As the plane begins its descent, the clouds gracefully disappear, revealing a landscape like no other I’ve seen in Vietnam. A vibrant patchwork green of rolling hills as far as the eye can see, a landscape of pine forests, French villas and beautiful lakes — I feel as if I’ve stumbled into the French Alps in springtime. The doors open and the gush of crisp, cool air that enters the plane sends me rummaging through my bag for my jacket. After the intense heat of the last week, the cooler climate is welcome relief indeed! I have arrived in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, in a town called Dalat, the ‘city of eternal spring’. The name Da Lat comes from the hill tribe groups, the original inhabitants of the region, and its name means ‘stream of the Lat people’. Dalat is 1500 metres above sea level, and its cool climate and high rainfall make it ideal for growing vegetables and herbs. Guests having lunch in the gardens of the Dalat Palace in the early 1900s Dalat train station in the early 1900s; Dalat train station as it is today; Guests arriving at the Dalat Palace by plane Villa built by the French in the early 1900s; Vietnamese workers and their French employer In 1893, Swiss-born French physician Dr Alexandre Yersin, a protégé of Dr Louis Pasteur, visited the region, its ever green trees and hills reminding him of his homeland. So enamoured was he of the town’s charms, he recommended the French colonial administration form a health resort in the area. Soon hotels, chalets and villas began to spring up all over town, and French government officials, military personnel and foreign dignitaries, looking for a respite from the oppressive heat of the cities, flocked here on weekends — a playground for the colony’s rich when en vacance. The area became known as ‘le petit Paris’, and much of its French colonial past is still evident today. One of the oldest French hotels still standing is the luxurious Dalat Palace, built in 1922. It became the epicentre around which the rest of the town developed, and housed the social elite. Hoping to get just a glimpse of the glitz and glamour of life back then, I have booked a room there. As I wheel my bags out of the airport, my dream life begins to unfold. I spot a man dressed in a black suit, standing in front of a beautifully restored black and gold vintage Citroën, holding a sign: ‘Mr Luke Nguyen’. ‘That’s me! That’s me!’ I shriek as I run towards him, barely able to contain my excitement. Not very cool, I must admit. I had seen this type of car in Hanoi, but now I’m about to ride in one. I nestle into the car’s soft, dark red seats and breathe in the scent of old leather. The drive through town transports me to the Europe of a hundred years ago, as we pass lakes, churches, convents, windmills and a treasure trove of French provincial architecture. The car pulls into the grounds of the Dalat Palace, down a long driveway surrounded by hectares of lush rolling lawns and flower beds. This place is like a country estate and I feel like a king. Dalat Palace THE CITROËN SLOWS TO A HALT IN FRONT OF THE Dalat Palace hotel and I step out onto red carpet. In the lobby, four hosts warmly greet me, offering a variety of Asian and European teas. The hotel’s decor is magnificently elegant: the lobby is dotted with plush chairs, an elaborate chandelier hangs from the high ceiling, and even the floor tiles are works of art. There is no need to check in. I’m guided up a grand staircase to my room, with Edith Piaf’s La vie en rose playing in the background. My room has French doors that open out onto a view of the picturesque Xuan Huong Lake. There’s no shower, only a claw-foot bathtub. I imagine myself here a hundred years ago; I would spend all day in my room soaking in the tub or writing letters to friends and family with my fountain pen, and sealing the envelopes with hot wax… But letter writing will have to wait; I head down to the hotel’s signature restaurant, Le Rabelais, and take a seat at a table dressed with pressed linen and set with fine crystal. The waitress, dressed as they did centuries ago with a ruffled petal-shaped apron and head piece, shows me the ‘1926 Menu’. This menu is a re-creation of an original menu found in the Dalat museum, and has been carefully replicated by the hotel’s chefs… ‘Young rabbit aspic with apple foie gras, pickled shallot and mushroom; Bread consommé with beef and porto sauce; Roasted chicken and red beans with bacon, and fine green salad of the moment; Selection of cheeses; Fresh fruit tart with raspberry coulis.’ There is no way I can eat all that myself, so I opt for the à la carte menu and order a dish called ‘The best of Dalat, from the hill to the garden’, as I’m curious to see what produce is grown here. My meal arrives and it is truly decadent: asparagus soup; smoked duck rillettes; pumpkin flowers stuffed with goat’s cheese; and artichoke and avocado rice paper rolls served with raspberry chutney — all beautifully arranged and finished with a scattering of edible flowers. The chef, dressed in crisp starched whites and a very tall chef’s hat, comes out to check on my meal. His name is Linh and he has been cooking in the Rabelais’ kitchen for over fifteen years. He tells me that in the early 1900s Dalat was well known as good hunting grounds for wild boar, black bears, deer, panthers, tigers, elephants and peacocks, and that guests once stood out on the restaurant balcony and shot these animals for entertainment. Sadly, hunting was so popular in Dalat that most of these animals no longer exist here. But I’m not interested in hunting, I want to learn more about the fresh herbs and vegetables that grow so abundantly throughout Dalat, which varieties were introduced by the French and what other foods and influences they brought with them. I ask chef Linh where he sources his produce. He tells me he has many suppliers, but one grower in particular supplies all of his European herbs, such as thyme, sage and rosemary — a small farm just on the outskirts of town called the Golden Garden. The sun is shining but the air is cool so I wrap myself in a scarf, borrow a motorbike from the hotel and head to the hills, to embark on my French discovery tour of Dalat. The Palace’s vintage Citroën Dalat Palace in the early 1900s. Chargrilled beef and asparagus mustard rolls SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED STARTER Dijon mustard is a fantastic French ingredient that the Vietnamese now enjoy using in many of their dishes. Here the mustard is married with the Asian flavours of soy and fish sauce to make a surprisingly wonderful combination. INGREDIENTS 500 g (1 lb 2 oz) beef sirloin 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon fish sauce 2 teaspoons sesame oil 3 garlic cloves, chopped 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon ground black pepper 10 asparagus spears, trimmed 2 carrots, peeled and sliced to the length of the asparagus (you’ll need 10 pieces of carrot) 2½ tablespoons dijon mustard 10 spring onions (scallions), white part only 1 tablespoon vegetable oil 1 teaspoon toasted sesame seeds light soy sauce and sliced red chilli, for dipping METHOD Trim the beef and thinly slice it into ten 5 x 8 cm (2 x 3¼ inch) pieces. Combine the soy sauce, fish sauce, sesame oil, garlic, sugar, salt and pepper in a mixing bowl, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Add the beef and toss to coat in the marinade, then cover and set aside at room temperature for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, bring a saucepan of water to the boil, add the asparagus and blanch for 2 minutes. Drain, then place the asparagus in iced water to stop the cooking process. Drain and set aside. Repeat the process to blanch the carrots. Lay the beef slices on a chopping board and spread 1 teaspoon of mustard over each slice. Now add 1 piece of asparagus, carrot and spring onion to each slice of beef. Roll up the beef to enclose the vegetables. Repeat to make 10 rolls in total. Heat a barbecue grill or chargrill pan to medium heat. Drizzle the beef rolls with the vegetable oil, then chargrill the rolls for 3 minutes on each side. Garnish with the sesame seeds and serve with a small bowl of soy sauce and sliced chilli for dipping. Green mango and pomelo salad with soft shell crab SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL Green mangoes are fantastic in salads. They are a little sweet, a little sour and have such great texture. When choosing green mango, go for the smaller variety, and make sure it is green and firm. If green mango is unavailable, try green papaya or green apple instead. INGREDIENTS 1 pomelo 1 green mango, peeled and julienned (see note) 1 handful perilla leaves, torn 1 handful mint leaves, torn 1 handful Vietnamese mint leaves, torn 1 spring onion (scallion), thinly sliced 1 tablespoon fried garlic 2–3 tablespoons dipping fish sauce (nuoc mam cham) 1 litre (35 fl oz/4 cups) vegetable oil, for deep-frying 4 soft shell crabs 100 g (3½ oz) potato starch 1 tablespoon chopped roasted peanuts 2 tablespoons fried red Asian shallots 1 bird’s eye chilli, sliced METHOD Peel the pomelo and then roughly segment it by simply tearing small pieces with your hands, doing your best to remove the tough outer pith. Put the pomelo in a mixing bowl with the green mango, herbs, spring onion and fried garlic. Dress with the dipping fish sauce and set aside. Heat the oil in a wok or deep-fryer to 180°C (350°F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds. Pat the crabs dry with kitchen paper, then cut each crab in half and dust with the potato starch. Working in small batches, deep-fry the crabs for 4 minutes, carefully turning them over in the oil after 2 minutes, until crisp. Remove and place on kitchen paper to absorb the excess oil. Arrange the salad on a platter. Place the crabs on top and garnish with the peanuts, fried shallots and chilli. Note To prepare the green mango, first peel and cut off the flesh in thin slices around the stone, then slice into fine julienne. Alternatively, you can use a serrated vegetable shredder, known as a kom kom peeler (sold in Asian food stores), to do this. Quail cooked in orange and coconut water SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED MEAL Quails are really enjoyable to eat; they are full of flavour, inexpensive and incredibly versatile. The trick to a perfectly cooked quail is to always keep it moist, so don’t forget to baste the quail during cooking time. INGREDIENTS 6 quails 40 g (1½ oz) butter 250 ml (9 fl oz/1 cup) young coconut water (or chicken stock) 125 ml (4 fl oz/½ cup) shaoxing rice wine 2 tablespoons fish sauce 4 tablespoons orange juice ½ teaspoon grated orange zest 3 garlic cloves, chopped 2 tablespoons sugar 6 pitted prunes 1 tablespoon potato starch 2 tablespoons Grand Marnier METHOD Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/Gas 4). To butterfly the quails, place them on a chopping board, breast side up. Using poultry scissors or a sharp knife, cut down along each side of the backbone. Discard the backbone. Put the quail, skin side up, on the board and press firmly down on the ribcage, pressing it out flat. Combine the butter, coconut water, rice wine, fish sauce, orange juice and zest, garlic and sugar in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Place the quails in a single layer in a flameproof baking dish, add the prunes, then pour over the orange and coconut water mixture. Bake for 45 minutes, occasionally basting the quails with the liquid. Remove the baking dish from the oven and place on the stovetop over high heat. Transfer the quails to a serving platter. Sprinkle the potato starch into the baking dish, stir constantly for 1 minute, then reduce the heat and simmer for 2 minutes until the sauce is thickened. Add the Grand Marnier and stir to combine. Pour the sauce over the quails and serve. Pumpkin flowers stuffed with prawns and dill SERVES 4–6 AS PART OF A SHARED STARTER I learnt so much about edible flowers while in Dalat. Chef Linh offers a fantastic ‘Flower Menu’ at the Dalat Palace for guests who want to sample the region’s edible flowers. Pumpkin flowers are enjoyed throughout Vietnam, but I have never seen them served anywhere else in the world, so if you can’t source them use zucchini flowers instead. INGREDIENTS 350 g (12 oz) raw prawns (shrimp), peeled, deveined and roughly chopped ½ bunch dill, picked 1 tablespoon fish sauce 1 garlic clove, finely chopped pinch of salt and pepper 12 pumpkin flowers, stems intact with stamens removed (or use zucchini flowers) vegetable oil, for deep-frying 2 egg whites 155 g (5 ½ oz/1 cup) potato starch 6 violet flowers, to garnish (optional) 1 lime, cut into wedges METHOD Using a mortar and pestle, pound the prawns into a fine paste. Place into a mixing bowl and add half the dill, the fish sauce, garlic, salt and pepper. Using your hands, mix everything together for 2 minutes, or until combined well. Take a teaspoon of the paste and carefully stuff each pumpkin flower. Fill a wok or deep-fryer one-third full of oil and heat to 180°C (350°F), or until a cube of bread dropped into the oil browns in 15 seconds. Meanwhile, put the egg whites into a bowl and beat well. Put the potato starch into another bowl. Carefully dip each filled pumpkin flower into the egg white to coat. Drain off the excess, then dust each flower with the potato starch until dry. Shake off the excess starch, then deep-fry the flowers in three batches for 3–4 minutes, or until crisp, be	262,908
sotaytimhuyet.pdf	KHÍ CÔNG Y ĐẠO VIỆT NAM SỔ TAY TÌM HUYỆT ĐỖ ĐỨC NGỌC 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 Khích-Nguyên, Khích-Du, Thông : TrÎ Çau nhÙc chân tay. 40 41 42 Thông-B° 12 ÇÜ©ng kinh. 43 44 45 Tä-Thông 12 ÇÜ©ng kinh : 46 47 48 1-ñiŠu hòa HÕa-Thûy : VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Tâm du 6-36 lÀn dùng Ç‹ tä hÕa, tä nhiŒt trong bŒnh sÓt nhiŒt, cao áp huy‰t. 2-Tä nhiŒt : VuÓt tØ Bàng Quang du lên Quy‰t âm du. 3-Tä hÕa : VuÓt tØ Bàng Quang du lên Ti‹u trÜ©ng du rÒi vuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Tâm du. 4-Tä hå xuÃt can nhiŒt Ç¶c : VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Can du 18 lÀn,và vuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Ph‰ du 36 lÀn, rÒi tØ Bàng Quang du lên ThÆn du 18 lÀn, và tØ Bàng quang du lên ñåi trÜ©ng du 18 lÀn. 5-Ho cäm do Ph‰ nhiŒt : VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Tâm du 18 lÀn, rÒi tØ ThÆn du lên Ph‰ du 36 lÀn. 6-Ho cäm do Ph‰ hàn : VuÓt tØ Can du lên Tâm du 18 lÀn,rÒi tØ Tâm du lên Ph‰ du 18 lÀn. 7-Bao tº nhiŒt : VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Quy‰t âm du 18 lÀn, tØ ThÆn du lên Ph‰ du 18 lÀn ,tØ Bàng Quang du lên ñåi trÜ©ng du 9 lÀn rÒi tØ Bàng Quang du lên VÎ du 18 lÀn. 8-B° HÕa : VuÓt tØ Can du lên Tâm du 18-36 lÀn. VuÓt tØ Ti‹u trÜ©ng du lên Quy‰t âm du 18 lÀn. 9-Tæng nhiŒt : VuÓt tØ Tam tiêu du lên ñªm du 18 lÀn, tØ ñªm du lên Quy‰t âm du 18 lÀn. 10-Bón nhiŒt : VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Ph‰ du 18 lÀn, tØ ñåi trÜ©ng du lên ThÆn du 18 lÀn, rÒi vuÓt tØ Hå Liêm Ç‰n Khúc Trì 18-36 lÀn. 11-Bao tº hàn : VuÓt tØ ñªm du lên Quy‰t âm du 18 lÀn,Tÿ du lên Tâm du 18 lÀn, rÒi VÎ du lên Tâm du 18 lÀn. 12-Hå ÇÜ©ng trong máu : VuÓt bài ÇiŠu hòa thûy-hÕa. VuÓt tØ ThÆn du lên Ph‰ du ,vuÓt tØ Tÿ du lên Ph‰ du ,vuÓt tØ ñåi TrÜ©ng du lên VÎ du, rÒi tØ Bàng Quang du lên Tam tiêu du, m‡I huyŒt 18 lÀn. 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 Côngdøng cûa huyŒt theo bát pháp 67 TáC døng thông : Møc Çích thông trŒ : dissolvant-antistate : Thông Nhâm ñÓc Thông Måch Nhâm,Ph‰ Thông nhuÆn ph‰ Thông Måch ñÓc Thông mÛi Thông mÛi, m¡t khô do nhiŒt h¶i Thông m¡t Thông m¡t tai Thông tai Thông kinh låc Thông kinh låc ª gÓi Thông låc Thông dÜÖng toàn thân Thông huy‰t trŒ hå tiêu Thông thÃp trŒ Thông khí cÖ tam tiêu Thông l®I kh§p tay vai Thông ti‹u nhiŒt Thông ti‹u Thông trÜ©ng vÎ thÃp nhiŒt Thông thÜ®ng tiêu Thông ph‰ khí thûng TrÜ©ng cÜ©ng. Nhân trung LiŒt Khuy‰t Kh°ng tÓi HÆu Khê ThÜ®ng tinh. Nghênh hÜÖng NgÛ xÙ ñÒng tº liêu r phong Thính cung. Trung ch». Nhï môn Túc tam lš. Thi‰u thÜÖng Âm thÎ Tam dÜÖng låc ñåi chùy Huy‰t häi Tam âm giao Ty trúc không Kiên ngung Thanh lãnh uyên ñÎa thÜÖng ThÜ®ng c¿ hÜ. N¶I Çình Trung phû Âm Çô 68 Tác døng thÜ giãn chÓng co th¡t ThÜ cân giäi co rút do hÕa thiêu cân ThÜ ÇÀu c° gáy, cánh tay, lÜng ThÜ gân c°, bong gân ThÜ hÀu h†ng ThÜ cân måch toàn thân ThÜ cân thông låc ThÜ cân thông låc l®i yêu tÃt ThÜ cân månh lÜng gÓi ThÜ cân, månh cÓt, trøc phong ª gÓi ThÜ cân tÙ chi, run gân, Parkinson ThÜ cân låc ª can ThÜ hung cách ThÜ kinh måch ThÜ cân låc chÓng co th¡t ThÜ lÜ«i ThÜ lÒng ng¿c ThÜ tim ng¿c ThÜ ng¿c l®I cách do khí uÃt, nghËt thª ThÜ ng¿c Ùc hÀu h†ng ThÜ ng¿c bøng ThÜ thÀn kinh bøng, Çùi hang ThÜ trung tiêu ThÜ th¿c Çåo, môn vÎ ThÜ trÜ©ng vÎ ThÜ tôn cân ThÜ yêu do Ù huy‰t ThÜ giãn gân bÎ co rút Khúc tråch Tiêu låc Hàm y‰n Thiên Ç¶t HÆu khê. ñåi tr». Thân måch DÜ«ng lão. ThØa sÖn.Côn lôn.DÜÖng trì Ñy trung Côn lôn DÜÖng læng tuyŠn Kh‰ måch. LÜ tÙc Trung phong. Khúc tuyŠn Chí dÜÖng. Khích môn. Cách du Yêu du Thái båch. Công tôn. ñåi bao. MŒnh môn. Cân súc Hoåt nhøc môn Ki‰n lš. CÜu VÏ. ñªm du ñåi læng Chiên trung Hoa cái TrÃp cân Âm bao N¶I quan. ThÜ®ng trung quän. TuyŠn cÖ ThÀn khuy‰t Khí xung Ân môn Á môn 69 Tác døng l®I : L®I cách L®I cÖ quan L®I dÎch chÃt, l®I ti‹u,thông ti‹u L®I Çªm L®I hå tiêu L®I bàng quang L®I bàng quang ÇiŠu thûy Çåo L®I bàng quang do thÃp nhiŒt L®I quan ti‰t L®I ræng kh§p L®I ti‹u tháo thÃp L®I thông ti‹u L®I thÃp nhiŒt ti‹u trÜ©ng L®I trÜ©ng L®I thûy thÃp L®I xÜÖng kh§p L®I xÜÖng lÜng L®I yêu tích L®I y‰t khai âm L®I y‰t hÀu sÜng Çau do hÕa L®i y‰t hÀu khô h†ng L®i yêu tÃt L®i phúc thûng ( bøng l§n nhÜ trÓng ) C¿ Khuy‰t Phong phû ñÎa thÜÖng TÙ båch Âm læng. Âm cÓc. Hoang du Thûy Çåo Ñy dÜÖng . Phøc lÜu Trung c¿c Khúc trì Giáp xa Chí thÃt Âm bao, âm læng,Âm cÓc,Quan nguyên Ti‹u trÜ©ng du Thû tam lš Thûy phân Á môn ThÆn du. Bàng quang du Nhân trung. MŒnh môn Thiên Ç¶t Liêm tuyŠn. ThÜÖng dÜÖng. NhÎTamgian Nhân nghênh. Thi‰u thÜÖng NgÜ t‰. Thiên ÇÌnh. Chi‰u häi Yêu dÜÖng quan.ñåi trÜ©ng du Quan nguyên Âm cÓc 70 Tác døng b° hÜ t°n : Møc Çích cûng cÓ cho månh tonic-antivide TçNG PHÑ : B° tång phû B° vinh vŒ khí, tông khí B° ngÛ tång khí, tr® khí trung tiêu B° thÆn hÜ, b° nguyên khí B° khí hÒi dÜÖng B° thÆn dÜÖng B° tr® vÆn hóa can tÿ thÆn B° hÜ t°n tæng båch cÀu B° lao t°n B° hÜ phò chính B° phò ích tÿ B° Tÿ vÎ KiŒn Tÿ vÎ KiŒn vÆn hóa tÿ vÎ bÎ hÜ hàn Phò th° hóa thÃp ª vÎ Phò th° hóa thÃp ñåi trÜ©ng Phò th° trØ thÃp hàn, thÃp thûy Tr® khí hóa hå tiêu B° tång thÆn B° thÆn hóa thÃp hàn, thÃp nhiŒt B° thÆn âm tráng nguyên dÜÖng Tr® vÆn hóa trung tiêu Tr® vÆn hóa trung tiêu hàn Theo ngÛ du huyŒt trên kinh. Chiên trung Trung quän Khí häi Quan nguyên MŒnh môn. Tam tiêu du Tam âm giao ñào Çåo Ph‰ du Túc tam lš …n båch. Thái båch Công tôn ThÜÖng khâu ThÀn khuy‰t Xung dÜÖng Thiên xu Tÿ du Trung c¿c ThÆn du. Phøc lÜu Côn lôn Thái khê Thái båch ChÜÖng môn 71 Tác døng Ôn : Làm Ãm Ôn ÇiŠu thÃt tinh cung hàn Ôn hå tiêu hàn Ôn thông nguyên dÜÖng cÓ thoát Ôn dÜÖng hÒi nghÎch, ôn tÿ hàn Ôn thÆn hàn Trung c¿c. Yêu dÜÖng quan. Quan nguyên Khí häi. Yêu du ThÀn khuy‰t …n båch Kinh môn. Tác døng Thæng, giáng : Thæng dÜÖng cÓ thoát Thæng dÜÖng cÙu nghÎch ñiŠu thæng ñiŠu giáng Bách h¶i TÓ liêu B° Trung quän Tä Trung quän Giáng can khí nghÎch làm qu¥n Çau Giáng âm hÕa quy‰t nghÎch ( thûy nhiŒt lên ÇÀu ) Giáng hÕa khí nghÎch 12 kinh Giáng hÕa khí nghÎch tam tiêu Giáng hÕa nghÎch thÜ®ng tiêu Giáng hÕa nghÎch hÀu h†ng ,sÜng h†ng Giáng khí Ù Giáng, lÜÖng huy‰t Giáng ph‰ ÇiŠu khí Giáng khí trÜ©ng vÎ Giáng låc huy‰t Giáng ph‰ khí nghÎch Giáng khí ngÎch Giáng nghÎch khu phong thÃp Giáng vÎ hÕa nghÎch, quy‰t nghÎch Giáng vÎ nghÎch thÃp hàn Giáng vÎ khí nhiŒt Giang nghÎch hóa thÃp x ñåi Çôn DÛng tuyŠn ThÜÖng dÜÖng Chi cÃu Khúc tråch NhÎ, Tam gian, Phù Ç¶t C¿ cÓt Khích môn ñåi chùy. Kh°ng tÓi H®p cÓc Xích tråch Chiên trung. ThÜ®ng quän LÜÖng khâu LŒ Çoài Kim môn N¶i Çình ThÜ®ng quän 72 Tác døng ÇiŠu : ÇiŠu chÌnh ñiŠu ph‰ tÿ ñiŠu ph‰ khí ñiŠu giáng ph‰ khí ñiŠu giáng ph‰ khí thûng ñiŠu giáng khí Çåi trÜ©ng ñiŠu khí Çåi trÜ©ng ñiŠu trÜ©ng phû ñiŠu khí trÜ©ng vÎ ñiŠu vÎ khí ñiŠu khí hòa vÎ ñiŠu thÆn khí ñiŠu Bàng quang ñiŠu khí lš huy‰t ñI“U HUYrT : ñiŠu can ph‰ bÃt hòa ñiŠu huy‰t ñiŠu giáng huy‰t nghÎch ( máu cam ) ñiŠu huy‰t häi ñiŠu huy‰t bào cung ñiŠu kinh, huy‰t ñiŠu hòa kinh nguyŒt ñiŠu kinh hòa vinh huy‰t ñiŠu Nhâm Måch ñiŠu Xung Måch ñiŠu vinh huy‰t can thÆn ñiŠu thÆn huy‰t ñI“U KH´ : ñiŠu nguyên khí ñiŠu khí ích nguyên ñiŠu khí âm dÜÖng thØa nghÎch ñiŠu hòa khí âm dÜÖng ñiŠu khí hóa ñiŠu phû khí ñiŠu thæng giáng khí ñiŠu khí giáng nghÎch ñiŠu khí cÖ ñiŠu khí cÖ tam tiêu ñiŠu Ç§I måch Trung phû Trung phû. Ph‰ du. Kh°ng tÓi. ñåi chùy Âm Çô Tam gian Thiên xu Khúc tråch ThÜ®ng c¿ hÜ. ñåi trÜ©ng du LÜÖng khâu. VÎ du C¿ khuy‰t Yêu dÜÖng quan. Phøc lÜu. ThÆn du Âm læng tuyŠn. Khí xung. Ti‹u trÜ©ngdu Tâm du. Thái xung Thiên phû Huy‰t Häi. …n Båch Kh°ng tÓi Công tôn Trung c¿c. Tam âm giao. ñÎa cÖ Thûy TuyŠn Thái Xung ñåi Çôn LiŒt Khuy‰t Hoang du ñ§i måch ñåi chung Quan nguyên Khí Häi ThØa tÜÖng Nhân Trung Tam tiêu du ThØa sÖn Trung quän Chiên trung Thái båch. Thiên Ç¶t r phong. Ty trúc không ñ§i måch. Túc lâm khÃp 73 ñiŠu khí l®I yêu tích ñiŠu trung khí ñiŠu kinh låc khí huy‰t ñiŠu cÓt ti‰t ñiŠu khí trŒ ñiŠu lš khí ñiŠu khí huy‰t l®I y‰t hÀu ñiŠu thûy Çåo ñiŠu tâm khí MŒnh môn LÜÖng môn.Túc tam lš Túc tam lš ñåi tr» Can du. ñªm du Tÿ du Nhân nghênh Thiên lÎch. Ñy dÜÖng Gian sÙ Tác døng hòa : Làm hòa dÎu b§t xung kh¡c. Hòa vinh huy‰t Hòa vinh dÜ«ng huy‰t Hòa vinh thanh nhiŒt Hòa vinh ÇiŠu kinh Hòa vinh huy‰t thÓi nhiŒt Hòa bi‹u lš Hòa vÎ Hoà vÎ thÜ ng¿c Hòa vÎ ÇÎnh thÀn Hòa vÎ thanh ph‰ Hòa trÜ©ng vÎ Hòa vÎ l®i trÜ©ng Hòa trÜ©ng tiêu trŒ Hòa l®I khí toàn cÖ th‹ Hòa trung giáng nghÎch Hòa trung tiêu thÃp nhiŒt Khí häi . Khí xung Khúc trì. ñåi Chung Huy‰t häi Thiên xu Ph‰ du Kÿ môn Cách du ñåi læng Xung dÜÖng. LŒ Çoài NgÜ t‰ LÜÖng môn Thû tam lš Túc tam lš. Thiên xu Thân trø LÜÖng Khâu NhÆt nguyŒt 74 Tác døng khinh : Tä trØ th¿c tà ( éliminateur de l’énergie perverse ) PHONG Tà : Khu phong giäi bi‹u Khu phong tà ª bi‹u lš Khu phong tà Khu phong thông låc Khu phong tà ª ÇÌnh s†, t¡c máu não Khu phong minh møc Khu phong thông nhï Khu phong dÜÖng trŒ Khu phong tí ª Çàu gÓi Trøc phong ª hå chi Khu phong l®i ræng kh§p Hàn- phong hàn : Khu phong hàn Khu phong hàn tí Trøc phong hàn tí, cÜ§c khí,nhÒi máu cÖ tim Trøc phong tí hàn, nhiŒt. Trøc hàn xuÓng hå tiêu ra ngoài Trøc hàn ª cách mô, æn không xuÓng Trø phong hàn dÎ Ùng ª mÛi Trøc phong hàn, teo cÖ b¡p chân NHIäT- PHONG NHIäT : Tä phong nhiŒt ph‰, l®i hÀu Khº huy‰t nhiŒt Khº nhiŒt do løc dâm ª bi‹u Khu phong giäi bi‹u nhiŒt, l®I kh§p, nhï, møc Trøc phong hÕa thông nhï møc, phong hÕa viêm gan Khu phong nhiŒt ª m¡t Trøc phong nhiŒt teo cÖ b¡p Khúc trì Khâu khÜ ñåi tr». ñÎa thÜÖng Côn lôn Chí âm TÙ båch Thính h¶i Hành gian TÃt quan. ñ¶c tœ Phong thÎ Giáp xa Âm læng tuyŠn Ngoåi khâu DÜÖng giao HiŒp khê Âm giao Trung Çình ThØa linh o Quang minh NgÜ t‰ Khúc tråch Ngoåi quan Phong trì Túc lâm khÃp ñÒng tº liêu. DÜÖng båch. Møc song x Quang minh 75 Trøc phong nhiŒt ÇÜ©ng ti‹u và sinh døc ( nhiÍm trùng ÇÜ©ng ti‹u và sinh døc ) Khu phong n¶I nhiŒt Khu phong tán hÕa Khu phong ti‰t hÕa Khu phong ti‰t nhiŒt Khº khí uÃt nhiŒt tam tiêu Khu phong l®I ph‰ : Túc ngÛ lš Nhân trung ThØa khÃp. Nghênh hÜÖng ñÀu Duy. DÜÖng Khê. r phong Quan Xung Liêt khuy‰t. Thái uyên 76 Tác døng hoåt :Møc Çích tiêu Ù Ç†ng ( activateur ) TIÊU VIÊM, − : Tiêu ban Tiêu Ù Tiêu viêm các loåi, l®i thûy thÃp Tiêu viêm ph‰ nhiŒt Ç¶c, thÜ®ng tiêu Tiêu viêm ÇÜ©ng ti‹u, sinh døc Tiêu viêm ph‰ khí quän Tiêu viêm thÆn Tiêu viêm sÜng ræng Tiêu viêm sâu ræng dÜ§i Tiêu viêm ræng l®i, tuy‰n giáp Tiêu viêm gÓi Tiêu viêm vú, lÜng, chân, m¡t. Tiêu viêm Ça kh§p, nhÙc mÕi Tiêu viêm håch vú, håch bËn háng Tiêu viêm tuy‰n vú Tiêu viêm nh†t vú Tiêu viêm håch c° Tiêu viêm håch nách Tiêu viêm bä vai Tiêu viêm miŒng ,tai, lÜ«i, h†ng, gáy. Tiêu sÜng hå chi ( Çau sÜng bøng dÜ§i) Båch huy‰t cÃp tính Tiêu viêm gan, xÖ gan Tiêu viêm sÕi mÆt Tæng båch cÀu kháng viêm Tiêu viêm sÜng ræng nÜ§u Xích båch Ç§i HiŒp båch Can du Tam tiêu du Xích tråch Khúc cÓt.Bàng quang du, thÆn du. Trung c¿c.Tam âm giao. Phù båch Thûy phân Giác tôn DÎch môn ñÀu khi‰u âm TÃt quan ñÎa ngÛ h¶i DÜÖng phø Hå liêm Chiên trung,Khúc trì Chiên trung. ñåi læng.Thi‰u tråch. Du phû. Ñy trung. Thû ngÛ lš. Thiên dÛ Thiên trì Kiên Liêu Ôn l¿u Bào hoang Can du, ThÆn du, HuyŠn chung Can,tÿ, ñÓc du.Kÿ môn, huy‰t häi, Tam âm GIao.DÜÖng læng. Chi cÃu, DÜÖng læng. ñåi chùy.Khúc trì. Tÿ du, Tam âm Giao, Túc tam Lš. DÜÖng Khê, NhÎ gian Khí häi. ñ§i måch 77 Tác døng táo :Møc Çích làm khô ÇŠ trØ thÃp ( Contre-humidité ) Khº thÃp tr†c Khº thÃp tiêu trŒ Khº thÃp thûy Khº thÃp nhiŒt Khº thÃp nhiŒt hå tiêu Khº thÃp tí tiêu viêm c£ng chân Khº thÃp thông ti‹u Trøc phong thÃp Khu phong hóa thÃp Khu phong thÃp nhiŒt Khu phong thÃp khí trŒ ª lÜng, mông, Çùi, chân Khí häi Phøc lÜu Tÿ du. ThÆn du Can du Thái xung Trung Çô Âm cÓc Yêu du. Tam âm giao. Bàng quang du LÜÖng khâu Lao cung. HuyŠn chung Hoàn khiêu Tác døng tr†ng : Møc Çích an thÀn, trÃn thÓng thÀn kinh, giäm Çau ( anxiolytique ) LÝ KH´ ( do khí làm Çau ) : Lš khí thÜ hung cách thÜ®ng tiêu Lš khí trung tiêu Lš khí hå tiêu Lš khí cÖ ( do gân cÖ làm Çau ) Lš hå tiêu, l®I thÃp nhiŒt Lš vÎ khí trÃn thÓng Lš khí hòa vÎ Lš khí hòa vÎ trÃn thÓng Lš trÜ©ng hòa vÎ Lš khí Çåi trÜ©ng Lš khí Çåi ti‹u trÜ©ng, trÃn thÓng lÜng bøng Lš khí tÿ vÎ LÝ HUYrT ( DO HUYrT LàM ñAU ) Khích môn. Chiên trung VÎ thÜÖng Trung c¿c. Quan nguyên. Nhiên cÓc. .ñåi Çôn Công tôn .Chí dÜÖng ñ§I måch N¶I Çình Ki‰n lš. C¿ khuy‰t. ñªm du N¶i quan ThÜ®ng c¿ hÜ ñåi trÜ©ng du Duy Çåo ThÜ®ng quän. Túc tam lš 78 Lš kinh Ç§i hòa vinh huy‰t Lš huy‰t trŒ bào cung Lš huy‰t hòa tÿ Lš khí, hòa tÿ, vinh huy‰t TRƒN TH–NG : TrÃn thÓng phong hàn TrÃn thÓng phong viêm gÓi TrÃn thÓng, cÜ§c khí, phong hàn TrÃn thÓng vÎ hàn TrÃn thÓng thông låc TrÃn thÓng thÀn kinh, lÜng, bøng dÜ§i TrÃn thÓng thÀn kinh, phøc hÒi š thÙc Khí Häi Côn lôn ñÎa cÖ Tÿ du Trung Ç¶c. Ngoåi Khâu TÃt quan DÜÖng giao HiŒp khê H®p cÓc Âm bao ThÀn Çình Tác døng cÓ,sáp,chÌ, liÍm : Møc Çích gi» cho khÕi thoát (anti-échappant ) CÓ bi‹u dÜÖng kinh CÓ bi‹u tiŠm hÜ dÜÖng HÒi dÜÖng cÓ thoát CÓ thÆn, b° khí hÒi dÜÖng. CÓ ích tinh b° thÆn ChÌ huy‰t ChÌ khái ( cÀm ho ) HÆu khê Âm khích ThÀn khuy‰t Quan Nguyên MŒnh môn. Chí thÃt Kh°ng tÓi Thái Uyên Tác døng thanh : Làm mát, giäm nhiŒt, giäi Ç¶c. Thanh huy‰t : Thanh huy‰t nhiŒt Thanh huy‰t, l†c máu Ç¶c, máu Ù Thanh ti‰t huy‰t nhiŒt, giäi Ç¶c toàn Huy‰t Häi Cách du Xích Tråch.Ñy trung 79 thân Thanh giáng, lÜÖng huy‰t Thanh nhiŒt khí huy‰t, tiêu n¶i nhiŒt. Thanh tûy nhiŒt Thanh dÜ«ng huy‰t Thanh vinh , lÜÖng huy‰t Thanh lÜÖng huy‰t Giäi Ç¶c thÀn kinh Thanh nhiŒt khí : ª bi‹u : Thanh bi‹u nhiŒt Giäi bi‹u tà dÜÖng kinh. Thanh não, giäi bi‹u, não có nÜ§c. Thanh thÓi nhiŒt, giäi bi‹u Giäi bi‹u nhiŒt Giäi phong bi‹u nhiŒt Giäi nhiŒt bi‹u lš Thanh hÕa ti‰t phong nhiŒt Thanh trØ thÃp nhiŒt thông ra bi‹u Thanh phong nhiŒt, thông nhï, møc, l®I kh§p Thanh ph‰ giäi bi‹u tà Ÿ LÝ : TæNG PHÑ : PHr : Thanh ph‰ nhiŒt Thanh ph‰ khí Thanh tåp ph‰ khí Thanh ph‰ hóa Çàm Thanh ph‰ khí nghÎch Thanh ph‰ hÜ nhiŒt Thanh ph‰ l®I hÀu mát h†ng Thanh ti‰t ph‰ giáng trÜ©ng vÎ Thanh ph‰ ÇiŠu thûy ( nÜ§c trong ph°I ) Thanh thông phong hÕa ph‰ khi‰u (mÛi) ñåi-TI”U TRÐ©NG : Thanh ti‰t phong hÕa trÜ©ng vÎ Khích Môn Nhân trung HuyŠn Chung Khúc trì ñåi læng Thanh lãnh uyên. Hành gian SuÃt cÓc H®p cÓc. Khúc trì. Kh°ng TÓi ñåi chùy ThÜÖng dÜÖng Ngoåi quan. Chi chánh ñåi tr» DÜÖng trì Tam tiêu du Âm cÓc Phong trì ñào Çåo NgÜ t‰. ñào Çåo Thiên lÎch. Thiên ÇÌnh Thái Uyên Chiên trung Thi‰u thÜÖng Ph‰ du ThÜÖng dÜÖng. Thiên ÇÌnh H®p cÓc Thiên lÎch Nghênh hÜÖng Kiên ngung 80 Thanh trØ phong thÃp nhiŒt, hòa vÎ Thanh thÃp nhiŒt trÜ©ng vÎ Thanh Çªm vÎ thÃp nhiŒt Thanh vÎ nhiŒt hóa thÃp trŒ Thanh ti‰t vÎ nhiŒt hóa trŒ Thanh ti‰t thÃp hÕa Thanh phong hàn nhiŒt, vÎ chÌ thÓng. CAN-ñŸM : Thanh ti‰t phong thÃp nhiŒt can,Çªm Thanh thông nhï khi‰u Thanh phong thÃp nhiŒt trŒ Çªm ª kinh låc, gân måch, mông. Thanh ti‰t phong thÃp nhiŒt, tûy nhiŒt, Çªm hÕa, ª kinh låc. Thanh tÙc phong hÕa nhiŒt trŒ ª can Çªm, thông nhï, minh møc, hóa Çàm nhiŒt, tiêu viêm, hå áp, thanh dÜÖng hÕa. Thanh can hÕa, ti‰t hÕa hå tiêu Thanh ti‰t can hÕa, thông thûy hå tiêu Thanh phong hÕa nhiŒt Thanh thÃp nhiŒt hå tiêu THáN- BàNG QUANG : Thanh thÃp thûy nhiŒt, l®I bàng quang Thanh ti‰t hÕa, tÜ thûy, minh møc Thanh thÃp nhiŠu, tiêu trŒ bàng quang và hå tiêu, ÇiŠu dÎch, b° thÆn, nhuÆn táo Thanh thÆn nhiŒt,giáng âm hÕa. B° thân âm dÜÖng, thanh thÓi hÜ nhiŒt Thanh ti‰t hÕa, thæng thûy mát c° h†ng ra nÜ§c mi‰ng. Thanh thÓi thÆn nhiŒt Thanh thÃp nhiŒt Bàng quang Thanh ti‰t quy‰t khí, trØ thÃp, thông bi‹u, b° thân, l®I hå tiêu Lao cung ThÜ®ng c¿ hÜ DÜÖng cÜÖng Giäi khê N¶I Çình Thính h¶i HiŒp khê. ñªm du Thính h¶i DÜÖng læng tuyŠn HuyŠn chung Túc lâm KhÃp Hành gian Khúc tuyŠn Túc lâm khÃp. Nghênh hÜÖng Thái xung Thûy Çåo Tình minh Phøc lÜu DÛng tuyŠn. Hoang du Thái khê Chi‰u häi Nhiên cÓc .Hoang du. Khúc tuyŠn Âm cÓc 81 TÂM- TÂM BàO : Thanh huy‰t nhiŒt tâm hÕa Thanh giáng lÜÖng huy‰t Thanh hÕa tâm bào, tam tiêu Thanh vinh, lÜÖng huy‰t, hå áp Thanh tâm, thÓi nhiŒt, khai khi‰u Thanh tâm bào, hóa Çàm Thanh tâm hÕa, tiŠm hÜ dÜÖng Thanh phong nhiŒt ª tâm Thanh tiêu viêm nhiŒt quanh vai Thanh tâm, ÇiŠu huy‰t, ôn dÜÖng hÒi nghÎch KINH-LæC : Thanh hÕa nghÎch kinh âm Thanh hóa thÃp nhiŒt kinh dÜÖng Thanh nhiŒt,thæng dÜÖng cÙu nghÎch, chÌnh måch Thanh, tiêu phong n¶I nhiŒt,ÇiŠu hòa khí nghÎch âm dÜÖng ,ÇiŠu hô hÃp cÃp cÙu Thanh nhiŒt kinh låc Thanh nhiŒt phong tà ª não TAM TIÊU : Thanh nhiŒt thÜ®ng tiêu Thanh nhiŒt giäi Ç¶c thÜ®ng tiêu Thanh tåp khí thÜ®ng tiêu Thanh tâm, giáng nghÎch thÜÖng tiêu Thanh tam tiêu, giáng nghÎch Thanh can huy‰t thÃp nhiŒt hå tiêu ñ„U ¹C- TH„N KINH : Thanh giáng lÜÖng huy‰t, ÇÎnh tâm an thÀn Thanh thÀn chí, ÇiŠu tâm khí Thanh tâm bào, ÇÎnh tâm an thÀn Thanh vinh lÜÖng huy‰t, hå áp, an thÀn Thanh tâm hÕa hòa vÎ thÃp nhiŒt, lÜÖng huy‰t, an thÀn Khúc tråch Khích môn N¶I quan. Gian sÙ ñåi læng Trung xung Thi‰u häi Âm Khích Thi‰u tråch BÌnh phong …n Båch Liêm tuyŠn Chí dÜÖng TÓ liêu Nhân trung DÜÖng trì Kinh cÓt Trung phû Xích tråch Thái Uyên Khúc tråch Chi cÃu TÙ quan ( Hành gian. Thái Xung ) Khích Môn Gian sÙ N¶I quan ñåi læng Lao cung 82 Thanh thông tâm, tâm bào, hóa Çàm, ÇÎnh thÀn chí Thanh tâm hÜ dÜÖng, an thÀn Thanh thÀn chí, rÓi loån tâm thÀn Thanh thÀn chí, khai tâm khi‰u Thanh thÀn chí, trøc n¶I nhiŒt Thanh thÀn chí, giäi bi‹u nhiŒt Thanh thÀn chí do phong nhiŒt kinh låc, nhiŒt k‰t ti‹u trÜ©ng ñÎnh thÀn, thông nhï Thanh tâm ÇÎnh thÀn, ôn dÜÖng hÒi nghÎch Thanh thÀn chí, hÒi nghÎch quy‰t khí Thanh vÎ nhiŒt hóa thÃp trŒ an thÀn chí Thanh tiŠt tà nhiŒt trÜ©ng vÎ, an thÀn Thanh giáng âm hÕa nghÎch, ÇÎnh thÀn Thanh thÆn, hòa huy‰t, b° ích tinh thÀn Thanh ti‰t hÕa thæng thûy, thanh thÀn chí Phøc hÒi chÙc næng ÇÀu s† ñiŠu dÜ«ng tâm khí, thanh thÀn chí Thanh vinh lÜÖng huy‰t, minh møc, ÇÎnh thÀn Hoåt låc, khai khi‰u, tÌnh thÀn Thanh thÀn chí, thÜ cân måch Thanh não, ÇÎnh thÀn, khu phong Thanh tâm ÇÎnh thÀn do khí huy‰t suy nhÜ®c ThÜ ng¿c, ÇÎnh thÀn Thanh ph‰ nhiŒt, ÇÎnh thÀn, b° hÜ t°n Thanh não ÇÎnh thÀn Thanh thÀn chí, thông khi‰u, l®I kh§p Thanh thÀn chí, ti‰t khí hÕa, l®I quan ti‰t Khai khi‰u ÇÎnh thÀn, ti‰t nhiŒt dÜÖng kinh. TrÃn an tinh thÀn, phøc hÒi kš Ùc − nÜ§c trong s†, ÇÀu, m¥t, m¡t, sÜ©n, ng¿c. Thi‰u häi Âm khích ThÀn môn Thi‰u xung HÆu khê Chi chánh Ti‹u häi Thính cung …n båch ñåi Çôn Giäi khê LŒ Çoài DÛng tuyŠn ñåi chung Chi‰u häi HuyŠn Ly Tâm du Can du B¶c tham Thân Måch Kinh cÓt C¿ Khuy‰t CÜu VÏ ñào Çåo ñåi chùy Á Môn Phong phû Bách h¶i ThÀn Çình Hãm cÓc 83 Tác døng ti‰t : Mª s¿ Çóng ch¥t (dilateur et secréteur) TÁN : làm tan s¿ k‰t tø Tán phong nhiŒt Tán phong nhiŒt, thông s»a Tán phong thÃp kinh låc Tán hàn ª ngÛ tång Tán Ù Tán Ù ª lÜng Tán Ù k‰t trÜ©ng phû Tán tà ræng, m¥t, m¡t Ÿ TæNG PHÑ : PHr : Ti‰t ph‰ viêm, giáng khí ghÎch Ti‰t ph‰ nhiŒt Ti‰t hÕa nghÎch 12 kinh ñæI TRÐ©NG : Ti‰t tä nhiŒt trÜ©ng vÎ Ti‰t tà nhiŒt, ÇiŠu phû khí Ti‰t ph‰ khí giáng trÜ©ng vÎ Tán phong hÕa trÜ©ng vÎ TAM TIÊU : Ti‰t phong nhiŒt, thông låc tam tiêu Ti‰t tà nhiŒt nhï khi‰u TÂM : Ti‰t tä nhiŒt, khai tâm khi‰u T² : Ti‰t nhiŒt giäi b‰ tâm vÎ CAN : Ti‰t quy‰t khí hÒi nghÎch Ti‰t can hÕa, t¡t phong dÜÖng, thông trŒ Nghênh hÜÖng Thi‰u Tråch Phi dÜÖng ChÜÖng Môn C¿ cÓt Ân Môn Chi cÃu ThØa tÜÖng Xích tråch NgÜ t‰ Thi‰u thÜÖng ThÜÖng dÜÖng. LŒ Çoài Tam gian H®p cÓc DÜÖng khê r phong Nhï Môn Thi‰u xung ñåi Çô ñåi Çôn Hành gian 84 VÎ : Ti‰t phong hÕa ª ÇÀu, giäm Çau Ti‰t nhiŒt trŒ ª vÎ Ti‰t phong nhiŒt trÜ©ng vÎ THáN : SÖ ti‰t hå tiêu Ti‰t hÕa thæng thûy l®I hÀu Ti‰t quy‰t khí, tÜ thÆn, trØ thÃp, thông bi‹u, l®I hå tiêu, l®I hÀu ñŸM : Ti‰t phong nhiŒt ª m¡t Ti‰t hÕa do phong hÕa ª m¡t BàNG QUANG : Ti‰t hÕa, tÜ thûy, minh møc Ti‰t nhiŒt can Çªm Ti‰t phong nhiŒt tai, m¡t MæCH ñ–C : Ti‰t hÕa khu phong ª ÇÀu Ti‰t nhiŒt dÜÖng kinh ñÀu duy N¶i Çình LŒ Çoài Thûy tuyŠn Chi‰u Häi Âm cÓc ñÒng tº liêu DÜÖng båch Tình minh ñªm du r phong. ñÒng tº liêu Phong phû Bách H¶i 85 Tác døng hóa : Hóa Ù Hóa hàn thÃp trŒ Hóa thÃp nhiŒt Hóa thÃp trung tiêu Hóa thÃp tam tiêu Hóa tích trŒ trung tiêu hàn Hoá thÃp trŒ trung tiêu Hóa thÃp trŒ kinh låc Hóa thÃp khu phong Hóa thÃp giáng nghÎch Hóa thÃp hòa vÎ Hóa thÃp tiêu tích Hóa l®i thûy thÃp Hóa thÃp b° thÆn Hóa tích trŒ trÜ©ng vÎ Hóa trŒ Çåi trÜ©ng Çàm nh§t : Hóa Çàm tr†c Hóa Çàm thanh ph‰ Hóa Çàm nh§t Hóa Çàm l®I y‰t Hóa Çàm chÌ khái Hóa Çàm thông låc Hóa Çàm thÃp Hoá Çàm tiêu Ù Hóa Çàm Ù do hàn Khº Çàm hòa vÎ ñàm khí hÕa nghÎch Cách du ThÀn khuy‰t Chí dÜÖng. DÜÖng cÜÖng NhÆt nguyŒt. Khâu khÜ Thái båch Thiên tïnh ChÜÖng Môn Âm læng tuyŠn. C¿ Khuy‰t DÜÖng læng tuyŠn LÜÖng Khâu. Túc tam lš ThÜ®ng quän Xung dÜÖng Trung quän Chí thÃt Côn lôn LÜÖng môn. Ti‹u trÜ©ng du ñåi trÜ©ng du ThÜ®ng quän Chiên trung Tº cung Thiên Ç¶t Thái Uyên Thi‰u Häi Thiên tïnh Kÿ Môn ChÜÖng môn Gian sÙ Liêm tuyŠn 86 Áp døng Bát pháp: Hãn : Trong trÜ©ng h®p Bi‹u nhiŒt, Th¿c nhiŒt, thûy thûng, ma chÄn. Sau Çó phäi b° khí, huy‰t. ChÓng chÌ ÇÎnh : Không ÇÜ®c dùng phép hãn trong trÜ©ng h®p bŒnh hÜ, bŒnh khô thi‰u tân dÎch. Tä : Trong trÜ©ng h®p bón uÃt nhiŒt tØ ba ngày trª lên ª hå tiêu. Dùng thanh nhiŒt ª tång phû, ª trÜ©ng vÎ, ª bàng quang, tä Ç¶c tích tø, miŒnh h†ng khô, ki‰t lœ, bao tº ÇÀy cÙng.Tä xong phäi b° hÜ t°n. ChÓng chÌ ÇÎnh : Không ÇÜ®c dùng phép tä trong trÜ©ng h®p âm hÜ, tân dÎch khô kiŒt, vô l¿c y‰u sÙc, æn ít, thi‰u khí. Th° : Cho mºa Ç¶c tÓ, Çàm chÆn, uÃt thÜ®ng tiêu. ChÓng chÌ ÇÎnh : không ÇÜ®c cho mºa trong trÜ©ng h®p khí hÜ. Hòa : Trong trÜ©ng h®p bŒnh bán bi‹u bán lš, chÌ thanh nhiŒt mà không cho ra mÒ hôi, trong trÜ©ng h®p nghi ng© bŒnh hÜ th¿c thác tåp. Thanh : Thanh th¿c nhiŒt thì cho ti‰t tä nhiŒt. Phi‰m nhiŒt ( ngÜ©I nóng hâm hÃp ) thì thanh nhiŒt SÓt hÜ chÌ ôn b° ( làm Ãm ), chÓng chÌ ÇÎnh thanh ho¥c ti‰t tä së làm lånh ngÜ©I, ngÜ©I h‰t nóng rÒi bÎ nóng låi do phong còn, phäi dùng khu phong giäi Ç¶c. Ôn : Trong trÜ©ng h®p bŒnh hàn, tà thÃp, phong hàn, dÜÖng hÜ, nhiŠu Çàn nh§t. Hàn n¥ng nhiŠu không ôn mà phäi nhiŒt b°. Hàn trung tiêu thì lš trung. Hàn hå tiêu thì dùng tÙ nghÎch. Khí hÜ thì Ôn. Thoát huy‰t, âm hÜ thì không ÇÜ®c ôn. Tiêu : Th¿c phäi công hå, hÜ phäi b°. Tiêu dùng trong trÜ©ng h®p ngÜ©i hÜ nhÜ®c có nhiŒt tà, không b° không tä ÇÜ®c phäi dùng phép tiêu, nhÜ làm tiêu Çàm, tiêu thÙc æn, tiêu khí tích, huy‰t tích, tiêu trÜng hà, sán khí, loa lÎch. BÜ§u chai mà khí hÜ, tÿ suy, không dùng phép tiêu mà phäi b° khí,b° tÿ huy‰t. TrÃn : Làm giäm Çau trÃn thÓng thÀn kinh, an thÀn. Sáp : Ngæn gi» không cho thoát mÃt tinh, khí, huy‰t, thûy dÎch làm mÃt nÜ§c trong bŒnh toát mÒ hôi ÇÀm Çìa, tiêu chäy không ngØng, máu chäy nhiŠu. 87 B° : TÜ b° : B° tØ tØ. TuÃn b° : B° månh. ñiŠu b° : VØa ch»a bŒnh vØa b°. Ti‰p b°; là b° thêm âm ho¥c b° thêm dÜÖng, m¶t trong hai. B° khí hÜ ; làm cho tÿ và vÎ månh. DODUCNGOC	32,451
VNDULPNhapMon.pdf	VIỆT NAM ĐỒNG ỨNG LIỆU PHÁP LÝ PHƯỚC LỘC (VN LY’S CORRESPONDING RESPONSE THERAPY) Nhập Môn Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 1 Mục Lục I. GIỚI THIỆU SƠ LƯỢC VỀ VIỆT-NAM ĐỒNG ỨNG LIỆU PHÁP (VNĐƯLP) ............................................... 4 A. Tiểu sử ............................................................................................................................................... 4 B. Nguồn gốc ......................................................................................................................................... 4 C. Liên lạc và Trang Mạn chính của VNĐƯLP ........................................................................................ 4 II. NGUYÊN TẮC CƠ BẢN CỦA VNĐƯLP ..................................................................................................... 5 A. Đồng Ứng Trị Liệu Pháp .................................................................................................................... 5 B. Lý Đồng Ứng ...................................................................................................................................... 5 C. Sinh Huyệt (SH)? ............................................................................................................................... 5 D. Tìm Sinh Huyệt (SH) như thế nào? .................................................................................................... 5 E. Quan Điểm ........................................................................................................................................ 6 F. Tính Năng .......................................................................................................................................... 6 G. Phương Châm ................................................................................................................................... 6 H. Thao Tác ............................................................................................................................................ 6 III. ĐỒ HÌNH ............................................................................................................................................ 7 IV. PHƯƠNG PHÁP TRỊ LIỆU ................................................................................................................. 26 A. CÁC BỆNH VỀ ĐẦU, MẶT, CỔ / GÁY ................................................................................................ 26 1. Nhức đỉnh đầu ............................................................................................................................ 26 2. Nhức nửa đầu (Migraine headache, Thiên đầu thống) .............................................................. 26 3. Nhức đầu ở trán .......................................................................................................................... 26 4. Nhức đầu hai Thái Dương ........................................................................................................... 27 5. Nhức đầu chẩm gáy .................................................................................................................... 27 6. Chóng mặt (Dizziness) ................................................................................................................. 28 7. Cứng gáy, Vẹo cổ ......................................................................................................................... 29 B. CÁC BỆNH Ở LƯNG .......................................................................................................................... 30 1. Cụp Lưng (Lumbago) ................................................................................................................... 30 2. Đau Lưng ..................................................................................................................................... 30 3. Thần kinh tọa .............................................................................................................................. 31 C. CÁC BỆNH LIÊN QUAN VỀ TAI MŨI HỌNG ...................................................................................... 32 1. Tai ù, Lãng tai, điếc tai ................................................................................................................ 32 2. Tai bị Ngứa và có Mủ Hôi Thối .................................................................................................... 33 D. CÁC BỆNH VỀ MẮT .......................................................................................................................... 34 1. Các bệnh thông thường về mắt .................................................................................................. 34 2. Nhức hốc mắt (Orbital pain) ....................................................................................................... 35 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 2 3. Mắt không đảo nhãn (Oculomotor Paralysis) ............................................................................. 36 4. Mắt quáng gà (Hemeralopia) ...................................................................................................... 37 5. Chảy Nước Mắt Sống .................................................................................................................. 38 6. Khô Nước Mắt ............................................................................................................................. 38 E. CÁC BỆNH VỀ HÔ HẤP ..................................................................................................................... 39 1. Ho (Common Cough) ................................................................................................................... 39 2. Viêm họng (Sore Throats) ........................................................................................................... 40 3. Suyễn (Asthma) ........................................................................................................................... 40 4. Ngủ bỏ thở (Sleep Apnea) ........................................................................................................... 41 5. Tức nặng ngực (Chest pain) ........................................................................................................ 41 F. TIM MẠCH ....................................................................................................................................... 42 1. Tim đập nhanh (Throbbing) ........................................................................................................ 42 2. Tai Biến Mạch Máu Não / Đột Quỵ (Stroke) ............................................................................... 43 G. CÁC BỆNH VỀ TIÊU HÓA .................................................................................................................. 45 1. Lưỡi mất vị giác (Hemiageusia) ................................................................................................... 45 2. Tiêu chảy (Diarrhea) .................................................................................................................... 46 3. Trào ngược (Acid reflux) ............................................................................................................. 47 H. CÁC BỆNH VỀ TAY ............................................................................................................................ 48 1. Đau cùi chỏ (Tennis elbow) ......................................................................................................... 48 2. Kẹt khớp vai ................................................................................................................................ 49 3. Tê cánh tay. Tê ngón tay ............................................................................................................. 49 4. Viêm bao gân cổ tay (Carpal tunnel syndrome).......................................................................... 50 5. Đau các khớp ngón tay ................................................................................................................ 50 6. Ngón tay cò súng (Trigger finger) ................................................................................................ 51 7. Hội chứng run tay ....................................................................................................................... 51 I. CÁC BỆNH VỀ CHÂN ........................................................................................................................ 52 1. Viêm khớp gối ............................................................................................................................. 52 2. Thốn gót, thốn bàn chân ............................................................................................................. 53 3. Lật cổ chân (Twisted Ankle) ........................................................................................................ 54 J. CÁC BỆNH TIẾT NIỆU ....................................................................................................................... 55 1. Tiền liệt tuyến & Nhiếp hộ tuyến (Prostate & Prostatism) ......................................................... 55 K. CÁC BỆNH PHỤ KHOA ..................................................................................................................... 57 1. Đau Bụng Kinh (Menstrual Pain) ................................................................................................. 57 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 3 2. Nhiễm Trùng Âm Đạo (Vaginal Infection - Vulvovaginitis) .......................................................... 58 L. CÁC BỆNH NỘI KHOA ...................................................................................................................... 59 1. Huyết áp Cao (High Blood Pressure) ........................................................................................... 59 2. Huyết áp thấp (Low Blood Pressure) .......................................................................................... 60 M. CÁC BỆNH THÔNG THƯỜNG ....................................................................................................... 61 1. Cảm cúm (Cold, Influenza) .......................................................................................................... 61 2. Dị ứng (Allergy) ........................................................................................................................... 63 3. Mất ngủ (Insomnia) ..................................................................................................................... 64 4. Cảm nắng (Sốt, Fever) ................................................................................................................. 65 5. Nấc cụt (Hiccough or hiccup) ...................................................................................................... 66 N. CÁC BỆNH ĐẶC BIỆT ........................................................................................................................ 67 1. Thống Phong (Gout) .................................................................................................................... 67 2. Cứu cấp Đột Quỵ ......................................................................................................................... 69 3. Sa bìu (Orchiocele) ...................................................................................................................... 70 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 4 I. GIỚI THIỆU SƠ LƯỢC VỀ VIỆT-NAM ĐỒNG ỨNG LIỆU PHÁP (VNĐƯLP) A. Tiểu sử Thầy Lý Phước Lộc nguyên là đệ tử của Thầy Bùi Quốc Châu và cũng là thành viên của nhóm Nghiên Cứu & Phát Triển Diện Chẩn Điều Khiển Liệu Pháp (DCĐKLP Bùi Quốc Châu) kể từ năm 1981. Qua nhiều năm nghiên cứu LÝ ĐỒNG ỨNG, Thầy Lộc đã hệ thống hóa và xây dựng Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp (VNĐƯLP), một phương pháp đơn giản tìm sinh huyệt khắp toàn thân để điều trị những rối loạn chức năng của cơ thể mà không cần dùng thuốc (medical oil), cao dán (salonpas), kim châm, hay dụng cụ, v.v. B. Nguồn gốc VNĐƯLP đã được hình thành dựa trên ba nguồn y-học chính:  Dân gian : Cạo gió, Giác hơi, Chích Lễ  Cổ truyền : Châm cứu, Bấm Huyệt  Hiện đại : Cơ thể học C. Liên lạc và Trang Mạn chính của VNĐƯLP Thầy Lý Phước Lộc email: lyphuocloc4067@gmail.com VNĐƯLP blog: http://vndongunglieuphap.blogspot.ca Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 5 II. NGUYÊN TẮC CƠ BẢN CỦA VNĐƯLP A. Đồng Ứng Trị Liệu Pháp 1) Phương pháp điều trị những bệnh chứng không dùng thuốc, không dùng kim châm, hay dụng cụ. 2) Chủ yếu bằng những phương tiện cơ hữu của bản thân: Ngón tay, Bàn tay, Cùi chỏ, Gót chân, v.v. Người trị bệnh vẫn có thể dò tìm, tác động chính xác vào Sinh Huyệt theo Lý Đồng Ứng. B. Lý Đồng Ứng 1) Theo Học Thuyết Âm Dương: Vạn hữu Không ngoài Âm Dương. Âm Dương tuy Dị mà Tương Đồng. Chúng có thể hóa giải hay hổ tương, cùng phát triển, tồn tại theo quy luật của Vũ Trụ. 2) Mọi cơ quan Tạng Phủ của con người cũng theo quy luật Âm Dương. Chúng có mối tương quan mật thiết với nhau trong một khối thống nhất. C. Sinh Huyệt (SH)? 1) Sinh huyệt là biểu hiện bất thường hay là Điểm nhạy cảm nhất của cơ thể khi cơ thể đã & đang có bệnh. * Chúng thường xuất hiện một cách có hệ thống. 2) Khi SH được phát hiện và tác động kịp thời, hiện tượng Cảm Ứng xảy ra ngay tức khắc như một Lực Đòn Bẩy đẩy đi những Rối loạn chức năng của cơ thể một cách kỳ diệu. 3) SH có ba dạng:  Thống điểm  Biểu hiện khác thường (mụn nhọt đỏ/ trắng, chỉ máu v.v.)  Bất Thống điểm D. Tìm Sinh Huyệt (SH) như thế nào? 1) Như đã nói SH là một biểu hiện thông tin bệnh lý, đồng thời là cửa ngõ của sự khai thông khí huyết, tái lập lại những trật tự của cơ thể. Do vậy ĐƯTLP lấy SH làm cơ sở cho việc Chẩn Trị; và công việc Chẩn Trị thường xảy ra đồng lúc. 2) Việc Chẩn Trị này đạt được Hiệu quả đến đâu tùy thuộc vào sự hợp tác & cảm thông giữa bệnh nhân và người điều trị. 3) Dựa vào thuyết Âm Dương, Tam Tài, Lý Đồng Ứng, Sinh Huyệt được xác định theo ba yếu tố: Đồng Hình, Đồng Thế, và Đồng Thể.  Đồng về Hình: Đồng Dạng  Đồng về Thế: Động/Tĩnh, Cao/Thấp, Co/Thẳng, v.v.  Đồng về Thể: Mềm/Cứng, Thô/Láng, Mỏng/Dày, v.v. Thí dụ:  Chỏ/Gối, Khuỷu/Kheo, Cổ tay/Cổ chân/Cổ gáy/Cổ Họng, v.v.  Bụng/Kheo/Khuỷu, Ót/Gót, Nách/Háng, Mông/Vai/Gót, v.v. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 6 E. Quan Điểm 1) Bệnh trạng có hai loại:  Bệnh Chứng: Rối loạn Chức Năng  Bệnh Tật: Tổn thương cụ thể (thuộc tiến trình Sinh, Lão, Bệnh, Tử) 2) Khi nhận định được SH, ai cũng có thể chữa được bệnh cho chính bản thân, gia đình, và người thân không phân biệt tuổi tác, Nam hay Nữ. 3) * Không ai chữa bệnh cho Mình bằng chính Mình * F. Tính Năng  Đơn Giản - Hiệu Quả - Nhanh Chóng - Tự Nhiên - Dễ Học - Dễ Hành - Tự Tin G. Phương Châm  Phòng Bệnh hơn Chữa Bệnh  Cứu Mình- Cứu Người H. Thao Tác Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 7 III. ĐỒ HÌNH Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 8 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 9 ĐỒ HÌNH CHÍNH TRÊN MẶT Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 10 ĐỒ HÌNH MẶT (Nhìn Nghiêng) BỘ TIÊU VIÊM Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 11 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ #1 Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 12 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ #2 Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 13 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ #6 Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 14 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU MẶT Ở ĐẦU VÀ CỔ GÁY Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 15 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ TRÊN BÀN TAY Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 16 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU ĐẦU và MẶT TRÊN BÀN CHÂN, CẲNG CHÂN Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 17 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ Trên Đầu Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 18 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU NGOẠI VI CƠ THỂ #16 Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 19 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU GỐI Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 20 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU BỘ PHẬN SINH DỤC NAM TRÊN MẶT (Nhìn nghiêng) Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 21 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU BỘ PHẬN SINH DỤC NỮ TRÊN MẶT Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Uterus (Tử Cung) Fallopian Tube (Ống dẫn trứng) Broad Ligament (Dây chằng rỗng) Cervix (Cổ Tử cung) Ovary (Buồng trứng) Round Ligament (Dây chằng tròn) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 22 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU BỘ PHẬN SINH DỤC NỮ TRÊN MẶT (Nhìn nghiêng) Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 23 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU HỆ NỘI TIẾT Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) Thyroid (Tuyến Giáp) Adrenals (Tuyến Thượng Thận) Hypophysis (Tuyến Yên) Tương ứng Tiến Đình Testes (Tuyến ngoại Thận, Tinh Hoàn) Ovary (Buồng trứng) Pancreas (Tuyến Tụy) Parathyroid (Tuyến Cận Giáp) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 24 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU THAI NHI, CỘT SỐNG, THẬN, BAO TỬ, MẮT, HỐ CHẬU TRÊN LOA TAI Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) HAI TAI ĐỒNG HÌNH VỚI HỐ CHẬU THẬN MẶT SAU LOA TAI ĐỒNG HÌNH VỚI VÕNG MÔ THAI NHI CUNG SAU LOA TAI ĐỒNG HÌNH VỚI CỘT SỐNG (PHÍA LƯNG) QUÁCH TAI ĐỒNG HÌNH VỚI CỘT SỐNG (PHÍA BỤNG) THÂN SAU BAO TỬ ĐỒNG HÌNH VỚI CHÂN TAI MẶT SAU THÂN TRƯỚC BAO TỬ TƯƠNG ỨNG VỚI RÃNH BÌNH TAI Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 25 ĐỒ HÌNH PHẢN CHIẾU ĐẤU và CỐ GÁY TRÊN BÀN CHẦN#1 Copyright © 1990 by Mr. Lý Phước Lộc (SG-VN) ĐỈNH ĐẦU XƯƠNG ÓT CỔ GÁY XƯƠNG CHỦM TAI C Ổ VAI CỔ GÁY Tương đương H. Đại Chùy BẢ VAI ĐỈNH PHỔI Tương ứng Huyệt khi Suyễn Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 26 IV. PHƯƠNG PHÁP TRỊ LIỆU A. CÁC BỆNH VỀ ĐẦU, MẶT, CỔ / GÁY 1. Nhức đỉnh đầu Hội chứng của gan Cách khám và điều trị: Xoa nắn mắt thứ nhất ngón chân cái (gần móng chân) 2. Nhức nửa đầu (Migraine headache, Thiên đầu thống) Hội chứng của gan, mật Cách khám và điều trị: a) Trường hợp do gan Khám 2 ngón tay giữa từ khớp ngón tay và bàn tay ra đầu ngón. b) Trường hợp do tỳ vị Điểm tiếp giáp giữa đáy xương bả vai và cơ nách 3. Nhức đầu ở trán Hội chứng của tỳ Cách khám và điều trị: a) Vùng chẩm gáy đối xứng ở trán b) Đối với trẻ con lưu ý 2 eo bàn chân trong; thường do ăn không tiêu. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 27 H.5a 4. Nhức đầu hai Thái Dương Thường do cảm sốt Cách khám và điều trị: a) Bóp mạnh từ 2 chân cổ gáy ra 2 đầu vai b) Bấm huyệt Liệt Khuyết, là chỗ đầu ngón tay trỏ của bàn tay trái chạm trên cổ tay của bàn tay phải trong tư thế 2 bàn tay đan nhau. Huyệt có hiệu năng đi chéo (bấm trái nhẹ phải và ngược lại) Huyệt trị nhức đầu 2 Thái Dương (dấu đậm ngay đầu ngón tay trỏ) c) Day ấn mắt giữa ngón tay Áp Út 5. Nhức đầu chẩm gáy Cách khám và điều trị: a) Mắt thứ nhất ngón chân Cái cạnh ngón chân Trỏ, mắt thứ 2 ngón chân Út b) Tác động eo bàn chân trong/ngoài, và dưới lòng bàn chân c) Xung quanh mắt Cá chân ngoài trước & sau d) Tác động các vùng Cổ tay, Mu bàn tay, mắt thứ nhất ngón tay Áp Út e) Tác động trên mặt các vùng: Sơn Căn, Đuôi mày, Thái Dương, Đỉnh Tai, trước và sau Tai, Pháp Lệnh, và Ụ Càm. Vùng nào nhậy cảm nhất là Sinh Huyệt H.5c H.5b H.5d H.5e Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 28 6. Chóng mặt (Dizziness) Triệu Chứng:  Hoa mắt, xây xẩm thấy mọi vật nghiêng ngã, quay vòng ...  Cố nhắm mắt hay nằm yên có cảm giác như say sóng Nguyên nhân:  Thường do huyết áp cao hay thấp Khám & điều trị: a) Dùng cườm tay tác động 2 bên thăng lưng ngang đường đáy qua hai xương bả vai. Chỗ nào đau nhất đó là huyệt. b) Dùng 10 đầu ngón tay tác động vùng hộp sọ theo 2 chiều lên xuống. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 29 7. Cứng gáy, Vẹo cổ Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Trúng lạnh vùng cổ gáy  Xoay trở khó, khi lái xe không thể quay đầu để de xe  Muốn quay về 1 phía để nhìn đôi khi phải quay cả thân mình như 1 người máy Khám và Điều trị: a) Hơ cứu ngay lập tức vùng huyệt Ế Phong sau dái tai b) Bàn tay sấp:  Chà vuốt các kẽ ngón tay theo hướng từ ngoài vào trong cổ tay. Khi chà vuốt mở rộng kẽ tay theo tư thế ngón lên ngón xuống  Vuốt kín theo 3 tuyến Cái, Giữa, Út từ cổ tay vào chỏ c) Bàn tay ngửa:  Chà vuốt theo hướng từ cổ tay ra các kẽ ngón tay d) Chà vuốt từ 2 đầu mày đến đuôi mày vào chân tóc (Thái Dương), vòng qua 2 đỉnh loa tai. e) Tác động dọc hai bên Đại Chuỳ. f) Mặt sau gối (khoeo chân) g) Mắt thứ nhất hai ngón chân Cái, Út Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 30 B. CÁC BỆNH Ở LƯNG 1. Cụp Lưng (Lumbago) Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Cơ lưng bị co rút kéo dài trong lúc gắng sức  Nhấc một vật nặng làm cơ bị co rút lại (muscle spasm).  Không điều trị kịp thời và đúng cách, sự đau đớn sẽ kéo dài mãn tính. Khám và Điều trị: a) Kẽ tay giữa 2 ngón Út và Áp Út (bàn tay sấp) b) Khoeo chân c) Lưng: hai thăng lưng vùng L1 và L5 d) Xương Ót e) Ngón chân Cái mắt thứ nhất (tư thế co) 2. Đau Lưng Nguyên nhân:  Thoái hoá đốt sống lưng  Thoát vị đệm đốt sống Khám và Điều trị: a) Một trong hai bên thái dương. Điểm gặp giữa vùng eo chân tóc và tuyến ngang chia đều 1/4 trán về phía lông mày b) Khoeo chân c) Ngón chân cái mắt thứ nhất. Nhớ bẻ ngón chân xuống lấy huyệt * Mỗi ngày kiên trì tập hai thế khí công: rắn ngóc đầu và vỗ gối. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 31 3. Thần kinh tọa Triệu Chứng:  Thường xuyên nhức mỏi một trong 2 chân ở vùng má ngoài đùi vế.  Người bệnh khi ngồi thẳng lưng trên ghế, dơ thẳng chân bị đau lên không được  Đi bộ không quá 15 phút, bị đau chân  Đứng lâu thốn gót Không kịp điều trị dần dần đi đến:  Đau 1 bên mông - Đi đứng khó khăn  Đau lói vùng háng. Thậm chí có người không nhấc được chân để mặc quần. Tệ hại sẽ hơn bị teo cơ. Nguyên nhân:  Do hệ thống cột sống bị suy yếu.  Vôi hoá cột sống  Một trong các nhánh thần kinh Mạn Thiên (sacral plexus) bị chèn ép Khám và Điều Trị: a) Vùng Bả Vai sau gần điểm giao tiếp với cơ Delta và Khớp Vai b) Vùng Gót chân trong c) Eo bàn chân tuyến ngón Út d) Ngón chân Cái mắt thứ nhất (bẻ ngón chân xuống để lấy huyệt) e) Vùng Ót và Chẩm Gáy (H.3a) H.3a Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 32 C. CÁC BỆNH LIÊN QUAN VỀ TAI MŨI HỌNG 1. Tai ù, Lãng tai, điếc tai Nguyên nhân:  Thường do tai bị nhiễm trùng, hay té ngã Điều trị:  Tác động trước Bình Tai  Tai ù do Tim đập nhanh (có tiếng thình thịch như đại bác nổ trong lỗ tai)  Tác động kẽ tay giữa hai ngón Út và Áp Út (bàn tay ngửa)  Viêm Tai giữa  Điều trị: Ba huyệt Tam Thương (Thiếu Thương, Trung Thương, Lão Thương) trên ngón tay Cái  Hơ cứu mắt cá chân trong Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 33 2. Tai bị Ngứa và có Mủ Hôi Thối Triệu Chứng:  Hai bên tai bị đau nhức, ngứa khó chịu, có mủ bên trong, và bốc mùi hôi thối Nguyên nhân:  Do nhiễm trùnng hoặc thiếu vệ sinh Điều trị:  Nói bệnh nhân nắm hai bàn tay lại như hình loa tai, xong lấy máy sấy tóc hơ trên vùng ngón Cái và Trỏ. Nếu có hiện tượng Đồng Ứng, thì bệnh nhân cảm thấy nóng rát ở chỗ sấy; đồng thời nóng và giựt giựt ở bên trong lỗ tai.  Sau đó bấm thêm bộ huyệt Tiêu Viêm (Ấn Đường, Cự Liêu, Chuẩn Đầu, Thừa Tương, Nhân Trung. Xem hình bộ Tiêu Viêm trang 10) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 34 D. CÁC BỆNH VỀ MẮT 1. Các bệnh thông thường về mắt Những triệu chứng:  Cườm mắt (cataracts)  Mắt bị viêm hoàng điểm  Lẹo mắt  Mi mắt bị run giật  Hội chứng liệt mặt  Cảm giác mắt có ruồi bay Khám & Điều trị: a) Dọc theo hai rãnh xương bả vai (chấm đen) b) * Nếu do hội chứng liệt mặt: day ấn 1 trong 2 bên Đại Chuỳ (chấm đỏ), ngang đốt sống cổ C7 c) Cảm giác mắt có ruồi bay  Day bấm trên mu bàn tay và cổ tay d) Nếu Mắt bị chói nắng  Bấm mắt giữa ngón tay Út (mũi tên C màu đỏ) e) Thị lực kém  Mắt giữa Ngón tay giữa (mũi tên D màu xanh dương)  Mắt thứ nhất ngón tay Cái (mũi tên D màu xanh dương)  Vùng Phong Trì sau Gáy f) Viêm Giác mạc  Đường chỉ văn mặt trong ngón tay Cái (mũi tên E màu xanh lá cây) g) Mắt mọng thịt  Nếp nhăn thứ hai ngón tay Cái (khớp ngón tay Cái và bàn tay ngửa, mũi tên F màu hồng) C D F E Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 35 2. Nhức hốc mắt (Orbital pain) Triệu chứng:  Thường nhức vùng hốc mắt trên, mắt khi thấy rõ, khi mờ  Mỗi sáng vừa thức dậy đầu nhức vùng chẩm gáy, đôi khi thấy vùng đầu mày bị sưng Nguyên nhân:  Có thể do Mắt Viêm Xoang, hay Tim mạch. Khám & Điều trị: Trong khi chờ đợi BS. Bạn có thể tác động vào các vùng: a) Ngón chân Cái mắt thứ nhất b) Ót chỗ lõm 2 bên gân cổ c) Cổ Tay (bàn tay xấp. Huyệt thường ở chỗ tiếp giáp của hai làn da thô và láng) H.2a H.2b H.2c Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 36 3. Mắt không đảo nhãn (Oculomotor Paralysis) Triệu chứng:  Một trong 2 mắt không liếc được  Người bệnh không điều khiển chính xác mọi hoạt động vì luôn thấy 2 ảnh của 1 vật, nhưng không phân biệt được đâu là ảnh thật, đâu là ảnh giả  Thường xuyên nhức đỉnh đầu & chẫm bộ  Mất ngủ Nguyên nhân:  Chấn thương vùng đầu  Khối u ở não liên quan đến Thần Kinh Vận Nhãn Chung Khám & Điều trị: a) Huyệt đặc trị về mắt & mũi: điểm gặp giữa tuyến dọc qua trung tâm con ngươi & tuyến ngang chân mí tóc trán. b) Ngón tay giữa. Dùng bất kỳ nguồn lửa nào hơ cứu các mắt ngón tay giữa theo thứ tự từ trong bàn tay ra đầu ngón. Hướng tác động theo chiều ngang của chỉ tay. c) * Trường hợp chỉ sụp mi mắt: hướng tác động của nguồn lửa theo chiều dọc thẳng góc qua trung tâm lằn chỉ ngang của ngón tay. Huyệt báo bệnh thường là mắt tay giữa. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 37 4. Mắt quáng gà (Hemeralopia) Triệu chứng:  Mỗi buổi chiều mặt trời vừa sắp lặn, người bệnh không thấy rõ mọi vật dù là ở tuổi thanh niên.  Thị lực kém vào những giờ gà về chuồng nên đặt tên như vậy. Nguyên nhân:  Trong khi chờ đợi bác sĩ nhãn khoa chẩn đoán do tế bào thị giác nào? Khám & Điều trị: chúng ta có thể áp dụng 1 số huyệt sau theo VNDƯLP a) Tác động từ hai Thái Dương vòng qua hai đỉnh Tai đến vùng Chẩm Bộ b) Vùng lưng (dọc theo 2 thăng lưng & rãnh xương Bả Vai) c) Lòng bàn tay, hơ cứu theo thứ tự 5 Sinh Huyệt từ gót bàn tay ra đầu ngón H.4a1 H.4a2 H.4b (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) H.4c Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 38 6C 6E 5. Chảy Nước Mắt Sống Điều trị: a) Vùng huyệt Thượng Tinh b) Mắt thứ nhất ngón tay Cái theo hướng từ móng vào cổ tay c) Cơ Nách (đáy bả Vai, hình 5C) 6. Khô Nước Mắt Nguyên nhân  Thường do viêm tuyến Lệ Điều trị a) Các vùng huyệt dọc Thăng Lưng và xương bả Vai (hình ghi chú 6A) b) Xung quanh hốc mắt (hình 6B) c) Các mắt ngón tay: Cái, Giữa, Út (hình ghi chú 6C) d) Huyệt Dưỡng Lão (hình ghi chú 6D) e) Mắt Cá Chân trong (hình ghi chú 6E) f) Vùng Trán trên cung Mày (hình ghi chú 6F) 6F 6B 6B 5C 6A 6D Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 39 E. CÁC BỆNH VỀ HÔ HẤP 1. Ho (Common Cough) Triệu chứng: Nếu không có những triệu chứng nguy hiểm như  Ho khan sau bữa ăn, nôn mửa hoặc khạc ra máu  Ho dữ dội như bể ngực với tiếng trầm & thường tức ngực Nguyên nhân:  Có thể sau cơn cảm kéo dài hoặc sau khi sanh nở tắm giặt sớm.  Dị ứng thức ăn hay thời tiết hoặc một sự nhiễm lạnh đột ngột mà không nhận biết. * Trong phạm vi chữa bệnh không dùng thuốc, chúng tôi chỉ đề cập đến những cơn ho vô ích mà y học hiện đại thường không thấy nguyên nhân nhưng làm người bệnh khổ sở không ít! Khám & Điều trị: a) Trước & sau tai (đặc biệt trước dái tai & cạnh càm) b) Cổ tay trong vùng huyệt Nội quan đến Đại Lăng c) Ngón chân cái (mặt dưới) H.1a H.1c H.1b Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 40 2. Viêm họng (Sore Throats) Triệu Chứng:  Thường xuyên ngứa cổ & bắt ho liên tục hoặc khó chịu trong họng phải khạc nhổ luôn.  Trầm trọng hơn làm mất ngủ, cảm xổ mũi dai dẳng Nguyên nhân:  Viêm họng thường là hậu quả của bệnh cảm trị không dứt gốc.  Sức đề kháng suy yếu. Khám & Điều trị: theo 5 vùng sau a) Vùng Dái Tai (sinh huyệt thường báo nam trái, nữ phải) Nhớ há miệng nhỏ trước khi lấy huyệt. Khi vuốt ngậm miệng lại b) Cổ tay trong c) Khớp ngón tay Cái & bàn tay ngửa d) Khớp ngón tay Giữa & bàn tay ngửa e) Khớp ngón chân Cái & mặt dưới bàn chân 3. Suyễn (Asthma) Triệu Chứng:  Nặng ngực thở khò khè, thở khó như cá ngộp nước Nguyên nhân:  Do Phế Thận suy yếu. Khám và Điều trị: a) Vùng Chí Dương (ở sau lưng đối xứng với huyệt Đản Trung) b) Vùng Kiên Ngoại Du ở hai bên cổ vai lưng c) Khí Hải (dưới rốn 3 thốn) d) Đản Trung (giao điểm của hai nhũ hoa và giữa ngực) e) Lao Cung (trong giữa lòng bàn tay) H.2c Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 41 4. Ngủ bỏ thở (Sleep Apnea) Triệu chứng:  Ngủ ngáy lớn vì mũi không thở Nguyên nhân:  Suy hô hấp ảnh hưởng đến tim mạch Khám & Điều trị: a) Day ấn vùng Chí Dương (xem hình bệnh asthma) b) Xoa vuốt vùng Lao Cung (xem hình bệnh asthma) c) Dùng hai đầu ngón tay Cái vuốt từ giữa lông mày qua huyệt đặc trị Mắt & Mũi ở mí tóc trán vào giữa đỉnh đầu (thông mũi, vùng huyệt số 2) 5. Tức nặng ngực (Chest pain) Triệu chứng:  Đau lói giữa ngực như nghẹn thở Nguyên nhân:  Do khí uất kết  Đôi khi không rõ nguyên nhân  Trước mắt phải cấp cứu ngay chứng đau nguy hiểm này Khám và Điều trị: a) Vùng Đản Trung (huyệt là giao điểm giữa tuyến ngang 2 nhũ hoa và tuyến dọc qua trung tâm của xương mỏ ác) b) Hai vùng huyệt Vân Môn và Trung Phủ (gần nách và tuyến ngang xương lồng ngực số 1) c) Hai má trong khuỷu tay vùng huyệt Thiếu Hải d) Cổ tay sấp vùng Tam Dương Lạc và cổ tay ngửa đối xứng vùng Tam Dương Lạc e) Vùng huyệt Lao Cung Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 42 F. TIM MẠCH 1. Tim đập nhanh (Throbbing) Triệu chứng:  Tim đập nhanh làm hồi hộp, tai nghe cả tiếng tim đập Nguyên nhân:  Tim Mạch Khám & Điều trị: a) Hai gót chân trong (dọc theo khớp mắt cá chân từ hướng cổ chân trước vào gót) b) Đầu 2 khớp vai trước (vùng huyệt Vân Môn, Trung Phủ) c) Bàn tay ngửa 3 huyệt d) Hai bên viền mũi má, dùng sóng bàn tay tuyến ngón út vuốt từ đầu mày & sơn Căn đến bọng má e) Kẽ tay giữa 2 ngón Út & Áp Út (bàn tay ngửa) f) Tác động dọc theo hai đường cong của rãnh xương bả vai và lưng Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 43 2. Tai Biến Mạch Máu Não / Đột Quỵ (Stroke) Triệu chứng:  Nặng : Ngay sau cơn Đột Quỵ , hôn mê sâu, Á khẩu, sùi bọt mép, đa số đều tử vong  Nhẹ: Sau cơn choáng, té ngã thình lình, lưỡi đớ, HA (Huyết Áp) lên rất cao. Tay Chân phải hoặc trái mất cảm giác không điều khiển được; Miệng méo; tiếng nói khó nghe; ăn uống khó nuốt; khóc cười không tự chủ. Nguyên nhân:  Hầu hết các trường hợp xảy ra thường ở người bị cao HA  Một số ít trường hợp xảy ra với người có HA thấp.  *** Có thể nói HA là nguyên nhân nhưng thủ phạm chính là Sự Xơ Cứng Động Mạch. Điều trị: Trong phạm vi Day Bấm Huyệt theo VNDƯLP chỉ có thể điều trị sau khi bệnh nhân được xuất viện. Các vùng cần tác động: a) Mắt thứ nhất ngón chân cái: liên hệ Đầu, Lưỡi, phục hồi trí nhớ & chức năng vận động b) Khớp Mắt cá chân trong ngoài, Gót chân: liên hệ khớp Vai, Não Hộ. Các khớp ngón chân c) Vùng Đùi Vế: liên hệ Tỳ, Can, Thận làm mềm dẻo động mạch Tác động theo 2 hướng  Từ Gối đến Mông  Từ Bẹn Háng đến Gối d) Mắt thứ nhất ngón tay Cái: liên hệ đến Đầu, Mắt, Tai, ổn định Thần kinh Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 44 2 3 4 5 1 e) Cẳng Tay trước:  Bàn tay sấp từ cổ tay vào Chỏ & trên nếp nhăn Cùi Chỏ  Bàn tay ngửa từ Chỏ ra Cổ tay; kẽ tay giữa 2 ngón Út & Áp út f) Xoa nắn các khớp ngón tay theo thứ tự: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5 g) Khớp Vai trước & sau (vùng Vân Môn, Trung Phủ, Kiên Trinh) h) Cổ Gáy 2 bên Đại Chuỳ : Ổn định Thần kinh & HA, chống kẹt Khớp Vai i) Thái Dương vào trong mí tóc (vùng số 2 Bản đồ huyệt vùng mặt) j) Đỉnh chân Tai (Thượng Nhĩ Căn), rãnh trước bình tai & cạnh càm Tác động bên Liệt trước để cho mềm cơ, ngay sau đó tác động ngược lại bên không Liệt. Kết hợp:  Uống rượu Tỏi  Tập thế Khí Công Dịch Cân Kinh (Phất Thủ Liệu Pháp) Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 45 G. CÁC BỆNH VỀ TIÊU HÓA 1. Lưỡi mất vị giác (Hemiageusia) Triệu chứng:  Lưỡi tê thường xuyên; ăn uống không biết vị, dù cho nhiều mắm, muối, tiêu, ớt đến đâu. Người bệnh cũng không cảm được mặn, lạt, cay, đắng ... !  Đi đứng không bình thường dường như không biết được phương hướng. Thật là nguy hiểm đối với người có huyết áp cao Nguyên Nhân:  Có thể nói bệnh chứng là dấu hiệu của Stroke Khám & Điều trị: a) Ngay đỉnh dái tai dọc cạnh càm b) Mặt dưới của ngón chân cái c) Khớp ngón tay cái & bàn tay Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 46 2. Tiêu chảy (Diarrhea) Triệu chứng:  Tiêu chảy còn gọi là tháo dạ. Người bị tiêu chảy thường đau bụng, nóng rát hậu môn, mót tiêu  * Tuy là một bệnh chứng thông thường nhưng đôi khi biến chứng theo những trận dịch thành thổ tả (Cholera) gây tử vong không ít Nguyên nhân:  Dùng thức ăn không tươi hoặc bị nhiễm trùng  Tiêu hoá kém: không chịu các thức ăn có chất béo hoặc các loại thực phẩm hay rau quả không nấu chín Khám & điều trị: Tăng sức đề kháng, chống mất nước a) Đánh nóng vùng Khuỷu Tay b) Gối  Má trong ngang eo đầu xương chày  Má ngoài: Huyệt nằm giữa xương cẳng chính & xương cẳng phụ c) Mặt sau gối nếu có nôn mửa d) Hơ cứu 2 huyệt ở đầu ngón tay trỏ & út (Thương Dương & Thiếu Xung) H.2a H.2b H.2b H.2c H.2d Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 47 3. Trào ngược (Acid reflux) Triệu Chứng:  Thường đầy & ợ hơi chua, ăn không tiêu. Nguyên nhân:  Tiêu hoá kém do Can (Gan) Khám & Điều Trị: a) Gan bàn chân từ vùng Dũng Tuyền ra kẽ ngón chân. Đặc biệt giữa hai ngón trỏ & cái b) Hơ cứu dọc theo Nhâm Mạch gồm 3 huyệt theo thứ tự:  Khí Hải, dưới rốn 3 thốn (tương đương = 3 ngón tay khép kín của người bệnh)  Trung Quản, vị trí 1/4 trên tính từ Đản Trung đến rốn.  Đản Trung (Chiên Trung), huyệt là điểm gặp giữa tuyến ngang 2 nhũ hoa gặp đường trung tâm qua giữa rốn. c) Huyệt Cách Du ở Lưng. Cách xác định huyệt: từ Chí Dương (đối xứng với Huyệt Đản Trung), sau đó bàn khai ra 2 biên # 1cm, chỗ nào đau là huyệt. d) Tác động tiếp 1 trong 2 đáy cơ nách tiếp giáp với đáy xương bả vai. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 48 H.1b 2 3 4 5 1 H.1e H. CÁC BỆNH VỀ TAY 1. Đau cùi chỏ (Tennis elbow) Triệu chứng:  Đau nhói ở Chỏ, cử động cánh tay ngoài khó khăn đôi khi mỏi nặng. Những cử động nhẹ như phủi tay, quét nhà cũng đau.  Vùng đau thường xuất hiện ở điểm nhọn của đầu xương quay (radius) Nguyên nhân:  Sự vận động ráng quá sức hoặc sau cú đập hụt trái banh tennis trong thi đấu.  Đôi khi do thấp khớp (gout). Điều Trị: Áp dụng chủ yếu theo nguyên tắc Tam Đồng: Hình - Thế - Thể. a) Chỏ đối xứng b) Cổ tay tuyến ngón cái huyệt trên chỗ thầy thuốc xem mạch 1 thốn (bàn tay sấp). Chà vuốt nhẹ, cộm đau thấy ngón tay cái nhúc nhích là đúng. c) Đầu khớp vai vùng huyệt Kiên Ngung (hiệu năng huyệt đi chéo) d) Gối: trên, dưới gối má ngoài e) Mắt giữa các ngón tay theo công thức: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5 (Áp út, Cái, Giữa, Trỏ, Út) H.1c H.1d Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 49 2. Kẹt khớp vai Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Đột ngột tay dở không lên  * Triệu chứng nguy hiểm về tim mạch Khám và điều trị: a) Vuốt và bấm khớp vai đối xứng theo quy ước Tam Đồng: Hình -Thế - Thể b) Vuốt và bấm khớp mắt cá chân trong c) Vuốt và bấm khớp mắt cá chân ngoài theo các huyệt: Khâu Khư, Thân Mạch, Côn Lôn d) Vuốt và bấm điểm gặp giữa đường ngang 1/4 trán về phía lông mày vào chân tóc gần Thái Dương. e) Vuốt và chà hai rãnh trước chân tai (nhớ há miệng nhỏ khi lấy huyệt) 3. Tê cánh tay. Tê ngón tay Triệu chứng:  Thường cứng 1 hoặc 2 gân cổ gáy  Hội chứng tim mạch Cách khám và điều trị: a) Xoa vuốt cổ tay ngửa vùng Đại Lăng tuyến ngón tay cái theo hướng từ cổ tay ra bàn tay (gò Kim Tinh) b) Cổ tay ngửa, kẽ tay tuyến ngón Út và Áp Út theo hướng từ lòng bàn tay ra ngón tay. c) Vùng khuỷu tay (Nội Khúc Trì) d) Xoa vuốt cổ tay sấp theo hướng từ ngoài vào trong, đặc biệt tuyến ngón tay cái và vùng Thủ Tam Lý Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 50 e) Hơ cứu vùng Đại Chuỳ, Kiên Tĩnh, và đầu vai f) * Xoa vuốt hai khớp vai trước g) * Xoa vuốt hai mắt cá chân trong theo hướng từ cổ chân vào gót Lưu ý cả 2 mục e và f: phòng cho trường hợp nghẽn tim, làm tim đập nhanh 4. Viêm bao gân cổ tay (Carpal tunnel syndrome) Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Cổ tay tuyến ngón cái thường bị sưng đau.  Người bệnh cảm thấy ngón tay cái vô lực, không thể xoay trở cổ tay hay cầm nắm một vật.  Bệnh thường do thói quen nghề nghiệp  Ảnh hưởng đến tim mạch Khám và điều trị: a) Vùng cổ hai bên Đại Chuỳ và Kiên Ngoại Du (ngang đốt T1 và T2) b) Cổ tay đối xứng theo nguyên tắc Tam Đồng c) Ngón chân cái. 5. Đau các khớp ngón tay Nguyên nhân:  Thấp khớp do can thận suy Khám và điều trị: a) Xoa nắn các đốt ngón tay theo thứ tự: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5 b) Xung quanh vùng chỏ (Khúc Trì, Khúc Trạch, Thủ Tam Lý, Thiếu Hải) c) Cổ tay tuyến ngón Cái d) Kẽ tay giữa 2 ngón Út và Áp Út e) Hai bên chân cổ gáy (Đại Chuỳ), hai đỉnh xương bả vai (Kiên Ngoại Du, Thần giác) f) Xoa nắn các đốt ngón chân 2 3 4 5 1 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 51 6. Ngón tay cò súng (Trigger finger) Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Bệnh thường xuất hiện ở ngón tay giữa co vào khó, mở ra phải kéo, rất đau đớn.  Bệnh do nghề nghiệp thường quen xử dụng 1 tay trong cùng 1 tư thế lâu ngày sinh mỏi rã vô lực.  Di chứng của bệnh Tennis Elbow Khám và Điều trị: a) Ngón tay đối xứng theo nguyên tắc Tam Đồng b) Chà vuốt từ cổ tay vào chỏ thấy 1 trong 2 ngón áp út và giữa bật lên là đúng huyệt. Tác động cả 2 bên bệnh và không bệnh. c) Cổ tay tuyến ngón cái thấy ngón tay cái bật lên là đúng d) Cổ chân theo khớp mắt cá chân ngoài e) Vùng huyệt Thần Giác ở hai vai 7. Hội chứng run tay Triệu chứng:  Tay run không tự chủ. Nguyên nhân:  Thường do não bộ (suy nhược thần kinh) Điều Trị: Tâm Bào & Tam Tiêu a) Nắm kéo nhẹ phần da theo đường tưởng tượng giữa cánh tay trước, từ cổ tay vào khuỷu tay. Điểm đau nhất thường xuất hiện ở huyệt Tý Trung. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 52 I. CÁC BỆNH VỀ CHÂN 1. Viêm khớp gối Nguyên nhân:  Hội chứng Can Thận  Di chứng Tiểu Đường  Lạm dụng thuốc chống viêm Khám và điều trị: a) Tác động xung quanh khớp gối gồm các vị trí chính; trên khớp gối (2): Lương Khâu, Huyết Hải; dưới khớp Gối (3): Âm Lăng, Dương Lăng, Túc Tam Lý; sau khớp gối (1): Uỷ Trung. b) Hai mắt thứ nhất ngón chân Cái c) Vùng Chẩm gáy * Kết hợp hai thế khí công: vỗ gối và rắn ngóc đầu Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 53 2. Thốn gót, thốn bàn chân Nguyên nhân và Triệu chứng:  Sáng sớm thức giấc bước chân xuống giường thường bị đau  Do Gan Thận bị suy yếu Khám và điều trị a) Vùng Thái Dương (điểm gặp nhau giữa tuyến ngang giữa trán và chân tóc). Ngay sau đó dùng tay xoa nắn nhẹ vào điểm đã xác định hướng lên đỉnh đầu khoảng 1/2 thốn, điểm đau nhất là huyệt. b) Hai đầu khớp vai trước c) Hai đầu khớp vai sau vùng tiếp giáp giữa cơ Delta d) Chẩm gáy H.2a H.2d H.2b H.2c Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 54 3. Lật cổ chân (Twisted Ankle) Triệu chứng:  Đang đi, đột ngột bàn chân bị lật, làm bạn phải khuỵu xuống, dù trước đó bạn chưa bị té ngã lần nào. Sự việc cứ lập đi lập lại làm chúng ta lo sợ. Nguyên nhân:  Đàm thấp, khí trệ một trong những triệu chứng ban đầu báo hiệu bạn sẽ mắt 1 số bệnh: bướu cổ, bao tử, mắt kém, mất ngủ. Khám & Điều trị: a) Mỗi ngày 3 thời tác động vào vùng huyệt xương Ót & xương đính. Tác động cả 2 phía trái & phải đồng lúc. Vùng nào đau nhất tác động 7 lần. * Kỳ huyệt nầy làm cho bạn dễ ngủ, long đàm, dể thở, thông hầu họng. Nếu bị bướu hơi bệnh sẽ giảm nhanh chóng. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 55 J. CÁC BỆNH TIẾT NIỆU 1. Tiền liệt tuyến & Nhiếp hộ tuyến (Prostate & Prostatism) Triệu chứng:  Đàn ông hay đi tiểu vặt, nhiều, thường phải rặn.  Khi tiểu xong vẫn còn sót vài giọt ra trễ. Không chữa trị kịp thời lâu ngày bàng quang bị cặn nước tiểu làm độc, sinh nóng buốt và mót tiểu luôn. Bàng quang lúc nầy ví như một cái thùng rượu soi lỗ phía trên còn vòi dưới thì bị đóng nút. Do vậy bàng quang bị nở rộng làm nước tiểu tràn ra ngoài. Phải giải phẫu. Nguyên Nhân:  Sưng Nhiếp Hộ Tuyến (Prostatism) là chứng bệnh của những người đàn ông ngoài 50 tuổi. Tỷ lệ mắc bệnh có đến 50%.  Bệnh thường xảy ra cho những người ngồi luôn một chỗ, ít vận động, thường táo bón. Có thể do một nguyên nhân về nội tiết trong tuổi về già cũng như phụ nữ thời kỳ mãn kinh. Khám & Điều trị: Phải tích cực và thường xuyên cho đến khi dứt bệnh. Mỗi ngày 3 thời tác động theo thứ tự sau: a) Dùng 2 tay bóp đều từ bẹn háng ra đến má trong đầu gối. Sinh huyệt thường xuất hiện ở vùng huyệt Huyết Hải Kỳ huyệt nầy vô cùng quan trọng cho các chứng về thận b) Thái Khê c) Nội Hợp Cốc H.1a Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 56 d) Thừa Khấp (bản đồ huyệt trên mặt vùng số 3) e) Huyệt đặc trị làm thông tiểu 2 bên mép miệng (bản đồ huyệt trên mặt vùng số 7) f) Chọn SH một trong 2 Thái Dương (bản đồ huyệt trên mặt vùng số 2) g) Bộ Tiêu Viêm: Ấn Đường, Cự Liêu, Chuẫn Đầu, Thừa Tương, Nhân Trung Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 57 K. CÁC BỆNH PHỤ KHOA 1. Đau Bụng Kinh (Menstrual Pain) Triệu chứng:  Bụng thường thấy đau trước ngày có kinh, thường đau tiếp tục trong 2 ngày đầu. Kinh ra được thì hết đau.  Bụng cứ đau ngấm ngầm, thỉnh thoảng đau dội lên, lan xuống bụng dưới háng & đùi.  Ngoài những lúc đau dữ dội, vùng xương chậu thường tụ máu nóng hoặc tức. Bên cạnh đó có nhiều triệu chứng bất ổn về thần kinh như Nhức đầu, Nóng nảy, Bất định, Suy nhược … Nguyên Nhân:  Có thể nói 1/3 tổng số phụ nữ thường thấy đau đớn, khó chịu trong kỳ kinh nguyệt. Người nào hay nóng nảy & táo bón rất dễ đau bụng trong kỳ kinh  Theo Tây Y: Nguyên nhân đầu tiên do sự co dãn của dạ con cùng sự tiết ra nhiều kích thích tố Điều trị: a) Vùng Cổ Chân: Vùng Tam Âm Giao. Tác động nhẹ vào 1 trong 2 cổ chân trong. Vùng nào đau là SH. b) Vùng lông mày, hốc mắt & 2 Thái Dương Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 58 2. Nhiễm Trùng Âm Đạo (Vaginal Infection - Vulvovaginitis) Điều trị: a) Chọn SH một trong 2 vùng má trong đầu Gối b) Tam Âm Giao c) Mặt : SH 1 trong 2 Thái Dương + Bộ Tiêu Viêm (xem Đồ Hình ở Mặt) *** Phác đồ huyệt nầy có thể áp dụng cho trường hợp phụ nữ khó có con Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 59 L. CÁC BỆNH NỘI KHOA 1. Huyết áp Cao (High Blood Pressure) Triệu chứng:  Huyết áp cực đại trên 140 mm Hg hay huyết áp cực tiểu trên 90mm Hg  Nhức đầu mỗi buổi sáng không phải do gan hay dạ dày  Thường nhức đầu vùng chẩm hộ.  Biểu hiện những cọng gân nổi to ở 1 trong 2 bên Thái Dương  Chóng mặt hoa mắt, ù tai, chảy máu cam  Ráng sức một chút đã thấy mệt, thở hỗn hển  Dễ xúc động, hồi hộp  Tê nửa mặt, tay chân tê  Kẹt khớp Vai đột ngột Nguyên nhân:  Xơ cứng động mạch  Do bệnh Thống Phong (gout) hay Tiểu Đường  Thận suy, bướu ở tuyến Thượng Thận  Rối loạn nội tiết  Phụ nữ: U xơ buồng trứng (fibroma). Thời kỳ tiền mãn kinh (PMS, Pre-Menstrual Syndrome) Khám & điều trị: Làm mềm dẻo mạch máu & an thần a) Kết hợp Vận Động Dưỡng Sinh qua 3 thế Dịch Cân Kinh: Rắn ngóc đầu & Vỗ gối. Chủ yếu thở sâu b) Uống rượu tỏi c) Có 3 vùng huyệt chính:  Kẽ ngón chân Cái & ngón Trỏ  Gáy cổ (hai bên Đại Chuỳ), Dái tai và cạnh Càm  Nắm tay, kẽ tay ở mu bàn tay Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 60 2. Huyết áp thấp (Low Blood Pressure) Triệu Chứng:  Huyết áp cực đại 100mm Hg, huyết áp cực tiểu 50mm Hg  Thường bị chóng mặt (Vertigo)  Cứng gáy, mỏi nặng 1 trong 2 vai Nguyên nhân:  Thiếu oxygen vào não. Khám & Điều trị: Thăng Khí a) Vùng Kheo sau gối thường ở huyệt Uỷ Dương (xem hình) b) Khớp thứ nhất của ngón chân cái (mu bàn chân).* Co ngón chân để lấy huyệt. c) Hộp sọ tác động theo chiều từ gáy lên đỉnh đầu Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 61 M. CÁC BỆNH THÔNG THƯỜNG 1. Cảm cúm (Cold, Influenza) Triệu chứng:  Một chút rùng mình, ớn lạnh, khó chịu, chảy nước mắt sống. Tiếp theo nhảy và sổ mũi, họng đau rát, đầu nặng, sốt hâm hấp rồi cao dần. Nguyên nhân:  Trúng lạnh do hàn khí (nhiễm siêu vi) rất khó nhận biết.  Đừng nghĩ sai lầm: chỉ có nhiễm Nắng, Mưa, Sương, Gió mới bị bệnh.  * Đừng ỷ lại vào tân dược.  * Đừng chủ quan: chỉ cần uống 1 ly nước chanh đường pha 1 chút rượu  *** Thực tế cho thấy: bệnh cảm cúm từng chuyển biến theo những trận dịch đã làm chết người không ít. Điều trị sai lầm hoặc không dứt gốc; bệnh sẽ để lại những hậu quả nghiêm trọng như viêm họng mãn, viêm mũi, hen suyễn, trầm cảm v.v. Khám & Điều trị: bằng năng lực tinh thần với 2 bàn tay không, bạn vẫn có thể chữa tuyệt cơn bệnh theo VNDƯLP. Tác động theo thứ tự sau: a) Dùng 2 ngón tay trỏ & giữa hình thành chử V, đánh nóng trước & sau Loa Tai b) Mí tóc trán c) Giữa Trán d) Vùng đầu mày & hốc mắt e) Hai bên vùng mũi má Ngọa Tầm(NT) f) Xung quanh miệng theo chiều từ phải qua trái của bạn H.1a H.1b H.1c H.1d, e, f Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 62 g) Đầu : Đỉnh đầu , 2 Thái Dương, Chẩm Gáy h) Cổ Gáy & 2 Vai i) Bàn tay sấp: cổ tay vùng Tam Dương Lạc * Tuỳ thuận có thể dùng các đầu ngón tay hay sóng bàn tay để tác động Ăn uống kiêng cử:  Ngay sau khi điều trị bạn hãy dùng 1 tô cháo nóng có ít thịt bằm nhuyễn, hoặc cá, tròng đỏ trứng gà, nhiều hành lá, một chút tiêu & gừng  Uống nước nóng ấm  Đi ngủ sớm  Không tắm rửa, không uống nước dừa, nước cam, nước đá  Dù bệnh đã giảm dần, bạn vẫn tiếp tục xoa vuốt 9 vùng đã nêu ngày 3 thời cho đến khi hết bệnh * Nếu bạn thấy tắt tiếng nên dùng thêm:  Một trái tắc lớn để nguyên vỏ bổ đôi  Một mắt nghệ khoảng 1 mắt tay út của người bệnh (xắc mỏng)  Một miếng đường phèn (rock sugar) độ 1 mắt tay út.  Cả 3 đem chưng cách thủy, tồn tính, cho đến khi tắc và nghệ bệu ra.  Mỗi lần khát nước, ngứa cổ muốn ho. Bạn hãy uống 1 muỗng café tắc nghệ rồi hãy uống nước chín đun sôi để nguội. H.1g H.1g H.1h H.1i Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 63 2. Dị ứng (Allergy) Triệu chứng:  Ngứa xung quanh mắt, chân tai, khóe mắt, khóe miệng, vùng nách, vùng háng, khuỷu tay, khoeo chân Nguyên nhân:  Thận Phế kém không đủ sức đề kháng Khám & Điều Trị: Mỗi ngày 3 thời dùng máy sấy tóc hơ cứu a) Các kẽ ngón chân, ngón tay b) Mắt thứ nhất ngón tay cái c) Vùng lưng trên, dọc 2 xương bả vai Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 64 3. Mất ngủ (Insomnia) Mất ngủ theo y học Đông Phương có liên quan đến những chức năng: Tỳ, Can, Thận. * Muốn chữa được chứng mất ngủ cần phân biệt rõ 2 nguyên nhân chính: a) Hư chứng:  Do trạng thái thần kinh căng thẳng quá sức.  Bị căng thẳng (stress) về công việc hay tình cảm. b) Thực chứng:  Rối loạn nội tiết (Dysendocrinia)  Ngoại Tâm Thu (Extra Systole) Khám & Điều trị: Theo VNĐƯLP cả hai trường hợp có thể dùng một phác đồ. Mỗi đêm tác động các vùng: a) Ngoạ Tằm dùng hai đầu ngón tay tác động đồng lúc 7/14/21 lần (vùng số 3) b) Hai mép miệng vùng huyệt lợi tiểu. Dùng hai ngón tay trỏ & cái bóp đều tay theo đường ngang bờ môi dưới theo hướng từ miệng ra dái tai & cạnh càm (vùng số 7) c) Bàn tay gò Kim Tinh, vùng huyệt Ngư Tế d) Bóp đều tay từ khớp háng ra đến má trong đầu gối. Chỗ nào đau tác động 7 lần * Trường hợp do Ngoại Tâm Thu: tác động thêm ngay đỉnh dái tai & cạnh càm. Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 65 4. Cảm nắng (Sốt, Fever) Triệu chứng:  Da, mặt đỏ rần, mạch nhảy mau & mạnh. Người có cảm giác như lửa phỏng. Tiếp theo nhức đầu, chóng mặt, buồn nôn tức thở, miệng khô đắng để lâu bất tỉnh. Nguyên nhân:  Trúng nắng hay trúng nóng, mất nhiều mồ hôi. Cơ thể mất nước, một số lượng muối trong cơ thể mất đi theo mồ hôi, lỗ chân lông nở to nhiễm gió gây ra bệnh. Khám & Điều trị: Phải đưa ngay bệnh nhân vào chỗ thoáng mát, mở lỏng các nút quần áo mới điều trị. a) Bàn tay: day ấn mạnh & sâu vùng huyệt giữa nếp nhăn cổ tay cho đến khi giảm hồi hộp, hạ nhiệt. b) Bấm mạnh các góc móng tay Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 66 5. Nấc cụt (Hiccough or hiccup) Triệu chứng:  Hoành cách mô co lại thình lình, đưa mạnh vào một luồng khí trời đi qua lưỡi gà gây ra tiếng nấc cụt.  Nó có thể kéo dài nhiều ngày làm cho người bệnh khốn khổ; không ăn, uống được. Nguy cơ có thể đưa đến suy nhược thần kinh. Nguyên nhân: Thường do bao tử  Ăn uống thức ăn nóng hay lạnh quá  Trẻ con bú no quá  Mọi chứng liên quan đến bắp thịt cách mô như sưng bao tâm, bao phế đều có thể sinh ra nấc cụt. Điều Trị: a) Tác động vào các vùng: Lưng & ngón tay giữa H.5 H.5 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 67 N. CÁC BỆNH ĐẶC BIỆT 1. Thống Phong (Gout) Triệu Chứng:  Sự đau nhức thường xuất hiện ở các khớp như ngón chân Cái (vùng Bunion), Gối, Khớp mắt Cá chân v.v. gây Sưng, Nóng Đỏ, Đau.  **Người bệnh thường bị đau nhức & Sốt về đêm, đi đứng khó khăn với cây gậy.  Bệnh thường liên quan đến Tiểu đường & Cao máu Nguyên Nhân:  Gout là một loại bệnh viêm khớp do Uric Acid quá nhiều trong máu.  Một trong những cơ quan: Gan, Tỳ, hay Thận bị suy yếu. Điều Trị:  Theo Tây Y thường cho uống thuốc hoặc chích thuốc giảm đau hay Kháng Viêm. Tuy nhiên căn bệnh xưa như trái đất này cho đến nay vẫn còn là nỗi khổ của không ít người. Cuối cùng phải chấp nhận Giải Phẫu.  Theo VNDƯLP chúng tôi đề ra một số vùng huyệt: a) Gối 5 huyệt (4 huyệt trước đầu gối, và Ủy Trung ở giữa kheo) b) Khớp mắt Cá Chân H.1a H.1a H.1b Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 68 c) Ngón chân Cái, Út d) Chẩm Gáy Lưu Ý: Phòng bệnh phát triển sang đa khớp. Người bệnh phải điều trị tích cực mỗi ngày Xoa thêm các mắt ngón tay theo thứ tự: 4, 1, 3, 2, 5 Kiêng cử:  Các loại thịt và mỡ động vật  Mắm (mắm cá, mắm tôm v.v.)  Đồ biển (sea food)  Các loại rau củ như Cà Tím, Khoai Tây, Khoai Lang 2 3 4 5 1 Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 69 2. Cứu cấp Đột Quỵ Triệu chứng:  Mặt tái nhợt  Mắt lạc thần  Nói khó. Cách khám và Điều trị: a) Dùng 2 ngón tay cái và trỏ vuốt mạnh trước tai và sau dái tai dọc cạnh càm (thường huyệt báo đau bên trái của bệnh nhân) b) Bấm mạnh Nhân Trung c) Bóp mạnh Gân Gót chân d) Nắn vuốt kéo ngón chân Cái từ trong khớp bàn chân ra ngoài. Chủ yếu ở mặt dưới ngón chân. e) Theo kinh nghiệm dân gian: chích lễ 10 đầu ngón tay, ngón chân Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 70 3. Sa bìu (Orchiocele) Triệu chứng:  Ngoại Thận xệ xuống, phồng to, tức đến nghẹn thở  Không thể đi lại được người rã rượi. Nguyên nhân:  Cơ thể bị nhiễm độc do Quai bị, Phong thấp, Đậu mùa. Khám & Điều trị: Theo Tây Y phải đeo hố đỡ (suspensor) điều trị theo tân dược. VNDƯLP có 3 huyệt: a) Gối: Để Bệnh nhân ngồi thẳng lưng, chân để theo hình thước thợ. Người điều trị dùng 2 tay để hổ khẩu ôm sát gối. Huyệt nằm ngay đầu ngón tay cái (má trong đùi) * Bấm mạnh & sâu đồng lúc 2 bên. Chọn bên huyệt nào đau nhất làm SH. b) Mặt & Chẩm bộ: dùng 2 ngón tay Trỏ & Cái bấm mạnh đồng lúc vào 2 huyệt ở Má & Chẩm Bộ Kiêng cử:  Không xách vật nặng lên cao  Không làm việc vội vã Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 71  Sức Khỏe là Tài Sản  Trí Tuệ là Thần Thông  Biết Đủ là Hạnh Phúc  Cho Đi là Không Mất  Đồng Ứng Bất Cưỡng Cầu Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp - Lý Phước Lộc VNĐƯLP Căn Bản Orange, CA. Dec 05, 2016 72 Tiểu sử Thầy Lý Phước Lộc sinh năm Giáp Thân tại làng Phước Hải tỉnh Phước Tuy (Bà Rịa) 1965 – 1966 : Sinh viên Đại Học Khoa Học Sài Gòn 1966 – 1975 : Sĩ quan Không Quân VN Cộng Hòa 1981 – 1995 : Thành viên nhóm Nghiên Cứu Diện Chẩn Điều Khiển Liệu Pháp Bùi Quốc Châu 1995 : Định cư tại Hoa Kỳ, tiểu bang California Thầy Lý Phước Lộc bắt đầu phổ biến và phát triển Việt Nam Đồng Ứng Liệu Pháp từ năm 2012 ở Hoa Kỳ, Canada, Đức, Pháp, Hòa Lan, Bỉ, Thụy Sĩ, Tiệp Khắc …	74,691
An Encyclopedia of Humor (Lowell D. Streiker) (Z-Library).pdf	An ENCYCLOPEDIA of HUMOR Lowell D. Streiker HENDEICKSON P U B L I S H E R S An Encyclopedia of Humor Copyright © 1998 by Lowell D. Streiker, Ph.D. Published by Hendrickson Publishers, Inc. P.O. Box 3473 Peabody, Massachusetts 01961-3473 All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in printed reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmit- ted in any form or by any means (printed, written, photocopied, visual elec- tronic, audio or otherwise) without the prior permission of the publisher. Disclaimer: The names of persons, businesses, and churches used in this collection are mostly fictitious. Any resemblance to persons, businesses, or churches living or dead is, for the most part, purely coincidental. Printed in the United States of America ISBN 1-56563-305-9 Fourth Printing—February 1999 Cover design by Paetzold Design, Batavia, 111. Interior design by Pinpoint Marketing, Kirkland, Wash. Edited by Scott Pinzon, Margaret D. Smith, and Heather Stroobosscher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data An encyclopedia of humor / [compiled and written by] Lowell Streiker. Includes index. ISBN 1-56563-305-9 (cloth) 1. American wit and humor. 2. Religion-Humor. I. Streiker, Lowell D. PN6162.E5 1998 973' .02' 07-dc21 98-9845 CIP CONTENTS AN INTRODUCTION vii INTRODUCING LOWELL STREIKER viii 1. CHURCH LIFE 9 A martyr is someone who has to live with a saint 2. KIDS' THEOLOGY 63 You don't have to do homework in heaven (unless your teacher is there, too) 3. HEAVEN & HELL 77 We could've gotten here sooner if we hadn't eaten all that oat bran 4. MEN VS. WOMEN 93 I'm so miserable without you, it's like having you here 5. FAMILY & HOME 121 Insanity is hereditary: you get it from your kids 6. BLOOPERS, BUMPER SNICKERS, &ZINCERS 169 Save the whales; collect the whole set 7. SPORTS & LEISURE 197 Bacteria is the only culture some people have 8. ON THE JOB (BUT OUT TO LUNCH) 209 To err is human; to forgive is not company policy 9. 'PHYSICIAN, HEAL THYSELF!" 235 The doctor is very busy; please have your symptoms ready V 10. LAWYERS 245 Notice: Inalienable Rights Cancelled for Today 11. COPS & ROBBERS 275 Headline: "Thugs eat then rob proprietor" 12. GOVERNMENTS, MILITARY 285 If the Russian rulers were the Tsar and Tsarina, were their children Tsardines? 13. TOO MANY LIGHT BULB JOKES 315 Q: How many Amish does it take to change a light bulb? A: What's a light bulb? 14. AGING & HEALTH 325 You're only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely 15. YOU'RE ALL NOTHING BUT AN IMALSF 351 When a cow laughs, does milk come out of her nose? 16. THE REST OF THE WORLD 367 I try to daydream, but my mind keeps wandering TOPICAL INDEX 406 Jik lyf W #• m ^ 1 INTRODUCTION ^ " M F Noted evangelist John Franklin was speaking at two V * 9 different churches in a large city in the same week. l \| C ^ J > A reporter was present at the first service. After the sermon the evangelist pleaded with the reporter not to publish in the local paper any of the jokes he had used that night since he was going to use the same stories the following night at the other church. The next morning the reporter published an excellent review of the evangelist's message and concluded with these words: "The Reverend Mr. Franklin also told many stories that cannot be published." What follows is a collection of stories that definitely can be published! Here are nearly three thousand of my all-time favorite anecdotes, jokes, and witty comments about virtually every topic under the sun. I trust that they will be of value to you as you meet and communicate with others—whatever your vocation may be. Laughter is a powerful force, and it is yours to use whether you are a minister, a public speaker, a teacher, a salesman, an office worker, a psychologist, or a plumber! The laughter encouraged by this collection is supportive of human dignity. It is life-affirming and life-giving. And it is, to borrow a word from religion, prophetic. It comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable. It ennobles our spirits and extends our love to others. And, above all, it's fun! So remember four simple words: Live. Love. Laugh. Bloom! —Reverend Lowell Vll INTRODUCING LOWELL STREIKER Lowell D. Streiker is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and holds a Ph.D. in religion from Princeton University. He has written, co-authored, edited, and con- tributed to more than twenty books. He has co-produced and moderated the television series Counterpoint for CBS. He has appeared on numerous radio and television programs includ- ing The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Merv Griffin Show, and CBS Morning News. Visit his website, Reverend Lowell's Electronic Congre- gation, at http://www.revlowell.com. Your humor contributions and comments are always welcome. MEET LOWELL IN PERSON! Share Lowell's "good clean fun" words of inspiration with your business, church, or other audience. Lowell is available for speaking engagements, workshops, conferences, and preaching. During the past two years, he has spoken, sung, preached, and entertained in the United States, Norway, Germany, Holland, Finland, Russia, Poland, and Hungary. For more information, contact Lowell today at: 795 Reina del Mar Avenue Pacifka, California 94044-3153 Phone: (650) 359-7123 Fax: (650) 359-0850 E-mail: revlowell@earthlink.net Vlll 1 CHURCH LIFE Sacred cows make the best hamburger. —Mark Twain The new priest was trying to institute some liturgical reform in his very old-fashioned parish by teaching his parishioners the new responses. He said to them, "When I say, 'The Lord be with you,' you will reply all together, 'And with you also.' Then I will say, 'Let us pray.'" The day came for the introduction of the new liturgy. Something happened to the microphone, and the priest, trying to adjust it, said in a loud voice, "There is something wrong with this microphone." The congregation responded with one loud voice, "And with you also!" —King Duncan I was preaching in a small Methodist church in Georgia and asked the congregation, "How many of you folks here this morning are Methodists?" Everybody raised a hand, except one little old lady. After the service, when she and I were shaking hands, I said, "Ma'am, I noticed you didn't raise your hand. That means you're not a Methodist. Would you mind telling me what you are?" She said, "Well, I'm a Baptist." 9 10 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©F® Some of the people standing around didn't seem to appre- ciate her answer. So I asked her, "Ma'am, would you mind telling me why you're a Baptist?" She said, "I really don't know, except my mother was a Baptist, my father was a Baptist, my grandmother and my grandfather were Baptists." I said, "Ma'am, that's really not a good reason to be a Baptist. Suppose your mother and your father, and your grand- mother and your grandfather had been morons, what would you have been?" Without batting an eye, she said, "I guess I'd have been a Methodist." Mls it a sin to have sexual relations before receiving Communion?" the young woman asked her pastor. "Only if you block the aisle," he replied. We were traveling one summer in the Pocono Mountains and, like a good Presbyterian family, attended church while we were on vacation. One lazy Sunday we found our way to a little Methodist church. It was a hot day, and the folks were nearly drowsing in the pews. The preacher was preaching on and on, until all of a sudden he said, "The best years of my life have been spent in the arms of another man's wife." The congregation let out a gasp and came to immediate attention. The dozing deacon in the back row dropped his hymnbook. Then the preacher added, "It was my mother." The congregation tittered a little and managed to follow along as the sermon concluded. I filed away this trick in my memory, since it was such a great way to regain the congregation's attention. The next summer, on a lazy Sunday, I was preaching and the flies were buzzing around and the ushers were sinking lower and lower in their seats in the back row until I could hardly see them. CHURCH LIFE • 11 Then I remembered our experience in the Pocono Mountains, and I said in a booming voice, "The best years of my life have been spent in the arms of another man's wife." Sure enough, I had their attention. One of the ushers in the back row sat up so fast he hit his head on the back of the pew in front of him. I had them. But you know something, I forgot what came next. All I could think to say was, "And for the life of m e , I can't r e m e m - ber h e r name!" —Pastor Roger Matthews Mrs. Hansen had been a member of First Baptist church for twenty-five years. After the service, as she walked toward the pastor who stood waiting at the sanctuary door, it was obvious that she had something on her mind. She complained, "Reverend, if God were alive today, He would be shocked at the changes in this church!" ^ / V A man with a nagging secret couldn't keep it any ^ _ V longer. In the confessional he admitted that for uMJKX years he had been stealing building supplies from the lumberyard where he worked. "What did you take?" his parish priest asked. "Enough to build my own home and enough for my son's house. And houses for our two daughters. And our cottage at the lake." "This is very serious," the priest said. "I shall have to think of a far-reaching penance. Have you ever done a retreat?" "No, Father, I haven't," the man replied. "But if you can get the plans, I can get the lumber." Rev. Harold Watson, a Congregationalist minister, received a call from a woman who was quite distressed over the death of her pet cat, Samantha. She asked the minister to conduct a funeral service for her cat. The minister explained that it was contrary to Congregationalist policy to conduct funerals for 12 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum(3)F® animals and referred her to a friend, a Methodist pastor. Later, Watson learned that the Methodist minister had referred her to a Presbyterian minister, who had referred her to someone else. A day later, the grieving pet owner called Watson back, still upset. She said she was at her wit's end, couldn't find a minis- ter to conduct Samantha's funeral, and didn't know what to do. She said she planned to donate ten thousand dollars to the church of the minister who performed this service for Samantha. Watson said to her, "Well, why didn't you tell me Samantha was a Congregationalist in the first place?" The main course at the big civic dinner was baked ham with glazed sweet potatoes. Rabbi Cohen regretfully shook his head when the platter was passed to him. Father Kelly scolded playfully, "When are you going to for- get that silly rule of yours and eat ham like the rest of us?" Without skipping a beat, Rabbi Cohen replied, "At your wedding reception, Father Kelly." A man and his ten-year-old son were on a fishing trip miles from home. At the boy's insistence, they decided to attend the Sunday worship service at a small rural church. As they walked back to their car after the service, the father complained. "The service was too long," he lamented. "The sermon was boring, and the singing was off key." Finally the boy said, "Daddy, I thought it was pretty good for a dime." A very dignified pastor was visiting a lady in a nursing home who was confined to a wheelchair. As he stood to leave, the lady asked him to have a word of prayer. He gently took her hand and prayed that God would be with her to bring her comfort, strength and healing. When he finished praying, her face began to glow. She said softly, "Pastor, would you help me to my feet?" CHURCH LIFE • 13 Not knowing what else to do, he helped her up. At first, she took a few uncertain steps. Then she began to jump up and down, then to dance and shout and cry with hap- piness until the whole nursing home was aroused. After she was quieted, the solemn pastor hurried out to his car, closed the door, grabbed hold of the steering wheel and prayed this little prayer: "Lord, don't you ever do that to me again!" A rabbi and a soap maker went for a walk together. The soap maker said, "What good is religion? Look at all the trouble and misery of the world! Still there, even after years—thousands of years—of teaching about goodness and truth and peace. Still there, after all the prayers and sermons and teachings. If reli- gion is good and true, why should this be?" The rabbi said nothing. They continued walking until he noticed a child playing in the gutter. Then the rabbi said, "Look at that child. You say that soap makes people clean, but see the dirt on that youngster. Of what good is soap? With all the soap in the world, over all these years, the child is still filthy. I wonder how effective soap is, after all!" The soap maker protested. "But, Rabbi, soap cannot do any good unless it is used!" "Exactly!" replied the rabbi. Just before I was to preach at a Baptist church in Maryland, the pastor, Carl Banks, said, "When you get through I want you to stand at the door with me, so that the people can greet you." Afterwards I stood there, and folks came by. One woman grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, "Dr. Streiker, that was a sorry sermon." Of course, I was shaken by that, but I was more shaken when I noticed her in line the second time. She grabbed my hand again, looked me in the eye, and said, "... a sorry sermon and you didn't even preach it well!" And she walked on. 14 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum©F® Then she came back a third time, grabbed my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, " . . . a sorry sermon and you didn't preach it well, and I hope you never come back." Well, I was devastated. I turned to the pastor and said, "Carl, what is with this woman?" He said, "Don't pay any attention to her. She's not very bright. She just goes around repeating what she hears every- body else saying." CHURCH SIGNBOARDS Work for the Lord. The pay isn't much, but the retirement plan is out of this world. Interested in going to heaven? Apply here for flight training! Since you can't take it with you, why not leave it here? You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. No parking. Violators will be turned into a pillar of salt. We have a prophet-sharing plan for you. The Lord loveth a cheerful giver. He also accepteth from a grouch. Rev. Alan Hansen finished a powerful sermon on the Ten Commandments. One congregant was momentarily depressed but soon perked up. "Anyway," he told himself, "I've never made a graven image." Pastor Sampson was visiting London. The guide showed him through Westminster Abbey where so many of the nation's renowned are entombed. The guide proudly announced, "England's Great sleep within these walls." The minister muttered, "I feel right at home." CHURCH LIFE • 15 Visiting a newly-rich friend in the country, Wolcott Gibbs refused to be impressed by tennis courts, swimming pools, sta- bles, and other forms of luxury. Finally, returning to the house, the owner pointed to a magnificent elm growing just outside the library window and boasted, "That tree stood for fifty years on top of the hill. I had it moved down here so on pleasant mornings I can do my work in its shade." Said Gibbs: "That just goes to show what God could do if he had money." The pastor was growing concerned about sparse attendance, so he published this item in the church bulletin: "This . . . is . . . the . . . way . . . the . . .church . . . sometimes . . . looks . . . to . . . the . . . pastor . . . when . . . he . . . goes . . . into . . . the . . . pulpit. "Itwouldlooklikethisifeverybodybroughtsomebodyelsetochurch." The minister selected a fifty-cent item at a convenience store but discovered he didn't have any money with him. "I could invite you to hear me preach in return," he said jokingly to the owner, "but I'm afraid I don't have any fifty-cent sermons." "Perhaps," suggested the owner, "I could come twice." Did you hear about the ostentatious bishop who had his car fit- ted with stained glass windows? A visitor found in her Episcopal church a prayer book that obviously had been used by a novice server for Holy Commu- nion prompting. At the appropriate places, he had written "sit," "stand," and "go to the altar." For one stage of the ritual he had added, and underlined, "Incense the people." 16 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H y m © ^ Billy Graham tells the amusing story of a fire that broke out in a small town church. When the fire brigade, sirens wailing, arrived on the spot, the min- ister recognized one of the men. "Hello there, Jim. I haven't seen you in church for a long time," he chided. "Well," answered the sweating man struggling with the hose, "it's been a long time since there's been any kind of fire in this church." The problem with mainline Christianity is that too many church members are singing "Standing on the Promises," when they are merely sitting on the premises. Willard Scott, the irrepressible weather reporter on The Today Show, grew up in a Baptist church. On one occasion when he was twelve years old, he took Communion and had a most embarrassing thing happen to him. He describes it like this: "In the Baptist church, they serve grape juice rather than wine, in tiny little individual-sized plastic cups. On this partic- ular occasion, I was trying to get the last bit of juice out of the bottom of the cup with my tongue, when all of a sudden the suction grabbed hold and my tongue got stuck in the cup! I tried desperately to pull that doggone cup off, but it wouldn't budge. Then before I could make another attempt, the pastor asked everyone in the church to hold hands with the person next to him and sing 'Blest Be the Tie That Binds.' Well, I was the one in a bind. Here I was with this cup on my tongue, and the people next to me had grabbed my hands. 'Just when it seemed like I was about to be discovered, I had what I can only regard as a divine inspiration. I sucked the whole cup into my mouth and held it there until the hymn was over. Then, while no one was looking, I reached in and pulled it off my tongue." —The Joy of Living CHURCH LIFE • 17 Shortly after the holy days of Lent and Passover, a priest, a min- ister, and a rabbi went off together on a fishing trip. They tried every kind of bait they could think of, but the fish weren't bit- ing. So the priest got out of the boat and walked across the water to another spot. Then the rabbi got out of the boat and walked across the water. The minister got out of the boat, too— and started to sink. He floundered around, climbed back into the boat, and tried again. Once again he sank into the water. He clambered back into the boat, and tried once more, this time almost drowning. Finally the priest said to the rabbi, "Do you think we should tell him where the rocks are?" The congregation of a small stone church in England decided that the stone which formed the step up to the front door had become too worn by its years of use, and would have to be replaced. Unfortunately, there were hardly any funds available for the replacement. Then someone came up with the bright idea that the replacement could be postponed for many years by simply turning over the block of stone. They discovered that their great-grandparents had beaten them to it. It seems the previous pastor was a paragon of virtue. He lived up to all the people's expectations and was willing to live on a very low salary, to boot. And he loved to work around the manse and keep both house and grounds in repair. But the new pastor wasn't that type. He hired someone to do a lot of these chores, including the mowing of the manse and church lawns. Naturally, this cost more money. This change of pattern was of concern to some of the elders of the church. One day one of them approached the new pastor and tried to bring up the matter tactfully. He said to the new pastor, "You know, our previous pastor mowed the lawn himself. Have you considered this approach?" The new pastor responded, "Yes, I'm aware of this. And I asked him. But he doesn't want to do it anymore." 18 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HU m©Fs Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God. —Lenny Bruce ' Pastor Phillips was delivering his sermon when a r : man in the back pew turned his head to one side, put his hand to his ear, and hollered, "Louder." The preacher raised his voice somewhat and continued with his sermon, which wasn't too interesting. After a few minutes the man said again, "Louder!" The preacher strained even more and continued on, but by now the sermon had become quite boring. The man shouted, "Louder!" At this point a man in the front row couldn't stand it any longer and yelled back to the man in the rear, "What's the mat- ter, can't you hear?" "No," said the man in the back. "Well," said the man down front, "move over, I'm coming back to join you." During a flight between New York and Chicago the captain announced over the plane's intercom, "Our number four engine has just been shut off because of mechanical trouble. There is nothing to worry about, however. We can still finish the flight with just three engines. Besides, you will be reassured to know that we have four pastors on board." One passenger called the flight attendant and said, "Would you please tell the captain that I would rather have four engines a n d three pastors?" —Dick Underdahl-Peirce The minister was sick, and a pastor noted for his never-ending sermons agreed to fill in. When he stood up in the pulpit, he was annoyed to find only ten worshipers present, including the choir. Afterward he complained to the sexton. "That was a very small turnout," he said. "Weren't they informed that I was coming?" "No," replied the sexton, "but word must have leaked out." CHURCH LIFE • 19 A fella's talking to his priest. He said, "I gave up sex for Lent. Well, I tried to, but the last day of Lent my wife dropped a can of peaches and when she bent over to pick 'em up, I couldn't help it." The priest said, "That's all right, son. A lot of people give in to temptation." The fella asked, "You're not gonna throw us out of church?" The priest said no. The fella exclaimed, "Thank goodness. They threw us out of the Supermarket!" —George "Goober" Lindsey One sunny Sunday morning, Henry Jones awoke to find his wife standing over him, shaking him by the shoulder. "You have to get up," she urged. "We have to get ready for church." "I don't want to go to church," he replied. "I want to stay in bed." Crossing her arms over her chest, his wife demanded, "Give me three good reasons why you should stay in bed and not go to church." "OK," he answered. "First, I don't get anything out of the service. Second, I don't like the people there. And third, no one there likes me. Now can you give me three good reasons why I should go to church?" His wife responded, "First, it will do you some good. Second, there are people who really do like you, and they'll miss you if you aren't there. And third, you're the minister!" Our former pastor, Jack Watson, invariably divided up his ser- mon into several major points on the basis of a number found in his selected Biblical text for the day. For instance, he would preach on the two angels who visited Lot in Sodom and divide his sermon into two parts. He would preach on the three men who approached the wounded man in the Parable of the Good Samaritan and divide his sermon into three parts. He would 20 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H u m © F s preach about a passage in the Book of Acts in which four anchors are dropped from a storm-tossed ship and divide his sermon into four parts. He would preach on the David and Goliath story, in which five smooth stones are mentioned, and divide the sermon into five parts. One Sunday morning, the congregation shook with terror when the preacher announced that he would now preach on the text from the twenty-first chapter of the Gospel of John—in which Peter throws out a net and catches 153 fish! Twelve-year-old Norton was bitterly disappointed at not being cast as Joseph in the church school Nativity pageant. He was given the minor role of the innkeeper instead. Throughout the weeks of rehearsal he brooded on how he could avenge him- self on his little brother, Wayne, who had been awarded the part of Joseph. On the day of the performance, Wayne (as Joseph) and his sister Kelly (as Mary) made their entrance and knocked on the door of the inn. Norton (the innkeeper) opened it a fraction and eyed them with suspicion. Joseph implored, "Can you give us board and lodging for the night?" He then stood back awaiting the expected rejec- tion. But Norton had not plotted all those weeks for nothing. He flung the door wide, smiled, and shouted, "Come in, come in! You shall have the best room in the hotel." There was a long pause. Then with great presence of mind, Wayne turned and said to Kelly, "Hold on. I'll take a look inside first." He peered past the innkeeper, shook his head firmly and said, "I'm not taking my wife into a filthy place like this. Come on, Mary, I'd rather sleep in a stable." The pageant was back on course. ^o^z^f during the hours before D-day, three chaplains— '' ^ ^ f Reverend Paul Peterson, Father Mike O'Connor, £?** and Rabbi Henry Birnbaum—sat together and solemnly discussed the possibility that one or more of them might be killed in the next few hours. CHURCH LIFE • 21 "It makes one feel the necessity of unburdening one's soul and making confession," said Father Mike. "I must own up to a terrible impulse to drink. Oh, I fight it, I do; but the tempta- tion haunts me constantly, and sometimes I give in to it." "Well," said Reverend Paul, "I don't have too much trouble with liquor, but I must own up to the terrible sexual urges I feel toward attractive women. I fight this temptation desperately, but every once in a while, I fail to resist." After that, there was a pause. Finally both turned to the Jewish chaplain and one said, "And you, Henry, are you troubled with a besetting sin, too? What is your persistent temptation?" Rabbi Birnbaum sighed and said, "I'm afraid I have a terrible, irresistible impulse to gossip." At a mental hospital in California one Sunday morning a group of patients was being shepherded to the Catholic and Protestant chapels. One patient did not enter either chapel but continued walking toward the main gate. When an atten- dant caught up with him and asked where he was going, the patient replied, "I was told I could go to the church of my choice. It's in New York." Which reminds me of the revivalist in Alaska who attracted a considerable crowd of visiting sailors because he condemned the town's prostitutes by name and address! Henry Ward Beecher, the famous New England minister, entered his pulpit one Sunday morning. Awaiting him was an unmarked envelope. Opening it, he found a single sheet of paper on which was written the single word, "FOOL." After chuckling to himself, he held the paper up to the congregation and said, "I have known many an instance of a man writing let- ters and forgetting to sign his name. But this is the only instance I've ever known of a man signing his name and for- getting to write his letter." 22 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©Fs Laughter reminds us how readily we misunderstand those who communicate with us. There was a nice lady, a minister's widow, who was a little old-fashioned. She was planning a week's vacation in California at a church campground near Yosemite National Park, but she wanted to make sure of the accommodations first. Uppermost in her mind were bathroom facilities, but she couldn't bring herself to write "toilet" in a letter. After considerable delibera- tion, she settled on "bathroom commode," but when she wrote that down, it still sounded too forward. So, after the first page of her letter, she referred to the bathroom commode as "BC." "Does the cabin where I will be staying have its own BC? If not, where is the BC located?" is what she actually wrote. The campground owner took the first page of the letter and the lady's check and gave it to his secretary. He put the remainder of the letter on the desk of the senior member of his staff, without noticing that the staffer would have no way of knowing what "BC" meant. Then the owner went off to town to run some errands. The staff member came in after lunch, found the letter, and was baffled by the euphemism. He showed the letter around to several counselors, but they couldn't decipher it either. The staff member's wife, who knew that the lady was the widow of a famous Baptist preacher, was sure that it must be a question about the local Baptist church. "Of course!" the first staffer exclaimed. "'BC stands for 'Baptist Church.'" The staffer was quite busy, so it took him a few days to answer the woman's letter. Finally, he sat down and wrote: Dear Madam, I regret very much the delay in answering your letter, but I now take the pleasure in informing you that the BC is locat- ed nine miles north of the campground and is capable of seating 250 people at one time. I admit it is quite a distance away if you are in the habit of going regularly, but no doubt you will be pleased to know that a great number of people take their lunches along and make a day of it. They usually arrive early and stay late. CHURCH LIFE • 23 The last time my wife and I went was six years ago, and it was so crowded we had to stand up the whole time we were there. It may interest you to know that right now there is a supper planned to raise money to buy more seats. They are going to hold it in the basement of the ' B C I would like to say that it pains me very much not to be able to go more regularly, but it is surely no lack of desire on my part. As we grow older, it seems to be more of an effort, par- ticularly in cold weather. If you decide to come down to our campground, perhaps I could go with you the first time, sit with you, and introduce you to all the folks. Remember, this is a friendly community. Sincerely, . . . Reverend Obediah Franklin wrote a sermon on "humility" then filed it away. He wanted to save it for a really big occasion when he could impress a lot of people. Ministers are notorious for taking themselves too seriously. Leonard I. Sweet, President of United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, gave a vivid illustration from his own career: It was my first stewardship campaign. I had been appointed by the bishop to the missionary church in a small-college community in New York's Genessee Valley. The first year had been a nervous one both for me (a young, not-dry-behind-the- ears pastor and wetback Ph.D.) and for the congregation, which was comprised of an odd and unconsummated coupling of rural folk and "academic types." But there was significant enough progress to warrant the belief that we could double the budget after my first year there. If only we had a slogan; some catchy motto or jingle around which to design our develop- ment campaign. . . . Or so I thought. 14 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum©F® The weekend before the "Stewardship Sunday" kickoff, I sought solitary confinement in Toronto, Canada. There I hit first on a slogan and then an idea: why not have T-shirts made up for those "every-member canvassers" who could then call on parishioners emblazoned with my newly-brainstormed stew- ardship theme? It seemed the perfect plan. During the "Community Concerns" time of the morning worship the next Sunday, the chair of the campaign, Doug Klapper, did an outstanding job of making the committee's case for our controversial financial leap forward. As soon as he finished, I bolted to the front, prevented him from returning to his seat, and presented him with a surprise gift that I announced confidently would give our campaign focus and force. The color of Doug's face when he unwrapped his surprise should have alerted me to what was to come. His embarrassed refusal to hold up the T-shirt for the congregation to see ("You do it," he giggled) was another missed warning signal. But it was not until the moment that I held up that T-shirt and announced that there were enough of these "surprise gifts" for every one of our canvassers to wear that I realized exactly what I had done. Our stewardship slogan would be, I proudly read: IUppedMYPledge Up YOURS At first, there was a trickle of giggles, then a torrent of laughter. I tried to preach, but I had lost it. Convulsions of laughter drowned out my sermon at unpredictable moments, ebbing and flowing like a moonshine tide. That moment of my greatest embarrassment and mistake, a moment from which that worship service never fully recov- ered, was the moment of my ministry's recovery in that community. For suddenly this upstart preacher and hotshot Ph.D. became human, and did something so outrageously stupid and foolish that it redeemed all his jarring strangeness. From that Sunday on, I became their pastor and was bonded to them for life. And for the next seven years, as I walked the streets of the village, I would find myself greeted with the query, "Are you the 'up-yours' preacher?" CHURCH LIFE • 25 Two fellows are talking religion. One says to the other, "Sometimes I'd like to ask God why he allows poverty, famine and injustice when he could do something about it." "What's stopping you from asking?" asks the second. The first replies, "I'm afraid God might ask me the same question." If a minister preaches over ten minutes, he's long-winded. If his sermon is short, he didn't prepare it. If his congregation's finances are in the black, he's too materialistic. If they're in the red, he's too other-worldly. If he mentions money, he's money-mad. If he doesn't men- tion money, he's a lousy businessman. If he visits his parishioners, he's nosy. If he doesn't, he's being snobbish. If he has fairs, bazaars, and pancake breakfasts, he's bleed- ing the people. If he doesn't, there isn't any life in the parish. If he takes time with his parishioners to help and advise, he's meddling. If he doesn't, he doesn't care. If he celebrates liturgy in a quiet voice, he's boring. If he puts feelings into it, he's being histrionic. If he starts the service on time, he's rushing the congrega- tion. If he starts late, he's holding up the people. If he tries to lead the people in music, he's showing off. If he doesn't, he doesn't care what the service is like. If he decorates the church, he's wasting money. If he doesn't, he's letting it run down. If he's young, he's not experienced. If he's old, he ought to retire. B u t . . . if he dies . . . no one can ever replace him. V ^ Willie Jensen, the sexton, was cleaning up the minis- ^tesjf^ ter's office late one Thursday afternoon. The minister l^fl^ had gone to visit a parishioner at the hospital and had left the working manuscript of his sermon on his desk. Willie took a peek. Along the left margin were instructions such as: 26 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©Fs "Pause here," "Wipe brow here," "Use angry fist gesture," and "Look upward." Near the end was a long paragraph of text, opposite which the sexton wrote in large capital letters: "ARGUMENT WEAK HERE. YELL WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT!" I was sitting in my office on the first Saturday of December. Outside in the courtyard of our church the men of the church were in the process of building the stage for a live nativity scene. Since my door was open, I heard two children discussing the process. One asked of the other, "What is this going to be?" Answered the other, "Oh, they're building a live fertility s c e n e . " —Walter Lauster The church choir director was frustrated with the sporadic attendance of all the choir members for rehearsals for the Christmas Concert. At the final rehearsal he announced: "I want to personally thank the pianist for being the only person in this entire church choir to attend each and every rehearsal during the past two months." At this, the pianist rose, bowed, and said, "It was the least I could do, considering I won't be able to be at the Christmas Concert tonight." A party of clergymen was attending a conference in Scotland. Several of them set off to explore the district. Presently they came to a river spanned by a temporary bridge. Not seeing the notice that read, "Unsafe," they began to cross. The bridge- keeper ran after them to protest. "It's all right," declared one pastor, not understanding the reason for the old man's haste. "We're Presbyterians from the conference." "If ye dinna get off that bridge," he replied, "you'll all be Baptists!" —On Top of the World News & CHURCH LIFE • 27 doing to church doesn't make anybody a Christian any more than taking a wheelbarrow into a garage makes it an automobile. —Billy Sunday PASTOR QUITS SPORTS TWELVE REASONS WHY A LOCAL CLERGYMAN STOPPED ATTENDING ATHLETIC CONTESTS 1. Every time I went, they asked me for money. 2. The people with whom I had to sit didn't seem very friendly. 3. The seats were too hard and not comfortable. 4. The coach never came to call on me. 5. The referee made a decision with which I could not agree. 6. I was sitting with some hypocrites—they came only to see what others were wearing. 7. Some games went into overtime, so I was late getting home. 8. The band played some numbers that I had never heard before. 9. The games are scheduled when I want to do other things. 10. My parents took me to too many games when I was grow- ing up. 11. Since I read a book on sports, I feel that I know more than the coaches, anyhow. 12.1 don't want to take my children, because I want them to choose for themselves what sport they like best. With apologies to those who use these same excuses for not coming to church. —Moody Monthly Pastor Susanne Phelps had preached a vigorous and thought- ful sermon, and several members of the congregation rushed up to congratulate her. One longtime member gushed, "Pastor, every sermon you preach is better than the next one!" The church is the only outfit I know that shoots its wounded. —Chuck Swindoll 28 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©E® f A Methodist church tried to get a certain man to attend, but he never did. "Why don't you come?" the minister asked, and the man finally admitted it was because he didn't have proper clothes. So a member of the congregation took him to a clothing store and got him a nice suit, shirt, tie and shoes. But on the following Sunday, he still did not show up. So the minister visited him again and asked why he didn't come. "When I got dressed up in my new suit," the man explained, "I looked so good I decided to go to the Episcopal church." The Lord created the world in six days. He rested on the seventh. On the eighth day, he started to answer complaints. A woman criticized D. L. Moody for his methods of evangelism in attempting to win people to the Lord. Moody replied, "I agree with you. I don't like the way I do it, either. Tell me, how do you do it?" The woman replied, "I don't do it." Moody retorted, "Then I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it." —Christian Communications Laboratory Lutherans believe you cannot get into heaven unless you bring a Covered dish. —Garrison Keillor I feel sorry for Moses. He spent forty years wandering the desert, eating nothing but bread off the ground and the occa- sional bird, and every day a million people would come up to him and ask, "Are we there yet?" —Robert G. Lee The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are generally the same people. —G. K. Chesterton CHURCH LIFE • 29 Sister Serafina was on a much desired mission assignment to the Apache Indians. She was so excited that she drove past the last gas station without noticing that her gas gauge was on "Empty." She ran out of gas about a mile down the road, and had to walk back to the station. The attendant told her that he would like to help her, but he had no container to hold the gas. "Can't you find anything at all?" she asked him. Sympathetic to her plight, he agreed to search through an old shed in the back for something that might suffice. He was doubtful, but the grateful nun told him that the bedpan he'd found would work just fine. She carried the gasoline back to her car, taking care not to drop an ounce. A truck driver pulled alongside the car as the nun was emp- tying the bedpan's contents into the tank. He rolled down his window and yelled, "I wish I had your faith, Sister!" Do you know what you get when you cross a Jehovah's Witness with an atheist? Someone who knocks on your door for no apparent reason. —Guy Owen You know it's going to be a boring service when the ushers ask for your espresso order as they hand you a bulletin. —Bill Jones Every week our preacher tells us to go out and "witness" to oth- ers. But nothing strikes more fear in my heart than having to share my faith with a complete stranger. It's gotten so bad I've enrolled in a Witness Relocation Program. —Robert G. Lee Presbyterians are a rather conservative bunch. We're like Methodists without the excitement. We never raise our hands in church. We can't. We're afraid if we raise them too high, God might call on us. In fact, we're so conservative, Christ could come back tomorrow and we'd form a committee to look into it. —Robert G. Lee 30 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUm(§)&> In the town where I live, the Baptists and the Presbyterians share a single church building. The Presbyterians have their Sunday worship service at 9:30 A.M. and the Baptists at 11:00 A.M. The two congregations put up a banner over our main street directing the faithful to their services. Each church included an appropriate motto. The Baptists urge: "Repent and be saved!" The Presbyterians inquire: "Is your pledge up to date?" A grandmother was told by her grandson that in Sunday school the teacher said Jesus was Jewish. The Presbyterian grandmother said, "Well, that may be, but I assure you, God is still a Presbyterian." Marlin Hopkins, the pastor of Holy Apostles Covenant Church, was proud of his new "loose-leaf Bible. He decided to use it as he began preaching a series from Genesis. The second week of his series he was on the story of the fall of man. As he was reading his text he read, "And Adam said to Eve . . . " Then he turned the page to complete the verse, but the rest of the text was missing. He was puzzled for a few seconds. Then, finally realizing what had happened, he looked up rather embarrassed and said, "It looks like a leaf is missing!" Jim Hansen, the pastor of St. Mark's Methodist Church, had just announced to the congregation that he would be leaving their church. There was a good deal of crying and lots of kind words. As the pastor was talking to one woman who had expressed her sadness at his leaving, he consoled her with these generous words: "Oh, don't feel bad. I'm sure our super- intendent will come up with a much better replacement." She turned and said, "Oh, that's what they said last time. In fact, that's what they say all the time. But it never happens!" CHURCH LIFE • 31 The Perfect Pastor has been found. He preaches exactly twenty minutes and then sits down. He condemns sin, but never steps on anybody's toes. He works from eight in the morning until ten at night, doing everything from preaching sermons to sweeping. He makes $400 per week, gives $200 a week to the church, buys lots of books, wears fine clothes, and has a nice family. He's always ready to contribute to every other good cause, too, and to help panhandlers who drop by the church on their way to somewhere. He is thirty-six years old, and has been preaching forty years. He is tall on the short side, heavyset in a thin sort of way, and handsome. He wears his hair parted in the middle, left side dark and straight, right side brown and wavy. He has a burning desire to work with the youth and spends all his time with the senior citizens. He smiles all the time while keeping a straight face, because he has a keen sense of humor that finds him seriously dedicated. He makes fifteen calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing non-members, and is always found in his study if he is needed. Unfortunately he burnt himself out and died at the age of thirty-seven. Jesus was walking along one day when he came upon a man crying, and he said, "My friend, what's wrong?" The man replied, "I'm blind; can you help me?" Jesus healed the man, and went on his way. Soon he came upon another man sitting and crying. "Good friend, what's wrong?" The man answered, "I'm lame and can't walk; can you please help me?" Jesus healed the man, and they both went down the road. As they continued, they came upon a third man crying. Jesus said, "Good friend, what's wrong?" He said, "I'm a minister." And Jesus sat down and wept with him. —Phil Hines 32 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H u m © F s Ad from a recent church music publication: Position Wanted: Organist/Choirmaster. Lifelong, mili- tantly loyal, dyed-in-the-wool traditional RC, seeks full time position in pre-Vatican II urban parish (will consider Tridentine) blessed with large church building designed by P.C. Keely, 19th-century American pipe organ of three or four manuals, and, most importantly, using or willing to implement the BACS hymnal (Hymns, Psalms, & Spiritual Canticles). All- male or professional mixed choir a must (no volunteers!) as is freedom from outside interference by liturgy committees, reli- gious educators, or other so-called vested interests. Prefer Massachusetts (except Fall River diocese). Will consider other areas in Northeast. Write to . . . When Jesus started his church, the pastor (Jesus) was execut- ed. The chairman of the board (Peter) was cursing, swearing, and denying his position. The treasurer (Judas) committed suicide after embezzling funds. The other board members (the disciples) ran away. The only ones left were a few from the Women's Fellowship. You see, your church is not all that bad! —Robert Sarpalius Son: "Dad, what's a religious traitor?" Father: "A person who leaves our church and joins another." Son: "And what is a person who leaves another church and joins ours?" Father: "A convert, son, a blessed convert." Paul Harvey reports: A young couple invited their parson for Sunday dinner. While they were in the kitchen preparing the meal, the minis- ter asked their son what they were having. "Goat," the little boy replied. "Goat?" replied the startled man of the cloth. "Are you sure about that?" CHURCH LIFE • 33 "Yep," said the youngster. "I heard Pa say to Ma, 'Might as well have the old goat for dinner today as any other day.'" And the Lord said unto Noah: "Where is the ark which I have commanded thee to build?" And Noah said unto the Lord: "Verily, I have had three car- penters off ill. The gopher-wood supplier hath let me down, yea, even though the gopher-wood hath been on order for nigh upon twelve months. What can I do, O Lord?" And God said unto Noah: "I want that ark finished even after seven days and seven nights." And Noah said: "It will be so." And it was not so. And the Lord said unto Noah: "What seemeth to be the trouble this time?" And Noah said unto the Lord: "Mine subcontractor hath gone bankrupt. The pitch which Thou commandest me to put on the outside and on the inside of the ark hath not arrived. The plumber hath gone on strike. Shem, my son who helpeth me on the ark side of the business, hath formed a pop group with his brothers Ham and Japheth. Lord, I am undone." And the Lord grew angry and said, "And what about the animals, the male and female of every sort that I ordered to come unto thee to keep their seed alive upon the face of the earth?" And Noah said: "They have been delivered unto the wrong address but should arriveth on Friday." And the Lord said: "How about the unicorns, and the fowls of the air by sevens?" And Noah wrung his hands and wept, saying: "Lord, uni- corns are a discontinued line; thou canst not get them for love nor money. And fowls of the air are sold only in half-dozens. Lord, Lord, Thou knowest how it is." And the Lord in His wisdom said, "Noah, my son, I know- est. Why else dost thou think I have caused a flood to descend upon the earth?" —-Journal of Eastern Region of the Royal Institute of British Architects JL 34 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum(§)&> In Minnesota three pastors got together for coffee one day and found all their churches had bat-infestation problems. "I got so mad," said Pastor Johnson, "I took a shotgun and fired at them. It made holes in the ceiling, but did nothing to the bats." "I tried trapping them alive," said Pastor Linquist. "Then I drove fifty miles before releasing them, but they returned." "I haven't had any more problems," said Pastor Stephens. "What did you do?" asked the others amazed. "I simply baptized and confirmed them," he replied. "I haven't seen them since." Ruth Troutman, the Sunday school teacher, was very keen on religious ceremonies and had spent an entire session talking to the class about the correct way to pray. "Now," she said finally, "suppose we want to pray to God for forgiveness. What must we do first of all?" "Sin?" suggested one little boy. A Methodist minister, a Catholic priest, and a Jewish rabbi were talking. The Methodist bragged, "One of my ancestors wrote over a hundred hymns." Not to be outdone, the priest responded, "One of my ancestors translated the Bible into English." "That's nothing," said the rabbi. "One of my ancestors wrote the Ten Commandments." Mike and Lefty grew up together in Chicago. They both became lawyers. Then, much to the amazement of Mike, Lefty became a Sunday school teacher. "I bet you don't even know the Lord's Prayer," said Mike. "Everybody knows that," replied Lefty. "It goes, 'Now I lay me down to sleep. . . .'" "You win," said Mike. "I didn't know you knew so much about the Bible." CHURCH LIFE • 35 When my friend Ralph was rector of a small Episcopal chapel in West Virginia, he presided at so many shotgun weddings he renamed his church Winchester Cathedral. I had been invited to speak as a visiting minister at Christ Episcopal Church in Mount Pocono. "Do you wish to wear a surplice?" asked the rector. "Surplice!" I cried. "I'm a Congregationalist. What do I know about surplices? All I know about is deficits!" The Bible is a very ancient book, yet it is always relevant to our lives. People in it have the same problems we do. Think of Noah . . . it took him forty days to find a place to park. A favorite story of Lyndon Johnson's: A preacher was becoming terribly distracted by a man who came to church every Sunday and slept through the entire ser- mon. One Sunday the preacher decided to do something about it. As he began to preach, the man, true to form, fell fast asleep. Whereupon the preacher said quietly, "Everyone who wants to go to heaven, stand up." The entire congregation immediately stood up, except the sleeping man. When they sat down, the preacher shouted at the top of his voice, "Everyone who wants to go to hell, stand up!" This startled the dozing man. Still half asleep, he jumped up, looked around to see what was going on, then said to the preacher, "I don't know what we're voting on but it looks like you and I are the only ones in favor of it." The following story is attributed to Mark Twain: "I once heard a preacher who was powerful good. I decided to give him every cent I had with me. But he kept at it too long. Ten minutes later I decided to keep the bills and give him my loose change. Another ten minutes and I was darned if I'd give 36 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HU m@Fs him anything at all. When he finally stopped and the plate came around, I was so exhausted, I stole two dollars from the plate in sheer spite." At the church I attend there is a young woman whose husband is an usher. During last Sunday's morning service, she became terribly worried that she might have left a roast cooking in the oven. She wrote a note to her husband and passed it to him by way of another usher. The latter, thinking it was a note for the pastor, handed it to the minister with the morning's offering. The minister was just about to begin his sermon. He shuf- fled the note in with his sermon manuscript and paid no atten- tion to it until he was well into his oration. Imagine his surprise when halfway through the sermon his eyes fell on the following words: "Please go home and turn off the gas." A stranger came to church, and the minister was pleased to see him come sit in one of the empty seats at the front. Afterwards he greeted the newcomer and said, "I'm glad you felt free to sit well forward, even though you are a visitor." "Well," said the person, "I'm a bus driver—and I wanted to see if I could learn how you get everyone to move to the rear all the time." —King Duncan An enthusiastic minister was exhorting his congregation to become more active in church affairs, to get the church on its feet. "Brothers and sisters," he proclaimed. "What this church needs is the energy to get up and walk." One of his deacons said, "Let her walk, brother, let her walk!" The preacher raised his voice a little and added, "But we cannot be satisfied with walking, we've got to pick up speed and run." The same deacon chimed in, "Let her run, my brother, let her run!" CHURCH LIFE • 37 The preacher was really getting into his message now. "But running's not enough, either. One of these days this church has got to fly!" That same deacon echoed, "Let her fly, brother, let her fly!" The preacher paused for a moment and said solemnly, "But if this church is going to fly, we are all going to have to work harder and give more money!" The deacon said softly, "Let her walk, brother, let her walk." —King Duncan We were all surprised one Sunday morning to find the presi- dent of our congregation at the pulpit. He explained that the pastor had the flu and had called him on Saturday to ask him to conduct the worship service. "After agreeing to do it," the man said, "I began to panic at the thought of preparing a talk on such short notice. The panic subsided when I thought of those comforting words, 'Ask and ye shall receive.' I remembered that all I had to do is ask for anything I wanted, so I did." He paused a moment before adding, "But, as you can see, I didn't catch the flu, and I still had to come here this morning." —Carolyn A. Edwards (Metairie, LA) in Reader's Digest We expect so little out of church nowadays. I once asked Angel Fernando, pastor of a church in northern California, "Do your people come to church expecting something?" He replied, "Yes, they expect to be out by twelve." Flanagan knelt in the confessional. "Yes, my son?" said the priest. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," Flanagan whispered. "Yesterday I killed two lawyers and a politician. . . . " "I'm not interested in your civic activities," interrupted the priest. 'Just tell me your sins!" 38 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H y m © ^ Father Victor Owens, the parish priest, was being honored at a dinner on the twenty-fifth anniversary of his pastorate. A lead- ing local politician, who was a lawyer and a member of the priest's congregation, was to give the keynote speech at the dinner, but found himself delayed in court. The toastmaster decided to proceed without him. After all the laudations had been heaped upon the venera- ble priest, he rose to acknowledge the tributes given him. "The seal of the confessional," he said, "can never be bro- ken, and so I can only hint gently of my impressions when I first came here twenty-five years ago. Oh, I thought I had been assigned a terrible place. The very first chap who entered my confessional told me how he had stolen a television set, and when stopped by a policeman, had almost murdered the offi- cer. Further, he told me he had embezzled money from his place of business and had an adulterous affair with his part- ner's wife. I was appalled. If that was only the first one, I thought, what were the others like? But as the days went on I knew that my people were not all like that and I had, indeed, a fine parish full of understanding and loving people." Just as Father Owens finished his thanks, the politician arrived full of apologies and rushed to the dais to make the gift presentation speech. "I'll never forget the first day our pastor arrived in this parish," said the politician. "In fact, I had the honor of being the first one to go to him in confession." Twenty-three-year-old Kevin Pearson asked his minister, "Can I live a good Christian life on one hundred dollars a week?" "Sure," the minister replied. "In fact, that's all you can do!" My friend, Pastor Crawford Flanders, tells me that during the first five years of his ministry, he had a sign on his desk read- ing, "Win the world for Christ." The next five years the sign read, "Win five for Christ." After ten years, he changed the sign to read, "Don't lose too many." CHURCH LIFE • 39 The details of insurance benefits and premiums are almost never completely understandable. Not long ago, the clergy of the Spokane, Washington, Roman Catholic diocese got into a hassle with Blue Cross. The diocese held a group medical pol- icy on its sixty-six priests. Blue Cross had added thirty cents a month to the premium for each policy—for maternity benefits. —Joseph L. Felix, It's Easier for a Rich Man to Enter Heaven t y The pastor of the church had bemoaned the fact that no one seemed to feel involved in worship service. The people could not be motivated to go into the world properly, because they held back so much in worship. He found an architect who promised to build a badly needed wor- ship center if the church would agree to keep the plans secret until its unveiling on the day it was first to be used. The big day finally arrived. The building looked quite nor- mal from the outside. The big difference was on the inside. A great crowd gathered early that first Sunday. Each person was seated in a pew near the door, one pew at a time. When the pew was filled, it was rolled automatically to the front! This process continued until the entire sanctuary was filled. The minister was so carried away by having his audience at the front, he preached on and on. In fact, he didn't even really get warmed up until twelve o'clock! Suddenly another innovative architectural feature made itself known. In the middle of one of his most fervent appeals, at two minutes past twelve, a trap door opened, and the preacher dropped into the basement. —Don Emmitte A woman joined a convent before she learned that as a nun, she could talk only once a year. The first year she said to the Mother Superior, "My room is cold." "We'll get you a blanket," was the response. The second year she said, "My bed is hard." "We'll get you a mattress," was the response. The third year she said, "My room is too dark." 40 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum©&> "We'll get you a brighter lamp." was the response. The fourth year she had done some thinking and said, "I quit. "Well," came the response, "we were thinking about letting you go, anyway. You're always complaining." —A Clear Sign A church in California's San Fernando Valley stopped buying from its regular office supplier. Why? When they ordered small pencils to be used in the pews for visitors to register with, the dealer sent golf pencils—each stamped with the words PLAY GOLF NEXT SUNDAY Father Truman Johns, the Episcopal priest, asked for a dis- count at the hardware store, saying: "I'm a poor preacher." "I know," said the storekeeper. "I heard you last Sunday." When I resigned as pastor of the Little Brown Church, one woman came up to me and said, "I'm sorry you are leaving. I never knew what sin was, until you came here!" John O'Brien tried to explain why he left the priesthood. "Were you defrocked?" he was asked. "No," he replied, 'just unsuited." Mrs. Wanda Watson had asked me to offer the blessing at the women's luncheon being held at her home. But I was delayed by an unforeseen parish emergency. (A snake had appeared in the midst of the pre-school playground.) Mrs. Watson waited as long as she could for me to appear. Finally, she asked her hus- band Henry to fill in. Henry hated to speak in public, let alone pray out loud. He was visibly shaken but stood and announced reverently: "As there is no clergyman present, let us thank God." CHURCH LIFE • 41 During his sermon one Sunday morning, Reverend Sam Phillips said, "In each blade of grass there is a sermon." The following Tuesday one of his flock saw him pushing a lawn mower about the grass in front of the parsonage and paused to say: "Well, Parson, I'm glad to see you engaged in cutting your sermons short." To his horror, the pastor discovered during the service that he had forgotten his sermon notes, so he said to the congrega- tion, by way of apology, "This morning I shall have to depend upon the Lord for what I might say, but next Sunday I will come better prepared." r^^>^^^ Rt. Reverend Charles Francis Hall, Episcopal ^ ^ ^ ^ 3 ^ Bishop of New Hampshire, while attending the ^ 5 ^ 1968 Lambeth Conference in London, was to attend a special service at Westminster Abbey. His wife, out shopping with another bishop's wife, realized it was almost time for the service at the Abbey, jumped into a taxi, directing the driver, "Take us to the cathedral." Instead of taking them to the Episcopal cathedral, he deposited them at the Roman Catholic cathedral. Not realizing where they were, the woman marched up to an usher, saying, "We're bishops' wives. Where do we sit?" No one recalls the response of the usher, but the story made the front page of London newspapers the next day. At Mt. Ebal Baptist Church, Melanie Nelson was in charge of promoting the denominational magazine among the members of the congregation. At the Sunday morning service, she made an appeal to the congregation. "Please, brothers and sisters, if all of us start our subscriptions at the same time, and mail them in before the end of the month, then we'll be able to expire together." 42 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum©&> Helen asked Madge, who decorated the altar, what she did with the flowers after the service. Madge replied innocently, "Oh, we take them to the people who are sick after the sermon." Jf%j, At our congregation's Annual Meeting dinner, g ^ my wife and father were seated at the same table ^ ^ ^ as the Conference Minister. Near the end of the meeting, the Conference Minister stood to offer some closing remarks, which became increasingly scattered and disorga- nized. As he rambled on, he lost his train of thought for the third time. "Now where was I?" he asked. To the delight of all in attendance, my wife spoke up strongly, saying, "In conclusion!" A Milwaukee minister, who declared that there are 947 sins, was besieged for copies of the list. As Father Theodore O'Brien walked down the street one day, he met the Reverend Paul Whittelsey, who was playing "sidewalk superintendent" at the building of his new Congregational church. The priest inquired politely how the church was coming along and how well the contributions were coming in. "Everything is fine, Father," the minister assured him. Then he added, "Perhaps you'd like to make a contribu- tion yourself." "I'd certainly like to," answered the priest, "but my bishop would never allow me to contribute to a Protestant church." The next morning, however, when opening his mail, Mr. Whittelsey found a check for fifty dollars with this note from Father O'Brien: "Although my bishop would never consent to a contribution for the erection of a Protestant church, there must be some expense involved in the tearing down of the old church. I'm sure he would never object to my contributing generously to that." CHURCH LIFE • 43 Three men were discussing what they would be, if not what they already were, denominationally. The Catholic said, "I'd be an Episcopalian." The Methodist said, "I'd be a Baptist." The Lutheran said, "I'd be ashamed of myself." Clara Winslow was attending a meeting of Church Women United. The secretary asked Clara's church affiliation. "I'm a Lutheran," she replied, "but my husband is nondimensional." When the senior minister knelt at the altar, repeating, "I am nothing, nothing," his assistant was overcome by this show of humility and joined him. The janitor saw them, and moved by it all, did the same. Whereupon the assistant whispered to the minister, "Now look who thinks he's nothing." Woman complaining to organist: "Your preludes are so loud I can't hear what my friends are saying." Caitlin Reed noticed that his pastor, Reverend Avery Melton, an overwrought Disciples of Christ minister, went daily to the nearby railway tracks to watch an express train streak by. After observing this several times, Caitlin asked, "Pastor Melton, why do you come here every day and watch the Conrail flyer go by?" "Because," retorted the pastor, "I like to see something I don't have to push." Asked to pray, Deacon Weldon said, "Lord, give me patience. And give it to me immediately." His sermons are sound advice—ninety-nine percent sound, and one percent advice. 44 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©B© Verna Phillips said to her pastor, "Your sermons are so good, they ought to be published." The pastor, trying to be modest, said, "Posthumously, you mean?" Nodding enthusiastically, Mrs. Phillips gushed, "Yes, and the sooner the better." Wally Burns, trying to find a church for the first time, arrived nearly half an hour late. "Is the sermon over yet?" he asked. The usher at the door replied, "Yes, but the preacher doesn't know it." Neighbor: "Does your Sunday morning service usually start on time?" Deacon: "Yes, our service starts at eleven o'clock sharp and ends at twelve o'clock dull." He doesn't put enough fire into his sermons. It would be bet- ter if he put his sermons into the fire. The preacher who doesn't strike oil in fifteen minutes should stop boring. Minister (to his wife): "Well, Mrs. Lindy is moving away next week. I'll be sorry to see her go." Wife: "You'll be sorry to see her go? Why, she's been the worst member of your congregation!" Minister: "True—but she's given me the material for a lot of great sermons! He gives a moving sermon. Long before he's finished, his con- gregation wants to move out of the sanctuary. CHURCH LIFE • 45 One scientist took sixteen years to discover helium. Another took thirty years to find radium. But many preachers take only ten minutes to produce tedium. Bernard Petrie, a young minister, frequently boasted in public that all the time he needed to prepare his Sunday morning ser- mon was the few minutes it took him to walk to the church from the parsonage next door. Soon after, the elders bought him a new parsonage five miles away. Oliver Mendell, Ph.D., the noted scientist, made a careful study of people who fell asleep in church. His conclusion was that if all the sleeping congregants were laid end to end, they would be a lot more comfortable. f ^ j \| During a game at the Sunday School's annual picnic, JJAEK the superintendent was struck on the head by a base- <\T2? ball. He was taken to the local hospital for X-rays. Sunday morning the assistant superintendent announced, "The superintendent is resting comfortably. The X-rays of his head showed nothing." Prison Chaplain Larry Swenson said to a soon-to-be ex-convict, "As you make your way in the world, Son, remember the ser- mons you heard while you were here." Replied the about-to-be-released prisoner: "Chaplain, no one who's heard you preach would ever want to come back here." "Mummy," said little Lance, "why does the minister get a whole month's vacation in the summer?" "Well, son," answered his mother, "if he's a good minister, he needs it. If he isn't, the congregation needs it!" 46 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m@F9 I know that all of you were saddened to learn this week of the death of one of our church's most valuable members— Someone Else. Someone's passing created a vacancy that will be difficult to fill. Else has been with us for many years, and for every one of those years, Someone did far more than the normal person's share of the work. Whenever leadership was mentioned, this wonderful person was looked to for inspira- tion as well as results. Whenever there was a job to do, a class to teach, or a meet- ing to attend, one name was on everyone's lips, "Let Someone Else do it." It was common knowledge that Someone Else was among the largest givers in the church. Whenever there was a financial need, everyone just assumed that Someone Else would make up the difference. Someone Else was a wonderful person, sometimes appearing super-human, but a person can only do so much. Were the truth known, everyone expected too much of Someone Else. Now Someone Else is gone. We wonder what we are going to do. Someone Else left a wonderful example to follow, but who is going to follow it? Who is going to do the things Someone Else did? Remember, we can't depend on Someone Else any longer. —King Duncan Pastor Tony Jenkins went to see his doctor for advice about his wife's snoring. The doctor asked, "Does her snoring really disturb you?" The pastor replied, "Does it disturb me? Why, it disturbs the entire congregation!" Noted pastor Henry Ward Beecher said, "If anyone falls asleep in church, I have given the ushers permission to wake up the preacher!" I asked a group of high school students to write down their favorite hymn. Jennifer, a sixteen-year-old, wrote, "Charlie Sheen." CHURCH LIFE • 47 Frieda, Henrietta, and Gertrude were Baptist sisters who lived in separate states but always managed to get together for Christmas. One year, they were discussing their respective churches. Frieda lamented, "Our congregation is sometimes down to thirty or forty on a Sunday." Henrietta sighed, "That's nothing. Sometimes our congre- gation is down to six or seven." Gertrude, a maiden woman in her seventies, topped them all: "Why, it's so bad in our church on Sundays that when the minister says 'dearly beloved,' it makes me blush." A mission church in an Alaskan town was losing its minister. A pastor-seeking committee was formed, all the proper papers were filled out and many phone calls made to the Board of National Missions in New York City. Months went by without any sign of the church getting a new minister. Finally, in frus- tration, the committee's chairwoman dashed off one more note to the Board. It read, "Forget the minister. We've found sinning is more fun." The new minister arrived in two weeks. When I moved to northern California, I was invited to attend the Rotary Club as a guest. I wanted to become a member but was told that the club already had its quota of ministers. Later they discovered that they had no hog caller in the club and invited me to join in that category. After some hesitancy I accepted, saying: "When I came here I expected to be the Shepherd of the Flock, but you have lived here longer than I have. I suppose you know the people of this community better than I do." Father Carl Roth, an Episcopal rector, faxed his bishop asking if it was all right for him to conduct the funeral of a Baptist. The bishop faxed back, "Bury all the Baptists possible." 48 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©Es John Killinger writes: My wife, bless her, knows how to do it. We had been in our new pastorate ten months when she found out about a dear lady, well meaning, who was bad-mouthing the pastor because I had not yet called on her mother. (Actually I had, and the poor lady in her senility could never remember it.) "Tell her to phone me," said my wife. "There are two things I would like to say to her. First, John is not God; and second, stuff it." I have not heard another word of criticism in the parish. When a church seeks a pastor, they want the strength of an eagle, the grace of a swan, the gentleness of a dove, the friend- liness of a sparrow, the eye of a hawk, and the night hours of an owl. And when they catch this rare bird, they expect him to live on birdseed! When I was pastor of the Little Brown Church, a visitor asked me, "How many members do you have?" I replied, "A hundred." "How many active?" "All of them are active—fifty for me; fifty against me." My friend Gene, who is a traveling revivalist, reports, "Last year in a revival meeting in Iowa they fed me chicken three times a day for two weeks, then called on me to lay the cornerstone for their new Christian Education building. Believe me, I was ready!" In the neighborhood where I grew up in Chicago, there was a Catholic sister who taught at Our Lady of Angels Parochial School. She gave so many multiple-choice tests that she became known as Nun of the Above! CHURCH LIFE • 49 Todd Rundgren, a Pentecostal pastor who is very popular with his congregation, explains his success as the result of a silent prayer that he offers each time he takes to the pulpit: "Lord, fill my mouth with worthwhile stuff, And nudge me when I've said enough." Rabbi Mordecai Goodman sat in the synagogue all alone, tears streaming down his cheeks. He had just learned that his only son had deserted the ways of his ancestors and had become a Protestant. The rabbi was sobbing uncontrollably when suddenly he heard the voice of God: "What is troubling you?" "I'm so ashamed," cried the Rabbi. "My only son gave up being a Jew and became a Christian!" "Yours, too?" replied the Lord. A revival meeting was being held in a tent on the outskirts of town, and along the main road was a billboard proclaiming: "If you're weary of sin and want to be saved, turn here, go 100 yards and come into the revival tent." Below the sign someone had hung another smaller one, "If not weary, call 555-3550." Agatha Longworth, age seventy-eight and rather deaf, had a tendency to shout when she went to confession. When the priest, Father Leo Dankin, asked her to speak more quietly, since everyone in the church could hear, she shouted, "What did you say?" He carefully told her that she should write down what she had to say in advance. At her next confession, she knelt and handed a piece of paper to the priest. He looked at it and said, "What is this? It looks like a grocery list." "Oh dear," said Mrs. Longworth. "I must have left my sins at the Safeway." 50 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H y m © ^ After church one Sunday at St. Philip's, two members were cri- tiquing Father Thompson's sermon. The first one said, "I thought the sermon was divine. It reminded me of the peace of God. It passed all understanding." The second one observed, "It reminded me of the mercy of God. I thought it would endure forever." Shirley Sanders came to First Presbyterian Church every Sunday to look for an eligible bachelor. One Sunday her min- ister, Pastor Larson, asked her, "Why is it that when the rest of the congregation kneels to pray, you just sit there twiddling your thumbs?" "Oh that," she chuckled. "I figure by this time God knows what I want, and it seems a little silly to keep going over the same old ground." Pastor Jenkins was well loved by his small town congregation, but his salary was small. When a prosperous congregation in a large city offered to double his salary, the locals could not pos- sibly match the generous financial offer. "I suppose," a member of the flock worried to the pastor's son, "your father will accept the call to that big city?" "I really don't know," replied the boy. "Dad's on his knees in the study at this very moment praying for guidance." "And your ma?" "She's upstairs packing." As two priests traveled along a country road, the first com- plained about the other's habit of constantly interrupting him- self. "Tell you what I'll do," said the first priest. "I'll wager you my horse that you won't be able to recite the 'Our Father' through to the end without stopping." The other agreed to the bet and started the prayer. Halfway through, he looked up and asked, "Do I get the saddle, too?" —Bishop Fulton J. Sheen CHURCH LIFE • 51 When I saw Lucille Lindy, a congregant of whom I was not par- ticularly fond, coming up my garden path, I scampered upstairs and hid in my study, leaving my wife to handle the sit- uation alone. A full hour later, I called down to her, "Has that horrible bore gone yet?" "Yes, dear," answered my wife, cool as a cucumber. "She went long ago. Mrs. Lindy is here now." I had just completed the baptism of Sandra Anne, the infant daughter of James and Linda Winters. Everything went smoothly. I turned to Linda and said: "I have never seen a child that was so well behaved at a christening. She never as much as whimpered." Linda replied, "Maybe that's because my husband and I have been practicing on her with a watering can for a week." Betty Patrick, a member of my congregation, said to me last Sunday, "You sure did preach a powerful sermon today, Pastor. You must live a wonderful life!" My response: "Betty, I can preach more gospel in fifteen minutes than I can live in fifteen years." There was a very strict order of monks, and they had a rule that said speaking is permissible only one day a year, one monk at a time. One year, a monk stood up and said quietly, "I don't like the mashed potatoes here at all. They're too lumpy." And he sat down. A year later it was another monk's turn. He stood and said, "I rather like the mashed potatoes, I find them very tasty." The third year came along and it was another monk's turn. He said, "I want to transfer to another monastery. I can't stand this constant bickering." 52 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF H u m © F s Following the Vatican's declaration that women cannot become priests because they do not resemble Christ, sources report that Colonel Sanders has declared that he will not employ anyone who doesn't resemble a chicken. —Jane Curtin Mark Twain sat through a carefully crafted, dramatically deliv- ered sermon one Sunday morning. Even though he admired the effort, there was something about this minister that had always bothered him. The preacher seemed entirely too proud of his talents. Twain decided to take him down a few pegs. After the service, Twain walked over to the minister and drawled, "Well, yes, it was a rip snorter, Reverend Wallace, but you know, I have a book at home that has every word of it." The preacher took the bait at once. "Quite impossible. I would certainly like to see that book, if it exists." "So you shall. I will mail it to you first thing in the morning." Eventually, a bulky package arrived from Twain with an enormous postage-due bill attached. The preacher paid the charges and ripped open the wrappings. Inside was an unabridged dictionary. Mrs. Reed, who had been a member of the Little Brown Church for more than fifty years, loved to hear a fiery sermon. She would rock back and forth in the front pew in time to the minister's cadences, take a dip of snuff, and cry, "A-a-a-amen," at every ministerial denunciation. When the minister spoke harshly of sex, drinking, smok- ing, drug-taking, movie-going, and dancing, she approved heartily, taking snuff at each admonition and shouting her enthusiastic "A-a-a-amen." One Sunday the minister began, "And now let me talk about another vicious habit that, fortunately, is going increas- ingly out of fashion. I refer to the deplorable practice of snuff- dipping—" Whereupon Mrs. Reed sat bolt upright and muttered under her breath, "Wouldn't you know? He's stopped preach- ing and begun meddling." CHURCH LIFE • 53 I once heard Medwick McGee, an old-fashioned, hell-and- damnation evangelist, berating his audience for their terrible misdeeds. "Remember what it says in the Bible," he thundered. 'Jesus tells us in Matthew 22:13 that for those who do evil, there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." "I guess I have nothing to worry about," replied a heckler, pointing to his toothless gums. "Don't you worry, " the evangelist shot back. "In your case, teeth will be provided!" In a rural community in Kansas, there was a year-long drought. All the crops were dying. In desperation, Larry Gates, the pastor of the Methodist church, the only church in town, announced that the whole community would assemble at the edge of one of the fields and pray for rain. A large crowd gathered, and Pastor Gates climbed on a tractor and surveyed the flock. He shouted, "Brothers and sisters! We have come here to pray for rain!" "Amen!" responded the crowd. "Well," said the minister, "do you have sufficient faith?" "Amen! Amen!" shouted the crowd. "All right, all right," said the minister, "but I have one ques- tion to ask you!" The crowd stood silent, puzzled, expectant. "Brothers and sisters!" shouted the minister, "Where are your umbrellas?" Vicar: "I didn't see you in church last Sunday, Nigel. I hear you were out playing football, instead." Nigel: "That's not true, Vicar. And I've got the fish to prove it!" There are a number of holy orders in the Catholic Church, among them being the Benedictines, the Dominicans, and the Jesuits—also know as the Society of Jesus, or "S.J." Recently there was a dispute (quite possibly foolish) between some Benedictines and Dominicans as to which order was loved the 54 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hu m©Fs most by God. After an examination of history, personal experi- ence, and resort to prayer, no agreement could be reached. So the monks decided to send an angel messenger up to God Himself to ask the question. After a few days the angel returned bearing a message: "I bless both the Benedictines and the Dominicans and envelop you all in my love." The message was signed, "God, S.J." Then Jesus took his Disciples up the mountain and, gathering them round him, he taught them, saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they who mourn. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are they who thirst for justice. Blessed are you when persecuted. Blessed are you when you suffer. Be glad and rejoice, for your reward is great in Heaven. Try to remember what I'm telling you! Then Simon Peter said, "Will this count on our final grade?" And Andrew said, "Will there be a test on it?" And James said, "By what date do we have to know it?" And Philip said, "How many words?" And Bartholomew said, "Will I have to stand up in front of the others?" And John said, "The other disciples didn't have to learn this. Why do we have to learn it?" And Matthew said, "What grade do we get if we learn it? Is this a regular assignment or extra credit?" And Judas said, "What is it worth? Will it help us to get a better job in the real world?" And the other disciples questioned him likewise. Then one of the Pharisees who was present asked to see Jesus' lesson plan and inquired of Jesus, "Good Master, what are your terminal objectives in the cognitive domain?" And Jesus wept. CHURCH LIFE • 55 Margaret Denton, an elderly church member, was discussing with me an uncle of hers who, after a lifetime of rather wild liv- ing, had repented of his sins and joined a Southern Baptist church. "Will my converted uncle's sins be forgiven, Pastor?" she asked. "Oh, certainly, yes!" I replied. "Remember, the greater the sins, the greater the saint." Margaret thought silently for a time. Then she said, "I wish I'd known this fifty years ago." A twenty-seven-year-old minister had been assigned to his first post only a short time when he noticed that one of his parish- ioners, an old lady, had missed several Sundays in a row. He decided to see her and find out the reason. "Young man," she answered him firmly, "you aren't old enough to have sinned enough to have repented enough to be able to preach about it!" —Funny Funny World Over at Holy Ghost Gospel Tabernacle, Pastor Martin Catrell was rather disappointed that things were not "happening" in his church. He asked one of the leading deacons, "What is wrong with our church? Is it ignorance or apathy?" The deacon responded, "I don't know, and I don't care." When my late father-in-law ran out of sermon ideas, instead of a sermon, he would have the congregation call out favorite hymn selections. Everyone would sing a verse or two of each. He called such an event a "singspiration." These events got quite popular, and people made a point of checking the Longview, Texas newspaper to see when they were going to happen. One week, the paper announced that the Longview Cumberland Presbyterian Church would have a "sinspiration" on Sunday evening. Yes, the crowd was much larger than usual. —William (Bill) Corbin 56 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum(§)K@ From the bulletin of the Church of the Incarnation in Sarasota, Florida: "The Magic of Lassie, a film for the whole family, will be shown Sunday at 5 p.m. in the church hall. Free puppies given to all children not accompanied by parents." When it comes to church leadership, some members rise to the occasion, while others merely hit the ceiling. A circus strong man earned his living by displaying astonishing feats of physical strength. His show would normally conclude with a simple but impressive demonstration of his ability to squeeze an orange dry! After completing his act, he would then challenge his audience to produce anyone who could extract even one drop of juice from the crushed fruit. On one of these occasions, a little man volunteered. He was so diminutive that his very appearance raised a laugh from the spectators. Undaunted, however, the man stepped onto the stage and took from the athlete what appeared to be nothing more than a shriveled-up piece of rind. Then bracing himself, he firmly compressed his right hand. Every eye was on him, and the atmosphere was electric! A moment or two elapsed, and then, to everyone's amazement—and not least the circus strong man—a drop of orange juice formed and dripped to the floor. As the cheers subsided, the strong man invited the little guy to tell the crowd how he had managed to develop such fistic powers. "Nothing to it," replied the little fellow. With a grin, he added, "I happen to be the treasurer of the local Baptist church!" As she left church, Peggy Watson shook hands with the minis- ter and said, "Thank you for your sermon. It was like water to a drowning man." CHURCH LIFE • 57 PREACHER-IN-A-BOX Are you tired of waking up at six in the morning just to drag your family out to hear another of those last-minute, package- mix Church sermons? Are you tired of falling asleep as your minister drones on and on and on about the same thing he rattled on about the month before? Then, friend, you need to meet the latest invention from Theology Technology: Preacher-in-a-Box. Preacher-in-a-Box is a twenty-one pound lunch-box-size computer system that, when used, will lift the level of spiritual- ity in any church. With the touch of a few buttons anyone can access the three thousand pre-programmed sermons, any of the four hundred song accompaniments, and the fifteen hun- dred exciting children's stories. With the new voice and sound synthesis systems, Preacher-in-a-Box will perform its tasks with near-perfect accuracy, with much variety, and the expertise of the world's greatest preachers. Preacher-in-a-Box even does weddings and funerals, and with our new office counseling chip, it will be able to operate on an interactive level with your congregation. In addition, Preacher-in-a-Box mounts easily on any standard-size pulpit when called to speak, and if you act now, we will give you, free of charge, the new extension arm that will enable Preacher-in- a-Box to shake hands with those attending your services. Stop by your local Theology Technology dealer, and see what this amazing new machine can do for you and your church. Oh yeah, in case you were wondering about Preacher-in-a-Box's public relations skills, this entire ad was written and produced by the machine without any outside help. —Ray McAllister From a church bulletin: "All new sermons every Sunday. No reruns." You have to get to church pretty early to get a seat in the back row. —Funny Funny World 58 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum©B@ The minister of a rural church in the Ozarks suggested to his parishioners that they purchase a chandelier. It was put to a vote and all the members voted it down. "Why do you oppose the purchase of a chandelier?" asked the preacher. "Well," drawled one of his flock, "first we can't spell it, so how can we order it? Second, even if we did get it, no one can play it, and third, what we really need is more light." —Funny Funny World Connie: Did you see the new hat Mrs. Smith wore to church this morning? Lowell: No! Connie: A lot of good it does you to go to church! Seymour met a priest on the street. He asked, "How come you wear your collar backwards? The priest answered, "Because I am a father!" Rosenberg said, "I have four sons myself!" The priest smiled and said, "You don't understand. You see, I have thousands of children!" "Well, then," Rosenberg said, "you should wear your trousers backward!" During a visit to the big island of Hawaii, my wife and I attended Sunday services at a small Congregational church known for its informality. One Sunday a deacon asked me if I would usher at the morning service. I protested that I was much too casually dressed. "At home," I explained, "the deacons always look for a man wearing a tie when they needed an usher. "Over here," the deacon laughingly replied, "we look for someone wearing shoes." CHURCH LIFE • 59 I was attending a conference out-of-town with two deacons from my congregation. The first evening's meeting did not fin- ish until rather late, so we decided to have something to eat before going to bed. Unfortunately the only place still open was a seedy bar-and-grill with a questionable reputation. After being served, one of the deacons asked me to say grace. "I'd rather not," I replied. "I don't want Him to know I'm here." ri^kv At the Little Brown Church, our music director ^ ^ ^ ^ \| ^ referred to the choir as "the prison ensemble." 4£F When I asked her why, she explained, "Because they're always behind a few bars and trying to find the key." Father Vazken Movsesian, a Bay Area Catholic priest, recalls: Uplifted by the Papal Mass at San Francisco's Candlestick Park [a few years back], I gave my congregation a detailed account of how I was escorted to the Forty-Niners' locker room, where I met with representatives of other Christian churches. I expressed the feeling of warmth that was radiating from the seventy thousand faithful that day. Finally, I summa- rized the inspirational message of Pope John Paul II. At the conclusion of my remarks, I asked for questions. A young voice piped up eagerly, "Father, did you get to see Joe Montana's locker?" At the Little Brown Church, I regularly visited shut-ins. Two of my regulars were sisters in their nineties who lived together. I arrived at their home one day to find that Meals on Wheels had just delivered Mexican food, which neither sister liked. "We hate to see food go to waste," said the elder sister. "Won't you please eat it?" I replied, "I would feel terribly guilty eating the lunch brought to you by Meals on Wheels. Why not give it to the cat?" "Oh, we tried that," said the younger sister. "He didn't like it, either. It made him throw up." 60 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HUm(§)Fs While I was the new pastor of a church in rural east Tennessee, I assisted a family of parishioners who owned a feed store. It was their busy season, and they needed someone to help fill hundred-pound sacks of corn. As I pulled my first bag off the scale and started to close it, I noticed a look of concern on the face of the store owner. "When we tie sacks, we use a miller's knot," he said. "I don't suppose you can do that." He didn't know that I had spent ten years farming before entering the ministry. When I easily tied the knot, he was visibly impressed. "You're the first preacher I ever saw," he told me, "who knew anything at all about working." —James Huskins At the Little Brown Church, our Christmas Eve service included a candle-lighting ceremony in which each member of the con- gregation lit a candle from his neighbor's candle. At the end of the ceremony, the congregation sat hushed, pondering the inspiring beauty of the moment. I rose to announce the con- cluding hymn and was taken completely by surprise when my invitation evoked laughter: "Now that everyone is lit, let's sing 'Joy to the World.'" When I first met Father Miles, he had just come from the Catholic church across from his office, where he had been cel- ebrating Mass. He looked odd to me in his cassock and to cover my discomfort I quipped, "I didn't know you wore dresses!" Without losing a beat, Father Miles replied, "Oh, this old thing." While I was visiting Father Miles, the UPS guy came by with a large package. He had a very strange look on his face. "I have a package for the Father," he explained. Miles signed for it. I clearly understood the delivery man's chagrin when I saw what was stamped on the box: "Contents: FULL COLOR MADONNA CALENDARS." CHURCH LIFE • 61 i«j^J When I received my first call (to be pastor of the St. ,[^Ff John's Congregational Church in Philadelphia), I ^--4 found the first few months at my new job very inter- esting. One day I'd have ink up to my elbows from repairing a mimeograph machine. The next day, I'd be arranging a rum- mage sale or a pancake breakfast. The next, I'd be hanging from a tree trying to trim the limbs without getting into the power lines. Then, I'd try to hunt down a carburetor for the church's antique bus. Next, I'd repaint the church nursery. Roofing, plumbing and wiring were also included in my work. One thing's for sure: my instructors were right on target when they said, "The seminary won't teach you all you need to know about being a pastor." Reverend Mel, a local Baptist minister, liked to slip old proverbs into his sermons, but had trouble getting them right. For example, he would remind the congregation not to "kick a gift horse in the mouth" or that "a stitch in line saves time" or "a fool and his money are soon started" or "you can lead a horse to water, but that's a horse of a different color." One Sunday, he was describing how easy some task was to perform and said, "It's just like falling off a log." We all thought he had finally mastered one. Then he added, "Once you learn how, you never forget." KIDS THEOLOGY My grandson Jacob once asked me, "Grandpa Lowell, why do so many churches have plus signs on them?" Elizabeth Peters and her five-year-old grandson Nathaniel were taking a walk in the country just after the first heavy frost of the season had given the foliage a brilliantly colored crazy quilt appearance. 'Just think," the grandmother marveled, gazing at the scar- let and gold hillside, "God painted all that." "Yes," the grandson agreed, "and He even did it with his left hand." "What do you mean, 'He did it with his left hand'?" she asked, somewhat puzzled by the remark. "Well," Nathaniel replied reasonably, "at Sunday School, they told us that Jesus is sitting on the right hand of God!" During the minister's prayer, there was a loud whistle from the congregation. Gary's mother was horrified. Later she asked, "Gary, whatever made you do that?" Gary answered soberly, "I asked God to teach me to whistle, and just then he did!" —James Cammack, Parables Outside Paradise 63 64 • AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Hum(§)Fs Austin Markle, the Sunday School teacher, asked his class: "What are sins of omission?" After some thought one little fellow said: "They're the sins we should have committed but didn't get around to." I was helping my grandson Jonathan with his science home- work. His assignment was to define the Great Divide. "That's easy, Grandpa," he said. "That's when Moses parted the Red Sea." Students of a Sunday School class at Brewer's Island United Church were asked to write down what they liked best about Sunday School. One little boy, Harold Winston, who also happened to be the pastor's son, thought for a moment and remembered all the songs the class had sung during the year. His spelling was not as good as his memory for he wrote, "The thing I like best about Sunday School is the sinning." Dexter Rice, a Sunday School teacher, was telling his class the story of the Prodigal Son. Wishing to emphasize the resentful attitude of the elder brother, he laid stress on this part of the parable. After describing the rejoicing of the household over the return of the wayward son, Dexter spoke of one who, in the midst of the festivities, failed to share in the jubilant spirit of the occasion. "Can anybody in the class," he asked, "tell me who this was?" Nine-year-old Olivia had been listening sympathetically to the story. She waved her hand in the air. "I know!" she beamed. "It was the fatted calf!" One morning, a Sunday School teacher asked her group, "Does somebody know who defeated the Philistines?" After a few moments one youngster asked, "They're not in the NBA, are they?" KIDS'THEOLOGY • 65 One Sunday late in Lent, a Sunday School teacher decided to ask her class what they knew about Easter. The first little fellow suggested, "Easter is when all the fam- ily comes to the house and we eat a big turkey and watch foot- ball." The teacher suggested that perhaps he was thinking of Thanksgiving, not Easter. Next, a pretty little girl answer said, "Easter is the day when you come down the stairs in the morning and you see all the beautiful presents under the tree." At this point, the teacher was really feeling discouraged. After explaining that the girl was probably thinking about Christmas, she called on a lad with his hand tentatively raised in the air. Her spirits perked up as the boy said, "Easter is the time when Jesus was crucified and buried." She felt she had gotten through to at least one child, until he added, "And then He comes out of the grave, and if He sees His shadow we have six more weeks of winter." The Sunday School teacher asked each child to identify a favorite Bible character. "Mine is King Solomon," declared a little girl. "And why is that?" asked the teacher. "Because he was so kind to ladies and animals." "Who told you that?" asked the startled teacher. "Nobody told me. I read it myself in the Bible," said the girl.	650,961
Be a Great Stand-up Teach Yourself (Logan Murray) (Z-Library).pdf	Be a Great Stand-Up Logan Murray For UK order enquiries: please contact Bookpoint Ltd, 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SB. Telephone: +44 (0) 1235 827720. Fax: +44 (0) 1235 400454. Lines are open 09.00–17.00, Monday to Saturday, with a 24-hour message answering service. Details about our titles and how to order are available at www.teachyourself.com For USA order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Customer Services, PO Box 545, Blacklick, OH 43004-0545, USA. Telephone: 1-800-722-4726. Fax: 1-614-755-5645. For Canada order enquiries: please contact McGraw-Hill Ryerson Ltd, 300 Water St, Whitby, Ontario, L1N 9B6, Canada. Telephone: 905 430 5000. Fax: 905 430 5020. Long renowned as the authoritative source for self-guided learning – with more than 50 million copies sold worldwide – the Teach Yourself series includes over 500 titles in the ﬁ elds of languages, crafts, hobbies, business, computing and education. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: on ﬁ le. First published in UK 2007 by Hodder Education, part of Hachette UK, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH. First published in US 2007 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. This edition published 2010. Previously published as Teach Yourself Stand-Up Comedy. The Teach Yourself name is a registered trade mark of Hodder Headline. Copyright © 2007, 2010 Logan Murray In UK: All rights reserved. Apart from any permitted use under UK copyright law, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information, storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or under licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited. Further details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained from the Copyright Licensing Agency Limited, of Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. In US: All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Typeset by MPS Limited, A Macmillan Company. Printed in Great Britain for Hodder Education, an Hachette UK Company, 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH, by CPI Cox & Wyman, Reading, Berkshire RG1 8EX. The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher and the author have no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content will remain relevant, decent or appropriate. Hachette UK’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. Impression number 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Year 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 iii Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Thanks to all the comedians who contributed to this book. Thanks also to all the comics at the Fortnight Club who have made hosting the nights such a pleasure over the last couple of decades. And to Maddy Carbery for keeping the club going despite numerous venue changes – a thankless task! You are much missed on our Monday evenings. Thanks for the Comedy Course 1,500, who ’ ve taught me so much and made me laugh far too much. And a special thanks to Hils Jago for her tireless work in organizing everything. I ’ m also grateful to Steve Armstrong for inadvertently setting this whole thing in train, and to Victoria Roddam for her invaluable suggestions. Lastly, a massive thanks to Katy Bagshaw for teaching me the meaning of punctuation. Image credits Front cover: © Creative Crop/Digital Vision/Getty Images Back cover: © Jakub Semeniuk/iStockphoto.com, © Royalty- Free/Corbis, © agencyby/iStockphoto.com, © Andy Cook/ iStockphoto.com, © Christopher Ewing/iStockphoto.com, © zebicho – Fotolia.com, © Geoffrey Holman/iStockphoto.com, © Photodisc/Getty Images, © James C. Pruitt/iStockphoto.com, © Mohamed Saber – Fotolia.com iv Contents Meet the author viii Only got a minute? x Only got ﬁ ve minutes? xii Only got ten minutes? xiv Introduction xix Part one: Theory 1 Where do jokes come from? 3 Do we create funny ideas or do they come and ﬁ nd us? 4 Practical creative games 5 Some modern theories of humour 8 What is a joke? 14 Attitude, the comedian’s secret weapon 15 Attitude games 18 2 Building a joke 24 Extreme attitudes to speciﬁ c points can lead to humour 25 Always ask yourself: ‘What is the comedian’s answer to this particular problem?’ 26 Finding the joke 28 Afterthoughts 28 Afterthought games 31 3 Comedy ground rules 41 Style or content? 41 Kill little Mr/Ms social control in your head 42 Remember 44 Stupid name game 44 Bad geography 46 What’s your attitude to the subject? 46 More attitude games 47 Be speciﬁ c 50 Games to develop speciﬁ c thinking 52 Be concise 54 v Contents The longer the set-up, the funnier the punchline had better be! 57 If it doesn’t add, it distracts 58 Avoid the temptation of burying your routines in the past 61 Always remember: start with your best stuff; ﬁ nish with your best stuff; let the middle take care of itself 62 4 What sort of comic are you? 66 Your persona 66 Comedic ﬂ aws and how to use them 67 Comic archetypes 69 Mixing and matching 77 Games to uncover comedic ﬂ aws 78 Part two: Practical sessions 5 Unlocking your creativity 83 Don’t worry about the result: just write! 84 Writing activities 84 6 Emotional exaggeration 95 Breaking the habits of a lifetime: be bigger, be broader! 95 Why comics start exaggerating their emotional responses 96 Reasons why new comedians might overlook their emotional performance 97 Why comedians need to be more extreme 98 Remember 99 Activities to encourage emotional exaggeration 100 7 Creating material 106 Workshop 1: the thank you list 107 Workshop 2: building routines 111 Workshop 3: putting your set together 115 ‘Less is more’ activities 119 Workshop 4: the hate list 120 Remember 121 Workshop 5: creating your own lists 121 Workshop 6: joke forms 123 Workshop 7: ﬁ nding different voices 130 vi Stereotype activities 131 Creating a character act 133 8 Stagecraft 136 Think about your attitude to your audience 136 Remember 137 Treat the audience exactly as you would treat your friends 137 Force yourself to look at the audience 138 Try to ‘read’ the crowd 138 Slow down! 139 How to deal with nerves 141 9 Microphone technique 149 Microphone mistakes 150 Remember 153 10 Hecklers and crowd control 155 Why a gig can go bad 156 How to make a gig better 156 Hecklers 159 Crowd control exercises 161 11 What other comics think 164 Milton Jones 164 Richard Herring 166 Steve Hall 171 Sarah Kendall 172 Pat Condell 175 Katy Bagshaw 177 Marek Larwood 179 Mark Maier 181 Robin Ince 183 Greg Davies 186 12 Business 188 How to get started 189 Learn to market yourself 190 Etiquette 193 Do your time on stage 193 Building your set 194 Compèring 195 Beyond stand-up 196 vii Contents Competitions 197 Festivals 198 Agents and managers 200 Remember 202 13 Your ﬁ rst gig 204 Booking the gig 204 Three or four days before the gig 205 The day before the gig 205 On the day of the gig 206 On the evening of the gig 206 On stage 207 After the gig 208 14 The future 210 Appendix 1: group games 212 Appendix 2: the fall and rise of stand-up comedy 235 Taking it further 251 Index 252 viii Meet the author So, you want to be a stand-up comedian? The best advice I can offer you, regardless whether you buy my book or not, is just to do it! Write some stuff that you think is funny, take a deep breath and book in a ﬁ ve-minute try-out spot at a comedy club in your nearest city and give it a spin. If the feeling of elation outweighs the fear you felt before you went on, then it ’ s probably worth a second shot. After the gig, think what worked and what didn ’ t work: try to maximize the laughs in the bits that the audience liked, and try to work out what didn ’ t work in the bits that the audience seemed indifferent to. That, in essence, is all that every comedian I have every known does. There you go; if you ’ re reading this in a shop I ’ ve saved your wallet the strain of the recommended retail price of this book! If you enter the world of stand-up, you ’ ll ﬁ nd most people are just as nice as me. If making total strangers laugh has always been a secret ambition of yours, then you really should give it a go. Lots of people have taken the plunge and have found it has changed their lives in remarkable ways . ix Meet the author About Logan Murray Logan Murray has been a working comedian since 1984. Over the years, he has performed in every conceivable venue, from a converted public lavatory to 3,000 people at the Glastonbury Festival, in the United Kingdom and throughout the world. During his career he has written for TV and radio. He has appeared in variety shows, sitcoms, documentaries, panel shows and game shows. In 1994 Logan Murray created his alter ego, the monstrously bitter, tired old showbiz hack Ronnie Rigsby, who has a showbiz career of live dates and TV and radio appearances to rival his own! Logan Murray was also one half of the infamous 1990s double act ‘Bib and Bob’ with Jerry Sadowitz. They have appeared all over the country, including a West End run at the Criterion Theatre (the police were called twice and the critics lauded it as the best bad taste show ever). He has directed the stage shows of award-winning comedians, lectured at Middlesex University and teaches comedy at the BBC. Logan Murray regularly holds highly acclaimed courses in London and is acknowledged as one of the best comedy tutors in the UK. x Only got a minute? There is a common myth that comedy is a very difﬁ cult thing to get right and that the job of the stand-up comedian is one of the hardest in the world. All the comedian has to do is talk to people and make them laugh. One of the great secrets of stand-up (and the one we comedians all try to hide from civilians) is that a good comic uses exactly the same skill set that any of us use in everyday life. We talk, we listen, we think on our feet and we play. On a good night, this is the easiest job in the world. There are very few jobs which allow you the same sense of liberation: you are entirely responsible for your own career. If you make people laugh, you know you are doing your job; if producers and directors see you being funny, they assume that you can also present shows, write for other people, act, Only got a minute? xi direct or appear on those endless comedy panel shows that occupy the TV schedules. Very few jobs provide this sort of broad spectrum apprenticeship. In fact, the only thing that makes this profession hard is fear. But, as you will ﬁ nd out, this fear is illusory! The more you perform, the more you will wonder why your doubts held you back at the beginning. You may not be the comic genius you want to be when you start out. But neither were your comedy heroes when they began, so why not let yourself off the hook? We all had to start somewhere and we all learnt that the more we performed, the funnier we became. This is a great journey that you are about to embark on! xii 5 Only got ﬁ ve minutes? So, you want to be a stand-up comedian? Welcome to a life of adrenaline, late-night motorway food and paranoia. You ’ ll need three things to succeed, over and above being funny. First, a thick skin because of all the knock-backs. Second, expertise in reading the mood of an audience. Third, there ’ s an incredibly high drop-out rate in the ﬁ rst year and often it ’ s not the most funny that survive, but the most driven. After a bad gig, try to learn from it and then throw yourself back in the ring. The more you perform, the funnier you will become. We were all pretty rubbish for our ﬁ rst ten or twenty gigs. Practice makes perfect. It ’ s a craft and you will need to learn it. If you don ’ t give up, you will become funnier. Write for yourself. Don ’ t try to second guess what the audience wants you to say. Talk about what fascinates you and what annoys you. It ’ s your opinions that we want. Is your message clear? Art can be ambiguous, but a joke must not be. Don ’ t wafﬂ e. Get to the point quickly. If in doubt, be as speciﬁ c as you can be with your subject matter. Speciﬁ c ideas give you somewhere to go and hopefully lead to funny thoughts. Keep phoning around for work. There may be a lag between your call and the actual gig – so keep plugging away to make sure there are no gaps in your diary. If you want four gigs a week, you should phone around and book four gigs a week! Be yourself on stage (or, at least, an extreme version of yourself). That ’ s what you ’ re best at. Relax. Take your time. Don ’ t let nerves speed you up. Try to look as if you ’ re having a good time. xiii Only got ﬁ ve minutes? Do your time. If you ’ re booked for ﬁ ve minutes, don ’ t do ten. You ’ ll be using up someone else ’ s stage time and generally annoying everyone who ’ s on after you. Don ’ t drink. It won ’ t relax you; it will just slow you down. Listen to your audience. The person you think is heckling you may just be agreeing with you. Treat it like a proper job. Turn up on time, don ’ t mess people around by dropping out at the last minute, and be polite. It ’ s business, not a soap opera. Tape yourself at every gig. That way, you won ’ t lose any of those brilliant ad - libs that you will make up during your performance. If you can, run through your material immediately after the gig. What worked well? What didn ’ t? What could you do to improve it? Play the moment. React to what happens around you. Make eye contact. You are not reciting lines, you are engaging with a group of people. You are talking to , not talking at an audience. Just like you talk to people all the time, every day of your life. Feel free to enter the competitions – but be aware that they can be a lottery, and that it ’ s only a competition. If you win, it ’ s fantastic, but plenty of performers have won and then sunk without trace, and plenty of comics have never entered them and now have their own TV shows. Remember, you are in charge. You have the microphone and the audience wants you to win (honest). xiv 10 Only got ten minutes? All creativity comes out of play. D.W. Winnicott Human beings love playing games; we love to look at things from fresh and novel angles. In essence this is all the comedian does – play with ideas until the world is shaken into a new shape. The games that comedians play might include saying one thing and revealing another; misunderstanding something deliberately for comic effect; exhibiting a correct way of behaving for entirely the wrong context; or something equally different. If that game is played correctly, then the jokes will be unlocked from the subject matter. The twentieth-century polymath Arthur Koestler thought that laughter is generated as a reward when we associate two things that we don ’ t usually think of inhabiting the same mental space. Human beings, in effect, create an arc between these two states, or objects, that don ’ t usually go together and the sense of pleasure generated makes us laugh. Whether it is an absurd juxtaposition or a simple word play, our laughter announces to the world that we ‘ get ’ this new idea. It may well be that humour is an adaptive evolutionary trait that humans actively look for. Humour not only indicates a sense of play, it also shows an ability to synthesize new ideas, or to look at problems from new perspectives. The ability to laugh at oneself means that individuals might not take themselves too seriously; it perhaps shows a degree of pragmatism which demonstrates mental ﬂ exibility. They say the devil can ’ t abide laughter; is that because laughter allows liberation? If you were faced with two equal candidates to be trapped on a desert island with – both are equally industrious, motivated and intelligent – but only one had a sense of humour, which would you prefer? xv Only got ten minutes? We all ﬁ nd funny people sexier. It ’ s an attractive trait in our prospective partners. Who wouldn ’ t want to share their DNA with someone who can make and take a joke? Why does the phrase ‘ good sense of humour ’ litter lonely hearts columns? Isn ’ t it true to say that, no matter how shy we are, we all like to think of ourselves as possessing a keen sense of humour? Most of our spare time is spent trying to ﬁ nd ways to distract ourselves from the tyranny and tedium of everyday life. Often the cheapest escapes, a night out or an impromptu gathering, can be the best. We characterize these events as ‘ a good night out ’ or ‘ a good laugh ’ . We may fool ourselves into thinking that the amount of fun we have is in direct relation to the amount of alcohol we drink; but it is my belief that it is the setting that matters. Human beings seek out zones that offer us an opportunity to play. We crave novelty and we love to be told things that we didn ’ t know, whether it ’ s scurrilous gossip or where to get the best bargain online. In short, we are a bunch of monkeys who love to tell each other stories. To have a laugh The comedian is often a laughter junkie, someone who has learnt to enjoy the sense of pleasure (and power!) in making another person laugh. They may feel they have a facility for it and want to hone their skills in the more abstracted setting of a comedy venue, rather than making people laugh around the water cooler at work. In essence, while they are on stage a comedian is trying to recreate that sense of joy, or ‘ a bloody good party ’ , that we all experience. There is no difference between entertaining six people in the kitchen at a party, or 60 in a small comedy club, or 6,000 in the Comedy Tent at the Glastonbury Festival. It ’ s just a matter of degree. So, in one sense, the comedian is not doing anything out of the ordinary. All human beings share the capacity to be naturally funny. xvi The comic just decides to take it a stage further and tries to understand the rules of play that make us laugh and free us – if only for a few moments – from the grind of everyday concerns. What sort of person wants to be a stand-up comedian? The previous paragraph probably gave the impression that comedians are wonderful noble people who give up their time to make other people happy, or that every comic is some latter day shaman, hell bent on alchemizing the human mind into a better state. Well, do bear in mind that I ’ m a working comic who is trying to justify his existence … The true fact of the matter is that many comics I know (myself included) are doing this for deeply selﬁ sh reasons – we enjoy adulation and we relish the opportunity to shout our opinions at a bunch of strangers. Perhaps most comedians share some ﬂ aw (or ‘ trait ’ if you think ‘ ﬂ aw ’ implies fault) that makes us do this as a living. It does seem to me that comedy, in a sense, is a profession that chooses you, although perhaps the burning desire to do it professionally is really the only qualiﬁ cation that gets you through the door. What compels a certain type of person to choose this life as a career? What fuels this desire that comedians have for getting up on stage? What makes them choose a career without structure or clearly deﬁ ned goals (other than those that are self-imposed) over the clearly delineated career paths of the modern world? Is it a cry for attention? Arrested development? Not enough love as a child? xvii Only got ten minutes? Is it that we feel a burning desire to be a creative artist, but that we are not talented enough to paint or sing or play an instrument? Is it because comedians are rebels who, sensing that we ’ ll be dead for an awfully long time, want to spend as much of our lives as possible telling the world exactly what our particular comedic answer to the world ’ s ills might be? Will scientists in a few years uncover a funny gene, pinpointing what drove this strange minority of people to play at being fools? Perhaps the answer is much simpler. Most comedians, if they are honest, will tell you that nothing can beat the feeling of making other human beings laugh. That is, I suspect, the real reason why comics will travel across the country or across the globe, knowing that there are probably easier ways to make a living. Certainly, there are jobs that keep more social hours . On a good night, just as they step up for an encore, a comedian could believe that they have the easiest job in the world. Sometimes the experience seems to be over all too soon. The nature of performing is that it is entirely ephemeral: unlike a painter or sculptor, there is no physical artefact left behind that we can point to and say: ‘ Look, that ’ s me being funny. ’ All a DVD can do is record the event. It is not the actual event itself. We are only as good as our last gig. If we keep our wits about us, we can learn from the bad shows and always admit room for improvement after the great gigs. It ’ s all part of the learning process, and in comedy there ’ s always something new to learn. This page intentionally left blank xix Introduction Introduction 1985 I have just smuggled myself out of hospital, where I have been bed-bound, in excruciating agony from rheumatic fever. I am shaking and sweating, leaning on a stick, feeling that I have just made the most stupid mistake of my young life. My destination is the London Comedy Store, where I have been booked to perform ﬁ ve minutes for a BBC Radio Show called ‘Cabaret Upstairs’ . I have cancelled every gig in my diary, one by one, from the hospital ward ’ s public telephone, as I get progressively sicker – but I ’ m determined not to give up my ﬁ rst radio job. The comp è re announces my name and I limp on to the stage, trying to fake a normal healthy stride. I deliver my ﬁ rst line and the well-primed audience roll over, like a big puppy dog, with laughter. For the next ﬁ ve minutes I feel brilliant. 1995 I ’ m on stage for the second time that evening, having raced across London to ‘ double up ’ at another gig. If anything, this audience seems even better than the ﬁ rst one. Probably because it ’ s later in the evening and they are more warmed up after an interval . I ’ m half way through a joke when I have a strange feeling of d é j à vu. There is an awful sinking feeling that I ’ m repeating a xx joke that I ’ ve just told this crowd. Intellectually, I know that I ’ m probably remembering the earlier gig, but my gut tells me that I ’ ll get to the punchline and the audience will give me a look of pity. This feeling is so strong that instead of nailing the gag, I say it as – if – I – am – wading – through – treacle. I avoid the looks of pity, but now the audience are looking at me as if I ’ m slightly constipated, I resolve to pick up the pace! 2005 I ’ m standing at the back of a smoky, packed Comedy Club in North London. The audience is excited and boisterous. They are waiting to see seven brand new comics taking their ﬁ rst ﬂ edgling steps into the gloriously tawdry world of showbiz. What the audience doesn ’ t know is two have pulled out at the last minute through sheer fear. I am frantically scribbling down a new running order and trying to dragoon two more comics, who just came down to watch, into ﬁ lling the stage time. I ’ m standing quite close to the gents ’ toilet. If I listen very carefully, I can hear the ﬁ rst act being sick … Ah, the glamour! I ’ ve been making a living as a stand-up comic for over 20 years. To be honest, this is the only job I ’ ve ever known. The hours are great, 20 minutes a night, three or four evenings a week. The pay is fantastic. I ’ m my own boss. I never have to set the alarm to avoid the early morning rush hour. I genuinely look forward to going to work and cannot imagine ever wanting to retire. This business has allowed me to perform all over the world, as far west as Colorado and as far east as the Gulf States. It has lead to some really interesting (and, occasionally, strange) jobs in TV and radio. I ’ ve presented TV game shows too cheesy for words; had tiny parts in several very good sitcoms; supplied the voices for some well-known cartoon characters and, for some bizarre reason, played a computer-generated ﬁ sh twice for two separate terrestrial xxi Introduction television projects. I ’ ve written for radio, TV, the stage and, occasionally, for magazines. I mention all these things not to brag, but just to point out that none of these experiences would have come my way had I not been a comedian. To me, stand-up is its own reward. It ’ s not something you do to become famous (although, it would be nice) or rich (although, again, I wouldn ’ t complain). We do this job because on some basic level we need to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and make them laugh. Give me 70 or 80 people in a room above a pub, and I ’ m never happier. I ’ ve done big gigs, little gigs, great gigs and scary gigs that have taken years off my life. I ’ ve been drowned out by bands at the Reading Festival, had a performing epiphany at the Glastonbury Festival and lost thousands of pounds at the Edinburgh Fringe. What compels a certain type of person to choose this life as a career? What fuels this desire that comedians have for getting up on stage? Is it a cry for attention? Arrested development? Not enough love as a child? Perhaps the answer is much simpler. Most comedians, if they are honest, will tell you that nothing can beat the feeling of making other human beings laugh. That is, I suspect, the real reason why comics spend far too many nights, red-eyed and hunched over the steering wheel, heading for home, fuelled by motorway coffee and chocolate, having entertained a room full of people in some far- ﬂ ung corner of Britain. The best party in the world would compare poorly to that time in front of the microphone. The ﬁ nest wines are tame in comparison to the adrenaline rush experienced on stage – plus, you don ’ t have to worry about a hangover the next morning. xxii On a good night, just as they step up for an encore, a comedian could believe that they have the easiest job in the world. Sometimes the show seems to be over all too soon. The nature of performing is that it is entirely ephemeral: unlike a painter or sculptor, there is no physical artefact left behind, that we can point to and say, ‘ Look, that ’ s me being funny. ’ We are only as good as our last gig. If we keep our wits about us, we can learn from the bad shows and always admit room for improvement after the great gigs. It ’ s all part of the learning process, and in comedy there ’ s always something new to learn. So you want to be a stand-up comedian? Everyone has the ability to be funny. Over the past ﬁ ve years I ’ ve had the great pleasure of teaching more than 700 people how to perform stand-up comedy. Almost all of them took part in a ﬁ nal show open to the public. Out of those 700, most had a blast at their very ﬁ rst gig. More importantly, so did the audience. So much so that these new comics got bitten by the bug and (rather like me) became seduced into this lifestyle. A fair number, a year later, liked the lifestyle so much – and were having enough success – that they became professional comedians. You ’ ve probably seen one or two of them. I wish I could say that this high success rate is purely down to me being the best teacher in the world, but I think it ’ s truer to say that the ability to be funny is a natural human trait. We all have the ability to make others laugh, to set strangers at their ease, to play with ideas (often the essence of a joke), and to communicate those ideas to others. If you think about it, there is a great deal of evolutionary sense in breeding these traits into individuals. If you could use humour to xxiii Introduction defuse a situation, or to bond with the rest of your group, you would probably increase your chances for survival. These people would probably live long enough to breed. The miserable, uncooperative types, lacking imagination, would probably die alone and unloved. Serves them right. No one loves a whinger. Chances are the people who could deal with the strangers over the hill and perhaps got along with them long enough to trade with them, stood a better chance of passing their sociable genes on to the next generation. Obviously, a closer study of human history might show that we are very good at killing each other too, but that subject is covered in my companion volume to this book, provisionally titled Teach Yourself Mass Murder . What makes people funny? We all ﬁ nd funny people sexier. It ’ s an attractive trait in our prospective partners. Why does the phrase ‘ good sense of humour ’ litter lonely hearts columns? Isn ’ t it true to say that, no matter how shy we are, we all like to think of ourselves as possessing a keen sense of humour? That ’ s probably true for you, isn ’ t it? Even if you ’ ve never admitted it to anyone else. Have you ever had that experience at a party where, perhaps fuelled by a glass of wine to loosen your inhibitions, perhaps standing with a number of close friends and newly met acquaintances, you ’ ve all started to make each other laugh – without even trying ? No one is resorting to ‘ jokes ’ , no one is trying to ‘ take control ’ ; you are all just chipping in, each adding to the previous person ’ s comments, generally being really playful and having a laugh. A feeling of well-being washes over you and everyone else. You are having an enormous amount of fun. You feel better than you have done for days. Of course you recognize this experience, because it ’ s what xxiv human beings do. It ’ s also why people go to comedy clubs, to experience this sense of giddy joy. To have a laugh. In essence, a comedian is trying to recreate that sense of joy, or ‘ a bloody good party ’ , while they are on stage. There is no difference entertaining six people in the kitchen at a party or 60 in a small comedy club or 6,000 in the Comedy Tent at the Glastonbury Festival. It ’ s just a matter of degree. So, let ’ s entertain the idea that people can be naturally funny. What makes a stand-up different from other performers? STAND-UP IS A VERY NAKED MEDIUM: IT ’ S JUST YOU AND THE AUDIENCE A comic hasn ’ t got the luxury of blaming the script or the director or a fellow actor for giving him or her the wrong cue. A comic is alone in front of the paying crowd. Unlike other performing artists, I can ’ t excuse a prolonged silence from my audience with the notion that ‘ I ’ m really making them think, tonight. ’ If I don ’ t hear the audience laughing with certain regularity, then I know I haven ’ t done my job. The fact that there are no barriers between you and the audience makes it a very pure art form. Your relationship is solely with the audience. You are not reciting some lines; you are telling them a story, here and now. You are the author, the director and the actor. If they don ’ t like you, there is no one else to blame. But if they love you, then the credit is all yours! THERE IS AN IMMEDIACY TO STAND-UP If you make an audience laugh, you know you are doing your job. If you make them laugh enough, the people who run clubs have to book you. You begin to build up a reputation. xxv Introduction THE LIFE OF A COMEDIAN IS VERY EMPOWERING You pick up the phone, you get the gigs, you make people laugh. Word gets around, other people want to book you, so you pick up the phone again, you ring the new numbers people have given you, you get the gigs … and so it goes. There is no boss telling you to work harder or that you ’ re failing to meet this month ’ s targets; there is no casting agent suggesting that you are too tall or too short, too old or too fat for the part. It is very difﬁ cult to believe critics who tell you that you are not very good, if the whole room is laughing. The secret of stand-up comedy The most important thing to remember in a stand-up career is to persevere. If you keep performing, you will get better. If you keep performing, you will come up with new ideas. If you keep at it, people will offer you strange, often lucrative, jobs that you could never have imagined. You could be the funniest person in the world, but if you never try your ideas out in front of the world, the world will never know. How to use this book Treat this book as a big bag of tricks. All the exercises have been tried and tested by countless people in the past but that doesn ’ t mean that you have to like them all. Some comedians gravitate towards the word-play games; some xxvi prefer the showing-off games. It would be a good idea to try all the exercises at least once, if you can – I can appreciate that some of the group activities may prove difﬁ cult if there ’ s just you or only two or three of you trying out ideas in a workshop-style session. You may ﬁ nd it useful to return to the exercises at least one more time (perhaps after you ’ ve started performing), just to see how differently you react to them when you have had some performance experience. As a general point, feel free to return to themes and ideas again and again as you write and perform. You should never feel, ‘ Oh well, I covered this subject. ’ As we will ﬁ nd out later on, you can always ﬁ nd a new twist to an old subject. Remember Heraclitus ’ old adage: ‘ A man cannot enter the same river twice, for he is not the same man, nor is it the same river. ’ Everything, including ourselves, always changes. The way you write about relationships would not be the same at the beginning of a love affair as it would be if you put pen to paper just after you had been dumped. It would be a lazy comedian indeed who decided that they have exhausted a subject forever. Write for your own pleasure While we are on the subject of writing, I would strongly suggest that you get in the habit of writing for yourself . That is to say, write (and perform) what you think is funny, rather than trying to guess what your hypothetical audience wants you to say. All worthwhile comedians talk about what matters to them. That ’ s what the audience want to hear – your opinion on things. Have conﬁ dence that what you have to say on a subject is worth hearing. Your perspective is unique, the audience is desperate to hear your point of view. They know what they think, so tell them something new. Have fun doing the exercises in this book. If it starts to seem like hard work, take a break. All creativity comes out of play, so don ’ t treat the time improving your comedy as a prison sentence. xxvii Introduction Use the exercises as starting points to create your own games. If you can ﬁ nd an interesting ‘ twist ’ to the instructions, feel free to give it a go. There are no rules where creativity is concerned, except to say that if an exercise feels like fun when you are doing it and leaves you with a giddy desire to show off what you have just created, then you ’ ve probably done the right thing, even if it contradicts the rules for the particular exercise . You ’ re the boss. Working individually The vast majority of the preparation work that a comedian does is solitary. That involves a degree of discipline on your part, especially when you ’ re staring at a blank piece of paper desperately trying to remember if there is anything remotely funny in your head. Set guidelines for your work. Top tip Always carry a pen and a little notebook with you because you never can tell when inspiration will hit you. If you can bear to look a bit weird, carry one of those pocket voice recorders with you and mutter the funny idea into it before it evaporates. But think twice before doing this on a ﬁ rst date! Also, tell yourself that you are going to set aside an hour (at least) every day to write. That is time over and above when you may be jotting down an idea that occurs to you on the bus. Most importantly – and certainly when you begin – allow yourself the freedom of not being funny. Allow yourself to explore ideas without insisting that there is a punchline at the end of every sentence. This period of time is set aside for you to play – something which many of us have been actively discouraged from doing after childhood – so it may take time to relearn how to have fun again. xxviii SET YOURSELF A TASK For example, you could: write a list of all the kids who bullied you at school, and imagine where they are today (if there were any justice in the world!) write down crossword puzzle clues written by a hopeless alcoholic or someone who ’ s just got divorced draw a four-panel cartoon showing the rest of your life write a list of your top ten favourite ﬁ lms of all time and why write a love poem written by a sanitary engineer or a trafﬁ c warden write up a list of things never to say to a new partner describe the worst Olympic sport (real or made up) and explain why list obvious clich é s in horror ﬁ lms list some really bad ideas for Christmas presents for your family, and why write a synopsis of War and Peace in under 50 words describe the plot of Macbeth in 20 words, then see if you can cut it down to 10 recount your worst fashion mistake ever list your favourite words, explaining why. You will ﬁ nd some more interesting ideas and tasks to inspire you in later chapters: Chapter 5 lists quite a few creativity exercises; Chapter 7 will take you through several workshops designed to help you uncover funny material. There is also an appendix detailing lots of group comedy games for you to use if you are lucky enough to be working with a group of like-minded people. Writer ’ s block Setting yourself little writing games is possibly one of the best ways for a budding comedian to avoid writer ’ s block. It breaks things xxix Introduction down into bite-sized chunks and makes every piece of writing a game to play, rather than a task to complete. The more you write, the more you are exercising those creative muscles, so keep to your daily or weekly schedule. And don ’ t judge yourself too harshly! You may ﬁ nd, once you start, that the creative ﬂ oodgates open and all this stuff locked up in your brain starts pouring out. Unfortunately for your social life, inspiration rarely follows a nine- to-ﬁ ve schedule. Friends and loved ones don ’ t always understand that you have to strike while the inspiration is hot; often, if they ’ re not performers themselves, they won ’ t understand that you have to write it down there and then even if it means turning on the bedside lamp at two in the morning. So a little bit of sensitivity may be called for on your part. Usually, once they are made aware that comedy is your career, most partners will forgive the occasional burning of the midnight oil. The two key qualities that an aspiring comic working alone should cultivate are discipline and perseverance: discipline to get the work done and perseverance to keep battering at the comedy industry until it begins to notice you. It can seem a very hard road when you ’ ve just been booed off the stage, but take heart that every comedian worth their salt has been booed off at some time in their career. By learning from their mistakes and by not giving up, they have become better performers. Working in groups This method has a lot to recommend it. Three or four like-minded new comedians brainstorming ideas will probably cover more ground through simple synergy alone than a solo comic would. Think about the way most American sitcoms are written: a bullpen of 10 or 20 writers will sit round a table and throw ideas at each other. This can, with the right people, be a very productive way of working. xxx Ownership issues of who wrote what joke don ’ t have to rear their ugly heads if clear guidelines are set at the beginning. At its root, you know if an idea is really yours or someone else ’ s. Here are some simple working ground rules: No ideas are to be shot down in ﬂ ames while they are still in development. No one person is in charge. Try to say, metaphorically at least, ‘ yes, and … ’ to an idea rather than ‘ no ’ . Saying yes builds on an idea. Saying no is effectively closing off a discussion. ‘ What if … ’ is a much better premise for a comedian to work with than ‘ It could never happen. ’ While general ideas are up for grabs (for instance ‘ relationships ’ is such a general subject heading as to be almost meaningless), speciﬁ c ideas based on your attitude or experience belong to you. For example, I have some jokes about a diabetic cat I once looked after. If I had presented these to a group of other comics, and then found the next week they had all come up with their own diabetic cat material, I ’ d be a little suspicious. Those three or four people can also act as a support group for each other, pooling information about venues and being a friendly face in a crowd. Also, the presence of other people will galvanize the individual comic into working, rather than deciding to do some ‘ research ’ watching the TV, or staring out of the window. Working in a group forces you to think how you can best present your ideas to other people. It stops it becoming just a mental exercise and makes you have to perform – stand-up is, after all, a social activity. A few of the games and exercises in this book (and all the ones listed in the appendix) have been devised to work with a partner or in a group. The logic behind this is that it lets the individual comedian off the hook, by letting them react (hopefully in a funny way) to xxxi Introduction what their partner is doing. It also forces the comedian to up their game before trying it out in front of an audience. Chances are, if a funny idea can be communicated to one other person, it can probably be made to work in front of a paying crowd. Comedy workshops There are a number of professionally led comedy courses running throughout the world. They provide an opportunity for the new comic to ‘ road test ’ or ‘ workshop ’ their ideas in a safe, supportive environment. Many famous comedians of the past 20 years have taken part in them. If you live in a major city with a handful (or more) of comedy clubs, then there is a strong likelihood that there is a course running somewhere near you. A few common-sense questions should indicate whether it ’ s a good course. Has it got a good reputation? Are other comedians recommending it? Is it run by a comedian? What is the standard of the comedians who have done the course? All these things can be checked out before the aspiring comic is persuaded to part with their hard earned cash. A good course can, week by week, give the aspiring stand-up some concrete goals to work towards: setting homework, reﬁ ning material or looking at an individual ’ s presentation skills. Just as a car mechanic needs a workshop in which to tinker with a vehicle, a new comedian may need a workshop situation in which to ﬁ ne-tune their routine. A workshop is a forum in which to experiment and to take greater risks than you might do by yourself. You could, perhaps, discover a unique performance style that no amount of working alone, or even in small groups around a kitchen table, could uncover. It also provides an opportunity for you to hone your craft in front of a large group of sympathetic strangers who are also trying to do the same thing. A good course should increase your chances of hitting the ground running when you get out there in front of paying audiences, as you ’ ve committed most of your ‘ rookie ’ mistakes in xxxii the workshops. You will also be used to performing in front of other people. Collectively, 15 or 20 people are cleverer than one individual, and the group can goad the individual to greater efforts. Fifteen or 20 people also offer a greater opportunity to network. The only possible downside to a workshop might be that it ’ s led by someone trying to impose his or her ideas of comedy on you. I would be very suspicious of a didactic teacher who said that there was only one way of doing things – their way! Before you go any further … Buy a notebook dedicated solely to your comedy. Make sure it is with you at all times! Draw up a working schedule. It is probably better to work little and often, rather being unrealistic and deciding to devote massive swathes of the day to writing. Don ’ t beat yourself up if you miss a day here or there. Don ’ t worry about being funny to begin with. Just write about what matters to you. Feel free to stop writing if it all seems a bit much like hard work. It should be fun. Don ’ t limit yourself to just words. Employ diagrams, cartoons, bullet points, lists, or advertisements ripped from magazines that you have covered with comments. It is your workbook – you are writing for yourself – not for posterity! Find out where your nearest comedy venue is and become a regular patron. Look at the skills (and mistakes!) exhibited by live acts and try not to place too much reliance on watching DVDs of your favourite comics as research. Examine your everyday actions and those around you. If something pleases you, write down why; if something annoys you, list all the reasons why. Part one Theory This page intentionally left blank 3 1. Where do jokes come from? 1 Where do jokes come from? In this chapter you will learn: • the mechanisms that lie underneath a joke • how to kick-start your own comic creativity • why your personal opinions matter most when you are writing jokes. I rather like those books where each chapter begins with a quotation. Ramsey Dukes What is laughter? It seems to be a very pleasurable activity that we all share, yet ﬁ nd very hard to analyse. It is a phenomenon not completely under our control: laughter can strike when we least desire it (giggling in church); it is hard to fake a laugh (ask an actor), but it is possible – sometimes – to suppress it. Every attempt to describe this state falls short of the truth. Calling it a ‘ semi-involuntary reﬂ ex triggered by diverse stimuli ’ , as many behavioural psychologists have, seems to be missing the point and will probably not get us invited to too many parties. It ’ s a mystery. Trying to explain laughter is a bit like trying to describe time: we all experience it, but it is very hard to put into words. Perhaps it has something to do with a loss of control in safe conditions. Think of the expressions we use to describe the phenomenon: ‘ I was on the ﬂ oor ’ ; ‘ I nearly wet myself ’ ; ‘ I was crying with laughter ’ ; ‘ I fell out of my seat ’ . They all suggest a sanctioned loss of control. 4 Laughter acts like a balm to the body and the spirit. We feel all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after a good laugh; our body pumps out endorphins and we feel more human. But we are really none the wiser in understanding the strange alchemy that goes on in our brain when someone makes us laugh. Luckily, no one expects comedians to know why we laugh; the public is only concerned whether we know how to make people laugh. Perhaps we are on safer ground if we ask where the roots of comedy lie. But to address this, we need to broaden our remit and ask ourselves what fuels the act of creation. Do we create funny ideas or do they come and ﬁ nd us? Obviously, comedians are responsible for everything that comes out of their mouths – they are the creators. But are they the conscious creators? It seems to me that most of the jokes that I make already exist ‘ out there ’ in some strange realm of ideas, and that I travel towards them. Sometimes there is an awful lot of hard work involved in getting to that place, but that ﬁ nal leap of faith – that inspiration – seems to arrive from outside myself. Creativity comes from beyond our everyday conscious selves. Indeed, our everyday selves can often get in the way of being creative. We are trained from an early age never to trust the ﬁ rst draft of anything. Instead of learning the ‘ fun ’ of language, we are taught to conjugate verbs and parse sentences. When painting we are expected to redraft the piece two or three times to make it technically better; we learn not to write how we speak, but to adopt a strange artiﬁ cial ‘ grown-up ’ way of writing, full of bombastic phrases which no real adults use outside of a news report or a House of Commons debate. It all becomes a bit dry and dusty. We are encouraged to learn by rote and disengage our creativity. If we are asked to be creative, we are encouraged to think that the 5 1. Where do jokes come from? process is hard, and to forget how much fun it was to play with ideas when we were younger. The pity of it is that creativity and craft don ’ t have to be divorced from each other. Most of us need to reconnect with our sense of play. We have to kill that little demon living on our shoulder telling us that what we ’ re doing isn ’ t good enough. Practical creative games Here are a few games that may help you start to rediscover your sense of playfulness. You ’ ll need at least one other person for some of them – certainly for the last one. The reasoning behind this is that the presence of another person will make you both try harder; also it gives you someone to react to. In all of these games, try to let yourself off the hook (they are supposed to be fun, after all) and don ’ t take charge! If you make your partner the boss and they make you the boss, then you won ’ t let your conscious self try to take control and mess it up. Having said that, most of these group games could be tweaked into a solitary exercise, with a bit of thought, and it ’ s worth reading through them anyway as they may give you helpful ideas. TV commentary (This could be done alone or with other people.) Turn down the television and supply the voices for the show. My personal favourites are old ﬁ lms and daytime makeover shows. Some people prefer soap opera or even adverts. Let your commentaries be opinionated. (Contd) 6 Problem pages (This could be done as a solitary exercise.) Read aloud to your partner(s) the letters on a problem page. Try to add the occasional sentence or word that might exaggerate or alter the problem, perhaps taking it into a completely different area. Read out the answer and feel free to alter that too. Practise being ﬂ ippant and learn to say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Be callous. Letters written into local newspapers are also quite good sources for subversion. Also, feel free to remember tried and tested group activities like charades. Anything that gets you out of your head and up on to your feet, showing how creative you actually are, is probably a good thing. Timeless classics (A solo writing game.) Write the ﬁ rst paragraph of a famous book that you haven ’ t read and have only the barest passing knowledge of. But write it as if the author was obsessed with something incredibly minor, like teeth or shoes or door handles. How will that affect the text? For instance, what would War and Peace be like if Tolstoy had been scared of heights? A liar ’ s biography (A solo writing game.) Write a biography about your glorious life and brilliant career as if you have a very weak grip on reality. For example, you may be delusional or borderline psychotic, self-serving or just a very bitter person. Be as detailed or as broad as you like. 7 1. Where do jokes come from? One-word story Two or more of you tell a story out loud, but you are each only allowed to give one word of the sentence. So if there were three people involved (A, B and C), it might look a little like this: A: I B: woke C: up A: today B: to C: ﬁ nd A: a B: frog C: on A: my B: pillow Make sure the story makes sense and that there are no jarring bits, such as one of you starting a new sentence before the old one is ﬁ nished. Turn your brain off, listen to the other person (or people) and have fun. Eventually, try to get up to conversational speed, but start off slowly. The seven ages of you Choose a subtext and then write out your entire life in seven stages. For example, as if you were fuelled by drinking habits: Cheap beer Wine (Contd) 8 Expensive wine Any wine Gin Rubbing alcohol Embalming ﬂ uid. Or if it was about the property ladder: Living with Mum and Dad Flat share with people you hate Home share with partner you love Divorce and living in a caravan Inheriting the family home Selling the family home for something more manageable A wooden box. If you prefer, try writing about the seven ages of speciﬁ c famous people or a stereotypical profession. Some modern theories of humour Many people over the years have tried to come up with a universal theory of why we ﬁ nd things funny. Many of them are fascinating, but fail at being truly universal: at best they describe one type of humour. 9 1. Where do jokes come from? With hindsight, we can recognize that these theories are embedded in their time; unduly inﬂ uenced by the prejudices and concerns of their world. All writers fall prey to this, an example being Aristotle, who committed to paper the questionable idea that ‘ women haven ’ t got souls ’ . (Do you think he wrote that after a particularly bitter break up?) This unquestioning cultural bias permeates everything, but is often only visible after the event – like costume drama ﬁ lms of the 1960s that give the heroine a beehive, or the hero a quiff. Only when viewed later do they stick out like a sore thumb. This is true with theories in comedy, which are as prone to fashion as anything else. So, having primed ourselves to be aware of cultural bias, let ’ s take a closer look. HUMOUR AS A WEAPON Charles Darwin popularized the general view that most aspects of civilized behaviour were nothing more than complicated versions of territorial behaviour common to most animals. Emotions, he suggested, were dangerous primal forces that had to be controlled by our self-made rituals. Beneath this polite, social facade lurked more ancient impulses. Rather than physically attack someone (and possibly lose the ﬁ ght), humour allowed the protagonist to symbolically kill his or her victim, or, if you prefer, to ‘ put them down ’ . When a comedian uses a heckle put-down to shut up a noisy member of the audience, they are not so much trying to win a battle of wits as to re-establish the animal hierarchy. Like any would-be alpha male or female they are saying: ‘ I ’ m in charge, listen to me! ’ Humour, Darwin says, is all about dominance and control. The victims of our jokes are suffering the suppressed fury of our killer instinct. Is his theory universal? It certainly chimes with the man who popularized Alfred Tennyson’s idea of ‘ nature red in tooth and claw ’ , but it doesn ’ t explain how, if all jokes are predatory, we can ﬁ nd ourselves laughing at the absurd, or ourselves. 10 Where is the killer instinct in the following jokes? What ’ s brown and sticky? A stick. (An ancient kid ’ s joke) I bought a box of instant water, but didn ’ t know what to add … (Steve Wright) I ’ m really worried about the state of the world, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, if things carry on the way they are … they ’ ll stay the same. (Pat Condell) HUMOUR AS A WAY OF MOCKING OTHERS The French philosopher Henri Bergson wrote an essay called ‘ Laughter ’ , detailing what he thought was the origin and impetus of humour. In it he states that what we ﬁ nd funny is ‘ … the mechanical attributes of inertia, rigidity and repetitiveness as they impinge on human affairs ’ . In other words, we laugh when we ﬁ nd other people reduced to unthinking responses, or who are on ‘ automatic pilot ’ , or whose behaviour puts them on a collision course with the world. We laugh because we see others becoming inﬂ exible. This could mean something as simple as watching someone walk into a lamp post (slapstick), but it could mean we laugh when people ’ s brains fall out of gear: we laugh at someone who can ’ t stop mentioning diets in front of a fat person and digs a deeper and deeper hole for themselves. There is a scene in an Austin Powers ﬁ lm (and also in an earlier John Hughes movie, Uncle Buck ) where the hero notices a mole on someone ’ s face and, despite his best efforts, can ’ t stop ﬁ xating on it. Another example would be when Basil Fawlty tells his staff not to mention the war to some German guests staying in his hotel, and then, when he is with them, is able to do little else. These comedians are portraying people trapped by their own mental programming and nothing their conscious mind can do will lift them out of it. That is their tragedy but, luckily for us, our comedy. 11 1. Where do jokes come from? Similarly, when people are responding automatically, without taking changing circumstances into consideration, we can ﬁ nd ourselves laughing at them and their inappropriate reaction to a situation, like the befuddled politician who ﬁ nds himself at election time kissing the hands of voters and vigorously shaking their babies, rather than the other way round. HUMOUR AS A MEANS OF REVEALING A TABOO Sigmund Freud ’ s book of 1905, Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious , takes the broad view that laughter is caused by repressed material which has not previously been allowed an airing. Freud says that often we will laugh at the shock of hearing things that haven ’ t previously been said, or more importantly, things which shouldn ’ t have been said. A joke uncovers that which is taboo. Rather like the child pointing out in the Emperor ’ s New Clothes that the monarch is naked, the comedian reveals what is under the surface, and says that which usually remains unsaid. One of Freud ’ s interests lay in ﬁ nding out why shared jokes are pleasurable and why someone would want to tell them or pass on old jokes to a new audience. What satisfaction is derived from this situation? Apart from wanting to share the ‘ eureka ’ moment of the punchline, an obvious pleasure lies in sharing some dirty little secret, especially if the joke revolves around a shared prejudice (for example, all mother-in-laws are monsters, all Scottish people are tight with money or all Essex women are stupid). This opens up an interesting dilemma for the comedian, of which more will be said later: do we give the audience what we think they want to hear? In other words, do we pander to their views? Or do we tell them what we want to say? Do we conﬁ rm their world view (and possibly their prejudices) or do we challenge them? How much of the individual comic is a crowd-pleaser and how much is he or she an artist? 12 HUMOUR AS PLAY Arthur Koestler, in The Act of Creation , suggests that the value of humour may lie in its ability to allow people to think along two different lines of thought at once. Joking becomes a game, an opportunity to exercise those mental muscles, allowing us to rehearse possible future situations. Even if the joke seems not to relate to the world, by juxtaposing two dissimilar subjects that don ’ t usually go together, the comic is playing with possibilities. Humour ’ s function, according to Koestler, is that it forces people to do what they do best: it forces them to think. Any art we create (says Koestler) will cause the audience to make new connections or see something in a new way. It is the ‘ spark ’ our brains generate in bringing these dissimilar objects together that creates the moment when we go ‘ Aha! ’ If we ’ re looking at the roof of the Sistine Chapel, it might cause a sharp intake of breath. In the case of a joke, that moment of apprehension creates laughter. Jokes are any easy way to illustrate what Koestler means. Think of the most clich é d joke in the world: A man walked into a bar and hurt his head. It was an iron bar. Once you have picked yourself up off the ﬂ oor and wiped away those tears of mirth, consider that the idea behind the joke is a verbal misunderstanding: we are led, deliberately, down one path by the teller, only to have the truth revealed at the last moment. The same is true for Henny Youngman ’ s signature line: ‘ Take my wife – PLEASE! ’ We laugh because an observation suddenly becomes a plea – punning around the two different meanings of the verb ‘ to take ’ . Children ’ s jokes show the same splitting of focus: What lies at the bottom of the sea shaking? A nervous wreck. 13 1. Where do jokes come from? What stands in a ﬁ eld and goes ‘ Ooh, ooh ’ ? A cow with no lips. We laugh because we are forced to make a mental leap to connect the two ideas. THE PLAYFUL COMEDIAN Most comedians would recognize an element of this thinking in their writing. We are there on stage to offer an escape from the everyday world. All comedians do this by playing with an audience, asking them to partake (for 20 minutes, at least) in the comedian ’ s slightly twisted take on reality. Most adults are encouraged in everyday life (and certainly at work) to behave in a serious, ‘ grown-up ’ way. This means, in general, dealing with one idea at a time; we try to be clear about what we are saying so as not to confuse our listeners. Separate ideas may be linked together, but we are at pains to point out the connections between them. The comedian, however, ﬁ nds that the rules are a little less exacting: we are encouraged (and encourage our audience) to compare and contrast different things or behaviour. We may allow ourselves to be dismissive about something that is terribly important or obsess about the inconsequential. In essence, we are allowed to play. This freedom could be viewed as a mini holiday for the audience. As a budding comic, you should embrace this opportunity: they have paid good money to watch you at a comedy club; they want to have a good time; they want to be told things they have never considered before, to be lifted out of the mundane world around them. The audience is prepared to go down any path the comedian opens up: as long as you keep them laughing, they will follow you wherever you lead them. Insight: stay playful! A playful comedian is a creative comedian. 14 What is a joke? Theories about jokes come into and go out of fashion all the time. There is, however, a model that seems to hold true for most jokes. A deﬁ nition, if you will. It is this: A joke is something that must have all the information implicit in the set-up, so that when the ‘ surprise ’ of the punchline is revealed, it all makes sense. To return to the oldest joke in the world: A man walked into a bar and hurt his head. It was an iron bar. It wouldn ’ t work if we said, ‘ A man walks into a pub ’ – we have lost the connection. The ambiguity of language, the multiple meanings of some words, hides momentarily the information we need at the end to ‘ get ’ the joke. Just before you throw this book down in disgust, thinking that all you ’ ve done is buy something that teaches you how to understand bad jokes, let me try your patience with one more example that, again, we ’ ve heard before: What lies at the bottom of the sea, shivering? A nervous wreck. Clearly, all the information is there in the set-up for us to make the connection. The wreck has to lie at the bottom of the sea, we can ’ t put it anywhere else to make the joke work. We also have to think of an adjective to denote nervousness. We could say ‘ What lies at the bottom of the sea, worrying or fretting ’ but again, it might not have the right degree of ambiguity. ‘ Shivering ’ is vague enough to hide the information. If we are British and we hear a joke involving an Englishman, an Irishman and a Scotsman, we know the joke will probably involve the Englishman being a bit priggish, the Scotsman probably being a bit mean-spirited and the Irishman getting completely the wrong 15 1. Where do jokes come from? end of the stick. Once we understand the hidden ground rules we can let the comic misunderstandings play themselves out with almost endless variation. Most working comedians don ’ t do something as bald as this when writing. The information hidden in their set-ups, which will allow the audience to ‘ get ’ the joke, is often supplied by their attitude to the material. As has been suggested earlier, the comedian writing about relationships who is hopelessly in love, is going to write totally different material about relationships from the comic going through a bitter divorce. So let ’ s take a closer look at attitude. Attitude, the comedian ’ s secret weapon HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT A SUBJECT WILL DICTATE HOW YOU MAKE IT FUNNY Any idiot can tell a joke. All it takes is good memory and a clear speaking voice. Professional comedians, these days, rarely tell jokes told in the third person ( ‘ Two men on a desert island … ’ ), and they would certainly never tell gags that they ’ ve heard before. What the professional comic tends to do is to talk about how they see things and what their attitude to it all is. It is personal to them . Do they love the subject they are talking about? Do they hate it? Does it worry them? Does it remind them of something else? In short, how do they feel about that subject? Attitude is terribly important. In many cases, it can help supply that implicit information that the audience needs to ‘ get ’ the joke. For instance, Jack Benny built his career on being stingy with money. So much so, that when he was playing a scene on his radio show in which he was being robbed, legend has it that he managed 16 to clock up the longest laugh ever recorded on radio. A mugger, pointing a gun at Benny demands ‘ Your money or your life! ’ There is a long pause. The criminal repeats it again, ‘ Look pal! I said your money or your life! ’ Benny snaps back: ‘ I ’ m thinking it over! ’ Jack Dee portrays himself as a miserable moaner. Given this, it is likely that his default position to a subject is likely to be negative (a pretty general state, admittedly) but this negativity might manifest itself in any particular joke as a much more speciﬁ c attitude; as either disappointment, or world-weariness or being self-serving. He may be thought of as a moaner (the comedian, not the man!) but he is far from being a one-note comedian; his misanthropy can inspire a myriad of attitudes. Let ’ s take a really positive state: love. How do you feel about it? You probably think it ’ s a good thing, that it gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, that it makes the world go round, and so on. But how do you really feel about the subject, when we get down and dirty to the speciﬁ cs? How do you feel if you suspect your partner loves you more than you love them? Is there a vague feeling of guilt or being put upon, tinged with love? How do you feel if you suspect you are more into your partner then they are into you? Desperate? Suspicious? Far too eager to please? Bitter? Used? Suicidal? Just how far do you, as a comedian, want to play it? As far as it takes to get to the best jokes would be the short answer. How do these different mindsets inform a comedian ’ s material? We all have an attitude to everything (if we examine ourselves closely enough) and this is what the comedian needs to exploit in order to travel towards the joke. For example, parking restrictions are a terrible thing in a city, but not if you have the correct parking permit and someone (who hasn ’ t got one) can ’ t take your bay. It all depends on your attitude. An acerbic, angry comic like Jerry Sadowitz will talk about ex-girlfriends in a totally different way from, say, the breezy, optimistic Australian comic Adam Hill. A bird spotter, like 1980s comic Johnny Immaterial, presumably wouldn ’ t describe pigeons as ‘ rats with wings ’ , as Woody Allen once did. 17 1. Where do jokes come from? EXAMPLES OF ATTITUDE AT WORK Here ’ s how a comedian might use different attitudes to explore the same subject in three different ways. In this case, let ’ s stick to the theme of love and play with the attitudes of disappointment, world-weariness and being devious. Disappointment : I ’ ve just fallen in love again … She ’ s not my ﬁ rst choice, but beggars can ’ t be choosers. World-weariness : I ’ ve just fallen in love again … I suppose it ’ ll keep me occupied for a brief while between the cradle and the grave. Devious : I ’ ve just fallen in love again … although to tell you the truth, I ’ m only going out with her so I can sleep with her best friend. By pursuing a speciﬁ c attitude, we ﬁ nd that we are halfway towards a joke. This may mean that the comedian needs to wear their heart on their sleeve a little more when they are on stage then when they are off. They need to tell the audience how they feel about things, which means, often as not, that not only must they play a more extreme attitude to the subject matter than they would in real life, they must also show us more clearly exactly how they feel about it. Their attitude must be clear to the audience, otherwise how will the audience be able to guess the intent of the comic? The message must be clear. And, unlike a badly told joke in a pub, mood matters. Insight All other art can be ambiguous: poetry can be opaque in its meaning, sculpture can be open to interpretation, but comedy must be crystal clear. If the audience doesn ’ t know where the comedian is coming from, it won ’ t get the point being made. Put simply: if they ’ re thinking, they ’ re not laughing . 18 Attitude games A letter of hate (A solo writing game.) Write a letter to someone or some institution that you really hate, congratulating them for everything they have done for you and the rest of the world. The more speciﬁ c you allow the detail to become, the more information you will have to get your teeth into. It doesn ’ t have to be about an ‘ important ’ matter (although if a government ’ s lack of action on global warming annoys you, get writing). It could be a very petty subject, like congratulating a manager for the poor service you received in their shop or restaurant, or the trafﬁ c warden for being such a stickler for detail and giving you a ticket. This game offers you the guise of pretending to praise something, when in actual fact you are sticking the knife in and twisting it. As such, it works on two creative levels: the comic is practising the valuable skill of saying one thing while revealing another and (perhaps equally importantly) we are learning to use our anger as an engine of creativity. Sometimes, if we are too angry about a subject it can be very difﬁ cult to address it in comedy terms; we just end up shouting at our audience. Or worse, we start lecturing them. But by approaching the subject from an oblique angle (praising something we dislike), we can sometimes harness that rage in a way that helps us attack the speciﬁ c thing(s) we hate about the subject. For example, I think we all probably ﬁ nd the terms ‘ collateral damage ’ and ‘ friendly ﬁ re ’ very distasteful euphemisms for killing people. They attempt to sanitize something that is quite horriﬁ c – pain, suffering and extinction. Human bodies reduced to smoking meat. But what if the writer of the letter is congratulating the politician or military spokesperson trying 19 1. Where do jokes come from? to whitewash all this death? Perhaps the writer thinks this is right because we shouldn ’ t frighten sensitive people with something as sordid as the truth. What other truths should be hidden from the sensitive public? The writer should make some suggestions. Perhaps, by logical extension, all signs of pain and suffering should be removed from the public eye? Anyone with an inﬁ rmity must be incarcerated to prevent upsetting the public. Perhaps all historical battles should be rebranded so they don ’ t sound so dangerous. The ‘ Gun Fight at the OK Corral ’ could now be called the ‘ Bun Fight at the OK Corral ’ . Much cosier. Perhaps the writer could suggest other ‘ cuddly ’ terms for death and destruction? This application of extreme forms of logic divorced from humanity can be a perfect tool for the satirical comedian to use. Think of Jonathan Swift ’ s A Modest Proposal , in which he suggests the Irish eat their own children as a solution to the growing famine. The writer can go from impotent outrage at the stupidity of others to actually addressing the issue and making an audience deal with it. Needless to say, it is a writing game that can be played again and again to unlock material. Write a letter as an extreme personality (A solo writing game.) Think about the type of person you hate the most and then write another letter as if you were that person. You could be writing as an extreme racist defending someone ’ s zero immigration policy; you could be an ultra liberal ex-hippy saying that not only should drugs should be decriminalized, but that they should be made compulsory. This is a different game from the previous hate letter because this time you are writing as a completely different (Contd) 20 character from yourself. Millions of different voices inhabit our brain through the course of our lives, even ones that seem horrible or hateful to us. They must exist somewhere inside us for us to be able to create them. In this game, you are just training yourself to listen to some of the more extreme ones. You may ﬁ nd this incredibly liberating. You may ﬁ nd that, once you have the parameters of the character clearly thought out, the material seems to be writing itself. If it does, then you may ﬁ nd yourself beginning to create a character act. If the letter seems to be stagnating or to have gone off the boil a bit, ask yourself whether you can push the extremes of the character even more or whether you are being speciﬁ c enough in your subject matter. Always hone in on your topic and always push the attitudes more. Obsessive detail (A solo writing game.) Write about a hobby you enjoy as if you were a foaming- mouthed fanatic; write about it in such detail that if you were telling people about it out loud, they would back away from you slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements. What does this extreme version of you think about people who don ’ t share this hobby? How would you as a fanatic treat them? How would your entire life revolve around this subject? How would it govern your every waking hour? Compliment/insult game (A group activity.) Sit in a circle and go round, one by one, complimenting the person to your left. All the compliments must be speciﬁ c – choose one thing about them only and don ’ t be vague. 21 1. Where do jokes come from? For example, talk about their eyes rather than general things you feel about them. Being speciﬁ c is very important! Each person complimented must say ‘ thank you ’ before they turn to the left to give their compliment. Once everyone has had a turn, go round a second time – but this time take that same piece of information used in the compliment and turn it into an insult. Again the recipient of the insult has to say ‘ thank you ’ before it ’ s their turn. Often the results of this exercise can be very funny. Perhaps because the people in the group feel let off the hook, they feel able to say whatever they want. It is understood that there is no personal animosity in this game; if there were, it wouldn ’ t be as funny. It ’ s often funny because we remember the compliment and we ’ re waiting to hear how it ’ s twisted into an insult. The players are mirroring a traditional joke structure of the set-up (the compliment) and the punchline (the insult). So the compliment ‘ You have a lovely smile ’ transforms to ‘ If I had teeth like that, love, I wouldn ’ t show them off . ’ Equally ‘ You were the ﬁ rst person in the group to say hello to me ’ becomes, in the insult round: ‘ Stop stalking me, you ’ re creeping me out! ’ It ’ s not yet a joke structure, but it is getting the recipients used to thinking more like a comic. This exercise forces the players to look at something speciﬁ c from two completely different angles: ‘ I love it ’ and ‘ I hate it. ’ The players can see, by their examples and (perhaps more importantly) by the examples of the other people in the group, how opposite attitudes can change the perspective on one simple subject. As such, this exercise is a very good indicator of what we mean by ‘ attitude ’ . (Contd) 22 Multiple answer quiz (A solo writing game.) Write your version of one of those multiple-choice quizzes that seem to be in every lifestyle magazine. But instead of the usual titles like ‘ Are you a good lover? ’ or ‘ How good are you with money? ’ , yours might be based around etiquette on public transport, or how to behave when you meet your partner ’ s parents for the ﬁ rst time, or even about political or social issues, such as how to combat global warming . Then write a list of speciﬁ c questions relating to that umbrella title that tickle you; then try and supply four wildly different and separate answers to that particular problem: (a), (b), (c) and (d). What this exercise does is supply multiple attitudinal answers to the same question, thus giving the comic a chance to play with different types of idiocy. It also gives you licence to parody the clich é s of that particular form. You may ﬁ nd that you write a very funny mock quiz to perform before a live crowd but, more likely, you will ﬁ nd that there are several observations just begging to be lifted out of the exercise and incorporated into your act. 23 1. Where do jokes come from? 5 THINGS TO REMEMBER 1 Treat all your creative work as play. 2 Always work out how you feel (or are pretending to feel) about the subject. Do you love it? Do you hate it? Does it frighten you? Does it make you feel inadequate? Are you jealous of what the subject represents? Do these different takes on a subject allow you to explore it in a deeper way? 3 Don ’ t be frightened of being extreme. Passion is everything. Pretending to hate is probably more rewarding that pretending to mildly dislike. 4 If it ’ s not clear where you are coming from, emotionally, then it will be very difﬁ cult for the audience to see where you are going with an idea. 5 A joke is something that must have all the information implicit in its set-up, so that the audience can unlock the joke when they hear the punchline. 24 2 Building a joke In this chapter you will learn: • some common themes in helping a comedian approach material • why the afterthought is essential to a joke • some joke-writing games. We ’ ve all got one ‘ funny ’ uncle who bores us to death with the same jokes every Christmas and family get-together. The big thing that separates professional comedians from amateurs is authorship. We all write our own material. We don ’ t steal, we don ’ t appropriate and we don ’ t recycle thinly disguised jokes that we have read off the internet. Previous generations of comedians may have shared gags, but we write our own. We ’ re more like singer-songwriters than a crooner who sings cover versions: Bob Dylan rather than Frank Sinatra. Of course, most modern comedians don ’ t tell ‘ jokes ’ in the traditional sense of the word. What they do is share their ideas with the audience. The comedian ‘ talks to ’ an audience, unlike the funny uncle who ‘ talks at ’ . The comic allows free rein to some of the more extreme aspects of his or her personality and hopes that this ‘ voice ’ will generate funny ideas. Almost invariably they have an attitude to their subject, and it is this attitude that generates humour. 25 2. Building a joke Extreme attitudes to speciﬁ c points can lead to humour Comedians may think something ’ s a stupid idea (for example, doing nothing about global warming) and decide to turn it on its head. An example is the Nick Revell gag in which, pretending to be a style guru, he spoke of the plus side of rising sea levels; how it would get rid of ‘ untidy ’ and ‘ unstylish ’ low-lying areas like Bangladesh or Norfolk. A comic may love something as a concept and wonder why it can ’ t be replicated in other areas of life. For example, if Mexican waves cheer up crowds why don ’ t we do them at funerals? Perhaps the subject just gets the comedian thinking. For example, when a girlfriend/boyfriend breaks up by saying ‘ It ’ s not you, it ’ s me … ’ , surely what they really mean is ‘ It is you. I ﬁ nd you boring/ whinging/psychotically deranged … ’ You could say that each of those potential jokes revolves around three different methods of approach. APPROACH 1: THE WRONG ATTITUDE FOR THE SITUATION This ﬁ rst approach is self-explanatory – we can all think of things we hate and why. If the audience agree with you, they ’ ll want to hear more. If your attitude to the subject is petty, spiteful, selﬁ sh or just wrong-headed then you ’ re probably one step nearer to getting a laugh. For example, you may tell the audience that you are against global warming – not because of the environmental impact, but because you get an irritating rash in hot weather. APPROACH 2: MISUNDERSTANDING The second example (why is it unacceptable to perform Mexican waves at funerals?) is playing with the concept of ‘ If this is such a good idea in this situation, why won ’ t it work in that situation? ’ 26 The comedian is pretending to misunderstand, for comic effect, our choices of behaviour. Right action, wrong situation. It is applying a comedian ’ s logic to a situation, such as the old joke: ‘ If black box ﬂ ight recorders always survive airplane crashes, why don ’ t they just build the whole aeroplane out of the same stuff they make the black box out of? ’ APPROACH 3: REVEALING THE HORRIBLE TRUTH … The ﬁ nal example (how your boyfriend/girlfriend might try to let you down gently) is playing with the idea of what people say and what they really mean. In effect we are blurting out the unpalatable truth, which most people would rather sugar-coat, in order to get a laugh. What each joke is really attempting to do is to say, in a funny way, that which usually remains unsaid. But the desire to say the socially unacceptable comment doesn ’ t have to be the only impetus for the comedian ’ s craft. Here are some other common underlying currents found in the comedian ’ s writing: I love it. We all love this because … (insert comedian ’ s logic). I hate it. We all hate it because … Let ’ s look at it from this angle … What if the next step was … ? Why do we do this? What we should do is … How does that work? Always ask yourself: ‘ What is the comedian ’ s answer to this particular problem? ’ The comedian is usually, on some level, trying to ﬁ nd an answer to a problem. It may not be the best answer, or the most socially responsible, but it is their answer. 27 2. Building a joke Robert Graves was once asked what he thought the point of poetry was. He answered that a poem was the poet ’ s answer to a particular problem. Rather like an oyster being irritated by a piece of grit and producing a beautiful, lustrous pearl around it; then similarly, a poet produces a beautiful web of images around their particular ‘ gritty ’ problem. It may not be the most realistic answer, but it is the answer that suits the poet ’ s purpose best. That seems to be a very good deﬁ nition of the comedian ’ s craft: we are building up a joke around a particular problem that we perceive. This is true whether that problem revolves around something simple, like a word having two different meanings, as in the old joke: ‘ I went to the butchers to buy some bacon. He said “ Lean back? ” So I leaned back. ’ Or Harry Hill ’ s word-play gag: ‘ I took my step-ladder. Not my real ladder. ’ It is also true if the problem trying to be resolved is as huge as religion. Here ’ s George Carlin on theology: Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there ’ s an invisible man – living in the sky – who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of ﬁ re and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’ til the end of time! But he loves you. George Carlin, You Are all Diseased , 1999 So always ask yourself: ‘ What is the best comic answer to this particular problem? ’ A joke, therefore, can arise out of addressing speciﬁ c problems (not vague ones – know your target!). It will often be fuelled by the comedian ’ s attitude to the subject. In Carlin ’ s example above, this is his contempt for the logic of organized religion. To put it crudely: SPECIFIC SUBJECT + ATTITUDE = COMIC ’ S SOLUTION (OR JOKE) 28 Insight You can never be too speciﬁ c when examining your subject matter. Finding the joke What we need to complete the equation is some sort of editorializing point or remark to supply the laugh. This is what supplies the punchline. In the case of comedienne Mary Bourke, the joke becomes: I never shop at Primark. I can ’ t help thinking of all those blind Korean orphans asleep over their sewing machines. A tear in every stitch. ’ Cos the tears make the leather very supple. In the case of Nick Revell the subject matter becomes: There are shocking rates of illiteracy and innumeracy in this country. Children are becoming more and more stupid. Whereas in the Far East, not only can they read and write, they can also make really good sportswear, fake Gap jeans, real Gap jeans, trainers, sportswear … They ’ re not lying around the house playing computer games and getting fat on junk food – they ’ re doing 12-hour shifts in sweatshops at the age of ﬁ ve – making something of their lives. Both comedians are being speciﬁ c and highlighting an attitude, but what generates the laugh is the afterthought that they provide. The afterthought is often the mechanism the comedian uses for generating a laugh, and it is what we shall now turn our attention to. Afterthoughts Afterthoughts are almost always the reason why we laugh at a comedian ’ s routine. If the ﬁ rst thought is the set-up, the 29 2. Building a joke afterthought can be seen as the punchline. The afterthought is the line that supplies the other half of the joke equation. Really, it is a less daunting way for the new comedian to deﬁ ne a punchline. Afterthoughts are something that most of us are trained to use in everyday life. We may use them in the workplace (managers might use them to show that they are not some inhuman tyrant); we could supply some self-deprecating comment at a party to show we aren ’ t ‘ really ’ bragging about our job or status; or we might add a silly afterthought to a comment on a ﬁ rst date to broadcast, in an unconscious way of course, what a witty and funny individual we are and how much it would be worth getting to know us better. Afterthoughts are everywhere. Any time that you are offering a qualiﬁ cation or commenting on something you or someone else has said, or any time you add a sarcastic comment to something particularly stupid that someone else has said, then you are exercising your afterthought ability. This is often precisely what a comedian is doing when they make an audience laugh. To be absolutely clear, an afterthought is a continuation of the previous thought; it is not a contradiction. So for instance, the statement ‘ We ’ ve been married 25 years now ’ can be followed up by the afterthought ‘ and it ’ s time to tell you I only did it for a bet ’ . But a straight contradiction of ‘ No we haven ’ t ’ would make no sense at all. An afterthought continues the initial thought and takes it in a different direction. If you look at the jokes quoted in this book, most of them rely on the afterthought to generate the laugh. Sometimes the afterthought can be supplied with just a look from the comic, in the form of a raised eyebrow or mugging to the audience. Sometimes the afterthought is supplied by showing a different emotion from the one the words would have us believe (like saying you are really pleased for someone else ’ s success through gritted 30 teeth and trying not to choke on the words). But an afterthought should always aim to take the audience by surprise. It is a thought that comes out of the blue, but that still has a twisted logic about it. Insight If your afterthought isn ’ t funny enough, then perhaps you need to push the attitude more. ENCOURAGE YOUR AFTERTHOUGHTS Sometimes you can add an afterthought to an afterthought. Try to encourage yourself to do this (at least when you are writing) because it is an excellent way of opening out material. If you add an afterthought to an initial thought and the audience laugh, then you have written a joke; but if you add another afterthought to that ﬁ rst one, then qualify that thought with another afterthought, before making an editorial point to that afterthought, before clarifying your thought one degree further, then you are well on your way to writing a routine. At the very least you will have given yourself a fair chance at exploring the subject matter and exploring your attitude to the subject. EXAMPLES OF AFTERTHOUGHT GAGS Deﬁ nitive statements are quite good for generating afterthoughts, as are broad general statements that require a comedian ’ s qualiﬁ cation on the subject. Here are, at random, some general ideas that comedians have played the afterthought game with over the past 20 years: I ’ ve been married ﬁ ve times … I don ’ t believe in Astrology … Ethnic minorities – they ’ re not like us! I think you should get to know someone properly when you start dating them … These deﬁ nitive statements have been qualiﬁ ed by various comedians to become: 31 2. Building a joke ‘ I ’ ve been married ﬁ ve times. Every one a success! ’ (aging lothario Ronnie Rigsby, mistaking quantity for quality) ‘ I don ’ t believe in Astrology. But then again I ’ m a Capricorn and they ’ re naturally very sceptical. ’ (Nick Revell) ‘ Dad said, “ Remember, son, those ethnic minorities – they ’ re not like us! ” I said, “ I know Dad. Some of them have jobs. ” (Steve Hall) ‘ I think a person should get to know someone and even be in love with them before you use them and degrade them. ’ (Steve Martin). So when thinking about jokes, bear the following model in mind: Speciﬁ c thought leads to unexpected afterthought . Afterthought games Listed below are some afterthought exercises. Remember the following when you try them: You are allowed to be incredibly ﬂ ippant or say the inappropriate thing, so don ’ t edit yourself. Try to get used to saying the ﬁ rst attitude that pops into your head. Don ’ t worry about being impolite or rude. For the rest of your comedy career you will be exercising, in one way or another, your ability to throw thoughts out into the void and catching whatever twisted afterthoughts you can to make a joke. Positive/negative Write down some banal, happy thoughts. For once, we don ’ t have to be speciﬁ c: general statements will do. In the case of this exercise, the blander, the better. Lines like: ‘ Aren ’ t summers lovely? ’ , ‘ The weekend ’ s coming around ’ , (Contd) 32 or ‘ The birds are singing sweetly in the tree ’ are perfect for our purposes. Then put those thoughts away in a drawer for at least a day before returning to look at them again. On this second viewing, try to add very negative afterthoughts that twist the original thought in a different area. It cannot be stressed enough that all thoughts of propriety or ‘ niceness ’ must be checked at the door. You must give yourself licence to write whatever afterthoughts you want for the purpose of this game. Remember to kill your internal social editor! For example, the previous day you might have written: ‘ I like children ’ and today you might supply the afterthought (as W.C. Fields did) ‘ but I couldn ’ t eat a whole one ’ or ‘ they ’ re much easier to beat at kick-boxing ’ . The thought ‘ I love chicken! ’ could have tagged on to it the following day ‘ that ’ s why I married one! ’ or ‘ but I prefer the taste of human ﬂ esh ’ . This is a great game for providing a workout for the brain. It trains the aspiring comedian to exercise those comedy muscles; and the more you stretch them, the stronger they will become. Eventually you won ’ t need a day away from the initial thoughts to come up with something twisted; you ’ ll be able to say something incredibly ﬂ ippant as soon as the ﬁ rst thought comes out of your mouth. Subverting proverbs Write down some old proverbs or sayings then provide an afterthought that tweaks them in a completely different direction. 33 2. Building a joke So, instead of saying ‘ Red sky at night, shepherd ’ s delight ’ , we might change it to ‘ Red sky at night, my house is on ﬁ re ’ . Or ‘ Red sky at night, World War Three has begun ’ . ‘ Too many cooks spoil the broth ’ might become ‘ Too many cooks are on TV ’ . The nice thing about this game is that all these sayings are embedded in the popular consciousness, so they have a dull familiarity that we can capitalize on, so that the ‘ rug-pull ’ surprise of your subversion will doubly delight. This game can be set up as a group game, with each comic shouting out his or her own proverb and everyone trying to top the last person ’ s particular afterthought gag. Don ’ t be shy of reincorporating earlier ideas (for example, if someone offered ‘ Red sky in the morning ’ then expect some wag to add on ‘ My house is still on ﬁ re! ’ ). Subverting memes According to Richard Dawkins, a meme is any unit of information that passes from mind to mind. It could be an irritating tune, a song lyric, an over-used phrase (for example ‘ 24/7 ’ ), a catchphrase or an advertising slogan. A lot of them sit like unwanted junk mail in your brain. If so, this exercise is your opportunity to exorcise these particular demons. It is time to do your own thinking, rather than letting the meme do the thinking for you. (And if you think that is an overstatement then ask yourself why we all feel maudlin when we hear a sad song on the radio.) Instead of the proverbs of the previous game (which, come to think of it, are cultural memes, too), you have to add twisted afterthoughts to whatever memes you are using. (Contd) 34 Let ’ s start with advertising slogans because they are easy targets. The old slogan ‘ A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play ’ can easily become, for our purposes: ‘ A Mars a day helps you work, rest and become diabetic ’ . Remember the advertising jingle of the 1970s and 80s that went: A million housewives every day Pick up a can of beans and say ‘ Beanz! Meanz! Heinz! ’ That could easily be subverted into: A million housewives every day Pick up a can of beans and say ‘ Why am I making such poor food choices for my children? ’ Of course, it doesn ’ t have to be an advert; memes crop up everywhere. Think about bad literary devices. The writer and comedienne Sheila Hyde used to have a line in her set parodying Mills and Boon styles: He wasn ’ t attractive in the conventional sense of the word. Or, indeed, in any sense of the word. Her afterthought was poking fun at a cultural meme. The clunking, conversational clich é s that add nothing to our lives are also memes and can easily be lampooned with afterthoughts: At the end of the day … the sun sets. 35 2. Building a joke So think of different categories of memes and attempt to add afterthoughts that twist or undercut them. If it makes you laugh or smile then it ’ s probably worth trying it out in front of a live audience. The eternal optimist This is almost a straight reversal of the ‘ Positive/Negative ’ game. Think of really horrible, negative statements, then try to add some sort of positive spin to the situation. So the statement ‘ The doctors have only given me six months to live ’ could be countered with ‘ Pretty cool for a mayﬂ y! ’ or ‘ Luckily I live in Doncaster, so it will seem much longer . ’ It is, for some reason, a much harder exercise than that of putting a negative spin on an initial positive thought, but it is worth persevering with. Often a lovely, silly energy can come out of the afterthoughts generated. The best of times, the worst of times Write down as many aspirations as you can think of and be sure to be quite speciﬁ c. It would not be enough to write ‘ I want to be the richest person in the world ’ ; you would need to detail how rich you would be and what you would do with that wealth. Try to be speciﬁ c! Once you have written these aspirations, return to the list and try to imagine the ﬂ ip side of that thought, the worst possible fear that you have concerning wealth or beauty or power or whatever the ﬁ rst fantasy was based on. But ensure that the two thoughts relate to each other. Remember, a joke must have all the information in the set-up so that when the punchline is revealed, the audience can make a connection. That is why the ﬁ rst thought should be speciﬁ c rather than general, so that your brain has some material to play with for the returning negative thought. (Contd) 36 Here ’ s a short version of this game: I want to have the body of Matt Damon. But I ’ m frightened that I have the body of Matt Lucas. A more surreal version might be: I want to have the body of Matt Da	451,437
Comedy FAQs and answers how the stand-up biz really works (Dave Schwensen) (Z-Library).pdf	Praise for Comedy FAQs and Answers “No one has written a more comprehensive and interesting and illuminating book on the subject of stand-up comedy than our Dave Schwensen.”—Budd Friedman, Founder of Improv Comedy Clubs “Dave’s book speaks from the heart. He’s been there, he’s done that. And now he’s giving the information for others who want to become one. This book is deﬁnitely worthwhile to read and to follow.”—Roger Paul, Comedy Agent, ICM “Dave truly understands the reality of today’s stand-up business. This should be required reading for anyone considering a career in comedy.”—Kurtis Matthews, Owner, San Francisco Comedy College Biz Really Works How the Stand-up and Answers Comedy FAQs Dave Schwensen ALLWORTH PRESS NEW YORK © 2005 Dave Schwensen All rights reserved. Copyright under Berne Copyright Convention, Universal Copyright Convention, and Pan-American Copyright Convention. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1 Published by Allworth Press An imprint of Allworth Communications, Inc. 10 East 23rd Street, New York, NY 10010 Cover design by Derek Bacchus Interior design by Sharp Designs, Inc., Lansing, MI Page composition/typography by Integra Software Services, Pvt. Ltd., Pondicherry, India ISBN: 1-58115-411-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schwensen, Dave. Comedy FAQs and answers: how the stand-up biz really works/Dave Schwensen. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1-58115-411-9 (pbk.) 1. Stand-up comedy—Vocational guidance. I. Title. PN1969.C65S37 2005 792.702'8'023—dc22 2004029553 Printed in Canada DEDICATION In memory of Edward Schwensen and Carrol Harrison: Your laughter is missed, but always remembered. Dedicated to those of you who love to laugh, and are inspired to bring that joy to others. To Debbie, Kevin, Arlys, Blake, and Brooke. To my son Paul who was ﬁrst entrusted with the secret that I was writing this book—and didn’t tell anyone! Now, if I just could get him to be as tight-lipped about my age, my weight . . . You’re the inspiration for my laughter. CONTENTS Thank You · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · ix Preface · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · xi Introduction · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · xiii 1 PRE-STAGE FAQ 1 Am I a Comedian? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 5 2 What Material Should I Use? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 8 3 Do I Gotta Write What They Wanna Hear? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 10 4 Would a Comedy Class Help Me Put Together My Act? · · · · · · 12 5 What’s the Deal with Open Mikes? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 17 6 How Do I Get to Perform at Open Mikes? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 20 7 How Would I Go about Running My Own Open Mike? · · · · · 23 8 Open Mikes: Been There, Done That. What’s the Next Step? · · · 26 9 Help! How Do I Overcome Writer’s Block? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 29 10 How Am I Gonna Memorize All These Lines? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 34 11 Should I Use a Stage Name? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 38 12 Does This Joke Make Me Look Too Old? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 41 13 What Should I Do When I’m Not Feeling Funny? · · · · · · · · · · · 42 2 ON STAGE FAQ 14 Should I Let Other Comics Inﬂuence Me? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 51 15 How Long Can I Stick to the Same Old Routine? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 56 16 What’s Expected from a Good MC? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 58 17 What Do I Do if I Am Just Not Connecting with the Audience? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 62 18 Should I Be Mr. Clean or The Dirt Devil? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 66 19 What about Pauses during Your Delivery? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 70 20 What’s the Deal about Using a Callback? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 73 21 When Are Too Many Tag Lines Too Many? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 75 22 Does a Funny Voice Make a Funny Character? · · · · · · · · · · · · · 76 23 How Much Work Is It to Work Off the Audience? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 78 24 What’s the Best Way to Handle Hecklers? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 85 25 If I Die on Stage, Will I Ever Live Again? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 89 3 OFF STAGE FAQ 26 Can I Stop People from Stealing My Jokes? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 95 27 What Am I Gonna Learn by Taping My Set? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 97 28 Should I Enter Comedy Contests? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 100 29 Does Anyone Still Believe Comedy’s a Man’s World? · · · · · · · 103 30 How Do You Get a Manager and an Agent? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 104 31 When Should I Start Promoting Myself? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 109 32 What Goes in a Promo Package? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 111 33 How Do I Get a Good Promo Tape? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 113 34 My Performance Wasn’t Perfect—Can I Still Send Out the Tape? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 117 35 Could You Give Me Some Hints about Being My Own Publicist? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 119 36 How Far Can I Go to Make It a Show? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 122 37 How Can I Be Funny, When My Life Ain’t Nothin’ to Laugh About? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 129 vi • Comedy FAQs and Answers 4 BACKSTAGE FAQ 38 Is it Professional to Get So Personal? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 137 39 Where in Cyberspace Can I Find a Resource for Comedy Clubs? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 140 40 Is an Audition a Good Place to Try New Material? · · · · · · · · · 142 41 Will Making Friends and Networking Really Help Me Book Gigs? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 146 42 Is Laughter the Best Medicine? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 148 43 I Know You Can Help Me, but How Much Are You Gonna Pay? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 150 44 How Far Do I Gotta Travel to Get Booked in My Local Club? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 154 45 Can I Get My Big Break on Local TV? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 158 46 What about Putting “Extras” on My Promo Tape? · · · · · · · · · · 161 47 Am I a Comic, an Actor, or a Comic Actor? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 163 48 How Do I Get to Letterman or Leno? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 166 49 Got Any Tips for Breaking into the College Market? · · · · · · · · 168 50 Okay, You Promised Us College Marketing 201. So, What Are NACA and APCA? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 170 51 What’s the Deal with Corporate Shows? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 178 52 What’s the Going Rate? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 181 53 Do You Think I Should Sell Stuff after My Show? · · · · · · · · · · 184 54 What if I Want to Publish My Comedy Material as a Book? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 187 55 Any Advice for Someone Who Wants to Just Write for Other Comics? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 189 56 Got Any Words for a Grand Finale? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 194 57 Help? · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 195 Cast of Characters · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 198 Index · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · 204 Contents • vii THANK YOU This book would not have been possible without the help of friends and busi- ness associates. The following list includes both. Many were an integral part of actually putting this together, while others were simply valuable inﬂuences. All deserve mention and my sincerest thank you: Budd Friedman and Fran Cowan at The Improv; my agent Joan Brandt; Ali- son Leslie and Melanie Herschorn at Maleah Leslie & Associates; Yvette Shearer at Shearer Public Relations; Rory Rosgarten; Jonathan Mooves, Joe Khoury, and Loan T. Dang; Bill Bowley and Charles Montgomery from Power Entertainment; Susan Phillips and Jerry Hamza from Carlin Productions; Maggie Houlehan at Parallel Entertainment; Kate Madigan; Mike Berkowitz and Pamela King at Rick Dorfman Entertainment; Tony Ross at Personal Publicity; Christopher Pratt and Brie at A Management Company; Roger Paul at ICM; Mario Gonzalez, Frank Kondrich, Lee Herlands, Sarah Nye, John Count, and Dave Carpenter at The Improv; Nick Kostis and John Lorince at Hilarities; June Moes, Steve Hofstetter, Lord Carrett, and Mike Sergio, (who now owes me big time for this mention). My teammates on the legendary NYC Ironmen Softball Team for leading the league in laughs: Fat Mikey, Frankie G., Mio, Carter, Billy Action, JoMama, Conrad, Murphy; team owners, Bob and Marlene; team cocktail waitresses, Sally, Cindy, and Vicky; chief of team insecurity, Led Lacy; and Brian Doyle Murray, for color commentary and getting me on Saturday Night Live. The Brothers of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity at Bowling Green State Univer- sity in Ohio for inspiration about “hecklers,” including Chuck Sprosty who would embarrass me in front of large groups of people if I didn’t mention his name. John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo. Mick and Keith. Moe, Larry, Curly, and Shemp. Dean and Jerry. Tom and Dick. All past and future members of my comedy workshops. I learned as much from you as you did from me. x • Comedy FAQs and Answers PREFACE Let’s get started. . . . The houselights go down. Except for candles on each table ﬂickering like stars in the night, the showroom itself is dark. Audience members turn their attention toward the stage where a lone microphone stands illuminated in bright spotlight. A voice over the sound system welcomes everyone to the club and prom- ises a laugh-ﬁlled evening. The ﬁrst comedian is announced, the crowd applauds, you start walking toward the stage—and you abruptly stop. “Wait a minute!” You might say, interrupting the scene I’m trying to set in your mind. “What am I supposed to do?” “What do you want to do?” I’d say. “Make people laugh,” you’d continue. “That’s what comedians do, right?” “Yeah, last time I checked. Just do that.” “What would I say? Something funny?” “That’s a good start,” I’d agree. “Try that.” Easy to do? For some it can be. For others, performing comedy takes hard work, dedication, and experience. The common ingredient is talent. The goal is to make audiences laugh. When it all comes together, a good comedian can make it look easy. This book is the result of hard work, dedication, and experience. The common ingredient is worthwhile advice. The goal is to shine a bright spotlight on your path into the comedy world and make the journey toward success a bit easier than it would be without advice. But writing this book wasn’t all work and no play. I laughed a lot writing it—it was impossible not to when talking with so many talented, funny, and successful comedians. The main ingredient of this business is humor, and you’ll ﬁnd a generous portion within these pages. All the contributors have one thing in common: I happen to be a big fan of each and every one. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be included. Many are friends I’ve known since the beginning of my career as Talent Coordinator for The Improv Comedy Clubs in both New York and Los Angeles, and for the television show A&E’s An Evening At The Improv. Others are comedians I’ve booked through my agency (Dave Schwensen Entertainment), for corporate events, college shows, or nightclubs, interviewed for my newspaper columns, or searched out speciﬁcally for advice on certain topics. Some are stars, while others may not be household names—yet—but “insiders” know who they are. I’ve also worked at various points in my career with all the behind-the-scenes members of this illustrious group. Each is a true professional with valuable experience and advice. Plus, they’re as entertaining as some comedians—and I didn’t have to pay a cover charge for the laughs! To say their advice about the inner workings of the comedy industry is worthwhile is an understatement. So, let’s get started—again. . . . “Is it really that easy?” You may ask, as the audience grows impatient wait- ing for you to take the stage. “If it was easy, then more people would be comedians,” I’d reply. “But if you work hard, dedicate yourself, and get experience . . .” “I know! I know! You said that already!” “. . . then it’s worth the effort. If you want it bad enough.” “I do,” you’d answer, moving toward the stage. “That’s a good start,” I’d say to myself, before grabbing an empty seat in the back of the showroom for a laugh-ﬁlled evening. Keep laughing!! —DAVE SCHWENSEN Note: Credits for all of my contributors are listed in the back of the book. All contributors are stand-up come- dians, except where otherwise identiﬁed. xii • Comedy FAQs and Answers INTRODUCTION To be a successful comedian, you have to be funny. That’s the bottom line and the number one goal; to make audiences laugh. Except it’s not always as easy as the good comics make it look. There are many other factors that play a huge part in achieving success in the business; by “success” I mean being hired on a regular basis to perform comedy. Creativity, being unique, and having an original point of view are tal- ents that need to be explored, sharpened, and used to develop comedy material and an individual presence. It’s also important to have on-stage experience at verbalizing these thoughts, observations, or jokes, along with a willingness to reveal and explore your personality in front of a room full of strangers. In the world of comedy, these factors are accomplished in two ways: performing and writing. Creating comedy is comparable to making music, painting a picture, or writing a book. In other words, comedy is an art and the creators are artists. Once you’re committed to doing comedy (rather than committed for doing comedy), all these above factors will come into play. You can also bet you’ll encounter a few more along your journey, especially since achieving suc- cess in any business usually includes having an understanding of the business methods. As a performer and writer, your best teacher will be experience. An audi- ence will always tell you what’s funny—and what’s not. You’ll learn to make adjustments, restructure your material and delivery, and then climb back on stage to go through the whole process again and again. Talent and determina- tion are the foundation in becoming a successful comedian. Then again, a little luck never hurts. Being in the right place at the right time is an underlying theme in many success stories. This is the “unknown fac- tor” you can’t always control, but it’s possible to put the odds in your favor. The best way is to be seen by people who can further your career. And the best way to let them know you should be seen is through funny performances and good promotion. This book will answer your questions about these topics. In fact, that’s the main purpose, answering questions. How do you start? How do you write? Where do you perform? What can you do to make your performances better? How can you be seen by people who can put the odds in your favor of becoming a suc- cessful comedian? Thanks to a background in the comedy industry and a knack for self- promotion, I’ve received quite a few letters and e-mails—from around the world—from hopeful and professional comedians asking for more details about these subjects and many others. In my comedy workshops, I’ve given out “homework” (here, that term means the opposite of what it did during our school days). In this case, I asked aspiring comics to write down their questions about the industry, and I did the work of answering them. Along the way, I’ve had the opportunity to talk and work with some of the top comedians, agents, producers, publicists, coaches, club owners, and talent bookers in the business. Since I’ll never claim to “know it all,” I’ve relied on their experiences, thoughts, opinions, and advice about the indus- try for more insight into the topics. These are people I truly respect and admire. Putting all the pieces together, the ﬁnal result is that this book includes questions from people not only thinking about getting into the business, but also many who are working and making a living at their chosen career. The answers come from experience. An avowed pack rat, I’ve saved all this correspondence. That’s probably why I’ll never fit into the corporate world, because I’d be the suspect leav- ing a long paper trail for anyone to investigate. Except in this case, there’s nothing to hide. It’s information from the comedy trenches and if it saves xiv • Comedy FAQs and Answers Introduction • xv time during your personal investigation into the comedy world, then filling up notebooks, tape recorders, and my computer hard drive has been well worth the effort. These questions and answers have been divided into four sections devoted to the various phases of developing a successful career in comedy: Pre-Stage, On Stage, Off Stage, and Backstage. We’ll cover the craft of being an artist and the methods behind the business for those of you who want to make the commitment sooner, rather than later. You’ll also hear from many comics and industry professionals who have “been there and done that.” To give you an idea of what I’m rambling about, here’s an example of a thought that undoubtedly runs through everyone’s mind early in his or her stand-up career. ‘Do I really have a chance at being successful?’ Well, it all depends. . . . FAQ What Are My Chances? Greetings Dave, Thanks so much for taking time to really watch my videotape. I have a question. This is a big one and I hesitate to ask, but do you think I have the potential to “make it?” I know there are a million variables to making it in the entertainment business and how we can all be the best if we just apply ourselves. But do you see real talent in my act? —T.D. I’m the wrong person to ask if you can “really make it.” Do you want to know why? Because I’ve worked with too many comedians who were told early in their careers that they would never make it. You just don’t know and can’t truly make that decision without really digging in and doing it for at least a few years. I don’t know how long you’ve been performing comedy, but if you can still remember the exact number of shows you’ve done, I’ll dare to say it’s not long enough to really hit your potential as a performer and writer. I was asked this same question during one of my recent workshops. We’d only just had our ﬁrst meeting in which everyone did a short comedy set, when I received a call the next day from a young woman wanting to know if I thought she had the potential to be a comedian. She was going to base her whole decision about pursuing comedy on what she had done in a workshop on the ﬁrst day—without taking time to develop her act and get experience in front of an audience. How could I, or anyone else for that matter, possibly know what direction her material would eventually take or how her perform- ances will develop as she gains experience on stage? Only the performer can make that personal decision and it can only be made after he’s tested the waters and developed his talent as far as he thinks possible. If there comes a point where the performances are not working and the comic has exhausted his creative and on-stage talents without success, then it’s probably time to start thinking about doing something else. But if comedy is in his blood and it’s a passion he can’t imagine replacing with any- thing else, there really is no choice in the matter. He keeps climbing on stage and looking for a spotlight of hope—which is also known as the light at the end of the tunnel. Great comics do it because they have to and sometimes success comes from that passion. Other comics have different reasons, including the desire to be rich and famous. These can also be powerful incentives, but those per- formers probably have a better chance of achieving their goals by working hard at their craft instead of daydreaming about dollar signs and television deals. You need to make a decision. Are you willing to work hard, sacriﬁce, and dedicate yourself to this career? Do you want it bad enough that this is not even a decision at all? If so, then the question about “making it” will be answered in its own due time—by you. Richard Jeni Everybody sucks in the beginning. I mean, it took about two years to become . . . effective. You know? I don’t mean good, I mean effective. To the point where you can be reasonably sure the audience wouldn’t totally hate you. It took about ﬁve years to get pretty good. And that’s only pretty good. It’s really hard. I’ve never seen anybody that’s really that good in comedy who hasn’t been doing it at least ﬁve years. It takes a really long time. You have to learn how to write material as well as perform it. You have to really get both of those things down. xvi • Comedy FAQs and Answers 1 Part One PRE-STAGE 1 PRE-STAGE FAQ 1 Am I a Comedian? I was down at the library a couple years ago and a book about comedy reached out and smacked me right in the face. That’s when the idea of stand-up ﬁrst occurred to me. I know you don’t know me, but right now I am going through a lot in my life. After years of working at a factory, the company shut it down. I’m on the verge of losing my house and everything I own. My mother is old and can’t remember hardly anything and I’m the only one to take care of her. I believe if it wasn’t for stand-up in my life right now, I would go insane. —D.L. You’ve made a very profound statement not only about what’s going on in your life, but also offered deep insight into why many creative and driven individu- als have a need to perform stand-up comedy. For some, it’s not a choice. It could be as complicated as self-therapy, or a way to relieve stress that doesn’t involve lawyer fees, court dates, or an alibi. For others, stand-up comedy is purely a way of expressing themselves and being heard. Of course, we can’t discount the excitement of making people laugh or the high that comes from performing and being in the spotlight. There’s no one reason that’s right for everyone. They all work, it just depends on which ones work for you. Being successful at comedy is not easy. If it was, everyone would do it for any of the above reasons and others I haven’t even mentioned. Then again, life in general is hardly easy, as you’ve pointed out. Sometimes just looking for- ward to a laugh—given or received—is enough to keep pushing us into this crazy business. It’s difﬁcult when you’re starting out in comedy. You either know this already or will soon ﬁnd out. The comics who continue to follow their career path and learn something every step along the way have the best chance of making their dreams of success come true. Wait a minute, did I just say “chance?” Possibly the wrong word. . . . Yes, chance and luck often come into play, but the comics who have experience, knowledge of the business, dedication, and drive can steer them- selves into a position to make things happen. Where it all leads, no one can predict. But then again, no one ever ﬁnds out unless they try. You have a lot of factors that could prevent you from becoming a comedian. Throw in an ex-wife, a dog, and a pick-up truck, and you could be a country music superstar. But obviously, that’s not where your heart is. Everyone going into comedy can ﬁnd reasons why they shouldn’t. If you can’t think of reasons yourself, then I suggest mentioning this topic during a conversation with your parents, teachers, spouses, employers, co-workers, friends, or just about anyone else who might not share the same dream. Believe me, you’ll discover there are no shortages of reasons that can work against you. Except the bottom line is no one can make that choice for you. Especially in the beginning of your journey, because you’ll probably have to make that same decision everyday: ‘Am I a comedian or not? ’ Are you? I don’t know. You don’t know either, unless you try. There are many personal and business factors you’ll have to think about seriously, along with unforeseen problems that will need to be solved. If you’re not sure com- edy is your destined career, then have a backup plan. If there’s no choice in the matter and you’re driven to succeed, then reduce the element of chance and work hard toward gaining enough experience and knowledge to put yourself in a position to make things happen. By the way, I’m very pleased a book on comedy jumped off the bookshelf and struck you in the face. The one you’re currently reading is meant to hit you with the intensity of a sucker punch that will knock you into the next phase of your no-choice career: comedy. 6 • Comedy FAQs and Answers Margaret Cho I was an opening act for, like, eight years. Then I middled for two weeks and then I was a headliner. So I never really got to enjoy the idea of just working as a comic because it was a struggle, then it was kind of fun for a while, and then it was another struggle. So, I’ve always had a hard time, I think. And I was desperate to make a living. I did every job imaginable just to stay devoted. I kept getting ﬁred because I’d get comedy gigs and do those instead of a regular job. So I understand that striving. I think if anything, that just makes you funnier because it makes you really needing and wanting it more and trying it more. Pre-Stage • 7 Here’s A Start • Job Requirements. From the moment you decide to be a comedian, you take on a number of different jobs. You’re a performer, director, manager, agent, and publicist. Except there wouldn’t be work for any of these positions unless you ﬁrst become a writer. This job has one requirement: create material that makes audiences laugh. How do you do that? Making it funny is a good idea. . . . • Say Something Funny. Anyone can talk about any subject and bore people to tears, but a great comedian can talk about anything and make people laugh. Find what’s humorous about what you want to say—real or imagined—and use it when writing your comedy material. Remem- ber, if you say something and make it funny, you’re a comedian. If you say something and it’s not funny, you’re not yet a comedian. If you’re not sure where you ﬁt in, you might want to think about hosting a game show or going into politics (which are not that much different from each other anyway). But here’s something to consider—why did you think it was funny enough to say on a comedy stage in the ﬁrst place? Under- stand why, learn how to convey it to an audience—and that’s saying something funny. • Open Mike. Yeah, you’ll ﬁnd out about this real quick. . . . Basically, any club that will let a performer with little or no experience get on stage to entertain an audience. Understand that you don’t do comedy as a hobby. You do it because you have to. You do it because there’s nothing else in your life that you’d rather do. It’s a strange compulsion and it’s an obsession. It’s an addiction. You just have to. And I think it’s an insult for comedy for someone to come in and say, ‘Oh, I just want to do comedy part- time.’ I mean it’s okay to come in and see if you want to do it, or whatever. If you’re curious about it. But to be a stand-up comic, it takes everything. FAQ 2 What Material Should I Use? I’m just starting comedy and pondering my last two performances. I wanted to ask you about material. I don’t write jokes. I go on stage and talk about whatever’s on my mind. I’ve always been like that and have always been able to make it funny. I did a set two weeks ago and everybody laughed. My next set, nobody laughed. To me, that’s a red ﬂag that it wasn’t working. Should I just stick to doing the same material (that worked), over and over? I’m afraid I’ll get bored, which is why I enjoy the concept of doing different sets based on whatever’s on my mind at that moment. I’m starting to feel like I want to scrap everything (especially after this last show), and just try something else—perhaps actually writing a joke (what a concept!). Any opinions? —M.C. I made a pot of coffee this morning. This is not something I do every day, but enough that I don’t ﬁnd it a very exciting activity. If I haven’t had enough sleep (one incentive to drink coffee), or I’m distracted (like the time our dog made a meal out of my television remote control), I might make a mistake and add the wrong amount of coffee or water. Sometimes I’ll get lucky and enjoy a new caffeine experience. Other times I’ll have to pour the concoction down the sink and try to salvage what’s left of the morning by making another pot with my usual amounts to get a better taste. Making coffee—uh, excuse me—making comedy . . . is a matter of taste. Sometimes it’s good to know what ingredients on which you can depend to get the desired results. Then again, trying something new is never boring and if you’re lucky, you could enjoy a new comedy experience. Doing the same routine night after night can be boring—if you let it. Making up a completely new act every performance could be enough of a comedy jolt to make caffeine obsolete; unless it’s going down the drain 8 • Comedy FAQs and Answers and taking you with it. The perfect mix might be a little of each, but it all depends on your personal taste. Some comics enjoy familiarity. Others enjoy living dangerously. You can pick one or the other—or a combination of both. It’s your choice. Whatever you decide, whether it’s writing material to use for every show or creating it on stage, one of the keys to success is picking topics that are most interesting to you. It could be insane one-line gags or characters that show-off your warped sense of humor, lengthy monologues about your life or something in the news that caught your attention. If you’re working off the audience, someone’s shirt might catch your eye or what they’re drinking, whom they’re sitting with, or even why they’re laughing so hard (or why they’re not!). Your performance will have much more of an impact on an audience if you are interested in what you are saying. If you’re writing material only because you think the audience will like it, but you don’t particularly ﬁnd it interesting, it won’t work as well. I see this in my comedy workshops quite often. A comedian will get on stage and talk about something that is essentially mean- ingless to her. But within the set she’ll hit on a subject she is really interested in and you can see the difference in her eyes, facial expressions, gestures, and delivery. I call this the “coming alive” moment and the goal is to have the entire performance “alive.” In other words, the topics really don’t matter to an audience as long as they’re laughing. But comedians need to pick ones they think are funny and personally interesting. If the performer buys into it, there’s a good chance the audience will too. It takes talent to write good comedy material. It also takes talent to walk on stage and improvise a new act every night. Which is the right choice for you? I won’t even make a guess because only your personal experience can answer that question. Of course I do have an opinion since I ﬁnd the topic interesting. . . . Don’t be fooled into thinking your favorite late-night television host writes a new monologue for every show. That’s why staff writers earn a weekly paycheck. If you have proven material that gets laughter from an audience, don’t hesitate to use it again and again; especially if your pay- check depends on that result. Chances are good your audience will be dif- ferent for every show. They will never have heard your material before, so Pre-Stage • 9 remember why you thought it was interesting and funny in the first place— then share it with them for the first time. If you’re improvising and the audience is laughing, you’re a success. If you can do it at every show, you’re also very talented. But if you’re distracted for any reason (when’s the last time you saw your dog and the remote control?), you’ll have to rely on your talent to get you through, or have proven material ready to salvage the set. I’ve heard many of the best improvisers use the same descriptive term for audience members at different shows. When they’ve needed it, it was there for them. Now the choice is up to you. The beauty is that you can change your mind every day. If it’s the wrong mix, dump it down the sink and brew up another one. Charles Fleischer I used to do an act—kind of like everybody, although it wasn’t like everybody because it was my own version of everybody. And before I went into my material, I would kind of work the crowd a little bit. Then one night, I think it was in Indianapolis, I realized that I had the light to get off and I hadn’t gotten to any material yet. And then it was just a slow process of developing that into a structure that I use now. It took years, of course, to develop to what it is. I think I’ve always found it to be the most exciting way to work. I mean I still . . . Like when I recorded my CD, for instance, that was an A to Z set. You know, worked on and crafted so the bits blended into each other and that’s fun doing that as well. But there’s something about going out and doing real-time stuff that creates a dangerous atti- tude that is picked up by the audience. And they realize that there’s a danger to it and it just makes things a little more exciting. Because they know it’s happening in real-time. FAQ 3 Do I Gotta Write What They Wanna Hear? When writing comedy material, I planned to focus on just the things I want to talk about. But in the last few days, I’ve actually been trying to write stuff that I didn’t really want to do. Mainly it was things that I felt obligated to do from outside inﬂu- ences who keep telling me what I should or shouldn’t put in my act. I ﬁnd myself just wanting to say, ‘Hey! Who’s on stage? ME!’ I’m sure they all mean well. —J.S. There are two ways to look at this situation. Taking on the role of an optimist, I’m assuming you’ve impressed everyone with your talent and they now think 10 • Comedy FAQs and Answers of you as a comedian. Suggestions are meant to further your career, similar to successful comics who are “pitched” jokes by comedy writers. On the other hand, if you wanted to play pessimist . . . Try to keep a positive attitude: These “others” are not suggesting you get out of the business! Obviously, their motive is meant to keep you going. Almost everyone will have an opinion about what you do on stage, and it’s important not to shut yourself off from that. If you’re not getting laughs from an audience, then other opinions should be considered that could lead to changes made in your act. If they are laughing, your “collaborators” are show- ing a supportive opinion about what you’re doing. We’ll talk later on about comics “writing” while on stage, but it’s a method where the comic uses audience suggestions and opinions about certain topics to inﬂuence the direction of his act. The general idea is to continue working with whatever it is that gets laughs and mold it into a ﬁnished piece of per- formance material. Of course, the comic must also have his own thoughts and opinions about what is being said. After all, he will make the ﬁnal decision on whether it becomes part of the act or discarded. The bottom line is having something you want to say with your own personal sense of humor and delivery—even if the idea comes from someone else. It’s true you’re the one on stage and will ultimately have to answer to the audience reaction. But that’s what good comedians do, including those who employ writers—they’re still performing material that personally works for them. Admittedly, even an optimist wouldn’t say I’ve written anything resem- bling a comedy routine with this answer. But the message should be clear because I’m saying what I want to say—even though you gave me the original thought. Ray Romano I talk about my life. I don’t do topical or political material. I talk about whatever happens. I talk about the kids. What you see in my (live) show is basically me, but it’s stand-up so it’s a little more uncen- sored. But you know me, I’m pretty clean. I talk about what any married guy would talk about. And if it’s sex, it’s the lack of it. That’s all it is. Pre-Stage • 11 A lot of people who come to the live shows know me as the guy on the sitcom. Some of them don’t even know that I do stand-up. They start to think . . . ‘Wow! ’ I didn’t realize that until I did a gig in Mississippi. When you’re in Los Angeles, nobody pays attention no matter who you are. When I went to Mississippi, then I real- ized, ‘God, people think . . . Hey, we’re fooling people! They think I’m somebody! ’ In Mississippi, it’s either me, or the clay-shooting champion. FAQ 4 Would a Comedy Class Help Me Put Together My Act? I would like a little more insight on putting together a comedy act. I don’t have any kind of set prepared, so I’ve thought about taking a comedy class. If I decide to do this, would I need to have a routine ready or would a comedy class be a bare-bones activity? —A.G. Many comedy clubs and performing arts schools offer comedy workshops on a regular basis that fit the “bare bones” description—even when it’s not Halloween. (Sorry, but I couldn’t help “boning” up on a little humor myself.) A good way to find out where and when workshops are offered is to call clubs in your area, look in the entertainment sections of local newspapers, or search the Internet under “comedy” or “stand-up comedy.” The term “comedy class” is often used, but for someone with a creative mind (a valuable asset in the laughter biz), the image could stir up memo- ries of a formal education where instructors taught proven facts. You know the drill: listen to the teacher, learn the exact formulas, and you’ll pass. For students who like to color outside the lines, these scholastic restrictions might have actually taught them to start looking at comedy as a viable career option. It’s difﬁcult to believe anyone can actually “teach” comedy, because it’s a per- sonal and artistic expression based on talent and developed through experience in front of an audience. There is no proven formula for writing a joke if you want to be creative, unique, and successful in this business. You’d have more luck trick- or-treating for jokes on Halloween than following someone else’s technique on a comedy stage; unless you don’t mind going to the party wearing the same costume as the funny guy who arrived earlier and got all the candy. There are no guaranteed outlines for writing jokes, even though there are plenty of books and comedy teachers who claim to have the secret formula. 12 • Comedy FAQs and Answers A successful comic may have his own technique or “hook” to rely on when writing material, but the reason it works for him and not for everyone else is because he’s an individual. There’s no one else who looks at, thinks about, or talks about everything exactly the same way he does. You, as a comedian, are as unique as anyone else. And to stand out in stand-up, you must develop your own comedy voice. Even the best writers and performers can’t always predict how an audience will respond to untried or formulated material. Comedy acts, television and movie scripts, comic skits, and improvisational games can be written, borrowed, rewritten, rehearsed, and filmed before being presented, but production companies, investors, and performers can tell you they never know for sure if it works until the audience starts laughing. If you need more proof, keep track of all the sitcoms premiered each television season that have “proven” stars, writers, or producers. At the end of the year, how many are still on the air? With the huge amounts of money that can be made or lost, you can bet the creative minds behind each show made their best effort to predict what an audience would laugh at. But even these experts can be wrong, which is why the television graveyard is littered with canceled sitcoms. The term “comedy workshop” carries a different meaning, which also serves as a guideline in what to look for if you decide not to enter the comedy world alone. These types of sessions should be productive meetings with a variety of people developing their individual comedy ideas and styles, while also offering helpful insight to others. Comedy can’t be taught, but it can be inﬂuenced, brought out, and guided in a way that gives performers focus and direction. A new comedian might only need assurance that what he’s writ- ing is already funny. Other times an outside opinion can ﬁnd humor in material the performer wasn’t aware of or ever considered presenting on a comedy stage. Similar to performing live in a comedy club, the audience reaction in a workshop is instantaneous. But along with the laughs (or dreaded silence), you get positive feedback and, if you didn’t get any laughs, you’ll get educated guesses as to why you didn’t. In this setting, it’s important the suggestions are also constructive and geared toward the type of material the comic is working on. If your intention is to perform a G-rated act, any suggestions for X-rated punch lines won’t be helpful in reaching your goal. Pre-Stage • 13 The person running the workshop should have the experience to guide you in the right direction and help mold your individual style so it has a better chance to work on a comedy stage. His opinion should carry a lot of weight, but he shouldn’t pretend to have all the answers or the ﬁnal say on what you “must” do. Members of the workshop can also offer thoughts, punch lines, bits, and other ideas based on what they see and hear. This will lead to discovering a unique and productive way for the comic to write, and inﬂuence how the material could be handled on stage. Performance techniques such as delivery, pauses, callbacks, destroying hecklers, and even how to handle a microphone can be valuable advice for new comedians. This often helps give the performer confidence, a more professional stage presentation, and insight into the comedy world. But the best “teacher” will always be the audience, and one way to prepare for an audience can be through the supportive environment of a good workshop. After locating a workshop near you (or a few dozen if you live in New York City or Los Angeles), talk with the person running it. Ask what is offered and if it’s geared for someone starting out in the business. You might run across work- shops for comedians who already have stage experience that might include how a certain club wants MCs to host their shows or the business aspects of promot- ing a career. These are topics serious performers will eventually learn through trial and error, by getting generous advice from comics they work with, or by attending workshops in the style of a lecture with questions, answers, and examples of promotional material, contracts, and other information about the business. It’s much easier to ﬁnd a workshop aimed for beginners. But before you choose one, ﬁnd out how many people will be involved, keeping in mind, the smaller the better. In my experience, workshops limiting the amount of partic- ipants means the person running it plans on giving everyone individual atten- tion. As I’ve mentioned, comedy is a very personal craft and each comic needs to keep his own sense of humor while developing a personal writing technique and performing style. It’s important for the organizer to give his attention to everyone on an individual basis. In other words, he shouldn’t bite off more than he can chew. This also has to do with the amount of time the class meets. You can’t give ten people as much attention in two hours as you can in four. 14 • Comedy FAQs and Answers On a personal note, I took a comedy class and a comedy workshop in New York City before deciding to get into this business. Both were completely different experiences, with one being much more valuable than the other. The class left me feeling as if the school only wanted my money. There were approximately twenty people in a ten-week course that met two hours each week. This didn’t leave us with a lot of individual performing time, because each of us was required to do a short act at every session. We met in a classroom, not a comedy club, and took turns standing in front of the group reciting a three-minute routine without a microphone or any interruptions. When we ﬁnished, the “teacher,” while never getting out of his chair to make a point or demonstrate any thoughts about our delivery, would be the only person to make a few comments about the material before quickly moving on to his next victim. The sad part was that he didn’t even bother to learn our names, which was very evident in the class and also when he ran into any of us venturing into a comedy club. The workshop setting was a much better experience. The group was limited to ten people and had a waiting list, which is always a good indication the person in charge wasn’t packing in as many people as possible to make more money. We met at a comedy club and had use of a stage and micro- phone; the workshop instructor helped us work on our material without ever actually writing it for us. He wasn’t shy about telling us what was and wasn’t funny, asking the other participants for suggestions, or getting on stage and demonstrating how a different delivery could make the act better. After each meeting he expected us to use our talent and ability to improve the act before doing it again the next week. We only met a few productive times before being introduced to our real “teacher,” a paying audience, which happened when we walked on stage to do our three-minute sets. Throw in the fact that the workshop instructor also knew our names, and it was enough to get me hooked. If you don’t have a comedy act, a good workshop will help you start the process of developing one. But here’s a little bit of advice: Most people getting into comedy have already imagined being on stage and talking about . . . well, something. I doubt I’m going out on a limb by thinking you already have ideas. Start early by putting these thoughts together before going to the ﬁrst meeting of a workshop. Whether it’s only a few ideas jotted down in a note- book, a funny conversation, personal experience, or any humorous opinions Pre-Stage • 15 you want to discuss. Pick a topic from all that information and be prepared to talk about it in front of the group. This will put you ahead of the game, rather than starting from scratch. This advice is based on a technique used in many workshops when some- one claims he doesn’t have any material. When he’s coaxed into talking about what interests him, more often than not something funny will come out. He may not realize it, but the others in the group will when they hear it. Even if the laughs aren’t there yet, an outside observer (with that important creative mind) can usually help in ﬁnding some potential for humor within the sub- ject. This is always a good starting point to help new performers develop a comedy routine. One thing I say too much in my workshops is that we’re not performing brain surgery. It’s comedy and basically meant to be funny and entertaining. If the material is insightful or enlightening (George Carlin), that’s a plus. If it’s just about nothing except being funny, (the sitcom Seinfeld, which was the writers’ admission, not mine), that’s just as good! Also keep in mind you’ll never meet a successful comedian who claims the ﬁrst thing he ever did on a comedy stage was his best performance ever. Quite often, material offered at the ﬁrst meeting of a workshop is eventually rewritten or never done again as you continue to grow as both a writer and performer. A good comic will always be searching for new material and ways to improve his on-stage delivery. Writing and performing a comedy act is an individual process and a good workshop is meant to be a launching pad to get your act onto a comedy stage where it belongs. Eddie Brill (Comedian Talent Coordinator for Late Show with David Letterman) I would make sure the person [running the workshop] was patient, compassionate, and really cared about teaching. That’s the main thing about a workshop. If a workshop is to work, it has to be a situation where everyone is learning and teaching together. You know, when I do a workshop, I’m not the only teacher. Everyone in the class is a teacher, as well. So I recommend it, but you have to be very careful. There are a lot of workshops and comedy classes out there that are run by incompetent peo- ple and they give you very bad advice. They’re really out to only make the money. And there are some pretty big ones out there, especially in New York where it’s all about money and nothing else. And although that’s what life is about, it’s not the thing you want to get out of a workshop. 16 • Comedy FAQs and Answers Experience counts. Also the ability to be a good teacher. There are a lot of people who are very talented, but cannot teach. They’re not compassion- ate with people. They don’t have patience. The important thing is for the work- shop to be very honest and egoless. Because the only way you’ll ever learn is by getting the truth—and the truth isn’t always pretty. But you must be willing to leave your ego at the door and learn. And your teacher must be willing to learn, as well. FAQ 5 What’s the Deal with Open Mikes? I performed at my first open mike last night and don’t know what to make of the experience. I was pretty nervous, but had written some jokes and decided it was time to do this. There were ten other comics and four regular customers sitting at the bar. By the time I did my set, all but two of the comics had already performed and left. I did my five minutes and the other comics told me it wasn’t bad for someone doing it for the first time. I didn’t think the manager had been listening at all, so I was surprised that he said I could come back again—which made me feel pretty good. But the people at the bar talked the whole time and were more interested in the television. It wasn’t the big rush like I expected and I wasn’t that nervous because nobody seemed to pay much attention to me. Is this typical? —J.B. Welcome to the entrance ramp for the road to comedy success. Hopefully, your journey through “The Wonderful World of Open Mikes” won’t be too long, but expect some bumps, potholes, construction, detours, tolls, and unpredictable traveling companions along the way. There are no posted speed limits, but also no shortcuts that I know of. The idea is to try and maintain control, be observant, and learn from your success and failures, while always keeping your destination within sight. Open-mike clubs (or open-mike rooms, as they’re known in “the biz”) can be described in two ways: undergraduate classroom or a necessary evil. Pre-Stage • 17 Either way, they’re important venues where comedians can lay the ground- work for a future career in comedy or a return to their regular lives in “the real world.” Typically, an open mike will not pay performers. In fact, when you ﬁgure in your personal time, traveling expenses, and whatever food or beverage you purchase with the hope of impressing a club manager,booker, or bartender, it’ll cost you to perform. Consider it tuition, or if you’re allowed to run a food and beverage bill to be paid later, a college loan. Each open mike is different, just like an audience. Some can be plush nightclubs with a large crowd (usually enticed by a happy hour or free food), which are excellent places to try material and gain on-stage experi- ence. Others might be dingy bars with patrons (if there are any), calling for you to “keep it down” so they can hear the television. In between these bookend examples is where you’ll spend most of your time as a beginning comic. And if you look at open mikes for what they’re meant to be, it should be time well spent. The reasons behind going to open mikes are simple. It’s where you’ll put together an act and make it presentable (funny) for future audiences. You’ll try new ideas, throw out bad ones, and generally learn how to write and perform. It’s possible to create funny material and perform it in front of a mirror in your apartment or for your friends, but it’s a different “Wonderful World” standing in front of a spotlight and talking into a microphone for a group of people who expect to be entertained. This is hands-on experience and like any job or internship, there’s no way to get better at it than by rolling up your sleeves and getting to work. It’s important to use any performance opportunity to your advantage. When there’s an audience, learn what it takes to make them laugh. If there are only a few other comics listening, make them laugh (believe me, they’ll be your toughest audience). If no one is paying attention or you’re playing to one drunk passed out at the bar (typical 4 AM set, learned from personal experience), consider it a practice session and a chance to say your act out loud. Because they represent a starting point, open-mike rooms give comedians no where else to go but up if they’re intent on using their talent, dedication, and desire to get better. Make every performance a learning experience. With time, you’ll eventually get off this bumpy road and into real comedy clubs where the adventure truly starts. 18 • Comedy FAQs and Answers Did You Hear The One About . . . ? • Bringer Shows. Sometimes owners of open-mike rooms aren’t con- cerned about how funny the comedians are. They’re more worried about having an audience so the club stays in business. One way of generating ﬁnances is to require each performer to bring a certain num- ber of paying customers if they want to get on stage that night. Though it’s a major complaint for many comics and a measure of loyal support by family and friends who are asked again and again to help ﬁll the requirement, it’s an early lesson in the true meaning of show business. • Cattle Call. Did I mention that a lot of people attempt comedy for a lot of different reasons? Of course it’s a passion for some, therapy for others, or a hobby for the adventurous looking for more excite- ment than a crocheting class. Actors may view comedy as a chance for Hollywood exposure, novices as a fast track to riches and fame, or unemployed accountants as a career alternative. Comedy attracts all types, and chances are you’ll see them all at open mikes, auditions, and venues where the only requirement needed to perform is to just show up. This term traditionally refers to the acting and dancing side of the entertainment industry when an “open call” would attract hundreds, even thousands of hopefuls to a single audition. Gazing at the long lines and crowded waiting areas, you can almost imagine a cowboy appearing through a dusty sunset to open the gates and herd everyone in. No doubt it’ll be a long night. • Bumped. Imagine it’s the seventh game of the World Series. Tie score and the home team is batting in the ninth inning, with two out and nobody on base. Suddenly the hitter connects and the historic ball is ﬂying toward the center ﬁeld bleachers where you just happen to be seated. As you jump up to catch the home run that will put you in every highlight ﬁlm for years to come, a bigger guy knocks you out of the way and makes the grab. Your excuse is that you were “bumped.” This is similar to how it works in the comedy world. You have a scheduled time to perform, but someone with a bigger name shows up unannounced, and the club manager puts him on stage instead of you. The manager’s excuse? “You’ve been bumped.” 19 Mark Curry My experience with open-mike clubs was “crash and kill.” You know? Whenever I got up there, I tried to kill the club. If it was a minute, two minutes, three minutes—I would try to kill them as long as possible. If I saw the light come on, I always acted like I didn’t see it. And the club owner would never mind, as long as they were laughing. I was in Oakland and it was rough. I started doing rap concerts, before I started doing comedy clubs. They wouldn’t let me in the clubs. I started doing, you know, 15–20,000 people at rap shows before I even went to a club. It was open-mikes to rap concerts and then clubs. There really were no open mikes. The open mikes were where you created them. And open mike was literally, where you took a microphone and you opened it up! No matter where the hell it was. It could be at a club, it could be at a barbeque. It didn’t make no difference where it was. It was just an “open mike.” It was a mike and you picked it up and you did your thing. It didn’t have to be a club, it could be anywhere. You couldn’t get into the big clubs. It was impossible. So wherever you could, you know, whether it be a little dinky club that had a band . . . Wherever there was a mike, I picked it up. Wherever there were people. FAQ 6 How Do I Get to Perform at Open Mikes? Do I need to know someone with a connection, like the owner or another comic? Would I just show up and say I want to perform? I’ve never done comedy before, but I’ve written some jokes and practiced in front of my friends. I think it’s time for me to do this. How long do they let you perform? —C.S. Getting on stage at an open mike is easier than getting a taxi in New York City during rush hour, passing through airport security with a metal plate in your head, or asking your friends to pay a cover charge to see you perform a set they’ve already paid to see at least a dozen times before. Then again, it’s also a little more difﬁcult than just walking into a club, grabbing the microphone, and launching into your full-length one-person show. Finding opportunities on stage as a new comedian can often be time- consuming and sometimes disappointing. Locating open mikes where you can perform is only the ﬁrst step. After that you must follow the club’s policy for a performance spot. 20 • Comedy FAQs and Answers The best situation is when you can conﬁrm a date in advance by phone. But as the new kid on the block there’s no guarantee you won’t get “bumped” if the local open-mike star wanders in unannounced—especially if he’s a friend of the person in charge. In many cases where a comedian is running the show, “a friend” can be someone who also has an open mike, and they trade stage time at their clubs. Does this give you an idea? Good. Don’t lose that thought because we’ll come back to it in a few moments. . . . Other open mikes can make you feel like the subject of Dumb and Dumber. The management will schedule a certain time (say, noon on Mondays), when they’ll take a select number of phone calls from comics who can sign up to perform. Did you ever try to win free concert tickets by being the tenth caller to a radio station? This is pretty much the same thing. You call at the designated time and keep hitting the redial button hoping to be one of the lucky winners. If it’s a popular club, keep a sandwich nearby because it might be a long process. If you get through, go out and buy a lottery ticket because it’s your lucky day. Then again, if it’s your phone that’s ringing off the hook at the designated hour . . . Well, hang onto that thought also. The comedy lottery can also be a long shot, but it’s actually a very fair method of choosing who gets the coveted open mike and audition spots in the more popular clubs. When I managed The Original Improv in New York City, we scheduled auditions for the ﬁrst Sunday of every month. Since most come- dians in the area dreamed of performing on the famous stage, it was not uncommon for the line of hopefuls waiting for their chance to stretch to the end of the block on West Forty-Fourth Street and around the corner along Ninth Avenue. The doors to The Improv would open at 5:00 PM and everyone would cram in or stand outside by the windows to hear the selection policy. As each comic entered, they would sign a notebook with their name and phone num- ber, then wait to be called in groups of ﬁve. The nerve-racking process would continue as they were led to a roped-off area where I was holding a cham- pagne bucket ﬁlled with small pieces of folded paper. If one hundred comics were there (which was not uncommon), the bucket would hold eighty-ﬁve blank pieces, while the remaining ones would be numbered one through ﬁfteen. Since only ﬁfteen three-minute audition spots were available during Pre-Stage • 21 that night’s show, eighty-ﬁve people would leave disappointed and have to wait until the next month’s audition. As my dad always said about the lottery, “You can’t win unless you play.” The same optimism also can hold true in the comedy lottery. But if you’re consistently out of luck, the signed notebook can be your winning ticket. If The Improv had written proof a comedian had signed-up to audi- tion six months in a row without getting on stage, he’d be rewarded with a spot that night. Nothing’s ever fair in love and war, but comedy can some- times have a soft heart. Some open mikes practice the show business technique known as the cat- tle call. Again, there is a designated time to sign-up for a performance spot, but you must be at the club, in person, to take advantage of it. The management may only take the ﬁrst ten comics in line, which means you should take a portable chair and reading material, and plan to get there early if it’s a pop- ular club. If you arrive and see you’re number eleven, set your alarm clock earlier for the next opportunity and try again. When the hours of the show permit, there are open mikes that will give everyone who attends a performance spot. This can be done on a ﬁrst-come, ﬁrst- serve basis, or as a lottery with estimated performance times picked at random. I’ve been to clubs in New York that will start the show at 7 P.M. and run until 4 A.M. with a continuous stream of comics. The comics would arrive at 6 P.M. to pick a time and often ﬁnd themselves either going home, to a movie, taking a nap, or performing at another open mike before returning to do their spot. As far as the time limit for your ﬁrst performances, expect to be on stage for three to ﬁve minutes. If you get laughs from the audience and management decides you deserve extra time on stage, they’ll let you know by inviting you back for another show. Eventually you could be offered much longer sets, but remember, it’s a gradual process as you build conﬁdence in your material and performance ability. Now, if you still have the thoughts I asked you to hang onto earlier, we’ll get to those in a moment. But ﬁrst . . . Brett Butler A lot’s changed since I began comedy over twenty years ago: venues, media, and nearly every aspect of the business. What hasn’t changed is that people will always want to see a good comedian. In terms of getting stage time, I recommend getting 22 • Comedy FAQs and Answers a good set of blinders. It’s none of my business who else goes on where, how much they get, or who comes in ﬁrst in contests. If I focus on material, delivery, and, most important, that real “voice” that’s only mine, the rest seems to sort itself out. Of course we don’t get into this business by being the most balanced of individuals and it’s only natural to com- pare art, acts, progress, and accolades with other comedians. I have never regretted keeping my eyes on “my own paper.” My favorite comedians do the same thing. We know a secret: It all works out the way it’s supposed to. But you have to be as old as me to ﬁnally realize it. FAQ 7 How Would I Go about Running My Own Open Mike? I’m thinking about starting my own open-mike room because it would give me a regular place to work on my act. There’s a bar near me that might go for this and it wouldn’t be a problem getting other comics. How do I go about setting this up? What kind of equipment would I need and how would I advertise this? Would I pay the owner to let me do this or would he pay me? Any advice would be appreciated. —M.M. I knew earlier there’d be a reason to drop hints even Austin Powers couldn’t miss . . . If you’re looking for a part-time job with salary paid in stage time, running your own open mike is not a bad idea. The beneﬁts don’t include medical (for the headaches), company car (to get you there), or paid vacations (when you just need a night off), but if you’re determined to have regular stage experi- ence to get your comedy career off the ground, this is a good way to break into the business. The best scenario for running an open mike is to ﬁnd a nightclub or bar with a built-in audience starved for entertainment. The owner should already have a stage with lights, sound system, and be eager to hang a sign in the Pre-Stage • 23 window saying “Open Mike Tonight,” which would, of course, be a magnet for funny acts, hungry to perform. Your job would be to decide who performs and when, while getting your ﬁll of stage time. Unfortunately, that’s not very likely to happen. In reality, you’ll have to convince a club owner who is hungry for customers to try an open-mike night—with you handling all the details. At least you won’t have to worry about ﬁlling out tax forms at the end of the year, since your proﬁt will most likely be the time you spend on stage. And if the club owner is looking for you to foot any part of the bill, keep searching until you ﬁnd one a little more hungry. The bottom line is that a club owner will not do anything that will lose money. He may give a new concept a trial run with the hope it pays off in the future, but economics will have the ﬁnal say. Therefore, your ﬁrst step is to con- vince him that an open mike will bring in more customers who will spend more money in his establishment. Once you’ve accomplished this, start working with what the club already has available, what the owner is willing to provide, or what you need to sup- ply. If the club is already equipped with a stage, lights, and microphone with a sound system, you’re halfway there. If not, you’ll have to start from scratch. To work, a performance space has to look like a performance space. If there’s not a stage, either build a small one or designate an area in the room where the acts can perform. This location should be the main focus in the club during the shows and visible to as many customers as possible. If you’re familiar with more traditional comedy clubs, you’ll notice that the ﬁrst row of tables and chairs are usually placed near the stage. Think of the old Vaudeville routine when an audience member in the front row is resting his foot on the stage: Performer: “Are you in show business?” Audience member: “No.” Performer: “Then get your foot off the stage!” The rest of the seating is arranged as tight as city ﬁre codes will allow. The reasons for tight seating arrangement are simple: One reason is that laughter is contagious. It’s much easier to laugh out loud as part of a group, which is beneficial for both the audience and performers. 24 • Comedy FAQs and Answers Also, many comedians don’t enjoy performing for an audience that is seated too far away. Their close proximity to the stage makes the shows more intimate, personal, and gives the comics an opportunity to “get-in-their-faces,” if that happens to be their style. Do your best to arrange the room in this manner, and the audience will have a clue they’re at a show and not just hang- ing around in a nightclub. Stage lighting is another way to keep everyone’s focus on the performers. From personal experience, this can be done inexpensively and effectively—and is worth the effort. Since I doubt we’re talking about lighting up Yankee Stadium or the Hollywood Bowl, don’t be too concerned about having high-tech lights. Many discount and appliance stores carry small spotlights or lamps that are hung over workbenches or used when tooling under cars. They have a clip-on feature and can be attached to poles or hung onto whatever is available so the light will shine on the area where it’s needed. Buy one or two of these and aim them toward the stage. When it’s showtime, just plug them in and you’ll be the spot- light of attention. A sound system is basically a microphone with a stand and an ampliﬁer with a speaker. For my ﬁrst open mike, I bought a very small guitar ampliﬁer that was not even two feet high or wide. Used, it cost less than $100. We placed it in front of the microphone to avoid “feedback” (a musical technique that allows guitar players to feel like Jimi Hendrix) and turned up the volume. Nobody in the room missed a word. After setting up a usable performance space in the club, you can just sit back and wait for audiences to ﬂock in for your open mike shows—correct? If you think so, you need to wake up because you’re dreaming about that best-case scenario again. . . . The next move is to turn yourself into a publicist. It’s important to let potential customers know you’re running a show they have to see. If the club owner will agree to pay for advertising, whether it’s in the local newspapers or radio, start writing promotional copy. You should also check if any newspapers carry free listings for entertainment and get the information—where, when, and cost of admission—to them at least one to two weeks before the show. (Word of advice: check with the listings’ editor for deadlines and don’t be late.) Flyers also are a simple and effective tool when advertising your shows. Anyone with basic computer skills can type out a one-page promotional ﬂyer and make copies. Pass them out to friends, co-workers, acquaintances, and Pre-Stage • 25 anyone you think might be interested in a comedy show. If your open mike is in a high-pedestrian area, stand outside and hand them to people walking by. If you’re into delegating, ask a few comedians to take on that assignment in exchange for stage time. When it comes to advertising, use your imagination and have fun—as you continue to work hard. When you get an audience, the best promotion is to give them a great show. Good word-of-mouth could result in a regular clientele, a happy club owner and an experienced comic—you! Jackie “The Joke Man” Martling I was in a three-piece band called The Off-Hour Rockers. We told dirty jokes and played our own songs. We were very wild and funny, but there was no place for us to go. At one point, the other two guys said, “Jackie, we’re leaving the band.” Now, I’m no rocket scientist, but if there’s three guys in the band and two of them leave, that’s kicking me out of the band! I started toying around with comedy after I ran into some stand-ups at a gig we were all working together. I just started hanging around with them and they used to come down when I was playing solo nights in clubs. Guys like Eddie Murphy and Bob Nelson. They’d come over to get stage time where I was playing and we’d work together whenever we could. You know, we’d make ﬁve dollars a night, ten dollars a night . . . whatever. Since I had been a guitar player in bands, I had an ampliﬁer, speakers, and a microphone with a stand. So, bingo—I was a producer. I put on shows and would charge the club owner, pay the comics, and host the shows or do a spot at the end. FAQ 8 Open Mikes: Been There, Done That. What’s the Next Step? I’m really getting frustrated with open mikes, but know I need more experience before auditioning at real comedy clubs. I can’t keep asking my friends to go as paid audience members (so I can get on stage), because they’ve seen me too many times already. There’s a couple I can go to every week, but the only audience they ever get are other comics waiting to go on. I’m not getting ahead in this business and it’s start- ing to get to me. Any ideas? —A.K. Here’s my impression of an annoying infomercial pitchman. You know the type of guy I’m talking about—the high-energy salesman offering you, “A proven 26 • Comedy FAQs and Answers method that could change your life. It’s so simple that you’ll be frustrated you didn’t think of it ﬁrst. It’ll kick-start your career, save your friends from uncon- sciously memorizing your act, and give you experience real comedy clubs are looking for!” Are you interested? Then read the following in an announcer’s loud and fast voice: Don’t touch that dial! We’ll be right back after an important message from our sponsor. Are you tired of bringer shows? Tired of arriving early only to get a late performance spot? Are you fed-up with rely- ing on sheer luck to get on stage? Even if you’re running an open mike one or two nights a week, are you frustrated that you are not perform- ing on a more regular basis? Then check out our new feature, Other Open Mike Options! 1. Find out what organizations or clubs in your area are doing events or beneﬁts. Then volunteer to be the host—free of charge! There’s a reason why professional speakers use humor in their presentations. It keeps the audience attentive and entertained at the same time. Your sense of humor can make introductions, announcements, and award ceremonies from becoming boring, without cutting into a budget usually aimed for food and beverages. Better still, as a marketing tool, tell them you’ll donate your standard fee for whatever it is they’re organized to do. Even if your actual fee is less than a bag of potato chips, make up a ﬁgure and tell them to keep it. You may even get listed as a contributor! 2. Everybody wants to be a star, which is the basic idea behind karaoke— the imported Japanese art of removing a professional singer’s voice from a popular song and allowing anyone who can’t tune an air-guitar to sing the lead. Sign up for karaoke performance spot and when it’s your turn, ask to do a few minutes of stand-up instead. The patrons might appreciate the break from the evening’s assault on their eardrums and depending on the next singer’s choice of songs, you could walk out saying you opened for Cher or The Village People. 3. Takin’ It to the Streets. Street corner comedy is not uncommon in New York City, the beaches near Los Angeles, or in almost any city with a lot Pre-Stage • 27 of pedestrian trafﬁc. It’s good advice to ﬁnd out if a permit is needed to perform, but otherwise the only requirements are a desire to get better and to acquire nerves of steel. Get a few other like-minded and brave comics to rotate sets and launch into a show. You’ll soon have an audience, more comedy experience, and if anyone has a knack for ﬁnances and remembers to pass a hat, possibly enough money to inspire a second show. 4. This is pure genius, but unfortunately I can’t take credit for it. When confronted with a bringer show and an exhausted list of friends and relatives, New York comedian Chris Murphy printed ﬂyers advertising the evening’s open-mike show. He stood outside the club and handed them to people walking by until the magic number he needed had paid admis- sion and were seated inside. He gave the leftover ﬂyers to another comedian in the same situation, then walked on stage and performed for his “brought” audience. Chris Murphy I call it guerilla warfare. You know, Viet Cong kinda comedy. A lot of times if you’re inexperienced, people aren’t going to come see you. But if you’re handing out ﬂyers you have a guaranteed audience, which is something you can’t do on your own because you don’t draw. You don’t have a “name” yet. It works in New York especially, because there are so many funny comics. Why would someone hire you when there are comics better than you? What can you do for them? Well, you need to bring in a crowd. If you can’t bring in a crowd with your name, you can make a name for yourself with the club owners by hand- ing out flyers. It’s kind of a cool thing to do, but I didn’t make it up. They were doing it at The Boston Comedy Club in New York City. Then I took it and went to a club we started. That’s how we got a lot of people in there. I handed out flyers for a year and a half. Once I passed my audition at The Improv, I spoke to the manager of The Boston Comedy Club and asked if I could start doing Mondays there without handing out flyers. I made my bones at Boston and doing open mikes, then used the experience to pass at The Improv. Then I used the fact that I played Boston and The Improv to pass at The New York Comedy Club. Suddenly, I was a regular at three clubs. But 28 • Comedy FAQs and Answers it was the reputation of The Improv and the stage time I got from handing out flyers that got me into those places. In order to pass at a major club, you have to have others think you’re funny ﬁrst— before the owner will make a move on you. No one likes to risk the ﬁrst move by saying someone is funny. It has to come from a bunch of people, preferably from come- dians who are funny and respected. And the best way to get around bringer shows is other comics’ recommendations. Best way to get their recommendation is to be funny. Best way to be funny is to go on wherever people let you! Comics stopped handing out flyers for a long time and now all of a sudden, the kids are doing it again. But make sure the people in the book know I haven’t done this since 1990. I don’t want them to think I’m a hundred years old and handing out flyers! Al Martin (owner, numerous comedy clubs) Find a way to make yourself as useful as possible to the club. Are you a printer? Are you a carpenter? Are you an electrician or a plumber? Any one of those skills that can be helpful to a club could be used to barter for stage time. I have not, in all the years I’ve been in comedy, been able to ﬁnd a plumber. I’ve had electricians up the ying-yang. I’ve had carpenters, dentists, lawyers . . . I’ve had every kind of stuff done, except it’s hard to ﬁnd a plumber. FAQ 9 Help! How Do I Overcome Writer’s Block? I’ve been having writer’s block lately and ﬁnding it really hard to come up with any material. When I do have an idea, I can only take it so far and then I lose the humor. I want to make comedy work for me, because it’s the best high I’ve ever had (and I did some major pot in my younger days). —S.B. What writer’s block? Your last line seems to have comedy potential, even for audiences who can actually remember their younger days or think “munchies” are characters in a video game. It’s just too bad I can’t think of anything else to write about the subject . . . Not!! You must realize that once you decide to become a comedian, you are writing material from that moment on. This is an on-going process, which should be happening all the time. Everything you do, say, think, hear, and see has the potential of becoming comedy material. The sources are endless Pre-Stage • 29 and include conversations, observations, television, the Internet, newspapers, magazines—just about anything that gets your attention. The opportunity to ﬁnd comedy is all around you and it’s important to “tune in.” Successful comedians know how to think funny. The conﬁdent ones (and that’s not a bad trait for success) can dig into almost any topic in an attempt to ﬁnd some humor in it. Even if the end result isn’t funny, it can still be an exercise in writing. I read an interview with the late George Harrison in which he was asked about writing songs. He explained that he would “doodle” on the guitar, then out of nowhere would come a song. It’s the same with comedy. If you look for the “funny” and keep notes of your thoughts, eventually you’ll have enough ideas to “doodle” with and possibly develop into solid material. It probably won’t all be good, but with a little work it shouldn’t all be bad either. It takes patience, dedication, and having the right frame of mind. Examine your daily life; family, job, hobbies, what you watch on television or even what got you into comedy in the ﬁrst place. What are your thoughts about what’s going on in the world? It can be almost anything. Then look for the humor—your humor—within it. Why did you think it was funny enough to share with an audience in the ﬁrst place? For example, let’s say you have a great premise for a joke or a bit. You may have seen something potentially funny on a trip to the mall, such as a guy following his wife while holding all her shopping bags. Since you’re tuned in to your humor radar, make notes on why you thought it was funny (his expres- sion, the amount of bags, the way he walked, etc.), and take time to think about it. What actually happened or what do you imagine could have hap- pened? Were you or someone you know ever in a similar situation? Is there someone else in the mall you could compare him to? Was there anything in the news about the differences between men and women, carrying heavy loads, shopping tips, the beneﬁts or stress of spending time together as a cou- ple? How would you immediately describe this situation to someone else in a funny way? Use all these real and imagined premises and start adding your opinions and humor. Because you’re now a comedy writer and need to work at it to improve your craft, set a goal each day to create a few different endings for the bit or add new ideas and descriptions. If the material seems to be coming together, then continue polishing it. If not, put it away and work on something else. If you come back to the bit because it seems to still have potential, it could 30 • Comedy FAQs and Answers be worth putting in more effort. If it doesn’t, consider it writing practice and dedicate the same effort to another topic. If nothing else, you might come up with a good bit on how hard it is to write material about guys carrying pack- ages in a mall. Since I can’t overemphasize that comedians have an individual voice, presence, or character on stage, perhaps you’re the type of person who can separate himself from you—the performer. If that’s the case, then write for that person. What would you want that particular performer to talk about? If you’re a sympathetic person on stage, come at it from that angle. If you’re a hard hitter with a sarcastic edge, drop a verbal nuclear bomb on the sub- ject. I know this is getting a whole out-of-body theme going (in fact, I could use some munchies right now), but look at your favorite comedian or musi- cian. If you were going to see them, what subjects would you expect them to talk about or what type of songs would you want to hear? Consider who you are on stage and look for material that would fit that out-of-body thought pattern. I’d also like to point out that I practice what I preach. I personally under- stand the worries about writer’s block and coming up with material because I’ve been there myself and have learned how to work through it. By tuning in to my personal thoughts, observations, and humor, I’ve been able to write an 800-word newspaper humor column every week for a number of years. It can sometimes be tough coming up with topics and meeting a deadline, but I’ve learned to relax and think about newsworthy events or what I had personally seen, heard, or experienced during the week. There are many false starts while trying to get something on paper, but once I get an idea it becomes a matter of dedicating the time and effort to see where it leads. If it doesn’t work, I go through the process again. Sooner or later, with the correct mind-set, I’ll find something funny to keep myself (and hopefully readers), interested enough so I’m still employed to do it all over again the next week. Richard Jeni I found that everybody has a peak creative time of the day. I researched it and found out that mine is between 5:00 and 5:02 every morning. So what I do is set my alarm for 5:00 and I write down the ﬁrst thing that comes into my mind. As a result, I have a lot of jokes that begin, “God, I really have to pee. . . .” So it’s not a foolproof method, but it helps me to keep coming up with stuff. Pre-Stage • 31 What’s That Mean? • Tune In. A comedian’s mind is like a computer hard drive. To develop more comedy material while on stage or to even comment on what might be happening in the showroom during a performance, that hard drive must be turned on. In other words, the comic must listen, watch, and pay attention to his thoughts and surroundings. Tune in, turn on . . . but be funny. • Premise. An idea for a joke, bit, or comedy monologue. It’s another term for the proverbial light bulb ﬂashing on over a comic’s head when they think to themselves, “Hey, that’s funny!” • A Bit. A segment, piece, or chunk of a comedy routine. Length and subject doesn’t matter. If a comedian is going to talk about his car, it could be a one-liner or his entire set for that night. When he gets off stage, he can say, “I did my car bit.” • Rifﬁng. Having a topic and verbally developing it into a comedy bit by using whatever thoughts it generates in your mind at that moment. To use musical terms, it’s a jam session in your head and you’re trying to come up with a piece everyone can follow. You hope something worthwhile comes out (in comedy terms, it’s called “funny”), and the technique relies on your natural talent to create comedy on the spot. • A Hook. A ﬁsherman has one at the end of his line when he’s trying to catch a ﬁsh. A comedian can have verbal lines or physical traits within his comedy routine that will catch an audience’s attention and keep it. The individual possibilities are endless, as long as it ﬁts the comedian’s image or material. For example, he could be known as “only the husband” or “the guy with the pet dinosaur.” He may regu- larly claim to “know it all” or “I know nothing about it, but this is how I see it.” The audience will become familiar with the performer’s style and if they like it, he’ll reel them in for laughs and return engage- ments. The most famous “hook” award goes to Jeff Foxworthy for, “You might be a redneck . . .” But for another one that’s running “neck-to-neck” in the popularity polls. . . . 32 Bill Engvall I’ve been doing “Here’s Your Sign” for years. I used to say that stupid people should be slapped. But one day my wife said, “You know, that’s kinda harsh.” So one night in a club, I believe it was in Omaha of all places, I kinda started dickin’ around with it and came up with this “sign” bit. And it hooked in. In fact, I used to sell those little signs for a dollar apiece—or two for ﬁve bucks—and it would just say, “I’m stupid.” And people would buy ’em. I’d sell out of them. I mean, it was amazing. I’d say somebody would do something stupid and you’d slap them, and go POW! But when I started to do the sign, I turned it into saying, “If they had to wear these signs, then you wouldn’t rely on them. You wouldn’t ask them, you’d see them. Then when they did something, you’d just go, ‘Here’s your sign.’” And that was it. That was what caught everybody’s attention. When we were putting (my ﬁrst) album together, we were trying to decide on a title. My manager said, “Why don’t you just call it ‘Here’s Your Sign.’” And I was like, “Yeah. All right.” I was trying to come up with something really cool and all of a sud- den, you know, here it was right in front of me. Sometimes you need that person there to . . . It’s like the old saying, “You don’t see the forest for the trees.” Because I was so into it, but . . . didn’t . . . And God, who knew? Man, who knew “Here’s Your Sign” was gonna . . . That one put me over the top. Brian Regan I try not to be too easily defined. If I start hearing comments like, “Oh, you’re the guy who always feels stupid,” or something like that, then I start writing away from that. I guess some people spend their whole career trying to find a hook. I try to find a way to get out of being involved with a hook. I want to be able to talk about anything and everything. I don’t want to be tied down to some easily identifiable type of comedian. I try to explore all different kinds of things, so it’s fun. Obviously, other comedians have gotten huge beneﬁts from going that route. So I don’t have any negative comments about it. I just prefer not to do that. Pre-Stage • 33 But this topic fascinates me because there’s a whole other thing going on. You see it especially with the comics out in Los Angeles. Everyone is being encouraged to write “an act” that is driven around a character that can easily be put into a sitcom. Either as the main character or as a peripheral character, and I just have absolutely refused to follow suit. I’ve had advice from people over the last ten years going, “You know, you gotta have ‘an act,’ so when the network executives come and watch it, they’ll go, ‘Oh, I get it! I can see that as a show.’” And it’s like, I refuse. I refuse! Because I love the art of stand-up too much to be doing it purely as a vehicle to make things easier for network executives. I love being a stand-up. I think it’s an art form. And it might sound self-serving, because now I’m, in a way, suggesting I’m an artist, but I think it is an art form. And I think we comedians should be able to explore what we want to explore on stage. And to see all these comedians doing what are clearly these little characters that can be put into sitcoms just . . . I don’t know. I’m not a fan of that. FAQ 10 How Am I Gonna Memorize All These Lines? Any ideas or tips for memorizing material? I’ve gotten into just rereading the things I’ve written over and over, but would like your comments. —J.W. After rereading your question a few times, I felt conﬁdent I could go outside and repeat it to my neighbor. Well, maybe not exactly, but I could get the point across. It really shouldn’t matter what order the words come out, as long as my neighbor understands what I’m saying. If I have his attention and get the desired reaction, the message has been delivered. Memorizing an act is often a safety net for new comedians. There’s nothing wrong with knowing your material word for word in an exact order if it helps builds enough conﬁdence to get you on stage. The key to this technique is not having it sound memorized. A great delivery can even give an old joke new life, so practice hard at making your material sound spontaneous (like you’re making it up on the spot), and conversational. Unless you’re cut from the “no fear” mold of comics who would only consider using a safety net as a prop rather than to stop a fall (think Carrot Top), everyone can be different when it comes to preparing their act for the stage. Some will memorize it and do the routine exactly the same way every time. 34 • Comedy FAQs and Answers Others will let it ﬂow around a mental outline of topics, a knowledge of where the jokes or descriptions need to be delivered within the set, or based on how they feel at that particular moment. The important thing is to make your comic points during the set and not let it sound as if you’re repeating a memo- rized script. Since there are always exceptions to any rule, one might be if a key ele- ment in your delivery is the humor that comes from performing a memorized routine. An example would be a commercial parody where the comic is lampooning a familiar radio or television advertisement. He could use an announcer’s voice and the exact wording each time to give it the necessary comic punch: I eat cat food every day because it’s not only good for me, but it keeps my hair shiny and manageable. Try Jim’s Cat Food. It’s purr-fect. For a while, it seemed too many acts were writing song parodies based on “The Brady Bunch Theme Song.” To make it work, they had to sing the famil- iar tune with new lyrics ﬁtting the exact musical beat: “Here’s a story, about a man named Brady . . .” might become, “I eat cat food, ’cuz it makes me purr-fect . . .” Admittedly, I’m no Weird Al when it comes to song parodies, but the humor is based on the comical lyrics ﬁtting the melody. And even though some comics can’t carry a tune (which can be funny in itself), the song would be performed the exact same way each time because the pre-written words make it work. In a case like this, you would have to keep practicing until you had it mem- orized. Think of how many times you heard “The Brady Bunch Theme Song” before knowing all the words, and you can estimate how long it might take you to recite your bit from memory. If you have a difficult time memorizing or doing your routine without it sounding memorized, try going on stage with only an outline for the act in your head. You can even write the key words in a notebook and take it on stage with you for a reference. Acknowledge to the audience that you have a “cheat sheet,” or whatever you prefer to call it so they don’t look at you as Pre-Stage • 35 a total amateur (it’s part of “being aware” of what goes on in the room), and look at it only when you need to. I’ve seen Jay Leno take a notebook on stage at the Los Angeles Improv because he wanted to work on new mono- logue jokes. He never actually read an entire bit off it, but glanced at key words in case his performance went off into a different direction, and he wanted to get back to what he had planned to talk about. The important thing is to be comfortable knowing where the laughs or punch lines should be and don’t forget to deliver them. Know the basic joke, or point of the line or story you want to make. Then get there as you would if you were telling it to a group of friends at a party. That’s an example used quite often in my workshops. If someone is struggling to remember his material exactly as he had written it or appears nervous, I remind him that a comedy club is supposed to be a fun place. People are there to laugh and if you mess up, so what? If you’re good- natured about it and are having fun yourself, the audience will pick up on that feeling and hopefully follow along. Your mistakes could turn into very funny moments and possibly lead the material in a direction you hadn’t thought of before. There was a comic in one of my workshops who would simply go ballistic on stage during our sessions when he couldn’t remember his material word for word. Each time he messed up, he would either throw himself on the ﬂoor, pound the wall in frustration, or throw up his hands and declare he was a screw up who will never get it right. It was an example of his true emotions and since he never actually hurt himself, the tirades were hysterically funny to all of us who were watching. We urged him (begged might be a better word), to keep these honest feelings in his act. It gave his delivery a raw, spontaneous feeling that made him unpredictable, edgy, and in the moment. The energy level brought a new life to his written material and his body language was both powerful and almost slapstick. It made him a real presence on the stage. The problem was that he didn’t believe us. He saw his forgetfulness as a roadblock to success and wanted to make his routine as perfect as possible. After some constant begging from the rest of us, he ﬁnally agreed to let his true emotions out if—and only if—he made a mistake. It wouldn’t be staged or done on purpose, but if something went wrong he would let the audience know how he honestly felt. 36 • Comedy FAQs and Answers The night of our show, I talked to the workshop members and gave each a little pep talk and reminders about certain elements of their set. When I got to our friend who had kept us laughing with his fits of frustration, I told him that I hoped he would mess up and not remember parts of his act. The result was one of the evening’s highlights. He started out perfect, for- got his next bit, and threw himself in a mini-rage across a bar stool that was on the stage. At ﬁrst the audience was shocked (which is a reaction many come- dians want), then laughed loudly as he honestly vented his frustrations while continuing to work within his memorized material. It was a wall-pounding, ﬂoor-hitting performance that was both unique and funny. Another way to look at it is to think of the club and audience as a big party. When you’re on stage, it’s your time to be the host and everyone will want to pay attention to your conversation. You have something very interest- ing to tell them, and then do your show as if you wanted to get laughs during a conversation with your party guests. Don’t concern yourself too much with memorization. Good comics con- stantly change their material and delivery, often depending on what will get the audience laughing harder during that particular show. Always record your act and listen to where the audience laughs and where they don’t. You’ll probably want to keep the material that worked relatively the same, but make changes to whatever bits might have brought you only blank stares and dead air. When you perform it over and over, you’ll ﬁnd the same laugh lines will be there because you’ll want that reaction every time. Keep in mind where the funny remarks, lines—or whatever it was that stirred your comic interests in the ﬁrst place—would ﬁt in, and deliver them at that time. How you get there is not important as long as the humor comes through and the laughter is heard. Now, go outside and repeat to your neighbor everything that was just mentioned. If you don’t remember it exactly, just do your best to get the point across. If that fails, try singing “The Brady Bunch Theme Song.” I’m sure you’ll get a reaction. Greg Proops Obviously, stage time is the most important thing. I work it out more on stage. But the “greats,” I think, do it more off stage. George Carlin, for instance, will work off stage. He memorizes it before he gets there. Pre-Stage • 37 An English comic, Rob Newman, once said to me, “I think rote is a great way to learn.” And it’s true. If you repeat it a thousand times you’ll know it. And then you’ll have the freedom to go off of it, add to it, and edit it. I do a lot of that on stage and try to develop it over the course of performing it a bunch of times. I’ll go in with an outline on some things, and some things I want to be real speciﬁc about the wording I use, because I tend to use a lot of adjectives and run-on compound sentences. So it’s important for me to get the words right. I memorize it over a pattern and then I loosely change things as the mood suits me or the audience. If I get inspired, I’ll change something. You know, I have a joke about Jessica Simpson. “She’s a tsunami of stupid. She’s a tidal wave of stupid. She’s a roller coaster of stupid. She’s Six Flags Over Stupid . . .” And it can change each night, the order of it, but there are a couple that are critical to get in the right way. But I don’t think there’s any substitute for as much stage time as possible. FAQ 11 Should I Use a Stage Name? I took your workshop last year. I was the bitchy redhead, if that helps. I would like to start using a different name when I perform—and I guess that would be a stage name. It’s not going to be anything crazy, but I would just like to change my last name. When and how do I do this? Should I use the name I want when send- ing out videos and photos? Should I introduce myself that way to club owners? Do I have to do something legally in order to use it? Any advice you could	454,581
Comedy Writing Workbook (Gene Perret) (Z-Library).pdf	• " • ' ' — • • ' — — - • • • • » Comedy Writing Workbook GENE PERRET PLAYERS PRESS, Inc. P.O. Box 1132 Studio City, CA 91614-0132 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK ISBN 0-88734-647-2 Library of Congress Catalog Number: 94-20150 © Copyright, 1994,1990, by Gene Perret ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored In a retrieval system, or transmitted In any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the Publishers. PLAYERS PRESS, Inc. P.O. Box 11232 Studio City CA 91614-0132 U.S.A. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perret, Gene. Comedy writing workbook / Gene Perret. p. cm. Originally published: New York : Sterling Pub. Co., 1990. Includes index. ISBN 0-88734-647-2 I. Title. PN6149.A88P46 1994 94-20150 808.7-dc20 CIP Simultaneously Published U.S.A., U.K., Australia, Canada Printed In the U.S.A. CONTENTS BEFORE YOU BEGIN 6 CHAPTER 1: WORKING WITH JOKES 9 Workout 1A "My Collection of Favorite Jokes" Workout IB "My Collection of Favorite Quotes" Workout 1C "My Collection of My Favorite's Favorites" Workout ID "My Collection of Favorite Cartoons" CHAPTER 2: WORKING WITH WORDS 23 Workout 2A 'A Rose by Any Other Name" Workout 2B "Mrs. Malaprop's Affliction" Workout 2C "The Dictionary Must Be Wrong" Workout 2D "So You Wanna Be Noah Webster" Workout 2E "Fun With Puns" Workout 2F "One Person's Idiom Is Another Person's Straight-Line" CHAPTER 3: WORKING WITH CAPTIONS 35 Workout 3A "A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Punchlines" Workout 3B "Pen and Ink Patter" Workout 3C "Inanimate Playhouse" Workout 3D "Caption Your Own" CHAPTER 4: WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS 42 Workout 4A "That Goes With This" Workout 4B "This Doesn't Go With That" Workout 4C "That Makes Absolutely No Sense at All" Workout 4D "What Can You Say About So-and-So?" CHAPTER 5: WORKING WITH IMAGERY 50 Workout 5A "Say It With Pictures" Workout 5B "Say It With Funny Pictures" Workout 5C "The Bobsled Man's Bottom" Workout 5D "Say It By Not Saying It" CHAPTER 6: WORKING WITH ALTERNATE MEANINGS 57 Workout 6A "But It Could Also Mean" Workout 6B "How Do I Get to Carnegie Hall?" Workout 6C "101 Tom Swifties" CHAPTER 7: WORKING WITH OBSERVATION 65 Workout 7A "Truth Is Humor" Workout 7B "What You See Is What You Laugh At" Workout 7C "Observation Field Trip" Workout 7D "You Know It's Time to . . . When . . ." CHAPTER 8: WORKING WITH ANALYZATION 73 Workout 8A "Random Associations" Workout 8B "Focused List of Associations" Workout 8C 'A Specific Associations List" Workout 8D "Writing from Your Associations List" Bonus Workout 8E "Finish the Joke" CHAPTER 9: WORKING WITH TOPICS AND SUBTOPICS 84 Workout 9A "Fast and Funny" Workout 9B "Topics to Subtopics" Workout 9C "More Topics to Subtopics" Workout 9D "Writing Fast and Funny from Subtopics" CHAPTER 10: WORKING WITH JOKE WRITING 91 Workout 10A "Statements to Jokes" Workout 10B "Questions to Jokes" Workout IOC "Finding Joke Formulas" Workout 10D "Formulas to Jokes" CHAPTER 11: WORKING WITH EXAGGERATION AND DISTORTION 100 Workout 11A "Big and Small Improvisation" Workout 11B "Bending Time and Space" Workout 11C "Bending Abstract Ideas" Workout 11D "Take It to the Limit" CHAPTER 12: WORKING WITH JOKE STRUCTURE 108 Workout 12A "This Is My Life" Workout 12B "From Page to Stage" Workout 12C "From Stage to Page" Workout 12D "Play With the Way You Say It" Workout 12E "This Is My Life—Again" CHAPTER 13: WORKING WITH SWITCHPNG 116 Workout 13A "Switch the Straight-Line" Workout 13B "Switch the Punchline" Workout 13C "Parallel the Joke" Workout 13D "Switching New Jokes from Old" CHAPTER 14: WORKING WITH JOKE BUILDING 123 Workout 14A "Potchkey" Workout 14B "Write and Potchkey" CHAPTER 15: WORKING WITH TOPPERS 127 Workout 15A "Tuning In to Toppers" Workout 15B "Topping the Tops" Workout 15C "Write a Joke and Keep Going" Workout 15D "Taunts and Toppers" CHAPTER 16: WORKING WITH REWRITING 132 Workout 16A "Mark and Make It Better" Workout 16B "Redirect the Too Direct" Workout 16C "Make It More Vivid" Workout 16D "Add Some Lilt" CHAPTER 17: WORKING WITH MONOLOGUES 142 Workout 17A "Plant Your Premise" Workout 17B 'Add a Different Handle" Workout 17C "Putting Your Ducks in a Row" Workout 17D "Fixing the Finest" CHAPTER 18: WORKING WITH TRANSITIONS 151 Workout 18A "Column A—Column B" Workout 18B "From Topic to Topic" Workout 18C "From Subtopic to Subtopic" Workout 18D "Smoothing Out the Monologue" CHAPTER 19: WORKING WITH STORY PLOTTING 160 Workout 19A "Story in a Nutshell" Workout 19B "Platonic Plagiarizing" Workout 19C "What Would Happen Next?" Workout 19D "What's the Worst Thing That Could Happen Next?" Workout 19E "Plus and Minus" CHAPTER 20: WORKING WITH STORY STRUCTURE 174 Workout 20A "Stop, Look, and Listen" Workout 20B "Outline Your Story" CHAPTER 21: WORKING WITH PRODUCTIVITY 178 Workout 21A "Read and Write" Workout 2IB "Write and Write" Workout 21C "Meet Your Quota" Workout 2ID "Flying On Instruments" CHAPTER 22: WORKING WITH CREATIVITY 185 Workout 22A "Desk Spot" Workout 22B "Comedy Parlor Game" Workout 22C "Do It Yourself PARTING WORDS 190 ABOUT THE AUTHOR 190 INDEX 191 BEFORE YOU BEGIN This book is aptly titled. It is about writing comedy, and it will be work. That's why the projects in the book are called "workouts." They're meant to be challenging, to be exhausting, to exercise and develop your creative muscles. The workouts aren't easy, but they're beneficial. Comedy is deceptive. Done well, it appears almost effortless. But it's the effort that goes into it that produces the illusion. I'm a weekend tennis player and I often use sports—especially tennis—to illustrate what I mean. It's interesting that when I see still photos of the great tennis players, they always seem to be doing the proper thing. When I see still photos of me playing tennis, I look awkward. My racket is in the wrong position. My foot is where my hand should be. The ball is going in one direction, while I'm looking in the other. That's because I'm usually off balance, but the pros play in perfect balance. They work out and practise so much that they've learned to outsmart the ball. They know where it's going, and their bodies are trained to get where they have to be. They swing with control and strike the ball properly. Their hours of intensive training produce a swing that is smooth, fluid, effortless, and consequently more powerful and accurate. Workouts such as those in this book are not reserved for the novice. When I worked on The Carol Burnett Show, I had lunch with one of the musicians in our orchestra. He told me he had to rush through lunch because he had to get to his lesson. I was intrigued because I assumed anyone who had reached his level would be giving lessons; not taking them. I said. "You still take lessons?" He said, "Of course." I said, "Do you practise regularly?" He said he did. I asked, "How much?" He said, "Oh, not too much anymore. Maybe four to six hours a day." Four to six hours a day! That's an accomplished, top'level musician who was good enough to be in a studio orchestra. He still studied and practised regularly—up to six hours a day. People who are good at what they do, practise. A baseball player may have his greatest year ever, but he still shows up for spring training the following season. The world champion in boxing still allows plenty of time for workouts in the gym before his next fight. Renowned ballerinas spend much more time in the practise studio than they do on the stage. What do they practise? Basics. I saw David Robinson, the All'American from Navy, giving a basketball lesson once to some youngsters. He was teaching them to catch the ball. He suggested that they practise just throwing the ball back and forth to one another. "If you don't have anyone to catch with," he said, "throw the ball up against a wall just for the practise of catching it." What could be more basic than that? But that's why he recommended practising it. Robinson pointed out, "You can't go up for a slam dunk until you've caught the ball." Almost all great accomplishments are born out of well-drilled fundamentals. Houses have to be built on firm foundations; skills have to be developed from basics. There are two reasons for practice. One is to learn a new skill. We all experience that. 6 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK 7 When we first learn to drive a car we don't know what to do or how to do it. We aren't sure we can steer or work the pedals. We practise and we learn. Anyone who plays a musical instrument remembers struggling to get everything to work together—reading the notes, moving your fingers to the right place, getting your hands to do what your mind was telling them to do. It wasn't easy. Now you do all that with ease, probably not even thinking about what you're doing. There are countless other examples—typing, knitting, mathematics. You know from experience that the more you do something, the better you get at it. Another reason for practice, though, is to fine tune skills you already have—to go back and review basics. I've always been a hacker on the golf course. If I break a hundred it's champagne for everybody. Most of the folks I play with are in the same class. It would always amuse me to see how our games could fluctuate. One playing partner would come out to the tee having just taken a lesson or read a new tip in the golf magazine. He'd concentrate so much on that pointer that he'd hit the ball magnificently—for about three holes. Then he'd get cocky. He'd feel he knew all there was to know about golf. He'd start adding a little flourish to his followthrough. Then he'd being playing worse than he did before the lesson. A good solid performance in any endeavor depends on all elements working together. If you allow any part of your performance to deteriorate, it can cause everything to collapse. That's why you want to review your techniques periodically, and brush up on those that are lacking. I once asked a tennis player while we were warming up before a match if he wanted me to hit him some lobs so he could practise his overhead smash. He said, "No, I never practise overheads because I'm lousy at them." Maybe he was "lousy" at them because he never practised them. If you spot a weakness in your skills, that's what you should attack with heavy-duty effort. In my own writing work I sometimes notice that my jokes are getting too literal. I haven't been letting them blossom out into fanciful or wacky references. They're not zany enough. So I force myself to write some "crazy" gags. Sometimes I get lazy and do the majority of my gags on the same subjects. That means I need to go back to basics and begin listing more references before I start the actual comedy writing. You hear the same things from people in every profession. Chris Evert wins a tennis tournament but says she wants to work on improving her serve to get ready for Wimbledon. Jack Nicklaus wants to add some distance to his drives. A college team is ranked number one in the nation and the coach says he isn't happy with the team's defensive work. Perfecting your craft is a never-ending duty. It's like properly maintaining a house. By the time you paint the outside, the inside needs wallpapering. After you clean up the backyard, the front lawn needs mowing. Keeping your skills in order is the same. It's a matter of constant checking and practising with workouts such as these. Consistent practice, too, keeps your skills sharp. Once, when I was producing Welcome Bac\, Kotter, we had a scene that involved a school yard basketball game. I visited the set, and the performers on the show were shooting the basketball at the hoop we had set up on the stage. I used to be a fair basketball player when I was a kid—a good shooter. So I called for the ball. They couldn't refuse since I was the producer. I dribbled twice, threw the ball toward the basket, and missed by about five feet. The ball sailed over the backboard and knocked over some scenery on the next set. Everyone laughed but me. I hadn't played basketball in 20 years, but I thought the eye 8 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK and the coordination would be the same as it was when I was a kid. It wasn't. If skills aren't used, they disappear—to "skill heaven" or somewhere. Working out regularly is one way to keep them. There's a fringe benefit to constant practice, too. It happens automatically. That bonus is experience. There's no substitute for experience; there's no shortcut. You can't get it from reading or watching; you only get it from doing. These workouts, though, are doing. Practice is doing. Therefore, the more time you spend practising, the more experience you have. In your effort to succeed, your first duty is to be good, to learn your craft well. If your desire were to be a concert pianist, wouldn't it be wise for you to learn to play the piano? Many variables affect your success, but perfecting your skills is one that you can control. You can study and practise whether you have connections in the business or not. Even if you can't get an audition or a tryout, you can still get better and better. And if you get good enough—which is usually up to you—success can't hide from you. You have to make it. Excellence is usually in short supply, but there is a high demand for it. If you have it, someone will find you. How you use this book is completely up to you. The suggestions are on these pages, but the effort is your decision. You're the one who will decide how much effort to give to each workout. Of course, you're the one who will reap the benefits, too. The workouts will certainly make demands on your time. This is not the kind of book that you read through and set aside. It may take many months to complete the exercises. Don't rush through. The benefit, remember, is not in completing them; it's in doing them. Of course, you don't want to work through them too sluggishly, either. Sometimes postponing the work allows you to forget about it all together. These workouts serve no purpose unless you do them. So set your own pace. Be demanding but not ridiculous with your scheduling. Take as much time as you need, but keep working. A consistent, steady work pace is more beneficial than a quick, "Get it out of the way and move on to the next one" routine. I strongly recommend that the first time through this book, you do the workouts in order. Complete all the exercises in Chapter One before moving on to Chapter Two, Chapter Three, and so on. Don't skip any of them. Later, you can return to this book and redo the workouts in any order you like, but the first time through, do them all—in order. I urge this for several reasons: First, it's good discipline. If there's any trait that is an absolute requirement for a writer it's discipline—both in work habits and technique. Second, doing all of the exercises in proper sequence eliminates the temptation to skip over those that are difficult or tedious. You might become like the tennis player who didn't want to practise overheads because he was lousy at them. You might say, "I don't want to work with words because I have a horrible vocabulary." That's exactly why you should do the workout on words. Third, many of the workouts in the book depend upon both knowledge and material that you gathered from previous workouts. Attacking them out of sequence or skipping selected workouts would weaken the overall benefit of the book. It is a workbook, so it will be work. Not much is ever accomplished without some effort. Sean O'Casey said, "When I stepped from hard manual work to writing, I just stepped from one kind of hard work to another." Toil, however, can seem less tedious when you're having fun. Have fun with all the workouts. Chapter One WORKING WITH JOKES I belong to a local tennis club. Most of the members compete at about the same relative level of mediocrity. Only once or twice a year do we all rise above our run'of thcmill skill level. That's when the Wimbledon or U.S. Open matches are being shown on television. After watching a few of those superb matches, we play above our heads. We sit home and view the powerful serve of Boris Becker, the finesse shots of John McEnroe, the explosive ground strokes of Ivan Lendl, the consistent passing shots of Chris Evert, and the athletic grace of Martina Navratilova; then we grab our rackets and a can of balls and come out and play a little bit more like those champions than we did last week. Why? We play better for one of several reasons or a combination of all of them: 1. We learn technique. We see what the correct swing looks like. We observe the footwork, preparation, balance, and smooth effort that goes into a polished tennis stroke. Our mind remembers that and translates it into muscle memory. Rather than continue to make the rushed, awkward, flailing strokes that we made last week, we emulate the pros. Mechanically, we improve. 2. We absorb strategy. We normally play dumb; the professionals don't. They play the percentages. They play the shot that's going to make their next shot a winner. We amateurs go for a winner whether we have the opening or not. We blow a lot of easy shots by going for the unnecessary, more difficult shot. Watching the pros play smart eliminates many of our unintelligent shots. 3. These athletes play so darn well, that it's inspiring. It renews our enthusiasm for the game. We race out onto the court, eager for the competition. We're excited about playing the game; consequently, we play better. 4. We see the possibilities. We see the way the game should be played and realize that we, too, might be able to rip a passing shot down the line, or smash an overhead into the open court. We realize that we might be able to follow our serve into the net and put away a well'placed volley for a winning point. The despair of our mediocrity is replaced by the hope of improvement. I've used tennis as an illustration, but the same phenomenon happens in all endeavors. Excellence is inspiring. It not only makes us want to emulate the masters, but it brings about improvement. Understand—my neighbors and I don't rush onto the court and play like Jimmy Connors. Not at all. Being inspired doesn't automatically produce professional re suits. It does, though, bring about a certain level of improvement, a minimal improve' ment. Only practice, study, and dedicated effort can produce longer'lasting results— the kind that make champions. 9 10 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK However, that's another fringe benefit of watching the best: it can generate the passion we need to work hard at our craft. It can make us zealous enough to practise and perfect our technique, and perhaps eventually become as skillful as the masters we watch. Even the professionals watch other professionals. Why? Because they learn from them, too. They keep current. They discover innovations. To stay with our tennis example a little longer: years ago most top'level players hit all their shots one-handed. When young Chris Evert began learning the sport, she was so small that she couldn't handle the racket that well. So she swung at her backhand shots with two hands. It became a habit for her and she stayed with it. She ruled women's tennis for many years with that unorthodox swing. Others watched and decided to try it. Today, in the pro ranks there are just about as many top professionals using a two-handed backhand as there are using the more traditional one-handed swing. These first few workouts are designed to get you to watch the masters of comedy. They're supposed to force you to notice the techniques, and the strategies that the best use. By practising these workouts you'll see how they do what they do and why they do what they do. You'll be inspired, excited, and enthused by them. "Vbu won't be doing much actual writing in these first few workouts. However, don't mistakenly conclude that because you're not putting pen to paper, these work' outs are less important than the writing assignments that will come later in the book. Of all the writing workouts, these first few are probably the most universally practised by professionals. I have asked many comedy writers what they do when they're not in the mood to write or when the assignment is not one that they want to attack. I wanted to know how they forced themselves to get to the word processor to complete their chores. Most of them said they watched, listened to, or read the masters. One gentleman said, "I play just a few minutes of tape. I listen to the comedian I'm writing for It only takes a few jokes of his to get me into his comedy timing and to inspire me. After that the jokes'start flowing." Another watched videotapes for the same reason. A third writer said, "I go back and read some of the jokes I wrote for that same person a few months ago. It not only reminds me of that comedy rhythm, but it also convinces me that I wrote pretty good jokes then, and I can do it again." The professionals in almost every field use this tactic. So attack this first chapter of workouts with vigor. They'll improve your comedy writing immediately, and in the long run, they'll help you steadily improve your writing until it's of professional quality. So let's get to it. Let's go to Wimbledon. WORKING WITH JOKES 11 = WORKOUT 1A = "My Collection of Favorite Jo\es" This is primarily a research workout, ^fou'll get to read, look, and listen, to discover some of the good comedy that's being done by others. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Gather a collection of 25 jokes that you think are top drawer. \bu want to find good, solid jokes that you would have been proud to have written; jokes that you would like in your own comedy act; jokes that you would show to others and say, 'This is the kind of humor I aspire to." Tfou can listen to young comics on TV and jot down the lines that strike you. Y>u can listen to the established legends of comedy—people like Bob Hope, Milton Berle, Johnny Carson—and note some of their outstanding gags. \fou can research lines in magazines or books. "Vbu can pull them from your own memory—lines you've heard and remembered over the years. %u can even jot down lines that you hear second' hand. Someone says, "Did you hear what Carson said last night?" When they tell you the joke (and they will), if it's one that you consider worthy of your list, write it down. 2. Get your 25 exemplary jokes on paper. If you clip them, you can staple them to a file card or a sheet of paper. \bu can type them or scribble them out by hand. It is important, though, that you get them on paper and save them because you may want to use a few of these examples in later workouts. Also jot down the name of the comedian. "Vbu'll see later that it might be beneficial to your own comedy. 3. After each gag you collect, write a brief reason why it made your "personal favorite" list. \bu needn't be too clinical—just a top'of-thchead evaluation. Why did you like this joke? HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout will open your eyes, ears, all of your senses and all your sensibilities to the world of humor, You'll be more attuned to the comedic. You'll hear more funny lines, remember more, and file more ideas into your memory for later use. I've always been fascinated in watching sports on television at how sharp'eyed some of the commentators are. When I watch bowling, I just see the pins "explode." The commentator, though, tells you exactly where each pin went. When I watch diving, I don't know how many turns and spins that diver took. My eye can't follow it. But the commentators know. It's not that their eyes are sharper or quicker; it's just that they know what to look for, how to look for it, and where to look. They're tuned in to that sport. "Vbu can acquire a similar awareness with humor. Also, you'll be more aware of what other writers are doing—not only the lines and types of jokes they're doing, but what they're talking about. "Vfou'U notice what they're observing in the world around them, and you may begin noticing similar topics that are ripe for humor. m 12 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK "You'll uncover interesting things about your own tastes and sense of humor. \fou may discover you like comics that you dismissed earlier. You may be surprised to learn that the type of jokes you prefer are not the ones you thought you would. With 25 jokes to study and analyze, you'll begin to uncover patterns. Those trends will indicate the direction in which your own comedy style should move. "Vfou'll recognize how good the best humorists can be (They're not always great, but when they are, they're magnificent). It will give you a goal to shoot for in your own work. "Vfou won't be as ready to settle for mediocre after seeing how good it can get. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES These are ten of my favorite jokes, with a short explanation and analysis of each one. This should give you an idea of how the workout works and what this list shows about my comedy style. • • • • • 1. Bob Hope did this line when America was having trouble with its space program. Each rocket we fired failed and fell into the ocean. The Russians had already successfully launched Sputnik, but we hadn't yet sent a rocket into space. On the day of the Bob Hope telecast, another launch had just aborted into the Atlantic Ocean. He said: "Well, I guess you heard the good news from Cape Canaveral. The United States just launched another submarine." I like this for several reasons. First it was topical. The event just happened that day and everyone was talking about it. Second, it was great audience misdirection. We all thought the news from Cape Canaveral was bad news; he said it was good. Our ears perked up to find out what was good about it. Third, the punchline was kept hidden until the very last word—submarine. That one word changed the meaning of the entire statement. • • • • • 2. Johnny Carson did this line on the night of the giant earthquake that hit the Los Angeles area in 1971. He opened his show that night by saying: "The 'God is Dead' meeting that was scheduled for tonight, has been can- celled." Again, it was topical, just a few hours old. And it was being talked about. It said by implication that all those folks who experienced the quake said a little prayer, whether they ever prayed before or not. • • • • • 3. Will Rogers was asked about his political affiliation. He said: "I belong to no organized political party. I'm a Democrat." I love the way this line leads the audience in one direction and then tricks them. The first sentence is a standard cop-out from someone who doesn't want to reveal his politics. Then he changes it with the second sentence. He is saying in effect, "I'm a Democrat, but they're not organized." • • • • • WORKING WITH JOKES 13 4. Jay Leno said: "Did you read where this is National Condom Week? Hey now, there's a parade you won't want to miss." I love this line because it creates such a bizarre image. It's topical, but that's not the important part of this joke. It's also a little naughty, but not offensive. I think it's a bright comment that paints a funny picture. • • • • • 5. Phyllis Diller said: "My husband, Fang, drinks too much. He cut himself shaving this morning, and he bled so bad his eyes cleared up." This joke paints a delightful graphic image. It says that his eyes were bloodshot without really saying it. It implies it. * * * * * 6. Here's a Rodney Dangerfield classic: "My father gave me a bat for Christmas. First time I tried to play with it, it flew away." I like this one because of the silly picture it paints, too. But this one also tricks the audience. Practically everyone thinks of a baseball bat, then the last few words tell us that it was a bat that lives in a cave. It's a goofy gift for a father to give a son. Funny joke. * * * * * 7- Jackie Mason had a line that went something like the following. I'm paraphras' ing: "My grandfather always told me, "Don't look after your money; look after your health." One day I was looking after my health, I found out my money was gone. My grandfather took it." It's a longer style of joke, but it misdirects the audience. All of us believe in the grandfatherly advice that we get from the older generation. They seem so wise, and that's the way Jackie Mason paints his grandpa. It's not until the last four words that we realize the old geezer was a crook. We've been fooled and we laugh. • * * * * 8.1 loved this Henny "foungman joke. Again I'm reconstructing it from memory: "My son kept coming to me every day complaining about headaches. Every day—headaches, headaches, headaches. I said to him, 'How many times do I have to tell you? When you get out of the bed in the morning, feet first.' " I like it because it's a funny picture and because you never see the punchline coming. None of us would guess that the kid dives out of bed each morning and lands on the floor on his head. But itis logical. If he did that, he'd have a headache. • • • • • 14 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK 9. Phyllis Diller has a line about her mother'in'law, a large lady she calls "Moby Dick." "Moby Dick gave me one of her old dresses the other day. I plan to have it starched and made into a summer home." I love the image this joke creates, and the fact that you can't see the punchline coming. \bu wonder what good one of those old dresses would be, then the comic gives you a zany, but logical use for it. 10. This last is a Phyllis Diller line, too. It kids her bad cooking. She tells about the time a "grease fire broke out in my sink": "The firemen put it out quickly, but three of them had to be treated for food inhalation." I like this one because the punchline is perfectly disguised. Up until the last two words, it's a normal statement. Substituting "food inhalation" for "smoke inhalation" turns the sentence completely around. It surprises the listeners; it makes it funny. A WORD BEFORE YOU START \fou can readily see from my list that I like the short, meaningful one'liners. I tend more to the Bob Hope, Jay Leno, Phyllis Diller, Joan Rivers style than to someone like Robin Williams. I like gags that set the audience up for one thing and then turn the tables on them, misdirect them. I also like gags that create outlandish images in the minds of the listeners. \bu'll be able to see patterns in your own comedy preferences as you do your own organised analysis of your selection. For example, you may find yourself drawn to the bizarre, wayout style of a Stephen Wright, or maybe the flakiness of a Grade Allen or Tom Smothers. \bu might prefer the colorful story style of Bill Cosby or the frenetic, frantic pace of Robin Williams. There are many styles of comedy to select from. This workout will help you zero in on your favorite. So begin your search, and have fun with it. WORKING WITH JOKES 15 = WORKOUT IB = "My Collection cf Favorite Quotes" This workout is largely research, too. It might involve even more extensive research than Workout LA \fou're going to be looking for one'liners that have withstood the test of time. Ifou want to find some classic, but funny, quotes. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Assemble a collection of 25 attributable quotes on the following subjects: Sex Friends Death Virtue Laughter Acting Cynicism Writing Gossip Health Marriage Wealth Courtship Intellectuals War (real or supposed) There are 15 different topics. Find at least one quote on each topic; the remaining 10 you can distribute in any fashion you like. Use a reference book for your research. Don't rely on your memory. First, memory can be inaccurate. %u may remember the wording differently from the original, and it's the original that holds the lesson. Second, in looking up the quote, you will read and consider many other quotes. The ones you don't choose can be as helpful in the learning process as those you do. 2. Assemble your collection of quotes, along with the authors' names, on paper. Save them. \bu may want to use them in later workouts. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU These epigrams, aphorisms, quotes, sayings, and other one'liners, have been preserved for posterity. Some of them may be hundreds of years old. They've survived because they're worthwhile. As you read through them for your research and select your favorites, you'll be learning something about those quotes. What made them noteworthy in the first place? What made them so remarkable that they have lasted this long? Most of these sayings are more than funny. They say something. In reading through them, analyzing them, selecting several, and studying your selections, you'll begin to see how to combine wit with wisdom. In researching specific topics you'll see how others have dissected that topic. As you first read through the 15 topics mentioned earlier, you may think there is nothing witty or worthwhile to say about some of them. When you see how other minds have commented on that topic, you'll learn that there are many approaches to each subject, and many facets to each topic. In 16 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES In the workout I didn't ask you to comment on why you chose certain quotes, so I won't comment either. Most of these lines are so strong that they don't need any elaboration. Sex: "Familiarity breeds contempt. .. and children." —Mar\ Twain * • • * • Death: "It's not that I'm afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens." —Woody Alien * * * * * Laughter: "He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news." —Bertoit Brecht * * * * * Cynicism.: "A cynic is a man who when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." —H. L. Mencken * * * * * Gossip: "If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me." —Alice Roosevelt Longworth * * * * * Marriage: "Marriage is a great institution; but I'm not ready for an institution." —Mae West * * • * * Courtship: "She was a lovely girl. Our courtship was fast and furious—I was fast and she was furious." —Max Kauffmann * * * * * War: "War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." —Thomas Mann * * * * * Friends: "Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." —Elbert Hubbard * * * * * Virtue: "What, after all, is a halo? It's only one more thing to keep clean." —Christopher Fry WORKING WITH JOKES 17 Acting: 'The important thing; in acting is to be able to laugh and cry. If I have to cry, I think of my sex life. If I have to laugh, I think of my sex life." —Glenda Jac\son * * * * * Wh'tmg: "What is a writer but a schmuck with an Underwood." —Jac\ Warner • * • * * Health: "Be careful about reading health books. "Vbu may die of a misprint." —Mar\ Twain * * * * * Wealth: "Nouveau is better than no riche at all." —Monsieur Marc * * * * * Intellectuals (real or supposed): "People who refer to themselves as intellectuals are automatically committing a social crime and, also, usually an error." —Tracy Young * * * * * Start your research and have fun looking. 18 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT IC = "My Collection of My Favorite's Favorites" This research workout will be more fun because it's custom designed to your taste in comedy. Workouts 1A and IB extended your comedy awareness. They forced you to read and listen to other humorists to get you out of your comfortable comedy rut. Now Workout IC lets you back into that "comfort zone." HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Select one comedian or humorist that you especially like. You may have many favorites. If so, you can do this workout several times. However, each time you do it, limit yourself to one specific mentor. 2. Collect 25 of your comic's (or humorist's) outstanding lines—those lines you consider best. Do this by reading books or magazine articles about your mentor, by listening to tapes of TV appearances, or by jotting down lines that you recall. 3. Get those lines on paper and save them. We will use them in future workouts. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU Comedy is subjective. "Vbu may like Comic A while someone else doesn't see any thing funny in him. Someone else may like Comic B, who doesn't make you laugh. There are reasons why you like certain comics, but you may not even know what those reasons are. This workout will filter out the best lines from your favorite performers or writers. Listing them, studying them, and analyzing them will teach you quite a bit about their comedy styles. It will also reveal considerable information about your own comedy tastes and preferences. As much as you like some particular performers and would like to emulate their work, your style will remain different from theirs. This workout will teach you even more about yourself than it does about your favorite performers. Also, it often makes sense in the beginning of your writing to emulate a favorite. Bob Hope admits that he began by imitating vaudevillian Frank Fay. There is a lot of Jack Benny in Johnny Carson's work. When Richard Pryor was a young comedian, he looked like a clone of Bill Cosby. \et all of these performers went on to develop their own individual comedy characterizations. Studying and copying another's style doesn't inhibit your individuality; it enhances it. It lets you know that you're headed in the right direction. It develops good writing techniques. Eventually, you add your own flair to those techniques. That develops a new style—your style. Studying someone you admire helps you develop it more quickly HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES I've selected Bob Hope as my mentor. I chose him not only for the purposes of this short example in Workout IC, but because I chose him as my mentor when I was a beginning writer. I would tape Bob Hope's television monologues, type them out and study them. WORKING WITH JOKES 19 Then a week or so later, I chose different topics from the daily papers and tried to duplicate the form of Hope's monologue with the different subjects. It was great practice and I recommend it. Here are a few of his lines that I especially like: 'Tbu're only as young as you feel. When I get up in the morning, I don't feel anything until noon. By then it's time for my nap." • • • • • "I go for a swim every single day. It's either that or buy a new golf ball." • • • • • "I think travel is very educational. I can now say 'Kaopectate' in seven different languages." • • * • • "When I was a kid I slept in one bed with six brothers. We had one bed'wetter. It took us two years to find out who it was." • • • • • "I like politicians who pray a lot. It keeps their hands up where we can see them." • • • * • "I always carry tranquilizers with me when I fly The hard part is getting the stewardesses to take them." • * • • • "I have the perfect simplified tax form for our government. Why don't they just print our money with a return address on it?" • • * • • "I had a flight attendant on the last flight who was so old, after she demon- strated the oxygen mask she left it on." • * > • • "We've had a lot of mudslides in California lately. I was driving to work the other day, glanced out the window, and my house was making better time than I was." • * • * * "I like to play golf with Jerry Ford. \bu don't have to keep score; you just look back along the fairway and count the wounded." • • • • • (When he spo\e about the fire at his house in Palm Springs): "It's a terrible feeling to wake up one morning and find out that the black cloud hanging over Los Angeles used to be your home in Palm Springs." • • • • • (In reply to the question: "How's your golf game?") "If it was a boxing match, they'd stop it." There's a fantastic doz^n that should tell much about my comedy preferences. %ur selection will educate you about your style, too. Dig those lines out and have fun doing it. 20 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT ID = "My Collection of Favorite Cartoons* This workout is largely research, too. It's similar to the other workouts in Chapter One except that it adds another element—the visual. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Assemble a collection of 25 cartoons that you consider first'rate. \bu can get them from magazines, newspapers, or cartoon collections. It will be hard to gather these from your memory because you should have the drawing, too. For our purposes here, the graphic image is as important as the caption. 2. Get your outstanding cartoons on paper just as you did in Workout 1A. Save these, too, because you may use them in later workouts. 3. After each cartoon, write a brief reason for selecting it. What made this joke funny, or meaningful for you? HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU Comedy rarely works in a vacuum. In today's visual age, with television, films, video' cassettes, and even live performances, an audience doesn't just "hear" comedy; they "see" it. The lines are important, but so is the scenery, the action, the mannerisms of the performers, the "takes." Jack Benny often got his biggest laughs from his reaction to the comedy lines rather than from the lines themselves. Workout 1A uncovered some classic comedy lines. They were lines that were quotable, lines that could stand alone and be funny. This workout shows us that humor can tie into actions or settings. It shows us that a line doesn't always have to be funny on its own; it can be funny in relation to its surroundings. This workout will show you how the words must complement the action to produce the humor. It will demonstrate how the action can sometimes enhance the humor of the words, and conversely, how the words sometimes influence the action. It also points out the importance of "captioning." In this case, the captions are connected with a drawing, but in humor we can caption many things—a straight line, for instance. We can caption an incident, a headline, a person. It's an important technique in writing and performing comedy. This workout studies it in its basic form. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are a few of my favorite cartoons. Ideally, the artwork should be included here, too, but these are cartoons that I saw years ago and preserved only in my memory. I don't think you'll have any trouble, though, visualizing the drawings. 1. Two men are chained to and suspended from a dreary prison wall. They have obviously been there for some time because they are scrawny and their clothes are tattered. They are chained hand and foot, completely immobilized, and totally help- less. One turns to the other and whispers: "Here's my plan." WORKING WITH JOKES 21 I like this because it reminds me of so many people like this—people who try the silliest things in the face of overwhelming odds. The caption carries this idea to the ultimate. The drawing clearly shows that no one could ever be more helpless than these two, yet the one guy still has an idea that he thinks might work. * * * * * 2. A sleepy father in pajamas and slippers is passing the room where his two sons are sound asleep with two large dogs on the bed with them. The Dad has tossed a cat in, and the drawing catches the cat in mid'flight. There is terror in the cat's eyes, and his hair is standing on end. The dad simply says: "Time to get up, boys." I like this one because it begins a story that the reader must finish. Anyone looking at that cartoon knows that all hell is going to break loose when that cat lands in the vicinity of those dogs. The reader will write his own funny material in his own mind. • • • • • 3. This drawing shows cattle as far as the eye can see. They are grazing peacefully on the hillside—except for two who are in the foreground. They look sneaky. Their heads are lowered and their eyes seem to be scanning the surrounding area. One whispers to the other: 'The stampede's at midnight. Pass it on." I like this because it's so wacky, so zany. To me, it's a funny idea that cattle actually plan stampedes the way prisoners plan breaks. The devious look in the eyes of those steers made the cartoon a gem. • • • • • 4. This cartoon shows two men suspended from a dungeon wall, chained there by the wrists. One of the men has been there quite some time. He has tattered clothing, long hair and a beard. The other gentleman looks rather sprightly He is a well' dressed court jester. Obviously, he's just been chained in the cell. With obvious enthusiasm, he says to the veteran prisoner: "I had 'em rolling in the aisles until I inadvertently mentioned the Queen's moustache." Frankly, I like this one because it has to do with the comedy profession. However, I think it's a great joke even aside from that. I can almost see the backstory, the incidents that lead up to his being chained in a dungeon. He was going good. He had everyone laughing, then he got carried away He said something he shouldn't have. The Queen stopped laughing. With just a few words and expressions on cartoon faces, an entire comic short story comes alive in my mind. * * * * * 5. This one shows a knight sitting on a bench in battle mail. Beside him sits a court jester. The knight says: "I don't see how you ever think 'em up." As a joke writer, I hear that comment many times. Seeing it in a cartoon fractured me. It's not so funny aside from that. However; that's a valid lesson, too. Humor has added impact when it hits the audience squarely between the eyes. 22 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK A WORD BEFORE YOU START Notice the punchlines in these cartoons that I selected. They are: "Here's my plan." "Time to get up, boys." "The stampede's at midnight. Pass it on." "I had 'em rolling in the aisles until I inadvertently mentioned the Queen's moustache." "I don't see how you ever think 'em up." Not one of them is funny on its own. Each of them works in partnership with a scene, a setting, an action. This is the same type of cooperation that we see in films, stage plays, and teleplays. In Workout 1A, all the lines, except for some minimal background, stood alone. These lines don't. We've seen two different styles of humor in these two workouts. As you complete this workout, analyze the results, and compare them to Workout 1A, you'll develop more of a feel for your style of comedy writing. Begin your research and have fun. Chapter Two WORKING WITH WORDS I once watched an interview with Andres Segovia, the great classical guitarist. The interviewer asked Segovia about his guitar, where it was made and by whom, what type of strings he preferred, how he cared for the instrument. The Maestro spoke so lovingly about his guitar that the listeners began to accept it as a person, a friend. The interviewer must have felt that way, also, because he asked if he might pick it up, hold it, perhaps even strum it once or twice. Segovia said, "No." He offered no explanation, no clumsy rationalization; he simply said no. It was a shocking moment at first because Segovia seemed almost rude. Then the logic of his reply sank in. This was Segovia's instrument. With it, he established his fame, he changed the world of guitar, he brought his music to his fans. Segovia cared for this guitar and only Segovia would play this guitar. That was his instrument; words are our instruments. Writers have to embrace language with the same consideration that Segovia had for his guitar. We have to become as familiar with the shadings and nuances of words as the Maestro was with the frets on his fingerboard. We have to study vocabulary and even listen to dialects. It's true that ideas are the heart of comedy, but words are the device we use to transmit our ideas. The better we use words, the more accurately and graphically we're able to convey our ideas, our humor. To see how words can be used to express an idea concisely and powerfully, read almost any page of Shakespeare. To learn how effectively words can be used to express comedy, read almost any quote from Woody Allen. Allen's grammar and language are so precise that they're almost impossible to improve. The words he uses are not only the words that should be used, but they seem absolutely necessary for the humor. \bu feel that the joke might not work if different words were used. Words are the humorist's connection with the audience. We try to take ideas from our minds and put them into their minds, but there is no interface for doing that directly. We do it mostly through dialogue. Therefore, knowing how to use language well serves us well. Familiarity with the language gives us more comedic options. That's why writers use a thesaurus. They want to find the word that comes as close as possible to saying what they mean. The words listed in the thesaurus give them more options. So when you're looking for a clever phrase, the more you know about language, the more selections you have available. Second, facility with words helps us to tell our humorous stories better. We can make our points more accurately and clearly; we can make them more visually interesting, and with more colorful imagery. 23 24 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK As we develop a good working knowledge of language, we can use the inherent nuances in words to enhance the subtlety of our comedy ideas. The pen is mightier than the sword, but only if we work hard to keep it sharper. The following workouts will give you an appreciation for the playfulness of the English language, and help you learn how to use it to complement your own sense of humor. So let's get to them. Make way for the Segovias of comedy WORKING WITH WORDS 25 = WORKOUT 2 A = "A Rose by Any Other Tiame" If a softball pitcher delivers an underhand pitch, it means that he or she is throwing the ball legally That's the way the rules say you must pitch in softball. If a business person makes an underhand deal, it means he or she is doing something illegal or unethical. Same word, same spelling, totally different meaning. This workout will reveal how deceptive the English language can be. Words that seem to mean one thing can mean something else. Words that appear to have an obvious definition, can have several hidden meanings, too. It will also point out how flexible words can be. We can use different meanings at different times or different meanings at the same time. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT Find at least five different, yet legitimate definitions for the following 20 words. bear carriage cart cup deck delivery finger heart hit horse house place plot seat shoe shoot show track well window Some of the definitions may indicate totally different meanings. For example, the word "play" can mean to engage in some exercise for amusement. It can also mean a theatrical presentation. Those are two valid yet totally different definitions of the word "play." It can also mean a strategy as in a baseball game ('The team put on a play") or it can mean an athletic feat ("What a great fielding play") The last two definitions are similar but with a slight shade of difference. Both are acceptable. Use some slang if it's readily recognized and in general use. However, compound forms of the word aren't allowed. For example, "play money" is the same as "play," meaning pretend or make-believe. Try to find at least five acceptable definitions for each word. With a little more effort, you can probably uncover seven meanings. With some struggle and creativity, you may be able to come up with as many as ten or more. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout will show you some of the nuances of the English language, and how words can be tricky, playful, and useful in creating comedy. It will also indicate the depth of meaning that exists in seemingly simple words, and will show you the power you have to explore those hidden meanings. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES I've chosen the word "fly" It's a simple word, and you may have come up with several definitions by simply reading title word. 1. to soar through the air under control, as a bird does 26 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK 2. to travel by airplane 3. to cause something to float on air currents, as in "fly a kite" Npte: Some may argue that these are all the same meaning, but they aren't when you're actually using them. A bird flying to Pittsburgh is much different than you flying to Pittsburgh. In fact, there's an old joke, based on this difference, that night' club comics used to use: "Ladies and gentlemen, I just flew in from Pittsburgh, and, boy, are my arms tired!" And the verbs in definition 1 and definition 3 are different in that one is passive and one is active. The kite is flying, but you are flying the kite. 4. a winged insect 5. a ball hit into the air 6. the front opening in a pair of trousers 7. a type of fishing lure 8. the area above a stage or proscenium 9. to lift people or scenery in stage lingo. 'To fly the scenery" is to lift it off the stage and hide it in the area out of view above the stage. 'To fly performers" is to lift them into the air and suspend them above the stage. 10. to travel or run fast, as in "They were flying down the highway" 11. to gather momentum, as in "I started slow, but I'm really flying now." 12. to pass swiftly, as in 'Time flies." 13. to avoid or shun, as in "to fly from trouble" 14. a disease in turnips 15. a hackney carriage 16. the outer canvas of a tent 17. the frame that takes the sheets from the cylinder of a printing press. A WORD BEFORE YOU START I wasn't sure that I could find even five definitions when I selected the word "fly" "Vet, there are 17 legitimate, acceptable meanings for that three'letter word. Granted, a few of them are obscure and I did need a dictionary to uncover them, but most of them are familiar to all of us. A comedian a few years ago gave a good example of how we can use these meanings to generate comedy. In his stage act, he sang a few lines from the song, "Volare," which was popular at the time. Then he said: ""Volare . . . that means 'fly' in Italian. It's very important that you know that, because some day you might be walking along the streets of Italy, and a stranger approaches you and says, 'Excuse me, sir, but your volare is open.' " Approach this workout with enthusiasm, and don't surrender too easily. Investi' gate and find as many meanings for each word as you can. Have fun with it. WORKING WITH WORDS 27 = WORKOUT 2B = "Mrs. Malaprop's Affliction" In the previous workout we saw how one word can have different—sometimes contradictory—meanings. In this workout we'll see that one meaning can often have several words assigned to it. These are malapropisms. A malapropism is a ridiculous misuse of words, usually through the confusion caused by a resemblance in sound. For instance, someone might say, "I was feeling peppy when I woke up this morning, but now I'm beginning to feel a little dyspeptic." "Dyspeptic" in this instance is being used to mean "not peppy" It may sound like that, but it doesn't mean that. Of course, we all know the meaning of the words, "in alphabetical order," right? Wrong. Consider Casey Stengel's instructions to his players at spring training: "I want you all to line up in alphabetical order, according to your size." Again, we see that words are tricky—they're playful. They can sound like they mean a certain thing when they really don't. In many cases, the "sound'alike" meaning can be more graphic than the real meaning. In writing comedy, we can take advantage of this phenomenon. In this workout, you'll be creating humorous malapropisms of your own, beginning from scratch. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT Write 25 humorous sentences where the humor comes from the misinterpretation of a word. The comedy may come from simply inserting a similar'sounding word for the correct word. For instance, a boxer who says, "I want to be the champion. With me that's almost an abstention." A more advanced type of comedy may be generated when the wrong word not only sounds like the correct word it replaces, but also gives an ironic meaning to the sentence. For example, if the same fighter said 'To be the heavyweight champion is a goal to which I perspire." In another type of misinterpretation the explanation of the word doesn't corre' spond with the word. That's the "alphabetical order according to size" type. "Vbu can attack this workout from any direction you like: Turn to the dictionary, or a rhyming dictionary, for sound'alike words. Or begin with the correct word and try to find another that sounds like it or seems to have a similar meaning, but doesn't. Create examples of each type of humor: The pure misuse of sound'alike words; then the sound'alike word that generates a different meaning; and finally, the defini' tion that contradicts the meaning. The example section of this workout lists more illustrations of all three types. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout will force you to investigate the meanings of words and their nuances. %u'll begin to look beyond the obvious meaning of a given word to find both hidden meanings and meanings that you might create—meanings that the word could have based on its spelling or sound. 28 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK Looking beyond the obvious is good training for a comedy writer—not only with words, but also with ideas. This workout will teach you to associate one idea with another. When you find the given word, you are forced to search for sound'alikes. "Deter" could sound like "inter," "intern," "defer," "detour," "demure" and who'knows'howmany others. Searching for related words and meanings is good practice for later workouts when you'll be searching for related ideas and concepts as the basis of your humor. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES The first examples are simply misused words. They sound like the right word, but they aren't. They're basically examples of "stupid" humor. That is, the person saying them doesn't know that they are wrong. They don't give any new meaning to the sentences. 1. "If I do you a favor I would expect that you precipitate." The speaker here meant to say "reciprocate." • • • • • 2. 'The boss called me in and told me my services were being exterminated." The speaker meant "terminated." • * * * * 3. "I've loved writing comedy ever since I was in my infantry." I think this person enjoyed writing since he was a small child; not since he served in the army He meant to say "infancy" * * * • • ' The next examples show a word that sounds right but is wrong. However, that wrong word gives a different twist, a funny twist, to the original sentence. 4. "The parson gave such a great sermon that the congregation gave him a standing donation." "Ovation" is the correct word here, but perhaps the parson would have preferred a "donation." • • • • • 5. "I was such a great lover on my honeymoon that my wife gave me a standing ovulation." "Ovation" again is the proper word, but the incorrect word definitely changes the meaning, and the humor content, of this sentence. * * * * * 6. "I was on my best behavior with this blind date. I think I made a terrific first depression on the girl." 'Terrific first impression" connotes a positive reaction; "terrific first depression" is much different. This is funny because the man obviously thinks he did well, but what he is saying probably is closer to the truth. The last examples are malapropisms in which the speaker seems completely obhV ious to the meaning of the key words in the sentence—but each one makes its point! * * * * * WORKING WITH WORDS 29 7- Samuel Goldwyn is reported to have said this: "A verbal agreement isn't worth the paper it's written on." It's hard to tell which Mr. Goldwyn was misusing, the phrase "verbal agreement," or the proverbial "paper it's written on." * • * • • • 8. The Commanding officer announced, "Dress uniforms this evening will be strictly optional, and that's an order." I don't know precisely what he meant, but I'd wear my dress uniform just to be safe. * * * * * 9. 'Anyone who is absent from tonight's meeting will be sent home imme' diately." Pretty severe punishment for someone who isn't even there. I wonder if they will be physically carried out by the Sergeant'at'Arms? A WORD BEFORE YOU START Well, you get the idea. Cram as much new meaning into your misinterpreted mean' ings as possible. This workout can lead to some bizarre statements! Have fun with it. 30 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 2C = "The Dictionary Must Be Wrong" Words are mischievous, too, in that many times they're not the sum of their parts. For instance, "defile" means to insult, to soil, to tarnish; however, it sounds like the file drawer that you'd find between the Ofile and the E'file. Comedy writers can capitalize on this playfulness that's built into the language. We can use either the literal definition or the sound-alike meaning. In this workout we'll explore this phenomenon. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT Create 20 meanings for readily recognizable words that are incorrect, but logical. \bu may select any words you like; in fact, finding the right word is the major part of the workout. Naturally, you create the comedic definition, too. For example, "profile" is a filing cabinet that has lost its amateur standing; and "debate" is something you use to catch de fish with. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout forces you to explore new areas of vocabulary—to stretch, to expand, to think of words that you don't often use. Investigating new vocabulary frontiers is always beneficial to a writer. Also, this workout helps you to look beyond the obvious. "fou'll be analyzing words that you're familiar with, but you'll be giving them unfamiliar definitions, new meanings. Looking beyond the obvious is always good practice for a comedy writer. This is good practice, too, in searching out relationships. \bu'U be working from a "known" and searching out another "known" that relates to it. That's a great way to teach the mind to think funny, relating one idea with another. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are several ordinary words to which I've assigned new and wacky definitions: beleaguered: a baseball player who will never make it to the major leagues. * * * * * debase: what you slide into when you steal second * * * * * debun\: the technical term for pushing a sailor out of bed. * * * * * deduce: de card in de deck between de ace and de trey * * * * * diatribe: what you do when you change the color of a whole group of Indians at the same time. * * * * * WORKING WITH WORDS 31 intense: where Lawrence of Arabia kept his soldiers. • • * • * pragmatic: an electronic machine that makes prags. * * * * * snapdragon: a mythical lizard'like animal whose religious beliefs forbid the use of either buttons or dippers. * * * * * squire: an equilateral rectangle with a decidedly Cockney accent. A WORD BEFORE YOU START Notice the variations in these examples. "Debase" and "debunk" are pretty much the same. "De" became a colloquial mispronunciation of the word "the." However, in "deduce," the mispronunciation was incorporated into the definition, too. "Diatribe" gives new meanings to a couple of the syllables in the word. The definition of the word "pragmatic" created an entirely new word—"prag" I don't know what a prag is, but if there were a machine that electronically made them, it would probably be called a "pragmatic." The "snapdragon" definition evoked a creature with religious convictions, and "squire" conjures up the bizarre image of the thing being defined pronouncing itself So you can see that even though this workout limits itself to working with words, it nevertheless stimulates inventiveness and comic creativity. "rou'll have some fun with it. 32 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 2D = "So You Wanna Be 7>loah Webster" This workout is similar to Wforkout 2C, except that it approaches from a different direction. In this case, you'll have to manufacture a reasonably logical definition for a word that you don't know the meaning o£ Therefore, your only frame of reference will be the sound of the syllables or your assumed meaning of them. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Search through the dictionary for ten words that you don't know the definition of—and don't look at the definition. As an alternative, you could have someone else do the research and supply you with the list of ten words. If you're working with another writer, you can each research ten words and exchange lists. The bottom line, regardless of the research method you use, is that you want to have a list of at least ten new and interesting words. 2. Using no other resources except the words and your own imagination, create logical, but whimsical definition. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU The benefits of this workout are similar to Wforkout IC. In the previous workout, you probably began with a thought in your own mind of which words you wanted to use or which relationship you would exploit. In this workout, you're presumably starting with nothing but a strangcsounding word. It puts more of a burden on your creativity The results may or may not be as funny, but the workout is worthwhile. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES prunella: a specialized type of umbrella that is used only in the unlikely event that it rains prune juice. * * * * * sprent: what a drunk claims he did with all his money. • * * * * stibiated: the logical conclusion one comes to when there are no doughnuts left in the box, and a lad named "Stibby" is the only one with powdered sugar around his mouth. Actually, "prunella" is a disorder of the jaws or throat; "sprent" is the obsolete past tense and past participle of the verb "spreng"; and "stibiated" means to be impreg- nated with antimony, which is a silvery-white, metallic chemical substance. WORKING WITH WORDS 33 = WORKOUT 2E = "Fun With Puns" We've had some fun with words in this chapter. This last workout will give us a chance to do some research and see how past masters have played with words. Puns have been maligned as the lowest from of humor. They aren't. They can be and often are, but so are other bad jokes. A good pun can be a funny joke and a fascinating use of language. Oscar Levant said, 'A pun is the lowest form of humor when you don't think of it first." HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Compile a list often puns, from your memory, from your reading, from dedicated research, or wherever. 2. Commit your list to paper and study and analyze the clever use of language in the pun. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU In searching for puns you like, you'll gain an appreciation of how language can be used in comedy. "Vfou'll see different ways to create puns, and how you, as a writer, can use language cleverly. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES One wit in England claimed that he could ad-lib a pun on any subject. Someone shouted out, "The King." He replied, "The King, Sir, is not a subject." * * * * * Then there's one about a man who accidentally swallowed some varnish. It killed him, but they say he had a fine finish. • * * * * Then there was the man who complained to his wife that the coffee tasted like mud. She said, "Of course it does; it was ground this morning." 34 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 2F = 11 One Person's Idiom Is Another Person's Straight'Line" Words often work in teams, and when they do they sometimes have a different meaning than they would individually For instance, "Get on the ball" has nothing to do with climbing onto a ball. It's a phrase that means to improve your performance. Phrases often have literal meanings that are different from their idiomatic mean' ings, and as a comedy writer, you can use either meaning or both of them. To illustrate, notice how the meaning changes as you read this following gag: "You know, I'm not drinking anymore. Of course, I'm not drinking any less, either." But the joke doesn't necessarily have to be based on double entendre. Often the meaning of the cliche lends itself to comedy. In this workout, you will analyze and pull apart phrases to find the fun that's hidden in them. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT Make a list of at least 20 common phrases, such as: "Till death do us part"/"For better or for worse"/"Hitting 50" (or whatever age) HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout has double-barreled rewards. It teaches you to analyze groups of words for the comedy inherent in them, and it gives you practice in pulling apart an idiomatic expression word by word. It also helps you develop a sharper ear for the language. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES "I'm not too crazy about that wedding vow, Tor better or for worse.' I much prefer 'For better or forget it.' " • • • • • "I don't plan to be buried in the same cemetery plot with my wife. No sir, our wedding vow said Till death do us part,' and I'm holding her to that." • • • • • "You didn't just hit 50, man. %u beat the hell out of it." A WORD BEFORE YOU START You can see from these examples that there are many ways to play with the wording of a phrase. In the first example, the preposition, "for," became the first syllable of "forget." The second example applies a literal meaning to the phrase, 'Till death do us part," changing it from a loving vow to a loophole. The third exaggerates the literal meaning of "hit" and creates a funny image. Experiment. Find new meanings and have fun with this workout. Chapter Three WORKING WITH CAPTIONS I once worked for a client who asked if I had done any jokes about a particular item that appeared in that morning's newspaper. I confessed I hadn't, and the client was annoyed. He had done a press conference earlier in the day, and one of the reporters asked about that particular topic. The comic had no quotable reply. I said, "I didn't realize you wanted jokes about that." He said, "I want to have something to say about everything that happens." That's quite an assignment for a comedy writer. I'm not sure I could afford the expense of that many typewriter ribbons. But that is the humorist's goal in life—to have a comment ready on practically anything. Much verbal humor is commentary. It's making a statement about something—an event, a person, a happening. If you review the joke examples in Workout 1A (and it might be a good idea to do that right now—read them over quickly before continuing), you'll see that they follow a particular form. They make a factual statement, then they comment on it. Some one4iners may simply be the comment, because the statement either has been made previously or is assumed. The comment is like a caption on a factual statement. Most of us are familiar with captions. We see them done on the Johnny Carson show periodically. We've seen books with comic captions applied to paintings, stat' ues, and photographs of all kinds. Most cartoons, of course, are drawings with captions. The photograph, drawings, or whatever is the set-up, and the caption is the punch' line. Captioning is an easy form of joke writing because the straight'line is furnished for us. We don't have to begin writing from scratch; we have the photo or the drawing as our starting point. We merely have to funny it up. Many one'liners are exactly the same, except that we have to provide both the set' up and the punchline. The writing of jokes or one'liners seems a bit easier if we remember that the factual statement is the setup. Then we simply have to find a caption for it—a punchline that makes it funny If you can caption a photograph or a cartoon, you can caption a statement. That's writing jokes. 35 36 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK H I = WORKOUT 3 A = "A Picture Is Worth a 'Thousand Punchlines" A picture is supposed to be worth a thousand words. That's probably because a photograph can be very eloquently understated. It allows you—the viewer—to do the talking. Ybu can interpret that picture any way you like. As we saw with words and with phrases, images can have a real and an imagined interpretation. In fact, several real interpretations may be possible. Is the person in the photograph going up or coming down the ladder? The humorist can assign a new and different meaning to any action in a picture. We see a boxer kneeling on the canvas. Obviously, he has been knocked down by his opponent. To the comedy writer, though, he may simply be looking for a contact lens. Or he might be praying. He can be doing anything the inventive mind of the writer wants him to be doing. In this workout you'll study photographs for hidden or different meanings and create a caption that explains your idea of what is going on. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Find and collect 25 interesting photographs. Ideally, these should all be of one particular type: old movie photos, horror movie photos, baby pictures, sports photo' graphs, or any theme you prefer. They can be actual photographs, or clippings from magazines or newspapers. Get them anywhere you can find them. 2. Write a funny caption for each photograph. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This is good training in looking beyond the obvious. Ybu see the action before you, and the action is generally fairly obvious. However, in order to generate humor, you might have to see something in the photo that isn't obvious. At least, it isn't obvious until you point it out to the viewer. For instance, your photograph might show someone yawning. But your caption may suggest that the person is not yawning, but singing, or screaming, or bobbing for watermelons, or anything else that requires opening the mouth that wide. This workout is good training, too, in phrasing your caption in a clever, unique way—a way that tells the story you want to tell the viewer clearly, concisely, and with maximum humor. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES In captioning photos, it's usually best to come up with an idea that assigns a com' pletely new meaning to the action in the photograph. Ybu may be able to get a joke from the action as it exists, but inventiveness usually adds to the humor. Let me illustrate. WORKING WITH CAPTIONS 37 Let's assume you're going with a photograph from a horror movie that shows a monster strangling a man. He has a garrote around his victim's throat and is pulling with all his strength. One caption might say, "Please. Igor, loosen it a little bit so I can cry out for help." That's fine, but it is leaving the action in the photograph exactly the way it was intended—the monster is choking his victim. • • • • • Another caption might say, 'Thank you, Igor, but I think I'll get someone else to help me with my bow tie." Now the action in the scene changes. The monster is not murdering the victim, he's merely helping him with the ever troublesome tying of a bow tie. It's funnier now. In trying to be friendly and helpful, he's got the hapless gentleman gasping for air • • • • • Another caption may say, 'This may feel a little uncomfortable at first, but many of our clients have lost a lot of weight with this diet." Now the monster is tying a cord around the client's neck not to strangle him, but to help him lose weight. A WORD BEFORE YOU START Study the photographs that you've selected and search out other meanings that they might have. The meanings can be subtle or they can be bizarre, but they should be different from the real action of the photo. Then try to find a short caption that tells "your" story to the viewer—clearly and humorously. Finding the photographs should be fun and making them funny should be, too. 38 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK WORKOUT 3B "Pen and In\ Patter" Pen and ink is mightier than the photograph. At least it's mightier in that it is more versatile. You can only photograph what actually exists; you can draw anything your mind can imagine. Therefore, you can see things in cartoons that you can't in photos. For example, with pen and ink you can show a person flattened out after being rolled over by a steamroller. We all accept that. The poor victim is only a half inch high, but everything else is in perfect proportion. The belt is still around the middle of the torso, the tie is still on, and so on. Naturally, a photograph of such a tragedy wouldn't look like that. That's the magic of cartooning. In the previous workout you captioned actual photos; in this one, you'll caption cartoons. The straight line you have to work with—the drawing—can be wackier, more bizarre. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Collect 25 cartoons that have drawings that you feel lend themselves to good comedy Discard the caption that is on them. If you prefer, you could have someone else collect interesting cartoons for you and discard the captions before you see them. That way your humor won't be influenced by the original creators' jokes. You could also work with another writer, collect cartoons, discard the captions, and exchange them. Whatever method you select, have at least 25 captionless cartoons at your dis' posal. 2. Write new captions for each cartoon. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU The value of this workout is the same as for Workout 3A, with the added benefit that you learn to see things with a whimsical eye. You will learn from the cartoonists' drawings that a thing doesn't have to be real or even possible for it to exist in your mind. Artists can draw anything that their minds can visualize. Once they draw it, other minds can visualize it, too. This phenomenon is true of ideas, also. Artists and writers are not limited by reality. We are all free to create a new reality—the reality of our imagination. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES In this workout, you needn't search for hidden meanings. The cartoonists have done that for you. You're searching for a logical reason for their craziness. For example, suppose your cartoon shows a cavalry officer speaking with an Indian Chief who is surrounded by hundreds of his warriors. The cavalry officer has literally hundreds of arrows sticking out of him, from all over his body. He looks like a porcupine. You don't need to change the characters. They can remain an officer WORKING WITH CAPTIONS 39 talking to an Indian Chief What you must search for is the reason why the officer has been riddled with arrows. Here are a few possibilities: "I apologize, Chief I was always led to believe that 'How' was a. friendly Indian greeting." • • • • • "Chief, I'm going to take this to mean that you weren't happy with the wording of the Peace Treaty." • • • • • "General Custer warned me that you were a sneaky little %#@$#&." A WORD BEFORE YOU START Some of the drawings you find may be so bizarre and unrealistic that it's hard to find any logic for them. However, the original artists saw some reason to draw them, and with some effort you can find a variation on that reasoning. It's good comedy writing practice, so have fun with this workout. 40 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK WORKOUT 3C "Inanimate Playhouse" Everything you see tells a story The photograph is real action, the cartoon is imagi' nary action, now we'll see that even inanimate objects can take action—at least in the mind. In this workout, you'll provide the image, the imagination, and the caption. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Create and stage a scene that you will caption. Limit yourself to just one area— anything related to: a. Food d. Handyman's tools b. Stationery or office supplies e. Letters of the alphabet c. Shoes and socks In creating and staging your scene, be as inventive as you want, but use only items from the area you selected. Food can be milk cartons, fruit, pretzels, snacks, soft drinks, whatever. Office supplies can be paper clips, staplers, rulers, pens, pencils, paper, and so on. Shoes may be ladies' shoes or men's shoes, athletic footwear, loafers, boots, or baby shoes—anything people put on their feet. Handyman's tools can range from screwdrivers and hammers all the way up to electric power tools. Letters of the alphabet can be typewritten, handwritten, ornate, scribbled—any type of letter at all. The scene that you create should give some life to these objects—a life that your caption (step 2) will explain. 2. Caption the scene that you have just created. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This workout will give you some practice in assigning different meanings, purposes, and intents to ordinary, inanimate objects. It will train your imagination to put some life into everything. It will train you to see things for what they are, and also for what they might be. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are some sample cartoons that I created using food: 1. In this scene I set up two soft pretzels. One is plain; the other is covered with mustard. The caption reads: ""Vfou're a nice girl, Mabel, but I think you use too much makeup." * * * * * 2. A plum is pictured next to a peach. The caption reads: 'The next time you expect to kiss me goodnight, Orville, you'd better shave first." * * * * * WORKING WITH CAPTIONS 41 3. A can of sardines lies open. One solitary sardine is lying beside the can. The caption reads: "Why is it always me that has to wait for the next elevator?" A WORD BEFORE YOU START It's hard to summarize this workout because it can go in any direction. However, it's good all around practice for creating, visualizing, and thinking funny. Have fun working at it. WORKOUT 3D "Caption Tour Own" For this workout, we're removing all restrictions on your imagination and in' ventiveness. You're free to go hog wild. \bu're going to create your own workout. It's just like a place where you make your own sundaes: you can add your favorite flavor or ice cream, your own toppings, and as much whipped cream as you like. In fact, this is so freewheeling, I'll even dispense with the normal format. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT Come up with your own zany idea of something—anything—that you can caption. Whatever you come up with, do at least ten of them. And, as always, have fun with it. Chapter Four WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS Here are four jokes that I've researched. They are different jokes from several comedi' ans on varying subjects. On the surface they don't appear alike at all. Study them, though, and see if you can discover some similarity among them. "Have I got a motheriri'law! She's so neat she tries to put paper under the cuckoo clock." —Henny Youngman • • • • • "This afternoon my wife told me she gave me the best years of her life. What worries me now is what's coming up." —Rodney Dangerfield • * • • • "I recently bought a dozen golf balls and the salesman asked me if he should wrap them up. I said, 'No, I'll drive them home.' " —}ac\ Carter • • • • • "Sex is a beautiful thing between two people. Between five it's fantastic." —Woody Allen • • • • • "I have a scheme for stopping war. It's this . . . no nation is allowed to enter a war till they have paid for the last one." —Will Rogers What all of the gags have in common, and what most gags have in common, is that they take one basic premise and relate it to another idea. To illustrate: Henny Youngman's basic idea was how neat his mother-in'law was, so he related it to putting paper under anything that could cause a mess. He exaggerated it to the point where she put the paper under something that couldn't cause a mess—the bird in the cuckoo clock. Dangerfield's primary topic was the years his wife had given him. He related them to the upcoming years. Jack Carter was talking about golf balls. He related them to driving, and then did a play on the word "drive," relating to both hitting a golf ball and steering a car. Woody Allen used a device that we'll have some workouts on later (working with alternate meanings). He took a phrase that emphasized the word "between" and switched that emphasis to the word "two." He related sex between two to sex among five. Will Rogers related war to paying for war. 42 WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS 43 Now analyze the jokes that you selected in Workout 1A. You will probably find that most of them are based on the interrelationship of two ideas. This relationship is the basis for the most humor. The comedian states the basic premise, then compares it to another idea. This second idea is often similar to the first, but it can also be opposite. It's related by being so unrelated—the same way a word can have synonyms and antonyms. Sometimes the second idea has no connec tion with the original premise at all: it's a complete nonsequitur. As an example: "It's better to have loved and lost than to get your lip caught under a manhole cover." With these types of jokes, the second idea is often a mini'joke in itself It's a funny sounding or image'producing phrase, that would almost stand alone. For example, you could put a completely different premise before this example and have a new joke that works just as well. 'There is nothing worse than a woman scorned except maybe a woman who gets her lip caught under a manhole cover." There are three basic types of relationships—similar, opposite, and unrelated. Think of the word association test that psychologists give. The doctor offers a word and the patient is supposed to respond with the first word that comes to mind. The doctor could say "black"; the patient might respond "ink." That would be a similar response. However, the doctor could say "black"; the patient might say "white." That's a logical but opposite relationship. Or the doctor cduld say "black" and the patient could respond "Pee Wee Herman's undershirt." That obviously is a non'related response. It probably means the patient's either crazy or a comedy writer. Exploring these relationships is the first step in writing comedy. To get a joke on paper, you usually begin with your basic premise—what you want to talk about— and something that it's related to. Once you have those items you can begin to search for the phrasing, the wording, the expressions that you'll use to get your idea across. More importantly, though, learning to discover, uncover, and create these rela' tionships—similar, dissimilar, or unrelated—give you a broader base for your comedy It gives you more ideas to select from, and it gives more variety to your comedy. You're like an artist. The more colors on your palette, the more shading, detail, and depth you can add to your painting. The following workouts will help you practise finding the relationships that will aid in your comedy writing. 44 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 4 A = "That Goes With This" This workout will be practice in searching out similar ideas to relate to your basic premise. Below are the two basic ideas that you will be working on: 1. Mikhail Gorbachev visiting New York City in December of 1988. He travelled around the city extensively, visiting many tourist attractions and attending official meetings. He travelled, though, in a motorcade of 49 cars. That's your premise—the size of that motorcade. • * * • • 2. Some years ago Queen Elizabeth II visited California and was scheduled to visit then President Reagan's Santa Barbara ranch and then enjoy some horse' back riding with the President. However, heavy rains threatened to cancel the riding. Your premise is this: The Queen and the President would ride despite the rains and wet conditions. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. List 15 things that might be associated with a motorcade of 49 cars. 2. List 15 ways that might allow the Queen and the President to ride in wet conditions. For instance, what kind of horse would be safe in that weather, or how could they doctor the horse or the equipment to ride safely in the rain? 3. Using items from the lists that you compile, write five jokes on the Gorbachev motorcade, and five jokes on the horseback riding in the rain. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU You'll leam how some mental effort helps you to uncover relationships. At first, it seems impossible to think of 15 things related to a motorcade, but you may surprise yourself. More importantly, you'll learn that once you have these relationships established, the joke writing becomes easier. The ideas present jokes to your mind. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are a few of the items that I dreamed up about the motorcade, along with some of the jokes that they inspired: a funeral procession a pilcup a parade a game of follow-the'leader a traffic jam "Gorbachev's a man who leaves nothing to chance. He carries his own funeral procession with him when he travels." • • • • • WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS 45 "Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle. Here's a man who brings his own traffic jam to New "Vbrk City." • • • • • "I hope he brought along good drivers. Can you imagine how long it would take to file an accident report involving 49 cars?" Here are some of the ideas that relate to riding a horse in wet conditions, along with the resulting jokes: get a horse with webbed feet get a horse that treads water hook an outboard motor to the horse get a horse with oars get a horse that is at home in the water 'They've decided that the Queen is going to go riding despite the weather. They've finally come up with a horse that has webbed feet." • • • • • "The Queen is going to go riding with the President. They got the saddles on the horses with no problem. The most difficult part was keeping the horses still while they hooked up the outboard motors." • • * • • "The Queen and the President are going to go riding today. The President shouldn't have any trouble, but it'll be hard for the Queen to row while sitting side-saddle." • • • • • "The President rode his regular horse, while the Queen rode 'Shamu, the Killer Stallion.5 " A WORD BEFORE YOU START \bu can see that each relationship practically leads you directly to its own joke. The wording and the exposition of the punchline might need some finctuning, but once you get the idea, the humor is there. "Vbu'll discover that you're writing jokes where you didn't think you could before. Instead of going right to the joke, you go for the relationship first. That makes the writing easier. Have fun with this exercise. 46 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 4B = "This Doesn't Go With That" This workout will be practice in uncovering dissimilar relationships—those that relate to your premise by being practically opposite. Use the same two premises that you used in Workout 4A. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. List 15 ideas or relationships that you would not associate with a 49'car motop cade. 2. List 15 reasons why the Queen and the President could not ride in the wet conditions. For example, what type of horse or equipment wouldn't be safe in rainy, wet weather. 3. Using items from the lists that you compile, write five jokes on the Gorbachev motorcade, and five jokes on the horseback riding in the rain. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU You'll see a whole new approach to establishing relationships. Even though these relationships are opposite, once the connection is made the interrelationship is valid. These connections lead just as easily to jokes. This new dimension will add variety to your writing. The same principles apply, but your humor takes on a slightly different character. When you do a lot of writing, those nuances are important to give your humor variety and depth. You'll learn from this workout, too, that by approaching your topic from a different direction you expand the topic. You open up new ideas and should produce more material. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are a few items I listed as not consistent with 49 cars driven as a unit, and some of the jokes that resulted: a getaway car belonging to the auto club finding a parking space being inconspicuous gassing up "It's the first time I ever felt sorry for Gorbachev. Can you imagine driving around New York looking for 49 parking spaces?" • • • • * "Imagine a 49'car motorcade. Boy, I'd hate to get his monthly bill from the Auto Club." • • • • • WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS 47 Hi "When the motorcade pulled into a corner gas station, the owner got on the phone to his wife and said, Tell Jimmy and Sue to start packing, Mom. The kids are going to college after all." Here are some of the ideas that I didn't feel were consistent with wet horseback riding, and some of the jokes that grew from them. a horse that can't swim a horse that's afraid of water a horse that doesn't have non-skid hoofs a horse that leaks a horse that stalls in wet weather 'The horse that the Queen had refused to go out in the wet conditions. They should have known better than to get a horse who had just seen the movie, Jaws, Part 2." • • • • • 'The Queen's horse reared up when they got out on the trail. He was spooked by a passing school of tuna." • • • • • 'The Queen almost drowned during the ride. Unfortunately, they got her a horse who only knew how to float on his back." A W O R D BEFORE YOU START You can see that these jokes fit with the basic premise just as well as the previous jokes, though they were arrived at from a different angle. It's like having two routes to get to your destination. Both of them get you there, but they add a little variety and some options. Have fun with this workout. H i 48 COMEDY WRITING WORKBOOK = WORKOUT 4C = "That Ma\es Absolutely JS[o Sense at All" This workout provides practice in using the non sequitur type of relationship. This device can quickly become cloying if used too much, especially in the same routine, but it's very effective when used sparingly. It's a zany type of humor, and it adds flavor and variety to your writing. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Compile a list of 15 aphorisms—short proverbs that are almost cliches. In a previous example, I used a variation on "It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." These don't have to be witty In fact, it's better if they aren't. They just have to be recognizable. 2. Select ten aphorisms from you list, and turn them into jokes by changing the ending to something completely ridiculous that is not associated with the first part of the sentence. %u may change the original ending or simply add on to it. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU "fou'U create some bizarre, wacky sayings. This will add a little craziness to your humor that will provide a welcome change of pace. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES Here are a few of the jokes that I concocted from sayings that you'll recognize: "Look before you leap—especially if you have a neighbor whose hobby is siphoning swimming pools." • • • • • 'Always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Strange kind of a hobby for a lumberjack to have." • • • • • "Haste makes waste. And waste makes great leftovers that you can serve when' ever the inlaws come to visit." A WORD BEFORE YOU START This workout is a stimulator. It has no rules or regulations. It only promotes creativity, and gets your mind thinking in unorthodox ways. Sometimes we get hung up on "correct" ways of doing things and traditional approaches. This should jar you out of that rut. Have fun with it. WORKING WITH RELATIONSHIPS 49 = WORKOUT 4D = "What Can You Say About So'and'So?" This is a combination workout. \bu can use any of the techniques that you learned in Workout 4A, 4B, and 4C. \bur basic focus in this workout will be a familiar personality. HERE'S WHAT YOU DO FOR THIS WORKOUT 1. Make a list of five celebrities from any field—sports, movies, politics, or what' ever—who are noted for a particular characteristic. For instance, Zsa Zsa Gabor is noted for her frequent marriages, George Burns for his age, Dolly Parton . . . well, you get the idea. 2. Compile a list of five relationships having to do with each celebrity's charac teristics. 3. Write one joke about each celebrity you listed using one of the relationships that you noted. HERE'S WHAT THIS WORKOUT WILL DO FOR YOU This exercise gives you your choice of using any of the relationships that we men' tioned—similar, opposite, or non sequitur. It's practice in becoming aware of the options that are available to you in comedy writing, exploring all of them, and selecting the one you'll use for a particular joke. This exercise will show you that the more options you have to choose from in your writing, the better your writing will be. HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES I've selected Sammy Davis as an example. Sammy is noted for the expensive gold rings, necklaces, and other baubles that he wears. My list of relationships would be: great wealth jewelry store King Tut King Midas gold fillings From that preparation, I created this joke: "I met and shook hands with Sammy Davis the other day. When I did, I had more money in my hand than I had in my wallet." A WORD BEFORE YOU START This workout is similar to the previous ones, except that it's fun working with celebrities. Have fun with it. iH ifi Chapter Five WORKING WITH IMAGERY Two men were playing golf at the club one day One gentleman was winning easily. Not only was he winning, but he was enjoying his victory, rubbing it in with sarcastic asides. The loser didn't accept the defeat or the ignominy gra' ciously; but he did endure them silently. In the clubhouse locker room, they settled the financial part of the defeat. Then as the loser dressed, the winner noticed he was a priest. He put on the Roman collar. Now the victor was embarrassed. He said, "I'm sorry. I had no idea you were a priest." The clergyman said, "Yes, I am. Bring your parents around to the church sometime and I'll marry them." The good Father called his antagonist a bastard without saying it—but by creating a vivid word picture. That's using imagery! When I was head'writer for a comedy'variety show, the star of the show often told me to have the writers "hide the joke a little more." That means to disguise the punchline rather than make it a statement. In our example above, the priest could have paid off the debt and said, "Here's your money, you bastard." That's not a joke. When he politely implies that his opponent's parents never married, thus calling him a bastard, it's funny. It's different. It's clever. That's disguising the punchline. One way to hide the punchline is to say something by not really saying it. Imply it, like the priest did. Use a colorful image that gets your idea across, but doesn't really say it. When you tell someone you'll get two Boy Scouts to help him across the street, you're saying he's old. W	380,640
Getting the Joke The inner workings of stand-up comedy (Oliver Double) (Z-Library).pdf	Getting the Joke 2nd Edition Getting the Joke 2nd Edition The inner workings of stand-up comedy OLIVER DOUBLE Bloomsbury Methuen Drama An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square 1385 Broadway London New York WC1B 3DP NY 10018 UK USA www.bloomsbury.com Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First edition published 2005 Second edition first published 2014 © Oliver Double, 2005, 2014 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Oliver Double has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as author of this work. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organisation acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-4081-7770-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NN CONTENTS Acknowledgements vii Foreword ix 1 Born not made 1 2 What’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 17 3 Stand-up USA 23 4 Stand-up UK 35 5 What’s new in stand-up? 49 6 Stand-up on stage 65 7 The outer limits of stand-up 77 8 Affection 97 9 The personality spectrum 121 10 Onstage, offstage 141 11 Truth 159 12 Working the audience 187 13 Sharing 203 14 References 221 15 Insiders and outsiders 243 16 Licence 261 17 Politics 287 vi Contents 18 Recorded live 309 19 The present tense 325 20 Conversation 339 21 Improvisation 351 22 Timing 365 23 Delivery 383 24 Instant character 393 25 Magic 409 26 Material 415 27 Performance 429 28 Why bother? 449 Appendix: Exercises for teaching stand-up comedy 459 Glossary of comedians 469 Bibliography 495 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I’d like to thank everybody who has helped me in the writing of this book – this version and the original edition – even if you’ve only been one of those people who I’ve tried to explain some bit I’ve been working on to, to the point where your eyes glaze over. A particularly enormous thank you to those comedians who were kind enough to give interviews, for the first edition or this revised version. Those who let me interview them the first time around were: Shelley Berman; Adam Bloom; Jo Brand; Rhona Cameron; James Campbell; Rhys Darby; Omid Djalili; Dave Gorman; Jeremy Hardy; Harry Hill; Alex Horne; Milton Jones; Phill Jupitus; Mark Lamarr; Shazia Mirza; Ross Noble; Alexei Sayle; Mark Thomas; and Andre Vincent. For this edition I interviewed: Stephen K. Amos; Margaret Cho (twice!); Tiernan Douieb; Richard Herring; Wil Hodgson; Milton Jones; Stewart Lee; Josie Long; Jimmy McGhie; Sarah Millican; Al Murray; Ross Noble; Pappy’s (Ben Clark, Matthew Crosby and Tom Parry); Howard Read; Mark Thomas; and Mark Watson. Conducting these interviews was fantastic fun and an invaluable source of information, much of which was unavailable elsewhere. I was hugely impressed by how willing and open these comedians were to discuss the way they work, and found them genuinely friendly and nice to talk to. Thanks are also due to the agents who helped to set up the interviews (especially Brett Vincent at Bound and Gagged who actively suggested people to me), and also Ian Baird, Matthew Crosby, Colin Anderson and especially Tiernan Douieb, who all put me in touch with people I wanted to talk to. And more thanks go out to those comedians who said they’d do an interview, but I didn’t get time to actually follow it up. viii Acknowledgements I’m very grateful to the University of Kent for giving me study leave so that I had time to write the book (both times around), and to the SDFVA Research Committee for funding some of the cost of seeing shows and doing interviews for the first edition. I’d like to thank Jimmy, Katie, Charlie and Gav for letting me talk about your work on the course – keep in touch. Also, thanks to all of the students I’ve taught on any of my stand-up courses, for drawing my attention to things and making me think so long and hard about all of this stuff – and particularly those like Jimmy and Tiernan who have gone on to become successful comedians. Professor Chris Baugh gave me moral support and good advice on the general tone of my research for the first edition, and Tony Allen has been an important influence on my writing, through his own work and the many conversations we’ve had over the years. Thanks are due to Alan Story from the Kent Law School for detailed and helpful advice on copyright law. I’m indebted to Louise Arnold for the comedy videos, and to Mark Lamarr for kindly giving me some of his old comedy albums. Huge thanks to Ross Noble for writing the new foreword to this edition, and for the many times you’ve got me tickets for your shows – particularly Laughs in the Park in 2011. Thank you to all the people at Methuen, especially Anna Brewer, my editor. Finally, a great big thank you to my wife Jacqui, who read through various drafts despite having better things to do, pointed out typos, made helpful suggestions and vehemently encouraged me to make my prose zippy, not stodgy. And a final, final thank you to my sons Joe and Tom, who make me howl with laughter and are generally lovely to have around. FOREWORD To the casual observer I as a stand-up comic spend my time on stage just dicking about and showing off. And those people might be surprised to see me writing the foreword to a serious book by Britain’s foremost comedy academic. Well I first met Oliver Double over 20 years ago when he ran and hosted a comedy club. Unlike a lot of comics and promoters he had a genuine passion for understanding and discussing the inner working of comedy. These conversations I find endlessly fascinating and I take great delight in watching people with little interest in the workings of comedy backing away after a prolonged dissection of a routine of a long forgotten music hall comic. It always amazes me when people think that a group of comics sitting around talking about comedy would be hilarious. Although it can be, especially if one of their number has suffered a terrible on-stage death, but for the most part I would liken it to bunch of chefs talking about creating recipes. At the time we first met I was a tiny child (some would say the Shirley Temple of the British stand-up circuit) with an obsession with stand-up comedy. Little did I realise back then, when we would discuss the topic at great length, that he would go on to write one of the most in-depth books studying the art of stand-up comedy and that I would be deemed worthy to introduce it as a leading exponent of the art form. It may seem a tad pretentious to describe stand-up in artistic terms, but as you will see from these pages it very much is. It is however rarely treated as such, and for many reasons, not least as it is so populist and often those who archive a reasonable degree of success in the field are more than happy to sidestep into other less challenging yet lucrative areas of the x Foreword entertainment world. Another reason stand-up is not taken as seriously as an art form is the simple reason that when it is done well it looks so effortless and natural, that it appears as if the performer is not doing anything, merely joining the audience in a moment that would have naturally happened. The conceit of watching a show is forgotten and the audience member feels like the comic is talking to them in a one-to-one conversation yet at the same time being swept away with the energy of those around them. The crowd and the performer are lost in the moment and the experience becomes an emotional rather than a cerebral one. Laughs are seemingly triggered by nothing more than tiny movements of the face or a pause that contains no words or sounds. It is this emotional response to stand-up that makes it so different from other art forms and in a live setting there is no way to fake it. The success of a comic is judged instantly – if they laugh you’re a hit, if they don’t you’re not. Also a fledgling stand-up must often learn their craft in pubs and clubs where their art is being judged, often by drunks and often leading to fairly lowbrow topics and a lack of imagination and risk taking. But it is this harsh critical environment that a truly brilliant stand-up must go through to equip them with the skills to develop and form them into a seasoned performer. Ironically, the raw and spontaneous development process that forms the comic and their act can, when a performer has found their audience and taken their act to television or DVD, leave an end result which has been tailored more for the home viewer, honed, edited and give a slight sense of losing the magic. All of this aside, this book explores stand-up as it should be, as a true art, and uncovers the mechanics and mysteries in creating it. Stand-up as an art form is unique in that there is no way to rehearse it. It can only be done in front of an audience, and can only be mastered by doing it live there and then in front of people. For every rule you create, a laugh can be gained by breaking that rule. And even though stand-up has its roots in theatre poetry and literature at its most primitive, it is just one person with funny bones in front of a group of Foreword xi people being funny. Holding the audience and being totally in the moment. There is something thrilling and magical about that moment, and it is for that reason that it is so intriguing. The joy and the secret of it is in that moment. It is not a passive medium – all the elements must come together, the ideas, the performance and the environment must perfectly align and the comic must merge all of these elements perfectly, controlling and timing everything just right while the audience gets lost in the moment. And it is that moment that makes stand-up so special. That moment that lives for a second and then is gone, never to be repeated. That moment where hundreds of people all feel the same joy and release of laugher at the same time, and that makes it the most direct form of expression with the comic being the writer, director and performer all at the same time. Those are the moments that make comedians appear like strange aliens, alchemists of the imagination who create delight and wonder from the mundane and make connections that most people would miss. This book is a chance to look behind the curtain and lift the lid and get an insight into the how those moments are achieved. I am not quite sure why there is a lid behind the curtains, so if you want to know about that I suggest you buy a book about home furnishing Far from being cerebral alchemy, stand-up is in many ways like playing music, with a comedian’s on-stage persona the instrument, and the gags and physical performance like musical notes: how they are arranged and played have very different effects on the audience. A comic can bang out a familiar crowd-pleasing tune or experiment with a concept album. They can tightly prepare the jokes and deliver them with amazing precision as if performing a classical movement or go on stage and wing it like a free-form jazz performer. Anyone can be funny in the same way that anyone can very quickly bang out a bit of a tune, but it is only through getting up on stage every night for years that a comic can attempt to master the medium and begin to understand how to live xii Foreword in those moments and play those notes and beats. However, in this book Oliver has taken this vast, complex and never- ending topic and managed to give an insight into what goes into getting there. He has managed to get to the heart of what is behind what we see in that moment. How it all fits together, the history of the medium and how different movements and individuals have shaped the comedy landscape to create the modern form we know today. He explores where and how ideas are created and how those ideas are executed, the essence of who is telling the gag and how the character or persona of the person on stage is absolutely integral to whether a joke gets a laugh or not. And shows how a person goes from being a funny bloke in the pub to a fully-fledged performer able to perform a comedic symphony, conducting the audience and riding the energy of their laughter, taking their input and using it to take the whole performance to another level. This book is for anyone who wants to be a comic or wants to know why anyone would want to be one. In essence a cookbook for the comical and in many ways a manual on how to show off and dick about. Ross Noble Note Currently both chefs and comics infest the TV schedules, and at some point a TV commissioner will create a TV chef– stand-up hybrid which will signal the end of television, and the beginning of the end of days CHAPTER ONE Born not made Let’s start with the fact that I’ve got a bit of a weird job. Since the late 1990s, I’ve been teaching university students how to do stand-up comedy. When I tell people that, the first thing they ask tends to be, ‘How on earth do you do that?’ Lurking behind the question is either genuine fascination or plain cynicism. That’s something I’ve got used to. When I first started at the University of Kent, where I now work, there was a flurry of press interest in the fact that they’d appointed a comedian to teach students how to do stand-up. Most of them went for the ‘hey-you’ll-never-believe-what-these-crazy-academics-are- up-to-now’ angle. The Sun named my teaching among their examples of ‘odd offerings from the wacky world of education’, and argued that some of the courses students choose to study ‘are worthless and will do nothing to help them get jobs.’1 Comedians themselves have also been somewhat sceptical about the idea of teaching comedy. Rhona Cameron, for example, says: I don’t feel you can study stand-up, and learn stand-up from a situation like that. I’ve got quite strong views on that. I feel like stand-up has to be … a thing you have to kind of drift into. I think it’s an organic thing, and I think it comes from a kind of crossroads of life, or a feeling that … you’ve never fitted in or you haven’t got along with others.2 2 GETTING THE JOKE I understand the cynicism about teaching stand-up, and if I wasn’t involved in it I might feel that way myself. However, while a formal comedy course might sound like a dreadful idea, clearly there is a learning process involved when somebody starts out as a stand-up – unless you subscribe to the notion that the comedian’s magical powers are fully manifested the first time they perform to an audience. There are certain technical skills which need to be acquired through experience, and Jeremy Hardy points out that ‘the tricks in stand-up are something you can learn’.3 Stephen K. Amos agrees: If someone told me when I first started that, you know, there’s techniques you can learn, I’d have said, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ But there is … you know, a look, a pause … the timing of taking a sip of water or beer or whatever. Or the callback to a certain member of the audience or something you said earlier. There’s all those things you learn…4 This learning process usually takes place in front of a live audience. Most comedians begin by being bad at their job. Their early performances are marred by nerves. They are clumsy and awkward onstage. They fail to get laughs. The bad experiences are usually leavened by the occasional show where the new comic clicks with an audience and goes down well. With experience, the act improves. The comedian learns the job simply by doing it, as Alexei Sayle describes: ‘I did as many as seven appearances a night, sometimes – one audience would be cold, the next warm, then one lukewarm, then another cold, then a really hot one … In a technical sense it’s fantastic training.’5 Advice The long, demoralising slog of hard experience isn’t the only way of learning, though. Comedians may be sceptical Born not made 3 about teaching stand-up, but in many cases they are teachers themselves. There’s a long tradition of older comedians giving advice and informal tuition to less experienced acts. Groucho Marx acted as a father figure to many younger comedians, and was an early admirer of Woody Allen’s stand-up act. Milton Berle was an established act when he first met Henny Youngman, who was doing weekend shows in the Catskills, and Berle gave him advice about timing and delivery. In 1949, Bob Monkhouse was appearing low down on the bill of a concert at the London Coliseum in aid of war refugees. Max Miller was topping the bill, and Monkhouse asked him for advice. Though feeling unwell, Miller made the effort to watch the younger comedian’s act. Afterwards, Miller gave him what Monkhouse describes as ‘a master class in patter comedy by its greatest living exponent’. There was advice on delivery, vocal projection, energy, comic authority, timing and using gesture to create a mental picture. Miller even gave Monkhouse detailed advice on how to improve the structure of particular jokes.6 Speaking on Radio 4, John Sessions says that the thought of comedy courses ‘really chills me’, but goes on to describe how John Cleese saw one of his early performances and phoned him the next day to discuss it in detail. Cleese advised him to give the jokes more space, and to try not to lump too many ideas together in one gag. Sessions found the advice ‘fantastic’.7 Omid Djalili had a more sustained relationship with his informal comedy mentor: It was really Ivor Dembina who then came to see me and took me under his wing and said, ‘Look, you’ve obviously got something, and you’re not quite there yet, you need someone to help you write some material.’… And I think he taught me a hell of a lot actually, he taught me how to write jokes … to be honest, he taught me how to do it.8 4 GETTING THE JOKE In other cases, comedians share knowledge among themselves on a more equal basis. Alexei Sayle remembers: In the early days, I think we used to stay up all night, I can remember me and Tony Allen and Andy de la Tour, for instance, round Tony’s flat, staying up all night talking about comedy, and the nature of it … we talked about the kind of ethical aspects of it, and … I can certainly remember talking about the technical [aspects].9 Younger comics can learn from older acts simply by watching them and observing their technique. Bob Monkhouse wrote about how he absorbed technique from comedians like Max Miller, Arthur Askey and Max Wall ‘by osmosis’.10 Chris Rock talks of the need to ‘study comedy’, and recalls how listening to albums by acts like Woody Allen and Richard Pryor helped him develop.11 Adam Bloom describes how watching other comics at the Bearcat Club helped him prepare for his first appearance: I used to go every single Monday without fail, and just watch, and learn, and suss it out. I kind of learnt by other people’s mistakes, in a way. Just, you know, worked out what open spots were doing wrong. And I could see there was a command that the established acts had that the open spots didn’t have.12 There’s a long tradition of agents and managers helping to nurture and develop the acts they represent, particularly in America. Woody Allen was helped through the sometimes painful transition from successful comedy writer to stand-up act by his managers Jack Rollins and Charles Joffe. They found him bookings in small venues to allow him to develop his performance skills, talked with him about comedy until 4am, and helped him to edit his material. Allen looks back on Rollins as ‘a great coach, a great teacher, a great manager’.13 Later, Joffe and Rollins helped to develop Robin Williams, for Born not made 5 example advising him to end a character piece about an old man looking back at the time before World War Three with a moment of pathos.14 Comedians can sometimes get similar help from the people who run the venues in which they perform. At the original Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Mitzi Shore would critique each of the new young acts she put on. When George Black ran the London Palladium, he would sometimes offer advice to the acts he booked. He might, for example, criticise a weak routine, telling the comic, ‘It’s dull … You’d better lose your pants or something.’15 When fledgling comics progress to appearances on radio or TV, they may find themselves working with people who can help them adjust their acts to the new medium. Hughie Green would advise and help to shape the acts that appeared on his TV talent show Opportunity Knocks. Later, when Bob Monkhouse hosted the same show, he would offer detailed advice to comedians, helping them with delivery, joke construction and the structure of the overall act. Working on the regional BBC Radio show Wotcheor Geordie, Bobby Thompson received detailed coaching from his producer, Richard Kelly, who remembers: ‘[O]f course, we spent quite a lot of time instructing him, giving him hints and tips on how to handle an audience, on pauses, on timing, … particularly on emphasis.’16 When Thompson used up his existing material, Kelly found a writer called Lisle Willis to provide him with more. Thompson found learning the new material difficult, as he had a poor memory. Kelly would spend long hours rehearsing with him, teaching him different ways of working with punchlines and ensuring he got the emphasis right in particular sentences. One joke had a pay-off line which went, ‘And leave me outside the way you’ve always done,’ and Thompson kept insisting on placing the emphasis on the word ‘done’ instead of where it should have been, on ‘always’. It could take a whole afternoon’s work to iron out such problems.17 6 GETTING THE JOKE Advice can also be found in the range of ‘how to’ guides to stand-up comedy published over the years.18 In 1945, Lupino Lane wrote a book called How to Become a Comedian. Lane came from a line of comic performers which stretched back to the seventeenth century, and worked in silent comedies, stage musicals and variety. Some of the chapters in his book – ‘How to Use an Old Gag’, ‘Patter’ and ‘Timing’ – might have been useful to fledgling front cloth comics in variety theatres. Others – ‘Female Impersonation’, ‘Crazy, Acrobatic, Knockabout and Slapstick Comedy’ and ‘Ventriloquism’ – are clearly aimed at other types of comedian. In the last 20 years, the number of ‘how to’ guides has proliferated, but the problem with many of these is that they tend to oversimplify the subtle techniques of stand-up and offer dogmatic advice which is sometimes simply wrong. In Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, Judy Carter defines modern stand-up as a form of self-expression: ‘People confuse stand-up comedy with telling jokes … Joke-telling is the old Catskill school of comedy… The new school of comedy is personal comedy. Your act is about you: your gut issues, your body, your marriage, your divorce, your drug habit …’ However, having argued against simply ‘telling jokes’ – thus implying a freer, more creative approach – she goes on to stipulate ‘specific stand-up formulas’ and argues: ‘All stand-up material must be organised into the setup/punch format. If your material isn’t organised like this, you’re not doing stand-up.’19 It defies belief that the free-flowing routines of geniuses like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly or Eddie Izzard were produced with this rigid, formulaic set-up/ punch approach. Carter specifically warns against personal anecdotes, saying ‘stories don’t work’.20 In the unlikely event that, say, Pryor or Connolly had followed this advice, they would have had to shed some of their strongest material. Born not made 7 Acting schools and comedy classes Some comedians have had a more formal training, albeit not specifically aimed at preparing them for stand-up. Shelley Berman trained as an actor at the Goodman Theatre School in Chicago, and feels that this contributed to the development of his unique and extraordinary vocal style: The study of speech, for example, I felt contributed to my work … as a comedian. The placement of my voice – I don’t know why, but somehow I know I can perform in a theatre without a microphone …Yes, certainly the education is a contributing factor there. Whatever is natural is natural, but there was considerable vocal development and speech development in my schooling …21 Then there are stand-up comedy classes. My stand-up course was by no means the first attempt at offering some kind of formal training specifically geared for comedy, and the idea probably originates in the training which took place within theatrical families for hundreds of years. Lupino Lane writes about the knowledge which was passed down within his own family, with tuition in such areas as acrobatic tricks, juggling and ‘The art of miming or expressing the emotions, in “dumb show”’. He also remembers his father, who he describes as ‘a most patient tutor’, teaching him comedy skills and specific routines.22 Classes aimed at the general public – as opposed to training within families – have existed for at least 100 years. In 1907, the young Marx Brothers spent some time in the newly estab lished Ned Wayburn’s College of Vaudeville, and appeared in a showcase performance featuring some of those that had studied there. Like the ‘how to’ guides, comedy classes have proliferated more recently. In 1972, Pete Crofts set up his Humourversity, which describes itself as ‘Australia’s foremost training 8 GETTING THE JOKE institution in the art of humour, comedy and laughter’. It offers courses and workshops on stand-up as well as related topics like comedy writing, and public speaking with humour. In America, comedy workshops are offered by comedians like Judy Carter, or by venues like the Comic Strip in New York, which offers an eight-week programme and private tutoring. Jamie Masada, who runs the Laugh Factory on Sunset Boulevard, has even established a Comedy Camp for Kids, where students from inner-city schools can learn stand-up skills. In the UK, the idea of teaching comedy has been floating around since the 1970s, when Trevor Griffiths set his play Comedians in a nightschool class for stand-ups.23 It’s only more recently that classes like this have become well estab lished outside the world of theatrical fiction. In the late 1980s, when he was just starting out as a comic, Frank Skinner ran stand-up workshops at the college where he was working. Although he looks back at the experience as ‘the near sighted leading the blind’, he received media coverage for the course, and this attracted the attention of Jasper Carrott, who turned up to one of the classes and offered advice and encouragement to the participants.24 Later, Skinner ran workshops as part of a Red Stripe-sponsored tour for Amnesty International, and the class at the Wythenshawe Forum in Manchester was attended by future comics Caroline Aherne and Dave Gorman, who was just 19 years old. Gorman remembers: It was … 20-odd people sitting around, and Frank sort of talked through what he thought about stand-up and showed a little video, and then that was discussed and analysed, and then anyone who wanted to was able to get up and do … five minutes in front of everyone else. A few of us did, and I did.25 The experience proved to be crucial, because on the strength of this five-minute performance in the class, Gorman was booked for a benefit gig by Henry Normal, then a stand-up Born not made 9 poet on the Manchester circuit. Skinner was headlining that show, and he went on to offer Gorman a paid booking at the 4X Cabaret in Birmingham which he was compèring at the time. This was the beginning of Gorman’s professional career. At around the same time, the Jacksons Lane Community Centre in Highgate ran comedy workshops taught by comics from the London circuit, covering such subjects as improvi sation, writing and compèring, in 11 two-hour sessions. Often, the tutors would be performers who had previously been students, like Ivor Dembina, Patrick Marber and Jim Tavaré. Jacksons Lane no longer runs comedy workshops, but there are still plenty of places to find them. The Comedy School, founded in 1998, offers classes taught by comics like Paul Merton, Arnold Brown and Adam Bloom. Logan Murray has been teaching his Stand Up and Deliver courses since 2000 in association with the Amused Moose comedy club, and has an impressive list of alumni.26 Tony Allen runs what is described as ‘a crash course in stand-up comedy’ made up of six two-hour sessions, and some of the exercises they use are described in Allen’s book Attitude: Wanna Make Something of It?27 Stand-up goes to university Mine is certainly not the first university comedy course. Middlesex University has been running one as part of its drama degree since the mid-1980s; and Salford University started a stand-up course in 1993, with Peter Kay as its most illustrious alumnus. More have followed in recent years, notably Southampton Solent University’s three-year BA in Comedy Writing and Performance. I had started teaching stand-up at Liverpool John Moores University even before I moved to Kent, as a result of the peculiar way my life was turning out. I’d started working as a 10 GETTING THE JOKE stand-up about ten years before I got the job at John Moores, making a living from the regular paid bookings I was getting as well as the comedy club I compèred and co-managed. I’d also written my first book on stand-up.28 In 1997, personal circumstances meant I had to get a proper job, so I started applying for drama lectureships. It was only after my first term at John Moores that I was asked to develop a stand-up course. Initially, the course was quite modest – one three-hour workshop per week for one term, leading to a single performance in a local pub. When I moved to Kent, I was asked to develop something similar. This time it was bigger – two sessions per week for a whole year, with three performances at regular intervals. Learning to teach students how to perform stand-up comedy wasn’t easy. I’d been taught in the traditional way – by experience. Now I had to find ways of passing on this knowledge to students. My first task was to break down what I knew, to try and untangle and identify the skills so they were no longer merely automatic. I started to do this purely by reacting to what the students were doing in class, and at first, my only way of passing on what I had learnt was simply by telling it to the students. Gradually, I found better ways of approaching the problem, developing a series of simple exercises which help the students to make discoveries for themselves.29 The Kent drama degree is a four-year course, and students specialise in just one practical subject for the whole of their final year. In 2001, I developed stand-up comedy as a fourth year option. It was a chance to teach more intensively, and I had the freedom to shape the course exactly as I wanted it. Taking advantage of this, I decided that the best way forward was to make the idea of learning by doing much more central. I would ask the students to do their first show ten days into the course, and then perform every week for the rest of the term. In each of the 11 shows, the students would be expected to come up with new material. That way, by the end of the term, they would have had a fair amount of stage Born not made 11 experience, and a repertoire of tried and tested routines to choose from. I knew this would be throwing them in at the deep end, so I had to find a sympathetic venue. I chose Mungo’s, a bar in one of the university’s colleges. It wasn’t perfect. The walls were slatted not solid, so that the corridor outside would act as a natural echo chamber, and people walking past could disrupt the show by shouting. It was too small for a raised stage, so we would have to just perform in one corner of the room. Worst of all, the doors stayed permanently open, and we wouldn’t be able to charge people to come in.30 Normally, this is the kiss of death for a comedy night. On the other hand, it was a regular haunt of other drama students, so it felt like home territory, and by working hard at publicity, we thought we would be able to only attract people who were interested in seeing the stand-up. In the second term, the students would put together a 20-minute set from the best bits they had done in Mungo’s, and take it out into away territory, doing a show in a Canterbury pub. They would also carry out a research project, and arrange for themselves a series of open mike performances in real comedy clubs. Again, the idea was for them to perform as much as possible, and even the research project would involve putting on a show. On 25 September, it was time for the first workshop, and the four students who had opted for stand-up arrived, looking distinctly nervous. Jimmy, a good-looking middle-class chap, had spent most of the previous three years underachieving by being cheekily lazy. Katie – the polar opposite of Jimmy – was a self-confessed swot, who was convinced that everyone thought she was too boring to do be a comedian. Gav was a gentle skinhead anarchist with a penchant for the surreal. Charlie had a kind of post-punk chic, and liked to take risks. Although they were a very mixed bunch, they all had the same ashen expression on their faces. I asked what the matter was, and they told me they’d all been in the bar together, drinking to calm their nerves. Apparently, even the workshop was a scary prospect. 12 GETTING THE JOKE As it turned out, they quickly relaxed into the exercises, laughing and messing about. The atmosphere of the workshops is important. When I was a drama student, the emphasis tended to be on discipline. We wore standard black clothes, worked barefoot, had to arrive strictly on time and were sometimes forbidden from talking about life in the outside world. Casual chatting and laughter were frowned on. This is a productive atmosphere for learning physical theatre skills or the techniques of Jerzy Grotowski, but not for stand-up. Although it’s still important to arrive on time, students wear their own clothes, and talking about the outside world is a positive requirement. As long as it is focused, casual chatting can be very productive. There’s a feeling of just playing about, and people gently make fun of each other – and me. Maintaining the balance between this casual atmosphere and the task in hand is a delicate matter. Then, after five sessions like this, the students had to face a live audience for the first time. The first night It’s Thursday, 4 October 2001, 8 p.m. Mungo’s is teeming with people, but I’m not sure they’re here to see the comedy. There’s a big party of students here as part of a fancy dress pub-crawl, and I really hope they’ll be gone by the time we start. I’m already thinking about other venues we might try if tonight’s a disaster. I’m going to compère the show myself, to try and make sure the atmosphere is warm and the audience is focused – and I know I’ll have a job on my hands. It’s still chaotic at 8.30 when I walk on to start the show. The drunken fancy dressers have moved on, but there are still 80 people or more packed into the bar. There’s a lot of background chatter, and I’m distracted by the echoey acoustics. I work hard to bring the room together, taking the crowd through a silly audience participation thing, and Born not made 13 playing them Lipps Inc.’s 1980 disco classic ‘Funkytown’ on the mandolin. After ten minutes, it feels like an audience rather than a random collection of people who happen to be in the same room together. I introduce Charlie, who’s on first, and there’s a huge burst of cheering and applause, with the kind of excitable edge you’d expect from an audience dominated by drama students. Charlie does well with the story of a one-night stand, and Katie follows by talking about her family. She plays on her swottiness, apologising after she says ‘shit’ – ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say the brown word.’ The audience like her. Gav is next, and he suddenly shows a control he’s lacked in the workshops, where he’s tended to veer off all over the place. He gets a big laugh for his opening gag (Gav: ‘Anyone here from Chester?’ Punter: ‘Yeah!’ Gav: ‘My dad died there.’), then lights himself a cigarette, taking his time over it. It’s a high-status gesture – he’s quite happy to keep a room full of people waiting until he’s ready. Jimmy goes on last, and it’s clear from the beginning that he’s a natural. He has the kind of casualness which shows a deep confidence, and he’s prepared to play about on stage. He starts by taking the piss out of me, saying I’ve only set the course up as a kind of revenge for all the times I died on stage when I was a working comic. Then he tells the tale of when he recently ‘shit himself’ while backpacking around Thailand. It’s well-structured and beautifully performed. After a Thai curry and some Chang beers, he’s in a sleeping bag under a mosquito net. ‘And then it came,’ he says. There’s a laugh of anticipation. ‘Blup!’ he says, impersonating the noise of his stomach. ‘Blululup!’ There’s another laugh, and he continues, in a genuinely cheerful voice: My guts were trying to tell me something! [laughter] They were! They were telling me I was about to shit myself! [laughter and applause] There’s a red Thai curry in there that wants to leave! [laughter] It wants to explore the world via my anus! [laughter] So yeah, so I just, I thought, ‘No, 14 GETTING THE JOKE bollocks,’ you know, ‘I’m tucked away, I’ve got all my stuff, I’m in my Action Millets Bearproof fucking Sleeping Bag, I’m not going anywhere, ‘cos it’s – it’s bound to just be a fart. [laughter] I’ll stand up, I’ll get out of the bedroom and I’ll just go thhhppp! [laughter] Then I’ll have to go back to bed.’ So I took the gamble. [laughter] So I did the Jimmy, I took the fucking gamble. I decided that I was going to take it on. So I stayed in bed. [pause] Silly Jimmy. [laughter and some clapping] The first night is a big success but it isn’t always this easy. The crowd fluctuates. Sometimes it’s big and noisy, but sometimes the students find themselves playing to 30-odd quiet punters. One week, the PA system starts to emit blue smoke while we’re soundchecking, then refuses to work – we have to perform acoustic. By halfway through the term, the students are starting to feel the strain of having to come up with new material every week. The process of teaching them, of helping them through the stresses and strains, starts to raise certain questions for me. I can draw on my previous research to answer the easier questions – like where stand-up comedy came from – but there are fundamental aspects of the art form that rarely get addressed in books: Who do comedians become when they’re on stage? What do they do to establish a relationship with their audience? How much do they improvise? Which different techniques do they use to perfect their delivery? And perhaps most crucial and most mysterious of all, how do comedians actually go about their job? Notes 1 Tim Spanton, ‘I’ve got a degree in Beckhamology’, The Sun, 14 August 2000 2 Interview with Rhona Cameron, by telephone, 19 March 2004 Born not made 15 3 Interview with Jeremy Hardy, Streatham, 1 April 2004 4 Interview with Stephen K. Amos, by telephone, 18 September 2012 5 John Hind, The Comic Inquisition: Conversations with Great Comedians, London: Virgin, 1991, p. 32 6 See Bob Monkhouse, Crying with Laughter, London: Arrow Books, 1993, pp. 56–9 for a lovely, detailed account of this. 7 Pillories of the State, Radio 4, 28 January 2001 8 Interview with Omid Djalili, by telephone, 28 June 2004 9 Interview with Alexei Sayle, University of Kent, Canterbury, 21 November 2003 10 See Bob Monkhouse, Over the Limit: My Secret Diaries 1993–8, London: Century, 1998, p. 184 11 See Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: A History of African American Comedy from Slavery to Chris Rock, Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 1999, p. 581 and Kings of Black Comedy, Channel 4, 9 March 2002 12 Interview with Adam Bloom, by telephone, 29 June 2004 13 Quoted in Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon Books, 2003, p. 548 14 The routine in question is ‘Grandpa Funk’, which can be heard on Robin Williams, Reality…What a Concept, Laugh.com, 2002, LGH 1104 15 Quoted in Ian Bevan, Top of the Bill: The Story of the London Palladium, London: Frederick Muller, 1952, p. 81 16 Bobby Thompson … The Little Waster, a documentary originally screened on Channel 4 in 1982, available on the video: Bobby Thompson, The Little Waster, Tyne Tees Television/Mawson & Wareham Music, 1986, MWMV1003 17 See Dave Nicolson, Bobby Thompson: A Private Audience, Newcastle Upon Tyne: TUPS Books, 1996, pp. 104–8 18 A number of comedians have told me that they found the first edition of Getting the Joke useful as a source of information when they were first getting started, even though it wasn’t written as a ‘how to’ guide. I felt immensely flattered when 16 GETTING THE JOKE Sarah Millican, for example, told me, ‘[Y]our book was very, very helpful to me’, not least because I’m a fan of her comedy. Modesty prevented me from including this information in the main text, but clearly I’m vain enough to include it as a footnote 19 See Judy Carter, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, New York: Dell Publishing, 1989, pp. 3, 45, 46 20 Judy Carter, Stand-Up Comedy: The Book, New York: Dell Publishing, 1989, p. 5 21 Interview with Shelley Berman, by telephone, 5 August 2004 22 See Lupino Lane, How to Become a Comedian, London: Frederick Muller, 1945, pp. 55–6, 61 23 Trevor Griffiths, Comedians, London: Faber, 1976. Tony Allen offers a commentary on the play in Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2002, pp. 123–6, and makes some insightful criticisms of Eddie Waters’s deficiencies as a teacher of stand-up. 24 Frank Skinner, Frank Skinner, London: Century, 2001, pp. 254–8 25 Interview with Dave Gorman, by telephone, 29 June 2004 26 Logan Murray has also written what is for my money probably the best ‘how to’ guide on stand-up comedy (Logan Murray, Be a Great Stand-Up: Teach Yourself, London: 2010). It’s full of detailed advice without being too dogmatic, and it draws on interviews with some very good comedians. Murray is also an interesting comic in his own right 27 For an example of one of their exercises, see Tony Allen, Attitude: Wanna Make Something of it? The Secret of Stand-Up Comedy, Glastonbury: Gothic Image Publications, 2002, p. 37 28 Oliver Double, Stand-Up! On Being a Comedian, London: Methuen, 1997 29 See Appendix 1 for a full description of some of the exercises I have developed 30 A few years ago, Mungo’s was completely remodelled, making it a better performance space and significantly increasing its audience capacity. My students now regularly play to audiences of 100–50, and have been known to attract crowds of up to 250 CHAPTER TWO What’s the definition of stand-up comedy? Back in 2000, I happened across a fact that shocked me. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term ‘stand-up comic’ was first used in an article in The Listener, published on 11 August 1966.1 Maybe shock is a bit of a strong reaction, perhaps even a little sad, but at the time I’d had a keen – not to say obsessive – interest in stand-up comedy for well over a decade. In all that time, I had never actually bothered to look into the origin of the term. My first reaction – after kicking myself for not being obsessive enough – was disbelief. Surely the term must have been in use before 1966? After all, by that point the style of performance it describes had been in existence for at least 60 years, and some of its most famous practitioners were already dead and gone. Indeed, the article hit the news-stands exactly eight days after Lenny Bruce was found dead on his toilet. I felt that the Oxford English Dictionary had thrown down the gauntlet, and I was determined to pick it up. I went straight to the Listener article which the OED says is the earliest recorded usage, to look for clues. It’s a piece reporting the ideas of the marvellously named Miss Ethel Strainchamps about the effect of television on spoken English, and it contains two references to ‘stand-up comics’.2 However, 18 GETTING THE JOKE it couldn’t possibly be the actual first usage of the term, not least because it’s actually a description of an earlier article, from an American journal called Television Quarterly, in which Miss Strainchamps wrote: Stand-up comics, the only kind of professional performers who have ever attempted to talk solo before a TV camera for more than two minutes at a time, must use the device of the studio audience or the laugh-track. Their purpose is to convert their total audience to the preliterate type by inducing a ‘crowd’ response.3 Having tracked down a copy of the Television Quarterly article, I started to look for other earlier usages. Amazingly, I found one in the OED’s rival: Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, published in 1961. It gives a definition of the adjective ‘stand-up’ as: ‘[P]erformed in or requiring a standing erect position <stand-up lunch> <stand-up bar> <stand-up comedy act> <stand-up boxing stance>’.4 Great! So the term ‘stand-up comedy’ was definitely in use in Lenny Bruce’s time. In fact, an even earlier usage crops up in a radio interview with Bruce from 1959, in which the inter viewer, Studs Terkel, asks: ‘Where does this leave the stand-up comics, quote unquote, who have stables of writers?’5 It’s unlikely that Terkel coined the term there and then, or Bruce would have probably asked him what he meant by it, but the chances are its exact origins are impossible to track down. An article in The Guardian claims it was first used on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, but Carson only started on that show in 1962, three years after the Lenny Bruce interview. This claim kicked off an internet discussion, in which someone suggests that Milton Berle did the coining in 1942, but this seems unlikely given that he disliked the phrase.6 But if finding the origin of the term ‘stand-up comedy’ is hard, it’s nothing compared with the difficulty of actually trying to define it. It’s an instantly recognisable form of enter tainment, but putting a finger on what makes it so easy to What’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 19 recognise is not so simple. You can start with the obvious fact that it’s funny, but that doesn’t narrow it down far enough. I’ve fallen into this trap myself. In my first book, I define stand-up as: ‘[A] single performer standing in front of an audience, talking to them with the specific intention of making them laugh.’7 Now I find myself having to nitpick this to pieces. I say ‘a single performer’, but couldn’t what Morecambe and Wise did in their routines in front of the velvet curtains be described as stand-up? And aren’t there other performers who fit this description, who are not stand-up comedians? What about comic poets? Circus clowns? Storytellers? Performers of character monologues, like Joyce Grenfell? Other definitions fall short for similar reasons. The OED defines the stand-up comic as ‘a comedian whose act consists of standing before an audience and telling a succession of jokes.’8 This description more or less fits the work of acts like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Ross Noble, Stewart Lee and Josie Long, but doesn’t even touch on the extra things they do that make them so extraordinary. Having thought long and hard about it, I’ve come up with a list of the three things which define stand-up comedy, besides the fact of it being funny: Personality It puts a person on display in front of an audience, whether that person is an exaggerated comic character or a version of the performer’s own self. Direct communication It involves direct communication between performer and audience. It’s an intense relationship, with energy flowing back and forth between stage and auditorium. It’s like a conversation made up of jokes, laughter and sometimes less pleasant responses. Present tense It happens in the present tense, in the here and now. It 20 GETTING THE JOKE acknowledges the performance situation. The stand-up comedian is duty bound to incorporate events in the venue into the act. Failure to respond to a heckler, a dropped glass or the ringing of a mobile phone is a sign of weakness which will result in the audience losing faith in the performer’s ability. If this definition of stand-up comedy is any good, then the form has been around a lot longer than the term which describes it. There’s been much speculation about the roots of the form, and it’s been suggested that its ancestors might include the shaman, jesters, Commedia dell’Arte, Shakespearean clowns like Richard Tarleton, English pantomime clowns like Joseph Grimaldi, circus clowns, British music hall comedians, American vaudeville entertainers, the stump speeches of American minstrelsy, nineteenth century humorous lecturers like Mark Twain and medicine shows. It’s been said that stand-up comedy itself is an American invention. US comedian Richard Belzer, for example, describes it as, ‘[O]ne of the few art forms indigenous to this country: jazz, abstract painting, and stand-up comedy.’9 British comedy critic William Cook agrees, adding: ‘British comics have adapted American stand-up to their own ends, but … our parochial version is still way off the pace.’10 As somebody who’s resented American cultural imperi alism ever since I first heard the Clash’s ‘I’m So Bored with the USA’, I feel duty bound to challenge the idea that stand-up originated on the other side of the Atlantic. The easiest way to do this is by looking at the evidence, tracing the history of stand-up first in the US, then in Britain. Notes 1 ‘Television and English’, The Listener, vol. LXXVI, no. 1950, 11 August 1966, p. 194. To be honest, I didn’t make the What’s the definition of stand-up comedy? 21 discovery by going to the OED myself. It came up in a student essay, and even then, the student hadn’t got the information direct from the OED, but via another book: John Limon, Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000, p. 7, 126 2 The two sentences read, ‘People, she points out, who appear before television cameras (apart from “stand-up comics”) never attempt to talk for more than two minutes at a time’; and ‘In television complex sentences need to be eschewed, especially by stand-up comics’. Oddly, it is the second of these sentences which the OED quotes 3 Ethel Strainchamps, ‘Television and the English Language’, Television Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1966, p. 61 4 Philip Babcock Gove, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of the English Language Unabridged, London: G. Bell & Sons and Springfield, MA: G&C Merriam, 1961, p. 2225 5 Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1984, p. 16. Interview broadcast 26 February 1959, WFMT, Chicago 6 The claim about the term being coined on Carson’s show is made in William Cook, ‘Rising to the Joke’, The Guardian (The Guide section), 22–28 February 2003, p. 5, However, the following website reveals that although The Tonight Show actually started in 1954, Carson didn’t follow Steve Allen and Jack Paar as host until 1962: http://www.johnnycarson. com/carson/did_you_know/history/index.jsp [accessed 27 September 2004]. The web discussion that followed can be found at http://pub122.ezboard.com/fwordoriginsorgfrm8. showMessage?topicID=464.topic [accessed 27 September 2004]. The person who posted the message says that Berle claimed to have originated the term in 1942, although the claim was actually made in 1991. Sadly, the 1991 source of the supposed claim is not actually cited. That’s the internet for you, isn’t it? 7 Oliver Double, Stand-Up! On being a Comedian, London: Methuen, 1997, p. 4. Other examples of laughter-based definitions include: Lenny Bruce, ‘A comedian is one who 22 GETTING THE JOKE performs words or actions of his own original creation, usually before a group of people in a place of assembly, and these words or actions should cause the people assembled to laugh at a minimum of … one laugh every 25 seconds for a period of not less than 45 minutes, and accomplish this feat with consistency 18 out of 20 shows.’ (Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1984, pp. 41–2); John Limon, ‘Your laughter is the single end of stand-up … Stand-up comedy does not require plot, closure, or point, and there need not be anything but jokes. Constant, unanimous laughter is the limit case.’ (John Limon, Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, or, Abjection in America, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000, pp. 12–13); Mark Lamarr, ‘…defining stand-up in itself is very simple: a solo performer, usually a man, performing verbal comedy’ (Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 22 February 2003) 8 J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner (eds), The Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition, Volume XVI soot-Styx), Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, p. 515 9 Quoted in Franklin Ajaye, Comic Insights: the Art of Stand-Up Comedy, Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 2002, p. 65. Belzer’s view is supported by an entry on ‘Hispanic Humor’ in Alleen Pace Nilsen and Don L. F. Nilsen (eds) Encyclopedia of 20th Century American Humor, Pheonix, Arizona: Oryx Press, 2000, which refers to ‘the American tradition of professional stand-up comedy’ (p. 145) and ‘the American custom of stand-up comedy’ (p. 147) 10 William Cook, ‘Rising to the Joke’, The Guardian (The Guide section), 22–28 February 2003, p. 5 CHAPTER THREE Stand-up USA Vaudeville In America, the story of stand-up starts in vaudeville, a form of popular theatre which began in the late nineteenth century. Growing out of earlier forms of popular entertainment like dime museums and Yiddish theatre, the first proper vaudeville venue was probably Tony Pastor’s New Fourteenth Street Theatre, which opened in New York in October 1881. Pastor was the first to take this type of popular entertainment out of saloons and present it to a respectable audience. Over a decade later, in March 1894, B. F. Keith opened his first theatre in Boston, and this was the first to actually use the word ‘vaudeville’ to describe what it offered its customers. The entertainment on offer took the form of a mixed bill of acts, which might include singers, dancers, speciality acts and comedy quartets. To give a specific example, if you were at the Palace Theatre in New York in the week beginning 2 May 1921, you could have enjoyed the following acts: 1 Fink’s Mules, animal act 2 Miller and Capman, singers and dancers 3 Georgia Campbell and Co., in ‘Gone Are the Days’ 4 Toney and Norman, songs and talk 5 Dorothy Jardon, prima donna 24 GETTING THE JOKE INTERMISSION 6 Kennedy and Berle, youthful entertainers 7 Ford Sisters, dancers 8 Watson Sisters, singing comediennes 9 Robbie Gordon, posing act1 There were different grades of theatre, and the organisation of the entertainment in the major theatres differed from that in the smaller venues. Big-time vaudeville changed the bill weekly and ran the show twice nightly. Small-time vaudeville changed the bill twice a week, ran three to six performances per day, had fewer acts per show and lacked headliners. Small-time vaudeville included the venues run by the Theatre Owners Booking Association (TOBA), which booked black acts and attracted black audiences. The need for its existence is an indication of the segregation which afflicted America, although some black acts, notably Bert Williams, did manage to break into the big-time circuits. Williams was just one of the many legendary comedians that vaudeville produced. Others included Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, Mae West, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Jack Benny and Milton Berle. Some of these were comic singers or sketch comedians, but others did something which we would recognise as a form of stand-up comedy. First, there were MCs, like Frank Fay, who introduced the other acts. By definition, they had to address the audience directly, and they would also make comic ad libs.2 Then there were the monologists, like Jack Benny, Bob Hope and Milton Berle. These are now thought of as classic stand-up comics in the traditional style, but in a 1991 interview, Berle rejects this idea: ‘We were monologists. Not stand-up comedians. That’s a new term. You know why they’re called stand-up comics today? Because all they do is stand there and take the micro phone off the stand.’3 Stand-up USA 25 Berle was contemptuous of acts who just stand there and tell gags, because he and his contemporaries did more than just that. His first solo act, in 1924, was 12 minutes long. As well as gags, it also featured two songs, a card trick, a soft-shoe dance and an impersonation of Eddie Cantor. Similarly, Jack Benny’s act contained elements which aren’t normally found in modern stand-up, like a female stooge, described in a 1927 review as ‘a nice-looking girl, who plays the role of a self- conscious “Dumb Dora”.’4 The monologists were like modern stand-ups because they addressed the audience directly and told jokes, but they probably only started doing this towards the end of the vaude ville era. A 1921 review of Fred Allen’s act notes that as well as singing a song and using what is intriguingly described as ‘a wabbly umbrella’, he also told a series of gags: ‘His chatter is unrelated and aimed for laughs, which he secured.’ This leads the reviewer to conclude that, ‘Allen is not a monologist.’5 Clearly, in the early 1920s this proto stand-up element was new to the art of monologism. Vaudeville was a very popular form of entertainment. In its heyday, there were at least 1,000 vaudeville theatres in the US, playing host to 25,000 performers. It quickly became big business, with huge theatre chains being formed by entrepre neurs like B. F. Keith, Edward F. Albee and Martin Beck. By 1927, the huge chains had merged into one enormous one, which combined the Keith & Albee circuit with the Orpheum. This meant that all major vaudeville theatres and many smaller ones came under the control of one organisation. At this point, vaudeville was facing competition from silent cinema, with some theatres responding by including movies between the other acts. The pressure increased when sound cinema arrived in the late 1920s, particularly as big vaude ville stars like Jack Benny, Fred Allen and Bert Lahr started to appear in ‘talkies’. Such stars also appeared on the radio, another new medium competing for audiences. What made vaudeville fatally vulnerable to such compe tition was the fact that so many of its theatres had been 26 GETTING THE JOKE amalgamated into one circuit. When Joseph P. Kennedy – the father of JFK – took control of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum circuit by buying up 200,000 shares in it, vaudeville’s fate was sealed. Kennedy had a background in the movie business, and wasn’t interested in live theatre. In 1930, he sold his stock to the Radio Corporation of America, which became RKO (Radio-Keith-Orpheum). With virtually all the theatres in the hands of a film company, live vaudeville was over. By 1935, it had virtually disappeared, living on for a while in the form of live acts performing between the films in cinemas. Borscht and Chitlins When vaudeville died, it might have taken the embryonic stand-up of the monologists with it. In 1938, Groucho Marx was worried that vaudeville’s demise would make comedians ‘a vanishing species’.6 In fact, it lived on in a variety of venues, like the hotels and resorts in the Catskill Mountains, known as the ‘Borscht Belt’. From the 1930s, the Borscht Belt was a favourite holiday destination for New York Jews. There were more than 500 hotels, including Brown’s, the Concord, Grossinger’s, Kutsher’s and the Tamarack, and the shows they put on led to them being dubbed ‘the new vaudeville’. Comedians who started out in the Borscht Belt include Red Buttons, Danny Kaye and Joey Bishop. In addition to headline comics, newer acts were booked as ‘toomlers’. Like the redcoats of British holiday camps, as well as doing a stage act the toomlers had to mingle with the guests – telling them gags and entertaining them as they did so, performing card tricks or jumping into the swimming pool fully clothed. This must have encouraged key elements of stand-up like an intensely direct relationship with the audience, improvisation and a firm emphasis on the here and now. Another arena where stand-up survived was the Chitlin Circuit, a series of cabarets, nightclubs and small theatres Stand-up USA 27 catering to black audiences in cities like Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Washington DC and Philadelphia. The pinnacle of the circuit was Harlem’s Apollo Theater, which still thrives today. On the Chitlin Circuit, great black comedians like Pigmeat Markham, Moms Mabley and Redd Foxx appeared alongside jazz bands, bluesmen, tap dancers and doo-wop groups. Then there were the white stand-up comedians like Minnie Pearl, who emerged from the country music scene. The casinos of Las Vegas provided a stage for the big names of comedy, paying them big money. Beyond all of these, would-be stand-ups could try to find work in cafés, bars or strip clubs. The sick comics Then in 1953, a young comic called Mort Sahl made his debut at a venue called the hungry i in San Francisco. Run by a beret-topped bohemian called Enrico Banducci, it was a small cellar club that played host to folksingers and beatnik poets. Behind the stage was just a brick wall, and this was the origin of the classic image of the American stand-up comedian telling gags in front of a bare brick backdrop. Sahl’s act at the hungry i was revolutionary. He eschewed smart suits in favour of slacks and a casual sweater, worn over an open-necked shirt. His delivery was just as informal, and his subject matter was relevant to a young, hip, beatnicky audience. Emerging in the context of McCarthyism, he was unafraid of controversy. He joked that he had bought a McCarthy jacket which is ‘like an Eisenhower jacket only it’s got an extra flap that fits over the mouth.’7 Others followed in Sahl’s wake, like Lenny Bruce, Shelley Berman, Dick Gregory, Mike Nichols & Elaine May, Jonathan Winters, Phyllis Diller, Bob Newhart and Woody Allen. They played at the hungry i and other hip venues in other American cities, places like Bon Soir, Le Ruban Bleu, Mocambo, the 28 GETTING THE JOKE Purple Onion, the Bitter End, Mr Kelly’s and the Blue Angel. Hugh Hefner was an enthusiastic fan of the new comedians, and booked them in to his Playboy clubs. They were labelled the ‘sick comics’, and Time Magazine described their style: They joked about father and Freud; about mother and masochism; about sister and sadism. They delightedly told of airline pilots throwing out a few passengers to lighten the load, of a graduate school for dope addicts, of parents so loving they always ‘got upset if anyone else made me cry’.8 All of these acts were exciting and inventive, but Lenny Bruce stands out for the sheer daring of his act and the frenzied controversy he managed to whip up. Bruce had started out as a Borscht Belt impressionist, doing Peter Lorre, James Cagney and Maurice Chevalier. In the late 1940s, he had what might have been a big break, performing a bit called The Bavarian Mimic on the Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts, but his career failed to take off.9 At this point, he was still a rather conven tional comic, but during the 1950s his style started to change. He began hanging out with a bunch of young comics at a luncheonette called Hanson’s in New York. They would try out material on each other, and Bruce was particularly influ enced by Joe Ancis, who never really worked as a professional comedian, particularly his ability to improvise outrageous comedy routines across the lunch table. When Bruce started working as an MC in strip clubs like Duffy’s Gaieties and Strip City, he began to try a riskier approach to stand-up. He would improvise, do very obscene stuff, insult the waitresses and wind up the customers. He would talk about jazz, and loved making the band laugh. Famously, one night he came on after one of the strippers, having taken all of his own clothes off. The audience was outraged, but Bruce was unrepentant: ‘What are you all staring at? You see nudity on this stage every night. What’s the big deal if I get naked?’10 When he broke out into more Stand-up USA 29 respectable venues, he took with him his improvisational flair, and his willingness to confront taboos with routines about sex, race and illegal drugs. Another stand-out act was Dick Gregory. Gregory started off on the Chitlin Circuit, and got his big break with a booking at the Playboy Club in Chicago on 13 January 1960. Replacing a white comedian who’d had to cancel, and playing to a white audience including a big party of Southern white businessmen, he stormed the gig, presenting an unashamedly black perspective and satirising racism. Gregory’s success opened the door for many more black comedians. Phyllis Diller – who started out in venues like the Purple Onion and the hungry i in the mid-1950s – made a similar breakthrough for women. There had been other female stand-ups before her, notably Moms Mabley and Minnie Pearl, but Diller was the first American comedienne to become a big star. The sick comics massively expanded the possibilities of stand-up, in terms of both presentation and subject matter. They paved the way for comedians to become less formal, wear casual clothes and adopt a natural, conversational delivery. They made room for comedy to be literate and intel lectual, as well as letting it into taboo areas. Just one example of how they drew the blueprint for modern stand-up is the observational style of Shelley Berman who, among other things, was the first to talk about the anxieties of flying, a subject which comedians still harp on about today.11 Perhaps understandably, older comics viewed these newcomers with suspicion. As Albert Goldman put it, Mort Sahl ‘so revolutionised the role of the comic that professional comedians viewed him with the same mixture of alarm and envy with which professional singers regarded Elvis Presley.’12 With the taste of sour grapes in his mouth, older comic Joey Bishop dismissed the new generation: ‘Those guys … tried their hardest to make it our way; when they couldn’t, they switched.’13 30 GETTING THE JOKE Comedy clubs The world’s first comedy club opened in 1962, in Sheepshead Bay, New York. A comedian called George Schultz capitalised on the new hipness and popularity which the likes of Sahl, Bruce and Gregory had brought to stand-up, and opened up a new venue called Pips, which was exclusively devoted to comedy. Here, stand-ups could perform without having to share the bill with dancers, posing acts, performing mules, beatnik poets or folksingers. Stand-up luminaries like Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers and Jerry Seinfeld played there early in their careers before moving on to bigger and better things. Pips enjoyed a long life, soldiering on until around 2007, when it closed down to be replaced by a sushi bar. The Improv – or the Improvisation Café as it was originally known – enjoys a much more legendary position in the history of American stand-up than Pips. Even though it didn’t open until the following year, it has a strong claim on being the originator of the modern idea of a comedy club. In previous incarnations, it had been a luncheonette and a Vietnamese restaurant, but in 1963, Budd Friedman reopened it as a late night café aimed at theatre people. Like the hungry i, it boasted the kind of bare brick backdrop which has become symbolic of American stand-up. In spite of the fact that Friedman could be, in his own words, ‘a son of a bitch’, it became the central location for new comics to cut their teeth, because as Richard Zoglin puts it, ‘[I]f you were a beginning stand-up who wanted to work on your craft every night, the choice was pretty much the Improv or your bathroom mirror.’14 Comics who played the Improv include Robert Klein, Richard Lewis, Jimmie Walker, Freddie Prinze, Elayne Boosler, Robin Williams, Jay Leno and Gilbert Gottfried. Although the original New York Improv has gone the same way as Pips, it spawned a whole chain of clubs across North America, in cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Stand-up USA 31 Hollywood, Houston, Las Vegas, Miami, Ontario, Pittsburgh and Washington DC.15 Gradually, more comedy clubs emerged. By the mid-1970s, New York had two more showcase venues, The Comic Strip and Catch a Rising Star, both of which would thrive and become famous. Then there was The Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, which opened on 10 April 1972. It was set up by an ex-comic called Sammy Shore, who had worked in Vegas and opened for Elvis prior to becoming a comedy promoter. Control passed to his wife Mitzi on their divorce in 1974, and she became infamous for putting the fear of God into the new comedians she nurtured there. Unlike the venues which had preceded them, from vaude ville to the hungry i, the early comedy clubs didn’t actually pay the stand-ups who worked in them. The logic was that they offered comedians valuable exposure and the chance to be spotted by TV producers, so paying them in cab fares and free meals was perfectly acceptable. In 1979, Mitzi Shore’s refusal to pay the acts at the Comedy Store led to the extraor dinary phenomenon of a strike by stand-up comedians. This was no laughing matter. Once the dispute had been settled and Shore had started paying the acts, a comic who believed he was not being booked because of his involvement in the strike committed suicide by jumping off the roof of a nearby building, holding a note which read, ‘My name is Steve Lubetkin. I used to work at The Comedy Store.’16 In the 1980s, there was an extraordinary explosion of comedy clubs in America. At the beginning of the decade, there were only ten of them that actually paid their acts, but by 1992 there were over 300, playing host to about 2,000 comedians. As in vaudeville, chains of venues were formed, with branches of the Improv and Catch a Rising Star opening all over the country. Small comedy clubs sprung up in every corner of the US, like (to pick three at random): The Looney Bin in Walled Lake, Florida; Uncle Funny’s in Miami, Florida; and Filly’s Comedy Shoppe in Rapid City, South Dakota. The success of stand-up comedy led to the coining of the cliché that 32 GETTING THE JOKE it had become ‘the new rock and roll’.17 Perhaps inevitably, by the early 1990s the expansion in the stand-up scene slowed down, and some venues were forced to close – but in spite of the fallback, there are still comedy clubs all over the US. Stand-up grew big not just in the mushrooming growth of comedy clubs, but also in the scale of popularity of comedy’s biggest stars. Steve Martin started performing as a teenager, doing a comedy magic act before building a stand-up career not in comedy clubs, but in nightclubs like the Boarding House in San Francisco and the Troubadour in Los Angeles. Appearances on Saturday Night Live and sales of his comedy albums exponentially boosted demand for his live shows, and he became the first stand-up to play arenas. In 1977, he grossed over $1 million for a tour in which he played to a total audience of 500,000 in enormous venues in 50 cities. A single engagement at the Coliseum in Richfield, Ohio, saw him play to an audience of 18,695 people. However reluctant I am to accept the idea that America invented stand-up comedy, I have to admit it has an intimi datingly good claim. The MCs and monologists of vaudeville were doing something rather like it as early as the 1920s, the form continued to develop in the Borscht Belt and the Chitlin Circuit, the blueprint for modern stand-up was drawn up by the sick comedians, the comedy club was born in New York, and it even gave the world the arena comedy gig. As if that wasn’t enough, the chances are that the term ‘stand-up comedy’ was coined in America. Notes 1 This bill is reproduced in Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel), Milton Berle – An Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 1974, p. 86 2 Berle remembers swapping ad libs with the acts he introduced, admitting that they were actually pre-arranged and rehearsed Stand-up USA 33 (Milton Berle with Haskel Frankel, Milton Berle – An Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 1974, p. 121) 3 Vernon Scott, United Press International, 20 August 1991, BC Cycle 4 See Milton Berle (with Haskel Frankel), Milton Berle – An Autobiography, New York: Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 1974, pp. 114-15; and Anthony Slide (ed.), Selected Vaudeville Criticism, Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1988, p. 20 5 Anthony Slide (ed.), Selected Vaudeville Criticism, Metuchen, NJ and London: Scarecrow Press, 1988, p. 1 6 Simon Louvish, Monkey Business: The Lives and Legends of the Marx Brothers, London: Faber, 1999, p. 331 7 See Gerald Nachman, Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, New York: Pantheon, 2003, pp. 9–13, 58, 61 8 Quoted in Lisa Appignanesi, Cabaret: The First Hundred Years, London: Methuen, 1984, p. 175 9 Lenny Bruce’s act for Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts can be heard on various commercially released recordings, for example Lenny Bruce, Warning: Lenny Bruce Is Out Again, SicSicSic Inc., 2002, LBSU-666, track 28 10 Albert Goldman (from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller), Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, pp. 151–3, 163; Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-Up Comics, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000, pp. 75–6 11 Berman’s routines ‘Airlines’ and ‘Stewardess’ are available on Shelley Berman, Inside Shelley Berman, Laugh.Com, 2002, LGH1111 12 Albert Goldman (from the journalism of Lawrence Schiller), Ladies and Gentlemen – Lenny Bruce!!, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1991, p. 226 13 Quoted (or paraphrased?) by Paul Krassner in an interview with Lenny Bruce, Kitty Bruce (ed.), The Unpublished Lenny Bruce, Philadelphia: Running Press, 1984, p. 40 34 GETTING THE JOKE 14 Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2008, pp. 94–5. Friedman’s self-description as a ‘son of a bitch’ is quoted on p. 89 15 It’s a shameful sign of stand-up comedy’s comparatively low cultural esteem that the passing of the iconic New York Improv into history attracted so little attention. Neither Google nor the Nexis database of newspaper and magazine articles yield any information about why it closed or even exactly when it happened 16 Phil Berger, The Last Laugh: The World of Stand-Up Comics, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000, p. 384. Also see Richard Zoglin, Comedy at the Edge: How Stand-Up in the 1970s Changed America, New York: Bloomsbury, 2008, pp. 195–202 17 To give one specific example of the ‘new rock and roll’ idea: ‘I read in a much-respected music magazine in America that over the next 10 years, comedy will replace rock music as the new form of cult entertainment.’ – Jasper Carrott (Stand-Up America, BBC Two, 7 July 1987) CHAPTER FOUR Stand-up UK Music hall Given all the evidence, how could Britain have any claim as the birthplace of stand-up comedy? Well, it’s simply that an embryonic version of stand-up existed in Britain even before it did in America, evolving in parallel with its American counterpart and arguably contributing just as much to the development of the form. The story of British stand-up starts in music hall, a slightly older tradition than vaudeville. The generally recog nised date of music hall’s birth is 1852, when Charles Morton opened the Canterbury Hall in London. Music hall grew out of tavern-based entertainment which had become increasingly formalised even before Morton opened his Hall, and the entertainment took the form of a series of acts – mainly singers – performing to male-dominated, largely working-class audiences who drank and ate as they watched. Like vaudeville, music hall became popular very quickly. By 1868, there were 200 halls in London and 300 in the provinces. As new venues were built and old ones adapted and expanded to cope with bigger audiences, the halls began to look less like taverns and more like theatres. By the beginning of the twentieth century, when venues like the Hackney Empire were built, music halls were pretty much 36 GETTING THE JOKE indistinguishable in shape from the theatres in which straight drama was presented. Meanwhile, significant changes were taking place in the entertainment which took place in them. A classic music hall show lasted three or four hours, and customers would often come and go, not necessarily staying for the whole show. There would be a huge number of acts on the bill. A programme from the Canterbury Hall in 1887 shows 53 items on the bill, including Little Tich, Raffin’s Pigs and Monkeys and the Sisters du Cane. This is outdone by a bill from the London Pavilion for 29 May 1899, which shows an extraor dinary 85 acts including Florrie Forde, Dan Leno and Marie Lloyd. By the first decade of the twentieth century, this format was being abandoned in favour of a shorter show, presented twice nightly. A bill from the Holborn Empire for the week commencing 3 March 1913, for example, shows just 13 acts in a show which started at 6.20 p.m. and 9.10 p.m.1 The actual acts themselves had also begun to change. The classic music hall style of solo performers singing comic or serious songs in character was gradually replaced by a more varied set of acts. For example, if you were at the Leeds Empire in the week commencing 28 February 1938, you could see seven individual acts making up the following bill 1 Overture [a musical introduction played by the theatre orchestra] 2 Toko & Barry, Unique Dancers 3 Russ Carr with Olive Grey and the Boy Friend [a ventriloquist] 4 Charly Wood, Juggler on the Uni-Cycle 5 Norman Carroll, Comedian 6 The Two Brasellos, Thrills on the Wire 7 Intermission [including more tunes from the orchestra] 8 Toko & Barry, Will Entertain Again [the opening dance act doing another number] Stand-up UK 37 9 Harry Jerome, Comedy Magician 10 Harry Roy and his Band, Conductor – Harry Roy2 To reflect the change in the organisation and nature of enter tainment, people began to refer to it as ‘variety’ instead of ‘music hall’. Why is music hall like stand-up comedy? The roots of stand-up comedy are unmistakable in the classic music hall style. Although a music hall act was largely made up of songs, these were often comic and were sung directly to the audience. Through time, they became more like stand-up, as a patter section was introduced, with the orchestra stopping and the comedian telling a series of gags, before the music struck up again for the final chorus. Gradually, the patter became more important, and the song which bracketed it became more like an afterthought. Dan Leno, probably the most popular British comedian of the late nineteenth century, was acknowledged as the performer who ‘shifted the centre of gravity from song to “patter”’.3 It seems likely that music hall comedians related to the audience exactly like modern stand-ups do. It’s difficult to prove this, because while there are many studio recordings of acts like Dan Leno, Marie Lloyd and Little Tich, they were never recorded live. However, some acts did survive long enough to perform in an era when live theatre recordings had become possible. Veterans of the music hall era toured around the variety theatres in shows like Don Ross’s Thanks for the Memory, which featured Randolph Sutton, Nellie Wallace, Ella Shields, Talbot O’Farrell, Gertie Gitana, Billy Danvers and G. H. Elliott. This was recorded for radio in around 1948, and Nellie Wallace’s act is particularly interesting. 38 GETTING THE JOKE Wallace had made her music hall debut in Birmingham in 1888 whilst in her teens, and was in her late 70s by the time of this recording. She performs just one song, ‘Mother’s Pie Crust’, but manages to spin it out for over seven minutes. The act starts with the musical introduction, and she proceeds to sing the song, getting regular laughs. It finishes, and the audience applaud. Then she launches into a spoken routine, which sounds exactly like what we would recognise as stand-up comedy: Oh dear, dear! My poor, dear father! I can see ‘im now! I can see ‘im so plainly! Just before ‘e died, he called me to his bedside! He said, “Are you there – my pretty one?” [laughter] He was unconscious! [laughter] Ahh. Ahh, poor darling, how he suffered, how he suffered! And in silence! The doctors wanted us to take ‘im – to the seaside. But – we couldn’t afford it! We hadn’t the money! So what do you think I did? His noble daughter. I sat by ‘is bedside, and fanned him with a kipper! [laughter]4 The delivery is more stylised than that of most modern comedians – her voice high-pitched, melodramatic and wobbling with age and emotion. She emphasises certain words or phrases by eeeelongaaaating the syllables, and adopting a singsong tone. But in spite of this, the energy and rhythm of her speech are distinctly like stand-up. She is as successful as a modern comedian in getting laughs, and building them. The laugh she gets with the third joke lasts for ten seconds, about twice as long as for the first joke. The ‘oh dear, dear’ which begins the routine is actually a kind of catchphrase, appearing in a number of her patter routines. As in stand-up, much of the humour comes from putting a personality on display in front of an audience. The audience laugh when she recalls her father calling her ‘my pretty one’, because they are familiar with her stage persona: a clownishly unglamorous ageing spinster with delusions of attractiveness. She wore outlandish costumes, with funny Stand-up UK 39 hats and flea-bitten furs, her face made comically gawky with exaggerated make-up, and sometimes thick, round-framed glasses. The gag about fanning her father with a kipper fits in perfectly with her grotesque image. Then there is the directness of communication. She acknowl edges the audience’s presence, talks directly to them. She goes on to ask them to join in with the song’s chorus (which closes the act), getting another laugh by telling them, ‘And when we come to that part, “The deep blue sea!” don’t mess about with it!’ Although she is not heckled in this recording, she would certainly have known how to deal with hostile audiences. T. S. Eliot remembered seeing her being jeered and heckled: ‘I have seen her, hardly pausing in her act, make some quick retort that silenced her tormentors for the rest of the evening.’5 The intense rapport between Wallace and her audience was essential to her act, and this makes her much more similar to a stand-up than to revue comedians like Joyce Grenfell. Wallace and Grenfell once appeared on the same bill in a wartime concert in a small country cinema. The difference in their approach becomes clear in Grenfell’s recollection of the incident, which manages to be affectionate whilst also portraying Wallace as a rather bad-tempered eccentric. Grenfell’s approach to the audience was the opposite of Wallace’s: ‘I felt secure only if I was safely behind the footlights and couldn’t see the audience.’ Wallace talked to the people who had come to see her, but Grenfell had others to converse with: ‘I’m pretending there is someone else on stage with me and I talk to him. If I pretend clearly enough I should be able to make you, the audience, accept the invisible character I’m imagining.’ Wallace found the idea of a solo comedian ignoring the audience bizarre, to the extent that she stood backstage making loud comments about it even while Grenfell was doing her act: ‘[A]ll was going fairly well when suddenly I heard Nellie Wallace say in a desperate sort of way, and clearly: “What does she think she’s doing out there on her own talking to herself?” Somehow I knew she didn’t want an answer!’6 40 GETTING THE JOKE Music hall turns into stand-up It was a short evolutionary leap from the classic music hall which Nellie Wallace performed to stand-up comedy, and some performers straddled the two styles. Will Fyffe, for example, was born in Dundee in 1885, and started as a classic music hall comedian, singing character songs which played on his Scottish ethnicity. His trademark song was ‘I Belong to Glasgow’, sung in the character of a drunken Glaswegian. It uses the standard format of the late music hall. Halfway through, the music cuts out, and he goes into a patter routine, complaining about rich ‘cap-u-tilists’ in slurred tones, before slipping back into the final chorus.7 Later, he did routines which weren’t bracketed within songs, like this radio recording in which he talks about being chatted up by a widow: But I knew she wanted me, sailors have that instinct. I knew it because one night, we were sitting on the die-van together – [quiet laughter] all right, the sofae. [laughter] This widow and I, we were sittin’ on the sofae. And all of a sudden, she looked right up into my dial. [laughter] In the way that widows can. Any o’ you lads ever had a widow looking at ye? [laughter] Eh? Y’ever noticed that sly, sleekit look, you know? You’ve, you’ve seen a ferret looking at a rabbit? [laughter]8 This is distinctly recognisable as stand-up. It’s a conver sation with the audience, with the joke-laugh rhythm that’s distinctive to the form. His connection with his punters is made more direct by the fact that he asks the ‘lads’ if they’ve had the same experience of widows as he has. In the variety era, the song-and-patter format of the music hall disappeared, except in the acts of veterans like Nellie Wallace. Instead, comedians like Max Miller, Tommy Trinder, Ted Ray, Billy Russell, Suzette Tarri, Beryl Reid and Frankie Stand-up UK 41 Howerd performed something which was stand-up comedy in all but name. These performers were known as ‘front cloth comics’. The name derives from the staging of British variety theatre, in which acts using the full stage were alternated with ones which could be performed in front of a painted backdrop at the front of the stage. This allowed the show to run smoothly, with no breaks – while one act performed in front cloth, the stage behind the curtains was set for the following one. Front cloth comedy existed at least as early as the 1920s – a 1926 review describes Max Miller as ‘a comedian of the new school’, presumably referring to this emerging style.9 Variety outlives vaudeville Front cloth comics had longer to evolve and develop than their US equivalents, the monologists, because British variety survived decades longer than American vaudeville. This was due to a quirk of fate. Whereas control of most vaudeville theatres had fallen into the hands of somebody who had no interest in live theatre, variety theatres came under the control of two people who were passionately committed to keeping the form alive: George Black and Val Parnell. In the 1920s, variety was in decline, and many performers were convinced that it was doomed. As in America, there was a trend for shows in which variety acts performed alongside films, and when Walter Gibbons took control of the London Palladium – the pinnacle of the variety circuit – he experimented with putting on cine-variety there. It was so unsuccessful that ownership of the venue changed hands. It now belonged to Gaumont-British, which also took possession of the associated GTC circuit of cinemas and theatres. The company put Black and Parnell in charge of them. The two men were determined to make the Palladium work as a world-class variety theatre, and although Gaumont-British was a film company, unlike RKO 42 GETTING THE JOKE in America it was happy to keep running theatres as well as cinemas. Black realised that in order to make the Palladium work, he would have to revive the national variety circuit, so that it could keep him supplied with experienced acts. With this in mind, he and Parnell made efforts to improve the quality of entertainment in the theatres they controlled. The Palladium was reopened as a pure variety theatre in September 1928, with a bill which included comedians Dick Henderson, Gracie Fields and Billy Bennett. The posters for the relaunch bore the slogan: ‘Variety is coming back … to the Palladium.’10 Later, in 1932, the larger and more prestigious Moss chain of theatres was rumoured to be about to switch from variety to cinema, but instead it was sold to Gaumont-British. They decided to keep the venues as variety theatres so as to avoid competition with their established cinemas. This meant that more than 30 more theatres fell into Black’s hands, to add to the 12 GTC halls he already controlled, and the future of British variety was secure.11 By July 1938, the entertainment trade paper The Era was topping its front page with the headline, ‘Biggest Variety Boom for Years’. It reported that many more cinemas were booking variety acts, some were converting back into variety theatres, and there were even fears that bookers would not be able to find enough ‘star-material’ to put on their bills.12 When Batley ruled British showbusiness Variety continued to more or less thrive through World War II and even into the 1950s, but by the beginning of the following decade it was giving out its last gasps, killed by the competition of television. Whereas American stand-up found a post-vaudeville home in the Borscht Belt and the Chitlin Stand-up UK 43 Circuit, its British equivalent survived in the working men’s clubs, which had existed since the mid-nineteenth century. When variety died, entertainment in working men’s clubs boomed, leading entrepreneurs to set up bigger, privately- owned clubs built around the same model but with the budget to put on really spectacular shows. The Batley Variety Club, for example, was opened by James Corrigan in the small Yorkshire town in 1967. Corrigan had worked out that there were about two million people living within a 20-mile radius of Batley, who would be happy to travel to be entertained. He raised £65,000 from Newcastle and Scottish Breweries, and built a club that could hold 2,000 people. This allowed a small Yorkshire town to play host to the kind of glamorous, big name acts that you would never expect to find there, including Gerry and the Pacemakers, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lulu, Matt Monro, the Beverley Sisters, Roy Orbison, Louis Armstrong, Shirley Bassey and Jayne Mansfield.13 Big clubs like Batley put on established comedians like Tommy Cooper and Dave Allen, but the stand-ups who actually started their careers on the club circuit had a distinctive style. In 1971, a group of them including Bernard Manning, Frank Carson, Ken Goodwin and Charlie Williams appeared in Granada Television’s The Comedians. Whereas the front cloth comics in the variety theatres had used catchphrases, costumes and comic personas, their acts fleshed out with songs and even dances, club comics had a more minimal approach – unoriginal, self-contained gags, told one after another, with little else going on. Meanwhile, there were more interesting stand-ups emerging from Britain’s folk music clubs. Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott and Mike Harding started as folksingers, but gradually, the comic introductions to their songs grew and became the most important part of their acts, just as stand-up comedy had originally grown out of the patter section on music hall song. In folk clubs, stand-up became more conversational, and comics like Connolly and Carrott built a very personal 44 GETTING THE JOKE relationship with their audience, putting personal anecdotes into their acts alongside observational routines. Victoria Wood was another singer who turned into a stand-up, although she started her career singing cabaret songs rather than folk. After an appearance on the TV talent show New Faces in 1974, she struggled to find suitable audiences. She appeared in revue and wrote successful plays, and by the early 1980s, her act had evolved into stand-up. Successful television shows like Victoria Wood – As Seen on TV helped build her audience to the point where she had become one of the most successful stars of British stand-up, having twice sold out a 15-night run in the 5,000-capacity Royal Albert Hall. Wood was not Britain’s first female stand-up, but – like Phyllis Diller in America – was the first to become a really big star. Alternative comedy and beyond America reinvented stand-up in the 1950s with the rise of the sick comedians, and it started to spawn comedy clubs as early as the 1960s. In this respect, Britain seriously lagged behind. The Comedy Store, the UK’s first dedicated stand-up club, didn’t open until May 1979, 17 years after Pips had made its first customers laugh. The Store was directly inspired by the American model. An insurance salesman called Peter Rosengard had visited the LA Comedy Store in the summer of 1978 and had been extremely impressed. He copied the idea and the name, setting up his own version in a room above a strip club at 69 Dean Street, Soho. Acts who found a platform there included Alexei Sayle, Tony Allen, Rik Mayall and French & Saunders. They were the first British comedians to seriously rival the likes of Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce, because they directly challenged the crusty conventions of traditional stand-up and expanded the possibilities of the form. Despite the argument that British comedians are ‘way off the pace’ set by the Americans, the Stand-up UK 45 first alternative comedians were genuinely groundbreaking. In a 1987 interview, Mark Breslin, who founded the Canadian comedy club chain Yuk Yuk’s, said that whereas American comedians like Jay Leno avoided controversial topics like the then-recent Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the same could not be said of ‘that guy out of England’, Alexei Sayle, who would ‘do a Chernobyl joke and have no problem with it.’14 As in America, once the idea of comedy clubs was estab lished, there was a boom. Initially, alternative comedy was a semi-amateur affair – when the Comedy Store first opened, the only act to actually get paid was the compère. A group called Alternative Cabaret (founded by Tony Allen) toured around pubs, arts centres, students unions and other small venues, thus sowing the seeds for the pub-based comedy clubs that began to flourish initially in London, and then in most large provincial towns and cities. This is where my own tiny part of the story comes in. From the late 1980s, I worked in small clubs in London and the provinces, and in 1992 I helped to set up Sheffield’s longest-running comedy club, the Last Laugh, in the Lescar pub, Hunters Bar. I co-managed and compèred it until 1997 when I had to give it up to start my first university job, but it still thrives today in the hands of Toby Foster, who played the drummer in Phoenix Nights.15 By the end of the twentieth century, the stand-up scene was big business. In 1999, the Comedy Store (now run by Don Ward, who had been part of it from the beginning) had an annual turnover of about £2.5 million in a purpose-built, 400-seat venue in Oxendon Street. In 2000, the Jongleurs chain of venues was sold to Regent Inns in a deal reported to be worth as much as £8.5 million. In 2001, the turnover of the Avalon agency had grown from £250,000 in 1988 to £30 million. As the new comedy scene thrived, it became absolutely central to British stand-up. Just about every major British stand-up comedian in the last 25 years has started his or her career in what would once have been called alternative comedy 46 GETTING THE JOKE clubs, including Ben Elton, Jo Brand, Jack Dee, Lee Evans, Eddie Izzard, Harry Hill, Peter Kay, Ross Noble, Jimmy Carr, Sarah Millican, John Bishop and Michael McIntyre. Then there were the offshoots, like the black comedy scene, which started with a series of shows in Ladbroke Grove, Deptford and Brixton; and the opening of the 291 Club in the Hackney Empire, which took its inspiration from the Live at the Apollo shows at Harlem’s famous theatre. These roots grew into a healthy circuit. One of its most important promoters, John Simmit, ran shows all over the UK under the banner Upfront Comedy, as well as playing Dipsy in the cult children’s TV show Teletubbies. There’s also the Irish comedy scene, which got going when the Comedy Cellar in Dublin’s International Bar opened in 1988. A core of performers played there regularly, learning their trade, and constantly trying new material. Some, like Ardal O’Hanlon and Dylan Moran, moved to the UK and quickly became very successful. Comparing the history of stand-up in Britain and America, it becomes obvious that rather than British comedians adopting and adapting an American invention, the form has actually undergone a parallel evolution on either side of the Atlantic. What’s striking is how similarly this played out in the two countries. In both cases, it started in theatres which presented a variety of acts, continued in other types of venues when the theatres shut down, underwent a major reinvention, and finally found its home in dedicated comedy clubs. While America may have been significantly ahead at certain points, there’s no evidence that stand-up actually sprang to life there. In fact, if you accept music hall as a form of embryonic stand-up, then Britain was probably the first to come up with it. To throw the question even further up into the air, there may be other countries which could claim to have originated the form. Australia, for example, had	959,061
Improvisation for the Spirit Live a More Creative, Spontaneous, and Courageous Life Using the Tools of Improv Comedy (Katie Goodman) (Z-Library).pdf	“If Robin Williams “If Robin Williams and Dear Abby had a baby and Dear Abby had a baby and hired Tony Robbins to and hired Tony Robbins to raise it, you might get someone raise it, you might get someone as bright, funny, insightful, and as bright, funny, insightful, and inspiring as Katie Goodman.” inspiring as Katie Goodman.” —Arianna Hufﬁ ngton, Editor in Chief, The Hufﬁ ngton Post PRAISE FOR IMPROVISATION FOR THE SPIRIT “If Robin Williams and Dear Abby had a baby and hired Tony Robbins to raise it, you might get someone as bright, funny, insightful, and inspiring as Katie Goodman. But why bother, she's already here—dispensing laugh-inducing and life-changing lessons. Punchlines have never been so practical. Life is one big ad-lib and Improvisation for the Spirit shows you how to bring the house down.” —Arianna Huffington, Editor-in-Chief, The Huffington Post “I’ve always wished I had instructions for applying the principles of improvisational comedy to living a fulfilling life. Now Katie Goodman has made my wish come true with this practical, fascinating, and funny guidebook. I've already begun applying hints from Improvisation for the Spirit, and I'm hoping that from now on, when people point and laugh at me, it will be for more appropriate reasons. A delightful read, filled with wonderful strategies.” —Martha Beck, Life Coach Columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine and author of Steering by Starlight “Improvisation for the Spirit is an engaging, joyful invitation to celebrate the present moment. Katie Goodman’s inspiring book offers practical but powerful step-by-step transformational exer- cises from her creative improv workshops, to use listening, collaboration, and creative lessons for self improvement and discovery. Goodman’s enthusiasm for life and improv is contagious and delightful, as she encourages playful participation in life right now!” —Greg Mortenson, author of # 1 New York Times bestseller Three Cups of Tea “Katie Goodman is spontaneous, creative, and fearless. She has to be: she’s an improv comedi- enne. Now in her new book, she tells how you too can be all these things. Her writing flows and then jumps with anecdotes and prescriptions for finding courage. Fun to read, hard to put down. The book is smart and wise. Wise-cracky and hilarious.” —Lesley Stahl, 60 Minutes “You don’t have to be a professional comic to fall in love with this book. Katie Goodman shows how the lessons of improv comedy can help anyone become more fearless and creative. If you feel that something is holding you back, that there is more to you than meets the eye, that the life you are meant to live is out there somewhere if only you could find it, then this book should go straight to the top of your reading list. When it comes to journeys of self-discovery, Goodman is the perfect companion—sharp, energetic, and demanding, but also gentle, generous, and wise. It helps that she’s laugh-out-loud funny, too. By the end of the book, I felt ready to take on the world—with a smile on my face.” —Carl Honoré, author of In Praise of Slowness and Under Pressure “Bravo to Katie! She brings an amazing positivity to improv comedy. The bottom line: Katie is funny. She teaches you to live your life like an improv scene—no fear and fully committed.” —Wayne Brady, improv comedian, Whose Line Is It Anyway? and Don’t Forget the Lyrics “Reading Katie is like giving your brain, and your spirit, a good floss. She has a great knack for zeroing in on bad habits, then giving you the tools to challenge them. Read Improvisation for the Spirit and get ready to shake things up!” —Colin Campbell, Academy Award nominated filmmaker “Aha! So that’s what TV news should be. Katie Goodman’s delicious roadmap to unleashing our inner Letterman will help you soar through the next interview, ace the next assignment, cement the next relationship. And you’ll be laughing all the way. I am gleefully transformed.” —Lynn Sherr, ABC News “Katie Goodman’s book will put the smile of the Buddha upon your face. Her humor is a profound vehicle for teaching deep truths about human nature so necessary for loosening up the ego’s grip on our all-caught-upness and allowing us to move into the natural space of our spontaneity and authenticity.” —Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder of Agape International Spiritual Center “Many books promise to unleash your creativity. Katie Goodman’s not only unleashes it, but then teaches it to walk on its hind legs, catch a Frisbee, and maybe even fall in love with a cat. Try it. You'll love it. It works." —Gail Lerner, Emmy-nominated comedy writer (Will and Grace) “Katie Goodman strikes gold with Improvisation for the Spirit, a must-read for anyone looking to transform their life for the better. It’s filled with fun and insightful advice and exercises that help unleash the creative, spontaneous spirit within us all.” —Caroline Hirsch, Caroline’s on Broadway comedy club “Katie Goodman has written a book using the wisdom of Buddhist principles but in a flat out funny and practical way for everyone. All too often, we in the spiritual field forget to have a sense of humor and Katie shows us how we can loosen the ego’s grip on our lives and quiet our inner voices while using real life tools that can anyone can master. This is zen for everyday people.” —Cheri Huber, American Zen teacher, author of There Is Nothing Wrong with You “In this book Katie Goodman proves that indeed ‘Life IS Improv’...and offers some valuable tools to help you keep dancing through your life’s journey.” —Jonathan Foust, Founder of the Mindfulness Training Institute of Washington PRAISE FOR KATIE GOODMAN’S SHOW Broad Comedy (co-written with Soren Kisiel) “Fierce, female, funny, and fabulous!” —Eve Ensler, creator of The Vagina Monologues “Sharp writing, playful performances and impeccable comic timing! The fun is infectious!” —The Boston Globe “Hilarious!” —Boston Herald IMPROVISATION FOR THE SPIRIT Copyright © 2008 by Katie Goodman Cover and internal design © 2008 by Sourcebooks, Inc. Cover design by Cyanotype Book Architects Cover photo © iStockphoto.com, Doctor_bass Portions of Chapter 11 originally published in altered form in O, The Oprah Magazine. Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the serv- ices of a competent professional person should be sought.—From a Declaration of Principles Jointly Adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book. Published by Sourcebooks, Inc. P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567–4410 (630) 961–3900 Fax: (630) 961–2168 www.sourcebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Goodman, Katie. Improvisation for the spirit : live a more creative, spontaneous, and courageous life using the tools of improv comedy / Katie Goodman. ISBN: 978-1-4022-1999-3 1. Self-help techniques. 2. Improvisation (Acting) 3. Acting—Religious aspects. I. Title. BF632.G66 2008 158.1—dc22 2008006780 Printed and bound in the United States of America. SB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Soren & Logan Acknowledgments .................................................................................................xi Introduction..........................................................................................................xiii Chapter 1: The Spontaneous Life............................................................................1 Chapter 2: Be Present & Aware..............................................................................17 Chapter 3: Be Open & Flexible ..............................................................................39 Chapter 4: Take Risks ............................................................................................55 Chapter 5: Trust....................................................................................................79 Chapter 6: Surrender & Non-Attachment ...............................................................93 Chapter 7: Gag Your Inner Critic...........................................................................115 Chapter 8: Get Creative .........................................................................................129 Chapter 9: Effortlessness .........................................................................................149 Chapter 10: Desire & Discovering What You Want .................................................179 Chapter 11: Authenticity........................................................................................205 Chapter 12: Allowing Imperfection & Practice, Practice, Practice .............................233 Appendix: The Practice..........................................................................................243 About the Author..................................................................................................249 Contents acknowledgments A book on how to live a more creative, spontaneous, and courageous life needs a lot of heroes to emulate. So here are all the people to whom I owe an expensive dinner: First of all, I want to thank Brian DeFiore. It’s really nice when you like having lunch with your agent, just for fun. And to DeFiore & Company: what a bunch of on-the-ball people. I am incredibly grateful to my mastermind of an editor at Sourcebooks, Shana Drehs, who I miraculously always agreed with. (And I want her husband to know that she is always right and to just accept that.) Of course, to Sourcebooks: every single person I worked with there was brilliant, fun, and easy. And we’d be nowhere without Carrie Gellin and Tony Viardo. And sorry about those Cubs…To Spontaneous Combustibles, including Craig Stauber; Kent Davis; Brian Dugan; my husband, Soren Kisiel; and past actors who let me try remarkably stupid things in rehearsal to see what would happen. And occasionally to do the same in a show…Thirteen years of making things up together is a lot of shotgun weddings and popes. To my teachers: Mark Lindberg, who taught me improv back in a different millennium and whom I continue to emulate as a director and teacher. And thanks for that director’s note about adding the wedgie. Very helpful. Thank you to Ilona Gerbner; Harvey Diamond; Nina Kaleska; Nancy Stetter; Cheri Huber & Living Compassion; Thich Nhat Hanh & Deer Park Monastery; O, The Oprah Magazine; Amy Gross; Deborah Way; Carl Honore; The Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health; Chico Hot Springs; Kari King; Debbie Green; Zehra Osman; Kathleen Crawford; Rachel Lewis; Cameron Goodman; Stephani Lourie; Broad Comedy; Vootie Productions; The Equinox Theatre Company; Camp Equinox; and Bozeman, Montana. To my workshop and retreat participants, who have all added to the practice and to this book directly and indirectly with their honest and unique stories that I’ve blended together. Thank you for your enthusiasm and courage in the workshops. To the friends and interviewees whose stories are jumbled in here—I appreciate your insight and sharing your time with me. To our large families, including our eight parents and twenty-plus cousins. Thank you for coming to our shows in the snow and across state lines. To my father, Tony Goodman, for sharing writing and editing and “zen” work. To Bob Levey for training my funny bone. To Kent Davis for being Soren’s and my partner in crime for nineteen years. (I think nineteen is the Plexiglas anniversary. I can’t wait.) Thank you to my mother, Ellen Goodman, and to Soren Kisiel and Maribeth Goodman for editing at the eleventh hour. Bless your flying fingers. And thank you for your insight, humor, and cutting to the chase. And most of all, thank you to Logan and Soren for, well, love. I am standing on the stage, facing a full house, lights blinding my view of the huge audience, and I am desperately trying to come up with a rhyme for “vegetarian.” I am performing with Spontaneous Combustibles, a professional improv comedy troupe I’ve been with for twelve years. It’s our typical routine: we ask the audience for a location where the scene could take place. Someone shouts out “The Oval Office!” We have no script, no time to plan, no safety net, and we don’t know what the other actors are thinking. We have two seconds to launch in and perform a never-rehearsed four-minute scene. It needs to have a beginning, which establishes the location and the characters, a middle that creates a conflict, and an end that resolves the conflict. We need to be captivating, funny, and creative throughout. And my team on that stage needs to work together if we want it to succeed. Time to pull out the Tums? This may sound like an exciting challenge to some of you, and to others like a recurring nightmare. This is my job. Packed with successful punch lines, scattered brilliance, a few blank stares, and utter unpredictability, it’s been a complete whirlwind. Most important, though, it’s been a steady stream of laughter and fun. INTRODUCTION But it’s also been a laboratory for the rest of my life. What I have learned is that what we do and practice in improv can be used in life and relationships and work. The skills required for improvisation are the skills needed for any collabora- tive or creative process: stay present, be flexible, let go of the goal, gag your inner critic, listen to others with an open mind, don’t struggle, give and take, trust your- self and the process, and more. I have struggled on stage with all the same issues everyone has in regular life—competing with others, wanting my own way, wanting to just once not have to make a group decision, being distracted and unfocused, not trusting that I’ll have a good idea, and having a great idea that doesn’t get used. The tools we use to handle these issues in improv are skills we can transfer to all kinds of areas of work and life. First of all, improv forces you to stay present. If your mind starts to wander, the scene will fall apart, so you get focused pretty quickly. Improv also asks you to be spontaneous, to open up, to allow mistakes to happen, to be flexible, and to forge ahead. If you are standing on a stage with an audience watching, you can’t just quit or say, “Wait a second while I think this through.” You must concentrate and carry on. You must be aware of others and your surroundings. If you played nicely in the sandbox in kindergarten, chances are you’ll do well at improv. Comedy improv games are rarely played alone—you’ve got to listen to your teammates and share ideas to make the scene work. Improv teaches you to take risks. It teaches you to be courageous, to trust your- self, and to trust the process. From these skills, you’ll learn how to surrender. You must surrender two things: First, you have to let go of the past (“Oh, what a dumb thing I just said!”) and move ahead. If you stay stuck in your Past Moment of Lameness, then you will have nothing to add to the present, and things will just spiral downward. And second, you must surrender attachments, such as ideas you have for the way a scene should go. For example, if I enter a scene all prepared to be the character of a tax collector, and someone says, “Hey, Doc, we got a man in trouble here!”—well, then I have to let go of my idea and go with the flow of what’s being presented to me. Improv helps you trust that all the ideas you need are already inside your head, and you just have to relax enough to let them out. Improv generates self-confidence. Improvisation for the spirit You can’t be a perfectionist in an improv scene—mostly because it’s a one-time event, and you don’t get to do it over or fix it. It disappears into the ether as soon as it’s been created. It’s like a Buddhist sandpainting mandala that way. Improv is a great place to work on that inner critic we all have, to learn to trans- form those critical voices in your head into something useful. You can also use improv to learn to tap into that creative source that maybe you didn’t even know you had. Because improv games move so quickly, you don’t have time to censor yourself, so whatever comes out, comes out—and often it’s brilliant and unexpected. And you want it to feel easy. Improv works best when we are in the flow and have a feeling of effortlessness. Learning not to struggle is vital to a rich and productive creative life. Finding the flow becomes easier when you know what you want. In improv games, you must know what your character wants in order to help create a story that moves forward in an interesting way. This is a great metaphor for our paths in the real world. We need to give ourselves time and room to explore and understand what we want. Getting in touch with our desires is critical for a well-lived life. The skills an actor uses in improv to be authentic and to connect with the audience are the same skills we need to live an authentic life. Honesty, introspec- tion, and taking risks lead us to a place where we can truly be ourselves and step up to living authentically. And finally, the practice of improv or any creative endeavor is just that: prac- tice. Allowing yourself to lose your perfectionist streak and to try again and again will let you live the life you want, without fear of “failure” or shame. And supporting others around you will create the kind of world we want to live in. When I realized what a long-term and useful (not to mention unexpected) spir- itual practice comedy improv was for me, I combined my love of this art form with my lifelong spiritual practices and created a series of workshops and retreats called “Improvisation for the Spirit.” The result has been thrilling for me. The retreats are filled with people who have had little or no experience with improv, who are often coming because they find the idea of improv intriguing or possibly terrifying and they want to challenge themselves in a supportive atmosphere. The participants go home with a newfound belief in their abilities, new friendships, and a rejuvenated spirit caused by sharing bonds with others and laughing ’til their sides ached. It has been a joy and an honor to share this practice during these retreats. xv introduction What you are holding is the retreat in book form. Improvisation for the Spirit offers both interactive and solitary experiences, just like the retreats, in which you can discover yourself and practice new ways of thinking and doing that will inspire you to develop a more creative, courageous, and spontaneous life. I hope that it is not only a way for you to gain insight, but that it is fun and generates enthusiasm in your life. Back on the stage, I breathe into the moment. Finally, in what seems like ten minutes but has been under two seconds, several “vegetarian” rhyming words appear in the corner of my brain: “He’s an octogenarian”…“She’s like a caring hen”…no, wait…Then the answer clicks into place, fitting into the musical story created over the past few minutes with the other actors, and I sing: “Sorry…I don’t eat carrion.” Phew. Next! And moving on… How to Use This Book You may want to dip into a chapter here and a chapter there, but I urge you to try to read the book in order, from start to finish. This is because the skills build on one another, and the exercises, experiences, and practices contained here offer sequential benefits. I suggest reading one chapter per week, but if you want to move faster, please do. But think about giving yourself some time to let the practices sink in. If, after you’ve read the book, you want to go back and try some exercises again, that’s perfect. Just jump to any chapter that speaks to you and use it as a refresher course. These are practices that you can keep coming back to again and again. One more thing: I have changed the names in this book so that I could use these stories (some of them are very personal) without embarrassing people and with their blessings. There are a few stories I have morphed into one to make the point clearer and to further shade identity. No matter what, though, these stories feature individuals, most with little or no theatrical background, who learned through my workshops how to use these tools in their daily lives. They’re now enjoying the benefit of applying the skills of improv comedy to all aspects of life. This book will help you do the same. Improvisation for the spirit You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. —Colette This chapter will help you restore your creative self-confidence, discover your potential, and have fun doing it! We begin with creative writing exercises that will help you spontaneously reach for the unexpected and perhaps riskier idea. This chapter offers ways to help you uncover your beliefs, judgments and self-doubts. The spontaneous life 1 Improvisation for the spirit Many of you have seen the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? or perhaps an improv troupe. If so, then you know that comedy improvisational performances use hundreds of different types of “games”—we don’t usually call them sketches or skits, because there is no script. When my troupe performs, there are generally two to four actors per game, so we are always collaborating. The actors share a vision, like any team or group does. Ours is to make people laugh. We all have different styles, different backgrounds, and often, different agendas. This is high-risk creative work: high-risk in terms of our egos, mostly, but also in terms of pleasing the audience consistently. We are on stage, creating before an audience’s eyes, thinking on our feet. There’s no time for rewriting or rethinking. And yet, it’s not a total free-for-all. We do have rules. Each of these games has different guidelines, and for each game, we get different starting information from the audience so everybody knows it’s truly improvised. For example, we generally start a scene by getting the audience to shout out a location where the scene will take place; sometimes we’ll ask for a pantomimed object that we have to work into the scene too. Those are then the criteria that we have to deal with. Our first goal is to create a scene incorporating these criteria in order to follow the rules of the game. Then, of course, we want to make it funny, interesting, and dramatic by adding conflict and plot. We need to share the stage with others (i.e., I shouldn’t totally dominate), and then, ultimately, the scene must resolve the conflict. At one show, we started a scene with a couple coming home from a first date. The guy stopped at the girl’s front door. The director of the scene yelled, “Freeze!” and asked the audience to shout out who should come out of the front door. An audience member yelled, “Her mother!” So I walked through the door and said, “Oh, hi, sweetheart. Your husband’s on the phone.” The date looked shocked, and the daughter now had to work her way out of the conflict that I created. The result? The date went out with the mother instead. In improv we have two tasks at all times: actively listening to our scene partner’s ideas and then adding our own to complicate the story. The exchange and adaptation of information and ideas is the main goal for us. And perhaps, for you. Nobody works in a vacuum. Life is one big collaboration. We collaborate with management teams, clients, family members, friends, PTA groups—even deciding with others which restaurant to pick for dinner is a collabo- ration. We create organizations from scratch, and we help others to grow. Raising 2 the spontaneous life 3 children is a challenging form of collaboration. We can renew our energy for relating with others by seeing our lives as one big collaborative process. Getting Started: The First Four Skills of Improv Skill #1: You must be present and listen carefully! At one show, I had a delightfully embarrassing moment when we were doing a game called “Movie Genres.” (I say delightfully because any mistake in an improv show usually is met with peals of appreciative laughter.) The scene director had us do a scene in the style of “Foreign Film,” and I thought he said “Porn Film.” Needless to say, when I noticed everyone but me was talking with French accents and smoking imaginary cigarettes, I figured out what was going on. But not before I had a leg wrapped around one of the other actors… Listening is one of the most important collaborative and yet often undervalued skills in our society. How often do you really listen deeply to the person who’s talking to you? Do you ever find yourself thinking about what you need to do next: checking your voicemail, finishing up the laundry, picking up the kids at school? Or planning what you will say in response to them? Do you think about another project? About the person’s appearance and all your beliefs about them? If so, you’re not really hearing what they’re saying at all. And believe me, people know when you are hearing them deeply or are not really present. Listening is a skill we all need to cultivate. To be creative with others and to brainstorm solutions, you must first understand where everyone is coming from, and to do that, you’ve got to listen. (And not sneak a peek at your incoming text messages.) Skill #2: The Pink Elephant Rule: Don’t Negate In improv, it is a cardinal sin to “negate.” Negation is when you deny someone’s idea. The classic example actors use to explain negation is this: One actor says, “Hey, look at that pink elephant!” The other actor says, “What are you talking about? There’s no pink elephant.” Plop. The first actor’s idea is shot down, and there’s nowhere to go. Improvisation for the spirit If someone offers a tidbit of information to move the scene forward (“Oh, man, I left the money we stole from the bank, um, at the bank.”), and I negate the offering (“No! It’s right here!”), it will do several things: First of all, it will be a power play over the other actor, which is really not fun for the others and, over time, makes people not want to work or hang out with you. (Sound like anything you’ve ever experienced?) Second, the energy of the scene will fall flat: if you outright say no to an idea, the scene comes to a screeching halt. Third, and most importantly, it will blow an opportunity for a creative challenge, which brings energy and enthusiasm to our lives. This is certainly something that most of us have experienced in many aspects of daily living, from committee meetings to important talks with our spouses or even with our parents. What happens when your ideas are ignored or shot down without consideration? It cuts off the creative flow. It makes you clam up. It doesn’t exactly invite further communication in a relationship: you’re probably not going to jump in again any time soon. Skill #3: Affirm & Add In a successful collaboration, we work toward “affirmation.” Instead of negating, we “affirm and add.” It’s called the “Yes, and…” Rule. You accept what your partner is suggesting, and you add to it. It requires active listening, and it shows you care about the other actors’ ideas. This fosters trust and teamwork, which leads to more innovation and enthusiasm for the work. Now, affirmation does not mean saying, “Oooo, yes, I love that idea!” even if it’s a worthless idea in your opinion. It doesn’t mean buttering up the other person, and it doesn’t mean putting your ideas away and being steamrolled over. This is a very important distinction to understand. All of us want our ideas to be heard. We don’t want our teammates, our family members, our co-workers, or our friends to harbor resentment. And we don’t want to harbor it either! In a recent show, we were doing a spooky Halloween-themed scene in which we had a long story going about a woman who ran an eggplant farm (the audi- ence’s suggestion). We wove the eggplant information into a tale about an eggplant coming alive and taking over the town. We were all headed toward a resolution in which we needed to call in a superhero—when suddenly, another actor jumped in as a townsperson who created some animated Parmesan cheese that engulfed the eggplant and turned it into a delicious force for good. Now, this was not in anyone’s mind when we started, or even as we worked toward the other resolution, but it was 4 the spontaneous life 5 much funnier than anything we had going. Had the rest of the cast not been open to that actor’s ideas, it never would have made its way into the scene. It really threw us all for a second, but we had trained ourselves to say, “Yes, and…” to each other, and the result was delightfully creative. In life, when you affirm another person’s idea, you acknowledge both the idea and the other person: “Yes, I heard your idea. Period. Now, we’ll explore it, improve upon it, maybe take a sharp turn toward something else, but I acknowl- edge it!” This creates an atmosphere of trust in which others feel they can offer creative ideas without fear of disapproval. This happens at home all the time. Perhaps your kids want to have their opin- ions heard. Have you ever noticed how much it ticks off four-year-olds, not to mention teenagers, to feel brushed off? Listen and affirm what they are saying. Even if you don’t agree, acknowledge their perspective—for that reason alone, it is valid. But you don’t have to stop there. Maybe you could say: “Yes, I understand that you want to pierce your eyelids, and I see that there are a lot of other kids doing it, and I can appreciate that there is some aesthetic value to it that perhaps I can’t quite grasp due to my limited perspective and high stan- dards of taste…er, I mean, different sense of style, but we need to really take a look at what kind of permanent visual impairment that it could perhaps cause before I say yes.” Or something like that. Skill #4: Always Be Willing To Surrender Your Plans In improv, you must be willing to give up your idea if it isn’t working or if the time to offer it has passed. Let’s say I walk into a scene fully imagining that I am the mother of the other character on stage. But before I can utter a word, the other actor refers to me as her dog. Okay, so now I’m a dog—perhaps a talking, highly opinionated dog who’s just come from his morning shoe buffet—but nonetheless, it’s not what I was picturing a minute ago. You might be tempted to negate the new information simply because you’re attached to your original idea. But the better approach is to go with the flow and alter your course. It’s a collaborative process and can be so much more fun and interesting if you enjoy that about it instead of clinging tenaciously to your orig- inal plan. Improvisation for the spirit For example, when I’m auditioning other actors, I might find myself with preconceived ideas of what I’m looking for, just like someone who is interviewing job applicants. But if we hang on to that image of what we think we want, we might overlook someone spectacular. It’s a fine balance between knowing what you want and being rigid. Having no idea of what you want is not particularly helpful, but having an idea and being willing to let it change is a better approach. The same goes for meetings. Say you go into a staff meeting with a fantastic idea you are totally attached to, and the guy to your right starts in on a totally different idea. A fight to the death over whose idea is going to win is one way to go about it, and many people choose that approach. But that ensures one of you will lose (which means that it could be you), and it also doesn’t allow for new possibilities that could come about from the intersection of ideas. Collaboration in which you work with each other’s ideas really creates an atmosphere of trust, fun, and inspiration. When you surrender your preconceived ideas and instead allow yourself to see new things as opportunities for creativity, you can discover endless possibilities and renewed inspiration. Spread the Spontaneity Sure, you say, spontaneity is great after 5:00 p.m. But how in the world would this work at the office? Whatever the scenario, we need to be able to open up, to allow mistakes to happen, and to forge ahead. When problem-solving brainstorming sessions are successful, it’s generally not because one person came up with all the right answers, but rather, because one person said something that gave someone else an idea, and so collectively the group came to a solution together. That’s spontaneity. That’s co-creation. I have heard people say, “I believe planning is more important than being spontaneous.” So how can planning and spontaneity work together? Here’s the deal: A plan is like the structure of every improv scene. The actors heading into an improv scene all share an idea of the shape the scene will take. We know it will begin by working toward a conflict, and we know that we’ll need to then solve that conflict. Say your “conflict” is that your office really needs new computers. What may help is a planning session in which your staff feels free to explore creative solutions about how you can get a hold of that equipment, partner with another facility, or 6 the spontaneous life 7 fundraise for it. You’re planning for a solution—and planning to incorporate creativity into that solution. After all, creative solutions can save big bucks. Keeping a plan in mind, but being spontaneous as you creatively collaborate by brainstorming ways to carry out that plan, may be the best solution of all. And it’s important to allow a goofy thing or two to come out as well. The point of spontaneity is that you are not censoring yourself. We often fear that if we don’t censor ourselves, we’ll say something stupid and be embarrassed by it, and everyone will think we’re dorky or worse. But if we do censor ourselves, we’ll never get to the best solutions. A fabulous young woman named Emily came to my workshop to get, as she called it, “a swift kick in the ass” to jar her into spontaneity. She valiantly jumped into everything, and she was hilarious and a lot of fun. When she went home after the workshop, she felt prepared to change the way she’d been doing things previously. “I was determined to take the toolbox Katie had given me and try it out on everything and everybody. And I knew exactly how I would do it, too. Then, in a flash, it all became so obvious—I was planning the ways I’d be spontaneous! My thought processes are always entirely scripted! I had it all planned out, as I do most everything in my life. It has always been comfortable for me this way. Secure. Safe. I was going to go back to my job as a school counselor and do x, y, and z, and by golly, these kids were going to learn what it is like to be spontaneous!” The irony of the situation helped her laugh and see how she generally oper- ated. She proceeded to keep an eye on herself and try a slightly different tactic: genuine spontaneity. “Trust that still, small voice that says, ‘This might work and I’ll try it.’” —Diane Mariechild Try This: Affirm & adD Throughout this book, I will offer exercises as a way for you to try out these skills. Here’s one that works with the skill of spontaneously Affirming and Adding: I’m in an improv scene and my partner says, “Hey, Officer! There’s a man with a gun in here!” This situation triggers my imagination (if I can remain freed up and unblocked), and I can come up with different responses. Here are several: “I see him! Let’s go get him!” “Oh, dang, I grabbed my son’s toy gun by accident this morning. Sorry, can’t help ya.” “This is a job for Opera Cop!” (You continue the scene singing the robber his rights.) “Um, Mr. Cheney, it’s July. Hunting season is over, sir.” Now you try one: Here’s a new opening line. Fill in whatever responses come into your head. You can start with simple or obvious ones if you like, but after three or four responses, try to give a few that we might not expect—the unexpected can be funnier sometimes. Repeat the opening line each time, and then quickly respond out loud before you write it down. Don’t think long and hard—just respond immediately: Improvisation for the spirit 8 Here’s your partner’s line: “Okay, what are you hiding behind your back?” 1.________________________________________________________ 2.________________________________________________________ 3.________________________________________________________ 4.________________________________________________________ 5.________________________________________________________ 6.________________________________________________________ 7.________________________________________________________ 8.________________________________________________________ Now, try another: “Don’t play with your food, Joey.” 1.________________________________________________________ 2.________________________________________________________ 3.________________________________________________________ 4.________________________________________________________ 5.________________________________________________________ 6.________________________________________________________ 7.________________________________________________________ 8.________________________________________________________ 9 the spontaneous life And another: “Sir, will you be having tea this afternoon?” 1.________________________________________________________ 2.________________________________________________________ 3.________________________________________________________ 4.________________________________________________________ 5.________________________________________________________ 6.________________________________________________________ 7.________________________________________________________ 8.________________________________________________________ One more: “Do you come here often?” 1.________________________________________________________ 2.________________________________________________________ 3.________________________________________________________ 4.________________________________________________________ 5.________________________________________________________ 6.________________________________________________________ 7.________________________________________________________ (Creative responses to this last one might even prove useful!) Improvisation for the spirit 10 Journal your observations below: 1. What did you discover? Were you quicker than you thought? Slower? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 2. Did you have more ideas than you expected? Fewer? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 3. How many ideas did you think you SHOULD have? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 11 the spontaneous life 4. What was your first reaction when you read the first line? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 5. Did that first reaction change by the fourth exercise? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 6. What are your beliefs about your creativity? Are you creative? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit 12 _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 7. Do you believe you are less creative than others? Is this belief true? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 8. If you don’t like these beliefs, write down a new belief that you’d like to have: _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 13 the spontaneous life 9. How can you really deeply internalize this new belief? In other words, what would have to change? Would you need to have a new experience where you actually succeeded beyond your expectations of yourself? Would you need to take a comedy course? A writing course? Something else? Do you believe you need to have others’ approval to feel more confident? (More on this later.) What do you need in order to reconnect with your belief in your abilities? Write down the first step you can take to gain more confidence: _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit 14 This Week’s Practice: The Spontaneous Life Each chapter will offer a meditation or practice at the end. Because these skills take some work, you might try the practices for a week to let them sink in or perhaps come back to them now and again. Journaling What does “spontaneity” mean to you? Does it scare you? Do you believe that being spontaneous could hurt you or be potentially damaging in some way? Would being more spontaneous in certain areas of your life help? Choose an area of your life where you would like to become more sponta- neous and inspired. Why do you think you do not act spontaneously in this area? What are you afraid will happen if you are spontaneous? As you go about doing things in this area of your life for the next few days, notice how often you are acting spontaneously. Ever? Are you just doing the same, safe thing each time? Where do you stand as far as living a spontaneous life? What was it about this book that attracted your attention? 15 the spontaneous life The noun of self becomes a verb. This flashpoint of creation in the present moment is where work and play merge. —Stephen Nachmanovitch Being present and listening to others will help you get out of your head and into a creative mode. This chapter offers tools and exercises to help you learn to move through blocks and to trust, commit, and surrender, using the practice of being fully there. 2 Present & Aware Be Improvisation for the spirit “You Must Be Present to Win” About fifteen years ago, I was a teensy bit drunk on free drinks at a Las Vegas casino. My husband and I were at the nickel slot machines (last of the big-time spenders), but we’d occasionally go over to the high-limits area so we’d be offered all the compli- mentary Kahlua and creams we could drink. I am not a big gambler (or drinker), so I was kind of bored and reading all the signs on the walls. One that caught my eye was “You Must Be Present to Win.” Well, Kahlua apparently creates a world in my head where everything appears more profound than it was originally meant to be, and I took this particular sign as a very important message. I even wrote it down on a “Circus Circus” cocktail napkin, which I later retrieved from my pocket before it was baptized by my Maytag. I try to remember this bit of wisdom when I am mid-scene on stage (or in the morning, when I sometimes get overwhelmed by the list of tasks ahead of me that day). I consciously redirect my focus on the present moment. But if, like the casino sign says, “you must be present to win,” then what is considered “winning” in the world of improvisation? Well, there are a few things: the most obvious is a big, loud, appreciative laugh from the audience. Others are seeing new possibilities open up in the scene because I added something that helped get my partners and me out of a rut, or even simply being a partner who helps keep the scene going—not really adding anything brilliant, but stalling for time while my partners and I try to work our way around to something wonderful. That’s winning, too: just being present and moving the scene forward. Being present also helps you keep the action in the present tense, which keeps the scene alive and interesting. It generally doesn’t work to talk about things that happened outside of the scene—things that are happening somewhere else or that happened in the past, which the audience can’t see. Giving a long back story about how you and your partner got to the present scene on stage isn’t really fun to watch—there’s no action! You’re just recounting something the audience can’t see. And when you talk about something happening somewhere else, again, it’s not really fun to watch. Audiences want to see action and emotion and drama and conflict unfolding in front of them. It took me a long time to stop talking about things on stage that the audience couldn’t see. Showing, not telling, is what’s key. Being present is where the funny is, and that’s what’s interesting. 18 be present & aware 19 On stage, I feel like I’ve achieved something great when my self-consciousness vanishes momentarily, and I am suddenly fully present in the scene. I get out of self- judgment and into creation. I can think fast without effort. Suddenly, I am George Bush at a self-help meeting—not Katie, wondering what to add to the scene. I come up with more ideas that actually fit, that work, that move the scene forward, and that support my teammates’ ideas. All because I am present. Bringing our focus into the here and now works in life as well. How often do we get hung up on what happened in the past? This can manifest itself on a grand scale: the conflict in the Middle East is a good example of people having a hard time looking past, well, the past. But even in your personal relationships, you can bring old “yous” into every conversation, and this is dangerous. Rarely is it useful to be talking to someone while thinking of his or her past transgressions or past behaviors. The past keeps us stuck and unable to see what’s real, here and now. Look at your primary relationship—with your parent, spouse, partner, co- worker…or even your schnauzer. At times, it feels impossible to look past your preconceived notions of certain people and see who they really are here in this moment, today, separate from your beliefs about them and what they’ve done or said in the past. But this is an incredibly useful practice—letting go of precon- ceived notions. Let go, let go, let go. Pay attention as each of your subjective beliefs about a particular person comes up. Notice every thought, and let it pass. Are you able to see what this person is feeling or doing right here and now? I can’t stress enough how deeply we are caught up in our beliefs about who people are now based on our past experiences of them. Let’s say you want to go out to dinner with your husband, but you think he is probably too tired, so you don’t ask. You make an assumption that he would rather be left alone on the couch, because that’s what has happened before, say, oh, about forty years’ worth of times. Well, it turns out that today he is feeling rather lonely at work and really wishes someone would take an interest in him. But your leaving him alone reaffirms his assumption that no one wants to be with him. If you were to simply ask, “Hey, do you want to go out to dinner, just the two of us?” his reac- tion might be one of joy. What a surprise and a delight for both of you. And that’s just applying the idea to one relationship! Imagine the possibilities that could arise if you could be truly present in all of your relationships. Try This: Look at What’s Here and Now In your next conversation, try to look at another person right in this moment. Let go of any preconceived notions about him or her and how you may have been treated before. Let go of who you think this person is, based on past behaviors. See if you can view the true nature of this person more clearly now than when your perspective is muddied by preconceived beliefs. Journal your experience: __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit 20 “When I’m in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise, there is pure harmony, an easy give and take.” —Jackson Pollock Why Be Present? In an improv game, if you are thinking about the audience, dinner, when you last got an oil change, or whether you should run for office, well, you’re just not there, are you? And you’ll miss important information from the audience or other actors and be lost. I admit I’ve done that so many times, I can’t even count. It makes for terrible improv. But more importantly, that habit of letting your attention wander makes for a lame-o life. Missing the present is such a shame, because really, that’s all there is. But on the other hand, there I am on stage at the beginning of an improv scene, putting together ideas in my head of where the scene might possibly go. Is this being present, or is this thinking ahead? Is it possible to do both? There is such a thing as bringing the future and your plans for it into the present. Take this example: I am in a scene in which the location the audience has given us is “hospital.” I quickly run through some options to add to the scene: I’m in labor…I’m back looking for that hot doctor who helped me last week…My gall bladder was stolen and sold on the black market, and I’m trying to track it down. There are infinite possibilities. Suddenly, I see that the actor next to me is standing in a very confident way. I notice him (in the present) and pick the handsome doctor scenario. “Excuse me,” I say in a sultry voice. “Do you recognize this?” I point to my nose, hoping he’ll recognize the emergency surgery he did on my imagined broken nose. Now, this is all happening very quickly, and you have to remember that the other actor is also running through possibilities and planning in his head. He may be thinking he’s the head of the hospital, or a reporter, or a patient. So, he gets present, lets go of some of his ideas, looks at me, takes in the line I just offered, and shouts to the emergency room at large: “I found it! The missing nose! It’s over here! She seems to have stored it here on her face.” Then he says to me, “Well done, nurse. The patient will appreciate what you’ve done with her nose, keeping it safe like that.” Well! Out goes my “looking for the hot doctor” scenario and in comes the “selfless nose-storing nurse.” But I don’t have to dump my sultry character—I can 21 be present & aware add it in. Maybe the nurse becomes someone who’s willing to do anything for this doctor she admires, including storing his patient’s nose on her face to win his approval. This is the process we all go through every day in regular life: we encounter problems, we brainstorm solutions, we get ideas, and we get attached to our ideas. Attachment doesn’t work, because by definition, when we get attached to an idea we had earlier, we are no longer present with what is needed now. So we either suffer from the attachment (getting frustrated and angry with ourselves and others), or we get present again, unattach a bit, and see where we can go now. And we think ahead, let go of ideas, and move on. Stacey, a creative financial advisor and singer and participant in one of my retreats, came to a revelation about being present. She noticed that suddenly, toward the end of the last day of the retreat, she became aware that the retreat was coming to an end. “I started thinking about the upcoming week. It changed my thoughts and emotions and I became different, less in the moment...less in joy,” she said. “This made me realize that the weekend could be seen as a microcosm of life. Am I so worried about the last ten years that I am not in the now? Am I so worried about growing older that I am not present and connected? Why I am anxious or in a hurry or so unwilling to be sad or irritated? Or so unwilling to be present with what is? This is what makes life interesting! It makes the scene! It makes me me.” Let Go of the Past Being present also requires being able to let go of past mistakes or shortcomings— we need to know how to move on. I am the director and co-writer (with my husband) of, as well as an actor in, my women’s satire show, Broad Comedy, a fairly feisty revue that tackles women’s issues and politics. Once, we were performing at a banquet for a fairly conserva- tive women’s sports organization. We were following our scripted show, when suddenly, I came to the part of a song about child rearing that had a rather large and glaring profanity in the middle of it. I totally forgot to change the line for this performance, and it came pouring out of my mouth. The line was about how, after my character had been struggling with breast-feeding, she wanted to kill those “buggers” at La Leche League. If I had only said “buggers,” it would have been fine, and I would not be using this as an example in my book. But I didn’t say Improvisation for the spirit 22 “buggers”…and this was not the audience for an R rating. So where there was normally a nice, big laugh, there were now crickets. And darting looks around the room as the audience members tried to gauge each other’s reactions. Not good. Now, if the cast were to spend the rest of the song thinking about how it had gone wrong, that would have read all over our faces and reinforced the mistake. It could also have made us forget our next lines. So what we did was let go of what just happened and become really present with what we were saying now. And we built the audience’s trust back up. And the next song, “I’m A Soccer Mom Ho,” which I had carefully cleaned up, brought down the house. We’ve all said something we thought was stupid, something we wished we hadn’t said. Maybe you took that creative risk and offered a suggestion (“Hey, why don’t we cover the lobby with cute, pink hearts for Valentine’s Day!”), but once it came out of your mouth, you realized it wasn’t good—and you got the feeling others thought so, too. What do you do now? Some say hindsight is 20/20, but sometimes hindsight can be blinding. The fact is, if you stay stuck in your Past Moment of Lameness, then you will have nothing to add to the present, and things will just spiral downward. You’ll be likely, in fact, to create more moments you don’t feel good about. Letting go of those moments, though, will allow you to move on and jump back into the flow of the moment. And practicing letting go, practicing moving on, makes this habit become easier and easier. It’s like a mental muscle: practice increases its strength. And that is true for all the skills offered in this book. JOURNAL How much time do you spend lost in the past or planning the future? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 23 be present & aware When you are lost in the past, is there a common theme? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ When you are fantasizing about the future, is there a common theme? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ What would happen if you ignored the past? What’s the first thought that springs to mind? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit 24 What would happen if, after you planned what needed to be planned, you just let it go and unfold? Do you need to go over and over what might happen? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ What is happening in your present right now? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ What does your body feel like when you think about the past? About the future? What about right now? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 25 be present & aware Improvisation for the spirit What do you fear will happen if you let go of the past? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ What do you fear will happen if you don’t constantly plan? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ What do you fear about the present? _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________ 26 be present & aware 27 Try This: Meditation as a Way to Bring the Present into Focus This is a meditation exercise, so if you’ve done something like this before, just focus on being present and follow my words below. If you’re new to medi- tation, here are a few instructions: Sit in a comfortable position for meditation. Keep your eyes open but kind of softly focused on something that isn’t moving. Now, let your attention come to your breath. Feel the breath move your abdomen, chest, shoulders, whatever. Feel the hot air go in and out of your nose. Now, here’s the deal: YOUR MIND WILL WANDER, AND THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU FLUNKED MEDITATION CLASS! Just notice the wandering, give a little smile as if to say, “I see you over there,” and bring your awareness back to your breath. You’re not alone. Pema Chodron, one of my favorite Zen Buddhist teachers, says she’s just terrible at meditation—meaning that her focus wanders all the time. And she’s a full- time meditation teacher and monk! So her practice is about bringing it back. And that’s what I finally got after, oh, two thousand years of practice. It’s the awareness of being away from your center that is the point and the practice of meditation—and it’s the coming back that matters! Because this is what happens all day long, although less so as you practice being present. We are always distracted by fantasies, worries, projections into the future, and attachments to the past. And that’s what causes suffering in our lives to a large degree: not being here. So sit and breathe and watch. And if you spin off somewhere, just bring yourself back to your breath. It absolutely doesn’t matter how long you do this. It is not a contest. Some people do two really present minutes a day. Some do two hours. Some do nothing at all—they just focus on staying present throughout their daily lives. Whatever you do is great. For now, just practice being aware of where your attention goes during the day. And bring it back. It is a simple practice that will bring you in touch with your life—so it won’t Improvisation for the spirit all pass by without your noticing it, so you can live with greater awareness. By coming into the present and being mindfully aware, you can see what’s going on in your life and make the changes you want. Pay Attention! The Art of Mindful Self-Awareness When you’re doing something you’ve never done before, you have a really enlight- ening opportunity to see how you operate. As the wonderful Zen teacher Cheri Huber says, “How you do anything is how you do everything.” When people come to my workshops, I can see within about thirty seconds of their first improv game what their normal habits are: if they are more comfortable being a leader or a follower, if they tend to plow into things without needing guid- ance, if they hold back until they understand rules, if they trust themselves creatively, if they trust others, and if they are people who are able to commit. I’m not psychic; it’s just glaringly obvious. I couldn’t agree more that the way you do anything (particularly something new) is the way you do everything. Now, if I were to take a surfing workshop, and you were a really proficient surfing teacher, you’d know my habits immediately, too. And those tendencies would almost certainly reveal how I operate in the rest of my life: I would want to see someone else go first. I wouldn’t want to wait and go last, because I’d feel too much pressure. I would try and make jokes to ease my own tension. These are habits that I have reinforced throughout my life. My awareness practice—that is, the practice of trying to continually be aware in the present moment—helps me notice these habits, and then I can choose to change them or not. It helps me see what goes on inside my head. And it’s an interesting place, the inside of your head. Are you competing with everyone else? Are you believing that you are the only one who’s afraid, that everyone else is perfectly at ease? Are you making assumptions about how you’ll do? Are you believing everyone else is thinking certain things about you? This is what I love to discover, along with my students and workshop participants. What’s going on in there? 28 be present & aware 29 Mindfulness training helps us notice these thoughts before we get too attached to them. Mindful awareness helps us realize that they are conditioned thoughts, not necessarily based on anything in reality. This is a crucial reason to practice being present: so that we can see our truth and not run on automatic pilot— judging, fearing, and blocking ourselves, and creating problems and confusion. Remembering to be mindful forces us to get present. So if you are starting something new, take the time to notice what beliefs jump up right away. That is, what are your conditioned ways of approaching a new expe- rience? Most likely, they are habits that have come up over and over in different areas of your life. As I will talk more about in chapter three, being a beginner is great practice, because you get the chance to learn a lot about yourself. When you are alert and aware of your thought process, you are by definition being present to what is going on right now inside your head. Father Anthony de Mello, a sort of Buddhist-in-Jesuit-priest-clothes, has been an incredible inspiration to me. His writing and public speeches point to the importance of being present. “Wake up! Wake up!” he would shout in a jovial way to his students. “You’re asleep, and you don’t even know it. Wake up!” Try This: Mindful Awareness Look up from this book. Right now. Notice one thing you’ve never noticed in your environment (your home, office, bed, porch, wherever you are). Do this several times a day. Try it with sound, smell, and touch, too. Do you notice what your chair feels like? What your home or office smells like? Bring the habit of mindful awareness to your life. Witnessing But how can you become more aware of your own self-awareness? Before you get too caught up in a Mobius strip of observing yourself observing yourself observing yourself, try this approach: witnessing. Improvisation for the spirit The practice of witnessing is a practice of self-observation without judgment. This is perhaps one of the most important practices you should make a habit if you want to become self-confident, self-aware, and, well, just happy. The way to practice witnessing is to start by noticing your thoughts throughout the day. Notice what you inner voices say to you when you get up, when you first look in the mirror, when you have breakfast, when you work, when you talk with others. Any time you are thinking, you can practice witnessing. The trick is to notice what your thoughts are without judging them. This is harder than you might think. Try it right now. Are there any unkind words ringing around in there? Are there any voices judging others? How much of the day do you spend making judgments about others or about situations? We will get into the issue of judgment and projection later, but for now, just notice your thoughts. Don’t berate yourself if you have negative or mean-spirited words in your head. JUST NOTICE. This is the first step. And also, if you’re new to this, allow yourself to do it in short spurts (minutes, not hours). It can be a little over- whelming if you spend too much time observing your own thoughts at first! What we’re trying to learn here is to not identify with our feelings and beliefs so much. There’s an old Zen joke: Before enlightenment, I was depressed. After enlightenment, I continue to be depressed! But the difference is that I’m not iden- tified with it anymore. And that is a huge difference. When you witness, you teach yourself to look objec- tively and find the truth. You let go of the beliefs that you hold so dearly. You get to see clearly your habitual judgments and subjective “truth.” And when you begin to question these beliefs—by simply witnessing what is going on in your head—you get a clearer picture of the way things are. For example, you walk into work and everyone ignores you, barely saying hello. You immediately jump to the conclusion that your co-workers are mad at you, or don’t like you, or were all just talking about you. You stop and breathe and notice that thought. It is perhaps a habitual way of thinking for you, jumping to conclu- sions based on your limited perspective of the situation. But now you notice this thought, and you allow for the possibility that there is another interpretation. Right there you’ve made a big change—you don’t necessarily buy what your mind was telling you in its first, hasty conclusion. This in itself is a big step in the right direction. You are disidentifying with your thought and looking at it objectively. Next, you step back and look at other possibilities: Could your co-workers be focused on their own tasks? Worried about their own deadlines? Did they perhaps 30 be present & aware 31 not hear you come in? Could they think you don’t care about them yourself? There are so many possibilities, and honestly, the only way you’ll ever find out the truth is to ask. And even then it’s questionable if you’ll get an objective picture of what’s going on. But the most important thing is that you didn’t immediately believe your first thought, and you didn’t act on it. Father Anthony de Mello said, “Wakefulness, happiness—call it what you wish—is the state of non-delusion, where you see things not as you are but as they are.” An illusion is a belief you have about a situation. What we want is to drop all of our illusions so that we can see reality as it is. “Every time you are unhappy,” de Mello said, “you have added something to reality…a negative reaction in you. And if you examine what you have added, there is always an illusion there.” Our reactions are based on our beliefs, such as when you believe everyone at your office is talking about you and become unhappy. We see the world from our own limited perspectives, but we want to begin to see it in a more objective way, so that we aren’t slaves to our beliefs and reactions. In improv, witnessing comes about when you observe your thoughts while creating a scene. This happens in any creative process. You form a belief and you act on it before you take a moment to witness it objectively and see if there is another possibility. If I’m on stage and another actor heads off in a different direc- tion, ignoring my idea, is it because he necessarily thinks it is a bad idea? No. He might not have heard it; he might be stuck on his own idea; he might not under- stand where I was heading; or he might think he is using my idea, but we’re just on different tracks. So witnessing helps break the cycle of thought-emotion-belief- reaction. And for many of us, this cycle happens all day long. Give your thoughts some attention today, and practice witnessing to see what you discover. Improvisation for the spirit Try This: “How you do anything is how you do everything” Write a paragraph on the topic of cars. No rules. Just write. Go. __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ 32 be present & aware 33 Now, how did you approach this assignment? Did you want more guide- lines and rules? Were you annoyed for any reason? What was the reason? Write it here: I was annoyed by/because: __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ How did you feel about your ability to do this exercise before you started? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ How about during the exercise? Did you notice your thoughts about being good or bad at it? About something else? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ And how do you feel now about what you wrote? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Look at your answers. Is this typical of the way you approach assignments and activities (new or not) in general? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ What might be another way of approaching assignments and tasks? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Our Modus Operandi (M.O.) Revealed When Sheila, a TV exec, came to one of my workshops, she noticed she always thought she knew how to do something before it was fully explained. She didn’t want help. But she sometimes didn’t really get the rules of the improv games she was playing, and this showed in her performances. It turns out that she thought that having to have something explained to her proved she wasn’t smart enough to figure it out on her own. A self-made woman, Sheila always felt she had to prove she was smart. But it turns out, she was actually sabotaging herself: she often did 34 be present & aware 35 things wrong, because she hadn’t listened or accepted help the first time. She wasn’t aware until then that this had been her M.O., but because the improv games were new to her, her M.O. was readily visible. This process helped her recognize her behavioral pattern. She is more mindful now, so she can do things differently. Prop Girl: The Art of Grabbing Stuff around You In improv, I am known as “Prop Girl.” My friend Mike pointed this out to me. He said, “Whenever you are on stage, you grab stuff.” I had no idea what he was talking about until the next show. We were performing in a conference room, and there I was, grabbing the giant, fake ficus tree and using it to create a forest scene. And ten minutes later, I was using an audience member’s mink coat. Later, I had a bottle of wine in my hand from the bar. What was this all about? I am a pretty visual and tactile person in general. I like to picture things. When I am a little lost in a scene, the best way for me to pull myself back into the moment is to grab something real that I can focus on and that can keep me grounded in the present. Hence the unsuspecting ficus’s debut on stage. In this same way, I may also really hone in on the person I’m acting with in a scene, employing active listening to keep myself alert and engaged. I do this in regular acting, too: when I’m in a play, the stimulus of the other actors, the set, the music, the words—they all give me a boost. Why? Props help me stay present and mind- fully aware. They make it all real. Try This: Be Present & Listen to Others Mindfully Practice noticing how you listen and respond to people. Create this new habit: when you listen, listen. Catch your mind wandering? Come back and just listen. It’s an incredibly different way of being in the world if you don’t normally listen deeply. Now, wait to respond. Here are several ways to do this: Improvisation for the spirit • Say, “Let me see if I hear you,” and in your own words, rephrase what someone has said to you. I’m sure you’ve heard this before, but have you really tried it? It’s startling how this practice takes determi- nation and commitment. And what it can do for your interactions is impressive. • Say, “Hmmm, let me think about that.” You wouldn’t believe how often it’s okay to wait to respond. People really appreciate it when you take the time to think about what they’ve said. You can do this with phone calls and emails, too. • Say, “You know, I really care about what you’re telling me right now, but I am distracted by something else. Can we catch up in a few minutes (hours, days), so I can really give you all my attention?” Why are we so trained to respond immediately? It really doesn’t often serve any of us to do so. This kind of consideration is what people love, and it will give you the time to be a better listener. Problems and hurt feel- ings can be avoided, and people can more easily connect and be creative when they use these kinds of deep, active listening skills. I found the concept of being present summed up perfectly in a mystery novel, of all places. In one of Tony Hillerman’s works, the main character, a detective named Joe Leaphorn, is asked by the FBI to go out to the scene where a body has been found. (It seems to have been tossed off a train onto a reservation.) Leaphorn begins to inspect the area in ever-widening circles, to the confusion of his colleague Jay Kennedy: “What are you looking for?” Kennedy asked. “Besides tracks.” “Nothing in particular,” Leaphorn said. “You’re not really looking for anything in particular. If you do that, you don’t see things you’re not looking for.” 36 be present & aware 37 This Week’s Practice: Be Present & Mindful Whenever you get caught up in past beliefs, past judgments, or expectations about what you can and can’t do in the future, change your focus to the present instead. What is happening now? How does that change the way your body feels? Try different ways to approach mindfulness, such as attentive, slow eating. Try eating without doing anything else: no talking, reading, walking, driving, working. It will teach you about being present. Just eat. Really slowly. It can be completely transcendent or totally annoying. Keep doing it anyway. Journal your experiences. Be committed in your practice to bring yourself back to the present. Just bring it back, bring it back, bring it back… BE Open & Flexible 3 It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. —Alan Cohen This chapter will help you practice being flexible and going with the flow when things change unexpectedly. Being open to change allows for more possibilities than you can imagine, infinitely more than what’s possible from a limited perspective in which you plan on everything going the way you imagine. Exercises and journaling in this chapter will offer you insight into your normal behavior, including how you try to control things, and will allow unexpected possibilities to unfold joyfully. Improvisation for the spirit Cameron is a twenty-year-old college student. He is a badass, an extreme-sports fanatic, and he also happens to be my brother. Cam’s greatest passion is surfing. Surfing requires an enormous amount of concentration and a willingness to be flexible, both physically and mentally. You don’t always know what a wave is going to do, so you can’t count on your plan. It’s the perfect place to practice being present and fluid. As Cam says, “When surfing a wave and looking for new lines and feelings, improv is key. No one wave is the same, and no single mind-set will work for every wave.” Cam explains that we have certain tools and techniques we know we can bring to any situation in life, and in surfing it’s the same thing. You can go into a situa- tion knowing what you’re capable of and feeling confident in what you may learn. Choosing how to adapt to each individual situation while using your personal skills is where improv comes into play. “In surfing,” Cam says, “each wave presents different characteristics, which work for some moves and not for others. The wave may pitch and barrel really fast, leaving no option but to race down the line as fast as you can and make for the hole of light at the end of the tunnel. Or it may be a slow, mushy wave with long shoulders, leaving time for big arcing turns. If you get too excited and ahead of yourself, you’ll go too fast and shoot off the end, leaving the critical part of the wave far behind and finding yourself slowly sinking back into the water.” Taking your time and focusing on what’s around you is just as important as speeding up your attack and making split-second decisions. Every second on a wave requires a decision to be made about how and where to ride it. That decision leads to the next instant, which in turn leads to another decision. Riding waves is so ephemeral that the decision-making process must be broken down into seconds. It’s amazing to watch Cam and his friends surf. A land-based mammal like me thinks they’re going to go one way, and zip, they flip around and change direction. It looks so fluid and easy. And because good surfers know to stay flexible both physically and mentally, they can adjust and change with the incoming informa- tion of the wave. Their bodies are as flexible as their minds let them be. That’s why “hang loose” is their motto. Oftentimes, trying new or different approaches leads you to places you never knew about. “You may check your speed too much where you originally wanted to go faster—but find yourself in a perfect position to pull into a hollow section you didn’t even know was there,” Cam says. 40 be open & flexible 41 And just like in improv, sometimes it’s on purpose, or sometimes we try one thing and end up doing something completely different. Either way, it works. As long as each step you make along the way is made with confidence and determi- nation, there’s no limit to what you can do. But it starts with a commitment to being flexible in mind and spirit. Without that, you can’t even get started. You’ll just get in your own way and create block after block. “Sometimes it’s not even about riding the wave, but dealing with the condi- tions,” Cam notes. “Paddling out, dealing with rip currents, getting caught inside, even finding a good spot on a crowded day, are all key components to improvising in surfing. When you can deal with nature harmoniously, even in the harshest of conditions, dealing with society and people is simple. And in surfing, if you don’t get it the first time, there’ll always be another wave coming.” Is this kid ahead of the game or what? Try This: One-Word Story We play this game as one of the starter games in my retreats, when we are just getting familiar with improvising. The individuals in the group go around the circle, making sentences together. The rule is that you can only say one word, and it has to make sense coming after the previous word spoken. Picture each word below said by one person after another going around: “There” “once” “was” “a” “dog” “who” “ate” “tax accountants.” Improvisation for the spirit Now, there’s no way to know where this sentence is going to end up. Since you can’t know what the person right before you is going to say, you absolutely cannot plan at all. You simply react. You listen to all the words; you hear the one right before you; your brain runs through a list of possi- bilities; and you pick one. Some people who haven’t done improv before can really get hung up on this game. They either want to plan (in which case what’s stuck in their head isn’t going to make sense), or they get blocked because there are too many choices, and they are too worried about which is the right one to pick—so they don’t choose and they freeze. But once they get the hang of it, they know there’s no right answer and that the goal is to just “hang loose” and listen. That’s it. That’s their whole job. I love seeing where these stories go. Like the one above, it is never predictable, and the unexpected nature of it is what makes it funny and fun. You can’t always know where the collaborative creative process is going to take you, so it’s in the best interest of the project, the client, or the management team to be open and flexible. You can come prepared with ideas and perhaps with a goal in mind, but you also must be willing to let go of these ideas instantly if they don’t work. Let Go I met a geriatric nurse named David at a workshop I led at a health-care confer- ence. David faced the challenge of letting go at work. “So many of us have often made up our minds about what we think a client needs before we’ve really listened to the story,” he said. “But if we collaborate with the patients about their care and needs, there are potentially more possibilities, more opportunities to really help make changes in their lives.” So how do we let go of these preconceived ideas and stay flexible and in the creative flow? Part of the trick lies in facing our fear—the fear of being spontaneous. We don’t always trust ourselves or trust that we’ll have more ideas. We get attached to one idea, as if it’s part of us. The other thing we have to recognize is our need for approval. A rejection of our idea might feel like a rejection of us, but we need to 42 be open & flexible 43 remind ourselves: Don’t take anything personally. And we also need to remember that we are more than our last idea, especially if our last idea was kind of boring. That’s a hard thing to believe in the moment, but we need to remember it to have perspective. Flexibility in the O.R. Even doctors must improvise, although most of us would not want our doctor to get too creative: “Um…I prefer that my surgeon uses the tried-and-true method for a vasectomy, please.” But how many times does a doctor get into an operation and have to make quick, clear, instinctual judgments? I would prefer a doctor who is not stuck on the notion that everything has to be set in stone. I would want a doctor who can trust his or her gut, who knows how to be flexible, and who is able to surrender previous plans if necessary. James, a surgeon, told me a story about the need for medical improvisation. Once when he was working in the emergency room, a man was shot in the back while fleeing the police. A bullet went through the man’s spine and severed his spinal cord. The X-ray showed the bullet lodged in part of his abdomen. There was no pulse in his right leg, and it was pale blue. The doctors figured out that the bullet, after cutting through the spinal cord, had entered the back wall of the aorta and then floated into the bloodstream, where it plugged up the artery to his leg. The heat from the bullet had seared shut the hole in the back of the aorta temporarily, so there was no bleeding—but this tentative fix could break free at any time, causing the man to bleed out in seconds and die. How could they fix that hole for good? The hard part was that the bullet hole was directly between the arteries that fed the kidneys. Disconnecting the aorta could destroy the kidneys. None of the doctors had ever seen a situation quite like this before, and there was no protocol to deal with it. The doctors’ solution was to clamp the aorta above and below the bullet hole, then open the front wall of the aorta, sew the hole shut, and close the front wall. Kind of like opening a refrigerator door and repairing the back of it from the inside, instead of turning the refrigerator around and repairing it from the back. It was a very clever solution: one that no one had needed to come up with before, one that required flexibility of the mind. If the doctors had stayed attached to Improvisation for the spirit standard practices or hadn’t allowed themselves to look at the problem creatively from different angles than usual, they would have lost that man’s life. What Happens Next? All improv games require flexibility. There’s a game called, simply enough, “What Happens Next.” In it, we start out wherever the audience sets the scene, and once we get a little story going, the game leader shouts to the audience, “What happens next?” The audience suggests all kinds of random, crazy things. Now, because we improv actors are all trained story-makers and plot-devisers, it’s absolutely impos- sible not to have an idea of where the scene is going. And because we don’t know at what point the leader will freeze us and send us off in a new direction, it’s impor- tant to have an idea of where we’re going. But we also have to be prepared to give our ideas up and turn in an unexpected direction. This happens about every thirty seconds during the four-minute game. And that’s what’s fun about it. If you get into this game looking at it as if ideas are going to be “derailed,” then you’re going to be frustrated. If you look at it as if the rules are what make the game funny and interesting, then you’re in good shape. And ain’t that just like life? If you are going along with inflexible plans, and you just can’t stand the idea of something coming into your life that sends you off in a different direction, well, then you can pretty much plan on being totally annoyed for most of your life. Flexibility—but not begrudging flexibility—has got to be your friend. You’ve really got to accept it and even look forward to it as a part of your life—and certainly part of a spontaneous, creative life. Try This: “What Happens Next” This week, every time something unexpected comes up, notice your reaction to it. See if you can change your mindset to actually expect things to require flexibility on your part. Traffic jam on the way home? It’s the perfect chance to try that new Thai place you see every day on your route. Trying a new 44 be open & flexible 45 recipe? You know that the chicken isn’t going to brown as easily as the book describes it. But with most of the chicken’s skin left burnt on the bottom of the pan, you’ve just created a healthier version of the recipe! So expect and even welcome changes and surprises. Really see if you can look at them differently. Does having the expectation for change make it easier to be flex- ible? Is there something enjoyable about expecting the unexpected? I love change, but only in specific areas, such as taking trips or finding great, new actresses to work with, or when my son suddenly outgrows old toys and activities and is ready for something new and exciting. But I have a natural disposition to expect my plans to go as I planned them. I am perhaps what you might call, oh, I don’t know, a control freak? I once tried to gently suggest to someone I worked with that she might consider being more flexible. Her response, which I will never forget, was relayed in a slightly intense shriek with absolutely no ironic awareness whatso- ever: “Oh, I can be flexible, as long as I know ahead of time!” So what we have to do is learn to stop assuming things will go according to plan. This takes some work, but when you aren’t surprised by plans changing, it really eases up on your stress and distress. JOURNAL When you hear the words “control freak,” what do you think of? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Do you consider yourself a control freak? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Improvisation for the spirit __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ In which areas of your life are you able to give up control? Which areas seem incredibly important for you to maintain control of? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ What do you have to do to make the shift away from obeying your inner control freak? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ What do you believe will happen if you don’t control the things you feel you need to? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ 46 be open & flexible 47 Is that true for certain? __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ Control Freaks: Read This Now! (Or in your own time, you know, like when it’s good for you. Say, when you personally really feel like it. Don’t let me tell you what to do…) So. Has anyone ever called you a control freak? Isn’t it funny how it’s the one experience we control freaks have in common—that people think it’s okay to tell us we’re control freaks? And that first time, wasn’t it kind of shocking? “Me?” you asked. And then you wondered about it on the way home in the car, where you were distracted for the first time by the idea of it, when you would normally be busy driving and checking how many minutes you had until you had to pick up your kids at school and make dinner so it could be ready at exactly 6:30 p.m., so you’d have time for their baths, two books, tooth brushing, and kisses before Lost was on at 8:00 p.m.? Well, this book is going to be good for you. And you’re going to hate me. “Does ‘anal-retentive’ have a hyphen?” —Alison Bechdel, 1990 Dykes to Watch Out For Calendar Improvisation for the spirit Try This: Control Freak Confrontation Next time you feel a fit of control coming on, see if you can objectively notice whether it is a matter of life and death or a matter of, say, lunch. Now, if it belongs in the latter category, but you are still tenaciously grasping at it, take one big breath. Sit down. Take another breath. Now, ask yourself how impor- tant it is. Can you see any humor in this situation at all? Can you dredge up even a small spark of recognition that this is, perhaps, NOT REALLY THAT BIG A DEAL? If the answer was yes, there is hope. If not, keep trying. Humor and self- awareness will win out in the end. Keep working with your witnessing practice. Need more practice? Book a vacation like we did that requires you to fly through O’Hare at Thanksgiving during Chicago’s first big snow… Flexibility, Microbiologist Style Serena is a microbiologist who studies everything from the gunk in the hot pools of Yellowstone National Park to the genes of fruit flies. If you ever meet her, ask her how you sex-test and neuter fruit flies. You’ll be the center of attention at cock- tail parties when you use this tidbit as a conversation starter. Research biologists investigate a problem, observe—question by gathering information—and then form a testable hypothesis. They do systematic tests so they can draw conclusions that either confirm or knock down their original hypothesis. Biology is really complicated, and simple answers are rare, so scientists usually can’t get too attached to one answer. (Sound like your love life?) Serena and other scientists need flexibility in their work. It has to be a habitual practice, or it won’t be an acces- sible tool when they need to use it. And this tool, this flexibility in thinking, often results in the most significant moments in science. For example, when Alexander Fleming noticed that a blue- green mold growing on one of his culture plates killed bacteria, well, we got 48 be open & flexible 49 penicillin! One of the most important medical discoveries in the twentieth century, born out of nothing. And when, as the story goes, some engineer at 3M made a glue that didn’t work as well as he hoped, Post-Its were created! And that was one of the most important	444,422
Learn How to Be a Master Communicator How to Make Great Conversation Small Talk (Sean McPheat) (Z-Library).pdf	Written By Sean McPheat Published by Being A Success Ltd Copyright © 2003 All Rights Reserved CONTENTS Introduction and welcome The secret to making conversation and small talk How do you get people to talk to you? How to create a favourable first impression How to keep conversations going Awesome one liners for you to use Learn how to say NO and mean it How to feel great in an INSTANT How to complain effectively and get what you want How to give tough messages and feedback Advanced Communication Skills How to speak up at meetings How to run meetings Public speaking techniques How to give winning presentations Welcome to HOW TO MAKE GREAT CONVERSATION & SMALL TALK! Thanks for purchasing this e-book. I hope you have as much enjoyment in reading this fantastic product and in benefiting from the techniques and strategies inside as I did when putting it together. The art of conversation is a lost skill in my opinion! People are far too busy nowadays to take the time to really communicate with anyone. Instead people just take it in turns talking and are too busy of thinking of what to say that they don’t really listen to the other person. Hence you just get the same old: PERSON A “I did this, this and this and then we went here and there and did that and this and then I did….” ….and then it’s your turn! YOU “Oh, that’s great. I did this, this and this……… Argghhhhhhhh!!!! This is not communicating, this is playing verbal tennis and the match doesn’t last very long either! …….and then the dreaded silence appears when you have both exhausted yourself about talking and ME ME ME! You are both looking at each other, both feeling uncomfortable – hoping, no praying, that the other person will say something first! Well this e-book is all about providing you with the tools, techniques and strategies to start conversations and continue them! I will show you specific phrases to use and when to use them. Soon you will be a communications and small talk master! Please bear in mind that no one is born with excellent communications skills. You don’t just appear out of your mother’s womb with the gift of the gab – having said that some of the people I have met think……. I digress! No instead, all skills can be learned over time. What I’d like you to do is to try the recommendations that I make in this e-book but please do not try to do everything at once! Your mind will turn to mush if you do! Instead, take one or two techniques at a time and try them out at work, with your friends and your business associates. Find out what works for you and what doesn’t. I can now make conversation and small talk with anyone from any background – I am quite famous for it! However, this wasn’t always the case – I have built up my skill over time and it now it’s your turn to do the same. So in closing, I would just like to thank you once again for your support, enjoy this publication and I would just love to hear your successes along the way. Just drop me an email – I’d love to hear from you. Take care and god bless Sean Sean McPheat THE SECRETS TO MAKING CONVERSATION AND SMALL TALK Besides feelings of low self worth and speaking in public/groups, meeting and talking to people is the most common topic that I coach and help people with in my coaching businesses. In fact most people would rather pull their toenails out than actually have to go up to someone they have never met before and strike up a conversation! But don’t worry help is at hand! Throughout this chapter I am going to talk you through how to communicate with people that you have never met before and teach you how to drum up conversation with people and make small talk. The techniques work equally well with people whom you find communicating to very difficult or awkward. Are you one of those people who meets someone new for the first time, you get past the “Hello” and then a tumbleweed breezes across the floor?! If so, you are not alone. Meeting people for the first time and striking up conversations can be a very daunting task, but it need not be the case. If you understand all about other people and how they like to communicate and what they like to talk about, then striking up a conversation can be an enjoyable experience. Honestly! Here’s how. The problem with meeting new people or people who you do not know very well is that you tend to find that you put yourself under pressure to talk. YOU PROBABLY ASK YOURSELF: What should I talk about? What shall I say? How will I fill this silence in the conversation? You enter into these meetings and encounters with ME ME ME on your mind! You forget about communicating with the other person because you are too busy thinking of what to say! In fact you don’t end up communicating you just end up taking it in turns talking! Let me tell you something now that may shock you. The best conversationalists in this world are the best listeners NOT the best talkers. In fact, the person who says the least is often the best communicator yet you are there racking your brains thinking of things to say all of the time! It took me years to finds this out and it would have saved me a lot of time and heartache if only I had known it sooner! Having said that this is the BEST tip I could ever give you if you want to be an excellent communicator = BECOME AN EXPERT LISTENER Let me explain why. When you become an expert listener is means that the other person is doing most of the talking. When you go into a situation where you are meeting someone for the first time, meeting a business associate or need to start a conversation go into that encounter with only one thing on your mind – THEM. You must treat that person as they are the most important person in the world, because to them they are! To build up rapport and to engage in a conversation ask questions and be intrigued about the other person not you. So, what do you talk to the other person about? Well, like I said before, you don’t! You let them do most of the talking and by doing this they will think that you walk on water and will in turn ask about you and that’s when YOU talk! I’ll illustrate this by telling you a short story: My wife Donna and I went to a social occasion a few years back. It was one of those functions where Donna knew everyone and I knew No-one! Sound familiar? I bet you’ve been in those situations as well haven’t you? So there we were walking up to the function room and Donna was looking forward to meeting the family members she hadn’t seen in ages and to catch up with the gossip from friends and here was good old Sean along for the ride! I’ll put my hand up and admit it was one of those functions when at the same time there was a very important game of football on the TV and here was me stuck there when I wanted to be watching the game with the guys! I knew I had 5 hours at the function and that there was no escape so I said to myself “Come on Sean practise what you preach, let’s practise my small talk techniques!” So I did! I went up to any one and everyone with the mindset that I wasn’t going to talk about ME whatsoever and that I would just be interested in THEM! First off, I need a starting line! You know that question, or phrase that starts the conversation going. So before I went up to anyone I thought to myself: What common themes does everyone have in common within the room? We are all there for a reason? What is the reason and what is the commonality? You see, there is always something to talk about no matter where you are, you just need to find out what the commonality is about the situation that you are in and use this to your advantage. So, in my case I thought: • We were all invited along to the same function, how did the person know the invitor? • Practically everyone in the room knew my wife Donna • The people in the room would either be having a good time or a bad time • We are eating the same food and drinking the same wine The list went on……. So with my preparation complete it was time to make some conversation starters! Here are few that I used on the night: “Hi my name is Sean, good party isn’t it? How do you know James and Claire?” THIS QUESTION WAS ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO INVITED BOTH OF US And then go into the conversation with just them in mind. They responded with: “I work with James at McCranors” NOW THIS IS WHERE I BET YOU DRY UP? WHAT NEXT I HEAR YOU CRY? Seeing as I did not know anyone there I went on to say: “McCranors? Sounds interesting? What do they do?” Always listen out for clues and snippets of information that the other person says, because if they say something it must mean that it is important to them. This lady could have just said: “I work with James” but she actually said “I work with James at McCranors” So I used this to generate more conversation! Another question I could have asked could have been: “Do you enjoy it there?” I hope you are with me on this? Another conversation starter I used were: “Hi, I’m Sean, Donna McPheat’s husband – please to meet you!” THIS IS A GREAT ONE TO USE AFTER I HAVE SEEN DONNA SPEAK TO THIS PERSON BECAUSE I KNOW THAT SHE KNOWS HER! The following morning when we had breakfast together Donna told me that everyone she had spoken to have said what a nice guy I was and that I was really interesting. The point of the matter is this; I hardly said a word myself all night! So, I have mentioned a little about starting conversations - you need to find some commonality between where you are, why you are there and make a mental note of these. Then you talk to the other person as though they are the most important person in the world – because to them they are! Let’s take this a step further and look at the TOP 5 topics of conversations that people like to talk about. So how do you engage the other person into talking? To do this it is important to understand what other people like to talk to about. Here is the TOP 5 in order: 1. THEMSELVES! People love to talk about themselves. It’s a fact and bet you are not an exception to that rule either! Want to know how to build rapport with someone and to hold a conversation? Get them to talk about their favourite subject – THEMSELVES! “What are YOU currently doing career wise?” “Do YOU enjoy it?” “Tell me about this…..” “I hear YOU have been doing this……” At a party: YOU - “Hi, how do you know the “party host”? THEM - “I know him because we went to school together” YOU- “What school was that?” THEM - “Gosford Park” YOU - “Did YOU enjoy it there? What did YOU study?” Ask question to get them to talk about themselves and then ask some more questions, and then some more! He or she will love you for it! 2. THEIR OWN OPINIONS Second only to talking about themselves, people love to air their opinions on anything and everything. Ask these questions as well and your new friend could be talking for hours! “What do you think of the way Manchester United have played this year?” “What is your opinion on the strike?” “What do you think of XYZ programme?” However, whatever you do, don’t get into an argument if your opinions differ, unless of course you want to make a sharp exit! 3. OTHER PEOPLE People love to talk about other people. Some people call this gossip; other just call it talking about other people! “What do you think of xyz person?” “Hasn’t xyz person got great interpersonal skills” “Isn’t xyz person a real laugh?” 4. THINGS Next on the pecking order is talking about things. No matter what it is your friend will have an opinion on it. “I love YOUR car, how long have YOU had it?” “What do YOU think of this widget?” “I love YOUR jacket, where did you get it from? 5. YOU! All together now – ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! It’s a horrible thing to say but the last thing people want to talk about is YOU! Keep the conversation centred around the other person until they ask about you and then it is your turn. To keep their full attention wait until they have finished talking about themselves and they have asked you a question. Then you can talk. When you do talk however, link it into what the other person has already said and you will really be making magical rapport. ACTION PLAN • Don’t worry about what to say just go into each conversation with the other person in mind. • Listen and ask questions about the other person. • Then ask some more questions! • Think about “YOU” instead of “I” • Talk about the other person’s favourite 5 subjects in order! • Don’t talk about yourself until the other person asks • Have fun! Making the first move So there you are at a party or function and you want to make the first move, but you are scared. You are scared that they will not like you, that you will be rejected, that you will have nothing to say – the list goes on! Guess what? They are probably thinking exactly the same thing so don’t worry about it! Instead, take a deep breath, go over to the person and ask them an opening question. The fact that you are both there in the same room means that you have got something in common. Other than that, bear in mind what we have covered to date and get them to talk about their favourite subjects! It’s always best to start off with small talk and then build on this foundation. Start on simple topics of conversation and then move on. “There are no uninteresting people, only disinterested listeners!” HOW TO GET OTHERS TO WANT TO SPEAK WITH YOU We’ve all been there. We’ve seen a person enter the room and we then we say: “I hope he/she doesn’t come over to me” Now why would we say that? Well, we say that because of the first impression that we have of that person. We don’t even know this person yet we have made up our mind about him or here!!! It’s crazy I know and you should “never judge a book by it’s cover” but whilst we can learn to accept people for what they are others do not. So just live with it! The way that you move your body and walk has an enormous effect on the way that you feel and how others perceive you. Think back to that person again. What did we rate them on? Let’s list them below: • Their looks • Their clothes • Their facial expressions • The way that they behaved • The way that they walked ……and they haven’t even opened their mouth yet!!! You see, we make our impression up of someone within the first 15 seconds of meeting anyone and this is largely due to the above factors and your body language. If you seem friendly, open, honest, trustworthy and good company to be with then it is most likely that people are going to want to talk to you If you look cold, closed, self centred and stand offish, people are not going to go out of their way to speak to you. Let’s complete an exercise! Imagine that there are two people that have just entered a room and one looks like a person you would have no problem in talking to and the other “never in a million years!” I’d now like you to write down what you are observing with each of these people. Person you would talk to Person you would feel uncomfortable with How are they standing? Where are their eyes looking? Where have they got their head? How are they talking? How are they moving? What are they wearing? What are their facial expressions like? Now think about yourself when you meet someone for the first time, and answer the questions that are in the boxes once more. Are you in the “Person I would talk to” or the “Person I would not talk to” column? Think about changing your body language and you will have awesome results – I can guarantee it! You will actually make someone want to talk to you! Right now in the box below, jot down all of the body language movements that will make you will look confident and approachable to other people: The way that you move sends subconscious messages to your mind and this either helps or hinder the way that the feel. Emotion is created by motion. If you sit still for a long period of time your natural energy levels automatically lower. And what happens when you get up, walk around and return to your seat? Yes, you have more energy and you’re given a boost. I can’t stress how important it is to move and act confidently and positively. You will give off all the right vibes to everyone around you and it will make them think that you are confident even if you’re not feeling it inside. Yes, that’s right. Even if you’re not feeling confident, act as though you are. So, how do you do this? Well, walk fast and with a purpose. Don’t saunter along, walk like you know exactly where you are going and when you get their you mean business! Gesture with your hands as you talk, it will create motion and you know what that leads to – EMOTION! The right gestures also have a major impact on building rapport as long as you’re not shaking your fist! All it takes is a smile! It may sound silly, but there is a lot of power associated with a smile. What I would like you to do is to start smiling more often. Now, that doesn’t mean that you have to walk around with a silly grin on your face all of the time. But smile as you walk down the street, when you talk to someone, even when you look in the mirror at yourself. You will be surprised at how better you will feel for it, and it will project a positive image to all others - one that will attract opportunities and people. Remember that confident people are happy people and negative people are not. Happy people are also seen as more attractive than unhappy and sad people so that is an added bonus! You know, the way that we communicate in our appearance, posture, gesture, gaze and expression can be such a powerful tool in the way that we feel and when communicating with others. HOW TO CREATE A FAVOURABLE FIRST IMPRESSION As I have said before, whether you like it or not, first impressions account for whether people instantly take to you or whether you have got some winning around to do! The first 15 – 30 seconds of any encounter are vital and it is very important that all of the stages of this process are managed correctly to save you a lot of work later on! So how do you create a favourable first impression? Read on! Let’s cut to the chase straight away! When you meet someone for the first time they will make their minds up about you based upon: 1. YOUR APPEARANCE 2. YOUR BODY LANGUAGE 3. HOW YOU SOUND 4. WHAT YOU HAVE GOT TO SAY The list above is in order of importance as well! YOUR APPEARANCE The way that you look and your grooming all have a lasting impression on the other person when you meet them for the first time. There is an old saying that goes ”Dress for where you are going, not from where you have been” Is your dress appropriate for the occasion? Formal? Casual? What is it? Do the best that you can with what you have got. To fit in appearance wise doesn’t mean that you have got to wear Armani suits and look like George Clooney – although both would be an advantage! It is the little things such as: Are you wearing the rights colours to complement your skin tone and colouring? Are your shoes nice and clean and shiny? Are you well groomed? Are you wearing the right attire for the occasion? - There is a big difference between what you would wear for an interview and what you would wear of you were going out bowling! Do your clothes complement your body shape and build? Is your skin looking vibrant and healthy or are you looking washed out? Are you clean shaven or have you got stubble? All of the above, and there are many others, will contribute to the first impression. Bear in mind that most of the people who meet you will have formed an impression of what you look like beforehand. That is, if you have spoken to them before on the phone or have communicated via letter/email etc. Some people may say, “You were not what I was expecting” Respond to this statement with “What WERE you expecting?” BODY LANGUAGE The main things to bear in mind are: Smile! A smile is very very powerful. People who smile a lot are naturally more attractive and people warm towards people who are happy. Who would be drawn to a miser? That doesn’t mean walking around with a stupid grin on your face but you should look happy and assure and in your first encounter with the other person when you say hello to them, SMILE! ☺ Eye Contact When speaking to your friend, look them directly in the eye. Making eye contact builds up trust and is a sign of confidence. People will like you for it. You know yourself the power of trust and how you feel towards a person who looks you in the eye. Stance and Posture If you are walking, stand tall and proud. If you are sitting imagine you have got a ruler down your back and sit up straight! Walk with a purpose and as though you have got the most important place to go, because you have remember! Don’t be slouched over like a couch potato! Act confidently even if you don’t feel it. No-one will know the difference! Handshakes There is only ONE WAY to shake hands, so I will keep this simple! When you greet someone for the first time: - Shake their hand firmly but not too hard - Look them in the eye - Smile - And say “Hello, nice to meet you” That’s it, nothing more to say! HOW YOU SOUND The natural tendency is to talk at a thousand miles per hour when you are a little nervous. Pace yourself and speak a little slower. Take a couple of deep breaths and relax. How you sound is important so sllllllllooooooooowwwwwwwww down and talk confidently! WHAT YOU HAVE GOT TO SAY Well, this had to come into it somewhere but it’s not as important as you think. Apart from a job interview, you will actually be doing less of the talking yourself if you are an excellent communicator. Note how I said excellent communicator and not excellent talker! A lot of people just take it in turns talking when they meet rather than communicate. I bet you all know of people who can run their mouths off and never listen! IN SUMMARY When meeting anyone for the first time 93% of the communication and impression that they make of you will be down to the way that you look, your body language and the sound of your voice. Only 7% will be down to the words that you use. Have you been concentrating on the 7%? If so, don’t worry. You now have some excellent techniques and knowledge to be able to create that positive first impression with anyone that you meet. Good luck, I’d love to hear how you get on. HOW TO KEEP CONVERSATIONS GOING Someone came up to me not so long ago and said: “Sean, you are so lucky to have the conversation skills that you have got, what is your secret?” This reminded me of a story about Gary Player, the famous South African golfer. Gary Player had just won yet another major and was being interviewed by the world’s press. Reporter - “Yet, another major Gary - congratulations. A lot of people around the world say that you are the luckiest golfer they have ever seen – what’s your secret?” “My secret is practice and preparation” replied Gary Player Reporter - “No, I’m on about the luck that you have when you play, you seem to get ALL of the breaks, ALL of the lucky bounces – wouldn’t you agree?” At this point, Gary Player, took his baseball cap off, scratched his head and said: “You know what? It’s really weird. Because the harder I practise and prepare for my matches, the luckier I become!” Never has a true word been spoken. No-one is ever born with talent or with the ability to be a great conversationalist – you just ask any 3 month year old baby and they will tell you! With practise and preparation you too can be what ever you want to be in life and that includes being a master communicator. When you go into any conversation from now on, I want you to really listen hard and communicate rather than just talk and pass the time. Be prepared, think of what you are going to say and how you are going to say it. Think about your first impression and your opening conversation starter. Focus on the other person and what he/she is saying. Stick to these rules and you will be bale to keep conversations going no problem. Below are some more tips for winning conversations: INVOLVEMENT I mentioned earlier the importance of both people being involved in the conversation. For example, if you are asked for your opinion, give it! But also spin it around to ensure that communication take places about your opinion. Let’s look at an example: PERSON: “What did you think of George Bush’s speech last night? YOU: “I thought it was good, I thought he came across well and motivated me. He told us what the troops were doing and what the current state of play was – which I thought was good” Now, the problem with that reply from you is that it is a DEAD END STATEMENT. That means that there is no natural flow to the conversation and it could just stop there and one of those DEADLY silences comes along! Instead there are several opportunities for a better reply that involves the other person – let’s look at a few: PERSON: “What did you think of George Bush’s speech last night? YOU: “I thought it was good, I thought he came across well and motivated me. Did you think so?” or “YOU: “I thought it was good, I thought he came across well and motivated me. He told us what the troops were doing and what the current state of play was – which I thought was good, did you think that way as well? Did you think he covered everything that you needed to know?” With the alternative replies above you are engaging and continuing a conversation rather than just answering questions like at an interview! Try it yourself. Next time this happens, answer the question and then spin it around so that the other person has to share their opinion. DON’T INTERRUPT When the other person is talking, I know it is hard at times, but please do not interrupt them when they are having their say. What they are talking about is important to them so please respect this. Also, if you do interrupt you get back to the “taking it in turns to talk” scenario! HOW YOU SAY THINGS IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WHAT YOU ACTUALLY SAY! Remember the importance of your body language signals that you are giving out all throughout the conversation. Not only when you are talking but also when you are listening as well. Vary the tonality and inflection in your voice – do not sound monotone. It you are saying, “That’s really interesting” I would expect you to say that in an energetic way that made me believe that you meant what you were saying. So many conversations break down due to the lack of positive vibes and body language from the other person. Make sure you are not one of them! AWESOME ONE LINERS FOR YOU TO USE! Here are some witty one liners that you can drop into your conversations. They’ll get a giggle and people will think you are so sharp that you could cut yourself! Use them sparingly otherwise they will lose their impact! AGE Be nice to your kids, they'll choose your nursing home! Few women admit their age, few men act it! I intend to live forever! So far so good hey? I started out with nothing and still have most of it One good thing about losing your memory is that you get to meet new people everyday! The tragedy with life is that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it! You know you're old when everything on you either dries up, leaks or shrinks! CAREER/WORK I always try to do the extra mile at work but my boss finds me and brings me back I have not failed - I have just found 5,000 ways that will not work! I know hard work never killed anyone - but why chance it? I pretend to work, they pretend to pay me If at first you don't succeed, redefine success If work is so terrific, why do they pay you to do it? Multi-tasking is screwing up several things at once The only person getting all of his work done by Friday is Robinson Crusoe Work fascinates me; I could sit and watch it for hours! CHILDREN A babysitter is a teenager pretending to be an adult while the adults are out pretending to be a teenager Kids in the back seat cause accidents, accidents in the back seat cause kids DIETS A balanced diet is having as much dark chocolate as white I'm on a 30-day diet. So far I've lost 15 days! MONEY A bargain is something you can't use at a price you can't resist All I'm asking for is the chance for me to prove that money can't make me happy! Always borrow money from pessimists - they never expect it back! I have enough money for the rest of my life....as long as I pass away next week I wish the buck stopped here.....I could do with a few! Money isn't everything but it's right up there with oxygen LIFE A status symbol is a symbol, not status. Life is all about common sense, but common sense is not common Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else! Half of being smart is knowing what you're dumb at! Everyone know what to do in life but they don't do what they know He who laughs last, thinks slowest If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything It's better to remain silent and let people think you are stupid rather than speak and remove all doubt! Never miss a good chance to shut up! No sense in being pessimistic, it wouldn't work anyway Remember that it's the second mouse that gets the cheese! The secret to getting ahead is getting started LEARN HOW TO SAY “NO” AND MEAN IT! How can you confidently respond when someone makes a request you’d prefer not to accommodate? This article shares some ideas you can use to make sure you don’t find yourself doing something you’d very much prefer not to do. The question has just been posed. Pause. Was your inclination to say yes, even though there’s a voice deep down saying “no.” Well, let’s raise the volume on that voice. What possible reasons could there be for saying no? It’s beyond your means? It’s beyond your comfort level? You have no interest? Identify all the reasons you have for saying “no.” Identify which stem from a lack of confidence, versus a sincere disinterest in fulfilling the request. What would happen if you said yes? Perhaps: You would be considered a teamplayer It would make your boss happy Your visibility with higher-ups would be improved It’s comes down to a simple cost/benefit really. Would the discomfort involved in saying yes outweigh the benefits of possibly going along with the request? Or, do the benefits outweigh your temporary discomforts? The role of guilt Saying “no” is hard for many of us. Guilt often comes into play. Whether this guilt has its foundation in religion, a proper upbringing, or a worldview that simply says “it’s not nice to say no”, we often recognise it and make decisions we’d rather not be making, based upon it. Saying “NO” You’ve made the decision, after scientifically weighing the results of your cost/benefit analysis, do honestly say “NO”. Well, go ahead and say it clearly, and self-assuredly...in the mirror. Look yourself in the eye, and do it. Just say “NO.” Say it like you really mean it, and then say it again as you would to whomever made the request of you. When you pretend you’re speaking to the person who made the request, does it come out differently? Practice and experiment with different ways to say “NO” until you find one you’re comfortable with. Then go, and say “NO.” After you say “NO” If you’re used to giving in to others, then guess what? After all that practice, you may just be surprised to find that they are not willing to accept it! They may push, rephrase the question, or make a new, not altogether different, request. Be prepared for this! Know your boundary—what ARE you willing to do? Revisit the questions you asked yourself before—what would happen if you said no, or yes? If you are serious about saying “NO” then stick to your guns. Tell the individual making the request that you would appreciate it if they respected your wishes, and ask them to refrain from pursuing it further. If you are comfortable expressing your “reasons why” then do so speaking from your personal perspective. Tips on how to say your ”NO!” 1. The “Wet lettuce NO” If you are going to say NO, you must say it in a way that means NO! Saying NO in a quiet, unassuming voice is like a hand shake that is floppy and limp. By saying NO in a non-confident manner it will make you feel as though you have got to convince the other person about your decision and the reasons why you have said it! 2. The “Mr Angry NO” This is at the other end of the spectrum in how to say NO. It is done in an aggressive manner and usually said with contempt. It is not an effective way to communicate your NO. Here are a couple of examples: “NO. I’m not doing that rubbish. You’ve got to be joking aren’t you” “NO. I wouldn’t lower myself to do that piece of work” 3. The assertive NO This is the best way to say NO! In a firm, yet polite voice say: “No. I will not be able to do that for you” Also, if you want to say the reasons why, keep it short and sweet. “No. I will not be able to do that for you. I will be having my hair done at that time” 4. Use effective body language When saying NO remember the power of non-verbal communications. Look the person in the eye when you say the NO. Shake your head at the same time as saying NO. Stand up tall. Use a firm tone in your voice. 5. When all is said and done Don’t forget that when anyone asks a question of you, you are perfectly OK to say, “Can I think about that and get back to you” No-one should be pressurised into giving an immediate answer, even if the delay is only a couple of minutes. It will give you some time to think it through and to gather your thoughts. It will also give you some time to think about how you are going to say it, the words to use and your body language. Saying NO exercise Practice makes perfect as they say! What I would like you to do for the next 7 days is to start to say NO more often. So whether it is the double glazing salesman, the cold call, “Would you like fries with that” or the shop assistant – practice saying NO to one person for at least the next 7 days. You will be an expert come the end of the week! What will happen? You will feel much more confident and proud. You will find that practice makes perfect—the more you confidently say “NO” the easier it becomes. Others will respect your wishes and take you seriously the first time you say “NO.” You won’t find yourself doing things you never wanted to do in the first place. You’ll have more time to focus on the things you do want to be involved in. The list goes on from there… HOW TO FEEL GREAT IN A MOMENT! The power of the mind is a truly remarkable thing. How you feel in any given moment is linked to: - What you are focussing on - The way that you are moving and using your body - The language you are using Your mind controls all three! If you are feeling lethargic or need an instant confidence/energy boost just remember that you can change the way that you feel by changing the above 3 points. 1. What you are focussing on Be aware of what you are focussing on in that very moment. Are they negative and lethargic thoughts? Low in confidence? You might fail? I bet you are saying to yourself that you feel low in energy! What would you have to focus on to feel vibrant and full of energy? What would you have to focus on to FEEL confident? If you could feel vibrant and energised right now, what you be thinking about? 2. The way that you are moving and using your body This is also called your physiology. Emotion is created by motion. The fewer movements you make the less energy you will have! And also the type of movements that you make will have an impact on whether you feel juiced up or whether you want to get back into that bed! When you are feeling low in confidence notice how you are moving your body. Are you sat down? Is your head up or down? Are your shoulders back or slouched? Are you walking slow or quick? Are you moving your facial muscles? What are you doing with your hands? Are you moving the way a person with confidence moves? Write down below all the characteristics of a confident person. If you saw one right now how would they be moving their body? Want to feel energised and confident? Copy the movements that you have written above when you are feeling low and YOU WILL become confident! 3 The language that you are using The words that you say to yourself in your mind and out aloud will have an impact on how you are feeling. What words do you use to describe negative emotions? Do you use: “I’m feeling tired” “I’m stupid” “I’m angry” “I’m livid” “I’m overwhelmed” “I’m feeling insecure” “I’m depressed” Write down some more of the common phrases that you use like those above: The intensity of those negative sayings will have an effect on how you feel and whether you feel confident or not. Just imagine that instead of saying – “I’m really nervous” You said to yourself – “I’m really excited” Do you think it would make you feel better? Of course it would. The feelings and emotions linked to nervousness and excitement are actually the same. So, what other words could you replace the negative sayings with: Try swapping : “I’m feeling tired” to “I’m feeling unresourceful” “I’m stupid” to “I’m learning” “I’m angry” to “I’m a little annoyed” “I’m livid” to “I’m a little miffed” “I’m overwhelmed” to “I’m feeling busy” “I’m feeling insecure” to “I’m questioning” “I’m depressed” to “I’m feeling I’m not on top of things” When you lower the intensity of the words and phrase you lower the intensity of the feeling. Write down 5 old negative sayings or phrases that you say on a consistent basis and replace them with new empowering and less intensified ones: OLD NEGATIVE PHRASES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. NEW EMPOWERING/LOW INTENSITY PHRASES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How to feel magnificent and confident every single day! We have talked about how changing the vocabulary you use have an impact on how you feel. Lower the intensity, lower the feeling when you use negative words. The opposite can be said when you want to feel great. Increase the intensity, increase the feeling when you use positive/good words. What do I mean by this? Well, instead of saying – “I feel good” say “I feel fantastic!” Here are some more – Change: “I feel ok” to “I feel awesome” “I feel motivated” to “I am driven” “I feel confident” to “I feel unstoppable” “I feel energised” to “I feel juiced” Write down some of the “good” words that you have been using in the past and replace them with “magnificent” words that you will use in the future. When you start to use this the impact will be AWESOME! OLD “GOOD” PHRASES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. NEW “MAGNIFICENT” PHRASES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. HOW TO COMPLAIN EFFECTIVELY A lot of people settle for sub-standard service because they haven’t got the confidence or communication skills to complain. Rather than sticking up for themselves they allow the retailer or restaurant to get away with providing faulty goods or bad customer service. So how do you complain with confidence? Right from the outset, this article is not about any Trades Description acts or any legislation. This article has been written on how to prepare and complain with confidence. If I had a pound for every time that I have heard the term “The customer is always right” I would be a very rich man! However, despite this saying, I’d bet that sometime or another we have all experienced poor customer service or faulty goods. But don’t you tend to complain to your spouse or friends about it rather than tell the company! This is a fact of life – people are not very good at complaining and most people do not have the confidence to do it. Because his marriage isn’t working, a man will complain down the pub to his mates rather than complain to his wife! The same can be said in the majority of cases when you SHOULD complain to a company that have not met your standards. Companies should be made aware of sub-standard services and goods – they cannot correct a problem if they are unaware that one exists in the first place! Effective complaining is a survival skill that anyone can master and everyone should. You are in the driving seat, so drive! If you need any reason to pluck up the courage to complain just remember that you have or are going to part with your hard earned cash for this service or good and: * THAT GIVES YOU EVERY RIGHT TO COMPLAIN * Also remember that you will not be the first person to complain and you will not be the last so don’t worry about that. As long as you complain assertively and don’t show anyone up by shouting or losing your cool, then both you and the company will come out of this with a win. You will come away having had your complaint dealt with effectively and the company will come away with some excellent feedback to improve the goods and services that they provide to the customer. In fact, they should thank you for your complaint – which in the majority of cases they actually do. Deal with facts not opinions One of the most important rules when complaining is to have all of the facts. So, if you have purchased faulty goods, have you got the receipt, date, time, price any further details relating to the purchase. If you are receiving service, what specifically are you complaining about? Be specific. Don’t use comments like “This is rubbish” or “This person needs a personality transplant!” Instead, use specific statements like: “Excuse me, we have been waiting for 30 minutes for our order and it hasn’t arrived yet. We also waited for 40 minutes for the Starters, could I please speak with the Manager?” With regards to being specific and factual based, you are more likely to get good service in response and a sympathetic ear. Think about the outcome you would like Before you complain, think in your mind how you would like the matter to be resolved: • Full refund? • Replacement? • Free dessert? • An apology? And to be afraid to ask for the outcome either! Complain assertively, not angrily Don’t go shouting or being nasty to anyone. Instead keep things factual and explain the situation in a calm yet firm manner. Shouting the odds will put the other person on the defensive from the outset. Instead try saying something like: “Excuse me, I’ve got a problem with these shirts. Could you help me with it?” Even if you do feel angry, avoid the temptation for a row no matter how tempting it is! You want a speedy resolution to your problem and this is best done with sticking to the facts, not being personal and having an outcome already in your mind. If at first you do not succeed! If the person you are dealing with in person or on the telephone cannot help you or is not responsive to your needs then ask to speak to the manager. However, don’t do this in an aggressive way. Instead ask for the manager in a firm but polite voice. “I appreciate that you have done all that you can do to help me and I thank you for that. But could I please speak to the manager?” Explain what will happen if you don’t get a positive response If you are not getting what you want from the company, explain what will happen if you don’t get the action that you want. Have you been a loyal customer? If so, tell them and also tell them that they will no longer have your business unless this is sorted out. If you have referred others to them, point that out as well The last word Don’t think that complaining is wrong, view it as providing feedback rather than a complaint. If you were running a business and one of your customers experienced poor service I am sure you would want to know about it and put it right – wouldn’t you? Raise your standards as a consumer and stand up for what you and the law feels is right! Happy complaining! ☺ HOW TO COMMUNICATE TOUGH MESSAGES Providing feedback to staff is always tough, but if it’s “constructive,” you not only get the message across, but, build a more cohesive and capable team as a result. Do you remember when your parents told you to eat your veggies because they were good for you? Now that you’re an adult, you know they were right. Well, just as they were right from the beginning, I’m asking you to trust me when I tell you this: constructive feedback is the only way to learn and develop—both personally and professionally. That means, you as Manager, have a responsibility to your staff to help them develop. That means, you have to give constructive feedback. What is constructive feedback? First, I’ll tell you what it’s not. Constructive feedback is not criticism (which has a negative connotation because it is so often generalised and personal). Constructive feedback is a not personal (e.g. you are lazy), but a targeted response to an individual’s action or behaviour (e.g. you did not accomplish the task you agreed to complete) that is intended to help them learn, and is delivered from a place of respect. Constructive feedback is not “closed” but rather invites the individual receiving the feedback to shed light, share their perspective, or provide their response. (E.g. Do you see it differently?) Constructive feedback does not blame, but presents a collaborative approach to problem solving. (E.g. If we are all to go home tonight on time, task A needs to get done. What support can the team offer to finish task A, so that everyone gets to go home on time.) Why constructive feedback works Constructive feedback enables us to give honest, “tough messages” to those with whom we work. However, instead of insulting, shutting-down others, or alienating those who receive the feedback, and thus lowering their morale and their resulting productivity, it motivates them to ask for help, and acknowledge a skill or competency deficiency, while feeling supported and respected. Two of the most important factors influencing employee retention/satisfaction are: “great boss,” and “feeling part of a team” (Hay Group Study on retention). Constructive feedback, because it is delivered out of respect and a genuine desire for the individual to improve, accomplishes both. Providing feedback, in this way, enables you to build the competency and cohesiveness of your team, while effectively managing performance issues. It also enables you to remain respected, well liked, and overall, considered “ a great boss.” Principles of feedback 1. Choose correct timing for feedback Praise is most effective when given as soon as possible after the behaviour has occurred. Immediate feedback will help to reinforce a correct behaviour and make it more likely to happen again. When an incorrect behaviour is not corrected with feedback, the staff member may incorporate it into his or her customer of colleague interactions unknowingly. It is highly desirable, when possible, to give corrective feedback before the situation occurs again. 2. Ask for self assessment Beginning by asking the person for self-assessment involves them in the feedback process. It helps to promote an open atmosphere and dialogue between the person doing the coaching and the person being coached. Often the person is well aware of his or her won strengths and weaknesses. It is more effective to allow the person to voice opinions before providing your own assessment of performance. Through self-assessment, the person can gradually assume more responsibility for his or her own abilities and performance. 3. Focus on specifics When you focus on a specific correct or incorrect behaviour, you remove the feedback from the sphere of personality differences and the other person will be more willing and able to change. For example, when providing corrective feedback: Do: “When you were talking to customer xyz, I noticed that you forgot to use her name” Don’t: “You are not building rapport with the customer” When providing praise: Do: “When you spoke to customer xyz, I noticed that you used really good open and closed questioning techniques” Don’t: “You communicated well there” 4. Limit feedback to a few important points Good coaches and communicators identify one or two critical areas and help the person address them one at a time. It is too hard to examine and try to change many aspects of behaviour at one time. Restrict your feedback to one or two important points so that you do not overwhelm the other person with too many things to consider. 5. Provide more praise than corrective feedback Positive reinforcement is one of the strongest factors in bringing about change. Unfortunately a lot of people always focus on the negative. When you give corrective feedback, remember to point out corrective behaviours first. This is as important as pointing out mistakes and areas that need improvement. And always end the conversation on a positive. 6. Give praise for expected performance People deserve to be praised for doing their job to the expected level. Too many people take the expected level for granted however. Remember that praising anyone who meets established standards is as important as praising the exceptional performer. Praise is a strong motivator, and enough praise may be what it takes to turn an average employee into an exceptional one. 7. Develop Action Plans Work together to identify the desired performance or result and how it can be achieved. Decide when the steps will be accomplished. Useful techniques to use when giving feedback Now that we have highlighted the main principles of giving feedback, lets look at some useful techniques we can use in feedback sessions: Open-ended questioning Use open-ended questions to allow and encourage the person to give more detail and elaborate. Open-ended Questioning Reflecting Back Maintaining Silence Active Listening Initiating action & Offering ideas Gaining Ownership Summarising Being Sensitive Use words like: What? How? Who? Tell me? Avoid closed questions when you are trying to get more information from someone. Avoid words like: Do you? Did you? Have you? Also be careful when you use the word “Why”. The person may think that you are blaming them or being critical if you use it. They may think that you disagree with them if you use this word. Reflecting Back This is about putting what the other person has said into your own words and reflecting it back. This is called paraphrasing and by doing this it shows that you are listening and more importantly that you are listening and understanding! For example: Individual – “I always seem to get the rough end of the stick - no-one listens to me at all……..” You – “You seem concerned that no-one listens to you and that you seem to be getting a dumb deal” Maintaining Silence Encourage the person to take their time. Always give the other person time to think through their reply to a challenging answer. Do not feel uncomfortable about silences but do be wary that silence can make people feel very uncomfortable. Maintain eye contact and demonstrate an interest. Summarising Summarise the output of the meeting and action plan to ensure that you have heard correctly and understood from his/her perspective. Restate the key aspects of the feedback discussion Conclude the discussion and focus on planning for the future. Example: “The three major issues you raised were……” “ To summarise then……” Being Sensitive Acting sensitive to the needs of the person is important as they may reject the feedback initially. Give the person space to think in his/her time. This may help the person to absorb the feedback Initiating Action and Offering Ideas Example: “Can you think of an action that would help build on your skills in this area?” Offer ideas without forcing your personal opinion. “One thing you might do is….” “Have you thought about……..” “Your options include………..” “What can I do to help?” Gaining Ownership Help the person to integrate the feedback into their own experience and view of themselves. Link the feedback as much as possible to business results and objectives – this will help increase ownership. Any change in behaviour will only occur through acceptance and ownership of then feedback by that person. Receiving Feedback As long as feedback is given in a non-judgmental and appropriate way, it is a valuable piece of information for learning and for our continued development as a person. Constructive feedback is critical for self-development and growth; here are some points to bare in mind when you receive feedback. 1. Don’t shy away from constructive feedback, welcome it 2. Accept feedback of any sort for what it is – information 3. Evaluate the feedback before responding 4. Make your own choice about what you intend to do with the information The feedback emotional rollercoaster Whether you are giving or receiving feedback it is useful to bare in mind the following model when it comes to people who receive feedback. D A W A DENIAL When people first receive feedback, they have a tendency to deny it. Please avoid immediate defensiveness – arguing, denying and justifying. This just gets in the way of your appreciation of the information you are being given. ANGER After the denial stage comes anger! So you’ve been told that your work is not as good as what it ought to be. You’ve said, “It’s as good as always” so you are denying it then you become angry as it stews in your mind and body. The immediate reaction is to fume! WITHDRAWAL After the anger has calmed down, the person has had time to reflect and ponder on the feedback. “Well, I have been making more mistakes then normal” This is when time is taken out to mull over the feedback and think about what it actually means. ACCEPTANCE The final part of this model is finally accepting the feedback, assessing its value and the consequences of ignoring it, or using it. “I HAVE been making mistakes” A model for giving feedback It’s called BOCA!!!!!! Behaviour - “when you disrupted the meeting” Outcome - “people felt uncomfortable” Consequences - “as a result, they stopped contributing” Actions - “what/how could you have handled it differently?” Listening skills are vital for coaching and giving feedback. But some people listen but they don’t hear! E - Encourage A - Ask Questions R - Reflect S - Summarise Active Listening Guidelines 1. Use open questions to encourage the other person to talk “Can you tell me which issue you would like to discuss and why” 2. Paraphrase what they say “So as I understand it, what you are saying is……” 3. Reflect the implications “So that may mean…..” 4. Acknowledge the underlying feelings “That must have been really hard for. How did that make you feel?” 5. Encourage further contribution “Tell me a bit more about that..” “What happened next..” 6. Use encouraging non verbal responses Eye contact Nodding Um humh Deal With Facts Not Opinions Below are some examples of statements that managers have used about their employee’s behaviour at work. Some statements are descriptions of what the individual actually said or did. Others are statements of opinion, rather than genuine observations of what was actually said or done. Please read the examples that follow and indicate whether the statement is FACT (F) or OPINION (O). 1. I consider she was the leader of the group 2. During the discussion she noted that the team was running over time. She told the group about the time issues and made a suggestion on how to cover the tasks within the remaining time. 3. It is clear to me that the group situation put her under a lot of stress 4. He came up with some very creative ideas during the meeting 5. Just before the end of the discussion, she summarised the actions that the group had decided on. 6. She was very good at organising the group to work together on the task 7. She spotted the key advantages and disadvantages of the group’s recommendations and explained them clearly to the rest of the group. 8. He was very team orientated 9. When the facilitator asked her to read out her short list of options, she listed each one in priority order with reasons for her choice. She suggested different approaches to the task one of which was accepted by the group. 10.He spoke a lot during the half hour session 11.Her participation in the discussion was very good. 12.He leant across his neighbour and waved his hands in her face in order to make his point. 13.He was very quiet during the discussions: his contribution consisted of three questions and a “yes” to indicate agreement to the group decision. 14.Half way through the discussion, she got up and walked out of the room. ADVANCED COMMUNICATION SKILLS Communication is so vital to everything that anyone does because we are usually required to seek solutions, information and help from others. It is without doubt the most important skill that anyone can improve and let me tell you that the results of doing so can be outstanding. The results can improve your relationships with clients and colleagues, loved ones and associates – you name it! Everyone can communicate in one shape or form. But haven’t you seen those people whose communication and interpersonal skills just seem to be on another level? They seem to have everyone doing whatever they say, the person is liked and respected by all, they can talk to strangers and build up rapport effortlessly! That’s the difference between communicating and communicating effectively. Communication goes far beyond the actual words that you say. More importantly it’s how you say it and they way that you act while you’re saying it. It depends on the other persons view of the world and their preferred learning style with regards to absorbing information and what you say that will determine whether you are successful in this area or not. Effective communicators can elicit all of the action signals and communication strategies from a person and adopt their style to make sure that their communications are effective. This section is all about providing you with the communications armoury for you to be able to communicate effectively with anyone and at any level, it goes far beyond a beginners guide to communication and focuses upon some more of the advanced communication techniques available. You will learn how other people think and how they prefer to learn and thus you will be able to tailor your communications to maximise your effectiveness. * EXERCISE * Write down all of the communications that you have with people. Take a blank piece of paper and write your name in the middle and then around your name write down everyone who you have communications with most frequently. So this will include friends, family, work colleagues, people at your sports club, at the gym etc. Please write down their names. Aren’t they so diverse! You could have friends, family, the CEO, the cleaner – you name!!! Each one requires a different communications strategy! THE COMMUNICATIONS PROCESS Communication is the transmission of information. Let’s just think for a moment or two of how the communication process kicks into action. Firstly, a person has some thoughts that they want to communicate. They then put all of these thoughts into a logical sequence. Then, these thoughts and representations are put into words and then they are then spoken. Easy hey! Ok, so let’s think of the person who is receiving the information. The words are heard from the second person and then are interpreted to make some sense. The sense of the words are now understood by the other persons view of the world and the filters that they use to understand information and then these understandings are then expressed as thoughts. So, if communication is so easy how come confusion, misunderstandings and miscommunication happy all too often? Thoughts Represent Words Speak Receive Interpret Understand Thoughts If we look at the two diagrams once more, we can see that there are two “THOUGHTS” processes – one at the beginning of the cycle with the communicator and one at the end of the cycle with the receiver of the communication. EVERYTHING INBETWEEN THESE TWO PROCESSES ARE INDEED PROCESSED IN DIFFERENT WAYS BY EVERY PERSON AND THIS IS WHERE MISCOMMUNICATION COMES FROM! Let’s have a look to see how this is done. When someone communicates information to us (through one of the senses), this information has to pass through an internal filter system, which is basically how we see the world. (There is a detailed section on this later) We then REPRESENT this information based upon our filters. The way that we are feeling at the time, i.e. are we Motivated? Energised? Depressed? Pleased? Will have a coupling effect with the representation that we have just made to create an emotional state. This state, whether good, bad or indifferent will determine our reaction to others and the event. This ultimately leads to the behaviour that others see when we communicate back whether it is through verbal or non- verbal methods. F I L T E R S Delete Distort Generalise Internal Representation Emotional State BEHAVIOUR PHYSI- OLOGY INFORMATION Communicating effectively is all about understanding this process. Once you know some of the communicating strategies of the other person and you adopt your style to compliment their strategies you will find that you will communicate so much more effectively. FILTER SYSTEMS As we mentioned before, information comes in through our sensory input channels. There are 5 in all but in the context of communication the 3 main channels are: Visual This is what we see and the body language and physiology of others Auditory These are the sounds we hear, the words spoken and the way that these are spoken Kinaesthetic These are split into Internal and external feelings. External feelings include touching someone or something, what it feels like – texture, pressure etc. Internal feelings include feelings like hunger, stress, tension, comfort, pleasure etc The other 2, which are less significant when it comes to communication, are: Olfactory The sense of smell Gustatory The sense of taste Information In – Information Out When information comes in through one of the senses we then process this information as described in the previous chapter – we modify it as we relate it to our view and understanding of the world. This understanding is based upon our filters. The are 6 main filters: INFORMATION IN INFORMATION OUT Language We interpret words depending on whether we understand them in the first place and our previous experience of using them. For some people, let’s say, the term “Outstanding” could mean the same as another persons “Good”. Language Meta Programmes Belief Systems Values Decisions Memories Ask 100 people in a room what “Competitive Advantage” means and you’re likely to get 30-40 different answers depending on the persons personal experience with that word and their understanding of what it means. Meta programmes Meta programmes are at the hub of your personality and these describe the ways that you analyse a situation and information. When you know a persons meta programmes you will then be able to predict their behaviour and actions a lot better. There are no right or wrong meta programmes it’s just the way we handle information. As these are so important to effective communications I have included a special chapter to learn these in greater detail. Values The third filter is values. This is your standards or evaluation filter. Values are our attractions or repulsion’s in life. They are all about what is important and what is good or bad for us. Because values are about things that are important to us, they have a great impact on our motivation. Beliefs A belief is a feeling of certainty of what something means to us. All human behaviour is belief driven. Beliefs are the presuppositions that we have about the way the world is. Depending upon what they are can either create or destroy our own personal power to do something. Beliefs are essentially our on/off switch for our ability to do anything in the world. There’s an old saying that “Whether you believe you can or your cannot, you’re absolutely right” When communicating to someone it is important to elicit their beliefs of WHY they have done what they have done. On the flip side, when motivating someone, you might also want to find out the disempowering beliefs that have stopped him or her from doing what they want to do. Memories This filter is all about our recollection of past events. If someone is saying something to us and we have done it in the past we are going to make a connection. And if that same something resulted in a negative experience, we may have built up a negative belief that it will happen again! Decisions The final filter is linked closely to memories and is about the decisions that we have made in the past. If we have made some good, bad or indifferent decisions in the past we may have created some empowering or disempowering beliefs either about the decision itself or the outcome. Information Out Once the information has been filtered through, the information is then either deleted, distorted or generalised. We delete certain pieces of information when we only pay attention to certain aspects of our experiences and not others. We distort information when we make misrepresentations of reality. I’m sure we have all seen a ghost’s face on the bedroom wall in the middle of the night. Or because the bushes in the garden are rustling, there must be burglars down there! We generalise information when we draw broad conclusions about what something means. For example, if a woman has had a particularly bad relationship with a man she may say that “All men are the same” and never want to get into a relationship for a long time. She has therefore taken one experience and made a generalisation out of it. * EXERCISE * APPRECIATING YOUR OWN VALUES AND THOSE OF OTHERS Part 1: I’d like you to write down all of your values. For example what things do you like to experience and have? Success? Freedom? Adventure? Security? Then I’d like you to write a list of the things you want to avoid? Rejection? Pain? Failure? Boredom? etc Firstly, I’d like you to look at your two lists and see if there are any conflicting values. For example, if you’ve put down success as a value that you want experience and you’ve put down avoiding failure as something you want to avoid then this is a conflicting value. On your way to success to you will fail, so the question you must ask yourself, id are you prepared to take the risk? Which of your values is more stronger? The one to achieve success or the one to avoid failure? SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT! Part 2: Partner up with a friend or spouse and go through your lists of values together. Have you got any conflicting values? Do you like adventure, but they like security? Do you like to strive for success, but they like comfort? Write down you differences and make a list of the possible barriers to communication that you may have HOW MISCOMMUNICATION OCCURS Miscommunication occurs when we delete, distort and generalise information from the outside as well as our own thought process. Our every experience is something that we literally make up inside our heads. We do not experience reality directly, since we are always deleting, distorting and generalising. Let’s just recap once more on how we react and respond to any piece of information. We receive information via one of our senses. Our filters then determine our internal representation of that event. It is our internal representation that puts us in a certain state and this in turns creates our physiology. The state in which we find ourselves, will determine our behaviour or reaction to what happens around us. Sometimes, the extent of our deletion, distortion and generalisation causes our version of reality to be sufficiently different to other people’s for misunderstanding, or even conflict to occur. EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATIONS So far we have looked at the communications process and how miscommunications can occur. A study at the University of Pennsylvania in 1970 questioned students on their ability to understand information depending on the deliver of that communication. From that study they produced a well know diagram that illustrates what is the composition of typical face to face communications. 7% of what we communicate is the results of the words that we say, or the content of the communication 38% of our communication to others is a result of VERBAL behaviour. This includes the tonality of our voice, tempo, pitch, volume etc 55% of our communication to others is a result of our NON-VERBAL communication to others. Our body language is so important it makes up over half of the composition of successful communications. Examples include facial expressions, posture, breathing, moving etc. Words 7% Verbal Comms 38% Non-Verbal Comms 55% Learning points so far and some rules for EFFECTIVE communications 1. The other persons model of the world is different to our own You should respect the other person’s model of the world because to him or her it’s the way that they see it just as you have your own conclusions and beliefs. 2. Physiology and the state of the mind The way that you are moving your body and your posture will have an affect on the way that you are thinking and the way that you are thinking will have an affect on your physiology. 3. There are no failures only outcomes Just like everything in life no matter what you intended by your communication, there will be an outcome and that will come through the response you get from the other person. Whatever interpretation they have made will be true for them. 4. Learn from feedback and modify your approach Look at the outcomes that you are getting from your communications and modify your approach. Use the results of communication as feedback and learn from it all the time. When your observations or feedback indicates that the results are not what you intended, do something else. 5. A person behaves the way they do, because they just do Remember that a person behaves the way that they do because it fits in with their values. If we cannot understand why someone behaved in such a way then what we are saying is that we do not understand his or her values. 6. Behaviour is the result of the thinking process and emotional state Behaviour is not the person; you need to look beyond the behaviour at the beliefs, values and other things that make up the identity of that person. 7. Flexibility is key A person utilising a flexible approach to communication will ensure that a less flexible person is usually responding to them. This is important when influencing another person 8. Use the ultimate success formula to get what you want To formulate the outcome that you desire you should first decide what it is that you want, how you are going to achieve it, execute the plan, work out what is working and what isn’t and if necessary change your approach. THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS FORMULA The ultimate success formula should form the basis for everything that you do in life where you need a desired outcome. It may look like common sense to you but unfortunately, common sense is not common! 1. Know your outcome 2. Know the compelling reasons why you need that outcome 3. Plan out how you are going to achieve it 4. See what is working and what is not working 5. Modify your approach until it does work So, with regards to communications, when you need to communicate anything to anyone you should go down this list beforehand and do some preparation. Here are some questions that you should ask yourself in the action planning stage? What are this person’s values and beliefs? How can I use these to communicate more effectively with this person? What body language should I use? What is this person like? Full of energy? A go-getter? Or is this person more shy and timid? How will I have to change my approach to make them feel comfortable and receptive to what I am going to communicate? How will I know when I have got my desired outcome? * EXERCISE * USING THE ULTIMATE SUCCESS FORMULA Based upon what you have learned so far: Think of an important communication that you need to make. Follow the ULTIMATE SUCCESS FORMULA to plan out your communication with this person. We will come back to this exercise later in the course META PROGRAMMES As we mentioned in a previous chapter meta programmes are an internal filter that we pass information through. They are specifically related to the way that we sort and categorise information. Knowing someone’s meta programmes allows you to predict their actions but please note that there are no right or wrong meta programmes. There are many meta programmes but let’s go through the top 6 that are used in everyday and business contexts. • Towards/Away • Frame of Reference • Sameness/Difference • Reason • Chunk Size • Convincer TOWARDS/AWAY Towards people are always striving to achieve an outcome. They always want to move towards something. They want to achieve a certain outcome or goal and find it difficult to recognise what should be avoided. Instead they concentrate and focus on what they will get when the outcome is achieved. Other the other hand, Away from people do things because they want to avoid a certain situation. They don’t want to experience loss or discomfort and want to move away from something. Question? How do you know what type of person they are? Answer - Ask them this type of question: What do you want? What will having xyz give you? What do you want in xyz? What their response will tell you: Toward people will tell you what they want. Away from people will tell you what they don’t want. Using this in the real world: How to communicate to people who have a TOWARDS and AWAY FROM strategy. In Negotiations with these people: Towards Work out what the goals are and what you can do to help achieve these goals. Focus on the outcome and what it will give you. Away Work out what you can do to help them avoid what they don’t want. Work out and anticipate potential problems and assure them that these can be minimised or avoided. In Managing these people: Towards Offer incentives, i.e an outcome. Emphasis goals and what they can achieve and attain. Away Use sanctions. Be aware that these people are usually the ones to bring up problems. Influencing Language Towards Get, achieve, attain, include, obtain, have, wants Away Not have, avoid, don’t want, keep away from, get rid of, FRAME OF REFERENCE The second major meta programme is your frame of reference. This is all about how people evaluate things and can be split out into two: • Internal People • External People Internal People evaluate on the basis of what they think is appropriate. They make all of the decisions themselves and can have difficulty in accepting other people’s feedback and direction. External People evaluate on the basis of what other people think is appropriate. They need others to help guide, direct and motivate them. They cannot decide for themselves that they need external references. Question? How do you know what type of person they are? Answer - Ask them this type of question: How do you know that you have done a good job? How do you know that …….? What their response will tell you: Internal people will tell you that they decide when they’ve done a good job. External people tell you that they know because other people or outside information sources tell them. Using this in the real world: In Negotiations with these people: Internal Emphasise to the person that they will know inside that you are right. Say that they have to decide. Don’t bother about external factors or what other people think, they will not be interested in this. External Emphasise what others think. Give them data and information to back things up. Give them feedback and reassurance. In Managing these people: Internal These people have difficulty in accepted feedback or praise. They like to decide for themselves and don’t like to be told what to do. They do best when they have little or no supervision. External These people need close management. They need constant feedback and re-assurance about how well they are doing. They need to be told what to do, how to do it and how well they are doing it. Influencing language Internal You know best, you’ll know when it’s right, only you can decide, it’s up to you External Can I give you some feedback, I will let you know, the facts show, other people think that, SAMENESS/DIFFERENCE This meta programme is all about people’s perceptions of likeness and differences. There are 4 main categories with this: Sameness People will notice those things that are the same or match their previous experiences. They dislike change. Sameness with exception people will first notice the similarities and will then notice the differences. They prefer slow or gradual change. Difference with exception people will notice the differences and then the similarities. They like change and variety. Difference people will notice those things that are different. They love change and want it all of the time. Question? How do you know what type of person they are? Answer - Ask them this type of question: What is the relationship between these three objects? What is the relationship between this X and a previous Y? What their response will tell you: Sameness People will tell you how things are the same. Sameness with exception people will tell you first how things are similar, then tell you what differences may be. Difference with exception people will tell you first how things are different and then the similarities. Difference people will tell you what the differences are. Using this in the real world: In Negotiations with these people: Sameness Stress areas of agreement. Do not discuss differences. Discuss areas of similarities, how you both want the same thing. Sameness with exception First stress similarities and then point out the differences. Talk about change as a gradual slow process. Difference with exception First stress how things are different and only then talk about similarities. Focus on change and new solutions Difference Stress how things are totally different. Do not mention similarities. Talk in terms of massive change and revolutionary. In Managing these people: Sameness Don’t talk about variety. Talk about continuity. Have them do things the same way. Sameness with exception Talk about gradual improvements. Make change a gradual process. Have them do the same things but with gradual improvements and changes Difference with exception Emphasis improvements and changes and downplay commonality. Stress different ways to do the job and make changes frequently. Difference Talk about the differences. Have them do something new all the time. These people will get bored at repetitive tasks. Influencing language Sameness Same, same as, maintain, keep doing, in common, keep the same, usual Sameness with exception Better, more, less, gradual, although, but, same except. Difference with exception Different, new, changed, change, unusual, Difference Different, new, radical, unique, revolutionary, REASON The reason meta programme is all about peoples opinions towards making choices, developing options and following procedures. Options People are very good at developing choices. They want to experiment and are therefore poor at following rules. They are very good at making improvements and developing new procedures or alternatives to old ones. Procedures people are good at following procedures, but they do not know how to generate them. When they have not got a procedure to follow, they become stuck. Question? How do you know what type of person they are? Answer - Ask them this type of question: Why did you choose xyz? What their response will tell you: Options people will give you the reasons why they did it. Procedures people will tell you a story about how they came to do what they did. They don’t talk about choices or options. They give you the impression that they don’t have choices. Using this in the real world: In Negotiations with these people: Options People Concentrate on the choices and possibilities. Discuss all the options. Do not follow a fixed procedure for the negotiation. Procedures People Lay out a procedure for the negotiation. Don’t provide them with options or choices and don’t expect them to decide on alternatives. In Managing these people: Options People Talk about the possibilities and alternatives. Tell them to think of new ways. Do not expect them to follow routines. Make sure that they do not violate procedures Procedures People Stress the procedures to do the work. Make sure there are procedures in place and that the person understands them. Be prepared to assist if the procedure fails. Influencing Language Options Alternatives, reasons, options, choices, possibilities Procedures Correct way, procedure, known way, right way, proven way, CHUNK SIZE People can be categorised into two when it comes down to details. They are either a detailed person (specific person) or they prefer large chunks of information (global person). Specific People give you all the small details. They like to understand and go into pieces of work with the minutest of detail. Global People like to talk in big pictures and are not detailed at all. They are conceptual and abstract. The give you the overall framework or brief of what is happening rather than going into details. You know when someone is specific and when someone is global just by asking them any question! What their response will tell you: Specific people will give you all the details and go to great lengths to explain everything. They give you more and more detail when you ask questions. Specific people become frustrated with Global People because there is no detail in what they say. Global People give you an overview without details. They tend to use large generalisations. Global People become frustrated with Specific People because they go into far too much detail Using this in the real world: In Negotiations with these people: Specific Avoid generalisations and vagueness. Break things down into the detail and be specific. Present things in logical sequences. Global Avoid details and present the bigger picture. In Managing these people: Specific Tell the person in detail what needs to be done and ensure that there is a logical sequence. Do not expect them to think about the bigger picture Global Skip the details and tell the person a broad overview. Tell them what the end game is and then let them fill in the rest. Influencing language Specific Next, then, precisely, exactly, specifically, first, second, details, Global Big picture, framework, in brief, result, generally, overview CONVINCER People make decisions and are convinced for only one of four reasons: It looks right It feels right It sounds right It makes sense Question? How do you know what type of person they are? Answer - Ask them this type of question: Why did you decide xyz? What their response will tell you: Looks right people do things because the representation that they make to themselves is a picture that literally looks right. They will use visual words when describing their decision Feel right people do things because the respresentation they make to themselves is a sensation in some part of their body which literally feels right. They use kinaesthetic words when describing their decision Sounds right people do things because the respresentation they make to themselves is a series of words which literally sounds right to them. They will use auditory words when describing their decision Makes sense people do things because the respresentation they make to themselves is based on logic which in their own mind they know is correct. They will use auditory words when describing their decision and they will use facts, data and reason. Using this in the real world: In Negotiations with these people: Us the appropriate language patterns that match their decision process. If providing learning materials make sure it is appropriate for that person – i.e pictures, diagrams, facts, data etc In Managing these people: Looks right Paint a picture in words for them. Draw a picture to explain things. Let them imagine something. Show them how to do it. Feels right Have them internally sense what they have to do. Let them get their hands on the task under supervision and touch, feel and experience what needs to be done Sounds right Have them describe to themselves in internal dialogue in an appropriate tone of voice what they are supposed to do. Tell them things. Tell them what others say. Makes sense Give them reasons for what you want them to do. Let them read instructions on how to do the job. Give them facts, statistics and data. Influencing language Appropriate to how they make their decisions. (We are going to look into this in greater detail in the next chapter) * EXERCISE * ELICITING META-PROGRAMMES Part 1: Now that you have seen what makes up each of the Meta programmes, what preferences do you have? Take time out and have a read through each again and write down below what your own Meta programmes are for your self-awareness and why? • Towards/Away • Frame of Reference • Sameness/Difference • Reason • Chunk Size • Convincer Part 2: Listen up next time you have a conversation with anyone. Elicit their Meta programmes by asking the relevant questions – you know what they are! After you think you have got their preference for each Meta programme, please provide feedback to each other on what they are and what you each said. INTERNAL REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEMS We have already talked about making internal representations in previous chapters and the meta programme called CONVINCER describes the way that people think and what they base their decisions on. We have also described that information comes in one of 5 main senses as well. Well, it is now time to put all of this together by recognising the thinking process of a person by listening to the verbal indicators that they use in everyday speech and then using this information to tailor the way that we communicate to them. Remember, people like people who are like themselves! For example if we meet someone who makes decisions because “It looks right” and uses mainly visual indicators, we will find it easier to communicate to and explain things to that person if we show him a diagram or by painting him a picture in his minds eye. So below is a list of indicators of the words that people use for the 3 main modalities: Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic Unspecified See Hear Feel Sense Look Listen Touch Experience View Sounds Grasp Understand Appear Make music Get hold of Think Show Harmonise Slip through Learn Dawn Tune in/out Catch on Process Reveal Be all ears Tap into Decide Envision Rings a bell Make contact Motivate Illuminate Silence Throw out Consider Imagine Be heard Turn around Change Clear Resonate Hard Perceive Foggy Deaf Unfeeling Insensitive Focussed Mellifluous Concrete Distinct Hazy Dissonance Get a handle Know Picture Unhearing Solid Below is a list of indicator phrases that people use, which ones do you use most often? Visual Auditory Kinaesthetic An eyeful Afterthought All washed up Appears to me Blabbermouth Boils down to Beyond a shadow of a doubt Call on Chip off the old block Birds eye view Clear as a bell Come to grips with Catch a glimpse of Clearly expressed Control yourself Clear cut Describe in detail Cool/calm/collected Dim view Earful Firm foundations Flashed on Enquire into Get a handle on Get a perspective on Give me your ear Get a load of this Get a scope on Give you a call Get in touch with Hazy idea Given amount of Get the drift of In light of Grant an audience Get your back up In person Heard voices Hand in hand In view of Hidden message Hand in there Looks like Hold your tongue Heated argument Make a scene Ideal talk Hold it Mental image Key note speaker Hold on Mental picture Loud and clear Hot head Minds eye Manner of speaking Keep your shirt on Naked eye Pay attention to Lay cards on the table Paint a picture Power of speech Pain in the neck See to it State your purpose Pull some strings Short sighted To tell the truth Sharp as a tack Showing off Tongue-tied Slipped my mind Sight for sore eyes Tuned in/tuned out Smooth operator Staring off into space Unheard of So-so Take a peak Utterly Start from scratch Tunnel vision Voiced an opinion Stuff upper lip Under your nose Well informed Stuffed shirt Up front Within hearing Too much hassle Well defined Word for word Topsy turvey * EXERCISE * YOUR REPRESENTATIONAL SYSTEM What words do you use the most? How do you think? How would you best learn new material? By a diagram? Listening? Doing and feeling? What category do you fit into the most? ELICITING THINKING PATTERNS THROUGH EYE MOVEMENT In the late seventies and early eighties researchers discovered that people move their eyes in a certain way when they think. Students were asked a series of questions and the researchers noticed that their eye movements, when thinking, followed a structured pattern. They realised that by looking at someone’s eyes, you could tell HOW they think. You can tell the way they are constructing their thoughts. The above picture is how the person looks when you are facing them. There is a basic rule that says when: People are looking up – They are visualising People look horizontally to the left and right – They are remembering or constructing sounds People look down and to their left – They are accessing their feelings. People look down and to the right – They are talking to themselves Visual Recall Auditory Recall Kinaesthetic (Feelings) Visual Construct Auditory Construct Internal Auditory Visual Recall This is when you are seeing images from the past. You are recalling them from memory and are things that you have seen before. Questions to ask? “What did your curtains look like when you were a teenager?” “What does your car look like?” Visual Construct When you are visualising something you have never seen before or you are making something up in your head you are using visual construct. Sometimes you can use this one to see if people are lying to you! Questions to ask? “What would your car look like if it had a soft top?” “What would you house look like if it were painted red?” What would you look like if you lost 3 stone in weight?” Auditory Recall This is when you are remember sounds or voices that you have heard before or things that you have said to yourself before. When you ask someone “What was the last thing I said?” they normally look in that direction. Questions to ask? “Can you remember the sound of your fathers voice?” “Can you remember what you said to yourself when you did that?” “What was the last thing I said?” Auditory Construct This is when you are making sounds up that you have never heard before. Questions to ask? “What would the national anthem sound like if it were played on the flute?” “What would I sound like if I were fluent in Spanish?” Kinaesthetic When you are accessing your feelings you tend to look in this direction. Questions to ask? “What does it feel like to touch this sand paper?” “What does it feel like to be so popular?” Internal Auditory This is where your eyes go when you are having internal dialogue and talking to yourself. Questions to ask? “Can you so over in your mind – All I need is within me now” “Can you recite to yourself ‘Three Lions’” We can elicit someone’s strategy then by listening to the words that they use and how they move their eyes. In order to communicate effectively we need to absorb these action signals and then modify our behaviour, physiology and the words that we use to best mirror and match their preferred learning and thinking style. After all, communication is all about rapport building – it is a relationship between two or more people. BUILDING MEGA RAPPORT Rapport is the ultimate tool for producing results with other people and thus it is so vital for effective communications. Whether you know the person or not, there are 6 main steps to establishing rapport with anyone. When you bear in mind that 93% of all communication is down to the tonality of your voice and your body language, building rapport is far more than just talking about common experiences. It’s an important point to remember but people like people when they are like themselves and when they are not it so much more difficult to have any sort of relationship with that person never mind an effective one! Have you ever had times in your past when building rapport was so easy? I bet you’ve also had times when you thought, “Oh, what am I going to do and say next?” We have all been there! We have also all been there when you’ve wanted to be quiet and relaxed when all of a sudden a friend or colleague comes jumping in and full of energy, wanting to talk your head off? How did you feel? I bet there have also been times when you’ve been full of energy and the other person wants to relax! You go arrggghhhhh! Ok, so let’s get to the 6 things you need to do to build rapport. 1. Match the persons sensory modality What I mean here is to match and mirror the way that they think and talk. Remember when we were talking about visual, auditory and kinaesthetic modalities? Well, this is about putting it into practice. Listen for the indicator words that the person is using and use words/phrases from the same modality. Also, look out for eye movements to spot thinking patterns. 2. Mirror the persons Physiology By copying the persons posture, facial expressions, hand gestures, movements and even their eye blinking, will cause their body to say unconsciously to their mind that this person is like me! 3. Matching their voice You should match the tone, tempo, timbre and the volume of the person’s voice. You should also make use of matching the key words that they use a lot. Examples of this may be: “Alright”, “Actually”, “You know what I mean” 4. Matching their breathing You should match the persons breathing to the same pace. Matching the in and out breath. 5. Matching how they deal with information You should match persons CHUNK SIZE of how they deal with information. For example are they detailed or do they talk an	119,846
Zen the Art of Stand-Up Comedy (Binx Eugene) (Z-Library).pdf	www.bibliotastic.com Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 1 Contents Chapter One - Auntie Knows Best.................................................................................2 Chapter Two - The Natives are friendly ......................................................................11 Chapter Three - The opening of the Two Buttocks .....................................................20 Chapter Four - Xmas is for giving ...............................................................................27 Chapter Five - Three Comedians and a Funeral ..........................................................45 Chapter Six - Back to Work.........................................................................................56 Chapter Seven - The out of Towners ...........................................................................60 Chapter Eight - Valentine’s Day Fiasco ......................................................................74 Chapter Nine - Enter Mr. Patel Centre Stage...............................................................90 Chapter Ten - Three Comedians and another Funeral, but the Show must go on. ....103 Chapter Eleven - Hello Sailor....................................................................................114 Chapter Twelve - What a Difference a Week Makes ................................................137 Chapter Thirteen - No Free Lunches .........................................................................147 Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 2 Chapter One - Auntie Knows Best Ernest and Katie Needle were both at work; the fact that it was a Friday would lead them through their routine for the day and carry them into their weekend. They had both started work in McNaughton’s London Brewery during the Swinging Sixties. Now heading towards retirement they moved like cogs within a giant machine. Having to pass a fish and chip shop on his way home from work and a local pub reminded Ernest, that God did at least create a perfect World for him. Katie was married to a merchant seaman when she first started in the wages office; they had married young and he had enjoyed sex on a global scale before it killed him. She was hard and had wasted no time in next marching Ernest up the steps of the local registry office. The fact that he was shortly to inherit his hospitalised mother’s house was the biggest turn on to be had within the brewery workforce. Katie had still lived at the time with her large family, all-waiting for Sinbad as they called him to return bearing gifts; he never did. So she instead had to suffer Ernest. The old horn that brought the day shift to a close caused the usual Friday jokes. Katie would make her way home ahead of Ernest, as she was office staff; tonight however having to consider a pleading phone call she had received that day from her sister. Katie knew how to tell her husband of the call. She would just wait until he was stuffing his face with the Friday night carrier bag full of stodge from the chip shop, washed down with a large bottle of McNaughton’s Light Ale. With his short concentration span, if she talked slowly enough, he would never know what he had agreed on. Her plan worked, Ernest was only alerted to the news that their Nephew would be in the East End the next day and how nice it would be to see him, but not that Nineteen-year-old Norman Smith was to be their first lodger. In fact, he would be the first person ever to invade the private world of Ernest and Katie. Norman had been adopted by Katie’s sister Lucy and husband Frank Junior Smith. He had been found during the clean up after a rock festival. The Police could not be sure if he was abandoned or his Parents had just got stoned and forgot they had a baby, possibly wandered back to the wrong tent and started another life. He was rapped in a patchwork quilt made up of rock star portraits, as the centrepiece was Frank Zappa the Police named him Frank. That name caught the attention of Frank Junior Smith as he toured an orphanage with wife Lucy some years later, looking for a son and heir to their Council flat in Birmingham. Lucy however insisted on the Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 3 name change, so Norman Frank Junior Smith was reborn out of compromise. Ernest would annoy Katie by referring to their nephew as Glastonbury. The cause of Norman now being shipped off to London was of, “A rather delicate nature,” Lucy had explained. “Norman has been having improper relations with our next door neighbour and only whilst her husband is away fighting in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces!” “Isn’t that treason?” asked Katie in a startled tone. “No, but it would be if my Frank was King.” The couple embarrassed by Norman’s actions and fearing a quick end to the war gave him two choices; he fancied the staying alive one. Lucy had even offered Katie money knowing that would appeal to Ernest. Following on from his Friday night stodge, Ernest fell asleep in his easy chair. He was a thin short man, untidy dark and grey hair, with a dress sense with which he would have looked at home in a silent movie. Katie dozed off in their bed upstairs. This was always the prelude to Friday night out at their Friday night local, which involved just coming out the front door and turning right. Unlike their Saturday night out at their Saturday night local, which involved just coming out of their front door and turning left. From 9 o’clock they took part in a real old East End knees up, Ernest loved it. Katie played cards with the ladies from the office; however this night she thought long and hard about how life might be with Norman the Nephew in tow. The evening slipped by as usual, Paddy the pub landlord pleading with Ernest later-on to make his way, “Down the yellow chip road and not to take sweets from strangers, only money.” Paddy always used the law as his excuse to close. Once back home Katie and Ernest were soon tucked up in bed, he comatose, she now panicking about the dawning of the next day that would bring the end to their timeless and exclusive routine. She did eventually fall asleep only to wake to the sound of her alarm clock. It was 9am the start of Katie’s Saturday morning two-hour bathroom makeover. She was still an attractive woman and loved this time of each week like no other. She pampered herself and sometimes in a sexual manner. In the bath she heard and felt their door buzzer. It sounded like the ones used on the old television quiz shows. Ernest on hearing it buzz and to his amusement only would shout out the answer to an imaginary quiz question, “Aborigines,” he shouted loudly as he made his way to the door. Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 4 Katie, curious as to why so much conversation was taking place, got out of the bath. She slithered still wet and soapy into her silk-look dressing gown. Her head appeared round the bathroom door, from where she could look straight down the stairs. Strange at first she thought, ‘No daylight showing up the damp patches on the flowery wallpaper; was the front door open, she strained to see beyond the cowering frame of Ernest. As if wedged into their doorway, Katie saw an almost rectangular shape. Without her glasses she squinted long and hard before making out the smiling face of a young man near the top of the doorframe. “Who is it Ernest,” she enquired in her haughty tone. “Says he is to lodge with us!” came his shocked reply. With firmness now in her voice, Katie instructed Ernest to show his Nephew Norman into the Front Room. “I will be down shortly,” she advised the pair of them. On returning to the bath, the noises from below as the men attempted to close the front door, open the front room door and move Norman’s enormous suitcase, gave her much cause for concern; she sighed. As Katie reached the bottom of the stairs, she caught sight of Ernest waving frantically from the safety of their lounge-dining room. He gestured it was time he escape to the pub; after all it was what he did Saturday mornings if he was not at work. Avoiding eye contact he hurried out through the back door, leaving it open to lesson the condemnation of his actions. Katie was pleased to see the back of him; she made her way to greet Norman. There in the front room, time had stood still since Ernest’s Parents had only once decorated and furnished it. “We should open this room to the public at weekends,” remarked Katie. “You would need wheelchair access though,” replied Norman. She laughed, “I can tell we will get on like a house on fire, do you smoke?” “Yes please,” he said “Do you drink?” “Just a sherry at Xmas.” “Funny, that’s not what your Mother told me, “I guess Ernest was of no help with that suitcase. He’s a right lazy so and so, but harmless.” In the modest comfort of the front room, Katie and Norman drew hard on their cigarettes in almost a tribal manner. She explained that only her good self made the house rules. His room was at the front of the house, next to theirs, but not to worry, he would not hear any cries of passion coming through the wall. His guided tour of the house included the outside toilet, Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 5 where he was informed, “That’s the gents’.” Katie had even more startling revelations; she explained how during the summer months the brewery took on temporary staff. Norman would start on Monday. However, she admitted that he would need to pass himself off as a student, “Company policy, sorry,” she said excusing herself, as she pointed to the whereabouts of snack food before going off to her room. Having dressed for her weekly maintenance trip to the graves of her Late In-Laws, Katie waved to Norman, “See you for tea time and just ignore Ernest.” Her words relaxed him; he settled into an armchair in front of their big old television set in the back lounge diner and fell asleep. Just like the classic fictional drunk, Ernest fell through his back door at 3.30. Norman was startled but did not show it, on account of his size he re- acted slowly to most things in life. Ernest stumbled round him as if he was a new piece of furniture and made his way up the stairs, “Alright; I Must ‘ave forgot you was coming to stay, excuse me I’m suffering from terminal laziness,” being the only conversation he managed. Katie returned at 5 o’clock. Norman was asleep, but woke with her presence in the room as she handed him a cup of tea and explained the routine for the rest of the weekend. The evening meal as they called it was at 7 o’clock; a meat and veg affair, no pudding, McNaughton’s Light Ale to wash it down for the boys and tea for her good self. This would be followed by tea all round as a final stomach liner before their big Saturday night out. Norman went off to his room. He now unpacked and tried to feel fully at home. Lying on the old double bed he gazed at a new world to him. This was a real afternoon television movie set he thought and perhaps Richard Burton would suddenly walk into the room. After much thought, he heard Katie calling out, “Grubs up.” Ernest must be conditioned to this routine thought Norman as he heard him stir and make his way down the stairs to the dining table. Norman a touch nervous followed on. As he joined the others a chair awaited him at the table, opposite Katie. “Never ad a lodger before,” said Ernest. “Nor me,” replied Norman. That was all the conversation that took place over that meal. After a couple of hours of watching television in silence Ernest went upstairs to put his Saturday night suit on. Katie passed in her Saturday outfit joined Norman on the sofa, “You will come,” she said. “Sure,” he replied, wanting to fit in. He had not changed his clothes since arriving, but his look passed the Katie test or he would have been told. Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 6 When the three of them set off, it was of course out the front door turn left night, Ernest walked out in front leaving the others to walk side-by-side and even break the usual silence. “Ernest has taken being a lert too literally,” pointed out Katie to Norman as she laughed. As they entered the Prince of Wales pub it was as usual, busy and noisy with a happy locals atmosphere noted Norman. At first the crowd went into a bit of a whisper mode. They thought Norman was on his own and his size caused concern to the landlord Charles, “If he gets pissed, you can throw him out,” said Charles’ son Churchill as he pulled a pint for Ernest. Suddenly Norman was being introduced by Katie to one and all. This would be the theme of the evening, as curiosity brought over even those that preferred to socialise in their private clusters. “Welcome to the Prince of Wales, I am Charles the landlord of course and the peoples’ true Prince of Wales,” bellowed a man in his sixties perched at the end of the bar watching all. His beer gut sitting proudly on the counter in front of him. Ernest rose to the occasion like a proud father. It had always been Ernest and Katie, now there were three of them by default and Ernest was even more contented. At first Norman was taken off to sit with his Uncle and some brewery workers. Katie joined her lady friends in a booth, for cards and gossip. As the evening de-generated somewhat Norman got the chance to socialise, no longer under the proud, yet restricting glances of his newfound guardians. First to monopolise him was Nancy Trollope, this caused many heads to turn. “Trollope by name, Trollope by nature,” remarked Katie. The comments addressed to Ernest at his table were pure filth on this subject. Nancy was attractive; she worked in the same office as Katie. She was most kindly referred to as the merry widow. Her late husband Dick had been killed in a tragic accident at the brewery, where he also had worked. He was most well remembered for buying vegetables from the local market, then giving them away to the bosses at the brewery as his home grown. This along with his name and the circumstances of his death provided a constant source of sick humour, not only at the brewery but also at the local pubs. Even this night a pal of Ernest’s commented, “Pity your nephew’s not called Dick, Nancy still loves her dick.” Nancy’s house backed on to Ernest and Katie’s, just separated by their small back gardens and the lane that ran the length of the streets. This meant of course with Ernest and Katie sleeping in their backroom and Nancy in hers, the merry widow had few secrets and no vegetable patch. A pair of Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 7 binoculars once used for nights at the local dog track provided both Ernest and Katie separately with many hours of adult entertainment. The Prince of Wales pub operated flexi-time on a Saturday, so landlord Charles informed his customers throughout the evening. “As long as you spend, we serve,” he croaked on noticing the till had gone silent. He and Churchill would take it in turns serving and stayed open all hours. Katie thinking that it all might be a bit much for Norman on his first night, gathered up first Ernest by the scruff of his collar and then Norman more politely as the clock struck Mid-night. Ernest was in a state of shock walking home sober for the first Saturday night in his life possibly, “Everything looks strange,” he said. Katie wasted no time in giving her nephew the facts of life talk with the substitution of the birds and the bees for a somewhat more graphic Nancy theme. Ernest developed a new saying, “That’s right, your Auntie knows best,” he said in a pure grovel tone. The three bid the local chip-shop owner goodnight as they passed by. “I love that chip shop,” blurted out Ernest, as if he was making a confession. “I know dear and the chip shop loves you,” replied Katie. As the three entered their home, Katie was also confused to be home so early and sober on a Saturday night. She announced to Ernest she would be taking a long un-interrupted bath, followed by an early night with her romantic novel, which would be finished tonight and also without interruption; then she wished Norman goodnight. Ernest seemed relaxed and contented to have company. He sat in his favourite armchair; poured McNaughton’s Ale for the two of them and stretched his braces. “Blokes at work reckon this is a right affidavit if you drink enough.” he said. “Do you mean aphrodisiac uncle?” “Yeah that’s it. Do you like Chas and Dave?” “Don’t know them,” replied Norman. “Gertcha,” sounded the old man. The two watched the latest news on the tele, “You wouldn’t catch me trying to sail round the world in a’rangatang,” commented Ernest with his words now slurred. “Nor me Uncle,” laughed Norman as he headed off for his first night’s sleep under the roof of the Needles. Ernest stumbled his way to the outside toilet. Norman knocked on the bathroom door, “Thanks for everything Auntie Katie,” he shouted through the sound of running water; there was no Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 8 reply. Norman settled into his new bed, great he thought, this life is so easy and with a feeling of total security he fell asleep. 6 am. Sunday, Norman woke up with the fear of God in him. “What the fuck am I doing here,” he asked himself. It had dawned on him, that this was not the morning after the night before, more a case of the first day of the rest of his life. He took deep breaths to fight off an anxiety attack, then he managed to put things into perspective in his head. He reasoned with himself, he could just treat this situation like a working holiday with relatives. It did not have to be more than that. He thought about moving on after the summer, an old school mate Chris Mason worked as a waiter on the cruise ships, “That’s it he muttered, I will go to sea, move on from here, why not. I must send him an E-mail, an S.O.S. must be a Cyber Café round here somewhere.” They had been best friends all through school; it was their almost identical heights that had caused the bond. Chris the adventurer of the two had left school as soon as the chance came, leaving Norman to then concentrate and throw himself into years of endless exams. Chris went off in search of fun, he had told Norman, ‘The minute you take life seriously, it’s over.’ Norman had missed Chris; having found a possible way out of his predicament he dozed off again. Katie took Norman in a cup of tea, waking him at ten. He needed coffee but made do. Sunday would be another day of unfaltering routine. Ernest would take his bath in the morning; then scatter his toenail clippings over the garden. “It’s good for the soil,” he informed Norman. “Must be right, Bloke in the Pub told me.” Katie sighed, she prepared the lunch before they set off to the pub. This session of the week was spent at the Hercules after a few introductions including the landlord Paddy who was not actually Irish, Norman found himself under the spell of the merry widow. The seat beside her was the only vacant seat ever it seemed, however he was in fact glad of her company, most present were much older than he. Nancy was, ‘Thirty something,’ she insisted; Katie in fact only knew her age and a sworn pact kept both their ages a secret. Both curvaceous blondes, they looked and acted like real cockney sisters. Nancy warned Norman he was in for a boring day at his new home. Sunday evening was the only night of the week that both Ernest and Katie stayed in. “I think they have sex on Sundays,” she joked, then watched his reaction, he looked away. “Sorry, but imagine it,” she laughed; so did he. They continued to talk, laugh and enjoy each other’s company. Nancy suggested they should meet up that evening, if only to stop Norman feeling perhaps the odd man out at home. He thought perhaps he ought to give Ernest and Katie some privacy and agreed. Katie marched her two men out of the pub at 3 o’clock sharp. Within minutes of their arriving back home, the Sunday roast was served. A bottle Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 9 of McNaughton’s Ale sat in the centre of the table, “Wine of the hop,” announced Norman. This remark went over the head of Ernest, but not Katie, she loved her crosswords. After a huge meal, Ernest returned from a long visit to the outside toilet, switched on the news channel and dozed off. Katie remarked how little Ernest knew, considering how many hours he spent in front of that, “Flaming news channel.” After Norman had helped Katie with the washing up, she announced Sunday afternoons were spent alone in her room. Norman suggested he could use a bath before having a walk, “To check out the area, perhaps locate the brewery,” he added. Katie handed him over his own front door key. He explained that he would most likely have a few beers that evening, “Get to know a few of the natives perhaps he gestured.” “Get to know Nancy more like,” she smiled and repeated some warnings regarding the merry widow. Norman took a short sleep before his bath, and then left the house still dressed in the clothes he had arrived in. On his way towards the brewery he passed Nancy’s front door, the house looked more modern than the others in the terraced street. Blinds not curtains, with modern light fittings showing through and a skylight set into the front of her roof. McNaughton’s Brewery gates were large and padlocked. Floodlights added to the bright early evening sun to give it the appearance through the steam of a space ship landing. Norman was glad to have his plan for escape in hand, as this place he thought was his worst nightmare. Sunday night the Hercules was quiet and cold all year round. Paddy the landlord was watching tele on the big screen. Chain-smoking; with his pale tall skinny frame dressed in white vest and his grey hair he even looked like a cigarette as he coughed with every breath. The picture was blurred; lions tour apart a zebra. The pub door flew open; Nancy swaggered up to the bar as she blew a kiss to Norman, seated in a corner. “No frigging wander, no bugger comes in here on a Sunday night, Paddy,” she yelled. “Put some music on or I’ll start singing.” Paddy laughed as he started to pour her usual drink. “Two quid,” he snarled, “Jukebox is over there.” Nancy sat down close to Norman, not in the seat he would have expected her to have chosen. “Cheers my darling,” she almost whispered. “Can you believe this pub, it is a miracle Paddy can afford to keep it open, trade is so bad. He would never get a job anywhere; look at the state of him.” Norman nodded. “So why are we here,” he asked. “Privacy, too many wagging tongues at the Prince tonight,” she explained, “And that Charles is a right dirty bastard, calls Churchill a drip of the old Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 10 cock. He stinks; his breath could start an epidemic. Claims not to brush his teeth, reckons that what you pay the Dentist for; it was no surprise his poor wife left him. She ran off with the Juke Box engineer and all they had in common was a crush on Cliff Richard. ” Nancy continued to chat away; Norman just listened and nodded. A few more customers did drift in, not the brewery crowd. Couples sat in what seemed like their regular Sunday night positions. Nancy asked Norman if he could sense the forbidden love atmosphere in the pub. She nodded him in the direction of some of the couples, commenting on their circumstances. “Affairs of the heart,” she sighed. “And sex.” Norman started to consider his position; now in the company of the merry widow he could feel others’ eyes upon him and became self conscious these people knew of, ‘Nancy’s fancies,’ as Katie had called them. “The bad news is,” announced Nancy, “this poor excuse for a boozer closes tonight at ten, Paddy’s poor wife, cancer you see,” she whispered as she drew on a freshly lit cigarette. “The good news is you are invited to my humble home for a night cap.” She had undressed Norman with her eyes and got quite excited when catching sight of his size twelve boots. Norman noting her gaze exclaimed, “Doc. Martins, very comfortable, I used to be a skinhead you know when I was at College.” Nancy smiled as she enquired, “Why did you stop?” “I fancied this black girl, but she didn’t want to know me.” Placing her hands over his, she asked, “Did your change of image do the trick.” “No” came the saddened reply, “turned out she was a Lesbian anyway.” At this they both laughed, for different reasons. “I meant stop College, come on,” gestured Nancy, “one for the gutter.” Norman took the initiative, soon returning from the deserted bar with two large Southern Comforts. “I hope you are not trying to get me pissed young Norman,” slurred Nancy. “Just being friendly,” he replied. They walked awkwardly at first on leaving the pub. Nancy deciding to take hold of Norman’s arm in an innocent way, “Just for support,” she explained leading the way into the small hallway of her house. There with the door closed she wrapped herself around her young escort, “Lesbian indeed,” she whispered into his ear, “How dare she.” Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 11 Chapter Two - The Natives are friendly They did not make it past the first few stairs which served as a make shift bed. They grunted and grunted and continued grunting till their satisfied groans brought a barking response from a neighbour’s dog out in the street. They were both still fully clothed as they got to their feet. Nancy gently steered Norman on his way out of the front door, with a tender kiss in his ear she whispered, “ See you at work in the morning Norman, take care of this little secret and we can have more.” Norman chuckled on his short walk home, this sex business is great in London he thought, you get to keep your clothes on and leave straight after. He remembered all the fuss he had now left behind in the Midlands and shook his head, “And I didn’t even have to tell her I love her,” he mused. “Perhaps my real parents were Londoners!” Katie had her eyes fixed on Nancy’s bedroom that evening from 10 o’clock, the time she new the Hercules closed. Sitting at her dressing table she was relieved to hear Norman use his key for the first time just gone 10.30. Good lad, she thought, Katie also had undressed Norman with her eyes and even fantasised various scenarios, as they were not really related they tended to follow the young lodger theme, rather than the other option. She did not greet Norman; he had a few friendly words with Ernest before going up to his room. He lit up a cigarette, sat on the end of his bed and thought about Nancy; it was to remain a secret but what next and how would she react to him at the brewery and then there’s Ernest and Katie His mind was working overtime; producing thoughts it seemed to stop him from sleeping. It was sex that got him here and it might be sex that would get him to somewhere else, the sea! Yes it was all fait; sex was sending him to sea. But surely sex is what people go to work at sea for; it is a vicious circle life he concluded. Then he fell asleep, confused but happy and sexually satisfied. Katie took Norman in coffee first thing Monday morning, she had noted his preference. He was to go into the brewery with her. Ernest had a 6am. Start. Katie and Norman would go in for 8.45. They moved around the kitchen well together, sharing the chores and enjoying each other’s company. After a light almost healthy breakfast they set off to work. On entering the brewery Katie handed over her Nephew to the foreman Lenny. A huge red faced man in his mid-forties with thinning ginger hair, better known as Lottery Lenny on account of the fact he spent small fortunes trying to win a big one. As a single man he could afford to gamble, but was a much-ridiculed figure for various reasons including his rejected advances Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 12 to Nancy. Norman fitted in well with the summer group of students; with his unkempt mop of jet-black hair he looked the part. “Listen up,” Lenny addressed the group, “my name is Mr. Pratt, get your laughter over now. Welcome to McNaughton’s Brewery formerly Whitney’s Fine Ales. We still brew here, however our main function is as a main distribution centre for your imported foreign lagers. Real ale! Well we brew Old Demented, Cats’ Piss and Mermaids Juice. Work! Right, let me explain, we brewery workers are as lazy as they come and proud of it. We barely find the time to work each day with the many distractions life throws our way, let alone maintain any standard of hygiene. So in the school holidays,” he said in a mocking tone, “we get in local students like your good selves. We pay you as little as the law allows and sit back and drink beer, while you clean the place up, in preparation for our yearly visit from the Environmental Health Inspector, by which time of course you lot have gone back to school. Any silly questions? No, good, right follow me.” Lenny soon had them hard at work. Norman’s worst fears now confirmed, he eyed up the brewery walls as if a prisoner, now just turned nineteen-years of age he felt he might be under-achieving. The well educated, college drop out had yet to find his career niche, not that he had ever looked. He never blamed his orphan status for anything and had no hang-ups, he was just a drifter. Katie tracked him down as he cleaned away, to encourage him she mentioned that Nancy sent her best wishes. Norman did feel a warm glow inside from their attention as he worked along side the other temporary workers, striking up friendships throughout the day. When given the go- ahead he made his own way home. Katie was there before him. She had put a stew on to cook. “It will be ready from 7,” she shouted from upstairs, “Just help yourself, with some bread and butter. Ernest is playing darts at the Prince of Wales; he will be back by 10 and will finish it off.” Norman liked this feeling of being a part of Ernest and Katie’s world and felt at home, even if it was to be just a short stay. Katie soon had changed and gone to bingo with the ladies from the office, including, ‘Nancy,’ she had dropped into her words of farewell. The telephone rang; Norman hesitated before he nervously picked up the handset. “Is Katie there,” said a female voice. Norman explained nervously that she had gone to the bingo. “I know,” said Nancy, “how are you after your first day in Alcatraz? Aches and pains I should imagine, take a nice hot bath darling and have an early night. I will need you at your best later in the week, take care.” Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 13 Norman took this advice, followed by a generous helping of Katie’s stew washed down with the never-ending stock of McNaughton’s Ale. Better buy a crate of these he thought, on my way home tomorrow I guess; I must sort out paying some keep money too. He decided to bring the matter up with Ernest, man to man he thought. Ernest just referred him to Katie. Katie just said she would think about it. The following day as Norman strolled back from the brewery he collected the beers and cigarettes, flowers and chocolates, only to arrive home to an empty house. A note only greeted him, it read, Ernest playing cribbage tonight at the Hercules, back by 10.30. I am out with the girls; stew on, ready by 7.30. What a social life these two have thought Norman. He took himself off to the bathroom, after a long soak he dared back downstairs wearing his dressing gown. The phone rang, he grabbed the handset straightaway, “Norman,” said Nancy. Norman stayed silent. “Very funny,” she snapped, “You, my place, now,” before she hung-up. Norman laughed. Once he had dressed for the job he strode off on the short walk to meet the merry widow. Her door was just open, he slowly pushed it back, inside was total darkness. Light showed from under a door at the top of the stairs. Once on the first floor he gently turned the door handle; the light went out, a click had come from the far end of the room. He saw just the outline of a woman in white, sitting on a bed, as she drew on her cigarette the glow illuminated her smile. Nancy completed her seduction with a spread of her legs, drawing them up to her chest as she released the tie on the top of her nightgown. Norman knew what to do to reward her for this generous offer. Once again he remained fully dressed as they wrestled on her king-size bed; he pushed away her curvaceous body as she wrapped herself around his waist forcing a ferocious pace of intercourse. It was soon over, she asked him to show himself out, blew him one last kiss, waved and gestured that this be another little secret. He closed the front door gently. The street was not brightly lit; the house was situated away from the streetlights. Nancy has got it really sussed thought Norman as he sloped off back home. The stew was a touch soup like now, but extra tasty, he was in need of this meal and was fast asleep in his room by the time Ernest and Katie had returned. They were concerned if he was feeling at home or, ‘Perhaps he was lonely,’ worried Katie. “Look Ernest she said in an emotional tone, he has been to the shop, lovely flowers and chocolates, McNaughton’s Light Ales and fags. We did do the right thing taking him in, lovely boy.” As the rest of the week came and went, Norman fell into the routine. Ernest and Katie went out every night separately. Friday and Saturday were their nights out together. Sunday they both stayed in. Norman fell in with Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 14 this, as the son Ernest and Katie never managed. Nancy was to provide his sex life. Katie even made the odd comment with regards to finding Norman a young lady. “You just wait till the Xmas-Eve disco at the Prince of Wales,” had shouted Ernest in an excited state one night “loads of crumpet.” Norman had seen Nancy every day at the brewery; she had given him smiles that sent him week at the knees. Even if it was just sexual she had got him, right where she wanted him, on tap. Saturday night at the Prince of Wales marked an anniversary, one week since Norman, Katie and Ernest had their lives joined through fait. Sunday night was a more private affair. At the Hercules pub just Norman and Nancy raised their glasses. They were good together, laughed a lot and enjoyed their little secrets. “Looks like this will be our last Sunday here for our sexual aperitif,” blurted out Nancy. “In English please,” pleaded Norman. “The poster, over there, have you not read it,” she said. Norman studied the very large poster. “Comedy F.U. every night starts next Sunday here. Pay As You Enter only, Free Exit. Wanted dead or alive COMEDIANS & COMEDIENNES apply to the MISMANAGEMENT. We are not an equal opportunities employer (so if you’re not funny you can fuck off). Ernest is not going to be too happy about this,” he concluded. “Still leaves him the Prince to drink in,” answered Nancy. “Look, Paddy has got real problems here, his wife being so ill, trade not what is was. One of the comedy agents offered him a deal; it is still his pub on paper. They sort everything out with the comedy in return for the door money.” At that point Paddy joined the two clutching a drink each for them and his own. “Need a word with you big fella, little birdie tells me you’re only a temp at the brewery. Got a proposition for you. Need a body here, told the jokers I’d supply the doorman. Needs to be a face people round here know. You’re O.K. working at the brewery and being family with Ernest and Katie. Well respected they are round here and trusted. You could be my ears and eyes.” “Every night though,” replied Norman, “it says on that poster.” “Bollocks,” said Paddy, “that’s just for show, will only be weekends at first anyway. See how it works out. You might be desperate for the hours when they kick you out the brewery end of the summer. What you say? ” Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 15 Nancy looked over at Norman nodding her head; he guessed she was the little birdie. “So I not only get to tell Ernest one of his locals is as good as closing, to the likes of him,” answered Norman, “but I even get to kick him while he is down, with the good news, by the way Uncle Ernest guess what, I got the job as doorman, at the Hercules.” “No no!” screamed Paddy. “The Two Buttocks, it is going to be called the Two Buttocks.” “What, I have to even tell him that an all?” asked Norman now in a state of amazement. “It was part of the deal with the jokers,” pleaded Paddy, “but it could have been worse, at first they wanted to call it The Haemorrhoids.” “Oh that’s alright then said Norman,” now in sarcastic tone. “Great, that is a right fucking load off my mind,” concluded Paddy. “A toast, the Two Buttocks. Nancy will sort out your wages; she is going to run the books for me.” Paddy shook both his new employees’ hands, but could not resist a peck on Nancy’s cheek. He then returned behind the bar, rang the bell and shouted, “Last orders at the bar please.” With only Norman and Nancy still in the pub, it was his way of dropping a hint that it was their round. Norman got the drinks in, Paddy said he could only accept a large scotch, they all laughed. The eager lovers knocked back their large Southern Comforts. Again they shook hands with Paddy before leaving. Nancy had nominated where she wanted sex this night. She led Norman into her open plan lounge area; she lit a candle then pulled him down on top of herself and a large beanbag. Just as a week earlier almost to the minute, Norman zipped up his trousers as they kissed goodnight just inside the darkened hallway. They were again both satisfied. On reaching home Norman opted for an early night, just shouting out, “Good night all,” as he made his way to the sanctuary of his room. As he lay in his bed, he practised how he would break his career news to Ernest and Katie, the sheer scale of the task put him to sleep. Monday morning he was late getting up, he now starts work later than Ernest but earlier than Katie, so only just caught sight of her as he rushed down a coffee, “Hot enough to kill lesser men” he screamed. Noticing Katie has started to wear less now when it’s just the two of them in the house causes Norman some concern. What she does wear reminds him of a documentary he once saw on women that sit behind windows in Amsterdam, offering sex. He thinks to himself, oh no, do I not have enough problems without this? He bolts out through the door, gazes at his watch, only to see Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 16 he is not now going to be late. “That pigging old clock in the bedroom, has given me a throat like Joe Cocker”, he mumbled to himself. He slowed his pace, he could now take time to think, and wander if he could be heading for another family upset, he felt uneasy. ‘Maybe I should have given Auntie Katie a good shagging this morning,’ he thought, ‘I did have the time after all, it would keep her sweet. Fucking women, he considered, why not.’ He concluded, ‘if she’s asking for it tomorrow she gets it.’ He chuckled away, feeling ashamed of his thoughts, as he waved to Nancy whilst passing by her office window. That night with Ernest at the pub and Katie just off to the bingo, Nancy phoned. Norman was pleased to hear her strong sexy voice. “I am worried about what Ernest will feel, about the Hercules and me and you even,” he wined. “Dearest Norman you have been hired as a doorman, you just leave the management of this situation to Nancy, got it,” she assured him. “Look, apart from our little secret, everything is sweet. Ernest and Katie will be fine. They hardly use the Hercules these days anyway and they will not go near the place if Paddy is not around, so relax.” “You got it,” said Norman in an American accent. “You have not said anything yet, have you?” asked Nancy. “Wish I knew how,” replied Norman. “Fine then,” she said, “I will mention to Katie tomorrow about Paddy, handing over the Pub to the jokers, you know his wife, the cancer and all that. How poor old Paddy needs some people he can trust to keep an eye on the place. I will tell her I am going to keep the books for him and ask her if she and Ernest would ask you to help poor old Paddy, by doing the door job.” “You sort it, I will do it,” concluded Norman. “Call me tomorrow.” Norman tucked into some of Katie’s stew, took over the parlour table, poured a McNaughton’s Ale and gazed at the tele. He was happy at home now for the first time in his life. After the phone call Nancy made her way to the Hercules, she knocked on the lounge bar entrance. Paddy let her in then bolted the door. He had given opening a miss on Mondays since trade fell away. A large oval table was covered in paperwork. The two sat down, it was an emotional meeting as there was history between them. “ I am a bit concerned, your relationship with the big fella, could give us problems with this lot, ” said Paddy, pointing at the piles of scruffy paper work, covered in old scotch stains and fresh cigarette ash. Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 17 “I don’t have relationships,” pointed out Nancy. “You of all people should know that. So down to the business in hand.” They agreed she would be in charge of the pub side. Norman would answer to her, the bar staff would answer to him when she was not around. The place would only open evenings from 7 and only if the jokers had done all the publicity. Paddy had made the flat upstairs self-contained and even soundproof when his wife first got ill. So Nancy was to let it out. “No fucking students or unemployeds,” shouted Paddy. “And if you get nurses from round the corner, no fucking parties up there every night.” “Of course not,” mocked Nancy, “we couldn’t have people laughing and drinking over a comedy pub could we.” “Doctors, young doctors would be best they earn more money than nurses,” replied Paddy now on a roll. “They reckon to work so fucking hard; they shouldn’t have the energy to enjoy themselves.” Nancy said she would put a notice up at the local hospital. Paddy and his wife would not be far away; she had never given up her small council flat. They had never married, “Too busy at first in the pub, then too quiet to afford it, then she became too ill, and that’s over twenty years,” reflected Paddy. “Second time round it was for both of us, come to think of it, not sure if she ever got a divorce. Good job I didn’t marry her perhaps.” Nancy dropped her head into her hands, she worried, managing this dinosaur’s business is going to be hard work she thought, still I owe him this and business is business. Paddy concluded with his winding up plans, he would break the news to Ernest and the lads on cribbage night Tuesday. He had agreed with Charles at the Prince of Wales they could play out the season there. This Friday would be the farewell party night at the Hercules. Paddy would hand over the Pub on Saturday. He and Maureen had not lived there since she became confined to her bed and they had moved back into her small flat. Nancy would interview bar staff over the weekend, she would meet 10a.m. Sunday with the jokers, to lay down all the ground rules for their working together. That evening would be the first Comedy night at the Two Buttocks. With business concluded Paddy was eager to get back to Maureen. It was still early enough for Nancy to join the Ladies at the local Bingo. She did mention to Katie that a meeting with Paddy had delayed her and she would tell all at work the next day. Tuesday, first thing, Norman knew he was not late, having bought himself a massive wall clock that dominated his room and made him very conscious of time. Being unable to bin the old dressing table clock, he would use it as a Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 18 bookend, not that he had any books. At work this day he got a few waves from Nancy as he walked passed her office. He also got waves from Katie, seeing the two of them in the office together he felt embarrassed. One down, one to go he thought to himself. That evening after Katie had gone off to the bingo, Norman phoned Nancy. “Did you get an adults permission to use the phone, “she enquired, laughing. “I don’t know any,” snapped Norman. “See you soon, I expect,” concluded Nancy as she hung-up. Norman ambled round for his Tuesday night Sex, but first he wanted an up-date on the Hercules saga. Nancy obliged but not in that order. “My pleasure before business,” she demanded. She went on to explain that Ernest and Katie would now ask him to help out Paddy anyway, so all would work out just fine. They agreed to meet up at Paddy’s Friday night farewell party. ‘GOOD BYE I’LL MISS YOU’ read the homemade banner crooked above the bar. “Shouldn’t be wasting money on an expensive sign like that,” shouted Nancy over at Paddy as he drank himself into a coma. “Could be your first job here Norman, to carry him out to a taxi later,” she added. Nancy was right, both Ernest and Katie had asked Norman to look after the door for Paddy and he did have to carry him out to his taxi. Norman was on overtime Saturday morning helping Paddy move out the last of his possessions. Nancy was there sorting out keys for everything, she found stocktaking with Paddy hard work. He wore sunglasses because of his hangover and kept falling over things. At last by early evening all was sorted at the pub. Nancy now the key holder locked the main door. She and Norman were both tired; they agreed on fish and chips to be purchased and then eaten at her house. As they sat down, Nancy served chilled white wine, lots of it. They enjoyed their first meal together. Nancy demanded some, “Serious sex” on the other beanbag; then sent Norman off home. They would meet later that evening at the Prince of Wales. Norman was enjoying his new life-style and it was now acceptable for him to spend time with Nancy as they worked together. Katie commented that perhaps he would meet a nice young lady at the comedy nights and Ernest blamed, “The bloody Council,” for the closure of the Hercules. Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 19 That evening was busier at the Pub than was normal. With the Hercules no longer a locals’ pub, its few customers had moved on to the Prince of Wales. Charles the landlord loved it, wishing Nancy and Norman good luck, as they didn’t threaten his newfound trade. At the end of the evening, they went their separate ways. She reminding him first that he was expected the following mid-day at the Two Buttocks. Sunday came, Norman knocked on the massive front door of the Hercules. It was mid-day and painters were desperate to cover up old signs. A new swinging sign had been hung up. Norman winced at the sight, yes it was TWO BUTTOCKS, and he was still shaking his head as Nancy opened the door. “Keys,” she snapped, “yours, you’re on time, in future be early.” She pulled him in through the door and kissed him, like he had never been kissed before. “Is this exciting Norman, or what!” she exclaimed. Come and meet the jokers. She led him through to the lounge bar, at the large table sat the Spin Doctor and Nigel. Nancy introduced the three. Both the jokers came from the North of England; Doc as he liked to be called warmed to Norman with his Midlands’ accent. Nancy had taken care of all the paperwork long before Norman had arrived; he noticed Nigel the slightly taller of the two with multi coloured hair was a very nervous guy. He had sat with his thin legs almost double crossed and adjusted his heavy black framed glasses none stop at the table; this put Norman on edge with him. “Right then, Doc and Nigel have lots to do, in oh! such little time and I have bar persons to sign up and train,” announced Nancy. “So! Norman the doorman, as there will be loads of strangers in and out, please give it code red on the security front.” Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 20 Chapter Three - The opening of the Two Buttocks Like ants building a nest, the jokers set about turning the old Hercules pub into a comedy venue. The building was just perfect for the transformation; Norman was amazed when two guys with ponytails walked in with chainsaws and turned two bars into one. A strange looking female with huge tits was putting up curtains everywhere with a staple gun. Long haired ex- public schoolboys hung spotlights from the ceiling and a bloke covered in tattoos drove everyone round the fucking twist, “One two, one two,” his testing call. “ Hawkwind used these speakers once.” “Only once,” shouted back Doc. Everything did in fact go like clockwork; at 7 there was a queue at the door. “Let them queue,” Nigel told Norman, looks great, there will be press here tonight, early cause it’s free drinks for them, don’t worry, comes out the door money, our treat.” The night was sheer chaos; Doc and Nigel had pulling power. The local hospital had provided a high local turnout also. Well over a 100 paid entry on the night, the guest list just added to record takings at the bar. Admissions had to be stopped at 10. Doc compared the evening he introduced a succession of unknown Stand-ups; Nigel as stage manager worked himself into neurotic state before leaving early. Doc referred to him as ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth.’ There was only one Stand-up known to this first night audience; a kiwi pretending to be an Aussie named Bungalow Bill stormed onto the stage at 10.15. “You Whinging fucking poms,” he shouted at the crowd. Then opening a newspaper he proceeded to read out headlines, adding his thoughts on the issues. “Pensioners say Council Tax too high, oh, what a fucking shame. If they don’t want to pay it, they should fuck off and live somewhere else. Try on the banks of the Ganges, no Council Tax there, you just poor your piss and shit in the river along with your garbage. Like you’re wanted here anyway. Stop fucking whinging coffin dodgers Here’s another, firemen consider further strike action, what bollocks, I’ve seen that documentary, London’s Burning, get a real job guys. Heat wave continues, do me a favour. Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 21 We had to open this place tonight, as it’s the only night this year that that fucking Office is not on the tele. Strange statistic, 100% of people that watch the Office, don’t have a video-recorder, so they all had to go out and buy the D.V.D. I auditioned for the girl in the wheelchair part you know, equal opportunities and all that, I think Ricky Gervais was worried I would be too strong a character, I respect his honesty. You do have some weird tele here though, the Royal Family, I channel hop a lot, first I thought it was a furniture ad; it’s just some whinging fucking poms; sit down comedy. I don’t get it. What’s the difference between a carpet and a wank? You can beat a carpet, but you can’t beat a good wank.” After many more insults, Bungalow Bill bowed out, the crowd were up for a great night and so they had one. Nancy, Norman and Doc had worked well together; the next comedy night would be Thursday. After Doc had left, Nancy showed Norman another location for sex. They then staggered off together, Norman just seeing Nancy safely to her front door, before tip- toeing back into the world of Ernest and Katie, now both fast asleep Early next morning, as Norman burnt some bread for breakfast, Katie came down early. She was keen to know how the first comedy night had gone down at the old Hercules. Norman was very excited even telling her a few of the less blue funnies. She asked him if he would be interested in staying on at the brewery after the summer. “Just a general tidier-up,” she explained, “money’s not bad though and you would finish in plenty of time for your door job.” Unable to reason at that time of the day, Norman replied, “Why not, thanks Auntie.” Katie smiled as she now hurried off to the bathroom. Nancy needed now to speak to Norman at the brewery daytimes, as there were matters to update him on. There was no gossip about the pair, he was considered to be her go-for. She asked him to let the jokers into the pub that night for a couple of hours. They had some more work to do and wanted to do a few auditions. Nancy would drop by after bingo. It was 11pm. when she let herself into the pub, only Norman was still there. He sat watching news on the big screen. Nancy poured them both a large Southern Comfort. “Sunday already,” said Norman. “No it’s fucking Monday,” replied Nancy, “pun intended.” She sat down with him. Cigarettes were lit. Norman grabbed the remote control, the big screen went blank. “Good shot,” said Nancy. “Here you go, a present.” She handed over a gift-wrapped box, Norman not really a presents man, was embarrassed. Nancy had to help him unwrap it. “A mobile phone” he asked, “for me?” Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 22 “It goes with the job,” she answered, “but they offered to gift wrap in the shop, now will you shag me.” As they locked up the pub, Norman pointed out to Nancy, that they had yet to have sex in the same place twice. “There isn’t time now Norman,” she replied in her mocking tone still fixing her clothes. They walked to her front door. She tidied up his thick hair with her hand and pushed him away in the direction of Ernest and Katie’s. Tuesday and Wednesday with the exception of the gift of a mobile phone, were more of the same for Norman and Nancy. Thursday evening kicked off the first of four nights’ consecutive comedy at the Two Buttocks. It was during this stint that Norman started to get noticed. Many of the customers were coming back, there were many bar-staff, and Doc and Nigel had friends that helped out. Even the lads from the brewery would stop for a chat with him as they passed by. Known now officially as Norman the Doorman, one or two ladies would hang around outside the door with him, some evenings. Nancy would tease Norman over his, ‘Normie’s,’ as she called them. The first full weekend of comedy was a huge success. Reviewers had been excited about the new comedy venue and their free drinks. Doc had researched the area well before approaching Paddy at the old Hercules. The area was on the up; professionals were moving into now trendy ex-council tower blocks. They of course took the brunt of much of the humour at the Two Buttocks. “No pissing in the lifts, you lot, on your way home,” Doc would shout most nights as he wished all good night and begged them not to come back again. Nancy had let the flat to her head barman Patrick and his Girl-friend B.A. despite her being an Art Student and the most awful Irish Comedienne on the circuit. The summer became routine for Norman and all those around him. The Thursday to Sunday comedy nights were established, with the odd extra one thrown in, August Bank Holiday Monday was a sell-out. Life at the brewery changed for him as the students went back to college. He got kept on, mainly due to Lottery Lenny now having the hots for Katie. Nights stood on the pub door soon became colder; Norman borrowed a night security coat from the brewery. He had from the onset listened to much of the comedy, it was very loud and easy to hear from outside. But as the winter weather forced him to stand just inside the door (with Nancy’s permission of course) he started to take note of the comedians’ mannerisms and developed his own style of humour. Norman had now entered a world where everything was fair game for would-be comedians and of course there was, the comedienne. “Always one,” moaned Nancy, “they are just not funny, especially B.A. That Jo Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 23 Brand she’s not bad, they should get ‘er down here.” It seemed like every comedy observation seemed to be followed by, ‘How sad is that,’ Norman noticed and he soon went from living and breathing stand up to speaking its very language. It helped remind him there was a much bigger World than his, somewhere. At the brewery he made them laugh, repeating material from the acts. At home he entertained Ernest and Katie. With Nancy he switched off, however she noticed he was more like Doc, Nigel and the acts, than he was her. He could no-longer look at things without seeing a funny side to them. One night Norman answered so many questions whilst watching University challenge, that Nancy tried seduction to put him off. She knew how clever he was and it added to his mystique and attraction. Their sexual encounters continued. He supported Birmingham City F.C. and asked Nancy if he could fuck her at half time when they were watching a televised match, she consented. Nancy asked Norman if he would use a microphone to clear people out a bit quicker at closing time, he agreed. Doc and Nigel were against it, but when Norman started to throw in a few funnies this became a feature of the evenings, the crowd enjoyed it so it stuck. In the run up to Xmas Nigel became ill, the Two Buttocks had taken its toll on his health, so he reckoned, despite his theory of out of date Yoghurts being good for him. There were even jokes made about Nigel after he had gone back North to his parents for a rest and to work on his idea, ‘A Fumble in the Jungle,’ un-solicited for Channel 4. He was referred to as, ‘Neurotic Nigel’ by Doc who now depended on Norman to help him out, Just as Norman depended on Patrick. With the arrival of winter Norman would sit by the cashier’s booth, just inside the main venue door. He now had a mike clipped to his shirt, a push button made him live. Being most nights the tallest person at the Two Buttocks and dressed in black suit and bow tie, he became master of ceremonies by default. At first introducing the compares, then introducing the acts if required. Doc found it easier to work with less people; he stopped booking compares and ran the shows with Norman. They worked well together. Doc was a very small guy, in his mid-thirties with fair thinning hair; he loved to dress up for the stage, had loads of energy and was an undiscovered comedy talent. He had lacked faith in himself and patience so moved into management. Now he had the power to control the fate of others, just as others had once controlled him. He was a bitter man but knew his comedy. As agent to many acts and comedy venues he was now discovered. December brought new customers into the venue, as regulars attended parties elsewhere. It was hard to get acts some nights and it was like the Doc and Norman show, with the audience as their support. But it still worked, the Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 24 place was packed out with the seasons revellers anyway, ‘And good talent would have been wasted on such morons,’ Doc insisted as he got richer and Norman got funnier, Paddy now thought every day was his Birthday as Nancy updated him on the bar takings, Maureen was still dieing, Ernest had almost forgot his Nephew lived in the house; Katie was spending a small fortune trying to attract Norman with sexy underwear, whilst Nancy seemed in control of it all and it wasn’t even Xmas yet. As the 25th of December got nearer Norman and Doc had to think on their feet more and more. But the Xmas week brought out their best efforts. They put on comedy Karaoke it went down a storm. Then one night the most feared thing was happening live, with only a mystery top of the bill expected Norman’s phone rang. Bungalow Bill booked only because he owed Doc a favour was having a massive problem at home. He lived in digs in a posh flat in Golders Green, where he claimed, ‘Some guys pretended to be Jewish, just so they could wear a skull cap to hide their bald patch whilst chatting up the local Sheilas.’ Bill’s landlady was having a mid-life crisis. “She’s 50, I keep telling her she should have had this at least ten years ago,” said Bill, “she will not live till 100 anyway, she could drink and smoke for Israel.” “If you can’t make it Bill,” insisted Norman, “your fucking nuisance of a landlady won’t be the only one having a mid-life crisis tonight.” “I offered the Sheila a good shagging,” shouted Bill into Norman’s ear, “seem to make her worse though. I will get to you for that last spot, must go.” Norman quickly relayed the troublesome news to Doc. He also proposed he devise a sketch for the two of them to do there and then. Doc nodded and with that, Norman picked him up like a puppet and strode onto the stage. Sitting down with Doc on his lap and his arm threaded up through Doc’s jacket, he looked into the eyes of his nervous dummy, “What’s up Doc,” he asked. The crowd were gob smacked as Norman bounced Doc on his knee. Lottery Lenny from the brewery helping out on security that night nearly fell off his stool. Doc’s friends working stage effects stood speechless in anticipation of the pairs’ next move. Bar staff stopped serving and Nancy on a rare visit to the venue of an evening thought she was going to orgasm. Doc reached out to the table closest to the stage, he picked up a full pint of lager. He then passed it to Norman who slowly started to down it in one. Then Doc spoke, “ Hello Boys and Girls are you looking forward to Xmas,” the crowd went for it and thanks to some great hecklers the routine with Doc the puppet and Norman the straight faced ventriloquist trying to keep some order went down well. When a lady insisted on trying to pull Doc’s trousers off Norman brought the act to an end, by admitting Doc was not really a puppet and he never really wanted to be a ventriloquist. No he Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 25 wanted to be a lumberjack, and he led the crowd into singing the lumberjack song. He retreated still carrying Doc like a puppet. “Thank god for Monty Python,” screamed Doc over the loud applause, “now will you fucking put me down.” Nancy went over and hugged the pair she had tears rolling down her face. They had bought the time they needed. Norman had put Ernest’s Chas and Dave video on the big screen; they would only get away with this at Xmas. Norman’s phone rang; he rushed outside the pub to take the call. “I’m just round the corner,” shouted Bill as his car screeched into sight. “I ended up giving her a good shagging Norman,” he yelled across the street, “it was the only way, and you owe me big time for that, she’s awesome man, hairs on her chest. I can never go home again.” He laughed and hugged Norman. Doc joined them outside. Bill explained he had an idea for his entrance tonight, Norman agreed. He removed the mike from Doc’s shirt and pinned it on to Bill. The entrance began. They could be heard, but not seen inside the pub. Norman, “Sorry sir, you can’t come in, we’re full up.” Bill, “Come on just a jar or two matey.” Norman, “No come back, where do you think your going?” Bill, “I just want to check out the sheilas.” Bill ran into the pub and made his way to the stage he let rip his catch phase, “Hello you whinging fucking poms.” The place erupted. Bungalow Bill now a minor television face held the audience through till closing time. He closed his act with a song, ‘Fuck off across the Mersey.’ Whilst receiving a standing ovation he ran out, still screaming abuse. He drove off, on the way home phoning Norman, “I got to get home and shag the Sheila again,” he chuckled, “well it is Xmas, can’t have her feeling crook; gooday.” The next morning, “What’s a good thing for a hangover Katie,” begged Norman. “To drink too-much the night before,” she answered, dressed in a burgundy silk look dressing gown. Norman was slumped over the dining table; the excitement of the previous evening had culminated with a bottle of Southern comfort and some quite violent sex with Nancy in the back yard of the pub. She called it the masonry position, “Missionaries should have taught this on their travels,” she had screamed. Now to get into the brewery for just a half day as it was Xmas Eve. Katie brought a glass of water and told him the fresh air on the way to work would Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 26 also help. At the brewery to his relief, there were other casualties of the Demon Drink. Nancy had booked the day off as she did every year; she would spend hours sitting beside the grave of her late husband. Knowing of this spooked Norman. The horn sounded at the brewery, cheers could be heard from the men. It was off to the Prince of Wales for their Xmas drink. In years gone by the Hercules was the chosen pub for this yearly binge. Norman tagged along, he didn’t want to let Ernest down and being family it meant a lot. Norman slipped off after a couple of beers. He now felt better, so he grabbed a pie and chips on his way home. He set himself up at the dining table, poured a beer and switched on the tele. He presumed he was alone in the house, finished lunch, cleared away and then relaxed for a snooze in the Ernest chair right in front of the tele. After realising his needed to use a toilet he climbed the stairs and entered the bathroom. “Oh Norman,” Katie said, in a welcoming tone her nakedness just slightly blurred by the steam rising off her heavily scented bath water. “So sorry,” replied Norman, “really sorry.” Katie having dreamt of this moment, seized it, standing up in the bath, “Fuck me Norman, please, please,” she begged. Norman had to think fast on his feet here, ‘If he refused, the embarrassment it would cause, would mess the both of them up. After all she had done for him he owed her everything really. It was just a fuck.’ “Where?” said Norman in true James Bond style. Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 27 Chapter Four - Xmas is for giving “Your room,” begged Katie. Norman led the way; Katie slipped into a black silk look dressing gown and followed him. He stood back in his room allowing her to enter; she drew the curtains before getting into the bed. The room was now dark enough to hide their blushes as they engaged in sexual foreplay. Norman sat on the bedside and fondled her breasts, he then stood up and undressed, not something he had time for when fucking Nancy. Being naked in bed was a first for Norman and a distant memory for Katie; this novelty factor heightened the event for them both, causing the pair to climax in record time. Norman lit a cigarette straight after. Katie told him to get some rest before his night’s work. She left the room with a silent grace; Norman felt no-less respect for her. He fell asleep and had to be woken by Nancy, on his mobile phone she gave him an earful. It was 6pm.Xmas eve and where the hell was he anyway. Norman made his peace and agreed to be there within 30 minutes. He showered, put on his doorman’ suit and strolled out of the house, “Have a great Xmas eve you two.” shouted Norman. Ernest was demolishing pie and chips. Katie was still in her room, she heard Norman’s upbeat farewell and sighed with relief as she now prepared to wash away her memory of that afternoon. Norman knew this was no time to reflect on his afternoon as he quickened his steps to the Two Buttocks. Once inside he got stuck in to the chaotic activities needed to get the venue open on time. He was not his usual self when Nancy handed over to him. She was going off for a few hours and would return about 11ish. Norman noticed behind the bar was untidy; he hated it when staff left junk around. He went through it, an assortment of worthless lost property and ex- staff belongings. A scarf of a former feminist barmaid was hurtled into the bin. He recalled how she had stormed out while a comedian had made one too many sexist remark; a reference that she preferred Men to liquor. At the very bottom of the junk was a book, Norman picked it up carefully; it was an easy introduction to Zen. He looked inside the cover, where by hand was written, ‘To Nigel, the world is a funny place this may help you keep laughing. Good luck the Doc.’ Norman waved the book at Doc, “Nigel’s left this book you got him,” he shouted over the music. “Pity”, replied Doc. “he should have read it, could have helped him straighten out his fucked up life.” “I will read it over Xmas, may I?” asked Norman. “That’s what books are for,” stated Doc. Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 28 Norman went through to the office. He placed the book in his draw for safekeeping. Perhaps it can help me straighten out my fucked up life, he thought to himself. The venue would not open this night until eight. They had a late extension for Xmas eve. Norman slowly started putting change into the bar tills, he was feeling fragile as a panic attack got hold of him. His thoughts slogged it out like two boxers, ‘I have just had sex with my Auntie, oh God, my Mum’s sister, that’s even worse. No my step Mums sister, that’s better. But it’s still my Uncles wife, only my step Uncle though, but I like him. Then there’s Nancy, what if Katie should tell her about us, what us? Katie and me or Nancy and me? What if Katie confesses to Ernest? What if Nancy tells Katie about us? Oh no this is the best one, Nancy tells Ernest, Ernest tells Katie. Or perhaps Nancy just tells Ernest, Ernest keeps quiet, and then Katie confesses to Ernest also.’ He lit a cigarette and drew hard, this slowed his thoughts down. ‘I could deny fucking either of them. Bollocks, what about me, why is it always about other people? Tomorrow how about that, Xmas dinner with Ernest and Katie, how will she act?’ He knew Nancy was to spend the day with her family. “Is this comedy?” he asked himself. Could I use this tonight, should I? This is life; if life isn’t funny then we would have to close down the venue.” Norman now just numbed by his situation, made a strong coffee, lit another cigarette and managed to clear his mind. Soon he was able to put his problems away for the evening as work took over his life. Xmas eve. entertainment was well sorted out. Lots of Xmas nonsense, comedy twists to everything, prize draws, competitions, a comedy magician and two stand-ups. Norman would open the show with a short intro-spot; the Doc would compare. Nancy was returning to cash up most of the money, but would not hang around long. Norman would have to lock up and very late, as staff and the acts would expect a good late Xmas drink that night. 9 o’clock Norman left lottery Lenny on the door and after collecting a large scotch and a stool from the bar stepped up onto the stage. He placed the glass on a tall table to his left, lit a cigarette and just stared at the crowd. Doc watched on with great interest as he made some lighting changes. He respected Norman’s comedy and had considered managing him. Norman produced from his large jacket pocket a red fez, his size and dress allowed him to do a Tommy Cooper impersonation. With one hand he turned the stool upside down, “Just like that” he said. A mixed reaction from those that had noticed him. He pulled out a gun cigarette lighter, pointed it at the crowd, then he pulled the trigger, it produced a flame. He then put it back in his pocket, Doc created a gun shot sound, and Norman pretended he had shot himself in the thigh. Doc despatched onto the stage one of his helpers. She was stunning, dressed as a 60s’ magician’s assistant from her Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 29 seamed stockings upwards. “The lovely Marsha,” announced Norman. She knelt down, unzipped his trousers, placed her hand inside, and pulled out a white, limp object which she placed in her mouth. The crowd now cheered into a frenzied state. Marsha stood up; moving away from Norman to reveal it was a silk sheet she was pulling out of his pants. Having extracted it, she bowed. Norman did his zip up. Marsha threw the material over the stool. Norman stepped forward, grabbed two corners. To the amazement of the now captive audience, he shook the silk sheet side to side and just kicked the stool from under it, straight off the side of the stage and out of site. He then held up the sheet to reveal the stool had vanished. A smoke bomb added to the fact that most of the audience could not see that section of the stage caused confusion. Norman received a massive applause, some for his Tommy Cooper con trick, more from those convinced he had made the stool vanish and many more just joining in. Marsha took her bows as she left Norman on stage. “The Spin Doctor, Ladies and Gentlemen, your compare for Xmas eve,” introduced Norman, as he genuinely limped off the stage as a result of kicking the stool with his shinbone. Doc rather pleased at Norman’s success having part devised the routine, now called for silence. He wore a Vicars collar. “I will ask you all please to remember the Religious hypocrisy, I mean significance, sorry, we always mix up those two, at Xmas. Here in an inn of all places we can just imagine if Joseph and Mary should call here looking for shelter for the night. Having paid a tenner each to get in, some fucking Aussie behind the bar would tell them we don’t do B and B. If they asked for their money back, the doorman would throw them out, troublemakers aye! You see it wasn’t Joseph’s fault, in those days things were different, he should know with a beard like that,” Doc pointed out a man near the front. “You see Joseph and Mary were just going away for Xmas, we take it for granted. But just think, they couldn’t book a hotel on the Internet in those days. No they had to walk hundreds of miles, up to the receptionist, got any rooms tonight, no, alright we better go home, spend a quiet Xmas. Off they go. But Mary’s pregnant, lets try an Inn says Joseph, I want en-suite says Mary. Women aye! Some things never change, that reminds me I only came up here to introduce, a woman, and here she is Betsy Norfolk.” Once described by a critic as the Queen of Monotone, Betsy took to the stage she started her routine as always. “Good evening, I’m Betsy Norfolk, well I’m Betsy and I’m from Norfolk. Of course most country girls are big old girls, but I was the last of the litter see.” Norman didn’t worry about the trickle of blood running down his leg, he propped himself up against the bar to watch Betsy. She was the only woman he really fancied since being deported to London. It was her that coined the phrase, “If you don’t laugh I’ll get my tits out.” She was tall, appeared flat chested and wore skin-tight stripy tops. However she turned men on big Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 30 time. On the stage to compliment her top half she wore jodhpurs, riding boots and held a horsewhip. Much of her act was Norfolk country type stuff; Norman just gazed at her. She was thirty-ish, very white, with freckles and red hair; he had just fallen in love for the first time. Betsy did her size is important routine, “Look, all this, it’s what he does with it crap, forget it, there aint much to do with it, so the bigger the better, right, girls, girl power yeah. The price girls they should have been called, cause they all had one. ” Norman drooling by now felt Nancy pat him on the shoulder. She passed him on her way to the office. This was his cue to collect the door takings and take them through to her to cash up. He would also collect up the bulk of the bar tills cash. Having to take his eyes off Betsy left Norman with an empty feeling. Nancy was so pleased to hear Norman knock on the office door. She saw him on the desktop monitor and pressed the door release button. He had the notes in his enormous inside jacket pocket. Lottery Lenny had watched his back all the way. With the money on the desk, Nancy wrapped herself around her man. Norman managed to respond, but was still besotted with Betsy. He was ready for sex, Nancy was there and it was her shout. She turned her back on him leaned and braced herself on the desk. He lifted up her skirt, as she was not wearing knickers, he realised she had once again planned her sex for the day. Norman had no problem, still stiff from the sight of Betsy; he fucked Nancy so hard she wept with pleasure as she climaxed. Norman remained silent but satisfied; he noticed looking down a blond hair trapped in his watch-strap and recalled this was his second session of the day. Nancy cashed-up once alone again in the office. Back in the venue Norman caught the last act in full swing. Mickey Finn was an East ender. Doc couldn’t stand him, but audiences could. Much of his patter was about his fictional ex-wife and the ever-changing East End, taking the Mickey as he called it, out of the Nouveau Pauvre. ‘If my poor old Gran could see that,’ or, ‘It’s the fucking principal mate,’ he would bellow at the end of most sentences. “ My Mrs. silly cow, doesn’t know that petrol prices go up cause she always buys a tenner’s worth; she’s my ex- wife actually, moan, even now, reckons I’m earning a fortune and she’s only getting 99% of it. Before I started this stand-up lark you know, I ad a proper job, working in a newsagents, assistant Manager actually baldy not paper boy. ” He yelled into the crowd. “ As I was saying, fing that used to crack me up, Trade Mags. It doesn’t matter what it is they got a Mag. for it. Sandwich Weekly, I ask you, industrial Flooring Up-date, that must be an exciting read.” Norman applauded, he liked Mickey. “Vegetarian Sex Tips, no not really I just made that one up. Vegetarians though, aye, fucking right pain in the arses or what. Why do they always insist on going into restaurants, not Vegetarian Restaurants and the first thing they ask is what Vegetarian dishes do you serve. I ask you, come on come on. Having been Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 31 offered a cheese salad or an omelette, they then complain how Vegetarians are never catered for. Ah, one fucking day I’m going to go into a Vegetarian Restaurant and guess what, yeah the first thing I’ll ask is, what Meat Dishes do you serve; fucking Hippies.” Nancy made her way through the crowd to Norman. “Alright if Lenny walks me to my door?” “Sure,” he nodded. “Have a nice Xmas day with your family, see you Boxing Day,” she whispered and kissed his ear. “Boxing day,” enquired Norman. “I always go to visit Katie and Ernest on Boxing Day, can’t wait, bye,” she shrilled over the laughter. “And anuva fing that winds me up, Stand-up Comedians,” continued Mickey. The evening finished in good humour, with many of the customers still laughing as they left the Two Buttocks in record time by 1.am Xmas day. Patrick and B.A. organised drinks for the staff. Mickey Finn had hung on for a free booze, as had Betsy Norfolk. Champagne on ice sat on the bar, Mickey proposed a toast, “Trevor McDonald,” he said. They all relaxed, settled into groups and reflected on the first part year of the Two Buttocks. The comics at their table were all trying to upstage each other in different ways. Norman sat with them but kept quiet; he chain-smoked and was drinking fast. Doc and his helpers left first. Norman then opened up, enjoying a conversation with Mickey. Betsy was more relaxed now it was just the three of them. The booze flowed. “Thank fuck he’s gawn,” insisted Mickey. “He’s made this place work though,” answered up Norman. “I’ll drink to that,” added Betsy. The bar staff wished the three a happy Xmas as their taxes arrived and Patrick went upstairs Norman locked the door behind them. He excused himself as he collected the bar tills and took them through to the office and into the safe. He then just sat behind the desk reflecting on his lot in life. B.A. was now fighting a losing battle with Mickey on the subject of her Art, “So why call it Ceramics if it’s Pottery,” he said. “I did Pottery at school, juniors though. Here’s a bit advice for you, if you want to make some serious dosh, invent a glaze that shit don’t stick to. Goodnight girls.” Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 32 He downed the last of his drink and scarpered under the most contemptible stares imaginable out into the relative safety of the streets of East London. “Hating that little scumbag is perhaps all you and I have in common,” blurted B.A. through her braced teeth as she made her way upstairs to the flat. “Mickey says goodnight, B.A. doesn’t,” said Betsy as she entered the office. “I locked the doors behind them.” “Let’s get back to our drinks then,” said Norman in a nervous tone. He followed Betsy still dressed in her stage clothes back through to the bar. “I love sitting here when the customers have gone,” he said. “Yeah I can understand that,” she replied, “so Norman who are you and what brought you here?” Norman told her a well-edited version of his life story; as he left out Nancy and Katie, she asked him what he did for sex these days. “I’m afraid I can’t answer that, you know client confidentiality.” Betsy laughed. She asked him what he had planned for the Xmas day. He explained with head down. “You should come to mine,” she offered, “have your lunch with your family and then come over. I’m not going to my family till Boxing Day. Your company would be great; we can try out material on each other as we’re not rivals.” Norman accepted her offer. They continued to talk, Norman fancied Betsy like crazy, but he held back. His situation at that time was complicated enough; he thought perhaps he could have Betsy as a friend as they were kindred spirits. It was daylight as Norman suggested coffee now they had solved all the World’s problems. “If only the World’s leaders would sit down and get pissed together,” said Betsy. They left the Two Buttocks together at 8am Xmas day. Betsy headed off in the opposite direction to Norman. She would get a minicab home. “Phone me later Norman, if you can make it, or even if you can’t,” being her parting words. He waved; she noticed a book in his hand. Norman was pleased that Ernest and Katie were still fast asleep as he tiptoed up the stairs and back into the sanctuary of his room. He undressed, got into bed and prayed he would be undisturbed for a few hours at least. He had overlooked the Xmas lunchtime session he must attend with the family at the Prince of Wales. As Xmas day had fallen on a Thursday, the Two Buttocks would not re-open till the following Wednesday New Years Eve. It would then stay closed for re-decoration only to re-open on February the 14th. This change of routine for Norman was causing him much concern. He had talked to Doc about him possibly doing stand-up at other venues. All this was on his mind lying in his room as Ernest called him. “Come on Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 33 Norman, it’s 11 o’clock, bathroom’s free, need to be down the Prince for twelve.” Norman, tired, confused but without a hangover responded. He ventured downstairs in good time to be greeted by Ernest and Katie both very excited at the day being Xmas. Katie had prepared the lunch which would slow cook ready for their return. “First drink is free,” said Ernest as the three set off. Soon they were all settled in the smoke filled Pub. The jukebox played the Xmas standards. Norman had to sit with Ernest and the lads from the brewery. Katie sat apart with her group of ladies. At 2 o’clock by tradition landlord Charles told them all to piss off to their homes, if they had one. ‘Sorry ladies for me French,’ he would say every year, confirmed Katie as they left. The smell of Katie’s cooking skills reminded Norman it was 24 hours since he last ate. He noticed Ernest and Katie seemed close for the first time since he arrived. The two men sat in armchairs, having helped themselves to their McNaughton’s supply. Ernest had poured Katie a very large sherry. She clearly was flattered by his new found manners an attention. Norman was just so relieved there was not a strained atmosphere. He even considered the possibility that he had dreamed of the sex with Katie and decided to leave it there. Pushing his luck even further he mentioned his invitation from Betsy. Ernest thought it about time Norman found a young lady, even if she was called Betsy and did turns. Katie seemed absolutely relieved. “She’s not a Lebanese is she? Lot of them about these days,” shouted Ernest. “He means Lesbian, Norman, but just ignore him,” shouted Katie even louder. Norman was sent into the hallway to phone his parents and wish them a happy Xmas, before being allowed his lunch. He nearly passed out waiting to tuck in. Next came presents from around the tree. Nancy had taken care of this for Norman, so all were very happy. Norman took note of these token gifts and their responses; he thought he could do a routine on this. As it was still just Daylight, he decided to check out if his invitation from Betsy was still on. He phoned her from the outside toilet as he relieved himself. “What’s that noise,” she enquired. “Just doing the washing up,” replied Norman. Betsy gave him her address. He made his excuses to Ernest and Katie and headed off for the local minicab office. Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 34 “Dock head please,” asked Norman. A few minutes later just south of the river Norman caught sight of Betsy. He stopped the cab. She had insisted on meeting him there, as she needed to stretch her legs. Betsy lived alone and had spent the day so far, on her own. They went for a walk at first, she led him through some old back streets to the river; Norman loved it, all was new and exciting to him as they viewed Tower Bridge and sat on a metal bench. Norman had lived in the very small world of Ernest and Katie since coming to London whilst all this was just round the corner. They headed back to Dockhead and onto the wharf side apartment which was home to Betsy. Behind iron gates a cobblestone courtyard welcomed them. She lived on the ground floor. They entered though a solid wooden door. For Norman he had entered a new world. The apartment was like something out of a film, a massive studio apartment. A Zen space thought Norman, only the bathroom was not at first visible as they entered the huge living area. Not wishing to seem uneasy he settled into a massive armchair. Betsy called him over to the glass doors she had opened. There he marvelled in silence as the River Thames filled the wharf. Betsy pointed to the end of the block of apartments where the Thames flowed by. “I feed ducks from here and even swans come,” she exclaimed. The two then settled in the centre of the room. Betsy offered Norman red or white wine, he took red and got his own bottle, Betsy hers. The conversation easily picked up from their last meeting. Cigarette smoke hung in the air-changing colour as it passed through the coloured spotlights. The background music, unknown to Norman, seemed perfect to oil their time together. He braved a trip to the toilet, ‘It just gets better,’ he thought, ‘this is great, what a shower-room and a bath. He could see himself in the tub; it has space for drinks, perhaps a cigarette and relax just relax he thought, but not on your own, she must share this but with whom had Betsy shared all this?’ He returned to the main room, the incense now burning added to his wonder as Betsy smiled. They chatted for hours, she was interested in his career plans adding, “There is talk of you on the circuit you know, well Doc’s circuit anyway.” Norman discovered he had an ego, “Who were they and what was the circuit?” He asked in an embarrassed manner. Betsy explained it all to him, he may have become a stand-up by default, but he had to take control now. She would work with him, Doc was offering too, “So, Norman” she said, “make today the first day of the best of your life.” Norman sighed, “If only.” Betsy dimmed the lights as the river rose outside the apartment. “Just relax now for a while,” she whispered. Then changing the music to suit, she Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 35 closed her eyes and dozed. Norman did the same, an hour passed with their silence. On opening her eyes, Betsy gazed at Norman for a while as if deciding. She then walked to him. As he slept she tugged his arm in time with his breathing. His eyes opened as she led him to the bathroom. There she undressed before entering the large shower room. Norman did the same as he came to his senses. In the showers she passed him fruit scented gels. The water was a perfect temperature, the noise like a waterfall. Betsy had her back to Norman as he massaged the gel into her soft skin working his way down her body. She then leant over the controls, he worked the lather between her legs and she turned the shower off. Norman convinced he must be in a dream, entered her easily. Betsy moaned with pleasure, she turned the showers back on gently. As he enjoyed her he had uninvited thoughts, he heard the John Lennon song in his head. ‘So this is Xmas and what have you done, I have fucked three women in 36 hours is what I’ve done, that’s one every 12 hours John, he smiled. Is this, what they call stand up comedy he asked himself,’ as they both climaxed then continued to shower. Betsy turned round showing her very small quite perfectly formed breasts to her lover. She held them in her hands offering them to him with bright pink erect nipples. He fondled them, “Follow me,” she said. Leading him first to the towel rack where they dried each other off, then through to her king-size bed back in the living area. The unmemorable perfect music was still repeating as in the darkened end of the room they enjoyed each others naked bodies, both bringing the other to climax again before falling into deep sleep. Norman awoke to the smell of breakfast cooking. He peered over the duvet to see Betsy in all her tall slender beauty moving around the apartment at lightning speed. She was cooking, cleaning and to his complete amazement practicing on her baby grand piano. He rose, not embarrassed by his nakedness, wished her a good morning, waved and walked through to the bath suit. After a great shower, he grabbed a clean towel and located his clothes. Back in the living area he lit a cigarette and swigged his glass of red wine. Betsy carried their cooked breakfast to a small table, set just inside the balcony doors overlooking the high tide. The room was very cold. She placed a bottle of red wine centre table. “Come Norman breakfast and fresh wine” she beckoned him. They tucked into a hearty, meaty breakfast washed down with the wine. The coffee that followed with sweet pancakes sobered the pair somewhat. “I think we can say we bonded last night Norman,” said Betsy, “Let’s stay friends for ever.” “Sounds just perfect to me,” Norman replied straight away and without any visible thought. Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 36 It was still only 8am Boxing day. Norman cleared away the breakfast mess. Betsy returned to speeding round the room. She stripped the bed depositing soiled linen into her washing machine, produced fresh bedding and threw various personal items into a suitcase. “I have a taxi booked for 8.30,” Betsy announced. “It can take you home after it drops me off at Liverpool Street Station. I have to spend a few days with my family in Norfolk but I’ll call you when I get back.” They were soon in the cab and Norman returned home. He tiptoed to his room without incident, to await his next challenge. He continued with his reading. “That was Nancy on the phone,” Shouted Katie at Norman’s door waking him, “she’s on her way over.” Norman stirred, rolling over onto Nigel’s Zen book. He felt pretty clean after all that showering at Betsy’s, so just went to the bathroom to wet his hair. Back in his room he worked some gel into his head with his fingers. That done he braved the world of Ernest and Katie. She was busy in the kitchen and explained Ernest had been banished from the house to tidy the already tidy backyard. “He gives off some terrible smells Xmas time, same every year, all the rich food and the booze of course. Good job the brewery doesn’t smell like him else no-one would want to work there, or buy the beer,” she moaned. Then pulling the back door closed she addressed Norman, “Need a word really,” she started, “Xmas eve, awkward really, got me going again really, after, I got thinking how to put things right. It wasn’t that wrong! We are not related flesh and blood wise. But I’m still your Auntie, old one at that, so I just needed to move on for both of us really. Later that night, for the first time since that night the Labour party got in, I slept with Ernest.” “Well it is Xmas,” said Norman, “the time of giving, Auntie.” “That will do, thank you very much Norman,” he recalled this haute tone. “So no need to dwell on the past is there, certain things best left to lie.” “Of course Auntie Katie, talking of which, perhaps we could not mention Betsy today, with Nancy coming over I would prefer not to,” he added. “Best you tell Ernest that right now,” she said opening the back door, “he’s the blabber mouth.” Norman had a word with Ernest and they came inside together. “We should get along to the Prince now,” insisted Ernest. “Nancy will know where to find us.” The three set off just past mid-day. “Like old times,” said Ernest. “We don’t see so much of you Norman, since the two thingies opened.” Eugene Binx www.bibliotastic.com 37 “Buttocks,” shouted Katie, Norman laughed, they all laughed. Well, thought Norman to himself, ‘That’s one down, two still to get sorted on the women front.’ They entered the pub. Norman knew the plan. He would sit with Ernest and the lads from the brewery. Katie would sit with her ladies, to be joined by Nancy. Katie and Nancy would leave the pub to go to the house and get lunch sorted. Charles would throw Ernest and Norman out of the pub at 3.15. Lunch would follow, then Monopoly. Norman had told Katie he didn’t understand how more than one person could play Monopoly; she’d clipped him round the ear, “Smart ass,” she’d called him. The Prince of Wales was very busy, through the smoke rising from their table Norman saw the security man from the brewery walk by. He strolled over to the ladies table, leant over to whisper to Katie. She let out an enormous shriek, and then burst into inconsolable wailing. Her lady friends did try to comfort her, without success. Ted the security man stepped back turning to Ernest. Norman heard the words, “It’s Nancy, she has been killed in a car crash,” he said, “she was coming here in a minicab when a coach in the Old Kent Road hit them. The police told her family, they phoned the brewery, I’m so sorry.” Charles had stood beside Ernest as Ted broke the news, he went back behind the bar, turned the music off and then the lights. He sent his barmaids round telling customers a tragedy had occurred. It was 2 o’clock some customers, not locals, left out of respect. Charles passed around brandy bottles. Norman could not speak, or move. However as Katie’s cries became louder, he moved to her holding her tightly. He looked over at Ernest, flicked his head to invite him to come over and take his wife. Ernest just about got the hint and walked over; Norman gently passed Katie over to him. “Best if you take Auntie home,” he said. Ernest nodded and led his wife out of the pub. Her lady friends still wept, quietly. The Boxing Day had just ground to a halt. Norman sat back down with the lads from the brewery. Charles joined them, putting his hand on Norman’s shoulder, only to comfort him because he was the youngest to be effected by the news. No one knew he had been Nancy’s last lover. On this tragic day, Norman stayed put in the pub. He wanted to give Ernest and Katie time and privacy, after all it was their home and their friend, he thought long and hard. He decided to return home as planned at 3.15. He entered the house, Ernest was sat in his armchair, he told Norman, Katie had taken her painkillers and gone to bed. Norman switched off the oven, then poured brandy for the two of them. Charles had insisted he take a bottle home. They sat in silence as the room became darker and darker and then just dark. Norman’s cigarette glow providing occasional light. ‘Our Zen and the Art of Stand-up Comedy www.bibliotastic.com 38 little secret,’ those words he kept hearing in his head, Nancy had taken the secret with her now. Early evening Ernest rose from his chair, put his hand out to hold Norman’s, nodded his head and went to join Katie. The effect of the brandy caused Norman to feel nothing at this time; a little sick, wretched and lost perhaps, but no feelings he could focus on and deal with. He creped out of the house and walked the short distance to Nancy’s. There was a light outside, that came on in the dark Norman knew this. He sat on her wall and wept. When he could cry no more without looking back he returned home. There was plenty of brandy left in the bottle; he put the television on low volume allowing himself to be sucked into the programmes he was watching. Firstly he was a cowboy then a gangster, then asleep. This morning after Boxing Day being Saturday brought some familiar sounds, to awaken Norman. The milkman, the papers and junk mail rattling, even children playing with their Xmas presents. He had slept the whole night in the armchair, out of respect really and confusion. Having never known anybody before to die, Norman was on a learning curve. He heard noises from above, Katie then walked into the lounge. She had put the kettle on then sat at the table, lit a cigarette and looked over at Norman. “She was like the sister I wish I had, we were closer than I was with your mum,” said Katie. “Same sort of thing with me,” replied Norman. Katie not understanding his reply said, “If you want to get away from all of this, we would understand, come back in a few weeks or so, up to you, our problem.” “Nancy was my friend as well as my boss,” answered Norman, “so I will stay around if that’s O.K. with you two, I would like to help you both through this.” “Tea Norman, “she offered, “I’d better take Ernest up a cup.” Norman accepted her offer. The weekend had now got going. Norman and Ernest slouched around; Katie was busy on the phone. She talked at great lengths to Nancy’s family. As the three of them would not return to their work at the brewery until the first week in the New Year, Katie instructed the two men to start getting out from under her feet, as soon as they liked. She took to cleaning the house non-stop with old pairs of Ernest’s Y-Fronts as her way of dealing with Nancy’s death. Ernest did as he would always do in holiday time nothing, apart from go to the pub twice a day. There, Katie’s ladies were absent, often to be found visiting each other. Norman found comfort and	361,234
13102-tuyen-tap-truyen-trao-phung-hay-nhat-cua-vo-tong-danh-meo-thuviensach.vn.pdf	ERROR: type should be string, got "https://thuviensach.vn\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nMục lục\nKing Kong\nTâm Sự Thanh Niên Đa Cấp\nHuyết Thư Từ Quất Lâm\nChuyện Nhà Cụ Tứ\nTết Của Gái Có Chồng\nBộ Phim Hót Nhất\nLàm Cha Khó Lắm\nNgười Nổi Tiếng\nCho Người Yêu Hoa Sữa\nLòng Dũng Cảm\nTam Quốc Diễn Hề\nXét Tuyển Đại Học\nVợ Và Xe Máy\nƯớc Mơ Trong Đời\nNhững Người Cùng Khổ\nHên Xui\nHịch Phây-Búc\nCô Dâu 80 Tuổi\nThật Và Giả\nNgôi Nhà Ma Ám\nTổng Hợp Phần I\nTổng Hợp Phần Ii\nLưu Bị 3 Lần Mời Khổng Minh\nCô Gái Bán Dâm\nÔng Đồ Giả\nĐôi Mắt Người Xưa\nChuyện Lì Xì\nNgày Không Phây\nChuyện Nhà Ruồi\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nLời Mẹ Dạy\nHội Trưởng Hội Phụ Nữ\nTổng Hợp Phần Iii\nTổng Hợp Phần Iv\nTổng Hợp Phần V\nTổng Hợp Phần Vi\nTổng Hợp Phần Vii\nTổng Hợp Phần Viii\nTổng Hợp Phần Ix\nTổng Hợp Phần X\nTổng Hợp Phần Xi\nTổng Hợp Phần Xii\nTổng Hợp Phần Xiii\nTổng Hợp Phần Xiv\nTổng Hợp Phần Xv\nTổng Hợp Phần Xvi\nTổng Hợp Phần Xvii\nTổng Hợp Phần Xviii\nTổng Hợp Phần Xix\nTổng Hợp Phần Xx\nTổng Hợp Phần Xxi\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nKing Kong\nSáng nay ngồi trà đá, tôi hỏi cô chủ quán:\n- Mấy hôm nay cô đi đâu mà không thấy bán vậy?\n- À! 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Tôi chưa được xem phim có cảnh cô chủ quán bỏ\nchạy khi bị King Kong đuổi theo, nhưng tôi nghĩ, chắc nó cũng chả khác gì\nnhiều so với cái cảnh tôi và cô vừa chạy ô tô điên đó đâu...\nKing Kong là con quái vật giả tưởng đáng sợ, tưởng như chỉ có trong\nphim ảnh, nhưng không, loài quái vật ấy vẫn đang hiển hiện giữa đời\nthường: ấy là khi một người chồng nát rượu về nhà cầm dao chém vợ; ấy là\nkhi một tài xế nồng nặc mùi cồn trong hơi thở, không làm chủ được tốc độ,\nvượt ẩu, lao nhanh...\nGiá mà chúng ta chỉ phải nhìn thấy King Kong trong phim, trong\nảnh...\n~~~~~~~~~~~***~~~~~~~~~~~\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nTâm Sự Thanh Niên Đa Cấp\nBuổi đầu tiên tôi đi làm, thật tình cờ, lại đúng vào hôm diễn ra đại hội\nhoa hồng của công ty. Các cụ dạy rằng: \"hơn nhau tấm áo manh quần, thả\nrông ở trần thì của ai cũng như của ai\" - quả không sai. Bộ com-lê chú rể -\nmua lại của thằng bạn vừa bị vợ bỏ - giúp tôi thấy tự tin hơn hẳn, đồng thời\nhòa nhập được dễ dàng với một rừng com-lê khác của các đồng nghiệp.\nTuy nhiên, khi mà anh MC gọi những cá nhân xuất sắc của công ty lên sân\nkhấu và công bố mức lương của họ nhận được trong tháng, thì bộ com-lê đã\nkhông thể giúp gì được tôi nữa: tôi đã sốc, và sốc rất nặng: người bét nhất\nlà 2 tỉ, trung bình là 3, 4 tỉ, đặc biệt, có cái anh đeo cà-vạt màu cứt chó,\nlương của anh ấy lên tới 7 tỉ.\nLúc ấy, tôi cứ ngỡ mình đang ở Zimbabwe, nơi mà đồng tiền mất giá,\nvà 1 tỉ chưa mua nổi bao thuốc lá; nơi mà người ta dùng tiền để chùi đít\nthay cho giấy vệ sinh; nơi mà các tỉ phú nhan nhản, lang thang, dặt dẹo\nngoài đường, mặc quần thủng đít, bới rác, ăn xin... Nhưng không, tôi đang\nở Việt Nam, nơi mà mẹ tôi dậy từ nửa đêm, còng lưng hái rau ngoài ruộng,\noằn vai gánh gồng ra chợ, bán đến trưa cũng chửa kiếm nổi trăm ngàn; nơi\nmà những quán cơm từ thiện giá 2 ngàn đồng vẫn đông ngùn ngụt; nơi mà\nmột chị phò hết đát, cùng đường, đói khát, sẵn sàng nhắm mắt để cho anh\nphụ hồ dày vò thân xác, rồi nhận về số tiền đủ để ăn bát phở... Bởi thế, tôi\nngưỡng mộ những đồng nghiệp của tôi, đặc biệt là cái anh đeo cà-vạt màu\ncứt chó!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nĐại hội kết thúc tốt đẹp trong tiếng vỗ tay rầm rầm của khán giả, à\nnhầm, của một rừng cán bộ nhân viên diện com-lê đứng dưới (người ta chỉ\ndùng từ khán giả khi xem kịch, xem tuồng thôi!). Lúc phi xe máy ra cổng,\ntôi thấy cái anh đeo cà-vạt màu cứt chó lương 7 tỉ ấy đang chen chúc đứng\nđợi xe buýt cùng một đống lố nhố những đồng nghiệp khác. Vì rất ngưỡng\nmộ anh, nên tôi dừng lại, hỏi nhà anh ở đâu, nếu tiện đường thì tôi xin phép\nchở anh về. May quá, xóm trọ của anh ấy cũng khá gần chỗ tôi, vậy là anh\nấy vui vẻ vén vạt áo com-lê, nhảy tót lên xe...\nTới nơi, anh cà-vạt cứt chó bảo tôi vào phòng trọ anh ấy chơi, rồi chạy\nsang phòng bên cạnh xin nước mời tôi, tiện thể vay gói mì tôm. Xong, anh\nchổng mông, phùng mồm thổi lửa, nhóm bếp than tổ ong, đun nước, pha\nmì. Tôi hỏi: \"Sao lương 7 tỉ mà anh vẫn đi xe buýt, vẫn ăn mì?\". Anh bảo:\n\"Bộ trưởng Thăng còn đi xe buýt được, Tổng Giám đốc Google sang Việt\nNam còn ngồi vỉa hè trà đá được, thì tại sao anh lại không? Thói quen của\nmột người đôi khi không phản ánh được đẳng cấp cũng như thu nhập của\nanh ta đâu em!\" - Vừa nói anh vừa bê bát mì lên húp soàn soạt, rồi lại tiếp\nlời: \"Hơn nữa, đi xe buýt và ăn mì tôm đã trở thành nét đẹp văn hóa chung\ncủa công ty ta rồi!\". Tôi nghe vậy thì hốt hoảng: \"Thế em mới vào làm, có\ncần phải đi xe buýt, ăn mì tôm để hòa chung vào nét đẹp văn hóa của công\nty không anh?\". Anh cứt chó bảo: \"Không cần! Em hãy cứ đi xe máy, và ăn\nnhững thứ em thích. Đến một lúc nào đó, em sẽ thấy mình không còn cách\nnào khác là phải bán xe máy, và cũng chẳng thể ăn gì khác ngoài mì tôm.\nẤy là khi em đã hòa mình vào với văn hóa của công ty ta rồi đó! Văn hóa\nkhông phải là sự cưỡng bức, ép buộc, mà văn hóa là sự tự nguyện, là sự\nthấm dần và thẩm thấu em ạ!\" - Nói rồi, anh lại lò dò sang phòng bên cạnh\nmượn lọ Sunlight, hì hụi ra chỗ vòi nước đầu hồi, chổng mông rửa bát.\nTối hôm đó, nhóm tôi tập trung tại đường Quang Trung (song song và\nvuông góc với đường Nguyễn Huệ) để cùng nhau tuyên bố mục tiêu, rồi\ngào thét, hú hét \"À hu! À hu!\", \"Ô yes! Ô yes!\" như mấy thằng điên. Tôi\nlần đầu được xuống đường cùng nhóm nên cực kỳ phấn khích, gào rất kinh\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nvà hét hết mình, đến nỗi vãi cả cứt ra quần. Anh trưởng nhóm ngửi thấy\nvậy thì động viên: \"Không sao đâu! Em mới vào làm, ăn uống còn tùy tiện,\nlại gào hăng quá, nên vãi cứt là điều hiển nhiên. Sau này, khi em ăn mì tôm\ntriền miên, em táo bón, thì có bôi Castrol vào, cứt cũng không vãi được!\".\nLúc cả nhóm quay về, thấy con Camry mới coóng đang đỗ bên đường,\nanh trưởng nhóm liền sán lại gần, tựa vào cửa xe, móc điện thoại ra tự\nsướng. Tôi còn chưa hiểu tại sao anh làm vậy thì đã thấy anh hồ hởi post\ncái ảnh vừa chụp đó lên Phây, caption rất hay: \"Trong tất cả những em xe\ncủa mình thì em này là mình ưng nhất, vì phần thân trên của em ấy nhẹ, bốc\nđầu rất dễ!\". Rồi tiện thể, anh quay sang bảo tôi: \"Em về xóa ngay mấy cái\nảnh cũ trên Phây của em đi! Thay vào bằng ảnh chụp với con Camry này,\nrồi sáng mai anh đưa em lên mấy trung tâm mua sắm, chụp thêm ít ảnh nữa\nđể dành post dần. Ai lại com-lê oai như giám đốc, lương tháng vài ba tỉ mà\nPhây toàn thấy ảnh cho lợn ăn, với cả ra đồng chăn bò, ra vườn tưới phân\nbao giờ\". Anh còn bảo anh có ảnh của tất cả những thắng cảnh du lịch đẹp\nnhất của 27 nước thuộc liên minh EU, tôi thích đi du lịch nước nào thì cứ\nđưa ảnh chân dung của tôi cho anh, anh sẽ ghép giúp...\nHôm trước về quê, tôi có qua chơi nhà chú Điền - là ông chú bên nội\nnhà tôi. Tôi cho chú Điền xem ảnh tôi đang trèo lên ngọn tháp Ép-Phen ở\nPa-ri, chống đẩy trên nóc nhà hát Con sò ở Sít-ni, chú cứ trầm trồ, xuýt xoa,\nkhen ảnh đẹp quá! Rồi khi tôi bảo lương của tôi hiện giờ là hai tỉ ba thì chú\ntròn mắt, há hốc mồm ra. Biết cá đã cắn câu, tôi tỉ tê rủ chú Điền về công ty\ntôi làm cho vui. Chú Điền cười tươi đầy hứng thú, nhưng rồi giọng lại\nchùng xuống: \"Chú bị thoái hóa đốt sống đít, đi đứng rất khó khăn, lại thêm\nbệnh trĩ kinh niên, nên lúc ngồi cũng vô cùng bất tiện. Không biết, liệu\ncông ty cháu có chịu nhận?\". Tôi cười bảo: \"Nhận hết chú ơi! Công ty cháu\nvừa tuyển vào một anh bị liệt toàn thân, sống thực vật, chỉ nằm bất động\ntrên giường, há mồm chờ người đút sữa. Ấy vậy mà lương của anh ấy cũng\nhơn hai tỉ đấy!\".\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nHứng thú là vậy, nhưng khi nhắc đến khoản tiền phải nộp để được vào\nlàm ở công ty tôi thì chú Điền lại nhíu mày. Tôi hiểu điều này, bởi nhà chú\nĐiền là một trong những hộ nghèo nhất xã tôi. Lúc tiễn tôi ra cổng, giọng\nchú Điền có vẻ rất quyết tâm: \"Cháu cứ về đi, chú sẽ cố xoay tiền, khi nào\nđủ chú sẽ báo!\" - Vừa nói, chú Điền vừa lấy dây xích con chó nhà chú vào\ngốc cây. Tôi hỏi sao lại phải xích như vậy, thì chú bảo vì bọn trộm chó bây\ngiờ manh động lắm, thả ra phát là chúng nó siết cổ kéo đi ngay.\nVề tới nhà, tôi lập tức cởi bộ com-lê ra, rồi lấy dẻ ướt gột qua cho đỡ\nbẩn (đúng ra là phải giặt, vì tôi đã mặc được hơn tuần rồi, nhưng chiều tôi\nlại phải diện nó sang nhà mấy bác mấy cô bên họ ngoại, giặt sẽ không khô\nkịp). Vừa gột được vài phát thì thằng con chú Điền chạy qua nói là bố nó\nxoay được tiền rồi, bảo tôi sang lấy. Tôi sướng quá, lại diện bộ com-lê vào,\nlao đi ngay. Tới nơi, tôi thấy chú Điền cùng với một gã nào đó đang trói\nquặt con chó nhà chú ấy lại. Con chó rên ư ử, mồm nhỏ dãi, nằm tuyệt\nvọng giữa sân. Chú Điền nhìn tôi, giọng bùi ngùi: \"Chú vay mấy nhà quanh\nđây mà vẫn chưa đủ, nên đành gọi thợ vào bán luôn con chó. Cũng hơi tiếc,\nvì con chó này sống rất có tình...\".\nCon chó bị trói vẫn nằm đó và nhìn tôi bằng ánh mắt rất lạ, cứ như thể\ntôi là thằng trộm chó vậy! Rồi mồm nó cố há ra, rít lên những tràng âm\nthanh vô nghĩa, như đang muốn nhắn nhủ với tôi điều gì đó. Nó tưởng tôi là\nđồng loại, và hiểu lời nó hay sao?\nLúc đưa tiền cho tôi, chú Điền cứ chùi chùi tay vào vạt áo, bảo: \"Tay\nchú vừa bắt chó, dính cứt chó, nên dính cả cứt vào tiền, hơi bẩn, cháu thông\ncảm!\". Tôi nghĩ thầm trong dạ: \"Đúng là người nhà quê, chu đáo một cách\nquá thể: Giờ, người đời chả coi chúng cháu như cứt, thế thì việc gì mà\nchúng cháu phải sợ cứt!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nHuyết Thư Từ Quất Lâm\nTrước tiên, chúng em - những cô gái đang làm phò ở Quất Lâm - xin\nkhẳng định đây là bức huyết thư được viết bằng máu của chúng em: người\ncắt máu ở tay, người cắt ở chân, người cắt ở bẹn, người may mắn đến tháng\nthì không phải cắt, vì có sẵn rồi, mỗi người góp một vài giọt để viết nên\nđược bức huyết thư này.\nNhư mọi người đã biết, mấy ngày gần đây, truyền thông và mạng xã\nhội ầm ĩ, xôn xao về vụ một cô ca sĩ bỏ chồng rồi ngang nhiên cặp kè với\nmột đại gia đang có vợ, gây bức xúc dư luận. Chuyện đó thực sự chúng em\nkhông quan tâm vì nó không ảnh hưởng tới thu nhập của chúng em. Duy\nchỉ có một điều khiến chúng em không hài lòng, đó là báo chí, truyền\nthông, dư luận, và đặc biệt là hội các mẹ bỉm sữa, cứ liên tục gọi cô ca sĩ đó\nlà phò. Thay mặt cho những đồng nghiệp khác đang công tác trong ngành\nphò trên cả nước (chúng em nghĩ là chúng em đủ tư cách để \"thay mặt\", vì\ntheo như thông báo mới nhất của Tổ chức nghiên cứu và phát triển phò\nLiên hợp quốc thì số lượng phò ở Quất Lâm hiện nay chiếm 69% tổng\nlượng phò quốc gia, tức là chiếm quá bán, mà quá bán thì được quyền đại\ndiện), chúng em nghiêm khắc đề nghị báo chí, truyền thông, dư luận, và\nđặc biệt là hội các mẹ bỉm sữa không được gọi cô ca sĩ đó là phò nữa, vì\ngọi như thế là đang xúc phạm những người làm phò chân chính như chúng\nem.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTại sao ư? Trước tiên, những người làm phò chân chính ở Quất Lâm\nnhư chúng em không đi cướp chồng, không phá hoại hạnh phúc gia đình\nngười khác. Thậm chí, khách đến chỗ bọn em, sau khi đã giải tỏa bức xúc,\ncòn được bọn em khuyên nhủ là nên quan tâm tới gia đình, chăm sóc cho\nvợ con. Khách nghe mười lần thì cả mười lần đều thấm thía, gật đầu lia lịa.\nChúng em phục vụ khách cũng rất kín đáo, tế nhị, chứ không dám công\nkhai nắm tay khách đi du lịch, mua sắm khắp nơi.\nChúng em làm việc trên cơ sở hết lòng tôn trọng khách, đặt lợi ích của\nkhách lên hàng đầu: có khách không thích chơi bao, chúng em lại phải ngọt\nngào phân tích về nguy cơ và tác hại của các bệnh lây nhiễm qua đường\ntình dục khi quan hệ mà không dùng biện pháp bảo vệ; có khách để quên\nví, chúng em lần theo địa chỉ, mang đến tận nhà, trao trả tận tay vợ hoặc\nngười yêu của khách; có khách bị xuất tinh sớm, chưa cho vào đã ra, chúng\nem linh động giảm tiền cho một nửa - chứ chúng em không bao giờ lợi\ndụng, đào mỏ hay bất chấp thủ đoạn để moi tiền nơi khách.\nChúng em cũng làm việc theo mức giá đã định sẵn, giàu hay nghèo\nchúng em đều trân trọng và phục vụ hết mình, chẳng bao giờ phân biệt. Bởi\nthế, không có chuyện vì đại gia này nhiều Đô-La mà chúng em săn đón, rồi\nkhi thấy đại gia khác lắm kim cương, bọn em lại bám theo...\nPhò đã được công nhận là một ngành du lịch sinh lý hợp pháp ở rất\nnhiều quốc gia. Còn ở nước ta, chúng em linh cảm rằng: \"ngày ấy, ngày ấy\nsẽ không xa xôi\". Và nếu cái \"ngày không xa xôi\" ấy thành hiện thực, thì\nphò chúng em sẽ được vào biên chế, được đóng bảo hiểm xã hội, về hưu sẽ\ncó lương, nghỉ đẻ được hưởng chế độ thai sản. Khi ấy, cùng với Holiwood -\nkinh đô điện ảnh, Milan - kinh đô thời trang, Quất Lâm cũng sẽ chuyển\nmình, trở thành kinh đô phò của thế giới.\nNói vậy để thấy, phò chúng em vẫn đáng được báo chí, truyền thông,\ndư luận, và đặc biệt là hội các mẹ bỉm sữa tôn trọng, đừng có cái gì cũng\ntùy tiện mang ra so sánh với phò! Nghe chửa?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nChuyện Nhà Cụ Tứ\nBà cụ Tứ ra trước ban thờ, kính cẩn thắp hương, lầm rầm khấn vái.\nKhói hương bảng lảng quyện với mùi khen khét bốc ra từ ngọn đèn dầu leo\nlét khiến cho không khí trong căn nhà bà cụ Tứ vừa mang nét tôn nghiêm\nvừa có chút gì đó rất nặng nề. Anh con trai út đứng ngay phía sau lưng cụ,\ntay lăm lăm ống tuýp, mặt lạnh lùng...\nĐợi mẹ thắp hương xong, người con trai út mới chầm chậm tiến lên,\nchắp tay vái 3 vái trước ban thờ, xong quay sang mẹ vái thêm 3 vái nữa,\ntổng cộng là 6 vái, rồi dõng dạc cất lời như tuyên thệ:\n- Con đi phen này thề sống chết với khách thập phương và bà con thôn\nxóm. Bao giờ cướp được lộc cầm chắc trong tay, con mới trở về!\nBà cụ Tứ lau vội vệt nước mắt - chả biết tự lúc nào đã lăn dài trên gò\nmá nhăn nheo - rồi thều thào vừa nói vừa đưa cho con trai cái túi ni-lông\nđựng đầy bông băng và thuốc sát trùng:\n- Con cầm cái này theo, nhỡ bị thương thì còn kịp thời sơ cứu. Con\nhãy nhớ: tuy mình đi cướp lộc, nhưng phải cướp bằng cái tâm, cướp có văn\nhóa! Nhớ chưa con?\nTrống ngoài đền vang rền từng hồi giục giã, báo hiệu giờ cướp đã đến.\nAnh con út chắp tay từ biệt mẹ rồi hung hãn chạy như ăn cướp về hướng lễ\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nhội, bỏ lại cụ Tứ một mình trong căn nhà tranh nghèo, nghiêng nghiêng,\nxiêu vẹo. Cụ Tứ muốn đi cướp cùng con lắm, nhưng sức yếu rồi, ra đó, gặp\nmấy thằng thanh niên trẻ khỏe, chúng nó đạp cho phát là lăn quay, nên lại\nthôi...\n- Mẹ ơi! Cho con đi đái!\nNghe tiếng gọi của anh con cả vọng ra từ trong buồng, bà cụ Tứ lật đật\nchạy vào nâng con dậy, cầm bô, cầm gậy cho con đi đái (gậy ở đây là gậy\ntre để chống cho dễ ngồi dậy, làm ơn đừng nghĩ bậy). Anh này trước đây to\nkhỏe như Lý Đức, nhưng năm ngoái đi cướp lộc ngoài đền, bị một thằng nó\nđạp cho gẫy đốt sống lưng, giờ chỉ nằm giường, ngồi dậy cũng khó, chưa\nnói gì là đi hay đứng.\nĐang cho thằng cả đái, cụ Tứ lại nghe tiếng ú ớ của thằng hai từ gian\nngoài vọng vào. Thằng này trước đây to khỏe như Phạm Văn Mách, nhưng\nnăm ngoái đi cướp lộc ngoài đền, bị một đứa nó đập ống tuýp vào đầu, giờ\nliệt toàn thân, chỉ còn mỗi cái mồm là ú ớ được. Đòi ăn nó kêu ú ớ, đòi ỉa\nnó cũng kêu ú ớ, thành ra, nghe tiếng con kêu, cụ cũng chẳng biết là nó\nđang muốn ăn hay muốn ỉa...\nGiờ, tất cả hi vọng và mong chờ, cụ đặt cả vào thằng út. Cầu cho năm\nnay nó cướp được lộc và lành lặn trở về, để nhà cụ sẽ có một năm thật\nnhiều may mắn...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nTết Của Gái Có Chồng\nRa Tết, đi làm, gặp lại đứa em mới lấy chồng đợt trước Tết, mình hỏi:\n\"Sao? Thấy Tết khi đã lấy chồng có khác với Tết lúc mới yêu nhau\nkhông?\". Nó thở dài, bảo: \"Vẫn thế thôi! Chả khác gì!\", rồi kể:\n\"28 Tết năm ngoái, anh ấy đưa em đi mua quần áo. Thấy mắt em sáng\nlên khi nhìn thấy cái váy đẹp lung linh, anh ấy cười, móc ví mua luôn. Khi\nbiết cái váy ấy có giá hơn ba triệu, em xót tiền, cứ ôm cái váy rưng rưng. 28\nTết năm nay, em đòi anh ấy đưa em đi mua quần áo, anh ấymở tủ, lôi cái\nváy năm ngoái ra, bảo: \"Còn đẹp thế này, việc gì phải mua váy mới\". Em\nkhi ấy không xót tiền, nhưng cũng lại ôm cái váy rưng rưng...\n29 Tết năm ngoái, em nói thèm ăn đùi gà KFC, anh ấy đưa em đi, gọi\ncho em luôn 5 cái. Em chỉ ăn được 4, anh ấy bảo: \"Em dạo này ăn uống vớ\nvẩn quá, thảo nào sút cân\". Rồi anh ấy ép em ăn bằng hết cái đùi gà thứ 5.\nEm no quá, cầm cái đùi gà đưa lên mồm mà cổ cứ nghẹn ứ, không sao xơi\nnổi. 29 Tết năm nay, em mua KFC về nhà, dọn sẵn ra bàn, đợi anh ấy về\ncùng ăn. Nhưng em gọi điện, anh ấy nói là bận ăn tất niên với bạn, bảo em\ncứ ăn một mình. Em khi ấy đang đói, mà sao cầm cái đùi gà đưa lên mồm\nvẫn cứ nghẹn ứ, không sao xơi nổi...\nMùng 1 Tết năm ngoái, em nằm dài trên giường cắn hạt hướng dương,\nbật sẵn TodayTV, chờ xem \"Cô dâu 8 tuổi\". Đùng phát mất cáp, không xem\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nđược, em nhìn cái tivi mà bất lực, ấm ức tột cùng. Mùng 1 Tết năm nay, em\nchổng mông trong bếp vặt lông gà, làm cơm cúng. Biết đã đến giờ chiếu\nphim \"Cô dâu 8 tuổi\" mà không thể nào bỏ việc ra xem được. Em lại nhìn\ncái tivi mà bất lực, ấm ức tột cùng...\nMùng 2 Tết năm ngoái, anh ấy chở em đi chơi bằng xe máy. Ôm anh\nấy từ phía sau, hai bàn tay em tê đi vì gió lạnh, nhưng mặt em lại nóng\nbừng vì được kề vào vai, gần sát môi anh ấy, cảm nhận hơi ấm từ anh qua\ntừng làn hơi thở. Mùng 2 Tết năm nay, em ngồi dạng háng dưới bếp rửa\nbát, hai bàn tay tê đi vì nước lạnh, nhưng mặt em lại nóng bừng vì cái bếp\nthan tổ ong đặt ngay bên, cảm nhận hơi ấm qua từng mớ khói khét lẹt đang\nnồng nàn thốc thẳng vào mặt...\nMùng 3 Tết năm ngoái, em và anh ấy ở bên nhau cả ngày trong nhà\nnghỉ. Đó cũng là hôm em trao cho anh thứ quý giá nhất của đời người con\ngái. Lúc dậy, thấy một vệt màu hồng vương trên ga trắng, chẳng hiểu sao\nem lại thấy tủi lòng, ôm mặt khóc rưng rưng. Mùng 3 Tết năm nay, em và\nanh ấy cũng ở bên nhau cả ngày trong phòng ngủ: em thì kiệt sức và mệt\nmỏi nên đổ bệnh, còn anh ấy thì nhậu nhẹt say mềm nên thở phì phò như\ncon lợn vừa bị chọc tiết đang chờ người ta đun nước nóng cạo lông. Lúc\ndậy, thấy cái đống anh nôn mửa ra loang lổ trên ga trắng, chẳng hiểu sao\nem lại thấy tủi lòng, ôm mặt khóc rưng rưng...\"\nỪ, nghe nó kể thì đúng là \"vẫn thế thôi, chả khác gì\" thật!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nBộ Phim Hót Nhất\nDanh hiệu này chắc chắn thuộc về \"Cô dâu 8 tuổi\". Nó hót đến độ một\nhãng phim tư nhân rất nổi tiếng (nhưng ít người biết đến) đã quyết định\nmua lại kịch bản để Việt hóa. Hãng phim này cũng đã rất chịu chơi khi mời\nVíc To Vú - đạo diễn đang nổi như cồn sau bộ phim \"Tôi thấy dây vàng\ntrên cổ anh\" - về làm đạo diễn. Tuy nhiên, Víc To Vú đã khéo léo từ chối,\nanh nói: \"Tôi năm nay đã hơn 40 tuổi rồi, làm xong 2000 tập của bộ phim\nnày, nếu may mắn còn sống, thì tôi chắc cũng phải ngoài 90. Anh bảo,\nngoài 90 mà chưa ỉa đùn, chưa phải gọi con cái vào rửa đít cho là hạnh\nphúc lắm rồi, sức đâu mà làm đạo diễn nữa\".\nKhông chỉ khó khăn về khâu đạo diễn, việc lựa chọn diễn viên chính\ncho phim cũng là vấn đề khiến đơn vị sản xuất rất đau đầu. Bé Thảo - năm\nnay 8 tuổi, người được mời đóng vai Ăn Năn Đi (tên phiên âm Tiếng Việt\ncủa Anandi) - cũng đã chính thức tuyên bố sẽ không tham gia phim này.\nThảo chia sẻ: \"Điện ảnh với Thảo chỉ là cuộc dạo chơi, bởi ước mơ lớn\nnhất của Thảo là trở thành cô giáo. Nếu tham gia bộ phim này, đến khi quay\nxong, thì Thảo cũng đã gần 60 tuổi rồi, lúc ấy mới làm cô giáo thì Thảo sợ\nhọc sinh không còn hứng thú với Thảo nữa!\".\nCon đường đắt giá nhất\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nThuộc về con đường sắp xây từ Hoàng Cầu tới nút giao Giảng Võ -\nLáng Hạ, với chi phí 2.5 tỷ/m.\nTrước giờ, tôi chỉ biết, và hay ra con đường rẻ nhất là đường Phạm\nVăn Đồng: 200k/shot. Hôm nào trúng lô, khá khẩm hơn chút, thì tôi ra\nđường Trần Duy Hưng: 500k/shot. Bữa nào tiếp khách của công ty, tiền\ntính vào công tác phí, thì tôi sẽ ra Nguyễn Chí Thanh: 1 củ/shot.\nChỉ đến hôm trước, đi với sếp tới đoạn Hoàng Cầu, sếp bảo xuống hỏi\ngiá. Tôi chọn em ngon nhất để hỏi, em ấy nói 3 triệu. Thấy tôi há hốc mồm,\nem ấy giải thích: \"Đây là con đường đắt nhất: 2.5 tỷ/m. Bọn em đứng đón\nkhách ở đây, đương nhiên là giá cũng phải cao chứ anh!\".\nTrên đường vòng xe trở về Phạm Văn Đồng, sếp tôi luôn miệng lắc\nđầu, chửi thầm: \"3 triệu/shot! Ăn cướp à!\".\nCon vật đắt giá nhất\nCó người cho rằng đó là chim, bởi trên đời, không thiếu những người\nđàn bà vì mê chim mà bỏ cả chồng con, gia đình. Kẻ lại bảo rằng đó là\nbướm, bởi thế gian, rất nhiều người đàn ông vì bướm mà tan nát cửa nhà,\nkhuynh gia bại sản. Tuy vậy, danh hiệu con vật đắt giá nhất lại thuộc về con\nruồi.\nCon ruồi này, tuy giá trên hợp đồng chỉ là 500 triệu. Nhưng sau đó, nó\nđã tặng thêm cho bên bán 7 năm tù giam, và khuyến mại cho bên mua một\ncuộc khủng hoảng thương hiệu nghiêm trọng mà thiệt hại được các chuyên\ngia kinh tế ước đoán lên tới xấp xỉ 2000 tỷ đồng.\nCũng con ruồi này, khi dính trên mép một cô giáo vô danh, ít ai biết\ntới, đã đột ngột khiến cô giáo ấy nổi như cồn, tiếng tăm bay xa muôn nhà,\nmọi ngả, đe dọa nghiêm trọng đến vị thế dẫn đầu của một cô giáo khác -\nngười đã được viết thành truyện, thành sách, in dấu ấn đậm nét trong lòng\nthanh thiếu niên Việt Nam, đặc biệt là đời 7, 8, và 9x.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nKhu vui chơi đông khách nhất\nDanh hiệu này khó thoát khỏi tay của Công viên nước Hồ Tây ngày\nmiễn phí. Chúng ta cùng tìm hiểu xem lý do gì giúp Công viên nước Hồ\nTây không có đối thủ cạnh tranh trong hạng mục này.\nTrước tiên, đến với Công viên nước Hồ Tây ngày miễn phí, khách sẽ\nnhư được trở về với tuổi thơ. Bởi nhìn hàng nghìn thanh niên cởi trần mặc\nquần sịp chen chúc, trêu ghẹo nhau trong bể bơi, ta sẽ liên tưởng ngay tới\ncảnh lũ khỉ vờn nhau dưới thác nước ở Hoa Quả Sơn, trong phim Tây Du\nKý - bộ phim mà chúng ta ít nhất đã được xem một đôi lần khi còn thơ bé.\nThứ hai, nhiều em gái teen bây giờ, khi thấy bạn bè xung quanh tất cả\nđều đã mất trinh, chỉ riêng mình là vẫn còn zin, thì tỏ ra xấu hổ, mặc cảm,\nvà khao khát cháy bỏng một ngày không xa cũng sẽ được mất trinh cho\nbằng bạn bằng bè. Nắm bắt được nhu cầu này, Công viên nước Hồ Tây đã\ndựng một hàng rào sắt nhọn cho khách trèo qua, nhằm giúp cái khát khao\ncháy bỏng và chính đáng của rất nhiều em gái teen ấy trở thành hiện thực.\nCác nam thanh niên FA cũng vậy, họ tất nhiên là luôn ước ao một\nngày được nắm tay, ôm ấp, vỗ về một người con gái. Và đến với công viên\nnước Hồ Tây, họ được làm việc đó tha hồ, thoải mái. Không chỉ nắm tay\nmà còn nắm tóc, nắm dây coóc-sê; không chỉ vỗ về mà còn vỗ đùi, vỗ\nmông, vỗ ngực...\nBức tranh bí ẩn nhất\nNhiều người sẽ nghĩ ngay đến bức tranh trừu tượng của họa sĩ Đít-To-\nNhư-Bô (cháu ruột của đại thi hào Víc-To- Huy-Gô). Bức tranh này vẽ cận\ncảnh cái miệng của một người đàn ông đang ăn xúc xích với hàng ria mép\nrậm rạp, đen sì, quăn tít. Tuy nhiên, sự trừu tượng lại tập trung vào cái\nmiệng, khi nó không nằm ngang mà lại bị xoay thành dọc. Hai cái môi của\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nngười đàn ông đang ngậm chặt cái xúc xích, tương ớt đỏ lòm trào ra hai\nbên mép. Trừu tượng hơn nữa khi mà cái xúc xích ấy cũng có ria mép.\nTuy nhiên, danh hiệu bức tranh bí ẩn nhất xứng đáng được trao cho\nbức tranh mà vị cán bộ tỉnh nọ đã tặng cho hội người mù nọ. Lý do ư? Vì\nbức tranh ăn xúc xích của Đít-To-Như-Bô, tuy trừu tượng nhưng người\nxem vẫn nhìn được ra là họa sĩ vẽ cái gì. Còn bức tranh tặng cho hội người\nmù thì hội người mù chịu, không nhìn được, nên hiển nhiên, nó phải là bức\ntranh bí ẩn nhất!\nBài viết hay nhất\nLiệu có phải là bài viết này không? Nếu phải: hãy bấm like để đồng\ntình, nếu không phải: hãy bấm like để phản đối. Người nào không bấm like,\nấy là người không có lập trường, là người ba phải. Đừng như thế!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nLàm Cha Khó Lắm\nCon trai tôi đang ngồi bàn học, thì đột nhiên cầm quyển vở chạy lại\nchỗ tôi, hỏi:\n- Bố ơi, cái câu \"Nhất cử lưỡng tiện\" này khó hiểu quá! Bố giải thích\ncho con với!\nTôi lắc đầu, vờ ra vẻ không hài lòng, rồi cốc nhẹ vào đầu con, mắng\nyêu:\n- Trên lớp thì không chịu nghe giảng, rồi giờ lại về hỏi bố! Thế con\nnói cho bố nghe, con hiểu câu này thế nào?\n- Dạ! Con hiểu \"Nhất\" là một, \"Cử\" là cử chỉ, hành động, \"Lưỡng\" là\nhai. Tức là một hành động nhưng lại được hai cái tiện!\n- Giỏi lắm! Con trai bố hiểu đúng rồi đấy!\n- Nhưng con lại chưa hiểu hai cái tiện ấy là những tiện gì!\n- À! Là tiểu tiện và đại tiện đó con! Một hành động mà kết hợp được\ncả tiểu tiện và đại điện!\n- Thế tức là đi ỉa hả bố?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Đúng rồi con!\n- Nhưng hôm qua, con đi ỉa mà chỉ thấy tiểu tiện, mãi cũng không đại\ntiện được bố ạ!\n- Đấy là con đang bị táo bón! Con phải chịu khó ăn nhiều rau quả,\nuống nhiều nước, như thế thì con sẽ lại \"Nhất cử lưỡng tiện\" ngay thôi!\n- Thế có khi nào mình đi ỉa mà lại chỉ có đại tiện, không có tiểu tiện\nkhông bố?\n- Có chứ con! Đó là khi con bị tiêu chảy liên tục, vài phút đi một lần,\nthì tiểu tiện sẽ không cung cấp kịp, chỉ còn đại tiện thôi. Để tránh tình trạng\nấy, con phải chú ý ăn uống hợp vệ sinh, ăn chín, uống sôi, không dùng thực\nphẩm ôi thiu hoặc để lâu ngày! Con trai bố rõ chưa?\n- Dạ! Con nhớ rồi ạ!\nDứt lời, cu cậu lại ngoan ngoãn chạy về bàn học.\nTôi biết, nhiều ông bố, bà mẹ, ở vào trường hợp như vừa rồi của tôi, sẽ\nrất dễ nổi cáu và quát mắng con. Đó là điều rất không nên. Các bạn phải\nhiểu rằng con cái chúng ta đang ở độ tuổi khám phá, tìm tòi và tiếp thu tri\nthức, bởi vậy, là cha mẹ, chúng ta phải có trách nhiệm giảng giải, phân tích\nsao cho con cái chúng ta hiểu được sự việc, nắm rõ được bản chất của vấn\nđề.\nHơn nữa, ngoài vấn đề con hỏi, nếu có cơ hội, chúng ta hãy cung cấp\ncho con thêm những kiến thức xã hội mở rộng khác. Ví dụ như vừa rồi, con\ntôi chỉ hỏi về câu tục ngữ, nhưng tôi lại khéo léo lồng ghép vào đó những\nbài học về vệ sinh an toàn thực phẩm, những thói quen sinh hoạt, ăn uống\ncó lợi cho tiêu hóa.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nLàm giàu không khó - ít ra là so với việc làm một người bố, người mẹ\ntốt! Chả thế mà từ hồi bé tí tẹo, tôi đã được học một bài thơ rất hay dạy\ncách làm cha. Tôi không thuộc hết, chỉ nhớ câu nào thì xin chép ra câu ấy:\nLàm cha khó lắm\nPhải đâu chuyện đùa\nVợ cho kẹo bánh\nChia con phần hơn\nCó bên ti đẹp\nCũng nhường con luôn...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nNgười Nổi Tiếng\nTừ khi Tòng đua đòi viết lách và phát hành được vài quyển sách vớ\nvẩn đến giờ, có ai đó - không biết vì ưu ái, hay vì một phút bốc đồng không\nkiểm soát được lời nói - đã gọi Tòng là \"người nổi tiếng\". Tòng thực không\ndám nhận 3 từ đó, và cũng không muốn 3 từ đó. Bởi theo như những gì\nTòng đọc trên báo chí, thì làm người nổi tiếng khổ bỏ mẹ, chả sung sướng\ngì đâu!\nLàm người nổi tiếng thì phải vào nhà hàng sang trọng, ngồi điều hòa,\nmà Tòng thì lại bị cái bệnh dị ứng điều hòa: cứ vào chỗ nào có máy lạnh,\nnhiệt độ thấp hoặc cao hơn ngoài trời là hai bẹn Tòng (và các vùng lân cận)\nlại nổi mụn đỏ ửng, ngứa ngáy vô cùng. Đó là một trong hai lí do vì sao\nTòng hay ngồi ở mấy quán bình dân, vỉa hè (lý do còn lại là vì không có\ntiền).\nLàm người nổi tiếng thì phải ngồi xe hơi, hoặc không cũng phải xe tay\nga xịn, trong khi Tòng bị say xe, rất sợ ô tô. Xe ga Tòng cũng không biết đi\n(vì không biết vào số ở chỗ nào). Đó là một trong hai lý do tại saoTòng vẫn\nchạy con Wave ghẻ (lý do còn lại là vì không có tiền). Nói qua về con\nWave ghẻ của Tòng. Khi con xe ấy lưu thông thì dù có ở cách xa cả trăm\nmét cũng sẽ vẫn nghe được tiếng yếm nhựa, tiếng chắn bùn, chắn xích va\nvào nhau loạch xoạch, lọc cọc, đinh tai nhức óc. Việc bấm còi do đó trở nên\nkhông cần thiết, thành ra, cái xe đã nát bét, nhưng riêng cái còi vẫn mới đét.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTrường hợp ai đó bị điếc, thì cũng vẫn không khó để người đó có thể\nnhận biết được xe của Tòng nhờ đám khói nghi ngút phụt ra dày đặc từ ống\nxả với bán kính bao phủ lên tới cả kilomet. Có lần đang chạy, nghe cái yếm\nrơi xuống đường đánh \"xoảng\" một phát, Tòng lập tức dừng xe, quay lại\nnhưng vẫn không thể nhìn thấy cái yếm đang nằm chỗ nào vì khói quá dày\nđặc.\nMặt khác, thận của Tòng hơi yếu, phải đi đái liên tục. Đêm muốn ngủ\nngon vẫn phải đóng bỉm; ngày nhiều lúc đang đi trên đường phải dừng xe\nlại, chạy vào gốc cây đái. Nếu làm người nổi tiếng, sao dám đái bậy được?\nThêm nữa, Tòng còn thường xuyên phải vào nhà nghỉ. Vào thì tất\nnhiên chỉ nằm ngủ đơn thuần, lành mạnh, trong sáng thôi, nhưng nếu là\nngười nổi tiếng, sẽ bị chụp hình, post lên mạng, lên Phây, rồi vợ con biết\nđược lại hiểu lầm, tan nát hạnh phúc gia đình!\nTóm lại, Tòng không muốn nổi tiếng, không muốn bước chân vào sâu-\nbíp, và luôn tìm mọi cách để tránh xa ánh hào quang danh vọng đầy lộng\nlẫy, xa hoa nhưng cũng không ít cạm bẫy, điêu ngoa ấy. Thế nhưng, tài\nnăng của Tòng giống như cái kim không bọc, lâu ngày cũng lòi ra, và bởi\nvậy, có đôi lúc ra đường, Tòng vẫn bị một số người tinh mắt nhận ra.\nNhớ một hôm Tòng vào nhà vệ sinh công cộng. Có hai bạn (nam)\nđang đứng đái, thấy Tòng vào đái thì hai bạn ấy ghé tai nhau thì thào:\n- Anh này hình như là đấy mày ạ!\n- Chắc không?\n- Chắc! Nhìn cái mặt đĩ thế kia, đúng chắc luôn!\n- Vậy ra xin chữ ký và chụp hình với anh ấy nhanh lên! Chả phải mày\nmong ngóng được gặp anh ấy từ lâu rồi hay sao?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Nhưng tao đang đái mà!\nVẻ tiếc nuối thể hiện rõ trên mặt bạn ấy! Tiếc cũng phải, bao ngày\nmong ngóng gặp thần tượng, đến lúc gặp lại bận việc quan trọng, không xin\nchữ ký được, ai mà chả tiếc! Thật may cho bạn ấy bởi Tòng là một người\nkhá tinh ý và thân thiện, nên Tòng lịch lãm quay sang, giọng nhẹ nhàng:\n- Em cứ đái bình tĩnh! Anh cũng chưa đái xong mà! Anh sẽ đợi ở đây\nđể ký và chụp ảnh cùng em, yên tâm chưa nào?\nNói về độ nổi tiếng thì Tòng chỉ là con muỗi, nhưng nói về độ thân\nthiện và nhiệt tình với fan thì Tòng tin là không ngôi sao nào ở Việt Nam,\nthậm chí là trên thế giới, so sánh được với Tòng.\nLần thứ hai Tòng được người hâm mộ nhận ra, ấy là hôm Tòng đi mua\ncá khô ở chợ. Tòng nhặt khoảng năm con, cho lên cân, được tròn 9 lạng. Bà\nbán cá bảo nhặt thêm con nữa, nhưng nếu nhặt thêm con nữa thì lại thành\ncân mốt. Tòng bảo cân mốt tính tròn một cân nhé, thì bà bán cá không chịu,\nbẻ đôi con cá ra bà ấy không cho, bán 9 lạng bà ấy không bán, mà lấy cả\ncân mốt thì Tòng không đủ tiền. Giằng co, tranh cãi mãi cả nửa buổi vẫn\nkhông xong. Cuối cùng, có bà bán đồ thờ ở hàng bên cạnh thấy vậy thì\nquay sang, bảo:\n- Thôi! Bà tính tròn cho cậu ấy thành một cân đi! Cậu này là nhà văn\nđấy!\n- Bà có chắc không? Nhà văn thì thường phải bẩn bẩn, xấu xấu, chứ\ncậu này nhìn như người mẫu ấy!\n- Nhà văn cũng vẫn có người đẹp trai mà! Con gái tôi suốt ngày vào\nPhây đọc truyện rồi ngắm avatar của cậu này, nên tôi nhìn phát nhận ra\nngay! Hồi trước, tôi rất lo lắng vì con gái tôi nghiện vào mạng xem sex,\ntruy cập mấy cái trang bậy bạ, đồi trụy. Nhưng giờ vào mạng, nó chỉ thích\nđọc truyện của cậu này, không còn nghiện mấy cái phim ảnh khiêu dâm,\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nkích dục kia nữa. Nó hiền hơn, và ngoan ngoãn hẳn ra! Đúng là văn chương\ncó sức mạnh vô hình thật khủng khiếp, đủ sức lôi người ta ra khỏi những\ndục vọng, ham muốn tầm thường, và hướng người ta tới những điều thánh\nthiện, trong sáng, thanh tao...\n- Ừ! Mà nhắc đến con gái bà mới nhớ! Năm nay nó học lớp mấy nhỉ?\nLâu rồi không thấy nó ra đây chơi?\n- Cháu nó mới lên lớp 9! Đợt vừa rồi cháu nó nghỉ đẻ! Không thằng\nngười yêu nào chịu nhận là cha đứa bé, nên con gái tôi phải chăm con một\nmình, làm gì còn thời gian ra đây chơi!\nTới lần thứ ba thì hơi khác một chút. Đó là hôm Tòng cầm trên tay\nquyển sách mới xuất bản của Tòng cho một chị cùng cơ quan mượn. Vào\nthang máy cùng Tòng là một cụ ông người dân tộc (Tòng đoán thế, vì cụ\nmặc trang phục của người dân tộc, lưng đeo gùi, hông treo cái tù và to như\ncái sừng trâu). Thấy Tòng cầm quyển sách, mắt cụ già sáng lên:\n- Cái cháu có thể cho cái cụ này mượn cái quyển sách đó được không?\nNghe cụ già hỏi, thực sự Tòng rất vui. Bởi truyện của Tòng trước giờ\nchủ yếu hợp với các bạn trẻ, mà phần lớn là các bạn trẻ dưới xuôi. Thế mà\ngiờ, có một cụ già, lại là cụ già dân tộc cũng hâm mộ và thích đọc truyện\ncủa Tòng, đó quả là một niềm vinh hạnh vô bờ bến cho những người cầm\nbút trẻ tuổi và đẹp trai như Tòng. Tất nhiên là Tòng lễ phép đưa quyển sách\nbằng hai tay ra trước mặt cụ. Cụ cũng nhận quyển sách bằng hai tay, run\nrun lật trang đầy xúc động. Thế nhưng, chưa kịp đọc được dòng nào thì cụ\ngià ôm bụng nhăn nhó với vẻ rất đau đớn và chực khuỵu xuống...\n- Cụ có sao không? - Tòng cuống quýt đỡ cụ, giọng hốt hoảng.\n- Á! Đau bụng quá! Vừa rồi, cái cụ ăn cái tiết canh ở cái chợ nhà xanh,\nđi đến đây thì buồn ỉa quá! Ỉa ngoài đường thì sợ cái công an bắt, vào đây\nxin đi ỉa nhờ thì cái bảo vệ nó chỉ vào cái thang máy...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nNghe vậy, tôi ấn cho thang máy dừng lại, dìu cụ ra ngoài, đưa cụ đến\ntận cửa nhà vệ sinh. Cụ cảm ơn rối rít, rồi hỏi:\n- Trong đó có cái giấy để chùi chưa?\n- Tất nhiên là có chứ cụ!\n- Vậy thôi! Trả cái cháu cái quyển sách! Cái cụ tưởng chưa có cái giấy\ntrong cái ấy nên cái cụ mới mượn!\nNói rồi, cụ dúi cuốn sách vào tay Tòng và chạy tọt vào trong. Cụ chạy\nnhanh quá nên Tòng không kịp hỏi xem cụ có muốn xin chữ ký và chụp\nảnh lưu niệm cùng Tòng không. Nếu cụ muốn, Tòng sẽ đợi ở đây để ký và\nchụp ảnh cùng cụ. Xin nhắc lại lần cuối cùng: về độ nổi tiếng thì Tòng chỉ\nlà con muỗi, nhưng nói về độ thân thiện và nhiệt tình với fan thì Tòng tin là\nkhông ngôi sao nào ở Việt Nam, thậm chí là trên thế giới, so sánh được với\nTòng.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nCho Người Yêu Hoa Sữa\nCó lẽ trong thế giới của hoa, thì hoa sữa là một loài đặc biệt. Không\nhiểu sao, tôi cứ liên tưởng hoa sữa giống như một hot blogger cá tính:\nkhông ít người yêu, nhưng cũng rất nhiều người ghét!\nTại sao ghét thì dễ rồi! Cứ đi hỏi những ai nhà mặt phố, hoặc chẳng\ncần mặt phố nhưng có hàng (hoặc thậm chí có chỉ một) cây hoa sữa trồng\nsát nơi họ ở thôi, thì sẽ rõ. Họ sẽ cho bạn biết vì sao vào những hôm hoa\nsữa nở rộ, dù rất thích được ngắm ánh trăng lung linh rọi qua song cửa sổ,\nrất thèm được ngọn gió đêm thu trong lành, mát dịu lùa vào, nhưng họ vẫn\nđành phải đóng sập những cánh cửa kín mít như bưng; và vì sao đã đóng\ncửa, đã nằm trên giường rồi mà họ vẫn cần một cái khăn đậy lên mũi rưng\nrưng...\nTại sao yêu thì khó xác định hơn! Có người bảo vì nó đẹp, có người\nnói vì nó thơm, có người lại cho rằng vì nó lãng mạn, thậm chí có người\nchẳng cần lý do gì: bởi ghét mới cần lý do, chứ yêu thì đâu cần thiết phải\ncần!\nTôi tự nhận mình là một người yêu hoa sữa, nhưng là yêu đơn\nphương, yêu giống như một cậu học trò nghèo yêu một tiểu thư khuê các,\nyêu từ xa, yêu trong mộng, yêu lặng thầm, yêu mà không dám, và không\nbao giờ có ý định lại gần. Bởi tôi hiểu một điều rằng: nếu tiếp cận, nếu sán\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nlại gần nàng, tôi sẽ vỡ mộng, sẽ nhận lấy cho mình những khó chịu, nhức\nnhối trong lòng - hệt như những người nhà mặt phố, hoặc chẳng cần mặt\nphố nhưng có hàng (hoặc thậm chí có chỉ một) cây hoa sữa trồng sát bên\ncửa phòng.\nVề hình thức, tôi không nghĩ là hoa sữa đặc biệt, vậy mà hoa sữa vẫn\nđặc biệt, thì sự đặc biệt ấy chỉ có thể đến từ tâm hồn - tức là từ mùi hương\ncủa nó. Một thứ mùi rất lạ nếu ta hít hà từ một cự ly phù hợp: mang mang,\nman mát, dìu dịu, thanh thanh, sâu thăm thẳm, mà lại nhẹ tênh tênh...\nKhông hiểu sao, cứ mỗi lần ngửi mùi hương hoa sữa, tôi lại nhớ về cái\nđêm rất khuya, trăng tròn vành vạnh trên nền trời đêm xanh mượt, tôi cùng\nmấy thằng bạn sinh viên trong xóm trọ cởi trần mặc quần đùi trèo cổng ra\nngoài mua rượu và cổ cánh vịt về nhậu. Chúng nó đi trước, tôi bị tụt lại\nphía sau bởi còn mải ngửa mặt lên trời ngắm làn hoa sữa sóng sánh ánh\ntrăng, nhè nhẹ rung rinh trong dìu dịu gió mơ màng... Và cũng rất kỳ lạ, cứ\nngửi thấy mùi hoa sữa là tôi chỉ nhớ về cái đêm ấy thôi, mà không là một\nđêm nào khác cả...\nTôi cũng tự hỏi, liệu có ai đó giống tôi, ngửi thấy mùi hoa sữa và nhớ\nvề một kỉ niệm ngọt ngào (hoặc xót xa) nào đó đã qua? Có thể là nụ hôn\nđầu của mối tình đầu trao nhau bên hàng hoa sữa? Có thể là một buổi chia\nly, người đứng lại, kẻ òa khóc bước đi, bàn tay buông xuôi, chẳng buồn lau\ndòng lệ tuôn nóng hổi, mặc kệ cả những cánh hoa nhỏ gầy vương trên tóc li\nti?\nNước hoa có phân biệt rõ ràng giữa nước hoa cho nam và cho nữ,\nphân biệt giữa nước hoa đi dạ hội, đi nhà hàng, đi nhà nghỉ, đi đám cưới,\nđám hỏi, đám giỗ, đám ma. Vậy nghĩa là: mỗi một mùi hương có một chức\nnăng riêng của nó. Thế thì chức năng của mùi hương hoa sữa liệu có phải là\nliều thuốc ngược thời gian thần kỳ, đưa người ta trở lại với những ký ức mà\nđôi khi người ta đã vô tình lơ đãng quên đi?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nLòng Dũng Cảm\nChiều qua, tôi sang nhà thằng bạn chơi. Đang pha trà thì đột nhiên\nthằng bạn đứng dậy, đi ra chỗ bếp. Tưởng nó mang đồ ăn gì ra, ai ngờ nó\nlấy cái bát, rồi rót trà vào, mời tôi uống. Tôi nghĩ chắc thằng này xem nhiều\nphim cổ trang kiểu như Thủy Hử hay Tam Quốc quá nên mới học được cái\ntrò uống trà bằng bát của mấy anh hùng hảo hán. Nhưng không, đưa bát trà\ncho tôi, nó ngượng nghịu giải thích:\n- Bộ chén thủy tinh đẹp lung linh bị thằng con trai đập nát rồi, uống\ntạm bằng bát nhé!\n- Sao thằng con mày nghịch dại thế?\n- Thì chả hiểu nó vớ đâu được cuốn sách Thực hành kỹ năng sống, rèn\nluyện lòng dũng cảm, trong đó có dạy cái trò đi trên thủy tinh. Thế là nó\nđập luôn bộ chén của tao, rồi cả tủ kính, gương, ảnh cưới, cứ cái gì bằng\nthủy tinh là nó đập hết. Xong, nó dồn đống lại trên nền gạch đá hoa, dùng\nchân đất đi qua... Á... - Đang nói, thằng bạn tôi ôm chân nhăn nhó.\n- Sao vậy mày?\nNghe tôi hỏi, thằng bạn liền giơ cho tôi xem cái lòng bàn chân nó\nchằng chịt những vết thương, vết rách, rồi bảo:\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Con trai tao có thói quen làm gì cũng bắt bố mẹ làm theo. Nếu vợ\nchồng tao không làm theo nó, nó sẽ trèo lên ban công tầng 2 nhảy xuống,\nhoặc chạy ra đường lao đầu vào xe máy!\n- Nó dọa vợ chồng mày thôi, không dám làm thật đâu!\n- Nó làm thật đấy! Nó được rèn luyện lòng dũng cảm rồi mà, nên cái\ngì cũng dám làm hết!\nTôi nghe vậy thì cũng chịu, chẳng biết nói gì thêm. Rồi như chợt nhớ\nra điều gì, tôi hỏi:\n- Nãy giờ không thấy vợ con mày đâu?\n- À! Đi viện hết rồi! Vợ bị mảnh thủy tinh cứa đứt gân gót chân, con\nthì bị một miếng nhọn chọc thẳng gan bàn chân, tới xương luôn. May là tao\ncòn đi lại, mang cơm cho vợ con được!\nNói rồi, nó tập tễnh đứng dậy, chuẩn bị cơm và đồ ăn để đem vào viện.\nNhìn trong đám đồ ăn nó mang đi, tôi thấy một cái hộp đen sì, và không\nbiết đó là gì. Tôi hỏi thì nó bảo:\n- Cứt gà đấy! Ăn cứt gà cũng là một cách rèn luyện lòng dũng cảm!\nThằng con tao đòi ăn, và bắt vợ chồng tao ăn cùng. Lúc đầu tao cũng tưởng\nlà ăn cứt gà rất đáng sợ. Nhưng khi ăn xong rồi, thấy cũng bình thường, và\ncó thêm niềm tin, rằng nếu quyết tâm, thì cứt gì cũng có thể ăn được!\nRồi nó vào viện thăm vợ con, còn tôi phóng xe máy về nhà. Thật đen\nđủi, đang đi thì cơn mưa như trút nước ập xuống...\nĐèn đỏ! Tôi dừng xe lại! Mưa vẫn trút! Và tôi nghe tiếng chửi bới sau\nlưng: \"Đi đi! Đang mưa, dừng làm đéo gì!\". Thế rồi mấy người đó lách xe,\nphóng vù lên, mặc cho làn đường bên kia, cả đoàn người xe nhung nhúc\nvẫn đang hối hả cắt qua.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nỪ! Thì đi! Chúng nó vượt đèn đỏ được thì tôi cũng vượt được! Sợ đéo\ngì! Và thế là tôi cũng rú ga lao lên...\nĐi qua đoạn đường đang thi công tuyến đường sắt trên cao, đột nhiên\ntôi nghe tiếng \"Rầm\". Một thanh sắt to như cái dầm rơi ầm một phát ngay\ntrước đầu xe tôi. May sao nó không đè chết ai. Tôi sợ, không dám đi đoạn\nđường này nữa, định vòng xe đi lối khác. Nhưng đường đang đông, nên\nviệc tôi vòng xe là rất khó khăn, và gây ùn ứ cả một khúc đường. Và tôi lại\nbị chửi: \"Thằng điên! Quay xe làm đéo gì! Thỉnh thoảng sắt nó mới rơi thôi\nmà!\".\nỪ! Thì không quay xe! Người ta vẫn dám đi tiếp thì sao tôi lại không\ndám? Sợ đéo gì! Vậy là tôi lại rú ga lao lên...\nMưa to quá, lại gặp đoạn đường trũng, nên nước dâng ngập đến nửa\nthân xe của tôi. Tôi sợ chết máy, và cũng vì sợ rơi xuống miệng cống, nên\ndừng xe lại. Và tôi lại bị chửi: \"Đi đi! Người ta vẫn phi ầm ầm kia kìa! Sợ\ncái đéo gì!\".\nỪ! Cũng phải! Người ta dám đi, sao tôi lại không dám? Sợ cái đéo gì!\nVậy là tôi lại rú ga lao lên...\nVà tôi chợt nhớ tới cuốn sách thực hành kỹ năng sống, rèn luyện lòng\ndũng cảm đang xôn xao cư dân mạng mấy ngày nay. Tôi thấy cuốn sách ấy\nthực sự không cần thiết lắm, bởi chỉ đi có một đoạn đường từ nhà thằng bạn\nvề nhà tôi thôi, thì tôi đã được học vô số những bài học về lòng dũng cảm.\nCần đéo gì sách!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nTam Quốc Diễn Hề\nTừ mờ sáng tới giờ, tại đại bản doanh nơi Lưu Bị đóng quân, chưa khi\nnào ngớt tiếng vó ngựa rầm rập, tiếng binh lính chạy hối hả, tiếng cờ chiến\nreo phần phật, và cả tiếng xe ba gác chở lương thảo ì ạch, gằn lên từng hồi\nphì phạch, nhả ra những mớ khói dầu đen ngòm, khét lẹt. Nắng chiếu chói\nchang, hừng hực trên đỉnh trời, khiến những đám cỏ lả đi, khô héo như\nrơm, trắng bệch trong màn cát bụi mịt mùng.\nMột trận đánh rất lớn sắp diễn ra! Chắc chắn là như thế!\nỞ bên trong lều, Lưu Bị và Khổng Minh đang ngồi trầm ngâm, đăm\nchiêu toan tính. Sự căng thẳng thể hiện rõ trên gương mặt mệt mỏi của cả\nhai: Lưu Bị mắt thâm quầng, hốc hác; Khổng Minh thì má tóp lại, phờ\nphạc, bàn tay gầy guộc run rẩy cầm chiếc quạt lông vịt, thi thoảng lại phe\nphẩy làm phất phơ chòm râu dài điểm bạc xác xơ...\n- Đang lúc nước sôi lửa bỏng mà không thấy mặt Quan Vũ và Trương\nPhi đâu cả! Thật là... - Lưu Bị vừa nói vừa thở dài bực bội.\n- Dạ! Chúa công quên rồi sao? Quan Vũ đã xin phép đi họp lớp cấp 3\ntừ sáng, còn Trương Phi xin về quê đám cưới người yêu cũ từ chiều qua ạ! -\nKhổng Minh đáp lời.\n- À ừ nhỉ! Ta mải lo nghĩ quá nên đâm ra đãng trí mất rồi!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Dạ! Chúa công yên tâm! Thần đã cho gọi gấp hai người đó về đây rồi\nạ!\n- Gấp thì cũng chỉ Quan Vũ thôi, chứ Trương Phi ở quê, đường xa, sao\nlên nhanh được! Mà quê Trương Phi ở đâu ấy nhỉ?\n- Quất Lâm ạ! Chúng ta chẳng về thăm quê Trương Phi vài lần rồi còn\ngì!\n- Về thăm vài lần, nhưng có vào nhà nó lần nào đâu mà nhớ!\n- Dạ! Giờ quê Trương Phi được đầu tư nhiều, phát triển lên nhanh lắm,\nđường cao tốc vèo vèo! Từ đây về đó nếu cưỡi ngựa chỉ hết khoảng 2 tiếng,\nđấy là tính cả thời gian cho ngựa nghỉ ăn cỏ và đi vệ sinh luôn ạ!\nCũng đúng lúc này, cả Quan Vũ và Trương Phi đều đã về tới. Vừa\nnhìn thấy Lưu Bị, Trương Phi lập tức hỏi ngay:\n- Có chuyện gì vậy đại ca? Đệ thấy ngoài kia binh lính rầm rập, ngựa\nxe dồn dập...\nLưu Bị nghe vậy thì lắc đầu chán nản:\n- Hôm nay là ngày cuối cùng nộp hồ sơ xét tuyển đại học, những đứa\nđiểm cao ém hồ sơ lại, chờ tới sát giờ mới nộp. Thành ra, vị trí của ta đã bị\nđẩy xuống khá xa so với điểm chuẩn, và gần như không còn khả năng đỗ...\n- Đại ca nộp hồ sơ trường nào? - Quan Vũ hỏi.\n- Ta nộp Đại học Y!\n- Đại ca được bao nhiêu điểm?\n- Vừa đủ đỗ tốt nghiệp, trong đó hai môn suýt bị điểm liệt!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nLưu Bị nói, rồi cúi gằm mặt đầy xấu hổ. Khổng Minh thấy vậy thì lại\nđỡ lời:\n- Thực ra, không phải vì chúa công học dốt, mà đúng giai đoạn cần tập\ntrung ôn thi thì chúa công lại phải dồn sức cho trận đại chiến Xích Bích với\nquân Tào Tháo, thành ra không ôn tập được nhiều!\n- Nhưng điểm thấp như thế mà đại ca vẫn dám nộp hồ sơ vào Đại học\nY sao? Nếu vậy thì cái kết cục này hẳn đại ca đã tự biết trước chứ? - giọng\nTrương Phi đầy bức xúc.\n- Trương Phi nói vậy là chưa hiểu chúa công rồi - Khổng Minh tiếp lời\n- Từ lâu, chúa công đã có ước mơ được trở thành một bác sĩ sản khoa, được\nđỡ đẻ cho những người mẹ trẻ. Bởi những người mẹ trẻ mới sinh đẻ lần đầu\nluôn gặp phải rất nhiều những khó khăn, bỡ ngỡ, và họ rất cần sự giúp đỡ\ncủa những người bác sĩ yêu nghề, có tâm với nghiệp. Đó là một ước mơ rất\nđẹp mà chúng ta không ai có quyền trách móc!\n- Thế còn đại nghiệp của chúng ta thì sao? Còn ước mơ thống nhất\nTrung Nguyên, lên ngôi Hoàng Đế, đại ca quên sao? - tới lượt Quan Vũ\ngiọng nghẹn ngào.\n- Quan Vũ nói vậy là chưa hiểu chuyện rồi - Khổng Minh lại ngắt lời -\nNgười quân tử thì phải biết lo xa. Nếu đại nghiệp của chúng ta thành công,\nvà chúa công lên ngôi Hoàng Đế, thì lúc ấy rất cần một tấm bằng đại học.\nBởi chúng ta đang sống trong một xã hội trọng bằng cấp. Đến anh xe ôm\ncòn có vài ba tấm bằng đại học, chẳng lẽ Hoàng Đế lại không có? Còn nếu\nđại nghiệp của chúng ta thất bại, thì chúa công sẽ giải nghệ, khi ấy, lại càng\ncần phải có một tấm bằng đại học để đi xin việc, kiếm sống, mưu sinh.\nTrương Phi và Quan Vũ nghe quân sư Khổng Minh nói xong thì có vẻ\nđã hiểu ra, liền lập tức hạ giọng:\n- Vậy, quân sư có kế sách gì không ạ?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nKhổng Minh từ từ đứng dậy, thong thả vuốt bộ râu dài, phe phẩy chiếc\nquạt trên tay, rồi cất giọng chậm rãi:\n- Giờ, thời gian không còn nhiều nữa. Nên việc bức thiết nhất là phải\nnhanh chóng rút được hồ sơ của chúa công ở Đại học Y ra để nộp sang\ntrường Đại học Mỏ Địa chất, càng sớm càng tốt! Bởi Đại học Mỏ Địa chất\nnăm nay có một khoa mới là khoa Đào Mỏ, ít người biết tới, nên chắc điểm\nchuẩn sẽ không cao!\n- Sao lại là Đại học Mỏ Địa Chất ạ? Đại ca ước mơ thành bác sĩ sản\nkhoa cơ mà?\n- Giờ thì còn ước mơ cái con mẹ gì nữa! Cứ ngành nào thấp, trường\nnào thấp thì nộp thôi! Đỗ được là may rồi! - Khổng Minh quát lên.\nThấy Khổng Minh nổi cáu, Quan Vũ và Trương Phi không dám làm\ncăng nữa, đành nhẹ nhàng xuống nước:\n- Vậy kế hoạch cụ thể thế nào, xin quân sư cứ nói ạ!\n- Quan Vũ! Ta cấp cho ngươi 69 vạn quân tới cổng trước của Đại học\nY, cố gắng gây náo loạn để thu hút sự chú ý của thí sinh và phụ huynh. Khi\nđám đông tò mò di chuyển bớt về cửa trước thì Trương Phi dẫn theo chúa\ncông cùng 69 vạn quân khác lập tức ập vào theo lối cửa sau để rút hồ sơ.\nXong xuôi, chúng ta sẽ hợp quân tại ngã tư Chùa Bộc để kéo về Đại học\nMỏ Địa chất!\nTheo đúng kế hoạch của quân sư, Quan Vũ và Trương Phi tức tốc tập\nhợp binh lính. Tiếng đao kiếm leng keng, tiếng chân lính dồn dập, tiếng hô\nquân hối hả tạo ra một bầu không khí đầy khẩn trương và hừng hực tinh\nthần chiến đấu. Ở trong lều, Lưu Bị ghé tai Khổng Minh thều thào:\n- Quân sư này! Nếu chẳng may năm nay ta không đỗ được trường nào\nthì tính sao đây?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Chúa công yên tâm! Thần có người quen làm ở phòng tuyển sinh của\nmột trường cũng thuộc ngành y, nếu cần, thần có thể xin cho chúa công vào\nđó học!\n- Thế thì tốt quá! Là trường gì vậy?\n- Trung cấp thú y ạ! Học trường này xong, chúa công không lo thất\nnghiệp, bởi đang thời buổi chiến tranh, nhu cầu chăm sóc và bảo dưỡng\nngựa luôn rất cao. Bên cạnh đó, nhu cầu nhân giống ngựa cũng cực kỳ lớn.\nKhi ngựa đực ra trận hết, thì người ta sẽ phải cần đến chúa công để làm\nthay nhiệm vụ của con ngựa đực, lúc ấy chỉ sợ chúa công không đủ sức mà\nlàm thôi! Và còn điều nữa quan trọng hơn, đó là chúa công vẫn thực hiện\nđược ước mơ trở thành bác sĩ đỡ đẻ. Tất nhiên là không phải đỡ cho những\nngười mẹ trẻ, mà là đỡ cho gia súc. Nhưng dù là đỡ cho gia súc thì cũng rất\ncần những người bác sĩ yêu nghề, có tâm với nghiệp!\nLưu Bị nghe Khổng Minh nói có lý thì cũng gật gù cho là phải. Thế\nrồi cả hai tiến ra bên ngoài. Nơi đó, hơn một trăm vạn binh lính đã cờ reo,\nđao vẫy, khí thế ngùn ngụt, điệp điệp, trùng trùng. Lưu Bị ra hiệu cho đám\nquân binh trật tự, rồi cất giọng ôn tồn:\n- Thưa các anh em! Vì việc thi cử của Bị này mà khiến anh em phải\nlao tâm khổ tứ, vất vả như thế này! Bởi thế, nếu Bị đỗ đại học năm nay, xin\nhứa sẽ mời hơn một trăm vạn anh em ở đây cùng về thăm quê Trương Phi\nmột chuyến để thay lời cảm tạ!\nTưởng đám quân lính sẽ hò reo mừng rỡ, nhưng không, thay vào đó là\nmột bầu không khí im lặng đến đáng sợ. Rồi từ trong đám lính ấy, một\ngiọng nói rụt rè cất lên:\n- Về thăm quê Trương Phi nhưng có vào nhà Trương Phi chơi không\nạ?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- À, không! Vào chơi nhà Trương Phi thì để lần khác! Còn nhiều dịp\nmà! - Lưu Bị đáp lời.\n- Hoan hô! Hoan hô! Yeah! Yeah!!!!\nĐám quân binh phấn khích la hét, hò reo không ngớt. Hơn trăm vạn\ntướng lĩnh, quân binh ấy hùng dũng, hừng hực khí thế kéo quân đi. Nắng\nvẫn chiếu chói chang, hừng hực trên đỉnh trời, khiến những đám cỏ lả đi,\nkhô héo như rơm, trắng bệch trong màn cát bụi mịt mùng.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nXét Tuyển Đại Học\nViệc xét tuyển đại học năm nay đang ở giai đoạn cực kỳ căng thẳng.\nChúng tôi đã có cuộc phỏng vấn tàu nhanh với cô giáo Na Ruồi - cô giáo\nnổi tiếng thứ nhì Việt Nam, chỉ sau cô giáo Thảo - để xem ý kiến của cô về\nvấn đề nóng này ra sao.\n- Chào cô giáo! Đang có rất nhiều thí sinh và phụ huynh phàn nàn, chỉ\ntrích rằng năm nay Bộ ra đề thi dễ quá, dẫn tới điểm thi trung bình của thí\nsinh năm nay cao hơn các năm trước phải đến 4, 5 điểm, bởi thế đã gây ra\nnhững tranh cãi và bất cập trong việc cộng điểm ưu tiên. Cô giáo nghĩ sao\nạ?\n- Tôi nghĩ những kẻ đang chỉ trích Bộ là những kẻ vô ơn. Như con trai\ntôi đây, năm trước cũng thi đại học, thiếu có nửa điểm thôi mà tôi phải chạy\nmất năm chục triệu thì cháu mới đỗ được vào trường. Năm nay, nhờ Bộ mà\nđiểm thi của mỗi thí sinh đều tăng thêm 4, 5 điểm. Bạn thử nhân lên xem:\nnửa điểm là 50 triệu; vậy 4, 5 điểm là nửa tỉ rồi! Bộ đã cho mỗi thí sinh nửa\ntỉ đồng đấy! Không cảm ơn Bộ thì thôi, còn chửi Bộ à? Đồ vô ơn!\n- Nhưng rõ ràng ai cũng được điểm cao dẫn đến việc cộng điểm ưu\ntiên vô tình trở thành yếu tố quyết định đến việc đỗ hay trượt đại học. Và\nbởi vậy mới có chuyện nhiều thí sinh nhà rất giàu, bao đời nay sống ở Hà\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nNội bỗng dưng trở thành con em dân tộc thiểu số và được cộng điểm ưu\ntiên? Cô giáo nghĩ sao về điều này?\n-Tôi thấy tốt mà! Trước đây, chúng ta cứ áp đặt suy nghĩ rằng con em\ndân tộc thiểu số thì trông phải ngô ngố, phải đóng khố, phải đeo gùi trên\nlưng, vào rừng hái củi, xuống suối bắt tôm, lên nương bẻ sắn. Giờ thì khác\nrồi, một thí sinh có gia phả bảy mươi đời ở thủ đô, quần áo sành điệu, vòng\ndây liểng xiểng, khuyên tai lủng liểng, earphone gật gù, Iphone vù vù, vẫn\nhoàn toàn có thể là con em dân tộc thiểu số. Thế nghĩa là kỳ thi đại học đã\ngóp phần xóa bỏ khoảng cách và sự khác biệt giữa người miền xuôi và bà\ncon các dân tộc thiểu số miền núi, qua đó giúp thắt chặt tình anh em, đồng\nbào, nâng cao tinh thần đại đoàn kết dân tộc. Chả lẽ như vậy không tốt sao?\n- Thế còn những trường hợp thí sinh và phụ huynh buổi sáng phải bắt\nxe khách hàng trăm cây số lên trường nộp hồ sơ, buổi chiều lục đục bắt xe\nvề, rồi sáng hôm sau nữa lại bắt xe lên trường rút hồ sơ để nộp sang trường\nkhác, rồi mấy hôm sau nữa lại tiếp tục bắt xe lên rút hồ sơ thì sao?\n- À! Đấy lại là một cái tốt nữa của kỳ thi năm nay! Như bạn biết đấy,\nvào thời điểm này những năm trước là thời điểm thí sinh vừa thi đại học\nxong, nằm dài ở nhà chờ kết quả, thành ra nhà xe đói thối mồm, xe ôm ngồi\nvêu mõm. Nhưng năm nay thì sao? Các nhà xe phải tăng cường xe, tăng tần\nsuất các chuyến, tăng cả giá vé lên gấp rưỡi, gấp đôi nhưng vẫn không đủ\nđáp ứng nhu cầu đi lại để rút hồ sơ của học sinh và phụ huynh. Doanh thu,\nlợi nhuận nhà xe tăng thì tiền thuế nộp sẽ nhiều hơn. Thuế nhiều thì sẽ có\ntiền nhiều đầu tư cho cải tiến giáo dục. Chả lẽ như vậy là không tốt sao?\n- Nhưng năm nay thí sinh và phụ huynh đã phải chịu quá nhiều những\nmệt mỏi, stress và áp lực: từ việc phấp phỏng, căng thẳng đợi chờ thông tin\nxét tuyển; những giây phút ngộp thở, thập thò bên máy tính dò xem vị trí\ncủa mình, rồi cả quá trình đấu trí sinh tử, cân não để đưa ra quyết định nên\nrút hay giữ lại hồ sơ. Những cảm giác ấy thực sự quá khủng khiếp! Cô giáo\ncó nghĩ vậy?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Tôi thì thấy đấy lại là điểm tốt nhất của kỳ thi năm nay. Người đời có\ncâu: \"Khi đã trải qua cơn đau khủng khiếp nhất rồi, thì những cơn đau sau\nđó chỉ còn như những cơn gió\". Trải qua những mệt mỏi và áp lực của quá\ntrình xét tuyển rồi thì các thí sinh sẽ có một tinh thần thép đủ vững vàng để\nchịu đựng những áp lực, những khổ đau sau này.\n- Dạ! Cô giáo có thể nói cụ thể hơn không ạ?\n- Thế này nhé! Những năm trước, chắc bạn cũng đã nghe chuyện\nnhiều thí sinh trượt đại học đã tự tử vì bế tắc, đau khổ, và không chịu được\náp lực của gia đình. Nhưng năm nay, tôi tin, sẽ không có thí sinh nào phải\ntự tử vì lý do đó nữa. Bởi giai đoạn khủng khiếp nhất là giai đoạn xét tuyển\nmà các thí sinh của chúng ta đã vượt được qua, thì chả còn chuyện gì trên\nđời làm nản lòng họ được nữa. Rồi sau này, các nữ sinh viên chẳng may\nđang học mà có bầu, bị người yêu bỏ rơi, họ cũng sẽ coi đó là chuyện rất\nbình thường; rồi khi ra trường, không xin được việc, phải đi bán trà đá, đi\nđánh giày, chạy xe ôm, các thí sinh của chúng ta cũng sẽ coi đó là chuyện\nđương nhiên...\n- Vậy theo cô giáo, việc xét tuyển đại học năm nay còn điều gì chưa\nđược?\n- Theo tôi, việc cộng điểm ưu tiên vẫn còn chưa thỏa đáng lắm! Tôi\nđồng ý với việc cộng điểm cho khu vực miền núi và nông thôn, nhưng tôi\ncũng đề nghị từ năm sau, Bộ nên cộng cả điểm cho các thí sinh thành phố\nnữa. Bởi thí sinh thành phố, họ cũng có những khó khăn của riêng mình. Ví\ndụ, ở nông thôn, ở miền núi, ít quán game online, ít quán bar, ít khu vui\nchơi giải trí, nên các thí sinh nông thôn và miền núi những lúc rảnh, không\ncó trò gì tiêu khiển thì đành ngồi vào bàn học. Còn ở thành phố thì khác.\nQuá nhiều những cám dỗ, những thú vui khiến thí sinh thành phố rất khó\ntập trung để học cho tốt được. Mà đã là khó khăn thì dù ở đâu cũng phải\nđược cộng điểm ưu tiên, thế thôi!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Vậy cô giáo đề xuất cộng cho thí sinh thành phố bao nhiêu điểm ạ?\n- Tôi nghĩ là nên cộng bằng nhau hết cho khỏi phải tị nhau, và cộng\nhẳn 10 điểm luôn. Nghĩa là mỗi thí sinh thi đại học, bất kể ở vùng nào, đều\nđược cộng 10 điểm. Như vậy, chắc chắn điểm thi đại học của chúng ta sẽ\nrất cao, và Việt Nam sẽ trở thành một trong những nước có điểm thi đại học\ncao nhất thế giới. Đó chẳng phải là điều rất đáng tự hào sao?\n- Dạ! Xin cảm ơn cô giáo! Và chúc cô giáo ngày càng thành công hơn\ntrong công việc. Cũng xin chúc cho cuộc đời và sự nghiệp của cô giáo sớm\nđược viết thành truyện, giống như Cô giáo Thảo!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nVợ Và Xe Máy\nMọi so sánh đều là khập khiễng! Tuy nhiên, chính sự khập khiễng mới\nlàm cho cuộc đời thú vị, bởi sự bằng phẳng thường là nguyên nhân gây ra\nbuồn tẻ. Bởi vậy, dù biết là khập khiễng, thì hôm nay, Tòng xin phép thử so\nsánh giữa vợ - một phạm trù cực kỳ phức tạp, trừu tượng, với xe máy - một\nđối tượng khá cụ thể và hữu hình, để xem sự giống và khác nhau là như thế\nnào. Và sau đây là kết quả:\nA: Giống\n- Đều phải mất tiền nếu muốn sở hữu: Với xe máy là tiền mua xe, với\nvợ là tiền đám cưới;\n- Đều cần phải có giấy tờ chứng minh sở hữu: Với xe máy là đăng ký\nxe, với vợ là đăng ký kết hôn;\n- Đều cưỡi được;\n- Đều có nguy cơ bị mất, bị cướp nếu không cảnh giác giữ gìn;\n- Đều nguy hiểm: nếu điều khiển xe máy không đúng cách, bạn sẽ gặp\ntai nạn trầy da, xước mặt, gãy răng, gãy chân, gãy tay, thậm chí tử vong.\nĐiều khiển vợ cũng thế!\nB: Khác\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Xe mới mua về thì đem dán một lớp màng ni lông bảo vệ. Vợ mới\ncưới về thì đem chọc thủng lớp màng;\n- Xe khởi động dễ và nhanh, đạp phát là xong. Vợ khởi động khó và\nlâu hơn, phải làm đủ trò, trong vòng 3 đến 5 phút, thậm chí hàng tiếng cũng\nchưa xong;\n- Xe phải đổ nhớt. Vợ tự tiết ra nhớt;\n- Khi lốp xe bị hết hơi, nhão nhoẹt, có thể dễ dàng tự dùng bơm để\nbơm căng lại, rất an toàn và tiết kiệm. Khi vợ bị hết hơi, nhão nhoẹt, muốn\nbơm căng phải đưa đến thẩm mỹ viện, cực kỳ tốn kém và nguy hiểm;\n- Xe đưa ta đi chơi. Vợ thì luôn réo bắt ta về nhà;\n- Bỏ xe rất dễ! Gọi đồng nát vào nó hốt đi là xong. Bỏ vợ rất khó! Phải\nviết đơn, ra tòa, thủ tục lằng nhằng;\n- Xe chỉ đơn thuần là phương tiện đi lại. Vợ đa năng hơn, có thể ra\nngoài kiếm tiền, về nhà giặt giũ, nấu nướng, rửa bát, quét nhà, đẻ con, cho\ncon bú, cho chồng bú...\n- Lấy được một người vợ tốt, biết làm ăn, biết chăm vén cho gia đình,\nthì sớm muộn bạn cũng sẽ dành đủ tiền mua được xe tốt. Lấy phải một bà\nvợ chỉ biết ăn chơi, mua sắm, tiêu xài, thì bao nhiêu xe tốt cuối cùng cũng\nsẽ bay hết!\nC: Kết luận\nNhững so sánh trên đây chỉ mang tính hài hước, chỉ để cho vui, chứ\nvới một thằng đàn ông, việc đặt vợ và xe lên bàn cân là một điều cực kỳ\nngu xuẩn. Đừng lấy vợ chỉ vì cái xe, và đừng cậy mình có xe mà nặng nề\nvới vợ!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nƯớc Mơ Trong Đời\nKỳ thi đại học quan trọng đã qua nhưng hẳn các bạn thí sinh đang\nđứng trước những quyết định khó khăn xem mình hợp với ngành nghề gì?\nNên chọn trường nào? Học khoa nào?\nLà một người đã từng có kinh nhiệm nhiều năm thi trượt đại học, cũng\nnhư đã từng bị đuổi việc ở cả chục công ty lớn nhỏ khác nhau, Tòng tin là\nmình sẽ có những kinh nghiệm quý báu để góp ý, chia sẻ và định hướng\ngiúp cho các bạn.\nVề việc thi trượt đại học liên tục, Tòng không bao giờ trách móc bản\nthân mình, bởi Tòng biết nguyên nhân trượt chỉ là bởi Tòng thiếu may mắn.\nNếu kỳ thi đại học năm đầu tiên không bị xếp ngồi bàn đầu, ngay cạnh\ngiám thị, thì chắc chắn Tòng đã mở được tài liệu và không bao giờ bị điểm\nliệt; nếu cái đứa ngồi cạnh Tòng trong kỳ thi đại học năm thứ hai không\nphải là đứa ích kỷ, nếu nó biết mủi lòng trước những lời năn nỉ của Tòng\nmà cho Tòng chép bài, thì đời nào Tòng chịu nộp giấy trắng? Nếu người\nchấm bài môn Văn của Tòng trong kỳ thi đại học năm thứ ba có khả năng\ncảm thụ văn học tốt hơn, có tầm nhìn và hiểu biết về ngôn ngữ sâu rộng\nhơn, thì có lẽ Tòng đã là thủ khoa toàn quốc môn Văn năm ấy...\nTất nhiên, với chữ nếu, người ta có thể nhét được cả chục cái chày vào\ntrong Ba Con Sếu. Nói vậy để thấy, đã là cái số thì khó ai tránh khỏi. Đến\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nviệc nhỏ nhặt như đánh đề, phang lô, chơi xổ số, lô tô mà còn phụ thuộc\nvào cái số thì một việc trọng đại ảnh hưởng đến cả đời người như thi đại\nhọc làm sao cưỡng nổi?!\nChuyện thi cử là vậy, rồi cả tới khi đi làm, bị đuổi việc liên tục, thì\nTòng cũng vẫn giữ vững niềm tin rằng: \"Mình bị đuổi là vì thiếu may mắn,\nchứ không phải vì năng lực mình yếu kém\".\nTrong số những lần bị đuổi việc, thì có một lần khiến Tòng khó hiểu\nnhất. Ấy là khi Tòng làm việc cho công ty của một chị giám đốc còn khá\ntrẻ và cực kỳ xinh đẹp. Vẻ đẹp của chị ấy thật khó miêu tả! Nó có chút đằm\nthắm của Hoàng Thùy Linh; chút gợi tình của Ngân Khánh; chút đỏng đảnh\ncủa Thủy Tiên; chút dịu hiền của Jennifer Phạm; chút điềm đạm của Hà\nTăng và chút hung hăng của Hà Hồ.\nBiết thân phận mình bé nhỏ, nghèo hèn, không dám mơ cao, ước dài,\nnên gặp chị, Tòng vẫn cố giữ thái độ lạnh lùng và rụt rè đúng với vị trí của\nmột kẻ cấp dưới làm thuê. Ngày ngày, Tòng đến công ty và cặm cụi, miệt\nmài làm việc mà không hề nhận ra rằng chị đã âm thầm để mắt đến mình từ\nlâu. Và rồi đêm hôm ấy, đã khuya lắm, Tòng nhận được tin nhắn của chị:\n- \"Em ngủ chưa? Tâm sự với chị một lát được không?\"\n- \"Có chuyện gì vậy chị?\"\n- \"Chị đang chán quá em ơi! Chồng chị là một gã đàn ông vô dụng,\nsuốt ngày chỉ biết chơi bời, đàn đúm. Ngay cả chuyện đơn giản là cái bồn\ncầu bị tắc thôi mà cả tuần nay mà lão ấy không sửa được. Vừa xong, nửa\nđêm chưa thấy lão về, chị gọi điện thì lão bảo đang đi du lịch tận bên Zim-\nba-bu-ê, vài hôm nữa mới về. Một mình trong căn phòng cô đơn, chị buồn\nlắm! Em có thể đến chỗ chị bây giờ không?\"\n- \"Giờ em đến cũng không giải quyết vấn đề gì đâu chị ơi! Vì muốn\nthông bồn cầu thì phải mua bột thông và dụng cụ thông ở ngoài cửa hàng\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ncơ. Mà giờ này thì làm gì còn cửa hàng nào mở cửa nữa đâu chị! Nếu chị\nbuồn quá thì cứ đi tạm vào bô hoặc chậu, mai em sẽ tới sớm thông giúp\nchị!\".\nSau tin nhắn đó, không thấy chị trả lời gì; sáng hôm sau đến công ty,\nnhìn thấy Tòng, chị cũng không nói gì. Lát sau, con bé thư ký của chị tiến\nlại chỗ Tòng, đưa cho Tòng cái tờ quyết định đuổi việc có con dấu đỏ tươi\ncùng cái chữ ký của chị loằng ngoằng, tựa như mớ tơ vò đang rối bời trong\nlòng Tòng với câu hỏi cứ trồi lên nhức nhối: \"Tại sao mình lại bị đuổi việc\ndù mình đã luôn nỗ lực, cố gắng hết mình vì sự thành công của công ty nói\nriêng, và vì sự phát triển của xã hội nói chung?\".\nMột lần đuổi việc nữa cũng khá đặc biệt, ấy là khi Tòng làm nhân viên\nđánh máy trong một cơ quan khá lớn. Nhiệm vụ của Tòng chỉ là đánh máy\nlại những thông báo, những quy định do cấp trên ban hành thành những văn\nbản; rồi những văn bản đó sẽ được in ra, trình sếp ký, và phát hành, phổ\nbiến rộng rãi tới bà con, để bà con có trách nhiệm tuân thủ, thi hành.\nLần đó, không hiểu vì dịch bệnh bò điên hoành hành đã lây sang\nngười, hay vì nhàn cư vi bất thiện, mà sếp của Tòng lại nghĩ ra cái quy định\nlà anh nào muốn đi đá phò thì phải có chữ ký đồng ý của vợ (hoặc người\nyêu) cùng xác nhận của chính quyền địa phương. Nếu bị bắt quả tang đang\ngiao dịch, cấu kết (gọi tắt là giao cấu) với phò mà thiếu một trong hai (hoặc\ncả hai) loại giấy trên thì đối tượng sẽ lập tức bị mời về trụ sở giải quyết, bất\nkể việc giao dịch, cấu kết ấy đang ở giai đoạn nào: khởi động, cao trào, lên\nđỉnh, hay thoái trào.\nĐương nhiên là quy định đó của sếp Tòng vấp phải phản ứng quyết\nliệt của bà con (chính xác hơn là các anh, các chú, các bác, các cụ) trong\nkhu. Tất cả những người phản đối đều cho rằng cái quy định này cực kỳ bất\nhợp lý. Bởi những thanh niên chưa có người yêu, hoặc đã có người yêu, đã\ncó vợ, nhưng đúng hôm vợ hay người yêu đi vắng không ký được; hoặc\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nnhững ngày nghỉ, ngày lễ, chính quyền địa phương không xác nhận được,\nthì những hôm đó phải nhịn đá phò hay sao?\nNhững bức xúc và phản đối kiểu ấy của bà con thường thì sẽ chẳng thể\nlàm cho sếp Tòng bận tâm. Bởi sếp Tòng đã từng đưa ra những quy định vô\nlý và vớ vẩn hơn thế nhiều, bị phản đối, bị chửi bới kinh khủng hơn thế\nnhiều, nhưng cuối cùng cũng chả sao, vì ai có việc của người đó: bà con\nkêu là việc của bà con, còn ra quyết định là việc của sếp. Tuy nhiên lần này\nlại khác, sếp của Tòng bị các sếp ở cấp cao hơn tức giận, phê bình và chỉ\ntrích nặng nề (chắc vì động tới quyền lợi trực tiếp của họ). Do vậy, sếp của\nTòng đành phải viết một tờ đơn tường trình, giải thích, rằng đó không phải\nlà lỗi của sếp, mà là lỗi của thằng đánh máy. Sếp sẽ cho thằng đánh máy\ncẩu thả này nghỉ việc luôn, đồng thời sẽ tuyển nhân viên đánh máy mới\nngay lập tức!\nCuối đơn, sếp còn chèn thêm một câu phàn nàn rằng chất lượng giáo\ndục đào tạo tại các trường đại học của chúng ta hiện nay kém quá! Sinh\nviên tốt nghiệp ra trường kiểu quái gì mà mỗi việc đánh máy cũng không\nxong. Từ đầu năm đến giờ, chỉ riêng cái vị trí nhân viên đánh máy này đã\ntuyển vào rồi đuổi đi cả chục người rồi!\nNhận quyết định đuổi việc từ tay sếp, đương nhiên là Tòng buồn,\nnhưng không giận sếp nhiều! Vì nếu không đổ tội cho Tòng thì nhiều khả\nnăng sếp sẽ là người bị cho thôi việc. Tòng khi ấy đi xe đạp, không vợ con\ngì, nghỉ việc cũng chả sao, nhưng nếu sếp mà nghỉ việc thì sẽ khổ lắm! Bởi\nsếp có tới mấy em bồ nhí vẫn há mồm đều đặn chờ chu cấp hàng tháng, rồi\ntiền lương trả cho người làm vườn, cho vệ sĩ, cho ô-sin, rồi tiền xăng, tiền\nbảo hiểm, bảo dưỡng cho hai cái ô tô nhà sếp nữa - nếu sếp bị kỷ luật, bị\nnghỉ việc, thì những người đó, những xe đó, ai sẽ lo đây?\nNhớ có đợt thất nghiệp, xin mãi không được việc mới, Tòng bèn dọn\nmột quán nhỏ ra vỉa hè đầu phố ngồi bán bánh bao. Ngay bên cạnh quán\nbánh bao của Tòng có một em gái bán bánh khúc. Em này còn trẻ nhưng đã\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nđeo trong mồm nguyên hai hàm răng giả. Tòng hỏi lý do thì em bảo tại em\nấy có sở thích nghiến răng. Thấy Tòng có vẻ hoài nghi, vì nếu chỉ nghiến\nrăng thì làm sao rụng răng được, thì em ấy liền giải thích ngay, rằng trước\nđây em ấy làm cave, trong một lần đang thổi kèn cho khách thì đột nhiên\nem ấy hứng chí lên nghiến răng một phát. Thế là em ấy ăn nguyên cái tát\ncủa khách vào mồm, rụng hết hai hàm răng. Vốn liếng dành dụm bao nhiêu\nnăm làm cave, may sao, cũng đủ để tậu bộ răng giả này.\nSau đấy, em ấy không làm chính thức, không thuộc biên chế của ổ\ncave nào nữa - vì bảo không thích bị ăn chặn, bị quản lý - mà chỉ làm\nfreelancer, làm cộng tác viên cho mấy nhà nghỉ quanh đây thôi - tức là khi\nnào khách thuê phòng có nhu cầu thì chủ nhà nghỉ sẽ gọi cho em ấy. Việc\nem ấy bán bánh khúc ở vỉa hè này cũng chỉ là cái cớ để kiếm khách. Sau\nkhi đong đưa, nếu khách ưng, thỏa thuận giá êm xuôi, là em ấy nhờ Tòng\nbán hộ bánh khúc, rồi leo lên xe của khách, cả hai lao thẳng tới nhà nghỉ,\nrồi múc!\nMọi thứ tưởng cứ vậy êm trôi, nhưng rồi một ngày, bước ngoặt của\ncuộc đời em ấy đã tới. Đó là một buổi sáng, có mấy thằng đến quán em ấy,\nchúng nó không mua dâm, không ăn bánh khúc, mà liên tục đưa máy ảnh\nlên chụp lia lịa. Sáng hôm sau, ảnh em ấy tràn lan trên mạng, trên Facebook\nvới cái tít nghe đầy cảm xúc: \"Hót-gơn bán bánh khúc, ngực như bánh đúc,\nkhiến cư dân mạng sôi sục\". Vậy là sau một đêm, em ấy đã thành hót-gơn,\nthành người nổi tiếng!\nTòng hỏi em ấy: \"Nổi tiếng có sướng không?\", em ấy bảo: \"Sướng thì\ncó sướng, nhưng làm việc gì cũng phải lén lút, thậm thụt vì luôn bị người\nhâm mộ, bị nhà báo, bị truyền thông để ý. Ví dụ trước đây, vừa bán bánh\nkhúc vừa đong đưa, ngã giá, ưng là nhảy lên xe đi nhà nghỉ luôn. Chứ giờ,\nviệc thỏa thuận giá phải thực hiện ngầm vụng bằng điện thoại; bí mật đặt\nphòng, kẻ đến trước, người tới sau; đến bằng taxi, ngồi trong taxi vẫn khẩu\ntrang, kính, mũ sùm sụp, cửa đóng kín như bưng, gò bó, khó chịu lắm anh\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTòng ơi! Nhưng em là người của công chúng, phải có trách nhiệm giữ hình\nảnh của mình luôn sạch sẽ, trong sáng!\".\nRồi tới buổi chiều hôm đó, lại có vài thằng vào quán bánh bao của\nTòng. Chúng nó cũng không ăn bánh, không đặt vấn đề mua dâm với Tòng,\nmà chỉ đưa máy ảnh lên chụp Tòng lia lịa. Tòng lập tức nhao tới, giật lấy\nmấy cái máy ảnh trên tay chúng nó, rồi bảo: \"Chúng mày không xóa hết\nảnh đi thì tao sẽ đập nát máy! Tao không muốn thành hót-boi, không muốn\nbước chân vào showbiz, hiểu chưa?\".\nMấy thằng đó thấy vậy thì xin lỗi rối rít, xóa ảnh cuống quýt, rồi bỏ\nchạy cong đít. Còn Tòng thì thở phào nhẹ nhõm. Bởi nếu Tòng không ra\ntay kịp thời thì kiểu gì ngày mai, những bức ảnh của Tòng sẽ được đăng\ntràn lan trên mạng, trên Phây, với cái tít - đương nhiên là rất hay, kiểu như:\n\"Hót-boi bán bánh bao, chim như cái sào, được cư dân mạng khát khao\".\nVà tất nhiên là Tòng sẽ nổi tiếng khắp Vịnh Bắc Bộ.\nNhưng nổi tiếng mà phải lén lút, thậm thụt như cái em bán bánh khúc\nkia thì quả thực Tòng không muốn. Bởi Tòng bị bệnh đái dắt, bán hàng\nđược một lát là kiểu gì Tòng cũng phải đứng dậy ra chỗ cột điện trước cửa\nsiêu thị để đái. Và khi nổi tiếng rồi, được fan hâm mộ, được báo chí, truyền\nthông để ý rồi, Tòng không thể đái bậy trên hè phố được nữa, mà phải giữ\ngìn hình ảnh, phải đi bộ vòng ra sau bãi rác phía cuối đường, đó mới là nơi\nkín đáo để người nổi tiếng có thể đái mà không bị truyền thông theo dõi.\nThế nhưng ra bãi rác ấy cũng không ổn, bởi cái bệnh đái dắt của Tòng\nthì cứ 20 phút phải đái một lần, mà đi từ quán bánh bao của Tòng ra đến bãi\nrác cũng đã mất 10 phút rồi. Vậy nghĩa là sau khi đái xong ở bãi rác, quay\ntrở về đến quán bánh bao thì cũng là lúc Tòng phải lập tức quay trở lại bãi\nrác để đái tiếp, nếu không muốn bị đái ra quần. Và vậy cũng có nghĩa là,\nnếu trở thành người nổi tiếng, thì cả ngày Tòng chỉ làm được mỗi việc là đi\nđái, không còn thời gian để bán bánh bao, để tương tác với fan, để trả lời\nbáo chí. Mình là người nổi tiếng mà, phải đóng góp, phải cống hiến cho xã\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nhội, chứ nếu cứ suốt ngày chỉ lo chuyện đi đái thì sớm muộn người hâm mộ\nvà giới truyền thông cũng sẽ quay lưng lại với mình thôi...\nĐó! Tâm sự và chia sẻ của Tòng chỉ có bấy nhiêu đó! Mong là những\nbạn trẻ - những người đang lưỡng lự, phân vân trong việc chọn ngành, chọn\nnghề - có thể rút ra được điều gì đó từ những chuyện Tòng vừa chia sẻ.\nVà điều cuối cùng Tòng muốn nói, đó là không có công việc nào là dễ\ndàng, và không có con đường thành công nào mà bằng phẳng cả. Bản thân\nTòng cũng vậy thôi, cũng phải trải qua bao nhục nhã, nhọc nhằn, cay đắng,\ngian nan thì mới có được địa vị như ngày hôm nay...\n- Ê! ĐKM thằng kia!\n- Dạ! Anh chửi em ạ?\n- Mày thấy khách vào, không dắt xe cho khách, còn ngồi đó chém gió\ncái gì vậy hả?\n- Dạ vâng! Em ra ngay đây!\nMọi người đợi Tòng chút nhé, Tòng phải ra dắt xe cho khách đã! Quên\nchưa giới thiệu với mọi người, hiện Tòng đang làm bảo vệ kiêm trông xe\ncho một quán mát xa kích dục lớn nhất thành phố, thu nhập rất ổn định (vì\nchủ quán đã cam kết rằng lương của Tòng sẽ suốt đời như vậy: triệu rưỡi\nmột tháng, không tăng, không giảm). Một lý do nữa khiến Tòng muốn gắn\nbó với công việc này là bởi lĩnh vực kinh doanh của quán là một mảng mà\nTòng rất đam mê. Tòng thấy mình quá may mắn, bởi đã đạt được cái điều\nmà khá nhiều người mơ ước. Chẳng phải bạn cũng mơ ước có được một\ncông việc mang lại cho bạn thu nhập ổn định và đúng với lĩnh vực mà bạn\nsay mê, yêu thích hay sao?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nNhững Người Cùng Khổ\nTrước khi lấy vợ, tôi là người đàn ông có tâm hồn khá tinh tế và nhạy\ncảm trong chuyện ăn uống: ngửi mùi thịt kho tàu nhà hàng xóm, tôi biết đó\nlà thịt mông, vai, hay ba chỉ; đi qua quán cơm bụi đang rán cá, tôi có thể\nkhẳng định chính xác đó là cá trôi, mè, hay diếc.\nNhưng thật tiếc, từ khi lấy vợ, sự tinh tế và nhạy cảm ấy đã thui chột\nhết. Giờ, nhiều khi đút miếng thịt vào mồm, tôi chẳng biết đó là món xào,\nluộc hay kho, và cũng không phân biệt được nó là thịt gà, vịt hay bò.\nNgày xưa - tức là lúc chưa lấy vợ - tôi như con dê núi, tối ngày lang\nthang, tự do phơi phới: sớm thì ra bờ suối, thưởng thức những nhành cỏ\nnon thơm như mùi lúa mới; trưa tha thẩn ngoài bãi nhâm nhi củ sắn, củ\nkhoai; tối đổi món chạy lên tận đỉnh đồi, vùng vẫy một mình với bạt ngàn\nrau sạch...\nBây giờ - tức là khi đã lấy vợ - tôi vẫn là con dê núi, nhưng đã bị nhốt\nvào cái lồng chật chội, tù túng với một mụ quản thú dữ dằn, hà khắc vô\ncùng. Còn đâu bạt ngàn rau sạch mơn mởn, xanh tươi; còn đâu những củ\nsắn củ khoai mũm mĩm, nần nẫn, chỉ cắn nhẹ thôi nhựa đã ứa ra ngập răng,\nchoe choét cả mồm; còn đâu những lọn cỏ non thơm thơm mùi lúa mới.\nGiờ, tới bữa, mụ quản thú quẳng vào lồng cho tôi nhúm cỏ già úa, khô\nkhốc, trệu trạo nhai và rào rạo nuốt mãi không trôi qua cuống họng.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nChắc một số bạn đang chửi tôi ngu, rằng sao trước khi cưới không bắt\nvợ nấu cho ăn, ngon thì hẵng cưới, không ngon thì té?! Tất nhiên là tôi có\nnghĩ đến chuyện đó chứ! Thậm chí mới ngỏ lời yêu buổi sáng thì buổi\nchiều tôi đã lập tức kiểm tra tài nấu nướng của vợ bằng cách đến phòng vợ\nrồi đề nghị vợ nấu cơm cho ăn. Nhưng vợ nghe xong yêu cầu của tôi thì\nđáp bằng giọng lạnh lùng: \"Em có hai nguyên tắc không thể phá vỡ: Thứ\nnhất, không quan hệ tình dục trước hôn nhân; thứ hai, không nấu cơm cho\nnhau ăn trước hôn nhân. Nếu anh vẫn cố tình phá thì chỉ được phép phá\nmột trong hai nguyên tắc đó thôi\".\nGiờ thì các bạn đã hiểu vì sao cưới xong tôi mới phát hiện ra khả năng\nnấu nướng của vợ rồi chứ? Nếu tôi chọn phá cái thứ hai - thay vì cái thứ\nnhất - thì chắc số người chửi tôi ngu sẽ còn nhiều hơn. Tóm lại, kiểu gì tôi\ncũng bị chửi là ngu!\nMà thôi, thân tôi thì thế nào tôi cũng chịu, bởi đó là con đường do tôi\ntự chọn, nhưng còn thằng con tôi, nó mới 4 tuổi mà đã phải chịu cảnh ngộ\nnhư tôi. Tôi thương nó!\nVợ tôi có một cái tật, là khi nấu món gì đó, nếu có ai đó - vì phép lịch\nsự, vì đang say rượu không phân biệt được phải trái, hoặc vì muốn nhờ vả,\nxin xỏ gì đó - mà lỡ mồm khen ngon, thì y như rằng cả tuần sau vợ tôi chỉ\nnấu nguyên món đó. Bởi vậy, trong bữa cơm, mỗi lần vợ hỏi tôi: \"Ngon\nkhông?\", thì tôi thường giả vờ không nghe thấy, rồi tìm cách lảng sang\nchuyện khác.\nNhưng rồi bữa ấy, khi cả nhà đang ăn món ốc bươu xào (thực ra vợ ăn\nlà chính, chứ tôi với thằng cu con thì không dám ăn, bởi mấy con ốc xào ấy\ntrắng ởn, nhợt nhạt, trần truồng nằm trên đĩa, trông hệt như nạn nhân của\nmột vụ hiếp dâm bị thủ phạm ném xuống sông mà cả tuần sau mới tìm thấy\nxác), thì chợt vợ quay sang, âu yếm hỏi thằng cu con: \"Ngon không?\".\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTôi hoảng quá! Nếu thằng con trả lời \"ngon\", đồng nghĩa với việc cả\ntuần đó bố con tôi sẽ phải chịu đựng món ốc xào; còn nếu nó trả lời \"không\nngon\", thì những tiếng quát tháo, giận cá chém thớt của vợ sẽ khiến cho\nkhông khí gia đình tôi, trong ít nhất một tuần tới, sẽ trở nên rất nặng nề và\nđáng sợ.\nMay sao, thằng cu đã trìu mến ngước đôi mắt trong veo lên nhìn mẹ,\nrồi bảo: \"Ngon mẹ ạ! Nhưng ốc thì chỉ nên ăn một bữa thôi, ăn nhiều dễ bị\nỉa chảy lắm!\".\nTôi nghe con nói mà mừng rơi nước mắt! Mừng không phải vì thoát\nđược bi kịch cả tuần ăn ốc, cũng không phải vì tránh khỏi cảnh vợ cáu bẳn,\nhằn học, mà mừng vì thằng con tôi, còn nhỏ tí nhưng đã hiểu chuyện, đã\nbiết lo cho bố, đã biết bảo vệ, giữ gìn sự bình yên, êm ấm của gia đình.\nTất nhiên, khi không có ai khen thì vợ tôi khá tích cực đổi món. Vợ tôi\nnấu ăn theo phương châm: \"mua một lần - ăn cả tuần\". Và chu trình đổi\nmón như sau: Hôm đầu tiên, vợ tôi sẽ mua khoảng 3 cân thịt lợn về luộc.\nĂn còn bao nhiêu thì hôm thứ hai sẽ cho vào rán. Ăn còn bao nhiêu thì hôm\nthứ ba sẽ cho vào kho. Ăn còn bao nhiêu thì hôm thứ tư cho vào sốt cà\nchua. Ăn còn bao nhiêu thì hôm thứ năm sẽ băm nhỏ làm chả quấn lá lốt.\nĂn còn bao nhiêu thì hôm thứ sáu sẽ cho vào nấu cháo. Hiện tại thì cháo\nvẫn là món cuối cùng của chu trình, vì vợ tôi chưa nghĩ ra cách chế biến\ncháo thành một món nào khác. Và như thế nghĩa là sau cháo, bố con tôi sẽ\nđược ăn món luộc. Lưu ý: chu trình trên không chỉ dành riêng cho thịt lợn,\nmà được áp dụng cho tất cả các loại thịt khác như bò, gà, chó, cá, hải sản,\nthủy sản, nông lâm sản, sơn sản, thiên sản...\nHôm trước, vợ có việc về bà ngoại một mình, nên bảo bố con tôi tự\nđưa nhau đi ăn quán. Khỏi phải nói là tôi và thằng cu mừng như thế nào!\nVậy là tôi đèo nó đến ngay một quán cơm to, đẹp và lịch sự nhất phố.\nĐương nhiên là cu cậu rất phấn khởi. Vừa dựa xe trước cửa quán, cu cậu đã\nhỏi:\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Cái biển kia viết gì đấy hả bố?\n- Đó là tên quán cơm con ạ! - Tôi trả lời.\n- Thế còn cái dòng chữ nhỏ bên dưới kia?\n- Đó là slogan của quán!\n- Slogan gì ạ?\n- \"Ngon như cơm mẹ nấu!\".\nTôi đọc cái slogan đó rất tự nhiên, nhưng rồi lập tức giật mình, vì hình\nnhư tôi đã hớ. Quả đúng vậy, thằng cu nghe xong thì quay ngoắt đi, dứt\nkhoát không chịu vào trong quán, mặc cho tôi tha hồ giảng giải, phân tích\nrằng slogan cũng chỉ là slogan, cũng chỉ là quảng cáo thôi, mà quảng cáo\nthì toàn là láo, không bao giờ đúng sự thật cả. Nhưng nó vẫn nhất quyết\nkhông nghe, rồi nằng nặc đòi vào cái quán cơm bụi không tên, không biển\nhiệu, nằm đối diện bên kia đường, bẩn thỉu, lụp xụp như cái lều.\nTôi vừa cay thằng chủ quán cơm, vì nó là thằng ếch ngồi đáy giếng,\nđặt cái slogan như hâm, vừa tiếc hùi hụi, vì chả mấy khi được đi ăn ngoài.\nNhưng thằng cu nhà tôi đã quyết như thế, tôi phải theo thôi. Ấy vậy mà\ncũng lạ, dù cái quán cơm bụi lụp xụp ấy vắng teo, thức ăn nguội ngắt, lèo\ntèo, nhưng bố con tôi vẫn ăn hùng hục như hai thằng tù sắp chết đói vừa\nvượt ngục. Để rồi, trong một thoáng ngừng ăn, liếc sang con, thấy con đang\nkhóc, tôi hỏi:\n- Sao vậy con? Cơm không ngon à?\n- Dạ không! Cơm ngon lắm ạ! Nhưng con nhớ lời bố dạy, rằng hưởng\nhạnh phúc hôm nay không được quên cay đắng hôm qua!\n- Bởi thế mà con khóc?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Dạ! Cũng chỉ đúng một phần thôi ạ!\n- Vậy phần còn lại là gì?\n- Dạ! Con nhớ tới những cay đắng ngày mai, khi mẹ trở về từ nhà bà\nngoại...\nGiờ thì tới lượt tôi khóc rồi! Cái thằng con mất dạy, hôm nay vui thì\ncứ biết hôm nay thôi, lại còn nghĩ tới ngày mai. Giờ, cái hàm tôi mếu máo,\nméo xệch, chẳng thể nhai, cục thức ăn ở cổ cũng vì thế mà dồn lại, phùng\nlên, nghẹn ứ...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nHên Xui\nKhi ở đương quãng xuân thì, tôi là đứa con gái đẹp nhất nhì của làng:\nchân thẳng băng, ngực đầy căng, da mịn màng. Đàn ông độ ấy theo tôi\nnhiều như đám dòi trong vại mắm tôm quên đậy nắp, để dưới gốc của hàng\ncây Mỡ mới trồng, đoạn gần cổng Đài truyền hình Việt Nam, trong những\nngày nắng nóng. Đó là cái giai đoạn mà tôi thấy mình cao giá nhất.\nTất nhiên, cao giá thì có quyền mơ mộng và kén chọn. Tôi muốn\nngười yêu tôi phải đẹp trai như Bình Minh, gợi tình như Trí Nguyễn, hiểu\nbiết như bầu Kiên, và nhiều tiền như bầu Đức. Nhưng, cũng tất nhiên, tôi\nđợi mãi mà chẳng được ai như thế!\nRồi cái giai đoạn cao giá ấy cũng qua đi, tôi chuyển sang giai đoạn\ngiảm giá, đồng thời các tiêu chuẩn chọn người yêu cũng giảm theo. Tôi\nkhông yêu cầu anh ấy phải đẹp trai như Bình Minh nữa, chỉ cần gợi tình\nnhư Trí Nguyễn là được rồi, bởi đẹp trai mà nhìn không thấy gợi tình thì\ncũng buồn; tôi cũng chẳng cần anh ấy phải hiểu biết như bầu Kiên, chỉ cần\nnhiều tiền như bầu Đức là được rồi, bởi hiểu biết mà không kiếm ra được\nnhiều tiền thì cũng chán.\nRồi khi cái giai đoạn giảm giá ấy đi qua, tôi đành ngậm ngùi, hoang\nmang, lê bước sang giai đoạn mất giá, và cuối cùng là ở giá!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nThế nhưng vào cái giai đoạn ở giá đầy chán chường và buông xuôi\nnhất ấy thì tôi lại gặp anh. Đương nhiên, anh không lịch lãm được như Bình\nMinh mà trông anh cứ bẩn bẩn, kinh kinh, đầu tóc hôi rình; anh cũng không\ngợi tình được như Trí Nguyễn, mà nhìn anh gầy gò, như thằng hen suyễn.\nCả việc anh không hiểu biết như bầu Kiên, không nhiều tiền như bầu Đức,\nthì tôi cũng miễn. Bởi quan trọng nhất là anh đã đến (dù muộn màng) và\ncho tôi những cảm xúc ngọt ngào mà đáng ra tôi phải được hưởng từ lâu.\nĐó là khi anh nắm bàn tay tôi run rẩy, ghì chặt tôi bằng vòng tay ấm\náp, đặt lên bờ môi tôi khô ráp nụ hôn đầu đời cháy bỏng, đầy đê mê, khao\nkhát. Tôi không biết nụ hôn đó kéo dài bao lâu, bởi ở cái khoảnh khắc\nthiêng liêng đó, mọi khái niệm về thời gian, không gian dường như ngừng\nlại, chỉ có khái niệm về độ dài, độ cứng, độ cong là bỗng đột xuất trở nên\nvô cùng nhạy cảm.\nĐang hôn say sưa, chợt anh buông tôi ra, có lẽ vì anh nghĩ rằng nếu\nanh vồ vập quá sẽ làm tôi sợ, hoặc ôm tôi chặt quá sẽ làm tôi ngộp thở - ấy\nlà tôi đoán thế, chứ một đứa đàn bà vừa mới chỉ được nếm trải nụ hôn đầu\nđời, vừa mới được một chút nhựa tình yêu ngọt ngào chấm nhẹ qua môi, thì\nsao đã đủ trải nghiệm để khẳng định một điều gì?! Và khi mà tôi còn đang\ncúi gằm, ấp úng, ngượng ngùng chẳng biết nói gì thì may quá, anh đã lên\ntiếng trước:\n- Em ăn rau muống xào tỏi hả?\n- Dạ! Sao anh biết? - tôi hỏi anh đầy ngạc nhiên.\n- Có sợi rau dắt trong mồm anh này!\n- Ý em muốn hỏi sao anh biết là rau muống ý!\n- Thì anh vừa nhai, rồi nuốt luôn mà! Rau em xào hả?\n- Dạ...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Em cho hơi nhiều mì chính, nên cứ lờ lợ. Thêm nữa, lần sau xào, em\nnên sử dụng bột canh, đừng dùng nước mắm, mùi rất khắm!\nAnh nói chuẩn quá! Đúng là tôi xào rau hay có tật cho nhiều mì chính\nvà nước mắm thật! Tôi khâm phục và thấy yêu anh nhiều hơn, bởi để rút ra\nngần ấy những nhận xét chính xác, đầy tính khoa học mà chỉ qua một sợi\nrau, lại là sợi rau tôi đã ăn từ mấy hôm trước, thì hẳn phải là người có tâm\nhồn tinh tế, nhạy cảm, biết yêu, biết thưởng thức, biết trân trọng và nâng\nniu cái ngon, cái đẹp ghê gớm lắm!\nDù chê món rau xào, nhưng ngồi được tí, anh lại ôm tôi vào và hôn\ntiếp. Hôn chán, anh chuyển qua chơi trò nắn hoa quả. Tôi lúc ấy phê rồi,\nchả còn sức đâu mà chống cự nữa, mà nhỡ chống cự, anh lại tưởng tôi\nkhông thích, anh dừng lại, thì tôi đến ấm ức mà chết mất. Nhưng cũng\ngiống như hôn, đang nắn hăng, như sực nhớ ra điều gì, anhchợt dừng tay,\nngẩng mặt lên nhìn tôi, bảo:\n- Anh đọc tặng em bài thơ của Hồ Xuân Hương nhé?\n- Bài gì vậy anh? \"Quả mít\" hả?\n- Không! \"Quả mít\" được viết khi còn trẻ. Còn bài này tác giả viết khi\nđã về già!\n- Bài gì ạ?\n- \"Quả mướp!\"\nNói rồi, anh ngồi ngay ngắn, hít một hơi thật sâu, cất giọng ngâm nga,\ntrầm ấm:\n\"Ti em như quả mướp trên cây\nVỏ nó thâm sì, núm nó dài\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nCông tử có thương thì túm lại\nChứ đừng lôi kéo tuột ra ngay\".\nVừa nãy nghe anh đánh giá, phân tích về món rau xào, tôi thấy mình\nyêu anh nhiều hơn, và giờ, sau khi nghe anh đọc thơ nữa thì tôi biết trái tim\ntôi đã hoàn toàn bị anh chinh phục. Tôi hạnh phúc quá! Ở vào cái lúc ế ẩm\nnày mà gặp được một người đàn ông vừa có tâm hồn nhạy cảm, tinh tế, lại\nvừa yêu văn thơ, đầy chất nghệ sĩ dào dạt trong người như anh là điều mà\ntrong mơ tôi cũng không bao giờ dám nghĩ...\nRồi sau đó tôi và anh chuyển về sống thử với nhau. Dù là sống thử,\nnhưng nó lại là quãng thời gian giúp tôi nhìn ra bộ mặt thật của anh. Anh\nkhông còn bình luận, đánh giá về những món ăn tôi nấu, bởi anh suốt ngày\nra ngoài nhậu nhẹt, chả mấy khi ăn ở nhà; anh cũng chẳng có thì giờ đọc\nthơ cho tôi nghe bởi còn bận lao vào những cuộc vui chơi, đàn đúm, bạn\nbè. Hầu như hôm nào cũng phải nửa đêm anh mới về, và cũng chẳng bao\ngiờ anh thèm ngó vào mâm cơm tôi dọn sẵn chờ anh để trên bàn; anh\nkhông thèm cả cởi giày mà đổ gục ngay xuống giường, mềm nhũn như cái\nbánh bèo, và ngủ say như một con heo.\nCũng có những hôm men rượu chưa đủ làm anh ngủ, thì anh sẽ lao\nvào tôi hùng hục, thô bạo, hệt như khi người ta giữ chân, buộc cánh, bành\nmồm, nhét bánh đúc vào họng một con gà tội nghiệp mà không cần biết\nrằng nó có muốn thứ bánh đúc tanh tưởi ấy hay không. Một vài lần đầu, tôi\ncó cố đẩy anh ra, nhưng về sau thì tôi nằm im chịu đựng, bởi tôi biết, chống\ncự lại anh trong thời điểm như vậy không khác gì chống lại một con thú\nhoang: cực kỳ vô ích!\nNhững chuyện như vậy diễn ra liên tục, và trong một thời gian rất dài,\nđến nỗi có lần tôi không chịu đựng nổi đã hét thẳng vào mặt anh rằng: \"Tại\nsao tôi dành cho anh tất cả, từ thể xác đến tâm hồn, còn anh thì lại coi tôi\nnhư một đứa ô-sin, một con búp bê tình dục?\". Anh nghe vậy thì ngửa mặt\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ncười khùng khục, rồi bất ngờ vung tay vả thẳng vào mặt tôi, trợn mắt nhìn\ntôi, quát lớn: \"Ý cô là lúc gặp tôi cô vẫn còn trinh tiết sao? Thật nực cười!\nTôi không phải là con bò mà cô đòi dắt mũi. Ở với cô lâu nay, tiết thì tôi có\nthấy đôi ba lần, chứ trinh thì tuyệt nhiên chưa lần nào tôi thấy!\".\nRa vậy! Nghĩa là trước giờ, anh ấy vẫn nghĩ tôi đã lừa gạt anh ấy, rằng\ntôi không còn trinh tiết khi đến với anh ấy? Liệu đó có phải là lý do khiến\nanh ấy thay đổi, tối ngay say sưa rượu chè, đàn đúm bạn bè, và coi tôi như\nnô lệ? Tôi đã cố gắng trình bày, giải thích, thề thốt nhiều lần, nhưng anh ấy\nkhông tin, bởi cái cái tư tưởng nặng nề đã ăn sâu vào gốc rễ, bởi những ám\nảnh trong đầu anh ấy đã trầm trọng đến mức không thể nào gột rửa. Và cuối\ncùng, tôi và anh phải chia tay, tôi chính thức được giải thoát khỏi cái địa\nngục của cuộc sống vợ chồng.\nSau lần đổ vỡ ấy, tôi thật sự sợ, và thề rằng sẽ không bao giờ lấy\nchồng nữa. Nhưng ở đời, có những việc tính cũng không được, mà không\ntính thì lại được.\nĐó là một buổi chiều trời mưa như trút, nước ngập quá đầu gối, và tôi\nphải bì bõm lội bộ trên vỉa hè. Bất ngờ, chân tôi sụt xuống một cái miệng\nhố khá sâu, người chực trôi hút đi. Thấy có một anh đang đứng cạnh, tôi\nđưa tay theo bản năng và túm lấy. Đúng ra tôi định túm thắt lưng, nhưng\nanh ta lại mặc quần đùi, bởi vậy tôi trượt tay, và túm ngay phải cái cục tròn\ntròn, dài dài ở giữa hai túi quần của anh ấy. Lúc ấy tôi mới thấm thía câu\nnói của các cụ: \"Chết đuối vớ được cọc\". Nếu hôm ấy, người đứng cạnh tôi\nlà một phụ nữ, hoặc thậm chí là đàn ông, nhưng không phải là anh ấy mà\nlại là một người ở độ tuổi dưới 13 và trên 60, thì có lẽ hôm nay tôi chỉ có\nthể kể cho các bạn nghe câu chuyện này khi các bạn đang ngủ, bằng cách\nhiện về báo mộng.\nKhông biết có phải vì động tác túm cọc đầy chuyên nghiệp và chuẩn\nxác của tôi hay không mà sau đó, anh chàng ấy ra sức theo đuổi và cưa cẩm\ntôi. Để rồi khi anh ấy nghiêm túc quỳ gối xuống ngỏ lời muốn cưới tôi làm\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nvợ thì tôi đã thật sự bối rối. Thứ nhất, tôi như \"con công sợ chim cong\", à\nnhầm, \"con chim sợ cây cong\", thứ hai, tôi quên chưa nói với các bạn, rằng\nanh ấy là trai Tây: trai Tây thì cái gì cũng to. Thử tưởng tượng xem, cái\nthân hình đồ sộ kia, lúc đi nhậu về mà đè lên tôi thì liệu tôi còn thở nổi?\nCái tay to như cái gốc cây kia mà vả vào mặt tôi thì trung tâm thẩm mĩ nào\ndám tự tin bảo rằng họ đủ trình độ phục hồi?\nHơn nữa, tôi lại bị bệnh dị ứng với mấy cái đồ Tây, cứ ăn bánh\nHamburger, ăn Pizza, ăn mì Spaghetti là người tôi lại nổi mụn khắp tứ chi,\ntừ mụn nhỏ li ti cho đến những mụn to bằng viên bi. Dù tôi chưa một lần\nđược ăn chuối Tây, nhưng chuối Tây thì cũng là đồ Tây, bởi vậy, nếu nhận\nlời làm vợ anh Tây, tôi sợ là cứ vài ngài tôi lại bị một lần nổi mụn...\nNghĩ là vậy, sợ là vậy, nhưng trước sự chân thành của anh Tây, tôi lại\nmủi lòng. Bởi là đàn bà, dù có làm ra vẻ cứng rắn, sắt đá đến đâu thì thẳm\nsâu trong đáy lòng, họ cũng đều cần một vòng tay đàn ông ấp ôm, che chở;\nđều cần một bờ vai để sẻ chia, nương tựa, để mỗi khi cô đơn, để những\nphút yếu lòng, học có thể gục vào nức nở...\nLần đầu tiên lên giường với anh Tây, tôi đã thể hiện hết mình với tinh\nthần vui là chính, bởi tôi đã quyết định sẽ nói thẳng với anh Tây rằng tôi\nkhông còn trinh tiết nữa, mọi việc sau đó tùy anh phán xét...\nSau khoảng 15 phút nghỉ giải lao, anh Tây đã hồi sức và nhịp thở có\nvẻ đã đều đều trở lại. Tôi lúc ấy cũng chuẩn bị sẵn mọi phương án trả lời\ncho những thắc mắc và tra hỏi của anh. Nhưng không, anh nhẹ nhàng\nchoàng tay qua ôm tôi vào, giọng thì thào:\n- Em tuyệt vời lắm!\nTôi hơi ngạc nhiên, bởi tôi không nghĩ anh sẽ nói với tôi câu đó. Dẫu\nvậy, tôi vẫn quyết định sẽ thú nhận với anh...\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Anh không hỏi gì về chuyện em đã mất trinh sao? Thực ra, em và\nbạn trai cũ của em đã...\nNhưng không để tôi nói hết câu, anh đã ngắt lời:\n- Anh muốn gặp bạn trai cũ của em!\n- Để làm gì hả anh? Chuyện giữa em và người đó đã kết thúc rồi mà!\n- Nhưng anh muốn cám ơn anh ấy! Người Tây bọn anh rất ngại phá\ntrinh! Đó là công việc vất vả giống như là mở một con đường đi xuyên qua\nmột khu rừng rậm nguyên sinh vậy. Nhờ có bạn trai cũ của em mà giờ anh\ntự nhiên có một con đường rộng rãi, trơn tru, vào ra dễ dàng, thông\nthoáng...\nThực sự thì tôi chưa rõ tương lai sẽ ra sao, bởi đó là điều chẳng ai biết\ntrước, nhưng hiện tại, tôi đang rất hạnh phúc với chồng Tây. Chồng Tây\ncủa tôi không nhận xét, đánh giá món ăn của tôi, bởi anh ấy là người nấu;\nanh không đọc thơ cho tôi nghe, mà anh làm thơ tặng tôi, cho tôi tự đọc;\nanh không đè tôi ngạt thở bởi anh luôn cho tôi ngồi trên, hoặc bế bổng tôi\nlên mỗi khi cao hứng; tay anh Tây to như gốc cây, nhưng không phải để vả\nvào mặt tôi, mà là để xách đồ cho tôi mỗi khi tôi đi mua sắm. Tôi cũng\nkhông sợ dị ứng với chuối Tây nữa, mà ngược lại, còn đang có dấu hiệu\nnghiện: vài ba ngày mà không được một quả là thấy nhạt miệng, người bứt\nrứt, uể oải và khó chịu vô cùng.\nTừ những thăng trầm của cuộc đời mình, tôi tự thấy, hôn nhân không\nkhác gì đánh bạc. Việc đặt ra yêu cầu này, tiêu chuẩn nọ để kén chọn chồng\nkhông khác gì việc một ông ngồi ôm quyển sổ để phân tích, tính toán xem\ntối nay đề về bao nhiêu, và nên phang con lô nào - rất mơ hồ, vô nghĩa, và\nchẳng có gì đảm bảo. Khi bạn tin chắc rằng sẽ trúng, thì bạn lại trượt, còn\nkhi bạn chẳng tính toán gì, chỉ đánh vì bạn thấy thích, thì bạn lại trúng,\nthậm chí trúng vài ba nháy. Nói một cách dễ hiểu hơn, hạnh phúc trong hôn\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nnhân giống như cơn đau bụng khi bị ỉa chảy. Tưởng là vẫn còn, nhưng hóa\nra đã hết, tưởng là đã hết, nhưng nó lại bất ngờ quặn lên, và làm bạn són ra\nquần!\nĐến đây, tôi lại nhớ tới hai câu thơ rất nổi tiếng nhưng ít người biết\nđến của một đại tiện thi hào với cái tên khá tầm phào (hình như là Võ Tòng\nđánh mèo hay đánh chó gì đó)...\n\"Thân em như hạt mưa rào\nHạt vô biệt thự, hạt vào Quất Lâm\"\nHên xui thôi!\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nHịch Phây-Búc\nTa từng tới bữa online, nửa đêm lướt web, đầu đau, tay nhức, mỏi mắt\nvô cùng, chỉ mong bài post lên được nhiều like, share và còm-men, thì dẫu\ntay chân rụng rời như vừa hút cỏ, người gầy như cây bạch đàn chết khô\nchết nỏ, cũng nguyện xin làm.\nTa cũng từng nghe: Quân Kun mặc sịp vàng chổng mông chụp ảnh; Bà\nTưng thả rông nhảy ầm ầm trước webcam; Kenny Sang nổ banh trời rồi\nngửa mặt cho người đời chê chửi; Lệ Rơi vừa trồng ổi vừa tranh thủ làm\nMV post lên Phây... Từ xưa, những kẻ bất chấp tất cả để được nổi tiếng đời\nnào chẳng có? Ví thử mấy người đó cứ an phận trồng ổi, bán quần áo, nắng\nchạy ra, mưa trú vào, mệt ngồi nghỉ làm điếu thuốc lào, thì đến bao giờ mới\nnổi?\nTa ở nhà được vợ nuông chiều, không có laptop thì vợ mua cho laptop,\nkhông có wifi thì vợ lắp wifi, ra ngoài thì smartphone nhoay nhoáy trên tay,\n3G bật cả ngày vì đã dùng gói Max-min 70k của Viettel trọn gói. Về mức\nđộ đầu tư và chịu chơi, so với mấy người kể trên, nào có kém gì?\nĐể rồi, nhìn một post lượng like hơn chục mà thấy lo, bài đưa lên chỉ\nvài view lè tè mà thấy thẹn. Đã vậy, bọn cá mập ngoài biển còn ngày đêm\nrình rập cắn cáp quang. Khi cáp đứt, cấu hình khủng cũng không load được\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nvideo, latop xịn không tải được status, Iphone 6 plus chính thức trở thành\ncục gạch không kém, không hơn. Đau xót biết chừng nào?\nNhưng đó là ngày xưa thôi, chứ giờ ta sợ rồi! Bởi ta nhận ra mình\nđang sống ở cái thời Internet và mạng xã hội rối ren, loạn lạc; cái thời mà\nmở máy tính ra là thấy cướp, hiếp, chém giết, lộ hàng; thời mà người ta nổi\ntiếng chẳng cần tài năng, chỉ cần ăn mặc hở hang đi bán bánh tráng, chỉ cần\nngực to, đùi mẩy để lên mạng làm trò, đưa đẩy, khoe hàng; thời mà hot-gơn\nnhiều hơn lũ khỉ ở Hoa quả sơn, và hotboy thì nhung nhúc như đám người\ntrong công viên nước Hồ Tây ngày miễn phí; cái thời mà một clip sex post\nlên Phây đủ sức khiến cô nữ sinh 15 tuổi phải từ giã cõi đời; cái thời mà\nchẳng may đi máy bay nằm ngủ dạng háng là lập tức bị người đời nhảy vào\nchửi cho tơi bời...\nTa sợ rồi! Và ta cũng biết mình không thể nổi tiếng được theo cách\ncủa những người trên đây, bởi mặt ta không đủ dày, và ta vẫn còn liêm sỉ.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nCô Dâu 80 Tuổi\nChiều qua, thấy quán trà đá có em bán hàng xinh quá, tôi liền ghé vào\nngồi lê la. Đang ngồi thì mẹ em ấy đi ra, hỏi em ấy:\n- Tối qua con có xem được tập 969 của phim Cô dâu 80 tuổi không?\nKể mẹ nghe với.\n- Dạ có mẹ! Tập hôm qua, Anandi bị táo bón. Cô ấy ngồi trong phòng\nvệ sinh rặn mãi nhưng không ra. Chắc đau quá nên cô ấy khóc, tivi quay\ncận cảnh cô ấy nước mắt nhạt nhòa. Chồng cô ấy đứng ngoài nghe tiếng vợ\nkhóc thì thương quá cũng khóc theo. Tivi lại quay cận cảnh chồng cô ấy\nnước mắt nhạt nhòa. Rồi chồng cô ấy hỏi: \"Ra chưa?\". Cô ấy trả lời:\n\"Chưa\", rồi cô ấy lại khóc, tivi quay cận cảnh cô ấy nước mắt nhạt nhòa.\nChồng cô ấy khi biết vợ chưa ra thì thương quá, càng khóc to hơn. Tivi\nquay cận cảnh chồng cô ấy nước mắt nhạt nhòa.\n- Tiếp đi con, đang hay!\n- Dạ hết rồi ạ! Tập hôm qua chỉ quay mỗi cảnh ỉa thôi mà!\nTôi nghe mẹ con họ nói chuyện thì tò mò quá, liền hỏi:\n- Chị xem phim này lâu chưa?\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n- Cũng mới thôi chú! Xem từ hồi mang bầu con bé này - vừa nói, chị\nvừa chỉ vào đứa con gái tuổi chừng mười tám đôi mươi, mơn mởn, xinh\ntươi.\n- Chị xem từ tập một à?\n- Không! Hồi tivi chiếu tập một thì chị vẫn còn ở trong bụng mẹ, sao\nmà xem được. Chỉ có mẹ chị là được xem từ tập một thôi!\n- Giờ mẹ chị vẫn tiếp tục xem chứ?\n- Không! Mẹ chị mất lâu rồi. Tuần sau là bốc mộ mẹ chị đấy! Lúc\nchết, mẹ chị không nhắm mắt được, vì không biết phim kết thúc ra sao. Chị\ncũng đang lo đây! Chị gần 50 tuổi rồi, mà phim mới chiếu được có hơn\nchín trăm tập, nghĩa là vẫn còn gần một nghìn tập nữa mới hết. Không biết\nchị có sống nổi đến tập cuối cùng hay không.\nTôi không nói gì, bởi thực sự tôi không biết chị có sống được đến tập\ncuối cùng hay không. Nhưng tôi tin rằng, nhiều người sẵn sàng chọn cái\nchết, nếu ai đó bắt họ phải xem bộ phim ấy đến tập cuối cùng.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nTUYỂN TẬP TRUYỆN TRÀO\nPHÚNG HAY NHẤT CỦA VÕ TÒNG\nĐÁNH MÈO\nĐinh Long\nwww.dtv-ebook.com\nThật Và Giả\nTôi hồi trẻ làm cave, đến khi có tí tuổi, ngực dài, háng rộng, toan về\ngià rồi, thì chuyển qua làm tú bà. Cái này cũng giống như mấy cầu thủ\nbóng đá, khi hết thời thì quay qua làm huấn luyện viên vậy. Cầu thủ chuyển\nqua làm huấn luyện viên có nhiều thuận lợi lắm, bởi họ có kinh nghiệm\nnhiều năm lăn lộn trên sân cỏ. Còn tôi, từ cave chuyển qua làm tú bà cũng\nkhông gặp khó khăn gì mấy, bởi tôi có kinh nghiệm nhiều năm lăn lộn trên\ngiường.\nCó lẽ sau nghề buôn thuốc phiện và trộm cướp thì cave là nghề bị xã\nhội khinh rẻ nhất. Tôi thấy có chút bất công. Bởi dù gì thì cave vẫn kiếm\ntiền bằng chính công sức của họ (dù ít hay nhiều), chứ họ không lấy trộm,\nkhông cướp giật, không ăn chặn của ai. Trong khi đó, đầy những kẻ làm\ngiàu bằng những cách thất đức, bẩn thỉu hơn thì lại được người đời ngợi ca,\ntrọng vọng.\nNgười ta bảo mại dâm làm cho đạo đức xã hội suy đồi. Ở vị trí là một\ntú bà, đương nhiên tôi không đồng tình với quan điểm ấy. Bởi cái việc mà\nđàn ông làm với cave về bản chất nó cũng chẳng khác gì cái việc vẫn được\ncác tiểu thuyết tình yêu hay các sách văn chương gọi là sự thiêng liêng, sự\nthăng hoa, là đặc ân mà tạo hóa ban cho loài người (và cả loài vật). Đàn\nông và cave làm việc đó với nhau sòng phẳng, \"tiền đưa, dưa thúc\", chứ họ\nkhông loạn luân, không hiếp dâm. Nếu bắt buộc phải chịu cái tiếng xấu là\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nlàm cho xã hội suy đồi, thì sự suy đồi mà mại dâm tạo ra cho cái xã hội này\ncũng nhỏ xíu thôi, chẳng ăn thua gì so với bao nhiêu thứ suy đồi ngoài kia\ncả.\nNgười ta còn bảo mại dâm làm ảnh hưởng đến hạnh phúc của các gia\nđình. Ở vị trí là một tú bà, tôi đương nhiên lại không đồng tình tiếp. Bởi\nđàn ông tìm đến cave chủ yếu để giải quyết sinh lý, không phải để yêu\nthương. Hiếm có thằng đàn ông nào vì đi chơi cave mà bỏ bê vợ con, chán\nnản gia đình. Thậm chí, khi mà quan hệ vợ chồng không được thuận hòa thì\nviệc đàn ông đi chơi cave có lẽ lại là một cách để giải tỏa, để tránh những\ncuộc bạo hành trên giường, tránh những cuộc yêu (lẽ ra là thiêng liêng) của\nchồng của vợ bị biến thành một cuộc cướp giật, cưỡng đoạt ghê sợ giống\nnhư ở ngoài đường, ngoài chợ; để không còn cảnh sau mỗi cuộc bạo hành\nấy, kẻ nằm hả hê, phì phò, người thì nghẹn ngào, nức nở, co ro.\nCó người cho rằng, càng quản lý chặt, càng khắt khe với mại dâm thì\nsẽ càng làm tăng thêm những vụ hiếp dâm và lạm dụng tình dục. Họ ví von\nrằng: hiếp dâm giống hiện tượng vỡ ống nước do dòng lưu thông bị tắc dẫn\nđến áp suất tăng cao. Nếu không bị bóp nghẹt, nếu cứ cho phép nước chảy\nthảnh thơi, hiền hòa, thì sẽ thât hiếm khi ống vỡ. Lý luận này dù có vẻ hơi\ncùn nhưng tôi tin là rất nhiều anh sẽ đồng tình, gật gù tán thưởng.\nTại Anh, Hà Lan, Tây Ban Nha và khoảng hơn chục nước thuộc Châu\nÂu khác, người ta đã công nhận mại dâm là một nghề, ở đó, cave được bảo\nvệ và tôn trọng. Tức là những đóng góp của ngành này cho việc cân bằng\nham muốn sinh lý của cộng đồng (chủ yếu là nam giới) đã được thừa nhận.\nTôi cũng rất mong một ngày không xa, ngành cave ở Việt Nam sẽ được\ncông nhận như thế. Khi ấy, sẽ có một bộ gọi là Bộ Cave, ngày 6-9 sẽ được\nchọn làm ngày cave. Hằng năm, đúng ngày này, Bộ trưởng Bộ cave sẽ\nxuống đường, đến tận các ổ chứa, nhà nghỉ, ra tận các gốc cây, vỉa hè để\nthăm và tặng quà cho cán bộ công nhân viên trong ngành. Và tôi tin, cave\nsẽ là ngành đóng thuế nhiều và ổn định nhất cho ngân khố quốc gia.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nNghề cave còn giống nghề cầu thủ bóng đá ở cái điểm là tuổi thọ nghề\nrất ngắn. Với cầu thủ, ngoài 30 tuổi là không chạy nổi nữa rồi, nếu có cố\nchạy cũng không còn sức chiến đấu. Cave cũng vậy, ngoài 30 là không nằm\nnổi nữa rồi, nếu có cố nằm cũng không còn sức chiến đấu. Bởi vậy, tôi luôn\nkhuyên nhủ các em cave trong đội của mình rằng khi còn đương trẻ, còn\nsung sức thì phải cố cày cuốc, dành dụm lấy ít vốn, sau này giải nghệ có cái\nmà chuyển qua làm ăn buôn bán, hoặc không thì cũng có khoản mà trông\nvào.\nMới hôm kia thôi, cái Trinh - trước làm cave ở chỗ tôi, giờ sức đã yếu\nnên về quê mở cửa hàng cắt tóc gội đầu - có gọi cho tôi khoe rằng nó vừa\nđược phong tặng danh hiệu cá nhân ưu tú. Tôi hỏi sao được hay vậy, thì nó\nbảo là vì nó vừa ủng hộ 10 triệu cho quỹ bảo trợ trẻ em của làng, 10 triệu\ncho hội phụ nữ, thêm 10 triệu cho hội người cao tuổi. Tôi nể nó quá! Hồi\ncòn xuân trẻ thì làm cave hầu hạ đàn ông, giờ giải nghệ về quê thì góp tiền\nủng hộ hội phụ nữ, rồi quan tâm đến trẻ con, lo toan cho người già, thử hỏi\ncòn thành phần nào của xã hội không được hưởng thụ tấm lòng nhân ái của\nnó? Nó mà không ưu tú thì ai dám ưu tú?\nChưa hết, hôm qua, tôi lại nghe mấy đứa kháo nhau rằng cái Thảo -\ncũng là cave cũ ở đội của tôi, mới nghỉ hưu - vừa được người làng nó dựng\ntượng dưới gốc đa, đặt ngoài ngã ba. Lý do là vì nó đã bỏ ra gần nửa tỉ để\nxây cho làng một cái nhà văn hóa to, đẹp và hiện đại như cái quán bar. Tôi\ncũng đã xem qua bức tượng con Thảo đăng trên Phây của nó rồi. Nhìn qua\nlà biết bức tượng đó được dựng mô phỏng theo tượng Nữ thần tự do của\nMĩ: tay phải con Thảo cầm cái ca giơ cao, tay trái cầm con ve chuẩn bị bỏ\nvào, đầu mũ có cái chỏm xinh xinh nhìn như cái bao.\nKhá nhiều đứa đang làm cho tôi thì bỗng đâu lại kiếm được một anh tử\ntế, vậy là chúng xin nghỉ việc để lấy chồng. Dù chúng nó lấy chồng nghĩa\nlà tôi mất đi một nhân viên, nhưng cùng là kiếp cave, tôi hiểu và mừng cho\nchúng nó.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nMấy đứa cave đi lấy chồng, may mắn vớ được những thằng đàn ông\ncó tư tưởng tiến bộ, phóng khoáng thì không sao, nhưng nếu gặp phải\nnhững người có suy nghĩ khắt khe, cổ hủ, đặt nặng chuyện trinh tiết thì các\nem ấy buộc phải đứng giữa hai lựa chọn: một là dùng màng trinh giả để\nthay cho cái màng trinh thật; hai là tìm một lý do giả để giải thích cho sự\nbiến mất của cái màng trinh thật.\nViệc dùng màng trinh giả thì dễ rồi, bạn gái nào quan tâm thì lên\nGoogle tìm, sẽ ra hết: từ mẫu mã, giá cả, hướng dẫn sử dụng đến các\nchương trình khuyến mại. Nhưng xin lưu ý một điều rằng chỉ nên dùng\nmàng trinh giả nếu người đàn ông của bạn là một thằng ngu và chưa làm\nchuyện đó bao giờ. Cái này giống như việc một người lần đầu được ăn sò\nhuyết vậy: dù là sò luộc chín tới, miệng khép hờ, ruột hồng tươi, hay là sò\nbị quá lửa, mồm há toác, ruột nhão nhoét, thì khi cho vào mồm cái thằng\nngu ấy cũng đều thành ngon hết. Còn nếu người đàn ông của bạn là một gã\nsành ăn thì đừng dại gì dùng cách ấy. Bởi một thằng sành ăn sẽ giống như\nmột tên thợ vá xe chuyên nghiệp, tháo cái săm xe ra, nhìn cái săm nát bét,\nthâm sì là nó biết ngay săm đã bị chọc bao nhiêu nhát, vá bao nhiêu lần.\nTôi vẫn khuyên mấy đứa ở đội của tôi nên chọn cách thứ hai, tức là\ntìm một lý do thật thánh thiện để biện hộ cho cái sự không hiện diện của cái\ntấm màng chết tiệt. Chỗ tôi, khá nhiều đứa đã chọn cách này, và giờ chúng\nđang có một gia đình rất vẹn tròn, hạnh phúc.\nCó thể kể ra đây trường hợp của cái Tâm, biệt danh Tâm Giặc (vì nó\nnghịch như giặc). Hồi ấy, mới đang tán tỉnh nhau, chồng nó rủ nó đi đạp xe.\nTuy nhiên, chồng nó chỉ vừa dắt cái xe đạp ra là nó ôm mặt sợ hãi, khóc\nthét, và không dám leo lên xe. Chồng hỏi tại sao, nó bảo rằng vì hồi nhỏ nó\ntập xe, đang đi thì cái yên xe bị rơi ra, nó không biết nên cứ vậy ngồi lên, bị\ncái khung xe dài dài, tròn tròn nó chọc cho một phát. Thành ra, giờ cứ nhìn\nthấy xe đạp là cái cảm giác đau rát khủng khiếp ấy lại ùa về... Chồng nó\nnghe thế thì thương nó quá, mới ôm nó vào lòng "	1,793,025
Anh Day Coc So Vo - Ban Ha Luong Luong.pdf	Mục lục Mục lục Chương 1 Chương 2 Chương 3 Chương 4 Chương 5 Chương 6 Chương 7 Chương 8 Chương 9 Chương 10 Chương 11 Chương 12 Chương 13 Chương 14 Chương 15 Chương 16 Chương 17 Chương 18 Chương 19 Chương 20 Chương 21 Chương 22 Chương 23 Chương 24 Chương 25 Chương 26 Chương 27 Chương 28 Chương 29 Chương 30 Chương 31 Chương 32 Chương 33 Chương 34 Chương 35 Chương 36 Chương 37 Chương 38 Chương 39 Chương 40 Chương 41 Chương 42 Chương 43 Chương 44 Chương 45 Chương 46 Chương 47 Chương 48 Chương 49 Chương 50 Chương 51 Chương 52 Chương 53 Chương 54 Chương 55 Chương 56 Chương 57 Chương 58 Chương 59 Chương 60 Chương 61: Ngoại truyện 1: Sau khi cầu hôn Chương 62: Ngoại truyện 2: Câu chuyện xoay quanh giấy đăng ký kết hôn Chương 63: Ngoại truyện 3 Chương 64: Ngoại truyện 4 Chương 65: Ngoại truyện 5: Nhật ký của Tiểu Tiểu Cố Chương 66: Ngoại truyện 6: Nhật ký Tiểu Tiểu Cố gài bẫy ba Chương 67: Ngoại truyện 7 ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 1 Chương 1 ”Hà hà hà, ổn rồi ổn rồi.” Chàng trai nhìn màn hình cười hưng phấn, gõ bàn phím cạch cạch cạch, lần này coi như giữ được thứ hạng rồi. ”Tiền đồ!” Chàng trai bên cạnh cười chế giễu, thao tác chuẩn xác chém bay đầu người trước mặt, đôi chân bắt chéo tỏ vẻ thờ ơ. ”Ha, còn không phải là do đám người ở hệ thống Matchmaking* đó à.” Hệ thống Matchmaking này được đặt để reset toàn bộ và hiệu chỉnh lại những thứ hạng MMR lúc trước để cân bằng và cải thiện hệ thống xếp hạng đại diện cho “hạng” mới của bạn trong mùa hiện tại. Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn chằm chằm vào màn hình, ngữ điệu rất nhanh, bình thường cậu sẽ không vì một bảng xếp hạng mà phấn khích như thế, kết quả bắt đầu từ tối qua... Cậu gần như quỳ chơi cả đêm, điểm rớt xuống còn hạng Bạch Kim, chứng tỏ thứ hạng này vô cùng quý báu. Tôn Hạo Quảng đang ở thứ hạng Kim Cương, chơi đấu xếp hạng toàn thua nên rớt hạng, có khả năng là 3-8 trận thua liên tiếp. ”Đồng đội thằng nào cũng ngu như heo, đánh không lại nộp đầu cho người khác thì thôi, dù sao ai cũng có khoảng thời gian là lính mới, nhưng đứng như trời trồng vậy là sao? Không nhúc nhích để người ta đánh như thằng ngu vậy!” ”Mẹ nó, lúc tôi muốn đi cứu, nói gì mà cậu đừng lên, cậu đánh không lại nó đâu, đến khi chịu không nổi nữa vừa mới đi lên đối diện có tí, kết quả người còn chưa thấy, màn hình đã tối đen. “ Tôn Hạo Quảng càng nói càng tức, nghiến răng nghiến lợi. ”Đám anh em này, chờ tôi một chút thì chết hả?” Nói xong, cậu nhìn tình hình chiến đấu trên màn hình, cười đắc ý, “Hà hà, chỉ có nhị ca là tốt.” Từ nhỏ cậu đã theo nhị ca lăn lộn, từ nhỏ đến lớn, không có gì mà nhị ca cậu không giải quyết được. ”Ờ.” Lông mày kiêu ngạo nhếch lên, giọng nói của chàng trai có chút miễn cưỡng. ”Dĩ nhiên cần phải quan tâm đến kẻ ngốc rồi.” Vèo một cái mũi tên cắm thẳng vào tim, độc mồm quá. ”Chết hết rồi.” Tôn Hạo Quảng hơi tiếc nuối, chậc một tiếng, tuy rằng bọn họ có thể thắng, “Nếu Đằng Phi có ở đây thì quá tốt rồi.” Sở trường của Đằng Phi là đánh Top, chắc chắn sẽ thắng. Đánh Top là đi đường trên, đặc trưng của bản đồ đấu Moba là sẽ chia làm 2 nửa, mỗi bên có 3 đường là Top - Mid - Bottom để tấn công đối phương. Cố Thần cười hừ hai tiếng coi như đáp lại. Không chờ cậu trả lời, Tôn Hạo Quảng lắc đầu nói tiếp, “Đáng tiếc, hình như hôm nay em họ cậu ta trở về.” Động tác của chàng trai dừng lại, “Làm sao mà bố biết được.” ”Cẩn thận!” Tôn Hạo Quảng la lên, nhìn người vừa mới chết trên màn hình, thở dài. ... Cậu nhớ là mình đâu hỏi cậu ta biết không đâu. Suy nghĩ chợt lóe lên, Tôn Hạo Quảng khó hiểu, “Nhị ca, cậu không đi gặp Sở Dư hả?” Sức khỏe Sở Dư không được tốt, lúc đi chơi chỉ toàn ngồi bên cạnh xem, cậu cũng không có ấn tượng gì mấy với cô, nhưng mấy năm trước lúc Sở Dư quay về, không phải lúc nào cậu ta cũng bảo vệ hết ư? ”Ai nói tôi muốn về gặp cô ấy?” Mặt Cố Thần đen lại, hừ một tiếng, “Đàn ông sẽ không vội vã đi gặp phụ nữ.” Tôn Hạo Quảng giật giật khóe miệng, niềm vui khi nhìn thấy thắng lợi trên màn hình cũng vì thế mà bị đè xuống. ”Nhị ca, tư tưởng của cậu thật là, đã là thời đại nào rồi chứ...” “Tôi nói cho cậu nghe, “ Cậu đẩy máy tính ra, xoay đầu lại. ”Phụ nữ bây giờ yêu cầu đàn ông tam tòng tứ đức còn chưa đủ, nấu cơm là tụi mình, việc nhà cũng tụi mình, chỉ hận không thể để đàn ông chúng ta sinh con nữa thôi... Cậu như vầy được gọi là gia trưởng đấy, tìm không ra đâu...” Bản gốc là trực nam nham/直男癌: những người đàn ông theo chủ nghĩa gia trưởng, bảo thủ, áp đặt suy nghĩ của mình lên mọi người xung quanh. Cố Thần đứng dậy, vươn người nhìn cậu, nhíu mày, “Cậu nói cái gì?” Tôn Hạo Quảng ngậm miệng lại. Thật ra dáng vẻ chàng trai rất thanh thuần, cộng thêm làn da trắng trẻo, lại thích sạch sẽ, nhìn kiểu gì cũng ra là loại nam thần sơ mi trắng trong mộng của nữ sinh, nhưng hiện thực và mộng tưởng hoàn toàn khác nhau. Cố Thần là cậu ấm nhà giàu, sinh ra đã ngang ngược, ông bà trong nhà đều nói cậu là: bướng bỉnh, kiêu ngạo, ngỗ ngược mà dã tâm bừng bừng. Tính cách lúc nào cũng hiện lên trên trán một hai phần, dần dần, cái tính cách ấy ngày càng lộ rõ ra. Giờ đây cậu nhướn mày, vẻ hung hãn không kiềm chế được kia lập tức xuất hiện, nhất thời Tôn Hạo Quảng kinh sợ. ”Không có gì.” Tôn Hạo Quảng sờ mũi, ho một tiếng, “Nhị ca muốn uống gì không?” Chủ nghĩa đàn ông thì chủ nghĩa đàn ông vậy. ”Không cần.” Cố Thần ném con chuột trong tay xuống, tìm bạn gái gì hả, cô gái Sở Dư này đúng là phiền phức mà. ”Đi đây.” ”Đi đâu vậy?” Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn trời, “Sao sớm thế?” Cậu biết ông Cố luôn có yêu cầu nghiêm khắc như quân đội với thời gian nghĩ ngơi và học tập của Cố Thần, ngủ sớm, dậy sớm, còn phải tập luyện sáng sớm, dù bây giờ nhị ca đang đi học xa nhà, thì cũng đã thành thói quen mất rồi. Nghĩ lại mà rùng mình. Nhưng lần này sớm hơn mấy lần trước nhiều. Điều này không quan trọng, quan trọng là... ”Về nhà làm thêm một ván nữa?” Cậu cười nịnh nọt, chỉ thiếu một điểm nữa thôi là thứ hạng của cậu sẽ quay về Kim Cương rồi. Chàng trai có chút không yên lòng gật đầu, “Ừ.” Hình như nghĩ đến gì đó, cậu dừng bước, “Để chú Vương đưa tôi đi.” ”Ừm.” Tôn Hạo Quảng gật đầu, gọi cho chú Vương, nhìn Cố Thần ra ngoài xong thì quay lại ngồi xuống máy tính, để đảm bảo, bây giờ không dám chơi game, nhưng có thể chơi cái khác. Bên này, chú Vương quen thuộc lái xe. Đến lúc cua, chàng trai ngồi phía sau bỗng nhiên lên tiếng, “Rẽ phải.” ”Đến đại viện.” ... ”Cố phu nhân xinh đẹp.” Cố thiếu gia chào người đang ngồi trên ghế sofa. Bà Cố thích người khác gọi mình là Cố phu nhân. Bà lão đeo kính lão ngồi trên ghế sofa, mái tóc dược chải gọn gàng, trên gương mặt có vài nếp nhăn trông thật hiền hòa, thành thục ngồi khâu vá. Bà ngẩng đầu lên, đôi mắt cong cong, “Thằng hai về rồi đấy à?” Cố Thần xếp thứ hai trong nhà.. ”Dạ.” Chàng trai đứng trước mặt bà nội thì rất ngoan, ngồi xuống ghế, nhìn bà đang làm việc, nhíu mày, “Ông lại kêu bà làm à? Bà chiều ông quá!” Ông Cố có một tật xấu, có vài thứ nhất định phải để bà Cố làm, đến vớ cũng chỉ mang vớ do bà may. Ngày trước, bà Cố là tiểu thư nhà giàu, nữ công rất giỏi. Bà nhìn cậu, nhẹ nhàng cắt sợi chỉ, nếp nhăn trên mặt đều là ý cười, lắc lắc đầu. Chuyện nhỏ như vầy không làm bà mệt được, thậm chí bà rất tình nguyện là đằng khác. ”Sao vậy ạ?” Chàng trai bị nhìn đến khó hiểu, mất tự nhiên nhìn xuống quần áo mình, hai sợi tóc dựng lên. Trong mắt bà Cố chứa đầy ý cười, vuốt tóc cậu, lắc đầu, “Đúng là con nít.” ”Bà nội, con lớn rồi.” Con trai không bao giờ muốn mình bị gọi là con nít. Cố Thần chịu đựng không rút đầu ra, mất tự nhiên lắc lắc, cứ cảm thấy trong mắt bà Cố có ý gì đó. ”Được được được, con lớn rồi.” Bà Cố cười tủm tỉm, “Chờ thằng hai tìm được bạn gái thì biết ngay thôi.” Hình như nhớ đến gì đấy, nụ cười của bà mang theo chút hoài niệm. Chàng trai có phần mất kiên nhẫn, “Phụ nữ rắc rối lắm, tìm bạn gái làm gì.” Bà Cố nghe thế thì cười, mới chỉ là thiếu niên 16 17 tuổi mà đã nghiêm túc bảo phụ nữ rắc rối. Bà tháo kính xuống. ”Bộ con gặp rất nhiều cô gái rồi hả?” Chàng trai xì một tiếng, “Sở Dư không tính à? Phiền muốn chết.” Cái gì cũng không được, đúng là đồ phiền phức mà. Bà Cố nhìn anh, nếp nhăn trên mặt in thật sâu, trêu cậu, “Bà nói là bạn gái sau này của con, con lại nhắc đến con bé nhà họ Sở làm gì?” Trái tim không hiểu sao bị lỡ một nhịp, Cố Thần nhìn vào mắt bà, hét to, “Bà nội!” ”La lớn làm gì hả? Bà nghe thấy mà.” Bà Cố lau lau kính, rồi đeo lên, “Xấu hổ hả?” Bà tiến lại gần, giống như thế mới có thể nhìn rõ hơn. Chàng trai đứng bật dậy, đen mặt vội vàng rời khỏi, “Con có việc, về phòng trước đây.” Bà Cố buồn cười nhìn bóng lưng cậu, còn xấu hổ nữa chứ. Thằng nhóc ngây thơ. Bà lại cầm lấy vớ, nên may vớ cho ông lão thôi. ... Bên này. ”Nhị ca cậu làm gì mà chậm thế?” Giọng nói từ bên kia truyền tới, Tôn Hạo Quảng không còn sức để nói, tính tình cậu lúc nào cũng gấp gáp, chờ đến mòn mỏi luôn rồi. ”Trên đường cậu gặp chuyện gì à?” ”Có đâu nhỉ, chú Vương cũng quay về an toàn rồi...” ”Nhưng sao lại về đại viện, không phải mới về mấy hôm trước à?” Có một ngày ông Cố nổi hứng đuổi hết tất cả mọi người ra ngoài, cùng bà Cố sống vui vẻ bên nhau, nên rất không thích người trong nhà quay về quá thường xuyên. ”Ừm.” Cố Thần thấp thỏm, cảm xúc bày trên mặt có phần quái dị, vừa bực bội, vừa xấu hổ. ”Đánh một ván đi.” Tôn Hạo Quảng nghẹn lời, tốt lắm. ”Aiz aiz, nhị ca cậu...” Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn Lee Sin hung hãn trên màn hình, tựa hồ một giây sau đó sẽ tiêu diệt luôn cả mình, cậu yên lặng nuốt nước bọt. Lee Sin là thầy tu mù, một trong những tướng trong Liên Minh Huyền Thoại. Được rồi, cậu vẫn nên xem là được rồi. Hung hăng đánh đấm một lượt, cảm xúc khó hiểu trong lòng cũng giảm bớt. Chàng trai thả lỏng chân mày, bắt đầu chú ý đến động tác của đồng đội, phối hợp theo, cuối cùng Tôn Hạo Quảng cũng yên lòng thở dài. Lúc này, bà Cố gõ cửa đi vào. Cố Thần liếc mắt nhìn, động tác chậm lại, vòng qua người trước mặt, “Bà nội?” Bà Cố đẩy kính lão, nhìn cậu, “Cơm chín rồi.” Bà không có ý để cậu dừng chơi, “Bà đi gọi ông về ăn cơm đã.” Tôn Hạo Quảng nghĩ nghĩ một hồi, còn thời gian, còn có thể đánh cho xong ván này. ”Ông con đang ở nhà họ Sở, con nhắm thời gian rồi xuống trước đi.” Trước ở đây, có nghĩa là trước khi ông Cố về nhà. Bình thường ông Cố rất nghiêm với cậu. Tôn Hạo Quảng chưa kịp thả lỏng, đã bị giọng nói kia làm nghẹn. ”Bà đi đây.” Ngón tay Cố Thần khựng lại trong một chốc khó nhận ra, khẽ nhếch cằm, ném bàn phím đi, “Bà nghỉ đi, để con đi cho.” [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố Tiểu Gia] Cố Thần: Đàn ông không vội đi tìm phụ nữ. Bà Cố cười tủm tỉm: Vậy để bà đến nhà họ Sở cho. Cố Thần: Được rồi, con không phải là đàn ông. ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 2 Chương 2 Bây giờ Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn màn hình thôi cũng đã muốn điên rồi, mình rất muốn thắng để lên cấp a a a! Bàn phím bị gõ cạch cạch liên hồi, một lát sau, nhân vật yêu mị trên màn hình cuối cùng cũng ngã xuống đất. Chàng trai ngồi phịch xuống ghế, tâm trạng không tốt lắm. Không nói đến chuyện thua ở bảng xếp hạng chỉ trong gang tấc, chỉ là... cậu luôn có một dự cảm xấu... Sau này rất có thể sẽ thường xuyên bị như vậy. Lại nói chuyện ở bên này. Bà Cố ngạc nhiên, “Con đi đấy à?” ”Vâng.” Cậu nói với vẻ mặt hằm hằm, lông mi khẽ rung động, hất cằm lên, lặp lại thêm một lần nữa. ”Con đi đây, bà nghỉ ngơi đi.” Bà Cố dở khóc dở cười, nhưng trong lòng lại thấy ấm áp, “Không sao, bà nội đi đứng vẫn còn khỏe lắm.” Thằng hai nhà bà đúng là một đứa trẻ ngoan. Cố Thần không nhịn được mà đứng lên, nhẹ nhàng cầm tay dìu bà ngồi vào ghế của mình. Sau đó cầm áo quần lên vừa đi vừa mặc vào, cậu nhíu mày, chậc, đúng là lão già phiền phức mà. Nếu không phải vì vậy thì giờ cậu đâu muốn chạy đến nhà họ Sở chứ, xa thế kia mà. Bảo vệ mở to mắt nhìn bóng lưng của cậu thanh niên đi ngang qua rất nhanh. Đây là... Có chuyện gì gấp à? ... Cậu dừng lại ngoài cửa nhà họ Sở, thở chậm lại, lặng lẽ điều chỉnh hơi thở của mình. ... Quả nhiên nhà họ Sở rất xa, cậu hơi mệt. Những âm thanh ồn ào náo nhiệt vang lên từ trong bức tường. ”Này! Cố Lão Chùy! Ông lại lùi nước cờ rồi!” ”Ha ha ha ha, ông Cố à, ông không sao chứ? Không được thì tôi tới nhé!” ”Cố Lão Chùy ơi là Cố Lão Chùy, đây là lần thứ mấy rồi? Là lần thứ năm rồi đấy nhé!” ”Làm gì có!” Theo sau đó là giọng nói oang oang của ông Cố, “Bỏ đi bỏ đi, mấy người ai cũng nhìn nhầm cả rồi.” Trong sân đang rất náo nhiệt. Xưa nay ông Cố vốn nổi tiếng là chơi cờ dở, đương nhiên là chỉ đối với những người đánh cờ giỏi ở quanh đây thôi, nhưng dù vậy thì ông vẫn chỉ thích đánh cờ nhất. Lúc này, có một giọng nói từ tốn ấm áp vang lên, “Tiếp tục không ạ?” ”Tiếp chứ tiếp chứ!” Ông Cố ồn ào, “Để ông để ông.” Những ông lão khác cũng nói với giọng không nhỏ, “Cố Lão Chùy ông đúng là không biết mất mặt là gì mà!” Thôi thì đánh lại với tiểu cô nương nhà ta cũng được đi, nhưng rõ ràng đã đến lượt người ta mà cứ khăng khăng bảo là lượt của mình. Cậu nghe thấy giọng nói kia, khẽ cười. Rõ ràng chỉ là một giọng nói rất khẽ trong nhóm người ồn ào oang oang, nhưng truyền vào tai cậu lại rất rõ ràng, thậm chí cậu có thể đoán được dáng vẻ cong môi của người kia vào lúc này. ”Đồ phiền phức!” Chàng trai khẽ hừ một tiếng, nhìn nút áo sơ mi, phải chắc chắn là đã gài hết rồi mới đẩy cửa đi vào. Hồi còn bé ông nội rất thích chơi với đồ phiền phức, lúc vừa về nước ông Sở bế cô đi khoe khắp nơi, thiếu chút nữa là ông nội đã nhảy vào cướp cô đi rồi. Lại còn ôm đồ phiền phức đến trước mặt cậu, hỏi cậu có muốn cô vợ nhỏ này không! Sau đó... Cố Thần chọn bỏ qua câu trả lời của chính mình, cũng bởi vì vậy mà lúc còn bé, cậu đã giải quyết giúp cô không ít phiền phức. Trong sân, mấy ông lão đang đứng hoặc đang ngồi, vây quanh một chiếc bàn tròn nhỏ, cười to nghiêng ngả không giữ hình tượng chút nào. Ánh mắt của cậu chỉ dừng lại ở cô gái đang ngồi trong đám đông đấy. Sở Dư. Cơ thể Sở Dư không được khỏe. Cơ thể mềm mại mà nhỏ nhắn, mặt có phần xanh xao, tính tình ấm áp lại dịu dàng, cứ như mỹ nữ bước ra từ trong tranh thủy mặc, rất có thần thái. Nụ cười lanh lợi ngoan ngoãn, khiến người ta lần đầu tiên gặp đã nâng hứng cô trong lòng bàn tay mà yêu thương bảo vệ, như thể chỉ cần gió thổi mạnh hơn một chút là sẽ có thể thổi cô bay đi. Lúc này dường như cô nhìn thấy được chuyện gì đó thú vị, khóe miệng khẽ cong lên. Cố Thần không kiên nhẫn hừ một tiếng, có gì vui đâu chứ! Rõ ràng chỉ vừa mới vào thu thôi, thế mà đã mặc dày như vậy rồi. ”Ông Cố!” Cậu hét to. Giọng nói này rất lớn, khiến những người ở trong sân đều quay đầu lại nhìn. Thấy có người tới, mắt ông Cố liền sáng lên. ”Sao con lại tới đây?” Trong ánh mắt ông xẹt qua một tia sáng, nhìn đám bạn già xung quanh, rồi lại bĩu môi như chê trách, thấp giọng nói. ”Ông ở nhà họ Sở đây rồi, cần gì lo lắng hả.” Nói rất nhỏ nhưng vừa đủ để những người xung quanh có thể nghe thấy. Mấy ông lão im lặng. Khóe môi Sở Dư cong lên, đúng là người già trẻ con. Những ông lão ở đây đều là những người có công với đất nước, nhưng đã nghỉ hưu cả rồi, dĩ nhiên những lúc rảnh rỗi cũng rất hay khoe khoang về con cháu mình. Ông cũng đã khoe cậu với mọi người trước khi cậu đến rồi. Ông ngoại của cô rất thích khen cô, lần này cũng vậy, đưa cô lên tận trời xanh luôn. Ông Cố bị người ta khoe khoang vượt mặt, không chơi nữa, mạnh miệng nói, “Đúng rồi, thằng nhóc Cố Thần cũng giống vậy đấy, ngày nào cũng lo cho tôi, vừa về nhà cái là phải đỡ tôi, ông nói xem, cơ thể tôi khỏe như này mà còn cần nó phải lo lắng à?” Từ nhỏ đến lớn, không phải mấy ông lão ở đây không biết Cố Thần là một đứa trẻ như thế nào, nhìn thằng bé lớn lên, đúng là một đứa trẻ ngoan, chỉ là tính khí của thằng bé này thật là... thật sự có thể làm chuyện chu đáo vậy ư? Mọi người ra hiệu suỵt suỵt với nhau. Ông Cố mặt dày, nghiêm túc lặp lại thêm lần nữa. Bây giờ Cố Thần đến đón ông về nhà, lại khiến ông thêm phần hãnh diện, có thể tự tin khoe một chút. Ánh mắt của Sở Dư cũng đang nhìn chàng trai kia. Lời vừa đến miệng liền dừng lại, Cố Thần hất cằm, rồi không hiểu ma xui quỷ khiến gì làm cậu nói khác đi, “Cố phu nhân không muốn đến nên mới để con đến.” Chứ không phải cậu muốn chạy xa thế đậu. Phụt ha ha ha ha ha! Một đám người già liền cười to chế nhạo ông Cố. Tức khắc mặt ông Cố đỏ bừng, vừa mới khoe trước mặt mấy ông kia, cuối cùng lại bị thằng nhóc này làm cho mất mặt. Đây có phải là cháu ruột của ông không thế?! ”Không đi! Về gì mà về chứ!” Ông đen mặt, khoát tay, có phần giận dỗi, “Chơi xong ván cờ đã rồi nói sau.” Cậu cau mày, cũng bướng bỉnh không kém, “Ai thèm quản ông chứ?” Vừa nói cậu vừa đi tới, nhìn quân cờ hai bên rồi ngồi sang một bên, “Tiếp theo là ai đánh?” ”An An nhà ông!” Ông Sở chỉ vào bàn cờ rồi cười tít mắt, khuôn mặt luôn hòa nhã để lộ mấy phần kiêu ngạo. An An là tên ở nhà của Sở Dư, từ lúc cô sinh ra đến đến giờ lúc nào cũng yếu ớt... Vậy nên mới có cái tên này. (Nhà họ Sở cầu mong Sở Dư được bình an nên đặt tên cô là An An.) Cố Thần nghe thấy thế bèn đưa mắt nhìn sang, lông mày nhếch lên, dường như không tin, “Cậu á?” Biết rồi còn hỏi. Sở Dư nhìn cậu. Ông Sở mất hứng, khẽ hừ,“Vẫn không tin à?” ”Thế là con không biết rồi, ông nội của con hoàn toàn không phải là đối thủ của An An nhà ông đâu.” Mấy ông kia cũng hùa theo, ông một câu tôi một lời để Cố Thần biết “kỷ lục” của ông Cố. Cố Thần lấy lại tinh thần, gật đầu. Đương nhiên là cậu biết. Có thể là do thiên phú, điểm kỹ năng của Cố Thần đều được tính theo phương diện quân sự, cả mưu lược cũng vậy. Còn ông Cố thì lại không giỏi mưu lược, lúc nào cũng bị cậu vượt trội. Hồi Sở Dư còn bé, cô chỉ chạy được vài bước đã lên cơn hen suyễn, vì vậy việc cô thường làm nhất chính là ôm sách vở im lặng xem người khác chơi, cậu chê cô sống quá nhàm chán, thế nên mới bắt đầu dạy cô chơi cờ. Sau khi được ông Sở nhắc nhở, ngược lại ông Cố nhớ đến cháu trai ông hồi nhỏ đã rất có khiếu đánh cờ, lúc nào cũng thắng ông. Mắt ông sáng lên, tính mở miệng, nhưng nghĩ đến sắc mặt vừa rồi là lại cứng đờ, không tiện vất thể diện mà yêu cầu được. Đánh tới đánh lui mấy quân cờ, ông Cố nghiêm túc đi lại một nước, sau đó lại ồn ào với người xem bên cạnh đang chỉ điểm cho mình. Bọn họ đều chỉ sai hết cả rồi. Môi Sở Dư cong lên, chỉ nhìn mà không giục. ”Cậu lạnh à?” Không biết từ lúc nào Cố Thần đã ở sau lưng cô, hai ngón tay kéo lấy áo cô. Cô gái nhỏ à, thân thiết đến mấy cũng không được dễ dãi cho người ta đụng vào áo của mình như vậy chứ. Sở Dư lùi ra, kéo áo mình ra khỏi tay cậu, “Không lạnh.” ”Không lạnh sao lại mặc nhiều quá vậy?” Cậu thu tay về, nhìn chằm chằm vào đôi mắt trong vắt của cô, nhưng hai giây sau lại không tự chủ được mà dời đi, lẩm bẩm, “Vốn đã xấu rồi còn mặc dày nữa, trông cứ như một con gấu ấy.” Sở Dư nhìn cậu, một quân cờ bắn lên đầu gối cậu. Cậu giả vờ tránh, kết quả lại bị đánh thật, “Còn không cho người ta nói thật à?” ”Được rồi được rồi.” Thấy cô chuẩn bị đánh tiếp, chàng trai đầu đội trời chân đạp đất... lập tức sửa lại, “Cậu xinh nhất, cậu đẹp nhất.” Thật ra không phải là cậu sợ, mà là do... Cô đánh rất đau, đúng thế, vì rất đau, thực sự rất đau, một người đàn ông tốt không nên đấu với phụ nữ. Ngón tay nhỏ nhắn lấy quân cờ lại, bỏ vào trong hộp. ”Khi nào cậu đi?” Ngón tay bất giác chạm vào tóc sau lưng cô. Sở Dư nhíu mày, cũng không biết làm sao, “Sao cậu cứ táy máy tay chân hoài thế?” Bàn tay trượt xuống mái tóc mềm, đầu ngón tay nắm chặt, trên trán cậu có mấy phần bất mãn, “Keo kiệt.” Lúc này đám người kia cũng dừng lại, ông Cố nhìn chằm chằm bàn cờ, suy nghĩ rất lâu, nhưng vẫn không biết mình nên đánh tiếp nước cờ gì. Cuối cùng ông cũng không chịu nổi nữa, liếc trộm Cố Thần hai lần, thấy cậu nhếch miệng, vẻ ngang ngược cũng đã giảm được đôi phần, nhất thời thở phào nhẹ nhõm. Ôi chao, thằng cháu trai của ông đúng là yêu ông mà. Khụ khụ, “Thằng hai, tới xem giúp ông một chút đi.” Ông nói với vẻ mặt nghiêm túc, nói xong còn giải thích một cách hiên ngang, “Thằng hai là cháu tôi, là gia đình của tôi, vừa khéo ông Sở với Tiểu An An cũng là hai ông cháu.” Mấy ông lão không chịu được độ mặt dày của ông Cố nữa, quả đúng hai người họ là ông cháu, nhưng nào có ra trận cùng nhau. Ông Cố cũng mặc kệ, vỗ vào vai Cố Thần, “Nghĩ lẹ đi.” Lần này bọn họ chắc chắn sẽ thắng. Ông có thể cảm nhận được khả năng đánh cờ của Sở Dư và Cố Thần. Cố Thần nhìn Sở Dư, đúng lúc cô cũng đang nhìn lại, trong vắt một mảng, đen trắng rõ ràng. Bất chợt tim thắt lại, Cố Tiểu Gia dời mắt nhìn sang bàn cờ, không tập trung quét một vòng, lấy tay chỉ vào một vị trí. Mắt ông Cố sáng lên, cầm cờ đặt cái cạch xuống. Sở Dư:... Ông Sở:... Mọi người cười ầm lên. [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố Tiểu Gia 2] Cố Tiểu Gia: Tôi không muốn đến nhà họ Sở đâu! Bảo vệ: Thiếu gia ơi cậu rớt giày rồi. Cố Tiểu Gia: Ấy, chắc không phải do tôi chạy nhanh đâu. ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 3 Chương 3 Nhất thời một tràng cười nổ lớn. Ông nội Cố quay lại, nhìn bàn cờ, nhất thời sắc mặt đen đi: “Tiểu! Cố!” Thắng cái gì mà thắng! Nước cờ này, là nước cờ chết. Vốn đang có thể cầm cự được vài nước nữa, nhưng giờ đi nước cờ này chính là chết không lối về. Nếu giờ mà đang ở thời chiến thì đây gọi là nằm vùng đấy! Mấy ông lão thấy ông giận thế thì cười càng hăng hơn. ”Chơi thúi cho lắm vào, rốt cuộc vẫn thua, ha ha ha!” ”Ha ha ha, cháu nội ông không cùng chiến tuyến với ông rồi!” Cố Thần nhìn sang theo phản xạ có điều kiện. Cái... cái gì mà không cùng chiến tuyến chứ. Cậu liếc nhìn Sở Dư đang ngồi bên kia, thấy cô nhìn cậu khẽ cười, không hiểu sao lại thở dài nhẹ nhõm. Ông Tôn vừa rồi chỉ thuận miệng nhạo báng:... Ặc Không phải chứ... Lấy lại tinh thần, Cố Thần hồi hồn, đưa mắt nhìn vị trí mà ban nãy mình lơ đãng chỉ bậy, cậu im lặng, sự nhanh nhẹn nơi trán không hề giảm, chẳng có gì gọi là chột dạ. ”Tới giờ ăn cơm rồi, kết thúc sớm vẫn tốt hơn.” Cảm giác được ánh mắt ai kia mang theo ý cười, cơ thể chàng trai bất giác căng ra, lại càng hùng hồn buông thêm một câu. ”Dù ông có muốn thắng thì cũng chậm quá rồi.” Cậu không phải vì lòng mình đứng bên kia đâu nhé, đều do ông Cố chơi dở thôi. Muốn trở mình còn khó hơn thua trực tiếp. Lời này lại càng làm ông Cố tức thêm. Có cháu nội kiểu này thì có xài được đâu! Tiếng cười chung quanh lại càng to thêm. ”Lo lắng đấy ha ha ha...” Quả nhiên là lo thằng cháu nội biết quan tâm săn sóc này sẽ đến ‘giúp’ ông đây mà! Ông Cố thẹn quá hóa giận, đứng dậy, xua tay làm bộ đuổi, “Đi đi! Cười cái gì mà cười! Bệnh hết rồi hay hả?” Nói xong lại trừng mắt nhìn Cố Thần, mặt hằm hằm đi ra ngoài, “Ngốc hả, đi ăn cơm còn đứng đó làm gì?!” Khóe mắt chàng trai liếc sang một bên, hừ một tiếng, “Không phải bảo con hạ cờ hay sao?” Mấy ông lão cũng bắt đầu chầm chậm bước ra ngoài, vừa đi vừa cười nhạo ông Cố. Váy dài viền lá sen tạo thoáng tung bay, cũng không cần cô khách sáo tiễn khách ra cửa, Sở Dư mỉm cười nhìn mấy ông rời khỏi. Mấy ông lão này cũng thú vị phết. Bất chợt phát hiện chàng trai vẫn đứng im không nhúc nhích. Sở Dư nhìn sang, trong ánh mắt mang theo ý hỏi. Cố Thần nhìn hiểu ngay. Vẻ mặt cứng đơ khó nhận ra, chàng trai nhìn về phía bàn cờ, “Tôi định hỏi cậu, có cần tôi dọn mấy quân cờ này không?” Sở Dư chưa kịp trả lời thì ông Sở đang dọn cờ ngẩng đầu lên, “Không cần đâu.” Ông bật cười, thật ra Cố Thần là một đứa trẻ rất tốt. “Cũng không có gì nhiều, con về ăn cơm đi A Thần.” Chỉ có mấy quân cờ thôi mà, ông già thì già, nhưng vẫn thích thu dọn mấy việc cỏn con này. Nhìn Sở Dư lẳng lặng gật đầu, chàng trai im lặng trong giây lát, ngực tắc nghẹn, trừng mắt đáp, “Dạ.” Nhân lúc ông Sở đang cúi đầu dọn cờ, cậu đưa tay túm lấy tóc Sở Dư kéo một cái, nói “Tôi đi đây.” Sở Dư bị đau, nhíu chân mày trừng mắt nhìn cậu. Sự khó chịu nơi ngực giờ mới biến mất, chàng trai cảm thấy mĩ mãn, ngâm nga câu ca rời đi. ** Về đến nhà, thức ăn đã được dọn lên từ lâu. “Sao vậy?” Bà Cố đang loay hoay chỉnh sửa mấy cành hoa trong bình. Thấy mình bị mất mặt, ông Cố thở hổn hển, nhưng hoàn toàn không có ý muốn trút giận lên bà Cố, phát giận lên phụ nữ thì hay ho gì. “Còn không phải thằng hai à!” Ông bớt giận đôi chút, giải thích chuyện vừa rồi, nói xong lại giận thổi vểnh cả râu, bảo tiếp: “Chờ thêm năm nữa là ném nó vào quân đội ngay!” Mắt bà Cố tràn đầy ý cười, lắc đầu, “Ông đã lớn thế này rồi mà còn so đó với nó à?” Bụp, nhành hoa bị cắt đi, bà Cố đặt kéo xuống, đứng dậy, “Huống gì, thằng hai cũng không nói sai.” Bà cười, “Ông chơi cờ vốn dĩ đã dở rồi.” Miệng ông Cố kéo căng, “Aiz, cái bà này...” Ông còn đang định nói gì đó thì bà nhìn ông, “Ăn cơm nào.” Thế là ông chỉ có thể thổi thổi chòm râu, lập tức im miệng. Lúc Cố Thần bước vào, ông Cố đã nguôi giận rồi, được bà Cố dỗ đôi câu đã hết giận. Nhưng thấy Cố Thần là ông lại mất hứng. “Làm gì mà lâu thế?” Ông vỗ vỗ bàn, “Cơm canh nguội cả rồi.” Cố Thần nhìn thức ăn còn bốc khói trên bàn, tâm trạng tốt nhướn mày, không nói gì, rửa tay xong ngồi vào bàn ăn. “Ăn cơm thôi.” Cậu nhíu mày, đưa đũa cho bà Cố, rồi lại đưa đôi khác đến trước mặt ông Cố. Ông Cố trừng mắt, rồi lại phát hiện cậu không có ý định cãi nhau với ông, tự mình bẽ mặt, cũng chỉ có thể giận dỗi im lặng. Thức ăn trên bàn không nhiều lắm, bốn món mặn một canh, từ nhỏ Cố Thần đã được ông Cố lấy tiêu chuẩn quân đội dạy dỗ, nên không hề kiêng ăn, ba người lại ăn không nhiều, nấu bốn món thì thường hay dư lại. ... Nhưng lần này lại ăn sạch sẽ. Ông Cố nhìn khóe miệng cậu nhóc nhếch lên, lại ăn hết một chén bới thêm, yên lặng trợn mắt, dù gì ông cũng đã lớn tuổi, thực đơn cũng nghiêm khắc, bảo vệ nấu ăn đều căn cứ nghiêm ngặt theo dinh dưỡng mà làm, có một món ông không thể nào ăn được. Ăn rất ngon. Hình như nghĩ tới gì đấy, ông Cố thôi nhìn món ăn nằm trước mặt Cố Thần, “Đúng rồi.” “Cô bé Sở gia sắp quay về đây đi học rồi, gì nhỉ... trước đây không phải con chơi rất thân với cô bé sao?” Chỉ mới hai năm gần đây mới không thấy cậu chạy đến nhà họ Sở nữa. “Ý của ông nội Sở là, chuyển đến trường của con, để con chăm sóc nó.” “Dạ? Dạ.” Vẻ mặt đơ ra, cậu chớp mắt gật đầu. Cố Thần ngừng lại, máy móc nuốt thức ăn trong miệng xuống, sóng lưng thẳng tắp, “Quay về?” Nghĩa là... không đi nữa ư. “Ừ.” Ông Cố đặt chén xuống, cầm lấy khăn, “Vài năm nay sức khỏe ông Sở không tốt, Sở Dư quay về chăm sóc.” Bà Sở qua đời sớm, ông Sở không đi bước nữa, nuôi hai người con. Hai vợ chồng con trai cả của nhà họ Sở đều làm trong quân đội, đứa con gái út lại lấy chồng ở nước ngoài, bận không kịp thở, huống hồ mấy người như bọn họ không thể xuất ngoại, chỉ có thể để mấy đứa cháu quay về chăm sóc. Sợ Cố Thần không đồng ý, ông Cố lại nói thêm, “Cũng không cần con lúc nào cũng chăm sóc nó, chỉ là sức khỏe của con bé Sở không tốt, ông Sở của con hơi lo.” Cố Thần gật gật đầu. Cậu biết, đồ phiền phức Sở Dư ấy sẽ không muốn người khác chăm sóc đâu. Lúc nhỏ cô không thể hoạt động, ngoan ngoãn ôm cuốn truyện cổ tích mà đọc, lúc cậu muốn đi cưỡi ngựa cũng không đòi theo, chỉ nháy mắt im lặng nhìn cậu, làm nũng trong im lặng. ... Cuối cùng cậu bị đánh không ít. Tối hôm đó, Cố Thần mơ một giấc mơ. Mơ thấy bọn họ lúc nhỏ. Cô bé sắc mặt tái nhợt, mặc váy công chúa xinh đẹp, ôm cuốn truyện cổ tích ngồi trước cửa sổ, hâm mộ nhìn mấy đứa nhỏ đang chơi ở bên ngoài. Bé trai chạy rầm rập vào nhà, “Em nhìn gì thế?” “Nhìn các bạn ấy chơi.” Giọng nói nho nhỏ của bé gái vang lên, im lặng nhìn bên ngoài sân. Nhìn theo ánh mắt cô bé, cậu bé căng thẳng hỏi, “Em có muốn ra ngoài chơi không?” “Có thể hả?” Mắt cô bé sáng rực, nhưng ngay sau đó lại dẩu môi, ánh mắt ảm đạm. “Mẹ nói em không được ra gió.” Cậu bé nhíu mày, nghĩ rồi lại nghĩ, ngang ngược cầm tay cô bé. “Không sao đâu, anh có cách.” Ngày hè nắng nóng, bé trai lén lút quay về nhà lấy trộm một cái chăn, đắc ý vỗ ngực quấn Sở Tiểu Dư thành cái bánh chưng, rồi nghẹn đỏ mặt ôm cô bé từng bước đi ra ngoài, xem bọn trẻ chơi diều hâu bắt gà con. Hai đứa bé vô cùng vui vẻ, cười như hai đứa ngốc. Kết quả là... bé gái nóng đến hôn mê. Sau đó là cảnh cậu bị ông Cố đuổi đánh khắp sân. Rồi cảnh tượng trong mơ thay đổi, biến thành cảnh khác. “Đồ phiền phức! Đồ phiền phức!” Bé trai vui vẻ ôm một thứ, “Em đoán thử xem đây là gì?” Bé gái bỏ bút xuống, đứng dậy đi đến, mở to mắt nhìn rồi lắc đầu. Cô không biết. “ Là kem ly đó! Ăn ngon lắm!” Cố Tiểu Thần nghĩ nghĩ, “Ăn ngon hơn chân gà luôn.” Đây là do cậu giấu vào ngực, vất vả lắm mới lén đem qua được. Sở Tiểu Dư đáng thương nhìn ly kem, cô không thể ăn. Cố Tiểu Thần hoàn toàn không ngờ cô bạn nhỏ lại không thể ăn, vậy là đành tự ăn một mình. Ăn gần hết, nhìn Sở Tiểu Dư gầy tong bĩu môi, đáng thương vô cùng, cậu do dự một lát, lần trước mông còn đau đây này. .Nhưng mà “tình bạn” quan trọng hơn, cậu vươn tay, “Nếu không thì em nếm thử đi?” Sở Dư rất ngoan, “Không thể ăn được.” Bị bệnh phải uống thuốc, đắng lắm. Cố Tiểu Thần nghiêng đầu, liếm liếm, “Có thể mà.” Cậu nghĩ rằng không thể ăn nghĩa là giống như trên truyền hình, sẽ trúng độc. “Thật ư?” Cô bé nháy mắt, để lộ chiếc răng sữa xinh xinh. Cô vẫn rất tin tưởng người bạn nhỏ này. Sở Tiểu Dư nheo mắt, ăn ngon lành. Bỗng nhiên, cô mở to đôi mắt, nắm chặt tay, nóng nảy nói. “Anh Cố, em ăn nước bọt của anh rồi, nếu mang thai thì làm sao bây giờ?” Nghe nói sẽ có em bé đó. Cố Tiểu Thần ngơ ngác một hồi, nghĩ ngợi rồi khoát tay, “Vậy thì sinh đi!” Cậu vỗ vỗ ngực, vô cùng khí phách, “Ba chúng ta sẽ cùng đi nhà trẻ!” ... Ông Cố quay về, lại đuổi đánh cậu khắp sân. Sau đó có một làn khói nhẹ thổi tới, người trong phòng biến thành một cô gái. Gương mặt nhợt nhạt, nhẹ nhàng uyển chuyển. “Anh Cố ~” âm thanh yêu kiều, vươn tay ra muốn ôm. Giọng nói mềm mại, làm trái tim của cậu thiếu niên tê dại, không tự chủ bật cười, kêu một tiếng rồi duỗi tay ra. Quên đi, cô thích cậu như thế, muốn chiều thì chiều thôi. Kết quả cô gái bỗng nhiên biến sắc, giơ gậy lên hỏi, “Cục cưng của chúng ta đâu?” ... Sáng sớm, chàng trai bỗng dưng bật dậy. Thở dài một hơi. Cái gì vây hả, đàn... đàn ông Bắc Kinh thế mà lại sợ vợ?! Cậu xoa xoa cái trán đầy mồ hồ, nghiêm túc suy nghĩ. [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố tiểu gia 3] Cố gia: bị đồ phiền phức trừng mắt nhìn, ông đây mất mặt quá, không vui không vui. Bảo vệ:... Thiếu gia đừng kích động! Cậu hát bị lệch tông rồi! ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 4 Chương 4 Cho đến khi cậu thiếu niên tập luyện buổi sáng xong, mấy phần xấu hổ mới vơi đi. Còn Sở Dư thì hoàn toàn không có kiểu chuyện phiền muộn như thế. ”An An,“ Ông Sở cũng đang nói với Sở Dư về chuyện này, “Hôm qua ông đã nói với ông Cố rồi, để Cố Thần chăm sóc con ở trường.” ”Vâng.” Sở Dư lặng lẽ gật đầu, mí mắt hơi cong, từ trước đến giờ cô không có thói quen từ chối sự quan tâm của người già. Đặc biệt là Tiểu Cố, lại càng không có vấn đề gì. Bàn tay trắng nhỏ bưng chén thuốc lên, đặt trước mặt ông, “Ông uống thuốc đi ạ.” Những năm này không có ai chăm sóc, căn bệnh lưu lại lúc trước trong người ông Sở cũng đã bắt đầu tái phát, nên nhất định phải nghỉ ngơi thật tốt. Mặt ông lão cứng đờ, màu nâu của thuốc bắc hòa cùng chén sứ màu xanh ngọc trông thật bắt mắt, nhưng mùi thuốc tỏa ra thì rất khó ngửi, khiến nó chẳng hề còn sức hấp dẫn nữa. “... Đợi lát nữa rồi ông uống có được không?” Ông Sở dựa lưng vào tường. Lúc còn trẻ, đừng nói là uống thuốc đắng, đến vết thương do súng bắn hay dao đâm ông cũng đã từng trải qua rồi, bây giờ già rồi thì lại có phần tùy hứng. ”Ông ngoại à.” Sở Dư nhẹ nhàng gọi. Bị một ánh mắt trong veo nhìn chằm chằm, cuối cùng ông Sở cũng không lay chuyển được Sở Dư, uống thuốc với vẻ mặt đau khổ. Thực sự rất đắng. Một đêm ngủ ngon. Ngày hôm sau. Chàng trai ngồi trên ghế salon, ánh mắt nhìn chằm chằm vào màn hình TV. Cho đến khi điện thoại trên bàn đột nhiên reo lên, phát ra âm thanh chói tai. Cậu lấy lại tinh thần, nhíu mày lại. ”Chuyện gì?” Nghe giọng điệu này, Tôn Hạo Quảng hơi hoảng, nhanh chóng đáp lời, “Tôi chỉ muốn hỏi cậu khi nào thì cậu về?” Mới sáng sớm ra đã bị cái gì rồi vậy... ”Về làm gì? Ở lại đây tốt hơn.” Tôn Hạo Quảng:... lén lút trợn mắt Nhị ca cậu nói những lời này không thấy trái với lương tâm sao? Lần trước ai nói ra vào hẻm nhỏ không thuận tiện? Huống hồ mấy ông già cũng quản khá nghiêm, cậu còn đỡ, chứ ông của nhị ca rất nghiêm, bình thường thì không để ý lắm, nhưng nhị ca cậu mà chơi game hay làm gì khác thì lại rất bất tiện. —— Đương nhiên là không. Thấy bên kia không nói gì, Cố Thần mất kiên nhẫn nói tiếp, “Cậu còn có chuyện gì nữa không?” ”Không có chuyện gì nữa thì tôi cúp máy đây.” ”Ấy, sao cậu vội thế?” Tôn Hạo Quảng chen ngang, thật ra cậu cũng không có chuyện gì gấp, “Cậu rảnh không? Có thì đấu hai trận cùng tôi đi.” Cố Thần nhìn màn hình TV, đôi chân dài đan vào nhau gác lên bàn thấp, Thờ ơ ra, “Xem TV rồi, không rảnh. ”Chiến binh Balala, biến hình...” (Đây là phim hoạt hình “Chiến Binh Balala” bao gồm những cô gái phép thuật của Trung Quốc.) Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn chằm chằm vào điện thoại, nghĩ đến âm thanh vừa nghe được ở đầu dây bên kia, nhếch mép. ... Đúng là... Đúng là không rảnh thật. Thôi quên đi, không phải núi nào cũng giống núi nào. Cố Thần tiện tay ném điện thoại sang một bên, nằm ngả ra sau, nghe giọng nói của Balala vang vọng bên tai, nhắm mắt lại. Không lâu sau, điện thoại lại vang lên. Cậu bực mình, mò điện thoại trên bàn, “Ai?” Số của cậu cũng chỉ có mấy đứa kia biết, nên cậu cũng chẳng cần khách sáo làm gì. ”Bố đây đang không rảnh.” Bây giờ cậu chẳng muốn làm gì cả. ”Ừ?” Ngoài dự đoán, giọng nói bên kia rất êm ái, hoàn toàn không có ý dây dưa, “Thế thôi vậy.” ”Đợi một lát!” Cố Thần đột nhiên bật dậy nhanh như tên bắn, khụ khụ, “Cậu có chuyện gì không?” Giọng nói của cậu cao hơn, nghe có vẻ dè dặt, “Nếu cậu đang vội, thì chuyện của tôi tính ra cũng chẳng gấp gáp.” ”Không có gì.” Khóe môi cong lên, Sở Dư từ tốn nói, “Sau này nói cũng không muộn.” Chỉ vài ngày nữa là đến ngày tựu trường trên khắp cả nước rồi. Nghĩ một lát, cô nói thêm một câu, “Cậu cố lên nhé.” Cơn gió nhẹ thổi qua, thổi lên tà váy dài của cô, Sở Dư nheo mắt lại, nhìn cảnh trước mắt, đôi mắt trăng khuyết lấp lánh ánh sao. Cô đặt điện thoại xuống, tiện tay gạt lấy sợi tóc dính trên khóe miệng, tiếp tục tô tô vẽ vẽ lên bức tranh trước mặt. Cậu thiếu niên lại nằm xuống, nhìn về phía màn hình TV. ... Biến thân cái gì chữ, quần áo gì mà xanh nguyên một cục, đúng là xấu xí. Cậu tắt TV, thể loại hoạt hình nhàm chán kiểu này thì ai mà xem nổi?! Buổi trưa. ”Không ăn nữa hả?” Ông Cố thấy Cố Thần buông đũa xuống, hừ một tiếng, “Lát nữa đói thì đừng có đi làm phiền bà mày đấy.” Hôm nay bà Cố nấu ăn, ông không muốn ai để thừa thức ăn cả. ”Vâng” một tiếng, chàng trai đáp, “Con no rồi.” Nói rồi liền đứng lên. ”Sao vội thế... Có chuyện gì gấp à?” Ông Cố đang nhai rau cần tây rộp rộp trong miệng, nhìn cậu, “—— Có chuyện gì thì nói ông nghe xem nào.” ”Gấp?” Cậu bước chậm lại, lông mày giương lên, “Con không gấps, chỉ là —— Sở Dư ở bên kia đang hối con.” Cậu kiêu căng nói, “Có thể là đang có việc gấp.” ”À.” Ông Cố gật đầu, nghĩ về tính tình của Sở Dư, nghi ngờ nhìn cậu, nhưng mà chuyện này... thằng hai cũng không cần thiết phải gạt ông làm gì. Có thể là đang có việc gấp thật. “Cũng được, con đi đi.” ... ”Sở Tiểu Dư?” ”Ừ?” Sở Dư vớt chén đũa từ trong nước ra, bỏ vào trong tủ, nhìn cậu trai đang dựa vào cửa bếp, “Sao cậu lại đến đây?” Tiếng nước chảy tí ta tí tách, lông mi dài đổ bóng xuống khuôn mặt trắng nhỏ dưới ánh đèn, “Không phải cậu bảo hôm nay không rảnh à?” ”Chuyện lúc sáng tôi làm xong rồi.” Cậu dựa vào cửa, trong mắt chợt lóe lên một tia xấu hổ rồi biến mất, sau đó lại bướng bỉnh hất cằm lên, “Chỉ là... ở nhà chán quá.” ”Sao cậu lại rửa chén vậy?” Cậu đổi chủ đề, vừa nói vừa nhíu mày lại, “Dì giúp việc không có nhà sao? Nghĩ đến Đằng Phi từng nói ông nội cậu ta không thích trong nhà có người, thế là lại hỏi, “Bảo vệ đâu?” Sở Dư nhẹ nhàng cười, “Chỉ là mấy cái chén thôi mà.” Ông ngoại cô thấy cô rửa chén cũng có phản ứng giống hệt như này, cũng chỉ là mấy cái chén, cứ làm như cô sẽ biến thành người thủy tinh vậy, thiếu chút nữa là cướp khỏi tay cô rồi. ”Rửa vui không?” Cậu đến gần một chút. ”Hửm?” Sở Dư ngẩng đầu lên. Hai người đứng rất gần nhau, chớp mắt liên tục, thiếu niên sạch sẽ trắng trẻo, Sở Dư lặng lẽ lùi ra xa, có hơi buồn cười. Thấy rõ trong ánh mắt cô hiện lên ý cười, dường như cậu cũng kịp nhận ra mình vừa hỏi một câu rất ngốc, Cố Thần đứng thẳng người lên, lỗ tai đỏ ửng, nhưng vẫn lặp lại một lần nữa, “Tôi nói... Rửa có vui không?” ”Cậu có muốn thử không?” Khóe mắt cô cong lên, dừng động tác lại. ”Thử thì thử.” Thiếu niên có phần bất mãn, đẩy cô ra, “Cậu tránh ra đi.” Nhìn động tác của cô rất dễ dàng, từ tốn ưu nhã, như thể đang uống trà chiều vậy, cậu cũng không thể tin được là cậu lại giận dỗi với dáng vẻ ấy. ”Rửa... Rửa như thế nào vậy?” Nói thì dễ, nhưng khi cầm đĩa, Cố Thần lại không biết bắt đầu từ đâu, có cần để cái gì vào không hay là chỉ trực tiếp chà lên thôi? Sở Dư cười, lui về phía sau hai bước, “Đầu tiên là nặn từ cái chai đầu tiên bên tay trái cậu...” ”Sau đó thì sao?” Cố Thần nhìn chiếc đĩa trong tay, cứng nhắc làm xong lại hối. Trong phòng bếp, giọng nói của thiếu niên có vẻ mất kiên nhẫn, nhưng không biết từ khi nào trên môi lại nở một nụ cười. ”Không tồi chứ?” Cố Thần nhìn chén đĩa được xếp gọn gàng trong tủ, hất cằm lên, nhìn về phía Sở Dư. Nhìn chén đĩa sạch sẽ, so với mặt cậu có khi còn trắng hơn, không có một chút tỳ vết nào, —— có cảm giác rất hoàn hảo. ”Rất tốt.” Sở Dư bật ngón tay cái, cô lớn lên ở nước ngoài, mặc dù vì cơ thể không tốt nên cô không hề ra khỏi cửa, nhưng vẫn ảnh hưởng văn hóa ở bên kia, trước giờ cũng không ngại khen và biểu hiện ra ngoài. Lời này vừa nói ra, lại làm cậu ngẩn người, không tự nhiên sờ vào lỗ tai mình. ”Sở Tiểu Dư cậu thật xấu.” Ánh mắt cậu dời sang chỗ khác, lên giọng,“Không phải là cậu rửa bát sao? Sao tôi lại trở thành người rửa bát rồi? Chả trách cậu lại khen tôi, không phải cậu làm thì đương nhiên là tốt rồi.” Lẩm ba lẩm bẩm, cứ y như bà già ấy. Bị suy nghĩ của mình làm buồn cười cong cả đôi mắt, Sở Dư cầm một cái chai nhỏ lên, “Cậu có muốn không?” Cố Thần bị chen ngang, ghét bỏ nhìn sang, “Không muốn.” Nghĩ sao mà bảo đại lão gia lau những thứ này? ”Đưa tay đây.” Rửa qua chén của đối thủ không tốt. Cố Thần trợn mắt nhìn, thấy cô hoàn toàn không có ý lùi bước, yên lặng lẩm nhẩm trong đầu đàn ông tốt không được đấu với phụ nữ. ”Ấy ấy... ít thôi.” [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố Tiểu Gia 4] Cố Tiểu Gia: Ai đến cũng không rảnh! ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 5 Chương 5 Ít thôi? “Được.” Sở Dư cười, cầm cái chai bóp vào tay cậu. “Được gì?” Một giọng con trai vang lên từ phía sau. Hai người nhìn lại, Cố Hạo Quảng vừa bước vào cửa, vừa đi vừa hỏi. Thấy hai người nhìn mình thì nở nụ cười với họ, gật đầu với Sở Dư, “Lâu rồi không gặp, về khi nào thế?” “Mới về thôi.” Sở Dư nhếch khóe miệng, cất cái chai trong tay đi. Hai người cũng không quen thân lắm, lúc trước khi Sở Dư quay về, đa phần là chăm sóc ông, dù có đi ra ngoài thì cô cũng không thể vận động mạnh, bọn họ đi cưỡi ngựa cô chỉ có thể ngồi xem ở bên cạnh. Được mấy lần, Cố Thần không dẫn cô đi theo nữa. Bọn cô gặp nhau rất ít, hỏi thăm vài câu thì cũng chả có gì để nói tiếp. Tức thì, Sở Dư nhìn phía sau cậu, dời chủ đề, hỏi, “Đây là?” “À” Cố Hạo Quảng nhìn cô gái đi phía sau, không biết phải giới thiệu thế nào, chả biết cô em họ xa ngàn dặm này là ai mà đi theo đuôi, cậu có rất nhiều em họ, làm sao nhớ hết cho được, “… Hạ Tử Hàm.” Chắc là tên này. Cậu chưa nói xong thì cô gái đã nhảy vào, “Em là em họ của anh Tôn, Hạ Tử Hàm của nhà họ Hạ.” Mắt to, cằm nhỏ, mỹ nhân chân dài. Nói xong, cô nháy nháy mắt với Cố Thần đang ghét bỏ thoa kem dưỡng da tay, chớp mắt hỏi, “Anh Cố Thần, anh còn nhớ em không?” Cánh tay đang giới thiệu của Cố Hạo Quảng ngừng lại, bất đắc dĩ buông xuống. Cố Thần đang thoa tay dừng lại, ngẩng đầu lên, “Gọi tôi là Cố nhị thiếu.” Nghe giọng nói ỉu xìu của Cố Hạo Quảng là biết, cô gái này chả có quan hệ gì với cậu ta, tám phần là không biết xấu hổ mà từ chối. Ghét nhất là thể loại giả vờ thân thiết thế này, đồ phiền phức còn chưa bao giờ gọi cậu thân mật như thế. Hạ Tử Hàm đờ người, lập tức giống như chưa từng xảy ra chuyện gì, cong khóe miệng, “Cố…nhị thiếu không nhớ em hả? Hồi nhỏ tụi mình gặp nhau, anh còn khen em cao cơ mà.” Cô cười tủm tỉm, “Anh Cố Thần bây giờ cao ghê, cao hơn cả Tử Hàm luôn, em đoán anh phải cao hơn 1m8 ấy…” Cô nàng càng nói càng hưng phấn, trong mắt như có ánh sao, rõ ràng là dáng vẻ mê trai, lại lần nữa quên mất phải gọi là nhị thiếu. Rất sinh động, rất hồn nhiên. Đa số con trai đều sẽ dính chiêu này, nếu như là người khác, không chừng trong lòng còn thoải mái, nhiều khi lại bỏ qua vấn đề xưng hô. Cố Thần liếc nhìn người đang cười ở bên cạnh, dáng vẻ không hề gì, trong lòng rục rịch, nhíu mày, không nhịn được cắt ngang, “Mắc mớ gì đến cô?” Dù có gặp cũng chưa gặp quá hai lần, lấy đâu ra fan cuồng chứ. “Lát nữa bọn tôi còn có việc, phiền cô ra ngoài nhớ đóng cửa lại dùm.” Cố Hạo Quảng mém tí vỗ tay khen ngợi nhị ca của cậu, tốt lắm, rất feel, rất trực tiếp, chỉ thiếu chút là đuổi thẳng ra ngoài thôi. Anh Cố không thương hoa tiếc ngọc. Cậu ho một tiếng, nhìn cô gái đang cứng đờ người kia, cuối cùng cũng cho cô một bậc thang, “Vậy, Tử Hàm, lát nữa về nói với mẹ tôi dùm, tôi có việc phải làm với nhị ca.” Hạ Tử Hàm đi rồi, Cố Hạo Quảng mới thở phào nhẹ nhõm, nhìn nhị ca cậu mà trêu, “Fan girl dáng thon chân dài, nhị ca, cậu không đau lòng sao?” “Đau lòng cái gì?” Ánh mắt Cố Thần bất giác nhìn sang chỗ khác, thẳng lưng, vội vàng phản bác: “Có gì để nhìn đâu?” Còn không bằng một góc người lạnh lùng nhưng lại dịu dàng. “Hơn nữa làm gì có fan girl nào ở đây?” Fan girl chân chính sẽ không thế này, thế nên… cậu nhìn Sở Dư, thật sự không phải là cậu khắt khe đâu. Sợ cậu nói thêm gì nữa, Cố Thần vội vàng chuyển đề tài, “Sao cậu lại tới đây?” Cố Hạo Quảng không hề nhận ra, trả lời tự nhiên, “Không phải cậu không quay về à? Tôi đang định quay về phòng trọ.” “Vừa nãy đi tìm cậu, biết cậu ở đây nên tôi chạy tới.” “Ừ” Cố Thần không để ý lắm, nghe vậy thì thở phào, thờ ơ trả lời: “Được.” Sở Dư nghe bọn họ nói chuyện một hồi mới nhẹ nhàng bảo, “Ngồi xuống rồi nói.” “Không phải tại cậu đang đứng à?” Cố Thần lầu bầu, theo cô bước tới sofa, “Tôi đến đây lâu như thế, còn chưa chịu rót cho tôi ly nước.” Sao mà nhìn kiểu gì cũng thấy sai sai….Cố Hạo Quảng chưa hiểu gì vừa lầm bầm vừa đi theo ở phía sau, đột nhiên cảm thấy khác thường. Nhị ca của cậu là như vầy sao?? Sở Dư bất đắc dĩ, lấy mấy chén trà, “Không phải là bận ư?” bọn họ đang rửa chén, làm gì có thời gian để ngồi chứ. Lúc này Cố Thần mới ngậm miệng, nhìn cô pha trà, nước chầm chậm chảy xuống, hơi nóng lượn lờ bốc lên, càng khiến cho người trước mắt càng trỏ nên mông lung mờ ảo, —— đẹp tựa như mơ. Chàng trai dời mắt, quan sát khắp phòng, làm như chưa bao giờ nhìn thấy, không tìm thấy điểm dừng, cứ chốc chốc dừng lại rồi lại nhìn đi chỗ khác. Bỗng nhiên cậu ngừng lại, nhìn Cố Hạo Quảng, “Cậu sao không ngồi còn đứng đó làm gì hả?” Cố Hạo Quảng co rút khóe miệng: … Nhị ca giờ cậu mới thấy tôi hả… Cậu đi đến, ngồi xuống sofa, tìm chuyện để nói, “Đằng Phi đâu? Tối hôm qua không phải bảo cậu ta quay về rồi ư?” Cạch —— Chén tử sa, tay hồng hào, nước trà trong vắt, hai người bạn. “Anh ấy không ở nhà.” Sở Dư tiếp tục châm trà, nghĩ nghĩ rồi nói, “Hình như chiều hôm qua còn có việc, cho nên tạm thời rời đi.” Ngón tay như ngọc, vừa thon vừa dài, như búp măng, sờ lên chắc là mềm lắm. Cố Thần bị suy nghĩ vừa lóe lên của mình làm cho hoảng sợ, sờ cái gì mà sờ! Cậu đổi tư thế, ánh mắt rơi xuống chén trà, chả biết mình vừa nói gì, “Cậu pha trà gì thế?” “Nghe mùi là thấy đắng rồi, nghe như thuốc ấy!” Miệng thì nói thế nhưng lại vươn tay ra đón lấy. Cố Hạo Quảng mém tí là phun cả trà, sao cậu lại cảm thấy nhị ca của mình lại… xấu xa như thế? Sở Dư liếc cậu một cái, tay vừa đưa ra liền rụt lại. “Sở Tiểu Dư?” Chàng trai sờ sờ mũi, giận thật à? Sở Dư không thèm đếm xỉa đên cậu. Không biết lấy đâu ra một hộp đường đỏ của phụ nữ mang thai, từ tốn múc một muỗng, khuấy đều rồi đưa cho cậu. “Được rồi đó.” cô cong mắt cười, “giờ không đắng nữa đâu.” Cố Hạo Quảng sặc ngụm trà, ho đến chảy cả nước mắt, “ha ha ha… khụ khụ… ha ha ha.” Cho thêm đường, lại còn là đường đỏ của phụ nữ mang thai, đúng là không hề đắng mà! “Sao vậy? Còn đắng hả?” Sở Dư nhìn Cố Thần ngồi im lìm, nhẹ giọng hỏi, lúc hỏi tay đang định múc thêm một muỗng đường. “Không có.” Cố Thần vội vàng che chén trà lại, “Đủ rồi, đủ rồi.” Rủi như thêm một muỗng nữa thì làm sao giờ? Chàng trai chậm rãi bưng chén trà, đưa lên miệng mình, cảm nhận được cái nhìn kia, chỉ có thể bóp mũi mà uống cho hết. —— Đàn ông con trai co được dãn được, coi như cậu dỗ cô hết giận vậy. … Uống hết thật hả???? Cố Hạo Quảng sợ đến ngây người. Mấy lúc thế này đáng lẽ nhị ca phải đẩy chén trà ra chứ? Mắt trợn trừng lên mới đúng chứ? “Nhìn cái gì?” Vẻ mặt Cố Thần vô cùng thê thảm, ánh mắt hung hăng vặn vẹo. Cố Hạo Quảng im lặng nhìn sang chỗ khác. … Vẫn hung dữ như thường. Sở Dư thấy cậu trừng to mắt nhìn mình, dáng vẻ như muốn sống chết một phen, lắc đầu buồn cười, rót một ly nước cho cậu. Cố Thần nhận lấy, uống một hơi mới thấy dễ chịu hơn chút. Cố Thần trả ly lại cho cô, nhíu mày, “Đừng nghĩ là tôi đã hết giận.” Đàn ông nói giận liền giận, bộ tưởng dễ dỗ lắm hả? Chàng trai nhận tiếp ly nước, uống hết, hừ hừ: “Tôi còn rửa chén giúp cậu, không cho tôi uống nước, để tôi uống cái thứ này thì thôi đi, con muốn lấy hai ly nước dỗ tôi ư, coi tôi là con nít đấy à?” Cố Hạo Quảng bóp trán, mấy câu này chứa quá nhiều thông tin, khiến cậu hốt hoảng một phen. Rửa chén? Giọng nói nuông chiều? Còn cần người ta dỗ? Nhưng Sở Du lại cảm thấy cậu chính là vậy, cô cười rộ lên, “Nếu không tôi bỏ thêm kẹo sầu riêng vào nhé?” Cố tiểu gia có một sự ham mê vô cùng kì lạ, cậu thích ăn sầu riêng, thích vô cùng, mấy món có liên quan đến sầu riêng đều thích tất. Cố Thần nghiêng đầu, chỉ cần có một cục kẹo sầu riêng mà dỗ được cậu á? Sở Dư mở tủ lấy ra một bịch kẹo sầu riêng, lấy ra một cục bỏ vào chén, “Này, đây là mang về cho cậu đó, ăn thử xem.” Chàng trai nhìn bịch kẹo sầu riêng kia, lại nhìn ánh mắt đầy ý cười của cô, cầm ly nước lọc lên miệng che lại, hất cằm. “Quên đi, tôi không thèm so đo với cậu.” Thấy cô lúc nào cũng nghĩ cho mình, cậu nên rộng lượng một chút vậy. Cố Hạo Quảng: … Một lời khó nói. Một viên kẹo đã dỗ được Cố Thần, đây chắc chắn không phải là nhị ca của cậu. “Sáng nay cậu tìm tôi làm gì?” Cố Thần hỏi cô. “Không có gì.” Sở Dư lắc lắc đầu, che miệng lại ngáp, “Định đem kẹo sầu riêng cho cậu thôi.” Khi cô còn nhỏ… mỗi ngày đều phải ngủ trưa, nếu không sẽ đau đầu, bây giờ tuy cơ thể đã khỏe hơn chút, nhưng thói quen ngủ trưa vẫn còn đó, không ngủ thì cứ cảm thấy khó chịu. Sắp đến giờ ngủ của cô rồi. “Biết rồi.” Chàng trai nhìn đồng hồ kiểu xưa đang treo trên tường. “Đúng rồi, lúc đi học cậu đi cùng tôi.” Sở Dư nhìn cậu, đáp lại một tiếng. Chàng trai cứ nhìn thẳng, làm như vu vơ hỏi một câu, “Cậu đã lập wechat chưa?” “Wechat?” Sở Dư lắc đầu, “Chưa lập.” Cô rất ít khi xài mấy mạng xã hội, nên cũng không biết mấy ứng dụng này. “Đưa di động đây.” Chàng trai thờ ơ nói, “Ở lại trong nước lâu như thế, cứ xài thì tốt hơn.” Ừ, đúng là thế. Sở Dư cũng không nghi ngờ gì, lấy di động ra đưa cậu, nhìn cậu tải wechat về, rồi lại lấy di động của mình ra, không biết đang vọc cái gì. Cô vô tình nhìn hai lần, liền thấy… Người theo dõi: Anh Cố. Sở Dư trừng mắt nhìn cậu. Cố Thần nhìn đồng hồ treo tường rồi nói, “Tôi còn có việc, đi trước đây, chân cậu ngắn thế, khỏi tiễn tôi.” Sở Dư… Sở Dư đóng cửa phòng lại cái rầm. Cố Hạo Quảng: … Nhìn nhị ca của cậu đang bị người ta trừng, khóe miệng còn khẽ cong lên, giống như tên trộm lấy được món hời, trong lòng Cố Hạo Quảng ngổn ngang. Trời đất bao la này, ông đây là lớn nhất. “Nhị ca, cậu thích Sở Dư từ lúc nào thế?” Bóng người đi trước bỗng chốc cứng đờ, Cố Thần xoay người lại, lớn giọng quát, “Nói bậy cái gì đó hả?!” Cố Hạo Quảng co rút khóe môi, biểu hiện thế này… còn bảo người ta nói bậy?? Cậu thở dài, “Thế sao vừa nãy cậu còn uống trà đó? Không phải cậu nên đẩy ra sao?” Chàng trai nhăn mày, “Tôi mà không uống, đồ phiền phức đó sẽ thêm hai muỗng đường nữa, lại càng khó uống.” “Nhị ca, trọng điểm đâu phải ở đấy.” Cố Hạo Quảng hàm ý sâu xa, “Trọng điểm là, vì sao cậu lại cảm thấy là, nếu cô ấy bỏ thêm hai muỗng đường nữa thì cậu vẫn uống hả?”[Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố Tiểu Gia 5] Cố Tiểu Gia: Đàn ông giận liền giận, làm gì mà dễ dỗ thế? Sở Dư: Một bịch kẹo sầu riêng được không? Cố Tiểu Gia: … Được. ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 6 Chương 6 Trọng điểm là ở chỗ, vì sao cậu lại cảm thấy là, nếu cô ấy bỏ thêm hai muỗng đường nữa thì cậu vẫn uống chứ? “Không uống thì đồ phiền phức kia sẽ giận.” Chàng trai đứng thẳng lưng, tai bắt đầu đỏ lên, mạnh miệng, “Sức khỏe của cậu ấy không tốt, đại lão gia đây phải nhường cậu ấy một chút.” Cái cớ này… Không nói đến việc cậu có quan tâm đến chuyện người ta có giận hay không… Chỉ cần nói, Cố nhị thiếu thương hoa tiếc ngọc nhà người ta đã là một câu chuyện tiếu lâm rồi. Nếu một cô gái khác cũng như thế, cứ cho là cô ấy yếu sắp chết đi, lúc đấy biểu hiện của cậu có phải kiểu nói giận là giận ngay giống như vậy không chứ? “Cậu vui là được rồi.” Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn nhị ca cậu một cái. Kiêu ngạo, khinh khỉnh, hay cằn nhằn, khôn khéo, hôm nay thế giới quan của cậu bị lật đổ không ít lần, thực sự không muốn nghĩ lại thêm lần nào nữa. Ví dụ như tai đỏ hết cả lên. —— thật ra thì dù có thừa nhận hay không cũng không quan trọng, cơ thể càng thành thực hơn ngôn ngữ nhiều. … “Tiểu Cố, con bị bệnh hả?” Ông Cố đặt quả chuối tiêu đang cầm trên tay xuống, nhìn về phía bóng lưng Cố Thần kêu. Mặt đỏ cứ như sơn màu đỏ ấy. “Con không sao.” Cố Thần không hề bước chậm lại, suýt chút nữa cắn phải đầu lưỡi, “Do trời nóng quá thôi.” Đang nói chuyện thì lại bước hai ba bước vào phòng, đóng cửa lại cái cạch. Nhưng không lâu sau, ông Cố lại thấy cháu mình đi ra lần nữa. —— còn thay cả áo quần nữa, rõ ràng là muốn đi chạy bộ. Ông Cố thong thả ăn chuối, cảm thấy thằng cháu mình có hơi ngốc. Đi ra ngoài một chuyến đến bây giờ, nóng đến nỗi mặt đỏ bừng hết cả lên, thế mà vẫn còn muốn chạy bộ? Cố Thần cũng không biết ông nội mình đang chửi thầm cậu ngốc, cậu cài nút dây ba lô lại, bắt đầu chạy. Một vòng này rồi đến một vòng khác, mồ hôi từ trên trán chảy xuống dưới. Chạy bộ là cách duy nhất có thể khiến cho cậu bình tĩnh lại, lúc đầu sẽ khiến cậu mệt mỏi đến cùng cực, sau đó sẽ làm cho cậu thoải mái, thân thể và tâm trí cũng sẽ được thư giãn. Hộc hộc —— Cố Thần ngồi trên bậc thang, ngước mặt lên, ánh mặt trời chiếu vào làm mắt cậu nheo lại thành một đường thẳng, không biết đang nghĩ gì. … Rất nhanh, còn một ngày nữa là đến ngày tựu trường. Ông Cố mặc đồng phục thái cực khẽ hát bài hát thiếu nhi, nhìn cháu trai cả người đầy mồ hôi từ ngoài vào nhà, “Sao hôm nay con dậy sớm thế?” Bình thường còn không thèm đi tập thái cực cùng ông. Cố Thần lau mồ hôi trên đầu, vẻ mặt tự nhiên, “Hôm qua con ngủ sớm quá nên mới thế.” “À.” Ông Cố cũng không suy nghĩ nhiều, “Haiz, thế mà ông cứ tưởng hôm nay là ngày trọng đại gì mà ông quên mất nữa chứ.” Cố Thần không nói gì, trực tiếp đi vào phòng tắm. Chín giờ hơn. Cố Thần cuối cùng cũng không nhịn được mà tắt ti vi, đúng là bộ phim vớ vẩn. Thật nhàm chán. Cậu đứng lên nghĩ. … Sở Dư bất lực nhìn ông Sở, ông ngoại cứ một mực muốn đưa cô đi. Nói là lo cho cô. Thực tế thì ông còn muốn để cho nhân viên bảo vệ hoặc gọi anh họ của cô về rồi đi cùng cô nữa cơ. “Ông ngoại,” Sở Dư vỗ về ông, “Con đến trường học chứ có phải đi ra chiến trường đâu mà.” Cô biết là ông ngoại quan tâm cô, hai ông anh họ của cô lúc nào đi học cũng bị ông đá ra ngoài, mà cô là con gái, từ nhỏ cơ thể đã yếu, lại còn lớn lên ở nước ngoài nữa, không chắc là có thể thích nghi được với cuộc sống ở trong nước hay không, những yếu tố này cộng lại cũng đủ khiến cho ông ngoại không yên tâm về cô rồi. Nhưng thực tế thì, cô cũng đã lớn, tuổi của cô ở nhà đã tính là độ tuổi hoàn toàn tự lập rồi, đặc biệt mẹ cô còn là người gốc bản địa 100%, chẳng qua chỉ là đến trường đại học một chuyến mà thôi, đâu có gì to tát. Sở Dư nói tiếp, “Hơn nữa, không phải còn có Cố Thần sao?” “Đúng! Còn có con đây!” Cố Thần bước vào vừa lúc nghe được câu này, không nghĩ gì mà lại buộc miệng nói ra, “Con sẽ chăm sóc cậu ấy thật tốt!” Lời vừa nói ra khỏi miệng, người cậu cứng đờ, “Ý của con là, con…” Còn chưa kịp giải thích, ông Sở đã cắt ngang, “Thật hả?” Bị hai người nhìn, đặc biệt là nghĩ đến thân phận của người đang đứng trước mặt, trên vầng trán của thiếu niên xẹt qua nét ngại ngùng, “Thật ạ.” —— sao lại giống như gặp mặt phụ huynh thế này. Ông Sở ngược lại cũng thấy có lý, thật ra ông cũng biết mình đi ra ngoài một chuyến sẽ rất phiền phức. Chỉ là không có người chăm sóc, ông lúc nào cũng không yên tâm về sức khỏe của Sở Dư, mặc dù đã khá hơn trước nhiều, nhưng ông vẫn rất lo lắng, lỡ như Sở Dư im lặng không tiếng động té xỉu ở nơi nào đó mà… không có ai nhìn thấy. “Ông ngoại không còn lo lắng nữa chứ?” Mắt Sở Dư cong lên, “Con đi một lát rồi về nhé.” Cô đã tìm hiểu, hai ngày đầu tiên chỉ đến để điểm danh, vẫn còn hai ngày nữa mới chính thức khai giảng, cô đi làm hồ sơ nhập học chuyển lớp xong thì có thể về rồi. Cố Thần đưa cô đến phòng làm việc của hiệu trưởng, rất nhanh đã làm xong hết mọi thứ. Sau đó lại dẫn cô đi một vòng xung quanh trường, đi qua chỗ nào cậu cũng giới thiệu rất cặn kẽ. Nghĩ đến cái gì đó, Cố Thần bỗng nhiên nói, “Tôi có một căn hộ ở cạnh trường đấy.” “Ừ?” Sở Dư thôi nhìn bức tường bên cạnh, không hiểu ý cậu là gì. “Không phải cậu bảo nếu buổi trưa không ngủ sẽ bị đau đầu sao?” Cậu hất cằm lên, giọng kiêu căng, “Nhà tôi cũng có không ít phòng, có thể cho cậu ở lại ngủ trưa.” Trường học không chỉ có giờ tự học vào buổi sáng mà còn có buổi tối nữa, nếu dậy sớm thì hằng ngày cũng có thể trở về đại viện, nhưng giờ nghỉ trưa chỉ có hai tiếng, chắc chắn là cô sẽ không ngủ trưa được. Sở Dư nghĩ một lát rồi nói, “Cậu nói cũng đúng.” Cô nói tiếp: ” —— thế thì chắc tôi cũng sẽ mua một ngôi nhà ở cạnh đấy.” Khóe miệng đang cong lên liền cứng đờ, một tia xấu hổ chợt lóe lên giữa hai hàng lông mày, chàng trai hừ một tiếng, “Vừa hay, tôi đỡ phải dọn dẹp.” Không muốn ở cũng được thôi, nói cứ như đang mong cô ở vậy. Chân cậu bước nhanh một chút, “Nhanh lên đi, lát nữa trời trưa nắng kiểu gì cậu cũng than nóng cho mà xem.” Sở Dư nhìn Cố Thần thay đổi 180 độ, có hơi buồn cười, người ta nói tính tình của con gái khó mà đoán trước được, nhưng cô thì lại thấy, Cố Thần mới là một tiểu công túa* kiêu ngạo. Bản gốc là tiểu công cử, cách nói trại đi của tiểu công chúa, dùng để chỉ đám con trai ỏn ẻn như gái. Bước chân như cũ, không nhanh cũng không chậm. Quả nhiên, qua một hồi. Chàng trai lại đột nhiên quay lại, nổi giận, “Sao cậu chậm quá vậy? Đúng là đồ phiền phức! Kiểu gì buổi trưa nắng nóng cậu cũng sẽ chóng mặt cho xem!” Môi Sở Dư cong lên, vuốt lại sợi tóc bị gió thổi bay dưới khóe miệng —— nhưng lại rất buồn cười. Cô nhìn về phía mặt hồ, “Không đi nhanh được.” Thiếu niên hừ hai tiếng, lẩm bẩm, “Chân ngắn.” Trông cô có vẻ rất đều đặn uyển chuyển, nhưng thực tế đấy lại là nguyên nhân làm cô mảnh khảnh, chiều cao luôn là nỗi đau của cô. Khóe môi cô xụ xuống, trừng mắt nhìn cậu, “Cậu nói gì đấy?” Bỗng thiếu niên lại có chút sững sờ. Cô cứ đứng ở đó như vậy, mặt hồ xanh biếc ở phía sau, cành liễu thướt tha, đột nhiên đều trở thành vật làm nền. Đôi mắt trong trẻo sâu thẳm, gợn sóng, lúc bị cô nhìn chằm chằm, người nào đó lại cảm thấy rất thoải mái. Cậu không nhịn được mà đến tiến lên hai bước. Vốn khoảng cách giữa hai người cũng không quá lớn, bây giờ lại càng gần hơn. Tà váy bị gió thổi nhẹ, chạm khẽ trên bắp chân cậu, cậu còn có thể ngửi thấy hương thơm nhè nhẹ trên mái tóc của cô. —— dường như thế giới cũng đứng yên lại. Càng dựa càng gần. Sở Dư ngẩng đầu lên, “Làm gì đấy?” Hô hấp của thiếu niên đông cứng lại. Đột nhiên nhấc tay đặt lên đầu cô, rồi so qua ngực mình, nói: “Có thể làm gì chứ?” Vừa nói cậu vừa lùi về sau hai bước, tay đặt ở ngực mình, nói rất nhanh, “Thấy cậu cao đến đâu chưa?” “Tôi đây phải lấy sự thật ra nói cho cậu biết, có thừa nhận hay không cũng không ích gì đâu…” “Đồ chân ngắn!” Tập thể dục thường xuyên nên cậu phát triển rất nhanh, khung xương đầy đặn, dáng người rất cao, đứng cùng một chỗ với cô lại thấy cao hơn cô rất nhiều. Môi Sở Dư hơi cong lên, “Đúng là trẻ con.” Không nói nhiều lời liền đạp cậu một cái,… Luôn tiện giẫm lên đôi giày sneakers màu trắng của cậu, để lại một dấu chân mảnh mai. —— coi như cô không chấp với đồ trẻ con kia. Cố Thần nổi giận, “Sở Tiểu Dư!” Giày cậu mới mua đấy. Thiếu niên bước nhanh đuổi theo cô, nhưng lại vô thức thở phào nhẹ nhõm. … Về đến nhà. Dĩ nhiên Sở Dư phải về nhà ngủ trưa, cậu nhìn cô đi vào, hiếm thấy có dịp không dừng lại, mà trực tiếp xoay người rời đi. Một đêm ngủ ngon. Sáng sớm hôm sau. Chàng trai nằm trên giường đột nhiên mở to mắt choàng dậy. Không biết cậu cảm thấy gì, sắc mặt cứng đờ, cảm thấy cảm giác này rất quen thuộc. Cậu hất chăn lên, đứng dậy đi vào phòng vệ sinh. Tắm bằng nước lạnh, Cố Thần nhìn chàng trai trong gương, khóe miệng còn lưu lại nụ cười lúc nãy, cậu có chút xấu hổ, dứt khoát xoay người đưa lưng về phía gương. Cậu nằm mơ thấy bên bờ hồ, trong lồng ngực có hơi thở ngọt ngào nhè nhẹ, nhiệt độ gần trong gang tấc. “Anh Cố ~” Chẳng qua là, lần này, người ở trong ngực lại đang ôm chặt cổ cậu, lẳng lặng hôn lên… Chỉ có cậu mới biết, khi đó tim cậu đập nhanh đến nhường nào. “Cậu đúng là đồ phiền phức thật mà.” Càng tắm càng thấy phiền, Cố Thần cầm khăn tắm lên lau sơ qua, đi ra khỏi phòng tắm. Đến phòng sách, con chữ trên biểu bảng báo cáo đột nhiên biến thành chữ sao hỏa, từng con chữ một lúc ẩn lúc hiện trong đầu cậu, rung đùi đắc ý, cậu làm thế nào cũng không thể hiểu được như vậy là có ý gì. Cậu vẽ bậy trong vô thức. Đợi cậu tỉnh lại khỏi sự xuất thần đó, nhìn về phía báo cáo, thì phát hiện trong lúc đó vô tình vẽ cái gì. Mái tóc dài, váy dài, đôi mắt cong cong. Thiếu niên nhìn một hồi, đột nhiên lại xấu hổ ném cây bút đang cầm trong tay, rồi sau đó ném báo cáo vào trong thùng rác. Xấu xí chết đi được! Cậu đẩy ghế ra, đi ra ngoài. Người rảnh rỗi hay thích suy nghĩ bậy bạ, không nhất thiết phải nghĩ về một người không liên quan. Không đi quá hai bước, cậu bỗng dừng lại. Quay lại một cách không tự nhiên, cúi người xuống, nhặt lên rồi kéo căng tờ báo cáo. Xếp cả hai vào trong lòng. —— báo cáo khó khăn lắm mới làm được, cậu cứ tiện tay ném đi như vậy thì thật lãng phí công sức quá ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 7 Chương 7 Ngày hôm sau. Lý Linh Linh đến hơi trễ, cầm cặp chạy vào lớp, trong lớp gần như đã kín chỗ, trừ chỗ của Cố nhị thiếu, nhưng đứng một hồi thì đã thấy bạn mình đứng ngay góc vẫy vẫy tay với mình, bên cạnh đó còn một chỗ, rõ ràng là để dành cho cô. Cô cười rộ lên, đi về phía bạn mình. "Sao cậu đến muộn thế, đã bảo cùng ăn mà?" Cô bạn vừa trách móc vừa nói với cô, "Giáo viên dẫn mấy bạn nam đi lấy sách rồi, lát nữa sẽ về điểm danh đó." "Ừ, mình sai rồi ~" Lý Linh Linh gật gật đầu, bắt đầu nói chuyện với bạn mình, dù gì cũng không gặp nhau cả hè rồi. Lúc hai người đang nói chuyện hăng say, một cô gái trông rất dịu dàng bị mấy cô gái khác vây quanh đi vào. Có không ít nữ sinh mỉm cười. Lý Linh Linh mím môi, liếc một cái, cô bạn huých vài cái cô mới có phản ứng, quay đầu đi chỗ khác. "Sao cậu ghét Vu Lan vậy?" Cô bạn hỏi nhỏ. Lý Linh Linh hừ hừ, "Mình ghét cái vẻ đó của cậu ta." Cái vẻ mình là thiên nga trắng, còn mấy người còn lại đều là vịt con xấu xí. Ai mà không biết cô ta đến lớp này làm gì, lúc trước xin hiệu trưởng chuyển mình đến lớp này, không phải vì muốn tạo quan hệ với Cố nhị thiếu hay sao? Lúc đến thì rụt rè, đến khi Cố nhị thiếu nói chuyện với cô ta, cô ta còn tưởngmình là thiên nga trắng ai gặp cũng thích chắc? Nhưng mà, cô bạn thấy rất nhiều nam sinh chào hỏi với Vu Lan, bỗng nhiên có chút bùi ngùi, "Khí chất của cậu ta cũng tốt đó chứ." Lý Linh Linh cũng không thể dối lòng mà nhận xét, có chút không vui. "Đừng nói cậu ta nữa." Cô cũng không muốn nói xấu cậu ta, bắt đầu vòng vo, "Tháng này sinh nhật tớ, cậu nhớ đến đó." "Đương nhiên rồi." Cô bạn huých cô, "Cậu thử không mời xem!" Hai người lại bắt đầu nói chuyện hăng say, đến lúc đang high thì bỗng nhiên cả lớp im lặng như tờ. Lý Linh Linh nhìn theo, không kìm được mà than thở, "Đây mới là khí chất này." Chỉ nhìn thoáng qua, cô không chú ý đến bề ngoài lắm, nhưng lại cảm thấy, hoa quỳnh dưới trăng, hay u lan trong đêm đều kém xa. Sau đó cô mới chú ý, bên cạnh cô ấy còn có người. Một người... á Cố nhị thiếu. Ờ, trên lưng Cố nhị thiếu còn mang một cái balo màu hồng phấn. Tạo nên một hình tượng tương phản hẳn với vẻ bướng bỉnh giữa hàng lông mày. Nhìn thôi cũng biết hai người đó hẳn là rất thân với nhau. Lý Linh Linh vội quay sang nhìn Vu Lan, thấy sắc mặt cô ta bỗng chốc trầm xuống, chả hiểu sao lại buồn cười. Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn hai người đi đằng trước, lại nhìn ánh mắt của mấy người xung quanh lia tới, ụa, bộ cậu ta là không khí hả? "Cậu ngồi trong đi." Cố Thần hất cằm, chỉ vào chỗ ngồi phía trong nói. Điều hòa trong lớp thường để thấp, chỗ đó có ánh nắng chiếu vào, nên ấm hơn chỗ khác. Sở Dư ừ một tiếng, quay lại bảo cậu, "Lấy bịch khăn ướt trong cặp ra cho mình." Hình như ghế đã được lau rồi, nhưng cô vẫn muốn lau lại lần nữa. "Ờ." Cố Thần cúi đầu tìm bịch khăn ướt trong ba lô đưa cho cô, rồi kéo khóa lại, nhìn cô cẩn thận lau sạch mặt bàn và ghế. Không thèm để ý ghế ngồi của mình, cậu ngồi xuống luôn, dáng vẻ mất tự nhiên, cằn nhằn cô, "Tôi nói này, ba lô của cậu nặng lắm, may mà tôi đeo giúp cho cậu, đựng gì trong đó thế?" May mà còn có chú bảo vệ, nếu không thì ai đeo cho cô ấy chứ. "Một bình nước và một quyển sách." Sở Dư không chút để ý trả lời cậu. Cô rất hay đọc sách. Chờ đến khi lau sạch hai băng ghế, cô cầm miếng khăn đã lau đưa ra sau, rồi tiếp tục lau bàn, không để ý bảo: "Đem vứt đi." "Ờ." Cố Thần lên tiếng, cầm lấy miếng khăn ướt vô cùng tự nhiên, nhìn trái nhìn phải, rồi đi đến thùng rác. Vừa nhìn đã biết đây là bị sai thành quen rồi. Ánh mắt đang nhìn của mấy bạn cùng lớp trở nên kinh hãi, đây là Cố nhị thiếu đây hả?! Bạn học ngồi gần thùng rác vội vàng cầm thùng rác lên, đón lấy miếng khăn ướt trong tay cậu. Tôn Hạo Quảng nhìn mọi người xung quanh, chậc một tiếng, tỏ vẻ: Này thì tính là gì? Ngay sau đó cậu lại thở dài,biết thân biết phận bắt đầu lau cái bàn phía sau, nói gì mà anh em tốt ngồi cùng bạn, chỉ là chuyện cười thôi. ... Lúc nhận sách, gọi đến tên Sở Dư thì Cố Thần lên nhận, mọi người đang quan tâm liền hiểu ngay, đó là tên của cô bạn ấy. Sau khi nhận sách xong, giáo viên bắt đầu đứng trên bục giảng phát biểu. Đây là học kì một của lớp mười hai. Mấy bạn học đều là bạn cũ, đã quá quen thuộc, chủ nhiệm giới thiệu qua loa vài câu thì cho lớp giải tán. Cố Thần vẫn đeo cái ba lô màu hồng phấn, đi theo sau Sở Dư ra khỏi lớp. Tôn Hạo Quảng lại bị bỏ lại phía sau:... Nhị ca, tôi hỏi cậu, cậu có còn nhớ Tôn Hạo Quảng đã cùng cậu lớn lên ở bên hồ Đại Minh không hả? Sau khi bọn họ rời khỏi, tất cả những người còn lại mới bắt đầu ồn ào, tốp năm tốp ba lục tục đứng dậy, châu đầu ghé tai trên đường. Có người giữ chặt cô bạn lớp bên, kích động nói, "Tớ nói cho cậu nghe một tin, cậu đừng nói với người khác nha." "Ừ, cậu còn không tin tớ hả?" Bạn tốt số 1 trả lời. "Tớ nói cho cậu biết, Cố thiếu có bạn gái!" Bạn tốt số 1 vẻ mặt không thể tin được, không thể nào, có ai mà không rõ tính tình của Cố thiếu cơ chứ. "Tớ tận mắt nhìn thấy nè! Bạn gái người ta tới học chung đấy!" Cô ngắt lời bạn mình, kích động thét chói tai, "Cậu không biết trước mặt bạn gái Cố thiếu ngoan cỡ nào đâu! Hôm nay cậu ta..." Bao nhiêu chuyện đặc biệt như thế mà cậu bảo không phải bạn gái ư?! Chưa đầy hai phút, hai người tách ra, vẻ mặt bạn tốt số 1 kích động đến đỏ bừng. Nhịn một lát, sắc mặt bạn tốt số 1 đỏ bừng, nhịn không được gọi cho bạn thân của mình, bạn tốt số 2 ở lớp khác. "Này, tớ kể cho cậu một bí mật, đừng nói với người khác đấy!" Giọng nói bên kia trong veo, "Haiz, miệng mình kín cỡ nào không phải cậu không biết!" "A a a a Cố thiếu có bạn gái... thật đấy... Cậu ấy còn mang ba lô cho bạn gái... rất rất nghe lời..." Bạn tốt số 2 đảo mấy vòng, không nhịn được cầm lấy điện thoại gọi cho đồng bọn của mình, "Có bí mật muốn cho cậu biết..." Tin tức truyền đi với tốc độ kinh người. Không lâu sao, cả khối đều biết chuyện —— Cố Thần Cố nhị thiếu có bạn gái! Ai cũng nói rằng, Cố nhị thiếu đối xử với bạn gái rất đặc biệt, mang ba lô hồng phấn cho cô, bị cô sai đi vứt ra cũng không giận, vô cùng ngoan ngoãn... Nói tới bên đây. Lúc Sở Dư về đến nhà, ông Sở quan tâm hỏi han. Sở Dư cười lắng nghe ông nói. Có người vui, đương nhiên cũng sẽ có người không vui. Ví dụ như Vu Lan. Nhưng mà rất nhanh, chỉ cần là người sáng suốt đều có thể nhìn ra Cố nhị thiếu đối xử với Sở Dư vô cùng đặc biệt. Cô mất hai năm, nhưng không thể nói chuyện với Cố Thần, càng đừng bàn tới việc khiến cho cậu thích cô, ngày xưa bên cạnh Cố Thần không có ai khác, cô còn có thể lừa người khác được, nhưng lần này rõ ràng như thế, chắc chắn không thể lừa được ở bên nhà nữa... Làm sao bây giờ? Sáng ngày hôm sau. Lúc Cố Thần và Sở Dư đến trường, phát hiện mỗi lần có người đi ngang qua đều liếc nhìn bọn họ. Sở Dư suy nghĩ nguyên nhân, nhìn Cố Thần hỏi, "Ở trường cậu nổi tiếng lắm hả?" "Đúng đó!" Tôn Hạo Quảng thở phào, rốt cục cũng có cơ hội nói xen vào, "Cậu không biết nhị ca..." "Không đâu." Cố Thần cứng đờ, ngắt lời cậu, cười ha ha, "Làm gì mà nổi tiếng chứ." Nổi vì tính tình xấu và đánh nhau... có thể nói ra ư. Tôn Hạo Quảng:... Nhìn Cố Thần đầy khinh bỉ, nhưng vẫn ngậm miệng. Sợ quá. Thấy cậu không muốn nói, Sở Dư cong môi, không hỏi nhiều. Dù sao cũng biết thôi. Bọn họ không biết, sau khi ba người họ đi qua, mấy bạn học đi ngang qua nhảy dựng lên, có vỗ tay chúc mừng, cũng có ánh mắt đầy xúc động. Thì ra là sự thật... ... Sắp xếp chỗ ngồi xong là bắt đầu vào học. Dĩ nhiên, chỗ ba người Cố Thần hoàn toàn không nhúc nhích, giáo viên cũng vờ không thấy. Trường bọn họ không giống với mấy trường khác, học kì mới của lớp mười hai có không nhiều kiến thức mới, khoảng 1 tháng, học xong mới có thể bắt đầu ôn tập. "Hôm nay chúng ta học..." "Được rồi, bài tập hôm nay..." Sở Dư nhìn chăm chú vào đề bài trong sách, khẽ nhướn mày, cô có thể hiểu được định nghĩa, nhưng khi giải đề, hình như có vài chỗ cô chưa học qua, cho nên hơi lờ mờ. Có lẽ cô nên mời gia sư, để bổ túc lại mấy kiến thức trước kia một chút. Dường như biết được cô đang lơ mơ, chàng trai đang cầm điện thoại chơi game nhìn sang cô, sau đó vứt di động sang một bên. "Này, đề này biết làm không?" Sở Dư nhìn nhìn, đúng ngay câu cô đang suy nghĩ, "Không biết." Cố Thần nâng cằm, phồng má, "Đây, để tôi chỉ cậu." Sở Dư dựa sát vào, Cố thiếu cầm bút, nở nụ cười, "Đề này làm thế này... sau đó như vầy..." "Hiểu chưa?" Sở Dư nhìn bài giảng của cậu, bỗng nhiên hỏi, "Cậu viết... gì thế?" Lúc còn bé Cố thiếu chỉ thích đánh đấm, ông Cố có đuổi cậu chạy hết cả một con hẻm cũng không ép anh rèn chữ được, bút lông thì khỏi phải nói, cậu đi đến thư phòng một lần, mém tí nữa là làm hỏng hết mấy bức tranh chữ quý giá của ông Cố. Ông Cố cảm thấy bất lực với cậu, thế nên đến bây giờ, chữ của Cố thiếu... xấu tới mức... kinh khủng. Ít có người đọc được chữ của cậu. "Là bài giải đó." Tai Cố Thần phiếm đỏ, nâng cằm nói. Sở Dư nhìn lại một lúc lâu, vẫn không nhìn ra được đây là bài giải. Chàng trai dường như có thể hiểu được ánh mắt của cô, bỗng nhiện thẹn quá hóa giận, ném bút cái cạch, "Cậu muốn nghe nữa không?" Trong cả đề cậu chỉ viết mỗi một kiểu chữ, không phải bài giải thì là gì?! Mới đó mà đã thế này, vậy thì mai mốt cậu viết thư tình thì cô sẽ cười cậu thành dạng gì hả? [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố thiếu 7] Cố thiếu: Tôi không thích cậu đâu nhá. Sở Dư: Ờ, vậy thư tình này ai viết vậy? Có cần tôi chúc hai người trăm năm hạnh phúc không? Cố thiếu:.QWQ vợ ơi anh sai rồi. → Cố sợ vợ login. ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 8 Chương 8 Buổi trưa, sau khi tan học. "Sở Dư, lát nữa đi ăn trưa với mình không?" Lý Linh Linh xoay người lại bắt chuyện với Sở Dư. "Ừ, cùng đi đi." Sở Dư cong môi, gật đầu trả lời. Được đáp lại, cô gái hẳn là rất vui, ngay cả đuôi mắt cũng cong lên. Cô đã quan sát mấy ngày rồi, tính tình của cô bạn Sở Dư này tương đối nhã nhặn, lúc lật sách không nhanh cũng không chậm, khiến cho người khác có cảm giác thật bình yên khi nhìn cô ấy. Cô muốn làm bạn với Sở Dư. Nhưng cũng có lẽ là do Cố nhị thiếu thực sự khá nổi tiếng, cậu lại còn thường xuyên ngồi cạnh Sở Dư không rời nửa bước, vì vậy cô cũng không có dũng khí để đến nói chuyện với Sở Dư. Nhưng hai hôm nay hình như giữa hai người xảy ra chuyện gì đó, Cố nhị thiếu... trông cứ như đang giận ấy, cũng không còn thường xuyên dính lấy Sở Dư nói chuyện nữa. Vậy nên kể từ khi Sở Dư chuyển đến lớp được vài ngày, sau giờ học tối hôm qua, cuối cùng cô cũng có can đảm bắt chuyện với Sở Dư, hôm nay là lần thứ hai. Cố nhị thiếu không dính lấy Sở Dư nữa, cô sẽ có thể cùng đi ăn cơm với Sở Dư... Đúng không? Lúc này, cứ như vừa nghe được cuộc nói chuyện giữa hai người, Cố Thần đột nhiên đứng lên. Lý Linh Linh giật mình, suýt chút nữa là nhảy cẫng lên lập tức nhận sai. Nhưng cô lại thấy Sở Dư không từ chối, Lý Linh Linh can đảm hơn chút, dù sao trực giác cũng nói cho cô biết, có Sở Dư ở bên thì cũng chẳng cần sợ Cố nhị thiếu làm gì. Cô vỗ ngực, lén xích lại gần Sở Dư, "Cố nhị thiếu, làm sao thế?" "Không sao hết." Như đang nghĩ đến gì đấy, Sở Dư không nhịn được bật cười, đuôi mắt cong lên như hình cánh cung, "Cậu ấy chỉ là... có chút xấu hổ thôi." Lý Linh Linh vốn đã bị mê hoặc bởi ánh mắt của Sở Dư, bên trong như chứa đầy sao, đẹp không tả nổi, nhưng nghe thấy lời này, cô lập tức bật dậy, cằm như muốn rơi xuống đất vậy. "Xấu hổ á?!" Có đúng là đang nói Cố thiếu không thế?! Ở đây Cố Thần rất nổi tiếng, không phải là vì cậu hư hỏng không chịu đi học hay gì, mà là vì bản thân cậu được nhận sự giáo dục quân sự, rất có ý thức tuân thủ thời gian và kỷ luật, nhưng điều này không có nghĩa là người khác sẽ không sợ cậu. Lúc cậu đánh nhau, vẻ mặt rất tàn nhẫn, đủ dọa người ta sợ tái cả mặt bể cả mật. Nói nhiều cũng vô ích, dù sao thì từ sau khi thấy Cố Thần đánh nhau, đám người bọn họ không ai là không sợ cậu. Chỉ hận không thể tránh xa thể loại này ba mét. Người như vậy mà Sở Dư lại nói là cậu đang xấu hổ... Cô thà tin chuyện heo nái biết leo lên cây còn hơn. Sở Dư ôm trán, cười khẽ. Chính là xấu hổ đấy. Nhắc đến chuyện này, phải nói đến buổi trưa tan học của ngày đầu tiên. Buổi trưa hôm đó... Mấy cô cậu học trò lần lượt đi ra ngoài. "Cậu mua nhà rồi hả?" Cố Thần hỏi. "Chưa." Sở Dư lắc đầu, "Bảo vệ vẫn đang tìm." Vì những căn hộ ở gần trường học hầu như không có phòng đã trang hoàng, mà cô lại muốn trực tiếp vào ở luôn, không muốn tốn thời gian sửa sang lại nhà, có điều rất nhanh rồi sẽ mua được thôi. Chàng trai chớp mắt, lặng lẽ liếc nhìn cô, "Thế hôm nay cậu định thế nào?" "Dù sao cũng chỉ không ngủ một ngày thôi mà, không sao đâu." Khóe môi chàng trai thản nhiên nhếch lên bỗng xụ xuống. Thà không ngủ một hôm còn hơn đến nhà cậu ngủ?! Càng nghĩ càng bực, còn có chút tủi thân, cậu có làm gì khiến cô ghét bỏ à. Không muốn ngủ thì... Sở Dư không để ý đến điểm này, cong môi nói thêm một câu, "Vả lại, không phải nhà cậu có phòng cho khách đó sao?" Giọng nói của cô rất nhẹ nhàng, "Tiểu Cố hào phóng như vậy, chắc cũng có thể cho tôi mượn phòng khách chứ nhỉ?" Mắt của chàng trai lại sáng lên lần nữa, cố nuốt vào trong câu nói sắp buột miệng nói ra, hừ một tiếng, "Để tôi về dọn phòng cái đã." Cô nhìn cậu, cười tươi giống như hoa nở, cậu có hơi bối rối nhìn sang hướng khác, nhanh chóng giải thích. "Chỉ là tôi đây thấy cậu rất đáng thương, không ngủ sẽ bị đau đầu, nếu không phải ông Sở nhờ tôi chăm sóc cậu thì tôi cũng sẽ không quản cậu đâu, giờ đành thu nhận cậu một buổi trưa vậy." Người tàng hình* Tôn Hạo Quảng ở phía sau phụt một cái, đột nhiên lại có hứng muốn nghe ngóng. Nhị ca à, cậu như vậy kiểu gì cũng sẽ không tìm được bạn gái đâu, biết không hả? "À." Sở Dư đáp, thật ra cũng không giận gì, nhưng vừa mới có chút cảm kích thì đột nhiên lại bay đi hết luôn rồi. Đúng là độc mồm giống nhau. Sau khi nói xong, Cố Thần suýt chút nữa thì cắn phải đầu lưỡi, nhìn Sở Dư rời đi, khóe môi cong lên cũng xụ xuống, có chút nhẹ nhàng, lại có chút không thoải mái. Sau đó, trên đường về hai người cũng không nói gì thêm. Thật ra Sở Dư cũng không có gì, nhưng bản thân cô không phải là một người hay chủ động tìm chủ đề để nói chuyện, không có gì để nói thì sẽ chậm rãi nhìn phong cảnh xung quanh. Cố Thần lại không như thế. Lén lút nhìn cô vài lần, thấy cô còn không thèm nhìn cậu lấy một cái, đột nhiên cậu thấy hơi hoảng, không lẽ giận thật rồi hả? Nghĩ một hồi, cậu lại thấy hơi tủi thân, có vậy thôi mà đã không thèm để ý đến cậu... Bước chân của cậu càng ngày càng chậm. Tôn Hạo Quảng cười ha hả đi nhanh hai bước, vỗ vào vai Cố Thần. Cố Thần nhíu mày lại, nhăn mặt, "Gì đấy?" Tôn Hạo Quảng lúng túng, có cảm giác một giây nữa mình sẽ bị cắt thành từng miếng, chịu đựng một lát, cuối cùng thì cảm giác muốn xem trò náo nhiệt vẫn chiếm ưu thế hơn. Cậu chu môi nhìn về phía trước, hạ giọng xuống rồi nói, "Nhị ca, cậu không định đến dỗ người ta à?" Cố Thần mím môi, có hơi giận dỗi, quay đầu đi, "Giận thì cứ giận đi, còn lâu tôi mới dỗ!" "Ù uôi," Tôn Hạo Quảng bật ngón cái lên, "Có khí phách!" Mấy ngày nay cậu đã được thấy rất nhiều kiểu nhị ca, kiểu trẻ con không ăn đường được, tủi thân đến nỗi giận dỗi nghiêng đầu... Thật chẳng muốn nhớ lại chút nào. Nói thật, cậu cũng không ngại xem thêm mấy kiểu đấy nữa, tiếc là cậu không thể làm như vậy với nhị ca được. —— để xem xem nhị ca "đàn ông" như thế nào trước mặt Sở Dư. Lúc này Cố Thần cũng không buồn nói đến tâm trạng đàn ông của mình, cậu hất tay của Tôn Hạo Quảng đang đặt trên bả vai xuống, cố gắng đi nhanh để đuổi kịp Sở Dư. Sao đường này lại dài quá vậy... Đi lâu vậy rồi, thế mà vẫn chưa thấy phần cuối. Phong cảnh lại còn xấu nữa, làm đường càng dài hơn, thật chả biết trường học xây con đường này làm gì nữa! Cố Thần bước mạnh một chút, có hơi thiếu kiên nhẫn. Ấy, hay là... Lát nữa trên đường về nhà mua cho cô một ít đồ ăn đi. Cậu làm sao có thể cứ so đo với một cô gái mãi được. Vất vả lắm mới đi ra cửa trường, Sở Dư đột nhiên thấy bảo vệ nhà mình, cô nghĩ một lát rồi đi sang hướng đó, không phải đã nói là buổi trưa không cần đến đón cô rồi sao? Cố Thần đang thiếu kiên nhẫn, nhìn thấy Sở Dư đột nhiên xoay người đi sang hướng khác, giống như không nói lời nào lại đi luôn, ánh mắt bỗng nhiên luống cuống, "Cậu đi đâu đấy?" Cậu chạy đến nắm chặt cổ tay cô. "Tôi sai rồi, cậu đừng giận, tôi xin lỗi cũng không được sao?" Sở Dư:... Tôn Hạo Quảng:... Đúng là một người đàn ông kiên cường. Sở Dư có hơi khó hiểu, "Cậu làm sai cái gì?" Nếu như lúc này Cố Thần còn có lý trí thì có thể sẽ dễ dàng phân biệt được rất nhanh, trong lời nói của Sở Dư không có một chút gì gọi là đang tức giận cả, nhưng bởi vì yêu nên rất dễ sinh ra sợ hãi, lúc này, Cố Thần không còn có tâm trạng phân biệt cảm xúc trong lời nói của cô nữa. Chỉ vội vàng trả lời, "Lúc nãy tôi không nên nói với cậu như thế." Sở Dư đột nhiên cười, một nụ cười rất sáng, "Cậu đang sợ tôi giận cậu đấy hả?" Tiếng cười trong trẻo êm ái, lúc này dù Cố Thần có sợ như thế nào thì cũng đã nghe ra, vốn là Sở Dư không hề giận dỗi gì, vậy cậu... Vậy cậu nói nhiều như thế... Chóp tai cậu đỏ lên, có hơi cáu, "Cậu căn bản là không hề giận tôi!" Sở Dư nhìn Cố Thần chằm chằm, đuôi mắt cong lên, chợt cảm thấy bộ dạng này của Cố Thần lại có chút đáng yêu. Cô cười lên, đột nhiên đưa tay ra nhéo má cậu, "Tiểu Cố à, cậu đáng yêu quá đi ~" "Đáng... Đáng yêu cái gì mà đáng yêu!" Cố Thần xoay đầu, người nóng như muốn bốc hơi, "Đàn... Đàn ông con trai sao có thể nói đáng yêu được chứ?!" Sở Dư nhìn Cố Thần chăm chú một hồi, liền phát hiện, vốn màu đỏ ban đầu chỉ có ở trên chóp tai, nhưng hình như địa bàn nho nhỏ này vẫn không đáp ứng được hết, bắt đầu từ từ lan rộng đến địa bàn khác... Cả hai bên má đều đỏ ửng lên, sau đó cổ cũng đỏ, rồi tiếp tục lan rộng xuống phía dưới, dường như có thể tượng tượng ra, ngực của cậu cũng đỏ giống như vậy. Cả người trông cứ như con tôm đang được người ta luộc chín vậy. Sở Dư:... Tiểu Cố đúng là người đàn ông kỳ lạ nhất thế giới. Còn ngây thơ đến nỗi không dám nhìn thẳng. "Cậu nhìn cái gì?!" Cố Thần nhịn rồi lại nhịn, nhưng rốt cuộc vẫn không nhịn được nữa, dậm chân nói. Cuối cùng cũng không nỡ nhìn người cậu đỏ từ trên xuống dưới nữa, Sở Dư nín cười, khóe môi cong lên, chỉ vào bảo vệ, "Chú bảo vệ tới, tôi sang đó nói với chú ấy một tiếng." "Ừ." Cố Thần không nhìn cô, phất phất tay, làm vẻ không chịu được nữa, "Đi lẹ đi lẹ." Sở Dư cắn môi, nín cười đi tới. Thấy nhị ca nhà mình không biết đang nghĩ gì, cả người lại đỏ hết cả lên, Tôn Hạo Quảng rất có mắt nhìn, không đi lên, chỉ lặng lẽ di chuyển tầm mắt. —— không thấy gì cả. Mắt chó hợp kim titan cũng không chịu được cảnh nhị ca của mình bị hủy hoại như vậy. Đợi đến lúc Sở Dư quay về, Cố Thần cũng đã bình tĩnh lại. "Cậu muốn ở phòng nào?" Cố Thần chỉ vào mấy phòng cho khách, hai ngày trước cậu cũng đã kêu người dọn dẹp xong cả rồi, phòng nào cũng đều có thể ở được. Cậu hất cằm lên, vẻ mặt sóng yên biển lặng, dường như đã quên bẵng chuyện xấu hổ ban nãy. Sở Dư cũng không vạch trần ý tứ, khóe môi cong cong, tùy tiện chọn một phòng rồi đi vào. Cố Thần thở phào nhẹ nhõm. Mở cửa phòng, nằm dài trên giường, nhắm tịt mắt lại. Đi ngủ, ngủ một giấc sẽ tốt hơn thôi. ... Nhưng có làm thế nào cũng không ngủ được, thiếu niên ngồi dậy vò đầu bứt tai, phiền chết đi được, Sở Dư đúng là đồ phiền phức! Không có gì mà sao lúc nào cũng chạy lung tung hết thế này! Trong đầu toàn là Sở Dư thì sao ngủ được đây trời?! ... Hậu di chứng của chuyện này vẫn rất lớn, ít nhất thì, người đàn ông họ Cố ngây thơ xấu hổ cho đến tận trước hôm nay. [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố Tiểu Gia 8] Cố Tiểu Gia: Tôi đương nhiên sẽ không đi dỗ phụ nữ rồi! Hai phút sau. Cố Tiểu Gia: Sở Dư tôi sai rồi... Tác giả ôm mặt tỏ vẻ đau lòng: Bốp bốp bốp, tự vả mặt... có đau không? ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 9 Chương 9 Cố Thần thu dọn xong xuôi, nhìn hai người đang chuẩn bị đi ra ngoài, bỗng dưng dừng bước. Quay đầu lại, "Còn không đi?" Lý Linh Linh, "..." Tụi tôi bảo cậu đi cùng lúc nào hả? Lão đại không dính lấy bạn gái thì không thể tự mình đi xa hơn à... Nhưng rồi cuối cùng, cô cũng chỉ dám oán thầm trong lòng, trên mặt lại tỏ vẻ ngoan ngoãn như chim non, vội vàng xách ba lô lên, thân thiết đi bên cạnh Sở Dư. "Cậu cũng muốn đến căn tin hả?" Sở Dư nén cười hỏi. Ý của cô là, nhìn cậu có vẻ như không muốn gặp cô, nên mới trốn tránh như thế, không ngờ cậu ấy còn chủ động chạy lại đây, xem ra cậu không có xấu hổ. Mấy hôm trước bọn họ đều ăn cơm trưa do đầu bếp trong nhà làm từ sớm, đến trưa hâm lại là được, nhưng hôm nay cô muốn ăn thử đồ ăn ở căn tin trường. Cô đã tra thử, đồ ăn ở trường này là có tâm nhất. "Ừ" Cố Thần thấy cô chỉ cười, thì nhẹ nhàng thở ra. Hơn nữa, nhìn thấy cái người cứ ôm chặt cánh tay của Sở Dư, cảm thấy hơi hối hận, biết thế đã sớm nghĩ thông rồi. Nhất thời không kiểm tra... Đã để... Cảm giác có người cứ nhìn chằm chằm mình, nghĩ tới ánh mắt ấy thuộc về ai, Lý Linh Linh lại càng ôm chặt, tựa như ôm cọng cỏ cứu mạng, hận không thể thu bé mình lại. Làm sao đây? Có phải Cố nhị thiếu đang muốn giết cô hay không... "Cậu sao vậy?" Sở Dư chú ý đến động tác của cô ấy, quay sang nhìn Cố Thần, rồi cong môi trấn an cô nàng. "Đừng sợ." Thật ra Cố Thần là người rất tốt. Lý Linh Linh suy nghĩ, tựa như được tưới năng lượng, đột nhiên ưỡn ngực, cô sợ gì chứ? Cô bây giờ là người có chỗ dựa đó! Vừa nhìn đã biết, Cố nhị thiếu là một người sợ vợ. Làm sao giờ, có thể làm tình địch của Cố nhị thiếu, tưởng tượng thôi đã thấy sướng rồi. Sau khi cô gái nhỏ đã nghĩ thông suốt, tính tình liền khác hẳn. Cô bắt đầu nói chuyện với Sở Dư ở cạnh theo ý mình, tình bạn của con gái vô cùng kì lạ mà không cần lý do, Sở Dư nghiêng đầu, mỉm cười lắng nghe. Không lâu sau, cảm giác mới lạ giữa hai người đã hoàn toàn biến mất. Càng nói lại càng hợp. Áp suất của Cố Thần càng ngày càng thấp. ... Có cái gì hay mà nói chứ... đúng là không có mắt nhìn mà. Tôn Hạo Quảng đi chầm chậm, ánh mắt kích động quét tới, chậc chậc, chiến trường đẫm máu là đây, địa ngục là đây! Không uổng công cậu chịu đựng áp suất của nhị ca nhà mình lâu như thế... Mau bùng nổ nào, mau bùng nổ nào! Tổng giám đốc bá đạo nói không cho phép cô được nói chuyện với người khác, ôm hôn đi nào! Nhưng mà đáng tiếc, cậu phải thất vọng rồi. Đến cuối cùng, Cố Thần cũng không nói một câu nào. Tôn Hạo Quảng tiếc nuối chậc một tiếc. Hãi thật. ... Đã rẻ lại ngon cái gì chứ, Sở Dư nhíu mày, động tác trên tay ngày càng chậm. Rẻ thì có rẻ, nhưng ngon thì hơi khó nói. Chờ mọi người dừng tay, Sở Dư cũng buông đũa, im lặng cầm ly nước trái cây uống thêm hai hớp. Cố Thần nhìn cô, không nói gì. Ăn cơm xong, Sở Dư phải ngủ trưa, Cố Thần cũng đi theo, Lý Linh Linh dừng bước, Tôn Hạo Quảng đang rảnh rỗi, dứt khoát đi đánh hai ván game. Mọi người cứ thế mà tách ra. Về đến nhà chưa được bao lâu. Sở Dư vừa mới thay áo ngủ, đã nghe tiếng chuông cửa vang lên. Nghĩ nghĩ, cô lấy áo khoác mặc vào, nhìn người ở bên ngoài rồi mới mở cửa. "Sao cậu lại đến đây?" Không phải vừa mới chia tay đấy à? —— Nhắc đến cũng thật khéo, cuối cùng bảo vệ cũng mua được một căn hộ cùng khu nhà với Cố Thần, một người ở tầng trên, một người ở tầng dưới. Cho nên hai người bọn họ đi đến chung cư rồi mới tách ra, còn chưa được vài phút. Chàng trai đẩy cửa ra, lắc lắc hộp đựng thức ăn trong tay giơ lên trước mặt cô lắc lắc, "Không phải vừa nãy cậu không ăn cơm sao?" Nói xong liền bước vào, nhìn cô đang đứng ở cửa, áo ngủ trên người cô mỏng đến độ lộ cả một mảng ở trước ngực và cổ, có cảm giác như tay ôm đàn che nửa mặt hoa... khiến cho người khác mê mẩn. "Cậu cậu cậu mặc kiểu gì vậy hả?" Phản ứng đầu tiên của cậu chính là đóng rầm cửa lại, nhìn sang chỗ khác, hổn hển hét lên. Vừa nãy có người đi ngang qua, rủi như bị người khác nhìn thấy thì sao hả?! Sở Dư cúi đầu nhìn áo ngủ trên người mình, áo cổ tròn, đâu có lộ bao nhiêu, hơn nữa mình còn mặc thêm áo khoác mà... Dù cho Sở Dư gặp biến cũng không sợ, nhưng bây giờ lại cảm thấy hơi khó hiểu, cô ăn mặc đâu có vấn đề gì... Sở Dư bèn chuyển đề tài, "Đây là cơm trưa của cậu hả?" Cô nhìn hộp đựng cơm, vì trưa nay muốn ăn cơm ở căn tin, cho nên cô không có mang cơm trưa theo. Cố Thần không tình nguyện gật đầu, ánh mắt nhẹ nhàng ưlướt xuống. Quên đi, dù... dù gì cũng chỉ có hai người họ ở đây, mặc... mặc ít một chút cũng không sao cả. "Cám ơn cậu." Sở Dư cong môi, không từ chối, "Sao cậu lại biết hôm nay tôi ăn ít?" Cố Thần đặt hộp cơm lên bàn, kéo ghế ngồi xuống, lấy đồ ăn ra. "Tôi còn không hiểu cậu ư, kén ăn đến thế." Đồ ăn ở căn tin, dù cho cậu là một người không kén ăn thì động vài đũa đã không muốn ăn thêm rồi, huống chi cô được nuông chiều từ nhỏ, chăm sóc cẩn thận, ăn được mới là lạ đấy. "Nhiều quá." Sở Dư nhìn đồ ăn trên bàn, "Cậu còn đói không, ăn cùng đi." Đây là dựa theo sức ăn của Cố Thần mà làm, cô chắc chắn ăn không hết. Cố Thần lắc đầu, "Tôi no rồi." Cậu có kén ăn đâu. Cậu lấy chén đĩa đẩy lại cho Sở Dư, "Ăn nhiều chút, vừa nãy ăn ít quá, như gà con mổ thóc ấy." Gà con mổ thóc gì hả... Sở Dư trừng mắt nhìn cậu, không nói nữa, tập trung ăn. Vừa nãy chỉ uống một ly nước trái cây, rồi lại đi một đoạn đường, đúng là cô hơi đói. "Cậu không cần ngồi đây chờ đâu, tôi cầm hộp cơm về cho cậu được mà." Sở Dư nuốt đồ ăn xuống, nhìn Cố Thần rồi nói. "Vừa mới ngồi xuống đã đuổi tôi đi, cậu đúng là đồ qua cầu rút ván." Chàng trai hừ một tiếng, "Đồ vô lương tâm!" Sở Dư: "Cậu đặt cho tôi bao nhiêu cái biệt danh rồi hả?" ... Còn không phải vì cô thấy cậu ngồi đấy trông chán à? Cố Thần hất cằm, "Có cái biệt danh nào tôi đặt cho cậu mà sai không?" Vẻ mặt cậu khó chịu nhưng lại ngồi im không nhúc nhích, giống như quyết tâm phải ngồi chờ lấy hộp cơm, Sở Dư cảm thấy buồn cười, tiếp tục ăn cơm. ... Hết thứ sáu là tới hai ngày nghỉ cuối tuần. "Anh Cố, anh có nhớ người ta không hả?" Đầu dây bên kia vang lên tiếng nũng nịu của một chàng trai, "Em nhớ anh lắm đó ~" Cố Thần buông bút, "Nói chuyện cho đàng hoàng." "Được, được rồi." Đầu dây bên kia ho một tiếng, ngại ngùng, khôi phục lại giọng nói trong trẻo, "Dạo này bận gì thế? Ra ngoài chơi đi." "Cả tháng nay không gặp anh rồi." Giống y hệt tiểu thư khuê cát không bước ra khỏi nhà, cậu ta thầm oán. "Không đi." Trên mặt Cố Thần không có phản ứng, dứt khoát từ chối. "Aiz!" Người bên kia đáp lại hơi to, "Anh không đến thật hả?" Lúc đầu Tôn Hạo Quảng nói cậu còn không tin, lúc trước trong mấy người bọn họ, Cố Thần là người cứng đầu, khó trói buộc nhất, cậu còn không tin anh Cố đổi tính, cá cược thua không ít tiền rồi. "Anh có chuyện gì vậy?" Bên kia bắt đầu nhiều chuyện. Mỗi lần cậu ta hỏi Tôn Hạo Quảng, thằng ấy cứ bày ra vẻ mặt khó mà tả nổi, sau đó vỗ vỗ vai cậu ta, vẻ mặt thông cảm đưa cho cậu ta một cái kính râm. ... Đến giờ cậu ta đã được mấy cái kính rồi đấy. Cố Thần xoay xoay cây bút trong tay, nhíu mày, bỏ qua câu hỏi này, "Không có gì thì tôi cúp đây." "Này anh, anh đừng thế chứ!" Người bên kia biết nếu cậu mà hỏi tiếp, Cố Thần chắc chắn sẽ cúp ngay, nghĩ nghĩ lại thuận miệng hỏi. "Vậy chiều nay rảnh không, mai cũng được?..." Thật ra Cố Thần nhỏ tuổi hơn cậu ta, nhưng suy nghĩ trưởng thành, luôn luôn nói được làm được, tối thiểu là cậu chưa thấy chuyện nào mà Cố Thần phải "tự vả" mình cả. Cố Thần không hứng thú, "Không rảnh." Chiều cậu bận phụ đạo cho Sở Dư rồi. Sở Dư cần phải phụ đạo lại kiến thức cũ, cho nên cô muốn tìm một gia sư, Cố Thần nhìn hoa văn trên bàn, gia sư kinh nghiệm cũng chưa chắc bảo đảm, còn không bằng cậu dạy. Vừa tiết kiệm tiền vừa bảo đảm, rất tốt. "Vô... tình quá." Người kia ai oán. Cậu ta vừa nghĩ ra được vài câu hỏi, thấy Cố Thần không trả lời, nghĩ một hồi, không nhịn được ho một tiếng, bình tĩnh hỏi. "Anh bận chuyện gì thế?" Cố Thần nhìn điện thoại, cau mày, cúp luôn. "A!" Bên kia kêu một tiếng, cậu ta là một người tò mò, chuyện gì cũng phải muốn biết câu trả lời, thế mà mọi người lại cố tình không nói cho cậu ta!!! Ngứa ngáy trong lòng quá aaa... Nếu không thì... trực tiếp đến xem xem nhỉ? Cố Thần cầm bảng chữ mẫu lên, tô từng chữ từng chữ một. Chuyện rèn chữ này, có thể nói cho cậu ta biết ư? —— Đương nhiên là không rồi, "bí mật" mà!! [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố tiểu gia 9] Trước khi gặp Sở Dư: Cậu em họ Trần: Tôi chưa bao giờ thấy anh tôi “tự vả” nói mà không giữ lời đâu nhé. Sau khi gặp Sở Dư: Cậu em họ Trần: Tôi sai rồi... là do tôi mù. ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 10 Chương 10 Buổi chiều, Cố Thần đến phụ đạo cho Sở Dư. "Con chào ông Sở." Cố Thần đẩy cửa ra, lễ phép chào hỏi. Ông Sở dịch tờ báo sang bên, "Tiểu Cố đến rồi đấy à." Ông cười ha hả nói, "Con đúng là một đứa trẻ ngoan, làm phiền con rồi, Sở Dư ở đằng sau đấy." "Vâng, con biết rồi." "Ông Sở, con đi trước đã ạ." Đợi cách một đoạn xa, Cố Thần mới thở phào nhẹ nhõm, ho khan một tiếng. Bởi vì... ông Sở rất nghiêm khắc (?) nên cậu luôn cảm thấy căng thẳng. Sở Dư luôn luôn im lặng, yên tâm ngồi học ở đó cả buổi chiều cũng không sao. Trái lại chẳng biết Cố Thần nghe mấy câu vớ vẩn từ đâu ra, cứ nhìn chằm chằm cô, không muốn cho cô đứng lên hoạt động một chút nào cả. Như thường lệ Sở Dư vẫn không thể nào thay đổi được cậu. Phải một lát sau hai người mới dừng lại nghỉ một lúc. Chỉ là lần này, đến khi Sở Dư dừng lại vì cổ đã mỏi nhừ, Cố Thần cũng không nói gì. Cô nghiêng đầu nhìn sang, thấy khóe môi Cố Thần nhếch lên cười, tay tô tô xóa xóa như đang vẽ cái gì đó. "Cậu đang vẽ gì thế?" Cô hỏi, lịch sự nhìn qua chỗ khác, nhưng giọng nói lại có vẻ rất tò mò. —— làm gì mà lại say mê đến vậy. Cố Thần giật mình, bộp một phát đóng luôn cuốn vở lại. "Vẽ... Vẽ cái gì chứ?" Cậu thều thào bảo, "Tôi... tôi đang viết giáo án!" "Thật không thế?" Khóe môi Sở Dư cong lên, giọng nói có phần trêu chọc. Cùng nhau lớn lên từ nhỏ nên cả hai đều hiểu rõ về nhau, ngay cả đến cuộc đời cũng bị đối phương làm ảnh hưởng. Ví dụ như cờ tướng. Ví dụ như vẽ tranh. Từ nhỏ Sở Dư được bồi dưỡng kỹ năng hội họa, mẹ Sở cũng là một người tài nữ, vẽ tranh thủy mặc rất đẹp, Sở Dư lại học tranh sơn dầu ở nước ngoài, nhưng kỹ năng vẽ hai loại tranh này cô đều rất thông thạo. Lúc Cố tiểu thiếu gia còn nhỏ, thấy người bạn nhỏ của mình chỉ cần dùng một cây bút lông là có thể vẽ ra được mình, di chuyển bút, lại còn vẽ thêm hai chiếc râu mèo hoặc nơ con bướm nữa, dĩ nhiên là không vui rồi. Anh đây đẹp trai thế này, sao có thể đeo mấy thứ đồ nữ tính như thế được chứ. Vì vậy hồi nhỏ Cố Tiểu Thần cũng học vẽ tranh, chỉ là cậu chỉ học giỏi nhất mỗi phác họa. "Đương nhiên." Ánh mắt trong veo kia vừa có vẻ hiểu rõ cậu, vừa có vẻ chế nhạo, Cố Thần hừ một tiếng, cắn răng mạnh miệng nói, "Tôi nói giáo án thì là giáo án." "Cậu ngốc như vậy, không viết giáo án thì sao tôi dạy cậu được chứ?" Sở Dư rất tinh tế, đương nhiên là hiểu cậu không muốn tiết lộ. Cô chuyển đề tài theo ý của cậu, thì thầm nói, nhưng lại trêu, "Sao lúc nào cũng châm chọc người khác thế, cậu không thể nói gì dễ nghe hơn được à?" "Cứ kiêu ngạo như thế sẽ không tìm được bạn gái đâu đấy nhá." Con gái thường chỉ nghe những lời ngoài miệng nhưng lại không muốn suy nghĩ ý nghĩa thật sự trong câu nói của cậu. Chẳng qua cô cũng chỉ thuận miệng nói, nhưng Cố Thần lại không thể không để ý được. "Ai... Ai không tìm được bạn gái chứ?!" Cậu giống như một con mèo bị người ta giẫm phải đuôi vậy, xù lông nhảy dựng lên, thẹn quá hóa giận, "Là do tôi không muốn tìm thôi nhé!" "Nếu ông đây muốn tìm, chỉ cần một giây thôi đã là có cả tá người đứng xếp hàng trải dài từ đây đến Trường Thành Bát Đạt Lĩnh đấy nhá!" Vừa nói ra lời này, cậu suýt chút nữa thì cắn phải đầu lưỡi mình. Sở Dư:... Phụt, cô cong môi lên bật cười, "Được rồi được rồi, Tiểu Cố người gặp người yêu." Cố Thần buột miệng thốt ra, "Vậy còn cậu?" ... Cậu yêu tôi không. "Hả?" Sở Dư nhìn với ánh mắt nghi ngờ, cậu nói nhanh quá, cô cũng không nghe rõ. Cố Thần bình tĩnh thở phào nhẹ nhõm, sau đó có chút thẹn quá hóa giận, quay đầu đi, "Không nghe rõ thì thôi vậy." Vốn dĩ cậu cũng không muốn hỏi. Sở Dư cầm sách lên, cũng không biết phải làm sao, tiếp tục lật xem. Nhìn cô rõ ràng là lại bắt đầu chú tâm học hành không thèm để ý đến cậu, Cố Thần hừ một tiếng, nhưng cũng không nói gì. Sở Dư rất chăm chú, lúc đang sắp đắm chìm trong thế giới của sách, lại đột nhiên nghe thấy có người nhỏ giọng hỏi bên tai, "Phải làm sao đây..." Sở Dư không phản ứng kịp, ngước mắt lên, "... Cậu nói gì thế?" Cố Thần tròn mắt nhìn chằm chằm cô một hồi, tràn đầy ý tố cáo. Cậu đã nói rồi mà cô lại không nghe được! Chẳng lẽ muốn cậu lặp lại lần nữa sao?! Khóe môi Sở Dư cong lên, giải thích, "Tôi thật sự không nghe được mà, Tiểu Cố đại nhân đại lượng có thể lặp lại thêm lần nữa không?" Cố Thần khẽ cắn môi, ngẩng cằm lên, cố gắng nghiêm mặt, nhanh chóng nói lại một lần nữa, "Tôi nói là, làm thế nào mới có thể theo đuổi... Mới có thể làm cho một cô gái theo đuổi tôi." Ông đây có thể đi theo đuổi con gái sao? Dĩ nhiên là không rồi. Sở Dư nháy mắt mấy cái,... Đây vẫn là lần đầu tiên cô nghe thấy phải làm cho con gái theo đuổi cậu ấy. Sở Dư vẫn nhìn chằm chằm cậu mà không nói lời nào, giống như đang muốn xem thấu suy nghĩ của cậu vậy, Cố Thần có hơi chột dạ, ánh mắt nhìn sang phía khác, lớn tiếng nói, "Thế nào? Ông đây hỏi thế có vấn đề gì không?" "... Không có." Ánh mắt Sở Dư cũng cong thành hình trăng non, "Tiểu Cố cậu đang thích cô nào hả?" "Không... không có." Cố Thần theo phản xạ nhìn vào mắt cô, sau đó lại thấy trong mắt cô chỉ có ý trêu đùa, thở phào nhẹ nhõm, nhưng lại không nhịn được mà có chút mất mát, "Chỉ là sau này kiểu gì cũng sẽ có nên muốn chuẩn bị trước thôi." Cậu lại hất cằm, lên tinh thần, "Sở Tiểu Dư cậu đừng có lái sang chuyện khác, nói đi!" Sở Dư suy nghĩ một lát, đột nhiên dịu dàng nói, "Nhưng tôi cũng đâu có biết." Không phải là cô không muốn nói, mà là cô đã yêu bao giờ đâu, cũng chưa từng nghĩ đến vấn đề này, sao có thể dạy cho Cố Thần biết theo đuổi con gái như thế nào được. Trái lại Cố Thần lại không có bất kỳ phản ứng gì với câu trả lời này, cậu nhìn cô, rất nhanh đã nói tiếp, "Cậu... cậu chỉ cần nói cậu thích mẫu người đàn ông như thế nào là được..." "Cậu... cậu đừng có mà suy nghĩ nhiều đấy!" Còn chưa đợi Sở Dư trả lời, cậu lại đột nhiên vội vàng giải thích, "Tôi đây là muốn xem xem con gái thích gì thôi, không phải muốn hỏi sở thích riêng của cậu, hiểu không..." Sở Dư nhẹ nhàng khép sách lại, cười, "Tôi biết mà." Cô dĩ nhiên là biết cậu không thích cô. Nhiệt tình đả kích cô trên các phương diện, —— hẳn là không có ai theo đuổi một người kiểu như vậy rồi, huống chi, từ nhỏ bọn cô đã bắt đầu sống chung vậy rồi, cô cũng không cảm thấy có bất cứ điều gì xảy ra cả. ... Người trong cuộc mơ hồ, có lẽ chính là như vậy. Nghe được câu trả lời của cô, Cố Thần bị nghẹn trong cổ họng, không lên nổi cũng chả xuống được. Trừng mắt nhìn một hồi, cậu nghiến răng, vẫn chỉ có thể thỏa hiệp, "Cậu - thông - minh." Cậu biểu hiện như thế còn chưa đủ rõ ràng sao?! "Cám ơn." Sở Dư đang đứng lên, lấy sách đặt trên giá, nghe vậy chứ cũng không để ý lắm, quay đầu cười. Nhưng mà, nếu Cố Thần đã mở miệng hỏi thì cô đương nhiên sẽ trả lời cậu, mặc dù cô chưa từng nghĩ đến vấn đề này. Dù sao thì, Tiểu Cố cũng đã đến lúc biết loại chuyện này rồi. "Về phần con gái thích cái gì..." Sở Dư ngồi xuống, cẩn thận suy nghĩ xem con gái đều thường thích cái gì, "Cái này thì không thể kết luận được." Nhưng cô cũng không phải là phân tích bản thân cô thích kiểu người như thế nào, nguyên nhân là do cô quá hờ hững với xung quanh, tình cảm cũng thế, cô dường như không mong đợi gì về nửa kia của mình cả. "Con gái có cả ngàn dáng vẻ, nhưng đa phần đều thích những người đàn ông hay nhớ đến mình, ví dụ như nhớ sinh nhật của cô ấy này, hoặc là đi đến chỗ nào cũng sẽ nghĩ chuẩn bị cho cô ấy một vài điều bất ngờ cho cô ấy vui chẳng hạn." "Đương nhiên, quan trọng nhất chính là quan sát." "Quan sát hành động nhỏ và sở thích của cô ấy... Sau đó căn cứ..." Cố Tiểu Gia há miệng, cuối cùng vẫn không nói ra, nhìn hàng mi của cô, thiếu niên nở một nụ cười, thôi vậy, đa phần ai cũng thế cả, sau này quan sát nhiều hơn một chút là được. ... Lúc này Cố Thần vẫn chưa biết, có người đến phá đám. Trước cửa nhà họ Cố. "Ây da! Anh Cố không có ở đây rồi." Một chàng trai giơ tay làm điệu hoa lan, xoay người hờn dỗi với người sau, "Người ta đau lòng quá ~" Một thiếu niên người cao lớn thô kệch khác chợt rùng mình, cách xa cậu ta một chút, "Trần Thuật! Mẹ nó cậu có thể bình thường một chút được không? Tôi nổi hết cả da gà lên rồi đây này." Bà nội Trần Thuật mê kinh kịch, ở nhà thường xuyên diễn hát, Trần Thuật hay nghe thấy, tự nhiên cũng bị kéo vào hát tuồng, thỉnh thoảng thì sẽ đụng đến một câu diễn là lại duỗi tay ra làm điệu hoa lan. là một thể loại ca kịch của Trung Quốc. Một người khác cũng chà chà cánh tay, nói thêm vào, "Cậu cứ như vậy là chúng tôi đi luôn đấy!" Dĩ nhiên Trần Thuật là người vừa gọi điện thoại lúc nãy, chẳng qua là tự mình tới tìm Cố Thần cậu lại cảm thấy có chút... Hừ, cho nên cậu mới gọi điện thoại đến cho từng người, cuối cùng vất vả lắm mới thuyết phục được hai người đi cùng mình. Nếu có đánh nhau... —— cũng có người bị đòn chung với mình. Lúc này dĩ nhiên cậu không dám đắc tội với hai người anh em này rồi. Cậu ho khan một tiếng, lập tức khôi phục nguyên trạng. "Cái đó, để tôi gọi cho Háo Tử* cái đã." Nhà họ Cố không có ai, bảo vệ chỉ biết là Cố Thần đi ra ngoài không ngồi xe, nhất định là không đi xa, nhưng đi đâu thì ông ấy không biết, chỉ có thể gửi gắm hy vọng vào Tôn Hạo Quảng thôi. Người Trung Quốc hay thêm chữ "Tử" vào sau tên biểu lộ sự thân mật, còn chữ "Háo" phát âm giống chữ "Hạo" trong tên Tôn Hạo Quảng, Háo Tử nghĩa là "chuột". Chỉ là không biết Háo Tử có biết hay không. Cậu biết trong số họ Tôn Hạo Quảng là người quan tâm Cố Thần nhất, vậy nên trước khi cậu đến đã gọi không biết bao nhiêu cuộc để rủ Tôn Hạo Quảng đi cùng, kết quả là Tôn Hạo Quảng kiên quyết bất ngờ. Kiên quyết không đến. Cậu cảm thấy có vẻ kỳ lạ. "A lô? Háo Tử!" "Cậu không tới thật hả?" Cậu không tự chủ được mà hỏi. "Không." Tôn Hạo Quảng lập tức từ chối, hoàn toàn không còn đường cứu vãn. Có thể làm bóng đèn hay không... Cũng phải cần xem trường hợp nào nữa. "Được rồi, anh Cố không có ở nhà, cậu biết anh ấy có thể đi đâu không?" "Hmmm." Ở đầu dây bên kia mặt, Tôn Hạo Quảng không cảm xúc, "Đến nhà họ Sở thử xem." Nếu là trước kia, cậu có thể không biết nhị ca đi đâu thật, nhưng bây giờ. Chả cần đoán làm gì. —— không phải đang ở nhà họ Sở, thì cũng đang trên đường đến nhà họ Sở. [Nhật ký mất mặt của Cố thiếu 10] Cố Tiểu Gia: Tôi không thích cậu, cậu không nên hiểu lầm. Sở Dư: Tôi biết mà, cậu yên tâm đi, chúng ta sẽ làm bạn cả đời. Cố Tiểu Gia: nắm tay*... Không! Xin cậu đấy a a a! Hiểu lầm đi! ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ ANH ĐÂY CÓC SỢ VỢ Bán Hạ Lương Lương Bán Hạ Lương Lương dtv-ebook.com dtv-ebook.com Chương 11 Chương 11 Trần Thuật vốn không hiểu sao Tôn Hạo Quảng lại chắc chắn ở nhà họ Sở, cũng không hiểu vì sao lúc cậu rủ cậu ta cùng đến đó thì giọng điệu lại quái dị đến thế. Thậm chí còn có phần thông cảm. Đến khi cậu mở cửa. Ngay lập tức chỉ muốn mắng Tôn Hạo Quảng cả ngàn lần. Đúng là tò mò hại chết con mèo ghê, mấy lời ông cha ta dạy đúng là có đạo lý. Nhất là khi Trần Thuật thấy Sở Dư ở trong phòng nhìn mình mỉm cười, còn vẻ mặt anh Cố nhà mình vô cùng âm u, trong đầu cậu liền hiện lên câu nói đó. Nhìn không khí trong phòng thế này cũng biết... cô nam quả nữ, tình ngay lý gian. ... Sau đó, bọn họ bước tới. Môi cậu giật giật, vẻ mặt khóc không ra nước mắt, cậu muốn ra khỏi đây rồi làm lại... Có được không? Phát hiện bầu không khí hơi quái dị, Sở Dư mỉm cười, phá vỡ yên tĩnh. "Trần Thuật, Phong Nguyên, Dương Hành, lâu rồi không gặp." Cô khẽ gật đầu. "Muốn uống gì? Trà hay nước trái cây?" "Lâu rồi không gặp, lâu rồi không gặp..." Ba người đồng thanh, cười, "Ha! Ha ha ha!" ... Mấy năm gần đây bọn họ chỉ gặp nhau có vài lần, thật khó cho cô còn nhớ được tên ba người bọn họ. Bỗng nhiên cảm thấy thật vinh hạnh... Hai người phía sau thúc tới, Trần Thuật bị đẩy về phía trước, cả người lảo đảo. Phắc! Hai cái thằng không có nghĩa khí này. Trần Thuật mắng thầm trong lòng, lại rất biết quan sát, vội vàng đè lại ấm trà đang xách lên, nói một hơi, "Không cần, không cần, ở ngoài không nóng, tụi tôi không khát." Vốn dĩ đã phạm phải sai lầm, nếu bọn họ còn để cho cô rót trà thì khỏi cần nghĩ gì nữa luôn, cứ trực tiếp tới nghĩa trang là được. Hai người sau cũng nói hùa theo, "Đúng đó, đúng đó, không khát đâu, lúc đến nhà họ Cố đã uống rồi." Cái đệt! Đến nhà họ Cố ngay cả không khí còn không có! Trần Thuật kiên quyết gật đầu, sợ cô nghĩ mình đang khách sáo,cậu lại liếc Cố Thần, "Huống chi anh Cố của tôi còn ở đây mà? Nếu khát tụi tôi sẽ không khách sáo với anh ấy đâu." Câu nói này không rõ ràng, nếu người không có ý gì nghe được thì cũng chỉ hiểu mặt ngoài. Nhưng vào tai người có tâm... chủ gia đình... đúng là rất êm tai. Mắt thấy vẻ mặt của anh Cố của cậu càng ngày càng tốt, Trần Thuật vừa thả lỏng, lại vừa khiếp sợ vì sự "sa đọa" của anh Cố nhà mình. Suy nghĩ của Sở Dư luôn rất nhanh, đương nhiên sẽ không làm chuyện khiến người khác khó xử, thấy họ kiên quyết thì thuận theo đặt ấm trà xuống. "Các cậu đến tìm Cố Thần hả?" Cô cong khóe miệng. "Nếu không vội thì vào ngồi một lát." Nói rồi cô nhìn đồng hồ, nói với Cố Thần, "Hôm nay tới đây thôi." Cô chưa nói hết nhưng mọi người đều hiểu —— chuyện của tôi đã xong, các cậu có việc thì đi đi. Cố Thần buồn bực, "Cậu đuổi tôi đi à!" "Sở Tiểu Dư, cậu có lương tâm không đấy," cậu hừ một tiếng, nhìn ấm trà đang đặt trên bàn, "Ngay cả nước cũng không cho tôi uống..." Trần Thuật bị dáng vẻ Cố Thần như thế làm trợn trừng mắt, mém tí trực tiếp xông thẳng lên biểu đạt lòng trung thành, cậu không uống trà thật mà... Nhưng cảm nhận được ánh mắt lành lạnh ấy, cậu co rút khóe miệng, vội vàng khoát tay, "Không gấp, không gấp mà..." Cậu vô cùng kiên quyết nói, "Bọn tôi ở nhà không có việc gì làm nên mới đi dạo loanh quanh, không hiểu sao lại đi đến Cố gia." "Đúng vậy." Hai người kia cũng ngồi xuống, dáng vẻ không gấp gáp tí nào, rảnh đến đau trứng, cười ha ha nói, "Tụi tôi chỉ thuận đường ghé thăm anh Cố thôi, lát nữa đi ngay ấy mà." Vẻ mặt Cố Thần bấy giờ mới tốt hơn, kiêu căng lườm Sở Dư. Cậu xem, họ đã nói không có v	563,526
Better Than It Sounds A Dictionary of Humourous Musical Quotations (David W. Barber) (Z-Library).pdf	cover next page > title: Better Than It Sounds : A Dictionary of Humorous Musical Quotations author: Barber, David W. publisher: Sound And Vision isbn10 \| asin: 0920151221 print isbn13: 9780920151228 ebook isbn13: 9780585141664 language: English subject Music--Humor, Music--Quotations, maxims, etc. publication date: 1998 lcc: ML65.B2355 1998eb ddc: 780/.207 subject: Music--Humor, Music--Quotations, maxims, etc. cover next page > < previous page cover-0 next page > Better Than It Sounds The music teacher came twice each week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin. George Ade < previous page cover-0 next page > < previous page page_i next page > Page i Better Than It Sounds A Dictionary of Humorous Musical Quotations Compiled and edited by David W. Barber Sound and Vision Toronto < previous page page_i next page > < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii Editor's Note Having spent a good deal of my time trying to come up with funny things to say about music, I decided it was time to take a little break (some break!) and let others say the funny stuff. There are hundreds of quotes here by, for and about musicians. In some cases I've stretched that definition a bit, I'll admit. (Frost's remark that "Hell is a half-filled auditorium" isn't specifically about music, but musicians will certainly be able to relate. Likewise for several of the remarks about critics.) Wherever possible, I've tried to give proper attribution to and information about the authors of these remarks, but that hasn't always been easy, since many other lexicographers aren't so concerned about such niceties. In some cases, several variations of a given quote are floating around, and I've tried to pick the one that seems most reliable. (But remember what Hesketh Pearson said: "Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted." Or something like that.) Anyway, for any omissions and/or inaccuracies, I apologize in advance though I make no apology for the several times that I've shamelessly quoted from my own books. After all, if I won't quote me, who will? DWB, TORONTO, 1998 < previous page page_iii next page > < previous page page_1 next page > Page 1 Accordion A gentleman is a man who can play the accordion but doesn't. Anon. Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American journalist, The Devil's Dictionary (1906). Advice When a piece gets difficult, make faces. Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), Austrian pianist, giving advice to fellow pianist Vladimir Horowitz. We are here and it is now. Further than that all human knowledge is moonshine. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. < previous page page_1 next page > < previous page page_2 next page > Page 2 In case of emergency: 1. Grab your coat. 2. Take your hat. 3. Leave your worries on the doorstep. 4. Direct your feet to the sunny side of the street. Anon. Nature has given us two ears but only one mouth. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), British prime minister. Never compose anything unless not composing it becomes a positive nuisance to you. Gustav Holst (1874-1934), British composer. 2"To be played with both hands in the pocket." Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer, giving instructions for one of his piano pieces. Consort not with a female musician lest thou be taken in by her snares. Ben Sira, The Book of Wisdom (ca. 190 BC). Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, but I'd try a revolver first. Josh Billings (1818-85), American humorist. < previous page page_2 next page > < previous page page_3 next page > Page 3 If thine enemy offend thee, give his child a drum. Anon. Don't do unto others as you would have them do unto you their tastes may be different. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room. Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965), British prime minister. Age O! sir, I must not tell my age. They say women and music should never be dated. Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774), Irish writer, in She Stoops to Conquer (1773). Amateurs Hell is full of musical amateurs. Music is the brandy of the damned. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic, in Man and Superman. < previous page page_3 next page > < previous page page_4 next page > Page 4 Said Oscar Wilde: 'Each man kills the thing he loves.' For example, the amateur musician. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. The Artistic Temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs. G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British essayist, novelist and theologian. American Music The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish. Virgil Thompson (1896-1989), American composer and music critic. Architecture Architecture, said Hegel, is frozen music. Donald Swann's music has been compared with defrosted architecture. Michael Flanders (1922-75), British humorist and songwriter (with Donald Swann). Writing about art is like dancing about architecture. Anon. < previous page page_4 next page > < previous page page_5 next page > Page 5 Art and Artists All the arts in America are a gigantic racket run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, in the London Observer (May 5, 1946). Art is a collaboration between God and the artist, and the less the artist does the better. André Gide (1869-1951), French novelist. Astaire, Fred Can't act. Can't sing. Balding. Can dance a little. MGM summary of singer/dancer Fred Astaire's first screen test. Audience Participation Together we should sing it, It's just a children's song. And if you do not know the words You'd better learn them! Peter, Paul and Mary, American folk music trio, in a concert version of Puff, The Magic Dragon. < previous page page_5 next page > < previous page page_6 next page > Page 6 If you feel like singing along, don't. James Taylor (b. 1948), American pop singer/songwriter, to an audience. Audiences I know two kinds of audience only one coughing and one not coughing. Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), Austrian pianist, in My Life and Music (1961). Will people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? All the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry . . . John Lennon (1940-80), British rock singer/songwriter, at a Royal Command Performance of The Beatles (1963). < previous page page_6 next page > < previous page page_7 next page > Page 7 Hell is a half-filled auditorium. Robert Frost (1874-1963), American poet. That reminds me, I'm playing a concert tonight. Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), Austrian violinist, on seeing a row of fish at the market. Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you bought two or three seats. Victor Borge (b. 1909), Danish-born American musical humorist, speaking to a half-full house in Flint, Michigan. I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish historian and writer. Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand, he goes one further and clenches his fist. Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980), British theatre critic and producer, on singer Frankie Laine. Furtwangler was once told in Berlin that the people in the back seats were complaining that they could not hear some of his soft passages. ''It does not matter,'' he said, "they do not pay so much." Neville Cardus, British music critic, in The Manchester Guardian (1935). < previous page page_7 next page > < previous page page_8 next page > Page 8 The audience strummed their cattarhs. Alexander Woollcott (1887-1943), American journalist and critic. Auditions It was the kind of show where the girls were are not auditioned just measured. Irene Thomas (b. 1920), British writer and broadcaster. Bach, J.S. You want something by Bach? Which one, Johann Sebastian or Jacques Offen? Victor Borge (b. 1909), Danish-born American musical humorist. Even Bach comes down to the basic suck, blow, suck, suck, blow. Larry Adler (b. 1914), American-born British harmonica virtuoso. There's no reason we can't be friends. We both play Bach. You in your way, I in his. Wanda Landawska (1877-1959), Polish concert keyboardist, to a rival (attr.). < previous page page_8 next page > < previous page page_9 next page > Page 9 Bad Music If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright and novelist, in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891). There is a lot of bad music in every age, and there is no reason why this one should be an exception. Harold C. Schonberg (b. 1915), American music critic, in the New York Times (March 26, 1961). Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music, people don't talk. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright and novelist. There are more bad musicians than there is bad music. Isaac Stern (b. 1920), Russian-born American violinist. Extraordinary how potent cheap music is! Noel Coward (1899-1973), British playwright and songwriter. < previous page page_9 next page > < previous page page_10 next page > Page 10 Bagpipes Others, when the bag-pipe sings i' the nose, Cannot contain their urine. William Shakespeare, (1564-1616), British playwright, Shylock in The Merchant of Venice IV:1. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig. Alfred Hitchcock (1889-1980), British film director. Ballet I don't understand anything about the ballet. All I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses. Anton Chekov (1860-1904), Russian playwright. The regular and insatiable supporters of ballet are people too sluggish of intellect to listen to a play on the one hand, and too devoid of imagination to listen to fine music without accompanying action, on the other. Alan Dent, drama critic of the News Chronicle (1952). < previous page page_10 next page > < previous page page_11 next page > Page 11 Banjo I can see fiddling around with a banjo, but how do you banjo around with a fiddle? Duncan Purney (b. 1937), American broadcaster, in Musical Notes (May 16, 1984). Baroque Music Muzak for the intelligensia. Anon., on Baroque music, circa 1970. Bartok,Bela He not only never wears his heart on his sleeve; he seems to have deposited it in some bank vault. Colin Wilson (b. 1931), British novelist, on Bela Bartok, in Brandy of the Damned (1964). < previous page page_11 next page > < previous page page_12 next page > Page 12 Beecham, Sir Thomas Hark! the herald angels sing! Beecham's Pills are just the thing, Two for a woman, one for a child, Peace on earth and mercy mild! Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. At a rehearsal I let the orchestra play as they like. At the concert I make them play as I like. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. Beethoven, Ludwig Van If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation. Tom Stoppard (b. 1937), Czech-born British playwright. I love Beethoven, especially the poems. Ringo Starr (b. 1940), British rock drummer, The Beatles. < previous page page_12 next page > < previous page page_13 next page > Page 13 I occasionally play works by contemporary composers for two reasons. First to discourage the composer from writing any more and secondly to remind myself how much I appreciate Beethoven. Jascha Heifetz (1901-87), Russian-born American violinist. It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of a bag of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer. John Ruskin (1819-1900), British art critic and writer, in a letter to John Brown (February 6, 1881). Last night the band played Beethoven. Beethoven lost. Anon. Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is the most sublime noise that has ever penetrated the ear of man. E.M. Forster (1879-1970), British novelist, in Howards End. < previous page page_13 next page > < previous page page_14 next page > Page 14 Berlioz, Hector Berlioz says nothing in his music, but he says it magnificently. James Gibbons Huneker (1860-1921), American music critic and writer. Berg, Alban It is my private opinion that [Alban] Berg is just a bluff. But even if he isn't, it is impossible to deny that his music (?) is a soporiphic, by the side of which the telephone book is a strong cup of coffee. Samuel Chotzinoff, in the New York Post (April 5, 1935). Biography My name is Hugo Wolf. I was born on March 13th 1860, and am still alive at the moment. That's biography enough. Hugo Wolf (1860-1903), Austrian composer, replying to a request for biographical information. < previous page page_14 next page > < previous page page_15 next page > Page 15 Brahms, Johannes If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon. Johannes Brahms (1833-97), German composer, on leaving a party of friends. Art is long and life is short: here is evidently the explanation of a Brahms symphony. Edward Lorne, British writer, in Fanfare, London (January 1922). [Brahms is] rather tiresomely addicted to dressing himself up as Handel or Beethoven and making a prolonged and intolerable noise. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic, in The World (June 21, 1893). Brahms Requiem There are some experiences in life which should not be demanded twice from any man, and one of them is listening to the Brahms Requiem. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. < previous page page_15 next page > < previous page page_16 next page > Page 16 [The Brahms Requiem] is patiently borne only by the corpse. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Brahms's Requiem has not the true funeral relish: It is so execrably and ponderously dull that the very flattest of funerals would seem like a ballet, or at least a danse macabre, after it. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic, in The World (November 9, 1892). Brains You don't need any brains to listen to music. Luciano Pavarotti (b. 1935), Italian opera tenor (1994). Brass Brass bands are all very well in their place outdoors and several miles away. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor (attrib.). < previous page page_16 next page > < previous page page_17 next page > Page 17 Canon Canon: . . . Not to be confused with the ones required in the 1812 Overture, which are spelt differently and which lack contrapuntal interest. Anthony Hopkins, British music writer, in Downbeat Music Guide (1977). Castrato Eunuch: A man who has had his works cut out for him. Robert Byrne [The castrato] represents what might be considered the ultimate example of putting art before common sense. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, When the Fat Lady Sings (1990). < previous page page_17 next page > < previous page page_18 next page > Page 18 Cello The cello is not one of my favorite instruments. It has such a lugubrious sound, like someone reading a will. Irene Thomas (b. 1920), British writer and broadcaster. Madame, there you sit with that magnificent instrument between your legs, and all you can do is scratch it! Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor, to a woman cellist. Also attributed to Beecham. Classical Music Classical music is music written by famous dead foreigners. Arlene Heath Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune. Frank McKinny (Kin) Hubbard (1868-1930), American journalist, Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors (1923). < previous page page_18 next page > < previous page page_19 next page > Page 19 Communism Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff. Frank Zappa (1941-1997), American rock musician, Mothers of Invention. Composers and Composing Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer. The main thing the public demands of a composer is that he be dead. Arthur Honneger (1892-1955), French composer, (when he was still alive). The good composer is slowly discovered; the bad composer is slowly found out. Ernest Newman (1868-1959), British music critic. Composers shouldn't think too much it interferes with their plagiarism. Howard Dietz (1896-1983), American songwriter. < previous page page_19 next page > < previous page page_20 next page > Page 20 Before I compose a piece, I walk round it several times, accompanied by myself. Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer. When I was young, people used to say to me: Wait until you're fifty, you'll see. I am fifty. I haven't seen anything. Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer. You have to develop in many different directions, because composers are so useless. John Beckwith (b. 1927), Canadian critic, essayist, educator and composer, quoted in The Globe and Mail (January 10, 1998). In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of. Robert Schumann (1810-1856), German composer. Do I send you my works to look at? Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), French composer, returning unsolicited compositions. < previous page page_20 next page > < previous page page_21 next page > Page 21 Conductors and Conducting I kissed my first girl and smoked my first cigarette on the same day. I haven't had time for tobacco since. Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor. There's only one woman I know of who could never be a symphony conductor, and that's the Venus de Milo. Margaret Hillis (b. 1921), American conductor. There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. < previous page page_21 next page > < previous page page_22 next page > Page 22 I am not the greatest conductor in this country. On the other hand, I'm better than any damned foreigner. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, in the Daily Express (March 9, 1961). Why do we have to have all these third-rate foreign conductors around when we have so many second-rate ones of our own? Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. They are for prima donnas or corpses I am neither. Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor, refusing a wreath of flowers after a concert. After I die, I shall return to Earth as a gatekeeper of a bordello and I won't let any of you not a one of you enter! Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor, to an orchestra. Can't you read? The score demands con amore, and what are you doing? You are playing it like married men! Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor, to an orchestra. This backward man, this view obstructor, Is known to us as the conductor. Lawrence McKinney < previous page page_22 next page > < previous page page_23 next page > Page 23 We cannot expect you to be with us all the time, but perhaps you could be good enough to keep in touch now and again. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, during a rehearsal. Country Music There's a lot of things blamed on me that never happened. But then, there's a lot of things that I did that I never got caught at. Johnny Cash (b. 1932), American country singer/songwriter. Credo The Credo is the longest movement. There is much to believe. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer, commenting on his Mass. Critics and Criticism A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car. Kenneth Tynan (1927-1980), British theatre critic and producer. < previous page page_23 next page > < previous page page_24 next page > Page 24 Critics are like eunuchs in a harem. They're there every night, they see it done every night, they see how it should be done every night, but they can't do it themselves. Brendan Behan (1923-64), Irish playwright. A critic is a legless man who teaches running. Channing Pollock (1880-1946). I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me. Max Reger (1873-1916), German composer, responding to critic Rudof Louis (1906). I cried all the way to the bank. Liberace (1919-87), (Vladzin Valentino Liberace), American pianist, on his reaction to criticism. I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer, in The Evening Standard (October 29, 1969). A statue has never been set up in honor of a critic. Jean Sibelius (1865-1957), Finnish composer. < previous page page_24 next page > < previous page page_25 next page > Page 25 The trouble with music critics is that so often they have the score in their hands and not in their heads. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. You know, the critics never change; I'm still getting the same notices I used to get as a child. They tell me I play very well for my age. Mischa Elman (1891-1967), Russian-born American violinist, in his 70s. Critics can't even make music by rubbing their back legs together. Mel Brooks (b. 1927), American film director, writer and actor, in The New York Times (1975). Nature fits all her children with something to do, He that would write and can't write can surely review. James Russell Lowell (1819-91), American astronomer and writer, A Fable for Critics. A critic is a necessary evil, and criticism is an evil necessity. Carolyn Wells (1869-1942), American novelist. < previous page page_25 next page > < previous page page_26 next page > Page 26 [The critic] is forced to be literate about the illiterate, witty about the witless and coherent about the incoherent. John Crosby A critic is a bunch of biases held loosely together by a sense of taste. Witney Balliett, Dinosaurs in the Morning (1962). When Frank Sinatra, Jr. was kidnapped, I said ''It must have been done by music critics.'' Oscar Levant (1906-72), American film actor, composer and pianist, Memoirs of an Amnesiac. The lot of critics is to be remembered for what they failed to understand. George Moore < previous page page_26 next page > < previous page page_27 next page > Page 27 I paid a shilling for my programme. The editor informs me with the law of libel in its present unsatisfactory condition, I must not call this a fraud, a cheat, a swindle, an imposition, an exorbitance, or even an over-charge. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Last year, I gave several lectures on 'Intelligence and Musicality in Animals.' Today, I shall speak to you about 'Intelligence and Musicality in Critics.' The subject is very similar. Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer, in a lecture In Praise of Critics (1918). Never speak ill of yourself; your friends will always say enough on that subject. Charles M. de Talleyrand-Périgord (1754-1838), French statesman. Pornophony. Anon., American critic, on Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth of Mtensk. Criticism of our contemporaries is not criticism; it is conversation. Jules Lamaître < previous page page_27 next page > < previous page page_28 next page > Page 28 I can take any amount of criticism, so long as it is unqualified praise. Noel Coward (1899-1973), British playwright and songwriter. Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance or a stranger. Franklin P. Jones If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong. Aaron Copland (1900-90), American composer. The audience came out whistling the set. Anon. American critic, on Irving Berlin's Miss Liberty (1949). Assassination is the extreme form of censorship. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. The music of The Love for Three Oranges, I fear, is too much for this generation. After intensive study and close observation at rehearsal and performance, I detected the beginnings of two tunes. Edward Moore, Chicago Tribune (December 31, 1921). < previous page page_28 next page > < previous page page_29 next page > Page 29 It sounds as if someone had smeared the score of Tristan while it was still wet. Anon. contemporary, on Schöenberg's Verklärte Nacht. Remember that nobody will ever get ahead of you as long as he is kicking you in the seat of the pants. Walter Winchell (1879-1972), American journalist. I found myself referring to the programme to find out whether I ought to be seeing red or looking blue at certain moments, and some of it made many of the audience feel green. The London Times, reviewing Arthur Bliss's A Colour Symphony (1922). Don't pay any attention to the critics don't even ignore them. Samuel Goldwyn (1882-1974), Polish-born American film producer. Having the critics praise you is like having the hangman say you've got a pretty neck. Eli Wallach (b. 1915), American film actor. < previous page page_29 next page > < previous page page_30 next page > Page 30 Crosby, Bing There is nothing in the world I wouldn't do for [Bob] Hope, and there is nothing he wouldn't do for me. . . . We spend our days doing nothing for each other. Bing Crosby (1904-77), American singer and film actor, in The Observer (May 7, 1950). Oh, the kinda singing I do, you can't hurt your voice. Bing Crosby (1904-77), American singer and film actor. Culture When I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my gun. Hanns Johst (b. 1890) (circa 1939), also attributed to Nazi officer Herman Goering. Culture is what your butcher would have if he were a surgeon. Mary Pettibone Poole Intellectuals should never marry; they might enjoy it; and besides, they should not reproduce themselves. Don Herold < previous page page_30 next page > < previous page page_31 next page > Page 31 Dancers and Dancing The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops when the music stops. Sir Robert Helpmann (1909-86), Australian dancer/choreographer, on the nude musical Oh, Calcutta! Debussy, Claude I have already heard it. I had better not go: I will start to get accustomed to it and finally like it. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), Russian composer, on a concert of Debussy's music. < previous page page_31 next page > < previous page page_32 next page > Page 32 Delius, Frederick The musical equivalent of blancmange. Bernard Levin (b. 1928), British writer and critic, of Frederick Delius (1983). Disco Disco dancing is . . . just the steady thump of a giant moron knocking in an endless nail. Clive James (b. 1939), Australian-born British journalist and critic, in the London Sunday Observer (December 17, 1978). DJs I am amazed at radio DJs today. I am firmly convinced that AM on my radio stands for Absolute Moron. I will not begin to tell you what FM stands for. Jasper Carrott (b. 1942), British comic. Death It is impossible to experience one's death objectively and still carry a tune. Woody Allen (b. 1935), American comic and filmmaker. < previous page page_32 next page > < previous page page_33 next page > Page 33 Ear Because I have no ear for music, at the concert of the Quintette Club, it looked to me as if the performers were crazy, and all the audience were make-believe crazy, in order to soothe the lunatics and keep them amused. Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), American poet and writer, Journals. He has Van Gogh's ear for music. Billy Wilder (b. 1906), Austrian-born American film director, on actor Clift Osmond. Elgar, Edward Holy water in a German beer barrel. George Moore, on Elgar's Dream of Gerontius. Fiddle Perhaps it was because Nero played the fiddle, they burned Rome. Oliver Herford (1863-1935), British-born American humorist. < previous page page_33 next page > < previous page page_34 next page > Page 34 He was a fiddler, and consequently a rogue. Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), Irish writer and clergyman. Film Music A [film] musician is like a mortician. He can't bring a body to life, but he can make it look better. Adolf Deutsch (1898-1980), American film composer. Flute Of all musicians, flautists are most obviously the ones who know something we don't know. Paul Jennings (b. 1918), British humorist, Flautists Flaunt Afflatus, The Jenguin Pennings. Folk Music The farmer's daughter hath soft brown hair (Butter and eggs and a pound of cheese); And I met a ballad, I can't say where Which wholly consisted of lines like these. C.S. Calverley (1831-84), British poet, Ballad. < previous page page_34 next page > < previous page page_35 next page > Page 35 The only thing to do with a folk melody, once you have played it, is to play it louder. Anon. A folksinger is someone who sings through his nose by ear. Anon. If I had a hammer, I'd use it on Peter, Paul, and Mary. Howard Rosenberg Funeral Music Very nice, but tell me frankly, don't you think it would have been better if it had been you who had died, and your uncle who had written the Funeral March? attributed to Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer, on being shown funeral music for Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864), composed by Meyerbeer's nephew. Gershwin, George The European boys have small ideas but they sure know how to dress 'em up. George Gershwin (1898-1937), American composer, on the music of Arthur Honneger. < previous page page_35 next page > < previous page page_36 next page > Page 36 God Why attack God? He may be as miserable as we are. Erik Satie (1866-1925), French composer. God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way! Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), Italian conductor, reprimanding a trumpet player. The German imagines even God is a singer. Friedrich Nietszche (1844-1900), German philosoper. < previous page page_36 next page > < previous page page_37 next page > Page 37 Goldberg Variations I don't know much about classical music. For years I thought the Goldberg Variations were something Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg tried on their wedding night. Woody Allen (b. 1935), American comic and filmmaker, in Stardust Memories (1980). Harp Harpists spend 90 per cent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 per cent playing out of tune. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer. Harpsichord The sound of the harpsichord resembles that of a birdcage played with a toasting-fork. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. A scratch with a sound at the end of it. Anon., quoted by Percy A. Scholes (1877-1958), in The Oxford Companion to Music. < previous page page_37 next page > < previous page page_38 next page > Page 38 Two skeletons copulating on a corrugated tin roof. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. Haydn, Franz Joseph Haydn had neither the flashy individuality of Mozart nor the brooding, romantic passion of Beethoven. He was more of a middle-management type. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, Bach, Beethoven and the Boys (1986). Hearing To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also. Igor Stravinsky (1822-1971), Russian-born American composer. < previous page page_38 next page > < previous page page_39 next page > Page 39 Inspiration All the inspiration I ever needed was a phone call from a producer. Cole Porter (1893-1964), American songwriter. Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work, or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios of Italy were bald at thirty. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer. Insults No one can have a higher opinion of him than I have, and I think he's a dirty little beast. W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911), British operetta librettist. Every time I look at you I get a fierce desire to be lonesome. Oscar Levant (1906-72), American film actor, composer and pianist. < previous page page_39 next page > < previous page page_40 next page > Page 40 Jazz Madam, if you don't know by now, DON'T MESS WITH IT! Fats Waller (1904-43), American jazz pianist, asked to define jazz. If you see me up there on the stand smiling, I'm lost! Earl ''Fatha'' Hines (b. 1905), American jazz musician. A jazz musician is a juggler who uses harmonies instead of oranges. Benny Green (b. 1923), American jazz trombonist, The Reluctant Art (1962). Man, I can't listen that fast. Unnamed jazz musician, on hearing Charlie Parker and Dizzie Gillespie's Shaw Nuff. Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing. Duke Ellington (1899-1974), American jazz musician, in Look magazine (August 10, 1954). I'll play it first and tell you what it is later. Miles Davis (1926-1991), American jazz trumpeter and composer. < previous page page_40 next page > < previous page page_41 next page > Page 41 That's just like tapping a nightingale on the shoulder, saying 'How's that again, dickey-bird?' Louis Armstrong (1898-1971), American jazz trumpeter, to Danny Kaye (1913-87), on why nobody writes down Dixieland, in The Five Pennies (1959). Epitaph for a tombstone of a cool musician: "Man, this cat is really gone." More Playboy's Party Jokes (1965). Life Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. John Lennon (1940-80), British singer/songwriter, The Beatles. Hey, if my life were easy, anyone could do it. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician. Liszt, Franz I know his mother only by correspondence, and one cannot arrange that sort of thing by correspondence. Franz Liszt (1811-86), Hungarian pianist, on rumors that he fathered pianist Franz Servais. < previous page page_41 next page > < previous page page_42 next page > Page 42 Lloyd Webber, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's music is everywhere, but so is AIDS. Malcolm Williamson (b. 1931), Australian music director to Queen Elizabeth II. A confusing jamboree of piercing noise, routine roller-skating, misogyny and Orwellian special effects, Starlight Express is the perfect gift for the kid who has everything except parents. Frank Rich, New York Times, reviewing the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Love Love is not the dying moan of a distant violin it's the triumphant twang of a bedspring. S.J. Perelman (1904-79), American humorist. What the world really needs is more love and less paperwork. Pearl Bailey (1918-90), American jazz singer. < previous page page_42 next page > < previous page page_43 next page > Page 43 I sigh, I pine, I squeak, I squawk. Today I woke too weak to walk. Stephen Sondheim (b. 1930), American lyricist and composer, in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Madonna [Madonna is] like a breast with a boom box. Judy Tenuta, American comedian. Madonna shaved her legs to lose 30 pounds. Joan Rivers, American comedian. Michael keeps asking why I can't write songs like Madonna. I tell him because I have brains. Cristina, British pop singer. Madonna and Sean Penn beauty and the beast, but guess which one? Joan Rivers, American comedian. < previous page page_43 next page > < previous page page_44 next page > Page 44 McCartney, Sir Paul Paul McCartney . . . has become the oldest living cute boy in the world. Anna Quindlen, in The New York Times. Melody Melody! The battle-cry of dilettanti! Robert Schumann (1810-56), German composer. Messiah I should be sorry, my Lord, if I had only succeeded in entertaining them; I wished to make them better. G.F. Handel (1685-1759), German-born British composer, to Lord Kinnoull, after the first London performance of Messiah (March 23, 1743). Just a little more reverence, please, and not so much astonishment. Sir Malcolm Sargent (1895-1967), British conductor, rehearsing a female chorus in For Unto Us a Child is Born, from Handel's Messiah. < previous page page_44 next page > < previous page page_45 next page > Page 45 Come for tea. Come for tea, my people. Anon., parodying the opening tenor aria of Handel's Messiah. Military Music Military justice is to justice what military music is to music. Groucho Marx (1890-1977), American comedic film star. Mistakes When a musician hath forgot his note, He makes as though a crumb stuck in his throat. John Clarke, Paroemiologia (1639). Modern Music I don't write modern music. I only write good music. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer. < previous page page_45 next page > < previous page page_46 next page > Page 46 Three farts and a raspberry, orchestrated. Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970), British conductor, describing modern music. My music is not modern, it is only badly played. Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Austrian-born American composer. That's the worst of my reputation as a modern composer everyone must have thought I meant it. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer, on a misprint in one of his scores. Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is just God's way of making the rest of us feel insignificant. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, Bach, Beethoven and the Boys (1986). < previous page page_46 next page > < previous page page_47 next page > Page 47 Ah, Mozart! He was happily married but his wife wasn't. Victor Borge (b. 1909), Danish-born American musical humorist. I write as a sow piddles. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1719-87), Austrian composer, in a letter. Nothing from Mozart? Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, on hearing his 70th birthday telegrams. The G-minor Symphony consists of eight remarkable measures . . . surrounded by a half-hour of banality. Glenn Gould (1930-1980), Canadian pianist and broadcaster, on Mozart's Symphony No. 40, in The Glenn Gould Reader (1984). It's people like that who make you realize how little you've accomplished. It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years! Tom Lehrer (b. 1928), American musical satirist, on Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel. < previous page page_47 next page > < previous page page_48 next page > Page 48 MTV MTV is the lava lamp of the 1980s. Doug Ferrari When I was young we didn't have MTV. We had to take drugs and go to concerts. Steven Pearl Murray, Anne If you close your eyes and think of a naked Anne Murray, parts of her always come up airbrushed. Larry LeBlanc (b. 1950), on the wholesome Canadian country-pop songbird, in Maclean's magazine (November 1974). Music and Musicians These three take crooked ways: carts, boats and musicians. Hindu proverb Only sick music makes money today. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher, (in 1888). < previous page page_48 next page > < previous page page_49 next page > Page 49 Music is essentially useless, as is life. George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish-born American philosopher. Music is but a fart that's sent From the guts of an instrument. Anon., Wit and Drollery (1645). Too many pieces [of music] finish too long after the end. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer. Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist. G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), British essayist, novelist and theologian. The English may not like music but they absolutely love the noise it makes. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, in the New York Herald Tribune (March 9, 1961). My music is best understood by children and animals. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer. < previous page page_49 next page > < previous page page_50 next page > Page 50 Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning. Frédéric Chopin (1810-49), Polish-born French composer, in La Courier musical (1910). ''I know I have to beat time when I learn music.'' "Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter. "He won't stand beating." Lewis Carroll (1832-1898), British writer, in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). "This must be music," said he, "of the spears, For I am cursed if each note of it doesn't run through one!" Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish poet, in The Fudge Family in Paris. We often feel sad in the presence of music without words; and often more than that in the presence of music without music. Mark Twain (1835-1910), American journalist and humorist. Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing. Austin O'Malley I hate music, especially when it's played. Jimmy Durante (1893-1980), American entertainer/comedian. < previous page page_50 next page > < previous page page_51 next page > Page 51 When you are about 35 years old, something terrible happens to music. Steve Race, BBC Radio disk-jockey (1982). Music Hall The other evening, feeling rather in want of a headache, I bethought me that I had not been to a music hall for a long time. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Musicals I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music. Sir Elton John (b. 1947), British singer/songwriter (1996). < previous page page_51 next page > < previous page page_52 next page > Page 52 The hills are alive and it's rather frightening! Anon., parodying Rodgers and Hammerstein's The Sound of Music. It doesn't stand up to huge intellectual scrutiny. Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (b. 1948), British composer, on his musical Phantom of the Opera. Musicology A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it. Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor. Muzak Muzak goes in one ear and out some other opening. Anton Kuerti (b. 1938), Austrian-born Canadian pianist, in Ulla Colgrass, For the Love of Music (1988). I worry that the person who thought up Muzak may be thinking up something else. Lily Tomlin (b. 1939), American comic. < previous page page_52 next page > < previous page page_53 next page > Page 53 Noise Of all noises, I think music is the least disagreeable. Samuel Johnson (1709-84), British lexicographer and diarist. Nonsense Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense. Joseph Addison (1672-1719), British essayist, in The Spectator (1711). Opera Bed is the poor man's opera. Italian proverb I do not mind what language an opera is sung in so long as it is a language I don't understand. Edward Appleton (1892-1965), British physicist. No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible. W.H. Auden (1907-73), British poet. < previous page page_53 next page > < previous page page_54 next page > Page 54 Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. You can't judge Egypt by Aïda. Ronald Firbank (1886-1926), British novelist. I liked your opera. I think I will set it to music. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer, to fellow composer Ferdinando Paër, on his opera Leonore. Opera's when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings. Ed Gardner (1905-1963), Duffy's Tavern. [Opera is] an exotic and irrational entertainment. Samuel Johnson (1709-84), British lexicographer and diarist. An opera, like a pillory, may be said To nail our ears down, and expose our head. Edward Young (1683-1765), British poet, Satires. < previous page page_54 next page > < previous page page_55 next page > Page 55 Do it big or stay in bed. Larry Kelly, American opera producer. Going to the Opera, like getting drunk, is a sin that carries its own punishment with it, and that a very severe one. Hannah More (1745-1833), letter to her sister. How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer (of operas). Nobody really sings in an opera they just make loud noises. Amelita Galli-Curci (1882-1963), Italian operatic soprano. [Opera is] the most rococo and degraded of all art forms. William Morris (1834-1896), British designer, artist and poet. I wholly agree with Arnold Bennett, who maintained that an opera was tolerable only when sung in a language he didn't understand. James Agate (1877-1947), British theatre critic (1945). < previous page page_55 next page > < previous page page_56 next page > Page 56 Like German opera, too long and too loud. Evelyn Waugh (1903-66), British novelist, describing the Battle of Crete (1941). I sometimes wonder which would be nicer an opera without an interval, or an interval without an opera. Ernest Newman (1869-1959), British music critic and writer. People are wrong when they say the opera isn't what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That's what's wrong with it. Noel Coward (1899-1973), British playwright and songwriter, Design for Living. An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. Edith Wharton (1863-1937), American novelist, in The Age of Innocence. I would rather sing grand opera than listen to it. Don Herold I liked the opera very much. Everything but the music. British composer Benjamin Britten (1913-76), to British poet W.H. Auden (1907-73), on hearing Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress. < previous page page_56 next page > < previous page page_57 next page > Page 57 The opera . . . is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. Sleep is an excellent way of listening to an opera. James Stephens The opera is like a husband with a foreign title: expensive to support, hard to understand and therefore a supreme social challenge. Cleveland Armory, British writer and critic. The first act of the three occupied three hours, and I enjoyed that in spite of the singing. Mark Twain (1835-1910), American journalist and humourist, in A Tramp Abroad (1880). It was pretty good. Even the music was nice. Yogi Berra (b. 1925), American baseball player, after attending an opera. Orchestra A piece for orchestra without music. Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), French composer, on his piece Bolero. < previous page page_57 next page > < previous page page_58 next page > Page 58 Overtures I tried to resist his overtures, but he plied me with symphonies, quartets, chamber music and cantatas. S.J. Perelman (1904-79), American jouralist and humorist. Paganini, Niccola I have wept only three times in my life: the first time when my earliest opera failed, the second time when, with a boating party, a truffled turkey fell into the water, and the third time when I first heard Paganini play. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer. Phonograph Phonograph: n. An irritating toy that restores life to dead noises. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American journalist, The Devil's Dictionary (1906). < previous page page_58 next page > < previous page page_59 next page > Page 59 Piano Piano. n. A parlor utensil for subduing the impenitent visitor. It is operated by depressing the keys of the machine and the spirits of the audience. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914), American journalist, The Devil's Dictionary (1906). I wish the Government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent. Edith Sitwell (1887-1964), British writer. I always make sure that the lid over the keyboard is open before I start to play. Artur Schnabel (1882-1951), Austrian pianist, asked the secret of piano playing. < previous page page_59 next page > < previous page page_60 next page > Page 60 Nothing soothes me more after a long and maddening course of pianoforte recitals than to sit and have my teeth drilled. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Don't tell my mother I'm in politics she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse. Anon. It is said about [Henry] Cowell that he has invented tonal groups that can be played on the piano with the aid of fists and forearms! Why so coy? With one's behind one can cover many more notes! Paul Zschorlich, Deutsche Zeitung, Berlin (March 13, 1932). When she started to play, Steinway himself came down personally and rubbed his name off the piano. Bob Hope (b. 1903), American comedian, on comedian Phyllis Diller. Piper Give the piper a penny to play, and twopence to leave off. Thomas Fuller (1654-1734), British poet, Gnomologia (1732). < previous page page_60 next page > < previous page page_61 next page > Page 61 He must be a poor sort of man, for otherwise he would not be so good a piper. Antisthenes (c. 450-380 BCE), Greek philosopher. Plagiarism It's much too good for him. He did not know what to do with it. G.F. Handel (1685-1759), German-born British composer, on using material composed by his rival Bononcini. Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. Lionel Trilling (1905-75), American writer. A good composer does not imitate; he steals. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), Russian-born American composer. Remember why the good Lord made your eyes plagiarize! Tom Lehrer (b. 1928), American songwriter and satirist. < previous page page_61 next page > < previous page page_62 next page > Page 62 Practising If I don't practice one day, I know it; two days, the critics know it; three days, the public knows it. Jascha Heifetz (1901-87), Russian-born American violinist, in the San Francisco Examiner (April 18, 1971). I never practise, I always play. Wanda Landawska (1877-1959), Polish concert keyboardist. Ravel, Maurice Who can unravel Ravel? Louis Elson, Boston Daily Advertiser (December 27, 1913). Although Ravel's official biography does not mention it, I feel sure that at the age of three he swallowed a musical snuff-box, and at nine he must have been frightened by a bear. To both phenomena he offers repeated testimony: he is constantly tinkling high on the harps and celesta, or is growling low in the bassoons and double-basses. Edward Robinson, The American Mercury, New York (May, 1932). < previous page page_62 next page > < previous page page_63 next page > Page 63 Repertoire I do not see any good reason why the devil should have all the good tunes. Rowland Hill (1744-1833), British clergyman. I know only two tunes: one of them is Yankee Doodle and the other one isn't. Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885), American Civil War general. Reger, Max Reger might be epitomized as a composer whose name is the same either forward or backward, and whose music, curiously, often displays the same characteristic. Irving Kolodin, New York Sun (November 14, 1934). Religious Music I didn't know Onward, Christian Soldiers was a Christian song. Aggie Pate, at a non-denominational mayor's breakfast in Fort Worth, Texas. < previous page page_63 next page > < previous page page_64 next page > Page 64 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka! Musical Courier, New York (October 27, 1897). Rock and Pop Music I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to. Elvis Presley (1935-77), American pop singer. Most rock journalism is people who cannot write interviewing people who cannot talk. Frank Zappa (1940-1997), American rock musician, Mothers of Invention. The typical rock fan is not smart enough to know when he is being dumped on. Frank Zappa (1940-1997), American rock musician, Mothers of Invention. Boy George is all England needs another queen who can't dress. Joan Rivers, American comedian. < previous page page_64 next page > < previous page page_65 next page > Page 65 It's one thing to want to save lives in Ethiopia, but it's another thing to inflict so much torture on the British public. Morrissey (Steven Patrick) (b. 1959), Rock singer/songwriter, on the Band Aid concert. If white bread could sing, it would sound like Olivia Newton-John. Anon. It's all right letting yourself go, as long as you can let yourself back. Mick Jagger (b. 1943), British singer/songwriter, The Rolling Stones. The popular music industry has tried, repeatedly, to do with music what Ford attempts with cars. It works better with cars. Tony Palmer (b. 1941), British music writer, in All You Need is Love (1976). I've always said that pop music is disposable. . . . If it wasn't disposable, it'd be a pain in the fuckin' arse. Sir Elton John (b. 1947), British singer/songwriter. They look like boys whom any self-respecting mum would lock in the bathroom. The London Daily Express, on The Rolling Stones (1964). < previous page page_65 next page > < previous page page_66 next page > Page 66 When I first started playing guitar, you didn't play gigs so much as just went out and tested your gear. Jeff Beck (b. 1944), British rock guitarist. If Patty Hearst were on United Artists Records, she never would have been found. Dean Torrence The image we have would be hard for Mickey Mouse to maintain. Karen Carpenter (1950-1983), American pop singer, The Carpenters. We're Pat Boone, only cleaner. Richard Carpenter (b. 1945), Karen's brother. < previous page page_66 next page > < previous page page_67 next page > Page 67 My persona is so confused it even confuses me. David Bowie (b. 1947), British singer/songwriter. People take us far too seriously. We're going to have to start being far more stupid. David Byrne (b. 1952), Scottish-born American singer/songwriter, Talking Heads. I don't think anybody ever made it with a girl because they had a Tom Waits album on their shelves. I've got all three, and it never helped me. Tom Waits (b. 1949), American singer/songwriter. The only trouble with going to Heaven is that I'm scared there's no nightclubs there. Tom Waits (b. 1949), American singer/songwriter. Reporting I'm drunk is like saying there was a Tuesday last week. Grace Slick (b. 1943), American rock singer, Jefferson Airplane. I don't expect Short People to be a big commercial success in Japan. Randy Newman (b. 1943), American singer/songwriter. < previous page page_67 next page > < previous page page_68 next page > Page 68 We wanted to see America. It wasn't entirely successful. I kept falling asleep. It was a long drive. Mick Jones (b. 1955), British rock musician, on a tour with The Clash. Suppose they gave a war and no one came? Arlo Guthrie (1947-1967), American folksinger/songwriter. I'm going to run for President and when I get elected I'll assassinate myself. That'll set a precedent. Spencer Dryden (b. 1943), American rock musician, Jefferson Airplane. I manage to look so young because I'm mentally retarded. Debbie Harry (b. 1945), American pop singer, Blondie. We would rather be rich than famous. That is, more rich and slightly less famous. John Lennon (1940-80), British rock singer/songwriter, The Beatles. I'm the man who put the unk into the funk. Muddy Waters (1914-83), American blues musician. < previous page page_68 next page > < previous page page_69 next page > Page 69 I never considered myself the greatest, but I am the best. Jerry Lee Lewis (b. 1935), American rock musician. The Rolling Stones are like a dinosaur attached to an iron lung. Tom Robinson (b. 1951), British singer/songwriter. In America, Debbie Harry is the girl next door only if you live in a bad neighborhood. Roy Carr (b. 1941), British music writer, New Musical Express. I'll be mellow when I'm dead. Weird Al Yankovic (b. 1959), American rock parodist. That's what's cool about working with computers. They don't argue, they remember everything and they don't drink all your beer. Paul Leary, British rock guitarist (1991). We don't see eye to eye, but we have a common interest: your money. John Lydon (b. 1953) (Johnny Rotten), British rock singer/songwriter, on a reunion tour of the Sex Pistols (1996). < previous page page_69 next page > < previous page page_70 next page > Page 70 Romance Music makes one feel romantic at least it always gets on one's nerves which is the same thing nowadays. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright and novelist. Rossini, Gioacchino Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on his backside. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), German composer. Dear God here it is, finished, this poor little Mass. . . . Little science, some heart, that's all there is to it. Be blessed, then, and grant me a place in Paradise. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer, in an inscription at the end of his Petite Messe Solennelle (1863). Royalties And the royalites went to Royalty Michael Flanders (1922-75), British humorist and songwriter (with Donald Swann), on Greensleeves having been written by Henry VIII. < previous page page_70 next page > < previous page page_71 next page > Page 71 Saxophone The saxophone is the embodied spirit of beer. Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), British novelist (attr.). Schoenberg, Arnold [Schoenberg's Violin Concerto] combines the best sound effects of a hen yard at feeding time, a brisk morning in Chinatown and practice hour at a busy music conservatory. The effect on the vast majority of hearers is that of a lecture on the fourth dimension delivered in Chinese. Edwin H. Schloss, in the Philadelphia Record (December 7, 1940). Scriabin, Alexander The voluptuous dentist. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), British writer, on Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. < previous page page_71 next page > < previous page page_72 next page > Page 72 Sex If sex is such a natural phenomenon, how come there are so many books on how to? Bette Midler (b. 1945), American singer and actress. Shaw, George Bernard Bernard Shaw has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish playwright and novelist. The way Bernard Shaw believes in himself is very refreshing in these atheistic days when so many believe in no God at all. Israel Zangwill If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you might as well make it dance. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. < previous page page_72 next page > < previous page page_73 next page > Page 73 Silence I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. The silent man is the best to listen to. Japanese proverb She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. Sinatra, Frank I wish Frank Sinatra would just shut up and sing. Lauren Bacall (b. 1924), American film actress. Sinatra's idea of Paradise is a place where there are plenty of women and no newspapermen. He doesn't know it, but he'd be better off it were the other way round. Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), American film actor. < previous page page_73 next page > < previous page page_74 next page > Page 74 I didn't want to find a horse's head in my bed. Paul Anka (b. 1941), Canadian-born American singer/songwriter, on why he gave My Way to Frank Sinatra. Singers on Singing Swans sing before they die 'twere no bad thing Should certain persons die before they sing. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), British poet, Epigram on a Volunteer Singer. Ya know whatta you do when you shit? Singing, it's the same thing, only up! Enrico Caruso (1873-1921), Italian operatic tenor. All singers have this fault: if asked to sing among friends they are never so inclined; if unasked, they never leave off. Horace (c. 65-8 BCE) (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Italian poet, Satires I:3. Sometimes my voice can make me cry. Leonard Cohen (b. 1934), Canadian poet/songwriter, quoted by Christopher Jones, Now magazine (November 3, 1988). < previous page page_74 next page > < previous page page_75 next page > Page 75 Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. Voltaire (1694-1778), French philosopher. Leonard Cohen gives you the feeling that your dog just died. Q magazine. You sang like a composer. Jules Massanet (1842-1912), French composer, to a tenor whose singing he disliked. A base barreltone voice. James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish writer, in Ulysses (1922). A vile beastly rottenheaded foolbegotteen brazen-throated pernicious piggish screaming, tearing, roaring, perplexing, spitmecrackle crashmecringle insane ass of a woman is practising howling below-stairs with a brute of a singingmaster so horribly, that my head is nearly off. Edward Lear (1812-88), British nonsense writer, in a letter to Lady Strachey (January 24, 1859). We've had a request from the audience but we're going to keep singing anyway. Anon. < previous page page_75 next page > < previous page page_76 next page > Page 76 I am saddest when I sing; so are those that hear me; they are sadder ever than I am. Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) (1834-67), American journalist and humorist. My mother used to say that my elder sister has a beautiful contralto voice. This was arrived at not through her ability to reach the low notes which she could not do but because she could not reach the high ones. Samuel Butler (1834-1902), English novelist and essayist, Note-Books. Her voice sounded like an eagle being goosed. Ralph Novak, on Yoko Ono, in People magazine (December 2, 1985). The higher the voice the smaller the intellect. Ernest Newman (1869-1959), British music critic and writer (attrib.). < previous page page_76 next page > < previous page page_77 next page > Page 77 I can hold a note as long as the Chase National Bank. Ethel Merman (1909-84), American singer and actress. She was a singer who had to take any note above A with her eyebrows. Montague Glass (1877-1934), American humorist. She was a town-and-country soprano of the kind often used for augmenting grief at a funeral. George Ade (1866-1944), American dramatist and humorist. Their morals are depraved, they are disreputable purveyors of every kind of vice. . . . They also teach but their pedagogy is senseless. Giralomo Cardano (1501-76), Italian music theorist. Snoring Laugh and the world laughs with you. Snore and you sleep alone. Anthony Burgess (1917-93), British novelist, journalist and composer. < previous page page_77 next page > < previous page page_78 next page > Page 78 Song Song: the licenced medium for bawling in public things too silly or sacred to be uttered in ordinary speech. Oliver Herford There was an Old Person of Tring Who, when somebody asked her sing, Replied, ''Aren't it odd? I can never tell God Save the Weasel from Pop Goes the King.'' Anon., in The New York Times Magazine (1946). Once in every lifetime a really beautiful song comes along. . . . Until it does, I'd like to do this one. Cliff Richard (b. 1940), British singer/songwriter, in his stage act (1983). Song Titles Blue Turning Grey Over You. Barbershop song title If Today Was a Fish, I'd Throw It Back In. Song title Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goal Posts of Life Song title < previous page page_78 next page > < previous page page_79 next page > Page 79 I'm So Miserable Without You It's Almost Like Having You Here. Song title by Stephen Bishop She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft Song title by Jerry Reed When My Love Comes Back from the Ladies' Room Will I Be Too Old to Care? Song title by Lewis Grizzard Stravinsky, Igor The Rite of Spring Who wrote this fiendish Rite of Spring, What right had he to write the thing, Against our helpless ears to fling Its crash, clash, cling, clang, bing, bang, bing? And then to call it Rite of Spring, The season when on joyous wing The birds melodious carols sing And harmony's in everything! He who could write the Rite of Spring, If I be right, by right should swing! Boston Herald, (February 6, 1924) < previous page page_79 next page > < previous page page_80 next page > Page 80 Stravinsky's Symphony for Wind Instruments written in memory of Debussy . . . was greeted with cheers, hisses, and laughter. I had no idea Stravinsky disliked Debussy so much as this. If my own memories of a friend were as painful as Stravinsky's of Debussy seem to be, I would try to forget him. Ernest Newman (1869-1959), British music critic, Musical Times, London (July 1921). [Stravinsky's music is] Bach on the wrong notes. Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), Russian composer. The most invigorating sound I heard was a restive neighbor winding his watch. Mildred Norton, on a concert of Stravinsky, in the Los Angeles Daily News, (November 12, 1952). String Quartets Most string quartets have a basement and an attic, and the lift is not working. Neville Cardus, British music critic, The Delights of Music (1966). < previous page page_80 next page > < previous page page_81 next page > Page 81 Success We must believe in luck, for how else can we explain the success of those we don't like? Jean Cocteau (1889-1963), French poet and artist. The worst part of success is to try to find someone who is happy for you. Bette Midler (b. 1945), American singer and actress. Suicide I tried to commit suicide one day. It was a very Woody Allen-type suicide. I turned on the gas and left all the windows open. Sir Elton John (b. 1948), British singer/songwriter. Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects. Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), Canadian humorist and writer. < previous page page_81 next page > < previous page page_82 next page > Page 82 Taste No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public. H.L. Mencken (1880-1956), American journalist and music critic. I wouldn't say I invented tacky, but I definitely brought it to its present high popularity. Bette Midler (b, 1945), American singer and actress. Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Illich Tchaikovsky's love life was, to put it bluntly, confused. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, Bach, Beethoven and the Boys (1986) Friedrich Vischer once observed, speaking of obscene pictures, that they stink to the eye. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto gives us for the first time the hideous notion that there can be music that stinks to the ear. Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), Czech-born Austrian music critic, Neue Freie Presse, Vienna, (December 5, 1881). < previous page page_82 next page > < previous page page_83 next page > Page 83 Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, like the first pancake, is a flop. Nicolai Soloviev, Novoye Vremya, St. Petersburg (November 13, 1875). Teachers The music teacher came twice each week to bridge the awful gap between Dorothy and Chopin. George Ade (1866-1944), American dramatist and humorist (attrib.). Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils. Hector Berlioz (1803-69), French composer. < previous page page_83 next page > < previous page page_84 next page > Page 84 Tenors The cast of Boris Godunov includes one character called 'An Idiot.' The role is of course sung by a tenor. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, When the Fat Lady Sings (1990). Tenors get women by the score. James Joyce (1882-1941), Irish novelist, Ulysses (1922). Theatre The theatre is not the place of the musician. When the curtain is up the music interrupts the actor, and when it is down, the music interrupts the audience. Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900), British composer of operettas. Toothache Music helps not the toothache. George Herbert (1593-1633), English poet, Jacula Prudentum (1651). < previous page page_84 next page > < previous page page_85 next page > Page 85 Tuning Gentleman, take your pick! Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, on hearing an oboist giving an A for tuning. Unemployment The trouble with unemployment is that the minute you wake up in the morning, you're on the job. Lena Horne (b. 1917), American jazz singer. I'm a concert pianist. That's a pretentious way of saying I'm unemployed at the moment. Oscar Levant (1906-72), American actor, composer and pianist, in An American in Paris (1951). Vaughan Williams, Ralph Listening to the Fifth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams is like staring at a cow for 45 minutes. Aaron Copland (1900-88), American composer. < previous page page_85 next page > < previous page page_86 next page > Page 86 I don't know whether I like it, but it's what I meant. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), British composer, on a passage in his Fourth Symphony. It looks wrong, and it sounds wrong; but it's right. Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958), British composer, also on a passage in his Fourth Symphony. Verdi, Giuseppe Verdi was intended by nature for a composer, but I am afraid the genius given him like girls kissing each other is decided waste of the raw material. Dwight's Journal of Music, Boston (July 14, 1855). Violin Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. Samuel Butler (1835-1902), British writer. Violinist: a man who is always up to his chin in music. Anon. < previous page page_86 next page > < previous page page_87 next page > Page 87 You see, our fingers are circumcised, which gives it a very good dexterity, you know, particularly the pinky. Itzhak Perlman (b. 1945), Israeli violinist, replying to a comment that so many great violinists are Jewish. Vivaldi, Antonio All in all, Vivaldi composed about 450 concertos of one sort or another. People who find his music too repetitious are inclined to say that he wrote the same concerto 450 times. This is hardly fair: he wrote two concertos, 225 times each. David W. Barber (b. 1958), Canadian journalist, humorist and musician, in Bach, Beethoven and the Boys (1986). Wagner, Richard Wagner's music is better than it sounds. Mark Twain (1835-1910), American writer and humorist (also attributed to American humorist Bill Nye, 1850-96). Wagner has beautiful moments but awful quarter hours. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer. < previous page page_87 next page > < previous page page_88 next page > Page 88 There is no law against composing music when one has no ideas whatsoever. The music of Wagner, therefore, is perfectly legal. Anon., review in The National, Paris (November 30, 1850). The prelude to Tristan and Isolde sounded as if a bomb had fallen into a large music factory and had thrown all the notes into confusion. J. Stettenheim, review in the Berlin Tribune (February 6, 1873). The Prelude to Tristan und Isolde reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), Czech-born Austrian music critic (June 1868). < previous page page_88 next page > < previous page page_89 next page > Page 89 When a musician can no longer count to three, he becomes ''dramatic,'' he becomes "Wagnerian." Friedrich Nietszche (1844-1900), German philosopher, The Case of Wagner. I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by his tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its paws. Charles Baudelaire (1821-67), French poet. I like Wagner's music better than any other music. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without people hearing what one says. That is a great advantage. Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish novelist, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Wagner is the Puccini of music. J.B. Morton (1893-1979), British journalist, who wrote a newspaper column under the name Beachcomber. We've been rehearsing for two hours and we're still playing the same bloody tune! Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961), British conductor, rehearsing Wagner's Götterdammerung. < previous page page_89 next page > < previous page page_90 next page > Page 90 I refused to sing the young Siegfried, because I think he is a bore. I always call him a Wagnerian L'il Abner. Jon Vickers (b. 1926), Canadian operatic tenor. Your Wagner is without pity; he drives the nail slowly into your head with swinging hammer blows. P.A. Fiorentino (1806-1864). Wagner is Berlioz without the melody. Daniel Auber (1782-1871), French composer, quoted in Le Ménestrel (1863). Tannhäuser is not merely polyphonous, but polycacophonous. Musical World, London (October 13, 1855). After Lohengrin, I had a splitting headache, and all through the night I dreamed of a goose. Mily Balakirev (1837-1910), Russian composer, in a letter to Vladimir Stasov, (November 3, 1868). What time is the next swan? Leo Slezak (1873-1946), Czechoslovakian opera tenor, after the mechanical swan left without him during a performance of Lohengrin. < previous page page_90 next page > < previous page page_91 next page > Page 91 Wagner, thank the fates, is no hypocrite. He says right out what he means, and he usually means something nasty. James G. Huneker (1860-1921), American music critic and author. One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend hearing it a second time. Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer. It is the music of a demented eunuch. Figaro, Paris, on the music of Wagner (July 26, 1876). [Wagner's Parsifal is] the kind of opera that starts at six o'clock and after it has been going on for three hours, you look at your watch and it says 6:20. David Randolph (b. 1914). Wagner is evidently mad. Hector Berlioz (1803-1869), French composer, in a letter (March 5, 1861). Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), German philosopher. < previous page page_91 next page > < previous page page_92 next page > Page 92 [The use of leitmotifs] suggests a world of harmless lunatics who present their visiting cards and shout their name in song. Claude Debussy (1862-1918), French composer, on the operas of Richard Wagner. I have witnessed and greatly enjoyed the first act of everything which Wagner created, but the effect on me has always been so powerful that one act was quite sufficient; whenever I have witnessed two acts I have gone away physically exhausted; and whenever I have ventured an entire opera the result has been the next thing to suicide. Mark Twain (1835-1910), American journalist and humorist, (1891). < previous page page_92 next page > < previous page page_93 next page > Page 93 Wedding Music Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle. Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), German poet and writer. Woodwinds Never let the horns and woodwinds out of your sight; if you can hear them at all, they are too loud. Richard Strauss (1864-1949), German composer, giving advice to young conductors. The chief objection to playing wind instruments it that it prolongs the life of the player. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright and music critic. < previous page page_93 next page > < previous page page_95 next page > Page 95 Index A Accordion 1 Addison, Joseph 53 Ade, George 77, 83 Adler, Larry 8 Advice 1 Agate, James 55 Age 3 Age of Innocence 56 Aïda 54 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 50 All You Need is Love 65 Allen, Woody 32, 37 Amateurs 3 American in Paris, An 85 American Music 4 Anka, Paul 74 Antisthenes 61 Appleton, Edward 53 Architecture 4 Armory, Cleveland 57 Armstrong, Louis 41 Art and Artists 5 Art Reluctant, The 40 Astaire, Fred 5 Auber, Daniel 90 Auden, W.H. 53, 56 Audience Participation 5 Audiences 6 Auditions 8 B Bacall, Lauren 73 Bach, J. S. 8 Bach, Beethoven and the Boys 38, 46, 82 Bad Music 9 Bagpipes 10 Bailey, Pearl 42 Balakirev, Mily 90 Ballad 34 Ballet 10 < previous page page_95 next page > < previous page page_96 next page > Page 96 Balliett, Witney 26 Band Aid 65 Banjo 11 Barber, David W. 17, 38, 41, 46, 82, 84, 87 Barbershop song title 78 Barbirolli, Sir John 46 Baroque Music 11 Bartok, Bela 11 Battle of Crete 56 Baudelaire, Charles 89 Beachcomber 89 Beatles 6 13, 41, 68 Beck, Jeff 66 Beckwith, John 20 Beecham, Sir Thomas 5, 12, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 25 37, 38, 47, 49, 52, 85, 89 Beethoven, Ludwig van 12 Beethoven, Ludwig van 13, 15, 38, 54, 70 Behan, Brendan 24 Bennett, Arnold 55, 71 Berg, Alban 14 Berlioz, Hector 14 Berlioz, Hector 83, 91 Berra, Yogi 57 Bierce, Ambrose 1, 58, 59 Billings, Josh 2 Biography 14 Bishop, Stephen 79 Blondie 68 Bogart, Humphrey 73 Bolero, Ravel's 57 Bononcini 61 Book of Wisdom, The 2 Boone, Pat 66 Borge, Victor 8, 47 Boris Godunov 84 Bowie, David 67 Brahms, Johannes 15 Brahms Requiem 15, 16 Brains 16 Brandy of the Damned 11 Brass 16 < previous page page_96 next page > < previous page page_97 next page > Page 97 Britten, Benjamin 56 Brooks, Mel 25 Brown, John 13 Burgess, Anthony 77 Butler, Samuel 76, 86 Byrne, David 67 Byrne, Robert 17 C Calverley, C.S. 34 Canon 17 Cardano, Giralomo 77 Cardus, Neville 7, 80 Carlyle, Thomas 7 Carpenter, Karen 66 Carpenter, Richard 66 Carpenters, The 66 Carr, Roy 69 Carroll, Lewis 50 Carrott, Jasper 32 Caruso, Enrico 74 Case of Wanger, The 89 Cash, Johnny 23 Castrato 17 Cello 18 Chekov, Anton 10 Chesterton, G.K. 4, 49 Chopin, Frèdèric 50, 83 Chotzinoff, Samuel 14 Churchill, Sir Winston 3 Clarke, John 45 Clash, The 68 Classical Music 18 Cocteau, Jean 81 Cohen, Leonard 74, 75 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 74 Colgrass, Ulla 52 Colour Symphony, A Bliss's, 29 Comments of Abe Martin and His Neighbors 18 Communism 19 Composers and Composing 19 Conductors and Conducting 21 Copland, Aaron 28, 85 < previous page page_97 next page > < previous page page_98 next page > Page 98 Country Music 23 Courier, La Musical 50 Coward, Noel 9, 28, 56 Cowell, Henry 60 Credo 23 Cristina 43 Critics and Criticism 23 Crosby, Bing 30 Crosby, John 26, 30 Culture 30 D Dancers and Dancing 31 Davis, Miles 40 Death 32 Debussy, Claude 31, 80, 92 Delights of Music, The 80 Delius, Frederick 32 Dent, Alan 10 Design for Living 56 Deutsch, Adolf 34 Devil's Dictionary, The 1, 58, 59 Dietz, Howard 19 Diller, Phyllis 60 Dinosaurs in the Morning 26 Disco 32 Disraeli, Benjamin 2 DJs 32 Downbeat Music Guide 17 Dream of Gerontius, Elgar's 33 Dryden, Spencer 68 Duffy's Tavern 54 Durante, Jimmy 50 Dwight's Journal of Music 86 E Ear 33 1812 Overture, Tchaikovsky's 17 Elgar, Sir Edward 33 Ellington, Duke 40 Elman, Mischa 25 Elson, Louis 62 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 33 Epigram on a Volunteer Singer 74 Evita 51 < previous page page_98 next page > < previous page page_99 next page > Page 99 F Fable for Critics, A 25 Ferrari, Doug 48 Fiddle 33 Fifth Symphony, Beethoven's 13 Fifth Symphony, Ralph Vaughan Williams's 85 Figaro 91 Film Music 34 Fiorentino, P.A. 90 Firbank, Ronald 54 First Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's 83 Five Pennies, The 41 Flaccus, Quintus Horatius 74 Flanders, Michael 4, 70 Flauntists Flaunt Afflatus 34 Flute 34 Folk Music 34 For the Love of Music 52 For Unto to Us a Child is Born 44 Forster, E.M. 13 Fourth Symphony, Vaughan Williams's 86 Frost, Robert 7 Fudge Family in Paris, The 50 Fuller, Thomas 60 Funeral March 35 Funeral Music 35 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A 43 G G-minor Symphony, Mozart's 47 Galli-Curci, Amelita 55 Gardner, Ed 54 Gershwin, George 35 Gide, André 5 Gilbert, W.S. 39 Glass, Montague 77 Glenn Gould Reader, The 47 Gnomologia 60 God 36 Goethe 13 Goldberg Variations 37 Goldsmith, Oliver 3 Goldwyn, Samuel 29 Götterdammerung, Wagner's 89 < previous page page_99 next page > < previous page page_100 next page > Page 100 Gould, Glenn 47 Grant, Ulysses S. 63 Green, Benny 40 Greensleeves 70 Grizzard, Lewis 79 Guthrie, Arlo 68 H Handel, G.F. 15, 44, 61 Hanslick, Eduard 82, 88 Harp 37 Harpsichord 37 Harry, Debbie 68, 69 Haydn, Franz Joseph 38 Hearing 38 Hearst, Patty 66 Heath, Arlene 18 Hegel 4 Heifetz, Jascha 13, 62 Heine, Heinrich 93 Helpmann, Sir Robert 31 Herbert, George 84 Herford, Oliver 33, 78 Herold, Don 30, 56 Hill, Rowland 63 Hillis, Magaret 21 Hindu proverb 48 Hines, Earl ''Fatha'' 40 Hitchcock, Alfred 10 Holst, Gustav 2 Honneger, Arthur 19, 35 Hope, Bob 60 Hopkins, Anthony 17 Horace 74 Horne, Lena 85 Horowitz, Vladimir 1 Howards End 13 Huneker, James Gibbons 14, 91 Huxley, Aldous 71 I In Praise of Critics 27 Insults 39 Italian proverb 53 < previous page page_100 next page > < previous page page_101 next page > Page 101 J Jacula Prudentum 84 Jagger, Mick 65 James, Clive 32 Japanese proverb 73 Jazz 40 Jefferson Airplane 67, 68 Jenguin Pennings, The 34 Jennings, Paul 34 John, Sir Elton 51, 65, 81 Johnson, Samuel 53, 54 Johst, Hanns 30 Jones, Franklin P. 28, 68, 74 Joyce, James 75, 84 K Kaye, Danny 41 Kelly, Larry 55 Kinnoull, Lord 44 Kolodin, Irving 63 Kreisler, Fritz 7 Kuerti, Anton 52 L Lamaître, Jules 27 Landawska, Wanda 8, 62 Lady Macbeth of Mtensk, Shostakovich's 27 Leacock, Stephen 81 Lear, Edward 75 Leary, Paul 69 LeBlanc, Larry 48 Le Ménestrel 90 Lehrer, Tom 47, 61 Lennon, John 6, 41, 68 Leonore 54 Levant, Oscar 26, 39, 85 Levin, Bernard 32 Lewis, Jerry Lee 69 Liberace 24 Life 41 Liszt, Franz 41 Lloyd Webber, Sir Andrew 42 Lloyd Webber, Sir Andrew 42, 52 Lohengrin, Wagner's 90, 91 Lorne, Edward 15 < previous page page_101 next page > < previous page page_102 next page > Page 102 Louis, Rudof 24 Love 42 Love for Three Oranges, The 28 Lowell, James Russell 25 Lydon, John 69 M Madonna 43 Man and Superman 3 Massanet, Jules 75 McCartney, Sir Paul 44 McKinney, Lawrence 22 Melody 44 Memoirs of an Amnesiac 26 Mencken, H.L. 1, 4, 54, 57, 82 Merchant of Venice 10 Merman, Ethel 77 Messiah 44 Messiah, Handel's 44, 45 Meyerbeer, Giacomo 35 MGM 5 Midler, Bette 72, 81, 82 Military Music 44, 45 Miss Liberty, Irving Berlin's 28 Mistakes 45 Modern Music 45 Moore, Edward 28 Moore, George 26, 33 Moore, Thomas 50 More, Hannah 55 More Playboy's Party Jokes 41 Morris, William 55 Morrissey, Steven Patrick 65 Morton, J.B. 89 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 46 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 38, 46, 47 MTV 48 Murray, Anne 48 Music and Musicians 48 Music Hall 51 Musical Notes 11 Musicals 51 Musicology 52 < previous page page_102 next page > < previous page page_103 next page > Page 103 Muzak 52 My Life and Music 6 My Way 74 N Neue Freie Presse 82 Newman, Ernest 19, 56, 76, 80 Newman, Randy 67 Newton-John, Olivia 65 Nietszche, Friedrich 36, 48, 89, 91 Noise 53 Nonsense 53 Norton, Mildred 80 Note-Books 76 Novak, Ralph 76 Nye, Bill 87 O Oh, Calcutta! 31 O'Malley, Austin 50 Ono, Yoko 76 Onward, Christian Soldiers 63 Opera 53 Orchestra 57 Osmond, Clift 33 Overtures 58 Oxford Companion to Music, The 37 P Paër, Ferdinando 54 Paganini, Niccola 58 Palmer, Tony 65 Parker, Charlie 40 Paroemiologia 45 Parsifal, Wagner's 91 Pate, Aggie 63 Pavarotti, Luciano 16 Pearl, Steven 48 Penn, Sean 43 Perelman, S.J 42, 58 Perlman, Itzhak 87 Peter, Paul and Mary, 5 Petite Messe Solennelle, Rossini's 70 Phantom of the Opera 52 Phonograph 58 < previous page page_103 next page > < previous page page_104 next page > Page 104 Picture of Dorian Gray, The 9, 89 Plagiarism 60, 61 Pollock, Channing 24 Poole, Mary Pettibone 30 Porter, Cole 39 Practising 62 Presley, Elvis 64 Prokofiev, Sergie 80 Puff, The Magic Dragon 5 Purney, Duncan 11 Q Queen Elizabeth II 42 Quindlen, Anna 44 R Race, Steve 51 Rake's Progress, Stravinsky's 56 Randolph, David 91 Ravel, Maurice 57, 62 Reed, Jerry 79 Reger, Max 63 Reger, Max 24 Reluctant Art, The 40 Repertoire 63 Rich, Frank 42 Richard, Cliff 78 Rimsky-Korakov, Nikolai 64 Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai 31 Rite of Spring, The 79 Rivers, Joan 43, 64 Robinson, Edward 62 Robinson, Tom 69 Rock and Pop Music 64 Rodgers and Hammerstein 52 Rolling Stones, The 65, 69 Romance 70 Rosenberg, Howard 35 Rossini, Gioacchino 19, 35, 39, 55, 58, 70, 87, 91 Rotten, Johnny 69 Royalties 70 Ruskin, John 13 < previous page page_104 next page > < previous page page_105 next page > Page 105 S Saint-Saëns, Camille 20 Santayana, George 49 Sargent, Sir Malcolm 44 Satie, Erik 2, 20, 27, 36 Satires 54, 74 Saxophone 71 Schloss, Edwin H. 71 Schnabel, Artur 1, 6, 59 Schoenberg, Arnold 46, 71 Schonberg, Harold C. 9 Scholes, Percy A. 37 Schumann, Robert 20, 44 Scriabin, Alexander 71 Servais, Fraz 41 Sex Pistols 69 Shakespeare, William 10 Shaw Nuff, Dizzie Gillespie's 40 Shaw, George Bernard 72 Shaw, George Bernard 3, 15, 16, 27, 28, 51, 60, 72, 73, 93 She Stoops to Conquer 3 Short People 67 Sibelius, Jean 24 Silence 73 Sinatra, Frank 73 Sinatra, Frank 74 Singers on Singing 74 Sira, Ben 2 Sitwell, Edith 59 Slezak, Leo 90 Slick, Grace 67 Snoring 77 Soloviev, Nicolai 83 Sondheim, Stephen 43 Song 78 Song Titles 78 Stardust Memories 37 Starlight Express 42 Starr, Ringo 12 Stasov, Vladimir 90 Stephens, James 57 Stern, Isaac 9 Stettenheim, J 88 Stoppard, Tom 12 < previous page page_105 next page > < previous page page_106 next page > Page 106 Strachey, Lady 75 Strauss, Richard 93 Stravinsky, Igor 79 Stravinsky, Igor 23, 24, 37, 38, 45, 46, 49, 61, 80 String Quartets 80 Success 81 Suicide 81 Sullivan, Sir Arthur 84 Swann, Donald 4, 70 Swift, Jonathan 34 Symphony No. 40, Mozart's 47 Symphony for Wind Instruments, Stravinsky's 80 T Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles M. de 27 Talking Heads, The 67 Tannhäuser 90 Taste 82 Taylor, James 6 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr IIyich 82 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr IIyich 82, 83 Teachers 83 Tenors 84 Tenuta, Judy 43 Theatre 84 Thomas, Irene 8, 18 Thompson, Virgil 4 Tomlin, Lily 52 Toothache 84 Torrence, Dean 66 Toscanini, Arturo 18, 21, 22, 36 Tramp Abroad, A 57 Trilling, Lionel 61 Tristan und Isolde, Wagner's 29, 88 Tuning 85 Twain, Mark 50, 57, 87, 92 Tynan, Kenneth 7, 23 U Ulysses 75, 84 Umemployment 85 United Artists Records 66 < previous page page_106 next page > < previous page page_107 next page > Page 107 V Vaughan Williams, Ralph 85, 86 Verdi, Giuseppe 86 Verklärte Nacht, Schöenberg's 29 Vickers, Jon 90 Violin 86 Violin Concerto, Schoenberg's 71 Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky's 82 Vischer, Friedrich 82 Vivaldi, Antonio 87 Voltaire 75 W Wagner, Richard 87 Wagner, Richard 87, 88, 91, 92 Waits, Tom 67 Wallach, Eli 29 Waller, Fats 40 Ward, Artemus (Charles Farrar Browne) 76 Waters, Muddy 68 Waugh, Evelyn 56 Wedding Music 93 Wells, Carolyn 25 Werfel, Alma Mahler Gropius 47 Wharton, Edith 56 When the Fat Lady Sings 17, 84 Wilde, Oscar 4, 9, 70, 72, 89 Wilder, Billy 33 Williamson, Malcolm 42 Wilson, Colin 11 Winchell, Walter 29 Wit and Drollery 49 Wolf, Hugo 14 Woodwinds 93 Woollcott, Alexander 8 Y Yankee Doodle 63 Yankovic, Weird Al 69 Young, Edward 54 Z Zangwill, Israel 72 Zappa, Frank 19, 64 Zschorlich, Paul 60 < previous page page_107 next page > < previous page page_109 next page > Page 109 Selected Bibliography Bloomsbury Dictionary of Quotations, ed. John Daintith (Bloomsbury, London) 1987, 1996. Bloomsbury Thematic Dictionary of Quotations, ed. John Daintith et al (Bloomsbury, London) 1988. The Book of Rock Quotes, ed. Jonathan Green (Omnibus/Music Sales, New York) 1982. A Dictionary of Musical Quotations, ed. Ian Crofton & Donald Fraser (Schirmer Books, New York) 1985. Lexicon of Musical Invective, ed. Nicholas Slonimsky, 2nd. ed. (University of Washington Press, Seattle and London) 1953, 1965, 1984. The Music Lover's Quotation Book: A Lyrical Companion, ed. Kathleen Kimball, 2nd ed. (Sound And Vision, Toronto) 1990, 1992, 1997. 1,911 Best Things Anybody Ever Said, ed. Robert Byrne (Ballentine/Random House, New York and Toronto) 1988. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations, ed. Tony Augarde (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York) 1991. A Treasury of Humorous Quotations, ed. Herbert V. Prochnow and Herbert V. Prochnow Jr. (Holt Rinehart, New York) 1969. The illustrations in this book are reproduced from the Dover Pictorial Archive series: MUSIC, A Pictorical Archive of Woodcuts & Engravings, by Jim Harter (Dover Publications, New York) 1980. The cover for this book was conceived and designed by Jim Stubbington. < previous page page_109 next page > < previous page page_110 next page > Page 110 About the Editor David W. Barber is a journalist and musician and the author of six previous humorous books about music. Formerly the entertainment editor of the Kingston Whig-Standard, he now divides his time between Toronto, where he is editor of Broadcast Week magazine at The Globe and Mail, and Westport, Ont., where he owns and operates White Knight Books and The Dormouse Café. As a composer, his works include two symphonies, a jazz mass based on the music of Dave Brubeck, a Requiem, several short choral works and numerous vocal-jazz arrangements. In his spare time he is an avid kayaker and reader of mysteries and enjoys performing with his vocal-jazz group, Barber and the Sevilles. If you like the books, you'll love the merchandise. Some of David W. Barber's wittiest definitions (along with Dave Donald's equally witty cartoon illustrations) from A Musician's Dictionary are available in product form. Perfect gifts for yourself or your music-loving friends, these mugs, tea towels, tote bags, aprons and greeting cards are available from Music Notables (UK) or in specialty music and gift shops. And in his new Classical for the Clueless series, Barber presents funny yet informative listening guides based on his bestselling Bach, Beethoven and the Boys and other books. A joint production of publisher Sound And Vision and record producer International Music Distribution, each Clueless package includes two CDs, each with more than an hour of digitally recorded music by top-notch performers, as well as a short book that talks about the composers and their music. And it's all in the same playful, irreverent style you've come to expect from this popular music humorist/historian. The Clueless series, available in music/record and book stores everywhere, lets you laugh as you listen as you learn. < previous page page_110 next page > < previous page page_112 next page > Page 112 Better Than It Sounds ©David W. Barber, 1998 All rights reserved Except brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Reprography Collective CANCOPY First published in Canada by Sound And Vision 359 Riverdale Avenue, Toronto, Canada, M4J 1A4 http://www.soundandvision.com E-mail:musicbooks@soundandvision.com First printing, April 1998 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 - printings - 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data Main entry under title: Better than it sounds includes bibligraphical references and index. ISBN 0-920151-22-1 1. Music Humor. 2. Music Quotations, maxims, etc. I. Barber, David. W. (David William), 1958- ML65.B2355 1998 780'.207 C98-930878-2 Typset in Century Schoolbook Printed and bound in Canada < previous page page_112 next page > < previous page page_113 next page > Page 113 by David W. Barber, cartoons by Dave Donald A Musician's Dictionary isbn 0-920151-21-3 Bach, Beethoven and the Boys Music History as It Ought to Be Taught isbn 0-920151-10-8 When the Fat Lady Sings Opera History as It Ought to Be Taught isbn 0-920151-11-6 If it Ain't Baroque More Music History as It Ought to Be Taught isbn 0-920151-15-9 Getting a Handel on Messiah isbn 0-920151-17-5 Tenors, Tantrums and Trills An Opera Dictionary from Aida to Zzzz isbn 0-920151-19-1 How to Stay Awake During Anybody's Second Movement by David E. Walden, cartoons by Mike Duncan isbn 0-920151-20-5 I Wanna Be Sedated Pop Music in the Seventies by Phil Dellio & Scott Woods, cartoons by Dave Prothero isbn 0-920151-16-7 Love Lives of the Great Composers from Gesualdo to Wagner by Basil Howitt, cover by Dave Donald i sbn 0-920151-18-3 The Composers A Hystery of Music by Kevin Reeves isbn 0-920151-29-9 A Working Musician's Joke Book by Daniel G. Theaker, cartoons by Mike Freen isbn 0-920151-23-X If you have any comments on this book or any other books we publish, or if you would like a catalogue, please write to us at Sound And Vision 359 Riverdale Avenue, Toronto, M4J 1A4, Canada or visit our website at:www.soundandvision.com < previous page page_113 next page > < previous page page_113-0 < previous page page_113-0	92,345
Taboo Comedy Television and Controversial Humour (Chiara Bucaria, Luca Barra (eds.)) (Z-Library).pdf	PALGRAVE STUDIES IN COMEDY TABOO COMEDY TELEVISION AND CONTROVERSIAL HUMOUR EDITED BY CHIARA BUCARIA AND LUCA BARRA Palgrave Studies in Comedy Series Editors Roger Sabin University of the Arts London London , United Kingdom Sharon Lockyer Department Social Sciences Media Communication Brunel University Uxbridge , Middlesex, United Kingdom Aims of the Series Comedy is part of the cultural landscape as never before, as older manifestations such as performance (stand-up, plays, etc.), fi lm and TV have been joined by an online industry, pioneered by YouTube and social media. This innovative new book series will help defi ne the emerging comedy studies fi eld, offering fresh perspectives on the comedy studies phenomenon, and opening up new avenues for discussion. The focus is ‘pop cultural’, and will emphasize vaudeville, stand-up, variety, comedy fi lm, TV sit-coms, and digital comedy. It will not cover humour in literature, comedy in ‘everyday life’, or the psychology of joke-telling. It will welcome studies of politics, history, aesthetics, production, distribution, and reception, as well as work that explores international perspectives and the digital realm. Above all it will be pioneering – there is no competition in the publishing world at this point in time. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/mycopy/series/14644 Chiara Bucaria • Luca Barra Editors Taboo Comedy Television and Controversial Humour Palgrave Studies in Comedy ISBN 978-1-137-59337-5 ISBN 978-1-137-59338-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958102 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifi ed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Cover image CSA Images/Archive / Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom Editors Chiara Bucaria University of Bologna Bologna , Italy Luca Barra University of Bologna Bologna , Italy v Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues and Themes 1 Chiara Bucaria and Luca Barra Controversial Humour in Comedy and Drama Series 19 The Rise and Fall of Taboo Comedy in the BBC 21 Christie Davies The Last Laugh: Dark Comedy on US Television 41 Kristen A. Murray ‘This Is Great, We’re Like Slave Buddies!’: Cross-Racial Appropriation in ‘Post-Racial’ TV Comedies 61 Carter Soles Phrasing!: Archer , Taboo Humour, and Psychoanalytic Media Theory 77 Matt Sienkiewicz CONTENTS vi CONTENTS Taboo Humanity: Paradoxes of Humanizing Muslims in North American Sitcoms 97 Kyle Conway Controversial Humour in Variety Shows, Commercials and Factual Programming 117 Dummies and Demographics: Islamophobia as Market Differentiation in Post-9/11 Television Comedy 119 Philip Scepanski Excessive Stand-Up, the Culture Wars, and ’90s TV 139 Evan Elkins Tosh.0 , Convergence Comedy, and the ‘Post-PC’ TV Trickster 155 Ethan Thompson Crude and Taboo Humour in Television Advertising: An Analysis of Commercials for Consumer Goods 173 Elsa Simões Lucas Freitas Filthy Viewing, Dirty Laughter 191 Delia Chiaro A Special Freedom: Regulating Comedy Offence 209 Brett Mills Editors 227 Contributors 229 Index 233 1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Bucaria, L. Barra (eds.), Taboo Comedy, Palgrave Studies in Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_1 Taboo Comedy on Television: Issues and Themes Chiara Bucaria and Luca Barra C. Bucaria () • L. Barra University of Bologna , Bologna , Italy e-mail: chiara.bucaria@unibo.it This chapter was prepared jointly by the two authors. However, Chiara Bucaria is mainly responsible for sections ‘Mapping Taboo Comedy on Television’ and ‘Taboo Comedy and Humour Studies’ and Luca Barra for sections ‘Taboo Comedy and Television Studies’ and ‘A Large and Complex Field of Study’. MAPPING TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION When Sex and the City and Six Feet Under premiered on the US cable channel HBO in 1998 and 2001 respectively, they were saluted as ground- breaking shows because of—among other reasons—their unconventional, often-humorous, and explicit treatment of subjects such as sex, death, homosexuality, and illness. Since then, the use of humour containing taboo references has become more pervasive in Anglo-American television programming. From Inside Amy Schumer and The League of Gentlemen to Super Bowl commercials, stand-up comedy specials, and new generation, single-camera sitcoms, forms of edgy, transgressive, dark, and even taboo humour have in the last few years increasingly become part and parcel of both television programming and the viewing experience. Even unsus- pected network family sitcoms are slowly but surely pushing the envelope of what constitutes acceptable material for comedy. Although, especially in the USA, the divide between network and cable television remains a sharp one, there is a noticeable trend towards a more extensive use of this kind of edgier comedy even in more widely available programming, which at least partially moves beyond the classic “least objectionable programming” and “mainstream” imperatives and tries to better respond to ever-changing media and television landscapes. From the heavy sexual innuendos of sit- coms such as Mom to paedophilia and incest jokes in American Dad , from late-night talk shows to Comedy Central Roasts , both traditional network shows and more niche cable productions are now rife with humorous references to subjects that were once reserved for comedy clubs at best, which makes taboo comedy a topical and relevant object of study for both Humour and Television Studies. From a terminological standpoint, this kind of comedy has been in turn referred to—among others—as ‘tasteless’, ‘outrageous’, ‘gallows’, ‘abu- sive’, ‘gross’, ‘sick’, ‘cruel’, ‘edgy’, ‘transgressive’, ‘aggressive’, ‘dark’, ‘dis- turbing’, ‘rude’, ‘offensive’, ‘politically incorrect’, ‘quirky’, ‘offbeat’, and ‘explicit’, to encompass a whole range of intensity. The number of terms that are variously used both in academia and the press to refer to this kind of comedy/humour is perhaps indicative of the many nuances that it can take on and of its slippery and elusive nature. However, faced with the task of having to choose a title for this collection, we selected taboo and contro- versial as our two focal points. ‘Taboo’ is hopefully evocative enough to immediately conjure up examples of and issues concerning the intended subject, whereas the choice of the term ‘controversial’ refl ects a conscious effort towards terminological neutrality. As opposed to adjectives such as ‘offensive’ and ‘rude’, for instance, ‘controversial’ appears to allow for less of a disapproving stance, thus mainly accomplishing a description of what the effect of this kind of comedy usually is, i.e. creating controversy on its appropriateness vs. inappropriateness. Although most academic literature and even journalistic discourse on controversial comedy often mention the ‘fi ne line’ between humour and offense and have sometimes veered towards a call for a more responsible and ethical use of taboo humour (e.g. Lockyer and Pickering 2005 ), we argue that a similar angle is beyond the scope and intention of this volume. In fact, this collection is meant to present scholarly research on issues concerning and arising from the 2 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA use of controversial comedy in different forms of television programming without necessarily offering value judgements on it. This specifi c intention is refl ected in the following chapters, which tackle taboo comedy from a multiplicity of different approaches and points of view. More specifi cally, under the umbrella phrase ‘taboo humour’ we mean to encompass the whole spectrum of comedy themes and subjects with which potential audiences might struggle because of its unconventional and at times intentionally shocking nature. Partially based on Allan and Burridge’s ( 2006 ) classifi cation of taboo in language, these include the following thematic categories: – dark humour: humour about death, sickness, and disability; – sexual humour: humour relying on explicit sexual references, situ- ations, or practices; – racial, ethnic, and minority humour, including sexist, homopho- bic, transphobic humour, and humour directed at the elderly; – gross-out/sick humour: humour relying on references to faeces (scatological humour) or other bodily fl uids, and other traditional Western taboos such as incest and cannibalism; – sacrilegious/blasphemous humour: humour targeting established religious beliefs and dogmas, and the ministers of those religions; – physical appearance humour: humour involving deformity and other, non-normative traits, such as being overweight, short, or bald. The possible intersections of these categories are obviously theoreti- cally infi nite, as are the potential thematic overlaps among these spheres of taboo humour and the gamut of linguistic modes used to express them. However, albeit purposely broad, they represent a useful starting point to approach the variety of taboo comedy in current television programming. Beyond the themes that taboo comedy touches upon, an analysis of the different forms of controversial humour on television cannot overlook the fact that its production, appreciation, and reception are not stand- alone occurrences, but need to be interpreted in light of specifi c cultural, industrial, and even political tensions, e.g. the value attached to the appre- ciation vs. rejection of taboo, edgy, and politically incorrect comedy in certain cultural and political circles, personal sense of humour and taste, and the contexts of production, reception, and distribution of comedy based on controversial subjects and language. Also, how do the constant changes in the media landscape—such as the existence of multiple and TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 3 niche platforms on which television content is available—affect the use of taboo humour? Does niche programming necessarily correspond to a greater use of taboo subjects and—potentially—comedy? Are controver- sial language and themes necessary elements to achieve the status of qual- ity television (Akass and McCabe 2007 )? Furthermore, how does the use of politically incorrect language for humorous purposes relate to the pos- sible regulatory intervention of institutions or authorities in order to pre- vent the use of this kind of humour? And what are the ways in which TV production and distribution cultures position themselves and willingly or unwillingly interact with such topics? What are the boundaries—if there are any—between acceptable and unacceptable comedy? In an attempt to discuss—if not provide answers to—the issues raised by the subject matter in this collection, the next two sections will address some of the themes and issues related to taboo and controversial comedy from the points of view of the macro disciplines of Humour and Television Studies, respectively. TABOO COMEDY AND HUMOUR STUDIES The potential for humour in a number of different contexts in human life and society has in itself been responsible for a wide range of different approaches to the study of humour and comedy, which makes Humour Studies an exceptionally interdisciplinary fi eld. While many of the chap- ters in this collection delve into theories of humour and comedy in more detail, it might be useful here to look in broader terms at the ways in which some of those theories and concepts try to respond to the tensions addressed by taboo comedy. One way in which existing humour scholarship can be valuable is in its contributions to the discussion of two central and recurring themes in the discourse on controversial comedy in general: on the one hand, the production and reception/appreciation of taboo humour and, on the other hand, the tension between the unacceptability or inappropriateness of taboo comedy and the legitimacy of humour addressing any sphere of human life. As far as issues relating to the production and reception/appreciation are concerned—in other words, how and why people create and/or appre- ciate taboo comedy—some theories of humour in general have been com- monly used to illuminate the dynamics and the mechanisms at play in this kind of humour. Two of the theoretical frameworks that have been most 4 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA commonly associated with controversial humour are superiority theory and incongruity theory. Superiority theory—which is usually associated with Plato, Aristotle, and Hobbes—addresses the more negative and aggressive components of humour, claiming that laughter is triggered by a feeling of superiority experienced by people towards an object, a situation, or a person. A further contribution of superiority theory to the theoriza- tion of taboo humour, however, can be found in Plato’s description of the ambivalent emotions originating from observing other people in dis- tressful situations. Plato’s view is also often considered as a forerunner of the ambivalence theory of humour, in which humour is seen as deriving from the perception of two opposite emotions. The connection between incongruity theory and taboo humour, on the other hand, seems to lie in the fact that, similarly to incongruous humour in general, taboo humour usually juxtaposes either content (death, disability, etc.) with a seemingly inappropriate form (comedy, jokes, farce, etc.) or two contrasting situa- tions (bad timing, inappropriate circumstances), with a typical example being gallows humour, in which humour is created in stressful, oppressing situations. Support for the incongruous nature of taboo humour is also found in the Freudian concept of ‘displacement’ (Freud 1963 ), which implies a shift of emphasis that allows the teller of the joke to disguise the joke’s aim and to reveal it at the most unexpected moment, thus acting as a subverter of expectations that is paramount for the dynamics of taboo humour (Colletta 2003 : 28–29). Indeed, psychoanalytic theory has contributed a number of concepts aimed at an understanding of the darker aspects of humour, with Freud being one of its key fi gures. In terms of the production of jokes, Freud identifi es a number of different jokework techniques—such as displace- ment, condensation, and unifi cation—and further distinguishes between innocent (or non-tendentious) jokes and hostile (or tendentious) jokes. In non-tendentious jokes pleasure derives purely from the aesthetic enjoy- ment of the cognitive technique involved, whereas tendentious jokes express unconscious, aggressive instincts that are temporarily allowed to be directed against someone or something. As Colletta notes, these jokes allow individuals to successfully circumvent ‘the obstacles to desire that society and education have erected’ ( 2003 : 29) and serve to appease what would normally be considered aggressive or socially unacceptable desires. Colletta compares this function of tendentious jokes to that of dark humour, which in a similar way allows for ‘rebellion against oppres- sive circumstances and liberation from pressure’ ( 2003 : 29). TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 5 As explored by research in psychology, key to an understanding of why people produce and appreciate taboo humour is also the idea of humour as a coping mechanism. Partially echoing Freud’s theory claiming that the surplus energy that is not associated with negative feelings when people fi nd themselves in distressing circumstances is instead released through humour and laughter, more recent empirical studies have explored the function of humour as a moderator of life stress and as a tool to improve the quality of life (Martin and Lefcourt 1983 ; Lefcourt and Martin 1986 ; Martin et al. 2003 ). Although these studies mainly address the use of humour in general, it isn’t diffi cult to hypothesize a more specifi c correla- tion between coping and taboo humour. Particularly, some see the use of dark humour in and by minority groups—for example among women and ethnic minorities—as a device to overcome situations of distress and oppression. Typically, some kinds of Jewish humour have been interpreted as direct expressions of this function of dark humour, as have the so-called disaster jokes (Smyth 1986 ; Oring 1992 ; Kuipers 2011 ), which in the dig- ital age now appear in a matter of minutes after a catastrophe or calamity and which according to Oring ( 1992 ) speak to notions of ‘decency’ and ‘unspeakability’ as they deal with situations that go beyond their content and concern, more in general, their capability of conjoining ‘an unspeak- able, and hence incongruous, universe of discourse to a speakable one’ (Oring 1992 , 35). Finally, similarly to dead baby jokes (Dundes 1979 , 1987 ), disas- ter jokes—the more recent incarnations of which appeared in the wake of the 2015 and 2016 terrorist attacks in Europe—beg the question of what factors affect the appreciation vs. rejection of dark or taboo humour. Humour research has investigated a number of factors that seem to play a role in individual humour preferences, such as gender, age, class (Kuipers 2006 ), and even mood at the moment in which the humorous stimuli are provided (Martin 1998 ; Ruch 1998 ). For instance, with the help of their Humour Style Questionnaire, Martin et al. ( 2003 ) have identifi ed four possible humour styles—‘affi liative’, ‘aggressive’, ‘self-enhancing’, and ‘self- defeating’—which seem to indicate, both in terms of humour production and appreciation, the existence of individual preferences. Aggressive humour is the preference that would more closely resemble an appreciation for taboo comedy. The second of the two broad themes mentioned previously, the unac- ceptability/inappropriateness of taboo comedy, is at the centre of a long- standing debate when it comes to popular culture and one that concerns 6 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA the attempt to identify the fl eeting boundaries of taboo or ‘offensive’ com- edy. This debate, which ultimately comes down to the tension between the appropriateness of taboo comedy and the legitimacy of humour address- ing any sphere of human life and freedom of speech, can be framed in terms of the pragmatics of humour. Similarly to all other forms of human interaction, instances of humour do not occur in a vacuum but have a context of delivery, which includes specifi c participants—who delivers the humour/comedy? who is the audience?—and a specifi c communicative setting. However, the crucial relationship between the content of comedy and the context in which it is delivered is not always given the relevance that it deserves as an interpretive tool. Often when we talk about the inappropriateness of something, we fail to see that the concept itself is relative, since it always implies reference to a specifi c context (appropriate for whom? in what situation?). Inappropriateness as an attribute is relative and not absolute, just like taboos tend to be relative and not absolute. When University College London professor Tim Hunt made what was perceived as a sexist joke at the World Conference of Science Journalists in 2015, and when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and New York City mayor Bill de Blasio engaged in a racially charged joke at a fundrais- ing event in April 2016, controversy soon arose at the international level. However, in denouncing the unacceptability of these attempted jokes not many made explicit the importance of the context of interaction and deliv- ery of the intended humorous content. In other words, while it might have been acceptable for an African-American comic to deliver the same joke on Coloured People Time (CP Time) at a comedy club, the fact that two white, prominent, political fi gures used the joke at a public event raises several issues concerning power and hegemony, which are only par- tially mitigated by the fact that Bill de Blasio, who delivered the CP Time line, is married to an African-American woman. Particularly, in the interactional context of comedy involving in-group/ out-group and centre/periphery (Davies 1990 ) dynamics—such as, but not limited to, racist/ethnic, homophobic, and sexist humour—it seems crucial to take into consideration the directionality of humour, i.e. who the sender and the recipient of the humorous message are, which can signifi cantly contribute to determining the underlying reasons why taboo humour is perceived as generally inappropriate when delivered by a mem- ber of a majority group addressing a minority group, whereas the opposite is generally considered less problematic. TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 7 In the debate on the use or abuse of taboo humour, this tension has recently been encoded in the ‘punching down’ vs. ‘punching up’ dichot- omy, with the former ultimately implying an alignment with existing hegemonic structures and the latter trying to expose socio-economic inequality, or metaphorically punching the perpetrators and not the victims. The concept of ‘punching up’ is similar to what Krefting refers to as ‘charged humour’, the idea that ‘charged humour relies on identifi ca- tion with struggles and issues associated with being a second-class citizen and rallies listeners around some focal point be that cultural, corporeal, or racial/ethnic similarities’ (Krefting 2014 , 5). On the other hand, echoing the sentiment of many detractors of ‘punching down’ humour, Krefting sees the comedians who purposely use taboo content as merely employing a rhetorical device mainly based on shock value and devoid of any political or social critique, a generic ‘anti-political correctness’ stand in the name of free speech. By contrast, many comics, including Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock, have been vocal about the effect that political correctness has had on the appreciation of their comedy routines, particularly on US college campuses, where—in part because of the polemic involving trig- ger warnings (Hume 2015 )—a large portion of students seems to react strongly to humour based on sensitive issues. The tension between the use of taboo humour and the legitimacy of making fun of any facet of human life and society is still very much at the centre of the debate, with come- dians being scrutinized in their comedy routines not just on stage but also on social media, and sometimes being forced to apologize for seem- ingly ill-advised jokes. Furthermore, the discussion is complicated by the subtlety and complexity of the intention of the speaker and their delivery. Since, as Gournelos and Greene note, ‘we can never be quite certain who is laughing, how they’re laughing, or why they’re laughing […]’ ( 2011 , xviii), one might legitimately wonder whether using politically incorrect humour is an effective way of breaking taboos and exposing hypocrisy or whether it simply perpetuates crass stereotypes on—among others—rac- ism, misogyny, homophobia, rape, and mental and physical disability. Lastly, we would be remiss if in an overview of the factors affecting the perception of the appropriateness of taboo humour we didn’t mention the signifi cance of culture-bound aspects. Just like the appreciation of contro- versial comedy may depend on factors such as age, gender, and personality traits, the likelihood is worth mentioning that—for a number of historical, political, and religious reasons—certain cultures may display a higher or lower tolerance for humour based on subjects and language perceived as 8 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA taboo. For instance, Hofstede et al.’s empirical research ( 2010 ) seems to point to the existence of recognizable national traits and values according to categories such as uncertainty avoidance, power distance, and gender roles, which, when applied to humour, in turn would explain why some cultures have a higher appreciation for humour based on nonsense or incongruity. Moreover, these categories, together with a country’s histori- cal background, may also explain why certain kinds of taboo comedy are more tolerated than others within the same culture. TABOO COMEDY AND TELEVISION STUDIES As mentioned above, humour always originates from a specifi c context, and controversial comedy is no exception. Therefore, when taboo material is included in a television show, the jokes—as imagined by performers and producers, and then properly embraced by audiences—often need to take into account not only the nature and structure of the wordplay or the spe- cifi c references employed, but also the specifi c traits of TV as a language, a technique, and a medium. In some ways, a clash is constantly developed and managed between the ‘exception’ constituted by humour and the regularity of ‘current’ television, often resulting in a stronger comedic effect. Taboo comedy does not completely fi t inside the small screen, its rules and its schemes, and this confl ict makes it more diffi cult and power- ful at the same time. From a perspective grounded in Television Studies, it is useful here to outline at least some of these challenges, irregulari- ties, and (explicit or implicit) contrasts, highlighting three different con- tinuums that have emerged as particularly relevant, both historically and more recently. These contrasts defi ne a complex fi eld of relations where controversial comedy can be positioned and, in fact, constantly positions itself: a fi eld that is incessantly modifi ed by the stretching of boundaries or by the changes occurring in the TV industry and in society at large. The fi rst continuum is the one between mainstream and niche. On the one side, television has been—and mainly still is today—a mass medium, offering its shows, series, imageries, and stars to the largest possible audi- ence, and trying to build and engage a wide, invisible community made up of different and geographically spread out people. The very nature of broadcasting, in fact, implies the simultaneous transmission of its messages to a wide, undifferentiated public. As a consequence, two of the staples of television are, on the one hand, the traditional logic of L.O.P.—the ‘least objectionable programming’, a common denominator aimed at not TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 9 hurting the sensitivity of the majority of the audience—and, on the other hand, the more general need not to exclude or leave out anyone from the pleasures of television viewing for both editorial and commercial reasons (Gitlin 1983 ; Mittell 2010 ). Controversial humour constantly struggles and engages with such basic assumptions, pushing to expand the limits of the medium, and at the same time adopting those limits as a major device to obtain laughter and success. Consequently, the informal rule that implies that the target of television is the largest possible audience acts as a constraint that taboo comedy always has to abide by (or some- how address), in some ways diminishing the power and extent of this kind of humour. Moreover, this rule constitutes a shared and acknowledged trait defi ning the medium, which performers must (and want to) accept, adapting their comedic material to this specifi c kind of audience. At the same time, once again, this rule provides controversial comedy with an irresistible and unlimited tension to push these boundaries, to overturn the general assumptions and expectations of TV audiences, to constantly expand the limits of what it is possible to say, show, and perform on televi- sion. Thanks to this tension, taboo comedy is able to follow the rules and break them at the same time, to include fresh and original perspectives into a common ground of habits and repetitions. Controversial humour on network and mainstream television breaks boundaries, and in doing so it also adjusts to them. On the opposite side of the same continuum, cable, satellite, and digital outlets offer a wider space for taboo comedy. By defi nition, they break and expand the limits of what can be represented, redefi ne humour inside a logic of ‘quality television’ and premium pro- gramming targeting specifi c niche audiences, and therefore are able—and somewhat proud—to create distinction and to stimulate controversy. Even in those cases, however, complete freedom is not possible and not allowed, in part because boundaries and constraints constitute a fundamental part of what makes taboo comedy work. Nevertheless, thematic and niche channels become a prolifi c space for controversial humour, often normal- izing it and using it as a positioning and promotional tool, as a rhetorical and marketing device. However, in both cases—the breaking of a general rule for mainstream networks and the more regular presence on targeted platforms—the spaces dedicated to provocative comedy enjoy an excep- tional status and a sort of ‘double-standard’, offering a hint of revolution in a generally fi xed context. Even in the most ground-breaking cases, TV comedy is taboo only as long as it remains suitable to the medium it is inserted into. 10 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA The second continuum involves the tension between reality and imag- ery, truth and carefully built representation. Taboo comedy plays a role in the perpetual television balance between the informative role of ‘showing the truth’—e.g. in the news—and the symbolic reading and manipula- tion of such reality—e.g. in entertainment genres or fi ction. On the one hand, controversial humour is a way to directly expose what happens in the world, to engage with the truth, to confront and to respond to a reality that is already in place. Here television breaks the fourth wall to show a more complex, varied, and truthful depiction of aspects we are used to hiding or forgetting. On the other hand, this kind of comedy necessarily exaggerates, distorts, and deforms such reality—for example through hyperbole, irony, detachment, and emphasis—thus highlighting the inauthenticity behind representation. Television humour exposes the truth, often recurring to artifi ciality. As it has been highlighted for comedy genres (Marc 1996 , 1997 ; Gray 2008 ), parody (Thompson 2011 ) and satire (Gray et al. 2009 ; Meijer Drees and De Leeuw 2015 ), as a result of its immediacy, familiarity, and liveness, television plays a double role in strengthening the effect of the truth, while at the same time clearly reveal- ing the tricks and production effects, the reality of its artifi ce. Moreover, TV comedy—including taboo humour—often does not take a clear posi- tion but indulges in a fruitful duplicity, seemingly able to provide both a liberal and a conservative approach to reality and its changes. Taboo humour can be ‘relevant’, opening the space of the small screen to unseen and unnoticed social issues with a progressive stance, and can also be a way of mocking and demonizing such issues, ridiculing the idea of a progressive stance (Marc 1997 ; Mills 2005 , 2009 ; Dalton and Linder 2005 ; Morreale 2003 ). In their long-lasting fi ght, both politically correct and controversial humour on TV become ways to establish a point of view. These struggles and negotiations between different perspectives—by comedians, produc- ers, networks, and all the other parties involved—confi rm this crucial power of comedy to frame, shape, and present a ‘biased’ reality. The third continuum contrasts long-term programming and one-off events. The majority of TV shows are serialized, spanning over multiple episodes across a single season and over multiple seasons year after year, and furthermore expanding with spin-offs, sequels, remakes, collections, reruns, and on-demand libraries. This is another fundamental feature of television and broadcasting (Kompare 2005 ), and its result is a fre- quent repetition of the same text, or at least of similar contents, models, schemes, patterns, and jokes. While TV comedy in general is often rein- forced by its constant reiteration, by consolidating the viewers’ affection TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 11 towards on-screen personalities and by introducing sitcoms and comedy shows in daily or weekly familiar habits, such repetition constitutes a great challenge for subversive humour. In fact, what appears to be innovative, unexpected, and revolutionary when it is fi rst shown on TV, ends up being less powerful once it is inserted in a cycle of slight modifi cations and con- stant reruns. The infringement of taboos—or the provocative challenge of shared topoi, clichés, and stereotypes—is therefore incisive in its fi rst occurrences, but the unexpected divergence from the norm is soon dimin- ished by repetition. The ground-breaking role of sharp sitcoms or stand-up comedy shows follows here a process of domestication and accommoda- tion, transforming ‘real’ taboo humour into a weaker—yet closer, more familiar, and more immediate—form of comedy. Revolution becomes the (new) norm, and the constant fl ow of programming plays an important role in this transformation. By contrast, controversial comedy appears to enjoy an easier and less compromised space in stand-alone events, one-off shows or guest appearances, where the strength of taboos is not weakened by everyday regularity. In this scenario, censorship, control, and polemical discourse, both on television and outside the box, are a good way of ‘even- tizing’ the linear and repetitive series of episodes, highlighting a deviation from the norm and putting a single moment of television—‘worth watch- ing’, or even impossible to watch—in the spotlight. The three fi elds of opposite forces briefl y outlined here encompass some of the issues that arise when taboo/controversial humour is included in television programming, thus following the rules, constraints, and the strengths of this medium and its language. All these underlying topics chal- lenge the defi nitions of taboo comedy: the obvious need to interact with large numbers of people, the pressure to abide by certain boundaries and to stress them, the tension between the effect of reality and its complex con- struction, the always-present yet hidden framing of such reality, the repeti- tion of episodes, seasons, and reruns, and the breaking of this usual scheme with events and once-in-a-lifetime television bits. These can help under- stand the complex, sometimes contradictory, yet very interesting presence of taboo comedy across a large number of TV shows and networks. A LARGE AND COMPLEX FIELD OF STUDY This edited collection provides an exploration of the phenomenon of taboo comedy and controversial humour on television. Throughout these essays, the topics briefl y addressed in this chapter—the defi nition and the status of this kind of jokes and laughter, its roles and effects, and the complex 12 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA relationship with the medium—are deeply scrutinized and analyzed from different perspectives, and with the help of a large number of examples. Some chapters adopt a mainly historical approach, focusing on important moments in television—as well as social—history, while other chapters adopt a more contemporary stance, highlighting how current television is permeated and shaped by multiple contradictory forces. The range of top- ics includes different kinds of taboos, involving religion and sex, national- ity and ethnicity, death and politics, gender and disgust; however, despite the differences in the objects of analysis, as well as in research methods and historical/critical approaches, some common traits emerge through- out the book, including the role of public service, the responsibility of commercial television, the space for regulation and censorship, excess and its (im)possible limits, the specifi cities of comedic performances, comedic stardom, and television’s layered relationship with its audiences. To give an order to such rich and complex material, two main criteria have been adopted. The fi rst one is geographical. Although both the book’s authors and approach are global, the majority of examples and case studies refers to the US and UK television systems. It is a deliber- ate choice, for a number of reasons: fi rstly, the wealth of these media environments provides the most solid grounds and the best structural conditions for the development not only of controversial humour on television, but also of an on-going discussion of and debate on the vari- ous issues involved; secondly, the global circulation and distribution of US and British TV shows and stars provide an easier ‘common ground’ and a shared framework for readers, who will at least have some famil- iarity with the examples provided and can engage with the case studies; lastly, both the US and the UK television systems are important mod- els for other countries in developing, modifying, and regulating taboo humour. A second criterion has to do with TV genres, which constitute the fi rst level of organization and structure for these essays. The fi rst section of the volume features essays involving scripted programming and fi ctional shows, especially comedies—including sitcoms—and dra- mas; the second section focuses mainly on non-scripted and non-fi ction genres, with insights on stand-up comedy, variety shows, commercials, and the vast category of factual programming, reality and life-style shows. It is worth mentioning that we have adopted the traditional distinction between scripted and unscripted shows, although we are aware that it is indicative of specifi c industrial conventions rather than actual writing, production, and consumption practices. TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 13 Part I of this book opens with an essay by Christie Davies , which criti- cally and historically analyzes the ‘culture wars’ that took place in the UK behind the scenes of the BBC comedy department. With constant refer- ences to archival documents and TV scripts, Davies explores the oscilla- tions of comedy programmes between censorship and creative freedom, highlighting the internal and external forces at play, the slow emergence of politically correct policies, and the constant connections between TV comedy and secularization. Kristen A. Murray discusses the role of dark humour and the different perceptions of death through television comedy, as depicted in a large number of series and sitcoms approaching the end of life in multiple ways. Death is a fundamental aspect of our lives, yet it is a topic increasingly removed from general discourse. However, by jok- ing about and laughing at funerals, corpses, hospitals, drugs, ageing, and sanity, drama and comedy series help audiences to correctly and playfully deal with this issue. Dark humour is also used by contemporary society to express and hide its deepest feelings. The following chapter, by Carter Soles , selects three US and Canadian TV series ( Arrested Development , Trailer Park Boys , and Party Down ) as interesting examples of the constant cultural appropriation of race by white-male-oriented comedy. Indulging in the fantasy of a post-racial society, these cult shows actually exploit dif- ferent races and cultures, adopt racist stereotypes on African-Americans and Latinos, and project the weaknesses of the dominant group onto a derisive approach to blackness. In the process of recognizing and expos- ing racism, these shows contradict their own goals, and fall into a differ- ent kind of racism. Matt Sienkiewicz adopts a psychoanalytical approach, using US series Archer as a tool to engage with Freudian theory. Animated comedies are able to include complex and subtle elements into a larger pleasurable text, and become a good way to express the most repressed elements of the human psyche. Archer , in particular, has set the oedipal fi xation as a constant background narrative, thus allowing viewers to read the text and its context as dreams in the dreamscape, with both an author- centred approach focused on producers and a reader-centred point of view exploring the audience and its feelings. In the last chapter in Part I, Kyle Conway explores Canadian sitcom Little Mosque on the Prairie and its role in humanizing Muslims through its characters and in erasing differences within the national community. Following a critical production studies approach, by means of interviews with professionals involved in the mak- ing of the series, Conway refl ects on how minorities sitcoms constitute an entry point to television—albeit through a ‘narrow door’—in some 14 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA ways leaving out negative emotions and other parts of the human experi- ence. Conway’s analysis of regulation, commercialism, and media logics helps in understanding the different possible levels of multiculturalism, and explains the on-going persistence of taboos and stereotypes. Part II of the volume opens with a chapter by Philip Scepanski , which in some ways acts as a link between the two sections of the book. Scepanski investigates the comedic reactions that followed the 9/11 attacks and that contributed to reinforcing the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’, espe- cially against Muslims. With an overview of animated sitcoms followed by a meticulous analysis of stand-up comedy shows by Carlos Mencia and Jeff Dunham, Scepanski demonstrates how the racist depiction of the other, often with the excuse of laughing at the enemy, reinforces cultural and political conservatism, justifi es xenophobia, exploits fear for commercial purposes, and works as a strategy for viewers and advertisers. Evan Elkins analyzes the long-lasting confl ict between politically correct comedy and free speech, and investigates the appropriateness of joking on taboo topics. Elkins explores the censorship of some stand-up com- edy routines on US networks in the early 1990s, including Andrew Dice Clay and Martin Lawrence on Saturday Night Live and the well-known case of Bill Hicks’ performance which was edited out of the Late Show with David Letterman . A tension between different logics ends up both celebrating and chastising controversial and potentially offensive comic material. Ethan Thompson selects a Comedy Central show, Tosh.0 , in an attempt to offer a better understanding of the relationship between convergent television, younger male demographics, and the boundaries of what is socially acceptable in comedy. Through an analysis of the structure of the show, Thompson highlights the ‘post-politically correct’ approach adopted by the programme, the multiple occasions for viewer participa- tion (and ridicule, if not humiliation), and the recurring jokes on sexuality and race/ethnicity. A fi gure of ‘contemporary trickster’ clearly emerges, which accepts racial and sexual identities as unproblematic, and thus chal- lenges and crosses traditional boundaries. The chapter by Elsa Simoes Lucas Freitas focuses on television commercials and the ways in which taboo humour works—or struggles—in advertising. After a close analysis of the structural elements involved and of the similarities between jokes and commercials, Freitas investigates how advertisers trade the viewers’ attention for the entertainment value of the ads. Through the examples of Super Bowl commercials and Portuguese campaigns involving offense, grossness, or sexual innuendos, it becomes clear how taboo humour is an TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 15 effective yet potentially risky practice. Delia Chiaro shifts the focus to reality television, lifestyle and factual programming, and analyzes the UK show How Clean is Your House? to discuss the various functions of laugh- ter in response to shocking yet comical situations involving fi lth and dirt. The ironic detachment and the funny reaction to embarrassing moments are textual devices punctuating the narrative of the show and directly con- necting with the audience, thus reinforcing the appeal of the programme. Lastly, Brett Mills explores the diffi culties for authorities to regulate and recognize humour, as well as to apply the ‘special freedom’ granted to the genre in specifi c circumstances. By commenting on examples from some controversial episodes of BBC’s Top Gear , including jokes on race, nation- ality, and sexuality, Mills highlights the complexities and contradictions emerging in the reaction to live television banter, the confl icts between professionals and in-production routines, the diffi culty in making sense of audience responses and complaints, and the unpredictable differences between the jokes that are perceived as taboo and the ones that go unno- ticed and do not stimulate further discussion. By presenting a rich and complex set of examples, perspectives, topics, television genres, ways of laughing, and objects to laugh at, this collection and its chapters aim at defi ning and expanding the scholarship on taboo comedy and on the television spaces devoted to taboo. The volume offers an in-depth discussion of—among others—the boundaries of TV represen- tations, the effects of comedy, censorship, and regulation, new and old ste- reotypes, and the cathartic role of laughter. Hopefully, the issues raised here will be a valuable stepping stone for further questions and research for the benefi t of scholars and students in both Humour and Television Studies. BIBLIOGRAPHY Akass, Kim, and Janet McCabe. 2007. Sex, Swearing and Respectability: Courting Controversy, HBO’s Original Programming and Producing Quality TV. In Quality TV. Contemporary American Television and Beyond , ed. Kim Akass, and Janet McCabe, 62–76. London: I.B. Tauris. Allan, Keith, and Kate Burridge. 2006. Forbidden Words Taboo and the Censoring of Language . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colletta, Lisa. 2003. Dark Humour and Social Satire in the Modern British Novel. Triumph of Narcissism . Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Dalton, Mary M., and Laura L. Linder (ed). 2005. The Sitcom Reader. America Viewed and Skewed . Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 16 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA Davies, Christie. 1990. Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Dundes, Alan. 1979. The Dead Baby Joke Cycle. Western Folklore 38(3): 145–157. ———. 1987. Cracking Jokes: Studies of Sick Humor Cycles & Stereotypes . Berkeley: Ten Speed Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1963. Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious . New York: Norton. Gitlin, Todd. 1983. Inside Prime Time . New York: Pantheon Books. Gournelos, Ted, and Viveca Greene. 2011. Introduction. In A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America , ed. Ted Gournelos, and Viveca Greene, vi–xxxv. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Gray, Jonathan. 2008. Television Entertainment . London: Routledge. Gray, Jonathan, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson (ed). 2009. Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era . New York: New York University Press. Hofstede, Geert, Geert Jan Hofstede, and Michael Minkov. 2010. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind . New York: McGraw-Hill. Hume, Mick. 2015. Trigger Warning Is the Fear of Being Offensive Killing Free Speech? London: William Collins. Kompare, Derek. 2005. Rerun Nation. How Repeats Invented American Television . London: Routledge. Krefting, Rebecca. 2014. All Joking Aside. American Humor and Its Discontents . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kuipers, Giselinde. 2006. Good Humor, Bad Taste . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ———. 2011. “Where Was King Kong When We Needed Him?”: Public Discourse, Digital Disaster Jokes, and the Function of Laughter after 9/11. In A Decade of Dark Humor: How Comedy, Irony, and Satire Shaped Post-9/11 America , ed. Ted Gournelos, and Viveca Greene, vi–xxxv. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. Lefcourt, Herbert M., and Rod A. Martin. 1986. Humor and Life Stress: Antidote to Adversity . New York: Springer. Lockyer, Sharon, and Michael Pickering. 2005. Beyond a Joke: The Limits of Humour . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Marc, David. 1996. Demographic Vistas: Television in American Culture . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ———. 1997. Comic Visions. Television Comedy & American Culture . Malden, MA: Blackwell. Martin, Rod A. 1998. Approaches to the Sense of Humor: A Historical Review. In The Sense of Humor. Explorations of a Personality Characteristic , ed. W. Ruch, 15–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. TABOO COMEDY ON TELEVISION: ISSUES AND THEMES 17 Martin, Rod A., and Herbert M. Lefcourt. 1983. Sense of Humor as a Moderator of the Relationship Between Stressors and Moods. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45: 1313–1324. Martin, Rod A., Patricia Puhlik-Doris, Gwen Larsen, Jeanette Gray, and Kelly Weir. 2003. Individual Differences in Uses of Humor and Their Relation to Psychological Well-being: Development of the Humor Styles Questionnaire. Journal of Research in Personality 37(1): 48–75. Meijer Drees, Marijke, and Sonja De Leeuw (ed). 2015. The Power of Satire . Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Mills, Brett. 2005. Television Sitcom . London: BFI. ———. 2009. The Sitcom . Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mittell, Jason. 2010. Television and American Culture . New York: Oxford University Press. Morreale, Joanne (ed). 2003. Critiquing the Sitcom. A Reader . Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Oring, Elliot. 1992. Jokes and Their Relations . Lexington: University of Kentucky Press. Ruch, Willibald (ed). 1998. The Sense of Humor. Explorations of a Personality Characteristic . Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Smyth, Willie. 1986. Challenger Jokes and the Humor of Disaster. Western Folklore 45(4): 243–260. Thompson, Ethan. 2011. Parody and Taste in Post-War American Television Culture . London: Routledge. 18 C. BUCARIA AND L. BARRA PART I Controversial Humour in Comedy and Drama Series 21 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016 C. Bucaria, L. Barra (eds.), Taboo Comedy, Palgrave Studies in Comedy, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-59338-2_2 The Rise and Fall of Taboo Comedy in the BBC Christie Davies C. Davies () University of Reading , Reading , UK e-mail: j.c.h.davies@reading.ac.uk A historical account of the responses to questionable comedy within or in response to the BBC can be divided into two very different eras of confl ict. The fi rst of these, the internal ‘war against smut’, stretched from the very inception of the BBC in 1922, when it was given a monopoly over all UK radio, and later television, paid for by a compulsory licence fee, to 1960, when Sir Hugh Carleton Greene became the new Director-General. His appointment was a response to the crisis within BBC Television caused by the ending of its monopoly in 1955, when the Independent Television Authority began transmitting programmes funded by commercial adver- tising. Before Greene’s appointment, the producers of comedy that might offend were involved in an endless on-going internal fi ght with the BBC bureaucrats who tried to repress anything they found offensive. Greene gave the producers their freedom, but this only moved the confl ict some- where else, for the freer broadcasting of offensive comedy led to a culture war with those outside who vigorously objected to it. During the time of its monopoly, and for a few years afterwards, the BBC operated almost as if it was a branch of the civil service when provid- ing public service broadcasting. It was independent of the government, but the way its administrators were organized in a hierarchy, the outlook that went with this and the enormous emphasis placed on enforcing policy from the centre and on formal paperwork was that of the mandarins of the British civil service. Censorship of comedy was rigorous, particularly in relation to humour about sex or scatology, to the use of ‘bad language’ or to the mockery of religion. An elaborate code of prohibitions was imposed on radio and TV producers, and through them on performers and writ- ers. There were even occasions in the 1940s when the Director-General himself, rendered apoplectic by a single joke contrary to ‘policy’, would intervene, fi ring off irate memoranda and demanding that those respon- sible for it be chastised. The situation changed radically when a new libertarian Director- General, Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, was appointed in 1960. Greene unleashed the producers and the comedy writers, and they came up with a series of comedy programmes characterized by bad language, smut and irreverence to the Christian religion that caused great offence but attracted exceptionally large audiences. The old-style administrative hier- archy were so conditioned to accepting and implementing orders from the top that they gave up ‘the war against dirt’ and became the enablers of the new comedy. Some of them disagreed with the changes, but the party line had changed and democratic centralism prevailed. The younger ones among them, particularly those recently recruited to run the expanding television service, welcomed the changes. It was anyway a time of very rapid social change in the wider society, changes that had nothing to do with the BBC, and the new generation saw the world very differently from their elders. Thanks to Greene, the comedy producers could now defy the administrators with impunity. The upholders of the old order still in offi ce were not always happy with this, but they were well aware that the tide of social change outside the BBC was running strongly against them, and it was easier to drift with it rather than fi ght the new Director-General. Even so, John Arkell, Director of Administration, wrote to Greene oppos- ing, in Tracey’s words, the new ‘untrammelled freedom of the producer’, with the role of the layers above being not to control but to cushion the pressure from outside. If this were BBC policy, Arkell added in an acid aside, ‘then the TV service is being run by a staff with an average age of twenty-seven’ (Tracey 1983 , 219). However, the centre of the confl icts had now moved from inside the BBC to being one between the BBC and its external critics. 22 C. DAVIES Those who resented most this new wave of smutty and irreverent com- edy were the people outside the organization who had loved the ancien régime , the old BBC known as Auntie, precisely because it was prim and proper, respectable and responsible. In particular, their indignation was expressed through the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association (NVALA) led by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse. They were quite unable to accept the new comedies that Greene had enabled. They campaigned strongly against them and with considerable personal hostility to Greene himself. They fought a long war of attrition against the transformed BBC and won several tactical victories, including the toppling of Greene him- self (Thompson 2012 , 87–88). But despite these victories, they lost their war against the new permissiveness in broadcast comedy. They lost mainly because the wider social changes that had enabled the BBC to change direction continued, and the large and vocal minority who supported their campaign shrank in size. The remnant lost confi dence in its ability ever to reverse the unwelcome shifts not just in the BBC, but in society at large. British society had become more secular, freer in its sexual behaviour and attitudes and increasingly tolerant of homosexuality. The critics lost the culture war and failed substantially to curb BBC comedy in the ways that mattered to them. THE ERA OF THE LITTLE GREEN BOOK From its inception, the BBC had strongly curbed comedy, which was eas- ily done when radio programmes were made in the studio using carefully vetted scripts, but tensions arose during World War II when outside radio broadcasts became common, often with a live audience of men serving in the armed forces, who were used to ribald humour. This led to trans- gressions that provoked a series of vigorous interventions from as high as the Director-General himself that could reduce the minions dealing with comedy to a state of obsequious groveling. On 30 January 1941, the comedian Sydney Howard introduced an unscripted off-colour gag into a forces programme to the horror of the producer D. Miller and of Jack Payne who was in charge of musical continuity. A badly frightened Payne wrote a very angry letter to Howard, accusing him of doing it maliciously. Payne was minding his back, for he also wrote demeaning letters of apol- ogy and exculpation to Roger H. Eckersley, Organiser of Programmes, to John Watt, Director of Variety and to the Director-General F.W. Ogilvie himself, until he felt he was entirely in the clear and could write, ‘I am THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 23 glad to know, Director-General, that you don’t blame me’. The joke had proved to be no laughing matter. 1 At the end of the war, the BBC began codifying its censorship of com- edy into a set of mandatory written rules. In September 1945, Michael Standing, the Director of Variety, drew up a formal censorship code insist- ing that programmes be entirely free of obscene and blasphemous lan- guage. There was to be no use of ‘God! Good God! My God! Blast! Hell! Damn! Bloody! Gor Blimey! and Ruddy!’ It was followed by the Television Policy Censorship Code of January 1947. In 1948, Standing produced the defi nitive BBC Variety Programmes Policy Guide for Writers and Producers that came to be known as The Green Book. 2 The little Green Book stated sternly that: There is an absolute ban on the following: Jokes about—Lavatories, Pre-natal infl uences, Marital infi delity, Effeminacy in men, Immorality of any kind (as well as) suggestive references to Honeymoon couples, Chambermaids, Fig-leaves, Prostitution, Ladies Underwear e.g. winter draws on, Animal habits, e.g. rabbits, Lodgers (and) Commercial Travelers. Like all such censorship codes, The Green Book was always being extended to include new words and situations. Nothing was ever deleted, but new forbidden items were added whenever there was unease at the top, making it more and more restrictive over time. The comedy performer Nicholas Parsons could still, decades later, ‘remember being told by one producer when recording a stand-up show that I couldn’t use the word naked as a punch line to a joke, it was a banned word in the little Green Book’s guid- ance and censorship’ (Parsons 2008 ). The little Green Book was strict not only on smut but also on irreverence: Sayings of Christ or descriptive of Him are, of course, inadmissible for light entertainment programmes […]. Jokes built around Bible stories, e.g. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, David and Goliath, must also be avoided or any sort of parody of them […]. Reference to and jokes about different reli- gious or religious denominations are banned. The following are also inad- missible:—Jokes or comic songs about spiritualism, christenings, religious ceremonies of any description (e.g. weddings, funerals). The absolutism of the code is emphasized by the instruction that ‘Warming up sequences with studio audiences before broadcasting should conform to the same censorship standards as the programmes 24 C. DAVIES themselves. Sample recordings should be submitted to the same censor- ship as transmissions.’ In other words, the code was not just a means of avoiding complaints from offended listeners but of upholding the inner purity of the BBC, one of Britain’s sacred hierarchies, a special space secluded from the vulgarity and commercialism of the outside world and its laughter. Those responsible for this code of practice for broadcast humour clearly felt that it might give rise to ridicule, should the general public learn of its existence and detailed content, for the fi le is marked as being only for reference and ‘not for circulation’, with a further note that it must be ‘kept in the offi ce and not taken away by outside producers’. The fi les of the BBC reveal just how emphatically the rules were enforced. They are full of edicts, memoranda, and denunciations from senior offi cials directed against errant producers of comedy programmes. Their missives tell us all we need to know about the internal tensions within the Corporation. The use of capital letters to indicate shock-horror is particularly revealing: Cecil McGivern. Television Programme Director to producers. 11 August 1947 Subject. Over-runs and smut. URGENT and IMPORTANT. SMUT There have […] been examples in variety programmes lately of very doubt- ful gags and songs. If a producer is not capable of deciding what is smut and embarrassing to the average householder, then he should not be producing. 3 Poor McGivern, a gifted enabler of new programmes, was under constant pressure from above. On 8 December 1947 he wrote to his superiors in the hierarchy: ‘You will see from the attached the constant war I wage against dirt. The chief reason for the dirt is that our variety producers are young and inexperienced in BBC ways. They must be trained. And are being so. But alas! it takes a little time.’ 4 On 8 October 1952, Ronald Waldman, Head of Light Entertainment, sent a missive to all producers, saying: ‘Twice in the last fi ve weeks we have been treated to the lavatory gag in Light Entertainment Programmes. It is NOT funny and NOT suit- able in television […]. I shall have to treat any further lapses of taste with extreme severity and this must not be considered an idle threat.’ 5 On 24 March 1954, there was a broadside from the Director-General himself, Sir Ian Jacob, to the Director of Television Broadcasting. Jacob complained that the television service was seriously departing from BBC policy and THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 25 standards, notably in its indecent light entertainment programmes and concluded ‘Unless action is taken soon to stop this kind of thing there will very soon be no standards left and the drift downhill will go right through the Corporation.’ 6 These splenetic letters are an indication of a guerrilla war within the BBC between the administrators and those doing the creative work—the producers and performers of comedy. The administrators waged a ‘war against smut’, by which they meant sexual and lavatorial jokes, innuendo and cross-dressing. Their use of angry phrases such as ‘despite orders, remonstration and constant harping’, ‘serious outbreak of questionable and suggestive material’, indicate how upset they were and their rage was backed up by threats. To mark a memorandum URGENT and even URGENT and IMPORTANT, in capital letters, when it deals with a mere joke, indicates the extent of their bile. The administrators sound like petulant schoolmasters haranguing their impudent charges as when they say ‘dirt and nastiness’, ‘it is NOT funny and NOT suitable’. The use of terms like these is guaranteed to produce smirks and sniggers among those thus admonished. In 1947, Cecil McGivern, Television Programme Director, complained that ‘variety producers tend to smile behind their hands whenever I complain of smut in variety shows’. 7 The administrators saw themselves as part of a strict hierarchy imbued with moral purpose, what they would have called the BBC ethos. Obedience was for them a key virtue and directives from above were responded to with great deference partly because the administrators’ careers depended on obeying orders, and partly because they strongly believed they should. The BBC offi cials were alarmed by ‘smut’ in comedy, not just because it might lead to complaints from the public and more alarmingly from the politicians who ultimately controlled the organization’s fi nances but because of the very nature of their employment, which narrowed their minds. They lived in a world of rigid, fi xed, hierarchically arranged cat- egories, as we can see from their compound titles built round the words ‘Director’, ‘Head’, ‘Controller’, and known by complicated acronyms as Tel.P.D., H.L.E. G. Tel, S.P. Man AC(OS), A/ADV. The head of it all, the Director-General, would be referred to in conversation as ‘the D.G.’ even though everyone knew his name. In such a world, ambiguity is suspect and irreverence to authority even more so, but these two things are the very building blocks of comedy. The senior offi cials of the BBC hierarchy were part of the Establishment and linked in sentiment and social background to the senior persons of other 26 C. DAVIES hierarchies, those of the armed forces, the civil service and the church. They had a shared outlook that rejected the commercial world with its vul- garity and the ‘anarchy of the market place’ and upheld traditional author- ity of all kinds. They were particularly likely to be worried about jokes that seemed to mock religion or were indecent. Religious creeds tend to be suspicious and fearful of sexuality and hold up ‘purity’ as an ideal, with pollution as its antithesis. Smutty and scatological humour cuts against such an out- look. As they entered Broadcasting House on their way to their offi ces, the senior BBC offi cials would every day pass a dedication plaque that read (in the classical Latin, which they would all have studied in their youth): This Temple of the Arts and Muses is dedicated to Almighty God by the fi rst Governors of Broadcasting in the year 1931, Sir John Reith being Director- General. It is their prayer that good seed sown may bring forth a good har- vest, that all things hostile to peace or purity may be banished from this house. It was perhaps rather strange that a pagan temple of the Arts and the Muses be dedicated to the Almighty God of the Christians and the Jews. Purity was to be upheld except perhaps when the high seriousness of art required that it be suspended. Comedy did not qualify, and the rules about the use of ‘bad language’ on the air were stricter for comedy than for serious drama. Expletives such as Hell! God! and Damn! were rigorously excluded from light entertainment and replaced by Heck! Gosh! and Darn!, whereas they were allowed in drama to give verisimilitude and there was a reluc- tance to bowdlerize the serious and sententious classics. On 29 April 1954, the Head of Drama Michael Barry wrote to all Drama Producers: URGENT. To be read today. This department has in the last four days trans- mitted a performance using language that it had been agreed should not be used in comedy and used only after careful consideration in serious plays. Far from having a ‘special freedom’, comedy was bound by special restric- tions that did not apply to other kinds of programme that the high-minded mandarins saw as heavily earnest. Only earnestness was important enough to justify wild language. It was forbidden to refer to ‘marital infi delity’ or to ‘immorality of any kind’, ‘except in plays’. There could be no joking about it and certainly none about that most outrageous of vices, ‘effemi- nacy in men (or impersonations)’. 8 Comedy could never contain the kind of redeeming purpose that would make the portrayal of transgression licit. THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 27 The producers of the comedy programmes were by virtue of their trade not part of this world of high seriousness. Unlike the comedy performers, whose relationship with the BBC was temporary, commercial and con- tractual, the producers were part of the BBC staff and had organizational responsibilities, but an individual producer was not, as the higher BBC bureaucrat was, ‘chained to the activity by his entire material and ideal existence […] forged to the community of all the functionaries who are integrated into the mechanism’ (Weber 1948 , 228–229). The producers worked closely with performers, men and women whose main concern was to amuse an audience, often a live outside audience, with whatever material they could get away with. These last were entertainers, a class about as far removed from the senior BBC bureaucrats as could be. The entertainers’ main strength in the marketplace lay in their popularity and, so long as this held up, they had high earnings and were not dependent on employment by the BBC. The salaried producers were stuck in the middle, but even though they were forced to obey the offi cials, their sympathies were likely to be with the entertainers with whom they worked on a regu- lar and intimate basis. The confl icts over humour during the 1940s and 1950s were, then, mainly internal ones, a confl ict of producers and performers versus the BBC’s senior bureaucrats. But even within the ordered hierarchy doubts and cracks were emerging. On 23 July 1963, Graham Miller, the Head of Northern Regional Programmes who was not happy with an explicit ban on jokes about the Profumo sex scandal, wrote in disagreement to R.D.A. Marriott, the Assistant Director of Sound Broadcasting, ending his letter with: ‘But orders are orders and they are being obeyed’. 9 One suspects he is being ironic for the year is 1963, Carleton Greene is the new libertarian Director-General and the old order is crumbling. The war against smut was beginning to be lost. The situation was soon to change radically, with greater internal freedom leading to intense confl ict with those outside determined to uphold the old taboos. THE GREAT CULTURE WAR The patterns of censorship of comedy in the BBC changed rapidly after Hugh Carleton Greene became Director-General in 1960. The Green Book gave way to the Greene book. He unleashed the producers of ribald and irreverent comedy and they made many outrageous series such as That Was the Week That Was (TW3) (1962–1963), Steptoe and Son (1962–1965; 28 C. DAVIES 1970–1974), and Till Death Us Do Part (1965–1968; 1970; 1972–1975) for television, and Round the Horne (1965–1968) for radio. They were all immensely popular. The audience for TW3 , a satire programme that was shown very late in the evening (Hoggart 2005 ), rose from three and a half million when it began to six and a half million by the beginning of 1963 (Tracey 1983 , 207) to 12 million just before it was taken off. In 1966, Harold Wilson, when Prime Minister, successfully demanded that the BBC show a repeat of Steptoe and Son later than usual in the evening on election night, well after the polls had closed, lest he lose votes (Tracey 1983 , 266), because Labour supporters would see watching a couple of comic rag and bone men as more important than voting for socialism. Later, Labour was to get Harry H. Corbett, the younger rag and bone man in the comedy, to take part in the Labour Party’s offi cial political broadcasts. Till Death Us Do Part was for a time the most popular show in Britain and even the second series had 16 million watching it (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 115). Even in 1986, an old and familiar repeat drew an audience of 12.5 million. When shown in Australia, Till Death Us Do Part became the most popular programme ever seen on Australian television. They were all hugely popular programmes and viewers voted for them by turning them on week after week. People wanted bad language, smut, irreverence and ‘racism’. But those who disapproved of that kind of thing were enraged. A Roman Catholic paper told its readers ‘to switch off when TW3 comes on’ and an Anglican priest called That Was the Week That Was ‘a poisonous conspiracy against all that is good in British life’ ( That Was 2012 ). Indeed, within two months of its inception TW3 was ‘begin- ning to give some people indigestion’ notably the item ‘Consumer Report on Religion’, which ‘described each of the main religions as if they were goods on offer’ (Tracey 1983 , 209). The widespread indignation led to a substantial protest movement, the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association led by Mrs. Mary Whitehouse and dedicated to cleaning up TV (Whitehouse 1967 ), which at its peak had 150,000 members. Its main objections were to the use of blasphemous and indecent language, to salacious humour and to the humorous mocking of the Christian religion. Thousands attended its inaugural meeting in 1964, and the following year a petition with nearly half a million signatures supporting its manifesto for cleaning up television was presented to Parliament (Whitehouse 1971 , 68). It was a very rapid and hostile response to the new liberties being taken in the BBC. NVALA had very considerable support, particularly from traditional Christians of a THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 29 puritanical disposition, of whom there were many. But it represented only a moral minority, a large and important minority but a minority far smaller than the numbers choosing week after week to watch and enjoy the pro- grammes that were giving so much offence. The television programme that gave most offence was Till Death Us Do Part , written for the BBC by Johnny Speight and produced by Dennis Main Wilson, perhaps the most celebrated and successful of all the BBC’s comedy producers for both radio and television, the man also responsible for The Goon Show , Hancock’s Half Hour , Here’s Harry , and It’s Marty. It was a satire directed against its central character Alf Garnett, a foul mouthed, authoritarian, reactionary, working-class Cockney, devoted to the monarchy and the church, bigoted and xenophobic (Booth 2005 ; Speight 1986 ). On 20 September 1972, the episode of Till Death Us Do Part was called ‘The Bird Fancier’. In one scene Alf’s wife, Else, is saying that the local pub is a hotbed of scandal: Alf: Blimey… Hark who’s talking! When you and Old Gran get in there with yer port an’ gins no one’s reputation is safe. The other night in there—old Gran—she was spreading scandal about heaven… say- ing—she was—that—Mary couldn’t be a virgin—‘cos she was in child by ( looks reverently upwards ) Him. Else: ( is shocked ) Alf: I thought she’d get struck down any minute, I did—I walked away. I wasn’t the only one either. Else: Well… I suppose they’re different to us—up there. I suppose they can have babies without having to do what we have to do. Rita: ( reacts sympathetically ) Alf: Yer… I know… well, what they do is immaculate, anit? Mike: I wonder how many they’ve got now? Else: Who? Mike: HIM and HER. Else: They only had the one. Mike: Yeah—but that was two thousand years ago—they could have had another fi fteen hundred by now. Else: ( is not amused ) Mike: Unless they’re on the pill. Alf: ( explodes ) You… I only hope He can hear you—you blasphemous scouse git! (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 110–111). 30 C. DAVIES Speight’s humour here was particularly offensive to Roman Catholics, who believe not just in the Virgin Birth but in the Immaculate Conception (a doctrine declared ex cathedra to be infallible), in Jesus not having siblings even though they are mentioned in the New Testament and that ‘artifi - cial’ methods of birth control are wicked and forbidden. Speight had been brought up in an authoritarian Catholic family and sent to a Catholic school, and Alf Garnett is supposed to have been based on his own father, a Catholic docker, though Alf is depicted as an Anglican in the TV series. Speight is making fun not just of Christian churches and the oddities of their members and clergy, but of the central mysteries of their faith. This is not the mere gentle poking fun at religious institutions found in other BBC television comedies such as The Vicar of Dibley , All Gas and Gaiters or Father Ted ; this is comedy that puts the boot in. It is likely that not only did Speight not believe in God but he hated Him. Not surprisingly this very popular episode caused widespread outrage (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 111–115) among those who had been protected from such comedies in earlier decades. Both Till Death Us Do Part and another very popular programme, It Ain’t Half Hot Mum , were regularly attacked for their use of innuendo and of bad language (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 88; Whitehouse 1967 , 162). Alf Garnett’s use of the word ‘bloody’ was incessant and repeti- tive, used as many as 103 times in a single episode (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 88). One of Mrs. Whitehouse’s many supporters wrote two letters to Lord Hill, the Chairman of the Board of Governors, pointing out the monotony of his speech, a straight letter of complaint and a satirical ver- sion using the word bloody as often as Garnett did. Dear Lord Hill, Will you please spare a few b----- minutes to read these two b----- letters. Last Friday my b----- husband and I counted the b----- number of times the b----- word ‘bloody’ was used in b----- ‘Till Death Us Do Part’. You may be b----- well surprised to know the b----- number—44 times—16 in the fi rst few b----- minutes as a b----- result of this I found myself b----- well obsessed by the b-----word and b----- well tossed and turned the whole b--- -- night long. I feel I should be b----- well failing in my b----- duty as a Christian if I didn’t raise my b----- voice small though it well b----- be and ask you as a b----- man in authority to raise your b----- voice in protest against such b----- programmes’ (Whitehouse 1971 , 80–81, cited without naming its Christian author, the wife of a school-master). THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 31 Lord Hill replied to the letters without using the ‘b’ word. He justifi ed Alf’s bloody mindedness on the grounds that he was inarticulate and so was forced to use it constantly. This was no more true of the highly articu- late Garnett than of the comedian Billy Connolly when, like the legendary Australian (Davies 1990 , 269), he said ‘I know at least… oh my God, at least 127 words. And I still prefer “Fuck”.’ Mrs. Whitehouse had long been a member of and was strongly infl u- enced by an organization called Moral Rearmament (MRA) (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 63–69), which was widely regarded with dislike and dis- dain, and particularly by Sir Hugh Greene (Tracey 1983 , 231). By origin, MRA was evangelical Christian, but many church leaders condemned it and it later transformed itself into a general vehicle for what it called ‘abso- lute morality’, open to members of any religion. One of its absolutes was ‘absolute purity’, which sounded sinister to many. Its leader in the early 1960s, Peter Howard, was full of contempt for what the BBC had become and obsessed with the ‘evils’ of homosexuality. Most of those who hold strongly negative views of homosexuals and homosexuality are not homo- phobic, merely misguided. But Howard was homophobic. He feared and hated homosexuality, and saw homosexuals as part of a conspiracy and as a potential source of total moral collapse. Howard’s book Britain and the Beast has chapters with titles such as ‘Sods and Squares’ and ‘Queens and Queers’. He begins another chapter with the phrase ‘God is the great totalitarian’ (Howard 1963 , 84). The slightest public joke on the subject could reduce him to hysterical indignation: The radio and television push acceptance of unacceptables on us in many ways. Programmes often are sympathetic to dirt and make suggestive jokes about homosexuals and fi lth. One morning in Spring, 1963, I heard two men talking about cricket reports. One said he had had his camera trained on an Australian cricketer with his legs wide apart fi elding at left slip. He had commented to the public that the man was ‘waiting for a tickle’. Giggles and laughter. This goes out to millions (Howard 1963 , 33–34). The harmless remark in question, a vulgar pun and innuendo, depends on the use of the word ‘tickle’ by cricket commentators to mean that the ball has just touched the edge of the bat, which may mean that someone fi eld- ing behind the batsman can catch it and thus dismiss the batsman. The comment was made by Brian Johnston, known as Johnners, who was to 32 C. DAVIES become one of the BBC’s most popular commentators on cricket matches. It is quite likely that the original remark had been a ‘Freudian leg slip’, but one that was instantly recognized and produced sniggering hilarity. Peter Howard made a fool of himself with his paranoid interpretation of it as part of a BBC lurch towards permissiveness in regard to homosexu- ality. However, once the gaffe had been made it became and remains a very popular humorous item, and Brian Johnston repeated it in his book of jokes, along with his later gaffe broadcast by the BBC, ‘The batsman’s Holding, the bowler’s Willey’ ( 1995 , 10; 2008 ; Tibballs 2007 , 18). Michael Holding was a noted West Indian cricket player and Peter Willey an off-break bowler for England. They were playing together in a cricket match at The Oval in 1976 with Johnners commenting, but by this time there may well have been a deliberate carelessness about his gaffes. He knew that the cricket fans would laugh at these petty indecencies and that no-one would care. Had Peter Howard, a former rugby international, still been alive and listening he would no doubt have seen it as the fall of the Roman Empire and the decadence of Weimar Germany rolled into one. The key question is why he could regard a mere joke as a matter of such extreme importance. The answer is that he was in the grip of a rigid and infl exible ideology, and any affront to his worldview or a reminder of its fragility he found seriously, if irrationally, threatening. An innuendo that made light of an imagined, indecent physical contact between men might lead to an unleashing of the sins of Sodom on the country and to total social collapse or to a supine acceptance of a foreign invasion. It is not dif- fi cult to guess what would have been the reaction of the by then deceased Howard to the popular radio comedy Round the Horne , described here by Jonathan Green ( 2005 , 151): But of all the Round the Horne humour none equalled the strain of unashamed camping that ran through the show. Homosexuality was not legalised until 1967 and the running references to the gay world and its particular jargon, delighted both homosexuals who were already ‘in’, and a growing ‘straight’ public, who began to understand just what it was the team were going on about. At its simplest there were the throwaway lines: Kenneth ‘Stinker’ Williams, the fag with the fi ltered tip […] and, in refer- ence to a well-known West End ‘cottage’: ‘Kenneth Williams can be seen in ‘The Little Hut’ in Leicester Square—soap and towels, 3d extra’. THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 33 ‘Hello, I’m Julian, and this is my friend Sandy’ was the catch-phrase of two outrageous camp characters played by two outrageous gay actors, Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick ( The Bona World of Julian and Sandy , 1996), in direct defi ance of the old BBC rule book edict that there must under no circumstances be humour about effeminacy in men. Mrs. Whitehouse would have been even more outraged by Round the Horne had she been able to grasp the references to unnatural sexual shenanigans being made in Polari, a gay argot (Took and Feldman 1974 , 12; Baker 2004 ; Ellison and Fosberry 1996 ). One of the functions of Polari, particularly in the days before homosexual behaviour was legalized in 1967, was to enable gay men to talk freely about forbidden matters without incurring trouble from the censorious and indeed from police informers. If it fooled the informers, it would certainly have fooled Mrs. Whitehouse and she would not easily have been able to challenge in court what was being said. Both Paddick and Williams loved Polari and ad-libbed, which made the show far fi lthier than Mrs. Whitehouse could even have imagined. And yet even when the meaning was innocent, it sounded vaguely indecent. Kenneth Williams, the star of the show, wrote in his diary on 28 April 1968: BBC Studios for the talk with Peter Haugh on ‘Moviegoround’. He asked me for a defi nition of ‘camp’. I said ‘To some it means that which is fun- damentally frivolous, to others the baroque as opposed to the puritanical (classical) and to others—a load of poofs’ (Williams 1994 , 324). Despite considerable pressure from the members of MRA to play a larger role in the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, Mrs. Whitehouse was careful to keep them at a safe distance and did not accept money from them. She did not want them explicitly involved in her work nor did she invite them to speak at her meetings (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 68), though they did sometimes distribute their leafl ets in the foyer (Tracey 1983 , 231). She wanted to run a quite independent organization. Yet at some level in her mind she probably knew that many Christian people were very hostile to MRA because of its tactics (Harrison 1934 ) and its bigotry. Nonetheless, her outlook was very much shaped by her earlier experiences as a member of MRA (Tracey and Morrison 1979 , 63–64, 69) and she went to MRA conferences in the 1960s when she was set- ting up the NVALA. It was particularly manifest in the way she was later to mount savage legal attacks on representations of homosexuality in print or on stage, particularly if they impinged on and therefore, in her 34 C. DAVIES eyes, besmirched religion or patriotism. In doing so, she foolishly drew the public’s attention to obscure items that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. For her, homosexuality was the peccatum illud horrible, inter christianos non nominandum , that horrible crime not to be named among Christians, a crime against the very order of society and indeed of God’s creation (Davies 1982 , 1983 , 2004 ). But her crusade failed and Quentin Crisp’s ‘stately homos of England’ prevailed. Openly gay comedians are a standard part of twenty-fi rst century broadcasting comedy. Welcome to the queer new world. WHY THE CULTURE WAR WAS LOST The confl ict between the BBC and the NVALA over comedies that the latter found offensive has to be seen as part of a much more general ‘cul- ture war’, which in turn arose from deeper patterns of social change. The dirty and irreverent BBC comedies were a symbolic battleground. Those who hated them did not understand the new and unwelcome patterns of social change in the wider world and must have felt helpless to stop them. Instead they attacked that which was visible and tangible and offensive and which they thought they could eliminate: offensive broadcasts. The would-be censors deluded themselves into thinking that these nasty com- edies had a signifi cant negative effect on society as a whole and that, were they abolished, there could be a return to the old decencies. They were utterly wrong on all counts. Comedy is both important and unimportant. It is important because of the great pleasure it gives to those who decide to join an audience. That is why so many millions of people chose to watch the disapproved programmes, enjoyed them enormously and went on watching. Comedy is unimportant because it has no effect and no consequences at all in a world where social change is driven by other far stronger social forces (Davies 2011 ). It does not follow that the underlying concerns of the NVALA were trivial or unreal. They were in the main fervent evangelical Christians and rigorist Roman Catholics who were living in a society that was increasingly secular. People were giving up going to church or belonging to a church and, most important of all, had stopped sending their children to Sunday school (Davies 2004 , 43–50). Very roughly, adherence to a church had peaked just before World War I and then gone into slow decline. From the mid-1950s the decline accelerated (Brown 2001 ; Davies 2004 ). The changes began well before the BBC descended into its comic mockery THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 35 of the Christian religion. The BBC did not cause secularization. Rather, the decline in religion created a cultural climate in which it was possi- ble for the BBC to put out its offending comedies with impunity. Mrs. Whitehouse and her supporters were a remnant of what had once been the dominant culture and they did not like their new position. With the decline in popular Protestantism (Green 2010 ) came a decline in the respectable virtues. The years of strong religion before World War I had produced a marked decline in both violent and acquisitive crime, in the abuse of drugs and alcohol, and in the number and proportion of illegitimate births. By the inter-war period, Britain was a low crime society; illicit drugs were almost unknown and public drunkenness rare. Prisons were being closed down because there were not enough inmates to justify their existence. From the mid-1950s all this changed. Crime rates of all kinds and drug and alcohol abuse rose rapidly, indeed alarmingly, and were to go on rising for forty years, completely transforming the society in undesirable ways (Davies 2004 , 1–42). But the change that alarmed the opponents of offending comedy was the marked shift in patterns of sexual behaviour. Younger people no longer saw any reason for waiting until they were married before enjoying sexual relations. Sexual matters were freely talked about. The use of the criminal law to punish homosexual behaviour came to be seen as an anachronism, and attempts were made to abolish these laws. People were ceasing to condemn the abominations of Leviticus or to take seriously the view of religious traditionalists that tolerating homosexuality would lead to disaster (Davies 2004 , 139–180). All this was abhorrent to the shrinking minority of true believers. Smutty comedies were seen as offensive because they aroused the deepest fears of those who were alarmed by the changes in sexual behaviour and attitudes. But secularization and the marked shift in sexual behaviour meant that in the long run the NVALA would be defeated because fewer and fewer people saw the world the way they did and ever fewer found comedies mocking the old conventional pieties to be unacceptable. Smut and irrev- erence had won. A NEW HEGEMONY Mrs. Whitehouse lost, but in the twenty-fi rst century political correctness has taken the BBC back to the rigid patterns of the 1950s and comedy has been correspondingly enfeebled (Deacon 2009 ; Lawson 2009 ). The golden age of comedy of the latter part of the twentieth century is over. Many of the television programmes of that brief era of freedom, such as 36 C. DAVIES Till Death Us Do Part and It Ain’t Half Hot Mum are never shown, even though they would still attract huge audiences for a BBC, which for fi nan- cial reasons depends heavily on repeating successful old comedies such as Dad’s Army or sketches from The Two Ronnies (Barker 1999 ; Davidson and Vincent 1978 ). Needless to say, no new programmes employing or implying mockery from the outside of ethnic and religious minorities will ever again be made by or for the BBC. It Ain’t Half Hot Mum made fun of British entertainer-soldiers in India in World War II with accompany- ing Indian menials, one of whom was played by a browned-up, Hindi- speaking, Indian-born Englishman. It can no longer be shown because it offends today’s BBC elite, who, along with administrators and producers alike, belong to a new version of a high-minded upper middle class with a single seamless world-view. The hegemony is even more absolute than it was in the early days of the BBC, for there are no rebellious producers seeking to defy their masters and amuse the masses in politically incorrect ways. When politically incorrect old programmes such as Fawlty Towers are shown, they are cut and censored. It does not take a great stretch of the imagination to guess how and why the Fawlty Towers script reproduced here was mutilated before being shown as a repeat. The Major: Strange creatures women. Basil: Well, can’t stand around all day… The Major: I knew one once… Striking looking girl… tall, you know… Father was a banker. Basil: Really. The Major: Don’t remember the name of the bank. Basil: Never mind. The Major: I must have been rather keen on her, because I took her to see… India! Basil: India? The Major: At the Oval… Fine match, marvellous fi nish… Now Surrey had to get 33 in about half an hour… She went off to powder her… powder her hands or something… women… er… never came back. Basil: What a shame. The Major: And the strange thing was… throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as niggers. ‘No no no,’ I said, ‘the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs.’ ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘All cricketers are niggers.’ Basil: They do get awfully confused, don’t they? They are not think- ers. I see it with Sybil every day (from ‘The Germans’ broad- cast on BBC2, 24 October 1975). THE RISE AND FALL OF TABOO COMEDY IN THE BBC 37 The Major, who is clearly a doddering anachronism, rarely sober and not very sharp, provides humour by speaking in character and is not to be taken seriously or identifi ed with, but he has been cut out like a fallen member of the Central Committee in a Kremlin photograph (Stevens 2013 ). Mrs. Whitehouse lost the war, but her style of thinking has cap- tured the BBC. Words once again have magical evil properties, regardless of intention or context and have to be excised from comedy. The delusion that comedy can have a powerful bad infl uence has returned, as has the idea that certain selected minorities must never be offended. Like Mrs. Whitehouse, the BBC elite are unable to understand that their views and values are not necessarily widely shared and that others may in good faith and for honourable reasons reject them. The confl icts are not about values and never were. They are about power. It is about who decides whose tastes in comedy shall prevail and whose shall never be catered to. It is about who has the power to decide who may be spurned when offended and who shall be pandered to. NOTES 1. BBC fi les. R34/292/21, 5 and 6 February 1942. All references to BBC fi les in the text refer to those in the BBC Written Archive in Caversham, England. I would like to thank the staff for their invaluable and helpful assistance to me during my research visits there. 2. BBC fi les. R/34/275/3 Policy Censorship in Programmes 1947–1954, File 1c, July 1948. 3. BBC fi les. T16/157. 4. BBC fi les. T16/157. 5. BBC fi les. T16/157. 6. BBC fi les. T16/162. 7. BBC fi les. T16/157, 1 September 1947. 8. Draft Television policy Censorship Code, 20 January 1947. Taste File 1946–1954. 9. BBC fi les. R34/1250, Policy Censorship Variety and Comedy Programmes, 1960–1967. BIBLIOGRAPHY Baker, Paul. 2004. Fantabulosa: A Dictionary of Polari and Gay Slang . London: Continuum. Barker, Ronnie. 1999. All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works . London: Essential. 38 C. DAVIES Booth, Tony. 2005. Alf Garnett. In British Comedy Greats , ed. Annabel Merullo, and Neil Wenborn, 12–16. Chester: Marks and Spencer. Brown, Callum. 2001. The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800–2000 . London: Routledge. Davidson, Ian, and Peter Vincent. 1978. The Bumper Book of the Two Ronnies: The Very Best of the News . London: Star. Davies, Christie. 1982. Sexual Taboos and Social Boundaries. American Journal of Sociology 87(5): 1032–1063. ———. 1983. Religious Boundaries and Sexual Morality. Annual Review of the Social Sciences of Religion 6: 45–77. ———. 1990. Ethnic Humor around the World: A Comparative Analysis . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2004. The Strange Death of Moral Britain . New Brunswick: Transaction. ———. 2011. Jokes and Targets . Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Deacon, Michael. 2009. The BBC’s Censors Risk Killing Off Comedy. The Telegraph , October 19. Ellison, M.J., and Charles Fosberry. 1996. A Queer Companion: A Rough Guide to Gay Slang . London: Abson. Green, Jonathan. 2005. Round the Horne. In British Comedy Greats , ed. Annabel Merullo, and Neil Wenborn, 148–151. Chester: Marks and Spencer. Green, Simon J.D. 2010. The Passing of Protestant England: Secularisation and Social Change, c. 1920–1960. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harrison, Marjorie. 1934. Saints Run Mad: A Criticism of the ‘Oxford’ Group Movement . London: Bodley Head. Hoggart, Simon. 2005. That was the Week That Was. In British Comedy Greats , ed. Annabel Merullo, and Neil Wenborn, 162–165. Chester: Marks and Spencer. Howard, Peter. 1963. Britain and the Beast . London: Heinemann. Johnston, Brian. 1995. I Say, I Say, I Say: Johnners’ Choice of Jokes to Keep You Laughing . London: Mandarin. ———. 2008. Johnners: Cricketing Gaffes, Giggles and Cakes . London: BBC Audio Books. Lawson, Mark. 2009. Is Censorship Taking over the BBC? The Guardian , November 18. Parsons, Nicholas. 2008. How Radio Comedy Changed a Nation. BBC News Magazine , October 17. Speight, Johnny. 1986. The Garnett Chronicles . London: Robson. Stevens, Christopher. 2013. Censoring Fawlty ’s Gags Makes the Beeb Look More Bonkers than Basil. Mail on Line , January 24. Thompson, Ben. 2012. Ban this Filth: Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive . London: Faber and Faber. THE RISE AND FA	582,358
CHUONG TRINH HOI THAO KY NIEM 130 DA LAT.pdf	CHƯƠNG TRÌNH HỘI THẢO KỶ NIỆM 130 NĂM ĐÀ LẠT HÌNH THÀNH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN (1893-2023) Thời gian 4/12/2023 Địa điểm: Khách sạn Sài gòn – Đà Lạt TT Công việc Thời gian Chi tiết Phụ trách 7h30-8h00: ĐÓN TIẾP ĐẠI BIỂU KHAI MẠC HỘI THẢO KHAI MẠC 8h00- 8h30  Văn nghệ  Đội văn nghệ 8h30- 8h45  Tuyên bố lý do, giới thiệu đại biểu, giới thiệu chủ trì, thư ký Hội thảo  Dẫn chương trình 8h45- 9h00  Phát biểu khai mạc hội thảo  Hiệu trưởng Trường CT 9h00- 9h10  Phát biểu Đề dẫn Hội thảo  Chủ tịch UBND Tp 9h10- 9h25  Video clip về Đà Lạt  Phòng VHTT 9h25- 9h40  Phát biểu đại biểu Tỉnh  Lãnh đạo Tỉnh 9h40- 10h30: PHÁT BIỂU THAM LUẬN NGHỈ GIẢI LAO 10h45-11h15: THẢO LUẬN 11h15 - 11h30: TỔNG KẾT, BẾ MẠC TIỆC CHIÊU ĐÃI	791
Imperial heights Dalat and the making and undoing of French Indochina (Jennings, Eric Thomas) (Z-Library).pdf	The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Ahmanson Foundation Humanities Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation. Imperial Heights FROM INDOCHINA TO VIETNAM: REVOLUTION AND WAR IN A GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE Edited by Fredrik Logevall and Christopher E. Goscha 1. Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam, by Mark Atwood Lawrence 2. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858–1954, by Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery 3. Vietnam 1946: How the War Began, by Stein Tønnesson 4. Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina, by Eric T. Jennings Imperial Heights Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina Eric T. Jennings Parts of chapters 7, 8, and 13 appeared in previous form in Historical Reflection/Réflexions historiques, Modern Asian Studies, and The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, respectively. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2011 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Jennings, Eric Thomas. Imperial heights: Dalat and the making and undoing of French Indochina / Eric T. Jennings. p. cm.—(From Indochina to Vietnam : revolution and war in a global perspective; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-520-26659-9 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Đà Lat (Vietnam)—History. 2. Đà Lat (Vietnam)—Colonial influence. 3. France—Colonies— Asia—History. I. Title. DS559.93.D3J46 2011 959.7′6—dc22 2010042773 Manufactured in the United States of America 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on Cascades Enviro 100, a 100% postconsumer waste, recycled, de-inked fiber. FSC recycled certified and processed chlorine free. It is acid free, Ecologo certified, and manufactured by BioGas energy. For Chantal and Larry CONTENTS List of Illustrations Foreword by the Series Editors Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Escaping Death in the Tropics 2. Murder on the Race for Altitude 3. Health, Altitude, and Climate 4. Early Dalat, 1898–1918 5. Colonial Expectations, Pastimes, Comestibles, Comforts, and Discomforts 6. Situating the “Montagnards” 7. A Functional City? Architecture, Planning, Zoning, and Their Critics 8. The Dalat Palace Hotel 9. Vietnamese Dalat 10. Some Colonial Categories: Children, European Women, and Métis 11. Divine Dalat 12. The Maelstrom, 1940–1945 13. Autonomous Province or Federal Capital? 14. Dalat at War and Peace, 1946–1975 Epilogue Notes Select Bibliography Index ILLUSTRATIONS FIGURES 1. “Military rate” for a rickshaw in French Indochina 2. “Prophylactic works against malaria to be undertaken at Dalat” 3. Dalat’s hospital, circa 1930 4. Coat of arms of Dalat’s Centre de Repos de la Marine 5. Overlapping modes of transport 6. Som Gon, on the Lang-Bian road, 1899 7. Dalat’s coat of arms, as seen on the cover of the Petit guide illustré de Dalat, 1930 8. Hunting postcard, Lang-Bian, date unknown 9. Gabrielle Vassal’s “hour of triumph” 10. Thés des Plateaux Moïs, date unknown 11. Minority people seated by Dalat’s artificial lake, colonial-era postcard 12. A Dalat villa 13. A Dalat villa 14. The Cité-Jardin Decoux under construction, 1942 15. Deauville’s train station, present day 16. Dalat’s train station, present day 17. The Lang-Bian Palace Hotel in the 1920s 18. Lang-Bian Palace Hotel luggage tag by V. Duong 19. “Sartorial inversions or the dangers of bathing around Dalat (a true story)” 20. The Dalat Palace Hotel, 2001 21. Vendors in Dalat’s market, 1939 22. Tourism Statistics, June 1, 1933, to May 31, 1938 23. “Two ways of taking summer vacations or the clash between East and West” 24. The former Couvent des Oiseaux, 2001 25. Students at the Ecole des enfants de troupe de Dalat, 1950s 26. Sister from the Congrégation Notre-Dame, 1950 27. The children of the Cité-Jardin Jean Decoux, July 1943 28. The aftermath of the Dalat convoy attack 29. Viet-Minh propaganda poster intended for circulation in the highlands 30. Diem-era tourist poster for Dalat MAPS 1. Gabrielle Vassal’s map of Indochina, 1910 2. Environs of Lang-Bian, 1920 3. The sinuous porter and mule path to Dalat and the projected rail line, 1905 4. Hébrard plan for Dalat, 1923 5. Map of Dalat, 1942 6. Detail of Dalat’s cadastral plan, circa 1930 7. Dalat and the Lang-Bian autonomous district, 1928 FOREWORD BY THE SERIES EDITORS Cities have received relatively little attention in the history of the French empire in general and that of colonial Indochina in particular. True, Philippe Papin and William Logan have provided us with excellent overviews of Hanoi, and Vietnamese scholars such as Tran Huy Lieu, Tran Van Giau, and Dang Phong have penned engaging accounts of Hanoi and Saigon through the centuries. However, one searches in vain for an account of the colonial city—its social, political, cultural, and economic dynamics, as well as its postcolonial transformations. With Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina, Eric Jennings provides just such a study. Rather than focusing on Saigon or Hanoi, Jennings gives us the first detailed account of the city of Dalat from its colonial conception in the late nineteenth century to its national promotion as a major tourist destination today. This city, located in the cool highlands of lower central Vietnam, was home to the first French hill stations, where colonizers came to seek relief from the stifling tropical heat. Such stations existed in various parts of the colonial world, and scholars (including Jennings himself) have written widely on their sociopolitical significance.* Imperial Heights is the first examination of the French equivalent in Indochina. And a remarkably rich history it is, including in the later years. Dalat was the city Vichy wanted to turn into the political capital of Indochina, the place where Governor General Jean Decoux lived during World War II. During the Indochina conflict, Bao Dai ran the Associated State of Vietnam from there, and the city was affected in important ways by both the French war and the American war that followed. Yet, as Jennings shows, it was well after the fighting ended that Dalat experienced some of its most important socioeconomic and cultural changes. Over the past two decades, as Vietnam has moved from a communist command economy to a remarkably vibrant market-oriented one, Dalat has adjusted accordingly, to the point that national authorities now celebrate its colonial and royalist past as part of their strategy of attracting tourists to this city’s beautiful hotels and hill stations. Although Jennings uses Dalat to demonstrate the “making and undoing of French Indochina,” he concludes by showing how colonial nostalgia remains an important part of the making of Dalat today. By focusing on a city and adopting a longue durée approach, Eric Jennings provides a new and powerful take on French colonial history and that of Vietnam. He has written an exciting and original book, expertly researched and beautifully crafted, one certain to appeal to general readers and specialists alike. We are proud to have it in our series. Fredrik Logevall, Cornell University Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal 17 September 2010 * Eric T. Jennings, Curing the Colonizers: Hydrotherapy, Climatology, and French Colonial Spas, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project could never have been realized without the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. SSHRC supported multiple research trips to Vietnam and France, and provided time off to write. The Canadian Institute for Health Research funded essential research for chapters 1 and 3. A Victoria College Senate Research Grant and a Spooner Fellowship made possible further research at the French colonial archives and in Vietnam. A JIGES research award took me to sources in Zürich. A special thank-you goes out to my research assistants, Nick Bentley, Chi Thuc Ha, Katie Edwards, Mairi MacDonald and Thuy Linh Nguyen. Thuy Linh Nguyen sifted through Vietnamese periodicals, newspapers, and poetry, as well as Vietnamese-language secondary sources, translating Dalat-related material into English. Over the years, a community of colleagues has guided me towards sources on Dalat. Fruitful leads were provided by Hazel Hahn, Christopher Goscha, Agathe Larcher-Goscha, Laurence Monnais, Hy Van Luong, Nhung Tran, Christina Firpo, Penny Edwards, David Del Testa, Robert Aldrich, Gilles de Gantès, Pascal Bourdeaux, Patricia Lorcin, Stein Tønnesson, David Biggs, Sébastien Verney, Caroline Herbelin, Philippe De Villers, Erica Peters, Pierre Brocheux, Alain Ruscio, Aline Demay, Rebecca Rogers, Ellen Furlough, Mathieu Guérin, Mitch Aso, Charles Keith, Jean Michaud, and Mike Vann. Mr. Jacques Veysseyre opened his father’s papers to me. J. P. Daughton, Tina Freris, Christopher Goscha, Peter Zinoman, Raphaëlle Branche, David Marr, Owen White, Emmanuelle Saada, Panivong Norindr, Alice Conklin, Elspeth Brown, Paul Cohen, Chantal Bertrand-Jennings, Larry Jennings, and an anonymous reader all provided valuable feedback on chapter drafts or presentations that later turned into chapters. Librarians and archivists on several continents have helped along the way: I wish to extend my thanks to Toronto’s Interlibrary Loan Services, and to the staff at Cornell’s Kroch Library, perched atop a pine- covered hill overlooking a lake that calls to mind Dalat. Merci as well to Olivia Pelletier, Lucette Vachier, and Jacques Dion at the ANOM, to Stéphane Kraxner at the Institut Pasteur, Sister Sieffert at the Congrégation Notre-Dame, to Bernard Mouraz at the Gendarmerie Archives, and to Daniel Weiss at the GTA in Zürich. Finally, thank you to Professor Phan Huy Le for his assistance with libraries and archives in Vietnam. At UC Press, I would like to thank Niels Hooper, Eric Schmidt, Suzanne Knott, and Caroline Knapp for seeing this project through to fruition, and William Nelson for map production. My gratitude also goes to Celia Braves for the index. Parts of chapters 7, 8, and 13 appeared in previous form in Historical Reflections/Réflexions historiques, Modern Asian Studies, and The Journal of Vietnamese Studies, respectively. I thank all three journals for their permission to reprint parts of these articles. MAP 1. Gabrielle Vassal’s map of Indochina, 1910. From Gabrielle Vassal, On and Off Duty in Annam (London: Heinemann, 1910). MAP 2. Environs of Lang-Bian, An Official Guide to Eastern Asia, vol. 5 (Tokyo: 1920). Courtesy of Kroch Library, Cornell University. Introduction Dalat is a singular, unexpected, almost incoherent place. Imagine Davos, Aspen, or Chamonix in Vietnam. Nestled high in Vietnam’s rugged interior, 150 miles northeast of Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), this colonial- era mountain resort features hundreds of quaint French regional villas, the golf course of Vietnam’s former emperor, a grand luxury hotel, colonial-era boarding schools, pagodas, and monasteries—all set against tall pine trees and artificial lakes. Neither the surroundings, nor the architecture, nor the climate square with what most tourists expect to find in Vietnam. Yet Dalat has its followers. Before my second trip there, a Vietnamese- Canadian travel agent expressed envy at my destination. “Ah, Dalat, my first kiss,” he sighed. The sentiment is widely shared, as droves of Vietnamese newlyweds have ascended to Dalat in recent years, earning it a reputation as “Vietnam’s wedding and honeymoon capital” and “Vietnam’s romantic getaway.”1 The resort elicits similar reactions among many French settlers, officials, and even their descendents. Websites reunite long-lost classmates from Dalat’s Lycée Yersin. A large percentage of Indochina’s French population either was born in Dalat, vacationed in Dalat, or was at some point schooled in Dalat, a site long considered the colony’s nursery. To this day, Dalat cultivates nostalgia and breeds a sort of wistfulness. For a city of some 160,000 inhabitants, Dalat today has achieved an almost mythical and remarkably varied reputation: it is at once a site of romance, education, privilege, leisure, pilgrimage, and science—the latter thanks to its U.S.-built experimental nuclear reactor. Why this fascination, and how do colonial and postcolonial perceptions of the place differ? There can be no doubt that Dalat’s tourist office is counting on colonial villas and an almost-Swiss pastoral landscape to draw tourists. How can this be in Communist Vietnam? Dalat, I would argue, is so enigmatic in large part because it almost uniquely encapsulates the colonial era, and its contested legacy and memories. Indeed, Dalat captures the colonial era, and exudes a colonial aura, precisely for the reasons listed above: it seemed and still seems out of place in Vietnam, its ratio of colonial to postcolonial architecture is probably the highest in Vietnam, and its climate and décor run contrary to tropical expectations. Dalat’s colonial founders had intended it to serve as a clone of France. So remarked British traveler Norman Lewis in 1951, as the colonial era entered its twilight: “Here,” he noted with obvious contempt, “a forlorn attempt has been made to create a sub-alpine atmosphere, but it remains nothing more than an uninspired imitation. . . . It looked like a drab little resort in Haute-Savoie.”2 This is a recurring theme. The 1998 edition of a popular French guidebook series (Le guide du routard) considered Dalat the equivalent of “Barbotan-les-Thermes in Indochina, Aix-les-Bains in a rice bowl, and Bagnoles-de-l’Orne in a conic hat”—in other words, a local Vietnamese riff on a French spa-town. However, in the 2006 edition of the same guidebook, the verdict had inexplicably changed: “No, Dalat is not Barbotan-les-Thermes in Indochina nor Bagnoles-de-l’Orne in a conic hat. But it is a ville paysage designed in the colonial era by the French in Cochinchina, who suffocated of Saigon’s damp tropical heat.”3 Perhaps irate Barbotanian and Bagnolian readers had written in between the two editions, to complain, like Lewis, that Dalat did not pass muster as a replica of their hometown. To heap scorn on the inexactitude of the copy is of course to miss the point entirely. Dalat at once created, blurred, and confounded boundaries. The hill station’s role as an ambiguous piece of France in Southeast Asia would be crisply encapsulated by a French officer during the First Indochina War: Dalat, he remarked, felt “so close, yet so far away.”4 This “French replica” was not created in a whim of fancy or as some curio. Rather, its establishment—and the cloning exercise it implied—was considered an absolute necessity. Through Dalat, colonialism could be made possible, precisely by carving out an oasis in the tropics, a respite from disease, a separate and new center of power in a minority nonethnic Vietnamese region, a site of French bourgeois domesticity, in short a colonial tabula rasa. This book offers a historian’s equivalent of a thick description of colonial-era Dalat, before considering some of the site’s postcolonial legacies.5 The hill station was as critical to the creation of Governor Paul Doumer’s modern Indochinese federation in 1897, as it was to colonialism’s last gasp—the Dalat conferences of 1946. Because the site was at once paradigmatic of, and central to French colonialism in Indochina, because it played a crucial role in the emergence, course, and demise of French colonial Indochina, I consider its many facets. These range from the vast— Dalat’s role as a pyrrhic capital of the colony—to the seemingly minute— disease, sanitation, urban plans, colonial comforts. Some of the issues tackled in this work are strikingly current: climate fears, colonial violence, mosquito-transmitted tropical epidemics, attempts to control an ethnically diverse territory from a safe zone, the periodic repatriation of imperial troops, colonial divide and rule strategies, and colonial tourism, to mention only a few. Yet this book remains an attempt to understand a specific place, time, and process, which is to say the apogee of European imperialism. Dalat reveals as much about colonial priorities as it does about colonial anxieties, divisions and fractions, sensibilities, and strategies. It affords us an incomparable window onto the actual workings of empire. It shows how a “healthy” and “safe” space was transformed into a site of power, and how that site of power, in turn, bent and morphed from its initial conception into something quite different. Through Dalat, one can compare grand imperial schemes against results on the ground, imperialist rhetoric against local practices. Though it was halted in its tracks in 1954, French colonialism in Indochina remains hotly debated to this day. In North America, the historical field was long distorted by the centrality of the Vietnam War, often seen as marking either the inexorable rise of Vietnamese communism, or the equally preprogrammed collapse of French “hegemony.” This is beginning to change, as a new generation of historians gain access to archives and challenge both teleological and hegemonic interpretations. In France, the fiftieth anniversary of the battle of Dien Bien Phu (1954–2004), and rancorous debates over how to teach and remember empire have left a deep imprint on the field of colonial studies.6 In a recent opinion piece on Indochina in Le Monde, writer Antoine Audouard pleaded for a middle ground between “hypocritical contrition” and “glorifying the civilizing mission.”7 Indeed, recent public debates over empire are notable mostly for their polarization and their superficiality. Caricatures prevail. On one side, colonial lobby groups imbued with nostalgia insist on rehabilitating colonialism, through an emphasis on schooling, road construction, or hospitals. On the other side, a second camp systematically conflates colonialism and genocide, or presents colonialism as unchanging and monolithic.8 The story of Dalat exposes the limitations of these perspectives. Dalat was not a product of French hegemony, so much as an admission of vulnerability. It was certainly a meticulously planned site and a controlled environment—yet one shaped more by internecine conflict, competition, and even chaos, than by any single vision. And what original visions one can discern, predicated on lingering climatic determinism, appeared already to some at the time to be deeply flawed. Moreover, events and practices at Dalat often ran at odds with early, lofty blueprints for a highland colonial utopia. Terrifying violence accompanied the hunt for Indochina’s hill and rest station. Yet, Dalat subsequently emerged as a playground for French and Vietnamese elites alike. Far from faltering in the 1940s and 1950s, its importance rose steadily on the eve of, and following the French defeat. The hill station in fact emerged as the Indochinese federal capital in 1946, and served as an unofficial seat of power until 1955. It represented a potent symbol of domination and control, yet already by the 1930s, its weaknesses were exposed. Apologia focused on hospitals or roads does not hold water either: Dalat’s hospitals were strictly segregated, its roads the bitter fruits of forced labor. Dalat was literally built on the backs of Vietnamese and indigenous minority laborers and peasants. This site of leisure and power exposes at once fault lines, practices, contradictions, ironies, and legacies of empire. Without aspiring to total history, I do hope to restore the texture of French colonial Indochina and postcolonial Vietnam by telling quite different stories through a single site. This is at once a local and a global history: Dalat’s founders drew inspiration in Brazilian, Swiss, Dutch, British, and American colonial models, and from previous experiments in Japan. German, French, and British scientists exchanged insights on colonial altitudes. Nonetheless, Dalat tells a different story from most other hill stations and mountain resorts the world over; far from being reduced to some imperial “curio” immediately following decolonization, it retained critical significance well into the 1960s. Its capacity for reinvention is especially noteworthy: Dalat served at once or alternatively as a military site, a Eurasian space, an educational center, a safe zone enabling European domesticity, an elite Vietnamese ideal, a religious refuge, and a critical point of contact with Indochina’s ethnic minorities. Mentalities and epistemologies are central to the first chapters of this book: I wish to shed light on sensibilities, anxieties, institutions, and networks that both gave rise to and drove Dalat—in short to the context in which Dalat was founded and grew. They remain, it seems to me, the keys to understanding colonialism in all of its complexity. Practices, accommodations, and compromises are the focus of the book’s central chapters, as this controlled product of French colonialism came unraveled shortly after reaching its zenith during the Second World War. Finally, colonialism’s afterlife—the ways in which colonial-era schemes colored postwar Southeast Asia and were recycled, abandoned, or reconditioned after and during colonialism’s gradual demise (far more gradual than analyses centered on Dien Bien Phu suggest)—will be considered in the book’s final chapters. Previous generations of historians were often hamstrung not just by deterministic frameworks, but also by sources. When I first began working on this project, few outside Vietnam knew what had become of the Résidence supérieure d’Annam (RSA) archives—miles of documents concerning the region of Central and Southern Vietnam where Dalat is located. With the help of colleagues, I uncovered them in Ho Chi Minh City. Since the research for this book was completed, the RSA archive has come full circle, and has been moved to Dalat itself. This book is thus the fruit of detective work in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Dalat, France, Switzerland, Canada, and the United States. Some of these archives had until very recently been completely closed. Most important, Dalat makes for a compelling and evocative story, one that does not require a neocolonialist fresco, a Manichean agenda, or a single overarching theory, to tell. Some of the characters I bring to the page are the stuff of novels: the Swiss scientist who cracked the bubonic plague’s secret and “founded” Dalat, and a deranged officer who went on a murderous rampage to beat him to the prize; an Italian elephant hunter called upon to scout the site; a British adventuress cum tiger hunter; the Vietnamese laborers who went on strike while toiling on the Lang-Bian road; the Paris municipal councilor who later became Dalat’s first mayor; the world-renowned architect who displayed his sketches of Dalat at Le Corbusier’s Congrès international d’architecture moderne in 1933; the last emperor of Vietnam, who made Dalat his sanctuary; or the Viet-Minh daughter of Dalat’s head school inspector. All left an imprint on this protean marker of empire in Southeast Asia, which today gathers throngs of Vietnamese honeymooners, victims of nostalgia, and Ho Chi Minh City middle class on weekend getaways. 1 Escaping Death in the Tropics DISEASE AND CLIMATE At the turn of the twentieth century, a French soldier noted in awe and consternation that the cemetery adjoining Saigon’s military hospital was “more populous than a large European city.” This was all the more troubling, wrote the infantryman, since Saigon had only been French since 1859, and the city’s garrison certainly never surpassed two thousand men at any given time.1 The health of French soldiers, officials, and settlers had been of paramount concern to the colonial administration in Indochina since the earliest days of conquest. As this soldier’s testimony suggests, there was reason to worry. During the first phase of invasion, French naval medics passed harsh judgment on the climate of Cochinchina—the southernmost part of modern-day Vietnam—a region France conquered between 1858 and 1862. After having spent a total of four years there, in 1876 Dr. Auguste- Pascal-Marie Danguy des Déserts declared Cochinchina’s climate so vile that he doubted Europeans could ever acclimatize to it.2 The more modestly named Dr. A. Léon concurred. He had participated in the conquest of Cochinchina in 1858 and 1859. Léon described the climate around Saigon as nothing short of “murderous” and pronounced its soil “unhealthy.” The region around Tourane (modern-day Da-Nang) elicited a similar, if not harsher, verdict. Léon recalled of his time there: “the climate is tough, the region unhealthy, the temperature excessive and the food lacking in variety.”3 Dr. François-Eugène Bernard, who served in the same campaign, eventually dedicated a dissertation to determining how Cochinchina’s climate impacted European troops. His findings likewise gave cause for alarm. He observed that troops hailing from Northern France survived only a matter of days in these climes before needing to be repatriated. Algerian units fared no better, victims of a humid climate unlike that of their homeland, but also of fatal nostalgia, which purportedly hindered recovery from the inevitable fevers. It was fevers, Bernard acknowledged, that felled most servicemen. Europeans in the advanced “anemic” stages of malaria could count on a single, slim, hope: repatriation. “One cannot cure anemics here in Cochinchina,” Bernard affirmed. “These wretches will all perish unless a prompt return to France can wrench them from certain death.”4 To be sure, Bernard, Danguy des Déserts, and Léon were unaware of the root cause of these fevers. The clouds of mosquitoes Bernard describes as tormenting French sailors were not even considered prime suspects. One of the great ironies behind Dalat is that this sanatorium founded on climatic determinism was established the very year—1897—in which the British scientist Ronald Ross, then working in India, debunked climatic determinism by establishing malaria’s mosquito vector. Doctors like Bernard, Léon, and Danguy des Déserts were certainly mistaken to think of Cochinchina’s climate, soil, or even latitude as the cause of death. Yet they grappled with the pathogen, whatever it might be, recognizing that it was both “very powerful” and “very rapid in its effects.” Fundamentally, they were not far off the mark on one central point: Casualty rates were unspeakably high. Bernard tells of a unit of 319 artillerymen that arrived in Cochinchina in 1862; four years later, only fifty remained.5 Bernard and Léon’s esteemed colleague, Dr. Mondot, argued that Europeans could in no case hope to survive more than four and a half years in Cochinchina.6 Bernard considered this optimistic. In his experience, Europeans died after on average two years in the region. He consequently recommended two years as the absolute maximum duration for a military posting to the area. Disease—and not just malaria—actively shaped French priorities in Southeast Asia from the outset. The ravages of dysentery, in particular, prompted the French military to abandon Tourane in 1860, and to fall back on Cochinchina.7 Yet the South offered little respite from disease. In 1861, two years after Saigon had fallen to the French, 11.5 percent of military personnel perished from illness in Cochin-china.8 That same year, Saigon’s main clinic alone registered 2,774 patients, out of whom 170 perished and 371 were urgently repatriated. In the words of Dr. Fontaine, Cochinchina’s terrifyingly high figures established “[its] deserved reputation for unhealthiness.”9 Cholera, too, was ravaging the South. In northern Cochinchina (at Baria) and southern Annam (Qui Nhon) in 1882, a cholera outbreak claimed several European lives and stirred fear as high as the governor general’s office.10 Doctors continued to battle high death rates well into the late nineteenth century. Between 1861 and 1888, the mortality rate among military personnel in Cochin-china only dipped below those of troops in British India for six out of twenty-seven years (in 1869, then again between 1873 and 1877).11 More anecdotally, Dr. Fontaine, a médecin principal des colonies, perished from tropical disease between the time he submitted his article on death rates in Cochinchina for consideration, and its publication —a bad omen even for those familiar with journal backlogs.12 His own untimely demise, coupled with the statistics he presents, belie his claim that the “progress of hygiene” was rendering Indochina hospitable to colonial troops. To be sure, mortality levels in the early 1880s had dropped to 2 percent of French naval troops stationed there. Yet they crept once again above the 2 percent bar in 1896. What is more, the 2 percent mortality rate from disease amongst colonial troops in Indochina between 1883 and 1888 compared unfavorably with 0.97 percent for Algiers, 1.1 percent for Tunis, and 1.5 percent for Oran in 1895. France’s Southeast Asian territories remained twice as murderous as its nontropical North African ones.13 If anything, colonial administrators chose some of the grimmest points of reference in tropical health to describe Indochina. Thus, an 1892 report by Prosper Odend’hal on the valleys of Khanh-Hoa and Kinh-Dinh, in the hinterland of Nha-Trang (Annam) reads: “The soil is excellent, the water abundant year round. Unfortunately, here one can apply the proverb we learned in Guyana: ‘One could become rich in a year, were it not for the fact that one dies in six months.’ ”14 Death was only part of the story. According to an 1888 account, no European left Cochinchina completely unscathed. After a few weeks, Frenchmen reportedly took on a “yellowish hue”—likely a symptom of hepatitis. As their health decayed, they reportedly grew increasingly irritable.15 Comportments and civilities too fell victim to the climate. Cochinchina “survivors” pondered the degenerative and debilitative cost of their time in the colony. REPATRIATION According to Dr. Fontaine, a significant number of fatalities occurred in the process of transporting patients. Within Indochina, many perished en route to the main hospitals. Fontaine attributed this to cost-cutting measures that had eliminated express river vessels, leaving patients with only slow, multipurpose steamers. These made frequent stops before reaching Saigon’s hospital.16 Repatriation to France constituted the preferred option for the seriously ill. This preference stemmed almost entirely from the prevailing notion that a change of “air” could cure disease. Simply put, the method of choice for overcoming tropical afflictions was to escape the tropics as quickly as possible. An 1853 French guide to tropical hygiene and medicine already advocated two possible routes: latitudinal movement, also known as repatriation; or the simpler, cheaper alternative of altitudinal movement within the colony, in other words, seeking higher ground on location.17 In Indochina over the course of the 1890s, governors, military leaders, and doctors would debate the merits and drawbacks of these two types of escapes from the tropics. Baron Albert d’Anthouard de Wasservas has left a vivid account of a return trip aboard a medical evacuation vessel. In 1885, the baron departed Saigon after the standard three-year posting of the era. He was not rushed home early, despite having lost twenty-seven kilos (sixty pounds) to the notorious “Cochinchina diarrhea,” one of the banes of the colonizers. His fellow passengers aboard the medical transport ship Bien Hoa included 250 seriously sick, bed-bound patients—soldiers and administrators for the most part—as well as numerous convalescents, and 150 Vietnamese prisoners, resistors to colonialism, bound for a penal colony in distant Guyana. The long voyage to France via the Suez Canal was punctuated by the death of a naval infantryman, buried at sea. D’Anthouard, conversely, saw his health improve during the crossing. He invoked the reasoning of the time to explain this turn of events: “one says of colonial diseases that while they worsen in their land of origin, they improve when one changes airs or climes.”18 However, the repatriation policy fast proved problematic both practically and financially. Already in 1876, a medic noted that the ship-voyage home took a terrible toll on seriously ill patients. As a result, he asked, “After this arduous crossing, how many [Cochinchinese administrators and settlers] will see only Toulon’s Saint-Mandrier hospital as their last piece of France?”19 Contrary to d’Anthouard’s received wisdom, death often struck upon reaching French shores, although as Gilles de Gantés observes, these “deferred deaths” are hard to tabulate.20 The toll was also terrifying on board the evacuation ships themselves, even with teams of doctors on hand. Alexandre Kermorgant reports that casualties on repatriation vessels from Cochinchina soared at thirty to forty deaths per transport in the 1860s, before gradually tapering off to some six to eight deaths per voyage.21 In 1886, the Breton naval doctor Lazare-Gabriel-Marie Palud defended his thesis on the Vinh-Long, a medical transport ship serving Indochina exclusively. Palud provided vivid details about conditions on board: two live milk-cows were along for every voyage, and bore responsibility for providing fresh milk to sick children; elsewhere on board, a chamber containing seven to eight barrels of ice kept perishables cool until Saigon, where an ice plant resupplied the ship.22 Palud observed that at least twelve fits of malarial fevers occurred on each westward crossing. Malarial patients were immediately wrapped in blankets and served thé punché, tea spiked with rum. In dire cases, they were injected with quinine sulfate.23 Palud witnessed radically different mortality rates on his three crossings. In the winter of 1884 he observed nine fatalities on board, which translated into 2 percent of all passengers; in the summer of 1885 the mortality rate had spiked to thirty-three people, or 6 percent of passengers, twenty-two of whom had succumbed to “chronic diarrhea”; on his third trip, 1885–86, it dropped to three dead or 0.5 percent of passengers.24 The scale of repatriation operations was remarkable for the era, the costs involved daunting. In 1894, 19.6 percent of naval infantrymen, and 37.6 percent of naval artillerymen were repatriated for health reasons—a total of 290 men from those branches of the navy alone. Two years later, 19 percent of naval infantrymen, and 40 percent of naval artillerymen posted in Indochina were repatriated to France—340 men in all. Between 1890 and 1896, dysentery had been responsible for a third of all such repatriations, and malaria for a quarter.25 These figures account only for naval personnel rushed home outside of the regular rotation table. Administrators too were being repatriated in droves, though they are not reflected in Dr. Fontaine’s statistics. Although admittedly risky, in the absence of an Indochinese sanatorium, repatriation was still considered one of the few alternatives to certain death. Until the late 1890s, the state contracted out transport to and from Indochina to two companies, the Messageries maritimes and the Compagnie nationale de navigation. Hoping to both save on the tremendous costs of this operation and improve hygienic conditions on board, in 1895 the Ministry of the Colonies studied the possibility of creating a new Indochina line, under direct state control. In their discussions with steamship companies, the Ministry of the Colonies insisted that every ship include a hospital equipped with 150 beds. Here was another sign that horizontal repatriation continued to account for a large part of all returns.26 Yet like Kermorgant, Palud was convinced that the trips had become on average less murderous than twenty-five years prior, when it had been common for fifty or sixty patients to perish per ship. Palud imputed these earlier rates to an unspoken policy of repatriating the seriously ill from their deathbeds, so as to lower Indochina’s already horrifying morbidity rates and reassure the public (casualties at sea were registered in a separate column).27 Thereafter, doctors successfully lobbied to send home only those likely actually to survive the passage.28 Among those favoring such a reform was the hygienist Georges Treille, who insisted on counting all those who died on return voyages in the colony’s own death column.29 Palud could see only one alternative to the repatriation system, which condemned the seriously ill to perish in Indochina or on the way home: a highland sanatorium in Indochina itself.30 In the words of historian Robert Aiken, who has studied the hill stations of British Malaya: “one rationale for the development of hill stations was that they obviated the necessity of a long and costly journey home by providing more accessible places with a benign, home-like climate that promised physical and emotional renewal.”31 This option appeared increasingly appealing in light of the physical and financial costs of repatriation. DR. MÈCRE’S YOKOHAMA SANATORIUM Already in 1876, Dr. Danguy des Déserts bemoaned that Cochinchina possessed no sanatorium. Unlike Guadeloupe or Réunion islands, whose hill stations and spas allowed colonials to reinvigorate on location, Cochinchina offered no such site where “exhausted personnel . . . can regain strength so as to confront new hardships.”32 In most of France’s overseas territories, wrote Danguy des Déserts, colonial life was marked by a cycle of sufferings and reprieves. At present, Cochinchina offered only suffering. The French naval, colonial, and medical establishments would soon set their sights on reprieves from “murderous” Cochinchina, which in Danguy des Déserts’ words, “[presents] only swampy flatlands where we find the same insalubrity.”33 Dr. Kermorgant, an authority in tropical medicine with special expertise in the field of colonial sanatoria, claimed that “from the very beginning” French officials had sought an appropriate site for a convalescence center in Cochinchina—in other words a salubrious, cooler site bearing some resemblance to a European climate. Unfortunately, he wrote, the mountains of Cochinchina itself had proven too low—Ba-Dinh stood at a mere 884 meters (3,000 feet), and Chua-Chang a paltry 600 meters (2,000 feet). In the absence of readily accessible, local, cool microclimates, those whom Kermorgant termed “fatigued functionaries deemed insufficiently ill to be repatriated to France, and who seemed likely to return to their posts after a short while” were routinely steered to Yokohama, Japan.34 Kermorgant had been careful to identify a very specific category. The severely ill were still to be sent to France without question. However, the “fatigued” or anemic could be reinvigorated in short order through treatment in Japan—indeed, to some extent, simply through osmosis of Japan’s temperate climate. The French sanatorium in Yokohama had its origins in the Sino-French war of 1883–85. At the time, Admiral Amédée Courbet had ordered wounded and sick soldiers evacuated to Yokohama, where the doctor of the French legation, Louis Mècre, treated them at his small hospital on the French concession.35 In 1886, the Ministry of the Colonies took interest in Mècre’s achievements, noting that the remarkable recovery of soldiers should be attributed to “his fine care, and to Japan’s favorable climate.”36 With most of Courbet’s fleet reassigned to other operations in 1886, both the Ministry of the Colonies and the French authorities in Indochina saw an opportunity. In 1887, Louis Mècre founded a sanatorium in Yokohama, financed by the government of Cochinchina, which provided an annual subsidy. Soon, the contract with Cochinchina was folded into Mècre’s previous deal with the French navy, with both agreeing to share the sanatorium’s annual subsidy of 10,000 francs. In 1893, the governor general of Indochina, Jean-Marie de Lanessan, renewed the contract, increasing the annual subvention. De Lanessan’s sympathies for Mècre’s endeavor are hardly surprising, given that the governor had previously served as naval doctor himself.37 The new sum of 15,000 francs was absorbed by Indochina’s various parts, with Cochinchina paying six-thirteenths, Annam and Tonkin three-thirteenths each, and Cambodia one-thirteenth (the Indochinese Union was founded in 1887, but Laos would only be incorporated into it in 1898). Presumably, this formula was intended to reflect the relative degree of actual use of the sanatorium.38 How had French authorities in Indochina been persuaded to outsource healthcare to Japan?39 For one thing, local budgets actually stood to save by sending patients 4,338 kilometers (2,700 miles) from Saigon to Yokohama, rather than ten thousand kilometers (6,271 miles) to France. More significantly, Yokohama was considered a healthy, proto-European environment. In 1897, the Minister of Foreign Affairs drew the following portrait of the Yokohama site: “situated on a hill dominating the sea, exposed to sea breezes, under a temperate clime, this land is particularly salubrious.”40 The French ambassador to Japan extolled the location’s marine “saline emanations.” Yokohama lent itself admirably, he explained “to a rest center where soldiers and functionaries of all ranks, weakened by Indochina’s climate, could regain their strength and rebuild their fragile health.” Yokohama would spare colonial troops and functionaries “the tribulations of the long and painful crossing of the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea.” How many might have been saved, asked the ambassador, “had they benefited earlier from a temperate clime, rather than perish on the voyage home?”41 The ambassador betrayed an ulterior motive when he expressed hope that the sanatorium would also foster deeper ties between Japan and French Indochina. Still, the sanatorium’s main asset was its potential as a panacea, one capable of saving numerous lives. How? Reimmersion in temperate climes and exposure to maritime breezes constituted the two chief remedies. Underpinning this scheme was the prevalent logic of the sanatorium and of “changing air”—immortalized by Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust, and practiced from Cabourg to Coney Island. To be sure, the Ministry of the Colonies had emphasized both Japan’s climate, and Mècre’s “fine care.” Mècre had indeed proven himself during the Sino-French conflict. Of the ninety-seven patients he received at that time, he boasted that only three had succumbed. He claimed to have cured all the gravest manifestations of “diseases from hot climes,” including dysentery, anemia, and malarial fevers.42 His sanatorium offered hydrotherapy—then a French method of choice in the war against tropical disease—as well as leisure, thanks to its billiard room and comfortable living quarters.43 Dr. Mècre’s relations with the government of Indochina soured overnight in December 1897, when Indochina’s new governor, Paul Doumer, refused to honor his end of the contract. The Mècre files reveal the doctor’s understandable outrage. They also shed light on the reasons for this 1897 volte-face. The Minister of the Colonies presented the chief motive for this abrupt decision as follows. He explained to one of Mècre’s powerful defenders, Senator Gauthier that “the new sanatorium which is to be constructed in Indochina proper will render unnecessary the sending of [sick] officials to Japan.”44 The Yokohama scheme, a compromise between repatriation to France and a sanatorium in Indochina proper, had run its course. A SANATORIUM IN INDOCHINA Unbeknownst to Mècre, plans for an Indochinese sanatorium had been brewing for at least a decade, though years of debate remained ahead to decide on specific locales. In 1887, Indochina’s Conseil supérieur de santé had reported to the governor general on the need for local convalescence centers, dedicated to treating “our Indochina functionaries.” The recommendation was solidly buttressed by several rationales, which the Conseil supérieur de santé de la Marine echoed in January 1888. For one thing, the “possibility for our officials to recover locally would bring notable savings, avoiding us costly repatriations.”45 This must have been music to a governor’s ears. Indochina’s fiscal deficit had begun to soar in the 1880s.46 Then too, humanitarian principles dictated that the sick be treated locally, given how many perished on the return trip through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.47 Yokohama could only provide an unsatisfactory semisolution, since patients still faced at best a twelve-day ocean crossing to reach it.48 As a result, those too sick could not be sent there, and those not sick enough avoided undertaking the voyage altogether. Finally, emulation of a colonial rival undoubtedly constituted the main driving force for this project. In the words of the Conseil supérieur de santé de la Marine: “France in Indochina owes its officers, soldiers, functionaries, and sailors what England has so successfully achieved in India for its army and its local administration.”49 Throughout its existence, Dalat would be compared to hill stations the world over, but especially to those of the British Raj. The pendulum had begun to swing towards an Indochinese hill station in 1887. However, the choice of its future site remained hotly contested, and would remain so well into the early years of the twentieth century. Indochina’s Conseil supérieur de santé contented itself with recommending that a technical subcommittee determine multiple sites of convalescence based “upon the rules of hygiene.”50 Alexandre Kermorgant provides hints of a failed experiment on a hill near Baria, southeast of Saigon, which unraveled abruptly because of high casualty rates in 1887.51 The Baria failure showed that high altitude did not suffice, argued Kermorgant. According to him, “admittedly altitude is beneficial to some patients. But one must, first and foremost, remove trees and cultivate the lands. Otherwise, one runs the risk of placing a future convalescence site on a hotbed of malaria, one all the more intense because the virgin tropical ground will have to be stirred up [by construction].”52 Kermorgant’s article appeared in the Annales d’hygiène et de médecine coloniales in 1899, just over a year after the same journal had reported Ronald Ross’s conclusive demonstration (1897) that the Anopheles mosquito constituted malaria’s sole vector of transmission. What is more, mosquito transmission had been suspected for some time before Ross, with the French doctor Alphonse Laveran first advancing a mosquito hypothesis in 1884, after having uncovered malaria’s parasitic nature in 1880.53 Yet Kermorgant remained frozen in the miasmic mold; malarial emanations, he feared, could be stirred from the fertile, virgin soil of the tropics after it had been disturbed. At Baria, but even more so at Dalat, French colonial doctors would negotiate and shift between miasmic and modern paradigms, between accumulated climatic knowledge and the new realities of bacteriology and micro-biology. In these contests over Indochina’s sanatoria, climatic determinist, telluric, and miasmatic models would prove remarkably resilient. YERSIN’S TRAVELS AND THE SEARCH FOR INDOCHINA’S SWITZERLAND In July 1897 Governor Paul Doumer ordered his subordinates to compile information on possible locations for a “mountain sanatorium where functionaries and settlers alike will be able to rebuild their strength, whereas today they are obliged to return to France to the greatest detriment of our budget and their business.” Doumer recognized the nefarious reputation of Indochina’s highlands, but he attributed it to “the state of abandonment in which the natives have left them.” Echoing Kermorgant, Doumer advocated a “preliminary deforestation” of the chosen location, “so that one will be able to find in the mountains of this land the vivifying air which one finds the world over at high altitudes.” Most of the Résidents supérieurs and other high-ranking officials responded with lists of possible seaside resorts. Only in Annam did authorities read Doumer’s memo closely enough—or perhaps only there did they dare brave the interior’s terrible reputation—to investigate several highland options, across Annam.54 The scientist cum explorer Alexandre Yersin responded promptly to Doumer’s request for information on a mountain sanatorium. The Swiss- born doctor’s legendary reputation stems largely from his discovery of the bacillus of the bubonic plague in 1894—immortalized as Pesta yersinia in his honor. He was a dedicated Pasteurian, having worked as assistant to Louis Pasteur and Emile Roux in 1886, and later founded a laboratory in Nha-Trang that would become a Pasteur Institute in its own right in 1905. Trained in Switzerland, Germany, and France by the likes of Pasteur and Robert Koch, Yersin’s scientific credentials and achievements have made him a household name in France, Switzerland, and Vietnam: founder of Hanoi’s medical school, introducer of the Brazilian rubber tree variety to Indochina, and of course breaker of the plague’s secret. Yersin’s curiosity led him not only to touch on all fields from botany to biology and medicine, but also to achieve breakthroughs in each of these areas. So tell us, quite convincingly, the various hagiographies of Yersin, one of the few colonials in whom French and Vietnamese seem to find common admiration, since his name and likeness survived the many street-name and statuary purges in Vietnam since 1945.55 In addition to Yersin’s logs and copious notes, the Pasteur Institute in Paris was recently entrusted with his voluminous correspondence with his Swiss mother. Through this source, a more nuanced portrait of the scientist emerges—perhaps simply a more human one. It reveals that in 1893, after having clashed with escaped Vietnamese political prisoners on his descent from the Lang-Bian to the coast, Yersin attended the execution of their rebel leader with morbid wonder. He insisted on photographing the condemned leader, named Thouk. He later noted that the rebel’s head was only severed on the fifth saber blow.56 In 1895, in an altogether different setting, Yersin quipped of Réunion island’s population: “the creoles are lazy . . . the negroes and mulattos try to take on European airs—how unoriginal and un- picturesque.”57 The scientist’s filial devotion led him to collect “curious objects” for his mother on his trips amongst Indochina’s highland minority peoples.58 In 1894, in the midst of his travels through the Indochinese highlands, he reported with disappointment that he would have to hand over this bounty to the Museum d’histoire naturelle in Paris. The museum’s director, he explained, served on the dreaded mission commission, and would certainly not approve of artifacts collected on official business being handed out as family presents.59 Finally, Yersin was no colonial liberal, or advocate of reform. He complained privately, in correspondence with a fellow explorer, of Governor de Lanessan’s purportedly naïve policy of “Annamitophilie.”60 None of these snapshots detract from Yersin’s achievements in the field of plague studies. They do, however, remind us that Yersin served not simply the Pasteur Institute, the Messageries maritimes, and science; he was also deeply implicated in French imperialism, even in its most extractive and oppressive dimensions. This inquisitive, brilliant scientist took considerable interest in Doumer’s project. He responded to the governor on July 19, 1897, presenting material on Annam’s highlands that he had collected on his three treks through the region in 1892, 1893, and 1894.61 The diaries contained hints of an idyllic site for Doumer’s sanatorium. Interestingly, Yersin’s missions of 1892 through 1894 had not actually been aimed at finding a suitable locale for a health station. Rather, he subsequently recalled that his goals had involved “reporting on the [interior’s] resources, on the possibility of raising animals, studying forest resources, and seeking exploitable metals in the mountains.”62 Yet Doumer would subsequently mine the journals of these expeditions for a sanatorium site. Fortunately for the governor general, Yersin had recorded nearly everything that caught his eye. “A vast, barren plateau featuring rounded hills.”63 So reads Yersin’s journal entry for June 21, 1893. Yersin had stumbled upon the expansive Lang-Bian plateau. Three days earlier, Yersin had caught his first close glimpse of the Lang-Bian summit, overlooking the plateau by the same name, where Dalat would later rise.64 He put pencil to paper, faithfully capturing its contours in the margins of his text. On his return to the Lang-Bian in February 1894, Yersin recorded other useful details. Two days’ walk from Lang-Bian, he already registered morning temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius. No doubt the imposing mountains, and these temperature readings, reminded Yersin more of his native Switzerland than of the Vietnamese coast where he had lived since 1891. On the Lang-Bian plateau he observed graceful deer or elk that roamed freely. He remarked that they were “the true kings of this strange land.”65 The map Yersin drew of his itinerary shows that he crossed much of the Lang-Bian plateau, from south to north. At Dankia, a village on the edge of the Lang-Bian plateau, Yersin noted that he stood at an effective border. Beyond here, he commented, indigenous minorities no longer paid a tax to Annam. In fact, the chief at Dankia purportedly refused to lead Yersin any further; villages beyond were considered “independent.” Here Yersin touched on one of the unstated objectives of his three voyages. “Governor Lanessan,” he writes, “had given me license to assure the Ma Moï that the Protectorate would care for them, that one day a Frenchman would come to protect them.” He deemed his second trip a success because “the Moïs now know that we exist, that we must protect them, and they would not understand any indifference on our part.”66 Why this insistence on protecting the diverse, ethnolinguistically distinct minorities of Annam’s mountainous interior, pejoratively termed “Moï”— meaning “savage” in Vietnamese? And from whom did they supposedly need to be protected? The answer, as it happens, was from the very auxiliaries Yersin had brought with him. In 1894 Yersin had traveled with fifteen linh, Vietnamese militiamen, and countless “coolies.” On his 1892 mission, Yersin had recruited some forty porters and two Vietnamese servants.67 On his 1894 mission, no fewer than fifty-four porters accompanied him.68 It was ethnic Vietnamese like them, Yersin believed, who had long oppressed highland minorities, save for a few stubbornly independent peoples beyond Dankia. Yersin claims to have seen this dynamic of oppression at work within the columns of his own exploration missions. He relates: “I witnessed unbelievable events: simple coolies having ascended the [Lang-Bian] plateau, passed for [Annamese] district chiefs, sent by mandarins. They then proceeded to collect ‘tax’ by means of lashings.”69 Time and again, Yersin asserted that the Lang-Bian lay beyond Vietnamese civilization. He later recalled: “there are no relations between the inhabitants of this region and the Annamese. A few Cambodians, elephant and rhinoceros hunters for the most part, sometimes pass through to trade. But even they are rare. Most Moïs have never even seen a gun.”70 Several principles had been coined. The mountainous interior lay beyond Vietnamese control, and hence offered unique advantages to the colonizer. Highland minorities required protection, indeed liberation, and could easily be swayed to support the French cause. Here was an ethnopolitical opportunity, alongside the averred climatic one. Had Doumer and his staff read Yersin’s reports more critically, they might have spotted clouds on the horizon. For one thing, Yersin’s diaries are replete with cases of indigenous minorities resisting the scientist and his schemes. Indeed, for his third mission (1894), Yersin requested and obtained the support of a small unit of militiamen, fifteen in all, so as to avert the confrontations he had encountered on his two previous trips. On the cusp of this third trip, Yersin confided to his mother, “I am starting to know these nasty savages, the Bihs and the Rades, who have already caused me so many miseries.”71 As for the healthfulness of central Annam’s mountains, careful investigation would have revealed it too to be dubious. In February 1893, at the tail end of his second expedition, a desperate Yersin had wired Hanoi. He reported suffering from “violent pernicious fevers, resulting from [his] last trip through the mountains.”72 The description is entirely compatible with malaria. On his expedition the following year, Yersin did not place his faith blindly in the cool nights at higher altitude. He wrote his worried mother that he still weighed his regular 60 kilos (132 pounds) and was in perfect health, thanks to “a daily dose of quinine.”73 In 1897, after carefully reading the scientist’s diaries, Doumer responded enthusiastically, even though the Lang-Bian remained only one of several possible locations at this point. He once again called upon Yersin, entrusting him with a mission to the Lang-Bian plateau. This time, he had a single, clear objective: “study the location of a sanatorium that the governor general would like to establish in the mountains.”74 Two months later, Yersin boasted to his mother that he had persuaded the governor to “create a sanatorium in the Lang-Bian.” This was certainly accurate, although Doumer reserved the right to establish other hill stations, and had yet to determine which would serve as Indochina’s chief sanatorium. In the Lang-Bian mountain range, Yersin explained to his mother, “there is a vast, barren plateau of some four hundred square kilometers in the middle of which rises a mountain. The plateau’s average elevation is of 1,500 meters [5,000 feet] above sea level; the mountain surpasses 2,000 meters. I believe the region to be healthy because it is barren.” Then Yersin betrayed his secret hope: “[The Governor has ordered] the construction of a road and railroad that will lead to the plateau directly from Nha-Trang. All of this will increase Nha-Trang’s importance!”75 Revealed here are not only Yersin’s miasmic theories (in the miasmic model, decaying organic material played an important role in transmitting malaria, and the more barren an area, the better), but also a hidden agenda: that the scientist’s beloved town of Nha-Trang, home to his laboratory, would grow in importance thanks to the future Lang-Bian sanatorium. LANG-SA If Yersin emerged as Doumer’s most trusted local health advisor, Alexandre Kermorgant remained the sanatorium expert. In June 1898, Kermorgant was asked to assess Yersin and Doumer’s plans for transforming the Lang-Bian plateau into a hill station. He began by bemoaning that no local Simla or Darjeeling—the famed hill stations of British India—had been found in the previous decades. This had led wealthy French settlers in Cochinchina to seek reinvigoration in the British colony of Singapore, and French officials and troops to find treatment at Yokohama, at great cost to the administration. At last, the Lang-Bian plateau promised to remedy this situation. Thanks to the Lang-Bian, wrote Kermorgant, “the sanatoria problem in the Orient has been resolved, which will ease the burden on state funds.” All stood to gain according to the optimistic Kermorgant: the soldiers, settlers, and administrators who could sojourn there, and the administration whose coffers would benefit in equal measure.76 Doumer, the future president of France, had strongly endorsed the sanatorium project—though he still remained vague about its precise location. In April 1898, he had stressed to the Minister of the Colonies the “high importance” that he ascribed to the project, given the “significance of this enterprise for French colonialism in Indochina.” He reiterated his goals: finding a salubrious plateau on which Europeans could enjoy “vivifying air, a temperate climate, analogous to some extent to Southern Europe’s, and capable consequently of restoring their health and vigor, altered by the humidity and heat of the lowlands.” A host of sites were considered, based on recent expeditions and consultations with explorers. Bavi, near Hanoi, was ruled out because “woodland fever” seemed to overcome all who stayed there. Doumer considered the Tonkin’s natural sanatorium solution to lie in China, in the Yunnan, which would soon be connected to Indochina by rail, but which presented the disadvantage of lying outside French borders. Instead, Doumer focused on Annam, where several sites seemed propitious. Certainly, the Lang-Bian had much to offer. The Lang-Bian, he opined, combined all of the necessary conditions: sufficient altitude, water supply, fresh air, and breezes.77 Other regions within Annam still held promise, including the hinterland of Tourane (Da-Nang), where explorations for a hill station were about to begin. To convince the Minister of the Colonies, Doumer cited outside opinions. Indochina’s inspector of agriculture, Jacquet, who had been sent to examine the Lang-Bian’s potential for sustaining European fruits and vegetables, declared: “I can barely contain my enthusiasm at the sight of this wonderful region.” Proof of the land’s healthfulness, insisted Jacquet, could be found in the highland minorities indigenous to the plateau. “They are robust and strong,” he wrote, “next to the emaciated peoples of the valleys.” Enter another witness. Jacques de Montfort, a world traveler and legendary marksman who had visited the Lang-Bian as a tourist, reported: “It is impossible to find a more pleasant temperature than on this plateau; the air is very dry, and a gentle breeze blows day and night.”78 Doumer concluded with a flourish. Not only could the Lang-Bian become “a site of rest and comfort for tired settlers and administrators,” it could one day become an administrative hub or even a de facto capital, and a military base where troops could be kept fresh and ready for combat. Doumer dubbed the Lang-Bian’s future sanatorium “Lang-Sa,” which he understood to denote “French town” in Vietnamese (from Phu Lang Sa).79 Here, in other words, stood not only an ideal sanatorium site, but also a future French administrative hub. Its advantages were many: buffered from Vietnamese centers of power, nestled in healthy mountains, offering a vast expanse for future constructions, climatically akin to Southern France, and surrounded by minority peoples allegedly seeking French intervention. Doumer’s fascination with the Lang-Bian plateau was anything but incidental. He hoped to exploit Indochina’s handful of “temperate and healthy regions.” “May they be populated with settlers,” implored Doumer, “and we will indestructibly establish both civilization and French sovereignty over this part of the Far-East.”80 Thus, hills stations held the key to perpetuating the French presence in, and domination over, Indochina. Such was the grand vision of Paul Doumer.81 The general principle of associating altitude, power, and health, had been firmly established. Details, however, had yet to be ironed out. Doumer kept his options open, realizing that Indochina’s vast distances might call for several hill stations, spread out between Tonkin and Southern Annam. His 1897 memo to administrators had urged them to consider all healthy highland sites for a possible sanatorium. In this process, Doumer came to rely upon some of the intrepid travelers who had trekked the mountains in the 1890s. INDOCHINESE CONTEXT: 1897 Starting in July 1897, Doumer positioned teams of explorers in their starting blocks. Their finish line was Indochina’s highland sanatorium. So far, we have followed only one of their itineraries, Alexandre Yersin’s; in the following chapter, we will turn to his chief competitor, Victor Adrien Debay. Clearly, Doumer assigned a high priority to this race, since he initiated it within months of taking office. The year 1897 proved fateful for the colony, or rather the Indochinese union, as it had been known for a decade. Paul Doumer’s nomination to the post of governor general that year marked a sea change. One of his predecessors, de Lannessan, had advocated the respect of Indochina’s many cultures, had championed a form of indirect rule, and even considered reversing the division of Annam and Tonkin—a partition that had torn Northern Vietnam away from the Nguyen dynasty in Hué. He had guaranteed the rights of the protectorates. In contrast, Doumer’s mandate involved creating a strong central government—the Gouvernement général de l’Indochine. Accordingly, in 1897, Doumer founded Indochina’s direction of finance, as well as its régies, or state monopolies. He stripped the Nguyen as well as the Cambodian monarchy of much of their power. Mostly, Doumer set into motion a massive increase in the size of the colonial administration. By 1900, Indochina’s ratio of European officials to total population already dwarfed that of British India and the Dutch East Indies.82 Soon the number of European functionaries across Indochina would soar from 2,860 in the year Doumer took office, to 5,683 in 1911.83 According to one source, Doumer ushered in “a great era of bureaucracy.”84 Most of Doumer’s objectives depended on the success of a sanatorium or hill station. With Europeans already perishing from disease at high rates, doubling the size of the European administration could only be justified by creating a site for periodic “cures.” As for carving out a French space in the Annamese interior, this decision was either tributary to Doumer’s 1897 reforms, or vice versa. Under de Lanessan, only Cochinchina—a colony rather than a protectorate—could have even been considered for such a project. We have seen that Cochinchina’s highest altitudes were deemed inadequate for a sanatorium. In fact, de Lanessan had favored the Yokohama option, a sanatorium that lay on a clearly defined French concession. The new plan to create a French convalescence site in the protectorate of Annam signaled a clear shift in the French relationship with the Nguyen dynasty. Such were the broader geostrategic stakes that Doumer pondered in 1897 as he dispatched columns of explorers into Annam’s rugged interior. Conceding a manifest fragility, French colonial doctors in nineteenth- century Indochina resorted to desperate and costly measures: repatriation and term limits on the length of stay in the colony. Colonial officials were acutely aware of the high morbidity rates Europeans suffered—rates so high that medics could barely write a paper on the topic and hope to see it published in their lifetime; so high that the administration tried to distort them by shipping the dying back to France so as to have them count as lost at sea. Desperation and a firm belief in the toxicity of Indochina’s climate drove the costly and bizarre attempt to evacuate sick administrators to distant yet clement Japan. With the advent of Paul Doumer, and the French government’s commitment to create an unusually strong administrative presence in Indochina, new, more practical and economic solutions needed to be found. Advocates of colonial sanatoria adroitly channeled a web of fears—of the climate, of mysterious fevers and emaciating digestive disorders, and even of indigenous peoples themselves—to justify a seemingly utopian project: the creation ex nihilo of a European health center, or even a French city, high atop the “uncharted” mountains of Annam. 2 Murder on the Race for Altitude THE MISSION The utopian project of finding and establishing a colonial mountain refuge had a dark side. It also did not focus solely on the Lang-Bian; rather colonial authorities scoured all of Indochina searching for the ideal site for Indochina’s main hill station, and later mandated a network of ancillary hill stations. Though situated further north in Annam, the saga of Victor Debay’s hill station mission constitutes a key to understanding the mentalities that went into making Dalat, because it sheds light on some of the brutal methods, the competition, and the urgency, even madness, associated with the search for a colonial highland sanctuary. At this story’s core is the relationship between empire, health, violence, and labor. In 1900 and 1901, Victor Adrien Debay, a captain with years of experience in the Annam highlands, cut a swath of destruction and death as he carried out Governor Doumer’s orders to find a second suitable site for an Indochinese hill station, this one within reach of Tourane (modern-day Da-Nang) and Hué. Depending on the captain’s findings, the site might one day rival or supplant the Lang-Bian as Indochina’s prime sanatorium. How did this hill station imperative shape or condition the murderous bedlam wrought on Vietnamese and highland minorities alike? Through the perpetrator’s trial, we will ponder the rampage both in its possible uniqueness and in the broader context of colonial power relations, and ultimately, contemplate some of its root causes. Colonial sources evoke two competing columns set in motion by Governor Paul Doumer to find the optimal site for an Indochinese hill station. One was dispatched to southern Annam, the other to central Annam. The two-pronged effort was nothing short of a race to uncover French colonial Indochina’s salvation: healthy places where Doumer’s dream of a large administration and flourishing settler colony could take root. The first column was led by the scientist Alexandre Yersin, the second by a captain, Victor Adrien Debay. As they prepared to set out on their respective missions, few clues hinted which of the two sites would ultimately become Indochina’s prime rest center, its nexus of leisure and power. Indeed Yersin and his competitor departed on relatively even footing, although the famed Swiss scientist admittedly got off the mark several years earlier. As a result, buzz about the Lang-Sa / Lang-Bian site had reached the halls of the Ministry of the Colonies in Paris before Debay’s expedition had even been gathered. The colonial press reported in April 1901 that a mission had set out in January of that year to sleuth for a hill station site in Central Annam.1 The reality was somewhat more complex. Governor Doumer in person had apparently named Debay to head an exploratory mission in February 1900. No doubt Doumer was drawn to the fact that, like Yersin, Debay had conducted long treks through the Annamese and Laotian interior in the 1890s. The captain had spent some 750 days hiking through the mountainous terrain, in 1894, 1895, 1896, and 1897.2 For this February 1900 expedition, Debay was accompanied by a number of other officers, each placed in charge of prospecting in different areas of the Annamese interior. Their instructions were as clear as they were specific. The future hill station ought to be located within a 150 km radius of Tourane.3 The site needed to surpass 1,200 meters in altitude, to feature a southeastern exposure and dry, swamp-free ground, yet possess water reserves. It had to be situated “in the middle of pine forests in a pleasant locale,” and be easily accessed from Tourane and Hué.4 In December 1900, Governor Doumer, frustrated at finding so few other sites besides the Lang-Bian, bade Debay to lead a new mission in search of a hill station. This time, Lieutenants Becker, Decherf, and Venet joined Captain Debay. As with the previous mission, they relied heavily on those they termed indigenous porters, translators, coolies, laborers, and servants. This motley crew left for the mountains for this second mission in February 1901.5 The spirit of competition between hill station explorers remained strong, their sense of purpose intense. Reflecting on the massif in Central Annam, Debay declared it “perhaps even better than the [upper] Donnai,” where Yersin had been conducting his own reconnaissance.6 Like Yersin, Debay was naturally convinced of his mission’s importance. “Acclimatization,” he wrote in a 1904 article about his assignment, “is never perfect.” White people, he argued, gradually succumb to the heat and humidity of the tropics. Their character, he wrote ominously, “becomes more nervous, their emotions more extreme and less pleasant.” To this climatic shock, there was “but one remedy: flee its causes.” Hence, he explained, the necessity for colonial hill stations, although he added pointedly, “a complete cure would also require the action of moral factors that no sanatorium can provide, and that can only be found in one’s homeland.” Indeed, he noted, no matter how useful the sanatorium, it could only forestall an eventual repatriation to the metropole.7 In a sense, these passages contain little by way of original insight: Debay repeated the received, and generally pessimistic, wisdom of his time with respect to the acclimation of Europeans in so-called tropical zones. Yet the author’s inflections also suggest a deeply personal experience of the colony’s deleterious effects, and of possible courses for salvation. THE PERPETRATOR Kurtz’s character in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was not just the stuff of fiction. After Parisian investigators tried to elucidate the mass death wrought by two rogue officers, Voulet and Chanoine, in their rampage across Central Africa only two years prior to Debay’s mission (1898), they ultimately concluded that the men had gone insane because of the African heat.8 Debay seems to have implied something similar in his 1904 article, to explain his spate of crimes, which were admittedly on a smaller scale than Voulet and Chanoine’s. Yet the mercurial Debay’s files suggest that demons haunted him long before he reached the tropics. Victor Adrien Debay was born on August 28, 1861 in the village of Serzy-et-Prin, near Reims. The son of Jean-Marie Adrien Debay and Louise Clotilde Eilisa Delamarck, he was not born into wealth. He joined the army as an entry-level soldier in 1882, at age 21. The French military of the 1880s was both reeling from defeat at the hand of Prussia in 1870, and deeply involved in a quest for redemption overseas, in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Indian Ocean. Debay finished his training with a good ranking, placing 144th out of 406 cadets. Thereafter, he rose steadily through the ranks: he entered the Saint-Cyr officer school in 1886, and achieved the rank of lieutenant in the infanterie de marine in 1891, before ascending to captain in 1898. At some point in this process, no doubt before serving in the military, he earned a university degree.9 Despite these promotions, certain stains marred Debay’s file. His dossier reveals that in 1884 he waited for a fellow soldier to fall sick, before pouncing on him and throwing him to the ground repeatedly for having allegedly disrespected him some time before.10 Debay reached Indochina in May 1890, and was first posted in Cochinchina. By October 1890, he was transferred to Tonkin, which was in a state of war. In April 1891, his superior drew a balance sheet of Debay’s qualities and faults: “This officer was given a poor grade in Cochinchina. He has been full of zeal and energy since arriving in Tonkin, especially on campaign, where he has shown remarkable bravery; he is almost fearless. . . . He is moreover well educated, with a university degree in arts and sciences. However, he is compulsively active, and his character exceedingly nervous, not well adjusted.”11 A portrait emerges of a fearless fighter, possessing a hair- trigger temper, and increasingly prone to fits of rage. In 1894, Debay shows up once again in colonial records, this time pestering the administration of Annam and of Indochina to fund his travels to the mountainous interior of Annam. A lettter from the interim governor of Indochina, Léon Chavassieux, to the Résident supérieur d’Annam, dated September 14, 1894, hints that Debay concocted these explorations himself. It certainly concludes that the lieutenant should not receive financial support for them from the colonial administration. Indeed, the correspondence reveals that both ex-Governor de Lanessan and the Minister of the Colonies had decided on previous occasions not to support Lieutenant Debay’s adventures. If he wished to pursue them, he could, but they underscored the ruinous expenses necessary for such an expedition. Among these the governor listed the costs of feeding and paying the column of porters, the escort and the interpreter Debay had requested.12 This further fleshes out Debay’s character: in addition to his temper, the lieutenant had an established reputation as something of a loose cannon, intent on quixotic adventure on his own terms. THE CRIMES When investigators in Tourane got hold of the Debay case in late 1901, they were flooded with literally hundreds of testimonies from ethnic Vietnamese and highland minorities alike, attesting to the captain’s pattern of brutal, murderous behavior, and his terrifying, impulsive ways. In a letter to the head prosecutor in Hanoi, the juge de la paix, Tricon, drew up a list of some of the captain’s worst offenses: the death by beating of a “coolie,” Nguyen- Van-Chieu, in 1897; the death by beating of another “coolie,” Nguyen-Van- Nieu that same year; the death by beating of a farmer, Le-Van-Si, in 1901 during the expedition to find a hill station in the Bana area; the death by beating of the highland minority man, Dinh-Vi, during that same mission; the death by beating some years earlier of Nam-Au, another farmer; arson leading to death, committed on a host of houses and one pagoda in Quan- Nam province; the severe beating between 1897 and 1901 of at least seventy-one other “coolies.”13 The forms that this violence took—Debay had for instance dragged one of his victims by the hair down a mountain, while simultaneously beating him—led Tricon to term the acts especially “barbarous.”14 In almost every case, the cause of Debay’s outbursts was either unknown, or altogether trivial—mostly annoyances and misunderstandings.15 Debay, for instance, appears to have expected all of his interlocutors to speak French, and became enraged when they did not. Thus, on the Bana hill station expedition, he beat a highland minority man on the head for not understanding a French-language question.16 His irritation did not stop there. On a separate occasion, when a porter on the route to Bana moved too slowly for his taste, Debay punched him violently in the nose, causing major bleeding. Furious that this did not help pick up the pace, Debay ordered two minority men to beat the porter with sticks, while he kicked the forlorn man. The 26-year-old victim would require a month’s bed rest, and still bore the scars at the time of his testimony.17 The case against the captain could have been stronger still but for the fact that witnesses fled, and that Tricon’s jurisdiction did not extend beyond Annam. Among other reports that could not be confirmed were the summary shooting of highland minorities who had disturbed Debay during a nap, and the torture of a village chief so as to obtain information. Countless crimes could not be corroborated or catalogued. When investigators reached the hill station site around Bana to collect testimonies, villagers fled upon hearing the name Debay.18 A “Debay method” emerges from these reports. Again, it bears some resemblance to the famous Voulet-Chanoine episode, insofar as forced recruitment, pillage, terror, and abductions were central to Debay’s modus operandi. Those termed “coolies” in the written transcripts and reports were so only in Debay’s mind. Most of them were in reality torn from their fields or houses, and forced to work for Debay for no remuneration. The official translator recorded this as “requisitioning” in the record of evidence.19 One witness, a highland minority village chief named Huynh So, attested: “I am very old [the colonial scribe noted that the witness looked “in his 60s”]. When the Captain came, he stayed four days in my village, in the 6th month of the Vietnamese calendar of this year. He asked me to take him into the mountains myself. I told him I was too old, but would do so anyways. . . . After telling me to go faster, he took a stick and hit me repeatedly. I turned to avoid the blows, so he threw me on the ground and kicked me.”20 This typical incident took place during Debay’s hill station expedition, in 1901. Debay no doubt deliberately targeted a village elder and chief, in a bid to send a hierarchical and terrifying message about coolie recruitment. Debay also insisted, in this instance as in others, that indigenous people of his choosing guide him on his expedition. Geographical information gathering had a long history in colonial contexts, and traditionally involved either an exchange of goods or money; European cartographers in particular had for centuries relied on indigenous informants to collect local knowledge.21 Yet although Debay’s mission lay at the intersection of reconnaissance and cartography, his approach was far more direct: he commandeered those he deemed influential to literally lead him to his goal, against their will. Similarly, Debay’s notions of hospitality and shopping would be equally foreign to most of us. Nguyen Van Deo, a 39-year-old farmer in Pho-Nam, testified that Debay ordered him to receive him at home. Debay quickly lost patience at not having been brought a lamp, and proceeded to lash his involuntary host forty-eight times with rattan.22 On another occasion, during the expedition to lay a path to the Bana hill station, Debay relentlessly beat conscripts, burned their homes, shot their livestock, destroyed their rice supplies, and imposed penalties to be paid in pork, poultry, rice, and tobacco, without ever giving laborers a salary.23 When later pressed on his motivations for this conduct, Debay would rest his argument on the scarcity and reticence of labor, and on the sacrosanct nature of his mission. THE HILL STATION IMPERATIVE, LABOR, AND MADNESS In his own writings, Debay constantly invoked his missions, his zeal, bravery, and devotion to a higher cause—in this case the Bana hill station as a panacea for Indochina. In his rebuttal to Tricon’s accusations, sent from France in May 1902, Debay explained first that the laziness and ill will of Vietnamese auxiliaries accounted in part for the reports of abuse against him. Between long passages railing against his own enemies in the colonial administration and in the army, Debay betrayed some of the choices he faced in his hill station expeditions. Less concerned than Yersin about triangulations of power between highlanders and ethnic Vietnamese, Debay dispensed beatings indiscriminately. Yet, he explains, he was especially compelled to use force and coercion when it came to finding ethnic Vietnamese porters and coolies to accompany him into the mountains. He elaborated, “I frequently had to requisition coolies to conduct work or to ensure transport in the mountains. Annamese dislike being requisitioned in general; they are even more hostile to it in the mountains where fever strikes them often. It was thus more or less impossible to recruit volunteers, despite the high salaries I offered them.”24 Like Yersin, Debay encountered stiff resistance to mountain expeditions. And like the Swiss scientist, he never once deduced that the highlands’ enduring reputation for ill-health might bode poorly for the French colonial health station that was to be constructed there. Most of Debay’s crimes were connected in some way to the recruitment of laborers. In a 1904 book on the colonization of Annam, Debay lamented that existing dispositions for recruiting laborers in Annam fell well short of what might be expected. The current system, of either relying on local chiefs or of negotiating directly with individuals was, in his words, “very poor, and upsetting for all involved: the settler, who only receives irregular and mediocre work from natives, . . . the coolies, who prefer to remain in their rice fields and villages, . . . the village notables who are stripped of laborers, and the résident de province, who is flooded with complaints.”25 As he set out on the two hill station expeditions (1900 and 1901), Debay confronted the labor question head-on, in his own impulsive way, by hijacking Vietnamese and highland minorities alike, leaving behind him a swath of devastation. The method had probably been honed during his earlier travels in 1894, undertaken despite the administration’s refusal to fund his mission. Roughly half of Debay’s many recorded crimes occurred on the Bana expeditions. Debay appears to hint at the reasons for his increasing recourse to violence, recognizing at one point his “needless violence and regrettable brutality.”26 The heavy price paid by his own entourage was, according to Debay, taking a toll on his mental health. Several lower-ranking officers on his second hill station mission had to abandon course. Lieutenant Vennet fell sick with fevers, and was urgently repatriated to France, as a dire case. The same fate awaited Lieutenant Becker, while Lieutenant Decherf actually perished, not from the fevers that were in fact tormenting him, but from a timber mishap during bridge construction on the path to the site of the future hill station.27 It was precisely at Decherf’s funeral that Debay gave a speech so bitter and bizarre that many officials and military colleagues present chided him for it. Amongst other things, Debay apparently named himself and the deceased as some of the few soldiers on risky missions whose higher goal was nonmonetary. In a remarkable self-diagnosis in his 1902 letter, Debay deduced that neurasthenia (an ill commonly attributed to the colonies), as well as hypochondria, dysentery, insomnia, and the “struggle against everyone and everything” all conspired to render this public speech so off- color.28 The colony, in other words, had gotten to both him and his men. Far be it for the historian to judge whether this explanation holds water. Debay’s mental health issues seem certain; his 1902 letter certainly smacks of paranoia, and in it he repeatedly hints at his “peculiar state of mind.”29 What matters here is how certain Debay was that Indochina itself was responsible for ruining his health, eroding his manners, and deteriorating his conduct. The terrible irony was that the final straw came on a mission that was supposed to find a respite from the colony, a lofty peak for perpetuating European rule, a haven for colonizers, a fountain of health. Instead, the quest had plunged Debay into an abyss of mental illness. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS AND SENTENCING From the outset, the legal proceedings against Debay took a peculiar turn. For one thing, Tricon’s findings were released only after Debay had returned to France (he set sail on November 30, 1901). Then too, it was unclear initially whether Debay would face justice in France or in Indochina. The Ministry of War opted for justice in Indochina, or rather by Indochinese authorities, on the revealing grounds that, “given the conditions in which the events took place, and the nature of the testimony, matters can only be appreciated in their proper context in Indochina, where they took place.”30 Only in Indochina could Debay’s actions be understood. The case against Debay would be decided by military justice, although the charges had initially been brought forward by a civilian prosecutor. In an army still reeling from the scandal of the Dreyfus Affair, and from the extraordinary stories of brutality in Congo and in the Voulet-Chanoine expedition, the obvious temptation was to sweep this new story of gratuitous colonial brutality under the carpet. Still, despite ultimately opting for a cover-up, the army brass initially agreed that Debay needed to be punished in some way, so deleterious was his behavior to French empire. Proceedings against Debay had been launched by a lead prosecutor in Indochina, Simon Georges Edgard Assaud, and not by Tricon, as Debay assumed. In his justification for pursuing the case, Assaud asserted that the body of evidence against Debay was irrefutable, the accusations against him, “alas, established.” Assaud added his political analysis of the situation, deeming that Debay’s murderous rampages could undercut “France’s good name” in Indochina.31 Debay’s crimes, in other words, had profoundly harmed France’s position in Indochina. As in the Dreyfus trial, military justice would prove a sham in the Debay case. Debay’s fate was simply decided by the Minister of War, on the advice of the Franco-Sénégalese métis General Alfred Dodds, then posted in Indochina. The latter seems to have weighed the evidence against Debay, seeking advice from colleagues in Paris and Hanoi. Surprisingly given his African parentage, Dodds conceded Debay’s point that natives were generally prone to exaggeration, and that their good faith was in many cases dubious. Considerable discussion seems to have taken place around this point. The Direction des troupes coloniales had honed the argument in a series of drafts, adding in marginalia near the mention that the testimonies were “exaggerated,” the critical point that “they come exclusively from natives.”32 Dodds also decided that homicide charges were unwarranted, because it could not be ascertained after the fact that these deaths had directly resulted from Debay’s beatings. Only the charge of “numerous cases of violence” against natives stuck. On this point, Dodds did not once refer to the hundreds of recorded testimonies. In the General’s opinion, the reaction of indigenous people to hearing Debay’s name was enough to confirm the captain’s guilt. In so doing, Dodds maintained his cardinal principle of discounting native testimonies, even on matters in which he ruled in their favor. Next, Dodds considered Debay’s responsibility. He depicted Debay as mentally strained “from the action of climate, and the isolation in which he was forced to live.” Consequently, Dodds evinced, Debay’s “responsibility is very limited, but he cannot be considered entirely irresponsible of the violence that he inflicted.” Dodds recommended that Debay be placed on “military inactivity”—that he keep his rank, but be suspended indefinitely and without pay from the army.33 The Ministry of War then considered whether to take the matter further, and bring Debay’s crimes before the Conseil de guerre. The matter was weighed in the military justice wing of the Ministry of War. A certain Taupin noted that it was ultimately up to General Dodds to decide whether Debay should face the Conseil de guerre. Since Dodds’ opinion on the matter was already known, there was in Taupin’s opinion, no point in pursuing the matter. Here Taupin read between the lines, detecting an additional reason why Dodds would like to see the Debay case disappear: “no doubt [Dodds thinks] without saying so explicitly, that it would be inopportune to fan the flames of discontent in Indochina through a judicial debate over assaults that were, after all, undertaken in all cases in the service of [Debay’s] mission.” Thus, the Ministry of War contended, Debay’s violence was not gratuitous; it had been conducted in the line of duty. Furthermore, spreading the details of this case would only serve to further erode French prestige in Southeast Asia. The Ministry of War agreed with General Dodds: Debay would be placed on the army’s “inactive” list.34 This took place on March 13, 1902, based on a presidential decision of March 7. Under the circumstances, one might have expected Debay to consider himself fortunate. Instead, on July 23, 1902 the captain petitioned for a full inquiry, certain that he was the victim of intrigues by rivals in Indochina. The army remained firm, an inquiry being precisely the result it wanted to avoid. September 1902 correspondence also shows that the Ministry of War was not credulous about Debay’s culpability. It pointed out that Debay’s lengthy response to Tricon’s accusations never challenged the countless beatings of which he was accused. The captain merely sought to excuse them.35 Thus, for hundreds of cases of violence and at least ten confirmed murders, Debay was sentenced to being temporarily laid off, while keeping his army rank. REHABILITATION Less than two years later, Debay’s pestering paid off. In January 1904, a report reached the Minister of War pleading for clemency. Debay had apparently expressed contrition for the violence he inflicted, and had pledged “to be motivated by better intentions in the future.” The report also vaunted Debay’s valor, as well as his family status, his three children, and lack of personal fortune.36 The arguments carried the day: Debay was recalled to duty and reinstated at full pay and rank on March 30, 1904. Debay was then assigned to the fourth Régiment d’infanterie coloniale, before being quickly shifted to the fourth Régiment de tirailleurs tonkinois on October 22, 1904. This spelled a return to Indochina. Unsurprisingly, Debay was back to his old ways in little time. A 1908 report on Debay confirms that the captain continued his vicious abuse of Vietnamese. Now under somewhat closer watch as the leader of Indochinese tirailleurs, he proved utterly unrehabilitated. His superior noted in 1908, “I am convinced that this officer has been guilty of acts of violence on our colonial soldiers (punches, slaps to the face), and that he does not even spare native officers. . . . [Debay] is intelligent and active, but bitter and brutal. He is absolutely inept at commanding native troops.”37 Unable to inflict his reign of terror over innocent villagers in the countryside, Debay now brutalized French colonial troops serving under the tricolor flag, much closer to the spotlights of his superiors. If anything, he had grown more brazen. Following this report, Debay retired in 1908, only to come out of retirement in 1914 to fight in the First World War, when he was placed at the command of West African troops. The Ministry of War seems to have remained deaf to the countless warnings about Debay’s penchant for violence against the colonized. ACCOLADES In his May 26, 1902 response to the crimes of which he was accused, Debay relied on multiple strategies. One involved discrediting indigenous witnesses. Another was to list the important missions that had been assigned to him, including the 1900 and 1901 quest for a hill station. Finally, Debay enumerated the honors that had been bestowed upon him. Among them were three separate nominations he had received for France’s highest distinction, the Legion of Honor.38 By decree of July 12, 1906, Debay was successfully named Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur. This was no small reward, especially in an institution that fetichized the Napoleonic ribbon. The title of Chevalier came with fringe benefits, including an allowance of 250 francs per year. How had a repeat offender, whose file was replete with reports of unwarranted violence and unprovoked, brutal murder, been chosen for such an honor? Had Debay received protection from further investigation? Certainly, Debay was well enough connected to publish several articles and a book, even in his two-year period of unemployment. Were the accusations against him so much as considered during the nomination process? Debay’s Legion of Honor file is silent on these scores. It merely extracts elements of praise from the captain’s personnel file: his bravery in April 1891 in an operation against “pirates” in Indochina, his tireless efforts at exploring Annam’s interior in 1900. No injuries are recorded, despite Debay’s persistent claim that he had lost partial sight in one eye. And Debay’s crime wave of 1900 is magically transformed into exemplary service. In 1918, Debay ascended the Legion of Honor’s echelons to the status of Officier de la Légion d’honneur, which he still occupies posthumously to this day (Debay died in 1921).39 A quick overview of current Legion rules suggests that Debay, having never been convicted of a crime, runs no risk of being struck from the order. One might expect Debay’s legacy in Vietnam to be more tarnished. And yet a bridge to Bana hill station—perhaps the very one where Decherf perished—still bears Debay’s name.40 COLONIAL VIOLENCE IN CONTEXT The main contours of the Debay story are not as unique as they may sound —leaving aside the Legion of Honor. Voulet and Chanoine had also turned into “bloodthirsty pillagers” in their quest to secure laborers and supplies. Two other officers deeply implicated in that wholesale slaughter later rose to the ranks of general. And in another infamous scandal of the same era, Gaud and Toque’s sadistic torture and massacres in the Congo, were treated just as lightly by French justice in 1903. The two were freed long before serving their five-year prison sentence. In an army shaken by the Dreyfus Affair, these crimes, like Debay’s, were especially unwelcome.41 Were these crimes the direct result of colonial power relations, or of the permissiveness of the colonial realm? Certainly Debay’s file contains few cases of violence against fellow Europeans, notwithstanding his early outburst against a sick comrade. Debay seems to have refrained from beating innocent bystanders during his years in Marseille. In her detailed analysis of torture during the Algerian War, Raphaëlle Branche sees the practice of colonialism itself profoundly shaping forms of violence, repression, and counterinsurgency.42 This squares well with the Debay saga, insofar as the captain’s mission, his deeply colonial conception of labor relations, his reading of indigenous responses, all conditioned when and how he deployed violence. Sven Lindqvist and Olivier le Cour Grandmaison take cases like this one —interestingly, no historian to date has stumbled upon the Debay story—as indicative of colonialism’s murderous impulses. Both draw direct lines between colonial massacres and the Holocaust. Both equate empire and genocide explicitly.43 Debay’s crimes cannot be bent to fit this line of thought. For one thing, Debay’s crime spree was decidedly low-tech, explicitly and no doubt deliberately unmodern. He used his old Winchester rifle sparingly; instead Debay favored his fists and feet as weapons. Moreover, Debay’s actions stand out in the archival record. Prosecutors in Tourane and Hanoi, the Minister of War, and the highest ranking general in Indochina all pondered Debay’s deeds, agreeing that they were out of the ordinary, reprehensible, and mostly, counterproductive. That Debay was granted the Legion of Honor is more illustrative of an army stubbornly unwilling to recognize its initial error in judgment than of an institution rewarding serial murder and abuse as a modus operandi. In her book Absolute Destruction, Isabel Hull has taken an intriguing revisionist position to the study of colonial violence. Examining tragic events in	941,632
KY YEU HOI THAO KY NIEM 130 DA LAT.pdf	KỶ YẾU HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC KỶ NIỆM 130 NĂM ĐÀ LẠT HÌNH THÀNH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN (1893 - 2023) LỊCH SỬ - THỰC TRẠNG - ĐỊNH HƯỚNG CHO SỰ PHÁT TRIỂN Quét mã QR để xem Kỷ yếu Hội thảo TỈNH ỦY LÂM ĐỒNG THÀNH ỦY ĐÀ LẠT - TRƯỜNG CHÍNH TRỊ TỈNH LÂM ĐỒNG * TUYÊN BỐ MIỄN TRỪ TRÁCH NHIỆM (1) Thành ủy Đà Lạt, Trường chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng, Ban tổ chức hội thảo và Ban biên tập Kỷ yếu Hội thảo không chịu trách nhiệm về bất kỳ chi phí hoặc thiệt hại nào cho dù trực tiếp hay gián tiếp, có liên quan tới hoặc là hậu quả của việc sử dụng, hoặc không thể sử dụng được các nội dung xuất bản trong Kỷ yếu này, bởi bất kỳ bên nào, hoặc liên quan đến các sai sót, vi phạm bản quyền, hay những vi phạm tương tự khác của tác giả các bài báo cáo/ tham luận được xuất bản trong Kỷ yếu. (2) Tác giả và các đồng tác giả bài báo/ tham luận có trách nhiệm tuân thủ đạo đức nghiên cứu và công bố công trình khoa học. Chịu trách nhiệm cá nhân về nội dung của bài báo/ tham luận; Sự chính xác và tính liêm chính học thuật của nội dung ấy (ví dụ tất cả các trích dẫn trong bài báo/tham luận đã được dẫn nguồn đầy đủ và đúng quy định; các dữ liệu, kết quả phân tích là trung thực và không bị ngụy tạo hoặc chỉnh sửa). (3) Nội dung của các bài báo/tham luận được xuất bản trong Kỷ yếu này thể hiện quan điểm cá nhân của tác giả và các đồng tác giả của bài báo/tham luận đó, và không nhất thiết phản ánh quan điểm của Thành ủy, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng, Ban Tổ chức Hội thảo và Ban biên tập Kỷ yếu Hội thảo. HỘI THẢO KHOA HỌC KỶ NIỆM 130 NĂM ĐÀ LẠT HÌNH THÀNH VÀ PHÁT TRIỂN (1893 - 2023) "LỊCH SỬ - THỰC TRẠNG - ĐỊNH HƯỚNG CHO SỰ PHÁT TRIỂN" STT HỌ VÀ TÊN NHIỆM VỤ 1 Đồng chí Đặng Trí Dũng - UVBTV Tỉnh ủy - Bí thư Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Trưởng ban 2 Đồng chí Nguyễn Vĩnh Phúc - Tỉnh ủy viên, Hiệu trưởng Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Phó ban 3 Đồng chí Ngô Thị Mỹ Lợi - Phó Bí thư Thường trực Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Phó ban 4 Đồng chí Trần Thị Vũ Loan - Thành ủy viên - Phó Chủ tịch UBND Thành phố - Phó trưởng BCĐ 130 năm. Phó ban 5 Đồng chí Phạm Kim Quang - Phó Hiệu trưởng Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Phó ban 6 Đồng chí Lê Thị Thắm - Phó Hiệu trưởng Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Phó ban 7 Đồng chí Trần Đức Nam - UVBTV, Trưởng Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy, Giám đốc Trung tâm Chính trị Đà Lạt Thành viên 8 Đồng chí Lê Anh Kiệt - Thành ủy viên, Trưởng phòng Văn hóa Thông tin thành phố Đà Lạt. Thành viên 9 Đồng chí Ngô Thị Thúy Vi - Trưởng phòng Quản lý đào tạo và nghiên cứu khoa học, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên BAN TỔ CHỨC BAN BIÊN TẬP STT HỌ VÀ TÊN NHIỆM VỤ 1 Đồng chí Ngô Thị Mỹ Lợi - Phó Bí thư Thường trực Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Trưởng ban 2 Đồng chí Trần Đức Nam - UVBTV, Trưởng Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy, Giám đốc Trung tâm Chính trị Đà Lạt. Phó ban 3 Đồng chí Phạm Kim Quang - Phó Hiệu trưởng Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Phó ban 4 Mời đồng chí Nguyễn Tất Thắng - Phó Hiệu trưởng trường Đại học Đà Lạt. Phó ban 5 Đồng chí Lê Thị Thắm - Phó Hiệu trưởng Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Phó ban 6 Mời đồng chí Nguyễn Cảnh Chương - Phó trưởng phòng QLKH-HTQT. Thành viên 7 Đồng chí Nguyễn Văn Tuấn - Trưởng phòng TCTT- Trường Đại học Đà Lạt. Thành viên 8 Đồng chí Lê Thị Hồng Phúc - Phó trưởng Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Thành viên 9 Đồng chí Kiều Hoài Sơn - Trưởng Khoa Xây dựng Đảng, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên 10 Đồng chí Lê Quang Sơn - Trưởng Khoa Lý luận cơ sở, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên BAN THƯ KÝ STT HỌ VÀ TÊN 1 Đồng chí Đặng Trí Dũng - UVBTV Tỉnh ủy, Bí thư Thành ủy Đà Lạt. 2 Đồng chí Nguyễn Vĩnh Phúc - Tỉnh ủy viên, Hiệu trưởng trường Chính trị Lâm Đồng. 3 Đồng chí Ngô Thị Mỹ Lợi - Phó Bí thư Thường trực Thành ủy Đà Lạt. 4 Đồng chí Đặng Quang Tú - Phó Bí thư Thành ủy, Chủ tịch UBND thành phố Đà Lạt. STT HỌ VÀ TÊN 1 Đồng chí Ngô Thị Thúy Vi - Trưởng phòng Quản lý đào tạo và nghiên cứu khoa học, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. 2 Đồng chí Lê Thị Hồng Phúc - Phó trưởng Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. BAN CHỦ TRÌ BAN LỄ TÂN - HẬU CẦN STT HỌ VÀ TÊN NHIỆM VỤ 1 Đồng chí Trần Ngọc Minh - Thành ủy viên, Chánh Văn phòng Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Tổ trưởng 2 Đồng chí Nguyễn Đức Dũng - Thành ủy viên, Chánh Văn phòng HĐND-UBND Thành phố. Tổ phó 3 Đồng chí Lê Thị Hồng Phúc - Phó trưởng Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Tổ phó 4 Đồng chí Nguyễn Thị Bích Đào - Phó Văn phòng Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Thành viên 5 Đồng chí Hồ Hữu Tường - Phó giám đốc phụ trách Trung tâm Văn hóa Thông tin và Thể thao thành phố Đà Lạt. Thành viên 6 Đồng chí Trần Văn Công - Phó trưởng phòng Tổ chức, hành chính, thông tin, tư liệu, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên 7 Đồng chí Cao Trọng Tuệ - Phó trưởng phòng Quản lý đào tạo và nghiên cứu khoa học, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên 8 Đồng chí Lê Viết Lâm - Chuyên viên phòng Quản lý đào tạovà nghiên cứu khoa học, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên 9 Đồng chí Nguyễn Đình Trọng - Chuyên viên Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Thành viên 10 Đồng chí Phan Văn Diễn - Chuyên viên Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. Thành viên 11 Đồng chí Nguyễn Thị Khánh Linh - Giảng viên Khoa Nhà nước Pháp luật, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng Thành viên 12 Đồng chí Nguyễn Thị Khánh Vân - Chuyên viên phòng QLĐT và nghiên cứu KH, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Thành viên 13 Đồng chí Đặng Thị Phương Hoa - Chuyên viên Văn phòng Thành ủy. Thành viên 14 Đồng chí Nguyễn Thị Phượng Uyên - Chuyên viên Ban Tổ chức . Thành viên 15 Đồng chí Đỗ Thị Hoàng Uyên - Chuyên viên Văn phòng Thành ủy. Thành viên 16 Đồng chí Nguyễn Bảo Phương Uyên - Chuyên viên Phòng VHTT Đà Lạt. Thành viên MỤC LỤC STT NỘI DUNG - TÁC GIẢ TRANG PHẦN I: LỊCH SỬ 1 Từ buổi ban sơ đến hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt. ThS. Lê Thị Hồng Phúc, Ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt 11 2 Những đóng góp quan trọng của bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin đối với thành phố Đà Lạt, tỉnh Lâm Đồng. TS. Nguyễn Thanh Sơn, Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt 22 3 Cao nguyên Lanbiang qua góc nhìn địa chính trị, văn hóa của A.Yersin. TS. Phan Văn Bông, Trường Cao đẳng Đà Lạt ThS. Nguyễn Đình Mạnh, Trường THPT Trần Phú 30 4 Những cống hiến của Bác sĩ Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin đối với Đà Lạt. ThS. Trương Thị Thu Thảo, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng 37 5 Tâm thức di dân - yếu tố quan trọng góp phần vào sự hình thành văn hóa con người Đà Lạt. Uông Thái Biểu, Vụ trưởng, Trưởng Cơ quan Thường trực Báo Nhân Dân tại Miền Trung - Tây Nguyên 44 6 Lịch sử hình thành các Tôn giáo. ThS. Nguyễn Hàm Mạnh Ban Tôn giáo, Sở Nội vụ tỉnh Lâm Đồng 56 7 Giữ gìn và phát huy bản sắc văn hóa người Đà Lạt. Thanh Dương Hồng Chủ tịch Hội văn học nghệ thuật tỉnh Lâm Đồng 65 8 Quá trình đấu tranh cách mạng của nhân dân Đà Lạt trong cuộc kháng chiến chống thực dân Pháp và đế quốc Mỹ xâm lược. Ban Tuyên giáo Tỉnh ủy Lâm Đồng 73 PHẦN II: THỰC TRẠNG 9 Nghiên cứu, ứng dụng khoa học và công nghệ hạt nhân phục vụ phát triển kinh tế - xã hội. Cao Đông Vũ, Viện trưởng Viện Nghiên cứu hạt nhân 83 10 Giải pháp huy động nguồn lực, thu hút đầu tư phát triển thành phố Đà Lạt. Sở Kế hoạch và Đầu tư tỉnh Lâm Đồng 93 STT NỘI DUNG - TÁC GIẢ TRANG 11 Thúc đẩy khởi nghiệp và đổi mới sáng tạo trong thanh niên phục vụ phát triển kinh tế xã hội. Trương Quốc Tùng, Trưởng Ban Phong Trào Tỉnh Đoàn Lâm Đồng 101 12 Phát triển mô hình thành phố thông minh của Đà Lạt Phòng Văn hóa và Thông tin thành phố Đà Lạt 105 13 Nâng cao hiệu quả hoạt động khoa học công nghệ và đổi mới sáng tạo phục vụ phát triển thành phố Đà Lạt. ThS Lê Quang Sơn, Trưởng khoa Lý luận cơ sở Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng 112 14 Ứng dụng khoa học và công nghệ trong phát triển công nghệ cao tại thành phố Đà Lạt và tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Sở Nông nghiệp và Phát triển nông thôn tỉnh Lâm Đồng 120 15 Giải pháp bảo tồn và phát huy các nghề thủ công tiêu biểu của Đà Lạt gắn với khai thác, quảng bá du lịch và phát triển kinh tế văn hóa xã hội của địa phương. Đoàn Thị Ngọ, Nguyên Phó Giám đốc Bảo tàng Lâm Đồng 130 16 Phát huy lợi thế tiềm năng, thế mạnh của Đà Lạt trong phát triển nông nghiệp công nghệ cao, nông nghiệp xanh. TS. Phạm S, Phó Chủ tịch UBND tỉnh Lâm Đồng 138 17 Đẩy mạnh ứng dụng khoa học công nghệ phát triển sản phẩm OCOP. ThS. Nguyễn Đình Thiện, Phó trưởng phòng Kinh tế Đà Lạt 143 18 Phát huy tiềm năng, thế mạnh của Đà Lạt trong phát triển nông nghiệp công nghệ cao, "nông nghiệp xanh". ThS. Hoàng Thị Như Quỳnh, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng 149 19 Nhiệm vụ và giải pháp phát triển du lịch Lâm Đồng theo hướng chất lượng cao và bền vững đến năm 2025, định hướng đến năm 2030. Sở Văn hóa, Thể thao và Du lịch tỉnh Lâm Đồng 152 20 Thành phố Đà Lạt và hành trình hướng đến tăng trưởng xanh Chi cục Bảo vệ môi trường Sở Tài nguyên và Môi trường tỉnh Lâm Đồng 160 21 Phát huy những giá trị tự nhiên, văn hóa trong phát triển bền vững thành phố Đà Lạt. TS. Phan Văn Bông, Trường Cao đẳng Đà Lạt 171 22 Một vài ý kiến về giữ gìn và phát huy phong cách người Đà Lạt. Nguyễn Ước, Cán bộ hưu trí ở Đà Lạt 185 STT NỘI DUNG - TÁC GIẢ TRANG 23 Nhìn lại việc nghiên cứu văn học Lâm Đồng. TS. Lê Hồng Phong, Chi hội trưởng Chi hội Văn nghệ Dân gian Lâm Đồng, nguyên Giảng viên Trường Đại học Đà Lạt. 194 24 Sự phát triển giáo dục và đào tạo thành phố Đà Lạt trong giai đoạn hiện nay. ThS. Tăng Thị Hằng Phó trưởng phòng Giáo dục và Đào tạo thành phố Đà Lạt 199 25 Những đóng góp của chức sắc các tôn giáo trong việc củng cố khối đại đoàn kết dân tộc của tỉnh Lâm Đồng nói chung, thành phố Đà Lạt nói riêng. ThS. Đặng Xuân Hồng, Phó Trưởng Ban Tôn giáo Sở Nội vụ tỉnh Lâm Đồng 210 26 Giữ gìn và phát huy một số luật tục trong xây dựng cộng đồng người Cơ Ho ở Đà Lạt. ThS. Ngô Thị Hồng Loan, Phó Trưởng khoa Nhà nước và pháp luật Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng 215 27 Đảm bảo quốc phòng - an ninh góp phần xây dựng thành phố Đà Lạt phát triển ổn định, bền vững qua 130 năm hình thành và phát triển. Thiếu tướng, PGS, TS Nguyễn Công Sơn Phó Chính ủy Học viện Lục quân 219 28 Để Đà Lạt mãi mãi tuổi thanh xuân. Nguyễn Thế Nguyên, Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng 228 29 Dân số của thành phố Đà Lạt giai đoạn từ năm 2010 đến năm 2021: Thực trạng và vấn đề đặt ra. ThS. Đào Thị Hiếu, Khoa công tác xã hội, Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 233 PHẦN III: ĐỊNH HƯỚNG CHO SỰ PHÁT TRIỂN 30 Công nghiệp văn hóa Việt Nam - Kinh nghiệm Hàn Quốc và hàm ý chính sách cho Đà Lạt. ThS. Trần Đức Nam, Trưởng ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt 243 31 Thực trạng và định hướng ứng dụng sinh học phân tử trong nông nghiệp tại Khoa sinh học - Trường Đại học Đà Lạt. TS. Lê Ngọc Triệu, Khoa Sinh học, Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 259 33 Vận dụng tư duy thiết kế trong quản lý xã hội địa phương. TS. Trương Thị Ngọc Thuyên, Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 267 34 Xây dựng Đà Lạt trở thành công viên khoa học - sáng tạo. TS. Nguyễn Cảnh Chương, Phó Trưởng phòng QLKH-HTQT Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 275 STT NỘI DUNG - TÁC GIẢ TRANG 35 Xây dựng Đà Lạt trở thành trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng - chăm sóc sức khỏe hiện đại. GS.TSKH.BS Dương Quý Sỹ, Hiệu trưởng Trường Cao đẳng Y tế Lâm Đồng ThS. Tăng Thị Thảo TrâmTrưởng phòng TCHCQT, Trường Cao đẳng Y tế Lâm Đồng 284 36 Giải pháp phát triển nông nghiệp bền vững thành phố Đà Lạt trong tương lai. Nguyễn Văn Tới, Ủy viên BTV Thành ủy Phó Chủ tịch HĐND thành phố Đà Lạt 292 37 Kinh tế đêm - Hiện trạng và một số kiến nghị phát triển cho thành phố Đà Lạt. ThS. Lê Thị Ngọc Trà, Trưởng Bộ môn Luật kinh tế, Khoa Kinh tế - Luật Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt ThS. Phạm Hoàng Phúc Giảng viên, Khoa Kinh tế - Luật Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt Trần Diệu Linh Sinh viên ngành Luật kinh tế, Khoa Kinh tế - Luật Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt 303 38 Hệ sinh thái khởi nghiệp đổi mới sáng tạo trong thanh niên - định hướng thúc đẩy phát triển doanh nghiệp vừa và nhỏ trên địa bàn thành phố Đà Lạt. TS. Phan Minh Đức,Phó Khoa KT-QTKD Trường Đại học Đà Lạt TS. Trương Vũ Tuấn Tú, Giảng viên Khoa KT-QTKD, Trường Đại học Đà Lạt 314 39 Những vấn đề và giải pháp để Đà Lạt phát triển bền vững đúng với tiềm năng của đô thị đặc thù. PGS, TS. Bùi Trung Hưng Trường Đại học Công nghệ Đồng Nai 326 PHẦN I: LỊCH SỬ 11 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc TỪ BUỔI BAN SƠ ĐẾN HÌNH THÀNH ĐÔ THỊ ĐÀ LẠT Tóm tắt Thành phố Đà Lạt tọa lạc trên cao nguyên Langbian, với độ cao khoảng 1.500m so với mực nước biển. Nơi đây được thiên nhiên ban tặng cho khí hậu quanh năm mát mẻ, trong lành, nhiệt độ trung bình năm khoảng 18OC, cảnh quan thiên nhiên tươi đẹp, từ lâu đã là một điểm đến hấp dẫn đối với du khách trong và ngoài nước tới tham quan, du lịch và nghỉ dưỡng. Không chỉ vậy, Đà Lạt 130 năm tuổi còn mang trong mình một chiều sâu văn hóa, lịch sử, với những di sản giá trị còn mãi với thời gian. Từ khóa: cao nguyên Langbian, văn hóa, lịch sử, giá trị. I. MỞ ĐẦU Dựa theo những tư liệu quý giá năm xưa được ghi chép lại và lưu giữ theo năm tháng, chúng ta sẽ tìm về với ký ức của một cao nguyên tươi đẹp, bí ẩn. Bài viết này sẽ phác họa sơ nét về bức tranh của một miền sơn cước hoang vu chưa được biết tới và những bước chân đã khám phá cao nguyên này. Bên cạnh đó, 4 năm ngắn ngủi (1897 - 1900) là giai đoạn vô cùng quan trọng, khi mà những nghiên cứu và những hoạt động đầu tư xây dựng đầu tiên của người Pháp đã hình thành nên một trạm nghỉ dưỡng trên cao nguyên Langbian, bước khởi đầu của một đô thị Đà Lạt trong tương lai. II. NỘI DUNG 1. Buổi ban sơ của cao nguyên Langbian (trước năm 1893) 1.1. Cao nguyên Langbian bí ẩn thời xa xưa Cao nguyên Langbian là một vùng đất rộng lớn với diện tích khoảng 400km2, độ cao trung bình khoảng 1.500m và nằm cách biển chỉ hơn 100km. Tuy nhiên, trong khu vực Tây Nguyên, cao nguyên hoang sơ và đầy bí hiểm này lại là một trong những nơi khó đặt chân tới nhất đối với các đoàn thám hiểm. Để tiếp cận được, theo hướng từ đồng bằng duyên hải miền Trung đi lên, phải vượt qua tầng cao nguyên thứ nhất (độ cao trung bình 900 – 1.000m), trước khi tới cao nguyên Langbian (độ cao khoảng 1.500m)1, địa hình hiểm trở với các khối núi cao dựng đứng và thiên nhiên ẩn chứa đầy những nguy hiểm. Chính những khó khăn về vị trí địa lý, địa hình, cùng với những nguy hiểm rình rập trong chốn rừng thiêng nước độc ngày đó, nên cho tới trước những năm 80 của thế kỷ XIX, cao nguyên Langbian gần như vẫn chưa được biết tới một cách rõ ràng, chỉ được ghi chép một cách chung chung, mơ hồ trong các thư tịch cổ, * Phó Trưởng ban Tuyên giáo Thành ủy Đà Lạt. 1. UBND TP Đà Lạt (1993), Đà Lạt thành phố cao nguyên, NXB. TPHCM, tr.91. ThS. Lê Thị Hồng Phúc* 12 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc hoặc những câu chuyện truyền miệng trong dân gian về một vùng núi rừng ở đầu nguồn sông Đồng Nai. Cao nguyên Langbian trong ký ức và truyền thuyết của người Lạch Cao nguyên Langbian thời xa xưa vốn là địa bàn cư trú lâu đời của các dân tộc bản địa, trong đó đông nhất là người Lạch (một bộ phận của người dân tộc K’Ho), với nét văn hóa độc đáo, cùng những truyền thuyết đã lưu giữ lại ký ức ban đầu trên miền đất cao nguyên linh thiêng này. Tên gọi Langbian xuất phát từ truyền thuyết cổ xưa của người dân tộc K’Ho kể về câu chuyện tình đau thương giữa chàng K’Lang và nàng H’Bian. Phổ biến nhất hiện nay là câu chuyện như sau: Ngày xưa, ở khu vực La Ngư Thượng (Đà Lạt hiện nay) đất đai phì nhiêu, thời tiết ôn hoà nên có khá đông bộ tộc cư trú, trong đó hai bộ tộc hùng mạnh nhất là Lạch và Srê. Tộc Lạch có một thủ lĩnh đẹp trai với năng lực siêu phàm, có thể hạ được cả ngàn con mãnh thú, là K’Lang. Ở bộ tộc Srê cũng có một cô con gái rất xinh đẹp là nàng H’Bian, dung nhan nàng khiến đất trời lay động. Vì nhan sắc ấy mà giữa rừng già có hai con rắn lớn rất đố kị và dùng nhiều thủ đoạn giết hại nàng. Một lần, nàng đi rừng lấy mật ong thì bị rắn xuất hiện đe doạ. Ngay khi đó, chàng cũng đi săn bắn, có ai bị tai nạn đều quay lại cứu giúp, tiêu diệt lũ quái vật và giải phóng cho nàng. Cảm động với tấm lòng cao cả của chàng trai nên nàng mới quyết định cho anh biết tên nàng là Biang. Từ đấy, chàng Lang và nàng Biang thầm thương trộm nhớ nhau. Sự tích núi Langbiang cũng bắt nguồn từ đây. Tình yêu tốt đẹp ấy cũng không thể yên bình và hạnh phúc như ý nguyện, vì cha của nàng Biang đã biết và không không thể nào chấp nhận được cuộc hôn nhân của con gái, cho dù Biang khóc lóc và cầu xin đau đớn. Vì trước kia bộ tộc Lạch và Srê có hiềm khích với nhau, cho nên con gái Srê không muốn lấy chồng bộ tộc Lạch. Bian đau khổ về cuộc tình với chàng Lang, nhưng nàng cương quyết không gả cho ai và hứa với lòng sẽ đeo trên người chiếc vòng tay đính hôn của Lang hết kiếp. Lang và Bian phải rời khỏi làng để lên miền núi lập nghiệp. Thế rồi, cuộc đời cũng không được yên bình khi mà Bian phát ốm chàng Lang buộc phải quay lại làng đi kiếm người giúp đỡ. Mối tình đầu trở nên đau khổ hơn nữa khi Biang chết để đỡ mũi tên chứa độc mà người làng bắn cho Lang. Trước sự mất mát lớn lao, Lang đau khổ ngồi khóc lóc ròng rã cho đến khi chết. Nỗi đau khổ cùng cái chết của hai người đã chứng minh một tình yêu trong sáng và chân thành khiến ông Bạp ân hận khôn nguôi. Ông đã đứng ra hợp nhất các tộc người này trở thành dân tộc K’Ho và phá bỏ lời nguyền cho nam nữ được thoải mái yêu đương tự do. Sau khi chết, lăng mộ của cặp uyên ương này được dựng trên hai đỉnh núi, chính là núi Ông và núi Bà ngày nay. Người Pháp cũng dùng tên tuổi của hai người đặt làm địa danh chính ở khu vực núi Langbian như chúng ta vẫn hay gọi. Cao nguyên Langbian và vùng phụ cận trong hiểu biết mơ hồ của người Việt thời xa xưa Trong sách Đại Nam nhất thống chí được viết thời nhà Nguyễn, cao nguyên 13 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Langbian được xác định nằm trong vùng đất gọi chung là Lâm Sơn Phần, thuộc đạo Ninh Thuận, tỉnh Bình Thuận. Hình: Bản đồ Đạo Ninh Thuận trong Đại Nam nhất thống chí, phía Tây Bắc có đề chữ “Lâm Sơn Phần” (Nguồn: UBND TP Đà Lạt, Địa chí Đà Lạt, NXB. Tổng hợp TPHCM, tr.8) Đại Nam nhất thống chí còn nhắc tới vùng Di Dinh Thổ Phủ (Di Linh và vùng phụ cận ngày nay) với 20 buôn: Phí Bà Nam, Băng Dựng, Giang Trang, Phi Chân, Phi Lộ, Băng Trang, Tầm Bạch, Thẩm Luật, Bàn Tấu, La Miên, Năm Luân, Giang Tre, Băng Bí Thủy, Băng Bí Hỏa, Lưu Miên, Băng Trinh, Năng Duy, Phí Cố, Chân Dựng, Phi Chinh. Dựa theo tên phiên âm Hán Việt, có thể đoán rằng địa điểm gần cao nguyên Langbian nhất đã được ghi nhận ở thời kỳ này là buôn Phí Bà Nam, có thể là vùng Phi Nôm ngày nay. Ngoài ra, trong sách còn có một con sông được nhắc tới: “Ở phía Tây có con sông Dã Dương, không rộng mà sâu, trong đó có nhiều cá sấu”, đó là một đoạn của sông Đạ Đờn, vùng đầu nguồn con sông Đồng Nai ngày nay. Theo tư liệu nhắc tới, phía Nam sông ngày trước thỉnh thoảng có người tới buôn bán, phía Bắc sông ít có ai tới. Năm Tự Đức thứ 19 (1865), triều đình có phái người đi thăm dò nhưng vì người Thượng sợ tránh, không dám dẫn đường nên phải trở về. Người Việt đầu tiên đã thực hiện thám hiểm vùng núi rừng Nam Trung Kỳ ngày trước là Nguyễn Thông. Năm 1877, ông đang làm Dinh điền sứ tỉnh Bình Thuận, đã tổ chức thám hiểm vùng đất giữa ba con sông La Ngà, Đạ Huoai và Đồng Nai. Nhưng rồi không thể tiếp tục khai phá vùng đất này, vì khả năng còn hạn chế, cùng với sự can thiệp, cản trở của người Pháp, nên vua Tự Đức phải cho dừng công trình này. Trong tờ sớ dâng lên vua Tự Đức ngày 11/8 năm Tự Đức thứ 30 (17/9/1877), Nguyễn Thông có viết về một số nơi ở khu vực này như sau: “Vào ngày 21/5 có người rất am hiểu đường sá và phong tục dân Man là bọn Nguyễn Văn Trị, Sỹ Văn Long, Dương Long Hợp cùng viên suốt đội Hoàng Phú đi trước đến sông Dã Dương xem xét tình thế. Ngày 22/6, bọn Nguyễn Văn Trị về tường trình bọn họ thừa lệnh khởi hành, trên đường đến Sách Man Mêpu thì Hoàng Phú mang bệnh trở về. Bọn họ có 3 người đi từ Mêpu về phía Bắc qua các Sách Man. Đến Sách Man Côn Hiên thì đi về phía Tây Bắc qua các Sách Man. Ngày 29/5 đến sông Tô Sa thì gặp mưa, nước lũ lớn không thuyền nào có thể qua 14 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc sông, bèn quay lại phía Nam. Ngày mồng 8 tháng 6 thì đến sông Đạ Đưng, rộng khoảng năm sáu mươi trượng, nước đục ngầu có đảo dài. Người Man gọi nước là “đạ”, lớn là “đưng”, cũng như người Việt nói là “sông lớn”. Đạ Đưng, người Việt gọi là sông Dã Dương, hạ lưu là sông lớn Thần Quy. Từ Sách Man Mêpu đi đến sông Tô Sạ, dọc đường phần nhiều là núi cao, từ Côn Hiên đến sông Đạ Đưng đều là đất bằng, địa thế rộng rãi, khoảng khoát, có thể khám xét để lập đồn điền khẩn hoang”. Các địa danh được Nguyễn Thông nhắc tới hoàn toàn nằm ở khu vực giữa ba con sông La Ngà, Đạ Huoai và Đồng Nai, tức là ở vùng giáp ranh giữa ba tỉnh Đồng Nai, Lâm Đồng và Bình Thuận ngày nay. Đi về phía duyên hải miền Trung, nơi gần cao nguyên Langbian nhất có xóm làng của người Việt là Xóm Gòn ở phía Nam dòng suối Krongpha, cách chân đèo Ngoạn Mục khoảng 3km, thuộc địa phận huyện Ninh Sơn, tỉnh Ninh Thuận ngày nay. Bên kia suối Krongpha cho tới đầu thế kỷ XX, người Việt chưa có sự hiện diện một cách rõ ràng, vì đó là chốn rừng thiêng nước độc với những nguy hiểm tiềm tàng từ thú dữ, rắn rết và đặc biệt là bệnh sốt rét rừng. Như vậy, người Việt cho tới những năm cuối thế kỷ XIX gần như chưa có sự hiện diện trên vùng đất cao nguyên Langbian. Mặc dù đã có ý định và từng thực hiện một cách hạn chế việc tìm hiểu và khai hoang vùng núi rừng này, nhưng vì nhiều hạn chế nên người Việt chỉ mới tiến được tới một phần rất nhỏ. Có thể trước đây người Việt đã biết một cách mơ hồ và đã có một số ghi chép về miền đất cao nguyên Langbian, nhưng chỉ dừng lại với một số tư liệu ít ỏi vì chưa có khả năng tiếp cận sâu hơn tới miền đất này.1.2. Những bước chân khám phá cao nguyên Langbian (1881 – 1893). Những bước chân khám phá cao nguyên Langbian (1881 – 1893) Xuất phát từ nhu cầu muốn hiểu biết thêm về những khu vực vùng núi sâu, Chính quyền thuộc địa Pháp đã cho tổ chức một loạt các cuộc thăm dò tại vùng Tây Nguyên, trong đó đã có một số người Pháp thám hiểm tìm đường tới thượng nguồn sông Đồng Nai. Năm 1881, chuyến thám hiểm đầu tiên do bác sĩ Paul Néis và trung úy Albert Septans thực hiện. Dựa theo sự chỉ dẫn của người dân tộc ở đây, họ đã đi ngược về phía thượng lưu sông Đồng Nai lên tận đầu nguồn và tới được cao nguyên Langbian. Báo cáo Chuyến đi thám hiểm tại cội nguồn sông Đồng Nai viết rằng: “Bao quanh phía Bắc của cao nguyên này là một ngọn núi có hình dạng đặc biệt, từ xa đã nhận biết được, ở phần phía Tây là núi trọc nhưng ở phần phía Đông là rừng cây, đó là Langbian; đây là nguồn gốc của sông Đồng Nai chưa hề được biết cho tới lúc đó”2. Chuyến thám hiểm năm 1881 của bác sĩ Néis và trung úy Septans đã mở đường cho nhiều người khác tìm hiểu thêm về vùng đất này. Năm 1882, có hai chuyến thám hiểm của Nouet và Gautier. Năm 1884, sĩ quan hải quân Raoul 2. Olivier Tessier & Pascal Bourdeaux (2020), Đà Lạt - Bản đồ sáng lập thành phố, NXB. Tổng hợp, TPHCM, tr 20. 15 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Humann đã lập được một bản đồ chi tiết về vùng Thung lũng sông La Ngà và vùng Đồng Nai Thượng, trên cơ sở những thông tin thu thập được trong suốt các chuyến du khảo của ông từ năm 1884 đến năm 1889. Trong những năm 80 của thế kỷ XIX, đã có những đoàn thám hiểm đầu tiên khám phá vùng thượng nguồn sông Đồng Nai và đi tới cao nguyên Langbian, đã có một số ghi chép đầu tiên, cũng như phác họa được bản đồ của khu vực này. Tuy nhiên, những kết quả đó đã nhanh chóng bị chìm vào quên lãng, vì chưa được giới thiệu rộng rãi tới công chúng, hơn nữa lúc này người Pháp vẫn còn đang bận tâm với việc chinh phục hoàn toàn xứ Đông Dương, nên chưa thể quan tâm tới vùng núi rừng xa xôi, hiểm trở này. Chiều ngày 21/6/1893, bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin đã đặt chân lên cao nguyên Langbian, đây là thời khắc đánh dấu khai sinh cho thành phố Đà Lạt về sau, nơi ông đặt chân tới là khu vực Dankia ngày nay. Trong Hồi ký của mình, bác sĩ Yersin đã mô tả: “Tôi có ấn tượng sâu sắc khi vừa bước chân ra khỏi rừng thông, đối diện với một cao nguyên mênh mông, trơ trụi và hoang vắng này, vẻ ngoài của nó gợi nhớ hình ảnh của một vùng biển đang cồn lên một đợt sóng lừng uốn lượn màu xanh lục. Dãy núi Langbian nhô lên ở phía chân trời Tây Bắc của cao nguyên, làm cho phong cảnh tăng thêm vẻ đẹp và nổi bật trên một hậu cảnh mỹ lệ”3. Hình: Nhật ký hành trình của bác sĩ Yersin “Bảy tháng trên xứ Thượng”, tr 117 có ghi lại thời điểm đặt chân lên cao nguyên Langbian: “3h30: Cao nguyên rộng lớn, mấp mô và trơ trụi” (Nguồn: Nguyễn Hữu Tranh (2018), Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB. Trẻ, TPHCM, tr.107) 3. Alexandre Yersin (2023), Những chuyến du hành qua xứ Thượng ở Đông Dương, NXB. Trẻ, TPHCM, tr.128-129. Hình: Bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin 16 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin không phải là người châu Âu đầu tiên đặt chân lên cao nguyên Langbian, nhưng chuyến thám hiểm của ông vào năm 1893 có ý nghĩa quyết định đối với thành phố Đà Lạt, vì chuyến đi này là tiền đề cho việc khai sinh Đà Lạt. Với những ấn tượng về cảnh quan thiên nhiên tương đẹp, khí hậu mát mẻ, những năm sau đó bác sĩ Yersin đã đề xuất thành lập nơi này thành một trạm nghỉ dưỡng trong tương lai, nền tảng cho việc hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt. 2. Những tiền đề đầu tiên hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt (1897 – 1900) 2.1. Trạm nghỉ dưỡng trên cao nguyên Langbian Ngay từ những ngày đầu xâm chiếm nước ta, yếu tố thời tiết nóng ẩm, cùng với những căn bệnh của vùng nhiệt đới như sốt rét và thổ tả, đã ảnh hưởng rất lớn tới sức khỏe và là nỗi ám ảnh kinh hoàng của người Pháp tại Đông Dương trong một thời gian dài. Ban đầu, để giải quyết tình trạng bệnh tật vì khí hậu, những chuyến hồi hương về Pháp đã được tổ chức, với quãng đường hơn 10.000km, lênh đênh trên biển hàng tháng trời, chi phí tốn kém, hiệu quả thấp và tỷ lệ tử vong cao. Năm 1887, một giải pháp tạm thời được bác sĩ Mècre đề ra là sử dụng viện điều dưỡng của Pháp ở Yokohama (Nhật Bản), khoảng cánh địa lý gần hơn là hồi hương trở về Pháp, từ Sài Gòn tới Yokohama chỉ hơn 4.000km. Nơi đây có khí hậu ôn hòa, giống châu Âu, tiết kiệm chi phí và hiệu quả hồi phục cao hơn so với việc trở về Pháp. Tuy nhiên, Yokohama cũng không phải là giải pháp lâu dài vì nằm ngoài địa phận Đông Dương và các vùng kiểm soát của Pháp, cùng nhiều vấn đề khác đã xuất hiện trong thời gian này4. Năm 1897, một giải pháp mới cho vấn đề sức khỏe của người Pháp tại Đông Dương đã được Toàn quyền Paul Doumer đề ra là cần xây dựng những trung tâm điều dưỡng trên núi cao tại Đông Dương. Trong Hồi ký của mình, ông đã đề cập vấn đề này: “Để thực hiện thành công công cuộc thuộc địa hóa tại một quốc gia nhiệt đới, điều kiện cần thiết đầu tiên là làm sao cho người Âu sống được tại đó… Nếu những người này không thể tồn tại lâu được ở thuộc địa một cách liên tục, mà bị bệnh tật hay cái chết hạ gục, thì những gì họ đảm nhiệm và thực hiện sẽ trở nên bấp bênh và thường không hiệu quả”5. 4. Eric T. Jennings (2015), Đỉnh cao đế quốc: Đà Lạt và sự hưng vong của Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, NXB. Hồng Đức, TPHCM, tr 23-36. 5. Paul Doumer (2016), Hồi ký: Xứ Đông Dương, NXB. Thế giới, Hà Nội, tr 561. Hình: Toàn quyền Đông Dương Paul Doumer 17 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Trong chuyến công du Ấn Độ năm 1897, Toàn quyền Paul Doumer đã được chứng kiến những trạm nghỉ dưỡng (sanatorium) trên núi ở độ cao 1.000 – 2.000m, được tổ chức tốt và nhận thấy các binh sĩ Anh đóng tại các địa điểm này không bị mắc các bệnh của vùng nhiệt đới, do có khí hậu ôn hòa giống như châu Âu. Từ đây, ông đã mong muốn tìm kiếm những nơi tương tự như vậy ở Đông Dương dành cho công chức và binh sĩ Pháp tránh cái nóng nung người ở đồng bằng, tận hưởng những giây phút yên tĩnh trong không khí mát lành để hồi phục sức khỏe. Vì những trạm nghỉ dưỡng này ở tại chỗ, nên chi phí sẽ tiết kiệm hơn, thời gian di chuyển cũng ngắn hơn và hiệu quả điều trị cao hơn so với việc về Pháp hay sang Nhật Bản. Ngày 23/7/1897, Paul Doumer gửi thư tới những người đứng đầu các xứ ở Đông Dương, đặt ra 4 điều kiện cần thiết cho một nơi nghỉ dưỡng là: có độ cao tối thiểu 1.200m, có nguồn nước dồi dào, có đất canh tác, có khả năng xây dựng đường giao thông dễ dàng6. Giải pháp tìm kiếm những địa điểm thích hợp ở Đông Dương để xây dựng trạm nghỉ dưỡng trên núi cao của Toàn quyền Paul Doumer năm 1897 đã giúp cho việc thám hiểm cao nguyên Langbian giờ đây không chỉ là những dòng ghi chép trong các bản báo cáo hay nhật ký hành trình nữa, mà đã có điều kiện để tiềm năng của nơi này được đánh thức. Ngày 19/7/1897, sau 4 năm khám phá cao nguyên Langbian, bác sĩ Yersin đã giới thiệu với Toàn quyền Paul Doumer về cao nguyên này và đề nghị xây dựng tại đây thành một nơi nghỉ dưỡng cho người Pháp. Tháng 10/1897, Toàn quyền Paul Doumer sau đó đã cho một phái đoàn đầu tiên lên cao nguyên Langbian khảo sát để tìm hiểu thực địa và nghiên cứu con đường lên cao nguyên trong tương lai. Tháng 3/19007, Toàn quyền Paul Doumer đã quyết định lên cao nguyên Langbian để khảo sát thực tế. Ông đã đánh điện cho bác sĩ Yersin báo rằng sẽ tới Phan Rang để cùng lên cao nguyên. Đích thân ông dẫn một phái đoàn gồm đại úy Langlois, sĩ quan tùy viên, Công sứ Nha Trang và quan phủ địa phương8. Sau chuyến đi này, cao nguyên Langbian đã được quyết định chọn làm nơi xây dựng trạm nghỉ dưỡng trên núi cao ở Đông Dương. Một bài báo năm 1899, có 4 lý do được nêu ra để cao nguyên Langbian được xác định là nơi có khí hậu thích hợp cho việc xây dựng trạm điều dưỡng vì: “1. Khí hậu của cao nguyên có nét tương đồng với các nước ôn đới vào mùa xuân. Nhiệt độ hầu như không dưới 0OC và không vượt quá 29OC; 2. Độ ẩm tương đối thấp hơn so với các trạm nghỉ dưỡng ở Ấn Độ; 3. Sương mù khá nhiều, đặc biệt là vào buổi chiều, điều này sẽ có lợi cho việc làm dịu đi những tia nắng trong những giờ nóng trong ngày; 4. Lượng mưa không quá lớn và số ngày mưa nhiều, mưa dai dẳng là rất hiếm, 6. Paul Doumer (2016), sđd., tr 562. 7. Theo bác sĩ Yersin, ông cho rằng Paul Doumer thăm Đà Lạt năm 1899. Còn theo bác sĩ Tar diff, Paul Doumer thăm Đà Lạt năm 1900, sau khi đọc bản phúc trình của ông. 8. Hãn Nguyên, sđd., tr 276. Trích dẫn từ A. Yersin, “Premièré Reconnaissances du Plateau du Langbian”, Revue Indochine, No 101, 8/1942, p.4-5. 18 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc ngoại trừ tháng 7 và tháng 8”9. Sau khi cao nguyên Langbian được chọn, một vấn đề đang được đặt ra là nghiên cứu địa điểm nào sẽ được chọn để xây dựng trạm nghỉ dưỡng, Dankia hay Đà Lạt. Trong bản phúc trình năm 1900 của bác sĩ Tardiff, ông đã phân tích những điều kiện để chọn Đà Lạt sẽ là nơi xây dựng trạm nghỉ dưỡng trong tương lai, thay vì Dankia theo đề nghị của bác sĩ Yersin. - Đà Lạt có địa thế liên tục, độ dốc thoải, dễ tới; trong khi Dankia gồm một loạt những núi đồi nhỏ cách biệt nhau bằng những thung lũng hẹp và lầy lội. - Đà Lạt cao hơn Dankia 100m và thoáng hơn, còn Dankia lại nằm trong lòng chảo. - Về đất đai: Dankia có lớp đất sét quá dày làm đất ít thấm nước, trong khi Đà Lạt có lớp đất sét mỏng vừa đủ điều kiện để trồng trọt. - Về nguồn nước: Việc dẫn thủy tại Đà Lạt tương đối dễ và nếu có nhà máy nước thì phân phối nước cũng dễ dàng hơn Dankia. - Về không khí: Đà Lạt thoáng khí hơn, không khí mát lành và ít ẩm hơn Dankia. Dankia gần đỉnh Langbian, ở bên sườn hướng gió ẩm, nhận được nhiều mưa rào hơn, thường có sương mù dày hơn tới 10 giờ sáng hôm sau mới tan. - Về thảo mộc: Dankia chỉ toàn là đồi cỏ, trong khi Đà Lạt lại gần rừng thông, không khí mát lạnh và thơm mùi hương nhựa thông. - Ngoài ra, khi trở thành một thành phố thì Dankia sẽ bất tiện vì địa hình mấp mô, không tiện cho xe cộ di chuyển10. Ngoài ra còn nhiều lý do khác cho thấy Đà Lạt thật sự thuận lợi hơn để xây dựng một thành phố trong tương lai so với Dankia. Một điểm quan trọng nữa để Đà Lạt được chọn làm nơi xây dựng thành phố vì muỗi anophel rất hiếm, nhờ đặc trưng khí hậu không quá ẩm, về đêm nhiệt độ xuống thấp đủ để ngăn cản mầm bệnh sốt rét phát triển. Như vậy, từ năm 1897, với dự định về một trạm nghỉ dưỡng tại Đông Dương của Toàn quyền Paul Doumer, cùng với việc bác sĩ Yersin đề xuất cao nguyên Langbian trở thành nơi nghỉ dưỡng trong tương lai, những chuyến khảo sát đã được diễn ra và tạo tiền đề cho việc đánh thức miền sơn cước hoang vu xinh đẹp này. Sự lựa chọn năm đó, cùng những động thái không ngừng nghỉ để xây dựng nền móng cho trạm nghỉ dưỡng, một đô thị Đà Lạt. 2.2. Sự hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt Ngày 01/11/1899, Toàn quyền Đông Dương Paul Doumer đã ký Nghị định thành lập tỉnh Đồng Nai Thượng (Haut-Donnai), được xác định trong khu vực vùng thượng lưu sông Đồng Nai tới ranh giới Nam Kỳ và Campuchia. Trung tâm tỉnh Đồng Nai Thượng đặt tại Di Linh và thành lập 2 trạm hành chính tại Tánh Linh và cao nguyên Langbian. Công sứ tỉnh Đồng Nai Thượng là ông Ernest Outrey giúp Sở Công chánh Đông Dương nghiên cứu và xây dựng đường sắt ở 9. “Le sanatorium du Langbian”, Bulletin Économique de l’Indochine, No 15, 1899, p493. 10. Hãn Nguyên, sđd., tr 277-278. Trích dẫn từ Docteur Etienne Tardiff, La Naissance de Dalat (1899 – 1900), Vienne, Jerrnet Martin, 1949, p.144-148. 19 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Nam Trung Kỳ11. Tỉnh Đồng Nai Thượng là một tỉnh vùng cao nguyên, tách khỏi tỉnh Bình Thuận, là cơ sở pháp lý đầu tiên và là điều kiện cho quá trình phát triển miền cao nguyên này. Hệ thống đường giao thông là một trong những ưu tiên hàng đầu về cơ sở hạ tầng cần được xây dựng, để kết nối cao nguyên với các vùng khác. Ngày 22/3/1897, Toàn quyền Paul Doumer gửi báo cáo về cho Bộ trưởng Bộ Thuộc địa Pháp nêu dự án chương trình hành động 7 điểm (Chương trình khai thác thuộc địa). Vấn đề phát triển giao thông vận tải một lần nữa được nhấn mạnh, được nêu tại Điểm thứ 3: “Cung cấp cho Đông Dương các công cụ phát triển kinh tế, các hệ thống đường sắt, đường bộ, đường thủy và cảng để phát huy giá trị của xứ này”12. Ngày 14/9/1898 của Hội đồng tối cao Đông Dương đã thông qua Chương trình đường sắt Đông Dương của Toàn quyền Paul Doumer, trong đó có một dự định về tuyến đường sắt từ Sài Gòn tới Nha Trang và lên cao nguyên Langbian. Ngày 25/12/1898, Tổng thống Pháp đã ký một Đạo luật chấp thuận cho Đông Dương một khoản vay 200 triệu franc, trả trong 75 năm, lãi suất 3,5%/năm để xây dựng hệ thống đường sắt. Trong đó, đường sắt kết nối Sài Gòn với cao nguyên Langbian, chiều dài ước tính 650km được dự chi 80 triệu franc (kinh phí lớn nhất trong các đoạn)13. Tháng 10/1897, Paul Doumer đã cử một phái đoàn quân sự nghiên cứu tìm một con đường dễ dàng nhất đi từ Nha Trang lên cao nguyên Langbian, do đại úy Thouard chỉ huy và trung úy Wolf làm phụ tá. Từ năm 1899 tới năm 1900, các phái đoàn của Odhéra, Garnier và Bernard đã nghiên cứu con đường đi trực tiếp từ Sài Gòn lên Đà Lạt. Kết quả khảo sát của các phái đoàn trong giai đoạn 1897 – 1900 đã xác định lộ trình của đường bộ và đường sắt trong tương lai kết nối với cao nguyên Langbian sẽ được nối dài từ vùng duyên hải Phan Rang. Hình: Công nhân làm đường lên Langbian, đoạn Xóm Gòn, năm 1899 (Nguồn: Olivier Tessier & Pascal Bourdeaux (2020), Đà Lạt – Bản đồ sáng lập thành phố, NXB. Tổng hợp, TPHCM, tr.35.) 11. “Arrêté portant création de la province du Haut-Donnai et 2 postes administratifs de Tân-Linh et sur le plateau du Langbian”, Bulletin Administratif de l’Indochine, 1899. 12. Paul Doumer, sđd., tr.486. 13. A. A. Pouyanne (1998), Các công trình giao thông công chính Đông Dương, NXB. Giao thông vận tải, Hà Nội, tr. 155. 20 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Ngày 28/4/1899, Paul Doumer đã giao cho đại úy Guynet nhiệm vụ làm một con đường mòn bằng đất dài 110 – 120km từ cửa Nại (gần biển Ninh Chữ, cách Phan Rang khoảng 7km) lên cao nguyên Langbian. Năm 1900, tuyến đường từ Phan Rang tới Xóm Gòn (dưới chân núi) dài 48km được lát đá và trải nhựa, còn đoạn đường núi từ Xóm Gòn tới Đà Lạt là con đường nhỏ hẹp, có độ dốc 8%, chủ yếu dành cho lừa tải hàng. Năm 1903, tuyến đường sắt kết nối từ Phan Rang lên cao nguyên bắt đầu được khởi công, trải qua nhiều lần gián đoạn vì thiếu kinh phí, đã kết nối tới Xóm Gòn và khai thác vào năm 1913. Đây là bước khởi cho tuyến đường sắt huyền thoại Tháp Chàm - Đà Lạt sau này hoàn thành vào năm 1932, để kết nối Đà Lạt với các vùng trong cả nước. Năm 1898, trạm canh nông đầu tiên Dankia ra đời, do sĩ quan Missigbrott thành lập và được kỹ sư canh nông Jacquet quản lý. Missigbrott là một thành viên trong phái đoàn của Thouard và Wolf khảo sát cao nguyên Langbian từ năm 1897, ông đã ở lại để lập một vườn rau và chăn nuôi gia súc, sau khi phái đoàn rời cao nguyên trở lại vùng biển vào tháng 9/1898. Trạm canh nông này có diện tích hơn 16ha, là nơi thử nghiệm nhiều giống cây trồng, hoa và gia súc của vùng ôn đới. Những kết quả này là cơ sở cho nền nông nghiệp ôn đới về sau và tới nay vẫn là một lĩnh vực quan trọng trong nền kinh tế của Đà Lạt. Năm 1902, Paul Doumer trở về Pháp, những dự định dang dở của ông đối với Đà Lạt hầu như bị ngưng trệ, hoặc nếu có tiến hành thì cũng rất chậm chạp. Đà Lạt thời kỳ này gần như bị bỏ ngỏ và chìm vào trong giấc ngủ hơn 10 năm. Năm 1914, khi chiến tranh thế giới thứ nhất bùng nổ, giao thông hàng hải từ Đông Dương trở về Pháp bị gián đoạn, những cuộc hồi hương cho người Pháp không còn thực hiện được nữa. Lúc này, nhu cầu thiết lập mạng lưới trạm nghỉ dưỡng trên núi ở Đông Dương trở nên cấp thiết, đô thị Đà Lạt từ đây được hồi sinh và bắt đầu bước vào thời kỳ phát triển nhanh chóng. III. KẾT LUẬN Trải qua 130 năm hình thành và phát triển, kể từ ngày bác sĩ Yersin đặt chân lên miền đất cao nguyên này, Đà Lạt ngày nay là một thành phố du lịch, nghỉ dưỡng nổi tiếng, là một điểm đến yêu thích cho du khách trong và ngoài nước tới tham quan, du lịch, nghỉ dưỡng. Từ buổi đầu ban sơ, là miền núi rừng hoang vu, tới khi hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt, một thành phố mộng mơ, xinh đẹp và mang trong mình những giá trị di sản cùng với chiều sâu văn hóa, trường tồn với thời gian. Những bước chân thám hiểm đầu tiên trên miền đất ban sơ này đã để lại những ký ức sống động của một thời đã xa, cùng với những dự định táo bạo năm đó đã đặt những nền móng ban đầu cho sự hình thành một đô thị Đà Lạt ngày nay./. TÀI LIỆU THAM KHẢO * Tài liệu tiếng Việt: 1. Paul Doumer (2016), Hồi ký: Xứ Đông Dương, NXB. Thế giới, Hà Nội. 21 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc 2. Eric T. Jennings (2015), Đỉnh cao đế quốc: Đà Lạt và sự hưng vong của Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, NXB. Hồng Đức, TPHCM. 3. Cửu Long Giang, Toan Ánh (1974), Miền Thượng Cao Nguyên, Sài Gòn. 4. Olivier Tessier & Pascal Bourdeaux (2020), Đà Lạt – Bản đồ sáng lập thành phố, NXB. Tổng hợp, TPHCM. 5. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh (2018), Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB. Trẻ, TPHCM. 6. Hãn Nguyên, “Lịch sử phát triển Đà Lạt (1893 – 1954)”, Tập san Sử Địa, Số 23-24, 1971, Sài Gòn, tr.265-290. 7. A. A. Pouyanne (1998), Các công trình giao thông công chính Đông Dương, KS Nguyễn Trọng Giai dịch, NXB. Giao thông vận tải, Hà Nội. 8. UBND TP Đà Lạt (1993), Đà Lạt thành phố cao nguyên, NXB. TPHCM. 9. UBND TP Đà Lạt (2008), Địa chí Đà Lạt, NXB. Tổng hợp, TPHCM. 10. Nguyễn Văn Y, “Bác sĩ Yersin, người đầu tiên tìm ra vùng đất Đà Lạt”, Tập san Sử Địa, Số 23-24, 1971, Sài Gòn, tr.34-41. 11. Alexandre Yersin (2023), Những chuyến du hành qua xứ Thượng ở Đông Dương, Cao Hoàng Đoan Thục dịch, NXB. Trẻ, TPHCM. * Tài liệu tiếng Pháp 12. “Arrêté portant création de la province du Haut-Donnai et 2 postes administratifs de Tân-Linh et sur le plateau du Langbian”, Bulletin Administratif de l’Indochine, 1899. 13. “Le sanatorium du Lang-Bian”, Bulletin Économique de l’Indochine, No 15, 1899, p.488-501. 14. Noel Bernard (1955), Yersin: pionnier-explorateur 1863 – 1943, Editions du vieux Colombier, Paris. 15. L. Constantin, “Le sanatorium du Lang-Bian”, Revue Indochinoise, No 3-4, 1916 Hanoi, p.305-323. 22 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc NHỮNG ĐÓNG GÓP QUAN TRỌNG CỦA BÁC SĨ ALEXANDRE YERSIN ĐỐI VỚI THÀNH PHỐ ĐÀ LẠT, TỈNH LÂM ĐỒNG TS. Nguyễn Thanh Sơn  Tóm tắt1 Bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin là người có công khám phá và đề xuất với toàn quyền Đông Dương xây dựng thành phố Đà Lạt trở thành nơi nghỉ dưỡng ở cuối thế kỷ 19. Đây là tiền đề quan trọng để hình thành và phát triển Đà Lạt trở thành thành phố đáng sống như hiện nay. Bài viết này tìm hiểu, tổng hợp những đóng góp mang tính chất nền tảng của bác sĩ Aleaxandre Yersin đối với thành phố Đà Lạt nhân dịp kỷ niệm 130 năm hình thành và phát triển (1893 - 2023). Từ khóa: Aleaxandre Yersin, Đà Lạt, đóng góp. I. ĐẶT VẤN ĐỀ Thành phố Đà Lạt, tỉnh Lâm Đồng ngày nay đã trở thành một địa danh rất quen thuộc với người dân Việt Nam và du khách quốc tế, thành phố Festival hoa, thành phố sáng tạo âm nhạc đầu tiên của Việt Nam trong “mạng lưới thành phố sáng tạo” của UNESCO (Nguyễn Nghĩa & Võ Trang, 2023). Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin (1863 - 1943) là người có hơn 50 năm sống, cống hiến cho khoa học nhân loại và Việt Nam, một cuộc đời đầy ắp những chuyến đi thám hiểm và thành tựu khoa học. Khi nhắc đến Đà Lạt, mọi người đều biết đến bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin (A. Yersin), người đã có công khám phá vào năm 1893 và đề xuất với toàn quyền Đông Dương xây dựng nơi đây thành nơi nghỉ dưỡng và phát triển đến ngày hôm nay (Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023). Hiện có rất nhiều nghiên cứu và tài liệu về bác sĩ A. Yersin, trong đó cũng đã đề cập đến các đóng góp của A. Yersin trong các lĩnh vực y học, thú y học, nông học, dân tộc học, địa lý… đối với nhân loại và đặc biệt là đối với Việt Nam. Bài viết này tổng hợp và đưa ra một góc nhìn về những đóng góp quan trọng của bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin với TP. Đà Lạt nhân dịp TP kỷ niệm 130 năm hình thành và phát triển (1893 - 2023). II. ALEXANDRE YERSIN VỚI NIỀM ĐAM MÊ THÁM HIỂM A. Yersin sinh ngày 22/9/1863 tại tỉnh Morges, Thụy Sĩ. Lớn lên, A. Yersin đi học tại Lausanne, đỗ tú tài ở Lausanne. Sau đó, thi vào Trường đại học ở Marburg, nước Đức và một thời gian sau sang Paris. Năm 1888, vừa đúng 27 tuổi, A. Yersin đã trình luận án tiến sĩ y khoa “Nghiên cứu về sự phát triển của lao thực nghiệm” và được nhận làm phụ tá cho GS. Émile Roux. Dưới sự hướng dẫn của GS. Émile Roux, A. Yersin đã tìm ra độc tố của vi khuẩn bạch hầu (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). Trong những năm nghiên cứu tại Viện Pasteur Paris, Ông đã chứng tỏ là một Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt 23 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc thiên tài hiếm có, một con người giàu nghị lực ham tìm tòi học hỏi. Nhưng A. Yersin lại hướng về chân trời mới, Ông muốn tìm ra lối thoát khỏi cuộc sống hiện tại: “Tôi luôn luôn mơ ước thám hiểm, khám phá đất lạ, thám hiểm khi còn trẻ; ta luôn tưởng tượng những điều kì lạ sẽ đến, không có gì là không thể làm được” (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017). Thế rồi, A. Yersin bất ngờ rời bỏ ngành vi trùng học để sống đời thủy thủ và nhà thám hiểm, mở đầu một cuộc đời khác kéo dài 50 năm. Trước hết, Ông nhận lời làm bác sĩ cho một con tàu của công ty vận tải đường biển đến Viễn Đông. Sau sáu tháng hoạt động trên tuyến đường Sài Gòn - Manila (Philippin), Ông chuyển sang làm việc trên tàu Sài Gòn chạy từ Sài Gòn đến Hải Phòng và ngược lại. Những tháng đầu tiên trong nghề hàng hải đối với Yersin thật quyến rũ! Khi thuyền lênh đênh trên đại dương, Yersin nhìn lên bầu trời và học cách xác định toạ độ. Khi tàu cập bến, Yersin tập sự cùng kính thiên văn. Trong những năm sau, Yersin say mê thiên văn học và về sau tìm hiểu cả điện khí quyển, quang phổ mặt trời. Tàu chạy trên tuyến đường Hải Phòng - Sài Gòn, khi tiến lại gần bờ biển, lúc vượt sóng ra ngoài khơi. Dãy Trường Sơn hùng vĩ ở phía Tây hiện ra trước mắt Yersin gợi lên kỷ niệm tuổi học trò. Ngày ấy, Yersin đã cùng các bạn leo lên sườn núi Valais. Dãy Trường Sơn tuy không có những đường nét và màu sắc giống như dãy Alpes nhưng có những hấp dẫn kỳ lạ. Yersin muốn tìm lại những cảm giác thành thực và thân thiết khi khám phá được những điều bí ẩn, đặt chân lên miền đất lạ (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017; Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023). Tháng 7 năm 1891, Yersin cập bến Nha Trang. Ông lên bờ, đi dọc miền duyên hải đến Phan Rí và theo các con đường mòn vượt qua một ngọn đèo cao 1.200 mét gần Di Linh. Từ Di Linh ông định băng rừng đến Sài Gòn tìm ra con đường bộ nối liền Nha Trang với Sài Gòn, nhưng không kịp chuyến tàu đi Hải Phòng nên ông đành bỏ cuộc hành trình, xuống Phan Thiết dùng thuyền buồm ra Nha Trang. Chuyến thám hiểm đầu tiên ngắn ngủi này đã giúp nhà thám hiểm 30 tuổi làm quen với những khó khăn trên miền núi vùng nhiệt đới, với gió núi, mưa rừng, chịu đựng những con vắt hút máu người, vượt qua những con suối nước chảy như thác đổ... Lần tiếp xúc đầu tiên với núi rừng Tây Nguyên cũng đã kích thích Yersin ham muốn thực hiện những chuyến thám hiểm khác (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017; Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023). III. NHỮNG ĐÓNG GÓP QUAN TRỌNG CỦA A. YERSIN ĐỐI VỚI THÀNH PHỐ ĐÀ LẠT, TỈNH LÂM ĐỒNG 1. Alexandre Yersin phác họa bức tranh sơ khai về một vùng đất còn bí hiểm ở Đông Dương thời bấy giờ Khi A. Yersin đặt chân đến Đông Dương vào năm 1890, người Pháp vẫn đang trong quá trình củng cố quyền lực của mình ở các vùng đồng bằng và châu thổ nơi có nhiều người Việt (Kinh) sinh sống, chưa quan tâm nhiều đến vùng núi cao, nơi có các dân tộc thiểu số sinh sống (Alexandre Yersin, 2023). Với máu phiêu lưu khám phá, A. Yersin đã xin thôi làm bác sĩ trên tàu biển 24 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc tuyến Sài Gòn - Hải Phòng của Công ty Hàng hải Messagerisse Maritimes để dấn thân khám phá các vùng thượng du nằm giữa Trung Kỳ và Nam Kỳ - nơi được xem là không thể tiếp cận vào thời đó. Trong những hành trình đó, A. Yersin đã từ Ninh Hòa hướng lên Đắk Lắk, qua Kon Tum… đặt chân đến thị trấn Stung Treng của Campuchia, A-ta-pư của Lào (Yersin viết là Attopeu). Trong quá trình thám hiểm, với tư duy của nhà khoa học, A. Yersin đã ghi lại rõ ràng hành trình mình đi qua, đặc điểm địa hình, thời tiết các vùng đất mới thông qua những phương tiện khoa học tối tân nhất ở thời đó, như: Máy kinh vĩ, thời kế, la bàn, máy ảnh... Nói cách khác, A. Yersin đã khám phá ra những địa điểm mà người Pháp chưa bao giờ tiếp cận được để bổ sung vào bản đồ Đông Dương (Alexandre Yersin, 2023). Trong hành trình thám hiểm, mặc dù còn sơ lược nhưng A. Yersin cũng có những phát hiện lý thú về phong tục - tập quán, con người, đặc điểm văn hóa, ngôn ngữ… của người Thượng. Ông chứng kiến những tộc người Thượng, những buôn làng, những nghi lễ uống rượu cần đặc biệt… Ông cũng ghi chép về những cuộc chiến giữa các bộ tộc, những tù binh chiến tranh, những đòi hỏi khắt khe của trưởng làng về lễ vật cống nạp mới được cho thuê voi hay là đi tiếp… Ông tiêm vắc xin ngừa bệnh đậu mùa cho người dân và cố gắng hòa giải xích mích giữa các buôn làng. Ông khẳng định tiềm năng kinh tế của từng khu vực, đặt trong giả thuyết nếu nó được liên kết với mạng lưới đường bộ và đường sắt. Ông cũng đề cập đến việc đất đai thích hợp cho trồng trọt (ở phía Nam) hoặc chăn nuôi (ở phía Bắc) cũng như hiện trạng giàu có về mặt khoáng sản (đặc biệt là vàng) ở khu vực này. Đặc biệt, ông đã để lại những tấm ảnh thực tế đầu tiên về đời sống người dân ở “những xứ Thượng ở Đông Dương”. Tất cả đã cho thấy tầm quan trọng và tính tiên phong mà A. Yersin đã làm được trong các chuyến du hành, từ đó phác họa bức tranh sơ khai về một vùng đất vẫn còn bí hiểm của xứ Đông Dương thời bấy giờ (Alexandre Yersin, 2023). 2. Với đề xuất chọn cao nguyên Lâm Viên làm nơi nghỉ dưỡng, Alexandre Yersin đã đặt nền móng xây dựng Đà Lạt trở thành thành phố du lịch nổi tiếng và đáng sống Nhờ sự giúp sức của Pasteur và Bộ trưởng Giáo dục Pháp, năm 1893, A. Yersin thực hiện nhiệm vụ thám hiểm vùng núi nằm giữa bờ biển miền Trung và sông Mêkông, vùng thượng nguồn sông Đồng Nai và Sêbangcan mà trước nay ít người biết đến. Rời Sài Gòn ông đã vượt qua thác Trị An đến Tánh Linh, vượt qua sông La Ngà đến Di Linh. Men theo một con đường mòn gần giống như con đường quốc lộ 20 hiện nay. Thời khắc 3 giờ 30 phút ngày 21/6/1893, bác sĩ A. Yersin đặt chân lên cao nguyên Langbian đã trở thành dấu ấn quan trọng đối với Đà Lạt. Trong nhật ký hành trình cuộc thám hiểm, Ông viết: “Những đường đất uốn lượn làm ta tin rằng chúng ta đang đi trên mặt biển dậy sóng lớn. Langbian nằm ở giữa như một hòn đảo và cảm giác càng xa dần mỗi khi ta tiến lên” (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017). Sau chuyến chuyến thăm Ấn Độ, toàn quyền Paul Doumer bắt đầu quan tâm đến việc tìm kiếm những nơi nghỉ dưỡng cho người da trắng ở Đông Dương. Với 25 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc người Pháp, việc xây dựng trạm nghỉ dưỡng cũng nằm trong giải pháp phục hồi sức khỏe cho giống dân da trắng trước sự đe dọa của những bệnh nhiệt đới. Ngoài ra, người Pháp cũng cần một thành phố biệt lập kiểu châu Âu giúp nguôi ngoai nỗi nhớ quê nhà. Trong thư gửi cho các khâm sứ, công sứ, ông nêu bốn điều kiện cần thiết cho một trạm nghỉ dưỡng: độ cao trên 1200 mét, nguồn nước dồi dào, đất đai canh tác được và khả năng thiết lập đường giao thông dễ dàng. Nhờ chuyến thám hiểm Lâm Viên năm 1893, Yersin đã đề xuất chọn cao nguyên Lâm Viên làm nơi nghỉ dưỡng và được Toàn quyền Paul Doumer ghi nhận (Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023; Nguyễn Vĩnh Nguyên, 2021). Năm 1897, Paul Doumer cử một phái đoàn quân sự, dưới sự chỉ huy của đại úy Thouard, nghiên cứu con đường từ Nha Trang lên Lâm Viên. Năm 1899, Ông đã tháp tùng Paul Doumer lên Đà Lạt. Ngày 1-11-1899, Toàn quyền Đông Dương ký nghị định thành lập tỉnh Đồng Nai Thượng với thủ phủ là Djiring và hai trạm hành chính là Tánh Linh và Lâm Viên (đặt tại Đà Lạt bây giờ). Đó là tiền đề pháp lý đầu tiên cho việc hình thành chức năng hành chính của Đà Lạt (Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023). Đà Lạt luôn được định hình là thành phố dành cho người Âu. Sau sự “khám phá” và những chuyến thám hiểm, tiền đề của một thành phố tương lai được phác họa. Qua các đồ án quy hoạch mà người Pháp dày công xây dựng trong nửa đầu thế kỷ XX, Đà Lạt luôn được định hình là thành phố dành cho người Âu. Vậy nên, người Pháp đã chọn những không gian đắc địa để xây dựng các công trình mang đậm kiến trúc Pháp. Đà Lạt còn được biết đến là một “Bảo tàng kiến trúc địa phương của Pháp”. Theo thống kê, Đà Lạt có khoảng hơn 1.300 công trình kiến trúc, biệt thự cổ mang phong cách châu Âu. Trong số đó, tòa nhà cong - Lycée Yersin đã trở thành một trong những tác phẩm huyền thoại về kiến trúc. Trường Lycée Yersin là công trình tri ân những đóng góp của Dr. Alexandre Yersin cho TP. Đà Lạt. Năm 1934, Toàn quyền Đông Dương phê chuẩn cho Nha học chánh một mảnh đất gần 15 hecta ở Đà Lạt để xây dựng trường Grand Lycée. Hiện nay trong Phòng lưu trữ Tòa Khâm sứ Trung kỳ bảo quản tại trung tâm Lưu trữ quốc gia IV còn lưu giữ hơn 30 bản vẽ kỹ thuật khổ lớn cùng nhiều tài liệu giá trị về quá trình xây dựng công trình này. Năm 1935, công trình được khánh thành và tổ chức khai trương với sự tham dự của bác sĩ Yersin, khi đó đã gần 80 tuổi. Tháng 4/1937 chính quyền Pháp đã sát nhập trường Petit Lycée và trường Grand Lycée thành một trường, lấy tên là Lycée Yersin để tri ân những đóng góp của ông cho thành phố Đà Lạt (Đà Lạt Trip JSC, 2018). Trải qua quá trình hình thành và phát triển với nhiều thăng trầm, TP. Đà Lạt ngày nay đã trở thành TP du lịch nổi tiếng với du khách trong và ngoài nước. Với cảnh quan thiên nhiên thơ mộng và lãng mạn, Đà Lạt còn được biết đến với nhiều tên gọi khác nhau như “Thành phố của sương mù”, “Thành phố của tình yêu”, “Thành phố của ngàn thông”... Từ ý nghĩa tên gọi ban đầu DALAT (cho người này niềm vui, cho người khác sự mát lành), ngày 31/10/2023, TP. Đà Lạt đã được UNESCO vinh danh, gia nhập mạng lưới các thành phố sáng tạo trong lĩnh vực 26 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc âm nhạc (Nguyễn Nghĩa & Võ Trang, 2023). Với nhiều ưu đãi của thiên nhiên, Đà Lạt cũng là một trong những thành phố đáng sống ở Việt Nam. 3. Di sản về khoa học, y học, nông nghiệp của bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin Ngày 15 tháng 6 năm 1894, A. Yersin đến Hồng Kông; chỉ sau năm ngày làm việc, ngày 20 tháng 6 năm 1894, ông đã tìm ra vi trùng bệnh dịch hạch. Qua hệ thống bưu điện của Anh, ông đã gữi những ống nghiệm trực trùng sang Pháp. Trực trùng bệnh dịch hạch đến Pasteur Paris nguyên vẹn và được xác minh, mang tên Yersin (Yersins Pestis) (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017). Năm 1895, Yersin thành lập viện Pasteur ở Nha Trang và điều chế huyết thanh chữa bệnh dịch hạch. Ông đã khai phá vùng suối Dầu, cách Nha Trang 10 km về hướng Nam, thành lập một trại chăn nuôi và trồng trọt nhằm mở rộng những cánh đồng cỏ để nuôi ngựa dùng cho việc điều chế huyết thanh. Ông cũng nghiên cứu huyết thanh trị bệnh dịch hạch cho trâu bò. Từ đó, viện Pasteur Nha Trang nghiên cứu vi trùng động vật và cá bệnh nhiễm trùng gia súc (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017; Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt, 2023). Ngày 01 tháng 01 năm 1936, theo đề xuất của bác sĩ A. Yersin, chính quyền Pháp quyết định thành lập Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt, cơ sở cuối cùng trong chuỗi các Viện Pasteur tại Đông Dương. Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt khi đó có nhiệm vụ nghiên cứu các bệnh nhiệt đới, làm một số xét nghiệm y tế phục vụ việc bảo vệ sức khỏe cho con người, sản xuất những chế phẩm sinh học cung cấp cho Viện Pasteur Sài Gòn và kiểm nghiệm nước uống cho địa phương. Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt còn thành lập một khu trồng cây quinquina tại xã Xuân Thọ để khảo nghiệm và sản xuất ký ninh. Trước năm 1975, Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt là một trong những cơ sở sản xuất thuốc chủng ngừa lớn nhất Đông Nam Á, vì vậy đôi khi viện còn sản xuất thuốc chủng cho một vài quốc gia khác trong khu vực. Sau năm 1975, Bộ Y tế Việt Nam quyết định thành lập Trung tâm nghiên cứu và sản xuất vaccine quốc gia dựa trên ba cơ sở: Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt, Phòng sản xuất của Viện Pasteur Nha Trang và Phòng sản xuất vaccine của Viện vệ sinh dịch tễ Hà Nội. Đến năm 1982, Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt được đổi lại thành Phân viện vaccine Đà Lạt, và từ năm 1986 trở thành cơ sở hai của Viện vaccine quốc gia đóng tại Nha Trang. Từ năm 2008, Bộ Y tế quyết định chuyển Phân viện Vaccine Đà Lạt thành Công ty Vaccine Pasteur Đà Lạt, một đơn vị hạch toán kinh tế tự chủ trực thuộc Bộ Y tế (Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, 2017). A. Yersin là người mang sang Việt Nam rất nhiều giống cây trồng, vật nuôi. Nhiều loại cây cối, hoa trái bây giờ được trồng phổ biến nhưng lúc đó còn rất “mới lạ” như cây cao su, cà phê, ca cao hay những giống cây ôn đới như cà rốt, súp lơ, su su, lay-ơn, cẩm tú cầu, xà lách, cà chua... Người dân Đà Lạt ngày nay vẫn sống bằng làm vườn và trồng các loại rau do Yersin nhập khẩu. Đặc biệt, ông cho trồng thử nghiệm cây cà phê ở Lâm Đồng, Đắk Lắk và Pleiku. Khi cây cà phê sinh trưởng tốt, phù hợp với thổ nhưỡng ở Tây Nguyên thì mới trồng thành đồn điền quy mô lớn. Lúc đầu là những đồn điền cà phê của các nhà tư bản Pháp, sau này người dân trồng thành những rẫy cà phê bạt ngàn trên khắp núi đồi cao nguyên. 27 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Từ đó cây cà phê trở thành cây kinh tế mũi nhọn của vùng đất đỏ bazan, là nông sản giá trị mang lại nguồn lợi to lớn cho người trồng và ngành nghề kinh doanh, dịch vụ liên quan như chế biến, xuất khẩu... (Tấn Vịnh, 2022; Patrick Deville, 2013). 4. Alexandre Yersin tạo dấu ấn và niềm cảm hứng trong lĩnh vực giáo dục - đào tạo Thời đó, Hà Nội được chọn để xây dựng một Trường y khoa Đông Dương. Đối với giới cầm quyền thời đó, Trường Y khoa Đông Dương không chỉ là nơi đào tạo các thầy thuốc bản xứ, mà còn là một trung tâm văn hóa, khoa học, nhằm phát huy ảnh hưởng của nền văn minh Tây phương, đặc biệt là của Pháp. Ngày 8/1/1902, Toàn quyền Đông Dương quyết định bổ nhiệm BS. Yersin làm Hiệu trưởng. Yersin đã xác định rõ mục đích và yêu cầu của nhà trường: Trường Y Đông Dương phải là nơi vừa đào tạo, vừa nghiên cứu khoa học, tiến tới trở thành một trung tâm khoa học có tầm cỡ tại Bắc Kỳ. Ông có công di chuyển trường khỏi làng Kinh Lược, cho xây dựng trường ở phố Bobillot (phố Lê Thánh Tông ngày nay). Năm 1904, những hoạt động của Trường Y khoa Đông Dương đi vào nền nếp, Yersin xin thôi chức Hiệu trưởng. Ngày 9/7/1904, ông rời Hà Nội để về lại Nha Trang với công việc lãnh đạo các Viện Pasteur ở Đông Dương (Trần Giữu, 2019). Hiện nay, có rất nhiều trường học mang tên A. Yersin tại nhiều tỉnh, thành phố trong cả nước. Trong đó phải kể đến Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt, thành lập ngày 27/12/2004 theo Quyết định của Thủ tướng Chính phủ. Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt trở thành cơ sở đào tạo Đại học ngoài công lập đầu tiên trên vùng đất Tây Nguyên. Quyết định lấy tên Yersin làm tên Trường, những nhà sáng lập tỏ lòng tôn vinh một nhà bác học người Pháp mà tên tuổi, sự nghiệp đã gắn liền với vùng đất Đông Dương và Việt Nam - Alexandre John Emile Yersin. Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt xác định sứ mệnh “Đào tạo thế hệ trẻ trở thành những công dân toàn cầu, có khả năng phát huy năng lực sáng tạo, tinh thần khởi nghiệp và có trách nhiệm với xã hội”. Trường định hướng đào tạo đa ngành, trong đó tập trung xây dựng các ngành mũi nhọn là Y - Dược, Du lịch và Công nghệ sinh học - Thực phẩm. Đây cũng là một định hướng phù hợp và hết sức ý nghĩa với ngôi trường đại học tại TP. Đà Lạt mang tên nhà bác học A. Yersin. Chưa hết, Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt cũng thành lập Trường Trung học phổ thông (THPT) Yersin Đà Lạt, đây là ngôi trường giáo dục - đào tạo khối THPT trên địa bàn TP. Đà Lạt và các huyện lân cận. Trường THPT hướng đến mở rộng quy mô, cấp học và phát triển trở thành Trường THPT chất lượng cao của TP. Đà Lạt, tỉnh Lâm Đồng. Trong 57 năm hoạt động khoa học, A. Yersin hoàn thành 55 công trình nghiên cứu khoa học có giá trị trong các lĩnh vực y học, thú y học, nông học, dân tộc học, địa lý… cống hiến cho đời sống con người. Những đóng góp to lớn của A. Yersin đã tạo niềm cảm hứng rất lớn đối với các thế hệ thầy và trò tại các trường học mang tên Ông. Thầy cô giáo và các em học sinh luôn nỗ lực trong học tập, giảng dạy, nghiên cứu để xứng đáng với tên tuổi và sự nghiệp của Ông. 28 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc 5. Alexandre Yersin - Cuộc đời của một vĩ nhân Trong hành trình thám hiểm của mình, A. Yersin và những người tùy tùng của mình đã đối mặt với nhiều hiểm nguy khi chạm mặt thú dữ, nhiễm dịch bệnh, bị cướp tấn công trên đường khám phá Dran (Đơn Dương, Lâm Đồng). Điều thú vị ông đã đóng vai “sứ giả hòa bình” để hòa giải, tháo gỡ ân oán giữa những cộng đồng người Thượng ở vùng Tây Nguyên; chữa bệnh, tiêm vắc xin ngừa bệnh đậu mùa cho trẻ em… nên đã nhận được sự yêu mến của những người dân bản địa (Alexandre Yersin, 2023). Với hơn 50 năm cống hiến cho khoa học nhân loại và Việt Nam, A. Yersin đã đạt được rất nhiều thành tựu lớn trong khoa học, thám hiểm và giành được sự kính trọng, yêu thương con người với tấm lòng nhân văn cao cả. Đời sống hằng ngày của Yersin giản dị, yên vui trong thú ẩn dật nhưng rất phong phú qua nhiều bức ảnh ông chụp, thư và tư liệu về cuộc đời ông vẫn được lưu giữ. Yersin sống trong ngôi nhà thiên văn ở Xóm Cồn, giúp đỡ dân nghèo, ngư dân, nông dân, trẻ con và đồng bào ít người. Người dân Nha Trang yêu mến gọi ông bằng tên gọi thân thuộc - Ông Năm Yersin. Người dân thờ ông trong chùa như một vị Bồ tát, và còn nhiều câu chuyện đời thường về ông đã trở thành huyền thoại được người dân bao đời lưu truyền. Năm 2013, A. Yersin được Chính phủ Việt Nam truy tặng danh hiệu Công dân danh dự Việt Nam (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). Yersin là một người con hiếu thảo luôn nhớ về mẹ. Trong những năm ở Nha Trang, hầu như tuần lễ nào Yersin cũng viết thư cho mẹ. Đến năm 1905, mẹ mất, Ông đã gửi gần 1.000 bức thư cho bà biết sức khỏe và công việc hằng ngày của mình. Ngay cả sau đó, Yersin vẫn tiếp tục gửi thư cho chị là bà Emilie (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). Tình yêu của ông dành cho Nha Trang thật sâu sắc, cảm động. Trong di chúc Ông viết: “Khi tôi chết, tôi ước muốn chôn cất ở Suối Dầu,... hãy giữ tôi lại với Nha Trang, đừng cho ai lấy tôi đi. Mọi tài sản còn lại xin tặng cho Viện Pasteur Nha Trang và những người giúp việc lâu năm”. Ngày 1 tháng 3 năm 1943, Ông ra đi rất thanh thản và được chôn cất tại Suối Dầu (xã Suối Cát, huyện Cam Lâm, tỉnh Khánh Hòa) với di nguyện mãi nằm tại mảnh đất này. Trong di chúc Yersin muốn được an táng đơn giản, nhưng đám tang của ông vẫn rất đông người đến viếng và đưa tiễn, là một đám viếng to lớn chưa từng thấy ở Việt Nam lúc bấy giờ và đoạn đường đưa tang trong lặng lẽ đến hơn 3 cây số (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). Với tình cảm trân trọng, ngưỡng mộ cuộc đời, sự nghiệp và tấm lòng của A. Yersin, cố Giáo sư, Tiến sĩ khoa học, thầy thuốc nhân dân Nguyễn Thị Thế Trâm, nguyên Viện trưởng Viện Pasteur Nha Trang, đã sáng lập Hội Những người ái mộ bác sĩ A. Yersin tỉnh Khánh Hòa năm 1992 cùng nhiều bác sĩ, trí thức, những người ái mộ bác sĩ A. Yersin tỉnh trong và ngoài nước. Theo bước chân bác sĩ Yersin, Hội đã tổ chức nhiều cuộc hội thảo, đề xuất nhiều hoạt động phát huy di sản và tấm lòng nhân văn cao cả của ông. Hội thành lập Phòng khám bệnh từ thiện A. Yersin năm 1993 và nhiều hoạt động thiện nguyện cao cả (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). Cuộc đời và sự nghiệp của nhà bác học A. Yersin không những rạng danh đất 29 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc nước Thụy Sĩ và Pháp mà còn cả đất nước Việt Nam. A. Yersin xứng đáng là một trong những biểu tượng của tình hữu nghị Thụy Sĩ - Việt Nam - Pháp (Hoàng Lệ Hà, 2023). TP. Đà Lạt ngày nay không chỉ là điểm đến du lịch, mà còn là nơi để những du khách quốc tế tìm hiểu về bác sĩ A. Yersin và những giá trị mà Yersin đã góp phần tạo nên. IV. KẾT LUẬN Cuộc đời và sự nghiệp của bác sĩ A. Yersin gắn liền với đất nước Việt Nam. Với TP. Đà Lạt, dấu ấn lớn nhất của bác sĩ A. Yersin có lẽ là việc khám phá và đề xuất chọn cao nguyên Lâm Viên làm nơi nghỉ dưỡng, tạo tiền đề cho việc xây dựng Đà Lạt trở thành thành phố du lịch nổi tiếng, thành phố sáng tạo âm nhạc và đáng sống như ngày nay. Bài viết này tổng hợp các nghiên cứu, tài liệu đã có để đưa ra góc nhìn về những đóng góp của bác sĩ A. Yersin với TP. Đà Lạt. Hi vọng đây là tài liệu tham khảo hữu ích cho những người quan tâm đến bác sĩ A. Yersin và TP. Đà Lạt./. TÀI LIỆU THAM KHẢO Alexandre Yersin. (2023). Alexandre Yersin - Những chuyến du hành qua xứ Thượng ở Đông Dương Cao Hoàng Đoan Thục dịch. Nhà xuất bản Trẻ. Đà Lạt Trip JSC. (2018). Đà Lạt 125 năm và dấu ấn của bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin. Truy cập từ https://www.dalattrip.com Hoàng Lệ Hà. (2023). Alexandre Yersin - Cuộc đời và sự nghiệp mẫu mực với tầm nhìn không biên giới. Truy cập từ https://www.qdnd.vn Nguyễn Nghĩa & Võ Trang. (2023). Đà Lạt chính thức được công nhận là thành phố Sáng tạo của UNESCO trong lĩnh vực âm nhạc. Truy cập từ https:// baolamdong.vn Nguyễn Vĩnh Nguyên. (2021). Đà Lạt, những cuộc gặp gỡ. Nhà xuất bản Trẻ. Nhật Quỳnh. (2023). Quyết tâm đưa Đà Lạt trở thành Thành phố di sản. Truy cập từ https://baolamdong.vn Patrick Deville. (2013). Yersin: Dịch hạch và thổ tả Đặng Thế Linh dịch, Đoàn Cầm Thi & Hồ Thanh Vân hiệu đính. Nhà xuất bản Trẻ. Tấn Vịnh. (2022). A. Yersin với Tây Nguyên. Truy cập từ https://baodaklak. vn Thanh Nhàn. (2023). Yersin ở Việt Nam. Truy cập từ https://tiasang.com.vn Trang thông tin điện tử TP. Đà Lạt. (2023). Lược sử và truyền thống đấu tranh. Truy cập từ https://lamdong.gov.vn/sites/dalat Trần Giữu. (2019). Bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin: Người công dân danh dự của Việt Nam. Truy cập từ https://suckhoedoisong.vn Trường Đại học Yersin Đà Lạt. (2017). Về bác sĩ Alexandre Yersin. Truy cập từ www.yersin.edu.vn 30 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc CAO NGUYÊN LANBIANG QUA GÓC NHÌN ĐỊA CHÍNH TRỊ, VĂN HÓA CỦA A. YERSIN TS. Phan Văn Bông  ThS. Nguyễn Đình Mạnh  Tóm tắt: Năm 1893, Yersin phát hiện ra cao nguyên Lanbiang, một thời gian ngắn sau, năm 1897, toàn quyền Doumer đã đặt nền móng cho thành phố này. Đến nay, thành phố Đà Lạt đã 130 năm tuổi, sự ra đời của thành phố này gắn với vai trò quan trọng của nhà khoa học, nhà thám hiểm Yersin. Không chỉ vậy, ông còn là một nhà văn hóa, nhà chính trị khi có cái nhìn địa chính trị, địa văn hóa sắc sảo về vùng đất cao nguyên này. Bài viết như một cách nhìn đa chiều về Yersin dưới góc độ chính trị, văn hóa, như là sự vinh danh người có công phát kiến ra Đà Lạt hôm nay. Từ khóa: Yersin, Lanbiang, địa chính trị, địa văn hóa. I. Mở đầu Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin (1863 – 1943) được thế giới biết đến là nhà khoa học nổi tiếng trên lĩnh vực y khoa (bác sĩ, nhà nghiên cứu vi trùng học), nông học… Ông còn là nhà thám hiểm, một nhà nghiên cứu địa dư; nghiên cứu khí tượng và thiên văn. Yersin luôn hứng thú với những vùng đất mới, những chân trời mới lạ và có lần nói rằng: “tôi luôn luôn mơ ước thám hiểm, khám phá đất lạ; khi còn trẻ, ta luôn luôn tưởng tượng những điều kỳ lạ sẽ đến, không có gì là không thể làm được”1. Qua những công trình nghiên cứu địa lý, thiên văn và qua ảnh hưởng của Yersin, chính quyền Pháp tại Đông Dương đã cho thành lập Sở Địa dư (Service Géographique), Sở Địa chất (Service Géologique), Sở Khí tượng (Service Météorologique), Đài Thiên văn (Observatoire), và Hải học Viện (Institut Océanographique). Đây là những cơ sở nghiên cứu khoa học đầu tiên của các ngành này tại Việt Nam. Về phương diện nghiên cứu địa dư, trên những chuyến thám hiểm miền rừng núi miền Trung – Tây Nguyên Việt Nam, ông đã tìm thấy ở Đà Lạt – một miền đất đầy tiềm năng, với khung cảnh thiên nhiên, khí hậu… gần giống Thụy Sĩ quê hương ông. Chuyến thám hiểm năm 1893 có ý nghĩa quan trọng đối với sự hình thành đô thị Đà Lạt sau này. Từ những ghi chép, tìm hiểu, phân tích của ông cùng một số nhà thám hiểm khác, Đà Lạt dần được xây dựng thành trung tâm hành chính, trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng… nổi tiếng ở Đông Dương và trên thế giới. Ngày 21/6/1893, lần đầu tiên Yersin tiếp xúc với cao nguyên Lanbiang cùng  Trường Cao đẳng Đà Lạt Trường THPT Trần Phú 1. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh, Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB TPHCM, 2001, tr.31. 31 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc với các chuyến đi đến Đà Lạt sau đó; ông đã ghi chép khá sinh động về vùng đất Đà Lạt ngày nay. Những ghi chép, phân tích này cho thấy Yersin là nhà địa dư tài năng. Đất trời cao nguyên dưới cái nhìn địa – văn hóa của ông, trong đầu ông đã hình dung về một thành phố mới sẽ được xây dựng tại đây mang dáng dấp của nhiều thành phố ở châu Âu. 2. Nội dung 2.1. Cao nguyên Lanbiang qua góc nhìn địa – văn hóa của A. Yersin Trong toàn bộ vùng rừng núi Nam Trung Bộ, cao nguyên Lanbiang là vùng khó thâm nhập nhất đối với các nhà thám hiểm. Từ đồng bằng ven bờ biển miền Trung đi lên, người ta phải vượt qua tầng cao nguyên thứ nhất (với độ cao trung bình từ 900 đến 1.000m) trước khi lên đến cao nguyên Lanbiang (với độ cao trung bình 1.500m). Bên trong cao nguyên, địa hình Đà Lạt phân thành hai bậc rõ rệt: Bậc địa hình thấp là vùng trung tâm có dạng như một lòng chảo bao gồm các dãy đồi đỉnh tròn, dốc thoải có độ cao tương đối từ 25-100m, lượn sóng nhấp nhô, độ phân cắt yếu, độ cao trung bình khoảng 1.500m. Bao quanh khu vực lòng chảo này là các đỉnh núi với độ cao khoảng 1.700m tạo thành vành đai che chắn gió cho vùng trung tâm. Phía Đông Bắc có hai núi thấp: hòn Ông (Láp Bê Bắc 1.738m) và hòn Bộ (Láp Bê Nam 1.709m). Ở phía Bắc là dãy núi Bà (Lanbiang) cao 2.165m, kéo dài theo trục Đông Bắc - Tây Nam từ suối Đa Sar (đổ vào Đa Nhim) đến Đa Me (đổ vào Đạ Đờn). Phía Đông án ngữ bởi dãy núi đỉnh Gió Hú (1.644m). Về phía Tây Nam, các dãy núi hướng vào Tà Nung giữa dãy Yàng Sơreng mà các đỉnh cao tiêu biểu là Pin Hatt (1.691m) và You Lou Rouet (1.632m). Bên ngoài cao nguyên là các dốc núi từ hơn 1.700m đột ngột đổ xuống các cao nguyên bên dưới có độ cao từ 700m đến 900m. Đọc nhật ký hành trình, hồi ký của A.Yersin, chúng ta có thể hình dung được những gian khổ mà các nhà thám hiểm đã gặp phải trên đường đi (đường núi dựng đứng, nắng mưa thất thường, rừng rậm, bệnh sốt rét, thú dữ…). Trong chuyến thám hiểm lần thứ ba, đầu tháng 6/1893 ông bắt đầu tìm đường lên cao nguyên Lanbiang (từ Rioung). Sau gần một giờ leo núi, ông bước ra khỏi rừng thông và phát hiện ra cao nguyên Lanbiang. Lúc này là 15g30 ngày 21.6.1893. Trong nhật ký hành trình, ông ghi vắn tắt “3h30: grand plateau dénudé mamelonné” (3g30: cao nguyên lớn trơ trụi, nhấp nhô gò đồi)2. Đầu năm 1894, ông lại có dịp lên đây một lần nữa. Lần này, Yersin đi từ Nha Trang đến Dankia bằng một lộ trình mới. Năm 1899, Yersin lại một lần nữa đến Đà Lạt cùng với Toàn quyền Doumer. Như vậy, trong lần khảo sát đầu tiên, Yersin đã choáng ngợp trước cảnh vật trên cao nguyên Lanbing – khác với những cánh rừng nhiệt đới ẩm mà ông đã vượt qua. Ông quan sát thấy cao nguyên Lanbiang có độ dốc theo hướng: cao ở phương Bắc và thấp dần về phương Nam. Trước tiên, đây là một vùng “hoàn toàn 2. Ủy ban nhân dân TP Đà Lạt. Đà Lạt – thành phố cao nguyên. NXB TPHCM, TP HCM, 1993, tr.110. 32 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc trơ trụi và đầy cỏ”, khác với cảnh núi đồi trập trùng, cây cổ thụ rậm rạp bao quanh cao nguyên. Địa hình không có sự chênh lệch nhiều “núi đồi nhấp nhô khiến tôi có ấn tượng như đang đi trên một đại dương xao động vì những ngọn sóng khổng lồ…”. Những dải đồi thấp không bị chia cắt mà nối tiếp nhau thành “một đợt sóng khổng lồ màu xanh dâng lên”3. Đặc biệt là khung cảnh cao nguyên rộng lớn ấy được che chắn bởi các dãy núi cao trên 1.700 m xung quanh “núi Lanbiang sừng sững ở chân trời phía tây bắc cao nguyên, làm tăng thêm vẻ đẹp của cảnh quan và tạo nên một hậu cảnh tuyệt mỹ”. Địa hình theo hướng mở, có núi cao che chắn nhưng không quá gần làm cho người ta có cảm giác choáng ngợp mà chỉ giống như một bức bình phong nên bầu trời luôn cao xanh, ánh nắng không bị che khuất và đặc biệt núi cao không làm mất đi vẻ bao la của thảm cây cỏ. Nhìn trên một bình diện lớn, Đà Lạt có hình thế như một “thung lũng cổ” (đáy thung lũng là khu vực Hồ Xuân Hương, thung lũng Kim Khuê ngày nay). Vùng trung tâm đủ rộng (đến nỗi người ta dễ tính sai khoảng cách trên những cánh đồng bao la này), không bị cắt xẻ bởi các đỉnh núi, vì thế nhiều học giả dùng khái niệm “bình sơn Đà Lạt” để phân biệt với các cao nguyên khác ở Tây Nguyên4. Tuy cao ráo nhưng nguồn nước ở Đà Lạt luôn dồi dào với những dòng suối, hồ xen kẽ rừng đồi tạo thành thế “sơn thủy tương liên” (núi đồi, suối hồ nối với nhau thành một dải). Đây là một điều kiện thuận lợi cho con người sinh sống lâu dài và có thể xây dựng một thành phố với cảnh quan tuyệt đẹp. Đà Lạt được ông mường tượng như vùng Thụy Sĩ xa xôi của ông, có thể xây dựng một trung tâm điều dưỡng, một thành phố mang dáng dấp châu Âu ở đây. Vì thế, ông đã tích cực vận động toàn quyền Doumer, người vừa nhận chức tại Đông Dương xây dựng nơi này thành thành phố dưỡng bệnh và nghỉ mát tại đây. Con người Xứ Thượng – Lanbiang qua góc nhìn A. Yersin Cao nguyên Lang Bian trước năm 1893 là địa bàn cư trú của các dân tộc thiểu số thuộc nhóm ngôn ngữ Môn – Kh’me (các nhà thám hiểm gọi là các tộc người Thượng), đông nhất là người Lat (Lạch). Những cộng đồng này cũng thu hút sự quan tâm đặc biệt của Yersin. Những buôn làng của đồng bào dân tộc thiểu số mà Yersin đi qua, ông đều cố gắng tìm hiểu và ghi chép về đời sống, phong tục đặc sắc. Đó là những vùng dân cư thưa thớt, ngôi nhà “không cất trên trụ, mái nhà sát mặt đất”, về ngôn ngữ thì Người Lạch nói cả tiếng Chăm và tiếng Mạ, đời sống kinh tế là trồng lúa nước rất tốt, phụ nữ thì có vành tai khoét một lỗ lớn và đặt vào đó những chiếc vòng, họ tiếp khách bằng những ché rượu cần được mang đến từ nhà của những chức sắc, cách uống rượu cần, nghi thức cầu nguyện Yàng5… Khi ông đến Lanbiang, ông được người địa phương tiếp đãi nồng hậu, về sự hiếu khách của người Lạch, 3. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh, Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB TPHCM, 2001, tr.40. 4. Hứa Hoành. Ký ức Đà Lạt. Tạp chí Xưa & nay. Số 150, 2003, tr.47. 5. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh, Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB TPHCM, 2001, tr.44. 33 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc ông viết: “Dân chúng tiếp tôi trong căn nhà làng. Mỗi già làng mang tới vò rượu cần của mình. Có đến sáu vò rượu xếp hàng dài trước mặt tôi, cũng may làngười ta không bắt tôi phải thưởng thức hết”6. Đây là những tư liệu điền dã rất quý cho việc nghiên cứu văn hóa các dân tộc thiểu số ở Tây Nguyên, nhất là khi những tư liệu thành văn viết về diện mạo cao nguyên Lanbiang và cuộc sống cư dân nơi đây hồi đầu thế kỷ XX còn rất hiếm. Đến với những vùng đất mới bằng tâm thế của một nhà khoa học, một nhà thám hiểm, trong những chuyến hành trình của Yersin, Ông được sự giúp đỡ nhiệt tình của những người dân địa phương. Họ chỉ đường, cung cấp thông tin, chỗ nghỉ ngơi, phân biệt các địa điểm mà ông còn hoài nghi… Khắp nơi Yersin được tiếp đãi ân cần, trọng thị, thậm chí ngày 19/7/1893 Yersin còn được mời lên miền núi tỉnh Khánh Hoà và Đắc Lắc để hoà giải những vụ xung đột giữa các bộ tộc người Thượng. Ngay cả câu chuyện tên Đà Lạt cũng có câu chuyện thú vị. Người ta cho rằng ông giỏi tiếng Latin, nên khi nghe người Lạch gọi vùng đất này là Đạ Lạch (con suối của người Lạch), ông đã liên tưởng đến câu: “Dat Aliis Laetitiam Aliis Temperiem” (Cho người này niềm vui, cho người kia sự mát dịu) và các chữ cái đầu của các từ trong câu lại là DALAT7. Có thể thấy rằng, A. Yersin cùng với lòng đam mê khám phá những chân trời mới lạ và tri thức uyên thâm của một nhà khoa học trên nhiều lĩnh vực, ông đã tìm thấy ở Lang Bian – Đà Lạt như một vùng đất lý tưởng bởi các điều kiện khí hậu, địa hình, phong cảnh, điều kiện y tế, thổ nhưỡng, văn hóa các dân tộc bản địa… để rồi sau này, khi có nhu cầu xây dựng khu nghỉ dưỡng, Yersin đã giới thiệu Lang Bian – Đà Lạt với những nhận định, phân tích của một nhà địa dư, nhà văn hóa tài năng. 2.2. Cao nguyên Lang Bian – Đà Lạt qua góc nhìn địa – chính trị của A. Yersin Mục đích đầu tiên của những chuyến thám hiểm cao nguyên miền Trung là để người phương Tây tìm hiểu về xứ sở họ vừa chiếm được, nhằm phục vụ tốt hơn cho công cuộc quản lý và khai thác thuộc địa. Nhận được thư của Doumer (1897) với ý định thành lập các khu nghỉ dưỡng tại Đông Dương thì Yersin đã gợi ý chọn một địa điểm đáp ứng đầy đủ các yêu cầu đặt ra, đó là cao nguyên Lanbiang. Đối với một thầy thuốc người châu Âu giữa bầu trời nắng lửa của vùng nhiệt đới mà bắt gặp một rừng thông bạt ngàn hàng vạn hecta thì quả là bước tới một “thiên đường”. Dưới con mắt của nhà bác học Yersin, rừng thông không chỉ có ý nghĩa gợi lên hình ảnh quê hương xứ sở, không chỉ đẹp về hình thức mà môi trường của rừng thông với bầu không khí ngát mùi hương terebenthine, nhiệt độ trung bình của “mùa xuân vĩnh cửu” (16 – 20 độ) là điều kiện lý tưởng cho con người bồi dưỡng, hồi phục sức khỏe. Theo yêu cầu của Toàn quyền Doumer, Yersin đã gửi cho ông này các bản 6. Ngô Tằng Giao, Đà Lạt ngày tháng cũ, Virginir (USA), 2016, tr.6. 7. Ngô Tằng Giao, Đà Lạt ngày tháng cũ, Virginir (USA), 2016, tr.8. 34 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc thảo và bản đồ liên quan đến hai cuộc thám hiểm 1893 và 1894. Doumer đã đích thân nghiên cứu một cách tỉ mỉ và nghiêm túc các tài liệu của Yersin về cao nguyên Lanbiang. Chuyến đi sau đó của Doumer và Yersin lên cao nguyên Lanbiang (1899) có ý nghĩa quyết định đối với việc thành lập trạm điều dưỡng. Về cơ bản, những người có liên quan đều nhất trí thành lập một trạm điều dưỡng trên cao nguyên Lanbiang. Nhưng địa điểm của trạm này được cân nhắc giữa Đà Lạt hay Dankia. Những phân tích cụ thể sau đó cho thấy, Đà Lạt có nhiều điều kiện thích hợp hơn với việc hình thành một trung tâm điều dưỡng bởi: địa hình Đà Lạt với những dải đồi dài liên tục, độ dốc thấp, cao ráo, không khí khô thoáng, rừng thông tạo thành một hình bán nguyệt phía đông nam cao nguyên… Tuy vậy, việc chọn Đà Lạt hay Dankia chỉ là vấn đề kỹ thuật (bởi hai địa điểm này cách nhau 15 km). Ông nhìn nhận cần phải xây dựng chính quyền bảo hộ ở nơi này, trong thư gửi “Toàn quyền Laneeean”, ông viết, “đã cho phép tôi đảm bảo với người Mọi dân tộc Mọi rằng chính phủ bảo hộ sẽ lo cho họ, rằng một ngày nào đó người Pháp sẽ đến bảo vệ họ”8. Rõ ràng, vị thế của cao nguyên Lanbiang đã được ông nhìn nhận không chỉ dưới con mắt của nhà khoa học, nhà thám hiểm mà còn dưới con mắt của một nhà chính trị có nhãn quan sắc sảo. Xét về mặt địa – chính trị, Lanbiang - Đà Lạt hội đủ những điều kiện cần thiết cho việc xây dựng một thành phố nghỉ dưỡng và đảm bảo mục đích quốc phòng. Về mặt đảm bảo điều kiện tốt nhất cho con người sinh sống và nghỉ ngơi: Đà Lạt có không khí mát mẻ (độ cao trung bình 1.500 m, nguồn nước dồi dào, đất đai trồng trọt được, khả năng thiết lập đường giao thông dễ dàng). Về phương diện quân sự – quốc phòng: Lanbiang – Đà Lạt là cao điểm thuận lợi cho việc phòng thủ quân sự bởi địa thế của nó như chiếc chòi canh khổng lồ so với những vùng đất cao nguyên miền Trung xung quanh. Xây dựng Đà Lạt còn nhắm tới việc bảo vệ tốt nhất vùng Tây Nguyên – khi mà cuối thế kỷ XIX đầu thế kỷ XX người Pháp chưa thực sự biết nhiều về khu vực cao nguyên rộng lớp này. Hơn nữa, để đến được Đà Lạt, phải vượt qua những ngọn núi cao từ 1.600 đến 2.000 m – như những bức tường thành tự nhiên khổng lồ bảo vệ thung lũng Đà Lạt. Cách tốt nhất để tiếp cận Đà Lạt chỉ có thể là những ngả đường men theo triền núi. Về mặt chính trị: khi Việt Nam, Lào, Campuchia đều nằm trong Liên bang Đông Dương thuộc Pháp, thì Đà Lạt là điểm phòng thủ nằm ở cao nguyên – ngã ba Đông Dương. Từ đây có thể bao quát một cách tốt nhất cả ba nước. Chính vì thế, không phải ngẫu nhiên mà khi còn ở Hà Nội, Doumer đã lập một chương trình xây dựng Đà Lạt thành “thủ đô mùa hè” của Đông Dương. Theo chương trình này, Đà Lạt là một thành phố toàn vẹn với hệ thống trụ sở hành chính hoạt động về mùa hè, trường học, y viện, doanh trại quân đội, hệ thống cung cấp nước, thủy điện… nhưng năm 1902, Doumer về Pháp, dự án này bị ngưng lại. Dưới thời chính quyền cũ, Đà Lạt cũng được xác định là đô thị nằm trong 8. Eric T.Jennings, Đỉnh cao đế quốc, NXB Hồng Đức, TP.HCM, 2015, tr.44. 35 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc tuyến phòng thủ chiến lược trên cao nguyên Trung phần, trung tâm giáo dục – đào tạo – huấn luyện quân sự... quan trọng. Sau khi đất nước được hoàn toàn giải phóng, Đà Lạt – Lâm Đồng với vị trí địa – chính trị đặc biệt: là cao nguyên án ngữ phía nam Tây Nguyên, phần đất chuyển tiếp giữa ba vùng chiến lược: Tây Nguyên – Đông Nam Bộ – Nam Trung Bộ. Vì thế, Bộ Quốc phòng và Quân khu VII luôn quan tâm xây dựng nơi này thành khu vực phòng thủ vững chắc để bảo vệ an ninh Tổ quốc. Điều này cho phép chúng ta khẳng định, việc đề xuất của A. Yersin chọn Lanbiang – Đà Lạt để xây dựng thành một trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng (và sau này là trung tâm chính trị, hành chính, khoa học – giáo dục, phòng thủ…) là đúng đắn dựa trên những nhận định, phân tích hết sức tỉ mỉ và khoa học của ông. Như vậy, từ một vùng rừng núi chưa ai biết đến, từ năm 1893 Đà Lạt được khám phá, được mọi người biết đến, được chọn làm nơi xây dựng trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng hàng đầu ở Đông Dương và trên thế giới. Trong đó nổi bật lên vai trò của bác sĩ – nhà thám hiểm Yersin. Chúng tôi nhất trí với cách đánh giá của các học giả Nguyễn Hữu Tranh, Mai Thái Lĩnh, Trương Ngọc Xán rằng: Năm 1893, bác sĩ A.Yersin đã có công thám hiểm cao nguyên Lang Bian và giới thiệu nó với công chúng rộng rãi. Bốn năm sau (1897), ông đã tích cực đề xuất với toàn quyền Doumer chọn nơi này làm địa điểm xây dựng trạm điều dưỡng. Và sau cùng, bằng chuyến đi lên cao nguyên với toàn quyền Doumer (1899), ông đã tham gia quyết định việc thành lập trạm điều dưỡng trên cao nguyên Lang Bian - tiền thân của thành phố Đà Lạt sau này. Vào năm 1935, toàn quyền Robin đã gửi thư cho ông để thông báo về quyết định đặt tên trường trung học Đà Lạt (lycée de Dalat) là trường trung học Yersin. Trong lá thư này, Robin gọi Yersin là “người phát kiến” (inventeur) ra Đà Lạt. Dù có đồng ý với cách gọi này hay không, chúng ta vẫn phải thừa nhận rằng: bác sĩ Yersin là người có công lớn nhất đối với sự khai sinh Đà Lạt9. 3. Kết luận Dưới con mắt của nhà khoa học, nhà địa dư, nhà văn hóa lớn Yersin, cao nguyên Lang Bian – Đà Lạt hiện ra trong chuyến thám hiểm 1893 thật hùng vĩ và khác hẳn với những ngọn núi cao, những cánh rừng rậm bao quanh nó. Yersin nhìn thấy ở Lang Bian – Đà Lạt những điều kiện địa hình, khí hậu, cảnh quan, truyền thống văn hóa các dân tộc bản địa… cần thiết cho việc xây dựng một trung tâm du lịch, nghỉ dưỡng giống như những thành phố ở châu Âu và Thụy Sĩ quê hương ông (và sau này là trung tâm chính trị, hành chính, khoa học – giáo dục, phòng thủ…). Hành trình khám phá của Yersin đã làm cho mọi người biết đến cao nguyên Lang Bian – Đà Lạt, cùng với các lần ghé thăm sau đó, ông tích cực tham gia khảo sát, đề nghị và quyết định chọn Lang Bian – Đà Lạt để xây dựng một trung tâm điều dưỡng. Trên cơ sở đó, cùng với thời gian, những công trình, dự án lớn đã biến Đà Lạt thành một trung tâm chính trị – kinh tế – văn hóa của Lâm 9. Ủy ban nhân dân TP Đà Lạt, Đà Lạt – thành phố cao nguyên, NXB TPHCM, TP HCM, 1993, tr.123. 36 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Đồng – Tây Nguyên, một thành phố du lịch nổi tiếng ở Việt Nam và trên thế giới./. TÀI LIỆU THAM KHẢO 1. Đảng bộ TP Đà Lạt. Lịch sử Đảng bộ Thành phố Đà Lạt 1930 – 1975. NXB TPHCM, TPHCM, 1994. 2. Đảng bộ TP Đà Lạt. Lịch sử Đảng bộ Thành phố Đà Lạt 1975 – 2000. NXB TPHCM, TPHCM, 2008. 3. Eric T.Jennings, Đỉnh cao đế quốc, NXB Hồng Đức, TP.HCM, 2015. 4. Hứa Hoành, Ký ức Đà Lạt, Tạp chí Xưa & nay, Số 150, 2003. 5. Nguyễn Trọng Lân, Huỳnh Thị Cả. Đà Lạt – thiên đường du lịch. NXB VHTT, H., 2001. 6. Ngô Phù Sa. Bác sĩ Yersin, người khám phá ra cao nguyên Lang Bian – Đà Lạt. Tạp chí Xưa & nay. Số 88, 2001. 7. Ngô Tằng Giao, Đà Lạt ngày tháng cũ, Virginir (USA), 2016, tr.8. 8. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh, Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB TPHCM, TPHCM, 2001. 9. Ủy ban nhân dân TP Đà Lạt, Đà Lạt – thành phố cao nguyên, NXB TPHCM, TP HCM, 1993. 10. Ủy ban nhân dân TP Đà Lạt, Đà Lạt: Điểm hẹn năm 2000, NXB Văn nghệ TPHCM, TPHCM, 2000. 37 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc NHỮNG CỐNG HIẾN CỦA BÁC SĨ ALEXANDRE ÉMILE JEAN YERSIN ĐỐI VỚI ĐÀ LẠT 1Tóm tắt Năm 1891, bác sĩ Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin đặt chân lên bờ biển Nha Trang. Kể từ đây, phần lớn cuộc đời của ông gắn liền với đất nước Việt Nam. Khát vọng khám phá những miền đất bí ẩn và niềm đam mê nghiên cứu khoa học đã giúp ông tìm ra những vùng đất mới; đặc biệt, vào ngày 21.06.1893, ông phát hiện ra Cao nguyên Lang Bian - Đà Lạt. Đà Lạt hình thành và phát triển 130 năm qua có công lao đóng góp rất lớn của bác sĩ A.Yersin. Từ khóa: Bác sĩ A.Yersin, Đà Lạt. 1. Đặt vấn đề Alexandre Émile Jean Yersin (A.Yersin) sinh ngày 22.9.1863 ở Lavoux, một làng nhỏ tại tổng Vaud của Thụy Sĩ. Năm 1889, khi mới 26 tuổi, bác sĩ A. Yersin đã nổi danh trong giới y học và là học trò xuất sắc của nhà vi trùng học nổi tiếng Pasteur. Những thành tựu đó mở ra cho ông một tương lai nghề nghiệp tươi sáng ở Viện y học Pasteur Paris. Thế nhưng, như ông đã từng viết: “Sống mà không đi (hoạt động) thì không phải là sống”, ông đã quyết định từ giã Paris để lên đường sang Việt Nam. Khát vọng khám phá những miền đất bí ẩn và niềm đam mê nghiên cứu khoa học đã giúp ông tìm ra những vùng đất mới, đặc biệt là vào ngày 21.06.1893, ông phát hiện ra Cao nguyên Lang Bian - Đà Lạt. Đó là dấu mốc khởi đầu cho những cống hiến của bác sĩ A.Yersin trên các lĩnh vực địa lý – du lịch, dân tộc học – văn hóa học, y học – nông học đối với mảnh đất và con người Đà Lạt. 2. Những cống hiến của bác sĩ A. Yersin đối với Đà Lạt 2.1. Cống hiến của bác sĩ A. Yersin trên lĩnh vực địa lý – du lịch Trong thời gian làm việc trên con tàu “Sài Gòn” chạy tuyến đường biển Sài Gòn – Hải Phòng, mỗi lần nhìn về vùng chân trời phía Tây, A.Yersin rất ấn tượng với dãy núi Trường Sơn hùng vĩ và có ý định sẽ tiến hành khảo sát vùng núi cao này khi có điều kiện. Trong hai năm 1891 - 1892, ông đã thực hiện hai cuộc thám hiểm, gặp không ít khó khăn, gian khổ và sau mỗi chuyến đi, ông lần lượt mắc bệnh sốt rét và kiết lị. Thế nhưng, niềm đam mê mạo hiểm, khám phá luôn thôi thúc ông. Ngày 29 tháng 01 năm 1893, A.Yersin đến gặp viên Toàn quyền Đông Dương Jean Marie Antoine de Lanessan. Trong hồi ký “Bảy tháng nơi xứ Thượng”, ông viết: “Ông De Lanessan muốn chuyến đi của tôi đạt được kết quả thiết thực… Ông giao cho tôi nghiên cứu một dự án đường sá đi từ Sài Gòn tiến vào xứ Thượng; con đường này sẽ đi về phía Bắc để tới một địa điểm thuận tiện nhất trên bờ biển Trường Chính trị tỉnh Lâm Đồng ThS. Trương Thị Thu Thảo 38 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Trung Kỳ. Tôi phải trình bày lại hiện trạng tài nguyên của xứ sở này, khả năng chăn nuôi, nghiên cứu lâm sản, tìm kiếm những khoáng sản có thể khai thác trong núi rừng” [8, tr.70]. Ngày 24-02-1893, đoàn thám hiểm của A.Yersin bắt đầu thực hiện nhiệm vụ được giao. Sau một hành trình dài, ngày 21-06-1893, A.Yersin phát hiện ra cao nguyên Lang Bian. Ông mô tả: “Vừa ra khỏi rừng thông, ấn tượng của tôi thật sâu sắc khi đứng trước một vùng cao nguyên mênh mông, hoang vắng và trơ trụi,.... Núi Lang Bian sừng sững ở chân trời phía Tây Bắc cao nguyên, làm tăng thêm vẻ đẹp của cảnh quan và tạo nên một hậu cảnh tuyệt mỹ” [8, tr.91]. Trước A.Yersin, đã có một vài người Pháp đặt chân lên cao nguyên Lang Bian, tiêu biểu là chuyến thám hiểm của bác sĩ Paul Néis cùng đồng sự Albert Septans năm 1881. Báo cáo về chuyến thám hiểm này viết xong vào đầu tháng 8 năm 1881 và được công bố trong năm. Kèm theo báo cáo là một số biểu đo đạc nhân trắc học (mesures anthropologiques), quan sát khí tượng và từ vựng tiếng Thượng. Như vậy, Paul Néis và Albert Septans đã đến cao nguyên Lâm Viên trước A.Yersin 12 năm, thu được một số kết quả khá quan trọng, nhưng chuyến đi của họ chủ yếu chỉ được biết đến trong giới thám hiểm và nhanh chóng bị rơi vào quên lãng. Ngược lại, hành trình của A.Yersin lên cao nguyên Lang Bian được nhiều người biết đến. Vì sao? Theo chúng tôi, có lẽ do ông có “cơ duyên” với xứ sở Đà Lạt. “Cơ duyên” đó đến từ sự kiện năm 1897, trong một chuyến công du tới Ấn Độ, Toàn quyền Paul Doumer có đến thăm các trạm nghỉ dưỡng được xây dựng trên những vùng núi cao, nơi có khí hậu tương tự như ở châu Âu. P.Doumer bắt đầu quan tâm đến việc thiết lập những trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng tương tự dành cho người châu Âu ở Đông Dương – những người vốn không quen với khí hậu nhiệt đới [7, tr.83]. Ngày 23 tháng 7 năm 1897, trong thư gửi cho các khâm sứ, thống sứ, P. Doumer nêu lên bốn điều kiện cần thiết để xây dựng một trạm nghỉ dưỡng: độ cao trên 1.200 mét, nguồn nước dồi dào, đất đai có thể canh tác và khả năng thiết lập đường giao thông dễ dàng. Bác sĩ A.Yersin cũng nhận được thư riêng của P.Doumer: “Trong thư, ông (P.Doumer) yêu cầu tôi xác định cho ông biết, là theo những kiến thức của tôi, thì trong vùng núi non của Nam Trung Kỳ nước An Nam, mà tôi đã thám hiểm, có nơi nào thích hợp để xây được một nhà an dưỡng chăng…” [7, tr.96]. Qua hai lần tiếp xúc với cao nguyên Lang Bian năm 1893 và 1894, dù ở lại đây trong thời gian ngắn nhưng đã để lại trong tâm thức bác sĩ A.Yersin những ấn tượng mạnh và nhận định rằng: “Thật rõ ràng, cao nguyên Lâm Viên thỏa mãn tốt những điều kiện này. Tôi đề nghị ông chọn nó và ông bằng lòng” [7, tr.96]. Viện bảo tàng Pasteur ở Paris vẫn còn giữ được hai văn bản liên quan đến vấn đề trên. Hai văn bản này cho thấy P.Doumer đã đích thân nghiên cứu các tài liệu của A.Yersin về cao nguyên Lang Bian [9, tr.117]. Trên cơ sở đó, trong hai năm 1897, 1898, toàn quyền P.Doumer đã cử hai đoàn khảo sát để xem xét khả năng xây dựng các con đường đi lên cao nguyên Lang Bian. Bản thân P.Doumer 39 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc cũng đã cùng với A.Yersin leo núi lên đây vào tháng 3 năm 1899 nhằm kiểm định những điều kiện cần và đủ cho việc thành lập một nơi nghỉ dưỡng. Những kết quả khảo sát ban đầu đã thuyết phục được P.Doumer. Hồi ký của P.Doumer cho biết: “Nhiều cuộc tìm kiếm công phu và kéo dài ở nhiều địa điểm đã không thành công; nhưng có một địa điểm đáp ứng đầy đủ các yêu cầu đặt ra, nhờ sự chỉ dẫn của Yersin: đó là cao nguyên Lang Bian” [9, tr.117]. Khi trở về, P.Doumer đã lập một chương trình xây dựng Đà Lạt với quy mô lớn. Tuy nhiên, năm 1902, P.Doumer về Pháp, dự án đồ sộ của ông ngưng lại, kinh phí bị cắt, những công trình xây dựng dở dang. Toàn quyền Paul Beau (nhiệm kỳ 1902 – 1908) tiếp tục cử nhiều đoàn khảo sát lên cao nguyên này. Ngày 5.1.1906, Hội đồng Quốc phòng Đông Dương họp ở Đà Lạt đã quyết định chọn cao nguyên Lang Bian làm nơi nghỉ dưỡng [8, tr.109]. Khi A.Yersin giới thiệu cao nguyên Lang Bian với P.Doumer, ông đề xuất lấy vùng đất Đăng Kia (nay thuộc huyện Lạc Dương, Lâm Đồng) làm trung tâm của khu nghỉ dưỡng. Không phải ngẫu nhiên ông chọn địa điểm này, lúc bấy giờ Đăng Kia là buôn lớn nhất, là trung tâm của toàn vùng; các điều kiện về độ cao, khí hậu, đất đai, phong cảnh đều đảm bảo. Tuy nhiên, trải qua một quá trình khảo sát và nghiên cứu cao nguyên Lang Bian, một số người đã đề xuất địa điểm mới đó là Đà Lạt; bởi lẽ, theo bác sĩ Tardif, Đà Lạt có những điều kiện tốt hơn so với Đăng Kia như đường đi gần hơn, thuận tiện hơn; địa bàn rộng rãi, bằng phẳng hơn nên có thể cho phép xây dựng những công trình lớn, quan trọng; khí hậu cũng khô ráo hơn;... Trên cơ sở đó, Tardif đã thuyết phục chính quyền Đông Dương chọn Đà Lạt thay vì chọn Đăng Kia và đã được chấp thuận. Tóm lại, mặc dù A. Yersin không phải là người đầu tiên đặt chân lên cao nguyên Lang Bian, địa điểm Đăng Kia cũng không được chọn làm nơi đặt trung tâm nghỉ dưỡng nhưng ông là người đầu tiên đề xuất chọn cao nguyên Lang Bian làm địa điểm đặt trạm điều dưỡng, đó chính là nhân tố quan trọng hàng đầu. Quyết định thành lập trạm điều dưỡng trên cao nguyên Lang Bian đã tạo điều kiện làm thay đổi hoàn toàn bộ mặt của vùng đất này – từ một nơi hoang sơ, trống trải, Đà Lạt đã từng bước được xây dựng, phát triển dần thành một thành phố du lịch - nghỉ mát, nghỉ dưỡng nổi tiếng; thành tựu đó có công đầu thuộc về bác sĩ – nhà thám hiểm A.Yersin. 2.2. Cống hiến của A. Yersin trên lĩnh vực dân tộc học – văn hóa học Thói quen ghi chép về tên đất, sông, núi, tài nguyên, phong tục, tập quán, những sự kiện đáng chú ý mỗi khi đi qua một vùng đất dường như đã trở thành phong cách của những người Âu châu; A.Yersin cũng không ngoại lệ. Ngoài những ghi chép về địa hình, tài nguyên theo yêu cầu của chính quyền Đông Dương, đi đến đâu ông cũng ghi lại sự phân bố của các dân tộc thiểu số, tên gọi các buôn làng, ngôn ngữ cùng phong tục, tập quán của họ bằng cách quan sát, dò hỏi với một niềm đam mê cái lạ, học cái hay để mở mang kiến thức, để hiểu và gần gũi hơn với dân bản địa. Khi lên cao nguyên Lang Bian, ông đã chép lại trong hồi ký 40 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc như sau: “Dân cư trong vùng thưa thớt, vài làng người Lạch (M’ Lates) tập trung ở chân núi. Họ trồng lúa nước rất tốt. Chúng tôi qua sông Đồng Nai, chỉ là một con suối rộng 3 mét, và đến Đăng Gia (Lang Ya hay Dan Ya) có chánh tổng trú ngụ. Người Lạch nói cả tiếng Chăm và tiếng Mạ. Phụ nữ có vành tai khoét một lỗ lớn và đặt vào đó những chiếc vòng to treo lủng lẳng những sợi dây thiếc hình xoắn ốc rất nặng. Tôi được tiếp trong nhà chung. Mỗi chức sắc trong làng mang đến một ché rượu. Trước mặt tôi có cả thảy 6 dãy ché. Rất may, họ không đòi hỏi tôi uống lần đầu hết tất cả” [8, tr.88]. Không dừng lại ở việc quan sát, A.Yersin còn hỏi Chánh tổng về: “những vùng ở phía Bắc núi Lang Bian mà tôi đã đo từ một điểm cách Đăng Kia về phía Tây Tây Bắc (3km). Ông ta biết các buôn Krong Ea, Kadoung và các buôn Bih mà tôi đã nhắc tên. Ông ta còn nêu ra các buôn sau đây nằm ở phía Bắc Đăng Kia và Menom Damutte: Mane Trane, Jenne, Dlaé, Tiel Moup, Jenne Tran, Bome Taou, Tiel Deung, Damron, Tildot, Dousal, Picó, Passal, Dambaét, Lamenne, Partéan, Khout” [8, tr.96]. Khi đến Ăn Krô-ét (An Kroette), ông viết: “2 xóm; dân cư: 630 người. Nhà không cất trên trụ, mái nhà sát mặt đất. Khi đổ nước vào ché, người ta bắt đầu đổ một ít nước sôi, rồi cầu nguyện Yàng cho đến khi đổ xong nước lạnh. Chính tôi phải cắm cần trúc vào ché rượu...” [8, tr.96]. Những ghi chép trên của A.Yersin tuy không nhiều nhưng cung cấp khá nhiều thông tin về mật độ dân cư, vị trí các buôn, ngôn ngữ, kiểu nhà, cách thức đón tiếp khách… Đó là nguồn tài liệu cần thiết, bổ ích, hỗ trợ cho các nhà sử học, dân tộc học, văn hóa học nghiên cứu, tìm hiểu về vùng đất Đà Lạt vào thời kì này. Thông qua những trang hồi ký của A.Yersin và những ghi chép khác của những người đã từng đặt chân lên vùng đất Đà Lạt, chúng ta có thể gắn kết để biết được quá trình hình thành và phát triển của các cộng đồng cư dân nơi đây. Từ một vùng đất có dân cư thưa thớt, là địa bàn cư trú của dân tộc K`Ho với các nhánh Lạch (chủ yếu), Chill, Sre; Đà Lạt đã từng bước trở thành một thành phố đông dân cư gồm các cộng đồng cư dân khác nhau (K`Ho, Việt, Âu, Hoa). Trên cơ sở đó, nền văn hóa của vùng đất cao nguyên này cũng có sự biến đổi, từ một nền văn hóa tộc người K`Ho bản địa, Đà Lạt trở thành nơi hội tụ của các nền văn hóa đa vùng miền, đa phong cách; có sự kết hợp, pha trộn giữa văn hóa phương Đông và phương Tây. Những chuyển biến về cộng đồng cư dân và văn hóa nêu trên gắn kết chặt chẽ với quá trình hình thành và phát triển của đô thị Đà Lạt mà điểm mốc khởi đầu chính là khi A.Yersin đặt chân lên cao nguyên Lang Bian và đề xuất để biến nơi đây thành trạm điều dưỡng của người Pháp. Có thể nói rằng, A.Yersin là một trong những người đã đặt nền móng cho sự hình thành của cộng đồng cư dân đa thành phần cũng như những nét văn hóa độc đáo, đa sắc thái trên vùng đất Đà Lạt ngày nay. 2.3. Cống hiến của bác sĩ A. Yersin trên lĩnh vực y học - nông học Với tư cách là một bác sĩ, bằng trí tuệ, niềm đam mê và lòng nhiệt tâm cứu 41 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc chữa người bệnh, A.Yerin không chỉ có những cống hiến quan trọng cho nền y học thế giới mà còn là người đặt những viên gạch đầu tiên cho nền y học Tây phương ở Việt Nam. Mặc dù phần lớn các hoạt động nghiên cứu y học và khám chữa bệnh của A.Yersin chủ yếu được thực hiện ở Nha Trang nhưng đối với Đà Lạt, ông cũng có những đóng góp nhất định. Theo đề xuất của bác sĩ A.Yersin, Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt được chính quyền Pháp thành lập năm 1936. Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt có nhiệm vụ nghiên cứu các bệnh nhiệt đới, làm một số xét nghiệm y tế phục vụ việc bảo vệ sức khỏe cho con người (ban đầu cho cán bộ, viên chức và binh lính người Pháp); sản xuất một số chế phẩm sinh học (vắc-xin phòng bệnh dại, bệnh đậu mùa, thương hàn, tả,...) cung cấp cho Viện Pasteur Sài Gòn; kiểm nghiệm nước uống cho địa phương; chữa trị bệnh dại miễn phí. Ngoài ra, Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt còn đảm nhận việc thành lập khu trồng cây canh-ki-na (Quinquina) để khảo nghiệm và sản xuất ký ninh (quinine) tại Xuân Thọ (Đà Lạt). Việc cây canh-ki-na được trồng ở Đà Lạt với quy mô lớn xuất phát từ những hoạt động nghiên cứu y học của A.Yersin. Lúc bấy giờ, sốt rét là một bệnh nguy hiểm tại Việt Nam và châu Á. Chiết xuất kí ninh lấy từ cây canh-ki-na là phương thuốc duy nhất chữa bệnh sốt rét. Do vậy, việc trồng cây canh-ki-na thành công sẽ đem lại lợi ích rất lớn cả về phương diện y học lẫn kinh tế. Năm 1886, Toàn quyền Đông Dương Paul Bert đã cho trồng thí điểm ở miền Bắc, nhưng không thành công. Việc trồng cây canh-ki-na của bác sĩ A.Yersin cũng trải qua một quá trình lâu dài, tốn nhiều công sức và tâm huyết. Ông gieo thử hạt canh-ki-na ở Suối Dầu, tiếp đó là Hòn Bà (Khánh Hòa) nhưng gặp thất bại hoàn toàn. Không nản lòng, ông đã bỏ công đi tìm vùng đất và khí hậu phù hợp với tập tính sinh trưởng của cây. Ông lần lượt cho trồng cây ở Đrăn (Đơn Dương – Lâm Đồng), Djiring (Di Linh – Lâm Đồng), trên cao nguyên Lang Bian nhỏ (Petit Lang Bian, Xuân Thọ - Đà Lạt), Diom (Lâm Đồng). Trải qua gần 20 năm (1917-1934) với các khâu thử đất, ươm giống, chọn phân, kiểm tra mầm bệnh, tìm hiểu nguyên nhân, phân tích tỉ lệ cây chết – cây sinh trưởng tốt ở mỗi địa điểm trồng cây… kết quả cuối cùng cho thấy: cây canh-ki-na tăng trưởng tốt ở cả bốn địa điểm trên, cây mọc khỏe, thân tròn, vỏ láng. Có thể nói, thành công trong việc trồng cây canh-ki-na cũng đồng nghĩa với việc chủ động được nguồn sunfat kí ninh kết tinh để bào chế thuốc chống sốt rét. Trước năm 1975, Viện Pasteur Đà Lạt có lúc đã cung cấp thuốc chủng này cho vài nước ở Đông Nam Á; vì lúc bấy giờ, Viện là một cơ sở sản xuất thuốc chủng ngừa lớn nhất trong toàn khu vực. Đó là một trong những thành tựu đáng kể của viện Pasteur Đà Lạt mà công đầu thuộc về A.Yersin – người đã miệt mài lao động để tạo ra nguồn thuốc quý cho Đà Lạt nói riêng và Việt Nam nói chung. Qua quá trình thực nghiệm trồng cây canh-ki-na nói trên đã chứng tỏ kiến thức nông học của A.Yersin khá sâu và thuần thục. Điều này đã được chứng thực khi ở Nha Trang, ông không chỉ được xem là một bác sĩ tài giỏi mà còn là một nhà nông học thực thụ, chuyên nghiên cứu những cây trồng mang lại lợi ích lâu dài cho Việt Nam, giới thiệu và hướng dẫn cách trồng cho nhà nông. Đối với Đà 42 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc Lạt, chính nhờ những kiến thức uyên thâm về nông nghiệp, khi đặt chân lên cao nguyên Lang Bian, ông viết: “Dưới chỗ trũng, đất màu đen và đầy than bùn” [8, tr.88]; trên cơ sở đó, ông nhận định cao nguyên Lang Bian có thể thỏa mãn điều kiện: đất đai có thể canh tác được mà Toàn quyền P.Doumer đưa ra. Thành công của Trạm nông nghiệp Đăng Kia trong việc trồng thử nghiệm các loại cây ôn đới đã chứng minh nhận định của ông là đúng đắn. Đó cũng chính là một trong những nhân tố góp phần khẳng định vững chắc quyết định của Chính quyền Đông Dương nhằm xây dựng cao nguyên Lang Bian thành một trạm điều dưỡng – nơi nghỉ mát, nghỉ dưỡng của “tầng lớp thượng lưu” ở Đông Dương lúc bấy giờ. 3. Kết luận Cuộc đời hoạt động khoa học sôi nổi, vừa đầy chông gai, thử thách; vừa đầy nhiệt huyết, nhiệt tâm của bác sĩ A.Yersin đã mang lại cho ông những thành quả lao động xứng đáng. Bằng trí tuệ, tài năng và lòng yêu thương con người, ông đã vượt qua những rào cản vật chất, cống hiến cả cuộc đời của mình cho khoa học, cho sự phát triển của loài người. Đà Lạt may mắn có “mối nhân duyên” với bác sĩ A. Yersin, kể từ khi ông đến (1893), “Thành phố ngàn hoa” đã từng bước chuyển mình, trải qua 130 năm hình thành và phát triển, từ một vùng đất hoang sơ, trống trải, dân cư thưa thớt, là địa bàn cư trú của dân tộc K`Ho; Đà Lạt ngày nay được biết đến với tư cách là một trung tâm văn hóa – du lịch, trung tâm sản xuất rau – hoa lớn, nổi tiếng của cả nước. Những bước phát triển và khởi sắc đó là kết tinh công lao xây dựng của nhiều thế hệ, nhiều thành phần cư dân đã đến lập nghiệp ở mảnh đất này và người có công đưa đường, chỉ lối cho họ đến thành phố xinh đẹp, mộng mơ này đó chính là bác sĩ – nhà thám hiểm – nhà nông học tài ba A.Yersin. Những cống hiến đó của ông đã được Đà Lạt trân trọng ghi nhận qua việc lấy tên ông đặt cho những ngôi trường (Trường Trung học Grand Lycée Yersin – nay là Trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Đà Lạt; Trường Đại học Yersin), cho con đường dẫn vào trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Đà Lạt, cho công viên đối diện với hồ Xuân Hương – nơi đặt bức tượng bán thân của bác sĩ A.Yersin. Hy vọng với bài viết này, các thế hệ hôm nay và mai sau sẽ hiểu rõ và trân quý hơn những cống hiến của ông đối với mảnh đất và con người Đà Lạt./. TÀI LIỆU THAM KHẢO 1. Trương Phúc Ân & Nguyễn Diệp (1993), Đà Lạt trăm năm, NXB Công ty Văn hóa tổng hợp, Lâm Đồng. 2. Trương Phúc Ân (2000), Bí mật thành phố hoa Đà Lạt, NXB Văn nghệ, TP. Hồ Chí Minh. 3. Nôen Bécna (1988), Những cuộc thám hiểm của Yersin, NXB Sở Văn hóa Thông tin, Phú Khánh. 4. Paul Doumer, người dịch Lê Đình Chi, Hoàng Long, Vũ Thủy (2016), Xứ Đông Dương (Hồi ký), NXB Thế giới, Hà Nội. 43 Kyû yeáu Hoäi thaûo khoa hoïc 5. Eric T. Jennings (2015), Đỉnh cao đế quốc – Đà Lạt và sự hưng vong của Đông Dương, NXB Hồng Đức, TP. Hồ Chí Minh. 6. Hãn Nguyên (1971), Lịch sử phát triển Đà Lạt (1893 – 1954), Tạp chí Sử Địa, 23+24, 265-289. 7. Hoàng Xuân Hãn & cs (2013), Đà Lạt xưa, NXB Thời Đại, Hà Nội. 8. Nguyễn Hữu Tranh (2001), Đà Lạt năm xưa, NXB TP. Hồ Chí Minh, TP. Hồ Chí Minh. 9. Ủy Ban Nhân dân thành phố Đà Lạt (1993), Đà Lạt thành phố cao nguyên, NXB TP. Hồ Chí Minh, TP. Hồ Chí Minh. 10. Ủy Ban Nh	921,666
Tâm Lý Dân Tộc An Nam (Paul Giran) (Z-Library).pdf	ebook©vctvegroup[1] LỜI NGỎ Chế độ thuộc địa đã cáo chung trên thế giới, khi bàn về chế độ thực dân Pháp ở An Nam (Việt Nam), các vấn đề: chính sách cai trị, kinh tế, thương mại, y tế, giáo dục, văn hóa, xã hội... do người Pháp áp dụng thường được khảo sát và đề cập. Tuy nhiên, để biến toàn bộ An Nam trở thành xứ bảo hộ và áp đặt chính sách cai trị ở Nam kỳ (thuộc địa) cũng như Bắc-Trung kỳ (bảo hộ), từ rất sớm người Pháp đã ý thức được rằng: việc thấu hiểu diện mạo, đời sống, tính cách và tinh thần người An Nam là những thách thức không nhỏ mà họ sẽ gặp phải khi đặt chân đến xứ sở này. Chính vì vậy, thu thập và tích lũy các quan sát để phục vụ công cuộc thực dân của nước Pháp trên đất An Nam được xem là một phần công việc của những người đi thực dân-bành trướng - một đặc tính di truyền của dân tộc Pháp[2]. Vào nửa cuối thế kỷ XIX, đại úy hải quân Léopold Pallu - người trực tiếp tham gia cuộc viễn chinh Nam kỳ năm 1861, đã viết trong cuốn ký sự chiến trường Nam kỳ viễn chinh ký 1861: “Cho đến tận ngày nay, người An Nam vẫn gần như không được biết tới dưới góc độ dân tộc học. [...] Những nghiên cứu về diện mạo và tinh thần người An Nam chưa từng xuất hiện trước cuộc chiến tranh Nam kỳ. Vì vậy, thấu hiểu thực sự về khả năng và phong tục của dân tộc này sẽ là lời bình luận hùng hồn nhất cho những khó khăn mà người Pháp đã gặp phải ở đây.”[3] Đầu thế kỷ XX, sau hơn ba năm thu thập và tích lũy quan sát ở Đông Dương, Paul Giran - một quan chức cai trị thuộc địa Pháp, cho xuất bản công trình Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam (Psychologie du peuple annamite) vào năm 1904. Ông cho rằng, “để cai trị tốt một dân tộc, trước tiên phải học hỏi tìm hiểu, phải biết rõ, phải thấu đáo tâm hồn, thần minh của họ.” Trong công trình của mình, Paul Giran đề xuất một nghiên cứu về dân tộc An Nam; “để khám phá những sức mạnh sâu kín của đời sống cộng đồng hoặc riêng tư; rút ra các nguyên tắc tối thượng chi phối việc thành lập các thiết chế xã hội hoặc chính trị; phân tích mọi ảnh hưởng mạnh mẽ đã định hình nên lịch sử và sự tiến hóa của nó.”[4] Để hiểu thấu đáo “tâm hồn và thần minh” của người An Nam, Paul Giran, cũng như nhiều đồng nghiệp của ông, đã thâm nhập và sinh sống để học ngôn ngữ và hiểu người bản xứ. Qua đó, khắc họa nên đặc điểm quốc gia, sự tiến hóa lịch sử, trí tuệ, xã hội và chính trị An Nam; tất cả nhằm phục vụ cho công cuộc thực dân của nước Pháp, “để thành công quân sự không trở nên vô ích, theo sau đó phải là chiến thắng của tiến bộ trước giấc ngủ mê Viễn Đông.”[5] Từ đây, ông rút ra hai nguyên nhân chính góp phần vào sự hình thành bản sắc dân tộc An Nam: chủng tộc và môi trường, cũng là đối tượng mà công trình này tập trung khảo sát. Nhận xét về Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam, Étienne Aymonier đã viết trong “Lời tựa”: “Một công trình chắc chắn, phong phú, có nội dung, tài liệu, chắc chắn không có tham vọng giải quyết những vấn đề lớn làm thay đổi sự thống trị của chúng ta, nhưng chí ít tuyên dương công trạng ở một vài khía cạnh.” “Tôi hy vọng, đối với ông (Paul Giran) và cho đất nước chúng ta, rằng tương lai sẽ chắp nối tất cả nguyện ước về những khởi đầu đáng kính này trong sự nghiệp thuộc địa.”[6] Trước khi về Paris phụ trách Trường Thuộc địa, Aymonier đã có hơn 15 năm ở nước Pháp-Á Đông, am hiểu xứ sở này với tư cách một nhà chính trị. Đứng đầu cơ quan đào tạo nhân viên cai trị thuộc địa, Aymonier vẫn là một nhà chính trị. Vì vậy, không có gì ngạc nhiên về cách đánh giá ông dành cho công trình Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam và cá nhân Paul Giran. Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam ra đời hơn 100 năm trước, thời điểm mà người Pháp đã đặt ách cai trị trên đất An Nam, những bài học rút ra từ nghiên cứu tâm lý này vẫn ít nhiều có giá trị tham khảo, “không cần phải dạy người An Nam ngôn ngữ của chúng ta, cho họ tòa án của chúng ta, tìm cách khắc sâu vào họ tôn giáo, ý tưởng và giáo điều của chúng ta.” “Phải tôn trọng tính toàn vẹn của tổ chức xã hội; không được chạm vào cả niềm tin cũng như luật pháp, kể cả bộ máy hành chánh, hay phong tục bản xứ.”[7] v.v... Nhân danh “khai hóa văn minh”, nước Pháp cho họ quyền thống trị các dân tộc khác, người Pháp thì đưa ra “những lý tưởng, những sứ mệnh, những bổn phận rất cao cả, linh thiêng để biện hộ cho chế độ thuộc địa của họ.”[8] Étienne Aymonier, Paul Giran... là những con người yêu nước mình, những mắt xích trong guồng máy thực dân của một thời quá vãng. Một phần quan điểm của họ được viết ra dưới giác độ của người đi thực dân, đó là điều mà chúng tôi lưu ý độc giả khi tiếp cận cuốn sách mỏng này. Dẫu vậy, Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam là một cuốn sách khá cô đọng, lồng trong đó nhiều kiến thức lịch sử, nhân chủng, tiến hóa, văn hóa, tín ngưỡng... Để bạn đọc tiện theo dõi, chúng tôi có bổ sung một số cước chú cần thiết ở chân trang, có những cước chú khá dài do người dịch đã dụng công tra cứu và dịch từ nhiều nguồn tài liệu tiếng Pháp, nếu bạn đọc không thấy cộng hưởng xin vui lòng bỏ qua. Giới thiệu Tâm lý dân tộc An Nam trong “Tủ sách Pháp ngữ - Góc nhìn sử Việt”, chúng tôi mong muốn gửi đến độc giả một công trình nghiên cứu khả tín, góp thêm một tài liệu có ích cho những nhà nghiên cứu. Chúng tôi cũng rất cần sự hợp tác của quý vị độc giả, giúp chúng tôi chấn chỉnh những sai sót để bản dịch được hoàn thiện hơn trong lần tái bản. Trân trọng, CÔNG TY CỔ PHẦN SÁCH OMEGA VIỆT NAM Dành tặng vợ yêu, cộng tác viên tận tâm của anh. P.G. LỜI TỰA Không ai phủ nhận rằng nước Pháp phải nhận thức đầy đủ về các vấn đề nghiêm trọng và tế nhị khởi từ việc mở rộng thuộc địa gần đây. Sau khi chúng ta trả giá đắt bằng hàng ngàn con người và hàng trăm triệu franc, những đầu tư quá an toàn này - như một trong những chính khách của chúng ta đã nói - liệu có tạo ra được một sự vận hành hiệu quả cho mục tiêu thực tiễn trước mắt: sự phát triển thịnh vượng và hoạt động quốc gia, hay ở mục đích cao xa hơn: truyền bá văn minh, cải biên chính tinh thần của chúng ta cho phù hợp với não trạng của các dân tộc kém phát triển mà chúng ta coi sóc? Câu trả lời chỉ có thể được khẳng định dựa theo điều kiện đầu tiên và thiết yếu: vấn đề thời gian thu hoạch. Tương lai tùy thuộc Thiên Chúa - hay định phận rủi may - phải giới hạn mọi dự đoán, thậm chí táo bạo nhất, trong một khoảng thời gian tương đối hạn chế nhưng phải là mức tối thiểu thực sự cần thiết cho những cuộc chinh phục tốn kém để sau này khỏi phải mang tiếng lừa dối con cháu chúng ta. Hãy lấy ba trăm năm làm mốc: đó không là gì đối với lịch sử nhân loại và rất ngắn ngủi đối với lịch sử quốc gia; với chúng ta, chỉ là khoảng thời gian trôi qua giữa triều đại Đại đế Vert Galant[9] và Tổng thống Émile Loubet. Vậy thử hỏi, tình trạng các thuộc địa của chúng ta sẽ như thế nào vào lúc bình minh của thế kỷ XXIII? Ở Bắc Phi, vào cuối triều đại Napoléon III, Prévost-Paradol[10] đã trình ra một tác phẩm hứa hẹn mang đến sự thỏa lòng cho tiếng thét cảnh tỉnh, vang vọng âu lo và gần như tuyệt vọng. Tại Algérie[11], nhân danh nước Pháp, sự máu lửa của tất cả các dân tộc La-tinh được hòa quyện vào nhau. Luật Nhập tịch năm 1889, luật có hiệu lực tương lai, luật không thể xác thực nếu không bao giờ được thực hiện[12], sẽ kích hoạt việc Pháp hóa chính thức tất cả các yếu tố vốn không khác biệt lắm về nền tảng, vả lại các bậc sơ học, dẫu còn chưa được mở rộng mấy, đang dần thấm nhuần tinh thần Pháp. Nếu sự xâm chiếm thắng lợi của nông dân Sicile buộc chúng ta phải bắt đầu lại cuộc chinh phục Tunisie[13], nếu có thể nói như vậy, thì thật dễ hiểu khi nhận ra rằng với sức mạnh to lớn đang tăng lên, từ tứ phía mọi luồng tấn công nhắm vào đầu óc đặc quyền, đặc lợi đáng tiếc của những đại điền chủ, tự cho mình là thực dân vì đã chiếm đoạt hầu hết vùng đất có sẵn, và của những phái bộ thảm hại bấy lâu nay luôn nhắm đến việc gây mất uy tín trước chính quyền vương quốc[14] cái công cuộc thuộc địa hóa chính thức và sự thiết lập những địa chủ nhỏ mà Algérie kể từ đây đã có thể cung cấp tương tự như Pháp quốc. Đến lượt mình, vấn đề Maroc đang dần chín muồi[15], đè nặng lên mọi đầu óc, đang đi đến cách giải quyết tự nhiên của nó, với sự chấp nhận hoặc từ bỏ của châu Âu; và trừ khi có những sai phạm hiển nhiên, những thảm họa không lường trước được, viên ngọc này, trong số những viên ngọc quý của nước Pháp, trong thời gian ngắn, sẽ nhân đôi, nhân ba giá trị tài sản tuyệt vời của chúng ta ở lục địa Atlantis[16]. Khi đó, từ Vịnh Gabès[17] đến khắp đại dương rộng lớn, hàng triệu người châu Âu mà chúng ta tin sẽ sớm tăng nhanh nhờ năng lực sinh sản cũng như dòng chảy không ngừng của người La-tinh, trong chưa đến ba thế kỷ, sẽ trở thành một quốc gia mạnh mẽ gồm ba mươi triệu người châu Âu nói tiếng Pháp, pha lẫn với ít nhất cũng là một con số tương đương số người bản xứ cũng sẽ sử dụng tiếng nói của chúng ta, điều vốn không làm hài lòng một số ít người thiếu ý thức, những kẻ mơ mộng chấn hưng, làm sống lại hoặc hợp nhất mọi phương ngữ của xứ sở. Sáu mươi triệu người Pháp Atlantis này sẽ tràn qua biên giới tự nhiên, băng qua sa mạc Sahara vươn tới Tây Phi của chúng ta, để có thể khai thác nó hiệu quả; bởi không ai biết những tài nguyên của cải nào dành cho chúng ta, trong sa mạc mênh mông, kiến thức về lòng đất, sự tiến bộ của khoa học hay việc sử dụng nhiệt năng, chẳng hạn như nhiệt năng mặt trời. Giữa nước Pháp-Phi trẻ này và Mẫu quốc Pháp già nua ở châu Âu, sự phân ly chính trị là không thể tránh khỏi, có lẽ nó được nhận định quá cứng nhắc và sẽ chỉ là một sự kiện quan trọng thứ yếu, được khởi xướng từ phương Bắc[18], là do tự thấy mình bị ảnh hưởng quá nhiều trong đời sống nội tại từ cái thuộc địa gần gũi và gợi cảm hứng này. Điều đáng mong muốn, điều phải là trên hết, đó là hàng trăm triệu con người sẽ sử dụng tiếng Pháp trên cả hai bờ Địa Trung Hải và đều thấy giống như đang ở nhà mình, tất cả được đào tạo trong một khối đại đồng về ý niệm và tình cảm, hàm chứa sự đồng nhất ngôn từ hiển nhiên, do đó mang lại cho nhau sự hỗ tương, giúp đỡ và trợ lực. Vì, dù đẹp đến đâu, liệu có phải chính từ các thuộc địa hiện tại của mình mà nước Anh đã lấy được chỗ dựa tư tưởng lớn nhất? Không phải thế sao, khi mà bất chấp sự phân ly dữ dội và lan tỏa giông bão Đại Tây Dương, tám mươi triệu người Bắc Mỹ, với chủng tộc pha trộn, nhưng tất cả đều nói ngôn ngữ của họ, mua sách báo, tham gia vào đời sống trí tuệ của họ? Vậy, với mọi viễn cảnh trên, công trình của nước Pháp sẽ mạnh mẽ và đạt thành tựu ở châu Phi. Thành công ở Madagascar còn đầy hoài nghi. Chúng ta mang lại sự yên bình và thịnh vượng tương đối cho dân cư rất sinh sôi nảy nở của hòn đảo lớn này. Chỉ tăng gấp đôi số lượng dân cư của hàng trăm năm qua và, vào đầu thế kỷ XXIII, sẽ vượt qua con số hai mươi triệu sinh linh, trong đó có vài trăm nghìn người Âu và người lai. Đặc điểm của dân tộc này sẽ là gì và giá trị của nó đối với sự bành trướng của nước Pháp trên thế giới sẽ ra sao? Chúng ta có thể mạnh dạn trả lời rằng giá trị này sẽ đến trực tiếp từ kiến thức và việc sử dụng ngôn ngữ chúng ta. Vậy điều trở ngại là cần tránh làm lụi tắt những nhiệt huyết tốt đẹp ban đầu của cuộc chinh phục, trong khi phải đồng thời chống lại tiếng Anh; là quên rằng nếu tất cả các công chức Pháp phải biết ngôn ngữ của xứ này, thì bên cạnh đó tất cả người bản xứ phải học và có thể nói khá hơn ngôn ngữ của chúng ta; là khuyến khích những chủ nhân của hòn đảo đã thấp thoáng ló dạng, lớp học giả nửa mùa tai hại[19], nhanh chóng bị mê hoặc bởi sự ngưỡng mộ về chủ đề nghiên cứu đặc biệt của họ, vì niềm hữu ý và vụ lợi nhiều hơn là sự chân thành và công chính, dễ dàng sẵn lòng coi thường nhiệm vụ yêu nước của mình để bảo lưu, thanh lọc, củng cố, tạo ra, có thể nói, một bản ngữ, và tiếp theo là một đặc tính quốc gia bản địa. Vậy làm sao không nghi ngờ cho được những nỗ lực của các quỹ của Viện Ngôn ngữ Malgache[20] mà chính những kẻ thống trị tài trợ, nếu họ có ý định áp đặt chương trình “cải cách xác đáng” của mình lên các quy tắc ngôn ngữ của xứ này! Sự hồ nghi này sẽ chuyển thành nỗi lo lắng nếu chúng ta chuyển sang Đông Dương, nơi tất yếu cần xem xét trước tiên là sự hấp thụ, dù hòa bình hay đối kháng, của đất nước này đối với khối khổng lồ bốn trăm triệu người Trung Hoa, mà dù có thế nào đi nữa cũng sẽ phát triển dưới áp lực của thời cuộc. Tại sao đất nước Trung Hoa, có nền văn minh đỉnh cao, rốt cùng thoát khỏi quy luật này lại biểu hiện quá tự mãn kể từ năm 1870[21]? Hầu như tất cả các dân tộc, thậm chí còn sơ khai, có những bước tiến vượt bậc về ý thức phòng vệ và sử dụng vũ trang khi bị đánh thức khỏi sự ngủ mê hay bị quấy rối sự yên tĩnh bởi việc xâm nhập bạo lực của người châu Âu. Nhật Bản và Abyssinia[22] chỉ là một số ví dụ, đúng là nổi bật nhất, cho những tiến bộ phổ quát này, chứng tỏ cái phúc cho những kẻ sở hữu[23] và làm cho mọi cuộc chinh phục trong tương lai ngày càng khó khăn hơn. Để qua một bên viễn cảnh của hiểm họa Trung Hoa, mà những thuận lợi rất đáng gờm về giao lưu không ngừng gia tăng[24] có thể xảy ra theo sau cuộc chiến với một cường quốc to lớn nào đó và sẽ gây tổn thất từ xứ Đông Dương nằm cách nước Pháp đến 3.000 hải lý, vậy thì ở cuối con đường mà chúng ta không phải là chủ tể, vị thế của những thần dân châu Á của chúng ta trong ba trăm năm nữa là gì? Ở đây, ít ra không bao giờ phải dùng chính sách mũ ni che tai hay cường điệu hóa bằng những ngôn từ sáo rỗng để làm hài lòng tinh thần có ở hầu khắp đồng bào chúng ta. Biến đổi xứ sở bằng cách cung cấp cho nó các công cụ kinh tế tinh vi, tái tạo nòi giống, ngăn chặn tình trạng tử vong ở trẻ em, làm cường tráng thân thể, chấn hưng tâm hồn, phục dựng tinh thần, v.v. Đó là những công thức phổ biến và biến hóa vô cùng. Trong thực tế những việc này có ý nghĩa gì? Tóm tắt chỉ có ba điều, không nhiều hơn: cải thiện cơ sở vật chất của xứ sở, gia tăng dân số ở mức nhất định, và sự tiến hóa tất nhiên của tâm hồn; ba điều đó sẽ cấu thành nhiệm vụ không thể tránh của kẻ chinh phục, với lợi ích gần như độc quyền cho các thần dân. Kể từ năm 1886, tôi hài lòng khi nhắc lại điều đó với các quan lại An Nam, họ quá muộn phiền vì sự hỗn loạn kinh khủng của thời đại và sự đàn áp tàn bạo không thể tránh: “Tôi đã nói với họ, chủng tộc của bạn trong quá khứ từng chịu những khủng hoảng lớn hơn nhiều mà còn không làm sao ngăn được nó phát triển. Về cơ bản, tất cả chúng tôi là người Pháp, chúng tôi chỉ làm vì bạn. Chúng tôi sẽ không lấy đất nước của bạn, chúng tôi sẽ biến đổi nó. Chúng tôi không làm giống nòi bạn biến mất, mà chắc chắn sẽ tiến bộ và giàu có lên dưới sự hướng dẫn của chúng tôi. An Nam của bạn là một trong số ít các vương quốc khép mình tuyên bố bế quan, một việc bất khả thi ở thời điểm này; chúng tôi mở nó ra, vì lợi ích của nó, cho hoạt động phổ quát.” Tôi vẫn tin rằng ngày nay những quan điểm này là chính xác. Nhưng trong mức độ nào thì công trình có thể mang lại lợi nhuận cho nước Pháp? Bảy hoặc tám phần mười thần dân Đông Dương cùng một chủng tộc mà phần mở rộng tất nhiên sẽ hấp thụ hoặc loại bỏ mọi yếu tố dị biệt trong tương lai như nó đã hấp thụ hoặc loại bỏ chúng trong quá khứ. Sự thống trị của chúng ta dường như không gây trở ngại cho kết quả chung cuộc. Có dòng máu rất pha trộn, người An Nam không lập nên được một quốc gia có tổ chức và thống nhất chặt chẽ bằng ngôn ngữ, tín ngưỡng dân tộc, sự tự hào về chủng tộc, tình cảm về một quá khứ với đầy rẫy nét vẻ của một chủ nghĩa yêu nước có thể so sánh với tình yêu nước của người Pháp ở một thời xưa cũ. Sự trung quân bị nhầm lẫn với tình yêu đất tổ và không gì hủy diệt được nó. Ông lão bảy mươi tuổi, như Phan Thanh Giản vào năm 1867[25], người ở độ tuổi hai mươi, như Tôn Thất Đạm vào năm 1888[26], đã kiên cường tự tử sau khi ra lệnh cho thuộc cấp quy hàng để chờ đợi thời cơ tốt hơn. Tinh thần đoàn kết của quốc gia và đại diện tối cao của nó vẫn được hiện rõ trong những lời tuyên bố long trọng, những lời nhận lỗi công khai, trong đó vua chúa hạ mình xuống, than vãn và tự buộc tội bản thân cho những tai họa lớn xảy ra trong triều đại của mình. Theo một quy luật quen thuộc, các nhóm dân tộc thiểu số[27] ở An Nam sẽ nổi lên chống đối. Sự nổi dậy mạnh mẽ sẽ khai phóng ý niệm về Tổ quốc, sẽ khiến nó xuất hiện với tất cả sức mạnh và sự trong sáng của nó, như các quốc gia nhiệt thành nhất của châu Âu hiện nay, đó là nhân tố ngoại lai, là sự hiện diện của chúng ta và hành động không chủ ý nhưng đương nhiên của họ, những cái đang thấm nhuần vào các ý tưởng và nền văn minh của chúng ta một cảm giác phiền nhiễu ngày càng rõ ràng gây ra bởi những kẻ cai trị hoặc thậm chí là sự thù hận mà họ kích động. “Kẻ thù của chúng ta là chủ nhân của chúng ta”, tinh thần này sẽ được lặp lại, đó là người Hoa, người An Nam, người Pháp dù xấu hay tốt. Thậm chí phải thừa nhận rằng bằng cách nào đó thần dân sẽ nợ chúng ta ít nhiều sự công nhận của họ vì họ thấy biết ơn chúng ta, điều mà ngày nay chúng ta vẫn có cơ sở tin tưởng. Bên nào nặng hơn, trên bàn cân đong đếm, một mặt là tình cảm lợi ích của chúng ta, ngay cả khi chúng không bị tranh cãi, và mặt khác, ký ức về những khó khăn của việc chinh phục, và hơn thế nữa, sự xấu hổ về sự hiện diện của chúng ta? Sẽ không quá đỗi huyễn hoặc để tin rằng họ sẽ đợi ba thế kỷ trôi qua trước khi ngẩng đầu tuyên bố độc lập, rằng năm mươi triệu người dân An Nam, nơi sẽ hòa lẫn vài trăm ngàn người lai, điều này sẽ thật sự rất nguy hiểm cho sự thống trị của chúng ta, nếu chúng ta phạm phải sai lầm không thể tha thứ là duy trì họ ở tình trạng đẳng cấp trung gian? Không thể nào so sánh công cuộc ở Ấn Độ, đó là bức tranh ghép của các dân tộc xa lạ với nhau, còn chia ra thành những đẳng cấp không thể khắc phục, và ở xứ An Nam này, nơi cuộc chinh phục đã gặp một chủng tộc hòa hợp tuyệt vời, đặt lên trên những nền tảng vững chắc của tổ chức gia đình và làng xã, sự phân cấp thông tuệ của những Nho gia quan lại, tôn vinh thiết chế xưa cũ của vương quyền, đại giáo chủ và đại diện tối cao của dân tộc! Bây giờ, khi thời điểm báo hiệu cho sự phân ly không thể tránh khỏi, hòa hoãn hoặc bạo lực, mà phải có dự tính lạnh lùng, điều này tốt hơn việc thoái lui, ở đây chúng ta sẽ còn làm việc cho Pháp chỉ trong phạm vi mà chúng ta gây dựng vững chắc ngôn ngữ của chúng ta. Tồn tại một ngôn ngữ An Nam, trừu tượng với sáu thanh sắc của các âm đơn, là một phương ngữ rõ ràng, phong phú về các từ ngữ thông thường, chuẩn và chính xác. Nhưng từ hơn 2000 năm nay, tiếng nói phổ thông này được duy trì ở trạng thái phương ngữ nội bộ không phát triển hoặc có tiến hóa khả dĩ nào, bằng ngôn ngữ Trung Hoa được dẫn dắt với văn minh của Đại đế quốc và hằng định là một ngôn ngữ trí tuệ, văn học và chính thức. Tất cả người An Nam được đào tạo - và giáo dục rất phổ biến - sử dụng hai ngôn ngữ trong giao tiếp, ngôn ngữ của họ, có cú pháp đơn giản như ngôn ngữ của người Pháp, và trong ngôn ngữ viết, là tiếng Trung Hoa, mà cấu trúc của nó luôn đảo ngược (so với tiếng Pháp). Trong số các vấn đề cần phải ngay lập tức xem xét, có việc liệu chăng nên dùng tiếng Pháp, ngôn ngữ có cấu trúc câu của tiếng An Nam, thay cho tiếng Hoa, ngôn ngữ cú pháp hoàn toàn khác nhưng cận kề tiếng An Nam hơn bởi tính đơn âm, nhiều ngữ điệu và nhiều thuật ngữ sử dụng thông thường của nó đã bổ sung vào phương ngữ bình dân, ít nhất là trong lĩnh vực tiếng nói cao cấp (trong xã hội). Sau đó, hãy để tương lai quyết định có bao nhiêu từ tiếng Pháp sẽ làm phong phú hoặc sửa đổi thổ ngữ này trong phạm vi rất hạn chế đó là tiếng An Nam hiện thời. Giải pháp khiêm tốn và khả thi này sẽ có những ưu và nhược của nó. Chữ Hoa tượng hình tạo thành một ngôn ngữ chung, phổ biến trong số năm trăm triệu người da vàng; trong khi việc sử dụng tiếng Pháp sẽ xoay An Nam về phía thế giới châu Âu, cả khoa học và nền văn minh của nó. Trong hai hướng này, điều gì sẽ thuận lợi nhất cho các thần dân của chúng ta? Vấn đề có thể vẫn còn bỏ ngỏ. Nhưng lợi ích của những kẻ chinh phục thoát khỏi tất cả tranh cãi và đó là điều cần phải cân nhắc. Điều này cho thấy bao nhiêu khó khăn và lo lắng - câu này không phải là quá nặng - cho công trình được nước Pháp thực hiện ở vùng Viễn Đông[28]. Một trong những điều kiện thiết yếu của hành vi tốt rõ ràng của nó là kiến thức thấu đáo về các thần dân chúng ta, liên quan đến các nghiên cứu sâu sắc và nghiêm túc về tâm lý của họ. Chúng tôi không thể vì thế quá hoan nghênh phát kiến thông minh của Paul Giran, một công trình chắc chắn, phong phú, có nội dung, tài liệu, chắc chắn không có tham vọng giải quyết những vấn để lớn làm thay đổi sự thống trị của chúng ta, nhưng chí ít tuyên dương công trạng ở một vài khía cạnh. Việc kết lại một vài nhận xét nhằm giới thiệu về cuốn sách này đã yêu cầu tôi giới thiệu thêm cho độc giả, và tự tôi làm điều này, rằng cũng muốn giới thiệu về con người tác giả. Ông thuộc loại người hiếm có, người được tin tưởng từ cái nhìn đầu tiên, những người miền Nam bình tĩnh và chín chắn. Sau khi học tú tài, người con của thành Nimes học ba năm chính quy tại Trường Thuộc địa, tiếp là ba năm nghĩa vụ quân sự, ông vui vẻ theo đuổi công việc, với tất cả tinh thần trách nhiệm yêu nước. Ra khỏi quân đội, ông hân hoan tác hợp với bạn đời đồng hành của mình, mong muốn cao quý tạo một mái ấm, ổn định cần thiết, của phẩm hạnh cá nhân với các thuộc địa. Và ngay sau đó, đi đến Đông Dương, nơi sự tin tưởng và quý mến của các lãnh đạo đã kêu gọi ông, trong thời gian ba năm lưu trú đầu tiên, đảm nhận các nhiệm vụ tế nhị, cho phép ông thu thập và tích lũy các quan sát để hôm nay công bố cho công chúng. Tôi hy vọng, đối với ông và cho đất nước chúng ta, rằng tương lai sẽ chắp nối tất cả nguyện ước về những khởi đầu đáng kính này trong sự nghiệp thuộc địa. ÉTIENNE AYMONIER[29] Tháng 12 năm 1903 DẪN NHẬP Lâu nay người Pháp chúng ta gặp nhiều khó khăn khi xét đoán những dân tộc hải ngoại với cái nhìn khác biệt. Chúng ta vẫn quen với việc nhìn họ qua những cảm quan riêng biệt và phán xét họ theo ý kiến của mình. Từ lâu chúng ta tin rằng nhân loại cơ bản giống nhau; và rõ ràng một điều là nếu có sự khác biệt thì đó không phải là điều quan yếu; và mọi con người dường như đều có khả năng tự hoàn thiện. Khái niệm thuần túy triết học này không phải không nguy hiểm khi được đưa vào ứng dụng. Vì nó đồng nhất chúng ta với những dân tộc có nền văn minh, phong tục, tôn giáo, tư duy khác biệt sâu xa, khiến chúng ta đánh giá sai tính cách thực sự của họ, áp dụng luật pháp, thiết chế, tôn giáo hoặc đạo đức của chúng ta cho họ, và khiến trong nhiều trường hợp lại gây nguy hại đến thanh danh (nước Pháp) trong các sự vụ thuộc địa. Ngày nay, một tinh thần mới đã xuất hiện. Hiện thời, việc chấp nhận duy trì các xã hội bản xứ dưới sự thống trị của chúng ta có thể dựa trên một cơ cấu có những nguyên tắc khác với những nguyên tắc đã từng là cơ sở cho các xã hội châu Âu. Phải thừa nhận rằng chúng ta mất hơn một thế kỷ để khám phá ra một sự thật là học thuyết bình đẳng đã ngăn trở nỗi hoài nghi về việc mỗi dân tộc, cũng như mỗi con người, đều có một tâm hồn riêng, mang bản sắc quốc gia cũng như đặc thù cá nhân. Ngày nay, rõ ràng để cai trị tốt một dân tộc, trước tiên phải học hỏi tìm hiểu, phải biết rõ, phải thấu đáo tâm hồn, thần minh của họ. Trong cuốn sách này, chúng tôi đề xuất một nghiên cứu về dân tộc An Nam; để khám phá những sức mạnh sâu kín của đời sống cộng đồng hoặc riêng tư; rút ra các nguyên tắc tối thượng chi phối việc thành lập các thiết chế xã hội hoặc chính trị; phân tích mọi ảnh hưởng mạnh mẽ đã định hình nên lịch sử và sự tiến hóa của nó. Với mục đích này, chúng ta sẽ lần lượt khảo sát hai nguyên nhân chính đã góp phần vào sự hình thành bản sắc quốc gia An Nam: chủng tộc và môi trường. Phần 1 Phần 1 Phần 1 ĐẶC ĐIỂM QUỐC GIA Chương I: CHỦNG TỘC I. Mô tả chủng tộc Người An Nam là một đại diện của chủng tộc da vàng, thuộc Đại chủng Á (Mongoloides)[30], có các nhánh chính là: họ Mông Cổ nói riêng, chiếm các vùng trung tâm châu Á; chủng Đột Quyết (Turc); nhánh lớn nhất, chủng Hán Hoa; và cuối cùng là các quần thể sống chủ yếu trên các sườn dốc dãy Himalaya được ông de Quatrefages[31] gọi là “Indo- Mongoles” (Cổ Mã Lai-Mông Cổ)[32]. Ở đâu đó giữa những nhánh sau cùng, các nhà nhân chủng học xếp vào nhóm dân tộc An Nam. Một cách tổng quát, diện mạo người An Nam hiện tại, phần lớn có các nét chung của dân Mông Cổ: đầu rộng ngắn (brachycéphale); trán thấp và dô ra, gò má cao, mắt nhỏ xếch, mí trên bụp và nặng, lông mày thưa, vểnh lên về phía đuôi; mắt đen, mũi bẹt phần phía dưới, phình ra, rộng ở gốc; đôi tai cách xa, môi dày, tóc đen, cứng và suông, râu và ria mép thưa, chỉ mọc rậm khi vào tuổi trung niên. Nét đặc trưng nhất của dung mạo này là “xương gò má rộng và cao, khiến cho khuôn mặt trông giống hình thoi hơn hình bầu dục”[33]. Da người An Nam thường có màu “xanh nhợt hoặc hơi vàng, đôi khi trắng đục”, tuy nhiên, sậm hơn ở những người sống ở miền Nam Đông Dương. Nhiều người muốn quy sự khác biệt về màu da này đơn nhất về cho tác động của mặt trời, mà ở vùng nhiệt đới rõ là nóng như nung như đốt phần da phơi ra dưới nắng, làm da nâu thêm và do vậy trông càng nổi bật hơn; còn ý kiến của chúng tôi là, chúng ta hãy còn phải nhìn nhận thêm ảnh hưởng của việc lai với người Mã Lai. Cái nôi của chủng tộc An Nam là Bắc kỳ và các vùng lân cận, ở đó tìm thấy những cá thể “thuần chủng” nhất có da nhạt màu nhất; ngược lại, người An Nam ở vùng Hạ Đàng Trong (la Basse- Cochinchine) quan hệ trực tiếp hơn với người Mã Lai hay người Chăm, nên chắc chắn đã biến đổi khi tiếp xúc với họ. Tóm lại, có thể nói với hai ông Bouinais và Paulus[34] rằng làn da của người An Nam minh chứng một sự chuyển tiếp giữa người Mã Lai và người Hán Hoa; da sáng hơn người Mã Lai, đậm màu hơn người Hán Hoa. Người An Nam thường không cao, chiều cao trung bình là lm60 ở nam và lm50 ở nữ. Hai chân, dù mảnh mai, nhưng khỏe; ở một số người, ngón chân cái choãi ra phía ngoài, cách khỏi các ngón chân còn lại. Lưng dài tương ứng với chân; vai và ngực hẹp, cổ tay cổ chân linh hoạt, bàn tay mảnh và thuôn. Toàn bộ cấu trúc giải phẫu tạo ấn tượng mảnh mai và yếu đuối. Thật hiếm khi thấy người An Nam béo phì; xương lộ ngay dưới da. Trọng lượng cơ thể trung bình là khoảng 55kg ở đàn ông và 45kg ở phụ nữ, như vậy nhẹ cân hơn so với các chủng tộc Âu. Cơ lực của họ không đáng kể; một vật nặng phải mất hai người An Nam, đôi khi nhiều hơn, nâng lên một cách khó khăn, trong khi chỉ cần một người Âu là đã có thể dễ dàng mang đi. Điều làm chủng tộc An Nam khác với chủng tộc Hán Hoa là sự lực lưỡng. Sự kém về mặt thể chất ở người An Nam, không nghi ngờ gì, là kết quả do tác động kéo dài của kiểu khí hậu Đông Dương. Càng xuống vùng nắng nóng, tác động này càng rõ rệt hơn. Người Bắc kỳ không lực lưỡng bằng người miền Nam Trung Hoa, nhưng luôn cao lớn và mạnh mẽ hơn người dân ở Hạ Đàng Trong. Họ thường chỉ cao đến lm60 và đôi khi, nhưng hiếm, cao đến lm65. Ở Bắc kỳ, phụ nữ làm việc như đàn ông, thường làm nghề culi[35] mà phụ nữ Nam kỳ không có khả năng làm. Tương tự như vậy, thường thấy rằng culi-xe[36] Bắc kỳ chạy tốt hơn, chạy những chuyến dài hơn người Nam kỳ. Bên cạnh đó, tuy có dáng vẻ yếu đuối nhưng người An Nam lại có một sức đề kháng đáng kể. Dưới khí hậu nóng bức, anh ta miệt mài lao nhọc và làm bằng chứng cho phẩm chất bền bỉ tuyệt vời. Có thể ở cả ngày ngoài ruộng, cúi mặt cấy lúa, lội bùn lên đến đầu gối, tiếp xúc với nền đất ẩm nóng hừng hực bốc lên và phả khủng khiếp vào người; hay cũng tương tự vậy ở trên thuyền tam bản, đầy nắng, gập người chèo thuyền hàng giờ liền. Có bao nhiêu người Âu có thể làm công việc khó nhọc của những người culi-xe, chạy hàng giờ với tốc độ mười hai cây số một giờ không mệt mỏi, chỉ có vài phút nghỉ ngơi để uống một tách trà hoặc ăn một bát cơm. Để xác định nguồn gốc của những ưu điểm thể chất này, cần phải tính một chút đến sự phát triển của hệ thần kinh ở người An Nam, về việc họ thiếu vắng cảm giác, và do đó, dửng dưng với đau đớn và lao lực. Tôi không nghĩ cần phải xem xét, như đôi khi ta vẫn nghe nói, đến ảnh hưởng di truyền được bảo tồn và truyền lại qua nhiều thế hệ, một di sản sức mạnh được thừa kế bởi tổ tiên Mông Cổ. Chủng tộc An Nam sinh sản nhiều. Nhờ vào khả năng bành trướng mà họ có thể, trong một thời gian tương đối ngắn, chiếm đất một cách hoàn hảo trên một phần lớn bán đảo Đông Dương. Trong khi ở châu Âu, tần suất sinh của 100 phụ nữ đã lập gia đình dưới 50, ở Phổ là 29, ở Anh 26, ở Pháp 16, người ta tính rằng số lần sinh trên 100 phụ nữ An Nam, trong cùng điều kiện, lên tới khoảng 170. Như chúng ta sẽ thấy sau đây, việc thiếu vắng cảm giác về thịnh mãn, đất đai phì nhiêu, sự phân chia tài sản cực đoan, tổ chức gia đình và tín ngưỡng tôn giáo đóng vai trò quan trọng trong việc tăng đáng kể tỷ lệ sinh. Vậy, đây không phải chỉ là một nét đặc trưng của chủng tộc mà còn là ảnh hưởng chủ đạo của môi trường vật chất và xã hội đối với đối tượng này. Dưới bầu khí hậu như thiêu đốt làm kích thích các dây thần kinh đến cùng kiệt, kích hoạt lưu thông máu và đốt cháy động vật, người An Nam trưởng thành sớm và già nhanh hơn những cư dân vùng ôn đới. Họ trông già sớm và hiếm khi sống thọ. Trong số 65.489 trường hợp tử vong trong năm 1900 ở người An Nam hoặc những người Á khác sống ở Nam kỳ, chỉ có 7.075 người chết trên 60 tuổi; tỷ lệ này tương đương ở năm 1901: 51.908 người chết, trong đó có 6.231 người chết trên 60 tuổi[37]. Như vậy, chỉ hơn một phần mười dân số An Nam sống đến tuổi 60; tỷ lệ này là tương đối thấp. Người An Nam. Kiểu người Nam kỳ. © Ảnh từ bản gốc tiếng Pháp. Ngoài ra, tuổi dậy thì đến rất sớm ở cư dân Đông Dương; lần kinh nguyệt đầu tiên, theo quan sát của bác sĩ Mondière, xảy ra ở nữ vào tuổi 12, và độ tuổi kết hôn là 16 tuổi 4 tháng. Do đó không phải là hiếm, nhất là trong các gia đình khá giả, các cuộc hôn nhân trong đó vợ chồng ăn ở với nhau kéo dài không tới ba mươi năm. Việc thể chất phát triển sớm kết hợp với ảnh hưởng xấu của khí hậu làm tiêu hao nhanh chóng một con người; họ thành niên ở tuổi 13, làm cha ở tuổi 16, và thành một ông già ở tuổi 50, trừ một số ngoại lệ hiếm hoi. Để kết thúc việc mô tả lướt qua về chủng tộc này, chúng ta phải cố gắng phác thảo tóm lại một tâm lý chung của các dân tộc thuộc chủng da vàng. Ngay như quan điểm sinh lý học, các đặc điểm của những cư dân này hòa hợp trong một kiểu duy nhất, bất chấp sự khác biệt có vẻ như tách chúng ra, do đó theo quan điểm tâm lý học cũng tương tự vậy, chúng ta thấy ở mọi người những nét tính cách đồng nhất, cách suy nghĩ và hành động tương tự, khuynh hướng văn minh hóa đồng điệu. Đây là một trong những tác động bình thường của di truyền. Thật vậy, phần lớn các nhà nhân chủng học[38] đều đồng ý về sự tổn tại một kết nối bất biến giữa sự di truyền cái giống nhau về thể chất và về tinh thần. Nếu người ta thừa nhận rằng mức độ phát triển của các thùy não: trán, đỉnh và chẩm, được phản ánh ra bên ngoài dưới các dạng sọ tương ứng[39], chúng tôi đi đến kết luận rằng hai hộp sọ có tương tự nhau, ở hai cá nhân khác nhau, các dấu hiệu cho thấy cả hai có thể trạng trí tuệ gần như giống hệt. Như đã nói, các chủng tộc da vàng nói chung có đầu ngắn (brachycéphale)[40]. Đương thời, các nhà sinh lý học cho rằng có thể khẳng định trí thông minh (con người) định khu ở thùy trán, nên việc kéo dài hoặc mở rộng bộ não, và tương ứng là kéo dài hộp sọ, cho thấy ở những cá thể hoặc ở các chủng tộc có ít hay nhiều năng lực trí tuệ lớn, nghị lực ý chí ít hay nhiều phần mạnh mẽ. Loại đầu ngắn và đặc biệt là đầu ngắn da sạm, về mặt tinh thần, ứng với người “hòa bình, cần cù, tiết kiệm, thông minh, cẩn thận, không bỏ qua cơ hội, giỏi bắt chước, bảo thủ, nhưng không có sáng kiến. Gắn bó với quê cha đất tổ, tầm nhìn ngắn, nhu cầu đơn điệu, đầu óc thường ngày dễ nổi loạn. Dễ bị dẫn dắt, dễ yêu thương cả người cai trị mình[41], thiếu ý chí nghị lực, được phú cho đầu óc dễ chăn dắt, tinh thần “bầy đàn”. Trên thực tế, gần như đó là các nét tâm lý nổi trội của người da vàng. Tuy nhiên, vẫn nên chỉ ra thêm sự thiếu vắng khả năng mẫn cảm của họ khiến họ vô cảm, không cảm thông với nỗi đau, cứng rắn đến khắc nghiệt nhưng đôi khi cũng nhẫn tâm đến độc ác. Điềm tĩnh, ít bị kích động, họ có thể lạnh lùng làm những điều tàn bạo tồi tệ nhất. Nhưng chúng ta phải nhấn mạnh chính yếu vào sự tầm thường của lối tư duy đặc biệt thực tế nơi họ; nói trắng ra, nhạy bén chỉ với một sự phát triển gò bó. Ở họ, trí tưởng tượng hãy còn nghèo nàn, hẳn nhiên là hệ quả của tính dửng dưng, cả về thể xác và đạo đức. “Trí tưởng mộ đạo, lòng sốt sắng, nhiệt thành cháy rực ở những người Ả Rập, Iran, Slave, không bao giờ đánh thức sự vô cảm mà sưởi ấm cái lạnh nhạt của người Đột Quyết (Turc), Mông Cổ và Mãn Châu. Tôn giáo thích hợp nhất với sự tĩnh mịch của họ chắc chắn là Phật giáo. Họ là Phật tử theo lẽ tự nhiên bởi chính nếp suy nghĩ của họ, không cần phải cố gắng gì.”[42] Và thậm chí Phật giáo còn không được họ tiếp thu nếu (tôn giáo này) không chấp nhận trải qua, trong vô thức, những điều chỉnh ngầm sao cho phù hợp với thói quen tư duy, những tín ngưỡng ban sơ của họ. Tóm lại, tính dửng dưng, bình thản, vô cảm, tàn ác lạnh lùng và vô thức, thiếu trí tưởng tượng, trí tuệ trung bình là tổng hòa làm nên tâm hồn của chủng người da vàng. Sự thực, những đặc điểm tiêu biểu này không rõ nét, giống hệt nhau trong tất cả những nhóm người Đại chủng Á (Mongoloides), có khi giảm khi tăng, bởi những ảnh hưởng khác nhau mà các dân tộc chủng da vàng đã phải chịu: khí hậu, hòa huyết, v.v. Nhưng như sẽ thấy sau này, chúng tôi luôn khám phá ra sự tồn tại nào đó của những bẩm tính nguyên thủy này mà từ đó có thể làm nảy sinh những khuynh hướng mới. Nếu có thể nói rằng trong quần thể các dân tộc Mông Cổ cùng biểu thị một vẻ giống nhau nào đó, thì chúng ta vẫn phải nhìn nhận rằng có sự khác nhau giữa các nhóm qua các tính cách khác biệt rõ rệt. Thuật ngữ “chủng Mông Cổ” thường được sử dụng để chỉ một số đông các dân tộc và quốc gia rất khác nhau (người Tây Tạng, Miến Điện, Xiêm, Trung Quốc, Nhật Bản, Tartar, Kyrgyz, Buryat, Tungus, Samoièdes, Phần Lan, V.V.), trên thực tế không gợi lên ý niệm về một kiểu người cụ thể, đã được tuyệt đối xác định và thực sự tồn tại, mà là một hình dung về một kiểu người tưởng tượng, tổng hợp, có tính hợp chung tất cả điểm tương đồng có trong các quốc gia hay dân tộc này. Sự thật, nó không bao hàm ý niệm về một sự hợp nhất chủng tộc, nhưng đúng hơn, như anh em nhà Reclus nói[43], đó là cách nói chỉ sự thâm nhập lẫn nhau thời cổ đại[44]. Dân tộc An Nam được ông de Quatrefages phân loại và xếp vào trong số “Người Indo-Mongol” cùng với người Miến Điện và người Xiêm. Những cư dân này hiển hiện, theo quan điểm về sọ học, các đặc điểm giống hệt nhau; thực sự cả ba thuộc nhóm Đầu ngắn (brachycéphale). Đặc điểm này phân biệt rõ với người Trung Hoa phía Bắc, nhóm Đầu dài (dolichocéphale) với số đo bề ngang hộp sọ trung bình khoảng 76,60 (theo Quatrefages). Chỉ số này ở những người An Nam dao động giữa 83 (Broca) và 85 (Pruner-Bey). Nhưng cho dẫu đã có các quan sát này, theo quan điểm nhân chủng học, ta cũng không nên kết luận rằng người An Nam gần gũi với người Xiêm và Miến Điện hơn người Hán Hoa. Ngược lại, với người Hán Hoa họ có những mối quan hệ không thể bàn cãi và riêng nhất mà đến nay chưa bao giờ nhận được giải thích chính xác nào. Chúng tôi không có ý định giải quyết vấn để này, nhưng điều quan trọng là vì lợi ích của nghiên cứu nên chúng tôi tạm dừng một lúc để xem xét nó xét trên một trong những khía cạnh đặc thù: đó là quan điểm về nguồn gốc của chính người An Nam. II. Nguồn gốc dân tộc Người An Nam, theo lịch sử của họ, có nguồn gốc từ miền Nam Trung Hoa. Cha Legrand de la Liraye nhận định “vào thời kỳ đó, khi mà hàng trăm gia đình người Hoa chiếm đóng tỉnh Thiểm Tây, tức là, trong thời gian trước Abraham[45] hai hay ba thế kỷ (2400 đến 2225 trước Công nguyên [TCN]), bốn bộ lạc man rợ chiếm vùng biên giới của Đế quốc[46]. Ở phía nam[47] là tộc người Giao Chỉ[48].” Đó là tộc được dân An Nam khẳng định là tổ tiên của họ. Nhưng liệu bộ tộc này có nguồn gốc từ xứ sở họ đã chiếm đóng vào thời điểm lịch sử đó? Điều này ít có khả năng. Có lẽ cần tìm kiếm sâu hơn nữa dấu tích của những cư dân đầu tiên ở khu vực này trong các nhóm người sống ở rừng núi: Thái, Mán, Mèo, Lôlô, v.v. mà tính đến bây giờ còn chiếm giữ hầu hết dãy núi Trường Sơn, và trong các bộ tộc miền núi Vân Nam, Quảng Tây và Quảng Đông: Lôlô, Dao và Miêu tộc (Miao-Tzès). Vậy Giao Chỉ là từ đâu ra? Có lẽ từ cùng một vùng với các cư dân Mông Cổ khác. Các giả định địa lý mạnh mẽ chứng thực ý kiến này. Nhóm da vàng, hậu duệ, theo hầu hết các nhà nhân chủng học, của những tộc người từ khối núi trung tâm châu Á, đã bị đẩy di cư về phía biển, nghĩa là về phía khí hậu ôn hòa hơn, bởi những biến đổi liên tiếp xảy ra trên bề mặt địa cầu. “Khi các hồ ở Trung Á khô cạn và sa mạc lấn chiếm các vùng đất canh tác, cư dân bị đẩy về các xứ sở phía tây, ở đó họ đã liên tục thiết lập quan hệ với những người Chaldéen, người Hindu, người Ba Tư, đi xuống vùng Hoàng Thổ (Hang-Tou, nghĩa là đất vàng)[49], mang theo cùng những kiến thức kỹ nghệ của mình. Mỗi lưu vực sông đã trở thành một con đường cho những cư dân nông nghiệp. [50]" Như vậy, dòng di cư tựu trung được chia thành nhiều nhánh; mỗi nhóm cư dân này đi theo lưu vực của một trong những con sông lớn châu Á: Hoàng Hà, Dương Tử Giang, Tây Giang, v.v. Mỗi bộ phận lập nghiệp ở xứ sở mà con đường sông xuôi theo đã mở ra cho nó; mỗi nhóm thích nghi với môi trường mới và do đó trải qua những biến đổi sâu sắc tạo thành sự khác biệt hiện nay giữa các chủng Mông Cổ khác nhau (Tartar, Mãn, Hán như đã nói, V.V.). Trong khi các nhánh của sông Vàng (Hoàng Hà) và sông Xanh (Dương Tử) phát triển nhanh chóng, trong một xứ sở giàu có biệt lệ, dưới một vùng trời ôn đới, chỉ bị chiếm cứ bởi một vài bộ tộc thổ dân dễ bị đẩy lùi, thì những nhánh phía nam, đi theo con đường của Tây Giang, đến một xứ sở khắc nghiệt, trập trùng đồi núi, với khí hậu nhiệt đới đã ảnh hưởng lên sự phát triển của họ trong một thời gian khá dài. Mặt khác, sự hiện diện của các bộ tộc bản địa ngoan cường, không thể thay đổi tập tính[51], làm mất một thời gian dài đấu tranh, đã ngăn cản việc vươn dậy của nền văn minh mà chủng tộc mang trong đó. Vậy, rất dễ hiểu rằng những dân cư miền Nam thô kệch từ lâu bị người Trung Hoa văn minh coi như man rợ và đối xử như kẻ thù, dù là trong thực tế họ phân nhánh từ cùng một nguồn gốc và sở hữu một vốn tín ngưỡng chung với người An Nam mà thời gian đã không thể xóa[52]. Người Hoa. Kiểu người Quảng Đông. © Ảnh từ bản gốc tiếng Pháp. Vả lại, người ta giải thích rằng những quần thể này, quá yêu thích nền tự chủ và tha thiết độc lập, qua biết bao thăng trầm đã có thể bảo tồn tính cách, đặc điểm, phong tục và ngôn ngữ vốn từ trước nhiều khả năng đã thẩm thấu được nền văn minh mà những người chinh phục mang đến. Nền văn minh này, dường như áp đặt lên họ chỉ bằng vũ lực, song lại được tiếp nhận một cách tự nguyện, qua sự cảm tình mà theo đó nó đáp lại các khát vọng ẩn giấu và những niềm tin sâu kín nhất của tâm hồn An Nam, và trùng hợp với những niềm tin khởi từ nguồn cội chung, một quê hương chung. Mối liên hệ huyết thống còn trực hệ hơn nữa giữa người An Nam và cư dân ở miền Nam Trung Hoa. Người Quảng Đông khác rất nhiều, nhất là về phương diện khí chất, với người Hoa ở vùng trung tâm và miền Bắc của Đế quốc[53]; nhưng họ lại gần gũi với kiểu người An Nam, do đó biểu hiện một loại chuyển tiếp giữa người An Nam và người Trung Hoa. Các dân cư miền Nam Trung Hoa, Quảng Đông và Phúc Kiến nói riêng, có hình dáng mảnh mai hơn, tay chân gầy hơn, da sẫm màu hơn, khí chất sôi nổi hơn người Hoa miền Bắc. Những khác biệt này, được giải thích một cách tự nhiên là do ảnh hưởng khí hậu, tạo nên đích xác những đặc điểm thường thấy của người An Nam nói chung, và đặc biệt là với cư dân đương thời ở Bắc kỳ. Sự giống nhau sẽ gây nhiều án tượng hơn nếu người Trung Hoa giữ lại kiểu tóc và trang phục thời trước của họ, vốn khá giống với những người mà chúng ta đang bảo hộ. Ta biết rằng ở Trung Hoa lệ cạo đầu và tết bím tóc mới du nhập gần đây[54]. Sự tương đồng giữa người miền Nam Thiên triều và người An Nam không gói gọn duy chỉ ở khía cạnh bên ngoài: nó vẫn được tiếp nối ở một số khía cạnh về ngôn ngữ[55], tính cách và thói quen. Giống như người Bắc kỳ, người Quảng Đông vui vẻ, ồn ào, đôi khi dí dỏm; như thể họ có những thói quen sông nước hiếm khi thấy được ở các dân tộc khác; toàn bộ ngôi làng hình thành trên các dòng sông, và người dân đặc biệt sinh hoạt, sống, làm việc và chết ở đó. Những sự trùng hợp đáng chú ý như vậy không thể không đập vào mắt các nhà quan sát có chủ ý; một vài người ghi nhận chúng[56] và đưa lý giải nhằm củng cố cho giả định cho rằng các cư dân này có cùng nguồn gốc dân tộc. Cấu hình địa lý của xứ sở, trước hết, cung cấp một lập luận mạnh mẽ ủng hộ giả thuyết này: các thung lũng song song của sông Hồng và sông Tây, cùng bắt nguồn từ Vân Nam, thông với nhau qua những hẻm núi tự nhiên và thực sự, vì lý do này, mà có thể tiếp nhận ở mỗi bên một nhánh người di cư xuất xứ từ cùng một nguồn. Tuy nhiên, không thể phủ nhận, đặc biệt là từ quan điểm sinh lý học, sự tồn tại khác biệt lớn giữa kiểu người An Nam và kiểu người miền Nam Trung Hoa. Một cách tổng quát, kiểu người miền Nam Trung Hoa thừa hưởng một thể tạng cứng cáp hơn, khí chất mạnh mẽ hơn, sức lực cơ bắp mạnh hơn người An Nam; đồng thời họ có vóc dáng cao hơn. Từ quan điểm đạo đức cũng thể hiện, và phải thừa nhận rằng, nhiều điểm không giống nhau. Liệu phản biện này có là nghiêm trọng và phá hủy giả thuyết của chúng ta? Chúng tôi không cho là vậy. Sự khác biệt đáng kể bộc lộ qua việc so sánh hai kiểu người cho ta lời giải thích tự nhiên ở hai khía cạnh: một là quy luật tự nhiên, ảnh hưởng của môi trường; hai là quy luật xã hội, ảnh hưởng của sự giao phối. Trong khi hệ quả của sự thích nghi bên dưới bầu trời Đông Dương đã tạo ra ở người An Nam một sự suy biến, người Quảng Đông vẫn tự duy trì trong một vùng khí hậu ôn đới hoặc bán nhiệt đới, khí hậu cho phép họ bảo tồn sức sống nguyên thủy. Mặt khác, như đã nói, họ đã tiếp xúc liên tục và trực tiếp hơn với chủng tộc Hán Hoa nên mang đậm nét chủng tộc của những người chiến thắng, với cấu tạo thể chất, chắc chắn mạnh mẽ hơn, đã ảnh hưởng một cách may mắn lên sự lai tạo. Trái lại, đất nước An Nam, bị cô lập, cách xa trung tâm Trung Hoa, được bảo vệ theo một cách nào đó bởi vùng đệm của xứ Quảng Đông (l’État Cantonais), tránh khỏi sự đồng hóa gần như hoàn toàn. Ngoài ra, chịu số phận địa lý - với vùng phía nam là các dải đồng bằng hẹp mà họ buộc phải xâm chiếm vì nhu cầu dân số ngày một tăng - nên đất nước An Nam không chỉ chịu ảnh hưởng lớn từ phía Trung Hoa: thực tế, họ đã thấy trước mặt sự hiện diện của chủng tộc Mã Lai, mà việc tiếp xúc đã cho ra kết quả là làm nổi bật sự khác biệt giữa những đặc điểm An Nam và Hán Hoa. III. Người Giao Chỉ Trước khi nghiên cứu những ảnh hưởng khác nhau đã góp phần hình thành kiểu người An Nam, phải thừa nhận là chúng ta nên dừng lại một chút để hướng cái nhìn vào những người Giao Chỉ cổ đại đã thiết lập nên nền tảng hòa trộn chủng tộc mà “sản phẩm” là cái ta đang muốn phân tích. Xứ sở mà người Giao Chỉ cư ngụ, đó là khu vực miền núi tương ứng với Bắc kỳ, Vân Nam, Quảng Tây và Quảng Đông ngày nay[57], một ngàn năm trước đương nhiên không y hệt như xứ sở chúng ta biết đương thời. Khi xưa, châu thổ sông Cái (sông Hồng) vừa mới hình thành và, không còn nghi ngờ gì nữa, có biển bao quanh dưới chân những triền đồi, với các đĩa địa chất nối tiếp nhau nâng cao dần lên đến tận cao nguyên Tây Tạng.[58] Vùng cao này ngày nay vẫn cực kỳ nguy hiểm; cư dân vùng đồng bằng vẫn từ chối vào đó, nói rằng đó là “vùng nước độc”. Hình thành nên từ những thung lũng hẹp và sâu, những lòng chảo rộng và bằng phẳng, từ một khối núi hỗn độn nơi nguồn nước tốt thường rất khó kiếm, bao phủ bởi những khu rừng rậm mà bùn tro cây lá bị chôn vùi dưới lòng đất trong nhiều thế kỷ sinh ra dưới tác động của ẩm thấp và sức nóng bốc lên của những phát xạ độc hại, con người sống bên cạnh những con thú hoang dã, đây là một môi trường sống đặc biệt không lành mạnh, bất lợi cho sự phát triển của một chủng tộc. Vậy, chúng ta có thể đồng tình với Luro[59] rằng những người Giao Chỉ không cường tráng, dù điều này không xác quyết lắm. Ở một xứ sở “bao phủ bởi rừng rậm dày đặc”, nơi “cái nóng mùa hè sinh bệnh dịch nguy hại”, sự tồn tại của họ thật khốn khổ. Họ là những kẻ man rợ thực sự đã cạo tóc, xăm mình và sống gần như hoàn toàn bằng săn bắn và câu cá. Cha Viện phụ Launay cho biết[60], vũ khí của họ gồm cung tên và giáo mác, đầu mũi tên đôi khi bằng sắt hoặc gỗ được trui qua lửa. Các thói quen và phong tục của một nhóm dân cư như vậy nhất thiết phải đơn giản và sơ khai. Luro cho hay: “Truyền thuyết của người An Nam về thời cổ đại có nói rõ rằng người Giao (Chỉ) mê tín, họ có đền thờ, họ cúng súc vật để hiến tế cho những thần linh bất tử đại diện cho sức mạnh thiên nhiên...”[61] Việc tự do quan hệ ở họ được xem là một vinh dự, và đã có lúc các nhà cai trị Trung Hoa phải cấm đoán nó. Chế độ đa thê chắc chắn tồn tại, và thiết chế gia đình dựa trên nguyên tắc quyền lực gia trưởng tuyệt đối. Những đặc điểm dân tộc khác nhau cho chúng ta thấy rằng người Giao Chỉ, trước cuộc chinh phạt của Trung Hoa, chỉ mới ở giai đoạn đầu của quá trình tiến hóa. Việc xem xét phẩm chất tinh thần của họ đều đưa đến một kết luận giống hệt nhau. Các nhà sử học về đất nước An Nam, Legrand de la Liraye, Luro và Launay đều đồng ý công nhận ở tổ tiên người Giao (Chỉ) có tính hiếu khách và một tình yêu độc lập nhất định. Điều này chắc chắn là do ảnh hưởng ít nhiều của cộng đồng thị tộc, là sự kết tụ xã hội đầu tiên theo các nhà xã hội học. Thành viên của thị tộc này, trong sự cô lập, chỉ có thể kháng cự yếu ớt với các cuộc tấn công của thú hoang dã hoặc các thị tộc lân cận, buộc phải đoàn kết cùng nỗ lực hòng giúp đỡ hỗ trợ lẫn nhau. Nhưng lòng tốt này đặc biệt ở chỗ nó chỉ hướng đến những thành viên cùng thị tộc. Tình cảm vị tha và chiếm hữu đó cùng một lúc làm nảy sinh hai khuynh hướng trái ngược nhau: “thân hữu với đồng đội, tàn bạo với người ngoài.”[62] Người Giao Chỉ còn được miêu tả là “phù phiếm và kiêu căng”. Đây là hậu quả tự nhiên của tinh thần xã hội. Không thích sống riêng rẽ, quen ở giữa những thân hữu, con người dễ trở nên phù phiếm, chỉ muốn tham gia lúc thuận lợi, rất để tâm đến ý kiến thuận mình. Cảm giác này đặc biệt được phát triển ở những người nguyên thủy, ở các “dân tộc non trẻ” - vốn hay thích đồ trang sức, những vật rực rỡ có bề ngoài nổi bật - và đã nhiều lần được ghi nhận. Người An Nam hiện đại vẫn tồn lưu khuyết điểm này. Mọi người đều biết tình yêu của họ dành cho trang sức kim loại và lông chim, những chiếc váy xa-tanh bóng và những chiếc dù lớn. Từ quan điểm chủ quan, Luro cho rằng người Giao (Chỉ) “nhẹ dạ, hay thay đổi và dễ nổi loạn”. Lịch sử đầy sóng gió của họ, trên thực tế, cho thấy khao khát độc lập, nhưng lại đi kèm với tính không bền chí, chỉ hành động vì bộc phát bạo lực và rồi bị đứt đoạn. Từ quan điểm chính trị, chúng tôi biết rất ít thứ liên quan đến cách tổ chức của những thị tộc Giao (Chỉ). Chúng tôi biết rõ nhất là họ được chia thành các bộ lạc với nhiều phân tranh được các bộ biên niên sử ghi chép lại. Chính vì không thể đoàn kết chống kẻ thù chung mà Giao Chỉ phải chịu ách thống trị của Trung Hoa. Theo Cha Launay, “nguyên thủy người Giao Chỉ được chia thành các bộ lạc hoặc vương quốc nhỏ, đứng đầu là một tù trưởng với quyền lực có lẽ là do thừa kế. Nhà nước này đạt đến tình trạng trung gian nối tiếp giữa quân chủ chuyên chế và chế độ gia trưởng. Có lẽ giống như chế độ phong kiến của chúng ta (châu Âu)... Khả năng lớn nhất là vào thời kỳ đó, quyền lực nhà vua phần nhiều hơn là trên danh nghĩa so với thực tế. Tuy nhiên, quyền lực tối cao tập trung chỉ trong một bàn tay này đã thiết lập một loại liên kết giữa tất cả bộ lạc và đem đến một sự gắn kết chính trị nhất định, nhưng rồi không đạt được nó, thậm chí cho đến nay, cho sự hợp nhất và tập trung hành chính mà sau này dưới sự thống trị Trung Hoa thì lại tạo ra được.” Nhìn rộng ra, họ đích thực mang tính cách, tập tục và sự tổ chức của các cư dân An Nam đầu tiên. Thực sự, họ không biểu hiện bất cứ điều gì quá đặc biệt. Đây là những điều mà chúng ta ghi nhận ở tất cả các dân tộc nguyên thủy, vào buổi bình minh của các nền văn minh. Bái vật và mê tín, tự do quan hệ hoặc đa thê, quyền lực gia trưởng độc đoán, tinh thần xã hội và nền độc lập, đam mê bạo lực, đó là những biểu hiện xã hội đánh dấu khởi đầu toàn bộ quá trình tiến hóa của các dân tộc. Tuy nhiên, cần lưu ý rằng sự tiến hóa này đặc biệt chậm ở người Giao Chỉ. Đến từ một đất nước gần như ôn hòa, càng đến sát đường xích đạo hơn thì họ càng ít có cơ hội thích nghi; hơn nữa, khu vực nơi họ định cư khá độc địa, về mặt kinh tế thì chỉ cung cấp rất ít tài nguyên. Do đó, giai đoạn thích nghi phải gian lao và làm chậm lại sự phát triển tuần tiến của chủng tộc trong mức độ nhất định. Tuy nhiên, điều không thể chối cãi là, người An Nam hiện đã hoàn toàn thích nghi; không nghi ngờ gì, kết quả này phải được quy cho sự lai tạo với nhiều dân tộc bản địa khác nhau[63] khi họ bắt đầu đến sinh sống. Nếu những cuộc hôn phối này có tác động may mắn đối với người Giao Chỉ về góc độ sinh lý học, thì về góc độ xã hội lại khác. Một sự lai tạo với các bộ tộc nguyên thủy góp phần làm những kẻ xâm lấn bị giữ lại ở điều kiện thấp hơn. Mặt khác, phải lưu ý rằng người nhập cư không phải lúc nào cũng có thể thu nhận các bộ lạc thổ dân, và phải đẩy hầu hết những người này trở lại vùng núi để chiếm giữ các vùng đất thấp, nhiều cá và màu mỡ của đồng bằng đang hình thành. Cuộc đấu tranh kéo dài và gay go; thực tế, thổ dân là những kẻ cường tráng đáng kinh ngạc, theo sự đánh giá qua các mẫu vật còn lại được tìm thấy ở phía bắc Bắc kỳ, Vân Nam, Quảng Tây và Quảng Đông; ngoài ra cho phép giả định rằng các bộ lạc của họ ở đó rất đông, nếu người ta xem xét sự đa dạng quá mức những phương ngữ mà cư dân rừng núi sống trong cùng các vùng này sử dụng[64]. Người Minh Hương: Người lai Hoa và An Nam. © Ảnh từ bản gốc tiếng Pháp. Tất cả những khó khăn thích nghi và tồn tại có thể đã dẫn đến sự hủy diệt của những người Giao Chỉ nếu một ảnh hưởng bên ngoài mạnh mẽ không đến sớm để mang lại cho họ sự trợ giúp hữu ích. Chính cuộc chinh phạt của người Trung Hoa đã làm nên dân tộc An Nam ngày nay. IV. Người Hoa và người Mã Lai Hầu như không vượt qua các giai đoạn tiến hóa xã hội đầu tiên, các kỹ năng của họ vẫn chưa định hình, bản sắc ban cho gần như trơn láng và dễ bị sai sử, hệt như “tờ giấy trắng”, không có tinh lực thực sự và đồng nhất, không có khả năng chống lại các lực lượng có tổ chức, nhưng lại được phú cho, giống như tất cả người Mông Cổ, các kỹ năng đồng hóa đáng kể, những người Giao Chỉ biết rằng họ ở vào thế thuận lợi nhất để tiếp nhận dấu ấn văn minh của một dân tộc vượt trội. Đó là vào năm 232 TCN, hoàng đế Trung Hoa Tần Thủy Hoàng đã đưa xuống An Nam hai đội quân, tổng cộng 800.000 lính, hợp thành từ tất cả những kẻ lang thang mà ông có thể tập hợp được. Dưới sự chỉ huy của tướng Triệu Đà, họ chiếm lấy vương quốc. Năm 40 xảy ra một cuộc nổi dậy (Trưng Trắc) nhằm rũ bỏ ách ngoại bang, kết quả duy nhất là đưa thêm vào xứ sở một đội quân Trung Hoa mới, và lần này kẻ chiến thắng quyết tâm thiết lập sự chiếm đóng vững chắc hơn. Công cuộc thực dân quân sự này trở nên cần thiết bởi có nhiều mưu toan giành lại độc lập của người An Nam, xen kẽ với đó là những cuộc tái lập nền đô hộ của Trung Hoa, và nó chỉ kết thúc vào năm 968. Liên tiếp tình thế giằng co này kéo dài hơn mười thế kỷ. Trong suốt một ngàn năm này, sự pha trộn của các dân tộc là không thể tránh khỏi và đã mang lại những thay đổi đáng kể trong cấu tạo thể chất của dân tộc bị trị. Chủng tộc Hán Hoa, như chúng ta biết, vô cùng mạnh mẽ và vượt trội trong việc lai tạo với các giống người khác là một thực tế được thừa nhận chung khắp. Sự nổi trội của kiểu người Hán Hoa chiếm ưu thế gần như không có ngoại lệ, và kiểu người này đôi khi có thể di truyền đến thế hệ thứ năm.[65] Có một nguyên nhân khác khuyến khích việc lai tạo với người Hán Hoa ở An Nam. Nếu sự di cư của đàn ông đến An Nam được chính quyền đế quốc khuyến khích, thì việc di cư của phụ nữ bị cấm theo phong tục, và cho đến nay (đầu thế kỷ XX) vẫn là như vậy. Do đó, chỉ có người đàn ông Thiên triều giao phối với phụ nữ An Nam để sinh ra nhiều thế hệ lai; sau đó đến lượt mình, các thế hệ lai này lần lượt có những phối hợp mới trong xứ sở, đảm bảo kiểu người An Nam duy trì một số đặc tính chủng tộc Hán Hoa. Kết quả của sự giao kết các chủng tộc này không phải là điều được kẻ xâm lược mong đợi. Người An Nam, được ban cho các kỹ năng đồng hóa mạnh mẽ, nhưng mặt khác, như chúng ta đã nói, lại sớm đắm chìm trong nền văn minh Trung Hoa, và điều này tình cờ đã trả lời chúng ta về khuynh hướng bí ẩn của tâm hồn họ. Do đó, rồi cũng đến một ngày không còn phân biệt được gì giữa kẻ bị đồng hóa với những người đồng hóa. Hai yếu tố hợp nhất thành một sự hòa trộn mật thiết, được nhóm theo cùng một dân tộc, được hợp nhất bởi một cộng đồng lợi ích gần gũi, tạo thành một dân tộc mới, mạnh mẽ hơn, tổ chức tốt, văn minh hơn so với nhóm khởi nguồn của nó, và cũng là nhóm mang khao khát thoát ách của chủ nhân mà nó thụ nhận nền văn minh. Vậy, dù đã ra đời thì quốc gia An Nam hãy còn chưa biến chuyển đến tận cùng. Sự mở rộng tiếp tục về phía nam đặt người An Nam vào tình trạng tiếp xúc với các dân tộc bản địa mới, trong đó có Mọi và Kha, không nghi ngờ gì, là những đại diện cuối cùng, cùng với một dân tộc thuộc chủng Mã Lai và nền văn minh Ấn Độ: người Chăm. Có sự nghi ngờ sâu sắc về việc làm sao xác định được những người Mã Lai đã đến định cư ở Đông Dương vào thời nào. Người Mã Lai. ©Ảnh từ bản gốc tiếng Pháp Họ đến sinh sống trước hay sau cuộc xâm lấn của chủng da vàng (Mongol)? Có phải họ đến từ Java như giả định của đa số tác giả, hay ngược lại, từ lục địa như quan điểm của Bác sĩ Harmand, tác giả C. Buck, Bác sĩ Bordier và một số người viễn du khác? Giải quyết một vấn đề như vậy nằm ngoài phạm vi của nghiên cứu này. Trong tình trạng kiến thức hiện tại của chúng tôi, đưa ra câu trả lời cho những vấn đề khác nhau này là rất mạo hiểm. Tuy nhiên, chắc chắn là trong những thế kỷ đầu tiên của kỷ nguyên chúng ta, (một phần) lãnh thổ hiện được gọi tên An Nam là trung tâm của vương quốc Mã Lai Champa[66], hình thành vào thế kỷ IX, từng là bá chủ trên bán đảo. Trong gần 1.200 năm, người An Nam và người Chăm đấu tranh và xung đột, luân phiên thu về chiến thắng và bại trận, kết cuộc là dân tộc Chăm bị đánh bại hoàn toàn. Các đại diện cuối cùng của nó nằm rải rác ở vài thung lũng nhỏ của An Nam và Campuchia, tính đến thời điểm đầu thế kỷ XX này thì có khoảng bốn mươi hoặc năm mươi ngàn người. Dường như trong suốt cuộc tiếp xúc dài lâu này, hai chủng tộc đã cùng hòa nhập sâu đậm; thật vậy, sự hợp nhất dường như là lời giải thích hợp lý duy nhất có thể được đưa ra cho sự biến mất gần như hoàn toàn của dân tộc Chăm[67]. Chúng tôi ghi nhận một cách chắc chắn nơi người An Nam những nét rõ ràng của việc lai với nhóm dân cư Mã Lai, nhưng sự lai tạo này không có một ảnh hưởng quyết định chiếu theo quan điểm nhân học, như chúng tôi sẽ chỉ ra. Người Mã Lai có làn da nâu, đôi khi sậm màu, đôi khi ngả sang màu đỏ hồng hào; tóc đen, tương đối mỏng; trán thấp, mắt to, lông mày cong và đậm; môi mỏng, mũi hơi tẹt, nhưng không lớn và bẹt ở phần hướng về chóp mũi như người An Nam. Dễ kích động, có cơ bắp, dẻo dai, thường là gầy, họ có dáng vẻ lực lưỡng hơn người An Nam vốn có chân tay mảnh khảnh. Nói chung họ cao lớn hơn người An Nam; chiều cao đôi khi đạt tới lm70. Tay chân và cổ tay cổ chân của họ rất khỏe; ngón chân cái tách ra khỏi các ngón chân khác, dấu hiệu rất đặc trưng của chủng tộc Mã Lai, được nhận thấy ở nhiều cá nhân thuộc chủng tộc An Nam. Như đã nói, chúng ta có thể giả định rằng người Chăm, hay người Mã Lai xưa ở phía đông Đông Dương, không có nhiều sự pha trộn với người dân An Nam. Trên thực tế, tình cảm hận thù truyền kiếp đã chia cắt hai quốc gia không cho phép một sự hợp nhất hoàn toàn[68]. Chỉ trong những thời kỳ hòa bình tương đối ngắn, sự hòa nhập lẫn nhau có thể xảy ra. Người An Nam cũng chỉ vay mượn từ chủng tộc Mã Lai một ít tính cách đặc biệt. Chủ yếu họ có màu da tối hơn một chút, khác biệt với người miền Nam Trung Hoa. Người ta cũng thường gặp, nhưng không phải phổ biến, như thường muốn nói, ngón chân cái choãi ra, hơi cách với các ngón còn lại. Tuy nhiên, nếu đặc điểm sinh lý này không được duy trì rõ ràng đến hôm nay trong tất cả hậu duệ người Mã Lai ở An Nam, thì ít nhất cấu trúc bàn chân này nhìn chung, tại một thời điểm nhất định, kể cả ở người An Nam, không có ngoại lệ, biểu hiện ở thói quen nắm một số vật bằng chân, và hệ quả tất yếu là đặc điểm giải phẫu như đã chỉ ra ở trên. Trên hết, cái mà chủng tộc An Nam có được từ dòng máu Mã Lai, dẫu yếu, đó là khả năng thích nghi cao hơn ở vùng nhiệt đới. Thực tế, cần lưu ý rằng môi trường sống bình thường của chủng tộc da vàng là trung tâm châu Á, nghĩa là vùng ôn đới, thường rất lạnh, có khí hậu trái ngược với An Nam và Hạ Đàng Trong. Đúng là, người da vàng là minh chứng cho những phẩm chất thích nghi tuyệt vời ở mọi loại điều kiện khí hậu; nhưng người An Nam, lần này, đặc biệt lâm vào hoàn cảnh rất tệ. Họ có thể đã không kháng cự nổi nếu không gặp người Mã Lai trên cuộc hành trình. Chương II MÔI TRƯỜNG Tính cách một dân tộc là kết quả đồng thời của hai nguyên nhân: thể chất sinh lý của dân tộc đó và sự thích ứng của họ với các môi trường khác nhau. Chúng ta đã nghiên cứu cái đầu tiên trong hai yếu tố đó: chủng tộc; bây giờ, đối với quá trình hình thành tính cách người An Nam, còn phải xác định cái nào là phần chịu ảnh hưởng từ nhiều mặt của các yếu tố như khí hậu, hình thế và địa chất, giáo dục, v.v. I. Môi trường vật lý Tác động khí hậu lên bản sắc quốc gia thường bị phóng đại; những phẩm chất hoặc khuyết điểm yếu kém nhất của một dân tộc đôi khi được lý giải quy cho duy nhất ảnh hưởng này. Đừng cho nó quan trọng đến như vậy, mà phải biết nhận định nó thật rõ. Trong một quốc gia văn minh, tác động của môi trường vật chất, bị đối trọng mạnh mẽ bởi những ảnh hưởng rất nhiều cũng như đa dạng của môi trường xã hội hay trí tuệ, còn lại gần như bằng không; tuy nhiên, ở một dân tộc khởi đầu tiến hóa, nó góp phần lớn trong việc định hình khí chất chung, sau đó di truyền và tạo thành với thể chất sinh lý của chủng tộc một nền tảng gần như không thay đổi của bản sắc quốc gia. Đông Dương, một vùng lãnh thổ rộng lớn trải dài hơn mười lăm kinh độ, có khí hậu tại các vùng không giống nhau. Trong khi Nam kỳ nằm trong khu vực nóng như thiêu đốt, thì Bắc kỳ lại có khí hậu bán nhiệt đới. Tuy vậy, sự phân bố các mùa có vẻ giống nhau ở cả hai xứ: mùa khô kéo dài từ tháng Mười hoặc tháng Mười một đến tháng Ba hay tháng Tư, và mùa mưa từ tháng Tư hoặc tháng Năm đến tháng Chín hoặc tháng Mười. Nhiệt độ trung bình ở Nam kỳ khoảng 27°C; đôi khi tăng lên đến 35°C hoặc 36°C trong mùa khô và không bao giờ giảm xuống dưới 18°C. Do đó, nóng nực gần như hằng định. Độ ẩm khá cao; độ ẩm trung bình là 84°C; vũ lượng kế cho thấy lượng mưa trung bình nhiều nhất là lm60, nhiều hơn gần gấp ba lần so với ở Pháp, nơi đạt được khoảng 0m65. Những điều kiện khí hậu này khiến Nam kỳ trở thành nơi không tốt cho sức khỏe. Đất lúc nào cũng rất ẩm ướt, thường bị ngập lụt, phủ kín là những đám cây cối um tùm, sinh sôi dưới tác động của cái nóng, những lam chướng độc hại thúc đẩy sự sinh sôi của tất cả các loại bệnh tật: kiết lỵ, tiêu chảy, sốt rét, tả, đậu mùa, v.v. Khí hậu Bắc kỳ nói chung khá hơn: nóng nực quá mức trong mùa mưa (nhiệt kế có khi đo được đến 39-40°C), mùa khô tương đối mát mẻ, khi đó nhiệt độ xuống đến 8°C thậm chí có khi là 7°C. Nhưng sự ẩm thấp lên đến cực độ; lượng mưa trung bình hằng năm là lm80, cao hơn 20cm so với Nam kỳ. Trong suốt mùa nóng khi mà lượng nước vô cùng dồi dào, vùng châu thổ này biến thành một đầm lầy thực sự; và nếu, vào mùa khô, ở những tháng Mười hai, tháng Giêng và tháng Hai, dù không có những cơn bão lớn thì bầu trời vẫn phủ khắp những đám mây xám để rồi trút xuống một màn nước mỏng: mưa phùn. Tóm lại, chúng ta có thể nhận định được khí hậu của Đông Dương: nóng nực và ẩm thấp quá mức. Vậy thì, nếu trước đây hai yếu tố này từng có thể ảnh hưởng lớn lên tổ tiên của những người An Nam, khi đó mới di cư từ vùng lạnh hơn xuống và không thích nghi được, thì ngày nay, trái lại, chúng không thể làm chuyển hóa những chủng người này nữa, vốn đã thích nghi với môi trường và đề kháng tốt hơn với tác động bên ngoài. Vì chính môi trường này đã bắt đầu thay đổi kể từ đó; các điều kiện sống trở nên tốt hơn, nơi những đầm lầy từng ứ đọng ngày nay là những ruộng lúa xanh rờn; bệnh sốt rét lúc này không còn nghiêm trọng nữa ở những nơi nó từng gây những thảm họa nặng nề[69]. Đó là những gì tôi vừa trình bày ở trên đây khi nói rằng trong một quốc gia văn minh, ảnh hưởng vật lý của môi trường được đối trọng bởi những ảnh hưởng xã hội. Sau khi tác động lên con người, thiên nhiên, đến lượt nó, chịu ảnh hưởng của xã hội, mà theo câu nói của Auguste Comte[70], là được “xã hội hóa” theo cách nào đó. Do đó, nếu chúng ta nghiên cứu ở đây các điều kiện khí hậu của Đông Dương, tất nhiên các tác động tức thì của chúng không là gì đối với cư dân hiện nay. Trong những trình bày trên đây, tất nhiên các quan sát tâm lý chỉ ứng với những người An Nam hiện đại, chúng ta chỉ tập trung vào biểu hiện kết quả của những tác động ban đầu, xảy ra qua quá trình rất lâu dài, và dần dần theo thời gian, trên cơ thể của những người Giao Chỉ cổ đại và các kết quả này, theo con đường di truyền, ngày nay đã trở thành những đặc tính hằng định của chủng tộc. Fouillé nói, “Những người Á châu, mà Hippocrate trước cả Montesquieu, đã ghi nhận đời sống bạc nhược, thường có tính khí cáu kỉnh, mệt mỏi do nóng nực; thiêu đốt bên trong quá mức nên không để lại chút sức lực dư thừa nào để dùng cho bên ngoài. Khí hậu quá nóng làm cho huyết dịch tuần hoàn quá nhanh, làm bài tiết nhiều chất thải hơn khiến cho cơ thể không được sạch sẽ trong khi gắng sức và lao động. Bằng sự kích thích tuần hoàn máu và làm tất cả lỗ chân lông mở ra, các dây thần kinh và da quá mẫn cảm. Bởi vậy, con người ta trở nên nhạy cảm hơn, và cùng với đó, cảm giác, trí tưởng tượng của họ cũng dễ bị kích động hơn. Cuối cùng, cái nóng vượt ngưỡng kết thúc bằng mệt mỏi cùng sự kiệt lực.” Điện áp không khí[71], độ ẩm, độ trong lành của nó cũng ảnh hưởng đến cơ thể. “Đặc biệt, tình trạng ẩm thấp tiếp tục còn gây bít lỗ chân lông trên da, làm chậm tuần hoàn cho khí sắc kém, giảm hoạt lực của hệ thống vận mạch, loại bỏ toàn bộ năng lượng cơ thể, làm suy giảm cảm giác và hoạt động tinh thần, nói một cách ngắn gọn, mở đường cho đặc điểm chậm chạp và ù lì thường thấy nơi tính khí lãnh đạm.”[72] Những nhận xét công bằng, chính xác này hoàn toàn ứng hợp với tính tình người An Nam. Tính ngang bướng của dân du mục Mông Cổ, tính thích gây gổ và bạo lực của người Mã Lai đáng lẽ được biểu hiện ở người An Nam do được di truyền từ hai nhóm đó, nhưng dưới tác động đáng kinh ngạc của khí hậu, lại hòa tan thành một bản chất dửng dưng, bình thản, đơn giản là thờ ơ. Được xem là bằng chứng đầu tiên cho sự dửng dưng này, chúng ta có thể dẫn ra việc người An Nam, tuy là dân tộc có một nền văn minh tương đối cao, nhưng lại không có bất kỳ sự tiến bộ, sự tinh tế nào trong cách ăn uống. Quả thật cần phải quay trở lại lúc khởi nguyên, vào thời điểm khi con người, chỉ có rất ít nhu cầu, tập trung vào việc thỏa mãn tất cả những gì cấp thiết nhất: cơn đói, để tìm ra được khẩu vị tương tự của người châu Á. Chúng ta biết những món ăn nổi tiếng trong ẩm thực người An Nam hay người Trung Hoa như: những con đun dừa, trứng thối, v.v. Hầu như tất cả mọi thứ đều có thể ăn được: ếch, chuột, dơi, rắn, thịt, rau củ hoặc thực phẩm bị hư hỏng. Trong chợ, người bán có hai loại giá: một cho hàng tươi, cái còn lại, giá thấp hơn, cho những thứ đã được bày ra những ngày trước đó. Một miếng thịt lợn như vậy hôm nay thì giá mười hai xu[73], ngày mai sẽ không có giá cao hơn tám hay mười xu và chắc chắn vẫn có người mua. Với những món ăn này, người An Nam sử dụng kèm những loại nước sốt vô cùng cay và có thành phần rất đặc biệt; phổ biến nhất là một loại gọi là “nước mắm” làm từ cá chất lớp lên nhau, để lên men rất lâu trong nước biển. Hương vị và mùi của hỗn hợp này rất kinh khủng đối với người Âu. Hơn nữa, thiếu tinh tế về khẩu vị sinh ra một phẩm chất hiếm thấy ở (người Âu) chúng ta: sự tiết độ. Người An Nam, ít bị đòi hỏi bởi những thèm muốn tự nhiên, rất tiết độ. Họ hầu như chỉ ăn cơm, cá khô và rau củ; chỉ uống nước hoặc trà; hiếm khi uống rượu[74]. Sự dửng dưng của người An Nam còn thể hiện ở sự thiếu tiện nghi về nhà ở và trang phục. Nhà thường dựng bằng tre và lợp tranh; tường là những “cái phên”[75]; vách ngăn bên trong là những tấm chiếu sơ sài, cửa ra vào chỉ khép hờ, không hề có cửa sổ, cũng không có thông hơi, khói tự thoát qua các kẽ hở giữa các tán lá tranh trên mái. Thấp và bí, quá hẹp cho một gia đình thường đông đúc, nhà dựng trên nền đất nện, luôn ẩm thấp, đôi khi ngập nước nếu ở gần rạch hoặc sông. Chúng ta hãy xem thử liệu nơi nào có thể thiết kế một ngôi nhà như vậy để chống lại cái nóng, mưa, và đặc biệt chống lại được cái lạnh ở Bắc kỳ. “Cái nhà” có khi được dựng trên một chiếc bè, ở rìa con sông để rồi bị cuốn đi mỗi lần nước lên. Về phương diện nhà cửa nói chung, rất dễ nhận ra sự đơn sơ thể hiện ở nội thất bên trong; chỉ có một hoặc hai chiếc phản lớn, bằng gỗ, trải một tấm chiếu mỏng trên đó cho cả gia đình dùng, vừa là bàn ăn, là ghế lại vừa là giường; một vài cái đôn, một cái rương... và một chiếc quan tài, ở vị trí trang trọng, do những đứa con hiếu thảo tặng cho người cha. Thêm một sự bẩn thỉu gớm ghiếc nữa đó là những con lợn hoặc gia cầm được thả rông, hoàn toàn tự do; một cái ao gần đó và cũng là hồ bơi, là nơi trồng cải xoong lẫn hố ủ phân... và bạn sẽ có một bức tranh gần chính xác về sự tiện nghi của người An Nam. Ngay cả ở những người giàu có, kể ra cũng chỉ là thiểu số ở An Nam, họ cũng không quan tâm đến sự thoải mái. Nếu nhà được xây gạch và lợp ngói, đồ đạc trong nhà, mặc dù sang trọng quý giá, nhưng vẫn rất bất tiện, càng không thoải mái càng tốt. Chõng tre được thay thế bằng những tấm phản dày bằng gỗ quý, những cái đôn thay bằng những chiếc ghế dựa cứng và lớn với lưng ghế được chạm khắc tinh xảo, nhưng chỗ dựa ít êm ái sẽ gây khó chịu cho người Âu chúng ta. Ngay đến cái gối, gối dựa hình vuông hoặc hình trụ, làm bằng gỗ hoặc sứ, mà dường như được dùng để làm đau đầu thay vì để nghỉ ngơi. Nhà lợp bằng tranh ở Bắc kỳ. ©Raphaël Moreau Với chuyện quần áo, người An Nam thể hiện cùng một thái độ coi thường đối với chính bản thân họ. Mặt trời như thiêu như đốt, nóng hừng hực, mưa xối xả, rồi cái lạnh ẩm của Bắc kỳ hiếm khi khiến họ phải cởi bỏ hoặc mặc thêm một bộ quần áo. Những gì họ thường mặc là: một chiếc quần thụng và một chiếc váy hoặc một chiếc áo khoác cột bên sườn; tất cả đều bằng vải mỏng. Vào mùa đông ở Bắc kỳ, trong khi người Âu mặc quần áo bằng nỉ cùng áo khoác dài, ta lại thấy những “phu thợ” lội chân trần trong bùn, lạnh thấu tủy xương, run lẩy bẩy, nhưng vẫn luôn chỉ mặc độc một “cái áo” vải. Sự thờ ơ như vậy dành cho chính con người họ tất nhiên dẫn đến môi trường sống bẩn thỉu. Chúng ta đã có được cảnh tượng khá kinh tởm về nhà ở, hình ảnh bề ngoài cá nhân còn khó chấp nhận hơn. Họ không thay hoặc gần như không bao giờ cởi quần áo ra, ngay cả vào ban đêm; quần áo được mặc đến khi hoàn toàn sờn rách. Người dân ở đây thường mặc vải nâu, nâu đỏ đậm, nhuộm bằng củ nâu, rất bền và không sợ ố bẩn hoặc bám bụi đất. Đối với người dân An Nam thì nên giặt quần áo càng ít càng tốt, nếp này tạo thành một sự tiện lợi đáng giá. Như vậy, khi những bộ đồ bỏ đi thì chỉ còn là miếng giẻ rách hôi thối! Vào những ngày lễ, người dân hài lòng diện những bộ đồ lễ hội, rực rỡ và được cất giữ cẩn thận; còn những đồ kể trên, bẩn thỉu và rách rưới, họ mặc hằng ngày. Những đứa trẻ nhỏ phải sống trong tình trạng bẩn thỉu đến đau lòng. Lúc nào cũng lăn lóc giữa bụi bặm, bùn hoặc phân, không bao giờ được mẹ tắm rửa cho, chúng luôn phủ đầy lớp vảy ghê tởm hay “phủ một lớp cáu bẩn dày cộm”[76]. Bản thân phụ nữ, dù không quá xấu, nhưng không bao giờ gây được thu hút nơi mắt nhìn. Dưới đây là phác họa thành công, tái hiện rất chân thực ấn tượng cảm nhận của hầu hết người Âu khi hai bên gặp nhau: “Các cô ấy thường có khuôn mặt tròn mà các nhà thơ Trung Hoa so sánh đầy cảm hứng với trăng tròn. Mái tóc đen và óng mượt được ép sát vào trán bằng dải khăn; đôi mắt đen đầy dịu dàng và mang nét ngây thơ hoang dại của đôi mắt nai; mũi tròn, hơi hếch, giữ cho khuôn mặt một dung mạo trẻ con; không bao giờ kiều diễm, họ gây rung cảm bởi sự ngây thơ và dễ mến, chỉ cần không mở miệng là được. Ngay khi họ phô hàm răng hư do nhai trầu và đều nhau nhuộm đen hạt huyền, mọi luồng quyến rũ biến mất: than thay cho những hạt ngọc trai, người ta chỉ thấy tuyền màu đen tối như thể một lỗ lớn há ra, thay vì ánh ngọc trai lấp lánh giữa đôi môi hồng, nó làm mất hết thiện cảm và đào sâu giữa hai dân tộc một khoảng cách mà tôi nghĩ khó lòng vượt qua được trong tình yêu.”[77]. Bức tranh chúng ta vừa phác thảo về gia đình và nội thất của người An Nam không hề nói quá; thật không may, mọi sự đúng là như vậy. Tuy nhiên, phải thừa nhận rằng dưới tác động của chúng ta, tình trạng vệ sinh được cải thiện rõ rệt. Nhưng vẫn còn nhiều việc phải làm, và sẽ còn rất dài trong những nội dung tới đây là bản mô tả của chúng tôi, một sự tái dựng trung thành với thực tại. Hơn nữa, bức tranh không phải chỉ chứa những điều u tối: nhìn dưới góc độ nào đó, nó vẫn cho thấy những viễn cảnh tươi sáng. Nếu cảm xúc của người An Nam, bị cùn nhụt kéo dài bởi khí hậu khắc nghiệt, làm họ quá tiết độ nên khó lòng tìm kiếm sự sung túc và khiến họ trở nên lười biếng, bỏ bẵng đi những phẩm cách ẩn giấu của họ, thì trái lại, nó tạo ra ở họ một năng lực ấn tượng: sức chịu đựng. Tôi vừa kể ở phần trước ví dụ về những “phu kéo xe” có thể chạy một hơi những cuốc xe từ hai mươi lăm đến ba mươi cây số, với tốc độ nhanh và bền bỉ; tôi cũng đã mô tả họ như thế nào dưới bầu trời mùa đông Bắc kỳ, đôi chân trần và quần áo mỏng manh, răng đánh lập cập, nhưng chai lì với cái lạnh, và chờ làm ấm lại sau mỗi đợt chạy; tôi cũng đã kể về công việc lao nhọc mà người nông dân phải nai lưng ra làm để đảm bảo ruộng lúa tươi tốt; sự chịu đựng ở người chèo thuyền, khom lưng hàng giờ liền trên thuyền. Và tôi vẫn có thể kể thêm ở đây nhiều câu chuyện, nhiều giai thoại chứng thực cho những quan sát trước đó: các cuộc phẫu thuật, họ chịu đựng không rên rỉ, không khóc than; những lần sinh nở diễn ra không hề có giúp đỡ, chăm sóc, và đáng kinh ngạc là bà mẹ hầu như không cần phải ngưng hoàn toàn những công việc thường ngày bởi biến cố này. Khả năng chịu đựng này, theo góc nhìn thể chất, có tác động tốt về mặt tinh thần: người An Nam rất can đảm, nhưng không như kiểu chúng ta [người Pháp hay người châu Âu] thường nghe nói, bởi đối với chúng ta biểu hiện đó đôi khi đồng nghĩa với sự táo bạo, mạo hiểm hoặc liều lĩnh. Những người lính An Nam thường chạy trốn trước chúng ta; tuy vậy, nếu họ được tập luyện, lãnh đạo, hỗ trợ tốt, họ sẽ thể hiện những kỹ năng chống lửa đạn đáng ngưỡng mộ, cũng như những gì họ đã thể hiện trong chiến dịch sau cùng với Trung Hoa. Thoạt đầu, dường như rất khó để dung hòa biểu hiện hèn nhát rành rành và lòng can đảm bẩm sinh này. Ở người An Nam, can đảm có tính thụ động: họ biết chịu đựng nỗi đau, chịu đựng cái chết mà không hề run sợ, nhưng chỉ khi điều đó dường như là không thể tránh khỏi đối với họ và sau khi họ đã cố hết sức để thoát khỏi nó. Thực ra, người An Nam sống rất an phận, và với sức cam chịu phi thường họ chịu đựng những trận đòn tàn khốc nhất của số phận. Không gì có thể làm xáo trộn sự bình tĩnh không hề lay chuyển của họ: kể cả có trút lên họ những nhục hình, như một vài tác giả báo cáo, cả những sự cố bất ngờ hoặc không may. Một ngày nọ, tôi thấy một quan huyện được chủ tỉnh gọi lên vì một vụ việc hành chính, trả lời các câu hỏi ông ta đặt ra suốt gần một giờ, một cách bình tĩnh, chính xác, không hề tỏ ra thiếu kiên nhẫn, rồi lặng lẽ chờ đợi, ở cách xa đó, cấp trên của anh ta, đang tất bật với những bản hỏi cung khác và đột nhiên chú ý đến sự hiện diện kéo dài của anh, mời anh nói, cuối cùng anh khai bằng một giọng đều đều, gần như vô cảm, đôi mắt hạ xuống, vẻ mặt thản nhiên, hai tay đan chéo với thái độ tôn trọng và trang nghiêm, rằng đêm trước anh bị ăn trộm mất bốn trăm đồng (đáng giá một gia tài ở An Nam) và tất cả những gì anh từng sở hữu ngoài nó: của cải hoặc trang sức. Anh gửi đơn khiếu nại thủ phạm, nhưng anh đã làm như vậy mà không hề nổi nóng, anh nói chậm rãi bằng những từ ngữ cẩn trọng, mô tả tỉ mỉ các tình tiết phạm tội của tên tội phạm, không bỏ sót một chi tiết nào... chỉ trừ một chuyện mà anh nêu ra ngay trước khi ngừng nói, anh làm giống như thể anh chợt nhớ ra nó, rằng nó là một việc anh đã quên và không hề quan trọng: “Tôi chưa nói với ông, thưa ngài Công sứ, rằng những tên trộm ngoài đó ra còn đầu độc tất cả gà vịt, chó và hai con ngựa của tôi.” Hãy thử đặt vào vị trí nạn nhân của người An Nam này một kiểu dân Pháp cùng chịu một biến cố như vậy, và bạn sẽ nhận ra sự khác biệt. Nhận định tương tự, sự điềm tĩnh là một phẩm chất không cần phải bàn cãi; đó là bình tĩnh, nhanh trí khi đối mặt với nguy hiểm, làm chủ được bản thân, những cơn giận và những ham muốn; nói tóm lại, đó là biểu hiện cao nhất của phẩm giá con người. Nhưng đó lại là mặt trái của sự việc. Cũng con người đó, thản nhiên trước sự bất hạnh của chính mình, sẽ thờ ơ trước bất hạnh của người khác. Người An Nam không xót thương thấu hiểu; hơn thế nữa, anh ta tàn nhẫn. Để nhận ra sự man rợ bẩm tính này, ta phải đọc trong Bộ luật (Gia Long) bản mô tả các hình phạt mà người bị kết án phải chịu, và để xem với nhận thức nào, chúng được áp dụng tinh vi ra sao. Và đầu tiên, phạt roi. Hình phạt này rất đau đớn: “Nhục hình này khác nhau về cường độ tùy theo khả năng của người thi hành. Cây roi dùng để đánh chỉ ở một phần ba chiều dài của nó, lực đập mạnh, roi phải đánh đúng một chỗ, roi thứ ba thường gây chảy máu. Bốn mươi roi liên tiếp có thể giết chết tù nhân. Vậy nên, họ thường đánh hai mươi roi; họ đổ thêm nước muối vào vết thương để kẻ bị kết án vào lại nhà giam suốt hai mươi bốn hoặc bốn mươi tám giờ, cuối cùng hắn ta nhận tiếp hai mươi roi mới, và cứ tiếp tục như thế...”[78] Tử hình có nhiều hình thức, mức độ kinh khủng tăng dần từng bậc: thắt cổ, chém đầu, voi giày, cái chết từ từ[79]. Thắt cổ được thực hiện bằng sợi dây thừng mảnh, rất dài, quấn một hoặc hai lần quanh cổ tù nhân, người này đứng thẳng, được gắn chặt vào một cái cột. Hai người phụ nắm lấy hai đầu của sợi dây và kéo từ từ, càng ngày càng mạnh, mỗi người một bên; vòng dây siết lại, tù nhân nghẹt thở: sợi dây được nới lỏng ra một chút, kẻ khốn khổ lấy lại hơi và người hành quyết chuẩn bị bắt đầu hành hình lại, ngưng lại một lần nữa nếu cái chết dường như đến quá nhanh. Đôi khi, giữa những lần hành hình, người bị kết án được cho uống một ít thuốc bổ để khiến anh ta khỏe hơn, và do đó kéo dài cảnh tượng ghê rợn này. Có khi, với cùng một mục đích nhưng ít gặp hơn, người hành hình nhóm một bếp lò dưới chân kẻ chịu tội. Voi giày, dành riêng cho người phụ nữ ngoại tình, tức là đầu bị nghiền nát dưới chân con thú to lớn; chém đầu, bằng cách sử dụng một thanh kiếm thường bị sứt mẻ, cũng không kém phần tàn bạo. “Các giáo sĩ kể lại với chúng tôi rằng, trong cuộc hành quyết (1839), một tân tòng trẻ tuổi tên Michel Mi, khi sắp đi đến cái chết mà không hề sợ hãi, đao phủ nói với cậu ta: ‘Đưa tao năm quan và tao sẽ chặt đầu mày chỉ bằng một nhát kiếm, không khiến mày phải chịu đau khổ.’”[80] Nhưng trong tất cả những kiểu chết đó, cái được gọi là “cái chết từ từ” là đáng sợ nhất. “Bao gồm việc xẻo thịt cơ thể thành từng miếng nhỏ, đến khi hoàn toàn trơ xương; ngay sau đó, với đàn ông, bộ phận sinh dục bị cắt đi; đối với phụ nữ, những bộ phận này được phủ bằng một miếng vải; họ mổ bụng và lấy ruột ra cho đến khi đối tượng chết hẳn. Sau đó, họ cắt bỏ các chi, cắt các khớp và đập nát xương.”[81] Có người từng cho rằng, một cách chắc chắn, nếu bị thấm nhuần lý luận phi nhân đạo mà dựa vào đó cơ quan lập pháp tiến hành thiết lập các bậc hình phạt kế tiếp khác nhau, thì họ cũng sẽ nghĩ rằng đó tự nhiên không phải là sự tàn ác, kể cả sự hiếu kỳ về máu và những cực hình, và do vậy đã đưa vào luật pháp An Nam nhiều kiểu tử hình, tra vấn và vô vàn kiểu tra tấn.[82] Họ nói với chúng tôi, luật pháp cố gắng làm cho giá trị của hình phạt phù hợp với mức độ của lỗi lầm; nhưng liệu “lý luận phi nhân đạo” này có đủ sức biện minh cho những tưởng tượng tàn ác làm nhà lập pháp thích thú; liệu nó có biện giải cho những hành vi xấu xa và dữ tợn thường được thực hiện bởi những kẻ hành quyết?[83] Phải thừa nhận rằng sâu thẳm trong tâm hồn người An Nam luôn tồn tại một ký ức xưa cũ, xa xăm và mờ mịt, nhưng đôi khi nó hiện lên những tiếng vọng dữ dội và bất chợt, về các tập quán tổ tiên. Các chiến binh Mông Cổ hung hãn và những tên cướp biển Mã Lai liều lĩnh đã để lại trong tâm tính con cháu của họ một mầm mống hung ác, được một mặt trời nhiệt đới đánh thức dưới làn hơi ẩm ướt và nóng bỏng. Ảnh hưởng của khí hậu khắc nghiệt không chỉ lưu dấu vết nơi cảm xúc; nó có tác động trở lại, hoặc trực tiếp hoặc gián tiếp, đến ý chí và trí tuệ. Sự suy nhược đáng kể của cơ thể bởi tác động của sức nóng và độ ẩm hoặc do thiếu thức ăn, biểu lộ qua tình trạng đờ đẫn không cưỡng được, qua sự ngại ngần thực hiện bất kỳ nỗ lực nhọc nhằn nào, bất kể là về thể chất hay trí tuệ. Do đó, chúng ta sẽ thấy rằng người An Nam nổi bật không phải bởi phẩm chất năng lượng tiên phong, cũng không phải bởi sức mạnh tưởng tượng hay thăng tiến tinh thần. Tuy nhiên, bất chấp những bất lực không thể chối cãi này, họ vui hưởng một đặc ân vô giá. Đó là một trong số ít những dân tộc sở hữu tính khí hài hòa, nơi tất cả mọi khả năng đều cân bằng. Thật vậy, người ta không thể nói rằng họ là một người “nhạy cảm”, một người “trí tuệ” hay một người “có ý chí”, bởi vì ở họ, cả thần kinh lẫn não bộ đều không chiếm ưu trội. Hệ thống thần kinh, hệ thống cơ bắp và hệ thống huyết dịch đều hợp nhất, nhưng ở một mức đặc biệt thấp: máu lưu thông chậm, thần kinh kiệt quệ và cơ bắp không còn chút sức bật nào. Vậy nên, nếu có thể nói rằng người An Nam vô cảm và lãnh đạm, không có nhiều nhu cầu to lớn và không có mong ước thực sự nào, và vì những lý do đó là một dân tộc hạnh phúc, ít nhất sẽ phải nói thêm rằng điểm chính yếu trong sự hạnh phúc của họ là tiêu cực và rất ít ham muốn. II. Môi trường con người Cho đến nay, trong số các yếu tố đã góp phần hình thành tính cách dân tộc An Nam, chúng ta chỉ xem xét các nguyên nhân thể chất. Vẫn còn một yếu tố không kém phần quan trọng mà chúng ta chưa xem xét, nhưng ảnh hưởng của nó chủ yếu là lên luân lý đạo đức; ý tôi là: con người. Người An Nam trong bữa ăn. ©Raphaël Moreau và đồng sự Chúng tôi đã nhận thấy rằng người An Nam chứa trong huyết quản của mình một phần khá lớn dòng máu Hán Hoa và Mã Lai; những sự lai tạp thừa kế này làm thay đổi đáng kể thể chất sinh lý nguyên thủy, đã để lại trong cấu tạo tinh thần của họ những dấu ấn còn sâu thẳm hơn. Do đó, cần phải có một kiến thức đầy đủ về tâm hồn người An Nam, trước tiên là nghiên cứu, ít nhất là trong những nét thiết yếu của họ, tâm lý học Hán Hoa và Mã Lai. Từ các nhóm khác nhau tạo nên Đại chủng Á, nhóm Hán Hoa chắc chắn là nhóm phức tạp nhất, là nhóm khó toát ra diện mạo đặc thù nhất. Theo quan điểm nhân chủng học, cư dân ở các tỉnh khác nhau của Trung Hoa thể hiện rất khác nhau về mặt phẩm chất tinh thần. Ở miền Nam, họ ngang bướng, độc lập hơn so với miền Bắc; họ có nhiều sáng kiến hơn, sẵn sàng giao dịch và dễ chấp nhận di cư. Một nghị lực nhất định, một sự năng động rất lớn, thậm chí táo bạo, đặc trưng hóa và phân biệt họ với những người Hoa miền Bắc, vốn điềm tĩnh hơn, bình thản hơn, nhưng có lẽ cũng văn minh hơn. Những khác biệt này được giải thích là do sự khác nhau về điều kiện khí hậu hoặc xã hội, dựa trên đó mà các phân nhóm Hán Hoa phát triển. Tuy nhiên, không phải là không thể thiết lập được một bình quân chung về những phẩm chất và khuyết điểm của chủng tộc Hán Hoa. Thực tế, tất cả đều bắt nguồn từ những khuynh hướng cơ bản mà chúng ta đã chỉ ra là phổ biến đối với Đại chủng Á: sự nhạy cảm và trí tuệ ở mức trung bình, thụ động. Chịu nhiều ảnh hưởng khác nhau, nên họ đã phát triển khác nhau. Đồng bằng Hoàng Hà rộng lớn, màu mỡ khiến dân du mục ngang bướng này định cư lại và tự biến mình thành những nông dân hiền hòa, những thương nhân khéo léo, những thợ thủ công tài tình, điềm tĩnh, trầm lặng, sợ chiến tranh và chuyện đăng lính. Tuy nhiên, ở họ, sự tàn ác bẩm sinh không hề biến mất - chúng ta biết những cuộc tra tấn khủng khiếp xảy ra ở Trung Hoa đối với những người bị tử hình - từ sự hung bạo trước đây, tính hung dữ của họ trở thành lạnh lùng và toan tính. Vùng đất đã được chuẩn bị kỹ cho sự phát triển của một thiên hướng như vậy; ít mẫn cảm và khắc nghiệt với bản thân, người Hoa vẫn lãnh đạm với những đau khổ của người khác. Sự điềm tĩnh điển hình này, hay một sự thiếu hụt cảm xúc, tạo nên cách cư xử tàn bạo và ích kỷ, vả lại, hàm chứa cả sự thoái chí, đưa đến thói an phận và quen nếp. “Khi nghiên cứu Đế quốc Trung tâm từ bất cứ khía cạnh nào, người ta luôn tìm thấy ở đó những khởi đầu đẹp đẽ và đầy hứa hẹn, nhưng là những lời hứa đáng thất vọng (vì cuối cùng) đã không hề được thực hiện. Mọi thứ đã được thử thách nhưng chỉ từ quan điểm thực dụng và bất di bất dịch; để rồi tất cả đi vào bế tắc.”[84] Người Trung Hoa biết rõ thuật in ấn và thuốc súng trước người châu Âu; nhưng không bao giờ những phát minh này ở họ có được sự phát triển như chúng ta đem đến cho chúng. Trong khi những khám phá này đã làm thay đổi thế giới châu Âu thời Trung cổ, người dân Thiên triều lại thờ ơ bỏ qua, không muốn và không biết tận dụng những yếu tố tiến bộ này. Quay về quá khứ, thay vì chuẩn bị cho tương lai, họ tìm kiếm sự hoàn hảo trong chi tiết, trong sự hữu hạn vật chất. Ngành kỹ nghệ của họ đứng yên một chỗ, cũng như nền giáo dục đạo đức thô thiển của họ. “Khổng Tử đưa ra các quy tắc chi li để giáo dục các bé trai, bé gái, thanh niên và người lớn. Ông đi đến mức quy định cách rửa tay và miệng, cách mặc quần dài, buộc giày, và ông chỉ cho phụ nữ cách họ nên ăn mặc và ướp hương cho tóc. Ngoài ra còn có các quy tắc của phép lịch sự và nghi thức cần tuân thủ giữa những người ngang hàng với nhau, những người bề trên và bề dưới. Đây có lẽ là cuốn sách đóng góp nhiều nhất cho việc đào tạo dân tộc Hán Hoa trong các mối quan hệ của họ và điều đó khiến họ trở nên văn minh nhất trong tất cả các dân tộc - và cũng là những người ít có khả năng học hỏi, cải thiện bản thân, kế tục nền giáo dục của thế giới.”[85] Chính sự thiếu quan tâm về việc hoàn thiện, cùng với sự tách biệt mà Trung Hoa luôn cảm thấy hài lòng, giải thích rõ nhất cho sự chững lại của nền văn minh Trung Hoa trong quá trình phát triển tuần tự của nó. Tuy nhiên, phải thừa nhận rằng tình trạng trì trệ kéo dài đó cũng là do sự thấp kém về trí tuệ của chủng tộc này. Rất đúng khi nói rằng sự tiến bộ là sản phẩm hiển nhiên của giáo dục, thế nhưng điều này chỉ đem đến tất cả thành quả ở một dân tộc thừa hưởng những phẩm chất trí tuệ tự nhiên cần thiết cho sự hoàn thiện chính dân tộc đó. Vậy mà, những phẩm chất thiết yếu này gần như hoàn toàn thiếu vắng ở dân tộc Trung Hoa. Sự nhạy cảm ít phát triển, năng lực cùn nhụt - nếu không muốn nói là thiếu vắng - đó là những gì nâng đỡ cho trí tuệ Trung Hoa. Vì lẽ này, tức sự kém cỏi của những trụ cột, dân tộc này không bao giờ có thể đạt đến những thăng hoa cao cả; bất chấp một văn hóa lâu dài và tỉ mỉ, sự thật là họ thích ứng kém, họ không hề có đột phá nào để đáp ứng những nhu cầu của chính họ. Nghèo nàn về cảm xúc và ý chí, người Trung Hoa cũng nghèo về trí tưởng tượng. Năng lực trừu tượng ở họ gần như hoàn toàn không có; đó là lý do tại sao các phương pháp của họ hoàn toàn tuân theo kinh nghiệm; họ không bao giờ biết rút ra các khái niệm khoa học ẩn giấu trong kinh nghiệm để nêu ra các định luật chung. Không có khả năng tạo ra một lý tưởng nào khác ngoài hạnh phúc tức thời có thể đạt được, họ tự tạo nên một tôn giáo tích cực và dựng thiên đường trên mặt đất: “Họ nói, đừng mơ về một cuộc sống bên ngoài sự sống, vì bạn sẽ không tìm thấy được cuộc sống đó... Không có thế giới nào khác ngoài thế giới trong vũ trụ và không có cuộc đời nào khác cho loài người chúng ta ngoài cuộc đời trên mặt đất... Đó là trong một chuỗi những sự tái sinh mà con người thấy được, tùy theo tình trạng rèn luyện mà linh hồn của họ đã chịu vào kiếp trước, hình phạt hay phần thưởng của họ. Nếu họ đã tu tập và hoàn thiện nó, họ sẽ được tái sinh với những năng lực, thậm chí cả thể chất và thể xác, điều này sẽ khiến họ hạnh phúc dài lâu hay sẽ là một sự đảm bảo cho điều đó.”[86] Đầu óc vô cùng cụ thể, thoát khỏi mọi bận tâm siêu hình, không mấy quen thuộc và ít có khuynh hướng cảm xúc tự nhiên bộc phát, họ tạo nên một tinh thần theo kiểu của riêng mình: vô cùng thực tế, đặc quyền vị lợi, nơi mà một tình cảm hơi nồng nhiệt và khoan dung chưa từng xuất hiện. “Học thuyết đạo đức mà con người phải học hỏi, các quy tắc đạo đức mà họ phải tuân thủ, các nguyên tắc đạo đức sẽ khai sáng con đường của họ trong cuộc sống, không phải là suy diễn; chúng luôn có một mục đích thiết thực, mang tính gia đình và xã hội. Không phải vì một mục tiêu dài hay ngắn hạn, vì một hình phạt sẽ được nhận ở một thế giới khác, mà các nguyên tắc của đạo đức này sẽ phải được áp dụng, nhưng trái lại, là vì những hiệu quả ngay lập tức, ở ngay nơi họ được dạy và thực hành.”[87] “Những gì bạn không muốn làm cho chính mình thì cũng đừng làm với những người khác”, triết gia Trung Hoa (Khổng Tử) khuyên nhủ. Nhưng theo quy tắc ứng xử này, với tinh thần hoàn toàn theo Ki- tô giáo, họ sẽ tuyên phạt cái gì? “Bằng cách cư xử như vậy, kể cả trong vương quốc lẫn gia đình bạn, sẽ không ai oán trách chống lại bạn.” Từ đỉnh cao của tinh thần không vụ lợi, chúng ta rơi vào một chủ nghĩa thực dụng thô thiển đầy ty tiện. Từ những gì chúng ta hiện biết về chủng tộc Hán Hoa, về sức sống mãnh liệt, về tâm hồn gai góc và đầu óc hạn hẹp của họ, chúng ta có thể kết luận rằng, nếu chủng tộc An Nam, bằng cuộc hôn nhân với dân Thiên triều, đã được hưởng món hời lớn, theo quan điểm sinh lý và xã hội, những đặc tính chịu đựng và thích nghi mạnh mẽ, nhưng họ đã chỉ có thể hưởng, theo quan điểm đạo đức, những phẩm chất tương đối tầm thường. Người Hoa, phải thừa nhận rằng, không thiếu sự can đảm cũng như sự khéo léo. “Trí tuệ của họ, như một nhà phê bình sáng suốt nói, chứa đựng sự tinh tế, các cơ quan của họ là sự khéo léo của lao động, có khả năng làm tất cả mọi thứ; họ có lý lẽ khéo léo, đầu óc lanh lợi tinh quái, một triết lý thực tế - lý lẽ của Panurge, tinh ranh của Falstaff, triết lý của Sancho[88]. ... Họ tin rằng hai với hai là bốn, và họ đúng. Họ nghĩ rằng không làm gì thì an toàn và dễ chịu hơn là hành động, và họ không sai. Họ coi trọng sự lễ độ, và tôi đồng ý với họ. Họ nghĩ rằng người khôn ngoan thì không tạo ra quá nhiều ham muốn, tôi cũng nghĩ như họ luôn. Một cái chén tốt được làm ra, một chiếc đĩa được tạo dáng đẹp khiến họ say mê; một vật làm bằng sơn mài hào nhoáng được mạ vàng sẽ hấp dẫn họ. Tất cả điều này đều có thể dung thứ... Nhưng những suy nghĩ vượt trội, phân tích nghiêm túc, mong muốn tiến bộ, tất cả những đức hạnh ‘mã thượng nhất’ họ đều thiếu - như Rabelais nói. Họ không thể có được nó. Những chiếc đinh thép của họ đã đóng chặt họ vào thói quen và quá khứ. Trải qua bốn ngàn năm lâu dài như vậy, không còn nghi ngờ gì nữa, vắng bóng trào lưu trí tuệ, hóa đá tư tưởng và tâm hồn trường cửu - Hỡi ôi! sống như thế nào đây?”[89] Bây giờ chúng ta phải tự hỏi những đặc điểm đạo đức của chủng tộc Mã Lai là gì. Thật khó để đưa ra một câu trả lời hoàn toàn thỏa đáng cho câu hỏi này. Thực tế, chủng tộc Mã Lai phát triển rất không đồng đều, một số đại diện của họ vẫn còn sống hoang dã. Do đó có thể hiểu rằng phải có một sự khác biệt đáng kể giữa những cư dân nguyên thủy này và những người, do những tiếp xúc khác nhau với thế giới, đã đạt được một mức độ văn minh nhất định. Mặt khác, việc trải qua những ảnh hưởng khác nhau của Trung Hoa, Ấn Độ và Ả Rập, qua nhiều thế kỷ, đã tạo ra nơi người Mã Lai sự đa dạng về chủng loại, không còn sự tương đồng nào giữa các nhóm ngoài những nét chung nhất. Và cũng phải nói thêm rằng người Mã Lai ngày nay là những tín đồ Hồi giáo, và tôn giáo này, được du nhập vào Sumatra vào khoảng thế kỷ XIII, đã cải biến khá nhiều tính cách của người Mã Lai cổ đại, cùng thời với người Giao Chỉ, mà duy chỉ có đề tài tâm lý của họ đưa chúng tôi vào nghiên cứu này. Các bộ tộc Mã Lai còn hoang dã, chẳng hạn như những người Dayak ở Bornéo và Battak ở Sumatra, còn giữ những tập quán - ví dụ như tục ăn thịt người - thể hiện rõ một sự tàn bạo nguyên thủy ở họ. Lên thêm một vài vĩ độ, những tập tục man rợ này biến mất, nhưng một sự hung tàn lạnh lùng và có tính toán vẫn làm nền tảng tôi luyện tinh thần của chủng tộc. “Một du khách xưa, Nicola Conti, đã viết vào năm 1430, kể lại việc làm thế nào các quý tộc Mã Lai thử độ cứng của một thanh kiếm mới: ‘Không có dân tộc nào, ông nói, có thể sánh với người dân Java và Sumatra về độ tàn ác. Giết một người đối với họ chỉ là chuyện vặt vãnh và không làm họ phải bị trừng phạt. Nếu một trong số họ, mua một thanh kiếm mới, muốn thử nó, anh ta chỉ cần đâm vào ngực người đầu tiên anh gặp. Người qua đường kiểm tra vết thương và khen ngợi sự khéo léo của kẻ giết người nếu nhát đâm được thực hiện tốt.’[90] Chúng tôi thấy một thông tin cùng loại trong tập quán nổi tiếng kể rằng: cuộc chạy đua của ‘kẻ bẩn thỉu’. Cái này ‘kết hợp tự sát với giết người, vì người chạy chết trong khi giết người khác’. Đây là cách mọi thứ diễn ra: một người, tuyệt vọng do một sự bất công đáng phẫn nộ hoặc do một nỗi bất hạnh nào đó, quyết định từ bỏ cuộc sống. Vậy thì anh ta bắt đầu nghiện thuốc phiện; thế rồi, ‘nghiền’ nó trong bàn tay, lúc đầu, anh ta nhảy xổ vào tất cả những người mà anh ta nghĩ rằng anh ta phải thưa kiện, đâm họ, sau đó chạy băng qua thị trấn, giết hoặc làm bị thương bất cứ ai có ý bắt giữ anh ta.”[91] Bình thường, người Mã Lai trầm tính, có vẻ thản nhiên, rất ít khi cởi mở. Họ che giấu cảm xúc, cân nhắc trong hành động và lời nói, không bao giờ thẳng thắn thảo luận về một chủ đề nào.[92] Hầu hết các tác giả đều đánh giá họ rất khắt khe, đã miêu tả cho chúng ta thấy rằng họ là những kẻ đạo đức giả, dối trá, ghen tuông một cách tàn nhẫn và độc ác. Tuy nhiên, tầng lớp quý tộc lại lịch sự tinh tế, cái mà họ tiếp thu qua lễ nghi của người Trung Hoa. Ông J. Chailly-Bert[93] nói, “Sự lịch sự của họ không dễ gì hiểu được cho những ai chưa từng nhìn thấy họ. Nền dân chủ của chúng ta cách họ cả ngàn dặm; thế kỷ XVIII đã quá lý trí và ngạo mạn; chỉ duy thế kỷ XVII có hơi trang trọng, của vua Louis XIV và Hoàng hậu xứ Maintenon, đã biết một số điều vừa nghiêm túc và toàn bích. Đó không phải là một bộ trang phục bó sát, một mặt nạ quyến rũ, một lớp sơn móng bong tróc, mà ở bên trong và thực chất, thâm nhập vào từng cá nhân, xâm chiếm toàn bộ thực thể. Ngay cả khi buồn phiền, thiếu kiên nhẫn, bị hạ nhục, lo lắng, thậm chí đam mê, người đứng đầu ở Java vẫn không để vị khách của mình nhìn thấu điều đó; ông sẽ đợi cho đến lúc chỉ còn một mình để trở về với những nỗi đau hay niềm vui của ông.” Cuối cùng, chúng ta hãy nói thêm rằng, bằng khả năng trí tuệ của họ, cái chỉ có thể phát triển hạn chế, người Mã Lai nằm trong số các chủng tộc mà chúng tôi thống nhất gọi là “trung bình”, nghĩa là hình thức trung gian giữa các chủng tộc hạ đẳng (người da đen) và các chủng tộc da trắng, được gọi là “thượng đẳng”. Nếu chúng ta vẫn nói rằng người Mã Lai, sau khi lần lượt theo đạo Bà La Môn và đạo Phật thì cuối cùng lại trở thành các tín đồ Hồi giáo, mà hơn nữa họ còn chưa bao giờ tỏ vẻ rao giảng một cách điên cuồng bất kỳ chủ thuyết nào, chúng ta có thể kết luận - và kết luận này phù hợp với kinh nghiệm - rằng họ không quá mộ đạo, đạo đức của họ, mất đi chỗ dựa tôn giáo, còn thô sơ. Đó là diện mạo chung của người Mã Lai đương đại. Tôi chỉ tập trung chỉ ra các đặc điểm nổi bật nhất của chủng tộc đó, nghĩa là những gì người ta tìm thấy không có ngoại lệ trong tất cả các đại diện hiện tại của họ, và những gì có thể biểu thị cho người Mã Lai cổ đại của vương quốc Champa. Đặc biệt, chúng tôi thấy hình dung của những tên cướp biển liều lĩnh này rất thú vị khi có thể phác thảo lại chính xác hòng hiểu rõ nó đã ảnh hưởng như thế nào lên quốc gia An Nam. Thật không may, chúng tôi chỉ còn có phương tiện khám soát thực tế; như chúng tôi đã nói, người Mã Lai cổ đại gần như đã biến mất khỏi Đông Dương. Tuy nhiên, điều cho phép giả định ở đây, đó là cư dân này - đôi khi quá hung tợn, quá mạnh mẽ, đến nỗi chúng tôi phải giả định họ thích mạo hiểm, băng qua biển cả trên những chiếc thuyền con, xâm chiếm vùng biển lân cận của bán đảo Đông Dương và các quần đảo xung quanh - như được tìm thấy trong các cuộc chiến bất tận, các câu chuyện được kể đầy trong biên niên sử của người An Nam, một việc tự nhiên đối với phẩm chất hiếu chiến đã phát triển nơi họ, ở mức độ cao, cùng sự nghị lực và tính can trường. Đôi khi chúng ta thấy trong tâm hồn người An Nam những phản chiếu thoáng qua nhiệt huyết của sự quật cường này. Thực sự, chỉ mỗi ảnh hưởng Trung Hoa không thể giải thích đầy đủ cho lịch sử đầy biến động - và quá lạ kỳ - của dân tộc An Nam. Chương III TÂM HỒN NGƯỜI AN NAM Bây giờ chúng ta có được tất cả yếu tố cần thiết để có thể khôi phục lại những quy luật phát sinh tính cách An Nam. Trong phạm vi mục tiêu này chúng ta sẽ lần lượt xem xét ba tính năng tinh thần chính: cảm xúc, ý chí, trí tuệ. I. Cảm xúc Khi đề cập đến ảnh hưởng môi trường vật chất, chúng ta đã bàn kỹ về khía cạnh cảm giác của người An Nam. Nhưng chúng ta cũng mới chỉ xem xét nó theo quan điểm sinh lý, trong mối quan hệ của nó với thể tạng chủng tộc và khí hậu. Chúng ta còn phải nghiên cứu nó trong những dạng thức cao hơn, những tình cảm, cái cùng với cảm giác phối nên tính cách, nếu như ta có thể nói như vậy. Sự tiến hóa tình cảm có liên kết chặt chẽ với sự tiến hóa trí tuệ. Duy nhất, chỉ trong các phương pháp phân tích, cần thiết cho mọi nghiên cứu tâm lý, chúng ta mới tách ra những yếu tố vốn dĩ luôn kết hợp với nhau trong tự nhiên. Mỗi tình cảm, như chúng ta biết, đòi hỏi phải có trước đó một ý tưởng mấu chốt cấu thành nên cơ sở của nó, “Bất kỳ tình cảm nào cũng che giấu một biểu hiện tinh thần, hình tượng hoặc ý tưởng.”[94] Do đó, sự tưởng tượng tái hiện, nghĩa là, khả năng khơi gợi một ấn tượng đã từng được cảm nhận, tạo nên một ảnh hưởng chủ đạo lên cảm xúc của não. Bằng tác động mạnh hay yếu nó sẽ in dấu lên tình cảm với lực mạnh hay nhẹ, theo hướng này hay hướng khác. Điều này bổ sung đầy đủ cho lời giải thích mà chúng tôi đã đưa ra ở trên, về sự bình tĩnh của người An Nam, về sự thanh thản của họ khi đối mặt với cái chết. Những gì E. Boutmy nói về người Anh có thể ứng hợp ở đây: “Họ không mong che giấu bằng sự kích động tăng tốc, bằng những cảnh sống động một viên đạn sượt qua trước mặt kèm âm thanh vút qua, rồi xương gãy, những cơn đau nhức nhối, như người Pháp[95].” Chúng ta cũng có thể nói về sự lặng lẽ này như những gì Dugald-Stewart đã nói về sự hèn nhát: “Đó là một căn bệnh của trí tưởng tượng.” Không nghi ngờ gì nữa, đó cũng là nguyên nhân góp phần gây nên sự vắng mặt gần như hoàn toàn cái cảm giác ngượng ngùng và thiếu lòng vị tha nơi người An Nam: cảnh tượng một người khỏa thân không hề khơi dậy nơi họ bất cứ ý tưởng xấu nào, họ không thể đồng cảm với nỗi đau hay sự thống khổ của người khác. Trong mối liên hệ này, cần lưu ý rằng, một cách tổng quát, tất cả tình cảm của người An Nam đều mang dấu ấn của sự vị kỷ thuần túy nhất. Không có một chút nhiệt tình hào phóng hay lòng nhân từ rộng lượng nào; trái tim thì đanh cứng, cằn cỗi, khô khốc. “Trái tim của bạn ngày càng nhỏ bé”, một triết gia nào đó từng nói. Nhờ vào câu châm ngôn tương tự, tình yêu cao thượng lại trở thành nhục dục tầm thường; tình cảm con cái dành cho cha mẹ chỉ là đạo hiếu. Tóm lại, không thể khởi được những ý tưởng quá trừu tượng, trí óc của họ chỉ có thể hoạt động trước những sự vật có thực, người An Nam không có khả năng cảm nhận những tình cảm quá phức tạp. Khuynh hướng của họ chủ yếu vẫn hướng về gia đình, họ không thể vượt ra ngoài vòng giới hạn. Chắc hẳn tâm hồn người An Nam đã phải thụ nhận những ý niệm về tổ quốc và lòng nhân đạo để hiểu được tình huynh đệ và lòng yêu nước. Tình thương yêu đồng loại, biểu hiện ở lòng trắc ẩn và bác ái, là những đức tính ít khi thấy hành xử ở An Nam. Không được có người nghèo ở xứ này, và trên thực tế không hề có. Mỗi gia đình phải tự chu cấp cho những nhu cầu của mình, mỗi làng xã phải lo liệu được cho người dân. Khí hậu, đất đai màu mỡ, thể chất chủng tộc đã tạo điều kiện để xứ này áp dụng và duy trì một quy tắc như vậy. Người An Nam, nhẫn nại và thụ động, bằng lòng với sự thiếu thốn, nhưng hiếm khi ở trong tình trạng bần cùng; ngược lại, họ không bao giờ tránh khỏi hàng vạn nỗi khổ nhân sinh khác. Bệnh tật chủ yếu gây ra cho họ những tai ách nghiêm trọng, và đặc biệt vào lúc đó họ thể hiện tính ích kỷ thầm kín của mình. Lịch sử cho chúng ta biết rằng những nạn nhân của bệnh dịch hạch, những người phong cùi và tất cả những người không may mắc phải một căn bệnh truyền nhiễm nào đó, chỉ sau một thời gian ngắn, liền bị tàn nhẫn đuổi khỏi nhà, bị bỏ rơi ngoài đồng hoặc nhốt cách ly ngoài làng như súc vật. Chưa chắc một đô thị quan trọng ở Annam đã có “trại phong” chỉ vì nó có “trường thi”, tòa án, nhà tù hoặc đền chùa của riêng mình; chủ nghĩa vị kỷ có những đền đài của nó cũng như tôn giáo, trật tự và an ninh công cộng. II. Ý chí Nếu nét đặc trưng của tình cảm người An Nam là sự lãnh đạm, thì sự trơ ỳ hẳn phải là đặc trưng của ý chí xứ này. Người An Nam ôn hòa và điềm tĩnh, có nghĩa là họ hiếm khi thể hiện sự thiếu kiên nhẫn và cũng không để bản thân nổi giận hoặc hung dữ bất chợt. Họ không đủ mạnh mẽ để bộc lộ như vậy. Tuy nhiên, đức tính này, theo ghi nhận cụ thể của P. Bouillevaux[96], phần nhiều là kết quả của sự lãnh đạm hơn là tính cách ôn hòa thực sự. Đừng tin vào vẻ điềm tĩnh của người xứ này; dưới cái vỏ bề ngoài bình tĩnh, họ có thể đang nuôi dưỡng lòng căm thù xấu xa nhất, mối thù hận sâu cay nhất, mong muốn báo thù khăng khăng nhất. Không thể nói thẳng thừng rằng người An Nam lười biếng; trái lại, họ siêng năng; rất ít người An Nam ăn không ngồi rồi; có điều, họ lao động một cách uể oải, đặc biệt là khi họ làm không phải do bị nhu cầu thúc bách hoặc không vì lợi riêng. Các kiều dân, thương nhân, kỹ nghệ gia, nói chung tất cả những ai phải thuê họ làm việc, dưới bất kỳ hình thức nào, đều quen thuộc với những điểm bất tiện của lực lượng lao động này. Để thực hiện công việc thường chỉ cần đến một người châu Âu, thì ở đây phải cần ít nhất bốn “phu thợ”... và một giám sát viên. Trong các ngôi nhà của người Pháp, người ta luôn thấy, để phục vụ cho một hoặc hai người, ít nhất phải có ba người hầu: một “anh bồi” (người hầu phòng), một đầu bếp và một “phu kéo xe”. Sự phân công lao động giữa họ bị đẩy đến mức cực đoan. Một nhà báo hóm hỉnh viết, “mỗi cá nhân phát triển toàn vẹn sự phân công lao động của mình, nếu thử tráo vai và yêu cầu họ giúp nhau, và nhất là tưởng tượng ra chuyện có một người giúp việc giỏi có thể làm hết mọi việc, thì ngay cả quét nhà cũng không có ai lo đâu.” Không nên quá đòi hỏi ở người An Nam bẩm sinh vô cảm quá mức. Khiếm khuyết này chắc chắn bắt nguồn từ những thiên hướng sinh lý di truyền mà ở một mức độ nhất định đã làm giảm bớt tính trách nhiệm của họ. Đối với (người Pháp) chúng ta, sự lười biếng là một khiếm khuyết nghiêm trọng, vì chúng ta có đủ sự năng nổ để khắc phục khuynh hướng bạc nhược này. Ở người An Nam, trái lại, biếng nhác là một tình trạng bình thường; năng động, mới là điều bất thường. Ý chí cùn nhụt của họ chỉ có thể thể hiện theo một hướng: thụ động. Từ “năng nổ” của chúng ta không có từ tương đương trong ngôn ngữ của họ. Sự kiên trì, năng động, sáng tạo, bao nhiêu là phẩm chất chưa được biết đến ở An Nam. Cha Bouillevaux nói, “người An Nam không kiên định. Họ bắt đầu vô cùng hăng hái một công việc hợp ý họ, họ khởi đầu tốt trong bất kỳ nghề nào; nhưng sau một vài tháng, nhiều nhất là vài năm, họ mệt mỏi, chán ghét, bỏ bê công việc và thường bỏ ngang nghề của mình, dù sau này vẫn phải làm tiếp khi nghèo đói. Người An Nam không có sự kiên trì, họ không thích quy tắc: họ thích hành sự tùy hứng, không nhất quán, không suy nghĩ thấu đáo.”[97] Người thợ An Nam làm việc chỉ để sống, những nhu cầu của họ phải nói là rất ít. Khi họ vừa rủng rỉnh đủ để sống trong một thời gian, họ sẽ ngừn	317,677
Đà Lạt - Một thời hương xa.pdf	BIỂU GHI BIÊN MỤC TRƯỚC XUẤT BẢN DO THƯ VIỆN KHTH TP.HCM THỰC HIỆN General Sciences Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nguyễn Vĩnh Nguyên, 1979- Đà Lạt, một thời hương xa / Nguyễn Vĩnh Nguyên. - In lần thứ 1. - T.P. Hồ Chí Minh : Trẻ, 2016. 400tr. ; 23cm. 1. Đà Lạt (Việt Nam) -- Mô tả và du lịch. I. Ts. 1. Đà Lạt (Vietnam) -- Description and travel. 915.976904 -- ddc 23 N573-N57 DU KHẢO VĂN HÓA ĐÀ LẠT GIAI ĐOẠN 1954-1975 NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN để tưởng nhớ ba tôi, người lạc thời, suy tưởng, cô đơn để tặng gia đình nhỏ yêu dấu của tôi để chuyện trò với những người yêu Đà Lạt. Vậy hành trình của anh thực ra là hành trình trong ký ức. — Italo Calvino Nhiều năm sau, ta cố giải mã các bí ẩn mà vào thời điểm đó không còn là bí ẩn nữa và ta muốn hiểu được những ký tự đã bị xóa phân nửa của một ngôn ngữ quá cổ xưa, thứ ngôn ngữ thậm chí ta còn không biết bảng chữ cái. — Patrick Modiano Thời hoàng kim xa quá chìm trong phôi pha Chờ đến bao giờ tái sinh cho người. — Cung Tiến MỤC LỤC DẪN NHẬP 11 DU HÀNH THỜI GIAN 23 Rue des Roses – tháng ngày xa khuất 25 Tiếng hắc tiêu trên đồi thông 37 Cà phê thời không “son phấn” 59 Café Tùng, từ thăm thẳm lãng quên 71 Cỏ xanh đổi sắc theo nhân tình 87 Một “nhà-dân-ngữ”, một khối huyền thoại 97 Một thời “quá thơ mộng và giang hồ” 119 Loài củi mục trên miền xứ bỏ hoang 127 Của thiên đường, của mộng, của thơ 141 KHÔNG GIAN ĐÃ MẤT 167 Thiên đường của những kho sách 169 Chuyến tàu trên biển thời gian bát ngát 181 Hai câu chuyện về tự trị đại học 189 Người tình của hoa đào 203 Một bước, tới Sài Gòn 217 “Như một bóng ma trong sương mù” 225 Sầu ca về thành phố 237 Trắng đen ký vãng 263 Cây đàn trong lòng đất 277 Lê Uyên-Phương, một vài góc khuất 289 La Dalat: người đẹp đồng bằng, tuấn mã cao nguyên hay giấc mơ Đà Lạt 301 Lối cũ, nhà xưa 313 PHỤ LỤC 325 Thời vàng son của đô thị giáo dục 327 Du lịch Đà Lạt đầu thập niên 1970 359 Hội hè thanh niên 365 7 công trình kiến trúc tiêu biểu được xây dựng trong giai đoạn 1954 – 1975 371 9 Thị trưởng Đà Lạt giai đoạn 1954 đến 1975 372 Tài liệu tham khảo 373 Lời cám ơn 377 Ghi chú 380 Mục từ tra cứu 394 ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 11 DẪN NHẬP Gần nửa đầu thế kỷ XX, người Pháp xây dựng Đà Lạt như một đô thị nghỉ dưỡng, nơi tái hiện khung cảnh núi Alps giữa vùng cao nguyên xứ Đông Dương với khoảng 1.300 ngôi biệt thự kiến trúc châu Âu. Không gian thành phố cao nguyên với hệ thống hồ nước nhân tạo nối trung tâm với những vùng canh nông, rừng thông trong phố như bộ máy điều hòa khí hậu tự nhiên khổng lồ, núi đồi ven đô là nơi lý tưởng cho những chuyến picnic, săn bắn, khách sạn xa hoa cho giới quan chức, không gian nhà thờ, tu viện cổ kính tái hiện không gian Trung Cổ bên trời Âu và cả trường học dạy Pháp ngữ là vườn ươm của con em giới quan chức chính quyền thực dân. Nhà nghiên cứu người Canada Eric T. Jennings không đưa ra con số chính xác, song có cơ sở khi nhận định rằng: “Một tỉ lệ lớn dân Pháp ở Đông Dương hoặc đã chào đời ở Đà Lạt, nghỉ mát ở Đà Lạt, hoặc vào một thời điểm nào đó học hành ở Đà Lạt, một nơi từ lâu được coi là vườn trẻ của thuộc địa này. Cho tới hôm nay, Đà Lạt vẫn ấp ủ hoài niệm và nuôi dưỡng niềm khát khao nào đó”1 Đúng là “yếu tố Pháp” ở Đà Lạt không chỉ nằm trong hoài niệm, mà còn ở chỗ, là đô thị từng “nuôi dưỡng một khát khao” về một hình mẫu xã hội đô thị Tây phương, một môi trường tận hưởng thiên nhiên hiền hòa, 12 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN thụ hưởng không gian giáo dục tiến bộ và tiếp nhận lối sống văn minh, lịch lãm mà những gia đình thượng lưu trí thức miền Nam ngưỡng vọng. Cần đặt niềm khát khao đó vào bối cảnh hậu thuộc địa, sự ảnh hưởng sâu xa của tư duy châu Âu trung tâm – dĩ Âu vi trung – nếu muốn lý giải trên bình diện tâm lý. Năm 1944, Đà Lạt có hơn 5.600 dân phương Tây cư trú. Nếp sống, văn hóa Âu, Pháp đậm đặc ở thành phố cao nguyên non trẻ này. Đến năm 1945, thực dân Pháp bắt đầu mất dần sức ảnh hưởng ở Đông Dương. Công cuộc vun đắp đô thị Đà Lạt như một thủ đô Liên bang Đông Dương của người Pháp khác nào một giấc mộng dang dở. Vị thế đó manh nha củng cố trong thời kỳ Hoàng triều cương thổ, khi biểu tượng Đà Lạt – trung tâm chính trị – gắn với sự trở lại ngắn ngủi, có gì đó khiên cưỡng và muộn màng của cựu hoàng Bảo Đại (từ 1950-1955), người đã trao ấn kiếm cho phía Việt Minh từ 1945. Ở vào mạt thời của chế độ phong kiến với những sức ép của cục diện chính trị mới – những chính sách của vị cựu hoàng nửa chủ nghĩa dân tộc phương Đông, nửa mang tinh thần xa hoa phương Tây trong lối sống và quản trị cộng với sự thiếu thực lực quân sự đã không đủ sức đưa thủ phủ Đà Lạt trở lại “đỉnh cao” (từ dùng của Eric T. Jennings) về địa chính trị như hy vọng được nữa. Nhưng thời kỳ này đánh dấu một giai đoạn chuyển tiếp quan trọng thuộc về cấu trúc dân số Đà Lạt. Sự “Việt Nam hóa” bắt đầu diễn ra tại đô thị quy mô nhỏ kiểu Pháp này. Năm 1952, Bảo Đại bỏ lệ lao động cưỡng bách trên toàn vùng Hoàng triều cương thổ và chấp nhận “nhập cư lao động” (dĩ nhiên, có qua sát hạch và được cấp căn cước gia nhập) để người Kinh có thể lên Đà Lạt nói riêng, lên “xứ Thượng Nam Đông Dương” nói chung2 – làm phu, thế dần bộ máy lao động của dân Thượng bản địa trước đó gánh vác, tạo ra một sự bình đẳng trong xã hội. Nhân sĩ, trí thức triều đình, người có gốc gác hoàng tộc ở Huế cũng chuyển đến Đà Lạt sống trong thời kỳ này, có nhiều đóng góp cho diện mạo văn hóa đô thị. Cuốn Địa chí Đà Lạt năm 1953 của Tòa Thị chính Đà Lạt có ghi chép mang tính tiên báo về một thời kỳ phát triển văn hóa rực rỡ của đô thị ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 13 này trong tương lai gần: “Đà Lạt phải trở thành trung tâm đại học của Việt Nam. Đà Lạt là một nơi vừa để nghỉ ngơi vừa để làm việc. Đà Lạt không ngừng phát triển và trong tương lai, trong một nước Việt Nam độc lập, Đà Lạt tràn đầy triển vọng”. [Bưu thiếp Đà Lạt năm 1951. Ảnh tư liệu] Khoảng đầu thập niên 1950 thì mỗi năm có khoảng 1.500 đến 2.000 người Kinh ở các vùng đồng bằng lên cao nguyên. Một số trường học: trường Huấn luyện Sĩ quan, trường Hành chánh Quốc gia và vài cơ sở giáo dục tiểu học của người Việt dần được thành lập vào giai đoạn này, trên thủ phủ của Hoàng triều cương thổ. Về an ninh, Đà Lạt trong năm 1953 vẫn được một số tư liệu Văn khố Quốc gia về Lãnh thổ Hải ngoại thuộc Pháp xem như là một thành phố “sống trong sự yên bình tuyệt đối”. Dù thời bấy giờ, đã âm ỉ xảy ra những cuộc thanh toán kiểu du kích của lực lượng Việt Minh nằm vùng nhằm vào mật thám và cộng đồng quan chức, trưởng giả Pháp còn sót lại, những phản ứng lần khần của binh lính Bảo Đại, những tranh giành quyền lực khi chính quyền Quốc gia của Bảo Đại bắt đầu có chính sách gần Mỹ, xa dần ảnh hưởng của Pháp. Nội tình chính trị không còn yên bình như vẻ ngoài của phong cảnh. 14 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Hoàng triều cương thổ hết vai trò lịch sử, tiến trình “Việt Nam hóa” ở Đà Lạt diễn ra nhanh chóng và ồn ào hơn, với đợt di dân năm 1954, sau hiệp định Genève. Quy hoạch đô thị giai đoạn này, nói như Eric T. Jennings, “đồ án 1942 của Lagisquet3 thậm chí đã được phủ bụi và đem ra sử dụng dưới thời tổng thống Ngô Đình Diệm”4. Dòng dân cư một triệu người từ bên kia vĩ tuyến 17 – đặc biệt là người dân theo đạo Công giáo dưới sự bảo trợ của chính quyền Ngô Đình Diệm – thiên di đến các đô thị miền Nam. Nhiều gia đình, trí thức tư sản tinh hoa ở Hà Nội đã chọn Đà Lạt làm chốn nhập cư. Quá trình thúc đẩy sự đồng hóa dân Thượng bản địa diễn ra ở đô thị này nhanh chóng hơn sau những nghi lễ hồ hởi bề mặt do chính quyền Việt Nam Cộng hòa tổ chức đón tiếp người Kinh mới đến. Phong trào khai hoang lập ấp ở các vùng ven Đà Lạt trong khoảng từ 1953-1956. Kết quả là gần 14.000 di dân đã định cư tại Đà Lạt vào năm 1956, và, theo đà đó, đến 1968, tức 5 năm sau khi chính quyền ông Ngô Đình Diệm sụp đổ, thì Đà Lạt căng mình đón 16.000 người Việt nhập cư mới. [Thủy tạ Đà Lạt, 1955. Ảnh: Đặng Văn Thông] ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 15 Đặc biệt, chính sách lập ấp chiến lược của chính quyền Ngô Đình Diệm năm 1962 cũng đã khuyến khích người Thượng từ các vùng núi dồn về trung tâm. Không gian đô thị trở nên sầm uất hẳn so với thời Hoàng triều cương thổ. Việc trở thành cư dân Đà Lạt có vẻ dễ dàng hơn nhiều so với trước đó. Nhưng điều may mắn, đó là bởi đô thị này phát triển theo hướng đẩy mạnh chức năng giáo dục, theo đó là những dịch vụ vệ tinh phục vụ cho đời sống ăn học, tinh thần, cho nên, bầu khí quyển văn hóa chi phối lối sống cư dân nói chung trong lành, nề nếp. Chức năng giáo dục cũng tạo ra một màng lọc tự nhiên đối với thành phần dân cư, hình thành một không khí trí thức thuần nhất, hiếm đô thị nào có được. Đà Lạt có nhà in Trí Hương5, Lâm Viên6, có tờ tuần báo riêng mang măng-sét Đà Lạt từ giữa thập niên 1950, in ronéo. Trước đó, cuối thập niên 1940, cũng tại Đà Lạt, nhà thơ Nguyễn Vỹ chủ trương tờ Dân Chủ, đưa ra quan điểm đối lập trực tiếp với chính quyền quân chủ Bảo Đại, ít lâu sau bị đình bản. Tiếp đó, ông mở báo Dân Ta, và cũng nhận cái kết không có hậu. Đáng kể, từ tháng Giêng năm 1952, với chủ trương báo chí là “tia sáng của văn hóa phải rọi khắp trong quốc dân”, Nguyễn Vỹ tiếp tục trong vai trò chủ bút, cho ấn hành tờ tạp chí Phổ Thông ra hàng tháng, công khai khẩu hiệu “Truyền bá trí thức – Nâng cao văn hóa”. Những số đầu của báo Phổ Thông được thực hiện tại Đà Lạt (tòa soạn đặt tại số 2 đường Khải Định) sau này thì dời về Sài Gòn, trở thành một trong những tờ nguyệt san uy tín hàng đầu trong làng báo chí miền Nam. 16 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Đà Lạt có đài phát thanh với những chương trình âm nhạc, trao đổi nghệ thuật, nơi nâng cánh cho những tài năng trẻ. Sự xuất hiện của nhóm nhạc Ngàn thông trên sóng radio, nơi xuất hiện một Từ Công Phụng, với chương trình Mây cao nguyên với sự tỏa sáng của Lê Uyên và Phương. Trước đó, cũng từ sóng radio, Sỹ Phú, Tôn Thất Niệm cũng được khán giả khắp nơi biết đến. Nhiều danh ca: Khánh Ly, Tuấn Ngọc, Thanh Tuyền,… các nhạc sĩ: Hoàng Nguyên, Nguyễn Ánh 9 cũng chọn Đà Lạt như điểm xuất phát trong sự nghiệp âm nhạc của mình. Đà Lạt cũng có những quán cà phê tụ điểm trí thức, những thư viện, rạp chiếu bóng và phòng trà văn minh, lịch lãm, mang sắc thái riêng của văn hóa đô thị theo mô thức phương Tây mà giới tinh hoa và du khách đặt chân đến cảm thấy gắn bó, hài lòng, xem như “thiên đường”. Đà Lạt đã chính thức trở thành một đặc khu văn hóa, giáo dục với sự ra đời của nhiều trường học từ tiểu học công, tư thục đến viện đại học. Từ yếu tố nền tảng là thành phần dân cư địa phương tương đối đồng nhất (Công giáo chiếm phần lớn; các phong trào Phật giáo theo xu hướng truyền thống, ôn hòa; dân cư làm nông theo mô hình quy hoạch thôn - ấp truyền thống có hương tục và tầng lớp hương thân; thành phần công chức, giáo viên vẫn duy trì lề lối làm việc kiểu công sở Tây; những người buôn bán trong môi trường thương mại tương đối nhỏ hẹp, ít áp lực cạnh tranh hay phải chụp giật, giẫm đạp lên tha nhân để tồn tại…) cộng với chức năng một đặc khu về giáo dục, với sự ra đời của Viện Đại học Đà Lạt, Giáo Hoàng Học viện thánh Piô X, trường Võ bị, Chiến tranh Chính trị và một hệ thống trường tiểu học, trung học có từ thời Pháp thuộc đến những trường dòng với chế độ giáo dục vừa nghiêm ngặt vừa khai phóng… đã tạo ra một môi trường xã hội đô thị yên ổn, ít cảnh bon chen; hướng đến những giá trị tinh thần; coi trọng người học thức và cổ súy cho những giá trị sáng tạo, tiến bộ. “Những di sản thuộc địa” hữu hình trong thời nọ thời kia có thể bị tìm cách tẩy xóa bằng cách này hay cách khác, nhưng sức sống văn hóa mạnh mẽ từ “mã gene” đô thị đó, trong lối ứng xử văn hóa thì vẫn âm ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 17 thầm được tiếp nối, cộng hưởng với khả năng hội tụ thành phần trí thức khắp nơi đến tiêu dao, tìm nguồn cảm hứng sáng tạo, giảng dạy, nghiên cứu đã tạo ra một “Đà Lạt tính”, một căn tính văn hóa đô thị không lẫn vào đâu. Tôi đã nghĩ rằng, những người Pháp, Âu đầu tiên đến với phương Đông, trước hết bởi sự hấp dẫn bí ẩn thuộc về một xứ khác, kẻ khác, một thế giới ở ngoài mình. Một đô thị trên cao nguyên xứ Đông Dương được hình thành khác chi sự hiện thực hóa giấc mơ viễn du tìm kiếm hương xa (exotisme) của những nhà kiến tạo đô thị Pháp thực dân nhưng lại duy văn hóa. Hương xa, ở chiều kích khác, cũng là một mảnh cấu thành trong tâm thức “dĩ Âu vi trung” thời hậu thuộc địa theo chiều ngược lại (tiếp nhận, hồi đáp). Điều này lý giải cho việc chính những trí thức bản xứ ngưỡng vọng, tự nguyện mô phỏng một mô hình văn hóa nối tiếp giấc mơ dang dở mà những nhà sáng lập danh nghĩa thực dân vừa mới rời đi sau những đợt sóng vận động của lịch sử. Trí thức, nghệ sĩ miền Nam tìm đến, cống hiến sáng tạo hay chí ít trải nghiệm Đà Lạt, bởi trong sâu thẳm hình dung, họ tìm thấy ở đó hình bóng một “Paris”, phổ quát hơn, là một bối cảnh, hệ giá trị phương Tây để theo đuổi. Như vậy, Đà Lạt là một biểu tượng đô thị hương xa xét từ cả hai chiều kích. Với lập luận trên, ta sẽ giải thích dễ dàng hơn những hiện tượng văn hóa diễn ra như việc một thời, các nghệ sĩ sống ở miền Nam, có những người từng du học tại Pháp (trong nhóm Trịnh Cung, Đinh Cường, Đặng Tiến, Trịnh Công Sơn, Vũ Khắc Khoan, Hoàng Anh Tuấn…) ưa thích tìm đến Đà Lạt sống và sáng tạo. Nguyễn Thị Hoàng đến Đà Lạt dạy học một thời gian để viết ra những tác phẩm về tình yêu thuở học trò gây tiếng vang. Ta lại thấy Phạm Công Thiện, Nguyễn Bạt Tụy chọn làm nơi náu mình để nghiên cứu, chiêm nghiệm, theo đuổi học thuật trong bối cảnh chiến tranh li loạn. Ở họ, có sự mê say vụng dại hồ hởi của tuổi trẻ, sự cực đoan đáng yêu của người hứng tâm với tri thức, nhưng cũng có những thứ được tạo nên từ sự trưởng thành rất đặc biệt trong một môi trường nhân văn lý tưởng; đóng góp cho văn hóa đất nước nói chung. 18 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN [Khu Hòa Bình, Đà Lạt 1952. Ảnh: Bill Robie] Nếu Paris từng là nơi lang bạt của những văn nhân nghệ sĩ Mỹ thuộc thế hệ “Lost Generation” (Thế hệ bỏ đi) như F. Scott Fitzgerald, E. Hemingway… vào những thập niên 1920 - 1930, thì với sự du hành văn hóa, dường như đã có một “Lost Generation”như thế ở những nghệ sĩ Việt Nam tuổi đôi mươi của Sài Gòn tìm đến Đà Lạt từ khoảng giữa thập niên 1950 đến cuối thập niên 1960 với những đầu óc chất đầy “chọn lựa”, “vấn đề”, “hiện sinh”, “dấn thân”, “tuổi trẻ băn khoăn”... Một kẻ hát rong trong gánh Đức Huy - Charlot Miều sớm nhận ra và gọi rất đúng cái tâm thế “vọng ngoại”, đúng hơn là “vọng Âu” đó trong một lần dừng chân ở Đà Lạt vào năm 1944: “Đã được đi nhiều nơi trên đất nước nhưng tôi không thấy phong cảnh ở đâu đẹp như ở đây. Mang tinh thần vọng ngoại như hầu hết thanh niên thời đó, tôi sung sướng được tới một thành phố giống như ở Âu châu. Tưởng mình đang ở Thụy Sỹ hay Đức quốc”. Kẻ hát rong đó là nhạc sĩ đa tình Phạm Duy, cũng là người có bản “tự thú” rất chân thành rằng, về sau ông đã trở lại Đà Lạt hơn chục lần, “lần nào cũng nằm tròn trong vòng tay ân ái của một người tình”7. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 19 Trong một số bức ảnh tư liệu của Đinh Cường, Trịnh Công Sơn chụp tại Đà Lạt vào khoảng 1964 - 1965, có thể thấy những chàng trai tuổi đôi mươi thuộc “nhóm bạn nghệ sĩ đường Hoa Hồng” miệng ngậm pipe, mình khoác áo manteau, nét mặt thường trực nỗi suy tư xa vắng. Rất dễ dàng nhận ra trên con đường “thơ mộng và giang hồ” của họ luôn có cái bóng của ông Jean-Paul Sartre. Nói khác đi, Sartre phủ trùm lên tư tưởng lẫn hình thức, phong thái cuộc sống của họ. Với những người đến Đà Lạt để học hành, nghiên cứu thì có dịp trải nghiệm một Đà Lạt tuy nhỏ, nhưng thấp thoáng bóng dáng thành phố quốc tế trong giáo dục. Những học trình, bằng cấp ở những trường Tây như Lycée Yersin, Collège d’Adran, Dalat School... đều được thế giới công nhận. Những sinh viên tốt nghiệp phân ngành Sư phạm tại Viện Đại học Đà Lạt khi ra trường có thể sang Pháp, Mỹ xin việc, theo đuổi nghề giáo dễ dàng. Những nhà nghiên cứu tại Giáo Hoàng Học viện Thánh Piô X có thể tiếp tục làm việc, giảng dạy tại những Viện nghiên cứu danh giá ở châu Âu… Đà Lạt từng là nơi hiện thực hóa giấc mơ theo đuổi học thuật của nhiều nhà nghiên cứu nổi tiếng thế giới mà tôi sẽ có dịp nhắc đến trong quyển sách này. Ngắn ngủi, chóng vánh nhưng để lại những sắc thái sâu đậm – đó là những gì có thể nói về Đà Lạt – thành phố của tri thức, văn hóa và của những cuộc du hành, không gian ẩn dật thú vị cho những nhân vật được đề cập trong cuốn sách này. Trong đó, có hai nhân vật chính khách: Ngô Đình Nhu, Nguyễn Tường Tam. Tuy khuynh hướng chính trị khác nhau, nhưng hai ông ít nhất một lần, từng nuôi ý định sẽ gắn bó với thành phố yên bình này suốt phần đời còn lại. Vậy thì tâm tính Đà Lạt là gì? Phải chăng đó còn là một tinh thần thư nhàn, phiêu du được diễn giải qua hình ảnh “tuấn mã cao nguyên” – La Dalat trong cuộc trở lại của nhà doanh nghiệp Pháp vào đầu thập niên 1970 hay là một đời sống phong lưu, một không gian sinh hoạt trí thức và một điều kiện văn hóa tinh lọc hướng đến hàn lâm hoặc là những ảo tưởng thoát ly mang sắc thái viễn mơ? 20 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Trong giấc mộng đẹp luôn thấp thoáng một nguy cơ của sự vỡ mộng. Nói theo lý thuyết về du hành và hồi đáp văn hóa của Edward Wadie Said8, thì Đà Lạt có thể xem là một case study (trường hợp tiêu biểu để nghiên cứu) khá thú vị. Mong mỗi người đọc sau khi tiếp cận với những câu chuyện trong quyển sách này cũng sẽ bổ sung thêm những “gạch đầu dòng” về tâm tính Đà Lạt cùng với cảm nhận riêng. Dù rằng, bản sắc, căn tính hay kể cả tâm tính là những thứ mà ngôn từ của lý tính thường bất khả hàm chứa trọn vẹn. Làm sao phân chất một mùi hương?9 Với cá nhân người viết, việc du hành về một đô thị thuở vàng son ký ức để tìm cách tái hiện những câu chuyện và phần nào, nỗ lực giải mã chúng có thể xem là một cuộc phiêu lưu đầy kỳ thú, dĩ nhiên, không ít nhọc nhằn. Điều đó có ý nghĩa như cách thế trả món nợ hiểu biết với thành phố mà mình từng gắn bó suốt năm năm thời đẹp nhất của tuổi trẻ. Nhưng có lúc, đó lại có thể là một việc làm tự thấy quá sức. Hãy còn nhiều con người, sự việc còn chìm trong mù sương lịch sử, cần thời gian và sự hành trì sâu hơn về dĩ vãng. Vì thế, mục tiêu của cuốn sách có tính du khảo này không kỳ vọng đạt đến tính khoa học nghiêm trang, nhưng phần nào minh định vài câu chuyện, đóng góp vài phát hiện nhỏ, kết nối một số tư liệu khảo cứu – kinh nghiệm thực địa với mục đích gần, đó là gợi mở một lối tiếp cận lịch sử đô thị nhân văn. Hy vọng điều này sẽ đem lại chút hữu ích cho những nhà nghiên cứu Đà Lạt đến sau. Giả như mục đích đó không mảy may đạt được, thì chí ít, cũng mong độc giả xem đây là một buổi cà phê tán gẫu không quá nhạt nhẽo với một người yêu Đà Lạt bằng một tình yêu quá lớn trong một năng lực hữu hạn. Trong chuỗi truyện mà Marco Polo – nhà du hành vĩ đại đến từ phương Tây – với Hốt Tất Liệt, vị đại hãn thứ năm của Mông Cổ về các thành phố mà ông đã từng đi qua, thì tôi đặc biệt nhớ mẩu chuyện về thành phố có tên Zirma. Đó là một nơi chốn mà mỗi cảnh tượng diễn ra đều bị “chồng lặp”, chính vì thế, chúng nhắc nhớ, neo đọng lại trong tâm ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 21 tưởng con người ta lâu dài. Phải chăng sự sống ký ức về không gian văn hóa của chúng ta về một nơi chốn, hay cụ thể hơn, thời vang bóng của một đô thị thì cũng mang một cơ chế gần như thế? Những kỷ niệm, ấn tượng, sự kiện, con người, khí hậu… sẽ có lý để được “chồng lặp” lại mãi trong hồi ức, đôi khi chống lại cả một thực tại cuồng khấu, bạo tàn và phũ phàng đang diễn ra hằng ngày trên da thịt thành phố. Như thi nhân xao xuyến tìm má hồng của cố nhân thuở hoa đào năm cũ: Trước sau nào thấy bóng người/ hoa đào năm ngoái còn cười gió đông10. Italo Calvino, nhà văn dệt mộng người Ý, kẻ chuyên nhấn chìm thực tại vào trong cõi vô hình bằng phép thuật ngôn ngữ, đã diễn dịch cuộc trò chuyện của nhà du hành giàu có ký ức, tưởng tượng và trải đời với một vị đại hãn – biểu tượng vương quyền chóng qua (nhưng ít ra, còn biết đối thoại!) – về Zirma11, rằng: “Ký ức chồng lắp dư dôi, những ký hiệu được lặp lại để mà thành phố khởi sự tồn tại”. Đà Lạt trong ký ức những người từng gắn bó ngày hôm qua, phải chăng, cũng thế? Vậy thì chiều kích thứ ba của cái gọi là tinh thần hương xa mà cuốn sách này mong muốn gợi mở là nằm ở nỗi hoài cảm về một “thời hoàng kim xa quá chìm trong phôi pha”, theo lối nói của Cung Tiến. Một mối u hoài đi cùng cảm giác mất mát khó giãi bày, có lẽ cũng là cảm trạng chung của những người từng gắn bó với Đà Lạt. Xin xem đây như là một sự chia sẻ. Hành trình đi vào lịch sử nhân văn của một đô thị nhiều thăng trầm như Đà Lạt chắc chắn sẽ không dừng lại ở đây. Hy vọng quyển sách đơn sơ này sẽ là những nét phác thảo gợi được một chút xúc cảm và hứng thú để chặng tiếp theo của cuộc du hành về quá khứ, tác giả của nó sẽ bớt đi phần nào cảm giác đơn độc. Xin mời độc giả đồng hành. Tác giả Saigon, đầu mùa mưa, 2016 DU HÀNH THỜI GIAN 24 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 25 RUE DES ROSES, THÁNG NGÀY XA KHUẤT Đà Lạt quá bé nhỏ và khiêm cung. Nên nếu phải kể đến một con đường ôm mang trong nó đầy đủ nhất những cung bậc thăng trầm của lịch sử, là việc khó. Nhưng hãy nhìn sâu vào cốt cách văn hóa của đô thị này, như cách đi vào bên trong những cánh sóng trên một đóa hoa hồng, ta sẽ gặp ở đó câu chuyện thời gian, trong từng rực rỡ có màu tàn phai… Thuở ban đầu Đà Lạt được nhà thám hiểm A. Yersin phát hiện từ 1893. Thập niên đầu của thế kỷ XX, nơi đây đã là trạm nghỉ dưỡng của người Pháp. Qua lần quy hoạch thứ nhất (năm 1923, của kiến trúc sư Ernest Hébrard), sắc vóc đô thị dần hình thành. Nhưng mãi đến bản quy hoạch chỉnh trang năm 1933 của Louis Georges Pineau thì một mô hình đô thị “thức thời” và “chức năng” mới thực sự được biểu hiện rõ ràng hơn. Eric T. Jennings, sử gia người Canada trong vai một hướng dẫn viên du lịch dẫn ta về Đà Lạt những năm 1930: 26 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN “Sau khi đặt chân xuống sân nhà ga kiểu art deco, một du khách đến Đà Lạt vào cuối những năm 1930 sẽ đi ngang qua ngôi trường gạch đỏ Lycée Yersin lấy cảm hứng từ Thụy Điển đang trong giai đoạn hoàn thành, sau đó đi men theo bờ hồ trung tâm trung tâm dọc đại lộ Albert Sarraut. Họ liếc thấy nhà thủy tạ Grenouillère bên tay trái với quầy rượu và các cầu ván nhảy bơi lặn, và thưởng lãm dinh thự của toàn quyền nằm trên đỉnh đồi toàn cây thông bao phủ về bên tay trái. Giống như đến bây giờ vẫn thế, hương thơm của những loài cây thường xanh thoảng trong không khí, khơi gợi những ký ức mãnh liệt cho những kiều dân thuộc địa. Từ xa, du khách này sẽ dõi theo những núi đồi nhấp nhô dọc bình nguyên, trải dài ngút tầm mắt. Một vài chóp nhọn nhô lên trên những ngôi biệt thự trên cao hoặc các tu viện. Bên kia hồ về phía tay phải, du khách sẽ ra sân gôn của hoàng đế An Nam. Kế đó là ba khung cảnh hiện ra, phô trương một sự tương phản hoàn toàn: thẳng phía trước là khu hành chính, trong đó người ta có thể nhận ra lực lượng hiến binh, nhà thờ bằng gạch, những khách sạn trắng tinh và các phòng thuế vụ. Xa hơn phía trước là một trong những khu vực chính kề cận nhau của người Âu và những ngôi biệt thự ngẫu hứng, cũng nằm trên một triền dốc, dọc theo những tên đường gợi nhiều liên tưởng như Rue des Roses (đường Hoa Hồng) và Rue des Glaïeuls (đường Hoa Lay-ơn)”12. [Con em một gia đình thượng lưu người Việt sống trong ngôi biệt thự trên đường Hoa Hồng vào thập niên 1950. Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình bà Nguyễn Thị Phong] ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 27 Năm 1933, đường bộ Đà Lạt - Sài Gòn thông xe. Đường sắt Đà Lạt - Tháp Chàm thông tuyến năm 1932. Nhà ga Đà Lạt hoàn thành năm 1938. Nhiều cơ sở chính của thành phố được mở mang trong thời gian này. “Sự phát triển của Đà Lạt hình như là hậu quả của sự cải tiến các phương tiện giao thông và sự dồi dào của vốn đầu tư” (…) “Nam Kỳ giàu có tiếp sức cho đà phát triển của Đà Lạt và cung cấp vốn sử dụng trong việc hình thành những khu phố đẹp. Đà Lạt trở thành một thành phố giáo dục quan trọng. Trường trung học được quyết định xây dựng năm 1926 và kéo dài đến hết năm 1941. Trường Đức Bà Lang Bian - Notre Dame du Langbian (hay còn gọi là Couvent des Oiseaux, nay là trường Dân tộc nội trú Lâm Đồng) được thi công từ năm 1934 đến năm 1936 và Thánh Tâm (Sacré Coeur) được xây năm 1940. Đồng thời, lục quân và hải quân cũng thiết lập những trại nghỉ hè. Doanh trại Courbet được quy hoạch năm 1930. Một doanh trại quân đội rộng 24 hec-ta sẽ mọc lên ở phía đông thành phố vào năm 1937. Về hướng Bắc, Trường Thiếu sinh quân (Ecole des Enfants de Troupe Eurasien, nằm ở khu đất ngày nay là Đại học Đà Lạt) chiếm 38 hec-ta từ năm 1939 dành cho trẻ em lai. Các khu phố đường Hoa Lay-ơn, đường Hoa Hồng, cư xá Saint Benoît được xây dựng. Về phía Tây Bắc và phía Nam của thành phố, người Việt Nam thành lập các khu phố. Hồ được xây dựng xong năm 1935”13 Cuốn Địa chí Đà Lạt 1953 cũng ghi chú thêm, vào thời điểm Rue des Roses được xây dựng (khoảng cuối thập niên 1930), Đà Lạt có 13.000 người, trong đó có khoảng 10.000 người Việt Nam, nhưng hai năm sau, dân số đã vượt lên 20.000 người. Đây là thời kỳ đồ án quy hoạch năm 1933 của kiến trúc sư Louis Georges Pineau được hiện thực hóa với mô hình một đô thị chức năng – “thành phố thư nhàn”, cấu trúc hài hòa với thiên nhiên, có hình rẻ quạt hướng về phía núi Lang Bian. Tư duy quy hoạch 1933 của Pineau về sau cũng được kiến trúc sư H. Mondet kế thừa trong đồ án về “Chương trình chỉnh trang và phát triển Đà Lạt” (1940) và được kiến trúc sư Jacques Lagisquet nghiên cứu trong “Chương trình chỉnh trang và phát triển Đà Lạt” (1943). Rue des Roses được sinh ra trong điều kiện đó. Như thế, ngay từ ban 28 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN đầu, nó đã là một con đường kiểu mẫu về sự hài hòa kiến trúc với khung cảnh, địa thế với tổng thể địa lý thành phố. Đường Hoa Hồng Những biệt thự kiến trúc châu Âu hoa mỹ trên con đường men theo sườn đồi, ẩn hiện dưới những tán thông, tùng cổ thụ một thời là nơi ở của đa số quan chức, công chức cấp cao người Pháp. Sau 1950, chúng bắt đầu dần dần thuộc sở hữu của giới trung lưu, thượng lưu và quan chức, công chức khá giả người Việt. Cao điểm nhất là vào đầu những năm 1960, Rue des Roses dưới tên gọi được Việt hóa – đường Hoa Hồng – chính là nơi chốn trọ của một nhóm nghệ sĩ trí thức chọn Đà Lạt làm đất sáng tạo.  Họa sĩ Trịnh Cung đã từng thuê một gian trong căn biệt thự số 11 đường Hoa Hồng trong hai năm, 1962-1963. Đây là căn biệt thự của bà Nghiên, vợ một quan chức cấp cao trong chính quyền Bảo Đại. Ông bà Nghiên lấy nhau ở Paris, sau đó chuyển về Đà Lạt sinh sống trong thời Hoàng triều cương thổ. Cuộc hôn nhân đổ vỡ, khi ra tòa ly dị, người vợ được tòa phán quyết chia cho căn biệt thự này. Là một trí thức Tây học, bà Nghiên có lối sống như những người Pháp láng giềng, biết thụ hưởng những giá trị tinh thần cao nhã, mê tranh và khá sành nhạc cổ điển. Sau Trịnh Cung, họa sĩ Đinh Cường cũng đến và lưu trú tại studio trong ngôi biệt thự này. Trong một bài hồi ức, họa sĩ Trịnh Cung kể: “Cuối năm 1962, tôi bỏ dạy vẽ, khăn gói lên Ðà Lạt theo đề nghị bảo trợ cho tôi một cuộc sống chỉ để vẽ, mọi thứ đều được anh bạn yêu tranh tôi, tên là Thọ, đài thọ. Anh Thọ có đồn điền ở Lâm Ðồng và có vài pharmacy ở Sài Gòn, dân du học ở Pháp về. Hồi đó dân chơi Sài Gòn đặt nick cho hai công tử, Lân Simca Ðỏ (Hoàng Kim Lân) và Thọ Florid Trắng, đó là chỉ hai chiếc xe mui trần nổi bật giữa Sài Gòn hoa lệ thời 60 của hai chàng. Anh Thọ lớn hơn tôi khoảng 5 tuổi, thuê cho tôi một căn hộ trong biệt thự nằm trên đường Hoa Hồng nay là đường Huỳnh Thúc Kháng, Ðà Lạt. Nơi mà Ðinh Cường thường đề cập khi anh viết về Ðà Lạt một thời. Việc cơm nước, anh Thọ giao cho bà chủ biệt thự này lo toan cho tôi mỗi ngày. Rong chơi và vẽ là nhiệm vụ mà tôi phải hoàn thành, anh Thọ muốn thế. Tôi thật quá may mắn! Và cũng nhờ chỗ ở này mà tôi đã đưa Trịnh Công Sơn và Ðinh Cường về ở chung mỗi khi hai bạn giang hồ lên Ðà Lạt và sau hai năm ở đó với bao kỷ niệm đẹp, tôi rời về Sài Gòn theo lệnh động viên vào quân trường Thủ Ðức. Từ đó Ðinh Cường tiếp tục ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 29 thuê căn phòng ở số 1014 đường Hoa Hồng này, cùng ở với Ðỗ Long Vân bỏ dạy Văn khoa Huế, lên làm thư viện tại Viện Ðại học Ðà Lạt từ năm 1963 đến 1965, ăn cơm tháng ở nhà phía sau của vợ chồng Hoàng Anh Tuấn. Trịnh Công Sơn hay từ Bảo Lộc về ở lại nơi này. Cũng là thời mà Trung úy Nguyễn Xuân Thiệp, Trưởng Đài phát thanh Quân đội Ðà Lạt, hay ghé mỗi đêm khi ở đài ra.”15 Trên báo Trẻ ở Dallas, Nguyễn Xuân Thiệp có đoạn hồi ký nhắc đến sinh hoạt văn nghệ năm 1964 của nhóm bạn nghệ sĩ sống trọ ở đường Hoa Hồng: [Họa sĩ Đinh Cường trước ngôi biệt thự số 11 đường Hoa Hồng (ảnh chụp khoảng 1964). Ảnh: Tư liệu Đinh Trường Chinh] “… Nguyễn (tức, Nguyễn Xuân Thiệp – NV) đã gặp các bạn Đinh Cường và Trịnh Công Sơn rồi Khánh Ly và bao nhiêu người nữa. Giáng sinh, kéo nhau đi uống bia, rồi về đàn hát ở studio Đinh Cuờng trên đường Roses. Có đêm uống rượu ở kiosque Dì Ba, hay vào Night Club dưới chân Đài phát thanh nghe Khánh Ly hát.” 30 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Đường Hoa Hồng xuất hiện nhiều trong thơ và hồi ký Đinh Cường. Với chàng trai duy mỹ của một thời, đây là con đường mang lại không gian tĩnh lặng, lý tưởng cho sáng tạo. Ông hồi tưởng: “Thời tuổi trẻ đã qua, sáng ở đầu sông nhớ núi, đêm nằm trong núi nhớ sông, những chuyến đi giang hồ chỉ để nhìn thấy cái diệu kỳ của thiên nhiên, nỗi hoang vu của trời đất… và luôn nuôi ngọn lửa sáng tạo. Thời ngồi vẽ suốt đêm, một căn phòng có ngọn đèn không tắt trong một biệt thự trên đường Roses – Đà Lạt” Hay ở một tùy bút khác, họa sĩ Đinh Cường viết: “Căn phòng thuê ở đường Roses, suốt mùa là những cánh hoa mong manh ấy, đủ màu, chen dưới những đốm lá xanh tròn. Căn phòng có cánh cửa không khóa, có ngọn đèn cháy cả đêm. Cả đêm, tôi say sưa vẽ, và Đỗ Long Vân say sưa dí mắt cận vào sách. Từng đống vỏ Bastos xanh. Từng khuôn mặt bè bạn: Thiệp, Sơn, Mai, Christan, Tường, Sâm,…” Nhà 11 đường Hoa Hồng còn là nơi cư ngụ của vợ chồng nhà thơ, đạo diễn Hoàng Anh Tuấn16 – Ngô Thy Liên. Ông Hoàng Anh Tuấn là nhà điện ảnh gốc Hà Nội, du học tại Pháp, chọn Đà Lạt làm nơi phát triển sự nghiệp. Ông chính là quản đốc đài phát thanh Đà Lạt giai đoạn giữa thập niên 1960. Đà Lạt cũng đi qua thơ ông như một bức thủy mặc ngôn từ đầy diễm ảo khói sương: Thơ về Đà Lạt Mây đi lạc xuống ven hồ cẩm thạch Là hoang vu tà áo gọi bâng khuâng Em mong manh tay cầm nhánh hoa hồng Bước hờ hững dưới pha lê mưa bụi. Vuông cửa kính lạnh hoen mờ tiếc nuối Bàn tay lau nghe giá buốt tâm hao Nhưng thấy em, ta hái đóa chiêm bao Bỗng nghe tiếng ta gọi em: Đà Lạt! ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 31 Có những buổi trăng về từ suối bạc Đem phong lan trang điểm một trời hương Đà Lạt của ta trong thần thoại hoang đường Lang tình tứ đã gặp Bian e ấp. Anh đã gặp em một lần duy nhất Đà Lạt em, Đà Lạt vẫn của anh Tình yêu đẹp như bức tranh thủy mặc. [Biệt thự số 11 đường Hoa Hồng năm xưa, nay đã được xây mới hoàn toàn; là khách sạn Saigon Port, số 17 Huỳnh Thúc Kháng. Ảnh: NVN] 32 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Trong một tùy bút đăng trên blog, nhà văn Trần Thị Nguyệt Mai viết những dòng đầy hoài niệm về không gian bè bạn văn nghệ một thời nơi con đường đẹp nhất thành phố sương mù: “Nhớ ngôi nhà ở đường Roses, nơi Hoàng Anh Tuấn và Ngô Thy Liên cùng các cháu cư ngụ . Ngôi nhà đó cũng là nơi quần tụ của Rừng, Đỗ Long Vân, Đinh Cường, Trịnh Công Sơn, Khánh Ly… nhớ bông phù dung trong vườn và bức tranh Khỏa thân nâu hồng của Đinh Cường”. Nhưng cũng ở ngôi biệt thự sang trọng này, về sau đã xảy ra một biến cố gây kinh hoàng cho những nghệ sĩ trẻ từng trú ngụ. Khoảng 1964, bà Nghiên, chủ ngôi biệt thự đã bị người làm thuê đánh chết bằng một cán cuốc (theo lời kể của những người hàng xóm). Họa sĩ Trịnh Cung kể lại: “Căn hộ này còn là một câu chuyện về người đàn bà đẹp, quyền quý, chủ căn hộ, người nấu và dọn cho tôi những bữa cơm theo kiểu Pháp và dạy tôi nghe nhạc cổ điển vào mỗi tối thứ Bảy. Thế rồi, một lần Ðinh Cường và Trịnh Công Sơn đã vào quân trường Thủ Ðức thăm tôi vào một sáng Chủ Nhật năm 1964 và báo cho tôi một tin dữ: ‘Bà Nghiên bị giết vào nửa đêm tại phòng khách của biệt thự, máu văng lên bức chân dung toa vẽ bà ấy’.”17 Đường Hoa Hồng dài chưa đến 2km quá nổi tiếng không chỉ là nơi tụ tập của nhóm bạn nghệ sĩ này. Cách căn biệt thự mà ông Cung, ông Cường từng lưu trú mươi bước chân, là ngôi biệt thự số 17 của gia đình đạo diễn Thái Thúc Nha (1920 -1986), chủ hãng phim Alpha lừng lẫy ở miền Nam trước 1975. Là một đạo diễn tài năng, vây quanh ông rất nhiều bóng hồng một thời. Con đường thơ mộng từng dập dìu hương sắc. Tài tử, giai nhân trong các đoàn làm phim thường xuyên lui tới ngôi biệt thự 17 đường Roses. Giới am hiểu điện ảnh trước 1975 có lẽ vẫn nhớ Thái Thúc Nha là người đã đưa Thanh Lan, cô cháu gái của mình, từ một ngôi sao sân khấu ca nhạc và kịch nghệ đến với hào quang nghệ thuật điện ảnh, một biểu tượng đầy gợi cảm của màn bạc một thời sau khi cô thủ vai chính trong phim Tiếng hát học trò (vai diễn đem đến cho cô giải nữ diễn viên triển vọng nhất của giải thưởng Văn học nghệ thuật 1971). Trên đường Hoa Hồng còn có tư gia của giới lãnh đạo cao cấp của chính quyền và những công chức trí thức, quan chức lớn của thành phố. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 33 Số 10 đường Hoa Hồng là ngôi nhà của tướng Lê Văn Kim. Ông Kim du học về quân sự tại Pháp, từng bị đưa lên Đà Lạt vì tình nghi “trung lập”. Nhưng thời gian ở Đà Lạt, ông là một trong những người có quyền lực: chỉ huy trưởng trường Võ bị giai đoạn khoảng 1959 - 1963. Ông Kim cũng là em rể của tướng Trần Văn Đôn, thuộc nhóm những tướng lĩnh “đình đám” của chế độ Việt Nam Cộng hòa. Vì thiên về học thuật quân sự, cùng với phát ngôn “trước sau tôi chỉ là một sĩ quan nhà trường chứ không phải là kẻ xông pha nơi hòn tên mũi đạn” cho nên ông Kim vẫn bị những tướng lĩnh cùng thời khác coi là người “vô vị”. Khoảng những năm cuối thập niên 1960, gia đình ông Trần Văn Lắm, Ngoại trưởng dưới chế độ Việt Nam Cộng hòa cũng mua căn biệt thự số 12 trên đường Hoa Hồng và lưu lại ở đó một thời gian. Cách đó không xa, là ngôi biệt thự nhà tập thể số 6, nơi cư ngụ của nhóm giáo viên trường Lycée Yersin. Ông Chử Ngọc Liễn, một thời từng là Phó Thị trưởng Đà Lạt cũng có một căn biệt thự kiểu Pháp nằm trên con đường quý tộc này. Nhưng những khách nổi tiếng từng ngụ tại Rue des Roses phải kể đến ông bà Ngô Đình Nhu. Cuốn Finding the Dragon Lady: the Mistery of Vietnam’s Madam Nhu của tác giả Monique Brinson Demery18 dành nguyên chương 7 nói về thời gian bà Nhu – Trần Lệ Xuân “tìm một nơi ẩn lánh trên núi” sau khi gia đình bà bị Việt Minh truy đuổi ở An Cựu, Huế do chồng bà hoạt động trong mạng lưới phong trào phi cộng sản và do trước đó, người anh cả của chồng bà (Ngô Đình Khôi) đã từng bị thủ tiêu cùng với quan thượng thư bộ lại Phạm Quỳnh do đưa quan điểm chống lại việc vua Bảo Đại trao quyền lực về tay chính quyền miền Bắc (1945). Bế con gái đầu (lúc bấy giờ mới một tuổi) chạy trốn khỏi miền Trung năm 1946, bà Nhu đã đến Đà Lạt sống ẩn dật. Lúc đó, ông Nhu đang hoạt động bí mật tại Sài Gòn. Cho đến năm 1947 thì ông Nhu mới thực sự đoàn tụ với vợ con tại thành phố cao nguyên. Ngôi nhà mà gia đình ông bà Nhu ở ban đầu là tại số 10, Rue des Roses, tức, nhà của ông Trần Văn Đôn (thân phụ của tướng André Đôn, cũng có tên Trần Văn Đôn). Ông Trần Văn Đôn (cha) – một bác sĩ từng quen biết ông Trần Văn Chương, thân phụ bà 34 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Nhu trong thời gian du học tại Pháp. Monique Brison Demery viết trong quyển Finding the Dragon Lady…: “Ông bà Nhu ở trong ngôi nhà mượn tại số 10 đường Hoa Hồng (Rue des Roses). Nó thuộc về bác sĩ bạn của cha bà Nhu và mặc dù không phải là một biệt thự lớn, cha mẹ bà Nhu đã đến ở, và cả anh trai ông Nhu, Ngô Đình Diệm. Nhà văn Pháp viết về vùng Viễn Đông Lucien Bodard nói đây là một nơi “phô trương lòe loẹt”; bà Nhu chỉ nói rằng “bạn sẽ không muốn băng qua vườn để vào bếp sau khi trời tối vì bạn sẽ không muốn đâm sầm vào một con cọp”. [Biệt thự số 10 đường Hoa Hồng của gia đình tướng Trần Văn Đôn, nơi vợ chồng ông Ngô Đình Nhu từng tá túc trong thời gian đầu đến Đà Lạt. Ảnh: NVN] Thời kỳ này, bà Nhu lo việc nội trợ, sinh con, dạy con; còn ông Nhu, cũng như nhiều trí thức Tây học khác từng sống ở Đà Lạt (trong đó có nhà văn Nhất Linh) say sưa với thú tầm lan, nuôi lan. Monique Brison Demery lột tả cái không khí chính trị âm ỉ của Đà Lạt đầy tinh tế vào thời kỳ này: “Nhưng không có gì ở Đà Lạt là hoàn toàn giống với cái dường như là nó. Ngay chính tiền đề về nơi này như một hòn đảo cho sự nghỉ ngơi và yên tĩnh lành mạnh ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 35 của người da trắng là một điều đại dối trá. Vì một điều, số phận của nó không bao giờ cách ly khỏi người Việt được. (…) Đà Lạt không phải là nơi ẩn náu êm đềm khỏi chiến tranh. Nó đã trở thành đại bản doanh trên thực tế của những tham vọng chính trị và quân sự của Pháp ở Đông Dương”. Và bằng chứng là chính thời gian ở Đà Lạt từ 1947 đến 1954, ông Ngô Đình Nhu ngoài việc ươm trồng lan thì cũng đã âm thầm gieo trồng một hạt mầm khác – hạt mầm có tên khoa học là Personalist Labor Party – Đảng Nhân Vị Cần Lao trên nền tảng triết học của Emmanuel Mounier và Jacques Maritain – hai triết gia Thiên Chúa giáo với tư tưởng chủ đạo cho rằng, việc xây dựng nhân vị, nhân cách con người sẽ quyết định thực tại xã hội. Nhân Vị là cơ sở triết lý chính trị của chính quyền Đệ nhất Cộng hòa Ngô Đình Diệm kéo dài 9 năm (1954 – 1963). Sống tạm trong căn nhà số 10 đường Hoa Hồng một thời gian ngắn, gia đình Ngô Đình Nhu chuyển sang biệt thự số 2 Yết Kiêu, còn gọi là Biệt điện Trần Lệ Xuân, nơi mất đến 5 năm xây cất, một chốn rộng rãi xa hoa được ví ngang hàng với Dinh 3 của ông anh họ bà Xuân – vua Bảo Đại19. Nhưng có lẽ thời gian sống êm đềm tại ngôi nhà số 10 đường Roses, bà Nhu được làm người đàn bà của gia đình đúng nghĩa trước khi trở thành một “Dragon Lady” của chính trường tương lai. Cũng từ thời gian hạnh phúc ngắn ngủi trong đời sống vợ chồng này, ông bà Nhu nhiều lần nói với nhau rằng khi về hưu họ sẽ cùng an hưởng tuổi già tại Đà Lạt. Viễn ảnh tốt lành và bình thường đó hóa ra lại là giấc mơ hoang đường bởi nó không ăn khớp được với lộ trình chính trị về sau mà họ sẽ chọn lựa đối mặt. Bao lần thay tên Như quyển Địa chí Đà Lạt 1953 đã viết, thuở ban đầu, người Pháp dùng tên gọi Rue des Roses, một trong những con đường biệt thự đẹp nhất của Đà Lạt. Người Việt sau đó đã Việt hóa tên gọi, đổi thành đường Hoa Hồng (từ 1953). Sau năm 1955 đường Hoa Hồng được đổi tên thành Ngô Đình Khôi – người anh cả trong gia đình Ngô Đình Diệm20. Sau đảo chánh Ngô Đình Diệm, đường lại đổi tên thành Nguyễn Tường Tam (từ 36 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN 1963 -1965) có lẽ để ghi dấu ấn về quãng thời gian nhà văn này chọn Đà Lạt làm chốn neo đậu hưởng thụ sự an nhàn (và có nhiều đóng góp cho phong trào chơi lan của thành phố?!). Sau 1965, đường lại đổi tên thành Huỳnh Thúc Kháng. Như vậy, qua các lần đổi tên đường phố Đà Lạt, cho thấy càng về sau hệ tiêu chí lấy tên đường càng coi trọng yếu tố nhân vật chính trị hơn là hướng đến tính đặc thù tự nhiên, văn hóa hay duy mỹ lãng mạn theo tư duy đặt tên đường của người Pháp thuở ban đầu. Nhưng người dân lại có cách hồi tưởng của mình. Dù đã bao lần thay tên, thì với những người từng sống, gắn bó với con đường này, cái tên Hoa Hồng hay Rue des Roses vẫn được dùng phổ biến. Ngày nay trở lại, tìm những ngôi biệt thự của tướng lĩnh, quan chức xưa, ngôi thì xuống cấp, được treo bảng rao bán, ngôi thì được tận dụng làm khu tập thể hay bỏ hoang dưới mưa nắng, thời gian. Biệt thự số 11, nơi nhóm bằng hữu văn nghệ như Đinh Cường, Trịnh Cung, Trịnh Công Sơn, Khánh Ly, Nguyễn Xuân Thiệp, Hoàng Anh Tuấn… tụ tập, lưu trú sáng tác ngày hôm qua nay đã được xây mới, là một khách sạn21 có mặt tiền bưng bít bằng rào lưới. Nhìn kỹ thì mới nhận ra cấu trúc ngôi biệt thự cổ phương Tây, khi nó bị “kẹp” giữa một sân tennis và một dãy phòng thuần túy công năng, thiếu thẩm mỹ. Nhưng những bậc tam cấp đi lên hàng hiên có bụi cây trạng nguyên vẫn còn đó. Họa sĩ Đinh Cường cũng có để lại một bức ảnh thời đôi mươi chụp ở góc này trông đầy vẻ phong trần, lãng tử. Biệt thự số 10 nằm lọt thỏm dưới một triền đồi cỏ xanh um tùm, vài lần ghé chân qua đều thấy cảnh sắc đìu hiu. Trên một cửa sổ phất phơ tấm biển rao bán đã cũ bươm. Cũng thế, ngôi biệt thự của gia đình đạo diễn Thái Thúc Nha nay nằm bên một quán cà phê, phòng trà dù xanh dù đỏ. Phía trước ngôi biệt thự có tạc hình ông Nha trên một khối cách điệu kết hợp giữa hình chiếc máy quay phim và chùa Một Cột. Nhưng phía trước trụ cổng phủ dây bìm bìm tím (giậu nào đổ, bìm nào leo?), biển số nhà đề trên tấm đá mới: Villa ROSE – MARIE, 17 Rue des Roses – Dalat. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 37 TIẾNG HẮC TIÊU TRÊN ĐỒI THÔNG Khác với tâm thế lần đầu đến Đà Lạt dự Hội nghị Trù bị – trong tư cách Trưởng đoàn Việt Nam kiêm Bộ trưởng Bộ Ngoại giao Chính phủ Liên hiệp Kháng chiến – 9 năm về trước, Nguyễn Tường Tam, tức nhà văn Nhất Linh trở lại Đà Lạt vào 1955 với sự chán ngán tột cùng cuộc thế chính trường; muốn tìm nơi nhàn dật thực sự. Đó là khoảng thời gian sau Hiệp định Genève (1954), thời tiết chính trị nhiều thay đổi bất lợi, Nhất Linh rơi vào tình trạng gần như bất đắc chí22. Sự sa sút thể hiện nhiều ở việc “không rượu chè, không thuốc sái, không trai gái, không cờ bạc, nhưng sau những thất bại chán chường trên trường chánh trị, Nguyễn Tường Tam đam mê chè rượu”23. Cũng theo nhà văn Vũ Bằng trong bài viết trên tạp chí Văn, những ngày trôi dạt trên đất Tàu, Nguyễn Tường Tam phải dùng rượu để “giết chết cái buồn vạn cổ”, thậm chí có giai thoại rằng, ông từng mua nguyên một thùng tonneau rượu, uống dần. Và vì rượu nhiều, rượu nặng nên ông đã phải bịt mũi, nhắm mắt lại để dốc vào cơ thể càng nhiều càng tốt. Ngoài rượu, ông còn hút thuốc lá đen. Cơ thể tiều tụy. Lạm dụng thuốc và rượu cộng với mất 38 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN ngủ là những nguyên nhân sâu xa dẫn đến căn bệnh đau dạ dày trầm trọng. Ông không thể dùng cơm ta nhà nấu mà phải đặt cơm tháng ở một hiệu cơm Tây. Có thời gian, ông một công đôi chuyện, sang Pháp thăm Nguyễn Tường Việt, tức người con trai đầu đang du học, để thay đổi môi trường sống và tìm cách chữa bệnh. Nhưng tình hình không khả quan. Cho tới khi vào Nam, chứng thần kinh suy nhược (neurasthénie) của ông đến thời kỳ trầm trọng với các biểu hiện: nói năng lẫn lộn, “có lúc như si, như dại”, theo Vũ Bằng. Vào Nam như một cách thế chạy trốn thực tại bế tắc, khiến tâm thần lao dốc khủng hoảng. Nhà thơ Nguyễn Vỹ cũng từng kể về cuộc gặp kéo dài nửa giờ với Nhất Linh tại An Đông, Sài Gòn. Ghi chép cuộc hội ngộ vội vàng nhưng đủ thấy toát lên vẻ thất thường trong thần thái Nhất Linh ở giai đoạn này: “– Anh để râu mép hồi nào? – Tôi nhìn mãi làn râu mép có duyên của ông bạn đen thui như một nếp tang-chế trên nụ cười dễ thương. Ông bạn đáp: – Tôi để râu từ hồi làm cách mạng. Ông Tam năm nay chắc cũng chạc độ 50 tuổi, nhưng nụ cười hài-hước của ông vẫn còn nguyên nét như xưa. Có điều, tôi thấy ông có vẻ buồn nản, mặc dầu ông cố giấu, nó vẫn lộ ra khi ông hết cười. Tay ông đưa thuốc mời tôi lại run run và ông ngồi như không vững, cái đầu lắc qua lắc lại như muốn rớt, đôi mắt nháy lia nháy lịa, như muốn nhắm, và ông hay cười, nụ cười mỉa mai đau đớn lạ.”24 Nguyễn Tường Tam tìm được một căn nhà ở gần chợ An Đông để vợ buôn bán trầu cau, còn mình thì ngồi chơi hắc tiêu (clarinet) và thỉnh thoảng tiếp bạn bè trong văn giới. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 39 Lại nói tới cái duyên Nhất Linh đến với cây hắc tiêu. Đây cũng là câu chuyện đặc biệt thú vị. Thời mới thành lập đảng Hưng Việt (sau đổi tên là Đại Việt Dân Chính) với khuynh hướng chống Pháp công khai, để che mắt giới mật thám, Nhất Linh đã học chơi hắc tiêu và tham gia vào một ban nhạc, qua đó, kết nối giao du với nhiều trí thức, nhân sĩ cùng thời. Ông làm nhạc công cho nhóm nhạc Tài tử (Orchestre Amateur) của giáo sư Lê Ngọc Huỳnh, do hai nhạc sĩ Thẩm Oánh, Vũ Khánh chủ trương. Nhóm nhạc này thời đó còn có Hoàng Gia Lịnh, Lê Ngọc Huỳnh, Vũ Khánh, Nguyễn Khắc Cung chơi violon, Nguyễn Thế Hiền, Nhất Linh thổi hắc tiêu, Vũ Thành chơi accordéon, Lê Huy Giáp chơi banjo, Lê Hữu Mục, Thẩm Oánh thổi saxophone, Vũ Khoa chơi violoncelle25. [Số 12 đường Yersin (nay là đường Trần Phú), nơi Nhất Linh từng thuê ở trong những ngày mới đến Đà Lạt năm 1955. Ảnh: NVN] Khi đã nếm mùi thất bại trong chính trường, hơn cả cây bút và trang giấy, cây hắc tiêu mở ra một thế giới âm nhạc tuyệt diệu, giúp Nhất Linh tìm được sự khuây khỏa tạm thời. Điều còn lại, là tìm một nơi vắng vẻ để ẩn dật, để trở về với đời sống tâm hồn thực thụ. 40 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Lúc bấy giờ, Đà Lạt là nơi Nguyễn Tường Tam chọn, có lẽ vì khí hậu tự nhiên hứa hẹn tốt cho sức khỏe, khí hậu chính trị cũng êm đềm, phần nào xa lánh thời cuộc đảo điên gây thêm khổ não. Lúc mới đến Đà Lạt, Nhất Linh cùng cậu con trai út – Nguyễn Tường Thiết và con gái Nguyễn Kim Thoa thuê phòng ở số 12, đường Yersin, Đà Lạt, gần Hotel Du Parc. Nguyễn Tường Thiết viết về tinh thần sống nhẹ nhõm của cha mình thời điểm này: “Quả nhiên, qua năm 1955, ông xách kèn lên Đà Lạt và quyết định ở luôn trên ấy mấy năm. Thu xếp xong chỗ ở, ông nộp đơn để xin cho tôi thi nhập học vào một trường trung học công lập trên ấy, thế là một lần nữa tôi lại theo ông lên sống trên miền cao nguyên. Nhất Linh, sau thời gian chữa bệnh bên Pháp, lại rất thích hợp với khung cảnh nên thơ và khí hậu mát mẻ của Đà Lạt, dạo này rất khỏe mạnh. Ông thường đi bộ một ngày đến hơn cả chục cây số. Mỗi buổi sáng sớm, từ căn phòng thuê trên lầu hai nhà hàng Poinsard & Veyret, số 12 đường Yersin, ông thả bộ xuống khu chợ Hòa Bình, ăn điểm tâm tô phở Bình Dân đường Hàm Nghi, rồi đi vòng bên kia bờ hồ Xuân Hương, vượt mấy ngọn đồi phía cuối hồ, đến tận khu Chi Lăng gần hồ Than Thở. Lâu lâu ông rủ tôi đi thả bộ cùng với ông. Hai bố con lặng lẽ đi bên nhau, vì ông thường đắm mình trong những kỷ niệm và suy tưởng riêng tư, cho đến lúc tôi mệt nhoài, đòi về. Có lần, đi ngang qua sân cù, ông chỉ về cái tháp cao của khu trường trung học Yersin và khách sạn Palace thấp thoáng trong sương phía bên kia bờ hồ Xuân Hương nói với tôi là chính tại ngôi trường đó, gần mười năm trước, ông đã cầm đầu phái đoàn Việt Nam dự hội nghị sơ bộ Pháp Việt và cũng thời gian đó, trước nhà hàng Palace kia, nơi thềm xi-măng mặt tiền khách sạn, ông vẫn thường ngồi uống rượu để thưởng ngoạn khung cảnh Đà Lạt với bác Thụy26 tôi, hai người vẫn nhìn sang rặng đồi thông bên này, nơi chỗ chúng tôi tản bộ ngày nay. Cái khung cảnh thơ mộng đó, mười năm sau, đã trở về trong ký ức của ông; nhưng lần này khung cảnh đó ông đã thưởng ngoạn với sự bình thản hơn nhiều của tâm hồn. Nhất Linh hầu như không bao giờ tâm sự với con cái về chính cuộc đời của ông, nhất là cuộc đời chính trị, nhưng có một lần hiếm hoi ông đã tiết lộ với chúng tôi là thời gian khổ sở nhất trong cuộc đời của ông là lúc ông đảm nhận chức vụ Bộ trưởng Bộ Ngoại giao trong Chính phủ Liên hiệp.”27 Một điều khá thú vị. Nhất Linh, trong bốn năm ở Đà Lạt được coi là quãng thời gian phóng chiếu cuộc đời mình vào hành trình của chính ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 41 nhân vật mà mình đã tạo ra gần 20 năm trước đó. Truyện ngắn Lan rừng, Nhất Linh viết năm 193728 kể về nhân vật Quang, một chiều băng qua khu rừng già để đến nhà người bạn ở Bản Lang, đã bị hồn hoa khuyến dụ, lạc bước vào cõi khói sương liêu trai của một động hoa lan bên suối. Nơi thoáng qua đó đem đến cho chàng trai trẻ những trải nghiệm thanh thoát, tuyệt vời, một cảnh giới thoát tục. Quang, mô thức nhân vật của văn chương lãng mạn đã không nằm mộng trên trang giấy, mà bước ra đời, vận vào chính tác giả, dẫn dụ ông vào một hành trình lánh xa thời cuộc để đi tìm, chiêm ngắm cái đẹp thanh khiết, tĩnh tại của tự nhiên. Giáo sư Nhật Thịnh cho việc Nhất Linh bỏ Sài Gòn huyên náo để lên Đà Lạt trồng lan là “trở về suối nguồn tinh thần siêu thoát của Đông phương”. Ông mô tả: “Lan Bạch Ngọc, Thanh Ngọc, Lan Văn Bao, Tím Đồi Mồi, Nhất Điểm Hồng, Cô Dâu… , thứ treo trên vách, thứ nằm trong chậu, thứ bầy trên bàn, tất cả xúm lấy ông - con người ông như đang thoát tục để đi tu tiên. Đó là một ý nghĩ người ta tạo ra để bôi nhọ ông. Người ta vẫn phao tin ông mắc bệnh thần kinh vì uống quá nhiều rượu, ấy là thủ đoạn của những nhà chính trị vẫn sử dụng để hạ đối phương mà họ nói rằng nguy hiểm.”29 Thời kỳ này, Nhất Linh có vẻ như cố gắng bỏ ngoài tai tất cả mọi thị phi trong chính giới, học giới, văn giới, kể cả những luận điệu thị phi hạ bệ tầm thường của cỗ máy báo chí tuyên truyền của cả hai miền. Ông trở thành một người tầm lan, chơi lan thượng thặng ở đô thị cao nguyên. Ông bỏ nhiều ngày băng rừng, lội suối để sưu tập những giống lan mới. Ông đặt báo chí nước ngoài, nghiên cứu cách dưỡng lan tại gia. Rồi bằng sự nhạy cảm của một người yêu cái đẹp, ông khai sinh cho từng loại lan rừng vô danh những cái tên đầy kiêu sa, sau đó xếp chúng thành chi, họ một cách bài bản như một nhà sinh vật học thực thụ (giới chơi lan ở Đà Lạt cho đến nay vẫn còn sử dụng đến hệ thống tên gọi mà Nhất Linh từng đặt!). Lối sống thanh đạm, tao nhã của một trí thức tiểu tư sản Hà Nội xem ra vô cùng phù hợp với không gian êm đềm của đô thị kiểu Pháp trên miền cao nguyên Trung phần. 42 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN [Nhà văn Nhất Linh trong một chuyến tìm lan giữa rừng sâu Đà Lạt vào khoảng 1956. Ảnh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] Nguyễn Tường Thiết nhớ lại: “Cái thú tản bộ của ông không còn mang mục đích tập thể dục buổi sáng hoặc để giúp ông thả hồn trong dòng suy tưởng nữa mà lúc này đã mang một mục đích mới: ông đi tầm lan, có khi đi suốt ngày, băng rừng lội suối, ông đi một mình hay đi cùng với những người bạn cùng mê lan như ông, để rồi chiều chiều về đến nhà mệt nhoài nhưng hí hửng với một hay hai đóa hoa lạ trên tay. Hôm nào không đi tìm lan thì ông đi tìm những những khúc rễ cây lớn có hình thù lạ mắt về nhà gọt dũa để gắn hoa phong lan lên trên hoặc ông lui cui xếp và đóng những thanh gỗ với nhau để làm rổ treo lan, mỗi rổ có một kiểu cọ khác nhau, rồi ông treo lan lên tường, treo cùng khắp gần như kín cả phòng. Mẹ tôi rất bận rộn buôn bán ở Sài Gòn ông cũng gọi lên Đà Lạt sống với ông ít ngày để cùng thưởng lan với ông. Cái nhiệt tình của Nhất Linh đã lây sang rất nhiều người khác làm sống dậy phong trào chơi lan và tầm lan của dân Đà Lạt những năm 1956-1957. Riêng anh em chúng tôi thấy ông vui thì cũng tham dự với ông nhưng trong bụng không thấy hứng thú gì cho lắm, trái lại lắm lúc còn bực mình vì ông cứ hay sai chúng tôi đi gỡ từng mảnh rêu để mang về cho ông, một công việc mà chúng tôi rất ghét làm. Rêu đúng loại tiêu chuẩn mà ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 43 ông mong muốn thì chỉ có thể tìm thấy dễ dàng ở vệ đường gần cách ống cống; giữa phố xá đông đúc người qua lại mà lại ngồi bệt xuống vỉa hè tẩn mẩn bóc gỡ từng mảng rêu xanh bỏ vào trong một cái rổ thì nom có vẻ kỳ quặc, khó coi quá. Nhất Linh chơi lan công phu hơn những người khác vì ngoài việc tầm lan ông còn ra thư viện tra cứu hoặc đặt mua từ bên Pháp các sách ngoại quốc viết về hoa phong lan trên thế giới, rồi ông tỉ mỉ phân loại, so sánh với hoa ở địa phương; ông lại vẽ từng đóa hoa một, đặt tên hoa, ghi chú từng đặc tính, với dụng ý sau này làm tài liệu viết một cuốn sách về việc sưu tập hoa phong lan. Và chiều nào ông cũng thổi hắc tiêu, nói là thổi cho lan nghe. Ông thổi bản: “J’ai rêvé de vous”, vous đây chính là đám hoa quấn quýt xúm lấy ông, nào là Nhất Điểm Hồng, Huyết Nhung Lan, Bạch Hạc, Tím Đồi Mồi, Hoa Cô Dâu, Bạch Ngọc, Thanh Ngọc, Văn Bao... thứ treo trên vách, thứ cắm trong chậu, thứ bày trên bàn. Mỗi chiều thứ bảy, ông lại tổ chức hòa nhạc tại gia, ngoài tiếng hắc tiêu của ông, lại có sự phụ họa lục huyền cầm của giáo sư Vĩnh Tường, khiến khách đi đường phải dừng chân trước khách sạn Du Parc, kẻ ngừng xe hơi, người ghếch xe đạp, để lắng nghe tiếng nhạc hòa tấu vẳng ra từ căn lầu nơi góc đường Yersin trong bầu không khí êm ả yên tĩnh của buổi chiều Đà Lạt.”30 Trong một ghi chép hiếm hoi về thời gian này, Nhất Linh từng luận về lan và thú chơi lan cầu kỳ của mình: “Chúng tôi đã chơi rất nhiều thứ lan nhưng sau cùng đều chỉ mê có thứ lan cổ điển: bởi vì lan ấy thanh nhã, sắc trong và có thoảng mùi hương tiên cách nhất và vì vậy tình yêu cũng lâu bền nhất. Trong các loại này thì có lan Thanh Ngọc là thơm đứng đầu. Người chú ý trước tiên và làm cho chúng tôi xao lãng tìm kiếm lan cây, chỉ đi tìm kiếm lan cổ điển là cụ Lê Quang Biên. Ở Đà Lạt tôi có cái may là đã kiếm ra những cụm lan Thanh Ngọc trước mọi người và bạn Lê Đình Gioãn có cái may được ba giò lan Thanh Ngọc đầu tiên nở trong nhà (do tôi kiếm được và biết). Hai câu thơ của bạn Gioãn: Hai tên nghèo túng như nhau cả, Anh kiếm được thì anh biếu tôi. Chính ra là: Ta mê lan đẹp như nhau cả, Anh kiếm được thì anh biếu tôi. Từ ngày được biết mặt hoa Thanh Ngọc thì tất cả chúng tôi đều cho việc vào rừng kiếm lan như đi kiếm tiên. Lan Thanh Ngọc lại rất khó kiếm, có lẽ khó hơn cả 44 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN việc đi kiếm tiền nữa. Độ chúng tôi còn kiếm lan cây thì người nào cũng ngửng nhìn trời, đến khi đi kiếm lan Thanh Ngọc thì ai cũng nhìn xuống đất. Vì đẹp, vì khó kiếm nên chúng tôi mơ lan như “mơ tiên”.31 Nghệ nhân Nhất Linh – chính khách Nguyễn Tường Tam – trong thời gian này từng có những “bài giảng thuyết” mê say về thú chơi lan chốn điền viên khiến cho những bè bạn cũ của ông không khỏi sốt ruột. Nhà văn, ký giả, dịch giả Hiếu Chân (Nguyễn Hoạt) tìm đến gặp Nhất Linh ở Đà Lạt vào đúng đêm Giáng sinh 1957. Hiếu Chân ngơ ngác: “Anh nói chuyện về phong lan cho chúng tôi nghe trong một gian phòng rộng bầy đầy những chậu lan quý – ông viết – Tôi vốn tính không ưa những trò tỉ mỉ như chơi hoa và nuôi chim, có lẽ do cái óc thực tế tạo ra do cuộc đời nghèo khổ của tôi từ tấm bé và do cả những tao ngộ bi đát trong những năm hoạt động cách mạng và kháng chiến. Hơn thế đối với tôi lan là một thứ hoa vương giả, phải mất nhiều công phu tìm kiếm, vun tưới chăm sóc thì mới đâm hoa được. Cho nên trong buổi tối đó tôi đã không chú ý lắm vào câu chuyện phong lan của anh. Và tôi lại lấy làm lạ sao một người như anh mà lại đi tiêu phí thì giờ vào một thú chơi vương giả đó. Nhưng sau này tôi mới biết là tôi đã xét đoán một cách vội vã, nông nổi.”32 Mặc cho thú chơi đó bị coi tiểu tư sản, xa lánh thời cuộc hay bị người khác nhân danh các phẩm tính “trí thức”, “dấn thân” để mai mỉa, Nhất Linh làm chủ nó như một liệu pháp tinh thần cần thiết cho sức khỏe thể chất và tinh thần của mình. Không cách nào khác. Chỉ sau một thời gian ngắn, chỗ ở trên đường Yersin đã trở nên quá chật hẹp, không đủ thỏa mãn để mở rộng chỗ trồng lan, nơi phố xá cũng không tiện cho sự phát triển của loài địa lan (còn gọi thổ lan) cần lối chăm chút cầu kỳ, cha con Nhất Linh chuyển sang sống trong căn biệt thự số 19 đường Đặng Thái Thân – căn biệt thự của ông Lê Đình Gioãn – một chủ gara xe ở Sài Gòn và là bạn chơi lan rất thân của Nhất Linh để lại. Căn biệt thự hình chữ A nằm ẩn trong một khu rừng thông trùng điệp, phía tay phải cửa ngõ vào thành phố. Tại đây, lúc bấy giờ hãy còn là nơi âm u hoang vắng. Nhà văn chìm sâu hơn vào thế giới của lan, của thông, của tiếng chim rừng và âm nhạc. Nhiều ngày trời ông không buồn ra phố, không tiếp xúc một ai. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 45 [Nhà văn Nhất Linh trồng lan trước ngôi biệt thự số 19 Đặng Thái Thân. Ảnh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] Những người bạn tìm thấy sự giao cảm với Nhất Linh qua thú chơi lan thảng hoặc đến giao du chuyện trò với ông thời kỳ này có thể kể: ông Lê Đình Gioãn, bác sĩ Nguyễn Hữu Phiếm từ Sài Gòn lên, bác sĩ Nguyễn Sỹ Dinh và ông Lê Văn Kiểm – người rất mê chụp ảnh (hầu hết những hình ảnh về Nhất Linh trong giai đoạn này đều do ông Kiểm chụp và lưu giữ). Rất nhiều người trong giới văn bút, trí thức từ Sài Gòn cuối tuần lên Đà Lạt du hí, nghe tin đồn về “tịnh cốc” Nhất Linh, cũng tò mò tìm cách lai vãng. Các văn sĩ trẻ như Đỗ Tốn, Tô Kiều Ngân sau vài chuyến theo Nhất Linh băng rừng, rồi cũng đâm ra say mê với việc sưu tầm lan. Từ đó, mỗi cuối tuần, Đỗ Tốn và Nhất Linh thường xuôi đèo bằng chiếc xe 46 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN hai ngựa NBH 476 để xuống suối Đa Mê ở Phi Nôm. Lâu dần, địa bàn tìm kiếm lan rừng ngày càng mở rộng, nghe nói có khi để có một nhành lan đẹp, cả nhóm phải đi xuống đến đèo Ngoạn Mục, đèo Bảo Lộc, Định Quán và xa hơn nữa, tới những cánh rừng xứ nắng Phan Rang. Tô Kiều Ngân kể trong một bài ghi chép: “Chúng tôi đến đón anh và chương trình ngày hôm đó bắt đầu bằng một chầu phở tại tiệm Bằng. Anh Tam ăn rất khỏe: hai bát phở, hai chai “la de”. Đó là bữa điểm tâm thường lệ của anh. Anh thường có thói quen đi bộ lên dốc, xuống dốc từ nhà anh đến hiệu phở quen thuộc mỗi buổi sáng từ lúc còn tinh sương. Đó là một điều đáng mến nơi nhà văn tuổi đã về già. Già nhưng lại trẻ hơn những người trẻ nhất. Anh Tam vui tính, hay pha trò một cách tế nhị và sống với tất cả nhiệt tình. Chúng tôi mang theo la de, bánh chưng, bánh tây. Hành lý của tiểu tổ đi săn lan, ngoài dao, cuốc còn có một chiếc sáo và một chiếc kèn. Chiếc xe hai ngựa của Đỗ Tốn ngược đường về Phi Nôm, nơi cụ Nghị Biên, ông bạn già của Nhất Linh đang đợi anh để cùng vào rừng. Trên đường, anh Tam lắp kèn và thổi một cách say sưa suốt buổi. Bài mà anh thích nhất là bài “A ton marriage”. Mỗi lần vào rừng tìm lan, chúng tôi thường chia nhau đi mỗi người một ngả. Nếu cần gọi nhau thì anh Tam sẽ thổi kèn để cho chúng tôi biết nơi anh hiện ở tìm tới hoặc chúng tôi cần anh thì cứ ra hiệu bằng một đoạn sáo véo von chẳng hạn. Đó là những lúc gọi nhau ra bờ suối ăn trưa và nghỉ trưa hoặc một kẻ nào đó tìm được một khóm lan lạ nằm trên cành cây cao phải cần đến sự phụ lực của người khác trèo lên gỡ xuống. Anh Tam đã để nhiều thì giờ nghiên cứu về lan. Mỗi lần nghe nói ở vùng nào có một thứ lan lạ là thế nào anh cũng tìm tới cho được dù xa xôi khó nhọc bao nhiêu. Nhiều lần anh rủ chúng tôi lên tận đèo Ngoạn Mục để tìm. Lan ở đó là thứ lan lạ mà vùng Phi Nôm không có. Tôi nhớ có lần bàn về một thứ lan gọi là Kim Xuân, một người bạn đã hỏi anh Tam: - Thứ lan này không quý vì có nhiều, màu không đẹp mà chẳng có hương, coi thật tầm thường, sao gọi là Kim Xuân? Anh Tam hóm hỉnh trả lời: - Nếu không gọi là Kim Xuân thì các bạn gọi là Lệ Xuân33 cho tiện, gọi thế chắc đúng hơn. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 47 Thường thường trong những dịp săn lan như vậy chúng tôi rất ít khi nói chuyện thời sự, chính trị dầu rằng trong đám người săn lan có cả một vị cựu bộ trưởng, một chính khách, một nhà cách mạng từng bôn ba hải ngoại. Chúng tôi tôn trọng cái không khí thanh bạch, cao quý, thần tiên của cuộc chơi kỳ thú, của khung cảnh núi rừng hùng vĩ, của những đóa hoa lan sơn dã, của giòng suối trong xanh và niềm vui hồn hậu của những tâm hồn bạn. Tuy nhiên, có những lúc ngồi bên bờ suối nghe anh Tam thổi hắc tiêu, tôi không khỏi xót đau, thắc mắc. Anh Tam quên sứ mạng của anh rồi ư? Có thật anh yên lòng đi tu tiên rồi chăng? Ngọn lửa Yên Bái, cái không khí ‘Chi Bộ Hai Người’, ‘Giòng Sông Thanh Thủy’ há không gợi trong anh chút nào vang bóng của quãng đời sóng gió trước kia?”34 Thế rồi khách tìm đến với căn biệt thự số 19 Đặng Thái Thân không chỉ vì lan. Hẳn nhiên. Một nhân vật lớn như Nhất Linh, dù có trốn đến tận thâm sơn cùng cốc, nhất cử nhất động trong hành tung, đều sẽ không dễ dầu gì được lãng quên trong thời kỳ nhiễu loạn đó, thời kỳ mà Đà Lạt là vùng đất bình yên nhưng cũng là đô thị âm ỉ những cuộc chiến gay gắt của mật vụ của nhiều phe phái chính trị. Thời gian Nhất Linh sống tại đây, nhạc sĩ Hoàng Nguyên và nhóm giáo viên trường Tuệ Quang đã bị quân trấn theo dõi, vây bắt (1956) vì bị vu hoạt động cho đảng Đại Việt. Vậy thì câu chuyện những tướng lĩnh, chính trị gia (và có lẽ cả đám mật vụ nữa) tìm cách lui tới chốn nhàn dật của nhân vật chính trị sáng giá nhất thời buổi đó không phải là chuyện khó hiểu. Giao du qua thú chơi lan đã trở thành 48 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN cái cớ của những cuộc thăm dò mờ ám với những mục đích hay âm mưu khó ngờ. [Ngôi biệt thự 19 Đặng Thái Thân, nơi Nhất Linh sống và biến thành trại lan. Ảnh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] Vòi bạch tuộc chính trị đã không muốn tha cho chứng neurasthénie của văn sĩ – nghệ nhân yêu đời nhàn dật. Và vì thế, sự u uất, thất chí và phản kháng có khi cũng bị đi xới lại trong đầu óc Nguyễn Tường Tam. Và đây là một biểu hiện, bằng cú sốc rất rõ ràng, Nguyễn Tường Thiết kể trong hồi ký: “Một bữa nọ, trong lúc đi thơ thẩn trong khu rừng thông gần nhà, tôi ngạc nhiên thấy có dăm ba người lính đứng gác ở bìa rừng xung quanh nhà tôi. Lúc tôi về nhà thì được biết tướng Dương Văn Minh cũng vừa lên xe ra về. Tướng Minh có mang đến biếu cha tôi một chậu hoa phong lan và nói chuyện với cha tôi khoảng tiếng đồng hồ trong phòng khách. Anh tôi kể lại với tôi tướng Minh là người cũng mê chơi lan, nhưng ông đến thăm cha tôi hẳn là còn có mục đích khác ngoài việc xem lan không thôi. Nhưng cha tôi cứ vờ coi như người khách đến thăm chỉ để ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 49 thưởng lan; trong một giờ đồng hồ ông cứ mải miết nói với tướng Minh về cách thức trồng hoa lan để hai người khỏi phải đả động đến các vấn đề khác. Một hôm khác chúng tôi đi săn lan ở đèo Bảo Lộc. Chúng tôi đi rất đông trên hai chiếc xe hơi. Trong đám người săn lan, ngoài các văn nghệ sĩ còn có một cựu bộ trưởng, một chính khách, một nhà cách mạng từng bôn ba hải ngoại, nhưng tất cả không ai nói chuyện thời sự, chính trị. Khi đoàn xe trở về Đà Lạt ngang Liên Khương thì bị chặn lại. Quốc lộ 20 bị kẹt xe đến cả cây số và chúng tôi phải đậu xe bên vệ đường chờ đợi đến cả hai tiếng đồng hồ. Không ai biết chuyện gì xẩy ra và đều rất bực mình vì phải chờ đợi quá lâu. Sau đó dò hỏi, chúng tôi được biết lý do kẹt xe vì tổng thống Ngô Đình Diệm đi kinh lý trên Đà Lạt, chuyến bay chở tổng thống bị trễ và vì không biết lúc nào phi cơ đáp xuống phi trường Liên Khương nên tốt nhất là chặn tất cả xe cộ lại, bắt chúng tôi phải chờ đợi không biết đến lúc nào. Khi biết chuyện này Nhất Linh nói đùa với đám chúng tôi: “Nếu trong số đây mai sau có ai lên làm tổng thống thì nhớ đến cái ngày hôm nay phải chờ đợi bực mình như thế này nhé!”35 [Ký họa của Nhất Linh đề ngày 15-12-1958. Tranh: Đinh Cường sưu tập và ký họa - đề thơ của Nhất Linh tặng bạn chơi lan Lê Đình Gioãn tại Suối Vàng ngày 15-12-1958. Tranh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] 50 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Những sự việc như thế lý giải cho việc càng ngày, Nguyễn Tường Tam càng lùi sâu vào rừng. 1957 có thể nói là thời điểm mà Nhất Linh dấn xa nhất vào cuộc sống của một ẩn sĩ. Ông mua một lô đất nằm ở vùng suối Đa Mê (Phi Nôm, ngày nay thuộc huyện Đức Trọng) nằm giữa hai lô đất của ông Nghị Biên và bác sĩ Nguyễn Sỹ Dinh. Dự định của Nhất Linh là sẽ cắm rễ ở đây để viết tiểu thuyết. Ông tự thiết kế và dựng căn nhà gỗ có tên Thanh Ngọc Đình (lấy tên loài hoa lan mà ông yêu thích) và bắt đầu với cuộc đời của một nông dân. Lúc bấy giờ các con ông vẫn sống ở Đà Lạt, thi thoảng đón xe hàng về thăm cha. Cậu con trai út kể về cha mình trong những tháng năm tận hưởng niềm hạnh phúc được người đời lãng quên thực sự: “Nhất Linh lúc này sống như trong thời trung cổ, đoạn tuyệt hẳn với đời sống văn minh, ông nói không đoạn tuyệt cũng chẳng được vì ở đây thiếu tất cả điện nước và các tiện nghi tối thiểu, cách tốt nhất là phải thích nghi với đời sống mới. Da ông rạm nắng trông ông càng phong sương hơn, ông mặc bộ đồ rừng bốn túi, đi ủng cao, hút thuốc lào, suốt ngày đôn đốc đám thợ khai quang rừng để làm một con lộ nhỏ đi từ quốc lộ vào đến suối Đa Mê. Ông nói với chúng tôi là bây giờ ông không cần đến cả đồng hồ để xem giờ giấc nữa vì ông đã tìm ra được một cách riêng để biết được đại khái thời gian trong ngày. Trong lúc chúng tôi ngồi ăn trong rừng, Nhất Linh nghếch tai nghe ngóng một tiếng chim lạ kêu rồi nói: ‘Thế mà đã bốn giờ trưa rồi!’. Chúng tôi so với đồng hồ thì thấy ông chỉ đoán sai có nửa tiếng. Sai xích nửa giờ là đủ chính xác rồi vì ở đây không cần chính xác hơn. Ông giải thích là từ ngày sống ở đây cứ mỗi sáng thức dậy cho đến lúc chiều tối là ông đều lắng nghe và quan sát tất cả các tiếng kêu của muông thú trong rừng rồi ghi vào một cuốn sổ tay. Sau một tuần lễ ông khám phá ra là mỗi tiếng kêu của muông thú thường ứng với một thời gian nhất định trong ngày, thế là ông tìm ra được một loại đồng hồ riêng cho mình mà không tốn kém gì cả. Trước đây trong những giờ rảnh rỗi cha tôi thường dạy tôi thổi hắc tiêu và lúc này tôi cũng đã chơi được kha khá. Trong số các bản nhạc Việt thịnh hành hồi đó, Nhất Linh thích nhất là thổi bản Hẹn một ngày về của giáo sư Lê Hữu Mục. Một buổi sáng cuối tuần trong lúc tôi thổi hắc tiêu bản nhạc này thì có một người khách ghé Đà Lạt muốn đến gặp cha tôi, nhưng lúc ấy cha tôi lại ở dưới Fim-Nôm36 . Ông khách có vẻ ngạc nhiên thích thú nghe tôi thổi bản nhạc; sau này tôi mới biết ông ta chính là giáo sư Lê Hữu Mục, muốn gặp cha tôi để phỏng vấn và viết một cuốn sách “Thân ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 51 thế và sự nghiệp Nhất Linh”. Ông Mục và tôi đáp xe xuống Fim-Nôm và khi chúng tôi đến trại lan thì cha tôi đang nằm trên võng bên bờ suối Đa-Mê say sưa viết lại toàn bộ cuốn trường thiên tiểu thuyết Xóm Cầu Mới”. [Thơ và ký họa của Nhất Linh đề tặng ông Lê Đình Gioãn, cạnh suối Đa Mê, 17-11-1957. Tranh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] 52 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Cần hiểu thêm, việc Nhất Linh lùi sâu vào đời ẩn cư để viết tiểu thuyết Xóm Cầu Mới một phần là thôi thúc nội sinh của tư cách văn chương, nhận ra nơi nương náu tốt lành nhất đó chính là trang viết, nơi dấn thân xứng đáng nhất là nghệ thuật và tư tưởng; nhưng một phần quan trọng khác, quyết định đó cũng ít nhiều có sự tác động của người bạn đời, bà Phạm Thị Nguyên, tức, bà Tam. Lúc bấy giờ, bà Tam đã thấm thía chuyện người trí thức sống ngay thẳng và quyết liệt bị quăng quật giữa bão táp chính trị, bị đọa đày tinh thần ra sao, nên luôn lấy lời nhỏ nhẹ khuyên chồng hãy trở lại cuộc sống đời thường của một văn nhân. Trong bức ảnh Lê Văn Kiểm chụp được tại một góc rừng Đa Mê, có thể nhìn thấy nụ cười hạnh phúc mãn nguyện của vợ chồng Nhất Linh trong một lần bà Tam khăn gói từ An Đông lên Đa Mê thăm chồng. Trong một vài bức ký họa của Nhất Linh thời kỳ này, lại dễ thấy sau nỗi buồn xa vắng quạnh quẽ của thiên nhiên là sự thanh tịnh của tâm hồn. Hàng tuần, các con Nhất Linh từ Đà Lạt về suối Đa Mê, mang theo những tập giấy trắng không kẻ hàng và mỗi lần trở lại, thấy những tập giấy đã phủ kín những dòng chữ nhỏ li ti. ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 53 “Thời gian này cha tôi bắt đầu viết lại và viết rất hăng say. Ông sai tôi ra tiệm trên Đà Lạt đóng mấy cuốn sách bìa dày trong toàn là giấy trắng không kẻ hàng. Mỗi lần ghé Fim-Nôm thăm ông tôi thấy những trang giấy trắng đã chứa đầy những dòng chữ nhỏ li ti, viết bằng cây bút Parker 51; những dòng chữ bị dập xóa, viết chồng lên nhau chằng chịt như cuốn hút trong dòng tư tưởng dồn dập. Để theo kịp được những cảm xúc, hình ảnh, ý nghĩ xô dạt trong đầu, tay ông phải viết nhanh lắm; do đấy mà chữ viết cứ nhỏ dần đi như chân kiến. Đi xa hơn nữa, để cho viết được nhanh hơn hoặc để khỏi phải bận tâm đến cái mà ông cho là không cần thiết, ông đã bỏ hết những quy luật văn phạm, chính tả thông thường. Công việc sửa lỗi chính tả nhỏ nhặt đó thường là công việc của người khác khi bản thảo được đánh máy trước khi in thành sách”, Nguyễn Tường Thiết kể lại37. [Nhất Linh trong những ngày sống nhàn dật ở suối Đa Mê. Ảnh: Vũ Hà Tuệ sưu tập] 54 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Nhưng dường như những gì con tạo vần xoay theo ngẫu hứng bất khả tư nghị, ý chí con người thật khó cưỡng. Một cơn bão lớn vào cuối 1958 thổi qua những cánh rừng Đa Mê, biến Thanh Ngọc Đình của tác giả Đoạn tuyệt hãy còn chưa hoàn thiện đã sụp đổ hoàn toàn. “Một điềm xấu”, nhà văn đã nghĩ như vậy (hay sự chộn rộn với cuộc thế lúc bấy giờ đã khiến ông tìm cách kiến giải về cơn bão cuộc đời mình theo chiều hướng đó), ông thẫn thờ nuối tiếc nhìn ngôi nhà chỉ còn trơ nền móng, gỗ đá ngổn ngang. Và rồi quay lưng, trở ngược về phía cuộc đời phố xá huyên náo. Tinh thần nhàn dật của ông đã không đủ mạnh để có thể tiếp tục “trùm chăn” với thế giới của lan, của rừng núi, của cái đẹp thiên nhiên, của sự đối diện bất trắc ở vùng lam sơn chướng khí. Nhất Linh đã không còn được hưởng thụ sự lãng quên của người đời để tĩnh tại ngồi lại với văn chương lâu hơn. Trường thiên tiểu thuyết (roman fleuve) Cầu Xóm Mới bị bỏ dở38. Nguyễn Tường Thiết gói lại thời kỳ Nhất Linh ở Đà Lạt bằng một tâm sự đầy nuối tiếc: “Thế rồi ông quyết định giã từ tất cả. Đà Lạt, Fim-Nôm, dòng Đa-Mê và cả trăm giỏ lan mà ông đã chăm sóc từ hai năm qua, để về ở luôn Sài Gòn, chấm dứt cái thời kỳ mà ông Lê Hữu Mục đã viết trong đoạn kết cuốn sách của ông là “một Nhất Linh nằm trùm chăn ở trên Đà Lạt”. Đối với tôi, thật bụng tôi chỉ mong ông được nằm trùm chăn lâu hơn vì đây chính là thời gian hạnh phúc nhất trong cuộc đời ông mà tôi được biết. Nhất Linh «xuống núi» lăn vào cuộc đời làm báo, tham gia đảo chính, thất bại, đi trốn, bị đưa ra tòa, đưa đến cái tự vẫn của ông mấy năm sau, mở đầu một thời kỳ cuối cùng của đời ông với nhiều não nề, nhiều chán chường hơn. Như đoạn văn kết trong cuốn truyện Đôi bạn của ông, hai câu thơ sau đây của Nhất Linh, đâu đó, vẫn còn vẳng về Đà Lạt như «một nỗi nhớ xa xôi đương mờ dần»: Người đi lâu chửa thấy về, Nhớ người lòng suối Đa Mê gợn buồn...”39 ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 55 [Bản thảo viết tay tiểu thuyết Xóm Cầu Mới. Ảnh tư liệu] 56 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Như vậy, Nhất Linh xuất hiện với Đà Lạt hai lần, trong Hội nghị trù bị Đà Lạt năm 1946, và, dài hơn (tuy vẫn quá ngắn ngủi) trong bốn năm kể trên. Ông trở lại sống cùng vợ con ở khu chợ An Đông, Sài Gòn, quay về với báo chí, văn chương trong tư cách cố vấn Trung tâm Văn Bút tại Việt Nam, tổ chức lại nhà xuất bản Phượng Giang (nơi sẽ in hai tập Xóm Cầu Mới về sau) và ra báo Văn hóa ngày nay… Thời kỳ ở Sài Gòn, tham gia báo chí, văn chương và hoạt động xã hội, bày tỏ phản kháng chính trị trực tiếp, cũng đồng nghĩa với một lần nữa, chứng thần kinh suy nhược quay trở lại với Nhất Linh. Theo bác sĩ Nguyễn Hữu Phiếm40 thì Nhất Linh bị mắc chứng ám ảnh tự sát (obsession par le suicide) khá nặng. Có lần, ông đã uống thuốc ngủ để tìm đến cái chết khi chạy trốn chính quyền Ngô Đình Diệm trên đường Lê Thánh Tôn (sau cuộc đảo chánh bất thành ngày 11-11-1960). Chính bác sĩ Phiếm đã phải súc rửa dạ dày và tiêm thuốc Strychnine cứu sống ông. Nhưng cuộc tự sát vào ngày 7-7-1963 của Nhất Linh bằng cách uống rượu whisky pha thuốc ngủ nồng độ mạnh là một sự giải thoát quyết liệt cuối cùng, đưa ông khỏi vũng lầy cuộc sống mà nhiều lần ông những muốn rút chân ra song không thành. Cuối cùng thì ông cũng làm được điều mình muốn: chọn cái chết như một diễn ngôn chính trị. Một ngày trước khi tòa án chính quyền Ngô Đình Diệm mở phiên xử tội đảo chánh, Nhất Linh lìa đời, để lại một di ngôn nổi tiếng: “Đời tôi để lịch sử xử, tôi không chịu để ai xử cả” Chưa đầy 4 tháng sau cái chết của Nhất Linh, cuộc đảo chánh xảy ra; kết thúc 9 năm nắm quyền của anh em ông Ngô Đình Diệm. Tại Đà Lạt, sau khi chính quyền gia đình trị của anh em họ Ngô sụp đổ, con đường Ngô Đình Khôi (trước đó là đường Rue des Roses, Hoa Hồng)41 được đổi tên thành đường Nguyễn Tường Tam (giai đoạn từ 1963 đến 196542) Bốn năm ở Đà Lạt như một chương nhạc đẹp và có không khí huyền bí trong bản hợp xướng cuộc đời phức tạp của nhà văn Nhất Linh – chính trị gia Nguyễn Tường Tam. Đó là một cuộc hóa thân, đi vào chính tác ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 57 phẩm của mình; cuộc trở về với phẩm giá của một kẻ sĩ Đông phương, nương náu, tìm mình trong thiên nhiên, nhưng cũng lại là thời kỳ giấu mình, tự thanh lọc để chọn lựa hành xử theo motif của một trí thức dấn thân kiểu phương Tây - tiếp tục quyết liệt đối diện với đời sống, thời cuộc dù phải đón nhận cái kết biết trước là bi thảm. Đoạn đường Đặng Thái Thân, nơi một thời Nhất Linh từng gắn bó. Đà Lạt, 7-2016. Ảnh: NVN] ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 59 CÀ PHÊ THỜI KHÔNG “SON PHẤN” Cà phê Đà Lạt trước 1975 là chủ đề mà nhiều người có thể kể lể sa đà. Vậy, những quán cà phê Đà Lạt từng có gì đặc biệt? Trước hết, cũng cần phải lật lại lịch sử con đường du hành của ly cà phê thế giới vào Việt Nam. Năm 1475, quán cà phê đầu tiên trên thế giới ra đời ở thành đô Constantinople của đế quốc Ottoman (1453-1922), để rồi hơn một thế kỷ sau, từ Yemen, cà phê xuất khẩu sang châu Âu và khai sinh văn hóa cà phê tại các nước Anh, Pháp, Hà Lan… Chủ nghĩa thực dân, từ thế kỷ thứ 15 đến nửa đầu thế kỷ 20 kéo theo nhiều cuộc vật đổi sao dời. Nhưng hãy tạm gác lại những luận điệu quen thuộc, nghiêm trọng và định kiến để nhìn vào yếu tố du hành văn hóa, sẽ thấy, riêng trong chuyện ăn uống tiêu dao, văn minh cà phê là một thành tựu mà người Âu “truyền bá” trên đất Á một cách tuyệt vời theo cái gọi là “bước chân thực dân”. Đi qua những gạch đầu dòng trong “phả hệ” cà phê thế giới để thấy rằng, trong ly cà phê hôm nay mà chúng ta tận hưởng tại Đà Lạt, hẳn 60 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN không phải là thứ thuần chủng bản địa, mà đến từ những cuộc xê dịch. Người Pháp theo đạo Thiên Chúa đã đưa cà phê vào Việt Nam trong quá trình truyền đạo. Những người triển khai chủ nghĩa thực dân từ những năm giữa thập niên 1850 hẳn đã chọn các đô thị làm điểm dừng. Sau đó, tạo ra những đồn điền cung cấp cà phê và bên cạnh những thành phố – nơi tiêu thụ cà phê. Đà Lạt, đô thị người Pháp khai sinh và xem là nơi nghỉ dưỡng, một “vườn ươm” nòi giống Pháp, chính vì vậy, có lẽ thú uống cà phê vào Đà Lạt là cuộc tiếp biến diễn ra sớm, tự nhiên và tất yếu so với các đô thị khác. Tính hai giai đoạn chính: người Pháp buông bỏ Đông Dương từ 1954 sau hiệp định Genève, người Mỹ đến và cũng rời đi sau sự kiện tháng 4-1975, thì Đà Lạt trải qua nhiều cuộc chuyển biến chính trị, nhưng trên cả những chính biến lớn lao diễn ra nơi đô thị này, những gì được kiến tạo thuộc về cấu hình văn hóa thị dân thì mãi được bảo lưu sống động, không hề đứt đoạn. Cà phê Đà Lạt có thể tiêu biểu minh chứng cho điều đó. Ngoài yếu tố lịch sử, thì tính cách tự nhiên và tâm lý, hành vi tiêu dùng sinh ra từ đó cũng là một đặc điểm cần nhắc tới. Một vùng khí hậu lạnh giá xem ra lý tưởng cho việc người ta theo một nhịp chuẩn (tempo giusto). Người xứ lạnh quen kiểu ngồi một góc quán sá hàng giờ, nghe nhạc và chờ phin cà phê ấm nóng rơi rớt từng giọt chậm chạp lúc thư nhàn. Thành phố có thành phần cư dân là giới trung lưu, công chức, trí thức chiếm tỉ lệ cao như Đà Lạt, nơi thị dân có nếp sống nhã nhặn, biết tận hưởng thời gian, sự tĩnh tại hay nhu cầu thường xuyên về những cuộc gặp gỡ giao du theo lối salon văn hóa cũng là lý do để những quán cà phê, phòng trà tồn tại với một sắc thái riêng. Có nhiều chọn lựa không gian cà phê nếu ta trở về Đà Lạt của những năm thập niên 1960 – 1970. Cà phê sang, có Night Club ở khu chợ Mới. Trong một đoạn hồi ức, danh ca từng viết rằng, lúc bấy giờ, những năm giữa thập niên 1960, đêm đến thường đi hát ở Night Club, với mức lương 2.500 đồng Việt Nam Cộng hòa mỗi tháng (ngang với lương bậc Trung úy thời bấy giờ). ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 61 [Hai mẩu quảng cáo cà phê, phòng trà Đà Lạt vào năm 1963 trên tờ Chiều hướng mới. Ảnh: NVN] Trong bích chương quảng cáo của phòng trà này, có vẽ một anh lính ngồi trầm tư trên chiếc ghế cao, trước ly cà phê tỏa khói. Điều này trùng khớp với câu chuyện Khánh Ly nói về thành phần khách quen của không gian cả phê ở phòng trà này: “Với khí hậu lành lạnh về đêm là nơi giải trí lý tưởng của thành phố du lịch, vậy mà khách khứa cũng không có bao nhiêu. Lính Mỹ, cấp cố vấn, mới được vào thị xã chơi chứ những cậu học trò vừa mới hết trung học, rời gia đình đến một đất nước xa lạ, nên có vẻ sợ sệt. Người của thành phố, muốn đi, sợ gặp người quen, khó chối tội với vợ, thế nên ban nhạc đêm đêm cứ chơi những bản nhạc trữ tình, chúng tôi vẫn hát, các chị ngồi uống nước tán gẫu hoặc nhảy với nhau. Mỗi đêm vài ba bàn khách. Mọi người bình thản nhìn nhau, chờ ngày cuối tuần. Có những đêm vũ trường gần đóng cửa, một băng không quân áo bay đen khăn quàng cổ màu tím hoa cà, bất ngờ xuất hiện đứng thành một hàng dài nơi cửa. Nhà hàng không chạy lại đón 62 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN khách. Chúng tôi không ai ngạc nhiên. Chuyện này xảy ra thường. Tôi lặng lẽ lên sân khấu, ban nhạc hiểu ý chơi bài Gửi gió cho mây ngàn bay. Tôi hát xong, những chiếc khăn quàng màu tím hoa cà lặng lẽ quay ra, đi vào đêm tối, nơi các anh từ đó bước ra. Không bao giờ hỏi nhưng tôi biết một phi vụ vừa hoàn tất.”43 [Ca sĩ Khánh Ly thời đi hát ở Night Club Đà Lạt. Ảnh tư liệu] Ngoài đến Night Club uống cà phê, thưởng thức vang và nghe hát ra thì café Tùng cũng là một quán lâu đời, nơi ưa thích của những trí thức, văn nghệ sĩ dừng chân ở Đà Lạt44. Lịch sử quán cà phê này gắn với ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 63 những giai đoạn quy hoạch trung tâm Đà Lạt. Khung cửa sổ kính mờ sương ở quán cà phê phố này đã là góc nhìn trầm tư trước phố xá của biết bao lữ khách đến và đi. Ở Tùng, thời gian như ngưng đọng với âm nhạc, tranh ảnh bài trí, với những vật dụng ghế bàn cũ, cung cách phục vụ cũ kiểu gia đình và phong thái tận hưởng cà phê kiểu người Đà Lạt cũ, chậm rãi, nhẹ nhàng, tinh tế. [Một không gian cà phê trí thức nghệ sĩ Đà Lạt giữa thập niên 1960. Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình cố họa sĩ Đinh Cường] Nhạc sĩ Lê Uyên Phương45 cũng kể về những quán cà phê trí thức Đà Lạt một thời. Với ông, quán cà phê là “ma túy” với những người trẻ – một nơi phản chiếu tâm thế bất an của tuổi trẻ trong thời chiến: “Không thể nào quên được những đêm thật tuyệt vời của Đà Lạt vào những năm của thập niên 1960. Chúng tôi, như phần đông những người trẻ lúc đó, thường hay la cà khắp các quán cà phê ở Đà Lạt, nhất là cà phê Tùng ở gần chợ Hòa Bình. 64 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Cái phòng vuông vức với những hàng ghế liền bọc plastic đỏ, những chiếc bàn thật thấp, trên tường có bức tranh lớn vẽ một người chơi guitar theo lối nửa lập thể, nửa ấn tượng, và cái không gian đầy khói thuốc trộn lẫn với âm nhạc nhẹ phát ra từ chiếc loa thùng đã trở thành một thứ ma túy đối với chúng tôi. Bấy giờ là thời kỳ mà cuộc chiến đang vô cùng sôi sục, quanh những ly cà phê đen, người ta nói nhiều về những bạn bè ở trên các mặt trận, người ta nói nhiều về cái sống và cái chết, về cái phải và cái không phải trong cuộc chiến đang xảy ra, người ta nói nhiều về những sự việc trong một quân trường hay trong một trại nhập ngũ nào đó và đôi lúc cả những nhà văn được giải Nobel lúc bấy giờ xen lẫn những mẩu chuyện về một cô gái xinh đẹp nào trong thành phố. Sự lo lắng về một tương lai bất định của thời chiến quả đã là một ám ảnh lớn cho tất cả chúng tôi lúc bấy giờ. Những giọt cà phê nhiều khi đã không được uống vì cái vị đắng của nó mà vì cái vị đắng của cuộc chiến kéo dài tưởng như vô tận so với cuộc đời hết sức ngắn ngủi của chúng ta – một người bạn vừa hy sinh ở góc rừng nào đó, không những để lại cho người thân của anh ta những nỗi buồn phiền bất tận mà còn thêm vào trong cái khói thuốc của căn phòng nhỏ bé vuông vức của những quán cà phê một sự u ám lạnh lẽo không cùng. Chúng tôi đã nhiều lần ngồi thở dài để đưa tiễn một người bạn lên đường, và trong những câu chuyện, chúng tôi đã luôn luôn cố gắng để giải thích cho chính mình mọi sự dấn thân của chúng tôi lúc đó. H. là một sinh viên ghiền ma túy. Một hôm trời khuya, chúng tôi đang lúc vui đùa ồn ào với nhau trong quán, H. bỗng ra dấu cho mọi người yên lặng, anh cầm cái thẻ sinh viên của anh đưa lên cao cho chúng tôi nhìn thấy rồi xé làm đôi, anh tuyên bố từ hôm nay anh chặt đứt mọi hệ lụy trong quá khứ của mình, ngày mai anh lên đường đi trình diện tình nguyện nhập ngũ – chiến tranh đôi lúc đã giải quyết cho chúng tôi một cách hữu hiệu những vấn đề cá nhân như thế. Biết bao nhiêu chuyện đã xảy ra trong một quán cà phê, ở đó đôi lúc đã là nơi mà những khúc quanh của một đời người bỗng mở ra trước mắt. Một bài hát mà lúc bấy giờ chúng tôi ai cũng ưa thích, bài J’Entend Soufflet Le Train46, tôi không nhớ ai đã hát bài đó, nhưng cái âm hưởng vừa xa vắng của bài hát – như một tiếng còi tàu – đã thể hiện được đúng tâm trạng của chúng tôi lúc bấy giờ. Phải chăng trong sự thôi thúc của đời sống, trái tim ta đôi lúc bỗng bắt gặp được cái nhịp đập bất thường rất kỳ diệu của cuộc đời, và trong mỗi khối óc của chúng ta, một số tế bào não bộ đã hiểu biết được đôi điều về cái đẹp vô cùng của sự não nề trong kiếp sống. (…) ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 65 Những quán cà phê lúc bấy giờ đã thực sự trở thành cái nhà của chúng tôi, ngoài giờ đi làm, đi học ra, cà phê là nơi chúng tôi thường xuyên có mặt, bất kể ngày đêm, ở đó chúng tôi có thể tìm gặp những người hiểu được mình và có thể thổ lộ mọi điều riêng tư mà không ai phàn nàn gì cả.”47 Bấy giờ ở Đà Lạt, những quán cà phê kiểu gia đình, không gian gần gũi như Văn, Vui, Mây,… là các địa chỉ của thanh niên, trí thức, công chức. Nhìn rộng ra, mỗi quán cà phê Đà Lạt thời điểm 1960 – 1970 đều mang một nét đặc biệt: ở cà phê Kivini số 52 Minh Mạng là nơi nổi tiếng nhờ giọng ca Kim Vui, cà phê T2 đối diện trường Bùi Thị Xuân được học sinh sinh viên mệnh danh (theo cách diễn dịch tên quán T2) là nơi dành cho người thất tình, thiếu tiền và có thể là nơi tỏ tình lý tưởng. Một chút xa xỉ cho những ai quyến luyến phong vị Pháp, có cà phê Thủy Tạ, ban công, sảnh Dalat Palace hay Hotel Du Parc… Nhưng Đà Lạt cũng có những quán cóc lề đường rất duyên, gắn với ký ức biết bao người, như dãy ở góc bến xe Tùng Nghĩa với những quán “tứ chiếng” một thời: Long, Đôminô, Bà Năm,… hay có thể là những quán cà phê vô danh nằm dọc lối vào chợ, ga xe lửa phục vụ khách lữ hành dừng chân chốc lát… Vào năm 1972, Đà Lạt có một địa chỉ mới cho giới sành cà phê và yêu nhạc, đó là Lục Huyền Cầm của vợ chồng Lê Uyên-Phương. Một bức ảnh tư liệu của gia đình có ghi lại cảnh vợ chồng nghệ sĩ này đang hát mộc tại quán cà phê bên những sinh viên và bạn bè nghệ sĩ. Lục Huyền Cầm được lập ra để làm nơi sáng tác, giao lưu bạn bè và giới thiệu những tình khúc mới. Nhạc sĩ Lê Uyên Phương có hai người bạn thân, hầu như hôm nào cũng có mặt ở đây, đó là Đỗ Đức Kim (giáo viên) và Nguyễn Văn Thuyết (họa sĩ). Nhiều tranh trang trí trong quán Lục Huyền Cầm là do Nguyễn Văn Thuyết vẽ. Về sau, một số tranh của ông Thuyết cũng được chọn in trên trang 4 của những tờ nhạc Lê Uyên Phương phát hành tại Sài Gòn. Cần nhớ rằng, quán cà phê này được mở khi Lê Uyên-Phương đã nổi tiếng khắp Sài Gòn48. Vì thế, sự ra đời của nó gây một sự chú ý đáng kể trong thành phố yên bình. Về mặt nào đó, nó góp thêm cho đời sống văn hóa thành phố một tụ điểm sinh hoạt ý nghĩa. Lục Huyền Cầm, vào các tối thứ 7 và chủ nhật là nơi tập hợp giới văn chương, âm nhạc trong 66 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 67 [Cà phê Bà Năm, một dạng quán cà phê bình dân Đà Lạt từ trước 1975 nay vẫn còn lưu giữ nét cũ, nằm trên đường Phan Bội Châu. Ảnh: NVN] 68 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN thành phố để chuyện trò thời thế, nghệ thuật và tạo hứng thú cho nhau sáng tác. Hơn 10 ca khúc phổ thơ của Nguyễn Xuân Thiệp, Huy Tưởng, Hoàng Khởi Phong, Phạm Công Thiện… trong album Tình như mây cõi lạ được nhạc sĩ Lê Uyên Phương viết tại Lục Huyền Cầm, sau những cuộc gặp gỡ, trao đổi sáng tác với các bằng hữu thi sĩ vào các đêm gặp gỡ văn nghệ. Thế giới cà phê Đà Lạt thời bấy giờ, dù dành cho giới thượng lưu hay bình dân, thì mỗi không gian mang một nét thanh cảnh nhỏ nhẹ và lịch thiệp, không xô bồ hỗn tạp. Thừa hưởng trực tiếp văn hóa cà phê từ người Pháp, thị dân Đà Lạt từng có một đời sống an nhàn, lịch lãm bên ly cà phê thường nhật. Một thế sống sang cả, tự nhiên, không chút “son phấn”. Có lý khi nói rằng, chỉ cần hai thứ – cà phê và khí hậu – được bảo tồn, thì Đà Lạt thảy còn nguyên vẹn để quay về. 70 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN [Đường phố Đà Lạt trước quán café Tùng. Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình ông Trần Đình Tùng] ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 71 CAFÉ TÙNG, TỪ THĂM THẲM LÃNG QUÊN Một góc đường phố trung tâm Đà Lạt đầu thập niên 1960. Có ba người đàn ông ăn vận thanh lịch, một người đóng thùng, áo manteau vắt khuỷu tay đang ngoái lại chờ bạn đồng hành. Một người tay thõng túi áo bước đi điềm nhiên, như đang kể câu chuyện vui nào đó và người cuối chậm rãi ngoái lại nhìn con phố sau lưng. Cả ba đều toát lên vẻ thong dong. Trên vỉa hè, có một cột điện treo bảng đường cấm (phương tiện cơ giới lưu thông theo hướng chiều ngược), dưới chân cột điện có vài thùng chai nước ngọt đã dùng xếp chồng lên nhau. Cạnh đó, người đàn ông vận áo khoác màu sậm, dáng thư sinh cùng với hai đứa trẻ đứng nhìn về phía ống kính. Một người đàn ông vận sơ-mi trắng quần đậm, đóng thùng, đi giày tây, đang di chuyển lướt qua trước mặt họ… Phông nền của cảnh sinh hoạt đó là ngôi nhà phố một tầng theo phong cách kiến trúc tân kỳ (modernism) có viền mái cách điệu mang đường nét tối giản, khỏe khoắn kéo thành lam ngang bên trên và một đường sổ chéo, lộng trong nó là khung cửa kính chia hai phần không đều, 72 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN một làm cửa ra vào và một làm view để lấy ánh sáng tự nhiên tạo cảm giác kết nối nội thất với ngoại cảnh. Phần dưới của phông tường nhám là những đường kẻ ngang giả lam-ri tạo cảm giác thân thiện, đồng nhất với đặc điểm trang trí bên trong. Thoạt nhìn bề ngoài, ngôi nhà phố đã toát lên vẻ đơn giản, gần gũi, ấm áp. Đó chính là mặt tiền Café Tùng của thuở ban đầu. Những người đàn ông lịch lãm trong bức ảnh đó có lẽ nay đã già, hoặc đã rời xa thế giới này. Đứa bé trai lớn trong bức ảnh, nay chắc đã ngoài 60, cũng trạc tuổi chủ quán Tùng hiện tại, người thừa hưởng một gia sản, hơn thế, một di sản quá lớn mà cha mình để lại – ngôi quán biểu tượng của thời hoàng kim trong lịch sử văn hóa đô thị Đà Lạt. Lịch sử của Tùng gắn với một phần lịch sử di cư của người Việt lên miền cao nguyên Lang Bian lập nghiệp; đó cũng chính là một mảnh vi lịch sử về đời sống người phương Bắc nhập cư Đà Lạt ở giai đoạn sớm. Chủ quán café Tùng đã tìm đến với thành phố cao nguyên này sớm hơn đợt di cư năm 1954. Ông thuộc trong nhóm người Hà Nội đến Đà Lạt quãng thập niên 1940. Kinh doanh cà phê không phải là ngành nghề kiếm sống ban đầu của gia đình ông bà Trần Đình Tùng - Lê Thị Giác (đều sinh năm 1927). Trước năm 1955, những con phố ở trung tâm Đà Lạt hãy còn thoáng rộng, một vài chỗ còn đầm lầy, nhiều nếp nhà tranh của người Việt dựng lên tạm bợ dưới những tán thông. Thời này, ông Tùng làm công chức ở Nha Địa dư Quốc gia. Sau đó, rời việc công chức nhàm chán, ông đi làm thợ hớt tóc. Rồi nghề thợ hớt tóc đến lúc cũng không đủ sống, ông chuyển qua học chế biến, pha chế cà phê. Ông mày mò nghiên cứu văn hóa cà phê từ những tài liệu người Pháp để lại và nuôi mộng mở một quán cà phê nhà phố vừa mang tinh thần Pháp - Âu lại vừa thân thiện, công năng, thức thời kiểu Mỹ trong không khí chuyển giao lịch sử (giá trị Mỹ đang dần tạo ra ảnh hưởng cùng với sự xuất hiện ngày càng ồ ạt của người Bắc trong đợt di cư lớn của những ngày đầu thời tổng thống Ngô Đình Diệm). ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 73 Ban đầu, café Tùng không nằm ở địa điểm số 6 khu Hòa Bình như bây giờ. Năm 1955, ông Trần Đình Tùng khai trương quán ở địa chỉ kiosque số 5 đường Thành Thái49, bên cạnh có nhà in, hiệu sách Đà Lạt khá nổi tiếng. Café Tùng thời điểm này trội hơn một số tiệm cà phê khác ở trung tâm, thứ nhất là bởi địa thế đẹp, nhà mặt phố khang trang có tầm nhìn từ đỉnh đồi ngó xuống bờ hồ (dù phố xá thời kỳ này thì còn hiu hắt lắm, chưa có nhiều cửa nhà hay công trình để ngắm nghía). Ngoài ra, Tùng mang lại một không gian sang trọng khác biệt, nhất là với âm nhạc: giọng ca Edith Piaf, Yves Montand hay Dalida đã được cất lên từ bộ loa thùng nhỏ trong góc kiosque ấm áp nơi góc phố cao nguyên còn đậm sắc thái văn hóa Pháp. Dòng nhạc từ châu Âu xa xôi như gọi về giấc mơ về một tiểu Paris hay thủ phủ Liên bang Đông Dương vừa vụt qua trong chớp mắt của lịch sử. [Café Tùng thời ở số 5 Thành Thái (nay là Nguyễn Chí Thanh). Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình ông Trần Đình Tùng] 74 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Trụ được ở kiosque số 5 Thành Thái trong vài ba năm, thì qua một đợt chỉnh trang trung tâm, quán café Tùng phải dời đi. Lần này thì chuyển đến một kiosque dãy nhà bên hông Chợ (Cũ) Đà Lạt, nay là rạp Hòa Bình. Thời kỳ này neo đậu không lâu. Là người từng làm Nha Địa dư, ông Tùng có lẽ cũng nắm một số phong thanh thông tin quy hoạch để biết rằng, đây chỉ là giai đoạn dừng chân tạm thời để duy trì hoạt động của quán trước khi kiếm được một địa điểm ổn định hơn. [Chợ cũ Đà Lạt. Ảnh tư liệu] Năm 1958 chợ Đà Lạt hiện nay (gọi là Chợ Mới) được bắt đầu xây dựng theo bản thiết kế của kiến trúc sư Nguyễn Duy Đức, nhà thầu Nguyễn Linh Chiểu thi công (về sau, kiến trúc sư Ngô Viết Thụ thiết kế “bổ sung” một lối đi bắc ngang qua khu Hòa Bình). Năm 1960 Chợ Mới khai trương, kéo theo cuộc giải tỏa dãy kiosque bên hông Chợ Cũ. Trung tâm Đà Lạt lại trải qua một đợt chỉnh trang lớn. Lần này, gia đình ông Trần Đình Tùng mới cho dời quán café sang tầng trệt nhà phố số 6 khu Hòa Bình và định vị ở đó cho đến bây giờ. Như vậy, trước khi an cư ở địa chỉ hiện tại thì café Tùng đã hai lần di ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 75 dời trong vòng 5 năm, từ 1955 đến 1960. Trong hai lần đó, gia đình ông Tùng tạm gọi là bắt mạch được phong cách thưởng thức cà phê của người Đà Lạt, đặc biệt là giới trí thức, công chức tinh hoa. Vợ chồng ông tự tay rang, xay cà phê theo một công thức riêng, trung thành với kiểu cà phê pha phin – một lối thưởng thức cà phê của người ưa sống chậm, âm nhạc được chọn theo một gu riêng, đậm chất Pháp và thẩm mỹ không gian quán xá được thiết kế theo một phong cách riêng, ấm áp, thân thiện và lịch thiệp. Không gian của café Tùng có sự dung hòa những giá trị Pháp qua âm nhạc, tranh ảnh mang vẻ hoài niệm cùng phong thái phục vụ đậm tính chất gia đình nề nếp truyền thống Việt Nam trong một thiết kế đề cao tính tiện nghi, cởi mở kiểu Mỹ. Nơi Tùng, những giá trị có tính quốc tế được nuôi dưỡng từ một bối cảnh lịch sử đặc biệt của thành phố, mà hình thành bản sắc, nhất quán cho đến mãi về sau này… [Ông Trần Đình Tùng tại quầy phục vụ quán cà phê của gia đình. Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình ông Trần Đình Tùng] 76 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN Một bức ảnh đầu thập niên 1960 chụp cảnh ông Trần Đình Tùng đứng ở quần bar của quán, vận đồ veston, tóc rẽ ngôi giữa, khuôn mặt gầy nhưng vóc dáng thư sinh – đang chăm chú tính toán sổ sách. Cạnh ông là hai đầu đọc đĩa than, bộ amply và loa, trên tường có dán một mẫu quảng cáo thuốc Bastos (đây là loại thuốc nặng, phổ biến ở Đà Lạt có lẽ một phần bởi thời tiết lạnh lẽo, cũng có thể bản thân thương hiệu này gắn với gu thưởng thức thuốc lá của dân Tây công chức thời thuộc địa và có ảnh hưởng đến cư dân Đà Lạt về sau chăng?!)50 và bức ảnh một phụ nữ ăn vận rất “à la mode” có lẽ được cắt ra từ một mẩu bích chương quảng cáo hay trang tạp chí nào đó. Café Tùng, ròng rã thập niên 1960 và nửa đầu 1970 có thể coi là một quán cà phê đô thị có sức hấp dẫn đặc biệt với giới tinh hoa, ưu tú của Đà Lạt và miền Nam. Đôi tình nhân nghệ sĩ Lê Uyên và Phương từng chọn Tùng làm nơi hò hẹn. Khi đã là vợ chồng, họ vẫn chọn một góc ở Tùng làm nơi bên nhau hằng ngày, tay trong tay nhìn ngày mới lên, nhìn màn đêm phủ tràn xuống thành phố và ước nguyện “có yêu nhau ngọt ngào tìm nhau”. Phía sau cánh cửa kính đón ánh sáng những ngày mùa đông mây xám, Nguyễn Thị Lệ Mai, với mảnh đời riêng đầy đa đoan từng ngồi đếm từng giọt cà phê rơi và nghĩ về một tương lai vô định. Hẳn lúc ấy cô không hình dung được rằng, một ngày nào đó giọng ca của mình sẽ cất lên trên chiếc loa thùng của quán cà phê này với thứ âm nhạc phản chiến của một chàng nhạc sĩ còn ủ dột u sầu ở xó núi B’lao mà làm xiêu đổ biết bao trái tim cư dân trong thành phố, con dân trên đất nước thời loạn li. Về sau, Lệ Mai, tức ca sĩ Khánh Ly, nhớ lại: “Một thời 20 rất bụi đời, rất vỉa hè. Đến như gió. Đi như gió. Từ đâu tới. Đi về đâu. Không biết. Không cần biết. Đáng yêu biết bao những ngày tháng sống lãng đãng như mây trời, biển khơi. Phà khói thuốc vào sương mù Đà Lạt. Buổi sáng thức dậy, ngửi mùi thơm của thông. Nghe thông reo nhè nhẹ. Mặc áo len cổ tròn, quàng cổ, quần jean, thế là… xuống phố. Có lúc đi giữa mưa vẫn nghe tiếng chân mình rộn rã reo vui trên mặt đường loang nước ở ngã tư. Xe đò, xe lam từ hướng Chi Lăng chạy ra. Bước lên xe ngồi xuống. Bao giờ tôi cũng ngồi ngoái lại trường tiểu học Phan Chu Trinh nằm bên kia đường. Tôi đã học ở đây năm 1956. Xe qua nhà vãng lai dành cho ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 77 các sĩ quan Không Quân nghỉ mát. Qua ga xe lửa. Tiệm phở ở ga ăn cũng khá. Đổ một con dốc. Rồi một con dốc nhỏ nữa, qua nhà thương Soyer, trường Yersin. Xe cứ chạy. Bên trái là sân vận động, sân tennis. Khách sạn Palace. Đường rẽ lên nhà thờ chính tòa Đà Lạt. Bên phải là Hồ Xuân Hương. Vòng theo một bùng binh. Ngang qua khu quân vụ thị trấn, xe đò lên dốc. Vào bến đậu ngay cạnh café Tùng. Vào làm một ly đã. Mọi chuyện tính sau. Ngày nào cũng thế, năm nào cũng thế. Không thay đổi.”51 Cũng nơi dãy ghế da liền cũ kỹ, trước những chiếc bàn gỗ bọc nhựa mica trắng im hơi, Phạm Công Thiện đã ngồi hàng giờ nhìn khói thuốc và trầm tư về thi ca, về thân phận và cách xoay chuyển tinh thần cá nhân trong một thực tại u ám bởi chiến tranh. Chàng trẻ tuổi đương triển khai trong đầu những gì là “ý thức mới trong văn nghệ và triết học”... Cũng ở một chỗ nào đó của Tùng, một chiều sương xám của thuở phố phường còn tịch lặng, trung niên thi sĩ Bùi Giáng xé vỏ thuốc lá mà biên mấy câu thơ giã từ lộng lẫy buồn: Buổi sớm hôm buồn tinh tú ai ngừa Bàn chân bước vơi tay buông kể lể Trời với đất để lòng em lạnh thế Hoa hương ơi còn diễm lệ bao giờ Những ân tình đầu liễu rũ lơ thơ Còn hay mất trong trăng mờ khuya khoắt 52 Cũng tại đây, chắc Từ Công Phụng, chàng sinh viên gốc Chăm đến từ đất nắng Phan Rang cũng từng có nhiều buổi chiều băn khoăn về tình yêu để rồi vượt qua những bỡ ngỡ rụt rè với âm nhạc thuở ban đầu, chia sẻ với bạn bè những câu hát đẹp như kẻ mộng du đi chới với trong vùng khói sương hư thực, đánh rơi ý niệm về thời gian và không gian: “Bây giờ, tháng mấy rồi hỡi em/ Lênh đênh, ngàn mây trôi êm đềm…” Nhiều trí thức danh nhân đã lặng lẽ bước trên nền gạch bông cũ để chọn cho mình một chỗ ngồi, nhưng nói đúng, là dọn cho mình một tâm thế sống, rồi thư thái nhìn cuộc đời lướt qua bên ngoài, nhìn thời 78 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN gian lặng trôi, chiêm nghiệm nhân thế thời ly loạn bên ly cà phê. Họ gặp ở đó không gian mà mỗi hiện tại đều nhanh chóng kết tủa thành hoài niệm rồi cũng tự mình đắm đuối với thời gian đã mất. Họ gặp ở đó chút ấm cúng của một nhân quần nhỏ biết khắc khoải suy tư hay băn khoăn về thân phận mong manh của con người trong thời chiến, gặp ở đó cả những mảnh tình đa đoan trôi dạt trên quê hương thống khổ mà luôn thừa mứa mộng mơ. Vào mỗi tối thứ Năm hàng tuần, họ vẫn tiếp tục phiêu diêu trong khí quyển tinh thần của những bản pop mang đậm sắc thái Francophone53 với “Yé Yé”54 hậu chiến có màu tươi sáng và giễu cợt số phận, mà đại diện tiêu biểu là: Adamo, Johnny Hallyday, Sylvie Vartan, France Gall, Françoise Hardy, Claude François, Christophe hay Jacques Brel… [Một góc café Tùng trước 1975. Ảnh: Tư liệu gia đình ông Trần Đình Tùng] Trong tạp ghi về Đà Lạt của một lữ khách về giai đoạn này, có dành những dòng nâng niu dành cho Tùng: ĐÀ LẠT, MỘT THỜI HƯƠNG XA ‒ 79 “Tất cả những gì có từ ngày cà phê Tùng bắt đầu sáng nghiệp, đến nay không thay đổi. Giữa cái lạnh sắt se của trời đêm Đà Lạt, ngồi trong quán cà phê Tùng nhìn từng ngọn đèn đường mờ ảo qua ô cửa kính, người ta thật sự cảm nhận trọn vẹn sự thơ mộng của thành phố mù sương. Những hôm quá lạnh, cà phê Tùng là lò sưởi làm ấm lòng lữ khách. Nhưng cũng có người không ngại ngồi trên balcon – chỉ có một bàn duy nhất – nhìn xuống đường, để thưởng thức sự rét mướt bao phủ khắp núi đồi Đà Lạt. Những ai ở Đà Lạt trong thập niên 1960, 1970 đều biết: Thứ Năm là ngày Cà Phê Tùng cho khách nghe nhạc Pháp. Dĩa hát của những giọng ca vàng từng ngân vang trong quán, như Françoise Hardy với Tous les garcons et les filles, Ton meilleur ami, Sylvie Vartan trình bày thật vui tươi La plus belle pour aller danser, En ecoutant la pluie, Quand le film est triste, Dalida tài danh thể hiện Bambino, L’histoire d’un amour, Bésame mucho, Christophe hát Main dans la main hay Charles Aznavour trầm ấm lả lướt với ca khúc Et moi dans mon coin..” 55 Ở Tùng, không gian không lấy gì làm cầu kỳ. Những bộ bàn ghế gỗ đơn sơ được đóng từ 1953, bằng tuổi anh con trai trưởng trong gia đình ông Tùng mà đến nay vẫn còn hữu dụng. Dàn âm thanh cũng vậy. Năm 1965, ông Tùng lặn lội xuống quân cảng Cam Ranh, để mua cặp loa hàng PX (viết tắt của post exchange, dịch vụ phân phối hàng hóa dành cho quân đội Mỹ ở miền Nam Việt Nam) có âm thanh ấm, có thể kết nối để nghe âm thanh analog từ chiếc máy đọc đĩa than. Cũng sau hơn nửa thế kỷ, cặp loa ấy vẫn còn được sử dụng ở Tùng. Tùng vẫn là một thánh đường hò hẹn và là điểm đến để đốt thời gian. Ở Tùng, ngoài nghệ sĩ, những lữ khách có tên tuổi ra, thì có thể gặp các sĩ quan trường Võ bị Đà Lạt, giáo sư, sinh viên trường Chiến tranh Chính trị, giới nghiên cứu ở Trung tâm Nghiên cứu Nguyên tử Đà Lạt hay giảng viên Viện Đại học Đà Lạt… Ngày đó, ông Tùng giữ nề nếp ngôi quán này đến nỗi, chỉ tuyển đàn ông làm xẹc-via (phục vụ) cùng với người trong gia đình để đảm bảo một thể diện “an toàn” cho quán. Nhưng Tùng vẫn là một phân khúc hơi cao trong thời bấy giờ trong một thành phố lạnh và thưa dân. Ông Trần Đình Tùng có nghĩ đến một nhóm khách hàng khác, đó là giới bình dân. Nên ngoài café Tùng, vợ chồng ông mở quán Đôminô ở khu bến xe cũ. Một dạng quán cà phê cóc 80 ‒ NGUYỄN VĨNH NGUYÊN ngày nay. Bà Sáu, người giúp việc cho gia đình ông Tùng được giao trông lo quán cà phê Đôminô. Là quán bình dân, nhưng cách phục vụ gần gũi nhỏ nhẹ của bà Sáu cộng với sự thân tình của một người giúp việc gắn bó với gia đình ông Tùng suốt 20 năm khiến nhiều khách vào quán này cứ nghĩ bà là em vợ của ông Tùng. Ở dãy cà phê bến xe cũ, gần Đôminô, có quán cà phê Long, cà phê Bà Năm được giới bình dân, trí thức nghèo yêu thích. Cà phê Bà Năm cho đến nay vẫn còn, nhưng dời về đường Phan Bội Châu. Hai chị em bà Năm cho đến nay vẫn đứng quán theo cách pha chế cà phê vớ (cà phê kho) ngày cũ, thành phần khách vẫn không đổi – đó là giới bình dân tứ chiếng, người lao động nghèo. Ngày đó, sĩ quan trường Võ bị Đà Lạt mặc đồ lịch sự thì vào Tùng ngồi, còn hôm túi tiền eo hẹp, ra phố không muốn ai nhòm ngó, ăn vận xuềnh xoàng thì vào Đôminô. Ở Đôminô vẫn bán cà phê do gia đình ông Tùng rang, xay, nhưng nhiều người Đà Lạt không có thói quen ngồi quán vẫn thường ghé lại Đôminô mua một vài	519,912
Aging Mechanisms II Longevity, Metabolism, and Brain Aging (Nozomu Mori) (Z-Library).pdf	Nozomu Mori Editor Aging Mechanisms II Longevity, Metabolism, and Brain Aging Aging Mechanisms II Nozomu Mori Editor Aging Mechanisms II Longevity, Metabolism, and Brain Aging Editor Nozomu Mori Fukuoka International University of Health and Welfare Fukuoka, Japan ISBN 978-981-16-7976-6 ISBN 978-981-16-7977-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7977-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, speciﬁcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microﬁlms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a speciﬁc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afﬁliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Preface Japan is the world’s longest-living country today. The average life expectancy is 81.64 years for men and 87.74 years for women, and the number of people over 100 years old (centenarians) is over 86,000 (as of 2021). However, of course, this was not the case in Japan 100 years ago. Health and long age the country enjoys today is based on the high economic growth after the Showa-era post-war recon- struction, improved dietary habits, and the expansion of the universal health care system. Although the country experienced the collapse of the bubble economy in the early Heisei period, the Japanese society has matured in a seemingly peaceful and prosperous manner up to the present day. However, the shadow of aging lurks over the whole society. As per the famous Noh play “Atsumori,” based on the Tale of Heike and sung and played by the renowned Sengoku Period Daimyo Oda Nobunaga, a man’s life was said to be 50 years in the sixteenth century. Even in the late nineteenth century Meiji- era Japan, the average life expectancy was in the 40s. However, after World War II, Japan achieved the world’s fastest increase in average life expectancy during the Period of Rapid Growth in the 1960s. This owes primarily to the establishment of the National Health Insurance, so-called kaihoken. In this relatively short period of time, Japan has quickly become a world leader in various health metrics, including longevity. Ikeda et al. analyze the key factors behind Japan’s impressive historic achievements over the past half-century in The Lancet special issue (The Lancet, 378(9796), 1094–1105, Fig. 1). On the ﬂip side, Japan’s entire society is now facing aging at the world’s fastest rate. The Period of Rapid Growth has long passed, and the whole country is now “aging.” On March 6, 2007, 14 years ago, something no one could have predicted happened; the collapse of a local city government. It was an unprecedented event. A town that once prospered from coal mining, Yubari city, Hokkaido, has gone bankrupt with a deﬁcit of 350 billion yen. A coal-mining town once bustling with 120,000 people had been reduced to 10,000 people in 40 years. There used to be six elementary schools, but now there is barely a single one. There is one small clinic, but no general hospital. The number of city employees was reduced by two-thirds, v and the city was forced to pay off its debts. Exodos of residents started and became unstoppable, especially in the young people, and the situation of the town is getting worse. Over 50% of the population is above the age of 65. Yubari is the epitome of the negative aspects of Japan’s aging society. On November 18, 2010, The British business magazine The Economist intro- duced the situation in Yubari to the world, and sounded a warning about the future of Japan’s super-aging population. The alarm was summed up in one word: “Japan’s burden.” Will Japan be able to cope with the various challenges of an aging society? The illustration of a child trying to support himself against the weight of the Japanese ﬂag is painful to our eyes (Fig. 2). This is not just a problem for Yubari, but will become a major issue soon in many parts of Japan. The baby boomer generation, born after World War II, has now become a large dark cloud of the elderly population of 75 years and older, shifting a massive burden to the future of a much smaller percentage of the young population. The origin of the problem lies in the imbalance between the extremely low birth rate and the growing aging population, with the birth rate of 1.4, lower than any other country. If this trend continues for the next 40 years, Japan’s overall population will decrease by 40 million, and Japan’s aging rate will reach 40% by the middle of this century (2050). That is to say, 4 out of 10 people will be 65 years or older. This is an average rate, however, and even if it can be lower in urban areas, the aging rate in the surrounding rural areas will easily exceed 50%. The situation Yubari is facing is expected to spread throughout the country soon. While “aging” has become a major social problem, it is fundamentally a medical and biological issue. Every living thing ages and dies without exception. Aging is not an illness, but a natural process of life. Consequently, research should focus not only on age-related diseases or pathological aging but also on physiological pro- cesses of aging. We would like to understand the fundamental biological mecha- nisms of aging; how do we all grow old? Over the past several decades, our knowledge of the research ﬁndings on the biological mechanisms of aging has accelerated. However, we are still a long way from fully understanding all the mechanisms of aging; how we, as animals, age and how our lifespan is determined. Fig. 1 Japan as No. 1 in the health-span growth and in longevity. (Adapted from The Lancet, 2011) vi Preface Previously, we have released a book entitled Aging Mechanisms: Longevity, Metabolism, and Brain Aging (Springer, 2015), summarizing aging researches pursued in the leading laboratories in the two neighboring countries in East Asia, i.e., Japan and South Korea. It was compiled as a memorial of collaborative efforts of basic biomedical researchers on aging in the two countries, mainly through the binational discussion forum of AACL (Asian Aging Core for Longevity) initiated by the editor in 2006. Now, it is almost 15 years since the editor took a ﬁrst step towards the discussion forum on aging research, and it is my sincere pleasure to ﬁnd the discussion forum of AACL evolve into the Asian Society for Aging Research to promote the scientiﬁc discussion on aging in East Asia including Japan, Korea, and China. Herein, I deeply thank our former core members, Drs. Eun Seong Hwang (University of Seoul), Isao Shimokawa (Nagasaki University School of Medicine), Zhongjun Zhou (University of Hong Kong), Sang Chul Park (Seoul National University), Inhee Mook-Jung (Seoul National University), and Yong-Sun Kim (Hallym University). I would note that this second volume Aging Mechanisms II (2021) is not a simple revision of the former Aging Mechanisms (2015), but it is intended to incorporate novel topics under the rapid progress of aging research in the leading laboratories in Japan. The only exception is Chap. 1, which is a revised version of the previous 2015 book chapter with a few modiﬁcations by Dr. Sataro Goto. The editor would like to express sincere thanks to everyone involved in the chapter contributions for their cooperation and enthusiasm, and hope that the book will be useful for many researchers and graduate students in biomedical aging research. Fukuoka, Japan Nozomu Mori Fig. 2 Japan’s burden and the population shift in the past and the future. (Source: The Economist, 2010) Preface vii Contents Part I From Hypothesis to Mechanisms 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Aging—A Historical and Critical Overview . . . . . . . . 3 Sataro Goto Part II Human Longevity: Accelerated Aging and Centenarians 2 Clinical and Basic Biology of Werner Syndrome, the Model Disease of Human Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Yoshiro Maezawa, Masaya Koshizaka, Hisaya Kato, and Koutaro Yokote 3 Biomarkers of Healthy Longevity: Lessons from Supercentenarians in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Yasumichi Arai and Nobuyoshi Hirose Part III Cellular Aging and Lower Animal Models 4 Cellular Aging and Metabolites in Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Hiroshi Kondoh, Takumi Mikawa, and Masahiro Kameda 5 To G0 or Not to G0: Cell Cycle Paradox in Senescence and Brain Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Shoma Ishikawa and Fuyuki Ishikawa 6 C. elegans Longevity Genes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Takaya Sugawara and Kazuichi Sakamoto 7 Understanding the Functions of Longevity Genes in Drosophila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Toshiro Aigaki and Manabu Tsuda ix Part IV Metabolism: Factors Affecting Tissue Aging 8 NAD+ Metabolism in Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Sailesh Palikhe and Takashi Nakagawa 9 Mitochondrial Dysfunction and Growth Differentiation Factor 15 in Aging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157 Yasunori Fujita and Masashi Tanaka 10 Sirtuins and Metabolic Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Jing Xu and Munehiro Kitada 11 Autophagy in Aging and Longevity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Shuhei Nakamura, Tatsuya Shioda, and Tamotsu Yoshimori 12 Sarcopenia: Current Topics and Future Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 Minoru Yamada, Kaori Kinoshita, Shosuke Satake, Yasumoto Matsui, and Hidenori Arai 13 Osteoporosis and Cellular Senescence in Bone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Takashi Kaito and Yuichiro Ukon 14 Aging and Chronic Kidney Disease Viewed from the FGF-Klotho Endocrine System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Makoto Kuro-o 15 Aging Biomarker SMP30 into a New Phase of Vitamin C and Aging Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Akihito Ishigami Part V Aging Brain: Cognitive Decline, Synaptic Plasticity 16 Age-Related Memory Impairments Are Caused by Alterations in Glial Activity at Old Ages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267 Motomi Matsuno and Minoru Saitoe 17 Critical Roles of Glial Neuroinﬂammation in Age-Related Memory Decline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279 Tatsuhiro Hisatsune 18 Central Mechanisms Linking Age-Associated Physiological Changes to Health Span Through the Hypothalamus . . . . . . . . . . . 289 Akiko Satoh Part VI Aged Brain: Neurodegenerative Diseases 19 PET Imaging of Amyloid and Tau in Alzheimer’s Disease . . . . . . . 307 Nobuyuki Okamura and Ryuichi Harada x Contents 20 Presenilin/γ-Secretase in the Pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 325 Taisuke Tomita 21 Amyloid-β in Brain Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Hiroki Sasaguri and Takaomi C. Saido 22 Tau Pathology and Neurodegenerative Disorders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355 Akihiko Takashima, Yoshiyuki Soeda, Riki Koike, and Sumihiro Maeda 23 Aging and Parkinson’s Disease: Pathological Insight on Model Mice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 Shigeto Sato and Nobutaka Hattori Part VII Anti-aging: Intervention and Epidemiology 24 Evaluating the Brain Aging Through Eyes: The Potential Use of Hyperspectral Imaging Cameras to Diagnose Alzheimer’s Disease Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 Nozomu Mori, Hisashi Oki, Airi Sasaki, Mari Mori, and Toru Nakazawa 25 Healthy Aging in Japan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403 Hiroshi Shimokata and Rei Otsuka Name Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421 Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 423 Contents xi Contributors Toshiro Aigaki Department of Biological Sciences, Tokyo Metropolitan Univer- sity, Tokyo, Japan aigaki-toshiro@tmu.ac.jp Hidenori Arai National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Aichi, Japan harai@ncgg.go.jp Yasumichi Arai Center for Supercentenarian Medical Research, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan yasumich@keio.jp Yasunori Fujita Biological Process of Aging, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo, Japan yfujita@tmig.or.jp Sataro Goto Institute of Health and Sports Science & Medicine, Juntendo Univer- sity Graduate School, Chiba, Japan gotosataro@gmail.com Ryuichi Harada Department of Pharmacology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan ryuichi.harada.c8@tohoku.ac.jp Nobutaka Hattori Department of Neurology, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan nhattori@juntendo.ac.jp Nobuyoshi Hirose Center for Supercentenarian Medical Research, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Utsunomiya Hospital, Tochigi, Japan Tatsuhiro Hisatsune Department of Integrated Biosciences, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Chiba, Japan hisatsune@k.u-tokyo.ac.jp xiii Akihito Ishigami Molecular Regulation of Aging, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology (TMIG), Tokyo, Japan ishigami@tmig.or.jp Fuyuki Ishikawa Laboratory of Cell Cycle Regulation, Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan ishikawa.fuyuki.7u@kyoto-u.ac.jp Shoma Ishikawa Graduate School of Biostudies, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan Takashi Kaito Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan takashikaito@ort.med.osaka-u.ac.jp Masahiro Kameda Geriatric Unit, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto Univer- sity, Kyoto, Japan Hisaya Kato Department of Endocrinology, Hematology and Gerontology, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba, Japan Kaori Kinoshita Department of Frailty Research, Center for Gerontology and Social Science, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Aichi, Japan Munehiro Kitada Department of Diabetology and Endocrinology, Kanazawa Medical University, Uchinada, Ishikawa, Japan kitta@kanazawa-med.ac.jp Riki Koike Laboratory for Alzheimer’s Disease, Department of Life Science, Faculty of Science, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan Hiroshi Kondoh Geriatric Unit, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan hkondoh@kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp Masaya Koshizaka Department of Endocrinology, Hematology and Gerontology, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba, Japan Makoto Kuro-o Division of Anti-aging Medicine, Center for Molecular Medicine, Jichi Medical University, Tochigi, Japan mkuroo@jichi.ac.jp Sumihiro Maeda Department of Physiology, Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Yoshiro Maezawa Department of Endocrinology, Hematology and Gerontology, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba, Japan yoshiromaezawa@chiba-u.jp Yasumoto Matsui Center for Frailty and Locomotive Syndrome, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Aichi, Japan xiv Contributors Motomi Matsuno Learning and Memory Project, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan matsuno-mt@igakuen.or.jp Takumi Mikawa Geriatric Unit, Graduate School of Medicine, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan Mari Mori Genetics and Genomic Medicine, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus, OH, USA Department of Pediatrics, Ohio State University College of Medicine, Columbus, OH, USA Nozomu Mori Fukuoka International University of Health and Welfare, Fukuoka, Japan morinosm@takagigakuen.ac.jp Takashi Nakagawa Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan nakagawa@med.u-toyama.ac.jp Shuhei Nakamura Department of Genetics, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan shuhei.nakamura@fbs.osaka-u.ac.jp Toru Nakazawa Department of Ophthalmology, Tohoku University School of Medicine, Sendai, Japan ntoru@oph.med.tohoku.ac.jp Nobuyuki Okamura Division of Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, Tohoku Medical and Pharmaceutical University, Sendai, Japan nookamura@tohoku-mpu.ac.jp Hisashi Oki Department of Orthoptics, Faculty of Medicine, Fukuoka International University of Health and Welfare, Fukuoka, Japan Rei Otsuka Graduate School of Nutritional Science, Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences, Nisshin, Aichi, Japan Sailesh Palikhe Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan Takaomi C. Saido Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Saitama, Japan saido@brain.riken.jp Minoru Saitoe Learning and Memory Project, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science, Tokyo, Japan saito-mn@igakuken.or.jp Contributors xv Kazuichi Sakamoto Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan sakamoto@biol.tsukuba.ac.jp Hiroki Sasaguri Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience, RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Saitama, Japan hiroki.sasaguri@riken.jp Airi Sasaki Department of Orthoptics, Faculty of Medicine, Fukuoka International University of Health and Welfare, Fukuoka, Japan Shosuke Satake Department of Frailty Research, Center for Gerontology and Social Science, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Aichi, Japan Shigeto Sato Department of Neurology, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan Akiko Satoh Department of Integrative Physiology, Geroscience Research Center, National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology, Obu, Aichi, Japan Division of Brain Science, Department of Integrative Physiology, Institute of Devel- opment, Aging, and Cancer, Sendai, Miyagi, Japan asatoh@ncgg.go.jp Hiroshi Shimokata Graduate School of Nutritional Science, Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences, Nisshin, Aichi, Japan simokata@nuas.ac.jp Tatsuya Shioda Department of Genetics, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan Yoshiyuki Soeda Laboratory for Alzheimer’s Disease, Department of Life Sci- ence, Faculty of Science, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan Takaya Sugawara University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan Akihiko Takashima Laboratory for Alzheimer’s Disease, Department of Life Science, Faculty of Science, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan akihiko.takashima@gakushuin.ac.jp Masashi Tanaka Department of Neurology, Juntendo University Graduate School of Medicine, Tokyo, Japan masashi_tanaka@me.com Taisuke Tomita Laboratory of Neuropathology and Neuroscience, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan taisuke@mol.f.u-tokyo.ac.jp Manabu Tsuda Department of Liberal Arts and Human Development, Kanagawa University of Human Services, Yokosuka, Kanagawa, Japan xvi Contributors Yuichiro Ukon Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka, Japan Jing Xu Department of Diabetology and Endocrinology, Kanazawa Medical Uni- versity, Uchinada, Japan Minoru Yamada Faculty of Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tokyo, Japan Koutaro Yokote Department of Endocrinology, Hematology and Gerontology, Chiba University Graduate School of Medicine, Chiba, Japan koutaroyokote@gmail.com Tamotsu Yoshimori Department of Genetics, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan tamyoshi@fbs.osaka-u.ac.jp Contributors xvii xviii Contributors Part I From Hypothesis to Mechanisms Chapter 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological Aging—A Historical and Critical Overview Sataro Goto Abstract I discuss the historical background of the original proposals and modern versions of the selected theories of the molecular mechanisms of biological aging, i.e., the mutation or genome instability theory, the free radical or oxidative stress theory, the mitochondrial theory, the error catastrophe theory, the altered protein or protein homeostasis or proteostasis theory, the dysdifferentiation or epigenetic theory, and the hyperfunction theory, adding a brief comment on a recent popular theory of “epigenetic clock” in this revised version of my previous overview (Goto, Aging mechanisms. Longevity, metabolism and brain aging, Springer, Berlin, 2015). I have involved the development of some of the theories, which are therefore described in more detail than others. A discussion on the deﬁnition of aging and general comments on the aging theory are described. A most popular theory of aging, the free radical or oxidative theory, was proposed more than half a century ago but has recently faced severe criticisms to which I shall refer. So far, no single theory has been able to successfully explain the mechanism of biological aging. We are thus awaiting emergence of a new paradigm or an integration of the existing theories for better understanding of the mechanism. Keywords Molecular mechanisms of aging · Mutation theory of aging/genome instability theory of aging · Free radical theory of aging/oxidative stress theory of aging · Mitochondria theory of aging · Error catastrophe theory of aging · Altered protein theory of aging/protein homeostasis or proteostasis theory of aging · Dysdifferentiation theory of aging/epigenetic theory of aging · Hyperfunction theory of aging This article is a revised version of my previous contribution to the Springer book (Goto 2015). S. Goto (*) Institute of Health and Sports Science & Medicine, Juntendo University Graduate School, Chiba, Japan Department of Aging Neuroscience, Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology, Tokyo, Japan e-mail: sgotou@juntendo.ac.jp; gotosataro@sakura.juntendo.ac.jp © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 N. Mori (ed.), Aging Mechanisms II, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7977-3_1 3 1.1 Introduction The average human life span in developed countries has increased by more than 20 years in the past several decades. Our major concern has shifted from an increase in the life span to an extension of the health span by retarding the progress of frailty due to lowered physical activities and inadequate nutrition in elderly people, thus reducing risks of potentially fatal diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, stroke, kidney disorder, type 2 diabetes mellitus, etc. Currently, elderly people are more concerned of maintaining high quality of life by delaying frailty that results from the decline of physiological functions such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis, even when such conditions are not directly fatal by themselves. However, it is often stated that the major risk factor for developing the geriatric diseases mentioned above is old age, or rather, biological aging itself. This means that the biological mechanisms of aging are likely to underlie the etiologies and progress of age-related diseases, although aging itself is not technically a disease. Since Peter Medawar stated in 1952 that aging is an unsolved problem of biology (Medawar 1952), the mechanisms of aging have been the subject of intensive research interest, and a large number of papers have been published on the mecha- nisms of aging. Half a century after Medawar’s statement, leading scientists of biogerontology claimed that aging is no longer an unsolved problem in biology (Holliday 2006; Hayﬂick 2007). Robin Holliday wrote that recently published major books on aging agree that the biological reasons for aging in mammals are now well understood and that the mechanism of biological aging is therefore no longer an unsolved problem. It is true that there appears to be similar, apparently common or conserved, senescent phenotypes in different species of animals in which longevity differs by several 100-fold (see Fig. 1.1 and Table 1.1); however, the very basic problems of the mechanism behind such species differences in longevity are not clear nor have been studied deeply enough. In this chapter, I provide an overview of selected theories of the mechanisms of biological aging. The overview includes theories of historical interest that are not necessarily widely accepted currently and/or theories that have since been transformed into modern versions. The latter group is presented under the same sections as the original theories from which they are derived. 1.2 The Deﬁnition of Aging There are two words with somewhat similar meanings that are commonly used in gerontology but are often confused, i.e., aging and senescence. Caeb Finch writes in his inﬂuential book that the term aging is mainly used to describe any changes that occur during the passage of physical time, during which there need be not common mechanisms, such as the aging of collagen, the aging of diploid cells in culture or of erythrocytes in circulation, the aging of populations or societies, or the aging of 4 S. Goto genes and species during evolution. In contrast, the term senescence is used to describe age-related changes in an organism that adversely affect its vitality and functions and, most importantly, increase its mortality rate as a function of time (Finch 1990). Robert Arking states that “the terms aging and senescence seem to overlap considerably, and the difference between them may be one of emphasis rather than fundamentals” (Arking 1998). Because the term aging is often used to convey what he describes as senescence in most current gerontology writing, I use the term aging to discuss the mechanisms of aging (senescence) in this chapter. To cite a few examples of the deﬁnition of aging (senescence) by leading scientists in biomedical gerontology books, Medawar wrote, as cited by Bernard Strehler in his book (Strehler 1977), “Senescence may be deﬁned as that change of the bodily faculties and sensibilities and energies which accompanies aging, and which renders the individual progressively more likely to die from accidental causes of random incidence.” Strehler himself deﬁnes it as “the changes which occur (1) generally in the postreproductive period and (2) which result in a decreased survival capacity of the part of the individual organism.” He further notes that “different evolutionary lines might very well decline in their survival capacities for entirely different immediate reasons. It may also be, however, that there are one or more dominant mechanisms of aging, common to all higher forms of life.” Alex Comfort deﬁnes senescence (aging) as a decrease in viability (leading to an increas- ing probability of death) with increasing chronological age and an increase in Fig. 1.1 Survival curves of human, mouse, fruit ﬂy, and nematode. (Adapted and modiﬁed from Goto S (2002) Saibo kogaku 21: 704–708 (in Japanese)) 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 5 vulnerability (Comfort 1964). The term vulnerability may be rephrased as frailty, a term more commonly used in geriatric medicine in recent years. Surveying the deﬁnition of aging in gerontology literatures, I note that aging can be deﬁned as a progressive functional decline with advancing age that occurs in every individual, sooner or later, within a population of a species, beginning around the time of reproductive maturity and leading to an increased probability of death over time. Theories of the mechanisms of aging that can ﬁt with this deﬁnition will be examined in this chapter. 1.3 Aging Theories In 1990, Zhores Medvedev wrote that more than 300 theories about the biological mechanisms of aging could be found in the literature (Medvedev 1990). Among the theories cited in his review, some are still popular, and some have disappeared or have been transformed, while other new theories have emerged and are currently Table 1.1 Common and uncommon aging phenotypes in human and model animals (Adapted from Vijg and Campisi (2008) and modiﬁed by Goto (2015)) Phenotype Human Mouse Fly Nematode Note: Highlights by yellow are common aging phenotypes in listed animals. NA not applicable 6 S. Goto being tested for validity. Theories of aging are mixed in that there are different levels of aging phenomena at the molecular, cellular, tissue, organ, or systemic levels. George Martin has proposed a classiﬁcation of the mechanisms of aging into two categories: public and private mechanisms (Martin et al. 1996a). The public mech- anisms of aging are those that could potentially be applied to the aging of different animals and tissues or cells, while the private mechanisms of aging are those that appear to be only true in speciﬁc species, cells, tissues, or organs. For example, the immunological theory can only be true in animals such as mammals with appropriate immune system but may not be true in nematodes or insect models which lack in acquired immunity seen in mammals. When thinking about the aging that occurs in any somatic cells of different species of animals, it is more appropriate to focus on “public” mechanisms rather than “private” mechanisms for the purposes of our discussion. See discussion on “public” and “private” mechanisms of aging in a literature (Partridge and Gems 2002). In this chapter, I therefore discuss the mechanisms of aging that can mainly, although not exclusively, be viewed as public. The private mechanisms of aging, however, are by no means unimportant. Indeed, they are useful by themselves to explain particular etiologies or the progress of individual age-related diseases. It should be noted that private mechanisms often involve public mechanisms. For instance, endocrinological decline with age, a private mechanism of aging, can be caused by public mechanisms, such as oxidative stress or protein alteration. It should be noted that each theory is naturally not mutually exclusive or incompatible each other, but may instead be regarded as a part of other theories. Figure 1.1 illustrates age-related changes in the mortality rate of different animal species, with life span difference of more than 1000-fold (e.g., between human and nematode). The apparent similarity of the survival curves may suggest that the underlying mechanisms of aging are common among the shown animal species. In fact, many aging phenotypes are conserved in model animals and human, as shown in Table 1.1 (Vijg and Campisi 2008). It should be noted, however, that no overall correlation of age regulation was found in the gene expression database, at least between mice and humans, for example, and therefore, aging processes in mice and humans may be fundamentally different, despite certain commonalities in the observed transcriptional proﬁles in the genes, for example, of electron transport chain for aging mouse, human, ﬂy, and nematode (Zahn et al. 2007). In the following sections, I examine selected public mechanisms of aging. 1.4 Mutation Theory of Aging/Genome Instability Theory of Aging This theory predicts that mutations accumulating in the genome are responsible for aging, i.e., physiological decline with advancing age. One of the early proponents of the theory was Leo Szilard. As a nuclear physicist, he proposed that somatic cell 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 7 mutations induced by ionizing radiation generated in reactions such as the nuclear ﬁssion and fusion would accelerate aging (Szilard 1959). Ionizing radiation in fact shortened the life span of mice and rats, shifting the survival curves to the left, with similar shapes as unirradiated controls, apparently being reminiscent of an acceler- ation of normal aging (Lindop and Rotblat 1961). It was later shown, however, that the major cause of the observed life span shortening was an increased rate of carcinogenesis rather than an acceleration of physiological aging in general. Irradi- ated rodents have therefore not been used as models of accelerated aging. In the meantime, it has been reported that the DNA repair activity of skin ﬁbroblasts in cultures irradiated with ultraviolet light depends on an animal’s maximum life span (Hart and Setlow 1974). The activity of cells from long-lived animals, such as human, elephant, and cow, was nearly ﬁve times higher than that in short-lived animals such as rat and mouse. Although the repair capacity and life span were not proportional, it was thought that long-lived species may have a more active repair system that could therefore play a role in deceleration of aging rate. More recently, it was reported that base excision repair activity declines with age in mice in the brain, liver, spleen, and testes (Cabelof et al. 2002). To study the mutation frequency in vivo, selectable markers, such as hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) of purine metabolism, have been used to detect 6-thioguanine-resistant cells that are defective in the HPRT gene. Using this method, it was reported that the mutation frequency increased with age (from 2 to 94 years of age) in cultured human kidney tubular epithelial cells (Martin et al. 1996b). To overcome the limitation that the cells to be assayed must proliferate in vitro in the assay, transgenic mice with reporter genes, such as the bacterial lacZ gene, have been developed. The DNA recovered from the transgenic mouse tissues, including the brain and heart, consisting of mainly postmitotic cells, was screened for mutations in the integrated shuttle vector in a bacterial host (Dollé et al. 2000). Signiﬁcant age-related mutant frequency was found to increase from 10 105 (3 months old) to 25 105 (33 months old) in the small intestine and from 5 to 10 105 in the heart of mice. However, no change was observed in the brain (5 105) between the young and old animals. It is noted that the increase was linear from young to old ages, with no larger changes at older ages. Because functional decline with age is apparently more signiﬁcant in the brain and heart than in the intestine and because the frequency of mutation is not high enough to account for the level of decline, it appears to be difﬁcult to ascribe a cause of aging to the age-related accumulation of mutations. In fact, the serious proponents of this theory recognize one important question about this theory, stating that “it is not known whether the frequency of the random changes is sufﬁcient to cause the phenotypic effects generally associated with aging” as cited from the abstract of a paper by Vijg and Suh (2013). The readers are advised to also refer to a recent general view on this theory (Moskalev et al. 2012). 8 S. Goto 1.5 Free Radical Theory of Aging/Oxidative Stress Theory of Aging The free radical theory of aging is one of the most well-known and popular theories of aging proposed so far. The theory has currently been transformed into the “oxidative stress theory of aging” because oxidative stress most frequently involves reactive oxygen species (ROSs) and because the causative agents of the stress are not only free radicals but also include non-radical ROS such as hydrogen peroxide (Martin et al. 1996a). The principle of the theory was originally proposed by Denham Harman more than half a century ago (Harman 1956). The history of the theory and the inside story of how the idea came to him are found in an interview with him (Harman and Harman 2003). He was originally a chemist specializing in free radicals who later became interested in aging and established himself as a medical scientist. In the beginning, the theory apparently did not attract as much interest from scientists working on aging as other theories, such as the mutation theory and the protein cross-linking theory. This is likely because radicals were not familiar to biologically oriented scientists, and the theory appeared to be too simple and straight forward to explain the complex aging phenomena. However, after superoxide dismutase (SOD), which catalyzes dismutation of superoxide radical forming hydrogen peroxide, was reported to be widely distributed in mammalian tissues (McCord and Fridovich 1969), more researchers became interested in the capacity of free radicals to damage a variety of cellular constituents, potentially leading to aging. The major targets of free radical damage were believed to be membrane lipids, which contain many unsaturated fatty acids that are easily attacked by radicals to produce lipid peroxides. Lipid peroxides were thought to be compo- nents of the lipofuscin age pigment, a then well-known histological marker of aged cells that consume substantial amounts of oxygen, such as neurons and kidney cells. Lipid peroxidation has readily been measured as thiobarbituric acid reactive sub- stances (TBARS), although the method to measure TBARS may be problematic in speciﬁcity and, recently, such substances as isoprostanes have been used to evaluate the oxidation. DNA was another molecule of interest for oxygen radical attack. It can form 8-hydroxy-2-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG), which is relevant to cancers that increase with age (Fraga et al. 1990). Oxidatively modiﬁed proteins have attracted the least interest mainly because of limitations in the methods to detect them despite the fact that the catalytic activities of enzymes have long been known to decrease with age (Stadtman 1988) and therefore can drive aging. Earl Stadtman and his collaborators established a conve- nient method to detect oxidatively modiﬁed proteins in which reactive carbonyl moieties are generated as oxidation products in amino acid residues such as lysine, arginine, and proline that can be measured by spectrophotometric or immunological methods after the reaction of proteins with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine to derivatize the carbonyls to the hydrazones. All cellular components (e.g., membrane phospholipids, nucleic acids, and pro- teins) have been reported to be oxidatively damaged with age, which could 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 9 potentially cause the physiological decline of the organisms (Cutler and Rodriguez 2003). The free radical theory of aging has prompted researchers to study radical scavengers and antioxidants to see if such chemicals can extend the life span of animals. Harman himself showed in his early studies that the synthetic antioxidants 2-mercaptoethylamine and butylated hydroxytoluene can extend the life span of mice (Harman 1968). Numerous studies have been conducted since then to try to extend the life span of experimental animals or to ameliorate age-related diseases in humans that are possibly caused by ROS, mostly using antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamins C and E, or natural products such as polyphenols and carotenes. The results, however, have been rather disappointing in human clinical trials attempting to reduce the risks of age-related diseases, although antioxidant supplements had been reported to be promising in experimental animals (Sadowska-Bartosz and Bartosz 2014). In human studies, it has been reported in a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials with a total of 232,606 participants that antiox- idant supplements (β-carotene, vitamins A and E) can even signiﬁcantly increase all-cause mortality (Bjelakovic et al. 2007). In animal studies, for example, the popular “anti-aging” polyphenol resveratrol, which is not necessarily supposed to act as an antioxidant, has been shown to not extend the life span of genetically heterogeneous mouse strains that mimic human population in multiple laboratories (Strong et al. 2013). The free radical theory of aging appeared to explain the rate of living theory of aging, which was ﬁrst proposed many years ago (Pearl 1928), suggesting that there is an inverse relationship between the metabolic rate and longevity in different animal species. However, it turned out that this does not apply to mammals. The opposite was even true intraspeciﬁcally when energy expenditure and the life span of indi- vidual mice were studied, in that the higher the energy expenditure (indicating a larger consumption of oxygen), the longer the life span, contrary to what is expected from the free radical theory of aging (Speakman et al. 2004). Based on studies of genetically modiﬁed mice showing under- or overexpression of genes of antioxidant enzymes (e.g., cytoplasmic and mitochondrial superoxide dismutases, catalase, glutathione peroxidase), it was concluded that all of the antioxidant enzymes studied separately or in combination do not signiﬁcantly inﬂuence the life span in mice (Pérez et al. 2009). On the other hand, it is true that oxidative damage in lipids, DNA, and proteins increases with age, as described above, suggesting an involvement of free radicals in aging. Additionally, a variety of mutant animals with longer life spans show increased resistance to oxidative damage (Brown-Borg 2006; Pickering et al. 2017). Thus, potential roles of ROS in driving aging should not be underestimated, although they may not play a crucial role in life span determination. It has often been stated that the major source of ROS generation is mitochondria, as discussed later in the mitochondrial theory of aging. However, apart from ROS generated in the mitochondria as byproducts, oxidants can be generated as normal products in multiple enzyme reactions catalyzed by oxidases, such as NADPH oxidase, xanthine oxidase, and monoamine oxidase, contributing to overall cellular oxidative stress. Such oxidants can damage cellular molecules and also play impor- tant roles as signaling factor (Finkel 2011). Although the involvement of ROSs in 10 S. Goto signal transduction have attracted more interest in recent years than their potential detrimental role in aging, I do not discuss details of this topic as it is beyond the scope of this overview. I instead discuss the hormetic roles of ROSs that are relevant to aging. Hormesis is a dose-response relationship that exhibits stimulation at low doses and inhibition at higher doses, although whether a response is beneﬁcial or harmful can be complex and is often not immediately obvious (Calabrese and Mattson 2011). Exposure to a variety of stressors, such as toxins, heat, ROS, and radiation, can induce an adaptive response if they are not too strong, making an organism more resistant to subsequent stronger challenges (Gems and Partridge 2008). Nematodes pretreated with hyper- baric oxygen became more resistant to semilethal oxygen exposure (Cypser and Johnson 2002). Interestingly, an oxidative stressor (juglone) could induce substantial resistance to a lethal challenge. The life span of the pretreated worms was increased compared to naive counterparts. We have shown that regular moderate exercise in old rats can reduce oxidative stress, as measured by protein and DNA oxidation, by upregulating anti-oxidation systems, including the glutathione, proteasome, and DNA repair enzymes (Goto and Radák 2009; Nakamoto et al. 2007; Radák et al. 2001). Other investigators have also demonstrated that exercise induces antioxidant enzymes (Gomez-Cabrera et al. 2008) and that antioxidant vitamins C and E ameliorate the beneﬁcial effects of exercise (Ristow et al. 2009). Exercise hormesis is well recognized, as the ROS induced by moderate exercise constitutes a signiﬁcant mechanism of beneﬁcial effects of the regimen (Gomez-Cabrera et al. 2008; Radák et al. 2005). See also the discussion on mitohormesis in the mitochondrial theory of aging section. Thus, ROSs have two sides, making this theory somewhat complex. On the one hand, ROSs are believed to have detrimental effects, as proposed in the original theory. On the other hand, they are also thought to have beneﬁcial effects as signaling factors and factors that can protect an organism against stresses that they may encounter in life. 1.6 The Mitochondrial Theory of Aging Mitochondria have long been known to be the power station of eukaryotic cells, generating the majority of ATP and therefore being vital to life. After the proposal of the free radical theory of aging, these organelles have attracted increased interest in the other side of life, as they use most of oxygen taken up by cells that could potentially be converted to damaging reactive oxygen species (ROSs) in the respi- ratory chain. Harman was the ﬁrst to suggest that mitochondria can be a major source of free radicals and also a principal target of the damage that drives aging as an obvious extension of the free radical theory of aging (Harman 1972). In fact, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and proteins are more vulnerable to oxidation than cytoplasmic or nuclear proteins and nucleic acids, likely due to their proximity to the electron transport chain, the lack of histones to protect the DNA, and their low repair 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 11 activities. Later, Jaime Miquel expanded the mitochondrial theory of aging (Miquel et al. 1980). A number of papers in support of the theory have been published. It has often been cited that ROSs (such as hydrogen peroxide) generated in the mitochon- dria account for 1–2% of the total oxygen uptake (Chance et al. 1979). Even higher values of 4–5% have been reported (Luft and Landau 1995). However, later studies have criticized these reports, and the current estimation for these values is as low as 0.15% (St-Pierre et al. 2002). Point mutations that may occur due to oxygen radicals accumulate in mtDNA with aging, possibly also due to mtDNA polymerase errors, suggesting that this process may cause the age-related functional decline of cells and tissues (Michikawa et al. 1999). For this reason, mice with defective mtDNA polymerase have been constructed as a model of premature aging to prove or disprove this theory (Trifunovic et al. 2004). Studies of these mice demonstrated that the animals with a homozygous mutation (mtDNA mutator mouse) expressing proofreading-deﬁcient mtDNA polymerase γ show reduced life span. They also show phenotypes of accelerated aging at 6–9 months of age, such as hair loss and graying, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, heart enlargement, and reduced subcutaneous fat, all of which are features that are typical of human aging (Trifunovic et al. 2004). Despite these premature aging phenotypes and the accumulation of mtDNA mutations, no increase in hydrogen peroxide production and oxidative stress markers (protein carbonyl, 8-OHdG, and F2-isoprostane) has been observed in isolated mitochondria and tissues of the mice. Thus, these ﬁndings did not support the idea that mtDNA mutations cause increased ROS production that might drive aging. One criticism of this research is that these mice may not represent natural human aging because the levels of mtDNA mutations in human tissues are an order of magnitude lower than in the mutator mice (Khrapko et al. 2006). It should, however, be noted that a recent report on the mtDNA mutator mice showed that the hydrogen peroxide levels in the aged animals were increased relative to the young mutator or wild type mice, suggesting that prolonged exposure to higher concentrations of ROSs could contrib- ute to accelerated aging (Logan et al. 2014). Thus, the possible contribution of ROSs to aging in the mtDNA mutator mice remains controversial. Interestingly, however, 5 months of endurance exercise can rescue premature mortality in the mutator mice by inducing mitochondrial biogenesis, thereby mitigating the development of sarcopenia, brain atrophy, cardiac hypertrophy, and other age-related pathologies (Safdar et al. 2011). Endurance exercise rescued mtDNA depletion in multiple tissues and reduced the frequency of point mutations in the mutant mice. These data support the view that lifestyle can improve the systemic deterioration of mitochondrial function that could increase morbidity and mortality with aging. Supporting evidence for the mitochondrial theory of aging has been obtained in transgenic mice overexpressing human catalase in the mitochondria, which exhibit increased life spans with reduced cardiac pathologies and cataract severity (Schriner et al. 2005). These mice exhibited higher aconitase activity, a marker of antioxidant capacity, in the heart and lower 8-OHdG in the DNA of the skeletal muscle, suggesting that oxidative stress can be ameliorated by the overexpression of catalase targeted to mitochondria. 12 S. Goto In view of the controversy regarding the contribution of mitochondrial ROS in aging, it is worthy of referring to the concept of mitochondrial hormesis (or mitohormesis) (Schulz et al. 2007; Ristow 2014). It was found that nematodes treated with 2-deoxyglucose (2DG), an inhibitor of glycolysis, exhibited a prolon- gation of their life span with a compensatory increase in mitochondrial respiration, which is associated with increases in the level of ROS, followed by increased expression of catalase, which scavenges hydrogen peroxide (Schulz et al. 2007). When the worms were pretreated with VC, VE, or other antioxidants, the elevation of catalase was abolished, and the extension of life span of the worms treated with 2DG was blocked. It thus appears that mitochondrial oxidants induced an increased defense against oxidative stress as a hormetic response because excess oxidants are obviously detrimental. The mitochondrial theory of aging has thus developed into a theory evaluating the roles of ROS generated from the organelle as signals for cellular homeostasis rather than simply as damaging chemicals, as originally suggested. Also, I should add that results incompatible with this theory are reported (Lapointe and Hekimi 2010). 1.7 The Error Catastrophe Theory of Aging This theory was most prominently advanced by Leslie Orgel (1963) in accordance with the development of molecular biology of the gene expression in the 1960s, such as the research on the mechanisms of replication, transcription, and translation. This theory predicted that nucleic acids and proteins inevitably contain errors when they are synthesized because the information transfer in each step of gene expression and maintenance is not perfectly accurate and the synthesizing machineries consisting of error-containing molecules would make further errors, thus forming a vicious cycle of error propagation that could result in the gradual loss of cellular function, i.e., catastrophe, with age. Although this theory is usually regarded as being advocated by Orgel, it should be noted that Zhores Medvediev presented a similar idea independently (Medvediev 1962). This theory has attracted particular attention from scientists interested in the molecular mechanisms of aging because it suggests a hypothesis that is experimentally testable by means of emerging theoretical and technological developments of research in gene expression. Possible detrimental consequences of the propagation of errors are likely more serious in nondividing cells than in dividing cells because error-containing dividing cells can be eliminated and replaced by new cells or can be diluted by cell division, while error-containing molecules may be repaired or replaced by metabolic turnover in nondividing and/or slowly dividing cells. Of the types of errors in information transfer, translational errors had been most extensively studied. These errors can occur in two independent steps of translation: (1) The charging of individual tRNAs by cognate amino acids and (2) the decoding of codon of mRNA. The former step is catalyzed by aminoacyl tRNA 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 13 synthetases that may mischarge amino acids to tRNAs by imperfect enzymes. The latter step occurs on ribosomes by matching codons with anticodons of charged tRNA. A number of studies on the rate of mistranslation (error fre- quency) in aging had been conducted mainly using young and senescent cells in culture. For example, the error frequency of actin synthesis was studied in human ﬁbroblasts at different replicative ages (Harley et al. 1980): Histidinol, an analogue of histidine, was added to the culture medium and thereby blocked the charging of tRNA for histidine. The decrease in the histidine-charged tRNA concentration induces an incorporation of glutamine into actin in the place of histidine because the codons for glutamine (CAA or CAG) are similar to those for histidine (CAU or CAC) so that errors of translation can occur due to codon- anticodon mispairing at the third position. Late-passage cells from fetal, young, and old donors cultured in vitro showed similar or lower error frequencies than the corresponding early-passage cells, suggesting that error propagation does not occur and thus fails to support the error catastrophe theory of aging. In another study, age-related changes in the charging error were examined in vivo by the incorporation of 14C-methionine and 3H-ethionine, an analogue of methionine, into proteins of young and old mouse livers (Ogrodnik et al. 1975). It was expected that ethionine could be mischarged to tRNA in place of methionine by methionyl tRNA synthase if the ﬁdelity of the enzyme would be decreased with age. The misincorporation of ethionine in the place of methionine was 10–50% higher in ribosomal proteins of old animals, indicating that the charging ﬁdelity indeed declines in older animals, although it was not clear if the error rate propagates with age. As for the recognition of natural amino acids in young and old animals, we have studied the age-related changes in the ﬁdelity of aminoacylation by tyrosyl- tRNA synthetase isolated from the liver of rats (Takahashi and Goto 1988). The enzymes were puriﬁed from the livers of young (4–7-month-old) and old (27–29- month-old) rats, such that no detectable phenylalanyl-tRNA synthetase was contaminated to study the misrecognition of phenylalanine as tyrosine by the enzyme. The error frequency of the tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase (on the order of 108) from the older animals was slightly lower than that from the younger animals, but this difference was not statistically signiﬁcant. Thus, the ﬁdelity of aminoacyl tRNA synthetase did not appear to decline signiﬁcantly in old age, again suggesting that errors in translation would not increase with aging at the stage of tRNA charging with amino acid in translation. The ﬁdelity of decoding on ribosomes from young and old animals had been mostly studied by assessing the misincorporation of non-cognate amino acids using synthetic mRNA of homopolymers, such as poly(U) which codes for phenylalanine polymers. The misincorporation of leucine into the poly(U)- dependent synthesis of polyphenylalanine using ribosomes of tissues did not differ signiﬁcantly between young and old mice (Mori et al. 1979). We have, instead, studied codon recognition ﬁdelity using a unique group of natural mRNAs that code for limited species of amino acids. Protamines are highly basic nuclear proteins from ﬁsh sperm consisting of 33 amino acid residues. 14 S. Goto They contain only seven different amino acid species, of which approximately two-thirds are arginine. It was therefore possible to study the incorporation of radioactive amino acids in vitro that are not coded in the mRNAs. The ﬁdelity of the decoding of the mRNAs on ribosomes from the livers of mice between 2 and 29 months of age was found to not change signiﬁcantly (Mori et al. 1983). Thus, these ﬁndings are not consistent with the error catastrophe theory of aging in terms of the predicted age-related changes in translational ﬁdelity. This is prob- ably because the proofreading mechanisms (Hopﬁeld 1974; Fersht 1980) of translation are maintained throughout life, keeping the ﬁdelity high enough, such that propagation of error would not occur. More recently, the high ﬁdelity of translation has been discussed from evolution- ary perspectives as it can be important for survival by avoiding protein misfolding (Drummond and Wilke 2009) (see also Sect. 1.8). Another possibility that error- containing proteins do not increase with age is that such proteins may be preferen- tially degraded and replaced by intact molecules by metabolic turnover as discussed in the next session (Sect. 1.8). Other steps of information transfer in which error catastrophe could occur are DNA replication and transcription. No age-dependent differences have been found between the ﬁdelity of nuclear DNA polymerase-α and nuclear DNA polymerase-β that were partially puriﬁed from the regenerating livers of young (6-month-old) and old (28-month-old) mice when the enzymes were tested for copying bacteriophage φX174 DNA (Silber et al. 1985). The same group of investigators showed that the ﬁdelity of highly error-prone DNA polymerase-β in the brain of young and old mice was not signiﬁcantly different when copying the same bacteriophage DNA (Subba Rao et al. 1985). Thus, although available reports on the possibility of age-related changes in the ﬁdelity of DNA polymerases are limited, it appears that the error catastrophe theory of aging is not supported by the information transfer in nuclear DNA replication. Although Orgel implied that transcription errors can lead to the catastrophe (Orgel 1963), I am not aware of a published paper on age-related changes in the ﬁdelity of nuclear gene expression or of RNA polymerases in the nucleus (Imashimizu et al. 2013). The integrity of RNA coded in mitochondrial DNA has been studied in the brain of young (1-month-old) and older (18-month-old) mice (Wang et al. 2014). The transcriptional error of the mitochondrial RNA polymerase is site-speciﬁc and varied greatly among different genes. The error levels in two age groups, however, were not signiﬁcantly different, suggesting that error propagation does not occur during aging. It is noted that transcriptional errors were independent of the DNA mutation frequency and were up to 200-fold more frequent than replication errors. The authors therefore conclude that the mitochondrial tran- scription ﬁdelity limits the impact of mitochondrial DNA mutation. Thus, the error catastrophe theory of aging, which was once a popular hypothesis, is not supported by the current experimental evidence. This theory thus seems to have been largely forgotten, but it should be noted that pathologist George Martin has argued that “it may have been given a premature death certiﬁcate” because drifts in gene expression may be responsible for the “quasi-stochastic” distribution of 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 15 lesions in geriatric pathologies, such as Alzheimer’s disease and atherosclerosis and that errors in information transfer could feasibly contribute to this process (Martin 2012). Although it is unlikely that error catastrophe occurs in genetic information transfer, it should be noted that errors in protein synthesis can occur as the misfolding of higher structures during translation. In fact, the rate of folding errors can be as high as 30% of newly synthesized proteins, even though misfolding may be mostly prevented by chaperons (Schubert et al. 2000) (see also: Sect. 1.8). 1.8 The Altered Protein Theory of Aging/Protein Homeostasis or Proteostasis Theory of Aging The origin of this theory may be traced back to Friz Verzár, who reported an age-related increase in collagen cross-linking in rat tail tendons (see Nagy 1986). A large number of studies have conﬁrmed that changes in collagen occur with age in various tissues and animals (Robert 2006). However, because collagen is an extra- cellular protein and its relevance to cellular metabolisms is limited, researchers interested in aging and inspired by the ﬁndings became more concerned about the age-related changes of enzymes and other proteins involved more directly in intra- cellular functions. In the meantime, studies on the error catastrophe theory of aging have failed to support the predicted propagation of errors in translation as described above and instead suggested the presence of altered forms of enzymes in aged cells and tissues. Thus, altered enzymes were interpreted to be formed not by translational errors but by posttranslational modiﬁcations. Altered forms of enzymes in old cells and animal tissues have been detected by various means. They have been shown to have low speciﬁc activity (by between 30 and 70%) per unit weight of puriﬁed enzyme (Rothstein 1981). One problem with ﬁnding altered forms of an enzyme through puriﬁcation is that altered enzymes with reduced activity are often lost during the puriﬁcation process, as puriﬁcation protocol usually depends on enzymatic activity. Altered enzymes have been detected in crude extracts without puriﬁcation that depends on enzyme activity, since antibodies against an enzyme molecule can react with enzymes with no or reduced activity that remain immunologically cross-reactive as the native enzyme (Gershon and Gershon 1970). Another frequently used method was to examine the heat-stability of an enzyme in cell or tissue extracts. An enzyme likely becomes heat-labile if it is altered such that the mixture of native and altered enzymes has a biphasic or quasi- biphasic heat-inactivation kinetic curves for the activity so that the percentage of the altered form of an enzyme could be evaluated for the extent of alteration (Houben et al. 1984). Thus, many altered proteins, mainly enzymes, have been reported to increase in cells and tissues with aging, suggesting that they may be responsible for the age-related decline of physiological functions. 16 S. Goto The causes of these alterations have been suggested to be posttranslational modiﬁcations, such as oxidation or nitrosylation by ROSs or RNSs (reactive nitro- gen species) and glycation by glucose. In some cases, reactive aldehydes derived from lipid peroxides are responsible for the modiﬁcations. We and other investiga- tors have shown that the heat-labile enzymes described above are generated by a reaction with ROSs in vitro (Takahashi and Goto 1990). The chemistry of modiﬁ- cations has been studied extensively, proving that the side chains of speciﬁc amino acid residues, such as lysine, arginine, and proline, are modiﬁed (Stadtman 1993). Notably, carbonyl moieties generated by oxidation have most frequently been used to evaluate oxidative stress on proteins by biochemical or immunochemical methods (Levine et al. 1990; Nakamura and Goto 1996), although this method is not without problems (Fedorova et al. 2014; Goto and Nakamura 1997). In addition to a correlative relationship between the oxidative modiﬁcation of proteins and aging, a causal relationship between age-related increases in oxidative stress and functional decline has been suggested (Martin et al. 1996a; Martin and Grotewiel 2006). However, despite numerous reports on the possible involvement of protein oxidation in aging, it is hard to decide its major contribution, as multiple effects of oxidative stress on other molecules, such as DNA and membrane phospholipids, do occur in parallel. The glycation caused by nonenzymatic chemical reactions of proteins with glucose is another well-recognized posttranslational modiﬁcation that increases with age in long-lived proteins, such as collagens and elastin, as well as lens crystallins. The glycation of proteins ends up in generating a variety of products collectively called AGEs (advanced glycation end products). Because proteins exposed to a high concentration of glucose in the blood for a long period of time are susceptible to this modiﬁcation, it accumulates frequently in extracellular matrix proteins and proteins with very low turnover rates. Glycation appears to be less involved in the age-related functional decline of cells as a general cause than other posttranslational modiﬁcations that occur more frequently inside cells. Nevertheless, there is no question that glycation is involved in age-related diseases of endothelial cells, such as in atherosclerosis, cardiovascular pathologies, and renal disorders, in which tissue microvessel dysfunction is involved. More recently, apart from the posttranslational modiﬁcations described above, speciﬁc altered proteins with abnormal conformational structures in age-related neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease (amyloidβ and tau tangles), Parkinson’s disease (mutant α-synuclein), Huntington’s disease (mutant huntingtin), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (misfolded SOD1), have been studied extensively (Stefani 2004; Labbadia and Morimoto 2015). More generally, amyloid diseases that impair the functions of different organs are also protein conformation diseases that increase with age. There are many other examples of protein misfolding and aggregation causing age-related diseases (Chiti and Dobson, 2017; Klaips et al. 2018). While numerous cases, especially in neurodegenerative diseases, have been reported in which protein alterations produce age-related pathologies, it is not clear whether such changes also contribute to the functional decline of cells and tissues in physiological aging. It is possible that minor alterations of individual proteins cause 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 17 undetected changes, yet result in signiﬁcant physiological deterioration in a long period of aging. The accumulation of altered proteins with age can be driven by either increases in the formation or the decline of degradation, or both processes. While the mecha- nisms involved in the formation of such proteins have been extensively studied, the decrease in degradation or elimination has attracted less interest. Rudolf Schoenheimer described for the ﬁrst time the dynamic state of body constituents, such as lipids and proteins, as early as the late 1930s, when the stable isotope technique became available to label cellular and extracellular components for chas- ing the fate of the labeled materials, thereby highlighting the importance of meta- bolic turnover as a homeostatic life maintenance mechanism. Due to the difﬁculty of the access to the historical book The Dynamic State of Body Constituents (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1949) written by him, I cite instead an excellent overview on this topic (Kennedy 2001). Schoenheimer’s view, however, was chal- lenged by Jacques Monod (Nobel Prize laureate for the operon theory) and collab- orators, who studied the turnover of β-galactosidase in growing E. coli and concluded that most proteins in the cells are static rather than in a dynamic state (Hogness et al. 1955). They further suggested that the proteins in mammalian tissues would also be stable because the apparent dynamic state in these cells may be interpreted as some proteins being secreted or lost by cell death. However, it was shown that proteins in rabbit macrophages, nondividing cells, actually turnover, thus not supporting Monod’s hypothesis (Harris and Watts 1958). Even so, protein degradation has not attracted the same intense research interest as other more positive biological processes such as protein and nucleic acid synthesis. The degradation of intracellular proteins was originally thought to be mainly dependent on lysosomes, which were found to contain multiple proteolytic enzymes (cathepsins) with different speciﬁcities at acidic pH values (de Duve 1983). While lysosomal proteolysis is thought to be nonspeciﬁc with regard to the protein sub- strates degraded, the half-life of different proteins was reported to vary considerably. This fact facilitated studies on non-lysosomal protein degradation that were ﬁrst performed in rabbit reticulocytes that do not have lysosomes. The extensive research on non-lysosomal protein degradation has established the mechanisms of the ubiquitin-proteasome system of proteolysis, showing that substrate proteins are marked with ubiquitin for degradation and digested by proteasomes (in the case of 26S proteasome, see below) (Ciechanover 2005). The proteasome is a multi-catalytic protease complex that exists in two forms, 26S and 20S, that differ in subunit composition but share a common catalytic speciﬁcity. The 26S proteasome degrades proteins tagged with ubiquitin chains and ATP dependently, while the 20S proteasome degrades non-ubiquitinated proteins without using ATP. On the other hand, the lysosomal pathway of proteolysis has developed into the elucidation of autophagy-lysosome systems, in which protein aggregates and dam- aged organelles are speciﬁcally recognized and destroyed, contrary to what was originally believed to be nonspeciﬁc (Koga et al. 2011). Both systems of protein degradation have profound impacts on aging and age-related diseases, particularly in 18 S. Goto neurodegenerative diseases (Rubinsztein et al. 2011; Saez and Vilchez 2014; Klaips et al. 2018). The altered protein theory of aging prompted studies on protein turnover in aging (Van Remmen et al. 1995; Goto et al. 2001). For example, it was demonstrated that the half-lives of enolase in nematodes and aldolase in mice are extended in old animals compared with their younger counterparts, as determined by pulse-chase experiments. We found that the half-life of the various proteins introduced into mouse hepatocytes in primary culture were extended by 40–60% in the cells from old animals (Ishigami and Goto 1990; Goto et al. 2001). It was also shown in vivo that prematurely terminated puromycinyl peptides, as a model of altered proteins, are much more slowly degraded in the livers of old mice than in those of younger animals (Lavie et al. 1982). Thus, the degradation of normal and abnormal proteins was shown to be impaired in old animals, and these ﬁndings were comparable with the age-related accumulation of altered proteins in different tissues. In the meantime, it was ﬁrmly established that the ubiquitin-proteasome system and the autophagy- lysosome system are responsible for intracellular protein degradation as described above. Many studies have demonstrated that proteasome activity declines with age (Saez and Vilchez 2014; Shibatani et al. 1996). We have shown that the activities of both the 20S and 26S forms of the liver proteasome decline similarly with aging in three age groups of rats of from 8–10 to 25–28 months of age (Hayashi and Goto 1998). Despite the decline in the enzyme activities, the amount of catalytic subunits measured by immunoblot did not change with age, suggesting that posttranslational modiﬁcations or subunit replacement are responsible for the decreased activities. In fact, other investigators have reported that the subunit composition of the proteasome is altered in aged tissues. Furthermore, a subunit of the proteasome is sensitive to oxidative modiﬁcation (Ishii et al. 2005), suggesting that oxidative stress can accelerate the accumulation of oxidized proteins in aging by reducing the efﬁciency of damaged proteins. It is interesting to note that the 20S proteasome degrades oxidatively modiﬁed proteins selectively (Davies 2001) and that the 26S proteasome can be reversibly dissociated to produce the 20S proteasome by remov- ing 19S regulators upon oxidative challenge, thereby facilitating adaptation to stress (Grune et al. 2011). It should be mentioned that the Lon protease plays an important role in the degradation of oxidized mitochondrial proteins, the activity of which declines with age and contributes to the accumulation of damaged proteins in the organelle (Ngo et al. 2013). When the damage to proteins is extensive, forming insoluble cross-linked aggre- gates that are not degraded by proteasomes, the autophagy-lysosome system degrades them in addition to removing the damaged organelles (Wong and Cuervo 2010). The autophagy-lysosome system is considered to act via microautophagy, macroautophagy, and chaperon-mediated autophagy, and the latter two systems are the predominant mechanisms of autophagy in animals. Macroautophagy refers to the digestion of contents of cytoplasmic regions engulfed in membrane vesicles, which then fuse with lysosomes for degradation. Chaperon-mediated autophagy is the digestion of substrates bound to the chaperon heat-shock cognate protein (hsc70), which is recognized by lysosomes via an interaction with the receptor protein on the 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 19 surface. Substrates translocated across the lysosomal membrane are then digested. The activities of these autophagic processes decline with aging (Rubinsztein et al. 2011). The age-associated decline in the chaperon-mediated autophagy can be caused by decreased content of the substrate receptor (lysosome-associated mem- brane protein type 2a) (Cuervo and Dice 2000) and the age-associated impairment of lysosomal function (Kurz et al. 2008). A number of studies have established the extensive involvement of altered protein conformation in age-associated neurodegenerative diseases. These are mainly due to the impaired functions of ubiquitin-proteasomes and/or autophagy-lysosome sys- tems and the chaperon dysfunctions described in many excellent reviews (Takalo et al. 2013; Hipp et al. 2019). However, I do not go into the details of these studies as this subject is of little relevance to the scope of this overview, although it is conceivable that these mechanisms are also involved in the general age-related functional decline of housekeeping proteins. Thus, the original idea that accumulation of altered proteins causes a variety of aging phenotypes has expanded to include different aspects of life processes. The altered protein theory of aging/proteostasis theory of aging has now become one of the most widely accepted theories to explain the basic mechanisms of aging. 1.9 Dysdifferentiation Theory of Aging/Epigenetic Theory of Aging Richard Cutler suggested that differentiated cells can undergo changes in transcrip- tion during aging, such that the strict pattern of gene expression is gradually relaxed, leading to the deterioration of the functions of cells and tissues (Cutler 1991). This idea, called the dysdifferentiation theory of aging, was based on the ﬁnding that the expression of globin or its related mRNA and murine leukemia virus RNA is increased in the brains and livers of aged mice compared to their younger counter- parts (Ono and Cutler 1978). More recently, it has been shown that gene expression becomes gradually heterogeneous in the tissues of individuals with advancing age, including the cerebral cortex and hippocampus (Somel et al. 2006). These ﬁndings are compatible with the dysdifferentiation theory of aging. This theory had never been popular, but has been recently revived as the epigenetic theory of aging. Epigenetics is a phenomenon in which a ﬁxed pattern of gene expression in a cell, or an organism is inherited from one generation to the next without changes in the genomic nucleotide sequence. This deﬁnition has been broadened to include the long-term stable control of gene expression in differenti- ated cells in a body without changes in the nucleotide sequence, as manifested in various physiological and pathological situations, including aging and age-related diseases. The epigenetic regulation of long-term cell-speciﬁc gene expression is determined by a variety of mechanisms, including DNA methylation, histone mod- iﬁcations, and microRNA expression (Brunet and Berger 2014; Raj and Horvath 20 S. Goto 2020). These epigenetic mechanisms of gene modulation are inﬂuenced throughout life by both internal and external stimuli, such as energy metabolism, nutrition, and exercise, and can therefore impact on the physiological aging and the incidence of age-related diseases (Lopez-Otin et al. 2013; Goto et al. 2015). It has been shown in twin studies that there are far more differences in the patterns of DNA methylation and histone acetylation in the circulating lymphocytes of older (50 years of age) monozygotic twins compared with younger (3 years of age) twins (Fraga et al. 2005). Interestingly and consistently with the ﬁndings, the differences in the gene expression between the older pairs were much greater than those in the younger pairs. These ﬁndings suggest that an identical genome in early life could undergo different epigenetic modiﬁcations throughout life, potentially resulting in differences in the aging rates and/or in their vulnerability to diseases. This type of variable epigenetic modiﬁcations may partly explain the relatively low contribution (approximately 30%) that genes have on longevity compared with environmental factors (Ljungquist et al. 1998; Dato et al. 2017). Frailty is a common manifestation of physiological aging. It has been reported that a worsening frailty status, as measured by the loss of body weight, the devel- opment of sarcopenia and muscle weakness, and the reduction in physical activity, is associated with decreased global DNA methylation in the peripheral blood cells of individuals aged 65–105 years old over a 7-year follow-up period (Bellizzi et al. 2012). Aging is often associated with reduced levels of global DNA methylation (hypomethylation), mostly in cytosine base of CpG sequences, but its physiological implications remain mostly unclear. However, it should be mentioned that the age-related hypermethylation can occur in some cases of cancer such as promoter regions of tumor suppressor genes increasing the risk of carcinogenesis with age (Kulis and Esteller 2010). In recent years, epigenetic modiﬁcations have attracted a particular interest following Steve Horvath published an inﬂuential paper on DNA methylation (DNAm) and aging covering a variety of tissues of different organisms in normal and pathological situations, coining a term “epigenetic clock” that appears to predict biological age rather than chronological age (Horvath 2013; Levine et al. 2018; Ryan 2021). I do not discuss this emerging topic in detail as many review articles have been published (see, e.g., an article by Jylhava et al. (2017) for a comparison among potential age predictors such as telomere attrition including DNAm age). It should, however, be noted that it is not clear whether DNAm is simply a marker of aging or has a causal or mechanistic relationship with changes of gene expression that should be relevant to physiological decline of cells and tissues with age, i.e., biological aging. In fact, Horvath admits that “I do not ﬁnd that age effects on DNAm levels affect gene” and “the relationship between DNAm levels and expression levels is complex” (Horvath 2013). In a recent systematic survey of the epigenetic clock, Oblak et al. (2021) state that a majority of parameters potentially related to the epigenetic clock is age-related diseases such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, lung disease including air pollution caused disorders, diabetes mellitus and mental disor- ders, etc. but so far apparently not clearly relevant to physiological decline in normal aging. Notably, the authors describe that frailty, a hallmark of human biological 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 21 aging, does not have any signiﬁcant effects. Therefore, I would think that DNAm age could not predict biological or physiological age but possibly can predict the remaining time of life or health span as DNA methylation being predictive of susceptibility to some kinds of age-related diseases. Changes in the posttranslational modiﬁcation of histones also occur with age, which can lead to reduced gene expression, as decreased acetylation allows the chromatin to more tightly condense by increasing the interactions with DNA. As an example, we have shown that acetylation of lysine 9 in histone H3 is reduced in aged rat livers compared to younger counterparts, suggesting a possible mechanism of decrease in the expression of certain genes with age (Kawakami et al. 2009). Memory impairment is a common feature of old animals and a serious problem for elderly people. It has been reported that the acetylation of speciﬁc lysine residues in histone H3 and H4 are transiently increased in the hippocampus of young (3-month- old) mice subjected to contextual fear conditioning but not in their older (16-month- old) counterparts (Peleg et al. 2010). These ﬁndings suggest that memory impair- ment in old animals is correlated with defects in learning-induced histone acetyla- tion. Intriguingly, the administration of histone deacetylase inhibitors, such as sodium butylate, to old mice prior to the memory conditioning increased the acetylation signiﬁcantly in the coding regions of learning-regulated genes. These ﬁndings suggest that the dysregulation of histone acetylation is causally related to age-associated memory impairment, raising a possible mechanism for the treatment of this disorder. MicroRNAs (miRNA) are another epigenetic modiﬁer of aging that have been widely studied in recent years (Bushati and Cohen 2007; Grasso et al. 2014). The RNAs are short, noncoding RNAs coded in the nuclear genome affecting transcrip- tion or mRNA stability and thus can inﬂuence gene expression in aging and diseases. Different kinds of miRNA have been reported to change with age in invertebrate models such as nematode and fruit ﬂy as well as normal tissues (brain, skeletal muscle, heart, etc.) of mice and rats (Kinser and Pincus 2020). miRNAs secreted from cells and tissues exist in the circulation and thus have been studied for a possible biomarker of aging. It should be mentioned that functional roles of miRNA and regulation of its gene expression have remained to be deﬁned, and therefore appeared to have limited signiﬁcance at present to explain the mechanisms of aging. 1.10 The Hyperfunction Theory of Aging This recently proposed new theory of aging that is apparently against the traditional view of aging deserves mentioning, as it particularly opposes the inﬂuential free radical theory of aging and may open up a new door to explain the mechanisms of aging. In most of the aging theories described so far, aging is believed to be due to an accumulation of detrimental molecular changes in protein and nucleic acid that is induced by ROSs and other chemicals or by errors in critical life maintenance 22 S. Goto processes. Mikhail Blagosklonny proposed that aging is instead caused by the hyperfunction of growth, such as hypertrophy and hyperplasia, rather than an increase in the damage that occurs later in life, leading to age-related pathologies (Blagosklonny 2008). His claim is based on reports that contradict the ideas that aging is caused by an accumulation of molecular damage. According to such ideas, the molecular damage is mainly due to ROS. The reduced translation activity due to the deletion of ribosomal S6 protein kinase 1, a component of the target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway, is believed to lead to an increased life span and resis- tance to age-related pathologies (Selman et al. 2009). TOR is an evolutionarily conserved protein kinase that regulates growth and metabolism and is involved in the modulation of aging (Kapahi et al. 2010). Blagosklonny admits that damage accumulation can cause the deterioration of cellular functions over time but also predicts that an organism could not live long enough to accumulate a lethal level of damage (Blagosklonny 2008). It is possible, however, that damage accumulation would increase the probability of death when exposed to internal and external stress, thus constituting a mechanism of aging. He stresses the role of the TOR pathway by placing it in the center of the hyperfunction theory of aging because most factors that appear to reduce the activity of TOR retard aging and extend the life span of model organisms (Blagosklonny 2012). Gems and Partridge support the idea of hyperfunction as a mechanism of aging but state that it remains unclear how the pathway controls the rate of aging and life span (Gems and Partridge 2013). This theory predicts a form of antagonistic pleiotropy (Austad and Hoffman 2018) in which hyperfunction increases ﬁtness early in life but can be harmful in old age. The identity of the intrinsic or extrinsic factors that maintain hyperfunction in the face of declining metabolic activity with age remains unknown. It should be noted that a recent report describes that rapamycin extends the life span of mice but ameliorates few aging phenotypes, such that its effects are not due to a modulation of aging but are instead related to aging-independent drug effects (Neff et al. 2013). 1.11 Summary and Perspectives Despite extensive efforts to solve an unsolved problem of biology for nearly three quarter of a century since Medawar wrote a book with this title, no single theory has yet fully explained the mechanism of aging. As all animals are considered to be the products of evolution, it is assumed that there are conserved aging mechanisms even between species with remarkably different life spans, such as humans, mice, fruit ﬂies, and nematodes (see Fig. 1.1 and Table 1.1). Although there appear to be conserved pathways that potentially drive aging (Kenyon 2010), it is not known how these very basic molecular mechanisms result in such great life span variation. The mechanism has remained as an unsolved problem in gerontology. The leading theories that have so far been proposed are apparently acceptable at least in part, but not without objections, and different theories interrelate with each other by one theory being a part of the others, suggesting that each one can contribute partly to be 1 An Unsolved Problem in Gerontology Yet: Molecular Mechanisms of Biological. . . 23 integrated into the whole process of aging. In addition, it has been proposed that chance or stochasticity in addition to genes and environments can play a role in aging regardless of the mechanisms in both humans and model organisms (Kirkwood and Finch 2002; Vaupel et al. 1998). Nevertheless, no one would think that a lucky mouse can live for 100 years and an unlucky normal human would die of aging in 3 or 4 years, showing that the gene undoubtedly play a deﬁnitive role for the rate of aging and life span determination. But nobody knows which gene or genes are responsible, and a little effort has appeared to be made so far to identify one. A major target of future studies of aging will be how to integrate the different theories to understand the mechanisms of varied aging rates in different animal species and individual differences of the aging rate within a species. 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Loneliness as a Way of Life (Thomas Dumm) (Z-Library).pdf	Loneliness as a Way of Life Loneliness as a Way of Life T H O M A S D U M M HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, En gland 2008 Copyright © 2008 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America A Caravan book. For more information, visit www.caravanbooks.org Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dumm, Thomas L. Loneliness as a way of life / Thomas Dumm. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-674-03113-5 (alk. paper) 1. Political science—Philosophy. 2. Loneliness. 3. Grief. I. Title. JA66.D84 2008 320.01—dc22 2008006567 To William E. Connolly Contents Preface ix Prologue: Cordelia’s Calculus 1 Chapter I. Being 21 Chapter II. Having 51 Chapter III. Loving 91 Chapter IV. Grieving 127 Epilogue: Writing 171 Notes 181 Index 187 Preface Why would someone who has devoted so much of his adult life to the study of politics write a book about loneliness? Isn’t it a radical departure from the concerns of polity to focus on a subject that on the face of it has nothing to do with our political condition? Does it even matter for our politics whether we are lonely? I believe that it matters profoundly. Loneliness as a Way of Life is the result of a lengthy and sometimes convoluted intellectual and emotional journey, but the core intuition that has persistently in- formed the thinking and the writing of this book is that many of our most important understandings about the shape of our present communal existence—the division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the es- tranged and isolating forms that our relationships with our most intimate acquaintances sometimes assume, the weakness of our at- tachments to each other and hence to our lives in common—are all manifestations of the loneliness that has permeated the modern world. We are the inheritors of a legacy of loneliness. But loneliness is not something that can easily be described through the usual ways of doing political theory. As I worked on this book, it gradually be- came clear to me that the subject of loneliness, because of its iso- lating qualities—what I call “the experience of the pathos of disappearance”—is resistant to understanding by means of the or- dinary tools of description, critique, and analysis. Instead, I realized that I would need to supplement those tools in order to explore and x Preface understand the powerful in ﬂ u ence that loneliness has on modern life. So as this book unfolds, its tone and substance become increas- ingly personal. In retrospect, it appears that I may have written something akin to a mystery story, one that concerns itself not only with the emergence of a modern form of loneliness, but with its ongoing presence as a common experience in our time. To illumi- nate this presence, in the end I had no recourse other than to sup- plement my study of the loneliness of others with an ongoing study of my own lonely self. You who read this book will need to judge whether it meets a particular test, whether the way I have described loneliness rings true. But the terms and conditions of your assessment will require a different set of criteria than is usual for books that take on such a subject. I ask that you try to bring as much of yourself to this book in response to what I have tried to bring to it. Descend to meet me, if you will. I am grateful to the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for awarding me a fellowship for the 2001–2002 academic year. That fellowship, supplemented by the generous support of the Board of Trustees at Amherst College in the form of sabbatical support for two leaves and a senior faculty research award, enabled me to take the time to think through this proj ect and to rethink and rewrite it as experience and circumstance demanded. Collegial encouragement in the form of invitations to speak on the subject of loneliness also helped me think through this proj ect. At Penn State University, Johns Hopkins University, Connecticut College, Bard College, and Simon’s Rock of Bard College, I was treated with generosity and kindness. I thank Nancy Love, William Connolly, Jane Bennett, Jennifer Culbert, Richard Flathman, Da- vid Kyuman Kim, Julie Rifkin, Thomas Keenan, Ann Lauterbach, Norton Batkin, and Asma Abbas for their hospitality on these occa- Preface xi sions. Russell Goodman invited me to Santa Fe to teach at the Na- tional Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute on “Em- erson at 200” in the summer of 2003. Russell and Stephen Affeldt, the assistant director of the proj ect, enabled me to think through a series of issues concerning Emerson, individuality, and loneliness. On all these occasions, the members of the audience were remark- ably attentive and engaged by what I had to say. To the extent that any of you whom I met during these encounters hear your own voice in this book, please take it as a hopeful sign that I heeded your words and learned from them. I am thankful for your small mercies. I am also grateful for the continued support of friends and col- leagues over the period of the writing of this book. In Amherst town, Julian Olf, a writer friend who is also a professor of theater at the University of Massachusetts, read my musing on Lear at an im- portant moment. Another dear friend, Jennifer Michelson, read much of the penultimate draft of this book and offered the perspec- tive of an acutely intuitive nonacademic thinker. More generally, the denizens of Rao’s Coffee shared the ev eryday with me as I wrote in their presence. Among other good friends, Heidi Stemple read the manuscript in full, offering trenchant editorial advice with the practiced eye of a professional writer. I also wish to thank my Amherst College colleagues Kim Townsend, Nasser Hussain, and Austin Sarat for their ongoing en- gagement with my work. My colleagues at the Massachusetts Re- view have been patient with me as I neglected my duties there to ﬁ n ish this proj ect, but they also have done more, publishing a small piece of it. Let David Lensen stand for all in my acknowledgment of their aid. Chip Turner, Wendy Brown, Mort Schoolman, Ken- nan Ferguson, Andrew Norris, Lisa Disch, Kitty Holland, Anne Norton, Jane Bennett, Peter Rush, Cornel West, Alison Young, Bob Gooding-Williams, Larry George, Elizabeth Young, Carolin Em- cke, Ted Lowi, Michael Shapiro, Linda Garman, Bill Chaloupka, xii Preface Alex Hooke, and Ted Plimpton all may ﬁ nd some of their alienated thoughts returning to them here. This is the ﬁ rst book I have worked on with Lindsay Waters of Harvard University Press. Lindsay insisted that I ﬁ nd my own voice, and as a result the book is now both shorter and more direct, much better than it was when it ﬁ rst came to him. He also suggested the title at a key moment, leading me to ﬁ nally and fully realize that this is in fact the subject of the book—a way of life. My brother John Dumm, my sister Catherine Doherty, and my daughter Irene Bright-Dumm read much of the manuscript of this book and shared their own perceptive knowledge about the familial circumstances that are the subject of some of its contents. I am pro- foundly grateful to them. There are three friends of long standing whose presence I always ﬁ nd when I write. Ann Lauterbach’s amazing poetry has inspired my less successful prose. Her passionate commitment to language— its way of expressing our states of being and becoming—continu- ally instructs me in the heartening economy of metaphor. Stanley Cavell’s impact on my understanding of philosophical matters should be readily apparent to anyone who has read his work. My wonder about where his words end and mine begin might be la- beled the anxiety of in ﬂ u ence, except that I feel less anxious and more happy when he is present in my present. That he allows me to be his friend is a source of deep gratitude. Finally, Bill Connolly, my interlocutor for de cades now, has done more to encourage me than I deserve. I dedicate this book to him as a small acknowledg- ment of his many kindnesses over the years. Elements of several of the chapters of this book have appeared in other forms in previous publications, and I am grateful to the pub- lishers for their permission to reuse this material. Parts of the Pro- logue appeared as “Cordelia’s Calculus: Love and Loneliness in Preface xiii Cavell’s Reading of Lear,” in The Claim to Community: Essays on Stanley Cavell and Political Philosophy, ed. Andrew Norris (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 212–235. The several pages of Chapter 2 that address the identity of Pip and Ishmael appeared in the September 2005 issue of the Massachusetts Review as “Who Is Ishmael?” Finally, the discussion of Du Bois and Emerson in Chap- ter 4 appeared in another form as “Political Theory for Losers” in Vocations in Political Theory, ed. Jason Frank and John Tambernino (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 145–165. Prologue Cordelia’s Calculus Her father the King has just announced that he is abdicating. Her sisters have avidly praised the old man, swearing their love in abso- lute terms in order to get their shares of his estate. Now he turns to the youngest daughter to elicit her testimony of love in front of the assembled court. Somehow we already feel that the kingdom hangs in the balance with her response. The right words of love and she inherits her share. If she fails to say the right words, bad things will happen. That her sisters cannot be trusted is proven by the answers they have just provided, answers so fulsome as to reveal their falseness. Partly because of their claims of love, Cordelia cannot bring herself to say what her father wants her to say. It isn’t that she doesn’t love him. But it is also not possible for her to say what she feels without it feeling false to her. Why does she feel a sense of falseness? After all, she isn’t like her sisters, professing a love they do not feel in order to inherit. What is the matter with Cordelia? Why is she stuck? And why is her father demanding this testimony? As sovereign, Lear is above all other mortals in this kingdom, but from the moment of abdication he will fall to a place where he will have nothing—no power, no assur- ance of recognition, not even a shelter from the storm. And yet he 2 loneliness as a way of life abdicates anyway, gives up his power without reckoning the conse- quences. Why does he do it? It has a lot to do with the fact that he loves his daughters. They are his ﬁ nal connection to this earth; they are his only line to whatever future he may still aspire to. But there is something more at work than a father’s love here, even his love in opposition to the demands of sovereign responsibility. Out of Lear’s love for his daughters grows a profound sorrow, a recognition that they have suffered something awful already in their lives, a suffering which he cannot repair, but which deepens his desire to give them something, ev ery thing he can give, as a compensation for their loss. Shakespeare’s Tragedy of King Lear long ago assumed mythic sta- tus, insinuating itself into the dreams of all of us. Harold Bloom has gone so far as to claim that in his plays and poems Shakespeare ac tually invented what it means to be human, and if anything Lear is Shakespeare’s most fully human play. Although what matters the most in the tale has been told and retold, the heart of its hurt is not so easily expressed. What may be most important about this play has ev ery thing to do with an as yet—always as yet—unarticulated feeling of loss. This tragedy is a story of losses, nothing but. A king- dom is riven, a king goes mad, a family is destroyed, a good man is blinded, many die, and the very idea of love itself is made to appear as a folly. How does all this happen? There is, of course, Lear himself. He is a monster of a man, enor- mous of soul, large enough to go to war with the world, and large enough to go to war with himself as well. When he be comes mad— driven mad, we usually say, but by whom?—we can see how fear- some he is, his psychic powers unchecked and unraveling. Here he is out in the storm, refusing shelter, hoping that the distraction will keep him from his evil-dwelling thoughts about the older daughters who have so grievously insulted him after he gave them his estate. His struggle is somatic, his body revolting against his soul. Prologue 3 Lear. Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm Invades us to the skin; so ’tis to thee; But where the greater malady is ﬁ x’d, The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’dst shun a bear, But if [thy] ﬂ ight lay toward the roaring sea, Thou’dst meet the bear i’ th’ mouth. When the mind’s free, The body’s delicate; [this] tempest in my mind Doth from my senses take all feeling else, Save what beats there—ﬁ lial ingratitude! Is it not as this mouth should tear this hand For lifting food to’t? But I will punish home. No, I will weep no more. In such a night To shut me out? Pour on, I will endure. In such a night as this? O Regan, Goneril! Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all— O, that way madness lies, let me shun that! No more of that. (III.iv.6–22)1 Lear’s mouth and hand are like his daughters and himself: his body can withstand the storm from the heavens but not the storm from his brain and his gut, the storm that began with his abdication, the rage that he proj ects upon his children. His raging mind is over- whelming his delicate body. It is taking from his senses all feeling, voiding the contents of his body, concentrating the very beat of his heart on the powerful and obsessively throbbing, painful idea—the constant thought of the refusal of his two well-dowered daughters to shelter him. He struggles with that mind through his body, but he is rent by the struggle. A Cartesian split between body and mind is enacted here on a mighty scale. That split is a fact of life for sovereign beings, well described in the medieval doctrine of the King’s Two Bodies, in 4 loneliness as a way of life which God’s chosen sovereign is said to possess both a mortal and an immortal body. Lear’s immortal body is escaping into the storm, while his mortal body is exposed to the elements, cracked wide open. He be comes more human than any of us, brought into a shape and scale both familiar and yet shocking. We see the mighty man in his diminished state, and he remains a man. But even as he rages honestly, and suffers with a clarity that communicates a great power, he still is lying—if only to himself—about what makes his heart beat this way, because while he gave all his goods to Regan and Goneril, his heart was not true in the giving. Had it been so, he would not have expected a return of even false love from them. So Lear goes into the storm to escape from himself, his shame, the hor- ror of his own bad behavior, giving his earthly possessions to those who falsely loved him, exiling the one daughter who did love him. He goes to the frontier to get away from the settlements of his di- vided kingdom. But he cannot get away from himself. To do that he must go mad, and even that is not enough in the end. What is the character of this rage that follows in the train of his shame? In thinking about his descent into madness and his recov- ery (such as it is), a key to comprehending Lear’s character is the fact that this man is, after all, a king attempting to give up not only his material possessions but his sovereign power as well. Abdication puts Lear in an impossible position in regard to ﬁ lial devotion—he wants to give his children ev ery thing, but because he is sovereign he must demand proof of their love in return, he must dictate the terms of his abdication. Hence, he would be happiest if in response to his demand for love he were to receive, not authentic statements, but counterfeit expressions. Then he could at least comfort himself with not having to know truly whether his daughters love him. When Cordelia fails to comply with his demand, she reveals the emptiness behind it. Lear is ashamed to want the expression of freely given love, having always dictated the terms by which he Prologue 5 would be loved. This exposure of his shame sets the tragedy in mo- tion. Out of his shame, Lear be comes enraged, ﬁ rst at Cordelia for being true and later at Goneril and Regan for being truly false. Their true falseness is revealed when they reject him from their homes, which means that they are sending him into exile, expelling him from the kingdom that he had bequeathed to them as a result of having divided his own. (And yet this exile is incomplete, for he still wanders through the kingdom, exposed to the elements, but not cast out.) We might be tempted to say that while on the throne Lear had wanted false love, but now that he is off the throne he wants true love, if only he could ﬁ nd it. But is love ever truly true? Can we ﬁ nd in the divisions of king- dom and love, of love and loss, of divided love and wounded selves, anything that resembles the truth of love? Goneril and Regan give their father false love while he rules in return for power upon his abdication, but now that they have power, why shouldn’t they see his request for shelter as offensive, as a renewed demand for the counterfeit expression they only gave him when he held sovereign power over them? Niceties of etiquette aside, Lear can only repre- sent a threat to them now, and so they will deal with him accord- ingly. Their calculus is straightforward: do unto Lear before he does unto them. And Cordelia? We will need to reckon with her love, mea sure how close she comes to true love, and how far away. So to the storm. Having imagined himself rejected by Goneril, upon his departure from her castle Lear sends ahead his servant, the disguised Kent, to announce his untimely visit to his other favored daughter, Regan. Arriving at Regan’s castle, he comes upon his un- fortunate emissary in stocks, a result of the fact that Goneril had sent her servant Oswald to warn Regan of Lear’s coming. When he learns of Kent’s harsh treatment at the hands of Regan, Lear is out- raged. In a moment of transcendent anger he warns himself of the madness welling up within him: 6 loneliness as a way of life Lear. O how this mother swells up toward my heart! [Hysterica] passio, down thou climbing sorrow, Thy element’s below.—Where is this daughter? (II.iv.56–58) This exclamation is the ﬁ rst overt acknowledgment by Lear of his madness. It is an extraordinary moment in which the various themes of the play ﬁ nd expression—love, loss, (mis)recognition, shame, sovereignty, and nihilism, all circling around one word— “mother.” The Riverside Shakespeare comments on this passage that “mother” means hysteria, which connects it to the Greek huster- ikos—of the womb. Tracing the word “mother” through the Oxford En glish Dic tio nary, we observe a metonymic chain of associated meanings at work in a series of deﬁ ni tions that emerge in the late fourteenth century. In one deﬁ ni tion “mother” is de ﬁ ned as the womb—and this part of the body serves to de ﬁ ne the whole body. When the womb be comes disordered, then the word describes the disorder of “a rising (suffocation, swelling upward) of the mother. Hysteria.”2 The hysteria of the mother plays a crucial role in the madness of Lear, linking his bodily condition to the deepest metaphorical pow- ers available to him. Imagination be comes embodied through a se- ries of gender displacements. There is a silent doubling at the heart of this tragedy, in which Lear’s abdication—the loss of the Crown that ultimately results in the loss of the King himself—is paralleled by an offstage tragedy in which the loss of the Queen, the mother (a loss that may have triggered the abdication in the ﬁ rst place), re- sults in the loss of the Queen’s daughter, Cordelia. (Cordelia is the most likely to be this Queen’s daughter, since she is the youngest of the three children. And we may be permitted to wonder if that same Queen is the mother of Regan and Goneril, if somehow these broken ties of blood and birth are inscribed in the very frame of this tragedy.) Prologue 7 Love and loss—where is the mother in Lear? We will again and again circle back to this beginning, to the crucial moment of abdi- cation which sets these events in motion. We do not know why Lear chooses this moment, of all moments, to abdicate. In the uni- verse of the play, his decision to abdicate occurs offstage, a silent prologue to the ﬁ rst act. Misrecognition and shame—is Lear him- self somehow trying to be the mother of these motherless children, and is this a source of his shame? If Lear’s hysteria is an expression of his impossible wish to mother his children, this may explain his desire to receive only their signs of love, not the real thing. For he is ill-equipped to receive the love that children may have for their mother. The moment of what may be Lear’s most repulsive expression of hate lends credence to this idea. When Lear, still mad, meets Glouc- ester immediately after the latter is led by Edgar to the false edge of the Dover cliff, Lear responds when the blinded man recognizes his voice. Lear. Ay, ev ery inch a king! When I do stare, see how the subject quakes. I pardon that man’s life. What was thy cause? Adultery? Thou shall not die. Die for adultery? No, the wren goes to’t, and the small gilded ﬂ y Does lecher in my sight. Let copulation thrive; for Gloucester’s bastard son Was kinder to his father than my daughters Got ’tween the lawful sheets. To’t, luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers. Behold, yond simp’ring dame, Whose face between her forks presages snow; That minces virtue, and does shake the head To hear of plea sure’s name— 8 loneliness as a way of life The ﬁ tchew nor the soiled horse goes to’t With a more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are Centaurs, Though women all above; But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath is all the ﬁ ends’: there’s hell, there’s darkness, There is the sulphorous pit, burning, scalding, Stench, consumption. Fie, ﬁ e, ﬁ e! pah, pah! Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, Sweeten my imagination. There’s money for thee. (IV.vi.107–131) Lear’s kingly consideration of the pardonable adulterer places these matters in terrible context: there is no other way to read this pas- sage than as a vision of women’s sexuality as an expression of great evil, Bosch-like in its hellish festering. Lear makes an oblique yet overwhelming comparison to the evil of that fruit of illegitimate if not adulterous love, that bastard son of Gloucester—Edmund, he who bears responsibility both for his father’s blinding and for Cor- delia’s death. Lear begins his tirade by suggesting that women are to be considered as animals below the waist, but he then goes on to say, using the Elizabethan slang for women’s genitalia, “hell,” that there is a ﬁ endish corruption emitted from their bodies that is be- yond the merely animal, something deeply, fetidly, rottenly evil. And it is a torment for Lear to think that from his lawful sheets, from his wife’s evil bit, came his daughters. In this rant, it all comes together as a misogyny that reduces, if not completely eliminates, distinctions, most importantly the distinction that might be made between love and mere lust. How is Lear to overcome this mad hatred? It may be that the deepest pathos of this most misogynistic passage is expressed in the line “Sweeten my imagination”—that in this terrifying speech Lear is expressing much more than a hatred of women, that his misog- Prologue 9 yny is a cover for his fearful rage against mortality itself, the com- plex interplay of life and death, the very harm of living. Who could be more acutely aware of the harm of mortality than the King, he who bears immortality in his of ﬁ ce? In the very next lines Lear, in response to Gloucester’s request to kiss his hand, responds, “Let me wipe it ﬁ rst, it smells of mortality” (IV.vi.133). Lear seeks to over- come his stench, a stench of death, but given his just-completed and ferocious meditation on the genitalia of women, we may also imagine that he is referring to the stench of birth as well. This inter- twining of life and death in the context of sovereign being is a representation of the worst sort of catastrophe that can befall us, a trauma so deep as to lead us into the temptation to give up on life itself for not being worth the pain. And yet it is in the face of such catastrophe that we ac tually become more fully who we are to be. In his important essay on Lear, “The Avoidance of Love,” Stan- ley Cavell has suggested that Shakespeare hopes to represent Lear’s self-understanding that love itself is inherently debased, precisely because given his sovereign power he cannot know whether he is loved or not. For Lear, the thought of this debased love “is a mad- dening thought; but still more comforting than the truth. For some spirits, to be loved knowing you cannot return that love, is the most radical of psychic tortures.”3 This debased love cannot be expressed beyond the relation of one’s embodied self to the world one inhab- its, and yet Lear’s duty is somehow to be beyond this world. It may be that his deepest love is his love of the dead mother, and this love is beyond this world as well. His horror is that of the father who has failed, because he cannot mother his motherless children. It is too much for him, precisely because to allow the mother to rise up would be to give in to his own madness. In this way, his madness drives him mad. Lear can- not look at himself, for if he did he would be forced to stare into an abyss of lovelessness, and this he cannot do. Cast into the storm, 10 loneliness as a way of life stripped naked, he is close to representing bare life, but it is a life for which he must still provide a matrix in the face of his existence. He must, in a sense, give birth to himself, and because he must pro- vide this birthing out of the mother, he remains ashamed. We may see that debased love as a matrix torn from its moorings, a rising mother. Lear would rather be nothing than be a mother. And yet Lear may be the mother of us all. This turning inward, this folding in of the self upon itself in the face of the loss of the mother, places us squarely in the world of modernity. At this moment, shame is transformed into guilt. We internalize the sovereign powers that we once could see inscribed on the bodies of kings and queens. Lear begins in shame, and be- comes ashamed to admit that he is ashamed. His shame begins with his treatment of Cordelia. Cordelia loves her father. His abdication will be her loss as well, not her gain. But what is it that leads him to abdicate if not the death of the mother? Grief-stricken, the King by his sovereignty is already placed above the constraints of ordinary mortals, but in abdication he risks falling below the threshold of ordinary existence, into a nothingness unlike all others. The strug- gle he enacts is to be present in the world when he has renounced all claims on those in whose presence he wishes to be. Cordelia of- fers something else, and Lear’s tragedy may be ﬁ g ured as his failure to recognize, not only the fact of her love, but the kind of love she has to offer. If we imagine that Lear is thinking of the missing mother when he contemplates abdication, then when we turn again to the ex- traordinary ﬁ rst scene of the play, the scene of abdication, we can see more clearly how Cordelia’s pronouncement of her love so moves us. For the missing mother is never more present than when a father is speaking to his daughter about the burdens and plea sures of inheritance. What would the mother have had to say, how would she have mediated between father and daughter, comforting both, showing each a way out of the hole they had dug? We only know Prologue 11 that there is nothing she can say now. Cordelia tries to imitate her, but fails. Cordelia’s ﬁ rst words are an aside to herself: Cor. [Aside.] What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent. (I.i.62) Cordelia sees her silence as a way out of a dilemma. So she loves by being silent. Her second speech is another aside, a report, not on her impaired ability to speak, but on the ponderousness of her love. Cor. [Aside.] Then poor Cordelia! And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s More ponderous than my tongue. (I.i.76–78) Only then does she respond directly to Lear. This is the famous ﬁ rst part of their exchange: Lear. . . .—Now, our joy, Although last and least, to whose young love The vines of France and milk of Burgundy Strive to be interress’d, what can you say to draw A third more opulent than your sisters’? Speak. Cor. Nothing, my lord. Lear. Nothing? Cor. Nothing. Lear. Nothing will come of nothing, speak again. Cor. Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty According to my bond, no more nor less. (I.i.82–93) 12 loneliness as a way of life What is Lear demanding, and why doesn’t Cordelia give it to him? At this moment the great confusions of the play are set to explode. Cordelia, in the position of ac tually loving Lear, cannot summon the ability to pretend to love him. Instead, she is forced into a state- ment of her love as a public reckoning, a thoughtful, pondered cal- culation of what she owes the sovereign. This public reckoning hu- miliates Lear: its coldness, from one who loves him so warmly, reveals the sad hypocrisy of his demand. Yet Cordelia prefaces her statement with a report on her affective condition: “Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth.” Cordelia cannot connect her heart to her words—she cannot put her love into words, and this is a result of her unhappiness. She is frozen, without words to say what she must not say. We might com- pare Cordelia’s inability to move her heart to her mouth to Lear’s inability to keep down his mother. Both of them suffer a disorder internal to the body that reaps tragic consequences. Why is Corde- lia so unhappy? Is the humiliating demand placed upon her by Lear for a public performance in place of a private assurance an adequate explanation of her response to his demand for a public expression of love? Or is there a deeper pity that prevents her from imitating her older sisters? Is her relationship to her hypocritical sisters silenc- ing her? Is her youth contributing to her stage fright? Of course, Cordelia is unhappy because she is humiliated, because she pities her father, because she is silenced, and because she is young. But here again, a more thorough consideration of the missing mother may help explain the situation: it is the great absence in this drama. If Cordelia is motivated purely by love, is it enough to claim that Lear is motivated by his desire to avoid her pure love? We may imagine that because Cordelia cannot put her heart into her mouth, Lear cannot restrain the mother rising to his heart. His rage is motherly because Cordelia, by her very presence, cannot help re- minding him that she is a motherless child and there is nothing he Prologue 13 can do to repair that loss. While this tension frames the exchange between Lear and Cordelia, the problem of the missing mother en- ables the con ﬂ ict between love and its avoidance to occur at the level of the motivation of these characters. The problem of the missing mother in the world of Shakespeare’s play thus bears on the national tragedy that moves into our world in the post-Lear era. Could it be that her acceptance is a refusal, and her refusal an ac- ceptance? That she confounds us because she combines both? What is she refusing, and in her refusal, what is she af ﬁ rming? What is she af ﬁ rming, and in af ﬁ rming, refusing? These questions admit no certain answers, but instead require a series of acknowledgments—of the force of love, the madness that love foments, the insistent de- mands we make for reassuring answers that our condition of true love seems to compel us to seek any time we are touched by it, and the lack of any adequate answer to our demands that also ﬂ ows from our impossible attempts to truly love. But there is even more to it than this, and it is the reason why the story of the fate of Cordelia prefaces this book on loneliness. We too live in the matrix of the missing mother, in the paradoxical con- text of no context, in the open world of storms into which we mod- erns have been cast. This is the way of loneliness. In her refusal to subject her love to the preordained claims of inheritance, the entail- ments that would lead her to live in the way of the court, Cordelia does not appeal to an unwritten law of kinship, as, for instance, her ancient predecessor Antigone may have; her act of refusal and her act of acceptance have as their most immediate consequence a dis- inheritance that throws her into the wilderness of politics. Nor is Cordelia’s refusal an implicit claim to a deeper form of kinship, such as a restored matriarchy—if there ever was a matriarchy, it was abandoned with the death of her mother. What Cordelia seeks is a new way out of her family’s drama of counterfeit love, a way into a sense of autonomy, which she tries to ﬁ nd through her attempt to 14 loneliness as a way of life establish a reasonable, rational, thoughtful division of love. She is refused that transition—a transition to a form of adulthood—by her abdicating father, but in spite of and because of that refusal she be comes the ﬁ rst lonely self. For Cordelia, loneliness be comes a way of life. She is thus our ﬁ rst modern person. Cordelia over comes her dumbness; she speaks with clarity and power, and the abyss opens for her and her father when she does. Her appeal is that of love, love that divides, as it must for the abdi- cation to proceed honestly. When Cordelia insists that she will di- vide her love, she knows that this is how she will be true to her love of Lear. But he does not want her truth. How could he, being who he is, the sovereign, the united being who cannot divide his love as though it were real estate? Imagine being Lear and listening to Cordelia’s speech. Is there anything as heartbreaking for a father to hear as his daughter’s mea- sured response, her implicit suggestion that there is something un- seemly about the way he has solicited love from her sisters, her all too mature claim that true love cannot, in the end, be “all,” her in- sistence on returning love as a duty? Cor. Good my lord, You have begot me, bred me, lov’d me; I Return those duties back as are right ﬁ t, Obey you, love you, and most honor you. Why have my sisters husbands, if they say They love you all? Happily, when I shall wed, That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry Half my love with him, half my care and duty. Sure I shall never marry like my sisters, [To love my father all]. Lear. But goes your heart with this? Cor. Ay, my good lord. Lear. So young, and so untender? Prologue 15 Cor. So young, my lord, and true. Lear. Let it be so: thy truth then be thy dow’r! (I.i.95–108) Lear’s curse on Cordelia—“thy truth then be thy dow’r,” a curse that silences all those present because of its sudden savagery—surely re ﬂ ects the pain of a sovereign who cannot handle the truth of di- vided love. But there is something else he doesn’t understand. Cor- delia loves Lear beyond dutifulness, and her speech shows this be- cause in dividing her love she is in a profound way imitating him—dividing her estate, which is composed of love, thus risking all by following him into the deep split that he has made within himself from the moment he decided to abdicate. Cavell says, “She is trying to conceal him; and to do that she cuts herself in two” (292). In doing so, she expresses the deepest and most ancient truth of modern life, that the divisions we are to enact between head and heart, heart and mouth, mother and heart, set us on a path that leads each one of us to isolation. Half of Cordelia’s love, being truthful, is worth inﬁ nitely more than the love of Regan and Goneril, which is no love at all. But Lear learns this too late, and Cordelia, full of this wisdom from the start, motherless child that she is, casts us as her descendants into an aberrant, unprecedented future. She speaks a new language, one of lonesomeness and longing, marking a path toward the healing of divisions of the self and the social that is, paradoxically, to de ﬁ ne the isolated self of the modern era. Cordelia tells us this: Love is all we need to overcome absence—and loneliness is the absence we cannot overcome. This is the present in which we live. It may be true that the divisions of love begun through the complex historical development of abdication and revolution were already apparent to Shakespeare’s audience, that the great migration of sov- 16 loneliness as a way of life ereignty, the splitting of power from the absolute monarch into the souls of all of us, was well underway when Shakespeare ﬁ rst pre- sented this tragedy at year’s end in 1606, some four hundred years ago. But that moment is still alive to us now. It may also be that the calculus that Cordelia offered in the moment of her abandonment has indeﬁ nitely multiplied our occasions for tragedy as the selves of modern experience have divided and redivided, and as we fail to notice our ongoing tragedy in the pains of the ev eryday. (But it is not as though we now understand tragedy better for our experience of the ev eryday, if only because we still may not know enough of what the ev eryday is.) Writing about these occasions of pain and death, self-consciously referring us back to Lear’s scene of abdica- tion, Cavell returns us to our present presence. “We are present at these events,” he writes, “and no one is present without making something happen; ev ery thing which is happening is happening to me, and I do not know what is happening. I do not know that my helplessness is limited only by my separateness, because I do not know which fortune is mine and which is yours. The world did not become sad; it was always sad. Tragedy has moved into the world, and with it the world be comes theatrical” (344). Tragedy has moved into the world. This is the moment of the lonely self’s ascendance. We are present at the place of our absence, lost in the stars, watching each other, waiting for each other to re- turn from nowhere. In this book I want to claim that being present at the place of our absence is what it means to experience loneliness. Is this loneliness merely nihilism? Much is made by many these days of the “noth- ings” of King Lear—how nothing comes of nothing; how Cordelia has nothing to say; how the Fool’s breaking of the circle (the egg) to make two crowns foreshadows the dissolution of the Kingdom of nothing; how the abdication of Lear sets him on the road to no- where; how any possible recovery is ruined through the death of all players of import, save Edgar, who matters so much primarily be- Prologue 17 cause only he survives, and secondarily because he “sullenly,” that is, melancholically, survives, leading us to ask whether modern exis- tence is to be essentially melancholic in character. These large ques- tions led Harold Bloom to deify Shakespeare, hoping that this one great human would somehow be able to encompass our humanity, and hence to give the gnostic something to worship. But the demands of philosophy are not those of faith. The think- ers I care about insist that there still may be something more to say about the truth we live, and insist upon the fact that we are to live that something. Truth is our dowry, just as it is Cordelia’s.4 But the truth we have inherited has led us to another place. This book was written across a period of time when the United States fought one war to avenge terrorist killings on American soil, and embarked on another war in a quest for a new empire, leaving us again in a quag- mire, showing even ourselves how this country has become the most dangerous nation in the world. In this time our lying leaders generate new falsehoods ev eryday. So it turns out that we need to rely upon Cordelia’s dowry to help us resist the prospect of an ever- widening experience of twenty-ﬁ rst-century war. There are enormous questions that we ask in and of the world that have been unanswered in the void that opened at the tip of the island of Manhattan on September 11, 2001, a void that by the time of this writing has come to replicate itself on a larger scale in the heart of Baghdad and that sometimes seems to threaten to swallow the entire world. How are we to grieve? What should we be de- manding of ourselves? What have we to do with the terror that af- ﬂ icts the world? Rather than confront this void, our sovereign au- thorities have lashed out, as mad as Lear in all his fury, and now we suffer from the spread of a new shame. What we have come to ex- pect of the world is now denied to us by the actions of those whom we have permitted to be placed in charge of our lives. How we re- spond to those acts of denial may in the end determine questions of war and peace, in fact may determine such matters more than the 18 loneliness as a way of life strategies of generals and fanatics, who are always already ready for war, always ready to kill, to torture, to imprison, to silence, regard- less of their very real reluctance to do so. This is still the claim that thinkers make on the world, to speak the truth of our ongoing shame in the face of a tragedy born of a powerful powerlessness, a tragedy born of a new avoidance of love. The lonely self is born within this matrix, in the face of it—sup- pressed by it, and yet responsive to it. There is always a turn to be made, no matter how unlimited the question, no matter how pow- erful the hurt, how deep the harm. Here we are, still unable to abdi- cate. Still unable to love. What are we waiting for? Tragedy has moved into the world as the certainties of sovereignty have crum- bled. Cordelia’s truthfulness enabled this passage to modernity. Like her, we need to confront this enormous fact without embarrass- ment and without shrinking from its philosophical import, not only for the sake of the future, but for the sake of rethinking who we are and how we may be present in our present. Recognizing the fatality of the division of Cordelia’s love, can we learn other affective ways of attaching ourselves to the world? This is, in fact, to be our task, ongoing. Through the family discord of Cordelia and Lear, Shakespeare provided us denizens of the twenty- ﬁ rst century with an ancient key for beginning to see who we are. Cordelia can divide her love, but she cannot divide herself. Lear can have absolute power or the love of his child, but he cannot have both. And in their attempts to overcome the divisions of the self that they improvise in order to escape unbearable circumstances, they re ﬂ ect our lesser struggles to become who we are in the face of our more quotidian, but ev ery bit as painful circumstances. They re ﬂ ect the fundamental fact of loss, of a wife, of a mother, of a very real and profound love that has gone missing from their world, and from ours. We too are lonely selves. We too have much to learn, and we risk the tragic fate of those who fail to learn in time. And yet we still Prologue 19 have all the time in the world—a world, it seems, that is always coming to an end. The claims we make upon our tragic world are also inevitably personal in character. For all of us there are griev- ances we cannot resolve, recognitions we try our best to avoid, co- incidences of folly that leave us either laughing or in a puddle of tears, all of these re ﬂ ected in the things we think and write about. As will become clear, I do not offer myself as an exception to this rule, but rather as a proof. Like many others, I may go to my grave crying over my missing mother. And if I am lucky, my motherless children will be there when I die. For you see, my thoughts about the missing mother are not the result of cool observation, but a fact of my life. My own mother was, as a result of circumstances I will explore in this book, unable to be present for me as I wanted her to be. More immediately, my daughter Irene and her youn ger brother Jimmy lost their own mother to death several years ago, while I was beginning to work on this book. So my convictions about the relationship of Lear and Cordelia are informed by my own losses and my ongoing attempt to mother my motherless children, to address the sorrow of this or- dinary loss in the context of a present formed by the larger experi- ence of a political culture shaped by loss. The intensity of this expe- rience has afforded me a perspective that has driven me onward as I have tried to follow it to its root, a spiral of thought and feeling that I will be retracing throughout the following pages. I tell you these details from my life because I suspect that if you have picked up this book, you are asking pertinent questions about what it means to be lonely, and in turn I believe that it is my charge to explain myself to you as fully as I can in order for you to under- stand how and why I came to think about this subject as I do. In the chapters that follow I will be thinking, in light of Cordelia’s calculus, about how we are in the world (Being), how we attempt to hold the world (Having), how we desire (Loving), and how we suffer loss (Grieving). In all of these ever-shifting groundings of the 20 loneliness as a way of life experience of loneliness we may ﬁ nd ourselves retreating to some inner ocean, seeking repair through reliance on a self not yet at- tained. This is a quest and a question for us. What are we to be- come as we live our lives, how are we to live with ourselves and each other? How are we to live with loneliness as our way of life? Chapter I Being Oh lonely death on lonely life. —Captain Ahab, in Melville, Moby-Dick The All One It isn’t as if Shakespeare invented loneliness, as brilliantly as he nar- rated its emerging force in the modern era. Think again of Cordelia and her dad, and imagine some words that might describe their common plight. Exiled, untouched, ignored, isolated, desolated, alien- ated, outcast, denied, lost, mad. Is it too much to claim that this list of words summarizes something important about all of us? Each one of us confronts an interminable ocean, a place untouchable by others, a language that sounds to us like a scream in the night. We imagine that to be alone is the worst we can experience. But how has it come to pass that we think this way? Why do we ﬁ nd such pain in the experience of being alone? Where does this pain come from? And why are we so attached to it? What plea sure is in it for us? Is the plea sure of being alone only painful? We theorists sometimes seek meaning in the etymologies of words. In this circumstance, it is powerfully apparent how the evo- lution of our language bears upon the subject of loneliness. The 22 loneliness as a way of life word “alone” is formed of the compound of two words, “all” and “one.” The All—the absolute containment of the inside on the out- side; the One—the absolute containment of the outside on the in- side. Floating through undifferentiated space, and yet pregnant with a sense of self, we ﬂ y into a universe both unmarked and yet totally de ﬁ ned. We are motivated; we are lost in space. “I am all one,” we say, triumphant and desperate. The All One condemns us to being no more than a weed in the wall at the same time as it al- lows us to be the most powerful of sovereigns. For being alone is not only the worst we can experience; it is also the inevitable mo- ment of some of our greatest experiences. In the solitude of our selves we learn something that is otherwise unavailable to us—how to become who we are. This is no small accomplishment. This other experience of being alone is what Ralph Waldo Emerson once called self-trust, and it leads to a way of life that is worth our while, de- spite the pain we may experience, the heartache of thinking that we will never know another as we know ourselves. Being alone. I confess that I think more often of the worst of the experience of being alone than I do of the best; I focus on the trauma and pain of the experience of deep isolation, a state of a certain kind of despair, rather than the greater plea sures of solitude and self-reliance. And yet as hard as I struggle to imagine the one without the other, the pain without the plea sure, I realize that the two emotional states are inextricably connected. So why do I think about the pain ﬁ rst? It is undoubtedly an idiosyncrasy, but I believe it is fortunate that I feel this way, because put ting the pain ﬁ rst also has a practical use. It is from the margins that we can see the center more clearly; it is from the perspective of what Michel Foucault once characterized as the “perverse implantation” that we may bet- ter observe what we call normal. In the state of crisis induced by the pain of being alone, it is more likely that we will clearly see the mo- tives and ends of the lonely self, even when that self moves from despair to happier ways of being. Being 23 The inclination of modern life, with its distractions and shallow- ness, obscures the deeper fact of our separation from each other. So we need to establish a certain distance from our distractions in or- der to think more clearly about what it is we are seeking from each other. It is in the silence that we may come to recognize the fact of our ghostly existence, our fatal separation from each other, and from our better selves. And yet it is this separation that we must preserve so as to come to understand the dangers that accompany our ongoing attempts to overcome it. How, then, may we consider this state of being alone? From the start we may know that loss awaits us all—diminishment, states of gracelessness, harm, wound, detachment. But in order to hew close to the truths that loneliness has to tell, to try to excavate its mean- ing for being human, we need to move beyond the terms that shape our discussions of it as currently con ﬁ g ured. I want to test the terms and conditions of the experience of loneliness in another way, so that we may try to reckon whether or not it is worthy of our lives to continue to live on in the way of the All One. This is a test that Henry David Thoreau, among others, has taught us to take—to ask whether we should resign ourselves to living in a particular way, es- pecially when it be comes clear to us that such a way of life means that we risk looking back upon our lives only to realize that we haven’t really lived. The question of loneliness entails imagining how it is that we are facing or confronting the world. Thus I explore the loneliness of the person I am supposed to know best, me. It is true that I’m more interested in how I am these days than in who I am, and even as I retain some interest in who I am, I’m more interested in who I am becoming than in who I have been. But I intend these develop- ments in my experiential life to be coincident with yours. That is to say, my self-interest extends to you, because I take seriously Whit- man’s striving to be a part of something that could be called a greater thing; because I understand that self-reliance is itself a pro- 24 loneliness as a way of life cess of becoming that depends upon conversation with compan- ions, helpmeets, friends; because it is a paradoxical truth that there is no escaping our selves, and that a proper care of the self is likely to be the best way of joining with others. My particular song of self is inﬂ ected through a lens of decline, a forceful sense that the ordi- nary experience of life has become increasingly endangered as forces of normalization and spectacle suck our internal resources dry, leav- ing us alone in a way that is increasingly dif ﬁ cult to overcome. The question of decline—of our culture, of our selves, of our knowledge of our lives in common and apart—is, I believe, how the problem of loneliness presents itself to us in our time. (We are still, in this sense, the heirs of Cordelia, in that the matrix of loneliness remains the matrix of the missing mother.) Despite the enormous literature, despite the constant discussion of the condition of loneliness, I don’t think most of us have yet ap- preciated the complexity of lonely being as a distinctly modern phenomenon. Our way of thinking about liberal freedom, its shal- lowness, its threadbare quality, and yet its persistence and power over centuries, has taught me how little I know about loneliness in this regard. But I am aware of the fact that the lonely self has been at the heart of an immense cultural, political, and philosophical ediﬁ ce, an aspect of all that we experience as humans, of how we come to know ourselves and the world we inhabit. So I want to try to do what others have attempted to do, which is, simply put, to think about what it means to be alone. There has been a drumbeat of news—for the past ﬁ fty years at least, if you want to call that news—concerning how lonely we Americans are in our increasingly complex society. This literature has been a constant feature of sociology and the political study of civil society. Simply to list some of the most prominent of these books is to describe a syllabus containing some of the most impor- tant works in the history of American sociology.1 These studies are united by a common prem ise: that there is a de ﬁ ciency or lack of Being 25 connection to others that has become the de ﬁ n ing characteristic of a particular class, gender, race and/or even generational cohort who are perceived to be the exemplars of the relevant ordinary person under examination. For most of these scholars, this ordinary person is de ﬁ ned by a timid introspection that turns away from common concern to the pursuit of a selﬁ sh life. From several ideological per- spectives, all of these authors have documented one or another va ri- ety of retreat into private life and have construed this retreat as a threat to something they identify as the common good. Sometimes embracing nostrums uncomfortably close to the most culturally re- actionary formulas available, or explicitly urging a revival of reli- gious brotherhood, or incoherently insisting upon a greater “invest- ment” in “social cap ital,” they proffer solutions that are, at their best, mildly liberating and helpful in their own ways, but neverthe- less are not commensurate with the scope and depth of the problem posed by loneliness at its deepest level. Alas, it may be that this in- commensurability is the most telling element of these studies. (While it is certainly not the case that only American scholars have been concerned with the problem of loneliness, as should become clear when I explore the contribution of Hannah Arendt to this subject, there is a way in which the split between European and Anglo-American philosophy has its parallel in the ways in which the concern with loneliness is expressed. For many European think- ers the self is already to be scrutinized as subject to the conditions of its cultivation. For Americans, a stubborn core of agency and volition gives shape to the ways in which the problem of loneliness is approached, less as a social problem and more as one of personal circumstance.) Rather than engaging the work of these scholars, I want to take another direction. I am concerned with what we might call domains of life—structural situations in which the feeling of loneliness comes to the fore, and out of which people react or respond to their lonely condition. One might say I am interested in the condition of 26 loneliness as a way of life the souls of lonely people, in the sense that my concern is not to predict behavior but to understand better the existential situations of people as they struggle to come to terms with who they are and how they are in a world in which they feel they are more or less alone. If, as Foucault once claimed, the soul is the prison of the body, then I may be thought of as exploring that soul, that prison, in an attempt to re ﬂ ect on how we might, if not escape its most powerful strictures, then at least begin to renegotiate the terms of our con ﬁ nement.2 Thinking about Being Lonely So what does it mean to be lonely? This is a simple question, but it admits no simple answer. While loneliness is close to being a uni- versal experience of human life, for many reasons it is not easy to describe. However, certain generally accepted truths concerning the human condition might serve as guideposts for discussion. For in- stance, we may note that to be human is to risk being alone in a way that is unbidden and unwanted. And we may also note that while we are alive, we humans search for what we imagine our world to be. It is true that from the start of our lives and for our lives’ duration, we seek others to comfort us, harm us, ignore us, and move us onto our paths through and out of life. Loneliness is deeply entangled in all paths of life because it reveals in sharp pro- ﬁ le some of the most important limits of who we are and how we are with each other. It may be said that loneliness is fundamental to the very constitution of our selves. There are moments when we ﬁ nd it astonishing, this life. We are astonished at least in part because we know of no other life and yet we retain a capacity to be amazed by the singularity of this one. It seems as though each of us is endowed with the ability to think of our life spe ciﬁ cally as being this life, and we are able to do so with- out any direct experience of other lives with which we may make a Being 27 comparison. The endowment of this life is a core paradox of our existence that motivates great religious thoughts, generates extraor- dinary imaginative energies, and underwrites profound philosophi- cal discourses. Yet for much of the living of it, we try to avoid think- ing about this life. We move about the world obscurely ashamed of our pretense, embarrassed by our unbidden par tic i pa tion in the search for meaning beyond the conventions handed down to us. We intuit that to face this life at the most basic level would be to experience a sort of sublime terror. Many of us would do almost anything, even deny our own life, to avoid that feeling. We cling to the familiar, even as a part of each of us remains acquainted with a strangeness inside ourselves. The world of our familiar takes on many modes that are deeply rooted in the rhythms of the ev eryday, and we say to ourselves that this is the world we live in. Yet this world remains largely unthought. It is as if we are condemned to see life retrospectively. In such moments, life itself seems like a bro- ken clock that can be taken apart and truly known only when it no longer keeps time. This is one way we come to know ourselves. But this way of knowing kills its object and violates what would seem to be our paramount responsibility of caring for ourselves. The care of the self is always related to how we know ourselves, how we explore and whether we decide to investigate the grounding of our life. And yet this care has another end in mind than knowing; it entails an ac- knowledgment of the very limits of what we may know while ap- preciating that there may still be an unknown that must remain unknown. How deeply we go in pursuit of this form of caring is not settled by rules, nor by the commands of various orthodoxies. Moreover, we cannot absolve ourselves of this obscure responsibil- ity of caring for ourselves by consigning this work to philosophers. As a matter of basic human right and responsibility, philosophizing is not an activity that is limited to those who are designated as phi- losophers. The thinking person, as Emerson suggests in his essay on 28 loneliness as a way of life the American scholar, is anyone who faintly remembers the whole- ness of a world that we can only experience partially. While we can never overcome this partiality, we still seek ways to endure it and to ﬁ nd something certain or energizing about our selves from within its bounds. We try different therapies that would comfort us in the face of our shattered condition or that would help us cope with or evade the harm we otherwise would suffer. Loneliness is one of the ways we experience partiality. We can never experience the world as a whole because we are mortal. We are fated to seek assurances for our existence, even though such as- surances can never overcome our basic doubt. We negotiate a path through this life with others, both with those who are far outside of us and with those who have penetrated our interiors. We hear voices composed of the fragments of those others, we speak, we listen, we touch and are touched, and we always fail to achieve an understand- ing that would allow us to rest. Our unending desires remain unsat- is ﬁ ed. Yet our failures, as inevitable as they are, also shape whatever our successes may be. We move through life, and our lives are shaped by these movements. When the reach of our selves to others be comes so fragmented and confused that we ﬁ nd ourselves arrested, or halted, or other- wise blocked from contact with them and from ourselves, we be- come lonely. We may thus think of loneliness as the experience of unhappy removal from a life lived in common with others. How we are removed from the presence of others would consti- tute a politics of loneliness. But because loneliness involves our re- moval from others, it has sometimes been construed by political thinkers as having nothing to do with the political condition of a society. Rather, it is read as a sign of the evacuation of meaning or politics from life. Aristotle once characterized a person who is un- connected to the polity as idiotes, a term which survives in vernacu- lar En glish as the word “idiot,” and which in its plainest context Being 29 means someone who is isolated from all others, unable to speak the common language, unable to interact. It was questionable for Aris- totle whether such a person—someone cut off from par tic i pa tion in the polis—could even be considered a human being. But to un- derstand loneliness as unpolitical is a mistake, even in the guise of describing it as a casting out of polity. Loneliness can never be reduced to being merely a necessary contrast to the condition of political existence. What seemed to Aristotle a dividing line be- tween polity and idiocy has never been an absolute frontier, and the line has been breached many times. It may even be the case that the terms of modern political identities are shaped by the inevitable crossings of public and private, that this line has become a blur. In a political sense, loneliness may be thought of as a sign, per- haps the most important sign, of the ghostly presence of an almost effaced distinction between the public and private realms of life. The very texture of modern life is inﬂ ected by loneliness. It is a leading experience through which we shape our perceptions of the world. It informs our deepest longings and aversions, an element inﬁ ltrating ev ery part of our existence. Loneliness thus may be thought of as being a profoundly political experience because it is instrumental in the shaping and exercise of power, the meaning of individuality, and the ways in which justice is to be comprehended and realized in the world. Of course we could employ other terms as well. For instance, we could say that contemporary civilization is built upon the founda- tion of a deep estrangement that we experience more or less in com- mon, and that the sources of this common estrangement may be found in the shaping by our own hands of certain institutions con- cerned with the governance of polity, economy, social life, and self. We could use the sociological terms “alienation” or “anomie.” But all these categories of distinction may be traced back to a common 30 loneliness as a way of life root: all are expressions of a deeper loneliness which they inade- quately capture. Loneliness may be thought of as foundational, in the sense that in the end we all understand ourselves as being alone in the world. While being alone is not itself synonymous with lone- liness, and while estrangement or alienation takes on forms other than loneliness, it is equally true that the rise of modern loneliness more than coincides with harmful experiences of being alone. Although the progress or regress of representative democracy, a paramount political institution of modern life, is closely related to the experience of loneliness, it may be that, as in the relationship of loneliness to estrangement, the relationship between loneliness and democracy cannot be plotted in any direct sense. For instance, I understand myself to be a democrat and a liberal, as these terms are commonly understood today. I am committed to substantive and procedural equality and to the protection of the rights of in- dividuals to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Less con- ventionally, I am also committed to certain elements of democracy and liberalism that are not commonly understood to be essential to their deﬁ ni tion and realization in the world. In this regard my liberal commitment to individual rights is a consequence of what I reckon to be the historically contingent inevitability of indi- vidual embodiment: to the extent that the right to pursue happi- ness must still be acknowledged as an individual right, then the political doctrine of liberalism is inevitably a sentimental one in its most primitive meaning, that of having to do with the senses. Be- cause of the corporeality of life, a robust liberalism must be con- nected to the way we encourage or discourage certain ways of think- ing, feeling, and acting about our affective connections and disconnections to our selves and others. Foucault understood the various ways we attend to embodiment to be important forms of the care of the self. I understand democracy as not only a good in and of itself, nor Being 31 even primarily as the vehicle for the realization of a distributive jus- tice of substantive goods, but as a means toward the end of devel- oping a more robust sense of the connections between self and oth- ers that may enable a happier and less lonesome way of being in the world. This vision of democracy is what William E. Connolly has sought to attain in thinking through what he calls the ethos of plu- ralization. That is, democracy may be thought of as a way of shap- ing discourse and deliberation so as to allow us to re ﬂ ect and act upon highly variegated ideas of the common good associated with affective freedom, so that the arts of being free may be commonly encouraged and their sphere of in ﬂ u ence enlarged. It is, in Tho- reau’s sense, a tradition. When democracy and liberalism enable each other in this way, the result is a marvelously rich matrix, a culture for living our life in common and in solitude. But of course we must ask, when has it ever been thus? There is a great paradox here in the experience of liberal democracy, because loneliness is both a fulﬁ llment and a dis- ruption of its possibility. This paradox gives shape to what we may think of as a dangerous politics of the self, a politics potentially de- structive of freedom and the possibilities of equality. To consider how loneliness has become a predominant affective connection of self to other in the modern era is to ask what the fact of lonely be- ing has meant for us. Loneliness is a condition that rebukes the ambitions of the pious and profane alike: whatever ameliorating schemes have been offered by today’s public intellectuals to heal the harms that have resulted from economic, racial, and gender in- equality, social isolation, violence, war, and weakened civil society, they are shadowed by the fundamental condition of lonely being.3 But if the problem of loneliness lies deeper than the solutions proffered by these American thinkers, the dif ﬁ culty may be at tri- buted not so much to any spe ciﬁ c de ﬁ ciency in their analyses as to an elusive element in the quality of the problem itself. Loneliness is 32 loneliness as a way of life both so common an experience and so tied to psychic life as to make the attempt to describe it paradoxical as well, for loneliness itself involves a failure of the self-descriptive capacity. Like the ex- perience of physical pain, it may somehow be beyond words. In- deed, loneliness may be a kind of pain. Elaine Scarry implicitly makes the comparison when she writes of the isolating, world- destroying power of pain.4 Pain grows and the world shrinks. Lone- liness isolates in a different way: rather than destroying the world, it establishes a barrier between the self and the world, leaving the world intact as a torment to the isolated person. Loneliness grows and the world recedes, eventually disappearing over the horizon. Will the world ever appear again? Was it ever there in the ﬁ rst place? (This is a kind of madness, what may be thought of as a madness bequeathed to us by Descartes.) And again, like pain, loneliness must be thought of as a necessary part of experience. Despite the muteness into which our loneliness leads us, words are still a potent way, perhaps the most effective way, to gain access to the experience of loneliness. The fact that we have words as in- struments to describe what may be indescribable is paradoxical. But we do things with words all the time, without always knowing what it is we are doing. That this lack of self-knowledge, if that is indeed what it is, so often is seen as a failure may be no more than a result of our blind pessimism—our suspicion that there is a failure of meaning itself—and our equally blind optimism—the failure to achieve certain meaning enables us to fantasize a perfection always only slightly out of reach. We ought to eschew both moods, to the extent that we can, when trying to think through our condition. Moreover, there is another way in which we may think of our words.5 As constituted in sentences and paragraphs and other frag- ments (for, as Thoreau suggests and Deleuze emphasizes, there is no such thing as a single word), our words shape and are shaped by forces that materialize our spiritual lives. Being 33 For example, let us reconsider a sentence from a few pages back: When democracy and liberalism enable each other in this way, the result is a marvelously rich matrix, a culture for living our life in common and in solitude. Does it make a difference to you to realize that the word matrix was once the word used to describe the womb, and became, through the magic of metonymy, a synonym for the word mother? Attentive to this word because of Lear and his struggle to contain his rising mother, I came to this etymological discovery in the notes to the Riverside Shakespeare. But why did it catch my attention? The fact that I am concerned about the problem of the missing mother in Lear, but also elsewhere, for reasons that extend to my personal concerns about marriage and death, motherless children, and the changing moods of the widower that I am, also may or may not be of relevance to your understanding of the word. And yet I think it would be very strange, once this knowledge of the word and my uses of it is gained, to believe that your further encounters with the word would not somehow be in ﬂ u enced by your new understand- ing. For me it would also be strange to think about the word matrix in a sentence without associating democracy and liberalism with an entire set of arguments concerning the relationship of marriage and remarriage to relationships of consent, or with Thoreau’s account- ing of consent through rituals of resigning and refusal, resistance and acquiescence.6 Moreover, to imagine that democracy and liber- alism may be wedded to each other, nurturing a space for natality and renewal, a feminizing movement, a cultural expression of em- bodied love, could help move us beyond the mechanical calculus of happiness and duty in our considerations of how we are to rule our- selves. If such a resonance is possible concerning the positioning of one 34 loneliness as a way of life word embedded in one sentence, what about the more complex experience of lonely being? It would seem that we are faced with an extraordinarily dif ﬁ cult task of description that entails, not control over meaning or a probing for ﬁ nal truths, but a continuing ac- knowledgment that the truths of our lives will never be governed completely by the imperatives of rules, and—what is perhaps more surprising—that democracy itself depends upon the continuing and autonomous iteration and reiteration of the meaning of words, sentences, paragraphs, and fragments. Instead of reaching ﬁ nal con- clusions, perhaps we would do better to think in terms of the ritu- als of truth that govern our lives together and apart, truths that are radically historical in character. However we choose to think about the experience of loneliness, no spe ciﬁ c emphasis on one aspect of it can be thought of as ﬁ nal. The dif ﬁ culty is that loneliness is presented to us as a termination point, as a ﬁ nality, as an ending. So it remains for me to do what I acknowledge may not be possible—to describe what cannot be de- scribed, to de ﬁ ne that which exceeds deﬁ ni tion, to write in such a way as to encourage further movement away from endings and to- ward beginnings. This is a seemingly immodest ambition, but it is also the most ordinary task we humans undertake in our lives to- gether. The Pathos of Disappearance To begin, a provisional deﬁ ni tion: Loneliness is the experience of the pathos of disappearance. We are marked by loneliness when we register the death of others to us, when we cease to be connected to the things that surround us, and when we notice that we somehow have become something that we no longer recognize as ourselves. Loneliness is akin to the expe- Being 35 rience of skepticism. Its intellectual affect suggests a gesture toward doubting the very possibility that the world we inhabit ac tually ex- ists. In this radical doubt, loneliness may well be considered as a side effect of Cartesian doubt, the spread of a terrible thought Des- cartes had in his study when he came to question his own existence. But we know that loneliness is a condition that is shared more or less by all who have ever lived as humans (and perhaps by other animals as well—I believe my dog is sometimes lonely when I am gone and he is alone), even as it is distinguished in a new way in the modern era, in that one of the most prominent experiences that we share is our very separation and estrangement from each other and the world. That loneliness is an experience of pathos reveals it, paradoxi- cally, to be rooted in the most explicit social and cultural structures of ordinary life. The pathos of loneliness is its path through lan- guage and the limits of language—that is, it is a well-marked or re- iterated narrative that assumes an aura of (tragic) inevitability in human life. Because loneliness is an experience of disappearance, it is embedded in existential paradoxes concerning the meaning of life as a death-bound experience. We appear on life’s stage, and then we disappear. The realm of appearances—of representations of life— that is inspired by the condition of loneliness suggests that we will ﬁ nd eloquent expression of the condition of loneliness in the com- mon vernaculars of life. In short, the boundaries commonly said to separate the psychological, social, and ontological dimensions of life are blurred by the experience of loneliness. Within the bounds of the condition of loneliness we are able to bear existence, or even more, we are happily able to inhabit our world through the multiple constructions of our extraordinarily rich inner lives, which keep us going when other persons fail us, as, being mortal, they inevitably must. Others fail us because nobody is perfect. Interestingly, in the modern era we have attached this idea of imperfection to the fact of embodiment, for we now see 36 loneliness as a way of life death itself as a form of failure, as a mistake of some sort. If it has always been the case that each and ev ery one of us must die, it has not always been the case that failure has so ubiquitously attached itself to the experience of death. This spreading sense of failure, along with our techniques for overcoming or bearing or subverting it, constitutes a large part of who we are now. Loneliness is a lens through which we may read the world around us as a failure. Total Abandonment Some aspects of this sketch of loneliness may be familiar to those who have read the work of Hannah Arendt concerning totalitarian- ism and modern life.7 In the concluding pages of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that totalitarianism is to be distin- guished from other forms of tyranny in large part by the way it cultivates, through rule by terror, a widespread, almost universal loneliness among the citizens of a state. This is not to say she was arguing that the form of rule determined whether there would be loneliness, but only that totalitarianism enforces and encourages loneliness as a means of securing and perpetuating its mode of rule. Arendt discussed loneliness in the context of her comments con- cerning the relationship of terror and ideology. For her, terror, “the essence of totalitarian domination . . . is the realization of the law of movement; its chief aim is to make it possible for the force of na- ture or of history to race freely through mankind, unhindered by any spontaneous human action” (OT, 464–465). For the movement of total rule to make progress, mere humans must be held in check, which is what total terror does: “[Total terror] substitutes for the boundaries and channels of communication between individual men a band of iron which holds them so tightly together that it is as though their plurality had disappeared into One Man of gi- gantic dimensions” (OT, 465–466). This One Man is the All One writ large, a Leviathan of loneliness. Totalitarian government relies Being 37 upon the extraordinary condition of stillness—a lack of free move- ment—to control those who live under its rule. “It destroys the one essential prerequisite of all freedom which is simply the capacity of motion which cannot exist without space” (OT, 466). To put it an- other way, totalitarian rule is marked by the ability of its adminis- trators to destroy the space between individuals through which people act as free subjects. The problem with such a conceptualization of space, however, is that in ev eryday human terms space is not neutral and unmarked, an open and inﬁ nite entity; it is shaped by people as they interact through, under, and outside of demarcated social ﬁ elds of life. Much like the great liberal philosopher Isaiah Berlin, who had a similar blind spot in thinking about space, Arendt both recognized this complexity and adhered to a strangely unmarked understand- ing of space. She understood how totalitarian ideologies provide complete explanations for reality detached from experience, how they are backed by the force of rule through terror, and hence are capable of ac tually changing reality for those who are subjected to them through an iron logic impervious to the messiness of ordinary life. For her, this combination of ideology and terror is the signa- ture of totalitarian rule. But by failing to recognize the complexities of space, Arendt lim- its her vision. The totalitarian imagination that she saw as all-en- compassing was not simply to be confronted with a reassertion of a public sphere where action could take place. Indeed, the more nu- anced and differentiated development of alternative spaces that provided sustenance and aid to those who would exercise freedom even within the terrible con ﬁ nes of such rule was to be the consti- tutive power that eventually eroded totalitarian systems. The iron band always has its weak points—cracks and ﬁ ssures which con- tribute to its breakdown. It is the exploration of those often hidden spaces that enables democratic negotiations, the possibility of what we may call a politics of becoming. The public that Arendt admires 38 loneliness as a way of life so much is cultivated by ordinary people as they work through the complex pro cesses of economy and society. But in her elevation of action as the quintessence of politics, she implicitly denigrated those realms of human existence. Yet in focusing on the worst, Arendt provides us with an illumi- nation of the political effect of loneliness. At its worst, loneliness is a denial of the possibility of a politics of becoming. Arendt rightly believed that at the heart of totalitarianism is the experience of a deep loneliness. While she was concerned about the isolation of people resulting from the devices of totalitarian rule, she also noted that it is possible to be isolated from others without being lonely. She argued that the key power of totalitarianism is its capacity to invade the sphere of the social, destroying any semblance of a pub- lic/private distinction, and, from her perspective, destroying the possibility of political action as well. Loneliness was thus for her the destruction of social space through the erasure of the public/private distinction. Arendt also noted that the experience of isolation—of being un- able to connect with others in public to act in concert—is an ordi- nary experience of life. She presented the example of homo faber, the creative worker who leaves, if only temporarily, the realm of politics in order to focus on his task of building a world of things. Using categories of experience that she was later to develop in The Human Condition, she wrote, “Tyranny based on isolation gener- ally leaves the productive capacities of man intact; a tyranny over ‘laborers,’ however, as for instance the rule over slaves in antiquity, would automatically be a rule over lonely, not only isolated, men and tend to be totalitarian” (OT, 475). In this sense, loneliness is a more encompassing affective state than is simple isolation, or, as Arendt puts it, “Loneliness concerns human life as a whole” (OT, 475). Moreover, loneliness reaches a particularly dangerous tipping point in the annals of experience when our world is dominated by labor, by the retreat (or advance) to an emphasis on the reproduc- Being 39 tive capacity of a human being. Hence any totalitarian government, in contrast to a mere tyranny, will reach beyond the power to iso- late and will drive its subjects into a state of pervasive loneliness. As labor came to be fragmented and dissipated in late modernity, forces of identity came to the fore. While Arendt did not fully rec- ognize this development—her comment concerning Little Rock and the civil rights movement was only the most notorious instance of her blindness in that regard—she did anticipate the quest for identity in a negative way. She suggested that loneliness derives from a condition of being superﬂ uous that grows out of uprooted- ness, the lacking of a place in the world that is “recognized and guaranteed by others” (OT, 475). She argued, Taken by itself, without consideration of its recent historical causes and its new role in politics, loneliness is at the same time contrary to the basic requirements of the human condition and one of the fundamental experiences of ev ery human life. Even the experience of the materially and sensually given world de- pends upon my being in contact with other men, upon our common sense which regulates and controls all other senses and without which each of us would be enclosed in his own particu- larity of sense data which in themselves are unreliable and treacherous. Only because we have common sense, that is only because not one man, but men in the plural inhabit the earth can we trust our immediate sensual experience. Yet we have only to remind ourselves that one day we shall have to leave this common world which will go on as before and for whose conti- nuity we are superﬂ uous in order to realize loneliness, the expe- rience of being abandoned by ev ery thing and ev erybody. (OT, 475–476) Rather than imagine the development of new forms of identity pol- itics through which new mediations of the common might be de- 40 loneliness as a way of life veloped, Arendt followed a more austere path. Her observation that loneliness is a condition in which we cannot trust our sensual expe- rience echoes the claim that René Descartes made in his Medita- tions when he elaborated the meaning of the cogito. For her, Carte- sianism, as a departure from common sense, contributes to the corrosive power of a skepticism that throws us into doubt about the very existence of others outside of ourselves, those we must depend upon to aid us in trusting our “sensual experience.” It is as though the moment of philosophical insight that resulted in the idea of the cogito has spread as a historical infection, over- whelming the world as we attempt to live in common after the death of God—in fact contributing to God’s death by elevating skepticism to its permanent position over faith. The working through of this skepticism in ev eryday experience, what Stanley Cavell calls “living our skepticism,” turns us toward understanding loneliness as a way of life, a life in which we are unable to recognize ourselves with the sort of certainty that would allow us to join with others, rather than conform to them. It is in conformity that we become ghostly, uncertain of ourselves because we are unable to think about how we are alone, even as we realize that we are alone. We lose ourselves in ourselves. This is what could be called the pathology of loneliness. In Ar- endt’s deﬁ ni tion of loneliness—the experience of being abandoned by ev ery thing and ev erybody—a particular pathos is associated with the secular anticipation of a singular event, our own death. Loneliness is not death. Yet we might as well be dead when our only possibility is to be alone, because the worst aspect of loneliness is that it ends the possibility of meaningful experience by translating the inner dialogue of solitude into a monologue of desolation. As the quin tes sen tial condition of singularity, loneliness is unlike the condition of solitude, although, unless the world be comes so bleak as to be irremediable to us, we hold out the hope that we may emerge from loneliness into solitude. In solitude, we are each of us Being 41 by our self, but not yet alone, because we are more or less happily occupied with our self, beside our self in a positive way, or in Ar- endt’s term, two-in-one. To move from loneliness to solitude is to recover the world we have lost. The two-in-one is in strong contrast to the All One, the state of being alone. When we are lonely we are ac tually alone, deserted by all others, including our own other self (OT, 476). What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one’s own self which can be realized in solitude, but con ﬁ rmed in its iden- tity only by the trusting and trustworthy company of my equals. In this situation, man loses trust in himself as the partner of his thoughts, and that elementary con ﬁ dence in the world which is necessary to make experiences at all. Self and world, capacity for thought and experience are lost at the same time. (OT, 477) The state of loneliness as one-ness, Arendt claimed, was once com- mon but very temporarily felt. Though she called loneliness an ex- perience, it is an experience composed of a loss of the capacity to experience. It is important to note that if we accept her deﬁ ni tion of experience, we cannot say that we are even having an experience at the moment we are lonely (OT, 477). This problem is what one might call the paradox of experience, its uselessness, its disconnec- tion from the world. Perhaps even more sig niﬁ cantly, Arendt argued that loneliness emerges as a permanent condition ﬁ rst for those who are philoso- phers; she cited Hegel’s deathbed pronouncement, “Nobody has understood me except one; and he also misunderstood” (OT, 477). By the twentieth century, however, loneliness has escaped the con- ﬁ nes of philosophical experience and has become the ev eryday ex- perience of “the ever growing masses” (OT, 478). Exploiting the massiﬁ cation of modern Western so ci e ties, totalitarianism is so ter- rible because it uses loneliness as an instrument of rule and blocks 42 loneliness as a way of life any paths leading back from loneliness into solitude. It embraces us in an isolation that desolates—an isolation that goes the whole way down. “We Refugees” For Arendt, loneliness was not only a useful term for capturing the essence of an instrument of totalitarian rule; it was also a profound element of her experience as an assimilated European Jew who had to accommodate herself to the continual sta tus of refugee. In an es- say from 1943, entitled “We Refugees,” Arendt goes beyond describ- ing the function of loneliness and dwells within it.8 This is an un- usual essay for her, because here she speaks directly to questions concerning the shaping of her own identity, the wounds she has suffered, the deep harm that comes from having her value as a hu- man being called into question, not only by the likes of Hitler and his government of thugs, but by a world that, through complacency and complicity, condemns the refugee to the sta tus of refugee. But even as Arendt directly addresses the terms of her own experience, she still speaks in the ﬁ rst person plural, understanding “we refu- gees” to be a synonym for the pariah Jew that she is. Arendt begins with re ﬂ ections on the optimism of her fellow refugees, the idea of optimism in the face of loss. What losses have these refugees suffered? She patiently lists them. The loss of home, which means the familiarity of daily life. The loss of occupation, which means a sense of usefulness in the world. The loss of ﬁ rst language, which means naturalness of expression, simplicity of ges- ture, and unaffected expression of feelings. And ﬁ nally, the loss of relatives and friends, those killed in concentration camps, the rup- ture of private lives. In the face of these losses, optimism is an at- tempt at forgetting, an embrace of the new and repudiation of the past. “The more optimistic among us would even add that their whole former life had been passed in a kind of unconscious exile Being 43 and only their new country now taught them what home really looks like.” This forgetting was important, because it was necessary for ev ery one to suppress the knowledge that contemporary history created “a new kind of human being—the kind that are put into concentration camps by their foes and in internment camps by their friends” (265). As the essay unfolds, this optimism be comes a token of despair. Thinking about the night thoughts of her fellow refugees, who may be wondering whether their new countrymen may turn on them as their former ones did, Arendt writes, “I dare not ask for informa- tion, since I, too, had rather be an optimist” (266). But for some, it is not possible to forget some things. There are those odd optimists among us who, having made a lot of optimistic speeches, go home and turn on the gas or make use of a skyscraper in quite an unexpected way. They seem to prove that our proclaimed cheerfulness is based on a dangerous readiness for death. Brought up in the conviction that life is the highest good and death the greatest dismay, we became wit- nesses and victims of worse terrors than death—without having been able to discover a higher ideal than life. (266) This turn, the realization that there is something worse than death combined with the modern loss of an alternative way of acting in the world, constitutes a devastating fact unveiled with the rise of Hitler. This is the fact of evil. But that grossly decontextualizing vio- lence, paradoxically, always occurs in a context that is, in its own insidious way, almost as bad. For the experience of the refugee is not one of relief from the hell that had been their plight before they ﬂ ed; it is instead its strange consummation in tokens of loss. Refu- gees attempt to become citizens of their new countries, erasing their prior allegiances, developing new loyalties, second, even third lan- 44 loneliness as a way of life guages, new selves. Arendt tells the tale of a Mr. Cohn, an exemplar of the assimilating Jew, who, starting as a German patriot, be comes in turn—until forced again and again to move on—a Czech pa- triot, an Austrian patriot, a French patriot. “As long as Mr. Cohn can’t make up his mind to be what he ac tually is, a Jew, nobody can foretell all the mad changes he will still have to go through” (271). The irrevocable fact of Jewish identity, forced upon the refugee, also illuminates a deep philosophical meaning underlying the idea of assimilation: “A man who wants to lose his self discovers, indeed, the possibilities of human existence, which are inﬁ nite, as inﬁ nite as is creation. But the recovering of a new personality is as dif ﬁ - cult—and as hopeless—as a new creation of the world” (271). The sta tus of the refugee—this unhappy removal from a life lived in common with others, thrown into circumstances where friends are not really friends, but sponsors, where the reasons for being re- stricted in one’s movement shift but one’s sta tus as being detached from others remains a constant—is exactly what I am calling the experience of loneliness. The refugee is in an incredibly precarious position. If we should start telling the truth that we are nothing but Jews, it would mean that we expose ourselves to the fate of human beings who, unprotected by any spe ciﬁ c law or political con- vention, are nothing but human beings. I can hardly imagine an attitude more dangerous, since we ac tually live in a world in which human beings as such have ceased to exist for quite a while . . . (273) With the disappearance of the conventions that protect us from each other, we become nothing but human beings. And to be noth- ing but human beings, it turns out, means to be nothing at all. Nothing comes of nothing. Our losses continue to mount. Arendt, a self-conscious pariah, struggles with her outlaw sta tus, and brings Being 45 us the gift of her experience, but it remains to be determined whether that gift is enough. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether the sta tus of refugee is coextensive with the sta tus of the lonely per- son. The connections between the two are deep and profound. But does the one ac tually determine the other? Loneliness and the Vicissitudes of Modernity Loneliness is the existential realization of a strange fantasy—the loss of self, world, experience, and thought. Arendt’s description of such a profound abandonment incites another question concerning the world we now inhabit, one where we always seem to be living in a vestibule of the totalitarian possibility. If that is in fact our possi- bility now, what is to be done? It at least be comes necessary to de- scribe this condition of loss, the categories through which we con- tinue to live even in their inadequacy, for if this kind of living alone is in fact to be our condition, it is also a condition that still is not the termination point of existence. In other words, imagining that we are lonely, and that we have not yet succumbed to the condition of hard totalitarianism, we may ask ourselves what basic categories may be said to displace those that Arendt presented as becoming lost to us. This is a scenario which may be thought of as fantastic, precisely because it requires us to imagine that we can live in death. Perhaps the most resolutely pessimistic response to our condi- tion as Arendt imagined it is provided by Giorgio Agamben when he suggests that we are in fact becoming beings whose nomos is that of the in hab i tants of a camp—that we are on the verge of inhabit- ing a great zone of indistinction between life and death akin to the experience of the Musselmen of Auschwitz.9 For Agamben, this is not a ghostly existence; we are the living dead. The categories of liv- ing death that would displace those of self, world, experience, and thought seem to be those (inhuman) categories of mass, space, sim- ulation, and logic. The pre-totalitarian moment in the life of a pol- 46 loneliness as a way of life ity—a period of widespread and ordinary loneliness—would then be marked by the displacement of a life of autonomous individuals acting in concert with a massiﬁ cation of social life; the reduction of a common sense of the world into a one-dimensional understand- ing of neutral space; the displacement of unmediated, face-to-face encounters between humans with ersatz or inauthenticizing en- counters with things; and ﬁ nally, the overcoming of the dialogue of inner thought with the solipsism of objective logic. Agamben suggests that both Arendt and Foucault lend support to this thesis. And it certainly is true that Arendt’s conclusion con- cerning totalitarianism is bleak, suggesting that humanity has en- tered a phase of “organized loneliness” encouraged by modern states as a means of increasing the docility of their citizens. In reaching this conclusion, her work ﬁ ts into a tradition extending back at least to Tocqueville, through Max Weber and most recently, in the American context, Sheldon Wolin. These otherwise diverse think- ers have in common an abiding concern with the ways in which there is a relationship between pro cesses of the pac i ﬁ ca tion of citi- zens, their subtle subjugation, and the determination of whatever possibility exists for them to be free. In all cases, the struggle for an intellectual purchase that would enable us to understand and em- brace freedom be comes arduous—some say impossible. Arendt’s argument is saved from complete defeatism by her embrace of what she termed the natal character of humanity, the most general possi- bility of new beginnings that underlies all human endeavor, and by her sense that a particular form of democratic revolution, American in character, occasionally encourages such beginnings. In many of her subsequent works, Arendt’s concerns about be- ginnings and the role of promising as expressions of human action oriented toward the future did much to ﬁ ll in her picture of natal- ity. But the picture, as it develops, still depends on a pre-given sense of the stability of a div	403,429
Positive Solitude A Practical Program for Mastering Loneliness and Achieving Self-Fulfillment (Rae Andre) (Z-Library).pdf	Preface It is 7:30 P.M. and you are at home alone. You have read the paper and eaten your supper. The early evening programs are lousy. Since you have been alone quite a lot lately and have had some bad feelings about it, you decide to spend some time thinking about your situation. You reach for a book on loneliness. Maybe it will help you to under- stand the times of boredom and the moments of pain that you experi- ence when you are alone. Perhaps the author will help you to under- stand your loneliness and to get over it. After a couple of hours, you put the book down. You are disappointed to realize that reading it hasn't helped. Your feelings of loneliness are worse than ever. Now you are depressed because even the experts have little to teach you about solving your problem. Feeling sad and lonely, you reach for something alcoholic and flip on the tube. . . . Something like this once happened to me. Some years ago, I found myself unexpectedly divorced. Within two months of the di- vorce, my mother died. A few months later, my best friends decided to move to another city. I had no children. Except for college and for week-long periods of marital separation for career reasons, I had never lived alone. Suddenly, I faced the 7:30 syndrome: Each night, hour upon hour lay ahead of me. "What do you do alone at 7:30 at night when you are tired and there are still three or four waking hours to go?" I asked myself. What does one do about loneliness? For an answer I turned to my lifelong friends—authors both known and new. I read widely in popular books and academic books, personal accounts and research studies. Usually, in my reading I find solace and new beginnings. Yet, surprisingly, after most encounters xii PREFACE with works on loneliness, I emerged somewhat more lonely and depressed than before. I learned from them how widespread the problem of loneliness is, that there has been relatively little research on it, and that little is known about how to "cure" it. In short, I learned a lot of depressing things about being alone. I knew I had to find something else—something more hopeful. Yet as I read more, I became increasingly frustrated. I started talking back to my books: "How come you people are so down? Why are you so depressing about the fact that someone is alone? What is the big deal here? People have been alone for centuries: There is probably an honorable tradition in being alone, if you would only look for it!" This was my anger talking. My intellect also had a few words to say. As a psychologist, I asked myself, "What is loneliness, really?" Is it an emotion, some- thing biological like anger or fear? Or is it something cognitive, an interpretation we humans have created to make sense of the circum- stance of being alone? I guessed that if we choose to view loneliness as an inevitable emotion or as a sickness caused by the "disease" of being alone, then we will not get far in overcoming it. On the other hand, if the idea of loneliness is mainly our interpretation of events, then, like all such ideas, it is subjective; it should be scrutinized and, most important, it can be changed. I asked myself one more question: Had I ever, even once, been happy while alone? Think about it, I coached. Had I ever once enjoyed the blue spring sky while walking alone down the street? Ever once enjoyed a piece of music while lying on the couch alone? Ever once enjoyed a good book alone? Of course, I had. And if I had d^one it once, I could do it again and again. However unhappy I had been at times, there had always been moments of peace and glimmers of joy in my life. These moments might have been triggered by ordinary events— by seeing my cat basking happily in the sun or by noticing the bright sunbeam itself. For an instant I would take pleasure in the event or I would find solace in it. If I could feel positive emotions when I was alone, even for a moment, I thought, why couldn't I build on that experience to feel positive alone for many moments—even for most of my life? My experience being alone, interpreted through my professional PREFACE xiii knowledge as a psychologist, has convinced me that, gradually, thought by thought, action by action, we can alleviate the suffering of people who say they are lonely. On the basis of the actual behaviors and experiences of individuals who are willing to describe their pain, we can develop a practical understanding of loneliness. What is even more hopeful, by carefully rethinking the problem of loneliness, we can help ourselves and each other to become well-adjusted, contented human beings who only happen to be alone. I began to do research on loneliness and solitude when I realized that I wanted on my own bookshelf a practical handbook that would take a positive view of being alone. I needed to know how to do it, and I wanted that advice to consult whenever I needed it—whenever I felt that I was falling into the loneliness traps created by my old belief system about being alone, whenever I faced a psychological problem alone. The book that you have in your hands describes such a way of living. It is the way of positive solitude. I have written this book for people who are currently alone and who feel, for want of a better idea, "lonely." I have written it for people who want to solve this problem of "loneliness." I have also written it for those people who enjoy being alone most of the time but who want to get even more out of their solitude. Positive solitude is not only about solving the problem of loneliness; it is about using solitude as a means to self-fulfillment. You may wonder whether pursuing solitude is merely ignoring the inevitable problem of loneliness. Is it repressing loneliness on Monday with the implication that it will return to bruise your psyche on Thursday? We will talk about this issue in detail later in the book, but up front, let me assert that I do not think so. In some sense, we are, all of us, alone. The emotions we feel when we are alone—as when we are in company—are deeply human. Sometimes when we are alone, we experience negative emotions that are directly associated with our aloneness—for example, sadness or fear. Experiencing these emotions is natural. And sometimes when we are alone, we experience negative emotions that are not directly associated with our aloneness—for example, jealousy or hatred. These emotions, too, are natural. But none of these emotions con- trols your life. If you take charge of your life, you can also experience xiv PREFACE positive states and emotions when alone. You can experience emo- tions like elation, contentment, challenge, curiosity, and even love frequently and continuously. Few people will ever eliminate their negative emotions, but you can learn to put them into perspective. You experience negative emotions not because you are alone and not because you are repressing loneliness, but because you are human. Today one of society's major difficulties is separateness. People are searching for roots and connections. In our longing for connec- tions, we should consider that being part of a couple or part of a family does not solve all life's problems either. Your problems, especially your psychological ones, will not be solved by your friends. Together- ness is not the total answer. Being alone is not the total answer either, of course, but solitude is much more of an answer than we think it is. Why not give positive solitude a chance in your life? You will find yourself in the company of artists, religious figures, writers, political thinkers, and many other wise people who have sought new paths. Of course, there will be things about being alone that you won't prefer. But, then, you would probably prefer to look like a model, too, yet you nevertheless have adjusted to being less than airbrushed perfect. Being alone may not be your preferred way of living right now, but is that any reason to let being alone ruin your life? You can be alone and not feel bad about it. You can be alone and feel happy. With experience, being alone may even become your preferred way of living most of the time. If there is any single memory on the subject of being alone that most Americans hold in common, it is probably Wordsworth's lines: I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills . . . If you are anything like me, you only vaguely recall the "o'er vales and hills" phrase, and what remains of the poem in your memory is the image of one's poor lonely self wandering miserably over a deso- late landscape. But—how human!—this memory fragment is flawed. We tend to forget that Wordsworth's full poem had a different and happier message about being alone. Do you remember the daffodils? PREFACE xv I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never-ending line Along the margin of a bay: Ten thousand saw I at a glance, Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. The waves beside them danced; but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee: A poet could not but be gay, In such a jocund company; I gazed—and gazed—but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought: For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.1 This book is dedicated to all people who, whether by chance or by choice, are alone, and who wish to fill their souls not with remorse, but with flowers. Notes 1. William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), 115-16. Introduction All human beings are vulnerable to the alienation and anxiety so often experienced by a person who is alone. Especially in our rootless American culture, being alone can lead quickly to loneliness. Today one-quarter of all American households consist of one person. Some of us are uncomfortable being alone without really knowing why. Others are ashamed of being alone. Many, perhaps even most, actu- ally fear being alone. Decades ago, sociologist David Riesman labeled us the "lonely crowd": a people proud of our independence while in reality dependent on others to give us our direction.1 The truth is that as Americans, we cherish our tradition of rugged individualism, but we know little about how to live it. Our efforts to join with others do not give us solace. We seek love, but we do not find it. We find that our lives remain if not totally empty, then unfulfilled. Sometimes we try to fill the void by learning what amounts to a fashionable helplessness, giving ourselves up to the pursuit of toys, status symbols, and entertainments. At other times, we keep ourselves busy in the pursuit of relationships because we do not know what else to do. We join singles groups, we play the personals ads, and we pay money to matchmakers, all to avoid being alone. Yet the loneliness goes on. In our cities, it has been called an epidemic. I believe that we have failed to solve the problem of loneliness because for decades we have been asking ourselves the wrong ques- tion. Over and over, in hundreds of ways, we have asked ourselves, "How can I find someone?" In the end, we remain incapable of solving the problem of loneliness because we fail to address the crucial fact xvm INTRODUCTION that ultimately we are alone. We are completely separate from others; we are alone in the face of life. Only when we acknowledge this fact, when we find the courage to consider it fully, can we ask ourselves the right question: How can I make this solitude into a positive force in my life? Loneliness, failing relationships, and the loss of community are central human problems of our times. I believe that we fail to solve these problems largely because we do not admit or understand that a fundamental element of a centered personality is the ability to be fulfilled alone. Modern writing and thinking about solitude have helped little. Far too much emphasis has been placed on leaving solitude by finding relationships, and far too little has been said about the positive aspects of being alone. Certainly, no one has attempted to develop a practical psychology for being alone. Too many of us hold the belief that being alone will lead to unhappiness, self-pity, and depression. In short, we believe that being alone leads to loneliness. With so many people living alone, this belief is a major national tragedy. Millions of people expect that being alone will cause a major personal crisis, and this expectation becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they don't "find someone," they believe, their personal crisis will continue indefinitely. This book sets forth a different belief system. I suggest here that our tragic American beliefs about being alone are largely an imaginary hell that we have created for ourselves—that in our modern society, these beliefs are too frightening and too negative. Thoughtful, mature individuals can bypass this negative belief system to develop positive solitude—the ability to think positively about being alone and to plan ways to live contentedly alone. Positive solitude is an antidote to the despair of trying to "find someone." How often have you heard that you should strive to be a whole, fulfilled person because enthusiastic self-confidence is the ultimate come-on? In contrast, positive solitude suggests that being alone can be an end in itself. Problems of connectedness and commu- nity and love will be solved only when we take the radical step of really facing ourselves. Only when we learn how to be alone, to live alone, and even to love alone—when we face our alienation, our vulnerability, our cre- INTRODUCTION xix ativity, our uniqueness, our humanity, and our desires—will the prob- lems of finding others and finding community become less urgent. Positive solitude is an intellectual and therapeutic tool that can help us to balance our society's overemphasis on relationships with a healthy emphasis on ourselves. With positive solitude, we discover that relationships, rather than being the goals of our lives, become explorations. Rather than being the ultimate answer, relationships become one interesting question. Being alone has always been an existential fact of life. Yet though the human condition is to be separate, it is not necessarily to be lonely. In this book you will learn to view separation as a positive, life-giving experience that encourages the creative, the unique, and the powerful in each individual. In the words of author Melodie Beattie (Codependent No More), you will stop being codependent and start experiencing the serenity, peace, and love inherent in personal independence. Learning positive solitude is a behavioral goal similar to losing weight or adopting an exercise program. While we cannot simply will loneliness away, we can learn to banish the negative feelings that we have when we are alone. We can learn to replace these feelings with positive experiences. We can learn loving attitudes. We can learn to value and explore ourselves. We can learn to love the relationship we build with ourselves. Because of our mistaken beliefs about loneliness, the skill of positive solitude has been widely ignored. Americans do not think highly of people who are alone. We seldom emphasize the positive side of being alone, but see people who are alone as outsiders and failures. We frequently make negative assumptions about people who are alone. For example, if you or I see an old man dozing on a park bench, we are apt to think, "Look at that lonely old man." We assume that if he is old and alone, the man must feel lonely. We say of a widow that we hope that she will remarry, assuming that she cannot be "truly" happy now that she is alone. Of a bachelor we may ask, "When is Bob going to settle down?" Our assumption is that he will be happier living with someone else than living alone. A particularly pernicious belief is that the ultimate way to cure loneliness is to find relationships. Alone, it is assumed, people cannot XX INTRODUCTION really conquer their loneliness; perhaps they can adjust to it, but they will never be truly happy. If a person has no relationships right now, friends, family members, and even strangers often assume that he or she is unhappy. Worse yet, many of us believe that people must find the right relationships to feel whole. One must have a spouse, and children, and intimate friends. One "should" be involved. By this way of thinking, if people are alone and feeling lonely, it is imperative that they find others, such as an "appropriate" mate, to reduce their loneliness. Positive solitude refutes these beliefs, describing how loneliness can be reduced within yourself, by yourself. The first step to experi- encing positive solitude is to believe that it is possible to do so. You can choose to view being alone as inevitably tragic or you can take a new approach: You can choose to view being alone as a positive, enlightening experience that is relaxing, creative, and much more. A point that I will emphasize over and over in this book is that we choose our attitude toward being alone and that the attitude that we adopt toward being alone will inevitably alter our experience of being alone. Writers and thinkers who have shaped our attitudes toward solitude have themselves been affected by our culture's pervasive negativity toward aloneness. Psychological research, for example, focuses almost exclusively on loneliness, which has a negative conno- tation, rather than on aloneness, which has a neutral connotation. In questionnaires that study being alone, psychologists ask questions like, "How often have you been lonely?" and "What do you do when you feel lonely?" They do not ask "How often are you alone?" and "How do you feel when you are alone?" They do not ask, "How often are you happy when you are alone?" Thus, they do not start from a balanced perspective that would allow the person being questioned to reveal both the positive and the negative sides of solitude. In fact, they are really studying only the negative aspects of aloneness. Similarly, most research studies are oriented toward solving the "problem" of loneliness rather than toward preventing negative emo- tions through the creation of a positive self-image. In the outmoded but still strong tradition of psychology as a healing art, many psy- chologists have wanted to "fix" loneliness—not to help people avoid loneliness in the first place. INTRODUCTION xxi These biases are natural, given the fact that researchers are human. Unfortunately, the published results of the research on loneli- ness add significantly to our culture's falsely negative view of being alone. For instance, one study of loneliness noted that only 1 to 2 percent of the people studied reported never having experienced loneliness and 10 to 30 percent had experienced cycles of pervasive loneliness most of their lives.2 The researchers did not ask people how often they had experienced happiness when alone. Nor did the researchers ask whether they had experienced cycles of self-confi- dence and contentment during their lives. Had they done so, perhaps many people would have answered that they actually had experienced happiness when alone. Perhaps many would have said they had expe- rienced self-confidence and contentment! "Loneliness" is not the problem. It is likely that you will experi- ence positive and negative feelings both when you are alone and when you are with others. Much of the psychological research on loneliness has done little more than prove once again the adage that if you ask the wrong question, you will get the wrong answer. Writing that focuses on the positive aspects of being alone is scarce. It is this lack of other positive voices that may have contrib- uted to the modern popularity of a writer from another century: Henry David Thoreau. Many people have been deeply touched by Thoreau's Walden. Our premier thinker on the spiritual value of solitude, Thoreau lived much of what he preached. "I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society," he wrote.3 His magnificent work has led generations to "follow a different drummer," to explore enlightenment and contentment within themselves. As you read this book, you will understand how Walden has been an inspiration for my thinking about positive soli- tude. In more recent years, several psychotherapists have made sig- nificant contributions to this subject. Author and psychotherapist Victor Frankl, a survivor of the Nazi concentration camps, wrote about the emotional experiences of aloneness that he lived and wit- nessed there. Frankl later developed a therapeutic technique based on his belief that our central task in life is to discover the meaning of our individual lives. This discovery, he believed, is the key to xxii INTRODUCTION experiencing a life that feels connected to other human beings. What is most important is that one must discover meaning by oneself, alone. Frankl's logotherapy—literally meaning therapy—has much to offer to people who are learning positive solitude. Another psychotherapist, Clark E. Moustakas, has made exten- sive contributions to the thinking on loneliness in his books Loneli- ness and Loneliness and Love. Typical of Moustakas's beliefs is this statement: Solitude is a return to one's own self when the world has grown cold and meaningless, when life has become filled with people and too much of a response to others. Solitude is as much an intrinsic desire in man as his gregariousness. Hermits, solitary thinkers, independent spirits, recluses, although often stigmatized in the modern world, are healthy expressions of man's dialogue with himself.... It is unlike any other experience—not to have to respond to others, not to be stimulated or challenged by others, just to be alone.4 Moustakas's writing has sometimes been dismissed as too personal and philosophical—as not dispassionate enough for use by other professionals. Yet his readership has been broad. Many of his ideas echo those of positive solitude. Extensive studies on sensory deprivation and the reduced envi- ronmental stimulation therapy (REST) technique pioneered by psy- chologist Peter Suedfeld and his associates have also made important contributions to positive solitude. Apart from these writers, ideas on positive solitude are scat- tered.5 Classical essayists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Michel de Mon- taigne held positive views of it. Poets, such as William Wordsworth, William Butler Yeats, and Rainer Maria Rilke, have looked favorably on being alone. Among contemporary writers, May Sarton, Anthony Storr, and Alice Roller are notable for their thoughtful consideration of being alone. Yet for every account of positive solitude, there are dozens that bemoan the problems of loneliness. If creative thinking about positive solitude were more widespread, more ideas for taking advantage of time alone would be generated and shared, and loneliness would be INTRODUCTION xxiii allayed. Eventually, people would come to expect positive outcomes from their time alone. Instead of worrying about our loneliness, we would be looking ahead to growth and change. Instead of feeling anxious about relationships, we would be concerned about things like how to improve our personal creativity and how to put more meaning into our lives. These positive issues of personal growth are the kinds of "meta-grumbles"—to use Abraham Maslow's wonderful word— that mature and healthy human beings should be experiencing. In the past decade, psychologists have taken an increased inter- est in loneliness. In 1979, the first major research conference on loneliness was held at the University of California at Los Angeles; since then, academics have worked increasingly on issues of loneli- ness. Though this book was not written primarily for researchers, I hope that by writing it, I will encourage more of them to work on positive solitude. The intellectual underpinnings of positive solitude derive from a rationalist tradition in psychology that emphasizes personal possibilities for psychological and behavioral self-manage- ment.6 These approaches have been widely accepted by both re- searchers and therapists. Recent approaches in this self-management tradition include social learning theory, rational emotive theory, rein- forcement theory, and cognitive behavior modification strategies. In this self-management tradition, the experience of being alone can be treated just like any other set of behaviors and attitudes. It is evalu- ated in terms of the satisfaction and health it brings to the individual. Self-management approaches adopt the optimistic and usually realis- tic view that a behavior that is learned is a behavior that can be changed. Since feeling lonely when alone is, as we have seen, a learned behavior, feeling content when alone is a behavior that can be adopted to replace the loneliness. Some professionals will resist the positive solitude approach. Psychologists and psychiatrists with a strong belief in Freudian psy- choanalytic theory often disagree with self-management techniques. Theorists in this tradition may argue that adopting a positive attitude toward being alone is an attempt to rationalize what they believe to be a deep-seated problem of loneliness. In fact, much of the early research on loneliness was done in the psychoanalytic tradition, which accounts for some of our American pessimism about people's xxiv INTRODUCTION ability to avoid loneliness. In contrast, I believe, and thousands of individuals who live happily alone would concur, that loneliness is neither innate nor inevitable. It is true that many people are miserable alone. Do unconscious traces of their first experience with loneliness—the separation from their mothers—still exist somewhere within them? Perhaps. Yet for most of us, these traces are vestigial, and they probably affect us only slightly more than did the gills that we once sprouted as human embryos. Research in cognitive psychology over thirty years argues strongly that conscious mental processes and behaviors can be changed permanently. Today many psychological problems, from phobias to reduced self-esteem, are being relieved with the cognitive self-management approach. Therapist-authors in this tradition include Albert Ellis and Scott Peck. Writers who work from the same theory include Dale Carnegie and Leo Buscaglia. These authors' reasoned approaches are all based on the tradition of cognitive self-manage- ment, and, adapted for their individual styles, their approaches work. The positive solitude approach works in the same way. Though posi- tive solitude cannot be achieved overnight, it definitely can, with time and practice, become a central mode of your psychological and spiri- tual life. I want to point out that the psychological approach in this book is very much a product of my education in a Western, rather than an Eastern, culture. I will later describe in detail "the feedback gap" that occurs when a person is lonely, and I will suggest that people can learn to fill this gap well and productively. This is a distinctively active and pragmatic view that is characteristic of Western approaches to psychological problems. As Margaret Mead once pointed out, "The stiff upper lip, the well-known Anglo-Saxon fortitude, requires in the case of Americans replacement of the missing."7 Over the past cen- tury, our Western, American philosophy for dealing with being alone has become ever more pragmatic. The Victorian American felt obliged to spend a long period mourning the loss of a loved one. Today "Americans on the whole disapprove of those who mope or are inconsolable over the memory of a particular place or person. It is no longer fashionable to die of love, to 'carry the torch' for a faithless love, to pine over a deserting husband, or to grieve long for INTRODUCTION XXV the dead. In modern times the best compliment that the living can pay a deceased spouse is to marry again."8 Mead pointed out that at a modern funeral it is common for people to hope that the widowed will marry again. In other words, in our modern Western culture, we not only seek to fill the feedback gap, we seek to fill it quickly. The psychology of self-management is, of course, part of this Western philosophy: Here one manages change. Thus, the approach in this book should be a workable model for most Westerners. Non- Western cultures often emphasize other modes of coping with being alone. Some Eastern cultures stress, for example, a person's fate and the transcendence of loneliness through an exploration of that fate's mystical implications. Some of these approaches will be considered here. We should realize that these other modes of dealing with being alone may be appropriate for some individuals even within our cul- ture. In fact, some of the more interesting material that I discovered on positive solitude integrates aspects of both Western and Eastern approaches. There is certainly more totbe learned about positive solitude in different cultures. The in-depth study of Eastern ap- proaches to solitude would be a fascinating exploration in its own right. Given the pervasively negative views of being alone that are held in our society, the ideas of positive solitude will undoubtedly meet some skeptics. It is all very well to say that one can be happy alone, they will argue, but what about sex? What about touching? What about finding meaning in life without family or others nearby to love? What about having people around to laugh with? Positive approaches to these and other concerns about being alone are the core of this book. I will focus here on making positive solitude immediately applicable in your daily life. Based on the practical application of common sense and on sound psychological theories, I will describe new directions for you to explore when you are alone. This book is only an introduction to being alone. It cannot fully describe the adventures and the problems, the pleasures and excite- ments, of life alone, but it shows a positive direction in which to travel. Simply, if a person is feeling lonely, this book bears the mes- sage that there is another way. Writing this book has required and encouraged my own positive xxvi INTRODUCTION solitude. At the same time, I have found great satisfaction in the relationships I have made through this work. I would like to acknowl- edge, most gratefully, the assistance of David P. Boyd, Jim Goldberg, Robert Holder, Afsaneh Nahavandi, Marianne Penney, Diane Simp- son, Marian Turner, Amy Wertheim, and several members of my family. I have also met personally many individuals who would prefer not to have their names mentioned here but who, in important con- versations, shared their experiences most graciously and openly with me. Their help has deepened the meanings to be found here. Notes 1. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). 2. Velio Sermat, "Some Situational and Personality Correlates of Loneli- ness," in Joseph Hartog, J. Ralph Audy, and Yehudi Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness (New York: International Universities Press, 1980), 305. 3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960), 96. 4. Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness and Love (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Pren- tice-Hall, 1972), 40-41. 5. Joseph Hartog, J. Ralph Audy, and Yehudi Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness (New York: International Universities Press, 1980). 6. B. F. Skinner, "What Is Wrong with Daily Life in the Western World?" American Psychologist (May 1986): 568-74. 7. Margaret Mead, "Loneliness, Autonomy and Interdependence in Cultural Context," in Hartog, Audy, and Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness, 397. 8. Ibid. xxvi INTRODUCTION solitude. At the same time, I have found great satisfaction in the relationships I have made through this work. I would like to acknowl- edge, most gratefully, the assistance of David P. Boyd, Jim Goldberg, Robert Holder, Afsaneh Nahavandi, Marianne Penney, Diane Simp- son, Marian Turner, Amy Wertheim, and several members of my family. I have also met personally many individuals who would prefer not to have their names mentioned here but who, in important con- versations, shared their experiences most graciously and openly with me. Their help has deepened the meanings to be found here. Notes 1. David Riesman, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950). 2. Velio Sermat, "Some Situational and Personality Correlates of Loneli- ness," in Joseph Hartog, J. Ralph Audy, and Yehudi Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness (New York: International Universities Press, 1980), 305. 3. Henry David Thoreau, Walden (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1960), 96. 4. Clark E. Moustakas, Loneliness and Love (Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Pren- tice-Hall, 1972), 40-41. 5. Joseph Hartog, J. Ralph Audy, and Yehudi Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness (New York: International Universities Press, 1980). 6. B. F. Skinner, "What Is Wrong with Daily Life in the Western World?" American Psychologist (May 1986): 568-74. 7. Margaret Mead, "Loneliness, Autonomy and Interdependence in Cultural Context," in Hartog, Audy, and Cohen, eds., The Anatomy of Loneliness, 397. 8. Ibid. Opening Ifour Self to Solitude We have a soul that can be turned upon itself. . . in solitude be to thyself a throng. —MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, "Of Solitude" Understanding the Feedback Gap Human beings experience the world as a cycle of expectations and events. To survive and to thrive we all need feedback from our environment. Feedback gives us a feeling of normalcy: When we get the feedback we expect, our notion of how the world works is con- firmed. Feedback also gives us the opportunity to learn: When we do not get the feedback we expect, we must figure out why. Through feedback, we are constantly learning about our environ- ment and adapting our behavior. This is not only a scientific way of viewing the world, but a commonsense view as well. Within this cycle we live our daily lives: we develop expectations about what will happen when we act, and we experience a range of emotions, from 4 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE affirmation to surprise, when our expectations are either confirmed or quashed. It is a physiological fact that if we are put into total sensory deprivation, our brains will invent the input that has been taken away from us. Deprived of sensory feedback, we will become disoriented and, within minutes, will begin to hallucinate. Likewise, human beings experience problems when our social feedback is disrupted. Social feedback from friends, family members, intimates, and even strangers plays an especially important role in our lives. Our attention to such feedback is only natural because, for thousands of years, being with others has helped human beings to survive. The feedback cycle influences us every day. A simple illustration of this influence occurred recently when I went traveling for two weeks. I left my loudly affectionate Balinese cat with a friend, and she was not returned to me until one day after I had returned. During that day, I literally missed her. When I was eating breakfast, I expected her to come yowling to me for her food; when I sat at my desk, I expected her to crawl onto my lap; when I walked into the living room, I expected to find her curled up on the couch. You might casually conclude that I was lonely for her. Yet, if one understands the feedback cycle, it could also be said that when I no longer expect her, I will not feel lonely for her. When I do not perceive a feedback gap in my life, in a real sense there won't be one. One day, my cat will actually be gone from my life. Then, even though I may remem- ber her sweet presence at times, I will not be lonely for her. Having learned to be good to myself, I will have filled the feedback gap left by her absence with something else that is meaningful. When being alone leads to the feeling of loneliness, it is usually because the lonely person is experiencing a feedback gap. Something like this might happen to you if you have recently been divorced or widowed: You arrive home at 5:30 P.M. after a day at work, just as you have arrived home many times before, except this time there is no one there. You meet darkness and silence. Later that evening, you go to bed. There used to be a warm person there, but now the sheets are cold. Or perhaps you have just moved into your first apartment alone. You sit down to eat your evening meal. Having been brought up in OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 5 a family that usually ate dinner together and having lived in dorms or apartments with friends ever since, you feel odd eating alone. Maybe you are harried after a long day's work. You are used to having someone to talk things over with. Now there is no one there to soothe you. This is the portrait of loneliness: actions that don't get reactions, gestures of love or need or hope that receive no confirmation. Whether the feedback you want from others is lost suddenly or gradually, you still expect it. Habitual pleasures have become fond expectations, and when you do not get them, you are disappointed. When we are newly alone, the feedback cycle that we are accus- tomed to has been disturbed, and we have to create a fresh program for getting the feedback we want and need. People who say they are lonely are either not getting enough feedback or are getting the wrong kind of feedback. They may erroneously believe that they can fill the feedback gap only by being with others. Or it may simply not have occurred to them that they can fill the feedback gap themselves. They may lack confidence in their ability and creativity. Whatever the reason, they create a vicious circle. Because they believe they cannot fill the feedback gap themselves, they do not try. Because they do not try, they fail, and so they fall into helpless and hopeless loneliness. Fortunately, there is an alternative. Being alone will become a positive experience when you learn to provide your own feedback, filling the feedback gap on your own initiative with satisfying emo- tional, intellectual, and physical experiences. There is a meaningful difference between filling the feedback gap in conventional, yet unsat- isfying ways and filling it with positive solitude. Through the experi- ence of positive solitude, you learn that you are not really dependent on others for your happiness. When you are not dependent, your prognosis for the likelihood of discovering happiness is good. You understand and experience personal autonomy, peace, and joy. You can banish the specter of loneliness. You can live your life creatively and fully. 6 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE Rethinking the Problem of Loneliness To understand the problem of loneliness, we must realize that life has a way of unexpectedly disrupting our feedback cycle. Few people relish such disruptions. Once our expectations and plans for the future are decided upon, we want to be able to relax, and we even tend to become complacent. Soon we begin to think we are "all set," but, actually, we are only forgetting the truth about life: that change is inevitable. Drastic disruptions in the feedback cycle take the form of deaths, divorces, and incapacitating illnesses. Other major disruptions also occur: the disruption of the relationship between a husband and a wife when a child is born, the changes that occur when lovers separate, or the changes brought on by retirement. Some of these changes can be expected, and you may be able to plan ahead to fill the feedback gap that will be left by them. When you can plan ahead, the feeling of emptiness that so often accompanies loneliness is lessened and may not even occur. Sometimes disruptions in the feedback cycle cannot be anticipated. These are especially troublesome because you will not be ready to fill the feedback gap that they cause. Often in life feedback is simply inconstant. After the intensity of a family holiday season, you may experience the January blues: The feedback in your life has become much less intense. During a week- end spent at a therapeutic retreat involving many group activities, you can easily experience a feedback high. Afterwards, it is also typical to experience a significant letdown. You return to the less feedback- rich environment that characterizes your daily life, puzzling a bit over why the high cannot be maintained, maybe even blaming yourself for losing that intensity. All people experience these variations in the feedback cycle. All of us face disruptions in our connections with the world. If we are to be well-adjusted human beings, we learn to deal with these situations. We learn how to fill the feedback gap. A basic principle of positive solitude is that it is essential to be able to fill the feedback gap by yourself. Whether a feedback gap opens gradually or suddenly, if you can fall back on yourself to fill it, you can live your life with a minimum OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 7 of disruption and emotional discomfort. In the long term, the more self-reliant and creative you can become in filling the feedback gap, the more stable you will be. When we do not know how to fill the feedback gap ourselves, we often say that we are lonely. What really is loneliness? After your tiring day at work, you come home to your dark apartment and imagine it would be much nicer if someone were there. When you eat alone and spend your evenings alone, you are often unhappy, and you say to yourself that you must be lonely. When you are physically alone—living alone, perhaps, or spending a great deal of time alone— blaming your unhappiness on the emotional disturbance, the "dis- ease," of loneliness seems to be logical. It is natural for people who are alone to focus on loneliness as a "problem" to be solved. In fact, it is not surprising that many people focus on loneliness as the major emotional problem to be solved when their lives are not going well. The newest behavioral-science research suggests that this way of thinking is actually a mistake, because interestingly enough, loneli- ness is not a true emotion. An emotion is "a set of distinct feelings that have observable and consistent physiological reactions." Psy- chologists have learned, however, that different people experience loneliness differently and that the experience of it is so inconsistent that what it is cannot be clearly identified. Anger, in contrast, is a true emotion. When people are angry, they demonstrate a consistent pattern of responses. Their blood pressure goes up, they get red in the face, they clench their muscles, and they are generally agitated. Fear is another true emotion. Its consistent pattern includes a faster heartbeat, sweating, and dilation of the pupils. Unlike anger and fear, loneliness has no consistent, unique physiological expression. It is not a discrete, identifiable emotional experience. Loneliness has been described by its sufferers as everything from feelings of emptiness and boredom to the experience of angst and desperation. Some lonely people are primarily depressed. Others are anxious. Some are angry. Others are frightened. Some individuals say that when they are lonely they experience a variety of emotions— anger and fear at some times, depression at others. What, then, is loneliness? It is not itself a problem emotion. Loneliness is a word that 8 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE people use to summarize their experience of the problem emotions they feel when they are alone. It is necessary to understand the concept of loneliness because the way we think about it is basic to our effectiveness in filling the feedback gap. People blame loneliness and being alone for a wide range of emotional and behavioral problems. What they are really doing is making loneliness the scapegoat for their various inadequa- cies in the face of filling the feedback gap. In the end, loneliness is best understood as a word that describes people's failure to fill the feedback gap by themselves. Let us think about what happens when you experience a feed- back gap in your life. You separate from a lover, or a family member dies, or you lose a pet. When a feedback gap like this opens up, you usually experience some unhappiness. For we human beings, whose survival has depended on acknowledging and mastering sudden changes in our environment, even mild change causes some emo- tional upset. This upset is productive because it forces us to adapt— to run to escape being eaten, to show submission before being forci- bly subdued. Predictably, unhappiness is especially likely when the feedback gap occurs as a result of broken relationships. Because we are social animals, such breaks in the feedback gap often cause us significant stress. We are likely to experience a broad range of nega- tive emotions, including sadness, anxiety, grief, fear, anger, helpless- ness, and depression. There is an additional change in your life when an important relationship ends. You may be able to hide your emotions from your friends and acquaintances. You may even act pretty much as before. But you cannot escape being seen alone. Your actual physical alone- ness is suddenly like a badge that you always wear—the modern version of Hester Prynne's red "A": Alone. The most visible altera- tion in your way of living, both to you and to others, is that you are now physically alone. Whereas formerly you visited friends with your spouse, now you visit them alone. Whereas you used to spend Sunday dinners with your partner, now you spend them alone. Friends once considered you part of a couple and would treat you as such; you were part of "Ted and Sally." Now guess who is coming to dinner? Friends are at first likely to say, "Just Ted" or "Just Sally." Only gradually OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 9 will they accept your aloneness and think of you as an individual, as the whole person "Ted" or "Sally." Because your physical aloneness is such an obvious outer symp- tom of the changes in your life, being alone becomes an important issue. Often when you are alone, "loneliness" is the first word that you will think of to describe your unhappiness. "Isn't it obvious?" you think. "I'm unhappy because I am alone." But think again. You may be unhappy because you have not taken responsibility for your life alone. You have not recognized the feedback gap, and you have not yet figured out how to fill your life with security and with meaning and with whatever else it is that you may treasure. In our society there are many familiar examples of this phenome- non. We have all heard about people like a woman who is so wrapped up in her children that when they go to bed at night she doesn't know what to do with herself; she claims that at night she becomes lonely. We know harried executives whose business schedules are so frag- mented and full that outside work they have little energy for them- selves or others; executives like themselves, they believe, are high- energy people who must manage time efficiently even at some emotional costs. But when they are asked about the causes of their problems, they attribute them not to fatigue or to time constraints, not to filling the feedback gap .with nonsatisfying activities, but to loneliness. "He travels fastest who travels alone," they say, but add "It is lonely at the top." Every individual who says he or she is lonely actually has a unique set of life problems and disruptive emotions to deal with. In every case in which people say they are lonely, we can see that beneath their description much more is going on emotionally. A lonely widow says: "You get disgusted when you are alone and you have to do everything yourself, especially when you are not well."1 Clearly, this woman is discouraged and tired because she is not physically well. She feels incompetent to handle "everything" because she lacks certain practical skills. Like many women of her generation, she is accustomed to having her husband handle many of the practicalities in her life. She feels helpless primarily because she is ill, but she has allowed this feeling to permeate other aspects of her life as well. She says she is lonely, but if she were to look deeper, she would see that 10 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE being alone is only a symptom of her problems—practical problems that include her illness and her deficient skills. Here is a widower who also has a unique set of problems: Once in a while, once in a while if I come home into the night and sit down, and let's say have a glass of beer and read the paper and think for about a half an hour before I go to bed, I get a little sense of despair. It's not necessary because I know that the kids are well looked after all the time and all this, but it's a lonesome feeling.2 What is this man's lonesome feeling? Does it come from being alone, or does it originate in the depressant effects of alcohol and the invariably negative evening news? It is probably true that if this man were with another person, that person would buoy his mood. The depressant effect of alcohol might become, at least for a time, a mutual conviviality, and the two might discuss the news and make light of it. But it is the alcohol and the news, not the fact that he is alone, that are the immediate causes of this man's unhappiness. He can change his mood by avoiding depressants and by reading more positive accounts or making the effort to put the negative accounts into perspective. He might even discover happier ways to fill his evenings. The point is that he can solve his own unhappiness, in solitude, by taking responsibility for it. Here a woman newly separated from her husband is described: In the bathroom closet at bedtime she comes across some of his old prescriptions, abandoned in his getaway; how long, she wonders will it be before all traces of his living in this home will be erased? In bed, she delays turning the light off; the darkness is full of nameless fears when one is alone. Finally, she does turn it off, but stays on her side of the bed, as if he were still there; the night presses upon her, the house makes mysterious noises that cause her heart to skip, and she waits for something to happen.3 This woman, too, says she is lonely. Actually, she is suffering from several emotional stresses. She has memories that make her feel sad and angry. She is afraid. She does not feel physically or emotionally OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 11 secure. What can she do? It is true that she would feel more physically secure if her husband were with her. But she could also take steps to secure her home so she would be comfortable in it by herself. Yes, the memories are painful. But is she in pain primarily because she is alone right now or because she has been abandoned and her self- esteem has suffered? Again, being alone is only the most obvious symptom, not the cause, of her suffering. The real cause is her failure to realize and use her own abilities—the ability to make her home more secure, the ability to rid it systematically and deliberately of traces of her husband, the ability to work through her hurt or anger. This woman is letting the feedback gap fill up with her helplessness. She is not taking charge of it and filling it with experiences that she wants. When you are alone, this vague concept called loneliness feels like an especially apt word to describe your emotional problems. "Isn't it clear that I am feeling lousy?" you protest. "Isn't it clear that I am alone?" Yes, both these facts can be true. What is not true is that one necessarily causes the other. In our society, loneliness is an encompassing and socially accept- able explanation for our unhappiness in times of emotional stress. We are likely to use it out of habit, without really thinking about it. It is a convenient word to explain our problems. But it is really too conve- nient. It is overused. It is a crutch^The result is that our negative associations about the idea of being alone are strengthened, and our fears about being alone increase. In addition, because the word loneli- ness does not adequately convey the range of concrete problems that underlie it, "curing" the problems is made more difficult. Relying on loneliness as the explanation for your problems can be incredibly dangerous. Because loneliness does not really exist, solving the "problem of loneliness" is truly an impossible task. Be- cause loneliness itself is not clearly identifiable, it seems and truly is unmanageable. No one can put together a puzzle that has no pieces. It is only when you realize that the word loneliness merely symbol- •zes emotions—emotions that, because they are clearly identifiable, are manageable—that the "problem of loneliness" can be solved. If, following a personal loss, such as the death or divorce of a spouse, you say to yourself that loneliness is the problem, you are 12 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE going to be handicapped in filling the feedback gap. It is likely that you will tell yourself "I am lonely" when you should say to yourself, "I am sad" and "I am afraid." When you experience a loss, it is more constructive to think, "I have to work through my grief or "I have to work on my anger" than it is to think, "I have to do something about my loneliness." For most people, loneliness cannot have one cure, but it must have many. Indeed, loneliness itself cannot be "cured" unless the various feelings that suggest it are dealt with. If your problem truly was "being alone," then loneliness cer- tainly would be frightening. Then it would be realistic for you to feel helpless and depressed because, of all the negative emotions, loneli- ness would be the only one that you could not alleviate yourself. Fear is an emotion you can conquer by learning and by courage. Anger you can work out or give up. But, by definition, if being alone is the cause of a problem, you have to be with at least one other person to solve it. You require other people's cooperation to fix your loneliness. And typically we cannot control other people. No wonder loneliness is such a depressing problem! We seldom hear people say that they fear their anger or that they fear sadness. But we often hear people say that they fear loneliness. If loneliness was a true emotion, then it would be the one aspect of our emotional lives in which we would be totally dependent on others to fulfill our needs. It would be the one emotion that was not under our psycholog- ical control. All of these issues would be significant—if our problem were really, literally, being alone. Fortunately, it is not. The problem is how you, the individual, interpret being alone. If you are alone and do not like being alone, if you find that nothing rewarding happens to you while you are alone, then you are likely to feel emotions like anxiety, anger, and depression. If, on the other hand, you accept that being alone is a state of being, not a state of deprivation, if it is merely a fact that people interpret intellectually and emotionally, then you can experience being alone with a full range of emotions, including happy and positive ones. Being alone need not lead to helplessness and hopelessness because learning how to man- age your feelings when you are alone can be turned into a realistic challenge. OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 13 Discovering Positive Ideas About Solitude Among human cultures there are wide fluctuations in the human experience of being alone. It is well known that different languages reflect the different environments in which people find themselves, that because of their landscape, the Eskimos, for instance, have doz- ens of words for white. The Eskimos also have several words for loneliness. One word signifies being "silent and withdrawn" because of the absence of other people. Another indicates "being or feeling left behind; to miss a person who has gone." Yet another, their most encompassing term, means "to be unhappy because of the absence of other people. In contrast, in the culture of the Tahitians, there is no word for loneliness in the sense of being depressed or sad because of the lack of companionship.4 The society has been so open for so long that the idea of being alone barely exists. In some cultures solitude is revered as a path toward spiritual or psychological transcendence. Throughout history, religious in- novators in these cultures, such as Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Zo- roaster, and the Buddha, have sought wilderness experiences to discover major visions. As part of a rite of passage into adulthood, tribal cultures in North and South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia have sent adolescents alone into the wilderness to seek wisdom. Individuals who undertake these rites expect to grow beyond their ordinary selves, and often they do have unique experiences. One modern version of this rite in America today is an integral part of self-development training run by the Outward Bound organization. People are deliberately stranded in a remote place, often under primi- tive conditions. They are left alone to face their own abilities, their own frailties, and their own solitude and they are expected to grow from this experience. Over the centuries, examining both the positive and negative sides of solitude has been a major theme in German philosophy. Early German writers held the view that solitude provides an opportunity 'Or reflection and for communication with God and with oneself. The Germans even have a word for positive solitude. Einsamkeit has historically meant realizing the strength of one's character by actually 14 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE choosing to spend time alone. In the 1940s social scientists who studied the experience of Einsamkeit in Germans and Americans discovered that the German people saw solitude primarily as a posi- tive phenomenon associated with words like strong and health, while Americans perceived it as negative and associated with fear. It may be a reflection of the stresses of modern times that when this study was replicated decades later, the Germans had become more like the pessimistic Americans. Today in Germany two interpretations of positive solitude still exist. One is the idea of solitude as a "splendid isolation," considered to be necessary if a person wants to discover new forms of freedom or even new forms of contact with other people. The second is the idea that through being physically isolated, one can search for new positive experiences. The connotations of solitude now also include what we would call loneliness—the feeling of an inner estrangement and alienation—and the idea of losing a loved one or other social contacts. These comparisons suggest that our personal experience of being alone is culturally conditioned in significant ways. In America even the language we speak overlooks the idea of positive solitude. Fortunately, because our attitudes toward being alone are condi- tioned, they can also be relearned. We can come to the realization that the main problem that most people have when alone is not being alone per se, but how they have learned to react to the changes that have taken place in their lives. When you understand positive solitude, you are not really depen- dent on others for your happiness. And when you are not dependent, your likelihood of discovering happiness is good. Remember that the human feedback in our lives is not always positive. In modern societies, although it is unfashionable to say so, people complicate our lives. Co-workers, strangers on the street, and even family members are as likely to increase the stress in our lives as to allay it. People put demands on us daily and often compete with us for scarce resources. Even when people love us and we love thei they sometimes annoy and obstruct us. Fortunately, the same society that brings us loneliness and ex cessive togetherness also brings us the affluence that makes sepa- rateness possible. When we are no longer dependent on others fo OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 15 our survival or for positive feedback, we can choose to fill the feed- back gap ourselves, providing ourselves with the experience of inde- pendence, centering, and love. Freed from the belief that you need others, you can devote your energies to finding happiness and con- tentment within yourself. You can banish the specter of loneliness. A growing number of writers, therapists, and researchers agree with this line of reasoning. They believe that if our society can be less negative about being alone and if individuals can think about being alone in the way I have described, then being alone can be a good experience, even a joyful exploration. They believe that for many who now suffer only loneliness, positive solitude is a viable alternative. One such voice is psychotherapist Peter Suedfeld: [There] are positive experiences to be savored in solitude. They are both beneficial and pleasant; and although they may not be "healing" in the strict sense—since there is no illness to be healed—they cer- tainly are so in the wider sense. Aloneness in this context fills a need, removes a lack, impels growth. There seems to be no loneliness; rather the individual feels a freedom from distraction, from the usual restric- tions imposed by social norms and the need to maintain face, and the benefits of reducing external stimulation to the point where the still, small internal voices can be heard.5 Many existentialist psychologists also emphasize positive soli- tude. They believe that being alone is a central fact of existence and that accepting it is important to human development. Existentialist therapist Rollo May captured the essence of the philosophy when he wrote: We all stand on the edge of life, each moment comprising that edge. Before us is only possibility. This means the future is open Despair, yes. But it is the beginning of human consciousness and all of the joys that opens to us.6 Another prominent existentialist who has studied aloneness is the therapist Clark E. Moustakas. Moustakas makes the useful distinction between "loneliness anxiety" and "true loneliness." Loneliness anxi- 16 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE ety—what I have called loneliness here—distracts you from your mission in life and leads you to seek too much contact with others. True loneliness—what I call simply being alone—involves the reality of facing your life experiences alone. In Individuality and Encounter, Moustakas related his personal experience of true loneliness when he had to decide whether to give his consent for his daughter's major heart surgery. The surgery would either restore his daughter to health or result in her death. In the urgency and gravity of the situation, Moustakas felt alone: I tried to draw from deep down within myself a single answer— While no answer came to the problem of surgery, I became aware that at the center of my world was a deep and pervasive feeling of loneliness. With this feeling came the tentative realization that loneliness is a capacity or source in man for new searching, awareness, and inspiration—that when the outside world ceases to have meaning, when support and confirmation are lacking or are not adequate to assuage human suffer- ing, when doubt and uncertainty overwhelm a person, then the individ- ual may contemplate life from the depths of his own self and in nature. For me, this was a discovery that in a crucial and compelling crisis, in spite of comfort and sympathy from others, one can feel utterly and completely alone, that at bottom, the experience of loneliness [alone- ness] exists in its own right as a source of power and creativity, as a source of insight and direction, as a requirement of living no matter how much love and affirmation one receives in his work and in his relationships with others.7 Among those who believe that being alone can be a positive experience, a common theme is that a person alone must be able to provide his or her own feedback. If you live alone in environments that reinforce your fear, tension, and anger, you will be unhappy; if you live alone in environments that reinforce relaxation, creativity, and happiness, you will be content. Suedfeld calls filling the feedback gap finding your "internal voice." Aloneness, he says, fills a "need"; alone, you remove a deficiency by choosing the feedback that encour- ages growth. Moustakas points out that the outside world may cease to provide meaning, support, and confirmation—that is, it may fail to provide adequate feedback. When it does, he discovered, the "depth OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 17 of the self may provide the individual with necessary feedbacks in powerful and creative ways. The small internal voice, the encounter with the depths of your self, and the pleasure of feeling calm and creative—all these expressions have in common the idea of accepting the responsibility of giving positive, consistent feedback to yourself and rejecting the feedback offered by an uncaring and random world. To say "I'd rather be alone" becomes not a defense, but an honorable choice. Practicing Positive Solitude: A Case Example We can fill the feedback gap in conventional, unsatisfying ways or we can fill it with positive solitude. These ideas can be seen in everyday terms in the case of Ron Johnson, a single man in his thirties. Ron split up with his wife two years ago after eight years of marriage. Ron says he feels lonely "a fair amount of the time." He has asked a couple of dozen women out since his divorce, but nothing seems to click. Nothing "feels as right" as his marriage did. He and his wife used to be a popular couple in a set of couples with whom he seldom associates now. "Couples drop you. They mostly want to be with other couples," he explains. "I have a few good male friends; we play tennis and go to ball games—that sort of thing. But my social life isn't what it used to be." He smiles derisively. "I'm certainly not the stereotype of the carefree bachelor; I spend a lot of time alone and I watch a lot of TV, sports mostly. Sure, I'm lonely sometimes." Why is Ron lonely? He is lonely because he has not filled the feedback gap left by his divorce. He "spends time" doing things, of course, but, sadly, he is truly "spending" time rather than enjoying it. He still longs for the rich feedback environment he had when he was married. For example, he mentions the highly satisfactory inter- personal relationships he and his wife had with several other couples. We may also guess that he and his wife had at least some mutual interests. Probably his sexual interests were at least somewhat ful- filled during his marriage. Now most of these ready rewards are no longer available: no lively set of heterosexual relationships, no full- time companionship, no regular sex life. Instead, Ron has his buddies and his sports, his random dates, his television. Clearly, he under- 18 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE stands that these activities and relationships are not enough for him, but he doesn't know what to do about it. For example, he wants a relationship with a woman, but he discounts the women he meets and does not work to develop deeper relationships with them. Ron is also dissatisfied, maybe even insecure, because he does not live up to his ideal of the "carefree bachelor." We can see that Ron is talking himself into his loneliness. For one thing, he is looking back unrealistically. Like most of us, he remembers the good times instead of the whole picture. Idealizing past relationships, such as the family life we experienced in our childhood, is normal. In a similar way, Ron is remembering only the best in his feedback-rich marriage—forgetting that the best of a long-term, well-developed relationship is a tough standard to use in judging a casual date. For another thing, Ron is unproductively comparing his life with that of others. He has chosen to compare his life with a media stereo- type of the swinging single male. He might have compared himself equally as unproductively with his happily married older brother or with the men in the couples that he used to socialize with. Most likely, he would see them as being better off than he is. We all have this tendency to evaluate our lives in contrast with others' instead of concentrating on the positive that we have in our own situation and instead of spending our energies filling the feedback gap. What might Ron's situation feel like if he had filled the feedback gap effectively? Well, we should not assume that Ron would be dating a dozen different women or that he is about to be married again. Both these "solutions" would be unrealistic and, perhaps, unwise. If Ron was making a healthy adjustment, he would put it this way: Since my divorce I have dated a lot of women. A few of these relation- ships I have pursued, really getting to know the women well and making friends. Some of these relationships have been sexual, and some have not. I have a couple of good male friends that I buddy around with. I am still close to one of the couples that I used to see when I was married. I make it a point to play doubles with them once in a while. I also spend a lot of time alone. I do the usual things like watch OPENING YOUR SELF TO SOLITUDE 19 TV and read and jog. But I've also really gotten into my darkroom lately, and I've joined the local camera club. I'm thinking of doing some professional photography on the side. It's not the same as when I was with my wife. My interests have changed, but I do have more time, and I have time now for the kinds of things that require intense personal involvement. I'm not the independent bachelor type—the kind that is out every night with a different woman or at a different function. That's just not me. Actually I enjoy staying home much of the time. Now Ron is not looking back. He recognizes that his life has changed. He is pursuing new interests and new people—both in depth. In one way, he is doing just what the advice-to-the-lovelorn columnist might tell him to do—he has joined a club that he is really interested in, and although meeting people is not his reason for joining, the club may, ironically, be a good place to do so. Ron may or may not meet Ms. Right at the camera club, but the important thing is that it doesn't matter. Ron is realizing who he is, what he likes, where he is going. He is putting meaningful feedback back into his life, both from relationships and from his time alone. He has filled the feedback gap productively. When he waxes philosophical about it, he recognizes that his new interests and attitudes are a natural part of changing, of living. He knows that he will continue to change. Sure, his married brother is happy, he says, but so, in his different lifestyle, is he. When you experience a feedback gap, the word loneliness itself 's a trap. When you feel what you are tempted to call loneliness, you are probably describing a period in which you are experiencing a variety of different uncomfortable emotions. How you fill the feed- back gap determines the emotions you will feel and whether you will conquer your unhappiness. The responsibility for doing so is yours alone. The reward for doing it is to know the positive solitude expen- se of self-confidence, joy, and independence. 20 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE Notes 1. Quoted in Helena Znaniecki Lopata, "Loneliness: Forms and Comp nents," in Robert S. Weiss, ed., Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Social Isolation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975), 106. 2. Robert S. Weiss, ed., Loneliness: The Experience of Emotional and Socia Isolation (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975), 106. 3. Morton M. Hunt, "Alone, Alone, All, All Alone," in Weiss, Loneliness, 126. 4. Letitia Anne Peplau, Maria Miceli, and Bruce Morasch, "Loneliness and Self-evaluation," in Letitia Anne Peplau and Daniel Perlman, eds., Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory, Research and Therapy (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1982), 136-37. 5. Peter Suedfeld, "Aloneness as a Healing Experience," in Peplau and Perlman, eds., Loneliness: A Sourcebook of Current Theory, Research and Ther- apy, 61. 6. Rollo May, Freedom and Destiny (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1981), 242. 7. Clark E. Moustakas, Individuality and Encounter (Cambridge, Mass.: Howard A. Doyle Publishing Co., 1968), 104-5. 2 Avoiding the Loneliness Traps One is one's own refuge. Who else could be the refuge? —THE BUDDHA Changing your life from unhappy loneliness to contented and creative solitude may be one of the most challenging things you can accomplish. Positive solitude is a new way of thinking and being. Everywhere you go, you will be influenced and even pressured to seek togetherness and to avoid being alone. Friends will tell you that you are just into a phase. Psychoanalysts may suggest that you are masochistically repressing your need for affiliation. How will you sort out all these ideas? Even though you may personally decide that you can be happy alone, your explorations toward positive solitude will simply not be reinforced by the people around you. It will be rather like trying to diet in a family that lives for ice cream. There are no popular songs about how great it is to spend the night alone. There are no models of positive solitude on family television. It would be a kinky nightclub 22 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE indeed that would invite you in to teach you the pleasures of being alone. Sometimes the pressure on you will occur because people have other agendas in mind. All kinds of singles groups survive by pushing people's loneliness buttons. Dating services make millions of dollars annually. At times the pressure on you will result merely from peo-1 pie's ignorance and habit. Solitude simply does not have a place of I honor in our society. What you will encounter on a daily basis are the old attitudes that lead people who are alone to feel lonely, the pres- \ sures that will encourage you to seek to be part of a couple or part J of a group. These aspects of American culture that encourage loneliness instead of healthful solitude are the loneliness traps. A loneliness trap is any common influence that reinforces unhappy loneliness instead of positive solitude. These influences are "traps" because you come I across them unexpectedly and fall into them accidentally. When you f experience a feedback gap in your life, the traps open up all around you. Often the traps are the quick-fix solutions that are most readily available. They are the easy ways and, often, the socially acceptable I ways to fill the feedback gap. The trouble with them is that over the long term, they discourage your acquisition of the important skills of positive solitude: learning to decrease problem emotions when you are alone and learning to like being alone. Some of the most important loneliness traps are our unexamined I beliefs about being alone. During our lives, each of us has developed many personal beliefs about being alone. We based our earliest thoughts on the attitudes of our worried parents: "Are you sure you I will be all right alone?" "I can't leave you all alone!" As teenagers, we saw our peers ostracized if they spent a lot of time alone. We thought they were weird, loners. Probably, you have not examined these beliefs closely. Often they are so widely repeated in our culture that they seem to be common sense. Upon inspection, it becomes clear that although these beliefs are, indeed, common, they are not particularly practical or sensible. AVOIDING THE LONELINESS TRAPS 23 fhe "Inevitability" of Loneliness Loneliness Trap 1 is the erroneous belief that "when I am alone it is inevitable that I will have some periods of loneliness." Examine the cause-effect relationship implied in this statement. "It is inevitable that I will have some periods of loneliness" suggests that being alone causes bad feelings. Yet being alone is a characteristic not so different from other characteristics—like being especially tall or having a par- ticular income or living in a certain community. Of course, any charac- teristic can "cause" us to feel good or bad if we let it. It is not so much the characteristic itself as the interpretation that you put on it that counts. Being alone does not itself cause periods of loneliness (such as bad feelings), any more than being tall causes a person to feel depressed. It is your interpretation and your habitual feeling patterns that cause the bad feelings when you are alone. If you expect being alone to cause sadness, it is likely to do so. It is almost true that when you are alone, you will have "some periods" of loneliness. More precisely, it is true that when you are alone, you will have some times of unhappiness. All of us have unhap- piness in our lives, and these bad times will occur when we are alone, as well as when we are with others. These periods may actually occur more often when you are alone if for no other reason than because when you are with others your mind tends to be preoccupied. When you are alone, there are fewer stimuli competing with your feelings and ideas for your attention, and previously suppressed feelings and ideas are more likely to surface. This situation is actually good be- cause you are in touch with who you are. But bad feelings are inevita- ble throughout life, not only when you are alone. Often being alone is not itself the cause of such feelings; it is merely the opportunity for them. If you are more unhappy when you are alone, you should carefully examine potential causes other than the mere fact that you are alone. To anticipate being lonely is indeed frightening. It is less fright- ening to anticipate depression or anxiety because these are discrete, 'dentifiable emotions that are known to be curable. Problems like depression and anxiety have been studied extensively, and, unlike loneliness, therapists and clients have developed highly successful 24 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE therapeutic and personal strategies for dealing with them. In fact, most of the usual problems associated with loneliness have been extensively studied and successfully treated. Helplessness, feelings of low self-esteem, and lack of social skills are all related problems that individuals and therapists have worked with successfully for decades. If you persist in the belief that loneliness is your problem, you will not be able to take advantage of the psychological knowledge that exists and you will experience considerable unnecessary anxiety about your ability to change. When you are alone, it is not inevitable that you will have periods of loneliness. Realizing the true emotions behind the word loneliness is essential if you are to fill the feedback gap successfully. Identifying these emotional issues will help you reduce the impact of this erro- neous belief. "Meeting People" as an Answer Loneliness Trap 2 is the erroneous belief that when you are feeling lonely, you should try to meet more people. This belief is often what drives people to singles bars, and perhaps it has already driven you there. It is the foundation of the singles industry. It is the advice a newly alone person gets most often. Again, the seduction of this belief, as with all beliefs, is that there is some truth in it. It is true that meeting people will temporarily occupy your mind. Being active in any way is superficially effective simply because it does not allow time for your feelings to surface. The challenge and the risks of socializing, especially with new people and with those of the opposite sex, can be just as preoccupying as, say, writing a complicated computer program. There is some satisfaction in having gone to a singles bar and survived. Meeting others may take your mind off your persistent emotional problems. It provides some temporary rest and relief from these feelings. Meeting others may also give you the opportunity to see how people like you are dealing with similar problems and may provide you with opportunities to enhance your self-esteem. In these ways, being with others temporarily relieves loneliness, yet it does not solve the emotional problems that still exist. Unless AVOIDING THE LONELINESS TRAPS 25 it is done in a context of working directly on these problems, meeting people is unlikely to alleviate the feelings underlying your loneliness. If your meeting with others is handled unskillfully or if you are unlucky enough to meet the wrong people, encounters can actually increase your feelings of loneliness. When you are unsuccessful in your socializing, meeting others will reduce your self-esteem. Spend- ing a lot of time with people can foster your unhealthy dependence on them. It can fill your time without being satisfying. So meeting people as a solution to loneliness is likely to be a mixed blessing. The most effective prescription for the alleviation of depression, anxiety, lack of self-esteem, or any of the other underly- ing emotions of loneliness is not the wholesale administration of the togetherness drug, but, rather, addressing these problems directly and separately. It is only our widespread cultural insistence that togetherness is a cure for loneliness that permits this erroneous belief to go unexamined. Do People Need People? Loneliness Trap 3 is the related belief that "people need peo- ple." As the popular song lyrics say, "People who need people are the luckiest people in the world." This belief is wrong both logically and scientifically. Logically, of course, people who don't need people may be the luckiest. If you can be happy and self-sufficient alone, who can quarrel with your success? Independence is a worthwhile goal that many people strive for. What could be more logical than to be independently in control of your own happiness? Social scientists have actually found little evidence to prove that People need people. Only a few psychologists believe that loneliness ls a basic motivater, that once people have satisfied their more obvi- ous physiological and biological drives and have secured and are comfortable with the necessities of air, water, and food, they then strive to alleviate loneliness. But there are few data to support their yiew, and most modern social science research downplays the impor- tance of the need for others. Adults do have some basic needs that must be met before higher needs become of real importance to them. 26 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE These are the needs for security, safety, food, and shelter. The higher needs are thought to include, among many others, the need to achieve, the need to have control over one's life, and the need to be with other people. So being with others is certainly not a basic need. And among the higher needs, no one particular need is more impor- tant than any other. There is no reason to suppose that in your life the "need for affiliation" will dominate your other needs. Modern research has even led to a rethinking of the term need itself. What social scientists used to call the "need" for affiliation is now called merely "the motivation to affiliation." Many psychologists eschew the theory of psychological needs. While physiological needs can be demonstrated, it is not clear that psychologically we really need any particular satisfactions. Some of us may "like people." Some may like to be by themselves. And some people may like people on some occasions. But contrary to popular belief, the evidence is that, psychologically at least, people do not absolutely need each other. Pitfalls in American Popular Culture Loneliness Trap 4 is found every day in American popular cul- ture, which influences our attitudes through music, television, and print and other media. The attitudes of other people who are affected by this culture, in turn, affect us. Because we take it for granted and do not examine its effects, the popular culture influences us pro-j foundly. It holds many pitfalls for the person who is alone. If you are alone, indiscriminate retreat into entertainment can be) detrimental to your well-being. Popular entertainment is especially dangerous if you are newly alone. Entertainment is made so conve- nient that it may appeal especially to the person who has been re- cently hurt by a close relationship. Instead of marriage on the re- bound, you do media on the rebound. Your sense of personal initiative may have temporarily waned. Your physical energy level is likely to be low. Under these circumstances, it is easy to flip on the television or the radio to fill time. It is true that under such trying circumstances, some sort emotional retreat to safer territory makes sense. But for reasons will describe, popular entertainment does not represent safer em" AVOIDING THE LONELINESS TRAPS 27 tional territory. If your retreat consists primarily of exposure to the mindless aspects of popular culture, increased loneliness, in the forms of boredom, sadness, and a sense of emptiness, will be the result. Like suddenly taking on a new lover, taking on the media can be risky. Music is a significant part of this loneliness trap. Listening to music is one of the most popular strategies mentioned by people who are trying to cope with their loneliness. There are no data to indicate whether this strategy is actually successful. However, common sense tells us that often it is not. First, you are often tempted to choose music that suits your mood—quiet, even melancholic music when you are sad or depressed or fast-paced and lively music when your mood is up. The music you chose reinforces your mood, of course, and if you are depressed this choice is clearly counterproductive. If you are alone and sad, you should probably decide to listen to mood-changing, rather than mood-reinforcing, music, opting for the up-beat rock rather than the moody ballad. Unfortunately, our popular culture dictates that we cannot always choose the most appropriate music. When you turn on the radio, you put yourself at the mercy of the popular mood, the mood of the disc jockey and, especially, of the lyricists. In our culture songs about love and loneliness are ubiqui- tous. Love is idealized as the way to happiness, and loneliness is portrayed as the opposite of love. Songs that extoll the virtues of positive solitude (the words do not exactly lend themselves to musi- cal rendition!) are rare. When you are looking for such reinforcing music, you will be lucky if you hear songs like the eighties hits "I Am What I Am" and "Walking On Sunshine." You will not hear these upbeat, uplifting tunes on the airwaves on a regular basis. Instead, you are likely to find a lot of mournful and angry lyrics on love and loneliness. Every recent generation has had its musical renditions of the 'ove-and-loneliness theme. The forties had Irving Berlin's "You're Lonely and I'm Lonely" and Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" (which was revived in the sixties.) The fifties gave us 'Lonely Street" and Paul Anka's "Lonely Boy." In the sixties there were "Mister Lonely" (by Gene Allan and Bobby Vinton), "Only the Lonely" (by Roy Orbison and Joe Melson), and "Sergeant Pepper's 28 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE Lonely Hearts Club Band" (by John Lennon and Paul McCartney). The seventies brought "Alone Again (Naturally)" (by Gilbert O'Sul- livan), "Lonely Night" (by Neil Sedaka), and "Lonely People" (by Dan Peek). In the eighties we heard Bill Oshan's "Love Zone", in which we were advised that we never have to be strangers "out there alone." Newly separated individuals, especially, should avoid listening to these kinds of lyrics. They only echo and reinforce the sadness of lost love. Song lyrics seldom evoke the positive feelings of freedom, power, and creativity that can be experienced alone. A major theme in popular music—the advice that finding a new love is the best answer for one's unhappiness—is itself a loneliness trap. At the center of the popular culture is the great seducer, televi- sion. The average household watches television more than forty-five hours a week, during which time you will see just about everything except positive solitude. Television naturally emphasizes exciting sights and sounds—action, dialogue, interesting facial expressions, and interpersonal conflict. It seldom delves into the meanings and thoughts behind the images. It emphasizes action over substance. Yet relating to the substance of life—to our personal philosophy, emo- tions, and intellect—is essential to positive solitude. On television we seldom see a character alone—walking alone along a hillside, for example, or contemplating life alone with a pleasant cup of tea. Since visible acts, not thoughts, are its medium, television is hampered in its examination of character. Yet it is thoughts—one's own impressions, sensations, analyses, and meanings—that the per- son alone lives with the most. You will not learn how to manage your ideas better from watching television, and, in fact, you are likely to find that television has distracted you from doing so. Television dramatizes human interaction, not human contemplation. Casually flipping on the "tube" propels you into a relationship fantasyland. In police dramas you see the police sharing the action on their beat, not one cop's lonely struggle to make sense of the crass world around him. In the soap operas you may encounter a moment of silence, often at the end of a scene, when the camera focuses on an individual's momentary expression of puzzlement or anger, but AVOIDING THE LONELINESS TRAPS 29 that is the full extent of the character study. In the rest of the show, you will view little intimacy—and a lot of togetherness. Of all possible relationships, television emphasizes families. Worse yet, in spite of some recent innovations, it often portrays the traditional family. Even nonfamily shows create fictional family groups that give enormously unrealistic amounts of personal support and empathy to their members. "Hill Street Blues," "MAS*H," and "Cheers" are recent popular examples that create incredibly feed- back-rich interpersonal environments. These fairy tales, pleasant as they are, play to the American dream of community and family. People who are alone are excluded from the fantasyland. Usu- ally, they are not even portrayed. It is as though they do not exist. The erroneous belief that being alone is basically unhealthy and un- worthy is supported by such programs. If you are alone, television programs certainly will not strengthen your belief in positive solitude, and they may actually weaken your positive self-image. In addition to its deemphasis on meaning and its lauding of togetherness, television is a loneliness trap in yet another way. Many of us believe that television relaxes us, but this is again one of those seductive partial truths. Relative to other activities you might choose, watching television is actually stimulating. It is, in fact, designed to be stimulating. Its fast-paced programming is created to keep you awake and focused for the next high-energy commercial. Viewers are constantly stimulated with engaging sounds and visuals, with sex and violence. Watching television may be more relaxing than driving in rush hour, but that is about the extent of its charms. If you are alone, do not think of television as a relaxant. It is much more relaxing to read a newspaper at your own pace. It is much more relaxing to take a walk. The ability to find peace is a prime benefit of being alone. Television does not bring you peace, and it may leave you with a high level of stimulation—stimulation that goes unresolved. Most television is a distraction, rather than a fulfillment. Ultimately, it will leave you with a feeling of anxiety and a sense of emptiness. Escaping this loneliness trap means at least flipping the dial. You cannot expect to find television programs that model positive soli- tude, but neither do you have to subject yourself to the fantasies of 30 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE togetherness and the commercial stimulation. It may be best to watch other types of programs, such as nature and news programs. Indeed, it may be that some of the recent popularity of these types of pro- grams can be attributed to the fact that today there are more people who are alone to watch them. Intuitively, many people who are alone may have figured out how to choose programs that are more nurtur- ing of their emotional and intellectual well-being. Finally, you should be careful about filling the feedback gap with certain types of popular reading material. If you are newly alone, you should be sensitive to the fact that what you happen to pick up may significantly affect your mood. As I mentioned earlier, many of the academic and self-help books on the subject of aloneness inadver- tently contribute to this loneliness trap. Having taken the view that loneliness is a problem to be solved, they seldom come up with holistic, realistic solutions. Some of the more entertaining types of reading will also be unhelpful now. The romance novel that you found entertaining before may be discouraging. Love poetry will not be uplifting. Search instead for reading that will enhance your interests, your ideas, and your self-actualization alone. Seductive Groups Loneliness Trap 5 is falling into feedback-rich environments that fill the feedback gap quickly and fully, but that do not foster self- understanding and self-sufficiency over the long term. The classic example of this trap is the seductive religious cult that makes people feel totally accepted. Such groups work to fill the feedback gap per- fectly and fully. They have even been known to enlarge a person's feedback gap deliberately—initially to deprive a person, for example, of adequate nutrition—so they may then fill the feedback gap even more completely with both physical and spiritual "nurturing." This practice puts people under their control, instead of enhancing peo- ple's self-control. Some popular "support" groups are similarly seductive to peo- ple in need of feedback. Such feedback-false environments are usually group activities that are organized by nonprofessionals as self-help groups. Some years ago, I attended a session of a widely known AVOIDING THE LONELINESS TRAPS 31 personal growth seminar. As I walked into the room of several hun- dred people, I was greeted warmly by name by several exceptionally attractive "helpers" who had never met me. When I sat down, the people on either side of me greeted me and went out of their way to get to know me. Wow! I thought. This beats your typical cold confer- ence. Throughout the evening, we were given exercises that encour- aged us to reveal our personal lives and to give others strokes for revealing theirs. People got up in front of the group and gave moving testimonials of how this network of supportive folks had helped them through an illness or to get a better job or to meet a mate. At first introduction, such "families" seem even better than do real families because their members are either trained or socialized to pay intense attention to each other. But the helpers are indeed trained, the participants are indeed socialized, and outside these groups you will rarely find people who act the same way. The atten- tion feels wonderful, but it is short-lived. The friendship networks are not self-sustaining away from the group meetings. People are not encouraged to focus on building networks, let alone psychological self-sufficiency, outside the group—and, of course, to come to the group costs money, often hundreds of dollars per event. The trainers are becoming rich, the participants high but dependent. Unfortunately, all too often these new groups of "friends" are emotionally and financially exploiting. These so-called self-improve- ment groups succeed because they fill their clients' feedback gaps. Whatever the actual content of a group's program, the feedback plan 's the same. Intimacy is fostered through exercises done in small groups. The types of questions that are asked encourage people to °Pen up to one another, right away, as they never would on their own, f°r example, on a first or second date. A norm is established that allows strangers to talk freely with each other. You feel more wel- come in this kind of group than in more natural settings. You get Positive feedback right away that you are okay or creative or smart. uften friendship networks are encouraged outside the formal ses- Sl°ns to keep the feedback gap filled until the next meeting. But the Redback gap is filled only by the meetings and by the networks associated with them. When you stop attending—when you stop 32 EXPLORING POSITIVE SOLITUDE paying or working to attend—the feedback stops. You walk awa mystified and disappointed. You have spent a lot of money and hav learned little about how to fill the feedback gap in real life. Group therapy, when done poorly, is another example of this type of trap. In bad therapy a client's chronic dependence is rein forced, rather than changed, by the therapist. Typically, a therapis provides a nurturing, supportive atmosphere for any client who is no able to find such emotional satisfactions in the outside world. Grou therapy can be especially powerful. Since the client's feedback gap i filled, he or she feels better. A reputable therapist will use thi~ supportive climate to help the client become emotionally secure an independent of the therapy. Yet when the therapist does not promot the clients' independence, often the clients do not understand tha they are not getting what they are paying for. They do not realize, especially early on, that they need change instead of contentment, that this change is often uncomfortable, and that it is the therapist' responsibility to foster this change. Unfortunately, clients sometime stay in therapy for years under these conditions. Feedback-rich environments attract people who are alone and lonely, especially among the young. In these groups, large amounts of personal attention are given freely. Mutual goals and shared mean- ings bind people together. Sometimes life in a group is structured around communal activities. If the lives of young people w	542,906
Psychology of loneliness (Bevinn, Sarah J.) (Z-Library).pdf	PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS PSYCHOLOGY OF LONELINESS No part of this digital document may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means. The publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this digital document, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained herein. This digital document is sold with the clear understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, medical or any other professional services. PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS Additional books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the Series tab. Additional E-books in this series can be found on Nova‘s website under the E-books tab. PSYCHOLOGY OF EMOTIONS, MOTIVATIONS AND ACTIONS PSYCHOLOGY OF LONELINESS SARAH J. BEVINN EDITOR Nova Science Publishers, Inc. New York Copyright © 2011 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means: electronic, electrostatic, magnetic, tape, mechanical photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the Publisher. For permission to use material from this book please contact us: Telephone 631-231-7269; Fax 631-231-8175 Web Site: http://www.novapublishers.com NOTICE TO THE READER The Publisher has taken reasonable care in the preparation of this book, but makes no expressed or implied warranty of any kind and assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for incidental or consequential damages in connection with or arising out of information contained in this book. The Publisher shall not be liable for any special, consequential, or exemplary damages resulting, in whole or in part, from the readers‘ use of, or reliance upon, this material. Any parts of this book based on government reports are so indicated and copyright is claimed for those parts to the extent applicable to compilations of such works. Independent verification should be sought for any data, advice or recommendations contained in this book. In addition, no responsibility is assumed by the publisher for any injury and/or damage to persons or property arising from any methods, products, instructions, ideas or otherwise contained in this publication. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information with regard to the subject matter covered herein. It is sold with the clear understanding that the Publisher is not engaged in rendering legal or any other professional services. If legal or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent person should be sought. FROM A DECLARATION OF PARTICIPANTS JOINTLY ADOPTED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION AND A COMMITTEE OF PUBLISHERS. Additional color graphics may be available in the e-book version of this book. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Psychology of loneliness / editor, Sarah J. Bevinn. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-61761-499-6 (eBook) 1. Loneliness. 2. Interpersonal relations. I. Bevinn, Sarah J. BF575.L7P79 2010 155.9'2--dc22 2010031327 Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.  New York CONTENTS Preface vii Chapter 1 Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood: Consequences for Psychosocial Adjustment, School Adjustment, and Academic Performance 1 Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell Chapter 2 Ageing and Psychological Well-Being 29 Juan Carlos Meléndez-Moral Chapter 3 Loneliness in Sexual Offenders 49 Emily Blake and Theresa A. Gannon Chapter 4 Loneliness and Life: From Beginning to End 69 Ami Rokach Chapter 5 The Experience of Loneliness while Studying Abroad 89 Holly A. Hunley Chapter 6 Denying the Need to Belong: How Social Exclusion Impairs Human Functioning and How People Can Protect against It 107 Richard S. Pond, Jr., Joseph Brey and C. Nathan DeWall Contents vi Chapter 7 Sexual Alienation: A Review of Factors Influencing the Loneliness of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Adolescents 123 Bradley J. Bond Chapter 8 Being Lonely in a Crowd: Population Density Contributes to Perceived Loneliness in China 137 Zhenzhu Yue, Cong Feng, Xinyue Zhou and Ding-Guo Gao Index 151 PREFACE Feelings of loneliness are central to the human experience. Therefore, because loneliness is an inherent human condition, operating on a cognitive and affective level, most individuals experience loneliness at some time across the life-span. Loneliness is a unique and multidimensional phenomenon that represents the extent to which an individual's perceived social network is either smaller or less satisfying than they desire. This book presents current research in the study of loneliness including such topics as loneliness in childhood and consequences for psychosocial adjustment and academic performance; the elderly and loneliness; loneliness in sexual offenders; the influence of age and gender on the experience of loneliness; the loneliness of undergraduate students studying abroad; gay,lesbian and bisexual adolescents and loneliness; and population density and loneliness. Chapter 1- Feelings of loneliness are central to the human experience, with most individuals encountering loneliness at some time (Weiss, 1974). The chapter will begin by providing a brief overview of the topic of loneliness and experiences of loneliness in adults to provide a context for children‘s loneliness. Next, we will discuss loneliness in childhood because experiencing loneliness during childhood has been identified as an antecedent of loneliness in adulthood (Cacioppo, Hawkley, & Berntson, 2003). Although some short- and long-term consequences of childhood loneliness have been explored, the present chapter aims to review the research evidence outlining the consequences of childhood loneliness for psychosocial adjustment. Specifically, given the importance of positive peer relationships during childhood for psychosocial adjustment, school adjustment, and academic performance (Wentzel, 1999), the chapter will discuss the research evidence that experiencing loneliness can have negative consequences for children in Sarah J. Bevinn viii the context of the school environment. In particular, the chapter will explore children‘s experiences of loneliness with regard to peer relationships, school adjustment, and academic performance. The chapter will then move on to discuss potential explanations of loneliness during childhood, focusing on how children‘s interpretations of social situations may influence their loneliness in school. Consequently, the chapter will make links between children‘s ability to interpret social situations, attribution styles, and loneliness. In support of this argument, the chapter will present the findings from a small-scale cross-sectional study with 135 children (66 male and 69 female) aged between 11- and 15-years old (M = 12.62, SD = 1.04) from the UK. Children completed measures of social and emotional experiences of loneliness and reported their attribution style in response to positive and negative social outcomes. The results indicate that adopting a more negative attribution style in both positive and negative circumstances was predictive of higher levels of loneliness. These results add further support to the argument that children‘s ability to interpret social situations influences their psychosocial adjustment assessed as loneliness. Chapter 2- Demographic changes in the last century have produced longer life expectancy, and therefore there is a greater proportion of elderly in the population. As a consequence of this, there has been a growing interest in the research with elderly people, especially in terms of their well-being. There is research evidence that well-being in the elderly may be understood as a two components construct: subjective well-being, that remains relatively stable during life span; and psychological well-being, that negatively changes with age, especially its dimensions of personal growth and purpose in life. Chapter 3- A great number of researchers and clinicians have observed that sexual offenders often appear to be socially isolated, experiencing few close intimate relationships and greater feelings of loneliness compared to other offenders and community controls (Bumby & Hansen, 1997; Garlick, 1991; Saunders, Awad & White, 1986; Marshall, Hudson & Robertson, 1994). These findings are consistent with the more general research on loneliness that suggests that lonelier people are more likely to have poor social skills, have difficulty in forming relationships, and hold negative or hostile opinions of other people. These findings have also prompted researchers to investigate whether the loneliness experienced by sex offenders is related to the development of sexual offending behaviour. Particular questions of importance relate to whether the loneliness experienced by sex offenders is caused by social skill deficits, which in turn contribute to sexual offending, or whether it is the direct experience of loneliness itself, in the absence of social Preface ix skills deficits that facilitates sexual offending? Conversely could the sexual offending behaviour or subsequent incarceration for such acts be the cause of sexual offenders‘ loneliness? This chapter aims to answer these questions by describing what researchers have learnt about the loneliness of sex offenders, and what impact loneliness has on offending behaviour. First we define loneliness using information available from general psychology, then we discuss the research evidence for loneliness in sexual offenders and the theories that attempt to explain the link between loneliness and sexual offending. Chapter 4- Loneliness is a prevailing experience, which every person has experienced at some point in his or her life. It is a subjective experience, which is influenced by one‘s personality, life experience and other situational variables. The present study examined the influence of age and gender on the experience of loneliness; not on its presence or absence, but rather on its qualitative apects. Seven hundred and eleven participants from all walks of life volunteered to answer an 82-item yes/no questionnaire, reflecting on their loneliness experiences and what it meant to them. Four age groups were compared: youth (13-18 years old), young adults (19-30 years old), adults (31- 58 years old) and seniors (60-80 years old). Within and between gender comparisons were also done. Results revealed that loneliness is indeed affected by one‘s age and gender. Chapter 5- Anecdotal evidence and previous research have indicated that experiencing some stress while traveling abroad is a rather common occurrence. Part of this stress may be explained by the experience of loneliness. Specifically, students who study abroad are removed, at least in part, from their usual social support systems, which may lead them to feel as though they lack close attachments or people on whom they can rely for support. Undergraduate students studying abroad at Loyola University‘s Rome Center during the 2004 fall semester (Rome Center Study I) and the 2006- 2007 fall and spring semesters (Rome Center Study II) completed questionnaires, which examined aspects of loneliness, psychological distress, and functioning while abroad. In general, these studies provide evidence that loneliness is associated with adverse consequences for students who study abroad. Specifically, students experiencing more loneliness also experienced greater psychological distress and demonstrated lower levels of functioning while studying abroad. Further, having fewer friends was associated with greater loneliness and lower levels of functioning, while having lower quality friendships while studying abroad was related to greater loneliness, lower levels of functioning, and greater psychological distress, particularly Sarah J. Bevinn x depression. Finally, there was weak support that less frequent contact with friends at home was related to the experience of more loneliness. Despite the increasing numbers of students who study abroad each year, there remains a limited body of research into the psychological aspects of studying abroad. Therefore, it is important to investigate factors such as loneliness and psychological distress that may hinder students from taking full advantage of their study abroad experiences. The results of these studies should be reviewed by universities and study abroad programs and used to enhance students‘ experiences while studying abroad by nurturing students‘ social support while abroad, providing intercultural training, and offering mental health resources for students abroad. Chapter 6- Humans are fundamentally social creatures. Our quality of life rests on the people we connect with, and not just because we depend on them for food, clothing, and shelter. Instead, we thrive on interpersonal contact, and because of this our psychological, and even physiological, well-being is hampered when we become socially disconnected. The current chapter focuses on what happens when people experience unfulfilled belongingness. Specifically, we review evidence about how social exclusion hampers us in ways that affect our cognitions, emotions, and behaviors. We review evidence about how people cope with the pain of exclusion. And we also discuss recent work that shows how people can be buffered from the deleterious effects of exclusion. The findings that we review demonstrate that social exclusion strikes at the core of human functioning, yet we also hope to show that the negative consequences associated with social disconnection can be effectively reduced. Chapter 7- Adolescence is a tumultuous time of development, as transformations continually influence the emotional well-being of the American teenager. Lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) teens experience loneliness with more saliency than their heterosexual peers. It is important to understand the factors influencing the loneliness of sexual minority youth given the social hindrances that they face. This commentary reviews the socialization agents known to influence feelings of loneliness among LGB adolescents. By reviewing the socialization agents in an effort to provide researchers with a concise review of important variables that need to be explored in future studies of LGB adolescents to better understand the emotional development of this population. Chapter 8- People feel lonely even they live in heavily populated areas like China, in spite of being surrounded by millions of people. Yet it is unclear why loneliness cannot be alleviated by high population density. In this article, Preface xi we argue that population density not only cannot lessen the feelings of loneliness, it also has the potential to exacerbate the perceived loneliness. We propose a number of possible mechanisms. First of all, we argue that people tend to disconnect themselves from others as a protective mechanism in heavily populated areas because crowding environment can be harmful to them physiologically and psychologically. And this self-defense mechanism may have the potential to decrease social ties and contribute to the feelings of being utterly alone and cut off. Moreover, habituation of social withdrawal may be over-generalized, so that people exposed to crowded living conditions for a long period become defensive and hostile chronically (Baum & Valins, 1977, 1979). This will make people around them more vulnerable to loneliness. Finally, since loneliness is contagious, when people come into contact with large number of other people daily, the perceived loneliness will spread out rapidly. Therefore, the quantity of contact does not translate into quality of contact (LoD, 2006). Quantity of contact may also have the potential to decrease the quality of contact. The implication for heavily populated societies like China is discussed. In: Psychology of Loneliness ISBN: 978-1-61761-214-5 Editor: Sarah J. Bevinn, pp. 1-27 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Chapter 1 EXPERIENCING LONELINESS IN CHILDHOOD: CONSEQUENCES FOR PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT, SCHOOL ADJUSTMENT, AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell Division of Psychology, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, United Kingdom ABSTRACT Feelings of loneliness are central to the human experience, with most individuals encountering loneliness at some time (Weiss, 1974). The chapter will begin by providing a brief overview of the topic of loneliness and experiences of loneliness in adults to provide a context for children‘s loneliness. Next, we will discuss loneliness in childhood because experiencing loneliness during childhood has been identified as an antecedent of loneliness in adulthood (Cacioppo, Hawkley, & Berntson, 2003). Although some short- and long-term consequences of childhood loneliness have been explored, the present chapter aims to review the research evidence outlining the consequences of childhood loneliness for psychosocial adjustment. Specifically, given the importance of positive peer relationships during childhood for psychosocial adjustment, school Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 2 adjustment, and academic performance (Wentzel, 1999), the chapter will discuss the research evidence that experiencing loneliness can have negative consequences for children in the context of the school environment. In particular, the chapter will explore children‘s experiences of loneliness with regard to peer relationships, school adjustment, and academic performance. The chapter will then move on to discuss potential explanations of loneliness during childhood, focusing on how children‘s interpretations of social situations may influence their loneliness in school. Consequently, the chapter will make links between children‘s ability to interpret social situations, attribution styles, and loneliness. In support of this argument, the chapter will present the findings from a small-scale cross-sectional study with 135 children (66 male and 69 female) aged between 11- and 15-years old (M = 12.62, SD = 1.04) from the UK. Children completed measures of social and emotional experiences of loneliness and reported their attribution style in response to positive and negative social outcomes. The results indicate that adopting a more negative attribution style in both positive and negative circumstances was predictive of higher levels of loneliness. These results add further support to the argument that children‘s ability to interpret social situations influences their psychosocial adjustment assessed as loneliness. INTRODUCTION Feelings of loneliness are central to the human experience (Weiss, 1974). Therefore, because loneliness is an inherent human condition, operating on a cognitive and affective level (Rotenberg, 1999), most individuals experience loneliness at some time across the life-span. Loneliness is a unique and multidimensional phenomenon that represents the extent to which an individual‘s perceived social network is either smaller or less satisfying than they desire (Jones, 1981; McWhirter, 1990; Nilsoon, Lindstrom, & Naden, 2006). Consequently, loneliness represents a substantive evaluation of an individual‘s actual and desired level of satisfaction with their social network and the potential discrepancy between these two (DiTommaso & Spinner, 1997). Due to the potential discrepancy between actual and desired satisfaction with social networks, loneliness has been described as a deeply distressing experience (Rotenberg, 1998), that is a by-product of human feelings (Weiss, 1987), and that is associated with a perceived lack of interpersonal intimacy (Chelune, Sultan, & Williams, 1980). For most individuals the experience and Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 3 feelings associated with loneliness tend not be a permanent condition but rather a transient experience (Weiss, 1987). Researchers have reported that experiences of loneliness are characterised by feelings of sadness, boredom and, in some instances, isolation from the wider social arena (Roberts & Quayle, 2001). This isolation, from the social world, can lead to reduced levels of self-esteem (Bullock, 2001) and reported difficulties in psychosocial adjustment (Rotenberg, Bartley, & Toivonen, 1997). Moreover, the effects of severe loneliness are widely recognised in a clinical context (Hardwig, 1991). Together, these findings have prompted researchers to explore the psychological consequences of experiencing loneliness across the lifespan. In the next part of the chapter, we will present some of the research evidence that suggests a link between experiences of loneliness and psychological adjustment in adulthood. LONELINESS IN ADULTS In adults, loneliness has been associated with a wide array of psychological difficulties. For example, loneliness has been associated with, and related to, reports of subjective health, increased psychosomatic symptoms, lower levels of self-esteem, increased anxiety levels, depression, neuroticism, and an external locus of control (Hojat, 1983; Jones, Freemon, & Goswick, 1982; Ouellet & Joshi, 1986). Loneliness, during adulthood, is also associated with, and potentially influenced by, other factors such as personality traits, shyness, extroversion (Uruk & Demir, 2003), and a negative self-perception (Goswick & Jones, 1981). In college students, higher levels of loneliness have been found to be associated with deficits in social functioning (Jones, Hobbs, & Hockenbury, 1982). Further, lonely college students are also more inclined to be introspective and, therefore, at a greater risk of developing depression (Ouellet & Joshni, 1986). Together, these studies underscore the importance of understanding the consequences of experiencing loneliness during adulthood because of the associated risks for individuals who experience extreme levels of loneliness. Although loneliness is commonly believed to occur when individuals are socially isolated and lacking in companionship, it is important to note that loneliness is not synonymous with being alone. In fact, loneliness can occur in either the presence or absence of social relationships (Page & Scanian, 1994). If an individual with a large social network feels that their needs are not being Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 4 met by their network then they may experience loneliness, whereas someone with a smaller network may feel that their needs are being met and, as such, may not experience loneliness (Asher & Paquette, 2003). Therefore, it is crucial to make the distinction between aloneness and loneliness. Specifically, it may be that individuals who chose to be alone may not necessarily be lonely and, conversely, individuals with extensive social networks may still experience the distress associated with loneliness. Consequently, experiencing loneliness is more complex than simply regarding an individual‘s social network size as an indicator of the propensity with which someone would experience loneliness. One of the most important antecedents of loneliness is a lack of emotional support; specifically, when an individual feels that the current level of emotional support that they receive does not adequately fulfil their needs they are more likely to experience loneliness (Marcoen & Brumagne, 1985). In support of this argument, Anderson (1998) suggests that loneliness operates on a continuum with social support and the level of experienced loneliness complementing each other. Loneliness is hypothesised to be at the negative end of the continuum with social support at the positive end. Due to this close association between feelings of loneliness and social support provisions, loneliness has been subdivided in to two types: emotional and social (Russell, Cutrona, Rose, & Yurko, 1984). Emotional loneliness is associated with a lack of close relationships, whereas social loneliness arises when an individual lacks social support networks and is characterised by feelings of boredom, aimlessness, and meaningless (Russell et al., 1984). Experiences of loneliness have also been distinguished according to duration. Chronic or state loneliness is experienced by individuals over a long period, whereas trait loneliness is experienced for a relatively short period of time (Rook, 1988). Although, trait loneliness is regarded as a brief, transient, experience it can still be extremely painful for the individual (Rook, 1988). In the next section of this chapter we turn our attention to loneliness in children. LONELINESS IN CHILDREN Loneliness during childhood has received comparatively less attention than loneliness in adulthood and Laine (1998) argues that children‘s experiences of loneliness were not considered before the 1980s. Further, as Dunn (2004) notes, until relatively recently, some researchers have argued that Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 5 children could not experience loneliness because they do not form intimate social relationships in the same way as adults do. Additionally, there was concern about whether children could make the distinction between aloneness and loneliness; Galanaki (2004) reports that children can make such a distinction but children who spend time alone are more likely to report feelings of loneliness. However, understanding children‘s experiences of loneliness is crucial because some researchers have suggested that experiencing loneliness during childhood is an antecedent to experiencing loneliness in adulthood (Hymel & Franke, 1985). Consequently, experiencing loneliness in childhood may predispose an individual to experience loneliness in adulthood and this, in turn, may result in the individual experiencing some of the aforementioned psychosocial consequences associated with loneliness in adulthood. If experiencing loneliness during childhood does represent a precursor of loneliness in adulthood, and subsequent poorer psychosocial adjustment, it is crucial for researchers to explore children‘s experiences of loneliness as a way of trying to promote short-term and long-term psychosocial adjustment. Recent research by Stoeckli (2009), with third- to sixth-grade children, found that 38% of the sample reported some experience of loneliness in school. Whilst Galanaki‘s (2004) research suggests that a far higher proportion of children experience loneliness with approximately two thirds of children experience loneliness at some time. Together, these studies suggest that a high proportion of children experience loneliness on a day to day basis. Further, similar to results with older samples, experiencing loneliness during childhood has also been associated concurrently with lower levels of psychosocial adjustment and school adjustment (Asher & Paquette, 2003). Consequently, understanding the experiences of childhood loneliness is fundamental both for short-term and long-term adjustment. In particular, it may be important to understand the experiences of those children who suffer from chronic loneliness. Loneliness during childhood is a multidimensional phenomenon (Hay, Payne, & Chadwick, 2004). According to Maragalit (1998), during childhood, loneliness encompasses elements of the individual and the wider interpersonal context, suggesting that childhood loneliness reflects both characteristics of the child and also characteristics of their social network. Further, children‘s experiences of loneliness also relates to their self-perceptions and their perceptions of how they are viewed by their peers, reinforcing the importance of children‘s social networks (Maragalit, 1998). Qualter and Munn (2002) argued that, unlike the conceptualisation of loneliness in adults, loneliness in children lacks a theoretical background and Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 6 often does not assess children‘s experiences of emotional loneliness. Consequently, they examined both children‘s emotional attachment to peers and their access to social networks to assess emotional and social loneliness respectively. Qualter and Munn (2002) also proposed a theoretical model that made the distinction between an internal subjective state of loneliness and an objective state of aloneness, with a stronger emphasis placed on children‘s perceived lack of attachment with peers rather than their actual isolation from peers. Following a cluster analysis, with 640 4- to 8-year-olds, they identified four subgroups of experiences: lonely, lonely/rejected, rejected, and control. Children in the lonely group comprised 22.6% of the sample and were those who felt the loneliest at school but were well liked by their peers. The lonely/rejected children comprised 9.5% of the sample and reported experiencing loneliness at school and were disliked by their peers. The rejected children comprised 9.4% of the sample and reported low levels of loneliness in school and were the most disliked by their peers. The remaining 58.5% of the sample comprised the control group: these children reported low levels of loneliness in school, were well like by their peers, and according to their teachers, were well adjusted. From these results, Qualter and Munn (2002) argued that children experience both social and emotional loneliness and that there are identifiable differences in these experiences. The age at which children first experience loneliness remains unclear. Some researchers argue that it is possible to identify loneliness in children as young as four (Qualter & Munn, 2002). However, it may be that whilst these younger children can report experiences similar to loneliness, they may lack the fine grained cognitive skills to make the more sophisticated distinctions of loneliness consistent with those reported by adults. There is evidence that young children have both a basic understanding of loneliness and can reliably report their experiences (Cassidy & Asher, 1992). Kindergarten and first-grade children were able to articulate some of the emotions commonly associated with loneliness, such as sadness, and could suggest examples of when someone would experience loneliness. These findings have since been replicated by other researchers working with young children (Cassidy & Berlin, 1999). Although the exact age at which children begin to experience loneliness may remain unclear, as they get older it is easier for researchers to identify loneliness (Page, 1991). Further, Asher and Paquette (2003) argue that very young children only have a rudimentary understanding of loneliness because, whilst they can understand some of the emotions associated with loneliness, they may fail to understand that loneliness can be felt in the context of large social network. Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 7 One of the challenges associated with the assessment of loneliness is that it is a highly subjective experience and, as such, self-report techniques are the most appropriate method of understanding loneliness (Laine, 1998). Qualter and Munn (2002) argue that researchers should make the distinction between social rejection and loneliness in children‘s reports of loneliness. A number of measures have been developed to assess children‘s loneliness including both self-report measures and also peer report measures (for a review see Goossens & Beynes, 2002). Broadly, the self-report measures have been developed to assess loneliness in the context of peer relationships and parental relationships, and to assess children‘s aversion to aloneness and children‘s affinity of loneliness. Conversely, the peer report measures often involve children nominating a peer who they think is typified by the experiences associated with loneliness. Goosens and Beynes (2002) recommend that researchers interested in examining children‘s loneliness, in the context of their peer relationships, consider using the Loneliness and Social Dissatisfaction Questionnaire (LSDQ; Asher, Hymel, & Renshaw, 1984; Asher & Wheeler, 1985; Cassidy & Asher, 1992). The LSDQ is a widely used scale to assess children‘s self- reported loneliness in the context of school that has strong psychometric properties (Bauminger & Kasari, 2000). The scale contains items that directly assess loneliness and items assessing constructs relevant to the loneliness experience. However, some researchers have argued that it is difficult to label some of the items within the scale (Cassidy & Asher, 1992), whilst others have argued that the scale assesses social contact rather than feelings of loneliness per se (Qualter & Munn, 2002). Consequently, many researchers have used a shortened ‗pure‘ measure of loneliness designed to assess experiences of loneliness in the school context (e.g., Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996a, 1996b; Ladd & Coleman, 1997). ‗Pure‘ measures of loneliness may be advantageous because there are only so many ways that an individual can be asked if they are lonely (Galanaki & Kalantzi-Azizi, 1999), and longer scales often contain divergent concepts (Asher & Paquette, 2003). Whilst there has been some variation in the methods used to assess children‘s loneliness, the research evidence does suggest that from around the age of five children can reliably report their experiences of loneliness and can articulate the emotions associated with loneliness. Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 8 LONELINESS AND PEER RELATIONSHIPS In the next part of the chapter, we will discuss the research evidence examining children‘s experiences of loneliness in the context of their social networks. On a daily basis, when in school, children spend a large amount of their time in the peer arena and interacting with their classmates. Therefore, positive and fulfilling peer relationships are fundamental for children‘s psychosocial and academic adjustment in school (Galanaki & Kalantzi-Azizi, 1999). The feeling that a child‘s relationship provisions have not been met lead children to report a lack of emotional support and affection, and these reports correspond closely to similar reports produced by lonely adults (Cassidy & Asher, 1992). As previously noted, loneliness is closely linked with social provisions in both adulthood and childhood. In support of this argument, research with children has shown that feelings of loneliness are linked to the experience of unfulfilled relationship provisions with peers (Cassidy & Asher, 1992) and negative feelings associated with difficulties in peer relationships (Uruk & Demir, 2003). Further, children‘s experiences of loneliness may be moderated by their attitude towards being alone (Goossens & Beyers, 2002). In recognition of the importance of children‘s social networks, for experiences of loneliness, many researchers have explored the relationship between children‘s peer acceptance and loneliness in school. Peer acceptance reflects ―classmates sentiments (i.e., liking versus disliking) toward individual children‖ (Ladd, Birch, & Buhs, 1999, p1375). Children who are nominated as being liked by their peers have higher levels of peer acceptance whereas children who are nominated as disliked by their peers have lower levels of peer acceptance. Those children who are less well accepted by their peers tend to report experiencing higher levels of loneliness than those children who have higher or average levels of peer acceptance (Asher et al., 1984; Parker & Asher, 1993). Similarly, Sanderson and Siegal, (1995) found that, in a study with 104, pre-school children experiencing higher levels of peer rejection reported experiencing higher levels of loneliness whereas children experiencing higher levels of peer acceptance reported experiencing lower levels of loneliness. Further, the social experiences of the rejected children were very different from the experiences of children who were accepted by their peers, reinforcing the link between loneliness and peer acceptance. Although there is evidence that children who are rejected by peers experience loneliness in the short-term, there is also evidence that loneliness can be a long-term consequence of poor peer relationships and peer rejection (Hymel, Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 9 Vaillancourt, McDougall, & Renshaw, 2002). Together, these studies suggest that children‘s loneliness is associated with their peer acceptance. However, the relationship between children‘s peer acceptance and loneliness may be more complex as peer acceptance is only one indicator of children‘s social integration, namely that of companionship (Buhrmester & Furman, 1987). Children‘s experiences and relationships with their peers have also been conceptualised as intimate relationships. Intimacy, in the context of children‘s peer relationships, reflects the extent to which children develop close relationships with their peers (Buhrmester, & Furman, 1987) and has been conceptualised as friendships. Children‘s friendships have been defined as a ―dyadic relationship that is characterised by a positive, affective tie between the partners‖ (Ladd et al., 1999, p1375). There is evidence of a link between third- to sixth-grade children‘s friendship quality, friendship quantity, and loneliness (Nangle et al., 2003): children who had fewer friends and lower quality friendships experienced higher levels of loneliness. Additionally, the relationship between friendship and depression was mediated by loneliness: children who had fewer friendships, had higher levels of loneliness which, in turn, predicted higher levels of depression. Although there is evidence that children‘s propensity to experience loneliness is associated with lower levels of peer acceptance and fewer friendships, it is important to recognise that, in some instances, children‘s friendships can serve as a protective factor. Friendships may act as a buffer for some of the negative consequences of loneliness. For example, there is evidence that having a reciprocal best friend can lessen the potential negative consequences of lower peer acceptance for experiences of loneliness (Parker & Asher, 1993). Specifically, Parker and Asher (1993) found that children without a best friend, regardless of their level of peer acceptance, experienced higher levels of loneliness than children who reported that they had a best friend. The potential buffering effect of a reciprocal best friend adds support to the argument that loneliness is associated with whether an individual feels that their social provisions are being met, and it may be that a best friend, for some children, goes a long way in meeting these provisions. Further, Dunn (2004) argues that friendship quality is more important than friendship quantity to protect children from experiencing loneliness. This is also consistent with Qualter and Munn‘s (2002) argument that loneliness in children may be more associated with a lack of a peer attachment rather than social isolation. The nature of children‘s friendships and friendship qualities have also been found to be associated with loneliness. However, it is important to note that lonely children do engage in dyadic interactions with their peers (Qualter Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 10 & Munn, 2005). For example, kindergarten children are more likely to experience loneliness when their social relationships are characterised by engaging in higher levels of self-disclosure about topics such as negative affect in friendships (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1996). Further, for boys, experiencing higher levels of conflict in friendships was associated with higher levels of loneliness but no such relationship emerged for girls. For those children who self-report that they struggle to ‗get along‘ with their peers, they often tend to report experiencing higher levels of loneliness compared to those children who feel more integrated in to their social network (Hojat, 1982). This self-perception of struggling to ‗get along‘ with peers could be more than a self-perception as children who report experiencing loneliness also tend to be those children who are less well accepted by the peer group and, as such, experience rejection (Qualter & Munn, 2002). Further, McGuire and Clifford (2000) argue that chronically lonely children may be so isolated from their peers that the situation cannot be easily rectified to enhance the children‘s social provisions. Although lonely children spend more time playing on their own than other children when lonely children interact with their friends, these interactions tend to be characterised by positive experiences (Qualter & Munn, 2002). Another potential explanation of why lonely children may struggle to ‗get along‘ with peers resides in how lonely children are perceived by their peers. Rotenberg et al. (1997) asked second-, fourth-, and sixth-grade children to rate hypothetical peers, the participants reported that they were more likely to reject a chronically lonely peer compared to a non-lonely peer. However, the direction of causality is between peer acceptance and loneliness, to some extent, ambiguous. Specifically, some studies have found evidence that children experience loneliness because they are less well accepted by their peers (e.g., Parker & Asher, 1993). Conversely, other studies suggest that children experience loneliness because the loneliness itself may hinder children‘s social competence resulting in difficulties in forming satisfying peer relationships and friendships (Page & Scanian, 1994). Together, the research does suggest that children‘s experiences with their peers, assessed as peer acceptance and reciprocal friendships, are associated with their reported experiences of loneliness in the classroom. Further, the distinction between friendship quality and quantity is also an important factor in children‘s experiences of loneliness. It is also clear that, as with adults, loneliness in children can be regarded both in terms of social loneliness and emotional loneliness. In the next section of the chapter, we will review some of the research literature that explores the consequences of experiencing loneliness during childhood. Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 11 CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD LONELINESS Loneliness in children is not a simple phenomenon and, as such, has been linked to a range of psychosocial adjustment and school adjustment consequences. For example, children who feel lonely may experience poor peer relationships, feel excluded, and have low self-esteem (Bullock, 1998). Lonely children also report lower social acceptance, global self-worth, and peer support (Fordham & Stevenson-Hinde, 1999). Experiencing higher levels of loneliness is also associated with experiencing higher levels of victimisation during childhood (Hawker & Boulton, 2000; Kochenderfer-Ladd & Skinner, 2002), anxiety, and propensity to engage in aggressive behaviour (Coplan, Closson, & Arbeau, 2007). Lonely children are also more likely to have low self-worth, engage in solitary behaviour, and lack sociability than non-lonely children (Qualter & Munn, 2002). Children who experience loneliness and have poor peer relationships may also display sadness and boredom, which may, in turn, affect children‘s adjustment (Bullock, 1998). Loneliness in children has also been found to be associated with displaying withdrawn behaviour and having few friends, although it may be that friendship quality rather than quantity is more important (Renshaw & Brown, 1993). In the next part of the chapter we will focus on the consequences of experiencing loneliness in the school environment because of the importance of school experiences for subsequent adjustment. Further, Galanaki and Vassilopoulou (2007) argue that when loneliness is both chronic and occurring in the school context, teachers and practitioners should be concerned for the children‘s well- being and adjustment. LONELINESS AND SCHOOL ADJUSTMENT As children enter school, they are exposed to a number of changes in their physical environment, in their social environment, and in the demands placed upon them (Donelan-McCall & Dunn, 1997; Entwistle, 1995; Hughes, Pinkerton, & Plewis, 1979; Ladd, 1996). For example, children need to be able to successfully negotiate the demands of new interpersonal relationships and be able to behave in a socially appropriate and accepted manner with their: classmates, teachers, and other adults they encounter in the school environment (Birch & Ladd, 1996; Pianta, Steinberg, & Rollins, 1995; Wentzel, 1999). How children deal with these social challenges has been Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 12 regarded as one of the indexes of children‘s school adjustment. School adjustment is a complex phenomenon that represents a range of factors that promote children‘s success within the classroom environment (Berndt & Keefe, 1996; Ladd, 1989, 1996; Perry & Weinstein, 1998). Understanding the factors that influence children‘s school adjustment is crucial because children spend approximately half a year for thirteen out of the first eighteen years of life in the school environment (Howe, 1993). Further, the time children spend in school can have long-term consequences that extend across the life-span, with the impact of schools on children‘s lives being central to their future happiness, psychosocial adjustment, and achievement (Alexander & Entwistle, 1988; Gutman, Sameroff, & Cole, 2003; Lerner & Lerner, 1977). Ladd (1996) defined school adjustment as ―the degree to which children become interested, engaged, comfortable, and successful in the school environment‖ (p 371). Consequently, experiencing loneliness within the school environment may reduce children‘s comfort in the classroom and this may, in turn, bear on their school adjustment. Further, researchers have reported that the more positive a child is about school the better their academic performance in comparison to those children who are less positive about school (Donelan-McCall & Dunn, 1997; Ladd, Buhs, & Seid, 2000; Valeski & Stipek, 2001). This provides some support for the link between comfort in the school environment and successful school adjustment. In recognition of the importance of children‘s experiences of loneliness in the classroom environment for school adjustment, Birch and Ladd (1996) included loneliness as an indicator of affect in their model of the conceptualisation of early school adjustment. Birch and Ladd (1996) argued that children with lower levels of loneliness in school are likely to be well adjusted to school whereas children with higher levels of loneliness in school are less likely to be well adjusted to school. Experiencing loneliness in the classroom may directly influence children‘s school adjustment and there is evidence that loneliness is associated with poorer school adjustment (Burgess, Ladd, Kochenderfer, Lambert, & Birch, 1999). One potential explanation for this relationship is that children who experience higher levels of loneliness, may lack a supportive peer network. Further, this lack of a supportive network may hinder the children‘s transition to school and integration into the school environment because the children do not receive appropriate peer support. Therefore, children who are lonely may be poorly adjusted to school because the children lack the peer support that aids their transition, and integration in, to school. In support of this argument, a number of researchers have reported that children‘s peers and best friends Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 13 can have a powerful influence on school adjustment (Bearndt & Keefe, 1995; Wentzel, 1999). Empirical evidence suggests that those children who report experiencing loneliness are less likely to be involved with classroom activities (Ladd, Kochenderfer, & Coleman, 1997). This lack of involvement may mean that lonely children are not afforded the same opportunities to learning. Experiences of loneliness have also been linked to children‘s attitudes towards school. Kochenderfer and Ladd (1996a), found that kindergarteners who reported experiencing loneliness were less likely to like school and were more likely to try to avoid school than those children who reported lower levels of loneliness. Further, those kindergarteners who reported experiencing loneliness in the fall were more likely to be school avoidant in the spring term and their reported levels of loneliness increased during this time. In a similar study, Ladd and Coleman (1997) reported that kindergarteners who experienced the highest levels of loneliness reported liking school the least whereas those children who reported experiencing the lowest levels of loneliness liked school the most and also had the highest peer liking. More recently, Coplan et al. (2007) provided support for the link between loneliness and school sentiments: kindergarteners who reported experiencing higher levels of loneliness, were more school avoidant and reported liking school less. Together, these studies provide evidence that experiencing loneliness is associated with children‘s sentiments towards school. The link between loneliness and sentiments towards school liking is important because children‘s school liking potentially influences their ability to adjust positively to school (Ladd, 1990; Ladd et al., 2000). Specifically, according to Ladd (1990), children who like school are more likely to become involved and integrated into the school environment and, as such, derive more benefit from the school environment and the experience. Conversely, those children who have less positive sentiments about school may become withdrawn within the classroom, which could result in poor academic performance (Ladd et al., 2000). Therefore, children‘s general sentiments towards school can affect their success and general well-being within the school environment (Valeski & Stipek, 2001). Consequently, if experiencing loneliness results in less positive sentiments towards school, it could be that these children are at risk of lower levels of success and well-being within school. In summary, there is evidence that children‘s experiences of loneliness are associated with their sentiments towards school and also their comfort in the environment. This evidence suggests that experiencing loneliness in school Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 14 may be indicative of lower school adjustment and negative perceptions of school. In the next section of the chapter, we will explore the consequences of experiencing loneliness for children‘s academic performance. LONELINESS AND ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE Whilst many researchers argue that successful school adjustment encompasses more than performing well academically (Birch & Ladd, 1996; Pianta et al., 1995; Wentzel, 1999), understanding the antecedents of children‘s academic performing is fundamental because of the value of success with a school context. Specifically, schools in the UK have to achieve a number of government targets for the children‘s performance and benchmarks have been created to track the children‘s academic success (e.g., Department for Education and Skills, 2005). There is also a drive within the education sector to raise standards and this raising of standards has often been regarded as improving children‘s academic performance. In this next section of the chapter, we will explore the research evidence that suggests that children‘s experiences of loneliness are associated with their academic performance. Drawing on the conceptualisation of school adjustment outlined earlier in the chapter, one reason why children‘s experiences of loneliness may be associated with their academic performance is that those children who are lonely, could be more likely to experience difficulties adjusting to school, and this, in turn, may influence their academic performance. Further, children who report experiencing loneliness also report that they are more school avoidant (Kochenderfer & Ladd, 1996a; Ladd & Coleman, 1997). If a child is school avoidant it is likely that this avoidance will reduce their engagement with school activities and research evidence suggests that school avoidant children tend to be those who perform less well academically (Ladd et al., 2000). Consequently, if lonely children develop school avoidant tendencies these may, in turn, result in poorer academic achievement. In support of these arguments, there is evidence of a direct link between children‘s self-reports of loneliness and some indexes of their academic performance. Third- to sixth-grade children who reported experiencing higher levels of loneliness scored lower on a comprehensive basic skills test whereas children who reported experiencing lower levels of loneliness received higher scores on the skills test (Asher et al., 1984). However, there was no such relationship between the children‘s experiences of loneliness and their scores Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 15 on the Stanford Diagnostic Reading Test. Other researchers have reported a significant negative relationship between sixth- to eighth-grade children‘s loneliness and academic performance (Johnson, LaVoie, Spenceri, & Mahoney-Wernli, 2001). Specifically, children who experience higher levels of loneliness were found to perform less well academically whereas children who experience lower levels of loneliness were found to perform higher academically. Alongside the direct evidence of a link between children‘s loneliness and academic performance, researchers have also reported that children‘s loneliness is associated with their academic competence. Marcus and Gross, (1991) investigated the relationship between loneliness and academic competence in a sample of seven- to thirteen-year-olds. Loneliness was found to be negatively associated with academic competence with children who experienced higher levels of loneliness having lower levels of academic competences whereas lower levels of loneliness was associated with higher levels of academic competence. In summary, the research suggests that children‘s loneliness is associated with their academic performance and their academic competence. Consequently, for children who experience chronic loneliness it may be that it they are not just at risk of poorer psychosocial and school adjustment but also at risk of lower academic performance. GENDER DIFFERENCES AND LONELINESS The next section of the chapter will explore gender differences in the experiences of loneliness. There is some evidence that there are gender differences in loneliness. Some researchers have argued that girls tend to report being less lonely than boys (Hoza, Bukowski, & Beery, 2000) whereas others have reported that girls tend to experience higher levels of loneliness than boys (Galanaki, 2004; Renshaw & Brown, 2000). However, Crick, Grotpeter, and Rockhill (1999) argue that boys are more likely to under report their experiences of loneliness. A potential explanation for these findings resides in children‘s ability to make the distinction between loneliness and being alone. In support of this argument, Galanaki (2004) reports that girls are better able to make such a distinction compared to boys. Further, it may be that children under report their experiences of loneliness because of issues Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 16 surrounding the social desirability of disclosing loneliness and children‘s propensity to disclose in general. Attribution Style and Loneliness So far throughout this chapter, we have discussed the consequences of children‘s loneliness for their psychosocial adjustment, school adjustment, and academic performance, in the next part of the chapter we want to turn our attention to differences in children‘s attribution style as a potential explanation of loneliness. Specifically, we will discuss how children‘s interpretations of ambiguous social situations may influence their experiences of loneliness. As previously noted, loneliness during childhood reflects both the child‘s self-perceptions and the child‘s perceptions of their social network (Maragalit, 1998). Children who report experiencing lower levels of perceived social acceptance tend to report higher levels of loneliness whereas children who report experiencing higher levels of perceived social acceptance report lower levels of loneliness (Fordham & Stevenson-Hinde, 1999). Further, it may be that children who experience loneliness try to understand why they are lonely and reflect on their own behaviour and that of the people around them (Laine, 1998). Therefore, how a child views and interprets the social world around them, through their attribution styles, may predispose them to feelings of loneliness. Attribution style refers to the way in which a person perceives and interprets ambiguous situations and the explanation an individual gives to either their own behaviour or the behaviour of those around them. Attribution styles have been distinguished as internal (pertaining to the individual) versus external (pertaining to the environment), stable and controllable (Graham & Juvonen, 1998). Individuals who have an internal attribution style, perceive and interpret the cause of events or acts as being due to themselves, i.e. they caused them to happen, whereas people with an external attribution style, interpret events as simply occurring by chance or luck, and of which they have little or no control over. The propensity with which an individual adopts a particular attribution style denotes the likely locus, stability, and controllability of a social situation. How children make sense of their interactions with their peers could influence their experience of loneliness. According to Crick, Grotpeter, and Rockhill‘s (1999), social information processing approach to children‘s loneliness, negative experiences with peers may result in children failing to Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 17 attempt to interact with others and leading to loneliness. Further, these negative peer interactions may predispose children to develop aggressive tendencies with their peers and these, in turn, may enhance children‘s distress and feeling of loneliness. To test this hypothesis, Crick et al. (1999) examined third- to sixth-grade children‘s social processing and loneliness. Hostile attributional biases, physical aggressive response patterns, and relational aggressive response patterns were associated with loneliness. These results suggest that viewing peers negatively and wanting to respond to peers in a hostile way was associated with loneliness, in girls. However, no such relationships were found for boys. Further evidence of the link between children‘s attribution style and loneliness comes from the work of Laine (1998). Laine (1998) identified 36 highly lonely and 42 non-lonely secondary school age children in Finland and compared their attribution style. Children who were classified as highly lonely tended to endorse ‗non self-serving‘ internal attribution styles whereas the non-lonely children tended to endorse their experiences of temporary loneliness to external, uncontrollable and unstable causes. This finding suggests that children experiencing higher levels of loneliness tend to use a stable and internal attribution style whereas children who experience very low levels of loneliness tend to use an unstable and external attribution style. Further, the results also suggest that the lonely children perceived that they were to ‗blame‘ for their experiences of loneliness as evidenced by the internal attributions that they made. Following a cluster analysis, children identified as lonely at school, but well liked by their peers, were more likely to make external attributions for positive outcomes and less likely to make internal attributions for positive outcomes than control children, rejected children, and lonely/rejected children (Qualter & Munn, 2002). Similarly, research by Crick & Ladd (1993) indicated that children‘s feelings of loneliness were related to the attributions that they made. Specifically, average children, who were neither popular, neglected, nor rejected and who experienced loneliness made self-blaming attributions based upon internal causes. Conversely, those children who experienced rejection and reported higher levels of loneliness and social distress attributed relationship failures to external causes via a self-serving attribution style. This difference in attribution may occur because admitting social problems could be more difficult for children who are rejected than those who are well liked by their peers. Thus, rejected children developed a self-serving attribution style which blamed peers for rejection to protect their own self-esteem. Conversely, average children were not accustomed to Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 18 rejection and made non self-serving attributions blaming themselves for their feelings of loneliness. This is further supported by Renshaw & Brown (1993) who conducted a short-term longitudinal study of third- to sixth-graders‘ experiences of peer- related loneliness and attribution style. Attribution style was measured as a composite score yielded from the children‘s responses to the presentation of vignettes. The study found that high levels of loneliness were predicted by internal-stable attributional styles and were a product of behavioural and social factors such as low peer acceptance, few or no friendships, and negative interpersonal behaviour. Further, a reciprocal relationship between loneliness and attribution style can be inferred, such that loneliness is not only a product of internal-stable attributions, but can also create the conditions for the manifestation of self-blaming attributions in children. As further evidence of the link between attribution style and loneliness, a two-year prospective study of children in year 7, found that higher levels of loneliness were reported when children attributed peer-related events (positive or negative) to stable and/or global factors (Toner & Heaven, 2005). A potential explanation for the finding is the nature of stable and global attributions which often yield higher outcome expectancies for positive events, and consequently, do not prepare the child for instances of adversity. Subsequently, these children are more negatively affected by adversity or negative peer interactions and, as such, experience higher levels of loneliness. Further, consistent with previous concurrent studies, loneliness was also associated with the absence of self-serving attribution biases (Crick & Ladd, 1993; Graham & Juvonen, 1998). Together, the previous research does provide evidence of a link between children‘s attribution style and their experiences of loneliness. An Example In this final section of the chapter, we will present empirical evidence that provides further support that different attribution styles are predictive of experiences of loneliness. The sample comprised 135 children (66 male and 69 female) aged between 11 and 15 years (M = 12.62, SD = 1.04) from 7 classrooms across 4 year groups in a secondary school in the UK. The response rate per year group ranged from 56 to 93%. The children were asked to complete a 10 item loneliness questionnaire using items derived from The Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Experiencing Loneliness in Childhood… 19 Adults (DiTommaso, 1997), to assess children‘s family loneliness and social loneliness. The children completed the questionnaire using a 7-point-likert scale ranging from 1 ‗strongly disagree‘ to 7 ‗strongly agree‘. The family and social loneliness scale had good internal consistency, α = 0.87 and α = 0.74 respectively. The children also completed 23 items from The Revised Children‘s Attributional Style Questionnaire (Thompson, Kaslow, Nolen- Hoeskema, & Weiss, 1998). The scale assesses three dimensions of attribution: internal versus external, stable versus unstable, and global versus specific with regard to positive social outcomes or negative social outcomes. Children were asked to endorse one of two response formats as an explanation for a potential situation. For example, the children were asked to imagine ―You get an ‗A‘ on a test‖ and then had to select between either ―I am smart‖ or ―I am good in the subject that the test was in‖ to indicate their attribution style. For the positive social outcomes, the children‘s responses were coded so that lower scores indicated a more depressive and negative attribution style and for the negative social outcomes, the children‘s responses were coded so that high scores indicated a more depressive attributional style. The positive social outcomes and negative social outcomes scales had only very modest reliability, α = 0.61 and α = 0.44 respectively, but could reflect the structure of the scale. To explore whether the children‘s attribution styles predicted loneliness, the children‘s attribution score for the positive social outcomes and the children‘s attribution score for the negative social outcomes were entered as separate predictors in a multiple regression. The outcome variable of interest was the children‘s total loneliness score. The model was a good fit, F(2,101) = 11.64, p < .001, and accounted for 17% of the variance, adjusted R2 = .17. Children‘s propensity to adopt a negative attribution style for positive social outcomes positively predicted loneliness, β = -.32, t(99) = 3.44, p = .001. Therefore, a more negative attribution style predicted higher levels of loneliness and a more positive attribution style predicted lower levels of loneliness in the context of positive social outcomes. Children‘s propensity to adopt a negative attribution style for negative social outcomes positively predicted loneliness, β = .22, t(99) = 2.39, p < .05. Therefore, a more negative attribution style predicted higher levels of loneliness and a more positive attribution style predicted lower levels of loneliness in the context of negative social outcomes. Together, these results suggest that the attribution style 11- to 15-year- olds adopt is predictive of their loneliness when they are asked to make judgments of positive and negative social situations. Specifically, adopting a Lucy R. Betts and Anna S. A. Bicknell 20 negative attribution style, regardless of social outcome predicted higher levels of loneliness. These findings are consistent with the previous research that has demonstrated a link between children‘s loneliness and attribution style (Crick & Ladd, 1993; Qualter & Munn, 2002; Toner & Heaven, 2005). However, we do recognize that the findings are cross-sectional and, as such, longitudinal research is needed to further explore the relationship between attribution style and loneliness with regard to causality. CONCLUSION Throughout this chapter we have argued that understanding children‘s experiences of loneliness in the school environment is fundamental for their peer relationships, psychosocial adjustment, school adjustment, and academic performance. We have also presented the findings of a small scale study that tried to further explore a potential antecedent of loneliness: children‘s attribution style. We found that for those 11- to 15-year-olds that adopted a more negative attribution style predicted elevated levels of loneliness whereas adopting a more positive attribution style predicted lower loneliness in both positive and negative social situations. Consequently, these findings suggest that how children interpret the social world, and the behaviours of those around them, shapes their experiences of loneliness. 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Educational Psychologist, 34, 59-69. In: Psychology of Loneliness ISBN: 978-1-61761-214-5 Editor: Sarah J. Bevinn, pp. 29-48 © 2011 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Chapter 2 AGEING AND PSYCHOLOGICAL WELL-BEING Juan Carlos Meléndez-Moral Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Valencia, Spain ABSTRACT Demographic changes in the last century have produced longer life expectancy, and therefore there is a greater proportion of elderly in the population. As a consequence of this, there has been a growing interest in the research with elderly people, especially in terms of their well-being. There is research evidence that well-being in the elderly may be understood as a two components construct: subjective well-being, that remains relatively stable during life span; and psychological well-being, that negatively changes with age, especially its dimensions of personal growth and purpose in life. 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, the study of ageing processes is extremely interesting, because of the increase of elderly population due to a demographic transition, changing Juan Carlos Melendez-Moral 30 from high to low death and birth rates, and producing a natural increase, as well as an increase in the number of elderly people. In this sense and through population pyramids we can observe that there is a decrease in the number of births, for this reason there is an increase in the age groups. Consequently, the ratio of elderly people tends to rise. Moreover, and in relation to low death rate, this reduction mainly affects elderly people instead of young people, increasing life expectancy. Thus, the current demographic transition has lead to a threefold increase in human life expectancy, a one-third or one-fourth reduction in the birth rate and in the size of the family, and the ageing of the population. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the nature of the last stage of life, since multiple researches have shown that ageing today is very much different from ageing a few years ago. Thus, new ways of assessing elderly people from a more positive perspective have to be considered, overcoming the deficit- based theories. This reflection makes us consider ageing as a natural process, another stage of the human development, where there are gains and losses, an approach broadly explained in the theories of Life Cycle (Baltes, 1987; Heckhausen, Dixon and Baltes, 1989). We must take into consideration that the approaches on the ageing analyses emphasized almost exclusively the variables regarding health condition, focusing on the pathology measures and the level of deterioration as key elements for the study of elderly people. According to Seligman and Csikszentmihali (2000), when focusing on these elements, positive aspects such as well-being, satisfaction, optimism or happiness have been disregarded, ignoring the potential benefits of these aspects. Positive Psychology arises in this context, with authors such as Seligman (1998) that proposes to promote human qualities as a buffer against adversity. Thus, an amendment in the significant sites is carried out, taking into account that the objective of the Positive Psychology is to find people's qualities or virtues in order to achieve a better quality of life and well-being. Therefore, its objective is to study human strengths and virtues, as well as the effects of those in a person's life and society. Consequently, an increasing number of studies on ageing models have focused in the identification of variables that contribute to the quality of life of the elderly, and in the pursuit of signs of successful ageing. In this sense, authors such as Meléndez (1996), Strawbridge, Wallhagen and Cohen (2002) or Tomás, Meléndez and Navarro (2008) think it is important to carry out an analysis of the well-being, considering it as a category that includes a Ageing and Psychological Well-Being 31 psychological aspect, but that also depends on the way a person perceives and values his/her life experience. 2. ORIGINS OF THE STUDY OF WELL-BEING AND ITS CONCEPT Although the scientific study of well-being is relatively recent, as proposed by Ryan and Deci (2001a), there are two points of view on what we understand by well-being, which are maintained in the current scientific research in this area. In particular, the points of view discussed are the hedonic and eudaemonic approaches. On the one hand, the hedonic approach has its origins in the philosopher Aristipo, IV century b.c., who thought that the purpose of life was to experience the maximum pleasure, so that happiness constitutes all the hedonic moments that a person experiences throughout his/her life. On the other hand, the eudaemonic approach has its origins in Aristotle, who taking into consideration his ―Nicomachean Ethics‖, criticizes the hedonic approach arguing that it is a common ideal that makes human beings slaves of their own desires. So, he thinks that happiness consists in living according to the "daimon" or true nature, i.e. he considers well-being as a consequence of one's effort to achieve perfection, which symbolizes the achievement of real dreams. Therefore, from this point of view, not all wishes mean well-being when they are achieved. Even when we achieve our wishes, benefits may not be available in a long term basis. Thus, subjective well-being, which is common in the hedonic approach, appears to be more related to the achievement of pleasure and happiness, whereas in the eudaemonic approach, psychological well-being appears to be related to development, personal growth and achievement of our own dreams, trying to fight for what we can become in the future. For Triadó (2003), such duality does not only imply different traditions within the study of well-being, it may also have significant implications for the determination of potential goals or desirable conditions, since well-being is one of the aspirations that every individual would like to achieve, and for this reason society should not prevent individuals from achieving their goals, but provide them with the necessary resources to make their dreams come true. Juan Carlos Melendez-Moral 32 3. SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: THE HEDONIC APPROACH According to Diener (1984), the most consistent approach within the scientific study of well-being is the hedonic approach. Even though psychology has focused on the negative aspects, development, social and behavioural psychologists are increasingly changing this situation, and theoretical and empirical work is introduced at a very fast pace. Thus, even though the term originally used was happiness, subsequently and given the diffuse nature of the term and its philosophical connotations, more operational concepts such as well-being or life satisfaction have been included in the psychological vocabulary, and so research has focused on the analysis of the components or dimensions, which would include to which extent these components have an empirical support in research. Therefore, according to Andrews and Withey (1976), Lucas, Diener and Suh (1996), Diener and Lucas (1999) or Sandin, Chorot, Lostao, Joiner, Santed and Valiente (1999), subjective well-being, a term very much related to well-established concepts in psychology, shows an emotional or affective component, associated with the feelings of pleasure or displeasure the human being experiences, and subject to short and mid-term changes; and a second more cognitive component, relative to the own personal opinion regarding his/her evolutionary trajectory (satisfaction), which would be much more stable and not subject to short and mid-term changes. On this subject, Veenhoven (1994) defines the subjective well-being as the degree in which someone generally or globally judges in positive terms or in other words, if he/she is happy with his/her life. Thus, the individual uses two components, a cognitive one, which represents the differences perceived between aspirations and achievements, ranging from the feeling of personal fulfilment to life experiences of failure or frustration, and an affective one, which implies an hedonic model, i.e. the one which includes the happiness experienced by individuals, with feelings, emotions and most common states of mind. Regarding these two main components of subjective well-being, there is apparently empirical evidence that both dimensions are related (Beiser, 1974; Campbell, Converse and Rodgers, 1976; Diener, 1984; Kushman and Lane, 1980; Michalos, 1986), since if an individual has pleasant emotional experiences, he/she is likely to perceive his/her life as desirable and positive. Additionally, individuals that have greater subjective well-being are those who usually have a favourable assessment of the circumstances and vital events; while "unhappy individuals" are those who consider most of these events to be Ageing and Psychological Well-Being 33 unfavourable. From this point of view, life satisfaction and the affective component of subjective well-being usually correlate, since both elements are influenced by the assessment of general events, activities and circumstances made by the subject. However, they also differ; life satisfaction represents a global life summary or assessment, while affective balance depends more on specific reactions to specific events that take place in the course of life. In any case, and according to several authors, there are reasons to evaluate them separately, since their evolution over time is different, and the relationships they have with other psychological variables show different patterns. Regarding this subject, Pavot and Diener (1993a) list three reasons for this differentiation. Firstly, although individuals recognize the undesirable aspects of their life, they can ignore or avoid negative emotional reactions. Secondly, affective reactions are often short responses given for immediate stimulus, while life satisfaction is an evaluation that shows a long-term perspective. Thirdly, the evaluation consciously made by the individual on his/her life circumstances may show conscious values and objectives. On the contrary, affective reactions may reflect to a large extent unconscious factors, and may be influenced by body states. In any case, as these authors point out, there must be certain degree of convergence between life satisfaction and emotional well-being since both depend on an assessment. If we consider the cognitive component, life satisfaction is defined as a global evaluation on life made by the individual (Pavot, Diener, Colvin, and Sandvik, 1991), so that tangible aspects are examined, setting the good features against bad features, and comparing them with a chosen criterion (Shin and Johnson, 1978), thus leading to a judgement on life satisfaction (Pavot et al., 1991). Therefore, judgements on satisfaction depend on the comparisons made by the individual between life circumstances and a standard that is considered appropriate. The latter is important, since it is not a external standard, but a criterion set by oneself. Regarding this standard, even though there is agreement on the fact that life satisfaction must focus on subjective judgements made by the individual on his/her own life, two different lines of research have been developed. On the one hand, there is an approach from which to establish that instead of adding satisfaction by specific domains in order to obtain a measure of general satisfaction, one should ask the individual for a global evaluation on life (Diener, Emmons, Larsen, and Griffin, 1985). On the other hand, authors such as Cummins (1996) and Cummins, McCabe, Romeo and Gullone (1994), have proposed the use of different domains when breaking-down judgements that Juan Carlos Melendez-Moral 34 individuals make on their lives, defining relevant aspects such as material well-being, health, productivity, intimacy, safety or emotional well-being. Regarding both positive and negative affective components, there is some controversy in connection with the independence of both. Bradburn (1969) developed the hypothesis that happiness is a global judgement made when comparing both affects, and using his Affect Balance Scale (ABS), this author observed that both types of items were relatively independent. According to this idea, different authors indicated that, even though the positive and negative affect scales were virtually unrelated, each one of them shows independent and increasing correlations with a global item of well-being (Beiser, 1974; Bradburn, 1969; Moriwaki, 1974). But these conclusions were refuted for different reasons, being the main reason the type of scales. Thus, several works (Brenner, 1975; Kozma and Stones, 1980; Larsen, Diener and Emmons, 1985) criticised that the relative independence of both types of affect could be based on weaknesses in measurement, which decreased the correlation between the positive and negative affect. For example, they said that there was much non affective content in the items, and that instead of measuring the intensity or frequency of feelings, only its presence was measured, etc. Consequently, subsequent works, such as those by Zevon and Tellegen (1982), and Bryant and Veroff (1982), confirmed the independence of both types of affect, using other measurements and methodologies, which gave evidence to support the dual nature of the affective component. Along this line, a broadly accepted model is the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) (Watson, Clark and Tellegen, 1988), which presents a bidimensional structure of the affect, including both positive and negative dimensions. The positive affect refers to a dimension in which the high levels are characterized by high energy, full c	388,973
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN: 978-1-53612-901-4 (eBook) Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. † New York CONTENTS Preface vii Chapter 1 The Veteran's Loneliness: Emergence, Facets, and Implications for Intervention 1 Jacob Y. Stein Chapter 2 Loneliness and Preference for Solitude among Older Adults 37 Aya Toyoshima Chapter 3 Loneliness and Suicide 67 Rebecca L. Kauten, Jessica M. LaCroix, Amber M. Fox and Marjan Ghahramanlou-Holloway Chapter 4 Social, Interpersonal and Emotional Antecedents of Loneliness 95 Leehu Zysberg Chapter 5 Loneliness Among Romanian Immigrants Living in Portugal 123 Félix Neto and Maria da Conceição Pinto Index 141 PREFACE In this compilation, the authors begin by discussing veterans' loneliness post-war, delineating this experience's developmental course and the underlying relational deficits at its infrastructure throughout that course. The authors also compare the characteristics of this loneliness to those of other types of loneliness, highlighting the necessity of understanding the veteran's experience as a specific form of loneliness. Next, developmental change in elderly people linked to loneliness and preference for solitude are examined through findings of recent studies, and reconsidering loneliness and the positive aspects of solitude. Preference for solitude is similarly examined. One chapter examines loneliness and suicide through Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioral theory and largely through Erik Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development. Intervention strategies to address loneliness and suicide are studied, and recommendations for clinical practice and future areas of study are presented. Lastly, a study is presented focusing on determinants of loneliness among Romanian migrants living in Portugal. The goal of the study was to answer two questions: “(1) What influences do acculturation problems have on loneliness? (2) What influences does adaptation to the society of settlement have on loneliness?” Chapter 1 - Veterans' loneliness may persist decades after the war and may be detrimental, particularly when deployment has been traumatic. Lázár Rudolf viii Indeed, mitigating loneliness via social support may be essential for alleviating war-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nevertheless, rarely has veterans' loneliness been empirically investigated, and its unique features have never been systematically delineated. Since experiences of loneliness vary qualitatively, and these variations may have implications regarding the kind of support and clinical intervention necessary for their amelioration, understanding its nature may be critical. The current chapter fills this gap by delineating this experience's developmental course and the underlying relational deficits at its infrastructure throughout that course. Based on veterans' accounts and extant multidisciplinary literature, the veteran's loneliness is traced from enlistment, through deployment, war, and homecoming. An experiential loneliness bound to the “veteran identity” is depicted, and the significance of transitions between social contexts and experiential worlds is underscored. Comparing the characteristics of this loneliness to those of other types of loneliness the chapter highlights the necessity of understanding the veteran's experience as a specific form of loneliness, with implications for intervention, both clinical and societal. The chapter therefore concludes with implications for practitioners and social support networks, as well as desirable directions for future research. Chapter 2 - Older adults tend to find it difficult to engage in social activities, as their social environments can be adversely affected as a result of negative life events such as bereavements, retirement, and the loss of physical function. Such individuals also find it difficult to develop new close relationships in later life. Further, the ratio of time spent alone tends to increase with age, with studies showing that older adults spend 48% of their daily lives engaging in solitary activities. However, although there are some negative factors that enhance loneliness in later life, the levels of loneliness reported by older adults are not as high as those reported by other age groups, which is a somewhat paradoxical finding. Geropsychological studies have determined that older adults manage the consequences of failure and loss using two strategies: primary control strategies and secondary control strategies. Primary control strategies refer to individuals’ attempts to change the external world to fit their personal Preface ix needs and desires, while secondary control strategies concern individuals’ inner emotions and involve their efforts to influence their own preferences. As primary control strategies can be costly, older adults are more likely to rely on secondary control strategies. Thus, it is possible that older adults use secondary control to change their preferences and adapt to the new limitations to their social activities. Meanwhile, preference for solitude, which relates to a high level of competency in terms of spending time alone (e.g., feeling positive emotions in such a situation), may be another important factor in this regard. In this chapter, developmental change in elderly people in relation to loneliness and preference for solitude are reviewed; this is achieved by examining the findings of recent studies, and reconsidering loneliness and the positive aspects of solitude. Chapter 3 - Loneliness has been conceptualized both as an objective state of physical alienation and a subjective state of distress due to feeling alone. The construct of loneliness has been empirically linked with a variety of mental health conditions including depression, hopelessness, suicide ideation, and/or suicide-related behaviors. This chapter examines loneliness and suicide through Aaron Beck’s cognitive behavioral theory and largely through Erik Erickson’s theory of psychosocial development. More specifically, the authors review how ambivalence resulting from competing drives of connectedness, authenticity, and self-protection may contribute to loneliness and explore manifestations of loneliness and suicidality during childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, middle adulthood, and older adulthood. Intervention strategies to address loneliness in the context of suicide are explored, and recommendations for clinical practice and future areas of empirical inquiry are presented. Chapter 4 - While the literature is replete with evidence and theory regarding the emotional consequences of loneliness and the challenges they pose to individuals, there is still not enough evidence examining the emotional antecedents of the phenomenon. This chapter reviews the existing literature on emotional antecedents of loneliness, dwells on recent evidence linking loneliness and certain underlying emotional mechanisms and presents an integrative model to guide research and future practice in diverse settings. Lázár Rudolf x Chapter 5 - This study approaches the determinants of loneliness among Romanian migrants living in Portugal. Two research questions guided the study: (1) What influences do acculturation problems have on loneliness? (2) What influences does adaptation to the society of settlement have on loneliness? The sample of this research consisted of 181 Romanian immigrants living in Portugal (49% females). The average duration of stay in Portugal was 9 years. Loneliness was measured by the ULS-6. In addition, other scales were used to assess Portuguese language proficiency, perceived discrimination, sociocultural adaptation, multicultural ideology, psychological problems and self-esteem. Results showed that both indicators of acculturation problems and of adaptation significantly predicted loneliness. Implications of the findings for future research are discussed. In: Psychology of Loneliness ISBN: 978-1-53612-900-7 Editor: Lázár Rudolf © 2017 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. Chapter 1 THE VETERAN'S LONELINESS: EMERGENCE, FACETS, AND IMPLICATIONS FOR INTERVENTION Jacob Y. Stein, PhD Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel I-CORE Research Center for Mass Trauma, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel ABSTRACT Veterans' loneliness may persist decades after the war and may be detrimental, particularly when deployment has been traumatic. Indeed, mitigating loneliness via social support may be essential for alleviating war-induced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Nevertheless, rarely has veterans' loneliness been empirically investigated, and its unique features have never been systematically delineated. Since experiences of Corresponding Author address: Jacob Y. Stein, I-CORE Research Center for Mass Trauma, Bob Shapell School of Social Work, Tel Aviv University, 69978 Tel Aviv, Israel. Email: cobisari@gmail.com. Jacob Y. Stein 2 loneliness vary qualitatively, and these variations may have implications regarding the kind of support and clinical intervention necessary for their amelioration, understanding its nature may be critical. The current chapter fills this gap by delineating this experience's developmental course and the underlying relational deficits at its infrastructure throughout that course. Based on veterans' accounts and extant multidisciplinary literature, the veteran's loneliness is traced from enlistment, through deployment, war, and homecoming. An experiential loneliness bound to the “veteran identity” is depicted, and the significance of transitions between social contexts and experiential worlds is underscored. Comparing the characteristics of this loneliness to those of other types of loneliness the chapter highlights the necessity of understanding the veteran's experience as a specific form of loneliness, with implications for intervention, both clinical and societal. The chapter therefore concludes with implications for practitioners and social support networks, as well as desirable directions for future research. Keywords: loneliness, veterans, identity, experiential loneliness, trauma INTRODUCTION In a recent evocative article that appeared in the veteran-issues online magazine US Defense Watch, former U.S Army Intelligence officer and veteran of the Gulf War, Ray Starmann (2015), asserted the following: Millions of vets are and have been successful in all endeavors. They are doctors, lawyers, business people and a thousand other professions. Not all have PTSD; not all are the troubled, brooding, street corner homeless guy, although they exist and need help desperately. No matter how successful a vet might be materially, more often than not, vets are often alone, mentally and spiritually each day and for the rest of their lives. Starmann had written his article as the 2015 Veterans Day was approaching, so as to provide a glimpse at the solitary world of the veteran. However, for those unfamiliar with the veteran experience, the solitary world of veterans depicted by Starmann may seem striking, perplexing and The Veteran's Loneliness 3 enigmatic. The enigma is accentuated when this solitary reality is contrasted with the ostensible embracing welcome that many civilians offer their nation's returning veterans, and more so in cases wherein veterans evince an apparently successful reintegration into society, as portrayed by Starmann. Thus, as one reads Starmann's depiction of the veteran's isolation, one may come to wonder: what is it that is so critically lacking in veterans' social networks? What is it that renders them so alone? Moreover, how does this loneliness materialize? And how might it best be addressed and ameliorated? These are the questions that are at the center of the current chapter. It is important to address these questions and unravel the enigma for several reasons. First, because loneliness is an emotional state that may entail extreme torment and suffering, and as such shares common features with physical pain (e.g., MacDonald & Leary, 2005). Additionally, loneliness may be extremely detrimental, as it precipitates impediments to physical and mental health, hindered well-being and premature mortality (S. Cacioppo, Grippo, London, Goossens, L., & Cacioppo, 2015). Even more alarming is the evidence that loneliness plays a pivotal role in suicide behaviors (Van Orden et al., 2010). At a time when veteran suicides are spiking (e.g., Kang et al., 2015), veteran loneliness is an issue that must be understood to the core, and efficient means for its amelioration are to be sought with utmost urgency. Finally, understanding veterans' loneliness may be informative in that it sheds light on the processes that occur in the various social networks in which these individuals are situated, both military and civilian. In the current chapter I then strive to delineate both the characteristics of the veteran's loneliness, and the manner in which it unfolds from the time of enlistment to the veteran's return to civilian life. Towards this end, in the preparation of this chapter an "insider's perspective" of the experience was sought, and a rich description of the experience is put forth below. The ultimate objective of the current chapter is to inform mental health professionals, as well as supporting figures within veterans' close social networks, as to the manner in which the loneliness under scrutiny may best be addressed. Indeed, understanding the lonely aspect of being a Jacob Y. Stein 4 veteran may be of immense value also for those who care for the returning veteran, first and foremost family and friends (Lyons, 2007). At the outset, however, the nature and multifariousness of loneliness must be addressed, for it is these that mandate the discernment of one type of loneliness from other types. Loneliness – Its Nature and Relation to Recovery from Trauma Loneliness may be conceptualized as the epitome of relational deficit within a given social configuration. From a cognitive perspective, loneliness is conceptualized as a perceived discrepancy between an individual’s desired social relations and those that he or she currently inhabits (Peplau & Perlman, 1982; Russell, Cutrona, McRae, & Gomez, 2012). As such, loneliness is, by definition, a subjective rather than objective experience of isolation. Moreover, it is invariably experienced as unpleasant as opposed to neutral or positive modes of isolation, such as aloneness or solitude (Gotesky, 1965). However, loneliness is anything but a unified experience (e.g., Hawkley, Browne, & Cacioppo, 2005; Rokach, 1988), and is in fact a term that lends itself to diverse, although conceptually related, phenomena (Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2015b). According to Stein and Tuval-Mashiach (2015b), experiences of loneliness may be qualitatively discerned from one another by examining the characteristics of one or more of seven elements that constitute every experience of loneliness: a) the experiencing subject (e.g., the lonely person's age, gender, personality), b) the relationship within which the experience transpires (e.g., familial, social, romantic), c) the Other with whom the relationship is formed (e.g., friends, intimate partner, oneself as an Other), d) the relational needs that are to be fulfilled in the relationship and the relational expectations it fosters (e.g., belongingness, intimacy, love, attention), e) the discrepancy between desired and attained relatedness (e.g., intensity or severity), f) the manner in which the person experiences him or herself as isolated (e.g., socially isolated, emotionally isolated), and g) the quality or intensity of the painful affective state that The Veteran's Loneliness 5 constitutes the experience of loneliness (e.g., depression, hollowness, forsakenness). Loneliness in this respect is polymorphic. The social isolation of an ostracized adolescent yearning for friends and the emotional isolation of a widow longing for her lost companion, are both forms of loneliness albeit a very different from of loneliness (Weiss, 1973), as is the existential isolation demarcated by philosophers (e.g., Mijuskovic, 2015) and existential psychologists (e.g., Ettema, Derksen, & van Leeuwen, 2010; Moustakas, 1961; Yalom, 1980). These phenomena all share a mutual core, but are nonetheless associated with different psychosocial deficits. Therefore, it is argued, they may require different interventions for their amelioration. Conversely, recent research indicates that the loneliness of active duty soldiers is likewise contextually-bound, and must be understood somewhat differently than the loneliness that is prevalent among civilians (J. T. Cacioppo et al., 2016). Ultimately, the alleviation of loneliness may be achieved by addressing the person's maladaptive perceptions or social tendencies (Masi, Chen, Hawkley, & Cacioppo, 2011), or otherwise by environmental changes that entail the adequate provision of relational provisions and apt social support. Arguably, providing the necessary support and facilitating healing highly depend on the identification of the relevant relational needs of the lonely person and the relationships within which these must be realized (Dykstra, 1993). From a motivation-oriented evolutionary perspective, loneliness is understood primarily as a transient phenomenon that, although may include an initial phase of withdrawal, eventually motivates individuals to seek reconnection (Qualter et al., 2015). Understanding personal inclinations towards either withdrawal or reconnection then depends on understanding of the underlying foundations of the individual's experience of loneliness. These realizations become pertinent when one takes into consideration that veterans must often also cope with the traumatizing aspects of war. War entails numerous stressors, including a constant threat of annihilation, ubiquitous death, incessant anxiety, exhaustion, deprivation, moral conflicts, guilt, homesickness and the loss of friends (e.g., Nash, 2007). These, for many veterans, may result in prolonged torment and Jacob Y. Stein 6 anguish that manifest as combat stress injuries (Figley & Nash, 2007), most conspicuous of which is posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; e.g., Fulton et al., 2015). Nevertheless, phenomena that have been identified as antonymic to loneliness (e.g., reconnection, reintegration, social support), may play a pivotal role in the process of recovering from trauma (Herman, 1992) as well as in mitigating the development of PTSD (e.g., Brewin, Andrews, & Valentine, 2000). Studies have found that perceived social support was implicated in less loneliness and PTSD among veterans both cross-sectionally and longitudinally throughout the course of 20 years after the war (Karstoft, Armour, Elklit, & Solomon, 2013; Solomon, Bensimon, Greene, Horesh, & Ein-Dor, 2015). Moreover, Solomon, Waysman and Mikulincer (1990) found that in the case of post-war PTSD support may be protective only if it indeed manages to alleviate loneliness. Notwithstanding, it would seem that any information addressing the nature and developmental course of veterans' loneliness may not to be found in one organized source in the trauma literature, but rather must be aggregated piecemeal from various sources. Loneliness-Focused Trauma Literature: A Gap Delineated Trauma has long been recognized as one of many potential antecedents of loneliness (Rokach, 1989). In the specific domain of war related trauma, there are volumes replete with allusions to post-war isolation and its concomitants. Such allusions appear in interdisciplinary works raging across psychology and psychiatry (e.g., Caplan, 2011; Figley & Leventman, 1980; Herman, 1992; Lifton, 1973), sociology (e.g., Schuetz, 1945; Waller, 1944), and philosophy (Sherman, 2015). Adding to this rich literature are non-academic monographs written by veterans (e.g., Johnson, 2010; Paulson & Krippner, 2004), letters written by veterans (Gill, 2011), and literary memoirs (e.g., Hynes, 1996). When loneliness has indeed been examined systematically, it was found among veterans several decades after their traumatic war experiences. Kuwert, Knaevelsrud, and Pietrzak, (2014), for instance, The Veteran's Loneliness 7 found that among older veterans in the US, 44% reported feeling lonely at least some of the time, and of these, over 10% reported feeling lonely most of the time. Similarly, comparing veterans who sustained a psychiatric breakdown in the heat of battle – a phenomenon known as combat stress reaction (CSR) – with veterans who did not, Solomon et al. (2015) found that the CSR casualties evinced steady high rates of loneliness throughout 20 years after their war experiences, whereas non-CSR veterans' loneliness decresed throughout the years. Furthermore, Solomon and her colleagues found that the baseline severity of PTSD symptomatology was cross- sectionally positively associated with loneliness, suggesting that loneliness may play a role in posttraumatic psychopathology. Indeed, "feelings of detachment or estrangement from others" (but not loneliness) have been incorporated in the recent edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013, p. 272) as possible constituents of PTSD. Regardless of the above indications that war-induced trauma may result in loneliness, and despite the fact that loneliness has been recognized as a clinically pertinent issue (S. Cacioppo et al., 2015); it remains the case that systematic loneliness-focused investigations with traumatized populations are scant. Indeed, most of the aforementioned literature, with the exception of the few studies cited above, consists of anthologies and monographs rather than peer-reviewed studies. Moreover, if this literature has referred to veterans' loneliness, it has done so mainly in passing or by alluding to related terms from the vast loneliness nomenclature (e.g., isolation, estrangement, alienation). This paucity is indicated, for instance, in the fact that none of the trauma encyclopedias that were published in the past decade (Doctor & Shiromoto, 2010; Figley, 2012; Reyes, Elhai, & Ford, 2008) have allocated an entry for loneliness. As part of this investigative dearth, to date, there exists no systematic investigation as to the manner in which veterans' post-war loneliness transpires, and no delineation of the course in which it unfolds and manifests itself. Due to this gap in the literature, attempts to explain why veterans' loneliness lingers for decades after the war, as well as attempts to trace it to its origins, remain largely speculative and tentative. Filling this gap, in the Jacob Y. Stein 8 current chapter I trace the experience back to its origins. This explication will facilitate a deeper understanding of veterans' motivations to reconnect or otherwise further withdraw in various social contexts, as well as promote the devising of apt clinical and supportive practices. Gaining Entrance to the Experience The bulk of the current chapter is an attempt to grant readers an entrance into the veteran's experience of loneliness and its phenomenology. This endeavor is engaged below in two complementary manners: (a) via veterans' narrative explications and (b) via the vast extant literature relating to veterans' war and post-war experiences. Narratives are most informative when attempting to understand the unfolding of human experience, particularly that of loneliness, from an insider's perspective (Wood, 1986). This is because narratives consist of rich accounts wherein experiences (e.g., war and homecoming) are temporally concatenated in a plot, and are linked to the characters (i.e., self and Others) and meanings (e.g., deficient relational needs and expectations) that are most pertinent from the narrator's perspective (e.g., Polkinghorne, 1988). Moreover, it is within narrative that phenomena may receive the title "loneliness," thus indicating that the phenomena under inspection are indeed construed as such by the persons who have experienced them (Wood, 1986). Veterans' oral and printed accounts are ubiquitous these days, and many of these reveal experiences entailing a state of painful isolation (i.e., loneliness). At the center of the current chapter stand two such exemplary accounts. Both accounts were chosen for their rich explicatory nature, and because their authors do not present the accounts as personal narratives per se, but rather strive to explain the loneliness of a veteran qua veteran to an outsider (i.e., a non-veteran, a civilian). The original authors have given their permission to use the accounts in the current project. The first account is one shared by a Vietnam veteran, L.V. The narrative was sent to me by L.V via e-mail correspondence (August, 20, 2015) in response to my inquiry concerning the experience of post-war loneliness. Complementing The Veteran's Loneliness 9 L.V's account is Starmann's (2015) aforementioned piece, entitled The Solitary World of the Vet. Starmann's article was purposively chosen also because its publication enabled many other veterans to react to the depiction it offers. Veterans responding to Starmann's article, whether on the US Defense Watch site, where it had originally appeared, or on social media (i.e., Facebook), where it was shared several thousand times, have all confirmed that Starmann's articulate depiction is faithful to their own experience, thus confirming that the account is anything but idiosyncratic. Below, the discussion of L.V's and Starmann's accounts will be grounded in extant literature. Undeniably, neither such literature nor the veterans' narratives indicate the prevalence of the phenomena under scrutiny. To the best of my knowledge, quantitative epidemiological studies seeking to establish such prevalence have not yet been conducted. Nevertheless, recognizing the common factors among narratives and extant literature serves to further demonstrate that these phenomena transcend the idiographic accounts, and are readily transferable to other veterans in more diverse post-war realities. L.V's and Starmann's accounts are therefore discussed not only as private cases but also and primarily as exemplars of the lonely-veteran experience. THE VETERANS' LONELINESS In order to gain a fuller understanding of veterans' post-war loneliness it may be beneficial to trace their experiences from the time of enlistment and deployment, through their war experiences, and finally to the post-war era from the initial time of homecoming to the more protracted civilian life wherein the loneliness at hand consolidates. Veterans' relational ties, the characteristics of their social networks, and their social connections and detachments throughout this temporal-experiential course vary considerably, and with them vary their experiences of loneliness. Jacob Y. Stein 10 Enlistment, Deployment and Homesickness As he set out to explain what it is that the veteran's loneliness entails and where and when it is fashioned, L.V noted the following: Being lonely is very difficult for humans; we have always been around a lot of other people and engaged in the act of living with and interacting with others from the day we are born. We have sought love, sought to be "included" and sought the approval of those with whom we interact. Then as a young man, in my case, we leave those with whom we have made an integral part of our life and go away, alone and to unfamiliar places. We then share the most basic of human emotions with others who are in a situation similar to ours. We begin to bond because of this shared "lonesome for home and family and longtime friends feeling." We get close as a group, then experience horrors that we have never experienced before; most are so basically alien to what we have ever known or could have dreamed. The greater the threat, the horror, the pain we feel, the closer we become. A primary goal in the initial phase of military training (i.e., boot camp) is the socialization of new recruits by stripping them of their civilian identity and instilling a military identity in its stead (Van Gennep, 1960). The transition into military life therefore entails a transition from the familiar, and perhaps typically caring, environment of one's family to the foreign military regime of the military. Thus, of great significance in adjusting to such transitions are the relationships in the soldier's family of origin prior to enlistment. Families that foster social growth and competence may in time facilitate closeness in the new social network of the military unit (Shulman, Levy-Shiff, & Scharf, 2000). At this preliminary point of transition, however, loneliness may become manifest first and foremost in the form of homesickness, implicated in the need for a familiar relational bond such as the family or friends left back home. This homesickness may be one of the first challenges soldiers must face right at the outset of their service (e.g., Flach, De Jager, & Van de Ven, 2000). It may exacerbate at times of deployment when the geographical distance The Veteran's Loneliness 11 complements and amplifies the sense of detachment from one's home, parents, spouse, and children. However, there is something much more profound in this transition, and it is underscored by the particular significance of the relationships formed among the members of the combat unit. Combat soldiers bond, in part, by undergoing shared experiences. The newly acquired social network becomes tighter and more significant as its members undergo mutual trials and tribulations. In this respect, the aforementioned homesickness is not only one of the warriors' shared experiences, but may, in fact, serve as a catalyst in the unit's bonding process thereafter (Waller, 1944). Such bonding, if attained, may fill the relational deficit created at the time of enlistment when the new recruit leaves home and all that it entails, but may later hinder the renewed entry into civilian society (Demers, 2011). Indeed, researchers recently found that for active-duty soldiers the experience of loneliness is more closely related to their bonds within the unit than to their relations with their actual families (J. T. Cacioppo et al., 2016). This finding makes perfect sense when the unit's cohesion is considered. Traversing into the war environment, it would seem that the soldiers' shared experiences become more extreme and tormenting, and as they do, the comrades' bond becomes tighter. In this shared fate, interdependence may be established among the members of the combat unit, resulting in a cohesion that may be indispensable for survival (Adler & Castro, 2013). Overcoming extreme hardship togehter may enable the overcoming of soldiers' initial loneliness and facilitate the forging of a comradery that must hold in circumstances of life and death on the battlefield. Fostering resilience in the face of potential threats to social ties (i.e., social resilience) may then be pertinent among soldiers (J. T. Cacioppo, Reis, & Zautra, 2011), and has therefore begun to attract researchers' attention (J. T. Cacioppo, Adler, et al., 2015). From an evolutionary perspective, animals and humans alike depend on companionship and mutual protection and assistance for their survival (J. T. Cacioppo, Cacioppo, et al., 2015). Loneliness then signals that there is a need to strengthen such bonds. This becomes even more pertinent at Jacob Y. Stein 12 times of actual threat. During war, the lack of unit cohesiveness may be a catalyst for the mental breakdown on the battlefield (Dasberg, 1976; Solomon, 1993), and may result in subsequent PTSD after the shooting ends (Brailey, Vasterling, Proctor, Constans, & Friedman, 2007). Acknowledging the intensity of the soldiers' bond may be crucial for understanding the emergence and severity of the loneliness that veterans experience upon homecoming. Homecoming, Experiential Loneliness and Communicative Isolation Eventually, the war ends and the unit, which has since become family, is dispersed. L.V makes note of this transition explicitly: Then, one day it is over. We know we will never see most of this “new” family again. We know that many of those who still have to stay and endure the horrors, will never actually leave. . . . This is traumatic to most, but not as much as finding out that when you do return, nobody has a clue what you have been through, or even who you have now become. You are alone, really alone. The sense of being alone may then manifest itself as soon as the veteran returns home. Homecoming has been extremely difficult in this sense for veterans in the time when Homer wrote the Iliad and Odyssey (Shay, 1994, 2002), as it has been after the World Wars (e.g., Shuetz, 1945), after Vietnam (e.g., Figley & Leventman, 1980), or following the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (e.g., Ahern et al., 2015; Caplan, 2011). Post- war loneliness to a great extent revolves around the loss of shared experiences. Upon homecoming, the world's population becomes bifurcated in the veteran's eyes: civilians on the one side, and veterans on the other (e.g., Ahern et al., 2015; Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2015a; Waller, 1944). The former do not share the war and post-war experiences and are thus incapable of understanding the returning veteran, and the latter are The Veteran's Loneliness 13 capable of listening and understanding but are usually not around to do so. Linking the above notions together, Starmann (2015) notes the following: Many vets experienced and saw and heard and did things unimaginable to the average person. They also lived a daily camaraderie that cannot be repeated in the civilian world. In fact, many vets spend the rest of their lives seeking the same esprit de corps that simply is absent from their civilian lives and jobs. They long to spend just 15 minutes back with the best friends they ever had, friends that are scattered to every corner of the earth, and some to the afterlife itself. Vets are haunted by visions of horror and death, by guilt of somehow surviving and living the good life, when some they knew are gone. They strangely wish sometimes that they were back in those dreadful circumstances, not to experience the dirt and horror and terror and noise and violence again, but to be with the only people a vet really knows, other vets. Veterans may practically miss being around those who have shared the experiences that have made them who they are. For many, the end of the war puts an end to their aspiration to feel ultimately connected. It leaves them very much alone with their experiences in a civilian world oblivious to the meaning of the experiences they have endured during their deployments. Seeking a conceptual understanding of this form of isolation, Stein and Tuval-Mashiach (2015a) suggest that the loneliness at hand may be best characterized as loneliness of experiential isolation or in short, experiential loneliness (p. 127). Conversely, Wood (1986) terms this facet of loneliness failed intersubjectivity, denoting the person's unfulfilled desire for interpersonal connection on the subjective level. The psychological underpinnings of such phenomena are multifaceted. Bearing subjective experiences alone undermines the human need for shared inner realities. We all need to sense that others experience, feel, think, evaluate, and altogether view the world as we do (Echterhoff, Higgins and Levine, 2009). In part, this is what motivates people to tell stories of those experiences. That said, typically, people assume that those who have undergone the same experiences as them are most capable of understanding how they felt in these experiences; and at times, that only Jacob Y. Stein 14 such individuals can do so (e.g., Hodges, Kiel, Kramer, Veach, & Villanueva, 2010). This persuasion, which may be pivotal in determining sources of emotional support and stress following stressful life events (Suitor, Keeton, & Pillemer, 1995), seems to lie in the substructure of veterans' post-war loneliness. At times, this feeling is exacerbated by the realization that others do not want to listen or otherwise are not really interested in understanding, thus ultimately culminating in the devastating feeling that no one really cares. In her analysis, for instance, Sherman (2015) notes in that for the veteran who needs others to really listen, the words "thank you for your service!" may be experienced as hollow lip- service, for they come instead of a sincere interest in that which the veteran had undergone during the war and since he or she has returned. Turning to L.V's explication of what this lonely experience entails, the personal meaning of such an experiential loneliness begins to emerge: The lonely feelings become enmeshed with feelings of helplessness and the scars of experiences that you never find a way to flush from your mind. You can write a superb study that many will read in curiosity or awe or for understanding. But I do not believe it is possible to explain or understand the type of deep, black loneliness that emerges in the context of or aftermath of combat and the later return to a world with those who have no such basis of experience or understanding. And for most, this is simply a subject not discussed. It is a very different kind of loneliness than simply missing a girl friend or family members. It is much more pervasive. You can go visit family and friends, [but] you cannot solve the loneliness issues that arise from horrific traumatic experiences that only others who have similar experiences can ever understand. In these assertions, L.V practically deemed my current endeavor in this chapter all but a futile attempt to communicate the experience at hand, and he is certainly not alone in these sentiments. From the veterans' perspective, his or her post-war loneliness may be experienced as a perpetual, incommunicable, and irrevocable loneliness, explicitly differentiated from any other kind of more quotidian forms of loneliness. Words fail extreme loneliness (Fromm-Reichmann, 1959/1990), and they The Veteran's Loneliness 15 fail the experiences incorporated in the gestalt we recognize as “war.” This phenomenon may be referred to as communicative isolation, wherein one is severed from society by the constraints of language. Thus, veterans may feel experientially isolated in regards to their loneliness just as they are in regards to the combat experiences they bear, and which have given rise to this loneliness that they now experience. The failure of language in this sense is twofold. First, the lonely veteran learns that words cannot adequately communicate to civilians the ineffable war experience. Alfred Schütz notes in this respect that, When the soldier returns and starts to speak – if he starts to speak at all – he is bewildered to see that his listeners, even the sympathetic ones, do not understand the uniqueness of these individual experiences which have rendered him another man. (Schuetz, 1945, p. 374) Starmannn (2015) expounds on this communicative barrier: A problem with the solitary world of the vet is that the vet has a hard time explaining what he or she did to those who didn’t serve. Some vets want to talk, but they have no outlet. . . . Part of this taciturn mentality is that vets speak another language, a strange and archaic language of their past. How do you talk to civilians about “fire for effect” or “grid 7310” or “shake and bake” or “frag orders” or “10 days and a wake up” or a thousand and one other terms that are mystifying to the real world? You can't. But it is much more than the technicalities of military routines that is incommunicable. The whole gamut of experiences one endures in battle are fundamentally different from civilians' mundane experiences – the loss of friends, the looming death, the incessant sense of threat and uncertainty, the struggle with the forces of nature and the perniciousness and brutality of human actions – all of these words are hollow representations of the experiences they attempt to represent. Thus silence emerges, for, as Wittgenstein (1921/2002, p. 89) famously noted “What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.” Jacob Y. Stein 16 The second linguistic barrier, indeed the Janusian face of the extreme nature of war, concerns the realization that for the veteran, civilian language has also changed its meaning. As Waller notes, “the words which mean so much to the civilian mean very little to the soldier” (Waller, 1944, p. 32). Words such as “pain,” “loss,” “friendship,” “responsibility,” “honor,” “loyalty,” “impossible,” and many others which are common stock in civilian discourse may have all changed their meanings for veterans who have encountered these in their most extreme forms. Such communicative barriers may once again lead to silence and withdrawal, as the veteran presupposes the emergence of misunderstanding a priori. These withdrawals permeate and impede several relational domains, including family, friends and society as a whole (Lyons, 2007). To exemplify, in their investigation of reintegration problems among veterans retuning from Iraq and Afghanistan Sayer et al. (2010) found that the leading challenges for reintegration are all interpersonal (e.g., dealing with strangers, making new friends, keeping up nonmilitary friendships, belonging in “civilian” society). More to the point, at the top of the list for most veterans in the study was the challenge of confiding or sharing personal thoughts and feelings with others. Civilian Life, the Veteran Identity, and Experiential Alienation Evidently, the sense of loneliness at hand is rooted in emotional transitions which are only partially congruent with physical transitions: from home to the military, from training to war, and from war back home. Perhaps more than any other experience during one's military service, war ultimately changes the combatant's identity (e.g., Gill, 2011). In fact, participation in war is the primary factor which constitutes the combat veteran's identity as such. It is this altered identity that civilians typically underappreciate. Starmann (2015) notes that, “Civilians must understand that for a vet nothing is ever the same again.” Schütz complements this realization by noting that the returning veteran “is not the same man who The Veteran's Loneliness 17 left. He is neither the same for himself nor for those who await his return” (Schuetz, 1945, p.375). Emphasizing the critical junctions wherein emotional transitions occur, L.V brought his account to a close with a summarizing statement that encapsulates all that has already been said, and reveals most explicitly the unmet relational needs encompassed in the veteran's experientially lonely state: In an abbreviated sense, being lonely is fighting for acceptance in your original world, being ripped away and then enduring the same process in a new world but under horrific circumstances, then returning to your original world only to discover that you are not understood, do not belong there the same way you did before, and the new world you have just left no longer exists, leaving you alone. Even when there are still the trappings of the world you once knew, they are no more, and there is no one to comfortably talk with about these things, so you keep these feelings inside and withdraw into them unless distracted by work or some crisis or some event powerful enough to draw your mind away from simply feeling like you no longer belong, anywhere really. Of immense importance here is yet another long standing fundamental human need, the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Gere & MacDonald, 2010). Aside from the compromised need to be understood, veterans also forfeit this form of connection, and thus feel further detached from society. The returning veteran's sense of being “a stranger among strangers” (Schuetz, 1945, p. 369), his or her experiential alienation, so to speak, once again underscores the existence of the aforementioned two populations, veterans and civilians, who are separated by an unshared and incommensurable experiential background. Such alienation was highlighted recently among UK veterans who sustained psychological injuries during combat (Brewin, Garnett, & Andrews, 2011). The researchers argue that this alienation was the most pressing issue relating to their mental health and suicidal behaviors. Participants in several related qualitative studies (Ahern et al., 2015; Brewin et al., 2011; Demers, 2011; R. T. Smith & True, 2014; Stein, 2017; Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2015a), Jacob Y. Stein 18 repeatedly noted that it is this alienation, in part, that drives veterans to withdraw from civilians, family included, on the one hand; and at the same time seek the companionship of other veterans, “brothers in arms” and experiential partners. From the lonely veterans' perspective, only a network consisting of such experiential partners may assuage their loneliness, and only among them they truly belong (e.g., Ahern et al., 2015). In this respect, the veteran's loneliness is highly bound to their veteran identity as they are required to make the transition into a civilian identity that is altogether unfamiliar to them and undesired (R. T. Smith & True, 2014). This alienation is a signature feature of the veteran's loneliness, for it is anchored in the alteration of veterans' world views. The shattering of basic world views, particularly assumptions concerning self-worth and world benevolence, have been associated with the human reaction to trauma (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). As Brewin et al. (2011) suggest the alteration of such world views may be significant when concerning the alienation at hand in that it keeps the veteran from sharing civilians' preconceptions and hinders reintegration. However, the crux of this alteration in prior perspective may be missed when examined via a-relational categories such as "perception of the world" and "perception of the self". Rather, it may be more informative to view these changes as an alteration in the perception of self in relation to the world, particularly that of veterans versus civilians. As one of the participants in Brewin and colleagues' study (2011) noted, “our lives are completely alien to civilian lives. I think it always will be a them-and-us situation” (p. 1737). Civilians do not typically construct their identities as contrasted to veterans' identities, but the opposite is often true: veterans define themselves in contrast to civilians. In a parallel vein, increasing attention is being devoted in the US to the emergence of a civilian-military gap. Several domains have been underscored wherein military personnel find that they endorse significantly different views from the civilian population (e.g., Rahbek-Clemmensen et al., 2012; Szayana, McCarthy, Sollinger, Demaine, Marquis, & Steele, 2007). Veterans' loneliness, and particularly their sense of experiential alienation, is closely related to this gap. Nevertheless, to the best of my knowledge, these have never been explicitly considered in this context. The Veteran's Loneliness 19 Undeniably, the reception of the returning veteran by society may contribute immensely to this sense of estrangement. Unwelcoming, hostile, rejecting or ostracizing receptions may be the worst in this sense (e.g., after the Vietnam War; e.g., Figley & Leventman, 1980; Lifton, 1973). However, the reception does not have to be a hostile one for experiential isolation to transpire (Caplan, 2011). In fact, for the veteran, the vagaries of civilian life may be construed as the antithesis of war, and civilians leading their lives as usual, may be held in contempt and “guilty” of being apathetic to the war. As some veterans note, “We’ve been at war while the country has been at the mall” (Sherman, 2015, p. 1). It is the experiential chasm that opens up between veterans and civilians that matters. Furthermore, the sensation that civilians are stigmatic about veterans' posttraumatic reactions may exacerbate the latter's sense of alienation (e.g., Caplan, 2011; Brewin et al., 2011). Such stigmas may motivate veterans to eschew any inclination to reconnect and reintegrate, thus jeopardizing the formation and reestablishment of adaptive civilian networks. The veteran's experiential loneliness is also implicated in what may be referred to as an internal-external discrepancy, wherein veterans wish that others would share their experiences, and at the same time feel that their subjectivities must remain confined within the boundaries of their bodies. Due to shame or fear of society's judgmental gaze and stigmatization, veterans, at times, invest tremendous efforts in zealously safeguarding their experiences deep within and simultaneously put on a facade as if all is well. It is in this respect that L.V noted that, “you keep these feelings inside and withdraw into them.” The result is often a lack of much needed authentic expression, silence, withdrawal, and isolation. The loneliness at hand is then not about the perceived presence or absence of other people or even about the relation with civilians per se. Rather it is about others' capacity to relate to certain experiences. Indeed, as loneliness is considered to be a subjective rather than objective sense of isolation, it is emphasized in the literature that one may feel extremely lonely even when in a crowd (e.g., Peplau & Perlman, 1982). As if echoing this realization, L.V noted of his own lonely experience that, “I have been in large crowds of people at social events and not felt the presence of a single person.” Jacob Y. Stein 20 Ultimately withdrawing into the confinements of the self, and fearing the stigma of mental injury results in the reluctance to seek help (e.g., Hoge et al., 2004; Kim, Britt, Klocko, Riviere, & Adler, 2011). Refraining from help-seeking then adds another layer to the veteran's stratified experience of loneliness. The Conviction of Being Alone in Coping Approaching his final conclusion, Starmann (2015) notes the following: All of this adds to the solitary world of the vet. Some are better at handling life afterwards than others. Some don’t seem affected at all, but they are. They just hide it. Some never return to normal. But, what is normal to a vet anymore? The veteran's loneliness is a stratified experience in which multiple facets accumulate and create a taxing experiential gestalt. The past and present emotional turmoil that veterans bear within, the lack of communicative capacities and opportunities for sharing within an understanding environment, all amass and give rise to a fifth element, being alone in coping. As the different facets of experiential loneliness accumulate, veterans may be convinced that they have no other choice but to cope alone with the collateral damage of the war. When this conviction creeps into veterans' minds they become exposed to a whole new gamut of relational deficits, once again painting the loneliness at hand in new colors. Here loneliness is demarcated by the need for support in the form of assistance and guidance, and often also for therapy. Indeed, this sense of being alone in coping may be part and parcel of what veterans mean when they speak of being alone (Stein, 2017). Certainly this is the facet of loneliness which agencies such as the VA and veteran emergency hotlines refer to when they reach out to veterans and proclaim “you are not alone!” The Veteran's Loneliness 21 Notably, coping alone may refer to coping with anything and everything, from the transition to civilian life and adaptation to it, to the emotional baggage from the war (e.g., guilt, loss), and up to the psychiatric symptoms endured on the battlefield (e.g., CSR; Solomon, 1993) or thereafter (e.g., PTSD). Interestingly, however, both L.V's and Starmann's accounts do not refer to psychopathology, neither CSR nor PTSD. The isolated states they share are purportedly representatives of the experience of (nearly) anyone who has been to war and lived to tell the tale. As Hynes' (1996) acclaimed titled reads, they represent The Soldier's Tale. As such, their accounts do not indicate the additional experiential isolation which may characterize coping with mental injuries or mental illnesses. Indeed, the complexity of reintegration and the experiential isolation it entails are challenging for veterans and may warrant counseling also when they are relatively healthy (Castro, Kintzle, & Hassa, 2015). It stands to reason, however, that veterans' experiential loneliness may be exacerbated as their emotional trials and tribulations intensify, and particularly when these manifest themselves in psychiatric pathology (Solomon et al., 2015). This is evident, for instance, in Dasberg's (1976) depiction of the loneliness associated with CSR. Accordingly, treading so closely to death's grasp, an overwhelming vulnerability and existential fear may render these combat soldiers ultimately lonely and forsaken. In this mental state, any sense of belonging and cohesion is torn apart at the seams as the soldier anticipates his or her approaching annihilation. The realization that one must inevitably face death alone is a conviction that one can hardly shake off, and hence it is suggested that it lingers on also after the shooting is long over (Solomon et al., 2015). Taking into account the aforementioned civilian-military gap, it is not surprising that remaining alone in coping is exacerbated by a lack of trust in civilians (e.g., Kubany, Gino, Denny, & Torigoe, 1994), and particularly in the care system (e.g., Hoge et al., 2004). As psychiatrist Jonathan Shay notes, combat “destroys the capacity for social trust” (Shay, 1994, p. 33) because it shatters the illusion that people are basically benevolent and good (Janoff-Bulman, 1992). This distrust is directed at one and all, and may also play a role in veterans' sense of loneliness. Distrust in people is Jacob Y. Stein 22 magnified when care systems such as the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) fail to deliver safe, effective, patient-centered care (Kizer & Jha, 2014). The lack of provision of apt care by those who are most responsible for the veteran's well-being, those who have sent him or her to the war, may be experienced as institutional betrayals (C. T. Smith & Freyd, 2014), thus worsening the psychological toll of war. As studies show, the more people believe they can trust others, the less isolated and lonely they tend to feel over time (Rotenberg et al., 2010). Thus, the distrust that may characterize the veteran's post-war experience may also contribute to feeling alone in coping. Moreover, compared to the trust that veterans afford each other during and after combat – trust that is considered as “unparalleled” (Nash, 2007, p. 25) – this new experience of distrust and the resulting predicament of having to cope alone, may mark the end product of a trajectory leading from the “brotherhood of veterans” to a lonely civil detachment. DISCUSSION Ultimately, understanding the veteran's loneliness may facilitate apt interventions and reconnection, as well as direct future research. I will address these aspects in relation to the multifaceted experience of loneliness depicted above. Implications for Intervention and Reconnection As clinicians consider implications for intervention, the first aspects to be addressed are the unique as well as the similar features that the veteran's loneliness shares with other forms of loneliness. The loneliness at hand in its experientially-bound core is different from other forms of loneliness (e.g., lack of friends, lack of intimate partner, social exclusion or ostracism, existential solipsism). Undeniably, the constituents of this experiential loneliness (i.e., failed intersubjectivity, experiential alienation, The Veteran's Loneliness 23 communicative isolation, the internal-external discrepancy, and the sense of having to cope alone with the aftermath of adversity) may all be shared by any that have undergone emotional, psychological, or physical adversities, traumatic or otherwise. As such, much like trauma itself, these experiences may be part and parcel of the human condition (Moustakas, 1961; Stolorow, 2007), and may concern any who wish to diminish the trauma victim's loneliness by being an intersubjectively attuned “relational home” in which severe emotional pain can be held (Stolorow, 2007, p. 10). The special character of the veteran's post-war loneliness, however, may be unique also within the more delimited context of traumatic experiences. This special character lies in the twofold relation it bears to the interpersonal context wherein it transpires. First, as noted above, veterans' identities as veterans form in contrast to the “civilian” identity, which they may eschew (e.g., Smith & True, 2014). Concomitantly, their loneliness also forms in relation to society at large, and their relational deficits often concern society as a whole. Such construal may be expected in collective or national traumas wherein society presumably plays a role in welcoming and ambracing the traumatized person after the trauma is over. Secondly, veterans' loneliness transpires against the backdrop of the closely-knit, experientially- connected, group of comrades. As noted, loneliness invariably manifests itself as a perceived discrepancy between the person's desired and current relational connections (Peplau & Perlman, 1982), and the severity of any experience of loneliness is intensified as this discrepancy grows (Russell et al., 2012). For veterans, this discrepancy is amplified by the intensity of the bond they have come to know under the extreme conditions of war, as well as their conviction that this type of relationship can never be achieved outside of the military. In this respect, veterans may be different from other trauma victims (e.g., rape victims, disaster victims) in that they have an alternative society (i.e., fellow veterans) to which they may compare their sense of experiential connection and disconnection. Thus, I would argue from a prospective and preventive point of view, that as veterans approach the time of discharge, they may benefit from apt preparation that includes forewarnings concerning the encounter with this Jacob Y. Stein 24 experiential gap and manners in which it may be adaptively approached (e.g., Hoge, 2010). Veterans should be informed prior to discharge of the plausible inclination to reproach civilian society, to withdraw into their veteran-self, and shun at civilians' expressions of interest. Concomitantly, veterans may be taught how they might foster more adaptive approaches. The specific features of the loneliness at hand, however, must also be accounted for in interventions that strive to facilitate active reconnection and reintegration after homecoming. Ultimately, since the veteran's loneliness may be closely tied to the “veteran identity” and to the experiences constituting that identity, the focus of intervention must be on assisting veterans in finding their place within newly acquired civilian social networks while retaining their veteran identities – once a warrior always a warrior (Hoge, 2010). This may be done in two complementary avenues. On the one hand, intervention must provide veterans with the necessary tools to bridge the experiential gap they experience. They must find a way to challenge the conviction that society is dichotomously bifurcated into civilians and veterans. On the other hand, society as a whole, and particularly veterans' proximate social support networks, must also work to minimize this gap. This line of thoughts calls into question the mainstream approach to loneliness reduction interventions. Loneliness is typically treated in the literature in the terms of perceived social isolation (e.g., S. Cacioppo et al., 2015). Concomitantly, several effective interventions have been underscored by the literature. These include a) altering maladaptive social cognitions, b) increasing opportunities for social interaction, c) improving social skills, and d) facilitating social support (Masi et al., 2011). According to Masi and his colleagues, interventions seeking to alter maladaptive social cognitions are slightly but significantly more effective than other interventions. This intervention typically aims to teach lonely individuals to identify automatic negative thoughts about themselves (e.g., likability, attractiveness) and their social environment and regard them as hypotheses to be tested rather than consolidated facts. The Veteran's Loneliness 25 The first conclusion to be drawn from the current chapter must be that the alleviation of veterans' loneliness may necessitate either abandoning these alternative approaches to loneliness reduction or otherwise adapting them to its unique features. Altering one's perception of his or her self- worth or likability, or otherwise simply seeking to meet new people or learning how to better engage them will not do. Rather, when seeking to increase social support, for instance, the support needed may be that of a sincere attempt to understand veterans' war and post-war experiences. Clinicians, family members and friends who wish to understand the veteran could, for example, get better acquainted with the war experience by reading descriptions of it by those who have experienced it. In this respect, Litz, Lebowitz, Gray and Nash (2016) argue that clinicians must get familiar with the military culture and the warrior ethos, as well as the particular meaning that the war had for the veteran, prior to their attempts to remedy the aftermath of veterans' traumatic experiences. In a similar vein, support providers might wish to get acquainted with veterans' perspectives concerning the aftermath of war. An alternative or complementary route may be educating oneself by consulting the more scientific literature (e.g., Lyons, 2007). Clinicians would do best to facilitate and encourage such psycho-education. It is noteworthy, however, that making an effort to understand the veteran's experience would ideally be a societal endeavor rather than a task bestowed solely upon veterans' families or friends. What is ultimately needed is the cultivation of a society that is committed to listening to veterans' stories and that would be caring enough to seek to understand their war and post- war experiences (Caplan, 2011; Sherman, 2015). As Sherman (2015, p. 40) asserts, “healing after war is a nation’s work.” In this respect, Starmann (2015) brought the address to an end by stating the following: So, this Veterans’ Day, if you see a vet sitting by themselves at a restaurant or on a train or shopping at the grocery store alone, take a moment to speak with them. Take them out of their solitary world for a moment. You’ll be happy you did. Jacob Y. Stein 26 From the other side of the equation, veterans themselves may also work to minimize the aforementioned experiential gap. When addressing social skills, veterans may benefit from learning to communicate their experiences so as to breach their communicative barriers. In their attempts to overcome linguistic barriers at times of disclosure, veterans may learn to utilize several linguistic devices that might bring the experience to life and vivify it so as to have their audiences connect to the experience on an experiential level (Stein & Tuval-Mashiach, 2017). Furthermore, addressing maladaptive social cognitions, veterans must learn to trust that others will apprehend these disclosures to the best of their capacity. They may also benefit from challenging the conviction that they and the civilian population are inherently different. Undeniably, when considering opportunities for positive social interactions it may be argued that other veterans may be the most apt for the task of reestablishing experiential-connection. This is because veterans already share the war and post-war experiences. This may enable an immediate connection both via veterans' mutual experientially isolated states and the shared experiences lying in the infrastructure of these lonely states. This realization has already inspired several veteran-to-veteran peer support initiatives (e.g., Greden et al., 2010) aiming, among other things, at reducing fear of stigma, increasing veterans' willingness to seek therapy for PTSD and ultimately put an end to their insistence to cope alone. Forming a collective story together may encourage veterans to feel less alone with their own plight and everyday challenges, find once again the comradery they had during their time of service, and ultimately drive them to seek help (Caddick, Phoenix, & Smith, 2015; Hundt, Robinson, Arney, Stanley, & Cully, 2015). Indeed, some veterans tell their stories particularly to further this end (e.g., Johnson, 2010; Paulson & Krippner, 2004). Notwithstanding, the investigation of these interventions is at its preliminary stages. Thus, while several benefits of peer-support interventions have been documented (e.g., the facilitation of support and experiential belongingness), and while their employment has attracted attention in governmental institutions such as the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA; Chinman et al., 2008), their effectiveness in lowering PTSD The Veteran's Loneliness 27 symptomatology remains undetermined and necessitates further research. Hopefully, adhering to any of the suggested intervention routes above may motivate veterans to reconnect in some way, and cease remaining alone with their experiences. Limitations and Future Directions The developmental course of the veteran's loneliness delineated above is limited in several manners that must be acknowledged. For one, there are undeniably individual differences in veterans' reactions to war and their social resilience thereafter. Moreover, the above relates solely to Western veterans' experiences, primarily ranging from the World Wars (e.g., Schuetz, 1945; Waller, 1944) to the present (e.g., Ahern, 2015), and only among men. The examination of other cultures and societies, as well as the investigation of women veterans' experiences, may reveal somewhat different courses in which the veteran's loneliness develops and manifests. Of primary interest may be societies which differ in respect to norms of disclosure and sharing of war experiences, or societies wherein civilian- military gaps may be expected to be less prominent. These may include, for instance, societies wherein military enlistment is conscription based (e.g., Israel). Nevertheless, as scholars (e.g., Schuetz, 1945; Shay, 1994, 2002) trace such phenomena back to the time of Homer (9th century B.C.), it would seem that many aspects of this loneliness may be universally associated with the warrior's homecoming experience. Second, in the current explication the prominence of experiential loneliness has been underscored, and it has been suggested that it is this form of isolation rather than other forms which veterans might most readily experience after their participation in war. Nevertheless, there currently exists no quantitative study wherein the prevalence of this phenomenon has been empirically investigated. Naturally, veterans may experience other forms of loneliness, and certainly not all veterans experience experiential loneliness even when they do experience experiential isolation. Either they do not perceive their isolation as Jacob Y. Stein 28 loneliness or otherwise are not bothered by it. Future research should establish such prevalences. Finally, several factors may contribute to the manifestation of veterans' unenviable experience of loneliness. 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Chapter 2 LONELINESS AND PREFERENCE FOR SOLITUDE AMONG OLDER ADULTS Aya Toyoshima, PhD* Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University, Suita City, Japan ABSTRACT Older adults tend to find it difficult to engage in social activities, as their social environments can be adversely affected as a result of negative life events such as bereavements, retirement, and the loss of physical function. Such individuals also find it difficult to develop new close relationships in later life. Further, the ratio of time spent alone tends to increase with age, with studies showing that older adults spend 48% of their daily lives engaging in solitary activities. However, although there are some negative factors that enhance loneliness in later life, the levels of loneliness reported by older adults are not as high as those reported by other age groups, which is a somewhat paradoxical finding. Geropsychological studies have determined that older adults manage the consequences of failure and loss using two strategies: primary control strategies and secondary control strategies. Primary control strategies * Corresponding author: Email: ayat@hus.osaka-u.ac.jp. Aya Toyoshima 38 refer to individuals’ attempts to change the external world to fit their personal needs and desires, while secondary control strategies concern individuals’ inner emotions and involve their efforts to influence their own preferences. As primary control strategies can be costly, older adults are more likely to rely on secondary control strategies. Thus, it is possible that older adults use secondary control to change their preferences and adapt to the new limitations to their social activities. Meanwhile, preference for solitude, which relates to a high level of competency in terms of spending time alone (e.g., feeling positive emotions in such a situation), may be another important factor in this regard. In this chapter, developmental change in elderly people in relation to loneliness and preference for solitude are reviewed; this is achieved by examining the findings of recent studies, and reconsidering loneliness and the positive aspects of solitude. Keywords: preference for solitude, loneliness, subjective well-being, older adults 1. INTRODUCTION Research into the loneliness experienced by older adults is important for promoting general well-being, especially considering the rapidly aging populations in many countries around the world. In fact, as a result of this rapid increase in population age, the problems faced by lonely elderly people are now gaining a great deal of academic attention, especially in Asian countries. Focusing on Japan, the number of older adults living alone has increased dramatically, from 17.3% in 1995 to 22% in 2005, and it is estimated that approximately 25% of older adults in Japan currently live alone (Cabinet Office, Government of Japan, 2015). The main cause of this situation is the increased prevalence of nuclear families in the country, which has resulted in some older adults living alone, without social interaction with neighbors; thus, older adults often die alone in their homes, a phenomenon known as “kodoku-shi” (solitary death). Loneliness and Preference for Solitude among Older Adults 39 1.1. Loneliness and Social Isolation Before beginning an in-depth analysis of loneliness among older adults, it would be beneficial to describe the difference between “loneliness” and “social isolation.” Since the research of Weiss (1973) and Perlman and Peplau (1981), which are regarded as the first studies of loneliness, loneliness has become an important research topic in the fields of personality and social psychology; specifically, Perlman and Peplau (1981) defined loneliness as “the unpleasant experience that occurs when a person’s network of social relations is deficient in some important way, either quantitatively or qualitatively” (p. 31). More recently, however, loneliness researchers have determined loneliness to be a subjective perception of social isolation or negative emotional experience, and a condition that is distinguishable from objective social isolation (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009; Cornwell & Waite, 2009). One of the most widely used (e.g., Lasgaard, 2007; Toyoshima & Sato, 2017; Wilson, Cutts, Lees, Mapungwana, & Maunganidze, 1992) instruments for assessing loneliness is the UCLA Loneliness Scale (Russell, 1996); examples of the items of this scale include: “how often do you feel that you lack companionship?” and “how often do you feel part of a group of friends?” This instrument is popular because, while some items in this scale inquire into social relationships with others, others focus on whether individuals perceive their social relationships negatively. In contrast, social isolation refers to a situation in which a person lacks social contacts. Gierveld and Havens (2004) suggested that “social isolation relates to the objective characteristics of a situation and refers to the absence of relationships with other people” (p. 110). Specifically, sociologists and geropsychologists assess social isolation by analyzing an individual’s social activities, the members of their social networks, and their frequency of contact with family members, neighbors, and friends (Victor, Cambler, & Bond, 2009). In fact, there are numerous indicators of social isolation: living alone, having a small social network, low participation in social activities, and a perceived lack of social support Aya Toyoshima 40 (Berkman & Syme 1979; Dean, Matt, & Wood, 1992; Hawkley, Masi, Berry, & Cacioppo, 2006; Krause 1987; Thoits & Hewitt, 2001). Previous studies have found it difficult to distinguish concepts of loneliness from those of social isolation, mainly because researchers have varying definitions of these concepts. Moreover, in pathological terms, loneliness and social isolation have been referred to as negative aspects of the social relationships of older adults; in conceptual gerontology, preventing these social diseases tends to be a priority, despite the lack of a clear definition of the concepts (Victor, Cambler, & Bond, 2009). Although loneliness relates to an individual’s subjective perception, a lack of social relationships, similar to social isolation, can also cause this emotion. This is a primary reason people tend to confuse the concepts of loneliness and social isolation. Loneliness is a possible outcome when individuals find themselves having a small number of relationships (Gierveld & Havens, 2004); however, it is important to note that people who are socially isolated do not always feel lonely, and that people can feel lonely even when staying with others in groups or colonies. Consequently, in this chapter, to avoid confusion with social isolation, the author describes “loneliness” as a subjective perception featuring negative emotion. The cognitive discrepancy model of loneliness (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) explains the psychological process through which an individual develops a comparison level for his or her entire network of social relationships. Such a comparison level can be thought of as representing the quantity or quality of social contact desired by a person. Russell, Cutrona, McRae, and Gomez (2012) examined relationships between desired and actual social contact and loneliness, and found that people who reported identical levels of desired and actual social contact showed the lowest levels of loneliness. Further, they also found that loneliness increases as the actual number of close friends exceeds the ideal number; therefore, it is possible that people feel lonely when they have more social contacts than they desire, despite the fact that they are not socially isolated. Loneliness and Preference for Solitude among Older Adults 41 1.2. Effects of Loneliness on Physical Health and Cognitive Function It has become widely known that loneliness influences physical health; for example, it has been reported that loneliness is linked to high blood pressure (Cacioppo et al., 2000) and sleep problems (Hawkley, Preacher, & Cacioppo, 2011; Pressman, Cohen, Miller, Barkin, Rabin, & Treanor, 2005). However, this seems to be a more severe problem for older adults than younger generations, as the negative impacts of loneliness on health have been regularly shown in studies on older adults (blood pressure; Hawkley et al., 2006; poor sleep quality: McHugh & Lawlor, 2013; Stafford, Bendayan, Tymoszuk, & Kuh, 2017). Interestingly, studies have also found that loneliness is a strong predictor of mortality (Berkman & Syme, 1979; Patterson & Veenstra, 2010; Shiovitz-Ezra & Ayalon, 2010), with higher rates of mortality being reported among isolated older adults (Luo & Waite, 2014; Perissinotto, Cenzer, & Covinsky, 2012). For example, Holt-Lunstad, Smith, Baker, Harris, and Stephenson (2015) conducted a meta-analysis to examine the effect of loneliness as a risk factor for mortality, and reported that loneliness predicts mortality, and that it has a similarly strong influence in this regard as that of social isolation and living alone. The psychological definition of loneliness is that it is a subjective perception that has a serious impact on health in later life. Several studies have found loneliness and the experience of negative emotions to have impacts on health over long-term periods, although some of the studies that have produced this finding tend to mix the definitions of loneliness and social isolation, and more research is needed to obtain a definitive conclusion in this regard (Ong, Uchino, & Wethington, 2016). The association between loneliness and cognitive function has also been analyzed, and these studies have found that loneliness negatively influences cognitive function (e.g., Cacioppo & Cacioppo, 2014; Zhong, Chen, Tu, & Conwell, 2017) and is a risk factor of dementia. In an experimental study, Cacioppo and Hawkley (2009) suggested that perceived social isolation,	314,584
The Handbook of Solitude (Robert J. Coplan, Julie C. Bowker) (Z-Library).pdf	T e Handbook of SOLITUDE Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone Edited by Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker The Handbook of Solitude For kenneth H. rubin scholar, mentor, and friend and For our families without whom we would always feel alone The Handbook Of Solitude Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone Edited by Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker This edition first published 2014 © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 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Cover design by Nicki Averill Design Set in 11/13pt Dante by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India 1 2014 Contents List of Contributors viii Foreword: On Solitude, Withdrawal, and Social Isolation xii Kenneth H. Rubin Part I Theoretical Perspectives 1 1 All Alone: Multiple Perspectives on the Study of Solitude 3 Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker 2 Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group: Historical Advances in Concepts and Measures 14 William M. Bukowski and Marie-Hélène Véronneau 3 An Attachment Perspective on Loneliness 34 Mario Mikulincer and Phillip R. Shaver 4 Shyness and the Electrical Activity of the Brain: On the Interplay between Theory and Method 51 Louis A. Schmidt and Vladimir Miskovic 5 The Origins of Solitude: Psychoanalytic Perspectives 71 Evangelia Galanaki 6 Experiences of Solitude: Issues of Assessment, Theory, and Culture 90 James R. Averill and Louise Sundararajan Part II Solitude Across the Lifespan 109 7 The Causes and Consequences of “Playing Alone” in Childhood 111 Robert J. Coplan and Laura Ooi 8 Peer Rejection in Childhood: Social Groups, Rejection Sensitivity, and Solitude 129 Drew Nesdale and Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck vi Contents 9 Affinity for Aloneness in Adolescence and Preference for Solitude in Childhood: Linking Two Research Traditions 150 Luc Goossens 10 Social Withdrawal during Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood 167 Julie C. Bowker, Larry J. Nelson, Andrea Markovic, and Stephanie Luster 11 Introversion, Solitude, and Subjective Well-Being 184 John M. Zelenski, Karin Sobocko, and Deanna C. Whelan 12 Social Approach and Avoidance Motivations 202 Jana Nikitin and Simone Schoch 13 Ostracism and Solitude 224 Eric D. Wesselmann, Kipling D. Williams, Dongning Ren, and Andrew H. Hales 14 Social Isolation among Older People 242 Elaine Wethington and Karl Pillemer Part III Solitude Across Contexts 261 15 Anxious Solitude at School 263 Heidi Gazelle and Madelynn Druhen Shell 16 Loneliness and Belongingness in the College Years 283 Steven R. Asher and Molly Stroud Weeks 17 Single in a Society Preoccupied with Couples 302 Bella DePaulo 18 Loneliness and Internet Use 317 Yair Amichai-Hamburger and Barry H. Schneider 19 Mindfulness Meditation: Seeking Solitude in Community 335 Paul Salmon and Susan Matarese 20 The Restorative Qualities of Being Alone with Nature 351 Kalevi Korpela and Henk Staats Part IV Clinical Perspectives 369 21 Social Anhedonia and Solitude 371 Thomas R. Kwapil, Paul J. Silvia, and Neus Barrantes-Vidal 22 Social Anxiety Disorder and Emotional Solitude 391 Lynn E. Alden and Karen W. Auyeung 23 Loneliness and Social Isolation in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders 409 Connie Kasari and Lindsey Sterling Contents vii 24 Solitude and Personality Disorders 427 Kevin B. Meehan, Kenneth N. Levy, Christina M. Temes, and Jonathan J. Detrixhe 25 The Intersection of Culture and Solitude: The Hikikomori Phenomenon in Japan 445 Alan R. Teo, Kyle W. Stufflebam, and Takahiro A. Kato Part V Disciplinary Perspectives 461 26 A View from Biology: Playing Alone and with Others: A Lesson from Animals 463 Elisabetta Palagi 27 A View from Anthropology: Anomie and Urban Solitude 483 Leo Coleman 28 A View from Sociology: The Role of Solitude in Transcending Social Crises – New Possibilities for Existential Sociology 499 Jack Fong 29 A View from Computer Science: From Solitude to Ambient Sociability – Redefining the Social and Psychological Aspects of Isolation in Online Games 517 Nicolas Ducheneaut and Nicholas Yee 30 A View from Political Theory: Desire, Subjectivity, and Pseudo-Solitude 539 Matthew H. Bowker 31 A View from Religious Studies: Solitude and Spirituality 557 John D. Barbour Index 573 List of Contributors Lynn E. Alden, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada Yair Amichai-Hamburger, The Research Center for Internet Psychology (CIP), Sammy Ofer School of Communications, The Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya, Israel Steven R. Asher, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA Karen W. Auyeung, Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada James R. Averill, Department of Psychology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA John D. Barbour, Department of Religion, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN, USA Neus Barrantes-Vidal, Department of Clinical Psychology, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain; University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA; Sant Pere Claver – Fundació Sanitària, Barcelona, Spain; Instituto de Salud Carlos III, CIBERSAM, Madrid, Spain. Julie C. Bowker, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, NY, USA Matthew H. Bowker, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, Medaille College, Buffalo, NY, USA William M. Bukowski, Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada Leo Coleman, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA Robert J. Coplan, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Bella DePaulo, Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA List of Contributors ix Jonathan J. Detrixhe, Department of Psychiatry, Center for Intensive Treatment of Personality Disorders, St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center, New York, NY, USA Nicolas Ducheneaut, Computer Science Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA Jack Fong, Department of Psychology and Sociology, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, CA, USA Evangelia Galanaki, Department of Special Education and Psychology, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece Heidi Gazelle, Melbourne School of Psychologyological Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia Luc Goossens, Department of School Psychology & Child and Adolescent Development, Catholic University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium Andrew H. Hales, Department of Psychological Sciences, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Connie Kasari, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles Takahiro A. Kato, Department of Neuropsychiatry, Graduate School of Medical Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan Kalevi Korpela, School of Social Sciences and Humanities/Psychology, University of Tampere, Finland Thomas R. Kwapil, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA Kenneth N. Levy, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Stephanie Luster, Department of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA Andrea Markovic, Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, NY, USA Susan Matarese, Department of Political Science, University of Louisville, Louisville KY USA Kevin B. Meehan, Department of Psychology, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, NY, USA Mario Mikulincer, Department of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya, Herzliya, Israel Vladimir Miskovic, McMaster Institute for Neuroscience, Discovery, & Study (MiNDS), McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada; Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA Larry J. Nelson, Department of Family Life, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA Drew Nesdale, School of Applied Psychology and Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia x List of Contributors Jana Nikitin, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Laura Ooi, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Elisabetta Palagi, Centro Interdipartimentale Museo di Storia Naturale e del Territorio, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy; Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Unità di Primatologia Cognitiva, CNR, Roma, Italy Karl Pillemer, Department of Human Development & Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Dongning Ren, Department of Psychology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Kenneth H. Rubin, Department of Human Development, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA Paul Salmon, Department of Psychological and Brain Science, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA Louis A. Schmidt, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada; Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster Children’s Hospital, Hamilton, ON, Canada; McMaster Institute for Neuroscience, Discovery, & Study (MiNDS), McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada Barry H. Schneider, School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON, Canada Simone Schoch, Department of Psychology, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland Phillip R. Shaver, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA Madelynn Druhen Shell, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia’s College at Wise, Wise, VI, USA Paul J. Silvia, Department of Psychology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA Karin Sobocko, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Henk Staats, Department of Psychology, Universiteit Leiden, Leiden, The Netherlands Lindsey Sterling, Department of Psychiatry, University of California, Los Angeles Kyle W. Stufflebam, Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA Louise Sundararajan, Forensic Unit, Rochester Psychologyiatric Center, Rochester, NY, USA Christina M. Temes, Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA Alan R. Teo, Department of Psychiatry, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, OR, USA Marie-Hélene Véronneau, Department of Psychology, Université du Québec á Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada Molly Stroud Weeks, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA List of Contributors xi Eric D. Wesselmann, Department of Psychology, Illinois State University, IL, USA Elaine Wethington, Department of Human Development & Sociology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA Deanna C. Whelan, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Kipling D. Williams, Department of Psychology, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA Nicholas Yee, Computer Science Laboratory, Palo Alto Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, USA John M. Zelenski, Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada Melanie J. Zimmer-Gembeck, School of Applied Psychology and Griffith Health Institute, Griffith University, Queensland, Australia Foreword On Solitude, Withdrawal, and Social Isolation Kenneth H. Rubin As I sit in my office pondering what it is that I should be writing in the Foreword to this extraordinary compendium, I am alone. With the door closed, I am protected against possible interruptions and am reminded of the positive features of solitude – there is no one around, it is quiet, and I can concentrate on the duties at hand. Indeed, several contributors to this volume have written about the pleasant- ries associated with solitude; frankly, I must agree with this perspective, but do so with a number of significant provisos. I will offer a listing of these provisos in the following text. However, before so doing, I would like to suggest a thought experiment or two. A Science Fiction Thought Experiment Why must one understand the significance of solitude, withdrawal, and social isolation? Let’s begin with a little thought experiment. Imagine, for at least one millisecond, that we have arrived on a planet populated by billions of people. Never mind how these people came into existence. Let’s just assume that they happen to be on the planet and that we know not how they came to be. Imagine too that there is no interpersonal magnetism … that these people never come together … there are no interactions … there is no crashing together or colliding of these individuals. All we can see are solitary entities walking aimlessly, perhaps occasion- ally observing each other. In short, we are left with many individuals who produce, collectively, an enormous social void. From an Earthly perspective, we might find the entire enterprise to be rather intriguing or boring or frightening and would likely predict that prospects for the future of this planet are dim. Given that this is a supposed “thought exercise,” please allow me to humor myself and replace the aforementioned noun “people” with “atoms” or their intrinsic properties of electrons, protons, and neutrons. By so doing, one might have to contemplate such topics as magnetism and collision and the products of these actions. This would immediately give rise to thoughts of mass, electricity, Foreword xiii and excitement. Without magnetism (attraction), electricity, and excitement, whatever would we be left with? As I move more forcefully into this exercise, I find myself in increasingly unfamiliar territory – I may study pretense, but I am not a pretender … at least insofar as suggesting to anyone willing to listen (or read) that I have “real” knowledge about anything pertaining to physics. In fact, I am ever so happy to leave the study of the Higgs boson to that group of scholars engaged in research at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. For the time being, I will escape from any contemplation of physics and swiftly return to thinking about a planet on which people appear to exist without laws of attraction. If the “people” who inhabit the planet do not collide, we are left with the inevitability of what solitude would eventually predict – a nothingness, an emptiness, a void. If “people” did not collide, did not interact, there would be no “us.” Relationships would not exist; there would be no human groups, no communities, no cultures. There would be no sense of values, norms, rules, laws. Social hierarchies would not exist; there would be no need to think about mind- reading, perspective-taking, interpersonal problem-solving. Liking, loving, accepting, rejecting, excluding, victimizing … none of these significant constructs would be relevant. Social comparison, self-appraisal, felt security, loneliness, rejection sensitivity … topics that tend to appear regularly in the Developmental, Social, Personality, Cognitive, and Clinical Psychology literatures would be irrelevant. From my admittedly limited perspective, as a Developmental Scientist (and thankfully not as a Physicist), there would be nothing to write, think, feel, or be about. Thank goodness for those nuclear researchers at CERN. They have taught us that magnetism matters, that interactions matter, that clusters matter (and may collide to produce new entities). These folks are not pondering what happens with people … they are thinking at the subatomic level. I, on the other hand, have spent the past 40-some years thinking about people, their individual characteristics, their interactions and collisions with one another, the relationships that are formed on the basis of their interactions, and the groups, communities, and cultures within which these individuals and relationships can be found. Indeed, I have collected more than a fair share of data on these topics. In so doing, I am left with the conclusion that solitude, isolation, and social withdrawal can be ruinous. It ain’t science fiction. A Second Thought Experience Let’s move to a rather different thought experience. Imagine that the community within which we live teaches its inhabitants, from early childhood, that normative sociocultural expectations involve helping, sharing, and caring with and for each other; teaching each other about that which defines the “good, bad, and ugly”; communicating with each other about norms and what may happen when one conforms to or violates them. Imagine too, that in such a community within which xiv Kenneth H. Rubin interaction, cooperation, and relationships matter, there are some individuals who, for whatever reason, do not interact with their confreres. One might suppose that the remaining members of the community could ponder why it is that these solitary individuals behave as they do. And several suggestions may be offered for their solitude. For example, it may be suggested that some of these noninteracting individuals have some biological or perhaps some genetic orientation that leads them to feel uncomfortable in the presence of others. Perhaps members of the community may have read something about a gene that is associated with diminished 5-HTT transcription and reduced serotonin uptake. Some in the community may have read somewhere that without the regulating effects of serotonin, the amygdala and hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) system can become overactive, leading to the physiological profile of a fearful or anxious individual. Fear may be a guiding force for these solitary individuals – fear of what may happen if they approach others in the community; fear of what may happen if they attempt to develop a nonfamilial relationship with another in the community; fear of leaving a negative impression on those who may judge their actions, thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Or perhaps, some might believe that it is not fear that guides the behaviors of some of these solitary individuals. Instead, it might be proposed that some of these noninteracting individuals have a biological orientation that leads them to prefer a solitary existence. These individuals may feel more positively inclined when in the company of inanimate objects … things. At this point, our second thought experience leaves us with the identification of two “types” of solitary individuals: (1) those who are motivated by fear, the prospects of social appraisal, and heightened sensitivity to the possibility of rejection; and (2) those who have a distinct preference for solitude. Regardless of the epidemiological “causes” of solitary behavior, in a society that has strong beliefs in the importance of cooperation, collaboration, and car- egiving, it is likely that the majority of individuals who adhere to the cultural ethos would begin to think unpleasant thoughts about the noninteracting minority. They may think of solitary individuals as displaying unacceptable, discomfiting behavior; they may begin to feel negatively about them; they may discuss among themselves the need to exclude these noninteractors or to alter the behavior of these nonconforming individuals. Indeed, from the extant research, it is known that those who display behaviors considered to be inappro- priate or abhorrent to the majority may be isolated by the group-at-large. And so now we have a third group of solitary individuals – those who have been isolated by the social group. But how would these hypothetical community responses affect the nonsocial, nonconforming individual? What kinds of interactive/noninteractive cycles would be generated? And what would the solitary individuals think and feel about the larger community responses to them? Foreword xv The Point The preceding verbiage brings me to the singular message that I am attempting to convey. From “all of the above,” I am willing to step out on a limb to suggest, straight- out, that solitude can be punishing, humbling, debilitating, and destructive. I do admit that it would be foolish to ignore the perspectives of those who have sung the praises of solitude. This would include several authors of chapters in this compendium. It would also include the many beloved and respected authors, poets, painters, philosophers, spiritualists, and scientists who have suggested that their best work or their deepest thoughts derive from those moments when they are able to escape the madding crowd. Here are a few examples: 1 “You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait, be quiet still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”Franz Kafka 2 “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here forever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.” Virginia Woolf I could offer hundreds of quotations about the glories of solitude from rather well-known people. Nevertheless, from my perhaps distorted, limited, and ego- centered perspective, I find it difficult to believe that one can lead a productive and happy life locked in a closet, a cave, a tent, a room. Virginia Woolf committed suicide; Kafka had documented psychological difficulties vis-à-vis his inability to develop and maintain positive and supportive relationships with others. One may prefer solitude … and many of us require solitude for contemplation, exploration, problem-solving, introspection, and the escape of pressures elicited by the social/ academic/employment/political communities. As I noted in the opening para- graph, solitude may be an entirely acceptable pursuit. But this statement comes with several provisos. The “ifs”. If one spends time alone voluntarily, and if one can join a social group when one wants to, and if one can regulate one’s emotions (e.g., social fears and anger) effectively, and if one can initiate and maintain positive, supportive rela- tionships with significant others, then the solitary experience can be productive. But the provisos that I have appended to the solitary experience are rather signifi- cant. I am quite certain that what the reader will come away with after having completed the chapters included herein is that solitude has many faces. These faces have varied developmental beginnings, concomitants, and courses. And these faces may be interpreted in different ways in different contexts, communi- ties, and cultures. And perhaps most importantly, the provisos offered previously must be kept in mind regardless of context, community, and culture. Frankly, if xvi Kenneth H. Rubin one fails to be mindful of these provisos, one can return to the introductory thought experiment and be assured that the failure of individuals to “collide” with one another will result in unpleasant consequences. People do need to collide, or better put, interact with others. Of course, these interactions must be viewed by both partners as acceptable, positive, and produc- tive. These interactions must be need-fulfilling. Drawing from the wisdom of others who have written of the significance of such interactions (e.g., John Bowlby and Robert Hinde), one might expect that a product of these interactive experiences is the expectation of the nature of future interactions with the same partners. Furthermore, from this perspective, one might expect that each partner is likely to develop a set of expectations about the nature of future interactions with unknown others. If the interactions experienced are pleasant and productive, then positive dyadic relationships may result. If, however, the interactions experienced are unpleasant or agonistic, the partners may avoid each other. And in some cases, if a particular individual comes to expect that all interactions will eventually prove negative, withdrawal from the social community may result. A Final Comment: Annus horribilis During the first six months of 2012, I “lived” in a hospital after having endured a heart transplant and numerous health complications. Although I was surrounded by medical staff and had many regular visitors, I was literally isolated from the “outside world.” For the first two months of my hospitalization, my mind and body were at the river’s edge. But when the neurons began firing somewhat normally (beginning March 2012), and when I was able to converse with hospital staff and visitors, I nevertheless felt totally alone. It did not help that when visitors (and medical staff) met with me, they were required to wear masks, gloves, and medical gowns of one sort or another. Eventually, it struck me that I was living at the extreme edge of what I had been studying for most of my professional career. And just as I had found through the use of questionnaires, interviews, rating scales, and observations (with samples of children and adolescents, and their parents, peers, and friends), solitude brought with it intrapersonal feelings of loneliness, sadness, anxiety, helplessness, and hopelessness. I felt disconnected from my personal and professional communities. Despite visitors’ generosity and kindness, I was miserable. Of course, when I was able to read and use my laptop, I could have taken the opportunity to play with ideas and data; my solitude could have been productive. But negative affect (emotion dysregulation) got in the way. Upon return home, I rehabilitated and received visitors – family, friends, colleagues, students, former golf and hockey “buddies.” I welcomed news about family (I was especially grateful to be reunited with my grandchildren!), friends, Foreword xvii academe, and the world-at-large. I began to catch up on the various projects that my lab was involved in. Within a matter of weeks, I was coauthoring manuscripts and preparing abstracts for submission to various conferences. Although physically weak and incapable of taking lengthy walks or lifting anything heavier than a few pounds, my spirits were greatly improving – I was no longer alone! And finally, by August, when I returned to campus for the first time, I felt recon- nected … and valued! The bottom line is that my personal solitude, especially given that it was experienced for a lengthy period of time and “enforced” externally and involuntarily, resulted in unpleasant consequences. The good news is that I have come to believe that the data my colleagues and I have collected over the years are actually meaningful beyond the halls of academe! Spending an inordinate time alone; feeling disconnected, rejected, and lonely; being excluded and perhaps victimized by others; being unable to competently converse with and relate to others (which may well result from solitude) can create a life of misery and malcontent; in some cases, this combination of factors may result in attempts at self-harm; in other cases it may result in attempts to harm others. Think for a moment about how often perpetrators of violence (e.g., Columbine, Virginia Tech, Newton High School, and the Boston Marathon bombings) have been described as loners, withdrawn, victimized, isolated, and friendless. Indeed, think about how some of the perpetrators have described themselves. As I write this last sentence, my mind drifts to the lyricist/songwriting team of Eddie Vedder and Jeff Ament. Their evocative song “Jeremy” is based, in part, on the description of the death of Jeremy Wade Delle, a 15-year-old high school student in Richardson, Texas. Jeremy is portrayed as a quiet, sad adolescent who “spoke in class today” by committing suicide (by gunshot) in the presence of his classmates. The lyrics also suggest that the Jeremy in the song suffered parental abuse and/or neglect. In the music video, Jeremy appears to be rejected, excluded, and isolated by his peers. The words “harmless,” “peers,” and “problem” appear throughout the video. And in interviews about the “meanings” of the lyrics, Vedder has suggested that he was attempting to draw attention to one possible consequence of difficulties that can be produced by familial and peer disruptions. More importantly, he argued that one must gather one’s strength to fight against the seeming inevitability of the negative consequences of isolation, solitude, and rejection. I would suggest that the central message is that family members, peers, school personnel, and community leaders should be aware of the signs that presage intra- and interpersonal desolation. Of course, not all people described as “solitary” or “isolated” have intra- or interpersonal problems. As noted previously, solitude and social withdrawal are not “necessarily evil.” We all need time alone … to energize and re-energize, to mull, to produce this-and-that without interruption. But our species is a social spe- cies. So much is gained when people interact, collaborate, help, and care for oth- ers, develop relationships, and become active members of groups and communities. xviii Kenneth H. Rubin However, when combined with dysregulated emotions, social incompetence, and a lack of supportive relationships, solitude, much like many other behavioral constructs studied by psychologists, can induce miserable consequences. The “trick” is to know if, when, and how to intervene within the family, peer group, and community. In closing, it is with pleasure and pride that two of my former students (and current colleagues and close friends) have done such a wonderful job in putting together this compendium on solitude. After all, I do believe that once upon a time, I may have introduced the constructs of social withdrawal and solitude to Rob Coplan and Julie Bowker! Somehow, I doubt that I instructed or comman- deered Rob and Julie to study solitude, isolation, and aloneness. If memory serves me correct, they were each interested in things social. All I happened to do was provide them with a personal, historical (perhaps hysterical) note about how and why I became interested in the research I was doing. Of course, I could never claim to have played a role in the thoughts and research of those who have examined solitude from the perspectives of anthropology, biology, computer science, divinity, neuroscience, political science, primatology, psychoanalysis, sociology, and those tracks of psychology that focus primarily on personality, the environment, autism, and adult relationships. Therein lies the beauty of this compendium. Editors Coplan and Bowker have cleverly taken a twisty turn that curves beyond their own comfort zones of Developmental Science. By so doing, they have left me absolutely delighted. Coplan and Bowker have clearly attempted to move the reader into multiple zones of cognitive disequilibration and to appreciate that if we are to truly understand any given phenomenon, we must look well beyond the silos within which we are typically reinforced to reside. You now hold in your hands a selection of readings that describe a variety of perspectives on solitude. You will read what solitude looks like; why it is that people spend time alone; why it is that solitude can be a necessary experience; how it feels and what one thinks about when one spends a good deal of time avoiding others or being rejected and excluded by one’s social community. There is no compendium quite like the one that you are handling. I applaud the editors’ efforts, and I do hope that the reader does herself/himself justice by closely examining chapters that move well beyond their own self-defined areas of expertise and intrapersonal comfort tunnels. Theoretical Perspectives part I The Handbook of Solitude: Psychological Perspectives on Social Isolation, Social Withdrawal, and Being Alone, First Edition. Edited by Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. All Alone Multiple Perspectives on the Study of Solitude Robert J. Coplan1 and Julie C. Bowker2 1 Department of Psychology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, Canada 2 Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, NY, USA Seems I’m not alone in being alone. – Gordon Matthew Sumner (1979) The experience of solitude is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Historically, solitude has been considered both a boon and a curse, with artists, poets, musicians, and philosophers both lauding and lamenting being alone. Over the course of the lifespan, humans experience solitude for many different reasons and subjectively respond to solitude with a wide range of reactions and consequences. Some people may retreat to solitude as a respite from the stresses of life, for quiet contemplation, to foster creative impulses, or to commune with nature. Others may suffer the pain and loneliness of social isolation, withdrawing or being forcefully excluded from social interactions. Indeed, we all have and will experience different types of solitude in our lives. The complex relationship we have with solitude and its multifaceted nature is reflected in our everyday language and culture. We can be alone in a crowd, alone with nature, or alone with our thoughts. Solitude can be differentially characterized along the full range of a continuum from a form of punishment (e.g., time-outs for children, solitary confinement for prisoners) to a less than ideal context (e.g., no man is an island, one is the loneliest number, misery loves company), all the way to a desirable state (e.g., taking time for oneself, needing your space or alone time). In this Handbook, we explore the many different faces of solitude, from perspectives inside and outside of psychology. In this introductory chapter, we consider some emergent themes in the historical study of solitude (see Figure 1.1) – and provide an overview of the contents of this volume. 1 4 Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker Emergent Themes The study of solitude cuts across virtually all psychology subdisciplines and has been explored from multiple and diverse theoretical perspectives across the lifespan. Accordingly, it is not surprising that there remains competing hypotheses regarding the nature of solitude and its implications for well-being. Indeed, from our view, these fundamentally opposed differential characterizations of solitude represent the most pervasive theme in the historical study of solitude as a psycho- logical construct. In essence, this ongoing debate about the nature of solitude can be distilled down to an analysis of its costs versus benefits. Solitude is bad Social affiliations are relationships that have long been considered to be adaptive to the survival of the human species (Barash, 1977). Indeed, social groups offer several well-documented evolutionary advantages (e.g., protection against predators, cooperative hunting, and food sharing) (Hamilton, 1964; Trivers, 1971). The notion that solitude may have negative consequences has a long history and can literally be traced back to biblical times (Genesis 2:18, And the LORD God said “It is not good for the man to be alone”). Within the field of psychology, Triplett (1898) demonstrated in one of the earliest psychology experiments that children performed a simple task (pulling back a fishing reel) more slowly when alone than when paired with other children performing the same task. Thus, at the turn of the century, it was clear that certain types of performance were hindered by solitude. Developmental psychologists have also long suggested that excessive solitude during childhood can cause psychological pain and suffering (e.g., Freud, 1930), damage critically important Solitude Solitude is bad (e.g., basic human need to belong, ostracism, peer exclusion, social isolation, loneliness, and clinical disorder) Solitude can be good (e.g., restorative haven, necessary escape, unique venue for creativity, and religious experiences) Developmental timing (e.g., importance of peer interaction in childhood, growing needs for privacy in adolescence, and risk of social isolation among older adults) Underlying mechanisms (e.g., active isolation versus social withdrawal, biological bases, social approach/social avoidance motivations, preference for solitude versus shyness). Figure 1.1 Emergent themes in the psychological study of solitude. All Alone 5 family relationships (e.g., Bowlby, 1973; Harlow, 1958), impede the development of the self-system (Mead, 1934; Sullivan, 1953), and prevent children from learning from their peers (e.g., Cooley, 1902; Piaget, 1926). The profound psychological impairments caused by extreme cases of social isolation in childhood, in cases such as Victor (Lane, 1976) or Genie (Curtiss, 1977), have emphasized that human contact is a basic necessity of development. Social psychologists have also long considered the need for affiliation to be a basic human need (Horney, 1945; Shipley & Veroff, 1952). Early social psychology studies on small group dynamics, such as the Robbers Cave experiments (Sherif, Harvey, White, Hood, & Sherif, 1961), further highlighted the ways in which intergroup conflict can emerge and how out-group members can become quickly perceived negatively and in a stereotypical fashion and become mistreated. More recently, the need to belong theory (Baumeister & Leary, 1995) has suggested that we all have a fundamental need to belong or be accepted and to maintain positive relationships with others and that the failure to fulfill such needs can lead to significant physical and psychological distress. Relatedly, social neuroscientists now suggest that loneliness and social isolation can be bad not only for our psychological functioning and well-being but also for our physical health (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; House, Landis, & Umberson, 1988). Finally, from the perspective of clinical psychology, social isolation has been traditionally viewed as a target criterion for intervention (Lowenstein & Svendsen, 1938). In the first edition of the Diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-I; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1952), people who failed to relate effectively to others could be classified as suffering from either a psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia; a psychoneurotic disorder, such as anxiety; or a personality disorder, such as an inadequate personality (characterized by “inadaptability, ineptness, poor judgment, lack of physical and emotional stamina, and social incompatibility”; p. 35). In the DSM-I, schizoid personality disorder is described as another personality disorder characterized by social difficulties, specifically social avoidance. Interestingly, children with schizoid personalities were described in the manual as quiet, shy, and sensitive; adolescents were described as withdrawn, introverted, unsociable, and as shut-ins. Solitude can be good In stark contrast, and from a very different historical tradition, many theorists and researchers have long called attention to the benefits of being alone (Montaigne, 1965; Merton, 1958; Zimmerman, 1805). For example, a central question for ancient Greek and Roman philosophers was the role of the group in society and the extent to which the individual should be a part of and separate from the group in order to achieve wisdom, excellence, and happiness. Later, Montaigne acknowledged the difficulties of attaining solitude but argued that individuals should strive for experiences of solitude to escape pressures, dogma, conventional 6 Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker ways of thinking and being, vices, and the power of the group. For Montaigne, the fullest experiences of solitude could not be guaranteed by physical separation from others; instead, solitude involved a state of natural personal experience that could be accomplished both alone and in the company of others. Related ideas can be found in religious writings and theology (Hay & Morisey, 1978). For example, Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who spent many years in solitude, passionately argued in several books and essays that solitude offered unique experiences for contemplation and prayer and that solitary retreats are necessary to achieve authentic connections with others. Ideas about the benefits of solitude can also be found in the writings of Winnicott (1958). For Winnicott, solitude was an experience of aloneness afforded by a good- enough facilitating environment and was a necessary precondition during infancy and childhood for later psychological maturity and self-discovery and self-realization. In adulthood, spending time alone and away from others has also long been argued by philosophers, authors, and poets to be necessary for imaginative, creative, and artistic enterprises (e.g., Thoreau, 1854). In these perspectives, solitary experiences provide benefits when the individual chooses to be alone. However, personal stories of several accomplished authors, such as Beatrix Potter and Emily Dickinson, suggest that creativity and artistic talents may also develop in response to long periods of painful social isolation and rejection (Middleton, 1935; Storr, 1988). Underlying mechanisms of solitude Although the costs versus benefits debate regarding solitude is somewhat all-encompassing, nested within this broader distinction is a theme pertaining to the different mechanisms that may underlie our experiences of solitude. To begin with, it is important to distinguish between instances when solitude is other- imposed versus sought after. Rubin (1982) was one of the first psychologists to describe these different processes as distinguishing between social isolation, where the individual is excluded, rejected, or ostracized by their peer group, and social withdrawal, where the individual removes themselves from opportunities for social interaction. As we have previously discussed, there are long-studied negative consequences that accompany being socially isolated from one’s group of peers. Thus, we turn now to a consideration of varying views regarding why individuals might chose to withdraw into solitude. Within the psychological literature, researchers have highlighted several different reasons why individuals may seek out solitude, including a desire for privacy (Pedersen, 1979), the pursuance of religious experiences (Hay & Morisey, 1978), the simple enjoyment of leisure activities (Purcell & Keller, 1989), and seeking solace from or avoiding upsetting situations (Larson, 1990). Biological and neurophysiological processes have also been considered as putative sources of solitary behaviors. For example, the ancient Greeks and Romans argued that biologically based individual differences in character help to determine mood All Alone 7 (such as fear and anxiety) and social behavioral patterns (such as the tendency to be sociable or not), ideas which were precursors to the contemporary study of child temperament (Kagan & Fox, 2006). As well, recent interest in the specific neural systems that may be involved in social behaviors can be traced to the late 1800s with the case of Phineas Gage, who injured his orbitofrontal cortex in a railroad construction accident and afterwards was reported to no longer adhere to social norms or to be able to sustain positive relationships (Macmillan, 2000). Finally, there is also a notable history of research pertaining to motivations for social contact (e.g., Murphy, 1954; Murray, 1938), which has been construed as a primary substrate of human personality (Eysenck, 1947). An important distinction was made between social approach and social avoidance motivations (Lewinsky, 1941; Mehrabian & Ksionzky, 1970). It has since been argued that individual differences in these social motivations further discriminate different reasons why individuals might withdraw from social interactions. For example, a low social approach motivation, or solitropic orientation, is construed as a non-fearful preference for solitude in adults (Burger, 1995; Cheek & Buss, 1981; Leary, Herbst, & McCrary, 2001) and children (Asendorpf, 1990; Coplan, Rubin, Fox, Calkins, & Stewart, 1994). In contrast, the conflict between competing social approach and social avoidance motivations (i.e., approach–avoidance conflict) is thought to lead to shyness and social anxiety (Cheek & Melchior, 1990; Jones, Briggs, & Smith, 1986). Developmental timing effects of solitude Our final theme has to do with developmental timing or when (or at what age/ developmental period) experiences of solitude occur. The costs of solitude are often assumed to be greater during childhood than in adolescence or adulthood – given the now widely held notion that the young developing child requires a significant amount of positive peer interaction for healthy social, emotional, and social-cognitive development and well-being (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). This pervasive belief may explain, in part, why considerably more developmental research on the concomitants of social withdrawal has focused on children as compared to adolescents. In addition, it is during adolescence that increasing needs for and enjoyment of privacy and solitude are thought to emerge (Larson, 1990). For this reason, it has been posited that some of the negative peer consequences often associated with social withdrawal during childhood, such as peer rejection and peer victimization, may diminish during the adolescent developmental period (Bowker, Rubin, & Coplan, 2012). However, it has also long been argued that solitude at any age can foster loneliness and psychological angst, particularly if it is other-imposed. As mentioned previously, social needs are thought to exist in individuals of all ages, with several social and developmental theories suggesting that psychological well-being is determined by whether social needs are satisfied. For example, Sullivan (1953) posited that all individuals have social needs but that with development, the nature 8 Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker of the social needs change (e.g., with puberty, needs for sexual relations emerge), as well as the type of relationship required to fulfill the needs (e.g., relationships with parents might satisfy early needs for tenderness; same-sex chumships or best friendships might satisfy needs for intimacy that emerge in early adolescence). Regardless of the developmental changes, however, Sullivan argued that if social needs were not fulfilled, significant negative self-system and psychological consequences would ensue. Consistent with these latter ideas are research findings that have identified loneliness, at any age, as one of the strongest risk factors for psychological ill-being (Heinrich & Gullone, 2006). The debate as to when in development solitude might carry the greatest costs is yet to be resolved. However, it must also be acknowledged that the very nature of solitary experiences likely changes with age. For example, young children may retreat to their rooms, engage in solitary play in the company of peers, or find themselves forced to the periphery of social groups. Although other-imposed solitude might be manifested similarly at older ages (e.g., adolescents being forced to eat alone at lunchtime, adults being left out of after-work gatherings), adolescents and adults have greater control over and increased opportunities for self-selected solitary experiences relative to children. For example, adolescents are sometimes left alone without parental supervision in their homes or able to take themselves to places of their choosing. Adults can also choose to travel alone, can engage in meditative and religious retreats, and can select relatively solitary occupations and ways to spend their free time. In contrast, there may come a time in the life of an older adult where they are significantly impeded in their ability to actively seek out social contacts. It remains to be seen how these potential differences in agency pertaining to solitude across the lifespan speak to the relation between solitude and well-being. Overview of This Handbook The chapters in this Handbook provide the reader with the first comprehensive compilation of psychological research related to the construct of solitude. The construct of solitude is examined from multiple psychological perspectives, during different developmental periods across the lifespan and across a broad range of contexts. Moreover, in an effort to further broaden the scope of our explorations, the final set of chapters incorporate disciplinary perspectives from outside of psychology. The first section of this volume includes chapters pertaining to historical, theoretical, and methodological approaches to the study of solitude. Bukowski and Verroneau (Chapter 2) provide a rich historical overview of the conceptualiza- tion and measurement of social withdrawal and social isolation in childhood, with a particular focus on the role of peers. From a very different perspective, Mikulincer and Shaver (Chapter 3) describe the contribution of attachment theory to our understanding of loneliness in the face of solitude. These two chapters explicitly All Alone 9 acknowledge the unique and critical role of both family and peers in how individuals come to experience and respond to solitude. In their chapter, Schmidt and Miskovic (Chapter 4) consider the contributions of biology, delineating brain-based neurophysiological factors that appear to underlie the manifestation of shyness in children and adults. There is no denying the substantive and long-term influence of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory in the emergence of psychology as a science. In her chapter, Galanaki (Chapter 5) provides a comprehensive historical analysis of the phenomenon of solitude from a psychoanalytic perspective. Finally, in a notable counterpoint to several of the chapters in this section, Averill and Sundararajan (Chapter 6) espouse the more positive aspects of the experience of solitude while also embedding their consideration of solitude within a broader cultural perspective. The second section of the book is organized to present the study of solitude in different developmental stages across the lifespan. However, equally represented here is heterogeneous nature of solitude, with various different conceptualizations, types, and psychological processes related to solitude represented. The first four chapters span the years from early childhood to young adulthood. Coplan and Ooi (Chapter 7) characterize different types of solitary play behaviors in early childhood, discussing their differential meanings and implications. Nesdale and Zimmer-Gembeck (Chapter 8) review the substantive and pervasive negative consequences of being rejected by peers (i.e., imposed solitude) in children’s development. In his chapter, Goosens (Chapter 9) provides detailed exploration of the notion that some children do not mind being by themselves, linking the constructs of preference for solitude in childhood with an affinity for aloneness in adolescence. Bowker, Nelson, Markovic, and Luster (Chapter 10) extend this discussion from adolescence into emerging adulthood, conceptualizing different types of social withdrawal and their differential implications among adolescents and young adults. The next three chapters explore personal and interpersonal processes in the experience of solitude in adults. Zelenski, Sobocko, and Whelan (Chapter 11) focus specifically on the Big Five personality dimension of introversion and discuss its (potentially complex) association with the experience of solitude and our subjective well-being. In their chapter, Nikitin and Schoch (Chapter 12) provide a rich synthesis of how social approach and social avoidance motivations underlie our interpretation of and reaction to social situations. As well, as a parallel to the earlier chapter on social exclusion in childhood, Wesselmann, Ren, and Hales (Chapter 13) discuss the profound negative implications of social ostracism for our species. In the final chapter in this section, Wethington and Pillemer (Chapter 14) outline the difficulties associated with social isolation among the elderly. The third section explores how solitude can be differentially expressed and experienced across different contexts. In the first chapter in this section, Gazelle and Druhen Shell (Chapter 15) describe the experiences that anxious–solitary children and adolescents have at school with their peers and teachers, and across 10 Robert J. Coplan and Julie C. Bowker school transitions, and how such experiences impact their behavior and psychoso- cial adjustment. With a focus on the college years, Asher and Stroud Weeks (Chapter 16) review the history of research on loneliness and belongingness and suggest that the two constructs are related but distinct dimensions of psychological experience. In the next chapter, DePaulo (Chapter 17) presents research debunking the myth that single people are lonely and unhappy and discusses recent changes in attitudes toward singles in the United States. In their chapter, Amichai-Hamburger and Schneider (Chapter 18) consider solitude in the virtual world, with a focus on when and for whom Internet usage can lead to loneliness. This section concludes with two chapters that describe contexts in which solitary experiences can be restorative. Salmon and Matarese (Chapter 19) argue that solitude can have the greatest benefits when it occurs in the company of supportive others, as exemplified by mindfulness-based stress reduction programs. Finally, Korpela and Staats (Chapter 20) detail the ways in which being alone in nature can offer important opportunities for privacy, relaxation, and restoration. The fourth section considers solitude from the perspective of clinical psychology. Here the focus is on solitude as it pertains to mental health. For example, Kwapil, Silvia, and Barrantes-Vidal (Chapter 21) examine the construct of social anhedonia (a trait-like disinterest in – and diminished pleasure derived from – social contact) and its link to the schizophrenia spectrum. In their chapter, Alder and Auyeung (Chapter 22) describe the emotional solitude that often accompanies social anxiety disorder. Kasari and Sterling (Chapter 23) focus on the social isolation and loneliness that may (or may not) be experienced by children with autism spectrum disorder. Meehan, Levy, Temes, and Detrixhe (Chapter 24) provide an in-depth discussion of how solitude is experienced and expressed by individuals suffering from personality disorders. In the final chapter of this section, Teo, Stufflebam, and Kato (Chapter 25) describe the phenomenon of hikikomori in Japan, a relatively recently studied extreme form of social withdrawal where individuals retreat into solitude in their residence for extended periods of time. The final section of the book includes chapters pertaining to the study of solitude from disciplines outside of psychology. From a biological perspective, Palagi (Chapter 26) discusses the importance of solitary play for the individual development of nonhuman animals, citing examples from geladas, a species of Old World monkeys, and bonobos, our closest living nonhuman primate relative. From an anthropological perspective, Coleman (Chapter 27) describes historical views of solitude in urban environments and anomie (chaotic and poorly organized social relations often attributed to modernity and globalization) as well as contemporary experiences of solitude and personal isolation. In his chapter written from an existential sociological perspective, Fong (Chapter 28) examines how individuals employ solitude to confront social conditions that compel them to make sense of their place in society (such as experiences of imprisonments). From the perspective of computer science, Ducheneaut and Yee (Chapter 29) explore recent theory and research on multiplayer online games, distinguishing All Alone 11 solitude from ambient sociability, a form of social interaction that may not create direct bonds but can still satisfy needs to feel connected to others. In his chapter from the perspective of political science, Bowker (Chapter 30) uses texts from a variety of fields to elucidate a psycho-political dilemma in which the ambivalences and perceived dangers of solitude encourage the self and the community to collude in thwarting genuinely solitary experience. In the final chapter from the perspective of religious studies, Barbour (Chapter 31) traces the history of attitudes toward solitude from different religious traditions, concluding with a discussion of the spiritual meanings of solitude for individuals who do not consider themselves as members of any organized religious community. Final Comments: Solitude…Together? It is somewhat ironic that the future study of solitude will likely be pursued within the context of an ever-expanding and increasingly connected global social community. The chapter authors in this Handbook span 13 countries and represent only the very tip of the iceberg in terms of cross-cultural research in this area. There is growing evidence to suggest that both the meaning and impact of (different types of) solitude differ substantively across cultures (e.g., Chen & French, 2008). Accordingly, it is critically important to embed this psychological research within a larger cul- tural context. Moreover, as evidenced by the chapters in the final section of this volume, psychologists have much to learn about the study of solitude from our colleagues in other disciplines. Indeed, we should expect interdisciplinary collaboration to eventually become the norm in these (and other) research areas. Such collaborations will allow us to further explore both the depth and breadth of our experiences of solitude and perhaps help to resolve some of the great debates in theory and research on solitude, such as when and why solitude causes harm or brings benefits. Finally, rapidly evolving technological advances intend to connect all of us – all of the time – to social and informational networks. This inevitably leads to the question as to whether any of us will ever truly be alone in the future. It is certain that our relationship with solitude will necessarily evolve in the digital age. In this regard, it remains to be seen if the experience of solitude is itself doomed to become an archaic remnant of a past era. References American Psychiatric Association. (1952). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (1st ed.). Washington, DC: Author. Asendorpf, J. B. (1990). Beyond social withdrawal: Shyness, unsociability, and peer avoidance. 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Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2 Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group Historical Advances in Concepts and Measures William M. Bukowski1 and Marie-Hélène Véronneau2 1 Department of Psychology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC, Canada 2 Department of Psychology, Université du Québec á Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada It is a truism that researchers who study social behavior need to deal with multiple conceptual and practical challenges. Interrelated questions about what a particular behavior consists of, what it is related to, how it functions, how it should be measured, and what it means need to be considered so that fully reasoned hypotheses about the behavior can be formed and examined. Added to these considerations are the additional challenges raised by contextual variations related to cultural and his- torical circumstances. A basic question about any social behavior concerns the extent to which it is natural and universal and how much it is a product of the social circumstances where it developed and/or occurs. For example, some broadband forms of social behavior (e.g., aggression) are likely to have a more consistent meaning and significance across contexts due to their rootedness in processes and motivation linked to our ethological heritage. In contrast, the meaning and signifi- cance of other social behaviors are likely to vary as a function of prevailing cultural ideologies about the intersection between the individual and the social context. One broad form of social behavior that has been studied in different ways during the past 60 years is withdrawal or isolation. Social withdrawal can be broadly defined as the process whereby a child removes himself/herself from opportunities for social interaction, whereas social isolation describes the child being actively excluded by peers from participating in social activities (Rubin, Coplan, & Bowker, 2009). In this chapter, we use a short-term historical perspective to examine the routes by which social withdrawal became part of the study of peer relations. The concepts used to study development have their own developmental histories. It is not just that children develop in particular places at particular times; it is also that the concepts Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group 15 and ideas we use are themselves embedded within historical, intellectual, or cultural moments that define what particular phenomena are, what they do, and how and why they function in particular ways (Appadurai, 1988; Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Bukowski & Lisboa, 2007; Cairns, 1983a). Social withdrawal or isolation is one of these concepts studied by developmental psychologists that has evolved within and as a function of many contextual factors. In this chapter we will discuss how context has mattered for our understanding of what withdrawal (i.e., isolation from the peer group) consists of and how it affects healthy social development. The basic premise of the chapter can be stated succinctly. Insofar as the construct of social withdrawal lies at the intersection between the person and the group, it needs to be understood according to a broad set of factors related to both of these social constructs. As social constructs, ideas about what it means to be an individual and ideas about the significance and meaning of the group are likely to vary as a function of multiple contextual factors, especially culture and history. A secondary premise of this chapter is a bit more complicated. It is concerned with two assertions. The first is that theories about what human development is, how it happens, and what it consists of cannot be separated from prevailing intellectual zeitgeists about what individuals are and how they should be studied. Ideas and concepts arise and evolve in conjunction with other concepts implicated in overriding theories about the features and processes that comprise human nature. Accordingly an understanding of how a concept has evolved in a particular literature needs to recognize the broader intellectual or historical climate in which it developed. The second idea is that research on any topic is constrained by the capabilities of avail- able research tools. How something can be studied and the questions one can ask about it depend on the existing research methods and statistical techniques. The creation of better techniques allows researchers to address questions of increasing complexity and with greater specificity and to produce more nuanced and precise findings. Together these premises support the claim that because withdrawal is a social construct and because research on withdrawal happens within a particular historical or technical con- text, research on withdrawal cannot be separated from the circumstances in which it occurs. It is important to recognize that this historical variability is neither a strength nor a weakness of this construct. It does not mean that withdrawal is an amorphous or capricious construct that lacks a true form or significance for development. Instead it shows that contextual variability is a basic feature of a complex textured reality that affects how children develop and how researchers study development. Understanding variability makes our task more difficult and also makes it more interesting. Accordingly, we will discuss how social developmentalists (particularly peer researchers) have studied social withdrawal especially with respect to changes during the second half of the twentieth century. Emphasis in this discussion will be placed on the evolution of measurement techniques and conceptualization. Within this discussion we will place withdrawal within a larger intellectual/historical context. Throughout this discussion we hope to raise some questions about how social withdrawal should be studied in the future. 16 William M. Bukowski and Marie-Hélène Véronneau Social Withdrawal and Isolation Have Always Been with Us The 1940s and 1950s A key question regarding research on a social construct such as withdrawal concerns when it became a topic for empirical study. Identifying how and when a construct entered a research literature is not an easy task. They are especially challenging when the construct and the research domain are themselves labile. At best one can try to discover when references to withdrawal or to related concepts began to appear in major review chapters of peer relations research and in the methods used to study peer experiences. The strategy of going on a walkabout through archival chapters is not without its limitations as one can never fully grasp what it was like to be in the moment when they were written and one cannot fully comprehend whom the authors presumed to be their audience. Nevertheless a close reading of these chapters can provide at least one bird’s-eye view of what was being studied and thought about during an earlier time. Two of the earliest large review chapters on peer relations can be found in the first two editions of Carmichael’s manual (Carmichael, 1946, 1954). These chapters were written by Kurt Lewin (1946, 1954) and by Anderson and Anderson (1954). Lewin’s chapter, titled “Behavior and development as a function of the total situation,” appeared in exact copy in both editions (Lewin died in 1947). The Andersons’ chapter, titled “Social development,” appeared in the second edition (1954). Each of these chapters covers a very broad range of topics related to social behavior and functioning in groups including the peer group. Neither chapter includes anything that could be construed as a direct reference to isolation or social withdrawal. Nevertheless, each includes discussions of related concepts that provide a glimpse of how withdrawal was regarded at this time and the social dynamics to which it was associated. The closest that Lewin gets to withdrawal in his chapter can be seen in his discussion of the concept of group belonging and its relations to the life space. For Lewin the life space consisted of all the social domains or fields where a person functioned. They could be the family home, the classroom, or the neighborhood playground. An essential component to Lewin’s model of social development was the idea that the particular fields that make up the life space increase in number and become more differentiated with age. He proposed that during early adolescence most girls and boys would find themselves in more places than they had been in during childhood (e.g., friends’ homes, local community center) and that these new contexts might be very different from the environment of the family home. Lewin was careful to point out, how- ever, that there were individual differences in how quickly children would become engaged in this age-related process. He noted that there can be large variability in “the speed with which the life space increased in scope and … differentiation during development.” In other words, he realized that some children and adolescents became more broadly situated in a range of fields more quickly than others. Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group 17 Inherent in this view is the claim that some children and adolescents became involved in multiple different life spaces, while others remained outsiders to them, isolated (our word, not his) in a smaller set of fields. Lewin saw this as a question of social belonging. He argued that social goals consisted of wishes to belong or not to belong to particular social groups. Some children simply lacked the goal to be part of new and different fields. Lewin did not see this reticence positively. He noted that there were negative consequences of having an outsider status. He claimed that being outside a group would affect one’s rights and duties vis-à-vis the group and would limit the, presumably positive, effects of the group on the person. It is important to recognize that Lewin saw outsider status as a by-product of group process or of the person/group interface. He believed that it could be understood largely, if not wholly, as a function of group dynamics. He did not see it as a property of the person or as the result of how an individual child behaved. For Lewin, being an outsider was merely the result of how a particular group functioned. Lewin’s approach to concepts such as belonging and outsider status was highly abstracted and theoretical. He devoted little, if any, attention to practical or methodological questions about the processes by which these phenomena would be measured. His chapter did present some sociograms that illustrated variations in group structures. Lewin included these diagrams of group structure alongside his very restrained and tepid description of the advantages of the sociometric methods developed by Bogardus (1933), Moreno (1934), and Lippitt (1940). These sociograms showed that some children had few connections to the other children in the group. Lewin stated that only “under some circumstances” (1946, p. 802) could they index group belongingness. Lewin may have been wrong to be so hesitant in his enthusiasm for the sociometric approach. The ideas, constructs, and techniques proposed by Moreno and his followers provided a means of clarifying and articulating the broad constructs which interested him such as social belongingness. Lewin’s lack of enthusiasm could have been due to an apparent difference in emphasis between him and that of Moreno and others interested in sociometry. Whereas Lewin was relatively more interested in the group per se and in group dynamics, the sociometric approach was relatively more interested in individuals and their places within group. Moreover, Moreno’s techniques had not been fully developed, and they were not specifically intended to directly assess the group as a whole. At least to some extent, sociometric methods were intended to measure the degree to which a person was connected to other group members on the basis of attraction. The sociometric approach could identify an outsider but they were not especially interested in the group dynamics that led to outsider status. Although one can understand Lewin’s somewhat dismissive stance, if he had been more generously open minded, he would have seen the value of the sociometric approach as a means of measuring basic indices of belongingness and outsider status. As with the work of other theorists, it is useful to consider the context in which Lewin developed his ideas about the role of the group in social development and 18 William M. Bukowski and Marie-Hélène Véronneau in which the earliest ideas about sociometry emerged. The prewar period of the late 1930s and the period during and just after World War II were moments of deep reflection about the power of groups and of the apparent frailty of individuals. Overlooking the destructive forces of fascist social movements was not an option. Beyond recognizing the tyrannical effects of strong social move- ments, there was at this same time an increased awareness of the apparent malleability of social development that can result from cultural (Mead, 1937) or socioeconomic circumstances (Dollard, 1937). Another vantage point provides another perspective on why the group received attention at this time. It is not hard to imagine that this heavy emphasis on the group is at least in part intended as counterweight to the excessive emphasis on the individual in other major theories of development (e.g., psychoanalysis – see Galanaki, Chapter 5, this volume) that were popular at the time. The chapter on Social development by Anderson and Anderson that appeared in the second edition of the Manual (1954) was more explicit in its emphasis on the individual and in its concern with individual differences in patterns of social development. They argued that social development is motivated by two goals, specifically integration (i.e., being engaged with others) and differentiation (i.e., autonomy or individuation). Central to their thinking is the distinction between moving toward others and moving against others. Whereas the former promotes integration at the level of the person and organization at the level of the group, the latter impedes both of these conditions. Although the Andersons saw aggression and conflict as the opposites of socially integrative behavior, they recognized that avoidant behavior was also antithetical to the tendency to move toward others. They did not go so far as to refer to moving away from others as a separate dimension of behavior. Instead they saw it as a submissive or non-integrative response to power imbalances that was associated with the low end of the features that would define socially successful children (i.e., “lower spontaneity, lower social communication, lower understanding, lower productivity, lower interacting” p. 1203). In spite of their reluctance to treat withdrawal and isolation as a broadband dimension of individual difference in social behavior, an implicit point of their chapter is that some children are more likely than others to withdraw from or to avoid their peers. This view was not yet an explicit concept in research on social development, but it would soon appear in at least two other research paradigms. So, by the beginning of the 1950s, there was at best an implicit view that withdrawal and isolation were less than ideal modes of social behavior during childhood. Although explicit references to withdrawn or isolated children appear to be rare in major summaries of research on social development, there was the implied point that being apart from others, that is, lacking in social belonging or being restricted to a narrow range of social contexts, was not a sign of healthy development. However, attention to person-focused empirical techniques to identify socially withdrawn or isolated children was not apparent in mainstream chapters. Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group 19 The 1950s and 1960s These conditions changed during the 1950s. Three advances that occurred just before 1960 ascribed increased status to the concepts of withdrawal and isolation as important for social development. One advance appears to be primarily methodological but it made an important conceptual point that has become an enduring cornerstone of peer research that is still with us today. This advance was in the area of peer assessment procedures (see Bukowski, Cillessen, & Velasquez, 2012). Techniques which collected information from peers about individual children had been in use since the 1920s. Initially they had been used to study specific outcomes such as self-control or moral behavior (e.g., Hartshorne & May, 1928; Hartshorne, May, & Maller, 1929). Mitchell (1956) recognized that peer assessment techniques could be used to measure the functioning of individual children across basic dimensions of social behavior. In contrast to prior peer assessment approaches that were focused on particular narrowband constructs, Mitchell used a heterogeneous set of 19 items representing multiple forms of social behavior. He used a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in which children were asked to indicate which of their peers fit the particular items in his list. Using their selections Mitchell assigned a score on each item to each child according to how many times the child had been nominated for it. A factor analysis revealed three large factors representing the basic dimensions of moving toward others, moving against others, and moving away from others. Mitchell called these factors as social acceptability (example item: “Who are the boys and girls who make good plans?”), aggressive maladjustment (“Who are the ones who break rules, rules of the school, and rules of games?”), and social isolation (“Who are the boys and girls who stay out of a game? They don’t like to play hard.”). Mitchell’s findings are important as the first empirical demonstration of withdrawal as a basic dimension of social functioning with peers that was not the mere opposite of sociability. This three- factor structure serves as the basic organization scheme for the better-known peer assessment techniques that came after it (e.g., Bower’s (1957) Class play, the Peer nomination inventory (Wiggins & Winder, 1961; Winder & Wiggins, 1964), the Pupil evaluation inventory (Pekarik, Prinz, Liebert, Weintraub, & Neale, 1976), and the Revised class play (Masten, Morrison, & Pellegrini, 1985)). To our knowledge, Mitchell’s technique was the first procedure that identified and assessed withdrawal as a basic aspect of functioning among peers. Mitchell’s discovery of withdrawal as a basic characteristic of peer-related social behavior was facilitated by two other advances. One was an explicit theme of the chapters by Lewin and the Andersons, specifically that research on social development needed to recognize the whole child. Mitchell was especially influenced by Eysenck’s (1953) quest to identify the basic dimensions that comprised the human personality. Mitchell chose to pursue this goal through an analysis of children’s functioning with peers. This pursuit was possible due to a second advance, specifically the development of factor analytic techniques 20 William M. Bukowski and Marie-Hélène Véronneau (e.g., Thurstone, 1947) to empirically assess the structure of a data set. The technical/statistical advances in factor analysis allowed Mitchell to show that withdrawal was a basic dimension of social behavior within the peer group that varied across individuals in a trait-like manner. Both of these conditions can be seen as manifestations of the modernist concerns that followed World War II, specifically that there is rich multidimensional complexity to human functioning that cannot be observed directly but whose existence needs to be recognized (Howe, 1967). They are also consistent with the modernist view that overriding utopian models about human nature (e.g., fascism and communism) are to be gravely distrusted and should be replaced by observational approaches to understanding human functioning. Mitchell was not interested in assessing narrow aspects of children’s social behavior even if these features were key components of a particular theory. Instead he wanted to take a comprehensive view of the latent factors that define children’s social behavior. When he took this view, he saw evidence of withdrawal as a basic dimension of social behavior during childhood. A second advance occurred at nearly the same time but in a very different research domain, specifically in nascent research on temperament. In their earliest papers on temperament, Chess, Thomas, and Birch (1959) referred to two dimensions of responsiveness to novelty that resemble the concepts of withdrawal and isolation. They were activity/passivity and approach/withdrawal. The underlying narrative of the rationale for their project consisted largely of a reaction to the prevailing environmental emphasis in theory about child development and in the advice provided in guides for young parents. Their goals were to show that infants were not blank slates and to provide a full assessment of the range of infant behavior. Their findings were largely descriptive in the sense that they wanted to describe the basic normative dimensions by which infants respond to the environment. Their observations showed that withdrawal and passivity were among the ways that some infants responded to the environment. Like the findings provided by Mitchell (1956), their evidence indicated that withdrawal was a normative form of trait-like behavior that needed to be included in descriptions of social development. There is another important similarity between the ideas of Mitchell (1956) and Chess et al. (1959). Beyond their agreement that withdrawal is a basic form of social behavior, they appear to agree that it is at least a risk factor if not a direct indicator of problem behavior. Implicit in their writing is the view that withdrawal is problematic as it precludes engagement in opportunities for positive development. Chess et al. depict withdrawal as the opposite of approach in the same way that negative mood is the opposite of positive mood. Mitchell is more explicit as he states that withdrawal will eventually lead to maladjustment. A third development of the late 1950s and 1960s was in an area that has been mentioned already, specifically sociometry. Sociometry refers to the collection of ideas, constructs, and methods related to understanding the attractions and Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group 21 repulsions between the members of a group (Cillessen & Bukowski, 2000). One tradition within sociometry has been concerned with identifying children who show elevated levels on the sociometric dimensions of liking and disliking. During the 1950s substantial progress was made in developing techniques to identify children who are neglected by their peers. Whereas previous techniques were able to distinguish children who were stars or populars in their groups (i.e., those who were much above average in how much they were liked by peers and much below average in how much they were disliked) from children who were rejected (i.e., low on liking and high on disliking) and those who were average on both dimensions, new techniques developed by Lemann and Solomon (1952) and others (Justman & Wrightstone, 1951; Thompson & Powell, 1951) were also able to distinguish between rejected and neglected children (i.e., children who were neither liked nor disliked). Dunnington (1957) made the strongest contribution through the creation of two new constructs that she called status and notice. Status was computed by subtracting a measure of disliking from a measure of liking to create an index of relative likeableness; notice was computed by adding liking and disliking scores together to create an index of the extent to which a child was visible within the peer group. More recently the measures of status and notice have been referred to by other terms such as social preference and social impact (Coie, Dodge, & Coppotelli, 1982; Newcomb & Bukowski, 1983; Peery, 1979). Children who had very low scores on notice (i.e., those with very low scores on both liking and disliking) were presumed to be neglected by their peers. Taken together these three advances show that, by the beginning of the 1960s, social withdrawal had been identified as a basic form of social behavior and that empirical techniques were now available to measure individual differences in withdrawal and neglect in the peer group. Although these advances provide converging evidence that withdrawal is a basic and measurable dimension of social behavior, it is important to recognize the differences between them. The measure developed by Mitchell is a form of peer perception that focuses on a broad set of indicators, in particular indices of anxiety and reticence in social or interpersonal contexts. His items were “the boys and girls who stay out of game … they don’t like to play hard”; “… too shy to make friends easily, it is hard to get to know them”; “the ones that get bothered and upset when they are called on to talk or recite”; “the boys and girls that you do not notice …. You just don’t think about whether they are with you or not”; and “the ones that are timid and afraid to take chances.” In contrast, the withdrawal-related dimension described by Chess, Thomas, and Birch emphasized motor behavior activity/passivity and initial reactivity to new stimuli approach/withdrawal. Their constructs and methods emphasized behaviors in response to both social and nonsocial stimuli. In a further contrast to this emphasis on behavior, the sociometric approach as practiced by researchers such as Dunnington (1957) emphasized measures of affect such as the extent to which a child was the recipient of positive and negative affect (i.e., liking and disliking) from peers. This diversity is a strength, as it points to the richness 22 William M. Bukowski and Marie-Hélène Véronneau and complexity of withdrawal as a construct, but it poses a challenge as it reveals the construct’s multifaceted and amorphous nature whose breadth may be so vast that it needs to be studied as a collection of interrelated phenomena rather than as a single coherent entity. One final aspect of these three advances should not be overlooked. Each of them, either explicitly or implicitly, sees withdrawal as a negative factor that puts children at risk for maladaptive outcomes. Withdrawal and Isolation Go Underground and Then Come Back from a Different Direction Although research on peer relations became more frequent during the 1960s and early 1970s than it had been in prior decades, it did not include much research on social withdrawal and isolation. Although the apparent advances of the 1950s might have led to an increased interest in these constructs, research on withdrawal and isolation during these years was rare. Three reasons may have contributed to this relative lack of activity in these constructs. One is that the application of the advances in peer assessment and sociometry posed practical challenges, especially when large samples are used. At this time, computing power was still weak and access to computing machinery and useful software was very limited. A second reason was the emergence of a theory that was more heavily focused on process than on characteristics of the person. The prevailing theoretical models during the 1960s and early 1970s were the mechanistic model of social learning theory and the organismic model of Piagetian theory regarding cognitive and social-cognitive development. In spite of the large differences between these approaches, they shared a strong emphasis on processes that would account for developmental change (especially the Piagetian approach) and the emergence of individual differences (especially the social learning approach). This process orientation left little room for a concern with types of children such as those who were withdrawn or isolated. A third reason may be the cultural zeitgeist in the Western world that emphasized the promotion of competent functioning in children and adolescents. In the Cold War era, prior to America’s entry into space race, the USSR’s launch of Sputnik led to concerted efforts to foster high levels of performance among the youth in the West. This frenzied zeitgeist aimed at creating super achievers is not likely to have had time to devote to withdrawn children. This is not to imply that concepts related to social withdrawal and isolation completely disappeared during this period or that there was no interest in the fac- tors that accounted for success in the peer group. Hartup’s 1970 and 1983 Handbook chapters (Hartup, 1970, 1983) largely consisted of a rich review of findings regard- ing the development of peer interaction and of evidence that experiences with peers can affect changes in behavior. Consistent with the preference among Piagetians and among the followers of social learning theory for laboratory-based observations, most of the research covered by Hartup used experimental Studying Withdrawal and Isolation in the Peer Group 23 procedures or well-crafted interviews and tasks. Nevertheless, Hartup devoted attention to two issues related to the topics of withdrawal and isolation. In his discussion of theory about the effects of peer relations on development, Hartup was careful to point to an issue previously covered by Lewin (1946, 1954) and by the Andersons (Anderson & Anderson, 1954), specifically that the desire to belong and to be integrated into the group is a powerful motivational force underlying the effects of peer experiences on behavioral change. In his 1970 chapter, Hartup, a very literate and cultured person, quoted a long passage from Carson McCuller’s novel A member of the wedding to demonstrate how being part of a larger social unit can be a strong desire for a child. Implied in this view is that withdrawn and iso- lated children are either atypical or lacking in the skills needed to be part of the group. Hartup also referred in both chapters to research on the factors that affect acceptance in the peer group. He points out that very little attention had been devoted to withdrawal. Although the mainstream literature on peer relations appeared to be uninterested in social withdrawal and isolation, a developing literature in another research domain was showing increased concern with these topics. In the 1960s and 1970s, large population-based epidemiological studies conducted by clinically oriented psychologists interested in the roots of adult mental health began to study the association between indicators of functioning during childhood and measures of functioning in adulthood. Individually and as a group, these studies showed that measures of problematic peer relations in childhood could be used to predict maladjustment in adulthood (e.g., Cowen, Pederson, Babigian, Izzo, & Trost, 1973; Kohn & Clausen, 1955; Roff, 1961; Roff, Sells, & Golden, 1972). Among the childhood indicators that were associated with problems in adulthood were measures of withdrawal and isolation. In a well-known comprehensive review of this literature, Pa	1,800,516
The History of Emotions An Introduction (Jan Plamper, Keith Tribe) (Z-Library).pdf	EMOTIONS IN HISTORY General Editors ute frevert thomas dixon The History of Emotions An Introduction J A N P L A M P E R Translated by K E I T H T R I B E 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries First published in German as Geschichte und Gefühl. Grundlagen der Emotionsgeschichte By Jan Plamper © 2012 by Siedler Verlag, a division of Verlagsgruppe Random House GmbH, München, Germany. The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Ofﬁce, the collecting society VG WORT, and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). © in this English translation Oxford University Press 2015 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2015 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2014940239 ISBN 978–0–19–966833–5 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. To the Berlin Feel Tank Acknowledgements Rather than me coming to this book, it is as if this book came to me. I was working on another study about the history of fear among soldiers when conceptual problems began piling up so fast that I found myself forced to call a halt, so that I might have some time to think them through. This happened during the academic year 2007/8, when I was a Junior Fellow at the Historisches Kolleg in Munich. Lothar Gall, the board’s chairperson at the time, was accommodating when I told him about my diversion. For a productive year at this unique institute for advanced study, I owe a debt of gratitude to him, Karl-Ulrich Gelberg, Elisabeth Hüls, and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, as well as my co-fellows Albrecht Cordes, Jörg Fisch, Georg Schmidt, and Martin Wrede. I am also grateful to Michael Hoch- geschwender, Benjamin Schenk, and Martin Schulze Wessel for good conversation and much more during my year in Munich. The book was written under conditions that were similarly idyllic while I was on a multi-year Dilthey Fellowship, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, at Ute Frevert’s Centre for the History of Emotions at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin—my ‘feel tank’. My colleagues there provided stimulating discussion, critical readings of my texts, and afforded glimpses of their own work-in-progress. Without all this the ﬁnal book would have been much worse, perhaps it would have never become a book. I am extraordinarily grateful to Jose Antony, Christian Bailey, Christina Becher, Magdalena Beljan, Gaby Bend- mann, Anja Berkes, Clare Bielby, Rob Boddice, Philippe Bongrand, Juliane Brauer, Daniel Brückenhaus, Moritz Buchner, Kate Davison, Sabine Donauer, Christiane Eifert, Pascal Eitler, Dagmar Ellerbrock, Merih Erol, Monika Freier, Ute Frevert, Benno Gammerl, Alice Goff, Joachim Häberlen, Christa Hämmerle, Bettina Hitzer, Philipp von Hugo, Uffa Jensen, Christine Kanz, Ursula von Keitz, Mana Kia, Anja Laukötter, Susanne Michl, Salil Misra, Sven Oliver Müller, Sophie Oliver, Stephanie Olsen, Tine van Osselaer, Margrit Pernau, Josef Prestel, Till van Rahden, Imke Rajamani, Karola Rockmann, Shweta Sachdeva, Mohammad Sajjad, Daniela Saxer, Monique Scheer, Maritta Schleyer, Anne Schmidt, Mark Seymour, Nadeem Shah, Kerstin Singer, Franziska Timm, Karen Vallgarda, Nina Verheyen, Gian Marco Vidor, Claudia Wassmann, and Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly. Working in a new ﬁeld that was booming, and was in fact being seriously hyped, was exhilarating: the general atmosphere in which we worked, the rapid develop- ment of concepts and terminology, the rapid publication and then citation of research work was a singular experience. The chances that any of us will ever repeat this experience in our academic careers are slim. The presence of experimental psychologists at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development was a major advantage for a humanities person like myself. Ulman Lindenberger made time for a thorough and constructive critique of my life science chapter, Isabel Dziobek and Hauke Heekeren gave me important leads. I was also able to beneﬁt from discussions with and comments made by Ray Dolan, Klaus Fiedler, and Tania Singer during multidisciplinary conferences at the Insti- tute. Among those more loosely connected with the Institute I should like to highlight Ruth Leys. My intellectual debt to her work is enormous, she engaged me in critical argument on various occasions, and she kept me from giving up at a critical juncture. Rüdiger Zill read the Introduction’s philosophical excursus with the sharp eye of a specialist in the philosophy of emotions. To all of them I am most grateful. Margrit Pernau invited me to co-teach a summer school of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes, and I ended up learning so much from the students in our group, especially those from the life sciences. The life scientists at the September 2010 ‘History of Emotions’ summer school in Görlitz were Aram Kehyayan und Marco Schmidt. Marco read and criticized my third chapter, as did another participant at our summer school, Philipp Gerlach. Philipp was also my intern in early 2011, and he did indispensable preliminary work for the philosophical part of the introduction. Many thanks! Ingo Gildenhard, Jochen Hellbeck, and Karl Schlögel took time out of their own work to listen to me while I was writing, and also to ask questions. That was very helpful. The reading of the entire ﬁnished manuscript by Dietrich Beyrau, Klaus Gestwa, Christa Hämmerle, and Barbara H. Rosenwein was similarly helpful. Barbara H. Rosenwein has been a wonderfully generous mentor from the very beginning of this project, responding reliably and rapidly to every one of my email questions. Stefanie Gert and Eva Sperschneider, as well as Hartmut Burggrabe and Johanna Rocker, provided ﬁrst-rate research assistance. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to them all. The recommendations of Anselm Doering-Manteuffel, Eli Bar-Chen, and Igal Halﬁn were crucial in placing the original of this book with Siedler Publishers at German Random House. Working with Siedler was a smooth and, indeed, re- assuring encounter with the publishing business. My editors Heike Specht, who commissioned the book, Antje Korsmeier, who provided substantive feedback from a philosopher’s perspective, and Tobias Winstel, who always looked further than I could think, were not only highly professional, but also friendly and approach- able. The same is true for Dietlinde Orendi from the illustrations department. In the end, Christiane Fritsche edited the revised manuscript with a mind-boggling sense for German style. Ditta Ahmadi performed miracles during the typesetting of the book. The translation of the book was made possible by a Geisteswissenschaften International Prize. I am grateful to Keith Tribe, my translator. Karola Rockmann of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin painstakingly checked the translation. Anika Fiedler helped track down English quotations. She was funded by a grant from the History Department at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I feel privileged to have been teaching since September 2012. My department also kindly paid for the rights for the illustrations and let Kerstin Feule take time off her administrative job to track them down. I am happy the English version of the book found a home in Ute Frevert and Thomas Dixon’s ‘Emotions Acknowledgements viii in History’ series at Oxford University Press, where Rowena Anketell meticulously copy-edited and Emily Brand, Robert Faber, Emma Slaughter, Cathryn Steele, and Christopher Wheeler expertly shepherded the manuscript through production. My friend Ilya Vinkovetsky kindly checked the ﬁrst proofs. This book starts with my visit to an anatomy course. It was Johannes Vogel of the Anatomical Institute at the Charité Hospital who generously invited me to his anatomy course on 7 December 2009 at the Rudolphi Room. Irina Kremenetskaia worked just 100 metres away in the Charité neurosurgical laboratory. Our marriage proves that the bridging of the gap between the humanities and the life sciences, between social constructionism and universalism, is possible—at least on a personal level. To be sure, things are easier when one is blessed with two daughters of exceptional emotional intelligence, Olga and Lisa Plamper. To my family go not only my thanks, but also my love. ix Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures xv History and Emotions: An Introduction 1 1 What Is Emotion? 9 2 Who Has Emotion? 25 3 Where Is Emotion? 29 4 Do Emotions Have a History? 32 5 What Sources Might We Use in Writing the History of Emotions? 33 One: The History of the History of Emotions 40 1 Lucien Febvre and the History of Emotions 40 2 The History of Emotions Prior to Febvre 43 3 The History of Emotions in the Time of Febvre and After 49 4 The History of Emotions and 9/11 60 5 Barbara H. Rosenwein and Emotional Communities 67 Two: Social Constructivism: Anthropology 75 1 The Varieties of Emotions 75 2 Emotions in Travel Writings and Early Anthropology 80 3 Emotions in the Anthropological Classics 83 4 Early Anthropology of Emotions in the 1970s 90 The Emotions of Inuits 90 Emotions ‘Hypercognized’ and ‘Hypocognized’ 95 5 The Linguistic Turn and Social Constructivism 98 Headhunting for Pleasure 99 Poetry, Not Tears, as the Medium of Authentic Feelings 102 The Height of Social Constructivism 106 6 Social Constructivism alongside Rosaldo, Abu-Lughod, and Lutz 109 7 The Social Constructivist Anthropology of Emotions: Some Preliminary Conclusions 114 Excursus I: Sociology 117 8 The 1990s I: The Anthropology of Emotions after Social Constructivism 129 Excursus II: The Linguistics of Emotion 130 9 The 1990s II: The Supersession of the Social Constructivism–Universalism Duality? 136 10 Recent Universalist Anthropology of Emotions 142 Three: Universalism: Life Sciences 147 1 Paul Ekman and Basic Emotions 147 2 Road Map for Chapter Three 163 3 Charles Darwin’s The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872), or, How One Book Became a Battleﬁeld between Social Constructivists and Universalists 164 4 The Beginnings of Psychological Research into Emotions, or, How Feelings, Passions, and Changes of Mood Migrated from Theology to Psychology and in the Process Became ‘Emotions’ 173 5 Emotion Laboratories and Laboratory Emotions, or, the Birth of Psychological Conceptions of Emotion from the Experimental Spirit 178 6 How Ideas of Social Order Also Ordered the Interior of the Brain 186 7 Research into the Emotional Response of the Brain 188 The Cannon–Bard Theory 191 The Papez Circuit 192 The Limbic System 193 8 Freud’s Missing Theory of Feeling 195 9 The Boom in the Psychology of Emotion from the 1960s Onwards 201 10 A Synthetic Cognitive-Physiological Theory of Emotion: The Schachter–Singer Model 202 11 Evaluating Emotions: Cognitive Psychology and Appraisal Models 204 12 The Neurosciences, fMRI Scanning, and Other Imaging Procedures 206 13 Joseph LeDoux and the Two Roads to Fear 212 14 Antonio R. Damasio and the Somatic Marker Hypothesis 214 15 Giacomo Rizzolatti, Vittorio Gallese, Marco Iacoboni, Mirror Neurons, and Social Emotions 219 16 On the Shoulders of Dwarves, or, The Neurosciences as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for the Human and Social Sciences 225 17 Affectarians of All Lands, Unite! The Neurosciences as Represented by Hardt, Negri, & Co. 237 18 Borrowings from the Neurosciences: An Interim Balance 240 19 Beyond all Divides: The Critical Neurosciences and Genuine Possibilities for Cooperation 243 Functional Speciﬁcation, also Known as Functional Segregation 244 Neuroplasticity 247 Social Neurosciences 248 Four: Perspectives in the History of Emotions 251 1 The Navigation of Feeling: William M. Reddy’s Attempt to Move Beyond Social Constructivism and Universalism 251 2 Emotional Practices 265 Mobilizing Emotional Practices 266 Naming Emotional Practices 267 Communicating Emotional Practices 267 Regulating Emotional Practices 268 3 Neurohistory 270 Contents xii 4 Perspectives in the History of Emotion 276 Political History, Social Movements, and Emotions 277 Economic History and Emotions 282 Legal History and Emotions 284 Media History and Emotions 285 Oral History, Memory, and Emotions 287 Historians as Emotional Beings 290 5 Prospects 293 Conclusion 297 Glossary 301 Select Bibliography 309 Index 343 xiii Contents List of Figures 1. Joseph LeDoux and The Two Roads to Fear 3 2. Galen’s Doctrine of the Four Fluids and The Related Emotional Types 16 3. Masahiro Mori and ‘The Uncanny Valley’ 28 4. Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin, and Koni in Sochi, 21 January 2007 37 5. Cofﬁn with Bells and Breathing Tube 79 6. Rasas and Their Associations with Colours and Deities According to Natyashastra 110 7. Facial Expression for raudra rasa (Anger) 111 8. Facial Expression for bhayanaka rasa (Fear/Panic) 111 9. Conceptual Primitives and Lexical Universals 132 10. Summary of Types of Emotion Language 134 11. The Flow of Emotion by Karl G. Heider 145 12. Sadness, Anger, or Disgust? Please, Make a Note! 148 13. Photos of Facial Expressions Shown to Test Subjects 154 14. Facial Expressions of Persons in a Story 156 15. Baring of Teeth in a Human as an Evolutionary Remnant 170 16. Acceleration of the Heart Rate under the Inﬂuence of Fear (in A and B) 182 17. Robert Dudgeon’s Sphygmograph for the Recording of Blood Pressure 182 18. Kiss-O-Meter 183 19. Phineas Gage and His Iron Bar 189 20. The Position of the Iron Bar in Phineas Gage’s Skull 190 21. Regions of the Brain (including the Limbic System) and Their Functioning 194 22. The Schachter–Singer Model of Emotion 203 23. Cross-Section of an fMRI Scanner 208 24. Brain Activity Relating to Emotion in a Dead Salmon? 211 25. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) Experiment 216 26. The BASIS Glossary 217 27. Rogier van der Weyden, The Descent from the Cross (1435–8) 229 28. ACT UP Poster 278 29. The Weeping Presidential Candidate? Edmund Muskie in a Snowstorm, 26 February 1972 280 30. The Crying President: George W. Bush, 11 January 2007 281 History and Emotions An Introduction Hardly more than a dark, oval shadow, about the size of a raisin, merging into other brain matter of a lighter colour—the amygdala. I immediately thought: perhaps you cannot even separate it out. It is not an organ like the liver or the kidney. These you can remove from a plastic model of the human torso, and then simply put them back. I was shown the amygdala in a sectioned brain that looked just like someone had sliced up a cauliﬂower. A student had checked a number of buckets ﬁlled with formaldehyde until she found a brain sectioned so that the amygdala was visible, carefully separating the slices to show me. This was early one December morning in 2009, in the Rudolphi Room of the Anatomical Institute of the Berlin Charité, Europe’s largest university clinic. I had emailed them to say that I was working on a history of fear among First World War Russian soldiers and would like to see a human amygdala, since it governed the human response of fearfulness and I had kept on coming across references to it in neuroscientiﬁc writings. The response was quick: I could attend the anatomy course for medical students the coming Monday, and I would be shown an amygdala. Arriving before the lecturer, I told the others about my interest—they were all fourth semester students, wearing white coats. While they ﬁshed out one brain after another from the plastic buckets in search of one that was suitable— brains dripping with formaldehyde—I glanced at the neighbouring table. Two female students were just heaving a body bag onto the table. They removed the blue plastic covering, then the gauze bandages covering the head, turned the skinned, prepared corpse onto its front, propped the head up with a wooden block, removed the sawn top of the skull, and began ﬁshing around deep inside the cavity with pincers and a scalpel. It suddenly occurred to me that the path these two students were taking into these regions below the cortex which governed cognition was just like that of my own historical studies. These students would at some point come across the amygdala, the inner sanctum of fear, the most basal point of the most fundamental of all feelings. The amygdala was so named in 1819 by its discoverer, the German anatomist Karl Friedrich Burdach (1776–1847), because of its almond-shaped form, as in the Greek Æªº (‘almond’).1 By the 1930s, animal experiments and studies of 1 David Sander, ‘Amygdala’, in Sander and Klaus R. Scherer (eds), The Oxford Companion to Emotion and the Affective Sciences (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 28–32, here 28. human patients had shown that this was the area of the brain where all neuronal processes caused by and responding to threats took place (for example, the threat represented by a venomous snake), processes which activated the nervous system out of its state of relaxation (enhancing muscle tone, accelerating the pulse, in short, everything needed to ﬂee from the snake), and which were generally categorized as ‘fear’ or ‘anxiety’. From the 1980s on, new imaging procedures associated with computer tomography reinforced this view. I asked the students working at the anatomy table under a harsh neon light what they considered to be the prevailing view about the function of the amygdala, and they agreed: ‘negative emotions, especially fear’. Popular knowledge of the amygdala’s signiﬁcance may be attributed to a best- seller written by a New York neuroscientist, Joseph LeDoux’s The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (1996), a book which has been translated into many languages. LeDoux, who plays ‘Heavy Mental’ electric guitar with other members of his lab in a band called The Amygdaloids, talks of two roads to fear: a fast one via the amygdala, and a somewhat slower one via the cerebral cortex.2 According to LeDoux, when a threat (the snake) is registered, this infor- mation takes 12 milliseconds to reach the amygdala, which then prepares the nervous system for a ﬁght-or-ﬂight reaction rooted in evolutionary biology. This quick response can decide upon life or death, and the body is prepared to run from the threat, or to stand and ﬁght. In twice that length of time the same information is conveyed to the cortex, which calculates: is that really a snake, or perhaps a piece of wood that looks like a snake? If it really is a snake, is it alive or dead? If it is alive, is it a venomous snake, or instead one that is quite harmless? If there is no actual danger, the cortex signals to the amygdala, and the nervous system calms down.3 The suggestive power of the illustration in LeDoux’s book depicting this process is considerable. Since 1996 it has been used more often than any others in works devoted to fear (Fig. 1).4 Since then, the amygdala has become so well known that I can hardly mention my historical work on fear among soldiers without being asked about it. There are very few emotions to which an anthropological constant—today dressed up in neuro- biological terminology—is applied in such an automatic way as happens with the fear felt by soldiers. Underlying this is the idea that there is a solid neurobiological (almond) kernel at the centre of the fear felt by all animals across time and culture, from the laboratory mouse to Homo sapiens. And this has been one pole in the study of emotion since the nineteenth century: solid, unchanging, culturally universal, inclusive of all species, transcending time, biological, physiological, essential, basic, hard-wired. The placement of the amygdala deep in the brain’s core—a site which the students at the next table were setting out to explore—says it all. But what is the amygdala? It is a mass of nerve cells activated in particular operations of the brain, emotion being one of these operations—at least most 2 See <http://www.amygdaloids.com> accessed 25 February 2014. 3 Joseph E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), ch. 6, esp. 163–8. 4 The illustration is also included in LeDoux, The Emotional Brain, 166. The History of Emotions 2 researchers do still agree on this. But argument begins as soon as one asks: which nerve cells belong to the amygdala? For the neighbouring regions are also composed of nerve cells, some of which are thought to be relevant to emotion.5 The gradual transition between the dark spot in the brain section and the less-dark area Amygdala Blood pressure Heart rate Muscle Visual Thalamus Visual Cortex Fig. 1 Joseph LeDoux and The Two Roads to Fear Source: Joseph E. LeDoux, ‘Emotion, Memory and the Brain’, Scientiﬁc American, 270/6 (1994), 50–6, here 38, illustration by Robert Osti. 5 A survey article claims that ‘The amygdala consists of functionally distinct nuclei (i.e. 13 main nuclei, each having further subdivisions), which have extensive internuclear and intranuclear connections’; Tim Dalgleish, Barnaby D. Dunn, and Dean Mobbs, ‘Affective Neuroscience: Past, Present, and Future’, Emotion Review, 1/4 (2009), 355–68, here 358. Another paper disputes that there is a unitary structure of nerve cells called the amygdala, and refers instead to a ‘structurally and functionally heterogeneous region of the cerebral hemispheres’; Larry W. Swanson and Gorica D. Petrovich, ‘What is the Amygdala?’, Trends in Neurosciences, 21/8 (1998), 323–31, here 330. Yet others argue that nerve cells from other parts of the brain belong to an ‘extended Amygdala’, among which is the substantia innominata of the basal forebrain; John P. Aggleton (ed.), The Amygdala: A Functional Analysis (2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 8–9; M. Davis and P. J. Whalen, ‘The Amygdala: Vigilance and Emotion’, Molecular Psychiatry, 6/1 (2001), 13–34. 3 History and Emotions: An Introduction surrounding it—something which struck me the ﬁrst time I ever saw the amygdala—itself represents the difﬁculty in clearly demarcating it. And there is also disagreement about the function of the amygdala. The idea that it is respon- sible only for negative emotions is now generally regarded as obsolete. Today the amygdala is considered among other things to be responsible for the sense of smell, for visual perception, and for the capacity of jazz musicians to distinguish between music played from a score and improvisation.6 In addition to this, the organization and connection of nerve cells in the amygdala differ between rodents, upon which most of the experiments are carried out, and humans, for whom conclusions are then drawn.7 And ﬁnally, strictly speaking, talking about ‘the’ amygdala is mis- leading, since there is one in each half of the brain. How they are connected, whether they perform distinct tasks, and if so, which, is currently the subject of intense discussion among neurobiologists.8 This all ran through my mind as I left the institute and found myself once more in Berlin’s weak winter sun. I had run across quite different things when reading anthropological studies of fear. Anthropology had not been seeking a general and unique mechanism of fear that had a speciﬁc neuroanatomical site, but had noticed differences in the treatment of fear at different times in different cultures. This was even true of soldierly fear, as was evident in one example: that of the Maori tribes native to New Zealand, who until they were conquered by the British in the mid- nineteenth century were often at war with each other. If a Maori warrior showed physical signs of fear before a battle, such as trembling, it was said that he was possessed by atua, a kind of spirit that had been angered by an infringement of tapu, a canon of social rules. There was a ritual for ridding oneself of this possessed state: the warrior had to crawl between the legs of a standing Maori woman of superior social status. The sexual organs of the woman, especially the vagina, had special powers which could free the warrior of atua. If the warrior crawled between the woman’s legs without shaking then he was freed of atua, and went off to battle liberated from fear. But if he still shook, the ritual cleansing was judged a failure, and the warrior could stay at home unpunished. Apparently no one thought it possible for someone to be afﬂicted with atua during a battle; and so we can assume that Maori warriors just did not feel fear. Hence the model of soldierly fear for the Maori warrior is one that locates it outside the body. Fear originates not in his 6 For the sense of smell see Geoffrey Schoenbaum, Andrea A. Chiba, and Michela Gallagher, ‘Neural Encoding in Orbitofrontal Cortex and Basolateral Amygdala during Olfactory Discrimination Learning’, Journal of Neuroscience, 19/5 (1999), 1876–84; for visual perception see Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio R. Damasio, ‘Fear and the Human Amygdala’, Journal of Neuroscience, 15/9 (1995), 5879–91; for the distinction by jazz musicians between improvised and scored music, see Annerose Engel and Peter E. Keller, ‘The Perception of Musical Spontaneity in Improvised and Imitated Jazz Performances’, Frontiers in Auditory Cognitive Neuroscience, 2/83 (2011), 1–13. 7 See Richard J. Davidson, ‘Seven Sins in the Study of Emotion: Correctives from Affective Neuroscience’, Brain and Cognition, 52/1 (2003), 129–32, here 130. 8 Daan Baas, André Aleman, and René S. Kahn, ‘Lateralization of Amygdala Activation: A Systematic Review of Functional Neuroimaging Studies’, Brain Research Reviews, 45/2 (2004), 96–103. The History of Emotions 4 ‘soul’, or his ‘psyche’, or his ‘brain’, but instead in a transcendent sphere of tapu norms and higher beings.9 This example quite signiﬁcantly modiﬁes any idea of the universality of a soldier’s fear. And here we come to the second polarity for all research on feelings: soft, anti-essentialist, anti-determinist, social constructivist, culturally relative, cul- turally speciﬁc, culturally contingent. Since the mid-nineteenth century at the very latest, academic discussion of emotion has revolved around these two polarities: hard and soft, essentialist and anti-essentialist, determinist and anti-determinist, universal and culturally conditioned. The concepts grouped at either end of this spectrum are not complementary. What their relation to each other is; how, when, and where they emerged; what distinguishes them; how they might be precisely mapped—none of this is clear. Research is only in its earliest phases. Anyone who during the ﬁrst decade of the third millennium has taken part in multidisciplinary conferences involving neuroscientists and specialists in the humanities—there is little point here in talking of interdisciplinarity—will know just how sensitive these polarities are, and how quickly camps form around them that become bitter foes. The polarization between universalism and social constructivism has often been noted: Barbara H. Rosenwein has written that ‘some scholars view emotions as innate whereas others consider them to be “social constructions”.’10 For Ingrid Kasten the question is ‘where and how boundaries are to be drawn between universals and variables’.11 Peter and Carol Stearns talk of the challenge of sorting ‘the durable (animal) from the transient (culturally caused)’.12 According to Rüdi- ger Schnell, ‘today’s historical research into emotions involves two basic and contrary positions: according to the one, human feelings have remained the same for millennia (only the means of expressing them having changed); and according to the other, each emotion has its own history determined by general historical changes’. Schnell also considers that ‘universalists and evolutionary theorists’ are in one camp, ‘constructivists in the other’.13 Armin Günther asks whether ‘emotions have a history at all, or are they anthropological constants?’14 And ﬁnally, Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey White conclude that ‘A number of classic theoretical or epistemological tensions are found in the emotion literature. These include . . . 9 Jean Smith, ‘Self and Experience in Maori Culture’, in Paul Heelas and Andrew Lock (eds), Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self (London: Academic Press, 1981), 145–59, here 149. 10 Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Introduction’ in Rosenwein (ed.), Anger’s Past: The Social Uses of an Emotion in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 2. 11 Ingrid Kasten, ‘Einleitung’, in C. Stephen Jaeger and Ingrid Kasten (eds), Codierungen von Emotionen im Mittelalter: Emotions and Sensibilities in the Middle Ages (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), xiii–xxviii, here xiv. 12 Peter N. Stearns and Carol Z. Stearns, ‘Emotionology: Clarifying the History of Emotions and Emotional Standards’, American Historical Review, 90/4 (1985), 813–36, here 824. 13 Rüdiger Schnell, ‘Historische Emotionsforschung: Eine mediävistische Standortbestimmung’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 38 (2005), 173–276, here 180, 213. 14 Armin Günther, ‘Sprache und Geschichte: Überlegungen zur Gegenstandsangemessenheit einer historischen Psychologie’, in Michael Sonntag and Gerd Jüttemann (eds), Individuum und Geschichte: Beiträge zur Diskussion um eine ‘Historische Psychologie’ (Heidelberg: Asanger, 1993), 34–48, here 35. 5 History and Emotions: An Introduction universalism and relativism.’15 Even where the binary opposition of social con- structivism and universalism does not arise, it is usually considered necessary to mention explicitly that this opposition is not being employed, as for instance when a collection relating to medical ethnology notes that ‘The papers do not focus on debates about the universality or cultural speciﬁcity of particular emotions’.16 It has likewise been noted that this division between universalism and social constructivism has done little to help develop our ideas.17 Even a quick glance at writings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries shows that this distinction is far from God-given, but instead made by humans. It comes from another dichot- omy: that of nature versus culture. For much of the seventeenth century ‘nature’ was for European thinkers still an open category: often the subject of allegory (as the goddess Diana) and widely worshipped (in temples to Nature), it was capable of transformation and moved ﬂexibly to a goal, instead of simply existing, solid and immutable. Nature was ‘an intention never fully realized in actuality’; it was ‘still understood as a pliable set of potentialities, not as a reality inexorably, unalterably ﬁxed’.18 Nature was something that could be modelled, something mutable. This all changed with the Enlightenment. In the course of the early eighteenth century the contrast of nature to culture crystallized. Henceforth, nature was no longer changeable, and it assumed new properties. First of all, the ‘state of nature’ became for political theorists such as Thomas Hobbes the period before the existence of any state, and for John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau the period before the existence of society. Secondly, nature became deﬁned as ‘primitive’, a developmental description for alien, non-European peoples. Thirdly, Enlighten- ment thinkers began to equate nature with the human body, especially with its internal and less mutable aspects, among which were the instincts (for example in the work of Julien Offray de La Mettrie and other ‘mechanical’ philosophers). Fourthly and lastly, the semantics of nature fused with the environment in general, so that ﬂora and fauna became ‘nature’.19 These last two meanings—nature as the body and nature as the environment—ﬁrst of all became a pre-religious form of legitimation; and then, following a process that we can for the sake of simplicity, 15 Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey M. White, ‘The Anthropology of Emotions’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 15 (1986), 405–36, here 406. See also Helena Flam, for whom there are ‘constructivist and positivist approaches’: Helena Flam, Soziologie der Emotionen: Eine Einführung (Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft, 2002), 118. According to Owen Lynch ‘the Western hierarchical distinction of reason over emotion implies the further hierarchical distinctions of human over animal and culture over nature’: Owen M. Lynch, ‘The Social Construction of Emotion in India’, in Lynch (ed.), Divine Passions: The Social Construction of Emotion in India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 3–34, here 10. 16 Mary-Jo Delvecchio Good, Byron J. Good, and Michael M. J. Fischer, ‘Introduction: Discourse and the Study of Emotion, Illness and Healing’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 12/1 (1988), 1–7, here 2, emphasis in original. 17 See Lutz and White, ‘Anthropology of Emotions’, 406, 429–30. 18 Lorraine Daston and Gianna Pomata, ‘The Faces of Nature: Visibility and Authority’, in Daston and Pomata (eds), The Faces of Nature in Enlightenment Europe (Berlin: BWV, 2003), 1–16, here 14. 19 Maurice Bloch and Jean H. Bloch, ‘Women and the Dialectics of Nature in Eighteenth-Century French Thought’, in Carol P. MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern (eds), Nature, Culture and Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 25–41, here 27. The History of Emotions 6 but with no small amount of reservation, call ‘secularization’, they became a unique and absolute legitimating instance. Nature was poured and cast as a solid funda- mentum absolutum, and became the new ultimate certainty. During the nineteenth century this process was associated with the diffusion of Francis Galton’s ideas and their vulgarization as ‘eugenics’, as well as with the professionalization and institu- tionalization of the modern natural sciences.20 The contrast of nature to culture was also inscribed in discussion about scientiﬁc methods. In 1894 for example, in his inaugural lecture as rector of the University of Strasbourg, the neo-Kantian philosopher Wilhelm Windelband made a distinction between nomothetic and idiographic study that remains in use to this day: the nomothetic natural sciences seek generally valid laws and favour the method of reductionist experiment, while by contrast idiographic human sciences seek not the universal, but the speciﬁc and unique in their objects of study.21 The historian of science, Lorraine Daston, considers that the contrasting of nature to culture, of universalism to social constructivism, is so deeply rooted that any attempt to move beyond such polarities would involve group therapy for all scientiﬁc disciplines. Only on the psychiatrist’s couch, as it were, might the ideological heritage of the nineteenth century be ‘worked through’.22 In this book I have time and again sought to get up off the couch, throw open the window and reveal a new perspective, a post-therapeutic study of emotion, the study of emotion beyond the dichotomy of universalism and social constructivism. I have two objectives in this book. First of all, it is an introduction to the history of emotions, and so a synthesis of the current state of knowledge on the subject. An introduction of this kind is not easy to write, for at present the history of emotions is taking off in all directions. Metaphorically, it is rather like tracking photograph- ically each instant of the acceleration of a rocket from its launching pad. I think that this is still feasible for the history of emotions, while it is now too late for the psychology, ethnology, and philosophy of emotions. What has been published so far in the history of emotions can still be pulled together, even if we will eventually come to a point of no return, where knowledge reaches a critical mass beyond which no single person will have the capacity to absorb it. In conformity with this work of review, this book will summarize and order, myths regarding recent studies will be cleared away, and there will be a great deal of direct quotation, so that readers writing their own histories have a sound basis for developing their own work 20 For Galton’s contribution to the nature–culture dyad, see Donald A. MacKenzie, Statistics in Britain: 1865–1930: The Social Construction of Scientiﬁc Knowledge (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981). 21 Wilhelm Windelband, Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft: Rede zum Antritt des Rectorats der Kaiser-Wilhelm-Universität Strassburg, gehalten am 1. Mai 1894 (3rd edn, Strasbourg, 1904). See also the ethnologist John Leavitt, who argues that the study of emotion has been hindered by an unproductive division between a nature investigated by nomothetic sciences and a culture for which ‘ideolectic’ sciences are responsible; John Leavitt, ‘Meaning and Feeling in the Anthropology of Emotions’, American Ethnologist, 23/3 (1996), 514–39, here 515. 22 Lorraine Daston in conversation with the author (25 June 2009). See also Jan Plamper and Benjamin Lazier, ‘Introduction: The Phobic Regimes of Modernity’, Representations, 110/1 (2010), 58–65, here 59. 7 History and Emotions: An Introduction on the history of feeling. As in any survey of this kind, the bird’s-eye view is just a bird’s-eye view, and all readers are encouraged to follow up the literature to which I refer so that they might, instead of a coarse-grained overview, gain a sense of detail. Nonetheless, this book is not just an overview; it is also an intervention in a rapidly developing research ﬁeld. This will be plain in each chapter: I have sought to maintain neutrality in summarizing the material, while at the same time making my own opinion as transparent as possible. This is especially true for my critical assessment of the way in which some of the human and social sciences—primarily relating to the study of literature and images, but also political science—make casual use of the neurosciences, which are today so much in vogue. These borrow- ings often look like a binge that will be closely followed by the most dreadful hangover—I am quite certain of that. And I would place emphasis here upon casual borrowings, since in principle borrowings of this kind can lead to important innovations. One needs a degree of literacy in the neurosciences to understand what one is borrowing from, when one borrows. And this book seeks to promote such literacy—in Chapter Three both objectives, overview and intervention, are inseparable. Other works have shown me how it might be possible to bridge the gap between a balanced assessment of a ﬁeld as a whole and wholehearted involvement in this ﬁeld; that this might even be done with elegance is something that they have shown me, and without such exemplars I might never have begun this book.23 The book is divided into four chapters. Chapter One presents a chronology of historical studies of emotion from the start of the history of emotions in the late nineteenth century. This developmental process is placed in the context of social and political events, together with that of other scientiﬁc disciplines that had an inﬂuence upon the history of emotions. I show in this way that even the history of emotions has a history. Chapter Two turns to the social constructivist end of the spectrum in the debate over emotion, dealing with the discipline that has contrib- uted more than any other to our understanding that feelings are dealt with differently in different cultures: anthropology. Chapter Three switches attention to the other, essentialist, end of the spectrum, and provides an overview of the study of emotion in experimental psychology from the end of the nineteenth century, focusing especially on recent research in the neurosciences. Here I must make a clariﬁcation: I use the term ‘life sciences’ for psychology, physiology, medicine, neurosciences, and related disciplines. This term ﬁrst emerged in the 1980s as an extension of the more restricted sense of ‘biology’, introducing areas such as cognitive psychology, brain research, or computer-based neurological research that dealt with living organisms. ‘Life sciences’ represents the ﬂuidity existing between these separate disciplines. Chapter Four then opens up a perspective upon those areas in the historical study of emotions that might have a future. The dedication of Chapter Two to social constructivism and Chapter Three to universalism does retain the dyadic structure that has prevailed. This contrast has 23 Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983) served as my most important model. The History of Emotions 8 had too much inﬂuence upon everything that has been written about feeling and emotion, and a book which seeks at least in part to be a synthesis cannot do entirely without it. But if The History of Emotions: An Introduction can raise questions about this dyad, and ultimately assist in reconciling the two camps, that would be something of an achievement. This Introduction, however, is devoted to the most fundamental questions raised by the history of emotions: What is emotion? Who has emotion? Do emotions have a history? Assuming that they do have a history, how does the discipline of history deal with this history? Any approach to answering these questions demands exploration of many scientiﬁc domains, above all, two and a half millennia of philosophy. This is ﬁrstly because philosophical investigations were especially inﬂuential and so form a necessary framework for this book; secondly, because in the following chapters they are overshadowed by work in anthropology and the life sciences; and thirdly, because they were often preoccupied with themes and dichotomies other than the opposition of universalism to social constructivism, and thus demonstrate the real prospect of moving beyond this distinction domin- ating recent work on the study of emotion.24 1 WHAT IS EMOTION? ‘What Is an Emotion?’ is the title of a famous essay by the American psychologist William James (1842–1910) that appeared in 1884.25 James did answer his own question—we will come to that—but it is signiﬁcant that both question and answer come from a psychologist. This leads us to the prior question of who deﬁnes what emotions are. For the discourse on emotion is not always dominated by the same discipline; successive disciplines have addressed the issue, and some of these, like William James’s own discipline of psychology, had not existed in previous centur- ies. Very roughly, it can be said that in the West, from antiquity until about 1860, it was primarily philosophy and theology that deﬁned thinking about emotions, together with rhetoric, medicine, and literature, and while after 1860 experimental 24 We can thank the ethnologist Catherine A. Lutz for what is probably the most concise account of the history of emotions, in just two sentences: ‘The extensive discussions of the concept of the emotions that have occurred in the West for at least the past 2,000 years have generally proceeded with either philosophical, religious, moral, or, more recently, scientiﬁc-psychological purposes in mind. This discourse includes Plato’s concern with the relation between pleasure and the good; the Stoic doctrine that the passions are naturally evil; early Christian attempts to distinguish the emotions of human frailty from the emotions of God; Hobbes’s view that the passions are the primary source of action, naturally prompting both war and peace; the argument of Rousseau that natural feelings are of great value and ought to be separated from the “factitious” or sham feelings produced by civilization; the nineteenth-century psychologists’ move to view emotions as psychophysiological in nature, with consciousness seen less and less as an important component of the emotions’; Catherine A. Lutz, Unnatural Emotions: Everyday Sentiments on a Micronesian Atoll & Their Challenge to Western Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 53. 25 William James, ‘What Is an Emotion?’, Mind, 9/34 (1884), 188–205. This title has been alluded to many times since, as for instance by the psychologist Jerome Kagan in his What Is Emotion? History, Measures, and Meanings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 9 History and Emotions: An Introduction psychology became dominant, this dominance shifted to neuroscience in the late twentieth century.26 A statement as general as this needs to be qualiﬁed. To start with, we can introduce what could be called a meta-history of emotions, dealing with who could speak with authority about emotions, where and when they might speak, how these speakers related to each other over time. A history of this kind has been initiated and written for particular periods, but we only have more or less reliable evidence for ancient Greece, eighteenth-century colonial North America, and nineteenth-century Great Britain.27 This book cannot provide an histoire totale of emotion, nor even a complete meta-history of emotions, piecing the islands of knowledge that we have into an archipelago and then ﬁlling in the ocean that separates it. All that can be done here is to provide some suggestions regarding what we might need if we were to construct such a meta-history. In any case, the idea that more than two and a half millennia of Western theological and philosophical thought about emotion has simply been displaced by one hundred and ﬁfty years of research into the psychology of emotion is deeply problematic, for we also need to take account of thinking about feelings in non-Western parts of the world, where it has also played an important role. Besides, transfers from West to East and vice versa were so diverse and multidirectional even before the rise of psychology that it no longer makes any sense to talk in terms of ‘Western’ and ‘non-Western’ categories.28 There is another prior question that we cannot avoid. Are we really talking about the same object when we refer to ‘emotion’ as understood by Joseph LeDoux in the neurosciences of 1996 and ‘emotion’ as used by Klaus Scherer for experimental developmental psychology in 1979? Or Barbara Rosenwein’s use of the term for historical studies in 2002 and ‘emotion’ for Jaak Panksepp’s neuroscience in 1998? Or the use of the term ‘emotions’ by Charles Darwin in 1872, and the entry for 26 Philip Fisher provides a description of the ﬁelds that dealt with emotion, although he gives no chronology: ‘What we know or how we think about the passions was, from the beginning, a complex product of overlapping and sometimes mutually encumbering work in philosophy, in literature— especially epic and tragedy—in medicine, in ethics, in rhetoric, in aesthetics, in legal and political thought. In our own time, new work in evolutionary biology, psychology, anthropology, and most recently in the neurobiology of the brain, along with work in game theory and economics, and, above all, in philosophy, continues the interwoven texture of shared, interdependent, sometimes interfering, even damaging, and sometimes enhancing collaborative thought’; Philip Fisher, The Vehement Passions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 7. 27 For Greece, see David Konstan, The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2006); for colonial North America, see Nicole Eustace, Passion Is the Gale: Emotion, Power, and the Coming of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008), 481–6; for Great Britain in the 19th century, see Thomas Dixon, From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 28 For this process of transfer, see the example of the emotional dimension of ‘hysteria’ in the Greek-Persian-Arabic-Indian triangle: Guy N. A. Attewell, Reﬁguring Unani Tibb: Plural Healing in Late Colonial India (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2007), 225–37; for emotion itself, and its localization in the body in the Greek-Persian-Arabic-Indian-British relationship, see Margrit Pernau, ‘The Indian Body and Unani Medicine: Body History as Entangled History’, in Axel Michaels and Christoph Wulf (eds), Images of the Body in India (London: Routledge, 2011), 97–108, esp. 104–6. The History of Emotions 10 ‘affection’ in the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1910/11 which states that affection ‘does not involve anxiety or excitement, that it is comparatively inert and compat- ible with the entire absence of the sensuous element’? Is there anything in common between les affects as understood by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in 1980, the Indonesian perasaan hati in the mid-1980s, ‘affect’ as used in English by the philosopher Brian Massumi in 2002, and the emozioni as described by Cesare Lombroso in 1876?29 In brief: is there a unity of meaning sufﬁcient to permit us to deal with these very different terms originating in very different ﬁelds, times, and cultures as ‘emotion’? At ﬁrst glance it certainly does not look like it. Even in such a limited ﬁeld as English-language experimental psychology, ninety-two different deﬁnitions of emotion have been counted between 1872 and 1980.30 The sheer difﬁculty of deﬁning emotion is often treated as its leading characteristic, for instance when in 1931 an American cardiologist described emotion as a ‘ﬂuid and ﬂeeting thing that like the wind comes and goes, one does not know how’; or when two psychologists half a century later argued that ‘everyone knows what an emotion is, until asked to give a deﬁnition’.31 There are, however, three reasons to bring all these deﬁnitions together under ‘emotion’. First of all, many concepts of emotion are etymologically connected. If you trace back the German terms Emotion and Gemüthsbewegung (‘stirring of one’s soul’), for example, then you ﬁnd that they both relate to the Latin movere. Showing and tracing all these connections in a large number of languages would be a major project for conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte), one that could only be pursued on a collaborative basis. Besides this, even cultures whose languages having nothing like a concept of emotion often import the word. The Tibetan language does this, where non-Tibetans were so frequently asked why there was no word for emotion that a neologism—tshor myong—was invented to cover the term.32 Secondly, 29 See LeDoux, Emotional Brain; Klaus R. Scherer, ‘Nonlinguistic Vocal Indicators of Emotion and Psychopathology’, in Carroll E. Izard (ed.), Emotions in Personality and Psychopathology (New York: Plenum Press, 1979), 495–529; Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, American Historical Review, 107/3 (2002), 821–45; Jaak Panksepp, Affective Neuroscience: The Foundations of Human and Animal Emotions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: John Murray, 1872); ‘affection’, in The Encyclopædia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Literature, and General Information, i. A to Androphagi (11th edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910), 299–300, here 300; Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Mille plateaux (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1980), 314; Karl G. Heider, Landscapes of Emotion: Mapping Three Cultures of Emotion in Indonesia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41; Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Cesare Lombroso, L’uomo delinquente in rapporto all’antropologia, alla giurisprudenza ed alle discipline carcerarie (Turin: Bocca, 1876), 651. 30 Paul R. Kleinginna Jun. and Anne M. Kleinginna, ‘A Categorized List of Emotion Deﬁnitions, with Suggestions for a Consensual Deﬁnition’, Motivation and Emotion, 5/4 (1981), 345–79. 31 Stewart R. Roberts, ‘Nervous and Mental Inﬂuences in Angina Pectoris’, American Heart Journal, 7/1 (1931), 21–35, here 23; Beverley Fehr and James A. Russell, ‘Concept of Emotion Viewed from a Prototype Perspective’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113/3 (1984), 464–86, here 464. 32 Georges Dreyfus, ‘Is Compassion an Emotion? A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Mental Typologies’, in Richard J. Davidson and Anne Harrington (eds), Visions of Compassion: Western 11 History and Emotions: An Introduction comparison and draft translations throw up similarities, and also of course differ- ences. In fact, draft translations are extremely productive, and make up the majority of deﬁnitional science. Thirdly, and lastly, scholarship without meta-concepts—a nominalist human science—would relapse into a radically random enterprise. In itself, there would be nothing against that. But since there is a market for anti- nominalist scholarship, and currently also for a history of emotions, this scholarship will be produced. I have decided to use ‘emotion’ as a meta-concept. As a synonym I will also use ‘feeling’. At the same time I will not shy away from the necessary labours of historicization: I will therefore address myself to the clariﬁcation of speciﬁc ter- minological usage when and wherever it occurs. I will deal with the word ‘affect’ in a different manner. Inﬂuenced by the neurosciences, the notion has in recent years increasingly assumed the sense of purely physical, prelinguistic, unconscious emo- tion. For this reason, it will not be deployed as a meta-concept in this book. If I had used ‘affect’ as a meta-concept I would have had to use up a lot of space in rowing against the currently dominant usage, introducing considerations of evaluation, language, and consciousness. But back to my original question: what is emotion? Today, much of the public and transdisciplinary scholarly discourse concerning emotion is dominated by a psychology which is heavily coloured by the neurosciences. A general collective amnesia prevails concerning the history of psychological, not to mention philo- sophical, ideas regarding emotion—even if there are today voices raised in the neurosciences suggesting that the entire history of philosophy represents an antici- pation of the modern natural sciences.33 Only a rough outline of two and a half thousand years of philosophical thinking about emotion can be given here. A constant feature of this history is the reception process, including the psychology of today, and here the ‘unspoken’ reception is important, in which the actual philosophical connections are no longer recognized. If at the conclusion of this account some elements of the wealth and complexity of the philosophy of emotion are recognizable, then the following pages will have served their purpose. One of the earliest recorded deﬁnitions, also one of the most enduring and inﬂuential, comes from Aristotle (384–322 bc).34 He described the Greek term pathos (pathē in the plural) as follows: The emotions are all those affections which cause men to change their opinion in regard to their judgements, and are accompanied by pleasure and pain; such are anger, pity, fear, and all similar emotions and their contraries.35 Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 31–45, here 31. 33 Antonio R. Damasio, Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2003), 15. 34 The most concise introduction to thinking on emotion from Plato to Augustine can be found in Barbara H. Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), ch. 1. 35 Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, trans. John Henry Freese (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959), 173. More generally, see Michael Krewet, Die Theorie der Gefühle bei Aristoteles (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011). The History of Emotions 12 This quotation comes from his ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, in a passage that deals with the way that emotion fogs judicial powers of judgement. The target group of the text were those whose work in politics or in the courts of law involved the use of eloquence to exert emotional inﬂuence. Aristotle gave them a kind of instruction manual. In this ﬁrst of many catalogues of affects, Aristotle does not simply distinguish between positive and negative emotions, as is usual today, but treats each emotion as itself having a negative and a positive sense, and as being capable of producing pleasure or pain. Interpretations of this passage diverge greatly: some think it untypical of Aristotle and thus as being limited to the pragmatic context of rhetoric; others regard it as quite typical of Aristotle’s conception of emotions, and more generally that of the city states of Classical Greece (c.500–336/323 bc), where emotions were under- stood to be reactions, reactions not to events but to actions or situations that resulted from actions, the consequences of which affect one’s relative status, or the relative status of others.36 For some, Aristotle’s list reminds them of the basic emotions which Paul Ekman identiﬁed in the later twentieth century; others on the other hand believe that Aristotle’s conception of emotion, and his emphasis upon the element of judgement, is a forerunner of the experimental psychology of cognitive appraisal that is opposed to Ekman but which belongs to the same period; yet others point to contemporary social psychology with its emphasis upon the intersubjective and communicative function of emotion.37 It is quite apparent that even very old ideas about emotion are eagerly projected upon the key cleavages in recent research. But let us stick with Aristotle and one particular emotion, that of anger (orgē). We can read the following in Aristotle’s The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric: Let us then deﬁne anger as a longing, accompanied by pain, for a real or apparent revenge for a real or apparent slight, affecting a man himself or one of his friends, when such a slight is undeserved. If this deﬁnition is correct, the angry man must always be angry with a particular individual (for instance, with Cleon, but not with men generally), and because this individual has done, or was on the point of doing, something against him or one of his friends; and lastly, anger is always accompanied by a certain pleasure, due to the hope of revenge to come. For it is pleasant to think that one will obtain what one aims at; now, no one aims at what is obviously 36 William W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion: A Contribution to Philosophical Psychology, Rhetoric Poetics, Politics and Ethics (2nd edn, London: Duckworth, 2002), 114 treats the passage as untypical, and limited to rhetoric; while the contrasting position can be represented by Konstan, Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, 40. 37 For Aristotle as a precursor of Ekman, see Carol Tavris, ‘A Polite Smile or the Real McCoy?’, review of Paul Ekman, Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life (New York: Times Books, 2003), in Scientiﬁc American, 288/6 (2003), 87–8. For Aristotle as the forerunner of the appraisal approach of cognitive psychology: Randolph R. Cornelius, The Science of Emotion: Research and Tradition in the Psychology of Emotion (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1996), 115; Kagan, What Is Emotion?, 11–12; Richard Lazarus, ‘Relational Meaning and Discrete Emotions’, in Klaus R. Scherer, Angela Schorr, and Tom Johnstone (eds), Appraisal Processes in Emotion: Theory, Methods, Research (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 37–67, here 40. For Aristotle as forerunner of social psychology, Konstan, Emotions of the Ancient Greeks, 31, citing the social psychologist Agneta Fischer. 13 History and Emotions: An Introduction impossible of attainment by him, and the angry man aims at what is possible for himself. Wherefore it has been well said of anger, that ‘Far sweeter than dripping honey down the throat it spreads in men’s hearts’ for it is accompanied by a certain pleasure, for this reason ﬁrst, and also because men dwell upon the thought of revenge, and the vision that rises before us produces the same pleasure as one seen in dreams.38 Hence anger is neither an exclusively positive nor an exclusively negative emotion. Anger is of course painful, but also involves the expectation of ‘sweet’ revenge. In addition, Aristotle’s conception of anger had a temporal dimension: anger had an endpoint, whereas hatred had no end and was temporally unlimited. The power of imagination is also an element of anger: revenge is sweet, and the sweetness of revenge is something imagined; here, expectation blossoms in the domain of imagination. Aristotle generally associated pathē with the world of imagination, providing the basis for further reﬂection upon aesthetics and feelings: is there any difference between the sympathy I feel for someone whom I rush to assist after he falls off his bike, and that which I feel for Oliver Twist, the hero of a novel? And if so, in what way? Can emotional reactions to ‘real’ events that affect me directly be compared or even equated with emotional reactions to cultural products such as novels, ﬁlms, or computer games? And what has that got to do with my fear of spiders, keeping me captive in a windowless room? Aristotle considers that feelings devoid of any connection with reality—the pure products of phantasia—have a lesser force than feelings which are related in some way with the real world.39 In fact, pathē was used ﬁrst by Plato (424/3–348/7 bc) and his pupil Aristotle to refer to circumstances that originated of themselves. This had not always been so. ‘Homer’s literary ﬁgures saw themselves as more or less helpless in the face of the power of feelings’, and the pre-Socratic philosophers also deﬁned emotions as something that was external, and not something produced within men themselves—the parallel here with the Maori warriors who attributed their fear to atua, noted above, is quite clear.40 Perhaps it is because of the long shadow cast by Classical Greek theories of emotion that many of the metaphors we today use to express our feelings correspond to the idea that emotion is something external: we are ‘overcome with rage’, ‘seized by pleasure’, and ‘love-struck’.41 But this does not 38 Aristotle, ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, 173–5. 39 Simo Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 37, 40. 40 Christoph Demmerling and Hilge Landweer, Philosophie der Gefühle: Von Achtung bis Zorn (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2007), 2. See also Bruno Snell, The Discovery of the Mind: The Greek Origins of European Thought, trans. T. G. Rosenmayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1960) [Ger. orig., Die Entdeckung des Geistes: Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen, 1946]. 41 ‘We talk about being “paralyzed” by fear, “smitten” by love, “struck” by jealousy, “overwhelmed” by sadness, and being “made mad” with rage’; Robert C. Solomon, True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 190. See, for a discussion of the philosophy of emotion in antiquity, Rüdiger Zill, Meßkünstler und Rossebändiger: Zur Funktion von Metaphern und Modellen in philosophischen Affekttheorien, PhD diss., Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, 1994. The History of Emotions 14 mean that Greek philosophers thought in terms of a unidirectional schema of stimulus and response that left no room for considerations of judgement and calculation. On the contrary: Aristotle deﬁned fear as ‘a painful or troubled feeling caused by the impression of an imminent evil that causes destruction or pain’ and did not conceive this as an automatic (also physical) reaction to imagined future adversity, but instead as something which admitted the power of conviction, opinion, and belief to interrupt the course of emotion.42 Aristotle would have traced my fear of the snake I saw in the woods to the imagined harm I suffered from the threat of its bite, but ascribed to me the capacity of suppressing any prepro- grammed emotion before it started because I had, as a 6-year-old visiting the terrarium in the Boston Zoo, developed a real love of snakes, or stopping it because as a 40-year-old I had engaged in behavioural therapy that kept my phobia in check. Besides that, because of their inherent element of judgement Aristotelian emo- tions can be altered not only in oneself, but in others as well, especially the young. In Aristotle’s eyes the young needed to develop their feelings so that proper judgement became second nature.43 Those philosophers associated with Stoicism agreed with Aristotle until it came to the element of judgement in his deﬁnition of emotion.44 They went their own way once it came to the education of young people: their pantheism led them to emphasize the bigger picture and the irrele- vance of emotion. The aim was to achieve an emotionless or calm state of apathy (apatheia), followed by ataraxia.45 Love and marriage were to be avoided because of their relative lack of signiﬁcance in their general pantheistic perspective. This form of control over emotion echoed long afterwards—the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (121–180) wrote about the ataraxic ideal in his Meditations and above all recommended that politicians be calm, while the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who sees herself as a ‘neo-Stoic’, consequently has an understanding of emotion that lays emphasis upon one’s own well-being—hence the Stoic emphasis on peace of mind—but she still views emotion as ‘appraisal’.46 42 Aristotle, ‘Art’ of Rhetoric, 201. See also Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, 35, 37. 43 A. W. Price, ‘Emotions in Plato and Aristotle’, in Peter Goldie (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 121–42, here 137–8. 44 The Stoics who were most interested in emotion were Zeno of Kition (c.333/2–262/1 bc), Chrysippos (281/276–208/204 bc), Poseidonios (135–51 bc), Seneca (c.1–65), and Epiktetos (c.50–c.125). See e.g. on the Stoics and their attitude to emotion Richard Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation: The Gifford Lectures (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Margaret R. Graver, Stoicism and Emotion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007); Barbara Guckes (ed.), Zur Ethik der älteren Stoa (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); but also the older text by Maximilian Forschner, Die stoische Ethik: Über den Zusammenhang von Natur-, Sprach- und Moralphilosophie im altstoischen System (2nd edn, Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995). 45 On ataraxia and apathy see Joachim Ritter (ed.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, i (Basel: Schwabe, 1971), 429–33, 593. 46 Martha Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 4–5, ch. 1. Nussbaum goes beyond the Stoics in detail, admitting to animals the capacity of emotion. She generally distinguishes between a descriptive and a normative Stoic programme, embracing the former and rejecting the latter. See Jules Evans, ‘An Interview with Martha 15 History and Emotions: An Introduction In the course of the second century ad a Greek physician emerged who had been inﬂuenced by Plato and whose ideas of emotion inﬂuenced generations of Arabic and European physicians, right up to the Italian Renaissance. Galen (c.130–c.200) put forward a doctrine of human temperament which ascribed particular properties to blood, phlegm, yellow gall, and black gall.47 Galen thought that an excess of one of these ﬂuids caused one’s humour to belong to one particular sphere (see Fig. 2). Galen did not see any therapeutic potential in chemical or physical media, but instead in moral education and moderation. His doctrine of the four ﬂuids, and especially the related pathology of humours (choleric, sanguine, melancholic, and phlegmatic)—hence the characteristics of external, excess emotions—can still be found, albeit in modiﬁed form, in the writings of Immanuel Kant and also those of some psychologists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.48 Fundamental to most thought about emotion since Plato has been the idea of a tripartite soul. Plato considered that the soul was formed by rational (logistikon), spirited (thymoeides), and appetitive (epithymetikon) elements. This idea was modi- ﬁed by Aristotle and the Stoics, but most lastingly by Augustine (354–430), who was inﬂuenced by early Christian writings on emotion.49 Augustine created a hierarchical, staged model of souls, where the lowest stage was purely vegetative and physical, and the highest stage, the seventh, was beatitude or divine epiph- any.50 The top two stages were reserved for men. Augustine also replaced the Aristotelian and Stoic division of the emotional process—which conceives of it as a more physical initial movement (primus motus) and a second, cognitive and moral Hot Strong Will Cold Weak Will Dry Strong Feelings Yellow Gall Choleric: irritable Black Gall Melancholic: sad and reflective Wet Weak Feelings Blood Sanguine: lively and active Passive Phlegmatic: passive and difficult Fig. 2 Galen’s Doctrine of the Four Fluids and The Related Emotional Types Nussbaum’, Philosophy for Life (5 February 2009) <http://philosophyforlife.org/an-interview-with- martha-nussbaum/> accessed 21 February 2014. 47 For an introduction to Galen’s doctrine of the four ﬂuids see Jutta Kollesch and Diethard Nickel (eds), Antike Heilkunst: Ausgewählte Texte aus den medizinischen Schriften der Griechen und Römer (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994), 25–7. 48 Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, 41; Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, 93–8; Sorabji, Emotion and Peace of Mind, 253–60. 49 See on these early Christian monks, the so-called Desert Fathers, and their ideas about emotion: Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, 46–50. 50 Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 34. The History of Emotions 16 evaluation—with a unitary category of the emotions (motus) subordinated to the will: What is important here is the quality of a man’s will. For if the will is perverse, the emotions will be perverse; but if it is righteous, the emotions will be not only blameless, but praiseworthy. The will is engaged in all of them; indeed, they are all no more than acts of the will. For what is desire and joy but an act of will in agreement with what we wish for? And what is fear and grief but an act of will in disagreement with what we do not wish for?51 However, because of original sin, man’s will generally guides him in the wrong direction. Only he who had accepted God’s mercy and oriented his will to the ﬁxed point of God could render his feelings positive. In this Augustine’s ideas funda- mentally conﬂicted with those of Classical Greek philosophers. For unlike the Stoics, whose pantheistic conceptions led them to discover the divine in earth and nature, Augustine located divinity in an unreachable, transcendent sphere. For him, emotions were thus oriented towards life after death. Everything temporal, includ- ing the human body, was deﬁled and transitory.52 This was quite different to Aristotle, for whose thought the emotional and the cognitive were inseparable. Augustine had thus already anticipated the duality of emotion and reason for which Descartes is usually blamed.53 And as a further contrast with the Stoics, whose ideal for life was emotional serenity, Augustine welcomed emotionality in life, so long as it was subordinated to the will and aimed at divinity.54 Emotional thinking during the Middle Ages is not so well researched as that in antiquity, and furthermore had little inﬂuence on subsequent centuries; the Scho- lastics, and in particular Thomas Aquinas (1225–74), are usually treated as an appendix to Aristotle and Augustine.55 It is always said that René Descartes (1596–1650) was the real innovator. He is not only regarded as the most inﬂuential philosopher of modernity, but as the founder of dualism, above all of mind–body 51 Augustine, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) [Lat. orig., De civitate dei, 426], 590. 52 Rosenwein, Emotional Communities in the Early Middle Ages, 50–1. 53 Robert C. Solomon, The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1993). According to Thomas Dixon, Robert Solomon is wrong to hold Christian thinkers like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas responsible for the separation of emotion and reason. In fact, they dealt in terms of passion and reason, in which reason, just like passion, could be ‘moved’ (motus), although this was only as a positive movement such as love; Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 53–4. 54 Augustine dealt with voluntaristic control of emotion autobiographically in his Confessions, which for the most part concerns his efforts to repress his own lust (libido); Dixon, From Passions to Emotions, 51–2. 55 An introduction to medieval emotional thinking can be found in Peter King, ‘Emotions in Medieval Thought’, in Goldie (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion, 167–87; Knuuttila, Emotions in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy, chs. 3–4; Piroska Nagy and Damien Boquet (eds), Le Sujet des émotions au Moyen Âge (Paris: Beauchesne, 2009), esp. pt. I. On Thomas Aquinas see Nicholas E. Lombardo, The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America, 2011). On the medieval and early modern periods, from Thomas Aquinas to Descartes and Spinoza, see Dominik Perler, Transformationen der Gefühle: Philosophische Emotionstheorien 1270–1670 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2011). 17 History and Emotions: An Introduction dualism, which also involved a contrast between emotion and reason.56 His ‘I think, therefore I am’ is often understood in this way, as, for example, in this statement from the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who summarizes Descartes’ Error (the title of his best-seller) in this way: Taken literally, the statement illustrates precisely the opposite of what I believe to be true about the origins of mind and about the relation between mind and body. It suggests that thinking, and awareness of thinking, are the real substrates of being. And since we know that Descartes imagined thinking as an activity quite separate from the body, it does celebrate the separation of mind, the ‘thinking thing’ (res cogitans), from the nonthinking body, that which has extension and mechanical parts (res extensa). . . . This is Descartes’ error: the abyssal separation between body and mind, between the sizable, dimensioned, mechanically operated, inﬁnitely divisible body stuff, on the one hand, and the unsizable, undimensioned, unpush-pullable, nondivisible mind stuff; the suggestion that reasoning, and moral judgment, and the suffering that comes from physical pain or emotional upheaval might exist separately from the body. Speciﬁcally: the separation of the most reﬁned operations of mind from the structure and operation of a biological organism.57 Recently it has been argued against this position that Descartes, by rationalizing God, by making Him the epitome of reason—clearly differentiating himself from Christian philosophers such as Augustine and Thomas Aquinas—likewise loaded reason with emotion. For example, he treated fear as an element of will, treating the control of fear not as the suppression of passion, but as the victory of one passion over another: ‘useful thoughts designed to generate one passion (e.g. courage) to counteract another (e.g. fear)’.58 All the same, such revisionism should not distract from the sheer novelty of Descartes, as when he announces in The Passions of the Soul his intention of investigating emotions as ‘a physician’ and separating them from the soul, so that they might be studied as mechanisms, like all living organisms 56 Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) radicalized the mind–body dualism. For his theory of emotion see Tad Schmaltz, ‘Malebranche: Neigungen und Leidenschaften’, in Hilge Landweer and Ursula Renz (eds), Klassische Emotionstheorien: Von Platon bis Wittgenstein (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 331–49. 57 Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Putnam, 1994), 248–9. Various critics have noted that Damasio has used Descartes as a straw man, without taking account of studies of Descartes’s work: see Henrik Lagerlund, ‘Introduction: The Mind/Body Problem and Late Medieval Conceptions of the Soul’, in Lagerlund (ed.), Forming the Mind: Essays on the Internal Senses and the Mind/Body Problem from Avicenna to the Medical Enlightenment (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 1–15; Timo Kaitaro, ‘Emotional Pathologies and Reason in French Medical Enlightenment’, in Lagerlund (ed.), Forming the Mind, 311–25. 58 Deborah Brown, ‘The Rationality of Cartesian Passions’, in Henrik Lagerlund and Mikko Yrjönsuuri (eds), Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), 259–78, here 270. On Descartes’s contribution, important but less original than usually assumed, see Anthony Levi, French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions, 1585 to 1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964). On the prehistory of the upgrading of emotions in early modernity see Wilhelm Dilthey, ‘Die Funktion der Anthropologie in der Kultur des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts’, in Gesammelte Schriften, ii. Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (6th edn Stuttgart: Teubner, 1960), 416–92. The History of Emotions 18 (with the exception of the human soul).59 He used the example of the ﬁnger of another person which is getting close to one’s eye; even if our mind knows that this ﬁnger belongs to a friend, our body responds with the mechanisms of fear and self- protection, and we blink. In such a circumstance our mind proves useless, since ‘the machine of our body is so formed that the movement of this hand towards our eyes excites another movement in our brain, which conducts the animal spirits into the muscles which cause the eyelids to close’.60 The court artist to Louis XIV, Charles Le Brun, also made use of Descartes’s theory of emotion in his anatomical sketches of emotion, inaugurating a connec- tion between emotion and medially represented (sketched, photographed, computer-generated) faces (and brains) that would prove enormously inﬂuential.61 Le Brun created a sketched taxonomy of facial expression showing particular emotions that remained in use until the nineteenth century. But even in his lifetime critics argued that the ideal-typical faces were too static: they both lacked the processual character of emotion, and appeared simultaneously, rather than in clear succession. This objection, that emotion might not be treated in its pure forms, reappeared in the later twentieth century as a regular criticism of the theory of basic emotions.62 Baruch de Spinoza (1632–77) is often treated as the opposite of Descartes if the latter is understood as a dualist, and has in the last few years experienced a breathtaking renaissance in the study of embodiment in the social sciences, literary studies, and the study of images (see Chapter Three). This boom can be read out of the titles of Damasio’s popular books, which run from the critical Descartes’ Error to the afﬁrmative Looking for Spinoza. It could be said that the alacrity with which the modern neurosciences have adopted Spinoza can be blamed upon the ambiguity and disorderliness of his thinking. One might also trace the Spinoza renaissance to his rejection of dualism—he is often called a monist because of his belief in a single divine substance—a rejection which leads him to see feeling and soul as two sides of the same reality. The connection in his main work, Ethica: Ordine geometrico demonstrata (1677; Eng. Ethics), of natural scientiﬁc, geometric reﬂection with emotional thinking is also a bonus that only adds to his attraction for literary 59 René Descartes, ‘Préface to “Passions de l’âme”: Letter of Descartes to the editor, 14 August 1649’, in Roger Ariew (ed.), Descartes in Seventeenth-Century England, ii. Descartes’s Works in Translation (Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 2002), B3. 60 Descartes, ‘Préface to “Passions de l’âme” ’, 37. The example is cited in Daniel M. Gross, The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle’s Rhetoric to Modern Brain Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 23. 61 [Charles] Le Brun, A Method to Learn to Design the Passions: Proposed in a Conference on the General and Particular Expression: Written in English, and Illustrated with a Great Many Figures Excellently Designed by M. Le Brun, Chief Painter to the French King, Chancellor and Director of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture: Translated and all the Designs Engraved on Copper by, John Williams (London: n.p., 1734) [1st Fr. edn 1698]. 62 Anne Schmidt, ‘Showing Emotions, Reading Emotions’, in Ute Frevert et al., Emotional Lexicons: Continuity and Change in the Vocabulary of Feeling 1700–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 62–90. The mixed character of emotions is today emphasized by, amongst others, Kagan, What Is Emotion? 19 History and Emotions: An Introduction scholars interested in the neurosciences and for neuroscientists interested in litera- ture.63 Spinoza considered that the mind, and hence also feelings, were part of nature; as such, they obeyed generally valid laws: I shall, then, treat of the nature and strength of the emotions, and the mind’s power over them, by the same method I have used in treating of God and the mind, and I shall consider human actions and appetites just as if it were an investigation into lines, planes, or bodies.64 He also divided feelings into actions and passions, such that actions have their origin in us, while passions have an external origin. Self and the external are not however categorically distinct, since both are part of nature. At the same time he assumed there to be only three basic feelings: joy, sadness, and the higher feeling of cupidity/desire (cupiditas). These building blocks in his treatment of feeling (as elsewhere) were combined in a complicated manner into laws expressed as axio- matic aphorisms, such as Proposition 38: If anyone has begun to hate the object of his love to the extent that his love is completely extinguished, he will, other things being equal, bear greater hatred toward it, than if he had never loved it, and his hatred will be proportionate to the strength of his former love.65 The physical and law-like nature of these propositions gained the attention of physiologists during the nineteenth century, and later the admiration of experi- mental psychologists.66 The current fashion for Spinoza focuses in particular on his monism. Writers in the social sciences and literary studies invoke him so that they might valorize matter, whether these be everyday objects, trees, or Arctic ice. Matter has feeling and ultimately agency just like the human being; hence matter is also within range of our empathy and deserving of protection, even requiring protection, something which makes these ideas attractive to ecological projects and other post-Marxist political endeavours.67 Social scientists and 63 Baruch de Spinoza, ‘Ethics’, in Spinoza: Complete Works, ed. Michael L. Morgan, trans. Samuel Shirley (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2002), 213–382. 64 Spinoza, ‘Ethics’, 278. On Spinoza in general see what remains the most complete compendium of thought on emotion in one volume, even if it is organized according to the perspective of 1930s experimental psychology (two of the authors were psychologists): H. M. [sic Harry Norman] Gardiner, Ruth Clark Metcalf, and John G. Beebe-Center, Feeling and Emotion: A History of Theories (New York: American Book Company, 1937), 192–205. See also Steven Nadler, ‘Baruch Spinoza’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2011 Edition) <http://plato.stanford. edu/archives/spr2011/entries/spinoza> accessed 22 February 2014. 65 Spinoza, ‘Ethics’, 298. 66 See e.g. the physiologist Johannes Müller, Handbuch der Physiologie des Menschen: Für Vorlesungen, ii (Koblenz: Hölscher, 1840), 543–52. 67 See Jane Bennett, Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), x–xi: ‘I try to bear witness to the vital materialities that ﬂow through and around us. Though the movements and effectivity of stem cells, electricity, food, trash, and metals are crucial to political life (and human life per se), almost as soon as they appear in public (often at ﬁrst by disrupting human projects or expectations), these activities and powers are represented as human mood, action, meaning, agenda, or ideology. This quick substitution sustains the fantasy that “we” really are in charge The History of Emotions 20 literary scholars are also attracted to monism because it makes possible the embodiment of thought processes.68 Neuroscientists also took an interest in Spinoza’s monism since they saw in it an anticipation of their own work, for example, in the idea ‘That mind and body are parallel and mutually correlated processes, mimicking each other at every crossroad, as two faces of the same thing’, and ‘That deep inside these parallel phenomena there is a mechanism for representing body events in the mind’.69 Spinoza can also be assimilated to evolutionary theory and the idea of homeostasis—that living beings seek to maintain themselves in existence—and neuroscience has also en- dorsed his theory of virtue: it can be said that ‘We have to work hard at formulating and perfecting the human decree but to some extent our brains are wired to cooperate with others in the process of making the decree possible’.70 In a word: Spinoza was ‘the protobiologist’.71 Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) never wrote a separate text on the emotions, but he constantly referred to emotions in his writing, from his early Elements of Law, Natural and Politic through Leviathan to De Homine: ‘No writer of the period attributes to them such signiﬁcance for the whole life of man as he.’72 Hobbes described the state of nature as a terrible living-out of passions: ‘no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; of all those “its”—its that, according to the tradition of (nonmechanistic, nonteleological) materialism I draw on, reveal themselves to be potentially forceful agents. Spinoza stands as a touchstone for me in this book, even though he himself was not quite a materialist. I invoke his idea of conative bodies that strive to enhance their power of activity by forming alliances with other bodies, and I share his faith that everything is made of the same substance. . . . This same-stuff claim, this insinuation that deep down everything is connected and irreducible to a simple substrate, resonates with an ecological sensibility, and that too is important to me.’ Emphasis in original. 68 See William E. Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 7–8: ‘Humans, as embodied, thinking beings, form two irreducible perspectives on themselves. Spinoza introduced this view, treating thought and extension as two aspects of the same substance rather than two kinds of stuff from which the universe is composed. I adopt a modiﬁed version of Spinoza’s “parallelism” . . . In my judgment, neither that thesis nor those contending against it have been proved. But a modiﬁed Spinozism can marshal points in its favor. First, it expresses the understanding of those who contend that human life evolved from lower forms without divine intervention, and it does so without reducing human experience to third-person accounts of it. Second, it encourages cultural theorists to explore accumulating evidence of signiﬁcant correlations between the observation of body/brain processes and the lived experience of thinking. Third, it encourages us to come to terms actively with a variety of techniques—many of which already operate in everyday life—that can stimulate changes in thinking without adopting a reductionist image of thought in doing so. Fourth, it allows us to explore how thinking itself can sometimes modify the microcomposition of body/brain processes, as a new pattern of thinking becomes infused into body/ brain processes. For, as Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tonino, two leading neuroscientists, put the point pithily, “Neurons that ﬁre together wire together.” The version of parallelism adopted here encourages exploration of opaque, ubiquitous relations between technique and thinking without reducing the experience of thinking itself to a series of observational states. It appreciates the complexity of thinking while encouraging us to deploy technique to become more thoughtful. Technique is part of culture, and thinking is neurocultural.’ Emphasis in original. 69 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 217. Other life scientists who invoke Spinoza are listed in the same work, 300 n. 7. 70 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 173–4. 71 Damasio, Looking for Spinoza, 14. 72 Gardiner, Metcalf, and Beebe-Center, Feeling and Emotion, 184. 21 History and Emotions: An Introduction and the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short’.73 But this condition involved a hope: that for a short while this living-out of passions and fear balanced each other, and made rational decisions possible. This equilibrium, Hobbes argued, came from the social contract, which was the only means for humankind to escape the state of nature. For Hobbes all feelings were bodily manifestations, connected to the will and directed at external objects. There were only two directions for such movements: towards an object, appetite; or away from an object, aversion. If we neither desire nor are averse to an object we despise it and keep our body (our heart) in between the two movements. The two directions create a short catalogue of ‘simple’ emotions, such as love, sorrow, and joy, and, when combined with other factors, an endless catalogue of further emotions.74 With Hobbes, we need to bear in mind that ‘His main interest . . . is not psychological analysis, but the development of a conception of human nature which would explain men’s actions and afford an intelligible basis for civil institutions and political government’.75 The eighteenth-century Scottish moral philosophers reacted to Hobbes and his adversary John Locke (1632–1704) in elaborating a system of moral sentiments, introducing a conception of empathy that remains much discussed today. Anthony Ashley-Cooper, Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713), closely connected to the Scottish moral philosophers, inquired into the utility of emotions, and treated them in a far more relational manner than Hobbes. For Hobbes, one part of the emotions, natural affections, was directed mainly to one’s fellow beings, whereas unnatural affections were antisocial, involving only one’s own advantage.76 In contrast to Hobbes, Shaftesbury also saw that in human nature ‘virtue and interest may be found at last to agree’.77 Emotions were valuable a priori, and the pursuit of happiness has to be understood in accordance with this. The different feelings men had related to one another like the ‘strings of a musical instrument’, which strived for natural harmony.78 Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) went one step further. Also a moral philoso- pher, he considered that emotions were ‘by Nature ballanced against each other, 73 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (rev. edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 89. 74 Hobbes, Leviathan, ch. 6. Generally, Hobbes’s treatment of emotion is scattered through a number of texts: chs. 7, 9, and 12 of The Elements of Law, Naturals and Politic (1640/50); De Cive (1642); chs. 6 and 13 of Leviathan (1651); ch. 25.12–13 of De Corpore (1655); ch. 11 of De Homine (1658). 75 Gardiner, Metcalf, and Beebe-Center, Feeling and Emotion, 187–8. 76 In addition, Shaftesbury ‘for the ﬁrst time discovered feeling as a unique and independent capacity or sentiment. He considered feelings—contrary to his teacher John Locke—not as something deriving from sensations and reﬂections, but as a mental phenomenon sui generis’; Angelica Baum and Ursula Renz, ‘Shaftesbury: Emotionen im Spiegel reﬂexiver Neigung’, in Landweer and Renz (eds), Klassische Emotionstheorien, 351–69, here 353. 77 Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 167. 78 Gardiner, Metcalf and Beebe-Center, Feeling and Emotion, 212. The History of Emotions 22 like the Antagonistic Muscles of the Body’.79 David Hume, who described himself as a ‘pagan’ philosopher, made the passions into something that controlled reason: ‘reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other ofﬁce than to serve and obey them’.80 For Hume, reason had in itself no particular ‘evaluative and representational content’, so that even a murder can be thoroughly rational.81 A murder only became immoral once our passions were engaged. Hume himself emphasized that Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my ﬁnger. Tis not contrary to reason for me to chuse my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me. Tis as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledg’d lesser good to my greater, and have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter.82 Besides the passions as an instance that controlled reason there was another strand of Hume’s thinking on emotion, one that has recently gained an increasing amount of attention: that of sympathy. According to Hume, sympathy works as a process whose complexity is only imperfectly grasped by the medical metaphor of ‘conta- gion’: if we observe external signs of emotion in our fellow men (tears, for example, when someone is sorrowful), we construct a mental image of the feelings experi- enced by this person which can enter into association with one’s own feelings and so in turn give rise to feelings that can determine our own action (for example, giving the person a hug to comfort them).83 This area of Hume’s thinking about emotion, together with that of Adam Smith (1723–90), today casts a lengthy shadow extending from philosopher Max Scheler’s idea of ‘emotional contagion’, to the conception of emotional intelligence advanced by John Mayer and Peter Salovey and popularized by Daniel Goleman, as well as to contemporary Theory of Mind and neuroscientiﬁc research on mirror neurons.84 With the arrival of the Enlightenment the emotional scenery was shifted once more. The canonization of reason demanded sacriﬁces, and the strict separation of reason and feeling was one such sacriﬁce. Consequently emotion was deﬁned as 79 Francis Hutcheson, An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections: With Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. Aaron Garrett (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002), 119, emphasis in original. 80 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, ii. Of the Passions (London: John Noon/Thomas Longman, 1739), 248 (pt. 3, sect. 3). 81 Sabine A. Döring, ‘Allgemeine Einleitung: Philosophie der Gefühle heute’, in Döring (ed.), Philosophie der Gefühle (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2009), 12–65, here 16. For Hume as a ‘self- styled “pagan” philosopher’ see Solomon, True to our Feelings, 100. 82 Hume, Treatise of Human Nature, ii. 249–50 (pt. 3, sect. 3). 83 Rachel Cohon, ‘Hume’s Moral Philosophy’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2010 Edition) <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2010/entries/hume-moral> accessed 22 February 2014. 84 Max Scheler, The Nature of Sympathy, trans. Peter Heath (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2008), 14–17; Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, ‘Emotional Intelligence’, Imagination, Cognition and Personality, 9/3 (1989–90), 185–211; Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (New York: Bantam Books, 1995). On Theory of Mind and mirror neurons see Chapter Three. 23 History and Emotions: An Introduction unreason, celebrated as such by some, damned as such by others. The former camp held sway during the Age of Sentimentalism (c.1720–1800), during which Jean- Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) became the pathﬁnder for a cult of emotional au- thenticity. He took the view that men in the ideal state were naturally equal and unsullied by the lamentable inﬂuence of culture. As he wrote in his novel Émile, ‘The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life.’85 The formation of feeling thus signiﬁed the reintroduction of man to his original state, leading him away from the inﬂuences of culture. It was therefore no wonder that Rousseau agitated against the expression of feeling in the theatre, which was simulated and therefore inauthentic. In addition, the feelings represented by actors addressed those of the audience in a dangerous manner. Since ‘all the passions are sisters and one alone sufﬁces for arousing a thousand’, the social body was threatened with overstimulation and, ultimately, loss of self-control.86 This Enlightenment separation of reason and feeling was most clearly expressed in the work of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)—and, unlike with Rousseau, in a strongly negative fashion. Kant never developed a coherent theory of feeling, but he did talk a great deal about emotion and, towards the end of his life, ascribed it a signiﬁcant place as the Other of reason. His ﬁrst thoughts about moral sentiments were linked to Hume, but from the 1790s on he adopted a distinctly anti- emotional standpoint, expressing emotio and ratio as a binary opposition that has survived to this day. In his 1798 Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Eng., Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 1974) he subdivided emotion into affects and passions, deﬁning emotion as beyond the control of reason, thus uncoupling it from any kind of ethics. For Kant, affect was something sudden, ‘the feeling of a pleasure or displeasure in the subject’s present state that does not let him rise to reﬂection (the representation by means of reason as to whether he should give himself up to it or refuse it)’.87 Whereas affects could become a ‘temporary surrogate of reason’, passions lay far beyond the range of an ethics governed by reason: an ‘Inclination that can be conquered only with difﬁculty or not at a	1,167,631
The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes (David Jones (Editor)) (Z-Library).pdf	The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Also available from Bloomsbury On the Feminist Philosophy of Gillian Howie, edited by Victoria Browne and Daniel Whistler Aesthetic Marx, edited by Samir Gandesha and Johan Hartle The Subject of Rosi Braidotti, edited by Bolette Blaagaard and Iris van der Tuin The Sea, David Farrell Krell The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Edited by David Jones Kennesaw State University, USA BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 Copyright © David Jones and contributors, 2019 David Jones has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Editor of this work. Cover design: Eleanor Rose Cover image © David Farrell Krell All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3500-7785-0 ePDF: 978-1-3500-7786-7 eBook: 978-1-3500-7787-4 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents List of Contributors vi Introduction David Jones 1 You Lonely Farang: Hiatus in Inducing an Introduction David Jones 5 Part 1 Creative Solitudes 1 Creative Solitudes David Farrell Krell 21 Part 2 Imagining Solitude 2 David Farrell Krell: The Impossible Voicing of Philosophy’s Double Walter Brogan 41 3 A Creativity to Sustain, A Solitude to Endure Angelica Nuzzo 53 4 Solitude, Creativity, Delinquency Charles E. Scott 69 5 Reticence, Solitude Alphonso Lingis 81 6 “An Incarnation Openly Bearing Its Emptiness”: Life, Animal, Fiction, and Solitude in the Work of David Farrell Krell Peg Birmingham 95 7 An Enigmatic Solitude William McNeill 103 8 Solitude and Other Crowds Jason M. Wirth 119 Part 3 Imagining Krell’s Solitudes 9 Sounion John Sallis 135 10 Withdrawal Symptoms: David Farrell Krell and the Solitude of a Body Born of Chaos Michael Naas 143 11 Hölderlin’s Solitude Françoise Dastur 161 Part 4 Solitudes 12 Off the Beaten Track David Wood 173 13 Landscapes of Solitude: Some Reflections on the Free Spirit Jill Marsden 179 14 Cabin Solitudes Dawne McCance 193 15 The Abandonment of the Circus Horses H. Peter Steeves 213 Subject Index 233 Author Index 237 Contributors Peg Birmingham is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. She is the author of Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (Indiana University Press, 2006), coeditor (with Philippe van Haute) of Dissensus Communis: Between Ethics and Politics (Koros, 1996), and coeditor (with Anna Yeatman) of The Aporia of Rights: Citizenship in an Era of Human Rights (Bloomsbury, 2014). She is the editor of Philosophy Today. Walter Brogan is a member of the philosophy department at Villanova University and of the College of Fellows at Western Sydney University. He is on the board of directors of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Italy. Dr. Brogan is a past member of the executive committee of the American Philosophical Association and the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. He is the cofounder of the Ancient Philosophy Society and a past editor of Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy. His publications include a book on Heidegger and Aristotle, several edited volumes, and an array of articles on ancient philosophy and contemporary continental philosophy. Françoise Dastur taught philosophy at the University of Paris I (1969–1995), the University of Paris XII (1995–1999), and the University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis (1999–2003). She was a visiting professor at the Universities of Mannheim, Rio de Janeiro, Caracas, Warwick, Essex, DePaul, Northwestern, and Boston College. She was, as honorary Professor of Philosophy, attached to the Husserl Archives of Paris (ENS Ulm), a research unit affiliated to the French National Center for Research (CNRS), until June 2017. She was one of the founding members in 1993 and the president until 2003 of the École Française de Daseinsanalyse, of which she is now honorary president. She has published many articles in French, English, and German on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Derrida, Levinas, and is the author of several books in French, from which five have been translated into English: Heidegger and the Question of Time (Humanities Press, 1998); Telling Time, Sketch of a Phenomenological Chronology (Athlone Press, 2000); Death, An Essay on Finitude (Athlone Press, 1996); How Are We to Confront Death? An Introduction to Philosophy, translated by Robert Vallier with a foreword by David Farrell Krell (Fordham University Press, 2012); and Questions of Phenomenology, Language, Alterity, Temporality, Finitude, translated by Robert Vallier (Perspective in Continental Philosophy, Fordham University Contributors vii Press, 2017). Her latest publications in French include Déconstruction et phénoménologie. Derrida en débat avec Husserl et Heidegger (« Le Bel Aujourd’hui » collection, Paris, Hermann, 2016); Leçons sur la Genèse de la pensée dialectique, Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel (« Cours de Philosophie » collection, Paris, Ellipses, 2016); and Figures du néant et de la négation entre Orient et Occident (Les Belles Lettres, Paris, Encre Marine, 2018). David Jones is University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta. He is Editor of Comparative and Continental Philosophy (Taylor and Francis) and has been Visiting Professor of Confucian Classics at Emory and Visiting Scholar in 2013 and 2015 at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities and Social Science at National Taiwan University. His The Fractal Self: Science, Philosophy, and the Evolution of Human Cooperation with John L. Culliney is published by the University of Hawai‘i Press (2017), and edited books include The Humanist Spirit of Daoism by Chen Guying with Sarah Flavel (Brill Academic, 2018); Confucianism: Its Roots and Global Significance, Ming-huei Lee, edited and annotated (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017); On the True Sense of Art: A Critical Companion to the Transfigurements of John Sallis (Northwestern, 2016) with Jason M. Wirth and Michael Schwartz; Emerging Patterns within the Supreme Polarity: Returning to Zhu Xi with He Jinli (SUNY Press, 2015); The Dynamics of Cultural Counterpoint in Asian Studies (SUNY Press, 2014) with Michele Marion; The Gift of Logos: Essays in Continental Philosophy (Cambridge Scholars, 2010) with Jason M. Wirth and Michael Schwartz; Asian Texts—Asian Contexts: Encountering the Philosophies and Religions of Asia with Ellen Klein (SUNY Press, 2009); Confucius Now: Contemporary Encounters with the Analects (Open Court, 2008); and Buddha Nature and Animality (Jain, 2007). David Farrell Krell is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, and Brauer Distinguished Visiting Professor of German Studies at Brown University, Providence. His philosophical work focuses on the areas of early Greek thought, German Romanticism and Idealism, and contemporary European thought and literature. His most recent scholarly books include The Sea: A Philosophical Encounter (Bloomsbury, 2018) and The Cudgel and the Caress: Reflections on Cruelty and Tenderness (SUNY Press, 2019). He has also published a number of short stories and three novels. Alphonso Lingis is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University. Among his books published are The Community of Those Who Have Nothing in Common, Abuses, The Imperative, Dangerous Emotions, Trust, The First Person Singular, Contact, Violence and Splendor, Irrevocable, and The Alphonso Lingis Reader. Dawne McCance is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Manitoba, Canada. She has published six books and many journal essays and book viii Contributors chapters in disability studies, critical animal studies, and on the work of Jacques Derrida. She is the author of The Reproduction of Life Death: Derrida’s La vie la mort (Fordham University Press, Spring 2019). Jill Marsden is Senior Lecturer in The School of the Arts at The University of Bolton, UK. She is the author of After Nietzsche: Notes Towards a Philosophy of Ecstasy (Palgrave, 2002) and a range of other writings on Nietzsche, modernism, and continental philosophy. Jill was a student of David Krell’s at the University of Essex in the 1980s, and her approach to philosophy has been greatly inspired by him. She is currently working on the concept of literary thinking. Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He works in the areas of ancient Greek philosophy and contemporary French philosophy. His most recent books include The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida’s Final Seminar (Fordham, 2014) and Plato and the Invention of Life (Fordham, 2018). He also coedits the Oxford Literary Review. William McNeill is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. He is the author of The Time of Life: Heidegger and Ēthos (SUNY Press, 2006) and The Glance of the Eye: Heidegger, Aristotle, and the Ends of Theory (SUNY Press, 1999). He has translated numerous works by Heidegger, most recently his lectures on Hölderlin’s Hymn “Remembrance” (co-translated with Julia Ireland [Indiana University Press, 2018]). Angelica Nuzzo is Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center and Brooklyn College (City University of New York). Among her books are Approaching Hegel’s Logic, Obliquely: Melville, Molière, Beckett (SUNY Press, 2018); Memory, History, Justice in Hegel, (Macmillan, 2012); Ideal Embodiment: Kant’s Theory of Sensibility (Indiana University Press, 2008); and Kant and the Unity of Reason (Purdue University Press, 2005). John Sallis is currently the Frederick J. Adelmann Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. Previously he held chairs at Pennsylvania State University, Vanderbilt University, Loyola University of Chicago, and Duquesne University. He has published more than twenty books, his books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He has also served as Editor of many publications. Indiana University Press has announced the project of publishing his Collected Writings; this edition will run to more than forty volumes. He has lectures extensively in Europe, Asia, and North and South America. Charles E. Scott is Professor of Philosophy, Penn State University; and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus and Research Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University. His publications include Living with Indifference (Indiana University Press, 2007); The Lives of Things (Indiana University Press, 2002); The Time of Memory (SUNY Press, 1999); On the Contributors ix Advantages and Disadvantages of Ethics and Politics (Indiana University Press, 1996); The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger (Indiana University Press, 1990); The Language of Difference (Humanities Press International, 1987); and Boundaries in Mind: A Study of Immediate Awareness Based in Psychotherapy (Crossroads, 1982). In addition to his service to the profession as chair and interim head of philosophy at Vanderbilt and Penn State, Charles E. Scott served as Director of the Mellon Regional Faculty Development Program at Vanderbilt University from 1979 to 1987, Founding Director of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt University from 1987 to 1993, and in 2005 returned to Vanderbilt to serve as Founding Director of the Vanderbilt University Center for Ethics. H. Peter Steeves is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Humanities Center at DePaul University, where he specializes in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophy of science. Steeves is the author of eight books, including Beautiful, Bright, and Blinding: Phenomenological Aesthetics and the Life of Art (SUNY Press, 2017) and the forthcoming Being and Showtime (Northwestern, 2020). His current research focuses primarily on cosmology and astrobiology—on the origin events of both the cosmos and life. Jason M. Wirth is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University and works and teaches in the areas of Continental philosophy, Buddhist philosophy, aesthetics, environmental philosophy, and Africana philosophy. His recent books include Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth: Reading Gary Snyder and Dōgen in an Age of Ecological Crisis (SUNY Press, 2017), a monograph on Milan Kundera (Commiserating with Devastated Things, Fordham University Press, 2015), Schelling’s Practice of the Wild (SUNY Press, 2015), The Conspiracy of Life: Meditations on Schelling and His Time (SUNY Press, 2003), a translation of the third draft of The Ages of the World (SUNY Press, 2000), the edited volume Schelling Now (Indiana University Press, 2004), the coedited volume (with Bret Davis and Brian Schroeder) Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Indiana University Press, 2011), and The Barbarian Principle: Merleau-Ponty, Schelling, and the Question of Nature (SUNY Press, 2013). He is the associate editor and book review editor of the journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy. His forthcoming manuscript is called Nietzsche and Other Buddhas (Indiana University Press, 2019), and he is currently completing a manuscript on the cinema of Terrence Malick. David Wood is W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt, where he teaches continental philosophy and environmental philosophy. He is the author and editor of numerous books including Time After Time; Eco- Deconstruction: Derrida and Environmental Ethics (coedited with Matthias x Contributors Fritsch and Philippe Lynes) (Fordham University Press, 2018); Deep Time, Dark Times: On Being Geologically Human (Fordham University Press, 2018); Reoccupy Earth: Notes toward an Other Beginning (Fordham University Press, 2019); and Thinking Plant Animal Man (Fordham University Press, 2019). He is also an earth artist and director of Yellow Bird Art Farm in Woodbury, TN. Introduction This book celebrates and engages the play found between the hard and vigorous work exhibited in philosophy, its related challenges of translation and textual interpretation, and the creative passion that such work can bring to the philosopher. This volume includes some of the best Continental philosophers and is inspired by David Farrell Krell’s lead essay from which the book derives its title. Krell, a philosopher of the sublime, intimately realizes philosophy’s passion when it takes its creative turn. As an author of fiction, as well as a virtuosic philosopher and a superb translator of a number of philosophical and poetic texts, Krell’s essay was used as a prompt for authors to respond to his essay “Creative Solitudes.” This request was met in a variety of ways. Some chose to respond in their own creative ways and create more fictional philosophical narratives. These authors include H. Peter Steeves’s The Abandonment of the Circus Horses and the introduction to the volume, You Lonely Farang: Hiatus in Inducing an Introduction. Others chose reflective philosophical responses alighting on the prospects of creative solitudes through a more singularly direct engagement either with Krell’s work on the topics of solitudes and creativity or other thinkers such as Heidegger or Hölderlin. We see a number of chapters engaged directly with Krell’s chapter in light of some of his other work. These chapters are by Walter Brogan (David Farrell Krell: The Impossible Voicing of Philosophy’s Double), Peg Birmingham (“An Incarnation Openly Bearing Its Emptiness”: Life, Animal, Fiction, and Solitude in the Work of David Farrell Krell), and Michael Naas (Withdrawal Symptoms: David Farrell Krell and the Solitude of a Body Born of Chaos). The undertaking was met differently by others to take the opportunity to reflect on the philosophy of solitude by looking into traditional philosophy’s role in relation to creativity. Examples of this approach are: Angelica Nuzzo’s A Creativity to Sustain, A Solitude to Endure; Charles E. Scott’s Solitude, Creativity, Delinquency; Alphonso Lingis’s 2 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Reticence, Solitude; William McNeill’s An Enigmatic Solitude; Jason Wirth’s Solitude and Other Crowds; and Sounion by John Sallis. Françoise Dastur’s Hölderlin’s Solitude is also an illustration of this type of response when she turns to the philosophical dimensions of Hölderlin’s philosophical poetry. Remaining authors delve into the experiential nature that our solitudes bestow. David Wood’s Off the Beaten Track, Jill Marsden’s Landscapes of Solitude: Some Reflections on the Free Spirit, and Cabin Solitudes by Dawne McCance embark on the book’s mission more in this way. The book, however, has been organized to offer readers a more holistic approach to its contents and is divided into four sections: Creative Solitudes, Imagining Solitude, Imagining Krell’s Solitudes, and Solitudes. There are a number of photographic images throughout the book. When not specified, they are David Farrell Krell’s photographs of his own place of creative solitudes. Our solitudes are always in the plural, not only in the differences between ourselves, but even in the singularity of our own selves because we are always a multiplicity of voices ruminating, listening, and contending with each other among ourselves and within. Our solitudes change, transform, and return to other times and their imaginings. In appropriate form and expression, this volume of companions and responders to Krell’s insights to creative solitudes bears its words in degrees between the thresholds of the extremes of the philosophical- poetic and poetic-philosophical, with some authors offering fictional stories or creative narratives and others tendering the verges of what constitutes the finest of Continental philosophical musings on the topic of solitudes and its accompanying creativity. By its nature, this book will present challenges to those readers who only desire a rigid philosophy devoid of feeling and absent of the humanness that made philosophy the love of wisdom for our ancient forebears. Likewise, those seeking only literary cleverness without the engagement of measured thinking will find themselves tested by the philosophical richness contained in all of the book’s chapters. For David Farrell Krell, our inspiration for The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes, the truth is in the fiction, and there is fiction in truth. The superlative cast of Walter Brogan, Angelica Nuzzo, Charles E. Scott, Peg Birmingham, William McNeill, John Sallis, Michael Naas, Françoise Dastur, David Wood, Alphonso Lingis, Jill Marsden, Dawne McCance, Jason Wirth, and H. Peter Steeves practices this truth and rehearses this fiction in their own ways of creative solitudes. The play of truth in fiction and fiction in truth awaiting readers is the sublime and critical responses of the authors’ own creative solitudes Introduction 3 prompted without any intentional inducing, except by the unfolding of the soul of this rare friend of wisdom and lover of life. This book is dedicated to David Farrell Krell in appreciation of his creative musings, prodigious philosophical work, contributions to the philosophical profession, and the friendship emerging from his own creative solitudes. —David Jones You Lonely Farang: Hiatus in Inducing an Introduction His hand began slipping away from her and hung limp by his side. She thought nothing of this, but the vacant look in his eyes made her pause. He fell from his stool to the hard-tiled pavement hitting his head. She looked in disbelief as she had done earlier that morning when she encountered the dead bird on the typically uneven Thai sidewalk. She remembered the brief passing conversation she had with the Farang. She sidestepped the bird and stared at its lifeless body with its feet in the air and broken wing. The Farang had said to her, “We should do something about it, perhaps bury it.” She turned, and he saw her beautiful face as it broke into a smile that brought even greater radiance to the bright morning that promised to be a hot day. She replied to the foreign man that “She would take care.” He smiled warmly and replied, “Yes, you take care,” realizing she would not understand the double entendre of his reply. He was pleased nevertheless to let her know he cared, even if she didn’t understand. The foreign man continued walking along the soi looking for his son, and she took care of the dead bird. As his son lay on the tiles convulsing, his eyes searching the dark emptiness of their sockets, he frothed from his mouth, a hypostasis of sorts, in this his first epileptic seizure. His body went as rigid as the dead bird’s, but he moved without his own volition, for there was no control, no intentionality, no nothing from his point of view except the abject nothingness of this between state of being alive, but being absent. She bent over him and held his head in her bronze hands with long slender fingers and brightly painted nails until his rigid body slowly began to relax some. Normal breathing returned to the young man and slowly his consciousness of the world started to seep into him with its thick and maddening reality. It all annoyed him for some reason to be returning from his 6 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes newly found dark place and its submissive nothingness. For her, it all seemed as if an eternity had elapsed for him to awaken, especially since in her village many would think him to be possessed by wretched spirits of the underworld— those demonic disenchanted ones reaching out with their tentacles to snatch the unsuspecting and unfortunate ones above. She didn’t really know if he was possessed or not—she had yet to completely forfeit her beliefs—but she did sense something special about this young man whom she held with her lovely hands, from this young man she hoped would buy some of her time. His eyes opened, he had no idea where he was, who he was, or even the sound of his name. She remembered his name; it was part of her job to make customers feel like they mattered. So many men came to Thailand in hopes of healing, and to escape from something back home—a divorce, memories of the war crimes they witnessed or committed in the name of freedom, or from their just plain and simply disenchanted lives. In some sense, her life was not so much different, and she realized this as she prayed for her own healing, or the occasional intimacy that was somehow disallowed to her by a culture where many men felt their wives were possessions, and that somehow happened—not all the time—but on occasion, with these Farang men from faraway places with lots of money. She stroked his black hair; he could be Thai, she thought, but she knew he wasn’t. He was darker than his father, the Filipino in him, and as she spoke Thai to him he had no understanding what she was saying, but it felt soothing; Thai wasn’t one of the several languages he learned to speak, and even his closest language, English, went by without any understanding as she attempted to reach into his darkness and pull him back into the light. And slowly as he recovered, regaining some sense of the reality around him, he understood her words for the first time. “Mano, Mano, you okay?” He nodded with his eyes, for he couldn’t even smile yet as she helped him to his feet and took him into the shade and yelled out for some water. All of this was being observed by others in the outdoor bar. Other girls were coming to work and stopped to pay homage to the Buddha by holding their hands together in the mudra of prayer or wai. They too had hopes of a healing for this possessed young man and prayed for their own protection from the underworld ghosts that might creep through his spirit and into theirs. Another observer sat expressionless, taking it all in as if in some kind of omniscient way. This man had been appearing to his father in a number of other places—first in Hawaiʻi, then China, Taiwan, and now here in Thailand as his father sat listening to music and drinking a beer in another place far from the epileptic young man and his Avalokiteśvara, his bodhisattva of compassion. This other place, not You Lonely Farang 7 wanting to erupt but destined to, as polling day came nearer. His father would be there when it came and would witness several of these strategically placed protests to “Shutdown Bangkok—Restart Thailand.” On polling day, the father listened to the music and the speeches in Thai, understanding only the feeling behind the words, those feelings that drove their words of frustration, anger, and hope, and the lingering residue of those feelings that also drives them into being. It was on an earlier day that this man walked by the father, tall, thin in an athletic way, long black hair with some occasional grey strands, and a bit of a straggly beard. He smiled and the seated man nodded and after he passed by, the father realized the connection seemed to go back to other places. He wondered about this passing man, always and only Asian, who appeared to be Thai in Thailand, Chinese in China and Taiwan, and one of those wonderful Hawaiian blends that make for such striking varietal beings in Hawaiʻi. The thought passed along with the strange man as the music ended when the father wanted it to continue. It was familiar music from the days when he protested against the war in Vietnam—that war that left some names on the Wall for him, that war that would always somehow define his life and being. His time in Vietnam was different from theirs; it came later, but he, too, went there to make some kind of peace with the people, the place, and himself. Some peace did come to him, but was an easier kind, a more fortunate kind of peace than those before him ever could be. And there this man with long black hair and some occasional grey strands was witnessing his son coming back from wherever he would now forever go for the rest of his life, and his return came this day in the arms of an enchanting bar girl with a heart of compassion. His son would later learn her name, but his father never would. She had an evening of money to make and the young Farang was costing her wages. Like most of the young women, she would send money back to her family in Isaan, home to most of the working girls in Thailand. It was the same story: money for the family and the child now cared for by the mother as her daughter worked in the city where the Farang came. The father was either dead, worked to death by life’s hardships or by cancer, or was selfishly irresponsible. It seemed to be the same story, over and over again, but many times it was about hardworking fathers whose bodies succumbed to the strains and mandates of labor. Isaan is a poor region. The people of Isaan are in many ways more Lao in their local languages and customs than Thai. Even though accepted in Thai culture by other Thais, they are the farmers living far from the influences of the “higher” culture of the cities. They always worked hard to make food grow in the dry region and learned to be inventive in eating what the land 8 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes could provide. The man’s son would learn later to eat grasshoppers and beetles and even come to think of them as delicacies. His mother, if she ever knew, would be abhorred at the thought. They both wanted to find him in their own and different ways. She and her former husband wanted him back, back like he used to be. They were, the father guessed, still a family of sorts, but their son would never come back. She gently and sympathetically stroked his hand and arm until he had fully regained himself. He told her he was tired, and she said, “I take care you.” An evening of possible wages from other Farang from their distant places wanting her attentions, her company, would be lost—a portion of her cut from the inflated prices of “lady drinks,” bar fines to free her from the bar, and the time charged if she decided to go out for “short-time” or “long-time.” All of these possibilities would be lost this evening when she became his Buddha of Compassion. She watched him breathe in and out more easily as he slept into the evening and night in her simple home. She was used to staying awake late for the Farang who came to her for their healing. She grew to be grateful to them and wished for their arrival every night because occasionally they brought her something close enough to love, even sometimes they genuinely did bring their love to her, and she gave them something in return, something she was just now beginning to understand, something that resembled love. This browner Farang still slept on her hard Thai bed and would only awaken the next day. She felt close to him for some reason, perhaps because he had chosen to have his seizure with her. This lovely woman then crawled in beside him and held him throughout the night. Somewhere deep inside he must have felt safe with her. Finally, she slept too. The father, not knowing how close he was to his son at that time, would sit at the same bar later in the week and buy her an overpriced drink. There was something special about her he noticed, a softness and gentleness for life and a sadness hidden only by the pervasive happiness that seems to fill Thai life in spite of the harshness of its realities. This is, he would later realize, their remedy for suffering. How many times had the Farang heard the words, “I just want you happy.” These foreigners loved hearing this, because life was all about them, their happiness, but behind the remedy was the most profound acknowledgement of suffering—the Buddha’s First Noble Truth. He sat with her, they joked some, and she asked if he had a hotel room, but she left out the “a” that often prefaces our nouns in English. Such a strange word this “a” is, he thought, and how it has multiple uses—an indefinite article, preposition, and even on occasion a noun, and it once was a verb in its archaic form. No wonder it’s not understood by other language speakers; we don’t even understand it ourselves. These thoughts visited him as he looked into her deep brown eyes. “Of course,” he replied. “I come with you,” she stated in question form. The Farang man reached out and gently touched her hand with the long thin fingers and long, painted nails—gentle hands they were, in spite of working in the fields until she came of age. He smiled and replied, “Thank you, you’re most lovely, but I’m here looking for my son.” She looked at his face and saw its sadness and heard it in his tone. She recognized his loneliness coming through the slightly sunburned skin on his nose and cheeks, all the places that stand out to catch just a little more from the over-rich star that makes this planet inhabitable. “Oh, so sorry your son lost.” “I hope you find him.” Her words were spoken with such feeling. He realized she actually meant them, and he was authentically touched by her empathic susceptibility to his pain—he realized she could experience his pain. Her moist eyes glistened with the reflection from the neon lights that were overhead casting their glow on everything. But her glow was steady to him, not blinking like the lights, and shined its way toward him. His hand was still on hers he realized. He had gotten lost in the moment of her caring, but she grasped it more tightly. “I sorry.” “You kind man.” “Maybe you find your son somewhere.” She could read him like the books he wrote, or the ones he wanted to write. It seems she knew he was searching, had always been searching throughout his life, for something that was even unknown to him. It was his curse like so many others that afflicted him because there was nothing to find, except the magic of another being to understand. Perhaps it was this way for her as well he wondered. He wouldn’t ever know; or could ever know. This was his abject nothingness. “I go now,” he said to break her spell and as he thought in his mind, “before I ask you to marry me.” This brought a smile to his face, for that’s the only way it could happen at this age, he thought. As he walked down the narrow soi, he paused and looked back expecting to see her pursuing the next Farang for the evening. But she just sat there, not knowing that this white man’s son was the young man she had nursed and brought back to a new life. She sat there thinking of the suffering of the young man at home and the old man who had just left and how theirs were the same as her suffering. How could she know that the Farang’s lost son wasn’t white like him? That the Farang was so close to finding his son Mano, an endearment he had given him and that his son would use when he wanted to withhold his real identity. She sighed and smiled, knowing it was time to be happy again and she returned to the work that was hers. The next day, the searching father returned to his hotel in Bangkok and sat at the occupied corner, which is normally the busiest corner in the city. The You Lonely Farang 9 10 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes tall, musician-looking man with long black hair streaked with some grey walked by and caught his eye again. He smiled and hurried along his way with the flow of people trying to get to work around the demonstrators who had been camped there for weeks. The tall man disappeared into the abyss of the crowded street. As the father freely obliged himself of the hotel’s happy hour, David Farrell Krell came to his mind. How odd to think of him in a place such as this, a place so antithetical to everything Krell is and for which he stands. Not solitude, but massive ongoing flows of people; not silence and sounds of nature, but the constant noise of motor scooters, cars, trucks, overhead trains railing across the skyway; not the smell of flowers after a rain being delivered by gentle cool mountain breezes, but the smell of diesel, the occasional waft of a sewer punctuated by street food vendors frying fish or chicken in fish oil, and the cigarette smoke from those Farang from faraway places between their boisterous laughter that proclaims they own this place. And this is where David decides to come to the man! Does he come to tell him to find a creative solitude elsewhere, or does he come to assure him that our creative solitudes take many forms and that even amid all these people one can find oneself alone, and in solitude. As he begins his piece in this volume of creative solitudes of companions for the DFK, he hears Krell’s words ring out clearly above the ambient noise. “Clearly, by ‘creative solitudes’ I do not mean isolation and self-absorption. To languish in narcissism, whether dreamily or wretchedly, is not creative but destructive—we all know that. Yet I suspect that aloneness and loneliness are essential components of creative solitudes. They may be self-inflicted wounds, but they are not accidents and mere options.” But was not the searching father here by accident? Has not everything in his life been accidental—even his self-inflicted wounds of searching for that which is not there, that which never was there in the first place? “But my poor man,” Krell might say to the writer of this saga of searching, “Are you not languishing in your own self-made narcissism?” “It’s not very creative you know” so the man imagined Krell’s voice speaking to him inside his head. Then listening to his own voice of self-reflection, he heard himself say, “Always in my head, even after years of meditation!” As this internal dialogue unfolded, he pondered why Krell would mindfully come to him now and here in Bangkok, and why in the voice of his own superego. He knew Krell surely would have helped him search for his son—and he knew this in his soul—and that Krell would never assume the sound of his own guilt for taking so long to find inspiration and to call on whatever talents he had. Krell’s voice was his own summoning to let the muses enter into and possess him right there on this occupied corner in Bangkok. And with this thought, he felt a smile coming to his face, and something in him was able to feel it spreading and transforming into laughter as he was sitting there alone amid all the others—being happy in this Happy Hour, for David Farrell Krell was coming to him as a mythic muse to set afire his imagination and urging him to get started, finally. And he began to type—began to write—about how he felt his life was just a series of unplanned events that had congealed and crystallized into this unexpected moment of being in Bangkok during the occupation to “Shut Down Bangkok—Restart Thailand.” This day when he started writing, soldiers joined the riot police, helicopters flew just over the tops of the skyscrapers, and the protestors continued their singing and praying. He was now alone, at least for a while, and felt lonely not noticing the others as he finally began working without isolation and self-absorption. The fortuitous occasions of all of our births seem to make all the difference. As Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s most poignant philosophers, reminds us: European philosophy has given almost exclusive preponderance to temporality . . . . The “where-I-was-born” is the predetermination of all other determinations. To be born among pygmies in Africa or in a Fifth Avenue neighborhood in New York City . . . is to be born into another world; it is to be born spatially into a world that predetermines—radically, though not absolutely—the orientation of one’s future proyecto. (Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation [Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2003], 24–25) Yes, our plans, projects—even this one, a hiatus in inducing an introduction, which has languished for far too long—have accidental dimensions. And the man supposed that it is accidental that he would be given the honor of editing this book instead of another. Others wondered too, he realized. Surely, he had the idea, but it never meant that he would somehow become the one attached to the delivery of the idea. His idea was to honor David Farrell Krell in a new series with Northwestern, and then, through the strange forces of life that had brought David and him together, here he was; he was learning to love his fate, but it came with such trials and troubles. From another perspective, it was just his karma acting up again. The karma that had taken him Eastward, taken him to places he understood better than the culture of his own country, from his own hill in Pittsburgh. Could Nietzsche have meant something like karma with his amor fati? Dussel is one of our greatest thinkers. His perspective is an important one for us to realize. Life is different for those who were colonized and had their You Lonely Farang 11 12 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes cultures stolen from them, leaving them only with the culture of the colonizer. How to decolonize oneself in a postcolonial time is a great challenge. Sadly, this is the fate of too many people. But it is a fate that must be affirmed and not allow a preponderance of hierarchy imposed upon being one rather than being another. To be born a Buddhist, to accept the particularity of one’s incarnation, is to affirm the givenness of our arrival either as a dog animal or a human animal, as a pygmy in Africa, or a millionaire on Fifth Avenue. In many ways, the impoverished lives of those who dwell on Fifth Avenue are no different from those of a man looking for his son in Thailand, a place where his son has never been. For David Farrell Krell, the call to creative solitudes is about freedom, a freedom from suffering and a freedom to and for the celebration of life. This call is about finding our creative solitudes amid all that surrounds us, and often what encircles us is waste, pain, suffering, and loss. This book is an extraordinary book for and on the work of an extraordinary man written by a chosen group of extraordinary philosophers and writers. The echo here is intended, notwithstanding that such echoes can be seen as examples of poor writing, for “extraordinary” takes us beyond the ordinary, yet positions us amid the everyday with the challenge of how to accept it and make every single day extraordinary through unexpected outbursts of creative responses stemming from our solitudes. One remarkable feature of David Farrell Krell’s oeuvre is the play found between the hard work of the philosopher and the creative passion of the poet, like the play between the mutability and force of water as it finds its way along to its destination of either conformity or creativity and destruction. This volume of companions to Krell’s oeuvre also finds its play between the Dionysian and Apollonian, between the philosophical and poetic. But in all of the authors’ contributions, their words bear the philosophical-poetic and poetic-philosophical in degrees between the thresholds of either extreme, with some offering fictional stories or creative narratives and others tendering the verges of what constitutes the best of Continental philosophical musings. This movement is the most appropriate recognition for David Farrell Krell, one of the best philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, most significant translators of our day, and most talented writers of fiction and fictional biographies of some of the deepest thinkers of the West. The cast of characters of The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes includes Walter Brogan, Angelica Nuzzo, Charles E. Scott, Peg Birmingham, William McNeill, John Sallis, Michael Naas, Françoise Dastur, David Wood, Alphonso Lingis, Jill Marsden, Dawne McCance, Jason Wirth, and H. Peter Steeves, and begins with David Farrell Krell’s own Creative Solitudes. Each author offers reflections on the creative solitudes composing standpoints of their lives in response to the impetus of the protagonist of this volume, while some respond more directly to him. In arranging the book, I have sought to combine pieces that go together in content and flow together in style. This does not mean, however, that the combination necessarily reflects all of the fictional fragments of creative solitudes merely being lumped together, nor does it reflect the placement of the more direct pieces of philosophical panache into one section. The blending of these reflections on solitudes was the aim. If this aim has missed its mark, the selections of this volume stand on their own merits in tribute to one of the very best. And it was here that he happened to hear the waitress say: “I think you lonely.” “I’m just alone,” was his reply. She smiled, as only the Thai can smile, as only Thai women can smile at Farang men—as if they harbor some hidden truth of happiness, or if they want something from the Farang. The Farang sat enjoying the beer that was very cold—not very good, but cold. He sat as many foreigners—the Farang—do in Thailand. Just sitting there, these men staring outward, looking somewhere in some kind of subversive meditative way. He was an expert in this form of meditation. The man had been coming to Thailand for some time now, looking for something that wasn’t ready at hand at home. As he sat, he remembered Heidegger’s distinction between present-at-hand and ready-at-hand, and he pondered how many Farang saw Thai women as being simultaneously as ready- to-hand, that is, available for some purpose and present-at-hand, as simply an object of gratification. They were just like tools for the purpose of pleasure or power for many foreigners. Although each of these ways of “seeing” is different, in Thailand they somehow collapsed together in one “standing reserve” when they came to women, he thought. The thought brought a frown to his forehead as he sipped on his icy beer; the objectification of people, especially of women, or anything breathing for that matter, was abhorrent and something that saddened him. “You mad now,” she asked with apparent concern in her voice. “No, no” he replied, “Not at you, at least.” “Not good to be mad,” she responded. “I’m just perturbed about why people are mistreated.” “Oh, me too, I guess. But then I just think of something else.” You Lonely Farang 13 14 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes The Farang replied, “Yours is a better way, I think,” and then he smiled warmly for her. But, he continued to think, this is why he comes to Thailand, in search of the ability to respond creatively to the sufferings that constitute his life. “What would Krell say to him now—more self-indulgence?” he thought with a mind that kept coming back to the introduction that just somehow would not write itself. He knew it wasn’t “writers’ block,” whatever that is, because he was able to write other things. He let the thought go, because it often accompanied him, and maybe in this place, the place that brought him in search of his son and everything that he stood for in the Farang’s life, would become a writing place— one of those places that opens the soul. Staying in place often, but always wandering around—sometimes with destination, sometimes without—this was his mood today, a prevailing mood like a fog that never seems to lift. He realized he was looking for something, but after all, he had been looking for something all of his life. But what could it be for him, this Farang who sat in his subversive meditation on this day in this place? It wasn’t the woman who had just spoken his loneliness with such forthrightness, but sometimes it could have been, and often it was. This wandering man who often stayed in place valued and respected this about Thais—their honesty and willingness to accept the conditional truth of circumstance; just acceptance, not victimization, nor punishment, just karma. “What’s the problem?” he asked himself. And then, “Why’s there always got to be a fucking problem?” He was feeling alone, not lonely, in spite of the astuteness of her perceptive wisdom. He realized she was wise, possessed a wisdom that came naturally to her, unlike his own; he had to work at it, like all philosophers. “Why am I a philosopher; of all things to be, why a philosopher?” He was tired of trying to achieve this thing called wisdom, as if it were actually attainable—an object to be attained, a state to be reached, some kind of teleological place of which to emigrate. He just didn’t care anymore about this kind of wisdom, or even about its Asian counterpart, enlightenment, especially the kind that would spirit him away to where no one needed to be, really wanted to be if they knew any better, or should ever aspire to be if they were sensitive enough to what it means to always be with, the being-with of Heidegger. It was clear enough to him that he had at least arrived at the stand-point of Nietzsche’s insight into life that he too, like Nietzsche, found folly in wisdom and the perennial search for it as life evaporated around the seekers of life’s meaning. “Does the sun bother you?” she asked as she was about to obstruct his view by lowering the shade in the outside bar overlooking the street, the bar that sat on the sidewalk. “Oh no, please don’t. The sun feels good; it won’t last long,” he said and then thought to himself the “warmth of light never lasts long enough, only the dismal eternal darkness of the nothing that awaits everything alive seems always present.” Even in Chiang Mai in the winter the sun was warm, but it did not feel as discernably damaging as in Bangkok or Phuket, Pattaya, or Koh Samui and other places farther south. The air was cooler here and the sun felt warming; it accompanied him as he sat in his meditative posture taking it all in as life passed along the thoroughfare that was life here—the place that he was in and the time that pervaded it. So, he sat, sipping the coldness of the beer, celebrating the glow of the warm sun and the occasional backdoor breath of the tuk tuk sputtering by trying to interrupt his meditation. All of this along with the caressing breeze coming from the mountain where the monastery looked down upon the city and him—the necessary counterpoint that makes everything in the world so perfect. The wat was just a little beyond the halfway point up the mountain where it sat alone in its own meditative state as only buildings can, by itself, never lonely, only alone, because it was surrounded by the beauty of the earth’s vibrant crease that reached to touch the sky from the flatness of the plain on which Chiang Mai sits. Perched midway up the mountain, it felt no suffering whatsoever. Wats are everywhere in Thailand, the most Buddhist country in the world. In fact, there was a wat on this busy little street lined with bars, massage parlors, and numerous shops selling overpriced wares but nevertheless bargains to the unexpected; those non-expecting ones would bargain down in self-fulfilling ways and still, nevertheless, get ripped off and, in turn, inflate prices for locals. The overweight Farang from Russia and Germany were now completing what the Americans had started after the Vietnam War. He sat alone for the early happy hour meditation before the louder, obnoxious other Farang would come and interpose on his daily meditation with their boisterous behavior of holiday entitlement that brought disrespect, oftentimes unintentional but always hurtful and never completely understood by the residents of this special land. As he turned toward her activity, she sensed his question and answered, “For Buddha, he get hungry too you know! And he like whiskey too!” She smiled as she made her proclamation as if it would offer her a better incarnation next time around. But that was his thought, not hers. You Lonely Farang 15 16 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes The wanderer always sensed that the Buddha must have enjoyed the libations that dissolved the border regions between self and other. But he realized the Buddha’s alcoholic enjoyment likely did not possess an addictive quality like his own. How else could it be, for the Buddha was the unattached one? So he smiled at his insight and said, “Yes, the Buddha is hungry and thirsty too.” And that was the way it was in Thailand. One must feed and give drink to the Buddha. Not a god beyond desires, needs, and believability, but a god with all the same desires, needs, and wishes for perfection as our seated wanderer. But this god, this Lord Buddha, wasn’t attached and could see beyond the perpetuation and acceleration of all of what the rest of us felt. “Yes, feed the Buddha, so he will not need to sit hungry and thirsty in meditation,” he said to her without saying, “Make love to this Buddha who is your Buddha, so he won’t have the desires I have when a Thai woman like you smiles back at me!” He didn’t say these words aloud and let them remain in the loud silence of his mind where most of our thoughts thankfully stay. She liked it when he smiled; she smiled back, not needing to know the thought that brought the smile to her customer’s face. She placed the offering as so many shop owners do on the sidewalk off to the side somewhere and in the alley where her bar was situated beside the wat. “Temples and bars, what better combination is there!” he thought. The bar is a temple as the Irish so well know—“ah, what he would do for a good pint of Irish brew now!” he daydreamed. As she placed her offerings in their profane place in this profane world next to the profane spot where the man sat in his profane meditation, the birds immediately flocked, seemingly coming from nowhere, hungry and in need of libation like our man—like our Farang wanderer in the bar on the sidewalk by the busy street in some place in Thailand, the most Buddhist country in the world. The pigeons came, big and fat, well-fed like the Hoi-tai Buddha, but all of a sudden hungry as they strutted in dance cooing for their meal. There they consumed the Buddha’s food and spilled his drink, mixing it with the sticky rice, vegetables, and likely some pork. “Didn’t the Buddha die of rancid pork?” He thought of the irony the situation posed and how Thais would not even consider this to be an ironic matter in the least. They would just accept it at its face value—as the life, and the death, of the Lord Buddha. The pigeons came into the bar and strutted their dance around his bare feet that he had slipped out of his sandals to be cooler; they strutted as if he had something to offer them, cooing as they came and went. He sat there watching without judgment. “Looking for more sustenance in this world of craving,” he thought to himself, “They share this with all other species, and yes, they share this with me, and I with them.” He would often tell his Japanese- American-with-a-little-Filipino-in-him son that he was working on his own Hoi-tai Buddha belly in observance of this sacred tradition. This son of his who, by this time, had completely disappeared with all traces turning cold in the hot sun of Thailand. The wandering Farang, this sitting man we are considering for the moment, continued his meditation amid male cooing and strutting with their bellies inflated from the offering to the Buddha; they now strutted after their female counterparts after satiating themselves on the Buddha’s food and drink. Yes, his son had disappeared, losing his substantiality in this world of flocking and strutting Buddhas. His meditation was interrupted by her laughter, “Birds hungry too. Hungry just like Buddha!” He looked at her without surprise, or even with anything that resembled anticipation, and said, “But you feed the Buddha and the birds eat his food, and look they’re drunk just like me now!” As he uttered these words, his laughter came deep from his stomach, a place where authentic laughter originates. All laughter should come from here, not from its more frequent throaty expressions, or so he would later reflect. Perhaps he was finally learning a little without realizing and finally, if only momentarily, just being-here; this laughter made him grateful for being alive, and it often came to him here, in this place, for some reason—this most Buddhist place in the world. She laughed even harder accepting his contagion, “I still think you lonely Farang!” He smiled at her and felt the warmth the smile brought to his face; he let it spread without any encouragement to satisfy him; it spread throughout his body as the sun dipped and disappeared behind the buildings and the mountain where the monastery sat midway up its rise, shedding its intensity and leaving only its refracting glow. “Check please,” he asked turning toward her again with the smile still lingering, not yet beginning to fade with the sun’s light. After a quick nod, a formal bow in this temple bar, his check soon arrived, and he left the required baht rounding off the amount without a tip, which was the custom before the Americans, Germans, and Russians came. As he left and walked out into the street alone just as he had entered, she yelled out to him expecting no answer. “Come back again.” And no answer ever came. He never would return to her, her Buddha temple with its craving pigeons. From her vantage point, he soon disappeared into the passing flow, and she immediately forgot him, forever, for, to her, he was like all the others. As he You Lonely Farang 17 18 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes moved along the uneven pavement, a thin tall man off to the side in the wat aimed his Mamiya RB-67 camera with its 105 mm traditional macro lens with a fixed focal length at the Farang and snapped a picture at the slowest of shutter speeds. Holding his camera absolutely steady, he eventually captured the passing Farang’s image. Without expression, the man ran his hand through his long black hair streaked with some grey, after returning his equipment to its case. He stepped out from his hiding place behind a statue of Ganesha, the elephant god that removes obstacles, at the wat’s back alley entrance and was noticed by no one, especially this time not by the man whose image he had just seditiously seized and captured. When her customer had completely faded into the world around her wat, she spoke out loud to no one but herself, the always hungry pigeons, and to the Buddha. “I think you lonely Farang.” He often thought that somewhere in Thailand just might be the place for him to enter that place of nothingness, that place where he might finally reunite with his son. He may not ever be alone then, or even lonely, if he too could find his Buddha of Compassion, his Avalokiteśvara. For David Farrell Krell with respect, admiration, and love. —David Jones Part One Creative Solitudes 1 Creative Solitudes David Farrell Krell When David Jones first proposed this volume to me I was both grateful and surprised. He had heard me deliver a lecture entitled “Creative Solitudes” at Kennesaw State University in 2005. The lecture was originally written for the Cortelyou-Lowery Award ceremony at DePaul University in 1997, then revised and presented at a number of colleges and universities over the next few years. Wherever I have given the lecture the reaction has been the same: faculty and students seem to agree with much of what I am saying, and some are enthusiastic about it, whereas administrators generally hate the whole thing. I take that as a good sign. A number of years ago, David sent this paper to a group of philosophers with the request that they respond with an essay on their own experiences of creative solitudes. Some chose to examine various books and essays of mine, while others went in the direction of their own research and reflection. In both cases, the theme was solitude in our creative and scholarly lives, and not my own work. Not even Paul Auster claims to have “invented” solitude. Everyone who reads and writes does so under the auspices of solitude. Is it safe to say that both reading and writing are endangered species in a culture whose very first axiom when it comes to “mental health” and “social adjustment” is that solitude be assiduously avoided? If that seems too alarmist, we may nevertheless agree that ours is a good time to think about the pains and the gains of solitude, and not by way of “tweets.” I have taken the liberty of cutting portions of the original lecture in order to make space for some remarks on more recent work of mine. I regret the resulting patchwork and the autobiography, but it seemed necessary to say what I am using or abusing my “creative solitudes” for these days. My gratitude to all the contributors to this volume and to David Jones. And I am still surprised. 22 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes “Creative solitudes.” What a splendid title! Both Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, and perhaps even William James, would have written stirring essays on it. Well, then, that makes it a quaint nineteenth-century topic, both edifying and obsolete. Besides, no one has ever cracked the code of creativity, although much empirical-psychological ink has been spilled over it. And solitude? No one has ever been able to distinguish it properly from aloneness or loneliness, even though we know that these states or conditions are far from identical. Clearly, by “creative solitudes” I do not mean isolation and self-absorption. To languish in narcissism, whether dreamily or wretchedly, is not creative but destructive—we all know that. Yet I suspect that aloneness and loneliness are essential components of creative solitudes. They may be self- inflicted wounds, but they are not accidents. I have two questions to pose concerning creative solitudes. First, what is the relation of such solitudes to teaching and learning, especially in our colleges and universities? Second, what will be the fate of creative solitudes in the age of information technology, electronic mass communication, and social media? Are there any resources that may help us to avoid the worst potholes on the information highway down which we are tearing, roaring along so confidently in the direction of ignorance, ugliness, and mean-spiritedness? My complaints about information technology (and, believe it or not, my main example will be email) are three: first, that it invades our creative solitudes in a particularly pernicious way; second, that it subverts our language and our thought processes; and third, that it encourages our most rancorous side—the side that loves gossip and slander. What I am worried about, in a word, is that information technology is invidious to both creativity and civility, both solitude and community. The celebrated global village is a village stripped of its sense of creativity and fair play. Perhaps it is silly of me to be nostalgic about these things, and perhaps I am merely being paranoid about what is everywhere touted as an exciting and useful tool of communication and community. We shall see. However, on the way to the question concerning the effect of information technology on creative solitudes, let me not forget to ask about the importance of such solitudes for college and university teachers—indeed, for teachers and learners generally. Important they are, and yet in some way they are also menacing. Part of the poignancy of solitary reading and writing is the momentary realization of how much of life we are missing. Thoreau says of the act of writing, “I know not whether it was the dumps or a budding ecstasy.”1 We do have to be comfortable (if not ecstatic) when we work, but a terrible aloneness also has to subtend the comfort. Such isolation is hard on the others Creative Solitudes 23 who are close to us—this need for aloneness, this need to forego something of life—and it is hard on us. If there were an easier and more gregarious path, we would walk it and talk it. Creative solitudes may not have to be mournful, but whenever we are caught up in them we do have to notice that something is missing, something is in default. Time may seem to stop in such solitudes, but it stops merely in order to gesture toward the transience of things, the very passing of time, the deaths of parents and friends and lovers—along with the demise of ideas, feelings, and sensations—as we write. We must clear a space at the writing table for ghosts, if only because specters too are vulnerable, ephemeral, and, if the ancients are to be believed, wretchedly lonely. The French playwright Hélène Cixous tells her students that when they write plays they must bring the dead onto the stage, since otherwise—apart from our dreams about them—the dead do not stand a chance. Perhaps, then, every creative solitude entertains ghosts. We are always writing with them and for them, even when we are writing against them. No matter how joyous and exhilarating our solitudes may be, they are always haunted. We may feel at home in them, yet our being-at-home is riddled with uncanny, unhomelike sensations.2 It may be objected that the haunted solitude demanded by philosophical or literary work is too taxing a standard for our everyday academic work. Yet the populations of the night—that is, of both our everyday sorts of nights and of what Maurice Blanchot calls the “other” night3—probably do touch our work of the day, at least if there is anything at all creative about it. And our desire to forget or turn a deaf ear to those populations (for who wants to entertain ghosts, who wants to be lugubrious?) perhaps explains our willingness to surrender creative solitudes to just about anything. Without creative solitudes, however, we cannot read or write or teach, and to a college or university professor, and to teachers in general, that is a disadvantage. I cannot say, as Thoreau does, that I have “never felt lonesome or in the least oppressed by a sense of solitude” (W 99). Emerson’s journal entry for October 27, 1851, makes more sense to me, and it exposes Thoreau’s braggadocio for what it is. Emerson writes: “It would be hard to recall the rambles of last night’s talk with H. T. [i.e., Henry Thoreau]. But we stated over again, to sadness, almost, the eternal loneliness . . . How insular and pathetically solitary, are all the people we know.”4 Pathetically solitary? Perhaps. Yet sometimes also heroically so. Herman Melville, in Pierre or The Ambiguities, describes the blank sheet of paper on which his hero is trying to write in the following way: “If man must wrestle, perhaps it is well that it should be on the nakedest possible plain.”5 24 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Something else about creative solitudes, however, something more mundane than ghosts, frightens us. A university administrator once said to me, “You know, creative solitudes are wasted on some people,” and all I could reply was that often I am one of them. I ought to have added that I am in good company. When Gustav Mahler was at his summer cottage in Maiernigg, working on the Adagietto movement of his Fifth Symphony, he felt he might be one of them; so did the young W. E. B. Du Bois while he was studying economics in Berlin, if only because he was aiming so high on behalf of so many; so did Hannah Arendt feel it when she was writing a lecture in New York and Ticino on what she called, with some trepidation and even embarrassment, thoughtfulness, mere thoughtfulness, as the only effective response to the banality of evil. To be thoughtful, to be creative in thinking, is to be never cocksure. When the German poet Hölderlin was twenty-five, he wrote to Schiller, who at that time was a kind of foster-father to him: “I am living a very solitary life, and I believe it is good for me.”6 Six incredibly creative years later, he was less sure. He wrote to his friend Christian Landauer: “Tell me, this being solitary—is it a blessing or a curse? My nature determines me to it, and the more purposefully I choose my state with a view to finding out who I am, the more irresistibly I am forced back into it again and again—this being lonely” (CHV 2:896). Maurice Blanchot writes of the “essential solitude” of the work of art or literature. His model solitary is Franz Kafka.7 Blanchot describes essential solitude in terms of a night that is more nocturnal than the nights of all our days. The fruits of such a night, in which we are intimate with writing and reading alone, while intoxicating, are meager. For both writer and reader are fascinated and are on automatic pilot, as it were, rapt to mere words—to what Sartre, in Les mots, calls “the rigorous succession of words.”8 Rapt, seized, and very much alone. Blanchot writes: “To write is to enter into the affirmation of solitude, where fascination menaces us” (EL 27). Why should fascination menace? Blanchot is thinking of a letter Kafka writes to Milena Jesenská. (Twenty years after Kafka’s death in Prague due to tuberculosis, Milena died of kidney failure at the concentration camp in Ravensbrück; she had been imprisoned there because she was a socialist and had married a Jew.) One can hear in this letter to Milena echoes of Kafka’s subversive tale of desperate loneliness, Der Bau, “The Burrow.” On September 14, 1920, Kafka writes to Milena: It is something like this: I, an animal of the forest, was at that time barely in the forest; I lay somewhere in a muddy hollow (muddy only as a consequence of my being there, naturally); and then I saw you out there in the open, the Creative Solitudes 25 most wonderful thing I had ever seen; I forgot everything, forgot myself totally; I got up, came closer, anxious to be secure in this freedom that was new though familiar; I approached even closer, came to you, you were so good, I huddled near you, as though I had the right, I placed my face in your hand; I was so happy, so proud, so free, so powerful, so much at home; always and again it was this: so much at home;—and yet, at bottom, I was only the animal; I had always belonged to the forest alone, and if I was living here in the open it was only by your grace; without knowing it (because of course I had forgotten everything), I read my destiny in your eyes. It could not last. Even if you stroked me with your favoring hand, it was inevitable that you would observe my singularities, all of which bespoke the forest, this origin of mine, my real homeland; the necessary words ensued, about my “anxiety,” necessarily they were repeated, about the anxiety that tormented me (as it did you, albeit innocently), until my nerves screeched; the realization grew in me, I saw more and more clearly what a sordid pest, what a clumsy obstacle I was for you in every respect . . . I recalled who I was; in your eyes I read the end of illusion; I experienced the fright that is in dreams (acting as though one were at home in a place where one did not belong); I had that fright in reality itself; I had to return to the darkness, could not bear the sun any longer; I was desperate, really, like a stray animal, I began to run breathlessly; constantly the thought, “If only I could take her with me!” and the counterthought, “Is it ever dark where she is?” You ask how I live: that is how I live.9 The loneliness of the love life and of the life of writing mirror one another. Kafka pictures himself writing through the night “in the innermost space of a vast, sealed cellar,” a place underground where it is always night, Blanchot’s “other” night. He pauses only long enough to rise and shuffle “beneath all the vaults of the cellar” to the “outermost portal,” where some unidentified keeper has left some food for him. Why live this way? Because, he writes, one “cannot be sufficiently alone when writing; . . . never enough silence around oneself when writing; the night itself is still too little night. . . .”10 What I would add to Kafka’s and Blanchot’s haunting descriptions of essential solitude is an ignominious and perhaps banal consequence of the fascination with words: one cannot dedicate oneself to reading and writing without also committing oneself to what will be an extravagant waste of time, or, at the very least, a maddening inefficiency. Perhaps that explains why we are losing the capacity and the courage to read and write. And even if we are not wasting time when we engage with words, time is wasting us. No piety of the sub specie aeternitatis type will rescue us any longer from this squandering. It will be clear not only to outsiders, nor merely to managers and efficiency experts, nor 26 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes only to those for whom the fascination has flagged, but also to those who find themselves on the crest of the creative wave, that time is a-wasting. It is at best a desperate sort of feeling, the sense that one belongs to a very foolish subspecies of mortality. During the winter, Melville used to begin his days—before striking out for the nakedest possible plain of writing—by feeding pumpkins to his cow. As the cow began to ruminate, so did he. No doubt he was grateful that the cow blessed his silence and absurdity. She gave him the time he needed to waste. —Now go and write, she said to him after a few mouthfuls. I’ll see you at four. How rare this bovine wisdom is among us pushy humans, who goad one another to get busy and be as productive as possible. Cows know that there are no calculable guarantees concerning “outcomes” and that it takes time for time to “do its thing.” We others, with our human wisdom, will persist in calling creative solitudes a “waste of time.” Yet this dark romanza of reading and writing seems quite remote from much of what goes on in our institutions of higher learning. Keyboarding lecture notes or a book review, writing up the results of an experiment or a grant proposal or a committee report, or, horribile dictu, typing up data for yet another entirely useless departmental review—surely these kinds of writing are circumscribed in advance. They are meant to be and will be read by few or none; they constitute a document rather than a text or a work. And if the exercise has boredom as its end, then boredom—and not fascination—will accompany it every step of the way. The only problem is that some things at college are meant to be not boring. Teaching, for example. We so often oppose teaching to research, reading, and writing that we forget a terrible truth: although reading and writing are incapable by themselves of fashioning a skillful teacher, no one can teach who has not been able to sustain the creative solitudes of reading, research, reflection, meditation, and writing. It is necessary to repeat this truism concerning the importance of all these lonely activities for teaching at a time when disapproval of solitude has been institutionalized. In spite of the endless talk among professors, administrators, and professional educators about teaching, very little thought is given to the day- to-day encounters that teaching entails. We are told it is better to spend endless hours at workshops, chatting earnestly and most often in bad faith about course “inputs” and “assessed learning outcomes.” It is taken as a given that there will be sufficient time and energy for the creative solitudes of reading—thoughtful reading—and class preparation, even though every teacher reading these words of mine is disturbed, I believe, by the increasing number of classes we all have had to teach on the wing. Creative Solitudes 27 Who can protect teachers against the institutionalized war on creative solitudes? No one. Nor should we expect understanding on this point from persons who no longer teach much. One of my most distinguished professors back in graduate school once said to me, “Don’t expect anyone to protect the time for your work. No one will ever do that for you. And, by the way, never paint your house.” Stephen Dedalus invoked the cunning old artificer who was his namesake to help him create, whereas Hegel no doubt counted on the cunning of reason, but no cunning and calculating efficiency expert will ever lend a sympathetic ear to a teacher, not even if it is the case that without the creative solitudes of reading and writing the life of a school, college, or university is doomed. We talk endlessly about how to “improve” our teaching, but a large part of this talk is an exercise in what Nietzsche calls “active forgetfulness.” We tend to forget who our own great teachers were and why they were great. We hope we can pick up the knack from the chatter in a faculty chat room. Yet our great teachers were not full of chat; they were not “personalities,” and certainly not song-and-dance performers or talk-show hosts. Rather, they spoke well about what they had read and contemplated well; they brought something of their solitary reading and thinking and writing with them when they entered a classroom. It was not a marketing trick they learned at a meeting or in a workshop; it was something that happened to them—many times over—when there was no one there to observe. Moreover, solitude must accompany both teacher and learner throughout the teaching encounter. Garrulity is never enough, and it is often too much. We are losing the sense of what learners—such as ourselves—need to do alone. We are reminded of it when a beginning student comes up to us after class in order to say how strange and difficult they have found the assigned reading, and could it really be saying this, and after we listen to their struggles we smile and say, without flattery, “You are right on track, you are reading well, keep it up.” True, those words of support have to be spoken. Yet they must be spoken discreetly, and that means they must be communicated from one solitude to another; otherwise they are simply vacuous “validations,” mere manipulations. We teachers usually overestimate ourselves as catalysts of learning. In our effort to be not boring, we go glib or even apoplectic. In our fervor to be active and even proactive, we forget the higher form of passivity that all teaching and learning require, passivity in the sense of releasement or letting be, Meister Eckhart’s Gelassenheit. One of the great teachers of the twentieth century said that what teaching calls for is “letting learn”: 28 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Indeed, the proper teacher lets nothing else be learned than—learning. His or her conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we are really learning nothing from them, if by “learning” we now automatically understand the mere procurement of useful information. Teachers are ahead of their apprentices in this alone, that they still have far more to learn than the apprentices. For teachers have to learn to let them learn.11 My guess is that this mysterious letting learn, which is neither uncaring abandonment nor overzealous intervention, has to do with creative solitudes. Creative solitudes on both parts, as teachers demand of their students what they demand of themselves, namely, cultivation of those forms of fascination and even rapture that let us learn. Among the threats to the creative solitudes of reading, writing, thinking, and teaching- by-letting-learn, none is so full of promise as the World Wide Web and email. It is perhaps still too early to assess the advantages and disadvantages— the promise and the threat—of the cybernetic and information revolutions for creative solitudes. These are heady days, however, and a word of caution may be in order. We often forget that most electronically stored “information” is quite accurately designated by that familiar icon to which we most often drag it: it is Trash. Now, I do not wish to bash trash in order to glorify the creative process. Sifting through trash is all we mortals ever do when we create. Remember that even Plato’s Demiurge does not create out of nothing—he needs Necessity, or Ananke, who rules over the chaos of becoming. All the more reason, however, that the quality and quantity of our trash be scrutinized. The talents required for such scrutiny, however, cannot themselves be nurtured on-line. There is the cybernetic rub. When a student downloads someone else’s paper for a course assignment, he or she cannot see what trash it is—they believe that the downloaded trash is better than the miserable scraps they themselves have failed to cobble together. Yet their hope is misplaced. They would have done better to cobble. The task before us, then, is to hone the skills that will enable them to see that they cannot lose by being original—the available materials are that bad! We have to teach them confidence by default, as it were. Socrates assures us that the only thing we can know is that we do not know. There are teeth in that realization. The internet is just another incarnation of those self- proclaimed “experts” of ancient Athens whom Socrates dialectically dismantles. It is doubtless faster than prior purveyors of knowledge, but it is every bit as bemused. As for electronic communication and the social media, computers and smartphones put us in ever closer touch with one another—touch at a Creative Solitudes 29 distance—through email and text-messaging. They therefore enable us to interrupt one another’s creative solitudes with ever greater speed and impact. Yet the sad truth is that the interruptions occur on the inside: we do it to ourselves. With so many new messages in our little mailboxes we must be more important than we thought we were while being defeated by some difficult book or by the attempt to scribble a few ragged lines of our own. To be at the others’ electronic beck and call is the wish-fulfillment dream of those for whom the fascination has flagged. Some of our colleagues have given up entirely on creative solitudes; their supreme need is to interrupt those who have not yet succumbed. Misery loves emails calling for yet another committee meeting. Such misery will find its best allies in us, however, in our own most vulnerable moments. What lies at the root of the problem? I do not know. Perhaps it is harder than ever to be alone for any reason. Creative solitudes never looked so lonely, and their libidinal source never seemed so suspect, especially at a time when libido has been identified as nothing more than grounds for sanctions or a lawsuit. No wonder we who are increasingly out of touch with touch (except when it comes to touch pads) are secretly grateful for those avenues of escape, the websites and chat rooms and the new messages in our mailbox that trap us for hours, the committee meetings convened for an entire afternoon—all of them welcome postponements of yet another bout of solitude. We yearn for hours and days when we will not have to face another struggle on that nakedest possible plain. The blank sheet of paper resists our efforts more than a blank screen does; it will not be calendared as readily as a meeting that exhausts an entire afternoon, an afternoon we sacrifice with a pristine conscience. The writing desk will not support that sterile sociality that seems to compensate us for the people and the intimacy we have lost in this age of relentless competition, litigation, and aggression. Let me return to the more general theme of creative solitudes by raising a final suspicion. Is all this nostalgia for solitude merely an echo of Western egoism, rugged individualism, self-reliance, and solipsism? Solipsism—indeed, an existential solipsism—is where a number of great thinkers in the century recently past say we have to be, are condemned to be. We are not alone at birth: like John Lennon’s “Bungalow Bill” we always take our mothers with us. We do die alone, however, no matter who is in attendance. Nevertheless, I am suspicious of such claims concerning the inevitability of existential solipsism, which seem to be in a direct line of descent from the skull-gazing tradition of the memento mori. I am suspicious of the putative singularity of the solus ipse and of the emphatic egocentricity that seems to derive from the metaphysics and 30 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes morals of both late antiquity and European modernity since Descartes. For such singularity of self—the rational self in solitude, cogitating to beat the band—has more to do with disciplining the self, that is, with producing a self for purposes of disciplining, than with anything either altruistic or creative. I confess I admire those theories of selfhood that remember how much of other persons each human being internalizes, from the cooing of the mother and the no-and-yes-saying of the father to all the subsequent voices each human existence carries with itself. I admire most of all the thought elaborated by Pierre Klossowski in response to Nietzsche’s uncanny notion of the eternal recurrence of the same. Klossowski, noting the elation that accompanies the thought of eternal recurrence each time we think it—as though we were forever thinking it for the very first time—argues that human beings must be living out a recurrence of multiple selves on a cycle of amnesia and anamnesis, periodically forgetting and remembering who they might be. For a time we forget virtually everything about who we are and what sustains us, but then we suddenly find ourselves swimming against the current of Lethe toward the farther shore of our many selves, the selves which we will never come to know fully but which we must affirm if our solitudes are to be creative.12 That is my image of Arendt in New York and Ticino, Du Bois in Berlin and Atlanta, and Mahler in Vienna and Maiernigg. Without his summer solitudes in 1901 and 1902, Mahler would not have concluded the Adagietto movement with those infinitely descending final notes; without his solitudes at the University of Berlin, Du Bois would not have written for us those insights into the veil and our national double consciousness when it comes to the color line; without her solitudes in Berlin and New York and Ticino, Hannah Arendt would not have given us her lucid and worldly-wise “thoughtfulness.” The terrible truth, however, is that each of these solitudes could have ended badly: Mahler could have been frightened off by those notes in the bass that are so deep they leave us nothing to stand on; Du Bois could have admitted defeat, when so many wanted the black man not to aim at such intellectual achievement; Arendt could have vacillated and joined the choruses of condemnation. Results are always the result of retrospective illusion. As long as Mahler, Du Bois, and Arendt were caught up in their creative solitudes, those solitudes were desperately lonely. Even their promise was unpromising. Someone was always there to tell them they were wasting their time, and that someone was none other than one of the selves they carried with themselves. Luckily, it was not their most solitary self, not the self that rallies the others in the night when hope seems absurd, the self that affirms even tragedy. Creative Solitudes 31 My own call to creative solitudes wants to be a call to this society of selves each of us is. The purpose of the call is not to announce I think I am . . . sufficient to myself. The purpose is rather to suggest that all our selves need to listen harder to the creative others who are without and within, whether they are dead or living— that in our solitudes we need to be rapt to these others to the point of rapture. And so, this final affirmation: creative solitudes do not have to be shattered by every interruption. A friend can drop by and ask you what you are writing; you show it to him, he nods slowly, and either he lets you get on with it or he stays and tells a story that will help you get on with it. I was very near the end of a novel called Son of Spirit, which is about the short unhappy life of Hegel’s first son—an illegitimate child, Louis Fischer, eventually named after his mother—when a friend, Dr. Kevin Miles, came to visit. He asked to see what I was writing, and I handed him the notebook, reluctantly. It was too new, too fresh, too vulnerable. He read for some time, then avoided direct comment by telling me stories of other illegitimate children, stories that were important to his own life as a writer and thinker. Among them was the story of the natural supernatural son of Io, Epaphos, whose name means “touched by Zeus.” Epaphos, according to an ancient story (picked up by Aeschylus), fathered the peoples of Africa. Miles referred also to the story of Ishmael, the son of Hagar and Abraham, or, it may be, the child of Hagar and Herman Melville. Finally, he recounted the story of Adeodatus, “given by or to God,” the illegitimate son of Augustine and a slave who was sent back to Africa by Augustine’s pious, relentless mother. Miles was absorbed by these stories, and he absorbed me into them. After he left, I sat down and wrote one of the sections I love best in the novel, a section that manages—thanks to the stories brought to me by a friend— to gather Epaphos, Ishmael, and Adeodatus into a kind of posthumous family album for Louis Fischer, the solitary son of spirit. Visitors, then, bring us bouquets of stories, and no creative solitude dare be churlish and inhospitable towards them. For their own multiple selves often invite the best of our selves into the vaulted cellar of creative solitudes. They are the keepers who bring the writer sustenance. And yet what would become of creative solitudes if everyone who wanted to interrupt them had the instantaneous electronic means to do so? Worse, what would happen if we ourselves, fleeing that struggle on the nakedest possible plain, succumbed to the chattiness of the chat room and the reassuring somebody-out-there-loves-me- or-at-least-can-use-me feeling that radiates from a stuffed mailbox? Our creative solitudes would be driven to distraction in all that white noise. 32 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes “Creative solitudes are wasted on some people,” says the administrator, and he or she is surely right. Have I become one of these? When I decided to write the Nietzsche novel back in 1988, I vowed to myself that I would “waste” my entire sabbatical year on it, and from a scholarly point of view that is exactly what I did. By now things have deteriorated to such an extent that I am often writing books that could hardly be called “scholarly”; furthermore, I do not hesitate now to try my hand at fiction writing whenever an idea for a story presents itself. I seem to be more solitary in this respect than ever—even if more and more colleagues find themselves desiring new directions and new instruments for their thinking and writing, Zarathustra’s “new lyre.” Indeed, Robert Musil says that the “normal career” of an academic philosopher can be summarized in this way: “taking up a teaching position, patiently bearing the boring tasks of an assistant professor, intellectual participation in the transformations taking place in psychology and philosophy—and then, after being satiated with all that, a natural decline and the attempt to make a transition into literature.”13 Be that as it may, what use am I making of my solitudes? What do I ask of them? Some astute person once defined golf as a good way to spoil a pleasant walk. I love to walk, but I am no good at golf. I am not very good at philosophy, either, as my more analytically inclined colleagues have always insisted. To be sure, I hate arguments, which seem to me another way to spoil a walk. I often find it both difficult and bootless to follow the thread of a thesis for more than a minute or two. As for serious scholarship, it takes more patience, thoroughness, and conceptual skill than I perhaps ever possessed. I do have the reputation of being a good translator of philosophical and literary texts, but that is a rumor I started myself. I make up for being a fair-to-middlin’ translator by wearing out the pages of my thesaurus. This will sound like false modesty to some readers, as I hope, and false modesty, fishing for compliments, is a more despicable sport than even golf. Yet as far as I can tell, what I am saying is true. The publication a decade ago of my translation of Hölderlin’s Der Tod des Empedokles gives me hope, however, and with luck, I will continue to do some translating. Yet why fiction? I recall a conversation with David Wood somewhere near a pond in Umbria, a conversation in which he remarked that the difference between us, philosophically speaking, was that whereas he always felt constrained to come down on the side of the light, I invariably came down on the side of darkness. He was right. Obscurities have always attracted me more than enlightenments. When Herman Melville read Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Mosses from an Old Manse, he felt encouraged to add a larger dose of the “blackness of darkness,” “mystical Creative Solitudes 33 blackness,” “darkness,” and even “tragicalness” to his own story of the white whale, which was under way at the time. I have always felt that both Hawthorne and Melville were talking to me. More darkness! More tragicalness! Hawthorne and Melville, of course, were writing fiction. I had not noticed at the time. Now I believe I have. I have to admit that I am uncertain, more so recently than ever before, about whether I am any better at fiction than philosophy. Until quite recently things were looking bleak. I certainly cannot plot and I have scant imagination for situation. As for characters, where are my circus animals? What’s keeping them? Occasionally they do show up, and then my solitudes are a delight: I love writing when the characters themselves approach and tell me the words they have always meant to say, the deeds they have always wanted to perform, and the sufferings they have always feared most. And so I plan to persist. Aristotle says, or at least suggests, if I remember well, that every being is good at something, or good for something: the point is to keep on searching. To date I have published only two of my short stories; a stage play, based on the life of Grete Trakl, although rewritten a dozen times, is not being produced; my film scripts attract dust instead of production companies—and that is probably for the best. Yet it is a pleasure for me to labor on these things. Pleasure? you may say, a bit archly. Why not? I reply, only slightly defensively. And you never know, I may get good at one or other of these very different sorts of writing, each new genre an adventure for me, each incredibly challenging. What exactly do I want from fiction writing? I dream of producing a work. I mean by this not some grand contraption that moves world and earth, but a minuscule cosmos all its own, a tiny gem, not precious, a mere stone, but cleanly cut and ably set. My models for such a work are almost always musical: a nocturne by Chopin, any one you like—if you are undecided, then opus 27 number 2. Or, if I may dream in the direction of some of my favorite stories, then something approaching Joyce’s “Araby,” maybe even “The Dead.” Or how about Hemingway’s perfect story, “The Capital of the World,” or Melville’s outrageous “Cock-A-Doodle-Doo!” Why not dream extravagantly? Yet by now I realize that it is not a matter of leaving philosophy and nonfiction writing behind. I have recently completed two books on philosophical themes, one a meditation on the sea, the other a study of tenderness and cruelty—more precisely, of the German words Zärtlichkeit and Grausamkeit. A few years ago, I published a book on the poetry of Georg Trakl and another on what Heidegger calls “ecstatic temporality.” Most recently, I completed a trip retracing Hölderlin’s journey—over a thousand kilometers by foot and by post-coach—from 34 The Philosophy of Creative Solitudes Nürtingen (near Stuttgart) to Bordeaux, and then back home again, another thousand-plus kilometers. The journey there took him through the northern part of the Black Forest to Strasbourg, and from Strasbourg to Lyon, Clermont- Ferrand, and over the snow-laden Auvergne to Limoges and Périgueux to Bordeaux and the Gironde. His walk took two months to complete: he left Nürtingen around December 6 or 10, 1801, and arrived in Bordeaux on January 28, 1802. Astonishingly, in May of that same year, he walked back home, this time by way of Paris. (I confess that I did not walk in his footsteps—had I tried to walk I would still be lost and snowbound somewhere in the northern Schwarzwald.) At the moment, I am trying to write about these exacting journeys of Hölderlin’s, to and from Bordeaux, journeys of unimaginable aloneness. They were solitudes that proved to be both creative and destructive. When Hölderlin arrived home, he was in such a state that even his old friends failed to recognize him. Yet in the months that followed he was still able to compose many of his most memorable poems and hymns, among them, “Bread and Wine,” “Half of Life,” “Patmos,” “Mnemosyne,” and “Remembrance.” I have no way of knowing whether I will be able to recount these journeys, his and my own, which will have had their own solitudes. But then, readers may ask, why not be satisfied with such nonfiction work, which is gripping enough? And why not be content with philosophical writing? My response to the second question is that, to put it negatively, it has become clear to me that I am not driven by a pervasive and impelling philosophical question—for example, the question of being or the question of the trace, or even the question of the question—not compelled by a singular question or affirmation that would inspire a philosophical project worthy of the name. As for serious scholarship, it inspires footnotes, and that is another way to spoil a pleasant walk. Yet there is a more positive reply to the question. The work I feel most compelled or called to do involves persons and personae rather than ideas or philosophical systems. The philosopher Schelling long ago reminded me that whatever is known has to be recounted or narrated. Such narration, with all its masks, has always been the crucial matter for me—not as a theoretical matter for an aesthetics but as a practice and a way of life. No one, it seems to me, not even Musil, would or should begrudge me this chance (however slight) to produce a work, a well-wrought tale or two. Whatever my earlier or even current philosophical work has to contribute to the writing of fiction it will contribute; the rest will fall away, or has already done so, and I hope that no one is or will be the worse for it. “The most innocent of occupations,” Hölderlin said of creative writing (CHV 2:638). Innocent it may be, but it is also Creative Solitudes 35 full of ruses. This same Hölderlin calls language itself “the most dangerous of gifts” (CHV 1:265). It turns out that I have been making my way toward ruse-ridden fiction for a long time. Recently I discovered a journal that I had misplaced for many years and had considered lost, and so I looked into it. (Otherwise I never read my journals. What do we keep them for, anyway? For eventual but highly unlikely autobiography? For an uninterested posterity? For the repetition compulsion?) Allow me to cite one entry, made on October 15, which is Nietzsche’s birthday, in the year 1969, which is now some fifty years ago. I wrote, near Seehausen in Oberbayern: I’ve been reading Hemingway’s A Movable Feast, about his early years in Paris and his efforts there at writing . . . I gobble up what the writer writes about writing . . . But it is all a matter of how we devote our time. What I have so far written is quite bad, if only because I expect to get what I want as soon as I sit down at the desk. One who will not waste time won’t write. I must free myself from my schooling. That was a year before I completed my dissertation—if not my “schooling.” Looking back, it seems as though philosophy was the long detour that eventually had to return me to the main road, fiction. I recall that	590,636
Too Loud a Solitude (Hrabal Bohumil Heim Michael Henry) (Z-Library).pdf	Bohumil Hrabal Too Loud a Solitude Translated from the Czech by MICHAEL HENRY HEIM Copyright © 1976 by Bohumil Hrabal English translation copyright © 1990 ISBN 015190491X Only the sun has a right to its spots. —GOETHE ONE For thirty-five years now I've been in wastepaper, and it's my love story. For thirty-five years I've been compacting wastepaper and books, smearing myself with letters until I've come to look like my enclyclopedias— and a good three tons of them I've compacted over the years. I am a jug filled with water both magic and plain; I have only to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me. My education has been so unwitting I can't quite tell which of my thoughts come from me and which from my books, but that's how I've stayed attuned to myself and the world around me for the past thirty-five years. Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel. In an average month I compact two tons of books, but to muster the strength for my godly labors I've drunk so much beer over the past thirty-five years that it could fill an Olympic pool, an entire fish hatchery. Such wisdom as I have has come to me unwittingly, and I look on my brain as a mass of hydraulically compacted thoughts, a bale of ideas, and my head as a smooth, shiny Aladdin's lamp. How much more beautiful it must have been in the days when the only place a thought could make its mark was the human brain and anybody wanting to squelch ideas had to compact human heads, but even that wouldn't have helped, because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself. I've just bought one of those minuscule adder-subtractor-square-rooters, a tiny little contraption no bigger than a wallet, and after screwing up my courage I pried open the back with a screwdriver, and was I shocked and tickled to find nothing but an even tinier contraption—smaller than a postage stamp and thinner than ten pages of a book—that and air, air charged with mathematical variations. When my eye lands on a real book and looks past the printed word, what it sees is disembodied thoughts flying through air, gliding on air, living off air, returning to air, because in the end everything is air, just as the host is and is not the blood of Christ. For thirty-five years now I've been compacting old paper and books, living as I do in a land that has known how to read and write for fifteen generations; living in a onetime kingdom where it was and still is a custom, an obsession, to compact thoughts and images patiently in the heads of the population, thereby bringing them ineffable joy and even greater woe; living among people who will lay down their lives for a bale of compacted thoughts. And now it is all recurring in me. Along with thirty-five years of pushing the red and green buttons on my hydraulic press, I've had thirty-five years of drinking beer— not that I enjoy it, no, I loathe drunkards, I drink to make me think better, to go to the heart of what I read, because what I read I read not for the fun of it or to kill time or fall asleep; I, who live in a land that has known how to read and write for fifteen generations, drink so that what I read will prevent me from falling into everlasting sleep, will give me the d.t.'s, because I share with Hegel the view that a noble-hearted man is not yet a nobleman, nor a criminal a murderer. If I knew how to write, I'd write a book about the greatest of man's joys and sorrows. It is by and from books that I've learned that the heavens are not humane, neither the heavens nor any man with a head on his shoulders— it's not that men don't wish to be humane, it just goes against common sense. Rare books perish in my press, under my hands, yet I am unable to stop their flow: I am nothing but a refined butcher. Books have taught me the joy of devastation: I love cloudbursts and demolition crews, I can stand for hours watching the carefully coordinated pumping motions of detonation experts as they blast entire houses, entire streets, into the air while seeming only to fill tires. I can't get enough of that first moment, the one that lifts all the bricks and stones and beams only to cave them in quietly, like clothes dropping, like a steamer sinking swiftly to the ocean floor when its boilers have burst. There I stand in the cloud of dust, in the music of fulmination, thinking of my work deep down in the cellar where I have my press, the one where I've been working for thirty-five years by the light of a few electric bulbs and where above me I hear steps moving across the courtyard, and, through an opening in the ceiling, which is also a hole in the middle of the courtyard, I see heaven-sent horns of plenty in the form of bags, crates, and boxes raining down their old paper, withered flower-shop stalks, wholesalers' wrappings, out-of-date theater programs, ice-cream wrappers, sheets of paint-spattered wallpaper, piles of moist, bloody paper from the butchers', razor-sharp rejects from photographers' studios, insides of office wastepaper baskets, typewriter ribbons included, bouquets from birthdays and namedays long past. Sometimes I find a cobblestone buried in a bundle of newspapers to make it weigh more or a penknife and a pair of scissors disposed of by mistake, or claw hammers or cleavers or cups with dried black coffee still in them, or faded wedding nosegays wound round with fresh artificial funeral wreaths. For thirty-five years I've been compacting it all in my hydraulic press, and three times a week it is transported by truck to train and then on to the paper mill, where they snap the wires and dump my work into alkalis and acids strong enough to dissolve the razor blades I keep gouging my hands with. But just as a beautiful fish will occasionally sparkle in the waters of a polluted river that runs through a stretch of factories, so in the flow of old paper the spine of a rare book will occasionally shine forth, and if for a moment I turn away, dazzled, I always turn back in time to rescue it, and after wiping it off on my apron, opening it wide, and breathing in its print, I glue my eyes to the text and read out the first sentence like a Homeric prophecy; then I place it carefully among my other splendid finds in a small crate lined with the holy cards someone once dropped into my cellar by mistake with a load of prayer books, and then comes my ritual, my mass: not only do I read every one of those books, I take each and put it in a bale, because I have a need to garnish my bales, give them my stamp, my signature, and I always worry about whether I've made a bale distinctive enough: I have to spend two hours overtime in the cellar every working day, I have to get to work an hour early, I sometimes have to come in on Saturdays if I want to work my way through the never-ending mountain of old paper. Last month they delivered nearly fifteen hundred pounds of "Old Masters" reproductions, dropped nearly fifteen hundred pounds of sopping-wet Rembrandts, Halses, Monets, Manets, Klimts, Cézannes, and other big guns of European art into my cellar, so now I frame each of my bales with reproductions, and when evening comes and the bales stand one next to the other waiting in all their splendor for the service elevator, I can't take my eyes off them: now The Night Watch, now Saskia, here Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe, there the House of the Hanged Man at Anvers or Guernica. Besides, I'm the only one on earth who knows that deep in the heart of each bale there's a wide-open Faust or Don Carlos, that here, buried beneath a mound of blood-soaked cardboard, lies a Hyperion, there, cushioned on piles of cement bags rests a Thus Spake Zarathustra; I'm the only one on earth who knows which bale has Goethe, which Schiller, which Holderlin, which Nietzsche. In a sense, I am both artist and audience, but the daily pressure does me in, tires me out, racks me, sears me, and to reduce and restrict my enormous self- output I drink beer after beer, and on my way to Husensky's for refills I have time to meditate and dream about what my next bale is going to look like. The only reason I down so much beer is to see into the future, because in every bale I bury a precious relic, a child's open coffin strewn with withered flowers, tinsel, and angel's hair, and I make a nice little bed for the books that turn up unexpectedly in the cellar, much as I myself turned up there one day. That's why I'm always behind in my work, why the courtyard is piled to the rooftops with old paper that can't go down the opening in the ceiling of my cellar for the mountain of old paper blocking it from below; that's why my boss, his face scarlet with rage, will sometimes stick his hook through the opening and clear away enough paper to shout down to me, "Haňťa! Where are you? For Christ's sake, will you stop ogling those books and get to work? The courtyard's piled high with paper and you sit there dreaming!" And I huddle in the lee of my paper mountain like Adam in the bushes and pick up a book, and my eyes open panic-stricken on a world other than my own, because when I start reading I'm somewhere completely different, I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth. Ten times a day, every day, I wonder at having wandered so far, and then, alienated from myself, a stranger to myself, I go home, walking the streets silently and in deep meditation, passing trams and cars and pedestrians in a cloud of books, the books I found that day and am carrying home in my briefcase. Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, never bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes of beer and grime, yet smiling, because my briefcase is full of books and that very night I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know. On I go through the noisy streets, never crossing at the red; I walk subconsciously unconscious, half-asleep, subliminally inspired, with every bale I've compacted that day fading softly and quietly inside me. I have a physical sense of myself as a bale of compacted books, the seat of a tiny pilot light of karma, like the flame in a gas refrigerator, an eternal flame I feed daily with the oil of my thoughts, which come from what I unwittingly read during work in the books I am now taking home in my briefcase. So I walk home like a burning house, like a burning stable, the light of life pouring out of the fire, fire pouring out of the dying wood, hostile sorrow lingering under the ashes. For thirty-five years now I've been compacting old paper in my hydraulic press. I've got five years till retirement and my press is going with me, I won't abandon it, I'm saving up, I've got my own bankbook and the press and me, we'll retire together, because I'm going to buy it from the firm, I'm going to take it home and stash it somewhere among the trees in my uncle's garden, and then, when the time is right, I'll make only one bale a day, but what a bale, a bale to end all bales, a statue, an artifact, I'll pour all my youthful illusions into it, everything I know, everything I've learned during my thirty-five years of work; at last I'll work only when the spirit moves me, when I feel inspired, one bale a day from the three tons of books I have waiting at home, a bale I'll never need to be ashamed of, a bale I'll have time to think out, dream out, in advance. And, more important, while I line the drum of my press with books and old paper, while I'm in the throes of creation but just before I turn the pressure on, I'll sprinkle it all with confetti and sequins, a new bale a day, and when a year is up—an exhibition, I'll hold a bale exhibition in the garden, and all the people who come will be able to make their own, though under my supervision, and when the green light goes on and the press starts churning, starts its tremendously powerful churning, starts crushing and compacting the old paper trimmed with books and flowers and whatever refuse people happen to have brought along, the sensitive spectator will personally experience compaction in my hydraulic press. But now I'm at home, sitting on a chair, my head drooping lower and lower, until I drift off the only way I know how, moist lips against raised knees. Sometimes I remain in my Thonet position as late as midnight, and when I awake, curled up, coiled up in myself like a cat in winter, like a rocking-chair frame, I lift my head to find my trouser knee drenched with drool. I can be by myself because I'm never lonely, I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me. TWO For thirty-five years now I've been compacting old paper, and I've had so many beautiful books tossed into my cellar that if I had three barns they'd all be full. Just after the war was over—the second one— somebody dumped a basket of the most exquisitely made volumes in my hydraulic press, and when I'd calmed down enough to open one of them, what did I see but the stamp of the Royal Prussian Library, and when next day I found the whole cellar overflowing with more of the same— leather-bound tomes, their gilt edges and titles flooding the air with light—I raced upstairs to see two fellows standing there, and what I managed to squeeze out of them was that somewhere in the vicinity of Nové Strašecí there was a barn with so many books in the straw it made your eyes pop out of your head. So I went to see the army librarian, and the two of us took off for Nové Strašecí, and there in the fields we found not one but three barns chock full of the Royal Prussian Library, and once we'd done oohing and ahing, we had a good talk, as a result of which a column of military vehicles spent a week transporting the books to a wing of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Prague, where they were to wait until things simmered down, when they could be sent back to their place of origin. But somebody leaked the hiding place and the Royal Prussian Library was declared official booty, so the column of military vehicles started transporting all the leather-bound tomes with their gilt edges and titles over to the railroad station, where they were loaded on flatcars in the rain, and since it poured the whole week, what I saw when the last load of books pulled up was a constant flow of gold water and soot and printer's ink coming from the train. Well, I just stood there, leaning against a lamppost, flabbergasted, and as the last car disappeared into the mist, I felt the rain on my face merging with tears, so when on my way out of the station I saw a policeman in uniform, I crossed my wrists and begged him with the utmost sincerity to take out his handcuffs, his bracelets, as we used to call them, and take me in—I'd committed a crime, a crime against humanity—and when he did take me in, all they did was laugh at me and threaten to lock me up. A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles and city mansions, fine, rare, leather- and Morocco-bound books, load whole trains full, and as soon as a train had thirty cars, off it would go to Switzerland or Austria, one kilogram of rare books for the equivalent of one crown in convertible currency, and nobody blinked an eye, nobody shed a tear, not even I myself, no, all I did was stand there smiling as I watched the train hauling those priceless libraries off to Switzerland and Austria for one crown in convertible currency a kilo. By then I had mustered the strength to look upon misfortune with composure, to still my emotions, by then I had begun to understand the beauty of destruction, and I loaded more and more freight cars, and more and more trains left the station heading west at one crown per kilogram, and as I stood there staring after the red lantern hanging from the last car, as I stood there leaning on a lamppost like Leonardo da Vinci, who stood leaning on a column and looking on while French soldiers used his statue for target practice, shooting away horse and rider bit by bit, I thought how Leonardo, like me, standing and witnessing such horrors with complete composure, had realized even then that neither the heavens are humane nor is any man with a head on his shoulders. At about that time I received word that my mother was dying, so I immediately hopped on my bike and rode home, but since I happened to be thirsty, I ran down to the cellar and grabbed a cold earthenware jug of sour milk, picked it up with both hands, and was gulping it down greedily when all at once I saw two eyes floating opposite my own, but I was so thirsty that I went on drinking until the two eyes were as dangerously close as the lights of a locomotive speeding into a tunnel at night, and suddenly the eyes disappeared and my mouth was full of something wrigglingly alive, and I pulled a frog out of it by the leg, and as soon as I had disposed of it in the garden, I went back and polished off the milk à la Leonardo. When Mama died, I cried a bit to myself, but never shed a tear. Leaving the crematorium, I watched the smoke rising from the chimney into the sky, watched Mama making her way upward to the heavens, but before leaving I decided to take a trip downstairs: after all, didn't they do in their cellar with people what I did in my cellar with books? Anyway, I waited until the service was over and watched them burning four corpses, the third of which was Mama, looked on motionless at the final state of man, observed my counterpart picking out the bones, grinding them in his hand mill, grinding up Mama, too, and laying her earthly remains in a metal box, and all I could do was stand there and stare—the way I stared after the train taking those wonderful libraries off to Switzerland and Austria at one convertible crown a kilo—stand there and think of the lines from Sandburg about how all that remains of a man is the phosphorus for a box of matches or the iron for a noose-worthy nail. A month later I got them to sign the urn over to me, and when I took Mama's ashes to my uncle, carried them out to his garden and up to his signal tower, he called out to them, "Home again at last, eh, Sis?" And when I gave him the urn, he weighed it in his hand and declared she wasn't quite all there —she'd weighed a full one hundred and sixty-five pounds when she was alive—so he weighed her on a scale and then sat down and worked out that there ought to be another one and three-quarter ounces of her. Anyway, he placed the urn on a wardrobe, and once that summer, while he was hoeing out the kohlrabi, he thought of his sister, my mother, and how she loved kohlrabi, so he took down the urn and opened it with a bottle opener and scattered Mama's ashes over the kohlrabi, which we later ate. For a long time thereafter I would hear the crunch of human skeletons whenever my hydraulic press entered its final phase and crushed the beautiful books with a force of twenty atmospheres, I would hear the crunch of human skeletons and feel I was grinding up the skulls and bones of press-crushed classics, the part of the Talmud that says: "For we are like olives: only when we are crushed do we yield what is best in us." After the crushing is over, I do up each bale with steel bands, pulling them as tight as possible, so that, try as the books may to break out, the steel holds, and I think of the full-to-bursting chest of the sideshow strongman who rends his chains by forcing yet more air into his lungs. But the bale is safe in the strong embrace of the steel bands, everything is as calm inside as inside the burial urn, and I reverently dolly it over to its mates, making sure to turn it so that the reproductions face me. Because this week I've started in on a hundred reproductions of Rembrandt van Rijn, a hundred portraits of the old artist with the mushroom face, the face of a man pushed to the brink of eternity by art and drink, the door handle starting to turn, the final door pushed open from without by an unknown hand, and I'm beginning to have his puff-paste face, that peeling, piss-soaked wall of a face, I'm beginning to smile his half-moronic smile, to look at the world from the other side of human causes and events, and all my bales these days are framed with that portrait of Rembrandt van Rijn as an old man while I keep filling my drum with wastepaper and open books. Today for the first time I noticed I'd stopped looking out for the mice, their nests, their families. When I throw in blind baby mice, the mother jumps in after them, sticks by them, and shares the fate of my classics and wastepaper. You wouldn't believe how many mice there are in a cellar like mine, two hundred, five hundred maybe, most of them friendly little creatures born half-blind, but there's one thing we have in common, namely, a vital need for literature with a marked preference for Goethe and Schiller in Morocco bindings. My cellar is constantly full of blinkings and gnawings: in their free time the mice are as playful as kittens, climbing up and down the sides of the press and pattering along the horizontal shaft. Then the green button sets the drum wall in motion and throws paper and mice into a high-stress situation, and the cheeping fades and the mice in other parts of the cellar suddenly turn serious and stand on their hind legs, prick up their ears, wondering what those new noises are, but since mice lose track of the moment as soon as the moment is over, they go right back to their games, to munching books, the older the paper the tastier it is, like a well-aged cheese or vintage wine. My life is so tightly bound up with these mice that even though I give all the paper a good evening hosing, which for the mice is like a daily dunking, they're always in a good mood and even look forward to their bath: they enjoy the aftermath, hours of licking and warming themselves in their paper retreats. Sometimes I lose control over my mice: I go out for a beer, lost in deep meditation, I dream as I wait at the bar, and when I open my coat to reach for my wallet, out jumps a mouse on the counter, or when I leave, out scurries a pair from a trouser leg, and the waitresses go wild, climb on chairs, stick their fingers in their ears, and scream bloody murder. And I just smile and wave a wet good-bye, full of plans for my next bale. For thirty-five years now I've been throwing each bale into a high-stress situation, crossing off every year, every month, every day in the month until we both retire, my press and I. I've been bringing home books every evening in my briefcase, and my two-floor Holešovice apartment is all books: what with the cellar and the shed long since packed and the kitchen, pantry, and even bathroom full, the only space free is a path to the window and stove. Even the bathroom has only room enough for me to sit down in: just above the toilet bowl, about five feet off the floor, I have a whole series of shelves, planks piled high to the ceiling, holding over a thousand pounds of books, and one careless roost, one careless rise, one brush with a shelf, and half a ton of books would come tumbling down on me, catching me with my pants down. And when there was no room for even a single addition, I pushed my twin beds together and rigged a kind of canopy of planks over them, ceiling high, for the two additional tons of books I've carried home over the years, and when I fall asleep I've got all those books weighing down on me like a two-ton nightmare. Sometimes, when I'm careless enough to turn in my sleep or call out or twitch, I am horrified to hear the books start to slide, because it would take little more than a raised knee or a shout to bring them all down like an avalanche, a cornucopia of rare books, and squash me like a flea. There are nights when I think that the books are plotting against me for compacting a hundred innocent mice a day, that they want to get even with me, and well they might: our transgressions haunt us. I lie on my back half drunk under a canopy of miles and miles of texts, trying hard not to remember, but then I'll think of the time the local forester caught a marten in an inside-out sleeve lining and, instead of killing it, justly, for having gobbled up some chickens, he took a nail, hammered it into its head, and then let it go darting and howling around the yard until it died. And then I'll remember how a year later the forester's son was killed by a live wire while repairing a cement mixer. Just yesterday the figure of the forester came back to me, out of the blue, under my canopy, and I remembered him sharpening a stick each time he came across a hedgehog curled up in a ball and sinking that sharp stick into the hedgehog's stomach— he was too cheap to waste a bullet—until one day he took to bed with cancer of the liver and in return for all those hedgehogs he spent three long months curled up in a ball, a tumor in his stomach and horror in his brain, before he died. Such are the thoughts that make me panic when I hear the books above me plotting their revenge, and I am so terrified by the prospect of having them flatten me and then crash through each floor all the way to the basement, like an elevator, that I prefer sleeping in my chair by the window. The way I look at it, my life fits together beautifully: at work I have books—and bottles and inkwells and staplers—raining down on me through the opening in the cellar ceiling, and at home I have books above me constantly threatening to fall and kill or at least maim me. The swords of Damocles that I've hung from my bathroom and bedroom ceilings force me to make as many trips for beer at home as at work: it's my only defense against a beautiful misery. Once a month I go and visit my uncle and look around in his garden for the place to put my press when we retire. The idea of saving up and buying the hydraulic press when I retire was his, not mine. He spent forty years as a railroad man, raising and lowering gates at crossings, forty years as a signalman, forty years, like me, enjoying nothing but work, and when he retired he found he couldn't live without a signal tower, so he picked one up secondhand at a border station no longer in use and had it brought back to his garden, and then some of his friends who were retired engineers chipped in on a small locomotive—an Ohrenstein & Koppel that had once pulled skips and flatcars through a steelworks— and some tracks and three flatcars, all of which they found at a scrap heap somewhere, and once they'd laid the tracks in and around the trees of the old garden, they would stoke up the Ohrenstein & Koppel every Saturday and Sunday, and off they'd go, giving rides to children in the afternoon and—when evening came on and they began drinking beer and singing—rides to one another, or else they would all crowd together on the locomotive, and it would look like a statue of the river god Nile, the figure of a naked reclining Adonis dotted with figurines. One day I went to see my uncle to find a place for my press, and as night fell, and the train, its lights aglow, rounded the apple- and pear-tree bends at top speed, I watched him sitting in his signal tower, busy at the switches and, to judge by the intermittently flashing aluminum tankard, every bit as well lubricated as the Ohrenstein & Koppel. Since I walked through the children's whoops and the old men's hoots without being invited to join in or asked whether I wanted a drink— they were all too involved in their games, which were really nothing more than the jobs they'd enjoyed all their lives—I simply kept walking, marked like Cain, and when, after walking on my own for an hour or so, I returned to see whether anyone would call me over, what I saw was that no one even recognized me, and when, after passing through the gate, I turned one last time, what I saw, by the light of the lanterns and the brightly lit signal tower, was a flurry of silhouettes and the train following them with a whistle and a clank on yet another journey along the crumpled ellipsis of its tracks, a hurdy-gurdy playing and replaying a single tune, a tune so catchy you never wanted to hear another as long as you lived. And even though no one could possibly have seen me from so far off, I could tell that my uncle saw me, that he had never taken his eyes off me all the time I was wandering through the trees, and he lifted his hand from the controls and waggled his fingers at me in an odd way, as if trying to make the air vibrate, and I waved back at him through the darkness, and we seemed to be saying good-bye from trains rushing in opposite directions. When I reached the outskirts of Prague, I bought a sausage—and was I scared, because without raising it to my mouth I could feel it brushing my hot lips. And when I looked down—I was holding it at waist level— what did I see but the other end touching my shoes, but when I lifted it in both hands, it looked perfectly normal, so I knew Ï had shriveled up, shrunk, in the last ten years. When I got home, I pushed a couple of hundred books away from the kitchen door and found the lines I used to draw on the frame with an indelible pencil to show how tall I'd been on a given date, and I picked up a book, stepped back against the doorframe, and pressed the book flat on my head, and when I turned in place and drew another line there, I could tell with the naked eye that in eight years I had shrunk four inches, and I decided I must have shrunk under the weight of that two-ton canopy of books. THREE For thirty-five years now I've been compacting waste-paper, and if I had it all to do over I'd do just what I've done for the past thirty-five years. Even so, three or four times a year my job turns from plus to minus: the cellar suddenly goes bad, the nags and niggles and whines of my boss pound in my ears and head and make the room into an inferno; the wastepaper, piled to the ceiling, wet and moldy, ferments in a way that makes manure seem sweet, a swamp decomposing in the depths of my cellar, with bubbles rising to the surface like will-o'-the-wisps from a stump rotting in the mire. And I have to come up for air, get away from the press, but I never go out, I can't stand fresh air anymore, it makes me cough and choke and sputter like a Havana cigar. So while my boss is screaming and wringing his hands and raining threats down on me, I slip away and set off in search of other basements, other cellars. Most of all I enjoy central-heating control rooms, where men with higher education, chained to their jobs like dogs to their kennels, write the history of their times as a sort of sociological survey and where I learned how the fourth estate was depopulated and the proletariat went from base to superstructure and how the university-trained elite now carries on its work. My best friends are two former members of our Academy of Sciences who have been set to work in the sewers, so they've decided to write a book about them, about their crissings and crossings under Prague, and they are the ones who taught me that the excrement entering the sewage plant at Podbaba on Sundays differs substantially from the excrement entering it on Mondays, and that each day is so clearly differentiated from the rest that the rate of flux may be plotted on a graph, and according to the ebb and flow of prophylactics one may determine the relative frequency with which varying sections of Prague indulge in sexual intercourse. Today, however, my friends made an even deeper impression on me with a report of a war, a total, humanlike war, between white rats and brown, which, though it ended in the absolute victory of the whites, had led to their immediate breakdown into two groups, two opposing clans, two tightly organized rodent factions engaged at this very moment in a life-and-death struggle for supremacy of the sewers, a great rodent war over the rights to all the refuse and fecal matter flowing through the sewers to Podbaba, and as soon as the present war was over, my friends the academic sewersweeps informed me, the winning side would again break down, like gases and metals and all organic matter, into two dialectically opposed camps, the struggle for supremacy bringing life back to life, the desire for conflict resolution promising imminent equilibrium, the world never stumbling for an instant. I could see how right Rimbaud was when he wrote that the battle of the spirit is as terrible as any armed conflict; I could grasp the true meaning of Christ's cruel words, "I came not to send peace, but a sword"; and having received my education unwittingly, I was always amazed at Hegel and what he taught me, namely, that the only thing on earth worthy of fear is a situation that is petrified, congealed, or dying, and the only thing worthy of joy is a situation where not only the individual but also society as a whole wages a constant battle for self-justification. Wandering through the streets of Prague on the way back to my cellar, I switched on my X-ray eyes and peered down through transparent pavements into the sewers to find rodent general staffs mapping out operations for rodent troops, generals barking orders into their walkie-talkies about which front to put pressure on, but I just kept walking, listening to the crunch of sharp little rats' teeth under my shoes and thinking of the melancholy of a world eternally under construction, and when I looked up through my tears I noticed something I had never noticed before, namely, that the façades, the fronts of all the buildings, public and residential—and I could see them all the way up to the drainpipes—were a reflection of everything Hegel and Goethe had dreamed of and aspired to, the Greece in us, the beautiful Hellenic model and goal. I saw Doric columns and frieze-covered gutters, I saw Corinthian columns with florid leafage, I saw Ionic columns with volutes and stately shafts, I saw garlanded cornices, templelike vestibules, caryatids and balustrades reaching to the roofs of the buildings—and I walked in their shadows. I had seen it all in the poorer sections of town, too, Greece plastered over the most ordinary buildings, their portals adorned with naked men and naked women and the boughs and buds of alien flora. Anyway, on I walked, thinking about what the boilerman with the university education had told me, that Eastern Europe doesn't start outside the gates of Prague, it starts at the last Empire-style railroad station somewhere in Galicia, at the outer limits of the Greek tympanum, and Prague's involvement with the Greek spirit goes deeper than the façades of its buildings, it goes straight into the heads of the populace, because classical gymnasia and humanistic universities have stuffed millions of Czech heads full of Greece and Rome. And while the sewers of Prague provide the scene for a senseless war between two armies of rats, the cellars are headquarters for Prague's fallen angels, university-educated men who have lost a battle they never fought, yet continue to work toward a clearer image of the world. When I got back to my own cellar and saw my little mice hopping and skipping up to say hello, I thought of the hatch at the bottom of the elevator shaft and the sewer it kept at bay, and I climbed down the ladder to the bottom of the shaft, screwed up my courage, yanked off the cover, kneeled down, and listened to the whish of wastewater, the applause of toilets flushing, the melodic runoff from basins and once-soapy baths, a miniature seashore, as it were, but then I pricked up my ears and what did I hear sailing out over the waters but the whooping of warrior rats, the gnawing of meat, the keening, rejoicing, the lapping and gurgling of bodies in combat, sounds from a distance, yet I knew I could remove any gate or manhole cover in the city and climb straight down into the life-and-death struggle, the rat war to end all rat wars, and I knew it would end with a celebration lasting only till they could find a motive to start fighting again. I put the cover on and returned to my press, enriched by the new knowledge that there was a fierce battle going on under my feet, and if not even rat heaven was humane, then how could I be, I who have been baling wastepaper for thirty-five years and grown a little ratlike myself from living in cellars all that time. I don't like baths even though we have a shower room right behind the boss's office, because if I had a bath I'd be sure to come down with something. I have to go easy on the hygiene, working with my bare hands: I can't wash them until night, because if I washed them several times a day my skin would crack. But sometimes, when a yearning for the Greek ideal of beauty comes over me, I'll wash one of my feet or maybe even my neck, then the next week I'll wash the other foot and an arm, and whenever a major religious holiday is in the offing, I'll do my chest and both feet, but in that case I take an antihistamine in advance, because otherwise I'll have hay fever even if there's snow on the ground. Now I'm back at my press, making up wastepaper bales, a classical philosopher in the heart of each bale, and my body is relaxed by my morning stroll through Prague, my mind is cleared by the thought that I am not alone, that there are thousands like me in Prague working underground, in basements and cellars, and that they have live, living, life-giving thoughts running through their heads. I have calmed down a little and my work is going better than yesterday, so well, in fact, that it does itself and I can slip back into the womb of time, into my youth, when I ironed my trousers and shined my shoes, soles included, every Saturday, because when you're young you love keeping clean, you love your self-image, an mage you still have time to improve. Anyway, I would twirl my iron through the air until the hot coals spewed out sparks, lay the trousers on the ironing board— first smoothing out the buckled creases, then covering them with a cloth I'd squirted beforehand with a mouthful of water, and finally giving them a careful iron, especially the right leg, since it was always a little frayed from the habit I had of touching my knee to the dirt just before letting go of the ball in ninepins—and when at last I cautiously peeled off the hot, smoking cloth, I would hold my breath to see whether the creases were perfectly straight, because only then could I pull my trousers on and set off, as I did every Saturday, for the village square, where, just before I reached the log pile in front of the Lower Tavern, I would turn and see my mother watching, checking whether everything was as it should be and I looked my best. It is evening, I'm at a dance, and in comes Marie (or Manča, as I call her), the girl I've been waiting for, ribbons trailing, ribbons braided in her hair, and the band plays and I dance only with her, we dance and the world swirls around us like a merry-go-round, and when out of the corner of my eye I look for an opening that Manča and I can polka into, I see Manca's ribbons swinging around me, borne straight out on the wind of the dance, and whenever I feel the need to slow down, the ribbons start to droop, but then I pick up again and whirl her around, and the ribbons pick up and graze my hands, the fingers that hold her hand, which holds on tightly to a white embroidered handkerchief, and for the first time I tell her I love her and she whispers back that she's loved me since school, and then all at once she presses against me, clasps me, and we're closer than we've ever been before, and she asks me to be her partner for Women's Choice, and I shout "Yes!" but no sooner does Women's Choice begin than Manca turns pale and tells me she'll only be a second. When she came back, her hands were cold, but we started up again and I kept her twirling so everyone could see what a good dancer I was and how good we were together, what a couple we made, and as the polka reached its dizzy peak and Manca's ribbons started fluttering through the air with her straw- colored braid, I noticed the other couples had stopped dancing and were moving away from us in disgust, until finally they made a large ring around us, but not to admire us, no, to escape us, because centrifugal force was spraying them with something horrible, though exactly what it was neither Manča nor I could guess, until Manča's mother ran up, horror-stricken, grabbed her by the arm, and they ran out of the dance hall, out of the Lower Tavern, never to return, which meant that I didn't see her again for years. What had happened was that Manča was so excited by her Women's Choice, so thrilled by my I love you, that she had to pop out to the tavern latrine, where, unbeknownst to her, her ribbons had dipped into the pyramid of feces rising up to meet the board she sat on, and when she ran out into the brightly lit room and starting dancing, she splashed and splattered the dancers, every dancer within range, with the centrifugal force of her ribbons, and from that day on they called her Shithead Manča. I compact wastepaper, and when I press the green button the wall of my press advances, and when I press the red button it retreats, thereby describing a basic motion of the world, like the bellows of a concertina, like a circle, which must return to its point of departure. Manča, having relinquished glory, was left with shame, which was not her doing, since what had happened was only too human: Goethe would have forgiven Ulrike von Levetzow the ribbon episode, Schelling would have forgiven his Karoline, but then again, Leibniz seems unlikely to have forgiven his royal mistress Sophie Charlotte, to say nothing of the ultrasensitive Holderlin and his Madame Gontard. When five years later I tracked her down—the whole family had packed up and moved to Moravia to escape the ribbons—I asked her to forgive me, because I always feel I'm to blame for everything— anything that happens, anything I ever read about in the papers—and she forgave me, so I invited her to go on a trip with me, because I'd won five thousand crowns in a lottery and couldn't wait to see the last of them: I hate money, to say nothing of savings accounts. So off we went to the mountains, to the Hotel Renner on Golden Peak, a luxurious hotel that would be quick to part me from the money and the worries that go with it, and every night the guests outdid one another to woo Manča away from me, especially an industrialist by the name of Jina, but I was happy, because I was spending the money, spending it on anything our hearts desired. It was late February, the sun shone every day, and every day my beautifully tanned Manča went out skiing, flying down the sparkling slopes in a sleeveless, low-cut blouse, surrounded by men, while I sat sipping cognac, and whereas by noon all the men were back on the terrace in front of the hotel tanning themselves in a row of fifty chairs and chaise longues flanked by thirty small, aperitif-laden tables, Manča kept skiing until just before dinner, when she would suddenly glide up to the hotel. On our last day there, no, next-to-the-last, our fifth day, when all I had left was five hundred crowns, I was sitting in the row of guests watching Manča, tan and beautiful, flying down Golden Peak, I was sitting there clinking glasses with Mr. Jina, the industrialist, who took me for an industrialist, too, watching her vanish behind a clump of pines and scraggy spruces, then reappear, resume her rapid journey, and glide up to the hotel as usual. It was such a beautiful day and the sun was so warm that all the chairs and chaise longues were occupied, and one of the porters had to bring out more, and meanwhile my Manča promenaded up and down the row of tanning guests—Mr. Jina was right, she was as pretty as a picture that day—but as she passed the first sun worshipers I noticed the women turning after her and snickering into their hands, and the closer she came to me, the more women I saw stifling their laughter, the more men I saw falling back in their chairs and pulling their newspapers over their fades, pretending they had swooned or were seeking shelter from the sun, and when she glided up to me, what did I see on one of her skis, just behind the boot, but an enormous turd, a turd the size of the paperweight the poet Vrchlický celebrated in sublime verse, and then and there I knew we had come to the second chapter in the life of Manča, who, never having known glory, would never relinquish shame. Well, Mr. Jina, the businessman, took one look at the big business Manča had done on her ski behind a scraggy spruce in the foothills of Golden Peak and fainted dead away, and he was still quite pale that afternoon, by which time Manca's face was bright red to the roots of her hair. No, the heavens are not humane, nor is any man with a head on his shoulders. Here I stand, compacting bale after bale, placing a book open to its finest passage in the heart of each, but as I work, my thoughts are with Manča, who helped me to drink up my last few crowns that night, though neither champagne nor cognac could erase the image of Manca's promenading her business in front of everyone. I spent the rest of the night begging her to forgive me for what had happened, but she refused, and early next morning she left the Hotel Renner, head held high, thereby confirming Lao- tze's dictum: Know thy shame and preserve thy glory. A shining example, that woman. Opening the Canonical Book of Virtues to the proper page, I placed it like a priest on the altar of my press, which I had lined with greasy pastry paper and empty cement sacks. I pushed the green button, the press started churning like fingers clasping in a desperate prayer, and I watched it compact the Canonical Book of Virtues, the source of the associations leading me back to Manča, the beauty of my youth. From the tunnels, from the sewers, where two rat armies were locked in a life-and-death battle, came a whish of wastewater, a subterranean subtext. Today was a beautiful day. FOUR One afternoon the slaughterhouse people brought me a truckload of bloodstained paper and blood- drenched boxes, crate after crate of the stuff, which I couldn't stand, because it had that sickly sweet smell to it and left me as gory as a butcher's apron. By way of revenge I piously placed an open Praise of Folly by Erasmus of Rotterdam into the first bale, a Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller into the second, and, that the word might be made bloody flesh, an Ecce Homo by Friedrich Nietzsche into the third. And as I worked, a host, a swarm of those dreadful flesh flies the butchers had brought with them from the slaughterhouse buzzed around my head, attacking my face like a hailstorm. While I was on my fourth mug of beer, I noticed a pleasant-looking young man next to the press, and I knew then and there it was Jesus Himself. And soon he was joined by an old man with a face full of wrinkles, and I knew on the spot it could only be Lao-tze. So there they stood, side by side, the better for me to compare them, an elderly gentleman and a young man, as thousands of cobalt-colored flies swooped in thousands of wild nosedives, their metallic wings and bodies embroidering an immense tableau vivant made up of constantly shifting curves and splashes like the flow of paint in those gigantic Jackson Pollocks. Not that I was surprised to find the two of them there: my grandfathers and great-grandfathers had visions too when they drank, but they saw fairy-tale characters. My grandfather met all kinds of mermaids and water nymphs in his wanderings, and my greatgrandfather believed in the imps, sprites, and fairies he saw in the Litovel Brewery malthouse. As for me, with my unwitting education, when I lie falling asleep under my two-ton canopy of books, I see visions of Schelling and Hegel, who were born in the same year, and once Erasmus of Rotterdam rode up on his horse and asked me how to get to the sea. So I wasn't surprised when another two of my favorites showed up. Seeing them side by side, I realized for the first time how important their age was for an understanding of their teachings, and leaning through the flies' fandango in my wet, blood-soaked smock, I pushed first the green button, then the red button, and watched Jesus, an ardent young man intent on changing the world, rise up and take over Lao-tze's place at the summit, while the old man looked on submissively, using the return to the sources to line his eternity; I watched Jesus cast a spell of prayer on reality and lead it in the direction of miracle, while Lao-tze followed the laws of nature along the Tao, the only Way to learned ignorance. And all the while I was loading armfuls of wet, red paper and my face was smeared with blood. Then I pushed the green button, and the press started compacting the flies along with the disgusting paper, the flesh flies that couldn't tear themselves away from what was left of the meat and were mad for its odor and started rutting and mating, and as their passion drove them into wilder and wilder pirouettes, they formed thick orbits of dementia around the drum full of paper, like neutrons and protons swirling around their atoms. Drinking from my mug, I kept my eyes glued to the young Jesus, all ardor amidst a group of youths and pretty girls, and the lonely Lao-tze, looking only for a worthy grave. Even as the compacting process reached its final stage and the paper started squirting and dripping blood and flesh-fly juice, I watched the young Jesus still suffused with mellow ecstasy and Lao-tze leaning sad and pensive against the edge of the drum and looking on with scornful indifference; I watched Jesus giving confident orders and making a mountain move, and Lao-tze spreading a net of ineffable intellect over the cellar; I watched Jesus the optimistic spiral and Lao-tze the closed circle, Jesus bristling with dramatic situations and Lao-tze lost in thought over the insolubility of moral conflicts. When the red signal lit up and the bloodstained wall started retreating, I went back to pitching boxes and cartons and blood-soaked wrappings into the drum, but I also found the strength to skim a book by Friedrich Nietzsche, or at least the pages about his cosmic friendship with Richard Wagner, before plunging it into the drum like a child into a bath, and just in time to swat away a swarm of blue and green flies lashing at my eyes like weeping-willow branches in a whirlpool. And the moment I pushed the green button, what should come tripping daintily down the cellar stairs but two skirts, one turquoise blue, the other velvet violet, the skirts of two Gypsy girls who always came as a revelation, visiting me when I least expected them, when I thought they'd died, their throats slit by a lover's knife. These two Gypsy girls, who collected wastepaper and lugged it around on their backs in huge bundles the way women carried grass from the woods in the old days, would waddle their loads along crowded streets, and people had to step aside for them and retreat into doorways, and their packs were so big that whenever they tried to come into our courtyard they clogged the entrance, but they'd squeeze through, make straight for the scale, bend over, turn, and fall into the pile of paper smack on their backs, only then undoing the straps and freeing themselves from their enormous yoke, after which they'd drag the bundle onto the scale and, wiping their sweaty foreheads, look up at the dial, which always showed at least seventy-five, and sometimes a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five pounds of boxes and cartons and refuse paper from various shops and distribution centers. And whenever they began to miss me or whenever their loads became too great—they were so strong and had so much energy that from a distance those bundles on their backs looked more like a small train or tram—they would come down and pay me a visit, throw off their canvas-covered burdens, fall back on their piles of dry paper, roll their skirts up to their belly buttons, pull out cigarettes and matches, and light up, flat on their backs, inhaling the smoke as if chomping on chocolate. I shouted a greeting, and, though surrounded by a cloud of flies, I could see the turquoise Gypsy lying on her back with her skirt up to her waist—fine legs and a fine naked stomach and a bush of hair surging up from below like a flame, one hand under the kerchief that held the dark, greasy hair together behind her neck, the other raising the cigarette to her mouth, oh, how innocent she looked—and the velvet-violet Gypsy lying like a tossed-off towel, exhausted, spent from her tyrannical labors. I pointed an elbow at my briefcase—I usually bought salami and bread on the way to work, then took it home with me, because I couldn't eat a thing when I drank, and I almost always drink at work, because I'm so excited, overwhelmed, overwrought—and the Gypsy girls rolled themselves out of the paper like two rocking chairs and, sticking their cigarettes in their mouths, lunged into the briefcase, four hands pulling out the salami, dividing it equally; and then, snuffing out the cigarettes with great theatricality, grinding them into the floor with their heels as if they were snake heads, they sat back down and set to. Only after they had polished off the salami did they start in on the bread—and how I loved to watch them eat it: suddenly very serious, they would crumble it with their fingers and raise each morsel separately to their mouths, nodding and touching shoulders like a team of horses pulling the dray to the knacker's, and in fact, if I came across the two of them in the street dragging their packs from shop to warehouse, they always had their arms around each other's waists and cigarettes in their mouths and they always walked in a kind of polka step. They had a hard time of it, those Gypsy girls: they had not only themselves and two children to support, they also had to support their man, a Gypsy who took his cut every afternoon according to the size of their bundles. He was a strange type, that Gypsy: he wore gold-rimmed glasses, had a mustache, and parted his hair down the middle, and I never saw him without a camera slung over his shoulder. He took their picture every day, posing them carefully and stepping back to frame the picture, while they flashed him the brightest of smiles, but he never had film in the camera and the Gypsy girls never saw a single shot of themselves, and still they had their picture taken every day and looked forward to the results like Christians to heaven. One day I ran into my Gypsy girls on the other side of the Vltava where the Libeň Bridge swings over from Holešovice. As I was walking along, I noticed a Gypsy policeman with white sleeves and a striped stick directing traffic at the bend near Scholer's, and the way he polka-stepped to change the flow of traffic was so striking and dignified that I stopped to watch him finish his half-hour shift, and suddenly a flash of turquoise blue and a blaze of velvet violet caught my eye, and who did I see across the street but my two Gypsy girls— attracted like me by the sight of a Gypsy directing traffic at a busy intersection—in a crowd of Gypsy children and a few older Gypsies, all of them beaming with pride at the heights to which a Gypsy had risen. And when his time was up and he had passed the intersection on to his replacement, he went over to bask in the praise and congratulations of his fellow Gypsies, and all at once I saw the turquoise-blue and velvet-violet skirts fall to their knees and start shining the policeman's dusty shoes. At first the Gypsy merely smiled, but soon his joy got the better of him and he laughed and kissed all the Gypsy girls ceremoniously, while the turquoise-blue and velvet-violet skirts went on shining his shoes. When they had finished the salami and bread, they picked the crumbs off their skirts and ate them too, and then the turquoise Gypsy stretched out in the paper and hitched up her skirt to the waist. "How about it, chief?" she said seriously. "You game?" I showed her my hands full of blood. "Not today," I said. "Got a bad knee." She shrugged and rolled down her turquoise skirt, staring at me the whole time with unblinking eyes, as the velvet-violet Gypsy had been doing from her perch on the bottom step. Then they both stood up, refreshed and invigorated, gathered the edges of their canvas sails, and, just before disappearing, dropped their heads between their legs like folding rulers, shouted their alto good- byes, and ran out into the corridor, and soon I could hear their feet pattering across the courtyard in their inimitable polka gait, moving on to new piles of wastepaper as per the orders of the finely combed and neatly parted Gypsy photographer with the gold-rimmed glasses. So I went back to work, hacking away at the blood-soaked boxes, cartons, and wrapping paper, until they started cascading from ceiling to drum, and once the hole in the ceiling was free, I could hear everything going on in the courtyard, everything being said there, as if through a megaphone. Some of my regulars came up to the opening, and I peered up at them from below, and if they looked to me like statues on a church portal, my press looked to them like the catafalque of Charles IV, father of our country. Then suddenly they were replaced by my boss, wringing his hands and booming down at me in a voice full of malice, "Haňťa, what were those fortune-tellers, those witches, doing here again?" Trembling as usual, I dropped to one knee and, holding on to the drum with one hand, looked up, wondering what he, my boss, had against me, what made him pull such terrifying faces, faces so indignant, so full of suffering that they always made me believe that I was a repulsive person and a hopeless worker who inflicted the most ignoble blows on his noble superior. I picked myself up from the floor as the terrified soldiers must have done when the stone covering the tomb where Christ lay buried sprang into the air and set Him free, I picked myself up, dusted off my knees, and went back to work. By then the flesh flies were out in full force, maybe because I'd stirred up a draft by clearing the hole in the ceiling; in any case, they formed a thick shrub around me and my hands—a raspberry bush, a bramble patch—and brushing them away was like forging a path through filings of iron wire, but soaked in blood and sweat though I was, I never stopped working. While the Gypsy girls were with me, Jesus and Lao-tze had been standing together in the drum of my hydraulic press; now that I was alone again, wound in wires of flesh flies but left to my own devices and the routine of my work, I saw Jesus as a tennis champion who has just won his first Wimbledon and Lao-tze as a destitute merchant, I saw Jesus in the sanguine corpo-rality of his ciphers and symbols and Lao-tze in a shroud, pointing at an unhewn plank; I saw Jesus as a playboy and Lao-tze as an old gland-abandoned bachelor; I saw Jesus raising an imperious arm to damn his enemies and Lao-tze lowering his arms like broken wings; I saw Jesus as a romantic, Lao-tze as a classicist, Jesus as the flow, Lao-tze as the ebb, Jesus as spring, Lao-tze as autumn, Jesus as the embodiment of love for one's neighbor, Lao-tze as the height of emptiness, Jesus as progressus ad futurum, Lao-tze as regressus ad originem. Anyway, I went on pushing the green button and the red button until at last I'd thrown the final armful of repulsive bloodstained paper into the drum, cursing the butchers for cramming my cellar full of the stuff yet blessing them for bringing me Jesus and Lao-tze, so in the last bale I put a Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant, and the flesh flies went berserk, attacking the last bits of dried and drying blood with such gluttony that they failed to notice the drum wall crushing and compacting them, separating them into membranes and cells. I fastened the compacted cube with wire and wheeled it out, surrounded by what was left of the still-crazed flies, to join the fourteen other bales, all of which were also strewn with flies, green or metallic-blue flies shining on every black-red drop of blood, each bale like a gigantic side of beef hanging from a hook in a provincial butcher's shop at hot high noon. I looked up and realized that Jesus and Lao-tze had disappeared up the whitewashed stairs like the turquoise and velvet-violet skirts of my Gypsy girls before them, and looked down and realized that my pitcher was empty, so I stumbled up the stairs on all threes, my head spinning from too loud a solitude, and not until I'd made it to the back alley and breathed some fresh air in my lungs could I pick myself up and get a firm grip on the pitcher. The air was sparkling, the rays of the sun felt salty and made me blink, and as I walked along the wall of the Holy Trinity parish house, I saw those turquoise and velvet- violet skirts again: my Gypsy girls were sitting on a board, smoking and chatting with a group of Gypsy workers who were digging up the street. Lots of Gypsies work in road construction; they're paid by the job and they put their heart and soul into it, because having a goal keeps their energy up. I always like to watch them naked to the waist doing pickax battle with hard earth and cobblestones, I like to watch them underground to the waist seeming to dig their own graves, I like them because they keep their wives and children near the construction sites, and whenever one of them feels a yen for his baby, a Gypsy woman tucks up her skirt and takes over his pickax and he dandles the baby on his knee, and, oddly enough, playing with his baby seems to renew his strength, though not so much the strength in his arms as the strength in his soul. They're terribly sensitive people, the Gypsies, and like a beautiful Czech madonna playing with the infant Jesus they have big, human eyes that make your blood run cold, eyes that reflect the wisdom of a culture long forgotten. While we were running around with clubs in our hands and hides on our loins, the Gypsies had their own state and a social system that had been through two declines; and today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of rough-hewn wood like a child's laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer's eye and soul. Eye, soul, and hands, when the weather's cold, I thought, entering Husensky's, and watched the barmaid pour four half-liter mugs down the inside wall of my pitcher and slide the rest across the counter for me to drink in a glass, because the foam had started running down the outside wall. Then she turned away fast, because when I paid the day before, a mouse had jumped out of my sleeve, or maybe it was my bloodstained hands, because when I stroke my face with my hand—I have a habit of stroking my face with an open hand—I splatter my forehead with the squashed fresh flies I smacked in self-defense. Anyway, as I walked back through the dug-up alley deep in thought, I saw the turquoise and velvet-violet skirts sparkling in the sun against the wall of Holy Trinity and watched the Gypsy with the camera pose their chins, step back, peer through the viewfinder, do whatever it took to make their rotogravure faces break out into happy smiles, and finally, the viewfinder pressed to his eye and his left hand raised in a wave, click the shutter and wind the nonexistent film; I watched the Gypsy girls clap with glee like children wondering how the pictures would come out. Then I pulled my hat over my eyes and crossed the street to where a lost-looking philosophy professor stood aiming his thick, ashtray glasses at me as if they were a double-barreled shotgun. As usual he rummaged awhile in his pocket and came up with a ten-crown note, which he handed to me and asked, "Is the young man in?" And when I said he was, he whispered into my ear as usual, "You be nice to him, you hear?" And when I said I would, he slipped into our courtyard from the Spálená Street entrance, and I crossed over and ran around to the back and was down the stairs and hatless by the time I heard him making his timorous way across the courtyard and coming noiselessly down the stairs, and when our eyes met, he sighed and asked, "Where's the old man?" And as usual I said, "He's off somewhere having a beer." And the professor asked, "Does he still treat you like a brute?" And I said, as usual, "He's jealous, jealous because I'm younger than he is." And the philosophy professor gave me another crumpled ten-crown note, pressed it into my hand and, his voice quivering, said, "This is for you, to help you look. Have you found anything?" And I went over to a box and pulled out some back issues of National Politics and National News, and as usual they had theater reviews in them, articles written by Miroslav Rutte and Karel Engelmuller, so I gave them to the professor, who used to work at Theater News, and even though he'd been dismissed from the editorial board five years ago for political reasons, he still had a passion for theater reviews from the thirties. He gave them the once-over, stuffed them into his briefcase, and said good-bye, at which point, as usual, he slipped me another ten-crown note. Then, on the stairs, he turned and said, "Keep it up, keep looking! I just hope I don't run into the old man," and hurried out into the courtyard. Meanwhile, as usual, I threw my hat back on, ran out the back way into the alley and across the presbytery courtyard, and took up my post at the statue of Saint Thaddeus, my hat pulled down over my eyebrows and a look of grim surprise on my face, and I watched the philosophy professor sneak along the parish-house wall, watched him panic, as usual, when he saw me, but as soon as he recovered, he came up to me and, as usual, handed me a ten-crown note and said, "Don't be so hard on the young man. What have you got against him? You will be kind to him now, won't you?" And when, as usual, I nodded, he darted off, not going straight ahead to Charles Square, as I knew he should, but turning at the first corner, his briefcase flying behind him, in his haste to leave the old man who treated his young helper like dirt. Just then I saw a truck backing into our courtyard, so I slipped down to the cellar and stood by the fifteen bales I had compacted today, all of them decorated with blood-speckled reproductions of Paul Gauguin's Bonjour, M. Gauguin, all of them shiny and bright, and I was sorry the driver had come so early: I'd have liked to spend more time with the pictures, layered as they were like stage sets, forming a beautiful if confusing backdrop for the droning flesh flies. But there was the driver's face leaning out of the elevator, so I loaded one bale after another on the dolly, feasting my eyes on the Bonjour, M. Gauguins, sorry to see them go. Not that it matters, I said to myself, because when I'm retired and buy my press, I'll keep all the bales I make, even if somebody buys one of my signed bales, even a foreigner —but with my luck I'll mark it up to a thousand deutsch marks to put it out of reach and that foreigner will fork out a thousand deutsch marks and haul it away and I'll never be able to go and visit it again. Anyway, as bale after bale was hauled up to the courtyard, I heard the janitor cursing the flesh flies on and around them, and, sure enough, when the last bale vanished up the shaft, the flies all vanished with them. But without the flies the cellar suddenly seemed sad and downcast, so I crawled up the stairs—by the time I've drunk my fifth mug, I have to negotiate stairs like ladders—and saw the janitor placing the last bale into the driver's gloved hands and the driver hoisting it onto the truck with his knee, saw the back of the janitor's overalls smeared with a blood batik, saw the driver tear off his bloodstained gloves and fling them away in disgust, the janitor climb in next to the driver, and the bales pull out of the courtyard. I was glad the Bonjour, M. Gauguin sides showed above the slats, and I hoped that everyone the truck passed would enjoy it. As the truck drove off, the flesh flies came alive in the Spálená Street sun, swarms of blue, green, and gold flesh flies that were certainly entitled to be locked up with Paul Gauguin's Bonjour, M. Gauguin, in large crates and doused with acids and alkalis in paper mills, because those wild flies refuse to give up the idea that life is at its most beautiful in gloriously rancid, decomposing blood. I was about to go back to the cellar when my boss dropped to his knees before me with a martyred look on his face and clasped his hands and pleaded, "Please, Haňťa, for the love of God, come to your senses while there's still time and stop pouring those pitchers of beer down your gullet. Do your job and stop torturing us. You'll be the end of me if you go on like this." Trembling, I leaned over him and took him gently by the elbow. "Get a grip on yourself, my good man," I told him. "It's not dignified to kneel." And as I helped him up, I felt him shake all over, so I asked him to forgive me, without knowing what for, but that was my lot, asking forgiveness, I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be. Depressed, burdened with guilt, I made my way down to the cellar and lay on my back in the hollow still warm from the Gypsy girl in the turquoise skirt, I lay there listening to the sounds of the street, the beautiful concrete music of the street, and the dripping and flushing of wastewater that was constantly running through the five-story building above us, to toilet chains being pulled, listening to what was going on below, clearly hearing the far-off flow of wastewater and feces through the sewers, and far beneath the surface—now that the flesh flies' legions had beat a fast retreat—the keening and mournful squeaking of the two armies of rats battling throughout the sewers of the capital, battling for supremacy over the sewers of Prague. Neither the heavens are humane nor is life above or below—-or within me. Bonjour, M. Gauguin! FIVE And so everything I see in this world, it all moves backward and forward at the same time, like a blacksmith's bellows, like everything in my press, turning into its opposite at the command of red and green buttons, and that's what makes the world go round. I've been compacting wastepaper for thirty- five years, a job that ought to require not only a good classical education, preferably on the university level, but also a divinity degree, because in my profession spiral and circle come together and progressus ad futurum meets regressus ad originem, and I experience it all firsthand: I, unhappily happy with my unwitting education, ruminate on progressus ad futurum meeting regressus ad originem for relaxation, the way some people read the Prague Evening News. Yesterday we buried my uncle. He was the bard who showed me the way by setting up a signal tower in his garden and laying tracks in and around the trees for an old Ohrenstein & Koppel locomotive he and his friends had put back in running order and stoked up every Saturday and Sunday afternoon to give children rides on the three flatcars and then go for rides themselves and drink beer by the tankard. Yesterday we buried my uncle, who had a stroke on the job, in his signal tower. It's the height of summer and his friends are all off in the woods and streams; he lay there on the signal-tower floor for two hot weeks before one of the engineers found him coated with flies and worms, his body running over the linoleum like an overripe Camembert. The undertakers picked up what had stuck to his clothes, then came and told me what had happened, and I went and got a shovel and trowel and scooped him bit by bit off the floor, fortified by a bottle of rum the undertakers had given me. Humbly and quietly I scraped up the remains of his remains, the toughest part being the red hair in the linoleum —it was like the spines of a porcupine run over by a truck; I had to use a chisel on it—and when I finished, I stuffed the leftovers under the clothes he had on in the coffin, covered his head with the cap I'd found hanging in the signal tower, and placed a volume of Immanuel Kant in his hands, opening it to a beautiful text that has never failed to move me: "Two things fill my mind with ever new and increasing wonder—the starry firmament above me and the moral law within me," but, changing my mind, I leafed through the younger Kant and found an even more beautiful passage: "When the tremulous radiance of a summer night fills with twinkling stars and the moon itself is full, I am slowly drawn into a state of enhanced sensitivity made of friendship and disdain for the world and eternity." And when I opened his closet, there it was—the scrap-metal collection my uncle used to show me all the time, not that I'd ever appreciated it, a collection of metal of every possible color, boxes full, odds and ends of copper and brass and tin and iron and other colored metal he would lay out on the tracks when he was on duty, and every evening, after the train passed, he picked up and sorted them according to the wild shapes they had assumed, giving each piece a name by association with its shape and each box a motif, like Asian butterflies or chocolate-nougat foil wrappers. It wasn't until I'd taken one box after another and emptied them into my uncle's coffin, inundating him with his precious scrap- metal collection, that I let the undertakers put the lid on. There he lay, covered with medals, medallions, and orders, decked out like a dignitary, like a prize bale I had composed and compacted. Then I went back to my cellar, crawling down the stairs backward, as if climbing down a ladder from the attic, and after quietly polishing off the bottle of rum and downing a beer chaser, I pickaxed my way through a mass of foul, sticky paper full of mice-made Swiss-cheese-like holes, and I after another drink of beer I forked it into my drum, mouse paths and all, whole nests full of mice, because we'd been closed for two days to give me time to make a clean sweep of the cellar before inventory. Hosing down the day's pile of wastepaper every evening, I never thought of what was going on at the very bottom of it all, at the bottom of the flowers and books and miscellaneous paper welded together by the mountain of waste resting on top of it and compacted as surely as if by my hydraulic press. As I say, it's a job for a theologian, because at the base, the bottom of the pile, a spot I hadn't got to for the six months since the last inventory, the wastepaper had rotted like roots in a swamp, giving off the sickly sweet stink of a cheese forgotten for months in the pantry, looking a dull, gray-beige mass with the consistency of stale bread. I worked well into the night, my only breaks being short trips to the air shaft, where I gazed up five stories like the young Kant at a piece of the starry firmament, and whence I crawled out the back way on all fours, pitcher in mouth, to return on all threes, pitcher in hand, backward, as if climbing down a ladder. There, on the table under the light bulb, my copy of Immanuel Kant's Theory of the Heavens lay waiting, and over by the elevator my bales stood at attention, and because today I'd started in on a hundred large, soaking-wet reproductions of Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers, the sides of each bale glowed gold and orange on a field of blue, making the smell of compacted mice and mouse nests and decomposing paper a bit more bearable. Meanwhile, the wall kept advancing and retreating, according to whether I pushed green or red, and in between I learned from the Theory of the Heavens how in the silence, the absolute silence of the night, when the senses lie dormant, an immortal spirit speaks in a nameless tongue of things that can be grasped but not described. And these lines so shocked me that I ran out to the air shaft and gazed up at my starry patch of firmament, but then I went back to forking foul paper and mouse families into my drum, and although anyone who compacts wastepaper for a living is no more humane than the heavens, somebody's got to do it, that slaying of the newborn as depicted by Pieter Brueghel, with which I happened to have wrapped all my bales last week. As for van Gogh's whorls and bull's-eyes of yellow and gold, they only intensified my tragic mood, but even so, I kept working and decorating mouse graves and running out to the shaft and reading the Theory of the Heavens a sentence at a time, savoring each sentence like a cough drop and brimming with a sense of the immensity,' grandeur, and infinite beauty streaming at me from all sides, the starry firmament through the hole in the shaft above and the war between the two rat armies in the Prague sewers below. Meanwhile, the wall was lined with twenty bales, a twenty-car convoy on its way to the service elevator, each lit with sunflower light, and I still had a drum full of mashed mice which, like the mice caught for fun by Cruel Tom Cat, never had a chance to squeak, merciful nature having come up with a horror destroying all sense of security, a horror more intense than pain, and visited it upon them in the moment of truth. It never ceased to amaze me, until suddenly one day I felt beautiful and holy for having had the courage to hold on to my sanity after all I'd seen and been through, body and soul, in too loud a solitude, and slowly I came to the realization that my work was hurtling me headlong into an infinite field of omnipotence. The bulb kept shining down on me, the red and green buttons kept moving the wall back and forth, and at last I reached the bottom of the pile, using my knee, like a construction worker shoveling dirt, for leverage on the bottom's clayey, limestonelike layer. Slinging the last, viscous shovelful into the drum, I imagined myself a sewersweep cleaning out the basin of an abandoned underground canal. I opened the Theory of the Heavens and placed it in the last bale, and after winding the bale around with wire, loading it on the dolly, and rolling it over to the others, I sat on a step and let my arms hang down between my legs to the cold concrete floor. Twenty-one sunflowers lit up the dark cellar and the few mice left shivering for want of paper, and one mouse came up and attacked me, jumping on its hind legs and trying to bite me or knock me over, straining its tiny body, leaping at my leg and gnawing at my wet soles, and each time I brushed it away, gently, it would fling itself at my shoe until finally it ran out of breath and sat in a corner staring at me, staring me right in the eye, and all at once I started trembling, because in that mouse's eyes I saw something more than the starry firmament above me or the moral law within me. Like a flash of lightning Arthur Schopenhauer appeared to me and said, "The highest law is love, the love that is compassion," and I realized why Arthur hated strongman Hegel, and I was glad that Hegel and Schopenhauer weren't leading opposing armies, because the two of them would wage the same war as those two rat armies in the sewers of Prague. I was so worn out when I got home that I lay down on my bed fully dressed, and lying there crosswise under the canopy of shelves holding two tons of books, I looked up through the dim light coming from the street and through the cracks in the shelves, and when everything was perfectly silent I began to hear the gnawing of mouse teeth, hear them working away on the books in my heaven, and their ticking sound terrified me, because it was only a matter of time before they made a nest, and a few months after mice make nests they found a settlement, and six months later they form whole villages, which in geometric progression grow together within a year to make a city, a city of mice capable of gnawing through boards and beams with such skill that before long—yes, the time was not far off—it would take no more than a loud voice or a careless touch for the whole two tons of books to come down on my head and wreak vengeance on me for all the bales I've compacted the mice into. Anyway, there I lay, half asleep, overwhelmed by the gnawing going on above me, and, as usual when I drift off, I was joined by a tiny Gypsy girl in the form of the Milky Way, the quiet, innocent Gypsy girl who was the love of my youth and used to wait for me with one foot slightly forward and off to the side, like a ballet dancer in one of the positions, the beautiful, long-forgotten beauty of my youth. Her body was covered with sweat and a gamey musk-and-pomade-scented grease that coated my fingers when I stroked her, and she always wore the same dress covered with soup and gravy stains in the front and whitewash and woodworm stains—from carrying rotten boards she found among the rubble—in the back. I met her near the end of the war when, on my way home from Horky's, where I'd had a few beers, she latched onto me, tagged along, so that I had to turn and talk to her over my shoulder, and she never tried to pass me, she just toddled noiselessly behind, and when we came to the first intersection I said, "Well, good-bye, I've got to be going," but she said she was going in the same direction, and when we got to the end of Ludmila Street I said, "Well, good-bye, I've got to be going home," and she said she was going in the same direction, so on we went, and I purposely walked all the way to Sacrifice and held out my hand to her and said, "I've got to be going home now," but she said she was going in the same direction, and on we went until we came to the Dam of Eternity, and I said I was home now and we'd have to say good-bye, and when I stopped at the gas lamp in front of my door and said, "Well, good-bye now, this is where I live," she said she lived there, too, so I unlocked the door and motioned for her to go in ahead of me, but she refused and told me to go in first, and since the hall was dark, I did, and then I went down the stairs and into the yard and up to the door of my room, and when I'd unlocked it, I turned and said, "Well, good-bye, this is my room," and she said it was her room, too, and she came in and shared my bed with me, and when I woke up in a bed still warm with her, she was gone. But the next day, and every day thereafter, the moment I set foot in the yard I saw her sitting on the steps in front of my door and some white boards and sawed-off beams lying under the window, and when I unlocked the door, she would leap up like a cat and scamper into my room, neither of us saying a word. Then I went for beer with my big, five-liter pitcher, and the Gypsy girl would light the old cast-iron stove, which boomed even with the door open, because the room had once been a blacksmith's shop and had a high ceiling and a huge fireplace, and she would make supper, which was always the same potato goulash with horse salami, then sit by the stove, feeding it with wood, and it was so hot that her lap glowed gold and gold sweat covered her hands, neck, and constantly changing profile, while I lay on the bed, getting up only to quench my thirst from the pitcher, after which I handed it to her, and she would hold the giant pitcher in both hands and drink in such a way that I heard her throat move, heard it moaning quietly like a pump in the distance. At first I thought she put so much wood on the fire just to win me over, but then I realized it was in her, the fire was in her, she couldn't live without fire. So we went on living together even though I never really knew her name and she never knew or wanted or needed to know mine; we went on meeting every night, even though I never gave her the keys and sometimes stayed out late, until midnight, but the moment I unlocked the main door I would see a shadow slip past, and there she was, striking a match, setting fire to some paper, and a flame would sputter and flare in the stove, which she kept going with the month's supply of wood she'd laid in under the window. And later in the evening, while we ate our silent supper, I would turn on the light bulb and watch her break her bread as if she were taking Communion and gather up all the crumbs from her dress and toss them reverently into the fire. Then we switched off the bulb and lay on our backs, looking up at the ceiling and the shimmer of shadow and light, and the trip to the pitcher on the table was like wading through an aquarium filled with algae and other marine flora or stalking through a thick wood on a moonlit night, and as I drank I always turned and looked at my naked Gypsy girl lying there looking back at me, the whites of her eyes glowing in the dark—we looked at each other more in the dark than by the light of day. I always loved twilight: it was the only time I had the feeling that something important could happen. All things were more beautiful bathed in twilight, all streets, all squares, and all the people walking through them; I even had the feeling that I was a handsome young man, and I liked looking at myself in the mirror, watching myself in the shop windows as I strode along, and even when I touched my face, I felt no wrinkles at my mouth or forehead. Yes, with twilight comes beauty. By the flames in the stove's open door the Gypsy girl stood up, naked, and as she moved, I saw her body outlined in a yellow halo like the halo emanating from the Ignatius of Loyola cemerited to the façade of the church in Charles Square, and when she added some wood to the fire and came back and lay down on top of me, she turned her head to have a look at my profile and ran her finger around my nose and mouth. She hardly ever kissed me, nor I her; we said everything with our hands and then lay there looking at the sparks and flickers in the battered old cast-iron stove, curls of light from the death of wood. All we wanted was to go on living like that forever. It was as if we had said everything there was to say to each other, as if we had been born together and never parted. During the last autumn of the war I bought some blue wrapping paper, a ball of twine, and glue, and while the Gypsy girl kept my glass filled with beer, I spent a whole Sunday on the floor making a kite, balancing it carefully so it would rise, and I tacked on a long tail of tiny paper doves strung together by the Gypsy girl under my tutelage, and then we went up to Round Bluff, and after flinging the kite to the heavens and letting the cord run free for a while, I held it back and gave it a few tugs to make it straighten up and stand motionless in the sky so that only the tail rippled, S-like, and the Gypsy girl covered her face to her eyes, eyes wide with amazement. Then we sat down and I handed it to her, but she cried out that it would carry her up to heaven—she could feel herself ascending like the Virgin Mary—so I put my hands on her shoulders and said if that was the case we'd go together, but she gave me back the ball of twine and we just sat there, her head on my shoulder, and suddenly I got the idea to send a message, and handed the kite to the Gypsy girl again, but again she froze and said it would fly away with her and she'd never see me again, so I pushed the stick with the twine into the ground, tore a page out of my memo pad, and attached it to the tail, and as soon as the twine was back in my hands, she started screaming and reaching after the message as it jerked its way up to the sky, each burst of wind traveling through my fingers to my whole body, I even felt the message making contact with the tip of the kite, and suddenly I shuddered all over, because suddenly the kite was God and I was the Son of God, and the cord was the Holy Spirit which puts man in contact, in dialogue with God. And once we'd flown the kite a few more times, the Gypsy girl screwed up her courage and took over the twine—trembling as I had trembled, trembling to see the kite tremble in the gusty wind—and, winding the twine around her finger, she cried out in rapture. One evening I came home to find her gone. I switched on my light and went back and forth to the street until morning, but she didn't come, not that day or the next or ever again, though I looked everywhere for her. My childlike little Gypsy, simple as unworked wood, as the breath of the Holy Spirit—all she ever wanted was to feed the stove with the big, heavy boards and beams she brought on her back, crosslike, from the rubble, all she ever wanted was to make potato goulash with horse salami, feed her fire with wood, and fly autumn kites. Later I learned that she had been picked up by the Gestapo and sent with a group of Gypsies to a concentration camp, and whether she was burned to death at Majdanek or asphyxiated in an Auschwitz gas chamber, she never returned. The heavens are not humane, but I still was at the time. When she failed to return at the end of the war, I burned the kite and twine and the long tail she had decorated, a tiny Gypsy girl whose name I'd never quite known. Well into the fifties my cellar was piled high with Nazi literature, and there was nothing I enjoyed more than compacting tons of Nazi pamphlets and booklets, hundreds of thousands of pages with pictures of cheering men, women, and children, cheering graybeards, cheering workers, cheering peasants, cheering SS men, cheering soldiers. I got a specially big kick out of loading my drum with Hitler and his entourage entering liberated Danzig, Hitler entering liberated Warsaw, Hitler entering liberated Prague, Hitler entering liberated Vienna, Hitler entering liberated Paris, Hitler at home, Hitler at harvest festivals, Hitler with his faithful sheepdog, Hitler visiting his troops at the front, Hitler inspecting the Atlantic Wall, Hitler en route to the conquered towns of East and West, Hitler leaning over military maps. And the more I compacted the cheering men, women, and children, the more I thought of my Gypsy girl, who had never cheered, who had wanted nothing more than to feed the fire, make her potato goulash, and fill my large pitcher with beer, nothing more than to break her bread like the wafer at Communion and look into the stove door, transfixed by the flames and heat and noise of the fire, the song of the fire, which she had known since childhood and which held sacred ties to her people. It left all pain behind and coaxed a melancholy smile to her face, a reflection of perfect happiness. Now I am lying in bed crosswise, on my back, and a tiny mouse has just fallen on my chest, slid down to the floor, and scurried for shelter under the bed. I've probably brought home a few mice in my briefcase or coat pocket as well. A toilet-scented perfume drifts up from the yard: we're in for some rain, I tell myself. I'm so worn out from work and beer that I can't move a finger—two whole days of cleaning the cellar at the cost of those humble little creatures that wanted nothing more than to nibble at a few old books and live in wastepaper holes, give birth to other mice and feed them in cozy nests, tiny mice rolled into balls the way my tiny Gypsy rolled into a ball next to me on cold nights. The heavens are not humane, but I'd forgotten compassion and love. SIX For thirty-five years now I've compacted wastepaper in a hydraulic press, for thirty-five years I thought there was no other way, but then I began hearing about a new press over in Bubny, a gigantic press that did the work of twenty, and when eyewitnesses reported it made bales of seven and eight hundred pounds, bales delivered directly to the train by forklift, I said to myself, "This is something you've got to see, Haňťa, with your own eyes. It's time for a courtesy call." And when I got to Bubny and saw the enormous glass structure and heard the press booming away, I was so shaken I couldn't look at the machine, I just stood there and turned my head away, fumbled with my shoelaces—anything to keep from looking that machine in the face. To peer into the mass of wastepaper and find the spine and boards of a rare book has always been a special treat for me. Instead of going after it on the spot, I'll take a piece of steel wool and give the shaft a good rub, then have another look at the paper and check whether I have the strength to pull out the book and open it, and not until I decide I do have the strength will I pick it up, and even then it shakes in my hands like a bride's bouquet at the altar. That's the way it was in the old days, too, when I played soccer for the village club: I knew the lineup wasn't posted in the Lower Tavern until Thursday, but I would ride down on Wednesdays, my heart thumping, and stand there astride my bike scrutinizing the notice board itself—the lock, the glass case—unable to look directly at the notice, then I'd read out the name of our club, letter by letter, and only then glance at the lineup, but since it was Wednesday the lineup was still the previous week's, so off I rode, to return the next day, when again I would stand there astride my bike scrutinizing everything but the lineup, and once I took hold of myself, I would read slowly down the lineup of the first team, slowly down the lineup of the second team, and slowly down the lineup of the juniors, and not until I found my name among the substitutes was I happy again. Standing in front of the gigantic press at Bubny, I had the same feeling, and once I was over the initial shock, I took hold of myself and glanced at the machine, which rose up to the glass roof like the gigantic altar at St. Nicholas in Prague. It was even bigger than I had expected, with a conveyor belt as long and wide as the one that slowly dumps coal under the grates at the Holešovice Power Station, but what was slowly moving along this belt was books, books put there by young workers in getups quite different from what I or others like me wore at work: they were wearing orange and baby-blue gloves and yellow American baseball caps, and overalls that went up to their chests, and suspenders that went over their shoulders and crossed on their backs and showed off the T-shirts and turtlenecks they had on underneath. And nowhere did I see a light bulb: sunlight streamed in through the glass walls and glass ceiling, and the ceiling had a ventilation system to boot. But it was the gloves that got my goat: I always worked with my bare hands, I loved the feel of the paper in my fingers, but nobody here had the slightest desire to experience the palpable charm of wastepaper, and the conveyor belt moved the books and some miscellaneous scraps of white paper just as the Wenceslas Square escalator moves people up into the street, and that paper went straight into an enormous drum, a drum as big as the cauldron used for brewing at the Smíchov Brewery, and when the drum was full, the conveyor belt turned itself off and a propellerlike contraption descended from the ceiling, forced its mammoth strength on the paper, and with a magnificent snort returned to the ceiling, whereupon the conveyor belt jerked new books into motion and on to the oval drum as big as the fountain in Charles Square. By now I had calmed down enough to realize that the machine compacted and baled whole runs of books, and through the glass wall I could see trucks pulling up with boxes of books piled to the brim, the entire printing of a book going straight into the pulper before a single page could be sullied by the human eye, brain, or heart. Only now did I see the workers at the foot of the conveyor belt tearing open the boxes, taking the virgin books out of them, pulling the covers off, and tossing the naked insides on the belt, and it didn't matter what page they fell open to: nobody ever looked into them, nobody even dreamed of looking into them, because whereas I stopped my press all the time, they had to keep the belt full and moving. It was inhuman, the work they were doing in Bubny; it was like work on a trawler, when the nets are hauled in and the crew sort big fish from small, tossing them on belts that go directly to canning machines in the bowels of the ship: one fish after another, one book after another. Plucking up my courage, I climbed the steps to the platform that ran around the oval drum, and as I walked along it, imagining myself in the brewing room at Smíchov, where they brew five hundred hectoliters of beer at once, or on the second-story scaffolding of a house under repair, I looked down and saw the control panel with all its colored buttons and the propeller mashing the contents of the drum the way you mash a ticket in your fingers when you're not thinking about it, and I was so scared I looked this way and that, and what I saw was workers bathed in glass-wall sun, their overalls and T- shirts and caps lost in a riot of color, like exotic birds they were, like kingfishers, Norwegian bullfinches, like parrots. But that wasn't what scared me; what scared me was that suddenly I knew for certain that the gigantic press before me was sounding the knell of all smaller presses, I saw that all this meant a new era in my specialty, that these people were different and their habits different. Gone were the days of small joys, of finds, of books thrown away by mistake: these people represented a new way of thinking. Even if each of the workers took home one book from each printing as payment in kind, it wouldn't be the same, it would still be the end of us, the old guard, because we were all educated unwittingly: each of us had a decent home library of books we'd happened to rescue, and each of us read those books in the blissful hope of making a change in his life. But the biggest shock came when I saw the young workers shamelessly guzzling milk and soft drinks—legs spread wide, hand on hip— straight from the bottle. Then I knew the good old days had come to an end, the days when a worker shoveled in his own wastepaper, went down on his knees in one-on-one combat, and ended each day filthy and exhausted from the effort. This was a new era with new men an	147,524
Eat, Pray, Love Committed The Last American Man Stern Men Pilgrims (Elizabeth Gilbert) (Z-Library).vn.pdf	https://thuviensach.vn https://thuviensach.vn Ăn, Cầu Nguyện, Yêu Elizabeth Gilbert Chia sẻ ebook: https://downloadsach.com Follow us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/caphebuoitoi https://thuviensach.vn Table of Contents [1] LỜI GIỚI THIỆU – hay - QUYỂN SÁCH NÀY THẾ NÀO – hay - Hạt thứ 109 Ý – hay - “Nói Như Ta Ăn” – hay - Ba Mươi Sáu Câu Chuyện Về Kiếm Tìm Hạnh Phúc 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 ẤN ĐỘ - Hay - “Hân Hạnh Được Gặp Quý Vị” – Hay - Ba Mươi Sáu Câu Chuyện Về Theo Đuổi Tín Ngưỡng https://thuviensach.vn 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 https://thuviensach.vn Nói sự thật. Chỉ nói sự thật. Elizabeth Gilbert đã tuyên ngôn vậy, khi cô kể lại câu chuyện cuộc đời mình trong Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu. Những đau khổ rất nhân bản nhưng vẫn quá ngỡ ngàng đã xuất hiện giữa tuổi ba mưoi đầy xáo động của cô. Vượt qua tuyệt vọng, Liz tự mình thực hiện một hành trình dũng cảm để tìm kiếm thanh thản. Chính vì sự thật mà chuyện kể của một con người đã đủ sức mở lối cho hàng triệu người khác nhau trên khắp thế giới tìm được con đường thoát khỏi trầm cảm, thấy lại niềm vui và sự cân bằng, đồng thời sẵn sàng yêu nhau lần nữa. Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu – cuốn hồi ký xuất sắc của Elizabeth Gilbert, một bestseller của The New York Times, được đánh giá là một trong những cuốn sách có ảnh hưởng lớn tới đời sống tâm lý Mỹ hiện đại. Tác phẩm đã bán hơn 5 triệu bản và được dịch ra hàng chục thứ tiếng trên toàn cầu. Thành công rực rỡ của Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu cũng chính là bước ngoặt đưa Elizabeth Gilbert trở thành một trong bốn nhà văn được tạp chí Time bình chọn vào danh sách 100 nhân vật có ảnh hưởng nhất thế giới năm 2008. - “Món quà tôi mang tặng tất cả bạn gái của mình.” – Julia Roberts - “Mọi phụ nữ đều nên đọc cuốn sách này” – Ellen Macpherson - “Ăn, Cầu nguyện, yêu thật đáng yêu… Tôi thấm thía cả nỗi khao khát trải lòng trên từng trang giấy lẫn ước vọng chữa lành vết thương của tác giả” – Meg Ryan - “Một suy ngẫm về yêu dưới muôn dạng thức – yêu món ăn tinh tế, yêu ngôn ngữ mới mẻ, yêu con người, yêu thượng đế, và cả thứ tình yêu đã thực sự cứu rỗi Gilbert, yêu chính bản thân mình” – Los Angeles Times - “Một giọng văn ríu rít mà bí ẩn, một tấm thảm thêu văn hoá cùng cảm xúc, một trạng thái say mê lẫn nồng nhiệt, một câu chuyện hấp dẫn kết nối tới cả lịch sử và giai thoại” – Publishers Weekly. https://thuviensach.vn Giới thiệu tác giả: Elizabeth Gilbert sinh năm 1969 tại Connecticut, Mỹ. Cô tốt nghiệp ngành Khoa học Chính trị tại Đại học New York năm 1991. Elizabeth Gilbert say mê viết văn từ thuở nhỏ. Sự nghiệp sáng tác của cô bắt đầu từ khi cô bước vào nghề báo. Elizabeth là một trong những cây bút viết toàn diện, xuất sắc nhất của American GQ. Cô đã hai lần nhận được đề cử Giải thưởng Tạp chí Quốc gia. Đến nay Elizabeth Gilbert đã xuất bản được 4 cuốn sách, bao gồm tập truyện ngắn Pilgrims (tác phẩm lọt vào chung kết giải thưởng Pen/Hemingway 1997), tiểu thuyết Stern Men (2000), tiểu thuyết The Last American Man (đề cử Giải thưởng Sách Quốc gia, và ghi nhận Sách Tiêu biểu năm 2002 của The New York Times), và cuốn hồi ký xuất bản năm 2006 Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu (Eat, pray, love). Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu được độc giả Mỹ cũng như trên khắp thế giới đón nhận hết sức nồng nhiệt. Tác phẩm hiện đang được dựng phim với sự tham gia diễn xuất của nữ minh tinh Julia Roberts. Thành công rực rỡ của Ăn, cầu nguyện, yêu đã đưa Elizabeth Gilbert trở thành một trong bốn nhà văn được tạp chí Time bình chọn vào danh sách 100 nhân vật có ảnh hưởng nhất thế giới năm 2008. Hiện cô đang sống giữa Philadelphia (Mỹ) và Brazil. Tặng Susan Bowen – người mang lại miền trú ẩn dù cách xa 12.000 dặm xa. Nói sự thật, nói sự thật, nói sự thật.[1] - Sheryl Louise Moller https://thuviensach.vn LỜI GIỚI THIỆU hay QUYỂN SÁCH NÀY THẾ NÀO hay Hạt thứ 109 Khi du lịch ở Ấn Độ - nhất là qua các địa điểm linh thiêng và các Ashram[2], ta sẽ thấy rất nhiều người đeo tràng hạt ở cổ. Ta cũng sẽ thấy rất nhiều bức hình cũ chụp những hành giả[3] mình trần, gầy trơ xương và dữ tợn (hay đoi khi là những hành giả béo tròn, hiền lành và rạng rỡ) cũng đeo tràng hạt. Tràng hạt này được gọi là japa mala. Ở Ấn Độ, trong nhiều thế kỷ tràng hạt được dùng để giúp các tín đồ đạo Hindu và Phật giáo sùng đạo tập trung khi tham thiền cầu nguyện. Người ta cầm tràng hạt và dùng ngón tay lần hạt theo vòng tròn – chạm vào một hạt là lặp lại một câu chú. Khi quân Thập Tự Chinh thời Trung cổ tràn sang phương Đông tiến hành Thánh Chiến, chứng kiến các tín đồ dùng những japa mala này để cầu nguyện, họ đã rất thán phục cách thức đó và đưa niệm này về quê nhà ở châu Âu, gọi là chuỗi tràng hạt. Một xâu japa mala truyền thống có 108 hạt. Trong giới hiền triết phương Đông thần bí, số 108 được xem là tốt lành nhất, bội số ba chữ số hoàn hảo của số ba, các thành phần của nó cộng lại thành chín, là ba lần ba. Và ba, tất nhiên, là con số tượng trưng cho sự cân bằng tối thương như bất kỳ ai từng nghiên cứu về Chúa Ba Ngôi linh thiêng hay chỉ về cái ghế quầy rượu đơn giản đều có thể thấy rõ ràng. Vì toàn bộ cuốn sách này là về những cố gắng tìm thấy cân bằng của tôi, tôi quyết định tạo cho nó kết cấu như một japa mala, chia thành 108 câu chuyện, hay 108 hạt. Chuỗi 108 câu chuyện này sẽ được chia tiếp thành ba phần về Ý, Ấn Độ và Indonesia – ba xứ sở tôi đã ghé thăm trong năm tự khám phá bản thân này. Sự phân chia này có nghĩa là một phần có 36 câu chuyện lôi cuốn tôi trên phương diện cá nhân vì tôi đã viết tất cả những điều này vào năm tôi ba mươi sáu tuổi. Giờ thì trước khi tôi trở nên quá giống Louis Farrakhan với vấn đề thần số học ở đây này, cho phép tôi kết luận bằng cách nói rằng nó cũng thích cái ý tưởng xâu chuỗi những câu chuyện này theo kết luận của một japa mala vì nó rất... có kết cấu. Khám phá chân thực về tâm linh là, và luôn là, một nỗ lực của kỷ luật có phương pháp. Đi tìm Chân Lý không phải là một thứ ngớ ngẩn miễn-phí-cho-tất-cả, ngay cả trong cái thời đại ngớ ngẩn vĩ đại miễn-phí- cho-tất-cả này. Với tư cách vừa là một người kiếm tìm vừa là một nhà văn, tôi thấy cố gắng dựa vào chuỗi hạt là điều hữu ích, phương pháp tốt nhất giúp tôi tập trung chú ý vào cái mình đang cố hoàn tất. Bất luận thế nào, mỗi japa mala đều có một hạt đặc biệt, hạt thêm vào – hạt thứ 109 – xâu bên ngoài cái vòng 108 hạt cân xứng như một đối trọng. Tôi vẫn thường nghĩ hạt thứ 109 là một thứ dự phòng khẩn cấp như cái khuy áo dự phòng dính vào chiếc áo len đẹp đẽ, hay người con trai út trong một gia đình hoàng gia. Nhưng rõ ràng ở đây có một mục đích cao cả hơn. Khi ngón tay ta chạm đến dấu mốc này là lúc cầu nguyện, ta phải ngưng trạng thái https://thuviensach.vn thiền định và đa tạ sư phụ mình. Vậy nên ở đây, ở hạt 109 của riêng mình, tôi dừng trước cả khi bắt đầu. Tôi xin được dâng lời cảm tạ đến những người thầy của tôi, những người đã xuất hiện trước mắt tôi trong rất nhiều thể dạng lạ lùng trong năm này. Nhưng lời cảm tạ đặc biệt nhất tôi dành cho Sư phụ[4] của tôi, người có lòng bi mẫn trong mỗi nhịp đập trai tim, và là người đã rất rộng lượng cho phép tôi học hỏi tại Ashram của bà khi tôi ở Ấn Độ. Đây cũng là lúc tôi muốn giải thích là tôi viết về những trải nghiệm của mình ở Ấn Độ thuần túy từ quan điểm cá nhân chứ không phải như một học giả thần học hay phát ngôn viên chính thức của bất kỳ ai. Đấy là lý do tôi sẽ không nhắc đến tên Sư phụ mình trong cuốn sách này – vì tôi không thể là người phát ngôn cho bà. Những giáo huấn của bà tự nó nói lên tất cả. Tôi cũng sẽ không tiết lộ tên hay địa điểm Ashram của bà, để nơi đó tránh được sự chú ý của công chúng, một điều nó không quan tâm mà cũng chẳng có các nguồn lực để quản lý. Một biểu hiện cuối cùng của lòng biết ơn: khi những cái tên rải rác khắp cuốn sách này đã được thay đổi vì nhiều lý do, tôi quyết định thay đổi tên của từng người mình gặp tại Ashram này ở Ấn Độ, cả người Ấn và người Tây phương. Vì tôn trọng một thực tế là hầu hết mọi người không thực hiện chuyến hành hương tâm linh để rồi sau đó xuất hiện như một nhân vật trong sách. (Trừ khi, tất nhiên, đó là tôi.) Tôi chỉ có một ngoại lệ cho cách giấu tên tự đặt ra này. Richard từ Texas thực sự tên là Richard, và đúng là người Texas. Tôi muốn dùng tên thật của anh ấy vì anh là người rất quan trọng với tôi khi tôi ở Ấn Độ. Một điều cuối cùng – khi tôi hỏi Richard nếu tôi nhắc đến việc anh từng là một người nghiện rượu và ma túy trong cuốn sách của mình thì có sao không, anh trả lời là điều đó hoàn toàn được. Anh nói, “Dù sao thì tôi cũng đã thử tìm cách nói ra chuyện đó.” Nhưng đầu tiên – nước Ý... https://thuviensach.vn Ý – hay - “Nói Như Ta Ăn” – hay - Ba Mươi Sáu Câu Chuyện Về Kiếm Tìm Hạnh Phúc Ý hay “Nói Như Ta Ăn” hay Ba Mươi Sáu Câu Chuyện Về Kiếm Tìm Hạnh Phúc https://thuviensach.vn 1 Tôi ước gì Giovanni hôn tôi. Ồ, nhưng có quá nhiều lý do vì sao điều này sẽ là một ý tưởng khủng khiếp. Đầu tiên, Giovanni trẻ hơn tôi mười tuổi, và – như hầu hết các chàng trai Ý ở tuổi hai mươi – anh vẫn còn sống cùng mẹ. Chỉ riêng những điều này thôi cũng đã khiến anh khó có thể là một người tình lãng mạn của tôi, vì thực tế tôi là một phụ nữ Mỹ có nghề nghiệp khoảng ngoài ba mươi, vừa trải qua một cuộc hôn nhân thất bại và vụ ly dị tàn hại và bất tận, liền theo là cuộc tình say đắm có một kết cục làm tan nát cõi lòng. Mất mát này chồng lên mất mát khác khiến tôi cảm thấy buồn, mong manh và chừng như đã già bảy ngàn tuổi rồi. Thuần về nguyên tắc thì tôi không thể để anh chàng Giovanni trong sáng, đáng yêu phải chịu đựng một kẻ sầu muộn già nua đổ vỡ trong hôn nhân là mình. Chưa kể là rốt cuộc tôi cũng đã tới cái tuổi mà một phụ nữ bắt đầu hỏi, có thực cách khôn ngoan nhất để vượt qua nỗi mất mát vì một người đàn ông trẻ đẹp mắt nâu là mời ngay một người đàn ông khác lên giường hay không. Đấy là lý do tôi đã đơn độc nhiều tháng nay. Đấy là lý do, trên thực tế, tôi đã quyết định sống độc thân suốt năm nay. Một người quan sát sắc sảo có thể sẽ chất vấn, “Vậy thì tại sao cô lại đến Ý?” Và để trả lời, tôi chỉ có thể đáp – nhất là khi nhìn anh chàng Giovanni đẹp trai ngồi bên bàn – “Một câu hỏi hay.” Giovanni là Bạn Giao Lưu Xe đạp đôi của tôi. Nghe có vẻ như ám chỉ cái gì đấy khác, nhưng tiếc là không phải. Thật ra tất cả chỉ có nghĩa là chúng tôi gặp nhau vài tối mỗi tuần ở đây, tại Roma, để thực hành ngôn ngữ của cả hai. Đầu tiên chúng tôi nói tiếng Ý anh ấy nhẫn nại với tôi; rồi chúng tôi nói tiếng Anh, và tôi kiên nhẫn với anh. Tôi đã phát hiện ra Giovanni vài tuần sau khi đến Roma, nhờ cái quán cà phê Internet lớn ở Piazza Barbarini ấy, bên kia đường đối diện đài phun nước có bức tượng chàng trai người cá gợi tình đang thổi cái vỏ sò. Anh (là Giovanni, không phải chàng người cá) đã dán một quảng cáo lên bảng tin nói là một người Ý bản ngữ đang tìm một người Anh bản ngữ để thực hành ngôn ngữ đàm thoại. Ngay dưới yêu cầu giúp đỡ của anh là một quảng cáo khác với cùng một yêu cầu, giống hệt nhau từng chữ một, đến cả kiểu chữ. Khác biệt duy nhất là thông tin liên hệ. Một quảng cáo ghi địa chỉ email của một ai đó có tên là Giovanni; còn cái kia thì giới thiệu ai đó tên la Dario. Nhưng ngay cả số điện thoại nhà cũng là một. Tôi sử dụng năng lực trực giác nhạy bén của mình gửi email cho cả hai người một lúc, hỏi bằng tiếng Ý, “Có lẽ các anh là anh em?” Chính Giovanni là người viết thư trả lời rất provocatio[5] như sau, “Còn hay hơn nữa. Sinh đôi!” Đúng vậy, hay hơn nhiều. Hóa ra đây là hai anh em sinh đôi tuổi hai mươi lăm giống hệt nhau, to cao, đẹp trai, rám nắng với đôi mắt Ý to nâu mơ màng khiến tôi muốn mở lòng. Sau khi đích thân gặp cả hai người họ, tôi bắt đầu không biết có nên chỉnh lại chút xíu điều lệ độc thân trong năm nay của mình hay không. Ví dụ, có lẽ tôi vẫn độc thân hoàn toàn trừ việc https://thuviensach.vn giữ anh em sinh đôi người Ý hai mươi lăm tuổi đẹp trai này làm nhân tình. Chuyện này có chút làm nhớ lại chuyện một người bạn của tôi ăn chay trừ món thịt lợn muối xông khói, nhưng dù sao thì... Tôi đã bắt đầu viết thư cho tạp chí Penthouse: Trong bóng tối lung linh ánh nến của quán cà phê Roman, chẳng thể nào nói được tay ai đang vuốt ve... Nhưng không. Không và không. Tôi cắt ngang hình ảnh mộng mị này lưng chừng câu. Đây không phải là lúc tôi tìm kiếm lãng mạn và (như ngày tiếp nối đêm) làm cuộc sống đã nan giải của mình phức tạp thêm. Đây là lúc tôi tìm kiếm sự hàn gắn và yên tĩnh chỉ có thể có được từ sự đơn độc. Dù sao thì, đến lúc này, vào giữa tháng Mười một, anh chàng Giovanni nhút nhát, siêng năng và tôi đã trở thành bạn thân. Còn về phần Dario – kẻ ưa tiệc tùng đàn đúm hơn trong hai anh em – tôi đã giới thiệu với cô bạn nhỏ Sofie đáng yêu người Thụy Điển của mình, và họ đã cùng chia sẻ những buổi tối của họ ở Roma ra sao thì lại hoàn toàn là một kiểu Bạn Giao Lưu Xe đạp đôi khác. Còn Giovanni và tôi, chúng tôi chỉ trò chuyện. À không, ăn uống và chuyện trò. Đã nhiều tuần lễ thú vị chúng tôi cùng ăn uống và trò chuyện, chia nhau món pizza và nhẹ nhàng sửa những lỗi văn phạm, và đêm nay cũng không phải ngoại lệ. Một buổi tối dễ thương và những thành ngữ mới và món pho mát tươi mozzarella. Giờ là nửa đêm và trời mù sương. Giovanni đưa tôi trở về căn hộ qua những con đường của Roma hiền hòa lượn quanh các tòa nhà cổ như những nhánh sông trườn quanh những khoảng rừng bách mờ ảo. Giờ thì chúng tôi đang đứng trước cửa, đối diện nhau. Anh trao tôi một cái ôm ấm áp. Đây là một tiến bộ; trong mấy tuần đầu tiên anh chỉ bắt tay tôi thôi. Tôi nghĩ nếu mình ở lại Ý thêm ba năm nữa, rất có thể anh sẽ ghì lấy tôi mà hôn nồng nhiệt. Tuy nhiên, giá mà anh hôn tôi ngay lúc này, đêm nay, ngay đây cạnh cửa nhà tôi... có thể lắm chứ... ý tôi là chúng tôi đang ôm ghì nhau dưới ánh trăng này... và dĩ nhiên điều đó sẽ là một sai lầm khủng khiếp... nhưng đó vẫn thật là một khả năng tuyệt vời nếu anh thật sự có thể làm điều đó ngay lúc này... rằng giá mà anh cúi xuống... và... và... Không. Anh buông vòng tay. “Chúc ngủ ngon, Liz yêu dấu,” anh nói. “Buona notte, caro mio,”[6] tôi đáp. Tôi bước lên những bậc thang dẫn đến căn hộ tầng bốn của mình, hoàn toàn đơn độc. Tôi trôi vào căn hộ bé xíu xiu của mình, cũng hoàn toàn đơn độc. Tôi đóng cánh cửa lại sau lưng. Lại một đêm ngủ một mình nữa ở Roma. Lại một đêm dài nữa đang đợi, chẳng có ai và chẳng có gì trên chiếc giường ngoại trừ một chồng sách thành ngữ Ý và từ điển. Tôi một mình, tôi cô độc, tôi hoàn toàn cô độc. Hiểu thấu thực tế này, tôi buông túi xách, khuỵu xuống và tì trán vào tường. Nơi đây, tôi dâng lên vũ trụ lời cầu nguyện cảm tạ nhiệt thành. https://thuviensach.vn Đầu tiên là bằng tiếng Anh. Rồi đến bằng tiếng Ý. Và rồi – để trình bày rõ ràng hơn – bằng tiếng Phạn. https://thuviensach.vn 2 Và vì tôi đã quỳ trên sàn mà khẩn nguyện, cho phép tôi giữ nguyên tư thế đó để trở về thời điểm ba năm trước, khi toàn bộ câu chuyện này bắt đầu – thời khắc tôi cũng đang đúng trong tư thé đó: quỳ gối, trên sàn nhà, cầu nguyện. Thế nhưng những thứ còn lại trong khung cảnh của ba-năm-trước thì có khác. Lúc đó, tôi không ở Roma mà trong phòng tắm trên lầu căn nhà lớn ở ngoại ô New York mới mua cho chồng. Khi ấy là khoảng ba giờ sáng một ngày tháng Mười một lạnh lẽo. Chồng tôi còn đang ngủ trên giường. Tôi náu mình trong phòng tắm đâu như đã đêm thứ bốn mươi bảy liên tiếp rồi, và – cũng như tất cả những đêm trước – tôi đang khóc nức nở. Thật vậy, nức nở đến độ trên sàn gạch men phòng tắm trước mặt tôi lan dài một hồ rộng đầy nước mắt nước mũi, một Hồ Hạ[7] thật sự (nếu bạn cho phép), đầy nỗi tủi thẹn, sợ hãi, bối rối và đau buồn của tôi. Tôi không muốn đời sống hôn nhân nữa. Tôi cố hết sức không nghĩ đến điều này nữa, nhưng sự thật vẫn cứ bám riết lấy tôi. Tôi không muốn đời sống hôn nhân nữa. Tôi không muốn sống trong căn nhà lớn này. Tôi không muốn có con. Nhưng lẽ ra tôi phải muốn có con. Tôi đã ba mươi mốt tuổi. Chồng tôi và tôi – chung sống trong tám năm, cưới nhau được sáu năm – đã xây dựng toàn bộ đời sống cả hai quanh một mong đợi chung là, sau khi bước qua ngưỡng cửa tuổi ba mươi già nua lập cập rồi, tôi sẽ muốn ổn định và có con. Chúng tôi cùng trông đợi là, đến lúc đó, tôi sẽ chán ngấy đi đây đó và sẽ sống hạnh phúc trong một đại gia đình bận bịu đầy bọn nhóc và chăn bông tự làm, có vườn ở sân sau và món hầm sôi lục bục trên bếp. (Thực ra đây là miêu tả khá chính xác về mẹ tôi, cho thấy ngay cả tôi cũng từng khó mà nêu ra được sự khác biệt giữa tôi và người phụ nữ mạnh mẽ đã nuôi dạy mình ấy ra sao.) Nhưng, tôi kinh hoàng nhận ra, mình không muốn bất cứ gì trong những thứ này cả. Thay vì vậy, khi thời hai mươi của tôi đã qua, cái hạn chót BA MƯƠI TUỔI đó lơ lửng trước mặt tôi như một bản án tử hình, và tôi hiểu ra là mình không muốn có mang. Tôi cứ chờ lúc mình muốn có con, nhưng điều đó không xảy ra. Và tôi biết cái cảm giác muốn một điều gì đó như thế nào, xin hãy tin tôi. Tôi biết rất rõ cảm giác khát khao thì sẽ ra sao. Nhưng o có. Vả chăng, tôi không thể thôi nghĩ đến điều chị tôi đã từng nói với tôi khi đang cho đứa con đầu lòng bú, “Có con giống như xăm hình trên mặt mình vậy. Em phải thật sự chắc chắn đó là điều mình muốn trước khi cam kết.” Thế nhưng làm sao tôi có thể quay trở lại? Mọi thứ đã sẵn sàng cả rồi. Năm đó là dành cho việc có mang. Trên thực tế, chúng tôi đã cố để có con vài tháng nay rồi. Nhưng chẳng có gì xảy ra cả (trừ việc – gần như một trò chế giễu mỉa mai của thai nghén – tôi bị mệt mỏi căng thẳng thần kinh vào buổi sáng, bồn chồn đến độ ngày nào cũng nôn hết bữa sáng đã ăn.) Và mỗi tháng tới chu kỳ tôi thường thầm thì lén lút trong phòng tắm: Cám ơn, cám ơn, cám ơn, cám ơn đã cho tôi sống thêm một tháng nữa... https://thuviensach.vn Tôi đã cố thuyết phục mình rằng điều đó là tự nhiên. Mọi phụ nữ khác hẳn cũng cảm tháy vậy khi cố để có mang, tôi nghĩ. (Tôi dùng từ “do dự” để tránh một miêu tả chính xác hơn nhiều, “khiếp đảm cực độ”.) Tôi cố buộc mình tin những cảm giác đó là bình thường, bất chấp mọi bằng chứng ngược lại – ví như tuần trước tôi tình cờ gặp một người quen vừa biết mình có thai lần đầu sau khi đã dành trọn hai năm và một món tiền lớn cho việc điều trị sinh sản. Cô ấy vô cùng sung sướng. Cô nói với tôi rằng lúc nào cô cũng muốn được làm mẹ. Cô thú nhận nhiều năm rồi đã âm thầm mua quần áo sơ sinh và giấu dưới giường, nơi chồng cô không thể phát hiện. Tôi thấy niềm vui trên khuôn mặt cô và tôi nhận ra nó. Đó chính là niềm vui rạng rỡ trên mặt tôi mùa xuân năm ngoái, cái ngày tôi được biết là tờ tạp chí nơi tôi làm việc sắp cử tôi đi New Zealand công tác để viết một bài về cuộc tìm kiếm loài mực khổng lồ. Và tôi tự nhủ, “Chừng nào mình chưa thể cảm thấy sướng rơn về chuyện có con như mình đã cảm thấy về chuyến đi đến New Zealand tìm loài mực to tướng thì mình chưa thể có con được.” Tôi không muốn đời sống hôn nhân nữa. Ban ngày, tôi cự tuyệt ý nghĩ ấy, nhưng đêm đến nó thường giày vò tôi. Thật là một thảm họa. Làm sao tôi lại có thể ngu xuẩn một cách vô đạo đức khi dấn thân đến thế vào hôn nhân, chỉ để rồi bỏ đi? Chúng tôi chỉ mới mua căn nhà này một năm trước thôi. Tôi không muốn căn nhà xinh đẹp này sao? Tôi không yêu thích nó sao? Vậy sao giờ đây tôi lại lang thang khắp các gian phòng hàng đêm, gào khóc như Medea[8]? Phải chăng tôi không hãnh diện về tất cả những gì chúng tôi đã tích lũy được – ngôi nhà hoành tráng ở thung lũng Hudson, căn hộ ở Manhattan, tám đường điện thoại, bạn bè, những cuộc dã ngoại và tiệc tùng, những ngày cuối tuần lang thang trên các lối đi của các cửa hiệu lớn ưa thích, sắm thật nhiều đồ dùng bằng thẻ tín dụng? Tôi đã hăng hái tham gia vào mỗi phút giây tạo nên cuộc sống này – vậy tại sao tôi lại cảm thấy như chẳng có gì ở đó tương đồng với mình? Tại sao tôi lại cảm thấy ngập trong nghĩa vụ, phát chán phải làm người nuôi sống gia đình, người nội trợ, người sắp xếp giao tế xã hội, người dắt chó đi dạo, người vợ và người mẹ tương lai, và – đâu đó trong những khoảnh khắc giành giật được – một nhà văn...? Tôi không muốn đời sống hôn nhân nữa. Chồng tôi đang ngủ trong căn phòng khác, trên giường chúng tôi. Tôi yêu anh ấy đồng thời cũng không chịu nổi anh ấy. Tôi không thể đánh thức anh dậy để chia sẻ nỗi khốn khổ của mình – để làm gì cơ chứ? Anh đã chứng kiến tôi suy sụp từ nhiều tháng nay rồi, thấy tôi cư xử như một mụ điên (cả hai chúng tôi cùng đồng ý với từ này), và tôi chỉ làm anh kiệt sức mà thôi. Cả hai đều biết có điều gì đó không ổn với tôi, và anh đã mất kiên nhẫn với chuyện đó. Chúng tôi cãi nhau và khóc, rồi chúng tôi mệt mỏi theo lối chỉ một cặp vợ chồng có hôn nhân đang sụp đổ mới cảm thấy. Ánh mắt chúng tôi trở thành ánh mắt của những kẻ tị nạn. Những lý do khiến tôi không muốn làm vợ của người đàn ông này nữa là quá riêng tư và quá buồn để chia sẻ ở đây. Phần lớn các lý do đó liên quan đến những vấn đề của tôi, nhưng một phần khá lớn những rắc rối của chúng tôi cũng liên quan đến các vấn đề của anh ấy. Cũng tự nhiên thôi; suy cho cùng, hôn nhân nào cũng có hai nhân vật – hai biểu quyết, hai ý kiến, hai khuynh hướng quyết định, hai ước muốn và giới hạn mâu thuẫn nhau. Nhưng tôi cho rằng nói về những vấn đề của anh ấy trong cuốn sách của mình là không thích hợp. Tôi cũng không thể đòi hỏi ai đó tin là tôi có thể thuật lại câu chuyện của chúng tôi một cách https://thuviensach.vn khách quan, và do vậy, biên niên sử cuộc hôn nhân thât bại của chúng tôi sẽ không bao giờ được đề cập đến ở đây. Tôi cũng sẽ không thảo luận ở đây tất cả những lý do tại sao tôi vẫn đã rất muốn là vợ anh, hay điều tuyệt vời nơi anh, hay tại sao tôi yêu anh, tại sao lại cưới anh và tại sao không thể hình dung nổi một cuộc sống thiếu anh. Tôi sẽ không thổ lộ bất kỳ điều gì hết. Hãy cứ biết là, vào đêm đó, anh ấy vẫn là ngọn hải đăng và cũng là con chim hải âu lớn của tôi. Điều duy nhất khó nghĩ hơn ra đi là ở lại; điều duy nhất bất khả hơn ở lại là ra đi. Tôi không muốn phá hoại bất kỳ điều gì hay bất kỳ ai. Tôi chỉ muốn lẳng lặng lẻn ra cửa sau, không làm ầm ĩ hay gây ra một hậu quả nào, và rồi chạy một mạch tới khi đến được Greenland. Phần này của câu chuyện không vui, tôi biết. Nhưng tôi chia sẻ ở đây vì một điều gì đó sắp xảy ra ngay tại sàn phòng tắm ấy đã vĩnh viễn thay đổi tiến trình cuộc đời tôi – kiểu như một trong những siêu sự kiện thiên văn điên rồ khi một hành tinh lật ngược trong vũ trụ không vì một lý do nào cả, rồi cái tâm nóng chảy của nó dịch chuyển, kéo theo vị trí hai cực dịch chuyển và hình dạng của nó thay đổi hoàn toàn, đến mức toàn khối hành tinh đột nhiên trở thành hình khuôn thay vì hình cầu. Đại loại như vậy. Điều xảy ra là tôi bắt đầu cầu nguyện. Bạn biết đấy, như là cầu nguyện Thượng Đế. https://thuviensach.vn 3 Bấy giờ, đó là lần đầu tiên đối với tôi. Và vì đây là lần đầu tiên tôi đưa từ gay go ấy – THƯỢNG ĐẾ - vào quyển sách của mình, và vì đây là từ sẽ xuất hiện lặp lại nhiều lần trong suốt các trang sách này, có lẽ là đúng đắn nếu tôi dừng ở đây giây lát nhằm giải thích chính xác ngụ ý của mình khi dùng từ này, để mọi người có thể quyết định ngay mình có cần cảm thấy khó chịu thế không. Để dành tranh luận liệu Thượng Đế có tồn tại hay không về sau (mà không, tôi có một ý kiến hay hơn: ta hãy bỏ qua luôn tranh luận đó), cho phép tôi trước tiên giải thích tại sao tôi dùng từ Thượng Đế khi có thể chỉ đơn giản dùng các từ như Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu hay Zeus. Hoặc giả, tôi có thể gọi Thượng Đế là “Đó” là cách gọi của kinh Phạn cổ mà tôi cho là sát với thực thể bao trùm vạn vật và không thể gọi tên từng được tôi đôi lần chứng nghiệm. Nhưng tôi cảm thấy từ “Đó” có vẻ phi nhân cách – một vật, không phải một sinh thể - và bản thân tôi không thể cầu nguyện với một Đó. Tôi cần một cái tên riêng, để cảm nhận trọn vẹn một sự hiện diện cá nhân. Cũng vì lý do này, khi cầu nguyện, tôi không hướng lời nguyện cầu đến Vũ Trụ, Đại Không, Sức Mạnh, Bản Thể Tối Thượng, Toàn Thể Tính, Đấng Sáng Tạo, Ánh Sáng, Quyền Năng Cao Cả, hay ngay cả lối biểu thị tên gọi Thượng Đế nên thơ nhất, tôi tin là từ sách Phúc âm phái Ngộ đạo, “Bóng của Vần Xoay”. Tôi chẳng chống đối bất cứ thuật ngữ nào trong những thuật ngữ này cả. Tôi cảm thấy chúng như nhau vì chúng đều là những miêu tả tương xứng và không tương xứng như nhau về cái không thể tả được. Nhưng mỗi người chúng ta cần một cái tên thiết thực cho cái không thể tả được đó, và “Thượng Đế” là cái tên với tôi có vẻ ấm áp nhất, vậy nên tôi dùng từ này. Tôi cũng nên thú nhận là tôi thường nghĩ Thượng Đế là “Ông” mà không áy náy vì theo tôi, đó chỉ là một đại từ cá nhân hóa tiện dụng, không phải một miêu tả cơ thể học chính xác hay một động cơ cách mạng. Tất nhiên, tôi không phiền nếu mọi người gọi Thượng Đế là “Bà”, và tôi hiểu sự thôi thúc khi người ta làm vậy. Lần nữa, với tôi, những từ này ngang bằng nhau, tương xứng và bất xứng như nhau. Tuy nhiên tôi thực sự cho rằng viết hoa bất kỳ đại từ nào cũng đều là một nét hoa mỹ, một sự lễ phép nho nhỏ với sự hiện diện của thiêng liêng. Về mặt văn hóa, dù không phải thần học, tôi là một tín đồ đạo Cơ đốc. Tôi xuất thân là một người da trắng Anglo-Saxon theo đạo Tin lành. Và trong khi vẫn yêu kính vị thầy vĩ đại của hòa bình là Jesus, trong khi vẫn bảo lưu quyền tự hỏi trong những tình huống thử thách rằng quả thực Ông có thể làm gì, tôi không thể chấp nhận cái nguyên tắc bất di bất dịch của đạo Cơ đốc cứ khăng khăng Chúa là con đường duy nhất đến với Thượng Đế. Vậy thì, nói đúng ra, tôi không thể nhận mình là tín đồ Cơ đốc. Hầu hết những tín đồ Cơ đốc tôi biết đều chấp nhận những cảm nhận của tôi về điều này với lòng khoan dung và đầu óc cởi mở. Nhưng ngược lại, hầu hết tín đồ Cơ đốc tôi biết không phân định khắt khe. Đối với những người phân định (và nghĩ) khắt khe, tất cả những gì tôi có thể làm ở đây là xin lỗi nếu có gì xúc phạm và giờ thì xin cáo lui khỏi công việc của họ. Theo truyền thống, tôi hưởng ứng những nhà thần học siêu việt của tất cả mọi tôn giáo. Tôi đã luôn hưởng ứng với niềm phấn khích đến nghẹt thở bất kỳ ai nói rằng Thượng Đế https://thuviensach.vn không ở trong kinh sách giáo điều hay ngự trên một ngai vững cách biệt trên trời mà thật ra ở rất gần chúng ta – gần hơn chúng ta tưởng rất nhiều, hít thở ngay qua chính tim của chúng ta. Tôi hưởng ứng với lòng biết ơn bất kỳ ai đã từng du hành đến tận tâm của trái tim ấy, và rồi trở lại thế gian cho tất cả những người còn lại chúng ta biết, Thượng Đế là một chứng nghiệm tình yêu cao cả. Mọi truyền thống tôn giáo trên trái đất đều luôn có những vị thánh thần bí và những con người siêu việt truyền đạt lại chính xác chứng nghiệm này. Rủi thay là nhiều người trong số họ cuối cùng đã bị bắt và bị giết. Dù vậy, tôi vẫn đánh giá rất cao về họ. Cuối cùng, điều tôi dần dần tin về Thượng Đế rất đơn giản. Nó như thế này – tôi từng nuôi một con chó rất tuyệt vời. Nó vốn đến từ nơi nhốt chó, mèo lạc. Con chó ấy là sự pha trộn của hoảng mười giống khác nhau, nhưng dường như nó thừa hưởng những ưu điểm trội nhất của tất cả các giống ấy. Bộ lông của nó màu nâu. Khi mọi người hỏi, “Nó là chó gì vậy?” tôi luôn trả lời cùng một câu, “Nó là con chó màu nâu.” Tương tự, với câu hỏi đặt ra, “Cô tin vào Thượng Đế nào?”, câu trả lời của tôi rất đơn giản, “Tôi tin vào Thượng Đế cao cả.” https://thuviensach.vn 4 Tất nhiên, tôi đã có rất nhiều thời gian để hình thành quan điểm của mình về linh thiêng từ cái đêm trên sàn phòng tắm tôi lần đầu tiên trực tiếp nói chuyện với Thượng Đế. Dù sao, ngay giữa cơn khủng hoảng tháng Mười một tối tăm ấy, tôi đã không lưu tâm đến chuyện hình thành quan điểm thần học của mình. Tôi chỉ nghĩ đến việc cứu lấy đời mình. Cuối cùng tôi nhận ra rằng dường như mình đã rơi vào một tình trạng hiểm nghèo tuyệt vọng vô phương và tôi chợt nghĩ rằng đôi khi trong tình trạng hiểm nghèo tuyệt vọng vô phương, và tôi chợt nghĩ rằng đôi khi trong tình trạng này người ta sẽ tìm đến Thượng Đế cầu xin giúp đỡ. Tôi chắc đã đọc điều này đâu đó trong một cuốn sách. Những điều tôi vừa khóc nấc vừa nói với Thượng Đế gần như vậy, “Xin chào, Thượng Đế. Ngài khỏe không? Tôi là Liz. Hân hạnh được biết ngài.” Đúng thế - tôi đang trò chuyện với đấng sáng thế như thể chúng tôi vừa làm quen với nhau tại một buổi tiệc rượu. Nhưng trong cuộc sống chúng ta thường làm theo cách quen thuộc với mình, và đây là câu tôi luôn dùng khi bắt đầu một mối quan hệ. Thật ra, đó là tất cả những gì tôi có thể làm để ngăn mình không nói, “Tôi vẫn luôn là một người hâm mộ cuồng nhiệt tác phẩm của ngài...” “Tôi xin lỗi đã làm phiền ngài đêm hôm khuya khoắt thế này,” tôi tiếp. “Nhưng tôi đang gặp rắc rối thật sự. Và tôi cũng xin lỗi vì chưa bao giờ trực tiếp nói chuyện với ngài trước đây, nhưng tôi tin tôi đã luôn bày tỏ lòng biết ơn vô bờ đối với tất cả những phước lành ngài ban cho tôi trong đời.” Ý nghĩ này càng khiến tôi nức nở hơn. Thượng Đế đợi cho tôi dịu xuống. Tôi cố trấn tĩnh lại đủ để nói tiếp: “Tôi không thạo việc cầu nguyện, ngài biết rồi đấy. Nhưng ngài có thể giúp tôi không? Tôi đang quá cần được giúp đỡ. Tôi không biết phải làm sao. Tôi cần một câu trả lời. Xin hãy cho tôi biết tôi phải làm gì đi. Xin hãy cho tôi biết tôi phải làm gì. Xin hãy cho tôi biết tôi phải làm gì...” Và rồi lời cầu nguyện rút gọn lại chỉ còn là một khẩn nài đơn giản lặp đi lặp lại: hãy cho tôi biết tôi phải làm gì. Tôi không biết mình đã cầu khẩn bao nhiêu lần. Tôi chỉ biết là tôi đã cầu xin như một người đang cầu xin cho mạng sống của mình. Và tôi cứ khóc mãi. Cho đến khi – hoàn toàn đột ngột – tôi thôi khóc. Hoàn toàn đột ngột, tôi nhận ra mình không còn khóc nữa. Tôi đã thôi khóc, thật sự, giữa lúc đang thổn thức. Nỗi thống khổ trong tôi rút đi sạch trơn. Tôi nhấc trán khỏi sàn và ngồi dậy ngạc nhiên, không biết mình có sắp thấy một Đấng Chí Tôn nào đấy vừa lấy những giọt nước mắt của mình đi hay không. Nhưng chẳng có ai ở đó cả. Chỉ có mình tôi. Mà cũng không hoàn toàn một mình. Một cái gì đó bao quanh tôi mà tôi chỉ có thể mô tả như một cái túi nhỏ tĩnh lặng – một sự tĩnh lặng mong manh đến nỗi tôi không muốn thở ra, e sẽ làm nó tan mất. Tôi đã tĩnh lặng một cách hoàn toàn. Tôi không biết đã có bao giờ mình cảm thấy một sự tĩnh lặng như vậy chưa. Rồi tôi nghe thấy một giọng nói. Xin đừng hoang mang – đó không phải là một giọng như Charlton Heston của Hollywood đọc Cựu ước, cũng không phải một giọng ra lệnh tôi phải https://thuviensach.vn xây bóng chày ở sân sau nhà mình đâu. Đó chỉ là giọng của chính tôi, phát ra từ bên trong bản ngã của tôi. Nhưng đây là giọng nói của tôi mà tôi chưa từng nghe thấy trước kia. Giọng của tôi, nhưng lại hoàn toàn sáng suốt, điềm tĩnh và cảm thông. Đó là giọng nói, của tôi nếu có lúc nào đó trong đời tôi có chứng nghiệm được tình yêu và sự vững vàng. Làm sao tôi có thể tả nổi sự ấm áp yêu thương trong giọng nói đó khi mà câu trả lời nó đem lại đã vĩnh viễn đóng dấu đức tin của tôi vào thiêng liêng? Tiếng nói bảo: Đi ngủ lại đi, Liz. Tôi thở ra. Thật rõ ràng, ngay lập tức đó là điều duy nhất cần làm. Tôi không thể chấp nhận bất kỳ câu trả lời nào khác. Tôi không thể tin cậy một giọng nói trầm hùng phán rằng: Mi Phải Ly Dị Chồng! hay: Mi Không Được Ly Dị Chồng! Vì đó không phải là sự sáng suốt đích thực. Sáng suốt đích thực phải đem lại câu trả lời khả dĩ duy nhất vào một thời khắc nhất định, và vào đêm đó, đi ngủ lại là câu trả lời khả dĩ duy nhất. Đi ngủ lại, giọng nói nội tâm toàn tri nói, vì ngươi không cần phải biết câu trả lời tối hậu ngay lúc này, vào ba giờ sáng một ngày thứ Năm của tháng Mười một. Đi ngủ lại, vì ta yêu ngươi. Đi ngủ lại, vì điều duy nhất ngươi cần làm lúc này là nghỉ ngơi và tự chăm sóc mình cho đến khi biết được câu trả lời. Đi ngủ lại để khi bão tố đến, ngươi sẽ đủ mạnh mẽ để đối phó. Và giông tố đang đến, con thân yêu. Chóng thôi. Nhưng không phải đêm nay. Vậy nên: Đi ngủ lại đi, Liz. Về một phương diện mà nói, tình tiết nhỏ này có tất cả những dấu hiệu của một chứng nghiệm cải tạo Cơ đốc giáo điển hình – đêm tối của tâm hồn, tiếng kêu cứu, giọng nói đáp lại, cảm giác chuyển hóa. Nhưng tôi không thể nói đó là một sự cải đạo với tôi, không phải theo cách truyền thống là được sinh ra lần nữa hay được cứu rỗi. Thay vì vậy, tôi sẽ gọi điều xảy ra đêm đó là sự khởi đầu của một cuộc chuyện trò tôn giáo. Những lời đầu tiên của một cuộc đối thoại cởi mở và khám phá, cuối cùng, quả thực đã có thể đưa tôi đến rất gần Thượng Đế. https://thuviensach.vn 5 Nếu có cách nào đó để tôi biết rằng mọi sự - như Lily Tomlin từng nói – sắp sửa trở nên hoàn toàn tồi tệ hơn trước khi chúng đã trở nên tồi tệ hơn, tôi không chắc làm sao mình đã có thể ngủ ngon đêm đó. Nhưng bảy tháng rất khó khăn sau đó, tôi đã chia tay chồng mình. Khi cuối cùng có quyết định này, tôi tưởng điều tồi tệ nhất đã qua. Chuyện này cho thấy tôi ít hiểu biết về ly hôn ra sao. Trước đây có một biếm họa trong tạp chí The New Yorker. Hai phụ nữ đang trò chuyện, người này nói với người kia: “Nếu ta thật sự muốn biết rõ ai, ta phải ly dị anh ta.” Tất nhiên, kinh nghiệm của tôi thì ngược lại. Tôi sẽ nói là nếu ta thật sự muốn NGỪNG biết ai đó, ta phải ly dị anh ta. Hay cô ta. Vì đó là điều đã diễn ra giữa tôi và chồng. Tôi tin là cả hai chúng tôi đã làm người kia sốc khi nhanh chóng từ những người hiểu nhau nhất thành hai kẻ xa lạ khó hiểu đối với nhau nhất trên đời. Nguyên nhân sâu xa của sự xa lạ đó là sự thật thăm thẳm rằng cả hai chúng tôi đều làm điều mà người kia chẳng bao giờ quan niệm là có thể; anh ấy không bao giờ nghĩ là tôi sẽ thật sự rời bỏ anh, và tôi ngay cả trong tưởng tượng rồ dại nhất cũng không nghĩ được là anh ấy sẽ gây khó khăn cho sự ra đi của mình đến vậy. Khi chia tay chồng, tôi đã thành thật tin là chúng tôi có thể thu xếp mấy vụ việc thực tế của mình trong vài giờ với một cái máy tính, một chút lương tri và một ít thiện chí đối với người mình đã từng yêu. Gợi ý ban đầu của tôi là chúng tôi bán căn nhà và phân chia tất cả tài sản theo tỉ lệ 50/50; tôi chưa từng thoáng nghĩ có thể có cách thu xếp nào khác hơn. Anh ấy không cho gợi ý đó là công bằng. Vậy nên tôi nâng đề nghị của mình lên, thậm chí đã gợi ý cách chia đôi khác: hay là anh ấy lấy hết toàn bộ tài sản còn tôi nhận tất cả trách cứ? Nhưng ngay cả đề nghị đó cũng không đem lại một thỏa thuận. Bây giờ thì tôi lúng túng. Ta thương lượng ra sao khi đã dâng hết mọi thứ? Giờ tôi chẳng thể làm gì ngoài việc chờ đợi một phản đề nghị của anh ấy. Tội lỗi rời bỏ anh ấy không cho phép tôi nghĩ đến việc giữ dù chỉ một hào tiền mình đã kiếm được trong mười năm qua. Hơn nữa, tinh thần mới tìm thấy trong tôi khiến tôi thấy điều thiết yếu là chúng tôi không phân tranh. Vậy nên đây là lập trường của tôi – tôi sẽ không tự vệ trước anh ấy mà cũng không tranh đấu với anh. Trong một thời gian rất dài, trái với lời khuyên của những người quan tâm đến tôi, tôi phản đối ngay cả chuyện hỏi ý kiến luật sư, vì tôi cho rằng ngay cả điều đó cũng là một hành vi bạo động. Tôi đã muốn hoàn toàn là một Gandhi trong chuyện này. Tôi muốn hoàn toàn là Nelson Mandela trong chuyện này mà lúc đó lại không nhận ra là cả Gandhi và Mandela đều là luật sư. Nhiều tháng trôi qua. Cuộc sống của tôi treo lơ lửng khi tôi chờ được giải thoát, chờ xem những điều khoản sẽ ra sao. Chúng tôi sống ly thân (anh ấy đã chuyển về căn hộ của chúng tôi ở Manhattan), nhưng chẳng có việc gì được giải quyết. Hóa đơn chất đống, công việc đình trệ, ngôi nhà rơi vào tình trạng hư hỏng, còn chồng tôi thì thỉnh thoảng phá tan sự im lặng chỉ để nhắc chuyện tôi là kẻ ngu ngốc tội lỗi ra sao. Và rồi David xuất hiện. https://thuviensach.vn Tất cả những phức tạp và tổn thương của những năm ly hôn đáng sợ đó được nhân lên nhiều lần với biến cố David – chàng trai tôi đã phải lòng khi giã từ cuộc hôn nhân của mình. Tôi đã nói tôi “phải lòng” David phải không? Điều tôi muốn nói là tôi đã lao ra khỏi cuộc hôn nhân và ào vào vòng tay David cũng y như một người biểu diễn xiếc trong phim hoạt hình phóng ra từ một cái bục cao rồi lao vào một chén nước nhỏ, mất tăm hoàn toàn. Tôi bám chặt lấy David để thoát khỏi hôn nhân như thể anh là chiếc trực thăng cuối cùng rút khỏi Sài Gòn. Tôi trút lên anh tất cả mọi hy vọng về cứu rỗi và hạnh phúc của mình. Và, đúng, tôi đã yêu anh ấy. Nhưng nếu tôi có thể nghĩ ra một từ nào mạnh hơn từ “tuyệt vọng” để miêu tả tôi đã yêu David như thế nào, tôi sẽ dùng từ đó ở đây, và yêu tuyệt vọng luôn là cách yêu mãnh liệt nhất rồi. Tôi dọn đến ở với David ngay sau khi chia tay chồng. Anh từng là – và đang là – một chàng trai trẻ tuyệt đẹp. Một người sinh quán New York, một diễn viên và một nhà văn, với cặp mắt Ý nâu mơ màng luôn làm tôi xáo trộn (tôi đã đề cập điều này chưa?). Lõi đời, độc lập, ăn chay, ăn nói thô lỗ, tâm linh, quyến rũ. Một tay hành giả-thi sĩ nổi loạn từ Yonkers. Một lính mới ở vị trí chặn ngắn[9] gợi tình của Thượng Đế. Lớn hơn cả sự sống. Lớn nhất thế giới. Hay chí ít anh đã là như vậy đối với tôi. Lần đầu tiên khi Susan người bạn thân nhất của tôi nghe tôi kể về anh ấy, cô nhìn vẻ say sưa trên mặt tôi và nói, “Ôi lạy Chúa, cưng ơi, bồ gặp rắc rối to rồi.” David và tôi gặp nhau vì anh đang tham gia một vở kịch dựa trên các truyện ngắn tôi viết. Anh đóng một nhân vật hư cấu của tôi, điều đó có đôi chút ấn tượng. Trong tình yêu tuyệt vọng vẫn luôn là vậy, phải không? Trong tình yêu tuyệt vọng, chúng ta luôn bịa ra những phẩm chất của người bên cạnh của mình, đòi hỏi họ là cái mà ta cần ở họ, và rồi cảm thấy tan nát khi họ từ chối đóng vai trò ta tạo ra ban đầu. Nhưng, chao ôi, chúng tôi đã có một thời gian tuyệt vời bên nhau trong suốt những tháng đầu tiên ấy khi anh vẫn còn là nhân vật nam chính lãng mạn của tôi và tôi vẫn còn là mộng tưởng sống của anh. Sôi động và tương hợp tới mức tôi chưa từng tưởng tượng được. Chúng tôi chế ra ngôn ngữ của riêng mình. Chúng tôi thực hiện những chuyến đi trong ngày và những chuyến đi xa. Chúng tôi lên đến đỉnh của mọi thứ, chìm nghỉm xuống tận đáy những thứ khác, lập kế hoạch những chuyến đi khắp thế giới chúng tôi sẽ cùng nhau thực hiện. Chúng tôi cùng nhau xếp hàng tại Cửa hàng Xe động cơ mà vui hơn hầu hết những cặp khác trong tuần trăng mật. Chúng tôi cho nhau cùng một biệt danh để không có gì ngăn cách giữa chúng tôi. Chúng tôi đặt ra các mục tiêu, thề nguyện, hẹn ước và ăn tối cùng nhau. Anh đọc sách cho tôi nghe, và anh giặt giũ cho tôi. (Lần đầu tiên chuyện đó xảy ra, tôi gọi cho Susan kể điều kỳ lạ ấy với vẻ sửng sốt, như thể tôi vừa thấy một con lạc đà sử dụng điện thoại di động. Tôi nói: “Một người đàn ông vừa giặt giũ đồ của tớ! Anh ấy thậm chí còn giặt tay đồ lót của tớ nữa!” Và cô ấy lặp lại, “Ôi lạy Chúa, cưng ơi, bồ gặp rắc rối to rồi”.) Mùa hè đầu tiên của Liz và David giống như cảnh người ta phải lòng nhau trong mọi phim lãng mạn chúng ta từng xem, giống đến cả cảnh bắn nước tung tóe trong biển sóng và tay trong tay băng qua đồng cỏ ánh vàng lúc hoàng hôn. Lúc đó tôi vẫn còn nghĩ là vụ ly hôn của mình sẽ được tiến hành một cách lịch thiệp, tuy vậy tôi vẫn cho chồng mình một mùa hè nghỉ ngơi không đả động gì về chuyện đó để cả hai có thể lắng dịu lại. Dù sao, trong hạnh phúc như thế thì thật dễ dàng không nghĩ về tất cả những mất mát. Rồi mùa hè đó (hay còn gọi là “thời điểm hoãn thi hành”) cũng kết thúc. https://thuviensach.vn Vào ngày 9 tháng Chín năm 2001, tôi gặp mặt riêng chồng lần chót mà không nhận ra rằng mỗi lần gặp sau phải có luật sư giữa chúng tôi, để điều đình. Chúng tôi ăn tối ở một nhà hàng. Tôi cố đề cập đến chuyện chia tay của chúng tôi, nhưng cả hai chỉ lại tranh cãi. Anh bảo tôi là kẻ dối trá, kẻ phản bội và rằng anh căm ghét tôi và sẽ không bao giờ nói với tôi nữa. Hai sáng sau đó tôi thức dậy sau một giấc ngủ không yên để rồi biết rằng những chiếc máy bay bị không tặc đã đâm sầm vào hai tòa nhà cao nhất trong thành phố tôi, khi tất cả những gì không thể bị đánh bại từng đứng cùng nhau giờ đã trở thành một đống đổ nát âm ỉ cháy. Tôi gọi cho chồng mình để biết chắc anh vẫn bình an vô sự và chúng tôi cùng khóc vì thảm họa này, nhưng tôi không đến chỗ anh. Trong tuần đó, khi mọi người trong thành phố New York từ bỏ thù oán vì một thảm kịch lớn lao hơn gần kề, tôi vẫn không trở về với chồng. Vì cả hai chúng tôi đều biết là mọi chuyện đã kết thúc, thật sự kết thúc rồi. Chẳng có gì là phóng đại khi nói rằng tôi không ngủ được trở lại trong liền bốn tháng sau. Tôi đã nghĩ mình tan nát từ trước đó, nhưng giờ đây (hài hòa với sự sụp đổ rành rành của toàn thể thế giới này) cuộc sống của tôi thật sự vỡ vụn. Giờ đây tôi đang cau mày nghĩ lại những gì mình đã buộc David phải chịu trong những tháng chúng tôi chung sống, ngay sau ngày 11/9 và việc ly thân của tôi với chồng. Hãy hình dung anh ấy ngạc nhiên ra sao khi khám phá ra rằng người phụ nữ hạnh phúc nhất, tự tin nhất anh từng gặp đã thật sự - khi ta để cô ấy một mình – là một lỗ hổng âm u của sầu muộn thăm thẳm. Một lần nữa, tôi không thể thôi khóc. Đó là lúc anh ta bắt đầu rút lui, và đó là khi tôi thấy mặt trái của người hùng lãng mạn đam mê của mình – một David cô độc như kẻ bị ruồng bỏ, lạnh ngắt cảm xúc, cần không gian cá nhân hơn cả một đàn bò rừng bizon Mỹ. Sự bất ngờ thoái lui về cảm xúc của David có thể là một thảm họa với tôi ngay cả trong tình huống tốt đẹp nhất, vì rằng tôi là thể dang sống cần nhiều âu yếm nhất trên hành tinh (như một giống lai giữa một loài chó cưng và một con hàu), mà đây lại là tình huống tồi tệ nhất của tôi. Tôi đã tuyệt vọng và cần được che chở, cần nhiều chăm sóc hơn cả một đứa bé đẻ non trong cặp sinh ba. Anh rút lui càng làm tôi thêm thiếu thốn, và sự thiếu thốn của tôi chỉ càng thúc đẩy anh rút lui, cho tới khi chẳng mấy lâu sau anh rút lui trong những cầu xin khóc lóc vỡ òa của tôi kiểu, “Anh đi đâu? Điều gì đã xảy ra giữa chúng mình?” (Mẹo hẹn hò: Đàn ông THÍCH chuyện này.) Sự thật là, tôi đã trở nên say mê David (tôi thường biện hộ, anh đã khuyến khích điều này để trở thành một thứ gì đó như “man-fatale”[10]), và giờ đây khi sự quan tâm của anh đang dao động, tôi gánh chịu những hậu quả có thể thấy trước dễ dàng. Say mê là dấu hiệu của mọi cuộc tình dựa trên mê muội. Toàn bộ bắt đầu khi đối tượng ta tôn thờ ban cho ta một liều gây ảo giác nặng thứ gì đó thậm chí ta chưa từng dám thú nhận là mình muốn – có lẽ thế, một liều tiêm cocain lẫn heroin cảm xúc của tình yêu sấm động và phấn khích trào dâng. Chẳng mấy chốc ta sẽ bắt đầu thèm khát sự quan tâm chăm sóc nồng nàn đó, với cái ám ảnh đói khát của một kẻ nghiện. Khi không được cấp thuốc nữa, ta sẽ nhanh chóng ngã bệnh, điên khùng và suy yếu (chưa kể phẫn uất kẻ bán thuốc là người đã khuyến khích chứng nghiện này đầu tiên nhưng giờ lại từ chối không chi cho thứ này nữa – bất chấp sự thật là ta biết hắn ta có giấu nó đâu đó, chết tiệt, vì hắn ta thường đưa nó cho ta miễn phí). Giai đoạn kế tiếp ta sẽ da bọc xương và run cầm cập trong một xó, chỉ biết chắc một điều là ta sẽ bán linh hồn mình hay trộm cướp nhà hàng xóm chỉ để có thứ đó dù chỉ một lần nữa. https://thuviensach.vn Trong khi đó, đối tượng ta tôn thờ giờ đã ghê tởm ta. Hắn nhìn ta như thể ta là ai đó hắn chưa từng gặp trước kia, chứ đừng nói là người hắn đã từng yêu say đắm. Trớ trêu là ta khó lòng trách hắn. Ý tôi là, ta biến đi thôi. Ta là một mớ hỗn độn đáng khinh, không còn nhận ra được ngay cả trong mắt mình. Nên kết thúc rồi. Giờ thì ta đã đến trạm cuồng si cuối cùng – sự mất giá trị toàn triệt và không thương tiếc của bản ngã. Ngày hôm nay tôi có thể thậm chí bình thản viết về điều này là bằng chứng hùng hồn cho khả năng hàn gắn của thời gian, vì tôi đã không chịu đựng được khi nó xảy ra. Mất David ngay sau cuộc hôn nhân đổ vỡ, ngay sau vụ khủng bố thành phố mình, và ngay trong cái khó chịu tồi tệ nhất của ly hôn (một trải nghiệm sống mà bạn Brian của tôi ví như “mỗi ngày bị một vụ tai nạn xe thật sự tồi tệ trong chừng hai năm”)... thế đấy, điều này đơn giản là quá nhiều. Ban ngày David và tôi tiếp tục những chầu vui và sự tương hợp của mình, nhưng tối đến, trên giường anh ta, tôi trở thành kẻ sống sót duy nhất của một mùa đông hạt nhân khi mà anh ấy rõ ràng đã rút lui khỏi tôi, mỗi ngày một xa thêm, như thể tôi bị bệnh truyền nhiễm. Tôi dần dần sợ buổi tối như thể đó là phòng giam của kẻ tra tấn. Tôi nằm đó cạnh cơ thể David xinh đẹp đang ngủ, không thể tiếp cận, và tôi quay sang nỗi hoảng loạn đơn độc và những ý nghĩ tự sát được vạch ra chi tiết tỉ mỉ. Mọi bộ phận cơ thể tôi đều làm tôi nhức nhối. Tôi cảm thấy mình như một loại máy thô sơ có lò xo nào đó, bị đặt dưới sức ép lớn hơn nhiều lần sức chịu đựng thực của nó, sắp sửa nổ tung thành từng mảnh đe dọa bất cứ ai đứng gần. Tôi hình dung các bộ phận cơ thể mình đang bay ra khỏi thân mình để thoát khỏi cái tâm hỏa diệm sơn bất hạnh đã trở thành là: tôi. Hầu hết các buổi sáng khi tỉnh dậy David thường thấy tôi ngủ chập chờn trên sàn cạnh giường anh, rúc trong một đống khăn tắm, như một con chó. “Chuyện gì xảy ra thế này?” anh thường hỏi – một người đàn ông khác đã hoàn toàn kiệt quệ vì tôi. Tôi nghĩ mình sụt đâu chừng ba mươi pound trong thời gian đó. https://thuviensach.vn 6 Ồ, nhưng những năm đó không hoàn toàn tệ đến thế... Vì Thượng Đế không bao giờ đóng sầm cửa trước mặt ta mà không mở một hộp bánh quy của Nữ Hướng Đạo Sinh, (hay như câu ngạn ngữ cổ có nói) một vài điều tuyệt vời đã xảy đến với tôi trong bóng tối của toàn bộ buồn phiền đó. Đầu tiên, rốt cuộc thì tôi đã bắt đầu học tiếng Ý. Ngoài ra, tôi đã tìm thấy một Sư phụ Ấn Độ. Cuối cùng tôi được một ông thầy mo cao tuổi mời đến sống với ông ở Indonesia. Tôi sẽ giải thích tuần tự. Đầu tiên, mọi việc bắt đầu sáng sủa đôi chút khi tôi dọn ra khỏi chỗ David vào đầu năm 2002 và lần đầu tiên trong đời, tôi tìm được một căn hộ cho riêng mình. Tôi không thể trả nổi tiền cho căn hộ vì vẫn đang phải trả tiền căn nhà lớn ở ngoại ô đã không có ai ở nữa mà chồng tôi thì cấm tôi bán, và tôi vẫn đang cố giữ cho những chi phí luật sư và tư vấn trong tầm kiểm soát... nhưng có Một Phòng Ngủ của riêng mình là cốt tử cho sự sống còn của tôi. Tôi xem căn hộ gần như một viện điều dưỡng, một bệnh viện cho kẻ cận tử để mình bình phục. Tôi sơn tường bằng những màu sắc ấm áp nhất có thể tìm được và mua hoa cho mình mỗi tuần, như thể tôi đang đi thăm chính mình ở bệnh viện. Chị tôi tặng tôi một bình nước nóng như một món quà tân gia (vậy là tôi sẽ không phải hoàn toàn một mình trên chiếc giường lạnh lẽo) và tôi đặt nó trên ngực hàng đêm khi ngủ, như thể săn sóc một chấn thương thể thao. David và tôi đã chia tay mãi mãi. Hay có thể là không. Giờ đây thật khó mà nhớ chúng tôi đã chia tay rồi lại đến với nhau bao nhiêu lần trong những tháng đó. Nhưng có một mô thức xuất hiện: tôi tách khỏi David, lấy lại sức mạnh và tự tin, và rồi (như anh vẫn luôn bị sức mạnh và sự tự tin của tôi lôi cuốn) đam mê của anh dành cho tôi lại bùng lên. Một cách tôn trọng, đúng mực và thông minh, chúng tôi bàn chuyện “cố gắng lần nữa”, luôn với một kế hoạch mới lành mạnh nào đó để giảm thiểu những xung khắc rành rành giữa chúng tôi. Cả hai đã rất dốc lòng tháo gỡ điều này. Vì làm sao hai người đã từng yêu nhau đến vậy lại không có một kết cục sống hạnh phúc mãi mãi? Nó phải có kết quả, phải không? Tái hợp với những hy vọng mới mẻ, chúng tôi chia sẻ ít ngày hạnh phúc tột cùng bên nhau. Hay đôi khi thậm chí nhiều tuần. Nhưng cuối cùng rồi David lại rút lui và tôi bám lấy anh (hay tôi bám vào anh rồi anh rút lui – chúng tôi chưa bao giờ có thể hình dung được điều đó khởi sự ra sao) và tôi đã bị tàn hoại mọi thứ. Còn anh ấy thì cuối cùng cũng ra đi. David là cây bạc hà mèo và là điểm yếu của tôi. Nhưng trong những giai đoạn chúng tôi đã phân ly, cũng khó khăn như mọi khi, tôi tập sống một mình. Và trải nghiệm này đã đem đến một chuyển biến nội tâm mới mẻ. Tôi bắt đầu cảm thấy rằng – dù cuộc sống của tôi vẫn giống như một tai nạn dồn đống đủ loại xe trên đường cao tốc. New Jersey trong giao thông ngày lễ - tôi đang chập chững gần trở thành một cá thể tự trị. Khi không cảm thấy muốn tự sát vì vụ ly dị, hay tự sát vì bi kịch của mình với David, tôi đã thật sự cảm thấy gần như hài lòng về tất cả ngăn ô thời gian và không https://thuviensach.vn gian xuất hiện trong những lúc sáng sủa của mình, khi tôi có thể tự hỏi một câu hỏi mới quyết liệt, “Mi muốn làm gì hả, Liz?” Phần lớn thời gian (trong khi vẫn còn phiền muộn về chuyện cứu mình ra khỏi cuộc hôn nhân) tôi thậm chí không dám trả lời câu hỏi đó mà chỉ âm thầm phấn khích về sự tồn tại của nó. Và cuối cùng khi bắt đầu trả lời, tôi đã trả lời một cách dè dặt. Tôi chỉ cho phép mình nói lên những ước muốn nhỏ nhoi chập chững. Ví dụ: Mình muốn đến một lớp Yoga. Mình muốn rời buổi tiệc này sớm để có thể về nhà và đọc một cuốn tiểu thuyết. Mình muốn mua cho mình một hộp bút chì mới. Rồi vẫn luôn là một câu trả lời kỳ lạ đó, lần nào cũng như nhau: Mình muốn học nói tiếng Ý. Từ nhiều năm, tôi ước mình có thể nói tiếng Ý – ngôn ngữ mà tôi thấy đẹp đẽ hơn cả hoa hồng – nhưng tôi chưa bao giờ tìm được một biện minh cụ thể nào về việc học tiếng Ý. Tại sao không học gạo tiếng Pháp hay tiếng Nga như mình đã học nhiều năm trước? Hay học nói tiếng Tây Ban Nha, cách tốt hơn giúp mình giao tiếp với hàng triệu đồng bào Mỹ của mình? Mình sẽ làm gì với tiếng Ý? Không những thế mình sắp chuyển đến đó. Sẽ thực tế hơn nếu học chơi đàn phong cầm. Nhưng tại sao mọi thứ phải luôn có một ứng dụng thực tế? Tôi đã làm một tên lính mẫn cán nhiều năm rồi – làm việc, tạo dựng, không bao giờ trật một hạn chót nào, quan tâm đến những người thân yêu, đến nướu răng của tôi, đến hồ sơ tín dụng, bầu cử v.v... Đời sống này chỉ bao hàm nghĩa vụ thôi sao? Trong giai đoạn mất mát tối tăm này, tôi có cần bất kỳ thanh minh nào cho việc học tiếng Ý ngoài việc đó là thứ duy nhất tôi có thể tưởng tượng sẽ đem lại cho mình chút vui thích nào đó ngay lúc này? Và dù sao, muốn học một ngôn ngữ cũng không phải là mục tiêu quá đáng. Nó không như điều tôi nói ở tuổi ba mươi hai, “Tôi muốn trở thành diễn viên vũ ba lê chính cho đoàn Ba lê New York.” Học một ngôn ngữ là một cái gì đó ta thật sự có thể làm. Nên tôi ghi danh học tại một trong những điểm giáo dục thường xuyên (hay Trường Đêm dành cho Quý cô Ly dị). Bạn bè tôi thấy chuyện này vui nhộn. Bạn tôi là Nick hỏi, “Tại sao bồ học tiếng Ý? Để - phòng khi Ý xâm lược Ethiopia lần nữa, và lần này thành công thực sự - bồ có thể khoác lác là biết một thứ tiếng được sử dụng ở cả hai xứ sở à?” Nhưng tôi thích nó. Với tôi mỗi từ là một con chim sẻ líu lo, một trò ma thuật, một cái kẹo mềm sô cô la. Tôi thường lõm bõm dưới mưa về nhà sau giờ học, pha một bồn nước nóng, rồi nằm đó trong bọt xà phòng đọc to cuốn từ điển tiếng Ý cho mình nghe, làm sao lãng tâm trí mình khỏi những áp lực của vụ ly hôn và nỗi buồn tan nát. Mấy con chữ làm tôi cười thích thú. Tôi bắt đầu gọi chiếc di động của mình là il mio telefonino (“chiếc di động bé xíu xiu của tôi”). Tôi đã trở thành một trong những người rầy rà luôn nói Ciao! Chỉ có điều tôi còn quá rầy rà, vì tôi luôn giải thích từ ciao là từ đâu. (Nếu bạn cần biết, nó là viết tắt của một cụm từ dân Venice thời Trung cổ dùng như một lời chào thân mật: Sono il suo schiavo! Nghĩa là, “Tôi là nô lệ của anh!”) Chỉ nói những từ này thôi cũng khiến tôi cảm thấy mình gợi tình và hạnh phúc. Luật sư lo vụ ly dị của tôi bảo tôi không phải lo; bà nói bà từng có một https://thuviensach.vn thân chủ (người Hàn Quốc theo huyết thống), sau một vụ ly dị gớm guốc, đã hợp pháp đổi tên thành một tên Ý nào đó, chỉ để cảm thấy mình gợi tình và hạnh phúc trở lại. Rốt cuộc có lẽ tôi sẽ chuyển đến Ý... https://thuviensach.vn 7 Điều đáng kể nữa xảy ra trong thời gian đó là chuyến phiêu lưu kỷ luật tinh thần mới tìm thấy. Dĩ nhiên là được giúp đỡ và tiếp tay, tôi được làm quen với một Sư phụ Ấn Độ đang còn sống – mà tôi sẽ luôn phải cám ơn David vì điều đó. Toi được làm quen với Sư phụ của mình đêm đầu tiên tôi tới căn hộ của David. Tôi gần như phải lòng cả hai người cùng một lúc. Tôi bước vào căn hộ của David và thấy bức ảnh một phụ nữ Ấn đẹp rạng rỡ trên kệ gương liền hỏi, “Ai vậy?” Anh ấy nói, “Đó là vị đạo sư của anh.” Tim tôi đập lỗi một nhịp, vấp ào và rồi té sấp. Rồi tim tôi đứng dậy, phủi bụi, hít một hơi thật sâu rồi nói, “Tôi muốn một vị đạo sư.” Tôi muốn nói theo nghĩa đen là chính tim tôi nói điều này, nói bằng miệng tôi. Tôi cảm thấy sự phân chia kỳ lạ này ở mình, và tâm trí tôi trong giây phút bước ra khỏi thân xác tôi, đầy sửng sốt quay nhanh lại đối diện tim tôi và thầm thì hỏi: “Mi MUỐN thật chứ?” “Đúng vậy,” tim tôi trả lời. “Ta muốn.” Rồi trí tôi hỏi tim tôi, có chút chế nhạo, “Từ KHI NÀO vậy?” Nhưng tôi đã biết câu trả lời: từ cái đêm trên sàn phòng tắm ấy. Lạy Chúa, nhưng tôi muốn một vị đạo sư. Ngay lập tức tôi bắt đầu tưởng tượng ra nếu có một vị thầy như vậy thì sẽ thế nào. Tôi tưởng tượng người phụ nữ Ấn xinh đẹp này sẽ đến căn hộ của mình vài tối mỗi tuần và chúng tôi sẽ ngồi với nhau uống trà và đàm đạo về linh thiêng, bà sẽ giao cho tôi các bài đọc và giải thích tầm quan trọng của các cảm giác lạ tôi cảm thấy khi tham thiền... Toàn bộ mộng mị này nhanh chóng bị quét sạch khi David kể cho tôi nghe về uy tín quốc tế của người phụ nữ này, về hàng chục ngàn môn đệ của bà – nhiều người trong số họ chưa từng trực tiếp gặp mặt bà. Tuy nhiên, anh nói, thành phố New York này, mỗi tối thứ Ba có một buổi họp mặt các tín đồ của sư phụ, họ tập hợp thành một nhóm để tham thiền và tụng kinh. David nói, “Nếu em không quá ghê cái ý nghĩ ở trong một căn phòng với vài trăm người để xưng tụng tên Thượng Đế bằng tiếng Phạn, thỉnh thoảng em có thể đến.” Tối thứ Ba sau đó tôi đi cùng anh. Chẳng những không ghê sợ những con người trông bình thường đang cầu nguyện Thượng Đế này, trái lại tôi còn cảm thấy tâm hồn mình trở nên trong suốt từ sau buổi cầu kinh ấy. Tôi trở về nhà đêm đó mà cảm thấy như thể không khí có thể luân chuyển trong tôi, như thể tôi là vải sạch phấp phới trên dây phơi, như chính New York đã trở thành một thành phố làm bằng giấy gạo – còn tôi đủ nhẹ để chạy trên khắp mọi mái nhà. Tôi bắt đầu đến các buổi tụng kinh mỗi thứ Ba. Rồi tôi bắt đầu tham thiền mỗi sáng với câu chú tiếng Phạn cổ mà Sư phụ ban cho tất cả môn sinh của bà (câu chú tôn quý Om Namah Shivaya, nghĩa là, “Tôi tôn kính thiêng liêng ngự trị trong tôi”). Rồi tôi được nghe đích thân Sư phụ nói lần đầu tiên, và những lời bà nói làm tôi nổi da gà toàn thân, thậm chí khắp da mặt. Và khi nghe nói bà có một Ashram ở Ấn Độ, tôi biết mình phải dến đó càng nhanh càng tốt. https://thuviensach.vn 8 Dù sao, trong khi chờ đợi tôi phải tiếp tục chuyến đi tới Indonesia này. Một lần nữa, chuyện này xảy ra do phân công của một tờ tạp chí. Đúng lúc tôi đang cảm thấy đặc biệt thương thân mình vì đổ vỡ, cô đơn và bị giam cầm trong Trại Giam Ly Hôn, một biên tập viên của một tờ tạp chí phụ nữ hỏi bà có thể thanh toán các chi phí để tôi đến Bali viết một câu chuyện về các kỳ ẩn dật Yoga không. Đáp lại tôi hỏi bà một loạt câu hỏi, chủ yếu là về các chủ đề Đậu màu xanh phải không? Và Có phải Giáo hoàng theo Thiên Chúa giáo không? Khi tôi đến Bali (một nơi, nói gọn là, rất đẹp) người thầy đang trông nom một kỳ ẩn dật Yoga hỏi chúng tôi: “Trong thời gian tất cả các bạn đang ở đây, có ai muốn đi thăm một thầy mo Bali đời thứ chín không?” (lại một câu hỏi quá rõ ràng không cần trả lời), và thế là một đêm tất cả chúng tôi đến nhà ông ấy. Hóa ra, ông thầy mo là một ông già nhỏ người, da nâu đỏ, ánh mắt vui vẻ với cái miệng răng sún gần hết và sẽ không quá phóng đại nếu nói ông giống hệt nhân vật Yoda trong Chiến tranh giữa các vì sao. Tên ông là Ketut Liyer. Ông nói thứ tiếng Anh rời rạc và rất là thú vị, nhưng cũng có một người phiên dịch giúp mõi khi ông bị kẹt một từ nào đó. Thầy Yoga của chúng tôi đã dặn trước là mỗi người chúng tôi có thể nêu ra một câu hỏi hay vấn đề với ông thầy mo, và ông ấy sẽ cố giúp chúng tôi với những rắc rối của mình. Trong nhiều này tôi nghĩ xem sẽ hỏi ông cái gì. Những ý tưởng ban đầu của tôi rất không đâu vào đâu. Ông có thể khiến chồng tôi chấp thuận ly hôn không? Ông có thể làm cho David lại cảm thấy hấp dẫn tình dục với tôi không? Tôi đã thật sự xấu hổ vì những ý nghĩ như vậy của mình: ai lại đi cả một hành trình dài vòng quanh trái đất gặp một thầy mo già ở Indonesia, chỉ để yêu cầu ông ta can thiệp giùm rắc rối về đàn ông? Vậy nên khi ông già hỏi ngay tôi là tôi thực sự muốn gì, tôi đã tìm thấy những lời khác, những lời lẽ chân thật hơn. “Tôi muốn có một chứng nghiệm trường cửu về Thượng Đế.” Tôi nói với ông ấy. “Đôi khi tôi cảm thấy như thể mình nắm bắt được điều thiêng liêng của thế giới này, nhưng rồi tôi đánh mất nó vì sao lãng trong những ham muốn và sợ hãi nhỏ nhặt của mình. Tôi muốn lúc nào cũng được bên Thượng Đế. Nhưng tôi không muốn làm thầy tu, hay từ bỏ hoàn toàn những thú vui trần tục. Tôi nghĩ điều mình muốn học hỏi là làm sao sống trên đời này và thưởng thức những thú vui của nó, nhưng đồng thời cũng hiến dâng mình cho Thượng Đế.” Ketut nói ông có thể trả lời câu hỏi của tôi bằng một bức tranh. Ông cho tôi xem bức hình một lần ông đã vẽ khi tham thiền. Đó là một hình người bán nam bán nữ, đứng thẳng, hai tay chắp lại cầu nguyện. Nhưng hình người này có bốn chân và không có đầu. Thay vào đó là một tán lá dương xỉ dại và hoa. Bên trên trái tim có một gương mặt nhỏ tươi cười. “Để tìm thấy cân bằng như cô muốn,” Ketut nói qua người phiên dịch, “cô phải trở thành như vậy. Cô phải đứng vững trên mặt đất đến độ như thể cô có bốn chân, thay vì hai. Bằng cách đó, cô có thể trụ lại trên thế gian. Nhưng cô phải thôi nhìn thế gian bằng cái đầu của mình. Thay vào đó, cô phải nhìn bằng trái tim. Bằng cách đó, cô sẽ nhận biết Thượng Đế.” https://thuviensach.vn Rồi ông hỏi ông có thể xem tướng tay cho tôi không. Tôi chìa tay trái cho ông và ông bắt đầu ráp tôi lạ như ráp trò chơi đố ba mảnh. “Cô là một người chu du thế giới,” ông bắt đầu. Tôi nghĩ chuyện này có lẽ phần nào hiển nhiên, vì rằng lúc này đây tôi đang ở Indonesia, nhưng tôi không muốn ép câu chuyện... “Cô gặp nhiều may mắn hơn bất kỳ ai ta đã từng gặp. Cô sẽ sống thọ, có nhiều bạn bè, nhiều trải nghiệm. Cô sẽ thấy cả thế giới. Cô chỉ có duy nhất một vấn đề trong đời mình. Cô lo lắng quá nhiều. Lúc nào cô cũng quá xúc động, quá bồn chồn. Nếu ta hứa với cô là cô sẽ không bao giờ có lý do gì để lo nghĩ về bất cứ điều gì trong đời mình, cô có tin ta không?” Tôi bồn chồn gật đầu mà không tin ông ấy. “Về công việc, cô làm việc gì đó có tính sáng tạo, có thể như một nghệ sĩ, và cô được trả rất nhiều tiền cho việc mình làm. Cô sẽ luôn được trả nhiều tiền cho việc làm của cô. Cô rất rộng rãi về tiền bạc, có lẽ quá hào phóng. Cũng là một vấn đề. Cô sẽ mất tất cả tiền bạc một lần trong đời mình. Ta nghĩ có lẽ chuyện này sẽ sớm xảy ra thôi.” “Tôi nghĩ có lẽ điều đó sẽ xảy ra trong vòng sáu tháng đến mười tháng tới,” tôi nói khi nghĩ đến vụ ly hôn của mình. Ketut gật đầu như muốn nói: Đúng vậy, gần đúng thế. “Nhưng đừng lo,” ông nói. “Sau khi mất hết cả tiền, cô sẽ có lại tất cả. Cô sẽ ổn ngay thôi. Cô sẽ có hai cuộc hôn nhân trong dời mình. Một ngắn ngủi, một lâu dài. Và cô sẽ có hai đứa con...” Tôi đợi ông nói “một đứa cao, một đứa thấp”, nhưng ông đột nhiên im lặng, cau mày nhìn lòng bàn tay tôi. Rồi ông nói, “Thật kỳ lạ...”, điều này là thứ gì đó ta chẳng bao giờ muốn nghe từ miệng thầy xem tướng tay hay nha sĩ của mình. Ông yêu cầu tôi đi lại ngay dưới ngọn đèn treo để ông có thể nhìn rõ hơn. “Ta lầm rồi,” ông nói. “Cô sẽ chỉ có một đứa con. Về sau này trong đời, một đứa con gái. Có lẽ. Nếu cô quyết định... nhưng ở đây còn có điều gì khác nữa.” Ông cau mày, rồi nhìn lên, đột nhiên hoàn toàn tự tin. “Một ngày gần đây cô sẽ trở lại Bali này. Cô phải trở lại. Cô sẽ ở đây tại Bali trong ba, có thể bốn tháng. Cô sẽ là bạn của ta. Có lẽ cô sẽ sống ở đây với gia đình ta. Ta có thể thực hành tiếng Anh với cô. Ta chẳng bao giờ có ai để cùng thực hành tiếng Anh cả. Ta nghĩ cô giỏi với chữ nghĩa lắm. Ta nghĩ công việc sáng tạo mà cô đã làm là cái gì đó về chữ nghĩa, phải không nào?” “Đúng vậy!” Tôi nói. “Tôi là một nhà văn. Tôi viết sách.” “Cô là một nhà văn từ New York,” ông nói, tán thành xác nhận. “Vậy là cô sẽ trở lại Bali và sống ở đây và dạy tiếng Anh. Và ta sẽ dạy cô tất cả những gì ta biết.” Rồi ông đứng lên và phủi hai tay, như kiểu: Nhất định rồi đấy. Tôi nói, “Nếu ông nói nghiêm túc, thưa ông. Tôi cũng nghiêm túc.” Ông nhìn tôi cười rạng rỡ với cái miệng sún và nói: “Hẹn gặp lại, cá sấu Mỹ.” https://thuviensach.vn 9 Giờ đây, tôi là loại người mà, khi một thầy mo Indonesia đời thứ chín phán rằng mi có số phận phải đến Bali và sống với ông ta trong vòng bốn tháng, nghĩa là mi phải làm tất cả để thực hiện điều đó. Và cuối cùng, toàn bộ ý tưởng về chuyện du hành năm này của tôi bắt đầu thành hình như vậy đấy. Nhất định thế nào tôi cũng phải trở lại Indonesia lần này bằng tiền túi của mình. Chuyện này là hiển nhiên. Dù rằng tôi vẫn chưa thể hình dung ra làm sao để thực hiện việc đó, dựa trên đời sống hỗn loạn và lo âu của mình. (Không những tôi vẫn còn một vụ ly hôn tốn kém phải lo, và những-rắc-rối-với-David, mà vẫn còn một công việc ở tạp chí không cho phép tôi đi đâu liền ba hay bốn tháng.) Nhưng tôi phải trở lại đó. Phải không? Không phải ông ấy đã báo trước chuyện này rồi sao? Vấn đề là ở chỗ, tôi cũng muốn đi Ấn Độ để viếng thăm Ashram của Sư phụ tôi, và đi Ấn cũng là một chuyện tốn kém thời gian và tiền bạc. Để vấn đề còn rối tinh rối mù hơn, gần đây tôi cũng khát khao được sang Ý, để có thể thực hành tiếng Ý ngay trong khung cảnh đó, mà cũng vì ý tưởng sống một thời gian trong một nền văn hóa mà thú vui và cái đẹp được trọng vọng đã cuốn hút tôi. Tất cả những mong muốn này dường như mâu thuẫn nhau. Đặc biệt là mâu thuẫn Ý/Ấn. Cái gì quan trọng hơn? Cái phần trong tôi muốn ăn thịt bê ở Venice? Hay cái phần trong tôi muốn thức dậy thật sớm trước rạng đông trong sự khổ hạnh của một Ashram để bắt đầu một ngày dài tham thiền và cầu nguyện? Nhà thơ vĩ đại Sufi và nhà hiền triết Rumi đã từng khuyên môn đệ của mình ghi ra ba điều họ muốn nhất trong đời. Rumi cảnh cáo, nếu bất kỳ điều gì trong danh sách này mâu thuẫn với điều khác, các người chỉ chịu bất hành thôi. Ông dạy, tốt hơn nên sống một cuộc sống nhất tâm. Nhưng còn những ích lợi khi sống hài hòa giữa những thái cực thì sao? Nếu ta có thể bằng cách nào đó tạo ra một cuộc đời đủ khoáng đạt để có thể đưa tất cả những trái ngược có vẻ phi lý khớp vào một thế giới quan không loại trừ điều gì cả thì sao? Sự thật của tôi đúng là điều tôi đã nói với ông thầy mo ở Bali – tôi muốn nếm trải cả hai. Tôi muốn cả thú vui trần thế lẫn siêu nghiệm thiêng liêng – những vinh quang đối ngẫu của một kiếp người. Tôi muốn cái mà người Hy Lạp gọi là kalos kai agathos, sự cân xứng đặc biệt giữa thiện và mỹ. Tôi đã bỏ lỡ cả hai trong suốt những năm nặng nề đã qua, vì cả thú vui và lòng sùng đạo đều đòi hỏi một không gian yên bình để đơm hoa kết trái mà tôi thì lại sống trong một cái máy ép rác khổng lồ của tâm trạng bất an triền miên. Còn làm sao để cân bằng thôi thúc tìm kiếm thú vui và khát khao sùng tín... thôi được, thế nào cũng có một cách để học được bí quyết này. Và ngay từ chuyến lưu lại ngắn ngày ở Bali, tôi đã thấy dường như mình có thể học được điều này từ người Bali. Thậm chí có thể từ chính ông thầy mo. Bốn chân trên mặt đất, một cái đầu đầy lá cây, nhìn thế gian bằng trái tim... Vậy là tôi thôi cố gắng chọn lựa – Ý? Ấn Độ? Hay Indonesia? – và cuối cùng chỉ thừa nhận là mình muốn đến tất cả những xứ sở này. Bốn tháng ở mỗi nơi. Một năm cả thảy. Tất nhiên giấc mơ này có chút xíu tham vọng hơn. Nhưng đây là điều tôi muốn. Và tôi biết rằng mình muốn viết về nó. Cũng chẳng có gì là quá đáng khi tôi muốn khám phá thấu đáo chính những nước này; và điều này tôi đã làm. Hơn thế nữa tôi là muốn thăm dò thấu đáo một khía cạnh của chính mình trong khung cảnh của mỗi nước nơi có truyền thống làm điều ấy https://thuviensach.vn rất tốt. Tôi muốn khám phá nghệ thuật hoan lạc ở Ý, nghệ thuật sùng tín ở Indonesia là nghệ thuật cân bằng cả hai. Chỉ mãi về sau khi thú nhận ước mơ này, tôi mới nhận thấy sự trùng hợp tài tình là cả ba nước này đều bắt đầu bằng chữ I[11]. Dường như đây à một dấu hiệu khá tốt lành trên hành trình tự khám phá. Giờ nếu bạn đồng ý thì hãy hình dung xem tất cả những cơ hội chế giễu mà ý tưởng này tung ra giữa đám bạn bè láu cá của tôi. Tôi muốn đến Ba Chữ I, phải không? Vậy sao không ành một năm ở Iran, Ivory Coast[12] và Iceland? Hoặc còn hay hơn – sao không hành hương đến Ba Tiểu bang Lớn bắt đầu bằng chữ I: Triumvirate of Iclip, I-95 và Ikea? Cô bạn Susan của tôi gợi ý có lẽ tôi nên thành lập một tổ chức cứu trợ phi lợi nhuận gọi là “Phụ nữ ly dị không biên giới”. Nhưng tất cả những trò đùa này đều chỉ là trên tranh luận thôi vì “tôi” vẫn chưa tự do để đi đâu hết. Vụ ly dị đó – rất lâu sau khi tôi ra khỏi hôn nhân – vẫn chưa diễn ra. Tôi đã bắt đầu phải gây sức ép pháp lý với chồng, làm những điều khủng khiếp vì cơn ác mộng ly dị tồi tệ nhất của mình, như tống đạt giấy tờ và viết những cáo buộc quỷ quai (theo đòi hỏi của luật tiểu bang New York) viện dẫn sự tàn nhẫn tinh thần của anh ấy – những tài liệu không có chỗ cho phẩm chất tinh tế, hoàn toàn không thể nói với thẩm phán, “Nghe này, đó là một mối quan hệ thực sự phức tạp và tôi cũng đã phạm những lỗi lầm to lớn, và tôi rất lấy làm tiếc về điều đó, nhưng tất cả những gì tôi muốn là được phép ra đi.” (Ở đây tôi dừng để dâng lời cầu nguyện cho bạn đọc cao quý của tôi: cầu mong các bạn không bao giờ phải có một vụ ly dị ở New York.) Mùa xuân năm 2003 ấy mọi việc đến điểm sôi. Một năm rưỡi sau tôi ra đi, cuối cùng chồng tôi cũng đã sẵn sàng thảo luận các điều khoản thỏa thuận. Phải, anh ấy muốn tiền mặt và căn nhà và tiền cho thuê căn hộ Manhattan – tất cả mọi thứ tôi đã đề nghị trong suốt thời gian này. Nhưng anh ấy còn đòi những thứ thậm chí tôi chưa từng nghĩ đến (một quyền lợi trong nhuận bút sách tôi viết trong thời gian hôn nhân, một phần bản quyền đối với phim có thể được dựng trong tương lai trên tác phẩm của tôi, một phần chia các tài khoản lương hưu của tôi, vân vân...) và đến đây thì cuối cùng tôi phải lên tiếng phản đối. Nhiều tháng trời thương lượng đã diễn ra giữa các luật sư của chúng tôi, một thỏa hiệp linh tinh đủ thứ nhích từng bước một đến bàn thương lượng và bắt đầu có vẻ như chồng tôi có thể sẽ thực sự chấp nhận một thỏa thuận đã sửa đổi. Điều đó sẽ khiến tôi trả giá đắt, nhưng một tranh chấp tại tòa án sẽ tốn kém thời gian và tiền bạc hơn rất nhiều, chưa kể là làm mục ruỗng tâm hồn. Nếu anh ta ký thỏa thuận, tất cả những gì tôi phải làm là thanh toán và bỏ đi. Mà điều ấy thì ổn với tôi vào thời điểm đó. Quan hệ giữa chúng tôi giờ đây đã hoàn toàn sụp đổ, thậm chí cả phép lịch sự giữa chúng tôi cũng đã không còn, tất cả những gì tôi muốn thêm nữa chỉ là một cánh cửa. Vấn đề là – anh ta sẽ ký hay không? Thêm nhiều tuần trôi qua vì anh ta còn tranh luận nhiều chi tiết nữa. Nếu anh ta không đồng ý dàn xếp này, chúng tôi sẽ phải ra tòa. Một phiên tòa gần như chắc chắn có nghĩa là mọi xu còn lại sẽ mất hết cho tòa án phí. Tệ hơn hết, một phiên tòa sẽ có nghĩa là một năm nữa – ít nhất – với tất cả tình trạng hỗn độn này. Nên bất cứ điều gì chồng tôi quyết định (và xét cho cùng, anh vẫn còn là chồng tôi), cũng sẽ quyết định một năm nữa của đời tôi. Tôi sẽ một thân một mình du lịch Ý, Ấn Độ và Indonesia? Hay tôi sẽ bị chất vấn tại một cuộc thẩm cung đâu đó trong tầng hầm phòng xử án? https://thuviensach.vn Mỗi ngày tôi gọi luật sư của mình mười bốn lần – có tin gì mới không? – và mỗi ngày bà ấy đều đoan chắc với tôi rằng bà đang làm hết sức mình, rằng bà sẽ gọi ngay lập tức khi thỏa thuận được ký. Cảm giác bồn chồn tôi cảm thấy lúc này nửa giống như chờ đợi bị gọi lên văn phòng hiệu trưởng nửa như phỏng đoán các kết quả sinh thiết. Tôi muốn kể là tôi vẫn bình thản và Thiền, nhưng không phải vậy. Một vài đêm, trong cơn giận dữ dâng trào, tôi đập nhừ tử cái ghế dài của mình bằng cái gậy softball[13]. Phần lớn thời gian tôi chỉ trầm cảm đau đớn. Trong khi ấy, David và tôi lại chia tay. Lần này, dường như là mãi mãi. Hay cũng có thể không – chúng tôi không thể thôi nhau hoàn toàn. Thường thì khát khao hy sinh tất cả cho tình yêu dành cho anh ấy xâm chiếm tôi. Nhưng những lúc khác, tôi có bản năng ngược lại hoàn toàn – dựng lên càng nhiều càng tốt những lục địa và đại dương giữa tôi và người đàn ông ấy, hy vọng tìm thấy thanh thản và hạnh phúc. Giờ thì trên mặt tôi xuất hiện các nếp nhăn, những rãnh sâu thường trực giữa hai lông mày, vì khóc và vì lo âu. Và giữa tất cả những thứ ấy, người ta xuất bản một cuốn sách bìa mềm tôi viết vài năm trước và tôi phải thực hiện một chuyến quảng cáo nhỏ. Tôi đưa cô bạn Iva của mình theo cho có bạn. Iva bằng tuổi tôi nhưng lớn lên ở Beirut, Lebanon. Điều đó có nghĩa là, khi tôi đang chơi thể thao và thử giọng trong các vở nhạc kịch tại một trường trung học cấp hai ở Connecticut, thì cô ấy rúm mình trong hầm trú bom năm đêm một tuần, cố để không chết. Tôi không rõ toàn bộ việc tiếp xúc sớm với bạo lực này đã tạo ra một con người giờ đây cứng rắn đến thế sao, nhưng Iva là một trong những người điềm tĩnh nhất tôi biết. Hơn nữa, cô có cái mà tôi gọi là “Số điện thoại riêng đến vũ trụ” gần như một kênh đặc biệt, chỉ-của- Iva, mở thường trực nối với thiêng liêng. Vậy là chúng tôi đang chạy xe ngang qua Kansas, và tôi đang trong tình trạng thường lệ của mình là bị xáo trộn đến vã mồ hôi vì vụ thỏa thuận ly dị đó – anh ta sẽ ký hay là không? – và tôi nói với Iva, “Tớ không nghĩ mình có thể chịu đựng một năm nữa ở tòa án. Ước gì tớ có thể viết một thỉnh nguyện cho Thượng Đế, cầu xin vụ này chấm dứt.” “Vậy sao cậu không làm?” Tôi giải thích với Iva những ý kiến cá nhân về cầu nguyện. cụ thể là tôi không thấy thoải mái khi thỉnh nguyện Thượng Đế những điều cụ thể, vì với tôi điều đó giống với một kiểu kém cỏi về đức tin. Tôi không thích hỏi, “Ngài làm thay đổi điều khó khăn này hay điều hó khăn nọ trong đời tôi được không? – Vì – ai biết được – có thể Thượng Đế muốn tôi đối mặt thử thách đó là có lý do. Thay vì vậy, tôi cảm thấy thoải mái hơn khi cầu xin có dũng khí để thanh thản đối diện bất kỳ điều gì xảy ra trong đời mình, bất luận mọi chuyện sẽ ra sao. Iva lịch sự lắng nghe rồi hỏi, “Cậu đào đâu ra cái ý nghĩ ngu ngốc đó vậy?” “Ý cậu là sao?” “Cậu lấy đâu ra cái ý nghĩ rằng cậu không được phép thỉnh nguyện vũ trụ bằng cầu nguyện? Cậu là một phần của vũ trụ này, Liz à. Cậu là một phần tử - cậu hoàn toàn có quyền tham dự vào những hành động của vũ trụ và bộc bạch những cảm nhận của mình. Vậy nên https://thuviensach.vn cứ đưa ý kiến của cậu ra ngoài thinh không kia. Cứ trình bày trường hợp của mình đi. Tin tớ đi – chí ít điều đó sẽ được xem xét.” “Thật chứ?” Tất cả những điều này đều lạ lùng đối với tôi. “Thật! Nghe này, ví dụ cậu phải viết một thỉnh cầu cho Thượng Đế ngay lúc này, cậu sẽ nói gì?” Tôi ngẫm nghĩ một lúc rồi rút ra một cuốn sổ và viết lời thỉnh nguyện này: Thượng Đế thân mến, Xin hãy can thiệp và giúp chấm dứt vụ ly dị này. Chồng tôi và tôi đã bất thành trong hôn nhân và giờ đây lại thất bại trong ly dị. Quá trình độc hại này đang đem đến khổ đau cho chúng tôi và những ai quan tâm đến chúng tôi. Tôi biết là ngài rất bận bịu với chiến tranh và thảm kịch và những xung đột lớn lao hơn rất nhiều so với những tranh chấp đang diễn ra của một đôi bất ổn. Nhưng theo tôi hiểu thì thì sự lành mạnh của hành tinh chịu ảnh hưởng bởi sự lành mạnh của mỗi cá nhân sống trên nó. Chỉ cần hai con người bị giam cầm trong mâu thuẫn, toàn thể thế giới cũng bị ô uế vì điều đó. Cũng vậy, nếu một hay hai người có thể thoát khỏi bất hòa, sức khỏe chung của toàn thế giới sẽ tăng theo, giống như một số tế bào khỏe mạnh trong một cơ thể có thể nâng cao sức khỏe chung của cơ thể đó. Vậy thì, đây là yêu cầu hèn mọn nhất của tôi, xin ngài giúp chúng tôi chấm dứt xung đột này, để hai con người nữa có thể có cơ hội trở nên tự do và lành mạnh, và vậy là thù địch và cay đắng trong một thế giới đã quá khổ đau sẽ giảm đi được chút ít. Tôi xin cám ơn Ngài đã để tâm. Trân trọng, Elizabeth M.Gilbert. Tôi đọc thỉnh cầu cho Iva nghe, và cô ấy gật đầu tán thành. “Tớ sẽ ký,” cô nói. Tôi trao tờ thỉnh nguyện cùng với cây bút cho cô, nhưng cô ấy quá bận lái xe nên nói, “Không, giả dụ là tớ đã ký rồi đó. Tớ ký trong tâm mình.” “Cảm ơn, Iva. Tớ rất cảm kích ủng hộ của cậu.” “Giờ thì, ai sẽ ký nữa?” cô hỏi. “Gia đình tớ. Mẹ tớ và bố tớ. Chị tớ.” “Được rồi,” cô nói. “Họ vừa ký rồi đó. Hãy xem là đã có thêm tên họ rồi. Tớ thực sự cảm thấy họ ký. Giờ thì họ có tên trong danh sách rồi. Tốt, còn ai sẽ ký nữa nào? Bắt đầu nêu tên đi.” https://thuviensach.vn Vậy là tôi bắt đầu nêu tên của tất cả những người tôi nghĩ có thể ký tờ thỉnh nguyện. Tôi nêu tên tất cả bạn thân của mình, rồi một số thành viên gia đình và một số đồng nghiệp. Sau mỗi tên, Iva nói quả quyết, “Rồi. Anh ấy vừa ký,” hay “Cô ấy vừa ký.” Thỉnh thoảng cô chen vào tên những người ký của chính cô, ví dụ, “Bố mẹ tớ vừa ký rồi đó. Họ nuôi dạy con mình trong chiến tranh. Họ ghét xung đột vô ích. Bố mẹ tớ sẽ rất vui thấy vụ ly dị của cậu chấm dứt.” Tôi nhắm mắt đợi xem còn nhớ ra tên nào nữa không. “Tớ nghĩ Bill và Hillary Clinton vừa mới ký,” tôi nói. “Tớ không nghi ngờ điều đó,” cô nói. “Nghe này, Liz, ai cũng có thể ký tờ thỉnh nguyện này. Cậu có hiểu điều đó không? Cứ kêu gọi bất kỳ ai, người sống hay kẻ đã chết, và bắt đầu thu thập chữ ký.” “Thánh Francis xứ Assisi vừa ký!” “Dĩ nhiên là ngài ấy đã ký!” Iva vỗ lên tay lái vẻ chắc chắn. Giờ thì tôi đang bịa ra: “Abraham Lincoln vừa ký! Rồi Gandhi, rồi Mandela và tất cả các sứ giả hòa bình. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mẹ Teresa, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson và Đạt Lai Lạt Ma... rồi bà tớ mất hồi năm 1984 và bà nội vẫn còn sống... rồi thầy dạy tiếng Ý của tớ, bác sĩ trị liệu của tớ, rồi người đại diện của tớ... rồi Martin Luther King Con và Katharine Hepburn... rồi Martin Scorseve (bạn không nhất thiết yêu cầu, nhưng ông ấy vẫn tử tế)... rồi Sư phụ của tớ, dĩ nhiên... và Joanne Woodward, rồi nữ thánh Joan d’Arc, rồi cả cô Carpenter, cô giáo lớp bốn của tớ, và Jim Henson...” Những cái tên cứ tràn ra. Trong gần một giờ, chúng không ngừng tràn ra khi chúng tôi chạy xe qua Kansas và thỉnh nguyện hòa bình của tôi kéo dài hết trang giấy vô hình này đến trang giấy vô hình khác với tên những người ủng hộ. Iva tiếp tục xác nhận – rồi, ông ấy đã ký, rồi, cô ấy đã ký – và trong tôi mênh mang một cảm giác được che chở, được bao bọc trong thiện chí tập thể của biết bao tâm hồn vĩ đại. Cuối cùng danh sách cạn dần, và bất an của tôi cũng vơi theo. Tôi buồn ngủ. Iva nói, “Chợp mắt chút đi. Tớ sẽ lái.” Tôi nhắm mắt lại. Một cái tên cuối cùng hiện ra. “Michael J. Fox vừa ký,” tôi thì thào rồi trôi vào giấc ngủ. Tôi không biết mình đã ngủ bao lâu, có lẽ chỉ mười phút, nhưng rất sâu. Khi tôi tỉnh dậy, Iva vẫn đang lái xe. Cô hát một khúc hát cho chỉ mình cô nghe. Tôi ngáp. Điện thoại di động của tôi reo. Tôi nhìn cái telefonino nhỏ khùng điên ấy đang rung phấn khích nơi chiếc gạt tàn trong chiếc xe thuê. Tôi cảm thấy mất phương hướng, gần như bị mê sau giấc ngủ ngắn, bất thần không thể nhớ ra cái điện thoại hoạt động ra sao. “Cứ nghe đi,” Iva nói, đã biết điều gì. “Trả lời chuyện đó đi.” Tôi nhấc máy, chào thì thào. https://thuviensach.vn “Tin tốt lành đây!” luật sư của tôi thông báo từ thành phố New York xa tít. “Anh ta vừa ký!” https://thuviensach.vn 10 Vài tuần sau, tôi đang sống ở Ý. Tôi đã bỏ việc, thanh toán thỏa thuận ly hôn của mình và các hóa đơn luật sư, từ bỏ căn nhà của mình, nhường lại căn hộ của mình, để đồ dùng cá nhân lại trong kho ở chỗ chị gái và thu dọn đồ đạc vào hai cái va li. Năm du hành của tôi bắt đầu. Và tôi có thể thật sự đủ điều kiện để làm việc này vì một phép lạ riêng tư kinh ngạc: nhà xuất bản của tôi đã mua trước cuốn sách tôi sẽ viết về chuyến chu du của mình. Nói cách khác, hóa ra tất cả diễn ra đúng y như ông thầy mo Indonesia đã tiên đoán. Tôi sẽ mất tất cả tiền của mình và ngay lập tức sẽ được bù lại – hay ít nhất nó cũng đủ để tôi mua cho mình một năm sống. Nên giờ đây tôi đang là cư dân Roma. Căn hộ tôi tìm được là một studio yên tĩnh trong một tòa nhà lịch sử, chỉ cách Spanish Steps một vài khối nhà hẹp, núp dưới bóng mát khoan dung của vườn Borghese tao nhã, phía cuối đường tính từ Piazza del Popolo nơi người La Mã xưa thường đua chiến xa. Tất nhiên, quận này hoàn toàn không có cái vẻ đồ sộ ngổn ngang của vùng phụ cận thành phố New York cũ của tôi nhìn qua lối vào đường hầm Lincoln, nhưng dù sao... Sẽ đủ thôi. https://thuviensach.vn 11 Bữa ăn đầu tiên của tôi ở Roma chẳng có gì nhiều. Chỉ một ít mì ống carbonara đặc sản và một món ăn kèm là rau bina chiên áp chảo và tỏi. (Nhà thơ lãng mạn vĩ đại Shelley đã từng khiếp hãi viết một bức thư cho một người bạn ở Anh về ẩm thực Ý, “Phụ nữ trẻ có địa vị xã hội thực sự có ăn – bạn sẽ chẳng bao giờ đoán được đâu – TỎI!”). Ngoài ra, tôi còn dùng atisô, chỉ để thử; người Roma hết sức tự hào về atisô của mình. Rồi cô phục vụ mang lại món ăn kèm miễn phí bất ngờ - một phần nhỏ hoa bí xanh chiên với một phết mỏng pho mát ở giữa (được chuẩn bị tinh tế đến nỗi có lẽ những bông hoa không nhận ra là mình không còn trên cành nữa). Sau món mì ống, tôi thử món thịt bê. Ô, rồi tôi còn uống một chai vang đỏ địa phương, chỉ dành cho tôi. Rồi ăn ít bánh mì nóng, với dầu ô liu và muối. Món Tiramisu tráng miệng. Về nhà sau bữa ăn đó, khoảng 11 giờ đêm, tôi có thể nghe thấy tiếng ồn từ một trong những tòa nhà trên phố tôi, cái gì đó nghe như một buổi tụ họp của các cô cậu tuổi lên bảy – một buổi tiệc sinh nhật chăng? Tiếng cười và la hét và chạy nhảy. Tôi trèo lên mấy bậc thang dẫn đén căn hộ của mình, nằm xuống chiếc giường mới rồi tắt đèn. Tôi đợi mình bắt đầu khóc hay lo lắng, vì đó là điều thường xảy ra với tôi khi đèn tắt, nhưng tôi thực sự cảm thấy ổn. Tôi thấy ổn. Tôi đã cảm thấy những dấu hiệu mãn nguyện đầu tiên. Cơ thể mệt lử của tôi hỏi thần trí mệt mỏi của tôi, “Vậy ra đây là tất cả những gì mi muốn?”. Không có câu trả lời. Tôi đã ngủ say rồi. https://thuviensach.vn 12 Trong mọi thành phố lớn ở Thế giới phương Tây, có một số thứ vẫn luôn luôn như vậy. Cũng những người đàn ông châu Phi luôn bán túi xách tay và kính mắt nhái hàng hiệu, và cũng những nhạc công Guatemala luôn chơi “Tôi thà một con chim sẻ hơn là một con ốc sên” bằng những chiếc kèn hơi của họ. Nhưng có một số thứ chỉ có ở Roma. Như người bán sandwich ở quầy hàng rất thoải mái gọi tôi là “người đẹp” mỗi khi chúng tôi nói chuyện. Cô muốn món panino[14] này nướng hay lạnh, bella? Hay những cặp hôn hít vuốt ve nhau khắp mọi nơi, như thể có một cuộc thi cho chuyện ấy vậy, xoắn lấy nhau trên những chiếc ghế dài, vuốt tóc và đũng quần nhau, ấp vào nhau và xoay mông liên tục... Và rồi đến những đài phun nước. Pliny the Elder đã từng viết: “Nếu ai đó xem xét sự dồi dào trong việc cung cấp nước công cộng của Roma, cho bồn tắm, bể chứa, mương, nhà cửa, vườn tược, biệt thự; và có chú ý đến cái khoảng cách mà nó đi, vươn lên những nhịp cầu xuyên qua những núi non, trải dài những thung lũng – anh ta sẽ thừa nhận là trên khắp thế giới chưa từng có gì phi thường hơn.” Rất lâu sau, tôi đã có một vài đối thủ cho đài phun nước ưa thích của mình ở Roma. Một là ở Villa Borghese. Ở giữa đài phun nước này có một gia đình bằng đồng đang vui đùa. Ông bố là một thần đồng áng còn bà mẹ là người bình thường. Họ có một cậu con trai thích ăn nho. Bố và mẹ ở trong tư thế kỳ lạ - đối mặt nhau, nắm lấy cổ tay nhau, cả hai cùng ngả người. Khó mà phân biệt được là họ đang vùng ra khỏi nhau vì bất hòa hay đang nhảy vòng quanh vui vẻ, nhưng ở họ tràn đầy sinh khí. Dù thế nào thì, cậu con trai ngồi trên cổ tay họ, ngay giữa hai người họ, vẫn thản nhiên trước vui đùa hay xung đột của họ, nhai tóp tép một chùm nho. Mấy cái móng guốc nhỏ chẻ đôi của cậu toòng teng phía dưới khi cậu ăn. (Cậu giống bố cậu.) Lúc này là đầu tháng Chín năm 2003. Thời tiết ấm áp và uể oải. Đến lúc này, ngày thứ tư của tôi ở Roma, bóng tôi vẫn chưa in trên lối vào một nhà thờ hay viện bảo tàng nào, thậm chí tôi cũng chưa xem sách hướng dẫn. Nhưng tôi cứ đi liên tu bất tận không mục đích, và cuối cùng đã tìm ra một nơi nhỏ xíu mà một người lái xe buýt thân thiện cho biết có bán Kem Ngon nhất ở Roma. Chỗ đó gọi là “Il Gelato di San Crispino”. Tôi không chắc, nhưng tôi nghĩ có thể dịch là “kem của vị thánh khô lạnh”. Tôi đã ăn thử loại kết hợp bưởi chùm và dưa. Rồi, sau buổi ăn chiều cũng tối ấy, tôi lặn lội cả quãng đường đến đó một lần cuối, chỉ để ăn thử một cốc quế-gừng. Mỗi ngày tôi cố gắng đọc hết một bài báo, bất luận mất bao lâu thời gian. Cứ khoảng ba từ là tôi phải tra từ điển một lần. Báo chí thời nay thật hấp dẫn. Khó mà hình dung được cái tít nào ấn tượng hơn “Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i Più Grassi d’Europa!” Lạy Chúa! Béo Phì! Tôi nghĩ, bài báo tuyên bố trẻ con Ý là những đứa trẻ mập nhất ở châu Âu! Đọc tiếp, tôi biết rằng trẻ con Ý mập hơn trẻ con Đức nhiều và mập hơn trẻ con Pháp rất nhiều. (Thật nhân từ, không thấy họ so sánh với trẻ con Mỹ.) Bài báo nói ngày nay trẻ em Ý ở độ tuổi lớn hơn cũng đang béo phì một cách nguy hiểm. (Ngành mì ống đã tự bào chữa.) Những thống kê báo động về chứng béo phì của trẻ em Ý được “una task force internazionale” – không cần phải dịch ở đây – công bố hôm qua. Tôi mất gần một giờ mới giải mã được cả bài báo https://thuviensach.vn này. Trong thời gian đó, tôi ăn một cái pizza và nghe một đứa trẻ Ý chơi đàn phong cầm bên kia đường. tôi thấy đứa bé không mập lắm, nhưng có lẽ vì cậu là dân gypsy. Tôi không rõ mình có hiểu sai dòng cuối của bài báo không nhưng hình như có vài thảo luận từ phía chính phủ cho rằng cách duy nhất để đối phó với cơn khủng hoảng béo phì ở Ý là đánh thuế trên số cân thừa...? Chuyện này có thể nào là thật không? Sau một vài tháng ăn kiểu này, liệu họ có truy đến tôi không? Điều quan trọng nữa là đọc báo mỗi ngày để xem Giáo hoàng đang ra sao. Ở Roma này, người ta ghi lại sức khỏe của Giáo hoàng trong báo hàng ngày, giống như với thời tiết, hay chương trình truyền hình. Hôm nay Giáo hoàng đang mệt. Hôm qua, Giáo hoàng đỡ mệt hơn hôm nay. Ngày mai, chúng ta hy vọng Giáo hoàng sẽ không mệt như hôm nay. Đối với tôi nơi đây gần như một thiên đường của ngôn ngữ. Với một người luôn muốn nói tiếng Ý, còn gì có thể hơn được Roma? Như thể ai đó dựng nên cả thành phố chỉ để phù hợp các đặc điểm của tôi, nơi mọi người (ngay cả trẻ con, ngay cả tài xế taxi, ngay cả diễn viên các tiết mục quảng cáo!) đều nói thứ ngôn ngữ có ma lực này. Cứ như cả xã hội đang chung sức dạy tôi tiếng Ý. Thậm chí họ còn in báo chỉ bằng tiếng Ý khi tôi đang ở đây nữa chứ; họ không phiền! Ở đây họ có những hiệu sách chỉ bán sách viết bằng tiếng Ý! Tôi đã tìm thấy một hiệu sách như vậy sáng hôm qua và cảm thấy như mình bước vào một cung điện bị bỏ bùa mê. Tất cả đều bằng tiếng Ý – thậm chí cả Dr.Seuss. Tôi thơ thẩn khắp nơi, sờ vào mọi quyển sách, bất kỳ ai đang nhìn tôi sẽ nghĩ tôi là một người bản ngữ. Chao ôi, tôi muốn tiếng Ý rộng mở cho tôi biết chừng nào! Cảm giác này gợi nhớ chuyện hồi tôi bốn tuổi, còn chưa biết đọc nhưng đã khát khao học hỏi. Tôi nhớ là đã ngồi trong phòng đợi ở phòng mạch với mẹ, tay cầm tờ tạp chí Good Houskeeping trước mặt, chậm rãi lật các trang báo, nhìn chằm chằm vào bản văn với hy vọng người lớn trong phòng đợi sẽ nghĩ là mình đang đọc thực sự. Từ đó đến nay tôi vẫn chưa cảm thấy thèm khát lĩnh hội đến thế. Tôi tìm được vài tác phẩm của các nhà thợ Mỹ ở hiệu sách đó, với nguyên bản tiếng Anh in ở một mặt và phần dịch tiếng Ý ở mặt kia. Tôi mua một cuốn của Robert Lowell, một cuốn của Louise Glỳck. Ở đây khắp nơi đều có những khóa đàm thoại tự phát. Hôm nay, khi tôi đang ngồi trên một chiếc ghế trong công viên thì một phụ nữ lớn tuổi nhỏ bé mặc một đồ đen đến gần, ngồi xuống cạnh tôi và bắt đầu hăm he tôi về một điều gì đó. Tôi lắc đầu, nín thinh và bối rối. Tôi xin lỗi bằng tiếng Ý rất lịch sự, “Tôi xin lỗi, nhưng tôi không nói tiếng Ý,” và có vẻ như bà sẽ quất tôi bằng một cái thìa gỗ, nếu bà có. Bà khăng khăng: “Cô hiểu mà!” (Thật thú vị, bà ấy nói đúng. Câu nói đó thì tôi có hiểu.) Giờ bà muốn biết tôi từ đâu đến. Tôi bảo bà tôi từ New York rồi hỏi bà từ đâu đến. Rõ rồi – bà ấy từ Roma. Nghe thấy thế, tôi vỗ tay như trẻ con. A, Roma! Roma xinh đẹp! Tôi thích Roma lắm! Roma dễ thương! Bà lắng nghe sự khoa trương thô thiển của tôi một cách hoài nghi. Rồi bà tỏ ra thích thú điều đó và hỏi tôi lập gia đình chưa. Tôi nói tôi đã ly dị. Đây là lần đầu tiên tôi nói điều này với bất kỳ ai, và giờ thì tôi đang vậy, nói bằng tiếng Ý. Dĩ nhiên là bà hỏi: “Perché?” Ôi... “Tại sao” là một câu hỏi khó trả lời trong bất kỳ ngôn ngữ nào. Tôi lắp bắp, rồi cuối cùng cũng nói được là “L’abbiamo rotto” (chúng tôi đã đổ vỡ). Bà gật đầu, đứng lên, bước ra đường đến trạm xe buýt, leo lên xe và thậm chí không quay lại nhìn tôi lần nữa. Bà ấy giận mình sao? Thật lạ, tôi đã ngồi trên ghế công viên đó đợi bà trong hai mươi phút, nghĩ một cách vô lý là bà có thể trở lại và tiếp tục chuyện trò, nhưng bà chẳng bao giờ trở lại. Tên bà là Celeste, phát âm phụ âm điếc ch, như trong cello. https://thuviensach.vn Trong ngày hôm đó lúc muộn hơn, tôi tìm thấy một thư viện. Trời ơi, tôi mê thư viện làm sao. Vì chúng ta đang ở Roma, thư viện này là một thứ cổ kính xinh đẹp, bên trong có một sân vườn mà ta sẽ không bao giờ có thể đoán được nó tồn tại nếu chỉ nhìn từ ngoài đường. Khu vườn vuông vức điểm xuyết bằng những cây cam vào ở giữa có một đài phun nước này sắp sửa là một đối thủ với những thứ ưa thích của tôi ở Roma, dù nó không giống bất kỳ thứ gì tôi từng thấy từ trước đến nay. Trước hết là, nó không được chắc chạm bằng đá cẩm thạch tráng lệ. Đây là một đài phun nước tự nhiên nhỏ, màu xanh đầy rêu. Nó giống như một bụi dương xỉ tua tủa đang rỏ nước. (Thực ra nó giống y như tán lá cây dại mọc ra từ đầu người cầu nguyện trong bức hình ông thầy mo già ở Indonesia vẽ cho tôi.) Nước phun ra từ trung tâm cây bụi đang trổ hoa này, rồi tưới trở lại trên lá, tạo nên một âm thanh u buồn và dễ chịu khắp cả sân. Tôi tìm thấy một chỗ ngồi dưới một cây cam rồi mở một trong những cuốn thơ đã mua hôm qua. Louise Glỳck. Đầu tiên tôi đọc bài thơ bằng tiếng Ý, rồi bằng tiếng Anh, rồi sững lại ở dòng này: Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana... “Từ tâm cuộc sống tôi, một đài phun nước tuyệt vời xuất hiện...” Tôi đặt cuốn sách vào lòng, lắc đầu khuây khỏa. https://thuviensach.vn 13 Thật ra, tôi không phải là lữ khách giỏi nhất thế giới. Tôi biết điều ấy vì tôi đã đi đây đó rất nhiều và đã gặp những người rất thạo chuyện này. Những người có năng khiếu thật sự. Tôi đã từng gặp những du khách thể chất khỏe mạnh đến nỗi có thể dùng hộp đánh giày uống nước từ một máng nước ở Calcutta mà không bao giờ mắc bệnh. Những người có thể làm quen với ngôn ngữ mới ở nơi những người khác trong chúng ta chỉ có thể mắc phải các bệnh truyền nhiễm. Những người biết cách làm một lính biên phòng ưa dọa nạt rút lui hay tán tỉnh một viên chức không hợp tác tại văn phòng thị thực. Những người có chiều cao và nước da hợp lý đến gần như trông bình thường dù họ đi đâu - ở Thổ Nhĩ Kỳ họ có thể thấy người Thổ, ở Mexico họ bỗng thành người Mexico, ở Tây Ban Nha họ có thể bị nhận lầm là một người Basque, ở Bắc Phi đôi khi người ta tưởng họ là người Ả Rập... Tôi không có những phẩm chất này. Đầu tiên, tôi không lẫn lộn được. Cao, tóc vàng hoe và nước da hồng, tôi giống một con hồng hạc hơn là một con tắc kè hoa. Trừ ở Dusseldolf ra, đi tới đâu tôi cũng nổi bật sặc sỡ. Khi ở Trung Quốc, phụ nữ trên đường phố thường đến gần tôi rồi trỏ tôi cho họ xem như thể tôi là một con thú xổng chuồng từ sở thú nào đó. Và con họ - chưa từng thấy thứ gì thật giống người ma mặt hồng đầu vàng này – thường òa khóc khi thấy tôi. Tôi thật sự ghét chuyện đó ở Trung Quốc. Tôi không rành (hay, đúng hơn, lười) nghiên cứ một nơi trước khi du lịch, tôi thường chỉ xuất hiện và xem chuyện gì xảy ra thôi. Khi du lịch kiểu này, điều thường “xảy ra” là ta mất rất nhiều thì giờ đứng giữa ga xe lửa và bối rối, hay mất quá nhiều tiền cho khách sạn vì không biết gì hơn. Nhận thức phương hướng và địa lý không vững của tôi có nghĩa là trong đời mình tôi đã thám hiểm cả sáu lục địa với chỉ một ý niệm mơ hồ nhất về việc mình đang ở đâu vào một thời điểm nhất định mà thôi. Ngoài cái la bàn sai bét trong bụng của mình, tôi còn thiếu sự điềm tĩnh riêng, điều này có thể là một của nợ khi đi lại. Tôi chưa bao giờ biết cách tạo cho mình cái vẻ trơ trơ như không tồn tại thật thành thạo, thứ rất hữu ích khi du lịch ở những nơi nguy hiểm, xa lạ. Bạn biết đấy – cái vẻ cực kỳ thoải mái, nhập vai hoàn toàn làm ta giống như thuộc về nơi đó, bất kỳ đâu, mọi nơi, ngay cả giữa bạo loạn ở Jakarta. Ồ, không. Khi tôi không biết mình đang làm gì, tôi trông có vẻ không biết mình đang làm gì. Khi tôi phấn khích hay lo lắng, tôi trông có vẻ khấn khích hay lo lắng. Khi tôi bị lạc, mà chuyện này thì thường xuyên, tôi trông có vẻ bị lạc. Mặt tôi là một máy phát rõ ràng mỗi ý nghĩ của tôi. Như David có lần nói, “Mặt em thì trái ngược với bộ mặt lạnh như tiền. Em có gương mặt luôn ‘tố giác’ em.” Và, trời, còn những rắc rối mà chuyện đi lại bắt bộ máy tiêu hóa của tôi phải chịu! Tôi thật sự không muốn mở cái vấn đề phiền hà đó (xin thứ lỗi cho từ ngữ này), nên chỉ cần nói rằng tôi đã nếm trải mọi thái cực khẩn cấp liên quan đến tiêu hóa. Một đêm ở Lebanon tôi ngã bệnh dữ dội đến nỗi tôi chỉ có thể cho rằng bằng cách nào đó mình đã nhiễm phải một kiểu virus Ebola Trung Đông. Ở Hungary, một kiểu tai họa về ruột hoàn toàn khác tôi phải chịu đã thay đổi mãi mãi cách tôi cảm nhận về thuật ngữ “Khối Xô Viết”. Và tôi cũng có yếu kém về thể xác khác nữa. Lưng tôi kiệt quệ ngay ngày đầu tiên ở châu Phi, tôi là thành viên duy https://thuviensach.vn nhất trong đoàn ra khỏi rừng rậm Venezuela với những vết nhện cắn nhiễm trùng, và tôi hỏi bạn – xin bạn đấy! – ai lại bị cháy nắng ở Stockholm? Dù sao, bất chấp mọi chuyện này, du lịch là tình yêu chân chính vĩ đại của đời tôi. Tôi đã luôn cảm thấy rằng, từ khi tôi mười sáu tuổi và lần đầu tiên đến Nga bằng tiền giữ trẻ dành dụm được, du lịch đáng bất kỳ giá nào và hy sinh nào. Tôi trung thành và kiên định trong tình yêu dành cho du lịch, trong khi không phải luôn trung thành và kiên định trong những tình yêu khác. Tôi cảm nhận về du lịch như cái cách một bà mẹ trẻ hạnh phúc cảm nhận về đứa con sơ sinh luôn luôn hiếu động, đau bụng và quá quắt của mình – tôi không quan tâm nó bắt mình chịu cái gì. Vì tôi tôn sùng nó. Vì nó là của tôi. Vì nó đúng là trông giống tôi. Nó có thể trớ khắp lên tôi nếu nó muốn – đơn giản là tôi không quan tâm. Dù sao, với cái lối của một con hồng hạc, tôi không hoàn toàn bất lực giữa đời. Tôi có một tập hợp các kỹ thuật sống của riêng mình. Tôi kiên nhẫn. Tôi biết cách gói ghém hành lý gọn nhẹ. Tôi là một người ăn chẳng kiêng gì. Tuy nhiên năng khiếu du lịch phi thường của tôi là tôi có thể kết bạn với bất kỳ ai. Tôi có thể làm bạn với người đã chết. Một lần tôi làm bạn với một tội phạm chiến tranh ở Serbia, và anh ta mời tôi thực hiện một kỳ nghỉ ở miền núi với gia đình anh ta. Không phải là tôi hãnh diện đưa những kẻ giết người hàng loạt Serbia vào danh sách người gần gũi thân yêu nhất của mình (tôi phải đối xử với anh ta như bạn bè vì một câu chuyện, và cũng là để anh ta không đấm tôi), nhưng tôi chỉ muốn nói là – tôi có thể làm điều đó. Nếu không có ai xung quanh để trò chuyện, có lẽ tôi sẽ bầu bạn với một đống tấm ốp tường đá Sheetrock cao bốn feet. Vì vậy mà tôi không ngại du lịch đến những nơi hẻo lánh nhất trên thế giới, không ngại bất cứ đâu nếu ở đó có người. Trước khi tôi đi Ý mọi người đã hỏi, “Cô có bạn bè nào ở Roma không?”, tôi thường lắc đầu nói không và thầm nghĩ. Nhưng tôi sẽ có. Thường khi đi du lịch ta gặp bạn bè mình một cách tình cờ, như khi ngồi cạnh họ trên xe lửa, hay trong quán ăn, hay trong một nhà giam. Nhưng đó là những gặp gỡ tình cờ, và ta đừng bao giờ nên tin cậy hoàn toàn vào sự tình cờ. Để có một phương pháp hệ thống hơn thì phải nói đến một hệ thống cũ rất quan trọng là “thư giới thiệu” (ngày nay có thể là một email), trịnh trọng giới thiệu ta với người quen của một người quen. Đây là cách thức tuyệt vời để gặp gỡ mọi người, nếu ta đủ trơ tráo gọi một cú điện thoại tiếp thị rồi tự mời mình đén nhà người ta ăn tối. Vậy nên trước khi đi Ý, tôi đã hỏi tất cả những người mình biết ở Mỹ là họ có bạn bè nào ở Roma không, và tôi vui mừng thông báo là tôi đã được cử ra nước ngoài với một danh sách đầu mối liên lạc Ý đáng kể. Trong tất cả những người được đề cử trong Danh Sách Bạn Ý Mới Tiềm Năng của tôi, tôi tò mò muốn gặp nhất một anh chàng tên là... chuẩn bị nghe đây... Luca Spaghetti. Luca Spaghetti là một người bạn tốt của cậu bạn thân Patrick McDevitt tôi quen từ những ngày còn học đại học. Và nói thật đó là tên của anh ấy, tôi thề có Chúa, tôi không bịa ra đâu. Thật quá điên rồ. Ý tôi là – thử nghĩ xem. Hãy tưởng tượng đi qua cuộc đời với một cái tên như Patrick McDevitt? Dầu sao, tôi định sẽ liên lạc với Luca Spaghetti càng sớm càng tốt. https://thuviensach.vn 14 Dù sao, đầu tiên tôi phải ổn định trường lớp đã. Lớp học của tôi bắt đầu hôm nay tại Học viện Nghiên cứu Ngôn ngữ Leonardo da Vinci, nơi tôi sẽ học tiếng Ý bốn giờ một ngày, năm ngày một tuần. Tôi rất háo hức đi học. Tôi thật là một sinh viên không biết mắc cỡ. Tối qua tôi bày quần áo của mình ra, y như tôi làm trước ngày đầu vào lớp một, với đôi giày da sơn và hộp đựng cơm trưa mới của mình. Toi hy vọng thầy giáo sẽ thích mình. Tất cả chúng tôi phải làm một bài kiểm tra vào ngày đầu tiên tại Học viện Leonardo da Vinci để được xếp vào các trình độ lớp tiếng Ý theo khả năng của mình. Khi nghe thấy chuyện này, tôi liền bắt đầu hy vọng mình không bị xếp vào lớp Trình độ Một, vì vậy sẽ rất bẽ mặt, vì rằng tôi đã học cả một học kỳ tiếng Ý tại Trường Đêm dành cho Quý cô Ly dị ở New York, và rằng tôi đã học thuộc lòng các thẻ ghi chú trong mùa hè, và rằng tôi đã ở Roma một tuần lễ, và đã thực tập tiếng Ý trực tiếp, thậm chí trò chuyện với các cụ bà về ly dị. Vấn đề là, tôi thậm chí không biết trường này có bao nhiêu lớp, nhưng ngay khi nghe từ trình độ, tôi nhất định là mình phải qua được bài kiểm tra để vào Trình độ Hai, ít nhất. Hôm nay trời mưa rầm rập, và tôi có mặt ở trường sớm (tôi vẫn luôn vậy – lập dị!) và làm bài kiểm tra. Thật là một bài kiểm tra khó! Thậm chí tôi không thể làm xong một phần mười của bài! Tôi biết rất nhiều tiếng Ý, tôi biết hàng tá từ tiếng Ý, nhưng họ không hỏi tôi bất kỳ điều gì tôi biết. Rồi đến một bài kiểm tra miệng, còn tệ hơn nữa. Người giáo viên Ý gầy nhom phỏng vấn tôi nói quá sức nhanh, theo tôi thấy, lẽ ra tôi có thể làm tốt hơn rất nhiều nhưng tôi căng thẳng và phạm lỗi ở những chỗ đã biết (ví dụ, sao tôi lại nói Vado a scuola thay vì Sono andata a scuola?[15] Tôi biết cái này mà!). Dù sao thì cuối cùng, mọi chuyện cũng ổn. Thầy giáo người Ý gầy nhom kiểm tra bài làm của tôi rồi chọn lớn cho tôi: Trình độ HAI! Các lớp học bắt đầu vào buổi chiều. Vậy nên tôi đi ăn trưa (rau diếp quăn chiên) rồi thong dong trở về trường và bảnh chọe đi ngang qua tất cả những sinh viên Trình độ Một đó (họ hẳn là molto stupido, thật vậy) và bước vào lớp đầu tiên của mình. Với người bằng vai phải lứa của mình. Chỉ trừ việc mọi chuyện nhanh chóng trở nên rõ ràng là những người này không ngang hàng với tôi và rằng tôi không dính dáng gì ở đây cả vì Trình độ Hai thật sự khó quá sức. Tôi cảm thấy như mình đang bơi, nhưng phải chật vật lắm. Như mỗi khi hít vào tôi lại uống luôn nước. Người thầy, một anh chàng gầy nhách (sao mấy ông thầy ở đây lại ốm đến vậy? Tôi không tin cậy những người Ý gầy nhom), đi quá nhanh, bỏ qua cả mấy chương sách giáo khoa, và cứ nói, “Cái này các bạn đã biết rồi, cái kia các bạn đã biết rồi...” và tiếp tục một cuộc đàm thoại nhanh như gió với những bạn học của tôi rõ ràng là đã quá trôi chảy. Bụng tôi thắt lại hoảng sợ và tôi thở khò khèn, cầu cho ông thầy đừng kêu tôi. Vừa đến giờ giải lao, tôi nhào ra khỏi lớp, hai chân loạng choạng và chạy vụt một mạch đến phòng hành chính chực khóc, van xin rành mạch bằng tiếng Anh là họ có thể vui lòng chuyển tôi xuống lớp Trình độ Một không. Và thế là họ chuyển tôi xuống. Và giờ thì tôi đang ở đây. https://thuviensach.vn Người thầy này đầy đặn và nói từ từ. Vậy thì tốt hơn nhiều. https://thuviensach.vn 15 Điều thú vị về lớp học tiếng Ý của tôi là không ai thật sự cần phải có mặt ở đó. Chúng tôi có cả thảy mười hai học viên, thuộc mọi lứa tuổi, từ khắp nơi trên thế giới, và tất cả đều đến Roma với cùng một lý do – học tiếng Ý vì họ cảm thấy thích. Không một ai trong chúng tôi có thể xác định được dù chỉ một lý do cụ thể tại sao mình có mặt ở đây. Không ai có ông chủ nói rằng, “Điều thiết yếu là anh học tiếng Ý để chúng ta tiến hành kinh doanh ở nước ngoài.” Tất cả mọi người, kể cả ông kỹ sư Đức nghiêm trang, đều chia sẻ điều tôi tưởng là động cơ của cá nhân mình: tât cả chúng tôi muốn nói tiếng Ý vì chúng tôi thích cái cách nó làm chúng tôi cảm nhận nó. Một phụ nữ Nga có gương mặt u buồn nói với chúng tôi là bà đãi mình những lớp học tiếng Ý vì “Tôi nghĩ tôi xứng đáng được một cái gì đó đẹp đẽ.” Ông kỹ sư Đức nói, “Tôi muốn tiếng Ý vì tôi thích dolce vita” – một cuộc sống ngọt ngào. (Chỉ có điều, với giọng Đức cứng nhắc của ông, nghe có vẻ như ông nói ông thích một “deutsche vita” – cuộc sống Đức – mà tôi e ông đã có quá nhiều rồi.) Như tôi khám phá ra trong vài tháng sau đó, quả thực có một số lý do chính đáng khi nói tiếng Ý là ngôn ngữ đẹp một cách quyến rũ nhất trên thế giới và tại sao tôi không phải là người duy nhất nghĩ vậy. Để hiểu tại sao, đầu tiên ta phải hiểu rằng châu Âu đã từng là một nơi hỗn loạn với vô số thổ ngữ bắt nguồn từ tiếng La tinh mà dần dần, qua nhiều thế kỷ, phân hóa thành một số ngôn ngữ riêng biệt – tiếng Pháp, Bồ Đào Nha, Tây Ban Nha. Điều đã diễn ra ở Pháp, Bồ Đào Nha và Tây Ban Nha là một cuộc tiến hóa tự nhiên: thổ ngữ của thành phố nổi bật nhất dần trở thành ngôn ngữ được cả vùng chấp nhận. Do vậy, cái mà ngày nay chúng ta gọi là tiếng Pháp thật ra là một phiên bản của tiếng Pari thời Trung cổ. Tiếng Bồ Đào Nha thật ra là tiếng Lisbon. Tiếng Tây Ban Nha về cơ bản là tiếng Madrid. Đây là những thắng lợi tư bản chủ nghĩa: thành phố hùng mạnh nhất cuối cùng đã quyết định ngôn ngữ của cả quốc gia. Ý thì lại khác. Một sự khác biệt then chốt là, trong một thời gian rất dài, Ý thậm chí không phải là một quốc gia. Mãi về sau (năm 1861), Ý mới được thống nhất và cho đến lúc đó vẫn còn là một bán đảo gồm các thành bang trong đó chiến tranh bị các hoàng tử địa phương kiêu hãnh hay các cường quốc châu Âu khác thống trị. Nhiều vùng của Ý thuộc về Pháp, nhiều vùng thuộc về Tây Ban Nha, nhiều vùng khác thuộc về Giáo hội, nhiều vùng thì thuộc về bất kỳ ai có thể chiếm được pháo đài hay cung điện trong đó. Người Ý đã hoặc nhu nhược hoặc hào hiệp với tất cả sự thống trị này. Hầu hết không ưa gì lắm chuyện làm thuộc địa của những người bạn châu Âu, nhưng luôn có một nhóm người thờ ơ nói “Franza or Spagna, purchè se magna”, trong thổ ngữ là “Dù Pháp hay Tây Ban Nha, miễn là ta còn có thể ăn.” Tất cả sự chia rẽ nội bộ này có nghĩa là Ý đã chưa bao giờ thống nhất theo đúng nghĩa, và tiếng Ý cũng vậy. Vậy nên không có gì ngạc nhiên khi, trong nhiều thế kỷ, người Ý viết và nói bằng những thổ ngữ mà giữa họ với nhau không thể hiểu được. Một nhà khoa học ở Florence khó mà giao tiếp với một nhà thơ ở Sicily hay một thương gia ở Venice (dĩ nhiên là trừ khi bằng tiếng La tinh mà hầu như không được xem là ngôn ngữ quốc gia). Vào thế kỷ mười sáu, một số trí thức Ý đã họp lại và qu	786,264
Eat, Pray, Love One Womans Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia (Elizabeth Gilbert) (Z-Library).pdf	ALSO BY ELIZABETH GILBERT Pilgrims Stern Men The Last American Man VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England First published in 2006 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 Copyright © Elizabeth Gilbert, 2006 All rights reserved LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA Gilbert, Elizabeth, date. Eat, pray, love: one woman’s search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia / Elizabeth Gilbert p. cm. ISBN 0-670-03471-1 1. Gilbert, Elizabeth, date—Travel. 2. Travelers’ writings, American. I. Title. G154.5.G55A3 2006 910.4—dc22 [B] 2005042435 Printed in the United States of America Set in Italian Garamond with Tagliente Display Designed by Elke Sigal Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. For Susan Bowen— who provided refuge even from 12,000 miles away Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.* —Sheryl Louise Moller * Except when attempting to solve emergency Balinese real estate transactions, such as described in Book 3. CONTENTS Introduction Book One Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Book Two Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Book Three Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 Chapter 76 Chapter 77 Chapter 78 Chapter 79 Chapter 80 Chapter 81 Chapter 82 Chapter 83 Chapter 84 Chapter 85 Chapter 86 Chapter 87 Chapter 88 Chapter 89 Chapter 90 Chapter 91 Chapter 92 Chapter 93 Chapter 94 Chapter 95 Chapter 96 Chapter 97 Chapter 98 Chapter 99 Chapter 100 Chapter 101 Chapter 102 Chapter 103 Chapter 104 Chapter 105 Chapter 106 Chapter 107 Chapter 108 Final Recognition and Reassurance Eat, Pray, Love Introduction or How This Book Works or The 109th Bead When you’re traveling in India—especially through holy sites and Ashrams—you see a lot of people wearing beads around their necks. You also see a lot of old photographs of naked, skinny and intimidating Yogis (or sometimes even plump, kindly and radiant Yogis) wearing beads, too. These strings of beads are called japa malas. They have been used in India for centuries to assist devout Hindus and Buddhists in staying focused during prayerful meditation. The necklace is held in one hand and fingered in a circle—one bead touched for every repetition of mantra. When the medieval Crusaders drove East for the holy wars, they witnessed worshippers praying with these japa malas, admired the technique, and brought the idea home to Europe as rosary. The traditional japa mala is strung with 108 beads. Amid the more esoteric circles of Eastern philosophers, the number 108 is held to be most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to nine, which is three threes. And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see. Being as this whole book is about my efforts to find balance, I have decided to structure it like a japa mala, dividing my story into 108 tales, or beads. This string of 108 tales is further divided into three sections about Italy, India and Indonesia—the three countries I visited during this year of self-inquiry. This division means that there are 36 tales in each section, which appeals to me on a personal level because I am writing all this during my thirty-sixth year. Now before I get too Louis Farrakhan here with this numerology business, let me conclude by saying that I also like the idea of stringing these stories along the structure of a japa mala because it is so . . . structured. Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free- for-all. As both a seeker and a writer, I find it helpful to hang on to the beads as much as possible, the better to keep my attention focused on what it is I’m trying to accomplish. In any case, every japa mala has a special, extra bead—the 109th bead— which dangles outside that balanced circle of 108 like a pendant. I used to think the 109th bead was an emergency spare, like the extra button on a fancy sweater, or the youngest son in a royal family. But apparently there is an even higher purpose. When your fingers reach this marker during prayer, you are meant to pause from your absorption in meditation and thank your teachers. So here, at my own 109th bead, I pause before I even begin. I offer thanks to all my teachers, who have appeared before me this year in so many curious forms. But most especially I thank my Guru, who is compassion’s very heartbeat, and who so generously permitted me to study at her Ashram while I was in India. This is also the moment where I would like to clarify that I write about my experiences in India purely from a personal standpoint and not as a theological scholar or as anybody’s official spokesperson. This is why I will not be using my Guru’s name throughout this book—because I cannot speak for her. Her teachings speak best for themselves. Nor will I reveal either the name or the location of her Ashram, thereby sparing that fine institution publicity which it may have neither the interest in nor the resources for managing. One final expression of gratitude: While scattered names throughout this book have been changed for various reasons, I’ve elected to change the names of every single person I met—both Indian and Western—at this Ashram in India. This is out of respect for the fact that most people don’t go on a spiritual pilgrimage in order to appear later as a character in a book. (Unless, of course, they are me.) I’ve made only one exception to this self- imposed policy of anonymity. Richard from Texas really is named Richard, and he really is from Texas. I wanted to use his real name because he was so important to me when I was in India. One last thing—when I asked Richard if it was OK with him if I mentioned in my book that he used to be a junkie and a drunk, he said that would be totally fine. He said, “I’d been trying to figure out how to get the word out about that, anyhow.” But first—Italy . . . 1 I wish Giovanni would kiss me. Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and—like most Italian guys in their twenties—he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am a professional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old. Purely as a matter of principle I wouldn’t inflict my sorry, busted-up old self on the lovely, unsullied Giovanni. Not to mention that I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy. To which the savvy observer might inquire: “Then why did you come to Italy?” To which I can only reply—especially when looking across the table at handsome Giovanni—“Excellent question.” Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it’s not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other’s languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I’d arrived in Rome, thanks to that big Internet café at the Piazza Barbarini, across the street from that fountain with the sculpture of that sexy merman blowing into his conch shell. He (Giovanni, that is—not the merman) had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for- word identical in every way, right down to the typeface. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same. Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, “Are you perhaps brothers?” It was Giovanni who wrote back this very provocativo message: “Even better. Twins!” Yes—much better. Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year- old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. After meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless . . . I was already composing my letter to Penthouse: In the flickering, candlelit shadows of the Roman café, it was impossible to tell whose hands were caress— But, no. No and no. I chopped the fantasy off in mid-word. This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude. Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, the shy, studious Giovanni and I have become dear buddies. As for Dario—the more razzle-dazzle swinger brother of the two—I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and how they’ve been sharing their evenings in Rome is another kind of Tandem Exchange altogether. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentle grammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception. A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella. Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome, which meander organically around the ancient buildings like bayou streams snaking around shadowy clumps of cypress groves. Now we are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug. This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice to kiss me. On the other hand, he might just kiss me right now, tonight, right here by my door . . . there’s still a chance . . . I mean we’re pressed up against each other’s bodies beneath this moonlight . . . and of course it would be a terrible mistake . . . but it’s still such a wonderful possibility that he might actually do it right now . . . that he might just bend down . . . and . . . and . . . Nope. He separates himself from the embrace. “Good night, my dear Liz,” he says. “Buona notte, caro mio,” I reply. I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night’s sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrasebooks and dictionaries. I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone. Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks. First in English. Then in Italian. And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit. 2 And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began—a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying. Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I’d recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o’clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and—just as during all those nights before —I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and confusion and grief. I don’t want to be married anymore. I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me. I don’t want to be married anymore. I don’t want to live in this big house. I don’t want to have a baby. But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six —had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn’t—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn’t happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn’t there. Moreover, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breastfeeding her firstborn: “Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.” How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we’d been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was experiencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live . . . I’d been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they’re trying to get pregnant, I’d decided. (“Ambivalent” was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: “utterly consumed with dread.”) I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary —such as the acquaintance I’d run into last week who’d just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king’s ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she’d been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn’t find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, “Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.” I don’t want to be married anymore. In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We’d only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn’t I wanted this nice house? Hadn’t I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn’t I proud of all we’d accumulated—the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and—somewhere in my stolen moments—a writer . . .? I don’t want to be married anymore. My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn’t wake him to share in my distress—what would be the point? He’d already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he’d been losing patience with it. We’d been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees. The many reasons I didn’t want to be this man’s wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. Much of it had to do with my problems, but a good portion of our troubles were related to his issues, as well. That’s only natural; there are always two figures in a marriage, after all—two votes, two opinions, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. But I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to discuss his issues in my book. Nor would I ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriage’s failure will remain untold here. I also will not discuss here all the reasons why I did still want to be his wife, or all his wonderfulness, or why I loved him and why I had married him and why I was unable to imagine life without him. I won’t open any of that. Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland. This part of my story is not a happy one, I know. But I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life—almost like one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and its molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shape radically, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical. Something like that. What happened was that I started to pray. You know—like, to God. 3 Now, this was a first for me. And since this is the first time I have introduced that loaded word—GOD—into my book, and since this is a word which will appear many times again throughout these pages, it seems only fair that I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get. Saving for later the argument about whether God exists at all (no—here’s a better idea: let’s skip that argument completely), let me first explain why I use the word God, when I could just as easily use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus. Alternatively, I could call God “That,” which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced. But that “That” feels impersonal to me—a thing, not a being— and I myself cannot pray to a That. I need a proper name, in order to fully sense a personal attendance. For this same reason, when I pray, I do not address my prayers to The Universe, The Great Void, The Force, The Supreme Self, The Whole, The Creator, The Light, The Higher Power, or even the most poetic manifestation of God’s name, taken, I believe, from the Gnostic gospels: “The Shadow of the Turning.” I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. But we each do need a functional name for this indescribability, and “God” is the name that feels the most warm to me, so that’s what I use. I should also confess that I generally refer to God as “Him,” which doesn’t bother me because, to my mind, it’s just a convenient personalizing pronoun, not a precise anatomical description or a cause for revolution. Of course, I don’t mind if people call God “Her,” and I understand the urge to do so. Again—to me, these are both equal terms, equally adequate and inadequate. Though I do think the capitalization of either pronoun is a nice touch, a small politeness in the presence of the divine. Culturally, though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open- mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know don’t speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business. Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed—much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them. In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this —I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God.” 4 Of course, I’ve had a lot of time to formulate my opinions about divinity since that night on the bathroom floor when I spoke to God directly for the first time. In the middle of that dark November crisis, though, I was not interested in formulating my views on theology. I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopeless and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I’d read that in a book somewhere. What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: “Hello, God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you.” That’s right—I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party. But we work with what we know in this life, and these are the words I always use at the beginning of a relationship. In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, “I’ve always been a big fan of your work . . .” “I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” I continued. “But I’m in serious trouble. And I’m sorry I haven’t ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that you’ve given me in my life.” This thought caused me to sob even harder. God waited me out. I pulled myself together enough to go on: “I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don’t know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do . . .” And so the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty—Please tell me what to do—repeated again and again. I don’t know how many times I begged. I only know that I begged like someone who was pleading for her life. And the crying went on forever. Until—quite abruptly—it stopped. Quite abruptly, I found that I was not crying anymore. I’d stopped crying, in fact, in mid-sob. My misery had been completely vacuumed out of me. I lifted my forehead off the floor and sat up in surprise, wondering if I would see now some Great Being who had taken my weeping away. But nobody was there. I was just alone. But not really alone, either. I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence—a silence so rare that I didn’t want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off. I was seamlessly still. I don’t know when I’d ever felt such stillness. Then I heard a voice. Please don’t be alarmed—it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charlton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard. It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. This was what my voice would sound like if I’d only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine? The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz. I exhaled. It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do. I would not have accepted any other answer. I would not have trusted a great booming voice that said either: You Must Divorce Your Husband! or You Must Not Divorce Your Husband! Because that’s not true wisdom. True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer. Go back to bed, said this omniscient interior voice, because you don’t need to know the final answer right now, at three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in November. Go back to bed, because I love you. Go back to bed, because the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer. Go back to bed so that, when the tempest comes, you’ll be strong enough to deal with it. And the tempest is coming, dear one. Very soon. But not tonight. Therefore: Go back to bed, Liz. In a way, this little episode had all the hallmarks of a typical Christian conversion experience—the dark night of the soul, the call for help, the responding voice, the sense of transformation. But I would not say that this was a religious conversion for me, not in that traditional manner of being born again or saved. Instead, I would call what happened that night the beginning of a religious conversation. The first words of an open and exploratory dialogue that would, ultimately, bring me very close to God, indeed. 5 If I’d had any way of knowing that things were—as Lily Tomlin once said —going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I’m not sure how well I would have slept that night. But seven very difficult months later, I did leave my husband. When I finally made that decision, I thought the worst of it was over. This only shows how little I knew about divorce. There was once a cartoon in The New Yorker magazine. Two women talking, one saying to the other: “If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him.” Of course, my experience was the opposite. I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him. Or her. Because this is what happened between me and my husband. I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. At the bottom of that strangeness was the abysmal fact that we were both doing something the other person would never have conceived possible; he never dreamed I would actually leave him, and I never in my wildest imagination thought he would make it so difficult for me to go. It was my most sincere belief when I left my husband that we could settle our practical affairs in a few hours with a calculator, some common sense and a bit of goodwill toward the person we’d once loved. My initial suggestion was that we sell the house and divide all the assets fifty-fifty; it never occurred to me we’d proceed in any other way. He didn’t find this suggestion fair. So I upped my offer, even suggesting this different kind of fifty-fifty split: What if he took all the assets and I took all the blame? But not even that offer would bring a settlement. Now I was at a loss. How do you negotiate once you’ve offered everything? I could do nothing now but wait for his counterproposal. My guilt at having left him forbade me from thinking I should be allowed to keep even a dime of the money I’d made in the last decade. Moreover, my newfound spirituality made it essential to me that we not battle. So this was my position—I would neither defend myself from him, nor would I fight him. For the longest time, against the counsel of all who cared about me, I resisted even consulting a lawyer, because I considered even that to be an act of war. I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers. Months passed. My life hung in limbo as I waited to be released, waited to see what the terms would be. We were living separately (he had moved into our Manhattan apartment), but nothing was resolved. Bills piled up, careers stalled, the house fell into ruin and my husband’s silences were broken only by his occasional communications reminding me what a criminal jerk I was. And then there was David. All the complications and traumas of those ugly divorce years were multiplied by the drama of David—the guy I fell in love with as I was taking leave of my marriage. Did I say that I “fell in love” with David? What I meant to say is that I dove out of my marriage and into David’s arms exactly the same way a cartoon circus performer dives off a high platform and into a small cup of water, vanishing completely. I clung to David for escape from marriage as if he were the last helicopter pulling out of Saigon. I inflicted upon him my every hope for my salvation and happiness. And, yes, I did love him. But if I could think of a stronger word than “desperately” to describe how I loved David, I would use that word here, and desperate love is always the toughest way to do it. I moved right in with David after I left my husband. He was—is—a gorgeous young man. A born New Yorker, an actor and writer, with those brown liquid-center Italian eyes that have always (have I already mentioned this?) unstitched me. Street-smart, independent, vegetarian, foulmouthed, spiritual, seductive. A rebel poet-Yogi from Yonkers. God’s own sexy rookie shortstop. Bigger than life. Bigger than big. Or at least he was to me. The first time my best friend Susan heard me talking about him, she took one look at the high fever in my face and said to me, “Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.” David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I’d written. He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it’s always like this, isn’t it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. But, oh, we had such a great time together during those early months when he was still my romantic hero and I was still his living dream. It was excitement and compatibility like I’d never imagined. We invented our own language. We went on day trips and road trips. We hiked to the top of things, swam to the bottom of other things, planned the journeys across the world we would take together. We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honey- moons. We gave each other the same nickname, so there would be no separation between us. We made goals, vows, promises and dinner together. He read books to me, and he did my laundry. (The first time that happened, I called Susan to report the marvel in astonishment, like I’d just seen a camel using a pay phone. I said, “A man just did my laundry! And he even hand-washed my delicates!” And she repeated: “Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.”) The first summer of Liz and David looked like the falling-in-love montage of every romantic movie you’ve ever seen, right down to the splashing in the surf and the running hand-in-hand through the golden meadows at twilight. At this time I was still thinking my divorce might actually proceed gracefully, though I was giving my husband the summer off from talking about it so we could both cool down. Anyway, it was so easy not to think about all that loss in the midst of such happiness. Then that summer (otherwise known as “the reprieve”) ended. On September 9, 2001, I met with my husband face-to-face for the last time, not realizing that every future meeting would necessitate lawyers between us, to mediate. We had dinner in a restaurant. I tried to talk about our separation, but all we did was fight. He let me know that I was a liar and a traitor and that he hated me and would never speak to me again. Two mornings later I woke up after a troubled night’s sleep to find that hijacked airplanes were crashing into the two tallest buildings of my city, as everything invincible that had once stood together now became a smoldering avalanche of ruin. I called my husband to make sure he was safe and we wept together over this disaster, but I did not go to him. During that week, when everyone in New York City dropped animosity in deference to the larger tragedy at hand, I still did not go back to my husband. Which is how we both knew it was very, very over. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I did not sleep again for the next four months. I thought I had fallen to bits before, but now (in harmony with the apparent collapse of the entire world) my life really turned to smash. I wince now to think of what I imposed on David during those months we lived together, right after 9/11 and my separation from my husband. Imagine his surprise to discover that the happiest, most confident woman he’d ever met was actually—when you got her alone—a murky hole of bottomless grief. Once again, I could not stop crying. This is when he started to retreat, and that’s when I saw the other side of my passionate romantic hero—the David who was solitary as a castaway, cool to the touch, in need of more personal space than a herd of American bison. David’s sudden emotional back-stepping probably would’ve been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet’s most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armful of premature infant triplets. His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of, “Where are you going? What happened to us?” (Dating tip: Men LOVE this.) The fact is, I had become addicted to David (in my defense, he had fostered this, being something of a “man-fatale”), and now that his attention was wavering, I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you’re someone he’s never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that’s it. You have now reached infatuation’s final destination—the complete and merciless devaluation of self. The fact that I can even write calmly about this today is mighty evidence of time’s healing powers, because I didn’t take it well as it was happening. To be losing David right after the failure of my marriage, and right after the terrorizing of my city, and right during the worst ugliness of divorce (a life experience my friend Brian has compared to “having a really bad car accident every single day for about two years”) . . . well, this was simply too much. David and I continued to have our bouts of fun and compatibility during the days, but at night, in his bed, I became the only survivor of a nuclear winter as he visibly retreated from me, more every day, as though I were infectious. I came to fear nighttime like it was a torturer’s cellar. I would lie there beside David’s beautiful, inaccessible sleeping body and I would spin into a panic of loneliness and meticulously detailed suicidal thoughts. Every part of my body pained me. I felt like I was some kind of primitive springloaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me. Most mornings, David would wake to find me sleeping fitfully on the floor beside his bed, huddled on a pile of bathroom towels, like a dog. “What happened now?” he would ask—another man thoroughly exhausted by me. I think I lost something like thirty pounds during that time. 6 Oh, but it wasn’t all bad, those few years . . . Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies (or however the old adage goes), some wonderful things did happen to me in the shadow of all that sorrow. For one thing, I finally started learning Italian. Also, I found an Indian Guru. Lastly, I was invited by an elderly medicine man to come and live with him in Indonesia. I’ll explain in sequence. To begin with, things started to look up somewhat when I moved out of David’s place in early 2002 and found an apartment of my own for the first time in my life. I couldn’t afford it, since I was still paying for that big house in the suburbs which nobody was living in anymore and which my husband was forbidding me to sell, and I was still trying to stay on top of all my legal and counseling fees . . . but it was vital to my survival to have a One Bedroom of my own. I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital. My sister gave me a hot water bottle as a housewarming gift (so I wouldn’t have to be all alone in a cold bed) and I slept with the thing laid against my heart every night, as though nursing a sports injury. David and I had broken up for good. Or maybe we hadn’t. It’s hard to remember now how many times we broke up and joined up over those months. But there emerged a pattern: I would separate from David, get my strength and confidence back, and then (attracted as always by my strength and confidence) his passion for me would rekindle. Respectfully, soberly and intelligently, we would discuss “trying again,” always with some sane new plan for minimizing our apparent incompatibilities. We were so committed to solving this thing. Because how could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it? Reunited with fresh hopes, we’d share a few deliriously happy days together. Or sometimes even weeks. But eventually David would retreat from me once more and I would cling to him (or I would cling to him and he would retreat —we never could figure out how it got triggered) and I’d end up destroyed all over again. And he’d end up gone. David was catnip and kryptonite to me. But during those periods when we were separated, as hard as it was, I was practicing living alone. And this experience was bringing a nascent interior shift. I was beginning to sense that—even though my life still looked like a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike during holiday traffic—I was tottering on the brink of becoming a self-governing individual. When I wasn’t feeling suicidal about my divorce, or suicidal about my drama with David, I was actually feeling kind of delighted about all the compartments of time and space that were appearing in my days, during which I could ask myself the radical new question: “What do you want to do, Liz?” Most of the time (still so troubled from bailing out of my marriage) I didn’t even dare to answer the question, but just thrilled privately to its existence. And when I finally started to answer, I did so cautiously. I would only allow myself to express little baby-step wants. Like: I want to go to a Yoga class. I want to leave this party early, so I can go home and read a novel. I want to buy myself a new pencil box. Then there would always be that one weird answer, same every time: I want to learn how to speak Italian. For years, I’d wished I could speak Italian—a language I find more beautiful than roses—but I could never make the practical justification for studying it. Why not just bone up on the French or Russian I’d already studied years ago? Or learn to speak Spanish, the better to help me communicate with millions of my fellow Americans? What was I going to do with Italian? It’s not like I was going to move there. It would be more practical to learn how to play the accordion. But why must everything always have a practical application? I’d been such a diligent soldier for years—working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? And it wasn’t that outrageous a goal, anyway, to want to study a language. It’s not like I was saying, at age thirty-two, “I want to become the principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet.” Studying a language is something you can actually do. So I signed up for classes at one of those continuing education places (otherwise known as Night School for Divorced Ladies). My friends thought this was hilarious. My friend Nick asked, “Why are you studying Italian? So that—just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again, and is actually successful this time—you can brag about knowing a language that’s spoken in two whole countries?” But I loved it. Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. I would slosh home through the rain after class, draw a hot bath, and lie there in the bubbles reading the Italian dictionary aloud to myself, taking my mind off my divorce pressures and my heartache. The words made me laugh in delight. I started referring to my cell phone as il mio telefonino (“my teensy little telephone”). I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it’s an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: “I am your slave!”) Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again. Maybe I would move to Italy, after all . . . 7 The other notable thing that was happening during that time was the newfound adventure of spiritual discipline. Aided and abetted, of course, by the introduction into my life of an actual living Indian Guru—for whom I will always have David to thank. I’d been introduced to my Guru the first night I ever went to David’s apartment. I kind of fell in love with them both at the same time. I walked into David’s apartment and saw this picture on his dresser of a radiantly beautiful Indian woman and I asked, “Who’s that?” He said, “That is my spiritual teacher.” My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: “I want a spiritual teacher.” I literally mean that it was my heart who said this, speaking through my mouth. I felt this weird division in myself, and my mind stepped out of my body for a moment, spun around to face my heart in astonishment and silently asked, “You DO?” “Yes,” replied my heart. “I do.” Then my mind asked my heart, a tad sarcastically: “Since WHEN?” But I already knew the answer: Since that night on the bathroom floor. My God, but I wanted a spiritual teacher. I immediately began constructing a fantasy of what it would be like to have one. I imagined that this radiantly beautiful Indian woman would come to my apartment a few evenings a week and we would sit and drink tea and talk about divinity, and she would give me reading assignments and explain the significance of the strange sensations I was feeling during meditation . . . All this fantasy was quickly swept away when David told me about the international status of this woman, about her tens of thousands of students —many of whom have never met her face-to-face. Still, he said, there was a gathering here in New York City every Tuesday night of the Guru’s devotees who came together as a group to meditate and chant. David said, “If you’re not too freaked out by the idea of being in a room with several hundred people chanting God’s name in Sanskrit, you can come sometime.” I joined him the following Tuesday night. Far from being freaked out by these regular-looking people singing to God, I instead felt my soul rise diaphanous in the wake of that chanting. I walked home that night feeling like the air could move through me, like I was clean linen fluttering on a clothes-line, like New York itself had become a city made of rice paper— and I was light enough to run across every rooftop. I started going to the chants every Tuesday. Then I started meditating every morning on the ancient Sanskrit mantra the Guru gives to all her students (the regal Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, “I honor the divinity that resides within me”). Then I listened to the Guru speak in person for the first time, and her words gave me chill bumps over my whole body, even across the skin of my face. And when I heard she had an Ashram in India, I knew I must take myself there as quickly as possible. 8 In the meantime, though, I had to go on this trip to Indonesia. Which happened, again, because of a magazine assignment. Just when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself for being broke and lonely and caged up in Divorce Internment Camp, an editor from a women’s magazine asked if she could pay to send me to Bali to write a story about Yoga vacations. In return I asked her a series of questions, mostly along the line of Is a bean green? and Does James Brown get down? When I got to Bali (which is, to be brief, a very nice place) the teacher who was running the Yoga retreat asked us, “While you’re all here, is there anybody who would like to go visit a ninth-generation Balinese medicine man?” (another question too obvious to even answer), and so we all went over to his house one night. The medicine man, as it turned out, was a small, merry-eyed, russet- colored old guy with a mostly toothless mouth, whose resemblance in every way to the Star Wars character Yoda cannot be exaggerated. His name was Ketut Liyer. He spoke a scattered and thoroughly entertaining kind of English, but there was a translator available for when he got stuck on a word. Our Yoga teacher had told us in advance that we could each bring one question or problem to the medicine man, and he would try to help us with our troubles. I’d been thinking for days of what to ask him. My initial ideas were so lame. Will you make my husband give me a divorce? Will you make David be sexually attracted to me again? I was rightly ashamed of myself for these thoughts: who travels all the way around the world to meet an ancient medicine man in Indonesia, only to ask him to intercede in boy trouble? So when the old man asked me in person what I really wanted, I found other, truer words. “I want to have a lasting experience of God,” I told him. “Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don’t want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.” Ketut said he could answer my question with a picture. He showed me a sketch he’d drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart. “To find the balance you want,” Ketut spoke through his translator, “this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.” Then he asked if he could read my palm. I gave him my left hand and he proceeded to put me together like a three-piece puzzle. “You’re a world traveler,” he began. Which I thought was maybe a little obvious, given that I was in Indonesia at the moment, but I didn’t force the point . . . “You have more good luck than anyone I’ve ever met. You will live a long time, have many friends, many experiences. You will see the whole world. You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to ever worry about anything, will you believe me?” Nervously I nodded, not believing him. “For work, you do something creative, maybe like an artist, and you get paid good money for it. Always you will get paid good money for this thing you do. You are generous with money, maybe too generous. Also one problem. You will lose all your money once in your life. I think maybe it will happen soon.” “I think maybe it will happen in the next six to ten months,” I said, thinking about my divorce. Ketut nodded as if to say, Yeah, that sounds about right. “But don’t worry,” he said. “After you lose all your money, you will get it all right back again. Right away you’ll be fine. You will have two marriages in your life. One short, one long. And you will have two children . . .” I waited for him to say, “one short, one long,” but he was suddenly silent, frowning at my palm. Then he said, “Strange . . . ,” which is something you never want to hear from either your palm-reader or your dentist. He asked me to move directly under the hanging lightbulb so he could take a better look. “I am wrong,” he announced. “You will only have only one child. Late in life, a daughter. Maybe. If you decide . . . but there is something else.” He frowned, then looked up, suddenly absolutely confident: “Someday soon you will come back here to Bali. You must. You will stay here in Bali for three, maybe four months. You will be my friend. Maybe you will live here with my family. I can practice English with you. I never had anybody to practice English with. I think you are good with words. I think this creative work you do is something about words, yes?” “Yes!” I said. “I’m a writer. I’m a book writer!” “You are a book writer from New York,” he said, in agreement, in confirmation. “So you will come back here to Bali and live here and teach me English. And I will teach you everything I know.” Then he stood up and brushed off his hands, like: That’s settled. I said, “If you’re serious, mister, I’m serious.” He beamed at me toothlessly and said, “See you later, alligator.” 9 Now, I’m the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you’re destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that. And this, finally, was how my whole idea about this year of traveling began to gel. I absolutely needed to get myself back to Indonesia somehow, on my own dime this time. This was evident. Though I couldn’t yet imagine how to do it, given my chaotic and disturbed life. (Not only did I still have a pricey divorce to settle, and David-troubles, I still had a magazine job that prevented me from going anywhere for three or four months at a time.) But I had to get back there. Didn’t I? Hadn’t he foretold it? Problem was, I also wanted to go to India, to visit my Guru’s Ashram, and going to India is an expensive and time-consuming affair, also. To make matters even more confusing, I’d also been dying lately to get over to Italy, so I could practice speaking Italian in context, but also because I was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure and beauty are revered. All these desires seemed to be at odds with one another. Especially the Italy/India conflict. What was more important? The part of me that wanted to eat veal in Venice? Or the part of me that wanted to be waking up long before dawn in the austerity of an Ashram to begin a long day of meditation and prayer? The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I’d said to the medicine man in Bali—I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence —the dual glories of a human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I’d been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I’d been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion . . . well, surely there was a way to learn that trick. And it seemed to me, just from my short stay in Bali, that I maybe could learn this from the Balinese. Maybe even from the medicine man himself. Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart . . . So I stopped trying to choose—Italy? India? or Indonesia?—and eventually just admitted that I wanted to travel to all of them. Four months in each place. A year in total. Of course this was a slightly more ambitious dream than “I want to buy myself a new pencil box.” But this is what I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to write about it. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery. Imagine now, if you will, all the opportunities for mockery this idea unleashed in my wise-ass friends. I wanted to go to the Three I’s, did I? Then why not spend the year in Iran, Ivory Coast and Iceland? Or even better—why not go on pilgrimage to the Great Tri-State “I” Triumvirate of Islip, I-95 and Ikea? My friend Susan suggested that perhaps I should establish a not-for-profit relief organization called “Divorcées Without Borders.” But all this joking was moot because “I” wasn’t free to go anywhere yet. That divorce—long after I’d walked out of my marriage— was still not happening. I’d started having to put legal pressure on my husband, doing dreadful things out of my worst divorce nightmares, like serving papers and writing damning legal accusations (required by New York State law) of his alleged mental cruelty—documents that left no room for subtlety, no way in which to say to the judge: “Hey, listen, it was a really complicated relationship, and I made huge mistakes, too, and I’m very sorry about that, but all I want is to be allowed to leave.” (Here, I pause to offer a prayer for my gentle reader: May you never, ever, have to get a divorce in New York.) The spring of 2003 brought things to a boiling point. A year and a half after I’d left, my husband was finally ready to discuss terms of a settlement. Yes, he wanted cash and the house and the lease on the Manhattan apartment—everything I’d been offering the whole while. But he was also asking for things I’d never even considered (a stake in the royalties of books I’d written during the marriage, a cut of possible future movie rights to my work, a share of my retirement accounts, etc.) and here I had to voice my protest at last. Months of negotiations ensued between our lawyers, a compromise of sorts inched its way toward the table and it was starting to look like my husband might actually accept a modified deal. It would cost me dearly, but a fight in the courts would be infinitely more expensive and time-consuming, not to mention soul-corroding. If he signed the agreement, all I had to do was pay and walk away. Which would be fine with me at this point. Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door. The question was—would he sign? More weeks passed as he contested more details. If he didn’t agree to this settlement, we’d have to go to trial. A trial would almost certainly mean that every remaining dime would be lost in legal fees. Worst of all, a trial would mean another year—at least—of all this mess. So whatever my husband decided (and he still was my husband, after all), it was going to determine yet another year of my life. Would I be traveling all alone through Italy, India and Indonesia? Or would I be getting cross-examined somewhere in a courtroom basement during a deposition hearing? Every day I called my lawyer fourteen times—any news?—and every day she assured me that she was doing her best, that she would telephone immediately if the deal was signed. The nervousness I felt during this time was something between waiting to be called into the principal’s office and anticipating the results of a biopsy. I’d love to report that I stayed calm and Zen, but I didn’t. Several nights, in waves of anger, I beat the life out of my couch with a softball bat. Most of the time I was just achingly depressed. Meanwhile, David and I had broken up again. This time, it seemed, for good. Or maybe not—we couldn’t totally let go of it. Often I was still overcome with a desire to sacrifice everything for the love of him. Other times, I had the quite opposite instinct—to put as many continents and oceans as possible between me and this guy, in the hope of finding peace and happiness. I had lines in my face now, permanent incisions dug between my eyebrows, from crying and from worry. And in the middle of all that, a book that I’d written a few years earlier was being published in paperback and I had to go on a small publicity tour. I took my friend Iva with me for company. Iva is my age but grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. Which means that, while I was playing sports and auditioning for musicals in a Connecticut middle school, she was cowering in a bomb shelter five nights out of seven, trying not to die. I’m not sure how all this early exposure to violence created somebody who’s so steady now, but Iva is one of the calmest souls I know. Moreover, she’s got what I call “The Bat Phone to the Universe,” some kind of Iva-only, open-round- the-clock special channel to the divine. So we were driving across Kansas, and I was in my normal state of sweaty disarray over this divorce deal—will he sign, will he not sign?—and I said to Iva, “I don’t think I can endure another year in court. I wish I could get some divine intervention here. I wish I could write a petition to God, asking for this thing to end.” “So why don’t you?” I explained to Iva my personal opinions about prayer. Namely, that I don’t feel comfortable petitioning for specific things from God, because that feels to me like a kind of weakness of faith. I don’t like asking, “Will you change this or that thing in my life that’s difficult for me?” Because— who knows?—God might want me to be facing that particular challenge for a reason. Instead, I feel more comfortable praying for the courage to face whatever occurs in my life with equanimity, no matter how things turn out. Iva listened politely, then asked, “Where’d you get that stupid idea?” “What do you mean?” “Where did you get the idea you aren’t allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You’re a constituent—you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me—it will at least be taken into consideration.” “Really?” All this was news to me. “Really! Listen—if you were to write a petition to God right now, what would it say?” I thought for a while, then pulled out a notebook and wrote this petition: Dear God. Please intervene and help end this divorce. My husband and I have failed at our marriage and now we are failing at our divorce. This poisonous process is bringing suffering to us and to everyone who cares about us. I recognize that you are busy with wars and tragedies and much larger conflicts than the ongoing dispute of one dysfunctional couple. But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are locked in conflict, the whole of the world is contaminated by it. Similarly, if even one or two souls can be free from discord, this will increase the general health of the whole world, the way a few healthy cells in a body can increase the general health of that body. It is my most humble request, then, that you help us end this conflict, so that two more people can have the chance to become free and healthy, and so there will be just a little bit less animosity and bitterness in a world that is already far too troubled by suffering. I thank you for your kind attention. Respectfully, Elizabeth M. Gilbert I read it to Iva, and she nodded her approval. “I would sign that,” she said. I handed the petition over to her with a pen, but she was too busy driving, so she said, “No, let’s say that I did just sign it. I signed it in my heart.” “Thank you, Iva. I appreciate your support.” “Now, who else would sign it?” she asked. “My family. My mother and father. My sister.” “OK,” she said. “They just did. Consider their names added. I actually felt them sign it. They’re on the list now. OK—who else would sign it? Start naming names.” So I started naming names of all the people who I thought would sign this petition. I named all my close friends, then some family members and some people I worked with. After each name, Iva would say with assurance, “Yep. He just signed it,” or “She just signed it.” Sometimes she would pop in with her own signatories, like: “My parents just signed it. They raised their children during a war. They hate useless conflict. They’d be happy to see your divorce end.” I closed my eyes and waited for more names to come to me. “I think Bill and Hillary Clinton just signed it,” I said. “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Listen, Liz—anybody can sign this petition. Do you understand that? Call on anyone, living or dead, and start collecting signatures.” “Saint Francis of Assisi just signed it!” “Of course he did!” Iva smacked her hand against the steering wheel with certainty. Now I was cooking: “Abraham Lincoln just signed it! And Gandhi, and Mandela and all the peacemakers. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson and the Dalai Lama . . . and my grandmother who died in 1984 and my grandmother who’s still alive . . . and my Italian teacher, and my therapist, and my agent . . . and Martin Luther King Jr. and Katharine Hepburn . . . and Martin Scorsese (which you wouldn’t necessarily expect, but it’s still nice of him) . . . and my Guru, of course . . . and Joanne Woodward, and Joan of Arc, and Ms. Carpenter, my fourth-grade teacher, and Jim Henson—” The names spilled from me. They didn’t stop spilling for almost an hour, as we drove across Kansas and my petition for peace stretched into page after invisible page of supporters. Iva kept confirming—yes, he signed it, yes, she signed it—and I became filled with a grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls. The list finally wound down, and my anxiety wound down with it. I was sleepy. Iva said, “Take a nap. I’ll drive.” I closed my eyes. One last name appeared. “Michael J. Fox just signed it,” I murmured, then drifted into sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe only for ten minutes, but it was deep. When I woke up, Iva was still driving. She was humming a little song to herself. I yawned. My cell phone rang. I looked at that crazy little telefonino vibrating with excitement in the ashtray of the rental car. I felt disoriented, kind of stoned from my nap, suddenly unable to remember how a telephone works. “Go ahead,” Iva said, already knowing. “Answer the thing.” I picked up the phone, whispered hello. “Great news!” my lawyer announced from distant New York City. “He just signed it!” 10 A few weeks later, I am living in Italy. I have quit my job, paid off my divorce settlement and legal bills, given up my house, given up my apartment, put what belongings I had left into storage in my sister’s place and packed up two suitcases. My year of traveling has commenced. And I can actually afford to do this because of a staggering personal miracle: in advance, my publisher has purchased the book I shall write about my travels. It all turned out, in other words, just as the Indonesian medicine man had predicted. I would lose all my money and it would be replaced immediately—or at least enough of it to buy me a year of life. So now I am a resident of Rome. The apartment I’ve found is a quiet studio in a historic building, located just a few narrow blocks from the Spanish Steps, draped beneath the graceful shadows of the elegant Borghese Gardens, right up the street from the Piazza del Popolo, where the ancient Romans used to race their chariots. Of course, this district doesn’t quite have the sprawling grandeur of my old New York City neighborhood, which overlooked the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, but still . . . It will do. 11 The first meal I ate in Rome was nothing much. Just some homemade pasta (spaghetti carbonara) with a side order of sautéed spinach and garlic. (The great romantic poet Shelley once wrote a horrified letter to a friend in England about cuisine in Italy: “Young women of rank actually eat—you will never guess what—GARLIC!”) Also, I had one artichoke, just to try it; the Romans are awfully proud of their artichokes. Then there was a pop- surprise bonus side order brought over by the waitress for free—a serving of fried zucchini blossoms with a soft dab of cheese in the middle (prepared so delicately that the blossoms probably didn’t even notice they weren’t on the vine anymore). After the spaghetti, I tried the veal. Oh, and also I drank a bottle of house red, just for me. And ate some warm bread, with olive oil and salt. Tiramisu for dessert. Walking home after that meal, around 11:00 PM, I could hear noise coming from one of the buildings on my street, something that sounded like a convention of seven-year-olds—a birthday party, maybe? Laughter and screaming and running around. I climbed the stairs to my apartment, lay down in my new bed and turned off the light. I waited to start crying or worrying, since that’s what usually happened to me with the lights off, but I actually felt OK. I felt fine. I felt the early symptoms of contentment. My weary body asked my weary mind: “Was this all you needed, then?” There was no response. I was already fast asleep. 12 In every major city in the Western World, some things are always the same. The same African men are always selling knockoffs of the same designer handbags and sunglasses, and the same Guatemalan musicians are always playing “I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail” on their bamboo windpipes. But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich counterman so comfortably calling me “beautiful” every time we speak. You want this panino grilled or cold, bella? Or the couples making out all over the place, like there is some contest for it, twisting into each other on benches, stroking each other’s hair and crotches, nuzzling and grinding ceaselessly . . . And then there are the fountains. Pliny the Elder wrote once: “If anyone will consider the abundance of Rome’s public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens, villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the mountains pierced, the valleys spanned—he will admit that there never was anything more marvelous in the whole world.” A few centuries later, I already have a few contenders for my favorite fountain in Rome. One is in the Villa Borghese. In the center of this fountain is a frolicking bronze family. Dad is a faun and Mom is a regular human woman. They have a baby who enjoys eating grapes. Mom and Dad are in a strange position—facing each other, grabbing each other’s wrists, both of them leaning back. It’s hard to tell whether they are yanking against each other in strife or swinging around merrily, but there’s lots of energy there. Either way, Junior sits perched atop their wrists, right between them, unaffected by their merriment or strife, munching on his bunch of grapes. His little cloven hoofs dangle below him as he eats. (He takes after his father.) It is early September, 2003. The weather is warm and lazy. By this, my fourth day in Rome, my shadow has still not darkened the doorway of a church or a museum, nor have I even looked at a guidebook. But I have been walking endlessly and aimlessly, and I did finally find a tiny little place that a friendly bus driver informed me sells The Best Gelato in Rome. It’s called “Il Gelato di San Crispino.” I’m not sure, but I think this might translate as “the ice cream of the crispy saint.” I tried a combination of the honey and the hazelnut. I came back later that same day for the grapefruit and the melon. Then, after dinner that same night, I walked all the way back over there one last time, just to sample a cup of the cinnamon-ginger. I’ve been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today’s news was fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than “Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i Più Grassi d’Europa!” Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French babies.(Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article. (The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness were unveiled yesterday by—no need to translate here—“una task force internazionale.” It took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a pizza and listening to one of Italy’s children play the accordion across the street. The kid didn’t look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I’m not sure if I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the government that the only way to deal with the obesity crisis in Italy was to implement a tax on the overweight . . .? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will they come after me? It’s also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope’s health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today. It’s kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It’s like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It’s like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They’ll even print their newspapers in Italian while I’m here; they don’t mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I’d entered an enchanted palace. Everything was in Italian—even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old and couldn’t read yet, but was dying to learn. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office with my mother, holding a Good Housekeeping magazine in front of my face, turning the pages slowly, staring at the text, and hoping the grown-ups in the waiting room would think I was actually reading. I haven’t felt so starved for comprehension since then. I found some works by American poets in that bookstore, with the original English version printed on one side of the page and the Italian translation on the other. I bought a volume by Robert Lowell, another by Louise Glück. There are spontaneous conversation classes everywhere. Today, I was sitting on a park bench when a tiny old woman in a black dress came over, roosted down beside me and started bossing me around about something. I shook my head, muted and confused. I apologized, saying in very nice Italian, “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Italian,” and she looked like she would’ve smacked me with a wooden spoon, if she’d had one. She insisted: “You do understand!” (Interestingly, she was correct. That sentence, I did understand.) Now she wanted to know where I was from. I told her I was from New York, and asked where she was from. Duh—she was from Rome. Hearing this, I clapped my hands like a baby. Ah, Rome! Beautiful Rome! I love Rome! Pretty Rome! She listened to my primitive rhapsodies with skepticism. Then she got down to it and asked me if I was married. I told her I was divorced. This was the first time I’d said it to anyone, and here I was, saying it in Italian. Of course she demanded, “Perché?” Well . . . “why” is a hard question to answer in any language. I stammered, then finally came up with “L’abbiamo rotto” (We broke it). She nodded, stood up, walked up the street to her bus stop, got on her bus and did not even turn around to look at me again. Was she mad at me? Strangely, I waited for her on that park bench for twenty minutes, thinking against reason that she might come back and continue our conversation, but she never returned. Her name was Celeste, pronounced with a sharp ch, as in cello. Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you’d never have guessed existed if you’d only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square, dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain. This fountain was going to be a contender for my favorite in Rome, I could tell immediately, though it was unlike any I’d seen so far. It was not carved of imperial marble, for starters. This was a small green, mossy, organic fountain. It was like a shaggy, leaking bush of ferns. (It looked, actually, exactly like the wild foliage growing out of the head of that praying figure which the old medicine man in Indonesia had drawn for me.) The water shot up out of the center of this flowering shrub, then rained back down on the leaves, making a melancholy, lovely sound throughout the whole courtyard. I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I’d purchased yesterday. Louise Glück. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line: Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . . “From the center of my life, there came a great fountain . . .” I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief. 13 Truthfully, I’m not the best traveler in the world. I know this because I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I’ve met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go—in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab . . . I don’t have these qualities. First off, I don’t blend. Tall and blond and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children—who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person—would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China. I’m bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending just to show up and see what happens. When you travel this way, what typically “happens” is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused, or dropping way too much money on hotels because you don’t know better. My shaky sense of direction and geography means I have explored six continents in my life with only the vaguest idea of where I am at any given time. Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in-charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, “You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face.” And, oh, the woes that traveling has inflicted on my digestive tract! I don’t really want to open that (forgive the expression) can of worms, but suffice it to say I’ve experienced every extreme of digestive emergency. In Lebanon I became so explosively ill one night that I could only imagine I’d somehow contracted a Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus. In Hungary, I suffered from an entirely different kind of bowel affliction, which changed forever the way I feel about the term “Soviet Bloc.” But I have other bodily weaknesses, too. My back gave out on my first day traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my party to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask you—I beg of you!—who gets sunburned in Stockholm? Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to —I just don’t care. Anyway, for a flamingo, I’m not completely helpless out there in the world. I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. I’m a fearless eater. But my one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. I once made friends with a war criminal in Serbia, and he invited me to go on a mountain holiday with his family. Not that I’m proud to list Serbian mass murderers amongst my nearest and dearest (I had to befriend him for a story, and also so he wouldn’t punch me), but I’m just saying—I can do it. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock. This is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left for Italy, “Do you have friends in Rome?” and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will. Mostly, you meet your friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on a train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell. But these are chance encounters, and you should never rely entirely on chance. For a more systematic approach, there is still the grand old system of the “letter of introduction” (today more likely to be an e-mail), presenting you formally to the acquaintance of an acquaintance. This is a terrific way to meet people, if you’re shameless enough to make the cold call and invite yourself over for dinner. So before I left for Italy, I asked everyone I knew in America if they had any friends in Rome, and I’m happy to report that I have been sent abroad with a substantial list of Italian contacts. Among all the nominees on my Potential New Italian Friends List, I am most intrigued to meet a fellow named . . . brace yourself . . . Luca Spaghetti. Luca Spaghetti is a good friend of my buddy Patrick McDevitt, whom I know from my college days. And that is honestly his name, I swear to God, I’m not making it up. It’s too crazy. I mean—just think of it. Imagine going through life with a name like Patrick McDevitt? Anyhow, I plan to get in touch with Luca Spaghetti just as soon as possible. 14 First, though, I must get settled into school. My classes begin today at the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Language Studies, where I will be studying Italian five days a week, four hours a day. I’m so excited about school. I’m such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me. We all have to take a test on the first day at Leonardo da Vinci, in order to be placed in the proper level of Italian class for our abilities. When I hear this, I immediately start hoping I don’t place into a Level One class, because that would be humiliating, given that I already took a whole entire semester of Italian at my Night School for Divorced Ladies in New York, and that I spent the summer memorizing flash cards, and that I’ve already been in Rome a week, and have been practicing the language in person, even conversing with old grandmothers about divorce. The thing is, I don’t even know how many levels this school has, but as soon as I heard the word level, I decided that I must test into Level Two—at least. So it’s hammering down rain today, and I show up to school early (like I always have—geek!) and I take the test. It’s such a hard test! I can’t get through even a tenth of it! I know so much Italian, I know dozens of words in Italian, but they don’t ask me anything that I know. Then there’s an oral exam, which is even worse. There’s this skinny Italian teacher interviewing me and speaking way too fast, in my opinion, and I should be doing so much better than this but I’m nervous and making mistakes with stuff I already know (like, why did I say Vado a scuola instead of Sono andata a scuola? I know that!). In the end, it’s OK, though. The skinny Italian teacher looks over my exam and selects my class level: Level TWO! Classes begin in the afternoon. So I go eat lunch (roasted endive) then saunter back to the school and smugly walk past all those Level One students (who must be molto stupido, really) and enter my first class. With my peers. Except that it becomes swiftly evident that these are not my peers and that I have no business being here because Level Two is really impossibly hard. I feel like I’m swimming, but barely. Like I’m taking in water with every breath. The teacher, a skinny guy (why are the teachers so skinny here? I don’t trust skinny Italians), is going way too fast, skipping over whole chapters of the textbook, saying, “You already know this, you already know that . . .” and keeping up a rapid-fire conversation with my apparently fluent classmates. My stomach is gripped in horror and I’m gasping for air and praying he won’t call on me. Just as soon as the break comes, I run out of that classroom on wobbling legs and I scurry all the way over to the administrative office almost in tears, where I beg in very clear English if they could please move me down to a Level One class. And so they do. And now I am here. This teacher is plump and speaks slowly. This is much better. 15 The interesting thing about my Italian class is that nobody really needs to be there. There are twelve of us studying together, of all ages, from all over the world, and everybody has come to Rome for the same reason—to study Italian just because they feel like it. Not one of us can identify a single practical reason for being here. Nobody’s boss has said to anyone, “It is vital that you learn to speak Italian in order for us to conduct our business overseas.” Everybody, even the uptight German engineer, shares what I thought was my own personal motive: we all want to speak Italian because we love the way it makes us feel. A sad-faced Russian woman tells us she’s treating herself to Italian lessons because “I think I deserve something beautiful.” The German engineer says, “I want Italian because I love the dolce vita”—the sweet life. (Only, in his stiff Germanic accent, it ends up sounding like he said he loved “the deutsche vita”—the German life— which I’m afraid he’s already had plenty of.) As I will find out over the next few months, there are actually some good reasons that Italian is the most seductively beautiful language in the world, and why I’m not the only person who thinks so. To understand why, you have to first understand that Europe was once a pandemonium of numberless Latin-derived dialects that gradually, over the centuries, morphed into a few separate languages—French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian. What happened in France, Portugal and Spain was an organic evolution: the dialect of the most prominent city gradually became the accepted language of the whole region. Therefore, what we today call French is really a version of medieval Parisian. Portuguese is really Lisboan. Spanish is essentially Madrileño. These were capitalist victories; the strongest city ultimately determined the language of the whole country. Italy was different. One critical difference was that, for the longest time, Italy wasn’t even a country. It didn’t get itself unified until quite late in life (1861) and until then was a peninsula of warring city-states dominated by proud local princes or other European powers. Parts of Italy belonged to France, parts to Spain, parts to the Church, parts to whoever could grab the local fortress or palace. The Italian people were alternatively humiliated and cavalier about all this domination. Most didn’t much like being colonized by their fellow Europeans, but there was always that apathetic crowd that said, “Franza o Spagna, purchè se magna,” which means, in dialect, “France or Spain, as long as I can eat.” All this internal division meant that Italy never properly coalesced, and Italian didn’t either. So it’s not surprising that, for centuries, Italians wrote and spoke in local dialects that were mutually unfathomable. A scientist in Florence could barely communicate with a poet in Sicily or a merchant in Venice (except in Latin, of course, which was hardly considered the national language). In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals got together and decided that this was absurd. This Italian peninsula needed an Italian language, at least in the written form, which everyone could agree upon. So this gathering of intellectuals proceeded to do something unprecedented in the history of Europe; they handpicked the most beautiful of all the local dialects and crowned it Italian. In order to find the most beautiful dialect ever spoken in Italy, they had to reach back in time two hundred years to fourteenth-century Florence. What this congress decided would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. When Dante published his Divine Comedy back in 1321, detailing a visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, he’d shocked the literate world by not writing in Latin. He felt that Latin was a corrupted, elitist language, and that the use of it in serious prose had “turned literature into a harlot” by making universal narrative into something that could only be bought with money, through the privilege of an aristocratic education. Instead, Dante turned back to the streets, picking up the real Florentine language spoken by the residents of his city (who included such luminous contemporaries as Boccaccio and Petrarch) and using that language to tell his tale. He wrote his masterpiece in what he called dolce stil nuovo, the “sweet new style” of the vernacular, and he shaped that vernacular even as he was writing it, affecting it as personally as Shakespeare would someday affect Elizabethan English. For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante’s Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that— from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked. The Italian we speak today, therefore, is not Roman or Venetian (though these were the powerful military and merchant cities) nor even really entirely Florentine. Essentially, it is Dantean. No other European language has such an artistic pedigree. And perhaps no language was ever more perfectly ordained to express human emotions than this fourteenth-century Florentine Italian, as embellished by one of Western civilization’s greatest poets. Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call “a cascading rhythm”—a rhythm which still lives in the tumbling, poetic cadences spoken by Italian cabdrivers and butchers and government administrators even today. The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so-called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle . . . “The love that moves the sun and the other stars.” So it’s really no wonder that I want so desperately to learn this language. 16 Depression and Loneliness track me down after about ten days in Italy. I am walking through the Villa Borghese one evening after a happy day spent in school, and the sun is setting gold over St. Peter’s Basilica. I am feeling contented in this romantic scene, even if I am all by myself, while everyone else in the park is either fondling a lover or playing with a laughing child. But I stop to lean against a balustrade and watch the sunset, and I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding, and that’s when they catch up with me. They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me—Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well. We’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. Though I admit that I am surprised to meet them in this elegant Italian garden at dusk. This is no place they belong. I say to them, “How did you find me here? Who told you I had come to Rome?” Depression, always the wise guy, says, “What—you’re not happy to see us?” “Go away,” I tell him. Loneliness, the more sensitive cop, says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I might have to tail you the whole time you’re traveling. It’s my assignment.” “I’d really rather you didn’t,” I tell him, and he shrugs almost apologetically, but only moves closer. Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Then Loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours. He’s polite but relentless, and he always trips me up eventually. He asks if I have any reason to be happy that I know of. He asks why I am all by myself tonight, yet again. He asks (though we’ve been through this line of questioning hundreds of times already) why I can’t keep a relationship going, why I ruined my marriage, why I messed things up with David, why I messed things up with every man I’ve ever been with. He asks me where I was the night I turned thirty, and why things have gone so sour since then. He asks why I can’t get my act together, and why I’m not at home living in a nice house and raising nice children like any respectable woman my age should be.	727,107
Quiet Power The Secret Strengths of Introverts (Susan Cain, Gregory Mone, Erica Moroz) (Z-Library).v.pdf	ERROR: type should be string, got "https://thuviensach.vn\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nThông tin ebook\nDự án ebook cho thiết bị di động\nTạo ebook: Hanhdb\nCopyright © 2012 by Susan Cain\nBản quyền tác phẩm đã được bảo hộ.\nDịch từ bản gốc tiếng Anh “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That\nCan't Stop Talking”, được xuất bản tại Hoa Kỳ bởi Crown Publishers.\nBản dịch được thực hiện bởi Nguyễn Tiến Đạt (sutucon).\nBản dịch này không phải là bản dịch chính thức của cuốn sách, được thực\nhiện chỉ đơn thuần với mục đích để chia sẻ. Người dịch không được hưởng\nbất kỳ lợi ích nào về tiền bạc thông qua việc thực hiện và công bố bản dịch\nnày, cũng không khuyến khích các hành vi đọc, tải sách vi phạm bản quyền.\nHãy mua cuốn sách này khi nó được dịch hoặc phát hành chính thức tại nơi\nbạn sống để ủng hộ tác giả.\nEbook miễn phí tại : www.Sachvui.Com\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nLời người dịch\nXin chào, tôi là Nguyễn Tiến Đạt. Bản dịch mà bạn đang đọc là dự án cá\nnhân lớn đầu tiên sau năm 20 tuổi của tôi. Cám ơn bạn vì đã đọc, hoặc thậm\nchí dẫu có thể chỉ là đang cân nhắc đến việc sẽ đọc nó.\nTôi có may mắn được biết đến cuốn sách này từ khá sớm, vào cuối mùa hè\nnăm 2012, không lâu sau thời điểm nó được ra mắt tại Mỹ. Và tôi đã lập tức\nbị hút vào nó. Đôi lúc trong đời bạn, sẽ có những cuốn sách xuất hiện và tác\nđộng rất mạnh đến cách nhìn cuộc sống của bạn, cấy vào trong đầu bạn một\ný tưởng, cho bạn một lăng kính hoàn toàn mới để nhìn nhận cuộc sống và để\nnhìn nhận chính bản thân bạn. “Quiet” của Susan Cain đối với tôi là một\ncuốn sách như vậy. Và tôi không hề hối hận về việc mình đã bỏ ra hơn 6\ntháng trời để dịch nó. Nó đã giúp thay đổi cuộc sống của tôi theo hướng tốt\nđẹp hơn nhiều, đến mức tôi nhận ra việc những người khác cũng được đọc\nnó sẽ có ý nghĩa lớn đến thế nào. Và tôi nhảy vào làm, mặc dù không phải\ntôi không nhận được những lời khuyên không nên. Một người anh tôi rất\nkính trọng cũng đã khuyên tôi như vậy. Nhưng tôi còn trẻ, tôi nghĩ mình có\nquyền phạm sai lầm và có quyền làm một thứ gì đó điên rồ một chút khi tôi\ncòn đủ thời gian và nhiệt huyết. Vậy nên tôi làm.\nCuốn sách này là một dự án cá nhân của tôi. Tôi nghĩ mình cần giải thích\nmột chút cụm từ “dự án cá nhân”. Thứ nhất, nó có nghĩa là: Cuốn sách này là\ncủa tôi. Từ chữ cái đầu tiên đến cái dấu chấm cuối cùng, từ cách dịch, cách\nchọn từ, đến cách làm chú thích; từ cách trình bày bìa, đến màu bìa, thậm chí\nlà việc thiết kế bìa. Tất cả những thao tác bạn có thể nghĩ ra để có thể làm ra\nđược bản dịch này, tôi đã tự tay làm một mình hoàn toàn. Tất nhiên, việc\ndịch của tôi đứng trên đôi vai của rất nhiều kiến thức dịch và ngôn ngữ dịch\ncủa bao dịch giả tôi đã từng được đọc, được theo học, và tôi cũng đã cầu\nviện đến sự trợ giúp của rất nhiều các từ điển và các nguồn thông tin tham\nkhảo khác nhau từ mạng Internet, nhưng người làm nhiệm vụ sử dụng tất cả\nnhững thứ nguyên liệu nguồn đó để tạo ra những dòng văn bản này là tôi, và\nchỉ mình tôi. Tôi chính là người chịu trách nhiệm, là người bạn sẽ muốn\nnhắm đến để khen ngợi, hoặc để ném đá. Thứ hai, nó có nghĩa là: Dự án này\ncó ý nghĩa đặc biệt quan trọng với riêng cá nhân tôi. Với tôi, việc phải đưa\nđược những kiến thức trong cuốn sách này đến với nhiều người hơn nữa gần\nnhư là một sứ mệnh tôi tự giao cho mình, nó là một mục đích tôi hoàn toàn\ntin tưởng vào, và nó đã là động lực thúc đẩy tôi theo đuổi công việc này\ntrong suốt quãng thời gian hơn 6 tháng vừa qua. Tôi không dịch cuốn sách\nnày vì muốn nó được một nhà xuất bản nào để ý đến và trả tôi tiền để mua\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nnó; tôi không làm nó để in ra và bán cho bất kỳ ai; và tôi cũng không làm nó\nđể thể hiện gì trình độ của mình cả. Bạn có thể chọn tin lời tôi hoặc không,\ntôi không quan tâm, nhưng điều tôi muốn nói là: tôi chọn làm nó, vì tôi\nmuốn bạn đọc nó.\nTôi biết việc chỉ hết sức khen ngợi cuốn sách này trong một dòng “trạng\nthái” vu vơ nào đó trên mạng xã hội, hay liên tục bỏ bom trang mạng cá\nnhân của bạn với những bình luận kiểu “hãy đọc nó đi, nó hay lắm…” là\nkhông đủ. Dù cho trình độ tiếng Anh của bạn có đủ tốt để biết được cuốn\nsách viết gì, rào cản ngôn ngữ vẫn sẽ là một nhân tố cản trở (dù có thể chỉ là\nrất nhỏ). Và dù nhân tố cản trở đó có thể rất nhỏ, nhưng nhân nó lên với\ndung lượng của cuốn sách này (bản điện tử mà tôi có là một bản PDF chữ\nnhỏ li ti mà cũng đã 139 trang); cùng với chủ đề có vẻ thiếu hấp dẫn của nó\n(“tâm lý học”, “tính cách”, “người hướng nội”); lại nữa, hãy nghĩ đến cả thể\nloại của nó (“non-fiction” và “self-help”) vốn là thứ tôi không nghĩ được số\nđông trong các bạn ưa thích. Hãy thành thực mà nói đi, bạn thử nghĩ đến\nnhững thứ này mà xem, nếu nó không phải là một tài liệu học tập bắt buộc\nhoặc một cuốn sách nghiên cứu buộc-phải-có kinh điển cần thiết cho công\nviệc, bao nhiêu trong số các bạn sẽ bị hấp dẫn đến với một cuốn sách với\ndung lượng, chủ đề và thể loại như thế? Tôi nghĩ là không nhiều. Tôi cũng\nphải thú thật là kể cả tôi có lẽ cũng sẽ không tìm đến với một thứ như thế\nđâu, nếu tôi đã được biết đến nó theo cách này.\nNhưng tôi biết đây là một cuốn sách rất đáng đọc. Và TÔI MUỐN CÁC\nBẠN ĐỌC NÓ. Thành thực mà nói, bạn có thể dùng việc này để đánh giá tôi\nđấy. Tôi đang làm cái việc mạo hiểm là đem uy tín của mình ra để đảm bảo\ncho cuốn sách này. Nếu bạn đọc thử và không thấy nó đáng đọc như lời tôi\ntâng bốc, vậy thì tôi coi như mất sạch sẽ uy tín với bạn nhỉ. Từ nay về sau\nmọi lời tôi nói sẽ không còn mấy sức nặng với bạn nữa. Nhưng kể cả khi biết\nđiều đó, tôi vẫn tin chắc và vẫn sẽ nói cho bạn biết, rằng: TÔI TIN ĐÂY LÀ\nMỘT CUỐN SÁCH ĐÁNG ĐỌC.\nViệc dịch cuốn sách này là cố gắng của tôi để đạp đổ rào cản ngôn ngữ. Việc\ntôi sử dụng trang cá nhân của mình và đăng tải những đoạn trích tôi thấy hay\ntrong cuốn sách này là những nỗ lực nhỏ của tôi để thu hút sự quan tâm của\nmọi người tới với chủ đề của cuốn sách. Và bằng việc thực sự trở nên tự tin\nhơn, sống tốt hơn, thể hiện ra qua cuộc sống thực ngoài đời và qua những gì\ntôi giao tiếp với mọi người xung quanh cả trên mạng lẫn trong đời thực, bất\nchấp việc là một người hướng nội nhút nhát, tôi hy vọng rằng mình đã có thể\nchứng minh cho các bạn—những ai biết tôi—thấy rằng cuốn sách này, dù là\nsách self-help, dù là sách non-fiction, nhưng nó vẫn thực sự đáng giá, vì nó\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ncó thể làm thay đổi cuộc sống của bạn theo những nghĩa tốt hơn. Tôi là một\nbằng chứng cho điều đó.\nBẢN DỊCH NÀY KHÔNG HỀ HOÀN HẢO. Bạn cần phải biết điều đó. Và\nbạn cũng cần phải biết rằng tôi biết điều đó. Nó chi chít lỗi. Lỗi về cách\ndùng từ tiếng Việt. Lỗi về ngôn ngữ dịch. Lỗi cả về thao tác tham khảo\nnguồn để làm chú thích. Lỗi cả trong những khâu chế bản điện tử, tạo file\nPDF, lỗi trong việc thiết kế bìa, chọn màu bìa. Lỗi trong cả cách chọn dịch\ntiêu đề. Chi chít lỗi. Nhưng tôi hy vọng rằng chúng sẽ không làm phiền bạn\nquá nhiều trong quá trình đọc, và, quan trọng hơn, không làm ảnh hưởng đến\nviệc tiếp nhận những ý tưởng từ cuốn sách này của bạn. Tôi chỉ mong bản\ndịch này của mình có thể giúp cho việc đọc của bạn trở nên dễ dàng hơn, và\ndo đó, bạn sẽ đỡ vất vả hơn trong việc hoàn tất việc đọc cuốn sách này, chứ\ntôi thực sự không dám mong nó trở thành một bản dịch hoàn hảo, có thể\nkhiến tên tuổi tôi nổi như cồn và được khen ngợi tới tấp. Không, không đâu\nạ. CHẮC CHẮN BẠN SẼ THẤY BẢN DỊCH NÀY CHI CHÍT LỖI. Nhưng\ntôi vẫn hy vọng bạn sẽ thấy thích thú khi đọc nó, tôi nói điều này ra một cách\nhoàn toàn chân thành.\nHy vọng đến đây, có lẽ bạn đã có câu trả lời của tôi cho hai câu hỏi lớn mà\ncó thể bạn đang muốn hỏi tôi: “Cuốn sách này có đáng đọc không, tại sao?”\nvà “Sao bạn lại muốn bỏ công sức ra thực hiện việc dịch nó?”. Sau đây, tôi\nxin dành mấy lời cuối cùng này để trả lời nốt mấy câu hỏi mà từ mấy hôm\nnay tôi đã nhận được, kể từ khi tôi công bố trên trang cá nhân rằng “dự án cá\nnhân lớn nhất sau năm 20 tuổi” của tôi đã chính thức kết thúc:\n¾ Tại sao tôi không gửi sách cho nhà xuất bản, mà lại chịu tải công sức dịch\ncủa mình lên mạng một cách miễn phí thế này? Tôi có sợ vi phạm luật bản\nquyền gì đó không?\nTôi không thể, không dám và cũng không biết cách để gửi bản dịch cho nhà\nxuất bản, nếu bạn muốn tin tôi. Tôi không thể chịu được những lời phê bình,\nbất kể chúng có tích cực và xác đáng thế nào, và một khi đã là một dịch giả\nxuất bản, người đòi hỏi các bạn đọc trả tiền cho tôi để được đọc thứ tôi dịch,\ntôi sẽ phải chịu một trách nhiệm quá lớn cho bản dịch của mình. Các bạn sẽ\ncó quyền phê bình tôi. Nhưng tôi cực kỳ ghét bị phê bình, dù trên bất cứ\nphương diện gì, dù nó có nhẹ nhàng và xác đáng đến thế nào đi nữa. Hơn\nnữa, tự tôi biết trình độ của mình quá thấp. Tôi biết chắc rằng có đầy lỗi về\ncách dùng từ và lỗi về cách viết trong bản dịch này, và tôi lại là một người\ntheo chủ nghĩa hoàn hảo nữa, nên tôi không thể bán một sản phẩm mà tôi\nbiết không đạt được chất lượng tốt nhất có thể như vậy. Cuối cùng, tôi không\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ncó uy tín, thiếu kinh nghiệm và zê-rô quan hệ với bất cứ một nhà xuất bản\nnào, và tôi cũng quá nhút nhát rụt rè và thiếu tự tin để có thể dám đem thứ\nmình dịch này ra trước bất cứ hội đồng thẩm định của bất cứ nhà xuất bản\nnào. Tôi sợ sự đánh giá. Và do vậy, tôi đã chọn không tìm cách xuất bản\nchính thống bản dịch này. Hãy để cho ai đó phù hợp hơn tôi làm thế khi nào\nhọ có thể đi. Tôi chỉ cần bản dịch này đến với các bạn được là được rồi, dẫu\nchỉ là qua Internet thôi cũng không sao. Một ngày nào đấy, sẽ có một cuốn\nsách với tên Nguyễn Tiến Đạt, hoặc với tư cách là dịch giả, hoặc (và tôi\nmong là) với tư cách một tác giả. Còn hôm nay, mong các bạn hãy nhận lấy\nmón quà này của tôi từ Internet.\nVề vấn đề đọc và tải sách bản quyền, bản thân tôi coi đây là một vấn đề vẫn\ncòn chưa thực sự rõ ràng về mặt đạo đức. Liệu sao chép, phân phối hay tải\nsách hay bất cứ thứ gì từ trên mạng về một cách miễn phí có được coi là ăn\ncắp không? Tôi không tin vào điều này, nhưng tôi cũng không khuyến khích\nnhững hành vi bị coi là vi phạm luật bản quyền. Và tôi vẫn quyết định sẽ\nchia sẻ bản dịch này của mình, bởi theo chiếc la bàn đạo đức nội tại của tôi,\ntôi không tin rằng việc mình đang làm là sai. Và tôi cũng không quan tâm\nliệu bạn có ủng hộ tôi trong vấn đề này hay không. Ở đây, tôi chỉ xin dừng\nlại để nói rằng: tôi đang làm điều tôi tin là đúng đắn và nên làm, và với tôi,\nchỉ vậy là đủ.\n¾ Tại sao lại chọn thiết kế bìa như vậy? Tại sao lại chọn dịch tiêu đề “Quiet”\nthành “Im lặng”?\nBìa của “Im lặng” có hình ảnh chủ đạo là một trục phần tư mô phỏng một hệ\ntrục tọa độ. Đây là tôi thiết kế dựa vào một ý tưởng xuất hiện trong cuốn\nsách, đó là: “một đồ thị với một trục đứng và một trục nằm ngang, với trục\nngang là khoảng dao động giữa hai thái cực hướng nội-hướng ngoại, và trục\nđứng tương ứng với khoảng bình thản-lo lắng. Với mô hình này, bạn có được\nbốn phân loại khác nhau của tính cách con người, tương ứng với bốn góc\nphần tư của đồ thị: người hướng ngoại bình thản, người hướng ngoại lo lắng\n(hoặc bốc đồng), người hướng nội bình thản, và người hướng nội lo lắng.\nNói một cách khác, bạn có thể là một người hướng ngoại nhút nhát như\nBarbra Streisand, người có một tính cách hết sức đặc sắc và thu hút, nhưng\nvẫn sợ đến tê liệt cả người đi mỗi khi phải bước lên sân khấu; hoặc một\nngười hướng nội không-nhút-nhát, như Bill Gates, người mà về mọi phương\ndiện đều tránh phải tiếp xúc với mọi người, nhưng chưa bao giờ phải lo lắng\nvì áp lực ý kiến của người khác.” Đây là chi tiết tâm đắc đầu tiên tôi bắt gặp\ntrong cuốn sách khi lần đầu đọc nó, và do đây là một dự án cá nhân của riêng\ntôi, tôi không nghĩ mình có gì phải ngại trong việc chọn một chi tiết mình\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nthích làm cảm hứng để thiết kế bìa. Nói luôn, bìa màu xanh lá cây cũng chỉ\nđơn giản là vì đây là màu sắc ưa thích nhất của tôi mà thôi. Dù sao cũng\nmong là nó hợp mắt các bạn, nhưng dẫu nó (nhỡ) có không hợp mắt các bạn\nthì tôi cũng đành chịu; đây là dự án cá nhân của tôi, tôi sẽ làm nó theo những\ncách mà tôi muốn, chứ không phải là theo ý thích của bất kể ai khác.\nChữ “Quiet”, là tiêu đề chính của bản gốc, đã được tôi chọn dịch là “Im\nlặng”. Tôi có lý do cho điều này. Bên cạnh sự tương hợp đến một mức độ\nnào đấy với nét nghĩa mà tôi hiểu của từ “Quiet” theo ý dùng của tác giả, tôi\ncố tình chọn chữ “Im lặng”, với chữ “I” chủ ý kéo dài ra và làm lớn hơn hẳn\ncác chữ còn lại khi in trên bìa, còn là vì tôi muốn đặc biệt dành tặng cuốn\nsách này cho những người có tính cách “I”, viết tắt của “introverted”—\nhướng nội, theo phân loại của bài Trắc nghiệm tính cách Myers-Briggs\n(Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), thường được viết ngắn gọn là MBTI. Chữ\n“I” lớn đó chính là dành cho họ, những con người nhút nhát, rụt rè, ngại giao\ntiếp, thích suy nghĩ sâu sắc, ham đọc sách, khiêm tốn, nhạy cảm, thận trọng,\nnghiêm túc, sống nội tâm, hiền lành, điềm tĩnh, thích tìm sự đơn độc, ngại\nmạo hiểm, dễ bị tổn thương bởi lời lên án hoặc xúc phạm. Những người như\ntôi. Cuốn sách này được Susan Cain viết trước hết là để cho họ. Bản dịch\nnày được tôi thực hiện, trước hết là để cho họ.\nNhững lời này nói ra, tôi hy vọng đã giúp bạn hiểu được tôi làm thế này là để\nlàm gì, để đạt được gì, và để bạn hiểu rằng bạn nên trông mong những gì và\nkhông nên trông mong những gì từ bản dịch này. Kể từ giờ trở đi, tôi xin\nnhường lại công việc quyết định cho bạn. Nếu bạn tin tôi, tin vào những điều\ntôi nói, hoặc ít nhất là tin vào giá trị của cuốn sách này, và muốn sử dụng\nđến bản dịch (dù thiếu hoàn hảo) này của tôi, tôi xin được nói: Cảm ơn bạn.\nChúc bạn tất cả những gì tốt đẹp nhất. Bản dịch này xin được gửi tặng đến\ntất cả những người hướng nội ở ngoài kia, cũng như những người hướng\nngoại yêu quý, gắn bó hoặc cộng tác với những người hướng nội nữa. Cảm\nơn các bạn đã đọc đến đây. Cảm ơn các bạn, và chúc các bạn cũng sẽ tìm\nđược những hiểu biết và ý tưởng thật sâu sắc, mới mẻ từ cuốn sách này, như\ntôi đã tìm thấy được vậy.\nHà Nội, ngày 10 tháng Năm, năm 2014.\nNguyễn Tiến Đạt (sutucon)\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nĐề từ\nTHÊM MỘT VÀI TIẾNG ỒN CHO ‘IM LẶNG’\n“Một khảo nghiệm về tâm lý con người hấp dẫn, có thể làm thay-đổi-cuộc-\nđời mà chắc chắn sẽ đem lại lợi ích lớn cho cả người hướng nội cũng như\nngười hướng ngoại”.\n—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)\n“Hiền lành là mạnh mẽ… Đơn độc chính là đạt hiệu quả cao nhất về giao\ntiếp… những ý tưởng dường như rất ngược đời này là một vài trong rất\nnhiều lý do để đem Im lặng vào một góc khuất tĩnh lặng nào đó và hấp thụ\ntoàn bộ những thông điệp tuyệt vời, kích-thích-suy-nghĩ vô cùng của nó.”\n—ROSABETH MOSS KANTER, giáo sư tại Đại học Kinh tế Harvard, tác\ngiả của cuốn sách “Confidence and SuperCorp”.\n“Một cuốn sách rất có giá trị về mặt hiểu biết, được tiến hành nghiên cứu kỹ\ncàng, về sức mạnh của sự lặng im và đức hạnh của việc có một đời sống nội\ntâm phong phú. Nó phá đổ quan điểm xã hội phổ biến rằng bạn cần phải\nhướng ngoại thì mới có thể hạnh phúc và thành công trong cuộc sống”.\n—JUDITH ORLOFF, tiến sĩ y khoa, tác giả của cuốn sách “Emotional\nFreedom”\n“Trong cuốn sách đề cập hết sức kỹ lưỡng và được viết một cách rất tuyệt\nvời này, Susan Cain đã thể hiện một cuộc biện hộ mạnh mẽ cho sự hướng\nnội. Cô cũng khéo léo cảnh báo về những nhược điểm của sự ồn ào trong\nnền văn hóa của chúng ta, trong đó có cả nguy cơ nó làm át đi những tiếng\nnói có giá trị khác. Vượt lên trên tất cả những ồn ào, giọng nói của chính\nSusan vẫn hiện lên đầy hấp dẫn—sâu sắc, hiền từ, bình tĩnh và hùng hồn. Im\nlặng xứng đáng có được một lượng độc giả rất lớn”.\n—CHRISTOPHER LANE, tác giả của cuốn sách “Shyness: How Normal\nBehavior Became a Sickness”\n“Hành trình của Susan Cain để thấu hiểu sự hướng nội, một hành trình tuyệt\nvời đã đi từ phòng thí nghiệm tới bục sân khấu của người diễn giả, cho\nchúng ta những bằng chứng đầy sức thuyết phục để trân trọng vào chất\nlượng hơn là phong cách, vào nội dung hơn là diện mạo, và vào những phẩm\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nchất mà ở Mỹ thường bị coi nhẹ. Cuốn sách này xuất chúng, sâu sắc, chứa\nđầy cảm xúc và đầy tràn những hiểu biết”.\n—SHERI FINK, tiến sĩ y khoa, tác giả của cuốn sách “War Hospital”.\n“Xuất sắc, khai sáng, giải phóng con người! Im lặng đem đến không chỉ một\ntiếng nói, mà còn cả một con đường về nhà cho rất nhiều người đã bước qua\ncuộc đời mà vẫn luôn nghĩ cách họ tương tác với thế giới là có gì đó cần phải\nsửa chữa”.\n—JONATHAN FIELDS, tác giả của cuốn sách “Uncertainty: Turning Fear\nand Doubt into Fuel for\nBrilliance”\n“Thi thoảng, lâu lâu một cuốn sách lại xuất hiện và cho chúng ta những hiểu\nbiết mới đến bất ngờ. Im lặng là một cuốn sách như vậy: nó vừa kể những\ncâu chuyện hấp dẫn, vừa truyền tải những tri thức khoa học hàng đầu. Lời\ngợi ý dành cho kinh doanh là đặc biệt có giá trị nhất: Im lặng mang đến\nnhững lời khuyên để người hướng nội có thể lãnh đạo một cách hiệu quả,\nthực hiện những bài nói một cách thành công, tránh bị kiệt sức, và chọn lấy\nvai trò phù hợp. Cuốn sách hấp dẫn, viết hay đến tuyệt vời, được nghiên cứu\nkỹ càng này chỉ đơn giản là tuyệt hảo”.\n—ADAM M. GRANT, tiến sĩ, phó giáo sư bộ môn quản lý, Đại học kinh tế\nWharton\nTHÊM NHIỀU TIẾNG ỒN HƠN NỮA CHO ‘IM LẶNG’\n“Phá tan những hiểu lầm… Cain liên tục thu hút sự chú tâm của độc giả\nbằng cách đưa ra những câu chuyện cụ thể về các cá nhân… cũng như các\nbáo cáo về những nghiên cứu mới nhất. Sự chuyên tâm, các nghiên cứu, và\nđặc biệt là niềm đam mê về chủ đề quan trọng này của cô đã được đền đáp\nxứng đáng”.\n—Tạp chí “Publishers Weekly”\n“Im lặng đưa những cuộc trò chuyện về người hướng nội trong xã hội định-\nhướng-hướng-ngoại của chúng ta lên một tầm cao mới. Tôi tin rằng có rất\nnhiều người hướng nội sẽ nhận ra, mặc dù có thể họ không biết, rằng họ đã\nđợi cuốn sách này cả đời mình rồi”.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n—ADAM S. MCHUGH, tác giả của cuốn sách “Introverts in the Church”\n“Cuốn sách Im lặng của Susan Cain cung cấp tuyệt vời nhiều những thông\ntin về khuôn mẫu hướng ngoại lý tưởng và khía cạnh tâm lý học của một tính\ncách nhạy cảm, và cô có nhận thức rất rõ về việc người hướng nội có thể làm\nthế nào để tận dụng được nhiều nhất thiên hướng tính cách của mình trên\nmọi lĩnh vực của cuộc sống. Xã hội cần những người hướng nội, vậy nên tất\ncả mọi người đều có thể thu được lợi ích từ những hiểu biết có trong cuốn\nsách này”.\n—JONATHAN M. CHEEK, giáo sư tâm lý học tại Đại học Wellesley, đồng\nbiên tập của cuốn sách “Shyness: Perspectives on Research and Treatment”\n“Một cuốn sách xuất sắc, quan trọng, và có sức ảnh hưởng cá nhân vô cùng\nlớn. Cain đã cho thấy rằng, với tất cả những đức hạnh của nó, Khuôn Mẫu\nHướng Ngoại Lý Tưởng của nước Mỹ đang lấy đi quá nhiều dưỡng khí. Bản\nthân Cain là người hoàn hảo để đứng lên đấu tranh cho điều này—với thái độ\nchiến thắng và sự rõ ràng, cô đã cho chúng ta thấy sẽ thế nào khi suy nghĩ\nbên ngoài nhóm (think outside the group)”.\n—CHRISTINE KENNEALLY, tác giả của cuốn sách “The First Word”\n“Điều Susan Cain thấu hiểu—và người đọc của cuốn sách tuyệt vời này rồi\nsẽ sớm trân trọng—là một thứ mà tâm lý học và thế giới nói-nhanh-làm-\nnhanh của chúng ta đã quá chậm để nhận ra: Không chỉ không có gì sai trong\nviệc tĩnh lặng, thích suy nghĩ, nhút nhát rụt rè, và hướng nội, mà còn có\nnhững lợi thế rõ ràng khi là người như thế nữa”.\n—JAY BELSKY, Giáo sư Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn, chuyên ngành\nPhát triển Con người và Cộng đồng, Đại học California (University of\nCalifornia, Davis)\n“Tác giả Susan Cain đã thể hiện sức mạnh tĩnh lặng của chính mình, trong\ncuốn sách được thực hiện vô cùng tuyệt vời và hết sức hấp dẫn, lôi cuốn này.\nCô mang tới những nghiên cứu khoa học và những trải nghiệm của người\nhướng nội vô cùng quan trọng”.\n—JENNIFER B. KAHNWEILER, tiến sĩ, tác giả của cuốn sách “The\nIntroverted Leader”\n“Trên nhiều phương diện, Im lặng là một cuốn sách thực sự xuất sắc. Trước\ntiên, nó được trang bị chi tiết với những thông tin từ các nghiên cứu khoa\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nhọc, nhưng không hề bị sa vào nó. Thứ hai, cuốn sách được viết đặc biệt tốt,\nvà rất “thân thiện với người đọc” (‘reader friendly’). Thứ ba, nó cung cấp\nnhiều hiểu biết mới quan trọng. Tôi chắc chắn rằng rất nhiều người thắc mắc\ntại sao những hành vi tự tin đến hung hăng, bốc đồng lại thường được tưởng\nthưởng; trong khi những hành vi giàu suy nghĩ, cẩn trọng lại thường bị bỏ\nqua. Cuốn sách này đi vượt xa hơn cả những sự hời hợt ở ấn tượng bề mặt để\nthâm nhập và phân tích sâu hơn nhiều”.\n—WILLIAM GRAZIANO, giáo sư, Khoa Khoa học Tâm Lý, Đại học\nPurdue\nDành tặng gia đình tuổi ấu thơ của tôi\n“Một giống loài nơi tất cả đều là Tướng Patton, sẽ không thể thành công\nhơn bất cứ, dù chỉ một chút nào, so với một chủng tộc nơi tất cả đều là\nVincent Van Gogh1. Tôi thích tin rằng thế giới này cần có những vận động\nviên thể thao, những nhà triết học, những biểu tượng sex, những họa sĩ,\nnhững nhà khoa học; nó cần những người nhân hậu, những người sắt đá,\nnhững người tàn nhẫn, và cả những người nhút nhát yếu mềm. Nó cần\nnhững người có thể cống hiến cả đời họ cho việc nghiên cứu có bao nhiêu\ngiọt nước được tiết ra trong tuyến nước bọt của loài chó, trong mỗi điều kiện\nkhác nhau; nó cần những người có thể lưu giữ ấn tượng chớp nhoáng của\ntrăm đóa hoa anh đào bung nở trong một bài thơ mười bốn chữ; hay cống\nhiến hai mươi lăm trang giấy để phân tích cảm giác của một cậu bé khi nằm\nyên trên giường một mình buổi tối, chờ mẹ đến hôn vào má và chúc cậu ngủ\nngon.... Quả thực vậy; sự hiện diện của sức mạnh vượt trội của mỗi người\ntrong một lĩnh vực nhất định đã mặc định rằng, năng lượng cần thiết cho\ncác hoạt động khác ở họ hẳn đều đã bị rút cạn đi, và thay vào để dùng cho\nchỉ một lĩnh vực vượt trội kia mà thôi.”\n—ALLEN SHAWN\n1 George Smith Patton Jr. (11/ 11/1885—21/ 12/1945), còn được gọi là\nGeorge Patton III, là một tướng lĩnh, nhà chỉ huy quân sự nổi tiếng của Lục\nquân Hoa Kỳ trong Chiến tranh Thế giới lần II trong các chiến dịch ở Bắc\nPhi, Sicilia, Pháp và Đức, 1943–1945. Trong Chiến tranh thế giới thứ nhất,\nông trở thành một trong những chỉ huy đầu tiên của binh chủng xe tăng của\nHoa Kỳ. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nVincent Willem van Gogh (30/3/1853—29/7/1890), thường được biết đến\nvới tên Vincent Van Gogh, là một danh hoạ Hà Lan thuộc trường phái hậu\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nấn tượng. Nhiều bức tranh của ông nằm trong số những tác phẩm nổi tiếng\nnhất, được yêu thích nhất và cũng đắt nhất trên thế giới . Van Gogh là nghệ\nsĩ tiên phong của trường phái biểu hiện và có ảnh hưởng rất lớn tới mỹ thuật\nhiện đại, đặc biệt là tới trường phái dã thú (Fauvism) và trường phái biểu\nhiện tại Đức. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nGhi chú của tác giả\nTôi đã viết cuốn sách này một cách chính thức từ năm 2005, và không chính\nthức trong suốt cả quãng đời trưởng thành của mình. Tôi đã nói và viết với\nhàng trăm, có lẽ là hàng nghìn người về những chủ đề bàn luận đến ở đây, và\ncũng đã đọc chừng ấy sách, các nghiên cứu học thuật, các bài báo và tạp chí,\nnhững cuộc thảo luận ở chat-room trên mạng, và những bài blog. Một vài\ntrong số này tôi đã nhắc đến trong cuốn sách; một số khác thì được nhắc đến\ntrong hầu như mọi câu văn mà tôi viết. Im lặng đứng trên rất nhiều đôi vai,\nđặc biệt là các học giả và các nhà nghiên cứu mà công trình của họ đã dạy tôi\nrất nhiều. Trong một thế giới hoàn hảo, tôi sẽ đề tên tất cả mọi nguồn thông\ntin, tất cả những người thầy, và tất cả những người mà tôi đã từng phỏng\nvấn. Nhưng để văn bản còn có thể đọc được, một số cái tên sẽ chỉ xuất hiện\ntrong phần Chú thích hoặc Lời ghi nhận.\nVì những lý do tương tự, tôi đã không dùng dấu ba chấm hay ngoặc đơn\ntrong một số câu trích dẫn, nhưng đã đảm bảo rằng những từ thêm vào hoặc\nbị cắt đi không làm thay đổi dụng ý của người nói hay người viết. Nếu bạn\nmuốn trích dẫn lại những câu này từ nguồn nguyên bản của nó, các liên kết\nđưa bạn tới văn bản gốc có trong phần Chú thích.\nTôi đã thay đổi danh tính và một số chi tiết có thể dùng để nhận diện những\nngười có trong các câu chuyện mà họ kể cho tôi, cũng như trong các câu\nchuyện của chính tôi với tư cách một luật sư và một nhà tư vấn. Để bảo vệ sự\nriêng tư của các học viên tại lớp học kỹ năng nói trước đám đông của\nCharles di Cagno, những người vốn không có ý định được nhắc đến trong\ncuốn sách này khi họ đăng ký lớp học, câu chuyện về buổi học đầu tiên của\ntôi ở lớp học đó thực ra là một tổng hợp của vài buổi học khác nhau; cả câu\nchuyện về Greg and Emily cũng vậy, được xây dựng từ nhiều cuộc phỏng\nvấn với các cặp đôi tương tự. Ngoài việc bị giới hạn bởi trí nhớ của tôi, tất cả\ncác câu chuyện khác đều đã được thuật lại như cách chúng đã diễn ra hoặc\nđã được kể lại cho tôi. Tôi không tiến hành kiểm tra lại tính xác thực của\nnhững câu chuyện mà người khác kể cho tôi về chính họ, nhưng chỉ bao gồm\nvào đây những câu chuyện mà tôi tin là có thật.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nGIỚI THIỆU\nHai cực Bắc–Nam của tính cách con người\nMontgomery, Alabama. Ngày 1 tháng Mười Hai, năm 1955. Trời vừa chập\ntối. Một chiếc xe buýt dừng lại bên bến, và một người đàn bà phục sức giản\ndị, tuổi chừng bốn mươi bước lên xe. Bà đứng thẳng người, bất chấp việc đã\ndành suốt cả ngày hôm đó cúi gập bên bàn ủi quần áo, trong căn tiệm may\nẩm thấp, tối tăm của mình tại khu bách hóa Montgomery Fair. Bàn chân bà\nsưng tấy vì mệt mỏi, hai bả vai đau nhức. Bà ngồi yên lặng trên hàng ghế\nđầu tiên của dãy ghế dành cho người Da màu, ngắm nhìn từng tốp, từng tốp\nhành khách chậm chạp lấp đầy dần từng băng ghế trống trên chiếc xe. Cho\nđến khi người tài xế đột nhiên yêu cầu bà phải đứng dậy và nhường chỗ cho\nmột hành khách người da trắng.\nNgười phụ nữ bé nhỏ chỉ thốt ra một từ duy nhất, một từ ngữ đã châm ngòi\ncho một trong những phong trào dân quyền lớn nhất của thế kỷ 20, một từ\nngữ đã giúp cho nước Mỹ tìm thấy bản ngã khác tốt hơn cho chính mình.\nBà đã nói: “Không.”\nNgười tài xế đe dọa sẽ báo bắt bà nếu bà không chịu làm theo yêu cầu. “Ông\ncó thể làm thế.” Rosa Parks trả lời.\nMột viên cảnh sát tới nơi. Ông ta hỏi Parks tại sao bà không chịu đứng dậy.\n“Tại sao tất cả các người cứ mãi o ép chúng tôi?” bà chỉ đơn giản hỏi lại.\n“Tôi không biết”, viên cảnh sát nói. “Nhưng luật là luật, và bà sẽ bị bắt”.\nTrong buổi chiều ngày diễn ra phiên tòa tuyên án Parks tội “gây rối trật tự\ncông cộng”; Hiệp Hội Vì Montgomery Tiến Bộ (Montgomery Improvement\nAssociation) tổ chức một cuộc biểu tình ủng hộ Parks tại Giáo đường Baptist\nPhố Holt, trong khu nghèo nhất của cả thành phố. Năm nghìn người tụ tập để\nủng hộ hành động dũng cảm đơn độc của Parks. Họ lấp đầy sảnh đường nhà\nthờ, đông đến nỗi những băng ghế của sảnh đường rút cục không thể chứa\nthêm được nữa. Những người còn lại lặng lẽ chờ đợi bên ngoài, lắng nghe\nqua những chiếc loa. Vị linh mục Martin Luther King Jr. nói với đám đông:\n“Sẽ có một lúc con người không thể chịu đựng được việc tiếp tục bị giày xéo\nbởi gót chân sắt của sự đàn áp”, ông nói. “Sẽ có một lúc con người không thể\nchịu đựng được việc tiếp tục bị đẩy ra khỏi ánh nắng ấm áp của mặt trời\ntháng Bảy, và bị bỏ lại một mình trong cái lạnh cắt thịt của tháng Mười Một\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nnơi miền núi An-pơ.”\nÔng ngợi ca hành động dũng cảm của Parks, và ôm lấy bà. Bà đứng đó, lặng\nyên, chỉ sự có mặt của bà cũng đủ để khích động cả đám đông. Tổ chức đã\nphát động một phong trào tẩy chay xe buýt kéo dài đến 381 ngày sau đó.\nNhững người dân lê bước hàng nhiều dặm đường để đến nơi làm việc. Họ đi\nnhờ xe với những người mới gặp. Họ thay đổi con đường lịch sử của cả Liên\nBang Hoa Kỳ.\nTôi đã luôn hình dung về Rosa Parks như là một kẻ rất hiên ngang, oai vệ,\nmột người phụ nữ mạnh mẽ, quyết đoán; có thể dễ dàng đối mặt với cả chiếc\nxe buýt chứa đầy các hành khách với những ánh nhìn cay độc. Nhưng khi bà\nmất vào năm 2005 ở tuổi 92, cơn lũ ồ ạt các bài cáo phó đăng trên các trang\nbáo đều miêu tả bà như một người rất nhỏ nhẹ, dịu dàng, và thậm chí vóc\nngười của bà cũng rất thấp bé. Họ nói bà rất “rụt rè và nhút nhát”, nhưng có\n“lòng dũng cảm của một con sư tử”. Các tờ báo viết về bà đều tràn ngập\nnhững lời ca ngợi như “sự khiêm tốn cấp tiến” và “sự ngoan cường tĩnh\nlặng”. Nghĩa là thế nào khi một người có thể ngoan cường một cách tĩnh\nlặng? - những lời này dường như muốn ngầm hỏi. Làm thế nào bạn có thể\nvừa rụt rè, lại vừa thật dũng cảm?\nParks có vẻ nhận rõ nghịch lý này, gọi tên cuốn tự truyện của mình là “Sức\nmạnh im lặng” (Quiet Strength)—một tiêu đề có vẻ như muốn thách thức\nnhững nhận định của chúng ta. Tại sao im lặng lại không thể có sức mạnh?\nVà im lặng thực sự còn làm được những gì nữa, mà trước giờ chúng ta chưa\nbao giờ chịu nhìn nhận?\nCuộc sống của chúng ta được định hình bởi tính cách cũng sâu sắc như nó bị\nảnh hưởng bởi giới tính hay chủng tộc vậy. Và phương diện quan trọng nhất\ntrong tính cách của một con người—“Hai cực Bắc– Nam của tính cách”, như\nmột nhà khoa học đã nói—là ở việc chúng ta rơi vào đâu trên trục nối giữa\nhai thái cực Hướng Nội—Hướng Ngoại. Vị trí của chúng ta trên thang nối\nnày tác động tới cách chúng ta chọn bạn bè và người tình, cách chúng ta bắt\nđầu một cuộc trò chuyện, tìm giải pháp cho những sự khác biệt, và thể hiện\ntình yêu. Nó ảnh hưởng tới sự nghiệp mà chúng ta chọn, và góp phần quan\ntrọng quyết định xem liệu chúng ta có thành công trong sự nghiệp đó hay\nkhông. Nó điều khiển việc chúng ta thực hiện thường xuyên đến đâu các\nhoạt động như tập thể thao, ngoại tình, làm việc hiệu quả mà không cần ngủ,\nhọc từ những sai lầm trong quá khứ, đặt những canh bạc lớn trên thị trường\nchứng khoán, bỏ qua món lợi tức thời để có được lợi ích về lâu dài trong\ntương lai, làm một nhà lãnh đạo giỏi, và đặt những câu hỏi như : “Nếu trong\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ntrường hợp đó thì mọi việc sẽ ra sao?”2. Nó được phản chiếu ngay trong trục\nthông tin trong não bộ của mỗi con người, trong từng nơ-ron truyền dẫn\nxung điện, và trong từng góc khuất nhỏ nhất trong hệ thần kinh của mỗi\nchúng ta. Ngày nay, sự hướng nội và hướng ngoại là hai trong số những chủ\nđề được nghiên cứu nhiều nhất trong tâm lý học tính cách, làm khích động trí\ntò mò của hàng trăm nhà khoa học khắp nơi trên toàn cầu.\nCác nhà nghiên cứu này đã có những khám phá vô cùng thú vị, với sự hỗ trợ\nđắc lực từ những công nghệ mới nhất; nhưng chúng chỉ là một phần nhỏ\ntrong một lịch sử lâu dài về nghiên cứu tâm lý con người. Các thi gia và các\nnhà triết học cổ đại đã có những suy nghĩ về người hướng nội và hướng\nngoại ngay từ những năm tháng đầu tiên của lịch sử có thể ghi chép được. Cả\nhai loại tính cách này đều xuất hiện trong Kinh Thánh, cũng như trong ghi\nchép của các thầy thuốc từ thời Hy Lạp và La Mã cổ đại; và một số nhà\nnghiên cứu tâm lý tiến hóa (evolutionary psychologists) đã khẳng định rằng\nlịch sử của hai loại tính cách này còn vươn xa hơn thế nữa: vương quốc của\nloài vật cũng có “hướng nội” và “hướng ngoại”, như rồi chúng ta sẽ thấy, từ\nruồi giấm cho đến cá vược, đến động vật linh trưởng. Cũng như với tất cả\ncác cặp tương hỗ khác: nam tính và nữ tính; phương Đông và phương Tây;\ntự do và bảo thủ— nhân loại sẽ khác đi đến mức không thể nhận ra, cũng\nnhư suy biến đến một cách vô cùng, nếu không có đủ cả hai dạng tính cách\nkhác biệt này.\n2 Câu trả lời: tập thể dục: hướng ngoại; ngoại tình: hướng ngoại; hoạt động\ntốt mà không cần ngủ: hướng nội; học từ những sai lầm trong quá khứ:\nhướng nội; mạo hiểm những canh bạc lớn: hướng ngoại; ưu tiên lợi ích lâu\ndài hơn là phần thưởng trước mắt: hướng nội; làm một nhà lãnh đạo giỏi:\ntrong một số trường hợp là người hướng ngoại, trong các trường hợp khác\nlà người hướng nội, tùy thuộc vào nhu cầu lãnh đạo của từng trường hợp cụ\nthể; đặt câu hỏi “Nếu vậy thì sao?”: hướng nội.\nCó thể thấy ngay điều đó trong mối quan hệ hợp tác giữa Rosa Parks và\nMartin Luther King Jr : Một nhà diễn thuyết quả quyết, hùng hồn, dữ dội từ\nchối nhường ghế của mình trên một chuyến xe buýt phân biệt chủng tộc chắc\nchắn sẽ không thể có cùng một tác động như một người phụ nữ khiêm tốn, rõ\nràng là thích giữ im lặng hơn, trừ khi tình huống cực kỳ cần thiết như Rosa\nParks. Và Parks chắc chắn cũng không có năng lực để thu hút đám đông, nếu\nbà cố đứng lên và nói với tất cả rằng bà có một giấc mơ 3.\nNhưng với sự giúp đỡ của King, bà đã không cần phải làm thế.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nẤy vậy nhưng ngày nay, chúng ta chỉ dành chỗ cho một phạm vi tính cách\nrất hẹp. Chúng ta được dạy rằng người mạnh dạn sẽ là những người tuyệt\nvời, và kẻ quảng giao sẽ là kẻ hạnh phúc hơn. Chúng ta tự nhìn nhận bản\nthân như một quốc gia của những người hướng ngoại—một điều nói lên rằng\nchúng ta đã mất hẳn đi nhận thức về việc chúng ta thực sự là ai. Tùy thuộc\nvào việc bạn tham khảo nghiên cứu nào, một phần ba cho tới một phần hai\ndân số nước Mỹ là những người hướng nội—nói một cách khác, cứ hai hoặc\nba người mà bạn biết thì có một là người hướng nội. (Cứ xét đến việc Mỹ là\nmột trong số những quốc gia hướng ngoại nhất trên thế giới, tỷ lệ người\nhướng nội ở các nước khác chắc chắn cũng phải cao ít nhất như vậy). Nếu\nchính bản thân bạn không phải là một người hướng nội, vậy thì chắc chắn\ncon cái bạn, nhân viên của bạn, vợ/chồng của bạn, hay người tình của bạn\nphải là một người như vậy.\nNếu những số liệu này làm bạn ngạc nhiên, thì có lẽ là vì rất nhiều trong số\nđó luôn giả vờ là những người hướng ngoại. Những người hướng nội bí mật\ndễ dàng lướt qua bạn mà không hề bị phát hiện trong mỗi sân chơi, bên mỗi\ntủ để đồ trường học, và trong mỗi dãy hành lang của toàn thể Liên Bang Hoa\nKỳ. Một số đánh lừa cả chính họ, cho tới khi một diễn biến thay đổi cuộc đời\nnào đó xảy ra—khi bị sa thải, khi con cái lớn lên và bắt đầu rời xa, hoặc một\nmón thừa kế khổng lồ từ trên trời rơi xuống, một thứ giúp giải phóng và cho\nphép họ tự do phung phí thời gian để làm bất cứ thứ gì mà họ muốn—và xốc\nhọ trở về với đúng bản chất tự nhiên thực sự của mình. Bạn có thể chỉ cần\nđưa chủ đề của cuốn sách này vào một cuộc nói chuyện với bạn bè và người\nquen của mình là đủ để phát hiện ra, những người bạn ít ngờ đến nhất sẽ tự\nnhận họ là người hướng nội.\n3 \"Tôi có một giấc mơ\" (tên gốc tiếng Anh: \"I Have a Dream\") là tên phổ\nbiến của bài diễn văn nổi tiếng nhất của Martin Luther King, Jr., khi ông\nnói, với sức mạnh thuyết phục của tài hùng biện, về ước mơ của ông cho\ntương lai của nước Mỹ, khi người da trắng và người da đen có thể sống\nchung hoà thuận như những con người bình đẳng. Ngày 28 tháng 8 năm\n1963, King đọc bài diễn văn này từ những bậc thềm của Đài Tưởng niệm\nLinco ln, trong cuộc Tuần hành đến Washington vì Việc làm và Tự do. Đó là\nthời điểm quyết định cho Phong trào Dân quyền Mỹ.\nKhởi đầu với lời gợi nhắc đến bản Tuyên ngôn Giải phóng Nô lệ, văn kiện\nnăm 1863 công bố sự tự do cho hàng triệu nô lệ, King đưa ra nhận xét,\n\"nhưng một trăm năm sau, người da đen vẫn chưa được tự do.\" Khi sắp kết\nthúc bài diễn văn, King rời bỏ bản thảo soạn sẵn để trình bày một điệp ngữ\nđầy tính ngẫu hứng, khi ông nhắc đi nhắc lại câu, \"Tôi có một giấc mơ\", có\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nlẽ theo yêu cầu của Mahalia Jackson, “Martin, hãy nói cho họ biết về giấc\nmơ!”. Đây là thời khắc đẩy cảm xúc người nghe lên đỉnh điểm, và khiến nó\ntrở nên phần nổi tiếng nhất của bài diễn văn: King kể cho họ nghe giấc mơ\ncủa ông, phác họa những hình ảnh về sự tự do và bình đẳng đang trỗi dậy từ\nvùng đất nô lệ và đầy hận thù. \"Tôi có một giấc mơ\" đứng đầu danh sách\n100 bài diễn văn chính trị xuất sắc nhất nước Mỹ trong thế kỷ 20, theo sự\nbình chọn năm 1999 của giới học giả về diễn thuyết trước công chúng.\n(Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nThực ra rất hợp lý khi nghĩ đến lý do tại sao nhiều người hướng nội lại cố\nche giấu sự rụt rè của mình đến vậy, thậm chí là ngay cả với chính bản thân\nhọ. Chúng ta sống trong một hệ giá trị mà tôi gọi là Khuôn Mẫu Hướng\nNgoại Lý Tưởng (the Extrovert Ideal)—một niềm tin có vẻ có mặt ở khắp\nmọi nơi rằng một con người lý tưởng với xã hội phải là một kẻ hoạt bát,\nxông xáo, năng nổ, hăng hái giao du rộng rãi, và có thể hoàn toàn thoải mái\nkhi là trung tâm của mọi sự chú ý. Người hướng ngoại lý tưởng ưa thích\nhành động chứ không phải tư duy; mạo hiểm chứ không phải xét đoán; và\nchắc chắn chứ không phải hoài nghi. Anh ấy sẽ ưu tiên những quyết định\nthật nhanh chóng, kể cả khi phải mạo hiểm rằng mình có thể sai. Cô ấy sẽ\nlàm việc vô cùng hiệu quả trong nhóm và giao du rộng rãi với tập thể. Chúng\nta luôn thích nghĩ rằng mình luôn trân trọng mọi đặc tính cá nhân; nhưng quá\nthường xuyên, chúng ta chỉ trân trọng một loại đặc tính cá nhân mà thôi—\nloại có thể thoải mái “dấn thân mình ra ngoài kia”. Chắc rồi, chúng ta cho\nphép những thiên tài công nghệ đơn độc, người đã xây dựng những tập đoàn\ncả tỷ đô chỉ từ trong ga-ra ô tô nhà mình, có thể có bất cứ thể loại tính cách\nnào mà họ muốn. Nhưng họ là những ngoại lệ, chứ không phải quy luật; và\nsự hào phóng của chúng ta cũng chỉ dừng lại ở những người có thể trở nên\nvô cùng giàu có, hoặc những ai có tiềm năng sáng giá có thể làm được như\nvậy mà thôi.\nSự hướng nội—cùng với những họ hàng của nó như tính nhạy cảm, lòng\nnghiêm túc, và sự rụt rè—giờ đây đã trở thành những đặc điểm tính cách\nhạng hai, đâu đó nằm giữa một nỗi thất vọng và một chứng bệnh về tâm lý.\nNgười hướng nội sống dưới hệ giá trị xã hội của Khuôn Mẫu Hướng Ngoại\nLý Tưởng cũng giống như phụ nữ trong một thế giới của đàn ông—không\nđược đếm xỉa đến bởi một thứ từ sâu trong bản chất của họ, bởi bản tính tự\nnhiên đã sinh ra cùng và quyết định họ là ai. Hướng ngoại là một tính cách\ncực kỳ hấp dẫn, nhưng chúng ta đã vô tình biến nó thành một thứ tiêu chuẩn\nđàn áp, và khiến cho phần lớn trong chúng ta cảm thấy mình buộc phải tuân\ntheo.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nKhuôn Mẫu Hướng Ngoại Lý Tưởng đã được đề cập đến trong rất nhiều\nnghiên cứu, mặc dù những nghiên cứu này chưa bao giờ được tập hợp lại\ndưới một cái tên duy nhất. Người hay nói, ví dụ, thường được đánh giá là\nthông minh hơn, có hình thức đẹp hơn, có tính cách thú vị hơn, và, dễ được\nlòng người hơn là những người ít nói. Tốc độ nói cũng ảnh hưởng nhiều\nngang với mức âm lượng khi nói: chúng ta có xu hướng coi những người nói\nnhanh là đủ năng lực và dễ mến hơn những người nói chậm. Tiêu chuẩn ứng\nxử này cũng hiện diện trong các hoạt động nhóm, khi các nghiên cứu đã chỉ\nra rằng trong nhóm, người nói lớn thường được đánh giá là thông minh hơn\nnhững người dè dặt kín đáo—kể cả khi không có một chút liên quan nào\ngiữa khả năng nói liên tục và khả năng có được những ý tưởng xuất sắc.\nThậm chí chính bản thân từ “hướng nội” (introvert) cũng bị bêu xấu—một\nnghiên cứu không chính thức, tiến hành bởi nhà tâm lý học Laurie Helgoe,\nđã chỉ ra rằng những người hướng nội miêu tả vẻ ngoài của riêng mình với\nngôn ngữ rất rõ ràng (“mắt xanh”, “như người nước ngoài”, “xương gò má\ncao”); nhưng khi được yêu cầu miêu tả chân dung một người hướng nội nói\nchung, họ vẽ nên một bức tranh nhạt nhẽo và thiếu hấp dẫn (“vụng về”,\n“lóng ngóng”, “sắc da nhàn nhạt”, “mặt mụn”).\nNhưng chúng ta đã phạm một sai lầm nghiêm trọng khi luôn đề cao Khuôn\nMẫu Hướng Ngoại Lý Tưởng một cách quá thiếu suy xét. Một lượng không\nít trong số những ý tưởng, tác phẩm nghệ thuật và phát minh vĩ đại nhất của\nlịch sử loài người—từ thuyết tiến hóa cho đến những đóa hướng dương của\nVan Gogh, cho đến những chiếc máy tính cá nhân—tất cả đều đến từ những\ncon người lặng lẽ, kín đáo và thông thái; những người biết cách truy nhập\nvào thế giới rộng lớn bên trong họ và biết về những kho báu quý giá có thể\ntìm thấy được ở nơi đó. Thiếu đi những người hướng nội, thế giới của chúng\nta sẽ không bao giờ có:\nđịnh luật vạn vật hấp dẫn thuyết tương đối\n“The Second Coming” của W. B. Yeats\ncác bản dạ khúc của Chopin\nbộ tiểu thuyết “Đi tìm thời gian đã mất” của Proust\nPeter Pan\ncác tiểu thuyết “Một chín tám tư” và “Trại súc vật” của Orwell “The Cat in\nthe Hat”\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nCharlie Brown\n“Schindler’s List”, “E.T.”, và “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”\nGoogle\nHarry Potter 4\n4 Theo thứ tự từ trên xuống: Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, W. B. Yeats,\nFrédéric Chopin, Marcel Proust, J. M. Barrie, George Orwell, Theodor\nGeisel (Dr. Seuss), Charles Schulz, Steven Spielberg, Larry Page, J. K.\nRowling.\nNhư cây bút chuyên về khoa học Winifred Gallagher đã viết: “Điều minh\ndiệu nhất của một tính cách có thể dừng lại để suy xét về nhân tố tác động,\nthay vì xông xáo lao tới và tác động lại với chúng, đó là ở mối quan hệ chặt\nchẽ đã có từ rất lâu giữa nó với trí tuệ thông thái và những thành tựu nghệ\nthuật vĩ đại của loài người. Cả E=mc2 5 lẫn Thiên đường đã mất 6 đều\nkhông được tạo ra nguệch ngoạc vội vàng bởi một sinh vật của đám đông.”\nKể cả trong những phương diện rõ ràng là ít hướng nội nhất, như kinh tế,\nchính trị, hay các phong trào dân quyền, một lượng không nhỏ trong số\nnhững diễn biến lớn nhất của chúng cũng được lãnh đạo và tiến hành bởi\nnhững người hướng nội. Trong cuốn sách, rồi chúng ta sẽ bàn đến và xem\nxét xem làm thế nào những hình tượng như Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Gore,\nWarren Buffett, Gandhi—và cả Rosa Parks—đã đạt được những gì họ đạt\nđược, không phải bất chấp, mà chính là nhờ vào sự hướng nội của họ.\n5 E=mc2 : Phương trình nổi tiếng thể hiện công thức tương đương khối\nlượng-năng lượng của Albert Einstein. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\n6 Thiên đường đã mất (tiếng Anh: Paradise Lost)—là một thiên sử thi bằng\nthơ không vần (blank verse) của John Milton kể về lịch sử của con người\nđầu tiên—Adam. Thiên đường đã mất in lần đầu tiên năm 1667 gồm 10\nquyển. Bản in năm 1674 gồm 12 quyển. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nẤy vậy nhưng, như Im lặng rồi sẽ chỉ ra, rất nhiều trong số các học viện và\nmôi trường giáo dục quan trọng bậc nhất ngày nay của chúng ta đều được\nthiết kế cho những người ưa thích làm việc theo nhóm, và thoải mái với một\nsự kích thích ở mức độ cao. Khi còn là trẻ em, các bàn học ở trường của\nchúng ta được thiết kế thành từng “khối” một quay mặt vào nhau, thiết kế\nphù hợp hơn cho việc làm bài tập theo nhóm. Các nghiên cứu cũng cho thấy\nphần lớn các giáo viên tin rằng một học sinh lý tưởng là một người hướng\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nngoại. Chúng ta ngày ngày xem những chương trình ti-vi nơi nhân vật chính\nkhông còn là hình mẫu “cô bé hàng xóm ngoan hiền” như những Cindy\nBrady hay Beaver Cleaver của ngày xưa nữa; mà là những ngôi sao nhạc\nRock, hay dẫn chương trình của website nổi tiếng, như Hannah Montana và\nCarly Shay của iCarly. Thậm chí ngay cả Sid cậu nhóc Khoa học (Sid the\nScience Kid), một hình mẫu nhân vật được đông đảo trẻ em mến mộ trên\nmột chương trình do PBS tài trợ, cũng bắt đầu mỗi ngày đi học của mình\nbằng cách biểu diễn những điệu nhảy với các bạn (“Nhìn tôi mà xem! Tôi là\nmột siêu sao!”).\nLà người lớn, rất nhiều trong số chúng ta làm việc cho những tổ chức luôn\nkiên quyết rằng các nhân viên của họ cần phải làm việc theo nhóm, và cho\nnhững nhà quản lý đề cao “kỹ năng giao tiếp” (“people skills”) trên tất cả\nmọi nhân tố khác khi đánh giá nhân viên. Để thăng tiến trong sự nghiệp,\nchúng ta được kỳ vọng là phải biết tiếp thị bản thân mình một cách mạnh dạn\nnhất có thể. Các nhà khoa học có đề tài nghiên cứu được cấp vốn để triển\nkhai thường là những người có bản tính hết sức tự tin, đôi lúc quá tự tin.\nNhững họa sĩ mà tranh của họ trang hoàng lộng lẫy cho những bức tường\ntrong bảo tàng và triển lãm luôn được bắt gặp đang bắt tay và tạo những\ndáng đứng ấn tượng trong những buổi khai mạc triển lãm của mình. Các tác\ngiả có sách được chấp nhận xuất bản—những người từng có một thời được\ncả xã hội chấp nhận như là những kẻ luôn ẩn dật trốn đời—nay được các nhà\nxuất bản điều tra kỹ lưỡng, để chắc chắn rằng họ có thể sẵn sàng diễn thuyết\nvà xuất hiện trên mọi chương trình truyền hình để quảng bá cho tác phẩm\ncủa mình. (Bạn sẽ không được đọc cuốn sách này, nếu tôi đã không xoay sở\nđế thuyết phục được nhà xuất bản của tôi rằng tôi đủ hướng ngoại để có thể\nquảng bá cho cuốn sách mình đã viết ra).\nNếu bạn là một kẻ hướng nội, bạn chắc chắn cũng biết sự thiên vị của xã hội\nchống lại người hướng nội có thể tạo ra những vết thương tinh thần lớn thế\nnào. Khi còn là một đứa trẻ, bạn có thể đã nghe thấy cha mẹ bạn xin lỗi mọi\nngười vì tính rụt rè nhút nhát của bạn (“Sao con không thể giống bọn nhóc\nnhà Kennedy hơn được một chút chứ?” cha mẹ một người đàn ông tôi phỏng\nvấn đã liên tục hỏi con của mình câu đó khi ông còn nhỏ). Hoặc ở trường, có\nlẽ bạn đã bị ép phải “ra khỏi cái vỏ của mình”—một lối diễn đạt rất nguy\nhiểm, hoàn toàn thất bại trong việc nhận ra rằng có những loài vật luôn tự\nnhiên mang theo vỏ và mai của mình theo dù tới bất cứ đâu, và rằng với một\nsố người mọi chuyện cũng chỉ hoàn toàn giống vậy. “Tất cả những lời bình\nluận đó từ ngày còn nhỏ tới tận giờ vẫn còn vang lên bên tai tôi, ám ảnh tôi\nrằng mình thực chất chỉ là một kẻ lười biếng và ngu ngốc, chậm chạp và\nbuồn chán.” một thành viên của một diễn đàn có tên “Chốn bình yên của\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nngười Hướng Nội” (Introvert Retreat) đã viết vậy trong một e-mail. “Đến khi\ntôi đã đủ lớn để nhận ra rằng chẳng có gì bất ổn ở tôi cả, rằng tôi chỉ đơn\ngiản là một người hướng nội mà thôi; thì nó đã thành một phần của tôi rồi,\ncái nhận thức như là có cái gì đó không bình thường ở tôi. Tôi chỉ ước gì có\nmột cách nào đấy để có thể tóm được một chút nghi ngờ còn sót lại đó, và\nvứt bỏ được nó đi hoàn toàn mà thôi”.\nGiờ đây khi đã là một người trưởng thành, có lẽ bạn vẫn cảm thấy một cảm\ngiác thật tội lỗi khi từ chối một lời mời ăn tối để đi đọc một quyển sách mới\nthú vị. Hoặc có lẽ bạn thích dùng bữa tối tại nhà hàng một mình, và sẽ dễ\nchịu hơn rất nhiều nếu không có những ánh nhìn thương hại từ những vị thực\nkhách xung quanh. Hoặc có lẽ bạn vẫn được bảo rằng bạn “ở trong đầu của\nmình quá nhiều”, một câu nói vẫn được tận dụng triệt để để chống lại những\nngười ít nói và thích suy nghĩ.\nNhưng tất nhiên, có một cái tên khác cho những người như vậy:\n“thinkers”—những kẻ ham tư duy.\nTôi đã chứng kiến tận mắt khó khăn đến đâu cho những người hướng nội để\nnhận ra và khai thác năng lực thực sự của mình, và tuyệt diệu đến đâu khi\ncuối cùng họ làm được thế. Trong suốt hơn mười năm tôi đã đào tạo cho rất\nnhiều người ở đủ mọi ngành nghề—các luật sư kinh tế và sinh viên đại học,\ncác quản lý tài chính và cả các cặp vợ chồng—về kỹ năng đàm phán. Tất\nnhiên, chúng tôi luôn dạy đủ những kiến thức cơ bản: cách chuẩn bị cho một\nbuổi đàm phán, khi nào thì cần ra giá trước, và phải làm gì khi người bên kia\nnói “hoặc giá đấy, hoặc không gì cả!”. Nhưng tôi cũng giúp các khách hàng\ncủa mình tìm ra bản tính tự nhiên của mỗi người họ, và làm cách nào để có\nthể tận dụng được nó một cách tốt nhất.\nKhách hàng đầu tiên của tôi là một cô gái trẻ có tên Laura. Cô là một luật sư\nkinh tế ở phố Wall, nhưng là một người ít nói, hay mơ mộng, rất sợ phải làm\ntrung tâm của sự chú ý, và căm ghét mọi sự công kích cũng như bạo lực. Cô\nđã xoay sở để bằng cách nào đó sống sót qua được luyện ngục của Đại học\nLuật Harvard—nơi các giờ học được thực hiện trong những giảng đường\nkhổng lồ, lớn ngang những khán đài xem võ sĩ giác đấu của người La Mã cổ\nđại, và là nơi một lần cô đã căng thẳng tới mức nôn mửa ngay trên đường tới\nlớp. Giờ khi đã bước ra cuộc đời thực, cô vẫn luôn e ngại rằng mình không\nđủ mạnh bạo để có thể đại diện cho các khách hàng của mình theo những\ncách họ vẫn mong chờ được.\nTrong ba năm đầu tiên của sự nghiệp, Laura vẫn còn giữ những chức vụ quá\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nthấp đến mức cô chưa bao giờ phải kiểm tra giả thiết này của mình. Nhưng\nrồi đến một ngày, luật sư cấp trên của cô, lúc đó đang trong một kỳ nghỉ, đã\ngiao lại cho cô chịu trách nhiệm chính trong một buổi đàm phán rất quan\ntrọng. Khách hàng là một nhà sản xuất ở Nam Mỹ đang sắp không trả nổi\nmột món nợ ngân hàng, và hy vọng cô có thể giúp họ đàm phán lại những\nthỏa thuận của món nợ. Một nhóm ủy viên đặc trách của ngân hàng nắm giữ\nmón nợ nguy hiểm đó ngồi đối diện với họ ở phía bên kia của bàn thảo luận.\nNếu được chọn, Laura thà được trốn dưới gầm chiếc bàn này còn hơn, nhưng\ncô đã học cách chiến đấu chống lại được những cảm giác thôi thúc mãnh liệt\nnhư này rồi. Liều lĩnh, nhưng vẫn rất căng thẳng, cô ngồi xuống vị trí của\nmình ở chính giữa, hai bên là các khách hàng của cô: tổng cố vấn doanh\nnghiệp (general counsel) ở một bên và cán bộ kiểm soát tài chính cấp cao\n(senior financial officer) ở phía còn lại. Đây tình cờ lại là dạng khách hàng\nưa thích nhất của Laura: nhã nhặn, lịch sự và ngôn từ luôn rất nhỏ nhẹ, khác\nhẳn so với dạng khách hàng tôi-là-bá-chủ-của-vũ-trụ mà hãng luật của cô\nvẫn thường đại diện. Trong quá khứ, Laura đã từng đưa viên tổng cố vấn\ndoanh nghiệp tới một trận bóng bóng chày của đội The New York Yankees,\nvà giúp ngài cán bộ kiểm soát tài chính cao cấp chọn một chiếc túi xách làm\nquà cho cho em gái của ông ấy. Nhưng giờ những khung cảnh ấm cúng này\n—đúng kiểu giao tiếp mà Laura ưa thích—dường như đã cách xa cô cả một\nthế giới nào đó. Ngồi quanh bàn giờ đây là chín cán bộ ngân hàng cáu kỉnh\ntrong những bộ com-lê cao cấp và giày da bóng lộn; được hộ tống bởi luật sư\nđại diện của bên họ, một người phụ nữ với quai hàm vuông cương nghị và\nmột phong thái hết sức mạnh bạo, chủ động. Chắc chắn không thuộc loại\nngười thiếu tự tin về năng lực của bản thân, người phụ nữ lập tức khởi động\nngay một bài diễn thuyết vô cùng ấn tượng về việc các khách hàng của Laura\nsẽ may mắn đến đâu nếu họ chỉ đơn giản chấp nhận tất cả các điều khoản của\nphía ngân hàng. Nó, như lời cô ta nói, đã là một đề xuất quá hào phóng rồi.\nTất cả mọi người đều đợi câu trả lời của Laura, nhưng cô quả thực không\nnghĩ ra gì để đáp lại cả. Vậy nên cô chỉ cứ ngồi đó. Chớp mắt. Mọi ánh nhìn\nđều đổ về phía cô. Các khách hàng của cô cựa quậy một cách không thoải\nmái trên những chiếc ghế của họ. Suy nghĩ của cô quay tròn theo một vòng\nlặp quen thuộc: Mình quá rụt rè cho những hoạt động kiểu này, quá khiêm\ntốn, quá mải suy nghĩ. Cô hình dung về một người sẽ phù hợp hơn để cứu\nnguy cho tình huống này: ai đó mạnh bạo, tự tin, ăn nói trôi chảy, sẵn sàng\nđấm sầm xuống bàn để thể hiện thái độ kiên quyết không nhượng bộ. Ở\ntrường cấp II, một người như vậy, không giống như Laura, sẽ được gọi là\n“năng động” (“outgoing”), thành tích cao nhất mà các đồng bạn lớp 7 của\nLaura biết, cao hơn cả “xinh đẹp”, với con gái, và “giỏi thể thao” với con\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ntrai. Laura tự hứa với mình rằng cô chỉ cần cố sống sót qua hết ngày hôm ấy\nnữa thôi. Ngày mai cô sẽ đi tìm một công việc khác.\nRồi cô nhớ ra điều tôi đã dặn đi dặn lại cô: cô là người hướng nội, và là một\nngười như vậy, cô có một năng lực đặc biệt trên bàn đàm phán—có lẽ chỉ\nkém hiển nhiên hơn, nhưng không hề kém đáng sợ hơn một chút nào. Cô gần\nnhư chắc chắn là đã chuẩn bị kỹ hơn tất cả mọi người ngồi đây. Cô có một\nphong cách nói tuy nhẹ nhàng, nhưng rất chắc chắn. Cô gần như không bao\ngiờ nói mà không suy nghĩ kỹ trước khi mở miệng. Là người điềm đạm bình\ntĩnh, cô có thể có những bước tấn công hết sức quyết liệt, mạnh bạo, và vẫn\ntạo được ấn tượng là mình đang rất vừa phải và hợp lý. Cô có xu hướng hay\nđặt ra các câu hỏi—rất nhiều câu hỏi—và thực sự lắng nghe những câu trả\nlời, một điều mà, bất kể tính cách của bạn có là gì, vẫn là cực kỳ quan trọng\ntrên bàn đàm phán.\nVậy nên Laura bắt đầu làm điều đến tự nhiên nhất với cô.\n- “Thử dừng lại một chút đã nào. Các số liệu bên chị được căn cứ vào đâu?”\n- “Chúng ta hãy thử kết cấu khoản vay theo cách này, các vị nghĩ liệu có\nđược không?”\n- “Cách kia?”\n- “Hay một cách nào đó khác?”\nBan đầu những câu hỏi của cô vẫn còn khá rụt rè. Dần dần cô bắt đầu càng\nlúc càng mạnh bạo hơn, thúc đẩy bên kia quyết liệt hơn, thể hiện rõ cho họ\nthấy rằng cô đã làm bài tập về nhà đầy đủ, và nhất định sẽ không chịu đầu\nhàng một cách dễ dàng. Nhưng cô cũng đồng thời trung thành với phong\ncách riêng của mình, không bao giờ lên giọng hay mất bình tĩnh. Cứ mỗi lần\nphe chủ ngân hàng đưa ra một tuyên bố cuối cùng với một vẻ chắc nịch, như\nthể không còn cách nào thay đổi được nữa, Laura lại cố tỏ ý xây dựng: “Có\nphải ý chị là đó là cách duy nhất? Nếu chúng ta thử tiếp cận vấn đề theo một\ncách khác thì sao?”\nDần dần cuối cùng những câu hỏi đơn giản của cô đã làm thay đổi không khí\ntrong căn phòng, đúng như trong sách giáo khoa về đàm phán đã nói. Phía\nngân hàng không còn hăng hái diễn thuyết và hùng hổ chiếm thế chủ động\nnữa, những hoạt động mà Laura cảm thấy mình yếu thế một cách vô vọng,\nvà hai bên bắt đầu có một cuộc nói chuyện thực sự.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nVẫn tiếp tục thảo luận. Vẫn chưa đi đến được một thống nhất nào. Một trong\ncác ủy viên bên phe ngân hàng lại kích động lên lần nữa, vùng đứng dậy,\nquăng tất cả tài liệu xuống mặt bàn và đùng đùng bước ra khỏi phòng. Laura\nphớt lờ thái độ này, một phần lớn là vì cô không biết phải làm gì khác trong\ntrường hợp như thế. Về sau có người nói với cô rằng vào thời điểm then chốt\nđó, Laura đã có một nước đi vô cùng đúng đắn, trong một trò chơi vẫn được\ngọi là “Nhu thuật Thương thuyết” (“negotiation jujitsu”); nhưng cô biết rằng\ncô chỉ làm điều mình đã học được một cách rất tự nhiên khi làm một người\nlặng lẽ, trong một thế giới luôn to mồm mà thôi.\nCuối cùng hai bên cũng ký kết được một thỏa thuận. Các ủy viên ngân hàng\nrời tòa nhà, những khách hàng ưa thích của Laura lên xe tới sân bay, còn\nLaura thì trở về nhà, cuộn tròn mình lại với một cuốn sách, và cố quên đi tất\ncả những căng thẳng đã diễn ra trong ngày.\nNhưng sáng hôm sau, luật sư đại diện cho phía ngân hàng hôm qua—người\nphụ nữ quả quyết với quai hàm vuông cương nghị—gọi điện lại cho cô và đề\nxuất một lời mời làm việc. “Tôi chưa bao giờ được gặp ai vừa nhẹ nhàng lại\nvừa cương quyết đến vậy”, cô ấy nói. Và ngày hôm sau nữa, phía ngân hàng\nhôm nọ cũng gọi điện cho Laura, và hỏi liệu hãng luật của cô có thể đại diện\ncho công ty của họ trong tương lai được không. “Chúng tôi cần một người có\nthể giúp chúng tôi đạt được mọi thỏa thuận mà không để cho cái tôi của\nmình ngáng đường” ông ta nói.\nBằng cách trung thành với phong cách nhẹ nhàng của riêng mình, Laura đã\nđưa được về cho hãng luật của mình thêm một thỏa thuận thành công, tìm\nđược một đối tác mới cho hãng, và có cả một lời đề nghị việc làm cho riêng\nmình. Lên giọng và đấm xuống mặt bàn đã được chứng tỏ là hoàn toàn\nkhông cần thiết.\nNgày nay Laura hiểu rất rõ rằng thiên tính hướng nội là một phần quan\ntrọng, cốt yếu của con người cô, và cô càng trân trọng hơn bản tính thích suy\nnghĩ của mình. Cái vòng lặp trong đầu Laura, thứ vẫn liên tục buộc tội cô là\nquá rụt rè, quá khiêm tốn, nay đã xuất hiện càng lúc càng ít hơn. Laura giờ\nđây biết rằng cô luôn có thể xoay sở mọi thứ ổn thỏa bằng chính sức của\nmình khi cần thiết.\nChính xác thì ý tôi là gì khi nói Laura là một người hướng nội ? Khi tôi bắt\nđầu bắt tay vào viết cuốn sách này, thứ đầu tiên tôi muốn tìm hiểu là chính\nxác thì các nhà nghiên cứu định nghĩa những khái niệm hướng nội và hướng\nngoại (introversion và extroversion) như thế nào. Tôi biết rằng vào năm\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n1921, nhà tâm lý học có ảnh hưởng hàng đầu Carl Jung đã xuất bản một\ncuốn sách bom tấn, “Phân loại Tâm lý học” (Psychological Types), giúp phổ\nbiến các thuật ngữ sự hướng nội và sự hướng ngoại như những khái niệm cơ\nbản nhất để xây dựng nên bản đồ tính cách con người. Người hướng nội sẽ bị\nthu hút hướng vào thế giới bên trong của suy nghĩ và cảm xúc, Jung nói,\ntrong khi người hướng ngoại hướng ra cuộc sống bên ngoài với con người và\ncác hoạt động. Người hướng nội tập trung vào giải thích ý nghĩa của những\nsự kiện, sự vật diễn ra xung quanh họ; người hướng ngoại thì lao mình vào\nchính các sự kiện và sự vật đó. Người hướng nội nạp lại năng lượng cho\nmình bằng cách ở một mình; người hướng ngoại thì cần phải nạp thêm năng\nlượng mỗi khi họ không giao tiếp đủ nhiều. Nếu bạn đã bao giờ thử làm bản\nTrắc nghiệm tính cách tâm lý Myers-Briggs 7, được thiết kế dựa trên cơ sở\nnghiên cứu của Jung và được sử dụng rộng rãi bởi phần lớn các trường đại\nhọc và các công ty, tập đoàn hàng đầu trên thế giới; thì có lẽ bạn đã quá quen\nthuộc với các khái niệm này rồi.\n7 Trắc nghiệm tính cách Myers-Briggs, hay Chỉ số phân loại Myers-Briggs\n(Myers-Briggs Type Indication), thường được viết ngắn gọn là MBTI, là một\nphương pháp sử dụng các câu hỏi trắc nghiệm tâm lý để tìm hiểu tâm lý, tính\ncách cũng như cách con người nhận thức thế giới xung quanh, đưa ra quyết\nđịnh cho một vấn đề. Phương pháp kiểm kê tính cách này khởi nguồn từ các\nlý thuyết phân loại trong cuốn “Psychological Types” của Carl Gustav Jung\nxuất bản năm 1921 và được phát triển bởi Katharine Cook Briggs cùng con\ngái của bà, Isabel Briggs Myers, từ khoảng Thế chiến thứ hai. (Nguồn:\nWikipedia)\nThế nhưng còn các nhà tâm lý học hiện đại thì nói gì? Tôi nhanh chóng nhận\nra rằng không có một định nghĩa toàn diện nào về hướng nội và hướng ngoại\ncả: không hề có một thể loại nghiên cứu thống nhất nào mà ở đó tất cả mọi\nngười đều có thể đồng ý về những đặc điểm chung để có thể cho vào nhóm,\nkhông như các nhóm “những người tóc quăn” hay “những người 16 tuổi”. Ví\ndụ, những người ủng hộ trường phái Ngũ Đại (Big Five) trong tâm lý tính\ncách (tranh cãi rằng tính cách con người có thể được phân tách ra thành 5 xu\nhướng chính) định nghĩa hướng nội không phải theo phương diện có một thế\ngiới nội tâm phong phú, mà là ở việc thiếu hụt những đặc tính như sự quả\nquyết hay khả năng dễ dàng hòa đồng với tập thể. Có bao nhiêu nhà tâm lý\nhọc tính cách thì dường như có bấy nhiêu định nghĩa về hướng nội và hướng\nngoại, và những người này bỏ ra rất nhiều thời gian để tranh cãi xem định\nnghĩa của ai mới là chính xác nhất. Một số thì nghĩ rằng ý tưởng của Jung đã\nquá lỗi thời rồi; số khác lại quả quyết rằng ông là người duy nhất nói đúng.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nNhưng mặc dù vậy, các nhà tâm lý học ngày nay nói chung vẫn nhất trí ở\nmột số điểm lớn: ví dụ, người hướng nội và hướng ngoại cần những mức độ\nkích thích khác nhau để có thể hoạt động một cách bình thường. Người\nhướng nội có thể cảm thấy “vừa đủ” với mức độ kích thích thấp hơn, như là\nnhấp một ngụm rượu vang với vài người bạn thân, chơi giải ô chữ trên báo,\nhay đọc một cuốn sách. Người hướng ngoại thì ưa thích yếu tố bất ngờ,\nkhích động từ những hoạt động như gặp gỡ ai đó lần đầu tiên, lao mình trượt\ntuyết trên những sườn núi đổ dốc, hay vặn lớn bộ dàn loa stereo tới mức âm\nlượng tối đa. “Với họ, những người khác luôn quá khích động”, nhà tâm lý\nhọc tính cách David Winter nói, giải thích lý do tại sao một người hướng nội\nđiển hình sẽ thà dành trọn kỳ nghỉ của mình đọc sách bên một bờ biển vắng\nngười còn hơn là tiệc tùng thâu đêm trên những du thuyền sang trọng. “Họ\nkhích động với những đe dọa, sợ hãi, bạo lực, và cả tình yêu. 100 con người\ncó tác động kích thích cao hơn rất nhiều so với 100 quyển sách, hay 100 hạt\ncát trên bờ biển”.\nRất nhiều nhà tâm lý học cũng đồng ý rằng người hướng nội và người hướng\nngoại làm việc theo những cách rất khác nhau. Người hướng ngoại có xu\nhướng xông xáo lao đến và giải quyết vấn đề một cách mau lẹ. Họ đưa ra\nnhững quyết định nhanh chóng (đôi lúc thiếu suy xét), không gặp vấn đề gì\nkhi phải làm nhiều việc cùng lúc, và sẵn sàng chấp nhận rủi ro. Họ thích thú\ntận hưởng “khoái cảm mạo hiểm” của công việc để hướng đến những phần\nthưởng có giá trị như của cải hay địa vị.\nNgười hướng nội lại thường làm việc chậm chạp hơn, và chú tâm lên kế\nhoạch cụ thể hơn. Họ thích tập trung vào giải quyết lần lượt từng vấn đề một,\nvà có một sức mạnh tập trung đáng nể phục. Họ gần như miễn dịch với sức\ncám dỗ của tiền bạc hay danh vọng.\nTính cách của chúng ta cũng đồng thời định hình phong cách giao tiếp của\nchúng ta. Người hướng ngoại sẽ là những người đem sức sống đến cho\nnhững bữa tiệc của bạn, bật cười một cách sảng khoái trước những câu\nchuyện cười bạn kể. Họ thường rất quả quyết, chủ động, và luôn cần có bạn\nbè. Người hướng ngoại nghĩ ra đằng miệng, nghĩ ngay tại chỗ và gần như\nngay lập tức. Họ ưa thích nói hơn là lắng nghe; rất hiếm khi thấy bí không\nbiết phải nói gì, và thỉnh thoảng buột miệng nói ra những điều mà họ không\nbao giờ thực sự có ý nói. Họ rất thoải mái với những xung đột, nhưng hoàn\ntoàn không thể chịu được những nơi vắng vẻ, tĩnh mịch.\nNgười hướng nội thì ngược lại, một vài trong số họ có thể có kỹ năng giao\ntiếp rất tốt, hoàn toàn thoải mái với các buổi tiệc và các bữa tối với đối tác,\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nnhưng sau một thời gian sẽ bắt đầu ước gì giá mà giờ họ được nằm ườn ở\nnhà, trong bộ py-ja-ma. Họ thường ưa thích dành năng lượng giao tiếp của\nmình cho chỉ một vài người bạn thân, đồng nghiệp, hay các thành viên gia\nđình gần gũi nhất với họ. Họ lắng nghe nhiều hơn là nói, luôn nghĩ kỹ trước\nkhi mở miệng, và thường cảm thấy rằng họ diễn đạt bản thân mình bằng chữ\nviết tốt hơn là lời nói. Họ thường có xu hướng cố tránh các cuộc xung đột.\nRất nhiều người sợ nói chuyện phiếm, nhưng lại hoàn toàn ưa thích những\ncuộc trao đổi thực sự, sâu sắc về những chủ đề ưa thích của mình.\nCó một số thứ không phải là một người hướng nội: hướng nội không phải là\nmột từ đồng nghĩa với ẩn dật hay khinh người. Người hướng nội có thể là\nnhững người này, nhưng phần lớn họ đều hết sức thân thiện và hoàn toàn dễ\ngần. Một trong những cụm từ nhân đạo nhất của tiếng Anh—“Only\nconnect!”— “Chỉ có kết nối!”—được viết ra bởi một người hướng nội vô\ncùng rõ rệt, E. M. Forster, trong một cuốn tiểu thuyết khai phá câu hỏi làm\ncách nào để đạt được “tình yêu giữa người với người ở sắc thái tuyệt đối\nnhất của nó.”\nCũng không phải cứ hướng nội thì là người rụt rè. Nhút nhát, rụt rè là nỗi sợ\nsự không chấp nhận của xã hội, sợ bị bẽ mặt; trong khi hướng nội là sự ưa\nthích những môi trường không quá kích thích. Tính nhút nhát rụt rè có thể\ngây thương tổn tinh thần rất sâu đậm; tính hướng nội thì hoàn toàn không.\nMột trong những lý do khiến mọi người luôn nhầm lẫn hai khái niệm này là\nviệc đôi lúc chúng giao nhau (mặc dù các nhà tâm lý học vẫn còn tranh cãi là\nđến mức độ nào). Một số nhà tâm lý học thể hiện hai xu hướng này trên một\nđồ thị với một trục đứng và một trục nằm ngang, với trục ngang là khoảng\ndao động giữa hai thái cực hướng nội-hướng ngoại, và trục đứng tương ứng\nvới khoảng bình thản-lo lắng. Với mô hình này, bạn có được bốn phân loại\nkhác nhau của tính cách con người, tương ứng với bốn góc phần tư của đồ\nthị: người hướng ngoại bình thản, người hướng ngoại lo lắng (hoặc bốc\nđồng), người hướng nội bình thản, và người hướng nội lo lắng. Nói một cách\nkhác, bạn có thể là một người hướng ngoại nhút nhát như Barbra Streisand 8,\nngười có một tính cách hết sức đặc sắc và thu hút, nhưng vẫn sợ đến tê liệt\ncả người đi mỗi khi phải bước lên sân khấu; hoặc một người hướng nội\nkhông-nhút-nhát, như Bill Gates 9, người mà về mọi phương diện đều tránh\nphải tiếp xúc với mọi người, nhưng chưa bao giờ phải lo lắng vì áp lực ý\nkiến của người khác.\nBạn cũng có thể, tất nhiên, vừa là một người hướng nội, vừa là một người\nnhút nhát. T. S. Eliot 10, một con người đơn độc nổi tiếng, đã viết trong bài\nthơ Đất hoang (The Waste Land) rằng ông có thể “chỉ cho bạn thấy nỗi sợ\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ntrong mỗi một nắm tay bụi đất”. Rất nhiều người nhút nhát chọn hướng mình\nvào thế giới nội tâm, một phần như một cách tị nạn để thoát khỏi cái xã hội\nngoài kia đã gây cho họ biết bao nhiêu căng thẳng và lo lắng. Và nhiều\nngười hướng nội cũng rất nhút nhát, một phần là vì họ luôn nhận được thông\nđiệp từ xã hội rằng có gì đó không ổn với họ, rằng có gì đó sai trái trong việc\nhọ thích suy nghĩ và bỏ thời gian nghiền ngẫm về mọi thứ; và cũng một phần\ndo đặc trưng tâm lý của họ, như chúng ta rồi sẽ bàn đến, luôn khiến họ thấy\nkhông thoải mái và phải tránh xa các môi trường có tính kích thích cao.\n8 Barbra Joan Streisand (sinh ngày 24 tháng 4 năm 1942) là một nhà sáng\ntác nhạc, nữ diễn viên điện ảnh, kịch và ca sĩ Mỹ, đồng thời cũng là nhà hoạt\nđộng chính trị cấp tiến, nhà sản xuất phim và nhà đạo diễn phim. Bà đã\ngiành được giải thưởng Oscar cho danh hiệu Nữ diễn viên chính xuất sắc\nnhất và Bài hát hay nhất trong phim cũng như các giải Emmy, Grammy, Quả\nCầu Vàng. Streisand đã được xếp vào hàng nghệ sĩ nữ có album bán chạy\nnhất mọi thời đại ở Hoa Kỳ trong vòng hơn 30 năm, theo RIAA. Bà được\nxem như một trong những nghệ sĩ biểu diễn nữ thành công nhất trong lịch sử\nngành giải trí hiện đại và là nữ ca sĩ bán được nhiều album nhất trong lịch\nsử âm nhạc Mỹ, được RIAA xác nhận là hơn 71 triệu đĩa ghi âm. (Nguồn:\nWikipedia)\n9 William Henry \"Bill\" Gates III (sinh ngày 28 tháng 10, 1955) là một doanh\nnhân người Mỹ, nhà từ thiện, tác giả và chủ tịch tập đoàn Microsoft, hãng\nphần mềm khổng lồ mà ông cùng với Paul Allen đã sáng lập ra. Ông luôn có\nmặt trong danh sách những người giàu nhất trên thế giới, và là người giàu\nnhất thế giới từ 1995 tới 2009, ngoại trừ năm 2008, khi ông chỉ xếp thứ ba.\nTháng 5 năm 2013, Bill Gates đã giành lại ngôi vị người giàu nhất thế giới\nvới tài sản 72,7 tỉ đô la Mỹ. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\n10 Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 tháng 9 năm 1888—4 tháng 1 năm 1965) là một\nnhà thơ, nhà viết kịch, nhà phê bình văn học Anh gốc Hoa Kỳ đoạt giải\nNobel văn học năm 1948. Eliot thường đi vào những chủ đề triết lí, phản ánh\nmâu thuẫn giữa thực tại và thế giới tinh thần, sự yên bình của tâm hồn và lo\nâu trong đời sống con người, sự chuộc tội của linh hồn qua thời gian... Eliot\nlà người có đầu óc cách tân trong ngôn ngữ thơ và thi pháp, đấu tranh cho\n\"thơ tự do\", thoát khỏi khuôn sáo của thơ đương thời. Eliot là nhà thơ lớn\nnhất của nước Anh trong thế kỉ 20, có ảnh hưởng rộng lớn đến văn học các\nnước phương Tây. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nNhưng với tất cả những khác biệt như thế, tính nhút nhát và sự hướng nội\nvẫn có một điểm chung rất sâu sắc. Trạng thái tâm lý của một người hướng\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nngoại nhút nhát ngồi nín thinh bên bàn họp của một doanh nghiệp có thể sẽ\nrất khác so với trạng thái tâm lý của một người hướng nội bình tĩnh—người\nnhút nhát vì quá sợ nên không dám nói, còn người hướng nội chỉ đơn giản là\nđang bị quá tải bởi môi trường xung quanh có nhiều nhân tố kích thích hơn\nmức họ có thể chịu đựng. Nhưng với thế giới bên ngoài, hai người họ trông\nchẳng khác gì nhau. Điều này có thể giúp cho cả hai loại người này hiểu rõ\nhơn về việc quá kính trọng và đề cao “vị trí dẫn đầu” hướng ngoại có thể\nkhiến chúng ta bỏ qua những thứ thực sự tốt, thông minh và thông thái đến\nthế nào. Vì những lý do rất khác nhau, người nhút nhát và người hướng nội\ncó thể sẽ chọn dành thời gian của mình cho những công việc hậu trường, như\nphát minh, hay tiến hành nghiên cứu, hay ở bên và nắm lấy tay những người\nđang trong cơn bệnh—hoặc ở vị trí lãnh đạo, họ giải quyết công việc với một\nphong thái tĩnh lặng. Đây không phải vị trí tiên phong dẫn đầu, nhưng những\nngười đảm đương những vị trí đó vẫn cứ là những hình mẫu đáng để ta học\ntập và noi gương.\nNếu bạn vẫn không chắc chắn liệu mình rơi vào đâu trên khoảng giữa hai\nthái cực hướng nội-hướng ngoại, bạn có thể tự đánh giá mình ở đây. Hãy trả\nlời mỗi câu hỏi này bằng cách đáp “Đúng” hoặc “Sai”, chọn câu trả lời nào\nđúng với bạn thường xuyên hơn.11\n1. Tôi thích những cuộc nói chuyện một-đối-một hơn là hoạt động nhóm.\n2. Tôi thường thích thể hiện mình qua chữ viết hơn là lời nói.\n3. Tôi thích chỗ yên tĩnh, và được ở một mình.\n4. Tôi có vẻ ít quan tâm tới tiền tài, danh vọng hay địa vị… hơn là các bạn\ncùng lứa của tôi.\n5. Tôi ghét nói chuyện phiếm, nhưng ưa thích bàn luận sâu sắc về những chủ\nđề quan trọng với tôi.\n11 Đây chỉ là một bài trắc nghiệm không chính thức, không phải là một bài\nkiểm tra xác định tâm lý tính cách được xác nhận có cơ sở khoa học chặt\nchẽ. Các câu hỏi được đặt dựa vào những đặc tính của người hướng nội tiêu\nbiểu, được chấp nhận một cách rộng rãi bởi đông đảo các nhà tâm lý học\nhiện đại nói chung.\n6. Mọi người nói tôi là một người rất giỏi lắng nghe.\n7. Tôi không giỏi chấp nhận rủi ro, mạo hiểm.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n8. Tôi thích những công việc cho phép tôi hoàn toàn “cắm đầu vào làm” mà\nkhông bị ngắt quãng.\n9. Tôi thích tổ chức sinh nhật với quy mô nhỏ, chỉ có gia đình hoặc một hai\nngười bạn thật thân mà thôi.\n10. Mọi người thường miêu tả tôi là “điềm đạm” hoặc “chín chắn”.\n11. Tôi thường không thích cho ai khác xem công việc của mình cho đến khi\nnó đã hoàn tất.\n12. Tôi không thích xung đột hay mâu thuẫn.\n13. Tôi làm việc tốt nhất khi được ở một mình.\n14. Tôi thường nghĩ kỹ trước khi nói.\n15. Sau khi đi chơi nhiều với mọi người tôi thường cảm thấy năng lượng như\nđã bị rút cạn hết, mặc dù có thể tôi cũng đã chơi rất vui.\n16. Tôi thường để cho các cuộc gọi rơi vào hộp thư thoại.\n17. Nếu phải chọn một trong hai, tôi thà chọn một Chủ Nhật hoàn toàn\nkhông có gì để làm hơn là một ngày cuối tuần với quá nhiều công việc đã\nđược lên kế hoạch sẵn.\n18. Tôi không thích làm nhiều việc cùng lúc.\n19. Tôi có thể hoàn toàn tập trung vào một việc rất dễ dàng.\n20. Trong tình huống phòng học, tôi thích nghe giáo viên giảng sẵn hơn là\ntham gia vào những buổi seminar. 12\n12 * Seminar có thể hiểu đơn giản là một hình thức học tập mà ở đó người\nhọc chủ động hoàn toàn tư khâu chuẩn bị tài liêu, trình bày nội dung đưa\ndẫn chứng, trao đổi, thảo luận với các thành viên khác và cuối cung tự rút\nra nội dung bài học hay vấn đề khoa học cũng như đề xuất các ý kiến để mở\nrộng nội dung.\n* Vai trò của người thầy là\n· Tìm được các chủ đề phù hợp nội dung của bài giảng, có nguồn tư liệu đầy\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nđủ.\n· Cung cấp tài liệu hoặc hướng dẫn tìm tài liệu.\n· Giải đáp thắc mắc của sinh viên trong khâu chuẩn bị.\n· Lắng nghe và bổ sung hoặc sửa chữa các chỗ thiếu sót của người học.\n· Tổng kết vấn đề.\n· Nếu sinh viên chưa quen thì trong những lần đầu tiên có thể điều hành việc\ntrao đổi thảo luận.\nĐiểm khác biệt cơ bản nhất giữa học seminar và nghe giảng là trong giờ\nseminar, học sinh phải nói và tranh luận rất nhiều.\nCàng có nhiều câu trả lời “đúng”, bạn càng có khả năng là một người hướng\nnội (introvert) nhiều hơn; nếu ngược lại, bạn càng có khả năng là một người\nhướng ngoại (extrovert). Nếu bạn thấy mình có một số lượng câu trả lời\n“đúng” và “sai” tương đối bằng nhau, vậy thì có thể bạn là một ambivert—\nvâng, thực sự có riêng một từ dành cho những người như vậy đấy ạ.\nNhưng kể cả nếu bạn chỉ chọn một phương án duy nhất cho tất cả các câu\nhỏi ở đây, điều đó cũng không có nghĩa là hành động của bạn có thể dễ dàng\ndự đoán trước được trên tất cả mọi phương diện. Chúng ta không thể nói mọi\nkẻ hướng nội đều là những con mọt sách hay mọi người hướng ngoại đều\nquậy tới bến ở những bữa tiệc tưng bừng với bạn bè—cũng hệt như việc\nchúng ta không thể khẳng định chắc nịch rằng mọi phụ nữ đều là những\nngười giỏi lắng nghe, và mọi người đàn ông đều thích những môn thể thao\nva chạm—như bóng đá hay bóng bầu dục chẳng hạn (chú thích của người\ndịch). Như Jung đã nói, một cách rất chính xác, rằng: “Không hề có thứ gì\ngọi là một kẻ hoàn toàn hướng ngoại hay một kẻ hoàn toàn hướng nội hết.\nMột kẻ như thế chắc chắn sẽ chỉ có thể kết thúc mình trong một nhà thương\nđiên”.\nMột phần của lý do ở đây là vì chúng ta đều là những sinh vật phức tạp đến\nđáng kinh ngạc, nhưng một phần khác cũng là bởi có vô cùng nhiều các kiểu\nhướng nội và hướng ngoại khác nhau. Tính hướng nội và hướng ngoại tương\ntác với những nét tính cách khác cũng như với quá khứ riêng của từng người,\ntạo ra vô số những kiểu người khác nhau. Vậy nên nếu bạn là một thanh niên\nMỹ có thiên hướng nghệ thuật, luôn bị cha mình bắt ép tham gia đội tuyển\nbóng bầu dục của trường như người anh trai sôi nổi- ăn to nói lớn của bạn;\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nbạn sẽ là một dạng hướng nội rất khác so với, ví dụ, một nữ doanh nhân\nngười Phần Lan có cả bố và mẹ đều là những người giữ hải đăng. (Phần Lan\nlà một quốc gia nổi tiếng hướng nội. Truyện cười người Phần Lan: Làm thế\nnào để bạn biết một anh chàng Phần Lan có thích bạn hay không? Câu trả\nlời: Anh ta sẽ nhìn chằm chằm vào mũi giày của bạn, thay vì vào mũi giày\ncủa chính anh ta!)\nRất nhiều người hướng nội cũng “đặc biệt nhạy cảm”(“highly sensitive”);\nnghe có vẻ rất thi vị, nhưng đó thực tế là một thuật ngữ chuyên môn trong\nngành tâm lý học. Nếu bạn thuộc dạng nhạy cảm, vậy có lẽ bạn sẽ phù hợp\nhơn nhiều những người khác để cảm thấy tuyệt đối hạnh phúc dễ chịu khi\nnghe bản “Xô-nát ánh trăng” của Beethoven, một câu đáp bằng tiếng Anh\nthật hoàn hảo, hay một nghĩa cử cao đẹp đến đáng khâm phục. Bạn cũng sẽ\nnhanh cảm thấy phát bệnh hơn khi phải chứng kiến bạo lực hay những thứ\nxấu xí đáng ghê tởm, và bạn có một lương tâm vô cùng lành vững. Khi còn\nlà một đứa trẻ, rất có thể bạn đã luôn bị bảo là “quá nhút nhát”, và cho tới tận\nbây giờ vẫn luôn cảm thấy rất căng thẳng mỗi khi bị người khác đánh giá,\nnhư khi phải diễn thuyết trước một đám đông, hoặc trong lần hẹn hò đầu\ntiên. Rồi chúng ta sẽ bàn đến tại sao tập hợp các đặc tính tưởng chừng ít liên\nquan cho lắm đến nhau này lại thường thuộc về cùng một người, và tại sao\nngười này lại thường là người hướng nội. (Không ai biết chính xác thì có bao\nnhiêu người hướng nội cũng là người đặc biệt nhạy cảm, nhưng chúng ta biết\ncó khoảng 70% người nhạy cảm là người hướng nội, và 30% còn lại báo cáo\nrằng họ cũng thường cần rất nhiều “khoảng nghỉ” trước khi có thể hoạt động\nlại bình thường sau một cơn chấn động).\nTất cả những rắc rối phức tạp này có nghĩa là, không phải mọi thứ viết trong\nIm lặng đều có thể áp dụng đúng với bạn, kể cả khi bạn tự thấy mình là một\nkẻ hướng-nội-toàn-tập. Ví dụ, chúng ta sẽ dành một lượng thời gian để bàn\nvề tính nhút nhát và sự nhạy cảm, những đặc tính mà có thể bạn tự thấy là\nmình hoàn toàn không có. Nhưng kể cả thế cũng không sao. Hãy cứ áp dụng\nnhững cái có thể áp dụng được với bạn, và dùng những kiến thức còn lại để\ncải thiện mối quan hệ của bạn với những người xung quanh.\nĐiều đó nói ra, trong Im lặng này chúng ta sẽ cố gắng không lệ thuộc quá\nnhiều vào các định nghĩa. Những thuật ngữ được định nghĩa nghiêm ngặt là\nđặc biệt quan trọng với các nhà nghiên cứu, những người mà công trình của\nhọ phụ thuộc chặt chẽ vào việc xác định chính xác đến đâu thì tính hướng\nnội dừng lại, và từ đâu thì các đặc tính khác, ví dụ, như tính nhút nhát, bắt\nđầu. Nhưng trong Im lặng, chúng ta sẽ quan tâm nhiều hơn đến thành quả\ncủa những nghiên cứu đó. Các nhà tâm lý học ngày nay, kết hợp với các nhà\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nkhoa học thần kinh (neuroscientist) cùng những thiết bị quét não bộ của họ,\nđã khám phá ra được những phát hiện vô cùng sáng giá có thể thay đổi được\ncách chúng ta nhìn nhận thế giới— và cả chính bản thân mỗi chúng ta. Họ\nđang trả lời cho những câu hỏi như: Tại sao một số người nói rất nhiều, trong\nkhi một số khác thì đo đếm từng chữ một mình nói ra? Tại sao một số người\nlao mình vào công việc, trong khi một số khác thì tổ chức những bữa tiệc\nsinh nhật tưng bừng ngay tại nơi làm việc? Tại sao một số người không gặp\nvấn đề gì với việc nắm trong tay quyền lực, trong khi một số khác thì lại\nkhông thích cả việc lãnh đạo lẫn việc bị người khác lãnh đạo? Liệu người\nhướng nội có thể làm nhà lãnh đạo tốt được hay không? Liệu xu hướng ưu ái\nnhững người hướng ngoại của chúng ta là một kết quả của tiến hóa tự nhiên,\nhay là do chịu ảnh hưởng từ văn hóa và xã hội? Nếu bạn là một người hướng\nnội, liệu bạn có nên cống hiến hết thời gian và sức lực của mình cho những\nhoạt động tự nhiên nhất đối với bạn; hay liệu bạn nên cố gồng mình để vượt\nqua các thử thách của cộng đồng, như Laura đã làm trên bàn đàm phán ngày\nhôm đó?\nCâu trả lời có lẽ sẽ khiến bạn ngạc nhiên.\nMặc dù vậy, nếu chỉ có duy nhất một điều bạn có thể lấy ra được từ cuốn\nsách này, tôi hy vọng đó sẽ là một cảm nhận mới về quyền được phép là\nchính bạn. Tôi có thể tự mình cam đoan về về tác dụng thay đổi cuộc đời\nmột khi bạn đã đạt được đến thái độ, quan điểm này. Các bạn còn nhớ về\nngười khách hàng đầu tiên mà tôi đã kể với các bạn không, cô gái trẻ mà tôi\nđã gọi là Laura để bảo vệ danh tính thật cho cô ấy ấy?\nĐó thực ra là câu chuyện về chính tôi. Tôi chính là khách hàng đầu tiên của\nmình.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nPhần Một: KHUÔN MẪU HƯỚNG\nNGOẠI LÝ TƯỞNG\n1. SỰ TRỖI DẬY CỦA HÌNH TƯỢNG “ANH BẠN\nVÔ CÙNG DỄ MẾN”\nLàm Thế Nào Người Hướng Ngoại Trở Thành Hình Mẫu Lý Tưởng\nCủa Xã Hội\nÁnh mắt của những người lạ, tò mò và khắt khe,\nLiệu bạn có thể đối diện chúng một cách thật tự hào—can đảm—và không hề\nsợ hãi?\n—MẪU QUẢNG CÁO TRÊN BÁO CỦA HÃNG XÀ BÔNG\nWOODBURY, 1922\nThời gian: năm 1902. Địa điểm: Nhà thờ Harmony, bang Missouri, một thị\ntrấn nhỏ, chỉ-một-chấm-con trên bản đồ nước Mỹ, tọa lạc bên một vùng bờ\nsông, cách thành phố Kansas hơn 100 dặm. Nhân vật chính trẻ tuổi của\nchúng ta: một cậu học sinh trung học nhân hậu, tốt bụng, nhưng thiếu tự tin\nvào bản thân tên Dale.\nGầy gò, ủ dột và ốm yếu, Dale là con trai trong một gia đình nông dân đứng\nđắn về đạo đức nhưng đã từ lâu sống trong cảnh bần hàn bằng nghề chăn\nnuôi lợn. Cậu kính trọng cha mẹ mình, nhưng tận thâm tâm không bao giờ\nmuốn lại bước tiếp theo con đường nghèo đói của gia đình. Dale cũng lo\nlắng về những thứ khác nữa: sấm sét, bị đày xuống địa ngục, và bị cứng\nhọng vào đúng những thời khắc quan trọng nhất. Cậu thậm chí còn sợ cả\nchính lễ cưới của mình sau này: Nhỡ cậu không thể nghĩ ra điều gì để nói với\nngười vợ tương lai của mình thì sao?\nMột ngày nọ, một diễn giả Chautauqua tới thị trấn của cậu. Phong trào\nChautauqua, ra đời năm 1873 tại phía Bắc, ngoại ô New York, gửi những\ndiễn giả tài năng đi khắp đất nước để đem những tri thức về văn hóa, khoa\nhọc, và tôn giáo tới mọi người. Những vùng nông thôn nước Mỹ quý trọng\nnhững diễn giả này bởi ánh hào quang thành thị họ mang tới từ thế giới bên\nngoài—và ở sức mạnh của họ trong việc mê hoặc đám đông. Người diễn giả\nnày đã đặc biệt thu hút Dale bởi câu chuyện đổi đời của của chính ông: có\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nmột thời ông cũng là một cậu bé con nhà nông dân thấp kém với một tương\nlai mịt mờ, nhưng rồi ông dần dần phát triển một phong cách diễn thuyết đầy\nlôi cuốn và chiếm lĩnh sân khấu ở Chautauqua. Dale lắng nghe chăm chú\nnhư nuốt lấy từng lời của ông.\nMột vài năm sau, chàng thanh niên Dale lại một lần nữa bị ấn tượng mạnh\nbởi giá trị của khả năng diễn thuyết. Gia đình của anh chuyển tới sống tại\nmột trang trại chỉ cách thành phố Warrensburg, Missouri ba dặm, để Dale có\nthể theo học đại học tại đó mà không cần phải đi thuê phòng hoặc ở nhờ nhà\nai. Dale để ý thấy rằng những học sinh giành chức vô địch trong những cuộc\nthi hùng biện của trường luôn được kính nể như những nhà lãnh đạo, và anh\nhạ quyết tâm cũng phải trở thành được một người như vậy. Anh ghi danh\nđăng ký trong mọi cuộc thi, và lao vội về nhà mỗi khi hết giờ học để vùi đầu\nvào luyện tập. Cứ thua rồi anh lại thua nữa; Dale rất quyết tâm, nhưng anh\nvẫn chưa thực sự là một nhà hùng biện giỏi. Nhưng dù vậy, cuối cùng thì\nnhững nỗ lực của anh cũng bắt đầu được đền đáp xứng đáng. Anh lột xác trở\nthành một nhà vô địch hùng biện, một người hùng của toàn thể học sinh\ntrong trường học. Những học sinh khác bắt đầu tìm đến anh để hỏi xin kinh\nnghiệm diễn thuyết, anh đào tạo họ, và họ cũng bắt đầu giành được giải\nthưởng nữa.\nĐến khi Dale rời trường đại học vào năm 1908, cha mẹ của anh vẫn nghèo\nnhư vậy, nhưng nước Mỹ liên hiệp đang bắt đầu lột xác. Henry Ford đang\nbán những mẫu xe hơi Model Ts đắt như tôm tươi, sử dụng câu khẩu hiệu:\n“vì công việc, và vì cả niềm vui” (“for business and for pleasure”). J.C.\nPenney, Woolworth, và Sears Roebuck đã trở thành những thương hiệu đồ\ngia dụng hàng đầu. Ánh đèn điện thắp sáng mọi căn nhà của tầng lớp trung\nlưu; hệ thống nước máy được bơm dẫn vào từng nhà, giải phóng họ khỏi\nnhững chuyến đi ra nhà ngoài để xách nước về hàng đêm.\nNền kinh tế mới cần đến một kiểu người mới—một người bán hàng, một nhà\nhùng biện trong giao tiếp, ai đó luôn sẵn sàng với một nụ cười thường trực,\nmột cái bắt tay chuyên nghiệp, sở hữu khả năng hòa đồng với bất cứ một\nđồng nghiệp nào, nhưng đồng thời vẫn luôn có thể tỏa sáng lấn át tất cả bọn\nhọ. Dale tham gia vào tầng lớp những người bán hàng đang lên này, bước ra\nngoài cuộc đời với gần như không một tư trang gì khác ngoài cái lưỡi vàng\ncủa mình.\nTên cuối của Dale là Carnegie13 (thực ra là Carnagey, ông về sau đã đổi lại\ncách viết tên của mình, nhiều khả năng là để tưởng nhớ Andrew Carnegie,\nnhà cách mạng công nghiệp vĩ đại). Sau một vài năm chật vật chào bán thịt\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nbò cho hãng Armour and Company, ông thành lập một lớp học về kỹ năng\ndiễn thuyết. Carnegie mở lớp của mình đầu tiên tại một trường học buổi đêm\ncủa Hiệp hội Thanh niên Cơ Đốc (YMCA), tọa lạc trên phố 125th ở New\nYork. Ông đòi mức lương 2 đô-la một giờ học như mức thông thường của\nmột giáo viên dạy ban đêm. Giám đốc của trường, tuy vậy, nghi ngờ việc\nmột lớp học về kỹ năng nói trước công chúng có thể thu hút được nhiều\nngười, đã từ chối chi trả một khoản tiền như vậy,\n13 Dale Breckenridge Carnegie (24 tháng 11 năm 1888—1 tháng 11 năm\n1955) là một nhà văn, nhà thuyết trình Mỹ và là người phát triển các lớp tự\ngiáo dục, nghệ thuật bán hàng, huấn luyện đoàn thể, nói trước công chúng\nvà các kỹ năng giao tiếp giữa mọi người. Ra đời trong cảnh nghèo đói tại\nmột trang trại ở Missouri, ông là tác giả cuốn Đắc Nhân Tâm (“How to Win\nFriends and Influence People”), được xuất bản lần đầu năm 1936, một cuốn\nsách thuộc hàng bán chạy nhất và được biết đến nhiều nhất cho đến tận\nngày nay. (Nguồn: Wikipedia)\nNhưng hóa ra lớp học đã trở thành một hiện tượng chỉ trong một thời gian\nngắn, và Carnegie tiếp tục tiến tới thành lập Học Viện Dale Carnegie, cống\nhiến hết mình để giúp tất cả mọi người nhổ bật đi sự thiếu tự tin đã từng kìm\nchân chính ông trong quá khứ. Vào năm 1913, ông xuất bản cuốn sách đầu\ntiên của mình, \"Nói trước Công chúng và Gây ảnh hưởng tới mọi Người\ntrong Kinh doanh” (“Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business”).\n“Trong những ngày mà phòng tắm và đàn piano còn là những thứ vô cùng xa\nxỉ”, Carnegie viết, “con người xem khả năng diễn thuyết như là một khả\nnăng kỳ lạ, chỉ có những người như luật sư, giáo sĩ truyền đạo, và những\nchính khách mới cần đến một thứ như vậy. Nhưng ngày nay chúng ta nhận ra\nrằng đó chính là thứ vũ khí vô cùng thiết yếu, không thể thay thế được của\nnhững người muốn tiến lên hàng đầu trong cuộc đua tranh quyết liệt của\nthương trường.”\nQuá trình lột xác của Carnegie từ cậu bé nông dân trở thành người bán hàng,\nrồi thành biểu tượng hùng biện của thời đại cũng chính là câu chuyện về sự\ntrỗi dậy của Khuôn Mẫu Hướng Ngoại Lý Tưởng. Hành trình của Carnegie\nphản ánh sự tiến hóa của xã hội và đã chạm đến bước thay đổi toàn diện khi\nbước vào thế kỷ 20, thay đổi mãi mãi việc chúng ta là ai và chúng ta ngưỡng\nmộ ai, chúng ta hành xử thế nào trong những buổi phỏng vấn việc làm và\nchúng ta đòi hỏi những gì ở một nhân viên, cách chúng ta chọn bạn tình thế\nnào và nuôi dạy con cái ra sao. Nước Mỹ đã chuyển mình từ thứ mà nhà sử\nhọc văn hóa có ảnh hưởng lớn Warren Susman gọi là “Nền Văn Hóa Của\nĐức Tính” (Culture of Character) sang “Nền Văn Hóa Của Tính Cách”\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\n(Culture of Personality)—và mở ra một chiếc hộp Pandora giải phóng trăm\nvạn những nỗi lo lắng cá nhân, mà từ đó chúng ta vẫn chưa bao giờ có thể\nhồi phục hoàn toàn được.\nTrong Nền Văn Hóa Của Đức Tính, con người lý tưởng là kẻ nghiêm túc, có\nkỷ luật, ngay thẳng và chính trực. Thứ được quan tâm không phải là ấn\ntượng một người có thể tạo ra với đám đông, mà là cách một người cư xử thế\nnào khi chỉ có một mình. Thậm chí từ ngữ “tính cách” (personality) vẫn còn\nchưa tồn tại trong tiếng Anh cho đến tận thế kỷ thứ 18, và ý tưởng về việc\n“có một tính cách tốt” (“having a good personality”) chưa bao giờ được phổ\nbiến rộng rãi trước thế kỷ thứ 20.\nNhưng khi chúng ta đã đi theo Nền Văn Hóa Của Tính Cách, người Mỹ bắt\nđầu dần quan tâm nhiều hơn đến cách những người khác nhìn nhận mình\nnhư thế nào. Họ bị tuyệt đối thu hút bởi những người bạo dạn và có phong\ncách nói chuyện hấp dẫn, lôi cuốn. “Vai trò mới mà xã hội đòi hỏi ở tất cả\ntrong Nền Văn Hóa Của Tính Cách là vai trò của một người biểu diễn”, như\nmột lời viết nổi tiếng của Susman. “Mỗi người Mỹ đều phải trở thành một cá\nnhân biểu diễn”.\nSự trỗi dậy của nước Mỹ công nghiệp đã là một động lực mạnh mẽ thúc đẩy\nchu trình tiến hóa toàn diện này của xã hội. Cả đất nước nhanh chóng chuyển\nmình từ một xã hội nông nghiệp với những ngôi nhà nhỏ trên thảo nguyên\nsang một nền văn minh đô thị, mà ở đó “công việc của nước Mỹ là kinh\ndoanh” (“the business of America is business”). Trong những năm tháng quá\nkhứ của miền quê, hầu hết mọi người Mỹ sống cũng như gia đình của Dale\nCarnegie: trong những nông trại, trong những thị trấn nhỏ vô danh trên bản\nđồ, tương tác chủ yếu với những người họ đã biết cả cuộc đời họ. Nhưng khi\nthế kỷ 20 đến, một cơn bão toàn diện của những doanh nghiệp lớn, của đô thị\nhóa, và những cuộc di cư ồ ạt bắt đầu quét qua nước Mỹ, cuốn dân số của nó\ntới những đô thị lớn. Vào năm 1790, chỉ có khoảng 3% dân số Mỹ sống ở\nnhững thành phố; đến năm 1840, vào khoảng 8%; và đến 1920, hơn một\nphần ba dân số toàn quốc đã là những cư dân thành thị. “Tất cả chúng ta\nkhông thể đều sống hết ở thành phố”, biên tập viên tin tức Horace Greeley đã\nviết vậy vào năm 1867, “ấy vậy nhưng có vẻ ai cũng quyết tâm phải tới sống\nở đó bằng được”.\nNhững người Mỹ giờ đây thấy mình không còn làm việc chung với những\nhàng xóm láng giềng như xưa nữa, mà với toàn những người xa lạ. “Công\ndân” giờ chuyển hóa thành “nhân viên”, họ đối mặt với câu hỏi: làm thế nào\nđể tạo ấn tượng tốt với những người mà họ không hề có quan hệ đồng hương\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nhay họ hàng gì? “Lý do một người này được thăng chức hay một người khác\nbị xã hội tảng lờ và tẩy chay”, nhà sử học Roland Marchand viết, “càng ngày\ncàng ít phụ thuộc hơn vào những sự ưu tiên thiên vị lâu dài hay những mối\nthâm thù với một dòng tộc gia đình nào đấy. Trong một nền kinh tế và những\nmối quan hệ càng lúc càng giấu danh tính của thời đại mới, người ta hoàn\ntoàn có thể nghi ngờ rằng mọi thứ—kể cả ấn tượng lần gặp mặt đầu tiên—\nđều có thể tạo ra những khác biệt cực kỳ quan trọng”. Người Mỹ phản ứng\nlại những áp lực này bằng cách cố gắng trở thành người bán hàng, những\nngười có thể tiếp thị và bán không chỉ những sản phẩm tinh xảo mới nhất\ncủa công ty, mà còn có thể tiếp thị và chào bán cả chính họ nữa.\nMột trong những góc nhìn quan trọng nhất mà qua đó ta có thể thấy được sự\nthay đổi của Nền Văn Hóa Tính Cách là truyền thống tự-giúp-đỡ-bản-thân\n(self-help) mà ở đó Dale Carnegie đã đóng góp một phần công sức lớn.\nNhững cuốn sách tự-giúp-đỡ-bản-thân từ cách đây rất lâu đã luôn chiếm một\nvị trí quan trọng trong tâm trí mỗi người dân Mỹ. Phần lớn các cuốn sách\nhướng dẫn thời kỳ đầu tiên là những truyện ngụ ngôn mang màu sắc tôn\ngiáo, như The Pilgrim’s Progress, xuất bản năm 1678, một câu chuyện cảnh\nbáo người đọc rằng nếu không biết kiềm chế bản thân, họ sẽ không bao giờ\ntới được thiên đường. Những cuốn sách khuyên bảo của thế kỷ 19 đã dần ít\nchất tính tôn giáo hơn, nhưng vẫn đề cao giá trị của việc có một nhân cách\ncao quý. Chúng kể những câu chuyện về cuộc đời của những vĩ nhân như\nAbraham Lincoln, được ngưỡng mộ không chỉ bởi khả năng giao tiếp tuyệt\nvời, mà còn bởi là một con người vô cùng khiêm tốn, người mà, như triết gia\nRalph Waldo Emerson đã viết, “không bao giờ bị vấy bẩn bởi uy quyền”.\nNhững cuốn sách cũng ca ngợi cả những con người bình thường nhưng có\nhành động thể hiện tư cách đạo đức cao quý. Một cuốn sách khuyên bảo khá\nnổi tiếng xuất bản năm 1899 có tên: “Nhân cách: Điều Vĩ Đại Nhất Trên\nĐời” (Character: The Grandest Thing in the World) kể về một cô bé chủ một\ncửa hàng nhỏ, đã đem toàn bộ số tiền kiếm được ít ỏi của mình tặng cho một\nkẻ hành khất đang co ro nơi góc phố, và rồi vội vã chạy đi thật nhanh trước\nkhi có ai kịp nhìn thấy hành động của mình. Đức hạnh của cô, như mọi\nngười đọc đều hiểu, không chỉ đến từ lòng nhân ái, mà còn cả từ ước muốn\nđược ẩn danh của cô nữa.\nNhưng đến năm 1920, những cuốn sách tự-giúp-đỡ-bản-thân nổi tiếng đều\nđã chuyển từ tập trung vào đức hạnh bên trong của con người sang việc xây\ndựng khả năng mê hoặc và bề ngoài để thu hút và chinh phục người khác\n—“biết phải nói gì, và nói nó như thế nào”, như một cuốn nói. “Tạo ra một\ntính cách thu hút là tạo ra sức mạnh”, một cuốn khác khuyên. “Hãy cố luôn\nthường trực một tác phong để khiến cho người khác phải nghĩ: “anh ta quả là\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nmột anh bạn vô cùng dễ mến”, một cuốn thứ ba bàn. “Đó là cách xây dựng\ndanh tiếng cho một nhân cách”. Tạp chí Success và cả tuần báo The\nSaturday Evening Post giới thiệu những chuyên mục mới hướng dẫn người\nđọc về nghệ thuật giao tiếp. Orison Swett Marden, cũng chính tác giả của\ncuốn sách Nhân cách: Điều Vĩ Đại Nhất Trên Đời vào năm 1899, đã xuất\nbản một tác phẩm nổi tiếng khác vào năm 1921, tiêu đề: “Tính Cách Bá\nChủ” (Masterful Personality).\nHầu hết các sách hướng dẫn này được viết dành cho nam giới thuộc tầng lớp\ndoanh nhân, nhưng phụ nữ cũng bị thôi thúc phải cải thiện một kỹ năng bí ẩn\nkhác có tên “sức quyến rũ”. Lớn lên trong thập kỷ 1920 là sinh ra trong một\ncuộc đua tranh quyết liệt hơn nhiều những gì bà hay mẹ của họ đã phải trải\nqua, một cuốn hướng dẫn chăm sóc sắc đẹp cảnh báo, và muốn thành công\nhọ cần phải có một vẻ ngoài ấn tượng. “Những người đi ngang qua ngoài\nphố sẽ không biết được là bạn thông minh và quyến rũ, trừ khi bạn trông\ngiống vậy.”\nNhững lời khuyên kiểu này—rõ ràng đều nhằm để cải thiện cuộc sống của\ncon người—hẳn đã phải khiến kể cả những người khá là tự tin cũng phải\ncảm thấy không thoải mái. Susman đã thống kê những từ ngữ xuất hiện\nnhiều nhất trong các cuốn sách hướng dẫn của đầu thế kỷ 20, và so sánh\nchúng với từ ngữ trong những cuốn sách đề cao đạo đức nhân cách của thế\nkỷ 19. Những cuốn sách của thế kỷ trước nhấn mạnh hơn vào những phẩm\nchất mà bất cứ ai cũng có thể cải thiện được, được miêu tả bằng những từ\nnhư:\nBổn phận công dân\nNghĩa vụ Việc làm\nNghĩa cử cao đẹp Danh dự\nDanh tiếng\nTư cách đạo đức Cách hành xử lễ độ\nChính trực, ngay thẳng\nNhưng những cuốn sách hướng dẫn của thế hệ mới thì tôn vinh những phẩm\nchất mà—bất kể Dale Carnegie có làm cho nó nghe có vẻ dễ dàng đến đâu—\nvẫn khó hơn rất nhiều để đạt được. Hoặc là bạn có được chúng, hoặc là\nkhông—không có lựa chọn thứ ba.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nLôi cuốn Quyến rũ\nGây choáng ngợp\nCó sức hấp dẫn mãnh liệt Vượt trội\nQuả quyết, mãnh liệt\nLuôn tràn đầy năng lượng\nHoàn toàn không phải trùng hợp ngẫu nhiên mà vào những thập kỷ 1920 và\n1930, hết thảy người dân Mỹ đều bị ám ảnh bởi những minh tinh màn bạc.\nLàm gì còn ai tốt hơn một siêu sao điện ảnh để thể hiện được sức mạnh của\nmột vẻ ngoài quyến rũ mê hoặc chứ?\nNgười dân Mỹ cũng đồng thời nhận được những lời khuyên về cải thiện kỹ\nnăng tiếp thị bản thân—bất kể họ có thích chúng hay không—từ ngành công\nnghiệp quảng cáo. Nếu những quảng cáo thời kỳ đầu đi thẳng vào ca ngợi\nchất lượng của sản phẩm (“Giấy mỏng vân lụa của Eaton’s Highland: Loại\ngiấy viết trong sạch và tươi mát nhất trên thế giới.”); thì quảng cáo của thời\nkỳ tôn vinh tính cách khắc họa khách hàng như những người phải chuẩn bị\nbiểu diễn mà vẫn còn run sợ, và chỉ có sản phẩm của nhà quảng cáo mới có\nthể giúp họ có thể tiếp tục tự tin tiến lên. Những quảng cáo này đặc biệt chú\ntrọng tới cái nhìn đầy đe dọa của mọi người xung quanh: “Khắp nơi xung\nquanh, mọi người đều đang âm thầm đánh giá bạn”, một quảng cáo xà bông\ncủa Woodbury cảnh báo. “Những ánh mắt vô cùng nghiêm khắc đang bủa\nvây lấy bạn ngay chính lúc này đây!”, quảng cáo của Kem Cạo Râu\nWilliams Luxury khuyên.\nNhững quảng cáo này đã nhắm thẳng vào mối lo lắng của rất nhiều doanh\nnhân và quản lý thuộc tầng lớp trung lưu. Trong một quảng cáo của kem\nđánh răng Dr. West, một anh chàng dáng vẻ bệ vệ ngồi sau một bàn giấy, hai\ntay chống tự tin vào hông, và hỏi bạn “Đã bao giờ thử tự chào bán chính bạn\ncho chính bạn chưa? Một ấn tượng đầu tiên ưa nhìn chính là nhân tố quan\ntrọng nhất để thành công, bất kể là trong kinh doanh hay trong đời sống xã\nhội!”. Kem Cạo Râu Williams Luxury quảng cáo một người đàn ông tóc\nbóng mượt, để ria, thúc giục người đọc “Hãy để gương mặt của bạn bộc lộ\nsự tự tin, chứ không phải lo lắng! Hãy nhớ, “diện mạo” của bạn chính là thứ\nngười khác dùng để đánh giá bạn nhiều nhất!”\nNhững quảng cáo khác nhắc nhở phụ nữ rằng thành công của họ trong trò\nchơi ái tình giờ không chỉ phụ thuộc vào vẻ ngoài hấp dẫn, mà còn cả vào\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ntính cách của họ nữa. Một quảng cáo của Xà bông Woodbury vào năm 1921\ngiới thiệu một cô gái ủ rũ, trở về nhà một mình sau một buổi tối đi chơi đáng\nthất vọng. Cô đã “luôn khát khao được hạnh phúc, được thành công, được\nchiến thắng”, mẩu quảng cáo nói với vẻ cảm thông. Nhưng không có sự trợ\ngiúp của đúng loại xà bông, người phụ nữ trẻ chỉ có thể là một thất bại trong\nquan hệ xã hội mà thôi.\nMười năm sau, bột giặt Lux đăng một quảng cáo trên mặt báo giấy, giới\nthiệu một lá thư buồn bã gửi Dorothy Dix, một “Chị Thanh Tâm” của thời kỳ\nđó. “Thưa cô Dix,” lá thư viết, “Tôi phải làm thế nào để có thể trở nên nổi\ntiếng hơn đây? Tôi cũng khá là ưa nhìn và không phải là một đồ ngốc, nhưng\ntôi lại quá rụt rè và e thẹn trước mặt mọi người. Tôi luôn chắc chắn rằng họ\nsẽ không bao giờ thích tôi…”— Joan G.\n“Cô Dix” đã trả lời lại, dứt khoát và rõ ràng: Giá mà Joan đã dùng bột giặt\nLux trên váy áo, rèm cửa, sofa của mình, cô chắc chắn đã sẽ sớm có được\n“một niềm tin sâu đậm, chắc chắn, mãnh liệt vào sự quyến rũ của chính\nmình”.\nViệc khắc họa việc hẹn hò như thể nó là một màn biểu diễn với đầy những\nrủi ro đã phản ánh rõ những quy chuẩn hoàn toàn mới của Nền Văn Hóa\nTính Cách. Dưới những giới hạn (đôi lúc áp chế) của những quy chuẩn của\nNền Văn Hóa Đức Tính, cả hai giới tính đều thể hiện phần nào sự kín đáo,\ndè dặt trong cuộc yêu đương. Người nữ mà ăn nói quá to, hay có những ánh\nnhìn không đứng đắn với nam giới thì đều bị coi là trâng tráo, không biết\nthẹn, không biết xấu hổ. Những phụ nữ thuộc tầng lớp trên có nhiều quyền\ntự do để giao tiếp hơn là những người cùng giới với họ ở đẳng cấp dưới, và\nhọ quả thực được đánh giá một phần vào tài năng của họ trong những lời đối\nđáp mau lẹ và thông minh, nhưng kể cả họ cũng được khuyên là nên biết tỏ\nra ngượng ngùng và xấu hổ. Họ được các cuốn sách hướng dẫn cảnh báo\nrằng “sự kín đáo lạnh lùng nhất” là “phẩm chất đáng ngưỡng mộ nhất ở một\nngười phụ nữ mà một người đàn ông muốn lấy làm vợ, hơn tất cả mọi sự\nthân mật không cần thiết nào”. Mọi người đàn ông đều có thể có được một\ncung cách xử sự lặng lẽ, từ tốn, một sự bình tĩnh và một thứ sức mạnh không\ncần thiết phải luôn tự khoe khoang về nó. Mặc dù sự rụt rè nhút nhát tự nó\nvẫn luôn là một điều không thể chấp nhận được, kín đáo lại là một dấu hiệu\ncủa một người bạn đời lý tưởng.\nNhưng với sự xuất hiện của Nền Văn Hóa Tính Cách, những giá trị của sự\nmực thước bắt đầu sụp đổ dần, với cả nam và nữ. Thay vì dùng những kính\nngữ trang trọng khi giao tiếp với phụ nữ và nghiêm túc tuyên bố sự chú ý\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\ncủa mình tới đối phương, nam giới giờ đây được kỳ vọng là phải biết chinh\nphục cuộc hẹn hò bằng nghệ thuật của ngôn từ, mà ở đó họ tung ra một lời\n“tán” đã được cân nhắc kỹ lưỡng. Những người đàn ông quá kín tiếng trước\nmặt phụ nữ sẽ phải chịu nguy cơ bị tưởng là “pê-đê”; như một cuốn hướng\ndẫn chuyện yêu đương năm 1926 đã quan sát thấy: “những người đồng tính\nluyến ái luôn luôn rất kín đáo, nhút nhát, rụt rè, không thích đám đông”. Phụ\nnữ nữa, cũng vậy, được kỳ vọng là phải biết cân bằng giữa đứng đắn và bạo\ndạn. Nếu phản ứng quá rụt rè trước những động thái lãng mạn, họ có thể bị\ncoi là “lạnh nhạt”.\nCả phương diện tâm lý học cũng bắt đầu chật vật với áp lực phải thể hiện sự\ntự tin. Vào thập kỷ 1920, nhà tâm lý học có tầm ảnh hưởng Gordon Allport\nđã tạo ra một bài trắc nghiệm chẩn đoán về mức độ “Thống trị-Nhượng bộ”\n(Ascendance-Submission), nhằm xác định mức độ thống trị trong giao tiếp\nxã hội. “Nền văn minh đương đại của chúng ta”, Allport nhận xét, người mà\nchính bản thân ông cũng rất kín đáo và nhút nhát, “có vẻ đặt giá trị cao hơn\nvào những con người hùng hổ, người ‘xông lên đoạt lấy phần thưởng’“.\nNgay từ những năm 1921, Carl Jung đã nhận thấy vị trí xã hội đang bắt đầu\nbị đe dọa của sự hướng nội. Chính Jung coi người hướng nội như là “những\nnhà giáo dục và những kẻ khuyến khích của tương lai”, những kẻ đã thể hiện\ngiá trị của “một thế giới nội tại luôn rất cần thiết trong nền văn minh của\nchúng ta”. Nhưng ông cũng thừa nhận rằng “sự kín đáo và những nỗi\nngượng ngùng dường như rất vô căn cứ (của họ), sẽ tự nhiên khơi dậy rất\nnhiều ác cảm của xã hội với loại người này”.\nNhưng không ở đâu nhu cầu cần phải có một dáng vẻ tự-tin lại rõ ràng hơn ở\nđịnh nghĩa khái niệm mới của các nhà tâm lý học, về thứ gọi là “Phức cảm tự\nti” (inferiority complex). Hội chứng IC, như nó sau này được biết đến rộng\nrãi hơn trên báo chí (viết tắt từ hai chữ cái đầu của tên gốc tiếng Anh, the\nInferiority Complex), được đề xuất lần đầu vào những năm 1920 bởi nhà tâm\nlý học người Viên Alfred Adler, để định nghĩa về cảm giác tự ti và những\nhậu quả của nó. “Bạn có hay tự cảm thấy bất an không?” một cuốn sách do\nAdler viết, vào hàng bán chạy nhất thời điểm đó, hỏi. “Bạn có hay thiếu tự\ntin không? Bạn có dễ nhượng bộ không?”. Adler giải thích rằng tất cả trẻ sơ\nsinh và trẻ nhỏ đều cảm thấy tự ti, khi phải lớn lên trong một thế giới của\nngười lớn và những anh chị lớn khác của chúng. Trong một quá trình lớn lên\nbình thường, hầu hết mọi người sẽ học cách hướng những cảm xúc này vào\nlàm động lực để theo đuổi những mục tiêu của mình. Nhưng nếu có gì đó đi\nchệch hướng khi họ trưởng thành, họ có thể bị đóng chặt mãi mãi với một\ncăn ác bệnh có tên “Hội chứng IC”, hay “Phức cảm tự ti”—một trở ngại chết\nngười, đặc biệt trong một thế giới càng ngày càng cạnh tranh quyết liệt hơn.\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nÝ tưởng về việc đóng gói tất cả mọi nỗi lo lắng với đời sống xã hội của mình\nvào một cái gói gọn ghẽ của “Hội chứng IC” đã làm vừa ý rất nhiều người\nMỹ. Phức Cảm Tự Ti trở thành một lời giải thích tuốt- tuồn-tuột cho mọi vấn\nđề trên hầu khắp mọi phương diện của xã hội, từ chuyện tình cảm yêu đương\ncho tới việc làm cha làm mẹ, tới cả công danh sự nghiệp. Vào năm 1924, tạp\nchí Collier đăng một câu chuyện về một người phụ nữ đang sợ phải cưới\nngười mà mình yêu, vì e ngại rằng anh ta đã mắc phải một hội chứng IC quá\nnặng, không còn cách chữa. Một tạp chí nổi tiếng khác thì cho đăng một bài\nbáo có tựa đề: “Con Của Bạn Và Cái Chứng Phức Cảm Thời Thượng Kia”,\ngiải thích cho các bà mẹ thứ gì dẫn đến hội chứng IC ở trẻ nhỏ, và làm cách\nnào để ngăn chặn hoặc chữa trị được nó. Như thể tất cả mọi người đều bị\nmắc phải hội chứng IC này vậy; nhưng, với một số người, nghịch lý thay, đó\nlại chính là dấu hiệu để nhận biết họ. Lincoln, Napoleon, Teddy Roosevelt,\nEdison, và cả Shakespeare—tất cả đều đã phải chống chọi với chứng bệnh\nIC, theo lời một bài báo của Collier năm 1939. “Vậy nên”, tờ tạp chí kết\nluận, “nếu bạn có một hội chứng Phức Cảm Tự Ti to bự đang phát triển, vậy\nthì bạn đã thực sự may mắn đến hết mức mà bạn có thể mong đợi rồi đấy,\nmiễn là bạn có đủ chất để chống lưng cho nó”.\nNhưng bất chấp giọng điệu lạc quan của bài báo này, các chuyên gia nuôi\ndạy trẻ nhỏ của thập kỷ 1920 vẫn hạ quyết tâm giúp đỡ trẻ em phát triển một\n“tính cách để chiến thắng”. Cho đến tận lúc đó, những người làm nghề này\nchủ yếu vẫn chỉ phải đương đầu với những bé gái phát triển tâm sinh lý quá\nsớm, hay những bé trai thích tập tành đua đòi làm băng đảng, du côn. Nhưng\ngiờ những nhà tâm lý học, nhân viên công tác xã hội, và bác sĩ chú tâm hơn\nvào những đứa trẻ bình thường hàng ngày “có tính cách và tâm lý không\nbình thường”—đặc biệt là những em rụt rè và nhút nhát. Sự nhút nhát có thể\ndẫn đến những hậu quả đáng sợ, những cuốn sách hướng dẫn này cảnh báo,\ntừ nghiện rượu cho đến tự tử; trong khi một tính cách năng động, xông xáo\nsẽ đem tới thành công cả về tài chính lẫn tinh thần. Các chuyên gia khuyên\ncác vị phụ huynh hãy bắt trẻ em hòa đồng với tập thể hơn, khuyến khích\ntrường học phải chuyển trọng tâm của mình từ học-trong-sách-vở sang “định\nhướng và dẫn đường cho sự phát triển tính cách của trẻ nhỏ”. Các nhà giáo\ndục đã tiếp nhận vai trò này một cách vô cùng nồng nhiệt. Đến năm 1950,\ncâu khẩu hiệu của Hội Nghị Nhà Trắng Nửa Thế Kỷ về Thanh Thiếu Niên đã\nlà: “Một tính cách lành mạnh cho mọi con em của chúng ta”.\nNhững bậc phụ huynh—hoàn toàn có ý tốt—của thập kỷ 1950 đồng ý rằng\nim lặng là một thứ tính cách hoàn toàn không thể chấp nhận được, và tính\nhòa đồng tập thể là lý tưởng cho cả nam lẫn nữ. Một số còn ngăn cấm con\nem tiếp xúc với những thú vui quá nghiêm túc và cô độc, như âm nhạc cổ\nhttps://thuviensach.vn\nđiển, e sợ rằng những thứ như vậy có thể khiến con họ trở nên kém nổi tiếng\ntrong mắt bạn bè và những người xung quanh. Họ càng ngày càng gửi con\nmình đến trường sớm hơn, với mục tiêu chủ yếu là để các em học được cách\nhòa nhập vào với hoạt động tập thể một cách sớm nhất. Những trẻ em hướng\nnội thường bị đánh dấu như là những trường hợp có vấn đề (một tình huống\ncũng tương tự với bất cứ ai có con là người hướng nội ngày nay).\nTác phẩm của William Whyte, “Con người của Tổ Chức” (The Organization\nMan), một trong những sách bán-chạy-nhất của năm 1956, đã miêu tả chi tiết\nviệc các bậc cha mẹ định sửa chữa toàn diện tính cách ít nói của con trẻ như\nthế nào. “Việc học hành của Jonny ở trường giờ đang không được tốt cho\nlắm”, Whyte nhớ lại một người mẹ đã kể với ông. “Thầy giáo có giải thích\nvới tôi rằng điểm học t"	901,596
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) (Z-Library).pdf	SIDDHARTHA An Indian Tale by Hermann Hesse FIRST PART To Romain Rolland, my dear friend THE SON OF THE BRAHMAN In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe. Joy leapt in his father's heart for his son who was quick to learn, thirsty for knowledge; he saw him growing up to become great wise man and priest, a prince among the Brahmans. Bliss leapt in his mother's breast when she saw him, when she saw him walking, when she saw him sit down and get up, Siddhartha, strong, handsome, he who was walking on slender legs, greeting her with perfect respect. Love touched the hearts of the Brahmans' young daughters when Siddhartha walked through the lanes of the town with the luminous forehead, with the eye of a king, with his slim hips. But more than all the others he was loved by Govinda, his friend, the son of a Brahman. He loved Siddhartha's eye and sweet voice, he loved his walk and the perfect decency of his movements, he loved everything Siddhartha did and said and what he loved most was his spirit, his transcendent, fiery thoughts, his ardent will, his high calling. Govinda knew: he would not become a common Brahman, not a lazy official in charge of offerings; not a greedy merchant with magic spells; not a vain, vacuous speaker; not a mean, deceitful priest; and also not a decent, stupid sheep in the herd of the many. No, and he, Govinda, as well did not want to become one of those, not one of those tens of thousands of Brahmans. He wanted to follow Siddhartha, the beloved, the splendid. And in days to come, when Siddhartha would become a god, when he would join the glorious, then Govinda wanted to follow him as his friend, his companion, his servant, his spear-carrier, his shadow. Siddhartha was thus loved by everyone. He was a source of joy for everybody, he was a delight for them all. But he, Siddhartha, was not a source of joy for himself, he found no delight in himself. Walking the rosy paths of the fig tree garden, sitting in the bluish shade of the grove of contemplation, washing his limbs daily in the bath of repentance, sacrificing in the dim shade of the mango forest, his gestures of perfect decency, everyone's love and joy, he still lacked all joy in his heart. Dreams and restless thoughts came into his mind, flowing from the water of the river, sparkling from the stars of the night, melting from the beams of the sun, dreams came to him and a restlessness of the soul, fuming from the sacrifices, breathing forth from the verses of the Rig-Veda, being infused into him, drop by drop, from the teachings of the old Brahmans. Siddhartha had started to nurse discontent in himself, he had started to feel that the love of his father and the love of his mother, and also the love of his friend, Govinda, would not bring him joy for ever and ever, would not nurse him, feed him, satisfy him. He had started to suspect that his venerable father and his other teachers, that the wise Brahmans had already revealed to him the most and best of their wisdom, that they had already filled his expecting vessel with their richness, and the vessel was not full, the spirit was not content, the soul was not calm, the heart was not satisfied. The ablutions were good, but they were water, they did not wash off the sin, they did not heal the spirit's thirst, they did not relieve the fear in his heart. The sacrifices and the invocation of the gods were excellent--but was that all? Did the sacrifices give a happy fortune? And what about the gods? Was it really Prajapati who had created the world? Was it not the Atman, He, the only one, the singular one? Were the gods not creations, created like me and you, subject to time, mortal? Was it therefore good, was it right, was it meaningful and the highest occupation to make offerings to the gods? For whom else were offerings to be made, who else was to be worshipped but Him, the only one, the Atman? And where was Atman to be found, where did He reside, where did his eternal heart beat, where else but in one's own self, in its innermost part, in its indestructible part, which everyone had in himself? But where, where was this self, this innermost part, this ultimate part? It was not flesh and bone, it was neither thought nor consciousness, thus the wisest ones taught. So, where, where was it? To reach this place, the self, myself, the Atman, there was another way, which was worthwhile looking for? Alas, and nobody showed this way, nobody knew it, not the father, and not the teachers and wise men, not the holy sacrificial songs! They knew everything, the Brahmans and their holy books, they knew everything, they had taken care of everything and of more than everything, the creation of the world, the origin of speech, of food, of inhaling, of exhaling, the arrangement of the senses, the acts of the gods, they knew infinitely much--but was it valuable to know all of this, not knowing that one and only thing, the most important thing, the solely important thing? Surely, many verses of the holy books, particularly in the Upanishades of Samaveda, spoke of this innermost and ultimate thing, wonderful verses. "Your soul is the whole world", was written there, and it was written that man in his sleep, in his deep sleep, would meet with his innermost part and would reside in the Atman. Marvellous wisdom was in these verses, all knowledge of the wisest ones had been collected here in magic words, pure as honey collected by bees. No, not to be looked down upon was the tremendous amount of enlightenment which lay here collected and preserved by innumerable generations of wise Brahmans.-- But where were the Brahmans, where the priests, where the wise men or penitents, who had succeeded in not just knowing this deepest of all knowledge but also to live it? Where was the knowledgeable one who wove his spell to bring his familiarity with the Atman out of the sleep into the state of being awake, into the life, into every step of the way, into word and deed? Siddhartha knew many venerable Brahmans, chiefly his father, the pure one, the scholar, the most venerable one. His father was to be admired, quiet and noble were his manners, pure his life, wise his words, delicate and noble thoughts lived behind its brow --but even he, who knew so much, did he live in blissfulness, did he have peace, was he not also just a searching man, a thirsty man? Did he not, again and again, have to drink from holy sources, as a thirsty man, from the offerings, from the books, from the disputes of the Brahmans? Why did he, the irreproachable one, have to wash off sins every day, strive for a cleansing every day, over and over every day? Was not Atman in him, did not the pristine source spring from his heart? It had to be found, the pristine source in one's own self, it had to be possessed! Everything else was searching, was a detour, was getting lost. Thus were Siddhartha's thoughts, this was his thirst, this was his suffering. Often he spoke to himself from a Chandogya-Upanishad the words: "Truly, the name of the Brahman is satyam--verily, he who knows such a thing, will enter the heavenly world every day." Often, it seemed near, the heavenly world, but never he had reached it completely, never he had quenched the ultimate thirst. And among all the wise and wisest men, he knew and whose instructions he had received, among all of them there was no one, who had reached it completely, the heavenly world, who had quenched it completely, the eternal thirst. "Govinda," Siddhartha spoke to his friend, "Govinda, my dear, come with me under the Banyan tree, let's practise meditation." They went to the Banyan tree, they sat down, Siddhartha right here, Govinda twenty paces away. While putting himself down, ready to speak the Om, Siddhartha repeated murmuring the verse: Om is the bow, the arrow is soul, The Brahman is the arrow's target, That one should incessantly hit. After the usual time of the exercise in meditation had passed, Govinda rose. The evening had come, it was time to perform the evening's ablution. He called Siddhartha's name. Siddhartha did not answer. Siddhartha sat there lost in thought, his eyes were rigidly focused towards a very distant target, the tip of his tongue was protruding a little between the teeth, he seemed not to breathe. Thus sat he, wrapped up in contemplation, thinking Om, his soul sent after the Brahman as an arrow. Once, Samanas had travelled through Siddhartha's town, ascetics on a pilgrimage, three skinny, withered men, neither old nor young, with dusty and bloody shoulders, almost naked, scorched by the sun, surrounded by loneliness, strangers and enemies to the world, strangers and lank jackals in the realm of humans. Behind them blew a hot scent of quiet passion, of destructive service, of merciless self-denial. In the evening, after the hour of contemplation, Siddhartha spoke to Govinda: "Early tomorrow morning, my friend, Siddhartha will go to the Samanas. He will become a Samana." Govinda turned pale, when he heard these words and read the decision in the motionless face of his friend, unstoppable like the arrow shot from the bow. Soon and with the first glance, Govinda realized: Now it is beginning, now Siddhartha is taking his own way, now his fate is beginning to sprout, and with his, my own. And he turned pale like a dry banana-skin. "O Siddhartha," he exclaimed, "will your father permit you to do that?" Siddhartha looked over as if he was just waking up. Arrow-fast he read in Govinda݀s soul, read the fear, read the submission. "O Govinda," he spoke quietly, "let's not waste words. Tomorrow, at daybreak I will begin the life of the Samanas. Speak no more of it." Siddhartha entered the chamber, where his father was sitting on a mat of bast, and stepped behind his father and remained standing there, until his father felt that someone was standing behind him. Quoth the Brahman: "Is that you, Siddhartha? Then say what you came to say." Quoth Siddhartha: "With your permission, my father. I came to tell you that it is my longing to leave your house tomorrow and go to the ascetics. My desire is to become a Samana. May my father not oppose this." The Brahman fell silent, and remained silent for so long that the stars in the small window wandered and changed their relative positions, 'ere the silence was broken. Silent and motionless stood the son with his arms folded, silent and motionless sat the father on the mat, and the stars traced their paths in the sky. Then spoke the father: "Not proper it is for a Brahman to speak harsh and angry words. But indignation is in my heart. I wish not to hear this request for a second time from your mouth." Slowly, the Brahman rose; Siddhartha stood silently, his arms folded. "What are you waiting for?" asked the father. Quoth Siddhartha: "You know what." Indignant, the father left the chamber; indignant, he went to his bed and lay down. After an hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood up, paced to and fro, and left the house. Through the small window of the chamber he looked back inside, and there he saw Siddhartha standing, his arms folded, not moving from his spot. Pale shimmered his bright robe. With anxiety in his heart, the father returned to his bed. After another hour, since no sleep had come over his eyes, the Brahman stood up again, paced to and fro, walked out of the house and saw that the moon had risen. Through the window of the chamber he looked back inside; there stood Siddhartha, not moving from his spot, his arms folded, moonlight reflecting from his bare shins. With worry in his heart, the father went back to bed. And he came back after an hour, he came back after two hours, looked through the small window, saw Siddhartha standing, in the moon light, by the light of the stars, in the darkness. And he came back hour after hour, silently, he looked into the chamber, saw him standing in the same place, filled his heart with anger, filled his heart with unrest, filled his heart with anguish, filled it with sadness. And in the night's last hour, before the day began, he returned, stepped into the room, saw the young man standing there, who seemed tall and like a stranger to him. "Siddhartha," he spoke, "what are you waiting for?" "You know what." "Will you always stand that way and wait, until it'll becomes morning, noon, and evening?" "I will stand and wait. "You will become tired, Siddhartha." "I will become tired." "You will fall asleep, Siddhartha." "I will not fall asleep." "You will die, Siddhartha." "I will die." "And would you rather die, than obey your father?" "Siddhartha has always obeyed his father." "So will you abandon your plan?" "Siddhartha will do what his father will tell him to do." The first light of day shone into the room. The Brahman saw that Siddhartha was trembling softly in his knees. In Siddhartha's face he saw no trembling, his eyes were fixed on a distant spot. Then his father realized that even now Siddhartha no longer dwelt with him in his home, that he had already left him. The Father touched Siddhartha's shoulder. "You will," he spoke, "go into the forest and be a Samana. When you'll have found blissfulness in the forest, then come back and teach me to be blissful. If you'll find disappointment, then return and let us once again make offerings to the gods together. Go now and kiss your mother, tell her where you are going to. But for me it is time to go to the river and to perform the first ablution." He took his hand from the shoulder of his son and went outside. Siddhartha wavered to the side, as he tried to walk. He put his limbs back under control, bowed to his father, and went to his mother to do as his father had said. As he slowly left on stiff legs in the first light of day the still quiet town, a shadow rose near the last hut, who had crouched there, and joined the pilgrim--Govinda. "You have come," said Siddhartha and smiled. "I have come," said Govinda. WITH THE SAMANAS In the evening of this day they caught up with the ascetics, the skinny Samanas, and offered them their companionship and--obedience. They were accepted. Siddhartha gave his garments to a poor Brahman in the street. He wore nothing more than the loincloth and the earth-coloured, unsown cloak. He ate only once a day, and never something cooked. He fasted for fifteen days. He fasted for twenty-eight days. The flesh waned from his thighs and cheeks. Feverish dreams flickered from his enlarged eyes, long nails grew slowly on his parched fingers and a dry, shaggy beard grew on his chin. His glance turned to icy when he encountered women; his mouth twitched with contempt, when he walked through a city of nicely dressed people. He saw merchants trading, princes hunting, mourners wailing for their dead, whores offering themselves, physicians trying to help the sick, priests determining the most suitable day for seeding, lovers loving, mothers nursing their children--and all of this was not worthy of one look from his eye, it all lied, it all stank, it all stank of lies, it all pretended to be meaningful and joyful and beautiful, and it all was just concealed putrefaction. The world tasted bitter. Life was torture. A goal stood before Siddhartha, a single goal: to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of wishing, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. Dead to himself, not to be a self any more, to find tranquility with an emptied heard, to be open to miracles in unselfish thoughts, that was his goal. Once all of my self was overcome and had died, once every desire and every urge was silent in the heart, then the ultimate part of me had to awake, the innermost of my being, which is no longer my self, the great secret. Silently, Siddhartha exposed himself to burning rays of the sun directly above, glowing with pain, glowing with thirst, and stood there, until he neither felt any pain nor thirst any more. Silently, he stood there in the rainy season, from his hair the water was dripping over freezing shoulders, over freezing hips and legs, and the penitent stood there, until he could not feel the cold in his shoulders and legs any more, until they were silent, until they were quiet. Silently, he cowered in the thorny bushes, blood dripped from the burning skin, from festering wounds dripped pus, and Siddhartha stayed rigidly, stayed motionless, until no blood flowed any more, until nothing stung any more, until nothing burned any more. Siddhartha sat upright and learned to breathe sparingly, learned to get along with only few breathes, learned to stop breathing. He learned, beginning with the breath, to calm the beat of his heart, leaned to reduce the beats of his heart, until they were only a few and almost none. Instructed by the oldest if the Samanas, Siddhartha practised self-denial, practised meditation, according to a new Samana rules. A heron flew over the bamboo forest--and Siddhartha accepted the heron into his soul, flew over forest and mountains, was a heron, ate fish, felt the pangs of a heron's hunger, spoke the heron's croak, died a heron's death. A dead jackal was lying on the sandy bank, and Siddhartha's soul slipped inside the body, was the dead jackal, lay on the banks, got bloated, stank, decayed, was dismembered by hyaenas, was skinned by vultures, turned into a skeleton, turned to dust, was blown across the fields. And Siddhartha's soul returned, had died, had decayed, was scattered as dust, had tasted the gloomy intoxication of the cycle, awaited in new thirst like a hunter in the gap, where he could escape from the cycle, where the end of the causes, where an eternity without suffering began. He killed his senses, he killed his memory, he slipped out of his self into thousands of other forms, was an animal, was carrion, was stone, was wood, was water, and awoke every time to find his old self again, sun shone or moon, was his self again, turned round in the cycle, felt thirst, overcame the thirst, felt new thirst. Siddhartha learned a lot when he was with the Samanas, many ways leading away from the self he learned to go. He went the way of self-denial by means of pain, through voluntarily suffering and overcoming pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness. He went the way of self-denial by means of meditation, through imagining the mind to be void of all conceptions. These and other ways he learned to go, a thousand times he left his self, for hours and days he remained in the non-self. But though the ways led away from the self, their end nevertheless always led back to the self. Though Siddhartha fled from the self a thousand times, stayed in nothingness, stayed in the animal, in the stone, the return was inevitable, inescapable was the hour, when he found himself back in the sunshine or in the moonlight, in the shade or in the rain, and was once again his self and Siddhartha, and again felt the agony of the cycle which had been forced upon him. By his side lived Govinda, his shadow, walked the same paths, undertook the same efforts. They rarely spoke to one another, than the service and the exercises required. Occasionally the two of them went through the villages, to beg for food for themselves and their teachers. "How do you think, Govinda," Siddhartha spoke one day while begging this way, "how do you think did we progress? Did we reach any goals?" Govinda answered: "We have learned, and we'll continue learning. You'll be a great Samana, Siddhartha. Quickly, you've learned every exercise, often the old Samanas have admired you. One day, you'll be a holy man, oh Siddhartha." Quoth Siddhartha: "I can't help but feel that it is not like this, my friend. What I've learned, being among the Samanas, up to this day, this, oh Govinda, I could have learned more quickly and by simpler means. In every tavern of that part of a town where the whorehouses are, my friend, among carters and gamblers I could have learned it." Quoth Govinda: "Siddhartha is putting me on. How could you have learned meditation, holding your breath, insensitivity against hunger and pain there among these wretched people?" And Siddhartha said quietly, as if he was talking to himself: "What is meditation? What is leaving one's body? What is fasting? What is holding one's breath? It is fleeing from the self, it is a short escape of the agony of being a self, it is a short numbing of the senses against the pain and the pointlessness of life. The same escape, the same short numbing is what the driver of an ox-cart finds in the inn, drinking a few bowls of rice-wine or fermented coconut-milk. Then he won't feel his self any more, then he won't feel the pains of life any more, then he finds a short numbing of the senses. When he falls asleep over his bowl of rice-wine, he'll find the same what Siddhartha and Govinda find when they escape their bodies through long exercises, staying in the non-self. This is how it is, oh Govinda." Quoth Govinda: "You say so, oh friend, and yet you know that Siddhartha is no driver of an ox-cart and a Samana is no drunkard. It's true that a drinker numbs his senses, it's true that he briefly escapes and rests, but he'll return from the delusion, finds everything to be unchanged, has not become wiser, has gathered no enlightenment,--has not risen several steps." And Siddhartha spoke with a smile: "I do not know, I've never been a drunkard. But that I, Siddhartha, find only a short numbing of the senses in my exercises and meditations and that I am just as far removed from wisdom, from salvation, as a child in the mother's womb, this I know, oh Govinda, this I know." And once again, another time, when Siddhartha left the forest together with Govinda, to beg for some food in the village for their brothers and teachers, Siddhartha began to speak and said: "What now, oh Govinda, might we be on the right path? Might we get closer to enlightenment? Might we get closer to salvation? Or do we perhaps live in a circle-- we, who have thought we were escaping the cycle?" Quoth Govinda: "We have learned a lot, Siddhartha, there is still much to learn. We are not going around in circles, we are moving up, the circle is a spiral, we have already ascended many a level." Siddhartha answered: "How old, would you think, is our oldest Samana, our venerable teacher?" Quoth Govinda: "Our oldest one might be about sixty years of age." And Siddhartha: "He has lived for sixty years and has not reached the nirvana. He'll turn seventy and eighty, and you and me, we will grow just as old and will do our exercises, and will fast, and will meditate. But we will not reach the nirvana, he won't and we won't. Oh Govinda, I believe out of all the Samanas out there, perhaps not a single one, not a single one, will reach the nirvana. We find comfort, we find numbness, we learn feats, to deceive others. But the most important thing, the path of paths, we will not find." "If you only," spoke Govinda, "wouldn't speak such terrible words, Siddhartha! How could it be that among so many learned men, among so many Brahmans, among so many austere and venerable Samanas, among so many who are searching, so many who are eagerly trying, so many holy men, no one will find the path of paths?" But Siddhartha said in a voice which contained just as much sadness as mockery, with a quiet, a slightly sad, a slightly mocking voice: "Soon, Govinda, your friend will leave the path of the Samanas, he has walked along your side for so long. I'm suffering of thirst, oh Govinda, and on this long path of a Samana, my thirst has remained as strong as ever. I always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions. I have asked the Brahmans, year after year, and I have asked the holy Vedas, year after year, and I have asked the devote Samanas, year after year. Perhaps, oh Govinda, it had been just as well, had been just as smart and just as profitable, if I had asked the hornbill-bird or the chimpanzee. It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as `learning'. There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I'm starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning." At this, Govinda stopped on the path, rose his hands, and spoke: "If you, Siddhartha, only would not bother your friend with this kind of talk! Truly, you words stir up fear in my heart. And just consider: what would become of the sanctity of prayer, what of the venerability of the Brahmans' caste, what of the holiness of the Samanas, if it was as you say, if there was no learning?! What, oh Siddhartha, what would then become of all of this what is holy, what is precious, what is venerable on earth?!" And Govinda mumbled a verse to himself, a verse from an Upanishad: He who ponderingly, of a purified spirit, loses himself in the meditation of Atman, unexpressable by words is his blissfulness of his heart. But Siddhartha remained silent. He thought about the words which Govinda had said to him and thought the words through to their end. Yes, he thought, standing there with his head low, what would remain of all that which seemed to us to be holy? What remains? What can stand the test? And he shook his head. At one time, when the two young men had lived among the Samanas for about three years and had shared their exercises, some news, a rumour, a myth reached them after being retold many times: A man had appeared, Gotama by name, the exalted one, the Buddha, he had overcome the suffering of the world in himself and had halted the cycle of rebirths. He was said to wander through the land, teaching, surrounded by disciples, without possession, without home, without a wife, in the yellow cloak of an ascetic, but with a cheerful brow, a man of bliss, and Brahmans and princes would bow down before him and would become his students. This myth, this rumour, this legend resounded, its fragrants rose up, here and there; in the towns, the Brahmans spoke of it and in the forest, the Samanas; again and again, the name of Gotama, the Buddha reached the ears of the young men, with good and with bad talk, with praise and with defamation. It was as if the plague had broken out in a country and news had been spreading around that in one or another place there was a man, a wise man, a knowledgeable one, whose word and breath was enough to heal everyone who had been infected with the pestilence, and as such news would go through the land and everyone would talk about it, many would believe, many would doubt, but many would get on their way as soon as possible, to seek the wise man, the helper, just like this this myth ran through the land, that fragrant myth of Gotama, the Buddha, the wise man of the family of Sakya. He possessed, so the believers said, the highest enlightenment, he remembered his previous lives, he had reached the nirvana and never returned into the cycle, was never again submerged in the murky river of physical forms. Many wonderful and unbelievable things were reported of him, he had performed miracles, had overcome the devil, had spoken to the gods. But his enemies and disbelievers said, this Gotama was a vain seducer, he would spent his days in luxury, scorned the offerings, was without learning, and knew neither exercises nor self-castigation. The myth of Buddha sounded sweet. The scent of magic flowed from these reports. After all, the world was sick, life was hard to bear--and behold, here a source seemed to spring forth, here a messenger seemed to call out, comforting, mild, full of noble promises. Everywhere where the rumour of Buddha was heard, everywhere in the lands of India, the young men listened up, felt a longing, felt hope, and among the Brahmans' sons of the towns and villages every pilgrim and stranger was welcome, when he brought news of him, the exalted one, the Sakyamuni. The myth had also reached the Samanas in the forest, and also Siddhartha, and also Govinda, slowly, drop by drop, every drop laden with hope, every drop laden with doubt. They rarely talked about it, because the oldest one of the Samanas did not like this myth. He had heard that this alleged Buddha used to be an ascetic before and had lived in the forest, but had then turned back to luxury and worldly pleasures, and he had no high opinion of this Gotama. "Oh Siddhartha," Govinda spoke one day to his friend. "Today, I was in the village, and a Brahman invited me into his house, and in his house, there was the son of a Brahman from Magadha, who has seen the Buddha with his own eyes and has heard him teach. Verily, this made my chest ache when I breathed, and thought to myself: If only I would too, if only we both would too, Siddhartha and me, live to see the hour when we will hear the teachings from the mouth of this perfected man! Speak, friend, wouldn't we want to go there too and listen to the teachings from the Buddha's mouth?" Quoth Siddhartha: "Always, oh Govinda, I had thought, Govinda would stay with the Samanas, always I had believed his goal was to live to be sixty and seventy years of age and to keep on practising those feats and exercises, which are becoming a Samana. But behold, I had not known Govinda well enough, I knew little of his heart. So now you, my faithful friend, want to take a new path and go there, where the Buddha spreads his teachings." Quoth Govinda: "You're mocking me. Mock me if you like, Siddhartha! But have you not also developed a desire, an eagerness, to hear these teachings? And have you not at one time said to me, you would not walk the path of the Samanas for much longer?" At this, Siddhartha laughed in his very own manner, in which his voice assumed a touch of sadness and a touch of mockery, and said: "Well, Govinda, you've spoken well, you've remembered correctly. If you only remembered the other thing as well, you've heard from me, which is that I have grown distrustful and tired against teachings and learning, and that my faith in words, which are brought to us by teachers, is small. But let's do it, my dear, I am willing to listen to these teachings--though in my heart I believe that we've already tasted the best fruit of these teachings." Quoth Govinda: "Your willingness delights my heart. But tell me, how should this be possible? How should the Gotama's teachings, even before we have heard them, have already revealed their best fruit to us?" Quoth Siddhartha: "Let us eat this fruit and wait for the rest, oh Govinda! But this fruit, which we already now received thanks to the Gotama, consisted in him calling us away from the Samanas! Whether he has also other and better things to give us, oh friend, let us await with calm hearts." On this very same day, Siddhartha informed the oldest one of the Samanas of his decision, that he wanted to leave him. He informed the oldest one with all the courtesy and modesty becoming to a younger one and a student. But the Samana became angry, because the two young men wanted to leave him, and talked loudly and used crude swearwords. Govinda was startled and became embarrassed. But Siddhartha put his mouth close to Govinda's ear and whispered to him: "Now, I want to show the old man that I've learned something from him." Positioning himself closely in front of the Samana, with a concentrated soul, he captured the old man's glance with his glances, deprived him of his power, made him mute, took away his free will, subdued him under his own will, commanded him, to do silently, whatever he demanded him to do. The old man became mute, his eyes became motionless, his will was paralysed, his arms were hanging down; without power, he had fallen victim to Siddhartha's spell. But Siddhartha's thoughts brought the Samana under their control, he had to carry out, what they commanded. And thus, the old man made several bows, performed gestures of blessing, spoke stammeringly a godly wish for a good journey. And the young men returned the bows with thanks, returned the wish, went on their way with salutations. On the way, Govinda said: "Oh Siddhartha, you have learned more from the Samanas than I knew. It is hard, it is very hard to cast a spell on an old Samana. Truly, if you had stayed there, you would soon have learned to walk on water." "I do not seek to walk on water," said Siddhartha. "Let old Samanas be content with such feats!" GOTAMA In the town of Savathi, every child knew the name of the exalted Buddha, and every house was prepared to fill the alms-dish of Gotama's disciples, the silently begging ones. Near the town was Gotama's favourite place to stay, the grove of Jetavana, which the rich merchant Anathapindika, an obedient worshipper of the exalted one, had given him and his people for a gift. All tales and answers, which the two young ascetics had received in their search for Gotama's abode, had pointed them towards this area. And arriving at Savathi, in the very first house, before the door of which they stopped to beg, food has been offered to them, and they accepted the food, and Siddhartha asked the woman, who handed them the food: "We would like to know, oh charitable one, where the Buddha dwells, the most venerable one, for we are two Samanas from the forest and have come, to see him, the perfected one, and to hear the teachings from his mouth." Quoth the woman: "Here, you have truly come to the right place, you Samanas from the forest. You should know, in Jetavana, in the garden of Anathapindika is where the exalted one dwells. There you pilgrims shall spent the night, for there is enough space for the innumerable, who flock here, to hear the teachings from his mouth." This made Govinda happy, and full of joy he exclaimed: "Well so, thus we have reached our destination, and our path has come to an end! But tell us, oh mother of the pilgrims, do you know him, the Buddha, have you seen him with your own eyes?" Quoth the woman: "Many times I have seen him, the exalted one. On many days, I have seen him, walking through the alleys in silence, wearing his yellow cloak, presenting his alms-dish in silence at the doors of the houses, leaving with a filled dish." Delightedly, Govinda listened and wanted to ask and hear much more. But Siddhartha urged him to walk on. They thanked and left and hardly had to ask for directions, for rather many pilgrims and monks as well from Gotama's community were on their way to the Jetavana. And since they reached it at night, there were constant arrivals, shouts, and talk of those who sought shelter and got it. The two Samanas, accustomed to life in the forest, found quickly and without making any noise a place to stay and rested there until the morning. At sunrise, they saw with astonishment what a large crowd of believers and curious people had spent the night here. On all paths of the marvellous grove, monks walked in yellow robes, under the trees they sat here and there, in deep contemplation--or in a conversation about spiritual matters, the shady gardens looked like a city, full of people, bustling like bees. The majority of the monks went out with their alms-dish, to collect food in town for their lunch, the only meal of the day. The Buddha himself, the enlightened one, was also in the habit of taking this walk to beg in the morning. Siddhartha saw him, and he instantly recognised him, as if a god had pointed him out to him. He saw him, a simple man in a yellow robe, bearing the alms-dish in his hand, walking silently. "Look here!" Siddhartha said quietly to Govinda. "This one is the Buddha." Attentively, Govinda looked at the monk in the yellow robe, who seemed to be in no way different from the hundreds of other monks. And soon, Govinda also realized: This is the one. And they followed him and observed him. The Buddha went on his way, modestly and deep in his thoughts, his calm face was neither happy nor sad, it seemed to smile quietly and inwardly. With a hidden smile, quiet, calm, somewhat resembling a healthy child, the Buddha walked, wore the robe and placed his feet just as all of his monks did, according to a precise rule. But his face and his walk, his quietly lowered glance, his quietly dangling hand and even every finger of his quietly dangling hand expressed peace, expressed perfection, did not search, did not imitate, breathed softly in an unwhithering calm, in an unwhithering light, an untouchable peace. Thus Gotama walked towards the town, to collect alms, and the two Samanas recognised him solely by the perfection of his calm, by the quietness of his appearance, in which there was no searching, no desire, no imitation, no effort to be seen, only light and peace. "Today, we'll hear the teachings from his mouth." said Govinda. Siddhartha did not answer. He felt little curiosity for the teachings, he did not believe that they would teach him anything new, but he had, just as Govinda had, heard the contents of this Buddha's teachings again and again, though these reports only represented second- or third-hand information. But attentively he looked at Gotama's head, his shoulders, his feet, his quietly dangling hand, and it seemed to him as if every joint of every finger of this hand was of these teachings, spoke of, breathed of, exhaled the fragrant of, glistened of truth. This man, this Buddha was truthful down to the gesture of his last finger. This man was holy. Never before, Siddhartha had venerated a person so much, never before he had loved a person as much as this one. They both followed the Buddha until they reached the town and then returned in silence, for they themselves intended to abstain from on this day. They saw Gotama returning--what he ate could not even have satisfied a bird's appetite, and they saw him retiring into the shade of the mango- trees. But in the evening, when the heat cooled down and everyone in the camp started to bustle about and gathered around, they heard the Buddha teaching. They heard his voice, and it was also perfected, was of perfect calmness, was full of peace. Gotama taught the teachings of suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the way to relieve suffering. Calmly and clearly his quiet speech flowed on. Suffering was life, full of suffering was the world, but salvation from suffering had been found: salvation was obtained by him who would walk the path of the Buddha. With a soft, yet firm voice the exalted one spoke, taught the four main doctrines, taught the eightfold path, patiently he went the usual path of the teachings, of the examples, of the repetitions, brightly and quietly his voice hovered over the listeners, like a light, like a starry sky. When the Buddha--night had already fallen--ended his speech, many a pilgrim stepped forward and asked to accepted into the community, sought refuge in the teachings. And Gotama accepted them by speaking: "You have heard the teachings well, it has come to you well. Thus join us and walk in holiness, to put an end to all suffering." Behold, then Govinda, the shy one, also stepped forward and spoke: "I also take my refuge in the exalted one and his teachings," and he asked to accepted into the community of his disciples and was accepted. Right afterwards, when the Buddha had retired for the night, Govinda turned to Siddhartha and spoke eagerly: "Siddhartha, it is not my place to scold you. We have both heard the exalted one, be have both perceived the teachings. Govinda has heard the teachings, he has taken refuge in it. But you, my honoured friend, don't you also want to walk the path of salvation? Would you want to hesitate, do you want to wait any longer?" Siddhartha awakened as if he had been asleep, when he heard Govinda's words. For a long tome, he looked into Govinda's face. Then he spoke quietly, in a voice without mockery: "Govinda, my friend, now you have taken this step, now you have chosen this path. Always, oh Govinda, you've been my friend, you've always walked one step behind me. Often I have thought: Won't Govinda for once also take a step by himself, without me, out of his own soul? Behold, now you've turned into a man and are choosing your path for yourself. I wish that you would go it up to its end, oh my friend, that you shall find salvation!" Govinda, not completely understanding it yet, repeated his question in an impatient tone: "Speak up, I beg you, my dear! Tell me, since it could not be any other way, that you also, my learned friend, will take your refuge with the exalted Buddha!" Siddhartha placed his hand on Govinda's shoulder: "You failed to hear my good wish for you, oh Govinda. I'm repeating it: I wish that you would go this path up to its end, that you shall find salvation!" In this moment, Govinda realized that his friend had left him, and he started to weep. "Siddhartha!" he exclaimed lamentingly. Siddhartha kindly spoke to him: "Don't forget, Govinda, that you are now one of the Samanas of the Buddha! You have renounced your home and your parents, renounced your birth and possessions, renounced your free will, renounced all friendship. This is what the teachings require, this is what the exalted one wants. This is what you wanted for yourself. Tomorrow, oh Govinda, I'll leave you." For a long time, the friends continued walking in the grove; for a long time, they lay there and found no sleep. And over and over again, Govinda urged his friend, he should tell him why he would not want to seek refuge in Gotama's teachings, what fault he would find in these teachings. But Siddhartha turned him away every time and said: "Be content, Govinda! Very good are the teachings of the exalted one, how could I find a fault in them?" Very early in the morning, a follower of Buddha, one of his oldest monks, went through the garden and called all those to him who had as novices taken their refuge in the teachings, to dress them up in the yellow robe and to instruct them in the first teachings and duties of their position. Then Govinda broke loose, embraced once again his childhood friend and left with the novices. But Siddhartha walked through the grove, lost in thought. Then he happened to meet Gotama, the exalted one, and when he greeted him with respect and the Buddha's glance was so full of kindness and calm, the young man summoned his courage and asked the venerable one for the permission to talk to him. Silently the exalted one nodded his approval. Quoth Siddhartha: "Yesterday, oh exalted one, I had been privileged to hear your wondrous teachings. Together with my friend, I had come from afar, to hear your teachings. And now my friend is going to stay with your people, he has taken his refuge with you. But I will again start on my pilgrimage." "As you please," the venerable one spoke politely. "Too bold is my speech," Siddhartha continued, "but I do not want to leave the exalted one without having honestly told him my thoughts. Does it please the venerable one to listen to me for one moment longer?" Silently, the Buddha nodded his approval. Quoth Siddhartha: "One thing, oh most venerable one, I have admired in your teachings most of all. Everything in your teachings is perfectly clear, is proven; you are presenting the world as a perfect chain, a chain which is never and nowhere broken, an eternal chain the links of which are causes and effects. Never before, this has been seen so clearly; never before, this has been presented so irrefutably; truly, the heart of every Brahman has to beat stronger with love, once he has seen the world through your teachings perfectly connected, without gaps, clear as a crystal, not depending on chance, not depending on gods. Whether it may be good or bad, whether living according to it would be suffering or joy, I do not wish to discuss, possibly this is not essential--but the uniformity of the world, that everything which happens is connected, that the great and the small things are all encompassed by the same forces of time, by the same law of causes, of coming into being and of dying, this is what shines brightly out of your exalted teachings, oh perfected one. But according to your very own teachings, this unity and necessary sequence of all things is nevertheless broken in one place, through a small gap, this world of unity is invaded by something alien, something new, something which had not been there before, and which cannot be demonstrated and cannot be proven: these are your teachings of overcoming the world, of salvation. But with this small gap, with this small breach, the entire eternal and uniform law of the world is breaking apart again and becomes void. Please forgive me for expressing this objection." Quietly, Gotama had listened to him, unmoved. Now he spoke, the perfected one, with his kind, with his polite and clear voice: "You've heard the teachings, oh son of a Brahman, and good for you that you've thought about it thus deeply. You've found a gap in it, an error. You should think about this further. But be warned, oh seeker of knowledge, of the thicket of opinions and of arguing about words. There is nothing to opinions, they may be beautiful or ugly, smart or foolish, everyone can support them or discard them. But the teachings, you've heard from me, are no opinion, and their goal is not to explain the world to those who seek knowledge. They have a different goal; their goal is salvation from suffering. This is what Gotama teaches, nothing else." "I wish that you, oh exalted one, would not be angry with me," said the young man. "I have not spoken to you like this to argue with you, to argue about words. You are truly right, there is little to opinions. But let me say this one more thing: I have not doubted in you for a single moment. I have not doubted for a single moment that you are Buddha, that you have reached the goal, the highest goal towards which so many thousands of Brahmans and sons of Brahmans are on their way. You have found salvation from death. It has come to you in the course of your own search, on your own path, through thoughts, through meditation, through realizations, through enlightenment. It has not come to you by means of teachings! And- -thus is my thought, oh exalted one,--nobody will obtain salvation by means of teachings! You will not be able to convey and say to anybody, oh venerable one, in words and through teachings what has happened to you in the hour of enlightenment! The teachings of the enlightened Buddha contain much, it teaches many to live righteously, to avoid evil. But there is one thing which these so clear, these so venerable teachings do not contain: they do not contain the mystery of what the exalted one has experienced for himself, he alone among hundreds of thousands. This is what I have thought and realized, when I have heard the teachings. This is why I am continuing my travels--not to seek other, better teachings, for I know there are none, but to depart from all teachings and all teachers and to reach my goal by myself or to die. But often, I'll think of this day, oh exalted one, and of this hour, when my eyes beheld a holy man." The Buddha's eyes quietly looked to the ground; quietly, in perfect equanimity his inscrutable face was smiling. "I wish," the venerable one spoke slowly, "that your thoughts shall not be in error, that you shall reach the goal! But tell me: Have you seen the multitude of my Samanas, my many brothers, who have taken refuge in the teachings? And do you believe, oh stranger, oh Samana, do you believe that it would be better for them all the abandon the teachings and to return into the life the world and of desires?" "Far is such a thought from my mind," exclaimed Siddhartha. "I wish that they shall all stay with the teachings, that they shall reach their goal! It is not my place to judge another person's life. Only for myself, for myself alone, I must decide, I must chose, I must refuse. Salvation from the self is what we Samanas search for, oh exalted one. If I merely were one of your disciples, oh venerable one, I'd fear that it might happen to me that only seemingly, only deceptively my self would be calm and be redeemed, but that in truth it would live on and grow, for then I had replaced my self with the teachings, my duty to follow you, my love for you, and the community of the monks!" With half of a smile, with an unwavering openness and kindness, Gotama looked into the stranger's eyes and bid him to leave with a hardly noticeable gesture. "You are wise, oh Samana.", the venerable one spoke. "You know how to talk wisely, my friend. Be aware of too much wisdom!" The Buddha turned away, and his glance and half of a smile remained forever etched in Siddhartha's memory. I have never before seen a person glance and smile, sit and walk this way, he thought; truly, I wish to be able to glance and smile, sit and walk this way, too, thus free, thus venerable, thus concealed, thus open, thus child- like and mysterious. Truly, only a person who has succeeded in reaching the innermost part of his self would glance and walk this way. Well so, I also will seek to reach the innermost part of my self. I saw a man, Siddhartha thought, a single man, before whom I would have to lower my glance. I do not want to lower my glance before any other, not before any other. No teachings will entice me any more, since this man's teachings have not enticed me. I am deprived by the Buddha, thought Siddhartha, I am deprived, and even more he has given to me. He has deprived me of my friend, the one who had believed in me and now believes in him, who had been my shadow and is now Gotama's shadow. But he has given me Siddhartha, myself. AWAKENING When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings. Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!" Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process." Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do. "Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga- Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha." He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything. "How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day." In thinking this thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path. Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. When he had left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "But I am no longer the one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father's place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation? But all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path." Motionless, Siddhartha remained standing there, and for the time of one moment and breath, his heart felt cold, he felt a cold in his chest, as a small animal, a bird or a rabbit, would when seeing how alone he was. For many years, he had been without home and had felt nothing. Now, he felt it. Still, even in the deepest meditation, he had been his father's son, had been a Brahman, of a high caste, a cleric. Now, he was nothing but Siddhartha, the awoken one, nothing else was left. Deeply, he inhaled, and for a moment, he felt cold and shivered. Nobody was thus alone as he was. There was no nobleman who did not belong to the noblemen, no worker that did not belong to the workers, and found refuge with them, shared their life, spoke their language. No Brahman, who would not be regarded as Brahmans and lived with them, no ascetic who would not find his refuge in the caste of the Samanas, and even the most forlorn hermit in the forest was not just one and alone, he was also surrounded by a place he belonged to, he also belonged to a caste, in which he was at home. Govinda had become a monk, and a thousand monks were his brothers, wore the same robe as he, believed in his faith, spoke his language. But he, Siddhartha, where did he belong to? With whom would he share his life? Whose language would he speak? Out of this moment, when the world melted away all around him, when he stood alone like a star in the sky, out of this moment of a cold and despair, Siddhartha emerged, more a self than before, more firmly concentrated. He felt: This had been the last tremor of the awakening, the last struggle of this birth. And it was not long until he walked again in long strides, started to proceed swiftly and impatiently, heading no longer for home, no longer to his father, no longer back. SECOND PART Dedicated to Wilhelm Gundert, my cousin in Japan KAMALA Siddhartha learned something new on every step of his path, for the world was transformed, and his heart was enchanted. He saw the sun rising over the mountains with their forests and setting over the distant beach with its palm-trees. At night, he saw the stars in the sky in their fixed positions and the crescent of the moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, herbs, flowers, stream and river, the glistening dew in the bushes in the morning, distant hight mountains which were blue and pale, birds sang and bees, wind silverishly blew through the rice-field. All of this, a thousand-fold and colourful, had always been there, always the sun and the moon had shone, always rivers had roared and bees had buzzed, but in former times all of this had been nothing more to Siddhartha than a fleeting, deceptive veil before his eyes, looked upon in distrust, destined to be penetrated and destroyed by thought, since it was not the essential existence, since this essence lay beyond, on the other side of, the visible. But now, his liberated eyes stayed on this side, he saw and became aware of the visible, sought to be at home in this world, did not search for the true essence, did not aim at a world beyond. Beautiful was this world, looking at it thus, without searching, thus simply, thus childlike. Beautiful were the moon and the stars, beautiful was the stream and the banks, the forest and the rocks, the goat and the gold-beetle, the flower and the butterfly. Beautiful and lovely it was, thus to walk through the world, thus childlike, thus awoken, thus open to what is near, thus without distrust. Differently the sun burnt the head, differently the shade of the forest cooled him down, differently the stream and the cistern, the pumpkin and the banana tasted. Short were the days, short the nights, every hour sped swiftly away like a sail on the sea, and under the sail was a ship full of treasures, full of joy. Siddhartha saw a group of apes moving through the high canopy of the forest, high in the branches, and heard their savage, greedy song. Siddhartha saw a male sheep following a female one and mating with her. In a lake of reeds, he saw the pike hungrily hunting for its dinner; propelling themselves away from it, in fear, wiggling and sparkling, the young fish jumped in droves out of the water; the scent of strength and passion came forcefully out of the hasty eddies of the water, which the pike stirred up, impetuously hunting. All of this had always existed, and he had not seen it; he had not been with it. Now he was with it, he was part of it. Light and shadow ran through his eyes, stars and moon ran through his heart. On the way, Siddhartha also remembered everything he had experienced in the Garden Jetavana, the teaching he had heard there, the divine Buddha, the farewell from Govinda, the conversation with the exalted one. Again he remembered his own words, he had spoken to the exalted one, every word, and with astonishment he became aware of the fact that there he had said things which he had not really known yet at this time. What he had said to Gotama: his, the Buddha's, treasure and secret was not the teachings, but the unexpressable and not teachable, which he had experienced in the hour of his enlightenment--it was nothing but this very thing which he had now gone to experience, what he now began to experience. Now, he had to experience his self. It is true that he had already known for a long time that his self was Atman, in its essence bearing the same eternal characteristics as Brahman. But never, he had really found this self, because he had wanted to capture it in the net of thought. With the body definitely not being the self, and not the spectacle of the senses, so it also was not the thought, not the rational mind, not the learned wisdom, not the learned ability to draw conclusions and to develop previous thoughts in to new ones. No, this world of thought was also still on this side, and nothing could be achieved by killing the random self of the senses, if the random self of thoughts and learned knowledge was fattened on the other hand. Both, the thoughts as well as the senses, were pretty things, the ultimate meaning was hidden behind both of them, both had to be listened to, both had to be played with, both neither had to be scorned nor overestimated, from both the secret voices of the innermost truth had to be attentively perceived. He wanted to strive for nothing, except for what the voice commanded him to strive for, dwell on nothing, except where the voice would advise him to do so. Why had Gotama, at that time, in the hour of all hours, sat down under the bo- tree, where the enlightenment hit him? He had heard a voice, a voice in his own heart, which had commanded him to seek rest under this tree, and he had neither preferred self-castigation, offerings, ablutions, nor prayer, neither food nor drink, neither sleep nor dream, he had obeyed the voice. To obey like this, not to an external command, only to the voice, to be ready like this, this was good, this was necessary, nothing else was necessary. In the night when he slept in the straw hut of a ferryman by the river, Siddhartha had a dream: Govinda was standing in front of him, dressed in the yellow robe of an ascetic. Sad was how Govinda looked like, sadly he asked: Why have you forsaken me? At this, he embraced Govinda, wrapped his arms around him, and as he was pulling him close to his chest and kissed him, it was not Govinda any more, but a woman, and a full breast popped out of the woman's dress, at which Siddhartha lay and drank, sweetly and strongly tasted the milk from this breast. It tasted of woman and man, of sun and forest, of animal and flower, of every fruit, of every joyful desire. It intoxicated him and rendered him unconscious.--When Siddhartha woke up, the pale river shimmered through the door of the hut, and in the forest, a dark call of an owl resounded deeply and pleasantly. When the day began, Siddhartha asked his host, the ferryman, to get him across the river. The ferryman got him across the river on his bamboo-raft, the wide water shimmered reddishly in the light of the morning. "This is a beautiful river," he said to his companion. "Yes," said the ferryman, "a very beautiful river, I love it more than anything. Often I have listened to it, often I have looked into its eyes, and always I have learned from it. Much can be learned from a river." "I than you, my benefactor," spoke Siddhartha, disembarking on the other side of the river. "I have no gift I could give you for your hospitality, my dear, and also no payment for your work. I am a man without a home, a son of a Brahman and a Samana." "I did see it," spoke the ferryman, "and I haven't expected any payment from you and no gift which would be the custom for guests to bear. You will give me the gift another time." "Do you think so?" asked Siddhartha amusedly. "Surely. This too, I have learned from the river: everything is coming back! You too, Samana, will come back. Now farewell! Let your friendship be my reward. Commemorate me, when you'll make offerings to the gods." Smiling, they parted. Smiling, Siddhartha was happy about the friendship and the kindness of the ferryman. "He is like Govinda," he thought with a smile, "all I meet on my path are like Govinda. All are thankful, though they are the ones who would have a right to receive thanks. All are submissive, all would like to be friends, like to obey, think little. Like children are all people." At about noon, he came through a village. In front of the mud cottages, children were rolling about in the street, were playing with pumpkin-seeds and sea-shells, screamed and wrestled, but they all timidly fled from the unknown Samana. In the end of the village, the path led through a stream, and by the side of the stream, a young woman was kneeling and washing clothes. When Siddhartha greeted her, she lifted her head and looked up to him with a smile, so that he saw the white in her eyes glistening. He called out a blessing to her, as it is the custom among travellers, and asked how far he still had to go to reach the large city. Then she got up and came to him, beautifully her wet mouth was shimmering in her young face. She exchanged humorous banter with him, asked whether he had eaten already, and whether it was true that the Samanas slept alone in the forest at night and were not allowed to have any women with them. While talking, she put her left foot on his right one and made a movement as a woman does who would want to initiate that kind of sexual pleasure with a man, which the textbooks call "climbing a tree". Siddhartha felt his blood heating up, and since in this moment he had to think of his dream again, he bend slightly down to the woman and kissed with his lips the brown nipple of her breast. Looking up, he saw her face smiling full of lust and her eyes, with contracted pupils, begging with desire. Siddhartha also felt desire and felt the source of his sexuality moving; but since he had never touched a woman before, he hesitated for a moment, while his hands were already prepared to reach out for her. And in this moment he heard, shuddering with awe, the voice if his innermost self, and this voice said No. Then, all charms disappeared from the young woman's smiling face, he no longer saw anything else but the damp glance of a female animal in heat. Politely, he petted her cheek, turned away from her and disappeared away from the disappointed woman with light steps into the bamboo-wood. On this day, he reached the large city before the evening, and was happy, for he felt the need to be among people. For a long time, he had lived in the forests, and the straw hut of the ferryman, in which he had slept that night, had been the first roof for a long time he has had over his head. Before the city, in a beautifully fenced grove, the traveller came across a small group of servants, both male and female, carrying baskets. In their midst, carried by four servants in an ornamental sedan-chair, sat a woman, the mistress, on red pillows under a colourful canopy. Siddhartha stopped at the entrance to the pleasure-garden and watched the parade, saw the servants, the maids, the baskets, saw the sedan-chair and saw the lady in it. Under black hair, which made to tower high on her head, he saw a very fair, very delicate, very smart face, a brightly red mouth, like a freshly cracked fig, eyebrows which were well tended and painted in a high arch, smart and watchful dark eyes, a clear, tall neck rising from a green and golden garment, resting fair hands, long and thin, with wide golden bracelets over the wrists. Siddhartha saw how beautiful she was, and his heart rejoiced. He bowed deeply, when the sedan-chair came closer, and straightening up again, he looked at the fair, charming face, read for a moment in the smart eyes with the high arcs above, breathed in a slight fragrant, he did not know. With a smile, the beautiful women nodded for a moment and disappeared into the grove, and then the servant as well. Thus I am entering this city, Siddhartha thought, with a charming omen. He instantly felt drawn into the grove, but he thought about it, and only now he became aware of how the servants and maids had looked at him at the entrance, how despicable, how distrustful, how rejecting. I am still a Samana, he thought, I am still an ascetic and beggar. I must not remain like this, I will not be able to enter the grove like this. And he laughed. The next person who came along this path he asked about the grove and for the name of the woman, and was told that this was the grove of Kamala, the famous courtesan, and that, aside from the grove, she owned a house in the city. Then, he entered the city. Now he had a goal. Pursuing his goal, he allowed the city to suck him in, drifted through the flow of the streets, stood still on the squares, rested on the stairs of stone by the river. When the evening came, he made friends with barber's assistant, whom he had seen working in the shade of an arch in a building, whom he found again praying in a temple of Vishnu, whom he told about stories of Vishnu and the Lakshmi. Among the boats by the river, he slept this night, and early in the morning, before the first customers came into his shop, he had the barber's assistant shave his beard and cut his hair, comb his hair and anoint it with fine oil. Then he went to take his bath in the river. When late in the afternoon, beautiful Kamala approached her grove in her sedan-chair, Siddhartha was standing at the entrance, made a bow and received the courtesan's greeting. But that servant who walked at the very end of her train he motioned to him and asked him to inform his mistress that a young Brahman would wish to talk to her. After a while, the servant returned, asked him, who had been waiting, to follow him conducted him, who was following him, without a word into a pavilion, where Kamala was lying on a couch, and left him alone with her. "Weren't you already standing out there yesterday, greeting me?" asked Kamala. "It's true that I've already seen and greeted you yesterday." "But didn't you yesterday wear a beard, and long hair, and dust in your hair?" "You have observed well, you have seen everything. You have seen Siddhartha, the son of a Brahman, who has left his home to become a Samana, and who has been a Samana for three years. But now, I have left that path and came into this city, and the first one I met, even before I had entered the city, was you. To say this, I have come to you, oh Kamala! You are the first woman whom Siddhartha is not addressing with his eyes turned to the ground. Never again I want to turn my eyes to the ground, when I'm coming across a beautiful woman." Kamala smiled and played with her fan of peacocks' feathers. And asked: "And only to tell me this, Siddhartha has come to me?" "To tell you this and to thank you for being so beautiful. And if it doesn't displease you, Kamala, I would like to ask you to be my friend and teacher, for I know nothing yet of that art which you have mastered in the highest degree." At this, Kamala laughed aloud. "Never before this has happened to me, my friend, that a Samana from the forest came to me and wanted to learn from me! Never before this has happened to me, that a Samana came to me with long hair and an old, torn loin-cloth! Many young men come to me, and there are also sons of Brahmans among them, but they come in beautiful clothes, they come in fine shoes, they have perfume in their hair and money in their pouches. This is, oh Samana, how the young men are like who come to me." Quoth Siddhartha: "Already I am starting to learn from you. Even yesterday, I was already learning. I have already taken off my beard, have combed the hair, have oil in my hair. There is little which is still missing in me, oh excellent one: fine clothes, fine shoes, money in my pouch. You shall know, Siddhartha has set harder goals for himself than such trifles, and he has reached them. How shouldn't I reach that goal, which I have set for myself yesterday: to be your friend and to learn the joys of love from you! You'll see that I'll learn quickly, Kamala, I have already learned harder things than what you're supposed to teach me. And now let's get to it: You aren't satisfied with Siddhartha as he is, with oil in his hair, but without clothes, without shoes, without money?" Laughing, Kamala exclaimed: "No, my dear, he doesn't satisfy me yet. Clothes are what he must have, pretty clothes, and shoes, pretty shoes, and lots of money in his pouch, and gifts for Kamala. Do you know it now, Samana from the forest? Did you mark my words?" "Yes, I have marked your words," Siddhartha exclaimed. "How should I not mark words which are coming from such a mouth! Your mouth is like a freshly cracked fig, Kamala. My mouth is red and fresh as well, it will be a suitable match for yours, you'll see.--But tell me, beautiful Kamala, aren't you at all afraid of the Samana from the forest, who has come to learn how to make love?" "Whatever for should I be afraid of a Samana, a stupid Samana from the forest, who is coming from the jackals and doesn't even know yet what women are?" "Oh, he's strong, the Samana, and he isn't afraid of anything. He could force you, beautiful girl. He could kidnap you. He could hurt you." "No, Samana, I am not afraid of this. Did any Samana or Brahman ever fear, someone might come and grab him and steal his learning, and his religious devotion, and his depth of thought? No, for they are his very own, and he would only give away from those whatever he is willing to give and to whomever he is willing to give. Like this it is, precisely like this it is also with Kamala and with the pleasures of love. Beautiful and red is Kamala's mouth, but just try to kiss it against Kamala's will, and you will not obtain a single drop of sweetness from it, which knows how to give so many sweet things! You are learning easily, Siddhartha, thus you should also learn this: love can be obtained by begging, buying, receiving it as a gift, finding it in the street, but it cannot be stolen. In this, you have come up with the wrong path. No, it would be a pity, if a pretty young man like you would want to tackle it in such a wrong manner." Siddhartha bowed with a smile. "It would be a pity, Kamala, you are so right! It would be such a great pity. No, I shall not lose a single drop of sweetness from your mouth, nor you from mine! So it is settled: Siddhartha will return, once he'll have have what he still lacks: clothes, shoes, money. But speak, lovely Kamala, couldn't you still give me one small advice?" "An advice? Why not? Who wouldn't like to give an advice to a poor, ignorant Samana, who is coming from the jackals of the forest?" "Dear Kamala, thus advise me where I should go to, that I'll find these three things most quickly?" "Friend, many would like to know this. You must do what you've learned and ask for money, clothes, and shoes in return. There is no other way for a poor man to obtain money. What might you be able to do?" "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." "Nothing else?" "Nothing. But yes, I can also write poetry. Would you like to give me a kiss for a poem?" "I would like to, if I'll like your poem. What would be its title?" Siddhartha spoke, after he had thought about it for a moment, these verses: Into her shady grove stepped the pretty Kamala, At the grove's entrance stood the brown Samana. Deeply, seeing the lotus's blossom, Bowed that man, and smiling Kamala thanked. More lovely, thought the young man, than offerings for gods, More lovely is offering to pretty Kamala. Kamala loudly clapped her hands, so that the golden bracelets clanged. "Beautiful are your verses, oh brown Samana, and truly, I'm losing nothing when I'm giving you a kiss for them." She beckoned him with her eyes, he tilted his head so that his face touched hers and placed his mouth on that mouth which was like a freshly cracked fig. For a long time, Kamala kissed him, and with a deep astonishment Siddhartha felt how she taught him, how wise she was, how she controlled him, rejected him, lured him, and how after this first one there was to be a long, a well ordered, well tested sequence of kisses, everyone different from the others, he was still to receive. Breathing deeply, he remained standing where he was, and was in this moment astonished like a child about the cornucopia of knowledge and things worth learning, which revealed itself before his eyes. "Very beautiful are your verses," exclaimed Kamala, "if I was rich, I would give you pieces of gold for them. But it will be difficult for you to earn thus much money with verses as you need. For you need a lot of money, if you want to be Kamala's friend." "The way you're able to kiss, Kamala!" stammered Siddhartha. "Yes, this I am able to do, therefore I do not lack clothes, shoes, bracelets, and all beautiful things. But what will become of you? Aren't you able to do anything else but thinking, fasting, making poetry?" "I also know the sacrificial songs," said Siddhartha, "but I do not want to sing them any more. I also know magic spells, but I do not want to speak them any more. I have read the scriptures--" "Stop," Kamala interrupted him. "You're able to read? And write?" "Certainly, I can do this. Many people can do this." "Most people can't. I also can't do it. It is very good that you're able to read and write, very good. You will also still find use for the magic spells." In this moment, a maid came running in and whispered a message into her mistress's ear. "There's a visitor for me," exclaimed Kamala. "Hurry and get yourself away, Siddhartha, nobody may see you in here, remember this! Tomorrow, I'll see you again." But to the maid she gave the order to give the pious Brahman white upper garments. Without fully understanding what was happening to him, Siddhartha found himself being dragged away by the maid, brought into a garden-house avoiding the direct path, being given upper garments as a gift, led into the bushes, and urgently admonished to get himself out of the grove as soon as possible without being seen. Contently, he did as he had been told. Being accustomed to the forest, he managed to get out of the grove and over the hedge without making a sound. Contently, he returned to the city, carrying the rolled up garments under his arm. At the inn, where travellers stay, he positioned himself by the door, without words he asked for food, without a word he accepted a piece of rice-cake. Perhaps as soon as tomorrow, he thought, I will ask no one for food any more. Suddenly, pride flared up in him. He was no Samana any more, it was no longer becoming to him to beg. He gave the rice-cake to a dog and remained without food. "Simple is the life which people lead in this world here," thought Siddhartha. "It presents no difficulties. Everything was difficult, toilsome, and ultimately hopeless, when I was still a Samana. Now, everything is easy, easy like that lessons in kissing, which Kamala is giving me. I need clothes and money, nothing else; this a small, near goals, they won't make a person lose any sleep." He had already discovered Kamala's house in the city long before, there he turned up the following day. "Things are working out well," she called out to him. "They are expecting you at Kamaswami's, he is the richest merchant of the city. If he'll like you, he'll accept you into his service. Be smart, brown Samana. I had others tell him about you. Be polite towards him, he is very powerful. But don't be too modest! I do not want you to become his servant, you shall become his equal, or else I won't be satisfied with you. Kamaswami is starting to get old and lazy. If he'll like you, he'll entrust you with a lot." Siddhartha thanked her and laughed, and when she found out that he had not eaten anything yesterday and today, she sent for bread and fruits and treated him to it. "You've been lucky," she said when they parted, "I'm opening one door after another for you. How come? Do you have a spell?" Siddhartha said: "Yesterday, I told you I knew how to think, to wait, and to fast, but you thought this was of no use. But it is useful for many things, Kamala, you'll see. You'll see that the stupid Samanas are learning and able to do many pretty things in the forest, which the likes of you aren't capable of. The day before yesterday, I was still a shaggy beggar, as soon as yesterday I have kissed Kamala, and soon I'll be a merchant and have money and all those things you insist upon." "Well yes," she admitted. "But where would you be without me? What would you be, if Kamala wasn't helping you?" "Dear Kamala," said Siddhartha and straightened up to his full height, "when I came to you into your grove, I did the first step. It was my resolution to learn love from this most beautiful woman. From that moment on when I had made this resolution, I also knew that I would carry it out. I knew that you would help me, at your first glance at the entrance of the grove I already knew it." "But what if I hadn't been willing?" "You were willing. Look, Kamala: When you throw a rock into the water, it will speed on the fastest course to the bottom of the water. This is how it is when Siddhartha has a goal, a resolution. Siddhartha does nothing, he waits, he thinks, he fasts, but he passes through the things of the world like a rock through water, without doing anything, without stirring; he is drawn, he lets himself fall. His goal attracts him, because he doesn't let anything enter his soul which might oppose the goal. This is what Siddhartha has learned among the Samanas. This is what fools call magic and of which they think it would be effected by means of the daemons. Nothing is effected by daemons, there are no daemons. Everyone can perform magic, everyone can reach his goals, if he is able to think, if he is able to wait, if he is able to fast." Kamala listened to him. She loved his voice, she loved the look from his eyes. "Perhaps it is so," she said quietly, "as you say, friend. But perhaps it is also like this: that Siddhartha is a handsome man, that his glance pleases the women, that therefore good fortune is coming towards him." With one kiss, Siddhartha bid his farewell. "I wish that it should be this way, my teacher; that my glance shall please you, that always good fortune shall come to me out of your direction!" WITH THE CHILDLIKE PEOPLE Siddhartha went to Kamaswami the merchant, he was directed into a rich house, servants led him between precious carpets into a chamber, where he awaited the master of the house. Kamaswami entered, a swiftly, smoothly moving man with very gray hair, with very intelligent, cautious eyes, with a greedy mouth. Politely, the host and the guest greeted one another. "I have been told," the merchant began, "that you were a Brahman, a learned man, but that you seek to be in the service of a merchant. Might you have become destitute, Brahman, so that you seek to serve?" "No," said Siddhartha, "I have not become destitute and have never been destitute. You should know that I'm coming from the Samanas, with whom I have lived for a long time." "If you're coming from the Samanas, how could you be anything but destitute? Aren't the Samanas entirely without possessions?" "I am without possessions," said Siddhartha, "if this is what you mean. Surely, I am without possessions. But I am so voluntarily, and therefore I am not destitute." "But what are you planning to live of, being without possessions?" "I haven't thought of this yet, sir. For more than three years, I have been without possessions, and have never thought about of what I should live." "So you've lived of the possessions of others." "Presumable this is how it is. After all, a merchant also lives of what other people own." "Well said. But he wouldn't take anything from another person for nothing; he would give his merchandise in return." "So it seems to be indeed. Everyone takes, everyone gives, such is life." "But if you don't mind me asking: being without possessions, what would you like to give?" "Everyone gives what he has. The warrior gives strength, the merchant gives merchandise, the teacher teachings, the farmer rice, the fisher fish." "Yes indeed. And what is it now what you've got to give? What is it that you've learned, what you're able to do?" "I can think. I can wait. I can fast." "That's everything?" "I believe, that's everything!" "And what's the use of that? For example, the fasting-- what is it good for?" "It is very good, sir. When a person has nothing to eat, fasting is the smartest thing he could do. When, for example, Siddhartha hadn't learned to fast, he would have to accept any kind of service before this day is up, whether it may be with you or wherever, because hunger would force him to do so. But like this, Siddhartha can wait calmly, he knows no impatience, he knows no emergency, for a long time he can allow hunger to besiege him and can laugh about it. This, sir, is what fasting is good for." "You're right, Samana. Wait for a moment." Kamaswami left the room and returned with a scroll, which he handed to his guest while asking: "Can you read this?" Siddhartha looked at the scroll, on which a sales-contract had been written down, and began to read out its contents. "Excellent," said Kamaswami. "And would you write something for me on this piece of paper?" He handed him a piece of paper and a pen, and Siddhartha wrote and returned the paper. Kamaswami read: "Writing is good, thinking is better. Being smart is good, being patient is better." "It is excellent how you're able to write," the merchant praised him. "Many a thing we will still have to discuss with one another. For today, I'm asking you to be my guest and to live in this house." Siddhartha thanked and accepted, and lived in the dealers house from now on. Clothes were brought to him, and shoes, and every day, a servant prepared a bath for him. Twice a day, a plentiful meal was served, but Siddhartha only ate once a day, and ate neither meat nor did he drink wine. Kamaswami told him about his trade, showed him the merchandise and storage-rooms, showed him calculations. Siddhartha got to know many new things, he heard a lot and spoke little. And thinking of Kamala's words, he was never subservient to the merchant, forced him to treat him as an equal, yes even more than an equal. Kamaswami conducted his business with care and often with passion, but Siddhartha looked upon all of this as if it was a game, the rules of which he tried hard to learn precisely, but the contents of which did not touch his heart. He was not in Kamaswami's house for long, when he already took part in his landlords business. But daily, at the hour appointed by her, he visited beautiful Kamala, wearing pretty clothes, fine shoes, and soon he brought her gifts as well. Much he learned from her red, smart mouth. Much he learned from her tender, supple hand. Him, who was, regarding love, still a boy and had a tendency to plunge blindly and insatiably into lust like into a bottomless pit, him she taught, thoroughly starting with the basics, about that school of thought which teaches that pleasure cannot be be taken without giving pleasure, and that every gesture, every caress, every touch, every look, every spot of the body, however small it was, had its secret, which would bring happiness to those who know about it and unleash it. She taught him, that lovers must not part from one another after celebrating love, without one admiring the other, without being just as defeated as they have been victorious, so that with none of them should start feeling fed up or bored and get that evil feeling of having abused or having been abused. Wonderful hours he spent with the beautiful and smart artist, became her student, her lover, her friend. Here with Kamala was the worth and purpose of his present life, nit with the business of Kamaswami. The merchant passed to duties of writing important letters and contracts on to him and got into the habit of discussing all important affairs with him. He soon saw that Siddhartha knew little about rice and wool, shipping and trade, but that he acted in a fortunate manner, and that Siddhartha surpassed him, the merchant, in calmness and equanimity, and in the art of listening and deeply understanding previously unknown people. "This Brahman," he said to a friend, "is no proper merchant and will never be one, there is never any passion in his soul when he conducts our business. But he has that mysterious quality of those people to whom success comes all by itself, whether this may be a good star of his birth, magic, or something he has learned among Samanas. He always seems to be merely playing with out business-affairs, they never fully become a part of him, they never rule over him, he is never afraid of failure, he is never upset by a loss." The friend advised the merchant: "Give him from the business he conducts for you a third of the profits, but let him also be liable for the same amount of the losses, when there is a loss. Then, he'll become more zealous." Kamaswami followed the advice. But Siddhartha cared little about this. When he made a profit, he accepted it with equanimity; when he made losses, he laughed and said: "Well, look at this, so this one turned out badly!" It seemed indeed, as if he did not care about the business. At one time, he travelled to a village to buy a large harvest of rice there. But when he got there, the rice had already been sold to another merchant. Nevertheless, Siddhartha stayed for several days in that village, treated the farmers for a drink, gave copper-coins to their children, joined in the celebration of a wedding, and returned extremely satisfied from his trip. Kamaswami held against him that he had not turned back right away, that he had wasted time and money. Siddhartha answered: "Stop scolding, dear friend! Nothing was ever achieved by scolding. If a loss has occurred, let me bear that loss. I am very satisfied with this trip. I have gotten to know many kinds of people, a Brahman has become my friend, children have sat on my knees, farmers have shown me their fields, nobody knew that I was a merchant." "That's all very nice," exclaimed Kamaswami indignantly, "but in fact, you are a merchant after all, one ought to think! Or might you have only travelled for your amusement?" "Surely," Siddhartha laughed, "surely I have travelled for my amusement. For what else? I have gotten to know people and places, I have received kindness and trust, I have found friendship. Look, my dear, if I had been Kamaswami, I would have travelled back, being annoyed and in a hurry, as soon as I had seen that my purchase had been rendered impossible, and time and money would indeed have been lost. But like this, I've had a few good days, I've learned, had joy, I've neither harmed myself nor others by annoyance and hastiness. And if I'll ever return there again, perhaps to buy an upcoming harvest, or for whatever purpose it might be, friendly people will receive me in a friendly and happy manner, and I will praise myself for not showing any hurry and displeasure at that time. So, leave it as it is, my friend, and don't harm yourself by scolding! If the day will come, when you will see: this Siddhartha is harming me, then speak a word and Siddhartha will go on his own path. But until then, let's be satisfied with one another." Futile were also the merchant's attempts, to convince Siddhartha that he should eat his bread. Siddhartha ate his own bread, or rather they both ate other people's bread, all people's bread. Siddhartha never listened to Kamaswami's worries and Kamaswami had many worries. Whether there was a business-deal going on which was in danger of failing, or whether a shipment of merchandise seemed to have been lost, or a debtor seemed to be unable to pay, Kamaswami could never convince his partner that it would be useful to utter a few words of worry or anger, to have wrinkles on the forehead, to sleep badly. When, one day, Kamaswami held against him that he had learned everything he knew from him, he replied: "Would you please not kid me with such jokes! What I've learned from you is how much a basket of fish costs and how much interests may be charged on loaned money. These are your areas of expertise. I haven't learned to think from you, my dear Kamaswami, you ought to be the one seeking to learn from me." Indeed his soul was not with the trade. The business was good enough to provide him with the money for Kamala, and it earned him much more than he needed. Besides from this, Siddhartha's interest and curiosity was only concerned with the people, whose businesses, crafts, worries, pleasures, and acts of foolishness used to be as alien and distant to him as the moon. However easily he succeeded in talking to all of them, in living with all of them, in learning from all of them, he was still aware that there was something which separated him from them and this separating factor was him being a Samana. He saw mankind going trough life in a childlike or animallike manner, which he loved and also despised at the same time. He saw them toiling, saw them suffering, and becoming gray for the sake of things which seemed to him to entirely unworthy of this price, for money, for little pleasures, for being slightly honoured, he saw them scolding and insulting each other, he saw them complaining about pain at which a Samana would only smile, and suffering because of deprivations which a Samana would not feel. He was open to everything, these people brought his way. Welcome was the merchant who offered him linen for sale, welcome was the debtor who sought another loan, welcome was the beggar who told him for one hour the story of his poverty and who was not half as poor as any given Samana. He did not treat the rich foreign merchant any different than the servant who shaved him and the street-vendor whom he let cheat him out of some small change when buying bananas. When Kamaswami came to him, to complain about his worries or to reproach him concerning his business, he listened curiously and happily, was puzzled by him, tried to understand him, consented that he was a little bit right, only as much as he considered indispensable, and turned away from him, towards the next person who would ask for him. And there were many who came to him, many to do business with him, many to cheat him, many to draw some secret out of him, many to appeal to his sympathy, many to get his advice. He gave advice, he pitied, he made gifts, he let them cheat him a bit, and this entire game and the passion with which all people played this game occupied his thoughts just as much as the gods and Brahmans used to occupy them. At times he felt, deep in his chest, a dying, quiet voice, which admonished him quietly, lamented quietly; he hardly perceived it. And then, for an hour, he became aware of the strange life he was leading, of him doing lots of things which were only a game, of, though being happy and feeling joy at times, real life still passing him by and not touching him. As a ball-player plays with his balls, he played with his business-deals, with the people around him, watched them, found amusement in them; with his heart, with the source of his being, he was not with them. The source ran somewhere, far away from him, ran and ran invisibly, had nothing to do with his life any more. And at several times he suddenly became scared on account of such thoughts and wished that he would also be gifted with the ability to participate in all of this childlike-naive occupations of the daytime with passion and with his heart, really to live, really to act, really to enjoy and to live instead of just standing by as a spectator. But again and again, he came back to beautiful Kamala, learned the art of love, practised the cult of lust, in which more than in anything else giving and taking becomes one, chatted with her, learned from her, gave her advice, received advice. She understood him better than Govinda used to understand him, she was more similar to him. Once, he said to her: "You are like me, you are different from most people. You are Kamala, nothing else, and inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself, as I can also do. Few people have this, and yet all could have it." "Not all people are smart," said Kamala. "No," said Siddhartha, "that's not the reason why. Kamaswami is just as smart as I, and still has no refuge in himself. Others have it, who are small children with respect to their mind. Most people, Kamala, are like a falling leaf, which is blown and is turning around through the air, and wavers, and tumbles to the ground. But others, a few, are like stars, they go on a fixed course, no wind reaches them, in themselves they have their law and their course. Among all the learned men and Samanas, of which I knew many, there was one of this kind, a perfected one, I'll never be able to forget him. It is that Gotama, the exalted one, who is spreading that teachings. Thousands of followers are listening to his teachings every day, follow his instructions every hour, but they are all falling leaves, not in themselves they have teachings and a law." Kamala looked at him with a smile. "Again, you're talking about him," she said, "again, you're having a Samana's thoughts." Siddhartha said nothing, and they played the game of love, one of the thirty or forty different games Kamala knew. Her body was flexible like that of a jaguar and like the bow of a hunter; he who had learned from her how to make love, was knowledgeable of many forms of lust, many secrets. For a long time, she played with Siddhartha, enticed him, rejected him, for	228,566
Siddhartha (Hermann Hesse) (Z-Library).v.pdf	Mục lục Mục lục Chương 1: Tất Đạt Chương 2: Đoàn Sa Môn Chương 3: Cồ Đàm Chương 4: Thức Tỉnh Chương 5: Kiều Lan Chương 6: Giữa Xã Hội Chương 7: Khổ Đau Chương 8: Bên Bờ Sông Chương 9: Người Lái Đò Chương 10: Đứa Con Chương 11: Om Chương 12: Thiện Hữu CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 1: Tất Đạt Chương 1: Tất Đạt Cạnh những con thuyền, dưới ánh nắng ven sông, trong bóng cây cổ thụ và trong khu rừng vàng nhạt, Tất Đạt, người con trai Bà La Môn đĩnh ngộ ấy đang lớn lên cùng bạn chàng là Thiện Hữu. Nắng nhuộm màu “bồ quân” đôi vai thon đẹp khi chàng tắm lễ “thánh tẩy”. Mắt chàng thoáng những nét trầm tư mỗi lúc chàng dạo chơi trong khu rừng xoài, khi nghe mẹ hát, trong những buổi học với cha, hay khi chuyện trò cùng những người thức giả. Tất Đạt từ lâu đã sớm dự phần trong các cuộc đàm luận của những bậc tri thức, thường tranh biện với Thiện Hữu và cùng bạn thực tập suy tư quán tưởng. Chàng có thể đọc tiếng “Om”* trong im lặng – nói tiếng ấy trong tâm khi thở vào và thở ra, với tất cả tâm hồn, vầng trán chàng chói ngời tia sáng trí tuệ. Cha chàng rất sung sướng vì con thông minh và khát khao hiểu biết. Ông tin tưởng chàng sẽ lớn lên thành một học giả, một mục sư, một hoàng tử trong giới Bà La Môn. Mẹ chàng đầy kiêu hãnh khi nhìn con đi, đứng, khoẻ mạnh, xinh đẹp, dẻo dai. Tất Đạt chào mẹ với một dáng điệu nho nhã. Và mỗi khi Tất Đạt dạo bước qua phố phường, với vầng trán cao, đôi mắt vương giả, dáng điệu thanh tao, thì những cô gái Bà La Môn bỗng nghe lòng rộn lên một niềm yêu thương rào rạt. Thiện Hữu bạn chàng, con một người Bà La Môn, yêu chàng hơn ai hết. Chàng yêu đôi mắt và giọng nói trong trẻo của Tất Đạt. Chàng yêu dáng đi của Tất Đạt, cử động của chàng. Chàng yêu tất cả những điều Tất Đạt làm và nói, và trên tất cả, chàng yêu kiến thức của Tất Đạt, những tư tưởng đẹp đẽ và đầy nhiệt tình, ý chí mạnh mẽ và thiên tính cao vời của chàng. Thiện Hữu biết rằng chàng trai kia sẽ không trở thành một người Bà La Môn tầm thường, một người hành lễ tế thần biếng nhác, một kẻ ham nói phù chú, một người hùng biện khoác lác, một mục sư xảo quyệt, hay chỉ một con chiên ngoan ngớ ngẩn giữa đàn chiên đông. Không, và chính chàng, Thiện Hữu cũng không muốn trở thành một Bà La Môn như trăm ngàn Bà La Môn khác. Chàng muốn theo Tất Đạt, con người khả ái tuyệt vời kia. Vì nếu Tất Đạt có ngày trở thành một vị chúa tể, nếu có một ngày chàng bước vào cõi quang minh, thì lúc ấy Thiện Hữu muốn theo chàng như bạn chàng, như người tôi tớ của chàng, như cái bóng của chàng. Mọi người đều yêu quí Tất Đạt như thế. Chàng làm cho họ vui vẻ hạnh phúc. Nhưng chính chàng, Tất Đạt, lại không hạnh phúc. Lúc lang thang dọc những con đường hồng trong vườn, khi ngồi trầm tư trong bóng xanh nhạt của cụm rừng, khi rửa đôi chân trong buổi thánh tẩy với tư thái đầy trang nghiêm, đâu đâu chàng cũng được mọi người quí trọng và là nguồn vui cho tất cả. Tuy thế thâm tâm chàng lại không được yên vui. Mộng ảo và những suy tư khắc khoải dồn vào tâm tưởng chàng từ khúc sông cuồn cuộn, từ những vì sao lấp lánh, từ ánh mặt trời chan hoà. Mộng tưởng và vọng động xâm chiếm chàng, dâng lên từ làn khói của những cuộc tế thần, phát ra từ những thánh thi tuôn tràn từ những giáo lý của các vị Bà La Môn. Tất Đạt bắt đầu thấy những hạt giống khổ đau trong chàng. Chàng bắt đầu cảm thấy tình thương của song thân cũng như tình thương của Thiện Hữu không thể cho chàng hạnh phúc bình an, không thể thoả mãn chàng. Chàng bắt đầu ngờ rằng phụ thân đáng kính của chàng và các sư phụ khác, những vị Bà La Môn thông thái đã truyền hết cho chàng những tri kiến của họ rồi, tất cả kiến thức của họ đã trút vào túi khôn của chàng rồi. Nhưng túi khôn không đầy, trí năng chàng không thoả mãn, linh hồn chàng không bình yên và con tim không an nghỉ. Nước tịnh thuỷ tắm hàng ngày thật tốt, nhưng đây cũng chỉ là nước, không thể rửa sạch tội lỗi, không làm vơi bớt khổ đau của tâm hồn. Những cuộc tế thần và khấn nguyện cùng Thượng đế thật là tuyệt diệu, nhưng đấy phải chăng là tất cả... Và thần linh ấy là gì... Có phải thật là đấng sáng tạo ra thế giới... Không phải rằng linh hồn duy nhất đã tạo ra vũ trụ hay sao... Và thần linh phải chăng là những hình thái được tạo dựng như tôi và người, những sinh vật phù du... Và như thế phải chăng rất nên dâng lễ cho các thần linh... Và ta phải dâng cúng lễ vật cho ai nữa, phải kính nể ai nữa nếu không phải thần linh. Linh hồn duy nhất... Và linh hồn ở đâu, trái tim bất diệt ở đâu, nếu không phải Tự ngã, trong phần thâm sâu, bất diệt mà mỗi người đều mang sẵn... Nhưng đâu là Tự ngã ấy, phần thâm sâu ấy... Đấy không phải là thịt xương, cũng không phải tư tưởng hay ý thức. Những người trí thức đều dạy chàng như thế. Vậy thì nó ở đâu... Đi tìm Tự ngã, Linh hồn ấy, có nơi nào khác đáng đặt chân không... Không ai chỉ đường, vì không ai biết, từ cha chàng, thầy chàng, những bậc thức giả cho đến những bài thánh thi. Những người Bà La Môn và những thánh kinh của họ biết hết về mọi sự, họ đã đi sâu vào mọi vấn đề - sự tạo thiên lập địa, nguồn gốc của ngôn ngữ, thức ăn, hơi thở vào, thở ra, sự sắp đặt của những giác quan, hành động của những thần linh. Họ thông thạo vô số vấn đề - nhưng có bỏ công không, nếu họ không thấu hiểu vấn đề quan trọng độc nhất... Nhiều câu thơ của thánh kinh nhất là Áo Nghĩa Thư – có nói về cái thâm sâu ấy. Kinh chép rằng: “Linh hồn mi là cả vũ trụ”. Khi một người ngủ, người ấy đi vào trong phần thâm sâu của mình va an trú trong linh hồn. Những câu thơ này chứa đựng một trí tuệ tuyệt diệu, mọi hiểu biết của thánh hiền đã diễn tả đầy trong ngôn ngữ diễm lệ, trong trẻo như mật hoa mà những con ong hút được. Không, vốn liếng tri thức to tát ấy, đã được bao thế hệ kế tiếp của những người hiền triết Bà La Môn kết tập duy trì, không thể nào dễ khinh thường. Nhưng đâu là những người Bà La Môn, mục sư, hiền triết đã thành công – không những trong sự nắm vững được tri thức sâu xa nhất này mà còn trong sự chứng nghiệm tri thức ấy... Đâu là người đã được điểm đạo để có thể, khi đạt đến linh hồn trong giấc ngủ, giữ linh hồn ấy lại trong trí thức, trong đời sống, khắp nơi, trong ngôn ngữ và hành động hàng ngày... Tất Đạt quen biết rất nhiều vị Bà La Môn đáng kính, nhất là cha chàng, một người thánh thiện, thông thái và được quí trọng. Cha chàng thật đáng kính phục với phong độ trầm tĩnh uy nghi. Ông sống một đời sống tốt đẹp, lời nói thì khôn ngoan, tư tưởng thì thanh cao, tế nhị - nhưng cả đến ông ta, người biết nhiều như thế, ông ta sống có hạnh phúc chăng... Có được bình an chăng... Ông ta lại không là người không ngớt tìm kiếm đó sao... Ông lại không liên tục tìm đến nguồn với cơn khát không bao giờ được thoả mãn, đến những cuộc tế thần, hay tìm đến sách vở và những cuộc luận đàm của dòng Bà La Môn đấy hay sao... Tại sao cha, người không có lỗi lầm ấy, phải rửa sạch tội lỗi và ráng sức tẩy mình mỗi ngày... Thế thì linh hồn không có ở trong cha hay sao... Nguồn suối không có sẵn trong chính tâm ông sao... Người ta phải tìm thấy nguồn ở ngay trong tự thân mình, phải chiếm hữu nó. Mọi việc làm khác đều là mò mẫm sai lầm. Đấy là những suy tư của Tất Đạt, nỗi khát khao của chàng, nỗi sầu muộn của chàng. Chàng nhẩm lại với mình những lời trong quyển thánh kinh: “Thật ra tên của Đại ngã là chân lý. Thật vậy, ai biết điều này sẽ đi vào thế giới thần tiên mỗi ngày”. Thế giới thần tiên ấy có vẻ như gần, nhưng chưa bao giờ chàng hoàn toàn đạt đến nó thật sự, chưa bao giờ chàng thoả mãn được nỗi khát khao to lớn nhất. Và trong số những bậc hiền triết mà chàng quen biết và nghiền ngẫm lời dạy, cũng không có một ai hoàn toàn đạt đến cõi ấy - thế giới thần tiên. Không một ai giải thích được niềm khát khao tối hậu. - Thiện Hữu, Tất Đạt nói với bạn, bạn hãy đi cùng tôi lại cây bàng kia. Chúng ta hãy tập thiền quán. Họ đến cây bàng và ngồi cách nhau hai chục bước. Khi chàng ngồi, sẵn sàng đọc chữ “Om”, Tất Đạt lẩm nhẩm đọc câu thơ: “Om là chiếc cung, mà tên là linh hồn. Thượng đế, là đích mũi tên. Ở đó người nhắm đến không lay chuyển”. Khi giờ tập toạ thiền ấy đã qua, Thiện Hữu đứng dậy. Trời đã về chiều. Ấy là giờ thánh tẩy buổi chiều. Thiện Hữu gọi tên bạn, nhưng Tất Đạt không trả lời. Chàng ngồi đăm chiêu, đôi mắt chú mục như hướng về một cõi xa xăm, đầu lưỡi hơi lộ ra giữa hai hàm răng bầu biếc. Chàng không có vẻ như đang hô hấp; chàng ngồi như thể mất hút trong quán tưởng, nghĩ “Om”, linh hồn như mũi tên hướng về Đại ngã, Thượng đế. Một ngày kia, vài vị Sa Môn đi qua thành phố của Tất Đạt. Là những người khổ hạnh lang thang, họ gồm ba người đã gầy mòn, không già không trẻ, đôi vai đầy bụi và rướm máu, gần như trần trụi, thân thể rám nắng, họ có vẻ cô đơn lạ lùng và tương phản với thế giới loài người. Xung quanh họ bao phủ một làn không khí của lòng say mê tận tuỵ và xã kỷ không chút tiếc thương. Chiều ấy sau giờ quán tưởng, Tất Đạt nói với bạn: “Ngày mai tôi sẽ đi theo những vị Sa Môn. Tất Đạt sẽ trở thành Sa Môn như họ”. Thiện Hữu choáng váng khi nghe những lời nói ấy và đọc niềm cương quyết trên nét mặt cương nghị của bạn, một niềm cương quyết không chuyển hướng tợ mũi tên phóng khỏi tầm cung. Khi nhìn nét mặt bạn, Thiện Hữu nhận rõ ngay giờ đã đến; Tất Đạt sắp bước lên đường chọn lựa; định mệnh chàng bắt đầu ló dạng và cùng với định mệnh Tất Đạt, định mệnh Thiện Hữu cũng theo cùng. Và mặt Thiện Hữu bỗng tái xanh như tàu lá, chàng kêu lên: - Ồ! Tất Đạt! Liệu phụ thân anh có cho phép chăng... Tất Đạt nhìn bạn như một người tỉnh giấc. Nhanh như chớp chàng đọc thấu tâm can bạn, nỗi lo âu, lòng tùng phục. - Đừng phí lời, Thiện Hữu – Chàng khẽ nói. Ngày mai, lúc rạng đông tôi sẽ bắt đầu đời sống Sa Môn. Chúng ta đừng thảo luận chuyện ấy nữa. Tất Đạt bước vào phòng khi cha đang ngồi trên một tấm đệm. Chàng tiến đến sau lưng cha và đứng lặng cho đến khi cha biết có chàng. - Con đấy ư, Tất Đạt... Ông hỏi. Cứ nói lên cho cha nghe những gì con đang nghĩ. - Thưa cha, nếu cha cho phép, con đến thưa cha rằng con muốn rời nhà ngày mai, để đi theo những người khổ hạnh. Con muốn trở thành một vị Sa Môn. Con tin rằng cha sẽ không ngăn cản. Người hiền triết Bà La Môn lặng im rất lâu, lâu quá đến nỗi khi những vì sao đã lạc qua song cửa nhỏ và chuyển hướng, sự im lặng trong gian phòng mới được đánh tan. Người con đứng lặng, hai vòng tay khép chặt. Người cha cũng bất động ngồi trên chiếc thảm. Những ngôi sao băng qua nền trời. Rồi ông bảo: - Không lẽ cha, một người tu đạo lại thốt lời giận dữ hùng hổ, nhưng cha rất bất bình. Cha không muốn con lặp lại lời xin ấy một lần nữa. Bậc hiền nhân từ từ đứng lên. Tất Đạt vẫn khoanh tay đứng lặng. - Tại sao còn đợi đấy... Cha chàng hỏi. - Cha cũng hiểu tại sao rồi. Chàng đáp. Người cha rời phòng, bất mãn và đi nằm. Khi đã một giờ trôi qua không ngủ được, vị hiền nhân đứng dậy, đi bách bộ ra khỏi nhà. Ông nhìn qua cửa sổ nhỏ và thấy Tất Đạt vẫn đứng khoanh tay bất động. Ông có thể thấy chiếc áo nhạt của chàng thấp thoáng. Tâm hồn bất an, người cha trở về giường nằm. Một giờ nữa lại trôi qua, ông không ngủ được, lại trở dậy đi bách bộ, ra khỏi nhà và thấy trăng đã lên. Ông nhìn qua cửa sổ. Tất Đạt còn đứng đấy bất động, vòng tay vẫn khép; mảnh trăng chiếu sáng trên chân chàng. Người cha đi ngủ, lòng xao xuyến. Một giờ sau ông trở ra và hai giờ sau ra lại, nhìn qua cửa sổ thấy Tất Đạt vẫn còn đứng đó trong ánh trăng, trong ánh sao, trong đêm tối. Ông yên lặng trở lại hàng giờ, và vẫn thấy Tất Đạt đứng đấy bất động. Lòng ông tràn ngập giận, lo, sợ và buồn. Vào giờ cuối đêm, trước bình minh, người cha trở lại, đi vào phòng và thấy đứa con niên thiếu vẫn còn đứng. Ông trông thấy dáng chàng cao xa lạ với mình. Ông gọi: - Này Tất Đạt, sao con còn đợi kia... - Cha đã biết tại sao. - Con có đợi được đến mai, trưa, chiều hay không... - Con sẽ đứng và đợi. - Con sẽ mệt mỏi, Tất Đạt... - Con không mệt mỏi. - Con sẽ buồn ngủ, Tất Đạt... - Con sẽ không buồn ngủ. - Con sẽ chết, Tất Đạt... - Con sẽ chết. - Và con thà chết còn hơn là nghe lời cha con... - Con luôn luôn nghe lời cha. - Vậy thì con hãy bỏ ý định của con đi... - Con sẽ làm những gì cha dạy bảo. Ánh sáng đầu tiên của ngày lan vào phòng. Người Bà La Môn trông thấy hai đầu gối của Tất Đạt run nhẹ, nhưng gương mặt chàng bình thản, đôi mắt nhìn vô tận. Người cha nhận ra rằng Tất Đạt không thể ở lại với mình lâu hơn - rằng Tất Đạt sắp rời bỏ mình. Ông đặt tay lên vai Tất Đạt và bảo: - Con sẽ đi vào rừng làm thầy Sa Môn. Nếu con tìm thấy hạnh phúc trong rừng sâu, hãy trở về và chỉ lại cho ta. Nếu con thấy đấy chỉ là ảo tưởng, hãy trở về, và chúng ta sẽ lại cúng tế các thần linh. Bây giờ hãy hôn mẹ con và thưa lại cho mẹ hay nơi con đến. Còn ta đã đến giờ ra sông làm lễ thánh tẩy. Ông buông vai Tất Đạt và ra đi. Tất Đạt lảo đảo bước. Chàng cố gượng cúi chào cha và tìm mẹ theo lời cha dặn. Khi Tất Đạt rời châu thành yên tĩnh đang say ngủ vào lúc rạng đông với đôi chân tê cóng, một bóng người âm thầm xuất hiện từ căn lều cuối cùng và theo dõi chàng. Đó là Thiện Hữu. Tất Đạt mỉm cười. - Bạn đến đấy à! - Tôi vừa đến. Thiện Hữu trả lời. CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 2: Đoàn Sa Môn Chương 2: Đoàn Sa Môn Chiều hôm đó gặp các vị Sa Môn và xin gia nhập đoàn thể. Các vị Sa Môn chấp nhận. Tất Đạt cho một người Bà La Môn nghèo khổ gặp trên đường quần áo của mình và chỉ giữ lại chiếc áo cừu và chiếc áo khoác rách vai màu đất. Chàng chỉ ăn mỗi ngày một bữa và không bao giờ nấu đồ ăn. Chàng nhịn mười bốn ngày - Rồi hai mươi tám ngày. Trên bắp chân và trên má, thịt biến đi đâu mất. Những giấc mơ lạ phản chiếu trên đôi mắt lớn của chàng. Móng tay chàng mọc dài trên đầu những ngón gầy, và một chòm râu khô cứng xuất hiện dưới cằm. Cái nhìn của chàng trở nên lạnh giá khi tiếp xúc với đàn bà, đôi môi mím lại một vẻ khinh thường khi chàng đi qua phố thị có đông người ăn mặc xa hoa. Chàng nhìn những thương gia buôn bán, các ông hoàng đi săn, những người tang chế khóc người chết, những người kỹ nữ bán thân, các bác sĩ săn sóc bệnh, những tình nhân đang tình tự, những người mẹ đang vỗ về con. Và tất cả không đáng một cái nhìn thoáng qua, tất cả đều lừa dối: hạnh phúc và sắc đẹp đều là ảo ảnh của giác quan - tất cả đều đưa về huỷ diệt. Thế gian đượm vị đắng cay. Cuộc đời là nỗi đau khổ. Tất Đạt chỉ có một mục đích duy nhất là trở thành trầm tĩnh. Không khao khát, không ham muốn, không mộng mị, không vui và không buồn. Để cho cái ngã tiêu diệt – không còn ngã nữa, chứng nghiệm được sự bình an của một tâm hồn tịch mịch, chứng nghiệm tâm linh thuần tuý. Đó là mục đích của chàng. Khi cái ngã bị nhiếp phục và huỷ diệt, khi mọi đam mê và dục vọng bị lắng xuống, thì thực thể thâm cùng phải biểu lộ - không còn ngã nữa, nhưng là một cái gì huyền nhiệm cao vời. Tất Đạt đứng lặng im trong ánh nắng dữ dội, vừa đau rát vừa khát cháy, và đứng cho đến khi không còn cảm thấy đau, khát nữa. Chàng đứng lặng im trong mưa, nước từ mái tuôn xuống đôi vai cóng lạnh, xuống bắp vế và hai ống chân. Và người khổ hạnh đứng cho đến khi đôi vai và hai chân hết giá buốt, cho đến khi chúng hết cảm giác, bất động. Chàng lặng lẽ ngồi trên gai nhọn. Máu nhỏ giọt từ làn da quằn quại của chàng, ung nhọt thành hình, và Tất Đạt vẫn bất động, kiên cố, cho đến khi máu ngừng chảy, cho đến khi hết nghe châm chích, hết nghe đau đớn. Tất Đạt ngồi thẳng và tập tiết kiệm hơi thở, cố thở ít lại, nhịn thở. Chàng tập lắng nhịp của tim khi thở vào, tập làm tim đập ít lại – cho đến khi rất ít, rồi không còn nữa. Nhờ vị Sa Môn trọng tuổi nhất dạy bảo, Tất Đạt tập sự quên mình và trầm tư theo những quy luật của Sa Môn. Một con hạc bay qua rừng trúc và Tất Đạt thu nhiếp nó vào tâm, bay qua rừng núi, trở thành con hạc, ăn cá, đói cái đói của hạc, dùng ngôn ngữ hạc và chết cái chết của một con hạc. Một con chồn chết nằm trên bờ cát và hồn của Tất Đạt nhập vào xác nó; chàng trở thành một con chồn chết, nằm trên bãi, bị sình trương, hôi thối, bị báo ăn hết bốn chân, diều hâu rỉa thịt, trở thành một bộ xương, trở thành cát bụi hoà với không khí. Và hồn Tất Đạt trở lại chết, huỷ hoại, thành cát bụi, thực nghiệm vòng khổ đau của một chu kỳ sống. Chàng đợi chờ với một niềm khát khao mới như một người đi săn đứng trên vực thẳm, nơi mà chu trình sống kết liễu, ở đó không cần nguyên nhân và ở đó sự thường tại không đau khổ bắt đầu. Chàng tiêu diệt mọi cảm giác, tiêu diệt ký ức, đi ra khỏi cái ngã của mình dưới trăm nghìn hình hài khác nhau. Chàng quán mình là đá, gỗ, nước. Và sau mỗi lần chàng lại tỉnh dậy, mặt trời hay mặt trăng vẫn chiếu, chàng lại là chính chàng, đi vào chu kỳ sống, khát khao, chiến thắng khát khao, rồi lại có những khát khao mới. Tất Đạt học hỏi rất nhiều từ các vị Sa Môn, chàng học được nhiều cách thức để diệt ngã. Chàng phiêu du qua các đoạn đường diệt ngã bằng khổ đau, qua đói khát và mệt nhọc. Chàng phiêu lưu qua những con đường diệt ngã bằng trầm tư, bằng gạn lọc khỏi tư tưởng hết mọi hình ảnh. Chàng đã học trải qua những con đường này và những con đường khác. Chàng diệt ngã được một nghìn lần và có những ngày chàng đã sống trong phi ngã. Nhưng mặc dầu những con đường đưa chàng ra khỏi ngã, cuối cùng chúng luôn luôn đưa chàng trở lại ngã. Mặc dầu Tất Đạt rời bỏ ngã một ngàn lần, sống bằng phi ngã trong con vật hay đá, đất, sự trở lại vẫn không thể tránh. Không thể tránh lúc chàng trở lại chính chàng, trong ánh mặt trời hay trong ánh trăng, trong nắng hay dưới mưa, và trở lại Ngã hay Tất Đạt, trở về niềm khắc khoải, về kiếp luân hồi nặng nề. Cạnh chàng Thiện Hữu sống như cái bóng của chàng; Thiện Hữu cùng phiêu lưu qua con đường của chàng, và cùng làm những cố gắng của chàng. Họ ít trò chuyện riêng với nhau trừ những điều cần thiết về công việc hay thực tập. Một đôi khi họ cùng đi qua các làng khất thực. Một lần Tất Đạt hỏi Thiện Hữu: - Này Thiện Hữu, anh nghĩ sao... Anh có nghĩ rằng chúng ta đã tiến thêm bước nào chưa... Đã đạt được mục đích của chúng ta chưa... - Chúng ta đã và đang học tập. Rồi anh sẽ trở thành một Sa Môn cao cả, Tất Đạt. Anh đã học thật là nhanh các bài tập, vị Sa Môn trưởng thường khen anh. Một ngày kia anh sẽ là một bậc thánh, Tất Đạt. - Không có việc ấy đâu bạn ơi, những điều tôi đã học với các vị Sa Môn cho đến nay, đáng lẽ tôi cũng có thể học mau hơn và dễ dàng hơn trong bất cứ tửu quán nào, trong xóm điếm, với những phu khuân vác và những người cờ bạc. - Nói đùa chứ. Làm sao anh có thể tập thiền quán, nín thở và thản nhiên trước đói khát, đớn đau với những người vô phúc đó... Tất Đạt trả lời nhỏ, như nói với chính mình: - Thiền quán là gì... Bỏ quên tự thân là gì... Nhịn đói là gì... Điều hoà hơi thở là gì... Đó là sự vượt ra ngoài Tự ngã, đó là sự vượt ra ngoài dày vò của Tự ngã trong nhất thời, những viên thuốc tạm bợ chống lại đau khổ và điên đảo cuộc đời: người đánh xe bò cũng dùng lối thoát đó, phương thuốc nhất thời đó khi ông ta uống chén rượu nếp trong quán; ông ta không còn cảm thấy có mình nữa, không còn cảm thấy khổ đau của cuộc đời, và như thế, ông chứng nghiệm sự thoát ly trong chốc lát. Gục trên chén rượu nếp, ông ta biết được cái mà Tất Đạt và Thiện Hữu tìm thấy khi chúng ta thoát khỏi tự thân bằng những tập luyện và sống trong vô ngã. - Anh nói vậy nhưng anh cũng biết là Tất Đạt không phải là người đánh xe bò và một Sa Môn thì không uống rượu – người uống rượu tất nhiên cũng tìm được thoát ly và an nghỉ, nhưng nó sẽ thức tỉnh trước ảo tưởng và tìm thấy mọi vật như cũ. Nó không thể khôn ngoan, nó không tăng thêm trí thức, nó không trèo cao hơn chút nào. Tất Đạt trả lời với nụ cười trên nét mặt: - Tôi không biết – Tôi chưa bao giờ uống rượu. Nhưng tôi chỉ tìm thấy một an ủi ngắn ngủi trong những thực tập về thiền quán của tôi, và tôi thật còn xa vời trí tuệ, giải thoát, như một đứa trẻ còn trong lòng mẹ, và điều này thì Thiện Hữu ơi, tôi biết rõ lắm. Một dịp khác khi Tất Đạt rời khỏi cánh rừng cùng Thiện Hữu đi khất thực, Tất Đạt bắt đầu trò chuyện và hỏi: - Này Thiện Hữu. Chúng ta đã đi đúng đường chưa... Chúng ta có tăng thêm tri thức không... Chúng ta đã gần đạt đến giải thoát... Hay chúng ta chỉ đang đi trong những vòng luân hồi – trong lúc chúng ta đang nghĩ cách thoát khỏi... Thiện Hữu nói: - Chúng ta đã học nhiều Tất Đạt ạ. Chúng ta không ở mãi trong vòng luân hồi đó, chúng ta đang đi ra ngoài. Con đường là một đường xoáy ốc. Chúng ta vừa trèo xong nhiều bậc rồi. - Bạn nghĩ vị thầy khả kính của chúng ta chừng bao nhiêu tuổi. - Tôi nghĩ nhiều nhất là vào khoảng sáu mươi. - Người đã sáu mươi tuổi và chưa đạt đến Niết Bàn. Người sẽ già bảy mươi, tám mươi và anh với tôi sẽ lớn lên và già như người, tập được nhịn đói và thiền quán, nhưng chúng ta sẽ không đạt đến Niết Bàn, người cũng như chúng ta. Thiện Hữu ơi, tôi tin rằng giữa các Sa Môn, có thể không được ai vào Niết Bàn cả. Chúng ta tìm thấy an ủi, chúng ta học những mánh lới tự lừa dối chúng ta, nhưng điều cốt yếu - Chính Đạo – ta không tìm thấy. - Đừng nói gở như thế Tất Đạt ơi! Làm sao có thể tin rằng giữa bao nhiêu người học thức, giữa bao nhiêu người Bà La Môn, bao nhiêu Sa Môn xứng đáng và khắc khổ, giữa bao nhiêu người đi tìm, bao nhiêu người hy sinh cho đời sống nội tâm, bao nhiêu người thánh thiện ấy, lại chẳng có ai sẽ tìm ra Chính Đạo... Tất Đạt vẫn nói bằng một giọng chua chát pha lẫn chút phiền muộn. Có một vẻ gì buồn bã, một vẻ gì dí dỏm trong giọng nói của chàng: - Thiện Hữu, rồi bạn anh sẽ rời con đường của các Sa Môn mà trên đó nó đã du ngoạn với anh rất lâu. Tôi đau niềm khao khát và trên bước đường Sa Môn dài, niềm khao khát của tôi không hề thuyên giảm. Tôi luôn khao khát hiểu biết và luôn luôn tràn đầy những nghi vấn. Năm này qua năm khác tôi đã đi hỏi các vị Bà La Môn, hỏi những pho kinh thánh. Thiện Hữu ạ, có lẽ đi hỏi một chú lợn rừng hay một chị vượn cũng đáng và cũng thiêng liêng bằng. Tôi đã phí rất nhiều năm tháng nhưng vẫn chưa xong, để học được một điều này là: người ta không học được gì cả. Tôi tin rằng trong bản chất mỗi sự vật, có một cái gì mà chúng ta không thể học được. Thiện Hữu ơi, chỉ có một tri thức ở khắp nơi, là Đại ngã, trong tôi, trong anh và trong mọi sinh vật, và tôi bắt đầu tin rằng tri thức ấy không có một kẻ thù nào nghịch hơn là con người tri thức, hơn sự học. Đến đây Thiện Hữu dừng lại trên đường, đưa hai tay lên và nói: - Tất Đạt, đừng làm bạn anh phiền muộn với những câu chuyện như vậy. Thật thế, những lời của anh làm tôi xao động. Hãy suy nghĩ lại, những bài cầu nguyện của chúng ta, sự khả kính của các vị Bà La Môn, sự thiêng liêng của các Sa Môn sẽ có nghĩa gì nếu không có học thức như lời anh nói... Tất Đạt, mọi sự sẽ trở thành gì trên trái đất này, còn cái gì thánh thiện nữa, còn cái gì thiêng liêng và quý giá nữa... Thiện Hữu lẩm nhẩm một câu thơ, một câu kinh từ Áo Nghĩa Thư, “Kẻ mà linh hồn trong sạch thấm nhuần Đại ngã sẽ hiểu thánh ân không thể diễn tả bằng ngôn từ”. Tất Đạt im lặng. Chàng đắm chìm trong lời thơ mà Thiện Hữu vừa thốt ra. Phải – chàng đứng cúi đầu suy nghĩ – cái gì còn lại từ tất cả những gì mà chúng ta cho là thiêng liêng... Cái gì còn lại... Cái gì được bảo tồn... Và chàng lắc đầu. Lúc hai người sống chung với các vị Sa Môn được chừng ba năm và cùng nhau tham dự những buổi thực tập, một hôm, họ bỗng nghe một tiếng đồn từ nhiều nguồn. Có một người đã xuất hiện, tên là Cồ Đàm, đức Như Lai, đức Phật. Người đã nhiếp phục được nỗi khổ của đời và làm ngưng được con đường sinh tử. Người lang thang khắp xứ để giảng đạo, các đồ đệ vây quanh. Không của cải, nhà cửa, vợ con. Người mặc một cái áo khoác màu vàng của nhà khổ hạnh, vừng trán cao và thánh thiện. Những người Bà La Môn và các hoàng tử nghiêng mình trước Người và trở thành học trò của Người. Tin ấy được đồn đãi ra xa và lan khắp. Những người Bà La Môn bàn về tin ấy trong thành thị, những Sa Môn bàn trong núi rừng, dần dần đến tai đôi bạn trẻ, có khi nghe hoan nghênh, có khi nghe phỉ báng. Cũng như khi một miền bị bệnh dịch hoành hành, và có một tin đồn rằng có một hiền nhân, một nhà thức giả, có thể dùng lời nói và hơi thở để chữa lành bệnh, khi tin ấy được bàn tán khắp nơi, sẽ có nhiều người ngờ vực, nhiều người đến tìm vị thánh nhân ấy tức khắc, cũng như thế, lời đồn đãi về đấng Cồ Đàm, đức Phật, dòng họ Thích Ca lan khắp xứ. Người có trí tuệ cao vời – người ta bảo: Người nhớ được tiền kiếp, đã đạt đến Niết Bàn và không còn luân hồi sinh tử, không chìm đắm trong dòng hình hài vẩn đục. Nhiều điều kỳ diệu và khó tin được đồn về Người rằng, Người đã làm phép thần thông, đã nhiếp phục được ma quỷ, đã chuyện trò với thần linh. Những đối thủ và những người hoài nghi thì bảo rằng Cồ Đàm ấy chỉ là một người lừa bịp biếng nhác, ông sống xa hoa, khinh thường tế tự, không có học thức và cũng không biết gì về sự tu hành ép xác khổ hạnh. Tin đồn về đức Phật có mãnh lực gây chú ý, hình như có phép lạ gì trong những lời đồn ấy. Thế giới đang bệnh hoạn, sự sống đầy khổ đau nên đâu đâu dường như cũng loé sáng một niềm hy vọng mới, một sứ giả đem lại vỗ về an lạc, đầy hứa hẹn. Khắp nơi đều có tin đồn về đức Phật. Các thanh niên khắp xứ Ấn Độ lắng nghe, cảm thấy một niềm khát khao hy vọng và trong làng mạc thành thị những người con của các vị Bà La Môn đón tiếp nồng hậu mỗi khi có người lạ mặt mang đến hoặc kẻ hành hương mang tin về đấng Giác Ngộ, đức Thích Ca Mâu Ni. Tiếng đồn đến tai các vị Sa Môn trong rừng và Tất Đạt, Thiện Hữu nghe mỗi mẩu tin với niềm hy vọng, với nỗi hoài nghi. Họ ít bàn đến tin đồn ấy, vì vị Sa Môn trưởng không tán thành tin kia. Ông đã nghe rằng đức Phật người ta nói đến, ngày xưa đã từng khổ hạnh và sống trong rừng sâu nhưng sau đó trở lại sống xa hoa với lạc thú thế tục và vì thế ông không tin Cồ Đàm. - Tất Đạt ơi, Thiện Hữu một hôm bảo bạn, sáng nay khi tôi vào làng, một người Bà La Môn đã mời tôi vào nhà, và trong nhà có một người con trai Bà La Môn đã đến từ thành Thất La. Anh ta đã thấy tận mắt đức Phật và nghe Ngài thuyết pháp. Thật tôi đã tràn đầy khát vọng và tôi nghĩ: “Tôi mong sao cả Tất Đạt và tôi được sống đến ngày chúng ta có thể nghe lời dạy từ kim khẩu của đấng Vô Thượng Giác”. Bạn ơi, chúng ta lại không đến đấy hay sao, để nghe chính Ngài chỉ giáo... Tất Đạt bảo: - Tôi vẫn tưởng rằng Thiện Hữu sẽ ở lại với những vị Sa Môn. Tôi luôn luôn tin rằng bạn tôi sẽ sống sáu mươi, bảy mươi tuổi mà vẫn còn thực hành những bí quyết của các Sa Môn dạy. Nhưng tôi đã hiểu bạn ít làm sao! Tôi đã chẳng hiểu gì trong thâm tâm bạn cả! Bây giờ, bạn ơi, bạn đã mong mỏi vạch một con đường mới và đi nghe lời Người dạy. Thiện Hữu nói: - Anh vẫn thích thú để chế nhạo tôi. Không sao đâu, Tất Đạt. Nhưng chính anh, anh không cảm thấy mong muốn khát khao được nghe lời dạy ấy hay sao... Và chính anh đã không có lần nói với tôi rằng anh không đi theo con đường của những Sa Môn nữa đó sao... Tất Đạt cười lớn và trong giọng chàng có lẫn vị nửa buồn rầu nửa châm biếm. Chàng bảo: - Đúng đấy, Thiện Hữu, bạn đã nhớ rất giỏi. Nhưng bạn cũng nên nhớ những điều khác tôi đã nói cùng bạn - rằng tôi trở nên nghi ngờ sự dạy dỗ cũng như học hành và tôi không tin mấy về những lời mà những vị thầy nói ra. Nhưng tốt lắm bạn ơi: tôi cũng sẵn sàng để nghe những lời chỉ giáo mới mẻ mặc dù trong thâm tâm tôi vẫn tin rằng chúng ta đã nếm những quả tốt đẹp nhất của những lời giảng dạy ấy. Thiện Hữu trả lời: - Tôi rất sung sướng vì Tất Đạt đã bằng lòng. Nhưng hãy nói cho tôi nghe, làm sao những lời chỉ giáo của Cồ Đàm đã cho ta thấy những quả quí báu nhất khi mà ta chưa nghe lời Người nói. Tất Đạt bảo Thiện Hữu: - Hãy thưởng thức trái ngon này và chờ đợi những trái sau. Trái ngon mà ta đã thừa hưởng của Cồ Đàm là sự kiện Ngài đã lôi kéo chúng ta ra khỏi những thầy Sa Môn. Còn có quả nào khác hơn và tốt lành hơn nữa, chúng ta hãy kiên tâm chờ xem. Cùng hôm đó, Tất Đạt báo tin cho vị Sa Môn trưởng rằng chàng quyết định rời bỏ Người. Chàng nói với vẻ khiêm tốn của một môn đệ trẻ tuổi. Nhưng vị Sa Môn già tức giận khi thấy rằng cả hai người học trò trẻ tuổi muốn bỏ mình, và ông cao giọng rầy mắng họ kịch liệt. Thiện Hữu ngạc nhiên cực độ nhưng Tất Đạt rỉ tai bạn: “Bây giờ tôi sẽ làm cho ông già thấy rõ rằng tôi đã học được ít nhiều với ông ta”. Chàng đứng gần vị Sa Môn, tập trung thần trí; chàng nhìn vào đôi mắt của ông lão và dùng nhãn lực xâm chiếm ông ta, thôi miên ông, làm ông câm nín, thu phục ý chí ông và lặng lẽ sai bảo ông ta làm theo ý chàng. Ông già trở nên im lặng, đôi mắt long lên, ý chí kiệt quệ hẳn, cánh tay buông thõng. Ông ta bất lực dưới bùa chú của Tất Đạt. Ý tưởng Tất Đạt nhiếp phục hết ý tưởng của thầy Sa Môn già, ông ta phải làm những gì chàng sai khiến và cứ thế ông cúi đầu nhiều bận, ban phép lành và lẩm bẩm những lời chúc tụng chàng một cuộc hành trình tốt đẹp. Đôi bạn trẻ cám ơn ông ta, đáp lễ và ra đi. Trên đường Thiện Hữu bảo: - Tất Đạt, anh đã học của những thầy Sa Môn nhiều hơn là tôi tưởng. Thôi miên được một vị Sa Môn già rất khó khăn. Quả thật nếu anh ở lại, nhất định anh sẽ học được cách đi trên nước. - Tôi không muốn được đi trên nước, Tất Đạt bảo – hãy để cho những Sa Môn tự mãn với những bí thuật như vậy. CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 3: Cồ Đàm Chương 3: Cồ Đàm Trong thành Thất La, mọi trẻ con đều biết đến đức Phật Đại Giác và mọi nhà sẵn sàng đồ cúng dường sử dụng, để đổ vào bình bát của những đồ đệ Ngài lặng lẽ đi khất thực. Gần thành phố có chỗ ưa thích của đức Cồ Đàm, rừng Lộc Uyển mà thương gia giàu có tên Cấp Cô Độc, một cư sĩ đã tận tuỵ cúng dường Ngài. Hai bạn trẻ khổ hạnh, khi đi tìm chỗ ở của đức Cồ Đàm đã được chỉ đến vùng này; và khi họ đến Thất La lặng lẽ khất thực trước cửa nhà đầu tiên, thức ăn liền được dâng cúng. Họ chia nhau thực phẩm, Tất Đạt hỏi người đàn bà cúng dường: - Thưa bà, chúng tôi rất muốn biết đức Phật, đấng Giác Ngộ hiện đang ở đâu... Chúng tôi là Sa Môn từ rừng núi xuống và muốn đi gặp đấng Giác Ngộ để nghe những lời dạy từ miệng Ngài thốt ra. Người đàn bà nói: “Các ngài đã đến đúng chỗ, thưa các vị Sa Môn hạ sơn. Đấng Giác Ngộ hiện đang ở rừng Lộc Uyển. Các ngài có thể ngủ lại ở đấy, hỡi quí vị khất sĩ, vì có đủ chỗ cho rất đông người đến tụ tập để nghe Ngài chỉ giáo”. Thiện Hữu sung sướng nói: Thế thì chúng ta đã đến đích và hành trình đã xong. Nhưng hỡi bà mẹ quí, bà có biết đức Phật không... Bà có thấy Ngài tận mắt không... Người đàn bà đáp: - Tôi đã thấy đức Giác Ngộ nhiều lần rồi chứ. Nhiều hôm tôi thấy Ngài đi qua những đường phố, lặng lẽ khoác áo vàng, và im lặng chìa bát khất thực trước cửa các nhà rồi trở về với bát đầy. Thiện Hữu lắng nghe thích thú và muốn hỏi nhiều, nghe nhiều nữa, nhưng Tất Đạt nhắc chàng phải đi. Họ cảm tạ rồi ra đi. Bấy giờ thì không phải hỏi đường nữa, vì có một số đồ đệ của đức Cồ Đàm đang trên đường đi đến vườn Lộc Uyển. Khi họ đến đấy vào đêm, còn có nhiều người tiếp tục đến. Nhiều lời nói nổi lên nhao nhao từ những kẻ đến xin chỗ trọ. Hai thầy Sa Môn nhờ quen đời sống núi rừng nên dễ dàng tìm chỗ nghỉ và ở lại cho đến sáng. Khi mặt trời lên cao họ ngạc nhiên thấy số lượng khổng lồ những tín đồ và kẻ hiếu kỳ đã ngủ qua đêm tại đây. Những thầy tu vận áo vàng đi bách bộ dọc khắp các con đường nhỏ trong khu rừng thâm u. Lác đác đây đó vài vị ngồi dưới bóng cây, mài miệt trầm tư hoặc luận đàm đạo lý. Khu vườn rợp bóng trông như một thành phố đầy ong chen chúc. Phần đông những tu sĩ ra đi với những bát khất thực để xin thức ăn cho buổi trưa, buổi ăn độc nhất trong ngày. Cả đến đức Phật cũng đi khất thực về ban sáng. Tất Đạt trông thấy Ngài và nhận ra ngay, như thể một vị thần linh nào đã chỉ cho chàng. Chàng thấy Ngài mang bình bát lặng lẽ rời chỗ ở. - Kìa! Đấy là đức Phật, Tất Đạt khẽ bảo Thiện Hữu. Thiện Hữu chú mục nhìn vị tu sĩ đắp y vàng, một vị tu sĩ khó mà phân biệt được giữa hàng trăm tu sĩ khác, những Thiện Hữu cũng nhận ra. Phải, đấy chính là đức Phật, và họ đi theo chiêm ngưỡng Ngài. Đức Phật lặng lẽ đi, dáng đăm chiêu suy nghĩ. Nét mặt bình an của Ngài không sung sướng cũng không buồn khổ. Ngài dường như hiền dịu mỉm cười trong tâm với một nụ cười kín đáo không khác nụ cười của một trẻ thơ khoẻ mạnh. Người bước đi bình an, lặng lẽ. Ngài đắp y và đi bộ giống hệt các vị tỳ kheo khác nhưng nét mặt Ngài cùng bước chân Ngài, cái nhìn xuống trầm lặng và đôi tay buông thả, và mỗi ngón tay Ngài đều nói lên một niềm bình thản đầy đặn, không tìm kiếm gì, không học đòi một cái gì, mỗi ngón tay phản chiếu một sự bình lặng liên tục, một ánh sáng không phai mờ, một niềm bình an bất khả tổn thương. Cứ thế đức Cồ Đàm đi vào thành thị để khất thực, và hai người Sa Môn nhận ra Ngài chỉ nhờ tư thái tuyệt diệu của Ngài, sắc tướng vắng lặng của Ngài trong đó không có sự kiếm tìm, không có hiện diện của ý chí hay sự gắng công - chỉ thuần ánh sáng và niềm bình thản. - Hôm nay chúng ta sẽ nghe lời dạy từ chính kim khẩu của Ngài, Thiện Hữu bảo. Tất Đạt không trả lời. Chàng không thiết tha mấy tới những lời chỉ giáo. Chàng không nghĩ chúng sẽ dạy chàng điều gì mới lạ. Chàng cũng như Thiện Hữu, đã nghe những tinh hoa của Phật pháp dù chỉ nghe những lời tường thuật qua hai ba lần kể. Nhưng chàng nhìn chăm chú vào đầu đức Phật, vào vai Ngài, vào chân, vào bàn tay buông thong thả và chàng tưởng như mỗi đốt tay của Ngài đều chứa đựng tri thức, chúng nói lên, thở ra, tuôn phát ra chân lý. Người này, đức Phật này, quả là một người thánh thiện đến từng đầu ngón tay. Chưa bao giờ Tất Đạt thấy kính trọng một người đến thế, chưa bao giờ chàng thương quí một người đến thế. Buổi chiều, không khí nóng nực đã giảm và mọi người trong trại đã thức dậy tụ họp, họ nghe Phật thuyết pháp. Họ nghe thấy tiếng Ngài, và tiếng ấy cũng thật tuyệt diệu, lặng lẽ và đầy thanh bình. Ngài nói về Khổ, nguồn gốc của Khổ, cách diệt Khổ. Sự sống là khổ đau, thế giới đầy đau thương, song con đường thoát khổ đã tìm ra. Những người theo đường của đức Phật sẽ được sự cứu rỗi. Đấng Giác Ngộ với một giọng dịu dàng nhưng đoan quyết, Ngài dạy về Tứ diệu đế, Bát chánh đạo; và cùng với phương pháp dạy thông thường Ngài kiên nhẫn thêm vào những ví dụ và nhắc lại nhiều lần. Lặng lẽ và rõ ràng, giọng Ngài bay đến những thính giả như một ánh sáng, như một vì sao từ thiên giới. Khi đức Phật đã chấm dứt - trời đã về đêm – nhiều khách hành hương tiến lên xin được gia nhập vào giáo hội, đức Phật nhận lời và bảo: - Các ngươi đã nghe những lời của Như Lai. Hãy đi theo ta và đi với niềm an lạc, chấm dứt mọi khổ đau. Thiện Hữu, con người rụt rè, cũng bước lên nói: - Tôi cũng muốn xin theo đấng Giác Ngộ và lời chỉ giáo của Ngài. Chàng xin được nhập vào tăng chúng và liền được chấp thuận. Khi đức Phật đã lui về nghỉ ban đêm, Thiện Hữu quay lại Tất Đạt và nói với vẻ nồng nhiệt: - Tất Đạt, tôi không quen chỉ trích anh. Chúng ta đều đã nghe đấng Giác Ngộ. Tôi đã lắng nghe lời dạy và đã chấp thuận những lời ấy, nhưng còn bạn, bạn ơi, bạn lại không đặt chân lên con đường giải thoát hay sao... Bạn còn trì hoãn gì nữa! Còn đợi gì nữa sao... Khi nghe lời Thiện Hữu, Tất Đạt bừng tỉnh như vừa ngủ dậy. Chàng nhìn vào mặt Thiện Hữu một lúc lâu. Rồi chàng nhẹ nhàng bảo - giọng không còn chế giễu: - Thiện Hữu, bạn ơi, bạn đã bước chân đi và chọn đường, bạn đã luôn luôn là bạn quí của tôi. Thiện Hữu, bạn đã luôn đi sau tôi một bước. Tôi vẫn thường nghĩ: “Thiện Hữu có bao giờ bước một bước mà không cần đến tôi chăng... Một bước đi từ sự tin tưởng vững vàng của chàng... ”. Giờ đây, bạn đã là một người đàn ông và đã chọn con đường riêng của bạn. Ước mong sao bạn sẽ đi đến cùng. Thiện Hữu, ước mong bạn sẽ tìm được giải thoát. Thiện Hữu vẫn chưa hiểu rõ, lặp lại câu hỏi một cách nóng nảy: - Nói đi, bạn! Hãy nói rằng bạn cũng sẽ không làm gì khác hơn là nguyện theo gót đức Phật... Tất Đạt đặt tay lên vai bạn: - Bạn đã nghe tôi chúc lành cho bạn, hỡi Thiện Hữu. Tôi lặp lại: mong sao cho bạn đi cuộc hành trình cho đến cùng; cho bạn tìm ra giải thoát! Lúc ấy, Thiện Hữu mới nhận ra rằng bạn chàng đang bỏ chàng. Chàng bắt đầu khóc. - Ồ Tất Đạt! Thiện Hữu nấc lên. Tất Đạt dịu dàng bảo: - Thiện Hữu ơi, đừng quên rằng bây giờ bạn ở vào hàng đệ tử của Phật. Bạn đã khước từ dòng dõi và tài sản, khước từ ý chí riêng, khước từ tình bạn hữu. Đấy là những gì giáo điều giảng dạy, đấy là ý muốn của đấng Giác Ngộ. Đấy cũng là những gì chính lòng bạn muốn. Ngày mai, Thiện Hữu ơi, tôi sẽ rời bạn. Một lúc lâu, đôi bạn lang thang qua các khu rừng. Họ nằm xuống đất rất lâu nhưng không sao ngủ được. Thiện Hữu gạn hỏi bạn nhiều lần tại sao Tất Đạt không muốn theo lời dạy của đức Phật, chàng đã thấy khuyết điểm gì trong lời dạy ấy, nhưng mỗi lần Tất Đạt đều khoát tay: - Bạn hãy bình tĩnh, Thiện Hữu. Lời dạy của đấng Giác Ngộ thật chí lý. Làm sao tôi có thể tìm ra khuyết điểm trong ấy... Sáng sớm, một đồ đệ của đức Phật, một trong những vị tỳ kheo già nhất, đi khắp khu rừng và triệu tập tất cả những đồ đệ mới phát nguyện để khoác cho họ chiếc áo vàng và dặn dò những lời chỉ giáo đầu tiên về phận sự của họ. Khi ấy Thiện Hữu chỉ chạy đến hôn người bạn từ thời thơ ấu và khoác chiếc áo tăng lữ đầu tiên. Tất Đạt đi lang thang trong khu rừng, để tâm trí trong suy tư. Ở đấy chàng gặp Cồ Đàm, đấng Giác Ngộ, và khi chàng kính cẩn chào Ngài và thấy nét mặt Phật đầy thiện đức và bình an, chàng thu hết can đảm xin phép được nói chuyện cùng Ngài, đấng Giác Ngộ lặng lẽ gật đầu. Tất Đạt nói: - Bạch đấng Đại Giác, hôm qua tôi đã hân hạnh được nghe những lời chỉ giáo tuyệt vời của Ngài. Tôi từ xa đến với bạn tôi để nghe Ngài và bây giờ bạn tôi sẽ ở lại với Ngài, bạn đã nguyện theo Ngài. Còn tôi, tôi vẫn lại tiếp tục hành trình. - Người cứ tự tiện, đấng Giác Ngộ ôn tồn đáp. Tất Đạt tiếp lời: - Có lẽ những lời của tôi quá táo bạo nhưng tôi không muốn từ giã đấng Giác Ngộ mà không thành tâm trình bày cùng Ngài những thiển ý của tôi. Ngài có thể nghe tôi hầu chuyện một lúc nữa chăng... Đức Phật lại lặng lẽ gật đầu. - Hỡi đấng Giác Ngộ, trước hết tôi rất thán phục những điều Ngài dạy bảo. Mọi sự đều được chứng minh đầy đủ rõ ràng. Ngài trình bày thế giới như một sợi dây xích liên tục không đứt đoạn, một sợi dây bất tuyệt nối liền với nhau bởi nhân và quả. Chưa bao giờ vũ trụ được trình bày rõ ràng như thế, và chứng minh một cách khúc chiết như thế. Chắc hẳn một người Bà La Môn phải giật mình kinh hãi, khi qua những lời giảng dạy của Ngài, họ nhìn thấy một vũ trụ hoàn toàn mật thiết với nhau đến không có một lỗ hổng, trong suốt như pha lê, không phụ thuộc may rủi, không phụ thuộc thần linh. Thế giới tốt hay xấu, sự sống tự nó là đau khổ hay khoái lạc, sự sống bất trắc hay không, điều này không quan trọng nhưng sự nhất thể của thế giới, lẽ tương quan tương liên của mọi sự vật, lớn nhỏ bao gồm nhau, sinh thành bao gồm trong huỷ diệt: những điều Ngài dạy thật sáng lạng và phân minh. Nhưng theo những lời dạy ấy, sự nhất tính và liên tục hợp lý của mọi sự có một chỗ hở. Qua khe hở nhỏ ấy, một cái gì lạ lùng bỗng tuôn trào vào trong thế giới nhất thể này, một cái gì mới mẻ, một cái gì không có ở đấy trước kia và không thể chứng minh hay chứng nghiệm được: ấy là thuyết của Ngài về sự vươn lên trên thế giới, thuyết cứu độ. Với khe hở nhỏ này, chỗ gián đoạn bé bỏng ấy, dù sao, luật vũ trụ duy nhất không tiền khoáng hậu lại bị sụp đổ. Xin Ngài tha thứ nếu tôi đưa ra sự đối chất này. Đức Cồ Đàm đã lắng nghe, lặng lẽ bất động. Và Ngài cất một giọng nhã nhặn trong sáng: - Người đã khá nghe những lời giảng dạy, hỡi người thanh niên Bà La Môn, và thật quý hoá người đã nghĩ sâu xa về những lời ấy. Người đã tìm thấy một khuyết điểm. Hãy nghĩ kỹ lại về điều đó. Ta chỉ khuyên người, một người khao khát hiểu biết, hãy tránh xa rừng quan niệm và sự xung đột giữa các danh từ. Quan niệm không có nghĩa gì, chúng có thể đẹp hay xấu, khôn hay dại và bất cứ ai cũng có thể chấp nhận hay bác bỏ. Giáo lý mà người đã nghe, tuy vậy, không phải là quan niệm của ta, và mục đích của nó không phải là để giải thích vũ trụ cho những người ham hiểu biết. Mục đích của nó hoàn toàn khác biệt. Mục đích ấy là giải thoát khỏi khổ đau. Đấy là những gì Cồ Đàm dạy, không gì khác hơn. - Xin Ngài đừng giận tôi, hỡi đấng Giác Ngộ, người trẻ tuổi nói. Tôi không nói thế để tranh biện với Ngài về danh từ. Ngài rất hợp lý khi dạy rằng quan niệm không có nghĩa lý gì, nhưng xin Ngài cho tôi được nói thêm một lời. Tôi không nghi ngờ rằng Ngài là đức Phật, rằng Ngài đã đạt đến đích cao cả nhất mà người người Bà La Môn và con trai họ đang nỗ lực để đạt đến. Ngài đã đạt được nhờ sự tìm kiếm của riêng Ngài và bằng đường đi của chính Ngài, bằng suy tư, bằng thiền quán, bằng hiểu biết và trí tuệ. Ngài bảo không học được gì từ những lời giảng dạy, và bởi thế, kính bạch đấng Giác Ngộ, tôi nghĩ rằng không ai tìm được giải thoát qua những lời chỉ giáo. Ngài không thể, hỡi đấng Toàn Giác, truyền cho ai bằng danh từ và giáo lý những gì đã đến với Ngài trong giờ Ngài giác ngộ. Lời chỉ giáo của đấng Giác Ngộ bao hàm rất nhiều, dạy rất nhiều, phải sống thế nào, phải tránh điều ác như thế nào. Nhưng có một điều mà giáo lý sáng sủa và giá trị ấy không chứa đựng, ấy là những gì huyền bí mà đấng Giác Ngộ đã chứng nghiệm – Ngài độc nhất giữa hàng trăm nghìn người khác. Chính vì lẽ thế mà tôi phải đi con đường của tôi, không phải để tìm thêm một lý thuyết tốt đẹp hơn, vì tôi biết không có, nhưng để từ bỏ tất cả lý thuyết và thầy dạy, để tự mình đạt đến đích – hay chết. Nhưng tôi sẽ luôn luôn nhớ lại hôm nay, hỡi đấng Toàn Giác, và giờ này, khi mắt tôi được chiêm ngưỡng một bậc thánh nhân. Mắt của đức Phật hạ thấp xuống, nét mặt khôn dò của Ngài diễn tả một niềm bình an thuần tịnh. - Ta mong người không lầm trong lối lập luận ấy – Người chậm rãi nói. Mong sao cho người đến đích! Nhưng người hãy nói ta nghe; người đã thấy nhiều bậc thánh thiện tụ họp quanh ta chưa... Những người đệ tử đã quy y theo giáo lý của ta ấy... Hỡi người Sa Môn từ xa đến, người có nghĩ rằng tốt hơn họ nên hồi lại và trở về sự sống thế nhân với dục lạc... - Tôi không bao giờ nghĩ đến điều đó... Tất Đạt kêu lên. Ước sao cho họ đi đến đích! Mong sao cho họ đều theo lời chỉ giáo! Không phải việc của tôi để đi phê phán cuộc đời khác. Tôi phải phê phán cho chính tôi. Tôi phải lựa chọn và gạt bỏ. Chúng tôi là những Sa Môn tìm kiếm sự giải thoát khỏi bản ngã. Nếu tôi là một trong những đồ đệ của Ngài, tôi sợ rằng đấy chỉ là bề mặt, rằng tôi sẽ tự lừa dối mình là tôi đang bình an và đã giải thoát trong khi thực ra cái ngã vẫn còn tiếp tục sống và tăng trưởng, vì nó sẽ được biến vào trong những lời chỉ giáo của Ngài, trong sự quy y của tôi và lòng thương mến của tôi đối với Ngài và đoàn thể tăng chúng. Hơi mỉm cười, sắc diện vẫn sáng ngời hào quang, đức Phật thân mật nhìn người khách lạ chăm chăm và Tất Đạt đoán rằng Ngài muốn từ giã chàng. - Hỡi Sa Môn, ông rất là khôn ngoan, Ngài nói. Ông biết ăn nói khôn khéo lắm, ông bạn. Nhưng hãy cẩn thận trước sự khôn ngoan quá mức. Đức Phật bỏ đi và cái nhìn của Ngài, nụ cười của Ngài khắc sâu trong ký ức của Tất Đạt mãi mãi. Ta chưa hề thấy một người nhìn, mỉm cười, đi, đứng, ngồi như thế. Tất Đạt tự nhủ: Ta cũng muốn nhìn, cười, đi, đứng như thế, tự tại làm sao, vừa dè dặt, vừa trong sáng hồn nhiên, vừa huyền bí. Một người chỉ nhìn và bước đi như thế một khi họ đã nhiếp phục được Tự ngã. Ta, ta cũng sẽ nhiếp phục được Tự ngã. Ta đã thấy một người, chỉ một người thôi, mà trước người ấy ta phải cúi đầu, – Tất Đạt thầm nghĩ. Ta sẽ không bao giờ cúi đầu trước người nào nữa. Không lời chỉ giáo nào khác sẽ quyến rũ ta được. Đức Phật đã cướp của ta, Tất Đạt suy nghĩ. Ngài đã cướp của ta, tuy nhiên, Ngài đã cho ta một giá trị khác cao hơn. Ngài đã cướp khỏi tay ta người bạn đã tin tưởng nơi ta mà bây giờ tin theo Ngài, người bạn ấy đã là cái bóng của ta nhưng bây giờ là cái bóng của Cồ Đàm. Nhưng Ngài đã đem lại cho ta chính ta. CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 4: Thức Tỉnh Chương 4: Thức Tỉnh Khi Tất Đạt từ giã khu rừng trong đó có đức Phật, đấng Toàn Thiện ở lại, và bạn chàng cũng ở lại theo Ngài, chàng có cảm tưởng rằng chàng vừa từ bỏ một tiền kiếp lại sau lưng, trong cụm rừng. Khi chàng từ từ bước trên đường, đầu chàng nghĩ miên man về những điều ấy. Chàng nhận ra rằng chàng không còn là một người con trai nữa, bây giờ chàng là một người đàn ông. Chàng trực nhận rằng một cái gì đó từ bỏ chàng, như một con rắn vừa thay vỏ. Một cái gì đó không còn ở trong chàng nữa, một cái gì đã theo chàng từ tấm bé và đã là một phần của người chàng: lòng ham muốn có bổn sư và được nghe những lời chỉ giáo. Chàng đã từ giã bậc thầy cuối cùng chàng gặp, cả đến vị thầy cao cả nhất, khôn ngoan nhất, thánh thiện nhất: đức Phật. Chàng phải từ giã Ngài, chàng không thể chấp nhận lời chỉ giáo của Ngài. Con người suy tư ấy tiến bước chậm rãi và tự hỏi: ta muốn học cái gì từ những lời dạy và thầy học, và mặc dù họ dạy ta rất nhiều điều, cái gì họ không thể dạy cho ta... Và chàng nghĩ: chính là sự Ngã, đặc tính và bản chất của nó mà ta muốn biết. Ta muốn thoát khỏi Tự ngã, nhiếp phục nó nhưng ta không thể, ta chỉ có thề lừa dối nó, trốn thoát nó, lẩn tránh nó. Quả thế, không gì trong vũ trụ xâm chiếm tư tưởng ta nhiều như Tự ngã, bài toán khó giải ấy, vấn đề tôi tồn tại, tôi là một và tách rời khác hẳn bao kẻ khác, rằng tôi là Tất Đạt … thật không có gì trong vũ trụ mà tôi biết ít hơn là về chính tôi. Đang đi chậm rãi trên đường, chàng bỗng đứng dừng lại, ý nghĩ vừa rồi đập mạnh vào trí chàng, và một ý nghĩ khác theo sau. Ấy là: lý do vì sao tôi không biết gì về tôi, lý do vì sao Tất Đạt đã vẫn xa lạ, lạc loài đối với chính mình chỉ do từ một điểm, một điểm độc nhất – là tôi sợ hãi chính tôi, tôi đang trốn chạy tôi. Tôi đang tìm kiếm Đại ngã Tiểu ngã, tôi muốn tự huỷ mình, ra khỏi chính mình, để mà tìm trong khu vực thâm cùng xa lạ cái nhân của mọi pháp, linh hồn, sự sống, sự thiêng liêng, sự tuyệt đối. Nhưng khi làm thế, tôi tự đánh mất chính tôi. Tất Đạt nhìn lên quanh chàng, nụ cười thoáng nở trên mặt. Một cảm giác tỉnh thức từ giấc trường mộng chạy khắp người chàng. Chàng lại tiếp tục bước, nhanh nhẹn, như một người vừa biết mình phải làm gì. Chàng thở mạnh và suy nghĩ: phải, ta sẽ thôi trốn chạy bản thân ta, ta sẽ thôi nghĩ về Tiểu ngã và những nỗi buồn nhân thế. Ta sẽ thôi huỷ hoại thân này để đi tìm một màu nhiệm nào đằng sau sự huỷ diệt. Ta sẽ thôi học khổ hạnh hay bất cứ giáo lý nào khác. Ta sẽ học chính ta, là người học trò của chính ta; ta sẽ học ngay trong ta cái màu nhiệm của Tất Đạt. Chàng nhìn quanh như mới thấy vũ trụ lần đầu. Thiên nhiên đẹp hẳn lên, kỳ lạ nhiệm màu. Đây là màu xanh, đây là màu vàng, đây là màu lục, trời và nước, cây và rừng, tất cả đều đẹp, tất cả đều huyền bí và quyến rũ và giữa tất cả các cái đó, chàng, Tất Đạt, kẻ vừa giác ngộ, đang tự tìm mình. Tất cả sự vật, tất cả sắc xanh hay vàng, dòng sông hay rừng cây lần đầu tiên diễn ra dưới mắt Tất Đạt. Chúng không còn là phép lạ của thần Mara, chúng không còn là bức màn huyễn hoá, không còn là những bề ngoài vô nghĩa mà các người Bà La Môn khinh bỉ. Dòng sông là dòng sông, và nếu có cái Nhất thể thiêng liêng trong Tất Đạt đang sống tiềm tàng trong màu xanh kia và dòng sông nọ, thì đấy là sự hiện hữu của sắc màu, trời và rừng cây, và Tất Đạt. Ý nghĩa mà thực tại không ẩn núp đằng sau sự vật, mà trong sự vật, trong mọi sự vật. Chàng đi nhanh hơn và suy nghĩ, ta thật là ngu và điếc. Khi một người đọc một bài để học thuộc, nó không khinh thường những từ ngữ và dấu chấm câu trong bài, không xem chúng là ảo tưởng, tình cờ, chỉ là những cái vỏ vô vị, mà trái lại, đọc chúng, học và thích từng chữ. Còn ta thích đọc quyển sách vũ trụ và sách bản thân ta, mà lại đi khinh thường những chữ và dấu hiệu. Ta gọi thế giới hiện tượng này là ảo ảnh, ta gọi mắt và lưỡi là sự tình cờ. Bây giờ đã hết: ta đã tỉnh thức. Ta đã giác ngộ và chỉ mới sinh ra ngày hôm nay. Nhưng khi những tư tưởng đó đi qua đầu Tất Đạt, chàng bỗng đứng lặng yên, như có một con rắn đang nằm chắn đường. Rồi bỗng nhiên điều này khai thị trong chàng: chàng, mà quả thật là một người mới giác ngộ hay vừa sinh ra, phải bắt đầu cuộc đời lại từ khởi thuỷ. Khi chàng rời vườn Lộc Uyển sáng nay, khu vườn của bậc Toàn Giác, chàng có ý định trở về với phụ thân, với quê hương sau những năm dài khổ hạnh. Bây giờ khi đứng im lìm giữa đường, ý nghĩ này đến với chàng: ta còn là ta thuở trước, một người Bà La Môn. Ta sẽ làm gì... Ở nhà với phụ thân ư... Học ư... Cúng tế ư... Ngồi thiền ư... Tất cả điều ấy đối với ta đã hết rồi. Tất Đạt đứng bất động, và trong lúc ấy chàng cảm thấy lạnh cả người. Tim chàng run lên, như một con vật nhỏ, một con chim hay một con thỏ, khi nhận rằng chàng quá cô đơn. Chàng đã sống kiếp không nhà từ nhiều năm mà không cảm thấy như vậy. Nhưng giờ đây chàng lại có cảm giác ấy. Trước kia, trong những giờ trầm tư miệt mài nhất, chàng vẫn còn là con của phụ thân, là một người Bà La Môn thượng lưu, một người ngoan đạo. Bây giờ chàng chỉ là Tất Đạt, người thức tỉnh; ngoài ra không còn là gì nữa. Chàng hít vào một hơi dài và rùng mình trong một lúc. Không ai cô đơn như chàng. Chàng không còn là người quý phái, thuộc một dòng họ quyền quí nào. Chàng không là người Bà La Môn, sống cuộc đời Bà La Môn, không là một người thuộc dòng Sa Môn khổ hạnh. Đến cả kẻ ẩn tu trong rừng vắng cũng không cô đơn, vì kẻ ấy thuộc vào một hạng người. Thiện Hữu đã trở thành một tu sĩ và có hàng trăm tu sĩ huynh đệ của chàng cùng mặc một loại áo, cùng thuộc một tín ngưỡng và nói cùng một ngôn ngữ. Mà chàng, Tất Đạt, chàng thuộc về đâu... Chàng sống theo đời ai... Chàng dùng ngôn ngữ ai... Trong lúc đó, lúc vũ trụ quanh chàng tan rã, lúc chàng đứng cô đơn như một ngôi sao trên nền trời, lòng chàng tràn ngập một cảm giác thất vọng tái tê, nhưng chàng cũng cương quyết hơn bao giờ. Đó là sự run rẩy cuối cùng trước khi tỉnh thức, những đau đớn cuối cùng của sự thoát hình. Lập tức, chàng tiếp tục, và bắt đầu bước nhanh hối hả, không hướng về quê nhà, không trở lại thân phụ, không nhìn lui nữa. CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 5: Kiều Lan Chương 5: Kiều Lan Tất Đạt học thêm trên mỗi bước đường một điều mới mẻ, vì vũ trụ đổi thay và chàng ở trong vũ trụ. Chàng thấy mặt trời lên trên núi rừng và lặn ở bãi xa. Ban đêm chàng thấy những vì sao trên nền trời và mảnh trăng lưỡi liềm như một con thuyền trôi trong màu xanh thẳm. Chàng thấy cây cối, trăng sao, loài vật, mây, ráng trời, hang đá, cỏ hoa, suối và dòng sông, sương lấp lánh trên bụi bờ buổi sớm, những dãy núi xa cao và xanh nhạt, chim hót, ong bay vù vù, gió thổi nhẹ qua đồng lúa. Tất cả thứ đó muôn màu sắc, muôn dáng hình vẫn luôn tồn tại ở đây. Mặt trời và mặt trăng vẫn luôn luôn tồn tại ở đây. Mặt trời và mặt trăng vẫn luôn luôn chiếu sáng, dòng sông luôn chảy và những con ong bay vù vù, nhưng ngày xưa đối với chàng, chúng không là gì cả ngoài ra một trò huyễn hoá trước mắt chàng, bị nhìn một cách hoài nghi, bị khinh thường và gạt ra khỏi tư tưởng vì chúng không phải là thực tại, vì thực tại nằm bên kia nhãn giới. Bây giờ chàng nhìn chúng, chàng thấy và nhận ra nhãn giới, chàng tìm thấy vị trí của chàng trong vũ trụ này. Chàng không kiếm tìm thực tại: mục đích của chàng không ở một phía nào khác nữa. Vũ trụ tươi đẹp khi ta nhìn nó bằng cái nhìn này, không tìm kiếm, một cái nhìn đơn giản, cái nhìn của trẻ thơ. Trăng sao đẹp, bờ suối, bờ bể, rừng và hang đá, con dê và con nai vàng, hoa và bướm đều đẹp. Vũ trụ sẽ đẹp nếu ta nhìn thấy nó như vậy, hồn nhiên, tỉnh thức, chỉ quan tâm tới hiện tại mà không một thoáng nghi ngờ. Nơi kia mặt trời nắng gắt, nơi kia có bóng rừng im mát, nơi kia có chuối và bí ngô. Ngày và đêm đều ngắn, mỗi giờ qua nhanh như một chiếc buồm của một con tàu chở đầy kho báu, chở đầy niềm vui. Tất Đạt trông thấy một đàn khỉ trong rừng sâu, chuyền qua những cành cao, và chàng nghe tiếng kêu man rợ của chúng. Tất Đạt trông thấy một anh cừu đực đi theo ái ân với một chị cừu cái. Trong một chiếc hồ, một con cá lớn đói đang đi săn mồi ăn chiều. Từng đàn cá nhỏ đang bơi lượn sáng loáng, lo lắng tránh xa cá lớn đang tìm ăn chúng. Sức mạnh và dục vọng phản chiếu trên những con sóng xao động vì cuộc đuổi bắt hăng say. Tất cả những điều ấy đã có từ bao giờ nhưng chàng không hề thấy, chàng chưa bao giờ hiện diện. Bây giờ chàng hiện diện và thuộc vào thế giới ấy. Bằng con mắt, chàng thấy ánh sáng và bóng tối, bằng trí óc, chàng trực nhận có trăng sao. Trên đường đi, Tất Đạt nhớ lại tất cả những gì chàng đã thực nghiệm trong vườn Lộc Uyển, những giáo lý mà chàng đã nghe từ đức Phật, cuộc đối thoại với bậc Toàn Giác. Chàng hồi tưởng mỗi chữ chàng đã nói với đấng Giác Ngộ, và chàng ngạc nhiên rằng mình đã nói những điều mà chính mình chưa thật biết. Điều chàng nói với đức Phật - rằng sự giác ngộ của Phật là điều huyền bí không thể giảng dạy được, không thể diễn tả và thông cảm được – mà chàng đã một lần chứng nghiệm trong một giờ sáng suốt, chính là điều mà bây giờ chàng bắt đầu thực nghiệm. Chàng cần phải có kinh nghiệm bản thân. Chàng đã biết từ lâu rằng bản thân chàng là Tiểu ngã, cùng nguồn gốc với Đại ngã, nhưng chàng chưa bao giờ thật tìm thấy Tự ngã, vì chàng đã tóm nó vào cái lưới tư duy. Thân thể dĩ nhiên không là Tự ngã, cảm giác, tư tưởng, sự hiểu biết, sự tinh khôn để rút kết luận và dệt những tư tưởng mới từ những ý đã có sẵn, cũng không phải là Tự ngã. Không, thế giới tư duy cũng vẫn còn ở bên này bờ và nó không đưa đến mục đích nào khi con người phá huỷ giác quan để chỉ nuôi Tự ngã bằng tư duy và kiến thức. Tư tưởng và giác quan đều quý báu, sau chúng là ý nghĩa cuối cùng ẩn nấp. Thật đáng nên lắng nghe cả hai, không khinh thường cũng không xem trọng cái nào hơn, mà phải chú tâm lắng nghe cả hai một cách cẩn thận. Chàng sẽ chỉ lắng nghe lời chỉ bảo của tiếng nói nội tâm, không dừng lại bất cứ chỗ nào, ngoài chỗ mà tiếng nói ấy chỉ định. Tại sao đức Cồ Đàm đã ngồi dưới gốc cây khi Ngài đạt được toàn trí... Ngài đã nghe một tiếng nói trong thâm tâm, đã ra lệnh cho Ngài yên toạ dưới gốc cây đó, và Ngài đã không hành hạ thể xác, không tế thần linh, tắm nước thiêng hay cầu nguyện, uống hay ăn, ngủ hay mơ; Ngài đã nghe theo tiếng nói, không tuân theo mệnh lệnh nào khác ở ngoài, chỉ theo tiếng nói ấy – đó là điều hay và cần thiết – ngoài ra không có gì cần nữa. Suốt đêm, khi ngủ trong một căn nhà tranh dành cho người bộ hành, chàng đã mơ một giấc mơ. Chàng mơ thấy Thiện Hữu đứng trước mặt trong chiếc áo vàng của nhà tu khổ hạnh. Thiện Hữu trông buồn bã và hỏi chàng: - Tại sao anh bỏ tôi... Chàng liền ôm lấy bạn và khi kéo bạn sát lòng mình và hôn, thì bạn không còn là Thiện Hữu nữa, mà là một người đàn bà và ngoài cái áo của nàng là một bộ ngực đầy, và chàng nằm xuống uống những dòng sữa vị ngọt và nồng nàn. Có vị của đàn ông và đàn bà, của mặt trời và núi rừng, của loài vật và hoa lá, của mọi thứ quả, của mọi khoái lạc. Thứ sữa ấy làm mê man. Khi Tất Đạt thức dậy, con sông mờ nhạt loang loáng ánh qua líp cửa của chòi tranh, và trong rừng một tiếng cú kêu vang lên sâu thẳm và trong vắt. Khi ngày bắt đầu lên, Tất Đạt nhờ người chủ nhà của chàng, một người lái đó đưa chàng qua sông. Người lái đò đưa chàng trên con thuyền tre. Mặt nước rộng và phẳng lì loang loáng hồng trong ánh nắng ban mai. - Con sông thật đẹp – Chàng nói với người đồng hành. - Vâng, người chèo đò đáp. Con sông rất đẹp, tôi yêu thích nó hơn tất cả mọi sự. Tôi đã thường lắng nghe nó, nhìn ngắm nó, và luôn học được ở nó một điều gì. Người ta có thể học được rất nhiều từ một dòng sông. - Cám ơn ông lái đò, Sa Môn bảo khi chàng lên bờ. Tôi sợ e rằng tôi không có gì để tặng ông, cũng không có tiền trả. Tôi không nhà cửa, tôi là con của một người Bà La Môn và là một vị Sa Môn. - Điều đó tôi cũng thấy rõ, người chèo đò nói – và tôi không chờ đợi ngài trả công hay cho chác gì tôi. Ngài sẽ cho tôi một lần khác. - Ông nghĩ vậy sao... Tất Đạt vui mừng hỏi. - Hẳn là thế. Tôi cũng học điều này từ con sông nữa. Mọi sự đều trở về. Ngài nữa, vị Sa Môn ơi, ngài cũng sẽ trở lại. Nào, chúng ta từ biệt! Mong ngài nghĩ đến tôi khi ngài tế lễ các vị thần. Họ mỉm cười chia tay. Tất Đạt sung sướng trước sự thân mật của người chèo đò. Anh ta thật giống Thiện Hữu. Chàng nghĩ, vừa mỉm cười. Mọi người ta gặp đều giống Thiện Hữu, mọi người đều biết ơn, dù chính họ xứng đáng được tạ ơn. Mọi người đều ưa phục tòng, mọi người đều ước mong là bạn của ta, vâng lời và ít suy nghĩ. Người ta đều là trẻ con cả. Đang trưa chàng đi qua một làng mạc. Trẻ con nhảy múa tung tăng trên con đường nhỏ trước mặt những chòi bằng đất sét. Chúng chơi đùa la hét và vật lộn nhau, nhưng bỏ chạy rụt rè khi người Sa Môn lạ lùng xuất hiện. Ở cuối làng, con đường chạy dài theo một dòng suối, và bên bờ suối, một người đàn bà đang quỳ gối giặt giũ. Khi Tất Đạt chào, nàng ngẩng đầu lên nhìn chàng với nụ cười và chàng thấy rõ tròng trắng của mắt nàng chiếu long lanh. Chàng nói lên một lời chúc tụng theo tục lệ những du khách, và hỏi đường còn bao xa nữa là đến thành phố. Khi ấy nàng đứng lên, tiến đến chàng, đôi mắt ướt sáng lên một cách quyến rũ trên gương mặt trẻ của nàng. Nàng trao đổi vài nhận xét với Tất Đạt, hỏi chàng ăn cơm chưa và có phải rằng những Sa Môn ngủ một mình trong rừng ban đêm không được theo người đàn bà nào cả hay không. Đoạn nàng đặt bàn chân trái lên trên chân phải của Tất Đạt và phác một cử chỉ thường làm khi một người đàn bà mời một người đàn ông hưởng thú khoái lạc ái tình mà thánh kinh gọi là “leo xuống cây”. Tất Đạt cảm thấy máu chàng nóng lên và chàng nhận ra hình ảnh giấc chiêm bao của chàng vừa qua, chàng hơi cúi mình về người đàn bà và hôn lên đầu chóp nâu của ngực nàng. Nhìn lên, chàng thấy mặt nàng tươi cười, đầy dục vọng, với đôi mắt hơi nhắm của nàng khẩn cầu khao khát. Tất Đạt cũng cảm thấy khát khao và lòng rung động vì dục vọng, nhưng vì chàng chưa hề động đến một người đàn bà, chàng hơi do dự một lúc, mặc dù tay chàng đã ôm lấy nàng. Lúc ấy bỗng nghe tiếng nội tâm của chàng, và tiếng ấy nói “Đừng! ”. Rồi tất cả ma lực đều biến đi khỏi khuôn mặt tươi cười của người đàn bà, chàng chỉ nhìn thấy cái nhìn nồng nàn của một người đàn bà trẻ say đắm. Chàng vỗ nhẹ má nàng, và nhanh chân đi khỏi người đàn bà đang tiu nghỉu và khuất bóng trong rừng tre. Trước khi chiều xuống, chàng đến một thành phố lớn, và chàng sung sướng, vì chàng khao khát gặp người ta. Chàng đã sống trong rừng rú khá lâu và chòi canh của người chèo đò trong đó chàng ngủ đêm trước, là mái nhà đầu tiên trên đầu chàng sau một thời gian dài. Ngoài phố thị, cạnh một khu rừng đẹp, người lữ hành lang thang gặp một đoàn gia nhân mang đầy những giỏ. Ở giữa, trong một chiếc kiệu trang hoàng có bốn người gánh, một người đàn bà, bà chủ, ngồi trên chiếc ghế dựa đỏ, dưới chiếc tàn lọng sặc sỡ màu. Tất Đạt đứng lặng ở cửa vào khu rừng nhỏ và ngắm đoàn những người tớ trai tớ gái và giỏ. Chàng nhìn chiếc kiệu và người đàn bà ngồi trong. Dưới mớ tóc đen bới cao, chàng thấy một gương mặt rất sáng, dịu hiền và thông minh, một cái miệng đỏ chót như một trái anh đào mới cắt, đôi mày tuyệt xảo và một vòng cung cao, đôi mắt đen láy tinh khôn và ưa quan sát, chiếc cổ thon trắng muốt nổi trên chiếc áo choàng vàng lục của nàng. Đôi bàn tay mịn màng dẻo dai dài và thon, nơi cườm tay đeo những chiếc vòng vàng chói. Tất Đạt thấy nàng tuyệt đẹp và lòng chàng vui rộn lên. Chàng cúi thấp khi chiếc kiệu đi qua gần chàng, và lại ngẩng đầu lên ngắm gương mặt xinh đẹp trong sáng, nhìn vào đôi mắt bồ câu một lúc và thở hít vào mùi hương mà chàng không nhận ra mùi gì. Người đàn bà đẹp gật đầu mỉm cười một lát, rồi biến khuất trong cụm rừng, theo sau là đàn tôi tớ. Tất Đạt nghĩ: ta đã vào thành phố này dưới một ngôi sao may mắn. Chàng cảm thấy hăm hở muốn đi vào cụm rừng ngay, nhưng chàng nghĩ lại, vì chàng sực nhớ đến cái nhìn của bọn tôi tớ trai gái nhìn chàng trước cửa đi vào, một tia nhìn khinh mạn và nghi ngờ, một tia nhìn như muốn xua đuổi. Ta vẫn còn là một Sa Môn, chàng nghĩ, vẫn còn là một nhà khổ hạnh, ăn xin. Ta không thể vẫn là một người như thế. Ta không thể đi vào cụm rừng ấy trong hình thức này. Và chàng cười lớn. Chàng dò hỏi những người chàng gặp đầu tiên về khu rừng, và về người thiếu phụ; và được biết đó là khu rừng của Kiều Lan, một kỹ nữ danh tiếng, và ngoài khu rừng ra, nàng còn làm chủ một biệt thự trong thành phố. Chàng đi vào thành. Chàng chỉ có một mục đích. Theo đuổi mục đích ấy, chàng rảo bước qua thành phố, đi lang thang trong những đường hẻm, đứng lặng ở vài chỗ, và đứng nghỉ trên bực đá đưa xuống sông. Về chiều, chàng làm quen với một người thợ phụ hớt tóc, người chàng thấy đang làm việc dưới bóng một vòm cây. Chàng lại gặp ông ta đang cầu nguyện trong một ngôi đền, ở đấy ông ta kể lại cho chàng nghe những câu chuyện về thần Tình ái. Ban đêm chàng ngủ giữa những chiếc thuyền trên sông, và sáng sớm, trước khi những khách hàng đầu tiên đến tiệm, chàng đã nhờ người thợ phụ cạo hết râu cho mình. Chàng cũng bảo chải đầu và xức dầu láng. Rồi Tất Đạt đi tắm trên dòng sông. Khi về chiều, nàng Kiều Lan xinh đẹp tiến vào khu rừng của nàng trong chiếc kiệu, Tất Đạt đang đứng ở cổng vào. Chàng cúi chào và đón nhận lời chào của nàng. Chàng ra hiệu cho người tôi tớ đi sau cùng, và nhờ anh ta báo tin cho chủ biết có một người Bà La Môn trẻ muốn nói chuyện với nàng. Sau một lúc, người gia nhân trở lại, bảo Tất Đạt theo mình, lặng lẽ dẫn Tất Đạt đi vào trong một gian trại ở đó Kiều Lan đang nằm trên một chiếc thảm, và để chàng lại đấy. - Có phải anh đứng ngoài cổng hôm qua và chào ta không... Kiều Lan hỏi. - Vâng, chính thế. Hôm qua tôi thấy nàng và chào nàng. - Nhưng hôm qua hình như anh có bộ râu và tóc dài đầy bụi, phải không... - Nàng đã quan sát rất giỏi, đã thấy mọi sự. Nàng đã thấy Tất Đạt, con một vị Bà La Môn, người đã từ bỏ gia đình để trở thành một thầy Sa Môn, và đã tu trong ba năm. Nhưng giờ đây tôi đã từ bỏ con đường ấy và đến thành phố này, và người đầu tiên tôi gặp chính là nàng. Tôi đến đây là để nói với nàng, hỡi nàng Kiều Lan, rằng nàng là người đàn bà đầu tiên mà Tất Đạt muốn nói chuyện cùng mà không hạ đôi mắt. Tôi sẽ không bao giờ hạ đôi mắt khi gặp một người đàn bà đẹp nữa. Kiều Lan mỉm cười và mân mê chiếc quạt lông công, đoạn hỏi: - Tất Đạt đến để nói với ta có chừng ấy sao... - Tôi đến để nói cùng nàng điều đó, và để cám ơn nàng vì nàng quá xinh đẹp. Và nếu nàng không phật ý, hỡi nàng Kiều Lan, tôi yêu cầu nàng hãy là bạn và thầy của tôi, vì tôi không biết tí gì về nghệ thuật mà nàng đang nắm vững. Lúc ấy Kiều Lan bật cười: - Tôi chưa bao giờ nghe chuyện một người Sa Môn trên núi xuống muốn gặp tôi và học với tôi. Chưa bao giờ một người Sa Môn tóc dài, áo quần rách rưới đến với tôi. Nhiều thanh niên đến gặp tôi, kể cả con trai những người Bà La Môn, nhưng họ đều ăn mặc đẹp đẽ, giày bóng, đầu họ thơm tho và túi đầy tiền. Đấy những thanh niên đến với tôi như thế đấy, hỡi thầy Sa Môn. Tất Đạt bảo: - Tôi bắt đầu học được ở nàng hôm nay. Hôm qua tôi cũng đã học được một điều. Tôi đã cạo râu, chải đầu và bôi dầu láng. Hỡi người diễm tuyệt, tôi không còn thiếu bao nhiêu nữa: áo quần đẹp, giày đẹp và tiền trong túi. Tất Đạt đã làm những việc khó khăn hơn những chuyện tầm thường ấy, và đã thành công. Tại sao tôi lại không đạt được điều mà hôm qua tôi quyết định khởi sự - làm bạn với nàng và học nơi nàng những lạc thú của ái tình... Nàng sẽ thấy tôi là một người học trò có khả năng. Hỡi Kiều Lan, tôi đã học nhiều điều khó khăn hơn những gì nàng phải dạy tôi. Thế ra Tất Đạt chưa đủ tươm tất vừa ý nàng, với đầu tóc láng bóng, nhưng không có quần áo tốt, giày và tiền... Kiều Lan cười lớn: - Không, Tất Đạt không đủ tươm tất. Anh phải có quần áo thật đẹp và giày thật tốt, và tiền đầy túi, và tặng phẩm cho Kiều Lan. Anh đã biết chưa, hỡi thầy Sa Môn từ rừng núi xuống... Anh hiểu không... - Tôi hiểu lắm. Tất Đạt kêu lên. Làm sao tôi không hiểu được, khi những lời ấy thốt ra từ một chiếc mồm xinh đẹp thế kia... Môi nàng giống như một trái anh đào mới cắt, hỡi Kiều Lan. Môi tôi cũng đỏ thắm và tươi mát, và sẽ hợp với môi nàng lắm, để nàng xem. Nhưng này, hỡi nàng Kiều Lan xinh đẹp, nàng không sợ hay sao, sợ vị Sa Môn từ rừng núi xuống để học về yêu đương... - Tại sao tôi phải sợ một vị Sa Môn, một thầy Sa Môn ngốc nghếch từ rừng núi xuống, và không biết gì về đàn bà... - Ồ, người Sa Môn rất hùng mạnh và không sợ gì cả. Người có thể cưỡng bức nàng, hỡi cô gái đẹp, người có thể cướp của nàng và làm nàng đau đớn. - Không, hỡi Sa Môn. Tôi không sợ. Có bao giờ một thầy Sa Môn hay một Bà La Môn sợ rằng có kẻ sẽ đến đánh người ấy và cướp của người ấy kiến thức, lòng sùng bái, năng lực suy tư... Không, bởi vì những cái ấy thuộc về của chính ông ta, và ông ta chỉ có thể cho những gì ông ta muốn, và nếu ông ta muốn. Cũng hệt như thế với Kiều Lan và những lạc thú của tình yêu. Đôi môi của Kiều Lan đẹp lắm, nhưng ai muốn cưỡng bức Kiều Lan để hôn chúng, người ấy sẽ không hưởng chút gì ngọt ngào từ nơi môi ấy, mặc dù chúng biết rõ làm sao để ban bố sự ngọt ngào. Anh là một người học trò giỏi, hỡi Tất Đạt, bởi thế anh nên học thêm điều này: người ta có thể cầu xin, mua, được tặng hay gặp tình yêu trên các nẻo đường, nhưng tình yêu không bao giờ trộm cướp được. Anh đã hiểu lầm. Vâng, thật đáng tiếc, nếu một người thanh niên đẹp đẽ như anh mà hiểu lầm điều đó. Tất Đạt cúi đầu mỉm cười: - Nàng nói phải, Kiều Lan, thật đáng tiếc. Thật sẽ vô cùng đáng tiếc. Không, không một giọt ngọt ngào nào sẽ bị rơi mất từ môi nàng hay môi tôi. Vậy Tất Đạt sẽ trở lại khi có đủ những gì đang thiếu – áo quần, giầy, tiền bạc. Nhưng hỡi nàng Kiều Lan xinh đẹp, nàng không thể cho tôi vài lời khuyên nhủ sao... - Lời khuyên... Sao lại không... Ai mà lại không sẵn sàng chỉ cho một thầy Sa Môn, nghèo khó ngu ngốc từ núi xuống, sống giữa những con lừa... - Hỡi nàng Kiều Lan, tôi có thể đi đâu để kiếm được nhanh chóng ba thứ trên... - Ông bạn ơi, nhiều người muốn biết điều đó lắm. Ông phải làm những gì ông đã học để kiếm tiền, quần áo và giày. Một người nghèo khó không thể kiếm tiền bằng cách nào khác hơn... - Tôi biết suy tư, tôi biết chờ đợi, tôi biết nhịn đói. - Không biết gì khác sao... - Không. Ồ có, tôi biết làm thơ. Nàng có thể cho tôi một cái hôn để đổi lấy một bài thơ... - Tôi sẽ đổi nếu bài thơ của anh vừa ý. Bài thơ ấy gọi là gì... Suy nghĩ một lúc, Tất Đạt đọc lên những vần thơ: “Nhác trông nàng kiều nữ Dạo gót sen về rừng Ngõ vào, Sa Môn đứng Nghiêng mình trước bông hoa Nàng mỉm cười diễm lệ Chàng Sa Môn thầm nghĩ: “Nên dâng nàng lễ vật Hơn cúng tế thần linh”” Kiều Lan vỗ tay thật lớn, đến nỗi những đôi vòng vàng của nàng kêu reng rẻng. - Bài thơ của anh rất hay, hỡi thầy Sa Môn áo nâu. Và thật cũng không mất gì nếu tôi cho anh một chiếc hôn vì nó. Nàng đảo mắt ra hiệu cho chàng lại gần. Chàng để mặt sát mặt nàng, kề môi sát môi nàng, đôi môi tựa trái anh đào mới cắt. Kiều Lan hôn chàng đắm đuối, và người Sa Môn ngạc nhiên vô cùng thấy nàng đã dạy chàng nhiều quá, nàng khôn khéo quá, cách nàng chế ngự chàng, xua đuổi chàng, và sau chiếc hôn dài đầu tiên, bao nhiêu cái hôn khác chờ đợi chàng, chàng đứng yên, thở rất dài. Lúc ấy chàng giống hệt một trẻ nhỏ ngạc nhiên trước sự hiểu biết và kiến thức tràn đầy trải qua trước mắt. - Bài thơ của anh rất hay, Kiều Lan bảo, nếu tôi giàu có, tôi sẽ trả tiền cho anh về bài thơ ấy. Nhưng sẽ rất khó khăn cho anh nếu anh muốn kiếm được nhiều tiền như anh muốn với thi ca. Vì anh sẽ cần rất nhiều tiền nếu anh muốn là bạn của Kiều Lan. - Nàng biết hôn thật tuyệt – Tất Đạt ấp úng. - Quả thế, chính vì vậy mà tôi không thiếu áo quần, giày và mọi thứ xinh đẹp. Nhưng anh sẽ làm gì, anh không biết gì khác ngoài suy nghĩ, nhịn đói và làm thơ sao... - Tôi còn biết hát những bài tế thần – Tất Đạt nói. Nhưng tôi sẽ không hát nữa. Tôi cũng biết những bài phù chú, nhưng tôi sẽ không đọc nữa. Tôi đã đọc những thánh kinh. - Xem! Kiều Lan ngắt lời, - anh không biết viết và đọc... - Dĩ nhiên là biết. Nhiều người có thể làm được việc ấy. - Không có nhiều. Chẳng hạn như tôi, tôi không biết. Thật tốt, thật rất tốt, nếu anh biết đọc, biết viết. Có thể anh cần đến cả những bài phù chú. Lúc ấy một người tớ bước vào thì thầm bên tai bà chủ. Kiều Lan vội bảo Tất Đạt: - Tôi có một người khách. Nhanh lên, cút đi Tất Đạt. Không ai được thấy anh ở đây. Chúng ta sẽ gặp nhau lại ngày mai. Tuy nhiên, nàng lại sai gia nhân đem tặng thầy Sa Môn thánh thiện một chiếc áo choàng trắng. Không biết rõ những gì đang xảy ra, Tất Đạt được gia nhân nàng dẫn đi ra, qua một con đường ngoằn ngoèo, đến một ngôi nhà có vườn. Chàng được tặng một chiếc áo, dẫn vào bụi rậm và người ta bảo chàng lập tức rời khỏi cụm rừng chớ để cho ai thấy chàng. Vui mừng, chàng làm những gì người ta bảo. Đã quen với rừng núi, chàng lặng lẽ tiến ra khỏi khu rừng nhỏ và qua bên kia bờ rào. Vui mừng, chàng trở lại thành phố, mang theo chiếc áo cuộn tròn dưới cánh tay. Chàng đứng trước cửa một tửu quán ở đấy du khách tụ tập, lặng lẽ xin ăn và lặng lẽ nhận một mảnh bánh cốm. Có lẽ ngày mai, chàng nghĩ, ta sẽ không cần ăn xin nữa. Bỗng chốc chàng cảm thấy tràn ngập một niềm kiêu hãnh. Chàng không còn là một Sa Môn: thật cũng không nên ăn xin nữa. Chàng quăng cho chó mảnh bánh cốm và nhịn ăn. Đời sống ở đây thật là đơn giản, Tất Đạt nghĩ. Không có gì là khó khăn cả. Mọi sự đều là khó khăn, vô vọng khi ta là một Sa Môn. Bây giờ thì tất cả đều dễ dàng như cái hôn mà Kiều Lan dạy. Ta chỉ còn cần quần áo và tiền bạc. Đó là những mục đích dễ dàng không làm ai mất ngủ. Hôm sau chàng trở lại nơi Kiều Lan ở để thăm nàng. Nàng bảo: - Mọi sự đều tốt đẹp. Vạn Mỹ mời anh đến thăm ông ta. Ông ta là thương gia giàu có nhất trong thành phố. Nếu anh vừa ý ông ấy, ổng sẽ nhận anh giúp việc. Hãy khôn ngoan lên, vị Sa Môn áo nâu ơi! Và hãy thân mật với ông ấy: ông ta rất quyền thế, nhưng anh đừng nên quá nhún mình. Tôi không muốn anh là người tôi tớ của hắn ta, mà là người ngang hàng, nếu trái lại tôi sẽ bất bình về anh. Vạn Mỹ bắt đầu già và lười biếng. Nếu anh làm cho ổng vừa lòng, ổng sẽ rất tin cậy anh. Tất Đạt cám ơn nàng và cười, và khi biết rằng chàng đã đói từ hai hôm nay, nàng ra lệnh lấy bánh và trái cây cho chàng. Nàng bảo chàng khi sắp từ giã: - Anh may mắn đó. Hết cánh cửa này lại đến cánh cửa khác mở ra cho anh. Sao mà may mắn thế! Anh có bùa chú gì chăng... Tất Đạt trả lời: - Hôm qua tôi đã nói với nàng rằng tôi biết suy tư, chờ đợi và nhịn đói, nhưng nàng không cho đó là hữu ích. Rồi nàng sẽ thấy chúng rất hữu ích. Hôm kia tôi hãy còn là một khất sĩ lôi thôi, hôm qua tôi đã được hôn nàng, và bây giờ tôi sắp sửa là một thương gia có tiền, có tất cả những gì mà nàng yêu chuộng. - Phải đó, - nàng biểu đồng tình, - nhưng anh sẽ làm gì nếu không có tôi... Anh sẽ ra sao nếu Kiều Lan không giúp anh... - Kiều Lan thân mến ơi, khi tôi đến khu rừng của nàng, tôi đã đi bước đầu. Ý hướng của tôi là học về tình yêu từ nơi người đàn bà đẹp nhất. Ngay khi tôi đưa ra quyết định ấy, tôi biết chắc tôi sẽ thực hiện nó. Tôi biết nàng sẽ giúp tôi, biết từ cái nhìn đầu tiên của nàng khi tôi mới đến. - Và nếu tôi không muốn... - Nhưng nàng đã muốn, Kiều Lan hãy nghe này, khi nàng ném một viên đá trong nước, nó tìm đường nhanh nhất để rơi xuống đáy. Cũng thế, khi Tất Đạt có một mục đích. Nó không làm gì cả: nó chờ đợi, suy tư và nhịn đói; và khi làm những công việc thế tục nó cũng không làm gì, không khuấy động gì, mà tự để mình rơi. Tất Đạt bị lôi cuốn bởi mục đích của chính mình, vì nó không cho phép một điều gì chống lại mục đích đó len vào trong trí óc. Đó là điều mà Tất Đạt đã học từ các vị Sa Môn. Đó là điều mà những kẻ phàm phu cho là phép lạ và do quỉ thần sai khiến. Không có gì do quỉ thần cả, và cũng không có quỉ thần. Mọi người đều có thể thực hiện phép màu, mọi người đều có thể đạt đến mục đích nếu họ biết suy tư, chờ đợi và nhịn đói. Kiều Lan lắng nghe chàng nói. Nàng yêu giọng nói ấy, yêu cái nhìn ấy. Nàng dịu dàng bảo: - Có lẽ như anh nói, nhưng cũng có lẽ chính vì Tất Đạt là một chàng trai khôi ngô, vì cái nhìn của chàng thu phục được đàn bà, nên chàng mới may mắn như thế. Tất Đạt hôn nàng từ giã. - Tôi cầu mong được như vậy, hỡi người đã dạy cho tôi. Cầu mong cái nhìn của tôi mãi mãi làm đẹp lòng nàng, cầu mong sự may mắn sẽ mãi mãi đến với tôi từ nơi nàng! CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 6: Giữa Xã Hội Chương 6: Giữa Xã Hội Tất Đạt tìm đến Vạn Mỹ, người thương gia, và được chỉ vào một biệt thự giàu có. Gia nhân đưa chàng qua những tấm thảm rộng, vào một phòng, ở đấy chàng ngồi đợi chủ nhà. Vạn Mỹ đi vào, ông ta là người hoạt bát, dẻo dai, tóc hoa râm, đôi mắt thông minh khôn khéo và cái miệng đầy nhục cảm. Chủ, khách thân mật chào nhau. Người thương gia bắt đầu: - Tôi được nghe nói ngài là một người Bà La Môn học thức, nhưng muốn đi tìm việc với một thương gia. Vậy ngài túng thiếu lắm sao, nên đi kiếm việc làm... Tất Đạt trả lời: - Không, tôi không thiếu, và chẳng bao giờ thiếu gì. Tôi đến từ những vị Sa Môn mà tôi đã chung sống từ lâu. - Nếu ngài ở trong đoàn Sa Môn, làm sao ngài lại không thiếu thốn... Các vị Sa Môn há không hoàn toàn vô sản... - Tôi không có gì cả, - Tất Đạt nói - hiểu theo ý ông. Dĩ nhiên là tôi vô sản, nhưng do tôi tự nguyện, vì thế tôi không thiếu thốn. - Nhưng làm sao ngài sống nếu không có tài sản... - Tôi chưa bao giờ nghĩ đến điều ấy, thưa ông. Tôi không có gì cả đã gần ba năm nay, nhưng tôi chưa bao giờ nghĩ về việc phải sống bằng cách nào. - Nghĩa là ngài sống trên tài sản của kẻ khác... - Bề ngoài thì như thế. Người thương gia cũng sống trên tư hữu của kẻ khác. - Cũng đúng, nhưng người thương gia không lấy không. Họ cho lại hàng hóa của họ để trao đổi. - Điều đó thành như định luật. Mọi người đều có cho, có nhận. Cuộc đời là như vậy. - Ồ, nhưng nếu ngài không có gì, thì làm sao mà cho... - Mỗi người cho cái mà mình có. Người lính cho sức mạnh, người thương gia cho hàng hoá, người thầy cho kiến thức, người làm ruộng cho lúa, người chài lưới cho cá. - Phải lắm, nhưng ngài có thể cho gì... Ngài đã học được gì để cho... - Tôi có thể suy tư, chờ đợi và nhịn đói. - Chỉ có thế... - Tôi nghĩ chỉ có thế. - Nhưng những thứ ấy dùng để làm gì... Ví dụ như nhịn ăn, để làm gì... - Nó có giá trị lớn lắm, thưa ông. Khi một người không có gì để ăn, nhịn đói là điều khôn ngoan nhất. Chẳng hạn nếu tôi không học cách nhịn, thì tôi phải tìm việc làm hôm nay, hoặc với ông, hoặc nơi khác, vì cơn đói hướng dẫn tôi. Nhưng bây giờ, tôi có thể chờ đợi một cách bình thản. Tôi không vội vàng, không thiếu thốn, tôi có thể nhịn rất lâu và xem thường sự đói. Vì thế mà nhịn đói là hữu ích, thưa ông. - Thưa Sa Môn, ngài dạy rất phải. Xin ngài đợi cho một lát. Vạn Mỹ đi ra, và trở vào với một cuộn giấy trao cho khách, đoạn hỏi: - Ngài có thể đọc cái này không... Tất Đạt nhìn vào cuộn giấy và bắt đầu đọc bản giao kèo về thương mãi. Vạn Mỹ bảo: - Tốt lắm. Bây giờ xin ngài viết cho tôi một câu gì trên tờ giấy này, ông ta trao cho chàng giấy bút. Tất Đạt viết rồi trao trả tờ giấy. Vạn Mỹ đọc: “Viết lách rất tốt, nhưng suy nghĩ còn tốt hơn. Sự khôn khéo rất hay, nhưng kiên tâm còn hay hơn”. Người thương gia ngợi khen: - Ngài viết hay lắm. Chúng ta sẽ còn bàn luận nhiều, nhưng hôm nay tôi mời ngài làm vị khách và ở trong nhà tôi. Tất Đạt cám ơn ông ta và nhận lời. Người ta đem đến cho chàng áo quần, giày dép, và một gia nhân sửa soạn đồ tắm cho chàng mỗi ngày. Họ dọn cho chàng những mâm cơm ngon lành mỗi ngày hai dạo, nhưng chàng chỉ ăn có một buổi, và không dùng rượu thịt. Vạn Mỹ nói cho chàng nghe về việc mua bán, chỉ cho chàng xem hàng hóa, kho chứa hàng và sổ kế toán. Chàng học nhiều điều mới lạ, nghe nhiều và ít nói. Và nhớ đến lời Kiều Lan dặn, chàng không bao giờ hạ mình trước người thương gia mà buộc ông ta đối với chàng như một người ngang hàng hoặc cao hơn. Vạn Mỹ điều hành công việc cẩn thận say mê, nhưng Tất Đạt xem chúng như một trò chơi mà luật lệ thì chàng học thuộc nên chúng không làm chàng bận tâm. Ở nhà Vạn Mỹ chưa lâu, chàng đã dự phần trong công việc kinh doanh của ông ta. Tuy thế, hàng ngày chàng vẫn đến thăm Kiều Lan vào giờ nàng mời, ăn vận tề chỉnh, mang giày bóng và mang quà đến tặng nàng. Chàng học hỏi được nhiều nơi đôi môi đỏ khôn khéo của nàng. Bàn tay mềm dịu của nàng dạy chàng rất nhiều. Vốn còn là một đứa con trai khờ dại trong tình yêu, chàng thường đắm mình trong ái ân một cách mù quáng không biết chán chê, không bao giờ thỏa mãn. Nhưng nàng dạy cho chàng rằng không ai có thể hưởng thụ khoái lạc mà không đồng thời ban bố nó, và mỗi cử chỉ, mỗi sự mơn trớn, mỗi cái nhìn, mỗi phần trong cơ thể đều có bí quyết riêng của nó để đem khoái cảm cho người biết thưởng thức. Nàng dạy cho chàng rằng những người yêu đương không nên rời nhau sau khi âu yếm mà không cảm phục nhau, không chinh phục người yêu và bị chinh phục, để cho không có cảm giác ngấy chán hay cô đơn nào phát sinh, và nhất là không có cái cảm giác khủng khiếp là mình đã lạm dụng hay bị lạm dụng. Chàng trải qua những giờ thần dịu bên người kỹ nữ khôn khéo xinh đẹp, và trở thành học trò của nàng, người yêu của nàng, bạn quí của nàng. Giá trị và ý nghĩa của cuộc đời chàng hiện tại ngưng đọng nơi cuộc gần gũi Kiều Lan chứ không phải trong công việc kinh doanh với Vạn Mỹ. Người thương gia giao cho chàng viết những bức thư và ngân phiếu quan trọng và dần dần có lệ hỏi ý chàng về những việc hệ trọng. Chẳng bao lâu ông ta đã nhận thấy rằng Tất Đạt ít hiểu biết về lúa gạo, len, về việc chuyên chở hàng hóa và mậu dịch, nhưng chàng lại có một năng khiếu tự nhiên và vượt hẳn ông ta về sự trầm tĩnh và thản nhiên, trong nghệ thuật nghe và làm cho người lạ có cảm tưởng tốt đẹp về chàng. Ông ta nói với một người bạn: “Người Bà La Môn này không phải là một thương gia thực thụ và sẽ không bao giờ thành một thương gia cả, hắn không bao giờ say sưa với công việc ấy. Nhưng hắn có cái bí quyết của những người mà sự thành công tự đến với họ một cách dễ dàng, không biết vì hắn ra đời dưới một ngôi sao tốt, hay vì phép lạ, hay vì hắn đã học điều ấy nơi các Sa Môn. Hắn luôn luôn có vẻ thư thái trong công ăn việc làm, công việc chẳng bao giờ làm hắn bận tâm nhiều, hay chi phối hắn. Hắn chẳng bao giờ sợ thất bại và chẳng bao giờ lo mất mát”. Người bạn khuyên thương gia: “Hãy chia cho hắn một phần ba lợi tức của công việc hắn điều khiển, nhưng bắt hắn chịu cùng một tỷ lệ ấy nếu thua lỗ. Như vậy hắn sẽ hăng hái hơn”. Người thương gia theo lời khuyên ấy, nhưng Tất Đạt không mấy lưu tâm. Nếu có lời chàng nhận nó một cách bình tĩnh; nếu lỗ, chàng cười lớn và nói: “Ồ! Thì ra chuyến buôn này tệ thật! ”. Quả thế, chàng hầu như thờ ơ với việc thương mãi. Một hôm, chàng đi đến một làng nọ để mua một mùa lúa lớn. Khi chàng đến đấy, lúa đã bán cho một thương gia khác. Tuy vậy, chàng vẫn ở lại trong làng rất lâu, giao du với những người chủ trại, cho trẻ con tiền bạc, dự một đám cưới và trở về một cách thỏa mãn. Vạn Mỹ trách chàng đã không về ngay, để phí thời giờ và tiền bạc. Tất Đạt trả lời: - Bạn ơi, đừng có trách móc. Không việc gì thành tựu bằng lời khiển trách cả. Nếu có sự tổn thất nào, tôi sẽ chịu. Tôi rất bằng lòng chuyến du lịch này. Tôi đã được quen rất nhiều người, thân với người Bà La Môn, trẻ con đã ngồi trên gối tôi, những người chủ trại đã chỉ cho tôi xem những cánh đồng của họ. Không ai xem tôi là một thương gia cả. - Tất cả điều đó rất hay, Vạn Mỹ chấp nhận một cách miễn cưỡng – nhưng trên thực tế ngài là một thương gia. Hay là ngài chỉ đi vì sự ham vui của ngài thôi... Tất Đạt cười: - Dĩ nhiên tôi đi vì ham vui. (Chàng cười lớn). Sao lại không... Tôi đã quen với nhiều người và nhiều vùng mới. Tôi đã được tình bạn và lòng tin cậy. Nếu tôi là Vạn Mỹ, tôi đã bực bội bỏ ra về ngay khi thấy mình không mua chác được, mà lại tốn thì giờ, tiền bạc. Đằng này tôi đã trải qua những giờ tươi đẹp, học thêm nhiều điều, hưởng nhiều thú vui và không làm hại chính tôi cũng như kẻ khác vì sự bực dọc hay vội vàng. Nếu có dịp nào đến lại chỗ ấy, những người thân sẽ đón tiếp tôi, và tôi sẽ sung sướng vì lần trước tôi không tỏ ra vội vã bất bình. Dù sao, hãy gác câu chuyện ấy lại, ông bạn ạ, và đừng tự dày vò mình với những lời trách móc. Nếu có ngày ông nghĩ rằng Tất Đạt này hại ông, hãy chỉ nói một lời và Tất Đạt sẽ đi khỏi nơi đây. Cho đến ngày đó, giờ chúng ta hãy là những người bạn tốt của nhau. Người thương gia cố làm cho chàng nhận chân được rằng chàng đang ăn cơm của ông ta, nhưng vô hiệu. Tất Đạt ăn cơm của riêng chàng. Hơn nữa, họ đều ăn cơm của người khác, cơm của mọi người. Tất Đạt không bao giờ bận tâm về những lo lắng của Vạn Mỹ, và Vạn Mỹ thì rất nhiều lo lắng. Khi một công việc có vẻ sắp thất bại, khi một chuyến hàng bị mất, khi một con nợ không chịu trả, Vạn Mỹ không bao giờ có thể làm cho người đồng nghiệp của mình tin rằng điều đó có thể làm điên tiết lên, làm cho trán nhăn lại và giấc ngủ trằn trọc. Một hôm, khi Vạn Mỹ nhắc lại rằng chàng đã học được mọi sự từ nơi ông ta, Tất Đạt trả lời: - Đừng nói đùa chứ. Tôi đã học được của ông giá tiền rổ cá bao nhiêu, và cho vay tiền có lời bao nhiêu. Đó là kiến thức của ông. Nhưng tôi không học của ông cách suy tư, ông Vạn Mỹ thân mến, ông nên học ở tôi điều đó. Quả thế, tâm hồn chàng không ở trong công việc thương mãi. Nó hữu ích cho chàng vì nó đem lại tiền để chàng biếu Kiều Lan, và chàng được nhiều tiền hơn là chàng cần. Hơn nữa, cảm tình và trí tò mò của chàng chỉ hướng về những con người, mà những công việc, lo âu, lạc thú và sự điên rồ của họ thật xa vời và lạ lùng đối với chàng hơn cả mặt trăng. Mặc dù chàng cảm thấy rất dễ dàng nói chuyện với mọi người, sống với mọi người, học hỏi mọi người, chàng ý thức sâu xa một điều rằng có một cái gì đó ngăn cách chàng với họ, và đều do thực trạng chàng đã là một Sa Môn. Chàng thấy mọi người sống một cách trẻ con và như thú vật, điều làm cho chàng vừa cảm thương vừa khinh bỉ. Chàng thấy họ lao nhọc đau khổ và bạc đầu về những chuyện mà đối với chàng thật không đáng một đồng xu, - tiền bạc, lạc thú nhỏ nhoi và những danh vọng hão huyền. Chàng thấy họ đánh mắng, chửi nhau, than vãn về những nổi khổ cực mà sẽ làm cho một vị Sa Môn bật cười, và họ khổ đau vì những thiếu thốn mà một vị Sa Môn không cảm thấy. Chàng nhận lấy tất cả những gì người ta mang lại cho chàng. Người thương gia đem đến hàng vải để bán cũng được đón tiếp, con nợ đến vay cũng được đón tiếp y hệt, kẻ ăn xin cũng được tiếp đón, có khi ở lại hàng giờ để kể lể nỗi nghèo nàn với chàng mặc dù hắn không nghèo khó bằng bất cứ một Sa Môn nào. Chàng tiếp đãi không chút phân biệt, từ người thương gia giàu xa lạ đến người tôi tớ cạo râu cho chàng, và những anh hàng rong mà chàng mua chuối đã đánh cắp những đồng xu lẻ của chàng. Khi Vạn Mỹ đến kể cho chàng nghe những nỗi lo lắng và trách cứ về một vụ thua lỗ, chàng lắng nghe một cách tò mò chăm chú, và há hốc mồm, cố gắng để hiểu ông ta, nhượng bộ ông ta một tí khi cần, và tảng lờ ông ta để đến với người cần chàng hơn. Và rất nhiều người đến với chàng, người thì đến vì công việc mua bán, người thì để lừa gạt chàng, người để nghe chàng nói, người để nghe chàng cảm thông, người cần chàng chỉ bảo. Chàng giúp họ ý kiến, cảm thông với họ, cho chác họ, để cho họ lừa gạt chàng một ít, và để tư tưởng chàng bận rộn vì trò chơi này cũng như trước đấy chàng đã bận rộn vì thần linh và Đại ngã. Thỉnh thoảng chàng nghe trong tâm tư một tiếng nói yếu ớt, nhẹ nhàng, nhắc nhở chàng một cách âm thầm, phàn nàn một cách lặng lẽ đến nỗi chàng khó có thể nghe thấy. Rồi đột nhiên chàng thấy rõ ràng chàng đang sống một nếp sống quái gở, rằng chàng đang làm việc chỉ đáng giá như một ván bài, rằng chàng cũng vui vẻ đấy và đôi khi hưởng khoái lạc nữa, nhưng sự sống chân thật đang trôi qua mà không chạm đến chàng. Như một cầu thủ chơi với quả cầu, chàng chơi với công việc kinh doanh, với những người chung quanh, ngắm nhìn họ, thích thú vì họ, nhưng tâm hồn chàng thì không có ở đấy. Bản ngã thực của chàng đang đi phiêu lưu một nơi nào đấy rất xa, âm thầm đi qua và không dính líu gì đến sự sống hiện tại của chàng. Đôi khi chàng sợ hãi những ý nghĩ ấy và ước sao được chia xẻ công việc hàng ngày trẻ con của họ một cách hăng hái, tham dự vào đời sống thực sự, thụ hưởng và sống đời sống của họ thực sự, thay vì chỉ ở đấy như một khách bàng quang. Chàng đến thăm Kiều Lan thường xuyên, học nghệ thuật yêu đương trong đó cho và nhận trở thành một. Chàng nói chuyện với nàng, học ở nàng, chỉ bảo nàng và nhận những lời chỉ bảo. Nàng hiểu chàng hơn Thiện Hữu ngày xưa hiểu chàng, nàng giống chàng hơn là Thiện Hữu đã giống chàng. Một hôm chàng bảo nàng: - Em thật giống tôi, khác hẳn mọi người. Em là Kiều Lan và không giống ai khác, và ở trong em hình như có sự bình lặng, một nơi thiêng liêng ở đấy, em cũng như tôi, có thể lui về bất cứ lúc nào và trở thành chính em. Ít người có khả năng ấy, trong khi mọi người đều có thể có. - Không phải mọi người đều khôn ngoan cả, Kiều Lan bảo. - Điều ấy không can hệ gì, Kiều Lan. Vạn Mỹ cũng khôn như tôi, nhưng ông ta không có nơi thiêng liêng ấy. Nhiều người khác có nhưng lại chỉ là những trẻ con về kiến thức. Hầu hết đều giống những chiếc lá rơi phiêu bạt, quay cuồng trong không rồi rơi xuống đất. Nhưng một số ít người khác thì giống như những vì sao, đi một con đường đã định: không một cơn gió nào có thể chi phối họ, họ có sẵn trong mình kim chỉ nam và lối đi. Trong tất cả những người khôn ngoan – tôi biết nhiều người – có một người hoàn toàn về phương diện này. Tôi không bao giờ quên được người ấy. Ngài là Cồ Đàm, đấng Giác Ngộ. Mỗi ngày có hàng ngàn thanh niên theo nghe giáo lý của Ngài và theo lời Ngài mỗi giờ phút, nhưng họ đều là những chiếc lá rơi; họ không có trong họ sự khôn ngoan và hướng đạo. Kiều Lan mỉm cười nhìn chàng: - Anh lại nói về ông ấy rồi. Anh lại có những tư tưởng Sa Môn. Tất Đạt im lặng, và họ chơi trò yêu đương. Thân nàng mềm mại như chiếc cung của một nhà thiện xạ, kẻ nào học tình yêu nơi nàng sẽ học được nhiều lạc thú, nhiều bí quyết. Nàng đùa giỡn với Tất Đạt một lúc, xua đuổi chàng làm chàng đê mê, chiếm đoạt chàng, và thích thú vì sự chế ngự của mình cho đến khi chàng chịu thua, kiệt sức nằm bên cạnh nàng. Người kỹ nữ cúi xuống nhìn rất lâu vào mặt chàng, vào đôi mắt chàng đã mệt mỏi. - Anh là người tình tài giỏi nhất mà em gặp, nàng nói một cách trầm ngâm. Anh khỏe mạnh hơn những người khác, dẻo dai hơn, hăng hái hơn. Anh đã học rất giỏi nghệ thuật của em, Tất Đạt. Một ngày kia, khi em lớn tuổi hơn, em muốn có một đứa con với anh. Nhưng anh ôi, anh vẫn còn là một Sa Môn. Anh không thực sự yêu em – Anh không yêu ai cả. Có phải thế không... - Có lẽ, Tất Đạt mệt mỏi đáp. Tôi cũng như em, em cũng không thể yêu. Nếu không, làm sao em có thể luyện tập về yêu đương như một nghệ thuật... Có lẽ những người như chúng ta không thể yêu đương. Những người thường tình kia, mới có thể yêu đương được - đấy là bí quyết của họ. CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG CÂU CHUYỆN DÒNG SÔNG Hermann Hesse Hermann Hesse www.dtv-ebook.com www.dtv-ebook.com Chương 7: Khổ Đau Chương 7: Khổ Đau Trong một thời gian khá lâu, Tất Đạt sống nếp sống của thế tục mà không dự phần vào thế tục. Những giác quan mà chàng đã kềm chế suốt những năm dài say mê sống đời khổ hạnh, bây giờ lại được vùng dậy. Chàng đã nếm mùi của cải, đam mê và thế lực, nhưng chàng vẫn còn là Sa Môn một thời gian rất lâu trong tâm khảm. Nàng Kiều Lan khôn khéo đã nhận thấy điều này. Đời chàng luôn luôn được hướng dẫn bởi nghệ thuật suy tư, đợi chờ và nhịn đói. Những con người xa lạ của thế tục, những thường nhân, vẫn còn xa lạ đối với chàng cũng như chàng cách xa họ. Năm tháng trôi qua. Tất Đạt không buồn để ý đến thời gian, vì được vây quay bởi những hoàn cảnh thuận tiện dễ dãi, chàng đã trở nên giàu có. Từ lâu chàng đã làm chủ biệt thự có tôi tớ, có một khu vườn ở ngoại ô cạnh dòng sông. Mọi người đều yêu thích chàng khi cần tiền bạc hay lời chỉ bảo. Tuy thế, trừ Kiều Lan ra, chàng không có bạn thân. Sự thức tỉnh huy hoàng mà chàng đã hơn một lần chứng nghiệm lúc thiếu thời, vào những ngày sau khi nghe đức Cồ Đàm thuyết pháp, sau khi từ giã Thiện Hữu, sự thức tỉnh bén nhạy kia, lòng kiêu hãnh được đứng độc lập không cần thầy hay thuyết lý, lòng hăm hở nghe tiếng diệu âm nội tại... tất cả đã dần trôi qua và trở thành ký ức. Dòng suối linh thiêng đã một lần gần gũi chàng và hát ca trong lòng chàng, bây giờ thì thầm rất nhẹ xa xa. Tuy nhiên, nhiều điều chàng học ở các vị Sa Môn, ở đức Phật, ở cha chàng, ở các vị Bà La Môn, chàng vẫn còn nhớ rất lâu: một cuộc sống điều độ, lạc thú của tư duy, những giờ thiền định, tri thức huyền nhiệm về Tự ngã, về cái Ta vĩnh cữu không phải thân thể cũng không phải ý thức. Nhiều điều chàng còn giữ lại, nhiều điều đã chìm xuống dưới làn bụi bao phủ. Như một cái bánh xe đã tắt máy còn quay một lúc lâu, quay rất chậm rồi ngừng, bánh xe khổ hạnh cũng vậy, bánh xe tư duy, bánh xe phân biệt còn quay rất lâu trong tâm hồn Tất Đạt, nó còn chuyển động nhưng chậm chạp, và ngập ngừng, sắp đứng lại. Chầm chậm, như chất mục nát len dần vào thân cây đang chết, len dần và làm cho thối rữa dần, thế tục với sự trơ lì vô cảm giác cũng len lỏi dần vào tâm hồn Tất Đạt, dần dần lấp đầy tâm hồn chàng, làm cho nó trầm trệ, mệt mỏi, ru ngủ nó. Nhưng mặt khác, những giác quan chàng lại được tỉnh thức hơn, chúng học được rất nhiều, kinh nghiệm rất nhiều. Tất Đạt học được cách điều hành những việc kinh doanh, thi hành quyền lực của mình đối với người, chơi với đàn bà, chàng đã mặc đồ sang trọng, sai bảo tôi tớ, tắm mình trong nước thơm. Chàng đã biết ăn những thức ăn thịnh soạn, cá thịt, bồ câu hầm và những thứ gia vị tinh xảo, những của ngon vật lạ. Chàng đã biết uống rượu, làm cho chàng lười biếng và chóng quên. Chàng đã biết chơi tài xỉu, đánh cờ, ngắm vũ nữ, ngồi kiệu, ngủ trên chiếc giường êm dịu. Nhưng chàng luôn luôn cảm thấy mình khác và cao hơn mọi người; chàng luôn luôn nhìn họ với một cái nhìn khinh khỉnh, chế giễu ngạo nghễ, sự ngạo nghễ của một Sa Môn đối với người thế tục. Khi Vạn Mỹ nổi cuồng lên, khi ông ta tự thấy mình đã bị lăng nhục hoặc khi ông bị rối rắm vì việc kinh doanh, Tất Đạt luôn luôn nhìn ông ta đầy chế giễu. Nhưng dần dà, và một cách thầm lặng, sự chế giễu và mặc cảm hơn người của chàng vơi đi cùng thời gian. Dần dà, cùng với những của cải tăng thêm, Tất Đạt cũng thu thập thêm ít đặc tính của những con người thường tình, thêm một ít lo âu của họ, một ít tính trẻ con của họ. Tuy nhiên chàng vẫn thèm thuồng số phận họ, càng giống họ bao nhiêu chàng càng ganh tị họ bấy nhiêu. Chàng ganh họ ở một điều độc nhất mà chàng thiếu, ấy là tầm quan trọng họ sống cuộc đời họ, bề sâu của khoái lạc cũng như đau khổ của họ, hạnh phúc xao xuyến nhưng êm đềm, ở mãnh lực liên tục của họ trong tình yêu. Những con người ấy luôn luôn mê say chính họ, con cái họ, danh vọng, tiền tài, kế hoạch và niềm hy vọng. Nhưng những điều này chàng không học được của họ, những khoái lạc trẻ con và những sự điên rồ; chàng chỉ học được ở họ những điều khó chịu, những điều mà chàng khinh bỉ. Sau một buổi chiều miệt mài trong cuộc truy hoan, thường thường là sáng hôm sau chàng cảm thấy vô cùng chán chường mệt mỏi. Chàng trở nên bực bội nóng nảy khi Vạn Mỹ quấy rầy chàng với những lo âu của ông ta. Chàng thường cười quá lớn khi thua bạc. Nét mặt chàng vẫn còn thông minh trí thức hơn những kẻ khác, nhưng chàng ít khi cười, và dần dần nét mặt chàng nhiễm lấy những vẻ thường thấy nơi những người giàu - vẻ bất bình, mệt mỏi, chán nản, nhàn hạ và vắng bóng yêu thương. Dần dần căn bệnh nội tâm của những người trưởng giả nhiễm vào trong chàng. Như một tấm màn, một dải mù sương mong manh, sự mệt mỏi chán chường trùm lên Tất Đạt mỗi ngày một dày nặng, mỗi tháng một đậm màu, mỗi năm một trầm trọng. Như một chiếc áo dần cũ theo thời gian, mất dần vẻ chói sáng, bạc màu và nhăn nheo, viền áo nứt rạn, đường chỉ bị sờn, đời sống mới mà Tất Đạt bắt đầu sau khi từ giã Thiện Hữu cũng trở nên cũ dần. Nó cũng mất dần sắc màu theo năm tháng: lằn xếp và vết bẩn dồn dập thêm, ảo tưởng cùng sự ngấy chán buồn nôn đã chực sẵn, nấp kín hoặc ló dạng ở vài nơi. Tất Đạt không chú ý đến. Chàng chỉ để ý rằng tiếng nội tâm trong sáng đã từng thức tỉnh chàng và luôn luôn dìu dắt chàng trong những giờ phút tốt đẹp nhất, bây giờ tiếng ấy bỗng im bặt. Nếp sống thế tục đã tóm lấy chàng; lạc thú, tham lam, lười biếng và cuối cùng cả đến tính dồn của, thói tục mà chàng vẫn xem thường, khinh bỉ vì nó điên rồ nhất. Tài sản, vật sở hữu và của cải, cuối cùng đã bẫy chàng. Chúng không còn là một trò chơi, một cuộc đen đỏ; chúng đã trở thành một dây xích, một gánh nặng. Qua ván đỏ đen, Tất Đạt đã đi hoang theo con đường quái gở cong quẹo, xuống cái dốc cuối cùng thấp nhất. Từ lúc chàng thôi còn là một Sa Môn trong tâm hồn, chàng bắt đầu chơi bạc vì tiền và vàng, càng ngày càng hăng hái, một cuộc đỏ đen mà như mọi người thường khác: đầu tiên chàng cũng ngồi vào một cách tươi cười và dễ dãi. Chàng là một tay cờ cừ khôi, ít ai dám chơi với chàng vì chàng đặt tiền quá cao và liều lĩnh. Chàng cảm thấy một say mê, một khoái cảm trong sự phung phí tiền vào cờ bạc, một thứ tiền khốn nạn. Chàng không thể bằng cách nào khác, bày tỏ một cách rõ rệt và ngạo nghễ hơn lòng khinh bỉ của chàng đối với của cải, thần tượng sai lạc của những thương gia. Bởi thế chàng đặt tiền rất cao, không dè sẻn, tự ghét mình, tự chế nhạo mình. Chàng được hàng nghìn và ném ra hàng nghìn, thua tiền, thua đồ nữ trang, thua một ngôi nhà ở thôn quê, lại được, rồi thua lại. Chàng say mê nỗi phập phồng ấy, nỗi phập phồng ghê gớm nặng nề mà chàng trải qua trong những ván bài, những sự hồi hộp nín thở, với những món tiền cọc rất cao. Chàng yêu thích cảm giác này và liên tục tìm kiếm nó lại, tăng nó thêm lên, kích thích nó, vì chỉ trong cảm giác này chàng mới thấy được một thứ hạnh phúc, một thứ phấn khởi, một đà sống nồng nàn hơn trong cuộc đời tẻ nhạt, vô vị, chán chường của chàng. Và sau mỗi trận thua bạc lớn, chàng lại tận tuỵ kiếm thêm của, hăm hở theo đuổi việc kinh doanh và hối thúc con nợ, vì chàng cần chơi lại, cần phung phí lại, cần phơi bày nỗi khinh miệt của chàng đối với tiền trở lại. Tất Đạt trở nên nóng nảy khi thua bạc, chàng mất bình tĩnh trước những con nợ dây dưa, chàng không còn tử tế với những kẻ ăn xin nữa, chàng không còn muốn cho người nghèo mượn tiền hoặc bố thí nữa. Chàng, người đặt cọc hàng mười nghìn vào ván bài rồi cười lớn, bây giờ trở nên khắt khe và bủn xỉn hơn trong việc kinh doanh, và đôi khi về đêm chàng lại nằm mộng thấy tiền. Và mỗi khi tỉnh dậy từ cái bùa chú khả ố này, khi chàng nhìn thấy bóng mình trong gương treo ở tường phòng ngủ, nét mặt già hơn và xấu hơn, mỗi khi hổ thẹn và sự buồn nôn xâm chiếm chàng, chàng lại chạy trốn, trốn vào trong ván đen đỏ khác, bối rối trốn vào dục lạc, vào men rượu và từ đó, trở lại với lòng hăm hở dồn chứa thêm tài sản. Chàng để mình hao mòn trong vòng luân chuyển vô tri ấy, và già đi, rồi bệnh hoạn. Rồi bỗng một hôm, một giấc mơ làm chàng nhớ lại. Chàng ở lại với Kiều Lan trong buổi chiều, trong khu vườn chơi xinh đẹp của nàng. Họ ngồi nói chuyện dưới một gốc cây. Kiều Lan đang nói cách nghiêm trọng, sự buồn rầu và mệt mỏi sau lời nói của nàng. Nàng bảo chàng nói cho nghe về đức Phật, và nghe bao nhiêu cũng không đủ đối với nàng, nào là mắt Ngài sáng trong làm sao, nào là chiếc miệng xinh đẹp và bình an, nụ cười huyền bí, tư thái Ngài đầy vẻ thanh tịnh làm sao. Rất lâu chàng phải thuật cho nàng nghe về đấng Giác Ngộ, và Kiều Lan đã thở dài và bảo: - Một ngày kia, có lẽ không lâu, em cũng sẽ đi theo đức Phật ấy. Em sẽ dâng Ngài khu vườn chơi của em và qui y theo giáo lý của Ngài. Nhưng đoạn nàng quyến rũ chàng, và hết sức nồng say, nàng vồ lấy chàng trong một cuộc ân ái vừa cuồng nhiệt vừa đầy nước mắt, tuồng như nàng muốn ép lấy giọt ngọt ngào cuối cùng của thứ khoái lạc phù du kia. Chưa bao giờ Tất Đạt thấy rõ một cách lạ lùng rằng dục lạc đắm say gần giống cảnh chết chóc như thế. Chàng nằm bên cạnh nàng, mặt nàng kề sát mặt chàng, và chàng đọc thấy trong đôi mắt nàng, ở khoé miệng nàng lần đầu tiên những dấu hiệu nhắc nhở mùa thu của cuộc đời, những đường nhăn của tuổi tác. Chính chàng, chỉ đang độ tứ tuần, cũng đã thấy xuất hiện những sợi hoa râm trong mớ tóc đen của mình. Sự mỏi mệt đã in dấu trên gương mặt xinh đẹp của Kiều Lan, do bởi tiếp tục một con đường dài không mục đích tươi vui. Sự mệt mỏi và tuổi già đang lộ liễu, cùng với một nỗi sợ hãi đang tiềm ẩn chưa được nói ra, có lẽ chưa được ý thức, nỗi lo sợ mùa thu của cuộc đời: sợ hãi, già, chết. Thở dài, chàng từ giã nàng, lòng nặng khổ đau và nỗi lo sợ âm thầm. Tất Đạt đã ở lại nhà nàng đêm đó với men rượu và vũ nữ, tự cho mình cao hơn đồng bọn, mặc dù kỳ thực chàng không còn gì hơn họ. Chàng uống nhiều rượu và rất khuya mới vào giường, mệt mỏi nhưng trằn trọc, gần muốn khóc và tuyệt vọng. Chàng cố ngủ nhưng vô hiệu. Tim chàng quá đau khổ, tưởng chừng không thể nào chịu đựng được nữa. Chàng cảm thấy một cơn buồn nôn xâm chiếm lấy chàng như một thứ rượu vô vị, một thứ nhạc quá ẻo lả và vô duyên, nụ cười quá nhạt nhẽo của những vũ nữ hay mùi hương quá nồng của mái tóc họ, của ngực họ. Nhưng trên tất cả, chàng buồn nôn vì chính chàng. Như một người đã ăn uống quá nhiều và nôn ra một cách khó nhọc nhưng rồi cảm thấy dễ chịu, con người bứt rứt của chàng muốn một cách quyết liệt, vứt bỏ hết những lạc thú, những thói quen, vứt bỏ cuộc sống hoàn toàn vô nghĩa này. Chỉ khi trời sáng và khi mọi hoạt động ngoài thành phố bắt đầu, chàng mới sực thiếp đi, hơi khuây khoả, và ngủ yên trong chốc lát. Chính trong lúc ấy chàng đã mơ một giấc chiêm bao. Kiều Lan nuôi một con chim lạ nhỏ trong chiếc lồng con bằng vàng. Chàng nằm mơ về con chim ấy. Con chim, thường hót về ban sáng, bỗng nhiên câm hẳn; và chàng ngạc nhiên đi đến chiếc lồng con nhìn vào. Nó đã chết và nằm cong queo trên sàn. Chàng đem nó ra, cầm trên tay một lúc rồi ném ra đường. Chính lúc ấy chàng bỗng sợ hãi và đau đớn như chàng đã vứt đi cùng với con chim ấy tất cả những gì tốt đẹp và giá trị trong đời chàng. Khi tỉnh dậy, chàng cảm thấy lòng tràn ngập một nỗi buồn sầu ghê gớm. Chàng mường tượng mình đã hoang phí một cách vô vị vô nghĩa; chàng đã không giữ lại được một điều gì của sự sống, một điều gì quí báu và xứng đáng. Chàng đứng cô độc như một kẻ đắm tàu đứng trên bờ. Buồn bã, Tất Đạt đi vào khu vườn chơi của chàng, chàng đóng cổng, ngồi dưới một cây xoài, và cảm thấy đầy chết chóc rùng rợn trong tâm khảm. Chàng ngồi và cảm thấy mình đang chết dần, đang héo mòn, đang chấm dứt. Dần dần, chàng tập trung lại tư tưởng và ôn lại cả cuộc đời, từ những ngày trẻ thơ nhất mà chàng còn nhớ. Khi nào thì chàng đã thực sự hạnh phúc... Khi nào chàng đã thực nếm trải niềm vui... Ừ, chàng đã trải qua điều này nhiều lần. Chàng đã vui trong những ngày niên thiếu, khi chàng được những người Bà La Môn khen ngợi, khi chàng vượt xa những người đồng thời, khi chàng đọc những thánh thư, trong những cuộc tranh biện với những bậc trí thức, khi dự những cuộc tế thần. Lúc đó chàng đã nghĩ: “Một con đường đang trải trước mắt. Những vị thần linh đang đợi ngươi”. Và khi còn là một thiếu niên, khi lý tưởng mãi bay lượn thúc giục chàng đi theo rồi từ giã những người cùng đi tìm kiếm như chàng, khi chàng cố hết sức để mình hiểu những lời dạy của người Bà La Môn, khi mỗi kiến thức mới thu được chỉ lôi kéo theo một niềm khao khát mới, và trong niềm khát khao của chàng, trong những cố gắng của chàng, chàng đã tự nhủ: “Tiến lên đi, tiến lên! Đây là con đường của ngươi”. Chàng đã nghe theo tiếng nói ấy khi chàng rời nhà và chọn đời sống Sa Môn, và khi chàng rời những vị Sa Môn để đến đức Phật, và khi chàng rời đức Phật để tiếp tục con đường vô định. Đã bao lâu rồi từ khi chàng nghe tiếng ấy, từ khi chàng bay bổng trên bất cứ chiều cao nào... Thật vô vị và buồn thảm làm sao, con đường chàng đã đi qua! Qua bao nhiêu năm dài rồi, chàng không có một mục đích nào cả, không một niềm hân hoan khát khao, không một thú nhỏ hẹp, là vẫn không thực thoả mãn! Không biết rõ điều đó, chàng đã cố gắng và khao khát mấy năm rồi, để được giống như mọi người khác, như những con người trẻ thơ kia, mà đời chàng vẫn khốn đốn và nghèo nàn hơn họ, bởi mục đích của họ không phải là mục đích của chàng, nỗi sầu muộn của họ cũng không phải là nỗi sầu muộn của chàng. Cả thế giới những người như Vạn Mỹ này chỉ là một ván bài trước mặt chàng, một cuộc khiêu vũ, một hài kịch để nhìn ngắm. Chỉ có Kiều Lan là yêu quí đối với chàng, là có giá trị đối với chàng. Nhưng nàng có còn yêu quí, giá trị hay không... Chàng có thực cần thiết đến nàng chăng... Họ lại không đang chơi một ván bài không dứt đó sao... Có cần thiết sống vì ván bài ấy hay không... Không. Ván bài này gọi là Sanh Tử, một trò chơi trẻ con, một trò chơi mà có lẽ chơi một, hai, mười lần cũng thú vị đấy, nhưng có đáng để chơi liên tục mãi mãi không... Tất Đạt biết ngay là trò chơi đã chấm dứt, rằng chàng không thể chơi thêm được nữa. Một cơn rùng mình thoáng qua thân thể chàng, cảm thấy một cái gì đó đã chết. Chàng ngồi suốt ngày hôm	188,308
The Complete Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love Committed The Last American Man Stern Men Pilgrims (Elizabeth Gilbert) (Z-Library).pdf	THE COMPLETE ELIZABETH GILBERT eat pray love ALSO INCLUDING: Committed The Last American Man Stern Men & Pilgrims BLOOMSBURY Table of Contents Eat, Pray, Love Commited The Last American Man Stern Men Pilgrims Note on the Author Contents Introduction Or How This Book Works Or The 109th Bead Italy Or ‘Say It Like You Eat It.’ Or Thirty-six Tales About the Pursuit of Pleasure Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 India Or ‘Congratulations to Meet You.’ Or Thirty-six Tales About the Pursuit of Devotion Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Chapter 53 Chapter 54 Chapter 55 Chapter 56 Chapter 57 Chapter 58 Chapter 59 Chapter 60 Chapter 61 Chapter 62 Chapter 63 Chapter 64 Chapter 65 Chapter 66 Chapter 67 Chapter 68 Chapter 69 Chapter 70 Chapter 71 Chapter 72 Indonesia Or ‘Even in My Underpants I Feel Different.’ Or Thirty-six Tales About the Pursuit of Balance Chapter 73 Chapter 74 Chapter 75 Chapter 76 Chapter 77 Chapter 78 Chapter 79 Chapter 80 Chapter 81 Chapter 82 Chapter 83 Chapter 84 Chapter 85 Chapter 86 Chapter 87 Chapter 88 Chapter 89 Chapter 90 Chapter 91 Chapter 92 Chapter 93 Chapter 94 Chapter 95 Chapter 96 Chapter 97 Chapter 98 Chapter 99 Chapter 100 Chapter 101 Chapter 102 Chapter 103 Chapter 104 Chapter 105 Chapter 106 Chapter 107 Chapter 108 Final Recognition and Reassurance INTRODUCTION Or How This Book Works Or The 109th Bead When you’re traveling in India—especially through holy sites and Ashrams—you see a lot of people wearing beads around their necks. You also see a lot of old photographs of naked, skinny and intimidating Yogis (or sometimes even plump, kindly and radiant Yogis) wearing beads, too. These strings of beads are called japa malas. They have been used in India for centuries to assist devout Hindus and Buddhists in staying focused during prayerful meditation. The necklace is held in one hand and fingered in a circle—one bead touched for every repetition of mantra. When the medieval Crusaders drove East for the holy wars, they witnessed worshippers praying with these japa malas, admired the technique, and brought the idea home to Europe as rosary. The traditional japa mala is strung with 108 beads. Amid the more esoteric circles of Eastern philosophers, the number 108 is held to be most auspicious, a perfect three-digit multiple of three, its components adding up to nine, which is three threes. And three, of course, is the number representing supreme balance, as anyone who has ever studied either the Holy Trinity or a simple barstool can plainly see. Being as this whole book is about my efforts to find balance, I have decided to structure it like a japa mala, dividing my story into 108 tales, or beads. This string of 108 tales is further divided into three sections about Italy, India and Indonesia—the three countries I visited during this year of self-inquiry. This division means that there are 36 tales in each section, which appeals to me on a personal level because I am writing all this during my thirty-sixth year. Now before I get too Louis Farrakhan here with this numerology business, let me conclude by saying that I also like the idea of stringing these stories along the structure of a japa mala because it is so . . . structured. Sincere spiritual investigation is, and always has been, an endeavor of methodical discipline. Looking for Truth is not some kind of spazzy free-for-all, not even during this, the great age of the spazzy free-for-all. As both a seeker and a writer, I find it helpful to hang on to the beads as much as possible, the better to keep my attention focused on what it is I’m trying to accomplish. In any case, every japa mala has a special, extra bead—the 109th bead—which dangles outside that balanced circle of 108 like a pendant. I used to think the 109th bead was an emergency spare, like the extra button on a fancy sweater, or the youngest son in a royal family. But apparently there is an even higher purpose. When your fingers reach this marker during prayer, you are meant to pause from your absorption in meditation and thank your teachers. So here, at my own 109th bead, I pause before I even begin. I offer thanks to all my teachers, who have appeared before me this year in so many curious forms. But most especially I thank my Guru, who is compassion’s very heartbeat, and who so generously permitted me to study at her Ashram while I was in India. This is also the moment where I would like to clarify that I write about my experiences in India purely from a personal standpoint and not as a theological scholar or as anybody’s official spokesperson. This is why I will not be using my Guru’s name throughout this book—because I cannot speak for her. Her teachings speak best for themselves. Nor will I reveal either the name or the location of her Ashram, thereby sparing that fine institution publicity which it may have neither the interest in nor the resources for managing. One final expression of gratitude: While scattered names throughout this book have been changed for various reasons, I’ve elected to change the names of every single person I met—both Indian and Western—at this Ashram in India. This is out of respect for the fact that most people don’t go on a spiritual pilgrimage in order to appear later as a character in a book. (Unless, of course, they are me.) I’ve made only one exception to this self-imposed policy of anonymity. Richard from Texas really is named Richard, and he really is from Texas. I wanted to use his real name because he was so important to me when I was in India. One last thing—when I asked Richard if it was OK with him if I mentioned in my book that he used to be a junkie and a drunk, he said that would be totally fine. He said, “I’d been trying to figure out how to get the word out about that, anyhow.” But first—Italy . . . ITALY Or ‘Say It Like You Eat It.’ Or Thirty-six Tales About the Pursuit of Pleasure 1 I wish Giovanni would kiss me. Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and— like most Italian guys in their twenties—he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am a professional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old. Purely as a matter of principle I wouldn’t inflict my sorry, busted-up old self on the lovely, unsullied Giovanni. Not to mention that I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy. To which the savvy observer might inquire: “Then why did you come to Italy?” To which I can only reply—especially when looking across the table at handsome Giovanni—“Excellent question.” Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it’s not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other’s languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I’d arrived in Rome, thanks to that big Internet café at the Piazza Barbarini, across the street from that fountain with the sculpture of that sexy merman blowing into his conch shell. He (Giovanni, that is—not the merman) had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for-word identical in every way, right down to the typeface. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same. Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, “Are you perhaps brothers?” It was Giovanni who wrote back this very provocativo message: “Even better. Twins!” Yes—much better. Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year- old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. After meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless . . . I was already composing my letter to Penthouse: In the flickering, candlelit shadows of the Roman café, it was impossible to tell whose hands were caress — But, no. No and no. I chopped the fantasy off in mid-word. This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude. Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, the shy, studious Giovanni and I have become dear buddies. As for Dario—the more razzle-dazzle swinger brother of the two—I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and how they’ve been sharing their evenings in Rome is another kind of Tandem Exchange altogether. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentle grammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception. A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella. Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome, which meander organically around the ancient buildings like bayou streams snaking around shadowy clumps of cypress groves. Now we are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug. This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice to kiss me. On the other hand, he might just kiss me right now, tonight, right here by my door . . . there’s still a chance . . . I mean we’re pressed up against each other’s bodies beneath this moonlight . . . and of course it would be a terrible mistake . . . but it’s still such a wonderful possibility that he might actually do it right now . . . that he might just bend down . . . and . . . and . . . Nope. He separates himself from the embrace. “Good night, my dear Liz,” he says. “Buona notte, caro mio,” I reply. I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night’s sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrasebooks and dictionaries. I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone. Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks. First in English. Then in Italian. And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit. 2 And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began—a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying. Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I’d recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o’clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and— just as during all those nights before—I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and confusion and grief. I don’t want to be married anymore. I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me. I don’t want to be married anymore. I don’t want to live in this big house. I don’t want to have a baby. But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six—had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn’t—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didn’t happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn’t there. Moreover, I couldn’t stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breast-feeding her firstborn: “Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it’s what you want before you commit.” How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we’d been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was experiencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live . . . I’d been attempting to convince myself that this was normal. All women must feel this way when they’re trying to get pregnant, I’d decided. (“Ambivalent” was the word I used, avoiding the much more accurate description: “utterly consumed with dread.”) I was trying to convince myself that my feelings were customary, despite all evidence to the contrary—such as the acquaintance I’d run into last week who’d just discovered that she was pregnant for the first time, after spending two years and a king’s ransom in fertility treatments. She was ecstatic. She had wanted to be a mother forever, she told me. She admitted she’d been secretly buying baby clothes for years and hiding them under the bed, where her husband wouldn’t find them. I saw the joy in her face and I recognized it. This was the exact joy my own face had radiated last spring, the day I discovered that the magazine I worked for was going to send me on assignment to New Zealand, to write an article about the search for giant squid. And I thought, “Until I can feel as ecstatic about having a baby as I felt about going to New Zealand to search for a giant squid, I cannot have a baby.” I don’t want to be married anymore. In daylight hours, I refused that thought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it? We’d only just bought this house a year ago. Hadn’t I wanted this nice house? Hadn’t I loved it? So why was I haunting its halls every night now, howling like Medea? Wasn’t I proud of all we’d accumulated— the prestigious home in the Hudson Valley, the apartment in Manhattan, the eight phone lines, the friends and the picnics and the parties, the weekends spent roaming the aisles of some box-shaped superstore of our choice, buying ever more appliances on credit? I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life—so why did I feel like none of it resembled me? Why did I feel so overwhelmed with duty, tired of being the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and— somewhere in my stolen moments—a writer . . . ? I don’t want to be married anymore. My husband was sleeping in the other room, in our bed. I equal parts loved him and could not stand him. I couldn’t wake him to share in my distress—what would be the point? He’d already been watching me fall apart for months now, watching me behave like a madwoman (we both agreed on that word), and I only exhausted him. We both knew there was something wrong with me, and he’d been losing patience with it. We’d been fighting and crying, and we were weary in that way that only a couple whose marriage is collapsing can be weary. We had the eyes of refugees. The many reasons I didn’t want to be this man’s wife anymore are too personal and too sad to share here. Much of it had to do with my problems, but a good portion of our troubles were related to his issues, as well. That’s only natural; there are always two figures in a marriage, after all—two votes, two opinions, two conflicting sets of decisions, desires and limitations. But I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to discuss his issues in my book. Nor would I ask anyone to believe that I am capable of reporting an unbiased version of our story, and therefore the chronicle of our marriage’s failure will remain untold here. I also will not discuss here all the reasons why I did still want to be his wife, or all his wonderfulness, or why I loved him and why I had married him and why I was unable to imagine life without him. I won’t open any of that. Let it be sufficient to say that, on this night, he was still my lighthouse and my albatross in equal measure. The only thing more unthinkable than leaving was staying; the only thing more impossible than staying was leaving. I didn’t want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland. This part of my story is not a happy one, I know. But I share it here because something was about to occur on that bathroom floor that would change forever the progression of my life—almost like one of those crazy astronomical super-events when a planet flips over in outer space for no reason whatsoever, and its molten core shifts, relocating its poles and altering its shape radically, such that the whole mass of the planet suddenly becomes oblong instead of spherical. Something like that. What happened was that I started to pray. You know—like, to God. 3 Now, this was a first for me. And since this is the first time I have introduced that loaded word—GOD—into my book, and since this is a word which will appear many times again throughout these pages, it seems only fair that I pause here for a moment to explain exactly what I mean when I say that word, just so people can decide right away how offended they need to get. Saving for later the argument about whether God exists at all (no— here’s a better idea: let’s skip that argument completely), let me first explain why I use the word God, when I could just as easily use the words Jehovah, Allah, Shiva, Brahma, Vishnu or Zeus. Alternatively, I could call God “That,” which is how the ancient Sanskrit scriptures say it, and which I think comes close to the all-inclusive and unspeakable entity I have sometimes experienced. But that “That” feels impersonal to me—a thing, not a being—and I myself cannot pray to a That. I need a proper name, in order to fully sense a personal attendance. For this same reason, when I pray, I do not address my prayers to The Universe, The Great Void, The Force, The Supreme Self, The Whole, The Creator, The Light, The Higher Power, or even the most poetic manifestation of God’s name, taken, I believe, from the Gnostic gospels: “The Shadow of the Turning.” I have nothing against any of these terms. I feel they are all equal because they are all equally adequate and inadequate descriptions of the indescribable. But we each do need a functional name for this indescribability, and “God” is the name that feels the most warm to me, so that’s what I use. I should also confess that I generally refer to God as “Him,” which doesn’t bother me because, to my mind, it’s just a convenient personalizing pronoun, not a precise anatomical description or a cause for revolution. Of course, I don’t mind if people call God “Her,” and I understand the urge to do so. Again—to me, these are both equal terms, equally adequate and inadequate. Though I do think the capitalization of either pronoun is a nice touch, a small politeness in the presence of the divine. Culturally, though not theologically, I’m a Christian. I was born a Protestant of the white Anglo-Saxon persuasion. And while I do love that great teacher of peace who was called Jesus, and while I do reserve the right to ask myself in certain trying situations what indeed He would do, I can’t swallow that one fixed rule of Christianity insisting that Christ is the only path to God. Strictly speaking, then, I cannot call myself a Christian. Most of the Christians I know accept my feelings on this with grace and open-mindedness. Then again, most of the Christians I know don’t speak very strictly. To those who do speak (and think) strictly, all I can do here is offer my regrets for any hurt feelings and now excuse myself from their business. Traditionally, I have responded to the transcendent mystics of all religions. I have always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky, but instead abides very close to us indeed— much closer than we can imagine, breathing right through our own hearts. I respond with gratitude to anyone who has ever voyaged to the center of that heart, and who has then returned to the world with a report for the rest of us that God is an experience of supreme love. In every religious tradition on earth, there have always been mystical saints and transcendents who report exactly this experience. Unfortunately many of them have ended up arrested and killed. Still, I think very highly of them. In the end, what I have come to believe about God is simple. It’s like this—I used to have this really great dog. She came from the pound. She was a mixture of about ten different breeds, but seemed to have inherited the finest features of them all. She was brown. When people asked me, “What kind of dog is that?” I would always give the same answer: “She’s a brown dog.” Similarly, when the question is raised, “What kind of God do you believe in?” my answer is easy: “I believe in a magnificent God.” 4 Of course, I’ve had a lot of time to formulate my opinions about divinity since that night on the bathroom floor when I spoke to God directly for the first time. In the middle of that dark November crisis, though, I was not interested in formulating my views on theology. I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopeless and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I’d read that in a book somewhere. What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: “Hello, God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you.” That’s right—I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party. But we work with what we know in this life, and these are the words I always use at the beginning of a relationship. In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, “I’ve always been a big fan of your work . . .” “I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” I continued. “But I’m in serious trouble. And I’m sorry I haven’t ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that you’ve given me in my life.” This thought caused me to sob even harder. God waited me out. I pulled myself together enough to go on: “I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don’t know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do . . .” And so the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty— Please tell me what to do—repeated again and again. I don’t know how many times I begged. I only know that I begged like someone who was pleading for her life. And the crying went on forever. Until—quite abruptly—it stopped. Quite abruptly, I found that I was not crying anymore. I’d stopped crying, in fact, in mid-sob. My misery had been completely vacuumed out of me. I lifted my forehead off the floor and sat up in surprise, wondering if I would see now some Great Being who had taken my weeping away. But nobody was there. I was just alone. But not really alone, either. I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence—a silence so rare that I didn’t want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off. I was seamlessly still. I don’t know when I’d ever felt such stillness. Then I heard a voice. Please don’t be alarmed—it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charlton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard. It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. This was what my voice would sound like if I’d only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine? The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz. I exhaled. It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do. I would not have accepted any other answer. I would not have trusted a great booming voice that said either: You Must Divorce Your Husband! or You Must Not Divorce Your Husband! Because that’s not true wisdom. True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer. Go back to bed, said this omniscient interior voice, because you don’t need to know the final answer right now, at three o’clock in the morning on a Thursday in November. Go back to bed, because I love you. Go back to bed, because the only thing you need to do for now is get some rest and take good care of yourself until you do know the answer. Go back to bed so that, when the tempest comes, you’ll be strong enough to deal with it. And the tempest is coming, dear one. Very soon. But not tonight. Therefore: Go back to bed, Liz. In a way, this little episode had all the hallmarks of a typical Christian conversion experience—the dark night of the soul, the call for help, the responding voice, the sense of transformation. But I would not say that this was a religious conversion for me, not in that traditional manner of being born again or saved. Instead, I would call what happened that night the beginning of a religious conversation. The first words of an open and exploratory dialogue that would, ultimately, bring me very close to God, indeed. 5 If I’d had any way of knowing that things were—as Lily Tomlin once said—going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I’m not sure how well I would have slept that night. But seven very difficult months later, I did leave my husband. When I finally made that decision, I thought the worst of it was over. This only shows how little I knew about divorce. There was once a cartoon in The New Yorker magazine. Two women talking, one saying to the other: “If you really want to get to know someone, you have to divorce him.” Of course, my experience was the opposite. I would say that if you really want to STOP knowing someone, you have to divorce him. Or her. Because this is what happened between me and my husband. I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. At the bottom of that strangeness was the abysmal fact that we were both doing something the other person would never have conceived possible; he never dreamed I would actually leave him, and I never in my wildest imagination thought he would make it so difficult for me to go. It was my most sincere belief when I left my husband that we could settle our practical affairs in a few hours with a calculator, some common sense and a bit of goodwill toward the person we’d once loved. My initial suggestion was that we sell the house and divide all the assets fifty-fifty; it never occurred to me we’d proceed in any other way. He didn’t find this suggestion fair. So I upped my offer, even suggesting this different kind of fifty-fifty split: What if he took all the assets and I took all the blame? But not even that offer would bring a settlement. Now I was at a loss. How do you negotiate once you’ve offered everything? I could do nothing now but wait for his counterproposal. My guilt at having left him forbade me from thinking I should be allowed to keep even a dime of the money I’d made in the last decade. Moreover, my newfound spirituality made it essential to me that we not battle. So this was my position—I would neither defend myself from him, nor would I fight him. For the longest time, against the counsel of all who cared about me, I resisted even consulting a lawyer, because I considered even that to be an act of war. I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers. Months passed. My life hung in limbo as I waited to be released, waited to see what the terms would be. We were living separately (he had moved into our Manhattan apartment), but nothing was resolved. Bills piled up, careers stalled, the house fell into ruin and my husband’s silences were broken only by his occasional communications reminding me what a criminal jerk I was. And then there was David. All the complications and traumas of those ugly divorce years were multiplied by the drama of David—the guy I fell in love with as I was taking leave of my marriage. Did I say that I “fell in love” with David? What I meant to say is that I dove out of my marriage and into David’s arms exactly the same way a cartoon circus performer dives off a high platform and into a small cup of water, vanishing completely. I clung to David for escape from marriage as if he were the last helicopter pulling out of Saigon. I inflicted upon him my every hope for my salvation and happiness. And, yes, I did love him. But if I could think of a stronger word than “desperately” to describe how I loved David, I would use that word here, and desperate love is always the toughest way to do it. I moved right in with David after I left my husband. He was— is—a gorgeous young man. A born New Yorker, an actor and writer, with those brown liquid-center Italian eyes that have always (have I already mentioned this?) unstitched me. Street-smart, independent, vegetarian, foulmouthed, spiritual, seductive. A rebel poet-Yogi from Yonkers. God’s own sexy rookie shortstop. Bigger than life. Bigger than big. Or at least he was to me. The first time my best friend Susan heard me talking about him, she took one look at the high fever in my face and said to me, “Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.” David and I met because he was performing in a play based on short stories I’d written. He was playing a character I had invented, which is somewhat telling. In desperate love, it’s always like this, isn’t it? In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding that they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place. But, oh, we had such a great time together during those early months when he was still my romantic hero and I was still his living dream. It was excitement and compatibility like I’d never imagined. We invented our own language. We went on day trips and road trips. We hiked to the top of things, swam to the bottom of other things, planned the journeys across the world we would take together. We had more fun waiting in line together at the Department of Motor Vehicles than most couples have on their honeymoons. We gave each other the same nickname, so there would be no separation between us. We made goals, vows, promises and dinner together. He read books to me, and he did my laundry. (The first time that happened, I called Susan to report the marvel in astonishment, like I’d just seen a camel using a pay phone. I said, “A man just did my laundry! And he even hand-washed my delicates!” And she repeated: “Oh my God, baby, you are in so much trouble.”) The first summer of Liz and David looked like the falling-in-love montage of every romantic movie you’ve ever seen, right down to the splashing in the surf and the running hand-in-hand through the golden meadows at twilight. At this time I was still thinking my divorce might actually proceed gracefully, though I was giving my husband the summer off from talking about it so we could both cool down. Anyway, it was so easy not to think about all that loss in the midst of such happiness. Then that summer (otherwise known as “the reprieve”) ended. On September 9, 2001, I met with my husband face-to-face for the last time, not realizing that every future meeting would necessitate lawyers between us, to mediate. We had dinner in a restaurant. I tried to talk about our separation, but all we did was fight. He let me know that I was a liar and a traitor and that he hated me and would never speak to me again. Two mornings later I woke up after a troubled night’s sleep to find that hijacked airplanes were crashing into the two tallest buildings of my city, as everything invincible that had once stood together now became a smoldering avalanche of ruin. I called my husband to make sure he was safe and we wept together over this disaster, but I did not go to him. During that week, when everyone in New York City dropped animosity in deference to the larger tragedy at hand, I still did not go back to my husband. Which is how we both knew it was very, very over. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that I did not sleep again for the next four months. I thought I had fallen to bits before, but now (in harmony with the apparent collapse of the entire world) my life really turned to smash. I wince now to think of what I imposed on David during those months we lived together, right after 9/11 and my separation from my husband. Imagine his surprise to discover that the happiest, most confident woman he’d ever met was actually—when you got her alone—a murky hole of bottomless grief. Once again, I could not stop crying. This is when he started to retreat, and that’s when I saw the other side of my passionate romantic hero—the David who was solitary as a castaway, cool to the touch, in need of more personal space than a herd of American bison. David’s sudden emotional back-stepping probably would’ve been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet’s most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armful of premature infant triplets. His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals, until soon he was retreating under fire of my weeping pleas of, “Where are you going? What happened to us?” (Dating tip: Men LOVE this.) The fact is, I had become addicted to David (in my defense, he had fostered this, being something of a “man-fatale”), and now that his attention was wavering, I was suffering the easily foreseeable consequences. Addiction is the hallmark of every infatuation-based love story. It all begins when the object of your adoration bestows upon you a heady, hallucinogenic dose of something you never even dared to admit that you wanted—an emotional speedball, perhaps, of thunderous love and roiling excitement. Soon you start craving that intense attention, with the hungry obsession of any junkie. When the drug is withheld, you promptly turn sick, crazy and depleted (not to mention resentful of the dealer who encouraged this addiction in the first place but who now refuses to pony up the good stuff anymore—despite the fact that you know he has it hidden somewhere, goddamn it, because he used to give it to you for free). Next stage finds you skinny and shaking in a corner, certain only that you would sell your soul or rob your neighbors just to have that thing even one more time. Meanwhile, the object of your adoration has now become repulsed by you. He looks at you like you’re someone he’s never met before, much less someone he once loved with high passion. The irony is, you can hardly blame him. I mean, check yourself out. You’re a pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to your own eyes. So that’s it. You have now reached infatuation’s final destination — the complete and merciless devaluation of self. The fact that I can even write calmly about this today is mighty evidence of time’s healing powers, because I didn’t take it well as it was happening. To be losing David right after the failure of my marriage, and right after the terrorizing of my city, and right during the worst ugliness of divorce (a life experience my friend Brian has compared to “having a really bad car accident every single day for about two years”) . . . well, this was simply too much. David and I continued to have our bouts of fun and compatibility during the days, but at night, in his bed, I became the only survivor of a nuclear winter as he visibly retreated from me, more every day, as though I were infectious. I came to fear nighttime like it was a torturer’s cellar. I would lie there beside David’s beautiful, inaccessible sleeping body and I would spin into a panic of loneliness and meticulously detailed suicidal thoughts. Every part of my body pained me. I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me. Most mornings, David would wake to find me sleeping fitfully on the floor beside his bed, huddled on a pile of bathroom towels, like a dog. “What happened now?” he would ask—another man thoroughly exhausted by me. I think I lost something like thirty pounds during that time. 6 Oh, but it wasn’t all bad, those few years . . . Because God never slams a door in your face without opening a box of Girl Scout cookies (or however the old adage goes), some wonderful things did happen to me in the shadow of all that sorrow. For one thing, I finally started learning Italian. Also, I found an Indian Guru. Lastly, I was invited by an elderly medicine man to come and live with him in Indonesia. I’ll explain in sequence. To begin with, things started to look up somewhat when I moved out of David’s place in early 2002 and found an apartment of my own for the first time in my life. I couldn’t afford it, since I was still paying for that big house in the suburbs which nobody was living in anymore and which my husband was forbidding me to sell, and I was still trying to stay on top of all my legal and counseling fees . . . but it was vital to my survival to have a One Bedroom of my own. I saw the apartment almost as a sanatorium, a hospice clinic for my own recovery. I painted the walls in the warmest colors I could find and bought myself flowers every week, as if I were visiting myself in the hospital. My sister gave me a hot water bottle as a housewarming gift (so I wouldn’t have to be all alone in a cold bed) and I slept with the thing laid against my heart every night, as though nursing a sports injury. David and I had broken up for good. Or maybe we hadn’t. It’s hard to remember now how many times we broke up and joined up over those months. But there emerged a pattern: I would separate from David, get my strength and confidence back, and then (attracted as always by my strength and confidence) his passion for me would rekindle. Respectfully, soberly and intelligently, we would discuss “trying again,” always with some sane new plan for minimizing our apparent incompatibilities. We were so committed to solving this thing. Because how could two people who were so in love not end up happily ever after? It had to work. Didn’t it? Reunited with fresh hopes, we’d share a few deliriously happy days together. Or sometimes even weeks. But eventually David would retreat from me once more and I would cling to him (or I would cling to him and he would retreat—we never could figure out how it got triggered) and I’d end up destroyed all over again. And he’d end up gone. David was catnip and kryptonite to me. But during those periods when we were separated, as hard as it was, I was practicing living alone. And this experience was bringing a nascent interior shift. I was beginning to sense that—even though my life still looked like a multi-vehicle accident on the New Jersey Turnpike during holiday traffic—I was tottering on the brink of becoming a self-governing individual. When I wasn’t feeling suicidal about my divorce, or suicidal about my drama with David, I was actually feeling kind of delighted about all the compartments of time and space that were appearing in my days, during which I could ask myself the radical new question: “What do you want to do, Liz?” Most of the time (still so troubled from bailing out of my marriage) I didn’t even dare to answer the question, but just thrilled privately to its existence. And when I finally started to answer, I did so cautiously. I would only allow myself to express little baby-step wants. Like: I want to go to a Yoga class. I want to leave this party early, so I can go home and read a novel. I want to buy myself a new pencil box. Then there would always be that one weird answer, same every time: I want to learn how to speak Italian. For years, I’d wished I could speak Italian—a language I find more beautiful than roses—but I could never make the practical justification for studying it. Why not just bone up on the French or Russian I’d already studied years ago? Or learn to speak Spanish, the better to help me communicate with millions of my fellow Americans? What was I going to do with Italian? It’s not like I was going to move there. It would be more practical to learn how to play the accordion. But why must everything always have a practical application? I’d been such a diligent soldier for years—working, producing, never missing a deadline, taking care of my loved ones, my gums and my credit record, voting, etc. Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty? In this dark period of loss, did I need any justification for learning Italian other than that it was the only thing I could imagine bringing me any pleasure right now? And it wasn’t that outrageous a goal, anyway, to want to study a language. It’s not like I was saying, at age thirty-two, “I want to become the principal ballerina for the New York City Ballet.” Studying a language is something you can actually do. So I signed up for classes at one of those continuing education places (otherwise known as Night School for Divorced Ladies). My friends thought this was hilarious. My friend Nick asked, “Why are you studying Italian? So that—just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again, and is actually successful this time— you can brag about knowing a language that’s spoken in two whole countries?” But I loved it. Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. I would slosh home through the rain after class, draw a hot bath, and lie there in the bubbles reading the Italian dictionary aloud to myself, taking my mind off my divorce pressures and my heartache. The words made me laugh in delight. I started referring to my cell phone as il mio telefonino (“my teensy little telephone”). I became one of those annoying people who always say Ciao! Only I was extra annoying, since I would always explain where the word ciao comes from. (If you must know, it’s an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval Venetians as an intimate salutation: Sono il suo schiavo! Meaning: “I am your slave!”) Just speaking these words made me feel sexy and happy. My divorce lawyer told me not to worry; she said she had one client (Korean by heritage) who, after a yucky divorce, legally changed her name to something Italian, just to feel sexy and happy again. Maybe I would move to Italy, after all . . . 7 The other notable thing that was happening during that time was the newfound adventure of spiritual discipline. Aided and abetted, of course, by the introduction into my life of an actual living Indian Guru —for whom I will always have David to thank. I’d been introduced to my Guru the first night I ever went to David’s apartment. I kind of fell in love with them both at the same time. I walked into David’s apartment and saw this picture on his dresser of a radiantly beautiful Indian woman and I asked, “Who’s that?” He said, “That is my spiritual teacher.” My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: “I want a spiritual teacher.” I literally mean that it was my heart who said this, speaking through my mouth. I felt this weird division in myself, and my mind stepped out of my body for a moment, spun around to face my heart in astonishment and silently asked, “You DO?” “Yes,” replied my heart. “I do.” Then my mind asked my heart, a tad sarcastically: “Since WHEN?” But I already knew the answer: Since that night on the bathroom floor. My God, but I wanted a spiritual teacher. I immediately began constructing a fantasy of what it would be like to have one. I imagined that this radiantly beautiful Indian woman would come to my apartment a few evenings a week and we would sit and drink tea and talk about divinity, and she would give me reading assignments and explain the significance of the strange sensations I was feeling during meditation . . . All this fantasy was quickly swept away when David told me about the international status of this woman, about her tens of thousands of students—many of whom have never met her face-to-face. Still, he said, there was a gathering here in New York City every Tuesday night of the Guru’s devotees who came together as a group to meditate and chant. David said, “If you’re not too freaked out by the idea of being in a room with several hundred people chanting God’s name in Sanskrit, you can come sometime.” I joined him the following Tuesday night. Far from being freaked out by these regular-looking people singing to God, I instead felt my soul rise diaphanous in the wake of that chanting. I walked home that night feeling like the air could move through me, like I was clean linen fluttering on a clothes-line, like New York itself had become a city made of rice paper—and I was light enough to run across every rooftop. I started going to the chants every Tuesday. Then I started meditating every morning on the ancient Sanskrit mantra the Guru gives to all her students (the regal Om Namah Shivaya, meaning, “I honor the divinity that resides within me”). Then I listened to the Guru speak in person for the first time, and her words gave me chill bumps over my whole body, even across the skin of my face. And when I heard she had an Ashram in India, I knew I must take myself there as quickly as possible. 8 In the meantime, though, I had to go on this trip to Indonesia. Which happened, again, because of a magazine assignment. Just when I was feeling particularly sorry for myself for being broke and lonely and caged up in Divorce Internment Camp, an editor from a women’s magazine asked if she could pay to send me to Bali to write a story about Yoga vacations. In return I asked her a series of questions, mostly along the line of Is a bean green? and Does James Brown get down? When I got to Bali (which is, to be brief, a very nice place) the teacher who was running the Yoga retreat asked us, “While you’re all here, is there anybody who would like to go visit a ninth-generation Balinese medicine man?” (another question too obvious to even answer), and so we all went over to his house one night. The medicine man, as it turned out, was a small, merry-eyed, russet- colored old guy with a mostly toothless mouth, whose resemblance in every way to the Star Wars character Yoda cannot be exaggerated. His name was Ketut Liyer. He spoke a scattered and thoroughly entertaining kind of English, but there was a translator available for when he got stuck on a word. Our Yoga teacher had told us in advance that we could each bring one question or problem to the medicine man, and he would try to help us with our troubles. I’d been thinking for days of what to ask him. My initial ideas were so lame. Will you make my husband give me a divorce? Will you make David be sexually attracted to me again? I was rightly ashamed of myself for these thoughts: who travels all the way around the world to meet an ancient medicine man in Indonesia, only to ask him to intercede in boy trouble? So when the old man asked me in person what I really wanted, I found other, truer words. “I want to have a lasting experience of God,” I told him. “Sometimes I feel like I understand the divinity of this world, but then I lose it because I get distracted by my petty desires and fears. I want to be with God all the time. But I don’t want to be a monk, or totally give up worldly pleasures. I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God.” Ketut said he could answer my question with a picture. He showed me a sketch he’d drawn once during meditation. It was an androgynous human figure, standing up, hands clasped in prayer. But this figure had four legs, and no head. Where the head should have been, there was only a wild foliage of ferns and flowers. There was a small, smiling face drawn over the heart. “To find the balance you want,” Ketut spoke through his translator, “this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have four legs, instead of two. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.” Then he asked if he could read my palm. I gave him my left hand and he proceeded to put me together like a three-piece puzzle. “You’re a world traveler,” he began. Which I thought was maybe a little obvious, given that I was in Indonesia at the moment, but I didn’t force the point . . . “You have more good luck than anyone I’ve ever met. You will live a long time, have many friends, many experiences. You will see the whole world. You only have one problem in your life. You worry too much. Always you get too emotional, too nervous. If I promise you that you will never have any reason in your life to ever worry about anything, will you believe me?” Nervously I nodded, not believing him. “For work, you do something creative, maybe like an artist, and you get paid good money for it. Always you will get paid good money for this thing you do. You are generous with money, maybe too generous. Also one problem. You will lose all your money once in your life. I think maybe it will happen soon.” “I think maybe it will happen in the next six to ten months,” I said, thinking about my divorce. Ketut nodded as if to say, Yeah, that sounds about right. “But don’t worry,” he said. “After you lose all your money, you will get it all right back again. Right away you’ll be fine. You will have two marriages in your life. One short, one long. And you will have two children . . .” I waited for him to say, “one short, one long,” but he was suddenly silent, frowning at my palm. Then he said, “Strange . . . ,” which is something you never want to hear from either your palmreader or your dentist. He asked me to move directly under the hanging lightbulb so he could take a better look. “I am wrong,” he announced. “You will only have only one child. Late in life, a daughter. Maybe. If you decide . . . but there is something else.” He frowned, then looked up, suddenly absolutely confident: “Someday soon you will come back here to Bali. You must. You will stay here in Bali for three, maybe four months. You will be my friend. Maybe you will live here with my family. I can practice English with you. I never had anybody to practice English with. I think you are good with words. I think this creative work you do is something about words, yes?” “Yes!” I said. “I’m a writer. I’m a book writer!” “You are a book writer from New York,” he said, in agreement, in confirmation. “So you will come back here to Bali and live here and teach me English. And I will teach you everything I know.” Then he stood up and brushed off his hands, like: That’s settled. I said, “If you’re serious, mister, I’m serious.” He beamed at me toothlessly and said, “See you later, alligator.” 9 Now, I’m the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you’re destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that. And this, finally, was how my whole idea about this year of traveling began to gel. I absolutely needed to get myself back to Indonesia somehow, on my own dime this time. This was evident. Though I couldn’t yet imagine how to do it, given my chaotic and disturbed life. (Not only did I still have a pricey divorce to settle, and David-troubles, I still had a magazine job that prevented me from going anywhere for three or four months at a time.) But I had to get back there. Didn’t I? Hadn’t he foretold it? Problem was, I also wanted to go to India, to visit my Guru’s Ashram, and going to India is an expensive and time-consuming affair, also. To make matters even more confusing, I’d also been dying lately to get over to Italy, so I could practice speaking Italian in context, but also because I was drawn to the idea of living for a while in a culture where pleasure and beauty are revered. All these desires seemed to be at odds with one another. Especially the Italy/India conflict. What was more important? The part of me that wanted to eat veal in Venice? Or the part of me that wanted to be waking up long before dawn in the austerity of an Ashram to begin a long day of meditation and prayer? The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously amid extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing? My truth was exactly what I’d said to the medicine man in Bali—I wanted to experience both. I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence —the dual glories of a human life. I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos, the singular balance of the good and the beautiful. I’d been missing both during these last hard years, because both pleasure and devotion require a stress-free space in which to flourish and I’d been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety. As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion . . . well, surely there was a way to learn that trick. And it seemed to me, just from my short stay in Bali, that I maybe could learn this from the Balinese. Maybe even from the medicine man himself. Four feet on the ground, a head full of foliage, looking at the world through the heart . . . So I stopped trying to choose—Italy? India? or Indonesia?—and eventually just admitted that I wanted to travel to all of them. Four months in each place. A year in total. Of course this was a slightly more ambitious dream than “I want to buy myself a new pencil box.” But this is what I wanted. And I knew that I wanted to write about it. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to thoroughly explore the countries themselves; this has been done. It was more that I wanted to thoroughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two. It was only later, after admitting this dream, that I noticed the happy coincidence that all these countries begin with the letter I. A fairly auspicious sign, it seemed, on a voyage of self-discovery. Imagine now, if you will, all the opportunities for mockery this idea unleashed in my wise-ass friends. I wanted to go to the Three I’s, did I? Then why not spend the year in Iran, Ivory Coast and Iceland? Or even better—why not go on pilgrimage to the Great Tri-State “I” Triumvirate of Islip, I-95 and Ikea? My friend Susan suggested that perhaps I should establish a not-for-profit relief organization called “Divorcées Without Borders.” But all this joking was moot because “I” wasn’t free to go anywhere yet. That divorce—long after I’d walked out of my marriage—was still not happening. I’d started having to put legal pressure on my husband, doing dreadful things out of my worst divorce nightmares, like serving papers and writing damning legal accusations (required by New York State law) of his alleged mental cruelty—documents that left no room for subtlety, no way in which to say to the judge: “Hey, listen, it was a really complicated relationship, and I made huge mistakes, too, and I’m very sorry about that, but all I want is to be allowed to leave.” (Here, I pause to offer a prayer for my gentle reader: May you never, ever, have to get a divorce in New York.) The spring of 2003 brought things to a boiling point. A year and a half after I’d left, my husband was finally ready to discuss terms of a settlement. Yes, he wanted cash and the house and the lease on the Manhattan apartment—everything I’d been offering the whole while. But he was also asking for things I’d never even considered (a stake in the royalties of books I’d written during the marriage, a cut of possible future movie rights to my work, a share of my retirement accounts, etc.) and here I had to voice my protest at last. Months of negotiations ensued between our lawyers, a compromise of sorts inched its way toward the table and it was starting to look like my husband might actually accept a modified deal. It would cost me dearly, but a fight in the courts would be infinitely more expensive and time-consuming, not to mention soul-corroding. If he signed the agreement, all I had to do was pay and walk away. Which would be fine with me at this point. Our relationship now thoroughly ruined, with even civility destroyed between us, all I wanted anymore was the door. The question was—would he sign? More weeks passed as he contested more details. If he didn’t agree to this settlement, we’d have to go to trial. A trial would almost certainly mean that every remaining dime would be lost in legal fees. Worst of all, a trial would mean another year—at least—of all this mess. So whatever my husband decided (and he still was my husband, after all), it was going to determine yet another year of my life. Would I be traveling all alone through Italy, India and Indonesia? Or would I be getting cross- examined somewhere in a courtroom basement during a deposition hearing? Every day I called my lawyer fourteen times—any news? — and every day she assured me that she was doing her best, that she would telephone immediately if the deal was signed. The nervousness I felt during this time was something between waiting to be called into the principal’s office and anticipating the results of a biopsy. I’d love to report that I stayed calm and Zen, but I didn’t. Several nights, in waves of anger, I beat the life out of my couch with a softball bat. Most of the time I was just achingly depressed. Meanwhile, David and I had broken up again. This time, it seemed, for good. Or maybe not—we couldn’t totally let go of it. Often I was still overcome with a desire to sacrifice everything for the love of him. Other times, I had the quite opposite instinct—to put as many continents and oceans as possible between me and this guy, in the hope of finding peace and happiness. I had lines in my face now, permanent incisions dug between my eyebrows, from crying and from worry. And in the middle of all that, a book that I’d written a few years earlier was being published in paperback and I had to go on a small publicity tour. I took my friend Iva with me for company. Iva is my age but grew up in Beirut, Lebanon. Which means that, while I was playing sports and auditioning for musicals in a Connecticut middle school, she was cowering in a bomb shelter five nights out of seven, trying not to die. I’m not sure how all this early exposure to violence created somebody who’s so steady now, but Iva is one of the calmest souls I know. Moreover, she’s got what I call “The Bat Phone to the Universe,” some kind of Iva-only, open-round-the-clock special channel to the divine. So we were driving across Kansas, and I was in my normal state of sweaty disarray over this divorce deal—will he sign, will he not sign? —and I said to Iva, “I don’t think I can endure another year in court. I wish I could get some divine intervention here. I wish I could write a petition to God, asking for this thing to end.” “So why don’t you?” I explained to Iva my personal opinions about prayer. Namely, that I don’t feel comfortable petitioning for specific things from God, because that feels to me like a kind of weakness of faith. I don’t like asking, “Will you change this or that thing in my life that’s difficult for me?” Because—who knows?—God might want me to be facing that particular challenge for a reason. Instead, I feel more comfortable praying for the courage to face whatever occurs in my life with equanimity, no matter how things turn out. Iva listened politely, then asked, “Where’d you get that stupid idea?” “What do you mean?” “Where did you get the idea you aren’t allowed to petition the universe with prayer? You are part of this universe, Liz. You’re a constituent— you have every entitlement to participate in the actions of the universe, and to let your feelings be known. So put your opinion out there. Make your case. Believe me—it will at least be taken into consideration.” “Really?” All this was news to me. “Really! Listen—if you were to write a petition to God right now, what would it say?” I thought for a while, then pulled out a notebook and wrote this petition: Dear God. Please intervene and help end this divorce. My husband and I have failed at our marriage and now we are failing at our divorce. This poisonous process is bringing suffering to us and to everyone who cares about us. I recognize that you are busy with wars and tragedies and much larger conflicts than the ongoing dispute of one dysfunctional couple. But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are locked in conflict, the whole of the world is contaminated by it. Similarly, if even one or two souls can be free from discord, this will increase the general health of the whole world, the way a few healthy cells in a body can increase the general health of that body. It is my most humble request, then, that you help us end this conflict, so that two more people can have the chance to become free and healthy, and so there will be just a little bit less animosity and bitterness in a world that is already far too troubled by suffering. I thank you for your kind attention. Respectfully, Elizabeth M. Gilbert I read it to Iva, and she nodded her approval. “I would sign that,” she said. I handed the petition over to her with a pen, but she was too busy driving, so she said, “No, let’s say that I did just sign it. I signed it in my heart.” “Thank you, Iva. I appreciate your support.” “Now, who else would sign it?” she asked. “My family. My mother and father. My sister.” “OK,” she said. “They just did. Consider their names added. I actually felt them sign it. They’re on the list now. OK—who else would sign it? Start naming names.” So I started naming names of all the people who I thought would sign this petition. I named all my close friends, then some family members and some people I worked with. After each name, Iva would say with assurance, “Yep. He just signed it,” or “She just signed it.” Sometimes she would pop in with her own signatories, like: “My parents just signed it. They raised their children during a war. They hate useless conflict. They’d be happy to see your divorce end.” I closed my eyes and waited for more names to come to me. “I think Bill and Hillary Clinton just signed it,” I said. “I don’t doubt it,” she said. “Listen, Liz—anybody can sign this petition. Do you understand that? Call on anyone, living or dead, and start collecting signatures.” “Saint Francis of Assisi just signed it!” “Of course he did!” Iva smacked her hand against the steering wheel with certainty. Now I was cooking: “Abraham Lincoln just signed it! And Gandhi, and Mandela and all the peacemakers. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mother Teresa, Bono, Jimmy Carter, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson and the Dalai Lama . . . and my grandmother who died in 1984 and my grandmother who’s still alive . . . and my Italian teacher, and my therapist, and my agent . . . and Martin Luther King Jr. and Katharine Hepburn . . . and Martin Scorsese (which you wouldn’t necessarily expect, but it’s still nice of him) . . . and my Guru, of course . . . and Joanne Woodward, and Joan of Arc, and Ms. Carpenter, my fourth-grade teacher, and Jim Henson—” The names spilled from me. They didn’t stop spilling for almost an hour, as we drove across Kansas and my petition for peace stretched into page after invisible page of supporters. Iva kept confirming— yes, he signed it, yes, she signed it—and I became filled with a grand sense of protection, surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls. The list finally wound down, and my anxiety wound down with it. I was sleepy. Iva said, “Take a nap. I’ll drive.” I closed my eyes. One last name appeared. “Michael J. Fox just signed it,” I murmured, then drifted into sleep. I don’t know how long I slept, maybe only for ten minutes, but it was deep. When I woke up, Iva was still driving. She was humming a little song to herself. I yawned. My cell phone rang. I looked at that crazy little telefonino vibrating with excitement in the ashtray of the rental car. I felt disoriented, kind of stoned from my nap, suddenly unable to remember how a telephone works. “Go ahead,” Iva said, already knowing. “Answer the thing.” I picked up the phone, whispered hello. “Great news!” my lawyer announced from distant New York City. “He just signed it!” 10 A few weeks later, I am living in Italy. I have quit my job, paid off my divorce settlement and legal bills, given up my house, given up my apartment, put what belongings I had left into storage in my sister’s place and packed up two suitcases. My year of traveling has commenced. And I can actually afford to do this because of a staggering personal miracle: in advance, my publisher has purchased the book I shall write about my travels. It all turned out, in other words, just as the Indonesian medicine man had predicted. I would lose all my money and it would be replaced immediately—or at least enough of it to buy me a year of life. So now I am a resident of Rome. The apartment I’ve found is a quiet studio in a historic building, located just a few narrow blocks from the Spanish Steps, draped beneath the graceful shadows of the elegant Borghese Gardens, right up the street from the Piazza del Popolo, where the ancient Romans used to race their chariots. Of course, this district doesn’t quite have the sprawling grandeur of my old New York City neighborhood, which overlooked the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, but still . . . It will do. 11 The first meal I ate in Rome was nothing much. Just some homemade pasta (spaghetti carbonara) with a side order of sautéed spinach and garlic. (The great romantic poet Shelley once wrote a horrified letter to a friend in England about cuisine in Italy: “Young women of rank actually eat—you will never guess what— GARLIC!”) Also, I had one artichoke, just to try it; the Romans are awfully proud of their artichokes. Then there was a pop-surprise bonus side order brought over by the waitress for free—a serving of fried zucchini blossoms with a soft dab of cheese in the middle (prepared so delicately that the blossoms probably didn’t even notice they weren’t on the vine anymore). After the spaghetti, I tried the veal. Oh, and also I drank a bottle of house red, just for me. And ate some warm bread, with olive oil and salt. Tiramisu for dessert. Walking home after that meal, around 11:00 PM, I could hear noise coming from one of the buildings on my street, something that sounded like a convention of seven-year-olds—a birthday party, maybe? Laughter and screaming and running around. I climbed the stairs to my apartment, lay down in my new bed and turned off the light. I waited to start crying or worrying, since that’s what usually happened to me with the lights off, but I actually felt OK. I felt fine. I felt the early symptoms of contentment. My weary body asked my weary mind: “Was this all you needed, then?” There was no response. I was already fast asleep. 12 In every major city in the Western World, some things are always the same. The same African men are always selling knockoffs of the same designer handbags and sunglasses, and the same Guatemalan musicians are always playing “I’d rather be a sparrow than a snail” on their bamboo windpipes. But some things are only in Rome. Like the sandwich counterman so comfortably calling me “beautiful” every time we speak. You want this panino grilled or cold, bella? Or the couples making out all over the place, like there is some contest for it, twisting into each other on benches, stroking each other’s hair and crotches, nuzzling and grinding ceaselessly . . . And then there are the fountains. Pliny the Elder wrote once: “If anyone will consider the abundance of Rome’s public supply of water, for baths, cisterns, ditches, houses, gardens, villas; and take into account the distance over which it travels, the arches reared, the mountains pierced, the valleys spanned—he will admit that there never was anything more marvelous in the whole world.” A few centuries later, I already have a few contenders for my favorite fountain in Rome. One is in the Villa Borghese. In the center of this fountain is a frolicking bronze family. Dad is a faun and Mom is a regular human woman. They have a baby who enjoys eating grapes. Mom and Dad are in a strange position—facing each other, grabbing each other’s wrists, both of them leaning back. It’s hard to tell whether they are yanking against each other in strife or swinging around merrily, but there’s lots of energy there. Either way, Junior sits perched atop their wrists, right between them, unaffected by their merriment or strife, munching on his bunch of grapes. His little cloven hoofs dangle below him as he eats. (He takes after his father.) It is early September, 2003. The weather is warm and lazy. By this, my fourth day in Rome, my shadow has still not darkened the doorway of a church or a museum, nor have I even looked at a guidebook. But I have been walking endlessly and aimlessly, and I did finally find a tiny little place that a friendly bus driver informed me sells The Best Gelato in Rome. It’s called “Il Gelato di San Crispino.” I’m not sure, but I think this might translate as “the ice cream of the crispy saint.” I tried a combination of the honey and the hazelnut. I came back later that same day for the grapefruit and the melon. Then, after dinner that same night, I walked all the way back over there one last time, just to sample a cup of the cinnamon-ginger. I’ve been trying to read through one newspaper article every day, no matter how long it takes. I look up approximately every third word in my dictionary. Today’s news was fascinating. Hard to imagine a more dramatic headline than “Obesità! I Bambini Italiani Sono i Più Grassi d’Europa!” Good God! Obesity! The article, I think, is declaring that Italian babies are the fattest babies in Europe! Reading on, I learn that Italian babies are significantly fatter than German babies and very significantly fatter than French babies. (Mercifully, there was no mention of how they measure up against American babies.) Older Italian children are dangerously obese these days, too, says the article. (The pasta industry defended itself.) These alarming statistics on Italian child fatness were unveiled yesterday by—no need to translate here —“una task force internazionale.” It took me almost an hour to decipher this whole article. The entire time, I was eating a pizza and listening to one of Italy’s children play the accordion across the street. The kid didn’t look very fat to me, but that may have been because he was a gypsy. I’m not sure if I misread the last line of the article, but it seemed there was some talk from the government that the only way to deal with the obesity crisis in Italy was to implement a tax on the overweight . . . ? Could this be true? After a few months of eating like this, will they come after me? It’s also important to read the newspaper every day to see how the pope is doing. Here in Rome, the pope’s health is recorded daily in the newspaper, very much like weather, or the TV schedule. Today the pope is tired. Yesterday, the pope was less tired than he is today. Tomorrow, we expect that the pope will not be quite so tired as he was today. It’s kind of a fairyland of language for me here. For someone who has always wanted to speak Italian, what could be better than Rome? It’s like somebody invented a city just to suit my specifications, where everyone (even the children, even the taxi drivers, even the actors on the commercials!) speaks this magical language. It’s like the whole society is conspiring to teach me Italian. They’ll even print their newspapers in Italian while I’m here; they don’t mind! They have bookstores here that only sell books written in Italian! I found such a bookstore yesterday morning and felt I’d entered an enchanted palace. Everything was in Italian—even Dr. Seuss. I wandered through, touching all the books, hoping that anyone watching me might think I was a native speaker. Oh, how I want Italian to open itself up to me! This feeling reminded me of when I was four years old and couldn’t read yet, but was dying to learn. I remember sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s office with my mother, holding a Good Housekeeping magazine in front of my face, turning the pages slowly, staring at the text, and hoping the grown-ups in the waiting room would think I was actually reading. I haven’t felt so starved for comprehension since then. I found some works by American poets in that bookstore, with the original English version printed on one side of the page and the Italian translation on the other. I bought a volume by Robert Lowell, another by Louise Glück. There are spontaneous conversation classes everywhere. Today, I was sitting on a park bench when a tiny old woman in a black dress came over, roosted down beside me and started bossing me around about something. I shook my head, muted and confused. I apologized, saying in very nice Italian, “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Italian,” and she looked like she would’ve smacked me with a wooden spoon, if she’d had one. She insisted: “You do understand!” (Interestingly, she was correct. That sentence, I did understand.) Now she wanted to know where I was from. I told her I was from New York, and asked where she was from. Duh—she was from Rome. Hearing this, I clapped my hands like a baby. Ah, Rome! Beautiful Rome! I love Rome! Pretty Rome! She listened to my primitive rhapsodies with skepticism. Then she got down to it and asked me if I was married. I told her I was divorced. This was the first time I’d said it to anyone, and here I was, saying it in Italian. Of course she demanded, “Perché?” Well . . . “why” is a hard question to answer in any language. I stammered, then finally came up with “L’abbiamo rotto” (We broke it). She nodded, stood up, walked up the street to her bus stop, got on her bus and did not even turn around to look at me again. Was she mad at me? Strangely, I waited for her on that park bench for twenty minutes, thinking against reason that she might come back and continue our conversation, but she never returned. Her name was Celeste, pronounced with a sharp ch, as in cello. Later in the day, I found a library. Dear me, how I love a library. Because we are in Rome, this library is a beautiful old thing, and within it there is a courtyard garden which you’d never have guessed existed if you’d only looked at the place from the street. The garden is a perfect square, dotted with orange trees and, in the center, a fountain. This fountain was going to be a contender for my favorite in Rome, I could tell immediately, though it was unlike any I’d seen so far. It was not carved of imperial marble, for starters. This was a small green, mossy, organic fountain. It was like a shaggy, leaking bush of ferns. (It looked, actually, exactly like the wild foliage growing out of the head of that praying figure which the old medicine man in Indonesia had drawn for me.) The water shot up out of the center of this flowering shrub, then rained back down on the leaves, making a melancholy, lovely sound throughout the whole courtyard. I found a seat under an orange tree and opened one of the poetry books I’d purchased yesterday. Louise Glück. I read the first poem in Italian, then in English, and stopped short at this line: Dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontana . . . “From the center of my life, there came a great fountain . . .” I set the book down in my lap, shaking with relief. 13 Truthfully, I’m not the best traveler in the world. I know this because I’ve traveled a lot and I’ve met people who are great at it. Real naturals. I’ve met travelers who are so physically sturdy they could drink a shoebox of water from a Calcutta gutter and never get sick. People who can pick up new languages where others of us might only pick up infectious diseases. People who know how to stand down a threatening border guard or cajole an uncooperative bureaucrat at the visa office. People who are the right height and complexion that they kind of look halfway normal wherever they go— in Turkey they just might be Turks, in Mexico they are suddenly Mexican, in Spain they could be mistaken for a Basque, in Northern Africa they can sometimes pass for Arab . . . I don’t have these qualities. First off, I don’t blend. Tall and blond and pink-complexioned, I am less a chameleon than a flamingo. Everywhere I go but Dusseldorf, I stand out garishly. When I was in China, women used to come up to me on the street and point me out to their children as though I were some escaped zoo animal. And their children—who had never seen anything quite like this pink-faced yellow-headed phantom person—would often burst into tears at the sight of me. I really hated that about China. I’m bad (or, rather, lazy) at researching a place before I travel, tending just to show up and see what happens. When you travel this way, what typically “happens” is that you end up spending a lot of time standing in the middle of the train station feeling confused, or dropping way too much money on hotels because you don’t know better. My shaky sense of direction and geography means I have explored six continents in my life with only the vaguest idea of where I am at any given time. Aside from my cockeyed internal compass, I also have a shortage of personal coolness, which can be a liability in travel. I have never learned how to arrange my face into that blank expression of competent invisibility that is so useful when traveling in dangerous, foreign places. You know—that super-relaxed, totally-in- charge expression which makes you look like you belong there, anywhere, everywhere, even in the middle of a riot in Jakarta. Oh, no. When I don’t know what I’m doing, I look like I don’t know what I’m doing. When I’m excited or nervous, I look excited or nervous. And when I am lost, which is frequently, I look lost. My face is a transparent transmitter of my every thought. As David once put it, “You have the opposite of poker face. You have, like . . . miniature golf face.” And, oh, the woes that traveling has inflicted on my digestive tract! I don’t really want to open that (forgive the expression) can of worms, but suffice it to say I’ve experienced every extreme of digestive emergency. In Lebanon I became so explosively ill one night that I could only imagine I’d somehow contracted a Middle Eastern version of the Ebola virus. In Hungary, I suffered from an entirely different kind of bowel affliction, which changed forever the way I feel about the term “Soviet Bloc.” But I have other bodily weaknesses, too. My back gave out on my first day traveling in Africa, I was the only member of my party to emerge from the jungles of Venezuela with infected spider bites, and I ask you—I beg of you!— who gets sunburned in Stockholm? Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby—I just don’t care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it’s mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to—I just don’t care. Anyway, for a flamingo, I’m not completely helpless out there in the world. I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. I’m a fearless eater. But my one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. I once made friends with a war criminal in Serbia, and he invited me to go on a mountain holiday with his family. Not that I’m proud to list Serbian mass murderers amongst my nearest and dearest (I had to befriend him for a story, and also so he wouldn’t punch me), but I’m just saying—I can do it. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of Sheetrock. This is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left for Italy, “Do you have friends in Rome?” and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will. Mostly, you meet your friends when traveling by accident, like by sitting next to them on a train, or in a restaurant, or in a holding cell. But these are chance encounters, and you should never rely entirely on chance. For a more systematic approach, there is still the grand old system of the “letter of introduction” (today more likely to be an e- mail), presenting you formally to the acquaintance of an acquaintance. This is a terrific way to meet people, if you’re shameless enough to make the cold call and invite yourself over for dinner. So before I left for Italy, I asked everyone I knew in America if they had any friends in Rome, and I’m happy to report that I have been sent abroad with a substantial list of Italian contacts. Among all the nominees on my Potential New Italian Friends List, I am most intrigued to meet a fellow named . . . brace yourself . . . Luca Spaghetti. Luca Spaghetti is a good friend of my buddy Patrick McDevitt, whom I know from my college days. And that is honestly his name, I swear to God, I’m not making it up. It’s too crazy. I mean —just think of it. Imagine going through life with a name like Patrick McDevitt? Anyhow, I plan to get in touch with Luca Spaghetti just as soon as possible. 14 First, though, I must get settled into school. My classes begin today at the Leonardo da Vinci Academy of Language Studies, where I will be studying Italian five days a week, four hours a day. I’m so excited about school. I’m such a shameless student. I laid my clothes out last night, just like I did before my first day of first grade, with my patent leather shoes and my new lunch box. I hope the teacher will like me. We all have to take a test on the first day at Leonardo da Vinci, in order to be placed in the proper level of Italian class for our abilities. When I hear this, I immediately start hoping I don’t place into a Level One class, because that would be humiliating, given that I already took a whole entire semester of Italian at my Night School for Divorced Ladies in New York, and that I spent the summer memorizing flash cards, and that I’ve already been in Rome a week, and have been practicing the language in person, even conversing with old grandmothers about divorce. The thing is, I don’t even know how many levels this school has, but as soon as I heard the word level, I decided that I must test into Level Two—at least. So it’s hammering down rain today, and I show up to school early (like I always have—geek!) and I take the test. It’s such a hard test! I can’t get through even a tenth of it! I know so much Italian, I know dozens of words in Italian, but they don’t ask me anything that I know. Then there’s an oral exam, which is even worse. There’s this skinny Italian teacher interviewing me and speaking way too fast, in my opinion, and I should be doing so much better than this but I’m nervous and making mistakes with stuff I already know (like, why did I say Vado a scuola instead of Sono andata a scuola? I know that!). In the end, it’s OK, though. The skinny Italian teacher looks over my exam and selects my class level: Level TWO! Classes begin in the afternoon. So I go eat lunch (roasted endive) then saunter back to the school and smugly walk past all those Level One students (who must be molto stupido, really) and enter my first class. With my peers. Except that it becomes swiftly evident that these are not my peers and that I have no business being here because Level Two is really impossibly hard. I feel like I’m swimming, but barely. Like I’m taking in water with every breath. The teacher, a skinny guy (why are the teachers so skinny here? I don’t trust skinny Italians), is going way too fast, skipping over whole chapters of the textbook, saying, “You already know this, you already know that . . .” and keeping up a rapid-fire conversation with my apparently fluent classmates. My stomach is gripped in horror and I’m gasping for air and praying he won’t call on me. Just as soon as the break comes, I run out of that classroom on wobbling legs and I scurry all the way over to the administrative office almost in tears, where I beg in very clear English if they could please move me down to a Level One class. And so they do. And now I am here. This teacher is plump and speaks slowly. This is much better. 15 The interesting thing about my Italian class is that nobody really needs to be there. There are twelve of us studying together, of all ages, from all over the world, and everybody has come to Rome for the same reason—to study Italian just because they feel like it. Not one of us can identify a single practical reason for being here. Nobody’s boss has said to anyone, “It is vital that you learn to speak Italian in order for us to conduct our business overseas.” Everybody, even the uptight German engineer, shares what I thought was my own personal motive: we all want to speak Italian because we love the way it makes us feel. A sad-faced Russian woman tells us she’s treating herself to Italian lessons because “I think I deserve something beautiful.” The German engineer says, “I want Italian because I love the dolce vita”—the sweet life. (Only, in his stiff Germanic accent, it ends up sounding like he said he loved “the deutsche vita”— the German life—which I’m afraid he’s already had plenty of.) As I will find out over the next few months, there are actually some good reasons that Italian is the most seductively beautiful language in the world, and why I’m not the only person who thinks so. To understand why, you have to first understand that Europe was once a pandemonium of numberless Latin-derived dialects that gradually, over the centuries, morphed into a few separate languages— French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian. What happened in France, Portugal and Spain was an organic evolution: the dialect of the most prominent city gradually became the accepted language of the whole region. Therefore, what we today call French is really a version of medieval Parisian. Portuguese is really Lisboan. Spanish is essentially Madrileño. These were capitalist victories; the strongest city ultimately determined the language of the whole country. Italy was different. One critical difference was that, for the longest time, Italy wasn’t even a country. It didn’t get itself unified until quite late in life (1861) and until then was a peninsula of warring city-states dominated by proud local princes or other European powers. Parts of Italy belonged to France, parts to Spain, parts to the Church, parts to whoever could grab the local fortress or palace. The Italian people were alternatively humiliated and cavalier about all this domination. Most didn’t much like being colonized by their fellow Europeans, but there was always that apathetic crowd that said, “Franza o Spagna, purchè se magna,” which means, in dialect, “France or Spain, as long as I can eat.” All this internal division meant that Italy never properly coalesced, and Italian didn’t either. So it’s not surprising that, for centuries, Italians wrote and spoke in local dialects that were mutually unfathomable. A scientist in Florence could barely communicate with a poet in Sicily or a merchant in Venice (except in Latin, of course, which was hardly considered the national language). In the sixteenth century, some Italian intellectuals got together and decided that this was absurd. This Italian peninsula needed an Italian language, at least in the written form, which everyone could agree upon. So this gathering of intellectuals proceeded to do something unprecedented in the history of Europe; they handpicked the most beautiful of all the local dialects and crowned it Italian. In order to find the most beautiful dialect ever spoken in Italy, they had to reach back in time two hundred years to fourteenth-century Florence. What this congress decided would henceforth be considered proper Italian was the personal language of the great Florentine poet Dante Alighieri. When Dante published his Divine Comedy back in 1321, detailing a visionary progression through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, he’d shocked the literate world by not writing in Latin. He felt that Latin was a corrupted, elitist language, and that the use of it in serious prose had “turned literature into a harlot” by making universal narrative into something that could only be bought with money, through the privilege of an aristocratic education. Instead, Dante turned back to the streets, picking up the real Florentine language spoken by the residents of his city (who included such luminous contemporaries as Boccaccio and Petrarch) and using that language to tell his tale. He wrote his masterpiece in what he called dolce stil nuovo, the “sweet new style” of the vernacular, and he shaped that vernacular even as he was writing it, affecting it as personally as Shakespeare would someday affect Elizabethan English. For a group of nationalist intellectuals much later in history to have sat down and decided that Dante’s Italian would now be the official language of Italy would be very much as if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early nineteenth century and decided that—from this point forward— everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked. The Italian we speak today, therefore, is not Roman or Venetian (though these were the powerful military and merchant cities) nor even really entirely Florentine. Essentially, it is Dantean. No other European language has such an artistic pedigree. And perhaps no language was ever more perfectly ordained to express human emotions than this fourteenth-century Florentine Italian, as embellished by one of Western civilization’s greatest poets. Dante wrote his Divine Comedy in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call “a cascading rhythm”—a rhythm which still lives in the tumbling, poetic cadences spoken by Italian cabdrivers and butchers and government administrators even today. The last line of the Divine Comedy, in which Dante is faced with the vision of God Himself, is a sentiment that is still easily understandable by anyone familiar with so- called modern Italian. Dante writes that God is not merely a blinding vision of glorious light, but that He is, most of all, l’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle . . . “The love that moves the sun and the other stars.” So it’s really no wonder that I want so desperately to learn this language. 16 Depression and Loneliness track me down after about ten days in Italy. I am walking through the Villa Borghese one evening after a happy day spent in school, and the sun is setting gold over St. Peter’s Basilica. I am feeling contented in this romantic scene, even if I am all by myself, while everyone else in the park is either fondling a lover or playing with a laughing child. But I stop to lean against a balustrade and watch the sunset, and I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding, and that’s when they catch up with me. They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me—Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well. We’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. Though I admit that I am surprised to meet them in this elegant Italian garden at dusk. This is no place they belong. I say to them, “How did you find me here? Who told you I had come to Rome?” Depression, always the wise guy, says, “What—you’re not happy to see us?” “Go away,” I tell him. Loneliness, the more sensitive cop, says, “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I might have to tail you the whole time you’re traveling. It’s my assignment.” “I’d really rather you didn’t,” I tell him, and he shrugs almost apologetically, but only moves closer. Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Then Loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours. He’s polite but relentless, and he always trips me up eventually. He asks if I have any reason to be happy that I know of. He asks why I am all by myself tonight, yet again. He asks (though we’ve been through this line of questioning hundreds of times already) why I can’t keep a relationship going, why I ruined my marriage, why I messed things up with David, why I messed things up with every man I’ve ever been with. He asks me where I was the night I turned thirty, and why things have gone so sour since then. He asks why I can’t get my act together, and why I’m not at home living in a nice house and raising nice children like any respectable woman my age should be. He asks why, exactly, I think I deserve a vacation in Rome when I’ve made such a rubble of my life. He asks me why I think that running away to Italy like a college kid will make me happy. He asks where I think I’ll end up in my old age, if I keep living this way. I walk back home, hoping to shake them, but they keep following me, these two goons. Depression has a firm hand on my shoulder and Loneliness harangues me with his interrogation. I don’t even bother eating dinner; I don’t want them watching me. I don’t want to let them up the stairs to my apartment, either, but I know Depression, and he’s got a billy club, so there’s no stopping him from coming in if he decides that he wants to. “It’s not fair for you to come here,” I tell Depression. “I paid you off already. I served my time back in New York.” But he just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it. 17 I’d stopped taking my medication only a few days earlier. It had just seemed crazy to be taking antidepressants in Italy. How could I be depressed here? I’d never wanted to be on the medication in the first place. I’d fought taking it for so long, mainly because of a long list of personal objections (e.g.: Americans are overmedicated; we don’t know the long- term effects of this stuff yet on the human brain; it’s a crime that even American children are on antidepressants these days; we are treating the symptoms and not the causes of a national mental health emergency . . .). Still, during the last few years of my life, there was no question that I was in grave trouble and that this trouble was not lifting quickly. As my marriage dissolved and my drama with David evolved, I’d come to have all the symptoms of a major depression—loss of sleep,	2,783,162
Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Strayed, Cheryl) (Z-Library).pdf	TRIVIA-ON-BOOKS PRESENTS Cheryl Strayed's Wild A TRIVIA GUIDES COLLECTION Join the trivia club Copyright © 2015 by Trivia-On-Books. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or retransmitted, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the publisher. Product names, logos, brands, and other trademarks featured or referred to within this publication are the property of their respective trademark holders and is not sponsored, approved, licensed, or endorsed by any of their licensees or affiliates. Disclaimers and Terms of Use: This is an unofficial and unauthorized trivia guide to supplement the original book. The publisher and author do not warrant or represent that the contents within are accurate and disclaim all warranties and is not liable for any damages whatsoever. Although all attempts were made to verify information, they do not assume any responsibility for errors, omissions, or contrary interpretation of the subject matter contained within as perceived slights of peoples, persons, organizations are unintentional and information contained within should not be used as a source of legal, business, accounting, financial, or other professional advice. Foreword Many read the book, but many don’t like it. Many like the book, but many are not avid fans. Many call themselves avid fans, but few truly are. Come test your knowledge with a trivia quiz to the bookandsee if you have what it takes to be called an avid fan. This is the missing link to separate yourself from the crowd and find out if you really are an avid fan or not. What will you score? Editors at Trivia-On-Books Attention: Get Your FREE Bonus Gifts Now Claim Our Bestselling Gift Below To say Thank You, we’ve included a FREE gift of our All-Time Top 5 Bestselling Kindle Trivia-On-Books yours FREE. Click Here to Get Instant Access. SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Table of Contents The First Challenge The Second Challenge The Third Challenge The Moment of Truth TRIVIA-ON-BOOKS PRESENTS Cheryl Strayed's Wild The First Challenge Have you read the book? Question #1 "Wild" is the story of Cheryl Strayed's journey on which trail? a. Pacific Crest Trail b. Apex National Recreation Trail c. Big Dry Creek National Recreation Trail d. Crag Crest National Recreation Trail a. ANSWERa Pacific Crest Trail “Wild” is a memoir by Cheryl Strayed. In this book, she relived her hike of over thousand miles on the Pacific Crest Trail during the summer of 1995. She described in great detail the very reasons that caused her to take the journey to self-discovery. The book has been successful and sold more than 1.75 million copies in print and has been translated into over thirty languages. Question #2 When was the book “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail” published? a. 2010 b. 2011 c. 2012 d. 2013 a. ANSWER d 2013 Knopf took the book to publication in March of 2013. It was first written in the English language and was listed in the education and memoir genres. The paperback edition of the book contains 315 pages, but it is also available in hardcover or eBook format and as an audiobook. Goodreads users gave "Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail" four out of five stars as did readers on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble's website. Question #3 Where was Cheryl Strayed born? a. Pennsylvania b. Texas c. North Carolina d. Minnesota a. ANSWER a Pennsylvania Strayed was born in Spangler, Pennsylvania in 1968. Born to Barbara “Bobbi” Lambrecht and Ronald Nyland, Cheryl traced her love for writing back to when she was six years old. She is best known for her novel, essay, and memoir writing. Essays written by Cheryl have appeared in numerous magazines in the United States. Her work has also been published in "The Best American Essays” while one of them, entitled "Munro County," was awarded the Pushcart Prize. Question #4 Where did Cheryl Strayed relocate when she was five? a. Minnesota b. Texas c. Michigan d. Mississippi ANSWER a Minnesota Cheryl Strayed relocated to Chaska, Minnesota when she was five years old and a year later, her parents divorced. Her mother eventually remarried and moved to Aitkin County, Minnesota when she was thirteen. Her mother and stepfather, Eddie, bought forty acres of land and built a house for themselves. The house was surroundedby trees and ponds; add animal friends, from baby chicks to horses, and you make a greatcanvas. Question #5 What occurred in 1991 that resulted in Cheryl Strayed’s devastation? a. Her father left them b. Her mother died c. Her husband found a new love d. All of the above a. ANSWER b Her mother died Strayed’s mother, Bobbi Lambrecht died in 1991 while they were both still in college. This devastating news made her succumb to depression. She recalled her mother’s love for animals when she lived in Minnesota. She would often bring the animals into her home to care for them. To pay respects to her mother, every nearby veterinarian sent flowers to her funeral service. Four years after her mother's death, driven by the hope of discovering herself and resolving her grief, Strayed braved the Pacific Crest Trail all alone. Question #6 Where did Cheryl Strayed’s finish her college degree? a. University of St. Thomas b. University of Minnesota c. Rainy River Community College d. Century College a. ANSWER b University of Minnesota Strayed attended McGregor High School where she was homecoming queen. She was active in extracurricular activities and sports. Moving forward, she attended college at the University of St. Thomas. She stayed there for one year, and then transferred to the University of Minnesota, graduating with a Bachelor's in English and Women's Studies.In her early writing years, Strayed held numerous job titles including EMT, waitress, and political organizer. Question #7 What was Cheryl Strayed’s first novel and when was it published? a. Dear Sugar, 2000 b. Tiny Beautiful Things, 2012 c. Torch, 2006 d. None of the above a. ANSWER c Torch, 2006 "Torch," Strayed's first novel, was published in 2006. The book received much attention, and it was even named one of the greatest books of the year by The Oregonian. In 2012, "Tiny Beautiful Things," a compilation of Strayed's advice from "Dear Sugar," was published. This compilation started as a column in The Rumpus, which offers audacious advice to readers. Question #8 What name did the three men whom Cheryl Strayed met in her trail quest give her? a. Princess of the Pacific Crest b. Amozona Queen c. Queen of the Trail d. All of the above a. ANSWER c Queen of the Trail "Wild" begins with Cheryl Strayed telling the story of her life at age twenty-two. At age 26, she started her 1,100-mile journey, having no prior backpacking experience. She began her journey in the Mojave Desert; passing through California and Oregon, and finally ending in Washington. She also narrated her prior life experiences that led her to begin her mountain-climbing journey. Strayed met many interesting people along the Pacific Crest Trail including the three men who named her the "Queen of the Trail.” Question #9 What animal did Cheryl Strayed find the spirit of her mother in while she was on the trail? a. Bears b. Rattlesnakes c. Lions d. Fox a. ANSWER d Fox The difficulties Strayed faced included the death of her mother, the detachment of her stepfather, and no communication with her siblings. Because of all of the hardships she was dealing with in her personal life, Strayed began using heroin. Four years after her mother's death, driven by the hope of discovering herself and resolving her grief, Strayed braved the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed often feels that the animals she meets in her life carry the spirit of her mother. She says she found the spirit of her mother in a fox she ran into along the Pacific Crest Trail. Question #10 What did Cheryl Strayed consider as the greatest thing she has ever done? a. Marrying the love of her life b. Having twin kids c. Hiking the Pacific Crest d. All of the above ANSWER d All of the above Strayed considers hiking the Pacific Crest Trail the greatest thing she has ever done in her life, aside from being married and having children. The Pacific Crest Trail taught her how to continue moving forward in her life no matter what obstacles arise. Another struggle she had to face while she was on her book tour was she had no money to pay for rent. People thought that she would splurge on fancy things now that she was already famous, but Cheryl did otherwise. The Second Challenge Do you know the author? SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Click Here to Get Instant Access to Top 5 Bestsellers for FREE. Question #1 How did Cheryl Strayed start to communicate again with her siblings? a. Through Facebook b. Through Skype c. Through her email d. All of the above a. ANSWER c Thru her email Strayed exhausted all means to find her half-sister and half-brother but to no avail. However, when her half-sister read her memoir, Wild, she found the courage to make herself known and send her an email. They were both ecstatic knowing that after years of longing to see each other, the day had finally arrived that their paths had crossed. Strayed says, “Life is like that. There’s always more, always a reveal.” Question #2 What did Cheryl Strayed prove wrong with her solo trail hike? a. That women alone are in danger b. Women who hike are bisexuals c. Women lack the ability to do manlyquests d. All of the above a. ANSWER a That women alone are in danger For Strayed to be alone on the Pacific Crest Trail went against the message often given in society that women alone are in danger. In fact, she felt that people were more excited for her and more willing to help her. Strayed is not the type of person to ask anyone for help. She was raised to do things on her own, and she sticks to that now even with her success. Strayed feels as though she could never have completed her hike without the help of the people she met along the Pacific Crest Trail. Strayed says there is a sense of togetherness among hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. Question #3 What nickname did Cheryl Strayed give her backpack? a. Wild Wild West b. Monster c. Rodeo d. Desert Storm a. ANSWER b Monster Strayed was a music lover, and she thought she could not be without music on her trail journey. She only had the music inside of her head since Ipods and cellular phones were not yet available. Her journey allowed her to maximize her brain’s potential since there were no distractions like telephones or computers for her. She was alone with only her thoughts. A prized companion that never left her throughout the entire journey was her backpack nicknamed "Monster." Question #4 What are the three beginnings that Cheryl Strayed talked about for her planned solo hike? a. The decision to do it b. To actually do it c. Preparing to do it d. All of the above a. ANSWER d All of the above Strayed stated that her quest to the trail had many obstacles. She started her quest by quitting her job and finalizing her divorce, selling everything she owned and visiting her mother’s grave one last time. She drove, caught a flight to Los Angeles, and finally embarked on the hike to Pacific Crest Trail. Question #5 What color was often repeated in the memoir? a. Red b. Blue c. Yellow d. Green a. ANSWER d Green Strayed could clearly remember her mother making her clothes for her. She wore green pants, a green shirt, and a green bow in her hair as she accompanied her parents to each floor of the Mayo Clinic while her mother went through a series of tests. She wasn’t crazy about the green pantsuit, but she wore it as a sign of penance. She remembered not asking God for mercy because she did not believe in God in the first place. Question #6 Why did Cheryl Strayed believe her mother would not get cancer? a. Because her mother was pious b. Because her mother was a vegetarian c. Because her mother had never said a bad word d. Because her mother was very calm and peaceful a. ANSWER b Because her mother was a vegetarian Strayed’smother was forty-five, and she looked fine. She could remember that her mother was a vegetarian for a good number of years. She recalled how she and her siblings were made to swallow raw cloves of garlic when they had colds to prevent it from getting worse. Her mother would plant different varieties of flowers in the garden to keep bugs away instead of using pesticides. She was never a smoker. She believed that the tests done in Mayo Clinic would prove the previous diagnosis wrong. Question #7 At what age did Cheryl Strayed learn about her mother’s illness? a. Twenty b. Twenty-two c. Twenty-four d. Twenty-six ANSWER b Twenty-two She was twenty-two, and the news came as a shock. She was at the lowest point of her life and could not believe she would lose her mother to cancer. She wondered who would take care of the family and how God could let this happen. She wanted to die now rather than slowly be killed by the thought of living the rest of her life without her mother. Question #8 What childhood experience did Cheryl Strayed recall when the doctor confirm that her mother had lung cancer? a. Riding a bike b. Swimming in the sea c. Playing in the park d. Fainting in the tub a. Answer d Fainting in the tub When the doctor declared that it was lung cancer and that there was nothing more that could do, and that finding it so late was common, Strayed forgot to breathe. She recalled fainting once when she was three years old because she did not want to get out of the bathtub. She would ask her mother throughout her childhood to tell that story repeatedly. She was amazed and delighted by her impetuous will. Question #9 Where did Cheryl and her mother proceed right after they finish with the doctor? a. Main lobby b. Restaurant c. Restroom d. Chapel ANSWER c Restroom Strayed and her mother went to the women’s restroom, occupying the adjacent stalls, crying. They did not worry about the other people there. She could feel her mother’s weight leaning against the thin wall that separated them, and she could feel the burden because she carried it just the same. After what seemed like forever, they came out to compose themselves, looking at each other in the mirror in front of them. Question #10 What was Cheryl Strayed’s prayer while they were waiting at the pharmacy? a. A year, a year, a year b. Lord, please show us some mercy c. Heal my mother, Jesus d. None of the above a. ANSWER a A year, a year, a year They went straight to the pharmacy and took a seat while waiting for the prescription. They took much delight in wondering how the other patients on the lobby were thinking. Most of the time, her thoughts were about what their family would say when they found out. Her prayer was: A year, a year, a year. That was what the doctor told them; those words beat like a heart in her chest. The Third Challenge Are you an Avid Fan? SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com Click Here to Get Instant Access to Top 5 Bestsellers for FREE. Question #1 How did Cheryl Strayed describe her mother’s love for her family? a. Ten thousand promises b. Ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe c. Ten thousand and one Dalmatians d. None of the above a. ANSWER b Ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe Strayed remembered her mother as sweet and charming. Her mother would always ask her and her two siblings, “Do I love you this much?” and she would hold her hands a few inches apart. “No” they would answer, grinning. It was beyond reach. They described their mother’s love as more than the ten thousand named things in the Tao TeChing’s universe. Question #2 What was the reason for Cheryl Strayed’s parents’ break-up? a. Her father was always drunk b. Her mother was addicted to casinos c. Her father beat her mother d. All of the above a. ANSWER c Her father beat her mother Strayed’s mother married her father and got pregnant at the young age of nineteen. Not long after they had been married, her father started beating her mother. Her mother left and came back. She lost track of the times she would leave him. Her father had been cruel to her mother several times. After nine years of cruelty, broken nose and all, her mother managed to leave her father for good. Question #3 How did Cheryl Strayed’s family manage in life after they left her father? a. She worked with her mother at a mine b. Her siblings were made to beg c. Her mother worked for a wealthy businessman d. Her mother worked multiple jobs a. ANSWER d Her mother worked multiple jobs To be able to put food on the table, Strayed’s mother accepted just about any job that was available to her. She waited tables at places called Norseman and Infinity. She was a factory worker during the day making plastic containers capable of holding highly corrosive chemicals. She would bring the rejects home so that the kids could make a toy out of them. They received a subsidy from the government and had presents from charity at Christmas. Question #4 What traits of Cheryl Strayed’s mother annoyed her most? a. Her optimism and cheer b. Her being bossy and arrogance c. Her patience and kindness d. Her cursing and impatience a. ANSWER a Her optimism and cheer Early in March, Strayed’s mother needed to go to Duluth because she was in so much pain that even putting her on socks was hard to do. She sat on the bed with her eyes closed and said to her, “Honey, this is not the way I wanted it to be, but it was the way it was.” It was the very acceptance of suffering that annoyed Strayed about her mother, her optimism and cheer. Question #5 Which part of the body did Cheryl Strayed’s mother donate when she died? a. Her kidneys b. Her eyes c. Her liver d. All of the above a. Answer b Her eyes When Strayed and her brother, Leif, reached their mother’s hospital room, a sign was posted on the door. A nurse explained that they had put ice on their mother’s eyes because she has just donated her corneas. Strayed opened the door, and her stepfather fetched them with arms outstretched, but she went straight to her mother’s bed. She cried her heart out, but her mother would never hear them anymore. They were late; their mother was dead. Question #6 What was the letter about which Cheryl Strayed received after her mother’s death? a. Letter of Condolences b. Letter of Thanksgiving c. Letter of acceptance from a University d. None of the above a. ANSWER c Letter of acceptance from a University The end of Strayed’s marriage began when she and Paul received a letter from New School in New York, a week after her mother’s death. She recalled that three months before they knew that her mother had cancer, she helped her husband, Paul, apply for a Ph.D. program to which he was accepted. In those times, it felt like it was heaven to live there but now that her mother was gone, it felt like impossible to move on with her life. Question #7 Why did Cheryl Strayed feel that so much had been denied to her? a. Because she wed at an early age b. Because she had to keep her family together c. Because she had to sacrifice leaving her hometown d. All of the above a. ANSWER a Because she wed at an early age When Paul had to go to New York for his Ph.D., Strayed told him to go without her. She was tormented because a part of her was terrified by his absence, but the other part hoped he would. She loved her husband, but the early commitment at the age of nineteen felt like she had been denied being attracted to other men. Question #8 Why did Paul defer his admission to New School? a. So Strayed could be with her family b. So they could work on having a baby c. So they could look for a new home d. All of the above a. ANSWER a So she could be with her family As Strayed waited for Paul to leave for graduate school, she made out with many men. On the other hand, her husband was thinking about her and deferred his admission for a year and stayed in Minnesota so she could be near her family. He believed this would help her cope.However, it accomplished very little. Without her mother, the family fell apart; Eddie had become a stranger, and Karen, Leif, and Strayed had moved on with their lives. Question #9 Why did Cheryl Strayed feel jealous and hurt after her husband left her? a. Because their friend made out with Paul b. Because Paul was dating many women c. Both a and b d. None of the above a. ANSWER c Both a and b When Strayed admitted her adulterous activities to Paul, he left her. Their friends were shocked saying their disposition told another story. When they knew the reason for the breakup, a dear friend made out with Paul, and he started dating a few women. These things hurt her and made her jealous. What was more troubling was that a friend told her that she deserved all of the things that were happening to her: a taste of her own medicine. Question #10 Who portrayed Cheryl Strayed in the movie “Wild”? a. Gwyneth Paltrow b. Alicia Silverstone c. Reese Witherspoon d. Eva Mendes a. ANSWER c Reese Witherspoon The film Wild was released in December 2014 with Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon portraying Cheryl Strayed, the movie’s protagonist. By the time the book was published, Pacific Standard had secured the rights to the film. Witherspoon promised the author, Cheryl Strayed, that she would make the best film she possibly could and that she would honor and protect it as she could relate to the grief that Strayed talks about in the book. She also thought the subject matter was unique. The Moment of Truth Results May Vary Based on the difficulty of the questions you are an Avid Fan if you’ve received less than “2” wrong. Review This Book! Attention: Get Your FREE Bonus Gifts Now Claim Our Bestselling Gift Below To say Thank You, we’ve included a FREE gift of our All-TimeTop 5 Bestselling Kindle Trivia-On-Books yours FREE. Click Here to Get Instant Access. SPONSORED BY www.KindlePromos.com	22,108
Wild From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail (Strayed, Cheryl) (Z-Library).v.pdf	HOANG DÃ Hành Trình Tìm Lại Mình Trên Đường Mòn ---❊ ❖ ❊--- Tác giả: Cheryl Strayed Dịch thuật: Quế Chi Phát hành: AlphaBooks Xuất bản: NXB Thế Giới Thể loại: Tự truyện Nguồn text: Waka Đóng gói: @nguyenthanh-cuibap C LỜI NGỎ uốn sách dựa trên nhật ký hành trình cá nhân cùng nhiều sự việc thực tế tôi tìm hiểu được; xin ý kiến những người được nhắc tới; gợi lại những sự kiện trong ký ức và cuộc sống hiện tại của tôi. Vì quyền riêng tư, hầu hết nhân vật đều đã được đổi tên, một số thông tin cá nhân cũng bị thay đổi. Cuốn sách không kết hợp các nhân vật, sự kiện làm thay đổi sự thật. Đôi khi, tôi có bỏ qua một vài chi tiết, nhưng vẫn đảm bảo trọn vẹn tính chân thực và nội dung câu chuyện. N MỞ ĐẦU hững cái cây sừng sững cao vút, nhưng tôi còn cao hơn chúng. Tôi đang đứng trên một sườn núi dốc đứng phía bắc California. Tôi vừa tháo đôi giày leo núi ra và để rơi một chiếc xuống tán cây, đầu tiên, nó bật nhào vào không khí khi bị chiếc ba lô khổng lồ của tôi đổ ụp xuống, rồi lăn theo con đường mòn sỏi đá và bay khỏi đỉnh dốc. Chiếc giày rớt xuống một tảng đá trồi phía dưới cách tôi vài mét và nảy lên trước khi biến mất giữa vòm rừng, chẳng thể nào lấy lại được nữa. Tôi há hốc miệng, điếng người. Dù đã ở giữa nơi hoang dã này 38 ngày và thấm thía rằng điều gì cũng có thể xảy ra và sẽ xảy ra; nhưng tôi khi ấy vẫn không khỏi bàng hoàng. Giày của tôi đã mất. Mất thật rồi. Tôi giữ chặt chiếc kia trước ngực như đứa trẻ, dù tất nhiên là chẳng nghĩa lý gì. Một chiếc giày làm được gì khi không có chiếc còn lại chứ? Chẳng gì cả. Nó vô dụng, cô độc mãi mãi, và tôi chẳng hề mảy may thương cảm. Đó là đôi bốt Raichle vừa to vừa nặng bằng da nâu với dây đỏ cùng lỗ xỏ dây kim loại màu bạc. Tôi giơ chiếc giày lên cao, cố sức ném thật xa, nhìn nó rơi xuống những tán cây xum xuê và biến mất khỏi cuộc đời tôi. Tôi cô độc. Chân trần. Tôi 26 tuổi và mồ côi nữa. Một kẻ lạc đường đúng nghĩa, như một người lạ đã nhận xét vào hai tuần trước, khi nghe tên tôi và cái cách tôi đánh mất mọi thứ trong đời. Cha bỏ đi khi tôi lên sáu. Mẹ mất khi tôi 22 tuổi. Sau cái chết của mẹ, cha dượng – người tôi từng coi như cha đẻ – dần trở thành người mà tôi chẳng nhận ra nổi. Chị gái và em trai tôi mỗi người một phương, đắm chìm trong nỗi buồn khổ riêng của họ. Dù tôi đã gắng sức gắn kết cả gia đình lại với nhau, nhưng rốt cuộc vẫn là ly tán. Vài năm trước khi ném đi chiếc giày ấy, tôi cũng đã vứt bỏ chính mình. Tôi vất vưởng, lang thang, bắt tàu – từ Minnesota tới New York, tới Oregon và xuyên qua miền Tây nước Mỹ – để cuối cùng, vào mùa hè năm 1995, tôi thấy mình chân không giày, không tha thiết cũng chẳng thờ ơ với thế giới. Đó là một thế giới tôi chưa từng đặt chân tới, thậm chí chưa từng biết đến sự tồn tại của nó; nơi tôi lê bước trong muộn phiền và bối rối, sợ hãi và hy vọng. Một thế giới mà tôi tin sẽ biến tôi thành người phụ nữ tôi có thể trở thành, đồng thời đưa tôi về với cô gái Cheryl trước kia. Một thế giới rộng chừng 60 cm và dài 4.285 km. Thế giới ấy mang tên đường mòn Pacific Crest. Lần đầu tiên tôi nghe đến nó chỉ chừng bảy tháng trước đó, khi đang sống ở Minneapolis, buồn bã, tuyệt vọng, chuẩn bị ly hôn người đàn ông tôi vẫn yêu say đắm. Tôi với lấy cuốn The Pacific Crest Trail, Volume 1: California (Đường mòn Pacific Crest, tập 1: California) từ giá sách liền kề khi đang đứng xếp hàng, đợi thanh toán một chiếc xẻng. Bìa sách nói: Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) là con đường mòn hoang vu chạy dài từ biên giới Mexico ở California đến sát biên giới Canada, qua chín ngọn núi: Laguna, San Jacinto, San Bernardino, San Gabriel, Liebre, Tehachapi, Sierra Nevada, Klamath và Cascades. Khoảng cách là 1.600 km đường chim bay, nhưng độ dài đường mòn thì gần gấp đôi số ấy. PCT trải dài qua các bang California, Oregon và Washington. Nó đi qua các vườn quốc gia, những vùng hoang dã cũng như nhiều vùng đất thuộc liên bang, bộ lạc và tư nhân; qua hoang mạc, núi đồi và rừng nhiệt đới; qua sông suối và cả những con đường cao tốc. Tôi lật lại, nhìn chăm chăm vào bìa trước – một hồ nước trong đầy sỏi cuội bao quanh bởi những vách đá cheo leo, in bóng bầu trời xanh lồng lộng – rồi đặt lại nó lên giá, trả tiền chiếc xẻng và rời đi. Nhưng sau đó, tôi đã quay trở lại và mua cuốn sách. Khi ấy, đường mòn Pacific Crest chưa phải là một phần cuộc đời tôi. Đó chỉ là một ý tưởng, mơ hồ và lạ lùng, đầy hứa hẹn và bí ẩn. Khi đưa tay miết theo con đường nhấp nhô vẽ trên tấm bản đồ, có điều gì đó như rộn ràng bung nở trong trái tim tôi. Tôi quyết định sẽ chinh phục con đường ấy, hay chí ít là đi xa nhất có thể trong chừng 100 ngày. Tôi sống một mình trong căn hộ studio [1] ở Minneapolis, ly thân chồng, làm phục vụ bàn, và sống những ngày tháng rối bời tệ hại. Mỗi ngày, tôi lại cảm thấy như mình đang ngước lên từ một đáy giếng thẳm sâu. Nhưng từ chính nơi đó, tôi chuẩn bị trở thành một khách bộ hành đơn độc phiêu lãng giữa miền hoang dã. Và tại sao lại không chứ? Đã từng có rất nhiều “tôi” khác. Một người vợ đáng yêu và một phụ nữ ngoại tình. Một cô con gái được yêu thương và kẻ giờ đây phải cô đơn trong những kỳ nghỉ lễ. Một kẻ đầy tham vọng hoài bão và một cây bút tiềm năng liên tiếp nhảy giữa những công việc vô nghĩa trong khi học đòi nghiện ngập và ngủ với vô số đàn ông. Tôi là cháu gái một người thợ mỏ ở Pennsylvania, con gái một nhân viên kinh doanh từng là công nhân ngành thép. Sau khi bố mẹ chia tay, tôi sống cùng mẹ, chị gái và em trai trong một khu chung cư dành cho những bà mẹ đơn thân và con của họ. Thời niên thiếu, tôi từng sống theo kiểu về với tự nhiên trong khu rừng phía Bắc Minnesota, ở một ngôi nhà không có vệ sinh khép kín, không điện, không hệ thống nước. Dù vậy, tôi vẫn trở thành đội trưởng đội cổ vũ trường trung học và hoa khôi học đường. Rồi tôi vào đại học, đứng trong hàng ngũ những người cánh tả cấp tiến về bình đẳng giới. Nhưng trở thành người phụ nữ một mình bước qua gần 1.800 km đường hoang dã ư? Tôi chưa từng có suy nghĩ ấy. Dẫu thế, thử một lần cũng chẳng mất gì. Và giờ đây, đứng chân trần trên ngọn núi ở California này, tôi tưởng như đã vài năm trôi qua, vài năm sống một cuộc đời hoàn toàn khác, kể từ giây phút tôi đưa ra quyết định không tưởng đó: một mình đi bộ đường trường trên PCT để cứu lấy đời mình. Khi đó, tôi tin rằng, mọi điều tôi từng trải qua trước đó sẽ là hành trang tốt cho chuyến đi này. Nhưng không. Mỗi ngày trên con đường mòn chính là chuẩn bị duy nhất cho ngày tiếp theo. Và thậm chí đôi khi còn chẳng có cách nào để chuẩn bị cả. Như việc chiếc giày của tôi đã rớt bên sườn núi và chẳng thể lấy lại. Thực sự thì, tôi không hoàn toàn tiếc nuối khi đánh mất nó. Trong sáu tuần đi đôi giày ấy, tôi đã băng qua những hoang mạc và vùng tuyết phủ, thấy cỏ cây, bụi rậm, lá hoa đủ mọi hình thù, kích cỡ và màu sắc; tôi leo lên rồi lại đi xuống núi đồi, qua những cánh đồng, rừng thưa và những dải đất tôi thậm chí còn chẳng biết tên. Tôi chỉ có thể nói rằng mình đã từng ở đó, vượt qua và bỏ lại chúng sau lưng. Trong suốt quãng thời gian ấy, đôi giày khiến chân tôi phồng rộp, trầy da chảy máu; móng chân tôi đen lại và bốn móng đã tự bong ra, đau đớn vô cùng. Khi để mất đôi giày, cả tôi và chúng đều đã hoàn thành nghĩa vụ với nhau, dẫu từ tận đáy lòng tôi vẫn vô cùng yêu quý chúng. Đôi giày ấy chẳng còn là vật vô tri vô giác như với “tôi” ngày trước nữa; cũng giống chiếc ba lô, lều trại, túi ngủ, bình lọc nước, bếp lò siêu nhẹ và chiếc còi nhỏ màu cam tôi mang theo thay cho khẩu súng trong suốt mùa hè ấy. Chúng đều là những thứ tôi hiểu rõ và tin tưởng; những thứ giúp tôi tiến bước. Phía dưới kia, những ngọn cây cao ngất đang khẽ đu đưa trong làn gió nóng bức. Tôi chăm chú nhìn xuyên qua khoảng mênh mông xanh ngắt ấy, thầm nghĩ hẳn đôi giày của mình nằm dưới đó. Vì khung cảnh tuyệt vời trước mắt, tôi quyết định dừng chân tạm nghỉ. Tôi ở đây, trong một chiều muộn giữa tháng bảy, cách xa thế giới văn minh về mọi mặt, và còn nhiều ngày nữa mới tới được trạm bưu điện hiu quạnh để lấy chiếc hộp tiếp tế tiếp theo. Có thể ai đó đang đi xuống theo con đường mòn này; nhưng khả năng ấy rất mong manh. Thường thường, tôi đi rất nhiều ngày mà không thấy một ai khác. Dù sao thì, có người đi cùng hay không cũng vậy cả. Tôi là kẻ độc hành. Tôi lặng nhìn đôi chân trần dập nát với vài móng chân còn sót lại. Khi tháo đôi tất len tôi vẫn thường mang, từ trên mắt cá trở xuống, chân tôi nhợt nhạt khủng khiếp. Bắp chân gân guốc, sạm nắng và rậm lông; lem luốc bẩn thỉu với đầy vết xước và phồng rộp. Tôi bắt đầu đi bộ từ hoang mạc Mojave và không định dừng lại cho tới khi chạm tay tới cây cầu bắc qua con sông Columbia ở ranh giới giữa Oregon và Washington. Một cây cầu có cái tên hoa mỹ: Cầu của Chúa. Tôi nhìn về phương bắc, chăm chăm hướng tới cây cầu “hoa tiêu” ấy. Tôi ngoảnh lại phương nam, vùng đất hoang dã đã “dạy dỗ” và thiêu đốt tôi; cân nhắc những lựa chọn của mình. Và chỉ có duy nhất một đáp án thôi. Luôn luôn là như vậy. Tiếp tục tiến bước. PHẦN MỘT Mười Ngàn Thứ Đập tan một thứ vô cùng vĩ đại sẽ tạo nên một cơ hội còn vĩ đại hơn. WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, (Antony và Cleopatra) C 1 MƯỜI NGÀN THỨ huyến độc hành ba tháng trên đường mòn Pacific Crest của tôi có kha khá những khởi đầu. Trước hết là quyết định đầu tiên, rất chóng vánh: mình sẽ đi; tiếp theo là quyết định nghiêm túc hơn: bắt tay vào làm thôi; tiếp đến là công cuộc khởi động, gồm hàng tuần liền mua sắm, đóng gói và chuẩn bị cho chuyến đi. Rồi xin nghỉ việc phục vụ bàn, hoàn tất thủ tục ly hôn, bán hầu hết mọi thứ tôi sở hữu, tạm biệt bạn bè và tới viếng mộ mẹ lần cuối. Rồi lái xe dọc đất nước, từ Minneapolis tới Portland, Oregon rồi vài ngày sau đó, bắt một chuyến bay tới Los Angeles, bắt tiếp xe tới thị trấn của Mojave, tiếp tục đi nhờ tới điểm giao cắt giữa PCT và đường quốc lộ. Mỗi khởi đầu ấy đều gồm bắt tay vào làm, nhanh chóng nhận ra việc này vô vọng đến thế nào, rồi quyết định từ bỏ bởi thấy nó thật vô nghĩa, gian nan, khác xa hình dung trước đó, và còn bởi tôi thực sự chưa đủ sẵn sàng. Và sau đó, là dấn thân vào thực sự. Cứ bám trụ cứ dấn bước, bất chấp tất cả. Bất chấp gấu, rắn đuôi chuông và tiếng gầm gào của sư tử núi chẳng thấy bóng dáng; bất chấp những vết phồng rộp, vết thương đóng vảy, xước xát và rách da rách thịt. Bất chấp kiệt sức và thiếu thốn; lạnh giá và nắng cháy; đơn điệu và đau đớn; đói và khát; vinh quang và những bóng ma ám ảnh suốt hành trình gần 1.800 km độc hành từ hoang mạc Mojave tới bang Washington. Và cuối cùng, khi đã thực sự đi và đến, bước qua chừng ấy dặm đường trong quãng thời gian đó, tôi nhận ra đâu mới là khởi đầu thực sự. Tôi nhận ra chuyến bộ hành qua đường mòn Pacific Crest của mình không khởi đầu từ quyết định chớp nhoáng ngày ấy. Nó đã manh nha từ trước cả khi tôi tưởng tượng về nó, chính xác là bốn năm, bảy tháng và ba ngày trước đó, khi tôi đứng trong căn phòng nhỏ ở bệnh viện Mayo, Rochester, Minnesota và biết rằng mẹ mình sắp chết. Khi đó, tôi mặc từ đầu tới chân một màu xanh lá. Quần xanh, áo sơ mi xanh, chiếc nơ màu xanh trên mái tóc. Đó là bộ đồ mẹ may cho tôi – bà đã may quần áo cho tôi suốt cả cuộc đời. Một số bộ hệt như tôi mơ ước, một số khác thì không bằng. Tôi chẳng cuồng đồ màu xanh, nhưng dù thế nào tôi cũng mặc chúng, như một kiểu chuộc lỗi, hiến tế hay bùa may mắn vậy. Cả một ngày trong bộ đồ xanh lá, khi đi cùng mẹ và dượng Eddie hết tầng này đến tầng khác ở viện Mayo để mẹ làm đủ thứ xét nghiệm, một lời cầu nguyện cứ điệp đi điệp lại trong tâm trí tôi, dù lời cầu nguyện không phải từ chính xác để mô tả điệp khúc đó. Tôi không quỵ lụy trước Chúa. Tôi thậm chí chẳng tin vào Chúa. Tôi chẳng cầu khấn: Lạy Chúa, xin Người hãy rủ lòng thương chúng con. Tôi không xin xỏ lòng thương. Tôi không cần chúng. Mẹ tôi mới 45 tuổi. Nom bà hoàn toàn khỏe mạnh. Nhiều năm nay mẹ gần như chỉ ăn chay. Mẹ trồng cúc vạn thọ quanh vườn để xua sâu bọ thay vì dùng thuốc trừ sâu. Mấy chị em tôi vẫn được mẹ cho nuốt tỏi sống khi cảm lạnh. Những người như mẹ sẽ chẳng thể nào bị ung thư. Những xét nghiệm ở bệnh viện Mayo sẽ chứng minh điều đó, phủ nhận hoàn toàn lời các bác sĩ ở Duluth nói. Tôi dám chắc là thế. Mấy bác sĩ ở Duluth là ai kia chứ? Mà Duluth là gì cơ chứ? Duluth! Một thị trấn lạnh lẽo, quê mùa nơi mấy tay bác sĩ chẳng hiểu quái gì về thứ họ nói: Một phụ nữ 45 tuổi, ăn chay, ăn tỏi, thường dùng những bài thuốc từ tự nhiên và không hút thuốc mà lại mắc ung thư phổi giai đoạn cuối sao? Mẹ kiếp. Đó là lời nguyện cầu của tôi: Mẹ kiếp, mẹ kiếp, mẹ kiếp. Thế nhưng, mẹ tôi đang ở đây, trong bệnh viện Mayo, mệt mỏi rã rời nếu phải tự đi lại quá ba phút đồng hồ. “Em có muốn dùng xe lăn không?” Dượng Eddie hỏi mẹ khi chúng tôi bắt gặp hàng xe lăn trong một hành lang dài trải thảm. “Mẹ con không cần xe lăn.” Tôi đáp. “Chỉ một lát thôi.” Mẹ nói, gần như đổ sụp xuống một chiếc. Ánh mắt tôi và mẹ chạm nhau trước khi dượng Eddie đẩy bà về phía thang máy. Tôi theo sau, không cho phép bản thân được nghĩ ngợi bất cứ điều gì. Chúng tôi đang lên gặp vị bác sĩ cuối cùng. Một bác sĩ thực thụ, chúng tôi cứ nói như vậy. Ông sẽ tập hợp mọi thông tin về mẹ và nói cho chúng tôi đâu mới là sự thật. Khi thang máy đi lên, mẹ đưa tay chạm vào quần tôi, vân vê lớp vải cotton xanh giữa những ngón tay theo cái cách rất riêng của mình. “Hoàn hảo.” Bà nói. Lúc đó tôi 22 tuổi, bằng tuổi mẹ khi bà mang thai tôi. Bà sắp rời bỏ tôi đúng vào thời điểm tôi đến với bà, suy nghĩ ấy lướt qua đầu tôi. Không hiểu sao suy nghĩ này cứ hiển hiện trọn vẹn trong tâm trí tôi, tạm thời xóa nhòa lời nguyện cầu Mẹ kiếp. Tôi gần như rít lên vì đau đớn. Tôi suýt nghẹn thở vì điều tôi nhận ra trước cả khi nó được xác nhận. Tôi sắp phải sống quãng đời còn lại mà không có mẹ. Tôi vận hết sức xua đi sự thật ấy. Tôi không thể để mình tin vào điều đó, lúc này đây và trong chiếc thang máy này, tôi giữ nhịp thở, bắt bản thân nghĩ tới những thứ khác. Như là nếu bác sĩ nói rằng bạn sẽ sớm ra đi, bạn sẽ được mang tới một căn phòng với cái bàn gỗ bóng loáng. Nhưng không phải vậy. Chúng tôi được dẫn tới một phòng kiểm tra nơi cô y tá yêu cầu mẹ cởi áo và mặc chiếc áo bệnh nhân bằng cotton với dây dợ lòng thòng hai bên. Sau đó, mẹ leo lên một chiếc bàn được lót bông và trải giấy trắng. Mỗi khi bà cử động, căn phòng lại lóe sáng lên với lớp giấy rách toạc và nhăn nhúm bên dưới. Tôi có thể thấy tấm lưng trần của mẹ, thấy đường cong nhỏ nhắn dưới thắt lưng bà. Bà sẽ không chết. Tấm lưng trần của bà dường như nói lên điều ấy. Tôi đang nhìn chằm chằm vào đó khi bác sĩ thực thụ kia bước vào phòng và nói nếu may mắn, mẹ tôi có thể sống thêm một năm nữa. Ông ta giải thích rằng họ sẽ không cố thử điều trị gì, rằng bà chẳng thể cứu chữa được nữa. Chẳng thể làm gì hơn, ông ta nói với chúng tôi. Phát hiện muộn bệnh ung thư phổi là chuyện bình thường. “Nhưng mẹ tôi không hề hút thuốc!” Tôi cự nự, cứ như thể có thể khiến ông ta từ bỏ lời chẩn đoán ấy, như thể bệnh ung thư biến chuyển tuần tự và có thể ngăn lại được. “Mẹ tôi chỉ hút khi còn trẻ và hàng năm nay chưa động đến một điếu nào.” Vị bác sĩ lắc đầu buồn bã và tiếp tục. Còn một việc có thể làm. Ông ta gợi ý làm giảm những cơn đau lưng bằng phương pháp xạ trị. Chúng giúp thu nhỏ kích thước của khối u đang lan dọc sống lưng mẹ tôi. Tôi không khóc. Tôi chỉ thở. Khó nhọc. Nỗ lực. Và rồi, quên mất cần phải thở. Tôi đã từng ngất đi – khi lên ba, tôi quyết nín thở vì không muốn ra khỏi bồn tắm. Lúc đó, tôi còn quá nhỏ để nhớ mọi chuyện. Mẹ đã làm gì? Mẹ đã làm gì? Tôi đã hỏi mẹ suốt thời thơ bé, khiến bà vừa buồn cười vừa ngạc nhiên vì cái tính dai như đỉa của tôi, rồi cuối cùng phải kể đi kể lại câu chuyện cả ngàn lần. Mẹ luôn kể rằng, mẹ đã chìa tay ra và nhìn khuôn mặt tôi dần tái xanh. Mẹ đợi tới khi đầu tôi ngả vào lòng bàn tay mẹ, tôi hít một hơi và tỉnh lại. Thở đi. “Tôi có thể cưỡi ngựa nữa không?” Mẹ hỏi ông bác sĩ. Bà ngồi đó, siết chặt hai bàn tay, ngoắc hai cổ chân vào nhau như thể tự trói mình. Để đáp lại, ông ta lấy ra một cây bút chì, đặt nó thẳng đứng ở rìa chậu rửa rồi gõ mạnh lên mặt chậu rửa. “Đây là đốt sống của bà sau khi xạ trị.” Ông ta nói. “Chỉ chấn động nhỏ, xương bà sẽ vỡ tan như bánh quy giòn. ” Tôi và mẹ cùng vào phòng vệ sinh nữ. Mỗi người khóa trái một gian, nức nở. Chúng tôi chẳng nói với nhau lời nào. Chẳng phải vì chúng tôi thấy cô đơn với nỗi niềm riêng, mà bởi chúng tôi cùng đau một nỗi đau, hai người như một. Tôi có thể cảm nhận được người bà đang tựa vào cánh cửa, đôi bàn tay đập từng nhịp lên cửa khiến các gian phòng cứ thế rung lên. Lát sau, chúng tôi bước ra rửa tay và mặt, nhìn nhau qua tấm gương sáng chói. Chúng tôi được chỉ tới đợi ở quầy thuốc. Tôi ngồi giữa mẹ và dượng Eddie, trong bộ đồ xanh lá, và chiếc nơ xanh kỳ lạ thay vẫn nằm trên mái tóc. Có một cậu bé mập mạp, trọc đầu nằm trong lòng người đàn ông già nua. Có một người phụ nữ với một bên cánh tay từ khuỷu xuống cứ đu đưa vô định. Cô cố giữ nó bằng bên tay còn lại. Cô ấy đang chờ đợi. Chúng tôi đang chờ đợi. Có một người phụ nữ xinh đẹp với mái tóc tối màu ngồi trên xe lăn. Cô đội chiếc mũ tím và đeo nhẫn kim cương đầy tay. Chúng tôi chẳng thể rời mắt khỏi cô ấy. Cô nói tiếng Tây Ban Nha với những người xung quanh, gia đình cô và có lẽ là cả chồng cô nữa. “Con có nghĩ cô ấy bị ung thư không?” Mẹ thì thầm hỏi tôi. Dượng Eddie cũng ngồi ngay cạnh tôi, nhưng tôi không thể nhìn ông. Bởi nếu tôi nhìn ông, cả hai chúng tôi sẽ cùng vỡ vụn như những chiếc bánh quy giòn. Tôi nghĩ về chị mình, Karen và em trai, Leif. Nghĩ về chồng tôi, Paul, và về ông bà ngoại cùng bác tôi, những người đang sống cách đây cả ngàn kilômét đường. Họ sẽ nói gì khi biết tin? Họ sẽ khóc như thế nào nhỉ? Lời cầu nguyện của tôi giờ đã khác: Một năm, một năm, một năm. Hai từ ấy nhịp tiếng như thể một trái tim đang đập trong lồng ngực. Đó là khoảng thời gian còn lại của mẹ tôi. “Mẹ đang nghĩ gì thế?” Tôi hỏi bà. Một bài hát vang lên trên loa. Bài hát không lời, nhưng mẹ biết chúng. Và thay vì trả lời tôi, bà khẽ ngân nga theo điệu nhạc. “Paper roses, paper roses, oh how real those roses seemed to be.”[2] (Những bông hồng giấy, những bông hồng giấy. Ôi! Chúng mới giống thật làm sao.) Bà đặt bàn tay lên tay tôi và nói: “Hồi còn trẻ mẹ vẫn nghe bài hát này. Giờ nghe lại thấy thật hay. Mẹ không biết là lại hay thế đâu.” Rồi họ gọi tên mẹ: đơn thuốc cho bà đã sẵn sàng. “Đến lấy giúp mẹ đi,” bà nói, “nói với họ con là ai. Nói rằng con là con mẹ.” Tôi là con của mẹ, nhưng còn hơn thế nữa. Tôi là Karen, Cheryl, Lief. Karen Cheryl Leif. KarenCherylLief. Tên của chúng tôi đã hòa vào làm một trong lời mẹ suốt cuộc đời tôi. Bà thầm thì và kêu la, huýt gọi và ngân nga ba từ ấy. Chúng tôi là con mẹ, là bạn mẹ, là khởi đầu và kết thúc của mẹ. Chúng tôi đã thay phiên nhau ngồi ghế trước trên ô tô cùng mẹ. “Mẹ yêu các con ngần này nhỉ?” Bà hỏi chúng tôi, giữ đôi tay cách nhau chừng 15 cm. “Không!” Chúng tôi đáp cùng nụ cười ranh mãnh. “Hay là ngần này?” Bà hỏi lại, và cứ thế, cứ thế, mỗi lần lại dang rộng tay hơn một chút. Nhưng rộng đến chừng nào cũng chẳng thể đủ. Tình yêu mẹ dành cho chúng tôi vượt qua cả vòng tay bà. Chẳng thể nào đo đếm, chẳng thể nào đong chứa. Nó gồm mười ngàn thứ [3] đã được đặt tên trong thế giới của Lão Tử và cả mười ngàn thứ nữa. Tình yêu của mẹ vẹn tròn, chan chứa và chẳng hề màu mè, lan tỏa qua vẻ bề ngoài nội tâm của bà. Bà là con gái một quân nhân và theo đạo Thiên Chúa. Bà từng sống ở năm bang và hai nước trước khi bước sang tuổi 15. Bà yêu những chú ngựa, nhạc Hank Williams và có một người bạn thân tên Babs. 19 tuổi có bầu, mẹ cưới bố tôi. Ba ngày sau, ông đuổi đánh mẹ quanh phòng. Mẹ bỏ đi rồi quay về. Bỏ đi rồi lại quay về. Dù chẳng muốn, bà vẫn gắng cam chịu. Ông đấm vỡ mũi mẹ, đập tan bát đĩa. Ông túm tóc, lôi mẹ xềnh xệch trên vỉa hè giữa ban ngày ban mặt, khiến đầu gối bà tứa máu. Nhưng ông chẳng khuất phục nổi bà. 28 tuổi, cuối cùng bà cũng rời bỏ ông. Bà đơn độc, với KarenCherylLief ngồi ghế trước trong chiếc ô tô của mình. Sau đó, chúng tôi đến sống ở một thị trấn nhỏ cách Minneapolis chừng một tiếng chạy xe, trong chuỗi căn hộ nghe tên thì có vẻ cao cấp lắm: Mill Pond và Barbary Knoll, Tree Loft và Lake Grace Manor. Mẹ tôi làm hết việc này đến việc khác. Phục vụ bàn tại Norseman rồi Infinity, nơi đồng phục là áo thun đen với dòng chữ GO FOR IT (Liều thử đi!) lấp lánh màu cầu vồng trước ngực. Bà làm ca ngày trong một nhà máy sản xuất dụng cụ bằng nhựa dùng để chứa chất ăn mòn mạnh và mang những sản phẩm lỗi về nhà. Chúng tôi sẽ dùng những cái khay và hộp bị lỗi, vỡ hay sứt mẻ ấy làm đồ chơi, giường ngủ cho búp bê hay đường dốc cho ô tô mô hình. Mẹ liên tục phải làm việc, làm việc rồi làm việc, mà chúng tôi vẫn cứ nghèo. Chúng tôi được nhận phô mai và sữa bột từ chính phủ, tem phiếu thực phẩm, thẻ hỗ trợ y tế cùng những món quà miễn phí từ người thiện nguyện vào dịp Giáng sinh. Chúng tôi chơi đuổi bắt, trò đèn xanh đèn đỏ, đố chữ bên các hòm thư của khu nhà, và đợi chờ những tấm séc được gửi tới. “Chúng ta không nghèo,” mẹ luôn nói đi nói lại như vậy, “bởi chúng ta giàu yêu thương.” Bà sẽ pha màu thực phẩm vào nước đường và giả vờ rằng chúng là những thứ đồ uống đặc biệt. Xá xị, cam ép hoặc nước chanh. Mẹ sẽ hỏi: Quý bà có muốn uống thứ gì khác không ạ? bằng chất giọng Anh quốc kiêu kỳ lần nào cũng khiến chúng tôi cười nghiêng ngả. Mẹ sẽ mở rộng dần vòng tay, hỏi rằng mẹ yêu chúng tôi nhiều đến chừng nào, và sẽ chẳng thể có giới hạn cho trò chơi ấy. Mẹ yêu chúng tôi hơn mọi thứ có thể gọi tên trên thế gian này. Mẹ luôn lạc quan và hiền hòa, chỉ trừ một vài lần bà mất bình tĩnh và tét chúng tôi bằng thìa gỗ mà thôi. Hay một lần mẹ hét lên KHỐN KIẾP và sụp xuống khóc vì chúng tôi không chịu dọn dẹp phòng. Mẹ rất tốt bụng, vị tha, hào phóng và chất phác. Mẹ hẹn hò với Killer, Doobie, Dan Mô Tô và một người tên Victor thích trượt tuyết đường dốc. Họ thường cho chúng tôi mấy đồng năm đô đi mua kẹo để có thể ở riêng với mẹ trong căn hộ. “Để ý cả hai bên đường nhé!” Mẹ sẽ gọi với theo như vậy khi chúng tôi chạy ào đi như đàn cún đói khát. Khi gặp dượng Eddie, mẹ đã nghĩ sẽ chẳng thành đôi vì ông kém bà đến tám tuổi. Dẫu vậy, họ vẫn yêu nhau. Karen, Lief và tôi cũng yêu quý ông. Khi ấy ông mới 25 tuổi, và hai năm sau, ông kết hôn cùng mẹ, hứa sẽ trở thành cha chúng tôi. Dượng Eddie là người thợ mộc có thể làm ra hoặc sửa bất cứ thứ gì. Chúng tôi rời những căn hộ có tên mỹ miều kia, chuyển đến ở cùng ông trong một nông trại cho thuê xiêu vẹo với tầng hầm bẩn thỉu và tường ngoài sơn tới bốn thứ màu. Mùa đông ngay sau đám cưới của hai người, dượng Eddie ngã từ trên mái nhà xuống khi đang làm việc và bị gãy sống lưng. Một năm sau đó, ông và mẹ dùng 12.000 đô-la tiền bồi thường của ông để mua 16 ha đất tại Aitkin County, cách Duluth 1 tiếng rưỡi lái xe về phía tây, trả hoàn toàn bằng tiền mặt. Ở đó không có nhà. Chưa ai từng dựng nhà trên mảnh đất ấy. 16 ha đất của chúng tôi toàn cây cối, bụi rậm, cỏ dại, ao chuôm lầy lội ngập cỏ nến. Chẳng có gì để phân biệt với cả vài kilômét cây cối, bụi rậm, cỏ dại, ao chuôm bao quanh. Trong những tháng đầu, chúng tôi cùng nhau dạo bước quanh khu đất như những người địa chủ, len lỏi qua khoảnh hoang vu ở hai phía không giáp với đường cái, như thể làm vậy sẽ tạo ra lãnh thổ riêng của mình. Và, dần dần, điều đó đã trở thành hiện thực. Những cái cây từng bình thường như bao cây khác, giờ giống như khuôn mặt người bạn cũ giữa đám đông, cành lá đung đưa, vẫy gọi như cũng có tâm hồn. Những bụi cỏ, rìa đầm giờ đã thân thuộc, thành điểm mốc hay chỉ dẫn mà chẳng ai ngoài chúng tôi hiểu nổi. Chúng tôi gọi nơi đó là “ngược lên bắc” khi còn sống ở thị trấn cách Minneapolis một tiếng chạy xe. Trong sáu tháng đầu, chúng tôi chỉ ngược lên bắc vào cuối tuần, hăng hái khai quang một khoảng đất và dựng căn lều một phòng bằng giấy dầu cho năm người ngủ. Đầu tháng sáu, khi tôi 13 tuổi, chúng tôi chuyển hẳn tới đó. Hay đúng hơn chỉ có mẹ, Leif, Karen và tôi, cùng hai con ngựa, lũ mèo và lũ chó với một chiếc hộp 10 chú gà con mẹ được tặng kèm khi mua hơn 11 cân thức ăn cho gà ở cửa hàng. Còn Eddie tiếp tục lái xe lên vào các ngày cuối tuần mùa hè đó, rồi ở lại thị trấn suốt mùa thu. Lưng ông cuối cùng đã hồi phục, nên có thể tiếp tục làm việc. Ông lại làm thợ mộc trong mùa cao điểm, tận dụng thời điểm thu nhập có thể rất khá. Vậy là lại chỉ còn KarenCherylLief sống cùng mẹ như những tháng năm mẹ vẫn đơn thân. Mùa hè đó, dù ngủ hay thức, chúng tôi gần như thấy nhau mọi lúc, và hiếm khi thấy ai đó khác. Có hai thị trấn nhỏ cách nơi chúng tôi sống chừng 30 cây số: Moose Lake ở phía đông và McGregor ở phía tây bắc. Vào mùa thu, chị em tôi tới học ở McGregor, thị trấn nhỏ hơn với 400 dân. Nhưng suốt mùa hè đằng đẵng, ngoài vài chuyến thăm nom thưa thớt của những người hàng xóm xa xôi ghé lại để chào hỏi, chỉ có chúng tôi và mẹ. Chúng tôi tranh luận, trò chuyện, trêu đùa tiêu khiển qua ngày. Tôi là ai? Chúng tôi lặp đi lặp lại câu hỏi đó trong trò chơi mà một người sẽ nghĩ về ai đó, nổi tiếng hoặc không, để những người kia đoán tên bằng vô số câu hỏi đúng-sai: Đàn ông phải không? Người Mỹ phải không? Chết rồi phải không? Có phải là Charles Manson không? Chúng tôi chơi trò đó khi gieo trồng và chăm sóc khu vườn giúp chúng tôi trụ qua mùa đông giá rét trên mảnh đất đã bị bỏ mặc cả nghìn năm này, khi dựng một ngôi nhà mới ở phía bên kia điền trang với hy vọng sẽ hoàn thiện khi mùa hè kết thúc. Chúng tôi bị muỗi đốt chi chít khi làm việc, nhưng mẹ lại cấm dùng DEET hay bất cứ chất hóa học nào phá hủy não, gây ô nhiễm môi trường, ảnh-hưởng-đến-thế-hệ sau tương tự DEET. Thay vào đó, mẹ dạy chúng tôi dùng tinh dầu bạc hà để đuổi muỗi. Tối tối, chúng tôi sẽ chơi trò đếm số vết muỗi cắn trên người dưới ánh nến. Sẽ là 79, 86 hay 103 gì đó. “Một ngày nào đó, các con sẽ cảm ơn mẹ vì điều này.” Mẹ luôn nói vậy mỗi khi chúng tôi phàn nàn vì thiếu thốn đủ thứ so với trước đây. Trước kia chúng tôi chưa từng được sống trong xa hoa nhung lụa, thậm chí không bằng nổi tầng lớp trung lưu, nhưng vẫn có cuộc sống thoải mái giữa đời sống hiện đại. Trong nhà cũ luôn có ti vi, chưa kể tới bồn cầu tự hoại và vòi nước sạch. Trong cuộc sống mới mẻ của những “kẻ tiên phong” như chúng tôi, nhu cầu đơn giản nhất cũng đòi hỏi một chuỗi nhọc nhằn những nỗ lực, thời gian và công sức. Bếp của chúng tôi chỉ có một bếp du lịch Coleman; một bếp lò; một tủ ướp lạnh cổ lỗ do dượng Eddie tự chế mà phải cho đá vào thì mới giữ được đồ ở mức hơi mát; một bồn rửa bát trơ trọi chống dựa lên bức tường ngoài lều và một thùng nước có nắp đậy. Thứ nào cũng đòi hỏi chỉ kém hơn chút xíu so với lợi ích chúng mang lại. Chúng cần được giữ gìn và bảo quản, lấp đầy vào rồi bỏ bớt ra, kéo lên rồi thả xuống, múc đầy rồi xả ra, hay mồi lửa rồi trông chừng. Karen và tôi nằm cùng một giường trên căn gác xép, sát mái đến độ chỉ vừa đủ để chúng tôi ngồi thẳng. Leif ngủ cách đó chừng một mét, trên một cái bục nhỏ hơn. Còn mẹ ngủ trên chiếc giường kê dưới sàn nhà, cuối tuần thì có thêm dượng Eddie. Hằng đêm, chúng tôi buôn đủ chuyện rồi ngủ, kiểu như tiệc ngủ vậy. Trên mái nhà có một cửa sổ chạy dọc giường của tôi và Karen, với ô cửa kính trong suốt ngay sát mặt. Hằng đêm, bầu trời tối và những vì sao lấp lánh bầu bạn cùng tôi. Đôi khi, vẻ đẹp và sự trang trọng ấy hiển hiện quá rõ ràng khiến tôi hiểu thấu rằng mẹ đã đúng. Một ngày nào đó, tôi sẽ biết ơn và thực sự tôi đang vô cùng biết ơn, rằng có điều gì đó đang lớn lên trong tôi, mạnh mẽ và rất thật. Chính điều đang lớn lên ấy là thứ tôi nhớ lại khi thả trôi cuộc đời trong nỗi muộn phiền vài năm sau đó. Chính nó khiến tôi tin tưởng rằng đường mòn Pacific Crest sẽ đưa tôi trở về với chính tôi ngày trước. Vào đêm Halloween, chúng tôi chuyển vào ngôi nhà tự dựng từ cây cối và gỗ vụn. Nhà không có điện hay nước, không điện thoại hay nhà vệ sinh khép kín, thậm chí chẳng có lấy một căn phòng riêng có cửa. Trong suốt thời niên thiếu của tôi, mẹ và dượng Eddie vẫn tiếp tục dựng nhà, sang sửa và dần dần hoàn thiện nó. Mẹ gieo trồng một mảnh vườn, đóng hộp, muối chua và ướp lạnh rau củ vào mùa thu. Bà chích mủ cây và làm siro lá phong, nướng bánh mì và xe sợi len, tự làm thuốc nhuộm vải từ bồ công anh hoặc lá bông cải xanh. Tôi lớn lên và rời xa tổ ấm để tới trường Đại học St.Thomas ở Twin Cities, nhưng không phải rời xa mẹ. Thông báo nhập học có nói phụ huynh được tham dự miễn phí các lớp học trong trường. Mẹ tôi luôn muốn lấy bằng đại học, nhiều như việc mẹ yêu thích cuộc sống của kẻ tiên phong thời hiện đại vậy. Chúng tôi cùng cười vang vì điều đó, rồi theo đuổi những suy nghĩ riêng. Khi thảo luận, mẹ nói mình đã 40, quá lớn tuổi để học đại học, và tôi chẳng thể phủ nhận điều này. Thêm vào đó, trường St. Thomas cách nhà đến ba tiếng lái xe. Chúng tôi bàn luận rất nhiều lần rồi cuối cùng thống nhất: Mẹ sẽ đến St. Thomas, nhưng chúng tôi có cuộc sống riêng, do tôi quyết định. Tôi sống trong ký túc, còn mẹ đi đi về về. Nếu chúng tôi chạm mặt nhau ở trường, mẹ sẽ vờ như không biết tôi, trừ khi tôi có ý nhận ra bà trước. “Chẳng để làm gì đâu mà.” Mẹ nói khi chúng tôi lên kế hoạch. “Kiểu gì mẹ cũng sẽ bị đuổi học thôi.” Để chuẩn bị, mẹ theo sát tôi trong suốt những tháng cuối cùng của năm cuối trung học, hoàn thành tất cả đống bài tập mà tôi phải làm, rèn luyện các kỹ năng của mình. Mẹ làm lại các bài tập của tôi, viết các bài luận như tôi, và đọc từng cuốn sách một. Tôi chấm điểm cho mẹ, dựa trên các lời phê của giảng viên trên lớp. Tôi đã đánh giá bà không phải là học viên giỏi. Rồi mẹ đến trường đại học và trở thành một sinh viên ưu tú. Đôi khi, tôi hồ hởi ôm mẹ khi gặp bà trong khuôn viên trường. Những lúc khác, tôi lại lướt qua mẹ như thể không quen biết. Khi phát hiện ra mẹ bị ung thư, cả hai chúng tôi đều đã là sinh viên năm cuối và không còn học ở trường St. Thomas nữa. Sau năm nhất, chúng tôi chuyển đến Đại học Minnesota – mẹ tới khu Duluth, còn tôi tới khu Minneapolis – và thật thú vị khi chúng tôi cùng học ngành Phụ nữ học. Ngoài ra, mẹ học thêm ngành Lịch sử còn tôi học Ngôn ngữ Anh. Hằng đêm, chúng tôi trò chuyện một tiếng qua điện thoại. Lúc đó, tôi kết hôn với một người đàn ông tốt bụng tên Paul. Đám cưới được tổ chức trong khu rừng trên mảnh đất của chúng tôi. Tôi mặc chiếc váy trắng xa tanh viền đăng ten tự tay mẹ may. Sau khi mẹ mắc bệnh, tôi gạt cuộc sống của mình sang một bên. Tôi nói Paul đừng trông chờ ở tôi. Tôi sẽ phải đi lại phụ thuộc vào những nhu cầu của mẹ. Tôi muốn nghỉ học, nhưng mẹ không cho phép, mẹ tha thiết khẩn nài tôi, dù có chuyện gì xảy ra cũng phải lấy bằng đại học. Còn mẹ thì nghỉ giải lao, theo cách gọi của bà. Mẹ chỉ còn hai môn nữa là có thể lấy bằng, và bà đã nói với tôi rằng bà sẽ lấy bằng được. Dù có chết bà cũng sẽ lấy bằng cử nhân. Chúng tôi cười phá lên rồi buồn bã nhìn nhau. Mẹ sẽ làm bài tập trên giường bệnh. Mẹ sẽ đọc để tôi gõ lại. Mẹ chắc chắn rằng mình vẫn đủ sức tham gia hai lớp học cuối cùng. Tôi vẫn đi học, nhưng cố xin các giảng viên để chỉ phải đến trường hai ngày mỗi tuần. Hai ngày ấy vừa kết thúc, tôi phóng ngay về nhà với mẹ. Lief và Karen hiếm khi chịu ở bên mẹ từ khi bà mắc bệnh, còn tôi lại chẳng thể chịu đựng nổi việc cách xa bà. Hơn nữa, mẹ cần tôi. Dượng Eddie vẫn ở bên mẹ những lúc có thể, nhưng ông còn công việc. Phải có ai đó thanh toán những hóa đơn. Mẹ gắng ăn những món tôi nấu nhưng hầu như chẳng nuốt nổi chút nào. Mẹ thường nghĩ rằng mình đã đói, sau đó lặng lẽ ngồi xuống như một tù nhân và nhìn chằm chằm vào đĩa đồ ăn. “Nhìn ngon thật đấy.” Mẹ nói. “Chắc lát nữa mẹ ăn vậy.” Tôi cọ rửa sàn nhà, cất dọn mọi thứ trong các tủ búp-phê và trải giấy xuống. Mẹ ngủ và rên rỉ, đếm mấy viên thuốc rồi uống chúng. Những ngày khá hơn, mẹ có thể ngồi trên ghế và nói chuyện với tôi. Chẳng còn gì nhiều để nói. Mẹ đơn giản và giàu tình cảm, tôi lại quá tò mò nên chúng tôi đã kể cho nhau gần như mọi thứ. Tôi biết tình yêu bà dành cho tôi rộng lớn hơn mười ngàn thứ, và cả mười ngàn thứ hơn thế nữa. Tôi biết tên những chú ngựa mẹ yêu quý hồi còn con gái: Pal, Buddy và Bacchus. Tôi biết mẹ đánh mất sự trinh trắng ở tuổi 17 với một chàng trai tên Mike. Tôi biết một năm sau mẹ đã gặp bố ra sao, ấn tượng của bà về ông trong những lần hẹn hò đầu tiên thế nào. Rồi cả khi mẹ, một thiếu nữ chớm đôi mươi, chưa chồng và có thai, thú nhận với ông bà, khiến ông ngoại đánh rơi cả chiếc thìa trên tay. Tôi biết mẹ ghét phải thú nhận và ghét chính những điều thú nhận ấy. Rằng mẹ đã nói hỗn với bà ngoại; văng tục khi phải dọn bàn trong khi cô em gái nhỏ bé thì được chơi. Rằng mẹ đã mặc váy khi ra khỏi nhà để tới trường, rồi lại thay quần jeans giấu trong túi xách. Suốt thời niên thiếu, tôi hỏi đi hỏi lại mẹ về những chuyện đó; rằng ai là người nói điều này điều kia, nói như thế nào; lúc ấy mẹ cảm thấy ra sao; rằng chuyện xảy ra ở đâu, khi nào. Và rồi mẹ sẽ kể tôi nghe, đôi khi thích thú, đôi khi miễn cưỡng, cười vang và hỏi tôi rằng tôi muốn biết để làm gì cơ chứ. Chỉ là tôi muốn biết thôi. Tôi cũng chẳng giải thích nổi. Nhưng giờ, khi mẹ sắp qua đời thì tôi đã rõ. Mẹ thực sự là một phần trong tôi. Người mẹ mà tôi biết và cả người mẹ trước khi tôi chào đời. Quãng thời gian đi lại giữa Minneapolis về nhà không kéo dài. Chỉ hơn một tháng. Niềm tin rằng mẹ có thể sống thêm một năm nhanh chóng tan thành giấc mộng buồn. Chúng tôi phải chuyển tới bệnh viện Mayo vào ngày 12 tháng 2. Và vào ngày mồng 3 tháng 3, mẹ phải chuyển lên bệnh viện ở Duluth cách đó hơn 100 km, vì mẹ thấy đau nhiều hơn. Khi mặc đồ để đi, mẹ chẳng thể tự xỏ tất nữa, bà gọi tôi vào phòng và nhờ tôi giúp. Tôi ngồi lên giường, quỳ xuống bên bà. Tôi chưa từng đi tất cho ai, và thấy khó hơn tôi nghĩ rất nhiều. Đôi tất chẳng chịu trượt vào chân bà, chúng cứ xoắn lại. Tôi nổi cáu với mẹ, cứ như thể bà cố tình để chân như vậy khiến tôi không làm được. Mẹ ngồi lùi về sau, dựa vào đôi tay đặt trên giường, hai mắt nhắm lại. Tôi có thể nghe rõ nhịp thở của bà, sâu và chậm rãi. “Khỉ thật!” Tôi nói. “Giúp con đi.” Mẹ nhìn xuống tôi, cứ thế một lúc lâu chẳng nói lời nào. “Con yêu.” Cuối cùng mẹ cất tiếng, nhìn sâu vào mắt tôi, và với tay vuốt ve đầu tôi. Mẹ đã gọi như thế suốt thời thơ ấu của tôi, với một âm điệu rất riêng. Tôi không thích cách gọi chỉ có hai từ con yêu như thế, nhưng vẫn là vậy. Đó là điều tôi bực nhất ở bà: dễ dàng chấp nhận nỗi đau, luôn vui vẻ và lạc quan đến bất tận. “Mình đi thôi mẹ.” Tôi nói sau khi chật vật xỏ được giày cho bà. Mẹ khoác áo choàng, cử động chậm chạp và nặng nề. Mẹ phải vịn vào tường để đi. Hai chú cún mẹ yêu quý chạy theo sau, dụi mũi vào tay và đùi bà. Tôi nhìn cách mẹ xoa xoa đầu chúng, chẳng thể nguyện cầu điều gì thêm nữa. Mấy từ chết tiệt cứ như hai viên thuốc khô khốc trong miệng tôi. “Tạm biệt, cún cưng.” Mẹ nói với bọn cún. “Tạm biệt, nhà yêu.” Mẹ nói khi theo tôi bước chân ra khỏi ngôi nhà. Tôi chưa bao giờ nghĩ sẽ có ngày mẹ chết. Cho đến tận khi bà hấp hối, suy nghĩ đó chưa từng xuất hiện. Mẹ như thần bảo hộ cho cuộc đời tôi, luôn kiên cường và không gì có thể quật ngã nổi. Mẹ sẽ chỉ già đi và vẫn làm lụng trên mảnh vườn ấy. Hình ảnh đó đã khắc ghi trong tâm trí tôi, cũng giống như những ký ức tuổi thơ của mẹ mà tôi đã đòi bà kể lại cặn kẽ đến nỗi chúng trở thành ký ức của chính tôi vậy. Bà sẽ già đi và đẹp lão như Georgia O’Keeffe trong bức ảnh đen trắng tôi đã từng gửi cho bà. Tôi vẫn bám chặt vào hình ảnh đó trong hai tuần đầu tiên sau khi rời bệnh viện Mayo. Và rồi, khi mẹ phải nhập viện điều trị ở Duluth, hình ảnh đó tan biến, nhường chỗ cho những hình ảnh khác, bình dị và thực tế hơn. Tôi vẽ trong đầu hình dung về mẹ vào tháng mười; rồi mẹ của tháng tám, mẹ vào tháng năm. Mỗi ngày trôi qua lại mất thêm một tháng. Vào ngày đầu tiên mẹ nằm viện, cô y tá khuyên bà tiêm một mũi morphine nhưng bà từ chối. Mẹ nói: “Morphine là cho người sắp chết, morphine đồng nghĩa với không còn hy vọng.” Nhưng mẹ chỉ cưỡng lại được morphine trong một ngày mà thôi. Mẹ ngủ rồi thức, nói và cười. Mẹ khóc vì đau đớn. Tôi trông mẹ ban ngày và dượng Eddie ở bên mẹ vào buổi tối. Leif và Karen thì chẳng thấy đâu, viện những lý do mà tôi không thể hiểu nổi và khiến tôi tức điên, dẫu rằng dường như điều đó chẳng hề làm mẹ phiền lòng. Bà chỉ bận tâm đến việc xua tan cơn đau – một việc bất khả thi trong khoảng thời gian giữa những mũi morphine. Những cái gối chẳng bao giờ ở đúng vị trí. Rồi chiều nọ, một vị bác sĩ tôi chưa từng gặp bước vào phòng và giải thích rằng mẹ tôi đang trong những ngày cuối. “Nhưng mới chỉ có một tháng mà!” Tôi phẫn nộ kêu lên. “Bác sĩ kia bảo với chúng tôi là một năm cơ mà.” Anh ta không đáp. Anh ta còn trẻ, có lẽ chỉ chừng 30. Anh ta đứng cạnh giường mẹ, bàn tay thanh nhã nhét trong túi áo, nhìn xuống bà và nói: “Từ giờ, điều quan tâm duy nhất của chúng ta là giúp bà cảm thấy thoải mái.” Phải rồi, thoải mái. Thế nhưng các y tá lại cố tiêm cho bà ít morphine nhất có thể. Một người trong số họ là nam giới, và tôi có thể thấy hình dáng thứ đó qua lớp quần y tá màu trắng bó sát của anh ta. Tôi muốn bất chấp đẩy anh ta vào nhà tắm nhỏ xíu phía sau chân giường mẹ để hiến dâng thân mình, để làm bất cứ điều gì nếu anh ta chịu giúpa chúng tôi. Và tôi cũng muốn tìm chút vui thú nơi anh, cảm nhận sức nặng cơ thể đè lên người mình, miệng anh vờn trên mái tóc, nghe anh ta gọi đi gọi lại tên tôi; bắt anh ta phải biết đến tôi, phải gắn với chuyện này, phải rủ lòng thương cảm. Tôi chưa từng thấy ai cầu xin thứ gì như cái cách mẹ xin anh ta thêm morphine. Như một con chó dại vậy. Anh ta không nhìn mẹ, mà nhìn chiếc đồng hồ đeo tay; giữ nguyên cùng một vẻ mặt cho các câu trả lời. Đôi khi, anh ta lặng lẽ tiêm cho bà, và đôi khi nói “Không”, giọng mềm mại, nhẹ nhàng nhưng vô cảm. Mẹ khẩn nài, rồi rên rỉ. Mẹ khóc, nước mắt không chảy xuống má rồi hai bên miệng, mà chảy dài từ khóe mắt xuống hai tai, rồi lẫn vào mớ tóc trên giường. Mẹ không sống được một năm. Mẹ không sống tới tháng mười, tháng tám hay tháng năm. Chỉ vỏn vẹn 49 ngày kể từ khi bác sĩ ở Duluth nói mẹ mắc ung thư; 34 ngày từ khi bác sĩ ở bệnh viện Mayo xác nhận lại điều đó. Nhưng mỗi ngày đều kéo dài như vô tận, ngày này chồng chất lên ngày khác, sự hiển nhiên hiện ra trong mịt mù vô vọng. Leif không tới thăm bà. Karen đến một lần sau khi tôi ép chị phải đi. Tôi buồn đau, giận dữ trong nỗi hoài nghi. “Chị không muốn thấy mẹ trong tình trạng như vậy.” Karen sẽ yếu ớt đáp vậy khi chúng tôi nói chuyện rồi khóc nức nở. Tôi không thể nói chuyện với Leif, vì tôi và dượng Eddie còn chẳng biết nó ở đâu suốt quãng thời gian ấy. Một người bạn bảo nó đang ở cùng cô bạn gái tên Sue ở St. Cloud. Một người khác thì trông thấy nó câu cá ở hồ Sheriff. Tôi chẳng có thời gian để tìm hiểu cho kỹ vì còn phải ở bên mẹ mỗi ngày, giữ cái khay nhựa để mẹ nôn vào, chỉnh đi chỉnh lại những cái gối; đỡ mẹ dậy và giúp mẹ ngồi lên chiếc bô mà cô y tá để cạnh giường; dỗ bà ăn từng chút để rồi 10 phút sau bà sẽ lại nôn ra hết. Hầu hết thời gian, tôi trông mẹ ngủ – công việc khó khăn hơn tất thảy bởi phải nhìn bà nghỉ ngơi mà nét mặt vẫn nhăn lại vì đau đớn. Mỗi khi mẹ cử động, ống truyền quanh bà đung đưa và tim tôi thì loạn nhịp, lo bà làm chệch những cái kim truyền ở cổ tay và bàn tay sưng vù. “Mẹ thấy thế nào?” Tôi sẽ thì thầm phấn khởi khi mẹ tỉnh dậy, với tay qua những ống truyền để vuốt mái tóc đã xẹp của mẹ vào nếp. “Ồ, con yêu” là tất cả những gì mẹ có thể nói. Và rồi, bà lại quay đi. Tôi lang thang qua các hành lang bệnh viện trong lúc mẹ ngủ, liếc nhanh vào những phòng khác khi đi qua những cánh cửa ngỏ, thoáng thấy những ông lão ho khù khụ và da dẻ chuyển màu tím tái; những người phụ nữ to béo với đầy băng trắng quanh đầu gối. “Chị thế nào rồi?” Những y tá sẽ hỏi tôi bằng một giọng u buồn. “Chúng tôi đang cố trụ đây.” Tôi sẽ đáp vậy, như thể tôi là “chúng tôi”. Nhưng vốn chỉ có tôi mà thôi. Chồng tôi, Paul, làm mọi điều để giúp tôi bớt cô đơn. Anh vẫn là người đàn ông tốt bụng và dịu dàng tôi đem lòng yêu vài năm về trước, yêu mãnh liệt đến mức tôi đã quyết định kết hôn ngay trước tuổi 20 và khiến tất cả bất ngờ. Nhưng khi mẹ bắt đầu yếu dần, có gì đó về anh đã chết trong tôi, dù anh có nói gì hay làm gì chăng nữa. Tôi vẫn gọi cho anh hàng ngày từ bốt điện thoại trong bệnh viện suốt những buổi chiều dài đằng đẵng hoặc buổi tối thì gọi cho anh từ nhà của mẹ và dượng Eddie. Chúng tôi nói chuyện rất lâu, tôi khóc và kể cho anh nghe mọi thứ; anh cũng khóc cùng tôi, cố gắng khiến mọi chuyện ổn hơn dù chỉ chút ít; nhưng những lời anh nói dường như rỗng tuếch. Tôi còn gần như không thể nghe hết nữa. Anh thì biết gì về mất mát chứ? Cha mẹ anh vẫn sống bên nhau hạnh phúc. Cuộc đời bình yên tuyệt vời của anh chỉ khiến nỗi đau trong tôi thêm nhức nhối. Đó không phải lỗi của anh. Tôi chẳng chịu nổi việc ở bên anh; nhưng ở bên ai khác thì cũng vậy thôi. Người duy nhất tôi có thể ở bên cũng là người khiến tôi không thể chịu nổi nhất: mẹ tôi. Vào các buổi sáng, tôi sẽ ngồi bên giường mẹ, cố đọc sách cho bà nghe. Tôi có hai cuốn: The Awakening (Thức tỉnh) của Kate Chopin và The Optimist’s Daughter (Con gái người lạc quan) của Eudora Welty. Đó là những cuốn chúng tôi đọc khi còn học đại học, những cuốn sách cả hai đều yêu thích. Tôi bắt đầu đọc, nhưng lại chẳng thể tiếp tục nổi. Từng từ phát ra cứ như tự tan vào không khí. Khi tôi cầu nguyện cũng vậy. Tôi nhiệt thành và điên cuồng cầu khấn, tới Chúa, tới bất cứ vị thần nào, cả những vị tôi chẳng hề biết đến. Tôi rủa thầm mẹ, người chẳng hề dạy tôi điều gì về tôn giáo. Căm ghét sự áp đặt trong lối dạy dỗ của đạo Thiên Chúa, từ khi trưởng thành bà đã tránh xa nhà thờ, và giờ bà đang chết dần còn tôi thì chẳng có Chúa ở bên. Tôi nguyện cầu vạn vật trên thế gian này, hy vọng rằng Chúa có ở đó và nghe được lời tôi. Tôi cầu nguyện và cầu nguyện, rồi nản chí. Chẳng phải bởi tôi không tìm thấy Chúa mà bởi tôi đột nhiên nhận ra rằng: Chúa ở ngay đây, và chẳng bận tâm làm bất cứ điều gì để giữ lấy cuộc sống của mẹ tôi. Chúa chẳng phải người biến ước ao thành sự thật. Hai ngày cuối cùng, mẹ tôi không phải vất vả chịu đựng những cơn đau nữa. Họ truyền morphine cho bà từ một túi trong suốt, chất lỏng chầm chậm chảy xuống ống ghim ở cổ tay mẹ. Khi tỉnh lại, bà chỉ nói “Ôi, ôi” hay ủ rũ thở dài. Có lần mẹ nhìn tôi, mắt ánh lên một tia yêu thương. Những lần khác, bà lại chìm vào giấc ngủ như thể không có tôi ở đó. Đôi khi, mẹ thức giấc mà không biết mình đang ở đâu. Mẹ muốn ăn món bánh enchilada và xốt táo. Bà tin rằng mọi con vật bà từng yêu thương đều đang ở trong phòng, và chúng vốn khá đông. Bà nói: “Con ngựa hư suýt giẫm lên mẹ” và nhìn quanh như tìm nó để trách cứ; hai tay bà vuốt ve một con mèo vô hình nằm bên hông. Suốt quãng thời gian đó, tôi muốn mẹ nói rằng tôi là cô con gái tốt nhất trần đời. Tôi không muốn mình mong muốn thế, nhưng vẫn không tránh được, chẳng thể lý giải nổi. Cứ như tôi đang bị sốt, và chỉ có thể giảm sốt bằng mấy từ ấy. Rồi tôi đã không kiềm nổi mà hỏi thẳng mẹ rằng: “Con có phải đứa con gái tốt nhất trần đời không?” Bà nói có, có chứ, tất nhiên rồi. Nhưng thế là chưa đủ. Tôi muốn những từ đó đan chặt nhau trong tâm trí mẹ, và khi được nói ra với tôi, nó sẽ hoàn toàn tươi mới. Tôi khao khát được yêu thương. Mẹ tôi ra đi nhanh chóng, nhưng không hoàn toàn đột ngột. Giống như một ngọn lửa cháy chậm lại khi lửa lụi thành khói, và rồi khói tan vào hư không. Mẹ còn chẳng có đủ thời gian để trở nên gầy guộc. Khi mất, bà có thay đổi nhưng dáng người vẫn đầy đặn – thân hình của một người phụ nữ vẫn tràn đầy sức sống. Tóc của mẹ vẫn còn; màu nâu, dễ gãy và xơ xác vì nằm trên giường bệnh nhiều tuần liền. Từ căn phòng nơi mẹ ra đi, tôi có thể thấy hồ Superior rộng lớn bên ngoài cửa sổ. Đây là hồ lớn nhất và lạnh nhất thế giới. Tôi phải áp sát một bên má lên cửa kính mà vẫn chỉ thấy một đoạn hồ kéo dài mãi tới tận chân trời. “Phòng nhìn ra ngoài đẹp quá!” Mẹ thốt lên, dù bà đã quá yếu để ngồi dậy và ngắm mặt hồ. Và rồi, bà khẽ nói: “Mẹ đã chờ cả đời để được sống trong căn phòng nhìn ra ngoài đẹp thế này.” Mẹ muốn được ra đi trong tư thế ngồi thẳng, nên tôi lấy mọi chiếc gối có thể với tới làm tựa lưng cho mẹ. Tôi muốn đưa bà ra khỏi bệnh viện, đỡ mẹ dựa lên mình khi bà ra đi trên một cánh đồng cỏ thi. Tôi đắp cho mẹ cái chăn ghép mang từ nhà đi, cái chăn mẹ đã tự khâu từ quần áo cũ của chúng tôi. “Bỏ thứ này ra!” Mẹ gầm lên giận dữ, đạp chân như đang bơi để hất nó ra. Tôi nhìn mẹ. Ngoài kia, ánh mặt trời đang tỏa sáng lấp lánh trên vỉa hè và những cánh tuyết trắng lung linh. Hôm nay là ngày Thánh Patrick, các y tá mang cho mẹ tôi một miếng thạch Jell-O màu xanh hình vuông đang rung rung trên chiếc bàn cạnh bà. Đó là ngày trọn vẹn cuối cùng của mẹ. Gần như cả ngày mẹ luôn gắng mở mắt, không ngủ cũng không thức, lúc mê lúc tỉnh. Tối đó, dù không hề muốn, tôi để mẹ ở lại để ra ngoài. Các y tá, bác sĩ nói với dượng Eddie và tôi rằng: đến lúc rồi. Tôi hiểu điều đó có nghĩa là mẹ sẽ sống thêm được một hai tuần nữa. Tôi tin những người bị ung thư có thể trụ được thời gian dài. Karen và Paul sẽ cùng lái xe tới đây từ Minneapolis vào sáng hôm sau; ông bà ngoại thì mất vài ngày để đi từ Alabama, còn Lief ở chỗ nào đó tôi chẳng biết. Dượng Eddie và tôi gọi cho bạn bè Lief, gia đình của bạn bè nó, để lại những lời nhắn khẩn khoản dặn nó gọi lại, nhưng nó không hề gọi. Tôi quyết định rời bệnh viện một đêm để tìm và mang nó đến đây, lần đầu và cũng là lần cuối. “Sáng mai con sẽ về.” Tôi nói với mẹ. Dượng Eddie đang nằm nghiêng trên chiếc ghế đi văng nhựa nhỏ xíu, tôi nhìn ông và nói: “Con sẽ về cùng Leif.” Khi nghe thấy tên em tôi, mẹ mở đôi mắt xanh thẳm rực sáng, hệt như trước đây. Sau tất cả mọi chuyện, đôi mắt ấy vẫn không hề thay đổi. “Làm sao mẹ có thể không điên lên vì nó nhỉ?” Tôi chua xót hỏi bà, có lẽ đã là lần thứ mười rồi. Thường bà sẽ nói: “Nó đã không muốn thì mình chẳng làm gì được đâu” hay “Cheryl, nó mới mười tám thôi mà.” Nhưng lần này, bà chỉ nhìn tôi và đáp: “Con yêu.” Hệt như khi tôi cáu lên vì đôi tất của bà. Hệt như khi bà thấy tôi đau khổ vì điều gì đó và bà dùng chính hai từ kia để thuyết phục tôi rằng: Tôi cần chấp nhận mọi việc như vốn có của nó. “Tất cả chúng con sẽ ở đây vào ngày mai.” Tôi nói. “Rồi tất cả chúng con sẽ ở bên mẹ, mẹ nhé. Sẽ không có ai đi nữa.” Tôi với qua những dây truyền quấn quanh mẹ và vuốt ve bờ vai bà. “Con yêu mẹ.” Tôi nói, cúi xuống hôn lên má mẹ, dẫu bà cự lại. Bà đã đau đớn đến mức không chịu đựng nổi dù chỉ một nụ hôn. “Yêu...” bà thì thào, yếu đến nỗi không thể nói nốt từ con. “Yêu...” Mẹ nói một lần nữa khi tôi rời khỏi phòng. Tôi đi thang máy và bước ra con đường vắng vẻ. Tôi bước dọc vỉa hè, lướt qua một quán bar chật cứng người, có thể nhìn vào trong quán qua một chiếc cửa sổ bằng kính lớn. Mọi người đều đội mũ bằng giấy bóng kính xanh lá, mặc áo xanh lá với dây đeo quần màu xanh lá và uống bia cũng xanh lá. Một gã bên trong bắt gặp ánh mắt tôi, chỉ vào tôi với điệu say xỉn, phá lên một điệu cười không thành tiếng. Tôi lái xe về nhà, cho ngựa và gà ăn, rồi với lấy điện thoại. Lũ chó mừng rỡ liếm tay tôi, còn con mèo thì chui tọt vào lòng. Tôi gọi cho tất cả những người có thể biết em trai tôi ở đâu. Nó đang uống rất nhiều, vài người nói. Vài người khác cũng xác nhận nó đang sống cùng một cô gái ở St. Cloud tên là Sue. Nửa đêm, điện thoại réo vang và tôi nói với nó rằng: Đến lúc rồi. Tôi đã muốn hét vào mặt nó ngay khi thấy nó bước qua cánh cửa, muốn nổi giận và kết tội nó, nhưng khi thấy Leif, tất cả những gì tôi có thể làm là ôm lấy nó và khóc. Đêm đó, tôi thấy Leif thật già mà cũng thật trẻ. Lần đầu tiên, tôi nhận ra Leif đã trở thành một người đàn ông và thấy cả cậu nhóc nhỏ bé ngày trước trong em nữa. Cậu bé của tôi, tôi đã chăm sóc em với một nửa vai trò người mẹ, để giúp mẹ tôi khi bà bận việc vắng nhà. Tôi và Karen lệch nhau ba tuổi, nhưng chúng tôi lớn lên như thể một cặp sinh đôi vậy, cùng chịu trách nhiệm chăm sóc Leif khi còn nhỏ. “Em không thể làm được.” Nó lặp đi lặp lại qua làn nước mắt. “Em không thể sống thiếu Mẹ. Em không thể, em không thể.” “Chúng ta phải làm vậy thôi.” Tôi đáp, dù chính tôi cũng chẳng tin như vậy. Chúng tôi cùng nằm xuống chiếc giường đơn, trò chuyện và khóc đến quá khuya, rồi ngủ thiếp đi bên cạnh nhau. Vài giờ sau, tôi tỉnh giấc. Trước khi đánh thức Leif, tôi cho ngựa gà chó mèo ăn, xếp chặt mấy túi đồ ăn để dùng khi thức khuya trông mẹ. Chừng tám giờ, chúng tôi lái chiếc xe của mẹ để đến Duluth. Leif phóng thật nhanh trong khi nhóm U2 gào thét album Joshua Tree trên đài. Chúng tôi chăm chú lắng nghe mà chẳng nói lời nào, ánh mặt trời chiếu rọi đám tuyết hai bên đường. Khi tới phòng mẹ ở bệnh viện, chúng tôi thấy một tấm biển bên ngoài cánh cửa phòng đóng kín chỉ dẫn tới chỗ y tá trước khi vào phòng. Điều này hoàn toàn mới, nhưng tôi nghĩ đó chỉ là vấn đề thủ tục. Một y tá đến gần khi chúng tôi đang đi ngoài hành lang tới đó. Trước khi tôi kịp mở lời, cô đã nói: “Chúng tôi đang chườm đá lên mắt bà. Bà muốn hiến tặng giác mạc của mình, nên chúng tôi cần giữ đá...” “Gì cơ?” Tôi lớn tiếng đến nỗi cô ấy nhảy dựng lên. Không đợi trả lời, tôi lao thẳng vào phòng mẹ, Leif theo ngay phía sau. Khi tôi mở cửa, dượng Eddie bước tới với vòng tay mở rộng, nhưng tôi tránh đi và lao tới bên mẹ. Cánh tay mẹ buông thõng, những cái kim và dây nối màu vàng và đỏ và đen và xanh đều đã bị tháo ra. Mắt mẹ được che lại bởi hai chiếc găng tay phẫu thuật đựng đá bên trong, mấy ngón găng tay căng phồng chĩa ngang mặt bà như muốn trêu ngươi. Khi tôi ôm chầm lấy mẹ, những chiếc găng trượt xuống, nảy trên giường, rồi rớt xuống sàn. Tôi chỉ còn biết cay đắng gào lên, dúi đầu vào người bà như một con thú. Mẹ đã mất được một giờ rồi. Chân tay bà lạnh ngắt, nhưng bụng bà vẫn tựa như một hòn đảo ấm áp. Tôi áp mặt vào nơi ấm áp ấy và lại gào lên. Tôi không ngừng mơ về mẹ. Trong những giấc mơ ấy, tôi luôn ở bên mẹ khi bà ra đi. Chính tôi sẽ là người giết chết bà. Cứ như vậy, lặp đi lặp lại. Mỗi lần bà ra lệnh cho tôi làm điều đó, tôi lại quỳ gối và khóc lóc, cầu xin bà đừng bắt tôi, nhưng bà không mủi lòng, và như một cô con gái ngoan, cuối cùng tôi vẫn làm theo. Tôi cột mẹ vào một cái cây trước sân, đổ dầu lên đầu bà, rồi châm lửa. Tôi bắt mẹ chạy xuống con đường bẩn thỉu ngang qua ngôi nhà chúng tôi xây và lái xe tải lèn lên người bà. Một mảnh kim loại sắc nhọn níu lại phần thân dưới của mẹ, tôi kéo lê bà cho đến khi nó rời ra, rồi quay xe và lèn lên người bà lần nữa. Tôi lấy chiếc gậy bóng chày mini và đánh bà đến chết, chậm rãi, khổ sở và buồn bã. Tôi bắt bà nhảy xuống cái hố tôi đã đào, đổ đất đá và rác rưởi lên bà rồi chôn sống. Những giấc mơ ấy không hề kỳ quái. Chúng diễn ra trong ánh sáng bình thường và rõ ràng. Đó là những thước phim tài liệu từ trong tiềm thức, chân thực như thể chính cuộc đời tôi. Xe tải chính là xe tải của tôi, khoảng sân trước nhà cũng vậy, chiếc gậy bóng chày mini thì ở trong buồng cùng mấy cái ô. Mỗi lần choàng tỉnh, tôi không đang khóc lóc mà đang hét váng lên. Paul ôm chặt đến khi tôi ngừng lại, thấm ướt khăn bằng nước lạnh và chườm lên mặt tôi. Nhưng những chiếc khăn ướt ấy chẳng thể gột được giấc mơ về mẹ. Đã không thứ gì gột được. Và sẽ chẳng thứ gì gột được. Chẳng thứ gì có thể mang mẹ tôi quay trở lại hay khiến việc bà đã ra đi là bình thường cả. Chẳng gì có thể giúp tôi ở bên cạnh bà lúc bà qua đời. Tôi như tan vỡ, như bị cắt thành nhiều mảnh. Tôi ngã dúi dụi, chẳng thể đứng lên. Phải mất nhiều năm tôi mới tìm lại được vị trí của mình giữa mười ngàn thứ đó. Để trở thành người phụ nữ mẹ tôi đã nuôi dạy. Để nhớ lại cách mẹ nói Con yêu và ánh nhìn chăm chú quen thuộc của mẹ. Tôi đớn đau, đớn đau mãi không thôi. Tôi muốn thay đổi thật nhiều những điều đã qua. Mong ước ấy như một vùng hoang vu và tôi phải tự tìm đường xuyên qua những cánh rừng bạt ngàn. Mất bốn năm, bảy tháng và ba ngày để làm điều đó. Tôi chẳng biết sẽ đi về đâu cho đến khi đã đặt chân được đến nơi đây. Đến Cầu của Chúa. N 2 CHIA LY ếu phải vẽ một tấm bản đồ mô tả hơn bốn năm dài từ ngày mẹ mất đến thời điểm tôi bắt đầu chinh phục đường mòn Pacific Crest, hẳn nó sẽ là những đường nét lộn xộn đủ hướng – như cây pháo bông nổ lách tách trong ngày Độc Lập – với Minnesota hiển nhiên ở vị trí trung tâm. Tới Texas rồi quay về. Tới New York rồi quay về. Tới New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California và Oregon rồi lại quay về. Tới Wyoming rồi quay về. Tới Portland, Oregon và quay về. Tới Portland và quay về một lần nữa. Và một lần nữa. Nhưng những đường nét ấy chẳng nói lên điều gì. Tấm bản đồ chỉ ra mọi nơi tôi từng đến, nhưng không cho thấy mọi cách tôi đã gắng để ở lại. Nó cũng không kể về những tháng ngày sau khi mẹ mất, tôi đã gắng gượng rồi thất bại ra sao trong nỗ lực thay mẹ gắn kết mọi người trong gia đình. Hay việc tôi đã đấu tranh để bảo vệ hôn nhân của mình như thế nào; dù cùng lúc, tôi cũng đang giết chết nó bằng những lời dối trá. Nó sẽ chỉ hệt như cây pháo bông đang cháy kia, những tia sáng chói cứ thế bắn tóe đi. Đêm trước khi tới thị trấn Mojave, California để bắt đầu hành trình PCT, tôi đã tạt qua Minnesota lần cuối. Tôi thậm chí còn kể cho mẹ, dù bà không thể nghe thấy đi chăng nữa. Tôi ngồi giữa đám hoa trong mảnh rừng trên khu đất của chúng tôi, nơi dượng Eddie, Paul, chị em tôi và tôi đã trộn tro của mẹ vào đất, dựng lên bia mộ. Tôi giải thích với bà rằng tôi sẽ không còn ở gần đây để chăm nom phần mộ của bà nữa. Điều đó cũng có nghĩa là sẽ chẳng có ai làm điều đó. Cuối cùng, tôi chẳng còn sự lựa chọn nào khác, đành để mộ mẹ lại với um tùm cỏ dại; những cành cây đổ và những quả thông rụng. Mặc cho tuyết rơi, hay bất cứ thứ gì, kiến, hươu nai, gấu đen hay ong đất muốn làm với bà. Tôi nằm xuống giữa tro tàn của mẹ, giữa những bông nghệ tây và thủ thỉ Vậy cũng ổn thôi. Rằng tôi đã đầu hàng. Rằng từ khi mẹ mất, mọi chuyện đã đổi thay. Những chuyện mẹ chẳng thể tưởng tượng hay đoán nổi. Những lời thật trầm và kiên định. Tôi đau lòng như thể ai đó đang bóp cổ tôi, và như cả cuộc đời tôi phụ thuộc vào những lời này. Mẹ mãi luôn là mẹ của con, nhưng con phải đi. Tôi nói. Dù sao thì, mẹ sẽ chẳng ở lại đây, trên những trảng hoa này nữa. Con sẽ đưa mẹ tới một nơi khác. Nơi duy nhất con có thể chạm vào mẹ. Trong trái tim con. Ngày tiếp theo, tôi rời xa Minnesota mãi mãi. Tôi sẽ đi PCT. Đó là tuần đầu tiên của tháng sáu. Tôi đến Portland bằng chiếc xe tải nhỏ Chevy Luv đời 1979, chất cả tá hộp đầy đồ ăn khô và đồ dùng cần thiết để mang theo. Tôi dành cả mấy tuần trước đó để sắp xếp đồ đạc, ghi tên người nhận từng chiếc hộp là chính tôi, địa chỉ nhận là các điểm dừng dọc PCT như hồ Echo; Soda Springs; thác Burney và thung lũng Seiad mà tôi chưa từng tới. Tôi để chiếc xe tải và những chiếc hộp ấy ở chỗ Lisa, bạn tôi, ở Portland. Cô ấy sẽ gửi chúng qua đường bưu điện cho tôi trong suốt mùa hè. Rồi tôi bay tới Los Angeles, đi nhờ xe anh trai của một người bạn tới Mojave. Chúng tôi tới thị trấn khi chiều tối. Mặt trời lặn dần xuống dãy Tehachapi phía sau chúng tôi chừng 20 km về phía tây. Đó là những đỉnh núi tôi sẽ leo vào ngày mai. Thị trấn của Mojave nằm ở độ cao hơn 800 m so với mực nước biển, mặc dù tôi lại có cảm giác giống như mình đang ở đáy của thứ gì đó hơn: các biển hiệu trạm xăng, nhà hàng và nhà nghỉ vẫn vươn cao hơn những cái cây cao nhất. “Anh dừng ở đây là được rồi.” Tôi nói với người đàn ông đã chở tôi từ Los Angeles tới, tay chỉ biển hiệu đèn neon kiểu cổ ghi NHÀ NGHỈ WHITE cùng chữ TI VI màu vàng phía trên và chữ CÒN PHÒNG màu hồng phía dưới. Nhìn tòa nhà có vẻ cũ kỹ, tôi đoán đây là nơi rẻ nhất trong thị trấn. Một nơi hoàn hảo cho tôi. “Cảm ơn đã cho em đi nhờ xe.” Tôi nói khi xe vừa đỗ. “Không có gì đâu.” Anh đáp và nhìn tôi. “Em chắc là ổn chứ?” “Vâng.” Tôi nói, chẳng mấy tự tin. “Em từng du lịch một mình nhiều lắm.” Tôi dỡ hành lý xuống xe, một chiếc ba lô và hai túi nhựa đầy cỡ lớn. Tôi vốn định xếp mọi thứ trong túi vào ba lô trước khi rời Portland, nhưng lại không có thời gian, nên đành mang tất cả tới đây. Tôi sẽ chuẩn bị mọi thứ trong phòng. “Chúc may mắn.” Anh nói. Tôi nhìn anh lái xe đi. Không khí oi bức có vị như bụi đất, làn gió khô khốc thổi tóc bay vào mắt. Bãi đỗ xe trải toàn đá sỏi màu trắng được đổ xi măng. Nhà nghỉ là một dãy dài các cửa chính và cửa sổ rủ những tấm rèm cũ kỹ. Tôi đeo ba lô trên vai, tay xách mấy túi đồ. Cảm giác thật lạ lùng khi chỉ còn lại những thứ này. Tôi đã nghĩ mình sẽ hồ hởi lắm, vậy mà giờ đột nhiên lại thấy lòng thật trống trải biết bao. Tôi đã dành cả sáu tháng trước đó để hình dung về khoảnh khắc này; nhưng giờ đây, khi chỉ còn cách PCT chừng 20 km, mọi thứ lại trở nên kém rực rỡ hơn, như thể tôi đang ở trong một giấc mơ, nơi mọi dòng suy nghĩ trôi chậm lại, nơi ý chí chiến thắng bản năng. Vào thôi! Tôi phải nhắc chính mình rồi mới có thể bước về phía nhà nghỉ. Đặt một phòng nào. “18 đô-la.” Một người phụ nữ lớn tuổi đứng sau quầy nói. Bà ta nhìn về phía sau cánh cửa kính nơi tôi vừa bước vào và thô lỗ nhấn mạnh: “Trừ khi cô có bạn đồng hành. Hai người thì nhiều hơn.” “Cháu không có bạn.” Tôi nói, mặt đỏ ửng. Tôi thường chỉ đỏ mặt khi nói thật mà lại cảm giác như đang nói dối. “Anh ấy chỉ đưa cháu đến đây thôi.” “Vậy thì 18 đô-la,” bà ta đáp, “nhưng nếu một người nữa tới cùng, cô sẽ phải trả thêm.” “Sẽ không có người nào tới cùng hết.” Tôi lấy 20 đô từ túi quần soóc và đẩy qua mặt quầy. Bà ta nhận lấy rồi trả lại tôi hai đô cùng tờ khai để điền thông tin với một cây bút gắn bàn. “Cháu đi bộ, nên không thể điền vào mục xe hơi được.” Tôi nói và chỉ vào tờ phiếu, mỉm cười thân thiện nhưng bà ta không đáp lại. “Cháu cũng không có địa chỉ cụ thể nào. Cháu đang đi, nên cháu…” “Thế thì điền nơi mà cô sẽ quay trở về.” Bà ta nói. “À, vấn đề là thế đấy. Cháu không chắc cuối cùng mình sẽ ở đâu vì…” Bà ta gắt lên: “Vậy thì tên bố mẹ, nhà ở đâu cũng được.” “Được thôi,” tôi nói và ghi địa chỉ của dượng Eddie. Dẫu thực tế, trong bốn năm kể từ khi mẹ mất, mối quan hệ giữa hai chúng tôi đã nặng nề và xa cách đến nỗi khó có thể coi ông vẫn là cha dượng của tôi. Tôi không có “nhà”, dẫu ngôi nhà chúng tôi xây vẫn còn đó. Leif, Karen và tôi vẫn là chị em ruột thịt, nhưng lại hiếm khi gặp nhau; cuộc sống cũng khác biệt quá nhiều. Paul và tôi đã hoàn tất thủ tục ly hôn vào tháng trước; sau khi khổ sở ly thân suốt một năm dài. Có vài người bạn thân mà đôi khi tôi vẫn coi như thể người nhà, nhưng những mối gắn kết ấy là không chính thức và đôi khi gián đoạn. Một giọt máu đào hơn ao nước lã, khi tôi lớn lên, mẹ vẫn thường nói thế; còn tôi thì hay cãi lại bà. Nhưng điều đó đúng hay sai cũng không còn quan trọng nữa. Tất cả mọi người đều đã rời xa tầm với của tôi. “Cháu gửi này.” Tôi nói với người phụ nữ, đẩy tờ khai qua quầy, dẫu bà ta mất một lúc mới quay sang phía tôi. Bà ta đang xem bản tin buổi chiều qua chiếc ti vi nhỏ đặt trên bàn sau quầy. Tin gì đó về vụ xét xử O. J. Simpson. “Cô có nghĩ hắn ta phạm tội không?” Bà hỏi, mắt vẫn dán chặt vào chiếc ti vi. “Có vẻ là vậy, nhưng quá sớm để kết luận, cháu đoán thế. Chúng ta đâu đã có đủ bằng chứng.” “Hắn chắc chắn có tội!” Bà ta quát lên. Cuối cùng, bà ta cũng đưa chìa khóa cho tôi. Tôi đi qua bãi đỗ xe, đến một cánh cửa ở tít cuối dãy nhà, mở cửa phòng và bước vào trong; tôi đặt đồ xuống rồi ngồi lên chiếc giường êm ái. Tôi đang ở giữa hoang mạc Mojave, vậy mà căn phòng này lại ướt át lạ lùng; bốc mùi thảm ẩm mốc và thuốc sát trùng Lysol. Một hộp máy thông gió bằng kim loại trắng thu lu trong góc phòng ầm ĩ khởi động – đó là một chiếc máy tạo hơi mát chạy khoảng vài phút rồi tự tắt với một tiếng loảng xoảng ghê rợn chỉ càng làm tăng cảm giác cô quạnh, vật vờ trong tôi. Tôi đã nghĩ đến chuyện ra ngoài và tìm cho mình một kẻ để cặp kè. Với tôi, chuyện đó quá sức dễ dàng. Mấy năm trước thực sự là bữa tiệc lạc thú của những cuộc tình một đêm, hai đêm và ba đêm chóng vánh. Trò mơn trớn với những kẻ ơ hờ ấy giờ đây thật nực cười làm sao, nhưng tôi vẫn khao khát cái cảm giác khi cơ thể ai đó đè nặng lên người tôi, lấp đi tất cả mọi nỗi niềm nghĩ suy khác trong tôi. Tôi đứng dậy, rũ bỏ cơn thèm muốn đang rền rỉ đói khát trong đầu: Mình có thể đến một quán bar. Mình có thể để gã nào đó mời một cốc. Rồi chỉ chớp nhoáng thôi là có thể cùng gã quay trở lại đây. Nhưng sau tất cả cơn thèm muốn ấy là nỗi khát khao được gọi cho Paul. Anh giờ đã là chồng cũ nhưng vẫn là người bạn tốt nhất của tôi. Trong mấy năm sau khi mẹ qua đời, tôi càng cố kéo bản thân lánh xa anh bao nhiêu lại càng dựa vào anh bấy nhiêu. Giữa những khoảng đắn đo câm lặng của tôi về cuộc hôn nhân, chúng tôi đã hạnh phúc bên nhau, đã từng, theo những cách kỳ quặc, là một cặp hạnh phúc. Cái hộp thông gió trong góc phòng lại tự bật lên và tôi đến trước nó, để luồng không khí lạnh cóng phả vào hai cẳng chân trần. Tôi vẫn mặc nguyên bộ quần áo từ tối hôm trước, lúc rời khỏi Portland, thứ nào cũng mới toanh. Đó là bộ đồ đi bộ đường dài và mặc nó trên người tôi cảm thấy hơi lạ lẫm, như thể mình trở thành một người khác. Tôi đi đôi tất len bên trong đôi giày đi bộ, có những lỗ xỏ dây kim loại. Quần soóc màu xanh lính thủy với những cái túi trông thật ngầu cài lại bằng miếng dính Velcro. Quần lót làm từ vải đặc biệt nhanh khô và một cái áo phông trơn trắng mặc bên ngoài áo lót thể thao. Tôi đã tiết kiệm tiền trong cả mùa đông và mùa xuân để mua bộ đồ này cùng với nhiều thứ khác. Tôi đã cố tăng ca ở quán ăn nơi tôi phục vụ bàn. Lúc mới mua, bộ quần áo này chẳng có vẻ xa lạ với tôi. Mặc dù khi ấy tôi cũng có chút bon chen vào cuộc sống chộn rộn chốn đô thị, nhưng người ngoài vẫn dễ dàng nhận ra tôi là kiểu người thích ở ngoài trời. Xét ra, tuổi niên thiếu của tôi đã lăn lộn qua những cánh rừng vùng Minnesota. Nếu có đi nghỉ thì cả nhà tôi sẽ đi cắm trại, và những chuyến đi chơi của tôi cùng Paul, cùng bạn bè hay một mình cũng đều thế cả. Tôi đã từng ngủ sau xe tải, cắm trại ngoài trời trong công viên và rừng quốc gia nhiều lần đến nỗi không thể nào đếm nổi. Nhưng bây giờ, ở đây, chỉ có ngần này quần áo, đột nhiên tôi cảm thấy như một kẻ lọc lừa. Trong sáu tháng kể từ khi quyết định dấn thân vào hành trình PCT, ít nhất một tá lần tôi đã giải thích tại sao chuyến đi này lại là một ý tưởng hay ho và tôi thích hợp với thử thách này như thế nào. Nhưng giờ đây, một mình trong căn phòng của nhà nghỉ White, tôi biết chẳng thể phủ nhận cái thực tế là mình đang vô cùng chông chênh. “Có lẽ em nên thử một chuyến đi ngắn hơn đã,” Paul đã gợi ý vậy khi tôi kể với anh ý định của mình trong một cuộc nói chuyện chúng-ta-có- nên-li-dị nhiều tháng trước đó. “Tại sao?” Tôi nổi quạu. “Anh không nghĩ là em có thể làm được à?” “Không phải thế.” Anh nói. “Chỉ là theo như anh biết thì em chưa bao giờ phượt bụi như vậy.” “Em đã đi rồi chứ!” Tôi giận dữ nói, mặc dù anh ấy đúng: tôi chưa đi như thế bao giờ. Dù trước đó đã từng làm những việc mà tôi tự thấy rất liên quan đến phượt bụi, nhưng tôi chưa bao giờ thực sự đeo ba lô sau lưng, cuốc bộ giữa thiên nhiên hoang dã và qua đêm ở đó cả. Chưa một lần nào cả. Mình chưa từng đi bộ đường dài bao giờ! Lúc này đây, tôi đã nghĩ đến điều ấy với một chút hài hước ảo não. Bất giác tôi nhìn sang chiếc ba lô và những cái túi nhựa mà tôi đã vác đi suốt từ Portland, bên trong là những thứ còn nguyên bao bì. Chiếc ba lô xanh rì màu lá rừng và điểm xuyết chút màu đen, thân ba lô có ba ngăn rộng, những cái túi bên hông nhét đầy giẻ và túi bóng, phồng lên như những cái tai to. Nó đứng đó, hai ngăn nhựa lạ mắt phình ra ngang đáy làm bệ đỡ. Lạ lùng thay, chỉ cần nó tự đứng được như thế mà không đổ nghiêng sang bên như những chiếc túi khác cũng khiến tôi cảm thấy nhẹ nhõm phần nào. Tôi đi đến chỗ cái ba lô và sờ vào nó như thể đang xoa đầu một đứa trẻ. Một tháng trước, người ta nhất mực khuyên tôi trước khi bắt đầu hành trình nên xếp đồ vào ba lô và vác đi thử. Tôi đã định làm thế trước khi rời Minneapolis, và tôi cũng định làm thế ngay khi đến được Portland. Nhưng tôi đã không làm. Cuộc đi bộ thử của tôi là vào ngày mai – ngày đầu tiên của tôi trên con đường mòn. Tôi lôi cái còi màu da cam từ một chiếc túi nhựa, bên ngoài túi đựng hùng hồn tuyên bố đây là “kẻ to mồm nhất quả đất”. Tôi xé túi đựng ra rồi tóm lấy cái dây màu vàng, vòng qua cổ, như thể tôi là một huấn luyện viên. Tôi có định đeo nó như thế trong chuyến đi bộ này không ấy hả? Nghe có vẻ ngớ ngẩn, nhưng quả tình tôi không biết nữa. Tôi đã mua cái còi to mồm nhất thế giới này mà chẳng cân nhắc kỹ càng, giống như khi mua nhiều thứ khác. Tôi tháo nó ra rồi buộc vào ba lô, để nó có thể đung đưa qua vai tôi khi tôi cuốc bộ. Như thế tôi có thể tiện tay với lấy được ngay khi cần. Mình có cần cái còi này không? Tôi ngồi phịch xuống giường, tự thấy nhu nhược, chán chường. Đã qua giờ ăn tối lâu rồi, nhưng tôi bồn chồn đến mức chẳng thấy đói, nỗi cô đơn giống như một tiếng thịch khó chịu đã xâm chiếm hết gan ruột tôi rồi. “Cuối cùng thì em cũng có được thứ em muốn.” Paul nói với tôi khi chúng tôi chia tay ở Minneapolis mười ngày trước. “Là cái gì?” Tôi hỏi. “Được ở một mình.” Anh đáp và mỉm cười, dù tôi chỉ có thể gật đầu mà không chắc lắm. Tôi đã từng muốn như thế, dù không hẳn hoàn toàn là một mình. Dường như không thể gọi tên được những điều tôi muốn có trong tình yêu. Chương cuối cuộc hôn nhân của tôi là một quá trình dằng dặc, bắt đầu bằng một bức thư đến sau cái chết của mẹ một tuần, mặc dù khởi nguồn của lá thư ấy đã có từ trước đó rất lâu. Đó không phải là bức thư gửi cho tôi. Mà gửi cho Paul. Lúc đó, dù vẫn buồn đau trong nỗi mất mát còn quá mới, nhưng tôi vẫn hăm hở lao vào phòng ngủ và trao thư cho anh khi nhìn thấy địa chỉ người gửi. Bức thư đến từ trường New School ở thành phố New York. Ở một đoạn đời khác – mới ba tháng trước chứ đâu xa, khi tôi còn chưa biết mẹ mắc ung thư – tôi đã giúp anh nộp hồ sơ cho chương trình Tiến sĩ ngành Triết học Chính trị. Hồi giữa tháng một, cái ý tưởng sống ở thành phố New York như thể là niềm hạnh phúc lớn lao nhất thế gian. Nhưng giờ đây, vào cuối tháng ba – khi Paul xé phong bì và reo lên thông báo đã trúng tuyển, khi tôi ôm anh và tỏ vẻ hân hoan chúc mừng – thì tôi lại cảm thấy bản thân như bị chia cắt làm hai nửa. Đó là tôi của thời điểm trước khi mẹ mất và tôi hiện tại, cuộc đời trước kia ngự như một vết bầm trên thân thể. Con người thực của tôi nằm dưới đó, phập phồng dưới tất cả những điều mà tôi từng nghĩ là mình biết. Rằng tôi sẽ lấy được bằng cử nhân và mấy tháng sau chúng tôi có thể chuyển đi. Rằng chúng tôi sẽ thuê một căn phòng ở East Village hay Park Slope – những nơi mà tôi chỉ mới tưởng tượng và đọc về chúng. Rằng tôi sẽ mặc chiếc áo cánh dơi sành điệu với mũ len siêu dễ thương và đôi giày cao cổ cực chất khi trở thành một nhà văn, lãng mạn, tay trắng như những nhân vật anh hùng, đả nữ trong văn học. Giờ đây tất cả những chuyện đó đã trở thành không thể, bất kể bức thư kia có nói gì đi nữa. Mẹ đã mất. Mẹ đã mất. Mẹ đã mất. Mọi thứ tôi hình dung về bản thân đều đã tan biến theo hơi thở cuối cùng của mẹ. Tôi không thể rời Minnesota. Gia đình tôi cần tôi. Ai có thể bên Leif cho đến khi em ấy trưởng thành? Ai sẽ ở đó an ủi dượng Eddie trong nỗi cô đơn? Ai sẽ nấu bữa tối lễ Tạ Ơn và tiếp tục truyền thống gia đình? Phải có ai đó gắn kết những gì còn lại của gia đình. Và “ai đó” ấy phải là tôi. Tôi nợ mẹ ít nhất là điều đó. “Anh có thể đi còn em ở lại.” Tôi nói với Paul khi anh cầm bức thư. Và tôi lặp lại nhiều lần nữa khi chúng tôi nói về chuyện đó vào những tuần tiếp theo, ngày càng thêm quả quyết. Một phần trong tôi vô cùng hãi sợ cảnh phải rời xa anh; một phần khác lại chỉ mong anh cứ đi như vậy. Nếu anh đi, cánh cửa hôn nhân của chúng tôi sẽ tự đóng lại mà không cần một cú đạp nào từ tôi cả. Tôi sẽ tự do và lỗi chẳng thuộc về tôi. Tôi yêu anh, nhưng lúc kết hôn tôi bốc đồng và mới 19 tuổi; còn lâu mới đủ chín chắn để gắn cuộc đời mình với một ai khác, dẫu người đó đáng mến đến chừng nào. Dù chẳng bao lâu sau khi lấy nhau tôi đã bị hấp dẫn bởi những người đàn ông khác, nhưng tôi vẫn giữ kẽ với họ. Song tôi không thể làm thế được nữa. Nỗi đau đã bịt mất khả năng kiềm chế của tôi. Tôi biện minh rằng cuộc đời đã từ chối tôi nhiều thứ. Tại sao tôi lại phải từ chối chính bản thân mình cơ chứ? Mẹ mất được một tuần thì tôi đã hôn một gã trai khác. Và một gã khác nữa vào tuần tiếp theo. Tôi chỉ mơn trớn với họ và những người đến sau – tôi thề thốt không bước qua ranh giới tình dục vốn vẫn có một ý nghĩa nào đó với tôi. Nhưng tôi vẫn biết tôi đã sai khi dối lừa như thế. Tôi cảm thấy như bị sập bẫy, loay hoay vì không thể rời bỏ khỏi Paul hay giữ sự thủy chung, bởi vậy tôi chờ đợi anh rời bỏ tôi và chuyển đi học một mình, cho dù tất nhiên là anh sẽ không đồng ý. Anh bảo lưu một năm và chúng tôi ở lại Minnesota để tôi có thể gần gia đình mình, mặc dù cái sự ở gần ấy cũng chẳng giúp được gì nhiều trong năm đầu sau khi mẹ mất. Hóa ra là tôi chẳng thể kéo mọi người lại gần nhau. Tôi không phải là mẹ. Chỉ đến khi mẹ mất rồi tôi mới nhận ra bà là ai: một nguồn năng lượng diệu kỳ ở vị trí trung tâm, giữ cho tất cả chúng tôi hiện hữu quanh mẹ với một quỹ đạo bền chặt. Không có mẹ, dượng Eddie dần trở thành một người xa lạ. Leif, Karen và tôi bị cuốn đi theo cuộc sống của mỗi người. Tôi đã vật vã cưỡng lại, rồi cuối cùng cũng phải vật vã chấp nhận sự thực rằng: không có mẹ, chúng tôi chẳng còn là chúng tôi ngày xưa nữa; chúng tôi trôi dạt mỗi người một phương nổi nênh lặn ngụp với nỗi đau khổ của riêng mình, kết nối với nhau bằng một sợi dây mỏng manh nhất. Tôi chưa bao giờ làm bữa tối Tạ Ơn mà tôi đã định. Đến lễ Tạ Ơn, tám tháng sau khi mẹ mất, tôi đã nói về “gia đình” như một cái gì đó xưa lắm. Bởi vậy tôi đã rất vui mừng khi cuối cùng Paul và tôi cũng chuyển đến thành phố New York, một năm sau thời điểm đã định. Ở đó, lẽ ra tôi có thể có một cuộc đời mới. Tôi sẽ thôi dan díu với đàn ông. Tôi sẽ không đau đớn buồn khổ nữa. Tôi sẽ không giận dữ nghĩ về tổ ấm mà tôi từng có nữa. Tôi sẽ trở thành một nhà văn sống ở thành phố New York. Tôi sẽ đi dạo loanh quanh với đôi bốt cực ngầu và chiếc mũ len siêu dễ thương. Tôi đã chẳng đi theo con đường đó. Tôi vẫn là tôi như cũ: vẫn là người đàn bà phập phồng giấu mình dưới vết bầm của cuộc đời trước đó, chỉ khác là tôi đang ở một nơi mới thôi. Ban ngày, tôi viết truyện; tối đến tôi phục vụ bàn rồi ôm ấp hôn hít với một trong hai người đàn ông mà tôi đều không vượt quá giới hạn. Chúng tôi mới sống ở New York một tháng thì Paul bỏ học tiến sĩ, chuyển sang học guitar. Sáu tháng sau, chúng tôi cùng nhau rời đi, trở lại Minnesota chóng vánh trước khi lên đường cho một chuyến vừa đi vừa làm việc kéo dài nhiều tháng trên khắp miền tây, làm một vòng bát ngát đi qua cả Grand Canyon và Thung lũng Chết, Big Sur và San Francisco. Chuyến đi kết thúc vào cuối xuân, chúng tôi dừng lại ở Portland và tìm việc trong những nhà hàng. Lúc đầu chúng tôi ở với bạn tôi là Lisa trong căn hộ bé tí xíu của cô ấy, sau đó tới ở một trang trại cách thành phố16 km, chăm sóc một con dê, một con mèo và một đàn gà chọi, đổi lại chúng tôi được ở đó miễn phí cả mùa hè. Chúng tôi kéo tấm nệm từ xe tải ra, đặt vào phòng khách và ngủ ở đó, dưới khung cửa sổ lớn trông ra vườn cây phỉ. Chúng tôi thường đi dạo khá lâu, hái dâu và làm tình với nhau. Mình có thể làm được. Tôi nghĩ. Mình có thể là vợ của Paul. Nhưng lại một lần nữa tôi đã nhầm. Dường như tôi chỉ có thể là con người vốn dĩ trước đây. Chỉ là lúc này tôi còn tồi tệ hơn cả thế. Thậm chí tôi còn không nhớ nổi người đàn bà trong tôi trước khi đời mình tách làm hai nửa. Khi sống ở ngôi nhà trang trại nhỏ bé bên rìa Portland đó, vài tháng sau lần giỗ thứ hai của mẹ, tôi đã không còn lo lắng gì về chuyện bước qua ranh giới nữa. Khi Paul nhận việc ở Mineapolis và phải quay trở lại Minnesota giữa mùa lũ gà ấp trứng, tôi ở lại Oregon và “chơi” ngay bạn trai cũ của người đàn bà là chủ nhân đàn gà này. Tôi làm tình với một gã đầu bếp ở nhà hàng nơi tôi được nhận công việc phục vụ bàn. Tôi ngủ với một tay mát-xa, kẻ đã cho tôi một miếng bánh kem chuối và một chầu mát-xa miễn phí. Cả ba người bọn họ không thọ với tôi quá năm ngày. Cảm giác của tôi lúc đó hẳn giống với những người tự cắt tay mình. Chẳng đẹp đẽ gì nhưng sạch sẽ. Chẳng hay ho, nhưng không hề hối tiếc. Tôi đang cố gắng tự chữa lành vết thương. Cố gắng gột bỏ cái xấu để lại trở nên tốt đẹp như xưa. Cố gắng tự cứu mình khỏi chính mình. Cuối mùa hè, khi trở lại Minneapolis để sống với Paul, tôi tin rằng mình đã làm được điều đó. Tôi nghĩ mình đã đổi khác, đã tốt hơn, đã êm thấm. Và tôi thực đã như vậy trong một khoảng thời gian, suốt mùa thu năm đó và bước sang năm mới. Rồi tôi lại sa vào một cuộc tình khác. Tôi biết tôi đã đi đến tận cùng giới hạn. Tôi không thể chịu nổi chính mình. Cuối cùng, tôi phải nói với Paul những lời sẽ đâm toạc cuộc đời tôi. Chẳng phải rằng tôi không yêu anh. Mà rằng tôi cần được ở một mình, mặc dù tôi không biết tại sao. Mẹ đã mất được ba năm. Chúng tôi đã cùng nức nở trên sàn nhà sau khi tôi nói hết những chuyện phải nói. Ngày hôm sau, Paul chuyển ra ngoài. Rồi dần dần, chúng tôi nói với bạn bè rằng chúng tôi đang ly thân. Chúng tôi nói hy vọng mọi chuyện rồi sẽ êm xuôi. Chúng tôi sẽ không cần thiết phải ly hôn. Đầu tiên họ đều không tin – ai cũng nói chúng tôi có vẻ rất hạnh phúc. Tiếp đến, họ nổi khùng – không phải với cả hai chúng tôi mà chỉ với mình tôi. Một trong những người bạn thân nhất đã rạch đôi bức ảnh của tôi, rồi gửi cho tôi. Một cô bạn khác thì ve vãn Paul. Khi tôi đau đớn và phát ghen vì điều đó, một người bạn khác đã nói thế là đáng đời tôi: tôi xứng đáng nhận vị thuốc đắng của chính mình. Công bằng mà nói, tôi chẳng có lý gì để mà phản đối, nhưng trái tim tôi vẫn nát tan. Nằm một mình trên chiếc đệm của hai đứa, tôi thấy mình đang lơ lửng trong nỗi đớn đau. Ly thân được ba tháng, chúng tôi vẫn dùng dằng trong đau khổ. Tôi vừa không muốn quay lại với Paul lại vừa không muốn ly hôn. Tôi muốn phân thân để có thể làm được cả hai. Paul đang hẹn hò với một hai người gì đó, nhưng tôi thì hoàn toàn cô độc. Tôi đã đập nát cuộc hôn nhân của chúng tôi vì tình dục, và giờ thì tình dục lại là thứ tôi thờ ơ nhất. “Cậu cần thoát khỏi cái nơi Minneapolis quái quỷ này.” Bạn tôi, Lisa, đã nói thế vào một trong những đêm tâm sự gan ruột của chúng tôi. “Hãy đến Portland với tớ.” Chỉ trong vòng một tuần, tôi đã nghỉ việc bồi bàn, chất đồ lên chiếc xe tải, và lái thẳng về phía tây, khởi hành trên đúng con đường mà một năm sau đó tôi đã băng qua để đến với cung đường Pacific Crest. Khi đến được Montana, tôi biết mình đã làm đúng – vùng đất xanh lá mênh mông trải tới hàng cây số qua kính chắn gió ở xe tôi, và bầu trời thì còn xa hơn nữa. Thành phố Portland thoắt biến mất khỏi tầm nhìn. Đây có thể là cuộc trốn chạy ngọt ngào của tôi, dù chỉ là trong một khoảng thời gian ngắn. Tôi đã nghĩ mình sẽ bỏ lại sau lưng những rắc rối. S 3 KHOM LƯNG ĐỨNG THẲNG áng hôm sau, tôi thức dậy trong nhà nghỉ White, tắm gội rồi để mình trần đứng trước gương, chậm rãi ngắm mình đánh răng. Tôi cố gắng cảm nhận một điều gì đó giống như là sự phấn khích nhưng lại chỉ thấy rầu rĩ và lo lắng. Thỉnh thoảng tôi có thể nhìn thấy chính mình – thực sự nhìn thấy mình – những lúc ấy một câu nói nào đó sẽ vang rền trong đầu tôi như những lời thần thánh. Và giờ đây, khi tôi nhìn vào tấm gương đã mờ xỉn này, câu nói đó là người đàn bà bị tổn thương rạn vỡ. Người đàn bà đó chính là tôi. Đó chính là lý do tại sao tôi lại khát khao một người bạn tình vào tối hôm trước đến vậy. Đó là lý do tại sao tôi ở đây, mình trần trong nhà nghỉ, với ý định khác người là một mình cuốc bộ ba tháng trên đường mòn PCT. Tôi đặt bàn chải đánh răng xuống, nhìn sát vào gương và nhìn sâu vào mắt. Tôi có thể tự cảm thấy nỗi hoang phế bên trong, giống như bông hoa tả tơi trước gió. Cứ mỗi lần cử động, một cánh-hoa-tôi lại rơi rụng đi mất. Làm ơn đừng. Tôi thầm nghĩ. Làm ơn. Tôi đến bên giường và nhìn xuống bộ đồ đi đường. Tôi đã cẩn thận trải nó lên giường trước khi đi tắm, như mẹ từng làm vào ngày đầu tiên tôi đi học. Khi tôi mặc áo lót và áo phông, những cái vảy nhỏ tí viền quanh hình xăm mới mắc vào ống tay áo và tôi tỉ mỉ nhặt chúng ra. Đó là hình xăm duy nhất tôi có – con ngựa màu xanh trên bả vai trái. Paul cũng có một hình xăm y như vậy. Chỉ mới tháng trước, chúng tôi đã đi xăm cùng nhau nhân sự kiện chính thức ly hôn. Chúng tôi không còn là vợ chồng của nhau nữa, nhưng với chúng tôi những hình xăm này dường như là minh chứng cho mối ràng buộc mãi mãi của hai đứa. Giờ đây, thậm chí tôi còn tha thiết muốn gọi cho Paul hơn cả tối hôm trước, nhưng tôi không thể cho phép mình làm thế. Anh biết tôi rất rõ. Anh sẽ nghe ra được nỗi buồn và thái độ lưỡng lự trong giọng nói của tôi và biết ngay rằng chẳng phải tôi chỉ hồi hộp trước chuyến đi PCT. Anh ấy sẽ cảm nhận được rằng tôi có điều gì muốn nói. Tôi đi tất, buộc dây giày, đến bên cửa sổ và kéo rèm cửa lên. Mặt trời tỏa ánh nắng chói chang trên những viên đá trắng ở bãi đậu xe. Bên kia đường có một trạm xăng – hẳn là nơi thuận tiện để bắt nhờ xe đến PCT. Khi tôi buông rèm cửa, căn phòng tối trở lại. Tôi thích cứ như vậy, giống như một cái kén tằm an toàn mà không bao giờ tôi phải rời bỏ, mặc dù tôi biết rằng chẳng phải như vậy. Đã chín giờ sáng và ngoài kia trời nắng tỏ, cái hộp thông gió màu trắng ở góc phòng tiếp tục gầm gào huyên náo. Mặc dù mọi thứ trông có vẻ như tôi đang đi đến một nơi vô định, nhưng tôi đã có một nơi để trú ngụ: đó là ngày thứ nhất trên con đường mòn PCT. Tôi mở các ngăn túi và lôi mọi thứ ra, quăng từng cái lên giường. Tôi nâng những cái túi nhựa lên và cũng lôi hết đồ trong đó ra, rồi nhìn chằm chằm đống đồ ấy. Đó là tất cả những thứ tôi phải mang theo trong ba tháng tới. Một chiếc túi nén màu xanh để đựng quần áo chưa mặc – một cái quần nỉ, một chiếc áo sơ mi dài tay giữ nhiệt, một chiếc áo gió có mũ trùm đầu dày dặn, hai đôi tất len và hai cái quần lót, một đôi găng tay mỏng, một cái mũ che nắng, một cái mũ nỉ và một quần đi mưa – và một cái túi khô chắc chắn hơn, ních chặt thức ăn mà tôi sẽ cần đến trong 14 ngày tới, trước khi đến được trạm tiếp tế đầu tiên ở một nơi được gọi là đồng cỏ Kennedy. Một cái túi ngủ, một chiếc ghế dành cho những chuyến cắm trại, có thể dàn ra để làm phản lót khi ngủ, một cái đèn đeo đầu kiểu thợ mỏ và năm cái dây chằng có móc hai đầu. Một bình lọc nước, một cái bếp nhỏ xíu có thể tháo ra lắp vào, một bình ga cao bằng nhôm và một chiếc bật lửa nhỏ màu hồng. Một cái xoong nhỏ có thể lồng vào bên trong một cái nồi to hơn, những dụng cụ nấu nướng có thể gập đôi lại và một đôi xăng đan thể thao rẻ tiền mà tôi định đi trong lều vào cuối mỗi ngày. Một cái khăn tắm có thể khô nhanh, một cái móc chìa khóa đồng kèm nhiệt kế, một tấm bạt, và một cái cốc nhựa cách điện có tay cầm. Một bộ sơ cứu khi bị rắn cắn và một con dao quân dụng Thụy Sĩ, một cái ống nhòm nhỏ trong túi khóa zip giả da và một sợi dây màu neon sặc sỡ, một cái la bàn mà tôi chưa học cách sử dụng và một cuốn sách có thể dạy tôi cách dùng cái la bàn đó, cuốn sách tên là Staying Found (Đừng để bị lạc) mà tôi định đọc trên chuyến bay tới Los Angeles nhưng đã không đọc. Một bộ đồ sơ cứu trong hộp vải bạt màu đỏ còn mới nguyên có thể đóng sập lại, một cuộn giấy vệ sinh trong túi khóa zip và một cái bay bằng thép không gỉ có bao riêng màu đen ghi dòng chữ Bạn-Đào-Nó ở đằng trước. Một cái túi nhỏ đựng đồ vệ sinh và đồ cá nhân mà tôi nghĩ sẽ phải cần đến trong suốt hành trình – dầu gội, dầu xả, xà phòng, dưỡng thể, chất khử mùi, kìm bấm móng tay và thuốc chống côn trùng, kính râm, một cái lược bàn và một miếng bọt biển thiên nhiên khi đến tháng, và một tuýp kem chống nắng dưỡng ẩm môi. Một chiếc đèn pin, một lồng đèn bằng kim loại có một cây nến Tạ Ơn bên trong và một cây nến dự trữ, một cái cưa gấp – để làm gì tôi cũng chẳng biết nữa – và một cái túi nylon màu xanh lá để đựng lều. Hai chai nước bằng nhựa đựng được mỗi chai gần một lít, một cái túi hình bướu lạc đà có thể gấp lại chứa được gần 10l, một tấm chụp bằng nylon có thể trải ra bọc che mưa cho cái ba lô và một quả bóng Gore-Tex có thể mở ra che mưa cho tôi. Có những thứ tôi mua để dự phòng khi cái chính không dùng được – pin dự trữ, một hộp diêm chống nước, một cái chăn giữ nhiệt, và một lọ thuốc viên i-ốt. Hai cái bút và ba cuốn sách ngoài cuốn Đừng để bị lạc: cuốn The Pacific Crest Train, Volume 1: California (Đường mòn Pacific Crest, tập 1: California) (chính nó đã kéo tôi đến với hành trình này, viết bởi nhóm bốn tác giả với giọng điệu bình thản nhưng sắt đá khi nói về những hiểm nguy và phần thưởng khi kết thúc con đường), cuốn As I Lay Dying (Khi tôi nằm chết) của William Faulkner và cuốn The Dream of a Common Language (Giấc mơ về ngôn ngữ chung) của Adrienne Rich. Một cuốn sổ bìa cứng 200 trang khổ 20x28 cm tôi dùng làm sổ ghi chép, một cái túi khóa zip bên trong đựng bằng lái xe và một cuộn tiền nhỏ, một thếp tem thư, và một cuốn sổ tay gáy xoắn tí hon ghi loằng ngoằng địa chỉ bạn bè ở mấy trang đầu. Một chiếc máy ảnh chuyên nghiệp Minolta X-700 35 mm với ống kính và đèn flash có thể tháo rời và một cái chân máy nhỏ có thể tháo lắp gọn gàng, tất cả được gói gọn trong túi đựng camera có độn bông to cỡ quả bóng đá. Chẳng bởi tôi là một nhiếp ảnh gia. Tôi đã đến một cửa hàng ngoài trời ở Minneapolis tên là REI cả tá lần suốt mấy tháng trước để mua phần lớn những thứ đồ này. Chẳng mấy khi việc mua bán diễn ra suôn sẻ. Tôi đã nhanh chóng nghiệm ra rằng, đi mua dù chỉ là một chai nước thôi mà không cân nhắc kỹ lưỡng trước về công nghệ mới nhất thì thật ngớ ngẩn. Phải cân nhắc đến mặt lợi và hại của nhiều chất liệu khác nhau, chưa kể đến mẫu mã thiết kế. Và đây chỉ là thứ nhỏ nhất, ít phức tạp nhất mà tôi phải mua. Sau khi tham vấn cả đàn ông lẫn phụ nữ ở REI, tôi nhận ra những đồ còn lại mà tôi cần còn phức tạp hơn nhiều. Bất cứ khi nào thấy tôi ở khu trưng bày bếp siêu nhẹ hay tản bộ giữa khu bán lều, họ đều nhiệt tình giúp đỡ. Nhân viên ở đây gồm đủ các thành phần tuổi tác và các kiểu sở thích với việc phiêu lưu hoang dã, nhưng điểm chung ở họ là bất cứ ai cũng có thể thích thú và nhiệt tình nói về các đồ nghề ấy thành một tràng dài đến ngỡ ngàng. Họ quan tâm liệu túi ngủ của tôi có phần bảo vệ khóa để tránh gãy chân răng hay không, có tấm khăn che mặt với mũ trùm đầu đủ kín mà không khiến tôi khó thở hay không. Họ lấy làm mừng vì bình lọc nước của tôi có một bộ phận bằng sợi kim loại xếp nếp giúp tăng diện tích bề mặt. Và bằng kiến thức của mình, họ đã làm cho tôi sáng mắt ra nhiều điều. Cho đến lúc chọn mua được ba lô – một chiếc có giàn khung đỡ bằng chất tổng hợp, hiệu Gregory cao cấp nhất, được quảng cáo là giữ được thăng bằng và dễ dàng mang vác – tôi cảm thấy như thể mình đã trở thành chuyên gia về ba lô vậy. Chỉ khi đứng nhìn cái đống đồ đạc đã được lựa chọn tỉ mỉ kỹ càng đang chình ình trên giường trong nhà nghỉ ở Mojave này, với sự khiêm nhường sâu sắc, tôi mới biết rằng mình chẳng phải chuyên gia gì cả. Tôi tìm cách xử lý núi đồ này, lèn, tống, dận vào bất cứ chỗ nào còn trống trong ba lô, cho đến khi chẳng thể làm hơn được nữa. Tôi đã định lấy mấy cái dây co có móc để buộc túi đựng đồ ăn, lều, bạt, túi quần áo và cái ghế cắm trại mà có thể trải đôi ra làm phản ngủ vào phía ngoài cái ba lô – được thiết kế khung mở để làm thế – nhưng bây giờ rõ ràng là còn có những thứ khác cũng phải cho ra bên ngoài. Tôi kéo căng mấy cái dây co bao quanh tất cả mọi thứ mà tôi đã định và rồi móc thêm vài thứ: quai đôi xăng đan, túi máy ảnh, tay cầm của chiếc cốc cách điện và cái lồng đèn nến. Tôi ngoắc chiếc túi đựng cái bay kim loại vào dây đai của ba lô và buộc cái móc chìa khóa có kèm nhiệt kế với một trong những cái khóa ba lô. Xong việc, tôi ngồi bệt xuống sàn nhà, mồ hôi mồ kê nhễ nhại rồi ngồi bình thản nhìn chiếc ba lô. Và tôi chợt nhớ ra một thứ cuối cùng: nước. Tôi lựa chọn điểm xuất phát chuyến đi bộ của mình đơn giản vì từ điểm này tôi ước tính sẽ mất khoảng 100 ngày để tới Ashland, Oregon – ban đầu tôi đã dự tính kết thúc hành trình ở đấy vì nghe nói nơi đó có nhiều thứ hay ho và tôi nghĩ mình có thể thích lưu lại sống. Nhiều tháng trước, tôi đã lần ngón tay mình xuôi xuống phía nam trên tấm bản đồ, thêm nhiều dặm đường và nhiều ngày nữa, rồi dừng lại ở đèo Tehachapi, nơi đường mòn PCT cắt ngang đường cao tốc 58 ở góc tây nam của hoang mạc Mojave, không xa thị trấn Mojave là bao. Cho tới tận một hai tuần trước, tôi mới nhận ra mình sẽ bắt đầu chuyến đi bộ tại một trong những khu vực khô hạn nhất của con đường, một khu vực mà thậm chí ngay cả những đôi chân lão luyện nhất, sành sỏi nhất và dày dạn nhất cũng không phải ngày nào cũng gặp được một nguồn nước. Đối với tôi, chuyện đó là không thể. Tôi phải tốn mất hai ngày để đến được nguồn nước đầu tiên, khoảng 27 km, tôi đoán thế, bởi vậy tôi phải mang đủ nước để vượt qua chặng đường đó. Tôi đổ đầy các chai nước một lít trong bồn rửa và đặt chúng vào các túi lưới bên hông ba lô. Tôi lôi cái túi bướu lạc đà từ ngăn chính của ba lô mà trước đó tôi đã nhồi nó vào và đổ đầy tất cả 10 l nước. Sau này tôi mới biết rằng một lít nước nặng một kilogam. Tôi không biết ngày đầu tiên cái ba lô của tôi đã nặng bao nhiêu, nhưng chỉ riêng nước thôi đã nặng 11 cân rồi. Và đó là 11 cân cồng kềnh. Cái túi bướu lạc đà giống như một quả bóng bẹt khổng lồ đựng nước, óc ách, oằn oại, tuột khỏi tay tôi và trượt xuống sàn khi tôi cố gắng giữ nó lại, ấn vào ba lô. Viền quanh cái ba lô đó có những sợi đan thành lưới; hì hục mãi tôi cũng luồn được sợi dây co qua chúng, tiếp theo là đến cái túi đựng máy ảnh, đôi xăng đan, cái cốc cách điện, cái lồng đèn nến, cho đến tận khi tôi cảm thấy quá bực mình đến mức giằng cái cốc cách điện ra rồi ném nó bay ngang phòng. Cuối cùng, khi mọi thứ tôi định mang đi đã yên vị đúng chỗ thì một nỗi sững lặng đổ ập lên người tôi. Tôi đã sẵn sàng lên đường. Tôi đeo đồng hồ, đeo chiếc kính râm có dây đai cao su tổng hợp màu hồng lên cổ, đội mũ, và nhìn cái ba lô. Trông nó vừa khổng lồ vừa gọn ghẽ, vừa đáng yêu vừa ôm đồm đáng sợ. Nó cũng khá sống động: có nó đồng hành khiến tôi bớt cô đơn đôi phần. Cái ba lô cao đến eo tôi. Tôi túm chặt lấy nó và nghiêng người nâng nó lên. Nó không động cựa gì. Tôi hạ người xuống, nắm lấy cái khung chắc hơn và cố gắng nâng lên lần nữa. Nó vẫn không suy suyển. Dù chỉ một li. Tôi cố gắng nâng lên bằng cả hai tay, gồng cả hai chân, ra sức vòng tay ôm chặt nó, huy động hết sức bình sinh và hết tất cả mọi thứ trong tôi. Và nó vẫn không chịu nhấc mình. Y như cố nhấc một chiếc Volkswagen Beetle lên vậy. Trông rất dễ thương, rất sẵn lòng để được cất lên – chỉ có điều đó là việc bất khả. Tôi ngồi bệt xuống sàn cạnh nó và cân nhắc tình trạng của mình. Làm sao tôi có thể vác được một cái ba lô đi bộ qua hơn 1.600 km đường núi gập ghềnh và những hoang mạc không có lấy một giọt nước khi mà tôi còn không thể dịch nó đi một li ngay cả trong căn phòng điều hòa của nhà nghỉ? Ngang trái là vậy, nhưng dù thế nào tôi cũng phải nâng được cái ba lô này lên. Chưa bao giờ tôi nghĩ mình không thể làm được điều đó. Tôi chỉ đơn giản cho rằng nếu chất tất cả những thứ tôi cần để đi du lịch bụi, thì cái sức nặng ấy tương đương với sức nặng tôi có thể mang. Đúng là những người ở REI hay đề cập đến trọng lượng trong màn độc thoại của họ, nhưng tôi không chú ý nhiều lắm. Dường như có những câu hỏi quan trọng hơn cần phải xem xét. Như là liệu cái khăn bịt mặt trùm đầu có che chắn kỹ mà không khiến tôi ngạt thở không. Tôi đã nghĩ đến chuyện cần phải bỏ bớt đồ ra, nhưng món nào tôi cũng thấy hoặc là cần thiết đến hiển nhiên hoặc là cần trong trường hợp khẩn cấp, đến mức chẳng dám vất bỏ thứ gì. Tôi sẽ phải cố mang cái ba lô với nguyên trạng của nó như bây giờ thôi. Tôi ngồi bệt xuống thảm và tựa mông vào lưng ba lô, luồn tay vào quai đeo, và cài đai quanh ngực. Tôi lấy một hơi thật sâu rồi bắt đầu đu người từ đằng sau ra đằng trước để lấy đà, rồi cuối cùng lấy hết sức mình, quăng người về phía trước và nâng được thân mình bằng tay và đầu gối. Cái ba lô không còn ở trên sàn nữa. Nó chính thức đã bám vào tôi. Nó trông vẫn giống con bọ Volkswagen Beetle, chỉ là bây giờ cái con bọ ấy đang đậu trên lưng tôi. Tôi giữ nguyên thế trong vài tích tắc, cố gắng lấy thăng bằng. Dần dần, tôi đã đứng được bằng chân trong khi tay bấu cứng vào cái máy làm lạnh bằng kim loại cho đến khi có thể xốc người thẳng dậy. Khi tôi đứng dậy cái khung kêu rít một cái, nó cũng phải vật lộn với sức nặng khủng khiếp này. Cho đến lúc tôi đứng dậy được – nghĩa là khòm lưng mà đứng theo hướng thẳng được – tay tôi vẫn đang cầm cái thanh thông gió bằng kim loại mà tôi vô tình kéo bật ra từ cái máy làm lạnh khi gắng sức đứng lên. Tôi thậm chí còn không thể làm gì để gắn nó lại. Chỉ cần với tay ra vài xentimet là có thể đặt nó lại chỗ cũ, nhưng dường như đó là nhiệm vụ bất khả thi. Tôi dựng thanh kim loại ấy dựa vào tường, thắt lại dây đai hông, và loạng choạng, lảo đảo quanh phòng, chỉ hơi nghiêng thôi là người cũng chực đổ. Sức nặng đè đau đớn lên hai đỉnh vai, bởi vậy tôi phải thắt chặt đai hông thêm nữa, cố gắng san đều gánh nặng, siết chặt chỗ giữa đến nỗi bụng phình ra cả trên lẫn dưới. Cái ba lô dựng đứng sau lưng tôi như thể một chiếc áo măng tô, cao hơn đầu tôi hàng chục xentimet và như một cái mỏ quặp quặp suốt từ đầu tới tận xương cụt tôi. Cảm giác cực kỳ kinh khủng, nhưng có lẽ là dân ba lô thì phải vậy. Tôi không biết nữa. Tôi chỉ biết đã đến lúc phải lên đường, bởi vậy tôi mở cửa và bước ra ngoài ánh sáng. PHẦN HAI Những Con Đường Lời là mục đích.Lời là lối đi. ADRIENNE RICH Lặn vào Chốn Tan hoang, người sẽ nhận lấy tôi như tôi là thế? Phải không? JONI MITCHELL (California - bài hát) T 4 ĐƯỜNG MÒN PACIFIC CREST rong đời mình, tôi đã làm nhiều chuyện ngu ngốc và nguy hiểm, nhưng khẩn khoản xin đi nhờ một người lạ thì chưa bao giờ. Tôi biết nhiều chuyện kinh khủng đã xảy ra với những người chuyên đi nhờ, đặc biệt là với đàn bà con gái một thân một mình. Họ bị cưỡng hiếp rồi bị chặt đầu. Bị tra tấn rồi bị bỏ lại cho đến chết. Nhưng trên đường đi từ nhà nghỉ White đến trạm xăng gần đó, tôi không thể cho phép những ý nghĩ như vậy phân tán đầu óc. Nếu không muốn cuốc bộ ngót 20 cây số dọc vệ đường cao tốc nóng bỏng để đến với con đường mòn, thì tôi phải đi nhờ xe. Thêm nữa, những người đi xuyên đường mòn PCT thỉnh thoảng vẫn đi nhờ xe như thế. Và tôi là một kẻ bộ hành trên con đường mòn PCT này đúng không? Đúng không? Đúng vậy. Đường mòn Pacific Crest, tập 1: California đã giải thích hành trình này với giọng điệu bình thản. Đôi lúc, PCT sẽ cắt ngang qua một con đường và phải xuôi xuống hàng cây số theo con đường đó mới có bưu điện để nhận hộp thực phẩm và đồ tiếp tế cần thiết cho chặng tiếp theo. Đi nhờ là giải pháp thực tế duy nhất để đến nơi nhận đồ tiếp tế rồi quay trở lại đường mòn. Tôi đứng gần những máy bán nước ngọt tự động sát tòa nhà của trạm xăng, quan sát người đến kẻ đi, cố gắng lên tinh thần để tiếp cận với một trong số họ, hy vọng có thể linh cảm đúng rằng đâu là người mà mình có thể an toàn đi theo. Tôi quan sát những ông già tóc muối tiêu đầu đội mũ cao bồi, những xe gia đình đã kín chỗ và đám trẻ trâu đi tới cùng với tiếng nhạc ầm ĩ phát ra từ cửa xe mở toang. Chẳng ai trông đặc biệt giống một tên giết người hay một kẻ hiếp dâm, nhưng cũng chẳng ai trông đặc biệt không giống bọn người ấy. Tôi mua một lon Coca và uống, cố ra vẻ thoải mái để giấu đi thực tế là không thể đứng cho ra hồn do sức nặng không thể tin nổi của cái ba lô trên lưng. Cuối cùng, tôi cũng phải làm cái gì đó. Lúc ấy đã gần 11 giờ, mặt đất dần dần phả hơi nóng của một ngày tháng sáu trên hoang mạc. Một chiếc xe tải nhỏ gắn biển Colorado đi đến rồi hai người đàn ông bước ra. Một người trạc tuổi tôi, người kia chừng 50 tuổi. Tôi tiến đến gần và xin đi nhờ. Họ lưỡng lự nhìn nhau, rõ ràng là đang ngầm thỏa thuận một lý do để chối từ, bởi vậy tôi vẫn tiếp tục nói, giải thích một tràng nhanh gọn về đường mòn PCT. “Chắc chắn rồi.” Cuối cùng người lớn tuổi hơn lên tiếng, miễn cưỡng ra mặt. “Cảm ơn.” Tôi ngọt giọng nói. Khi tôi tập tễnh đến cánh cửa lớn bên hông chiếc xe tải, cậu trai trẻ hơn mở cửa cho tôi vào. Tôi nhìn vào trong, phút chốc nhận ra không biết làm thế nào để chui vào được. Với cái ba lô này, thậm chí chỉ nhấc chân vào thôi tôi cũng không làm nổi. Tôi sẽ phải bỏ ba lô xuống, nhưng làm thế nào bây giờ? Nếu tháo cái đai quanh eo và hai quai ra, cái ba lô sẽ đổ uỳnh đến mức xoạc rời cả hai cánh tay tôi ra mất. “Cô cần giúp không?” Chàng trai trẻ hỏi. “Không, tôi làm được.” Tôi nói, giọng cố vờ bình thản. Tôi chỉ có thể nghĩ ra được đúng một cách là xoay lưng vào chiếc xe tải, ngồi xổm lên bậc cửa trong khi tay bấu vào cánh cửa trượt, hạ cái ba lô xuống sàn xe. Ơn trời. Tôi tháo quai ba lô và cẩn thận gỡ mình ra mà không làm đổ cái ba lô và rồi quay lại leo vào trong xe để ngồi bên cạnh nó. Trên đường đi, những người đàn ông thân thiện hơn với tôi. Họ lái xe về phía tây qua một vùng khô cằn những cây bụi khô rang và những ngọn núi xám nhạt trải dài tít tắp. Hai cha con họ từ vùng ngoại ô Denver, đang trên đường đến lễ tốt nghiệp ở San Luis Obispo. Chẳng mấy chốc, một tấm biển thông báo đèo Tehachapi xuất hiện, người cha cho chiếc xe chậm lại và tấp vào lề đường. Người con chui ra ngoài và trượt cửa ra cho tôi. Tôi đã hy vọng là có thể đeo lại ba lô theo cách đã tháo ra, tức là ngồi trên bậc cửa và lợi dụng chiều cao của cái sàn xe. Nhưng trước khi tôi kịp bước ra ngoài thì cậu con trai đã kéo cái ba lô ra rồi đặt phịch nó xuống mặt đất sỏi đá ven đường. Nó rơi mạnh đến mức tôi sợ là cái túi bướu lạc đà có thể bung ra. Tiếp đó tôi leo ra ngoài và dựng nó đứng thẳng dậy rồi phủi bụi cho nó. “Cô có chắc là nâng được cái ba lô này không?” Cậu ta hỏi. “Đến tôi cũng chẳng nâng được”. “Tất nhiên tôi có thể nâng được.” Tôi nói. Cậu ta đứng đấy như thể hóng tôi chứng minh điều mình vừa nói. “Cảm ơn đã cho tôi đi nhờ xe.” Tôi nói, trong lòng muốn cậu ta bỏ đi, khỏi chứng kiến cảnh vác ba lô nực cười của tôi. Cậu ta gật đầu rồi đóng cửa lại. “Đi cẩn thận nhé!” “Cảm ơn.” Tôi nói, rồi nhìn theo cậu ta quay trở lại xe. Họ đi rồi, chỉ còn mình tôi đứng bên đường cao tốc vắng lặng. Những đám mây bụi nhỏ cuộn bay dưới ánh mặt trời ban trưa chói lòa. Tôi đang ở trên độ cao hơn 1.158 m so với mặt biển, xung quanh chỗ nào cũng thấy những ngọn núi màu be cằn cỗi, điểm xuyết mấy đám xô thơm, cây joshua và cây chaparral cao đến thắt lưng người. Tôi đang đứng ở rìa phía tây hoang mạc Mojave và ở chân núi phía nam của dãy Sierra Nevada, dãy núi lớn trải dài lên phía bắc hơn 640 km tới vườn quốc gia Núi lửa Lassen, nơi nó gặp dãy Cascade, dãy núi mở rộng từ miền bắc California xuyên suốt Oregon và Washington rồi dông thẳng lên biên giới Canada. Hai dãy núi này sẽ là thế giới của tôi trong ba tháng tới; sống lưng của chúng chính là ngôi nhà của tôi. Trên một cái cọc hàng rào phía ngoài con mương của đường cao tốc, tôi thấy một miếng kim loại cỡ bằng lòng bàn tay ghi ĐƯỜNG MÒN PACIFIC CREST. Tôi đã ở đây rồi. Cuối cùng thì tôi cũng đã có thể lên đường. Tôi nhận ra giờ chính là thời khắc hoàn hảo nhất để chụp một tấm hình kỷ niệm, nhưng muốn gỡ máy ảnh ra thì phải lôi một lô một lốc các đồ khác và tháo cái dây co có móc ra, phiền phức đến mức thậm chí tôi còn không muốn thử. Hơn nữa, để chụp được cả mình thì tôi phải tìm một cái gì đó để đặt máy ảnh và hẹn giờ rồi chạy đến khung hình trước khi nó nháy máy, và xung quanh tôi thì chẳng có gì trông có vẻ hứa hẹn cả. Thậm chí cả cái cọc hàng rào gắn tấm biển kim loại PCT trông cũng khô xác và yếu ớt. Thế nên, tôi ngồi xuống nền đất ngay trước cái ba lô của mình, như cách tôi đã làm ở nhà nghỉ, vật lộn để vác nó lên vai, rồi chống tay vào đầu gối để đẩy mình lên, xốc người đứng thẳng dậy. Khấp khởi, lo lắng, lom khom trong một tư thế còn lâu mới gọi là đứng thẳng, tôi cài khóa, thắt chặt ba lô rồi loạng choạng những bước đầu tiên trên con đường mòn, tới một cái hộp kim loại màu nâu được đóng đinh vào một cái cọc hàng rào khác. Khi mở nắp hộp ra, tôi nhìn thấy một cuốn sổ tay và một cái bút bên trong. Đó là sổ nhật ký lữ hành của đường mòn, tôi đã đọc thấy nó trong cuốn sách hướng dẫn. Tôi viết tên mình và ngày tháng hôm đó rồi đọc những cái tên và lời ghi chú từ những kẻ bộ hành khác đã đi qua đây vài tuần trước, hầu hết bọn họ là đàn ông và đi có đôi có cặp, không một ai trong số đó là phụ nữ đi một mình cả. Tôi nấn ná thêm chút nữa, cảm giác như có một cơn sóng lòng thổn thức vì giờ khắc này, và rồi tôi nhận ra chẳng có gì để làm nữa ngoài việc cất bước ra đi, bởi vậy tôi đã lên đường. Con đường mòn tiến về phía đông, song song với đường cao tốc một lúc, trũng xuống một vùng đá gồ ghề rồi cao ngược lên. Mình đang đi bộ! Tôi nghĩ. Và rồi... Mình đang đi bộ trên đường mòn Pacific Crest. Chính việc đi bộ được như vậy đã là sợi chỉ đỏ xuyên suốt niềm tin trong tôi, rằng chuyến đi này hoàn toàn có thể cố gắng được. Suy cho cùng thì đi bộ đường dài cũng khác gì đi lại bình thường đâu? Em có thể đi bộ mà! Tôi tranh luận với Paul khi anh tỏ ý lo ngại rằng tôi chưa từng khoác ba lô lên và đi một chuyến thực sự bao giờ. Tôi đã đi bộ suốt đấy thôi. Tôi đi bộ hàng giờ liền ở chỗ tôi làm phục vụ bàn. Tôi đi bộ lòng vòng khắp những thành phố tôi ở và đến thăm. Tôi đi bộ cho vui hoặc vì công chuyện gì đó. Tất cả đều là sự thực. Nhưng sau 15 phút đi bộ trên con đường PCT, thực tế rành rành lộ ra: rằng tôi chưa từng đi bộ giữa những ngọn núi hoang mạc vào một ngày đầu tháng sáu với một cái ba lô trên lưng nặng hơn cả nửa cân nặng của tôi như thế này bao giờ. Hóa ra nó chẳng giống như đi bộ chút nào. Thực ra, nó giống địa ngục nhiều hơn. Chẳng bao lâu, tôi đã bắt đầu thở hổn hển và đổ mồ hôi, bụi đóng bánh trên đôi giày và ống chân tôi khi con đường rẽ lên phía bắc và bắt đầu lên dốc nhiều hơn là nhấp nhô uốn lượn. Mỗi bước đi là một cực hình, khi tôi cứ phải bước lên cao cao mãi, chỉ thi thoảng mới được đổi gió bằng những đoạn xuống thấp ngăn ngắn. Nhưng đó chẳng phải là phút ngơi nghỉ thảnh thơi giữa hành trình địa ngục gì cho cam mà là một kiểu hành xác khác vì mỗi bước đi xuống tôi phải cố gắng kìm để không bị lao xuống và ngã chỏng vó. Tôi cảm tưởng như cái ba lô chẳng bám vào người tôi như tôi gắn vào với nó. Giống như thể tôi là một tòa nhà có chân tay, bị bật khỏi nền và cứ thế lộn nhào khắp miền hoang dã. Trong vòng 40 phút, giọng nói trong đầu tôi đang kêu gào: Mình tự đẩy mình vào cái khỉ gì thế này? Tôi cố gắng lờ nó đi, vừa bước vừa ngâm nga hát, dẫu cho ngâm nga cũng thật quá khó khi còn phải vừa thở hổn hển vừa rên rỉ đớn đau vừa cố gắng còng lưng trong cái tư thế còn xa mới là thẳng tưng được vừa đẩy mình lên phía trước, cảm tưởng mình giống như một tòa nhà có chân vậy. Bởi thế tôi cố gắng chỉ đơn giản là tập trung vào những gì tôi nghe thấy – tiếng chân dậm xuống con đường mòn khô bụi gồ ghề, tiếng cành lá khô giòn lạo xạo trong làn gió nóng quanh những bụi cây thấp mà tôi đi qua – nhưng thế cũng chẳng xong. Cái tiếng kêu la Mình tự đẩy mình vào cái khỉ gì thế này? cứ gào lên. Không thể nào nhấn chìm nổi. Chỉ có rắn chuông là thứ duy nhất khiến tôi phân tâm vì tôi luôn phải cảnh giác xem chừng. Tôi đã chuẩn bị tinh thần mỗi chỗ rẽ sẽ có một con sẵn sàng lao ra tấn công. Dường như vùng đất này là dành cho chúng. Và cho cả đám sư tử núi, những sinh vật giết người hàng loạt thông tường vùng hoang dã này. Nhưng tôi không nghĩ đến chúng. Đó là điều tôi đã tự thỏa thuận với bản thân nhiều tháng trước, điều duy nhất cho phép tôi đi bộ một mình. Tôi biết rằng nếu tôi cho phép nỗi sợ hãi lấn lướt, thì chuyến đi của mình sẽ đổ bể. Sợ hãi, suy cho cùng, được sinh ra từ câu chuyện mà chúng ta tự kể cho mình, và bởi vậy tôi chọn sẽ kể cho mình một câu chuyện khác với những phụ nữ khác. Tôi chọn câu chuyện mình sẽ an toàn. Mình mạnh mẽ. Mình can đảm. Chẳng gì có thể khuất phục được tôi. Cứ bấu vào câu chuyện này cũng như thể tự kỷ ám thị vậy, nhưng hầu hết là nó có tác dụng. Bất cứ khi nào nghe thấy một âm thanh không rõ từ đâu ra hoặc tưởng tượng ra cái gì đó cực kỳ khủng khiếp, tôi lại rũ bỏ hết. Đơn giản là tôi không cho phép mình được sợ sệt. Sợ hãi sinh ra sợ hãi. Sức mạnh sinh ra sức mạnh. Tôi buộc mình phải mạnh mẽ. Và chẳng bao lâu tôi đã thực sự không còn hãi sợ nữa. Tôi đã chật vật đến mức không còn hơi sức đâu mà sợ nữa. Tôi cất một bước, rồi lại bước tiếp theo, chẳng khác gì bò đi cả. Trước đó tôi không hề nghĩ vượt qua đường mòn PCT là một chuyện dễ dàng. Tôi biết thế nào cũng phải điều chỉnh một chút. Nhưng bây giờ khi thân đã ở ngoài này, tôi không còn nghĩ là mình sẽ phải điều chỉnh. Đi bộ qua đường mòn PCT không giống như tôi tưởng tượng trước đó. Tôi không giống như tôi tưởng tượng trước đó. Tôi thậm chí còn không thể nhớ được mình đã tưởng tượng như thế nào sáu tháng trước, hồi tháng 12, khi lần đầu tiên tôi quyết định thực hiện hành trình này. Vào ngày tháng 12 đó, tôi đang lái xe trên đoạn đường nối dài đường cao tốc phía đông Sioux Falls, Nam Dakota, thì ý tưởng ấy nảy ra trong đầu. Ngày hôm trước, tôi cùng cô bạn Aimee lái xe từ Minneapolis đến Sioux Falls để lấy lại cái xe tải của tôi, một người bạn mượn nó rồi làm hỏng và bỏ ở đó hàng tuần nay. Khi tôi và Aimee đến được Sioux Falls, chiếc xe tải của tôi đã bị kéo ra khỏi đường. Giờ nó đang ở lẫn với nhiều chiếc xe khác trong một bã	701,918
Normal People (Sally Rooney) (Z-Library).pdf	SALLY ROONEY Normal People It is one of the secrets in that change of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda Contents Title Page Epigraph January 2011 Three Weeks Later (February 2011) One Month Later (March 2011) Six Weeks Later (April 2011) Two Days Later (April 2011) Four Months Later (August 2011) Three Months Later (November 2011) Three Months Later (February 2012) Two Months Later (April 2012) Three Months Later (July 2012) Six Weeks Later (September 2012) Four Months Later (January 2013) Six Months Later (July 2013) Five Months Later (December 2013) Three Months Later (March 2014) Four Months Later (July 2014) Five Minutes Later (July 2014) Seven Months Later (February 2015) Acknowledgements About the Author Also by the Author Copyright January 2011 Marianne answers the door when Connell rings the bell. She’s still wearing her school uniform, but she’s taken off the sweater, so it’s just the blouse and skirt, and she has no shoes on, only tights. Oh, hey, he says. Come on in. She turns and walks down the hall. He follows her, closing the door behind him. Down a few steps in the kitchen, his mother Lorraine is peeling off a pair of rubber gloves. Marianne hops onto the countertop and picks up an open jar of chocolate spread, in which she has left a teaspoon. Marianne was telling me you got your mock results today, Lorraine says. We got English back, he says. They come back separately. Do you want to head on? Lorraine folds the rubber gloves up neatly and replaces them below the sink. Then she starts unclipping her hair. To Connell this seems like something she could accomplish in the car. And I hear you did very well, she says. He was top of the class, says Marianne. Right, Connell says. Marianne did pretty good too. Can we go? Lorraine pauses in the untying of her apron. I didn’t realise we were in a rush, she says. He puts his hands in his pockets and suppresses an irritable sigh, but suppresses it with an audible intake of breath, so that it still sounds like a sigh. I just have to pop up and take a load out of the dryer, says Lorraine. And then we’ll be off. Okay? He says nothing, merely hanging his head while Lorraine leaves the room. Do you want some of this? Marianne says. She’s holding out the jar of chocolate spread. He presses his hands down slightly further into his pockets, as if trying to store his entire body in his pockets all at once. No, thanks, he says. Did you get your French results today? Yesterday. He puts his back against the fridge and watches her lick the spoon. In school he and Marianne affect not to know each other. People know that Marianne lives in the white mansion with the driveway and that Connell’s mother is a cleaner, but no one knows of the special relationship between these facts. I got an A1, he says. What did you get in German? An A1, she says. Are you bragging? You’re going to get six hundred, are you? She shrugs. You probably will, she says. Well, you’re smarter than me. Don’t feel bad. I’m smarter than everyone. Marianne is grinning now. She exercises an open contempt for people in school. She has no friends and spends her lunchtimes alone reading novels. A lot of people really hate her. Her father died when she was thirteen and Connell has heard she has a mental illness now or something. It’s true she is the smartest person in school. He dreads being left alone with her like this, but he also finds himself fantasising about things he could say to impress her. You’re not top of the class in English, he points out. She licks her teeth, unconcerned. Maybe you should give me grinds, Connell, she says. He feels his ears get hot. She’s probably just being glib and not suggestive, but if she is being suggestive it’s only to degrade him by association, since she is considered an object of disgust. She wears ugly thick-soled flat shoes and doesn’t put make-up on her face. People have said she doesn’t shave her legs or anything. Connell once heard that she spilled chocolate ice cream on herself in the school lunchroom, and she went to the girls’ bathrooms and took her blouse off to wash it in the sink. That’s a popular story about her, everyone has heard it. If she wanted, she could make a big show of saying hello to Connell in school. See you this afternoon, she could say, in front of everyone. Undoubtedly it would put him in an awkward position, which is the kind of thing she usually seems to enjoy. But she has never done it. What were you talking to Miss Neary about today? says Marianne. Oh. Nothing. I don’t know. Exams. Marianne twists the spoon around inside the jar. Does she fancy you or something? Marianne says. Connell watches her moving the spoon. His ears still feel very hot. Why do you say that? he says. God, you’re not having an affair with her, are you? Obviously not. Do you think it’s funny joking about that? Sorry, says Marianne. She has a focused expression, like she’s looking through his eyes into the back of his head. You’re right, it’s not funny, she says. I’m sorry. He nods, looks around the room for a bit, digs the toe of his shoe into a groove between the tiles. Sometimes I feel like she does act kind of weird around me, he says. But I wouldn’t say that to people or anything. Even in class I think she’s very flirtatious towards you. Do you really think that? Marianne nods. He rubs at his neck. Miss Neary teaches Economics. His supposed feelings for her are widely discussed in school. Some people are even saying that he tried to add her on Facebook, which he didn’t and would never do. Actually he doesn’t do or say anything to her, he just sits there quietly while she does and says things to him. She keeps him back after class sometimes to talk about his life direction, and once she actually touched the knot of his school tie. He can’t tell people about the way she acts because they’ll think he’s trying to brag about it. In class he feels too embarrassed and annoyed to concentrate on the lesson, he just sits there staring at the textbook until the bar graphs start to blur. People are always going on at me that I fancy her or whatever, he says. But I actually don’t, at all. I mean, you don’t think I’m playing into it when she acts like that, do you? Not that I’ve seen. He wipes his palms down on his school shirt unthinkingly. Everyone is so convinced of his attraction to Miss Neary that sometimes he starts to doubt his own instincts about it. What if, at some level above or below his own perception, he does actually desire her? He doesn’t even really know what desire is supposed to feel like. Any time he has had sex in real life, he has found it so stressful as to be largely unpleasant, leading him to suspect that there’s something wrong with him, that he’s unable to be intimate with women, that he’s somehow developmentally impaired. He lies there afterwards and thinks: I hated that so much that I feel sick. Is that just the way he is? Is the nausea he feels when Miss Neary leans over his desk actually his way of experiencing a sexual thrill? How would he know? I could go to Mr Lyons for you if you want, says Marianne. I won’t say you told me anything, I’ll just say I noticed it myself. Jesus, no. Definitely not. Don’t say anything about it to anyone, okay? Okay, alright. He looks at her to confirm she’s being serious, and then nods. It’s not your fault she acts like that with you, says Marianne. You’re not doing anything wrong. Quietly he says: Why does everyone else think I fancy her, then? Maybe because you blush a lot when she talks to you. But you know, you blush at everything, you just have that complexion. He gives a short, unhappy laugh. Thanks, he says. Well, you do. Yeah, I’m aware. You’re blushing now actually, says Marianne. He closes his eyes, pushes his tongue against the roof of his mouth. He can hear Marianne laughing. Why do you have to be so harsh on people? he says. I’m not being harsh. I don’t care if you’re blushing, I won’t tell anyone. Just because you won’t tell people doesn’t mean you can say whatever you want. Okay, she says. Sorry. He turns and looks out the window at the garden. Really the garden is more like ‘grounds’. It includes a tennis court and a large stone statue in the shape of a woman. He looks out at the ‘grounds’ and moves his face close to the cool breath of the glass. When people tell that story about Marianne washing her blouse in the sink, they act like it’s just funny, but Connell thinks the real purpose of the story is something else. Marianne has never been with anyone in school, no one has ever seen her undressed, no one even knows if she likes boys or girls, she won’t tell anyone. People resent that about her, and Connell thinks that’s why they tell the story, as a way of gawking at something they’re not allowed to see. I don’t want to get into a fight with you, she says. We’re not fighting. I know you probably hate me, but you’re the only person who actually talks to me. I never said I hated you, he says. That gets her attention, and she looks up. Confused, he continues looking away from her, but in the corner of his eye he still sees her watching. When he talks to Marianne he has a sense of total privacy between them. He could tell her anything about himself, even weird things, and she would never repeat them, he knows that. Being alone with her is like opening a door away from normal life and then closing it behind him. He’s not frightened of her, actually she’s a pretty relaxed person, but he fears being around her, because of the confusing way he finds himself behaving, the things he says that he would never ordinarily say. A few weeks ago when he was waiting for Lorraine in the hall, Marianne came downstairs in a bathrobe. It was just a plain white bathrobe, tied in the normal way. Her hair was wet, and her skin had that glistening look like she had just been applying face cream. When she saw Connell, she hesitated on the stairs and said: I didn’t know you were here, sorry. Maybe she seemed flustered, but not really badly or anything. Then she went back up to her room. After she left he stood there in the hall waiting. He knew she was probably getting dressed in her room, and whatever clothes she was wearing when she came back down would be the clothes she had chosen to put on after she saw him in the hall. Anyway Lorraine was ready to go before Marianne reappeared so he never did get to see what clothes she had put on. It wasn’t like he deeply cared to know. He certainly didn’t tell anyone in school about it, that he had seen her in a bathrobe, or that she looked flustered, it wasn’t anyone’s business to know. Well, I like you, Marianne says. For a few seconds he says nothing, and the intensity of the privacy between them is very severe, pressing in on him with an almost physical pressure on his face and body. Then Lorraine comes back into the kitchen, tying her scarf around her neck. She does a little knock on the door even though it’s already open. Good to go? she says. Yeah, says Connell. Thanks for everything, Lorraine, says Marianne. See you next week. Connell is already heading out the kitchen door when his mother says: You can say goodbye, can’t you? He turns to look over his shoulder but finds he cannot actually look Marianne in the eye, so he addresses himself to the floor instead. Right, bye, he says. He doesn’t wait to hear her reply. In the car his mother puts on her seatbelt and shakes her head. You could be a bit nicer to her, she says. She doesn’t exactly have an easy time of it in school. He puts the keys in the ignition, glances in the rear-view. I’m nice to her, he says. She’s actually a very sensitive person, says Lorraine. Can we talk about something else? Lorraine makes a face. He stares out the windshield and pretends not to see. Three Weeks Later (FEBRUARY 2011) She sits at her dressing table looking at her face in the mirror. Her face lacks definition around the cheeks and jaw. It’s a face like a piece of technology, and her two eyes are cursors blinking. Or it’s reminiscent of the moon reflected in something, wobbly and oblique. It expresses everything all at once, which is the same as expressing nothing. To wear make-up for this occasion would be, she concludes, embarrassing. Without breaking eye contact with herself, she dips her finger in an open pot of clear lip balm and applies it. Downstairs, when she takes her coat off the hook, her brother Alan comes out from the living room. Where are you going? he says. Out. Where’s out? She puts her arms through the sleeves of her coat and adjusts the collar. She’s beginning to feel nervous now and hopes her silence is communicating insolence rather than uncertainty. Just out for a walk, she says. Alan moves to stand in front of the door. Well, I know you’re not going out to meet friends, he says. Because you don’t have any friends, do you? No, I don’t. She smiles now, a placid smile, hoping that this gesture of submission will placate him and he’ll move away from the door. Instead he says: What are you doing that for? What? she says. This weird smile you’re doing. He mimics her face, contorted into an ugly grin, teeth bared. Though he’s grinning, the force and extremity of this impersonation make him look angry. Are you happy that you don’t have friends? he says. No. Still smiling, she takes two small steps backwards, and then turns and walks towards the kitchen, where there’s a patio door onto the garden. Alan walks after her. He grabs her by the upper arm and tugs her back from the door. She feels her jaw tighten. His fingers compress her arm through her jacket. If you go crying to Mam about this, says Alan. No, says Marianne, no. I’m just going out for a walk now. Thank you. He releases her and she slips out through the patio door, closing it behind her. Outside the air feels very cold and her teeth start to chatter. She walks around the side of the house, down the driveway and out into the street. Her arm is throbbing where he grabbed it. She takes her phone from a pocket and composes a text, repeatedly hitting the wrong key, deleting and retyping. Finally she sends it: On my way. Before she puts the phone back, she receives a reply: cool see you soon. * At the end of last term, the school soccer team reached the final of some competition and everyone in the year had to take the last three classes off to go and watch them. Marianne had never seen them play before. She had no interest in sport and suffered anxiety related to physical education. In the bus on the way to the match she just listened to her headphones, no one spoke to her. Out the window: black cattle, green meadows, white houses with brown roof tiles. The football team were all together at the top of the bus, drinking water and slapping each other on the shoulders to raise morale. Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was and become part of it. She had that feeling in school often, but it wasn’t accompanied by any specific images of what the real life might look or feel like. All she knew was that when it started, she wouldn’t need to imagine it anymore. It stayed dry for the match. They had been brought there for the purpose of standing at the sidelines and cheering. Marianne was near the goalposts, with Karen and some of the other girls. Everyone other than Marianne seemed to know the school chants off by heart somehow, with lyrics she had never heard before. By half-time it was still nil-all, and Miss Keaney handed around boxes of juice and energy bars. For the second half, the ends changed around, and the school forwards were playing near where Marianne was standing. Connell Waldron was the centre forward. She could see him standing there in his football kit, the shiny white shorts, the school jersey with number nine on the back. He had very good posture, more so than any of the other players. His figure was like a long elegant line drawn with a brush. When the ball moved towards their end of the pitch he tended to run around and maybe throw one of his hands in the air, and then he went back to standing still. It was pleasurable to watch him, and she didn’t think he knew or cared where she was standing. After school some day she could tell him she had been watching him, and he’d laugh at her and call her weird. At seventy minutes Aidan Kennedy brought the ball up the left side of the pitch and crossed it over to Connell, who took a shot from the corner of the penalty area, over the heads of the defenders, and it spun into the back of the net. Everyone screamed, even Marianne, and Karen threw her arm around Marianne’s waist and squeezed it. They were cheering together, they had seen something magical which dissolved the ordinary social relations between them. Miss Keaney was whistling and stamping her feet. On the pitch Connell and Aidan embraced like reunited brothers. Connell was so beautiful. It occurred to Marianne how much she wanted to see him having sex with someone; it didn’t have to be her, it could be anybody. It would be beautiful just to watch him. She knew these were the kind of thoughts that made her different from other people in school, and weirder. Marianne’s classmates all seem to like school so much and find it normal. To dress in the same uniform every day, to comply at all times with arbitrary rules, to be scrutinised and monitored for misbehaviour, this is normal to them. They have no sense of the school as an oppressive environment. Marianne had a row with the History teacher, Mr Kerrigan, last year because he caught her looking out a window during class, and no one in the class took her side. It seemed so obviously insane to her then that she should have to dress up in a costume every morning and be herded around a huge building all day, and that she wasn’t even allowed to move her eyes where she wanted, even her eye movements fell under the jurisdiction of school rules. You’re not learning if you’re staring out the window daydreaming, Mr Kerrigan said. Marianne, who had lost her temper by then, snapped back: Don’t delude yourself, I have nothing to learn from you. Connell said recently that he remembered that incident, and that at the time he’d felt she was being harsh on Mr Kerrigan, who was actually one of the more reasonable teachers. But I see what you’re saying, Connell added. About feeling a bit imprisoned in the school, I do see that. He should have let you look out the window, I would agree there. You weren’t doing any harm. After their conversation in the kitchen, when she told him she liked him, Connell started coming over to her house more often. He would arrive early to pick his mother up from work and hang around in the living room not saying much, or stand by the fireplace with his hands in his pockets. Marianne never asked why he came over. They talked a little bit, or she talked and he nodded. He told her she should try reading The Communist Manifesto, he thought she would like it, and he offered to write down the title for her so she wouldn’t forget. I know what The Communist Manifesto is called, she said. He shrugged, okay. After a moment he added, smiling: You’re trying to act superior, but like, you haven’t even read it. She had to laugh then, and he laughed because she did. They couldn’t look at each other when they were laughing, they had to look into corners of the room, or at their feet. Connell seemed to understand how she felt about school; he said he liked hearing her opinions. You hear enough of them in class, she said. Matter-of-factly he replied: You act different in class, you’re not really like that. He seemed to think Marianne had access to a range of different identities, between which she slipped effortlessly. This surprised her, because she usually felt confined inside one single personality, which was always the same regardless of what she did or said. She had tried to be different in the past, as a kind of experiment, but it had never worked. If she was different with Connell, the difference was not happening inside herself, in her personhood, but in between them, in the dynamic. Sometimes she made him laugh, but other days he was taciturn, inscrutable, and after he left she would feel high, nervous, at once energetic and terribly drained. He followed her into the study last week while she was looking for a copy of The Fire Next Time to lend him. He stood there inspecting the bookshelves, with his top shirt button undone and school tie loosened. She found the book and handed it to him, and he sat down on the window seat looking at the back cover. She sat beside him and asked him if his friends Eric and Rob knew that he read so much outside school. They wouldn’t be interested in that stuff, he said. You mean they’re not interested in the world around them. Connell made the face he always made when she criticised his friends, an inexpressive frown. Not in the same way, he said. They have their own interests. I don’t think they’d be reading books about racism and all that. Right, they’re too busy bragging about who they’re having sex with, she said. He paused for a second, like his ears had pricked up at this remark but he didn’t know exactly how to respond. Yeah, they do a bit of that, he said. I’m not defending it, I know they can be annoying. Doesn’t it bother you? He paused again. Most of it wouldn’t, he said. They do some stuff that goes a bit over the line and that would annoy me obviously. But at the end of the day they’re my friends, you know. It’s different for you. She looked at him, but he was examining the spine of the book. Why is it different? she said. He shrugged, bending the book cover back and forth. She felt frustrated. Her face and hands were hot. He kept on looking at the book although he’d certainly read all the text on the back by then. She was attuned to the presence of his body in a microscopic way, as if the ordinary motion of his breathing was powerful enough to make her ill. You know you were saying the other day that you like me, he said. In the kitchen you said it, when we were talking about school. Yeah. Did you mean like as a friend, or what? She stared down into her lap. She was wearing a corduroy skirt and in the light from the window she could see it was flecked with pieces of lint. No, not just as a friend, she said. Oh, okay. I was wondering. He sat there, nodding to himself. I’m kind of confused about what I feel, he added. I think it would be awkward in school if anything happened with us. No one would have to know. He looked up at her, directly, with total attention. She knew he was going to kiss her, and he did. His lips were soft. His tongue moved into her mouth slightly. Then it was over and he was drawing away. He seemed to remember he was holding the book, and began to look at it again. That was nice, she said. He nodded, swallowed, glanced down at the book once more. His attitude was so sheepish, as if it had been rude of her even to make reference to the kiss, that Marianne started to laugh. He looked flustered then. Alright, he said. What are you laughing for? Nothing. You’re acting like you’ve never kissed anyone before. Well, I haven’t, she said. He put his hand over his face. She laughed again, she couldn’t stop herself, and then he was laughing too. His ears were very red and he was shaking his head. After a few seconds he stood up, holding the book in his hand. Don’t go telling people in school about this, okay? he said. Like I would talk to anyone in school. He left the room. Weakly she crumpled off the seat, down onto the floor, with her legs stretched out in front of her like a rag doll. While she sat there she felt as if Connell had been visiting her house only to test her, and she had passed the test, and the kiss was a communication that said: You passed. She thought of the way he’d laughed when she said she’d never kissed anyone before. For another person to laugh that way might have been cruel, but it wasn’t like that with him. They’d been laughing together, at a shared situation they’d found themselves in, though how to describe the situation or what was funny about it Marianne didn’t know exactly. The next morning before German class she sat watching her classmates shove each other off the storage heaters, shrieking and giggling. When the lesson began they listened quietly to an audio tape of a German woman speaking about a party she had missed. Es tut mir sehr leid. In the afternoon it started snowing, thick grey flakes that fluttered past the windows and melted on the gravel. Everything looked and felt sensuous: the stale smell of classrooms, the tinny intercom bell that sounded between lessons, the dark austere trees that stood like apparitions around the basketball court. The slow routine work of copying out notes in different- coloured pens on fresh blue-and-white lined paper. Connell, as usual, did not speak to Marianne in school or even look at her. She watched him across classrooms as he conjugated verbs, chewing on the end of his pen. On the other side of the cafeteria at lunchtime, smiling about something with his friends. Their secret weighed inside her body pleasurably, pressing down on her pelvic bone when she moved. She didn’t see him after school that day, or the next. On Thursday afternoon his mother was working again and he arrived early to pick her up. Marianne had to answer the door because no one else was home. He had changed out of his school uniform, he was wearing black jeans and a sweatshirt. When she saw him she had an instinct to run away and hide her face. Lorraine’s in the kitchen, she said. Then she turned and went upstairs to her room and closed the door. She lay face down on the bed breathing into the pillow. Who was this person Connell anyway? She felt she knew him very intimately, but what reason did she have to feel that? Just because he had kissed her once, with no explanation, and then warned her not to tell anyone? After a minute or two she heard a knock on her bedroom door and she sat up. Come in, she said. He opened the door and, giving her an enquiring look as if to see whether he was welcome, entered the room and closed the door behind him. Are you pissed off with me? he said. No. Why would I be? He shrugged. Idly he wandered over to the bed and sat down. She was sitting cross-legged, holding her ankles. They sat there in silence for a few moments. Then he got onto the bed with her. He touched her leg and she lay back against the pillow. Boldly she asked if he was going to kiss her again. He said: What do you think? This struck her as a highly cryptic and sophisticated thing to say. Anyway he did start to kiss her. She told him that it was nice and he just said nothing. She felt she would do anything to make him like her, to make him say out loud that he liked her. He put his hand under her school blouse. In his ear, she said: Can we take our clothes off? He had his hand inside her bra. Definitely not, he said. This is stupid anyway, Lorraine is right downstairs. He called his mother by her first name like that. Marianne said: She never comes up here. He shook his head and said: No, we should stop. He sat up and looked down at her. You were tempted for a second there, she said. Not really. I tempted you. He was shaking his head, smiling. You’re such a strange person, he said. * Now she’s standing in his driveway, where his car is parked. He texted her the address, it’s number 33: a terraced house with pebble-dash walls, net curtains, a tiny concrete yard. She can see a light switched on in the upstairs window. It’s hard to believe he really lives in there, a house she has never been inside or even seen before. She’s wearing a black sweater, grey skirt, cheap black underwear. Her legs are shaved meticulously, her underarms are smooth and chalky with deodorant, and her nose is running a little. She rings the doorbell and hears his footsteps coming down the stairs. He opens the door. Before he lets her in he looks over her shoulder, to make sure that no one has seen her arrive. One Month Later (MARCH 2011) They’re talking about their college applications. Marianne is lying with the bedsheet pulled carelessly over her body, and Connell’s sitting up with her MacBook in his lap. She’s already applied for History and Politics in Trinity. He’s put down Law in Galway, but now he thinks that he might change it, because, as Marianne has pointed out, he has no interest in Law. He can’t even visually imagine himself as a lawyer, wearing a tie and so on, possibly helping to convict people of crimes. He just put it down because he couldn’t think of anything else. You should study English, says Marianne. Do you think I should, or are you joking? I think you should. It’s the only subject you really enjoy in school. And you spend all your free time reading. He looks at the laptop blankly, and then at the thin yellow bedsheet draped over her body, which casts a lilac triangle of shadow on her breast. Not all my free time, he says. She smiles. Plus the class will be full of girls, she says, so you’ll be a total stud. Yeah. I’m not sure about the job prospects, though. Oh, who cares? The economy’s fucked anyway. The laptop screen has gone black now and he taps the trackpad to light it up again. The college applications webpage stares back at him. * After the first time they had sex, Marianne stayed the night in his house. He had never been with a girl who was a virgin before. In total he had only had sex a small number of times, and always with girls who went on to tell the whole school about it afterwards. He’d had to hear his actions repeated back to him later in the locker room: his errors, and, so much worse, his excruciating attempts at tenderness, performed in gigantic pantomime. With Marianne it was different, because everything was between them only, even awkward or difficult things. He could do or say anything he wanted with her and no one would ever find out. It gave him a vertiginous, lightheaded feeling to think about it. When he touched her that night she was so wet, and she rolled her eyes back into her head and said: God, yes. And she was allowed to say it, no one would know. He was afraid he would come then just from touching her like that. In the hallway the next morning he kissed her goodbye and her mouth tasted alkaline, like toothpaste. Thanks, she said. Then she left, before he understood what he was being thanked for. He put the bedsheets in the washing machine and took fresh linen from the hot press. He was thinking about what a secretive, independent-minded person Marianne was, that she could come over to his house and let him have sex with her, and she felt no need to tell anyone about it. She just let things happen, like nothing meant anything to her. Lorraine got home that afternoon. Before she’d even put her keys on the table she said: Is that the washing machine? Connell nodded. She crouched down and looked through the round glass window into the drum, where his sheets were tossing around in the froth. I’m not going to ask, she said. What? She started to fill the kettle, while he leaned against the countertop. Why your bedclothes are in the wash, she said. I’m not asking. He rolled his eyes just for something to do with his face. You think the worst of everything, he said. She laughed, fixing the kettle into its cradle and hitting the switch. Excuse me, she said. I must be the most permissive mother of anyone in your school. As long as you’re using protection, you can do what you want. He said nothing. The kettle started to warm up and she took a clean mug down from the press. Well? she said. Is that a yes? Yes what? Obviously I didn’t have unprotected sex with anyone while you were gone. Jesus. So go on, what’s her name? He left the room then but he could hear his mother laughing as he went up the stairs. His life is always giving her amusement. In school on Monday he had to avoid looking at Marianne or interacting with her in any way. He carried the secret around like something large and hot, like an overfull tray of hot drinks that he had to carry everywhere and never spill. She just acted the same as always, like it never happened, reading her book at the lockers as usual, getting into pointless arguments. At lunchtime on Tuesday, Rob started asking questions about Connell’s mother working in Marianne’s house, and Connell just ate his lunch and tried not to make any facial expressions. Would you ever go in there yourself? Rob said. Into the mansion. Connell jogged his bag of chips in his hand and then peered into it. I’ve been in there a few times, yeah, he said. What’s it like inside? He shrugged. I don’t know, he said. Big, obviously. What’s she like in her natural habitat? Rob said. I don’t know. I’d say she thinks of you as her butler, does she? Connell wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. It felt greasy. His chips were too salty and he had a headache. I doubt it, Connell said. But your mam is her housemaid, isn’t she? Well, she’s just a cleaner. She’s only there like twice a week, I don’t think they interact much. Does Marianne not have a little bell she would ring to get her attention, no? Rob said. Connell said nothing. He didn’t understand the situation with Marianne at that point. After he talked to Rob he told himself it was over, he’d just had sex with her once to see what it was like, and he wouldn’t see her again. Even as he was saying all this to himself, however, he could hear another part of his brain, in a different voice, saying: Yes you will. It was a part of his consciousness he had never really known before, this inexplicable drive to act on perverse and secret desires. He found himself fantasising about her in class that afternoon, at the back of Maths, or when they were supposed to be playing rounders. He would think of her small wet mouth and suddenly run out of breath, and have to struggle to fill his lungs. That afternoon he went to her house after school. All the way over in the car he kept the radio on very loud so he didn’t have to think about what he was doing. When they went upstairs he didn’t say anything, he let her talk. That’s so good, she kept saying. That feels so good. Her body was all soft and white like flour dough. He seemed to fit perfectly inside her. Physically it just felt right, and he understood why people did insane things for sexual reasons then. In fact he understood a lot of things about the adult world that had previously seemed mysterious. But why Marianne? It wasn’t like she was so attractive. Some people thought she was the ugliest girl in school. What kind of person would want to do this with her? And yet he was there, whatever kind of person he was, doing it. She asked him if it felt good and he pretended he didn’t hear her. She was on her hands and knees so he couldn’t see her facial expression or read into it what she was thinking. After a few seconds she said in a much smaller voice: Am I doing something wrong? He closed his eyes. No, he said. I like it. Her breath sounded ragged then. He pulled her hips back against his body and then released her slightly. She made a noise like she was choking. He did it again and she told him she was going to come. That’s good, he said. He said this like nothing could be more ordinary to him. His decision to drive to Marianne’s house that afternoon suddenly seemed very correct and intelligent, maybe the only intelligent thing he had ever done in his life. After they were finished he asked her what he should do with the condom. Without lifting her face off the pillow she said: You can just leave it on the floor. Her face was pink and damp. He did what she said and then lay on his back looking up at the light fixtures. I like you so much, Marianne said. Connell felt a pleasurable sorrow come over him, which brought him close to tears. Moments of emotional pain arrived like this, meaningless or at least indecipherable. Marianne lived a drastically free life, he could see that. He was trapped by various considerations. He cared what people thought of him. He even cared what Marianne thought, that was obvious now. Multiple times he has tried writing his thoughts about Marianne down on paper in an effort to make sense of them. He’s moved by a desire to describe in words exactly how she looks and speaks. Her hair and clothing. The copy of Swann’s Way she reads at lunchtime in the school cafeteria, with a dark French painting on the cover and a mint-coloured spine. Her long fingers turning the pages. She’s not leading the same kind of life as other people. She acts so worldly at times, making him feel ignorant, but then she can be so naive. He wants to understand how her mind works. If he silently decides not to say something when they’re talking, Marianne will ask ‘what?’ within one or two seconds. This ‘what?’ question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silences that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for total communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them. He writes these things down, long run-on sentences with too many dependent clauses, sometimes connected with breathless semicolons, as if he wants to recreate a precise copy of Marianne in print, as if he can preserve her completely for future review. Then he turns a new page in the notebook so he doesn’t have to look at what he’s done. * What are you thinking about? says Marianne now. She’s tucking her hair behind her ear. College, he says. You should apply for English in Trinity. He stares at the webpage again. Lately he’s consumed by a sense that he is in fact two separate people, and soon he will have to choose which person to be on a full-time basis, and leave the other person behind. He has a life in Carricklea, he has friends. If he went to college in Galway he could stay with the same social group, really, and live the life he has always planned on, getting a good degree, having a nice girlfriend. People would say he had done well for himself. On the other hand, he could go to Trinity like Marianne. Life would be different then. He would start going to dinner parties and having conversations about the Greek bailout. He could fuck some weird-looking girls who turn out to be bisexual. I’ve read The Golden Notebook, he could tell them. It’s true, he has read it. After that he would never come back to Carricklea, he would go somewhere else, London, or Barcelona. People would not necessarily think he had done well; some people might think he had gone very bad, while others would forget about him entirely. What would Lorraine think? She would want him to be happy, and not care what others said. But the old Connell, the one all his friends know: that person would be dead in a way, or worse, buried alive, and screaming under the earth. Then we’d both be in Dublin, he says. I bet you’d pretend you didn’t know me if we bumped into each other. Marianne says nothing at first. The longer she stays silent the more nervous he feels, like maybe she really would pretend not to know him, and the idea of being beneath her notice gives him a panicked feeling, not only about Marianne personally but about his future, about what’s possible for him. Then she says: I would never pretend not to know you, Connell. The silence becomes very intense after that. For a few seconds he lies still. Of course, he pretends not to know Marianne in school, but he didn’t mean to bring that up. That’s just the way it has to be. If people found out what he has been doing with Marianne, in secret, while ignoring her every day in school, his life would be over. He would walk down the hallway and people’s eyes would follow him, like he was a serial killer, or worse. His friends don’t think of him as a deviant person, a person who could say to Marianne Sheridan, in broad daylight, completely sober: Is it okay if I come in your mouth? With his friends he acts normal. He and Marianne have their own private life in his room where no one can bother them, so there’s no reason to mix up the separate worlds. Still, he can tell he has lost his footing in their discussion and left an opening for this subject to arise, though he didn’t want it to, and now he has to say something. Would you not? he says. No. Alright, I’ll put down English in Trinity, then. Really? she says. Yeah. I don’t care that much about getting a job anyway. She gives him a little smile, like she feels she has won the argument. He likes to give her that feeling. For a moment it seems possible to keep both worlds, both versions of his life, and to move in between them just like moving through a door. He can have the respect of someone like Marianne and also be well liked in school, he can form secret opinions and preferences, no conflict has to arise, he never has to choose one thing over another. With only a little subterfuge he can live two entirely separate existences, never confronting the ultimate question of what to do with himself or what kind of person he is. This thought is so consoling that for a few seconds he avoids meeting Marianne’s eye, wanting to sustain the belief for just a little longer. He knows that when he looks at her, he won’t be able to believe it anymore. Six Weeks Later (APRIL 2011) They have her name on a list. She shows the bouncer her ID. When she gets inside, the interior is low-lit, cavernous, vaguely purple, with long bars on either side and steps down to a dance floor. It smells of stale alcohol and the flat tinny ring of dry ice. Some of the other girls from the fundraising committee are sitting around a table already, looking at lists. Hi, Marianne says. They turn around and look at her. Hello, says Lisa. Don’t you scrub up well? You look gorgeous, says Karen. Rachel Moran says nothing. Everyone knows that Rachel is the most popular girl in school, but no one is allowed to say this. Instead everyone has to pretend not to notice that their social lives are arranged hierarchically, with certain people at the top, some jostling at mid-level, and others lower down. Marianne sometimes sees herself at the very bottom of the ladder, but at other times she pictures herself off the ladder completely, not affected by its mechanics, since she does not actually desire popularity or do anything to make it belong to her. From her vantage point it is not obvious what rewards the ladder provides, even to those who really are at the top. She rubs her upper arm and says: Thanks. Would anyone like a drink? I’m going to the bar anyway. I thought you didn’t drink alcohol, says Rachel. I’ll have a bottle of West Coast Cooler, Karen says. If you’re sure. Wine is the only alcoholic beverage Marianne has ever tried, but when she goes to the bar she decides to order a gin and tonic. The barman looks frankly at her breasts while she’s talking. Marianne had no idea men really did such things outside of films and TV, and the experience gives her a little thrill of femininity. She’s wearing a filmy black dress that clings to her body. The place is still almost empty now, though the event has technically started. Back at the table Karen thanks her extravagantly for the drink. I’ll get you back, she says. Don’t worry about it, says Marianne, waving her hand. Eventually people start arriving. The music comes on, a pounding Destiny’s Child remix, and Rachel gives Marianne the book of raffle tickets and explains the pricing system. Marianne was voted onto the Debs fundraising committee presumably as some kind of joke, but she has to help organise the events anyway. Ticket book in hand, she continues to hover beside the other girls. She’s used to observing these people from a distance, almost scientifically, but tonight, having to make conversation and smile politely, she’s no longer an observer but an intruder, and an awkward one. She sells some tickets, dispensing change from the pouch in her purse, she buys more drinks, she glances at the door and looks away in disappointment. The lads are fairly late, says Lisa. Of all the possible lads, Marianne knows who is specified: Rob, with whom Lisa has an on-again off-again relationship, and his friends Eric, Jack Hynes and Connell Waldron. Their lateness has not escaped Marianne’s notice. If they don’t show up I will actually murder Connell, says Rachel. He told me yesterday they were definitely coming. Marianne says nothing. Rachel often talks about Connell this way, alluding to private conversations that have happened between them, as if they are special confidants. Connell ignores this behaviour, but he also ignores the hints Marianne drops about it when they’re alone together. They’re probably still pre-drinking in Rob’s, says Lisa. They’ll be absolutely binned by the time they get here, says Karen. Marianne takes her phone from her bag and writes Connell a text message: Lively discussion here on the subject of your absence. Are you planning to come at all? Within thirty seconds he replies: yeah jack just got sick everywhere so we had to put him in a taxi etc. on our way soon though. how are you getting on socialising with people. Marianne writes back: I’m the new popular girl in school now. Everyone’s carrying me around the dance floor chanting my name. She puts her phone back in her bag. Nothing would feel more exhilarating to her at this moment than to say: They’ll be on their way shortly. How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive. * Although Carricklea is the only place Marianne has ever lived, it’s not a town she knows particularly well. She doesn’t go drinking in the pubs on Main Street, and before tonight she had never been to the town’s only nightclub. She has never visited the Knocklyon housing estate. She doesn’t know the name of the river that runs brown and bedraggled past the Centra and behind the church car park, snagging thin plastic bags in its current, or where the river goes next. Who would tell her? The only time she leaves the house is to go to school, and the enforced Mass trip on Sundays, and to Connell’s house when no one is home. She knows how long it takes to get to Sligo town – twenty minutes – but the locations of other nearby towns, and their sizes in relation to Carricklea, are a mystery to her. Coolaney, Skreen, Ballysadare, she’s pretty sure these are all in the vicinity of Carricklea, and the names ring bells for her in a vague way, but she doesn’t know where they are. She’s never been inside the sports centre. She’s never gone drinking in the abandoned hat factory, though she has been driven past it in the car. Likewise, it’s impossible for her to know which families in town are considered good families and which aren’t. It’s the kind of thing she would like to know, just to be able to reject it the more completely. She’s from a good family and Connell is from a bad one, that much she does know. The Waldrons are notorious in Carricklea. One of Lorraine’s brothers was in prison once, Marianne doesn’t know for what, and another one got into a motorcycle crash off the roundabout a few years ago and almost died. And of course, Lorraine got pregnant at seventeen and left school to have the baby. Nonetheless Connell is considered quite a catch these days. He’s studious, he plays centre forward in football, he’s good-looking, he doesn’t get into fights. Everybody likes him. He’s quiet. Even Marianne’s mother will say approvingly: That boy is nothing like a Waldron. Marianne’s mother is a solicitor. Her father was a solicitor too. Last week, Connell mentioned something called ‘the ghost’. Marianne had never heard of it before, she had to ask him what it was. His eyebrows shot up. The ghost, he said. The ghost estate, Mountain View. It’s like, right behind the school. Marianne had been vaguely aware of some construction on the land behind the school, but she didn’t know there was a housing estate there now, or that no one lived in it. People go drinking there, Connell added. Oh, said Marianne. She asked what it was like. He said he wished he could show her, but there were always people around. He often makes blithe remarks about things he ‘wishes’. I wish you didn’t have to go, he says when she’s leaving, or: I wish you could stay the night. If he really wished for any of those things, Marianne knows, then they would happen. Connell always gets what he wants, and then feels sorry for himself when what he wants doesn’t make him happy. Anyway, he did end up taking her to see the ghost estate. They drove there in his car one afternoon and he went out first to make sure no one was around before she followed him. The houses were huge, with bare concrete facades and overgrown front lawns. Some of the empty window holes were covered over in plastic sheeting, which whipped around loudly in the wind. It was raining and she had left her jacket in the car. She crossed her arms, squinting up at the wet slate roofs. Do you want to look inside? Connell said. The front door of number 23 was unlocked. It was quieter in the house, and darker. The place was filthy. With the toe of her shoe Marianne prodded at an empty cider bottle. There were cigarette butts all over the floor and someone had dragged a mattress into the otherwise bare living room. The mattress was stained badly with damp and what looked like blood. Pretty sordid, Marianne said aloud. Connell was quiet, just looking around. Do you hang out here much? she said. He gave a kind of shrug. Not much, he said. Used to a bit, not much anymore. Please tell me you’ve never had sex on that mattress. He smiled absently. No, he said. Is that what you think I get up to at the weekend, is it? Kind of. He didn’t say anything then, which made her feel even worse. He kicked a crushed can of Dutch Gold aimlessly and sent it skidding towards the French doors. This is probably three times the size of my house, he said. Would you say? She felt foolish for not realising what he had been thinking about. Probably, she said. I haven’t seen upstairs, obviously. Four bedrooms. Jesus. Just lying empty, no one living in it, he said. Why don’t they give them away if they can’t sell them? I’m not being thick with you, I’m genuinely asking. She shrugged. She didn’t actually understand why. It’s something to do with capitalism, she said. Yeah. Everything is, that’s the problem, isn’t it? She nodded. He looked over at her, as if coming out of a dream. Are you cold? he said. You look like you’re freezing. She smiled, rubbed at her nose. He unzipped his black puffer jacket and put it over her shoulders. They were standing very close. She would have lain on the ground and let him walk over her body if he wanted, he knew that. When I go out at the weekend or whatever, he said, I don’t go after other girls or anything. Marianne smiled and said: No, I guess they come after you. He grinned, he looked down at his shoes. You have a very funny idea of me, he said. She closed her fingers around his school tie. It was the first time in her life she could say shocking things and use bad language, so she did it a lot. If I wanted you to fuck me here, she said, would you do it? His expression didn’t change but his hands moved around under her jumper to show he was listening. After a few seconds he said: Yeah. If you wanted to, yeah. You’re always making me do such weird things. What does that mean? she said. I can’t make you do anything. Yeah, you can. Do you think there’s any other person I would do this type of thing with? Seriously, do you think anyone else could make me sneak around after school and all this? What do you want me to do? Leave you alone? He looked at her, seemingly taken aback by this turn in the discussion. Shaking his head, he said: If you did that … She looked at him but he didn’t say anything else. If I did that, what? she said. I don’t know. You mean, if you just didn’t want to see each other anymore? I would feel surprised honestly, because you seem like you enjoy it. And what if I met someone else who liked me more? He laughed. She turned away crossly, pulling out of his grasp, wrapping her arms around her chest. He said hey, but she didn’t turn around. She was facing the disgusting mattress with the rust-coloured stains all over it. Gently he came up behind her and lifted her hair to kiss the back of her neck. Sorry for laughing, he said. You’re making me insecure, talking about not wanting to hang out with me anymore. I thought you liked me. She shut her eyes. I do like you, she said. Well, if you met someone else you liked more, I’d be pissed off, okay? Since you ask about it. I wouldn’t be happy. Alright? Your friend Eric called me flat-chested today in front of everyone. Connell paused. She felt his breathing. I didn’t hear that, he said. You were in the bathroom or somewhere. He said I looked like an ironing board. Fuck’s sake, he’s such a prick. Is that why you’re in a bad mood? She shrugged. Connell put his arms around her belly. He’s only trying to get on your nerves, he said. If he thought he had the slightest chance with you, he would be talking very differently. He just thinks you look down on him. She shrugged again, chewing on her lower lip. You have nothing to worry about with your appearance, Connell said. Hm. I don’t just like you for your brains, trust me. She laughed, feeling silly. He rubbed her ear with his nose and added: I would miss you if you didn’t want to see me anymore. Would you miss sleeping with me? she said. He touched his hand against her hipbone, rocking her back against his body, and said quietly: Yeah, a lot. Can we go back to your house now? He nodded. For a few seconds they just stood there in stillness, his arms around her, his breath on her ear. Most people go through their whole lives, Marianne thought, without ever really feeling that close with anyone. * Finally, after her third gin and tonic, the door bangs open and the boys arrive. The committee girls get up and start teasing them, scolding them for being late, things like that. Marianne hangs back, searching for Connell’s eye contact, which he doesn’t return. He’s dressed in a white button-down shirt, the same Adidas sneakers he wears everywhere. The other boys are wearing shirts too, but more formal-looking, shinier, and worn with leather dress shoes. There’s a heavy, stirring smell of aftershave in the air. Eric catches Marianne’s eye and suddenly lets go of Karen, a move obvious enough that everyone else looks around too. Look at you, Marianne, says Eric. She can’t tell immediately whether he’s being sincere or mocking. All the boys are looking at her now except Connell. I’m serious, Eric says. Great dress, very sexy. Rachel starts laughing, leans in to say something in Connell’s ear. He turns his face away slightly and doesn’t laugh along. Marianne feels a certain pressure in her head that she wants to relieve by screaming or crying. Let’s go and have a dance, says Karen. I’ve never seen Marianne dancing, Rachel says. Well, you can see her now, says Karen. Karen takes Marianne’s hand and pulls her towards the dance floor. There’s a Kanye West song playing, the one with the Curtis Mayfield sample. Marianne is still holding the raffle book in one hand, and she feels the other hand damp inside Karen’s. The dance floor is crowded and sends shudders of bass up through her shoes into her legs. Karen props an arm on Marianne’s shoulder, drunkenly, and says in her ear: Don’t mind Rachel, she’s in foul humour. Marianne nods her head, moving her body in time with the music. Feeling drunk now, she turns to search the room, wanting to know where Connell is. Right away she sees him, standing at the top of the steps. He’s watching her. The music is so loud it throbs inside her body. Around him the others are talking and laughing. He’s just looking at her and saying nothing. Under his gaze her movements feel magnified, scandalous, and the weight of Karen’s arm on her shoulder is sensual and hot. She rocks her hips forward and runs a hand loosely through her hair. In her ear Karen says: He’s been watching you the whole time. Marianne looks at him and then back at Karen, saying nothing, trying not to let her face say anything. Now you see why Rachel’s in a bad mood with you, says Karen. She can smell the wine spritzer on Karen’s breath when she speaks, she can see her fillings. She likes her so much at that moment. They dance a little more and then go back upstairs together, hand in hand, out of breath now, grinning about nothing. Eric and Rob are pretending to have an argument. Connell moves towards Marianne almost imperceptibly, and their arms touch. She wants to pick up his hand and suck on his fingertips one after another. Rachel turns to her then and says: You might try actually selling some raffle tickets at some point? Marianne smiles, and the smile that comes out is smug, almost derisive, and she says: Okay. I think these lads might want to buy some, says Eric. He nods over at the door, where some older guys have arrived. They’re not supposed to be here, the nightclub said it would be ticket-holders only. Marianne doesn’t know who they are, someone’s brothers or cousins maybe, or just men in their twenties who like to hang around school fundraisers. They see Eric waving and come over. Marianne looks in her purse for the cash pouch in case they do want to buy raffle tickets. How are things, Eric? says one of the men. Who’s your friend here? That’s Marianne Sheridan, Eric says. You’d know her brother, I’d say. Alan, he would’ve been in Mick’s year. The man just nods, looking Marianne up and down. She feels indifferent to his attention. The music is too loud to hear what Rob is saying in Eric’s ear, but Marianne feels it has to do with her. Let me get you a drink, the man says. What are you having? No, thanks, says Marianne. The man slips an arm around her shoulders then. He’s very tall, she notices. Taller than Connell. His fingers rub her bare arm. She tries to shrug him off but he doesn’t let go. One of his friends starts laughing, and Eric laughs along. Nice dress, the man says. Can you let go of me? she says. Very low-cut there, isn’t it? In one motion he moves his hand down from her shoulder and squeezes the flesh of her right breast, in front of everyone. Instantly she jerks away from him, pulling her dress up to her collarbone, feeling her face fill with blood. Her eyes are stinging and she feels a pain where he grabbed her. Behind her the others are laughing. She can hear them. Rachel is laughing, a high fluting noise in Marianne’s ears. Without turning around, Marianne walks out the door, lets it slam behind her. She’s in the hallway now with the cloakroom and can’t remember whether the exit is right or left. She’s shaking all over her body. The cloakroom attendant asks if she’s alright. Marianne doesn’t know anymore how drunk she is. She walks a few steps towards a door on the left and then puts her back against the wall and starts sliding down towards a seated position on the floor. Her breast is aching where that man grabbed it. He wasn’t joking, he wanted to hurt her. She’s on the floor now hugging her knees against her chest. Up the hall the door comes open again and Karen comes out, with Eric and Rachel and Connell following. They see Marianne on the floor and Karen runs over to her while the other three stay standing where they are, not knowing what to do maybe, or not wanting to do anything. Karen hunches down in front of Marianne and touches her hand. Marianne’s eyes are sore and she doesn’t know where to look. Are you alright? Karen says. I’m fine, says Marianne. I’m sorry. I think I just had too much to drink. Leave her, says Rachel. Here, look, it was just a bit of fun, says Eric. Pat’s actually a sound enough guy if you get to know him. I think it was funny, says Rachel. At this Karen snaps around and looks at them. Why are you even out here if you think it was so funny? she says. Why don’t you go and pal around with your best friend Pat? If you think it’s so funny to molest young girls? How is Marianne young? says Eric. We were all laughing at the time, says Rachel. That’s not true, says Connell. Everyone looks around at him then. Marianne looks at him. Their eyes meet. Are you okay, are you? he says. Oh, do you want to kiss her better? says Rachel. His face is flushed now, and he touches a hand to his brow. Everyone is still watching him. The wall feels cold against Marianne’s back. Rachel, he says, would you ever fuck off? Karen and Eric exchange a look then, eyes wide, Marianne can see them. Connell never speaks or acts like this in school. In all these years she has never seen him behave at all aggressively, even when taunted. Rachel just tosses her head and walks back inside the club. The door falls shut heavily on its hinges. Connell continues rubbing his brow for a second. Karen mouths something at Eric, Marianne doesn’t know what it is. Then Connell looks at Marianne and says: Do you want to go home? I’m driving, I can drop you. She nods her head. Karen helps her up from the floor. Connell puts his hands in his pockets as if to prevent himself touching her by accident. Sorry for making a fuss, Marianne says to Karen. I feel stupid. I’m not used to drinking. It’s not your fault, says Karen. Thank you for being so nice, Marianne says. They squeeze hands once more. Marianne follows Connell towards the exit then and around the side of the hotel, to where his car is parked. It’s dark and cool out here, with the sound of music from the nightclub pulsing faintly behind them. She gets in the passenger seat and puts her seatbelt on. He closes the driver’s door and puts his keys in the ignition. Sorry for making a fuss, she says again. You didn’t, says Connell. I’m sorry the others were being so stupid about it. They just think Pat is great because he has these parties in his house sometimes. Apparently if you have house parties it’s okay to mess with people, I don’t know. It really hurt. What he did. Connell says nothing then. He just kneads the steering wheel with his hands. He looks down into his lap, and exhales quickly, almost like a cough. Sorry, he says. Then he starts the car. They drive for a few minutes in silence, Marianne cooling her forehead against the window. Do you want to come back to my house for a bit? he says. Is Lorraine not there? He shrugs. He taps his fingers on the wheel. She’s probably in bed already, he says. I mean we could just hang out for a bit before I drop you home. It’s okay if you don’t want to. What if she’s still up? Honestly she’s pretty relaxed about this sort of stuff anyway. Like I really don’t think she would care. Marianne stares out the window at the passing town. She knows what he’s saying: that he doesn’t mind if his mother finds out about them. Maybe she already knows. Lorraine seems like a really good parent, Marianne remarks. Yeah. I think so. She must be proud of you. You’re the only boy in school who’s actually turned out well as an adult. Connell glances over at her. How have I turned out well? he says. What do you mean? Everyone likes you. And unlike most people you’re actually a nice person. He makes a facial expression she can’t interpret, kind of raising his eyebrows, or frowning. When they get back to his house the windows are all dark and Lorraine is in bed. In Connell’s room he and Marianne lie down together whispering. He tells her that she’s beautiful. She has never heard that before, though she has sometimes privately suspected it of herself, but it feels different to hear it from another person. She touches his hand to her breast where it hurts, and he kisses her. Her face is wet, she’s been crying. He kisses her neck. Are you okay? he says. When she nods, he smooths her hair back and says: It’s alright to be upset, you know. She lies with her face against his chest. She feels like a soft piece of cloth that is wrung out and dripping. You would never hit a girl, would you? she says. God, no. Of course not. Why would you ask that? I don’t know. Do you think I’m the kind of person who would go around hitting girls? he says. She presses her face very hard against his chest. My dad used to hit my mum, she says. For a few seconds, which seems like an unbelievably long time, Connell says nothing. Then he says: Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t know that. It’s okay, she says. Did he ever hit you? Sometimes. Connell is silent again. He leans down and kisses her on the forehead. I would never hurt you, okay? he says. Never. She nods and says nothing. You make me really happy, he says. His hand moves over her hair and he adds: I love you. I’m not just saying that, I really do. Her eyes fill up with tears again and she closes them. Even in memory she will find this moment unbearably intense, and she’s aware of this now, while it’s happening. She has never believed herself fit to be loved by any person. But now she has a new life, of which this is the first moment, and even after many years have passed she will still think: Yes, that was it, the beginning of my life. Two Days Later (APRIL 2011) He stands at the side of the bed while his mother goes to find one of the nurses. Is that all you have on you? his grandmother says. Hm? says Connell. Is that jumper all you have on you? Oh, he says. Yeah. You’ll freeze. You’ll be in here yourself. His grandmother slipped in the Aldi car park this morning and fell on her hip. She’s not old like some of the other patients, she’s only fifty-eight. The same age as Marianne’s mother, Connell thinks. Anyway, it looks like his grandmother’s hip is kind of messed up now and possibly broken, and Connell had to drive Lorraine into Sligo town to visit the hospital. In the bed across the ward someone is coughing. I’m alright, he says. It’s warm out. His grandmother sighs, like his commentary on the weather is painful to her. It probably is, because everything he does is painful to her, because she hates him for being alive. She looks him up and down with a critical expression. Well, you certainly don’t take after your mother, do you? she says. Yeah, he says. No. Physically Lorraine and Connell are different types. Lorraine is blonde and has a soft face without edges. The guys in school think she’s attractive, which they tell Connell often. She probably is attractive, so what, it doesn’t offend him. Connell has darker hair and a hard-looking face, like an artist’s impression of a criminal. He knows, however, that his grandmother’s point is unrelated to his physical appearance and is meant as a remark on his paternity. So, okay, he has nothing to say on that. No one except Lorraine knows who Connell’s father is. She says he can ask any time he wants to know, but he really doesn’t care to. On nights out his friends sometimes raise the subject of his father, like it’s something deep and meaningful they can only talk about when they’re drunk. Connell finds this depressing. He never thinks about the man who got Lorraine pregnant, why would he? His friends seem so obsessed with their own fathers, obsessed with emulating them or being different from them in specific ways. When they fight with their fathers, the fights always seem to mean one thing on the surface but conceal another secret meaning beneath. When Connell fights with Lorraine, it’s usually about something like leaving a wet towel on the couch, and that’s it, it’s really about the towel, or at most it’s about whether Connell is fundamentally careless in his tendencies, because he wants Lorraine to see him as a responsible person despite his habit of leaving towels everywhere, and Lorraine says if it was so important to him to be seen as responsible, he would show it in his actions, that kind of thing. He drove Lorraine to the polling station to vote at the end of February, and on the way she asked who he was going to vote for. One of the independent candidates, he said vaguely. She laughed. Don’t tell me, she said. The communist Declan Bree. Connell, unprovoked, continued watching the road. We could do with a bit more communism in this country if you ask me, he said. From the corner of his eye he could see Lorraine smiling. Come on now, comrade, she said. I was the one who raised you with your good socialist values, remember? It’s true Lorraine has values. She’s interested in Cuba, and the cause of Palestinian liberation. In the end Connell did vote for Declan Bree, who went on to be eliminated in the fifth count. Two of the seats went to Fine Gael and the other to Sinn Féin. Lorraine said it was a disgrace. Swapping one crowd of criminals for another, she said. He texted Marianne: fg in government, fucks sake. She texted back: The party of Franco. He had to look up what that meant. The other night Marianne told him that she thought he’d turned out well as a person. She said he was nice, and that everyone liked him. He found himself thinking about that a lot. It was a pleasant thing to have in his thoughts. You’re a nice person and everyone likes you. To test himself he would try not thinking about it for a bit, and then go back and think about it again to see if it still made him feel good, and it did. For some reason he wished he could tell Lorraine what she’d said. He felt it would reassure her somehow, but about what? That her only son was not a worthless person after all? That she hadn’t wasted her life? And I hear you’re off to Trinity College, his grandmother says. Yeah, if I get the points. What put Trinity into your head? He shrugs. She laughs, but it’s like a scoffing laugh. Oh, good enough for you, she says. What are you going to study? Connell resists the impulse to take his phone from his pocket and check the time. English, he says. His aunts and uncles are all very impressed with his decision to put Trinity as his first choice, which embarrasses him. He’ll qualify for the full maintenance grant if he does get in, but even at that he’ll have to work full-time over the summer and at least part-time during term. Lorraine says she doesn’t want him having to work too much through college, she wants him to focus on his degree. That makes him feel bad, because it’s not like English is a real degree you can get a job out of, it’s just a joke, and then he thinks he probably should have applied for Law after all. Lorraine comes back into the ward now. Her shoes make a flat, clapping noise on the tiles. She starts to talk to his grandmother about the consultant who’s on leave and about Dr O’Malley and the X-ray. She relays all this information very carefully, writing down the most important things on a piece of notepaper. Finally, after his grandmother kisses his face, they leave the ward. He disinfects his hands in the corridor while Lorraine waits. Then they go down the stairs and out of the hospital, into the bright, clammy sunshine. * After the fundraiser the other night, Marianne told him this thing about her family. He didn’t know what to say. He started telling her that he loved her. It just happened, like drawing your hand back when you touch something hot. She was crying and everything, and he just said it without thinking. Was it true? He didn’t know enough to know that. At first he thought it must have been true, since he said it, and why would he lie? But then he remembered he does lie sometimes, without planning to or knowing why. It wasn’t the first time he’d had the urge to tell Marianne that he loved her, whether or not it was true, but it was the first time he’d given in and said it. He noticed how long it took her to say anything in response, and how her pause had bothered him, as if she might not say it back, and when she did say it he felt better, but maybe that meant nothing. Connell wished he knew how other people conducted their private lives, so that he could copy from example. The next morning they woke up to the sound of Lorraine’s keys in the door. It was bright outside, his mouth was dry, and Marianne was sitting up and pulling her clothes on. All she said was: Sorry, I’m sorry. They must have fallen asleep without meaning to. He had been planning to drop her home the night before. She put her shoes on and he got dressed too. Lorraine was standing in the hallway with two plastic bags of groceries when they reached the stairs. Marianne was wearing her dress from the night before, the black one with the straps. Hello, sweetheart, said Lorraine. Marianne’s face looked bright like a light bulb. Sorry to intrude, she said. Connell didn’t touch her or speak to her. His chest hurt. She walked out the front door saying: Bye, sorry, thanks, sorry again. She shut the door behind her before he was even down the stairs. Lorraine pressed her lips together like she was trying not to laugh. You can help me with the groceries, she said. She handed him one of the bags. He followed her into the kitchen and put the bag down on the table without looking at it. Rubbing his neck, he watched her unwrapping and putting away the items. What’s so funny? he said. There’s no need for her to run off like that just because I’m home, said Lorraine. I’m only delighted to see her, you know I’m very fond of Marianne. He watched his mother fold away the reusable plastic bag. Did you think I didn’t know? she said. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again. He shrugged. Well, I knew someone was coming over here in the afternoons, said Lorraine. And I do work in her house, you know. He nodded, unable to speak. You must really like her, said Lorraine. Why do you say that? Isn’t that why you’re going to Trinity? He put his face in his hands. Lorraine was laughing then, he could hear her. You’re making me not want to go there now, he said. Oh, stop that. He looked in the grocery bag he had left on the table and removed a packet of dried spaghetti. Self-consciously he brought it over to the press beside the fridge and put it with the other pasta. So is Marianne your girlfriend, then? said Lorraine. No. What does that mean? You’re having sex with her but she’s not your girlfriend? You’re prying into my life now, he said. I don’t like that, it’s not your business. He returned to the bag and removed a carton of eggs, which he placed on the countertop beside the sunflower oil. Is it because of her mother? said Lorraine. You think she’d frown on you? What? Because she might, you know. Frown on me? said Connell. That’s insane, what have I ever done? I think she might consider us a little bit beneath her station. He stared at his mother across the kitchen while she put a box of own- brand cornflakes into the press. The idea that Marianne’s family considered themselves superior to himself and Lorraine, too good to be associated with them, had never occurred to him before. He found, to his surprise, that the idea made him furious. What, she thinks we’re not good enough for them? he said. I don’t know. We might find out. She doesn’t mind you cleaning their house but she doesn’t want your son hanging around with her daughter? What an absolute joke. That’s like something from nineteenth-century times, I’m actually laughing at that. You don’t sound like you’re laughing, said Lorraine. Believe me, I am. It’s hilarious to me. Lorraine closed the press and turned to look at him curiously. What’s all the secrecy about, then? she said. If not for Denise Sheridan’s sake. Does Marianne have a boyfriend or something, and you don’t want him to find out? You’re getting so intrusive with these questions. So she does have a boyfriend, then. No, he said. But that’s the last question I’m answering from you. Lorraine’s eyebrows moved around but she said nothing. He crumpled up the empty plastic bag on the table and then paused there with the bag screwed up in his hand. You’re hardly going to tell anyone, are you? he said. This is starting to sound very shady. Why shouldn’t I tell anyone? Feeling quite hard-hearted, he replied: Because there would be no benefit to you, and a lot of annoyance for me. He thought for a moment and added shrewdly: And Marianne. Oh god, said Lorraine. I don’t even think I want to know. He continued waiting, feeling that she hadn’t quite unambiguously promised not to tell anyone, and she threw her hands up in exasperation and said: I have more interesting things to gossip about than your sex life, okay? Don’t worry. He went upstairs then and sat on his bed. He didn’t know how much time passed while he sat there like that. He was thinking about Marianne’s family, about the idea that she was too good for him, and also about what she had told him the night before. He’d heard from guys in school that sometimes girls made up stories about themselves for attention, saying bad things had happened to them and stuff like that. And it was a pretty attention-grabbing story Marianne had told him, about her dad beating her up when she was a small child. Also, the dad was dead now, so he wasn’t around to defend himself. Connell could see it was possible that Marianne had just lied to get his sympathy, but he also knew, as clearly as he knew anything, that she hadn’t. If anything he felt like she’d been holding back on telling him how bad it really was. It gave him a queasy feeling, to have this information about her, to be tied to her in this way. That was yesterday. This morning he was early to school, as usual, and Rob and Eric started fake-cheering when he came to put his books in his locker. He dumped his bag on the floor, ignoring them. Eric slung an arm around his shoulder and said: Go on, tell us. Did you get the ride the other night? Connell felt in his pocket for his locker key and shrugged off Eric’s arm. Funny, he said. I heard you looked very cosy heading off together, said Rob. Did anything happen? Eric said. Be honest. No, obviously, said Connell. Why is that obvious? Rachel said. Everyone knows she fancies you. Rachel was sitting up on the windowsill with her legs swinging slowly back and forth, long and inky-black in opaque tights. Connell didn’t meet her eye. Lisa was sitting on the floor against the lockers, finishing homework. Karen wasn’t in yet. He wished Karen would come in. I bet he did get a cheeky ride, said Rob. He’d never tell us anyway. I wouldn’t hold it against you, Eric said, she’s not a bad-looking girl when she makes an effort. Yeah, she’s just mentally deranged, said Rachel. Connell pretended to look for something in his locker. A thin white sweat had broken out on his hands and under his collar. You’re all being nasty, said Lisa. What has she ever done to any of you? The question is what she’s done to Waldron, said Eric. Look at him hiding in his locker there. Come on, spit it out. Did you shift her? No, he said. Well, I feel sorry for her, said Lisa. Me too, said Eric. I think you should make it up to her, Connell. I think you should ask her to the Debs. They all erupted in laughter. Connell closed his locker and walked out of the room carrying his schoolbag limply in his right hand. He heard the others calling after him, but he didn’t turn around. When he got to the bathroom he locked himself in a cubicle. The yellow walls bore down on him and his face was slick with sweat. He kept thinking of himself saying to Marianne in bed: I love you. It was terrifying, like watching himself committing a terrible crime on CCTV. And soon she would be in school, putting her books in her bag, smiling to herself, never knowing anything. You’re a nice person and everyone likes you. He took one deep uncomfortable breath and then threw up. * He indicates left coming out of the hospital to get back on the N16. A pain has settled behind his eyes. They drive along the Mall with banks of dark trees flanking them on either side. Are you alright? says Lorraine. Yeah. You’ve got a look on you. He breathes in, so his seatbelt digs into his ribs a little bit, and then exhales. I asked Rachel to the Debs, he says. What? I asked Rachel Moran to go to the Debs with me. They’re about to pass a garage and Lorraine taps the window quickly and says: Pull in here. Connell looks over, confused. What? he says. She taps the window again, harder, and her nails click on the glass. Pull in, she says again. He hits the indicator quickly, checks the mirror, and then pulls in and stops the car. By the side of the garage someone is hosing down a van, water running off in dark rivers. Do you want something from the shop? he says. Who is Marianne going to the Debs with? Connell squeezes the steering wheel absently. I don’t know, he says. You hardly made me park here just to have a discussion, did you? So maybe no one will ask her, says Lorraine. And she just won’t go. Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. On the walk back from lunch today he hung back behind the others. He knew Rachel would see him and wait with him, he knew that. And when she did, he screwed his eyes almost shut so the world was a whitish-grey colour and said: Here, do you have a date to the Debs yet? She said no. He asked if she wanted to go with him. Alright then, she said. I have to say, I was hoping for something a bit more romantic. He didn’t reply to that, because he felt as if he had just jumped off a high precipice and fallen to his death, and he was glad he was dead, he never wanted to be alive again. Does Marianne know you’re taking someone else? says Lorraine. Not as of yet. I will tell her. Lorraine covers her mouth with her hand, so he can’t make out her expression: she might be surprised, or concerned, or she might be about to get sick. And you don’t think maybe you should have asked her? she says. Seeing as how you fuck her every day after school. That is vile language to use. Lorraine’s nostrils flare white when she inhales. How would you like me to put it? she says. I suppose I should say you’ve been using her for sex, is that more accurate? Would you relax for a second? No one is using anyone. How did you get her to keep quiet about it? Did you tell her something bad would happen if she told on you? Jesus, he says. Obviously not. It was agreed, okay? You’re getting it way out of proportion now. Lorraine nods to herself, staring out the windshield. Nervously he waits for her to say something. People in school don’t like her, do they? says Lorraine. So I suppose you were afraid of what they would say about you, if they found out. He doesn’t respond. Well, I’ll tell what I have to say about you, Lorraine says. I think you’re a disgrace. I’m ashamed of you. He wipes his forehead with his sleeve. Lorraine, he says. She opens the passenger door. Where are you going? he says. I’ll get the bus home. What are you talking about? Act normal, will you? If I stay in the car, I’m only going to say things I’ll regret. What is this? he says. Why do you care if I go with someone or I don’t, anyway? It’s nothing to do with you. She pushes the door wide and climbs out of the car. You’re being so weird, he says. In response she slams the door shut, hard. He tightens his hands painfully on the steering wheel but stays quiet. It’s my fucking car! he could say. Did I say you could slam the door, did I? Lorraine is walking away already, her handbag knocking against her hip with the pace of her stride. He watches her until she turns the corner. Two and a half years he worked in the garage after school to buy this car, and all he uses it for is driving his mother around because she doesn’t have a licence. He could go after her now, roll the window down, shout at her to get back in. He almost feels like doing it, though she’d only ignore him. Instead he sits in the driver’s seat, head tipped back against the headrest, listening to his own idiotic breathing. A crow on the forecourt picks at a discarded crisp packet. A family comes out of the shop holding ice creams. The smell of petrol infiltrates the car interior, heavy like a headache. He starts the engine. Four Months Later (AUGUST 2011) She’s in the garden, wearing sunglasses. The weather has been fine for a few days now, and her arms are getting freckled. She hears the back door open but doesn’t move. Alan’s voice calls from the patio: Annie Kearney’s after getting five-seventy! Marianne doesn’t respond. She feels in the grass beside her chair for the sun lotion, and when she sits up to apply it, she notices that Alan is on the phone. Someone in your year got six hundred, hey! he yells. She pours a little lotion into the palm of her left hand. Marianne! Alan says. Someone got six A1s, I said! She nods. She smooths the lotion slowly over her right arm, so it glistens. Alan is trying to find out who got six hundred points. Marianne knows right away who it must be, but she says nothing. She applies some lotion to her left arm and then, quietly, lies back down in the deckchair, face to the sun, and closes her eyes. Behind her eyelids waves of light move in green and red. She hasn’t eaten breakfast or lunch today, except two cups of sweetened coffee with milk. Her appetite is small this summer. When she wakes up in the morning she opens her laptop on the opposite pillow and waits for her eyes to adjust to the rectangle glow of the screen so she can read the news. She reads long articles about Syria and then researches the ideological backgrounds of the journalists who have written them. She reads long articles about the sovereign debt crisis in Europe and zooms in to see the small print on the graphs. After that she usually either goes back to sleep or gets in the shower, or maybe lies down and makes herself come. The rest of the day follows a similar pattern, with minor variations: maybe she opens her curtains, maybe not; maybe breakfast, or maybe just coffee, which she takes upstairs to her room so she doesn’t have to see her family. This morning was different, of course. Here, Marianne, says Alan. It’s Waldron! Connell Waldron got six hundred points! She doesn’t move. Into the phone Alan says: No, she only got five- ninety. I’d say she’s raging now someone did better than her. Are you raging, Marianne? She hears him but says nothing. Under the lenses of her sunglasses her eyelids feel greasy. An insect whirrs past her ear and away. Is Waldron there with you, is he? says Alan. Put him on to me. Why are you calling him ‘Waldron’ like he’s your friend? Marianne says. You hardly know him. Alan looks up from the phone, smirking. I know him well, he says. I saw him at Eric’s gaff there the last day. She regrets speaking. Alan is pacing up and down the patio, she can hear the gritty sound of his footsteps as he comes down towards the grass. Someone on the other end of the line starts talking, and Alan breaks into a bright, strained-looking smile. How are you now? he says. Fair play, congratulations. Connell’s voice is quiet, so Marianne can’t hear it. Alan is still smiling the effortful smile. He always gets like this around other people, cringing and sycophantic. Yeah, Alan says. She did well, yeah. Not as well as yourself! Five- ninety she got. Do you want me to put her on to you? Marianne looks up. Alan is joking. He thinks Connell will say no. He can’t think of any reason why Connell would want to speak to Marianne, a friendless loser, on the phone; particularly not on this special day. Instead he says yes. Alan’s smile falters. Yeah, he says, no bother. He holds the phone out for Marianne to take it. Marianne shakes her head. Alan’s eyes widen. He jerks his hand towards her. Here, he says. He wants to talk to you. She shakes her head again. Alan prods the phone into her chest now, roughly. He’s on the phone for you, Marianne, says Alan. I don’t want to speak to him, says Marianne. Alan’s face takes on a wild expression of fury, with the whites of his eyes showing all around. He jabs the phone harder into her sternum, hurting her. Say hello, he says. She can hear Connell’s voice buzzing in the receiver. The sun glares down onto her face. She takes the phone from Alan’s hand and, with a swipe of her finger, hangs up the call. Alan stands over the deckchair staring. There is no sound in the garden for a few seconds. Then, in a low voice, he says: What the fuck did you do that for? I didn’t want to speak to him, she says. I told you. He wanted to speak to you. Yes, I know he did. It’s unusually bright today, and Alan’s shadow on the grass has a vivid, stark quality. She’s still holding out the phone, loose in the palm of her hand, waiting for her brother to accept it. * In April, Connell told her he was taking Rachel Moran to the Debs. Marianne was sitting on the side of his bed at the time, acting very cold and humorous, which made him awkward. He told her it wasn’t ‘romantic’, and that he and Rachel were just friends. You mean like we’re just friends, said Marianne. Well, no, he said. Different. But are you sleeping with her? No. When would I even have time? Do you want to? said Marianne. I’m not hugely gone on the idea. I don’t feel like I’m that insatiable really, I do already have you. Marianne stared down at her fingernails. That was a joke, Connell said. I don’t get what the joke part was. I know you’re pissed off with me. I don’t really care, she said. I just think if you want to sleep with her you should tell me. Yeah, and I will tell you, if I ever want to do that. You’re saying that’s what the issue is, but I honestly don’t think that’s what it is. Marianne snapped: What is it, then? He just stared at her. She went back to looking at her fingernails, flushed. He didn’t say anything. Eventually she laughed, because she wasn’t totally without spirit, and it obviously was kind of funny, just how savagely he had humiliated her, and his inability to apologise or even admit he had done it. She went home then and straight to bed, where she slept for thirteen hours without waking. The next morning she quit school. It wasn’t possible to go back, however she looked at it. No one else would invite her to the Debs, that was clear. She had organised the fundraisers, she had booked the venue, but she wouldn’t be able to attend the event. Everyone would know that, and some of them would be glad, and even the most sympathetic ones could only feel a terrible second-hand embarrassment. Instead she stayed home in her room all day with the curtains closed, studying and sleeping at strange hours. Her mother was furious. Doors were slammed. On two separate occasions Marianne’s dinner was scraped into the bin. Still, she was an adult woman, and no one could make her dress up in a uniform anymore and submit to being stared at or whispered about. A week after she left school she walked into the kitchen and saw Lorraine kneeling on the floor to clean the oven. Lorraine straightened up slightly, and wiped her forehead with the part of her wrist exposed above her rubber glove. Marianne swallowed. Hello, sweetheart, Lorraine said. I hear you’ve been out of school for a few days. Is everything okay? Yeah, I’m fine, said Marianne. Actually I’m not going back to school. I find I get more done if I just stay at home and study. Lorraine nodded and said: Suit yourself. Then she went back to scrubbing the inside of the oven. Marianne opened the fridge to look for the orange juice. My son tells me you’re ignoring his phone calls, Lorraine added. Marianne paused, and the silence in the kitchen was loud in her ears, like the white noise of rushing water. Yes, she said. I am, I suppose. Good for you, said Lorraine. He doesn’t deserve you. Marianne felt a relief so high and sudden that it was almost like panic. She put the orange juice on the counter and closed the fridge. Lorraine, she said, can you ask him not to come over here anymore? Like if he has to collect you or anything, is it okay if he doesn’t come in the house? Oh, he’s permanently barred as far as I’m concerned. You don’t need to worry about that. I have half a mind to kick him out of my own house. Marianne smiled, feeling awkward. He didn’t do anything that bad, she said. I mean, compared to the other people in school he was actually pretty nice, to be honest. At this Lorraine stood up and stripped off her gloves. Without speaking, she put her arms around Marianne and embraced her very tightly. In a strange, cramped voice Marianne said: It’s okay. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. It was true what she had said about Connell. He didn’t do anything that bad. He had never tried to delude her into thinking she was socially acceptable; she’d deluded herself. He had just been using her as a kind of private experiment, and her willingness to be used had probably shocked him. He pitied her in the end, but she also repulsed him. In a way she feels sorry for him now, because he has to live with the fact that he had sex with her, of his own free choice, and he liked it. That says more about him, the supposedly ordinary and healthy person, than it does about her. She never went back to school again except to sit the exams. By then people were saying she had been in the mental hospital. None of that mattered now anyway. * Are you angry he did better than you? says her brother. Marianne laughs. And why shouldn’t she laugh? Her life here in Carricklea is over, and either a new life will begin, or it won’t. Soon she will be packing things into suitcases: woollen jumpers, skirts, her two silk dresses. A set of teacups and saucers patterned with flowers. A hairdryer, a frying pan, four white cotton towels. A coffee pot. The objects of a new existence. No, she says. Why wouldn’t you say hello to him, then? Ask him. If you’re such good friends with him, you should ask him. He knows. Alan makes a fist with his left hand. It doesn’t matter, it’s over. Lately Marianne walks around Carricklea and thinks how beautiful it is in sunny weather, white clouds like chalk dust over the library, long avenues lined with trees. The arc of a tennis ball through blue air. Cars slowing at traffic lights with their windows rolled down, music bleating from the speakers. Marianne wonders what it would be like to belong here, to walk down the street greeting people and smiling. To feel that life was happening here, in this place, and not somewhere else far away. What does that mean? says Alan. Ask Connell Waldron why we’re not speaking anymore. Call him back now if you want to, I’d be interested to hear what he has to say. Alan bites down on the knuckle of his index finger. His arm is shaking. In just a few weeks’ time Marianne will live with different people, and life will be different. But she herself will not be different. She’ll be the same person, trapped inside her own body. There’s nowhere she can go that would free her from this. A different place, different people, what does that matter? Alan releases his knuckle from his mouth. Like he fucking cares, says Alan. I’m surprised he even knows your name. Oh, we used to be quite close actually. You can ask him about that too, if you want. Might make you a bit uncomfortable, though. Before Alan can respond, they hear someone calling out from inside the house, and a door closing. Their mother is home. Alan looks up, his expression changes, and Marianne feels her own face moving around involuntarily. He glances down at her. You shouldn’t tell lies about people, he says. Marianne nods, says nothing. Don’t tell Mam about this, he says. Marianne shakes her head. No, she agrees. But it wouldn’t matter if she did tell her, not really. Denise decided a long time ago that it is acceptable for men to use aggression towards Marianne as a way of expressing themselves. As a child Marianne resisted, but now she simply detaches, as if it isn’t of any interest to her, which in a way it isn’t. Denise considers this a symptom of her daughter’s frigid and unlovable personality. She believes Marianne lacks ‘warmth’, by which she means the ability to beg for love from people who hate her. Alan goes back inside now. Marianne hears the patio door slide shut. Three Months Later (NOVEMBER 2011) Connell doesn’t know anyone at the party. The person who invited him isn’t the same person who answered the door and, with an indifferent shrug, let him inside. He still hasn’t seen the person who invited him, a person called Gareth, who’s in his Critical Theory seminar. Connell knew going to a party on his own would be a bad idea, but on the phone Lorraine said it would be a good idea. I won’t know anyone, he told her. And she said patiently: You won’t get to know anyone if you don’t go out and meet people. Now he’s here, standing on his own in a crowded room not knowing whether to take his jacket off. It feels practically scandalous to be lingering here in solitude. He feels as if everyone around him is disturbed by his presence, and trying not to stare. Finally, just as he decides to leave, Gareth comes in. Connell’s intense relief at seeing Gareth triggers another wave of self-loathing, since he doesn’t even know Gareth very well or particularly like him. Gareth puts his hand out and desperately, bizarrely, Connell finds himself shaking it. It’s a low moment in his adult life. People are watching them shake hands, Connell is certain of this. Good to see you, man, says Gareth. Good to see you. I like the backpack, very nineties. Connell is wearing a completely plain navy backpack with no features to distinguish it from any of the other numerous backpacks at the party. Uh, he says. Yeah, thanks. Gareth is one of these popular people who’s involved in college societies. He went to one of the big private schools in Dublin and people are always greeting him on campus, like: Hey, Gareth! Gareth, hey! They’ll greet him from all the way across Front Square, just to get him to wave hello. Connell has seen it. People used to like me, he feels like saying as a joke. I used to be on my school football team. No one would laugh at that joke here. Can I get you a drink? says Gareth. Connell has a six-pack of cider with him, but he’s reluctant to do anything that would draw attention to his backpack, in case Gareth might feel prompted to comment on it further. Cheers, he says. Gareth navigates over to the table at the side of the room and returns with a bottle of Corona. This okay? says Gareth. Connell looks at him for a second, wondering if the question is ironic or genuinely servile. Unable to decide, Connell says: Yeah, it’ll do, thanks. People in college are like this, unpleasantly smug one minute and then abasing themselves to show off their good manners the next. He sips the beer while Gareth watches him. Without any apparent sarcasm Gareth grins and says: Enjoy. This is what it’s like in Dublin. All Connell’s classmates have identical accents and carry the same size MacBook under their arms. In seminars they express their opinions passionately and conduct impromptu debates. Unable to form such straightforward views or express them with any force, Connell initially felt a sense of crushing inferiority to his fellow students, as if he had upgraded himself accidentally to an intellectual level far above his own, where he had to strain to make sense of the most basic premises. He did gradually start to wonder why all their classroom discussions were so abstract and lacking in textual detail, and eventually he realised that most people were not actually doing the reading. They were coming into college every day to have heated debates about books they had not read. He understands now that his classmates are not like him. It’s easy for them to have opinions, and to express them with confidence. They don’t worry about appearing ignorant or conceited. They are not stupid people, but they’re not so much smarter than him either. They ju	400,884
Quiet Power The Secret Strengths of Introverts (Susan Cain, Gregory Mone, Erica Moroz) (Z-Library).pdf	The stories in this book are based on interviews with more than one hundred kids, parents, and teachers. The names of the kids, along with other identifying details, have been changed to protect their privacy. DIAL BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014 Text copyright © 2016 by Susan Cain Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Grant Snider Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader. eBook ISBN 9781101629802 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cain, Susan, author. \| Mone, Gregory, author. \| Snider, Grant, illustrator. Title: Quiet power : the secret strengths of introverts / Susan Cain with Gregory Mone and Erica Moroz ; illustrated by Grant Snider. Description: New York : Dial Books, 2016. Identifiers: LCCN 2015040911 \| ISBN 9780803740600 (hardback) ISBN 9780399186721 (Library binding) Subjects: LCSH: Introverts—Juvenile literature. \| Self-esteem—Juvenile literature. \| Interpersonal relations—Juvenile literature. \| Families— Juvenile literature. \| BISAC: JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Science / Psychology. \| JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Issues / Self-Esteem & Self-Reliance. \| JUVENILE NONFICTION / Social Issues / Emotions & Feelings. Classification: LCC BF698.35.I59 C356 2016 \| DDC 155.4/18232—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015040911 Jacket art © 2016 by Grant Snider Jacket design by Irene Vandervoort Version_1 For Gonzo, Sam, and Eli, with all my love —S.C. Contents TITLE PAGE COPYRIGHT DEDICATION A MANIFESTO FOR INTROVERTS INTRODUCTION PART ONE: SCHOOL CHAPTER 1: QUIET IN THE CAFETERIA CHAPTER 2: QUIET IN THE CLASSROOM CHAPTER 3: GROUP PROJECTS, THE INTROVERTED WAY CHAPTER 4: QUIET LEADERS PART TWO: SOCIALIZING CHAPTER 5: QUIET FRIENDSHIP CHAPTER 6: QUIET PARTIES CHAPTER 7: #QUIET CHAPTER 8: OPPOSITES ATTRACT PART THREE: HOBBIES CHAPTER 9: QUIET CREATIVITY CHAPTER 10: THE QUIET ATHLETE CHAPTER 11: QUIETLY ADVENTUROUS CHAPTER 12: CHANGING THE WORLD THE QUIET WAY CHAPTER 13: QUIET IN THE SPOTLIGHT PART FOUR: HOME CHAPTER 14: THE RESTORATIVE NICHE CHAPTER 15: QUIET WITH FAMILY CONCLUSION THE QUIET REVOLUTION IN THE CLASSROOM: AN AFTERWORD FOR TEACHERS A GUIDE FOR PARENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS NOTES INDEX ABOUT THE AUTHOR 1. A quiet temperament is a hidden superpower. 2. There’s a word for “people who are in their heads too much”: thinkers. 3. Most great ideas spring from solitude. 4. You can stretch like a rubber band. You can do anything an extrovert can do, including stepping into the spotlight. There will always be time for quiet later. 5. But even though you’ll need to stretch on occasion, you should return to your true self when you’re done. 6. Two or three close friends mean more than a hundred acquaintances (though acquaintances are great too). 7. Introverts and extroverts are yin and yang—we love and need each other. 8. It’s okay to cross the hallway to avoid small talk. 9. You don’t need to be a cheerleader to lead. Just ask Mahatma Gandhi. 10. Speaking of Gandhi, he said: “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” INTRODUCTION “Why are you being so quiet?” Friends, teachers, acquaintances, even people I barely know have asked me this question. Most mean well. They want to know if I’m all right, or if there’s a reason that I’m keeping to myself. Some ask in a way that suggests they think it’s a little weird that I haven’t spoken up in a while. I don’t always have a clear-cut answer to this question. Sometimes I’m quiet because I’m in the middle of a thought or observation. Sometimes I’m more focused on listening than on talking. Often, though, the reason I’m being quiet is because that’s just how I am. Quiet. In school, it always seemed as if “outgoing” was the highest compliment a person could get. In classes, my teachers often asked me to speak up more. At school dances I headed for the dance floor with my friends, but had it been up to me, we would have just hung out together at someone’s house. I went along to loud, crowded parties in college, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I would have had a better time eating dinner with a friend or two and going to a movie. I never complained about it, though. I thought that I was supposed to do these things in order to be considered “normal.” Throughout this time, I’d built a small but deep network of close friends and colleagues. I never really cared whether someone was popular or not, which meant that some of my friends were “cool” and others not at all. Thanks to my preference for intimate conversations, my friendships were built on mutual trust, enjoyment of each other’s company, and love. They had little to do with cliques or popularity contests. People started to praise me for my insightful questions, my ability to think independently, and my calm approach to tense situations. They complimented me on being a deep thinker and great listener. They also started listening to me. They noticed that when I spoke, it was because I had something thoughtful to say. And once I moved into the working world, the bold, outspoken types who had once intimidated me started offering me jobs! As time went on, I realized that my quiet approach to life had been a great power all along. It was a tool that I’d just needed to learn how to use. I looked around and saw that many of the great contributions to the world— from the Apple computer to the Cat in the Hat—had been made by introverts because of, not in spite of, their quiet temperaments. I culled my ideas into a book for adults called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. It hit the New York Times best seller list and has stayed there for years, and has been translated into forty languages. Thousands and thousands of people have told me that this simple idea—that their quiet approach, if used correctly, is a powerful force—actually changed their lives. It touched them in ways I could not have imagined. Soon I was doing things that seemed impossible when I was younger. When I was in middle school, for example, I was terrified of public speaking. I couldn’t sleep the night before I had to give a book report. One time I was so scared that I froze up in front of everyone and couldn’t even open my mouth. Now, as an advocate for introverted people, I appear on screens all over the world and deliver lectures in front of thousands of people. I gave a TED Talk about introversion that became one of the most watched TED Talks of all time, with many millions of views. (“TED” stands for technology, entertainment, and design, and is the name of an organization that holds conferences where people share big ideas.) Inspired by these experiences, I cofounded Quiet Revolution, a mission- based company whose goal is to empower introverts of all ages. I want us quiet types to feel we can be ourselves wherever we are—at school, at work, and in society at large. Quiet Revolution advocates for change and boosts the voices of us introverts. The movement is inclusive—anyone is allowed to join, no matter how quiet or outgoing they are. I encourage you to get involved on Quietrev.com! People often ask me whether I’ve turned into an extrovert, now that I’m such a comfortable public speaker and media commentator. But I haven’t changed in any fundamental way over the years. I still feel shy sometimes. And I love my quiet, reflective self. I’ve embraced the power of quiet—and you can too. Many of my readers have told me they wish they’d heard about the Quiet Revolution when they were kids, or when they were parents raising their own introverted children. And I’ve also heard from inspiring young people who wish that there was a version of Quiet just for them. That’s where this book comes in. WHAT’S AN INTROVERT, ANYWAY? There’s a psychological term for people like me. We’re called introverts— and there’s no single way to define us. We enjoy the company of others but also like time alone. We can have great social skills, and also be private and keep to ourselves. We are observant. We might listen more than we talk. Being an introvert is about having a deep inner life, and considering that inner life to be important. If an introvert is someone who looks inward, an extrovert is just the opposite. Extroverts thrive in groups and gain energy from being around others. Even if you aren’t an introvert yourself, there are probably a few of us in your family or your circle of friends. Introverts make up a third to half of the population—that’s one out of every two or three people you know. Sometimes we’re easy to spot. We’re the ones curled up on the sofa with a book or an iPad on our lap instead of surrounded by people. At crowded parties you might find us talking to a handful of friends—definitely not dancing on the table. In class, we sometimes look away when the teacher searches for volunteers. We’re paying attention—we’d just prefer to follow along quietly and to contribute when we’re ready. Other times, we introverts are pretty good at hiding our true natures. We might pass undetected in classrooms and school cafeterias, living out loud when deep down we can’t wait to escape the crowd and to have some time to ourselves. Ever since I published my book, I’ve been amazed by how many seemingly extroverted people—including actors, politicians, entrepreneurs, and athletes—have “confessed” to me that they are introverts too. Being introverted doesn’t necessarily mean being shy. This is an important distinction. Introverts can be shy, of course, but there’s such a thing as a shy extrovert too. Shy behavior can look like introversion—it makes people appear to be quiet and reserved. Like introversion, the feeling of shyness is complicated; it has a lot of layers to it. It can come from a place of nervousness, or insecurity, about being accepted by others. It can come from a place of fear of doing the wrong thing. In class, a shy student might not raise his hand because he’s worried about giving the incorrect answer and feeling embarrassed. The introverted girl sitting next to him might keep her hand down too, but for different reasons. Maybe she doesn’t feel the need to contribute. Or she might be too busy listening and processing everything to talk. Just like introversion, shyness has its advantages. Studies show that shy kids tend to have loyal friendships, and to be conscientious, empathetic, and creative. Both shy and introverted people make great listeners. And it’s through listening that we tend to be good at observing, learning, and maturing. This book is about both introversion and shyness—and about the advantages both qualities give you. I happen to be an introvert and a naturally shy person (even though I have come to feel less shy with time). But you might be only one or the other. Take the parts of the book that apply to you, and don’t worry about the rest. ARE YOU AN INTROVERT, EXTROVERT, OR AMBIVERT? Psychology is the study of human behavior and the human mind and its functions. Of course, each person’s mind has its own special wiring, but everyone follows more or less the same framework, and there’s a lot of overlap between us all. Carl Jung (pronounced “young”), a famous twentieth-century psychologist, introduced the terms “introvert” and “extrovert” as a way to describe different personality types. Jung was an introvert himself, and he was the first to explain that introverts are drawn to the inner world of thoughts and feelings, while their opposites, extroverts, crave the external world of people and activities. Of course, even Jung said that no one is all introvert or all extrovert. These traits exist on what’s called a spectrum. The best way to understand a spectrum is to imagine a long ruler. Let’s say there are extreme extroverts at one end of the ruler, and extreme introverts at the other. There are people who fall near the middle—psychologists call them “ambiverts”—but even those who tend toward one of the two sides are still a bit of a mix. Many introverts say that when they’re with close friends or discussing an interesting subject, they act more like extroverts. And as much as extroverts like to be around people, most of them also need downtime to chill out too. Before we go any further, here’s the chance to see where you fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum. There are no right or wrong answers. Just pick “true” or “false” based on which one most often applies to you. I prefer spending time with one or two friends instead of a group. I’d rather express my ideas in writing. I enjoy being alone. I prefer deep conversations to small talk. My friends tell me that I’m a good listener. I prefer small classes to large ones. I avoid conflicts. I don’t like showing people my work until it’s perfect. I work best on my own. I don’t like being called on in class. I feel drained after hanging out with friends, even when I have fun. I’d rather celebrate my birthday with a few friends and family, instead of having a huge party. I don’t mind big independent projects at school. I spend lots of time in my room. I’m usually not a big risk taker. I can dive into a project, practice a sport or instrument, or engage in something creative for hours at a time, without getting bored. I tend to think before I speak. I’d rather text or e-mail than talk on the phone with someone I don’t know very well. I don’t feel totally comfortable being the center of attention. I usually like asking questions more than I like answering them. People often describe me as soft-spoken or shy. If I had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with absolutely nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled. * This is an informal quiz, not a scientifically validated personality test. The questions were formulated based on characteristics of introversion often accepted by contemporary researchers. The more often you answered “true,” the more introverted you probably are. If you answered “false” more often, it’s likely you’re more of an extrovert. If you answered “true” and “false” equally, you’re probably an ambivert. Whichever way you lean is fine. The key to a comfortable life is to know your own preferences. Some people really are “born introverts” or “born extroverts,” and personality traits like introversion and extroversion can be passed down from one generation to the next. Our genes don’t decide everything, though. Even if you see yourself as one or the other, your personality and attitude aren’t set in stone; you have lots of room to shape and develop them over time. Someone born with an extremely shy and quiet temperament probably won’t grow up to perform in front of stadiums like Taylor Swift, but most of us can stretch to some degree, much the way a rubber band can stretch very flexibly (up to a certain point). Recognizing which kinds of situations make you feel masterful and at ease can give you a sense of control. Then you can make choices based on what you know works for you. You can pursue the activities that bring you comfort—and step outside your comfort zone when you feel it’s worthwhile, for the sake of a project or person you care about. I can’t emphasize enough how empowering it is to live this way—so we’ll come back to this point throughout the book. Validation from those around you— online or in person—feels good, but the most important validation comes from your very own self. EXTROVERTS ARE GREAT TOO Society often overlooks us introverts. We idolize the talkers and the spotlight seekers, as if they are the role models everyone should be emulating. I call this the Extrovert Ideal. This is the belief that we’re all supposed to be quick-thinking, charismatic risk takers who prefer action to contemplation. The Extrovert Ideal is what can make you feel as if there’s something wrong with you because you’re not at your best in a large group. It’s an especially powerful force in school, where the loudest, most talkative kids are often the most popular, and where teachers reward the students who are eager to raise their hands in class. This book questions the Extrovert Ideal—but that doesn’t mean it questions extroverts themselves. My best friend, Judith, is a social butterfly who has been at the center of the “popular crowd” since elementary school. My beloved husband, Ken, is a charming take-charge type who always has interesting stories to share in a group. I love Judith and Ken partly because we’re different, and we complement each other. They see strengths in me that they don’t have themselves (or don’t have as often as they would like), and I feel the exact same way about them. I really can’t say enough about the yin and yang of the two personality types. When we join together, we’re so much better than the sum of our two parts. My husband and I use a Mexican expression to describe this: “juntos somos más,” which in English means “together we are more.” As much as I love extroverts, though, I want to shine the spotlight on what it feels like to be quiet—and to show just how powerful quiet can be. It’s no accident that many of history’s greatest artists, inventors, scientists, athletes, and business leaders were introverts. As a child, Mahatma Gandhi was shy and afraid of everything, especially other people; he used to run home from school as soon as the bell rang, to avoid socializing with his classmates. But he grew up to lead the nation of India to freedom, without changing his fundamental nature. He fought his battles through peaceful, nonviolent protests. The National Basketball Association’s all-time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, would toss his sky hooks in front of tens of thousands of people each night, but he enjoyed neither the crowds nor the attention. He loved reading history books and described himself as a nerd who happened to be good at basketball. He’s also used his quiet time to write, publishing both novels and memoirs. What about Beyoncé? You may know this icon for her sold-out stadium shows around the world. Or for her music videos, which, combined, have garnered over a billion YouTube views. But even though Beyoncé grew up performing from an early age, she describes herself as an introverted child. Now her confidence inspires her fans around the world—but it doesn’t mean that she has changed her quiet, observant ways. “I’m a good listener and I like to observe, and sometimes people think that’s being shy,” she says. The gifted actress Emma Watson is a shy introvert too. “The truth is that I’m genuinely a shy, socially awkward, introverted person,” says Watson. “At a big party . . . it’s too much stimulation for me, which is why I end up going to the bathroom! I need time-outs. . . . I’m terrible at small talk. . . . I feel a pressure when I’m meeting new people because I’m aware of their expectations. Which isn’t to say that when I’m in a small group and around my friends, I don’t love to dance and be extroverted. I am just extremely self-conscious in public.” Misty Copeland has been touted as an “unlikely ballerina.” Like most athletes, she started training young—but not nearly as young as most ballerinas, who often start as early as age four! As a shy thirteen-year-old, Misty thought that her middle-school audition for the drill team had been a bust. But even though she was quiet, she didn’t go unnoticed. Her strength and talent were undeniable, and her ability to observe and focus on complex choreography was unique for someone her age. She was named captain of the squad of sixty girls that day, eventually leading her on the path to ballet. In 2015, she became the first black female principal dancer in American Ballet Theatre’s history. Albert Einstein is another well-known introvert. As a child, his preference for independent learning sometimes got him in trouble. When he was sixteen, he failed a school entrance exam partly because he hadn’t taken the time to study all the subjects; he’d focused only on what interested him. Later, though, he learned to mix his intense periods of solitary work with small social gatherings. In his twenties, he started the Olympia Academy, a club where he’d meet with a few close friends to discuss the ideas he’d spent so many hours developing in solitude. When he was twenty-six years old, Einstein completely rewrote the laws of physics. At age forty-two, he won the Nobel Prize. In the following pages, you’ll meet quiet kids who excel at traditionally introverted activities, such as writing and art. You’ll also meet introverts who are presidents of their school class, champion public speakers, athletes, actors, and singers. These roles might not seem suited to quiet kids—and in many cases, the kids I’ll introduce you to were reluctant to pursue them at first. But they drove themselves forward out of passion for their work. This single-minded passion is a common characteristic of many introverts—I hope that over time (it doesn’t have to happen right away) you’ll identify your own! Through the stories and experiences of other young people like you, I’ll address questions that introverts often wonder about. How do you carve out a place for yourself as a quiet person? How can you make sure that you’re not ignored? And how do you make new friends when it feels hard to muster the confidence to be chatty? In this book we’ll talk about the ways we introverts relate to those around us—to friends, family, and teachers. We’ll talk about the ways we pursue our interests and hobbies. And we’ll talk about the ways we relate to our own selves, as individuals. I hope that through this book you learn to accept and treasure yourself—just as you are. The world needs you, and there are so many ways to make your quiet style speak volumes. Think of this as a guide book. It won’t teach you how to turn yourself into someone else. Instead, it will teach you to use the marvelous qualities and skills you already have. And then . . . look out, world! Chapter One QUIET IN THE CAFETERIA When I was nine years old, I convinced my parents to let me go to summer camp for eight weeks. My parents were skeptical, but I couldn’t wait to get there. I’d read lots of novels set at summer camps on wooded lakes, and it sounded like so much fun. Before I left, my mother helped me pack a suitcase full of shorts, sandals, swimsuits, towels, and . . . books. Lots and lots and lots of books. This made perfect sense to us; reading was a group activity in our family. At night and on weekends, my parents, siblings, and I would all sit around the living room and disappear into our novels. There wasn’t much talking. Each of us would follow our own fictional adventures, but in our way we were sharing this time together. So when my mother packed me all those novels, I pictured the same kind of experience at camp, only better. I could see myself and all my new friends in our cabin: ten girls in matching nightgowns reading together happily. But I was in for a big surprise. Summer camp turned out to be the exact opposite of quiet time with my family. It was more like one long, raucous birthday party—and I couldn’t even phone my parents to take me home. On the very first day of camp, our counselor gathered us together. In the name of camp spirit, she said, she would demonstrate a cheer that we were to perform every day for the rest of the summer. Pumping her arms at her sides as if she were jogging, the counselor chanted: “R-O-W-D-I-E, THAT’S THE WAY WE SPELL ROWDY, ROWDIE! ROWDIE! LET’S GET ROWDIE!” She finished with both her hands up, palms out, and a huge smile on her face. Okay, this was not what I was expecting. I was already excited to be at camp—why the need to be so outwardly rowdy? (And why did we have to spell this word incorrectly?!) I wasn’t sure what to think. Gamely I performed the cheer—and then found some downtime to pull out one of my books and start reading. Later that week, though, the coolest girl in the bunk asked me why I was always reading and why I was so “mellow”—mellow being the opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. I looked down at the book in my hand, then around the bunk. No one else was sitting by herself, reading. They were all laughing and playing hand games, or running around in the grass outside with kids from other bunks. So I closed my book and put it away, along with all the others, in my suitcase. I felt guilty as I tucked the books under my bed, as if they needed me and I was letting them down. For the rest of the summer, I shouted out the ROWDIE cheer with as much enthusiasm as I could muster. Every day I pumped my arms and smiled wide, doing my best approximation of a lively, gregarious camper. And when camp was over and I finally reunited with my books, something felt different. It felt as if, at school and even with my friends, that pressure to be rowdy still loomed large. In elementary school, I’d known everyone since kindergarten. I knew I was shy deep down, but I felt very comfortable and had even starred in the school play one year. Everything changed in middle school, though, when I switched to a new school system where I didn’t know anyone. I was the new kid in a sea of chattering strangers. My mom would drive me to school because being on a bus with dozens of other kids was too overwhelming. The doors to the school stayed locked until the first bell, and when I arrived early I’d have to wait outside in the parking lot, where groups of friends huddled together. They all seemed to know one another and to feel totally at ease. For me, that parking lot was a straight-up nightmare. Eventually, the bell would ring and we’d rush inside. The hallways were even more chaotic than the parking lot. Kids hurried in every direction, pounding down the hall like they owned the place, and groups of girls and boys traded stories and laughed secretively. I’d look up at a vaguely familiar face, wonder if I should say hello, and then move on without speaking. But the cafeteria scene at lunchtime made the hallways look like a dream! The voices of hundreds of kids bounced off the massive cinderblock walls. The room was arranged in rows of long, skinny tables, and a laughing, gabbing clique sat at each one. Everyone split off into groups: the shiny, popular girls here, the athletic boys there, the nerdy types over to the side. I could barely think straight, let alone smile and chat in the easygoing way that everyone else seemed to manage. Does this setting sound familiar? It’s such a common experience. Meet Davis, a thoughtful and shy guy who found himself in a similar situation on the first day of sixth grade. As one of the few Asian American kids at a mostly white school, he was also made uncomfortably aware that other students thought he looked “different.” He was so nervous that he barely remembered to exhale until he arrived in homeroom, where everyone gradually settled down. Finally, he could just sit and think. The rest of the day went on similarly—he barely navigated his way through the crowded cafeteria, feeling relieved only during quiet moments in the classroom. By the time the bell rang at 3:30 p.m., he was exhausted. He had made it through the first day of sixth grade alive—though not without somebody throwing gum into his hair on the bus ride home. As far as he could tell, everyone seemed thrilled to be back again the next morning. Everyone except Davis. INTROVERTS AND THE FIVE SENSES Things started looking up, though, in ways Davis could never have imagined on that stressful first day. I’ll tell you the rest of his story soon. In the meantime, it’s important to remember that no matter how cheerful they might have seemed, the kids at my school and at Davis’s probably weren’t all happy to be there. The first days in a new school, or even one you’ve been going to for years, can be a struggle for anyone. And as introverts, our reactivity to stimulation means that people like Davis and me really do have extra adjustments to make. What do I mean by “reactivity to stimulation”? Well, most psychologists agree that introversion and extroversion are among the most important personality traits shaping human experience—and that this is true of people all over the world, regardless of their culture or the language they speak. This means that introversion is also one of the most researched personality traits. We’re learning fascinating things about it every day. We now know, for example, that introverts and extroverts generally have different nervous systems. Introverts’ nervous systems react more intensely than extroverts’ to social situations as well as to sensory experiences. Extroverts’ nervous systems don’t react as much, which means that they crave stimulation, such as brighter lights and louder sounds, to feel alive. When they’re not getting enough stimulation, they may start to feel bored and antsy. They naturally prefer a more gregarious, or chatty, style of socializing. They need to be around people, and they thrive on the energy of crowds. They’re more likely to crank up speakers, chase adrenaline-pumping adventures, or thrust their hands up and volunteer to go first. We introverts, on the other hand, react more—sometimes much, much more—to stimulating environments such as noisy school cafeterias. This means that we tend to feel most relaxed and energized when we’re in quieter settings—not necessarily alone, but often with smaller numbers of friends or family we know well. In one study, a famous psychologist named Hans Eysenck placed lemon juice—a stimulant—on the tongues of adult introverts and extroverts. The human mouth’s natural response to a burst of lemon juice is to produce saliva, which balances out the acidic citrus taste. So, Eysenck figured he could measure sensitivity to stimulation—in this case the stimulation of a drop of lemon juice—by measuring how much saliva each person produced in response to the liquid. He guessed that the introverts would be more sensitive to the lemon juice and generate more saliva. And he was right. In a similar study, scientists found that infants who are more sensitive to the sweet taste of sugar water are more likely to grow up to be teenagers who are sensitive to the noise of a loud party. We simply feel the effects of taste, sound, and social life a little more intensely than our extroverted counterparts. Other experiments have yielded similar results. The psychologist Russell Geen gave introverts and extroverts math problems to solve, with varying levels of background noise playing as they worked. He found that the introverts performed better when the background noise was quieter, while the extroverts did fine with the louder sounds. This is one reason that introverts like Davis tend to prefer being around just a few people at a time; it’s less overwhelming than being surrounded by many different people at once. At parties, for example, we introverts can have a fantastic time, but sometimes we run out of energy sooner and wish we could leave early. Spending time alone in quiet settings recharges introverts’ batteries. That’s why we often enjoy solo activities, from reading to running to mountain climbing. Don’t let anyone tell you that introverts are antisocial—we are just differently social. Thriving at school or anywhere else comes more naturally when you’re in an environment that allows your nervous system to function at its best. And the fact is, most schools are not environments for introverts’ nervous systems. But once you start paying attention to the messages your body is sending you—such as feeling anxious or overwhelmed—the power is in your hands. You’ve recognized that something feels off, and now you know that a change needs to be made. You can take action to find your equilibrium—even before you get back to the sanctuary of your room at home. You can listen to your body and seek out the quiet spots in your school to collect yourself, such as a library or computer lab or the empty classroom of a friendly teacher. You can even duck into the restroom to have a moment to yourself! Davis probably understood this intuitively; that’s why after the gum incident, he started sitting at the front of the bus, where no one bothered him. He tried to tune out the rip-roaring sounds of games and phones beeping and of kids shouting and laughing. Soon enough, he found a pair of earplugs and used the bus time to read. He plowed through the whole Harry Potter series and turned to self-improvement books, like The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens and How to Win Friends and Influence People. Shutting out the noise was his way of reducing stimulation and keeping his head clear. SUPPOSED TO? There’s a lot to figure out as we move through adolescence. Our physical, emotional, and social needs are all going in new directions, and it can feel as if these needs have been tossed into a blender and remixed into something different. It’s both scary and exciting. While you’re navigating the social sea, remember that even your more extroverted friends are working through social insecurities of their own. Adolescent insecurity is something we all go through—even if we have an older sibling to show us the ropes, or have watched lots of movies about high school, or have been popular since kindergarten. Julian, a charismatic high school senior from Brooklyn, New York, who loves photography, remembers feeling frustrated that being quiet meant getting less attention from kids in his grade. “I used to be pretty weird,” he remarks with a laugh. “In elementary school and the start of middle school, I was ashamed of how quiet I was, so I used to try to get attention in other ways, like putting stuff down people’s shirts, stealing people’s pens—stuff like that. I’d come home and not feel very good. Now I’ve calmed down. I try to connect to people, not to annoy them. I don’t put up all the fronts that I used to.” Karinah, a reserved fifteen-year-old also from Brooklyn, often feels anxious when she’s forced into social settings. While Julian used to make up for his introversion by being loud or annoying, Karinah has felt stuck in her own head for as long as she can remember. “When I’m socializing, even with someone I know from school, I feel like I just want to be normal. I don’t want to say the wrong thing, and I don’t always say what’s on my mind; I can’t always word it properly.” Dr. Chelsea Grefe, a New York–based psychologist, has some thoughts about what someone in Karinah’s shoes can do to prepare for these kinds of situations. Dr. Grefe recalls meeting a bright and artistically gifted fifth grader who was nervous about making conversation with other kids. The girl wanted to expand her social horizons. She had two really good friends at school but felt lost when she was separated from them. Dr. Grefe encouraged the girl to brainstorm before entering situations she knew would be uncomfortable. “It was about making a plan and role-playing how to initiate conversations,” she says. First, Karinah identified girls in other groups whom she felt comfortable approaching. Then she set herself a goal: to ask them one-on-one if they wanted to sit together or hang out later. This pre-planning allowed her to avoid approaching a cafeteria table full of people with no clue what to say. Dr. Grefe suggests coming up with some conversation starters, even simple ones such as: “What did you do this weekend?” or “Are you getting excited for this particular school event?” This way, you’re prepared as you enter a social situation and have something to fall back on. Maggie, a college student from Pennsylvania, used to compare herself to other kids in her class—the bubbly ones, the “natural leaders.” She often wondered why the popular kids were so popular. Some of them weren’t even that well liked! Sometimes they were the most attractive, or athletic, or smart, but often it seemed more about how outgoing they were. They were the ones talking to whomever they wanted, or shouting out in class, or throwing parties. These were not qualities that she had, and sometimes she felt ignored—or weird—because of it. “When all the loud kids or popular kids were talking and laughing, I’d feel like, ‘Ugh, why can’t I just join in their conversation? It’s not a big deal! What is wrong with me?’” After all, Maggie was funny and kind. She had things to say. But at school, she didn’t show off these qualities, so she felt unnoticed and underappreciated. I’m happy to report that Maggie’s perspective changed over time. When she found out that she wasn’t the only introvert “in the entire universe,” it was a huge relief. “It started to come together when I read The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton in seventh grade,” Maggie said. “The first page of that book really stuck with me. The main character, Ponyboy, is walking home from a movie by himself, and he says that sometimes he just prefers to ‘lone it.’ I was so surprised and happy to read those words. It made me realize that this was a thing! Others feel this way too!” As I said earlier, a third to a half of the human population is introverted. Being introverted is not something to outgrow; it is something to accept and grow into—and even to cherish. The more you notice how special your introverted qualities are—and how some of the things you like best about yourself are probably connected to your introverted nature—the more your confidence will flourish and spread to other areas of your life. You don’t have to pick the activity, or befriend the people, you think you’re supposed to. Instead, do what you enjoy, and pick friends whose company you truly value. A girl named Ruby told me that during high school she twisted herself into a pretzel trying to be a gregarious “freshman mentor,” because that was a prestigious role at her school. Only after she was kicked out of the program for not being outgoing enough did she realize that actually she preferred science. She started spending time after school working with her biology teacher, and she eventually published her first scientific paper at the age of seventeen. She even won a university scholarship for biomedical engineering! As Ruby’s story shows us, there are all kinds of things that we really should do as good people, like being kind or helpful to our friends and families. But there are also so many supposed to’s. In my first year of middle school, I struggled to be the outgoing version of myself I thought I was supposed to be: bubbly, cool, and loud. It took me time to realize that I could just be whoever I was naturally. After all, the people I looked up to— my heroes and role models—were writers. They seemed genuinely cool to me—and most of them also happened to be introverts. Even though back then I didn’t have the benefit of understanding my nervous system, or even a word to describe my personality, I eventually started adapting my social life to its needs. I made some really great friends, and I noticed that I wanted to hang out with them one or two at a time, not in big groups. I decided that I wasn’t going to have the largest number of friendships, but I was going to have plenty of deep and excellent ones. And I’ve continued doing that all my life. AN ANIMATED EXPLANATION I’ve come to realize not only how important it is to follow my instincts and interests, but also to express my feelings and explain my actions to others. Here’s an example that might be familiar to you: Say you’re walking through the hallway, from one class to another, deep in thought or possibly overwhelmed by the noise and crowds. You pass a friend or classmate and glance at her briefly, but you’re so preoccupied that you don’t manage to stop to say hi and chitchat. You haven’t meant to be rude or hurtful, but your friend thinks you’re angry about something. Be on the lookout for moments of misunderstanding such as this one, and do your best to explain what you were thinking and feeling. An extroverted friend—and maybe even an introverted one—likely won’t guess that you were distracted by your thoughts or by too much sensory stimulation, and your explanation will make all the difference. Not everyone will understand your nature, though, even if you try to explain it. When Robby, a teenager from New Hampshire, first learned about introversion, he felt a great sense of relief. He had a tendency to turn quiet in large groups, and although he’d always felt comfortable talking and joking with his closest friends, he had a limit. “After a couple of hours I’m like, ‘Whoa, I can’t do this.’ It’s draining. There’s a wall that goes up and I don’t want to talk to anyone. It’s not physical exhaustion. It’s mental exhaustion.” Robby tried to explain the differences between introverts and extroverts to an outgoing friend, but she couldn’t understand his perspective. She thrived in loud, busy places and didn’t see why he needed to be alone so often. Another friend of his, Drew, grasped the idea immediately. Drew was more of an ambivert. He wasn’t as outgoing as his younger sister, but he wasn’t as reserved as his parents, either. The more he talked with Robby about what it was like to be introverted, the more he wanted people to understand both sides of his own personality. As an amateur filmmaker, Drew had been experimenting with a new animation style, and after researching the subject of introversion, he produced an animated, graphics-intensive public service announcement about what it means to be quiet. Drew posted it on YouTube, but that was only the start. He was also a producer of the high school’s television news show. Once a week, every student in the school watched the latest episode, and in one of these Drew included his PSA on introverts. The response was overwhelming; even one of the teachers, who was secretly introverted, expressed his gratitude. “I was able to bring the whole school community to an understanding,” Drew said. “For weeks afterward, people would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, that was awesome!’” His friend Robby thanked him more than anyone. Every school could benefit from a deeper understanding of the different strengths and needs of introverted and extroverted students. The middle and high school years are the most difficult times to be introverted, because when hundreds of kids are crammed together in a single building it can feel as if the only way to gain respect and friendship is through vivacity and visibility. But there are so many other great qualities to have, such as the ability to focus deeply on topics and activities, and a talent for listening with empathy and patience. These are two of the “superpowers” of introverts. Channel them; find your passions and pursue them wholeheartedly. Then you will not only survive but also thrive. STANDING OUT QUIETLY Sometimes it’s natural for the stress and drama of the school day to get to you. But you can rise above all that with your inner self intact. Here are a few quick tips that you can always refer back to: UNDERSTAND YOUR NEEDS: The boisterous environments common to schools are often taxing to introverts. Acknowledge that sometimes there will be a mismatch between you and your environment, but try not to let it stop you from being you. Find quiet times and places to recharge your batteries. And if you prefer to socialize with one or two friends at a time, rather than in a big group, that’s just fine! It can be a relief to find people who feel the same way, or who just understand where you’re coming from. LOOK FOR YOUR OWN CIRCLE: You may find that your sweet spot is with athletes, coders, or with people who are just plain nice whether or not your interests are perfectly aligned. If you need to make a checklist of things to talk about in order to get a friendship rolling, go for it. COMMUNICATE: Make sure your closest friends understand why you retreat or become quiet at times during school; talk to them about introversion and extroversion. If they’re extroverts, ask them what they need from you. FIND YOUR PASSION: This is crucial to everyone, regardless of personality type, but it’s especially important for introverts, because many of us like to focus our energy on one or two projects we really care about. Also, when you’re feeling scared, genuine passion will lift you up and give you the excitement you need to propel you through your fear. Fear is a powerful enemy, but passion is an even stronger friend. EXPAND YOUR COMFORT ZONE: We can all stretch to some degree, pushing past our apparent limitations in the service of a cause or a passion project. And if you’re stretching into an area that really frightens you—for many people, public speaking falls into this category—make sure to practice in small, manageable steps. You’ll read more about this in chapter 13. KNOW YOUR BODY LANGUAGE: Smiling will not only make other people comfortable around you—it will also make you happier and more confident. This is a biological phenomenon: Smiling sends a signal to the rest of your body that all is well. But this principle is not just about smiles: Pay attention to what your body does when you’re feeling confident and at ease—and what it does when you feel tense. Crossing your arms, for example, is often a reaction to nervousness, and it can make you seem—and feel—closed off. Practice arranging your body in the positions that don’t signal distress—and that make it feel good. Chapter Two QUIET IN THE CLASSROOM Every four weeks, Grace would burst through the door of her house after school, annoyed beyond belief. “Again!” she would vent to her mom. It happened each time the eighth-grade Student of the Month award was announced. The award was given for hard work, good behavior, and general class participation, but as far as Grace could tell, it was always handed to one of the outgoing kids. The winners, Grace explained, were always the ones who raised their hands constantly. That just wasn’t Grace’s style. In class, she sat in the back and followed the discussion by listening and jotting down notes. Other kids would blurt out a string of words at any opportunity. To her, it didn’t even seem like they were thinking before they raised their hands. It seemed as if they just wanted an audience. Grace’s teachers encouraged her to contribute more. Her friendly English teacher could tell from her written assignments that she had things to add to class discussions, and she would often prompt Grace to speak up. “She would say to me sometimes, ‘Grace, you’re being really quiet. How about you read the next three paragraphs in the textbook?’” Reluctantly, Grace would. After months of not getting the recognition she felt she deserved, Grace was set on winning that award. Her grades were good enough and she never caused trouble in class. Even though she shied away from the spotlight, she still wanted to be noticed. So she decided to mix things up: Whenever one of her teachers asked for volunteers to read aloud, Grace started raising her hand immediately. If she thought her voice sounded too shaky, she’d stop after one paragraph. If she felt good, she’d keep going. She also vowed to contribute more to open class discussions. Grace started to notice patterns to her nervousness. For example, she felt less anxious when she was called on about halfway through the class, after some of her peers had already spoken. That way, she’d have a chance to formulate her own opinions; she could either expand on other students’ ideas or disagree with them and propose something new. Sometimes when she was called on to answer a question first, she’d offer to go second or third instead, to give herself a little extra time to craft an answer. Then she’d suggest another student, someone who looked eager to have his or her voice heard. It was nerve-racking, but the strategy worked. Grace forced up her hand more and more, slowly but surely. She volunteered to read, asked questions when she needed clarification, and offered her opinions in class discussions. She hadn’t changed her ways, exactly—it was more that they were evolving out of her natural habits. Before long, she was awarded Student of the Month. RETHINKING CLASS PARTICIPATION Class participation has its benefits—it can be fun to express your ideas aloud, and it’s definitely a skill you’ll need throughout life—but in my opinion, some teachers push the idea of participation too far. Brianna, a Colorado teenager, had a teacher who gave each student three Popsicle sticks at the start of every class. The kids would sit in a big circle, and whenever they added something to the class discussion, they would throw one of their Popsicle sticks into the center. By the end of the class, they were supposed to have gotten rid of all of their sticks. “If all three sticks weren’t gone, your grade would go down dramatically,” Brianna recalled. Instead of enriching the discussion, said Brianna, the Popsicle stick technique led to meaningless blather. Kids spoke up just to be able to throw a stick into the center. Brianna too had to stoop to this level, and it frustrated her. “I don’t like to talk just to talk,” she said. “If I have something important to say, I will. But I ended up just saying a quick little sentence about anything so I could throw in the stick.” Other teachers grade students on class participation, awarding higher grades to vocal students, whether or not they’ve mastered the subject. But there are methods of teaching that instead measure “classroom engagement”—a much broader concept than “participation” that makes room for lots of different ways of interacting with material. Group discussion in class makes sense for a few reasons. It allows students to hear others’ ideas, and it reveals to teachers whether students are doing their work and whether they find it challenging. A strong class discussion can be a great way to keep students engaged with the material. But the key word is engaged. A quiet student who says little to nothing could be just as engaged as an outgoing one who tosses out responses effortlessly. A researcher named Mary Budd Rowe once studied how long teachers wait between asking a question and calling on a student who has raised his or her hand. She made video recordings of classroom discussions, studied the results, and found that teachers wait, on average, about one second before calling on someone. One second! Some educators are trying to improve class discussions by introducing a concept called “think time,” or as Rowe called it, “wait time.” It goes like this: After the teacher asks a question, he or she allows students a silent minute or two to think before continuing the discussion. A similar technique is “Think/Pair/Share,” in which students first sit quietly and think, then express their ideas to one peer or to a small group. Only then do they return to a whole-class discussion. This is a way to slowly expand your audience and ease you into feeling comfortable sharing. It also allows you time to reflect and to develop your thoughts. If you aren’t lucky enough to have a teacher who embraces ideas such as think time, and you believe your teacher would be receptive, you might try to summon the courage to have a discussion with her or him. Here’s the story of a girl in England named Emily who did just that. Emily was quiet in large groups but loud with her friends, and she learned about some of the ideas in this book through my talks and articles. When she was twelve, she had a teacher who had been calling her out for not participating enough. The idea of actually going up to her teacher and explaining herself directly was too intimidating. So instead, Emily wrote him a note. She explained that she was introverted, and that it made her uncomfortable to speak in front of such a large group. Later, her teacher asked her to stay after class for a talk. It turned out that he was an introvert too. He understood why Emily was so reluctant to speak up in class, and promised to create more opportunities for her to work in smaller groups. By communicating your needs, just as Emily did when she wrote to her teacher, you let others know where you’re coming from. Emily’s note allowed her teacher to understand that she wasn’t bored or disinterested in class; she just felt uncomfortable speaking up in front of the group. Calling attention to your shy or introverted ways may sound like a contradiction, but Emily’s story goes to show that you don’t have to suffer alone. Others can take steps to help you feel more comfortable—and they might even know these feelings from their own experiences. HOW TO BE HEARD IN THE CLASSROOM As much as I’d like to see schools and teachers rethink their approach to class participation, I also believe that you’ll feel more satisfied over the long run if you develop the confidence to contribute your ideas verbally, instead of bottling them up. Your ideas deserve to be heard and appreciated. In fact, one study found that in the typical group setting, introverts’ contributions become more and more appreciated over time, because others realize that when introverts raise their hands to speak, they usually have something worthwhile to say. If you’re a reluctant class participator, it may be helpful to understand why you feel so much discomfort speaking in class. This knowledge can make it easier to develop strategies, as Grace did, for sharing your ideas on your own terms. Why does speaking up feel so unnatural? Here are a few of the common reasons we’ve heard: I don’t want to be wrong. I don’t want to say something meaningless. I’m too busy listening to talk. I don’t have enough time to think up a response. I’m afraid I’ll get tongue-tied once I open my mouth. I just hate having all those eyes on me. I’ve never liked to be the center of attention. Some of these comments have to do with social anxiety—the fear of doing the wrong thing and feeling embarrassed in a social situation. Social anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of. Most people experience it at some point or another, but some people feel it especially intensely. When social anxiety gets the better of you, just know that you’re not alone, and give yourself small little pushes through your fear—for example, by raising your hand to answer a question you’re certain of. The more often you do this, and the more often you score small “wins,” the easier it will become over time—even if that seems impossible right now. (If this issue is impacting you on a daily basis, though, or if it’s inhibiting you from doing things you’d like to do, consider seeking the guidance of a counselor or psychologist.) At the same time, the more comfortable you get speaking up, the more you’ll realize that you don’t have to be right or “perfect” in order to merit other people’s attention. Some of the comments above have to do with perfectionism, which many introverts suffer from and which is a double- edged sword: It keeps your work at a high quality, but often prevents you from getting your ideas out there at all, since pretty much nothing anyone does or says is ever perfect. But keeping quiet isn’t always about fear, anxiety, or perfectionism. Many introverts simply prefer to wait until we have something meaningful to say (and many I spoke to expressed their wish that everyone else would follow the same etiquette!). In contrast to extroverts, who tend to think out loud, we introverts like to think before we speak. In fact, our ability to concentrate deeply on a topic is one of our particular gifts. A teacher calling on us unexpectedly can make us freeze up, since we haven’t had time to think through our response. Often, we introverts place so much value on the content and clarity of our answers that we’d rather be silent than simply blurt something out. Sometimes, by the time we think of the thing we truly want to say, the discussion is already over. Regardless of your reasons for keeping quiet, the students interviewed for this book have come up with many different strategies for making their voices heard. And many said that the more they participate, the easier it gets. The first step is to find a means of contributing that makes you comfortable. Sometimes this might be as simple as choosing the right seat. One student we spoke with always tried to sit in the front row. That way, when he spoke, he couldn’t see the other students turning to face him, and that eased his pressure. Another said he liked sitting near his friends, who made him feel more positive. Still others said that they learned to focus on and direct their comments to the classmates who seem warm and supportive, not the ones who appear too cool and haughty. Other students focus on how nervous other people are. Lola, a sixteen- year-old from Queens, New York, has noticed that her classmates are usually so wrapped up in managing their own social image that they don’t notice how nervous she sounds. The truth is, sharing thoughts and ideas makes anyone feel vulnerable. Even people who appear confident worry about getting the answer right. In a way, we’re all in this together. Some students have found that speaking in class is easier for them than normal social chitchat. For Liam, a sixth grader from Toronto, Ontario, the classroom setting allows him to express his ideas without getting caught in the back and forth. After he speaks, he explains, his teacher calls on the next person. Liam doesn’t have to worry about keeping up, the way he feels he must in conversations with friends. Grace, the girl we met at the beginning of this chapter, waited to contribute until she’d had time to “warm up.” That’s what worked for her. But the opposite strategy—preparing in advance to be one of the first to speak—might also suit you. It worked for me, back when I was a law school student. In January 2013, I spoke about my book Quiet at an event in Washington, D.C. My old friend Angie joined me onstage for a Q&A. Angie and I had met as students at Harvard Law School, and we’d recently gotten back in touch. To kick off the evening, Angie told the crowd that when we were in school, she’d had no idea that I was so introverted. Everyone was surprised, including me. But Angie pointed out that I was always one of the first people to raise my hand in class. How could I possibly have been an introvert? Her confusion made sense. At Harvard Law School, classes are taught in huge, amphitheater-style auditoriums, in a teaching style known as the Socratic method. The professor randomly calls on the students, and when you’re called, you don’t say no. It’s intimidating, but if you signed up for the class, you have to say something. I knew the rules, but I still didn’t want to be called on unexpectedly. So I always prepared a few ideas before each class, based on what we’d been studying. Then I’d screw up my courage, raise my hand, and offer my contribution as early as possible, before the discussion veered off into uncharted territory. This way, the professors were less likely to call on me later in the class, at a point where I might not have been ready with an answer. Instead, I knew, they would look for the students who hadn’t contributed yet. This strategy turned out to have another unexpected advantage, documented by social psychologists: The ideas of people who speak up first in a group tend to carry the most weight. So I often found my professors referring back to my contributions throughout the class, making me feel— quite unexpectedly—like a real presence in the room. I’m not the only one to use this sort of trick, of course. For example, when Davis was in middle school, he couldn’t even think about speaking up in a class full of students. Then he received his first B on a report card. His English teacher explained that participation was part of his grade, and since Davis never raised his hand, he couldn’t earn an A, no matter how well he did on his written exams. “It was pick your poison,” Davis recalled. “Either get a B, or raise your hand.” Davis took too much pride in his work to settle for a lower mark, so he forced himself to raise his hand and read aloud. “I was so scared at first. You’re scared that you’re going to fumble or trip over your words. I could feel the sweat coming off my forehead. But I would not allow my hand to come down,” he said. By taking these kinds of bold steps, Davis came a long way from this fear, as you’ll see in later chapters. For some of you reading this book, it may feel as if your discomfort with speaking in class is insurmountable. But you can do this—and you may find that it’s much easier than you think. Liam, the sixth grader from Toronto, says he’s grown so comfortable speaking in class that he has even started to look forward to it! Trust me—that can happen for you too. QUIET SOLUTIONS It’s okay if your heart is beating fast when you raise your hand. Many people feel this way, and speaking up is still worth it. If you don’t have time to read through the chapter above, here’s a quick list of strategies to ease the process: STRIKE EARLY: If you know the topic of discussion beforehand, plan out what you’re going to say. Develop an opinion or idea, and contribute before the discussion rambles off in an unexpected direction. IDENTIFY YOUR BEST ENTRY POINT: When are you most comfortable pitching in? Develop a strategy for joining the discussion in the way that’s easiest for you. Instead of being the first to speak, maybe you prefer building on or adding to another student’s comment. Maybe you like to be the person who asks thoughtful questions, or to play devil’s advocate. Choose a role that feels natural for you. USE NOTES: If you’re worried about freezing up while speaking, jot down your ideas on a piece of paper so that you can refer to them if needed. FOLLOW UP: If you had a point to make, but couldn’t summon the courage to raise your hand, e-mail your teacher after class, so that she or he knows you’re paying attention and are curious. OBSERVE YOUR CLASSMATES: Notice all the times when other people make nonsensical comments, or say something that’s just plain wrong, and no one minds. Develop a warm and forgiving attitude about other people’s mistakes, and thus about your own. You’ll come to realize that nothing terrible will happen if your answer is wrong or if your voice quivers slightly. “If your answer is incorrect, the teacher will simply move on to the next person,” says one wise teen named Annie. MOTIVATE: The best way to master school life is to find your personal sources of passion. Think about what goal is important to you. The more you care about a topic, the more comfortable you’ll feel speaking up about it. Chapter Three GROUP PROJECTS, THE INTROVERTED WAY Group activities are a mixed bag for introverts. On one hand, working with others can mean less pressure—the spotlight is on everyone instead of just you. On the other hand, the need to be social when working in a group can be draining to those of us who prefer to work autonomously. Karinah, the sophomore from Brooklyn, groans inwardly when her teacher assigns group work. As someone from a big family who shares a bedroom with her sister, Karinah yearns for privacy and time to herself. One of the perks of class time, she says, is that it’s a break from the social parts of school, like the hallway or the cafeteria. It can be a relief to be in a place where you’re supposed to listen quietly. It’s not that introverts don’t have ideas to contribute to a group, because we usually do. It’s that we don’t always want to say them in front of a bunch of people. Sometimes, the swagger of the outspoken kids doesn’t leave enough room for soft-spoken students to get a word in. Olivia, a middle-schooler, prefers being teamed up with the less motivated students in her class. “I like being in groups where the kids don’t do anything so I can just do it all myself,” she said. This strategy might be easy to fall back on, but why sell yourself short by working with people who don’t challenge you? The truth is that the best groups are composed of a mix of introverts and extroverts. Each type of person offers a different perspective on a problem or challenge, and together we cover more ground. You may find yourself in many different kinds of groups—in chapter 6 we’ll talk about socializing at parties and in chapter 10 about playing team sports—but group projects in school are perhaps the most challenging. But once you find a role that highlights your strengths and allows your ideas to shine through, your confidence will blossom. Whether you’re loud or quiet in groups, this chapter can help you find a role that works for you. THE RISE OF THE CLUSTERS I visited dozens of schools while researching my first book and TED Talk, and I was amazed by how many teachers nowadays assign constant group work. In classrooms across the country, desks are pushed together in clusters of four or five, and students are expected to collaborate. Take Brianna’s school in Colorado. Her Spanish class was given a group assignment with lots of creative freedom: Each group would make a video about furniture narrated in Spanish and using vocabulary they had recently learned. Brianna came up with an idea for her group: They could write a script, divide the roles into narrator, director, and editor, and then go to a furniture store like IKEA to shoot the video together. She thought her approach was sensible, but her five teammates were too busy arguing to listen. They struggled to work together. Each member of the group stood by his or her own idea, and no one seemed interested in hearing anyone else’s. So they decided to split up and film their own pieces, then splice them together into one video. “It was really choppy,” Brianna said. “Some people did more work than others. I did about half the editing because I wouldn’t speak up and say, ‘No, you have to do this too.’” Brianna wished she’d been more assertive. “It’s kind of easy for a quiet person to be walked on . . . A lot of people take advantage of that,” she said. If she could have started the project over, she would have fought harder for her initial plan. She wished that she’d slowed the pace of that first discussion so that everyone in her group had explained what they wanted to do and why. Together, they could have weeded out the ideas that didn’t work, and figured out which ones did. Suggesting this would have taken courage, Brianna admitted, but it also would have led to a better final product. And this kind of courage is more accessible to you than you might think. T-SHIRTS AND QUIET LEADERS Although we often hang back in group situations, evidence proves that introverts make strong leaders—often delivering better outcomes than extroverted leaders do. Yes, you read that right—not just decent outcomes, but better ones. Adam Grant, a psychologist at the Wharton School, worked with his colleagues to test the different ways that introverts and extroverts behave in group situations. They recruited 163 college students to participate in their experiment and split them up into teams of five. Each team had one designated leader and four followers. They were then given a pile of T-shirts and a simple task: to fold as many shirts as possible in ten minutes. Grant’s experiment had a twist, though. One “student” in each group was actually an actor who had been taught a really fast, efficient way to fold shirts. At the start of the competition, this actor told his team that he knew a great folding method, and asked if they wanted to learn it. When the leader of the group had a more introverted style, that team was more likely to listen to the actor’s idea. The leaders who were more extroverted were less likely to accept input. And this made a big difference. Groups that listened to the tip ended up folding faster. These findings weren’t just about T-shirts, though. Professor Grant also examined the earnings at a chain of pizza shops, and found that the best- performing stores were the ones staffed by proactive employees led by an introverted boss. Another famous study by Jim Collins found that every single one of the eleven best performing companies in the U.S. were led by CEOs who were described by their peers as “modest,” “unassuming,” “soft-spoken,” “quiet,” and “shy.” This isn’t as surprising as you’d think. Introverts tend to assume leadership positions within groups when they really have something to contribute. Then, once they’re there, they listen carefully to the ideas of the people they lead. All of this gives them a big advantage over leaders who rise to the top simply because they’re comfortable talking a lot or being in control. Just take a look at Karinah’s story. Karinah’s tenth-grade English teacher divided the class into groups and asked them to make PowerPoint presentations on a historical fiction novel. By the time the presentation was assigned, Karinah had already read the book and understood it well. To call her a bookworm is an understatement; she practically devours her school’s reading list, in addition to enjoying fantasy and sci-fi novels on her own. Nonetheless, she was resistant to speaking up about it and wasn’t looking forward to being grouped with her peers. When her teacher assigned the groups, Karinah was surprised to find herself with three students just as introverted as she was. Their first meeting had a lot of pauses. It seemed as if everyone was waiting for someone else to step up as leader. Finally, Karinah found the courage to speak—after all, she’d read the book and had opinions about how imagery and setting were used in the story. “After I shared my thoughts, I asked my group, ‘What do you want to do? Does this work for you?’” It turned out that by encouraging other students to speak instead of hogging the spotlight, Karinah helped her team members open up too. Soon, each member put forth an idea of his or her own. “When we were listening to each other, it felt like we had each other’s backs,” she said. Having proved to herself that she can speak up in a group and feel listened to, Karinah now feels less anxious when sitting in a cluster of desks. “I’ve never been able to be the leader before. I think it went well. It turned out that together we actually knew what we were doing. And,” she added with a smile, “it felt good to realize that I was doing something.” Liam, the sixth grader from Toronto, has also found a way to make group activities work for him—by getting his teachers to agree that the students can choose their own partners. Liam can then work with friends whose skills and knowledge complement one another. For example, his class was assigned the group project of making posters about climate change. Liam and his best friend, Elliot, and their friend Meredith decided to make an electronic poster using Photoshop about the four seasons. “Elliot had ideas about making the poster look good with pictures and bullet points. Our friend Meredith is really smart and knows a lot about science. I know more about Photoshop and computers, so I think altogether we’ll have a great project.” By choosing a congenial group with a variety of talents, Elliot, Liam, and Meredith created something they were truly proud of. THE OBSERVANT EDITOR The ability to listen to others may not sound like our cultural model of strong leadership—but the power of really hearing other people should not be discounted. Here’s how Lucy, a quiet British teenager, used this power to find her own niche as a leader. As Lucy transitioned from middle school to high school, she began recognizing her unique skills and strengths as an introvert, and embracing her quiet nature. She joined the school magazine, and soon enough was named deputy editor. Among her duties were proofreading, assisting in choosing which articles to publish, and making sure her classmates met all of their deadlines. Lucy could accomplish most of her work in solitude, and when she needed to send a writer feedback on an article, or remind students of their approaching deadlines, she could do so via e-mail. This arrangement suited her temperament. There were brainstorming meetings with other editors too, but they were all friends, so Lucy felt comfortable contributing. It was at the magazine- wide meetings that she became quiet. During these meetings, all the writers, photographers, editors, and designers met around a table to make announcements; it was an intimidatingly large group compared to her small meetings with the editors. Even though Lucy didn’t speak much, she was far from detached. As we’ve said, introverts are often great observers, and Lucy is no exception. In addition to listening closely, she watched everyone, studying their reactions. During one early planning session, she noticed a conflict of interest. The staff had unanimously agreed that the first issue should have the collage-y look of a scrapbook or Tumblr page, but when the graphic designer presented her work at the meeting, Lucy saw right away that it hadn’t achieved that artsy feel—there weren’t enough pictures and the font was too formal. In the meeting everyone said that it looked great, but as Lucy looked around the room, she could tell from the other students’ faces that they didn’t really mean it. They were either afraid to speak up, or too nice to be critical. After the meeting, Lucy approached the executive editor to discuss the situation, and she discovered that her intuition was spot-on—the staff was unhappy with the way the design had turned out, but no one knew how to speak up without upsetting the designer. So Lucy came up with a plan: She and the executive editor would meet privately with the designer in order to provide constructive feedback; they would gently suggest taking the design in another direction. In the end, the designer accepted their ideas, and the magazine’s first cover was a huge hit with teachers and students. THRIVING WITHIN A GROUP I still prefer working alone—it’s part of my job as a writer, after all—but even I believe that working with others in a group is an essential life skill. And working in groups is an increasingly large part of my life now that we’ve launched the Quiet Revolution! Over the years, I’ve taught myself how to succeed in group environments. I want you to find the same success—and even comfort. Here are a few tips to guide you along the way: QUIET, NOT SILENT: You don’t need to talk over anyone, or to speak up at every opportunity, but do share your thoughts in a way that’s comfortable for you. Perhaps you’ll opt for one-on- one conversations with key members of your group. (It can be especially effective to have these conversations before the meeting starts.) Or try written communication as an alternative to speaking in front of a bunch of people: Start a group e-mail or message chain so that you can lay out your thoughts without the pressure of wording everything perfectly on the spot. Some teachers may create an online forum for students to discuss ideas, give feedback, or post their results. (If yours hasn’t done so, think about suggesting it.) THE RIGHT ROLE: Lucy found that she contributed best by taking notes, conducting research, and tapping into her powers as an observer. Others are more comfortable playing the role of devil’s advocate, or facilitating a group meeting by asking for others’ ideas, without necessarily advancing their own. Put time into finding the role or roles that best fit your personality. Behind-the-scenes work is just as important as what goes on in the spotlight—just look at the film and technology industries! NEW PARTNERS: If you notice that you work well and feel comfortable with certain people, try collaborating with them. That’s not to say you should only work with friends or people who are just like you. Test out different partnerships—it can be a good way to get to know new people, and you might find that some classmates bring out your assertive leadership side. ADVOCATE FOR QUIET: Before any group discussion, suggest that everyone take a few minutes to come up with ideas quietly. This may help both the introverted and extroverted members of your group pause and frame their thoughts, leading to more meaningful conversations. FIND COMMUNITIES OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL: Practice your ability to work in groups by taking extracurricular courses or workshops in subjects or activities you love. Volunteering is also a great way to get involved in projects or groups that speak to you. TRY “BRAINWRITING”: This is a time-honored system in which each member of a group writes an idea down on a Post-it or piece of paper. Then each person puts his or her paper up on a board for everyone to discuss at once. This simple technique makes it easier for everyone to suggest ideas without fear of being interrupted or disapproved of. HOW TO AVOID BEING INTERRUPTED: If you feel that you tend to be talked over, try this technique. Signal that you want to keep talking by raising your voice slightly and holding up your hand with your palm facing out. This is a polite method that still succeeds in saying, “Back off, I’m not done yet.” SPEAK UP EARLY: Give yourself a little push to speak up early in a group session. Once you’ve spoken, you’ll feel more comfortable, and others will start directing their own comments to you. You’ll feel more a part of things, and this will help you gain confidence. Chapter Four QUIET LEADERS Every year at Grace’s school, a select group of twenty-five eighth graders are chosen to help younger students adjust to middle school. They’re called “peer leaders.” Grace’s older sister had been one. She had gushed about what an amazing and motivating experience it was to help the younger kids. In sixth grade, Grace herself had been too shy to make new friends. She wished someone had given her guidance, and now she believed that she could be there for some of the new sixth graders. She thought she could spot those introverted kids and give them a hand as they came out of their shells. She decided to follow in her sister’s footsteps and apply. It was intimidating, but after filling out the necessary paperwork, Grace felt up to the challenge. Applicants were divided into groups of eight for group interviews. Based on the students’ performances, the teachers and administrators would select the next crop of peer leaders. Grace knew that she was up against a lot of other kids in her grade: Almost four out of every five kids wanted to be a peer leader. She figured that most of the people chosen would be the talkative, outgoing ones. When the time for her session arrived, she waited outside the school conference room with the other kids. As she suspected, all but one, a soft-spoken boy she knew from class, were what Grace referred to as “screaming extroverts.” Inside the room, two teachers and the vice principal sat at one end of a long table. The kids took their seats, ready to answer interview questions, which were written out on index cards. A few of the kids volunteered immediately, but Grace wasn’t ready right away. She understood that she didn’t need to be the first to speak. She’d learned from her experience in English class that she was more comfortable going after others. “I wanted to listen and pay attention,” she said. “The kids were all jumping in, but I would answer when it was quiet, when no one else was talking, or at the end, when everyone was done.” As Grace grew more comfortable, and began adding her own thoughts to the discussion, she noticed that the quiet boy from her class was saying nothing at all. It seemed as if he was going to offer an answer a few times, but then someone else would start talking. Grace was tempted to tell the others to calm down and give him a chance, but that wasn’t her way. Instead, she raised her hand during a lull in the conversation and asked him if he wanted to speak. “Yes,” he replied, “but I was nervous.” To help him out, Grace volunteered the question on her own index card, which asked what he might have done differently if he were starting middle school all over again. The boy answered, and then Grace pitched in with her own response, confessing that she would have tried to branch out more and meet more people, instead of staying within her close-knit group of three girls. When the interview session was over, Grace wasn’t sure how she had fared. Had she spoken enough to show the teachers that she could be a “leader”? A few days later, though, she learned that she’d been selected. And that wasn’t the only good news. Thanks to her efforts, the quiet boy in her interview group was named a peer leader too. By helping her peer, Grace had shown true leadership. WHAT IS A LEADER? When I traveled around the U.S. visiting different private and public schools, I noticed two problematic trends: The first was that many educators seemed to value leadership as a quality that all students should have—even though many students prefer to live autonomously, to chart their own paths. The second was that leadership, whether consciously or not, was usually defined as being extroverted. The young people with so- called leadership skills were usually the outspoken kids. When the quiet kids sought leadership roles in group projects or on the student council, they were often put in charge of secondary work, such as taking notes at meetings or assisting others. But leadership doesn’t require being highly social or attention-seeking. I believe that the time has come to focus on the power of the quiet leader. The most effective leaders are not motivated by a desire to control events or to be in the spotlight. They are motivated by the desire to advance ideas and new ways of looking at the world, or to improve the situation of a group of people. These motivations belong to introverts and extroverts alike. You can achieve these same goals—you can be inspiring and motivational—without compromising your quiet ways. In sports, business, and the classroom, there are so many different styles of leadership. The brash, bold, popular kids often get the most attention, but don’t let appearances fool you! Quiet leaders have risen to some of the highest positions of power in the world. Consider Eileen Fisher, the shy, introverted, and mega-successful clothing designer and company owner. Fisher’s introversion inspires her creative work—she says that she learned to design comfortable clothes that would make her feel more comfortable in her own skin. As an introverted leader, Fisher is in esteemed company. Bill Gates, the genius who transformed Microsoft into one of the most profitable and powerful companies in the world and has since launched the Gates Foundation—one of the world’s most innovative philanthropic organizations—is another self-professed introvert. (He even named my TED Talk one of his favorite talks ever!) Another notable introvert is Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, who is respected as a quiet, deep thinker who is known for working well with others—and also for sitting at his desk for hours at a time, poring over financial documents. Even Martha Minow, the dean of my old law school, the place where spoken participation is essential, says she’s a strong introvert. A HUMAN RIGHTS LEADER One of the most inspiring and enduring examples of an introverted leader in American history is Eleanor Roosevelt. Roosevelt grew up as a painfully shy and careful child, ashamed of her appearance and of her quiet temperament. Her mother, a beautiful, social aristocrat, had nicknamed Eleanor “Granny” because of her demeanor. When Eleanor married an up- and-coming politician, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a distant cousin of hers, his family and friends made it clear that Eleanor wasn’t the light, witty type Franklin had been expected to wed. Just the opposite: Eleanor was slow to laugh, bored by small talk, serious-minded, shy. And she was fiercely intelligent. In 1921, FDR contracted polio. It was a terrible blow, but Eleanor kept his contacts with the Democratic Party alive while he recovered, even agreeing to address a party fundraiser. She was terrified of public speaking, and not much good at it—she had a high-pitched voice and laughed nervously at all the wrong times. But she trained for the event and made her way through the speech. After that, Eleanor was still unsure of herself, but she began working to fix the social problems she saw all around her. She became a champion of civil rights, women’s rights, and immigrants’ rights. By 1928, when FDR was elected governor of New York, she was the director of the Bureau of Women’s Activities for the Democratic Party and one of the most influential people in American politics. FDR was elected president in 1933. It was the height of the Great Depression, and Eleanor traveled the country, meeting with people to discuss their hard-luck stories. When she returned home from her meetings, she often told Franklin what she’d seen, and pressed him to create change. She helped put together government programs for half-starved coal miners in Appalachia. She urged FDR to include women and African Americans in his programs that were putting people back to work. The shy young woman who’d been terrified of public speaking grew to love public life. Eleanor Roosevelt became the first First Lady to hold a press conference, address a national convention, write a newspaper column, and appear on talk radio. Later in her career she served as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations, where she used her unusual brand of political skills and firmness to help win passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. She never did outgrow her quiet vulnerability; all her life she suffered dark “Griselda moods,” as she called them (named for a princess in a medieval legend who withdrew into silence), and she struggled to develop skin “as tough as rhinoceros hide.” “I think people who are shy remain shy always, but they learn how to overcome it,” she said. But it was this sensitivity that made it easy for her to relate to oppressed people, and to advocate on their behalf. CLASS PRESIDENT Davis, the shy guy we first met in chapter 1, followed in the footsteps of these quiet leaders. Though he felt overwhelmed when he started middle school, he found a way to balance being around his peers and being alone. When solitude wore on him, he joined the middle-school math team and, thanks to his ability to focus intently on problems for a long time, excelled in competitions. Patience was one of his strengths. As he built friendships with other kids on the team, he became more comfortable opening up and sharing his ideas about how the group could work together and improve. By the time Davis reached eighth grade, he was one of the captains. It surprised him to find that being a leader inspired him—and that he was good at it. An upside to being introverted, Davis found, was being a skilled observer. It meant that he could notice and empathize with what others were feeling, or try to understand where they were coming from. As he began noticing changes that needed to be made within the school as a whole, he decided that he wanted to be the one to make the changes happen. So when his homeroom teacher asked for a volunteer to serve on the student council, Davis took a deep breath and did what he usually avoided in class. He raised his hand. At the first meeting, it was obvious that most of the other kids on the student council were popular. Laughing and chatting around the table, they seemed completely at ease within the group. Davis wondered whether he’d made a mistake. The only person he knew in the room was his cousin Jessica, a seventh grader who was a lively member of the cheerleading squad. Jessica knew Davis better than anyone else at school did. Their families had dinner together every weekend. She knew that even though her cousin was quiet and shy, he didn’t want to remain in the background. Deep down, he wanted to make a difference—and she believed in his ability to do it. So, when it came time for the election of student body president, she asked her cousin to run. Davis thought she was insane. The most popular girl in school was already planning to run; her victory was almost guaranteed. As one of the only people of color at his predominantly white school, Davis had often been made to feel like an outsider. As he reflected on the student council election, it seemed so uncertain whether people would vote for him —a shy, Vietnamese American guy. Jessica heard him out, but urged him to trust her. The worst that could happen, she said, was that he’d lose and everyone would forget he ran in the first place. Davis eventually agreed, and as he started planning what he’d do if he were president, his cousin also went to work. She helped him put up posters all around school. “Everyone was like, ‘Who is this guy?’” Davis recalled. “They knew I was the nerd, but they didn’t know much else.” Before the election, the two candidates delivered short speeches to each homeroom class. Davis was terrified of standing up and speaking. Jessica accompanied him, though, and reminded him that he knew what he was doing. Davis’s opponent seemed comfortable at the front of the room. Her platform was quite simple: She promised more social events, like school dances and talent shows. Davis’s ideas for the school were more specific. After all, he had spent the last two years observing his school and noticing things that could be improved. His speech was devoted to all of the ways he planned to make changes if he were elected president. The cafeteria was one of his major issues. The school rules stated that you had to sit with your homeroom; switching tables to sit with friends in other grades or classes was forbidden. Davis had noticed how frustrating this was for most people, and he proposed that as president, he would encourage the principal to let kids sit wherever they wanted, as long as they behaved. He had also noticed that kids tended to ask each other academic questions before bringing them to their teachers, so he proposed a peer-to- peer tutoring system that would allow kids to exchange knowledge. He shared other ideas as well. Davis was scared as he moved from class to class, but he delivered his message. And his classmates listened. By the end of the homeroom speeches, both Davis and his opponent had done a good job. She was charismatic and captured the audience’s attention. The more she and Davis each spoke in front of the crowd, though, the clearer it was that Davis’s ideas were better developed and likelier to succeed. The results of the election were announced on a Friday morning. The quiet kid who rode home from his first day of school with gum in his hair was the new student body president! Davis triumphed because he learned to draw on his own natural strengths. He concentrated on substance, not style. Instead of trying to be as social as the most popular kid in school, he focused on being a great candidate. He addressed hard-hitting issues—the things that he noticed as a natural observer. He didn’t let his discomfort stop him. He was brave to put himself forward like that—and everyone saw it. LEADERS AS LISTENERS As a teenager, I was never a so-called natural leader, but I wasn’t a follower, either. Even though I was shy, I had a fiercely determined sense of my own path through the world. Writing was already my passion, so I could have tried to become editor of the school newspaper—but the paper had an enormous staff. I couldn’t imagine myself managing that many people. Besides, what I really loved was creative writing, not journalism. So I became the editor of the school’s literary magazine, a smaller, more personal publication. The kids who wrote for the magazine were more artistic and unconventional than the journalism crowd; I felt comfortable with them. And among this collection of quirky kids, I learned that I could get things done in my own quiet way. People were open to listening to me and making room for my ideas and my leadership style. One wrote in my yearbook at the end of the year how much he’d appreciated having had a leader he could respect. His words stunned me—it was the first time I ever thought of myself as a leader. Laurie, an athletic and ambitious teenager from Westchester, New York, described how she cultivated a similarly quiet manner of leadership. Laurie is a classic introvert. When her parents took her to baseball games at Yankee Stadium, she’d tune out the tens of thousands of cheering fans and flip open a novel. No matter how hard she tried to psych herself up for group activities, she couldn’t get into the excitement. This side of her personality felt like a flaw; she was ashamed of herself and wanted to create an identity that was more outgoing and social. “I didn’t want to say that I was introverted,” she recalled. “I felt like it was a negative word.” Laurie thought of herself as other things besides an introvert, though. She also believed she was a leader. In her heart, she knew that these two identities were not contradictory. As a junior in high school, she decided that it was her turn to be a team captain of her track team. Becoming captain was a process: Each student who tried out for the role would interview with the coaches and share her perspective on how to improve the team. Laurie had already been observing the team for two years, considering exactly that question. When she met with her coaches, she offered a few different ideas. She had noticed that the team could use more unity. There were eighty girls, and some never interacted at all, since their events were so different, from long-distance running to pole vaulting. Laurie wondered whether her teammates would perform better at meets if they felt more support from one another. So, one of Laurie’s first proposals was that the girls stretch together as a team at the start of each practice. She also proposed that they perform core or abdominal exercises as a group, since that was something everyone needed to do anyway. And even though Laurie herself was more inclined to small, intimate social gatherings, she suggested that some team dinners, group community service projects, and social outings beyond the track would bring the girls together. Laurie’s ideas made sense to the coaches, who could tell that she’d been paying careful attention. They selected her as one of the captains, and she remained in that role until she graduated. She didn’t try to change her personality and force herself to be a loud, outspoken leader. She led by example, first and foremost. In addition to guiding her teammates through the group stretches, she regularly posted team goals on their Facebook page. She wanted the athletes to earn personal bests. The team was good and she encouraged them to strive for a championship. Laurie was never one to lead the team cheers; it wasn’t her thing. She left that to her co-captains. Meanwhile, she connected with her teammates, especially the younger ones, on an individual basis. She’d chat with them before and after practices, answering questions or reviewing what they’d done that day. The more she learned about these girls and what drove them, the easier it was to help them succeed. Before meets, Laurie and her co- captains would gather the team to exchange strategies, everything from how much sleep to get the night before a race to what kinds of food would give them more energy. If the individual members succeeded, the team succeeded. If the team succeeded—then she as a leader had too. Although Laurie wasn’t the loudest, she found that when she did speak, her teammates listened. “As you get closer, and spend more time together, people just naturally start to respect you more as a captain and a leader. And then when you do have to lead practices, people listen to you. They watch what you’re doing. You don’t need to command their attention by yelling and shouting.” Her teammates appreciated the benefits of her more reserved, personal style of leadership, and Laurie was captain for four seasons. As a senior, she fully saw the effects of her efforts when the team had an unprecedented run of success. “The track program really took off,” she said. “We broke a lot of school records and won our league championships twice. Kids were getting into college for track for the first time.” Including Laurie, who would go on to run track at Harvard. It was clear that the team owed its success partly to the quiet captain who made room for everyone’s voice to be heard. LEADING WITHOUT SHOUTING Quietly powerful leaders have guided us throughout history. And as Davis’s story exemplifies, your own quiet strength will shine through, even among your louder and bubblier peers. As you read the tips below, keep in mind the words of Sir Winston Churchill, who was prime minister of Great Britain throughout World War II: “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” Are you seeking a leadership role of your own? Here’s a collection of advice to start you on your way: PLAY TO YOUR STRENGTHS: Davis was terrified when he had to speak in front of his peers, but instead of trying to be the funny, social guy, he focused his speeches on the substantive reasons he was running for office. In the end, his classmates valued the content of his speeches—and his courage—more than the smiles of his competitor. FOLLOW YOUR PASSIONS: Leading people is hard enough, but trying to do so in the service of a cause or goal that means little to you is nearly impossible. Whether it’s a charitable cause or a sports team, tap into your passion, and let others see how much you care. CONNECT AND LISTEN: Introverts specialize in forging deep personal relationships. We’re great listeners. Both of these traits can transform you into a powerful leader. When people see that you care about what they’re thinking and feeling, they’re more likely to follow you. If you don’t think you excel in large groups or at the podium, build your alliances slowly and steadily, one empathetic conversation at a time. EMPOWER OTHERS: Dictatorial rule rarely works; no one appreciates being bossed around. Generous leaders make sure that others have a sense of purpose, by giving them key roles and by soliciting their opinions and acting on them when they make sense. As a listener and observer, you’ll be uniquely tuned in to which roles suit which people in your group. DON’T BE AFRAID TO DESERVE IT: The fact that you’re quiet doesn’t mean that you’re not strong. It doesn’t mean people won’t follow you. Laurie believed in herself as a leader, so she sought the role of captain, and she proved to her coaches that they were right to select her. FIND A ROLE MODEL: No matter how many times I assure you that there is such a thing as a quietly powerful leader, it probably won’t mean much to you without a flesh-and-blood example of your own. Think of a person in your life—whether someone you know personally, or a famous figure you admire from afar—who is a strong leader and who has a temperament similar to yours. This will show you that it really can be done— and you can even try to mentally “channel” this person when you’re feeling unsure of yourself. LEAD BY EXAMPLE: This is one of the tenets of leadership, and it’s an easy one for the quietest introverts to follow. Showing your classmates, teammates, or friends that you’re dedicated and diligent can be just as inspiring as a rousing speech. Chapter Five QUIET FRIENDSHIP We all know loud, charming people who can walk into a room full of strangers and step out an hour later with two or three new soul mates. These kids and adults are held up as our social ideal, as if this is the way we’re	339,521
The Maine Woods A Fully Annotated Edition (Henry D. Thoreau) (Z-Library).pdf	The Maine Woods The Maine Woods h e n r y d . t h o r e a u a f u l l y a n n o t a t e d e d i t i o n Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer Yale University Press New Haven and London Copyright © 2009 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Sonia Shannon. Set in Adobe Garamond type by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication-Data Thoreau, Henry David, 1817–1862. The Maine woods : a fully annotated edition / Henry D. Thoreau ; edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-300-12283-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Piscataquis County (Me.)—Description and travel. 2. Maine—Description and travel. 3. Thoreau, Henry David, 1817–1862—Travel—Maine. 4. Authors, American—19th century—Biography. I. Cramer, Jeffrey S., 1955–. II. Title. f27.p5t43 2009 917.4'1043—dc22 2009015161 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Greg Joly Often on bare rocky carries the trail was so indistinct that I repeatedly lost it, but when I walked behind him I observed that he could keep it almost like a hound, and rarely hesitated, or, if he paused a moment on a bare rock, his eye immediately detected some sign which would have escaped me. —“The Allegash and East Branch” Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Permissions xiii Introduction xv T h e m a i n e w o o d s Ktaadn 1 Chesuncook 76 The Allegash and East Branch 146 Appendix 278 Supplement 305 Choice of Copy Text 307 Textual Notes and Emendations 309 Bibliography 343 Index 351 Preface ix Preface My purpose in editing The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edi- tion has been twofold: to examine the text of The Maine Woods in light of the research and commentary that has appeared in the 135 years since it was first published, and to present a reliable text with a comprehensive series of annotations. While paying tribute to and honoring the work that has come before, I have tried to correct errors and omissions of previous editions without creating new ones. Acknowledgments xi Acknowledgments The Maine Woods: A Fully Annotated Edition could not have been made without the help of literally hundreds of people, known and unknown. Many are acknowledged below, but there are some who, I regret, have become anonymous, and for these omissions of credit I apologize. There is generosity and enthusiasm in the world for which I am appreciative, and it is rewarding to know that such dedication and passion exists. I am grateful to previous editors of The Maine Woods, particu- larly Joseph J. Moldenhauer, and to the work of William Howarth and J. Parker Huber. Their work has contributed greatly to this new edition of The Maine Woods. No work such as this could be completed without the indis- pensable work and dedication of librarians who, with the advent of the Internet, have each become my local librarian wherever they may sit. In particular I would like to thank the State of Maine Law and Legislative Reference Library; the Old Town (Maine) Public Library; the Caribou (Maine) Public Library; Raymond H. Fogler Library, University of Maine; Maine Folklife Center; Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress; Moosehead Histori- cal Society; Monson Historical Society; Bangor (Maine) Public Library; American Museum of Natural History; Kansas City Pub- lic Library; Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress; Boston Public Library; Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library; Henry E. Huntington Library in San Marino, California; and the Pierpont Morgan Library. In addition, the following have been indispensable in offering help in various ways: Everett Parker; John Neff; Tom Kelleher, xii Acknowledgments Old Sturbridge Village; Micah A. Pawling; Zip Kellogg; Cliff Bart on Marm Howard; David Gamage on the Whitehead Light; Stanley F. Lombardo on Homer; Mark Griffith and Michael Lloyd on Aeschylus; Melanie Mohney and Scott Michaud on Waite’s Farm; Philippe Charland, Université du Quebec a Montreal, for his help with the Abenaki language; Debbie (Pelletier) Tajmajer on the Sawyers of Greenville; Glen Blouin on Native American medicinal uses of alder bark; Tony L. Nette, Arthur R. Rodgers, and Mike Schrage on moose horns; Ray Angelo on spruce trees; Rick Sisco on snakes; and Jan Hokes. I am indebted to Don Henley, Founder and President of the Walden Woods Project, and to Kathi Anderson, its Executive Di- rector, for their vision of a center for Thoreau studies, and to the many scholars who have donated their research to the collections of the Walden Woods Project, the Thoreau Society, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society. These collections, housed at the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, Lincoln, Massachusetts, and managed by the Walden Woods Project, constitute an invaluable and un- paralleled resource, without which this book could not have been completed. I would also like to express gratitude to Jennifer Banks, my edi- tor at Yale University Press, for her support, and to Dan Heaton for his masterful editing of the manuscript. Thanks to my daughters, Kazia and Zoë, for again sharing time with this dead nineteenth century Transcendentalist. And finally, always and forever, Julia—as Thoreau wrote, “Till we have loved we have not imagined the heights of love.” Permissions xiii Permissions Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Thoreau Society and the Walden Woods Project’s Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods for permission to quote from the unpublished correspondence of Fanny Eckstorm to Walter Harding, October 1840, in the Walter Harding Collection (Thoreau Society Collections), Thoreau Insti- tute at Walden Woods. Introduction xv Introduction Shall we not quit our companions, as if they were thieves and pot-companions, and betake ourselves to some desert cliff of mount Katahdin, some unvisited recess of Moosehead Lake, to bewail our innocency and to recover it, and with it the power to communicate again with these sharers of a more sacred idea? —Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Method of Nature” (1841) The Maine woods were present in Thoreau’s consciousness for more than half his life. He is known to have made six excursions to Maine: in May 1838 to search for a teaching position; in 1846 to climb Mount Katahdin; in 1849 and 1851 to lecture on econ- omy and Cape Cod, respectively; in 1853 to observe a moose hunt; and in 1857 to travel the Allegash and Penobscot Rivers. In his journal are numerous references to Maine, to Indians, and to the life it represented. Thoreau’s last recorded intelligible words were “moose” and “Indian.” Thoreau made his Ktaadn excursion during his second year at Walden Pond, despite his statement at the end of Walden that his “second year was similar” to the first. Thoreau was invited to accompany his cousin George Thatcher, who was in the lumber business in Maine and would be traveling to look at some prop- erty. During this time Thoreau made one of the few early ascents of Mount Katahdin by a non–Native American, finding a primor- dial landscape in which he felt like an intruder. “For what canst thou pray here,” he wrote in his journal, “but to be delivered from here.” xvi Introduction It was this feeling, expanded and manipulated in the published essay, which led to one of Thoreau’s most powerful comments on man’s place in nature: “Think of our life in nature,—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it,—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?” Thoreau lectured about his Ktaadn excursion in Concord in January 1848, and published his account, begun while at Walden, in five installments in Sartain’s Union Magazine of Literature and Art, from July through November 1848. “Chesuncook” describes a moose-hunting expedition Thoreau took in September 1853. It was his object to accompany Thatcher on a hunt. Thoreau distanced himself from the actual hunt by ex- plaining that he “had not come a-hunting, and felt some com- punctions about accompanying the hunters.” He had gone to see a moose, confessing at the same time that he “was not sorry to learn how the Indian managed to kill one.” Thoreau went as a “reporter” to the hunt, and his description of “that still warm and palpitat- ing body pierced with a knife,” of the “warm milk” that streamed “from the rent udder, and the ghastly naked red carcass appearing from within its seemly robe,” rivals, in less epic proportion, scenes of whale hunting in Moby-Dick. Almost equally well known as the essay itself, however, is the incident regarding its publication in the Atlantic Monthly. A sen- tence about the pine tree—“It is as immortal as I am, and per- chance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still”— had been expurgated. Thoreau was outraged at this liberty, writing to James Russell Lowell, then editor of the magazine, on 22 June 1858: “The editor has, in this case, no more right to omit a senti- ment than to insert one, or put words into my mouth. . . . I am Introduction xvii not willing to be associated in any way, unnecessarily, with parties who will confess themselves so bigoted & timid as this implies. I could excuse a man who was afraid of an uplifted fist, but if one manifests fear at the utterance of a sincere thought, I must think that his life is a kind of nightmare continued into broad daylight.” He did not publish anything else in the Atlantic Monthly until after Lowell’s resignation as editor in early 1861. It was during Thoreau’s final excursion to Maine, in 1857, that he met the Native American Joe Polis, who became his guide and earned his great respect. When originally asked for a piece for the Atlantic Monthly, Thoreau declined sending “The Allegash and East Branch”—instead submitting “Chesuncook”—because, as he wrote to Lowell: “The more fatal objection to printing my last Maine-wood experience, is that my Indian guide, whose words & deeds I report very faithfully,—and they are the most interesting part of the story,—knows how to read, and takes a newspaper, so that I could not face him again.” “The Allegash and East Branch” is the least formed of the pieces, never having been redacted from its journal-entry struc- ture—a style Thoreau did not use in his published writings—to an essay that finally expressed what Thoreau summed up about this excursion on 18 August 1857 to visit his friend, H. G. O. Blake: I have now returned, and think I have had a quite profitable journey, chiefly from associating with an intelligent Indian. . . . I have made a short excursion into the new world which the Indian dwells in, or is. He begins where we leave off. It is worth the while to detect new faculties in man, he is so much the more divine; and anything that fairly excites our admiration expands us. The Indian who can find his way xviii Introduction so wonderfully in the woods possesses so much intelligence which the white man does not, and it increases my own ca- pacity as well as faith to observe it. I rejoice to find that intelligence flows in other channels than I knew. Despite Robert Louis Stevenson’s dismissal that “Thoreau could not clothe his opinions in the garment of art, for that was not his talent,” the essays in The Maine Woods are paradigms of the writer’s art presented in the guise of unadorned travel narrative. The traveler, Thoreau wrote in his journal, “is to be reverenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of our life. Going from ———toward———; it is the history of every one of us.” In the construction of his literary excursions, Thoreau clearly outlined a progression, not just in the physical distance from Massachusetts to Maine, but from the man who left Concord to the man who returned. Always, and foremost, Thoreau was a writer, and each essay is more than a factual account of a single excursion to Maine. In a letter to Ralph Waldo Emerson of 12 January 1848, Thoreau wrote: “I read a part of the story of my excursion to Ktaadn to quite a large audience of men and boys, the other night, whom it inter- ested. It contains many facts and some poetry.” Poetry, Thoreau wrote in his journal, “puts an interval between the impression and the expression,—waits till the seed germinates naturally.” It is the poetry and deliberation of thought that makes a Thoreauvian excursion. The poet “must be something more than natural. . . . Nature will not speak through but along with him. His voice will not proceed from her midst, but, breathing on her, will make her the expression of his thought.” Thoreau knew, as he wrote in his journal, that there is “no such thing as pure objective observation.” To be “interesting, i.e. to be Introduction xix significant” the writer’s observations “must be subjective. The sum of what the writer of what ever class has to report is simply some human experience.” The essays of The Maine Woods report the human experience as Thoreau understood it in relation to exter- nal conditions: the human experience in relation to the wild; the human experience in relation to the animal; the human experience of European descent in relation to the Native American. As a writer Thoreau understood the importance of setting “down something besides facts,” as he also wrote in his journal. Facts were to stand only as the “frame to my pictures; they should be the material to the mythology which I am writing.” As he wrote in “Autumnal Tints”: “The actual objects which one man will see from a particular hilltop are just as different from those which another will see as the beholders are different. . . . We cannot see anything until we are possessed with the idea of it, take it into our heads, and then we can hardly see anything else. . . . A man sees only what concerns him.” What concerned Thoreau was not the progress of the pilgrim- age but what the mountains and the rivers and the woods said to him, and they spoke to him of man’s place in nature, of that which is sacred and that which is profane. Contemplation of the natural world was as important a factor in the development of Thoreau’s philosophy and ethic as was association with Emerson, John Brown, Joe Polis, Walt Whitman, and other representative men. Although it is common to distinguish between Thoreau’s natural history essays and his reform essays, it is to make, to use a phrase Thoreau often used, a distinction without a difference. In a journal entry of 6 May 1851 Thoreau wrote: “How impor- tant is a constant intercourse with nature and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the preservation of moral and intellec- tual health! . . . The philosopher contemplates human affairs as xx Introduction calmly and from as great a remoteness as he does natural phe- nomena. The ethical philosopher needs the discipline of the natu- ral philosopher. He approaches the study of mankind with great advantages who is accustomed to the study of nature.” When he returned from a trip to Minnesota in July 1861, where he had gone to improve his health, it was clear that his time and strength were limited by the tuberculosis that would end his life in less than a year. Much of the time that remained was spent in preparing various works for posthumous publication, including his writings about Maine—two previously published essays, his journal entries about his 1857 excursion, and his notes that formed the appendix—which he redacted into The Maine Woods. The Maine Woods was the second posthumous volume of Thoreau’s writings. Like its predecessor, Excursions, it was com- piled by Thoreau’s sister, Sophia, with help from friends, in this case William Ellery Channing. Unlike Excursions, however, The Maine Woods did have some authorial approval. The first extant record by Thoreau of his possible intention to use his Maine essays in some way beyond their initial publication was in an 1858 letter to Lowell in relation to “Chesuncook”: “I reserve the right to pub- lish it in another form after it has appeared in your magazine.” Unlike another posthumous book, Cape Cod, which had been more carefully and cohesively planned and written during Thoreau’s lifetime, The Maine Woods fails as a unified volume and is better considered as a collection of three thematically related but separate essays than as an organized whole. Had Thoreau lived, The Maine Woods might have been a completely different work. What that work might have been, no one can competently conjecture. Introduction xxi The following abbreviations for Thoreau’s works are used in the notes: C The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau. Edited by Walter Harding and Carl Bode. New York: New York University Press, 1958. ITM I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau. Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. J The Journal of Henry Thoreau. Edited by Bradford Torrey and Francis H. Allen. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. MJ Manuscript journal, Pierpont Morgan Library. PJ Journal. Edited by John C. Broderick et al. Prince- ton: Princeton University Press, 1981–. W The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau. Walden edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1906. Wa Walden: A Fully Annotated Edition. Edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. All biblical quotations in the notes are from the King James Ver- sion. Native American words, plants, and other items identified in Thoreau’s appendix are not separately annotated in the texts of the essays. The Maine Woods Ktaadn Ktaadn On the 31st of August, 1846, I left Concord in Massachu- setts for Bangor and the backwoods of Maine, by way of the railroad and steamboat,1 intending to accompany a relative2 of mine engaged in the lumber trade in Bangor, as far as a dam on the west branch of the Penobscot, in which property he was interested. From this place, which is about one hundred miles by the river above Bangor, thirty miles from the Houlton military road,3 and five miles beyond the last log hut, I proposed to make excur- sions to mount Ktaadn, the second highest mountain in New England,4 about thirty miles distant, and to some of the lakes of the Penobscot, either alone or with such company as I might pick up there. It is unusual to find a camp so far in the woods at that season, when lumbering operations have ceased, and I was glad to avail myself of the circumstance of a gang of men being employed there at that time in repairing the injuries caused by the great freshet in the spring.5 The mountain may be approached more easily and directly on horseback and on foot from the north-east side, by the Aroostook road,6 and the Wassataquoik river; but in that case you see much less of the wilderness, none of the glorious river and lake scenery, and have no experience of the batteau and the boatman’s life. I was fortunate also in the season of the year, for in the summer myriads of black flies, mosqui- toes, and midges, or, as the Indians call them, “no-see- ems,” make travelling in the woods almost impossible; but now their reign was nearly over. 1 Thoreau took the railroad from Concord to Bos- ton, and the steamer from Boston to Bangor. 2 George Augustus Thatcher (1806–1885), hus- band of Thoreau’s paternal cousin Rebecca Jane Billings (1813–1883). 3 In 1828 Congress made provision for a military road from Bangor to Houlton to provide access for militia and supplies to northern Maine in case of border friction. John James Audubon (1785– 1851) described it in 1833 as a “fine turnpike of great breadth, almost straight in its whole length, and perhaps the best now in the Union.” 4 Ktaadn is the second highest if, as was com- mon in Thoreau’s day, the Presidential Range, which includes Mounts Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Monroe, and Madison, is considered as a whole with several peaks rather than as separate mountains. 5 The editor of the Bangor Courier wrote: “It will be difficult for people who did not witness it to realize that all the business part of the city was a pool in which large vessels might sail—that Ex- change street, and Main street, and others lower down, were deep canals for half their length, and that Central street was a running river. But such things were, and hundreds of stores were under water!” 6 The Aroostook Road extends from the military road, seven miles above Mattawamkeag Point, to Ashland. The Maine Woods Ktaadn Ktaadn, whose name is an Indian word signifying highest land, was first ascended by white men in 1804.7 It was visited by Professor J. W. Bailey of West Point in 1836,8 by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, the State Geologist, in 1837,9 and by two young men from Boston in 1845.10 All these have given accounts of their expeditions. Since I was there, two or three other parties have made the ex- cursion and told their stories.11 Besides these, very few, even among backwoodsmen and hunters, have ever climbed it,12 and it will be a long time before the tide of fashionable travel sets that way. The mountainous re- gion of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains,13 northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook river, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more ex- tensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direc- tion will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive for- est, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward. The next forenoon, Tuesday, Sept. 1st, I started with my companion in a buggy from Bangor for “up river,” expecting to be overtaken the next day night, at Mat- tawamkeag Point,14 some sixty miles off, by two more Bangoreans,15 who had decided to join us in a trip to the mountain. We had each a knapsack or bag filled with such clothing and other articles as were indispensable, and my companion carried his gun. Within a dozen miles of Bangor we passed through the villages of Stillwater and Oldtown,16 built at the falls of the Penobscot, which furnish the principal power by which the Maine woods are converted into lumber. The mills are built directly over and across the river. Here is a close jam, a hard rub, at all seasons; and then the once green tree, long since white,17 I need not say as the driven snow,18 but as a driven log, becomes lumber merely. Here your inch, your two and your three inch stuff19 7 The ascent was made by Charles Turner, Jr. (1760–1839), and his party. Turner’s “Description of Natardin or Catardin Mountain” was published in 1819. 8 Jacob Whitman Bailey (1811–1857) was professor of chemistry, mineralogy, and geology at West Point from 1834 until his death. His “Account of an Excursion to Mount Katahdin in Maine” was published in 1837. 9 Charles Thomas Jackson (1805–1880), brother of Lucy Jackson Brown (1798–1868), who boarded in the Thoreau family home, and of Lidian Emer- son (1802–1892), the wife of Ralph Waldo Emer- son (1803–1882). His climb is reported in the Second Annual Report on the Geology of the Public Lands, Belonging to the Two States of Maine and Massachusetts. He was assisted by James T. Hodge (1816–1871) from Massachusetts, whose report is included in Jackson’s Second Annual Report, and William Clark Larrabee (1802–1859) from Maine, whose report appeared in the Lincoln Telegraph in January 1840. Jackson presented a lecture on ge- ology at the Concord Lyceum on 1 February 1843, while Thoreau was curator. In a brief obituary in the 1862–1863 Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History he praised Thoreau’s writings as “full of knowledge of the secrets of nature, . . . enlivened by much quaint humor, and warmed with kindness towards all living beings.” 10 Edward Everett Hale (1822–1909), who pub- lished an account of the climb in the Boston Daily Advertiser, 15 August 1845, and William Francis Channing (1820–1901), cousin of Thoreau’s friend William Ellery Channing (1817–1901). 11 Marcus R. Keep (1816–1894) published two accounts in the Bangor Democrat—“Katahdin” in December 1847 and “Mount Katahdin, Again” in October 1849—although Thoreau may have read Keep’s account only as quoted by John S. Springer (1811–1852) in his Forest Life and Forest Trees. Aaron Young, Jr. (1819–1898), reported on his botanical survey of Ktaadn in “Report: Botanical Explo- ration of Mt. Katahdn” and in his 1848 Flora of Maine. George Thurber (1821–1890), a member of The Maine Woods Ktaadn begin to be, and Mr. Sawyer marks off those spaces which decide the destiny of so many prostrate forests. Through this steel riddle,20 more or less coarse, is the arrowy21 Maine forest, from Ktaadn and Chesuncook, and the head waters of the St. John,22 relentlessly sifted, till it comes out boards, clapboards, laths, and shingles such as the wind can take, still perchance to be slit and slit again, till men get a size that will suit. Think how stood the white-pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, its branches soughing with the four winds, and every individual needle trembling in the sunlight—think how it stands with it now—sold, perchance, to the New En- gland Friction Match Company!23 There were in 1837, as I read, two hundred and fifty saw mills on the Penob- scot and its tributaries above Bangor, the greater part of them in this immediate neighborhood, and they sawed two hundred millions of feet of boards annually.24 To this is to be added, the lumber of the Kennebec, Andro- scoggin, Saco, Passamaquoddy, and other streams. No wonder that we hear so often of vessels which are be- calmed off our coast, being surrounded a week at a time by floating lumber from the Maine woods. The mission of men there seems to be, like so many busy demons, to drive the forest all out of the country, from every solitary beaver swamp, and mountain side, as soon as possible. At Oldtown we walked into a batteau manufactory. The making of batteaux is quite a business here for the supply of the Penobscot river. We examined some on the stocks. They are light and shapely vessels, calculated for rapid and rocky streams, and to be carried over long por- tages on men’s shoulders, from twenty to thirty feet long, and only four or four and a half wide, sharp at both ends like a canoe, though broadest forward on the bottom, and reaching seven or eight feet over the water, in order that they may slip over rocks as gently as possible. They are made very slight, only two boards to a side, com- Young’s party, also published an account in the Providence Journal, 26 September 1847. 12 The first partial ascent by a nonnative actually occurred in 1764 by Joseph Chadwick. Other as- cents were made by surveying parties: in October 1819 by a British expedition and in August 1820 by a joint expedition of British and American sur- veyors. Another early ascent, unknown to Thoreau, was made by Henry Boynton Smith (1815–1877) and two friends, in September 1836. 13 In New Hampshire. 14 A gravel bar formed by the junction of the Mattawamkeag and Penobscot Rivers, described by Ezekiel Holmes (1801–1865) in his Report of an Exploration and Survey of the Territory on the Aroostook River as “an elevated alluvial plain [that] commands three views of the two rivers,—viz: up and down the Penobscot and up the Mattawam- keag.” 15 Charles Lowell (1803–1885), who was the hus- band of Thoreau’s paternal cousin Mary Ann Bill- ings (1819–1888), and Horatio (“Raish”) P. Blood (1806–1883). 16 In 1806 the township of Orono, previously called Stillwater, was incorporated, including at that time the region of Oldtown. In 1840 Oldtown was incorporated as a separate town. 17 From the bark having rubbed off during the logjam. 18 Common phrase found in such works as John Lyly’s (1554–1606) Eupheus and William Shake- speare’s (1564–1616) A Winter’s Tale. 19 Boards. 20 A coarse sieve with a perforated bottom used for cleaning grain, as in separating the grain from the chaff. 21 Descriptive also used by Thoreau to describe the “arrowy” pines around Walden [Wa 39]. 22 River rising in Somerset County, Maine, and flowing northeastward through New Brunswick to empty into the Bay of Fundy. 23 One of the names by which the match com- pany established by Ezekiel Byam (1795–1863), who began manufacturing matches commercially The Maine Woods Ktaadn monly secured to a few light maple or other hard-wood knees, but inward are of the clearest and widest white- pine stuff, of which there is a great waste on account of their form, for the bottom is left perfectly flat, not only from side to side, but from end to end. Sometimes they become “hogging”25 even, after long use, and the boatmen then turn them over and straighten them by a weight at each end. They told us that one wore out in two years, or often in a single trip, on the rocks, and sold for from fourteen to sixteen dollars. There was something re- freshing and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man’s canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix26 and Canadian Voyageurs.27 The batteau is a sort of mon- grel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader’s boat. The ferry here took us past the Indian island.28 As we left the shore, I observed a short shabby washerwoman- looking Indian; they commonly have the woe-begone look of the girl that cried for spilt milk—just from “up river,”—land on the Oldtown side near a grocery, and drawing up his canoe, take out a bundle of skins in one hand, and an empty keg or half-barrel in the other, and scramble up the bank with them. This picture will do to put before the Indian’s history, that is, the history of his extinction. In 1837, there were three hundred and sixty-two souls left of this tribe.29 The island seemed de- serted to-day, yet I observed some new houses among the weather-stained ones, as if the tribe had still a design upon life; but generally they have a very shabby, forlorn, and cheerless look, being all back side and woodshed, not homesteads, even Indian homesteads, but instead of home or abroad-steads, for their life is domi aut mili- tiae,30 at home or at war, or now rather venatus, that is, a-hunting, and most of the latter. The church is the only trim-looking building, but that is not Abenaki,31 that was Rome’s doings.32 Good Canadian it may be, but it is poor Indian. These were once a powerful tribe. Politics in 1837 in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, and briefly in Boston, was known. 24 Thoreau read in John Hayward’s (1781–1869) New England Gazetteer: “On the Penobscot river and its tributary streams, above Bangor, more than 250 saw-mills, capable of cutting at least two hundred million feet of boards a year; all of which, except what is used in building, must be shipped at the harbor of Bangor.” 25 Arched or bowed. 26 Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoix (1682– 1761), French Jesuit missionary to Canada from 1720 to 1722. His Histoire et Description Générale de la Nouvelle France was published in 1744. 27 A woodsman, boatman, or guide employed by a fur company to transport goods and supplies between remote stations in Canada or the U.S. Northwest, from the French, voyager, meaning to travel. In 1837 Thoreau wrote “Voyager’s Song”: Gentle river, gentle river Swift as glides thy stream along, Many a bold Canadian voyageur, Bravely swelled the gay chanson. . . . . . . . . . . . . Thus we lead a life of pleasure, While we while the hours away, Thus we revel beyond measure, Gaily live we while we may. 28 In 1819, before Maine became a separate state, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts entered into treaties with the remaining tribes establishing them as nations within that state. These treaties also gave each nation certain lands. In consider- ation for a quitclaim to certain lands, all the islands in the Penobscot River above and includ- ing Indian Island (Old Town) were to be enjoyed by the Penobscot in perpetuity. 29 From Hayward’s New England Gazetteer: “The whole number of souls in the tribe was three hun- dred and sixty-two.” 30 Inversion of the phrase “aut militiae aut domi” The Maine Woods Ktaadn are all the rage with them now. I even thought that a row of wigwams, with a dance of pow-wows, and a prisoner tortured at the stake, would be more respectable than this. We landed in Milford, and rode along on the east side of the Penobscot, having a more or less constant view of the river, and the Indian islands in it, for they retain all the islands as far up as Nickatow, at the mouth of the East Branch. They are generally well-timbered, and are said to be better soil than the neighboring shores. The river seemed shallow and rocky, and interrupted by rapids, rippling and gleaming in the sun. We paused a moment to see a fish-hawk dive for a fish down straight as an arrow, from a great height, but he missed his prey this time. It was the Houlton Road on which we were now travelling, over which some troops were marched once towards Mars’ Hill, though not to Mars’ field,33 as it proved. It is the main, almost the only, road in these parts, as straight and well made, and kept in as good repair, as almost any you will find anywhere. Everywhere we saw signs of the great freshet—this house standing awry, and that where it was not founded, but where it was found, at any rate, the next day; and that other with a water-logged look, as if it were still airing and drying its basement, and logs with everybody’s marks34 upon them, and sometimes the marks of their having served as bridges, strewn along the road. We crossed the Sunkhaze, a summery Indian name, the Olemmon, Passadumkeag, and other streams, which make a greater show on the map than they now did on the road. At Passadumkeag, we found anything but what the name implies,35 earnest politicians, to wit—white ones, I mean—on the alert, to know how the election was likely to go;36 men who talked rapidly, with subdued voice, and a sort of facti- tious earnestness, you could not help believing, hardly waiting for an introduction, one on each side of your (Latin: at war or at home), from Marcus Tullius Cicero’s (106–43 B.C.E.) oration In Pisonem. 31 Native American people located in the Cana- dian Maritime Provinces and northeastern United States, most commonly found in Maine. 32 The Christianized Abenaki were Roman Catho- lic. 33 Allusion to the Aroostook War, a bloodless boundary dispute in 1839 between the United States (Maine) and Great Britain (New Bruns- wick). It was not Mars’ field—so named for the Roman god of war—because no fighting actually occurred. 34 Logger’s mark or brand that Springer com- pared to the way “one farmer distinguishes his sheep from those of his neighbor by the particular mark they bear, each differing in some particular from every other.” 35 Passadumkeag in Abenaki means “where the water goes into the river above the falls.” 36 The United States elections in 1846 for the House of Representatives, during which the Whigs took back control of the House. The biggest issues during this election were the Mexican-American War and the slavery question. The Maine Woods Ktaadn buggy, endeavoring to say much in little, for they see you hold the whip impatiently, but always saying little in much. Caucuses they have had, it seems, and caucuses they are to have again—victory and defeat: somebody may be elected, somebody may not. One man, a total stranger, who stood by our carriage, in the dusk, actually frightened the horse with his asseverations, growing more solemnly positive as there was less in him to be positive about. So Passadumkeag did not look on the map. At sundown, leaving the river-road awhile for shortness, we went by way of Enfield, where we stopped for the night. This, like most of the localities bearing names on this road, was a place to name, which, in the midst of the unnamed and unincorporated37 wilderness, was to make a distinction without a difference,38 it seemed to me. Here, however, I noticed quite an orchard of healthy and well-grown apple trees, in a bearing state, it being the oldest settler’s house in this region,39 but all natural fruit, and comparatively worthless for want of a grafter.40 And so it is generally lower down the river. It would be a good speculation, as well as a favor conferred on the settlers, for a Massachusetts boy to go down there with a trunk full of choice scions,41 and his grafting apparatus, in the spring. The next morning we drove along through a high and hilly country, in view of Cold-Stream Pond,42 a beautiful lake, four or five miles long, and came into the Houl- ton road again, here called the Military road, at Lincoln, forty-five miles from Bangor, where there is quite a vil- lage, for this country—the principal one above Old- town. Learning that there were several wigwams here, on one of the Indian islands,43 we left our horse and wagon, and walked through the forest half a mile, to the river, to procure a guide to the mountain. It was not till after considerable search that we discovered their habita- tions—small huts, in a retired place, where the scenery 37 Land under federal jurisdiction but not part of a local municipality. 38 Allusion to Royall Tyler’s (1757–1826) The Contrast, in which the character of Jonathan, in differentiating between a “servant” and a “waiter,” is said to have made a “true Yankee distinction, egad, without a difference.” 39 John Partridge Treat, Sr. (1783–1857), who settled in March 1823 in what would be incorpo- rated as Enfield in 1835. 40 In “Wild Apples” Thoreau wrote: “I love better to go through the old orchards of ungrafted apple-trees, at whatever season of the year,—so irregularly planted: sometimes two trees stand- ing close together; and the rows so devious that you would think that they not only had grown while the owner was sleeping, but had been set out by him in a somnambulic state. The rows of grafted fruit will never tempt me to wander amid them like these,” and praised natural fruit of trees grown from seed as having “a certain volatile and ethereal quality which represents their highest value, and which cannot be vulgarized, or bought and sold” [W 5:299, 295]. 41 Twigs or cut shoots with buds used in grafting. 42 A deepwater spring-fed lake located in Enfield. 43 Specifically, Mattanawacook Island. The Maine Woods Ktaadn was unusually soft and beautiful, and the shore skirted with pleasant meadows and graceful elms. We paddled ourselves across to the island-side in a canoe, which we found on the shore. Near where we landed, sat an Indian girl, ten or twelve years old, on a rock in the water, in the sun, washing, and humming or moaning a song mean- while. It was an aboriginal strain. A salmon-spear, made wholly of wood, lay on the shore, such as they might have used before white men came. It had an elastic piece of wood fastened to one side of its point, which slipped over and closed upon the fish, somewhat like the contriv- ance for holding a bucket at the end of a well-pole. As we walked up to the nearest house, we were met by a sally of a dozen wolfish-looking dogs, which may have been lineal descendants from the ancient Indian dogs, which the first voyageurs describe as “their wolves.”44 I suppose they were. The occupant soon appeared, with a long pole in his hand, with which he beat off the dogs, while he parleyed with us. A stalwart, but dull and greasy-looking fellow, who told us, in his sluggish way, in answer to our questions, as if it were the first serious business he had to do that day, that there were Indians going “up river,”—he and one other—to-day, before noon. And who was the other? Louis Neptune,45 who lives in the next house. Well, let us go over and see Louis together. The same doggish reception, and Louis Neptune makes his appearance—a small, wiry man, with puckered and wrinkled face, yet he seemed the chiefer man of the two; the same, as I remembered, who had accompanied Jack- son to the mountain in ’37. The same questions were put to Louis, and the same information obtained, while the other Indian stood by. It appeared, that they were going to start by noon, with two canoes, to go up to Chesun- cook, to hunt moose—to be gone a month. “Well, Louis, suppose you get to the Point,46 [to the Five Islands, just below Mattawamkeag,]47 to camp, we walk on up the 44 Quoted from Thomas Hariot’s (1560–1621) A Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia: “The inhabitants sometime kill the Lion & eat him: & we sometime as they came to our hands of their Wolves or wolfish Dogs, which I have not set down for good meat, least that some would understand my judgment therein to be more simple than needed, although I could allege the difference in taste of those kinds from ours, which by some of our company have been experi- mented in both.” 45 Guide who replaced Peol Michael, Jackson’s original guide, who had cut his leg with a hatchet while chopping wood. He may also be the same Neptune described by Emerson as an “able man” on his visit to Maine in July 1834. 46 Mattawamkeag Point. 47 Now Winn, it was originally named Snowville when first settled in 1820, and was also known as River Township No. 4 and Five Islands. Thoreau’s brackets. The Maine Woods Ktaadn West Branch to-morrow—four of us—and wait for you at the dam, or this side. You overtake us to-morrow or next day, and take us into your canoes. We stop for you, you stop for us. We pay you for your trouble.” “Ye!” re- plied Louis, “may be you carry some provision for all— some pork—some bread—and so pay.” He said, “Me sure get some moose;” and when I asked, if he thought Pomola48 would let us go up, he answered that we must plant one bottle of rum on the top, he had planted good many; and when he looked again, the rum was all gone. He had been up two or three times: he had planted let- ter,—English, German, French, etc.49 These men were slightly clad in shirt and pantaloons, like laborers with us in warm weather. They did not invite us into their houses, but met us outside. So we left the Indians, think- ing ourselves lucky to have secured such guides and companions. There were very few houses along the road, yet they did not altogether fail, as if the law by which men are dis- persed over the globe were a very stringent one, and not to be resisted with impunity or for slight reasons. There were even the germs of one or two villages just begin- ning to expand. The beauty of the road itself was remark- able. The various evergreens, many of which are rare with us—delicate and beautiful specimens of the larch, arbor- vitae, ball spruce, and fir-balsam, from a few inches to many feet in height, lined its sides, in some places like a long front yard, springing up from the smooth grass- plots which uninterruptedly border it, and are made fer- tile by its wash; while it was but a step on either hand to the grim untrodden wilderness, whose tangled labyrinth of living, fallen, and decaying trees,—only the deer and moose, the bear and wolf, can easily penetrate. More perfect specimens than any front yard plot can show, grew there to grace the passage of the Houlton teams. About noon we reached the Mattawamkeag, fifty-six 48 According to the Abenaki, Pomola, also known as Bmola and Bumole, a bird and night spirit, bringer of storms and cold weather, was said to live atop Katahdin. When Jackson’s 1837 ascent was interrupted by a snowstorm, Neptune said that “Pomola was angry with us for presuming to measure the height of the mountain, and revenged himself upon us by this storm.” Turner wrote that Pamola “flies off in the Spring with tremendous rumbling noises. They have a tradi- tion that no person i.e. native, who has attempted to ascend it, has lived to return. They alledge, that many moons ago, seven Indians resolutely ascended the mountain, and that they were never heard of afterwards, having been undoubtedly killed by Pamola in the mountain. The two Indi- ans, whom we hired to pilot and assist us . . . refused to proceed ahead—however, when they found that we were determined to proceed, even without them, they again went forward coura- geously, and seemed ambitious to be first on the summit.” 49 Turner’s party “deposited the Initials of our names . . . and the date, cut upon sheet lead, and a bottle of Rum corked and leaded, on the highest part.” Another member of the party, Joseph Treat (1775–1853), wrote when he returned in 1820: “— we deposited a bottle of Rum, and a bottle con- taining the Constitution of Maine and a by each of us on lead placed under a rock.” (blank space Treat’s). Louis Neptune was with Treat when he planted the Constitution and probably their initials, following Turner, under a rock. The Maine Woods Ktaadn miles from Bangor by the way we had come, and put up at a frequented house,50 still on the Houlton road, where the Houlton stage stops. Here was a substantial covered bridge over the Mattawamkeag, built, I think they said, some seventeen years before.51 We had din- ner—where, by the way, and even at breakfast, as well as supper52—at the public-houses on this road, the front rank is composed of various kinds of “sweet cakes,”53 in a continuous line from one end of the table to the other. I think I may safely say that there was a row of ten or a dozen plates of this kind set before us two here. To account for which, they say, that when the lumberers come out of the woods, they have a craving for cakes and pies, and such sweet things, which there are almost un- known, and this is the supply to satisfy that demand54— the supply is always equal to the demand,—and these hungry men think a good deal of getting their money’s worth. No doubt, the balance of victuals is restored by the time they reach Bangor: Mattawamkeag takes off the raw edge. Well, over this front rank, I say, you coming from the “sweet cake” side, with a cheap philosophic in- difference though it may be, have to assault what there is behind, which I do not by any means mean to insinu- ate is insufficient in quantity or quality to supply that other demand of men not from the woods, but from the towns, for venison and strong country fare. After dinner, we strolled down to the “Point,” formed by the junction of the two rivers, which is said to be the scene of an ancient battle between the Eastern Indians and the Mo- hawks,55 and searched there carefully for relics,56 though the men at the bar-room had never heard of such things; but we found only some flakes of arrow-head stone, some points of arrow-heads, one small leaden-bullet, and some colored beads, the last to be referred, perhaps, to early fur-trader days. The Mattawamkeag, though wide, was a mere river’s bed, full of rocks and shallows at this time, 50 A hotel built in 1830 by James Penley and George Wallace of Old Town, on the site of the old Mattawamkeag Stagehouse, and bought in 1835 by Asa Smith (1786–1867). 51 The Mattawamkeag Bridge was begun in 1831 by Stephen H. Long (1784–1864) of the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. Long’s bridges were not covered but consisted of a rigid timber truss form that incorporated panels consisting of intersecting diagonals and counters. 52 Although used synonymously now, dinner was a mid-day meal while supper was the evening meal. 53 James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851) described different cakes in The Pioneers: “The four corners were garnished with plates of cake. On one was piled certain curiously twisted and complicated figures, called ‘nut-cakes.’ On another were heaps of a black-looking substance, which, receiving its hue from molasses, was properly termed ‘sweet- cake.’” Thoreau below differentiates these from “hot cakes not sweetened.” 54 Classical economic theory developed as Say’s Law, or Say’s Law of Economics, from a principle attributed to French businessman and economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) that supply creates demand. 55 Numerous battles took place in the seven- teenth century between the Penobscot (Eastern Indians) and the Mohawks. 56 Thoreau collected approximately nine hundred Native American artifacts in his lifetime. The Maine Woods 10 Ktaadn so that you could cross it almost dry-shod in boots; and I could hardly believe my companion, when he told me that he had been fifty or sixty miles up it in a batteau, through distant and still uncut forests. A batteau could hardly find a harbor now at its mouth. Deer, and cari- bou, or reindeer, are taken here in the winter, in sight of the house. Before our companions arrived, we rode on up the Houlton road seven miles, to Molunkus, where the Aroostook road comes into it, and where there is a spa- cious public house in the woods, called the “Molunkus House,” kept by one Libbey,57 which looked as if it had its hall for dancing and for military drills. There was no other evidence of man but this huge shingle palace58 in this part of the world; but sometimes even this is filled with travellers. I looked off the piazza round the corner of the house up the Aroostook road, on which there was no clearing in sight. There was a man just adventuring upon it this evening, in a rude, original, what you may call Aroostook, wagon—a mere seat, with a wagon swung under it, a few bags on it, and a dog asleep to watch them. He offered to carry a message for us to anybody in that country, cheerfully. I suspect, that if you should go to the end of the world, you would find somebody there going further, as if just starting for home at sundown, and having a last word before he drove off. Here, too, was a small trader, whom I did not see at first, who kept a store—but no great store, certainly—in a small box over the way, behind the Molunkus sign-post. It looked like the balance-box of a patent hay-scales.59 As for his house, we could only conjecture where that was; he may have been a boarder in the Molunkus House. I saw him standing in his shop-door—his shop was so small, that, if a traveller should make demonstrations of entering in, he would have to go out by the back way, and confer with his customer through a window, about his goods in the 57 James Libby (1808–1874). 58 Phrase possibly coined by Washington Irving (1783–1859) in his Knickerbocker’s History of New York to describe the log houses built by Yankee settlers and farmers. 59 A platform scale (ca. 1830) invented by Thad- deus Fairbanks (1796–1886), a Vermont farmer, to weigh a cartload of hay. The balance-box was the cart-size shallow chamber level with the ground, eliminating the need to hoist a cart for weighing. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 11 cellar, or, more probably, bespoken,60 and yet on the way. I should have gone in, for I felt a real impulse to trade, if I had not stopped to consider what would become of him. The day before, we had walked into a shop, over against an inn where we stopped, the puny beginning of trade, which would grow at last into a firm copartner- ship, in the future town or city—indeed, it was already “Somebody & Co.,” I forget who. The woman came for- ward from the penetralia61 of the attached house, for “Somebody & Co.” was in the burning,62 and she sold us percussion-caps, canalés and smooth;63 and knew their prices and qualities, and which the hunters preferred. Here was a little of everything in a small compass to sat- isfy the wants and the ambition of the woods, a stock selected with what pains and care, and brought home in the wagon box, or a corner of the Houlton team; but there seemed to me, as usual, a preponderance of chil- dren’s toys, dogs to bark, and cats to mew, and trumpets to blow, where natives there hardly are yet. As if a child, born into the Maine woods, among the pine cones and cedar berries, could not do without such a sugar-man,64 or skipping-jack,65 as the young Rothschild66 has. I think that there was not more than one house on the road to Molunkus, or for seven miles. At that place we got over the fence into a new field, planted with pota- toes, where the logs were still burning between the hills; and, pulling up the vines, found good-sized potatoes, nearly ripe, growing like weeds, and turnips mixed with them. The mode of clearing and planting, is, to fell the trees, and burn once what will burn, then cut them up into suitable lengths, roll into heaps, and burn again; then, with a hoe, plant potatoes where you can come at the ground between the stumps and charred logs, for a first crop, the ashes sufficing for manure, and no hoeing being necessary the first year. In the fall, cut, roll, and burn again, and so on, till the land is cleared; and soon 60 Goods ordered or arranged for. 61 The innermost part or most private recess. 62 Area of land being cleared by burning. 63 Percussion caps, respectively, for grooved and smooth bored rifles. 64 Sugar molded into the shape of a man. 65 Also known as a skipjack or jumping jack: the forked bone of a fowl’s breast (merrythought or wishbone) made into a little toy by a twisted thread and a small stick. Sometimes made by twisting a piece of twine with a stick attached to it between the costal processes of the bone, one end of the stick being held by a small bit of shoe- maker’s wax. When the wax would give way from the tension of the twine, the toy skipped into the air or turned a somersault. 66 Prominent family of European bankers equated with great wealth. The Maine Woods 12 Ktaadn it is ready for grain, and to be laid down.67 Let those talk of poverty and hard times who will, in the towns and cities; cannot the emigrant, who can pay his fare to New York or Boston, pay five dollars more to get here,—I paid three, all told, for my passage from Boston to Bangor, 250 miles,—and be as rich as he pleases, where land virtually costs nothing, and houses only the labor of building, and he may begin life as Adam did? If he will still remember the distinction of poor and rich, let him bespeak him a narrower house68 forthwith. When we returned to the Mattawamkeag, the Houl- ton stage had already put up there; and a Province man69 was betraying his greenness to the Yankees70 by his ques- tions.—Why Province money won’t pass here at par,71 when States’ money is good at Frederickton72—though this, perhaps, was sensible enough. From what I saw then, it appeared that the Province man was now the only real Jonathan,73 or raw country bumpkin, left so far behind by his enterprising neighbors, that he didn’t know enough to put a question to them. No people can long continue provincial in character, who have the pro- pensity for politics and whittling,74 and rapid travelling, which the Yankees have, and who are leaving the mother country behind in the variety of their notions and in- ventions. The possession and exercise of practical talent merely, are a sure and rapid means of intellectual culture and independence. The last edition of Greenleaf’s Map of Maine75 hung on the wall here, and, as we had no pocket map, we re- solved to trace a map of the lake country: so dipping a wad of tow76 into the lamp, we oiled a sheet of paper on the oiled table-cloth,77 and, in good faith, traced what we afterwards ascertained to be a labyrinth of errors, carefully following the outlines of the imaginary lakes which that map contains. The Map of the Public Lands of Maine and Massachusetts78 is the only one I have 67 Let grow to grass after the soil has been ex- hausted as a method to reclaim the soil’s fertility. 68 A common epithet for the grave used by sev- eral poets, including William Wordsworth (1770– 1850), Ossian (James MacPherson [1736–1796]), Robert Burns (1759–1796), and William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878). Thoreau used the epithet twice in Walden. 69 A person from the Canadian provinces, al- though Thoreau more regularly used the term Canadian. 70 A native of New England or northern United States. Of uncertain etymology, although in A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Thoreau, following Noah Webster’s (1758–1843) 1828 American Dictionary, derived the epithet from the “New West Saxons, whom the red men call, not Angle-ish or English, but Yengeese, and so at last they are known for Yankees” [W 1:53]. 71 Equal or nominal face value. 72 Provincial capital of New Brunswick. 73 Common nineteenth-century name for an American, similar to the use of John Bull for the English, but in “Life without Principle” Thoreau also used the name to mean someone “essentially provincial still, not metropolitan” [W 4:447]. 74 The Yankee propensity for whittling was well known and sometimes caricatured. Michel Cheva- lier (1806–1879) in his 1839 Society, Manners, and Politics in the United States, wrote of the “pure Yankee” whose “fingers must be in action, he must be whittling a piece of wood.” 75 Third edition (1844) of Map of the State of Maine with the Province of New Brunswick by cartographer Moses Greenleaf (1777–1834), first published to accompany his Survey of the State of Maine. 76 Coarse flax or hemp fibers that have been separated from the finer part. 77 To make the tablecloth waterproof. 78 “A Plan of the Public Lands in the State of Maine.” The purpose of this map was to help settle land disputes between Massachusetts and Maine. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 13 seen that at all deserves the name. It was while we were engaged in this operation that our companions arrived. They had seen the Indians’ fire on the Five Islands, and so we concluded that all was right. Early the next morning we had mounted our packs, and prepared for a tramp up the West Branch, my com- panion having turned his horse out to pasture for a week or ten days, thinking that a bite of fresh grass, and a taste of running water, would do him as much good as backwoods fare, and new country influences his mas- ter. Leaping over a fence, we began to follow an obscure trail up the northern bank of the Penobscot. There was now no road further, the river being the only highway, and but half a dozen log huts confined to its banks, to be met with for thirty miles; on either hand, and be- yond, was a wholly uninhabited wilderness, stretching to Canada. Neither horse, nor cow, nor vehicle of any kind, had ever passed over this ground. The cattle, and the few bulky articles which the loggers use, being got up in the winter on the ice, and down again before it breaks up. The evergreen woods had a decidedly sweet and bracing fragrance; the air was a sort of diet-drink,79 and we walked on buoyantly in Indian file, stretching our legs. Occasionally there was a small opening on the bank, made for the purpose of log-rolling, where we got a sight of the river—always a rocky and rippling stream. The roar of the rapids, the note of a whistler-duck80 on the river, of the jay and chicadee around us, and of the pigeon-woodpecker81 in the openings, were the sounds that we heard. This was what you might call a bran new82 country; the only roads were of Nature’s making, and the few houses were camps. Here, then, one could no longer accuse institutions and society, but must front the true source of evil.83 There are three classes of inhabitants, who either fre- quent or inhabit the country which we had now entered; 79 A medicinal decoction, often of guaiacum, sarsaparilla, or sassafras, taken either singly or in combination as normal drink throughout the day, usually for months, to change the habit of the body. Thoreau wrote in his journal: “Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the in- fluences of each. Let these be your only diet drink and botanical medicines” [J 5:394]. 80 The common goldeneye (Bucephala clangula) colloquially called the “whistler” duck from the distinctive whistling sound its wings make during flight. 81 Yellow-shafted flicker (Colaptes auratus). 82 More properly “brand new,” although com- monly spelled “bran new” in the nineteenth cen- tury, from the sixteenth century usage meaning fresh or new from the fire. 83 As Thoreau wrote in his journal of 3 January 1853: Man, man is the devil, The source of all evil. [ITM 172] That man is the source of evil is found in many religious texts, such as Mark 7:21–23: “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lascivi- ousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolish- ness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man.” The Maine Woods 14 Ktaadn first, the loggers, who, for a part of the year, the winter and spring, are far the most numerous, but in the sum- mer, except a few explorers for timber, completely desert it; second, the few settlers I have named, the only per- manent inhabitants, who live on the verge of it, and help raise supplies for the former; third, the hunters, mostly Indians, who range over it in their season. At the end of three miles we came to the Mattaseunk stream and mill, where there was even a rude wooden railroad running down to the Penobscot, the last railroad we were to see.84 We crossed one tract, on the bank of the river, of more than a hundred acres of heavy tim- ber, which had just been felled and burnt over, and was still smoking. Our trail lay through the midst of it, and was well nigh blotted out. The trees lay at full length, four or five feet deep, and crossing each other in all directions, all black as charcoal, but perfectly sound within, still good for fuel or for timber; soon they would be cut into lengths and burnt again. Here were thou- sands of cords, enough to keep the poor of Boston and New York amply warm for a winter, which only cum- bered the ground, and were in the settler’s way. And the whole of that solid and interminable forest is doomed to be gradually devoured thus by fire, like shavings, and no man be warmed by it. At Crocker’s log hut,85 at the mouth of Salmon River, seven miles from the Point, one of the party commenced distributing a store of small cent picture-books86 among the children, to teach them to read; and also newspapers, more or less recent, among the parents, than which nothing can be more acceptable to a backwoods people. It was really an important item in our outfit, and, at times, the only currency that would circulate. I walked through Salmon River with my shoes on, it being low water, but not without wetting my feet. A few miles further we came to “Marm Howard’s,”87 at the end of an extensive clearing, where there were two 84 The Maine historian Fannie Hardy Eckstorm (1865–1946) described it as “a platform on wheels, carried down a short wooden track by gravity to the river.” 85 Unidentified. 86 Also known as “penny books” or “one cent toy books.” 87 Mary Doe Howard (1776–1869). The Maine Woods Ktaadn 15 or three log huts in sight at once, one on the opposite side of the river, and a few graves, even surrounded by a wooden paling, where already the rude forefathers of a hamlet lie;88 and a thousand years hence, perchance, some poet will write his “Elegy in a Country Church- yard.” The “Village Hampdens,” the “mute, inglorious Miltons,”89 and Cromwells,90 “guiltless of” their “coun- try’s blood,”91 were yet unborn. “Perchance in this wild spot there will be laid Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.”92 The next house was Fisk’s,93 ten miles from the Point, at the mouth of the East Branch, opposite to the island Nickatow, or the Forks,94 the last of the Indian islands. I am particular to give the names of the settlers and the distances, since every log hut in these woods is a public house, and such information is of no little consequence to those who may have occasion to travel this way. Our course here crossed the Penobscot, and followed the southern bank. One of the party, who entered the house in search of some one to set us over, reported a very neat dwelling, with plenty of books, and a new wife, just imported from Boston,95 wholly new to the woods. We found the East Branch a large and rapid stream at its mouth, and much deeper than it appeared. Having with some difficulty discovered the trail again, we kept up the south side of the West Branch, or main river, passing by some rapids called Rock-Ebeeme,96 the roar of which we heard through the woods, and, shortly after, in the thickest of the wood, some empty loggers’ camps, still new, which were occupied the previous winter. Though we saw a few more afterwards, I will make one account serve for all. These were such houses as the lumberers of 88 Allusion to Thomas Gray’s (1716–1771) “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” line 16: “The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” 89 John Milton (1608–1674), British author known for such works as his poetic epic Paradise Lost, his elegy “Lycidas,” and his treatise on cen- sorship, Areopagitica. 90 Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), who ruled En- gland as lord protector from 1653 to 1658 follow- ing the English Civil War (1642–1651). 91 Quoted from Gray’s “Elegy” 57–60: Some village Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood. 92 Quoted from Gray’s “Elegy” 45–48, the first line of which Thoreau altered from: “Perhaps in that neglected spot is laid.” 93 Benjamin Nutting Fiske (1815–1902). 94 The confluence of the east and west branches of the Penobscot. 95 Fiske married Eliza Pierce Warren (1811–1893) of Boston on 1 July 1846. 96 In his journal Thoreau interlined: “The water is comparatively smooth below Nickatow—though rough enough to daunt an inexperienced boat- man, but above this the serious difficulties com- mence” [PJ 2:274]. The Maine Woods 16 Ktaadn Maine spend the winter in, in the wilderness. There were the camps and the hovel for the cattle, hardly distin- guishable, except that the latter had no chimney. These camps were about twenty feet long by fifteen wide, built of logs—hemlock, cedar, spruce, or yellow birch—one kind alone, or all together, with the bark on; two or three large ones first, one directly above another, and notched together at the ends, to the height of three or four feet, then of smaller logs resting upon transverse ones at the ends, each of the last successively shorter than the other, to form the roof. The chimney was an oblong square hole in the middle, three or four feet in diameter, with a fence of logs as high as the ridge. The interstices were filled with moss, and the roof was shingled with long and handsome splints of cedar, or spruce, or pine, rifted with a sledge and cleaver. The fire-place, the most important place of all, was in shape and size like the chimney, and directly under it, defined by a log fence or fender on the ground, and a heap of ashes a foot or two deep within, with solid benches of split logs running round it. Here the fire usually melts the snow, and dries the rain before it can descend to quench it. The faded beds of arbor- vitae leaves extended under the eaves on either hand. There was the place for the water-pail, pork-barrel,97 and wash-basin, and generally a dingy pack of cards left on a log. Usually a good deal of whittling was expended on the latch, which was made of wood, in the form of an iron one. These houses are made comfortable by the huge fires that can be afforded night and day. Usually the scenery about them is drear and savage enough; and the logger’s camp is as completely in the woods as a fun- gus at the foot of a pine in a swamp; no outlook but to the sky overhead; no more clearing than is made by cutting down the trees of which it is built, and those which are necessary for fuel. If only it be well sheltered and convenient to his work, and near a spring, he wastes 97 Pork barrel became a standard unit of mea- surement equivalent to two hundred pounds. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 17 no thought on the prospect. They are very proper for- est houses, the stems of the trees collected together and piled up around a man to keep out wind and rain: made of living green logs, hanging with moss and lichen, and with the curls and fringes of the yellow-birch bark, and dripping with resin, fresh and moist, and redolent of swampy odors, with that sort of vigor and perennialness even about them that toad-stools suggest.98 The logger’s fare consists of tea, molasses, flour, pork,—sometimes beef,—and beans. A great proportion of the beans raised in Massachusetts find their market here. On expeditions it is only hard bread99 and pork, often raw, slice upon slice, with tea or water, as the case may be. The primitive wood is always and everywhere damp and mossy, so that I travelled constantly with the im- pression that I was in a swamp; and only when it was remarked that this or that tract, judging from the quality of the timber on it, would make a profitable clearing, was I reminded, that if the sun were let in it would make a dry field, like the few I had seen, at once. The best shod for the most part travel with wet feet. If the ground was so wet and spongy at this, the driest part of a dry season, what must it be in the spring? The woods hereabouts abounded in beech and yellow-birch, of which last there were some very large specimens; also spruce, cedar, fir, and hemlock; but we saw only the stumps of the white pine100 here, some of them of great size, these having been already culled out, being the only tree much sought after, even as low down as this. Only a little spruce and hemlock beside had been logged here. The eastern wood, which is sold for fuel in Massachusetts, all comes from below Bangor. It was the pine alone, chiefly the white pine, that had tempted any but the hunter to precede us on this route. Waite’s farm,101 thirteen miles from the Point, is an extensive and elevated clearing, from which we got a 98 Thoreau’s footnote, referring to Springer’s For- est Life and Forest Trees, added in the 1864 edition of The Maine Woods: “Springer, in his ‘Forest Life’ (1851), says that they first remove the leaves and turf from the spot where they intend to build a camp, for fear of fire; also, that ‘the spruce-tree is generally selected for camp-building, it being light, straight, and quite free from sap’; that ‘the roof is finally covered with the boughs of the fir, spruce, and hemlock, so that when the snow falls upon the whole, the warmth of the camp is preserved in the coldest weather’; and that they make the log seat before the fire, called the ‘Deacon’s Seat,’ of a spruce or fir split in halves, with three or four stout limbs left on one side for legs, which are not likely to get loose.” 99 Also called hardtack: coarse, hard, unleav- ened, unsalted, kiln-dried biscuit used especially as rations for sailors or soldiers. 100 The largest tree in the old-growth forests of New England, used for lumber and ship masts. 101 Farm of George Washington Waite (1793– 1870), although by this time the farm may have belonged to his son, William (1826–1915). Thoreau wrote in his journal: “We here met with a very hospitable reception from Mrs Waite who would not be paid for the luncheon she provided but seemed content with the sight of strangers” [PJ 2:297]. Mrs. Waite was George’s wife, Mary Has- kell Waite (1797–1864). The Maine Woods 18 Ktaadn fine view of the river, rippling and gleaming far beneath us. My companions had formerly had a good view of Ktaadn and the other mountains here, but to-day it was so smoky that we could see nothing of them. We could overlook an immense country of uninterrupted forest, stretching away up the East Branch toward Canada, on the north and northwest, and toward the Aroostook val- ley on the northeast: and imagine what wild life was stir- ring in its midst. Here was quite a field of corn for this region, whose peculiar dry scent we perceived a third of a mile off before we saw it. Eighteen miles from the Point brought us in sight of McCauslin’s, or “Uncle George’s,”102 as he was familiarly called by my companions, to whom he was well known, where we intended to break our long fast. His house was in the midst of an extensive clearing of intervale,103 at the mouth of the Little Schoodic River,104 on the opposite or north bank of the Penobscot. So we collected on a point of the shore, that we might be seen, and fired our gun as a signal, which brought out his dogs forthwith, and thereafter their master, who in due time took us across in his batteau. This clearing was bounded abruptly on all sides but the river, by the naked stems of the forest, as if you were to cut only a few feet square in the midst of a thousand acres of mowing, and set down a thimble therein. He had a whole heaven and horizon to himself, and the sun seemed to be journeying over his clearing only, the live-long day. Here we concluded to spend the night, and wait for the Indians, as there was no stopping place so convenient above. He had seen no Indians pass, and this did not often happen without his knowledge. He thought that his dogs sometimes gave notice of the approach of Indians, half an hour before they arrived. McCauslin was a Kennebec man,105 of Scotch de- scent, who had been a waterman twenty-two years, and had driven on the lakes and head waters of the Penob- 102 George McCauslin (1798–1884), the first white settler in the Burnt Land Rips area now known as East Millinocket. 103 Chiefly a New England term meaning a tract of low-lying land between hills. 104 Now, Schoodic Stream. 105 From the Kennebec River region in central Maine. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 19 scot five or six springs in succession, but was now settled here to raise supplies for the lumberers and for himself. He entertained us a day or two with true Scotch hospi- tality,106 and would accept no recompense for it. A man of a dry wit and shrewdness, and a general intelligence which I had not looked for in the backwoods. In fact, the deeper you penetrate into the woods, the more in- telligent, and, in one sense, less countrified do you find the inhabitants; for always the pioneer has been a trav- eller, and, to some extent, a man of the world; and, as the distances with which he is familiar are greater, so is his information more general and far reaching than the villager’s. If I were to look for a narrow, uninformed, and countrified mind, as opposed to the intelligence and re- finement which are thought to emanate from cities, it would be among the rusty inhabitants of an old-settled country, on farms all run out and gone to seed with life- everlasting,107 in the towns about Boston, even on the high road108 in Concord, and not in the backwoods of Maine. Supper was got before our eyes, in the ample kitchen, by a fire which would have roasted an ox; many whole logs, four feet long, were consumed to boil our tea- kettle—birch, or beech, or maple, the same summer and winter; and the dishes were soon smoking on the table, late the arm-chair, against the wall, from which one of the party was expelled. The arms of the chair formed the frame on which the table rested; and, when the round top was turned up against the wall, it formed the back of the chair, and was no more in the way than the wall itself. This, we noticed, was the prevailing fashion in these log houses, in order to economize in room. There were piping hot wheaten-cakes, the flour having been brought up the river in batteaux,—no Indian bread,109 for the upper part of Maine, it will be remembered, is a wheat country,—and ham, eggs, and potatoes, and milk 106 The legendary hospitality of the Scot has been mentioned by such authors as Charles Dickens (1812–1870), Samuel Johnson (1709– 1784), and Sir Walter Scott (1771–1832). Nathaniel Parker Willis (1806–1867) in his Famous Persons and Places described it as aiming “to convince you that the house and all that is in it is your own.” 107 Pearly everlasting (Antennaria Margarita- ceum). 108 Now Lexington Road. 109 Plant with edible parts, such as the breadroot (Psoralea esculenta), eaten by some Native Ameri- can peoples. The Maine Woods 20 Ktaadn and cheese, the produce of the farm; and, also, shad and salmon, tea sweetened with molasses, and sweet cakes in contradistinction to the hot cakes not sweetened, the one white, the other yellow, to wind up with. Such, we found, was the prevailing fare, ordinary and extraordi- nary, along this river. Mountain cranberries (Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea),110 stewed and sweetened, were the common dessert. Everything here was in profusion, and the best of its kind. Butter was in such plenty, that it was commonly used, before it was salted, to grease boots with. In the night we were entertained by the sound of rain-drops on the cedar splints which covered the roof, and awaked the next morning with a drop or two in our eyes. It had set in for a storm, and we made up our minds not to forsake such comfortable quarters with this prospect, but wait for Indians and fair weather. It rained and drizzled, and gleamed by turns, the live-long day. What we did there, how we killed the time,111 would, perhaps, be idler to tell; how many times we buttered our boots, and how often a drowsy one was seen to sidle off to the bedroom. When it held up, I strolled up and down the bank and gathered the harebell and cedar ber- ries,112 which grew there; or else we tried by turns the long-handled axe on the logs before the door. The axe- helves113 here were made to chop standing on the log— a primitive log of course—and were, therefore, nearly a foot longer than with us. One while we walked over the farm, and visited his well-filled barns with McCauslin. There were one other man and two women only here. He kept horses, cows, oxen, and sheep. I think he said that he was the first to bring a plough and a cow so far; and, he might have added, the last, with only two exceptions. The potato rot had found him out here, too, the previous year,114 and got half or two-thirds of his crop, though the seed was of his own raising. Oats, grass, and potatoes, were his staples; but he raised, also, a few carrots and tur- 110 Also called the rock cranberry and cowberry, about which Thoreau wrote in his journal on 3 June 1851 following the initial publication of this essay in Sartain’s Union Magazine: “Dr. Har- ris suggests that the mountain cranberry which I saw at Ktaadn was the Vaccinium Vitis-Idaea, cowberry, because it was edible and not the Uva- Ursi, or bear-berry, which we have in Concord” [J 2:224]. Thaddeus William Harris (1795–1856) was the librarian of Harvard from 1831 to 1856 and lectured on natural history there from 1837 to 1842. Thoreau often appealed to him for help with questions of natural history. 111 In Walden Thoreau wrote: “As if you could kill time without injuring eternity” [Wa 7]. 112 Berries of the eastern red cedar ( Juniperus virginiana). 113 Axe handles. 114 Famine swept Ireland in the 1840s, when the potato crop failed, causing the death of approxi- mately one million people. At this time hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrated, many to the United States. The potato rot soon reached the United States, and in 1844 the Maine potato crop began to fail. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 21 nips, and “a little corn for the hens,” for this was all that he dared risk, for fear that it would not ripen. Melons, squashes, sweet-corn, beans, tomatoes, and many other vegetables, could not be ripened there.115 The very few settlers along this stream were obviously tempted by the cheapness of the land mainly. When I asked McCauslin why more settlers did not come in, he answered, that one reason was, they could not buy the land, it belonged to individuals or companies who were afraid that their wild lands would be settled, and so incorporated into towns, and they be taxed for them; but to settling on the State’s land there was no such hin- derance. For his own part, he wanted no neighbors— he didn’t wish to see any road by his house. Neighbors, even the best, were a trouble and expense, especially on the score of cattle and fences. They might live across the river, perhaps, but not on the same side. The chickens here were protected by the dogs. As McCauslin said, “The old one took it up first, and she taught the pup, and now they had got it into their heads that it wouldn’t do to have anything of the bird kind on the premises.” A hawk hovering over was not allowed to alight, but barked off by the dogs circling underneath; and a pigeon, or a “yellow-hammer,” as they called the pigeon-woodpecker, on a dead limb or stump, was in- stantly expelled. It was the main business of their day, and kept them constantly coming and going. One would rush out of the house on the least alarm given by the other. When it rained hardest, we returned to the house, and took down a tract from the shelf. There was the Wandering Jew,116 cheap edition, and fine print, the Criminal Calendar,117 and Parish’s Geography,118 and flash novels119 two or three. Under the pressure of cir- cumstances, we read a little in these. With such aid, the press is not so feeble an engine after all. This house, 115 Maine has a short growing season, from approximately 110 days in the north to 180 in the south. Thoreau’s home state, in comparison, has a growing season of approximately 160 days in the eastern and central parts of the state, with a longer growing season on the coast, and just north of Boston, of about 200 days. 116 Translation of Eugène Sue’s (1804–1857) Le Juif errant. Sue was a popular French writer whose sensational and melodramatic works were pub- lished serially in newspapers. The circulation of Le Constitutionnel quadrupled during the 1844–1845 serialization of Le Juif errant. The Wandering Jew was first published in the United States in 1844. 117 Reference to The United States Criminal Calen- dar; or, An Awful Warning to the Youth of America; Being an Account of the Most Horrid Murders, Piracies, Highway Robberies, compiled by Henry St. Clair (Boston: C. Gaylord, 1835). 118 Elijah Parish’s (1762–1825) Compendious System of Universal Geography (1804) or his New System of Modern Geography (1810). 119 Cheap, paperbound popular fiction, quickly written and published. In his journal Thoreau mentioned one such work by name: Joseph Holt Ingraham’s (1809–1860) Belle of the Penobscots [J 2:293]. Ingraham produced more than eighty such novels in a six-year period. The Maine Woods 22 Ktaadn which was a fair specimen of those on this river, was built of huge logs, which peeped out everywhere, and were chinked120 with clay and moss. It contained four or five rooms. There were no sawed boards, or shingles, or clap- boards, about it; and scarcely any tool but the axe had been used in its construction. The partitions were made of long clapboard-like splints, of spruce or cedar, turned to a delicate salmon color by the smoke. The roof and sides were covered with the same, instead of shingles and clapboards, and some of a much thicker and larger size were used for the floor. These were all so straight and smooth, that they answered the purpose admirably; and a careless observer would not have suspected that they were not sawed and planed. The chimney and hearth were of vast size, and made of stone. The broom was a few twigs of arbor-vitae tied to a stick; and a pole was suspended over the hearth, close to the ceiling, to dry stockings and clothes on. I noticed that the floor was full of small, dingy holes, as if made with a gimlet, but which were, in fact, made by the spikes, nearly an inch long, which the lumberers wear in their boots to prevent their slipping on wet logs. Just above McCauslin’s, there is a rocky rapid, where logs jam in the spring; and many “drivers”121 are there collected, who frequent his house for supplies: these were their tracks which I saw. At sundown, McCauslin pointed away over the for- est, across the river, to signs of fair weather amid the clouds—some evening redness there.122 For even there the points of compass held; and there was a quarter of the heavens appropriated to sunrise and another to sunset. The next morning, the weather proving fair enough for our purpose, we prepared to start; and, the Indians having failed us, persuaded McCauslin, who was not un- willing to re-visit the scenes of his driving, to accompany us in their stead, intending to engage one other boatman 120 The chinks filled. 121 One who drives logs downstream, using a cant hook, or cant dog, a handspike with a swivel hook. 122 Allusion to the popular weather adage origi- nating from Matthew 16.2: “When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.” The Maine Woods Ktaadn 23 on the way. A strip of cotton-cloth for a tent, a couple of blankets, which would suffice for the whole party, fifteen pounds of hard bread, ten pounds of “clear” pork,123 and a little tea, made up “Uncle George’s” pack. The last three articles were calculated to be provision enough for six men for a week, with what we might pick up. A tea- kettle, a frying-pan and an axe, to be obtained at the last house, would complete our outfit. We were soon out of McCauslin’s clearing, and in the ever-green woods again. The obscure trail made by the two settlers above, which even the woodman is some- times puzzled to discern, ere long crossed a narrow open strip in the woods overrun with weeds, called the Burnt Land, where a fire had raged formerly, stretching north- ward nine or ten miles, to Millinocket Lake. At the end of three miles we reached Shad Pond, or Noliseemack, an expansion of the river. Hodge, the Assistant State Ge- ologist, who passed through this on the twenty-fifth of June, 1837, says, “We pushed our boat through an acre or more of buck-beans,124 which had taken root at the bot- tom, and bloomed above the surface in the greatest pro- fusion and beauty.”125 Thomas Fowler’s126 house is four miles from McCauslin’s, on the shore of the pond, at the mouth of the Millinocket River, and eight miles from the lake of the same name, on the latter stream. This lake affords a more direct course to Ktaadn, but we preferred to follow the Penobscot and the Pamadumcook Lakes. Fowler was just completing a new log hut, and was saw- ing out a window through the logs nearly two feet thick when we arrived. He had begun to paper his house with spruce bark, turned inside out, which had a good effect, and was in keeping with the circumstances. Instead of water we got here a draught of beer,127 which, it was al- lowed, would be better; clear and thin, but strong and stringent as the cedar sap. It was as if we sucked at the very teats of Nature’s pine-clad bosom in these parts— 123 Best class of barreled pork, comprising the sides of large hogs free from bones and clear of lean. 124 Menyanthes trifoliate, also known as bog bean. 125 Quoted from “Mr. Hodge’s Report on the Allegash section, from the Penobscot to the St. Lawrence River,” in Jackson’s Second Annual Report. 126 Thomas Fowler, Jr. (1822–1902). 127 Spruce beer that is described in William Durkee Williamson’s (1779–1846) History of the State of Maine as “a most wholesome and pal- atable drink.” On 13 July 1852 Thoreau wrote to his sister, Sophia 1819–1876): “I would exchange my immortality for a glass of small beer this hot weather” [C 6:194]. Thoreau made his own birch beer, as attested to by his friend Daniel Ricketson (1813–1898): “My friend Thoreau has a very pleas- ant acidulous drink, requiring only the addition of sugar. The sap of the birch, white, black and yellow. The former the most aromatic.” The Maine Woods 24 Ktaadn the sap of all Millinocket botany commingled—the top- most most fantastic and spiciest sprays of the primitive wood, and whatever invigorating and stringent gum or essence it afforded, steeped and dissolved in it—a lum- berer’s drink, which would acclimate and naturalize a man at once—which would make him see green, and, if he slept, dream that he heard the wind sough among the pines. Here was a fife, praying to be played on, through which we breathed a few tuneful strains,—brought hither to tame wild beasts.128 As we stood upon the pile of chips by the door, fish-hawks were sailing over head; and here, over Shad Pond, might daily be witnessed, the tyranny of the bald-eagle over that bird. Tom pointed away over the Lake to a bald-eagle’s nest, which was plainly visible more than a mile off, on a pine, high above the surrounding forest, and was frequented from year to year by the same pair, and held sacred by him. There were these two houses only there, his low hut, and the eagles’ airy cart-load of fagots. Thomas Fowler, too, was persuaded to join us, for two men were necessary to manage the batteau, which was soon to be our carriage, and these men needed to be cool and skilful for the navi- gation of the Penobscot. Tom’s pack was soon made, for he had not far to look for his waterman’s boots, and a red flannel shirt. This is the favorite color with lumbermen; and red flannel is reputed to possess some mysterious virtues, to be most healthful and convenient in respect to perspiration. In every gang there will be a large propor- tion of red birds. We took here a poor and leaky batteau, and began to pole up the Millinocket two miles, to the elder Fowler’s,129 in order to avoid the Grand Falls of the Penobscot, intending to exchange our batteau there for a better. The Millinocket is a small, shallow and sandy stream, full of what I took to be lamprey-eel’s or sucker’s nests, and lined with musquash130 cabins, but free from rapids, according to Fowler, excepting at its outlet from 128 Allusion to Orpheus, in Greek mythology, whose music had supernatural powers and could charm animals and inanimate objects. 129 Thomas Fowler, Sr. (1792–1874), the first white settler in the area now known as Milli- nocket. 130 Muskrat. The Maine Woods Ktaadn 25 the Lake. He was at this time engaged in cutting the native grass—rush grass131 and meadow-clover,132 as he called it—on the meadows and small, low islands, of this stream. We noticed flattened places in the grass on either side, where, he said, a moose had lain down the night before, adding, that there were thousands in these meadows. Old Fowler’s, on the Millinocket, six miles from Mc- Causlin’s, and twenty-four from the Point, is the last house. Gibson’s, on the Sowadnehunk,133 is the only clearing above, but that had proved a failure, and was long since deserted.134 Fowler is the oldest inhabitant of these woods. He formerly lived a few miles from here, on the south side of the West Branch, where he built his house sixteen years ago,135 the first house built above the Five Islands. Here our new batteau was to be carried over the first portage of two miles, round the Grand Falls of the Penobscot, on a horse-sled made of saplings, to jump the numerous rocks in the way, but we had to wait a couple of hours for them to catch the horses, which were pas- tured at a distance, amid the stumps, and had wandered still further off. The last of the salmon for this season had just been caught, and were still fresh in pickle, from which enough was extracted to fill our empty kettle, and so graduate our introduction to simpler forest fare. The week before, they had lost nine sheep here out of their first flock, by the wolves. The surviving sheep came round the house, and seemed frightened, which induced them to go and look for the rest, when they found seven dead and lacerated, and two still alive. These last they carried to the house, and, as Mrs. Fowler136 said, they were merely scratched in the throat, and had no more visible wound than would be produced by the prick of a pin. She sheared off the wool from their throats, and washed them and put on some salve, and turned them out, but in a few moments they were missing, and had not been 131 Sheathed rush-grass (Sporobolus vaginiflorus), a wiry grass with panicles more or less included in the leaf-sheaths, thus having a slightly rushlike appearance. 132 Red clover (Trifolium pretense). 133 Now Nesowadnehunk. 134 This clearing is described briefly in Jackson’s Second Annual Report: “We then came to Gibson’s clearing of 80 acres on the eastern side. The banks are from 10 to 15 feet high, and the soil, judging from the fine growth of grass which then covered the open intervale, is very good. The place is not inhabited.” 135 Fowler first built at Grand Falls before moving to Millinocket Stream ca. 1829–1830. 136 Betsy (Martin) Fowler (1801–1890). The Maine Woods 26 Ktaadn found since. In fact, they were all poisoned, and those that were found swelled up at once, so that they saved neither skin nor wool. This realized the old fables of the wolves and the sheep,137 and convinced me that that an- cient hostility still existed. Verily, the shepherd boy did not need to sound a false alarm this time.138 There were steel traps by the door of various sizes, for wolves, otter, and bears, with large claws instead of teeth, to catch in their sinews. Wolves are frequently killed with poisoned bait. At length, after we had dined here on the usual back- woods fare, the horses arrived, and we hauled our bat- teau out of the water, and lashed it to its wicker carriage, and, throwing in our packs, walked on before, leaving the boatmen and driver, who was Tom’s brother,139 to manage the concern. The route, which led through the wild pasture where the sheep were killed, was in some places the roughest ever travelled by horses, over rocky hills, where the sled bounced and slid along, like a vessel pitching in a storm; and one man was as neces- sary to stand at the stern, to prevent the boat from being wrecked, as a helmsman in the roughest sea. The phi- losophy of our progress was something like this: when the runners struck a rock three or four feet high, the sled bounced back and upwards at the same time; but, as the horses never ceased pulling, it came down on the top of the rock, and so we got over. This portage prob- ably followed the trail of an ancient Indian carry round these falls. By 2 o’clock we, who had walked on before, reached the river above the falls, not far from the outlet of Quakish Lake,140 and waited for the batteau to come up. We had been here but a short time, when a thunder- shower was seen coming up from the west, over the still invisible lakes, and that pleasant wilderness which we were so eager to become acquainted with; and soon the heavy drops began to patter on the leaves around us. I 137 Aesopian fables such as “The Wolves and the Sheep,” “The Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing,” and “The Shepherd-Boy and the Wolf.” 138 Allusion to the “The Shepherd-Boy and the Wolf”: “A shepherd-boy, who tended his flock not far from a village, used to amuse himself at times in crying out ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ Twice or thrice his trick succeeded. The whole village came running out to his assistance; when all the return they got was to be laughed at for their pains. At last one day the Wolf came indeed. The Boy cried out in earnest. But his neighbours, supposing him to be at his old sport, paid no heed to his cries, and the Wolf devoured the Sheep. So the Boy learned, when it was too late, that liars are not believed even when they tell the truth.” 139 George W. Fowler (1824–1890). 140 In Hodge’s report “Quakis” is described as “a narrow pond, 3 miles long, through which the current runs to its outlet. It is surrounded by low banks, which are covered with pine, birch, and oak.” The Maine Woods Ktaadn 27 had just selected the prostrate trunk of a huge pine, five or six feet in diameter, and was crawling under it, when, luckily, the boat arrived. It would have amused a shel- tered man to witness the manner in which it was un- lashed, and whirled over, while the first water-spout141 burst upon us. It was no sooner in the hands of the eager company than it was abandoned to the first revolution- ary impulse, and to gravity, to adjust it; and they might have been seen all stooping to its shelter, and wriggling under like so many eels, before it was fairly deposited on the ground. When all were under, we propped up the lee side, and busied ourselves there, whittling thole pins142 for rowing, when we should reach the lakes; and made the woods ring, between the claps of thunder, with such boat-songs as we could remember.143 The horses stood sleek and shining with the rain, all drooping and crest- fallen, while deluge after deluge washed over us; but the bottom of a boat may be relied on for a tight roof. At length, after two hours’ delay at this place, a streak of fair weather appeared in the northwest, whither our course now lay, promising a serene evening for our voyage; and the driver returned with his horses, while we made haste to launch our boat, and commence our voyage in good earnest. There were six of us, including the two boatmen. With our packs heaped up near the bows, and ourselves disposed as baggage to trim144 the boat, with instructions not to move in case we should strike a rock, more than so many barrels of pork, we pushed out into the first rapid, a slight specimen of the stream we had to navi- gate. With Uncle George in the stern, and Tom in the bows, each using a spruce pole about twelve feet long, pointed with iron,145 and poling on the same side, we shot up the rapids like a salmon, the water rushing and roaring around, so that only a practised eye could distin- guish a safe course, or tell what was deep water and what 141 A tornado passing over a body of water. 142 Wooden pegs set in part in the gunwales of a boat to serve as an oarlock. 143 Thoreau was familiar with the nautical songs of Charles Dibdin (1745–1814). He referred to Dibdin’s “Blow High, Blow Low” in his 1849 jour- nal [ITM 43], and Dibdin’s “Poor Tom Bowling; or, The Sailor’s Epitaph”—sometimes spelled “Tom Bowline”—was a favorite song. Edward Emerson, on recalling Thoreau singing it, wrote: “To this day that song, heard long years ago, rings clear and moving to me.” 144 To balance a vessel by shifting its cargo. 145 Thoreau’s footnote added in the 1864 edition of	923,519
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) (Z-Library).pdf	This page intentionally left blank CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Thus Spoke Zarathustra CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Series editors KARL AMERIKS Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame DESMOND M. CLARKE Professor of Philosophy at University College Cork ThemainobjectiveofCambridgeTextsintheHistoryofPhilosophyistoexpandtherange, variety, and quality of texts in the history of philosophy which are available in English. The series includes texts by familiar names (such as Descartes and Kant) and also by less well-known authors. Wherever possible, texts are published in complete and unabridged form, and translations are specially commissioned for the series. Each volume contains a critical introduction together with a guide to further reading and any necessary glossaries and textual apparatus. The volumes are designed for student use at undergraduate and postgraduate level and will be of interest not only to students of philosophy, but also to a wider audience of readers in the history of science, the history of theology, and the history of ideas. For a list of titles published in the series, please see end of book. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None EDITED BY ADRIAN DEL CARO University of Colorado at Boulder ROBERT B. PIPPIN University of Chicago TRANSLATED BY ADRIAN DEL CARO CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK First published in print format ISBN-13 978-0-521-84171-9 ISBN-13 978-0-521-60261-7 ISBN-13 978-0-511-22106-4 © Cambridge University Press 2006 2006 Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521841719 This publication is in copyright. 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Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org hardback paperback paperback eBook (NetLibrary) eBook (NetLibrary) hardback Contents Introduction page viii Chronology xxxvi Further reading xxxix Note on the text xliii Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None First Part  Zarathustra’s Prologue  The Speeches of Zarathustra  On the Three Metamorphoses  On the Teachers of Virtue  On the Hinterworldly  On the Despisers of the Body  On the Passions of Pleasure and Pain  On the Pale Criminal  On Reading and Writing  On the Tree on the Mountain  On the Preachers of Death  On War and Warriors  On the New Idol  On the Flies of the Market Place  On Chastity  On the Friend  On a Thousand and One Goals  On Love of the Neighbor  On the Way of the Creator  v Contents On Little Women Old and Young  On the Adder’s Bite  On Child and Marriage  On Free Death  On the Bestowing Virtue  Second Part  The Child with the Mirror  On the Blessed Isles  On the Pitying  On Priests  On the Virtuous  On the Rabble  On the Tarantulas  On the Famous Wise Men  The Night Song  The Dance Song  The Grave Song  On Self-Overcoming  On the Sublime Ones  On the Land of Education  On Immaculate Perception  On Scholars  On Poets  On Great Events  The Soothsayer  On Redemption  On Human Prudence  The Stillest Hour  Third Part  The Wanderer  On the Vision and the Riddle  On Unwilling Bliss  Before Sunrise  On Virtue that Makes Small  On the Mount of Olives  On Passing By  vi Contents On Apostates  The Homecoming  On the Three Evils  On the Spirit of Gravity  On Old and New Tablets  The Convalescent  On Great Longing  The Other Dance Song  The Seven Seals (Or: the Yes and Amen Song)  Fourth and Final Part  The Honey Sacriﬁce  The Cry of Distress  Conversation with the Kings  The Leech  The Magician  Retired  The Ugliest Human Being  The Voluntary Beggar  The Shadow  At Noon  The Welcome  The Last Supper  On the Higher Man  The Song of Melancholy  On Science  Among Daughters of the Desert  The Awakening  The Ass Festival  The Sleepwalker Song  The Sign  Index  vii Introduction The text Nietzsche published each of the ﬁrst three parts of Thus Spoke Zarathus- tra (TSZ hereafter) separately between and , during one of his most productive and interesting periods, in between the appearance of The Gay Science (which he noted had itself marked a new beginning of his thought) and Beyond Good and Evil. As with the rest of his books, very few copies were sold. He later wrote a fourth part (called “Fourth and Final Part”) which was not published until , and then privately, only for a few friends, by which time Nietzsche had slipped into the insanity that marked the last decade of his life.Not long afterwards an edition with all four parts published together appeared, and most editions and translationshavefollowedsuit,treatingthefourpartsassomehowbelong- ing in one book, although many scholars see a natural ending of sorts after Part and regard Part as more of an appendix than a central element in the drama narrated by the work. Nietzsche, who was trained as a classicist, may have been thinking of the traditional tragedy competitions in ancient Greece, where entrants submitted three tragedies and a fourth play, a comic and somewhat bawdy satyr play. At any event, he thought of this ﬁnal section as in some sense the “Fourth Part” and any interpretation must come to terms with it. Nietzsche went mad in January . For more on the problem of Part , see Laurence Lampert’s discussion in Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (New Haven: Yale University Press, ), pp. –. For a contrasting view (that Part is integral to the work and a genuine conclusion), see Robert Gooding-Williams, Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, ). viii Introduction TSZ is unlike any of Nietzsche’s other works, which themselves are unlike virtually anything else in the history of philosophy. Nietzsche him- self provides no preface or introduction, although the section on TSZ in his late book, Ecce Homo, and especially its last section, “Why I am a Des- tiny,” are invaluable guides to what he might have been up to. Zarathustra seems to be some sort of prophet, calling people, modern European Chris- tian people especially, to account for their failings and encouraging them to pursue a new way of life. (As we shall discuss in a moment, even this simple characterization is immediately complicated by the fact that Nietzsche insists that this has nothing to do with a “replacement” reli- gion, and that the book is as much a parody of a prophetic view as it is an instance of it.)In Ecce Homo Nietzsche expresses some irritation that no one has wondered about the odd name of this prophet. Zarathustra was a Persian prophet (known to the Greeks as Zoroaster)and he is important for Nietzsche because he originally established that the central struggle in human life (even cosmic life) was between two absolutely distinct princi- ples, between good and evil, which Nietzsche interpreted in Christian and humanist terms as the opposition between selﬂessness and benevolence on the one hand and egoism and self-interest on the other. Nietzsche tells us two things about this prophet: Zarathustra created this fateful error of morality: this means he has to be the ﬁrst to recognize it. (NietzschemeansthatZarathustrawastheﬁrsttorecognizeitscalamitous consequences.) And: [t]he self-overcoming of morality from out of truthfulness; the self- overcoming of the moralists into their opposite – into me – that is what the name Zarathustra means coming from my mouth. That is, we can now live, Zarathustra attempts to teach, freed from the picture of this absolute dualism, but without moral anarchy and without sliding into a bovine contentment or a violent primitivism. Sometimes, especially in the ﬁrst two parts, this new way of living is presented Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo (hereafter EH), in The Anti-Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), §, pp. –. Estimates about when Zarathustra actually lived vary from to . Somewhere between and would appear the safest guess. Nietzsche, however, evinces virtually no interest in the historical Zarathustra or the actual religion of Zoroastrianism. EH, §, p. . Ibid. ix Introduction in sweeping and collective, historical terms, as an epochal transition from mere human being to an “overman,” virtually a new species. This way of characterizing the problem tends to drop out after Part , and Zarathustra focuses his attention on what he often calls the problem of self-overcoming: how each of us, as individuals, might come to be dissat- isﬁed with our way of living and so be able to strive for something better, even if the traditional supports for and guidance toward such a goal seem no longer credible (e.g. the idea of the purpose of human nature, or what is revealed by religion, or any objective view of human happiness and so forth). And in Part Zarathustra asks much more broadly about a whole new way of thinking about or imagining ourselves that he believes is nec- essary for this sort of re-orientation. He suggests that such a possibility depends on how we come to understand and experience temporality at a very basic level, and he introduces a famous image, “the eternal return of the same” (which he elsewhere calls Zarathustra’s central teaching), to begin to grapple with the problem. He himself becomes deathly ill in contemplating this cyclical picture; not surprisingly since it seems to deny a possibility he himself had hoped for at the outset – a decisive historical revolution, a time after which all would be different from the time before. Many of the basic issues in the book are raised by considering what it means for Zarathustra to suffer from and then “recover” from such an “illness.” The interpretive problem TSZ is often reported to be Nietzsche’s most popular and most read book, but the fact that the book is so unusual and often hermetic has made for wildly different sorts of reception. Here is one that is typical of the kind of popular reputation Nietzsche has in modern culture: Together with Goethe’s Faust and the New Testament, Zarathustra was the most popular work that literate soldiers took into battle for inspiration and consolation [in WW I – RP]. The “beautiful words” of Zarathustra, one author wrote, were especially apt for the Germans who “more than any other Volk possessed ﬁghting natures in Zarathustra’s sense.” About ,copies of a specially durable wartime Zarathustra were distributed to the troops. Steven Aschheim, The Nietzsche Legacy in Germany, –(Berkeley: University of California Press, ), p. . The quotation cited is from Rektor P. Hoche, “Nietzsche und der deutsche Kampf,” Zeitung f¨ur Literatur, Kunst und Wissenschaft :(March ). x Introduction Now it is hard to imagine a book less suitable for such a purpose than Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It is true that Zarathustra had famously said, “You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I tell you: it is the good war that hallows any cause” (p. ), but even that passage is surrounded by claims that the highest aspiration is actually to be a “saint of knowledge,” and that only failing that should one become a warrior (what sort of continuum could this be?), and that the “highest thought” of such warriors should be one commanded by Zarathustra, and it should have nothing to do with states and territory but with the injunc- tion that human being shall be overcome. (What armies would be ﬁghting whom in such a cause?)Moreover one wonders what “inspiration and consolation” our “literate soldiers” could have found in the Fellini-esque title character,himself hardly possessed of a “warlike nature,” chroni- cally indecisive, sometimes self-pitying, wandering, speechifying, danc- ing about and encouraging others to dance, consorting mostly with ani- mals, confused disciples, a dwarf, and his two mistresses. And what could they have made of the speeches, with those references to bees overloaded with honey, soothsayers, gravediggers, bursting cofﬁns, pale criminals, red judges, self-propelling wheels, shepherds choking on snakes, tarantu- las, “little golden ﬁshing rods of wisdom,” Zarathustra’s ape, Zarathustra speaking too “crudely and sincerely” for “Angora rabbits,” and the wor- ship of a jackass in Part , with that circle of an old king, a magician, the last pope, a beggar, a shadow, the conscientious of spirit, and a sad soothsayer? Whatinfactcouldanyonemakeofthisbewilderingwork,partsofwhich seem more hermetic than Celan, parts more self-indulgent and bizarre than bad Bob Dylan lyrics? Do we know what we are meant to make of it? Nietzsche himself, in Ecce Homo, was willing to say a number of things about the work, that in it he is the “inventor of the dithyramb,”that with In EH, §, p. when Nietzsche says that after Zarathustra “the concept of politics will have then merged entirely into a war of spirits” he does not pause to tell us what a war, not of bodies, but of spirits might be. And he goes on to say “there will be wars such as the earth has never seen,” and we might note that he seems to mean that different sorts, types of “wars” will make up “great politics.” Cf. EH, §, p. : “I do not want to be a saint, I would rather be a buffoon . . . Perhaps I am a buffoon . . . And yet in spite of this or rather not in spite of this – because nothing to date has been more hypocritical than saints – the truth speaks from out of me. – But the truth is terrible: because lies have been called truth so far.” A dithyramb was a choral hymn sung in the classical period in Greece by ﬁfty men or boys to honor the god Dionysus. xi Introduction TSZ he became the “ﬁrst tragic philosopher,” and that TSZ should be understood as “music.” When it is announced, as the work to follow The Gay Science, we are clearly warned of the difﬁculty that will challenge any reader. Section §had concluded the original version of The Gay Science with “Incipit tragoedia,” and then the ﬁrst paragraph of TSZ’s Prologue. Nietzsche’s warning comes in the second edition Preface: “Incipit tragoedia” [tragedy begins] we read at the end of this suspi- ciously innocent book. Beware! Something utterly wicked and mis- chievous is being announced here: incipit parodia [parody begins], no doubt.” Are there other works that could be said to be both tragedies and parodies? Don Quixote, perhaps, a work in many other ways also quite similar to TSZ?If Nietzsche announced that his TSZ can and should be read as a parody, what exactly would that mean? I do not mean what it would mean to ﬁnd parts of it funny; I mean trying to understand how it could be both a prophetic book and a kind of send-up of a prophetic book. How it could both present Zarathustra as a teacher and parody his attempt to play that role? Why has the work remained for the most part a place simply to mine for quotations in support of Nietzschean “theories” of the overman,theEternalReturnoftheSame,andthe“lasthumanbeings”;all as if the theories were contained inside an ornate literary form, delivered by Nietzsche’s surrogate, an ancient Persian prophet? At the very least, especially when we look also to virtually everything written after the later s, when Nietzsche in effect abandoned the traditional essay form in favor of less continuous, more aphoristic, and here parabolic forms, it is clear that Nietzsche wanted to resist incorporation into traditional philos- ophy, to escape traditional assumptions about the writing of philosophy. In a way that point is obvious, nowhere more obvious than in the form of TSZ, even if the steady stream of books about Nietzsche’s metaphysics, or value theory, or even epistemology shows no sign of abating. The two Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (hereafter GS), edited by Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), §, p. . The intertwining of the two dramatic modes of tragedy and comic parody appear throughout the text. A typical example is at the end of “The Wanderer” in Part , when Zarathustra laughs in a kind of self-mocking and then weeps as he remembers the friends he has had to leave behind. (p. ). It is also very likely that Nietzsche, the “old philologist,” is referring to the end of Plato’s Symposium, where Socrates claims that what we need is someone who can write both tragedies and comedies, that the tragic poet might also be comic (Symposium, c–d). xii Introduction more interesting questions are rather, ﬁrst, what one takes such resistance to mean, what the practical point is, we might say, of the act of so resisting, what Nietzsche is trying to do with his books, as much as what his books mean, if we are not to understand them in the traditional philosophical sense. (It would have been helpful if, in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche had not just written the chapter “Why I Write Such Good Books,” but “Why I Write Books At All.”) Secondly, why has this resistance been so resisted, to the point that there are not even many disputes about TSZ, no contesting views about what parodia might have meant? One obvious answer should be addressed immediately. It may be so hard to know what TSZ is for, and so easy simply to plunder it unsystem- atically, because the work is in large part a failure. TSZ echoes Roman- tic attempts at created mythologies, such as William Blake’s, as well as Wagner’s attempt to re-work Teutonic myth, but it remains so sui generis and unclassiﬁable that it resists even the broadest sort of category and does not itself instruct us, at least not very clearly or very well, about how to read it. That it is both a tragedy and a parody helps little with the details. Large stretches of it seem ponderous and turgid, mysteri- ously abandoning Nietzsche’s characteristic light touch and pithy wit. The many dreams and dream images appealed to by Zarathustra jumble together so much (in one case, grimacing children, angels, owls, fools, and butterﬂies as big as children tumble out of a broken cofﬁn) that an attempt at interpretation seems beside the point. (When a disciple tries to offer a reading of this dream – and seems to do a pretty fair job of it – Zarathustra ultimately just stares into this disciple’s face and shakes his head with apparent deep disappointment.) These difﬁculties have all insured that TSZ is not read or studied in university philosophy depart- ments anywhere near as often as the Nietzschean standards, The Birth of Tragedy, The Uses and Disadvantages of History, Beyond Good and Evil, and The Genealogy of Morals. This is understandable, but such judgments may be quite premature. Throughout the short and extremely volatile reception of his work, Nietz- sche may not yet have been given enough leeway with his various exper- iments in a new kind of philosophical writing, may have been subject much too quickly to philosophical “translations.” This is an issue – how to write philosophy under contemporary historical conditions, or even how to write “philosophically” now that much of traditional philosophy itself is no longer historically credible – that Nietzsche obviously devoted xiii Introduction a great deal of thought to, and it is extremely unlikely that his conclusions would not show up in worked out, highly crafted forms. They ask of the reader something different than traditional reading and understanding, but they are asking for some effort, even demanding it, from readers. This is especially at issue in TSZ since in so far as it could be said to have a dominant theme, it is this problem, Zarathustra’s problem: who is his audience? What is he trying to accomplish? How does he think he should go about this? While it is pretty clear what it means for his teaching to be rejected, he seems himself very unsure of what would count as having that teaching understood and accepted. (The theme – the question we have to understand ﬁrst before anything in the work can be addressed – is clearly announced in the subtitle: A Book for All and None. How could a book be for all and none?) Thus Spoke Zarathustra as a work of literature? On the face of it at least some answers seem accessible from the plot of the work. Zarathustra leaves his cave to revisit the human world because he wants both to prophesy and help hasten the advent of something like a new “attempt” on the part of mankind, a post “beyond” or “over the human” ( ¨Ubermensch) aspiration. Such a goal would be free of the psychological dimensions that have led the human type into a state of some crisis (made worse by the fact that most do not think a crisis has occurred or that any new attempt is necessary). Much of the ﬁrst two parts is thus occupied with setting out these failings, and the various human types who most embody them, railing against them by showing what they have cost us, and intimating how things might be different. Some such failings, like havingthewrongsortofrelationtooneself,orbeingburdenedwithaspirit of revenge against time itself, are particularly important. So we are treated tobriefcharacterizationsofthedespisersofthebody,thepalecriminal,the preachers of death, warriors, chastity, the pitying, the hinterworldly, the bestowers of virtue, women, priests, the virtuous, the rabble, the sublime ones, poets, and scholars. Along the way these typologies, one might call them, are interrupted by even more ﬁgurative parables (On the Adder’s Bite, the Blessed Isles, Tarantulas, the Stillest Hour), by highly ﬁgurative homiliesonsuchtopicsasfriends,marriage,afreedeath,self-overcoming, redemption, and prudence, as well as by three songs, Night Song, Dance Song, and Grave Song. xiv Introduction However, we encounter a very difﬁcult issue right away when we try to take account of the fact that in all these discussions, Zarathustra’s account is throughout so highly parabolic, metaphorical, and aphoristic. Rather than state various claims about virtues and the present age and religion and aspirations, Zarathustra speaks about stars, animals, trees, tarantulas, dreams, and so forth. Explanations and claims are almost always analog- ical and ﬁgurative. (In his discussion of TSZ in Ecce Homo, Nietzsche wrote, “The most powerful force of metaphor that has ever existed is poor and trivial compared with the return of language to the nature of imagery.”)Why is his message given in such a highly ﬁgurative, literary way? It is an important question because it goes to the heart of Nietzsche’s own view of his relation to traditional philosophy, and how the literary and rhetorical form of his books marks whatever sort of new beginning he thinks he has made. Philosophy after all has traditionally thought of itself as clarifying what is unclear, and as attempting to justify what in the everyday world too often passes without challenge. Philosophy tries to reveal, we might say in general, what is hidden (in presuppositions, commitments, folk wisdom, etc.). If we think of literature in such tradi- tional ways, though, then there is a clear contrast. A literary work does not assert anything. “Meaning” in a poem or play or novel is not only hidden, and requires effort to ﬁnd; our sense of the greatness of great literature is bound up with our sense that the credibility and authority of such works rests on how much and how complexly meaning is both profoundly and unavoidably hidden and enticingly intimated, promised; how difﬁcult to discern, but “there,” extractable in prosaic summaries only with great distortion. Contrary to the philosophical attempt (or fantasy) of freeing ordinary life from illusions, confusions and unjustiﬁed presuppositions, one way in which a literary treatment departs from ordinary life lies in its great compression of possible meanings, defamiliarization, “showing” paradoxically how much more is hidden, mysterious, sublime in ordinary life than is ordinarily understood. (One thinks of Emily Dickinson’s pithy summary: “Nature is a haunted house, but art is a house that wants to be haunted.”) EH, §, p. . Emily Dickinson, Emily Dickinson: Selected Letters, ed. T. H. Johnson (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), p. . There is another text by a “Nietzschean” author that might also serve as, might even have been, a commentary on this aspect of TSZ – Kafka’s famous parable, “On Parables:” xv Introduction What would it mean to present a “teaching” with so many philosophical resonances, so close to the philosophy we might call “value theory,” in a way that not only leaves so much hidden, but that in effect heightens our sense of the interpretive work that must be done before philosophical reﬂection can hope to begin (if even then), and even further impedes any hermeneutic response by inventing a context so unfamiliar and often bizarre? There is a famous claim concerning truth and appearance and a set of complex images that are both relevant to this question. Truth, appearance, and the failure of desire In more traditional philosophical terms, Nietzsche often stresses that we start going wrong when we become captured by the picture of reveal- ing “reality,” the “truth,” beneath appearances, in mere opinions. This can be particularly misleading, Nietzsche often states, when we think of ourselves in post-Kantian modernity as having exposed the supposed groundlessness“underneath”thedeceptiveappearancesofvalueandpur- pose, when we think that we have rendered impossible any continuation of Zarathustra’s pronounced love of human beings, life, and the earth. Some impasse in the possible afﬁrmation of value (what Zarathustra calls Many complain that the words of the wise are always merely parables and of no use in daily life, which is the only life we have. When the sage says, “Go over,” he does not mean that we should cross to some actual place, which we could do anyhow if the labor were worth it; he means some fabulous yonder [Dr¨uben], something unknown to us, something that he cannot designate more precisely either, and therefore cannot help us here in the very least. All these parables set out to say merely that the incomprehensible is incomprehensible, and we know that already. But the cares we have to struggle with every day; that is a different matter. Concerning this a man once said: Why such reluctance? If you only followed the parables you yourselves would become parables and with that rid of all your daily cares. Another said: I bet that is also a parable. The ﬁrst said: You have won. The second said: But unfortunately only in parable. The ﬁrst said: No, in reality; in parable you have lost. Franz Kafka, The Basic Kafka (New York: Pocket Books, ), p. . It is well known that Kafka read and admired Nietzsche. The story about his vigorous defense of Nietzsche against Max Brod’s charge that Nietzsche was a “fraud” is often cited. See Klaus Wagenbach, Kafka, trans. Ewald Osers (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), p. . I pass over here another complex dimension of Nietzsche’s literary style. Zarathustra is not Nietzsche, any more than Prospero is Shakespeare, and appreciating the literary irony of the work is indispensable to a full reading. I have tried to sketch an interpretation along these lines in “Irony and Afﬁrmation in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics, ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy Strong (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. xvi Introduction “esteeming”) has been reached (“nihilism”) but this “radical enlighten- ment” picture is not the right description. (See Zarathustra’s attack on the “preachers of death” and his rejection there of the melancholy that might result when “they encounter a sick or a very old person or a corpse, and right away they say, ‘life is refuted’” (p. ).) And Nietzsche clearly wants to discard as misleading that simple distinction between appearance and reality itself. He is well known for claiming, in his own mini-version of the self-education of the human spirit in The Twilight of the Idols, that We have abolished the real world: what world is left? The apparent world perhaps? . . . But no! with the real world we have also abolished the apparent world. However, even if this sort of suspicion of the everyday appearances (that they are merely a pale copy of the true world, the true ideal, etc.) is rejected, it is very much not the case that Nietzsche wants to infer that we are therefore left merely to achieve as much subjectively mea- sured happiness as possible, nor does he intend to open the door to a measureless, wildly tolerant pluralism. As he has set it out, Nietzsche’s new philosophers (or post-philosophers) are still driven by what he calls a modern “intellectual conscience”:they want to know if what matters to them now ought to matter, whether there might be more important things to care about. Even though not driven by an otherworldly or tran- scendent or even “objective” ideal beneath or above the appearances, they should still be able to “overcome themselves” and in this way, to escape “wretched contentment.” That is, they cannot orient themselves from the question, “What matters in itself?” as if a reality beneath the appearances, but even without reliance on such a reality, a possible self-dissatisfaction and striving must still be possible if an afﬁrmable, especially what Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, transl. R. J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, ), p. . GS, §, p. . See also the remark in Daybreak, about how the drive to knowledge has become too strong for us to be able to want happiness without knowledge or [to be able to want the happiness] of a strong, ﬁrmly rooted delusion; even to imagine such a state of things is painful to us! Restless discovering and divining has such an attraction for us, and has grown as indispensable to us as is to the lover his unrequited love, which he would at no price relinquish for a state of indifference – perhaps, indeed, we too are unrequited lovers. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. R. J. Hollingdale and ed. Maudemarie Clark and Brian Leiter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), §, p. ) xvii Introduction Nietzsche sometimes calls a “noble” life, is still to be possible. And he clearly believes that the major element of this possibility is his own effect onhislisteners.Agreatdealdependsonhim(justasinthe“tragicageofthe Greeks,”Socrateswasabletocreate,tolegislateanewformoflife).Inwhat way, goes the implied question or experiment, can a human being now tied to the “earth” still aspire to be ultimately “over-man,” ¨Ubermensch? How could one come to want such an earthly self-overcoming in these post-death-of-God conditions? Whence the right sort of contempt for one’s present state, and aspiration for some future goal? Whatever the answer to such questions, Nietzsche clearly thinks that the character of Zarathustra’s literary rhetoric must be understood in terms of this goal. Parallel to the paradox of a book for all and none, this problem suggests the paradox of how Zarathustra by “going under” and by destroying hopes for a “hinterworld” in the names of “earth” and “life” can prepare the way for a new form of “going over,” can prepare the transition between human beings as they now are and an “overman.” One ﬁnal version of essentially the same paradox: how can Zarathustra inspire and shame without being imitated, without creating disciples? For example, in the Preface to Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche notes that our long struggle with and often opposition to and dissatisfaction with our own moral tradition, European Christianity, has created a “mag- niﬁcent tension (Spannung) of the spirit in Europe, the likes of which the earth has never known: with such a tension in our bow we can now shoot at the furthest goals.” But, he goes on, the “democratic Enlight- enment” also sought to “unbend” such a bow, to “make sure that spirit does not experience itself so readily as ‘need.’”This latter formulation coincides with a wonderfully lapidary expression in The Gay Science. In discussing “the millions of Europeans who cannot endure their boredom and themselves,” he notes that they would even welcome “a craving to suffer” and so “to ﬁnd in their suffering a probable reason for action, for In EH, what distinguishes Zarathustra is said to be his capacity for contradictions like this (EH, §, pp. –). See also section , “On Great Longing,” references to “loving contempt” (p. ) and to the intertwining of love and hate for life in “The Other Dance Song” (p. ). This is also the problem of “exemplarity” in Nietzsche’s Schopenhauer as Educator essay. There is an illuminating essay on this issue, “Nietzsche’s Perfectionism: A Reading of Schopenhauer as Educator,” of great relevance to TSZ, by James Conant in Nietzsche’s Postmoralism: Essays on Nietzsche’s Prelude to Philosophy, ed. R. Schacht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), pp. –. Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, transl. Judith Norman, ed. Rolf-Peter Horstmann and Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), preface, p. . xviii Introduction deeds.” In sum: “neediness is needed!” (“Not ist n¨otig”)In TSZ, the point is formulated in a similar way: Beware! The time approaches when human beings no longer launch the arrow of their longing beyond the human, and the string of their bow will have forgotten how to whir! Beware! The time approaches when human beings will no longer give birth to a dancing star. Beware! The time of the most con- temptible human is coming, the one who can no longer have con- tempt for himself. [p. ] In these terms Nietzsche is trying to create something like a living model for a new, heroic form of afﬁrmation of life (something like the way Montaigne simply offered himself to his readers),and by means of this model to re-introduce this “tension” of spirit so necessary for self-overcoming. This picture of a living, complex Zarathustra and his unsettledness, his inability to rest content either in isolation or in society, his uncertainty about a form of address, his apostrophes to various dimen- sions of himself, his illness and recovery, are all supposed to provide us with both an archetypal picture of the great dilemma of modernity itself (the problem of afﬁrmation, a new striving to be “higher”), but also to inspire the kind of thoughtfulness and risk taking Zarathustra embodies. In his more grandiose moments Nietzsche no doubt thought of Zarathus- tra’s struggles and explorations as reaching for us the same fundamental level as Homer’s Odysseus, as Moses, as Virgil’s Aeneas, as Christ. TSZ is somehow to be addressed to the source of whatever longing, striving, desire gives life a direction, inspires sacriﬁce and dedication. And it will be a very difﬁcult task. There is a clear account of the basic issue in Ecce Homo: The psychological problem apparent in the Zarathustra type is how someone who to an unprecedented degree says no and does no to everything everyone has said yes to so far, – how somebody like this can nevertheless be the opposite of a no-saying spirit. GS, §. See also “On Unwilling Bliss” in the third part, where Zarathustra speaks of the “desire for love” (p. xxx). For more on Nietzsche’s relation to Montaigne and the French psychological tradition, see my Nietzschemoralistefran¸cais.Laconceptionnietzsch´eenned’unepsychologiephilosophique,forthcoming, , Odile Jacob. Emerson is also clearly a model as well. See Conant, Nietzsche’s Postmoralism. EH, §, pp. –. xix Introduction And this way of putting the point makes it clear that Nietzsche also imagines that the experiment in so addressing each other might easily and contingently fail and fail catastrophically; it may just be the case that a sustainable attachment to life and to each other requires the kind of more standard, prosaic “illusion” (a lie) that we have also rendered impossible. The possibility of such a failure is also an issue that worries Zarathustra a great deal, as we shall see. The problem, then, that Zarathustra must address, the problem of “nihilism,” is a kind of collective failure of desire, bows that have lost their tension, the absence of “need” or of any fruitful self-contempt, the presence of wretched contentment, “settling” for too little. And these dis- cussions of desire and meaning throw into a different light how he means to address such a failure. As we have seen, even texts other than TSZ are overwhelmingly literary, rhetorically complex, elliptical, and always a matter of adopting personae and “masks,” often the mask of a historian or scientist.He appears to believe that this is the only effective way to reach the level of such concern – to address an audience suffering from failed desire (without knowing it). Nietzsche clearly thinks we cannot understand such a possibility, much less be both shamed and inspired by it, except by a literary and so “living” treatment of such an existential pos- sibility. And Nietzsche clearly thinks he has such a chance, in the current historical context of crisis, collapse, boredom, and confusion, a chance of shaming and cajoling us away from commitments that will condemn us to a “last man” or “pale atheist” sort of existence, and of inspiring a new desire, a new “tension” of the spirit. Hence the importance of these end- less pictures and images: truth as a woman, science as gay, troubadours, tomb robbers, seduction, romance, prophets, animals, tightrope walkers, dwarves, beehives, crazy men, sleep, dreams, breeding, blonde beasts, twi- light of the gods, and on and on. (It makes all the difference in the world if, having appreciated this point, we then appreciate that such notions as “the will to power” and “the eternal return of the same” belong on this list, are not independent “philosophical” explanations of the mean- ing of the list. It is not an accident that Nietzsche often introduces these notions with the same hypothetical indirectness that he uses for the other images.) For an extensive discussion of the issue of masks in TSZ see Stanley Rosen, The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ). xx Introduction The dramatic action (Prologue and Part I) However, as in many dramatic and literary presentations of philosophy (such as Platonic dialogues, Proust’s novel, Beckett’s plays, and so forth) there are not only things said, but things done, and said and done by characters located somewhere and at a time, usually within a narrative time that is constantly changing contexts, conditions of appropriateness, aspects of relevance, and the like. On the face of it this means that one ought to be aware of who says what to whom when, and what is shown rather than said by what they do and what happens to them. In this case, Zarathustra had left the human world when he was thirty and stayed ten years in the mountains. We are not told why, although it is implied that he had psychologically “burned up”; he carried his own “ashes” up to the mountain. In the section “The Hinterworldly” he also tells us that he managed to free himself (he does not tell us how) from the view that the ﬁnite human world was an imperfect copy of something better, “the work of a suffering and tortured god,” that such views were a kind of disease he had recovered from, and that he now speaks of “the meaning of the earth” (p. ). But we are not told exactly when this event occurred, before or after his voluntary exile, and the speech can be misleading unless, as just discussed above, it is read together with a number of others about self- overcoming. That is, it turns out not at all to be easy, having abandoned a transcendent source of ideals, to live in a way true to this meaning of the earth or to understand in what sense this is a “self-overcoming” way. The latter is not a mere “liberationist” project, but one that in some ways is even more difﬁcult than traditional self-denying virtue. We also have no clear sense of what Zarathustra did all day, every day for ten years; he seemed mostly to think, contemplate, and talk to animals, especially his favorites, his snake and eagle (already an indication of a link between the low and the high in all things human). But we do know that something happened to him one day, his “heart transformed,” and he resolved to re-enter the human world. We might assume, given Nietzsche’s own diagnosis of the age, that this change was brought about by a sense of some coming crisis among humans. That is, Nietzsche is well known for calling this crisis “nihilism,” and eventually many of Zarathustra’s speeches express this urgency about our becoming the “last human beings,” humans who can no longer “overcome themselves.” But initially Zarathustra’s return is promoted by motives that are explicit and xxi Introduction somewhat harder to understand. He had become “weary” of the wisdom gained while in isolation and needs to distribute it, much as the sun gratuitously “overﬂows” with warmth and light for humans; he would be in some way fatigued or frustrated by not being able to share this overﬂow. In a brief exchange with a hermit on the way down, we learn two further things about Zarathustra’s motives. His generosity is prompted by a love of human beings, and those who remain in hermit-like isolation can do so only because they have not heard that “God is dead.” These references to love, gift-giving, and Zarathustra’s potential weari- ness are quite important since they amount to his further ﬁgurative answers to questions about the intended function and purpose of TSZ; it is a gift of love and meant to inspire some erotic longing as well. (This assumes that Zarathustra’s fate in some way allegorizes what Nietzsche expects the fate of TSZ to be and, while this seems credible, Nietzsche also ironicizes Zarathustra enough to give one pause about such an alle- gory.) The images suggest that the lassitude, smug self-satisfaction, and complacency that Zarathustra ﬁnds around him in the market place and later in the city deﬁne the problem he faces in the unusual way suggested above. It again suggests that what in other contexts he could call the prob- lem of nihilism is not so much the result of some discovery, a new piece of knowledge (that God is dead, or that values are ungrounded, contingent psychological projections), nor merely a fearful failure of will, a failing that requires the rhetoric of courage, a call to a new kind of strength. As noted, the problem Zarathustra confronts seems to be a failure of desire; nobody wants what he is offering, and they seem to want very little other than a rather bovine version of happiness. It is that sort of failure that proves particularly difﬁcult to address, and that cannot be corrected by thinking up a “better argument” against such a failure. The events that are narrated are also clearly tied to the question of what it means for Zarathustra to have a teaching, to try to impart it to an audience suffering in this unusual way, suffering from complacency or dead desire. Only at the very beginning, in the Prologue, does he try to “lecture publicly,” one might say, and this is a pretty unambiguous failure. He is jeered at and mocked and he leaves, saying “I am not the mouth for these ears” (p. ). The meaning of his attempt, however, seems to be acted out in an unusual drama about a tightrope walker who mistakenly thinks he is being called to start his act, does so, and then is frightened into a fall by a “jester” who had attempted to leap over the tightrope walker. It xxii Introduction is not uncommon in TSZ that Zarathustra later returns to some of these early images and offers an interpretation. In Part , in the section called “On Old and New Tablets,” Zarathustra remarks, This is what my great love of the farthest demands: do not spare your neighbor! Human being is something that must be overcome. There are manifold ways and means of overcoming: you see to it! But only a jester thinks: “human being can also be leaped over.” (p. ) This is only one of many manifestations of the importance of under- standing Zarathustra’s “love” and his intimations of the great difﬁculty involved in his new doctrine of self-overcoming. Here it is something that must be accomplished by each (“you see to it!”) and even more strikingly, the reminder here of the Prologue appears to indicate that Zarathustra himself had portrayed his own teaching in a comically inadequate way, preaching to the multitudes as if people could simply begin to overcome themselves by some revolutionary act of will, as if the overman were a new species to be arrived at by “overleaping” the current one. We come closer here to the parodic elements of the text; in this case a kind of self-parody. The wandering Zarathustra (Part ) The other plot events in the book also continue to suggest a great unsettledness in Zarathustra’s conception and execution of his project, rather than a conﬁdent manifesto by Nietzsche through the persona of Zarathustra. He had shifted from market place preaching to conversa- tions with disciples in Part , and at the end of that Part he decides to forgo even that and to go back to his cave alone, and warns his disciples to “guard” themselves against him, and even “to be ashamed of him” (p. ). At the beginning of Part he begins to descend again, and again we hear that he is overfull and weary with his gifts and with love (the image of love has changed into something more dramatic: “And may my torrent of love plunge into impasses!”), but now we hear something new, something absent from his ﬁrst descent: he is also concerned and impa- tient. “My enemies have become powerful and have distorted the image of my teaching.” He will seek out his friends and disciples again (as well as his enemies this time, he notes) but he seems to have realized that part of the problem with the dissemination of his teachings and warnings xxiii Introduction lies in him, and not just the audience. He admits that his wisdom is a “wild” wisdom that frightens, and that he might scare everyone off, even his friends. “If only my lioness-wisdom could learn to roar tenderly!” he laments, a lesson he clearly thinks he has not yet learned. The crucial dramatic event in Part is what occurs near the end. Until then many of Zarathustra’s themes had been similar to, or extensions of, what he had already said. Again he seeks to understand the possibility of a form of self-dissatisfaction and even self-contempt that is not based on some sense of absence or incompleteness, a natural gap or imperfection that needs to be ﬁlled or completed, and so a new goal that can be linked with a new kind of desire to “overcome.” He discusses that issue here in terms of “revenge,” especially against time, and he begins to worry that, with no redemptive revolutionary hope in human life, no ultimate justice in the after-life, and no realm of objective “goods in themselves” or any natural right, human beings will come to see a ﬁnite, temporally mutable, contingent life as a kind of burden, or curse, or purposeless play, and they will exact revenge for having been arbitrarily thrown into this condition. What he means to say in the important section “On the Tarantulas” is something he had not made clear before, least of all to himself. Indeed, he had helped create the illusion he wants to dispel. He now denies that he, Zarathustra, is a historical or revolutionary ﬁgure who will somehow save all of us from this fate, and he denies that the overman is a historical goal (in the way a prophet would foretell the coming of the redeemer) but a personal and quite elusive, very difﬁcult new kind of ideal for each individual. In this sense TSZ can be a book for all, for anyone who is responsive to the call to self-overcoming, but for none, in the sense that it cannot offer a comprehensive reason (for anyone) to overcome themselves and cannot offer speciﬁc prescriptions. (It is striking that, although Zarathustra opens his speeches with the call for an overman, that aspect of his message virtually drops out after Part .)Indeed Zarathustra’s role as such an early prophet is again part of what makes his early manifestation comic, a parodia. He is clearly pulling back from such a role: But so that I do not whirl, my friends, bind me fast to the pillar here! I would rather be a stylite than a whirlwind of revenge! For more detail on the relation between the ﬁrst two parts and the last two, see Pippin, “Irony and Afﬁrmation.” xxiv Introduction Indeed, Zarathustra is no tornado or whirlwind; and if he is a dancer, nevermore a tarantella dancer! (p. ) Even so, this dance of some escape from revenge is hardly an automatic afﬁrmation of existence as such. Throughout Part , there are constant reminders of how hard this new sort of self-overcoming will be. The “Famous Wise Men” did not know the ﬁrst thing about what “spirit” truly was: Spirit is life that itself cuts into life; by its own agony it increases its own knowledge – did you know that? And the happiness of spirit is this: to be anointed and consecrated by tears to serve as a sacriﬁcial animal – did you know that? (p. ) Other dimensions of this “agony,” and the failed hopes of the beginning of his project start appearing. He says that “My happiness in bestowing died in bestowing, my virtue wearied of itself in its superabundance” (p. ). Paradoxical (to say the least) formulations arise. “At bottom I love only life – and verily, most when I hate it!” The problem of self-overcoming But he seems also to be gaining some clarity about his earlier aspirations and about the nature of the theme that plays the most important role in TSZ, “self-overcoming.” In a passage with that name, he comments on the doctrine most associated with Nietzsche, “the will to power.” But again everything is expressed ﬁguratively. He says that all prior values had been placed in a “skiff” as a result of the “dominating will” of the inventors of such values and he suggests that this “river of becoming” has carried those values to a disturbingly unexpected fate. He counsels these “wisest ones” not to think of this historical and largely uncontrollable fate as dangerous and the end of good and evil; rather the river itself (not a psychological will for power on the part of the creators) is the will to power, the “unexhausted begetting will of life,” the current of radical his- torical change “upon” which or in terms of which obeying and esteeming and committing must always go on. And he notes that he has learned three things about this process. () Life itself (that is the possibility of leading a life) always requires “obedience,” that is, the possibility of com- mitment to a norm or goal and the capacity to sustain such commitment. xxv Introduction () “The one who cannot obey himself is commanded.” (If we do not ﬁnd a way of leading our life, it will be led for us one way or another.) And () “Commanding is harder than obeying.” He then adds what is in effect a fourth point to these, that the attempt to exercise such command is “an experiment and a risk”; indeed a risk of life. He tells us that with these questions he is at the very “heart of life and into the roots of its heart” (p. ). There, in this heartland, he again confronts the problem he had discussed earlier in many different ways, the wrong sort of self-contempt, the absence of any arrows shot beyond man, no giving birth to stars, the bovine complacency of the last human beings. He asks again, that is, the question: without possible reliance on a faith in divine purposes or natural perfections (that river has “carried” us beyond such options), how should we now understand the possibility of the “intellectual conscience” with- out which we would be beneath contempt? That is, whence the experience that we are not as we could be, that what matters to me now might not be what should matter most, that our present state, for each individual, must be “overcome?” Why? Since the summary “secret” that Zarathustra has learned from life is expressed this way – “And this secret life itself spoke to me: ‘Behold,’ it said, ‘I am that which must always overcome itself,’” – it appears that what is at stake for him is the possibility of coming to exercise power over oneself; that is, to lead one’s life both by sustaining commit- ments (right “to the death,” he often implies, suggesting that being able to lead a life in such a whole-hearted way is much more to be esteemed than merely staying alive) and by ﬁnding some way to endure the altering historical conditions of valuing, esteeming, such that one can “overcome” the self so committed to prior values and ﬁnd a way to “will” again. One could say that what makes the “overman” ( ¨Ubermensch) genuinely self- transcendingisthathecanover-comehimself,accomplishwhennecessary thisself-transcending(Selbst- ¨Uberwindung.)Hetherebyhasgainedpower “over” himself and so realized his will to power: That I must be struggle and becoming and purpose and the contra- diction of purposes – alas, whoever guesses my will guesses also on what crooked paths it must walk! Whatever I may create and however I may love it – soon I must oppose it and my love, thus my will wants it. (pp. –) Likewise,Zarathustrastressesthatgoodandevil,anylife-orientingnor- mative distinctions, are hardly everlasting; rather they “must overcome xxvi Introduction themselves out of themselves again and again.” That is, self-overcoming is not transcending a present state for the sake of an ideal, stable higher state (as in a naturally perfected state or any other kind of ﬁxed telos). All aspirations to be more, better than one is, if they are possible at all in present conditions, are provisional, will always give rise to further trans- formed aspirations. Zarathustra’s questions about this do not so much concern traditional philosophical questions about such a form of life but a much more difﬁcult one to address: could we bear, endure such a fate? Clearly Zarathustra’s own starts and stops, and the effect these have on him, are meant to raise such an issue dramatically. (And it is not at all clear that this issue is in any way resolved, or that a resolution is even relevant.) Two other things are quite striking about these formulations. The ﬁrst, as the autobiographical inﬂection of such passages makes clear, is that we have to see Zarathustra as embodying this struggle, and thus must note that this possibility – the heart of everything, the possibility of self- overcoming–seemstherebyalsotiedsomehowto hisproblemsofrhetoric, language, of audience, friends, his own loneliness, and occasional bitter- ness and pity. Some condition of success in self-overcoming is linked to achieving the right relation to others (and so, by implication, is inconsis- tent with a hermit-like, isolated life). The second emerges quickly from the ﬁrst. We have to note that Zarathustra, as the embodiment of this struggle, whatever this relation to others turns out to be, is completely uninterested in gaining power over others, subjecting as much or as many as possible to his control or command. (“I lack the lion’s voice for all com- manding” (p. ).) Self-commanding (and, dialectically, self-obeying) are the great problems. (In fact he keeps insisting that the last thing he wants is the ability to command them. His chief problem is that whenever he hears them re-formulate what he thinks he has said or dreamt, he is either disappointed, or perhaps anxious that he does not understand his own “doctrine”; they may be right, he may be wrong, and no intellectual con- science could sustain acommitmentthatwassuspected ofbeing delusory.) Even when he appears to discuss serving or mastering others, he treats it as in the service of self-mastery and so again possible self-overcoming. (“[A]nd even in the will of the serving I found the will to be master” (p. ).) There are of course other passages in Nietzsche which seem to encourage a violent upheaval, all so that the strong can rule over the weak and so forth. I have only space to say that if we use TSZ xxvii Introduction These are less formulations of a position than fragmentary and largely programmatic aspects of Zarathustra’s self-diagnosis and the cure he at leastaspiresto.Manyphilosophicalquestionsariseinevitably.Whatwould be amiss, lost, wrong in a life not fully or not at all “led” by a subject? How could this aspiration towards something believed to be higher or more worthy than what one is or has now be directed, if all the old language of external or objective forms of normative authority is now impossible? On what grounds can one say that a desire to cultivate a different sort of self, to overcome oneself, is really in the service of a “higher” self? Higher in what sense? What could be said to be responsible for (relied on for) securing this obedience, for helping to ward off skepticism when it arises? Under what conditions can such commitments and projects be said to lose their grip on a subject, fail, or die? In general Zarathustra does not fully accept the burden of these ques- tions as ones he must assume. For one thing he clearly does not believe that the inspiration for such an attempt at self-direction and something like “becoming better at becoming who one is”can be provided by an argument or a revelation or a command. One would already have had to measure oneself and one’s worth against “arguments” or “revelation” or “authoritative commands” for such different calls to be effective and it is to that prior, deepest level of commitment that Zarathustra, however indirectly and ﬁguratively, is directing his rhetoric. And given the great indeterminateness of his approach, he is clearly much more interested in the qualitative characteristics of such commitments than with their content. The quality he is most interested in turns out to be extremely complex: on the one hand, “whole-heartedness” and an absorbed or pas- sionate “identiﬁcation” with one’s higher ideal; on the other hand, a paradoxical capacity to “let go” of such commitments and pursue other ideals when the originals (somehow) cease to serve self-overcoming and self-transcendence, when they lead to complacency and contentment. However, to come to by far the most complicated issue introduced by Zarathustra’s speeches, he clearly also thinks that such qualitative considerations – the chief topic of the book, the qualitative dimensions as a model for reading Nietzsche, and attend to issues like voice, persona, irony, and context, we will see a Nietzsche very different from the traditional one. For more on the political issues in Nietzsche, see my “Deceit, Desire, and Democracy: Nietzsche on Modern Eros,” International Studies in Philosophy, :(March, ), pp. –. That is, better at becoming who one truly is, beyond or over one’s present state. xxviii Introduction of a self-relation that will in the present circumstances make possible a yearning for a self-overcoming and escape from mere contentment – will also rule out various contents. It is clear that he, and in this case Nietzsche as well, thinks that one cannot whole-heartedly and “self-overcomingly” be a “lasthumanbeing”oranyofitsmanymanifestations(apettytyrant,apale atheist, a “reactive” type, a modern ascetic). Such types embody forms of a “negative” self-relation that are “reactive” and self-denying in a way that makes true self-overcoming and self-afﬁrmation impossible and so will not allow that form of identiﬁcation with one’s deeds that Zarathustra suggests should be like the way a “mother” sees herself in her “child.” (“I wish your self were in the deed like the mother is in the child; let that be your word on virtue” (p. ).) Yet it is also clear that one cannot simply will “to have contempt for oneself as Zarathustra recommends.” The right relation between shame and yearning is as delicate and elusive as are Zarathustra’s strange speeches and dreams and visions. And, as we have been seeing, he also clearly thinks (or he experiences in his own adventures) that only some kinds of relations to others are consistent with thepossibilityofsuchgenuineself-direction.Merelycommandingothers, discipleship, indifference, or isolation are all ruled out. Since we also do not ever get from Nietzsche a discursive account of what distinguishes a genuine form of self-direction and self-overcoming from an illusory or self-deceived one (whatever such a distinction amounts to, it is not of the kind that could be helped, would be better realized, by such a theory), elements of how he understands that distinction emerge only indirectly and, together with a clearer understanding of self-overcoming and the social relations it requires, would all have to be reconstructed from a wide variety of contexts and passages. Moreover, to make everything even more complicated, Nietzsche also clearly believes that such a whole-hearted aspirationtoself-overcomingisalsoconsistentwithacertainlevelofirony, some distance from one’s ideals, the adoption of personae and masks, and even a kind of esotericism when addressing different audiences. Illness and convalescence (Part ) But while Zarathustra does not treat these issues as discursive problems, as if they were problems about skepticism or justiﬁcation, he does suffer from them, suffer from the burden that the thought of such contingency imposes on any possibly worthy life. He becomes ill, apparently ill with xxix Introduction the human condition as such, even disgusted by it, and a great deal of the latter four speeches of Part and the majority of Part involve his possible recovery from such an illness, his “convalescing.” There is in effect a kind of mini-narrative from the speech called “The Soothsayer” in Part until the speech “On Unwilling Bliss” in Part that is at the center of the work’s drama, and the re-orientation effected there is played out throughout the rest of Part , especially in “The Convalescent.” Dramatically, at the end of Part Zarathustra again resolves to return home, and in Part he is underway back there, and ﬁnally reaches his cave and his animals. “The Soothsayer” begins with remarks about the famous doctrine mostly attributed to Nietzsche, but here expressed by a soothsayer and quoted by Zarathustra. (In Ecce Homo, the idea is called the “basic idea” and “fundamental thought” of the work.)This notion, that “Everything is empty, everything is the same, everything was!” is promptly interpreted in a melancholic way, such that “We have become too weary to die; now we continue to wake and we live on – in burial chambers” (p. ). It is this prophecy that “went straight to his [Zarathustra’s] heart and trans- formed him.” He does not eat or drink for three days, does not speak, and doesnotsleep.Intypicallyﬁgurativelanguageheexplainsthesourceofhis despair in a way that suggests a kind of self-critique. He had clearly earlier placed his hopes for mankind in a dramatic historical, epochal moment, the bridge from man to the overman, and he now realizes that it was a mistake to consider this a historical goal or broad civilizational ideal, that such a teleology is a fantasy, that rather “all recurs eternally,” that the last human being cannot be overcome in some revolutionary moment. In the language of his strange dream he ﬁnds that he does not, after all, have the “keys” to open the relevant historical gate (he thought he did, thought he need not only keep watch over, but could open up, what had gone dead), that it is a matter of chance or a sudden wind whether or not a historical change will occur within individuals, and if it does, it might be nothing but the release of what had been dead. His disciples promptly interpret the dream in exactly the opposite way, as if Zarathustra himself were “the [liberating] wind.” Zarathustra merely shakes his head in disappointment and continues his wandering home. EH, §, pp. and . xxx Introduction The details of Zarathustra’s re-evaluation of what is required now of himandhisaddresseesinorder,ineffect,to“takeupthereins”ofalifeand live it better, to embody a commitment to constant self-transcendence, instead of merely suffering existence, involve scores of images and para- bles. Zarathustra will not now see himself as removing the deformity from “cripples.” That is useless, he implies; they must do that for themselves. Or Zarathustra must learn to be silent often, to teach by not teaching, and this occasions the clearest expressions, even at this late date, of the ambiguities in Zarathustra’s role and self-understanding: Is he a promiser? Or a fulﬁller? A conqueror? Or an inheritor? An autumn? Or a plow? A physician? Or a convalescent? Is he a poet? Or a truthful man? A liberator? Or a tamer? A good man? Or an evil man? I walk among human beings as among fragments of the future; the future that I see. (p. ) Yet again, the question of who Zarathustra is, what he stands for, what his purpose is, remains a puzzling question for Zarathustra himself. Zarathus- tra, in other words, cannot understand what it means to be a “spokesman” for Zarathustra. We are obviously very far from being able to see him as a spokesman for Nietzsche. This is all also said to effect a kind of “reconciliation” with circular, repetitive time. He will encourage a liberation in which what we took to be what merely happened to us in the past can be assumed as the burden of one’s own doing, that one will heroically take on what merely “was” as one’s own and so transform it into “thus I willed it.” (This might be likened to a Greek tragic hero who takes on more of a burden of what was done than can be strictly attributed to his deed, someone like Oedipus or Ajax.) He does not need the “lion’s voice” of commanding: “The stillest words are those that bring the storm. Thoughts that come on the feet of doves steer the world” (p. ). Throughout Part , Zarathustra speaks mostly to himself; he learns that his greatest danger is “love,” “the danger of the loneliest one, love of everything if only it lives!” (p. ). He must struggle with a “spirit of gravity,” his own reﬂective doubt that he will be “dragged down” See Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). xxxi Introduction by the “abysmal thought” of the Eternal Return. It is in this struggle that he realizes that the way in which the meaning of the absence of historical revolution or redemption is lived out or embodied in a life is not something that can be easily read off from the mere doctrine itself. There is no clear, unavoidable inference either to despair, indifference, or afﬁrmation. The dwarf, the spirit of gravity, does that (reads despair as the implication) and “makes it too easy on himself” (p. ). And Zarathustra again tries to “dream” his way out of his sadness by dreaming himself as a young shepherd “choking” on his own “circular” doctrine, the Eternal Return, but one who succeeds in “biting off the head of the snake” that had crawled into his throat, and so emerged “a transformed, illuminated, laughing” being (p. ). Just how exactly the despair-inducing features of there being no temporal redemption and a ceaseless return of even the last men are transformed into an afﬁrmative vision, and just how this is captured by “biting the head off the snake” is not clear. When that very question comes up much more explicitly in “The Convalescent” (Zarathustra fasts again for seven days and when he resumes speaking he mentions again the “nausea” that the thought of the Eternal Return occasioned), the attempt by his animals to attribute the Eternal Return to Zarathustra as a “teaching” is met ﬁrst by his complaint that they are turning him and his struggle into a “hurdy-gurdy song” and when they go on and interpret the doctrine as a kind of immortality teaching (that Zarathustra will return), Zarathustra ignores them, communes only with his soul. Also, given that aspects of Zarathustra’s own despair return after this, the image of recovery might be as much wishful thinking, or at least the expression of a mere faint hope as it is a settled event. Zarathustra’s tragic end? Parables and parody (Part ) This dialogue with his disciples also shows that one of the things that recurs repeatedly for Zarathustra are his own words; that he cannot pre- vent the “literalization” of his parabolic speech. His disciples are not dense or merely mistaken; they are simply trying to understand what Zarathustra means. When repeated as a teaching or a doctrine, Zarathus- tra’s parabolic speech becomes parodic, comic. But he has no option other than saying nothing (and he has found that he cannot live in such iso- lation) or preaching more directly, in which case his disciples would be xxxii Introduction (even more than they already are) following him, not themselves. The parodic return of his own words is thus the heart of his tragedy. After this expression of his putative, perhaps short-lived new self- understanding, he believes he can say such things as “I gave it [chance] back to all things, I redeemed them from their servitude under purpose” (p. ). Having done so, a “homecoming” back with his animals is now possible, he thinks, and he expresses the relation to others, here his ani- mals, that he would have wanted “down there,” but failed to achieve: “We do not implore one another, we do not deplore one another, we walk openly with one another through open doors” (p. ). Thus, as we drift towards the end of the Part , which Nietzsche at one time clearly con- ceived as the end of the book, Zarathustra’s despair at any change in the collective or individual lives of human beings seems at its darkest. How- ever, as is so typical of the wandering eros of Zarathustra, within a few speeches he announces yet again “I want to return to mankind once more” (p. ). He does not, however, and at the beginning of the Part , Zarathus- tra is still alone, and he is old now. He re-encounters the soothsayer but one cannot see in their confrontation that anything decisive is settled. And, although Zarathustra begins to talk with and assemble a wide vari- ety of what are called “higher human beings” (kings, an old magician, the pope, the voluntary beggar, the shadow, the conscientious of spirit, the sad soothsayer, and the ass), his own “teaching” about overcoming and the higher seems here yet again parodied rather than celebrated. As noted, Part reads more like a comic, concluding satyr play to a tragic trilogy than a real conclusion. It is especially self-parodic when all these so-called higher types end up worshipping a jackass, presumably because the ass can at least make a sound that articulates what all have been seek- ing, a mode of afﬁrmation and commitment. The ass can say Hee-yaw, that is, ja, or Yes! So we end with the same problem. Zarathustra must report, “But I still lacktheproperhumanbeings.”However,whena“cloudoflove”descends around him,and he hears a lion’s roar (a “sign” that takes us back to On this point I am grateful to conversations with David Wellbery. Compare, “it is only in love, only when shaded by the illusions produced by love, that is to say in the unconditional faith in right and perfection, that man is creative.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life,” in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, ed. Daniel Breazeale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), §, p. . xxxiii Introduction the three metamorphoses of the ﬁrst speech), he also believes that “My children are near, my children,” and yet again he leaves his cave, “glow- ing and strong, like a morning sun that emerges from dark mountains” (p. ). But by this point we are experiencing as readers our own eternal return, the cycle of hope and despair, descent and return, sociality and isolation, love and contempt, parable and parody, lower and higher, earth and heaven, snake and eagle, that we have been reading about throughout. The “ending” in other words is meant to suggest a cyclical temporality, as if to pose for us the question Zarathustra continually has to ask himself. The question is oriented from the now familiar assumptions: no redemp- tive or revolutionary moment in human time, no re-assurance about or reliance on the naturally right or good; no revelations from God; and the eventual return of everything we have tried to overcome. Given such assumptions, the question is whether the self-overcoming Zarathustra encourages, the desire for some greater or better form of self-direction, assuming the full burden of leading a life, is practically possible, from the lived viewpoint of the agent. In keeping with the unsystematic form of the clear models for TSZ – biblicalwisdomliterature,theFrenchmoralpsychologistsofthesixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Montaigne, Pascal, La Rochefoucauld), Emer- son,Goethe–itisofcourseappropriatethatwebe“taught”nothingabout this by Zarathustra, “taught” if at all only by his ultimate silence about this new possibility and so its challenge to us, to make it “our own.” No lessons can be drawn from it, no summary credo articulated, no justiﬁca- tion for a position formulated, any more than any “gift of love” like this, any image of a life worth living under these conditions, can be interro- gated in this way. The work seems to function as the same kind of “test” for the reader as the soothsayer’s doctrine for Zarathustra. Either the temper and credibility of Zarathustra’s constant return to the ultimately unredeemable human world will strike the chord Nietzsche hoped still existed, or it will not; either there are such “children” as Zarathustra sees in his ﬁnal vision, or they will seem like the illusions that so many of Zarathustra’s hopes have proven to be from the beginning. Or to adopt the language of Zarathustra, and in this case at least, Nietzsche himself, per- haps such children do have the status of mere dreams, but they thereby also might satisfy what Nietzsche once described as the conditions of xxxiv Introduction contemporary self-overcoming: the ability to “dream” without ﬁrst hav- ing to “sleep.” Robert B. Pippin GS, §. A re-orientation of some sort that would permit the entertaining of some aspiration or ideal, some inspiring picture that would not (given our intellectual conscience) have to be treated as a distortion or fantasy or merely utopian (that we would not have to “sleep,” shut off our conscience) in order to dream in this way, is at the heart of the Kafka fable cited in n. above. From what has become the ordinary viewpoint, parables are a waste of time (What is Nietzsche’s proposal? His plan? How does he want us to live?), and the right understanding would be to live out the parable; but, paradoxically, not “as a parable,” as if a self-conscious idealization. That would be “correct,” from the viewpoint of reality, but a destruction of the parable’s function; one would have “lost.” xxxv Chronology  Born in R¨ocken, a small village in the Prussian province of Saxony, on October.  Birth of his sister Elisabeth.  Birth of his brother Joseph.  His father, a Lutheran minister, dies at age thirty-six of “softening of the brain.”  Brother dies; family moves to Naumburg to live with father’s mother and her sisters.  Begins studies at Pforta, Germany’s most famous school for education in the classics.  Graduates from Pforta with a thesis in Latin on the Greek poet Theognis; enters the university of Bonn as a theology student.  Transfers from Bonn, following the classical philologist Friedrich Ritschl to Leipzig where he registers as a philology student; reads Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation.  Reads Friedrich Lange’s History of Materialism.  Meets Richard Wagner.  On Ritschl’s recommendation is appointed professor of classical philology at Basle at the age of twenty-four before completing his doctorate (which is then conferred without a dissertation); begins frequent visits to the Wagner residence at Tribschen.  Serves as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian war; contracts a serious illness and so serves only two months. Writes “The Dionysiac World View.”  Publishes his ﬁrst book, The Birth of Tragedy; its dedicatory preface to Richard Wagner claims for art the role of “the highest xxxvi Chronology task and truly metaphysical activity of his life”; devastating reviews follow.  Publishes “David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer,” the ﬁrst of his Untimely Meditations; begins taking books on natural science out of the Basle library, whereas he had previously conﬁned himself largely to books on philological matters. Writes “On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense.”  Publishes two more Meditations, “The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life” and “Schopenhauer as Educator.”  Publishes the fourth Meditation, “Richard Wagner in Bayreuth,” which already bears subtle signs of his movement away from Wagner.  Publishes Human, All Too Human (dedicated to the memory of Voltaire); it praises science over art as the high culture and thus marks a decisive turn away from Wagner.  Terrible health problems force him to resign his chair at Basle (with a small pension); publishes “Assorted Opinions and Maxims,” the ﬁrst part of vol. of Human, All Too Human; begins living alone in Swiss and Italian boarding-houses.  Publishes “The Wanderer and His Shadow,” which becomes the second part of vol. of Human, All Too Human.  Publishes Daybreak.  Publishes Idylls of Messina (eight poems) in a monthly magazine; publishes The Gay Science (ﬁrst edition); friendship with Paul R´ee and Lou Andreas-Salom´e ends badly, leaving Nietzsche devastated.  Publishes the ﬁrst two parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra; learns of Wagner’s death just after mailing Part to the publisher.  Publishes Part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.  Publishes Part of Zarathustra for private circulation only.  Publishes Beyond Good and Evil; writes prefaces for new releases of: The Birth of Tragedy, Human, All Too Human, vols. and , and Daybreak.  Publishes expanded edition of The Gay Science with a new preface, a ﬁfth book, and an appendix of poems; publishes Hymn to Life, a musical work for chorus and orchestra; publishes On the Genealogy of Morality. xxxvii Chronology  Publishes The Case of Wagner, composes a collection of poems, Dionysian Dithyrambs, and four short books: Twilight of Idols, The Antichrist, Ecce Homo, and Nietzsche contra Wagner.  Collapses physically and mentally in Turin on January; writes a few lucid notes but never recovers sanity; is brieﬂy institutionalized; spends remainder of his life as an invalid, living with his mother and then his sister, who also gains control of his literary estate.  Dies in Weimar on August. xxxviii Further reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra has attracted the most attention of all of Nietz- sche’s works, it is therefore his most popular in terms of printings and sales, and his most critically acclaimed. Attempts to do justice to the richness and strangeness of this work by providing detailed commen- tary on each chapter began early, in the nineteenth century, with Gustav Naumann’s Zarathustra-Commentar (vols., Leipzig: H. Haessel, – ). Naumann’s commentary addresses each chapter of Zarathustra in a reliable and nuanced manner, making it useful even today (at least to readers of German). Naumann was also highly critical of the machina- tions of Nietzsche’s sister, Elisabeth F¨orster-Nietzsche, as she enlisted sympathetic editors to manufacture her own image of Nietzsche and her own edition of his works. Historically Naumann’s commentary is valuable because it is part of the phenomenal reception of Nietzsche’s ideas at the turn of the century, and because it is early enough to be untainted by the negative fall-out of the two world wars and their lingering damage to Nietzsche’s reputation. The next comprehensive attempt to explain Zarathustra began in the s and took the form of a six-year seminar given by C. G. Jung at the university of Zurich. For decades the unpub- lished notes of this seminar circulated in photocopy among the Nietzsche underground at various universities until ﬁnally they were edited and published by James L. Jarrett as Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra”: Notes of the Seminar Given in –by C. G. Jung (vols., Princeton University Press, ). This commentary by chapter is unparalleled in revealing the complex creative process behind Zarathustra, and though preachy at times, it subjects both Nietzsche and his creation to an anthropological approach that only Jung could present. Jarrett’s editing is quite skillful, xxxix Further reading while the seminar format of the “notes” makes this commentary uniquely discursive. More recent commentaries devoted exclusively to Zarathustra and lim- ited to a single volume are extremely useful as well. Laurence Lampert’s Nietzsche’s Teaching: An Interpretation of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” (Yale UniversityPress,),establishestheneedforanewteaching,thenature of the teaching, and the foundational role it plays in the history of philoso- phy. Lampert’s Nietzsche and Modern Times: A Study of Bacon, Descartes, and Nietzsche (Yale University Press, ), much broader in scope, goes further in the direction of specifying the ecological, earth-afﬁrming prop- erties of Nietzsche’s teaching via Zarathustra. Kathleen Higgin’s Nietz- sche’s “Zarathustra” (Temple University Press, ), which she prefers to designate not as commentary but “analysis” instead, treats Zarathustra in the context of the teachers Socrates and Christ. She strives to reha- bilitate the reputation of Zarathustra as a whole, and particularly Part . Stanley Rosen, in The Mask of Enlightenment: Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” (Cambridge University Press, ), comments on most of the chapters while bringing all of Nietzsche’s writings to bear on this difﬁcult and, for him, sometimes disturbing book. Rosen is mindful of the contradic- tion inherent in Nietzsche’s attempt to speak simultaneously to the few (esoterically) and to everyone (exoterically). Robert Gooding-Williams, in Zarathustra’s Dionysian Modernism (Stanford University Press, ), has delivered the latest of the Zarathustra-commentaries, and perhaps the most powerful in terms of maintaining hermeneutic continuity. The concept of a “Dionysian modernism” is effective in unifying the study and highlighting Zarathustra’s mission as a revival of the earth’s passions. Joachim K¨ohler’s Zarathustra’s Secret: The Interior Life of Friedrich Niet- zsche (Yale University Press, , translation of Zarathustras Geheimnis, ), purports to be a biography exposing the gamut of Nietzsche’s phi- losophizing as secret code for the gloriﬁcation of homosexuality. K¨ohler reduces all of Nietzsche’s motivations and teachings to his alleged homo- eroticism, sometimes with breathtaking obtuseness, and he uses it to undermine Nietzsche’s philosophical validity. Articles that address signiﬁcant aspects of Zarathustra include Gary Shapiro, “The Rhetoric of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra,” in Philosophical Style: An Anthology about the Writing and Reading of Philosophy, ed. Berel Lang (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, ), pp. –; Robert B. Pippin, “Irony and Afﬁrmation in Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” in xl Further reading Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics, ed. Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –; Daniel W. Conway, “Solv- ing the Problem of Socrates: Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as Political Irony,” Political Theory :(), pp. –; Keith Ansell-Pearson, “Who is the ¨Ubermensch? Time, Truth, and Woman in Nietzsche,” Journal of the History of Ideas :(), pp. –; Graham Parkes, “Staying Loyal to the Earth: Nietzsche as an Ecological Thinker” in Nietzsche’s Futures, ed. John Lippit (St. Martin’s Press, ), pp. –. There are also several books that deal substantially with Zarathus- tra while not attempting to provide running commentary on chapter and verse. The ﬁrst of these is Karl L¨owith’s Nietzsche’s Philosophy of the Eternal Recurrence of the Same (University of California Press, ; translation of Nietzsches Philosophie der ewigen Wiederkehr des Gleichen, ), still the most thorough and compelling philosophical treatment to date of the unifying doctrine of Zarathustra. Philip Grundlehner’s The Poetry of Friedrich Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, ), sheds light not only on the dithyrambs interspersed throughout Part , but on Nietzsche’s entire lyrical poetic output, of which Zarathustra is in many ways symptomatic. The debate concerning poetry vs. philosophy is given careful treatment in Grundlehner’s study. Rudolf Kreis’s Nietzsche, Wagner and die Juden (K¨onigshausen und Neumann, ) is underuti- lized in the English-speaking world. Kreis’s great service lies not in his thesis that Nietzsche opposed Wagner by writing Zarathustra as an “anti- Parsifal,” but in his more broadly juxtaposing the earth-afﬁrming ethos of the ancient Jews with the earth-denying ethos of modern Christian anti-Semitism. Kreis’s book traces the fortunes of the earth as ecosys- tem, casting the encounter between Nietzsche and Wagner as a deﬁn- ing moment. John Richardson’s Nietzsche’s System (Oxford University Press, ) represents a highly readable and reﬁned analysis of both the superhuman and the will to power. Richardson makes strides toward an ecumenical Nietzsche when he consistently renders German Mensch as “human being,” but he fails to follow through by rendering ¨Ubermensch as superhuman. For the purpose of providing an elegant and readable translation “overman” may well be the preferred expression, but for pur- posesofscholarship,theEnglish-speakingworldshouldhaveadvancedfar enough beyond Shaw’s and Marvel’s comic book “superman” to speak in terms of the superhuman. Gregory Moore’s Nietzsche, Biology and xli Further reading Metaphor (Cambridge University Press, ), though disappointing in itsfailuretorecognizetheDionysianasasourceofNietzsche’sbiologically inclined rhetoric, is nonetheless the best study to date on how Nietzsche responded to the scientiﬁc literature of his day in constructing his own views on evolution and degeneration. Adrian Del Caro’s Grounding the Nietzsche Rhetoric of Earth (Walter de Gruyter, ) unpacks Zarathus- tra’s proclamation that “the superhuman is the meaning of the earth,” and delivers a multifaceted treatment of the ecological Nietzsche. xlii Note on the text The text used for this translation is printed in the now standard edition of Nietzsche’s works edited by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari (Berlin: de Gruyter, –). Their edition and their Kritische Studien- ausgabe in ﬁfteen volumes (Berlin: de Gruyter, ) have been used in the preparation of the footnotes to this edition. The spacing and versiﬁcation of the original are preserved in this edition. xliii Thus Spoke Zarathustra A Book for All and None First Part First Part Zarathustra’s Prologue  When Zarathustra was thirty years old he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains. Here he enjoyed his spirit and his solitude and for ten years he did not tire of it. But at last his heart transformed, – one morning he arose with the dawn, stepped before the sun and spoke thus to it: “You great star! What would your happiness be if you had not those for whom you shine? For ten years you have come up here to my cave: you would have tired of your light and of this route without me, my eagle and my snake. But we awaited you every morning, took your overﬂow from you and blessed you for it. Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey. I need hands that reach out. I want to bestow and distribute until the wise among human beings have once again enjoyed their folly, and the poor once again their wealth. For this I must descend into the depths, as you do evenings when you go behind the sea and bring light even to the underworld, you super-rich star! Like you, I must go downas the human beings say, to whom I want to descend. So bless me now, you quiet eye that can look upon even an all too great happiness without envy! Bless the cup that wants to ﬂow over, such that water ﬂows golden from it and everywhere carries the reﬂection of your bliss! Behold! This cup wants to become empty again, and Zarathustra wants to become human again.” – Thus began Zarathustra’s going under. German uses untergehen, literally “to go under” for the expression the sun “goes down.” Nietzsche throughout Zarathustra uses wordplay to signify that Zarathustra’s “going under” is a “going over” or transition, ¨ubergehen, from human to superhuman, from man to overman. After Zarathustra draws his ﬁrst analogy between himself and the sun, I use “going under” for untergehen and its noun form Untergang. In setting or going down the sun marks a transition. Zarathustra meanwhile has been higher than human in both ﬁgurative and literal terms, and so his “going under” has the effect of him transitioning to human again. However, on the ecumenical level, when human beings transition or go under, and when they “overcome” the human, they should achieve the superhuman (overman).  Thus Spoke Zarathustra  Zarathustra climbed down alone from the mountains and encountered no one. But when he came to the woods suddenly an old man stood before him, who had left his saintly hut in search of roots in the woods. And thus spoke the old man to Zarathustra: “This wanderer is no stranger to me: many years ago he passed by here. Zarathustra he was called; but he is transformed. Back then you carried your ashes to the mountain: would you now carry your ﬁre into the valley? Do you not fear the arsonist’s punishment? Yes, I recognize Zarathustra. His eyes are pure, and no disgust is visible around his mouth. Does he not stride like a dancer? Zarathustra is transformed, Zarathustra has become a child, an awakened one is Zarathustra. What do you want now among the sleepers? You lived in your solitude as if in the sea, and the sea carried you. Alas, you want to climb ashore? Alas, you want to drag your own body again?” Zarathustra answered: “I love mankind.” “Why,” asked the saint, “did I go into the woods and the wilder- ness in the ﬁrst place? Was it not because I loved mankind all too much? Now I love God: human beings I do not love. Human beings are too imperfect a thing for me. Love for human beings would kill me.” Zarathustra replied. “Why did I speak of love? I bring mankind a gift.” “Give them nothing,” said the saint. “Rather take something off them and help them to carry it – that will do them the most good, if only it does you good! And if you want to give to them, then give nothing more than alms, and make them beg for that too!” “No,” answered Zarathustra. “I do not give alms. For that I am not poor enough.” The saint laughed at Zarathustra and spoke thus: “Then see to it that they accept your treasures! They are mistrustful of hermits and do not believe that we come to give gifts. “Ich liebe die Menschen” means literally “I love human beings.” Earlier translators ignored the ecological framework in which Nietzsche wrote Zarathustra by using expressions like “man.” The prologue establishes a prevailing semantic ﬁeld, a framework in which human beings, animals, nature and earth interact or should interact as never before.  First Part To them our footsteps sound too lonely in the lanes. And if at night lying in their beds they hear a man walking outside, long before the sun rises, they probably ask themselves: where is the thief going? Do not go to mankind and stay in the woods! Go even to the animals instead! Why do you not want to be like me – a bear among bears, a bird among birds?” “And what does the saint do in the woods?” asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: “I make songs and sing them, and when I make songs I laugh, weep and growl: thus I praise God. With singing, weeping, laughing and growling I praise the god who is my god. But tell me, what do you bring us as a gift?” When Zarathustra had heard these words he took his leave of the saint and spoke: “What would I have to give you! But let me leave quickly before I take something from you!” – And so they parted, the oldster and the man, laughing like two boys laugh. But when Zarathustra was alone he spoke thus to his heart: “Could it be possible! This old saint in his woods has not yet heard the news that God is dead!” –  When Zarathustra came into the nearest town lying on the edge of the forest, he found many people gathered in the market place, for it had been promised that a tightrope walker would perform. And Zarathustra spoke thus to the people: “I teach you the overman.Human being is something that must be overcome. What have you done to overcome him? All creatures so far created something beyond themselves; and you want to be the ebb of this great ﬂood and would even rather go back to animals than overcome humans? “Ich lehre euch den ¨Ubermenschen.” Just as Mensch means human, human being, ¨Ubermensch means superhuman, which I render throughout as overman, though I use human being, mankind, people, and humanity to avoid the gendered and outmoded use of “man.” Two things are achieved by using this combination. First, using “human being” and other species-indicating expressions makes it clear that Nietzsche is concerned ecumenically with humans as a species, not merely with males. Secondly, expanding beyond the use of “man” puts humans in an ecological context; for Zarathustra to claim that “the overman shall be the meaning of the earth” is to argue for a new relationship between humans and nature, between humans and the earth. Overman is preferred to superhuman for two basic reasons; ﬁrst, it preserves the word play Nietzsche intends with his constant references to going under and going over, and secondly, the comic book associations called to mind by “superman” and super-heroes generally tend to reﬂect negatively, and frivolously, on the term superhuman.  Thus Spoke Zarathustra What is the ape to a human? A laughing stock or a painful embarrass- ment. And that is precisely what the human shall be to the overman: a laughing stock or a painful embarrassment. You have made your way from worm to human, and much in you is still worm. Once you were apes, and even now a human is still more ape than any ape. But whoever is wisest among you is also just a conﬂict and a cross between plant and ghost. But do I implore you to become ghosts or plants? Behold, I teach you the overman! Theovermanisthemeaningoftheearth.Letyourwillsay:theoverman shall be the meaning of the earth! I beseech you, my brothers, remain faithful to the earth and do not believe those who speak to you of extraterrestrial hopes! They are mixers of poisons whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, dying off and self-poisoned, of whom the earth is weary: so let them fade away! Once the sacrilege against God was the greatest sacrilege, but God died, and then all these desecrators died. Now to desecrate the earth is the most terrible thing, and to esteem the bowels of the unfathomable higher than the meaning of the earth! Once the soul gazed contemptuously at the body, and then such con- tempt was the highest thing: it wanted the body gaunt, ghastly, starved. Thus it intended to escape the body and the earth. Oh this soul was gaunt, ghastly and starved, and cruelty was the lust of this soul! But you, too, my brothers, tell me: what does your body proclaim about your soul? Is your soul not poverty and ﬁlth and a pitiful content- ment? Truly, mankind is a polluted stream. One has to be a sea to take in a polluted stream without becoming unclean. Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this sea, in him your great contempt can go under. What is the greatest thing that you can experience? It is the hour of your great contempt. The hour in which even your happiness turns to nausea and likewise your reason and your virtue. The hour in which you say: ‘What matters my happiness? It is poverty and ﬁlth, and a pitiful contentment. But my happiness ought to justify existence itself!’  First Part The hour in which you say: ‘What matters my reason? Does it crave knowledge like the lion its food? It is poverty and ﬁlth and a pitiful contentment!’ The hour in which you say: ‘What matters my virtue? It has not yet made me rage. How weary I am of my good and my evil! That is all poverty and ﬁlth and a pitiful contentment!’ The hour in which you say: ‘What matters my justice? I do not see that I am ember and coal. But the just person is ember and coal!’ The hour in which you say: ‘What matters my pity? Is pity not the cross on which he is nailed who loves humans? But my pity is no cruciﬁxion.’ Have you yet spoken thus? Have you yet cried out thus? Oh that I might have heard you cry out thus! Not your sin – your modesty cries out to high heaven, your stinginess even in sinning cries out to high heaven! Where is the lightning that would lick you with its tongue? Where is the madness with which you should be inoculated? Behold, I teach you the overman: he is this lightning, he is this madness! –” When Zarathustra had spoken thus someone from the crowd cried out: “We have heard enough already about the tightrope walker, now let us see him too!” And all the people laughed at Zarathustra. But the tightrope walker, believing that these words concerned him, got down to his work.  Now Zarathustra looked at the people and he was amazed. Then he spoke thus: “Mankind is a rope fastened between animal and overman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous crossing, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking back, a dangerous shuddering and standing still. What is great about human beings is that they are a bridge and not a purpose: what is lovable about human beings is that they are a crossing over and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live unless by going under, for they are the ones who cross over. I love the great despisers, because they are the great venerators and arrows of longing for the other shore.  Thus Spoke Zarathustra I love those who do not ﬁrst seek behind the stars for a reason to go under and be a sacriﬁce, who instead sacriﬁce themselves for the earth, so that the earth may one day become the overman’s. I love the one who lives in order to know, and who wants to know so that one day the overman may live. And so he wants his	620,585
On Certainty (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (Z-Library).pdf	ON CERTAINTY LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Edited by G. E. M. ANSCOMBE and Go Ho von WRIGHT Translated by DENIS PAUL and G. E. M. ANSCOMBE BASIL BLACKWELL OXFORD 1969 0 B d Blackvell, Oxford 19 69 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 69-20428 Printed in Great Britain by Alden and Mowbray Ltd at the Alden Press, Oxford and bound at Kemp Hall Bindery PREFACE What we publish here belongs to the last year and a half of Wittgenstein's life. In the middle of 1949 he visited the United States at the invitation of Norman Malcolm, staying at Malcolm's house in Ithaca. Malcolm acted as a goad to his interest in Moore's 'defence of common sense', that is to say his claim to know a number of propositions for sure, such as "Here is one hand, and here is another", and "The earth existed for a long time before my birth", and '9 have never been far from the earth's surface". The first of these comes in Moore's 'Proof of the External World'. The two others are in his 'Defence of Common Sense'; Wittgenstein had long been interested in these and had said to Moore that this was his best article. Moore had agreed. This book contains the whole of what Wittgenstein wrote on this topic from that time until his death. It is all first-draft material, which he did not live to excerpt and polish. The material falls into four parts; we have shown the divisions at 5 65, p. 10, 5 192, p. 27 and 5 299, p. 38. What we believe to be the first part was written on twenty loose sheets of lined foolscap, undated. These Wittgenstein left in his room in G. E. M. Anscombe's house in Oxford, where he lived (apart from a visit to Norway in the autumn) from April I 9j o to February I 9 j I. I (G. E. M. A.) am under the impression that he had written them in Vienna, where he stayed from the previous Christmas until March; bit I cannot now recall the bas& of this impression. The rest is-in small notebooks, containing dates; towards the end, indeed, the date of writing is always given. The last entry is two days before his death on April 29th 195 r. We have left the dates exactly as they appear in the manuscripts. The numbering of the single sections, however, is by the Editors. These were not the only things Wittgenstein wrote during this period. He wrote i.a. a fair amount on colour-concepts, and this material he did excerpt and polish, reducing it to a small compass. We expect to publish a volume containing this and other material written after the completion of Philosopbi~al Investigations Part 11. It seemed appropriate to publish this work by itself. It is not a selection; Wittgenstein marked it off in his notebooks as a separate topic, which he apparently took up at four separate periods during this eighteen months. It constitutes a single sustained treatment of the topic. G. E. M. Anscombe G. H. von Wright vie ACKNOWLEDGMENT Dr. Lotte Labowsky and Dr. Anselm Miiller are to be sincerely thanked for advice about the translation of this work. 1. If you do know that here is one hand,' we'll grant you all the rest. When one says that such and such a proposition can't be proved, of course that does not mean that it can't be derived from other propositions; any proposition can be derived from other ones. But they may be no more certain than it is itself. (On this a curious remark by H. Newman.) 2. From its seeming to me-or to everyone-to be so, it doesn't follow that it is so. What we can ask is whether it can make sense to doubt it. 3. If e.g. someone says "I don't know if there's a hand here" he might be told "Look closer".-This possibility of satisfying oneself is part of the language-game. Is one of its essential features. 4. "1 know that I am a human being." In order to see how un- clear the sense of this proposition is, consider its negation. At most it might be taken to mean "I know I have the organs of a human". (E.g. a brain which, after all, no one has ever yet seen.) But what about such a proposition as "I know I have a brain"? Can I doubt it? Grounds for doubt are lacking! Every- thing speaks in its favour, nothing against it. Nevertheless it is imaginable that my skull should turn out empty when it was operated on. 5 . Whether a proposition can turn out false after all depends on what I make count as determinants for that proposition. 6. Now, can one enumerate what one knows (like Moore)? Straight off like that, I believe not.-For otherwise the expression ''I know" gets misused. And through this misuse a queer and extremely important mental state seems to be revealed. 7. My life shews that I know or am certain that there is a chair over there, or a door, and so on.-I tell a friend e.g. "Take that chair over there", "Shut the door", etc. etc. ' See G. E. Moore, "Proof of an Eaunal World'', Proceedings of fbu B r i m AcademyJ Vol. XXV, 1939; also !'A Defence of Common Sense" in Confemporav Brifisb PbiIosophy, 2nd SmiesJ Ed. J. H. Muirhead, 1925. Both papers are in Moore's PbihpbicaI Papers, London, George Allen and Unwin, 195 9. Edilors. 8. The ditference between the concept of 'knowing' and the concept of 'being certain' isn't of any great importance at all, except where "I know" is meant to mean: I can't be wrong. In a law-court, for example, "I am certain" could replace "I know" in every piece of testimony. We might even imagine its being forbidden to say "I know" there. [A passage in WiZheZm Meister, where "You know" or "You knew" is used in the sense "You were certain", the facts being different from what he knew.] 9 Now do I, in the course of my life, make sure I know that here is a hand-my own hand, that is? I 0. I know that a sick man is lying here ? Nonsense! I am sitting at his bedside, I am looking attentively into his face.-So I don't know, then, that there is a sick man lying here? Neither the question nor the assertion makes sense. Any more than the assertion "I am here", which I might yet use at any moment, if '6 suitable occasion presented itself.-Then is 2 x 2 = 4" nonsense in the same way, and not a proposition of arithmetic, apart from particular occasions ? ''2 x 2 = 4" is a true proposi- tion of arithmetic-not "on particular occasions" nor "always3'- but the spoken or written sentence "2 x 2 = 4" in Chinese might have a different meaning or be out and out nonsense, and from this is seen that it is only in use that the proposition has its sense. And "I know that there's a sick man lying here", used in an unsziitable situation, seems not to be nonsense but rather seems matter-of-course, only because one can fairly' easily imagine a situation to fit it, and one thinks that the words "I know that. . . 9' are always in place where there is no doubt, and hence even where the expression of doubt would be unintelligible. 11. We just do not see how very specialized the use of "I know" is. 12. -For "I know" seems to describe a state of &airs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression "I thought I knew". I 3. For it is not as though the proposition "It is so" could be inferred from someone else's utterance: "I know it is so". Nor from the utterance together with its not being a lie.-But can't I infer "It is so" from my own utterance "I know etc."? Yes; and also "There is a hand there" follows from the proposition "He knows that there's a hand there". But from his utterance "I know . . ." it does not follow that he does know it. 14- That he does know takes some shewing. I j. It needs to be shewtz that no mistake was possible. Giving the assurance "I know" doesn't suffice. For it is after all only an assurance that I can't be making a mistake, and it needs to be objectiueb established that I am not making a mistake about that. 16. "If I know something, then I also know that I know it, etc." amounts to: "I know that" means "I am incapable of being wrong about that". But whether I am so needs to be established ob- j ectively. CC 9 17. Suppose now I say I m incapable of being wrong about this: that is a book" while I point to an object. What would a mistake here be like? And have I any clear idea of it? 18. "I know" often means: I have the proper grounds for my statement. So if the other person is acquainted with the language- game, he would admit that I know. The other, if he is acquainted with the language-game, must be able to imagine how one may know something of the kind. 19. The statement "I know that here is a hand" may then be continued: "for it's my hand that I'm looking at". Then a reason- able man will not doubt that I know.-Nor will the idealist; rather he will say that he was not dealing with the practical doubt which is being dismissed, but there is a further doubt behind that one.-That this is an illz~siotz has to be shewn in a different way. 20. "Doubting the existence of the external world" does not mean for example doubting the existence of a planet, which later observations proved to exist.-Or does Moore want to say that knowing that here is his hand is different in kind from knowing the existence of the planet Saturn? Otherwise it would be possible to point out the discovery of the planet Saturn to the doubters and say that its existence has been proved, and hence the existence of the external world as well. 2 1. Moore's view really comes down to this: the concept 'know' C is analogous to the concepts 'believe', surmise', 'doubt', 'be convinced' in that the statement "I know . .. ." can't be a mistake. And if that is so, then there can be an inference from such an utterance to the truth of an assertion. And here the form "I thought I knew" is being overlooked.-But if this latter is inadmissible, then a mistake in the assertion must be logically impossible too. And anyone who is acquainted with the language-game must realize t h i s a n assurance from a reliable man that he hows cannot contribute anything. 22. It would surely be remarkable if we had to believe the reliable person who says "I can't be wrong"; or who says "I am not wrong". 23. If I don't know whether someone has two hands (say, whether they have 'been amputated or not) I shall believe Gs assurance that he has two hands, if he is trustworthy. And if he says he hows it, that can only signify to me that he has been able to make sure, and hence that his arms are e.g. not still concealed by coverings and bandages, etc. etc. My bdieving the trustworthy man stems from my admitting that it is possible for him to make sure. But someone who say<that perhaps there are no physical objects makes no such admission. 24. The idealist's question would be something like: "What right have I not to doubt the existence of my hands?" (And to that the answer can't be: I how that they exist.) But someone who asks such a question is overlooking the fact that a doubt about existence only works in a language-game. Hence, that we should first have to ask: what would such a doubt be like?, and don't understand this straight off. 25. One may be wrong even about "there being a hand here". Only in particular circumstances is it impossible.-"Even in a calculation one can be wrong--only in certain circumstances one can't." 26. But can it be seen from a rule what circumstances logically exclude a mistake in the employment of rules of calculation? What use is a rule to us here? Mightn't we (in turn) go wrong in applying it 3 27. If, however, one wanted to give something like a rule here, then it would contain the expression "in normal circum- stances". And we recognize normal circumstances but cannot precisely describe them. At most, we can describe a range of abnormal ones. 28. What is 'learning a rule' ?-This. What is 'making a mistake in applying it' ?-This. And what is pointed to here is something indeterminate. 29: Practice in the use of the rule also shews what is a mistake in its employment. 30. When someone has made sure of something, he says: "Yes, the calculation is right", but he did not infer that from his condi- tion of certainty. One does not infer how things are from one's own certainty. Certainty is as it w e a tone of voice in which one declares how things are, but one does not infer from the tone of voice that one is justified. 31. The propositions which one comes back to again and again as if bewitched-these I should like to expunge from philosophical language. 3 2. It's not a matter of Moore's knowing that there's a hand there, but rather we should not understand him if he were to say "Of course I may be wrong about this". We should ask "whit is it like to make such a mistake as that?"--e.g. what's it like to discover that it was a mistake? 3 3. Thus we expunge the sentences that don't get us any further. 34. If someone is taught to calculate, is he also taught that he can rely on a calculation of his teacher's ? But these explanations must after all sometime come to an end. Will he also be taught that he can trust his senses-since he is indeed told in many cases that in such and such a stlecial case vou cannot trust them?- A .I Rule and exception. j j . But can't objects? I don nonsense. Is it it be imagined that there should be no physical .'t know. And yet "There are physical objects" is supposed to be an empirical proposition?- And is thiJ an empirical proposition: "There seem to be physical objects" ? 36. "A is a physical object" is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn't yet understand either what "A" means, or what "physical object" means. Thus it is instruc- tion about the use of words, and "physical object" is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity, . . .) And that is why no such proposition as: "There are physical objects" can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn. 3 7. But is it an adequate answer to the scepticism of the idealist, or the assurances of the realist, to say that "There are physical objects" is nonsense? For them after all it is not nonsense. It would, however, be an answer to say: this assertion, or its opposite is a misfiring attempt to express what can't be expressed like that. And that it does misfire can be shewn; but that isn't the end of the matter. We need to realize that what presents itself to us as the first expression of a difficulty, or of its solution, may as yet not be correctly expressed at all. Just as one who has a just censure of a picture to make will often at first offer the censure where it does not belong, and an investigation is needed in order to find the right point of attack for the critic. 38. Knowledge in mathematics: Here one has to keep on reminding oneself of the unimportance of the 'inner process' or 'state' andY ask "Why should it 6e important ? What does it matter to me?" What is interesting is how we use mathematical proposi- tions. 39. This is how calculation is done, in such circumstances a calculation is treated as absolutely reliable, as certainly correct. 40. Upon "I know that here is my hand" there may follow the question "How do you know?" and the answer to that pre- supposes that t-,iJ can be known in that way. So, instead of "I know that here is my hand", one might say "Here is my hand", and then add how one knows. 41. "I know where I am feeling pain", "I know that I feel it here" is as wrong as "I know that I am in pain". But "I know where you touched my arm" is right. 42. One can say "He believes it, but it isn't so", but not "He knows it, but it isn't so". Does this stem from the difference between the mental states of belief and of knowledge? No.-One may for example call "mental state" what is expGssed by tone of voice in speaking, by gestures etc. It would thus bepossible to speak of a mental state of conviction, and that may be the same whether it is knowledge or false belief. To think that different states must correspond to the words "believe" and "know" would be as if one believed that different people had to correspond 66 9 , to the word I and the name "Ludwig", because the concepts are different, 43. What sort of proposition is this: "We cannot have miscalcu- lated in 12 x I 2 = 144" ? It must surely be a proposition of logic. -But now, is it not the same, or doesn't it come to the same, as the statement 12 x I 2 = 144? 44. If you demand a rule from which it follows that there can't have been a miscalculation here, the answer is that we did not learn this through a rule, but by learning to calculate. 45 We got to know the nature of calculating by learning to calculate. 46. But then can't it be described how we satisfy ourselves of the reliability of a calculation? 0 yes! Yet no rule emerges when we do so.-But the most important thing is: The rule is not needed. Nothing is lacking. We do calculate according to a rule, and that is enough. 47. This is how one calculates. Calculating is this. What we learn at school, for example. Forget this transcendent certainty, which is connected with your concept of spirit. 48. However, out of a host of calculations certain ones might be designated as reliable once for all, others as not yet fixed. And now, is this a logical distinction? 49. But remember: even when the calculation is something fixed for me, this is only a decision for a practical purpose. - lo. Whendoes onesay,Iknowthat.. . x . . . - . . .?When one has checked the calculation. 1 1. What sort of proposition is: "What could a mistake here be like!"? It would have to be a logical proposition. But it is a logic that is not used, because what it iellH us is not learned th;ough propositions.-lt is a logical proposition; for it does describe the conceptual (linguistic) situation. 1 2. This situation is thus not the same for a proposition like "At this distance from the sun there is a planet" and "Here is a hand" (namely my own hand). The secbnd can't be called a hypothesis. But there isn't a sharp boundary line between them. j 3. So one might grant that Moore was right, if he is interpreted like this: a proposition saying that here is a physical object may have the same logical status as one saying that here is a red patch. 14. For it is not true that a mistake merely gets more and more improbable as we pass from the planet to my own hand. No: at some point it has ceased to be conceivable. This is already suggested by the following: if it were not so, it would also be conceivable that we should be wrong in every statement about physical objects; that any we ever make are mistaken. $5. So is the b~othcsis possible, that all the things around us don't exist? Would that not be like the hypothesis of our having miscalculated in all our calculations ? 16. When one says: "Perhaps this planet doesn't exist and the light-phenomenon arises in some other way", then after all one needs an example of an object which does exist. This doesn't exist,-as for exumple does. . . . Or are we to say that cerainfy is merely a constructed point to which some things approximate more, some less closely? No. Doubt gradually loses its sense. This language-game just i5 like that. And everything descriptive of a language-game is part of logic. 17. Now might not "I bow, I am not just surmising, that here is my hand" be conceived as a proposition of grammar? Hence not temporally .- But in that case isn't it like this one: "I know, I am not just surmising, that I am seeing red'' ? And isn't the consequence "So there are physical objects" like: "SO there are colours" ? 5 8. If 'I know etc." is conceived as a grammatical proposition, 6' '2 of course the I cannot be important. And it properly means "There is no such thing as a doubt in this case" or "The expression 'I do not know' makes no sense in this case". And of course it follows from this that "I how" makes no sense either. 19. 'I know" is here a logical insight. Only realism can't be proved by means of it. 60. It is wrong to say that the 'hypothesis' that thiJ is a bit of paper would be confirmed or disconfirmed by later experience, and that, in "I know that this is a bit of paper," the "I know" either relates to such an hypothesis or to a logical determination. 61. . . . A meaning of a word is a kind of employment of it. For it is what we learn when the word is incorporated into our A language. 62. That is why there exists a correspondence between the concepts 'rule' and 'meaning'. 63. If we imagine the facts otherwise than as they are, certain language-games lose some of their importance, while others become important. And in this way there is an alteration-a gradual one-in the use of the vocabulary of a language. 64. Compare the meaning of a word with the 'function' of an official. And 'different meanings' with 'different functions'. 61. When language-games change, then there is a change in concepts, and with the concepts the meanings of words change. 66. I make assertions about reality, assertions which have different degrees of assurance. How does the degree of assurance come out? What conseauences has it ? We may be dealing, fGr example, with the or again of perception. I may be sure of know what test might convince me of error of the date of a b&le, but if I should find certainty of memory, something, but still - . I am e.g. quite sure a different date in a recognized work of history, I should alter my opinion, and this would not mean I lost all faith in judging. 67. Could we imagine a man who keeps on making mistakes where we regard a mistake as ruled out, and in fact never encounter one ? E.g. he says he lives in such and such a place, is so and so old, comes from such and such a city, and he speaks with the same certainty (giving all the tokens of it) as I do, but he is wrong. But what is his relation to this error? What am I to suppose? The question is: what is the logician to say here? 69. I should like to say: '?f I am wrong about this, I have no guarantee that anything I say is true." But others won't say that about me, nor will I say it about other people. 70. For months I have lived at address A, I have read the name of the street and the number of the house countless times, have received countless letters here and given countless people the address. If I am wrong about it, the mistake is hardly less than if I were (wrongly) to believe I was writing Chinese and not German. 71. If my friend were to imagine one day that he had been living for a long time past in such and such a place, etc. etc., I should not call this a mistake, but rather a mental disturbance, perhaps a transient one. 72' Not every false belief of this sort is a mistake. 73. But what is the difference between mistake and mental disturbance? Or what is the difference between my treating it as a mistake and my treating it as mental disturbance? 74. Can we say: a mi~take doesn't only have a cause, it also a ground? I.e., roughly: when someone makes a mistake, can be fitted into what he knows aright. has this 75. Would this be correct: If I merely believed wrongly that there is a table here in front of me, this might still be a mistake; but if I believe wrongly that I have seen tGs table, or one like it, every day for several months past, and have regularly used it, that isn't a mistake? 76. Naturally, my aim must be to say what the statements one would like to make here, but cannot make significantly. 77. Perhaps I shall do a multiplication twice to make sure, or perhaps get someone else to work it over. But shall I work it over again twenty times, or get twenty people to go over it? And is that some sort of negligence? Would the certainty really be greater for being checked twenty times? And can I give a reu~on why it isn't? 79. That I am a man and not a woman can be verified, but if I were to say I was a woman, and then tried to explain the error by, saying I hadn't checked the statement, the explanation would not be accepted. 80. The &a/tb of my statements is the test of my unde~sfanding of these statements. 81. That is to say: if I make certain false statements, it becomes uncertain whether I understand them. 82. What counts as an adequate test of a statement belongs to logic. It belongs to the description of the language-game. 8 3. The t~a/th of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference. 84. Moore says he hows that the earth existed long before his birth. And put like that it seems to be a personal statement about him, even if it is in addition a statement about the physical world. Now it is philosophically uninteresting whether Moore knows this or that, but it is interesting that, and how, it can be known. If Moore had informed us that he knew the distance separating certain stars, we might conclude from that that he had made some specialinvestigations, and we shall want to know what these were. But Moore chooses precisely a case in which we all seem to know the same as he, and without being able to say how. I believe e.g. that I know as much about this matter (the existence of the earth) as Moore does, and if he knows that it is as he says, then I know it too. For it isn't, either, as if he had arrived at his proposition by pursuing some line of thought which, while it is open to me, I have not in fact pursued. 8 5 . And what goes into someone's knowing this? Knowledge of history, say ? He must know what it means to say: the earth has already existed for such and such a length of time. For not any intelligent adult must know that. We see men building and demolishing houses, and are led to ask: "How long has this house been here?" But how does one come on the idea of askine this about a mountain, for example? And have all men the m&;n of the earth as a body, which &ay come into being and pass away? Why shouldn't I think of the earth as flat, but extending: without endOin every direction (including depth)? But in thatYcase one might still say "I know that this mountain existed long before my birth."-But suppose I met a man who didn't believe that? 86. Suppose I replaced Moore's "I know" by "I am of the un- shakeable conviction" ? 87. Can't an assertoric sentence, which was capable of function- ing as an hypothesis, also be used as a foundation for research and action? 1.e. can't it simply be isolated from doubt, though' not according to any explicit rule? It simply gets assumed as a truism, never called in question, perhaps not evenever formulated. 88. It may be for example that all enquiry on our part is set so as to exempt certain ~ropositions from doubt. if thev are ever formu- lated. TLey lie apkt grom the route traveiled by enquiry. 89. One would like to say: "Everything speaks for, and nothing against the earth's having existed long before. . . . 2 3 Yet might I not believe the contrary after all? But the question is: What would the practical effects of this belief be?-Perhaps someone says: "That's not the point. A belief is what it is whether it has any practical effects or not." One thinks: It is the same adjustment of the human mind anyway. 90. "I know" has a primitive meaning similar to and related to '9 << ''I see ( wissen", "videre"). And "I knew he was in the room, but he wasn't in the room" is like "I saw him in the room, but he wasn't there". "I know" is supposed to express a ,relation, not between me and the sense of a proposition (like "I believe") but between me and a fact. So that &e&ct is taken into my consdous- ness. (Here is the reason why one wants to say that nothing that goes on in the outer world is really known, but only what happens in the domain of what are called sense-data.) This would give us a picture of knowing as the perception of an outer event though visual rays which project it as it is into the eye and the con- sciousne&. Only thin 'the question at once arises whether one can be certain of this projection. And this picture does indeed show how our imagination presents knowledge, but not what lies at the bottom of this presentation. 91. If Moore says he knows the earth existed etc., most of us will grant him that it has existed all that time, and also believe him when he says he is convinced of it. But has he also got the right ground for his conviction ? For if not, then after all he doesn't know (Russell). g2* However, we can ask: May someone have telling grounds for believing that the earth has only existed for a short time, say since his own birth?-Suppose he had always been told that,- would he have any good reason to doubt it? Men have believed that they could make rain; why should not a king be brought up in the belief that the world began with him? And if Moore and this king were to meet and discuss, could Moore really prove his belief to be the right one? I do not say that Moore could not convert the king to his view, but it would be a conversion of a special kind; the king would be brought to look at the world in a different way. Remember that one is sometimes convinced of the correctness of a view by its simplicity or gmmetry, i.e, these are what induce one to go over to this point of view. One then simply says something like: "That's how it must be.'' 93. The propositions presenting what Moore 'hows' are all of such a kind that it is difficult to imagine why anyone should believe the contrary. E.g. the proposition &at Moore has spent his whole life in close proximity to the earth.-Once more I can speak of myself here instead of speaking of Moore. What could induce me to believe the opposite? Either a memory, or having been told.- Everything that I have no man has ever been of the world speaks in seen or heard gives me the conviction that far from the ekth. Nothing in my picture 1 1 . favour ot the opposite. 94. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness: nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false. 91 . The propositions describing this world-picture might be Dart of a kind of mvtholoev. And their role is like that of rules of a game; and the game c& be learned purely practically, without learning any explicit rules. 96. It might be imagined that some propositions, of the form of empirical propositions, were hardened and functioned as channels for such empirical propositions as were not hardened but fluid; and that this relation altered with time, in that fluid propositions hardened, and hard ones became fluid. 97. The mythology may change back into a state of flux, river-bed of thoughts may shift. But I distinguish between movement of the waters on the river-bed and the shift of the itself; though there is not a sharp division of the one from other. the the bed the But if someone were to sav "So logic too is an em~irical science" he would be wrong. ye; this is ryght: the same pioposi- tion may get treated at one time as something to test by experience, at another as a rule of testing. 99. And the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away, or deposited. 100. The truths which Moore says he knows, are such as, roughly speaking, all of us know, if he knows them. 101. Such a proposition might be e.g. "My body has never disappeared and reappeared again after an interval." 102. Might I not believe that once, without knowing it, perhaps in a state of unconsciousness, I was taken far away from the earth -that other people even know this, but do not mention it to me? But this would not fit into the rest of my convictions at all. Not that I could describe the system of these convictions. Yet my convictions do form a system, a structure. 103. And now if I were to say "It is my unshakeable convic- tion that etc.", this means in the present case too that I have not consciously arrived at the conviction by following a particular line of thought, but that. it is anchored in all my questions and anwers, so anchored that I cannot touch it. 104. I am for example also convinced that the sun is not a hole in the vault of heaven. I O ~ . All testing, all confirmation and disconfirmation of a hypothesis takes place already within a system. And this system is not a more or less arbitrary and doubtful point of departure for all our arguments: no, it belongs to the essence of what we call an argumint. The system is norso much the point of depar- ture, as the element in which arguments have their life. rob. Suppose some adult had told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon; no one has ever been on the moon; the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there.-If now the child insists, saying perhaps there is a way of getting there which I don't know, etc. what reply could I make to him? What reply could I make to the adults of a tribe who believe that people sometimes go to the moon (perhaps that is how they interpret their dreams), and who indeed grant that there are no ordinary means of climbing up to it or flying there?-But a child will not ordinarily stick to such a belief and will soon be convinced by what we tell him seriously. 107. Isn't this altogether like the way one can instruct a child to believe in a God, or that none exists, and it will accordingly be able to produce apparently telling grounds for the one or the other ? 108. "But is there then no objective truth ? Isn't it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?" If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions "How did he overcome the force of gravity?" "How could he live without an atmosphere.?" and a thousand others which could not be answered. But suppose that instead of all these answers we met the reply: "We don't know how one gets to the moon, but those who get there know at once that they are there; and even you can't explain everything." We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this. 109. "An empirical proposition can be tested" (we say). But how ? and through what? I 10. What coatzt.r as its test ?-"But is this an adequate test ? And, if so, must it not be recognizable as such in logic?'- As if giving grounds did not come to an end sometime. But the end is not an ungrounded presupposition: it is an ungrounded way of acting. I I I. "I know that I have never been on the moon." That sounds quite different in the circumstances which actually hold, to the way it would sound if a good many men had been on the moon, and some perhaps without knowing it. In thiJ case one could give grounds for this knowledge. Is there not a relationship here similar to that between the general rule of multiplying and particular multiplications that have been carried out ? I want to say: my not having been on the moon is as sure a thing for me as any grounds I could give for it. I 12. And isn't that what Moore wants to say, when he says he knows all these things?-But is his knowing it really what is in question, and not rather that some of these propositions must be solid for us? I I 3. When someone is trying to teach us mathematics, he will not begin by assuring us that he know$ that a +b = b +a. I 14. If you are not certain of any fact, you cannot be certain of the meaning of your words either. I I 5 . If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty. I r 6. Instead of "I know . . .", couldn't Moore have said: "It stands fast for me that . . ."? And further: "1t.stands fast for me and many others. . . . 2, I r 7. Why is it not possible for me to doubt that I have never been on the moon? And how could I try to doubt it? First and foremost, the supposition that perhaps I have been there would strike me as idle. Nothing would follow from it, nothing be explained by it. It would not tie in with anything in mv life. J When I say "Nothing speaks for, everything against it," this presupposes a principle of speaking for and against. That is, I must be able to say what WOZIZ~ speak for it. I 18. Now would it be correct to say: So far no one has opened my skull in order to see whether there is a brain inside; but every- thing speaks for, and nothing against, its being what they would find there ? I 19. But can it also be said: Everything speaks for, and nothing against the table's still being there when no one sees it? For what does speak for it? 120. But if anyone were to doubt it, how would his doubt come out in practice? And couldn't we peacefully leave him to doubt it, since it makes no difference at all? 121. Can one say: "Where there is no doubt there is no know- ledge either" ? I 22. Doesn't one need grounds for doubt ? I 23. Wherever I look, I find no ground for doubting that. . . . 124. I want to say: We use judgments as principles of judgment. I 25. If a blind man were to ask me "Have you got two hands ?" I should not make sure by looking. If I were to have any doubt of it, then I don't know why I should trust my eyes. For why shouldn't I test my eyes by looking to find out whether I see my 125 I 8e two hands? Wbat is to be tested by what? (Who decides what stands fast ?) And what does it mean to say that such and such stands fast? I zG. I am not more certain of the meaning am of certain judgments. Can I doubt that "blue" ? of my words this colour is than I called (My) doubts form a system. 127. For how do I know that someone is in doubt? How do I know that he uses the words "I doubt it" as I do? I 28. From a child up I learnt to judge like this. This is judging. 129. This is how I learned to judge; this I got to know a$ judgment. 130. But isn't it experience that teaches us to judge like thiJ, that is to sav, that it is correct to judge like this? But how does experience &ch us, then ? We may heZve it from experience, but experience does not direct us to derive anything from experience. If it is the ground of our judging like this, and not just the cause, still we do not have a ground for seeing this in turn as a ground. I 3 I. No, experience is not the ground for our game of judging. Nor is its outstanding success. 132, Men have judged that a king can make rain; we say this contradicts all experience. Today they judge that aeroplanes and the radio etc. are means for the closer contact of peoples and the spread of culture. I 3 3. Under ordinary circumstances I do not satisfy myself that I have two hands by seeing how it looks. W b not ? Has experience shown it to be unnecessary? Or (again): Have we in some way learnt a universal law of induction, and do we trust it here too ?- But why should we have learnt one w i v e r d law &st, and not the special one straight away? 134. After putting a book in a drawer, I assume it is there, unless. . . . "Experience always proves me right. There is no well attested case of a book's (simply) disappearing." It has ofm happened that a book has never turned up again, although we thought we knew for certain where it was.-But experience does really teach that a book, say, does not vanish away. (E.g. gradually evaporate.) But is it this experience with books etc. that leads us to assume that such a book has not vanished away? Well, suppose we were to find that under particular novel circumstances books did vanish away.-Shouldn't we alter our assumption? Can one give the lie to the effect of experience on our system of assumption ? I 3 5 . But do we not simply follow the principle that what has always happened will happen again (or something like it) ? What does it mean to follow this principle? Do we reallv introduce it into our reasoning? Or is It me;ely the n a t d I& which our inferring apparently follows? This latter it may be. It is not an item in our considerations. I 36. When Moore says he how^ such and such, he is really enumerating a lot of embirid propositions which we affirm U L .I. without special testing; proposltlons, that is, which have a peculiar logical role in the system of our empirical proposi- tions. 137. Even if the most trustworthy of men assures me that he knows things are thus and so, this by itself cannot satisfy me that he does know. Only that he believes he knows. That is why Moore's assurance that he knows . . . does not interest us. The propositions, however, which Moore retails as examples of such known truths are indeed interesting. Not because anyone knows their truth, or believes he knows them, but because they all have a ~imiZar role in the system of our empirical judgments. I 38. We don't, for example, arrive at any of them as a result of investigation. There are e.g. historical investigations and investigations into the shape and also the age of the earth, but not into whether the earth has existed during the last hundred years. Of course many of us have information about this period from our parents and grandparents; but mayn't they be wrong ?-"Nonsensel" one will say. "How should all these people be wrong?"-But is that an argument? Is it not simply the rejection of an idea? And perhaps the determination of a concept? For if I speak of a possible mistake here, this changes the role of "mistake" and cCtruth" in our lives. 139. Not only rules, but also examples are needed for establish- ing a practice. Our rules leave loop-holes open, and the practice has to speak for itself. 140. We do not learn the practice of making empirical judgments by learhing rules: we are taughtjudgmetlts and their connexion with other judgments. A totality of judgments is made plausible to us. 141. When we first begin to believe anything, what we believe is not a single proposition, it is a whole system of propositions. (Light dawns gradually over the whole.) 142. It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another mz/tuaZ support. many teller I am told, for example, that someone climbed this mountain years ago. Do I always enquire into the reliability of the of this storv, and whether the mountain did exist years ago? A child lams there are reliable and unreliable informants much later than it learns facts which are told it. It doesn't learn at aZ2 that that mountain has existed for a long time: that is, the question whether it is so doesn't arise at all. It swallows this consequence down, so to speak, together with what it learns. 144. The child learns to believe a host of things. 1.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it. 145. One wants to say CCAZZ my experiences shew that it is But how do they do that? For that proposition to which point itself belongs to a particular interpretation of them. "That I regard this proposition as certainly true characterizes my interpretation of experience." so". they also 146. We form the picture of the earth as a ball floating free in space and not altering essentially in a hundred years. I said "We form thepicture etc." and this picture now helps us in the judgment of various situations. I may indeed calculate the dimensions of a bridge, sometimes calculate that here things are more in favour of a bridge than a ferry, etc. etc.,-but somewhere I must begin with an assumption . . . or a decision. 147. The picture of the earth as a ball is a good picture, it proves itself everywhere, it is also a simple picture-in short, we work with it without doubting it. 148. Why do I not satisfy myself that I have two feet when I want to get up from a chair? There is no why. I simply don't. This is how I act. 149. My judgments themselves characterize the way I judge, characterize the nature of judgment. I 0 . How does someone judge which is his right and which his left hand? How do I know that my judgment will agree with someone else's? How do I know that this colour is blue? If I don't tmst myserf here, why should I trust anyone else's judgment? Is there a why? Must I not begin to trust somewhere? That is to say: somewhere I must begin with not-doubting; and that is not, so to speak, hasty but excusable: it is part of judging. I 5 I. I should like to say: Moore does not h o w what he asserts he knows, but it stands fast for him, as also for me; regarding it as absolutely solid is part of our method of doubt and enquiry. I 2. I do not explicitly learn the propositions that stand fast for me. I can discover them subsequentlv like the axis around which a body rotates. This axis is not'fixed'in the sense that anything holds it fast, but the movement around it determines its immobility. 153- No one ever taught me that my hands don't disappear when I am not paying attention to them. Nor can I be said to presuppose the truth of this proposition in my assertions etc., (as if they rested on it) while it only gets sense from the rest of our procedure of asserting. I 54. There are cases such that, if someone gives signs of doubt where we do not doubt, we cannot confidently understand his signs as signs of doubt. 1.e.: if we are to understand his signs of doubt as such, he may give them only in particular cases and may not give them in others. I j 5. In certain circumstances a man cannot make a mistake. ("Can" is here used logically, and the proposition does not mean that a man cannot say anything false in those circumstances.) If Moore were to pronounce the opposite of those propositions which he declares certain, we should not just not share his opinion: we should regard him as demented. 156. In order to make a mistake, a man must already judge in conformity with mankind. I 5 7. Suppose a man could not remember whether he had always had five fingers or two hands ? Should we understand him? Could we be sure of understanding him? I j 8. Can I be making a mistake, for example, in thinking that the words of which this sentence is composed are English words whose meaning I know? I 5 9. As children we learn facts ; e.g., that every human being has a brain, and we take them on trust. I believe that there is an island, ~usiralia, of such-and-such a shape, and I believe that I had great-grandparents, that gave themselves out as my parents really were This belief may never have been expressed; even it was so, never thought. so on and so on; the people who my parents, etc. . the thought that 160. The child learns by believing the adult. Doubt comes afer belief. 161. I learned an enormous amount and accepted it on human authority, and then I found some things confirmed or discon- firmed by my own experience. 162. In general I take as true what is found in text-books, of geography for example. Why? I say: All these facts have been confirmed a hundred times over. But how do I know that? What is my evidence for it? I have a world-picture. Is it true or false? Above all it is the substratum of all my enquiring and asserting. The propositions describing it are not all equally subject to testing. 163. Does anyone ever test whether this table remains in existence when no one is paying attention to it? We check the story of Napoleon, but not whether all the reports about him are based on sense-deception, forgery and the like. For whenever we test anything, we are already presupposing something that is not tested. Now am I to say that the experiment which perhaps I make in order to test the truth d a proposition presupposes the truth of the proposition that the apparatus I believe I see is really there (and the like) ? 164. Doesn't testing come to an end? 16 1. One child might say to another: "I know that the earth is already hundreds of years old" and that would mean: I have learnt it. 166. The difficulty is to realize the groundlessness of our . .. . believing. 167. It is clear that our empirical propositions do not all have the same status, since one can lay down such a proposition and turn it from an empirical proposition into a norm of description. Think of chemical investigations. Lavoisier makes experiments with substances in his laboratory and now he concludes that this and that takes place when there is burning. He does not say that it might happen otherwise another time. He has got hold of a definite world-picture-not of course one that he invented: he learned it as a child. I say world-picture and not hypothesis, because it is the matter-of-course foundation for his research and as such also goes unmentioned. 168. But now, what part is played by the presupposition that a substance A always reacts to a substance B in the same way, given the same circumstances? Or is that part of the definition of a substance ? 169. One might think that there were propositions declaring that chemistry is ~ossible. And these would be propositions of a natural scienfe. ~ b r what should they be suppoked by, if not by experience ? 170. I believe what people transmit to me in a certain manner. In this way I believe geographical, chemical, historical facts etc. That is how I learn the sciences. Of course learning is based on believing. If you have learnt that Mont Blanc is 4000 metres high, if you have looked it up on the map, you say you h o w it. And can it now be said: we accord credence in this way because it has proved to pay? I 71. A principal ground for Moore to assume that he never was on the moon is that no one ever was on the moon or could come there; and this we believe on grounds of what we learn. 172. Perhaps someone says "There must be some basic principle on which we accord credence", but what can such a principle accomplish ? Is it more than a natural law of 'taking for true' ? I 73 . Is it maybe in my power what I believe ? or what I un- shakeably believe ? I believe that there is a chair over there. Can't I be wrong? But, can I believe that I am wrong? Or can I so much as bring it under consideration?-And mightn't I also hold fast to my belief whatever I learned later on?! But is my belief thengrounded? 174. I act with complete certainty. But this certainty is my own. I7 j. "I know it" I say to someone else; and here there is a justification. But there is none for my belief. 176. how years Instead of "I know it is-rely upon it." and years ago"; and it" one may say in some In some cases, however sometimes: "I am sure it cases "That's "I learned it is SO." 177. What I know, I believe. 178. The wrong use made by Moore of the proposition "I know . . ." lies in his regarding it as an utterance as little subject to doubt as "I am in pain". And since from "I know it is so" there follows "It is so", then the latter can't be doubted either. I79. It would be correct to say: "I believe . . ." has subjective 2, truth; but "I know. . . not. 180. Or again "I believe . . ." is an 'expression', but not "I 2 2 know.. . 181. Suppose Moore had said "1 swear . . ." instead of "I 9 9 know.. . . 182. The more primitive idea is that the earth never had a beginning. No child has reason to ask himself how long the earth has existed, because all change takes place on it. If what is called the earth really came into existence at some time-which is hard enough to picture-then one naturally assumes the begin- ning as having been an inconceivably long time ago. I 8 3. "It is certain that after the battle of Austerlitz Napoleon. . . . Well, in that case it's surely also certain that the earth existed then." 184. "It is certain that we didn't arrive on this planet from another one a hundred years ago." Well, it's as certain as such things are. I 81. It would strike me as ridiculous to want to doubt the existence of Napoleon; but if someone doubted the existence of the earth listen, for does not rjo years ago, perhaps I should be more willing to now he is doubting our whole system of evidence. It strike me as if this svstem were more certain than a certainty within it. d 186. "I might suppose that Napoleon never existed and is a fable, but not that the earth did not exist 150 years ago." 187. "Do you h o w that the earth existed then?"-"Of course I know that. I have it from someone who certainly knows all about it." I 88. It strikes me as if someone who doubts the existence of the earth at that time is impugning the nature of all historical evidence. And I cannot say of this latter that it is definitely correct, I 89. At some point one has to pass from explanation to mere description. 190. What we call historical evidence points to the existence of the earth a long time before my birth;-the opposite hypothesis has nothing on its side. 191. Well, if everything speaks for an hypothesis and nothing against it-is it then certainly true? One may designate it as such.-But does it certainly agree with reality, with the facts?- With this question you are already going round in a circle. I 92. To be sure there is justification; but justification comes to an end. 193. What does this mean: the truth of a proposition is certain ? I 94. With the word "certain" we express complete conviction, the total absence of doubt, and thereby we seek to convince other people. That is ~ubjective certainty. But when is something objectively certain? When a mistake is not possible. But what kind of possibility is that? Mustn't mistake be logically excluded ? 195. If I believe that I am sitting in my room when I am not, then I shall not be said to have made a mistake. But what is the essential difference between this case and a mistake? 196. Sure evidence is what we accept as sure, it is evidence that we go by in acting surely, acting without any doubt. What we call "a mistake" plays a quite special part in our language games, and so too does what we regard as certain evidence. 197. It would be nonsense to say that we regard something as sure evidence because it is certainly true. 198. Rather, we must first determine the role of deciding for or against a proposition. 199. The reason why the use of the expression "true or false" has something misleading about it is that it is like saying "it tallies with the facts or it doesn't", and the very thing that is in question is what "tallying" is here. zoo. Really "The proposition is either true or false" only means that it must be possible to decide for or against it. But this does not say what the ground for such a decision is like. 201. Suppose someone were to ask: 'Ts it really right for us to rely on the evidence of our memory (or our senses) as we do?" 202. Moore's certain propositions almost declare that we have a right to rely upon this evidence. 203. [Everything1 that we regard as evidence indicates that the earth already existed long before my birth. The contrary hypo- thesis has nothing to confirm it at all. If everything speaks for an hypothesis and nothing against it, is it objectively certain? One can call it that. But does it necessarib agree with the world of facts? At the very best it shows us what "agreement" means. We find it difficult to imagine it to be false, but also difficult to make use of it.] What does this agreement consist in, if not in the fact that what is evidence in these language games speaks for our proposi- tion ? (Tractatzis Logico- PhiIosophicus) 204. Giving grounds, however, justifying the evidence, comes to an end;-but the end is not certain propositions' striking us immediately as true, i.e. it is not a kind of seeing on our part; it is our acting, which lies at the bottom of the language-game. 205. If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false. 206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?" we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same". If this didn't come about, that would mean that he couldn't for example learn history. 207. "Strange coincidence, that every man whose skull has been opened had a brain!" 208. I have a telephone conversation with New York. My friend tells me that his young trees have buds of such and such a kind. I am now convinced that his tree is. . . . Am I also convinced that the earth exists? 209. The existence of the earth is rather part of the whole pictm which forms the starting-point of belief for me. 210. Does my telephone call to New York strengthen my conviction that the earth exists ? Passage crossed out in MS. (Edtor~) Much seems to be fixed, and it is removed from the traffic. It is so to speak shunted onto an unused siding. 211. NOW it gives our way of looking at things, and our researches, their form. Perhaps it was once disputed. But perhaps, for unthinkable ages, it has belonged to the scaffolding of our thoughts. (Every human being has parents.) 21 2. In certain circumstances, for example, we regard a calcula- tion as sufficiently checked. What gives us a right to do so? Experience? May that not have deceived us? Somewhere we must be finished with justification, and then there remains the proposition that this is how we calculate. 2 I 3. Our 'empirical propositions' do not form a homogeneous mass. 214. What prevents me from supposing that this table either vanishes or alters its shape and colour when no one is observing it, and then when someone looks at it again changes back to its old condition?-"But who is going to suppose such a thing!"- one would feel like saying. 21 j. Here we see that the idea of 'agreement with reality' does not have any clear application. 216. The proposition ''It is written". 217. If someone supposed that all our calculations were un- certain and that we could rely on none of them (justifying himself by saying that mistakes are always possible) perhaps we would say he was crazy. But can we say he is in error? Does he not just react differently? We rely on calculations, he doesn't; we are sure, he isn't. 218. Can I believe for one moment that I have ever been in the stratosphere? No. So do I know the contrary, like Moore? 219. There cannotbe any doubt about it for me as a reasonable person.-That's it.- 220. The reasonable man does ?tot have certain doubts. 2 t 2. I cannot possibly doubt that I was never in the stratosphere. Does that make me know it? Does it make it true? 223. For mightn't I be crazy and not doubting what I absolutely ought to doubt? 224. "I h o w that it never happened, for if it had happened I could not possibly have forgotten it." But, supposing it did happen, then it just would have been the case that you had forgotten it. And how do you know that you could not possibly have forgotten it? Isn't that just from earlier experience ? 22j. What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions. 226. Can I give the supposition that I have ever been on the moon any serious consideration at all ? 227. "IS that something that one can forget ?I" 2 2 8. "In such circumstances, people do not say 'Perhaps we've all forgotten', and the like, but rather they assume that . . . ' 9 229. Our talk gets its meaning from the rest of our proceedings. 230. We are asking ourselves: what do we do with a statement "1 kmw . . ."? For it is not a question of mental processes or mental states. And that is how one must decide whether something is know- ledge or not. 231. If someone doubted whether the earth had existed a hundred years ago, I should not understand, for this reason: I would not know what such a person would still allow to be counted as evidence and what not. 232. "We could doubt every single one of these facts, but we could not doubt them all." Wouldn't it be more correct to say: "we do not doubt them ng". Our not doubting them all is simply our manner of judging, and therefore of acting. 233. If a child asked me whether the earth was already there before my birth, I should answer him that the earth did not begin only with my birth, but that it existed long, long before. And I should have the feeling of saying something funny. Rather as if the child had asked if such and such a mountain were higher than a tall house that it had seen. In answering the question I should have to be imparting a picture of the world to the per- son who asked it. If I do answer the question with certainty, what gives me this certainty ? 234. I believe that I have forebears, and that every human being has them. I believe that there are various cities, and, quite generally, in the main facts of geography and history. I believe that the earth is a body on whose surface we move and that it no more suddenly disappears or the like than any other solid body: this table, this house, this tree, etc. If I wanted to doubt the existence of the earth long before my birth, I should have to doubt all sons of things that stand fast for me. 2 3 . And that something stands fast for me is not grounded in my stupidity or credulity. 236. If someone said "The earth has not long been . . ." what would he be impugning? Do I know? Would it have to be what is called a scientific belief? Might it not be a mystical one? Is there any absolute necessity for him to be contradicting historical facts ? or even geographical ones ? 237. If I say "an hour ago this table didn't exist" I probably mean that it was only made later on. If I say "this mountain didn't exist then", I presumably mean that it was only formed later on-perhaps by a volcano. If I say "this mountain didn't exist half an hour ago", that is such a strange statement that it is not clear what I mean. Whether for example I mean something untrue but scientific. Perhaps you think that the statement that the mountain didn't exist then is quite clear, however one conceives the context. But suppose someone said "This mountain didn't exist a minute ago, but an exactly similar one did instead". Only the accustomed context allows what is meant to come through clearly. 238. I might therefore interrogate someone who said that the earth did not exist before his birth, in order to find out which of 238 3 == my convictions he was at odds with. And then it might be that he was contradicting my fundamental attitudes that were how it was, and if I should have to put up with it. Similarly if he said he had at some time been on the moon. 239. I believe that every human being has two human parents; but Catholics believe that Jesus only had a human mother. And other people might believe that there are human beings with no parents, and give no credence to all the contrary evidence. Catholics believe as well that in certain circumstances a wafer completely changes its nature, and at the same time that all evidence proves the contrary. And so if Moore said "I know that this is wine and not blood", Catholics would contradict him. 240. What is the belief that all human beings have parents based on? On experience. And how can I base this sure belief on my experience? Well, I base it not only on the fact that I have known the parents of certain people but on everything that I have learnt about the sexual life of human beings and their anatomy and physiology: also on what I have heard and seen of animals. But then is that really a proof? 241. Isn't this an hypothesis, which, as I belieye, is again and again completely confirmed? 242. Mustn't we say at every turn: "1 believe this with certainty" ? 243 One says "I know" when one is ready to give compelling grounds. "I know" relates to a possibility of demonstrating the truth. Whether someone knows something can come to light, assuming that he is convinced of it. But if what he believes is of such a kind that the grounds that he can give are no surer than his assertion, then he cannot say that he knows what he believes. 244. If someone says "I have a body", he can be asked "Who is speaking here with this mouth?" 24j To whom does anyone say that he knows something? To himself, or to someone else. If he says it to himself, how is it distinguished from the assertion that he is sure that things are like that? There is no subjective sureness that I know something. The certainty is subjective, but not the knowledge. So if I say "I know that I have two hands", and that is not supposed to express just my subjective certainty, I must be able to satisfy myself that I am right. But I can't do that, for my having two hands is not less certain before I have looked at them than afterwards. But I could say: 'That I have two hands is an irreversible belief." That would express the fact that I am not ready to let anything count as a disproof of this proposition. 246. "Here I have arrived at a foundation of all my beliefs." "This position I will holdl" But isn't that, precisely, ody because I am completely convinced of it ?-What is 'being. completely con- vinced' like ? 247. What would it be like to doubt now whether I have two hands ? Why can't I imagine it at all? What would I believe if I didn't believe that? So far I have no system at all within which - this doubt might exist. 248. I have arrived at the rock bottom of my convictions. - ~ n d one might almost say that these fhdation-walls are carried by the whole house. 249. One gives oneself a false picture of doubt. 2 j O. My having two hands is, in normal circumstances, as certain as anything that I could produce in evidence for it. That is why I am not in a position to take the sight of my hand as evidence for it. 2 j I. Doesn't this mean: I shall proceed according to this belief unconditionally, and not let anything confuse me ? 2 ~ 2 . But it isn't just that I believe in this way tha.t I have two hands, but that every reasonable person does. 25 3. At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded. 2 j4. Any 'reasonable' person behaves like this. 2 j j . Doubting has certain characteristic manifestations, but they are only characteristic of it in particular circumstances. If 2 5 5 33e someone said that he doubted the existence of his hands, kept looking at them from all sides, tried to make sure it wasn't 'all done by mirrors', etc., we should not be sure whether we ought to call that doubting. We might describe his way of behaving as like the behaviour of doubt, but his game would not be ours. 2 6. On the other hand a language-game does change with time. 217. If someone said to me that he doubted whether he had a body I should take him to be a half-wit. But I shouldn't know what it would mean to try to convince him that he had one. And if I had said something, and that had removed his doubt, I should not know how or why. 21 8. I do not know how the-sentence "I have,a body" is to be used. That doesn't unconditionally apply to the proposition that I have always been on or near the surface of the earth. 219. Someone who doubted whether the earth had existed for IOO years might have a scientific, or on the other hand a philo- sophical, doubt. 260. I would like to reserve the expression "I know" for the cases in which it is used in normal linguistic exchange. 261. I cannot at present imagine a reasonable doubt as to the existence of the earth during the last IOO years. 262. I can imagine a man who had grown up in quite special circumstances and been taught that the earth came into being 10 years ago, and therefore believed this. We might instruct him: the earth has long . . . etc.-We should be trying to give him our picture of the world. This would happen through a kind of persuasion. 263. The schoolboy believes his teachers and his schoolbook^. 264. I could imagine Moore being captured by a wild tribe, and their expressing the suspicion that he has come from some- where between the earth and the moon. Moore tells them that he knows etc. but he can't give them the grounds for his certainty, because they have fantastic ideas of human ability to fly and know nothing about physics. This would be an occasion for - - making that Gatement. 26 j. But what does it say, beyond "I have never been to such and such a place, and have compelling grounds for believing that" ? 266. And here one would still have to say what are compelling grounds. 267. "I don't merely have the visual impression of a tree: I h o w that it is a tree". 268. "1 know that this is a hand."-And what is a hand?- "Well, this, for example." 269. Am I more certain that I have never been on the moon than that I have never been in Bulgaria? Why am I so sure ? Well, I know that I have never been anywhere in the neighbourhood- for example I have never been in the Balkans. 270. "1 have compelling grounds for my certitude." These grounds make the certitude objective. 271. What is a telling ground for something is not anything I decide. 272. I know = I am familiar with it as a certainty. 273. But when does one say of something that it is certain? For there can be dispute whether something is certain; I mean, when something is objctiveZy certain. There are countless general empirical propositions that count as certain for us. 274. One such is that if someone's arm is cut off it will not grow again. Another, if someone's head is cut off he is dead and will never live again. Experience can be said to teach us these propositions. How- ever, it does not teach us them in isolation: rather, it teaches us a host of interdependent propositions. If they were isolated I might perhaps doubt them, for I have no experience relating to them. 27 . . J. If experience is the ground of our certainty, then naturally it is past experience. And it isn't for example just my experience, but other people's, that I get knowledge from. Now one might say that it is experience again that leads us to give credence to others. But what experience makes me believe that the anatomy and physiology books don't contain what is false? Though it is true that this trust is backed up by my own experience. 276. We believe, so to speak, that this great building exists, and then we see, now here, now there, one or another small corner of it. 277. '2 can't help believing. . . . 9 9 278. "1 am comfortable that that is how things are." 279. It is quite sure that motor cars don't grow out of the earth. We feel that if someone could believe the contrarv he could believe evetytha'ig that we say is untrue, and could queition every- thing that we hold to be sure. But how does this one belief hang together with all the rest? We should like to say that someone who could believe that does not accept our whole system of verification. This system is something that a human being acquires by means of observation and instruction. I intentionally do not say cclearns". 280. After he has seen this and this and heard that and that, he is not in a position to doubt whether. . . . 2 8 I. 1, L. W., believe, am sure, that my friend hasn't sawdust in his body or in his head, even though I have no direct evidence of my senses to the contrary. I am sure, by reason of what has been said to me, of what I have read, and of my experience. To have doubts about it would seem to me madness-of course, this is also in agreement with other people; but I agree with them. 282. I cannot say that I have good grounds for the opinion that cats do not grow on trees or that I had a father and a mother. If someo& has doubts about it-how is that supposed to have come about? By his never, from the beginning, 6a'ving believed that he had parents? But then, is that conceivable, ualrss he has been taught-it ? 283. For how can a child immediately doubt what it is taught? That could mean only that he was incapable of learning certain language games. 284. People have killed animals since the earliest times, used the fur, bones etc. etc. for various purposes; they have counted definitely on finding similar parts in any similar beast. They have always learnt from experience; and we can see from their actions that they believe certain things definitely, whether they express this belief or not. By this I naturally do not want to say that men should behave like this, but only that they do behave like this. 281. If someone is looking for something and perhaps roots around in a certain place, he shows that he believes that what he is looking for is there. 286. What we believe depends on what we learn. We all believe that it isn't possible to get to the moon; but there might be people who believe that that is possible and that it sometimes happens. We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief-they are wrong and we know it. If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far. 287. The squirrel does not infer by induction that it is going to need stores next winter as well. And no more do we need a law of induction to justify our actions or our predictions. 288. I know, not just that the earth existed long before my birth, but also that it is a large body, that this has been established, that I and the rest of mankind have forebears, that there are books about all this, that such books don't lie, etc. etc. etc. And I know all this? I believe it. This bodv of knowledge has been handed on to me and I have no grounds for doubting G, but, on the contrary, all sorts of confirmation. And why shouldn't I say that I know all this? Isn't that what one does say? But not only I know, or believe, all that, but the others do too. Or rather, I b e l k that they believe it. 289. I am firmly convinced that others believe, believe they know, that all that is in fact so. 290. I myself wrote in my book that children learn to under- stand a word in such and such a way. Do I know that, or do I believe it? Why in such a case do I write not "I believe etc." but simply the indicative sentence ? 291. We know that the earth is round. We have definitively ascertained that it is round. We shall stick to this opinion, unless our whole way of seeing nature changes. "How do you know that?"-I believe it. 292. Further experiments cannot g h the lie to our earlier ones, at most they may change our whole way of looking at things. 293. Similarly with the sentence "water boils at ~oo"C." 294. This is how we acquire conviction, this is called "being rightly convinced". 295. SO hasn't one, in this sense, a proof of the proposition? But that the same thing has happened again is not a proof of it; though we do say that it gives us a right to assume it. 296. This is what we cull an "empirical foundation" for our assumptions. 297. For we learn, not just that such and such experiments had those and those results, but also the conclusion which is drawn. And of course there is nothing wrong in our doing so. For this infened proposition is an instrument for a definite use. 298. W e are quite sure of it' does not mean just that every single person is certain of it, but that we belong to a community which is bound together by science and education. 299. We are satisfied that the earth is round.' '* . 1o.g.j I 300. Not all corrections of our views are on the same level. In English. Edr. 3 . Supposing it wasn't true that the earth had already existed long before I was born-how should we imagine the mistake being discovered ? 302. It's no good saying "Perhaps we are wrong" when, if no evidence is trustworthy, trust is excluded in the case of the present evidence. 303. If, for example, we have always been miscalculating, and twelve times twelve isn't a hundred and forty-four, why should we trust any other calculation? And of course that is wrongly put. 304. But nor am I making a mistake about twelve times twelve being a hundred and forty-four. I may say later that I was con- fused just now, but not that I was making a mistake. 3oj. Here once more there is needed a step like the one taken in relativity theory. 306. "I don't know if this is a hand." But do you know what the word "hand" means? And don't say "I know what it means now for me". And isn't it an empirical fact-that this word is used like this? 307. And here the strange thing is that when I am quite certain of how the words are used, have no doubt about it, I can still give no grounds for my way of going on. If I tried I could give a thousand, but none as certain as the very thing they were sup- posed to be grounds for. 3 08. 'Knowledge' and 'certainty' belong to different categories. They are not two 'mental states' like, say 'surmising' and 'being sure'. (Here I assume that it is meaningful for me to say "I know what (e.g.) the word 'doubt' means" and that this sentence indicates that the word "doubt" has a logical role.) What interests us now is not being sure but knowledge. That is, we are in- terested in the fact that about certain empirical propositions no doubt can exist if making judgments is to be possible at all. Or again: I am inclined to believe that not everything that has the form of an empirical proposition is one. 309. Is it that rule and empirical proposition merge into one another ? 309 310. A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning of words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all". 3 I I. Or imagine that the boy questioned the truth of history (and everything that connects up with it)--and even whether the earth had existed at all a hundred years before. 3 I 2. Here it strikes me as if this doubt were hollow. But in that case-isn't belief in history hollow too ? No; there is so much that this connects up with. 3 I 3. So is that what makes us believe a proposition? Well- the grammar of "believe" just does hang together with the gram- mar of the proposition believed. 3 14. Imagine that the schoolboy really did ask "and is there a table there even when I turn round, and even when no one is there to see it?" Is the teacher to reassure him-and say "of course there is!" ? Perhaps the teacher will get a bit impatient, but think that the boy will grow out of asking such questions. 3 I 1. That is to say, the teacher will feel that this is not really a legitimate question at all. And it would be just the same if the pupil cast doubt on the uniformity of nature, that is to say on the justification of inductive arguments.-The teacher would feel that this was only holding them up, that this way the pupil would only get stuck and make no progress.-And he would be right. It would be as if someone were looking for some object in a room; he opens a drawer and doesn't see it there; then he doses it again, waits, and opens it once more to see if perhaps it isn't there now, and keeps on like that. He has not learned to look for things. And in the same way this pupil has not learned how to ask questions. He has not learned the game that we are trying to teach him. 3 16. And isn't it the same as if the pupil were to hold up his 9 history lesson with doubts as to whether the earth really. . . . . 3 I 7. This doubt isn't one of the doubts in our game. (But not as if we chore this game!) 12.3.5 I 318. 'The question doesn't arise at 1 . Its answer would characterize a method. But there is no sharp boundary between methodological propositions and propositions within a method. 319. But wouldn't one have to say then, that there is no sharp boundary between propositions of logic and empirical proposi- tions? The lack of sharpness is that of the boundary between rde and empirical proposition. 320. Here one must, I believe, remember that the concept 'proposition' itself is not a sharp one. 321. Isn't what I am saying: any empirical proposition can be transformed into a postulate-and then becomes a norm of description. But I am suspicious even of this. The sentence is too general. One almost wants to say "any empirical proposition can, theoretically, be transformed . . . " 2 but what does "theo- retically" mean here? It sounds all too reminiscent of the Tractatzrs. 322. had What if been there the pupil refused to believe that this beyond human memory? We should say that he had no grout& for this suspicion. 323. So rational suspicion must have grounds ? We might also say: "the reasonable man believes this". 324. Thus we should not call anybody reasonable who believed something in despite of scientific evidence. 325. When we say that we h o w that such and such . . ., we - - mean that any reasonable person in our position would -also know it, that it would be a piece of unreason to doubt it. Thus Moore too wants to say not merely that he knows that he etc. etc., but also that anyone endowed with reason in his position would know it just the same. 3.26 . But who says what it is reasonable to believe in this situation ? 327. So it might be said: "The reasonable man believes: that the earth has been there since long before his birth, that his life has been spent on the surface of the earth, or near it, that he has never, for example, been on the moon, that he has a nervous system and various innards like all other people, etc., etc." 328. "I know it as I know that my name is L. W." 329. 'If he calls that in doubt-whatever "doubt" means here- he will never learn this game'. 3 30. So here the sentence "I know . . ." expresses the readiness to believe certain things. 3 3 I. If we ever do act with certainty on the strength of belief, should we wonder that there is much we cannot doubt? 332. Imagine that someone were to say, without wanting to phiiorophixe, "I don't know if I have ever been on the moon; I don't remember ever having been there". (Why would this person be so radically different from us ?) In the first place-how would he know that he was on the moon? How does he imagine it? Compare: "I do not know if I was ever in the village of X." But neither could I say that if X were in Turkey, for I know that I was never in Turkey. 3 3 3. I ask someone "Have you ever been in China?" He replies "I don't know". Here one would surely say "You don't know? Have you any reason to believe you might have been there at some time ? Were you for example ever near the Chinese border ? Or were your parents there at the time when you were gokg to be born?"-Normally Europeans do know whether they have been in China or not. J 34. That is to say: only in such-and-such circumstances does a reasonable person doubt that. 3 The procedure in a court of law rests on the fact that circumstances give statements a certain probability. The state- ment that, for example, someone came into the world without parents wouldn't ever be taken into consideration there. 336. But what men consider reasonable or unreasonable alters. At certain periods men find reasonable what at other periods they found unreasonable. And vice versa. But is there no objective character here? Vev intelligent and well-educated people believe in the story of creation in the Bible, while others hold it as proven false, and the grounds of the latter are well known to the former. 3 3 7. One cannot make experiments if there are not some things that one does not doubt. But that does not mean that one takes certain presuppositions on trust. When I write a letter and post it, I take it for granted that it will arrive-I expect this. If I make an experiment I do not doubt the existence of the apparatus before my eyes. I have plenty of doubts, but not that. If I do a calculation I believe, without any doubts, that the figures on the paper aren't switching of their own accord, and I also trust my memory the whole time, and tmst it without any reservation. The certainty here is the same as that of my never having been on the moon. 3 38. But imagine people who were never quite certain of these things, but said that they were vev probably SO, and that it did not pay to doubt them. Such a person, then, would say in my situa- tion: "It is extremely unlikely that I have ever been on the moon", etc., etc. How would the life of these people differ from ours? For there are people who say that it is merely extremely probable that water over a fire will boil and not freeze, and that therefore strictly speaking what we consider impossible is only improbable. What difference does this make in their lives? Isn't it just that they talk rather more about certain things than the rest of us? 339. Imagine someone who is supposed to fetch a friend from the railwav station and doesn't sim~lv look the train ut, in the time-table'and go to the station atLt6e right time, butLsays: "I have no belief that the train will really arrive, but I will go to the station all the same." He does everything that the normal person does, but accompanies it with doubts or with self-annoyance, etc. 3 0 . We know, with the same certainty with which we believe any mathematical proposition, how the letters A and B are pro- flounced, what the colour of human blood is called, that other human beings have blood and call it "blood". 341. That is to say, the question^ that we raise and our doubts depend on the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn. 3 42. That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted. 343. But it isn't that the situation is like this: We just can't investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. 344. My ife consists in my being content to accept many things. 345. If I ask someone "what colour do you see at the moment ?", in order, that is, to learn what colour is there at the moment, I cannot at the same time question whether the person I ask under- stands English, whether he wants to take me in, whether my own memory is not leaving me in the lurch as to the names of colours, and so on. 346. When I am trying to mate someone in chess, I cannot have doubts about the pieces perhaps changing places of themselves and my memory simultaneously playing tricks on me so that I don't notice. =j351 347. "I know that that's a tree." Why does it strike me as if I did not understand the sentence? though it is after all an ex- tremely simple sentence of the most ordinary kind? It is as if I could not focus my mind on any meaning. Simply because I don't look for the focus where the meaning is. As soon as I think of an everyday use of the sentence instead of a philosophical one, its meaning becomes clear and ordinary. 348. Just as the words "I am here" have a meaning only in certain contexts, and not when I say them to someone who is sitting in front of me and sees me dearly,-and not because they are superfluous, but because their meaning is not determined by the situation, yet stands in need of such determination. 3 49. CeI things: I someone know that that's a tree9'-this may mean all sorts of look at a plant that I take for a young beech and that else thinks is a black-currant. He savs "that is a shrub"; I say it is a tree.-We see something in the &st which one of us takes for a man, and the other says "I know that that's a tree". Someone wants to test my eyes etc. etc.--etc. etc. Each time the 'that' which I declare to be a tree is of a different kind. But what when we express ourselves more precisely? For example: "I know that that thing there is a tree, I can see it quite clearly."-Let us even suppose I had made this remark in the context of a conversation (so that it was relevant when I made it); and now, out of all context, I repeat it while looking at the tree, and I add "I mean these words as I did five minutes ago". If I added, for example, that I had been thinking of my bad eyes again and it was a kind of sigh, then there would be nothing puzzling about the remark. For how a sentence is meant can be expressed by an expansion of it and may therefore be made part of it. 3 0 "I know that that's a tree" is something a philosopher might say to demonstrate to himself or to someone else that he ktzotvs something that is not a mathematical or logical truth. Similarly, someone who was entertaining the idea that he was no use any more might keep repeating to himself "I can still do this and this and this". If such thoughts often possessed him one would not be surprised if he, apparently out of all context, spoke such a sentence out loud. (But here I have already sketched a background, a surrounding, for this remark, that is to say given it a context.) But if someone, inquite heterogeneous circumstances, called out with the most convincing mimicry: "Down with him!", one might say of these words (and their tone) that they were a pattern that does indeed have familiar applications, but that in this case it was not even clear what latzguage the man in question was speaking. I might make with my hand the movement I should make if I were holding a hand-saw and sawing through a plank; but would one have any right to call this movement sutvitzg, out of all context?-(It might be something quite dif- ferent!) 3 5 I. Isn't the question "Have these words a meaning?" similar to "Is that a tool?" asked as one produces, say, a hammer? I say "Yes, it's a hammer". But what if the thing that any of us would take for a hammer were somewhere else a missile, for example, or a conductor's baton? Now make the application yourself. 3 j 2. If someone says, "I know that that's a tree" I may answer: "Yes, that is a sentence. An English sentence. And what is it supposed to be doing?" Suppose he replies: "I just wanted to remind myself that I h o w things like that" ? 3 5 3. But suppose he said "I want to make a logical observa- tion" ? If a forester goes into a wood with his men and says "Thir tree has got to be cut down, and this one and ibis one" what if he then observes "I know that that's a tree" ? , -But might not I say of the forester "He knows that that's a tree-he doesn't examine it, or order his men to examine it"? 3 54. Doubting and non-doubting behaviour. There is the first only if there is the second. 3 5 j. A mad-doctor (perhaps) might ask me "Do you know what that is?" and I might reply "I know that it's a chair; I recognize it, it's always been in my room". He says this, possibly, to test not my eyes but my ability to recognize things, to know their names and their functions. What is in question here is a kind of knowing one's way about. Now it would be wrong for me to say "I believe that it's a chair" because that would express my readi- ness for my statement to be tested. While "I know that it . . . ' ? implies bewilderment if what I said was not confirmed. 3 5 6. My 'mental state', the "knowing", gives me no guarantee of what will happen. But it consists in this, that I should not understand where a doubt could get a foothold nor where a further test was possible. 3 5 7. One might say: " 'I know' expresses comfortabI~ certainty, not the certainty that is still struggling." 3 5 8. Now I would like to regard this certainty, not as something akin to hastiness or superficiality, but as a form of life. (That is very badly expressed and probably badly thought as well.) 3 5 9. But that means I want to conceive it as something that lies beyond being justified or unjustified; as it were, as something animal. 360. I KNOW that this is my foot. I could not accept any ex- perience as proof to the contrary.-That may be an exclamation; but what follow3 from it? At least that I shall act with a certainty that knows no doubt, in accordance with my belief. I But I might also say: It has been revealed to me by God that it is so. God has taught me that this is my foot. And there- fore if anything happened that seemed to conflict with this knowledge I should have to regard that as deception. 362. But doesn't it come out here that knowledge is related to a decision? 363. And here it is difficult to find the transition from the exclamation one would like to make, to its consequences in what one does. 364. One might also put this question: "If you know that that is your foot,-do you also know, or do you only believe, that no future experience will seem to contradict your knowledge?" (That is, that nothing will seem to youyoz~rseIf to do so.) 361. If someone replied: "I also know that it will never seem to me as if anything contradicted that knowledgew,-what could we gather from that, except that he himself had no doubt that it would never happen ?- 366. Suppose it were forbidden to say "I know" and only allowed to say "I believe I know"? 367. Isn't it the purpose of construing a word like "know" analonouslv to "believe" that then opprobrium attaches to the stateGent 'I know2' if the person wh6 kakes it is wrong? As a result a mistake becomes something forbidden. 368. If someone says that he will recognize no experience as proof of the opposite, that is after all a decisbn. It is possible that he will act against it. 16.3.j 1 369. If I wanted to doubt whether this was my hand, how could Z avoid doubting whether the word "hand" has any meaning? So that is something I seem to h o w after all. 370. But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings-shews that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know . . ." drags out the language-game, or else does away with it. 371. Doesn't "1 know that that's a hand", in Moore's sense, mean the same, or more or less the same, as : I can make state- ments like "I have a pain in this hand" or "this hand is weaker than the other" or "I once broke this hand", and countless others, in language-games where a doubt as to the existence of this hand does not come in? 372. Only in certain cases is it possible to make an investigation "is that really a hand ?" (or "my hand"). For "I doubt whether that is really my (or a) hand" makes no sense without some more precise determination. One cannot tell from these words alone whether any doubt at all is meant-nor what kind of doubt. 373. Why should it be possible to have grounds for believifig anything if it isn't possible to be certain ? 374. We teach a child "that is your hand", not "that is perhaps [or "probably"] your hand". That is how a child learns the in- numerable language-games that are concerned with his hand. An investigation or question, 'whether this is really a hand' never occurs to him. Nor, on the other hand, does he learn that he knows that this is a hand. 371. Here one must realize that complete absence of doubt at some point, even where we would say that 'legitimate' doubt can exist, need not falsify a language-game. For there is also some- thing like anothw arithmetic. I believe that this admission must underlie any understanding of logic. 3 76. I may claim with passion that I know that this (for example) is my foot. 377. But this passion is after all something very rare, and there is no trace of it when I talk of this foot in the ordinary way. 378. Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement. 3 79. I say with passion "I how that this is a foot"-but what does it mean? 380. I might go on: "Nothing in the world will convince me of the opposite!" For me this fact is at the bottom of all know- ledge. I shall give up other things but not this. 3 8 I. This "Nothing in the world" is obviously an attitude which one hasn't got towards everything one believes or is certain of. 382. That is not to say that nothing in the world will in fact be able to convince me of anything else. 383. The argument "I may be dreaming" is senseless for this reason: if I am dreaming, this remark is being dreamed as well- and indeed it is also being dreamed that these words have any meaning. 3 84. Now what kind of sentence is "Nothing in the world . . ." ? 3 8 5 . It has the form of a prediction, but of course it is not one that is based on experience. 386. Anyone who says, with Moore, that he knows that so and so . . .-gives the degree of certainty that something has for him. And it is important that this degree has a maximum value. 387. Someone might ask me: "How certain are you that that is a tree over there; that you have money in your pocket; that that is your foot ?" And the answer in one case might be "not certain", in another "as good as certain", in the third '1 can't doubt it". And these answers would make sense even without any grounds. I should not need, for example, to say: "I can't be certain whether that is a tree because my eyes aren't sharp enough". I want to say: it made sense for Moore to say "I know that that is a tree", if he meant something quite particular by it. [I believe it might interest a philosopher, one who can think himself, to read my notes. For even if I have hit the mark only rarely, he would recognize what targets I had been, ceaselessly aiming at.] 3 88. Every one of us often uses such a sentence, and there is no question but that it makes sense. But does that'mean it yields any philosophical conclusion? Is it more of a poof of the existence of external things, that I know that this is a hand, than that I don't know whether that is gold or brass? 18.3. 389. Moore wanted to give an example to shew that one really can know propositions about physical objects.-If there were a dispute whether one could have a pain in such and such apart of the body, then someone who just then had a pain in that spot might say: "I assure you, I have a pain there now." But it would sound odd if Moore had said: "I assure you, I know that's a tree." A personal experience simply has no interest for us here. 3 90. All that is important is that it makes sense to say that one knows such a thing; and consequently the assurance that one does know it can't accomplish anything here. 391. Imagine a language-game %en I call you, come in through the door". In any ordinary case, a doubt whether there really is a door there will be impossible. 392. What I need to shew is that a doubt is not necessary even when it is possible. That the possibility of the language-game doesn't depend on everything being doubted that can be doubted. (This i	175,348
Philosophical Grammar (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (Z-Library).pdf	LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN PHILOSOPHI CAL GRAMMAR PART I The Proposition and its Sense PART II On Logic and Mathematics Edited by RUSH RHEES Translated by ANTHONY KENNY I , --.--~,.,,- BASIL BLACKWELL . OXFORD © Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1974 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Basil Blackwell & Mott Limited. iilii"iljiiiijj 380501050055022 SIIR. JlOr ISBN 0631 152202 Printed in Great Britain by William Clowes & Sons Limited London, Colchester and Beccles and Bound at the Kemp Hall Bindery, Oxford Jsr: I -.. CONTENTS Part I The Proposition and its Sense I 1 How can one talk about "understanding" and "not under- standing" a proposition? Surely it's not a proposition until it's understood? 39 2 Understanding and signs. Frege against the formalists. Under- standing like seeing a picture that makes all the rules clear; in that case the picture is itself a sign, a cal~ulus. "To understand a language" - to take in a symbolism as a whole. Language must speak for itself. 39 3 One can say that meaning drops out of language. In contrast: "Did you mean that seriously or as a joke?" When we mean (and don't just say) words it seems to us as if there were something coupled to the words. 41 4 Comparison with understanding a piece of music: for explana- tion I can only translate the musical picture into a picture in another medium - and why just that picture? Comparison with understanding a picture. Perhaps we see only patches and lines - "we do not understand the picture". Seeing a genre-picture in different ways. 41 5 "I understand that gesture" - it says something. In a sentence a word can be felt as belonging first with one word and then with another. A 'proposition' may be what is conceived in different ways or the way of conceiving itself. A sentence from the middle of a story I have not read. The concept of understanding is a fluid one. 42 6 A sentence in a code: at what moment of translating does under- standing begin? The words of a sentence are arbitrary; so I replace them with letters. But now I cannot immediately think the sense of the sentence in the new expression. The notion that we can only imperfectly exhibit our under- standing: the expression of understanding has something missing that is essentiallY inexpressible. But in that case it makes no sense to speak of a more complete expression. 43 7 What is the criterion for an expression's being meant thus? A question about the relationship between two linguistic expressions. Sometimes a translation into another mode of representation. 45 8 Must I understand a sentence to be able to act on it? If "to understand a sentence" means somehow or other to act on it, then understanding cannot be a precondition for our acting on it. - What goes on when I suddenly understand someone else? There are matry possibilities here. 45 9 Isn't there a gap between an order and its execution? "I under- stand it, but only because I add something to it, namely the inter- pretation." - But if one were to say "any sentence still stands in need of an interpretation", that would mean: no sentence can be unde:r:stood without a rider. 46 10 "Understanding a word" - being able to apply it. - "When I sain <I can play chess' I really could." How did I know that I could? My answer will show in what way I use the word "can". Being able is called as/ate. "To describe a state" can mean various things. "After all I can't have the whole mode of application of a word in my head all at once." 4 7 6 11 It is not a question of an instantaneous grasping. - When a man who knows the game watches a game of chess, the experience he has when a move is made usually differs from that of someone else watching without understanding the game. But this experience is not the knowledge of the rules. - The understanding of language seems like a background; like the ability to multiply. 12 When do we understand a sentence? - When we've uttered the whole of it? Or while uttering it? 50 13 When someone interprets, or understands, a sign in one sense or another, what he is doing is taking a step in a calculus.- "Thought" sometimes means a process which may accompany the utterance of a sentence and sometimes the sentence itself in the system of language. 50 II 14 Grammar as (e.g.) the geometry of negation. We would like to say: "Negation has the property that when it is doubled it yields an affirmation". But the rule doesn't give a further description of negation, it constitutes negation. 52 15 Geometry no more speaks about cubes than logic does about negation. It looks as if one could infer from the meaning of negation that "~~ p" means p. 52 16 What does it mean to say that the "is" in "The rose is red" has a different meaning from the "is" in "twice two is four"? Here we have one word but as it were different meaning-bodies with a single end surface: different possibilities of constructing sentences. The comparison of the glass cubes. The rule for the arrangement of the red sides contains the possibilities, i.e. the geometry of the cube. The cube can also serve as a notation for the rule if it belongs to a system of propositions. 53 7 17 "The grammatical possibilities of the negation-sign". The T-F notation can illustrate the meaning of "not". The written symbol becomes a sign for negation only by the way it works - the way it is used in the game. 5 5 18 If we derive geometrical propositions from a drawing or a model, then the model has the role of a sign in a game. We use the drawing of a cube again and again in different contexts. It is this sign that we take to be the cube in which the geometrical laws are already laid up. 5 5 19M Y earlier concept of meaning ong1nates in a pnmitive philosophy of language. - Augustine on the learning of language. He describes a calculus of our language, only not everything that we call language is this calculus. 56 20 As if words didn't also have functions quite different from the naming of tables, chairs, etc. - Here is the origin of the bad expression: a fact is a complex of objects. 57 2 I In a familiar language we experience different parts of speech as different. It is only in a foreign language that we see clearly the uniformity of words. 58 22 If I decide to use a new word instead of "red", how would it come out that it took the place of the word "red"? 5 9 2 3 The meaning of a word: what the explanation of its meaning explains. (If, on the other hand by "meaning" we mean a charac- teristic sensation, then the explanation of meaning would be a cause.) 59 8 24 Explanation can clear up misunderstandings. In that case understanding is a correlate of explanation. - Definitions. I t seems as if the other grammatical rules for a word had to follow from its ostensive definition. But is this definition really unam- biguous? One must understand a great deal of a language in order to understand the definition. 60 25 The words "shape", "colour" in the definitions determine the kind of use of the word. The ostensive definition has a different role in the grammar of each part of speech. 6 I 26 So how does it come about that on the strength of this defi- nition we understand the word? What's the sign of someone's understanding a game? Ca~'t he learn a game simply by watching it being played? Learning and speaking without explicit rules. We are always comparing language with a game according to rules. 61 27 The names I give to bodies, shapes, colours, lengths have differ- ent grammars in each case. The meaning of a name is not the thing we point to when we give an ostensive definition of the name. 63 28 What constitutes the meaning of a word like "perhaps"? I know how it is used. The case is similar when someone is explaining to me a calculation "that I don't quite understand". "Now I know how to go on." How do I know that I know how to go on? 64 29 Is the meaning really only the use of the word? Isn't it the way this use meshes with our life? 65 30 The words "fine" ,"oh", "perhaps" ... can each be the expression of a feeling. But I don't call that feeling the meaning of the word. 9 I can replace the sensations by intonation and gestures. I could also treat the word (e.g. "oh") itself as a gesture. 66 3 I A language spoken in a uniform metre. Relationships between tools in a toolbox. "The meaning of a word: its role in the calculus of language." Imagine how we calculate with "red". And then: the word "oh" - what corresponds now to the calculus? 67 32 Describing ball-games. Perhaps one will be unwilling to call some of them ball-games; but it is clear where the boundary is to be drawn here? We consider language from one point of view only. The explanation of the purpose or the effect of a word is not what we call the explanation of its meaning. It may be that if it is to achieve its effect a particular word cannot be replaced by any other, just as it may be that a gesture cannot be replaced by any other. - We only bother about what's called the explanation of meaning and not about meaning in any other sense. 68 33 Aren't our sentences parts of a mechanism? As in a pianola? But suppose it is in bad condition? So it is not the effect but the purpose that is the sense of the signs (the holes in the pianola roll). Their purpose within the mechanism. We need an explanation that is part of the calculus. "A symbol is something that produces this effect." - How do I know that it is the one I meant?" We could use a colour-chart: and then our calculus would have to get along with the visible colour-sample. 69 34 "We could understand a penholder too, if we had given it a meaning." Does the understanding contain the whole system of its application? 10 \ When I read a sentence with understanding something happens: perhaps a picture comes into my mind. But before we call "under- standing" is related to countless things that happen before and after the reading of this sentence. When I don't understand a sentence - that can be different things in different cases. "Understanding a word" - that is infinitely various. 71 35 "Understanding" is not the name of a single process but of more or less interrelated processes against a background of the actual use of a learnt language. - We think that if I use the word "under- standing" in all these cases there must be some one thing that happens in all of them. Well, the concept-word certainly does show a kinship but this need not be the sharing of a common property or constituent. - The concept-word "game". "By 'knowledge' we mean these processes, and these, and similar ones." 74 III 36 If for our purposes we wish to regulate the use of a word by definite rules, then alongside its fluctuating use we set a different use. But this isn't like the way physics gives a simplified descrip- tion of a natural phenomenon. It is not as if we were saying something that would hold only of an ideal language. 77 37 We understand a genre-picture if we recognize what the people in it are doing. If this recognition does not come easily, there is a period of doubt followed by a familiar process of recognition. If on the other hand we take it in at first glance it is difficult to say what the understanding - the recognition say - consists of. There is no one thing that happens that could be called recognition. If I want to say "I understand it like that" then the "like that" stands for a translation into a different expression. Or is it a sort of intransitive understanding? 77 II 38 Forgetting the meaning of a word. Different cases. The man feels, as he looks at blue objects, that the connection between the word "blue" and the colour has been broken off. We might restore the connection in various ways. The connection is not made by a single phenomenon, but can manifest itself in very various pro- cesses. Do I mean then that there is no such thing as understanding but only manifestations of understanding? - a senseless question. 79 39 How does an ostensive definition work? Is it put to work again every time the word is used? Definition as a part of the calculus acts only by being applied. 80 40 In what cases shall we say that the man understands the word "blue"? In what circumstances will he be able to say it? or to say that he understood it in the past? Ifhe says "I picked the ball out by guesswork, I didn't understand the word", ought we to believe him? "He can't be wrong if he says that he didn't understand the word": a remark on the grammar of the statement "I didn't understand the word". 8 1 41 We call understanding a mental state, and characterize it as a rypothetical process. Comparison between the grammar of mental processes and the grammar of brain processes. In certain circumstances both our picking out a red object from others on demand and our being able to give the ostensive defi- nition of the word "red" are regarded as signs of understanding. We aren't interested here in the difference between thinking out loud (or in writing) and thinking in the imagination. What we call "understanding" is not the behaviour that shows us the understanding, but a state of which this behaviour is a sign. 82 12 42 We might call the recital of the rules on its own a criterion of understanding, or alternatively tests of use on their own. Or we may regard the recital of the rules as a symptom of the man's being able to do something other than recite the rules. To understand = to let a proposition work on one. When one remembers the meaning of a word, the remembering is not the mental process that one imagines at first sight. The psychological process of understanding is in the same case as the arithmetical object Three. 84 43 An explanation, a chart, is first used by being looked up, then by being looked up in the head, and finally as if it had never existed. A rule as the cause or history behind our present behaviour is of no interest to us. But a rule can be a hypothesis, or can itself enter into the conduct of the game. If a disposition is hypothesized in the player to give the list of rules on request, it is a disposition analogous to a physiological one. In our study of symbolism there is no foreground and background. 85 44 What interests us in the sign is what is embodied in the gram- mar of the sign. 87 IV 45 The ostensive definition of signs is not an application of lan- guage, but part of the grammar: something like a rule for transla- tion from a gesture language into a word-language. - What belongs to grammar are all the conditions necessary for comparing the proposition with reality - all the conditions necessary for its sense. 88 46 Does our language consist of primary signs (gestures) and secondary signs (words)? Obviously we would not be able to replace an ordinary sentence by gestures. "Is it an accident that in order to define the signs I have to go outside the written and spoken signs ?" In that case isn't it strange that I can do anything at all with the written signs? 88 47 We say that a red label is the primary sign for the colour red, and the word a secondary sign. - But must a Frenchman have a red image present to his mind when he understands my explana- tion "red = rouge"? 89 48 Are the primary signs incapable of being misinterpreted? Can one say they don't any longer need to be understood? 90 49 A colour chart might be arranged differently or used differently, and yet the words mean the same colours as with us. Can a green label be a sample of red? Can it be said that when someone is painting a certain shade of green he is copying the red of a label ? A sample is not used like a name. 90 50 "Copy" can mean various things. Various methods of com- parison. We do not understand what is meant by "this shade of colour is a copy of this note on the violin." It makes no sense to speak of a projection-method for association. 91 5 I We can say that we communicate by signs whether we use words or samples, but the game of acting in accordance with words is different from the game of acting in accordance with samples. 92 52 "There must be some sort oflaw for reading the chart. - Other- wise how would one know how the table was to be used ?" It is part of human nature to understand pointing with the finger in the way we do. The chart does not compel me to use it always in the same way. 93 14 5 3 Is the word "red" enough to enable one to look for something red? Does one need a memory image to do so ? An order. Is the real order "Do now what you remember doing then ?" If the colour sample appears darker than I remember it being yesterday, I need not agree with my memory. 94 54 "Paint from memory the colour of the door of your room" is no more unambiguous than "paint the green you see on this chart." I see the colour of the flower and recognize it. Even ifI say "no, this colour is brighter than the one I saw there," there is no process of comparing two simultaneously given shades of colour. Think of reading aloud from a written test (or writing to dic- tation). 95 5 5 "Why do you choose this colour when given this order?" - "Because this colour is opposite to the word 'red' in my chart." In that case there is no sense in this question: "Why do you call 'red' the colour in the chart opposite the word 'red'?" The connection between "language and reality" is made by definitions of words - which belong to grammar. 96 56 A gesture language used to communicate with people who have no word-language in common with us. Do we feel there too the need to go outside language to explain its signs? The correlation between objects and names is a part of the symbolism. It gives the wrong idea if you say that the connection is a psychological one. 97 57 Someone copies a figure on the scale of 1 to 10. Is the under- standing of the general rule of such mapping contained in the process of copying? Or was the process merely in agreement with that rule, but also in agreement with other rules? 97 58 Even if my pencil doesn't always do justice to the model, my intention always does. 98 59 For our studies it can never be essential that a symbolic phe- nomenon occurs in the mind and not on paper. An explanation of a sign can replace the sign itself - this con- trasts with causal explanation. 99 60 Reading. - Deriving a translation from the original may also be a visible process. Always what represents is the .J)Istem in which a sign is used. If 'mental' processes can be true and false, their descriptions must be able to as well. 99 6r Every case of deriving an action from a command is the same kind of thing as the written derivation of a result. "I write the number 'r6' here because it says 'x2 ' there." It might appear that some causality was operating here, but that would be a confusion between 'reason' and 'cause'. ror v 62 "That's him" - that contains the whole problem of representa- tion. I make a plan: I see myself acting thus and so. "How do I know that it's myself?" Or "How do I know that the word 'I' stands for me ?" The delusion that in thought the objects do what the proposition states about them. "I meant the victor of Austerlitz" - the past tense, which looks as if it was giving a description, is deceptive. r02 63 "How does one think a proposition? How does thought use its expression?" Let's compare belief with the utterance of a sentence: the pro- cesses in the larynx etc. accompa'!J' the spoken sentence which alone interests us - not as part of a mechanism, but as part of a calculus. We think we can't describe thought after the event because the delicate processes have been lost sight of. What is the function of thought? Its effect does not interest us. r03 64 But if thinking consists only 10 writing or speaking, why shouldn't a machine do it? Could a machine be in pain? It is a travesty of the truth to say: thinking is an activity of our mind, as writing is an activity of the hand. 105 65 'Thinking' 'Language' are fluid concepts. The expression "mental process" is meant to distinguish 'experience' from 'physical processes'; or else we talk of 'uncon- scious thoughts' - of processes in a mind-model; or else the word "thought" is taken as synonymous with "sense of a sentence". r06 66 The idea that one language in contrast to others can have an order of words which corresponds to the order of thinking. Is it, as it were, a contamination of the sense that we express it in a particular language? Does it impair the rigour and purity of the proposition 25 x 25 = 625 that it is written down in a particular number system? Thought can only be something common-or-garden. But we are affected by this concept as we are by that of the number one. 107 67 What does man think for? There is no such thing as a "thought- experiment". I believe that more boilers would explode if people did not calculate when making boilers. Does it follow that there will in fact be fewer? The belief that fire will burn me is of the same nature as the fear that it will burn me. 68 My assumption that this house won't collapse may be the utterance of a sentence which is part of a calculation. I do have reasons for it. What counts as a reason for an assumption deter- mines a calculus. - So is the calculus something we adopt arbi- trarily? No more so than the fear of fire. As long as we remain in the province of true-false games a change of grammar can only lead us from one game to another, and never from something true to something false. 1 10 VI 69 What is a proposition? - Do we have a single general concept of proposition? 1 1 2 70 "What happens when a new proposition is taken into the language: what is the criterion for its being a proposition?" In this respect the concept of number is like the concept of propo- sition. On the other hand the concept of cardinal number can be called a rigorously circumscribed concept, that's to say it's a concept in a different sense of the word. 113 71 I possess the concept 'language' from the languages I have learnt. "But language can expand": if "expand" makes sense here, I must now be able to specify how I imagine such an expansion. No sign leads us beyond itself. Does every newly constructed language broaden the concept of language? - Comparison with the concept of number. 114 72 The indeterminacy of generality is not a logical indeterminacy. The task of philosophy is not to create an ideal language, but to clarify the use of existing language. I'm allowed to use the word "rule" without first tabulating the rules for the word. - If philosophy was concerned with the concept of the calculus of all calculi, there would be such a thing as· metaphilosophy. But there is not. 115 73 It isn't on the strength of a particular property, the property of being a rule, that we speak of the rules of a game. - We use the word "rule" in contrast to "word", "projection" and some other words. 116 74 We learnt the meaning of the word "plant" by examples. And if we disregard hypothetical dispositions, these examples stand only for themselves. - The grammatical pace of the word "game" "rule" etc is given by examples in rather the way in which the place of a meeting is specified by saying that it will take place beside such and such a tree. 117 75 Meaning as something which comes before our minds when we hear a word. "Show the children a game". The sentence "The Assyrians knew various games" would strike us as curious since we wouldn't be certain that we could give an example. 1 1 8 76 Examples of the use of the word "wish". Our aim is not to give a theory of wishing, which would have to explain every case of wishing. The use of the words "proposition", "language", etc. has the haziness of the normal use of concept-words in our language. 1 19 77 The philosophy of logic speaks of sentences and words in the sense in which we speak of them in ordinary life. (We are not justified in having any more scruples about our language than the chess player has about chess, namely none.) 121 78 Sounding like a sentence. We don't call everything 'that sounds like a sentence' a sentence. - If we disregard sounding like a sentence do we still have a general concept of proposition? The example of a language in which the order of the words in a sentence is the reverse of the present one. 122 79 The definition "A proposition is whatever can be true or false". - The words "true" and "false" are items in a particular notation for the truth-functions. Does" 'p' is true" state anything about the sign 'p'? 123 80 In the schema "This is how things stand" the "how things stand" is a handle for the truth-functions. A general propositional form determines a proposition as part of a calculus. 124 8 I The rules that say that such and such a combination of words yields no sense. "How do I know that red can't be cut into bits ?" is not a ques- tion. I must begin with the distinction between sense and nonsense. I can't give it a foundation. 125 82 "How must we make the grammatical rules for words if they are to give a sentence sense?" - A proposition shows the possibility of the state of affairs it describes. "Possible" here means the same as "conceivable"; representable in a particular system of propositions. The proposition "I can imagine such and such a colour tran- sition connects the linguistic representation with another form of representation; it is a proposition of grammar. 127 83 It looks as if we could say: Word-language allows of senseless combinations of words, but the language of imagining does not allow us to imagine anything senseless. 20 "Can you imagine it's being otherwise?" - How strange that one should be able to say that such and such a state of affairs is inconceivable! 128 84 The role of a proposition in the calculus is its sense. It is only in language that something is a proposition. To understand a proposition is to understand a language. 130 VII 85 Symbols appear to be of their nature unsatisfied. A proposition seems to demand that reality be compared with it. "A proposition like a ruler laid against reality." 132 86 If you see the expression of an expectation you see what is being expected. It looks as if the ultimate thing sought by an order had to remain unexpressed. - As if the sign was trying to communicate with us. A sign does its job only in a grammatical system. 132 87 It seems as if the expectation and the fact satisfying the expecta- tion fitted together somehow. Solids and hollows. - Expectation is not related to its satisfaction in the same way as hunger is related to its satisfaction. 133 88 The strange thing that the event I expected isn't distinct from the one I expected. - "The report was not so loud as I had expec- ted." "How can you say that the red which you see in front of you is the same as the red you imagined ?" - One takes the meaning of the word "red" as being the sense of a proposition saying that some- thing is red. 134 89 A red patch looks different from one that is not red. But it would be odd to say "a red patch looks different when it is there from when it isn't there". Or: "How do you know that you are expecting a red patch ?" 13 5 21 90 How can I expect the event, when it isn't yet there at all? - I can imagine a stag that is not there, in this meadow, but not kill one that is not there. - It is not the expected thing that is the ful- filment, but rather its coming about. It is difficult for us to shake off this comparison: a man makes his appearance - an event makes its appearance. 136 91 A search for a particular thing (e.g. my stick) is a particular kind of search, and differs from a search for something else because of what one does (says, thinks) while searching, not because of what one finds. - Contrast looking for the trisection of the angle. 13 8 92 The symptoms of expectation are not the expression of expec- tation. In the sentence "I expect that he is coming" is one using the words "he is coming" in a different sense from the one they have in the assertion "he is coming"? What makes it the expectation precisely of him? Various definitions of "expecting a person X". It isn't a Jater experience that decides what we are expecting. "Let us put the expression of expectation in place of the expecta- tion." 138 93 Expectation as preparatory behaviour. "Expectation is a thought" If hunger is called a wish it is a hypothesis that just that will satisfy the wish. In "I have been expecting him all day" "expect" does not mean a persistent condition. 94 When I expect someone, - what happens? What does the process of wanting to eat an apple consist in ? 141 22 95 Intention and intentionality. - "The thought that p is the case doesn't presuppose that it is the case; yet I can't think that something is red if the colour red does not exist." Here we mean the existence of a red sample as part of our language. 142 96 It's beginning to look somehow as if intention could never be recognized as intention from the outside. But the point is that one has to read off from a thought that it is the thought that such and such is the case. 143 97 This is connected with the question whether a machine could think. This is like when we say: "The will can't be a phenomenon, for whatever phenomenon you take is something that simplY happens, not something we do." But there's no doubt that you also have experiences when you move your arm voluntarily, although the phenomena of doing are indeed different from the pheno- mena of observing. But there are very different cases here. 144 98 The intention seems to interpret, to give the final interpretation. Imagine an 'abstract' sign-language translated into an un- ambiguous picture-language. Here there seem to be no further possibilities of interpretation. - We might say we didn't enter into the sign-language but did enter into the painted picture. Exam- pIes: picture, cinema, dream. 145 99 What happens is not that this symbol cannot be further inter- preted, but: I do no interpreting. I imagine N. No interpretation accompanies this image; what gives the image its interpretation is the path on which it lies. 147 100 We want to say: "Meaning is essentially a mental process, not a process in dead matter." - What we are dissatisfied with here is the grammar of process, not the specific kind of process. 148 101 Doesn't the system of language provide me with a medium in which the proposition is no longer dead? - "Even if the expression of the wish is the wish, still the whole language isn't present during this expression." But that is not necessary. 149 102 In the gesture we don't see the real shadow of the fulfilment, the unambiguous shadow that admits of no further interpretation. 149 103 It's only considering the linguistic manifestation of a wish that makes it appear that my wish prefigures the fulfilment. - Because it's the wish that just that were the case. - It is in language that wish and fulfilment meet. I 50 104 "A proposition isn't a mere series of sounds, it is something more." Don't I see a sentence as part of a system of consequences? 15 2 105 "This queer thing, thought." - It strikes us as queer when we say that it connects objects in the mind. - We're all ready to pass from it to the reality. - "How was it possible for thought to deal with the very person himself?" Here I am being astonished by my own linguistic expression and momentarily misunderstanding it. 154 106 "When I think of what will happen tomorrow I am mentally already in the future." - Similarly people think that the endless series of cardinal numbers is somehow before our mind's eye, whenever we can use that expression significantly. A thought experiment is like a drawing of an experiment that is not carried out. 15 5 107 We said "one cannot recognize intention as intention from the outside" - i.e. that it is not something that happens, or happens to us, but something we do. It is almost as if we said: we cannot see ourselves going to a place, because it is we who are doing the going. One does have a particular experience if one is doing the going oneself. I 5 6 24 108 Fulfilment of expectation doesn't consist in some third thing's happening, such as a feeling of satisfaction. I 5 7 VIn 109 A description of language must achieve the same result as language itself. Suppose someone says that one can infer from a propsotion the fact that verifies it. What can one infer from a proposition apart from itself? The shadowy anticipation of a fact consists in our being able already to think that that ve,:y thing will happen which hasn't yet happened. ;59 110 However many steps I insert between the thought and its application, each intermediate step always follows the previous one without any intermediate link, and so too the application follows the last intermediate step. - We can't cross the bridge to the execution (of an order) until we are there. 160 I I I It is the calculus of thought that connects with extra-mental reality. From expectation to fulfilment is a step in a calculation. 160 112 We are - as it were - surprised, not at anyone's knowing the future, but at his being able to prophesy at all ( right or wrong). 161 IX I 13 Is the pictorial character of thought an agreement with reality? In what sense can I say that a proposition is a picture? 163 114 The sense of a proposition and the sense of a picture. The different grammar of the expressions: "This picture shows people at a village inn." "This picture shows the coronation of Napoleon." 164 115 A picture's telling me something will c~n~ist in my recog- nizing in it objects in some sort of charactenstlc arrangement. - What does "this object is familiar to me" mean? 165 116 "I see what I see." I say that because I don't want to give a name to what I see. - I want to exclude from my consideration of familiarity everything that is 'historical'. - The multiplicity of familiarity is that of feeling at home in what I see. 165 117 Understanding a genre picture: don't we recognize the painted people as people and the painted trees as trees~ ~tc.? . A picture of a human face is a no less famlhar .0~Ject than the human face itself. But there is no question of recognltlon here. 166 118 The false concept that recognizing always consists in com- paring two impressions with one another. - . "We couldn't use words at all if we didn't recogmze them and the objects they denote." Have we any sort of check on this recog- .. "' 167 mtlonr 119 This shape I see is not simply a shape, b~t is one of. the sh.apes I know. - But it is not as if I were companng the object wlth a picture set beside it, but as if the object coincided with the picture. h· 168 I see only one t mg, not two. 120 "This face has a quiteparticular expression." We perhaps look for words and feel that everyday language is here too crude. 169 26 121 That a picture tells me something consists in its own form and colours. Or it narrates something to me: it uses words so to speak, and I am comparing the picture with a combination of linguistic forms. - That a series of signs tells me something isn't constituted by its now making this impression on me. "It's only in a language that something is a proposition." 169 122 'Language' is languages. - Languages are systems. It is units of languages that I call "propositions". 170 123 Certainly, I read a story and don't give a hang about any system of language, any more than if it was a story in pictures. Suppose we were to say at this point "something is a picture only in a picture-language."? 171 124 We might imagine a language in whose use the impression made on us by the signs played no part. What I call a "proposition" is a position in the game of language. Thinking is an activity, like calculating. 171 125 A puzzle picture. What does it amount to to say that after the solution the picture means something to us, whereas it meant nothing before? 172 126 The impression is one thing, and the impression's being determinate is another thing. The impression of familiarity is perhaps the characteristics of the determinacy that every strong impression has. 174 127 Can I think away the impression of individual familiarity where it exists; and think it into a situation where it does not? The difficulty is not a psychological one. We have not determined what that is to mean. Can I look at a printed English word and see it as if I hadn't learnt to read? I can ascribe meaning to a meaningless shape. 128 We can read courage into a face and say "now once more courage fits this face". This is related to "an attributive adjective agrees with the subject". What do I do if I take a smile now as a kind one, now as mali- cious? This is connected with the contrast between saying and meaning. 176 129 A friendly mouth, friendly eyes, the wagging of a dog's tail are primary symbols of friendliness: they are parts of the pheno- mena that are called friendliness. If we want to imagine further appearances as expressions of friendliness, we read these symbols into them. It is not that I can imagine that this man's face might change so that it looked courageous, but that there is a quite definite way in which it can change into a courageous face. Think of the multifariousness of what we call "language": word-language, picture-language, gesture-language, sound-lan- guage. 178 13 0 " 'This object is familiar to me' is like saying 'this object is portrayed in my catalogue'." We are making the assumption that the picture in our catalogue is itself familiar. The sheath in my mind as a "form of imagining". - The pattern is no longer presented as an object, which means that it didn't make sense to talk of a pattern at all. "Familiarity: an object's fitting into a sheath" - that's not quite the same as our comparing what is seen with a copy. The question is "What do I recognize as what?" For "to recog- nize a thing as itself" is meaningless. 179 13 1 The comparison between memory and a notebook. How did I read off from the memory image that I stood thus at the window yesterday? What made you so certain when you spoke those words? Nothing; I was certain. How do I react to a memory? I 8 I I F Operating with written signs and operating with "imagina- tion pictures". 28 1 An attitude to a picture (to a thought) is what connects it with reality. 182 x 133 Grammatical rules determine ~ meaning and are not answer- able to any meaning that they could contradict. Why don't I call cookery rules arbitrary, and why am I tempted to call the rules of grammar arbitrary? I don't call an argument good just because it has the conse- quences I want. The rules of grammar are arbitrary in the same sense as the choice of a unit of measurement. 184 134 Doesn't grammar put the primary colours together because there is a kind of similarity between them? Or colours, anyway, in contrast to shapes or notes? The rules of grammar cannot be justified by shewing that their application makes a representation agree with reality. The analogy between grammar and games. 18 5 135 Langauge considered as a part of a psychological mechanism. I do not use "this is the sign for sugar" in the same way as the sentence "if I press this button, I get a piece of sugar". 187 136 Suppose we compare grammar to a keyboard which I can use to direct a man by pressing different combinations of keys. What corresponds in this case to the grammar of language? If the utterance of a 'nonsensical' combination of words has the effect that the other person stares at me, I don't on that account call it the order to stare. 188 1 37 Language is not defined for us as an arrangement fulfilling a definite purpose. 189 138 Grammar consists of conventions - say in a chart. This might be a part of a mechanism. But it is the connection and not the effect which determines the meaning. Can one speak of a grammar in the case where a language is taught to a person by a mere drill? 190 139 I do not scruple to invent causal connections in the mechanism of language. To invent a keyboard might mean to invent something that had the desired effect; or else to devise new forms which were similar to the old ones in various ways. "It is always for living beings that signs exist." 1 9 1 140 Inventing a language - inventing an instrument - inventing a game. If we imagine a goal for chess - say entertainment - then the rules are not arbitrary. So too for the choice of a unit of measure- ment. We can't say "without language we couldn't communicate with one another". The concept of language is contained in the concept of communication. 19 2 141 Philosophy is philosophical problems. Their common element extends as far as the common element in different regions of our language. Something that at first sight looks like a proposition and is not one. Something that looks like a design for a steamroller and is not one. 193 I 42 Are we willing to call a series of independent signals "a language" ? Imagine a diary kept with signals. Are explanations given so that the signals are connected to another language? A language consisting of commands. We wouldn't say that a series of such signals alone would enable me to derive a picture of the movement of a man obeying them unless in addition to the signal there is something that might be called a general rule for translating into drawing. The grammar explains the meaning of the signs and thus makes the language pictorial. 1 94 Appendix 1 Complex and Fact. 2 Concept and Object, Property and Substrate. 202 3 Objects. 208 4 Elementary propositions. 210 5 Is time essential to propositions? Comparison between time and truth-functions. 2 15 6 The nature of hypotheses. 7 Probability. 224 8 The concept "about". The problem of the heap. Part II On Logic and Mathematics I Logical Inference I Is it because we understand the propositions that we know that q entails p? Does a sense give rise to the entailment? 243 2 "If P follows from q, then thinking that q must involve thinking that p." 247 3 The case of infinitely many propositions following from a single one. 25 0 4 Can an experience show that one proposition follows from another? 25 5 II Generality 5 The proposition "The circle is in the square" is in a certain sense independent of the assignment of a particular position. (In a certain sense it is totally unconnected.) 257 6 The proposition "The circle is in the square" is not a disjunction of cases. 261 7 The inadequacy of the Frege-Russell notation for generality. 265 8 Criticism of my former view of generality. 268 9 The explanation of generality by examples. 10 The law of a series. "And so on". 280 III The Foundations of Mathematics I I The comparison between Mathematics and a game. 12 There is no metamathematics. I 3 Proofs of relevance. 14 Consistency proofs 15 Justifying arithmetic and preparing it for its application (Russell, Ramsey). 306 16 Ramsey's theory of identity. 315 17 The concept of the application of arithmetic (mathematics) 319 IV On Cardinal Numbers 18 Kinds of cardinal number 32 1 19 2 + 2 = 4. 332 20 Statements of number within mathematics. 348 21 Sameness of number and sameness of length. 351 V Mathematical Proof 22 In other cases, if! am looking for something, then even before it is found I can describe what finding is; not so, if I am looking for the solution of a mathematical problem. Mathematical expeditions and Polar expeditions. 359 23 Proof and the truth and falsehood of mathematical propo- sitions. 366 24 If you want to know what is proved, look at the proof. 25 Mathematical problems. Kinds of problems. Search. "Pro- jects" in mathematics. 377 26 Euler's Proof. 33 27 The trisection of an angle etc. 28 Searching and trying. 393 VI Inductive Proofs and Periodicity 29 How far is a proof by induction a proof of a proposition? 395 30 Recursive proof and the concept of proposition. Is the proof a proof that a proposition is true and its contradictory false? 397 3 I Induction, (x). (jiX and (3x). (jiX. Does the induction prove the general proposition true and an existential proposition false? 400 32 Is there a further .rtep from writing the recursive proof to the generalization? Doesn't the recursion schema already say all that is to be said? 405 33 How far does a recursive proof deserve the name of "proof". How far is a step in accordance with the paradigm A justified by the proof of B ? 408 34 The recursive proof does not reduce the number of fundamental laws. 425 35 Recurring decimals I : 3 = o· 3· 36 The recursive proof as a series of proofs. 43 0 37 Seeing or viewing a sign in a particular manner. Discovering an aspect of a mathematical expression. "Seeing an expression in a particular way." Marks of emphasis. 437 38 Proof by induction, arithmetic and algebra. 34 VII Infinity in Mathematics 39 Generality in arithmetic. 451 40 On set theory. 4 I The extensional conception of the real numbers. 47 1 42 Kinds of irrational number ( 1t' P,F). 475 43 Irregular infinite decimals. Note in Editing. Translator's note. 35 Part I The Proposition and its Sense I: I I How can one talk about 'understanding' and 'not under- standing' a proposition? Surely it is not a proposition until it's understood? Does it make sense to point to a clump of trees and ask "Do you understand what this clump of trees says?" In normal circum- stances, no; but couldn't one express a sense by an arrangement of trees? Couldn't it be a code? One would call 'propositions' clumps of trees one under- stood; others, too, that one didn't understand, provided one supposed the man who planted them had understood them. "Doesn't understanding only start with a proposition, with a whole: proposition? Can you understand half a proposition?"- Half a proposition is not a whole proposition. - But what the question means can perhaps be understood as follows. Suppose a knight's move in chess was always carried out by two movements of the piece, one straight and one oblique; then it could be said "In chess there are no half knight's moves" meaning: the relation- ship of half a knight's move to a whole knight's move is not the same as that of half a bread roll to a whole bread roll. We want to say that it is not a difference of degree. It is strange that science and mathematics make use of propo- sitions, but have nothing to say about understanding those propo- sitions. 2 We regard understanding as the essential thing, and signs as something inessential. - But in that case, why have the signs at all? If you think that it is only so as to make ourselves understood by others, then you are very likely looking on the signs as a drug which is to produce in other people the same condition as my own. 39 Suppose that the question is "what do you mean by that ges- ture?" and the answer is "I mean you must leave". The answer would not have been more correctly phrased: "I mean what I mean by the sentence 'you must leave'." In attacking the formalist conception of arithmetic, Frege says more or less this: these petty explanations of the signs are idle once we understand the signs. Understanding would be something like seeing a picture from which all the rules followed, or a picture that makes them all clear. But Frege does not seem to see that such a picture would itself be another sign, or a calculus to explain the written one to us. What we call "understanding a language" is often like the understanding we get of a calculus when we learn its history or its practical application. And there too we meet an easily surveyable symbolism instead of one that is strange to us. - Imagine that someone had originally learnt chess as a writing game, and was later shown the 'interpretation' of chess as a board game. In this case "to understand" means something like "to take in as a whole". If I give anyone an order I feel it to be quite enough to give him signs. And if! am given an order, I should never say: "this is only words, and I have got to get behind the words". And when I have asked someone something and he gives me an answer I am con- tent - that was just what I expected - and I don't raise the objec- tion: "but that's a mere answer." But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives ?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?" What is spoken can only be explained in language, and so in this sense language itself cannot be explained. Language must speak for itself. 3 One can say that meaning drops out of language; because what a proposition means is told by yet another proposition. "What did you mean by those words?" "Did you mean those words." The first question is not a more precise specification of the second. The first is answered by a proposition replacing the proposition which wasn't understood. The second question is like: "Did you mean that seriously or as a joke?" Compare: "Did you mean anything by that gesture - if so what?" In certain of their applications the words "understand", "mean" refer to a psychological reaction while hearing, reading,' uttering etc. a sentence. In that case understanding is the phenomenon that occurs when I hear a sentence in a familiar language and not when I hear a sentence in a strange language. Learning a language brings about the understanding of it. But that belongs to the past history of the reaction. - The under- standing of a sentence is as much something that happens to me as is the hearing of a sentence; it accompanies the hearing. I can speak of 'experiencing' a sentence. "I am not merely saying this, I mean something by it." When we consider what is going on in us when we mean (and don't just say) words, it seems to us as if there were something coupled to the words, which other- wise would run idle. As if they connected with something in us. 4 Understanding a sentence is more akin to understanding a piece of music than one might think. Why must these bars be played just so? Why do I want to produce just this pattern of variation in loudness and tempo? I would like to say "Because I know what it's all about." But what is it all about? I should not be able to say. For explanation I can only translate the musical picture into a picture in another medium and let the one picture throw light on the other. 41 The understanding of a sentence can also be compared with what we call understanding a picture. Think of a still-life picture, and imagine that we were unable to see it as a spatial representation and saw only patches and lines on the canvas. We could say in that case "we do not understand the picture". But we say the same thing in a different sense when although we see the picture spatially we do not recognize the spatial objects as familiar things like books, animals and bottles. Suppose the picture is a genre-picture and the people in it are about an inch long. If I had ever seen real people of that size, I would be able to recognize them in the picture and regard it as a life-size representation of them. In that case my visual experience of the picture would not be the same as the one I have when I see the picture in the normal way as a representation in miniature, although the illusion of spatial vision is the same in each case. - However, acquaintance with real inch-high people is put forward here only as one possible cause of the visual experience; except for that the experience is independent. Similarly, it may be that only someone who has already seen many real cubes can see a drawn cube spatially; but the description of the spatial visual presentation contains nothing to differentiate a real cube from a painted one. The different experiences I have when I see a picture first one way and then another are comparable to the experience I have when I read a sentence with understanding and without under- standing. (Recall what it is like when someone reads a sentence with a mistaken intonation which prevents him from understanding it - and then realizes how it is to be read.) (To see a watch as a watch, i.e. as a dial with hands, is like seeing Orion as a man striding across the sky.) 5 How curious: we should like to explain the understanding of a gesture as a translation into words, and the understanding of words as a translation into gestures. And indeed we really do explain words by a gesture, and a gesture by words. On the other hand we say "I understand that gesture" in the same sense as "I understand this theme", "it says something" and what that means is that I have a particular experience as I follow it. Consider the difference it makes to the understanding of a sentence when a word in it is felt as belonging first with one word and then with another. I might have said: the word is conceived, understood, seen, pronounced as belonging first with one word and then with another. We can call a 'proposition' that which is conceived first in one way and then in another; we can also mean the various ways of conceiving it. This is a source of confusions. I read a sentence from the middle of a story: "After he had said this, he left her as he did the day before." Do I understand the sentence? - It's not altogether easy to give an answer. It is an English sentence, and to that extent I understand it. I should know how the sentence might be used, I could invent a context for it. And yet I do not understand it in the sense in which I should under- stand it if I had read the story. (Compare various language-games: describing a state of affairs, making up a story, etc. What counts as a significant sentence in the several cases ?) Do we understand Christian Morgenstern's poems, or Lewis Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky"? In these cases it's very clear that the concept of understanding is a fluid one. 6 A sentence is given me in unfamiliar code together with the key for deciphering it. Then, in a certain sense, everything required for the understanding of the sentence has been given me. And yet if I were asked whether I understood the sentence I should reply "I must first decode it" and only when I had it in front of me decoded as an English sentence, would I say "now I understand it" . If we now raise the question" At what moment of translating into English does understanding begin?" we get a glimpse into the 43 nature of what is called "understanding". I say the sentence "I see a black patch there"; but the words are after all arbitrary: so I will replace them one after the other by the first six letters of the alphabet. Now it goes "a b c d e f". But now it is clear that - as one would like to say - I cannot think the sense of the above sentence straight away in the new expression. I might also put it like this: I am not used to saying "a" instead of "I", "b" instead of "see", "c" instead of "a" and so on. I don't mean that I am not used to making an immediate association between the word "I" and the sign "a"; but that I am not used to using "a" in the place of "I". "To understand a sentence" can mean "to know what the sentence signifies"; i.e. to be able to answer the question "what does this sentence say?" It is a prevalent notion that we can only imperfectly exhibit our understanding; that we can only point to it from afar or come close to it, but never lay our hands on it, and that the ultimate thing can never be said. We say: "Understanding is something different from the expression of understanding. Understanding cannot be exhibited; it is something inward and spiritual." - Or "Whatever I do to exhibit understanding, whether I repeat an explanation of a word, or carry out an order to show that I have understood it, these bits of behaviour do not have to be taken as proofs of understanding." Similarly, people also say "I cannot show anyone else my toothache; I cannot prove to anyone else that I have toothache." But the impossibility spoken of here is supposed to be a logical one. "Isn't it the case that the expression of under- standing is always an incomplete expression?" That means, I suppose, an expression with something missing - but the some- thing missing is essentially inexpressible, because otherwise I 44 might find a better expression for it. And "essentially inexpressible" means that it makes no sense to talk of a more complete expression. The psychological processes which are found by experience to accompany sentences are of no interest to us. What does interest us is the understanding that is embodied in an explanation of the sense of the sentence. 7 To understand the grammar of the word "to mean" we must ask ourselves what is the criterion for an expression's being meant thus. What should be regarded as a criterion of the meaning? An ~nswer to the question "How is that meant?" exhibits the relationship between two linguistic expressions. So the question too is a question about that relationship. The process we call the understanding of a sentence or of a description is sometimes a process of translation from one symbo- lism into another; tracing a picture, copying something, or translating into another mode of representation. In that case understanding a description means making oneself a picture of what is described. And the process is more or less like making a drawing to match a description. We also say: "I understand the picture exactly, I could model it in clay". 8 We speak of the understanding of a sentence as a condition of being able to apply it. We say "I cannot obey an order if I do not understand it" or "I cannot obey it before I understand it". "Must I really understand a sentence to be able to act on it? - Certainly, otherwise you wouldn't know what you had to do." - But how does this knowing help me? Isn't there in turn a jump from knowing to doing? "But all the same I must understand an order to be able to act according to it" - here the "must" is fishy. If it is a logical must, then the sentence is a grammatical remark. 45 I' I Here it could be asked: How long before obeying it must you understand the order? - But of course the proposition "I must understand the order before I can act on it" makes good sense: but not a metalogical sense. - And 'understanding' and 'mean- ing' are not metalogical concepts. If "to understand a sentence" means somehow or other to act on it, then understanding cannot be a precondition for our acting on it. But of course experience may show that the specific be- haviour of understanding is a precondition for obedience to an order. "I cannot carry out the order because I don't understand what you mean. - Yes, I understand you now." - What went on when I suddenly understood him? Here there are man.y possibilities. For example: the order may have been given in a familiar language but with a wrong emphasis, and the right emphasis suddenly occurred to me. In that case perhaps I should say to a third party: "Now I understand him: he means ... " and should repeat the order with the right emphasis. And when I grasped the familiar sentence I'd have understood the order, - I mean, I should not first have had to grasp an abstract sense. - Alternatively: I under- stood the order in that sense, so it was a correct English sentence, but it seemed preposterous. In such a case I would say: "I do not understand you: because you can't mean that." But then a more comprehensible interpretation occurred to me. Before I under- stand several interpretations, several explanations, may pass through my mind, and then I decide on one of them. (Understanding, when an absent-minded man at the order "Right turn!" turns left, and then, clutching his forehead, says "Oh! right turn" and does a right turn.) 9 Suppose the order to square a series of numbers is written in the form of a table, thus: - It seems to us as if by understanding the order we add some- thing to it, something that fills the gap between command and ex~c~tion. ~o that if someone said "You understand it, don't you, so It IS not lficomplete" we could reply "Yes, I understand it, but only because I add something to it, namely the interpretation." - But what makes you give just this interpretation? Is it the order? In that case it was already unambiguous, since it demanded this interpretation. Or did you attach the interpretation arbitrarily? In that case what you understood was not the command, but only what you made of it. (While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems.) .B~t an inter~retation is something that is given in signs. It is thiS Interp.retatlon as opposed to a different one (running differ- ently). So If one were to say "Any sentence still stands in need of an interpretation" that would mean: no sentence can be understood without a rider. Of :ourse sometimes I do interpret signs, give signs an inter- pretatIOn; but that does not happen every time I understand a sign. (If some.one ~sks me "What time is it?" there is no inner process of labOrIOUS Interpretation; I simply react to what I see and hear. If someone whips out a knife at me, I do not say "I interpret that as a threat".) 10. "Understanding a word" may mean: knowing how it is used; bemg able to apply it. "Can you lift this ball?" - "Yes". Then I try and fail. Then perhaps I say "I was wrong, I cannot". Or perhaps "I can't now, because I am too tired; but when I said I could, I really could." Similarly "I thought I could play chess, but now I have forgotten 47 I' I ! ' ! how", but on the other hand "When I said 'I can play chess' I really could, but now I've lost it." - But what is the criterion for my being able at that particular time? How did I know that I could? To that question I would answer "I've always been able to lift that sort of weight", "I lifted it just a moment before", "I've played chess quite recently and my memory is good", "I'd just recited the rules" and so on. What I regard as an answer to that question will show me in what way I use the word "can". Knowing, being able to do something, a capacity is what we would call a state. Let us compare with each other propositions which all in various senses describe states. "I have had toothache since yesterday." "I have been longing for him since yesterday." "I have been expecting him since yesterday." "I have known since yesterday that he is coming." "Since yesterday I can play chess." Can one say: "I have known continuously since yesterday that he is coming?" In which of the above sentences can one sensibly insert the word "continuously"? If knowledge is called a "state" it must be in the sense in which we speak of the state of a body or of a physical model. So it must be in a physiological sense or in the sense used in a psychology that talks about unconscious states of a mind-model. Certainly no one would object to that; but in that case one still has to be clear that we have moved from the grammatical realm of 'conscious states' into a different grammatical realm. I can no doubt speak of unconscious toothache, if the sentence "I have unconscious toothache" means something like "I have a bad tooth that doesn't ache". But the expression "conscious state" (in its old sense) doesn't have the same grammatical relationship to the expression "unconscious state" as the expression "a chair which I see" has to "a chair which I don't see because it's behind me". Instead of "to know something" we might say "to keep a piece of paper on which it is written". If "to understand the meaning of a word" means to know the grammatically possible ways of applying it, then I can ask "How can I know what I mean by a word> at the moment I utter it ? After all, I can't have the whole mode of application of a word in my head all at once". I can have the possible ways of applying a word in my head in the same sense as the chess player has all the rules of chess in his head, and the alphabet and the multiplication table. Knowledge is the hypothesized reservoir out of which the visible water flows. I I So we mustn't think that when we understand or mean a word what happens is an act of instantaneous, as it were non-discursive, grasp of grammar. As if it could all be swallowed down in a single gulp. It is as if I get tools in the toolbox of language ready for future use. "I can use the word 'yellow' " is like "I know how to move the king in chess". In this example of chess we can again observe the ambiguity of the word "understand". When a man who knows the game watches a game of chess, the experience he has when a move is made usually differs from that of someone else watching without understanding the game. (It differs too from that of a man who doesn't even know that it's a game.) We can also say that it's the knowledge of the rules of chess which makes the difference be- tween the two spectators, and so too that it's the knowledge of the 49 rules which makes the first spectator have the particular experience he has. But this experience is not the knowledge of the rules. Yet we are inclined to call them both "understanding". The understanding of language, as of a game, seems like a background against which a particular sentence acquires meaning. - But this understanding, the knowledge of the language, isn't a conscious state that accompanies the sentences of the language. Not even if one of its consequences is such a state. It's much more like the understanding or mastery of a calculus, something like the ability to multiply. 12 Suppose it were asked: "When do you know how to play chess? All the time? Or just while you say that you can? Or just during a move in the game ?" - How queer that knowing how to play chess should take such a short time, and a game of chess so much longer! (Augustine: "When do I measure a period of time ?") It can seem as if the rules of grammar are in a certain sense an unpacking of something we experience all at once when we use a word. In order to get clearer about the grammar of the word "under- stand", let's ask: when do we understand a sentence? - When we've uttered the whole of it? Or while uttering it? - Is understanding, like the uttering of a sentence, an articulated process and does its articulation correspond exactly to that of the sentence? Or is it non-articulate, something accompanying the sentence in the way a pedal note accompanies a melody? How long does it take to understand a sentence? And if we understand a sentence for a whole hour, are we always starting afresh? 13 Chess is characterized by its rules (by the list of rules). If I define the game (distinguish it from draughts) by its rules, then d these rules belong to the grammar of the word "chess". Does that mean that if someone uses the word "chess" intelligently he must have a definition of the word in mind? Certainly not. - He will only give one if he's asked what he means by "chess". Suppose I now ask: "When you uttered the word, what did you mean by it ?" - If he answered "I meant the game we've played so often, etc. etc." I would know that this explanation hadn't been in his mind at all when he used the word, and that he wasn't giving an answer to my question in the sense of telling me what "went on inside him" while he was uttering the word. When someone interprets, or understands, a sign in one sense or another, what he is doing is taking a step in a calculus (like a calculation). What he does is roughly what he does if he gives expression to his interpretation. "Thought" sometimes means a particular mental process which may accompany the utterance of a sentence and sometimes the sentence itself in the system of language. "He said those words, but he didn't think any thoughts with them." - "Yes, I did think a thought while I said them". "What thought?" "Just what I said." On hearing the assertion "This sentence makes sense" you cannot really ask "what sense?" Just as on hearing the assertion "this combination of words is a sentence" you cannot ask "what sentence ?" II 14 Can what the rules of grammar say about a word be described in another way by describing the process which takes place when understanding occurs? Suppose the grammar is the geometry of negation for example, can I replace it by the description of what "lies behind" the word "not" when it is applied? We say: "Anyone who understands negation knows that two negations yield an affirmation." That sounds like "Carbon and oxygen yield carbonic acid". But in reality a doubled negation does not yield anything, it is something. Something here gives us the illusion of a fact of physics. As if we saw the result of a logical process. Whereas the only result is the result of the physical process. We would like to say: "Negation has the property that when it is doubled it yields an affirmation," But the rule doesn't give a further description of negation, it constitutes negation. Negation has the property that it denies truly such and such a sentence. Similarly, a circle - say one painted on a flat surface - has the property of being in such and such a position, of having the colour it has, of being bisected by a certain line (a boundary between two colours) and so on; but it doesn't have the properties that geometry seems to ascribe to it(i.e. the ability to have the other properties). Likewise one doesn't have the property that when it's added to itself it makes two. 15 Geometry no more speaks about cubes than logic does about negation. Geometry defines the form of a cube but does not describe it. If the description of a cube says that it is red and hard, then 'a description of the form of a cube' is a sentence like "This box has the form of a cube". But if! describe how to make a cubical box, doesn't this contain a description of the form of a cube? A description only insofar as this thing is said to be cubical, and for the rest an analysis of the concept of cube. "This paper is not black, and two such negations yield an affirma- tion". The second clause is reminiscent of "and two such horses can pull the cart". But it contains no assertion about negation; it is a rule for the replacement of one sign by another. "That two negations yield an affirmation must already be contained in the negation that I am using now." Here I am on the verge of inventing a mythology of symbolism. It looks as if one could infer from the meaning of negation that " ~ - p" means p. As if the rules for the negation sign follow from the nature of negation. So that in a certain sense there is first of all negation, and then the rules of grammar. It also looks as if the essence of negation had a double expression in language: the one whose meaning I grasp when I understand the expression of negation in a sentence, and the consequences of this meaning in the grammar. 16 What does it mean to say that the "is" in "The rose is red" has a different meaning from the "is" in "Twice two is four"? If it is answered that it means that different rules are valid for these two words, we can say that we have only one word here. - And if all I am attending to is grammatical rules, these do allow the use of the word "is" in both connections. - But the rule which shews that the word "is" has different meanings in the two sentences is the one I i allowing us to replace the word "is" in the second sentence by "equals" and forbidding this substitution in the first sentence. "Is this rule then only the consequence of the first rule, that the word 'is' has different meanings in the two sentences? Or is it rather that this very rule is the expression of the word's having a different meaning in the two contexts ?" It looks as if a sentence with e.g. the word "ball" in it already contained the shadow of other uses of this word. That is to say, the possibility of forming those other sentences. To whom does it look like that? And under what circumstances? The comparison suggests itself that the word "is" in different cases has different meaning-bodies behind it; that it is perhaps each time a square surface, but in one case it is the end surface of a prism and in the other the end surface of a pyramid. Imagine the following case. Suppose we have some completely transparent glass cubes which have one face painted red. If we arrange these cubes together in space, only certain arrangements of red squares will be permitted by the shape of the glass bodies. I might then express the rule for the possible arrangements of the red squares without mentioning the cubes; but the rule would none the less contain the essence of the form of cube - Not, of course, the fact that there are glass cubes behind the red squares, but the geometry of the cube. But suppose we see such a cube: are we immediately presented with the rules for the possible combinations, i.e. the geometry of the cube? Can I read off the geometry of the cube from a cube? Thus the cube is a notation for the rule. And if we had discovered such a rule, we really wouldn't be able to find anything better than the drawing of a cube to use as a notation for it. (And it is sig- nificant that here a drawing of a cube will do instead of a cube.) 54 But how can the cube (or the drawing) serve as a notation for a geomet.r~cal rule? Only if it belongs, as a proposition or part of a prOpOSltIOn, to a system of propositions. 17 "Of course the grammatical possibilities of the negation sign reveal themselves bit by bit in the use of the signs, but I think negation all at once. The sign 'not' is only a pointer to the thought 'not'; it is only a stimulus to produce the right thought, only a signal." (If I were asked what I mean by the word "and" in the sentence "pass me the bread and butter" I would answer by a gesture of gathering together; and that gesture would illustrate what I mean in the same way as a green pattern illustrates the meaning of "green" and the T-F notation illustrates the meaning of "not", "and" etc.) 'Ww P " T F F W For instance, this sign for negation: is worth no more and no less than any other negation sign; it is a complex of lines just like the expression "not-p" and it is only made into a sign for negation by the way it works - I mean, the way it is used in the game. (The same goes for the T-F schemata for tautology and contra- diction.) What I want to say is that to be a sign a thing must be dynamic, not static. 18 Here it can easily seem as if the sign contained the whole of the grammar; as if the grammar were contained in the sign like a string of pearls in a box and he had only to pull it out. (But this kind of picture is just what is misleading us). As if understanding were an instantaneous grasping of something from which later we only draw consequences which already exist in an ideal sense before they are drawn. As if the cube already contained the geometry of the cube, and I had only to unpack it. But which cube? Or is there 55 an ideal geometrical cube? - Often we have in mind the process of deriving geometrical propositions from a drawing, a representation (or a model). But what is the role of the model in such a case? It has the role of a sign, a sign employed in a particular game. - And it is an interesting and remarkable thing how this sign is employed, how we perhaps use the drawing of a cube again and again in different contexts. - And it is this sign, (which has the identity proper to a sign) that we take to be the cube in which the geometrical laws are already laid up. (They are no more laid up there than the disposition to be used in a certain way is laid up in the chessman which is the king). In philosophy one is constantly tempted to invent a mythology of symbolism or of psychology, instead of simply saying what we know. 19 The concept of meaning I adopted in my philosophical dis- cussions originates in a primitive philosophy of language. The German word for "meaning" is derived from the German word for "pointing". When Augustine talks about the learning of language he talks about how we attach names to things, or understand the names of things. Naming here appears as the foundation, the be all and end all of language. Augustine does not speak of there being any difference between parts of speech and means by "names" apparently words like "tree", "table", "bread" and of course, the proper names of people; also no doubt "eat", "go", "he're", "there" - all words, in fact. Certainly he's thinking first and foremost of nouns, and of the remaining words as something that will take care of itself. (Plato too says that a sentence consists of nouns and verbs.)l 1. Sophist, 26IE, 262A. [1 have replaced "kinds of word" which appears in the translation of the parallel passages in Philosophical Investigations §I with "parts of speech", which appears to have been Wittgenstein's preferred translation. 1 am indebted for this information to Mr. R. Rhees. Trs.] They describe the game as simpler than it is. But the game Augustine describes is certainly a part of language. Imagine I want to put up a building using building stones someone else is to pass me; we might first make a convention by my pointing to a building stone and saying "that is a pillar", and to another and saying "that is called 'a block' ", "that is called 'a slab' "and so on. And then I call out the words "pillar", "slab", etc. in the order in which I need the stones. Augustine does describe a calculus of our language, only not everything that we call language is this calculus. (And one has to say this in many cases where we are faced with the question "Is this an appropriate description or not?" The answer is: "Yes, it is appropriate, but only here, and not for the whole region that you were claiming to describe.") So it could be said that Augustine represents the matter too simply; but also that he represents something simpler. It is as if someone were to say "a game consists in moving ob- jects about on a surface according to certain rules ... " and we replied: You must be thinking of board games, and your descrip- tion is indeed applicable to them. But they are not the only games. So you can make your definitions correct by expressly restricting it to those games. 20 The way Augustine describes the learning of language can show us the way of looking at language from which the concept of the meaning of words derives. The case of our language could be compared with a script in which the letters were used to stand for sounds, and also as signs of emphasis and perhaps as marks of punctuation. If one conceives this script as a language for describing sound-patterns, one can imagine someone misinterpreting the script as if there were simply a correspondence of letters to sounds and as if the letters had not also completely different functions. 57 i I Just as the handles in the cabin of a locomotive have different kinds of job, so do the words of language, which in one way are like handles. One is the handle of a crank, it can be moved con- tinuously since it operates a valve; another works a switch, which has two positions; a third is the handle of a pump and only works when it is being moved up and down etc. But they all look alike, since they are all worked by hand. A connected point: it is possible to speak perfectly intelligibly of combinations of colours and shapes (e.g. of the colours red and blue and the shapes square and circle) just as we speak of combina- tions of different shapes or spatial objects. And this is the origin of the bad expression: a fact is a complex of objects. Here the fact that a man is sick is compared with a combination of two things, one of them the man and the other the sickness. 2 I A man who reads a sentence in a familiar language experiences the different parts of speech in quite different ways. (Think of the comparison with meaning-bodies.) We quite forget that the written and spoken words "not", "table" and "green" are similar to each other. It is only in a foreign language that we see clearly the uniformity of words. (Compare William James on the feelings that d d l'k" ""b" d ) correspon to wor s 1 e not, ut an so on. ("Not" makes a gesture of rejection. No, it is a gesture of rejection. To grasp negation is to under- stand a gesture of rejection.) Compare the different parts of speech in a sentence with lines on a map with different functions (frontiers, roads, meridians, contours.) An uninstructed person sees a mass of lines and does not know the variety of their meanings. Think of a line on a map crossing a sign out to show that it is void The difference between parts of speech is comparable to the differences between chessmen, but also to the even greater differ- ence between a chessman and the chess board. Z2 We say: the essential thing in a word is its meaning. We can replace the word by another with the same meaning. That fixes a place for the word, and we can substitute one word for another provided we put it in the same place. If I decide to say a new word instead of "red" (perhaps only in thought), how would it come out that it took the place of the word "red"? Suppose it was agreed to say "non" in English instead of "not", and "not" instead of "red". In that case the word "not" would remain in the language, and one could say that "non" was now used in the way in which "not" used to be, and that "not" now had a different use. Would it not be similar if I decided to alter the shape of the chess pieces, or to use a knight-shaped piece as the king? How would it be clear that the knight is the king? In this case can't I very well talk about a change of meaning? 23 I want to say the place of a word in grammar is its meaning. But I might also say: the meaning of a word -is what the explana- tion of its meaning explains. "What 1 C.c. of water weighs is called '1 gram' - Well, what does it weigh?" The explanation of the meaning explains the use of the word. 59 The use of a word in the language is its meaning. Grammar describes the use of words in the language. So it has somewhat the same relation to the language as the description of a game, the rules of a game, have to the game. Meaning, in our sense, is embodied in the explanation of mean- ing. If, on the other hand, by the word "meaning" we mean a characteristic sensation connected with the use of a word, then the relation between the explanation of a word and its meaning is rather that of cause to effect. 24 An explanation of meaning can remove every disagreement with regard to a meaning. It can clear up misunderstandings. The understanding here spoken of is a correlate of explanation. By "explanation of the meaning of a sign" we mean rules for use but above all definitions. The distinction between verbal defini- tions and ostensive definitions gives a rough division of these types of explanation. In order to understand the role of a definition in the calculus we must investigate the particular case. It may seem to us as if the other grammatical rules for a word had to follow from its ostensive definition; since after all an ostensive definition, e.g. "that is called 'red' " determines the meaning of the word "red". But this definition is only those words plus pointing to a red object, e.g. a red piece of paper. And is this definition really un- ambiguous? Couldn't I have used the very same one to give the word "red" the meaning of the word "paper", or "square", or "shiny", or "light", or "thin" etc. etc.? However, suppose that instead of saying "that is called 'red' " 60 I had phrased my definition "that colour is called 'red' ". That certainly is unambiguous, but only because the expression "colour" settles the grammar of the word "red" up to this last point. (But here questions could arise like "do you call just this shade of colour red, or also other similar shades ?"). Definitions might be given like this: the colour of this patch is called "red", its shape "ellipse" . I might say: one must already understand a great deal of a language in order to understand that definition. Someone who understands that definition must already know where the words ("red", "ellipse") are being put, where they belong in language. 25 The words "shape" and "colour" in the definitions determine the kind of use of the word, and therefore what one may call the part of speech. And in ordinary grammar one might well distin- guish "shape words", "colour words", "sound words", "sub- stance words" and so on as different parts of speech. (There wouldn't be the same reason for distinguishing "metal words", "poison words", "predator words". It makes sense to say "iron is a metal", "phosphorus is a poison", etc. but not "red is a colour", "a circle is a shape" and so on.) I can ostensively define a word for a colour or a shape or a number, etc. etc. (children are given ostensive explanations of numerals and they do perfectly well); negation, too, disjunction and so on. The same ostension might define a numeral, or the name of a shape or the name of a colour. But in the grammar of each different part of speech the ostensive definition has a different role; and in each case it is only one rule. (Consider also the grammar of definitions like: "today is called Monday", "I will call this day of the year 'the day of atonement' "). 26 But when we learn the meaning of a word, we are very often given onlY the single rule, the ostensive definition. So how does it come about that on the strength of this definition we understand the word? Do we guess the rest of the rules? Think also of teaching a child to understand words by showing it objects and uttering words. The child is given ostensive defi- nitions and then it understands the words. - But what is the cri- terion of understanding here? Surely, that the child applies the words correctly. Does it guess rules? - Indeed we must ask our- selves whether we are to call these signs and utterances of words "definitions" at all. The language game is still very simple and the ostensive definition has not the same role in this language-game as in more developed ones. (For instance, the child cannot yet ask "What is that called ?") But there is no sharp boundary between primitive forms and more complicated ones. I wouldn't know what I can and what I can't still call "definition". I can only describe language games or calculi; whether we still want to call them calculi or not doesn't matter as long as we don't let the use of the general term divert us from examining each particular case we wish to decide. I might also say of a little child "he can use the word, he knows how it is applied." But I only see what that means ifI ask "what is the criterion for this knowledge?" In this case it isn't the ability to state rules. What's the sign of someone's understanding a game? Must he be able to recite the rules? Isn't it also a criterion that he can play the game, i.e. that he does in fact play it, even if he's baffled when asked for the rules? Is it only by being told the rules that the game is learnt and not also simply by watching it being played? Of course a man will often say to himself while watching "oh, so that's the rule"; and he might perhaps write down the rules as he observes them; but there's certainly such a thing as learning the game without explicit rules. The grammar of a language isn't recorded and doesn't come into existence until the language has already been spoken by human 62 4 beings for a long time. Similarly, primitive games are played with- out their rules being codified, and even without a single rule being formulated. But we look at games and language under the guise of a game played according to rules. That is, we are always comparing language with a procedure of that kind. 27 The names I give to bodies, shapes, colours, lengths have different grammars in each case. ("A" in "A is yellow" has one grammar if A is a body and another if A is the surface of a body; for instance it makes sense to say that the body is yellow all through, but not to say that the surface is.) And one points in different sense to a body, and to its length or its colour; for example, a possible definition would be: "to point to a colour" means, to point to the body which has the colour. Just as a man who marries money doesn't marry it in the same sense as he marries the woman who owns the money. Money, and what one buys with it. Sometimes a material object, sometimes the right to a seat in the theatre, or a title, or fast travel, or life, etc. A name has meaning, a proposition has sense in the calculus to which it belongs. The calculus is as it were autonomous. - Lan- guage must speak for itself. I might say: the only thing that is of interest to me is the content of a proposition and the content of a proposition is something internal to it. A proposition has its content as part of a calculus. The meaning is the role of the word in the calculus. The meaning of a name is not the thing we point to when we give an ostensive definition of the name; that is, it is not the bearer of the name. - The expression "the bearer of the name 'N'" is synonymous with the name "N". The expression can be used in place of the name. "The bearer of the name 'N' is sick" means "N is sick". We don't say: The meaning of "N" is sick. The name doesn't lose its meaning if its bearer ceases to exist (if he dies, say). But doesn't "Two names have a single bearer" mean the same as "two names have the same meaning?" Certainly, instead of "A = B" one can write "the bearer of the name 'A' = the bearer of the name 'B' ". 28 What does "to understand a word" mean? We say to a child "No, no more sugar" and take it away from him. Thus he learns the meaning of the word "no". If, while saying the same words, we had given him a piece of sugar he would have learnt to understand the word differently. (In this way he has learnt to use the word, but also to associate a particular feeling with it, to experience it in a particular way.) What constitutes the meaning of a word like "perhaps"? How does a child learn the use of the word "perhaps"? It may repeat a sentence it has heard from an adult like "perhaps she will come"; it may do so in the same tone of voice as the adult. (That is a kind of a game). In such a case the question is sometimes asked: Does it already understand the word "perhaps" or is it only repeating it? - What shows that it really understands the word? - Well, that it uses it in particular circumstances in a particular manner - in certain contexts and with a particular intonation. What does it mean "to understand the word 'perhaps' "? - Do I understand the word "perhaps" ? - And how do I judge whether I do? Well, something like this: I know how it's used, I can explain its use to somebody, say by describing it in made-up cases. I can describe the occasions of its use, its position in sentences, the intonation it has in speech. - Of course this only means that "I understand the word 'perhaps'" comes to the same as: "I know how it is used etc."; not that I try to call to mind its entire application in order to answer the question whether I understand the word. More likely I would react to this question immediately with the answer "yes", perhaps after having said the word to myself once again, and as it were convinced myself that it's familiar, or else I might think of a single application and pronounce the word with the correct intonation and a gesture of uncertainty. And so on. This is like the case in which someone is explaining to me a calculation "that I don't quite understand", and when he has reached a particular point of his explanation, I say: "ah, now I understand; now I know how to go on". How do I know that I know how to go on? Have I run through the rest of the calculation at that moment? Of course not. Perhaps a bit of it flashed before my mind; perhaps a particular application or a diagram. If I were asked: how do you know that you can use the word "perhaps" I would perhaps simply answer "I have used it a hundred times". 29 But it might be asked: Do I understand the word just be des- cribing its application? Do I understand its point? Haven't I deluded myself about something important? At present, say, I know only how men use this word. But it might be a game, or a form of etiquette. I do not know why they behave in this way, how language meshes with their life. Is meaning then really only the use of a word? Isn't it the way this use meshes with our life? But isn't its use a part of our life? Do I understand the word "fine" when I know how and on what occasions people use it? Is that enough to enable me to use it myself? I mean, so to say, use it with conviction. Wouldn't it be possible for me to know the use of the word and yet follow it without understanding? (As, in a sense, we follow the - singing of birds). So isn't it something else that constitutes under- standing - the feeling "in one's own breast", the living experience of the expressions? - They must mesh with my own life. Well, language does connect up with my own life. And what is called "language" is something made up of heterogeneous ele- ments and the way it meshes with life is infinitely various. 30 We may say that the words "fine", "oh", and also "perhaps" are expressions of sensation, of feeling. But I don't call the feeling the meaning of the word. We are not interested in the relation of the words to the senesation, whatever it may be, whether they are evoked by it, or are regularly accompanied by it, or give it an outlet. We are not interested in any empirical facts about language, considered as empirical facts. We are only concerned with the description of what happens and it is not the truth but the form of the description that interests us. What happens considered as a game. I am only describing language, not explaining anything. For my purposes I could replace the sensation the word is said to express by the intonation and gestures with which the word is used. I might say: in many cases understanding a word involves being able to use it on certain occasions in a special tone of voice. You might say that certain words are only pegs to hang intona- tions on. But instead of the intonation and the accompanying gestures, I might for my own purposes treat the word itself as a gesture. (Can't I say that the sound "ha ha" is a laugh and the sound "oh!" is a sigh?) 66 • 3 I I could imagine a language that was spoken in a uniform metre, with quasi-words intercalated between the words of the sentences to maintain the metre. Suppose we talked about the mean- ing of these quasi-words. (The smith putting in ,extra, t~ps between the real strokes in order to maintain a rhythm lO stnklOg). Language is like a collection of very various tools. In the tool box there is a hammer, a saw, a rule, a lead, a glue pot and glue. Many of the tools are akin to each other in form and,use, and t~e tools can be roughly divided into groups accordlOg to theIr relationships; but the boundaries between these groups wi!l oft~n be more or less arbitrary and there are various types of relauonshlp that cut across one another. I said that the meaning of a word is its role in the calculus of language. (I compared it to a piece in chess). Now let us think how we calculate with a word,for instance with the word "red". We are told where the colour is situated; we are told the shape and size of the coloured patch or the coloured object; we are tol~ whet~er the colour is pure or mixed, light or dark, whether It remalOs constant or changes, etc. etc. Conclusions are drawn from the propositions, they are translated into diagra~s and into ~ehaviour, there is drawing, measurement and calculatlOn. But thlOk of the meaning of the word "oh!" If we :vere asked ~bout ,it, ~e w~ul~ say "'oh'! is a sigh; we say, for lOstance, thl~gS hke Oh, 1t IS raining again already'''. And that would descnbe the use of the word. But what corresponds now to the calculus, the complicated f h d " hI" game that we play with other words? In the use 0 t e wor so. , or "hurrah", or "hm", there is nothing comparable. Moreover, we mustn't confuse signs with symptoms here. The sound "hm" may be called an expression of dubiousness and also, for other people, a symptom of dubiousness, in the way that 1 I clouds are a symptom of rain. But "hm" is not the name of du- biousness. 3.2 Suppose we want to describe ball-games. There are some games hke football, cricket and tennis, which have a well-developed and complicated system of rules; there is a game consisting simply of everyone's throwing a ball as high as he can; and there is the game little children play of throwing a ball in any direction and then retrieving it. Or again someone throws a ball high into the air for the fun of it and catches it again without any element of com- petition. Perhaps one will be unwilling to call some of these ball games at all; but is it clear where the boundary is to be drawn here? We are interested in language as a procedure according to explicit rules, because philosophical problems are misunder- standings which must be removed by clarification of the rules according to which we are inclined to use words. We consider language from.one point of view only. We said that when we understood the use we didn't yet under- stand the purpose of the word "perhaps". And by "purpose" in this case we meant the role in human life. (This role can be called the "meaning" of the word in the sense in which one speaks of the 'meaning of an event for our life'.) But we said that by "meaning" we meant what an explanation of meaning explains. And an explanation of meaning is not an empiri- cal proposition and not a causal explanation, but a rule, a conven- tion. It might be said that the purpose of the word "hey!" in our la~guage is to alarm the person spoken to. But what does its having th1s purpose amount to? What is the criterion for it? The word "purpose" like all the words of our language is used in various more or less related ways. I will mention two characteristic games. We might say that the purpose of doing something is what the person doing it would say if asked what its purpose was. On the 68 • other hand if we say that the hen clucks in order to call her chicks together we infer this purpose from the effect of the clucking. We wouldn't call the gathering of the chicks the purpose of the clucking if the c	814,094
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PHILOSOPHISCHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS PHILOSOPHISCHE UNTERSUCHUNGEN PHILOSOPHICAL INVESTIGATIONS LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe, P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte Revised fourth edition by P. M. S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte This fourth edition ﬁrst published 2009 © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Edition history: Basil Blackwell Ltd (1e, 1953; 2e, 1958); Blackwell Publishing Ltd (3e, 2001) Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientiﬁc, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. 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If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 1889–1951. [Philosophische Untersuchungen. English] Philosophical investigations / Ludwig Wittgenstein ; translated by G.E.M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker, and Joachim Schulte. — Rev. 4th ed. / by P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte. p. cm. English and German. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4051-5928-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-4051-5929-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy. 2. Language and languages—Philosophy. 3. Semantics (Philosophy) I. Anscombe, G. E. M. (Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret) II. Hacker, P. M. S. (Peter Michael Stephan) III. Schulte, Joachim. IV. Title. B3376.W563P53 2009 192—dc22 2009023572 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10.5/13pt Sabon by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Singapore 1 2009 Editors’ and Translators’ Acknowledgements for the Fourth Edition The idea that we should produce a revised translation of Wittgenstein’s Philosophische Untersuchungen was brought up at what turned out to be one of the last meetings of the Wittgenstein trustees. We and our colleagues a Nicholas Denyer, Anthony Kenny and Anselm Müller a came to the conclusion that it would be best to build on the founda- tions laid by G. E. M. Anscombe in her translation of Wittgenstein’s second great work. The trustees, with the exception of Anthony Kenny, became members of what is now the Wittgenstein editorial advisory com- mittee. This group was joined by David McKitterick, the Librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has been an enthusiastic supporter of our project. We are greatly indebted to him for his help. We thought that a few months’ individual work and three or four weeks together would sufﬁce to complete the task. With that in mind, we applied to the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio on Lake Como for a period of residence to work together, and were granted a stay of four weeks in these beautiful surroundings. But although each of us had spent several months preparing for our meeting, we found that the amount of work still necessary was far greater than anticipated. The shock of discovering that we would be lucky to reach §189 by the end of our stay was mitigated by the generous hospitality offered by the Rockefeller Center in September–October 2006. It was evident that far more time than originally anticipated was neces- sary, and we had to ensure that we could meet periodically to discuss the work each of us did independently. In this we were greatly helped by St John’s College, Oxford, and the Philosophy Department of the University of Zürich, whose assistance enabled us to have a further four extended meetings. Moreover, in the summer of 2007 the Kalischer fam- ily gave us the use of their magniﬁcent home in Berlin, which made it possible for us to spend a fortnight’s intense discussions in this locus amoenus. vi Editors’ and Translators’ Acknowledgements When we had a complete draft, we thought to beneﬁt from responses of Wittgenstein scholars to our revised translation. We applied to the European Translation Centre in Athens for a week’s stay in their resi- dence at Lefkes on the island of Paros. Generous ﬁnancial support was forthcoming from Trinity College, Cambridge, and when it was found that we had failed to allow for the fact that the value of currencies tends to ﬂuctuate, the Faculty of Philosophy of Oxford University and the University of Athens stepped in to help. So, we met for a week at Lefkes to discuss the fruit of our labours with Hanjo Glock, Anthony Kenny, Vassiliki Kindi, Brian McGuinness, Eike von Savigny, Severin Schroeder, Edna Ullmann-Margalit and Stelios Virvidakis. Anthony Kenny’s chair- manship of the meetings was exemplary, and we are grateful to him for steering us through the shoals and rapids. We are especially indebted to Vassiliki Kindi, who surpassed herself as organizer, helpmate, con- tributor to our discussions and friend. These intense and lengthy dis- cussions led to a great number of changes in our revised translation. In addition, we received long and invaluable lists of speciﬁc comments and questions from Brian McGuinness and Eike von Savigny, both before and after the meetings on Paros. Questions on or relevant to our revised translation were raised in correspondence with Hanoch Ben-Yami, Stewart Candlish, Lars Hertzberg, Wolfgang Kienzler, Grant Luckhardt and Josef Rothhaupt. We also proﬁted from examining speciﬁc points discussed in writings by Stewart Candlish, Roland Hall and David Stern. Patience is a publisher’s crowning virtue. We thank Nick Bellorini of Wiley-Blackwell for unstintingly exercising this virtue in our regard. And we are most grateful to Jean van Altena for her copy-editing and invalu- able suggestions for improvement. P. M. S. Hacker Joachim Schulte Contents Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition and Modiﬁed Translation viii The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen xviii Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations 1 Philosophie der Psychologie – Ein Fragment Philosophy of Psychology – A Fragment 182 Endnotes 244 Register 267 Index 288 Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition and Modiﬁed Translation 1. The previous editions and translation The Philosophical Investigations was published in 1953, edited by G. E. M. Anscombe and Rush Rhees, and translated by Anscombe. A second edition was published in 1958, in which minor corrections (mis- spellings and punctuation) to the German text were made, and a large number of small changes and 28 signiﬁcant alterations were made to the English text. In 2003, after Anscombe’s death, a third, 50-year anniver- sary edition was published by Nicholas Denyer with a small number of further alterations to the translation that Anscombe had made over the years in her copy of the previously published text. The third edition unfortunately did not follow the pagination of the ﬁrst two editions. Anscombe’s translation was an impressive achievement. She invented an English equivalent for Wittgenstein’s distinctive, often colloquial, style. This was no mean feat. For she had to ﬁnd not only English analogues of Wittgenstein’s stylistic idiosyncracies, but also an English rhythm that would convey the character of Wittgenstein’s carefully crafted prose. Her success is indisputable. Nevertheless, there are errors of different kinds in the ﬁrst three editions and in the translation. It was because of these that the Wittgenstein editorial advisory committee agreed to the production of a new edition. But, given the excellence of the Anscombe translation, it was resolved that rather than making a completely new one, we should build on Anscombe’s achievement and produce a modiﬁed translation, rectifying any errors or misjudgements we discerned in hers. It should be emphasized that many of the errors in the Anscombe–Rhees editions could not have been identiﬁed in the 1950s, prior to the availability and extensive study of the Wittgenstein Nachlass, some crucial items of which did not come to light until decades later. Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition ix 2. The fourth edition The most important editorial change we have made is to drop the divi- sion of the book into two parts. What was Part I is now the Philosophical Investigations, and what was Part II is now named Philosophy of Psychology a A Fragment (which we abbreviate ‘PPF’). We explain our reasons for this alteration in the essay on the history of the text of the Investigations below. A further important change we have introduced is to print the slips that were added by Wittgenstein to the typed text of the Philosophical Investigations in boxes in their designated places wherever that is now known, rather than at the foot of the relevant page as Randbemerkungen. The rationales for their relocations are given severally in endnotes. In a couple of places, we have introduced Wittgenstein’s original squiggles or drawings. In §169 a meaningless sequence of typograph- ical symbols was typed into the text as a substitute for the ‘arbitrary pothooks and squiggles’ (mentioned in §168) that are evident in Eine Philosophische Betrachtung, p. 182. So we have reproduced the latter. Again, PPF §108 beneﬁts from the insertion of the little drawing, printed in Last Writings on the Philosophy of Psychology I, §88, which illustrates the remark that different concepts touch and run side by side for a stretch, but one shouldn’t think that all such lines are circles. Because the new edition is also a modiﬁed translation, with some trans- lated sentences longer than hitherto and others shorter, it has not been possible to preserve the identical pagination of the ﬁrst and second editions. Since the vast majority of English writings on Wittgenstein have made copious references to those editions, we have inserted the pagination of the ﬁrst two editions in the text between small verticals (e.g. \|123\| ) at the points of page-breaks. There are some editorial changes in the new edition of what was pre- viously referred to as ‘Part II’. The lost TS 234 was based on MS 144, which consists of loose sheets clipped into a folder.1 It is not known to what extent the present order of sheets was Wittgenstein’s (the folia- tion is not in his hand). Most of the remarks collected in this folder come from MSS 137 and 138, that is, from manuscripts that were written between October 1948 and spring 1949 and hence not used for the dictation of TSS 229 and 232 (published as Remarks on the 1 All references to Wittgenstein’s Nachlass are to von Wright number, followed by page number or section number (§) or both, as in the Bergen electronic edition. References to Wittgenstein’s published works are by title and either section or page number. x Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition Philosophy of Psychology I and II). A few remarks are taken from these earlier typescripts; some originate in MS 169 (which is contemporary with the later part of MS 137); another few have not been traced to earlier manuscript sources. It is not known whether the typescript used for printing the ﬁrst edition of ‘Part II’ of the Investigations (TS 234) was copied by a typist from MS 144 or dictated to the typist by Wittgenstein. There is evidence that some mistakes were made in the composition of the typescript. It can safely be said that there are at least two points where the order of remarks intended by Wittgenstein and clearly indicated in MS 144 was not respected in TS 234. These errors were pointed out by G. H. von Wright;2 they have been rectiﬁed here (see PPF §§220–1 and §§235–6). It is clear that the remarks that were collected together in TS 234, as well as their arrangement, are very uneven. There is every reason to think that Wittgenstein would have made many changes had he con- tinued to work on this material. Some of these changes would have con- sisted in shifting individual remarks to different positions, in joining separate paragraphs to other ones, and in severing sentences or para- graphs from certain remarks. Other changes would have involved redrafting and correcting sentences that were badly drafted or poorly adjusted to their context (some of these requirements will be pointed out in the endnotes). Readers of Philosophy of Psychology b A Fragment will be well advised to bear in mind that what we have there, unlike the Investigations, is work in progress. A prominent feature of the Anscombe–Rhees edition of what they called ‘Part II’ is the subdivision of the text into ‘sections’ numbered i to xiv. The editors’ reasons for inserting these headings were in part external. As von Wright pointed out, in the manuscript ‘each section begins and ends on a sheet of its own’.3 However, as no copy of TS 234 is extant, we know nothing about the external characteristics of this typescript, and accordingly we cannot judge to what extent the cri- terion mentioned by von Wright may have been relevant to the editors’ decisions. In the case of the earlier sections it is often clear on the basis of the content of the remarks why they were grouped as they are. However, when one turns to section xi, it becomes equally clear that 2 G. H. von Wright, ‘The Troubled History of Part II of the Investigations’, Grazer philosophische Studien 42 (1992), p. 184. Cf. J. Schulte’s Kritisch-genetische Edition of Philosophische Untersuchungen (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001). 3 von Wright, ‘Troubled History’, p. 183. Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition xi Wittgenstein or his editors simply abandoned the project of arranging these remarks in an order analogous to that of sections i to x and xii to xiv. In the present edition, we have retained the old section headings, but our principal means of organizing the text and facilitating refer- ence to passages from it is a simple numbering of individual remarks along the lines of Wittgenstein’s own system in the Investigations. This method has the additional advantage of forestalling doubts about whether a paragraph beginning on a new page belongs to the same remark as the last paragraph on the previous page a a difﬁculty encountered on several pages of former editions. 3. The German text The most important source for the German text of Philosophische Untersuchungen printed here is the ﬁrst edition of the book (1953). This was based on one of three copies of the typescript of the Investigations and on what was apparently the sole copy (the missing TS 234) of what became ‘Part II’ of the book.4 As far as we know, the text of the 1953 edition is on the whole very reliable. Work on Wittgenstein’s Nachlass led to the critical edition (2001) of the currently extant typescripts of the earlier drafts of the Philosophical Investigations, as well as of the manuscript (MS 144) on which Part II was based. In this critical-genetic edition, many passages were elucidated by quotations from earlier manuscript versions of relevant remarks. In the light of this edition and additional work on the Nachlass, we have prepared a German text which differs from that of the ﬁrst three edi- tions in various respects. We have corrected a few obvious misprints like ‘Wage’ (§§142, 182, 259) in place of ‘Waage’ (often but by no means always misspelled by Wittgenstein); ‘wir’ in place of ‘wie’ (§282), and ‘Sinneneindrücke’ in place of ‘Sinneseindrücke’ (§486). A few oddities could be clariﬁed by consulting the manuscripts. For example, in §433 the correct version reads, not ‘in welchem Zeichen’, but ‘in welchen Zeichen’; and in §441 the unintelligible ‘daß wir . . . Wunschäußerungen von uns machen’ should read ‘daß wir . . . Wunschäußerungen machen’ 4 The typescripts from which the book was printed were lost sometime after publica- tion. The third copy of the Untersuchungen proper came to light only in 1993. The few points where it deviates from the published text and/or the other extant copy of the typescript are described in J. Schulte’s critical-genetic edition. xii Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition (Wittgenstein forgot to cross out part of the variant formulation ‘Wunschäußerungen von uns geben’). In TS 227(a), one of the two surviving typescripts, Wittgenstein crossed out the ‘k’ in ‘keinen’ in §85(b), thus changing the sentence from ‘der Wegweiser lässt doch keinen Zweifel offen’ (‘the signpost does after all leave no room for doubt’) to ‘der Wegweiser lässt doch einen Zweifel offen’ (‘the signpost does after all leave room for doubt’). This, in the context, makes much better sense. Similarly, ‘Gesichtseindruck’ (‘visual impression’) in PPF §231 is a mis- print for ‘Gesichtsausdruck’ (‘facial expression’), as is evident from MS 138, 6b. So too in PPF §306 ‘beim innerlichen Rechnen’ (‘when we made internal calculations’, according to Anscombe’s translation) is almost certainly meant to be ‘beim innerlichen Reden’ (‘when we speak to our- selves silently’) on the model of MS 144, 92. We have made no attempt to normalize Wittgenstein’s characteristic use of commas; the only exceptions are two or three passages where we omitted a particularly distracting comma after the last item of a long list. An example is PPF §93: ‘daß die Verben “glauben”, “wünschen”, “wollen”, alle die grammatischen Formen aufweisen’; the comma before ‘alle’ has been dropped in our edition. We have, however, stand- ardized his dots signifying ‘and so on’, reducing them to three, with- out any closing full stop when they occur at the end of a sentence. In the typescripts as well as in the previous editions of the Unter- suchungen there are many occurrences of forms like ‘etc.’ where a clos- ing full stop follows an abbreviation. We have decided to print only one full stop in such cases. There are a number of sentences where a closing full stop or question mark is missing. In such cases we have supplied the missing sign. In the case of complete quoted sentences we print the last quotation mark after the closing punctuation mark. This is in conformity with Wittgenstein’s normal practice. A few common expressions have been standardized in the light of Wittgenstein’s usual practice in his manuscripts. These are: ‘gar nicht’, ‘gar nichts’ in place of ‘garnicht’, ‘garnichts’; ‘inwiefern’ in place of ‘in wiefern’; ‘derselbe’ in place of ‘der selbe’; ‘so daß’ in place of ‘sodaß’; ‘statt dessen’ in place of ‘stattdessen’. In accordance with German typographical practice, we have spaced ‘z. B.’, ‘d. h.’, ‘u. s. w.’, etc. We have capitalized nominalized forms where Wittgenstein forgot to do so. In such cases, however, we have exercised our judgement and proceeded with discretion, restricting modiﬁcations of the text to par- ticularly clear and distracting cases where, for example, only one out of several nominalized words in the same sentence is spelled without a capital letter. Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition xiii 4. The modiﬁed translation Anscombe’s translation is now more than 50 years old, and English has moved on apace. Some of her orthographic conventions have become deﬁnitely archaic, such as her spelling of ‘connexion’ and ‘shew’. These we have replaced by contemporary orthographic conventions. We have also favoured colloquial compression, as in ‘I’m’, ‘I’ll’, ‘he’d’, ‘we’d’, ‘isn’t’, ‘aren’t’, ‘won’t’ and ‘wouldn’t’, rather more than Anscombe, in order to bring out the conversational tone of the writing. She was meticu- lous in her use of ‘shall’ and ‘will’, and ‘should’ and ‘would’, but time has eroded these distinctions, and we have tried to conform to current usage. In the changes we have introduced to the ﬁrst 107 remarks of the Investigations, we have paid careful attention to Wittgenstein’s responses to Rush Rhees’s translation of 1938–9 (TS 226). Wittgenstein went over Rhees’s often imperfect draft carefully, together with Yorick Smythies, and he made numerous changes and corrections on the typescript by hand. To be sure, he was not a native English speaker, and not all of his corrections are improvements. But where he changed a translation that was subsequently used also by Anscombe, his proposal always merits close attention. Moreover, many of the changes he introduced make his intentions at that time (1939) clear, and the fact that he did not change some of Rhees’s translation where it differs importantly in meaning from Anscombe’s is always noteworthy. Some of the substantive changes we have introduced into the trans- lation are systematic. Anscombe had a marked preference for minimizing the use of the third-person impersonal pronoun ‘one’, often translating Wittgenstein’s use of the German word man by the second-person pro- noun ‘you’. This made the text appear to be more of a conversation with the reader than it actually is. We have throughout respected Wittgenstein’s choice of pronominal form. Anscombe translated seltsam and merkwürdig by ‘queer’. We have translated seltsam by ‘odd’, ‘strange’ or ‘curious’, and merkwürdig by ‘remarkable’, ‘strange’, ‘curious’ or ‘extraordinary’. Wittgenstein’s use of Erklärung (‘explanation’) and Deﬁnition (‘deﬁnition’) was not always respected in Anscombe’s trans- lation, but we have kept to Wittgenstein’s choice of words. So too, his choice of Sinn in some contexts and Bedeutung in others was not observed in the translation, but we have abided by Wittgenstein’s preferences. Hence, where he speaks of ‘“primäre” und “sekundäre” Bedeutung’ (PPF §276; p. 216(d) in the ﬁrst two editions), we have translated ‘“primary” and “secondary” meaning’ rather than Anscombe’s ‘“primary” and xiv Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition “secondary” sense’. Anscombe was not consistent in her translation of Gebrauch, Verwendung and Anwendung. We have translated Gebrauch by ‘use’, Verwendung by ‘use’ or ‘employment’, and Anwendung by ‘appli- cation’. ‘Use’ also does service for benützen. In general, however, we have not allowed ourselves to be hidebound by the multiple occurrence of the same German word or phrase in different contexts. It by no means requires always translating by the same English expression, but rather depends on the exigencies of the context and the author’s intention. So, for example, we have translated Praxis der Sprache in Investigations §21 by ‘linguistic practice’ rather than by the more ponderous ‘prac- tice of the language’, and Praxis des Spiels in §54(b) as ‘the way the game is played’, because this is how Wittgenstein wanted it translated. Some German words that Wittgenstein employs are problematic for any translator. So, for example, his use of Satz has no obvious English equivalent, and choices have to be made between ‘sentence’, ‘proposi- tion’, and even ‘remark’. So, for example, in Investigations §§134–5 the German has Satz throughout, but it would be infelicitous to translate the word by ‘sentence’ in all its occurrences here. In many cases, we have gone along with Anscombe’s choice between ‘sentence’ and ‘proposition’, but not in all. For example, in §105(a) Wittgenstein wrote ‘Wenn wir glauben, jene Ordnung, das Ideal, in der wirklichen Sprache ﬁnden zu müssen, werden wir nun mit dem unzufrieden, was man im gewöhnlichen Leben “Satz”, “Wort”, “Zeichen” nennt.’ Anscombe translated the latter clause by ‘We become dissatisﬁed with what are ordinarily called “propositions”, “words”, “signs”.’ But Wittgenstein here is focusing on linguistic signs (as is evident from the subsequent paragraph (‘And we rack our brains over the nature of the real sign’) a so we have opted for ‘sentence’ here. Again, in §§395– 6, it is clearly the sentence, not the proposition, that is supposedly guar- anteed its sense by the imagination. And in §554, Wittgenstein is talk- ing about applying the operation of negation to sentences. Similar recurrent difﬁculties arise with the translation of Seele, since it cannot always be correctly rendered by ‘soul’. Anscombe was clearly aware of the problem, and in many remarks rightly opted for ‘mind’ as a correct translation of Seele (e.g. §§6, 37, 188, 196, 357, 358, 648, 651, 652), and usually translated Zustand der Seele correctly as ‘state of mind’. However, in some remarks she questionably opted for ‘soul’. For example, in §283(d): ‘And can one say of the stone that it has a Seele and that is what has the pain? What has a Seele, or pain, to do with a stone?’ a what is at issue is mind, not soul, and the problems of mind and body, not of the soul and the body. Similarly, in the ﬁnal Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition xv paragraph of this remark: ‘For one has to say it of a body, or, if you like of a Seele which some body has. And how can a body have a Seele’, it is clear that the discussion concerns mind and body. So too, in §§357, 391, 424, 454, and PPF §76. By contrast, in PPF §§23–6 it is primarily the soul that is under discussion, because §23 opens with the observa- tion that ‘religion teaches that the soul can exist when the body has disintegrated’. However, §24 requires some indication that ‘mind’ or ‘soul’ are equally apt. In the case of Empﬁndung the German noun has a much wider appli- cation than the English ‘sensation’. In many contexts, the translation ‘sensation’ is unproblematic. But in some cases the use of the German Empﬁndung is perfectly natural, while ‘sensation’ would be quite mis- taken. So, for example, in §151 ‘Vielleicht hatte er eine Empﬁndung, die man “das ist leicht” nennen kann’ is to be rendered ‘. . . what may be called the feeling [not “the sensation”] “that’s easy!”’. So too, in §160, one can speak of reading something with the feeling of saying some- thing one has learnt by heart, but not with the sensation of saying some- thing one has learnt by heart. §§272–5 are very problematic in this respect, for ‘Empﬁndung von Rot’ is neither ‘sensation of red’ (where is this sensation? a in the eye?) nor ‘feeling of red’. Since Wittgenstein switched from ‘Rotempﬁndung’ in §272 and §273 to ‘Farbeindruck’ and ‘visueller Eindruck’ in §§275–7, we have translated ‘Empﬁndung von Rot’ as ‘visual impression of red’ in §§272–3 and ‘colour impression’ in §274. Similarly, in §312, where Wittgenstein speaks of Gesichtsem- pﬁndung, we have changed Anscombe’s ‘visual sensation’ (visual sen- sations are, for example, sensations of glare when blinded by strong light) to ‘visual impression’. In §400 Empﬁndung presents yet another difﬁculty: what the idealist has discovered in speaking of the visual room ‘was a new way of speaking, a new comparison, and one could even say, a new Empﬁndung’ a here neither ‘sensation’ or ‘feeling’ nor ‘impres- sion’ will do. We have opted for ‘experience’ as the closest approx- imation, but perhaps what Wittgenstein had in mind was ‘a new sensibility’. Similar systematic difﬁculties attend the German use of ‘wollen’ and its relation to ‘Wille’ (especially in §§611–19). Anscombe chose to translate the verb in these contexts uniformly by ‘to will’ and its cog- nates, which is highly artiﬁcial as well as misleading. There is no easy solution to the problem, but we have used ‘to want’ and its derivatives where possible, and sometimes (as in §611) both. So too, Vorstellung and its cognates present formidable difﬁculties for the translator, which we have sometimes resolved differently from Anscombe, e.g. §§300–1, 389, 402. xvi Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition Occasional Anglicisms crept into Wittgenstein’s German. At one point, Anscombe failed to notice his (mis)use of Meinung to signify ‘mean- ing (something)’, translating §639 as ‘One would like to say that an opinion develops’ (which is perfectly accurate) instead of ‘. . . that mean- ing something develops’ (which is surely what Wittgenstein meant (see MS 129, 166f.)). Three recurrent errors run through Anscombe’s translation. First, she commonly mistranslated manch(er, -e, -es): for example, as ‘much of the use of (§7)’ rather than ‘certain uses’, ‘much else besides’ (§21) rather than ‘some other things’, ‘many ways’ (§73) rather than ‘various ways’, ‘a good deal that you will not say’ (§79(d)) rather than ‘some things you won’t say’, ‘many mathematical proofs’ (§517) instead of ‘some math- ematical proofs’, and so on. Second, she apparently misunderstood the usage of wohl, taking it to be more categorical than it is. So, for exam- ple, she translated ‘Aber es wird wohl auch der Ton . . .’ (§21) as ‘No doubt the tone . . .’ where we prefer ‘But probably the tone . . .’; she translated ‘Ähnlich dachte sich wohl Frege die “Annahme”’ (boxed note after §22) as ‘This will be how Frege thought of the “assumption”’ instead of ‘It may well be that this is how . . .’, ‘der wohl nur beim Philosophieren vorkommt’ (§38) as ‘which doubtless only occurs when doing philosophy’, instead of ‘which may well occur only when . . .’; and so on. Finally, there are occasions where the use of the German deﬁnite article der (die, das) should not be translated by a deﬁnite, but by an indeﬁnite article. For example, it is mistaken to translate ‘so nenne ich sie deswegen nicht den Befehl, mich anzustarren etc. . . .’ as ‘I don’t on that account call it the order to stare . . .’ rather than ‘. . . an order to stare’ (§498). Again, the slogan quoted in §560 should not run ‘The meaning of a word is what is explained by the explanation of its meaning’ but rather: ‘The meaning of a word is what an explanation of its mean- ing explains’. And so on. Since in German the indeﬁnite article and the number word ‘one’ are homonyms (ein) Wittgenstein tended to italicize ein when he meant ‘one’ as opposed to ‘a’. Anscombe preserved these italics in translation, but in English such italicization is unnecessary. Wittgenstein’s punctuation was often idiosyncratic. It is, of course, impossible to transfer into English the elaborate punctuation conven- tions of German, let alone all of Wittgenstein’s idiosyncratic additions to it. Anscombe was sparing with her use of punctuation. But Wittgenstein explicitly noted his own preference for heavy punctuation, in order to slow the reader down (MS 136, 128)5, so we have been a 5 See Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, 2nd edn (Blackwell Oxford, 1980), p. 68. Editorial Preface to the Fourth Edition xvii little more liberal in our use of commas than Anscombe. On the other hand, we have reduced his frequent use of colons before quoted sentences and replaced his colons by commas. We have respected Wittgenstein’s use of short and long dashes, but wherever possible, have avoided following a comma or semi-colon by a dash a which looks uncommonly ugly, preferring to delete one or the other. In some cases, however, we have replaced a pair of short dashes by commas. As in the German text, we have standardized his ‘dots of laziness’, but in con- formity with English convention have added one as a full stop when they occur at the end of a sentence. We have accepted his practice of using double quotation marks to begin a quotation, with single quotation marks for quotes within quotes. He also used single quota- tion marks as scare-quotes, and this too we have accepted. Wittgenstein wrote before the days of systematic and methodical dif- ferentiation of the use from the mention of a word or phrase by quo- tation marks (which became uniform in the second half of the twentieth century). His use, and lack of use, of quotation marks is not always systematic. We have for the most part abided by it, since it is usually perfectly clear. But in a couple of places it renders a passage almost unintelligible, and there we have changed it (e.g. §458, see end- note). We have by and large not followed his practice of employing both question mark and exclamation mark at the end of an interrogative sen- tence that is surprising or especially emphatic. For reasons that should be obvious from case to case, we have sometimes added italics and some- times removed italics from Anscombe’s translation. There are various quotations, references and allusions in Wittgenstein’s text. These we have attempted to identify. But, not wanting to clutter up his text with footnotes, we have relegated these identiﬁcations to the endnotes. It is there too that we have explained, where we could, the import of Wittgenstein’s occasional double-brack- eted notes to himself. Our primary use of endnotes, however, is to explain our differences with Anscombe’s translation, where they do not speak for themselves. All endnotes are indicated by a marginal asterisk adja- cent to the relevant remark or paragraph within a remark. The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen In his Preface, dated January 1945 (prior to the composition of the ﬁnal draft of the Investigations in 1945–6), Wittgenstein wrote that the book consists of the precipitate of his work over the previous sixteen years. He had returned to Cambridge, and to philosophy, in January 1929. His ﬁrst attempt to compose a book which would present his new thoughts was The Big Typescript (TS 213), a 768-page untitled type- script, with an eight-page annotated table of contents, dictated in 1933. This was based on his MSS Volumes I–X (MSS 105–114) written between 1929 and 1932. No sooner was the dictation completed than Wittgenstein started to amend it extensively, ﬁrst by manuscript addi- tions written on the typescript, and then by attempts at rewriting the material in fresh manuscripts. The ﬁrst revision (‘Umarbeitung’) is in MSS Volumes X and XI (MSS 114 and 115) written in late 1933 and early 1934. This too was unsatisfactory, and Wittgenstein immediately embarked on a second revision (the ‘Zweite Umarbeitung’) in MS 140 (known as the ‘Grosses Format’). However, after writing 39 pages of this, he abandoned it too. Thereafter, The Big Typescript was used primarily as a store from which remarks could be selected for use elsewhere. The second attempt at composing a book took place in Norway in the autumn of 1936. In the academic year of 1934–5 in Cambridge, Wittgenstein had dictated the Brown Book to Alice Ambrose and Francis Skinner. In August 1936, he travelled to Norway with the inten- tion of continuing his philosophical work in solitude in his small house in Skjolden. At the end of August, he began translating the English text of the Brown Book into German in MS 115 (Volume XI), pp. 118–292, under the title ‘Philosophische Untersuchungen, Versuch einer Umarbeitung’ (‘Philosophical Investigations, Attempted Revision’), revising it as he was going along. But in early November he gave up, The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen xix writing on page 292 of the MS volume ‘This whole “attempted revi- sion” from page 118 to here is worthless.’ He immediately began a new endeavour in MS 142 a the ﬁrst, pre- war, version of the Philosophical Investigations, which corresponds roughly to §§1–189(a) of the published book. This is a 167-page manuscript, written as consecutive paragraphed prose, with the title Philosophische Untersuchungen (Philosophical Investigations). It was compiled during two separate periods. Pages 1–76 were probably written between early November and early December 1936, after which Wittgenstein left Norway to spend Christmas with his family in Vienna. Pages 77–167 were presumably composed after his return to Skjolden between February and May 1937, when he left Skjolden for Britain. This manuscript material was typed in two instalments later in 1937, producing the 137-page typescript TS 220. Wittgenstein returned to Skjolden in mid-August 1937 and began work- ing on the continuation of TS 220. At this stage, the continuation of his reﬂections beyond §189 was intended to pursue questions in the phi- losophy of mathematics pertaining to inference, proof and calculation, and logical compulsion. So the initial discussion of following rules, which is common both to this Early Draft and to the ﬁnal version of the Investigations, was designed to support an investigation into logical and mathematical necessity. The upshot of his work on the sequel to TS 220 was the dictation in 1938 of TS 221, a typescript that corresponds, in a different arrangement (see below), to Part I of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. It was with the conjunction of TS 220 and 2211 that Wittgenstein approached the Syndics of Cambridge University Press in the late summer of 1938 with the intention of pub- lishing it in a bilingual edition under the title ‘Philosophical Remarks’. However, by October 1938, Wittgenstein was already having qualms about publication and expressing hesitation about it to the Syndics. Sometime between late 1939 and 1943, Wittgenstein revised the Early Draft. One of the typescripts of TS 220 was extensively revised by hand (TS 239).2 TS 221 was reworked, cut up and re-arranged. The subse- quently dictated typescript, TS 222, has been printed as Part I of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics. It was with these revised 1 The conjunction of the two typescripts has been published as the ‘Frühfassung’ (‘Early Draft’) in Philosophische Untersuchungen, Kritisch-genetische Edition, ed. Joachim Schulte (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 2001). 2 It has been published in the critical-genetic edition as the ‘Bearbeitete Frühfassung’ (‘Reworked Early Draft’). xx The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen typescripts that Wittgenstein again approached the Syndics of the Press in September 1943, proposing publication of a book with the title Philosophical Investigations, to be printed together with a new impres- sion of the Tractatus. The idea of juxtaposing these two texts, as he explained later in the Preface to the Investigations, had occurred to him in the course of re-reading the Tractatus together with a friend (prob- ably Nicholas Bachtin). For it seemed to him that his new philosoph- ical ideas could be seen in the right light only by contrast with his old ones. The Syndics agreed to the proposal in January 1944, but by then Wittgenstein had already moved on to something else. His next attempt was embodied in a 195-page typescript (which no longer exists as a separate typescript, but which has been reconstructed by G. H. von Wright) consisting of 300 (mis)numbered remarks (303 being the correct number) corresponding roughly to Investigations §§1–421. It was for this typescript that Wittgenstein wrote the Preface to the Investigations dated January 1945. This so called Intermediate Draft3 consists of the reworked draft of TS 220 (i.e. TS 239), cor- responding to Investigations §§1–189(a), together with eight pages from TS 221, corresponding to §§189(b)–197, followed by new material, written in 1944, that corresponds roughly to half the remarks in Investigations §§198–421. It was at this stage that Wittgenstein appar- ently abandoned the idea of a logico-mathematical sequel to the early draft of §§1–189, resolving instead to continue the remarks on follow- ing rules with the discussion of a private language, thought, imagina- tion, and so forth a in short, the material we are now familiar with from the ﬁnal version. The mathematical project was, it seems, deferred for a second book, with the subsequently proposed tentative title of ‘Beginning Mathematics’ (see MS 169, 36v). Still not satisﬁed with what he had done, Wittgenstein turned in mid- 1945 to selecting further materials for this ﬁrst volume,4 i.e. the Investigations, from his manuscript volumes MSS 115–119 and MSS 129–30, some from pre-war sources (MSS 115–17 and 119) and the rest from 1944–5 (the ﬁnal part of MS 116 and MSS 129–30). From these he dictated a typescript he entitled ‘Bemerkungen I’ (MS 228), which con- sists of 698 numbered remarks, some 400 of which he then incorporated 3 Published in the critical-genetic edition as the ‘Zwischenfassung’ (‘Intermediate Draft’). 4 See letter to Rhees 13 June 1945 (letter no. 328 in B. F. McGuinness (ed.), Wittgenstein in Cambridge b Letters and Documents 1911–51 (Blackwell, Oxford, 2008), p. 377). The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen xxi into the ﬁnal draft of the Investigations. The latter (TS 227) was prob- ably dictated in the course of the academic year 1945–6. The Interme- diate Draft had been 195 pages long; the ﬁnal typescript is 324 pages long. The ﬁnal typescript contains no remarks the manuscript sources of which post-date June 1945. But Wittgenstein made minor handwritten alterations to the typescript over the next few years. He also added the slips that were cut from typescripts or scribbled on notes, which were probably meant to be taken into account in further revisions of the text. On some he indicated their intended location. These notes, mostly printed in previous editions at the bottom of a given page5 and referred to as Randbemerkungen, are printed in this edition in boxes placed, wherever possible, in their designated location. The task of publishing the Philosophical Investigations fell to two of Wittgenstein’s three literary executors, Elizabeth Anscombe and Rush Rhees. Three typescripts of the Investigations were found among Wittgenstein’s papers after his death in April 1951. His manuscript modiﬁcations to one of the carbon copies were transcribed by various hands into the other two copies, and the original corrected copy was sent to the publisher Basil Blackwell, who produced the ﬁrst edition from it in 1953. Unfortunately, sometime after publication, the original cor- rected copy was lost. Among Wittgenstein’s papers, the editors found a typescript based on manuscript MS 144. This was a collection of 372 unnumbered remarks selected mostly from manuscripts written between May 1946 and May 1949. Anscombe and Rhees decided that this typescript was part of the same book as the 693 numbered remarks which they called ‘Part I’. Indeed, in the editorial note to their edition, they remarked that ‘If Wittgenstein had published his work himself, he would have sup- pressed a good deal of what is in the last 30 pages or so of Part I and worked what is in Part II, with further material, into its place.’ Accordingly, they published the typescript of MS 144 (TS 234) as Part II of the Philosophical Investigations. Unfortunately, that typescript, from which the text was printed, has been lost. 5 There are two exceptions. One is the boxed remark after §108, consisting of three paragraphs. In the Anscombe–Rhees editions these were incorporated in §108 as para- graphs (b)–(d). The other is the boxed remark after §133, previously printed as §133(d) without indicating that it is an added slip cut from TS 228, §140. xxii The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen There is no written evidence in Wittgenstein’s Nachlass or cor- respondence to suggest that MS 144 was intended to collect together materials that would be incorporated into the Philosophical Investiga- tions. Nor is there any indication that he intended to suppress ‘a good deal of what is in the last thirty pages or so of Part I’. One question that arises in this connection is the date when he might have made this remark to Anscombe and Rhees. G. H. von Wright, the third of Wittgenstein’s literary executors, conjectured that it was probably when they visited Wittgenstein in Dublin in December 1948.6 At that time a major part of what was collected in MS 144 had been written in much more extensive manuscript volumes (MS 137 and MS 138). But neither MS 144 nor, of course, the subsequent typescript TS 234, had been compiled. It may well have been that at this stage Wittgenstein contemplated revising the last 30 pages of his book, and intended to use some of the large amount of material that he had written since 1946 in the process. But he never carried out any such intentions, and we do not know whether he continued to intend to change the book in this radical way. What we do know is that he compiled MS 144 and dic- tated it to, or had it typed by, a typist in late June and early July 1949. It may well be that this was done at least in part in order to show his friend Norman Malcolm his current work in philosophy of psychology when he visited Malcolm at Cornell in late July 1949. We also know that when he visited Malcolm he said that if he had the money he thought he would have his book (TS 227, the typescript of the Investigations) mimeographed and distributed among his friends. He said that it was not in a completely ﬁnished state, but that he did not think that he could give the ﬁnal polish to it in his lifetime. The plan would have the merit that he could put in parentheses after a remark, expressions of dissatisfaction, like ‘This is not quite right’ or ‘This is ﬁshy’. He would like to put his book into the hands of his friends, but to take it to a publisher right then was out of the question.7 This remark, made in the late summer of 1949, certainly does not sug- gest plans for the radical rewriting and extension of the last 30 pages (approximately 170 remarks) of the book. 6 See G. H. von Wright, ‘The Troubled History of Part II of the Investigations’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 42 (1992), p. 186. He added: ‘For all I have been able to ascer- tain, Wittgenstein did not talk about his plans to the future editors of the Investigations after he had left Dublin in 1949’ (p. 187). 7 N. Malcolm, Ludwig Wittgenstein b A Memoir, 2nd edn (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1984), p. 75. The Text of the Philosophische Untersuchungen xxiii Whatever Wittgenstein’s ﬁnal intentions were, the fact is that the clos- est he ever came to completing the Philosophical Investigations is the current text consisting of §§1–693. It is, we believe, this text that should be known as Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. What has hitherto been called ‘Philosophical Investigations, Part II’ was a re- arranged set of remarks written between 1946 and 1949 dealing chieﬂy with questions in what Wittgenstein called ‘philosophy of psychology’. We have named it Philosophy of Psychology a A Fragment. This is, in effect, a reconstruction of the lost typescript 234, based on MS 144 and the printed version in the previous editions of the Investigations. Philosophische Untersuchungen Philosophical Investigations Überhaupt hat der Fortschritt das an sich, daß er viel größer ausschaut als er wirklich ist. The trouble about progress is that it always looks much greater than it really is. Nestroy Vorwort In dem Folgenden veröffentliche ich Gedanken, den Niederschlag philo- sophischer Untersuchungen, die mich in den letzten 16 Jahren beschäftigt haben. Sie betreffen viele Gegenstände: Den Begriff der Bedeutung, des Verstehens, des Satzes, der Logik, die Grundlagen der Mathematik, die Bewußtseinszustände und Anderes. Ich habe diese Gedanken alle als Bemerkungen, kurze Absätze, niedergeschrieben. Manchmal in längeren Ketten, über den gleichen Gegenstand, manchmal in raschem Wechsel von einem Gebiet zum andern überspringend. a Meine Absicht war es von Anfang, alles dies einmal in einem Buche zusammenzufassen, von dessen Form ich mir zu verschiedenen Zeiten verschiedene Vorstellungen machte. Wesentlich aber schien es mir, daß darin die Gedanken von einem Gegenstand zum andern in einer natürlichen und lückenlosen Folge fortschreiten sollten. Nach manchen mißglückten Versuchen, meine Ergebnisse zu einem solchen Ganzen zusammenzuschweißen, sah ich ein, daß mir dies nie gelingen würde. Daß das Beste, was ich schreiben konnte, immer nur philosophische Bemerkungen bleiben würden; daß meine Gedanken bald erlahmten, wenn ich versuchte, sie, gegen ihre natürliche Neigung, in einer Richtung weiterzuzwingen. —– Und dies hing freilich mit der Natur der Untersuchung selbst zusammen. Sie nämlich zwingt uns, ein weites Gedankengebiet, kreuz und quer, nach allen Richtungen hin zu durchreisen. —– Die philosophischen Bemerkungen dieses Buches sind gleichsam eine Menge von Landschaftskizzen, die auf diesen langen und verwickelten Fahrten entstanden sind. Die gleichen Punkte, oder beinahe die gleichen, wurden stets von neuem von verschiedenen Richtungen her berührt und immer neue Bilder ent- worfen. Eine Unzahl dieser war verzeichnet, oder uncharakteristisch, mit allen Mängeln eines schwachen Zeichners behaftet. Und wenn man diese ausschied, blieb eine Anzahl halbwegser übrig, die nun so angeordnet, Preface The thoughts that I publish in what follows are the precipitate of philo- sophical investigations which have occupied me for the last sixteen years. They concern many subjects: the concepts of meaning, of understand- ing, of a proposition and sentence, of logic, the foundations of math- ematics, states of consciousness, and other things. I have written down all these thoughts as remarks, short paragraphs, sometimes in longer chains about the same subject, sometimes jumping, in a sudden change, from one area to another. a Originally it was my intention to bring all this together in a book whose form I thought of differently at different times. But it seemed to me essential that in the book the thoughts should proceed from one subject to another in a natural, smooth sequence. After several unsuccessful attempts to weld my results together into such a whole, I realized that I should never succeed. The best that I could write would never be more than philosophical remarks; my thoughts soon grew feeble if I tried to force them along a single track against their natural inclination. —– And this was, of course, connected with the very nature of the investigation. For it compels us to travel criss-cross in every direction over a wide ﬁeld of thought. —– The philo- sophical remarks in this book are, as it were, a number of sketches of landscapes which were made in the course of these long and meander- ing journeys. The same or almost the same points were always being approached afresh from different directions, and new sketches made. Very many of these were badly drawn or lacking in character, marked by all the defects of a weak draughtsman. And when they were rejected, a number of half-way decent ones were left, which then had to be arranged and often 4 Vorwort oftmals beschnitten, werden mußten, daß sie dem Betrachter ein Bild der Landschaft geben konnten. a So ist also dieses Buch eigentlich nur ein Album. Ich hatte bis vor Kurzem den Gedanken an eine Veröffentlichung meiner Arbeit bei meinen Lebzeiten eigentlich aufgegeben. Er wurde allerdings von Zeit zu Zeit rege gemacht, und zwar hauptsächlich dadurch, daß ich erfahren mußte, daß meine Ergebnisse, die ich in Vorlesungen, Skripten und Diskussionen weitergegeben hatte, vielfach mißverstanden, mehr oder weniger verwässert oder verstümmelt im Umlauf waren. Hierdurch wurde meine Eitelkeit aufgestachelt und ich hatte Mühe, sie zu beruhigen. Vor vier Jahren aber hatte ich Veranlassung, mein erstes Buch (die “Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung”) wieder zu lesen und seine Gedanken zu erklären. Da schien es mir plötzlich, daß ich jene alten Gedanken und die neuen zusammen veröffentlichen sollte: daß diese nur durch den Gegensatz und auf dem Hintergrund meiner ältern Denkweise ihre rechte Beleuchtung erhalten könnten. Seit ich nämlich vor 16 Jahren mich wieder mit Philosophie zu beschäftigen anﬁng, mußte ich schwere Irrtümer in dem erkennen, was ich in jenem ersten Buche niedergelegt hatte. Diese Irrtümer einzusehen, hat mir a in einem Maße, das ich kaum selbst zu beurteilen vermag a die Kritik geholfen, die meine Ideen durch Frank Ramsey erfahren haben, a mit welchem ich sie während der zwei letzten Jahre seines Lebens in zahllosen Gesprächen erörtert habe. a Mehr noch als dieser a stets kraftvollen und sichern a Kritik verdanke ich derjenigen, die ein Lehrer dieser Universität, Herr P. Sraffa durch viele Jahre unablässig an meinen Gedanken geübt hat. Diesem Ansporn verdanke ich die folgereichsten der Ideen dieser Schrift. Aus mehr als einem Grunde wird, was ich hier veröffentliche, sich mit dem berühren, was Andre heute schreiben. a Tragen meine Bemerkungen keinen Stempel an sich, der sie als die meinen kennzeichnet, so will ich sie auch weiter nicht als mein Eigentum beanspruchen. Ich übergebe sie mit zweifelhaften Gefühlen der Öffentlichkeit. Daß es dieser Arbeit in ihrer Dürftigkeit und der Finsternis dieser Zeit beschieden sein sollte, Licht in ein oder das andere Gehirn zu werfen, ist nicht unmöglich; aber freilich nicht wahrscheinlich. Ich möchte nicht mit meiner Schrift Andern das Denken ersparen. Sondern, wenn es möglich wäre, jemand zu eigenen Gedanken anregen. Ich hätte gerne ein gutes Buch hervorgebracht. Es ist nicht so ausgefallen; aber die Zeit ist vorbei, in der es von mir verbessert werden könnte. Cambridge, im Januar 1945. Preface 4e cut down, in order to give the viewer an idea of the landscape. So this book is really just an album. Until recently I had really given up the idea of publishing my work in my lifetime. All the same, it was revived from time to time, mainly because I could not help noticing that the results of my work (which I had conveyed in lectures, typescripts and discussions), were in \|x\| cir- culation, frequently misunderstood and more or less watered down or mangled. This stung my vanity, and I had difﬁculty in quieting it. Four years ago, however, I had occasion to reread my ﬁrst book (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) and to explain its ideas. Then it suddenly seemed to me that I should publish those old ideas and the new ones together: that the latter could be seen in the right light only by contrast with and against the background of my older way of thinking. For since I began to occupy myself with philosophy again, sixteen years ago, I could not but recognize grave mistakes in what I set out in that ﬁrst book. I was helped to realize these mistakes a to a degree which I myself am hardly able to estimate a by the criticism which my ideas encountered from Frank Ramsey, with whom I discussed them in innumerable conversations during the last two years of his life. a Even more than to this a always powerful and assured a criticism, I am indebted to that which a teacher of this university, Mr P. Sraffa, for many years unceasingly applied to my thoughts. It is to this stimulus that I owe the most fruitful ideas of this book. For more than one reason, what I publish here will have points of contact with what other people are writing today. a If my remarks do not bear a stamp which marks them as mine, then I do not wish to lay any further claim to them as my property. I make them public with misgivings. It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work, in its poverty and in the darkness of this time, to bring light into one brain or another a but, of course, it is not likely. I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of think- ing. But if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own. I should have liked to produce a good book. It has not turned out that way, but the time is past in which I could improve it. Cambridge, January 1945. 1. Augustinus, in den Confessionen I/8: cum ipsi (majores homines) appellabant rem aliquam, et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad ali- quid movebant, videbam, et tenebam hoc ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu cor- poris aperiebatur: tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae ﬁunt vultu et nutu oculorum, ceterorumque membrorum actu, et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, rejiciendis, fugien- disve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita, et crebro audita, quarum rerum signa essent, paulatim colligebam, measque jam volun- tates, edomito in eis signis ore, per haec enuntiabam.1 In diesen Worten erhalten wir, so scheint es mir, ein bestimmtes Bild von dem Wesen der menschlichen Sprache. Nämlich dieses: Die Wörter der Sprache benennen Gegenstände a Sätze sind Verbindungen von solchen Benennungen. —– In diesem Bild von der Sprache ﬁnden wir die Wurzeln der Idee: Jedes Wort hat eine Bedeutung. Diese Bedeutung ist dem Wort zugeordnet. Sie ist der Gegenstand, für welchen das Wort steht. Von einem Unterschied der Wortarten spricht Augustinus nicht. Wer das Lernen der Sprache so beschreibt, denkt, so möchte ich glauben, zunächst an Hauptwörter, wie “Tisch”, “Stuhl”, “Brot”, und die Namen von Personen, erst in zweiter Linie an die Namen gewisser Tätigkeiten und Eigenschaften, und an die übrigen Wortarten als etwas, was sich ﬁnden wird. Denke nun an diese Verwendung der Sprache: Ich schicke jemand einkaufen. Ich gebe ihm einen Zettel, auf diesem stehen die Zeichen: “fünf rote Äpfel”. Er trägt den Zettel zum Kaufmann; der öffnet die 1 Nannten die Erwachsenen irgend einen Gegenstand und wandten sie sich dabei ihm zu, so nahm ich das wahr und ich begriff, daß der Gegenstand durch die Laute, die sie aussprachen, bezeichnet wurde, da sie auf ihn hinweisen wollten. Dies aber entnahm ich aus ihren Gebärden, der natürlichen Sprache aller Völker, der Sprache, die durch Mienen- und Augenspiel, durch die Bewegungen der Glieder und den Klang der Stimme die Empﬁndungen der Seele anzeigt, wenn diese irgend etwas begehrt, oder festhält, oder zurückweist, oder ﬂieht. So lernte ich nach und nach verstehen, welche Dinge die Wörter bezeichneten, die ich wieder und wieder, an ihren bestimmten Stellen in verschiedenen Sätzen, aussprechen hörte. Und ich brachte, als nun mein Mund sich an diese Zeichen gewöhnt hatte, durch sie meine Wünsche zum Ausdruck. 1. Cum ipsi (majores homines) appellabant rem aliquam, et cum secundum eam vocem corpus ad aliquid movebant, videbam, et tenebam hoc ab eis vocari rem illam, quod sonabant, cum eam vellent ostendere. Hoc autem eos velle ex motu corporis aperiebatur: tamquam verbis naturalibus omnium gentium, quae ﬁunt vultu et nutu oculorum, ceterorumque membrorum actu, et sonitu vocis indicante affectionem animi in petendis, habendis, rejiciendis, fugiendisve rebus. Ita verba in variis sententiis locis suis posita, et crebro audita, quarum rerum signa essent, paulatim colligebam, measque jam voluntates, edomito in eis signis ore, per haec enuntiabam. (Augustine, Con- fessions, I. 8.)1 These words, it seems to me, give us a particular picture of the essence of human language. It is this: the words in language name objects a sentences are combinations of such names. —– In this picture of lan- guage we ﬁnd the roots of the following idea: Every word has a mean- ing. This meaning is correlated with the word. It is the object for which the word stands. Augustine does not mention any difference between kinds of word. Someone who describes the learning of language in this way is, I believe, thinking primarily of nouns like “table”, “chair”, “bread”, and of people’s names, and only secondarily of the names of certain actions and properties; and of the remaining kinds of word as something that will take care of itself. Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shop- ping. I give him a slip of paper marked “ﬁve red apples”. He takes the slip to \|3\| the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer marked “apples”; then * * 1 When grown-ups named some object and at the same time turned towards it, I perceived this, and I grasped that the thing was signiﬁed by the sound they uttered, since they meant to point it out. This, how- ever, I gathered from their gestures, the natural language of all peoples, the language that by means of facial expression and the play of eyes, of the movements of the limbs and the tone of voice, indicates the affec- tions of the soul when it desires, or clings to, or rejects, or recoils from, something. In this way, little by little, I learnt to understand what things the words, which I heard uttered in their respective places in various sentences, signiﬁed. And once I got my tongue around these signs, I used them to express my wishes. 6 Philosophische Untersuchungen Lade, auf welcher das Zeichen “Äpfel” steht; dann sucht er in einer Tabelle das Wort “rot” auf und ﬁndet ihm gegenüber ein Farbmuster; nun sagt er die Reihe der Grundzahlwörter a ich nehme an, er weiß sie auswendig a bis zum Worte “fünf” und bei jedem Zahlwort nimmt er einen Apfel aus der Lade, der die Farbe des Musters hat. —– So, und ähnlich, operiert man mit Worten. —– “Wie weiß er aber, wo und wie er das Wort ‘rot’ nachschlagen soll und was er mit dem Wort ‘fünf’ anzufangen hat?” —– Nun, ich nehme an, er handelt, wie ich es beschrieben habe. Die Erklärungen haben irgendwo ein Ende. a Was ist aber die Bedeutung des Wortes “fünf”? a Von einer solchen war hier gar nicht die Rede; nur davon, wie das Wort “fünf” gebraucht wird. 2. Jener philosophische Begriff der Bedeutung ist in einer primitiven Vorstellung von der Art und Weise, wie die Sprache funktioniert, zu Hause. Man kann aber auch sagen, es sei die Vorstellung einer primi- tiveren Sprache, als der unsern. Denken wir uns eine Sprache, für die die Beschreibung, wie Augustinus sie gegeben hat, stimmt: Die Sprache soll der Verständigung eines Bauenden A mit einem Gehilfen B dienen. A führt einen Bau auf aus Bausteinen; es sind Würfel, Säulen, Platten und Balken vorhanden. B hat ihm die Bausteine zuzureichen, und zwar nach der Reihe, wie A sie braucht. Zu dem Zweck bedienen sie sich einer Sprache, bestehend aus den Wörtern: “Würfel”, “Säule”, “Platte”, “Balken”. A ruft sie aus; a B bringt den Stein, den er gelernt hat, auf diesen Ruf zu bringen. —– Fasse dies als vollständige primitive Sprache auf. 3. Augustinus beschreibt, könnten wir sagen, ein System der Verstän- digung; nur ist nicht alles, was wir Sprache nennen, dieses System. Und das muß man in so manchen Fällen sagen, wo sich die Frage erhebt: “Ist diese Darstellung brauchbar, oder unbrauchbar?” Die Antwort ist dann: “Ja, brauchbar; aber nur für dieses eng umschriebene Gebiet, nicht für das Ganze, das du darzustellen vorgabst.” Es ist, als erklärte jemand: “Spielen besteht darin, daß man Dinge, gewissen Regeln gemäß, auf einer Fläche verschiebt . . .” a und wir ihm antworten: Du scheinst an die Brettspiele zu denken; aber das sind nicht alle Spiele. Du kannst deine Erklärung richtigstellen, indem du sie ausdrücklich auf diese Spiele einschränkst. 4. Denk dir eine Schrift, in welcher Buchstaben zur Bezeichnung von Lauten benützt würden, aber auch zur Bezeichnung der Betonung und als Interpunktionszeichen. (Eine Schrift kann man auffassen als eine Sprache zur Beschreibung von Lautbildern.) Denk dir nun, daß Einer Philosophical Investigations 6e he looks up the word “red” in a chart and ﬁnds a colour sample next to it; then he says the series of elementary number-words a I assume that he knows them by heart a up to the word “ﬁve”, and for each number-word he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample out of the drawer. —– It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words. —– “But how does he know where and how he is to look up the word ‘red’ and what he is to do with the word ‘ﬁve’?” —– Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. a But what is the meaning of the word “ﬁve”? a No such thing was in question here, only how the word “ﬁve” is used. 2. That philosophical notion of meaning is at home in a primitive idea of the way language functions. But one might instead say that it is the idea of a language more primitive than ours. Let us imagine a language for which the description given by Augustine is right: the language is meant to serve for communication between a builder A and an assistant B. A is building with building stones: there are blocks, pillars, slabs and beams. B has to pass him the stones and to do so in the order in which A needs them. For this purpose they make use of a language consisting of the words “block”, “pillar”, “slab”, “beam”. A calls them out; B brings the stone which he has learnt to bring at such-and-such a call. —– Conceive of this as a complete prim- itive language. 3. Augustine, we might say, does describe a system of communication; only not everything that we call language is this system. And one has to say this in several cases where the question arises “Will that descrip- tion do or not?” The answer is: “Yes, it will, but only for this narrowly circumscribed area, not for the whole of what you were purporting to describe.” It is as if someone were to say, “Playing a game consists in moving objects about on a surface according to certain rules . . .” a and we replied: You seem to be thinking of board-games, but they are not all the games there are. You can rectify your explanation by expressly restrict- ing it to those games. 4. Imagine a script in which letters were used for sounds, but also for signs of emphasis and punctuation. (A script can be conceived as a lan- guage for describing sound-patterns.) Now imagine someone constru- ing that script as if there were just a \|4\| correspondence of letters to 7 Philosophische Untersuchungen jene Schrift so verstünde, als entspräche einfach jedem Buchstaben ein Laut und als hätten die Buchstaben nicht auch ganz andere Funktionen. So einer, zu einfachen, Auffassung der Schrift gleicht Augustinus’ Auffassung der Sprache. 5. Wenn man das Beispiel im §1 betrachtet, so ahnt man vielleicht, inwiefern der allgemeine Begriff der Bedeutung der Worte das Funk- tionieren der Sprache mit einem Dunst umgibt, der das klare Sehen unmöglich macht. a Es zerstreut den Nebel, wenn wir die Erscheinun- gen der Sprache an primitiven Arten ihrer Verwendung studieren, in denen man den Zweck und das Funktionieren der Wörter klar übersehen kann. Solche primitive Formen der Sprache verwendet das Kind, wenn es sprechen lernt. Das Lehren der Sprache ist hier kein Erklären, sondern ein Abrichten. 6. Wir könnten uns vorstellen, daß die Sprache im §2 die ganze Sprache des A und B ist; ja, die ganze Sprache eines Volksstamms. Die Kinder werden dazu erzogen, diese Tätigkeiten zu verrichten, diese Wörter dabei zu gebrauchen, und so auf die Worte des Anderen zu reagieren. Ein wichtiger Teil der Abrichtung wird darin bestehen, daß der Lehrende auf die Gegenstände weist, die Aufmerksamkeit des Kindes auf sie lenkt, und dabei ein Wort ausspricht; z. B. das Wort “Platte” beim Vorzeigen dieser Form. (Dies will ich nicht “hinweisende Erklärung”, oder “Deﬁnition”, nennen, weil ja das Kind noch nicht nach der Benennung fragen kann. Ich will es “hinweisendes Lehren der Wörter” nennen. —– Ich sage, es wird einen wichtigen Teil der Abrichtung bilden, weil es bei Menschen so der Fall ist; nicht, weil es sich nicht anders vorstellen ließe.) Dieses hinweisende Lehren der Wörter, kann man sagen, schlägt eine assoziative Verbindung zwischen dem Wort und dem Ding. Aber was heißt das? Nun, es kann Verschiedenes heißen; aber man denkt wohl zunächst daran, daß dem Kind das Bild des Dings vor die Seele tritt, wenn es das Wort hört. Aber wenn das nun geschieht, a ist das der Zweck des Worts? a Ja, es kann der Zweck sein. a Ich kann mir eine solche Verwendung von Wörtern (Lautreihen) denken. (Das Aussprechen eines Wortes ist gleichsam ein Anschlagen einer Taste auf dem Vorstellungsklavier.) Aber in der Sprache im §2 ist es nicht der Zweck der Wörter, Vorstellungen zu erwecken. (Es kann freilich auch gefun- den werden, daß dies dem eigentlichen Zweck förderlich ist.) Wenn aber das das hinweisende Lehren bewirkt, a soll ich sagen, es bewirkt das Verstehen des Worts? Versteht nicht der den Ruf “Platte!”, der so und so nach ihm handelt? a Aber dies half wohl das hinweisende Philosophical Investigations 7e sounds and as if the letters did not also have completely different func- tions. Augustine’s conception of language is like such an over-simple conception of the script. 5. If one looks at the example in §1, one can perhaps get an idea of how much the general concept of the meaning of a word surrounds the working of language with a haze which makes clear vision impossible. a It disperses the fog if we study the phenomena of language in prim- itive kinds of use in which one can clearly survey the purpose and func- tioning of the words. A child uses such primitive forms of language when he learns to talk. Here the teaching of language is not explaining, but training. 6. We could imagine that the language of §2 was the whole language of A and B, even the whole language of a tribe. The children are brought up to perform these actions, to use these words as they do so, and to react in this way to the words of others. An important part of the training will consist in the teacher’s point- ing to the objects, directing the child’s attention to them, and at the same time uttering a word; for instance, the word “slab” as he displays that shape. (I do not want to call this “ostensive explanation” or “deﬁnition”, because the child cannot as yet ask what the name is. I’ll call it “ostensive teaching of words”. —– I say that it will form an impor- tant part of the training, because it is so with human beings; not because it could not be imagined otherwise.) This ostensive teaching of words can be said to establish an associative connection between word and thing. But what does this mean? Well, it may mean various things; but one very likely thinks ﬁrst of all that a picture of the object comes before the child’s mind when it hears the word. But now, if this does happen a is it the purpose of the word? a Yes, it may be the purpose. a I can imagine such a use of words (of sequences of sounds). (Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination.) But in the language of §2 it is not the purpose of the words to evoke images. (It may, of course, be discovered that it helps to attain the actual purpose.) But if this is the effect of the ostensive teaching, am I to say that it effects an understanding of the word? Doesn’t someone who acts on the call “Slab!” in such-and-such a way understand it? a No doubt it 8 Philosophische Untersuchungen Lehren herbeiführen; aber doch nur zusammen mit einem bestimmten Unterricht. Mit einem anderen Unterricht hätte dasselbe hinweisende Lehren dieser Wörter ein ganz anderes Verständnis bewirkt. “Indem ich die Stange mit dem Hebel verbinde, setze ich die Bremse instand.” a Ja, gegeben den ganzen übrigen Mechanismus. Nur mit diesem ist er der Bremshebel; und losgelöst von seiner Unterstützung ist er nicht einmal Hebel, sondern kann alles Mögliche sein, oder nichts. 7. In der Praxis des Gebrauchs der Sprache (2) ruft der eine Teil die Wörter, der andere handelt nach ihnen; im Unterricht der Sprache aber wird sich dieser Vorgang ﬁnden: Der Lernende benennt die Gegenstände. D. h. er spricht das Wort, wenn der Lehrer auf den Stein zeigt. a Ja, es wird sich hier die noch einfachere Übung ﬁnden: der Schüler spricht die Worte nach, die der Lehrer ihm vorsagt —– beides sprachähnliche Vorgänge. Wir können uns auch denken, daß der ganze Vorgang des Gebrauchs der Worte in (2) eines jener Spiele ist, mittels welcher Kinder ihre Muttersprache erlernen. Ich will diese Spiele “Sprachspiele” nennen, und von einer primitiven Sprache manchmal als einem Sprachspiel reden. Und man könnte die Vorgänge des Benennens der Steine und des Nachsprechens des vorgesagten Wortes auch Sprachspiele nennen. Denke an manchen Gebrauch, der von Worten in Reigenspielen gemacht wird. Ich werde auch das Ganze: der Sprache und der Tätigkeiten, mit denen sie verwoben ist, das “Sprachspiel” nennen. 8. Sehen wir eine Erweiterung der Sprache (2) an. Außer den vier Wörtern “Würfel”, “Säule”, etc. enthalte sie eine Wörterreihe, die verwendet wird, wie der Kaufmann in (1) die Zahlwörter verwendet (es kann die Reihe der Buchstaben des Alphabets sein); ferner, zwei Wörter, sie mögen “dorthin” und “dieses” lauten (weil dies schon ungefähr ihren Zweck andeutet), sie werden in Verbindung mit einer zeigenden Handbewegung gebraucht; und endlich eine Anzahl von Farbmustern. A gibt einen Befehl von der Art: “d-Platte-dorthin”. Dabei läßt er den Gehilfen ein Farbmuster sehen, und beim Worte “dorthin” zeigt er an eine Stelle des Bauplatzes. B nimmt von dem Vorrat der Platten je eine von der Farbe des Musters für jeden Buchstaben des Alphabets bis zum “d” und bringt sie an den Ort, den A bezeichnet. a Bei anderen Gelegenheiten gibt A den Befehl: “dieses-dorthin”. Bei “dieses” zeigt er auf einen Baustein. U. s. w. Philosophical Investigations 8e was the ostensive teaching that helped to bring this about; but only together with a particular \|5\| kind of instruction. With different instruc- tion the same ostensive teaching of these words would have effected a quite different understanding. “I set the brake up by connecting up rod and lever.” a Yes, given the whole of the rest of the mechanism. Only in conjunction with that is it a brake-lever, and separated from its support it is not even a lever; it may be anything, or nothing. 7. In the practice of the use of language (2) one party calls out the words, the other acts on them. However, in instruction in the language the fol- lowing process will occur: the learner names the objects; that is, he utters the word when the teacher points at the stone. a Indeed, there will be an even simpler exercise: the pupil repeats the words after the teacher —– both of these being speech-like processes. We can also think of the whole process of using words in (2) as one of those games by means of which children learn their native language. I will call these games “language-games” and will sometimes speak of a primitive language as a language-game. And the processes of naming the stones and of repeating words after someone might also be called language-games. Think of certain uses that are made of words in games like ring-a-ring-a-roses. I shall also call the whole, consisting of language and the activities into which it is woven, a “language-game”. 8. Let us now look at an expansion of language (2). Besides the four words “block”, “pillar”, etc., let it contain a sequence of words used as the shopkeeper in (1) uses number-words (it may be the series of let- ters of the alphabet); further, let it contain two words which may as well be “there” and “this” (because that roughly indicates their pur- pose), which are used in connection with a pointing gesture; and ﬁnally a number of colour samples. A gives an order like “d–slab–there”. At the same time he shows the assistant a colour sample, and when he utters the word “there” he points to a place on the building site. From the stock of slabs, B takes one for each letter of the alphabet up to “d”, of the same colour as the sample, and brings them to the place A indi- cates. a On other occasions A gives the order “this-there”. At “this” he points at a building stone. And so on. 9 Philosophische Untersuchungen 9. Wenn das Kind diese Sprache lernt, muß es die Reihe der ‘Zahlwörter’ a, b, c, . . . auswendiglernen. Und es muß ihren Gebrauch lernen. a Wird in diesem Unterricht auch ein hinweisendes Lehren der Wörter vorkommen? a Nun, es wird z. B. auf Platten gewiesen und gezählt werden: “a, b, c Platten”. a Mehr Ähnlichkeit mit dem hinweisenden Lehren der Wörter “Würfel”, “Säule”, etc. hätte das hinweisende Lehren von Zahlwörtern, die nicht zum Zählen dienen, sondern zur Bezeichnung mit dem Auge erfaßbarer Gruppen von Dingen. So lernen ja Kinder den Gebrauch der ersten fünf oder sechs Grundzahlwörter. Wird auch “dorthin” und “dieses” hinweisend gelehrt? a Stell dir vor, wie man ihren Gebrauch etwa lehren könnte! Es wird dabei auf Örter und Dinge gezeigt werden, a aber hier geschieht ja dieses Zeigen auch im Gebrauch der Wörter und nicht nur beim Lernen des Gebrauchs. a 10. Was bezeichnen nun die Wörter dieser Sprache? a Was sie be- zeichnen, wie soll sich das zeigen, es sei denn in der Art ihres Gebrauchs? Und den haben wir ja beschrieben. Der Ausdruck “dieses Wort be- zeichnet das” müßte also ein Teil dieser Beschreibung werden. Oder: die Beschreibung soll auf die Form gebracht werden “Das Wort . . . bezeichnet . . .”. Nun, man kann ja die Beschreibung des Gebrauchs des Wortes “Platte” dahin abkürzen, daß man sagt, dieses Wort bezeichne diesen Gegenstand. Das wird man tun, wenn es sich z. B. nurmehr darum han- delt, das Mißverständnis zu beseitigen, das Wort “Platte” beziehe sich auf die Bausteinform, die wir tatsächlich “Würfel” nennen, a die Art und Weise dieses ‘Bezugs’ aber, d. h. der Gebrauch dieser Worte im übri- gen, bekannt ist. Und ebenso kann man sagen, die Zeichen “a”, “b”, etc. bezeichnen Zahlen; wenn dies etwa das Mißverständnis behebt, “a”, “b”, “c”, spiel- ten in der Sprache die Rolle, die in Wirklichkeit “Würfel”, “Platte”, “Säule”, spielen. Und man kann auch sagen, “c” bezeichne diese Zahl und nicht jene; wenn damit etwa erklärt wird, die Buchstaben seien in der Reihenfolge a, b, c, d, etc. zu verwenden und nicht in der: a, b, d, c. Aber dadurch, daß man so die Beschreibungen des Gebrauchs der Wörter einander anähnelt, kann doch dieser Gebrauch nicht ähnlicher werden! Denn, wie wir sehen, ist er ganz und gar ungleichartig. 11. Denk an die Werkzeuge in einem Werkzeugkasten: es ist da ein Hammer, eine Zange, eine Säge, ein Schraubenzieher, ein Maßstab, ein Leimtopf, Leim, Nägel und Schrauben. a So verschieden die Funktionen dieser Gegenstände, so verschieden sind die Funktionen der Wörter. (Und es gibt Ähnlichkeiten hier und dort.) Philosophical Investigations 9e 9. When a child learns this language, he has to learn the series of number-words a, b, c, . . . by heart. And he has to learn their use. a Will this training include ostensive teaching of the words? a Well, people \|6\| will, for example, point to slabs and count: “a, b, c slabs”. a Something more like the ostensive teaching of the words “block”, “pillar”, etc. would be the ostensive teaching of number-words that serve not to count but to signify groups of objects that can be taken in at a glance. Children do learn the use of the ﬁrst ﬁve or six elementary number-words in this way. Are “there” and “this” also taught ostensively? a Imagine how one might perhaps teach their use. One will point at places and things, but in this case the pointing occurs in the use of the words too and not merely in learning the use. a 10. Now what do the words of this language signify? a How is what they signify supposed to come out other than in the kind of use they have? And we have already described that. So the expression “This word signiﬁes that” would have to become a part of our description. In other words, the description ought to take the form: “The word . . . signiﬁes . . .” Well, one can abbreviate the description of the use of the word “slab” by saying that this word signiﬁes this object. This will be done if, for example, it is merely a matter of removing the misunderstanding that the word “slab” refers to the building stone that we in fact call “block” a but the kind of ‘referring’ this is, that is to say, the rest of the use of these words, is already known. Equally one may say that the signs “a”, “b”, etc. signify numbers: when, for example, this removes the misunderstanding that “a”, “b”, “c” play the part actually played in the language by “block”, “slab”, “pillar”. And one may also say that “c” signiﬁes this number and not that one; if, for example, this serves to explain that the letters are to be used in the order a, b, c, d, etc., and not in the order a, b, d, c. But making the descriptions of the uses of these words similar in this way cannot make the uses themselves any more like one another! For, as we see, they are absolutely unlike. 11. Think of the tools in a toolbox: there is a hammer, pliers, a saw, a screwdriver, a rule, a glue-pot, glue, nails and screws. a The functions of words are as diverse as the functions of these objects. (And in both cases there are similarities.) 10 Philosophische Untersuchungen Freilich, was uns verwirrt ist die Gleichförmigkeit ihrer Erscheinung, wenn die Wörter uns gesprochen, oder in der Schrift und im Druck ent- gegentreten. Denn ihre Verwendung steht nicht so deutlich vor uns. Besonders nicht, wenn wir philosophieren! 12. Wie wenn wir in den Führerstand einer Lokomotive schauen: da sind Handgriffe, die alle mehr oder weniger gleich aussehen. (Das ist begreiﬂich, denn sie sollen alle mit der Hand angefaßt werden.) Aber einer ist der Handgriff einer Kurbel, die kontinuierlich verstellt werden kann (sie reguliert die Öffnung eines Ventils); ein andrer ist der Handgriff eines Schalters, der nur zweierlei wirksame Stellungen hat, er ist entweder umgelegt, oder aufgestellt; ein dritter ist der Griff eines Bremshebels, je stärker man zieht, desto stärker wird gebremst; ein vierter, der Handgriff einer Pumpe; er wirkt nur, solange er hin und her bewegt wird. 13. Wenn wir sagen: “jedes Wort der Sprache bezeichnet etwas”, so ist damit vorerst noch gar nichts gesagt; es sei denn, daß wir genau er- klärten, welche Unterscheidung wir zu machen wünschen. (Es könnte ja sein, daß wir die Wörter der Sprache (8) von Wörtern ‘ohne Bedeutung’ unterscheiden wollten, wie sie in Gedichten Lewis Carroll’s vorkommen, oder von Worten wie “juwiwallera” in einem Lied.) 14. Denke dir, jemand sagte: “Alle Werkzeuge dienen dazu, etwas zu modiﬁzieren. So, der Hammer die Lage des Nagels, die Säge die Form des Bretts, etc.” a Und was modiﬁziert der Maßstab, der Leimtopf, die Nägel? a “Unser Wissen um die Länge eines Dings, die Temperatur des Leims, und die Festigkeit der Kiste.” —– Wäre mit dieser Assimilation des Ausdrucks etwas gewonnen? a 15. Am direktesten ist das Wort “bezeichnen” vielleicht da angewandt, wo das Zeichen auf dem Gegenstand steht, den es bezeichnet. Nimm an, die Werkzeuge, die A beim Bauen benützt, tragen gewisse Zeichen. Zeigt A dem Gehilfen ein solches Zeichen, so bringt dieser das Werkzeug, das mit dem Zeichen versehen ist. So, und auf mehr oder weniger ähnliche Weise, bezeichnet ein Name ein Ding, und wird ein Name einem Ding gegeben. a Es wird sich oft nützlich erweisen, wenn wir uns beim Philosophieren sagen: Etwas benen- nen, das ist etwas Ähnliches, wie einem Ding ein Namentäfelchen anheften. 16. Wie ist es mit den Farbmustern, die A dem B zeigt, a gehören sie zur Sprache? Nun, wie man will. Zur Wortsprache gehören sie nicht; Philosophical Investigations 10e Of course, what confuses us is the uniform appearance of words when we hear them in speech, or see them written or in print. For their use is not that obvious. Especially when we are doing philosophy! \|7\| 12. It is like looking into the cabin of a locomotive. There are handles there, all looking more or less alike. (This stands to reason, since they are all supposed to be handled.) But one is the handle of a crank, which can be moved continuously (it regulates the opening of a valve); another is the handle of a switch, which has only two opera- tive positions: it is either off or on; a third is the handle of a brake- lever, the harder one pulls on it, the harder the braking; a fourth, the handle of a pump: it has an effect only so long as it is moved to and fro. 13. If we say, “Every word in the language signiﬁes something”, we have so far said nothing whatever; unless we explain exactly what dis- tinction we wish to make. (It might be, of course, that we wanted to distinguish the words of language (8) from words ‘without meaning’ such as occur in Lewis Carroll’s poems, or words like “Tra-la-la” in a song.) 14. Suppose someone said, “All tools serve to modify something. So, a hammer modiﬁes the position of a nail, a saw the shape of a board, and so on.” a And what is modiﬁed by a rule, a glue-pot and nails? a “Our knowledge of a thing’s length, the temperature of the glue, and the solidity of a box.” —– Would anything be gained by this assimila- tion of expressions? a 15. The word “signify” is perhaps most straightforwardly applied when the name is actually a mark on the object signiﬁed. Suppose that the tools A uses in building bear certain marks. When A shows his assistant such a mark, the assistant brings the tool that has that mark on it. In this way, and in more or less similar ways, a name signiﬁes a thing, and is given to a thing. a When philosophizing, it will often prove use- ful to say to ourselves: naming something is rather like attaching a name tag to a thing. 16. What about the colour samples that A shows to B: are they part of the language? Well, it is as you please. They do not belong to * 11 Philosophische Untersuchungen aber wenn ich jemandem sage: “Sprich das Wort ‘das’ aus”, so wirst du doch dieses zweite “‘das’” auch noch zum Satz rechnen. Und doch spielt es eine ganz ähnliche Rolle, wie ein Farbmuster im Sprachspiel (8); es ist nämlich ein Muster dessen, was der Andre sagen soll. Es ist das Natürlichste, und richtet am wenigsten Verwirrung an, wenn wir die Muster zu den Werkzeugen der Sprache rechnen. ((Bemerkung über das reﬂexive Fürwort “dieser Satz”.)) 17. Wir werden sagen können: in der Sprache (8) haben wir ver- schiedene Wortarten. Denn die Funktion des Wortes “Platte” und des Wortes “Würfel” sind einander ähnlicher, als die von “Platte” und von “d”. Wie wir aber die Worte nach Arten zusammenfassen, wird vom Zweck der Einteilung abhängen, a und von unserer Neigung. Denke an die verschiedenen Gesichtspunkte, nach denen man Werkzeuge in Werkzeugarten einteilen kann. Oder Schachﬁguren in Figurenarten. 18. Daß die Sprachen (2) und (8) nur aus Befehlen bestehen, laß dich nicht stören. Willst du sagen, sie seien darum nicht vollständig, so frage dich, ob unsere Sprache vollständig ist; a ob sie es war, ehe ihr der chemische Symbolismus und die Inﬁnitesimalnotation einverleibt wur- den; denn dies sind, sozusagen, Vorstädte unserer Sprache. (Und mit wieviel Häusern, oder Straßen, fängt eine Stadt an, Stadt zu sein?) Unsere Sprache kann man ansehen als eine alte Stadt: Ein Gewinkel von Gäßchen und Plätzen, alten und neuen Häusern, und Häusern mit Zubauten aus verschiedenen Zeiten; und dies umgeben von einer Menge neuer Vororte mit geraden und regelmäßigen Straßen und mit einförmigen Häusern. 19. Man kann sich leicht eine Sprache vorstellen, die nur aus Befehlen und Meldungen in der Schlacht besteht. a Oder eine Sprache, die nur aus Fragen besteht und einem Ausdruck der Bejahung und der Verneinung. Und unzähliges Andere. —– Und eine Sprache vorstellen heißt, sich eine Lebensform vorstellen. Wie ist es aber: Ist der Ruf “Platte!” im Beispiel (2) ein Satz oder ein Wort? a Wenn ein Wort, so hat es doch nicht dieselbe Bedeutung, wie das gleichlautende unserer gewöhnlichen Sprache, denn im §2 ist es ja ein Ruf. Wenn aber ein Satz, so ist es doch nicht der elliptische Satz “Platte!” unserer Sprache. —– Was die erste Frage anbelangt, so kannst du “Platte!” ein Wort, und auch einen Satz nennen; vielleicht treffend einen ‘degenerierten Satz’ (wie man von einer degenerierten Hyperbel Philosophical Investigations 11e spoken language; yet when I say to someone, “Pronounce the word ‘the’”, you will also count the second “‘the’” as part of the sentence. Yet it has a role just like that of a colour sample in language-game (8); that is, it is a sample of what the other is meant to say. It is most natural, and causes least confusion, if we count the sam- ples as tools of the language. ((Remark on the reﬂexive pronoun “this proposition”.)) \|8\| 17. We could say: In language (8) we have different kinds of word. For the functions of the word “slab” and the word “block” are more alike than those of “slab” and “d”. But how we group words into kinds will depend on the aim of the classiﬁcation a and on our own inclination. Think of the different points of view according to which one can classify tools into kinds of tools. Or chess pieces into kinds of chess pieces. 18. Don’t let it bother you that languages (2) and (8) consist only of orders. If you want to say that they are therefore incomplete, ask your- self whether our own language is complete a whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the inﬁnitesimal cal- culus were incorporated in to it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this sur- rounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular streets and uniform houses. 19. It is easy to imagine a language consisting only of orders and reports in battle. a Or a language consisting only of questions and expressions for answering Yes and No a and countless other things. —– And to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life. But what about this: is the call “Slab!” in example (2) a sentence or a word? a If a word, surely it has not the same meaning as the like- sounding word of our ordinary language, for in §2 it is a call. But if a sentence, it is surely not the elliptical sentence “Slab!” of our language. —– As far as the ﬁrst question goes, you can call “Slab!” a word and also a sentence; perhaps it could aptly be called a ‘degenerate sentence’ (as one speaks of a degenerate hyperbola); in fact it is our ‘elliptical’ * * 12 Philosophische Untersuchungen spricht), und zwar ist es eben unser ‘elliptischer’ Satz. a Aber der ist doch nur eine verkürzte Form des Satzes “Bring mir eine Platte!” und diesen Satz gibt es doch in Beispiel (2) nicht. a Aber warum sollte ich nicht, umgekehrt, den Satz “Bring mir eine Platte!” eine Verlängerung des Satzes “Platte!” nennen? a Weil der, der “Platte!” ruft, eigentlich meint: “Bring mir eine Platte!” a Aber wie machst du das, dies meinen, während du “Platte” sagst? Sprichst du dir inwendig den unverkürzten Satz vor? Und warum soll ich, um zu sagen, was Einer mit dem Ruf “Platte!” meint, diesen Ausdruck in einen andern übersetzen? Und wenn sie das Gleiche bedeuten, a warum soll ich nicht sagen: “wenn er ‘Platte!’ sagt, meint er ‘Platte!’”? Oder: warum sollst du nicht “Platte!” meinen können, wenn du “Bring mir die Platte” meinen kannst? —– Aber wenn ich “Platte!” rufe, so will ich doch, er soll mir eine Platte bringen! —– Gewiß, aber besteht ‘dies wollen’ darin, daß du in irgend einer Form einen andern Satz denkst, als den, den du sagst? a 20. Aber wenn nun Einer sagt “Bring mir eine Platte!”, so scheint es ja jetzt, als könnte er diesen Ausdruck als ein langes Wort meinen: entsprechend nämlich dem einen Worte “Platte!”. —– Kann man ihn also einmal als ein Wort, einmal als vier Wörter meinen? Und wie meint man ihn gewöhnlich? —– Ich glaube, wir werden geneigt sein, zu sagen: Wir meinen den Satz als einen von vier Wörtern, wenn wir ihn im Gegensatz zu andern Sätzen gebrauchen, wie “Reich mir eine Platte zu”, “Bring ihm eine Platte”, “Bring zwei Platten”, etc.; also im Gegensatz zu Sätzen, welche die Wörter unseres Befehls in andern Verbindungen enthalten. —– Aber worin besteht es, einen Satz im Gegensatz zu andern Sätzen gebrauchen? Schweben einem dabei etwa diese Sätze vor? Und alle? Und während man den einen Satz sagt, oder vor-, oder nach- her? a Nein! Wenn auch so eine Erklärung einige Versuchung für uns hat, so brauchen wir doch nur einen Augenblick zu bedenken, was wirk- lich geschieht, um zu sehen, daß wir hier auf falschem Weg sind. Wir sagen, wir gebrauchen den Befehl im Gegensatz zu andern Sätzen, weil unsere Sprache die Möglichkeit dieser andern Sätze enthält. Wer unsere Sprache nicht versteht, ein Ausländer, der öfter gehört hätte, wie jemand den Befehl gibt “Bring mir eine Platte!”, könnte der Meinung sein, diese ganze Lautreihe sei ein Wort und entspräche etwa dem Wort für “Baustein” in seiner Sprache. Wenn er selbst dann diesen Befehl gegeben hätte, würde er ihn vielleicht anders aussprechen, und wir wür- den sagen: Er spricht ihn so sonderbar aus, weil er ihn für ein Wort hält. —– Aber geht also nicht, wenn er ihn ausspricht, eben auch etwas anderes in ihm vor, a dem entsprechend, daß er den Satz als ein Wort Philosophical Investigations 12e sentence. a But that is surely only a shortened form of the sentence “Bring me a slab”, and there is no such sentence in example (2). a But why shouldn’t I conversely have called the sentence “Bring me a slab” a lengthening of the sentence “Slab!”? a Because anyone who calls out “Slab!” really means “Bring me a slab”. a But how do you do this: how do you mean that while saying “Slab!”? Do you say the unshort- ened sentence to yourself? And why should I translate the call “Slab!” into a different expression in order to say \|9\| what someone means by it? And if they mean the same thing, why shouldn’t I say, “When he says ‘Slab!’ he means ‘Slab!’”? Again, why shouldn’t you be able to mean “Slab!”, if you can mean “Bring me the slab!”? —– But when I call out “Slab!”, then what I want is that he should bring me a slab! —– Certainly, but does ‘wanting this’ consist in thinking in some form or other a different sentence from the one you utter? a 20. But now it looks as if when someone says “Bring me a slab”, he could mean this expression as one long word corresponding indeed to the single word “Slab!” —– Then can one mean it sometimes as one word, and sometimes as four? And how does one usually mean it? —– I think we’ll be inclined to say: we mean the sentence as one consisting of four words when we use it in contrast to other sentences such as “Hand me a slab”, “Bring him a slab”, “Bring two slabs”, etc.; that is, in contrast with sentences containing the words of our com- mand in other combinations. —– But what does using one sentence in contrast to others consist in? Does one have the others in mind at the same time? All of them? And while one is saying the one sentence, or before, or afterwards? a No! Even if such an explanation rather tempts us, we need only think for a moment of what actually happens in order to see that we are on the wrong track here. We say that we use the command in contrast with other sentences because our language con- tains the possibility of those other sentences. Someone who did not under- stand our language, a foreigner, who had fairly often heard someone giving the order “Bring me a slab!”, might believe that this whole sequence of sounds was one word corresponding perhaps to the word for “building stone” in his language. If he himself had then given this order, perhaps he would have pronounced it differently, and we’d say: he pro- nounces it so oddly because he takes it for a single word. —– But then is there not also something different going on in him when he pro- nounces it a something corresponding to the fact that he conceives the sentence as a single word? —– The same thing may go on in him, or * 13 Philosophische Untersuchungen auffaßt? —– Es kann das Gleiche in ihm vorgehen, oder auch anderes. Was geht denn in dir vor, wenn du so einen Befehl gibst; bist du dir bewußt, daß er aus vier Wörtern besteht, während du ihn aussprichst? Freilich, du beherrschst diese Sprache a in der es auch jene andern Sätze gibt a aber ist dieses Beherrschen etwas, was ‘geschieht’, während du den Satz aussprichst? a Und ich habe ja zugegeben: der Fremde wird den Satz, den er anders auffaßt, wahrscheinlich anders aussprechen; aber, was wir die falsche Auffassung nennen, muß nicht in irgend etwas liegen, was das Aussprechen des Befehls begleitet. ‘Elliptisch’ ist der Satz nicht, weil er etwas ausläßt, was wir meinen, wenn wir ihn aussprechen, sondern weil er gekürzt ist a im Vergleich mit einem bestimmten Vorbild unserer Grammatik. a Man könnte hier freilich den Einwand machen: “Du gibst zu, daß der verkürzte und der unverkürzte Satz den gleichen Sinn haben. a Welchen Sinn haben sie also? Gibt es denn für diesen Sinn nicht einen Wortausdruck?” —– Aber besteht der gleiche Sinn der Sätze nicht in ihrer gleichen Verwendung? a (Im Russischen heißt es “Stein rot” statt “der Stein ist rot”; geht ihnen die Kopula im Sinn ab, oder denken sie sich die Kopula dazu?) 21. Denke dir ein Sprachspiel, in welchem B dem A auf dessen Frage die Anzahl der Platten, oder Würfel in einem Stoß meldet, oder die Farben und Formen der Bausteine, die dort und dort liegen. a So eine Meldung könnte also lauten: “Fünf Platten”. Was ist nun der Unterschied zwischen der Meldung, oder Behauptung, “Fünf Platten” und dem Befehl “Fünf Platten!”? a Nun, die Rolle, die das Aussprechen dieser Worte im Sprachspiel spielt. Aber es wird wohl auch der Ton, in dem sie ausge- sprochen werden, ein anderer sein, und die Miene, und noch manches andere. Aber wir können uns auch denken, daß der Ton der gleiche ist, a denn ein Befehl und eine Meldung können in mancherlei Ton aus- gesprochen werden und mit mancherlei Miene a und daß der Unterschied allein in der Verwendung liegt. (Freilich könnten wir auch die Worte “Behauptung” und “Befehl” zur Bezeichnung einer grammatischen Satzform und eines Tonfalls gebrauchen; wie wir ja “Ist das Wetter heute nicht herrlich?” eine Frage nennen, obwohl sie als Behauptung verwendet wird.) Wir könnten uns eine Sprache denken, in der alle Behauptungen die Form und den Ton rhetorischer Fragen hätten; oder jeder Befehl die Form der Frage: “Möchtest du das tun?”. Man wird dann vielleicht sagen: “Was er sagt, hat die Form der Frage, ist aber wirklich ein Befehl” a d. h., hat die Funktion des Befehls in der Praxis der Sprache. (Ähnlich sagt man “Du wirst das tun”, nicht als Prophezeiung, sondern als Befehl. Was macht es zu dem einen, was zu dem andern?) Philosophical Investigations 13e something different. What goes on in you when you give such an order? Are you conscious of its consisting of four words while you are uttering it? Of course you know this language a which contains those other sentences as well a but is this knowing something that ‘happens’ while you are uttering the se	1,299,107
Wittgenstein Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (Z-Library).pdf	L. WITTG ENSTEIN LECTURES & CONVERSATIONS on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief Compiled/rom Notes taken by Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees and] ames Taylor Edited by Cyril Barrett .UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley and Los Angeles· 1967 University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California All Rights Reserved Second printing, 1967 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 66-19347 Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Preface Lectures on Aesthetics Conversations on Freud Lectures on Religious Belief vii 1 41 53 PREFACE The first thing to be said about this book is that nothing con tained herein was written by Wittgenstein himself. The notes published here are not Wittgenstein's own lecture notes but notes taken down by students, which he neither saw nor checked. It is even doubtful if he would have approved of their publication, at least in their present form. Since, however, they deal with topics only briefly touched upon in his other published writings, and since for some time they have been circulating privatdy, it was thought best to publish them in a form approved by their authors. The lectures on aesthetics were delivered in private rooms in Cambridge in the sumer of 1938. They were given to a smail group of students, which included Rush Rhees, Yorick Smythies, J ames Taylor, Casmir Lewy, Theodore Redpath and Maurice Drury (whose names occur in the text). The name of another student, Ursell, also occurs in the text (p. 28), but he did not attend the lectures. The lectures on religious belief bdong to a course on belief given about the same time. The conversations on Freud between Wittgenstein and Rush Rhees took place between 1942 and 1946. Besides the notes of the. conversations on Freud, those of the fourth lecture on aesthetics are by Rush Rhees; the rest are by Smythies. Since· we possess three versions of the first three lectures on aesthetics (by Smythies, Rhees and Taylor-referred to respectively as S, R, and T) and two versions of the fourth lecture, the most complete version has been chosen as the text and significant variants have been added in footnote. The notes have been printed as they were taken down at the time, except for some minor gramtical corrections and a few omissions where the original was indecipherable. Although the diferent versions agree to a remarkable extent, their authors· do not vouch for their accuracy in every detail: they do not claim to give a verbatim report of what Wittgenstein said. The inclusion of variants may give to what were, after al, no more than informal discussions, an importance and solemnity PREFACE which may seem inappropriate. On the other hand, as should be clear, the difrent versions complement and clarify each other, and at the same time hint at their close agreement (which could be demonstrated only by printing al versions in ful). It might have been possIble to confiate the versions into a single text, but it seemed better to preserve each version as it was taken down and leave the reader to reconstruct a composite text for himself. At times, in the interests of clarity and smoother reading, some of the variants have been introduced into the text. Wherever this is done, and also where editorial emendations have been made, square brackets have been employed. The use of three dots ( ... ) usualy indicates that there is a lacuna or an indecipherable passage in the text. Finally, a w.ord about the choice of material. This is only a selection from the extant students' notes of Wittgenstein's lectures. Yet, in spite of appearances, it is not a random selection. The notes printed here reflect Wittgenstein's opinions on and attitude to life, to religious, psychological and artistic questions. That Wittgenstein himself did not keep these questions separate is clear, for example, from G. E. Moore's account of the 1930-33 lectures (Mind 1955). C. B. LECT U R E S ON A E S THETIC S I 1 . The subject (Aesthetics) is very big and entirely mis understood as far as I can see. The use of such a word as 'beautiful' is even more apt to be misunderstood if you look at the linguistic form of sentences in which it occurs than most other words. 'Beautiful' [and 'good'-R] is an adjective, so you are inclined to say: "This has a certain quality, that of being beautiful". 2. We are going from one subject-matter of philosophy to another, from one group of words to another group of words. 3. An intelligent way of dividing up a book on philosophy would be into parts of speech, kinds of words. Where in fact you would have to distinguish far more parts of speech than an ordinary gram does. You would talk for hours and hours on the verbs 'seeing', 'feeling', etc.,. verbs describing personal experience. We get a peculiar kind of confusion or confusions which comes up with al these words.1 You would have another chapter on numerals-here there would be another kind of confusion: a chapter on 'al', 'any', 'some', etc.-another kind of confusion: a chapter on 'you', '1', etc.-another kind: a chapter on 'beautiful', 'good'-another kind. We get into a new group of confusions; language plays us entirely new tricks. 4. I have often compared language to a tool chest, containing a hamer, chisel, matches, nails, screws, glue. It is not a chance that al these things have been put together-but there are import ant differences between the diferent tools-they are used in a family of ways-though nothing could be more diferent than glue and a chisel. There is constant surprise at the new tricks language plays on us when we get into a new field. 5. One thing we always do when discussing a word is to ask how we were taught it. Doing this on the one hand destroys a variety of misconceptions, on the other hand gives you a primitive language in which the word is used. Although this language is not what you talk when you are twenty, you get a 1 Here we find similarities-we find peculill1' sorts of confusion which come up with ali these W01'ds.-R. 2 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS rough approximation to what kind of Ia.ngua.ge game is going to be played.. a. How did we leam 'I dreamt so and so'? The interesting point is that we didn't learn it by being shown a dream. If you ask yourself how a· child learns 'beautiful', 'fine', etc., you find it learns them roughly as interjections. ('Beautiful' is an odd word to talk about because it's hardly ever used.) A child generally applies a word like 'good' first to food. One thing that is inunensely important in teaching is exaggerated gestures and facial expressions. The word is taught as a substitute for a facial expression or a gesture. The gestures, tones of voice, etc., in this case are expressions of approval. What makes the word an interjection of approval?l It is the game it appears in, not the form of words. (If I had to say what is the main mistake made by philosophers of the present generation, including Moore, I would say that it is that when language is looked at, what is looked at is a form of words and not the use made of the form of words.) Language is a characteristic part of a large group of activities-talking, writing, travelling on a bus, meeting a man, etc.2 We are concentrating, not on the words 'good' or 'beautiful', which are entirely uncharacteristic, generally just subject and predicate ('This is beautiful'), but on the occasions on which they are said-on the enormously complicated situation in which the aesthetic expression has a place, in which the expression itself has almost a negligible place. 6. If you came to a foreign tribe, whose language you didn't know at al and you wished to know what words corresponded to 'good', 'fine', etc., what would you look for? You would look for smiles, gestures, food, toys. ([Reply to objection:] If you went to Mars and men were spheres with sticks coming out, you wouldn't know what to look for. Or if you went to a tribe where noises made with the mouth were just breathing or making music, and language was made with the ears. Cf. "When you see trees swaying about they are talking to one another." ("Every- 1 And not of disappl:'oval 01:' of sutpl:'ise, fol:' example? (The child undetStands the gestUl'es which you use in teaching him. If he did not, he could undel'Stand nothing.)-R. I When we build houses, we talk and wl:'ite. When I take a bus, I say to the conductol:': 'Thl'ecpeny.' We ue concenttating not just on the word 01:' the sentence in which it is used-which is highly unc:huac:tistic-but on the ocion on which it is said: the framework in which (nota bene) the actual aesthetic judgment is pl'actically nothing at al.-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 3 thing has a soul.") You compare the branches with arms. Cer tainly we must interpret the gestures of the tribe on the analogy of ours.) How far this takes us from normal aesthetics [and ethics-T]. We don't start from certain words, but from certain occasions or activities. 7.. A characteristic thing about our language is that a large number of words used under these circumstances are adjectives -'fine', 'lovely', etc. But you see that this is by no means necessary. You saw that they were first used as interjections. Would it matter if instead of saying "This is lovely", I just said "Ah!" and smiled, or just rubbed my stomach? As far as these primitive languages go, problems about what these words are about, what their real subject is, [which is called 'beautiful' or 'good'.-R.]l don't come up at al. 8. It is remarkable that in real life, when aesthetic judgements are made, aesthetic adjectives such as 'beautiful', 'fine', etc., play hardly any role at alt Are aesthetic adjectives used in a musical criticism? You say: "Look at this transition'',Z or [Rhees] "The passage here is incoherent". Or you say, in a poetical criticism, [Taylor]: "His use of images is precise". The words you use are more akin to 'right' and 'correct' (as these words are used in ordinary speech) than to 'beautiful' and'lovely'.3 9. Words such as 'lovely' are first used as interjections. Later they are used on very few occasions. We might say of a piece of music that it is lovely, by this not praising it but giving it a character. (A lot of people, of course, who can't express themselves properly use the word very frequently. As they use it, it is used as an interjection.) I might ask: "For what melody would I most like to use the word 'lovely'?" I might choose between calng a melody 'lovely' and calling it 'youthful'. It is stupid to cal a piece of music 'Spring Melody' or 'Spring Sym phony'. But the word 'springy' wouldn't be absurd at all, any more than 'stately' or 'pompous'. 1 What the thing that is really good is-T. I 'The transition was made in the right way.' -T. a It would be better to use 'lovely' descriptively, on a level with 'stately', 'pomp ous,' etc.-T. 4 LECTURES AND CONVER SATIONS 10. If I were a good draughtsman, I could convey an innum erable number of expressions by four strokes- Such words as 'pompous' and 'stately> could be expressed by faces. Doing this, our descriptions would be much more flexible and various than they are as expressed by adjectives. If I say of a piece of Schubert's that it is melancholy, that is like giving it a face (I don't express approval or disapproval). I could instead use gestures or [Rhees] dancing. In fact, if we want to be exact, we do use a gesture or a facial expression. 11. [Rhees: What rule are we using or referring to when we say: "This is the correct way"? If a music teacher says a piece should be played this way and plays it, what is he appealing to?] 12. Take the question: "How should poetry be read? What is the correct way of reading it?" If you are talking about blank verse the right way of reading it might be stressing it correctly you discuss how far you should stress the rhythm and how far you should hide it. A man says it ought to be read this way and reads it out to you. You say: "Oh yes. Now it makes sense." There are cases of poetry which should almost be scanned where the metre is as clear as crystal-others where the metre is entirely in the background. I had an experience with the 18th century poet Klopstock.1 I found that the way to read him was to stress his metre abnormally. Klopstock put .. -R (etc.) in front of his poems. When I read his poems in this new way, I said: "A.h-ha, now I know why he did this." What had happened? I had read this kind of stuff and had been moderately bored, but when I read it in this particular way, intensely, I smiled, said: "This is grand," etc. But I might not have said anything. The important fact was that I read it again and again. When I read these poems I made gestures and facial expressions which were what would be called gestures of approval. But the important 1 Friedrich Gottlieb K!opstock (1724-1803). Wittgenstein is referring to the Odes. (Gesammelte Werke, Stuttgart, 1886-7). Klopstock believed that poetic diction was distinct from popular language. He rejected rhyme as vulgar and introduced instead the metres of ancient literature. Ed. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 5 thing was that I read the poems entirely differently, more intensely, and said to others: "Look ! This is how they should be read."l Aesthetic adjectives played hardly any role. 13. What does a person who knows a good suit say when trying on a suit at the tailor's? "That's the right length", "That's too short", "That's too narrow". Words of approval play no role, although he will look pleased when the coat suits him. Instead of "That's too short" I might say "Look!" or instead of "Right" I might say "Leave it as it is". A good cutter may not use any words at all, but just make a chalk mark and later alter it. How do I show my approval of a suit? Chiefly by wearing it often, liking it when it is seen, etc. 14. (If I give you the light and shadow on a body in a picture I can thereby give you the shape of it. But if I give you the high lights in a picture you don't know what the shape is.) 15. In the case of the word 'correct' you have a variety of related cases. There is first the case in which you learn the rules. The cutter learns how long a coat is to be, how wide the sleeve must be, etc. He learns rules--he is drilled-as in music you are drilled in harmony and counterpoint. Suppose I went in for tailoring and I first learnt al the rules, I might have, on the whole, two sorts of attitude. (1) Lewy says: "This is too short." I say: "No. It is right. It is according to the rules." (2) I develop a feeling for the rules. I interpret the rules. I might say: "No. It isn't right. If isn't according to the rules."2 Here I would be making an aesthetic judgement about the thing which is according to the rules in sense (1). On the other hand, if I hadn't learnt the rules, I wouldn't be able to make the aesthetic judgement. In learning the rules you get a more and more refined judgement. Learning the rules actualy changes your judgement. (Although, if you haven't learnt Harmony and haven't a good ear, you may nevertheless detect any disharmony in a sequence of chords.) 16. You could regard the rules laid down for the measure ment of a coat as an expression of what certain people want.3 People separated on the point of what a coat should measure: 1 If we speak of the right way to read a piece of poetry-approval enters, but it plays a fairly small r6le in the situation.-R. 2 'Don't you see that if we made it broader,it isn't right and it isn't according to the rules.'-R. 8 These may be extremely explicit and taught, or not formulated at al.-T. 6 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS there were some who didn't care if it was broad or narrow, etc.; there were others who cared an enormous lot.l The rules of harmony, you can say, expressed the way people wanted chords to follow-their wishes crystallized in these rules (the word 'wishes' is much too vague.)! All the greatest composers wrote in accordance with them. ([Reply to objection :] You can say that every composer changed the rules, but the variation was very slight; not al the rules were changed. The music was still good by a great many of the old rules.-This though shouldn't come in here.) 17. In what we call the Arts a person who has judgement developes. (A person who has a judgement doesn't mean a person who says 'Marvelous!' at certain thingS.)8 If we talk of aesthetic judgements, we think, among a thousand things, of the Arts. When we make an aesthetic judgement about a thing, we do not just gape at it and say : "Oh! How marvellous!" We dis tinguish between a person who knows what he is talking about and a person who doesn't.4 If a person is to admire English poetry, he must know English. Suppose that a Russian who doesn't know English is overwhelmed by a sonnet admitted to be good. We would say that he does not know what is in it at al. Similarly, of a person who doesn't know metres but who is overwhelmed, we would say that he doesn't know what's in it. In music this is more pronounced. Suppose there is a person who admires and enjoys what is admitted to be good but can't remember the simplest tunes, doesn't know when the bass comes in, etc. We say he hasn't seen what's in it. We use the phrase 'A man is musical' not so as to cal a man musical if he says "Ah!" when a piece of music is played, any more than we cal a. dog musical if it wags its tail when music is played. & 1 But-it is just a fact that people have1aid down such and such rules. We say 'people' but in fact it was a particular class • . • . When we say 'people', these were although we have talked of 'wishes' here, the fact is just that these rules were laid down.-R. I In what we cal the arts there developed what we cal a 'judge'-i.e. one who has judgment. This does not mean just someone who admires or does not admire. We have an entirely new element.-R. , He must react in a consistent way over a long period. Must know all sorts of things.-T. 6 cr. the who likes hearing music but canot talk about it at all, and is <luite on the subject. 'He is musical'. We do not say this if he is just happy when he hears music and the other things aren't present.-T. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 7 18. The word we ought to talk about is 'appreciated'. What does appreciation consist in ? 19. If a man goes through an endless number of patterns in a tailor's, [and] says: "No. This is slightly too dark. This is slightly too loud", etc., he is what we cal an appreciator of material. That he is an appreciator is not shown by the inter jections he uses, but by the way he chooses, selects, etc. Similarly in music: "Does this harmonize? No. The bass is not quite loud enough. Here I just want something diferent . . .. " This is what we cal an appreciation. 20. It iSJonot only difcult to describe what appreciation consists in, but impossible. To describe what it consists in We would have to describe the whole environment. 21. I know exactly what happens when a person who knows a lot about suits goes to the tailor, also I know what happens when a person who knows nothing about suits goes-what he says, how he acts, etc.1 There is an extraordinary number of diferent cases of appreciation. And, of course, what I know is nothing compared to what one could know. I would have-to say what appreciation is-e.g. to explain such an enormous wart as arts and crafts, such a particular kind of disease. Also I would have to explain what our photographers do today-and why it is impossible to get a decent picture of your friend even if you pay £1,000. 22. You can get a picture of what you may cal a very high culture, e.g . .German music in the last century and the century before, and what Ĩppens when this deteriorates. A picture of what happens in Architecture when y!>u get imitations-or when thousands of people are interested in the minutest details. A picture of what happens when a dining-room table is chosen more or less at random, when no one knows where it came from.2 23. We talked of correctness. A good cutter won't use any words except words like 'Too long', 'All right'. When we talk of t That is aesthetics.-T. I Explain what happens when a craft deteriomtes. A period in which everything ismed and extraordinary care is lavished on certain details; and a period in which is copied and nothing is thought about.-T. . great number of people are highly interested in a detail of a dining-room chair. And then there is a period when a dining-room chair is in the dmwing-room a d no one knows where this came from or that people had once given enormous thou ht in order to know how to design it.-R. 8 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS a Symphony of Beethoven we don't talk of correctness. Entirely diferent things enter. One wouldn't talk of appreciating the tremendous things in Art. In certain styles in Architecture a door is correct, and the thing is you appreciate it. But in the case of a Gothic Cathedral what we do is not at al to find it correct-it plays an entirely diferent role with us.1 The entire game is difer ent. It is as diferent as to judge a human being and on the one hand to say 'He behaves well' and on the other hand 'He made a great impression on me'. 24. 'Correcdy', 'charmingly', 'finely', etc. play an entirely diferent role. Cf. the famous address of Bufon-a terrific man -on style in writing; making ever so many distinctions which I only understand vaguely but which he didn't mean vague1y-all kinds of nuances like 'grand', 'charming', 'nice'.2 25. The words we cal expressions of aesthetic judgement play a very complicated role, but a very definite role, in what we cal a culture of a period. To describe their use or to describe what you mean by a cultured taste, you have to describe a culture. S What we now cal a cultured taste perhaps didn't exist in the Middle Ages. An entirely diferent game is played in diferent ages. 26. What belongs to a language game is a whole culture. In describing musical taste you have to describe whether children give concerts, whether women do or whether men only give them, etc., etc.' In aristocratic circles in Vienna people had [such and such] a taste, then it came into bourgeois circles and women joined choirs, etc. This is an example of tradition in music. 27. [Rhees: Is there tradition in Negro art? Could a European appreciate Negro art?] 28. What would tradition in Negro Art be? That women wear cut-grass skirts ? etc., etc. I don't know. I don't know how Frank Dobson's appreciation of Negro Art compares with an 1 Here there is no of Mgre8.-R. 2 Ducolil'S .rut' /8 the addres on his reception into L' Ac:ademie FranÏse. 1753.-Ed. 8 To describe a set ot aesthetic rules fuly means realy to describe the culture of a period.-T. . , That children are taught by adults who go to concerts, etc., that the schools are like they are, etc.-R. LEcrURES ON AESTHETIGS 9 educated Negro's.l If you say he appreciates it, I don't yet know what this means.2 He may fil his room with objects of Negro Art. Does he just say: "Ah!"? Or does he do what the best .. Negro musicians do? Or does he agree or disagree with so and so about it? You may call this appreciation. Entirely diferent to an educated Negto's. Though an educated Negro may also have Negro objects of art in his room. The Negro's and Frank Dobson's are diferent appreciations altogether. You do some· thing diferent with them. Suppose Negroes dress in their own way and I say I appreciate a good Negro tunic-does this mean I would have one made, or that I would say (as at the tailor's): "No ... this is too long",or does it mean I say: "Howcharmingl"? 29. Suppose Lewy has what is called a cultured taste in painting. This is something entirely diferent to what was called a cultured taste in the fifteenth century. An entirely diferent game was played. He does something entirely diferent with it to what a man did then. 30. There are. lots of people, well-offish, who have been to good schools, who can afford to travel about and see the Louvre, etc., and who know a lot about and can talk fluendy about dozens of painters. There is another person who has seen very few paintings, but who looks intensely at one or twl:) paintings which make a profound impression on him.3 Another person who is broad, neither deep nor wide. Another person who is very narrow, concentrated and circumscribed. Are these diferent kinds of appreciation? They may al be called 'appreciation'. 31. You talk in entirely diferent terms of the Coronation robe of Edward II and of a dress suit.' What did they do and say about· Coronation robes? Was the Coronation robe made by a tailor? Perhaps it was designed by Italian artists who had their own traditions; never seen by Edward II until he put it on. Questions like 'What standards were there?', etc. are al relevant 1 Frank Dobson (1888-1963) painter and sculptor ;W8S the first to bring to England the interest in African and Asian sculpture which characteri%ed the work of Picasso and the other Cubists during the years immediately prece and following the First World War.-Ed. I Here you haven't made what you mean by 'appreciate Negro.Ad clear.-T. 8 Someone who has not traveled but who makes certain observations which show that he 'realy does appreciate' • • . an appreciation which concentrates on one thing and is very that you would give your last penny for it.-R. 'Edward the B 10 LECTURES AND CONVERSATION'S to the question <Could you criticize the robe as they critized it?'. You appreciate it in an entirdy diferent way; your attitude to it is entirdy diferent to that of a person living at the time it was designed. On the other hand <This is a fine Coronation robe \' might have been said by a man at the time in exactly the same way as a man says it now. '-,: 32. I draw your attention to diferences and say: «Look how diferent these diferences are I" "Look what is in common to the diferent cases", "Look what is common to Aesthetic judge ments". An imensdy complicated family of cases is left, with the highlight-the expression of admiration, a smile or a gesture, etc. 33. [Rhees asked Wittgensteiri. some question about his <theory' of deterioration.] Do you think I have a theory? Do you think I'm saying what deterioration is? What I do is describe diferent things caled deterioration. I might approve deterioration-UAll very well your fine musical culture; I'm very glad children don't learn harmony now." [Rhees: Doesn't what you say imply a preference for using <deterioration' in certain ways?] Al right, if you like, but this by the way-no, it is no matter. My example of deterior ation is an example of something I know, perhaps something I dislike-I don't know. <Deterioration' applies to a tiny bit I may know. 34. Our dress is in a way simpler than dress in the 18th century and more a dress adapted to certain violent activities, such as bicycling, walking, etc. Suppose we notice a similar change in Architecture and in hairdressing, etc. Suppose I talked of the deterioration of the style of living.1 If someone asks: «What do you mean by deterioration?" I describe, give examples. You use <deterioration' on the one hand to describe a particular kind of devdopment, on the other hand to express disapproval. I may join it up with the things I like; yoě with the things you dislike. But the word may be used without any afctive dement; you use it to describe a particular kind of thing that happened. a It was more like using a technical term-possibly, 1 Deterioration of style and of living.-R. a 'DeterioIltion' gets its sense from the I can give. 'That's a deterior ation,' may be an expreson of disapproval or a LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 11 though not at al necessarily, with a derogatory element in it. You may say in protest, when I talk of deterioration: "But this was very good." I say: "Al right. But this wasn't what I was talking about. I used it to describe a particular kind of develop ment." 35. In order to get clear about aesthetic words you have to describe ways of living. 1 We think we have to talk about aesthetic judgements like 'This is beautiful', but we find that if we have to talk about aesthetic judgements we don't find these words at al, but a word used something like a gesture, accompanying a complicated activity.2 36. [Lewy: If my landlady says a picture is lovely and I say it is hideous, we don't contradict one another.] In a sense [and in certain examples-R] you do contradict one another. She dusts it carefuly, looks at it often, etc. You want to throw it in the fire. This is just the stupid kind of example which is given in philosophy, as if things like 'This is hideous', 'This is lovely' were the only kinds of things ever said. But it is only one thing amongst a vast realm of other things-one special case. Suppose the landlady says : "This is hideous", and you say: "This is lovely"-all right, that's that. n 1. One interesting thing is the idea that people have of a kind of science of Aesthetics. I would almost·like to talk of what could be meant by Aesthetics. 2. You might think Aesthetics is a science telling us what's beautiful-almost too ridiculous for words. I suppose it ought to include also what sort of coffee tastes welS 3. I see roughly this-there is a realm of utterance of delight, when you taste pleasant food or smell a pleasant smell, etc., then there is the realm of Art which is quite difent, though often you 1 Cf. 'This is a fine dress!-R. I The judgment is a gesture accompanying a vast· structure of actions not expressed by one judgment.-R. 'This is fine' is on a level with a gesture. almost-conected with al sorts of other gestures and actions and a whole situation and a culture. In Aesthetics just as in the arts what we caled expletives play a very small part. The adjectives used in these are doser related to 'correct'.-T. a It is hard to find boundaries.-R. 12 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS may make the same face when you hear a piece of music as when you taste good food. (Thol}gh you may cry at something you like very much.) 4. Supposing you meet someone in the street and. he tells you he has lost his greatest friend, in a voice extremely expressive of his emotion.1 You might say: "It was extraordinarily beautiful, the way he expressed himself." Supposing you then asked: "What similarity has my admiring this person with my eating vanila ice and liking it?" To compare them seems almost dis gusting. (But you can connect them by intermediate cases.) Suppose someone said: "But this is a quite diferent kind of delight." But did you learn two meanings of 'delight'? You use the same word on both occasions.2 There is some connection between these delights. Although in the first case the emotion of delight would in our judgement hardly count. a 5. It is like saying: "I classify works of Art in this way: at some I look up and at some I look down." This way of classifying might be interesting.' We might discover al sorts of connections between looking up or down at works of Art and looking up or down at other things. If we found, perhaps, that eating vanilla ice made us look up, we might not attach great importance to looking upł There may be a realm, a small realm of experiences which may make me look up or down where I can infer a lot from the fact that I looked up or down; another realm of experi ences where nothing can be inferred from my looking up or down.5 a wearing blue or green trousers may in a certain society mean a lot, but in another society it may not mean anything . 6. What are expressions of liking something? Is it only what we say or interjections we use or faces we make? Obviously not. It is, often, how often I read something or how often I wear a suit. Perhaps I won't even say: "It's fine", but wear it often and look at it.8 1 Someone • • • who tels you he has lost his friend, in a restrained way.-R. , But notice that 'you use the same word and not in the same chance way yon use the same word 'bank' for two things [like 'river bank' and 'money bank'-R.] -T. a Although in the first case the gesture or expression of delight may be most unimportant in a way.-T. , You might discover further characters of things which make us look up-.R. 5 Some one might exaggerate the importance of the type of indication.-T. • H I like a suit I may buy it, or wear it often-without interjections or making faces.-R. I may never smile at it.-T. LECTURES ON AES'l'HETICS 13 7. Suppose we build houses and we give doors and windows certain dimensions. Does the fact that we like these dimensions necessarily show in anything we say? Is what we like necessarily shown by an expression of liking?l [For instance-R] suppose our children draw windows and when they draw them in the wrong way we punish them. Or when someone builds a certain house we refuse to live in it or run away. 8. Take the case of fashions. How does a fashion come about? Say, we wear lapels broader than last year. Does this mean that the tailors like them better broader? No, not neces sarily. He cuts it like this and this year he makes it broader. Perhaps this year he finds it too narrow and makes it wider. Perhaps no expression [of delight-R] is used at al.2 9. You design a door and look at it and say: "Higher, higher, higher ... oh, al right."a (Gesture) What is this? Is it an expression of content? . 10. Perhaps the most important thing in connection with aesthetics is what maybe caled aesthetic reactions, e.g. dis content, disgust, discomfort. The expression of discontent is not the same as the expression of discomfort. The expression of discontent says: "Make it higher ... too low! ... do something to this." 11. Is what I cal an expression of discontent something like an expression of discomfort plus knowing the cause of the discomfort and asking for it to be removed? If I say: "This door is too low. Make it higher", should we say I know the cause of my discomfort? 12. 'Cause' is used in very many diferent ways, e.g. (1) "What is the cause of unemployment?" "What is the cause of this expression?" (2) "What was the cause of your jumping?" "That noise." (3) "What was the cause of that wheel going round?" You trace a mechanism.' 1 Out preferring these shows itself in al sorts of ways.-T. 2 But the tailor does not say: 'This is nice.' He is a good cutter. He is contented.-R. If you mean 'this year he cuts it broader' then you can say This way we are contented, he other not.-T. • ' • • • lime: thank God.'-R. ' • • • yes, that's right.'-T. 'Cause: (1) Experiment and statistics. (2) Reason. (3) Mcchanism.-T. 14 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS 13. [Redpath: "Making the door higher removes ,your dis content. "] Wittgenstein asked: "Why is this a bad way of putting it?" It is in the wrong form because it presupposes '-removes-'. 14. Saying you know the cause of your discomfort could mean two things. , (1) I predict correctly that if you lower the door, I wil be satisfied. (2) But that when in fact Isay: "Too highl" 'Toohighl' is in this ease not conjecture. Is 'Too high' comparable with 'I think I had too many tomatoes today'? 15. If I ask: "If I make it lower will your discomfort cease?", you may say: "I'm slIre it will." The important thing is that I say: "Too high!" It is a reaction analogous to my taking my hand away from a hot plate-which may not relieve my discom fort. The reaction peculiar to this discomfort is saying 'Too high' or whatever it is. 16. To say: "I feel discomfort and know the cause", is entirely misleading because 'know the cause' normally means something quite diferent. How misleading it is depends on whether when you said: "1 know the cause", you meant it to 'be an explan ation or not. 'I feel discomfort and know the cause' makes it sound as if there were two things going on in my soul-discom fort and knowing the cause. 17. In these cases the word 'cause' is hardly ever used at all. You use 'why?' and 'because', but not 'cause'.i 18. We have here a kind of discomfort which you may cal 'directed', e.g. if I am afraid of you, my discomfort is directed.s Saying 'I know the cause' brings in mind the case of statistics or tracing a mechanism. If I say: "I know the cause", it looks as if I had analysed the feelings (as I analyse the feeling of hearing my own voice and, at the same time, rubbing my hands) which, of course, I haven't done. We have given, as it were, a grammatical explanation [in saying, the feeling is 'directed']. 19. There is a 'Why?' to aesthetic discomfort not a 'cause' to it. The expression of discomfort takes the form of a criticism 1 Why are disgusted ? Because it is to high.-R. • What is advantage of 'My feeling of fear is directed' as opposed to 'I know the cause' ?-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 15 and not 'My mind is not at rest' or something. It might take the form of looking at a picture and saying: "What's wrong with it ?"l 20. It's al very well to say: "Can't we get rid of this analogy?" Well, we cannot. If we think of discomfort=use, painĚuse of pain naturaly suggests itself. 21. The cause, in the sense of the object it is directed to is also the cause in other senses. When you remove it, the discomfort ceases and what not. ·22. If one says: "Can we be immediately aware of the cause?", the first thing that comes into our mind is not statistics [(as in 'the cause of the rise in unemployment')-R], but tracing a mechanism. It has so very often been said that if something has been caused by something else this is only a matter of con comitance. Isn't this very queer? Very queer. 'It's only con comitance' shows you think it can be something else. II It could be an experiential proposition, but then I don't know what it would be. Saying this shows you know of something different, i.e. connection. What are they denying when they say: "There is no necessary connection"? 23. You say constandy in philosophy things like: "People say there is a super-mechanism, but there isn't." But no one knows what a sup.er-mechanism is. . . 24. (The idea of a. super-mechanism doesn't realy come in here. What coměs in is the idea of a mechanism.) . 25. We have the idea of a. super-mechanism when we talk of logical necessity, e.g. physics tried as an ideal to reduce things to mechanisms or something hitting sometlg else.s 26. We say that people condemn a man to death and then we say the Law condemns him to death. "Although the Jury can 1 If I look at a picture and say: 'What's wrong with this?', then it is better to say that my feeling has direction, and not that my feeling has a cause and I don't mow what it is. Otherwise we suggest an analogy with 'pain' and 'cause of Æ' i.e. what you have eaten. This is wrong or misleading, because, although we do use the word 'cause'in the sense of 'what it is directed to' ('What made you jump?' him appear in the doorway'), we often use it in other senses also.-R. I you say: 'To speak of the cause of some development is only to speak of the concomitants'-'cause is a question of concomitants'-then if you put 'only'. you are admitting that it be something else. It means that you know of some thing entirely difierent.-R. a You want to say: there is a conection.' But w at is a conection? Wel levers, chains, These are conections, and here we have them. but here what we ought to explain is 'super'.-R. 16 LECTURES AND CONVERSA'l'IONS pardon [acquit ?] him, the Law can't." (This IIltry mean the Law can't take bribes, etc.) The idea of something super-strict, some thing stricter than any Judge can be,l super-rigidity. The point being, you are inclined to ask : "Do we have a picture of some thing more rigorous?" Hardly. But we are inclined to express ourselves in the form of a superlative. 27. .. -- .. -- " , .. .. .. - .- '- Cf. a lever-fulcrum. The idea of a super-hardness. " The geometrical lever is harder than any lever can be. It can't bend." Here you have the Case of logical necessity. "Logic is a mechanism made of an infinitely hard material. Logic cannot bend.'11 (Well,' no more it can.) This is the way we arve at a super-something. This is the way certain superlatives come about, how they are used, e.g. the infinite. 28. People would say that even in the case of tracing a mechanism there is also concomitance. But need 'there be ? I just follow the string to the person at the other end. 29. Suppose there was a super-mechanism in the Sense that there was a mechanism inside the string. Even if there was such a mechanism, it would do no good. You do recognize tracing the mechanism as tracing a peculiar kind of causal reaction. 30. You wish to get rid of the idea of connection altogether. "This is also only concomitance." Then there is nothing more to be said.8 You would have to specify what is a case you wouldn't 1 Something that ClIlot be swayed.-R. B Suppose that we treat of kinematics. Give the distance of the lever from tho po nt, and c:alculate the distance of the arc. But then we say: 'If the lever is made of metl, however hard, it will bend a little, and the will not come just there.' And so we have the idea of a super rigidity: the of a geomelrical lever which Gtll bend. Here we have the ide3 of logical necessity: a mechanism of infinitely hard material.-R. . H someone says: 'You mustn't think that logic is made of an infinitely hard material', you must ask : 'What mustn't I think.?'-T. • What we cal ',xpllion' is a form of GfJI1ItUlitm. And we wish to get rid of conection altoĜ. We wish to get rid of the notion of mechanism, and say: 'It's al CODCOlDltants.' Why 'al' jI-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 17 call concomitance. "Tracing a mechanism is only finding con comitance. In the end it can all be reduced to concomitance." It It might be proved that people never traced a mechanism unless they had had a lot of experience of a certain sort. This could be put in the way : "It al reduces to concomitance." 31 . Cf. " Physics doesn't explain anything. It just describes cases of concomitance." 32. You could mean by 'There is no super-mechanism', 'Don't imagine mechanisms between the atoms in the case of a lever. There aren't any mechanisms there'.l (You are taking for granted the atomistic picture. II What does this come to ? We are so used to this picture that it's as though we had al seen atoms. Every educated eight-year old child knows that things are made of atoms. We would think it lack of education if a person didn't think of a rod as being made of atoms.) 33. (You can look on the mechanism as a set of concomitant causal phenomena. You don't, of course.) You say : ccWell, this moves this, this this, this this, and so on." 34. Tracing ,a mechanism is one way of finding the cause; we speak · of 'the cause' in this case. But if cases of wheels made of butter and looking like steel were frequent we might say : ccThis ('this wheel') is not the only cause at all. This may only look like a mechanism."3 35. People often say that aesthetics is ӓ branch of psychology. The idea is that once we are more advanced, everything-all the mysteries of Art-wil be understood by psychological experi ments. Exceedingly stupid as the idea is, this is roughly it. 36. Aesthetic questions have nothing to do with psycho logical experiments, but are answered in an entirely different way.' 1 You reduce the actual mechanism to a more c mplicated atomic mechanism, but don't go n.-T. I We might have a primitive mechanism. Then we have the picture of its al being formeCI. of particles-iltoms, etc. And we might then want to say: 'Don't go on to think of atoms between these atoms. ' Here we take for granted the atomic picture-which is a queer business. If we had to say what a super-mechanism was, we say it was one which did not consist of atoms : bits of the mechanism were just • We are constantly inclined to reduce to other Ðs. So excited by finding that it's sometimes concomitance, we to say it's al really concomitance. -T. , I wish to make it clear that the important problems in aesthetics are not settled by research.-T. problems are answered in a different way-more in the form 'What is in my mind ·when I say so and so ?'-R. 18 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS 37. "What is in my mind when I say so and so ?"! I write a sentence. One word isn't the one I need. 1 find the right word. "What is it I want to say ? Oh yes, that is what 1 wanted." The answer in these cases is the one that satisfied you, e.g. someone says (as we often say in philosophy) : "1 will tell you what is at the back. of your mind: . . . " "Oh yes, quite so." The criterion for it being the one that was in your mind is that when I tell . you, you agree. This is not what is called a psychological experiment . . An example of a psychological experi ment is: you have twelve subjects, put same question to each and the result is that each says such and such, i.e. the result is some thing statistical. 2 38; You could say: "An aesthetic explanation is not a causal explanation."3 39. Cf. Freud : Wit and the Unconscious. Freud wrote about jokes. You might cal the expla.nation Freud gives a causal explanation. "!f it is not causal, how do you know it's correct ?" You say: "Yes, that's right.'" Freud transforms the joke into a diferent form which is recognized by us as an expression of the chain of ideas which led us from one end to another of a joke. An entirely new account of a correct explanation. Not one agreeing with experience, but one accepted. You have to give the expla.na tion that is accepted. This is the whole point of the explanation. 40. Cf. "Why do 1 say "Higher !" ?" with "Why do I say "1 have a pain" ?"5 1 Compare: 'What realy Wlt to say is so and so.'-R. . t Is this a narrowing the sense of psychological experiment?-T. 8 It is true that 'psychology' is used in very different ways. We could say that aesthetic explanation is not causal explanation. Or that it is causal explanation of this sort: that the person who a$1'ccs with you sees the cause at once.-R. ' Al we can say is that if It is presented to you, you say 'Yes, that's what happened.'-R. The unrest when you ask: 'Why ?' in this sort of case is similar to the unrest in the case of 'Why?' when you look for the mechanism. 'Explanation' here is on the level of utterance. In some respect on a level. Cf. the two games with 'He's in pain.' 0" the two games with 'He's in Here 'explanation' is on the same as an utterance-where the utterance (when say that you have pain, for instance) is the sole criterion. Explanation here is an utterance supplied by another person-like teaching him to cry. ( his takes the sutprisingness away from the fact that the whole point of an explanation is that it is There are corresponding to these explanations uterances which look just as there are utterances which look like assertions.)-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 19 il 1. One asks such a question as 'What does this remind me of?" or one says of a piece of music: "This is like some sentence, but what sentence is it like ?"l Various things are suggested; one thing, as you say, clicks. What does it mean, it 'clicks' ? Does it do anything you can compare to the noise of a click? Is there the ringing of a bell, or something comparable ?2 2. It is as though you needed some criterion, namely the clicking, to know the right thing has happened.3 3. The comparison is, that some one particu:lar phenomenon happened other than my saying: "That's right." You say: "That explanation is the right one which clicks." Suppose someone said: "The tempo of that song will be al right when I can hear distinctly such and such.'" I have pointed to a phenomenon which, if it is the case, will make me satisfied. 4. You might say the clicking is that I'm satisfied. Take a pointer moving into place opposite another one. You are satisfied when the two pointers are opposite one another.1i And you coUld have said this in advance.8 5. We are again and again using this simile of something clicking or fitting, when really there is nothing that clicks or that fits anything. 6. I should like to talk of the sort of explanation one longs for when one talks about an aesthetic impression. 7. People stil have the idea that psychology is one day going to explain al our aesthetic judgements, and they mean experimental psychology. This is very funny-very funy indeed. There doesn't seem any connection between what psychologists do and any judgement about a work of art. We 1 There may be an 'explanation' in the form of an answer to a question like 'What does this remind me of?'. In a piece of music there may be a theme of which I say . . • -R. I Does it click in any sense? So that, for instance'J ou say: 'Now it has made that noise' ? Of course not. What do we compare the icking with here? 'With a feeling,' 'So you have a feeling ?' Do you have a sign that it has falen into place? -R; 8 Is there any necessary criterion for this happening?-T. , If it is sung slowly • . . -R. played degrees faster • . . -T. & (Something moving along a clicks when it fal into place.) -T. 8 But why not say the clicking is just that I am satis ed? Whereas it might look as clicking were something else, which I wait for, and when it comes I am In some circumstances you could point to such a phenomenon.-R. 20 LECTURES AND CONVERSA nONS might examine what sort of thing we would call an explanation of an aesthetic judgement. 8. 'Supposing it was found that al our judgements proceeded from o brain. We discovered particular kinds of mechanism in the brain, formulated general laws, etc. One could show that this sequence of notes produces this particular kind of reaction ; makes a man smile and say : "Oh, how wonderful!'l (Mechanism for English language, etc.)2 Suppose this were done, it might enable us to predict what a particular person would like and dislike. We could calculate these things. The question is whether this is the sort of explanation we should like to have when we are puzzled about aesthetic impressions, e.g. there is a puzzle-"Why do these bars give me such a peculiar impression ?" Obviously it isn't this, i.e. a calculation, an account of reactions, etc., we want-apart from the obvious impossibility of the thing. 9. As far as one can see the puzzlement I am talking about can be cured only by peculiar kinds of comparisons, e.g. by an arrangement of certain musical figures, comparing their effect on us.8 "If we put in this chord it does not have that effect; if we put in this chord it does." You could have a sentence and say "This sentence sounds queer somehow". You could point what's queer. What would be the criterion that you had pointed out the right thing ? Suppose a poem sounded old-fashioned, what would be the criterion that you had found out what was old-fashioned in it. One criterion would be that when something was pointed out you were satisfied. And another criterion: "No-one would use that word today"'; here you might refer to a dictionary, ask other people, etc.6 I could point out the wrong thing and yet you would still be satisfied. 10. Suppose someone heard syncopated music of Brahms played and asked : "What is the queer rhythm which makes me wobble ?"8 "It is the 3 against 4." One could play certain phrases 1 II you knew the mechanism of molecules there, and then knew the sequence of Dotes in the music, we could show that . • . -R. • That he says it in English and not in French would also be explained by the fact that sometlig is embodied in his brain: we could see the diferences.-R. • When the written notes or the played notes are spread out, then you say • . . T. , 'It is this word. you see. No one today would say so and so.'-R. . I IOU asked: 'What is it that sounds American about this sentence ?' But you Dna out whether the word was an americanism or not, for instance; other people might corborate this.-R. • FCel wobbly.-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 21 and he would say: "Yes. It's this peculiar rhythm I meant." On the other hand, ifhe didn't agree, this wouldn't be the explanation. 11. The sort of explanation one is looking for when one is pU2%l.ed by an aesthetic impression is not a causal explanation, not one corroborated by experience or by statistics as to how people react.1 One of the curious [characteristic-R] things about psychological experiments is that they have to be made on a number of subjects. It is the agreements of Smith, Jones and Robinson which allows you to give an explanation-in this sense of explanation, e.g. you can try out a piece of music in a psycho logical laboratory and get the result that the music acts in such and such a way under such and such a drug.2 This is not what one means or what one is driving at by an investigation into aesthetics. 12. This is connected with the diference between cause and motive. In a law-court you are asked the motive of your action and you are supposed to know it. Unless you lie you are supposed to be able to tel the motive of your action. You are not supposed to know the laws by which your body and mind are governed. Why do they suppose you know it? Because you've had such a lot of experience with yourself? People sometimes say: "No one can see inside you, but you can see inside yourself" , as though being so near yourself, being yourself, you know your own mechanism.s But is it like that? "Surely he must know why he did it or why he said such and such." 13. One case is, where you give the reason for your doing something.' "Why did you Write 6249 under the line?" You give the multiplication you had done. "I arved at it by this multi.,. plication." This is comparable to giving a mechanism. One might cal it giving a motive for writing down the numbers. It means, I passed through such and such a process of reasoning. II 1 You canot arive at the aplanation by means of psychological aperiment. R.. S Or on people of a certain race:-R.. 8 Obviously this has nothing to do with your having observed yourself so often. (Often we do seem to sugest that because you are so near to yourself, you could see what happened. This is like knowing your own mechanism.)-R. , There is one thing here that could be compared with knowing a mechanism 'Surely he must know he did it, or why he said so and so.' But how do you know why you did it ? is one kind of case where the answer is to give the ntI: you are writing out a multiplicatiOtl, and I ask • • • -R.. • Where I give a reason in this sense • • • -R.. 22 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS Here 'Why did you do it?' means CHow did you get there?' . You gi\re a reason, the road you went. 14. If he tells us a peculiar process by which he arrived at the thing, this inclines us to say,: "Only he knows the process which led to it." 15. Giving a reason sometimes means 'I actually went this way', sometimes 'I could have gone this way', i.e. sometimes what we say acts as a justification, not as a report of what was done, e.g. 1 remember the answer to a question ; when asked why I give this answer, I gave a process leading to it, though I didn't go through this process.! 16. "Why did you do it?" Answer: "I said to myself such and such . . . " In many cases the motive is just what we give on being asked.2 17. When you ask : "Why did you do it ?", in an enormous number of cases people give an answer--podictic-and are unshakable about it, and in an enormous number of cases we accept the answer given. There are 'other cases where people say they have forgotten their motive. Other cases where you are puzzled imediately after you have done something and ask: "Why did I do this ?'?3 Suppose Taylor was in this state and I said : "Look here, Taylor. The molecules in the sofa attract the molecules in your brain, etc . . . and so . . . " 18. Suppose Taylor and I are walking along the river and Taylor stretches out his hand and pushes me in the river. When I ask why he did this he says : "I was pointing out something to you", whereas the psycho-analyst says that Taylor subconsciously hated me.' Suppose e.g. it often happened that when two people were walking along a river: (1) they were talking amicably; 1 We give the proces which led to it before. Or it may be what we DOW see would it.-R. (It is not a natural usage of , motive'.) You might say: "He knows what he was doing, nobody else does.'-T. I Thus "reason' does not always mean the same thing. And similarly with "motive'. "Why did you do it?' One sometimes answers: 'Wel, I said to myself: "r must see him because he is il." '-ac:tualy remembering having said things to oneself. Or again, in many cases the motive is the justification we give on being asked-just tbat.-R. 8 But is it clear why one should be puzed ?-R. 'A lot of things confirm this. At the same time a psycho-analyst has another explanation.-T. We might have evidence that the psycho-analyst's explanation is cor.-R. " LECnJRES ON AESTHETICS 23 (2) one was obviously pointing out something and pushed the other in the river; (3) the person pushed in had a similarity with the father of the other person. Here we have two explanations: (1) He subconsciously hated the other man. (2) He was pointing at something. 19. Both explanations may be correct. When would we say that Taylor's explanation was correct? When he had never shown any unfriendly feelings, when a church-steeple and I were in his field of vision, and Taylor was known to be truthful. But, under the same circUmstances, the psycho-analyst's explanation may also be correct.1 Here there are two motives conscious and unconscious. The games played with the two motives are utterly difent.2 The explanations could in a sense be contradictory and yżt both be correct. (Love and Hate.)3 20. This connects up with something that Freud does. Freud does something which seems to me immensely wrong. He gives what he calls an interpretation of dreams. In his book The Interjmt of Dreams he describes one dream which he cals a Žbeautiful dream' ['Ein schoner Traum'-R].· A patient, after saying that she had had a beautiful dream, described a dream in which she descended from a height, saw flowers and shrubs, broke of the branch of a tree, etc. Freud shows what he cal the 'meaning' of the dream. The coarsest sexual stuf, bawdy of the worst lcirid-if you Wish to cal it that-bawdy from A to Z. We knoW what we mean by bawdy. A remark sounds to the unini tiated harmless, but the initiated, say, chuckle when they hž it. Freud says the dream ,is bawdy. Is it bawdy? He shows relations between the dream images and certain objects of a sexual nature. The relation he establishes is roughly this. By a chain of associ ations which comes naturaly under certain circumstances, this 1 He hated me because I reminded him of something. And the PiSychoanalyst's statement is then corroborated. HtJ1I corroborated ?-R. · 1 Utterly dillerent things are done with the statement of conscious motive and with the statement of unconscious motive.-R. . • One could be love and one could be hatred.-R. . ' Freud's 'Bin schooer Traum' (D;, Trtli4rdtmg Frankfurt: Fisher Bicherei, 1961. p. 240) does not contain the features of the 'beautiful dream' described here. But the dream which does contain them (the 'Bowery dream'-'Blumentraum'-p. 289) is in fact described as 'beautiful' or 'pret ('schOOe') : 'Der schOe Traum wolte der Triumerin nach der Deutung gar nicht mehr gefa1len.'-Bd. 24 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS leads to that, etc.1 Does this prove that the dream is what is caled bawdy? Obviously not. If a person talks bawdy he doesn't say something which seems to him harmless, and is then psycho analysed. \I Freud caled this dream 'beautiful', putting 'beautiful' in inverted commas. But wasn't the dream beautiful ? I would say to the patient : "Do these associations make the dream not beautiful? It was beautiful.3 Why shouldn't it be ?" I would say Freud had cheated the patient. Cf. scents made of things having intolerable smells. Could we therefore say: "The 'best' scent is realy al sulphuric acid ?"4 Why did FĲud give this explanation at al? Two things people might say : (1) He wishes to explain everything nice in a nasty way, meaning almost that he is fond of bawdy. This is obviously not the case. (2) The connections he makes interest people imensely. They have a charm. It is cha.rming6 to destroy prejudice. 21. a. "If we boil Redpath at 2000 C. al that is left when the water vapour is gone is some ashes, etc.S This is al Redpath realy is." Saying this might have a certain charm, but would be misleading to say the least. 22. The attraction of certain kinds of explanation is over whelming. At a given time the attraction of a certain kind of explanation is greater than you can conceive.7 In particular, explanation of the kind 'This is realy only this'. 23. There is a strong tendency to say: "We can't get round the fact that this dream is realy such and such."s It may be the fact that the explanation is extremely repellant that drives you to adopt it. 24. If someone says : "Why do you say it is realy this ? Obviously it is not this at al" , it is in fact even difcult to see it as something else. 1 From a flower to this, a tree to that, etc.-R. • You dont say a person talks bawdy when his intention is innocent.-T. I This is what is cal beautifUl.-T. , If there is a conection between acid which stinks and the best per- fumes, could we on that account put 'the perfume' in quotes.-T. I To some people.-R. • 'If we heat this man to 200 degrees Centegrade. the water evapolltes • • :-R. , If you haven't just the right examples in mind.-T. , 8 If we see the conection of something like this beautifUl dream to something ugly . • . -R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 25 25. Here is an extremely interesting psychological phenom enon, that this ugly explanation makes you say you realy had these thoughts, whereas in any ordinary sense you realy didn't. (1) There is the process ['freier Einfal'-R] which connects certain parts of the dream with certain objects. (2) There is the process 'So this is what I meant'. There is a maze for people to go astray in here.1 26. Suppose you were analysed when you had a stamer. (1) You may say that that explanation [analysis-R] is correct which cures the stamer. (2) If the stamer is not cured the criterion may be the person analysed saying : "This explanation is correct", 2 or agreeing that the explanation given him is correct. (3) Another criterion is that according to certain rules of experi enceS the explanation given is the correct one, whether the person to whom it is given adopts it or not.' Many of these explanations are adopted because they have a peculiar charm. The picture of people having subconscious thoughts has a charm. The idea of an underworld, a secret cellar. Something hidden, uncanny. Cf. Keller's two children putting a live fly in the head of a doll, burying the doll and then rung away.5 (Why do we do, this sort of thing ? This is the sort of thing we do do.) A lot of things one is ready to believe because they are uncany. 27. One of the most important things about an explanation [in Physics R, T] is that it should work, that it should enable us to predict something [successfuly-T]. Physics is connected with Engineering. The bridge must not fal down. 28. Freud says : "There are several instances (cf. Law) in the mind."8 Many of these explanations (i.e. of psycho-analysis) are not bome out by experience, as an explanation in Physics is.7 The 1 These two need not go together. Either might work and the other noto-R. I 'Oh yes, that's what I meant.'-R. Or you may say that the analogy is correct which the person analyzed agrees to.-T. • Of explaining such phenomena.-R. , Or you may say that the correct analogy is the accepted one. The one ordinarily given.-T. • Gottfried Keler (1819-1890). A Swiss poet, novelist and short-atory writer. The incident to which Wittgenstein refers ocs in Ro1leo tmd Julia auf M1I Dotft. W".h V-VI, Berlin, 1889, p. 84. Ed. • If you look at what Freud says in in his clinical procedure. but, for instance, what we say about the 'Instanzen' ('instances', in the sense in which we speak of a, court of higher instance) of the mind.-R. , An explanation in a diferent sense often. Ita attractiveness is important, morc important than in the case of an explanation in physics.-T. C 26 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS attitude they express is important. They give us a picture which has If. peculiar attraction for us.1 29. Freud has very intelligent reasons for saying what he says, great imagination and colossal prejudice, and prejudice which is very likely to mislead people. II 30. Suppose someone like Freud stresses enormously the importance of sexual motives : (1) Sexual motives are imensely important. (2) Often people have good reason to hide a sexual motive as a motive.- 31. Isn't this also a good reason for admitting sex as a motive for everything, for saying : "This is realy at the bottom of every thing" ? Isn't it clear that a particular way of explaining can bring you to admit another thing. Suppose I show Redpath fifty cases where he admits a certain motive, twenty cases where this motive is an important link. I could make him admit it as a motive in al cases.' 32. Cf. The Darwin upheaval. One circle of adQlirers who said : "Of course", and another circle [of enemies-R] who said : "Of course not".li Why in the Hel should a man say 'of course' ? (The idea was īt of monocellular organisms becoming more and more complicated until they became mamals, men, etc.) Did anyone see this process happening ? No. Has anyone seen it happening now? No. The evidence of breeding is just a drop in the bucket. But there were thousands of books in which this was said to be the obvious solution. People were certain on grounds which were extremely thin. Couldn't there have been an attitude which said: "I don't know. It is an interesting hypo thesis which may eventually be well confirmed" ?8 This shows how you ., can be persuaded of a certain thing. In the end you 1 This does not hc:lp us to P!'JitI anything, but it has a peculiar attraction.-R. • People can be convinced of many things acrding to what you tc:l them.-R. • It is disagreeable to have to ac:Jmit it so often.-R. C If you get him to admit that Ihis is at the bottom of everything, is it therefore at the botm of everything? Al you can say is that you can bring certain people to think that it is.-T. • What does their saying this mean ?-T. We could say the same thing against both of them.-R. • But people were immensc:ly attracted by the unity of the theory, by the single principle-which was taken to be the obvious solution. The certainty ('of course') was created by the enormous charm of this unity. People could have said: ' • • • Perhaps sometime we shal Bod grounds.' But hardly anyone said this; they were either sure that it was so, or sure that it was not so.-R. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 27 forget entirely every question of .verification, you are just sure it must have been like that. 33. If you are led by psycho-analysis to say that really you thought so and so or that really your motive was so and so, this is .not a matter of discovery, but of persuasion.1 In ·a diferent way you could have been persuaded of something diferent. Of course, if psycho-analysis cutes your stamer, it cutes it, and that is an achievement. One thinks of certain results of psycho analysis as a discovery Freud made, as apart from something persuaded to you by a psycho-analyst, and I wish to say this is not the case. 34. Those sentences have the form of persuasion in parti cular which say 'This is reallY this'. [This means-R] there are certain diferences which you have been persuaded to neglect.8 It reminds me of that marvellous motto : 'Everything is what it is and not another thing.' The dream is not bawdy, itis something else. 35. I very often draw your attention to certain difences, e.g. in these classes I tried to show you that Infinity is not so mysterious as it looks. What I'm . doing is also persuasion. If someone says : "There is not a diference", and I say: "There is a diference" I am persuading, I am saying "I don't want you to look at it like that."s Suppose I wished to show how very mis leading the expressions of Cantor are. You ask: "What do you mean, it is misleading ? Where does it lead you to ?" 36. Jeans has written a book called The MYsterious Universe and I loathe it and cal it misleading. Take the title. This alone I would cal misleading.' Cf. Is the thumb-catcher deluded or not?6 Was Jeans deluded when he said it was mysterious ? I might say the title The MYterious Universe includes a kind of idol worship, the idol being Science and the Scientist . . 1 We are likely to think of a person's admitting in analysis that he thought so and so as a kind of discovery which is independent of.having been persuaded by a psychoanalyst.-R. 8 This means you are neglecting certain things and have been persuaded to neglect them.-R. a I am saying I want you to look at the thing in a cl.ifent way.-T. , But in what way is it misleading? Isn't it mysterious. or is it ?-R. 6 I have been talking about the game of 'thumb catching'. What's with that?-R 'Thumb-c:atching': holding the right thumb, say. in the then trying to grasp it with right hand. The thumb 'mysteriously' disappears before it can be graspei:l.-Ed. 28 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS 37. I am in a sense making propaganda for one style of thinking as opposed to another. I am honesdy disgusted with the other. Also I'm trying to state what I think. Nevertheless I'm saying : "For God's sake don't do thiS."l E.g. lpuledUrsell's proof to bits. But after I had done, he said that the proof had a charm for him. Here I could only say: "It has no charm for me. I loathe it.":! Cf. the expression 'The Cardinal number of al Cardinal numbers'. 38. a. Cantor wrote how marvellous it was that the mathe matician could in his imagination [mind-T] transend al limits. 39. I would do my utmost to show it is this charm that makes one do it. a Being Mathematics or Physics it looks incontrovertible and this gives .it a ¼til greater charm. If we explain the surround ings of the expression we see that the thing could have been expressed in an entirely diferent way. I can put it in a way in which it wil lose its charm for a great number of people and certainly wil lose its charm for me.' 40. How much we are doing is cbailging the style of thinking and how much I'm doing is cbailging the style of and how much I'm doing is persuading people to cbailge their style of thinking. 41. (Much of what we are doing is a question of cbailging the style of thinking.) IV (prom Rhees's Notes) 1 . Aesthetic puzles-puzes about the efects the arts have on us:i Paradigm of the sciences is mecbailics. If people imagine a 1 I stop being uz2ded and I to do something diferent.-T. • Cantor's proofs:-I try to show that it is this charm which attractive: (¥= I Vd discussed these proofs with Ursel, and he had With me, he sald: And stil • • • )-R. 8 would do my utmost to show the efFects of the charm, and of the associations of 'Mathematics'.-T. , If I describe the Sutto\Uldings of the then you may see that the thing could have be in an entirely way; and then you see that the similarity of No a cardinal number is very smal. The matter can be put in a way which loses the charm it has for many 6 The puzes which arise in aesthetics, are puz arising &om the efFecta the arts have, are not puzes about how these things are caused • ... LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 29 psyChology, their ideal is a mechanics of the soul.1 If we look at what actualy corresponds to that, we find there are physical experiments and there are psychological experiments. There are laws of physics and there are laws-if you wish to be polite-of psychology. But in physics there are almost too many laws; in psychology there are hardly any. So, to talk about a mechanics of the soul is slighdy funy. 2. ƞut we can dream of predicting the reactions of human beings, say to works of art. If we imagine the dream realized, we'd not thereby have solved what we feel to be aesthetic puzle ments, although we may be able to predict that a certain line of poetry wil, on a certain person, act in such and such a way. What we really want, to solve aesthetic puzlements, is certain com parisons-grouping together of certain cases.2 There is a tendency to talk about the 'efect of a work of art'-feelings, images, etc.3 Then it is natural to ask: "Why do you hear this minuet?", and there is a tendency to answer : "To get this. and that efect." And doesn't the minuet itself matter ? hearing this: would another have done as well? You could play a minuet once . and get a lot out of it, and play the saine minuet another time and get nothing out of it. But it doesn't follow that what you get out of it is then independ ent of the minuet. Cf. the mistake of thinking that the meaning or thought is just an accompaniment .of the word, and the word doesn't matter. 'The sense of a proposition' is very similar to the business of 'an appreciation of art'. The idea that a sentence has a relation to an object, such that, whatever has this efect is the sense of the sentence. "What about a French sentence ? There is the same accompaniment, namely the thought." A man may sing a song with expression and without expression. Then why not leave out the song--ould you have the expression then? 1 I suppose the paradigm of al science i s mechanics, e.g. Newtonian mechanics. Psychology : Three laws for the 5Ou1.-5. • A picture, 'Creation of Adam' by Michelangelo, comes to mind. I have a que idea which could be expressed by : 'There is a tremendous philosophy behind this picture.'-S. a Does that mean that if you gave a person the efects and removed the picture it would be al right? Surely (the) fitst thing is, you see the picture or say the words of a poem. Would a syringe which produces these efects on you do just as wel as the picture?-S. 30 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS If a Frenchman says : "It is raining" in · French and an Englishman also says it in English, it is not that something happens in both minds which is the real sense of 'It is raining'. We imagine something like imagery, which is the international language. Whereas in fact : (1) Thinking (or imagery) is not an accompaniment of the words as they are spoken or heard; (2) The sense-the thought 'It's raining' -is not even the words with the accompaniment of some sort of imagery. It is the thought 'It's raining' only within the English language.1 3. If you ask : "What is the peculiar effect of these words ?", in a sense you make a mistake. What if they had no effect at al ? Aren't they peculiar words ? "Then why do we admire this and not that ?" "1 don't know.» Suppose I give you a pill (1) which makes you draw a picture-perhaps 'The Creation of Adam' ; (2) which gives you feelings in the stomach . . Which would you cal the more peculiar effect ? Certainly-that you draw just this picture. The feelings are pretty simple. "Look at a face-what is important is its expression-not its colour, size, etc." , "Well give us the ' expression without the face." The expression is not an effect of the face-on me or anyone. You could not say that if anything else had this effect, it would have the expression on this fa.ce.2 I want to make you sad. , I show you a picture, and you are sad. This is the effect of this face. 4. The importance of our memory for the expression of a. face. You ma.y show me sticks at diferent times-one is shorter than the other. I may not remember that the other time it was longer. But I compare them, and this shows me they are not the same. 1 (You could cal the music the scraping of the fiddles. etc., arid the efect the Doises we hear, but aren't the auditory impressions as important as the visual one ?) Thinking is not even speaking with accompaniment, noises accompanied with whatever may be, is not the sort 'It rains' at al, but is within English language. A Chinaman who makes noise 'It rains' with same accompaniments-Does he think 'It rains' ?-S. I Face is not a means to produce the exptession.-S. LECTURES ON AESTHETICS '31 1 may draw you a face. Then at another time I draw another face. You say : "That's not the ̢ame face."-but you can't say whether the eyes are closer tog̣er, or mouth longer [eyes bigger or nose longer-S1, or anY!hing of this sort. "It looks diferent, somehow."l l This is enormously important for al p)ilosophy. 5. If I draw a meaningless curve [squiggle-S1 and then draw another later, pretty much like it, you would not know the difrence. But if I draw this peculiar thing which .I cal a face, and then draw one slighdy diferent, you wil know at once there is a diference. Recognising an expression. Architecture :-draw a door -"Slighdy too large." You might say : "He has an excellent eye for measurement." N̤he sees it hasn't the right expression-it doesn't make the right gesture.2 If you showed me a stick of diferent length, I'd not have known. Also, in this case I don't make queer gestures and noise ; but I do when I see a door or a face. I say, e.g. of a smile : "It wasn't quite genuine." "Oh bosh, the lips were parted only 1 /1000th of an inch too much. Does it matter ?" "Yes." "Then it is because of certain consequences." But not only that: the reaction is difer̥t. We can give the history of the matter-we react so because it is a human face. But apart from history-our reaction to these lines is entirely ditf'erent from our reaction to any other lines. Two faces might have the same expression. Say they are both sad. But if ! say : "It has exacdy this expression . . . " . . .. 8 1 It is (the) fact of remembering a facial expression.-S. I Not a matter of measurement.-S. a Can squiggle have same efect as picture of a face? (1) Brothers had same sad expression. (2) It had this expression, photograph and gesture.-S. 32 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS 6. I draw a few dashes with a pencil and paper, and then ask: '"Who is this ?" and get the answer: '"It is Napoleon". We have never been taught to cal these marks, 'Napoleon'. The phenomenon is similar to that of weighing in a balance, I can easily distinguish between a few scratches, on the one hand, and a picture of a man properly drawn, on the other. No one would say: "This is the same as that" in one sense. But, on the other hand, we say : "That's Napoleon". On one peculiar [particular ?] balance we say: "This is the same as that". On one balance the audience easily distinguishes between the face of the actor and the face of lloyd George. All have learnt the use of ' = '. And suddenly they use it in a peculiar way. They say : "This is lloyd George," although in another sense there is no similarity. An equality which we could call the 'equality of expression'. We have learnt the use of 'the same'. Suddenly we automaticaly use 'the same' when there is not similarity of length, weight or anything of the sort.1 In a lecture on description Wittgenstein raised another point about similarity which deserves to be quoted and might be included here-Ed. 'Take a case where you notice a peculiarity in poems of one poet. You can sometimes find the similarity between the style of a musician and the style of a poet who lived at the same time, Ot a painter. Take Brahms and Keller. I often found that certain themes of Brahms wete extremely Kellerian. This was emaordinarily sttiking. First I said this to people. You might say: "What would be the interest of such an utterance ?" The interest partly lay in that they lived at the same time. If I had said he was Shakespearean or Miltonian, this might have had no interest or an entirely different one. If I had constantly wanted to say : "This is Shakespearean" of a certain theme, this would have had little or no interest. It wouldn't connext up with anything. 'This word ('Shakespearean') forces itself on me.' Did I have a certain scene in mind ? If I say this theme of Brahms is extremely Kelerian, the interest this has is first that these two lived at the same time. Also that you can the same sort of things of both of them-the culture of the time in which they If I say this, this comes to an objective interest . . The interest might be that my words suggest a hidden connection. . E.g. Here you actually have a case different from that of faces. With faces you can generally soon find something which makes you say: "Yes that's what made them so similar." Whereas 1 couldn't say now what it is that made Brahms similar to Keller. Nevertheless, I find that utterance of mine interesting. It derives its main interest from the fact that these two lived [at the same time]. "That was [wasn't] written before Wagner." The interest of this statement would lie in the fact that on the whole such statements are true when I make them. One can actually judge when a piece of poetry was written by hearing it, by the style. You could imagine this was impossible, if people in 1850 wrote the same way as in 1750, but you could still imagine people saying : "I am sure that was written in 1850." Cf. [A man on a railway journey to Liverpool saying.1 "I am sure Exeter is in that direction." '-So 1 We use 'agreed' in another way. This is equality and is equality of We suddenly, automaticaly, use 'the same' when it's not length, or etc., although we've learnt it in connection with these.-S. LECTURES ON AESTHE'ITCS 33 The most exact description of my feelings here would be that I say : "Oh, that's Lloyd George l"l Suppose the most exact description of a feeling is "stomach ache". Bnt why isn't the most important description of feeling that you say : "Oh, this is the same as that l" ? 7. Here is the point of Behaviorism. It isn't that they deny there are feelings. But they say our description of behaviour is our description of feelings. . "What did he feel when he said : 'Duncan is in his grave' ?" Can I describe his feelings better than by describing how he said it?2 All other descriptions are crude compared with a description of the gesture he made, the tone of voice with which he made it. What is a description of feeling at al? What is a description of pain ?3 Discussion of a comedian doing imitations, sketches. Suppose you want to describe the experience of the audience why not describe first of al what they saw ? Then perhaps that they.shook with laughter, then what they said.4 ., "This can't be a description of their feelings." One says this because one is thinking of their organic feelings-tension of the muscles in their chest, etc. This would obviously be an experience. But it doesn't seem half as important as the fact that they said so and so. One Ʈks of a description of experience not as a description of action, but as of a description of pain or organic feelings. Cf. what we said about the way in which fashions arise : whether he feels so and so when he cuts lapel of coat bigger. But that he cuts it in this way, etc.i-this is the most important part of the experience. 1 Important thing is I say: 'Yes, this is Drury.' If you wish to describe fe the best way is to describe reactions. Saying 'This is Drury' is the most exact description of feelings I can give at al. Idea that most exact way of describing is by feelings in the stomach.-S. ¥ Can I liescribe his feelings better than (by) imitating the way he said it? Isn't this most impressive ?-S. 8 'He felt this' (touching head).-S. , Suppose I said: 'The crowd roared with laughter: without what they were laughing at; describing what they were laughing at but not them Why not first describe what they saw, then what they did or said, then ' • • • his making it bigger or saying: 'No, no, no?'-5. 34 LECTURES AND · CONVERSATIONS . 8. "Is the most important impression which a picture produces a visual impression or not ?" [(1)] "No. Because you can do things which visually change the picture and yet not change the impression." This sounds as though one wished to say it wasn't an impression of the eyes : an effect, but not a purely visual effect: [(2)] "But it is a visual impression". Only these are the features of the visual impression which matter, and not the others. Suppose [someone says] : "Associations are what · matter -change it slightly and it no longer has the same associations." But can you separate the associations from the picture, and have the same thing? You can't say: "That's just as good as the other : it gives me the same associations." 9. You could select either of two poems to remind you of death, say. But supposing you had read a poem and admired it, could you say : "Oh, read the other it :wil do the same" ? • How do. we use poetry ? Does it play this role-that we say such a thing as : "Here is something just as good . . . . " ? Imagine an entirdy diferent civilization.1 Here there is something you might cal music, since it has notes. They t:J:eat music like this : certain music makes them walk like this. They play a record to do this. One says : "I need this record now. Oh no, take the other, it is just as good." If I admire a minuet I can't say : "Take ' another. It dQes the same thing." What do you mean? It is not the same.9 If someone talks bosh, imagine a case in which it is not bosh. The moment you imagine it, you see .at once it is not like that in our case. We don't read poetry to get associations. We don't happen to, but we might. 10. Two schools : (1) "What matters is the patches of colour [and lines-S] ." (2) "What matters is the expression on these faces." In a sense, these two don't contradict one another. Only (1) doesn't make clear that the difrent patches have difent lAnother culture where music makes them do different things. Cf. (the) rille music plays with us with the t6le music plays with others. One can't say now: 'Play Mozart it does just as well!-S. B Cf. language where producing pictures by words is important thing. You can see how our language is not like that. Poems, sea, sea-picture. Ask him. Show him the difence, etc.-5. LECTURES ON AESTHETrCS 35 importance, . and that diferent alterations have totally diferent effects : some make all the diference in the world. "A picture must be good even if you look at it upside down." Then, the smile may not be noticeable. [Suppose you said:] "That tiny smile by which you change the kindly smile into an ironic one, is not a purely visual difer ence," (Cf. a picture of a monk looking at a vision of the Virgin Mary.) [Suppose you said:] "It changes your whole attitude towards the picture." This may be entirely true. How would this be expressed? Perhaps by the smile you make. The one picture might be blasphemous; with the other you are as you might be in a church. Your attitude might be in the one case that you stand before it almost in prayer, in the other case almost leering' This is a diference of attitude. "Well, there you are. It is al the attitude." But you could have these attitudes without a picture. They are importantśertain1y. 1 1 . "You have given a rough description of the attitude. What you have to describe is something more subde." But if we describe the attitude more exactly, how do you know that this is the essential thing for this picture-that al this must always be present? Don't imagine a description which you have never heard, which describes an attitude in unheard of detail. For you know nothing about such an attitude. We have no idea of such an attitude . . An attitude is pretty well described by the position of the body. This is a good description. But accurate? In a way it is inaccurate. "But if you knew al the muscular sensations, yQU would point to just those which matter."l I don't know them and I don't know what such a description would be like. 2 This is not what we mean by description: Don't imagine an imaginary kind of description of which you realy have no idea. If you say 'description of attitude', tell us what you cal a description of attitude, then you wil see the attitude matters. Some changes change the attitude-We say: "the whole thing is changed." lWho says he always must have this feeling in this muscle? He distinguishes between looking at the picture and looking at this, but he does not distinguish between his muscular fee1ings.-S. I· I can describe how a man stands and then I can describe the picture. Man who makes twelve changes in Michae1angelo.-S. 36 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS 12. Associations also [enormously] matter. These are shown chiefly by the things we say. We ca.l this 'God the Father', the other 'Adam' ; we could go on : "That comes in the Bible, etc." Is this al that matters ? We could have al these associations with a diferent picture, and would stil want to see this picture. "That means the chief impression is the visual impression." Yes, it's the ·picture which seems to matter most. Associations may vary, attitudes may vary, but change the picture ever so slightly, and you won't want to look at it any mote. The craving for simplicity. [people would like to say:] "What realy matters is only the colours." You say this mostly because you wish it to be the case. H your explanation is complicated, it is disagreeable, especialy if you don!t have strong feelings about the thing itself. FROM A LECTURE BELONGING TO A COURSE OF LECTURES ON DESCRIPTION One of the most interesting points which the question of not being able to describe is connected with, [is that] the impression which a certain verse or bar in music gives you is indescribable. "I don't know what it is . . . Look at this transition. . . . What is it? . . . " 1 think you would say it gives you experiences which can't be described. First of al it is, of course, not true that whenever we hear a piece of music or a line of poetry which impresses us gready, we say : "This is indescribable". But it is true that again and again we do feel inclined to say: ''1 can't describe my experience". 1 have in mind a case that saying one is incapable of describing comes from being intrigued and wanting to describe, asking oneself: "What is this ? What's he doing. wanting to do here?-Gosh, if 1 could only say what he's doing here." Very many people have the feeling: "I can make a gesture but that's al". One example is that you say of a certain phrase of music that it draws a conclusion. "Though 1 couldn't say for my life why it is a 'therefore' I" You say in this case that it is indescrib able. But this does not mean that you may not one day say that something is a description. You may one day find the word or you find a verse that fits it. "It is as though he said : ' . . . '," and you have a verse. And now perhaps you say : "And now I understand it." If you say: "We haven't got the technique" (I. A. Richards), what in such a case are we entided to cal such a description ? You might say some such thing as : "Wel, now, if you hear this piece of music. you· get certain sense impressions. Certain images. certain organic feelings, emotions, etc.", meanings, "we stil don't know how to analyse this impression." The mistake seems to me in the idea of description. I said before, with some people, me especialy, the expression of an emotion in music, say, is a certain gesture. If I make a certain gesture . . . . "It is quite obvious that you have certain kinesthetic feelings. It means to you certain kinesthetic feelings." Which 38 LECTURES AND CONVERSA1'IONS ones ? How can you describe them? Except, perhaps, just by the gesture ? . Suppose you said: "This phrase in music alwa.ys makes me make one peculiar gesture." A painter might draw this gesture. A man, instead of making a gesture, would draw a gesture. For him it would be an expression to draw this gesture, or a face going with it, as for me it is to make a gesture. "Wittgenstein, you talk as if this phrase gave you sensations you couldn't describe. Al you get is sensations in your muscles." This is utterly misleading. We look up muscles in a book on anatomy, we press certain parts and give these sensations names, 'A', 'B', 'C', etc. All that would be needed for a piece of music would he the description 'A', etc. , giving the sensations in each muscle. It now seems as though you could do something like this. What a. man sees can generaly be described. Names of colours etc. One assumes at least a picture can be described. One goes on and says not only a visual picture but picture of Kinesthetic Sensations. . By the way, in what way is it wrong for a picture ? Suppose we said, that we cannot describe in words the expression of God in Michelangelo's 'Adam'. "But this is only a matter of tech nique, because if we drew a lattice-work over his face, numbered, 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 I would just write down numbers and you might say: "My Godl It's grand." It wouldn't be any description. You wouldn't say LECTURES ON AESTHETICS 39 such a thing at al. It would only be a description if you could paint (act?) according to this picture, which, of course, is con ceivable. But this would show that you can't at al transmit the impression by words, but you'd have again to paint. Could you imagine: it is an odd fact that we sometimes imitate someone else? I remember walking in the street and saying: "I am now walking exa.ctly like Russell." You might say it was a kinesthetic sensation. Very queer. A person who imitates another's face doesn't do it before a mirror but it is a fact that there is such a thing as saying: "The face is so and so." Suppose I make a gesture and I think the gesture charac teristic for the impression I get. Suppose I gave the gesture by co-ordinates and I wish to make it clear to Mr. Lewy. He might have to make an analogous gesture. His muscles, hands, etc., are diferendy shaped. So in one sense, he can't copy and in another sense he can. What are we to regard as the copy? "It wil depend on how such muscles contract." But how on earth are you to know? . If I make a gesture, and you are good imitators, these gestures wil have to be similar, but diferent; the shape of the fingers, etc., is diferent. The criterion for its being this gesture wil be the clicking of it in you. You say: "Now this." To say what's similar is impossible (to say). Each one makes a gesture immediately and says : "That's the one." . If I wish to convey an impression to Mr. Lewy, it might only be made in this way, that he copies my gesture. Then what about this technique of describing kinesthetic sensations ? This isn't coordinates; it is something else: imitating the person. "Wittgenstein, if you make a gesture, al you get are certain kinesthetic sensations." It is not at al clear in what case we do say we have conveyed them. But it may, e.g., be by what we cal 'imitating' . Whether it is this wil depend on . . . . "There is a phenomenon, the following: if you give me a piece of music and ask me in what tempo it ought to be played, I may or may not be absolutely certain. "Perhaps, like this . . . I don't know." Or "Like this", telling you exacdy what tempo it is to be. I always insist on one tempo, not necessarily the same. In the other case I am uncertain. Suppose the question were to 40 LECTURES AND CONVERSATIONS transmit to you a certain impression I get of a piece of music. That mig4t depend on the fact that a certain number of you, on my playing it to you, (that you) "get it", 'get hold of it'. What does it consist in to get hold of a tune or a piece of poetry ? You may read a stanza. I let you al read it. Everyone reads it slightly diferently. I get the definite impression that "None of them has got hold of it." Suppose then I read it out to you and say : "Look, this is how it ought to be". Then four of you read this stanza, no one exactly like the other, but in such a way that I say : "Each one is ,exactly certain. of himself." This is a phenom enon, being certain of yourself, reading it in one way onlY. He is absolutely exact as to what pause to ma.k͟. I might say in this case that you four have got hold of it. I would have conveyed something to you. I would perfectly correctly say, that I have exa.ctly conveyed to you the exact experience I had. But what about the technique of imagery, etc. ? This (con vention/communication/description) is not based on copying me exactly . If I had a chronometer by which I can measure exactly the interval between the vowels, they may not be the same but entirely diferent. If someone says : "We lack this technique", he presupposes that, if we had it, we would have a new expression, a new way of transmitting, not the old one. But how does he know that if we describe in the new way-suppose I had a way of describing kinesthetic sensations or way of describing gestures-I get the same as I got if I transmit gesture. Suppose I said: "I get a little tickling there" [rung finger down hand]. Suppose I had six ticklings and I had a method of producing eacil one. Suppose I had instruments attached to my nerves in such a way that an electric current going through the nerves was measured by the instrument. You get an instrument reading. "Now I'll represent this in Mr. Lewy." But would this be the representa.tion we want? I might read a stanza and you might say: "Wittgenstein obviously has got hold of it. He had got my interpretation." Mr. Lewy reads it and you say the same. But voice, strength, etc., are diferent. "My interpreta.tion is that which produces the same kinesthetic impressions." But how do you know ? This simply isn't an a.na.1ysis at al. We have one way of comparing and if you say: "And also we could get a scientific one," I'd ask: "Yes, but what makes you think that these wil go paralel at al ?" C ON V E R S A T I ON S ON F R EUD In these discussions Wittgenstein was critical of Freud. But he was also bringing out how much there is in what Freud says about the notion of "dream symbolism", for instance, or the suggestion that in dreaming I am-in some sense-'saying some thing'. He was trying to separate what is valuable in Freud from that 'way of thinking' which he wanted to combat. He told me that when he was in Cambridge before 1914 he had thought psychology a waste of time	165,568
The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho, Alan R. Clarke) (Z-Library).pdf	Contents International Acclaim for Paulo Coelho’s Foreword Prologue Part One Part Two Epilogue A Preview of Paulo Coelho’s: Warrior of the Light Warrior of the Light: Prologue About the Author Also by Paulo Coelho Back Ads Copyright About the Publisher International Acclaim for Paulo Coelho’s THE ALCHEMIST “The story has the comic charm, dramatic tension, and psychological intensity of a fairy tale, but it’s full of specific wisdom as well. . . . A sweetly exotic tale for young and old alike.” —Publishers Weekly “Beneath this novel’s compelling story and the shimmering elegance with which it’s told lies a bedrock of wisdom about following one’s heart.” —Booklist “As memorable and meaningful as Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince.” —Austin American-Statesman “A touching, inspiring fable.” —Indianapolis Star “A little poke in the ribs from on high.” —Detroit Free Press “The Alchemist is a fabulous success.” —Der Spiegel (Germany) “A remarkable tale about the most magical of all journeys: the quest to fulfill one’s destiny. I recommend The Alchemist to anyone who is passionately committed to claiming the life of their dreams—today.” —Anthony Robbins, author of Awaken the Giant Within “An entrepreneurial tale of universal wisdom we can apply to the business of our own lives.” —Spencer Johnson, M.D., author of Who Moved My Cheese “An adventure story full of magic and wisdom.” —Rudolfo Anaya, author of Bless Me, Ultima “The Alchemist is a beautiful book about magic, dreams, and the treasures we seek elsewhere and then find at our doorstep.” —Madonna in Sonntag Aktuell (Germany) “The Alchemist is an unabashed delight and inspirational wonder. This fable is a roseate amalgam of spiritual quest, existential puzzle, lovely sensitivity, and deep strength.” —Malcolm Boyd, author of Are You Running with Me, Jesus? “Paulo Coelho knows the secret of literary alchemy.” —Kenzaburo Oé, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature “A most tender and gentle story. It is a rare gem of a book, and will most certainly touch the very core of every heart earnestly seeking its own destiny on the journey of life.” —Gerald G. Jampolsky, M.D., coauthor of Change Your Mind, Change Your Life and Love Is Letting Go of Fear “Rarely do I come across a story with the directness and simplicity of Coelho’s The Alchemist. It lifts the reader out of time and focuses through a believably unlikely story on a young dreamer looking for himself. A beautiful story with a pointed message for every reader.” —Joseph Girzone, author of Joshua “This is the type of book that makes you understand more about yourself and about life. It has philosophy and is spiced with colors, flavors, and subjects, like a fairy tale. A lovely book.” —Yedi’ot Aharonot (Israel) “A boy named Santiago joins the ranks of Candide and Pinocchio by taking us on a very excellent adventure.” —Paul Zindel, author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds “The mystic quality in the odd adventures of the boy, Santiago, may bring not only him but others who read this fine book closer to recognizing and reaching their own inner destinies.” —Charlotte Zolotow, author of If You Listen “Paulo Coelho gives you the inspiration to follow your own dreams by seeing the world through your own eyes and not someone else’s.” —Lynn Andrews, author of the Medicine Woman series “Nothing is impossible, such is Coelho’s message, as long as you wish it with all your heart. No other book bears so much hope; small wonder its author became a guru among all those in search of the meaning of life.” —Focus (Germany) “The Alchemist is a truly poetic book.” —Welt am Sonntag (Germany) “Dotted throughout the story and illuminated in a poetic style are metaphors and deep insights that stir our imagination and transport the reader on a fantastic journey of the soul.” —Yomiuri Shimbun (Japan) “The Alchemist brings to mind The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry and The Prophet by Khalil Gibran, as well as biblical parables.” —Gazeta Wyborcza (Poland) “The Alchemist is a beautiful and heartwarming story with an exotic flavor. . . . You may or may not agree with Paulo Coelho’s philosophy, but it’s nonetheless a tale that comforts our hearts as much as our souls.” —Bergensavisen (Norway) “The Alchemist is like a modern-day The Little Prince. A supreme and simple book.” —Milorad Pavic, author of Dictionary of the Khazars “Among Latin American writers, only Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez is more widely read than Brazil’s Paulo Coelho.” —The Economist Foreword When The Alchemist was first published twenty-five years ago in my native Brazil, no one noticed. A bookseller in the northeast corner of the country told me that only one person purchased a copy the first week of its release. It took another six months for the bookseller to unload a second copy—and that was to the same person who bought the first! And who knows how long it took to sell the third. By the end of the year, it was clear to everyone that The Alchemist wasn’t working. My original publisher decided to cut me loose and cancelled our contract. They wiped their hands of the project and let me take the book with me. I was forty-one and desperate. But I never lost faith in the book or ever wavered in my vision. Why? Because it was me in there, all of me, heart and soul. I was living my own metaphor. A man sets out on a journey, dreaming of a beautiful or magical place, in pursuit of some unknown treasure. At the end of his journey, the man realizes the treasure was with him the entire time. I was following my Personal Legend, and my treasure was my capacity to write. And I wanted to share this treasure with the world. As I wrote in The Alchemist, when you want something, the whole universe conspires to help you. I started knocking on the doors of other publishers. One opened, and the publisher on the other side believed in me and my book and agreed to give The Alchemist a second chance. Slowly, through word of mouth, it finally started to sell—three thousand, then six thousand, ten thousand—book by book, gradually throughout the year. Eight months later, an American visiting Brazil picked up a copy of The Alchemist in a local bookstore. He wanted to translate the book and help me find a publisher in the United States. HarperCollins agreed to bring it to an American audience, publishing it with great fanfare: ads in the New York Times and influential news magazines, radio and television interviews. But it still took some time to sell, slowly finding its audience in the United States by word of mouth, just as it did in Brazil. And then one day, Bill Clinton was photographed leaving the White House with a copy. Then Madonna raved about the book to Vanity Fair, and people from different walks of life—from Rush Limbaugh and Will Smith to college students and soccer moms—were suddenly talking about it. The Alchemist became a spontaneous—and organic—Phenomenon. The book hit the New York Times bestseller list, an important milestone for any author, and stayed there for more than three hundred weeks. It has since been translated into more than eighty different languages, the most translated book by any living author, and is widely considered one of the ten best books of the twentieth century. People continue to ask me if I knew The Alchemist would be such a huge success. The answer is no. I had no idea. How could I? When I sat down to write The Alchemist, all I knew is that I wanted to write about my soul. I wanted to write about my quest to find my treasure. I wanted to follow the omens, because I knew even then that the omens are the language of God. Though The Alchemist is now celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary, it is no relic of the past. The book is still very much alive. Like my heart and like my soul, it continues to live every day, because my heart and soul are in it. And my heart and soul is your heart and soul. I am Santiago the shepherd boy in search of my treasure, just as you are Santiago the shepherd boy in search of your own. The story of one person is the story of everyone, and one man’s quest is the quest of all of humanity, which is why I believe The Alchemist continues all these years later to resonate with people from different cultures all around the world, touching them emotionally and spiritually, equally, without prejudice. I re-read The Alchemist regularly and every time I do I experience the same sensations I felt when I wrote it. And here is what I feel. I feel happiness, because it is all of me, and all of you simultaneously. I feel happiness, too, because I know I can never be alone. Wherever I go, people understand me. They understand my soul. This continues to give me hope. When I read about clashes around the world—political clashes, economic clashes, cultural clashes —I am reminded that it is within our power to build a bridge to be crossed. Even if my neighbor doesn’t understand my religion or understand my politics, he can understand my story. If he can understand my story, then he’s never too far from me. It is always within my power to build a bridge. There is always a chance for reconciliation, a chance that one day he and I will sit around a table together and put an end to our history of clashes. And on this day, he will tell me his story and I will tell him mine. — Paulo Coelho, 2014 Prologue Translated by Clifford E. Landers The alchemist picked up a book that someone in the caravan had brought. Leafing through the pages, he found a story about Narcissus. The alchemist knew the legend of Narcissus, a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called the narcissus. But this was not how the author of the book ended the story. He said that when Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears. “Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked. “I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied. “Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.” “But . . . was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked. “Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!” The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said: “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.” “What a lovely story,” the alchemist thought. THE BOY’S NAME WAS SANTIAGO. DUSK was falling as the boy arrived with his herd at an abandoned church. The roof had fallen in long ago, and an enormous sycamore had grown on the spot where the sacristy had once stood. He decided to spend the night there. He saw to it that all the sheep entered through the ruined gate, and then laid some planks across it to prevent the flock from wandering away during the night. There were no wolves in the region, but once an animal had strayed during the night, and the boy had had to spend the entire next day searching for it. He swept the floor with his jacket and lay down, using the book he had just finished reading as a pillow. He told himself that he would have to start reading thicker books: they lasted longer, and made more comfortable pillows. It was still dark when he awoke, and, looking up, he could see the stars through the half-destroyed roof. I wanted to sleep a little longer, he thought. He had had the same dream that night as a week ago, and once again he had awakened before it ended. He arose and, taking up his crook, began to awaken the sheep that still slept. He had noticed that, as soon as he awoke, most of his animals also began to stir. It was as if some mysterious energy bound his life to that of the sheep, with whom he had spent the past two years, leading them through the countryside in search of food and water. “They are so used to me that they know my schedule,” he muttered. Thinking about that for a moment, he realized that it could be the other way around: that it was he who had become accustomed to their schedule. But there were certain of them who took a bit longer to awaken. The boy prodded them, one by one, with his crook, calling each by name. He had always believed that the sheep were able to understand what he said. So there were times when he read them parts of his books that had made an impression on him, or when he would tell them of the loneliness or the happiness of a shepherd in the fields. Sometimes he would comment to them on the things he had seen in the villages they passed. But for the past few days he had spoken to them about only one thing: the girl, the daughter of a merchant who lived in the village they would reach in about four days. He had been to the village only once, the year before. The merchant was the proprietor of a dry goods shop, and he always demanded that the sheep be sheared in his presence, so that he would not be cheated. A friend had told the boy about the shop, and he had taken his sheep there. “I need to sell some wool,” the boy told the merchant. The shop was busy, and the man asked the shepherd to wait until the afternoon. So the boy sat on the steps of the shop and took a book from his bag. “I didn’t know shepherds knew how to read,” said a girl’s voice behind him. The girl was typical of the region of Andalusia, with flowing black hair, and eyes that vaguely recalled the Moorish conquerors. “Well, usually I learn more from my sheep than from books,” he answered. During the two hours that they talked, she told him she was the merchant’s daughter, and spoke of life in the village, where each day was like all the others. The shepherd told her of the Andalusian countryside, and related the news from the other towns where he had stopped. It was a pleasant change from talking to his sheep. “How did you learn to read?” the girl asked at one point. “Like everybody learns,” he said. “In school.” “Well, if you know how to read, why are you just a shepherd?” The boy mumbled an answer that allowed him to avoid responding to her question. He was sure the girl would never understand. He went on telling stories about his travels, and her bright, Moorish eyes went wide with fear and surprise. As the time passed, the boy found himself wishing that the day would never end, that her father would stay busy and keep him waiting for three days. He recognized that he was feeling something he had never experienced before: the desire to live in one place forever. With the girl with the raven hair, his days would never be the same again. But finally the merchant appeared, and asked the boy to shear four sheep. He paid for the wool and asked the shepherd to come back the following year. And now it was only four days before he would be back in that same village. He was excited, and at the same time uneasy: maybe the girl had already forgotten him. Lots of shepherds passed through, selling their wool. “It doesn’t matter,” he said to his sheep. “I know other girls in other places.” But in his heart he knew that it did matter. And he knew that shepherds, like seamen and like traveling salesmen, always found a town where there was someone who could make them forget the joys of carefree wandering. The day was dawning, and the shepherd urged his sheep in the direction of the sun. They never have to make any decisions, he thought. Maybe that’s why they always stay close to me. The only things that concerned the sheep were food and water. As long as the boy knew how to find the best pastures in Andalusia, they would be his friends. Yes, their days were all the same, with the seemingly endless hours between sunrise and dusk; and they had never read a book in their young lives, and didn’t understand when the boy told them about the sights of the cities. They were content with just food and water, and, in exchange, they generously gave of their wool, their company, and—once in a while—their meat. If I became a monster today, and decided to kill them, one by one, they would become aware only after most of the flock had been slaughtered, thought the boy. They trust me, and they’ve forgotten how to rely on their own instincts, because I lead them to nourishment. The boy was surprised at his thoughts. Maybe the church, with the sycamore growing from within, had been haunted. It had caused him to have the same dream for a second time, and it was causing him to feel anger toward his faithful companions. He drank a bit from the wine that remained from his dinner of the night before, and he gathered his jacket closer to his body. He knew that a few hours from now, with the sun at its zenith, the heat would be so great that he would not be able to lead his flock across the fields. It was the time of day when all of Spain slept during the summer. The heat lasted until nightfall, and all that time he had to carry his jacket. But when he thought to complain about the burden of its weight, he remembered that, because he had the jacket, he had withstood the cold of the dawn. We have to be prepared for change, he thought, and he was grateful for the jacket’s weight and warmth. The jacket had a purpose, and so did the boy. His purpose in life was to travel, and, after two years of walking the Andalusian terrain, he knew all the cities of the region. He was planning, on this visit, to explain to the girl how it was that a simple shepherd knew how to read. That he had attended a seminary until he was sixteen. His parents had wanted him to become a priest, and thereby a source of pride for a simple farm family. They worked hard just to have food and water, like the sheep. He had studied Latin, Spanish, and theology. But ever since he had been a child, he had wanted to know the world, and this was much more important to him than knowing God and learning about man’s sins. One afternoon, on a visit to his family, he had summoned up the courage to tell his father that he didn’t want to become a priest. That he wanted to travel. “People from all over the world have passed through this village, son,” said his father. “They come in search of new things, but when they leave they are basically the same people they were when they arrived. They climb the mountain to see the castle, and they wind up thinking that the past was better than what we have now. They have blond hair, or dark skin, but basically they’re the same as the people who live right here.” “But I’d like to see the castles in the towns where they live,” the boy explained. “Those people, when they see our land, say that they would like to live here forever,” his father continued. “Well, I’d like to see their land, and see how they live,” said his son. “The people who come here have a lot of money to spend, so they can afford to travel,” his father said. “Amongst us, the only ones who travel are the shepherds.” “Well, then I’ll be a shepherd!” His father said no more. The next day, he gave his son a pouch that held three ancient Spanish gold coins. “I found these one day in the fields. I wanted them to be a part of your inheritance. But use them to buy your flock. Take to the fields, and someday you’ll learn that our countryside is the best, and our women are the most beautiful.” And he gave the boy his blessing. The boy could see in his father’s gaze a desire to be able, himself, to travel the world—a desire that was still alive, despite his father’s having had to bury it, over dozens of years, under the burden of struggling for water to drink, food to eat, and the same place to sleep every night of his life. The horizon was tinged with red, and suddenly the sun appeared. The boy thought back to that conversation with his father, and felt happy; he had already seen many castles and met many women (but none the equal of the one who awaited him several days hence). He owned a jacket, a book that he could trade for another, and a flock of sheep. But, most important, he was able every day to live out his dream. If he were to tire of the Andalusian fields, he could sell his sheep and go to sea. By the time he had had enough of the sea, he would already have known other cities, other women, and other chances to be happy. I couldn’t have found God in the seminary, he thought, as he looked at the sunrise. Whenever he could, he sought out a new road to travel. He had never been to that ruined church before, in spite of having traveled through those parts many times. The world was huge and inexhaustible; he had only to allow his sheep to set the route for a while, and he would discover other interesting things. The problem is that they don’t even realize that they’re walking a new road every day. They don’t see that the fields are new and the seasons change. All they think about is food and water. Maybe we’re all that way, the boy mused. Even me—I haven’t thought of other women since I met the merchant’s daughter. Looking at the sun, he calculated that he would reach Tarifa before midday. There, he could exchange his book for a thicker one, fill his wine bottle, shave, and have a haircut; he had to prepare himself for his meeting with the girl, and he didn’t want to think about the possibility that some other shepherd, with a larger flock of sheep, had arrived there before him and asked for her hand. It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting, he thought, as he looked again at the position of the sun, and hurried his pace. He had suddenly remembered that, in Tarifa, there was an old woman who interpreted dreams. The old woman led the boy to a room at the back of her house; it was separated from her living room by a curtain of colored beads. The room’s furnishings consisted of a table, an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and two chairs. The woman sat down, and told him to be seated as well. Then she took both of his hands in hers, and began quietly to pray. It sounded like a Gypsy prayer. The boy had already had experience on the road with Gypsies; they also traveled, but they had no flocks of sheep. People said that Gypsies spent their lives tricking others. It was also said that they had a pact with the devil, and that they kidnapped children and, taking them away to their mysterious camps, made them their slaves. As a child, the boy had always been frightened to death that he would be captured by Gypsies, and this childhood fear returned when the old woman took his hands in hers. But she has the Sacred Heart of Jesus there, he thought, trying to reassure himself. He didn’t want his hand to begin trembling, showing the old woman that he was fearful. He recited an Our Father silently. “Very interesting,” said the woman, never taking her eyes from the boy’s hands, and then she fell silent. The boy was becoming nervous. His hands began to tremble, and the woman sensed it. He quickly pulled his hands away. “I didn’t come here to have you read my palm,” he said, already regretting having come. He thought for a moment that it would be better to pay her fee and leave without learning a thing, that he was giving too much importance to his recurrent dream. “You came so that you could learn about your dreams,” said the old woman. “And dreams are the language of God. When he speaks in our language, I can interpret what he has said. But if he speaks in the language of the soul, it is only you who can understand. But, whichever it is, I’m going to charge you for the consultation.” Another trick, the boy thought. But he decided to take a chance. A shepherd always takes his chances with wolves and with drought, and that’s what makes a shepherd’s life exciting. “I have had the same dream twice,” he said. “I dreamed that I was in a field with my sheep, when a child appeared and began to play with the animals. I don’t like people to do that, because the sheep are afraid of strangers. But children always seem to be able to play with them without frightening them. I don’t know why. I don’t know how animals know the age of human beings.” “Tell me more about your dream,” said the woman. “I have to get back to my cooking, and, since you don’t have much money, I can’t give you a lot of time.” “The child went on playing with my sheep for quite a while,” continued the boy, a bit upset. “And suddenly, the child took me by both hands and transported me to the Egyptian pyramids.” He paused for a moment to see if the woman knew what the Egyptian pyramids were. But she said nothing. “Then, at the Egyptian pyramids,”—he said the last three words slowly, so that the old woman would understand—“the child said to me, ‘If you come here, you will find a hidden treasure.’ And, just as she was about to show me the exact location, I woke up. Both times.” The woman was silent for some time. Then she again took his hands and studied them carefully. “I’m not going to charge you anything now,” she said. “But I want one-tenth of the treasure, if you find it.” The boy laughed—out of happiness. He was going to be able to save the little money he had because of a dream about hidden treasure! “Well, interpret the dream,” he said. “First, swear to me. Swear that you will give me one-tenth of your treasure in exchange for what I am going to tell you.” The shepherd swore that he would. The old woman asked him to swear again while looking at the image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. “It’s a dream in the language of the world,” she said. “I can interpret it, but the interpretation is very difficult. That’s why I feel that I deserve a part of what you find. “And this is my interpretation: you must go to the Pyramids in Egypt. I have never heard of them, but, if it was a child who showed them to you, they exist. There you will find a treasure that will make you a rich man.” The boy was surprised, and then irritated. He didn’t need to seek out the old woman for this! But then he remembered that he wasn’t going to have to pay anything. “I didn’t need to waste my time just for this,” he said. “I told you that your dream was a difficult one. It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them. And since I am not wise, I have had to learn other arts, such as the reading of palms.” “Well, how am I going to get to Egypt?” “I only interpret dreams. I don’t know how to turn them into reality. That’s why I have to live off what my daughters provide me with.” “And what if I never get to Egypt?” “Then I don’t get paid. It wouldn’t be the first time.” And the woman told the boy to leave, saying she had already wasted too much time with him. So the boy was disappointed; he decided that he would never again believe in dreams. He remembered that he had a number of things he had to take care of: he went to the market for something to eat, he traded his book for one that was thicker, and he found a bench in the plaza where he could sample the new wine he had bought. The day was hot, and the wine was refreshing. The sheep were at the gates of the city, in a stable that belonged to a friend. The boy knew a lot of people in the city. That was what made traveling appeal to him—he always made new friends, and he didn’t need to spend all of his time with them. When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person’s life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn’t what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own. He decided to wait until the sun had sunk a bit lower in the sky before following his flock back through the fields. Three days from now, he would be with the merchant’s daughter. He started to read the book he had bought. On the very first page it described a burial ceremony. And the names of the people involved were very difficult to pronounce. If he ever wrote a book, he thought, he would present one person at a time, so that the reader wouldn’t have to worry about memorizing a lot of names. When he was finally able to concentrate on what he was reading, he liked the book better; the burial was on a snowy day, and he welcomed the feeling of being cold. As he read on, an old man sat down at his side and tried to strike up a conversation. “What are they doing?” the old man asked, pointing at the people in the plaza. “Working,” the boy answered dryly, making it look as if he wanted to concentrate on his reading. Actually, he was thinking about shearing his sheep in front of the merchant’s daughter, so that she could see that he was someone who was capable of doing difficult things. He had already imagined the scene many times; every time, the girl became fascinated when he explained that the sheep had to be sheared from back to front. He also tried to remember some good stories to relate as he sheared the sheep. Most of them he had read in books, but he would tell them as if they were from his personal experience. She would never know the difference, because she didn’t know how to read. Meanwhile, the old man persisted in his attempt to strike up a conversation. He said that he was tired and thirsty, and asked if he might have a sip of the boy’s wine. The boy offered his bottle, hoping that the old man would leave him alone. But the old man wanted to talk, and he asked the boy what book he was reading. The boy was tempted to be rude, and move to another bench, but his father had taught him to be respectful of the elderly. So he held out the book to the man—for two reasons: first, that he, himself, wasn’t sure how to pronounce the title; and second, that if the old man didn’t know how to read, he would probably feel ashamed and decide of his own accord to change benches. “Hmm . . .” said the old man, looking at all sides of the book, as if it were some strange object. “This is an important book, but it’s really irritating.” The boy was shocked. The old man knew how to read, and had already read the book. And if the book was irritating, as the old man had said, the boy still had time to change it for another. “It’s a book that says the same thing almost all the other books in the world say,” continued the old man. “It describes people’s inability to choose their own Personal Legends. And it ends up saying that everyone believes the world’s greatest lie.” “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised. “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.” “That’s never happened to me,” the boy said. “They wanted me to be a priest, but I decided to become a shepherd.” “Much better,” said the old man. “Because you really like to travel.” “He knew what I was thinking,” the boy said to himself. The old man, meanwhile, was leafing through the book, without seeming to want to return it at all. The boy noticed that the man’s clothing was strange. He looked like an Arab, which was not unusual in those parts. Africa was only a few hours from Tarifa; one had only to cross the narrow straits by boat. Arabs often appeared in the city, shopping and chanting their strange prayers several times a day. “Where are you from?” the boy asked. “From many places.” “No one can be from many places,” the boy said. “I’m a shepherd, and I have been to many places, but I come from only one place—from a city near an ancient castle. That’s where I was born.” “Well then, we could say that I was born in Salem.” The boy didn’t know where Salem was, but he didn’t want to ask, fearing that he would appear ignorant. He looked at the people in the plaza for a while; they were coming and going, and all of them seemed to be very busy. “So, what is Salem like?” he asked, trying to get some sort of clue. “It’s like it always has been.” No clue yet. But he knew that Salem wasn’t in Andalusia. If it were, he would already have heard of it. “And what do you do in Salem?” he insisted. “What do I do in Salem?” The old man laughed. “Well, I’m the king of Salem!” People say strange things, the boy thought. Sometimes it’s better to be with the sheep, who don’t say anything. And better still to be alone with one’s books. They tell their incredible stories at the time when you want to hear them. But when you’re talking to people, they say some things that are so strange that you don’t know how to continue the conversation. “My name is Melchizedek,” said the old man. “How many sheep do you have?” “Enough,” said the boy. He could see that the old man wanted to know more about his life. “Well, then, we’ve got a problem. I can’t help you if you feel you’ve got enough sheep.” The boy was getting irritated. He wasn’t asking for help. It was the old man who had asked for a drink of his wine, and had started the conversation. “Give me my book,” the boy said. “I have to go and gather my sheep and get going.” “Give me one-tenth of your sheep,” said the old man, “and I’ll tell you how to find the hidden treasure.” The boy remembered his dream, and suddenly everything was clear to him. The old woman hadn’t charged him anything, but the old man—maybe he was her husband—was going to find a way to get much more money in exchange for information about something that didn’t even exist. The old man was probably a Gypsy, too. But before the boy could say anything, the old man leaned over, picked up a stick, and began to write in the sand of the plaza. Something bright reflected from his chest with such intensity that the boy was momentarily blinded. With a movement that was too quick for someone his age, the man covered whatever it was with his cape. When his vision returned to normal, the boy was able to read what the old man had written in the sand. There, in the sand of the plaza of that small city, the boy read the names of his father and his mother and the name of the seminary he had attended. He read the name of the merchant’s daughter, which he hadn’t even known, and he read things he had never told anyone. “I’m the king of Salem,” the old man had said. “Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?” the boy asked, awed and embarrassed. “For several reasons. But let’s say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your Personal Legend.” The boy didn’t know what a person’s “Personal Legend” was. “It’s what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their Personal Legend is. “At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream, and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their Personal Legend.” None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy. But he wanted to know what the “mysterious force” was; the merchant’s daughter would be impressed when he told her about that! “It’s a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your Personal Legend. It prepares your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it’s because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It’s your mission on earth.” “Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?” “Yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people’s happiness. And also by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one’s Personal Legend is a person’s only real obligation. All things are one. “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” They were both silent for a time, observing the plaza and the townspeople. It was the old man who spoke first. “Why do you tend a flock of sheep?” “Because I like to travel.” The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. “When he was a child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside. When he’s an old man, he’s going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable, at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of.” “He should have decided to become a shepherd,” the boy said. “Well, he thought about that,” the old man said. “But bakers are more important people than shepherds. Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry bakers than shepherds.” The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant’s daughter. There was surely a baker in her town. The old man continued, “In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more important for them than their own Personal Legends.” The old man leafed through the book, and fell to reading a page he came to. The boy waited, and then interrupted the old man just as he himself had been interrupted. “Why are you telling me all this?” “Because you are trying to realize your Personal Legend. And you are at the point where you’re about to give it all up.” “And that’s when you always appear on the scene?” “Not always in this way, but I always appear in one form or another. Sometimes I appear in the form of a solution, or a good idea. At other times, at a crucial moment, I make it easier for things to happen. There are other things I do, too, but most of the time people don’t realize I’ve done them.” The old man related that, the week before, he had been forced to appear before a miner, and had taken the form of a stone. The miner had abandoned everything to go mining for emeralds. For five years he had been working a certain river, and had examined hundreds of thousands of stones looking for an emerald. The miner was about to give it all up, right at the point when, if he were to examine just one more stone—just one more—he would find his emerald. Since the miner had sacrificed everything to his Personal Legend, the old man decided to become involved. He transformed himself into a stone that rolled up to the miner’s foot. The miner, with all the anger and frustration of his five fruitless years, picked up the stone and threw it aside. But he had thrown it with such force that it broke the stone it fell upon, and there, embedded in the broken stone, was the most beautiful emerald in the world. “People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being,” said the old man, with a certain bitterness. “Maybe that’s why they give up on it so early, too. But that’s the way it is.” The boy reminded the old man that he had said something about hidden treasure. “Treasure is uncovered by the force of flowing water, and it is buried by the same currents,” said the old man. “If you want to learn about your own treasure, you will have to give me one-tenth of your flock.” “What about one-tenth of my treasure?” The old man looked disappointed. “If you start out by promising what you don’t even have yet, you’ll lose your desire to work toward getting it.” The boy told him that he had already promised to give one-tenth of his treasure to the Gypsy. “Gypsies are experts at getting people to do that,” sighed the old man. “In any case, it’s good that you’ve learned that everything in life has its price. This is what the Warriors of the Light try to teach.” The old man returned the book to the boy. “Tomorrow, at this same time, bring me a tenth of your flock. And I will tell you how to find the hidden treasure. Good afternoon.” And he vanished around the corner of the plaza. The boy began again to read his book, but he was no longer able to concentrate. He was tense and upset, because he knew that the old man was right. He went over to the bakery and bought a loaf of bread, thinking about whether or not he should tell the baker what the old man had said about him. Sometimes it’s better to leave things as they are, he thought to himself, and decided to say nothing. If he were to say anything, the baker would spend three days thinking about giving it all up, even though he had gotten used to the way things were. The boy could certainly resist causing that kind of anxiety for the baker. So he began to wander through the city, and found himself at the gates. There was a small building there, with a window at which people bought tickets to Africa. And he knew that Egypt was in Africa. “Can I help you?” asked the man behind the window. “Maybe tomorrow,” said the boy, moving away. If he sold just one of his sheep, he’d have enough to get to the other shore of the strait. The idea frightened him. “Another dreamer,” said the ticket seller to his assistant, watching the boy walk away. “He doesn’t have enough money to travel.” While standing at the ticket window, the boy had remembered his flock, and decided he should go back to being a shepherd. In two years he had learned everything about shepherding: he knew how to shear sheep, how to care for pregnant ewes, and how to protect the sheep from wolves. He knew all the fields and pastures of Andalusia. And he knew what was the fair price for every one of his animals. He decided to return to his friend’s stable by the longest route possible. As he walked past the city’s castle, he interrupted his return, and climbed the stone ramp that led to the top of the wall. From there, he could see Africa in the distance. Someone had once told him that it was from there that the Moors had come, to occupy all of Spain. He could see almost the entire city from where he sat, including the plaza where he had talked with the old man. Curse the moment I met that old man, he thought. He had come to the town only to find a woman who could interpret his dream. Neither the woman nor the old man was at all impressed by the fact that he was a shepherd. They were solitary individuals who no longer believed in things, and didn’t understand that shepherds become attached to their sheep. He knew everything about each member of his flock: he knew which ones were lame, which one was to give birth two months from now, and which were the laziest. He knew how to shear them, and how to slaughter them. If he ever decided to leave them, they would suffer. The wind began to pick up. He knew that wind: people called it the levanter, because on it the Moors had come from the Levant at the eastern end of the Mediterranean. The levanter increased in intensity. Here I am, between my flock and my treasure, the boy thought. He had to choose between something he had become accustomed to and something he wanted to have. There was also the merchant’s daughter, but she wasn’t as important as his flock, because she didn’t depend on him. Maybe she didn’t even remember him. He was sure that it made no difference to her on which day he appeared: for her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises. I left my father, my mother, and the town castle behind. They have gotten used to my being away, and so have I. The sheep will get used to my not being there, too, the boy thought. From where he sat, he could observe the plaza. People continued to come and go from the baker’s shop. A young couple sat on the bench where he had talked with the old man, and they kissed. “That baker . . .” he said to himself, without completing the thought. The levanter was still getting stronger, and he felt its force on his face. That wind had brought the Moors, yes, but it had also brought the smell of the desert and of veiled women. It had brought with it the sweat and the dreams of men who had once left to search for the unknown, and for gold and adventure—and for the Pyramids. The boy felt jealous of the freedom of the wind, and saw that he could have the same freedom. There was nothing to hold him back except himself. The sheep, the merchant’s daughter, and the fields of Andalusia were only steps along the way to his Personal Legend. The next day, the boy met the old man at noon. He brought six sheep with him. “I’m surprised,” the boy said. “My friend bought all the other sheep immediately. He said that he had always dreamed of being a shepherd, and that it was a good omen.” “That’s the way it always is,” said the old man. “It’s called the principle of favorability. When you play cards the first time, you are almost sure to win. Beginner’s luck.” “Why is that?” “Because there is a force that wants you to realize your Personal Legend; it whets your appetite with a taste of success.” Then the old man began to inspect the sheep, and he saw that one was lame. The boy explained that it wasn’t important, since that sheep was the most intelligent of the flock, and produced the most wool. “Where is the treasure?” he asked. “It’s in Egypt, near the Pyramids.” The boy was startled. The old woman had said the same thing. But she hadn’t charged him anything. “In order to find the treasure, you will have to follow the omens. God has prepared a path for everyone to follow. You just have to read the omens that he left for you.” Before the boy could reply, a butterfly appeared and fluttered between him and the old man. He remembered something his grandfather had once told him: that butterflies were a good omen. Like crickets, and like grasshoppers; like lizards and four-leaf clovers. “That’s right,” said the old man, able to read the boy’s thoughts. “Just as your grandfather taught you. These are good omens.” The old man opened his cape, and the boy was struck by what he saw. The old man wore a breastplate of heavy gold, covered with precious stones. The boy recalled the brilliance he had noticed on the previous day. He really was a king! He must be disguised to avoid encounters with thieves. “Take these,” said the old man, holding out a white stone and a black stone that had been embedded at the center of the breastplate. “They are called Urim and Thummim. The black signifies ‘yes,’ and the white ‘no.’ When you are unable to read the omens, they will help you to do so. Always ask an objective question. “But, if you can, try to make your own decisions. The treasure is at the Pyramids; that you already knew. But I had to insist on the payment of six sheep because I helped you to make your decision.” The boy put the stones in his pouch. From then on, he would make his own decisions. “Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else. And don’t forget the language of omens. And, above all, don’t forget to follow your Personal Legend through to its conclusion. “But before I go, I want to tell you a little story. “A certain shopkeeper sent his son to learn about the secret of happiness from the wisest man in the world. The lad wandered through the desert for forty days, and finally came upon a beautiful castle, high atop a mountain. It was there that the wise man lived. “Rather than finding a saintly man, though, our hero, on entering the main room of the castle, saw a hive of activity: tradesmen came and went, people were conversing in the corners, a small orchestra was playing soft music, and there was a table covered with platters of the most delicious food in that part of the world. The wise man conversed with everyone, and the boy had to wait for two hours before it was his turn to be given the man’s attention. “The wise man listened attentively to the boy’s explanation of why he had come, but told him that he didn’t have time just then to explain the secret of happiness. He suggested that the boy look around the palace and return in two hours. “‘Meanwhile, I want to ask you to do something,’ said the wise man, handing the boy a teaspoon that held two drops of oil. ‘As you wander around, carry this spoon with you without allowing the oil to spill.’ “The boy began climbing and descending the many stairways of the palace, keeping his eyes fixed on the spoon. After two hours, he returned to the room where the wise man was. “‘Well,’ asked the wise man, ‘did you see the Persian tapestries that are hanging in my dining hall? Did you see the garden that it took the master gardener ten years to create? Did you notice the beautiful parchments in my library?’ “The boy was embarrassed, and confessed that he had observed nothing. His only concern had been not to spill the oil that the wise man had entrusted to him. “‘Then go back and observe the marvels of my world,’ said the wise man. ‘You cannot trust a man if you don’t know his house.’ “Relieved, the boy picked up the spoon and returned to his exploration of the palace, this time observing all of the works of art on the ceilings and the walls. He saw the gardens, the mountains all around him, the beauty of the flowers, and the taste with which everything had been selected. Upon returning to the wise man, he related in detail everything he had seen. “‘But where are the drops of oil I entrusted to you?’ asked the wise man. “Looking down at the spoon he held, the boy saw that the oil was gone. “‘Well, there is only one piece of advice I can give you,’ said the wisest of wise men. ‘The secret of happiness is to see all the marvels of the world, and never to forget the drops of oil on the spoon.’” The shepherd said nothing. He had understood the story the old king had told him. A shepherd may like to travel, but he should never forget about his sheep. The old man looked at the boy and, with his hands held together, made several strange gestures over the boy’s head. Then, taking his sheep, he walked away. At the highest point in Tarifa there is an old fort, built by the Moors. From atop its walls, one can catch a glimpse of Africa. Melchizedek, the king of Salem, sat on the wall of the fort that afternoon, and felt the levanter blowing in his face. The sheep fidgeted nearby, uneasy with their new owner and excited by so much change. All they wanted was food and water. Melchizedek watched a small ship that was plowing its way out of the port. He would never again see the boy, just as he had never seen Abraham again after having charged him his one-tenth fee. That was his work. The gods should not have desires, because they don’t have Personal Legends. But the king of Salem hoped desperately that the boy would be successful. It’s too bad that he’s quickly going to forget my name, he thought. I should have repeated it for him. Then when he spoke about me he would say that I am Melchizedek, the king of Salem. He looked to the skies, feeling a bit abashed, and said, “I know it’s the vanity of vanities, as you said, my Lord. But an old king sometimes has to take some pride in himself.” How strange Africa is, thought the boy. He was sitting in a bar very much like the other bars he had seen along the narrow streets of Tangier. Some men were smoking from a gigantic pipe that they passed from one to the other. In just a few hours he had seen men walking hand in hand, women with their faces covered, and priests that climbed to the tops of towers and chanted—as everyone about him went to their knees and placed their foreheads on the ground. “A practice of infidels,” he said to himself. As a child in church, he had always looked at the image of Saint Santiago Matamoros on his white horse, his sword unsheathed, and figures such as these kneeling at his feet. The boy felt ill and terribly alone. The infidels had an evil look about them. Besides this, in the rush of his travels he had forgotten a detail, just one detail, which could keep him from his treasure for a long time: only Arabic was spoken in this country. The owner of the bar approached him, and the boy pointed to a drink that had been served at the next table. It turned out to be a bitter tea. The boy preferred wine. But he didn’t need to worry about that right now. What he had to be concerned about was his treasure, and how he was going to go about getting it. The sale of his sheep had left him with enough money in his pouch, and the boy knew that in money there was magic; whoever has money is never really alone. Before long, maybe in just a few days, he would be at the Pyramids. An old man, with a breastplate of gold, wouldn’t have lied just to acquire six sheep. The old man had spoken about signs and omens, and, as the boy was crossing the strait, he had thought about omens. Yes, the old man had known what he was talking about: during the time the boy had spent in the fields of Andalusia, he had become used to learning which path he should take by observing the ground and the sky. He had discovered that the presence of a certain bird meant that a snake was nearby, and that a certain shrub was a sign that there was water in the area. The sheep had taught him that. If God leads the sheep so well, he will also lead a man, he thought, and that made him feel better. The tea seemed less bitter. “Who are you?” he heard a voice ask him in Spanish. The boy was relieved. He was thinking about omens, and someone had appeared. “How come you speak Spanish?” he asked. The new arrival was a young man in Western dress, but the color of his skin suggested he was from this city. He was about the same age and height as the boy. “Almost everyone here speaks Spanish. We’re only two hours from Spain.” “Sit down, and let me treat you to something,” said the boy. “And ask for a glass of wine for me. I hate this tea.” “There is no wine in this country,” the young man said. “The religion here forbids it.” The boy told him then that he needed to get to the Pyramids. He almost began to tell about his treasure, but decided not to do so. If he did, it was possible that the Arab would want a part of it as payment for taking him there. He remembered what the old man had said about offering something you didn’t even have yet. “I’d like you to take me there if you can. I can pay you to serve as my guide.” “Do you have any idea how to get there?” the newcomer asked. The boy noticed that the owner of the bar stood nearby, listening attentively to their conversation. He felt uneasy at the man’s presence. But he had found a guide, and didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity. “You have to cross the entire Sahara desert,” said the young man. “And to do that, you need money. I need to know whether you have enough.” The boy thought it a strange question. But he trusted in the old man, who had said that, when you really want something, the universe always conspires in your favor. He took his money from his pouch and showed it to the young man. The owner of the bar came over and looked, as well. The two men exchanged some words in Arabic, and the bar owner seemed irritated. “Let’s get out of here,” said the new arrival. “He wants us to leave.” The boy was relieved. He got up to pay the bill, but the owner grabbed him and began to speak to him in an angry stream of words. The boy was strong, and wanted to retaliate, but he was in a foreign country. His new friend pushed the owner aside, and pulled the boy outside with him. “He wanted your money,” he said. “Tangier is not like the rest of Africa. This is a port, and every port has its thieves.” The boy trusted his new friend. He had helped him out in a dangerous situation. He took out his money and counted it. “We could get to the Pyramids by tomorrow,” said the other, taking the money. “But I have to buy two camels.” They walked together through the narrow streets of Tangier. Everywhere there were stalls with items for sale. They reached the center of a large plaza where the market was held. There were thousands of people there, arguing, selling, and buying; vegetables for sale amongst daggers, and carpets displayed alongside tobacco. But the boy never took his eye off his new friend. After all, he had all his money. He thought about asking him to give it back, but decided that would be unfriendly. He knew nothing about the customs of the strange land he was in. “I’ll just watch him,” he said to himself. He knew he was stronger than his friend. Suddenly, there in the midst of all that confusion, he saw the most beautiful sword he had ever seen. The scabbard was embossed in silver, and the handle was black and encrusted with precious stones. The boy promised himself that, when he returned from Egypt, he would buy that sword. “Ask the owner of that stall how much the sword costs,” he said to his friend. Then he realized that he had been distracted for a few moments, looking at the sword. His heart squeezed, as if his chest had suddenly compressed it. He was afraid to look around, because he knew what he would find. He continued to look at the beautiful sword for a bit longer, until he summoned the courage to turn around. All around him was the market, with people coming and going, shouting and buying, and the aroma of strange foods . . . but nowhere could he find his new companion. The boy wanted to believe that his friend had simply become separated from him by accident. He decided to stay right there and await his return. As he waited, a priest climbed to the top of a nearby tower and began his chant; everyone in the market fell to their knees, touched their foreheads to the ground, and took up the chant. Then, like a colony of worker ants, they dismantled their stalls and left. The sun began its departure, as well. The boy watched it through its trajectory for some time, until it was hidden behind the white houses surrounding the plaza. He recalled that when the sun had risen that morning, he was on another continent, still a shepherd with sixty sheep, and looking forward to meeting with a girl. That morning he had known everything that was going to happen to him as he walked through the familiar fields. But now, as the sun began to set, he was in a different country, a stranger in a strange land, where he couldn’t even speak the language. He was no longer a shepherd, and he had nothing, not even the money to return and start everything over. All this happened between sunrise and sunset, the boy thought. He was feeling sorry for himself, and lamenting the fact that his life could have changed so suddenly and so drastically. He was so ashamed that he wanted to cry. He had never even wept in front of his own sheep. But the marketplace was empty, and he was far from home, so he wept. He wept because God was unfair, and because this was the way God repaid those who believed in their dreams. When I had my sheep, I was happy, and I made those around me happy. People saw me coming and welcomed me, he thought. But now I’m sad and alone. I’m going to become bitter and distrustful of people because one person betrayed me. I’m going to hate those who have found their treasure because I never found mine. And I’m going to hold on to what little I have, because I’m too insignificant to conquer the world. He opened his pouch to see what was left of his possessions; maybe there was a bit left of the sandwich he had eaten on the ship. But all he found was the heavy book, his jacket, and the two stones the old man had given him. As he looked at the stones, he felt relieved for some reason. He had exchanged six sheep for two precious stones that had been taken from a gold breastplate. He could sell the stones and buy a return ticket. But this time I’ll be smarter, the boy thought, removing them from the pouch so he could put them in his pocket. This was a port town, and the only truthful thing his friend had told him was that port towns are full of thieves. Now he understood why the owner of the bar had been so upset: he was trying to tell him not to trust that man. “I’m like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.” He ran his fingers slowly over the stones, sensing their temperature and feeling their surfaces. They were his treasure. Just handling them made him feel better. They reminded him of the old man. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,” he had said. The boy was trying to understand the truth of what the old man had said. There he was in the empty marketplace, without a cent to his name, and with not a sheep to guard through the night. But the stones were proof that he had met with a king—a king who knew of the boy’s past. “They’re called Urim and Thummim, and they can help you to read the omens.” The boy put the stones back in the pouch and decided to do an experiment. The old man had said to ask very clear questions, and to do that, the boy had to know what he wanted. So, he asked if the old man’s blessing was still with him. He took out one of the stones. It was “yes.” “Am I going to find my treasure?” he asked. He stuck his hand into the pouch, and felt around for one of the stones. As he did so, both of them pushed through a hole in the pouch and fell to the ground. The boy had never even noticed that there was a hole in his pouch. He knelt down to find Urim and Thummim and put them back in the pouch. But as he saw them lying there on the ground, another phrase came to his mind. “Learn to recognize omens, and follow them,” the old king had said. An omen. The boy smiled to himself. He picked up the two stones and put them back in his pouch. He didn’t consider mending the hole—the stones could fall through any time they wanted. He had learned that there were certain things one shouldn’t ask about, so as not to flee from one’s own Personal Legend. “I promised that I would make my own decisions,” he said to himself. But the stones had told him that the old man was still with him, and that made him feel more confident. He looked around at the empty plaza again, feeling less desperate than before. This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one. After all, what he had always wanted was just that: to know new places. Even if he never got to the Pyramids, he had already traveled farther than any shepherd he knew. Oh, if they only knew how different things are just two hours by ship from where they are, he thought. Although his new world at the moment was just an empty marketplace, he had already seen it when it was teeming with life, and he would never forget it. He remembered the sword. It hurt him a bit to think about it, but he had never seen one like it before. As he mused about these things, he realized that he had to choose between thinking of himself as the poor victim of a thief and as an adventurer in quest of his treasure. “I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure,” he said to himself. He was shaken into wakefulness by someone. He had fallen asleep in the middle of the marketplace, and life in the plaza was about to resume. Looking around, he sought his sheep, and then realized that he was in a new world. But instead of being saddened, he was happy. He no longer had to seek out food and water for the sheep; he could go in search of his treasure, instead. He had not a cent in his pocket, but he had faith. He had decided, the night before, that he would be as much an adventurer as the ones he had admired in books. He walked slowly through the market. The merchants were assembling their stalls, and the boy helped a candy seller to do his. The candy seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day’s work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man—the mysterious old king he had met. “This candy merchant isn’t making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper’s daughter. He’s doing it because it’s what he wants to do,” thought the boy. He realized that he could do the same thing the old man had done—sense whether a person was near to or far from his Personal Legend. Just by looking at them. It’s easy, and yet I’ve never done it before, he thought. When the stall was assembled, the candy seller offered the boy the first sweet he had made for the day. The boy thanked him, ate it, and went on his way. When he had gone only a short distance, he realized that, while they were erecting the stall, one of them had spoken Arabic and the other Spanish. And they had understood each other perfectly well. There must be a language that doesn’t depend on words, the boy thought. I’ve already had that experience with my sheep, and now it’s happening with people. He was learning a lot of new things. Some of them were things that he had already experienced, and weren’t really new, but that he had never perceived before. And he hadn’t perceived them because he had become accustomed to them. He realized: If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world. Relaxed and unhurried, he resolved that he would walk through the narrow streets of Tangier. Only in that way would he be able to read the omens. He knew it would require a lot of patience, but shepherds know all about patience. Once again he saw that, in that strange land, he was applying the same lessons he had learned with his sheep. “All things are one,” the old man had said. The crystal merchant awoke with the day, and felt the same anxiety that he felt every morning. He had been in the same place for thirty years: a shop at the top of a hilly street where few customers passed. Now it was too late to change anything—the only thing he had ever learned to do was to buy and sell crystal glassware. There had been a time when many people knew of his shop: Arab merchants, French and English geologists, German soldiers who were always well-heeled. In those days it had been wonderful to be selling crystal, and he had thought how he would become rich, and have beautiful women at his side as he grew older. But, as time passed, Tangier had changed. The nearby city of Ceuta had grown faster than Tangier, and business had fallen off. Neighbors moved away, and there remained only a few small shops on the hill. And no one was going to climb the hill just to browse through a few small shops. But the crystal merchant had no choice. He had lived thirty years of his life buying and selling crystal pieces, and now it was too late to do anything else. He spent the entire morning observing the infrequent comings and goings in the street. He had done this for years, and knew the schedule of everyone who passed. But, just before lunchtime, a boy stopped in front of the shop. He was dressed normally, but the practiced eyes of the crystal merchant could see that the boy had no money to spend. Nevertheless, the merchant decided to delay his lunch for a few minutes until the boy moved on. A card hanging in the doorway announced that several languages were spoken in the shop. The boy saw a man appear behind the counter. “I can clean up those glasses in the window, if you want,” said the boy. “The way they look now, nobody is going to want to buy them.” The man looked at him without responding. “In exchange, you could give me something to eat.” The man still said nothing, and the boy sensed that he was going to have to make a decision. In his pouch, he had his jacket—he certainly wasn’t going to need it in the desert. Taking the jacket out, he began to clean the glasses. In half an hour, he had cleaned all the glasses in the window, and, as he was doing so, two customers had entered the shop and bought some crystal. When he had completed the cleaning, he asked the man for something to eat. “Let’s go and have some lunch,” said the crystal merchant. He put a sign on the door, and they went to a small café nearby. As they sat down at the only table in the place, the crystal merchant laughed. “You didn’t have to do any cleaning,” he said. “The Koran requires me to feed a hungry person.” “Well then, why did you let me do it?” the boy asked. “Because the crystal was dirty. And both you and I needed to cleanse our minds of negative thoughts.” When they had eaten, the merchant turned to the boy and said, “I’d like you to work in my shop. Two customers came in today while you were working, and that’s a good omen.” People talk a lot about omens, thought the shepherd. But they really don’t know what they’re saying. Just as I hadn’t realized that for so many years I had been speaking a language without words to my sheep. “Do you want to go to work for me?” the merchant asked. “I can work for the rest of today,” the boy answered. “I’ll work all night, until dawn, and I’ll clean every piece of crystal in your shop. In return, I need money to get to Egypt tomorrow.” The merchant laughed. “Even if you cleaned my crystal for an entire year . . . even if you earned a good commission selling every piece, you would still have to borrow money to get to Egypt. There are thousands of kilometers of desert between here and there.” There was a moment of silence so profound that it seemed the city was asleep. No sound from the bazaars, no arguments among the merchants, no men climbing to the towers to chant. No hope, no adventure, no old kings or Personal Legends, no treasure, and no Pyramids. It was as if the world had fallen silent because the boy’s soul had. He sat there, staring blankly through the door of the café, wishing that he had died, and that everything would end forever at that moment. The merchant looked anxiously at the boy. All the joy he had seen that morning had suddenly disappeared. “I can give you the money you need to get back to your country, my son,” said the crystal merchant. The boy said nothing. He got up, adjusted his clothing, and picked up his pouch. “I’ll work for you,” he said. And after another long silence, he added, “I need money to buy some sheep.” THE BOY HAD BEEN WORKING FOR THE crystal merchant for almost a month, and he could see that it wasn’t exactly the kind of job that would make him happy. The merchant spent the entire day mumbling behind the counter, telling the boy to be careful with the pieces and not to break anything. But he stayed with the job because the merchant, although he was an old grouch, treated him fairly; the boy received a good commission for each piece he sold, and had already been able to put some money aside. That morning he had done some calculating: if he continued to work every day as he had been, he would need a whole year to be able to buy some sheep. “I’d like to build a display case for the crystal,” the boy said to the merchant. “We could place it outside, and attract those people who pass at the bottom of the hill.” “I’ve never had one before,” the merchant answered. “People will pass by and bump into it, and pieces will be broken.” “Well, when I took my sheep through the fields some of them might have died if we had come upon a snake. But that’s the way life is with sheep and with shepherds.” The merchant turned to a customer who wanted three crystal glasses. He was selling better than ever . . . as if time had turned back to the old days when the street had been one of Tangier’s major attractions. “Business has really improved,” he said to the boy, after the customer had left. “I’m doing much better, and soon you’ll be able to return to your sheep. Why ask more out of life?” “Because we have to respond to omens,” the boy said, almost without meaning to; then he regretted what he had said, because the merchant had never met the king. “It’s called the principle of favorability, beginner’s luck. Because life wants you to achieve your Personal Legend,” the old king had said. But the merchant understood what the boy had said. The boy’s very presence in the shop was an omen, and, as time passed and money was pouring into the cash drawer, he had no regrets about having hired the boy. The boy was being paid more money than he deserved, because the merchant, thinking that sales wouldn’t amount to much, had offered the boy a high commission rate. He had assumed he would soon return to his sheep. “Why did you want to get to the Pyramids?” he asked, to get away from the business of the display. “Because I’ve always heard about them,” the boy answered, saying nothing about his dream. The treasure was now nothing but a painful memory, and he tried to avoid thinking about it. “I don’t know anyone around here who would want to cross the desert just to see the Pyramids,” said the merchant. “They’re just a pile of stones. You could build one in your backyard.” “You’ve never had dreams of travel,” said the boy, turning to wait on a customer who had entered the shop. Two days later, the merchant spoke to the boy about the display. “I don’t much like change,” he said. “You and I aren’t like Hassan, that rich merchant. If he makes a buying mistake, it doesn’t affect him much. But we two have to live with our mistakes.” That’s true enough, the boy thought, ruefully. “Why did you think we should have the display?” “I want to get back to my sheep faster. We have to take advantage when luck is on our side, and do as much to help it as it’s doing to help us. It’s called the principle of favorability. Or beginner’s luck.” The merchant was silent for a few moments. Then he said, “The Prophet gave us the Koran, and left us just five obligations to satisfy during our lives. The most important is to believe only in the one true God. The others are to pray five times a day, fast during Ramadan, and be charitable to the poor.” He stopped there. His eyes filled with tears as he spoke of the Prophet. He was a devout man, and, even with all his impatience, he wanted to live his life in accordance with Muslim law. “What’s the fifth obligation?” the boy asked. “Two days ago, you said that I had never dreamed of travel,” the merchant answered. “The fifth obligation of every Muslim is a pilgrimage. We are obliged, at least once in our lives, to visit the holy city of Mecca. “Mecca is a lot farther away than the Pyramids. When I was young, all I wanted to do was put together enough money to start this shop. I thought that someday I’d be rich, and could go to Mecca. I began to make some money, but I could never bring myself to leave someone in charge of the shop; the crystals are delicate things. At the same time, people were passing my shop all the time, heading for Mecca. Some of them were rich pilgrims, traveling in caravans with servants and camels, but most of the people making the pilgrimage were poorer than I. “All who went there were happy at having done so. They placed the symbols of the pilgrimage on the doors of their houses. One of them, a cobbler who made his living mending boots, said that he had traveled for almost a year through the desert, but that he got more tired when he had to walk through the streets of Tangier buying his leather.” “Well, why don’t you go to Mecca now?” asked the boy. “Because it’s the thought of Mecca that keeps me alive. That’s what helps me face these days that are all the same, these mute crystals on the shelves, and lunch and dinner at that same horrible café. I’m afraid that if my dream is realized, I’ll have no reason to go on living. “You dream about your sheep and the Pyramids, but you’re different from me, because you want to realize your dreams. I just want to dream about Mecca. I’ve already imagined a thousand times crossing the desert, arriving at the Plaza of the Sacred Stone, the seven times I walk around it before allowing myself to touch it. I’ve already imagined the people who would be at my side, and those in front of me, and the conversations and prayers we would share. But I’m afraid that it would all be a disappointment, so I prefer just to dream about it.” That day, the merchant gave the boy permission to build the display. Not everyone can see his dreams come true in the same way. Two more months passed, and the shelf brought many customers into the crystal shop. The boy estimated that, if he worked for six more months, he could return to Spain and buy sixty sheep, and yet another sixty. In less than a year, he would have doubled his flock, and he would be able to do business with the Arabs, because he was now able to speak their strange language. Since that morning in the marketplace, he had never again made use of Urim and Thummim, because Egypt was now just as distant a dream for him as was Mecca for the merchant. Anyway, the boy had become happy in his work, and thought all the time about the day when he would disembark at Tarifa as a winner. “You must always know what it is that you want,” the old king had said. The boy knew, and was now working toward it. Maybe it was his treasure to have wound up in that strange land, met up with a thief, and doubled the size of his flock without spending a cent. He was proud of himself. He had learned some important things, like how to deal in crystal, and about the language without words . . . and about omens. One afternoon he had seen a man at the top of the hill, complaining that it was impossible to find a decent place to get something to drink after such a climb. The boy, accustomed to recognizing omens, spoke to the merchant. “Let’s sell tea to the people who climb the hill.” “Lots of places sell tea around here,” the merchant said. “But we could sell tea in crystal glasses. The people will enjoy the tea and want to buy the glasses. I have been told that beauty is the great seducer of men.” The merchant didn’t respond, but that afternoon, after saying his prayers and closing the shop, he invited the boy to sit with him and share his hookah, that strange pipe used by the Arabs. “What is it you’re looking for?” asked the old merchant. “I’ve already told you. I need to buy my sheep back, so I have to earn the money to do so.” The merchant put some new coals in the hookah, and inhaled deeply. “I’ve had this shop for thirty years. I know good crystal from bad, and everything else there is to know about crystal. I know its dimensions and how it behaves. If we serve tea in crystal, the shop is going to expand. And then I’ll have to change my way of life.” “Well, isn’t that good?” “I’m already used to the way things are. Before you came, I was thinking about how much time I had wasted in the same place, while my friends had moved on, and either went bankrupt or did better than they had before. It made me very depressed. Now, I can see that it hasn’t been too bad. The shop is exactly the size I always wanted it to be. I don’t want to change anything, because I don’t know how to deal with change. I’m used to the way I am.” The boy didn’t know what to say. The old man continued, “You have been a real blessing to me. Today, I understand something I didn’t see before: every blessing ignored becomes a curse. I don’t want anything else in life. But you are forcing me to look at wealth and at horizons I have never known. Now that I have seen them, and now that I see how immense my possibilities are, I’m going to feel worse than I did before you arrived. Because I know the things I should be able to accomplish, and I don’t want to do so.” It’s good I refrained from saying anything to the baker in Tarifa, thought the boy to himself. They went on smoking the pipe for a while as the sun began to set. They were conversing in Arabic, and the boy was proud of himself for being able to do so. There had been a time when he thought that his sheep could teach him everything he needed to know about the world. But they could never have taught him Arabic. There are probably other things in the world that the sheep can’t teach me, thought the boy as he regarded the old merchant. All they ever do, really, is look for food and water. And maybe it wasn’t that they were teaching me, but that I was learning from them. “Maktub,” the merchant said, finally. “What does that mean?” “You would have to have been born an Arab to understand,” he answered. “But in your language it would be something like ‘It is written.’” And, as he smothered the coals in the hookah, he told the boy that he could begin to sell tea in the crystal glasses. Sometimes, there’s just no way to hold back the river. The men climbed the hill, and they were tired when they reached the top. But there they saw a crystal shop that offered refreshing mint tea. They went in to drink the tea, which was served in beautiful crystal glasses. “My wife never thought of this,” said one, and he bought some crystal—he was entertaining guests that night, and the guests would be impressed by the beauty of the glassware. The other man remarked that tea was always more delicious when it was served in crystal, because the aroma was retained. The third said that it was a tradition in the Orient to use crystal glasses for tea because it had magical powers. Before long, the news spread, and a great many people began to climb the hill to see the shop that was doing something new in a trade that was so old. Other shops were opened that served tea in crystal, but they weren’t at the top of a hill, and they had little business. Eventually, the merchant had to hire two more employees. He began to import enormous quantities of tea, along with his crystal, and his shop was sought out by men and women with a thirst for things new. And, in that way, the months passed. The boy awoke before dawn. It had been eleven months and nine days since he had first set foot on the African continent. He dressed in his Arabian clothing of white linen, bought especially for this day. He put his headcloth in place and secured it with a ring made of camel skin. Wearing his new sandals, he descended the stairs silently. The city was still sleeping. He prepared himself a sandwich and drank some hot tea from a crystal glass. Then he sat in the sun-filled doorway, smoking the hookah. He smoked in silence, thinking of nothing, and listening to the sound of the wind that brought the scent of the desert. When he had finished his smoke, he reached into one of his pockets, and sat there for a few moments, regarding what he had withdrawn. It was a bundle of money. Enough to buy himself a hundred and twenty sheep, a return ticket, and a license to import products from Africa into his own country. He waited patiently for the merchant to awaken and open the shop. Then the two went off to have some more tea. “I’m leaving today,” said the boy. “I have the money I need to buy my sheep. And you have the money you need to go to Mecca.” The old man said nothing. “Will you give me your blessing?” asked the boy. “You have helped me.” The man continued to prepare his tea, saying nothing. Then he turned to the boy. “I am proud of you,” he said. “You brought a new feeling into my crystal shop. But you know that I’m not going to go to Mecca. Just as you know that you’re not going to buy your sheep.” “Who told you that?” asked the boy, startled. “Maktub,” said the old crystal merchant. And he gave the boy his blessing. The boy went to his room and packed his belongings. They filled three sacks. As he was leaving, he saw, in the corner of the room, his old shepherd’s pouch. It was bunched up, and he had hardly thought of it for a long time. As he took his jacket out of the pouch, thinking to give it to someone in the street, the two stones fell to the floor. Urim and Thummim. It made the boy think of the old king, and it startled him to realize how long it had been since he had thought of him. For nearly a year, he had been working incessantly, thinking only of putting aside enough money so that he could return to Spain with pride. “Never stop dreaming,” the old king had said. “Follow the omens.” The boy picked up Urim and Thummim, and, once again, had the strange sensation that the old king was nearby. He had worked hard for a year, and the omens were that it was time to go. I’m going to go back to doing just what I did before, the boy thought. Even though the sheep didn’t teach me to speak Arabic. But the sheep had taught him something even more important: that there was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired. Tangier was no longer a strange city, and he felt that, just as he had conquered this place, he could conquer the world. “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it,” the old king had said. But the old king hadn’t said anything about being robbed, or about endless deserts, or about people who know what their dreams are but don’t want to realize them. The old king hadn’t told him that the Pyramids were just a pile of stones, or that anyone could build one in his backyard. And he had forgotten to mention that, when you have enough money to buy a flock larger than the one you had before, you should buy it. The boy picked up his pouch and put it with his other things. He went down the stairs and found the merchant waiting on a foreign couple, while two other customers walked about the shop, drinking tea from crystal glasses. It was more activity than usual for this time of the morning. From where he stood, he saw for the first time that the old merchant’s hair was very much like the hair of the old king. He remembered the smile of the candy seller, on his first day in Tangier, when he had nothing to eat and nowhere to go—that smile had also been like the old king’s smile. It’s almost as if he had been here and left his mark, he thought. And yet, none of these people has ever met the old king. On the other hand, he said that he always appeared to help those who are trying to realize their Personal Legend. He left without saying good-bye to the crystal merchant. He didn’t want to cry with the other people there. He was going to miss the place and all the good things he had learned. He was more confident in himself, though, and felt as though he could conquer the world. “But I’m going back to the fields that I know, to take care of my flock again.” He said that to himself with certainty, but he was no longer happy with his decision. He had worked for an entire year to make a dream come true, and that dream, minute by minute, was becoming less important. Maybe because that wasn’t really his dream. Who knows . . . maybe it’s better to be like the crystal merchant: never go to Mecca, and just go through life wanting to do so, he thought, again trying to convince himself. But as he held Urim and Thummim in his hand, they had transmitted to him the strength and will of the old king. By coincidence—or maybe it was an omen, the boy thought—he came to the bar he had entered on his first day there. The thief wasn’t there, and the owner brought him a cup of tea. I can always go back to being a shepherd, the boy thought. I learned how to care for sheep, and I haven’t forgotten how that’s done. But maybe I’ll never have another chance to get to the Pyramids in Egypt. The old man wore a breastplate of gold, and he knew about my past. He really was a king, a wise king. The hills of Andalusia were only two hours away, but there was an entire desert between him and the Pyramids. Yet the boy felt that there was another way to regard his situation: he was actually two hours closer to his treasure . . . the fact that the two hours had stretched into an entire year didn’t matter. I know why I want to get back to my flock, he thought. I understand sheep; they’re no longer a problem, and they can be good friends. On the other hand, I don’t know if the desert can be a friend, and it’s in the desert that I have to search for my treasure. If I don’t find it, I can always go home. I finally have enough money, and all the time I need. Why not? He suddenly felt tremendously happy. He could always go back to being a shepherd. He could always become a crystal salesman again. Maybe the world had other hidden treasures, but he had a dream, and he had met with a king. That doesn’t happen to just anyone! He was planning as he left the bar. He had remembered that one of the crystal merchant’s suppliers transported his crystal by means of caravans that crossed the desert. He held Urim and Thummim in his hand; because of those two stones, he was once again on the way to his treasure. “I am always nearby, when someone wants to realize their Personal Legend,” the old king had told him. What could it cost to go over to the supplier’s warehouse and find out if the Pyramids were really that far away? The Englishman was sitting on a bench in a structure that smelled of animals, sweat, and dust; it was part warehouse, part corral. I never thought I’d end up in a place like this, he thought, as he leafed through the pages of a chemical journal. Ten years at the university, and here I am in a corral. But he had to move on. He believed in omens. All his life and all his studies were aimed at finding the one true language of the universe. First he had studied Esperanto, then the world’s religions, and now it was alchemy. He knew how to speak Esperanto, he understood all the major religions well, but he wasn’t yet an alchemist. He had unraveled the truths behind important questions, but his studies had taken him to a point beyond which he could not seem to go. He had tried in vain to establish a relationship with an alchemist. But the alchemists were strange people, who thought only about themselves, and almost always refused to help him. Who knows, maybe they had failed to discover the secret of the Master Work—the Philosopher’s Stone—and for this reason kept their knowledge to themselves. He had already spent much of the fortune left to him by his father, fruitlessly seeking the Philosopher’s Stone. He had spent enormous amounts of time at the great libraries of the world, and had purchased all the rarest and most important volumes on alchemy. In one he had read that, many years ago, a famous Arabian alchemist had visited Europe. It was said that he was more than two hundred years old, and that he had discovered the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life. The Englishman had been profoundly impressed by the story. But he would never have thought it more than just a myth, had not a friend of his—returning from an archaeological expedition in the desert—told him about an Arab that was possessed of exceptional powers. “He lives at the Al-Fayoum oasis,” his friend had said. “And people say that he is two hundred years old, and is able to transform any metal into gold.” The Englishman could not contain his excitement. He canceled all his commitments and pulled together the most important of his books, and now here he was, sitting inside a dusty, smelly warehouse. Outside, a huge caravan was being prepared for a crossing of the Sahara, and was scheduled to pass through Al-Fayoum. I’m going to find that damned alchemist, the Englishman thought. And the odor of the animals became a bit more tolerable. A young Arab, also loaded down with baggage, entered, and greeted the Englishman. “Where are you bound?” asked the young Arab. “I’m going into the desert,” the man answered, turning back to his reading. He didn’t want any conversation at this point. What he needed to do was review all he had learned over the years, because the alchemist would certainly put him to the test. The young Arab took out a book and began to read. The book was written in Spanish. That’s good, thought the Englishman. He spoke Spanish better than Arabic, and, if this boy was going to Al-Fayoum, there would be someone to talk to when there were no other important things to do. “That’s strange,” said the boy, as he tried once again to read the burial scene that began the book. “I’ve been trying for two years to read this book, and I never get past these first few pages.” Even without a king to provide an interruption, he was unable to concentrate. He still had some doubts about the decision he had made. But he was able to understand one thing: making a decision was only the beginning of things. When someone makes a decision, he is really diving into a strong current that will carry him to places he had never dreamed of when he first made the decision. When I decided to seek out my treasure, I never imagined that I’d wind up working in a crystal shop, he thought. And joining this caravan may have been my decision, but where it goes is going to be a mystery to me. Nearby was the Englishman, reading a book. He seemed unfriendly, and had looked irritated when the boy had entered. They might even have become friends, but the Englishman closed off the conversation. The boy closed his book. He felt that he didn’t want to do anything that might make him look like the Englishman. He took Urim and Thummim from his pocket, and began playing with them. The stranger shouted, “Urim and Thummim!” In a flash the boy put them back in his pocket. “They’re not for sale,” he said. “They’re not worth much,” the Englishman answered. “They’re only made of rock crystal, and there are millions of rock crystals in the earth. But those who know about such things would know that those are Urim and Thummim. I didn’t know that they had them in this part of the world.” “They were given to me as a present by a king,” the boy said. The stranger didn’t answer; instead, he put his hand in his pocket, and took out two stones that were the same as the boy’s. “Did you say a king?” he asked. “I guess you don’t believe that a king would talk to someone like me, a shepherd,” he said, wanting to end the conversation. “Not at all. It was shepherds who were the first to recognize a king that the rest of the world refused to acknowledge. So, it’s not surprising that kings would talk to shepherds.” And he went on, fearing that the boy wouldn’t understand what he was talking about, “It’s in the Bible. The same book that taught me about Urim and Thummim. These stones were the only form of divination permitted by God. The priests carried them in a golden breastplate.” The boy was suddenly happy to be there at the warehouse. “Maybe this is an omen,” said the Englishman, half aloud. “Who told you about omens?” The boy’s interest was increasing by the moment. “Everything in life is an omen,” said the Englishman, now closing the journal he was reading. “There is a universal language, understood by everybody, but already forgotten. I am in search of that universal language, among other things. That’s why I’m here. I have to find a man who knows that universal language. An alchemist.” The conversation was interrupted by the warehouse boss. “You’re in luck, you two,” the fat Arab said. “There’s a caravan leaving today for Al-Fayoum.” “But I’m going to Egypt,” the boy said. “Al-Fayoum is in Egypt,” said the Arab. “What kind of Arab are you?” “That’s a good luck omen,” the Englishman said, after the fat Arab had gone out. “If I could, I’d write a huge encyclopedia just about the words luck and coincidence. It’s with those words that the universal language is written.” He told the boy it was no coincidence that he had met him with Urim and Thummim in his hand. And he asked the boy if he, too, were in search of the alchemist. “I’m looking for a treasure,” said the boy, and he immediately regretted having said it. But the Englishman appeared not to attach any importance to it. “In a way, so am I,” he said. “I don’t even know what alchemy is,” the boy was saying, when the warehouse boss called to them to come outside. “I’m the leader of the caravan,” said a dark-eyed, bearded man. “I hold the power of life and death for every person I take with me. The desert is a capricious lady, and sometimes she drives men crazy.” There were almost two hundred people gathered there, and four hundred animals—camels, horses, mules, and fowl. In the crowd were women, children, and a number of men with swords at their belts and rifles slung on their shoulders. The Englishman had several suitcases filled with books. There was a babble of noise, and the leader had to repeat himself several times for everyone to understand what he was saying. “There are a lot of different people here, and each has his own God. But the only God I serve is Allah, and in his name I swear that I will do everything possible once again to win out over the desert. But I want each and every one of you to swear by the God you believe in that you will follow my orders no matter what. In the desert, disobedience means death.” There was a murmur from the crowd. Each was swearing quietly to his or her own God. The boy swore to Jesus Christ. The Englishman said nothing. And the murmur lasted longer than a simple vow would have. The people were also praying to heaven for protection. A long note was sounded on a bugle, and everyone mounted up. The boy and the Englishman had bought camels, and climbed uncertainly onto their backs. The boy felt sorry for the Englishman’s camel, loaded down as he was with the cases of books. “There’s no such thing as coincidence,” said the Englishman, picking up the conversation where it had been interrupted in the warehouse. “I’m here because a friend of mine heard of an Arab who . . .” But the caravan began to move, and it was impossible to hear what the Englishman was saying. The boy knew what he was about to describe, though: the mysterious chain that links one thing to another, the same chain that had caused him to become a shepherd, that had caused his recurring dream, that had brought him to a city near Africa, to find a king, and to be robbed in order to meet a crystal merchant, and . . . The closer one gets to realizing his Personal Legend, the more that Personal Legend becomes his true reason for being, thought the boy. The caravan moved toward the east. It traveled during the morning, halted when the sun was at its strongest, and resumed late in the afternoon. The boy spoke very little with the Englishman, who spent most of his time with his books. The boy observed in silence the progress of the animals and people across the desert. Now everything was quite different from how it was that day they had set out: then, there had been confusion and shouting, the cries of children and the whinnying of animals, all mixed with the nervous orders of the guides and the merchants. But, in the desert, there was only the sound of the eternal wind, and of the hoofbeats of the animals. Even the guides spoke very little to one another. “I’ve crossed these sands many times,” said one of the camel drivers one night. “But the desert is so huge, and the horizons so distant, that they make a person feel small, and as if he should remain silent.” The boy understood intuitively what he meant, even without ever having set foot in the desert before. Whenever he saw the sea, or a fire, he fell silent, impressed by their elemental force. I’ve learned things from the sheep, and I’ve learned things from crystal, he thought. I can learn something from the desert, too. It seems old and wise. The wind never stopped, and the boy remembered the day he had sat at the fort in Tarifa with this same wind blowing in his face. It reminded him of the wool from his sheep . . . his sheep who were now seeking food and water in the fields of Andalusia, as they always had. “They’re not my sheep anymore,” he said to himself, without nostalgia. “They must be used to their new shepherd, and have probably already forgotten me. That’s good. Creatures like the sheep, that are used to traveling, know about moving on.” He thought of the merchant’s daughter, and was sure that she had probably married. Perhaps to a baker, or to another shepherd who could read and could tell her exciting stories—after all, he probably wasn’t the only one. But he was excited at his intuitive understanding of the camel driver’s comment: maybe he was also learning the universal language that deals with the past and the present of all people. “Hunches,” his mother used to call them. The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is rea	230,324
Celebrating the Single Life Keys to Successful Living on Your Own (David Yount) (Z-Library).pdf	Celebrating the Single Life This page intentionally left blank Celebrating the Single Life Keys to Successful Living on Your Own David Yount Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yount, David. Celebrating the single life : keys to successful living on your own / David Yount. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–313–36595–9 (alk. paper) 1. Single people—United States. 2. Single people—United States—Psychology. 3. Single people— United States—Life skills guides. I. Title. HQ800.4.U6Y69 2009 646.70086'52--dc22 2008041038 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 2009 by David Yount All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2008041038 ISBN: 978–0–313–36595–9 First published in 2009 Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. www.praeger.com Printed in the United States of America The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48–1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Becky, who need never walk alone This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments xi 1. Welcome to the Majority 1 2. Cherish Life on Your Own 11 3. Care for Yourself 25 4. Reach Out to Others 39 5. Cultivate the Right Attitude 53 6. Find and Follow a Faith 67 7. Continue Your Education 83 8. Look Good and Feel Good 97 9. Pay Your Bills and Reward Yourself 117 10. Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later than You Think) 133 11. Write Your Own Script for Living 147 12. Become Your Own Best Friend 157 Afterword: It’s Never Too Late to Reinvent Your Life 165 Notes 171 References 179 Index 181 viii Contents This Is What You Shall Do: Love the earth and sun and animals, despise riches, Give to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men — go freely with powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and with the mothers of families — re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul. ... Your very ﬂesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest ﬂuency, not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body. Walt Whitman Preface to Leaves of Grass This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments No sooner had I completed a book-length manuscript extolling marriage than the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that the majority of adult Americans are no longer living in wedlock but on their own. Of course, I would not have attempted what I called my “marriage book” had it not been for the fact that the institution of marriage has long been under siege. Being happily married myself, I devoted close to a year to determining what causes nearly half of all marriages in America to fail, and what couples might do to improve their odds of living happily ever after till death do they part. But given the new statistic, I was forced to acknowledge that the prospect of living “happily ever after” must also be available to men and women who are single, either by choice or by circumstances such as divorce or the death of a spouse. Hence this book. Confronted with this new statistic, I reﬂected on my own history of sin- gle living. I was already in my thirties when I ﬁrst wed. When that mar- riage became history, I found myself a single parent with custody of my three little daughters. Although I have now been married to Becky, my second wife, for close to three decades, I spent as many early years on my own as a boy and young adult. As the only child of two working parents, I learned in my early years to rely on my own resources, balancing solitude with rel- ative freedom. Granted, the world was a less threatening place for a child then, but I was the only latch-key kid in my school and neighborhood. If the insurance industry’s predictions are correct, my wife—11 years my junior—will outlive me by many years. I’d be delighted if my better half chooses to remarry. But, more likely, she, like most widows, will have to manage the autumn of her life alone. There is nothing wiser than being prepared for life’s inevitabilities. So, just as I wrote my book on marriage to honor her love, I’ve written this one to honor her life and help ensure her future. This is the ﬁrst of my books to rely largely on information available on the Internet. Books quickly go out of print, so I have directed readers to Web sites that offer fresh, updated resources for everything you will need to live successfully on your own at any stage in your life. Among authors I consulted, I do wish to express my reliance on a book recommended to me by my wife, entitled Solitude; it is by the British psy- chiatrist Anthony Storrs, who documents the extraordinary accomplish- ments of people throughout history who have lived on their own resources. Loneliness can be a curse, to be sure, but solitude can be an extraordinary blessing. A great secret to life is to learn to cultivate and cherish your own company, becoming your own best friend. Thanks to Praeger’s Suzanne Staszak-Silva for taking an interest in this project and shepherding it into production. She also edited my previous title, America’s Spiritual Utopias: The Quest for Heaven on Earth. I want to express my admiration for many friends and acquaintances who successfully navigate life on their own every day, but I’m loath to name them for fear that some would protest that the single life was not of their choosing but was thrust on them, uninvited. Above all, I am grateful to my wife and helpmate for her professional counsel and her daily companionship. I am blessed to be numbered among those men who have married above themselves. xii Acknowledgments 1 Welcome to the Majority “If you have built castles in the air . . . now put the foundations under them.” Henry David Thoreau American society is no longer deﬁned by marriage. Today, an increasing majority of American households are headed by single men and women. Even those Americans who do marry spend at least half of their adult lives alone. If you happen to be single—for whatever reason—it’s cause for celebration and careful cultivation. Welcome to the majority. Perhaps the traditional fixation on marriage as the key to lifelong happiness has discouraged you from pursuing the joys of successful single living. Don’t fall for it. There is no single formula for life fulfill- ment; one size does not fit all. You must write your own script for happiness. These days, if you are unmarried and pining for romance, you are in a small minority.1 Only 16 percent of single Americans told the Pew Research Foundation that they were currently looking for a romantic part- ner. That amounts to just 7 percent of the nation’s adult population. Indeed, a majority (55 percent) of singles express no active interest at all in seeking a partner. Even a greater majority of widowed, divorced, or older women are not seriously seeking romance. Even among young adults, the zest for romance and marriage has waned. Only 22 percent of singles aged eighteen to twenty-nine admit that they are looking for life partners. Rest assured, they are not antisocial. As many as one-fourth of single young adults are in what they consider to be committed relationships, but with neither a wish nor a prospect of marriage. This signals a tidal shift toward single living. Within recent memory, most Americans considered living alone to be transitional—awaiting the appearance of Mr. or Ms. Right to lead them to the altar, domesticity, and happily-ever-after. In the past, men and women who remained unwed were pitied by their peers and tempted to consider their state in life as self- ish, unnatural, and lonely. Welcome instead to twenty-ﬁrst-century America, where men and women at any age successfully pursue their path through life relying on their own resources, with marriage merely as an option. The new demographic is less a cause for concern than it is an invitation for singles to face the facts, take charge of their lives, and trade in depend- ency for autonomy. The single life can no longer be dismissed as acciden- tal. Indeed, the vast majority of Americans, wed and unwed, need to be self-reliant. WHAT HAPPENED TO WEDLOCK? Why has marriage declined as society’s standard? In Genesis, the Creator observed that “It is not good for man to be alone.”2 Yet, throughout history, marriage has never completely insulated couples from the human predicament. We are each born alone, die alone, and live within our own minds and souls. Today, even those Americans who elect to marry are doing so much later than ever in our nation’s history. Marriage itself is more vulnerable to divorce than ever before: newly- weds enjoy only a 50–50 chance of permanence. Those couples in second and third marriages suffer an even greater failure rate.3 Moreover, in the autumn of their lives, those of us who have weathered married life successfully often ﬁnd ourselves alone again, having outlived our spouses. Thus the single population—young and old alike—expands. Meanwhile, the ranks of never-married men and women are growing exponentially. Rest assured, there is every reason to celebrate the single life rather than resent it. The freedom that comes with independent living sets no limits on friendship, affection, companionship, and romance. What it does demand is that we develop the practical and emotional skills that enable us to love and be loved rather than allow ourselves to be impoverished. 2 Celebrating the Single Life WHAT HAPPENED TO ROMANCE? Are Americans no longer romantically inclined? Don’t believe it.But many younger couples (themselves the sons and daughters of divorced parents) have become wary of wedlock. Fewer of us are willing to settle for relation- ships that promise less than permanence and fulﬁllment. As a consequence, we are slower than ever to tie the knot and hastier than ever to cut it. Our appreciation of the single life lags far behind the new reality. But there are notable exceptions. For example, one-fourth of adult New Yorkers in their twenties and thirties boast that they remain single by choice.4 For them, living on their own in the Big Apple represents freedom and auton- omy. They consider themselves winners, not compromisers. Embracing the single life, they actually socialize more than the rest of us, forging networks of friends of both sexes. Solitude does not scare them; they are not lonely. Regrettably, many singles of both sexes cannot enjoy unalloyed freedom because they have dependents. At the same time that they must fend for themselves, they carry the added burden of supporting young children or aging parents. Responsible single parents ﬁnd satisfaction in their families and friends. Surveys suggest that, as they approach their later years, fewer than one in seven aging parents will be able to count on adult children to contribute to their ﬁnancial support.The average age of widows,incidentally, is just ﬁfty-ﬁve.5 The single life used to be simple to grasp. Young women lived in the parental home until marriage. In Victorian times, if a suitor failed to appear before a daughter reached the age of twenty-six, she was deemed a spinster and expected to devote herself to her aging parents. By contrast, sons left the parental home as early as possible to earn enough to become eligible as husbands. Today, single living has developed many permutations. Young women now typically leave home as soon as possible to begin careers, whereas many of their brothers continue bunking with Mom and Dad, putting their lives on hold even after they have graduated from high school or college. VARIATIONS ON THE SINGLE LIFE Depending on their circumstances, single men and women face different challenges. Divorced men and women of all ages are single. So, too, are wid- ows and widowers, as well as parents without partners, whether or not their children were conceived in wedlock. Single, too, are the growing number of men and women who share life together without the mutual commitment of marriage. In truth, an unmarried couple consists of two single persons sharing a single bed. Welcome to the Majority 3 No matter what satisfactions they seek, few unmarried American men and women consider themselves part of the “Swinging Singles” scene. Liv- ing on one’s own resources is a challenge at any age and in any circum- stance. To be sure, autonomous living can be an adventure, but seldom a freewheeling one. Still, it invites celebration. It’s not difﬁcult to trace our shift from a nation of marrieds into a society of singles. Beginning in the 1960s, reliable contraception insulated sex from childbearing, as the baby boom generation took up the mantra, “If it feels good, do it.” Since then, the failure rate of marriages has soared, leaving the offspring of divorced parents wary of wedlock. One outcome is a tenfold explosion of couples living together without marriage.6 Nowadays what was once called a “trial marriage” collapses in fewer than ﬁve years. Today, more than half of all ﬁrst-time marriages are preceded by cohabitation. These informal arrangements fail twice as often as other ﬁrst-time marriages. Ironically, despite the easy availability of contraception, births to unwed mothers have soared to the point where one in every three American children enters life without the security of a married mother.7 Of course, economics has played a major role in converting us into a nation of singles. For example, we have long since discarded the romantic notion that two can live as cheaply as one. Over recent decades, women have entered the workforce less for liberation than from economic necessity. Today, even when prospective spouses are both employed, men and women in their twenties and thirties continue to be saddled with huge personal debts. These include tens of thousands of dollars of unpaid college loans, which cast a pall over wedlock and then discourage couples from starting a family, even as their biological clocks keep ticking. Whether single by choice or circumstance, we can take charge of our own lives,relishing our independence and developing a full emotional life,expand- ing our interests,and widening our circle of friends,all the while enriching the lives of others and making the world a better place because of us. You can establish and maintain autonomy, paying your own way and ensuring your security, at every stage in your life. And, when you need it, you can obtain assistance without becoming permanently dependent or indebted to others. ADVANTAGES OF BEING SINGLE Monks and nuns choose the single life because they dedicate themselves totally to God. But they are the ﬁrst to deny that celibacy is a restriction on their lives. Far from denigrating marriage, John Wesley, the great Protestant 4 Celebrating the Single Life Reformer, nevertheless praised the single life as “free from a thousand nameless domestic trials, which are found sooner or later in every family.” Of the unmarried, he noted: They are at liberty from the greatest of all entanglements, the loving one creature above all others; they have leisure to improve themselves; and, having no wife or children to provide for, may give all their worldly substance to God.8 Yet others choose to remain single in order to devote themselves totally to humankind. You are undoubtedly aware of doctors, scientists, political leaders, explorers, members of the military, and entrepreneurs who have chosen to remain unmarried rather than expect a spouse to be satisﬁed with what little of their time, attention, and even presence they can spare from their life’s work. Even if your career does not absorb the lion’s share of your time, energy, and attention, your choice of the single life will allow you to pursue other interests more fully, without shortchanging the legitimate demands of a life partner. For starters, the single life awards you more freedom and independence. You need answer to no one but yourself, avoiding reluctant compromise and emotional conﬂict. You will have to cook and clean for yourself, of course, but you alone will choose the menu according to your taste and you can set your own standards. You can enjoy the leisure to explore new interests that will make you a more interesting person to others and a better friend. It is not selﬁsh to do things for yourself that you are free to do. What is selﬁsh is to limit someone else’s freedom by tying them to you when you cannot reciprocate fully. Happily, the single life guarantees you greater control over your time, which you may elect to spend helping others less fortunate than yourself. Alternatively, you can spend time advancing your career, going back to school, or caring for friends. You will also maintain control of your money. Whether you are, on balance, a spender or a saver, you can make your ﬁnancial decisions without depriving a life partner of his or her needs and desires. In addition, you will be spared the annoyance of a partner’s irritating habits, allowing you to concentrate on ridding yourself of your own. Nor need you nag a loved one to wash the dishes or take out the trash, because you will assume the responsibility of routine tasks yourself. Unless you’re inclined to argue aloud with yourself, yet another advantage of single living is that it will spare you emotionally from the conﬂicts, argu- ments, heartbreaks, and outbursts that accompany domestic life. Welcome to the Majority 5 Finally, single life will allow you more time to get in touch with yourself and become a better person. Should you choose the opportunity to marry at a later stage in your life, you will be a more eligible, more wholesome, and kinder prospect. Approach single living as an adventure in self-improvement rather than taking smug satisfaction with the person you always have been. Being on your own affords the opportunity to think and feel better about yourself, which will immediately be apparent to others and make you more attrac- tive to them. Don’t fall for the notion that you need someone else to reas- sure you how wonderful you are. A wise saint advised that the key to attract love is to make yourself lovable. THE OBSTACLES YOU FACE Despite the fact that only a minority of American households is led by married couples, you may be prone to suspecting every stranger you meet to be attached. Fight your tendency to check every attractive person to determine whether he or she is wearing a wedding band. Suburbs and small towns attract married couples with children. If that’s where you live or work, don’t be surprised to discover that most of your neighbors and co-workers are wed. Many singles feel left out when their friends marry, and it’s true that, once married, a couple will tend to socialize with other couples. If you are of an age to feel like a ﬁfth wheel at social gatherings of mostly-marrieds, you will want to make an effort to seek out other singles instead. In fact, the fragile state of marriage in America today is such that couples soon ﬁnd themselves socializing with singles who were formerly married. In any case, wherever you live, don’t conﬁne yourself to a home-alone ghetto. Because we live close to Washington, D.C., my wife and I are intrigued by the guest lists at White House dinners, as well as formal Congressional, embassy, press, and arts events. Signiﬁcant singles in our nation’s capital cultivate each other’s company and pair up for these occasions. Rest assured, when Condoleezza Rice attends a White House state dinner, she goes as one-half of a couple. You will do well to cultivate a friend who enjoys your company for such occasions. In successful single living, romance is optional, but comrade- ship is essential. You do want to get out and about, so make sure you have something appropriate to wear when invited. More than 20 years ago I discovered a cast-off Saks Fifth Avenue tuxedo for six dollars at a church bazaar. It’s all I’ve ever owned for formal wear, and I seldom turn down an opportunity to dust it off and try it on. 6 Celebrating the Single Life The entertainment media is skewed toward depicting love and romance, and nearly every commercial tune is a love song. If you happen not to be in a romantic relationship, you may be tempted to believe that everyone else is in one. It’s not so. Even worse, Hollywood overwhelmingly depicts villains as single. News- papers skew their advice columns to readers seeking romance. Every week- end, they display pages of smiling brides and handsome grooms. It can seem like a conspiracy against the unmarried. But it’s just a way of selling more papers. Married couples tend to socialize with one another because their lives are restricted to daily domesticity and children. Their conversation tends to be limited to child rearing, dealing with repairmen, and maintaining the home. Couples tend to entertain at home rather than go out. Unless you’re a single parent, you won’t have to worry about a baby sitter for social freedom, and you won’t be conﬁned to your own four walls. Even if you are a single parent, you will ﬁnd yourself freer than many marrieds, not least because you do not have to seek the approval of a spouse when it comes to your schedule, social life, spending, and child care. Dependency too often leads to a sense of false security. It’s better to cherish the freedom that comes from depending on yourself. MYTHS ABOUT SINGLE LIFE Parents tend to hope that their children will be married. It’s an under- standable prejudice. After all, they are married. It’s their experience. And, should you marry, they will soon want to know when you plan to give them grandchildren. Parents are programmed to believe that their chil- dren will never grow up until they are wed and mired in domesticity. Even if you become hugely successful as a single, they may believe that your career and other interests are trivial pursuits. Don’t try too hard to change their beliefs. After all, they only want you to be happy, and marriage and family are their formula. But don’t buy into their prejudices, because they only perpetuate myths about the single life: for example, “Single means lonely.” Not at all. “Single” doesn’t even mean “alone.” What it does mean is that sin- gles can more easily choose moments of solitude without taking time and attention away from the people closest to them. Singles are actually freer to choose their friends of both sexes and to expand their circle of comrades without rousing envy or jealousy among those persons who make a legitimate emotional claim on them. Marriage connotes exclu- sivity and possessiveness. Only the very best marriages are those in Welcome to the Majority 7 which spouses allow each other the freedom to grow and mature. A lonely single is a selﬁsh person who is focusing on himself or herself instead of others. Another myth is “I need someone to make me feel good about myself.”A romantic relationship will never solve your problems, least of all any feelings of inadequacy. Emotional entanglements actually magnify one’s shortcom- ing and create new problems. Putting two needy people together makes them doubly needy. Relationships are not prescriptions for curing your ills, but for sharing yourself with another person. To do that successfully, you must have self-conﬁdence to share. Only you can make you happy, and only a “happy you” can build a successful life with another. Abraham Lincoln, reputed to be a melancholy man, nevertheless afﬁrmed that “most people are about as happy as they make up their mind to be.”9 “Since I can’t ﬁnd anyone who wants me, something must be wrong with me.” The only thing that’s wrong is that you dismiss the single life that you know in favor of one that you only imagine will make you happy. People focussed on searching often don’t allow themselves to be found. Men or women “on the prowl” for a mate are likely to scare off any prospects. Moreover, if you sense that you are a failure for being single, your neediness and self-reproach will turn others away. “Being single is only temporary. My real life won’t begin until I’m with someone else.” Treat your life as the gift that it is and make the most of it. You will never appreciate yourself until you invest in yourself and cher- ish your independence. You will never ﬁnd real intimacy with another person until you are a complete person. To share means both giving to and receiving from another person. It is interdependence, not depend- ency. First invest in yourself. You will be happier, with more to give of yourself to others. WRITING YOUR SCRIPT FOR SINGLE LIVING Doubtless, living on your own will present speciﬁc challenges, depending on your age, health, and circumstances. So your script for celebrating single life will call for different strategies, depending on whether you are a young adult, a recently divorced person, a single parent, or someone who has been widowed. Still, single living—by choice or necessity—requires the same core abilities—overcoming loneliness while cherishing solitude, reaching out to others, and developing a secure faith and self-respect, all the while pay- ing your bills and maintaining your health, security, sense of humor, and your ability to love and be loved. 8 Celebrating the Single Life These abilities are not options but necessities. In twenty-ﬁrst-century America, social isolation accounts for as much as a ﬁvefold shortening of the lives of single men and women. As they age, men and women with few or no friends are more than twice as likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease as those who take charge of their lives and make friends.10 George Bernard Shaw claimed,“The way to have a happy life is to be so busy doing what you like all the time that there is no time left to think about whether you are happy.”11 Those are your challenges. Rest assured, you do not have to confront them alone. Others will help you. Regardless of when you begin, you can become the person that your Creator had in mind when you were given life. There is a practical science to living successfully on our own. You can master it. Forget that old fable; you needn’t be married to live happily ever after. Welcome to the Majority 9 This page intentionally left blank 2 Cherish Life on Your Own “Someday my prince will come.” Snow White Then again, perhaps he won’t. Or, over time, he may reveal that he is a frog merely masquerading as a prince, and you will toss him back in the pond. Or . . . mortality will intrude on “happily ever after,” leaving contemporary Snow Whites and their Prince Charmings on their own, widows or wid- owers. Whatever the case, you owe it to yourself to learn to live on your own terms and with your own resources. Probably the greatest impediment to living a happy life alone is that men and women alike yearn for love and are inclined to equate personal fulﬁllment with marriage. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) reveals that 71 percent of adults agree that “ﬁnding true love is life’s top achievement.” In any given month, as many as 182 million Americans seek true love via Internet dating sites.1 Unless we temper our romantic predilections with reality, we will spoil our chances for pursuing a happy life on our own. When my wife’s ﬁrst marriage ended in divorce, she found herself sud- denly single, in a strange city without a job or a place to live. Survival was the ﬁrst order of business. She quickly attracted new friends, both married and single, found a place to live, and landed a job. Still smarting from the breakup of her marriage, Becky began to date aggressively. At which point, her mother gave her a piece of advice: “When you stop looking for love, love will ﬁnd you.” To that wisdom Becky added St. Augustine’s counsel: “In order to be loved, be lovable.”2 I came along not long afterward and found her lovable. That was some thirty years ago. She still is lovable, and we are still married. Most Americans marry, at least for a time. And most divorced persons harbor a wish to be married again. But the truth is that, on average, all of us, married or single, now live at least half of our adult lives on our own. To live alone successfully you do not have to proclaim yourself a con- ﬁrmed bachelor or bachelorette, rejecting any thought of marriage. But neither can you afford to be a hostage of romance. You must equip your- self to live on your own, enjoying your own company. When you achieve that, others will be attracted to you as to a magnet. If you’re still skeptical, consider this: the triumph of hope over experience. This year, more than two million American couples will wed, wagering against dire odds that their love will last, conquering all in an adventure of lifelong romance. Each couple will spend, on average, upwards of $25,000 on the wedding ceremony, reception, and honeymoon alone. In addition, the newlyweds will purchase $4 billion worth of furniture, $3 billion of house wares, and $400 million of tableware to begin their lives together.3 Although weddings are big business, marriage itself has shrunk to minority status as the institution under which American households are organized and children are raised. The most common living arrangement in America today is a household of unmarried adults with no children. Nearly two-thirds of American households have no offspring at home.4 Desire and romance persist, but personal commitment has long since yielded to casual sex and cohabitation, especially among young adults. Today marriage is an afterthought for close to half of the couples who eventually decide to wed. Not only are couples who cohabit before mar- riage twice as likely to end their lives together, but the birth of a child makes their break-up an even surer thing. Although plenty of couples remain happily married, that fact should not be allowed to persuade you that married life is the pinnacle of hap- piness. It may very well be, but only for those who have stuck with the marriage. A 2007 Gallup poll reports that nearly two-thirds of married men and women are happy with their personal lives, compared with only 43 percent of singles. Moreover, 60 percent of married couples in the lowest income bracket report being happier than half of singles in the highest income bracket.5 Don’t those statistics prove that marriage makes one happy? Not at all! Any true picture would have to take into consideration the half of those marriages that end in divorce. Couples who are happy together remain married. Those who are miserable with each other return to the single life. If you persist in pining for a perfect soul mate who will make you happy, you are destined to be unhappy living on your own. 12 Celebrating the Single Life DISPENSING WITH STEREOTYPES Rest assured, being on your own at any stage of your life does not con- demn you to live like a monk or nun. Affection, friendship, love, and romance are all ingredients of a complete emotional life, and they are all available to the unmarried. Our obstacle is that we have been conditioned to denigrate the single life. Fairy tales warn us about adults who live alone. Literature is no kinder. Think of Dickens’s daft Miss Havisham in her dusty room, jilted, still wearing her tattered wedding dress. Or consider the cliché of the sin- gle woman whose only company consists of her cats. Men living alone are tarred as well, suspected of being sexual predators or serial killers. Even when we dismiss these clichés, we suspect that anyone who lives alone for long will become eccentric. But hold on. Even so glamorous a single as the actor George Clooney kept a pet pig in his home for years as his closest companion. I’m inclined myself to associate single living with eccentricity but to accept it as a simple expression of the freedom that people on their own enjoy. Thoreau complained that most people live lives of quiet despera- tion, largely because they fail to make time to get to know themselves. By thoughtless conformity, they “begin digging their graves as soon as they are born.”6 Midway through the last century, Harvard sociologist David Riesman warned that conformity had turned American society into what he termed “The Lonely Crowd.”7 So let us celebrate eccentricity, identifying it as what it is—individuality in the adventure of enjoying one’s own company. Cherish free choice. It is one of the principal advantages of living on your own, as opposed to compromising with a soul mate. If living alone is new to you, you may feel like Thoreau venturing solo into the Massachusetts woods. But, like him, your purpose will be “to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles.”8 That “private business” will be to get to know and like yourself and to cherish your own company. THE PERSISTENCE OF AN ILLUSION In her book, The New Single Woman, sociologist E. Kay Trimberger confronted the effects of divorce on newly single women. As she attempted a chapter entitled “Sex and the Single Woman,” a friend opined, “Provocative title, but what you ﬁnd will not be.” To be sure, many divorced women whom Trimberger interviewed dis- missed sex as “overrated,” but she discovered that those women for whom Cherish Life on Your Own 13 sex was a priority “almost always found it. Love, not sex, I discovered, is the elusive entity.”9 Anyone who treats the single life as temporary, pending the appearance of a soul mate, is like a person living in a succession of unfurnished rooms. The single life is not a “meanwhile strategy,”but a life worthy of permanence and integrity, one that can be ﬁlled with love and friendship. Single men seem to accept this better than women, but they can be less adept at developing friendships that support their life alone. Still, the true test of living on one’s own, for men and women alike, is not how many friends they attract but how well they get on with themselves. British social commentator India Knight writes that “being uncomfortable with your own company is a modern disease.” She acknowledges that “being single used to get an incredibly bad press—a mystery, in my view, since being on your own is inﬁnitely prefer- able to being with someone ghastly . . . In the mid-1990s there was a sort of low-level panic at the idea of being left ‘on the shelf.’” Knight believes that concern to be outdated: “In past generations the energetic, eccentric maiden aunt had rather a lovely time, pottering about, driving with the roof down, reading books, having more spend- ing money than the child-encumbered, going on holiday to exciting family-unfriendly places and looking glamorous. I don’t really under- stand why she evolved into a sad, withered ﬁgure that inspired both pity and terror.” India Knight writes from experience. She is divorced, a single mother, and unsentimental about the single life. It is not for sissies, she afﬁrms, and can be “incredibly hard work”: I was reminded of this the other night when a girlfriend was moaning that end- less Christmas parties had taken their toll and she just wished she could have one night at home with a mug of tea, a takeaway, and something mindless on the telly. Easily arranged, I said, just don’t go out. I do it all the time. But apparently not.“I have to put myself out there,” she said, miserably, “otherwise who knows what— or who—I may be missing out on.”10 Such is life striving for an illusion. THE TRUE JOYS OF COUPLEDOM To be sure, many live-alones are not single by choice. But the effort expended to survive in the contemporary dating scene in hopes of mak- ing a fortuitous lifelong connection is unworthy of most singles past a certain age. 14 Celebrating the Single Life The contentment that sentimental singles seek in marriage is nothing like the frantic lottery of the dating game. To be honest, what they want is freedom, along with the added comfort of a trusted companion. Only party animals want to dance every night. The rest of us prefer to kick off our shoes at the end of the day, enjoy a home-cooked meal, watch something mindless on TV, and chat about nothing in particular with someone who is at least mildly interested. What we want is not glamor and adventure, but comfort. What about sex? “Lonely people can always get sex if they want it,” Knight says, “but getting somebody who will happily make you a cup of tea is altogether a trickier proposition.”11 To qualify, that person does not have to be a spouse or a lover. It can be a friend, a neighbor, a workmate, or family member. If tea is less important than companionship, the answer can be a pet. Don’t pity the single woman with cats or the single man with a dog. As companions, pets are vastly less demanding than people and typ- ically quicker to accept and offer affection. No wonder there are as many pets as people in America. THE VIRTUES OF SOLITUDE AND PRIVACY The English psychiatrist Anthony Storrs laments that our idealization of interpersonal relationships “causes marriage, supposedly the most inti- mate tie, to be so unstable. If we did not look to marriage as the principal source of happiness, fewer marriages would end in tears.” He concludes that “people who have no abiding interests other than their spouses and families are as limited intellectually as those who have neither spouse nor children may be emotionally,” and asks us to consider whether “what goes on in the human being when he is by himself is as important as what happens in his interactions with other people.”12 Yet another false stereotype of living on one’s own is that it is, perforce, lonely. To be sure, a strong motive for seeking companionship is to ﬂee one’s solitude. But, too often, that means escaping oneself for dependency on another person. Being physically alone does not equate with loneliness. It’s quite the opposite: when we are alone with our thoughts and daydreams, we typi- cally resent intrusions. Equally, when we are at work or concentrating on a task, we don’t wish to be disturbed. Until fairly recently, people were so crowded together physically that they felt almost claustrophobic. Single people often found themselves crowded into dormitories and boarding houses, lacking not only space but—more important—privacy. A young woman to whom I was engaged in college looked on marriage as a way to Cherish Life on Your Own 15 escape her crowded home. She complained that, growing up, the only place she could be alone was in the bathroom—and there was only one of those in her family’s modest old house. Ultimately, loneliness stems from a lack of self-regard. But, in the short run, it is a by-product of social isolation and a lack of personal validation by others. Not least of the damaging outcomes of divorce is to ﬁnd oneself with few friends, or none. Married couples often shed their friends for each other’s company. In homely terms, they place all their eggs in their partner’s basket. When a marriage breaks up, the former couple can ﬁnd themselves more completely isolated than they have been since childhood. Louise Bernikow in Alone in America identiﬁes loneliness as “not being known, not ﬁtting, not being right”—even being deserted by oneself.13 Making new friends is the ﬁrst order of business. But here’s a word of caution: families and spouses have an investment in keeping you just the way you are, even when you’re not happy with yourself. Friends, by contrast, expect a certain reciprocity, but they encourage your autonomy. And they do it by giving you different perspectives on yourself than you can achieve on your own.A friend with a sense of humor will appeal to your fun-loving side; a sober-sided friend can strengthen your serious side. In Bridget Jones’s Diary, the heroine, a single woman in her thirties, worries about “dying alone and being found three weeks later eaten by dogs.”14 Brid- get, of course, was obsessed with ﬁnding a soul mate. If she had invested as much attention in making friends (of both sexes), they would have kept tabs on her without invading her privacy or leaving her to the dogs. “BUT I DIDN’T CHOOSE TO BE SINGLE.” Maybe not, but it doesn’t mean that singles are victims of circumstance. If you ﬁnd yourself on your own, at any stage in your life, it will be the result of choices that you have made along the way. If you’ve never been married, it’s because you determined that sufﬁ- ciently attractive prospects weren’t available. If you’re divorced, it’s because you determined that your marriage didn’t live up to your expec- tations. And if you’re single again because your spouse has passed away, it’s because you knew from the outset that wedlock is “till death do us part”— but no longer. On average, men live shorter lives than women, yet they tend to marry women younger than themselves. On the face of it, that’s an impractical decision, but it’s one that couples make. The nation’s nursing homes disproportionately serve women whose marriages endured, but whose older husbands passed away before them.15 16 Celebrating the Single Life The single life can be thrust upon us at any age, but not without our coop- eration, if not actual collaboration. Still, Tennessee Williams afﬁrmed that “the heart is a stubborn organ,”16 but it needs exercise. Do not allow your heart to grow cold through inactivity just because you are on your own. Although our nation was founded on our right to pursue happiness, that goal can be elusive. Dr. Martin Seligman, former president of the American Psychological Association, is the reigning expert on the subject and author of Authentic Happiness, which, in its ﬁrst four years of publi- cation, was translated into nearly twenty languages. The psychologist is quick to acknowledge that happiness does not con- sist of mindless personal pleasure but requires community engagement, spiritual connectedness, hope, and charity. Trained as an expert on clini- cal depression, he decided in midcareer to explore the other side, deter- mining what makes life worth living. Happiness, he discovered, requires attention, effort, and persistence—not just passively feeling good, but pos- itively doing good.17 When a class in happiness was ﬁrst announced at Harvard, it attracted the most students of any course offering on campus. In a delightful feature for The New York Times Magazine, author D. T. Max chronicled his expe- riences in happiness classes on other campuses.18 When asked what already made them happy, his young classmates mentioned sex, drinking, entertainment, adventure, and friendship. Given the assignment to perform acts of selﬂess kindness, the same stu- dents became more imaginative. One who was terriﬁed of needles gave blood. Another donated clothes to a shelter for battered women. A third gave a waiter at a fast food restaurant a $50 tip. Seligman is himself a student of positive psychology. When he chastised his ﬁve-year-old daughter for being whiny, she struck a deal with her Dad: if he would stop being grumpy, she would stop her whining. They both happily improved their behavior. My own experience of happiness is that it is not a constant state. Rather, life is ﬁlled with ﬂeeting gifts of joy that are not of our own manufacture. At best, the pursuit of happiness is an applied science, not equally avail- able to the poor, the sick, and the handicapped—but certainly available to those who live on their own. The Bible, incidentally, is strangely sparse in its formulas for happiness, unless we can agree with those scholars who say Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount is best translated as “Happy are the poor . . . the merciful . . . the sin- cere . . . the peacemakers . . . and those who suffer persecution for the cause of goodness.”19 Living on your own, you are better advised to settle for contentment and to develop a keen sense of humor instead of asking,“Am I happy yet?” Cherish Life on Your Own 17 LOOK UP, BUT WATCH WHERE YOU’RE STEPPING Self-conﬁdence is just that—the conﬁdence that you award yourself. Only a saint merits wholehearted self-esteem, yet saints are notoriously critical of themselves. But they are effective nonetheless because they are conﬁdent. Their self-acceptance stems wholly from their belief that their creator loves and respects them. Their self-conﬁdence comes from working to justify that trust. Those of us who are less than saints gain our conﬁdence from small suc- cesses that beckon us to take further challenges. It helps, of course, to have loved ones who believe in us, but we are unlikely to believe even those closest to us unless we sense some record of success in our own efforts. School can be hard on a child who is plain, unathletic, or a slow learner. As children, we were constantly tested by our teachers, physically and mentally, against arbitrary standards and judged even more severely by our peers. Youth favors popularity as athletes, scholars, and cheerleaders. The vast majority of us, in childhood, couldn’t compete successfully in those arenas. Fortunately, we aren’t called on to do so as grown-ups. As adults, we ﬁnd our self-conﬁdence in different roles. When they were young, I told my learning-disabled daughters from my ﬁrst marriage that adult life would be friendlier to them than their growing- up years; that prediction proved to be true. The basis for self-conﬁdence in adult living is choosing our challenges instead of having others impose theirs on us. Adults select the friends, loves, and interests to which they devote their lives and that bring them satisfaction. Unlike schoolchildren, adults are not expected to be good at everything, but only competent at earning a living and responsible to the persons whom they choose to involve in their lives. Of course, we can fail at unsuitable jobs and with misplaced affections, but temporary setbacks are powerful motivation for starting afresh and moving on. Sadly, kids who fail in school are inclined to drop out, because there are no meaningful alternatives to school during the early years. But those of us who encounter failure in adulthood have alternatives—in employment, love, enjoyment, service, and every other aspect of living— that can make us successful again. If you ﬁnd yourself single because of divorce or the death of a spouse, you are no less successful than you were before. But you must take initiative. To be sure, there is a drawback to adulthood. Whereas children are con- stantly being evaluated, as adults we are often at a loss to know how well we are doing, both in our work and in our relationships. Expectations in our professional and personal lives are too seldom expressed by our super- visors and loved ones. To renew conﬁdence and grow in spirit, we must 18 Celebrating the Single Life insist on frequent feedback. That is especially true when you are living on your own. I was past the age of ﬁfty before I ever received a formal performance review in the workplace. Earlier, I was left guessing about how well my work was regarded. When I became a foundation president, I was deter- mined to clear the air. Not only did I institute an annual review for my staff, but I insisted that my trustees give me one as well. Periodically, in your own work and your own relationships, summon the courage to ask “How am I doing?” You will either be reassured, re- challenged, or made aware that others’ expectations of you are unrealistic and need to be altered. Whatever the assessment, your spirit will not suf- fer, because you will be exchanging illusion for reality. The truth will make you free. QUICK FIXES Self-esteem is holistic. It encompasses our whole way of relating to the world—our strategies for establishing goals, our expectations, our reac- tions to change, and how we deal with setbacks. People with low self- esteem tune out praise and amplify anything derogatory that is said about them. They actually seek partners who think poorly of them. Because of their low opinion of themselves, battered women tend to choose the kind of men who will mistreat them. They believe, perversely, that they deserve the abuse they get. Of course, we cannot completely eliminate the lingering effects of child- hood experiences, even when we only dimly recall them. Self-esteem is affected by the ways in which the world has reacted to us in the past and continues to act toward us at present. As William Swann acknowledges, “People who feel downtrodden sometimes are downtrodden. For this rea- son, merely changing people’s ways of feeling about themselves may cre- ate an illusion that will vanish in the harsh light of reality.”20 Quick ﬁxes won’t work, but longer ﬁxes can and do. It is pointless to attempt to lift yourself up by your own bootstraps when others are prepared to help you raise your spirits and help you on your adventure in living on your own. Although you’re on your own, you don’t have to go it alone. In the past, people with low self-esteem and ready cash consulted expert counselors, who guided them through lengthy and often expensive ther- apy. Today, antidepressants offer the illusion of a cheap alternative—a quick ﬁx to self-conﬁdence. It is true that Prozac and similar drugs can temporarily temper sufferers’ moods, but they can neither lift our spirits permanently nor strengthen our faith in ourselves. Cherish Life on Your Own 19 Elizabeth Wurtzel, who took Prozac for seven years to cope with depres- sion, credits the drug for saving her life but says it failed to change her life. In Prozac Nation, she revealed: Years and years of bad habits, of being attracted to the wrong kinds of men, of responding to every bad mood with impulsive behavior (cheating on my boyfriend or being lax about my work assignments), had turned me into a person who had no idea how to function within the boundaries of a normal, nondepres- sive world. I needed a good therapist to help me learn to be a grown-up, to show me how to live in a world where the phone company doesn’t care that you’re too depressed to pay the phone bill.21 PREDICTABILITY Self-conﬁdence ﬂies in the face of uncertainty. Every initiative that we take can end in failure rather than success, which explains why men and women with low self-esteem shy away from risk-taking altogether. But some risks actually make us stronger, even when they fail. Take the case of the ten-year-old Samuel Clemens, who as an adult would become known by his pen name, Mark Twain. In 1845, an epidemic of measles swept through his small town of Dawson’s Landing, Missouri. Dozens of children perished and the rest were terriﬁed. Rather than remain paralyzed with doubt, waiting to contract the disease, young Sam inﬂicted it on himself: I made up my mind to end the suspense and settle this matter one way or the other and be done with it. Will Bowen (a playmate) was dangerously ill with the measles and I thought I would go down there and catch them . . . I slipped through the backyard and up the back way and got into the room and into the bed with Will Bowen without being observed . . . It was a good case of measles that resulted. It brought me within a shade of death’s door.22 But the young Sam Clemens survived . . . and thrived. As a young girl growing up in the Ohio countryside, my wife was con- stantly warned by her parents to avoid the poison ivy that surrounded their home. Tired of being cautious and uncertain whether she was aller- gic to the leaves anyway, she decided one day to roll in the stuff. Her exper- iment ended even more happily than Sam Clemens’s—she proved to be immune to the poison. But, like him, Becky took a risk to make a discov- ery. Suddenly, one facet of her life became more predictable, and she became empowered to take other calculated risks. In their quest for predictability, men and women with poor self-images take the opposite tack, embracing partners who think poorly of them, 20 Celebrating the Single Life while actually shunning those who think well of them. Young Sam Clemens infected himself to make an uncertain situation more predictable and controllable; ironically, people with poor self-regard choose conﬁrm- ing partners for the same reason, feeling safer in abusive relationships than in uncertain ones. Choose friends who afﬁrm and strengthen you, even when they are occasionally critical of your choices. Fear can be good; it confronts real danger. Anxiety may be the product of depression. Uncontrolled, it can reduce you to inaction. Experiments demonstrate that people who fear thunderstorms lose that fear if they see lightning and can predict when the next thunderclap will come. Similarly, people inﬂicted with pain feel its agony less if they can predict when it will come. Predictability gives us a sense of control. The more we welcome risks, the more we encounter success, however modest. Life ﬁlls with nov- elty and more predictability. When I’m uncertain about the future, Becky typically asks, “What’s the worst that can happen? And can you live with it?” Mistakes are seldom tragedies. YOUR AUTHENTIC SELF No one can be completely self-approving but must choose his or her own standards of self-esteem. As a child, the famed psychologist William James was berated by his father, who constantly pointed to his son’s fail- ures. As an adult, James decided to concentrate on his strengths and dis- count his weaknesses, “staking his salvation” on a few areas of excellence: I am often confronted by the necessity of standing by one of my empirical selves and relinquishing the rest. Not that I would not, if I could, be both handsome and fat and well-dressed, and a great athlete, and make a million a year, be a wit, a bon- vivant, and lady-killer, as well as a philosopher, a philanthropist, statesman, war- rior, and African explorer, as well a “tone-poet” and saint. But the thing is simply impossible . . . So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest self must review this list carefully, and pick out the one on which to stake his salvation . . . I, who for the time have staked my all on being a psychologist, am mortiﬁed if others know much more psychology than I. But I am contented to wallow in the grossest ignorance of Greek. My deﬁciencies there give me no sense of personal humiliation at all. Had I “pretensions” to be a linguist, it would have been just the reverse.23 Britain’s King George VI (father of the current queen) gained the throne by default when his brother abdicated to marry the American divorcée Wallis Simpson. Afﬂicted all of his life with fragile health and a speech impediment, the shy monarch nevertheless led his nation through World War II, refusing to leave London during the Blitz. Despite a fear of Cherish Life on Your Own 21 ﬂying, he served in the Navy Air Corps. The King knew his limitations but roused his spirit to manage them. Anyone who aspires to be “all things to all men” is courting disillusion. But it is equally illusory to pretend to yourself to be something other than what you are. Nowhere is such deception more dangerous than in loving relationships. Famed feminist Gloria Steinem confessed that she was so determined to get a man to fall in love with her that she created a false self—changing herself into the woman that he wanted her to be. She was already well aware of the fearfulness of change: Change, no matter how much for the better, still feels cold and lonely at ﬁrst—as if we were out there on the edge of the universe with wind whistling past our ears—because it doesn’t feel like home. Old patterns, no matter how negative and painful they may be, have an incredible magnetic power—because they do feel like home.24 Knowing change to be harrowing, Steinem nevertheless adopted a false identity to please her lover, in the process forfeiting her personal values, diminishing herself rather than lose the man she loved. But she saw clearly: “having got this man to fall in love with an unauthentic me, I had to keep on not being myself.” To her credit, and on behalf of her self-conﬁdence, Steinem at length gave up the man and reafﬁrmed her original self.25 Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda revealed in her memoirs that, from childhood and through her marriages, she was the victim of parents’ and husbands’ overblown expectations of her. Only after many years living on others’ agendas did she ﬁnd and assert her real self through living on her own.26 In order to cherish living on your own, you don’t want to become an altogether different person—just a more effective, self-conﬁdent one. RESOURCES Getting Started Social scientist Stephen M. Johnson argues that anyone who aspires to live the good life alone needs ﬁrst to settle on a job description and then make an inventory of the skills needed to be autonomous. On a separate sheet of paper, rate your current ability to meet present needs as Excellent, Good, Adequate, Fair, or Poor: Cooking Housekeeping 22 Celebrating the Single Life Transportation Money management Clothing management Tolerating or enjoying being alone Enjoying solitary activities, interests, hobbies Pursuing a satisfying career Caring for children (if applicable) Making and cultivating same-sex friends Making and cultivating other-sex friends Being with or communicating with friends regularly Entertaining friends at home Initiating outside activities with friends Ease in receiving and reciprocating affection Ease in rejecting unwanted sexual advances Maintaining a positive mood Assuming that you acknowledge any of your skills in these areas to be only Fair or Poor, ask yourself the following questions: “How important is that skill to me?” “How easy would it be for me to develop it?” For example, you don’t have to be a gourmet cook to eat well, but eat- ing well is important for your overall well-being. It’s actually easy to learn to cook, but you need to make it a priority in life on your own. Alternately, keeping your home or apartment neat and clean may not be a high per- sonal priority, but you can acknowledge that it wouldn’t take an immense effort to be an adequate housekeeper. Don’t be surprised about the need to manage affection and reject unwanted advances.You may be single, but you’re not a hermit.Your emo- tional life is important to your satisfaction and your autonomy. If you feel yourself to be seriously handicapped in summoning the con- ﬁdence to live on your own, you may want to seek counseling. Clergy are among the most sensible counselors available, and they charge nothing for their services. You do not have to be a member of a congregation (or even a believer) to ask for an interview with a member of the clergy. If need be, he or she will refer you to a low-cost, full-time professional counselor. Should you be unacquainted with the churches in your community, phone the largest one or the local ministerial association listed in your White Pages to get a referral. Short of counseling, here are a few books that may be of help in build- ing the foundations for your self-conﬁdence: Cherish Life on Your Own 23 William B. Swann, Jr., Self-Traps: The Elusive Quest for High Esteem (New York: W. H. Freeman & Co., 1996). Anthony Storr, The Integrity of the Personality (New York: Ballantine, 1992). Gloria Steinem, Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem (Boston: Little, Brown, 1992). Charles J. Givens, SuperSelf: Doubling Your Personal Effectiveness (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993). Peter McWilliams, Love 101: To Love Oneself Is the Beginning of a Lifelong Romance (Los Angeles: Prelude Press, 1997). Thomas R. Blakeslee, Beyond the Conscious Mind (New York: Plenum, 1996). Judy Ford, Single: The Art of Being Satisﬁed, Fulﬁlled, and Independent (New York: Reed Paperback, 2004). Here’s a CD course that comes highly recommended: Dr. Michael S. Broder, The Single Life: How to Make It Work for You With or Without a Relationship (Media Psychology Associates, 2006). There is strength and wisdom in numbers. Singles are increasingly help- ing one another to succeed, notably through the following Web sites: www.SingleEdition.com caters especially to thirty-two- to forty-ﬁve-year-olds and includes legal, ﬁnancial, and lifestyle advice. www.quirkyalone.net offers links to other helpful sites. www.singleshelp.org offers a free short course in successful single living plus per- sonal counseling. www.unmarried.org is designed to help you establish control of your life. www.Christianity.com is an evangelical site. Consult its Single Issues Forum. www.TheSinglesCafe offers a comprehensive collection of articles for singles. 24 Celebrating the Single Life 3 Care for Yourself “We have all known the long loneliness, and we have learned that the only solution is love.” Dorothy Day (The Long Loneliness) The long-running television series, Sex and the City, portrayed the adven- tures of four single women who were fast approaching their “use by”dates. Although each lived alone in anonymous New York City, not one of them confessed to feeling lonely despite their passionate pursuit of life partners. Unlike most men or women in real life who live alone, Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha had every reason not to be lonely. Each had an engaging career, money to spend, a high sense of fashion, physical attrac- tiveness, a full social life, and no dependents. Best of all, they had each other—dependable, straightforward friends. Scriptwriters for the series carefully crafted the quartet’s friendship to beneﬁt each member. Notably, the women didn’t compete with each other at work or for the same men. They were instantly available to each other and always spoke the truth. Each had a distinctly different person- ality, allowing her to offer her particular character strengths to the friendship and, at the same time opening her weaknesses to her friends’ better wisdom. Of course, each was wiser about her friends than about herself, but that is true of all of us. It’s one good reason to have good friends. Sex and the City was less a fantasy about the pursuit of romance than it was about the satisfaction of living on one’s own. But in real life (your life) those satisfactions can occasionally appear to be ﬂeeting and fragile, whereas loneliness seems to be permanent. What’s worse, unlike Carrie and her friends, you may be not be totally free, but ﬁnancially and personally responsible for parents or children. Or you may lack a challenging career, the reassurance of enough money to spend, a satisfying social life, a circle of dependable friends, perfect health, or physical attractiveness. Say hello to real life. It’s the rare person living alone who does not occasionally dread loneli- ness. This book is not intended for Carrie and friends in fantasy New York, but for singles in real life. The ﬁrst secret of successful single living is car- ing for yourself. To do that, you ﬁrst have to confront and conquer the moody blues. THE LONELINESS BUSINESS More than twenty years ago, writer Louise Bernikow anticipated twenty-ﬁrst-century America, in which a majority of men and women live on their own. She set out on a transcontinental fact-ﬁnding mission to discover how single men and women of all ages and conditions actually disarm loneliness and ﬁnd companionship. Her ﬁndings, contained in her classic book, Alone in America, portray the disconnectedness and feeling of emptiness that mark too many of us in our solitary society. Bernikow acknowledges starting her journey with a prejudice—that loneliness belongs to life’s losers—but quickly corrected herself. The dic- tionary deﬁnition of loneliness is a longing for companionship, but it neg- lects to suggest how much “society” satisﬁes that longing. Bernikow acknowledged that “alone” and “lonely” were not the same—that many people were perfectly happy to spend time alone or live alone. Moreover, “solitude” is the happy ﬂip side of being on one’s own. It’s the satisfaction of having privacy, freedom, and comfort in one’s own skin and even of cultivating oneself as one’s own best friend. She quickly discovered that one person’s loneliness is not another’s. “Some,” she says, “are lonely eating alone, reminded of something that isn’t there, a family, an idea of family. Some are perfectly happy eating alone but can’t go to movies by themselves.” Big cities make some people lonely; others feel empty and alone in nature, missing the human presence of city life. Lonely means “nobody cares about me” often enough, a lack of relatedness to other people, feel- ing shut out. It sometimes means wanting a mate, or it means being mar- ried and having no friends. Many people use the word to describe a feeling of being adrift in the universe, atomized, living in a world that comprises 26 Celebrating the Single Life only the self.1 Whatever the occasion, loneliness is something that people dread—the principal impediment to pursuing a satisfying single life. Over time, Bernikow discovered that, for many people, loneliness was the sense of time weighing on their hands,“not knowing what to do with yourself.” Chronically lonely people turn to the telephone, the television, and the Internet to achieve the illusion of companionship. Unfortu- nately, they are only fooling themselves. Advertisers and the media abet the illusion. For example, when I was growing up, no one I knew made a long- distance telephone call, except to announce a birth or death in the family. Whereas today we are urged to “reach out and touch someone” by phone, or we nurture the illusion that the cast members of “Friends” are our own personal friends. Beer and liquor commercials on television never depict solitary drinkers. Instead, drinking is promoted as a social pastime with happy companions. At length, Bernikow concluded that most lonely singles are men and women who have failed to come to grips with changes in their lives. Here are some examples: An adolescent in transit from the dependency of childhood to the autonomy of adult life has not yet assimilated the change from one condition to another. A divorced person has not yet found a way of being in the world that was not as “wife” or “husband” to someone. A man who wants to fall in love with a woman who will be there at the end of the day and a woman who needs a man who makes more money than she does and will be counted on to care for, protect, and deﬁne her have not yet come to terms with the different way that we see these things now. A retired person or a widow living far from the old family circle has not found a way to adapt to those circumstances.2 CAN I PUT YOU ON HOLD? Loneliness can be caused by nostalgia for something that we haven’t actually lost because we never had it, such as the fanciful memory of a golden age that never was. Often it is a question of selective memory. If you are divorced, you may linger over the good times in your marriage although they were few. If you are a young adult on your own, your lone- liness may take the form of yearning for your family home when, in fact, you felt conﬁned and dependent as an adolescent. In otherwise comfortable retirement, loneliness can suggest that we were formerly happy throughout our work lives. In every case, loneliness fancies that times were better in the past, or that we might now be contenders for happiness if fate had only favored us with better looks, education, health, or friends. Care for Yourself 27 Loneliness, in brief, is the condition of standing still—of reluctance to moving on in order to make the very best of our current conditions and prospects. Loneliness often consists of waiting for something better to come along, without bothering to deﬁne that something or making the effort to grasp it. Although loneliness can be discouraging, it is not a manifestation of clinical depression, to be relieved by medication or psychotherapy. As long as we are unreconciled to being on our own, we are inclined to believe that our lives are “on hold,” waiting for something better to come along. That kind of loneliness can become an addiction equally as potent as drugs or alcohol. Men and women feel loneliness differently. Once upon a time, “per- sonal” ads appeared, principally in sex magazines, whose subscribers sought partners for pleasure, typically on a hit-and-run basis. But “women seeking men” and “men seeking women” ads have long since gone mainstream—in magazines, newspapers, and on the Internet. As Louise Berkinow learned, “Everyone who wants to ‘meet someone’ has a purpose: to close the door on being single . . . The pitch has changed. Now ﬁnding a partner and escaping singlehood is the promise of the loneliness business.”3 THE ADVANTAGES OF SOLITARY LIVING As my parents’ only child, I made an early acquaintance with solitude. Both of them worked outside the home, so I was on my own daily from the age of seven or eight. But I spent a lot of time in the homes of school friends, all of whom had brothers and sisters. I found their sibling rivalry exotic, and I marveled at the competitive chaos in their homes. My friends, in turn, envied me for being unobliged to compete with siblings. Over time, I found being the constant focus of my parents’ attention to be oppressive and delighted in the opportunity to go away to college. My college years were close to utopian. I continued to have the solitary freedom that I had always enjoyed, but now I joined a fraternity (gain- ing my ﬁrst brothers) and made friends of both sexes who pursued sim- ilar interests and freely shared their enthusiasms. Half a century after graduation, my classmates are still close because of the life that we shared for just four years. To be sure, going off to college for four or more years has become hideously expensive. Yet it offers perhaps the best introduction to a life that is at once long on solitude and comfortably social. Moreover, the col- lege years also afford the opportunity to act out the frustrations and kinks of adolescence and then to graduate into adulthood. 28 Celebrating the Single Life Actress Anne Hathaway (“The Princess Diaries”), determined not to become an undereducated Hollywood brat, settled far from the movie capital, to pursue studies at New York University between ﬁlms. Freely confessing to having been a difﬁcult child in her teens, she credits her campus experience with affording her a benign opportunity to straighten out the kinks in her character—out of the public eye. Hathaway pities the young Hollywood celebrities whose antics lead them to drugs and alcoholism—all because they lack the opportunity to expand their minds and cultivate smart and noncompetitive friends.“We’ve all done things we shouldn’t,” she admits, “it’s just that I did stuff at college, when nobody knew about it, so I’m not a saint . . . I wasted time doing self-destructive things, but it didn’t work. I found you can only dance on so many table tops. I got that out of my system, and now I’m healthy and I’m grounded.”4 It’s a stretch to treat a movie star as a model for every single, but Hath- away has been wise to invest not only in a glamorous career but in expand- ing her mind and curiosity and in assembling a wide circle of friends with whom she can share her enthusiasms. Those are the basic ingredients of a satisfying single life. AUTONOMOUS ADULTHOOD In First Person Singular: Living the Good Life Alone, Stephen M. Johnson, a clinical psychologist, urges singles to give themselves a job description. “I am convinced,” he says, “that one of the primary reasons people have such difﬁculty in living single is that they are simply unaware of what they need to do in order to live a reasonably fulﬁlling life alone.”5 Some thirty years ago, author Erica Jong complained that it was “heresy in America to embrace any way of life except as one half of a couple.”Well, times have changed, and that heresy has become the new orthodoxy. Although most adult Americans today are unmarried, few have bothered to reﬂect on what single life entails. Dr. Johnson originally came up with the concept of “autonomous adulthood” to assist men and women who were going through separation and divorce to land on their feet. But it soon became apparent to him that autonomy applies to all adults “irrespective of their marital or relationship status.”6 If you are single now but hope for a life companion someday, you want to build on the satisfaction that you already enjoy on your own. The false alternative is to believe that a future mate will be a miracle worker who will make you happy. The truth is this: if you feel inadequate on your own, you can never forge an equal partnership with another person; you will be Care for Yourself 29 dependent on him or her. Modern marriage, after all, is an equal partner- ship; you have to bring your autonomous individuality to it. Here is Johnson’s challenge to singles of all ages and both genders: What do you think could happen if you could commit yourself to living well alone as completely as you might to a really good career, relationship, marriage, or family? What if you committed yourself to learning autonomy skills with the same enthusiasm you might muster to learning a new sport? What if you spent as much energy in developing yourself as a functioning single adult as you have spent on your education, career, or family? What if you viewed single life as an exciting challenge in which much could be learned rather than as a temporary discomfort to be endured?7 SOLITUDE IS NOT LONELY Human culture has had precious little experience of the single life. From ancient times people have huddled together for mutual protection. In dangerous times, protection trumps privacy, and tribal living subordi- nates the individual to the group. It is only in recent centuries that men and woman have separated their individuality from the communities to which they belong. In the early centuries of Christianity, individual believers ﬂed from pagan civilization to become solitaries, but, when the hermits became eccentric, they were lured back into monasteries to enjoy the beneﬁts of communal life. Self-awareness itself is a product of modern times. The communes of the 1960s represented a reversion to tribal living, typically suppressing their members’ individuality and sometimes resulting in blind obedience to cult leaders. It is worthy of note that our heroes and heroines have always been pri- vate persons—self-aware and secure in their solitude. If the prospect of living alone strikes us as scary, it is because we are not nearly as self- sufﬁcient and self-aware as we think we are. Even rebels from conventional society eventually become uncomfortable in their own skins, so they seek the company of fellow eccentrics. Samuel Johnson in the eighteenth century both praised and chided soli- tary individuals. “The solitary mortal,” he said, “is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.”8 But that was at a time when single living was the exception. Today, men and women living on their own are the rule. Perhaps the princi- pal contribution of marriage and family life is that it civilizes its 30 Celebrating the Single Life members. Spouses and parents keep us from trampling on others, while smoothing the rough edges of our character and ensuring that we act responsibly. Let us look instead to life’s heroes and heroines as models for single liv- ing. They cherish solitude and do not ﬁnd it lonely—but rather an opportunity for personal growth, self-awareness, and resolution. Before embarking on his public life, Jesus of Nazareth went into the desert alone for forty days and nights. The Gospel acknowledges that he ended that ordeal hungry, but not lonely. Abraham, the Buddha, and Mohammed all sought solitude and did not ﬁnd it lonely. St. Paul and Nelson Mandela used their prison solitude to seek and ﬁnd their best selves, whereas Adolf Hitler used his solitary incarceration to create Mein Kampf, a blueprint for evil. Samuel Johnson was correct in judging solitude to be “luxurious.” It is a luxury for single persons to have the time and occasion to learn about themselves and their satisfactions. Of course, solitude suits some people more than others. Some of us are ambivalent about privacy, preferring the distraction of company. But British psychiatrist Anthony Storr insists that solitude is essential for serious thinking and self-satisfaction. In his book, Solitude: A Return to the Self, Storr proﬁles an array of men and women of great accomplishment for whom solitary life proved to be the key that unlocked their genius. My wife once had the opportunity to spend an evening with the actress Helen Hayes, who was an intimate friend of the reclusive Greta Garbo. Garbo is best remembered for her line, “I want to be alone.”“Did Garbo really cherish solitude?” my wife inquired. Oh yes, despite many friends, Greta despised celebrity and thoroughly enjoyed her own com- pany. In later life, Helen Hayes revealed that she and Lillian Gish kept Garbo company. What subject dominated the chatter of that celebrated trio of singles? Men! Henry David Thoreau is the renowned American exponent of the soli- tary life, and his experiment of living alone at Walden Pond is a classic example of the satisfactions that one can ﬁnd in solitude. When, at length, the hermit of Walden returned to society, he had learned “that if one advances conﬁdently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”9 “Love your life,”Thoreau urges us.“Meet it and live it. If I were conﬁned to a corner of a garret all my days, like a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I had my thoughts about me.” Solitude allowed Thoreau the freedom to make no compromises.“Remember,” he advised,“only that Care for Yourself 31 day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.”10 THE CHALLENGE OF SOLITARY LIVING So merely being alone doesn’t produce loneliness. We all crave soli- tude, if for no better reason than that we need privacy. It’s only when time hangs on their hands that singles are tempted to feel sorry for themselves. Here’s proof: my home is only a few minutes from Interstate 95, the nation’s principal East Coast highway connecting Maine with Florida. In my little part of Northern Virginia, I-95 is not principally used by interstate travelers, but by local commuters driving daily to and from their jobs in Washington, D.C. They move at a snail’s pace, while express lanes that are open to cars with three or more occupants are practically empty. Commuters put up with trafﬁc congestion because they insist on driv- ing alone. Married or single, they opt for solitude over company. Most motorists, I assume, are not thinking deep thoughts as they creep along, but just listening to the radio or a CD. Some boast that they use their time alone to listen to audio books. But all of them opt for solitude over com- pany, even when they merely ﬁll it with distractions. It’s how well people employ their time alone that determines how suc- cessful and satisfying single life can be. That takes effort to indulge enthu- siasms, appreciate legitimate pleasures, and cultivate good friends. It means not only caring for oneself but taking care of yourself. Barbara Holland reveals the bleak alternative in her book One’s Com- pany: Reﬂections on Living Alone: Small but ominous cracks and leaks in the good life; evenings in June when the late sun slants into the apartment and the silence ticks like a bomb; Saturdays in October when the wind creaks down the street and the light chills and sharpens and the skin prickles relentlessly.11 Divorced and living alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Holland reﬂects on those men and women who are too old or too shy or too poor to consider themselves “singles”: . . . or they were recently members of families and are still unadjusted and con- fused, or they live in the wrong sort of place. They buy a half-loaf of bread and a can of tuna and let themselves into their apartments at the end of the day calling wistfully for the cat, check the unblinking light on the answering machine, and sit 32 Celebrating the Single Life down to read through the junk mail, absorbing messages about carpet sales and grocery coupons sent in from the great busy world.12 PICK YOURSELF UP, BRUSH YOURSELF OFF, AND START ALL OVER AGAIN It’s no wonder that the single life suffers such a rotten reputation when it can be depicted as a kind of endless desert of the soul—a relentless lone- liness. Lamentably, single life inherits its bad reputation from the very people who write and talk about it. The typical printed guide to living alone is written by a divorced or widowed woman for whom the single life is an unwelcome condition to be coped with, not embraced—an unwel- come setback thrust upon her. Most books about the single life are,in reality,guides for surviving divorce. They sustain the notion that married life is the ideal standard for living and that single life only an aberration. In truth, the loneliness that is blamed on living alone is shared by married persons as well. Loneliness is simply part of the human condition. Marriage is not its remedy. Couples too often part because they blame their spouse for failing to cure them of their loneliness, only to ﬁnd themselves feeling worthless in the absence of a life partner. Popular advice columnists routinely counsel unhappy spouses to com- municate more openly with each other, and they are right. But verbal and physical intimacy alone cannot cure us of our common human condition. As psychologist Stephen Johnson notes of every individual: No one can experience our problems, our pain, our life as we experience them. In the ﬁnal analysis all of us are alone. And yet we are dependent on other people for many things (though not as dependent as we sometimes feel) . . . You can use the pain of loneliness to discover more about yourself and life, and you can learn how to make voluntary solitude more valuable and fun.13 Frankly, one signiﬁcant advantage in being unmarried is that you don’t have a partner telling you who you are and what you owe your spouse to make him or her happy. But you do have to deﬁne yourself, your pleasures, values, and aspirations if you are to convert loneliness into satisfying soli- tude. Dr. Johnson suggests examining yourself to determine which of these conditions may apply to you: 1. Other people are really important to you, but you haven’t taken adequate time for them. 2. Other people, while important to you, aren’t everything for you, and some unwanted time alone is the price you have to pay for devoting yourself to other things. Care for Yourself 33 3. You have been (a) too proud, (b) too lazy, or (c) too fearful to put yourself into situations where you can meet others. 4. Your relationships with others are superﬁcial and leave your need for intimacy unfulﬁlled. 5. Because of painful relationships in the past, you have been avoiding people who could be important to you now. 6. You are allowing your lack of a partner to restrict your contact with impor- tant friends who are paired. 7. You are doing some things that drive people from you, such as (a) complain- ing too much, (b) depreciating yourself excessively, (c) being too aggressive, or (d) withholding yourself. 8. You are particular about friends and prefer being alone to being with people who do not meet your needs. 9. You have very few meaningful activities to engage in when alone. 10. You have for a long time lived with others and, as a result, being alone is strange and fear-provoking. 11. You have just gone through some transition in your life and need time to accumulate new friends. 12. You don’t know how to have fun by yourself—you never had to learn; no one ever taught you. 13. Your limited interests make you boring to others and to yourself. MYTHS ABOUT DEALING WITH LONELINESS Men and women who ﬁnd themselves single again after divorce are not just demoralized, but diminished. They often discover that married life itself deprived them of skills that they once possessed and that they must regain in order to resume a satisfying single life. Typically, newlywed couples gradually give up the friends and interests that sustained them in single life, so they ﬁnd themselves more alone than ever after marital breakup. It takes a concerted effort to catch up to where they were socially before they married. Moreover, men and women whose last experience of single living was in their carefree twenties quickly learn that they cannot duplicate that experience now that they are in their for- ties or ﬁfties. They must start all over again with a new model of success- ful single life. Here are a few of the necessities that every single must provide for: (1) somebody nearby whom you can call in distress; (2) a few people you can drop in on for company with little advance warning; (3) some friends you can join for recreation; and (4) someone who can lend you money in a pinch or can otherwise assist you in need. In short, you need to have a 34 Celebrating the Single Life circle of friends. Unfortunately, according to Dr. Johnson, many singles unnecessarily restrict their friendships because they subscribe to the fol- lowing myths: 1. Lovers are better than friends. When there’s a chance to go on a date, some singles quickly cancel plans that they have already made with close friends. To do so is to choose a stranger over a friend, denigrating friendships. 2. Friendships needn’t be pursued, just allowed to happen. It is perverse to pursue partners of the opposite sex actively without expend- ing equal effort in making same-sex friends. 3. Singles should conﬁne their friendships to other singles. My wife’s best friend for decades has been a never-married woman whom she met in graduate school. Despite the differences in their domestic lives, they have a vast array of common interests and values. 4. Close friends must be of the same sex. If you believe this, you have written off half the human race as potential friends. As more and more young singles have the experience of living in coed college dormitories and in group houses after they graduate, they quickly learn that the opposite sex is not just for romance, but for genuine, undemanding friendship. 5. Best friends are the only real friends. We choose friends not because they share all of our interests and enthusiasms, but because they are comfortable to be with and reliable in a pinch. The friend with whom you choose to go shopping or to a ball game may not be the one to share books and music with—or even conﬁdences. All friends are mutual givers, but each friend has something special to give. 6. Friends will always be there. Your friends have problems and needs of their own. Friends who cling too closely to each other typically have too few friends. Friendship is not depend- ency, but liberation. Cultivating friends allows you to share yourself and to get outside of yourself.14 MAKING FRIENDS The antidote to loneliness is friendship. Making friends takes effort.You can’t simply rest with responding to others’ initiatives; you must take the initiative yourself. Otherwise, the friends you attract will appeal to only a few of your interests. What you want is to ﬁnd companions who actually expand your interests and add some adventure to your life. If your only friends are your coworkers, they may be adequate for having a drink after work or for shopping during your lunch break. But there’s more to your life than partying and shopping. Care for Yourself 35 What you must do is to conduct an honest assessment of your interests and then join groups or share activities with others who have the same interests. This is such obvious advice that I hesitate to offer it. But I do, because these potential friends won’t just appear spontaneously in your life. You must place yourself where they are. If you are religious, don’t keep your spirituality to yourself. Join a church that offers challenging programs for members of all ages, married and single. If you like music, don’t sit at home alone listening to your CDs. Go to concerts. If you like to dance, get out and take dance lessons. Rest assured, you will not want for partners. If you like books, don’t just read at home. Join a reading group that discusses the kinds of books that you like to read. If you’re into sports, don’t just sit in front of your television. Join a team, or ﬁnd a group of compatible men or women who like to watch games together. In an earlier book, I even suggested becoming a volunteer coach or ﬁre- man or woman. Don’t just rely on your current enthusiasms. Look for adventures that open new worlds to you. In reaching out, you’re not looking for a “best” friend. Rather, you are seeking out people with similar interests who might be candidates for varying degrees of companionship. Attempting to make friends by spend- ing weekends at singles bars with drinking buddies may net you attention, but not the kind that you need or want. There are singles who swear by the Internet as a source of friends, but more often go online trawling for romance. In either case, cyber-friend- making is abstract, lacking real human contact. One of my daughters, still single in her thirties, works with children, lacking daily contact with potential adult friends. She has gone to the Internet in search of local women her age “to hang out with.” She acknowledges that her quest is not speciﬁc enough and that she should specify her interests and join groups when looking for a social life. Here’s fair warning: people who use the Internet to make connections often misrepresent themselves, which is another way of saying that they are liars. That’s not how to start a friendship. Administrators of two of the most popular Web sites were shocked to learn in 2007 that close to a third of members purporting to be single were actually married, and tens of thousands were actually registered sex offenders.15 Strangers can be dangerous. That’s why you need to take the initia- tive to join groups whose members and interests are already known to one another. Don’t be lazy. Meet people face-to-face, not just in cyber- space. Being single, you enjoy the advantage of the time to expand your horizons. 36 Celebrating the Single Life RESOURCES Romance and Friendship Dating services are typically commercial and local. Check your Yellow Pages and ask for references. In all larger communities, there are also non- proﬁt networks, often sponsored by church groups. Usually you do not have to be a church member to join most “singles” or “young profession- als” groups. Look for large churches in neighborhoods where singles live. There’s no guarantee that you will ﬁnd love, but you will make friends and ﬁnd support. If you are divorced or a single parent, call your local chapter of Parents Without Partners. The Internet abounds in services that promise to connect you with a compatible partner. The best ones require you to complete a personality proﬁle and provide some credentials before accepting your application. EHarmony.com and MySpace.com offer the advantage of many members to connect with. Remember that Web sites provide only impersonal introductions (never a chaperone), so be careful connecting with strangers. If you consider yourself especially comely and insist on a mate with looks to match yours, try BeautifulPeople.net, an international dat- ing service. But be prepared to be rejected altogether from consideration if existing members of the opposite sex turn you down on the basis of the photo you submit. Fortunately, there are free services that rate these organizations, as well as provide direct links to them. The rating services not only offer mem- bership details but include endorsements, as well as warnings from singles who have used them. Try date.com to get started. Incidentally, you don’t have to own your own computer and possess Internet access in order to avail yourself of these opportunities to expand your social world. Just use your public library. Ask the reference librarian for help in getting started. Care for Yourself 37 This page intentionally left blank 4 Reach Out to Others At the moment, single men and women in Germany enjoy an advantage over their American counterparts in connecting with others. They can actually ﬁnd love and friendship at their neighborhood Wal-Mart. Every Friday evening from 6 to 8, at all 91 German Wal-Marts, is Singles Night, where the price of admission is simply to show up and accept a big bright red bow to display on your shopping cart or basket. It’s up to single shoppers to strike up conversations on their own, but Wal-Mart managers assist by designating “ﬂirting points” around the stores that stock “romantic” merchandise such as chocolates, wine, and cheese. The Singles Night concept is already being tested on singles in Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Britain, and being considered by managers in the United States. Some of the German Wal-Mart stores actually provide bulletin boards and “mail boxes” for singles. Anyone reaching out for friends or mates can post his or her picture on the board at any time and receive responses from prospects in a private letter box. As you might imagine, the scheme has attracted single men and women of all ages who would hesitate to search for a friend or mate on the Internet or via a dating service. When a seventy-four-year-old German man confessed that he was attracted by the photo of a woman his exact age, Wal-Mart personnel played Cupid by sprucing him up and having the store’s portrait photographer take his pic- ture for her to see on the bulletin board. As a result, the septuagenarians are now dating. And, yes, some couples who ﬁrst met at Wal-Mart have married. Many more have found friends of both sexes. In midtown Manhattan, it’s not Wal-Mart that attracts singles in search of companionship. Rather, it’s the New York Public Library, which offers challenging lecture series. It may sound stuffy, but it appeals to urban sin- gles who are interested in learning and in sharing their thoughts and inter- ests. Within just two years, the average age of lecture-goers dropped from sixty-eight to forty-one, reﬂecting the interest of singles of all ages. Such opportunities to meet other minds and share interests are also offered at New York’s Asia Society, Museum of Modern Art, and the Housing Works Used Book Café in Soho. In Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum offers a series that attracted 1,700 men and women the ﬁrst night. CONNECTING All humans look for love and cherish friendships. Unfortunately, many singles look in the wrong places because they are unaware of their options or their own minds. Sex can be purchased, but affection is priceless. Love is free, but it must be reciprocal, and it comes without a lifetime guaran- tee. Nor is romance the only connection worth our quest. Whatever their age, men and women need friendship, too, and affection, not just exclusive and passionate relationships. The decline of marriage as an American institution is largely because singles are increasingly seeking “the One” who alone can make them whole and happy for a lifetime. In searching for “the One,” singles are act- ing as consumers rather than as potential friends, lovers, and fellow- travelers. If there were truly just one person in the whole wide world to suit you, your chances for encountering him or her would be inﬁnitesimal. Even if you believe that marriages are made in heaven, you have to meet someone on Earth, which is a pretty big place. Only Adam and Eve had no choice in the matter. It’s more likely that there are potentially tens of thou- sands of potential mates who could offer you a satisfying alternative to the single life. Of course, there are matchmakers who are willing (typically for a fee) to help you ﬁnd love and friendship. The Washington Post matches men and women in their twenties and thirties through its “Date Lab,” charging no fee—but insisting on publishing the story of how the couple’s ﬁrst encounter went. When thirty-four-year-old Stacia Zeimet met blind date Russell Holt, thirty-eight, at a restaurant, he didn’t rise to greet her. The Post purposely chose not to inform the pretty teacher that Russell was wheelchair-bound. The date went well enough, principally because Stacia instantly overcame her ﬁrst thought, “Oh, I wasn’t expecting this!” But 40 Celebrating the Single Life afterward, Stacia spent days being angry at the Post’s matchmakers. “I felt like I was set up,” she says. “I’d look like a jerk, and he’d just be ‘the hand- icapped guy.’ I also didn’t think it was fair to him—what if I had turned out to be a mean, tactless person?”1 SOUL MATES, CASUAL SEX, AND SECOND CHANCES Even those singles who don’t insist on ﬁnding “the One” often refer to their quest for intimacy as the search for a “soul mate” (as opposed to a mere “body mate”). Doubtless, dating services place a priority on physical attractiveness and on the professional status of their subscribers, but it is possible to dig deeper. Once upon a time, couples discovered each other in church. The Inter- net attempts to offer a solid spiritual alternative for a soul as well as a body and for ﬁnancial security. The interfaith Beliefnet.com’s Soul mate Web site joined with Yahoo! Personals in late 2006 to create a pool of 14 million sin- gles who were willing to match their spiritual chemistry with one another. More than 20,000 young Christian women ﬁnd inspiration for con- necting at authenticgirl.com, which afﬁrms traditional virtues of feminin- ity, purity, and romance. Leslie Ludy, twenty-eight, is author of Authentic Beauty, which reassures young singles that being realistic doesn’t require lowering standards in the search for friends and mates. If you are formerly married and newly single, your reconnecting may not lead to a new spouse at all, but to new friends, even some of other species. As I write, Nessie, my Scottish terrier, snuggles under my feet, while cats Ginger and Rufus encourage me from a safer distance. Who knows?—perhaps affection will arrive in your life on four paws, or even on the wing. Animals are a joy, a comfort, and only a modest responsibil- ity. As a girl, my wife had a pet lamb, whereas my mother’s ﬁnal years were brightened by a canary’s song. Mom named the bird “Happy” because it made her so. Typically, men and women who ﬁnd themselves single again after divorce approach new relationships more sensibly, knowing that they got off on the wrong foot the ﬁrst time around. Today, half of American high school students have already engaged in sexual intercourse, and one in six teenage boys and girls has had four or more sexual partners. Sex is no longer the mystery it was when I was grow- ing up. But oddly, the casualness of passion among contemporary young people has made them wary of one another. Familiarity has not made their hearts grow fonder. Columnist Carolyn Hax, who regularly advises the “under 30 crowd” about relationships for The Washington Post, writes: Reach Out to Others 41 These modern times are utterly devoid of dating rules and methods, courtesy of the free-love freaks of a certain generation that I won’t name except to say that it rhymes with “maybe tumors.” Now we’re supposedly unfettered by stiff social rit- uals, and therefore free to mix and match with people based purely on character and chemistry. Thanks guys! Except you forgot those rituals helped people meet in the ﬁrst place, which strikes me as a rather crucial step, and they ca	435,009
Happy Singlehood The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living (Elyakim Kislev) (Z-Library).pdf	university of california press Happy Singlehood The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living Elyakim Kislev Happy Singlehood university of california press Happy Singlehood The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living Elyakim Kislev University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Oakland, California © 2019 by Elyakim Kislev Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kislev, Elyakim, author. Title: Happy singlehood : the rising acceptance and celebration of solo living / Elyakim Kislev. Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2019] \| Includes bibliographical references and index. \| Identifiers: lccn 2018038419 (print) \| lccn 2018042483 (ebook) \| isbn 9780520971004 (Epub) \| isbn 9780520299139 (cloth : alk. paper) \| isbn 9780520299146 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: lcsh: Single people. Classification: lcc hq800 (ebook) \| lcc hq800 .k53 2019 (print) \| ddc 306.81/5—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038419 Manufactured in the United States of America 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. The Age of Singlehood 13 2. Happy Singlehood in Old Age 45 3. Defying Social Pressure 79 4. Sleeping Alone, Bowling Together 103 5. Singling in a Postmaterialist World 125 6. Work Hard, (but) Play Hard 143 contents 7. The Future of Happy Singlehood 161 Conclusion: What Can States, Cities, and Social Institutions Do for Singles? 189 Notes 195 Index 259 vii 1. Percentage of singles between the ages of thirty and thirty-four in the years 2010–2014 16 2. Average US city population by marital status 39 3. The incidence of loneliness, according to age and marital status 50 4. Importance assigned to making independent decisions, among married versus unmarried individuals 60 5. Happiness in relation to the degree of social meetings and social activities 115 illustrations ix I express my gratitude to the many people who saw me through this book: to all those who provided support, talked things over, read, wrote, offered comments, allowed me to quote their remarks, and assisted in the editing, proofreading, and design. First and foremost, I owe much gratitude to all those surrounding me. I thank my dear family, whose love and appreciation are irreplace- able; my colleagues at the Federmann School of Public Policy and Government at the Hebrew University, whose professionalism is a true inspiration; and all my wonderful friends, whose support and encour- agement are at the very core of this book. This book is certainly not mine alone. I worked on this book with the most brilliant and diligent team of people I have ever known, and I owe them my deep gratitude. Above all, I thank my outstanding research assistant, Aurel Diamond, whose help was truly invaluable. I also thank all the interviewers who helped me collect the qualitative data presented here. A special thank you to Mark Moore and Kiera Schuller. Without their help, the interviews, data gathering, and analy- sis would have never been completed on time. I also thank Eviatar Zlotnick for punctiliously helping me in collecting and analyzing a major part of the blog posts about singlehood. acknowledgments x / Acknowledgments Last, but certainly not least, I thank Naomi Schneider, the chief editor of this book, and her entire team at University of California Press for believing in this work and pushing me high and above. Thank you all. 1 It is Friday night in conservative Jerusalem. I am a little kid. The public siren, the same one that calls out attacks, begins its two-minute wail, announcing to the city that it is Shabbat time. My family is ready: the table is beautifully set; the house overflows with succulent aromas of the delicious Friday night meal my mom has prepared; and we are all dressed in clean, white-collared shirts. My mom lights five candles: one for each of my parents and three others for her children, my two broth- ers and me. Standing on tiptoe, looking out the window, I see lights dotting the neighborhood. Every apartment shelters a seemingly happy family enjoying delicious food in a clean dwelling; men, women, and children poised to spend this night and the next day together. No phones. No television. Just family time. I walk with my father to the synagogue, where every family has its own reserved spot. Everyone around me seems content, even holy. But over in a corner, I always see one man—the same man—standing with his only child, himself an unmarried guy in his thirties. The father’s wife has been dead for years, and everyone knows the son. Everyone knows he is unmarried, too. I watch them every time, curious to know what they feel, how they spend their evenings. They never seem happy, at least not to me. Introduction 2 / Introduction I see them to this very day, more than twenty years later, when I visit my parents and return with my father to my boyhood place of worship. The father, now hunchbacked, and his son still live together; both are unmarried and shy, and they keep to themselves. When I grew up and moved to New York City for my doctoral stud- ies, I discovered a totally different world, full of singles who seemed like “the bold and the beautiful.” It was the fast-paced, competitive New York that everyone hears about, but which in real life is even faster. Every one rushed from one thing to the next, from one sexual encounter to another, trying to engage in “big-city life.” They did not need mar- riage to fit in. In fact, meeting someone in Manhattan with a family was more the exception than the rule. When someone said, “Hey, guys, I’m getting married” (and moving to Queens, of course), the underlying message came in loud and clear: “I’m done—game over.” Looking back now, I realize how naive I was in my assessment of these two contrasting worlds—married and single. Not everyone lived happily ever after in the tightly knit community of my childhood neighborhood. Some members endured divorce, including my own two brothers, while others continued life in miserable, unhappy marriages. It seems to me, upon reflection, that the latter probably suffered more than anyone. In fact, I often reflect on the old man and his unmarried son living in their own world. Should I have felt pity for them, or was I blinded by my own ingrained family-normative prejudice? I also think back to my fellow New Yorkers rushing from date to date, jumping into relationships only to quickly realize they wanted out as soon as possible, feeling suffocated and urgently needing to breathe the air of freedom. Still unmarried myself, I understand now that we were neither bold nor beautiful. We shuttled back and forth; we ran hard, but without purpose. In a way, we mirrored the rats we saw every day in the subway tunnels driven by hunger and distress. Apparently, marital status is last on the list of things we believe we should accept. We are open to various sexual identities, we celebrate Introduction / 3 different ethnicities, and we tolerate a wide array of political views, yet we still live in a society where singles, especially in advanced adult- hood, are urged to couple up or otherwise face prejudice. In one study, for example, one thousand undergraduate students were asked to list characteristics they associated with married and single individuals. Married individuals were referred to as mature, happy, kind, honest, and loving. Conversely, singles were perceived as immature, insecure, self-centered, unhappy, lonely, and even ugly.1 These stereotypes hurt both singles and couples. Singles—whether they are divorced, widowed, or never-married—clearly suffer in the most overt way. But this does not mean married people fare much bet- ter. The same stereotypes often pressure individuals to marry despite uncertainty over being ready for such a big commitment or doubts about being with the right person. Couples may marry only to realize later they made a bad or premature decision. Of course, divorce looms in such cases, after which 70–80 percent of divorced people remarry and face an even greater likelihood of a second divorce.2 Therefore, in this book I investigate the many aspects of modern singlehood, analyzing the cases in which singles accept, even celebrate, their marital status. Indeed, negative societal perceptions of singles are so internalized that singles often blame themselves for not being mar- ried. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me,” I heard time and again in the interviews I conducted for this book. As I will explain in detail, the choice to internalize the negative stereotypes or shrug them off is criti- cal in distinguishing between happy and unhappy singles. In other cases, it is not stereotypes against singles that prompt low- quality, rushed marriages but rather loneliness.3 Here again, a decision based on the wrong reasons often ends badly. In fact, research shows that married individuals can be just as lonely as their single counter- parts even though they partnered up.4 Instead of facing loneliness at its roots, many people chase partnership only to discover that loneliness is a stand-alone problem, the cure for which lies mainly within oneself, as researchers have repeatedly argued.5 4 / Introduction And yet, despite the prevalent social and psychological forces that push people into marriage, reality is inevitably changing and doing so rapidly. Today, unmarried individuals are the fastest-growing demo- graphic group in many countries.6 According to predictions, approxi- mately one-quarter of newborns in the United States will never marry.7 Official statistics in China indicate that the percentage of one-person households rose from just 4.9 percent in 1990 to 14.5 percent in 2010.8 The percentage of one-person households in several major European cities has already exceeded 50 percent, and singles account for around 40 percent of all households in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Germany.9 Adults are marrying late, divorce is more prevalent, and public attitudes toward the social status of marriage reflect a decline.10 Across the world, despite all prejudices and beliefs against it, singlehood is the growing trend. We are feeling something, wanting something, and doing something that we have yet to agree upon. The world is going single, but cultural disapproval still lingers. The result is that many people who are part of a rising trend of living alone and going solo are still pressured into marriage. The pressure itself makes them unhappy, often more than their marital status, but distinguishing between the two can be diffi- cult, even impossible. This situation creates a cognitive dissonance among the unmarried population. Many singles stated in interviews that they are looking to marry someone; but from what they told me, they don’t behave that way. Existing cultural and social values pressure people to say they would be happy to marry, but their everyday dating and relationship decisions indicate otherwise. They raise the threshold for a potential partner to almost impossible standards, as if to say they need an excep- tional argument to stop going solo. It seems society is still in denial about the fact that times are changing, and that there is a rumble under the age-old institution of marriage. Married people are not different in this sense. Of course, some live happily ever after with their partners, but others envy the rise in Introduction / 5 singlehood and want out of wedlock. My findings show that the differ- ence between unhappy singles and unhappily married individuals is often simply the fact that the latter group succumbed to the social and psychological pressures to marry. Both groups are unhappy and trapped in unbearable situations thanks to the stigma of being unmarried, on one side, and witnessing the trend toward singlehood, on the other. This gap between social and psychological pressure to marry and the reality of rising singlehood itself, in which people all over the world are abandoning the institution of marriage in growing numbers, is cen- tral to this book. We often find ourselves behaving in ways of which we are not fully aware: we think one thing and do another; we believe in “couplehood” but live in “singlehood.” We have not yet fully made the link between our true feelings and the attitudes enforced by social norms. The reason for this disconnect, I argue, is that many are still afraid of accepting singlehood. They see singlehood negatively; or rather, they are blind to the full potential inherent in this way of living. The role of this book is thus to put a spotlight on the mechanisms behind the rising trend of accepting and celebrating solo living. Having a clear and more benign image of singlehood will allow indi- viduals to freely choose whatever lifestyle fits them best. Some, of course, will continue to choose marriage. However, even this choice can arise from a more relaxed environment that allows for entering marriage at the right time and under the right circumstances. Such a well-thought-out decision will certainly lead to better marriages for those who choose marriage, while others will feel more comfortable going solo. Becoming more aware of the myriad possibilities for single- hood to foster happiness and well-being should liberate those who, until now, have been challenged with deviating from the norm. Indeed, the phenomenon of rising singlehood is not new. Many researchers have documented the decline in marriage rates, and policy makers closely follow changes in the modern family.11 The Danish government, for example, has even started ad campaigns encouraging 6 / Introduction citizens to marry and to have more sex.12 In the United States, the media has also addressed these changes, with television shows such as Seinfeld (1989–1998), Sex and the City (1998–2004), and Girls (2012–2017) and films such as How to Be Single (2016). The conversation has already begun, but this book takes it one step further. It is not about the social phenomenon of rising singlehood in and of itself. The actual social transformation goes far beyond discuss- ing the phenomenon, and this book concerns the next stage of single- hood: the mechanisms that allow a better quality of life for those taking part in this rising trend. Happy Singlehood: The Rising Acceptance and Celebration of Solo Living dis- cusses questions such as: How do singles effectively deal with the fear of aging alone? How do singles face discrimination? How do social activities play out for singles’ happiness compared to that of couples? How do values rooted in individualism and postmaterialism help singles embrace their lifestyle? What are the differences among singles by choice, singles by cir- cumstance, divorced individuals, widows, cohabiters, and married people in how they increase their life satisfaction? Finally, how can policy makers cater to the growing singles population and increase singles’ well-being? This inquiry is mostly new to academic research on singles, which until now has frequently shied away from asking these critical ques- tions, focusing instead on measuring and observing the phenomenon of singlehood itself alongside declining marriage and birth rates and ris- ing divorce levels. At the same time, popular media and the self-help industry have generally fixated on how to alleviate loneliness but with- out basing their work on comprehensive research. Hence, this book expands the current literature beyond asking descriptive questions, by inquiring how singles can achieve happiness in everyday life despite social headwinds. Such an investigation leads to evidence that supports or rejects the common discourse about singles that is prevalent in pop- ular media and the self-help industry. An even more ambitious goal of this book is to propel individuals to think about a new reality: the evolving ways in which human beings Introduction / 7 around the world are organizing their social and family lives. I analyze the specific needs of the growing singles population and outline several pioneering proposals—including innovative living arrangements, com- munities, and social interactions—to set the stage for an era of happy singlehood. In this sense, you should feel free to start with the chapter that ignites you the most. The silent minority of singles may soon grow into a vocal majority. Public demonstrations about rising rents for singles’ housing, cohabiters’ unclear legal status, impoverishment of single parents, and tax rights of divorced people have already taken place in several metropolitan centers around the world. In Tokyo, for example, a demonstration organized by the group Call for Housing Democracy demanded that the government reduce rents. The organizers told the reporters of the Japan Times, “The chances of getting into a public housing unit in the capital is now 1 in 20 for families and 1 in 57 for singles, and by singles the government means retired people. If you’re young and unmarried, you have no chance of get- ting into public housing, regardless of how poor you are.”13 Such protests signify the increasingly important, and urgent, need to discuss the factors contributing to singles’ happiness and well-being. Policy makers should address these needs and begin finding ways to cater to this population. This book is, therefore, also a call to action. It calls for researchers and policy makers, who are not used to thinking of singles as a disad- vantaged minority, to focus more on their growing numbers and the numerous obstacles they tackle.14 The time to rise—for the continually overlooked population of singles—has come. Its unique needs, lifestyle, and living arrangements deserve more attention, and I detail them in this book. I sincerely hope it serves as a modest contribution to the sin- gles population, a roaring giant who has just awakened. the research approach used in this book The findings and ideas presented in this book are based on a thorough assessment of the existing literature as well as new quantitative and 8 / Introduction qualitative findings. On the quantitative side, using advanced statistical models, I analyzed large, highly representative databases from over thirty countries, which allowed me to employ solid empirical data to address the question “What makes today’s singles happy?” (see below for a discussion of the term happiness). I used multilevel models based on integrative databases from several sources that surveyed hundreds of thousands of individuals. These sources include the European Social Survey, American Community Survey, the US Census Bureau, the World Bank, the United Nations, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The statistical investigation provides an accurate picture of current trends in singlehood and is presented in an accessible way for both academic and general readers, in the form of maps, charts, and examples. On the qualitative side, I conducted 142 personal interviews of single people in the United States and various European countries. For this purpose, I was assisted by a highly qualified research team. Together, we interviewed people from different locales, men and women, young and old, straight and gay, city dwellers and residents of small towns, all with differing socioeconomic and ethnic background. The average age among interviewees is 43.9, with the oldest aged 78 and the youngest aged 30 (see below for the reason for the lower age limit of 30). In addi- tion, women are 56 percent of interviewees, and the average self- reported income level, on a scale of 1 to 10, is 4.7. Of course, all the names of the interviewees have been changed to maintain anonymity. Interviews were transcribed, and central themes relating to the research questions have been identified and categorized systematically.15 I designed the interviews to be as impartial as possible, with care taken to ensure that questions were emotionally neutral. I avoided questions indicating predetermined conclusions about motivations and incentives for being single and/or feeling positive or negative about single status. Furthermore, I supplemented interviews with a systematic analysis of over four hundred blog posts, over three hundred newspaper and magazine articles, and thousands of comments and Facebook posts on Introduction / 9 singlehood. A purposive-snowball sampling approach was used to iden- tify singles’ blogs and posts. This sampling strategy is suitable in such cases, where a true random sample is not possible because of the absence of a known population. Rather, a sample with specific characteristics (e.g., blogs about singles) needs to be put together. Writer profiles were examined to identify the authors’ self-declared age, gender, and location, when possible. Most writers’ characteristics were easily identifiable; some information, however, required a deeper exploration of content from multiple blogs or posts. The thematic con- tent was then analyzed to identify the topics that singles wrote about. So that I could examine reliability, this content was coded independ- ently by two trained assistants familiar with the codebook. In a later stage, I supplemented both this analysis and that from academic litera- ture with newspaper and magazine articles relevant to the subject of singlehood. This supplementation informs the evidence supporting this book with contemporary and up-to-date information. The coding system for all qualitative data uses a bottom-up procedure similar to the grounded theory approach.16 definitions used in this book For the purposes of this study, I define single people as those who iden- tify as divorced, widowed, or never-married, and I distinguish among the three categories throughout. Demographically, only individuals more than thirty years old were selected from the databases, and this is also true for the interviews, blogs, and posts. I chose the age of thirty to represent a population that is generally above the average age at first marriage: singles who have already encountered assumed social pres- sure and thus face the consequences of not being married. In contrast, younger individuals are many times in a transition phase and do not think about marriage at all.17 In addition, I separately categorized those who currently cohabitate with a significant other, estimated at around 10 percent of the population.18 10 / Introduction Thus, cohabitation is considered a midpoint category in this book and not part of singlehood per se. On one side, cohabitation is now closer to mar- riage both socially and legally, with common marriage laws providing rights similar to those granted to formal marriages in many places, such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and various European countries.19 On the other side, cohabitating is still close to singlehood because it is also based, at least in part, on the increasing frustration and disillusionment with the institution of marriage.20 Fear of marital commitment and aver- sion to the risk of divorce have contributed to the number of couples choosing to cohabitate for significant periods of time without getting mar- ried.21 Moreover, in some contexts, cohabitation has an immediate impact on the share of singles in the population. Cohabitating relationships are less stable and more short-lived than marriages, and they are more likely to end in separation, independent of the couple’s age, income, or number of children.22 As a result, a higher proportion of people are expected to spend longer periods of time as singles, both before and after cohabitation. The reader should be aware of this complexity, and I analyze cohabiters separately from other categories of singles as much as possible. Furthermore, while singles share many of the same challenges, they are affected differently according to more nuanced social and familial situations. Having children is one prominent issue in this sense. For example, a single person with nearby supportive children or grandchil- dren operates in a different reality than a single with no descendants. Therefore, in all the statistical analyses, I employ a special variable to account for those with children. In addition, I differentiate between those who cohabitated in the past and those who never lived with another person. In the interviews, these differentiations are much eas- ier to make, since the interviewees usually revealed their marital status in detail; I state this information where relevant. Of course, there are always more subgroups that should be treated carefully. One example is singles in a serious relationship who live alone. It was not an easy task to distinguish these groups from nonex- clusive singles in some of the statistical analyses estimated for this Introduction / 11 book. For this reason, the qualitative data herein, in which these sub- groups are distinguishable, is highly important and complements our knowledge about singlehood. It is important to note that there are significant overlaps, but subtle differences also exist between singles, the unmarried, and those living alone. Different branches of research on singles opt for different defini- tions according to research needs and the nature of available data. In many large demographic data sets, for example, attention is often paid to one-person households. Individuals who live in one-person house- holds are often single, but not exclusively. Particularly in rapidly devel- oping countries with high rates of internal migration, such as India, one member of the family (usually the husband) may live permanently or semipermanently in another part of the country for work purposes, sending money home whenever possible.23 Therefore, I am careful to state explicitly when I use information about one-person households. On a separate note, the notion of happiness, a subjective well-being, is at the center of this book and should be briefly discussed and defined. Happiness is viewed here as the degree to which people judge their lives more or less favorably.24 This is a modest definition against the background of many cultures and philosophers that attribute ethical virtues, social devotion, and even transcendental Nirvana to the term happiness.25 Nevertheless, I stick to this reductionist definition following many studies that found it to be widely agreed-upon and to unify many cultural interpretations.26 For example, one study compared dictionary definitions of happiness across thirty countries spanning a period of 150 years, accounting for both time and culture. This study found that the most widely shared aspects of the definition were feeling lucky and experiencing favorable external conditions.27 Still, there is no denying that understandings of happiness vary, and one cannot know what exactly stands behind someone’s answer in a survey to the scalable question “How happy are you?” Respondents coming from different cultures or different age-cohorts might vary in the meanings they assign to the term happy. For example, studies show 12 / Introduction that young people associate happiness with excitement, while older individuals link happiness to peacefulness.28 To address these difficulties, this book considers large samples rang- ing across age and locale while accounting for cultural, social, and per- sonal differences as well as the average degree of happiness in each country. The power of large databases is that outliers usually cancel each other out; hence, answers can still be studied, broadly speaking.29 Thus, although imperfectly, this study assumes that, on aggregate, the question in the European Social Survey, for example, is useful enough because such examination not only carries strong statistical power but also affords generalized conclusions based on various cultures while using multilevel analysis to account for differences. In my research arti- cles on the subject, I delve deeper into these considerations with detailed and rigorous analyses, and those interested will find there much more information regarding the results presented here. One must admit that by not asking what makes an individual happy, policy makers and researchers are missing out on a huge opportunity for increasing overall population welfare.30 This holds true especially in light of nascent positive psychology that seeks to reframe classic approaches by focusing on improving happiness and avoiding the nega- tive at the personal and populational levels.31 Therefore, I urge the reader to use the proposed definitions as practical, applicable, and ben- eficial tools of analysis, and to cautiously determine if the findings of this book resonate with you. 13 On one special day of the year, you can find a bunch of single men jump- ing into a river wearing only underwear (or less), while single women run down the streets of major cities wearing wedding dresses. The Guanggun Jie, or Singles’ Day, is a new, popular Chinese festival that celebrates being single with shopping, festivities, and socializing with friends. Orig- inating in 1993 as a day for singles to party with single friends at universi- ties in Nanjing, one of China’s major cities, this festival has become the largest online shopping event in the world and a cultural marker for mod- ern Chinese society.1 Its date, November 11 (11/11), was chosen because the number 1 represents a single individual. Although this day is widely called Singles’ Day, in China it is also known as the “bare sticks holiday” because the numerical date of the holiday resembles unaccompanied twigs or sticks, which, in Mandarin, is a metaphor for single individuals. Through- out the years, this holiday has developed as an anti–Valentine’s Day, and branding it a singles celebration proved a tremendous success. The online retail giant Alibaba made more than twenty-five billion dollars in reve- nue on 2017’s Singles’ Day, four times more than on 2017’s Cyber Monday, the biggest online shopping day on the American calendar.2 Given the higher percentage of singles in the United States, it is a little surprising that the Singles’ Day movement began in China. But chapter one The Age of Singlehood 14 / The Age of Singlehood America joined in the fun quickly. The American version of National Singles’ Day was first observed in 2013 on January 11 (1/11). Here again, the number 1 is the almighty symbol of singlehood. In 2017, the date was changed to coincide with National Singles’ Week in September, which the Buckeye Singles’ Council in Ohio began celebrating in the 1980s. In an interview with Singular Magazine, Karen Reed, the founder of National Singles’ Day, said: China’s Singles’ Day was actually the initial inspiration for starting a Sin- gles’ Day here. . . . I also felt it was necessary to create a fresh, new singles holiday because so much has changed in recent years. Twenty-first century singles are a new breed. Today’s singles are a vibrant, diverse demographic and a force to be reckoned with. . . . Definitions of singlehood are complex—single by choice or circumstance, legally or figuratively, solo forever or just for now. Reaching single people as a group is a daunting task. And sometimes the best way to approach a mas- sive, virtually unsolvable problem is to bypass the details, jump high on top and shout with one voice—we’re here! Then do it again. And again.3 It is striking that even a few decades ago such festivals of singlehood would not have been imaginable. But the institution of marriage has been undergoing profound changes that are altering the face of modern society. The Chinese celebration of Singles’ Day did not come out of nowhere. China saw a precipitous fall in the mean size of households from 5.4 persons per household in 1947 to merely 3.1 in 2005 correspond- ing to the change from an agricultural society to a modern, urban one.4 It is really hard to comprehend, for example, that a Chinese young man who grew up in a rural area surrounded by his uncles and aunts, all working in one field and growing rice, now lives in a fundamentally different landscape—probably in a tiny apartment in a multistory building in one of the smoggy megacities of China—and works at a mammoth factory until late evening. In fact, more than 60 million Chi- nese households were registered in 2014 as single occupancy, up from 17 million one-person households in 1982, all while the Chinese popula- tion grew concurrently by a mere 40 percent.5 The Age of Singlehood / 15 In Europe, more than 50 percent of households in major cities such as Munich, Frankfurt, and Paris are occupied by singles.6 In the United States, 22 percent of American adults were single in 1950, while today this number has jumped to more than 50 percent,7 and one in four American newborns is predicted to never marry.8 At the same time, getting married before having children has become less prevalent in developed nations. The proportion of American children living with two married parents decreased from 87 percent at the start of the 1960s to 69 percent in 2015.9 Japan is probably the global leader in the rise of singlehood. The lat- est survey from the Japanese National Institute of Population and Social Security Research shows that, in 2015, one-third of Japanese adults under the age of thirty had never dated and over 40 percent were virgins. Furthermore, among unmarried Japanese, almost 60 percent of women and 70 percent of men aged eighteen to thirty-four were not in a romantic relationship, an approximately 10 percent rise from the 2010 survey and a whopping 20 percent increase from the 2005 survey. In fact, 30 percent of men and 26 percent of women stated they were not even looking for a relationship.10 In 2006, Maki Fukasawa, a popular author in Japan, wrote an article in which he referred to the increasing number of men not interested in intimate relationships as sôshoku danshi, or “herbivore men.” Since intimacy and physical relations in Japanese are referred to as “desire of flesh,” labeling a man an herbivore indicates a fundamental with- drawal from relationships. Moreover, it connotes a fundamental decon- struction of Japanese masculinity in which the once vigorous, procreat- ing man of miraculous, postwar Japan has become anemic and even lost.11 Notably, sôshoku danshi was on the 2009 short list of a national “buzzwords of the year” competition and, by 2010, was accepted as a standard noun.12 While buzzwords tend to have short lifespans, soon after this term gained prominence, one survey revealed that 75 percent of Japanese single men in their twenties and thirties considered them- selves herbivores.13 16 / The Age of Singlehood These trends are spreading rapidly, especially in the developed world, where the main forces behind the rise in singlehood, discussed later in this chapter, appeared considerably earlier than in other regions. Processes such as individualism, mass urbanization, increased longev- ity, the communications revolution, and the women’s rights movement all began taking hold within developed nations in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. A short-lived exception to this trend was observed in the United States, where World War II and the development of the suburbs brought about a short “golden age” in the 1950s, when people married early and the birthrate increased.14 How- ever, the single lifestyle gained steam again in the 1970s, after the social emphasis on individualism, rooted in consumerism and capitalism, spread in the United States, Europe, and other developed countries, again pushing people away from marriage and toward a postfamily cul- ture.15 The map in figure 1, which is based on the most recent data from the United Nations, illustrates the prevalence of singlehood across the globe. 0 % single both genders 10 20 30 40 50 Percentage of singles between the ages of thirty and thirty-four, in the years 2010–2014. Source: United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, World Marriage Data 2015 (POP/DB/Marr/Rev2015). The Age of Singlehood / 17 Although, as the map shows, the trend of singlehood is most pro- nounced in the developed world, the phenomenon is spreading globally. South American, Middle Eastern, and even African countries have seen a rise in the number of singles over the past decades.16 Evidence from many Asian countries, including India, South Korea, Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Malaysia, indicates that people are marrying later in life, getting divorced more frequently, and, most significantly, choosing to live alone in growing numbers.17 In fact, singles today are the fastest- growing relationship demographic in many countries.18 It is not surpris- ing, then, that one report predicts that the proportion of singles in the world is expected to jump by an astonishing 20 percent by 2030.19 Even more tellingly, these trends also manifest in conservative and ultraconservative societies farther afield in the Middle East. Iran, for example, is going through unprecedented changes in singlehood pat- terns. Traditionally, relationship patterns in Iran have been strongly influenced by religious and cultural expectations, with legal and soci- etal constructs that promote early, lifelong marital commitments and discourage divorce. Yet a look at population statistics reveals that Iran has undergone significant social change at both the macro and micro levels over the last three decades. The fertility rate underwent an unprecedented drop, decreasing from 7 children per woman in 1986 to just 2.1 in 2000.20 While this is partly explained by a government pro- gram that encouraged the use of contraception, a statistical analysis reveals that contraception awareness and accessibility accounted for only 61 percent of the drop, while 31 percent is attributed to changes in marriage patterns.21 Young Iranians, in particular women, get married later, get divorced more frequently, stop having children earlier, or sim- ply choose not to marry at all. Another case exhibiting the extraordinary emergence of singlehood in conservative societies is that of the United Arab Emirates. In 2014, more than 60 percent of Emirati women over the age of thirty were sin- gle, and the divorce rate was 40 percent, up from only 20 percent just two decades earlier.22 The trend of getting married late or abstaining 18 / The Age of Singlehood from marriage was already under way in the 1980s when Emirati men, in an attempt to avoid paying the lavish dowries typical of Emirati marriage arrangements, started seeking brides from abroad or decided not to wed at all.23 The phenomena of delaying marriage and marrying nonnationals led the government to establish a fund to encourage inter-Emirati nup- tials. Today, a male citizen who marries an Emirati woman is eligible for a monetary grant with additional benefits for each child born. The gov- ernment also invested resources in matchmaking and weddings. Here is an excerpt from the UAE’s official government website: The UAE Government aims to build and maintain a stable and consolidated Emirati family and to fortify the Emirati social and demographic structure, by encouraging Emirati men to marry Emirati women. In this regard, the UAE established [the] Marriage Fund under Federal Law No. 47 of 1992, com- plementing and integrating with the social policy set up by [the] late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the Founding President of the UAE. . . . Besides the Marriage Fund, there are entities in each emirate that provide services such as: finding a match; providing community centers and majlis venues for wedding ceremonies; providing counselling before and after the marriage.24 While thirty-two thousand families benefited from this grant in the first ten years of the program, the marriage statistics seem to suggest that the legislation has been ineffective in staving off the rising number of singles. Indeed, these trends are replicated in Arab and Muslim states across the Middle East and North Africa, with projects and initiatives similar to the United Arab Emirates’ Marriage Fund failing to prevent the move toward singlehood in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.25 Almost everywhere, it seems, the number of people delaying mar- riage, living alone, or choosing to be single is on the rise. Understanding the mechanisms and context-specific factors behind the demographic changes in marriage is key to deciphering happy singlehood, and they are explained in detail in the following sections. However, the reader should feel free to skip this introductory part and skip straight to the second chapter onwards, where I discuss happy singlehood itself. The Age of Singlehood / 19 why did we stop falling in love with marriage? We live on the tip of an iceberg. Throughout most of human history, life and livelihood involved three basic frameworks, layer within layer: the nuclear family, the extended family, and the local community made up of groups of families. As the basic building block of society, the fam- ily had unchallenged status, and thus marriage—the starting point of a new family—took center stage. Families assumed the responsibilities that local authorities and governments take today for one’s welfare, health, education, and housing at all ages. Undistinguished from the family, a person’s profession was most often linked to family history and the family’s role in the community; any deviation from this role would likely have shifted or upset the balance therein.26 This, however, changed drastically following the Industrial Revolu- tion and the emergence of the modern welfare state. The family’s tradi- tional role in an individual’s welfare, once indispensable, was gradually reassigned to the rising powers of the state and the market. Given that the family was no longer essential to survival, a series of changes affect- ing families and marriages began taking shape. In the following sections, I discuss eight major mechanisms under- lying the changing status of marriage: (1) demographic changes, (2) changes in women’s roles, (3) risk aversion in an age of divorce, (4) economics, consumerism, and capitalism, (5) shifts in religiosity, (6) popular culture and the media, (7) urbanization, and (8) immigra- tion. These eight categories are neither exhaustive nor independent and are liable to interact with and affect each other. The main point, however, is that such forces act simultaneously, making the rise in sin- glehood a real and sustainable trend, perhaps even unstoppable. The combination of these forces is so powerful that it seems time for us to face reality, embrace the trend, and start paving a way to an age of happy singlehood. 20 / The Age of Singlehood Demographic Changes Recent changes in the demographic makeup of various populations have significantly spurred the rise in singlehood. One major shift involves plummeting birthrates all over the world. Some notable examples of decreasing fertility rates, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development database, are Mexico, which went from 6.6 births per woman in 1970 to 2.2 in 2016; Indonesia, from 5.4 to 2.4 in the same period; and Turkey, where the rate declined from 5 to 2.1.27 In the Western world, these changes happened even earlier. The fer- tility rate began to drop significantly below the replacement rate in most western European countries during the 1970s and 1980s.28 Today’s numbers are unprecedentedly low. For example, the fertility rate in Spain is 1.3; 1.4 in Italy, Germany, and Austria; 1.6 in Canada; 1.7 in the Netherlands and Denmark; and 1.8 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia.29 By proxy, a lower fertility rate prompts the start of several processes that produce more singles. First, giving birth to fewer children allows marriage to be delayed—that is, the biological clock must tick only until delivering the first or second child, not until the sixth or seventh, allow- ing childbirth to start later.30 Second, the burden of divorce is less severe with fewer children, if any, to care for during the fallout.31 Third, a lower fertility rate means some people have no need to marry or partner at all: rearing one or two children as a single parent is less daunting than parenting half a dozen.32 Fourth, the consequences pass to newer gen- erations, because growing up in a smaller household is associated with a future smaller household size. Thus, the process is perpetuated.33 Another demographic change affecting singlehood is increased life expectancy, which results in many older adults living longer on their own.34 The miracle of modern medicine has significantly extended the average lifespan, especially in the developed world. In 1940, approxi- mately 11 percent of American society was sixty-five or older. By the 1970s, this rate had risen to about 17 percent, while a 2010 estimate stands The Age of Singlehood / 21 at 21 percent.35 The latest Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development statistics indicate that life expectancy at birth in member countries is now almost eighty years.36 As the number of years we live increases, so does the potential amount of years an individual lives alone after divorce or widowhood.37 For instance, data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe indicate that among Euro- peans aged seventy-five and older in 2015, 57 percent were widowed.38 Additionally, the number of older Americans (in this case, age fifty and over) who divorced in 2010 was more than twice the number in 1990.39 In developing countries, the rapid increase in life expectancy is pro- jected to increase the older population, thereby drastically inflating the number of singles. In China, for example, the average lifespan increased from 68.5 years in 1990 to 74.8 years in 2010. Hence, single occupancy among older adults has increased considerably.40 Moreover, this phe- nomenon initiates a chain reaction whereby the physical, economic, and social challenges of living alone in old age often place a social and financial burden on the younger generation.41 This burden, in turn, may prompt younger people to delay marriage and avoid additional commitments. This is especially true in Chinese society, where the ratio between the old and young generations is alarmingly dispropor- tionate because of the one-child policy.42 In some regions, the sex ratio also markedly affects the number of singles. An imbalanced sex ratio reduces the pool of local potential partners and, as a result, leaves many people single. In some parts of India, for example, the sex ratio is as low as sixty-two women per hun- dred men.43 Even Haryana, a North Indian state, home to one of India’s richest and most developed regions, suffers from a highly distorted sex ratio: eighty-eight women of all ages for every hundred men. In such imbalanced conditions, some young men simply cannot find a bride. In fact, the situation has grown severe enough that one local council decided, in 2015, to relax the ban on intercaste marriage, making it eas- ier for villagers to marry among their neighbors, an unprecedented move in traditional India.44 22 / The Age of Singlehood Today, sex imbalances occur mainly under three scenarios. First, a strong preference for male children has led to unbalanced ratios in China, Korea, parts of India, and in some smaller communities across the world.45 Second, certain internal and international migration waves are sex imbalanced. For instance, the 2016 report from Eurostat (the sta- tistical office of the European Union) shows that, among the applicants for asylum in Europe, 75 percent of fourteen-to-thirty-four-year-olds, and 60 percent of thirty-five-to-sixty-four-year-olds, were men.46 This imbalance limits their choices, at least within their own communities, until they overcome language and cultural barriers. Third, internal migration to big cities also causes a sex imbalance. For instance, the Williams Institute reports that college-educated women and homosex- ual men concentrate more highly in American cities.47 In Manhattan, there are approximately 32 percent more single, college-educated women than single, college-educated men. Moreover, 9 to 12 percent of men in Manhattan identify as gay (versus approximately 1–2 percent of women in Manhattan who identify as lesbians). Naturally, this narrows the pool of potential partners for women. These recent demographic developments are changing the founda- tions on which the institution of marriage is based. Some are viewed as irreversible, such as birthrate decline and increased life expectancy, which many researchers predict will continue.48 Others, such as sex imbalance, may be temporary because they involve ongoing social processes such as the integration of migrants and already-reversed gov- ernmental measures such as the one-child policy in China. All of them, however, combine to deconstruct the ways families are formed. The Role of Women in Society Another significant contributor to the rise of singlehood is the funda- mental shift in women’s social roles during the twentieth century.49 Particularly in the West, a more gender-equal society places less pres- sure on women to get married and have children and, at the same time, The Age of Singlehood / 23 provides them with opportunities to advance professionally and aca- demically. In the past, women had limited choices regarding marriage because they depended financially on men. Women who were unable to provide for themselves or their children were forced to live within fam- ily units to ensure financial survival.50 Today, however, increased gen- der equality, especially in Western labor markets, has allowed more women to flourish outside of traditional relationship arrangements, leading to a decline in relationship formation and sometimes even to prioritizing career over family.51 A parallel factor reducing marriage rates is women’s advancement in the education system. Research finds a strong relationship between women’s higher level of education and older age at first marriage.52 Studies also found an association between increased career resources and women postponing or avoiding child-rearing.53 Underlying these trends is the belief that young women in college or in their early career stages are not ready for marriage and motherhood.54 Furthermore, public opinion of single women has become less criti- cal. The creation of social groups and activities for single women counters the stigma of being a “spinster,” providing the opportunity to be identified as a single woman without necessarily feeling like an out- sider.55 Thus, while single women remain a focus of negative social judgment, a new discourse is enabling more women to choose single- hood while associating a feeling of empowerment with the decision. Even in more traditional societies, where the law still discriminates heavily against women and prohibits them from divorcing their hus- bands,56 feminist developments have influenced family structure and relationship formation.57 For example, Arab women have become increasingly empowered, especially during and following the Arab Spring, which took place between 2010 and 2012 and involved women in unprecedented numbers.58 Although parts of the Arab world are under- going a retrograde process in which the younger generation skews more conservative,59 women’s status remains on the rise, and women exert more independence in deciding when and whom to marry. This 24 / The Age of Singlehood has resulted in a sharp decline in fertility rates and a steady increase in the average age at first marriage.60 Even women who want to marry do not always find a suitable partner. The advancements in women’s status and independence have turned out to be unappealing to some men, who sometimes seek women with more traditional values.61 Indeed, these expectations are gradually changing, but they are still common in many societies and are negatively affecting marriage patterns.62 Additionally, women’s decisions to enter relationships, get married, and start families have recently been shaped by medical and techno- logical advancements. At a time when fertility treatments have become more effective and readily available, women are less pressured to marry and start families at a young age, when they would likely be more fer- tile.63 Some governments even subsidize fertility treatments for single women, providing more options for having children. Therefore, women wishing to delay marriage can afford to do so even if they want chil- dren. Indeed, investigations of insurance coverage for assisted repro- ductive technologies have found correlations between increased access to fertility treatments and older age at first marriage.64 This is particu- larly true for affluent demographics that enjoy more comprehensive insurance coverage. Likewise, women who want children but prefer to raise them alone can use sperm banks. The sperm bank industry not only has allowed single women to become pregnant but also, in some contexts, has decommodified sperm. By personifying donations and romanticizing the donor-recipient bond, sperm banks often add significant emotional tenor to a sperm donation. This change eases and facilitates the choice of many single women to start families, by providing at least the idea of a second parent, which is frequently desired and idealized.65 Risk Aversion in an Age of Divorce A less considered but highly important factor is averting the risk of divorce, a life event that carries dire emotional, societal, and fiscal con- The Age of Singlehood / 25 sequences. When divorce rates rise sharply, so do attempts to avoid marriage altogether.66 Without even being aware of it, people calculate the benefits and losses from different life events, especially in individu- alistic societies, where personal well-being is at the center. Making the calculation shows that divorce imperils one’s happiness, while marriage promises very little gain. In an award-winning and groundbreaking longitudinal study cover- ing fifteen years, Richard Lucas and his team found that marriage has a temporary positive effect on happiness, but that after two years one’s level of happiness typically reverts to the baseline level that existed before saying “I do.”67 It is striking to find a biological basis for this in the brain chemical phenethylamine, which is associated with feelings of well-being.68 Researchers argue that the decline in happiness (and the frequency of sexual activity) may occur either because neurons become habituated to the effects of phenethylamine or because levels of phenethylamine decline over time.69 Even researchers whose studies show a slight, lasting happiness advantage conferred by marriage70 admit that this uptick is partly due to the selection effect, whereby hap- pier people tend to marry, rather than marriage bringing happiness to the perennially grumpy.71 In contrast, the negative consequences of divorce are more perma- nent. Lucas, who did not find a lasting effect of marriage, found that in cases of divorce, happiness drops before legal action, bottoms out dur- ing divorce, then gradually rebounds but does not return to baseline.72 Later studies confirm these results time and again.73 Even among those who argue that marriage evidences a lasting—albeit small—advantage, they nonetheless concur that divorce significantly reduces happiness, to a greater extent than marriage raises it.74 These remarkable findings are not merely an academic exercise. They reflect a reality in which marriage contributes less to happiness than is often assumed. First, two years into a marriage, satisfaction spi- rals down toward baseline levels. Second, divorced people are less happy than ever before. They sink below baseline—and stay there. 26 / The Age of Singlehood Younger men and women can do the math, so they treat marriage with caution. In an age less bound by tradition, when people are more connected to their own well-being, men and women peel the imagined benefits of marriage away from the real ones and conclude that mar- riage may not be worth the risk. And the risk is high: recent data show that about 40 to 60 percent of Western couples divorce, and that devel- oping countries are catching up with these numbers quite fast.75 Averting the risk of divorce has direct and indirect long-term effects on the number of singles in society. A direct result is that marriage rates decrease as divorce-averse behavior becomes more prevalent.76 An indi- rect result is that the increasing rates of divorce-averse behavior cause more children to be born out of wedlock or to grow up in single-parent families after divorce. In turn, children of the unmarried are less inter- ested in marriage for themselves and feel free to choose otherwise.77 In this sense, divorce-avoidance tactics indirectly, but inevitably, perpetu- ate the process and change societal attitudes to favor single life. In addition, risk avoidance causes many people to simply delay mar- riage rather than avoid it completely. But ironically, those who marry at a late age are significantly more likely to divorce. The evidence indi- cates that the likelihood of divorce increases by approximately 5 percent each year after the age of thirty-two.78 Therefore, if a young person employs marriage-averse behavior to dodge divorce and, in doing so, waits until his or her thirties to marry, the possibility of divorce looms larger. In turn, once divorce grows more prevalent, it, again, creates deterrents against marriage for others. Given that the average age at first marriage is approaching, or above, thirty in most industrialized nations, this phenomenon can be expected to fuel divorce rates further. Avoiding marriage as a risk-aversion tactic may manifest differently depending on the type of society. In conservative nations, which are often less industrialized and more collective, the taboo of divorce and resulting stigma can act as a deterrent to marriage. Thus, it can inad- vertently encourage prolonged adolescence or deferring marriage as a risk-management tactic in order to avoid highly negative social conse- The Age of Singlehood / 27 quences.79 This, combined with the fact that premarital cohabitation is frowned upon in conservative societies, means that individuals delay relationship formation of all kinds in these societies, at least overtly, as a risk-evasion tactic. In more individualistic and industrialized societies, risk-avoidance takes the form of cohabitation in place of marriage.80 Since the dissolu- tion of cohabitation is easier and more common than marriage dissolu- tion, it alleviates relationship deterrents and the associated risks. Cohab- itation provides freedom to move in and out of sequential relationships while staying unattached between them. Thus, the acceptance of cohab- itation in liberal countries increases the number of cohabiters and uncoupled individuals alike. In 1998, the House of Representatives in the Netherlands was one of the first parliaments to formally recognize registered cohabitation through legislation. At the time, it was considered a policy breakthrough. Yet some researchers questioned whether this legislation sparked a fundamental shift in relationship formation. An evaluation study was commissioned to illuminate the consequences of this move. In seven focus-group inter- views with forty participants, the study found that the participants agreed with the risk-reduction strategy whereby cohabitation is less binding and permanent than marriage and allows more flexibility and independence. In other words, cohabitation, as a risk-reduction relationship strategy, has displaced marriage, particularly in the context of the Netherlands’ high divorce rate.81 The link between fear of divorce and a propensity for singlehood differs among demographic groups within populations. In the United States, studies reveal that faith in the institution of marriage and fear of divorce vary with minority status, education level, gender, and socioe- conomic status. For example, one study looked at how gender and social-class distinctions shape views of divorce.82 While over two- thirds of the participants were concerned about divorce, working-class women were the most skeptical about marriage because divorce would burden them both socially and financially. It is therefore unsurprising 28 / The Age of Singlehood that in some societies the rates of risk aversion and single living are increasing most sharply among the lowest earners. This influence of socioeconomic factors, though not entirely uniform, has been noted and confirmed in a variety of contexts, showing the compounded effect of singlehood and economics.83 Economics In his 1999 book The Age of Parasite Singles, Masahiro Yamada broke a taboo in drawing public attention in Japan to the growing number of thirtysomething singles still living with their parents.84 Yamada coined the term parasaito shinguru, “parasite singles,” for these young Japanese and argued that by living with their parents into their thirties, singles not only save money on rent but also manage to avoid responsibility for household chores. Indeed, approximately ten million young Japa- nese men and women had met the definition of parasite single in 1995. This number has increased by 30 percent, to thirteen million, today, despite the shrinking Japanese population, accounting for 10 percent of the Japanese people. Among Japanese singles, 60 percent of men and 80 percent of women fit this category, according to the most recent survey.85 Young Japanese singles are certainly not the only ones adopting this lifestyle. In English-speaking nations, the term basement dwellers carries similar connotations. In Italy, they are called bamboccioni (grown-up babies). Although these terms carry an unacceptable, derogative conno- tation by belittling a conscious decision made by young singles and their families, they say something about the interaction of economics and singlehood. This growing phenomenon means that the incomes of many of these singles are disposable, which allows for an enjoyable and economically secure lifestyle. In contrast, moving out or getting mar- ried would mean giving up this type of casual affluence.86 But economics affects singlehood in multiple ways, and it seems that all roads lead to the rise of singlehood in today’s world. Whether the The Age of Singlehood / 29 condition is economic hardship, security, or development, all three sit- uations provide good reason for people to remain single. Economic hardship and recent financial crises have shaped the way singles approach relationship formation. Many singles delay marriage, fearing the inability to support a family.87 Even if disadvantaged men and women value marriage highly, they are less likely to believe in their ability to remain financially stable and therefore sustain marriage and avoid divorce. In many societies, financial stability is regarded as a pre- requisite to marriage.88 Thus, in times of economic crisis or lack of employment opportunities, young people spend a larger portion of their lives single.89 The time and resources required to be financially stable compete with the commitments required for a romantic relationship. Following the 2008 financial crisis, young people in certain Euro- pean countries, such as Spain and Italy, suffered from both the crisis itself and increased housing prices. Because housing costs can absorb a major share of disposable income in Europe, many young people sim- ply decide to delay marriage and spend their prime dating years advancing economically.90 In fact, it is not uncommon to spot adult sin- gles in today’s Barcelona or Milan having sex in a car after a night of partying. They do it there simply because they have nowhere else to go. When the night ends, they go home—to their parents’ houses. Even when governments try to alleviate young people’s economic insecurity, singles do not hurry into wedlock. Here, the logic works dif- ferently: young singles choose not to marry because the financial incen- tive for living with another person decreases. In Sweden, for instance, the large welfare state allows many people to move into their own apartments after high school and live independently, at least financially. Young Swedes have seized on this as an incentive to stay single. No wonder the share of one-person households in Stockholm is among the highest in the world, standing at 60 percent.91 Conditions of economic development, too, promote rising single- hood, a great example of which is India. Although India is still widely traditional, economic development in the country has given more 30 / The Age of Singlehood young people economic independence, and as a result new family forms are becoming more common.92 Increasing purchase power has allowed young Indians to consider living independently, which would not have been possible before.93 Many Indian singles leave their families and move to big cities where jobs are available. Moreover, living alone is not only possible now but also more accepted. Modern India is becoming open to Western values because of exposure via telecommunications and films. Thus, the shifts toward independent living and economic development coincide with the emer- gence of individualism, which has been associated with delayed rela- tionship formation, discussed in the next section.94 It is a riddle how almost all economic conditions lead to the dissolu- tion of marriage. All over the world, it seems singles are basically look- ing for an excuse to forgo wedlock. Whether to save money, earn more, or spend more, young singles simply think of marriage as a commodity and conclude that the “juice is not worth the squeeze.” Nonetheless, economics carries a deeper meaning than simple income/expense cal- culations. The values and cultural foundations behind economics, and its influence on the rise of singlehood are reviewed in the following section. Capitalism and Consumerism Earlier, I discussed a popular book about young Japanese who maxi- mize their disposable income by living with their parents and remain- ing single.95 But the term parasite singles is derogatory and does not capture their true preferences. Young singles in today’s Japan simply changed their tastes and reordered their priorities. They prefer going out with friends, pursuing career goals, and developing a fashion palate before entering relationships.96 Surveys show that this choice is based not solely on economic considerations but on a change in values as well. In fact, 45 percent of women and 25 percent of men ages sixteen to twenty-four reported they are not interested in, or may even despise, The Age of Singlehood / 31 sexual contact, even if noncommittal.97 Moreover, almost half of all respondents had not engaged in sexual activity in the month before the survey. Instead, traditional cultural and familial values have been mostly replaced by consumerist ones. Thus, today’s Japan is an example of a value shift: away from tradition and religion, toward a market- oriented, career-driven, consumerist culture.98 Japan is an extreme example, but all over the world capitalist and consumerist trends give rise to singlehood. Several factors are at play here.99 First, the ascendance of consumerism extols the individual who buys and sells on the free market with fewer obligations to his or her larger society, culture, or family. In turn, consumerism frees people to pursue their own interests rather than those of others, thereby causing them to eschew traditional values. As the ideals of individualism and self-actualization spread, people reconsider whether marriage will serve them well. Careers become more important and are tied to wom- en’s independence and self-actualization. While there is some evidence to suggest that married people are better off financially,100 the prefer- ence for being an independent consumer with individualistic tastes has displaced the financial incentive to form relationships.101 Second, capitalism makes people think about the value of different lifestyles and encourages comparison. Privacy becomes a desired good alongside rising incomes that give people the ability to live alone.102 In this sense, capitalism does two things at once. For one, traditional val- ues are replaced by more rational thinking with which people priori- tize their preferences and assign values to them. For another, increased wealth allowed by the capitalist system affords people the opportunity to live by their values, often choosing independence over marriage, and privacy over family life.103 Finally, changes in the division of labor and the labor market create new flexibility and opportunities. People start working outside their families’ professions, and work detaches itself from close familial cir- cles. Moreover, the need to have children to continue the family busi- ness (e.g., by working on the family farm) and provide for parents 32 / The Age of Singlehood becomes less common. Furthermore, in today’s globalized world some professions require mobility and geographic flexibility. Thus, for many young professionals, tying the knot presents an obstacle to career advancement.104 One could even argue that markets prefer the single lifestyle because singles consume significantly more resources than do family units. Sin- gles boost real estate markets because of the increased demand for apart- ments that allow people to live alone. An American report also indicates that singles use 38 percent more produce, 42 percent more packaging, 55 percent more electricity, and 61 percent more gasoline per capita than individuals living in a four-person family unit.105 Divorced people, in particular, are seen as a potential growth market, because a couple that splits up results in two new singles who, out of necessity, consume prod- ucts at a higher rate and seek new living arrangements, usually without roommates.106 From a purely economic standpoint, singles’ voluminous material consumption causes markets to adapt by catering to their needs and even encouraging them, hence promoting singlehood, as cynical as that may sound. Responses to these phenomena are evident throughout various media. Despite persistent discrimination against singles in society at large, the media is now adjusting its approach and increasingly targeting singles through advertising,107 especially with regard to housing, dating, and travel.108 As a result, a consumer culture for singles has developed, which provides the means, legitimacy, and visibility for being single.109 Education It is often the more educated who abandon relationship formation for individual and professional goals. One study found that the highest percentage of people living alone were individuals who had earned at least a bachelor’s degree (15 percent), with the majority having received at least some college education.110 My own analysis of the European Social Survey also confirms that the unmarried group is the most The Age of Singlehood / 33 educated. In the above-thirty group, married individuals average 12.2 years of education, divorced people come in second with 12.5 years, the never-married group have 13 years, and cohabiters are the most edu- cated, at 13.8 years on average (widowed individuals have the lowest average, but they are also older and thus excluded from this analysis). The forces behind these numbers are complex. Higher levels of edu- cation have several direct and indirect effects on marriage rates: they are direct in that individuals still pursuing education are less likely to marry (thus, higher levels of education result in a shorter period on the marriage market); indirect in that higher levels of education imply more emphasis on career.111 Consequently, one study shows that enroll- ment in higher education significantly reduces marriage and birth rates, even in countries that encourage individuals to start families during their studies.112 Another possible reason for these findings is that higher levels of education indicate values associated with independence and individu- alism, which, in turn, ease the pressure to marry and form a family.113 One study, for example, found that education and cognitive sophistica- tion encourage tolerant views and raise willingness to extend civil lib- erties to nonconformist groups.114 Another cross-national study argues that education increases liberal attitudes across cultures and national contexts.115 Similar trends have been observed outside of Europe and the United States, which are highly individualistic, suggesting that education can affect relationship status even in societies that do not value privacy and independence as much as in the West.116 In addition, higher education increases the potential for career- marriage conflict, especially when both partners work.117 This conflict involves juggling the demands of progressing in the labor market, estab- lishing a long-term relationship, and maintaining the balance between one’s professional and personal life.118 In exploring the causes and repercussions of the career-marriage conflict, several studies found that the balance between relationship formation and career is overbur- dened during the final years of formal education.119 This situation leads 34 / The Age of Singlehood many young people who once focused on finding a partner to now choose career over marriage and advanced degrees over committed relationships. Furthermore, advanced levels of education correlate with higher levels of income,120 which moderate relationship patterns insofar as higher socioeconomic status allows people to live alone. As mentioned, privacy is a common good, and people can afford it when they enjoy higher incomes.121 Higher levels of education usually reflect socioeco- nomic advantages and, as a result, have been found to increase the like- lihood of living alone in both East Asia122 and North America.123 Shifts in Religiosity Many religious societies highly value modesty and traditional values, which form the basis of familism. They prefer late marriage over single or unmarried parenthood and view extramarital sex negatively.124 Col- lectivism, which often characterizes religious communities, has also been found to be particularly important to relationships and family values.125 In contrast, nonreligious individuals are more open to single- hood, and the growing prominence of individualism among nonreli- gious persons explains the number of never-married and unmarried people. Studies show that the diminishing role of religion relates to the record number of individuals choosing not to get married and to reduced fertility rates in the United States and western Europe.126 My analysis of the European Social Survey shows that 12 percent of married individuals are not religious (score 0 on a 0–10 scale), compared to 23 percent of cohabiters, 18 percent of the never-married, and 17 percent of divorced people. Even religious institutions opposed to singlehood cannot stop the flood of singles. In Catholic Mexico, for example, evidence shows that despite religious sentiments, marriage rates have overwhelmingly dropped while cohabitation rates have increased.127 In Italy, studies show that despite a society rooted in Catholicism, religion plays a lim- The Age of Singlehood / 35 ited role in relationship choices: singlehood is widely prevalent, and Italy has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.128 One explanation is that while religion generally relates positively to marriage, religious environments can also push people to forsake mar- riage because of tight restrictions relating to starting a family, giving birth, and divorce. In Mexico, studies show, people are refusing Catholic wedding vows to ease potential separation later on.129 Instead, they pre- fer to cohabitate and move in and out of partnerships, allowing for peri- ods of singlehood in between. Alternatively, those who already married in church and later separated simply choose to stay single or are forced to live with their next partner without officially marrying, because of church law. Mexico is not alone, as similar patterns have been observed in Spain,130 Quebec,131 and several countries in Latin America.132 Even among the devoutly religious, recent societal and generational processes of liberalization influence the decision to marry. For exam- ple, today’s young evangelicals in the United States are more likely to adopt liberal attitudes toward premarital sex and single living.133 Find- ings point to a shift in moral authority whereby young evangelicals believe that their own conscience, rather than God, is the true arbiter of right and wrong. Similarly, religious Muslims134 and Jews135 are demanding changes to the role of women in their communities, allow- ing women to delay marriage or choose divorce if unsatisfied with their partners. Even in highly conservative Hindu136 and ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities,137 in which marriage is traditionally arranged by the family and takes place at a young age, the hegemony is being chal- lenged, allowing a more liberal approach for premarital introduction between young men and women. Most fascinating, perhaps, is that the liberalization of attitudes toward marriage in religious environments occurs not just at the com- munity and personal levels but within the leadership as well. Notably, and in part as a response to the rising number of young people leaving the Catholic Church, the Vatican has in more recent years shown leni- ency with regard to relationship-related matters.138 For example, there 36 / The Age of Singlehood has been a significant shift in the rhetorical stance of the Roman Catholic Church toward gays since the Second Vatican Council, differ- entiating between the act (i.e., homosexual behavior), which is still con- sidered a sin, and the actor (i.e., the homosexual), who should be embraced.139 Such liberalization undermines traditional familial values in general. In turn, across many religious communities, the increasing acceptance of people who live independently, who delay marriage, or who divorce facilitates the rise of singles inside the religious world along with the general trend. Popular Culture, the Media, and Social Networking On September 21, 1995, the popular American television show Seinfeld pretty much summed up its message about marriage in the opening episode of season 7, called “The Engagement”: kramer: You started wondering, “Isn’t there something more to life?” jerry: Yes! kramer: Well, let me fill you in on something: there isn’t. jerry: There isn’t? kramer: Absolutely not. I mean, what were you thinking, Jerry? Mar- riage? Family? jerry: Well . . . kramer: They’re prisons! Man-made prisons! You’re doing time! You get up in the morning: she’s there. You go to sleep at night: she’s there. It’s like you have to ask permission to use the bathroom! As early as the 1980s, representations of twenty- and thirtysomething singles who do not need relationships to be happy began appearing in the media, affecting public opinion on the matter.140 While the previous generation was raised on films, books, and tales depicting immaculate romances where couples ended up happily ever after, the American tel- evision industry in the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first cen- tury began promoting shows such as Seinfeld, Sex and the City, and Will The Age of Singlehood / 37 and Grace, exposing entire populations to people who remained single into and beyond their thirties. The single woman began to be celebrated in popular media, and her image was reconfigured from “spinster” to “singleton.”141 For example, television critics see Sex and the City as an innovation in women’s representation on television in that it validated single women’s friendships and culture.142 The show promotes, even encourages, women’s right to sexual pleasure with no strings attached. Shows such as Will and Grace, Ally McBeal, and Girls portray single women as fashionable and sophisticated.143 In other shows, such as Seinfeld, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory, singles are characterized by being social, full of laughter, and surrounded by friends who generate a sense of community.144 It is precisely because singlehood and single living have come so far that singles now see their lives reflected in film, television, and print media. In this sense, popular culture mirrors, even celebrates, singles’ rise to sociocultural prominence. This process feeds itself as young viewers grow more comfortable with the idea of choosing the single lifestyle.145 These shows are so popular that their influence has spread beyond the Western world.146 But similar portrayals are also produced in non- Western studios. An obvious example is the Indian entertainment industry, one of the largest in the world.147 One study investigated the effects of Indian cable TV on Indian women over a three-year period. The study found that increased exposure to Indian media, in addition to foreign entertainment, was associated with higher autonomy and reduced fertility rates.148 Another study, conducted in Brazil, found that the share of women who became separated or divorced increased significantly after Globo, the monopoly network of telenovelas, became available.149 The effect was even stronger in small municipalities, where there is less exposure to liberal values. In an increasingly globalized world, very few countries are immune to the shift toward individual- ism,150 and many societies are exposed to lifestyles that conflict with the deeply ingrained traditional family unit.151 38 / The Age of Singlehood Nowadays, the exposure to different family forms and relationship possibilities happens via the Internet as well. One study of Facebook users found that high Facebook usage correlates with negative relation- ship outcomes, such as conflict, divorce, and separation.152 Another study found that active Twitter usage leads to more conflict among romantic partners, which, in turn, can lead to infidelity, breakup, and divorce.153 These contemporary means of communication challenge tradition- alism and the institution of marriage by exposing users to alternative lifestyles. Once individuals see other ways of interaction and of satisfy- ing their emotional needs, they rethink intimacy and reconsider their family situation. It is not necessarily human nature that is being changed so dramatically. Rather, these technological developments are revealing preexisting human needs. Technology has provided humans with more (perhaps even better) ways to express themselves and to fol- low their very basic desires, thereby leading to the rise of singlehood. Urbanization The growth of the city, too, links strongly to the rise of singlehood. This trend is especially salient in North America and many countries in Europe, where the number of households in cities has increased at a faster rate than the city population. More and more singles live in met- ropolitan areas, disproportionately to other regions.154 My analysis of the US Census and the American Community Survey indicates a large concentration of singles in populated areas. The diagram in figure 2 shows that American singles—whether never-married, divorced, or widowed—tend to live in larger cities. Yet the link between the growth of metropolitan areas and the cor- responding proportion of singles extends beyond the West: there is ample evidence that singles in South Asia, East Asia, South America, and other regions are flocking to cities to join the postfamily environ- ment.155 Particularly striking are the changes measured in the Arab and The Age of Singlehood / 39 Muslim world, even in ultraconservative Iran, where urbanization has been shown to be associated with family liberalization.156 Urbanization has a marked effect on family structure and the post- family culture for several reasons. First, urban areas have sprawled in recent decades following economic development, and the percentage of people living in cities has risen globally. As a result, city housing prices have skyrocketed, and the cityscape has become even less conducive to the family lifestyle, which requires larger apartments.157 Cities, in turn, have started to accommodate the increasing number of people living alone by providing greater numbers of smaller apartments, and the process continues to feed itself.158 Moreover, the diversity wrought by the growing number of people living in cities and urban settings has legitimized the forsaking of con- formist, traditional values. The urban identity has become too hetero- genic to feed into one collective format and has led to diverse societal beliefs, individualism, and a tendency to abandon family values.159 Thus, urbanization increases the variety of living arrangements with a general shift away from traditional family units to more modern family households while also multiplying single-occupancy homes.160 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 Average city population Married Never married Seperated/divorced Widowed Average US city population by marital status. Sources: 2000 US Census and 2001–2013 American Community Surveys. 40 / The Age of Singlehood The rise of singlehood in big cities also comes on the heels of domes- tic migration from the countryside. In many parts of the world, eco- nomic development and unprecedented geographic mobility have driven large-scale exoduses to urban areas. The new internal migrants are more likely than nonmigrants to live without family, because they are unfamiliar with the local community of potential partners, are far from the marriage obligations enforced by their extended families, and are flooded with the social, sexual, and leisure possibilities that the big city offers.161 This is especially true for young individuals who tend to seek economic opportunity, professional development, and personal exploration rather than a secure family life.162 Indeed, as early as the 1980s, a study found a positive correlation in every US state between rates of internal migration and the proportion of single, unmarried, and widowed individuals.163 In China, one study found that 41 percent of internal migrants in Beijing live alone, and that this proportion has rapidly increased over the last two decades.164 One of the most interesting places to watch this process in its early stages is sub-Saharan Africa. Here, rural and village dwellers, who until recently worked in agriculture and depended on the family unit for support, are finding new opportunities within growing cities and moving there to work in industrialized professions. Although most of the offered jobs in these developing metropolises are still low skilled, the new, unmarried, internal migrants gain the economic ability to live alone, and they do so in growing numbers.165 Similarly, members of rural families who relocate to work in urban areas and send money back home find themselves living apart from their extended, and sometimes even nuclear, families. For these indi- viduals, who are often married, the move to the city makes relationship maintenance more difficult but also allows them to explore other rela- tionship possibilities, thus promoting singlehood.166 Finally, urbanization and internal migration increase educational opportunity and wealth, both of which promote singlehood, as explained earlier. These effects are especially strong in areas of high gender The Age of Singlehood / 41 inequality like the city, because women advance significantly more in such places and feel more at ease living on their own. An example of this process can be found in Yemen, where development and urbanization have been associated with a sharp rise in education for girls. This has reduced the number of arranged marriages, increased the divorce rate, and raised the average age at first marriage.167 International Immigration In several ways, international immigration also contributes to the rising number of singles. First, immigrants, especially refugees or economic immigrants, often arrive alone to find new opportunities for work and to send money home to relatives.168 This may delay marriage, because the new immigrants must adjust to an unfamiliar environment, over- come difficulties in assimilation, and navigate a new culture while find- ing a match. Second, international immigrants are more likely to move into cities than rural areas because cities have more economic opportunities.169 As mentioned, cities expose new immigrants to more liberal and career-oriented societies less concerned with traditional values and family formation. As a result, communities of immigrants are expand- ing rapidly in many large cities; in fact, a few major European cities can claim that their populations of first- and second-generation immigrants have already passed the 50 percent mark.170 These communities pro- vide social opportunities and entertainment for newcomers, who feel they have many plausible alternatives for family life. Third, as in the case of refugees, international immigration waves are often gender imbalanced. Construction workers, for example, who are in high demand in many destination countries, are usually men, while nursing-service workers are usually women. The problem is that professions usually vary by nationality. China, for example, sends large numbers of construction workers, while countries such as the Philip- pines send nurses.171 As mentioned in the section on demographics, 42 / The Age of Singlehood heterosexual individuals who wish to form relationships within their own ethnic communities find gender imbalance to be an obstacle in meeting a suitable partner.172 These immigrants must either overcome social and cultural barriers and look beyond their communities in the host country or marry someone of their own group across borders.173 Fourth, some international immigrants reveal that they are totally fine living alone, as I discovered in the interviews I conducted with immigrant singles. Thus, international immigration, whose original purpose was to advance people economically, has morphed into a social transformation that allows immigrants to live as they wish. These immigrants feel freer to choose singlehood over marriage because they do not suffer the constraints of traditionalism arising from close prox- imity to their family and hometown community.174 toward an age of happy singlehood In his 1964 State of the Union address, President Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty. As the poverty rate in the United States approached 20 percent, a legislative program was laid out to eliminate poverty and create economic opportunities by expanding the federal government’s role in health care, education, and welfare.175 In the years after the program commenced, policies were enacted to provide food stamps, improve Social Security, fund elementary and secondary schooling, and create jobs for Americans. However, many policy experts and researchers consider these efforts as having failed, at least in a cost- benefit analysis.176 Poverty rates in the United States have remained stubbornly high despite occasional downticks.177 In part, singles were to blame for these failures. In the debates that followed the War on Poverty, it was assumed, and still is, that married couples are better off financially than singles, more economically capa- ble of supporting children, and less likely to be poor.178 Some con- cluded, therefore, that one way of combating rising poverty rates was to encourage relationship formation and marriage. In analyzing Johnson’s The Age of Singlehood / 43 policies, a 2013 op-ed published by the Brookings Institution delivers exactly this message: “Unless young people . . . stop having babies out- side marriage, government spending will be minimally effective in fighting poverty. On the other hand . . . redesigning the nation’s welfare programs to encourage marriage hold[s] great promise for at last achieving the poverty reduction envisioned by President Johnson.”179 Ron Haskins, the writer of the column, makes a simple argument: if we return to structuring our society on family units, the economic benefits will be high, and poverty will be reduced. Indeed, even fifty years after Johnson’s original declaration, some still blame the singles population and want to inhibit the rise of singlehood. The problem with this thinking, however, is that singlehood is becoming a common good in and of itself. It might well be economically smart for people to couple, but pushing citizens into marriage is not nec- essarily ethically justified. People choose singlehood for the many afore- mentioned reasons and are willing to pay for it. In fact, as already shown, many people choose singlehood over partnership whether they feel eco- nomically secure or not. Independence and individualism, together with education and liberalization, all lead to the single lifestyle. Instead of fighting singlehood, policy makers and society at large may need to start accepting and making the most of it. The age of sin- glehood is not based only on one driving force; many incentives exist for being single nowadays. It is therefore not surprising that this trend is gaining traction despite discrimination and governmental policies that try to push people away from singlehood and toward forming nuclear family units. The singlehood trend is taking hold in tandem with demographic changes, women’s shifting role in society, rising divorce rates, economic development and changes, increasing consumerism, shifts in religiosity, cultural changes, urbanization, and immigration. Together, these forces seem unstoppable. They are creating societies based on a majority of singles and, consequently, are shattering the institution of marriage around the world. These forces may seem somewhat trivial, but our 44 / The Age of Singlehood public institutions, most of which still promote deeply ingrained famil- ial norms, are ignoring them, showing that these dynamics are too for- eign—or rather too novel—to policy makers and the still-indifferent public. Understanding these various forces sheds light on this new social condition, helping to decipher what might make single people happy. Given all the mechanisms described here, it seems there is no way back. Rather, we need to understand better how single living can pro- duce joy and happiness and become an advantage instead of a source of agony. My mission in this book is to delve into the lives and statistics of happy singles, paving the way for those who either choose to be single or come by it via other circumstances. By no means does this book present an opposition to marriage or couplehood—if chosen freely and consciously. Rather, this book acknowledges the powerful trends that lead to an age of singlehood, while trying to answer the question: What makes singles happy? 45 The Inuit mythology tells the story of an old woman left behind in her village by her family. They provided her with a few insects to eat dur- ing the cold winter, but the old woman felt compassion for the insects. “They are living creatures and I should not do any harm to them,” she said. “I’d rather die first.” While the old woman was gazing tenderly at the insects, a fox entered her hut and immediately began biting her, ripping open her skin. But to her surprise, the fox’s assault had no effect on her. Instead, her old skin was simply taken from her body and a new, young skin appeared beneath it. The insects, apparently, were the ones who called the fox. And when her family returned to the village in the summer, the old woman was not there anymore. She had started a new life elsewhere with the insects.1 This story is seemingly about the power of giving and the virtue of compassion. However, if this is the lesson of the Inuit folklore tale, why is the hero of the story an old woman? And why was she left behind by her family? For example, the story equally could have been about a hungry young boy who saw some insects he could eat, but who, instead of killing them to satisfy his appetite, showed compassion and was thus rewarded. Indeed, it seems there is more to this story, and that through chapter two Happy Singlehood in Old Age 46 / Happy Singlehood in Old Age hearing about an old woman, we are exposed to one of the greatest fears of all: aging alone and being left behind. The old woman not only discovers a way to survive the cold winter despite her old age and ostensible fragility but also makes new allies and friends. Being alone puts her in touch with her surroundings, outside of her own family. Even after her family returns, she does not really need them anymore. She moves elsewhere and finds a whole new life in her senior years, filled with the new ties she forged and the compassion she treasures inside her. No wonder, then, that this story has passed through genera- tions of Inuit. I push this chapter forward in investigating singles’ happiness because one of the most common and deeply ingrained reasons for marriage is not a positive one. Studies show that it is actually the fear of aging alone and dying without anyone at our bedside that drives us into marriage.2 It is this image of getting old, dragging our way through the streets, alone, perhaps even sick, without anyone to talk to; the image of sitting on a bench in the park throwing pieces of bread to the pigeons and waiting for another day to be over; the image of return- ing at the end of the day to an old, cramped apartment, full of antique stuff that even charity shops are not interested in; the image of going to sleep alone in a single bed, thinking of what will happen if we get sick or die without anyone noticing. Those images haunt many of us, and we look for ways to escape this fate. Marrying someone and start- ing a family seems like a perfect solution: having someone beside us all the time, especially in the last part of life, feels comforting and reassuring. As cynical as it may seem to use another person to assuage our fears, for many people it is a major reason to marry. A research team from the university of Toronto conducted seven comprehensive and comple- mentary studies to examine how loneliness affects the incentive to marry.3 Their findings show that 40 percent of respondents fe	584,550
This Is for the Women Who Dont Give a Fuck (Janne Robinson) (Z-Library).pdf	“Women like Janne are more than important, they are vital to the fabric of this society. She exudes strength and grace in a combination like few I’ve ever known and her words are reminders, often fierce, often gentle, to that deep well of power inside her. As long as she writes, I’ll read.” —Tyler Knott Gregson “In a consumer society we are starving for the real and authentic. Janne’s words nourish that craving. If that which is spoken from the heart is sacred, these poems are like prayers.” —Dianne Whelan “When Janne has a new poem written, I shut my life down to do nothing but read it, and then when I turn my life back on, everything is better.” —James Altucher “This world needs Janne. She is a force of nature. Her authenticity, drive and vulnerability are giving people permission everywhere to access their truth and their greatness. She is a new voice of consciousness and a breath of fresh air.” —Kyle Cease “It is rare to meet anyone who makes revolution nature.” —Alan Clements “When Janne appears, she has that rare ability to light up the room, and sometimes the mountain or the entire forest! Read with her and be transported to the loving, kind, fantastic and thoughtful world we all want to believe exists. I do.” —Peter Tunney “Janne personifies courage of self-expression. She is a beacon of light and an inspiration in self-worth and leading by example.” —Austin Bisnow “Janne ‘gives a fuck’ about what it means to live—to truly live—in the rawness of this human experience, in the fullness of our potential and to the truest beat of the unchained heart. Her words wake you up, rattle your chains and beckon you to live and love with the fierceness of a soul who doesn’t give a fuck about the fears holding back your truth. In her poems we pick up the lost tracks of our soul’s frontier.” —Nicole Davis “Fearless inspiration to peel back layers of herself and the world along the way, Janne has an uncanny ability to offer a lens into the human experience in the ever-changing modern world. Poetry to find strength and cut through the confusion. Janne’s voice is bold, compassionate and commanding. Women are the future.” —Peter Goetz “I’m drawn to truth tellers. To people who dive below the surface and tell me what’s real. The people who express their souls and make me a little more in touch with mine. When I read Janne’s words I feel like I’m mainlining passion and on a superhighway to my heart. There’s no greater gift than this.” —Mark Groves “The world has been graced with some powerful women: the scientist Rosalind Franklin, anti-slavery advocate Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emmeline Pankhurst who led the women’s right to vote movement, Anne Frank, and so many more. The 21st century has Janne Robinson. She successfully colours outside the lines in a way that is not only provocative, but is sometimes messy, and always engaging. Her honesty, vulnerability and directness inspire women all over the globe. 100 years from now women all over the world will remember her name.” —Rae-ann Wood-Schatz Copyright © 2017 by Janne Robinson. This book was designed by KJ Parish and published by Thought Catalog Books, a publishing house owned by The Thought & Expression Company. Digital edition. ISBN 978-1-945796-41-8 “Women love, love—not men.” —Luca Villani Daniel Kingsbury—you will live etched in my brain with your broad shoulders amongst the yellow bloom of Broome the first week of June. And when the yellow has fallen to the earth—you will live on through the limbs and lips and heart born in these poems. Your love gave the wounded parts of me wings that did not know they were meant to fly. One of the greatest gifts of my life will forever be being loved by you. A book dedication is a small offering to the man who loved me with the love I denied myself my whole life—I hope they have libraries in heaven. THERE’S COBWEBS ON HER VAGINA the gynecologist replies removing his head from between her freckled thighs her mother chokes on the air p-pardon? It’s from a society that shames women for enjoying sex one that puts purity rings on their fingers promises them away to God away from pleasure pleasure is shameful you hear? God is the only one that loves you What if the husband is a jackrabbit? what if he lacks all there is to know about making a woman moan? what if she dies not having her soul ripple? her body shake fall apart from the hands and tongue of a man who has done his work a lover of all things woman God, what if he’s gay? what if he wishes to be making love to a man? heaven forbid her body is never touched with the tenderness that we deserve from the moment we are born It’s from a society that throws half-naked sexualized women in sunglasses commercials making us hide our daughters’ eyes while the men smoking Cuban cigars laugh making millions off the easiest marketing idea invented the female body is the greatest piece of art of course it sells Shame on us for giving it away then playing the victims the big bad media wolves forcing our hands to paper to sign there are no victims here women, are to blame It’s from a society that shrieks at nipples turns away they’re the same as mine but but they’re sexual! Put them away I can feel the breeze on my sweltering chest in August but you must cover yours It’s from a society that cuts off women’s genitals doesn’t give them the right to vote to work to live to love who they choose covers them in clothes no, not to hide them from the sun Marries them away at fourteen to a twenty-one-year-old called Jose who drinks four bottles of whisky a day who falls asleep drunk after they have sex each night boring missionary sex with no foreplay while she speaks quietly into the night of wanting to be a lawyer of how she would bring justice with all her might He closes her legs the mother’s mouth is still dropped masturbation, 2 times a day—3 if needed his white coat wisps behind him as the door shuts Oh mamma the world we live in is changing. * THESE ARE THE LOVE STORIES I’LL NEVER HAVE The floors shake as the city tram flies by I wish it were the hardwood floors shaking as your feet moved six feet from your closed door to mine I wish you would hover to knock go to leave and then stay decide to know and risk and I would wake up and sit in the big windows that look upon a city of strangers and yellow taxicabs and you could hit the white of your cigarette into an empty beer bottle and I would read to you slowly and deliberately past when the stars have gone to bed This would be better than the dream I had and the dreams I won’t have for if I move my foot two inches I can know what it would feel like for a moment to touch you and if I touch you I can know if I someday wish to lie nose to nose on white pillows and drift my fingers upon a back that has never felt these lips but instead you say goodnight darlin’ in a drawl that’s been practiced to steal the knees of women who want to be stolen and we go to sleep. * I WOKE UP TODAY AND DIDN’T MISS YOU ANYMORE do you know what that feels like? rain after weeks of being thirsty food after days of being hungry waking up to hear the piano one morning, after a lifetime of being deaf water, after wandering parched and delirious through the desert for days air after holding my breath for weeks opening my eyes, after existing in the dark speaking, after living in silence taking bricks off bones that didn’t know they were holding a weight that wasn’t theirs I have a power in my belly, a heat in my bones and my heart is clear I’m back my heart is alive. * I SOMETIMES LET THE KETTLE HOWL TOO LONG I hear it, see it in the corner of my eye I let it be singing quietly into the night it can wait this world needs to learn to wait wait for a love worth having company worth keeping a job worth working its call is comforting like the sound of the furnace beginning to roar in the dead of a cold night a candle burning in broad daylight red flannel on a rainy summer night a song I love playing whimsically in a café I don’t know making it feel more familiar more at home comfort has its place in this world mine is in the green kettle with a steel handle that burns demanding patience and respect. * I SHOULD GET A JOB I can’t afford all this this log palace this gluten-free cereal that costs eight dollars a box what starving artist can afford cereal that costs eight dollars a box? I’ll get a job when the words stop I say but they don’t stop every time I have time to pick up a pen or a keyboard they come they harass me when I seek rest when I seek food in conversations making me leave abruptly so I can scramble for ink and space pour it out scribble it down alone I just want to sit in my captain’s chair with the broken arm I meant to fix but live with at dusk and dawn (when I am awake for dawn) watch the fields below my cabin light on fire purple armies of petals I want to throw my heart at the world at sunshine trees strangers have room to catch it when it flies back words are in the rustle of trees in that piece of wood there in the man who I sat on a log and passed the day with today they are in the hellos with the hummingbird as it zooms by my balcony each morning no, words are my job I guess I’ll have to start eating cheaper cereal. * LET THERE BE WORDS, HE PRAYS I always know a man isn’t good for me if there’s no poems I once lived with a man for six days and the words didn’t come they stopped there was silence on paper and not a welcome silence like when you turn a fan off that’s been buzzing for four hours taking up space unknowingly in your ear’s brain When you are making love to a poet there should never be a word desert my pen was parched of ink I pulled my hair the love wasn’t there and then I left him I place my cup down on the wooden table I see the sweat trickle on my maybe lover’s forehead let there be words he prays. * FUCK PENSIONS I used to say that I didn’t value money I always had it, spent it, made rent without a sweat I paid the bill, chose the nicest red by the glass they knew my first name at my favorite stores we both knew they liked my credit card but it’s nice when they know you Now I am grateful for every dime in my car change tray I am grateful for every morsel of food on my plate I eat it all I am grateful when I have enough money to buy propane to have a hot shower at my cabin The other day I had 60 bucks to last me three days I bought groceries opted out of a shower fought with a Coleman stove from the sixties for 45 minutes on my deck in hopes of a coffee it won but when I had a coffee two days later—I won I’m a cushioned and privileged broke I know my mother won’t let me starve I’m also too proud to ask for help just yet I’d rather eat oats and deli meat remind myself what it takes being broke is okay there are some of us who have big houses that are empty fancy cars with seats where love has never been made shirts without wrinkles china in cabinets that have never been eaten on nice whisky with no company worth having to share it with record collections of a king listened to alone Why? because they’ve worked their life away and for what? a pension? early retirement? so your father smugly approves? fuck his approval work to work to work to die these people are the real peasants I’ll take freedom over a pension any day where are my stocks? remove the ‘T’ and then you’ll find them in the first drawer Where are my investments? in this leather-bound notebook in this prolific soul in that man’s smile my freedom lies here with my broke ass sleeping in my car by the ocean showering in salt for two days because my only source of income is renting my own bed out for a night it’s worth it look at this view! I’m young I can afford to have an aching back from sleeping in a car keep your pension these experiences make me rich. * CONVERSATIONS WITH GRIEF Knock knock who is it? I yell from beneath the bubbles of the bath oh, hey Grief you asshole come on in I pour two glasses of whisky in tall drams don’t add ice as ice is for assholes who don’t know that scotch is whisky why don’t we invite God, while we’re at it? hey! God! you big jackass why don’t you come down and explain to me this cruel joke? explain to me why at 10:44 PM I am hit like sunlight in the face after a night of drinking by loss of an eternal heartache explain to me why you didn’t make a fucking undo button? I take a drag of a cigarette I would never smoke the yellow burn chugging like a train that has lost its drive to live I hit the white into an ashtray Grief! you still there, pal? how fucking long does this take? almost three months and I’m brought back to zero daily can you prescribe me a new heart? What’s your big plan, God? what do you do with those of us left standing? don’t tell me we’re all one don’t tell me to feel him in the goddamn breeze I’m done eating the esoteric bullshit just look me in the eye and tell me why he’s gone Silence? big surprise the two heroes have nothing to say I laugh a mad laugh clapping echoes off the white tiles both of you get the fuck out of my bathroom and leave me alone. * OH, YOU’RE A WRITER? so you drink too much coffee stay up all night drinking whisky swearing at the world with your pen? basically, yes so, you’re a human? you eat, drink, breathe, sleep, shit graduate, go to college wear a tie, sit at a desk work for your parents think the world’s about “who you know” something about a blood diamond and an I do suburbia, procreate, cars, fence, pets 9–5, laundry vacation because you’re burnt out or bored I can do that too I write because I am desperate to be anything but you. * WE ARE A SOCIETY WITH A HARD-ON FOR THINGS Things, things, things we are a society with such a hard-on for things just go Go Go do the things you love travel to the places you wish to breathe the air stop waiting for life to hold your hand stop waiting ’til you have your shit together having our shit together is a myth for even when we are standing still the earth is moving it’s impossible to keep up with ourselves the moon is full the sky is orange the Ylang Ylang blossoms are in bloom today not tomorrow the only word worth saying today is Go. * THIS IS FOR THE WOMEN WHO DON’T GIVE A FUCK The women who are first to get naked, howl at the moon and jump into the sea. The women who drink too much whisky, stay up too late and have sex like they mean it. The women who know they aren’t sluts because they enjoy sex, but human beings with a healthy sexual appetite. The women who will ask you for what they need in bed. This is for the women who seek relentless joy; the ones who know how to laugh with their whole souls. The women who speak to strangers because they have no fear in their hearts. The ones who wear “night makeup” in the morning or don’t own mascara. The women who know their worth, plant their feet and roar in their brilliance. The women who aren’t afraid to tell a man to get the fuck out of her heart if he doesn’t honor her worth. This is for the women who rock combat boots with frilly skirts. The women who swear like truck drivers. The women who hold the people who wrong or harass them with fierce accountability. The women who flip gender norms and false limitations the bird and live to run successful companies giving “the man” a run for his name. The ones who don’t find their success a compliment just because they have a vagina. Women like Gloria Steinem who, when she was told, “We want a writer, not a woman. Go home,” kept writing anyway. This is for the women who drink coffee at midnight and wine in the morning, and dare you to question it. For the women who open doors for men and are confident enough to have doors opened for them. Who use “no” to be in service for themselves. Who don’t give a damn about pleasing the world, and do sweetly as they wish. For the superheroes—the single moms who work three jobs to make it. I salute your resilient, cape-flapping, ambitious selves. This is for the women who throw down what they love, and don’t waste time following society’s pressures to exist behind a white picket fence. The women who create wildly, unbalanced, ferociously and in a blur at times. The women who know love is not about gender and love who they wish. The women who know how to be busy and know how to plant their feet in the earth and get grounded. These are the women I want around me. * MAMMA DIDN’T RAISE NO FUCKING PRINCESS Don’t go in there! why? there’s some pee on the floor? the toilet seat’s never been cleaned? I’ll have to hover and squat and not touch the walls for shit’s been smeared upon them? mamma didn’t raise no fucking princess toilet paper’s for the rich just give it a shake and wash in the shower later the people here sleep on wooden slats they have saunas and sweat the dirt out instead of showers their bodies know not of hot water they cannot complain about lumpy pillows sagging mattresses for they sleep on slats where the cold seeps in and stays ’til the morning they wipe their eyes for dirt and the thirteen-year-old daughter works 10-hour days for $80 a month black hands from polishing shoes under the yellow sun because her father’s an alcoholic and her mother can’t support four children so no, I won’t piss in the privileged toilets I’ll squat a little so I can remember what I have and where I could’ve come from getting dirty in doses does mounds for our humility. * People ask me what it was like being raised by two gay moms I tell them my wallet is a little bit lighter on mother’s day and a little bit heavier on father’s day. * I’M THE WORST WRITER ON THE PLANET what kind of writer doesn’t carry a fucking pen? a notepad? I walk down the Grey Nuns hospital bleak buzzing lights backless blue hospital dress beneath this coat you can see my ass! I want to shout I’m having more fun than you—I’m naked I smirk well, naked with socks floundering for a pen drug rep posters splattered on the walls “She’s smiling, but what she doesn’t know…is that she has HPV!” dickheads inducing fear selling unnecessary drugs news, hospitals—all pushing fear tired nurses mundane lives they shit on my ears not enough rooms, too many patients they are tired, overworked talking about shitty lives shitty husbands, shitty boyfriends boring, dull, pointless get me out of here I look at my feet I fainted in this chair “Are you pregnant?” I have a flash uneasy no but yes before fuck off and fuck off with your $100 3-step shots “It’s mandatory for all grade fives now, you know?” if we all thought for ourselves we’d say no in grade five we would say, “Fuck the juice box—you’re not putting that in my arm.” in Guatemala kids in grade five take care of their entire families North American children have all the resources and no responsibility no gratitude no understanding we just shit away our privilege wasting our brains on video games “Doctor is just changing—he had a messy appointment.” what the fuck does that mean? vaginal juices? breast pumps? glorified gynecologist nay more “Jane” her smile’s fake she hates her job that’s not my goddamn name legs on stirrups open wide, edge closer I wish I shaved my legs “Oh, that’s by Bowen Island. I hear there’s a lot of gay people out there.” there are gay people everywhere asswipe there are also straight people everywhere you don’t ever say, “Oh, Boston—I hear there’s a lot of straight people who golf there!” do you? I hate hospitals. * EVERYONE’S A FUCKING BLOGGER Every Dick Jane Harry is a writer every jackass with a typewriter app is a poet every thirteen-year-old who has an iPhone is a photographer every thirty-year-old white woman has quit her job to become a yoga teacher every esoteric asshole is doing ayahuasca in Colombia every feather wearing hippie knows how to do reiki every ad on my Facebook is how to triple your money to become a coach starting your own podcast show? original no one is doing that lululemon is mandatory for yoga and gluten-free is the new Friday while you’re at it come to my goddess ceremony where women drink cacao tea we are the esoteric millennials who wash our face with Eckhart Tolle brush our teeth with Rumi and wipe our ass with Paulo Coelho we say namaste without knowing what it means follow teachers without knowing why they’re on a pedestal in the first place go to self-growth weekends where everyone is enlightened during the day and does drugs and fucks each other at night where founders and coaches try to sleep with their clients where we slap shaman on a business card and have no problem sleeping at night. * There is dirt and dust and wet jean shorts from waterfalls and sunshine and a day lived hard. We rip, chasing the last of the day frantically. There is a bottle of merlot, it’s open and untouched. We could miss the sunset, it happens every day. But we could also chase it, and I’m here to chase magic. I’m here to take the last slice of red hot sun as it sinks into la mer and the white wisps of waves—mimicking the clouds above. We throw shoes, a torn and tattered and rusty stained blue blanket, and rush to feel the ocean with our toes. We made the show. And we leave our cell phones and cameras, away, in our bags. There is gooey melted ice cream on my leg, salt on my face and sunshine in my hair. It is unspoken that this is a moment to be devoured without distraction—to become a vivid, lit-on-fire memory we can taste and smell and see and feel years from now because we are showing up, dropped on our knees with gratitude to be present. To be alive is such a rich thing. To have legs to stand upon and tear into this world with our wide open red beating hearts. The sky is orange and purple, Venus shines—there, trying to steal the show but it can’t, for if the clouds were a woman, she would be so beautiful the orchestra would drop their harps, their strings, their drums—they would weep and look away and look back and lust and love and fall away. And all of a sudden my isolationist heart is hit so terrifyingly hard in my chest—I don’t want to be alone. I want souls who I can fall in love with in forty-eight hours. Souls who rock their bliss hard. The decadent connections I stumble upon, and moments like this remind me of the beauty of being together. Let’s chase magic and write poetry, fall asleep together in hammocks, flirt with love, or perhaps loving love and get old and wrinkly and do it all over again tomorrow. Dear yesterday, I love you. Dear tomorrow, you better be goddamn beautiful—I’ve got expectations lit on fire. * HELP, I’M MAKING LOVE TO AN ITALIAN Help! I’m making love to an Italian he has brown eyes like honey blond hair that’s a mess he makes me rich dark espresso plays my legs like a harp cooks breakfast to Yiánnis Chryssomállis as I lie half asleep in blue sheets Help! I’m making love to an Italian he spends eight hours making lasagna thinks in Spanish holds me strongly although I object to cuddling while I sleep he holds me anyway and I let him Help! I’m making love to an Italian he’s boisterous and loud yet patient and loving he drags me home pulls me from the middle of the street where I lay drunk off wine and stars walks me home when he’d rather be asleep. * WE NEED LESS DICKHEADS AND MORE PEOPLE LIVING LIKE THEY MEAN IT Sleep 8 hours a night drink twelve cups of water drink milk eat meat or you’ll waste away like those grass-eating fucks the ones who won’t eat gummy bears because they contain honey and the bees had to work God save the bees! doing their jobs on this planet like everyone else bee cruelty—you’re an idiot I’ll eat those they’re delicious I’m deliriously happy haven’t slept enough drank three times my weight in coffee no milk it’s all crap—marketing cheerleaders for dairy did their jobs well all I need is coffee, connection and ink I’m fed I’m the happiest fucker in this airport moping around because you had to wait a second in line it’s life! you must wait you instant gratification shitheads if you don’t want to be here go home what’s at home? your TV? your Steve Jobs gadgets? that’s what you’re in a rush for? to get off the plane and turn your phone on idiot life is precious you’re wasting all our time with your melodramatic sighs because the woman forgot to take her belt off Jesus there are worse things we are so lucky I want to drop ungrateful fucks in places of conflict you complain about a baby crying on an airplane it’s an inconvenience, isn’t it? try dodging bullets watching vultures eating the bodies of those who didn’t make it while you complain about your leg room someone is bed-ridden with disease without the means to buy medicine do you know how lucky you are? has your soul quit seeing gratitude? quit complaining exist differently we need less dickheads and more people living like they mean it. * I AM NOT HERE TO FIX YOU I am not here to entertain you I am not here to fix you I am not here to rescue, heal or revive you I am not here to be talked at I am not here to give you all my energy I am not here to make your story my own I am not here to just listen I am not here to make you whole I am not here to make you happy I am not here to make it all dissipate I am not here to distract you from the tedious and mundane I am not here to mask your sadness and feed your insecure heart I am not here to hold your hand I am not here to be a band aid I am not here to give you all of me I am here to love you strongly I am here to love you equally I am here to be an addition to the joy you already have I am here to rest in, but not collapse into I am here to support you, hear you, see you I am here to make love to you I am here to love you sweetly and gently and ferociously with all my might. * I’M GOING TO WRITE POEMS ABOUT YOU it is a statement dressed up in an almost question he rolls his cigarette paper the fan blows hot air he doesn’t object This is a disclaimer if you make love to a writer’s heart you’re bound to wind up inside the pages even if he objected it wouldn’t matter he knows this perhaps it’s why he sits in silence. * HOW TO CATCH A WOMAN by the throat he says with strong dark Italian espresso with pasta and love and you must make the food with love and it sounds like shit, cliché but is true! and then, sex love twice over again ’til the soul is folded my eyes laugh for I know it is true. * I EAT MUSICIANS LIKE YOU FOR BREAKFAST What are you doing later? not rolling around in your sweet honey, little bee I eat musicians like you for breakfast I know this dance backstage access dick access too but not heart access no that takes more than flirting underneath a hot pink sky candle lanterns stars abloom that would take love and time and you leave to wherever have you at 3 PM tomorrow so run along try your long brown hair hazel eyes on another girl one who doesn’t know electric guitars are penis extensions who will fall into white sheets slept in by many loved by none. * I JUST WANT TO WAKE UP AND SHOUT I LOVE YOU’S AT EACH OTHER not really yelling (until we have coffee) but the I love you’s in each touch along our spines in each kiss along your neck in the way we wake up and feel so goddamn blessed to have found each other in this bat shit crazy world and get to maneuver through it together in the way we don’t take any of this—for granted in a way that makes our love insurmountable and unstoppable that scoffs at distance, for we know the importance of space within our togetherness1 you do not complete me, nor I you we were full before grounded before and that’s why when we dance we have so much fun a love that is so strong, that we replace jealousy with the confidence that we are such delectable lovers the whole world wants a piece and that at the end of the day all we really have is the choice to choose each other to wake up each day and say, “I choose you. I want you.” and hope like a motherfucker we’re both up to our necks in the same kind of love and then do it all over again the next day. * 1 Gibran, Kahlil, The Prophet, Alfred A. Knopf, 1923 RUBIA Blue sheets torn escaping the mattress rich red cherry wood creaks brown and blue tapestry hangs gently plays with the wind burning infancy he reads blond hair pulled back hazel eyes black coffee in hand rubia he calls I wish to connect the brown freckles moles on your back like constellations with my fingertips my lips sit for hours with you as a canvas between these legs paint and paint upon you Soft kisses drift upon my spine upon the arches of my legs, my hips my feet my back he hasn’t even made me lasagna yet. * THIS WAS WRITTEN AFTER A SUICIDE It’s funny one person throws in the cards to the deck and it’s 10:49 PM on a Friday and part of me could throw in the cards too and I stand in the white light as the fridge buzzes drinking milk out of the carton and wonder how many other people left behind in grief consider death as a vice I’ll continue watching crap TV and pretend I didn’t have that thought because I want to keep on living but the thought is there you know and I’ll just say it in case the rest of you were thinking it too. * FACEBOOK I pull up the white screen it shocks my eyes they yell a little what the fuck are you looking in there for? it’s none of your business you are just eyes you are only here to see so I look there is nothing there there is no love there is no affection it’s just a buzzing, bleak screen full of nothing it can’t hold me in the blackest of the night yet we live here you and I we think it’s real like a dollhouse with mini tables chairs shoes beds we eat, sleep, and love on Facebook neglecting our others in the daylight what the fuck are you doing in here? the screen says hike a mountain drink the clouds make love to tender thighs put buttercups in your hair draw a map of your own star constellations no! I yell grouchily there’s something in here I’m sure sometimes I feel it it coats the loneliness for a little while like a red pill after a bottle of Ardbeg whisky like being loved after chasing the loveless and we sit up all night scrolling like zombies waiting for our screens to give us what we need and they never will and we’ll never leave. * FUCK BUCKET LISTS fuck figuring it all out and having our shit together before we land our penguin carve a pebble out of whatever you have it’ll do better yet, be your own goddamn penguin we are constantly trying to be so together make x amount of money, live in x neighborhood, drive x car, be x weight after I’ve made X I’ll meet Z be your own Z! live vicariously through yourself no one is good enough to do the things you wish to do, other than you. * LISTEN UP YOU BIG BOYS the old boys’ club no longer belongs in shop culture take your sexism your chauvinism your homophobia your alpha testosterone your racism your porn your harassment your sabotage your alienation your ostracization your threats your pack mentality your sexual jokes about me eating a banana home show up with your wrenches like the rest of us and do your fucking job what about the ones who won’t listen? the old boys who laugh at feminism? the men who don’t take equality seriously? some of them will never change some of them will just die as dicks but some of us are willing to change and that’s why we stand up to speak. * YOUR WORDS ARE NO GOOD TONIGHT You like classical music? he says with a slip of a smile that mocks playfully he looks around for my brown loafers and reading glasses yes I reply not moving an inch there’s too many words in this world in my head in my heart on the streets on the telephone in the coffee shops and the restaurants and the mechanic garages everywhere I go there are words and sometimes it feels so good to turn them off to let strings dance trumpets sing cellos groan violins speak my brain needs classical music like my lungs need air now fetch me Brahms or Beethoven or Vivaldi and touch me only with the words of your lips and the syllables of your thumbs your words are no good tonight. * I’M NOT AFRAID TO TELL YOU that I am beautiful for being at home in my heart and heart’s shoes did not come to me at birth I’ve unravelled, searched done copious amounts of work I’ve travelled and done seen and asked participated in this planet my growth I’ve sat with my shadow soul spelunked The beauty that we hear of cannot always be seen but it can be felt in the eyes of the ones that shout sunshine the ones with no fear in their hearts that aren’t threatened by the brilliant existence the magnificence of the others that roam beside us Beauty is seeing that woman there saluting her in her exquisiteness knowing we see that brilliance because we, too are at home in our whole souls bodies, too So if this is vain I am vain if this is narcissistic I am a narcissist I would rather be all of these things than shake with fear in my heart whenever a beautiful woman walks into a room So I will say it again now listen with softer ears I am beautiful. * SEX & WINE FOR BREAKFAST We collapse taking each other’s bodies for hours the bottle of red there is half empty I pull you in and taste spice the cabin is full of sweat heat from limbs and hearts sweet moans blend with the rushing of the creek falling of the rain we’ve made love here and there in circles, on that chair those stairs come here falling into a bed naked of sheets pulling each other back down for air over and over should we get sheets? fuck the sheets I’ll lie anywhere with you just keep touching me with those hands that mouth the daylight breaks does having sex count as sleeping? I take you again your body ripples trembles falls apart beneath me. * I AM NOT MY SADNESS I am not my joy I am not my jealousy I am not my head held high I am not my insecurity I am not guilt nor am I my anger these emotions are visitors to the vessel that I am and I love them and feel them and don’t attach stories to them or identify with them they simply come to sit on my stoop I drink tea with Anger and I hear her rage I see her flex her biceps and her blood boil I see her face popping and arms swinging I invite Sadness to sit beside me she is blue everything she touches turns blue I see the weight of her heart as the words fall slowly out in tears and then I kiss her goodnight Joy is next and she is standing and talking quite loudly with her hands as she tells a grandiose story with gleaming eyes and laughter shaking the mountains around me she is light and I feel relief at her presence she is like sunshine and strawberries picked from the baseball field on a Sunday behind my grandmother’s house eaten with dirty hands And then Guilt shows up dragging his feet as he comes to lean beside me on the white post and the weight of his existence oozes and draws the energy from the earth he is born with a heaviness he does not know how to shake and I do not try explain or heal or fix him I just let him stand beside me as the sun goes down drinking the glumness that he is prescribing Jealousy shows up before I’ve had coffee she is wearing leather pants and she hisses at the world while she sways her hips holding a cigarette between her red lips she seethes and spits she is fire Soon after is her sister in crime Insecurity Insecurity walks tentatively up the steps she’s not sure if she’s welcome even after I’ve welcomed her in she doesn’t want to sit for she is so afraid of taking up space and so I let her shake beside me I just love her like that And then Arrogance rolls up in a Mercedes-Benz he revs his engine with the tenacity of a child longing to be seen and instead of rolling my eyes and telling him he misses the love of his mother he never received and that her love isn’t out here in this world that he won’t get it like that with his loud car it’s inside and he must sit still to find it I see him I smile I welcome his loudness his boisterous presence into my arms I take his broad shoulders and stiff neck reaching for the stars into my heart You see you and I are not our emotions they are visitors passing in the day and in the night And all you must do when they come knocking is welcome them inside with the knowingness that they truly never stay forever if you just honor and feel them with presence and love them through. * THE DARK SIDE OF PARADISE Palm trees brown warm skin red hot sunsets that kiss the bottom of the sea pura vida pura vida except don’t you dare go to the beach at night because there are dozens of nameless women raped in between the trunks of the palm trees One man held down by two men while his girlfriend was raped before his eyes they were just walking back from dancing wanted to watch the white moon in paradise it was dealt with not by the police but by the two men who held down the rapist and drowned him the next week I am not sad he drank foam instead of air It’s paradise except for the hotel with the large lizard white dirty walls window curtains stained with dust I never liked the energy in there steered clear found out the owner was found dead feet sticking out of a washing machine It’s paradise except for those three women on their quad who got mugged and raped by the river filled with crocodiles in broad daylight did you hear their screams? It’s paradise except for those young kids who get hopped up on cocaine and pull women off the dance floor at the full moon parties or when they go to the bathroom and take their turn inside of her while the techno screams It’s paradise except for the young girl who a man tried to lure into the bushes while I surfed with her dad in the sea she got out but whose daughter didn’t? It’s paradise except for those women who are too afraid to hold the men accountable because this isn’t the USA and the cops will ask you what were you wearing? I am mad at them anyway for leaving on big jet planes letting rapists roam free in the sunshine leering and waiting It’s paradise except for that morning I was checking the surf at 5 AM and an Argentinian ran by me screaming there’s a man with a gun there’s a man with a gun go back to your house close your windows It’s paradise except when you get chased out of town shot and bleed dry in the streets I love it here except when I feel the screams muffled by the hands of men as their entitled dicks ram in and out of a vagina that they claimed unasked and then can walk into a café in broad daylight the next day while people only whisper rapist and give him his change If you want to make a crime against the government I don’t give a fuck Rob a bank? it’s money I don’t give a fuck But if you sell a woman’s body on the market mug a child and drug her keep her in a room where men in old blue t-shirts pay $5 to fuck her before she’s hit puberty If you rape and take the body of a woman that is not yours I give a fuck Rape is unforgivable in my eyes My mamma said if anyone ever raped me she would kill them even if it meant going to jail for the rest of her life and my soul agrees if you take the flesh of a woman that is not yours may you burn in the red-hot coals of a hell I don’t believe in. * Zizikas my father says as the deafening roar of a million insects takes over my ears They only live for a few weeks so they are talking all the time they have to say everything before they die. * I WILL NOT WAIT TO DIE TO BEGIN TO LIVE What are you doing right now? Go outside Go Go stand in the goddamn sunshine smile at someone see the people around you see the pink flowers that hang heavy the red poppies that reach for the heavens feel the air in your lungs and be grateful they rise and fall on their own that your heart is beating strongly in your chest without assistance call the people you love, hell, get in a car and drive to their doorstep and remind them how much you love them we are not here to waste time not living, breathing, moving, loving we are not just here to work, eat, shit, sleep, make money, spend money—we are here to love please go outside right now and look at the mountains use your phone to extend some love instead of emails it’s not a request today—it’s a plea do not wait to die, to begin to live. * “Why do you love her?” they ask “She’s like sunshine,” I say sunshine that blasts through the rain as it collects in between the cobblestone streets at dusk where the pink flowers hang richly in the orange light their bleeding hearts unable to raise their faces to the sun. * CHARLIE A haze of tired faces ten hours spent in traffic jams Jesus, give us a break the ’stache of a ’70s porn star shirt unbuttoned gold rimmed glasses bronzed chest a triangle on his left arm the eight-pack only twenty-something-year-olds have goddamn I’m not done loving hot twenty-something-year-olds with butts of steel from surfing I’ll grow old and date old men eventually there he is in between the sea of blues and reds Waldo at the end of a 24-hour flight cold airplanes and hot buses we drink a bottle of $6 rum what else is there to do? take kisses that would taste like salt if we could touch it with our feet I like your poems he says good, you’ll likely be in one quit your job tomorrow pack up and leave come be with me there’s hope in my heart there’s always hope when there’s a man I could love there’s also a bag of 100 pills in his flowered shirt pocket it’s fear and loathing in Costa Rica and I’m cashing out. * CELEBRITIES Leaving the cabin in three weeks what if the words stop? I came here and drowned couldn’t get the words out fast enough they flew by keeping me from sleep to scribble down a line a title for something there are no words for yet but they will come I’m a slave driver for the words they live in the walls knock abruptly I’m lucky 10 months sitting at this table words words words I’ve created like a mad woman some of my best I could give a damn how it’s received it’s not why one should write 300 views, 600 thousand views it doesn’t matter the only thing that matters is getting the words out so I can breathe It pays better when the people like it I like to eat—I guess that’s all it’s worth A friend told me the other day I had become a “figure” a celebrity with a pen of sorts why? because someone you know that I don’t know came across my words on a dinky screen? Celebrities are just people I don’t give a damn if someone is famous I’ll give the man the time of day bagging my groceries or a rock star all the same we’re all just doing our dance The stars in your eyes are dangerous yes, those—shed them imaginary pedestals are useless come down from there, darling we’re all down here it’s better here A young woman replied to my cabin sublet ad said she was “starstruck” I was puzzled flattered for a nanosecond annoyed for a minute then told her I wake up like everyone else with Alice Cooper mosh pit hair drool stains on my pillows breath that smells like Khaosan Road There are no celebrities just people doing the shit they love or hate sometimes people love what they love back Then there’s the people who value sitting next to said “celebrities” who flake off with a desperation that reeks to be seen by cameras with no soul be a corner in a beauty rag We should wipe our asses with those selling crap to those who will eat it seek company that makes you rich fills you those ones are the real celebrities. * There’s assholes dancing and there’s assholes wishing they were dancing. * AND THIS IS HOW IT IS we go home and we shut our doors we don’t sleep with them open for fear the world sees in really sees us sees our pain sees our mess sees the things we can’t brush into place the art we create we’re too afraid to show the world see our broken hearts we don’t open our doors wide turn the spotlight on and say, “I haven’t done laundry in a week. My girlfriend left me. I’m not sleeping.” we just shut the white door with a blue handle and lie in bed staring at the ceiling all night. * I KEEP MY GRIEF IN A BOX it’s covered in duct tape it’s glued shut I’ve tied it up with string I’ve covered it in cement I’ve hid it beneath the bed so far below that even I can’t find it some days Every once in a while the box shows up it opens itself and takes me to the floor sliding down a white fridge and I try and tell it to go away that I’ve already stopped that I’m doing the best to live that I don’t have time for it tonight that I can’t do it right now It opens itself up anyways and takes me to my knees and I want to cry and thrash and scream but it’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday and I’m living in suburbia and if I scream and throw the dishes like I am in my head someone will hear me and come So I put on your songs and I lie in sorrow and cry and cry and cry until there is snot on my face and my eyes are swollen and bright blue and I just lie there nothing will bring you back and then I do my best to force my grief back into the box hide all the things I can run into that remind me of you and try to go on living for a little while longer. * I wish the world to smell like cedar. For the only struggle to be with spider webs from paths untouched by human feet. To fall asleep by a fire that cackles right there, on the floor, in the wood chips and the ash. I wish to wake up each morning and pee in the woods. Brush my teeth looking out at a lake still sleeping. Spider webs glistening by a white bar of soap on the dock. I wish to make kicking horse coffee in a blue tin cup and read book after book lying in the bottom of the canoe as it is still tied up. I wish to wake up to the chill of the morning, not forced heat that makes me claustrophobic to breathe—crisp air, cleaned by the hemlocks and spruces outside my bedroom window. I wish to wake up and water the flowers, barefoot and bare bummed. Light the kettle on a blue oven and pull open a door that stinks of cedar and time. I would like you to be here, but if you’re not—I will marvel, rest and play with the woman of the hour I came to see—mamma earth. * I am like a fish in love with a bird wishing I could fly * DID HE MAKE YOU COFFEE IN THE MORNING? they come home rumpled and frayed hair full of fingers from the night before back of the neck and hair dried with sweat hours of sex all over their souls we look up and all know I cock an eyebrow “Did he make you coffee in the morning?” The good ones own a silver espresso maker they don’t cheap out buy the ground beans you can tell in the color too if it’s watery a big brand name jug of cheap shit or whole beans reeking bitterly The really good ones don’t need to ask they just open one eye kiss the nape of your neck and say “I’ll make the coffee” They know you take two creams honey and they walk you home after the coffee proud to hold your hand and let the world know they loved you all night. * DOMESTICALLY DATING You’ve heard the story you go for a beer next thing you know she’s got three brown suitcases her pink square shampoo bottles in your shower skip first dates let’s share toothbrushes go grocery shopping run errands iron each other’s clothes get food poisoning and take care of one another can you pass the toilet paper? where’s the iron? laundry detergent? meet the friends before we’ve stayed up all night having raunchy sex you’re a little chaotic he says you have no idea scrubbing cold egg off the morning frying pan CBC radio plays Beethoven, Mozart, Bach we could be wearing our matching slippers stirring sugar and milk into white coffee cups without making eye contact because we’ve seen each other for the last 192 hours. * TOMORROW FEELS A LONG WAYS AWAY Go away outside world I do not understand you Go away birds Go away sunshine Go away belly I do not desire to eat Go away work Go away to-dos Go away messages and phone calls I cannot sleep any longer, and I do not wish to be awake I do not wish to sit numbly beside the window and hear the garbage truck in the alley I do not wish to hear the bee trapped in the window buzzing and I do not wish to save him sitting numbly all night listening to your songs you are dead, yet you sing still for me reading emails reading messages wondering why the fuck this is happening what do we do now? work? I cannot work there are no words I can write that are not heavy and sunken with the grief in my soul I cannot write anything that will not reek heartache and loss I cannot get in my car and go to the bank I cannot move and walk and speak I am stuck on a dead head floating in the water I am stuck on music you wrote when you wished to die I am stuck that you didn’t hit the fucking emergency button this is the lowest I have felt in my life today, tomorrow feels a long ways away where do I get the strength to go on? where do I gather forgiveness? where is my joy? all I can see is pink and blue ribbons and a black walkie-talkie marked with a D. * THOSE EYES COULD MAKE A SANE WOMAN WILD & A WILD WOMAN SANE I wish to remove the steel guitar from your fingers that strum in the pale evening sun I wish to place it on the floor beside your brown boots that have walked seven years I want to know you like those weathered boots do I want to reach across the couch and pull your head softly towards mine I wish not to rush this you are to be enjoyed to be opened slowly deliberately carefully I intend to kiss you and before I do I will write in circles about your eyes for the ocean knows not of eyes that will make its beauty shrink and the stars have not seen their maker the moon knows not of its match but I do those eyes could make a sane woman wild and a wild woman sane I would like to lie for two hours in white sheets ’til they are crumpled and torn from three sides of the bed with those green and hazel eyes. * I’M ON THE WAY TO KISS A MAN GOODBYE He asks to come with me he has a ride I smile like flies to honey except the kind of flies you don’t mind tall handsome long-haired non-Italian six-foot-something flies I’m on the way to kiss a man goodbye and it’s too soon to kiss another man hello little fly I see it in his eyes then the words come as I know they will can I take you on a micro date? ah a micro date where we look at the stars fumble between kisses? covered in sand on the beach? swim in the ocean? drink rum from the bottle? collapse upon one another wake to warm limbs and a sunrise? I’ve done that little fly and like I said I’ve got a man to kiss goodbye Can I just kiss you? I laugh I almost let him drown in my honey get drunk and dizzy I hug him goodbye tell him he can take me on a macro date if I ever make it to New York. * I WILL NEVER BE A WELL-BEHAVED WOMAN I would rather pass my days lying in the middle of dirt roads, staring at the full moon with a bottle of summer red in my palms. I would rather have kids when it suits me, not when society expects or throws shoulds. I would rather live in a hammock on a beach for six months, and write like my soul means it. I would rather be horribly broke at times, than married to a job because a mortgage payment has my ass on a hook. I would rather own moments, than investments. I would rather eat alone, than sit with women who bore me at “Wives’ Night.” I would rather swim naked with bioluminescence, have it fall like fireflies from my hair, my breasts, my back. I would rather do handstands naked in the moonlight when no one’s watching than pick bridesmaid dresses. I would rather drink seven-year-old rum from a sandy bottle, smell of smoke and ash than sit in church. I would rather learn from life than rack up debt, in a desk. I would rather drink the ocean, again and again—celebrate being madly alive. I would rather my love be defined by love itself, and nothing more or less. I do not need a ring on my finger to prove that I am in love. I would rather take the chicken bus, than spend useless money in safe-gated communities. Sit beside a goat, listen to reggaeton and eat green mango with sugar in a plastic bag sold from the woman who harasses the bus each time it stops. I do not need a degree to prove that I am intelligent. I do not need to own a piece of earth with some wood on top of it—to feel successful. No one truly owns the land, anyway—we just think we do. My savings account has diddly to do with my richness. I would rather sprawl my single ass out like a lioness each morning and enjoy each corner of my empty bed. I will take a job I love and freedom over a pension, any day. I will not work and work and work to live when my body is old and I am tired. Stocks are for people who get boners from money. Not everyone should have kids, and my eggs aren’t expiring. I will not drink the societal Kool-Aid on a bus, nor will I drink it on a train. Not on a plane, with a goat, in the rain, in the dark, in a tree, with a fox, in a box! I will not jump through society’s hoops and red tape, the treasure hunt in the rat race we chase. If we must have milestones—mine will be measured by how much joy I have collected at the end of each day and how often in this life I have truly, deeply, opened. Seek, see, love, do. * I WISH TO REST INTO YOU my love possibly collapse and I know we mustn’t fall for we must hold ourselves before we hold each other’s warm bodies in the night that bites where lovers lay but tonight my love I would like to collapse I would like to exhale and with it let go of all my fire all the do’s I would like to be a child in your arms and be held as if I could break. * TO MY LOVER I HAVEN’T QUITE MET YET I’d like for you to visit I say softly will you come in August? August is the fall of summer each ray of sunshine is fleeting and bittersweet on its way out demanding of you to love it even more so because of it Night nudges gently of fall’s arrival wool sweaters and socks come out of the closets I cut kindling for the fire my hands rediscovering the axe, knots and the smell of freshly cut cedar The euphoria has worn away by then we don’t run to each other with eyes made of love and stars instead we lie beside each other on the dock at dusk you bring a bottle of bourbon and I’ll build a boat we can pretend to fish with no real desire to catch or not catch anything and I’ll read us poetry as we gaze at the sky for our love isn’t hurried it doesn’t shy away unsure we’ve played, made love, had second doubts and made love again I choose you and you choose me and we meet here, together I curl into your t-shirt the soft one and press my ice-cold feet against your legs you yelp with shock and pull away before pulling me closer into your red beating heart to warm the night away We leave the lights on and read for a little while the moon is so distracting I don’t get much done but you do you wear glasses shirtless, letting your hairy bear chest free yellow beeswax candles burn softly I hold you in my eyes for my heart is paying attention. * TO MY LOVER I HAVEN’T QUITE MET YET (PART II) I’d like to lie with you and for each time we undress to marvel at the newness of each other’s skin to be the lovers that drink up love like they’re starving tasting stars and drinking moonlight I’d like to kiss you when the moon is full, or new or a quarter it doesn’t really matter I just want those lips I’d like for it to rain and listen to the tink tink as I count stars or for it to not rain and be sunny I’d like to hold you not because I’m cold but because I want to lie beside you I’d like to love you when the sun comes up to bathe in our light to drink coffee tangled in a messy joyous heap I’d like to make raspberries on your back and tickle you ’til you shove me off the bed I’d like to start the day laughing And I’d like to make love to you right there on the floor for my intent is to drink your existence. * I’LL TAKE MY COFFEE WITH A SIDE OF YOU My hair falls softly caressing the curves of my shoulder the smell of coffee runs up the stairs to greet you hummingbirds hover saying soft hellos to the flowers woven upon my balcony I push the French press down slowly letting the grains resist my urgency just milk, he says pitter patter falls the rain Jose Gonzalez fills the kitchen my denim shirt falls open carelessly buttoned I shiver the sun has not yet reached my cabin and the logs still hold the night The rain falls gently, then fast like Mother Nature’s fingertips drumming away on the roof where did the inside sheet run off to? I pull you close we are too tangled to start a fire drinking each other’s body heat murmuring nonsensical romance Nine days? it can’t be the creek beside my cabin rushes wildly tormented by the rain a woodpecker drills away in the distance all I feel is your lips drift upon my purple nipples my soul curls gasps in sweet delight tightens itself and lets go into the abyss strength within surrender kissing away hours fingertips glide between thighs pillows astray as we meet between the sheets I find your mouth again and again and again He leaves fresh cut wildflowers on every windowsill purple lilies on the doorstep whittles the day away palms full of splinters my heart warms quietly in my chest can one eat kisses? I’m starving for your lips and they just left mine. * COME TO MEXICO WITH ME the words exit his mouth and enter my heart all in one breath six days and we are already three months ahead can I keep you? I ask swigging the last bottle of tequila in this town fetched on a green bicycle by a man that all my heart is running face first into loving. * I AM SAD THIS MORNING the yellow sunflowers are sad my cold toes upon the hardwood floor are sad the roses refuse to smell sweetly this morning and my blue heart aches for I am unable to open I am unable to crack my heart in my chest for you and how I wish to if one could boss me into love it would be you if there was one person I wish I could open to it would be you and I’m not sure if I am for you and you deserve to be loved richly wholly not in small flutters so this morning my heart aches slowly and sadly in my chest. * AN ITALIAN ONCE TOLD ME there is very little between good poetry and bad poetry he says blowing smoke mixed with marijuana into the night filled with crickets and loneliness Each time the pen falls I wonder if the poem will be good or shit suppose I’ll never know so I’ll just keep writing. * SOMETIMES HITCHHIKING IS OKAY AND SOMETIMES IT ISN’T Sometimes you wind up in the back of a pick-up truck with two black dogs one kid a few rice sacks The back of a moto eating dust happy in the sunshine the worst they do is ask if you have a boyfriend you lie smile say goodbye Sometimes the man who picks you up in a silver SUV with blond hair sunglasses to mask eyes that would’ve stopped you asking for the ride and you stay calm knowing next time to listen closely to your gut I write stories he says fiction? I ask nonfiction? real life he replies my life is crazy no need to make anything up I don’t need to ask but I do we have a distance to cross and I’ve heard the best way to make friends with someone is to let them talk about themselves Short stories about a guy who robbed me so I locked him up messed him up real bad the cops came his family came no one fucks with me anymore I’m armed It’s not safe for you for women here So, it’s a true story? yes, I told you so he lets me out safe sometimes hitchhiking is okay and sometimes it isn’t. * IT’S JUST SEX he says my heart’s in a box and it won’t come out it did for a little while with you I felt but it’s back in there and it’s not coming out It would be quite complicated to meet me if you weren’t a feeler I’m all the feels all the time I still try to love those ones sometimes the ones who aren’t ready to be loved who crack their hearts open a little let me in for a week maybe two and then run into the night for empty legs and solitude in a bed that is vacant of love where their hearts won’t be bothered I still lie awake and think of you which is sad really you’re likely in a pillow full of blonde hair that smells like sex and I spend the night trying to compose a key with my words to unlock your heart for good. * APPARENTLY I WRITE THE BEST POEMS when I’m hungover after 4 hours’ sleep two glasses of wine tequila Chivas neat fucking a man with blond hair in a ponytail with blue eyes on white concrete before I never see him again. * EVERY TIME THE PLANE SHAKES enough that the fasten seat belt sign blinks on and “Please return to your seats” plays overhead I point my finger at the Gods and say strictly I have a lot of bad ass shit to create still I am not going down like this you hear? and then the plane settles and I take a sip of my shitty airplane coffee with a red plastic straw to the left this life is for living I am a visionary juicing our world to create the sustenance of my dreams there is no time to go down until I have lit this world on fire with my art. * ENLIGHTENED TOILET PAPER I don’t want to write love ballads enlightened toilet paper full of insights and ahas there are frogs wearing crowns they have built with their egos croaking to people who are drinking the spiritual Kool-Aid of the 21st century I am bored over here reading wannabe Rumi’s so what shall I write now? love is grande romanticism is a fairytale I can build easily in my head but what of truth? I would rather tell you quit the degree fuck the piece of paper if you’re not going to use it get up and leave you don’t need it You don’t need the house you don’t need the diamond you might die before you reap the benefits of that pension you don’t need the child unless you want to stay up listening to screaming ’til 4 AM to give your mother a granddaughter dogs are better kids anyway skip the minivan fuck suburbia screw Costco pick up what gives you joy and put down everything else I would rather piss off the blue collars twist the panties of the white collars confuse the beliefs of those who have chameleoned their beliefs from their parents why do you believe that? you were only meant to adopt the genetics of your parents not their closed-mindedness not their fear Don’t simply continue doing something just because you’re successful at it you can be good at all kinds of things be good at what gives you joy Question it all you have a law degree good for you if it makes you unhappy leave You’ve bought a house with a big ol’ white fence that wraps around the block stinking of money lean back against it one day with a push lawnmower and realize you don’t want this life sell it give it away we are only prisoners if we fall victim to the choices we have made that are parched dry of the authenticity of our souls I will go out burning like a light on my deathbed shouting bullshit at the falsity of this world and I will continue to do so every day until then with my pen. * I am fire if you want something salty and sweet with no opinion I am not the woman for you I spit flames often. * I am the tenderloin of New York steaks and you fell and slipped your dick in a striploin. * More men like you than any woman I know yes but none of them want to keep me. * POEMS ARE WHERE THE PAIN GOES I do not write poetry with a heart full of joy I write the sorrow so that it can be kept somewhere other than my heart I write of my pain when I am left I write of my anger at the wrongs I see on this planet I write of love that does not become love but instead is flushed down the toilet left unread I write loneliness I write blind with rage I write the justice I do not see I write the ribs of the orange dog begging for chicken who is not fed a bone and falls asleep hungry The poetry that falls from these hands is not a love story with doors being opened first kisses that smell like expensive perfume These poems are large bites of purple lips that are found in the limbs of sex that is useless and empty of love These poems rise from the trenches of despair heartache, confusion, grief and pretend to be fierce and strong meanwhile I shiver and quake stay awake at night peacocking a liberation drowned in falsity hopeful strength only in validation I am not strong I am hurt licking my wounds alone always alone with my pen Do not be fooled poets are cowards who turn weakness into a dance heartache into independence loneliness into courage It’s all yellow tail feathers lies and deceit we are all heartbroken and loveless grasping for control over that which we can never control with our pens and you are the puppets we pull at the bottom of the strings how does it feel down there? you may taste bites of my world but I am up here weaving a story you will never truly see Oh yes you are digesting regurgitated experiences down there so you never know even when you think you know you are simply knowing an experience of an experience Am I strong? or am I alone? is my sadness beautiful or it is a pain so deep you would leave if you could see? am I empowered or am I afraid? Today I will let you in I am afraid of intimacy I choose the ones who are empty of love to validate the victimization of my fatherless pain I truly wish a knight I truly wish to be kept close to a heart that beats yet I fight the ones who try and love me and chase the ones who never will and then I write pretty little poems which are full of pain to you and it continues. * Forgive me hands for I have held everything but my self. * HE IS HERE I want to wake up beside you the words exit my brain onto blue and white cotton sheets full of elephants and quiet my heart I feel as if I’ve eavesdropped on something I shouldn’t know just yet but they are here they are here in an all-white café with a man who feels like a magnet all the dust motorcycles yelling fall away they are here on a green bicycle through glacier eyes in a photograph they are here in a way that makes me wonder if any of the men I’ve kissed or loved or kept have really made sense for every molecule in my being smiles when I think of him and I don’t wish to know to understand I just know he’s here and that I look forward to rolling over on a Tuesday afternoon and seeing closed eyelashes his blond hair and hearing a red heart that beats beside me in these blue and white sheets. * So, what’s your job? I take slabs of my heart and share them with the world for a living. * I’m not sure if I’m more afraid of being loved or being left sounds like you’ve had a lot of left stories and not a lot of love stories. * They did not take your power you gave it to them don’t give it to them. * What they don’t tell you as a little girl in the fairytale books is that sometimes you kiss a frog and it turns into a prince and you spend three hot years with him in love and then one day he cheats on you and turns back into a toad and you must chuck him back in the pond and just keep fucking swimming. * You can’t even make eye contact with me no he says I’m terrified to look at you because I could fall in love with you in 24 hours So instead he sticks his dick in empty holes void of meaningful connections and numbs with cigarettes, cocaine and whisky. * It is as if there is a heat pulling me from the waist into him we are talking and moving and my hands move an orange fork towards my mouth yet a part of my soul has climbed into him I am on top of him with the wetness in between my thighs with my tongue against his tongue like vines discovering the heat of our mouths his hands underneath my layers fumbling and falling with excitement at the softness of a skin unfelt I can barley take it yet I nod and take another bite of chicken vindaloo and stare out at the white of the ocean and pretend there is not a magnet of energy between our bodies requesting me to throw the agreements I have and haven’t made into the wind or the ocean and dive in. * WHAT KIND OF WOMAN ARE YOU? he asks over a shirt that is blue with red Hawaiian flowers his open hairy chest breathing into the conversations that hum beside a yellow half moon in a rocky restaurant full of green plastic chairs I smile blow the grey smoke of a cigar through my stained red lips I believe in dessert before dinner I pray that Christians break up with Christ throw their purity rings off a bridge marriage disgusts me politics bore me children irritate me I wipe my ass with newspapers shit full of fear I think religion is all the same we just change the name of the one we worship If I had a father and he died I would spend his will on hookers and cocaine I drink more coffee than water I like when men lick me in circles tease me between my second lips I’ll kiss the inside of your thighs that have never seen sunlight licking and moving slowly up your waist taking all of you in my mouth before the sun is awake I shimmy and shake my hips low for I love to feel the power of the earth between my legs I scare the shit out of those who are lying to themselves and attract those who wouldn’t dare but hesitate drowned in shameful curiosity I keep company only of those that are If you leave me I pause take a sip of a silver can full of some beer barely worth drinking flashing my blue eyes in the dark I’ll be fine he smiles waves we’ll get the cheque. * He rips my white body suit to the side in a parking lot under the night sunshine of traffic lights and sticks two fingers inside of me it isn’t the hole that needs filling but it’ll do. * I would like to lie hip locked with you until the dusk crickets and the drunk roosters roar. * I AM A WOMAN OF DISTINCTION Recklessly beautiful and untamed—my heart is splayed wide open for I not only trust the process, but I trust the force in which each one of my feet hits the ground and my ability to maneuver through the joys and grief I face each day. I walk tall, taller than an old cypress tree because I am at home in my skin— my self-worth lives in each nook and cranny of my spine. It is not attached to exterior what-have-you’s like money, a piece of paper, a house, a car, this world’s approval, a ring or success. My success is in presence. I am present in the humans I stumble upon like heartbeats at first light and in the night. I salsa dance bare bummed with bronze skin and white cheeks—let the music sway and bend and dip my spirit with the grace of a dozen fireflies drunk on the moon’s wine. I am dripping in salt, browned from the sunshine and barefoot in my beauty. I am not afraid to tell you that I am beautiful because I have done the work to be at home in my soul’s skin. I do not shrink to accommodate the insecurities of those around me, but stand tall to remind them gently, why crouch? My body may be a meat bag, a vessel for the magnificence I hold inside but I cherish each scar on my chin, each freckle, each voluptuous sun bleached curl, each inch of my breasts. I walk with my head held high when I walk into a room because I know there is space for me in this world—however I may come. I show this world my tears and my laughter, unashamed. I know better than to try and fix or heal the suffering of this world. I know that by healing my suffering, I heal this world. I am a woman of distinction and I am not afraid to love you before you are ready. I am not afraid to move faster or slower than the expectations we lay on vulnerability and opening. I open at my will. I open at the first drop of a breeze, at a smile from the man sitting with a green top hat that I pass in a taxicab. I open fearlessly and sweetly and ferociously with all the might I can for what good is living if we are not loving? I am here to love and love I will. I am a woman of distinction, and I am not a victim of circumstance—I feel when things are out of alignment and I move from them with as much grace as I enter. I show up for this world. I set boundaries with ease that honor me. I understand that no is self-love and everything after no is unworthiness. I am worthy, darling—oh so deliciously worthy. I am authentic as all hell and can taste bullshit from a mile away. I spit out societal Kool-Aid laughing and write my own bible. I ground—ground through movement, through dance, through the sea. I drink the ocean for breakfast and kiss the red dirt for dessert. I do not keep my freedom in a cage that requires six whiskies to be let loose. I dance and shimmy and shake and love through my life. I am a woman of distinction—you will feel me when I walk into the room. * I could have stayed that morning and kissed you until August. * IF I GET LONELY, I’LL POUR AN ARDBEG UIGEADAIL AND MASTURBATE And some of the men show up charming with grandiose gestures with big promises of vaulting moments and then slink off into the night like the black cat I read about in that children’s book never to be seen again and I just sit on a white staircase hitting the butt of a cigarette into a tin can watching the roundness of the moon that is not quite full and go fuck where did that one go? and I know I drive them into the night running screaming in the daylight as if there is coal under their feet because I breathe a fire that not many men can stomach and all these new agey bullshit courses say I’m too masculine and that I need to embrace my feminine furnish my house with a pink blanket walk in my hips receive not pursue but I am what I am and in the daytime I am building a fucking empire that requires a facilitator and a doer and a mover a shaker who makes choices with her gut I am not a minion that sits quietly on the sidelines I am up at night under the covers creating plans of attack of how to throw my art ferociously and impactfully into this world so no I am not in the kitchen using a pink bowl stirring cupcake batter and being in my feminine and sometimes I facilitate the fuck out of love and try and make the moves because I don’t have time to sit around and be pursued I’m taking bites of this world with each exhale out of my stained red lips so I guess if they run into the night I can smack their ass on the way out and find a man who likes to be chosen who likes to be pursued right back and if he doesn’t well, fuck him I’ll just sit here and smoke cigarettes in between building a goddamn empire and taking over this world and if I get lonely I’ll pour an Ardbeg Uigeadail and masturbate. * DEAR MEN if a woman smiles at you slyly like she knows some secret you have only brushed up against in the dreams that are sometimes sweet yet always fleeting run run as far away as you can for she just wants to eat your heart from the inside out and finish your soul off for dessert. * HIS JOB He sacrificed himself for you in this life so you could learn how you deserve to be loved his job was to love the soles of your feet that have never felt the ground his job was to love your lungs that had been drinking water not knowing they needed air his job was to give your body the rest and the release of pleasure it had given up on his job was to allow you to feel the rise and fall and shudder as you experienced the joy within making love yes making love love love not sex his job was to awaken the parts of your spirit that were not aware they were sleeping his job was to pull you out from under the bed so you could see your whole light his job was to remind you that loving you is not a burden but everything he was born on this planet to do for his hands were forged to hold you each inch of your flesh and red beating heart with soft might his job was not to be with you forever no his job was to be the one who loved you so sweetly and so deeply that you are unable to deny the love you denied yourself your whole life. * They drink me like water they do not know they need and buzz to me like flies drunk off honey because I am a real thing in this fake world. * Quit distracting me wait do do distract me because I’ve waited for twenty-six years for the stars to shimmy the moon to make her moves the sun to redden after the fourth eclipse for you to walk into my life and steal every ounce of attention I ever had and ever will. * WHY ISN’T HE HERE? I ask the rum or the couch or the heater that creaks as it slows down at 10:28 PM on a Saturday night because you’re not ready I reply oh, alright and I walk across the old hardwood floor and floss my teeth of leftover basil from pasta and go to sleep without sex I miss the sex it’s been 3 months there’s cobwebs on my vagina but sex without love is like banging your funny bone it just doesn’t hit the spot. * You know what going mad takes? a bottle of rosé wine a Tuesday night and a man who says he doesn’t miss your presence. * THE POET IN ME can see you writing me saying I was afraid I ran away I’m sorry I told you I usually run away, do you remember? and I would and I would forgive you with urgency for it’s the most right right has ever felt so far and I have run from love more times than I would like to admit I can see myself landing in Puerto Vallarta in two weeks with brown and blonde curls as big as the Indian Ocean toppling over one another with excitement to see you I can feel the trickle of sweat under a white shirt that is unbuttoned three times billowing in the breeze that comes when you’re a poet and can paint it all at your palms I can see you and your glacier blues waiting for me there you’re wearing that light blue shirt and you are different but the same hearts don’t age like cheese or nice wine but we do I can see myself laughing with your parents your dad brushing the grey of his hair your mother likes me all mothers like me I have a kind heart you do too I see us on airplanes packing toothbrushes and laptops telephone calls late at night when we are gone we may go places but it doesn’t it won’t for when it is real it vibrates and hums quietly in the night through the days over oceans and mountains and cities blowing black fog into the trees Yes, I’m going there I can see us on a small yellow float plane flying over the green and blues there’s a yellow large mop of a dog with a rusted collar a blue 6’4” retro fish perhaps a fishing rod I’ve never been fishing you know My fingers loosely hold yours I can see us sleeping in a green tent in Fryatt Valley cold toes pressed against your legs I would like to take you there I would like to show you Canada someday not right now you’re not ready but someday I would like to show you all kinds of things drink coffee in a blue tin can and shower in the yellow and pink limestone waterfall we will need to hoist our food up every night into a tree for bears and cougars you’d like that I can see you chopping wood through a window that has seen twenty years of rain I can see a wool grey blanket and a roaring fire fed by cedar I can see my heart burning beside it for you light a fire in me I can see the back of your blond head on a white pillow underneath a bug net beside me I can feel the weight of your arm as you wake up and pull me inside you I can even see you sitting next to me on this blue seat today in 32 F passing by the turquoise greens of Miami watching white clouds and a world pass by we would drink black coffee and I would massage your right hand that you hurt as you are as hard on your body as this is on my heart The poet in me can see all of these things for I have the imagination of Picasso and the fingers of Frida I can go anywhere with my heart and these words it is why I breathe but you are right there is only black coffee and I am alone missing you foolishly and sweetly writing this poem. * I AM COLLECTING MEN like flower petals in Bali pink ones white ones they lay in my bed stomach breathing into the night hair stinking of salt bodies full of a warmth I wish to drink and drink like an endless cup I am collecting white teeth smiles hair flying by on a scooter as the world passes by. * I am surprised to see so many beautiful girls traveling alone he says brave doesn’t have a gender I say. * FORGET COLLEGE find mentors to work with beside under for who teach you their ways wisdom is experience books only give you knowledge the importance of the piece of paper is retiring university is like the military we don’t need it I promise we’re just spoonfed bullshit of fear of validation qualify yourself to follow your dreams write your own piece of paper with each stroke of your life you don’t need a desk or a $30,000 loan instead find those who catch your spirit and learn from them as much as you possibly can. * I AM MY OWN CUP OF TEA I am easy to love like water to your body air to your lungs sunshine to your skin I am composed of a soul sweat you have surely never tasted of stories and skin that Zeus reached down from the heavens and sewed himself of sweetness and thighs and lips that men have painted and will continue to talk about and make art about when I am grey and this world is young I encompass paint brushes that live in my brain that speak daily the wonders and sorrows of this world I do not discuss people or events, I discuss intentions that I walk with fire and bravery and might there is curiosity and relentless joy in the left corner of my eye and a wide-open heart in a love story with this world in my right it doesn’t matter if you drink me I am my own cup of tea. * AFTER YOU What are you doing to me? I am like a teenager he grabs the flesh of my ass with his entire mouth I laugh loudly why is this funny? I’m serious what will there be after you? you have the most feminine body I have ever touched I’m going to need to become a nun after you because nothing can compare to this. * Who says feminists hate men? I love men the only bashing of men I do is with my vagina. * TRUSTAFARIAN he asks no welfare I reply but maybe if I had a trust fund I could have built my castle faster so I could invite all the trolls up for tea Would you like a cup? or would you like to stay down there and continue to yell your projections insecurities and fear on my walls? He drops his head sugar please I hand him a brown cup of tea My mom… I know I reply we are all wounded children yelling at this world for the love we did not receive from our parents he lifts the right side of his face in silent agreement and we stir our tea. * You have little feet he says you know what they say about little feet I reply what? he asks confused little vaginas. * I FEEL HIS HAND UPON MY LEG I felt his eyes before his hand I feel his words before he speaks them his black hood is covering half his face his abs breathe in the night what do you write? poetry about what? would you like to read one? I ask will you read it to me? no, that’s why I’m a writer he laughs I hand him ‘mamma didn’t raise no fucking princess’ he reads it he hands it to the woman with white hair and glass frames next to him you’re liberal he says you have no idea the lifeguard who saw me surf naked at 10 AM today has an idea. * I believe that a woman is born with a type of orgasm and a type of a kiss his words echo on a white rooftop in Fuerteventura I hold those words in beautiful stillness in my heart for truth rings like church bells no matter the day the moment drinking clarity is something we cannot deny ourselves when it comes. * I MUST GIVE IT TO THEM SLOWER shouldn’t I? it is a question that desires more than silence I open the iron locks on my wooden window and speak to the yellow moon your heart? she replies as she smokes a drag of a passing shooting star oh dear no give it as slowly or as fast as it happens we are all making marks on souls with the teeth of our hearts and if they cannot handle a bite they do not deserve a kiss. * BE YOUR OWN GODDAMN KNIGHT Love isn’t coming to sweep you off your feet—it isn’t. Don’t sit by the door and listen for the hum of a black motorcycle as it makes its way to your doorstep—he’s not coming. He’s not coming on a horse or a plane, by bike or on his feet—he’s not coming. He’s not coming to say the things you want to hear in the crevices of your open heart—he’s not ready yet. He’s not coming to bury you in the whites of your pillows and rest his head in the softness of your breasts—he’s too busy chasing a dream that does not carry the flesh and heat and heart of love. He is not ready for a woman of heart who cries with each beat that she opens. He’s not coming to put a ring on your finger and a baby in your belly—he’s too busy chasing sex and drugs and women who are passing to need to feel the tangibility of tenderness. He’s not coming to bring you another half of you—so be the whole fucking thing. Don’t sit on the sidelines and think that love will be the band aid of the loneliness that sneaks in—be alone. Be wildly, deliciously alone. Sweep your own ass off its feet. * I DID NOT BRING YOU HERE TO MAKE LOVE TONIGHT I do not wish you to remove the blackness of my bra and taste my pink flesh with your lips. I did not call upon you to press my breast upon your breast and tongue-kiss into the night. I did not ask you to meet me, so we could re-dance a dance we’ve done. I know where you step and I stand. The love we made was sweet and salty and there are poems and songs and art that we will have tangibly, long after I have left this cabin and you are gone. They are written and hang from the walls, the ceilings, the old hardwood floors that creak. They are in the moans, in the red candle wax with no wicks left. They are in the records that we’ve played, the wine that we’ve drank and the bed that I sleep in. They surface like black and white movies, reeling slowly in my brain when I hear your left shoe fall on the floor. Although we have been lovers, and could be again, I did not bring you here to make love. I brought you here to love me. Not with your lips or your hands, your brown arms with hair golden from the spring sun, but your heart. I brought you here to peer into your soul and see if we are a love story worth breathing on the embers for. If I wish to open my heart, to you, again. If we have more to write and say and do and be and go and live and love. So, no, I do not wish you to carry me, leaving my white cotton shirt upon the banister to the bedroom we have made love in. My skin smells of coconut and I know we would make love so sweetly the moon may reach for a cloud to cover her ears, for she cannot bear to know such a thing. I do not wish you to kiss the skin above my waist with your tongue. I do not wish you to embrace me with those arms. I do not wish you to think me naked. Sex is easy and love is hard. So do not reach for me with lust that is expiring as the dusk crickets move through yellow spring flowers in the fields below. Do not bring your desires empty of a sweetness that lasts to my doorstep. I am waiting for love. And although I am free, and a lover of passion and sex without shame or judgment—just for the heat in my belly and warmth in between my legs—I do not wish to have sex with you tonight. I may not need a ring, or white dresses, or papers with signatures—but there is one thing I need from you tonight. So come here, if you will, so I may hold you, beside my red beating heart and the crackling of the fire. But you must promise to toss away the lust and the wishes and the wants. I am waiting to hold someone in my heart, before I take them between my freckled thighs. * We aren’t afraid of heights; we are afraid of falling. We aren’t afraid of love, we’re afraid of being heartbroken—of anguish, of being alone. We aren’t afraid of intimacy—we’re afraid if we show our whole selves to this world the world won’t like it. That once we are open we may be left. We aren’t afraid of flying—we’re afraid of not having control if something goes wrong, we’re afraid of dying. Darling, I hope you risk. I hope you fall so you can only see the jump wasn’t as big as you thought it was. I wish the ground to hit your feet and see your smile and your tears when you discover the space that was there all along. Darling, I hope you love—love so hard you may grieve for years and not because you’re weak or you’re soft but because you opened your heart with ferocious might and once the salt of the tears has run from your blood I wish you to exhale and fall into the heart of someone new. Risk—darling, risk. * I’M NOT BUILT FOR THE CITY I’m ungrounded by the red cars, yellow taxicabs whizzing by, the people honking, their car windows unrolled and music blasting. Cigarette smoke being blown from red painted lips in front of bars with beer- stained carpets that reek of the unloved. I’m put off by the people rushing, no one stopping, no one looking up, no one smiling and saying hello, staring into screens—no connecting. I spoke with a woman waiting for the streetcar who told me she is tired, that her job doesn’t fill her, that she thinks that’s just how it is—it’s not how it is, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. I’m on a subway with blue velvet seats with teenage boys watching YouTube videos, frying their brains with bullshit. I’m sitting next to a woman who has polished each hair on her head, each eyelash on her face—I wonder if she feels beautiful. I wonder if she is happy. I wonder if she knows she doesn’t need to spend so much time perfecting, that she’s beautiful before it all—right as she wakes, as-is. I hope someone in her life tells her she is beautiful every day. I don’t remember how to dress myself for the city. I don’t want to wear shoes. I don’t wish to walk fast. I don’t wish to push to get on the subway train. I don’t wish to smell McDonald’s and see ties and polished shoes in line at chain coffee shops with overpriced coffee. I don’t wish to blend into a sea of people existing without stopping to see one another. Perhaps I live alone in the woods because in cities such as these, we live close to be alone. * The people sitting on the beach throwing Frisbees, running, making sand castles, with dogs—they have no idea. There’s politics, rip currents, large black and white spotted stingrays that leap in front of you—flying like god through the morning air. Surfers have a world, an earth, a doorway that isn’t understood unless you’ve been here—out past the chaos of the whitewash, out where the blue and green ripples hum across the ocean towards you in the pink and gold morning light like Zeus has taken his wand and beckoned the sky to fall and dance for you. The ocean is my favorite coffee shop—it’s where I meet my friends, my lovers—it’s where I get a degree in philosophy on small days where I talk to the man beside me who’s a cello player and has toured the world and slept beneath dusty staircases. Out here is an existence between a forbidden world for humans, where we would otherwise collect water in our lungs—where I cheat, and play with dolphins and fish and they stare up dumbly because we aren’t meant to know —or be here, and yet we are and I am and I understand. * What time is it in Sweden? 10:30 AM he replies so I am in the future by one hour you are my future he replies. * The samba plays and the golden hills roll and he whistles I love the ass of a woman so much that if a woman has a beautiful ass and I am taking her from behind I must think so hard about her heart and her beautiful spirit or I loose myself and let go and I don’t I want to let go for sex is a spiritual experience then he turns the knob to the right and the music plays and the wind blows hot into the car through the mountains and green sea of Spain. * I am choosing women to be around that need me he remarks yes why are you choosing to spend your time in the company of lambs when you could be sitting amongst lions? * MY WORLD IS STANDING AND TALL I am an old cypress tree I do not shake by the opinions of others I do not bend at their whispers I do not stretch to hear their approval nor hide from their judgment their thoughts are theirs alone My power is here in my belly roaring with all its might Swing, swing, swing raging through the night and the sunlight but you cannot take my power it lies here inside of me I choose to walk smaller I choose to walk taller I choose when I kneel when I fall You may swing left you may swing right you cannot hit me you see? walk away and leave me be. * IF THERE IS LOVE HEAR THE LOVE if there is an uproar monkeys flinging their shit projections so be it do not rush to shake the hands of those who love and do not get on your knees to clean the shit of others let your head explode long enough to know why you’re doing it then whack it down hard back to earth and remind yourself you know nothing the earth is moving even when we are standing still there is no certainty truths change and are not always shared write your truth but do not shove your truth on others listen to the praise only enough to shield from the blows listen to the blows only to gain inspiration to write more if the blows are too low forget listening it’s not about you be a membrane let it all pass to sleep deep and wake up to write like a motherfucker in the morning. * I AM NOT A HUMBLE GRASSHOPPER If you have forgotten who I am and where I came from let me remind you I am not a humble grasshopper I am a mountain lion I do not bounce lightly when people are not accountable I do not walk away I turn my prey on their backs like a porcupine slice open their exposed underbellies I am patient I am a powerful hunter I will not go away fade into the distance so you may run with your enlightened tail quivering between your legs into the woods for as long as you so wish but when you return know I will be waiting. * I’M ON IT Hey! I whistle down the line I’m on it the men one by one pull their boards from the wave Hey! I’m here I’m taking up space for women have taken no space for centuries and men take and take and take and women voiceless married to a man named Pablo who drinks from 7 AM until the night and beats her first with his fists and then with his dick for it is not love fucking it is just a dick getting hard ramming into a hole that doesn’t have a voice Hey! I’m taking this wave for the fourteen-year-old married away to a man twice her age who cries in the field by her parents’ house for she dreamed of a love that is loving a love that is choice Hey! I’m taking this wave for the countries who short women education who short women the same goddamn pay just because they have lips in between their legs Hey! I’m taking this wave for the women who when they were raped were asked “What were you wearing?” Hey! I’m taking this wave for myself for the men in business suits who would come into the restaurant I worked at and leer drunkenly at me while attempting to caress my leg Hey! I’m taking this wave for all of the times I was an object and not the brilliant fucking brain I am Hey! I’m taking this wave for the time in Greece a man dropped his pants when I walked by in a bikini and jacked off in broad daylight watching my young body walk away Hey! I’m taking this wave because the policemen I called didn’t give a fuck and the women I went to crying laughed at me Hey! today I am taking this wave for a lifetime of women not being heard not being listened to not getting a space in the room and today you must take the spray of my feet in your face. * DO NOT COME TO THE MOUNTAIN AND REFUSE TO FEEL HER The earth twerked the yellow wasps stung angry at the feet that fell loudly on the red earth of their land the tarantula withdrew because secretly she knew that we cannot fathom the greatness of her red hollow thighs the white cum of commercialization and soul prostitution plastic consumption car guzzling gasolined frenzied greed get out says the mountain get out and take your photographs and your lack of presence absence of honor with you for I am here to be worshiped by those who embody the presence to devour my sides the hum and beat of my red ripe heart do not come to the mountain and refuse to feel her. * What if the great adventure was rest. * SOMETIMES WE MUST RUN FROM THE HEAT OF THE CITY we must run from the exhaust the car horns the traffic lights the sound of televisions on the fourth floor playing into the night we must retreat to where the only light comes from fireflies the moon the sunshine as it shines upon the ocean the lake we must return to where there are wildflowers to pick cedar docks to lie on stars to gaze at in silence laughter and stones being thrown dogs barking wasps buzzing we must return to the womb of the earth for she listens best she cradles deepest she loves hardest she forgives easiest if you need me this is where I’ll be. * SPLINTERS & SAP I pace to and fro play with my axe in my woodshed throw around uncut cedar rounds as big as my thigh sweat, chop, stack listen to the rain dripping from the prayer flags whack the knot grabs my axe I edge it out and swing again whack the wood splits I hold the axe loosely in my hand turn my face to the sky the smell of cedar the heart of my heat rises like warmth melted by rain my hands are like born again virgins I will need to reacquaint them with splinters & sap. * I TOOK YOU OUT TODAY your letters written with ink your love poems the flowers from my land you left on my windowsill they have dried now they are still beautiful I remember coming home to you whittling wood on these steps flowers on the doorstep every windowsill the fire built heart rocks and love ballads I needed all of that you took care of me showed up so subtly and sweetly opened me each crevice ’til my heart beat at the rivers and the mountains thank you You no longer belong shoved back in that drawer out of my heart’s eye I want you out here to breathe I want all the love I’ve had and will have to breathe the loves in my past to be in the sunlight you cannot fail at love we can only dance and darling, how we danced ’til my feet stopped and all that remained was the thud of my heart I want to shout love from mountaintops through this fog what’s the shame? I loved you darling we should celebrate the ones who carry a piece of our soul even if they do not stay forever I honor you I cherish you I am not blowing at the embers of our love to start anew you’ve opened to another so have I I hope she loves you with all her might I hope you’re full and thriving I am simply saying there ain’t no one like you your voice runs its fingers along the logs of my cabin this morning and I feel nothing but love for you. * Love less quick she said yes love less quick I’m sorry what was that? I was too busy loving. * You are in the milk of my coffee, the road beneath my feet, the yellow of the flowers that hang gently in the sunlight. You are in my blue cotton shirt that falls upon a woven grass chair as my hands pitter patter away as I write my grandfather an email. You are here today. * IT’S 3 AM I dress in black lace Double Trouble plays inside the red living room trying to seduce love with too many candles for a man visiting at 3 AM blue denim loosely unbuttoned whisky no ice good whisky that bites in a mason jar I answer the door it’s snowing outside I pull him inside and he pretends to care and I pretend not to and we make love that is good but without love and he doesn’t sleep over and in the morning I wish he had. * JUST BECAUSE YOU WISH TO LOVE A POET DOESN’T MEAN YOU SHOULD TRY TO BE ONE I say I’m done he writes and writes and writes and writes poems poems more poems they’re awful just because you wish to love a poet doesn’t mean you should try to be one more poems oh God—stop no more poems one day my prayers are answered they stop then he writes me “I deleted all our messages, will you send me the poems?” I didn’t write back the poems shouldn’t have been written in the first place. * DEAR MEN (II) if you sleep with a woman for fuck’s sake call her the next day call her the next day if you work 20 hours call her the next day if you have the flu and spent the night hugging the toilet bowl call her the next day if your car breaks down and you spend 7 hours at the mechanic’s call her and tell her that her legs are the most beautiful walking sticks you’ve touched call her and tell her being inside of her was like coming home call her and tell her she shook the rocks to the mountains and that you’ve had the smell of her brown shoulder on your mind since breakfast call her and beg to see her again tell her if you don’t the sun will not rise the stars will not shine the ocean will cease to swell the clocks will stop call her and tell her all you can feel are her lips left on your neck call her and say you have never felt a body that fit so sweetly in your arms that you spent your entire day dreaming of being hip locked and drowned in her grey and blue eyes. * THIS IS ABOUT AN ITALIAN You know how you can know I like you how? he asks because I walk down an	110,642
BÁO GIÁ Khay+ sọt+ thảm+ đôn 2024.pdf	BẢNG BÁO GIÁ Tháng 4.2024 Bên bán : Cơ sở Dạ Lý Hương Địa chỉ : 42 Hồ Bá Phấn, Phường Phước Long A, Quận 9, TP HCM Điện thoại : 08 37311039 - Handphone: 0905 584 119 Email: dalyhuong,dlh@gmail.com Bên Mua : Địa chỉ : Điện thoại: Email: Cơ sở Dạ Lý Hương gởi chị báo giá một số sản phẩm sau: L W H 1 Cái 250,000 5 2 Cái 280,000 5 3 Cái 350,000 5 4 Cái 370,000 5 5 Khay cói đan khung sắt k vải 30 25 13 Cái 105,000 5 6 30 25 13 Cái 125,000 5 7 30 20 25 Cái 115,000 5 8 Khay lục bình đan khung sắt., (thêm vải +20k) 30 25 13 Cái 105,000 5 9 33 22 15 Cái 135,000 5 10 40 25 18 Cái 160,000 5 11 44 30 20 Cái 180,000 5 STT Hình ảnh Mã/ Tên hàng Kích thước Đvt Đơn giá (VNĐ) Số lượng tối thiêu Sọt tre sọc , kèm nắp D25H27cm D33H43cm Sọt mây tròn có nắp, kèm vải lót cotton mộc Nhỏ : D33H41cm Lớn : D40H45cm Khay cói đan khung sắt. Thêm vải bọc +20k Cói bộ 3 không nắp, kèm vai lót thắt nơ. 12 33 22 15 Cái 160,000 5 13 40 25 18 Cái 180,000 5 14 44 30 20 Cái 210,000 5 15 33 22 15 Cái 160,000 5 16 40 25 18 Cái 180,000 5 17 44 30 20 Cái 210,000 5 18 33 22 15 Cái 155,000 5 19 40 25 18 Cái 180,000 5 20 44 30 20 Cái 205,000 5 21 33 22 15 Cái 185,000 5 22 40 25 18 Cái 205,000 5 23 44 30 20 Cái 230,000 5 24 33 22 15 Cái 160,000 5 25 40 25 18 Cái 180,000 5 26 44 30 20 Cái 200,000 5 27 33 22 15 Cái 185,000 5 28 40 25 18 Cái 205,000 5 29 44 30 20 Cái 230,000 5 Lục bình bộ 3 có nắp đậy kèm vải lót thắt nơ. Cói bộ 3 có nắp đậy kèm vải lót thắt nơ. Khay mây bộ 3 không nắp lót vải cotton mộc thắt nơ Khay mây bộ 3 không nắp lót vải cotton mộc thắt nơ Lục bình bộ 3 kèm vải lót thắt nơ. Lục bình bộ 3 kèm vải lót thắt nơ. + nắp 30 Sọt mây tròn 2 quai không lót vải , thêm vải +25k Cái 250,000 5 31 Sọt voi chất liệu lục bình Con 475,000 5 32 Sọt voi chất liệu mây Con 505,000 5 33 Sọt voi chất liệu cói Con 175,000 5 34 30 30 45 Cái 270,000 5 35 35 35 50 Cái 330,000 5 36 40 40 58 Cái 395,000 5 37 30 30 45 Cái 265,000 5 38 35 35 50 Cái 290,000 5 39 40 40 58 Cái 335,000 5 40 30 30 45 Cái 265,000 5 41 35 35 50 Cái 295,000 5 42 40 40 58 Cái 335,000 5 D32H37/44cm D40H50cm D40H50cm D40H50cm Sọt mây chữ nhật có nắp lót vải cotton thắt nơ Sọt cói chữ nhật có nắp lót vải cotton thắt nơ Sọt lục chữ nhật có nắp lót vải cotton thắt nơ 43 Cái 120,000 5 44 Cái 155,000 5 45 Cái 205,000 5 46 Cái 250,000 5 47 Cái 305,000 5 48 Cái 130,000 5 49 Cái 165,000 5 50 Cái 215,000 5 51 Cái 255,000 5 52 Cái 315,000 5 53 Tấm 17,000 5 54 Tấm 27,000 5 55 Tấm 33,000 5 56 Tấm 41,000 5 57 Tấm 50,000 5 58 Tấm 115,000 5 59 Tấm 165,000 5 60 Tấm 195,000 5 61 Tấm 220,000 5 62 Tấm 250,000 5 63 Tấm 395,000 5 64 Tấm 540,000 5 65 Tấm 980,000 5 66 Tấm 285,000 5 67 Tấm 325,000 5 68 Tấm 430,000 5 Đôn ngồi đan lục bình D5H10cm D40H10cm D40H20cm D40H30cm D40H40cm Đôn ngồi đan lục bình phối cói và là buông D40H5cm D40H10cm D40H20cm D40H30cm D40H40cm Thảm lục bình tròn D10cm D20cm D30cm D37cm D40cm D50cm D60cn D80cm D1m D1.2m D1.5m D1.8m D2m Thảm cói hoa thưa( gấp lại được) D1m D1.2m D1.5m 69 Tấm 285,000 5 70 Tấm 325,000 5 71 Tấm 430,000 5 72 Tấm 305,000 5 73 Tấm 345,000 5 74 Tấm 550,000 5 75 Thảm cói chùi chân Tấm 75,000 5 76 Cái 38,000 5 77 Cái 40,000 5 78 Cái 52,000 5 79 Cái 62,000 5 80 Cái 75,000 5 81 Cái 90,000 5 82 Cái 105,000 5 83 Nhà mèo lục bình, Cho mèo từ 7kg trở lên, giá kèm nệm lót Cái 360,000 5 84 Nhà mèo lục bình, Cho mèo từ 7kg trở xuống, giá kèm nệm lót Cái 270,000 5 Thảm cói xếp ngôi sao ( gấp lại được) D1m D1.2m D1.5m Thảm cói viền tròn D10cm ( gấp lại được) D1m D1.2m D1.5m 6530cm DLH170205 Giỏ cói tròn. D15cm D20cm D25cm D30cm D35cm D40cm D45cm D50H50cm D40H40cm 85 Cái 90,000 5 86 Cái 80,000 5 87 30 30 11 Cái 140,000 5 88 25 25 10 Cái 135,000 5 89 Khay lục bình oval 2 quai có vải 38 28 20/25 Cái 175,000 5 90 Khay lục bình oval đan thưa 2 quai có vải 38 28 20/25 Cái 145,000 5 91 Hộp đựng giấy chữ nhật 25 13.5 9cm Cái 145,000 5 92 Hộp đựng khăn giấy vuông 13 13 13 Cái 98,000 5 93 Hộp đựng khăn giấy tròn Cái 88,000 5 94 Hộp đựng khăn giấy vuông 16 12 8 Cái 160,000 5 95 Hộp đựng khăn giấy chữ nhật 23 11 12 Cái 195,000 5 Khay mây tròn có bọc vải D25H9cm D18H8cm Khay mây vuông có vải D13.5H13cm 96 Hộp khăn giấy mây có khung sắt, bọc vải mộc 25 14 9 Cái 125,000 5 97 Hộp khăn giấy cói có khung sắt, bọc vải mộc 25 14 9 Cái 140,000 5 98 Cái 165,000 5 99 Cái 155,000 5 100 Đĩa trái cây Cái 75,000 5 101 Cái 130,000 5 102 Cái 145,000 5 103 25 25 25 Cái 130,000 5 104 30 30 27 Cái 145,000 5 105 Sọt lục bình oval lớn đan xoắn thưa 45 45 37 Cái 230,000 5 106 Sọt lục bình oval lớn đan kín 45 45 37 Cái 230,000 5 Khay lục bình bầu có bọc vải D33H4cm Sọt lục bình đan thưa, trụ tròn không vải vải +25k D26H25cm D33H30cm Sọt lục bình đan thưa vuông, không vải, vải + 25k 107 Sọt lục bình tròn lớn đan kín 40 40 45 Cái 230,000 5 108 Cái 145,000 5 109 Cái 135,000 5 110 Cái 105,000 5 111 Sọt oval kín có quai cầm Cái 145,000 5 112 Cái 165,000 5 113 Cái 105,000 5 114 Cái 75,000 5 115 Giỏ chai nước Cái 25,000 5 116 Giỏ picnic mây Cái 255,000 5 117 Giỏ picnic cói nhập Cái 305,000 5 118 cái 155,000 5 119 cái 185,000 5 Sọt oval thưa có quai cầm L: D34H24cm M:D26H19cm S:D21H15cm D35H24cm Chum cói cắm hoa L:D35H32cm M:D24H22cm S:D15H13cm Khay mây lỗ tay cầm D30H5cm D35H5cm 120 Cái 20,000 5 121 Cái 45,000 5 122 Cái 85,000 5 123 Cái 75,000 5 124 Cái 40,000 5 125 Cốc mây oval Cái 72,000 5 126 Cốc mây trụ Cái 62,000 5 127 30 20 10 Cái 120,000 5 128 26 17 8 Cái 140,000 5 129 20 13 7 Cái 170,000 5 130 Cái 100,000 5 131 Cái 120,000 5 132 Cái 160,000 5 133 Cái 135,000 5 134 Cái 110,000 5 135 Cái 85,000 5 136 Cái 110,000 5 137 Cái 170,000 5 Thảm mây tròn D10cm D20cm D30cm Rổ mây bánh mì lớn nhỏ L:3723H4cm khay mây chữ bộ 3 Bộ khay mây tròn 2 quai cầm S:D21H3/7cm M: D25H3/7cm L:D26H3/7cm Khay mây tròn viền hoa sen thưa D30H7cm D23H5cm khay mây cơm bộ 3 3 cái S:2111H4cm M:2121*H4cm 138 Dép cỏ bàng freesize 36-42 Đôi 77,000 5 Tổng tiền hàng: - Giá trên là giá xuất tại xưởng, chưa bao gồm phí xuất hóa đơn đỏ trực tiếp - Giá sỉ áp dụng cho từ 20 sp trở lên - Giao hàng trong vòng 7 ngày kể từ ngày nhận đủ tiền cọc - Thông tin tài khoản Bên Bán: Tên tài khoản : Trần Thị Thu Hương Số tài khoản: 0381 0005 08082 Ngân hàng: Vietcombank chi nhánh Thủ Đức Tổng tiền hàng:	6,283
A Biography of Loneliness The History of an Emotion (Fay Bound Alberti) (Z-Library).pdf	A BIOGRAPHY OF LONELINESS A B I O G R A P H Y O F L O N E L I N E S S The History of an Emotion Fay Bound Alberti Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, ox2 6dp, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Fay Bound Alberti 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019947207 ISBN 978–0–19–881134–3 ebook ISBN 978–0–19–253934–2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work. For Millie Bound and Jacob George Alberti, as ever. For Jenny Calcoen for being my soul sister. And for Sandra Vigon, for holding up a light. PREFACE No (Wo)man Is an Island Why loneliness? That’s what people asked initially, when I told them I was writing this book. Well, not everyone. Those who hadn’t lived with loneliness, hadn’t felt its edges in the dark. Then in the space of a year, it didn’t seem so strange a topic: loneliness became ubiquitous. It was talked of in newspapers and on radio programmes; it was a national epidemic; it had its own Minister. In the early twenty-first century we find ourselves in the midst of a ‘loneliness epidemic’, while worry about loneliness makes it more inevitable. Talking about loneliness seems to spread, contagion-like, until it has become part of the social fabric. Certainly, it has become a convenient hook on which to hang a number of discontents. Loneliness has become an emotional hold-all: a shorthand for the absence of happiness, for a sense of disconnect, for depression and alienation, for social isolation. Except when it isn’t. Sometimes loneliness is sought out and desired; not just solitude, which has its own history, but also loneliness: that painful sense of disconnect which can be physical, emotional, symbolic, sensorial, attitudinal. So what is loneliness, and why does it seem so ubiquitous? As a cultural historian who has spent a lot of time thinking about the emotional body, I am intrigued by how quickly a perceived yet undefined emotional state can give rise to such cultural panic. And I am interested in how loneliness, like other emotional states—anger, love, fear, sadness—might take on different meanings depending on context; how loneliness can be physical as well as mental; and how loneliness as an individual experience might be shaped by and reflect bigger social concerns that include gender, ethnicity, age, environment, religion, science, and even economics. Why economics? Loneliness is expensive, which is arguably why it has attracted so much governmental attention. The health and social care needs related to loneliness are escalating in the West, because of an ageing demographic. Notably the West: very little attention has been paid to the rest of the world, to how loneliness changes over time, or how it looks different in different lights. Presuming that loneliness is universal and part of the human condition means that nobody is accountable, no matter how much deprivation prevails. So, loneliness is political, too. My interest was not purely historical. I have been lonely. And the different ways I have experienced loneliness—as a child, a teenager, a writer, a mother, a wife, a divorcée—whatever the badges we give to our life stages, this is what gave me the idea for the book’s title. Loneliness has a biography. It is not a static ‘thing’ but a protean beast that changes over time. Historically, loneliness has emerged as a ‘modern’ emotion. And also as a concept which gets layered with meanings. A Biography of Loneliness is about the idea of loneliness in history, as well as the different ways it intersects with minds, bodies, objects, and places. And places, as well as people, matter to the experience of loneliness. I grew up on an isolated Welsh hilltop. There was no internet in the 1980s. For most of my teenage years we had no telephone. The nearest neighbour was a mile away. My family experience was impoverished, unhappy, traumatic. Our Englishness set us apart from the Welsh-speaking villagers. We were hippies and most definitely Other. I was isolated and alone. And yet I did not endure loneliness; I enjoyed it. A natural introvert, I spent my days in the woods, making up stories, plotting alternative lives. My community was populated by fictional characters. Was it enough? When I was a child, yes. Not when I was older. Our needs change with us. And so does our experience of loneliness. Loneliness in youth can become a habit in old age, so perhaps our interventions into elderly loneliness need to start far earlier. Loneliness—especially chronic loneliness, linked to deprivation—can be terrible. When disconnected, socially or emotionally, from others, people can get ill. Deprived of touch, of meaningful human engagement, people can die. Chronic loneliness is not choosy; it often settles on the shoulders of those who have suffered enough, with mental or physical health problems, with addiction, with abuse. Transient loneliness, by contrast, the kind you slip in and out of on life’s journey—moving away to university, changing jobs, getting divorced—can be a spur to personal growth, a way of figuring out what one wants in relationships with others. And what one does not want, for loneliness in a crowd, or with a disengaged other, is the worst kind of lack. Loneliness can be a life choice and a companion, rather than a shadow. Sometimes loneliness is positive and nurturing, providing a space for us to think and grow and learn. And I do not mean merely solitude, or the state of being alone, but a profound awareness of the boundaries of the self which can, in the right contexts, be restorative. Some people step into loneliness and out again, then, like it’s little more than a puddle. For others, it’s an ocean without end. Does loneliness have a cure? Or rather, does unwanted loneliness have a cure? For there’s the rub: the element of choice. And there is no quick-fix treatment, no one size fits all. Loneliness as a modern social affliction has grown up in the cracks, in the formation of a society that was less inclusive and communal and more grounded in the scientific, medicalized idea of an individual mind, set against the rest. Loneliness thrives when there is a disconnect between the individual and the world, a disconnect that is so characteristic of neoliberalism, but not an inevitable part of the human condition. As the poet John Donne put it in 1624: ‘Any man’s death diminishes me/Because I am involved in mankind’. By being human, we are necessarily part of a force that is greater than ourselves. It is not inevitable that old people fear getting older because they are alone, that victims of violence are emotionally unsupported, that homeless people exist and are vulnerable. These systemic forms of enforced loneliness are the product of circumstance, and ideology. Yes, wealthy people can be (and often are) lonely and isolated, money being no guarantee of ‘belonging’. But it’s a different kind of loneliness to the social isolation imposed by poverty. Many of the divisions and hierarchies that have developed since the eighteenth century—between self and world, individual and community, public and private—have been naturalized through the politics and philosophy of individualism. Is it any coincidence that a language of loneliness emerged at the same time? If loneliness is an epidemic, then stemming its spread depends on rooting out the conditions that allowed it to take hold. That is not the same as saying that all loneliness is bad, or that loneliness as a sense of lack didn’t exist in the pre-modern world. The counter argument to claims of its modernity is: oh, but just because the language of loneliness didn’t exist before 1800, that doesn’t mean people didn’t feel lonely. To that I say simply this: the invention of a language for loneliness reflects the framing of a new emotional state. Yes, solitude could be negative in earlier centuries, and people talked about being alone in a negative way. But the philosophical and spiritual framework was different. The universal belief in some kind of God in pre-modern Britain—usually a paternalistic deity, certainly providing a sense of place in the world—provided a framework for belonging that, for good or ill, no longer exists. A medieval monk, reclusive and alone yet inhabiting a mental universe in which God is ever- present, will not experience the same sense of abandonment and lack as a person without this narrative framework. We are suspended in universes of our making in the twenty-first century, in which the certainty of the self and one’s uniqueness matters far more than any collective sense of belonging. This book is not exhaustive. It is merely one biography. But it seeks to open up new ways of envisaging and exploring loneliness in the modern age, and to offer insights into its physical and psychological meanings. This duality—the separating off of the mind and the body—calls for the wider lens of a longue durée approach. My academic training was in early modern cultures, where there was no division of mind and body, where emotions (or passions) were regarded holistically. Yet today we regard loneliness as a mental affliction, though tending to the body remains just as important as tending to the mind. I became obsessed, while writing this book, with the sheer physicality of loneliness, of how a sense of lack can make the belly feel so empty. I observed the effects of loneliness on my own body. Unable to think myself out of that embodied experience, I fed the senses: I splurged on heady- smelling soaps and scented candles, I listened to music and meditation on a loop, I petted dogs, smelled babies’ necks, hugged my kids, lifted weights, walked tens of thousands of steps a day, chopped vegetables, cooked, slept. Tending to my own body reminded me of its physical rootedness, of the imagined communities of which I was part. There was comfort in tending to the body, in acknowledging emotional experience as far more than a product of the mind. And I was reminded that loneliness, like any emotional state, is physical as well as mental. After all, we are embodied beings whose worlds are defined not only in isolation but also through our belief systems and our relationships with others: objects, animals, people. Which brings me to the people who have supported me not only during the writing of A Biography of Loneliness, but also while I was figuring out the next steps. Thanks to those who have given me strength in many different ways: Emma and Hugh Alberti, Jenny Calcoen, Nicola Chessner, Stef Eastoe, Patricia Greene, Jo Jenkins, Mark Jenner, Bridget McDermott, Paddy Ricard, Barbara Rosenwein, Barbara Taylor, and Sandra Vigon. Thank you to Javier Moscoso for inviting me to keynote at the European Philosophical Society for the History of Emotions in 2017, which allowed me to test out some of the ideas in this book. I am grateful to Sarah Nettleton for pointing me towards her materialities of care project at just the right moment, and to those people at the University of York, and York Hospital, who offered not only welcoming discussions, but also helpful insights into loneliness—especially Holly Speight, Sally Gordon, Lydia Harris, Bhavesh Patel, Yvonne Birks, Andrew Grace, Kate Pickett, Neil Wilson, and Karen Bloor. I have enjoyed being part of this community, as well as the UCL Loneliness and Social Isolation in Mental Health network, led by Sonia Johnson and Alexandra Pitman. Thank you to Kellie Payne of the Campaign to End Loneliness for inviting discussion, to Stephanie Cacioppo for sharing her research, and to Pamela Qualter for inviting me to participate in an ESRC Think Piece. Thanks to Millie Bound and Jacob Alberti for having such strong, emotional reactions to cover ideas (combined, thankfully, with an artistic eye). Finally, a sincere debt of thanks to Peter Stearns and the anonymous reviewers at Emotion Review, who offered insightful and generous advice when I was working out the transition between oneliness and loneliness. FAY BOUND ALBERTI London, 11 May 2018 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. CONTENTS List of Illustrations Introduction: Loneliness as a ‘Modern Epidemic’ When ‘Oneliness’ Became Loneliness: The Birth of a Modern Emotion A ‘Disease of the Blood’? The Chronic Loneliness of Sylvia Plath Loneliness and Lack: Romantic Love, from Wuthering Heights to Twilight Widow(er)hood and Loss: From Thomas Turner to the Widow of Windsor Instaglum? Social Media and the Making of Online Community A ‘Ticking Timebomb’? Rethinking Loneliness in Old Age Roofless and Rootless: No Place to Call ‘Home’ Feeding the Hunger: Materiality and the Lonely Body Lonely Clouds and Empty Vessels: When Loneliness Is a Gift Conclusion: Reframing Loneliness in a Neoliberal Age Appendix Notes Picture Acknowledgements Source Acknowledgements Further Reading Index of Names Index of Subjects 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ‘John Bigg, an eccentric hermit’. Line engraving by Wilkes. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, pictured in 1956. Creative Commons. Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights (1939), Samuel Goldwyn Pictures. Royal portrait of Queen Victoria, 1871. A 1905 advert for telephones aimed at socially isolated farmers. Age UK advert for loneliness, 2018. Homeless man seeking emotional engagement as well as relief. Consuming passions: does materialism make us lonely? Virginia Woolf, 1927, Harvard Theatre Collection. Use of the term ‘loneliness’ in English printed works between 1550 and 2000. Use of the term ‘solitude’ in English printed works between 1550 and 2000. Use of the term ‘lonely’ in English printed works between 1550 and 2000. Loneliness is neither good nor bad, but a point of intense and timeless awareness of the Self, a beginning which initiates totally new sensitivities and awarenesses, and which results in bringing a person deeply in touch with his own existence and in touch with others in a fundamental sense. Clark Moustakas, Loneliness You are born alone. You die alone. The value of the space in between is trust and love. That’s why geometrically speaking the circle is a one. Everything comes to you from the other. You have to be able to reach the other. If not you are alone. Louise Bourgeois, Destruction of the Father INTRODUCTION Loneliness as a ‘Modern Epidemic’ Loneliness is the leprosy of the 21st century. The Economist on Twitter, 2018 According to Beatles legend, Paul McCartney was the originator of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, which appeared on the band’s Revolver album. It was McCartney’s concern for elderly people since he was a child, it is said, that sparked the image of Eleanor Rigby as a ‘lonely old spinster’, picking up rice after the kind of wedding that she would never enjoy.1 On a broader level, the song tapped in to a wave of social concern about contemporary society connected to social change in the 1960s UK and US. Amid anti- establishment sentiment, including the civil rights movement and protests over the Vietnam war, changing socio-economic structures and intensified urbanization meant that more people were living alone, and outside of traditional family units.2 There was a growing problem of homelessness and poverty in the UK, with its attendant medical and social ills. By telling the story of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, the Beatles drew attention to a troubling and rising trend of loneliness as a modern affliction: ‘all the lonely people— where do they all come from?’ Half a century later, loneliness has become an ‘epidemic’, devastating for public health, and the emotional equivalent of leprosy, according to The Economist. Like leprosy, it is implied, loneliness is contagious and debilitating. It is something to fear and avoid at all costs. It is also apparently universal. According to British medical journals like The Lancet, and even that old stalwart of traditional British values, The Daily Mail, the UK is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness.3 Studies suggest somewhere between 30 and 50 per cent of those surveyed in Britain and North America feel lonely. In fact, Britain has been termed the ‘loneliness capital of Europe’.4 And that is before we consider the self-imposed political loneliness of Brexit. Children are lonely, teenagers are lonely; so are young mums, divorced people, old people, and bereaved people, just some of the social groups that are periodically singled out for particular concern by the British press.5 We are arguably in the midst of a moral panic. Amid this rise of concern about loneliness in the UK, the government announced the creation of a Minister for Loneliness in January 2018.6 The post, which was taken by Tracey Crouch, was created to carry on the work of the Labour Party MP Jo Cox, tragically murdered by a far right sympathizer two years earlier.7 By the end of the year, Crouch had resigned, citing a delay to betting reforms as the reason.8 Despite publicity around the post, there was no reference to how it might intersect with the government’s austerity targets, including the social care and welfare benefit cuts that created demographic inequalities in the experience of loneliness. A vocal representative of the Remain movement, Jo Cox had worked to support minorities and refugees experiencing social isolation and economic precarity. Her work continues in the Jo Cox Loneliness Commission.9 Cox’s murder took place in the run-up to the UK EU referendum, when the UK Independence Party (UKIP) was warning that a vote to stay in the European Union would result in ‘swarms’ of immigrants entering the UK. ‘This is for Britain’, her murderer said.10 Cox’s murderer had a long history of mental health problems, loneliness, and isolation. Newspapers referred to him as ‘a loner’; a term often given to those who commit acts of terror, who don’t seem to fit in with neighbours or friends.11 In this tragic situation, then, we have two different versions of loneliness: loneliness among people in need of social contact, as identified by Jo Cox, and loneliness as symptomatic of dangerous antisocial leanings: the ‘loner’. This divergence is indicative of how little we really know about loneliness, its etymology, its meanings, how it intersects with solitude, how it might be experienced by different people, and—crucially—how it might have changed over time. This Biography of Loneliness will explore the history and meanings of loneliness in its societal, psychological, socio-economic, and philosophical contexts. It considers the modern rise of loneliness as an epidemic and an emotional state, and the apparent explosion of loneliness since ‘Eleanor Rigby’ was written. What happened between 1966 and 2018 to propel loneliness to the forefront of popular and political consciousness? And how does modern loneliness relate to the past? Have we always been lonely? Why has loneliness become such a problem? One response relates to the framing of loneliness. Fear about loneliness creates loneliness. Certainly, this outcome has been found among elderly people who are fearful of being alone and vulnerable as they age. Yet there have also been some profound social, economic, and political shifts that have taken place since the 1960s, and that have pushed loneliness to the fore of popular and governmental consciousness. These shifts include rising living costs, inflation, immigration, and changing familial social structures, as well as the laissez-faire (French, literally ‘let do’) politics of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and the gradual abandonment of the idea of society and community in pursuit of the individual. Neoliberalism has been blamed for many things, including a rejection of collective values and the pursuit— whatever the cost—of individual aggrandisement.12 Against this backdrop of socio-economic and political transformation, there is intense political interest in the financial cost of illness. Loneliness is perceived as a national and economic burden, because it gives rise to a wide range of emotional and physical illnesses. The illnesses linked to loneliness, with a variety of explanations as to the cause and the direction of travel, range from depression and anxiety to heart attacks, strokes, cancers, and decreased immune response.13 Links between loneliness and poor mental and physical health have been particularly closely monitored in old age. The National Health Service (NHS) website suggests that lonely people are 30 per cent more likely to die earlier than less lonely people, with loneliness being a risk factor for heart problems, strokes, dementia, depression, and anxiety among the aged.14 It is understandable, in light of the above, that loneliness has been described as a modern ‘epidemic’. But this terminology is politically and socially powerful. It leads to knee-jerk political soundbites rather than thoughtful, historically informed discussion about what loneliness might mean, and why it might be rising. Perhaps rather than viewing loneliness as inevitable, especially in old age, and focusing on scientific reasons for its physical effects (such as hormonal shifts in the body), we would do better to consider the links between loneliness and other lifestyle factors, ranging from comfort eating, obesity, and physical inactivity (an unholy trinity that is often correlated with loneliness), to practical concerns, like an isolated person not having a companion to remind them to take their heart medication. Loneliness does not happen in a vacuum but is deeply connected with all aspects of our mental, physical, and psychological health. Loneliness is a whole-body affliction, of that there is no doubt. But as this book shows, the story of loneliness is a complex one. How should we define loneliness, this peculiar but oft-cited condition that has no opposite? A useful modern definition is stated by Professor Lars Andersson, from the Department of Social and Welfare Studies at Linköping University in Sweden, one of the most enlightened countries when it comes to investigating the health and social condition of the aged and most vulnerable in society. Andersson’s definition of loneliness is ‘an enduring condition of emotional distress that arises when a person feels estranged from, misunderstood, or rejected by others and/or lacks appropriate social partners for desired activities, particularly activities that provide a sense of social integration and opportunities for emotional intimacy’.15 Loneliness is not the state of being alone, then, though it is often mistaken as such. It is a conscious, cognitive feeling of estrangement or social separation from meaningful others; an emotional lack that concerns a person’s place in the world. Loneliness is entirely subjective. It has been measured, apparently objectively, in relation to personal statements, by use of the UCLA Loneliness Scale. This questionnaire asks individuals to describe their feelings of loneliness according to a sliding scale between ‘never’ and ‘often’. It has been criticized for being worded negatively and has been revised several times. It has also been altered to help assess loneliness in the elderly.16 Attempts to capture loneliness as a subjective experience are necessarily problematic, partly because loneliness is shrouded in shame in the West, for reasons that relate to historical connections between loneliness and personal failing. The interventions recommended tend to include increased contact with other people, without necessarily considering the difference between social contact and meaningful social contact, or the limitations that can be placed upon someone who wants to interact with others but is unable to due to health challenges, or personality traits like shyness. Another reason why loneliness is difficult to capture subjectively and objectively is that it is not a single emotional state. In this book, I describe loneliness as an emotion ‘cluster’, a blend of different emotions that might range from anger, resentment, and sorrow to jealousy, shame, and self-pity. The composition of loneliness varies according to the perception and experience of the individual, their circumstances and environment. Conflicting emotions can be felt at the same time, and loneliness can change over time depending on a range of cultural factors, expectations, and desires. Describing loneliness in this way helps to traverse the complex, often contradictory history of emotion concepts. It also helps to explain why the history of loneliness is entirely missing in the rapidly expanding field of emotion history. Its history is crucial in understanding what loneliness is today, as well as how it has emerged in different places, times, and cultures. And it’s crucial if we want loneliness to be less prevalent. What happens when we essentialize loneliness as a human universal, along with other emotions, is that we disregard significant beliefs that help shape emotional experience—these include the relationship of the individual to others, to God, the relevance of human agency and desires, and the societal expectations in which individual experience takes place. Loneliness becomes a hazard of being human, rather than a fundamental disconnect between the individual and the social structures and expectations through which she or he lives and engages with the world. I was drawn to study the history of loneliness when I was working on facial disfigurement and face transplants. I realized how common social isolation and loneliness were to the experience of physical difference and disability, and yet how difficult it was to access: there have not been histories of loneliness in the same way that there have been histories of love, anger, or fear. There have been studies of living alone and changes in socio-economic structures that suggest growing loneliness as a result of the shift from collective, face-to-face agrarian communities to urbanized, anonymized ones.17 There have been important studies of solitude in relation to religion, focusing for instance on monasticism and the ideal of solitude as a means of being closer to God.18 More recently, the writer Olivia Laing has explored the differences between solitude and loneliness, identifying the creative and positive aspects of both, and the tendency in the modern West to elide the two quite different states.19 So, why hasn’t loneliness featured in the history of emotions? One reason is language. Another is the historical construction of emotion categories. Loneliness does not feature in the ‘big six’ list of emotions that are still regarded popularly as basic emotions, and that tend to be linked to facial expressions. Those emotions, seen in the work of the American psychologist Paul Ekman, are: disgust, sadness, happiness, fear, anger, and surprise.20 Other scholars have argued that there are eight basic emotions that form polar opposites: joy–sadness; anger–fear; trust–distrust; surprise– anticipation.21 Since the 1990s, more nuanced approaches to emotion have criticized this biologically reductionist model, including from the discipline of history.22 These approaches recognize that rather than being universal, emotions are developed within complex power relations, and through the lenses of historically specific disciplines.23 Indeed, recent work within one of those disciplines, neuroscience, suggests that the very notion of individually boundaried emotions, like ‘anger, or sadness, or fear’, is incorrect.24 We do not have to view emotions as ‘natural kinds’, to use Barrett’s (2017) phrase, to distinguish between socially recognizable forms of emotion as an event (an angry outburst, or a sad event) and a feeling state that mutates and shifts and has been difficult to pin down. Loneliness is not alone in being such a state—other states (or concepts) like ‘nostalgia’ and ‘pity’ have been similarly neglected. Interestingly, ancient theorists were more nuanced than many modern writers. Aristotle, for instance, did not describe emotions purely as single states, but as ‘feelings accompanied by pleasure or pain’ that might include not only ‘anger, fear, joy and love’ but also ‘confidence, hatred, longing, emulation and pity’.25 Classical ideas about emotion were more expansive than those we use today. Influenced by humoral philosophy, they were also based on viewing the mind and body differently than we do today.26 Given the complexity of the subject, I contend that we need a better understanding of what loneliness is as both historical concept and experience, as well as how it affects different people (differently) during their lifespan. We need to read loneliness, like obesity, as a perceived ‘disease of civilization’, a condition that is chronic, pathological, and associated with the way we live in the modern, industrial West.27 Certainly, there are many parallels between loneliness and obesity. Both are seen to put excessive demands on the health services, both are linked to mental and physical illnesses, and both are associated with an inability of the individual to conform to prevailing social expectations. In both ‘conditions’, moreover, the person is pathologically locked within their own boundaries —in the body in the case of morbid obesity, and the mind in the case of loneliness. A Biography of Loneliness Have people always been lonely? Is loneliness a state that can afflict us all, regardless of our time in place and history? I don’t believe so, though that claim for universalism is, well, universal. ‘Man’s inevitable and infinite loneliness is not solely an awful condition of human existence’, wrote the American psychologist Clark Moustakas, in a 1960s treatise born from personal experience, ‘it is also the instrument through which man experiences new compassion and new beauty’.28 This statement is more complex than it might at first appear. On the one hand, it argues that loneliness is an integral part of the human condition, which this book refutes. On the other, it acknowledges that loneliness can be positive as well as negative; that it can give rise to previously unexplored depths of emotional experience, a subject that is explored in this book. Viewing loneliness in the West through a wide historical lens, A Biography of Loneliness argues that loneliness in its modern sense emerged as both a term and a recognizable experience around 1800, soon after ideas about sociability, and secularism, became important to the social and political fabric. It was reinforced by the emergence of an all-encompassing ideology of the individual: in the mind and physical sciences, in economic structures, in philosophy and politics. The evolution of language provides clues to the gradual development of loneliness since the birth of modernity. This process involved many different influences, from the decline of religion to the industrial revolution, of which neoliberalism is just the latest, toxic iteration.29 Each of the chapters contained here point not only to the complexities of loneliness as an experience, but also its links to relationships between the individual and society and the connections between emotional and physical need. Since loneliness is an emotion cluster that mutates across an individual’s lifespan, especially in the ‘pinch-points’ that are personally defining, it needs to be studied at particular moments. A Biography of Loneliness examines loneliness not only in relation to its historical emergence, but also how loneliness might impact people according to life stage. For some chronically lonely individuals, loneliness takes hold in childhood and adolescence, as it did for the American writer Sylvia Plath. For Plath, an unending loneliness seems to have accompanied her in an emotionally uncertain childhood through an allegedly abusive marriage, alongside chronic mental health problems that resulted in suicide. Crucially, loneliness forged in childhood and adolescence seems to set a pattern for loneliness in later life, which is a subject that requires much more investigation.30 Loneliness in the young is no less a problem than loneliness in the aged, but it will necessarily manifest itself differently according to expectations, abilities, and environment. In the twenty-first century, discussions of young people and loneliness tend to focus on digital culture and social media. Loneliness was undoubtedly a problem for the youth in Victorian Britain, as for Charles Dickens’ orphans. Yet the image of the lonely adolescent has ramped up since the onset of the digital revolution. There is a lack of clarity in health and policy research about the implications of this form of technology across the lifespan and in relation to a broader pattern of digital emotions. For elderly people in the UK, for instance, there has been discussion of ‘pet robots’ to offer companionship when the human touch is missing. In other cultures, notably Japan, sex robots have been available for some time to assuage the loneliness of isolated men, though the market is expanding.31 Patterns of social engagement among British millennials in particular have been altered by the diffusion of social media.32 New apps and platforms are constantly being developed, and it is difficult for parents to keep up, let alone stay on top of threats and benefits. Parents are not alone in this; around the globe, social and legal infrastructure is playing catch-up to a form of knowledge creation, exchange, and dissemination that has no established rules and does not follow traditional values and conventions. Young and old people alike are struggling to engage with and use digital media in ways that are consistent with the presentation of the self in everyday life; the difference is that digital selves may be multiple and conflicting, and the satisfaction derived from them not necessarily sustainable or as fulfilling as that acquired in real-life situations. One key reason why loneliness has become such a problem in the twenty-first century is the way it connects to broader social, economic, and political crises. Concern about loneliness among the aged, for instance, is a manifestation of broader concerns about an ageing population in the West, and considerable anxiety over how that population will be supported in an individualistic age when families are often dispersed. Most policy interventions are focused on the aged because of the significant impact of elderly loneliness on social and medical care. Particularly vulnerable are society’s ‘oldest old’: over eighty years old and living alone. The theme of living alone is an important one. There is a difference between solitude and loneliness. Yet wanting a special someone and not finding them can be a lonely process, for all ages.33 The language and history of the romantic ideal are important here, for an inability to find ‘the one’ can generate loneliness through a sense of lack. The trope of a ‘soulmate’ in Western culture emerged in the Romantic period and is associated with tremendous emotional struggle and the need of separation from the rest of society—as in the Byronic hero motif. Older people crave soulmates through the Internet,34 just as much as the young, though this image is considered less attractive to readers. The sexuality of old people is a decidedly niche market that is seldom considered in health and policy terms.35 The loneliness of loss is another significant life stage confronted by older people. Widow(er)hood or the death of a loved one creates a loneliness that sets one emotionally apart, and physically if one is socially isolated. This kind of loneliness is also a great leveller of experience; there is a depth of social and familial isolation linked to widow(er)hood, whether one is princess or pauper. Nostalgia for what is lost is central to the loneliness of widow(er)hood. Nostalgia as an emotional state shares many characteristics of, and can influence, loneliness. So, too, can homesickness, which compounds a sense of not belonging, which is so key to the perception of loneliness.36 The lack of belonging is most profound in those who are homeless and refugees, who have no place to call home. There is a particular kind of loneliness found among the ‘roofless and rootless’, whose homeless or refugee status brings in feelings of isolation linked to the symbolism of home, food, and the tokens of domesticity. Yet homeless people are among the most socially and politically neglected when it comes to understanding loneliness. Ethnicity provides another important variable, and again there has been insufficient research into the connecting variables of ethnicity, poverty, and loneliness.37 Nor has there been much research into the enforced impact of social exclusion through homophobia or prejudice against those leading traditionally unconventional lives.38 Class and gender differences are important in the experience of loneliness, and I have tried to articulate that throughout this book. Men tend to have higher loneliness scores than women; arguably because of single- sex or homosocial socializing and the fact that women are typically encouraged to talk about their feelings.39 Yet these statistics will be influenced by class, gender, sex identity, and other variables. The highest levels of loneliness seem to be found among the poorest groups in society, reflecting an increased breakdown in support networks in proportion to the levels of deprivation experienced.40 For every stereotypical image of a hermit-like Howard Hughes, there are ten thousand impoverished lonely people whose suffering is similarly invisible. Embodied Loneliness Loneliness, as I have outlined above, is about the body as much as the mind. That is a theme that will be taken up extensively in this book, through a consideration of the bodily and material cultures of loneliness. We tend, in the West, to regard loneliness as a mental affliction and to offer remedies that engage the mind—talking therapies, book groups, interventions based on combatting depression and anxiety through connectedness to others. Yet that connectedness needs to be more than rational. This focus says more about the history of the mind and body in scientific medicine than it does about the lived experience of loneliness.41 The physicality of loneliness was tended to from the time of the ancients to the eighteenth century. Today it is largely ignored, and yet loneliness is manifest in the language of the body— through the metaphors of ‘cold’ people that are indifferent or ‘warm’ people who offer companionship, as well as the hot baths and warm clothes that are instinctively used by those who feel most lonely. The physicality of loneliness and connectedness is also apparent in the ways we structure our material worlds, finding in objects a way to communicate emotions as well as to avoid loneliness. Excessive materialism, however, makes people lonelier, creating a wider sense of lack. Loneliness is not always bad. Indeed, there is an extensive literature on the luxury of solitude as well as loneliness, especially when linked to creativity and art. As the work of artists like William Wordsworth, Virginia Woolf, and May Sarton show, loneliness can be a gift as well as a burden. Does this recognition help in the management of loneliness in the twenty- first century? Is there a way to create great art without being lonely? And does the joy of loneliness have relevance to those who have little and who do not produce great works of art? My hope in writing this book is to help shape answers to these and related questions. And to open up the topic of loneliness more generally as a complex and historically situated emotional state. I hope, also, to encourage more comparative analysis across history, anthropology, and geography. A Biography of Loneliness focuses on the West in general and in the UK in particular; different responses and experiences of loneliness might be indicated in cultures that do not prioritize so highly the status of the individual. There are hints that societies which are collectivist may actually report more loneliness than individualistic societies, though it is unclear whether this simply reflects more ease in discussing loneliness; it might be less shameful in countries that recognize the value of the collective. There might also be a comparison between familial and friendship lack. Loneliness in collectivist cultures, for instance, has been associated with a lack of family support, whereas loneliness in individualistic cultures speaks to a lack of extra-familial connection.42 This raises the broader question of whether ‘loneliness’ means the same thing in collectivist cultures as it does in individualistic communities. To give just one example, ‘lonely’ in Arabic translates as wahid, which means ‘one’ or ‘single’ in English. This provides an interesting spin on my claim that loneliness emerged in the UK as a result of greater focus on the individual. ‘Family’ in the Arab world means more than the individual; connectedness between people is central to a common and individual identity.43 It may be that the embeddedness of the individual in those social contexts means that that the language of loneliness does not exist, as was the case in eighteenth-century Britain. But it is impossible to make authoritative claims about loneliness in the Arab world based on the lack of evidence (and I am wary of the implied presumption that the Arab world is therefore less ‘developed’ than the West, which is far from what I am saying). Most health, policy, and social science work focuses on those industrialized areas where loneliness has been identified as a problem, including North-West Europe and North America. The research samples often tend to be homogenous, so that it is difficult to address cultural diversity; there is a lack of comparative work even into diverse communities within the UK.44 There are clearly some crucial connections needed among diverse but rapidly changing cultures. First, though, I want to turn to the history of loneliness in Britain, and the specific claim that is being made in this book: that modern loneliness is a product of the nineteenth century, of an increasingly scientific, philosophical, and industrial focus on the individual over the collective, on the self against the world. In this, there is only one question that matters. How did the unemotional, physical state of being alone, conceived for centuries simply as ‘oneliness’, become transformed into a modern, pathologized epidemic? CHAPTER 1 WHEN ‘ONELINESS’ BECAME LONELINESS The birth of a modern emotion The history of loneliness is fundamental to understanding its prevalence and meanings in the twenty-first century. And yet that history has been virtually neglected. Of course, there have been books about loneliness—as well as programmes on the radio and television and self-help guides—that lament its rise as a twenty-first-century challenge to health and wellbeing, and panic about loneliness as a modern ‘epidemic’. But what of its history, its meanings, and its longevity? What can we learn about the way loneliness has evolved over time, or its British context? ‘Loneliness’ is a relatively modern phenomenon, both as a word, and perhaps more controversially, as an experience. Let us begin with language. To some degree, language is a challenge in the history of emotion, for there is always a lack of clarity in how feelings of emotion (the quickened heartbeat when spying a loved one) can be articulated through an available and appropriate emotion register (in this case, desire), and its expression, which can be verbal, textual, bodily, or material.1 Some emotional traces are more recoverable than others; a plaintive love letter lasts longer than a handkerchief wet with tears. There is often a space, too, between an emotional experience and the act of talking about that experience—as a result of shame, self-denial, or lack of self-awareness. Recorders of the past, including diarists, are not transparent, but tend to write for a future audience, real or imagined, and shape their stories accordingly.2 Even if we uncover the traces of emotions in the past, then, they may be expressed in ways that are unfamiliar to us. The exchange of furniture or household objects has been read in the past as indicative of a utilitarian approach to marriage formation, for instance, rather than the expression of profound feelings of love and commitment.3 Loneliness is no exception to the changeability of emotional language. Yet I am nevertheless staking a claim that loneliness in its current manifestation is a recent phenomenon, at least in the UK and arguably in the post-industrial West. The Invention of Lonelivness There was little mention of ‘loneliness’ in published texts in English prior to the end of the eighteenth century. Indeed, its appearance is almost negligible. Yet from around 1800, the term began to be used with increasing frequency, rising to a peak at the end of the twentieth century (see Appendix, Figure 10). The meanings of loneliness also changed. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, loneliness did not have the ideological and psychological weight that it does today. Loneliness meant simply ‘oneliness’, which was less a psychological or emotional experience than a physical one. Deriving from the term ‘lonely’, oneliness meant simply the condition of being alone. Oneliness was often contextualized as a religious experience, for it allowed communion with an ever-present God. In 1656, Thomas Blount, an antiquarian and lexicographer, published his Glossographia; or, a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language, now used in our refined English tongue. The book went through several editions and was the largest of the early dictionaries. In the 1661 edition, Blount described loneliness as ‘an [sic] one; an oneliness, or loneliness, a single or singleness’. The English lexicographer and stenographer Elisha Coles published his own English Dictionary in 1676. In it, he defined ‘loneliness’ as ‘solitude’ or ‘wandering alone’, with none of its modern, negative emotional connotations. Although loneliness features little in printed texts prior to the 1800s, the term ‘lonely’ does. Again, however, it is less a description of an emotional state than an indicator of the physical state of being alone. This is fundamentally important in critiquing the universal, inevitable nature of loneliness in the present day. And it also challenges the idea that ‘lonely’ in the past meant the same as it does in the present. Such ideas are problematic because they imply that emotions are static and unchanging over time. Yet they are commonplace in Shakespeare studies, for instance, and in accounts of Hamlet’s soliloquies that are presumed to show the eternal effects of human isolation.4 If we move beyond usage to etymology, The Oxford English Dictionary gives two definitions of lonely, a word that itself originated as late as the sixteenth century. These include: ‘1. Sad because one has no friends or company. Without companions; solitary . . . 2. (of a place) unfrequented and remote’. Only the second of these meanings—a place ‘unfrequented and remote’—was used frequently before around 1800. Accounts of being lonely prior to this are filled with religious revelations and moral accounts of human folly, as well as physical descriptions of isolated places where remarkable events occurred. For example, the use of loneliness in the Bible typically denotes the physical separation of the Messiah from others, as Jesus ‘withdrew to lonely places and prayed’ (Luke 5:16). Even Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) described the adjective ‘lonely’ purely in terms of the state of being alone (the ‘lonely fox’), or a deserted place (‘lonely rocks’). The term did not necessarily carry any emotional import. The Importance of Solitude The deliberate act of choosing to be lonely—as in being physically alone— might be to commune with God, in the early modern period, and increasingly by the eighteenth century, with nature. There is an extensive body of literature linked to the discovery of new lands, and the ‘primitive’, in which solitude is inherent, but not necessarily problematized. Indeed, in Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), the story of a shipwrecked man who spent twenty-eight years alone on a remote tropical island, loneliness does not feature, and not only because Crusoe forms a master/slave relationship with Friday. There is not a single reference to the main protagonist feeling ‘lonely’ or experiencing ‘loneliness’ in the novel. Crusoe is alone, but he never defines himself as lonely, a phenomenon or experience incomprehensible to modern readers. Consider, by contrast, the Twentieth-Century Fox drama Castaway (Zemeckis 2000), which borrows from Robinson Crusoe, and concerns a FedEx employee Chuck (Tom Hanks) being stranded on a desert island. Since he has nobody to talk to, Chuck marks a face on a volleyball and calls the ball ‘Wilson’. (Wilson is an American sporting equipment manufacturer, and the company now sells the replica balls on its website.) For modern viewers, this plot development makes far more sense: it connects to some innate human need for companionship and the belief that isolation has a devastating impact on one’s mental health.5 In Defoe’s time, however, solitude was not necessarily problematic. Let us turn again to Johnson’s Dictionary, which also defined ‘solitude’ as meaning a ‘lonely life; state of being alone’.6 Solitude had a similar and sporadic pattern of incidence to ‘lonely’ between 1550 and 1800. Solitude has fallen out of favour as a term in the twenty-first century but was once widely used. The term ‘solitude’ comes from the Latin solitudo, and means simply: ‘1. the state or situation of being alone’ and ‘2. a lonely or uninhabited place’. As with ‘lonely’, there was no emotional experience necessarily attached to solitude; both referred merely to the physical experience of ‘oneliness’ (see Appendix, Figures 11 and 12). The term ‘solitude’ was used less in printed works from the mid- nineteenth century. I believe that this decline corresponds with the increasing use of ‘loneliness’ as a shorthand for both the state of being alone and the experience of being lonely. Thus, the use of ‘solitude’ dipped at the same time the language of loneliness and being lonely became more common. Now, because loneliness and being lonely were not discussed prior to the late eighteenth century, these terms do not appear in the medical literature. The present-day pathologization of ‘loneliness’ as a mental and physical affliction was non-existent. What medical writers and others did talk about before the late eighteenth century was solitude, which had a number of negative and positive connotations. Like loneliness, solitude has a neglected history. Yet it is also an important aspect of the history of emotion. Again, solitude did not necessarily invoke any negative emotional response. Rather, solitude could be enjoyed and savoured. The historian Barbara Taylor has written of the enjoyment of solitude by the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the English philosopher and writer Mary Wollstonecraft, especially when linked to eighteenth-century passions of nature and the natural world. The ‘retreat’ to nature as a means to find individual happiness links to the psychological root of pastoral literature, and to deistic ideas of God-in- nature.7 Solitude was not incompatible with sociability, then, as it could be mentally and physically invigorating, and enable the individual to fare better in society. In The Pleasures of Solitude, P.L. Courtier justifies its value, not as the desire of a ‘surly misanthrope’, but rather to ‘escape the throng’s turmoil, To breathe the cooling freshness of the grove! . . . For, all we fondly cherish, dearly prize, All that the fancy or the heart can move; full oft the busy scene of life denies’. Similarly, in J.G. Zimmerman and J.B. Mercier’s Solitude Considered, in Regard to its Influence upon the Mind and the Heart, the authors claimed that: The rudiments of a great character can only be formed in Solitude. It is there alone that the solidity of thought, the fondness for activity, the abhorrence of indolence, which constitute the characters of a HERO and a SAGE are first acquired. This reinforcement of the value of solitude is reminiscent of the ancient hermit ideal, with isolation as a spiritual path.8 Oneliness in the presence of God could be, for the deliberately isolated (as for Christ in the wilderness), a subject of intense creative and spiritual reflection. For the creative, too, there has always been a power in solitude, which seems to echo and reflect that connection to a higher spiritual power.9 Of course, hermits might also reject society for non-religious reasons. One example is John Bigg, the ‘Dinton Hermit’ (1629–96) (Figure 1). Figure 1. ‘John Bigg, an eccentric hermit’. Line engraving by Wilkes. Once clerk to Simon Mayne, one of the judges responsible for sentencing King Charles I to death in 1649, Bigg withdrew from society at the Restoration, when Mayne was executed as a Regicide. The reasons for his social withdrawal are unclear; some claimed it was remorse at his hand in the King’s death; others that he feared retribution. Living in a cave, he became dependent on the charity of others, begging for food and asking for strips of leather, which he attached to his clothes.10 Solitude, Gender, and Class Choosing to be alone for artistic purposes, by contrast, was an educated middle-class activity, requiring physical space as well as time away from economic activities. It was also traditionally white, male, and privileged; the same conventions have not been applied to black writers and women have long been identified through family structures rather than in terms of their own individual accomplishments. All emotional states and representations are gendered, now as in the past. One of the important aspects of that gendering is how social performances of an emotion served to justify and uphold traditional social relationships. In the sixteenth century, women’s tears proved that women were wetter than men; that they lacked the heat of men’s bodies. In the nineteenth century, those tears marked women’s femininity and lack of suitability for public life, meaning that they were deemed inferior in a whole different (but nonetheless influential) way.11 The lonely woman is a similarly recurring trope in literature that reflects the passivity expected of women, especially middle-class women from the late eighteenth century onwards, whose place was increasingly restricted to the home. In early modern literature the lone woman—usually an ungoverned spinster or widow—plays a different and subversive figure as she moves between the private and public spheres and threatens the patriarchal order. Solitary women, then, could be a threat.12 There were gendered roles for men too, linked to solitude. One convention was that men, through reasons of religiosity or intellect, spent their days in isolation as either hermits or scholars. Indeed, Rousseau gladly took up that self-description when he went in search of solitude.13 Women could be alone for religious reasons, and later for creative reasons, but in Western literature, they were far more likely to have solitude imposed upon them, a common literary trope including the abandonment or neglect of a lover. Forbearance and patience became a woman’s lot, which was rather different from the self-imposed ideal of solitude, and a caricature of the female part became that of the imaginary sister of Viola in Twelfth Night: ‘She pined in thought/And with a green and yellow melancholy/She sat like patience on a monument/Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?’ (Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, 2, 4, 110–13). The ‘abandoned woman’ was in some ways then the poetic counterpart of the ‘solitary man’, and part of a much longer literary tradition that found its way into personal letters and correspondence in the seventeenth century and beyond.14 Solitude and Health Excessive solitude could be potentially damaging to health—as indicated by the ‘green and yellow melancholy’, which simultaneously invoked the lovesickness of an abandoned virgin. Solitude was particularly problematic when it was imposed from the outside rather than sought from within. And in the pre-modern, humoral tradition which dominated Western medicine from the second to the late eighteenth centuries, solitude could impact on the balance of one’s psychological and physical health. Good health concerned the internal balance of the four humours, and an imbalance in the fluids of the body, brought about by the passions or the ‘non-naturals’ or the habits of the body, which included sleep and movement, food and drink, and bodily excretions, produced a variety of mental and physical ailments, from depression to obesity.15 Too little solitude, like too much exercise, could deplete the spirits; too much made them sluggish and prone to melancholia. This is why excessive solitude in the 1700s was linked by medical writers to mental afflictions, worry, and self-doubt. In Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), the Oxford cleric enumerated all the different causes of melancholia and depression, from which he had long suffered. There is no reference to ‘loneliness’ or even ‘solitude’ in the book, but there are multiple references to the state of being ‘alone’, which often led him to over-thinking. Scholars were thought to be particularly prone to melancholia through excess rumination in humoral medicine, and Burton acknowledged this in his introductory ‘Abstract of Melancholy’: When I go musing all alone Thinking of divers things fore-known. When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow and void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, Methinks the time runs very fleet. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy . . . When I lie waking all alone, Recounting what I have ill done, My thoughts on me then tyrannise, Fear and sorrow me surprise, Whether I tarry still or go, Methinks the time moves very slow. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so mad as melancholy . . . Friends and companions get you gone, ’Tis my desire to be alone; Ne’er well but when my thoughts and I Do domineer in privacy.16 The letters of consultation by the eighteenth-century Scottish physician William Cullen similarly provide a wealth of information about the impact of loneliness on interpersonal relationships, as well as health.17 It was not uncommon by the eighteenth century for men and women with sufficient recourse to money, literacy, and status to write to physicians to discuss their health concerns and to pursue healing.18 Mental and physical health was still a collaborative exercise between physicians and their patients, with the latter picking up ideas from conversations with others and advice manuals like William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine, which went through at least eighty editions.19 Patients and physicians drew on a shared understanding about the role of the humours in generating ill health as well as, by the eighteenth century, the nerves. Although it was the physical structures of the body (its nerves and fibres) that became the source of illness, rather than the humours, ‘nervous debility’ told the same story: too much time alone had a negative physical and emotional impact. In a letter regarding one Mrs Rae (1779), for instance, Cullen suggested that his patient suffered from ‘nervous weakness, often tedious but never dangerous’. He recommended exercise—specifically horse riding—in order to physically invigorate her fibres and spirits. In this context, Rousseau’s and Wollstonecraft’s brisk walks in pursuit of solitude ironically became the very means through which its negative excesses could be avoided.20 In Cullen’s view, tea and coffee were to be avoided as they were stimulants, but it was most important that Mrs Rae’s mind be occupied. As Cullen explained, ‘her mind requires as much attention as her body. However averse she should see her friends both at home & abroad, every amusement & easy occupation are to be sought for while Silence & Solitude are to be avoided’. Mrs Allan, a ‘hysteric melancholic’, was similarly urged to seek companionship and engage in conversation (1777), though Cullen ‘never knew reasoning’ to have much effect with hysterical women.21 In the nineteenth century, Western medicine found new ways of classifying mental and physical health and developed a series of specialisms around emotional and psychological wellbeing on the one hand, and physical organs, systems, and parts on the other. What is profoundly different in modern medical, as opposed to humoral, interpretations of solitude, moreover, is that its positive characteristics are usually absent. We are so committed to the ideal of sociability as a model for mental health that we do not always tend to the positive aspects of being alone, nor to its impact on the body as well as the mind. Yet the benefits of loneliness (Einsamkeit) were stressed in German philosophy and literature until as late as 1945.22 Reminiscent of the pursuit of solitude in earlier centuries, the term relates to the voluntary withdrawal from life’s hectic progress, so that individuals could reflect, meditate, and commune with God or a higher creative force. It may well be that solitude was considered more problematic in physiology and medicine in the latter part of the eighteenth century, corresponding to a philosophical and political context in which sociability —in some ways the antonym of solitude—was increasingly important in learned British culture. The literary critic and English professor John Mullan has explored the ways in which the rise of the novel from the mid- eighteenth century was entangled with the rise of a particular kind of ‘public sphere’ sentimentalism, and the emergence of literary sensitivity and empathy as part of the development of civil society.23 In some ways, this is reminiscent of the historian William Reddy’s claims about the emergence of a particular kind of ‘affect’ in French post-Revolutionary society, in which one form of emotional regime was replaced by another.24 Performing sociability through public gatherings and collective participation in some kind of shared consensus of value was one of the ways through which civil society was manifested and reinforced. And this meant a prevalence of emotional language linked to gender, empathy, and moral and ethical responsibility towards others.25 Sociability was linked to politeness, and to attentiveness to form, worldliness, and gentility. These characteristics of polite eighteenth-century society also concerned symbolic, bodily, gestural, and verbal display codes through which sociability could be enacted.26 In the Spectator, a daily publication founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, philosophy and manners were taught to aspiring middle-class men and women, with accounts by such characters as Sir Roger de Coverley reminding readers of the ‘benevolence’ that, in an ideal state, ‘flows out towards everyone’ one meets.27 Such sentiment was expressed in stoic philosophy, which emphasized the value of ‘sensus communus’ (the idea that common sense connected the individual and society), and by poets like Alexander Pope, for whom ‘Self-love and Social be the Same’.28 To a great extent, these philosophical imperatives were realized in the metaphors of the physical body. The emotions that forged connections between people were echoed in the nerves and fibres that symbolically linked one person to another, and to the body of the state, or the body politic.29 I would suggest that this meta-narrative of change in which sociability and connections were fundamentally important to the social fabric might help to explain why it was that solitude became more frequently referenced in publications between 1750 and 1850, whether as an antagonistic force to the production of civil, sociable society, or as a personal quest for peace in a hectic world. The latter perspective, in which the search for the individual was an absolute necessity in the mechanized industrial age, became central to the work of the Romantic poets, who privileged solitary wandering in pursuit of literary and emotional fulfilment.30 The Making of Modern Loneliness How has loneliness, as a distinct emotion cluster, taken over from solitude and oneliness as a symbol of social separateness and a sign of social disconnect? What are the pathways by which loneliness became so ubiquitous as a social and emotional condition and a modern-day ‘problem’? Demographic historians explain this as a result of structural change; loneliness becomes a direct and inevitable consequence of late modernity, when a large proportion of the world live in highly developed, globalized, secular societies. Historian Keith Snell argues that the most significant historical cause of loneliness is living alone, which often stems from bereavement.31 Sole living was also caused by the transition from a traditionally agrarian, face-to-face society (in which multiple generations lived within the same household, social mobility was low, and few people moved outside the boundaries of their village) to an urban, socially mobile workforce, in which new, independent households were created.32 Social and demographic shifts certainly played a factor. But they are not the only explanation. Loneliness is not an inevitable correlation of space. The writer Olivia Laing’s much-acclaimed book The Lonely City similarly identifies single dwelling as exacerbating loneliness.33 Yet she also notes how being with other people in a shared physical space is not the same as being together in a shared emotional space. The idea that environmental changes necessarily brought emotional changes presumes an unchanging picture of the self and emotion. So, we have to ask: what other factors were at play? The emergence of ‘loneliness’ as a coherent emotional state was a product of demographic change and urbanization accompanied by a number of other significant factors in creating an increasingly individualized, secular, and potentially alienated existence. These factors include modern scientific beliefs about the body and the mind and the decline of the soul as a source of explanation. After the early neurological work of the French philosopher René Descartes (best known for his dictum: ‘I think therefore I am’), it became possible to view the human body as an automaton, and physical movement, including the heartbeat, as reflecting physiological impulse, rather than a spiritual presence. Mind and body were separable states and the body was under the control of the mind (qua brain). Following these scientific and spiritual changes were mass industrialization and urbanization, with traditional domestic manufacture being replaced by factory-scale piecework. Underpinning economic and social change was the work of Charles Darwin and the rise of evolutionary biology, which was manifested and communicated through a range of fictional plots and social metaphors.34 The philosophy of the individual predominated; the individual was more important than, and opposed to, society. Little wonder then that Victorian novels were full of lonely characters, in search of psychological growth and freedom while pitted against a hostile and uncaring world. Yes, there are many lone figures in the world’s literature, from the exile of Rama in the ancient Indian epic poem Ramayana, through the seventeenth-century French abduction tales of Mademoiselle de Scudéry.35 And at the heart of many of these stories is the individual pitted against society, or on some transformative quest. But what is characteristic of the depiction of aloneness, and subsequently loneliness in the nineteenth-century novel, is a growing emphasis on psychological realism since the publication of Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded in 1740, a backdrop of industrialization (with its accompanying social imagery and metaphors), and a growing public/private divide, which required women to receive emotional satisfaction and companionship from the domestic sphere.36 With an expansion of bourgeois literary forms from the eighteenth century, aimed at a readership with significant levels of leisure and literacy, and well versed in the literary tropes of romance and individualism, loneliness began to be used in novels and poems to mark not only the battle for belonging on the part of the protagonist, but also the absence of this emotional satisfaction. In many cases the lack of social acceptance and the desirability of a romantic mate are blended, as in I.D. Hardy’s Love, Honour and Obey (1881): Zeb is standing by the companion-way, looking on at the sociable groups around, and feeling rather lonely, when a gentleman—the same whose attention had been attracted to her before dinner, at which meal, however, his place had been far from her—approaches, gazes at the veiled face searchingly in the dim light to make sure that it is ‘the handsome girl with the black eyes’. (p. 233, emphases added) Lonely female protagonists move through Victorian fiction, from Charlotte Brontë’s Villette (1853) to Anne Brontë’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), from George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) to Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1892). In many cases, these characters, with their themes of emotional resistance or martyrdom, played with earlier variations of women as ‘Patience on a monument, smiling at grief’. Of course, heroines could overcome their loneliness, but it was typically through a ‘Reader, I married him’ acquiescence to the status quo and the ideal of the romantic love fulfilled—or lost in the case of Great Expectations’ Miss Havisham (Dickens 1861). Charles Dickens’ works also depicted a variety of models of loneliness, especially in children, in the context of an unfeeling, mechanistic industrial society. Thus, the heroes and heroines of Dickens’ novels—Pip in Great Expectations, for instance, or Oliver in the eponymous Oliver Twist (1837) —found themselves alone, abandoned, and friendless in a bleak and hostile world. Such characters drew attention, often deliberately, to a psychological paradox in nineteenth-century industrial metaphors: on the one hand, it was necessary for the working classes to operate like cogs in a machine, but on the other hand, that was a potentially dehumanizing process, even for those whose life was nasty, brutish, and short.37 In the late industrial age, moreover, the themes of sociability and social connectedness took on new metaphors, as the nervous system of Britain and its people were connected by electricity and the telegraph.38 Incidentally, the digital age has bodily metaphors of its own, with the brain qua mind as a kind of Google, endlessly connecting and disconnecting from one idea, event, and person to another. Metaphors for loneliness are overwhelmingly embodied too; they tend to involve images and degrees of warmth, which is suggestive of the physicality of contact with another. Thus, lonely people are ‘left out in the cold’. The poetic depiction of the lonely individual outside of society, whether through error, weakness, unfeeling social structures, or bad luck, was compatible not only with the principles of evolutionary biology, but also with the emergence of the individual as an object of early psychiatry: a monadic, delimited self, set against the world. With the mind sciences, neurological and biological principles started to explain the kinds of nervous disorders seen in the eighteenth century (and manifested by excessive solitude), with considerable influence from psychoanalytic theory and the work of theorists like the Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Freud did not write specifically about loneliness, but he did write about the fear of being alone. He uses the anecdote of a child, who is frightened of the dark unless his aunt speaks to him, at which point ‘it gets lighter’. Darkness and light, like cold and warmth, may be seen as embodied experiences of loneliness. More importantly, perhaps, Freud’s subject Dora is a diagnosed hysteric, who is described as unsociable and locked into an incommensurate longing for a distant woman, who would become, perhaps, the mother figure in Freud’s other writings.39 Loneliness, it was implied, marked a sort of neuroticism, an inadequate development of the self that cannot adapt and thrive in adverse circumstance. For other writers, including the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung, loneliness manifested the modern dilemma of humankind. For Jung, the lifelong journey of the human being is the differentiation of the self from others. This process of individuation meant separating out the conscious and unconscious elements of existence, with the individual engaging with the overriding themes of the collective unconscious, as well as with the language and symbols that were available. Jung differentiated between ‘introverted’ and ‘extroverted’ types, based on how those individuals engaged with the external world, and there was a degree of neuroticism associated with introversion and the desire for solitude. Modern loneliness became, by the early twentieth century, a mental problem linked to the operation of mind. Philosophies of social alienation, which stressed low common values and a high degree of isolation between individuals, reinforced the idea that loneliness was a dysfunctional and negative part of the human psyche, caused by the onset of modernization and a profound individual disconnect from others. Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and others predicted the five prominent features of alienation: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self- estrangement.40 For the founder of German sociology Frederick Tönnies, there were two types of social groupings: Gemeinschaft, usually translated as ‘community’ based on togetherness and mutual bonds, and Gesellschaft, or groups sustained for the benefit of the individual. Emotional connections are seldom so rigidly defined, yet the nostalgic idea of the ‘lost Gemeinschaft’ is still used in the twenty-first century to explain loneliness among the elderly.41 Alienation, like the philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology, identified the helplessness of the individual in relation to the world, as well as the complex inevitability (at least for existentialists) of loneliness. Yet intellectual truth and freedom for the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, for instance, was found not only in solitude but also in loneliness, since that is the path towards true self-knowledge. There is a reminder, here, of the intellectual isolationism of the early monastic hermits, in the quest for meaning lying within (though Heidegger refuses a theological voice).42 Others, including the so-called first existentialist Søren Kierkegaard (whose work particularly influenced Heidegger), similarly invoked the idea that—as Sartre put it in the play No Exit—‘hell is other people’.43 While Freud had not expressed specifically this concept of social alienation, his notion of a subconscious versus a conscious mind, and the ego-super-ego and id, created a space between the individual and society, and affirmed the idea that there was a disconnect between self and world. It is not my aim to rehearse all the different philosophical perspectives that emerged during the twentieth century, including Max Weber’s recognition that it was the individualism of Protestantism that underpinned the tenets of economic capitalism.44 What is most significant is the twentieth-century emergence of ‘self versus world’ and ‘individual versus society’ which were naturalized in economic and political structures and beliefs that still govern intellectual discussion in the twenty-first-century West. At that extreme, loneliness is not merely an inevitable part of the fragmented human condition, but also a distinctly psychological state linked to one’s ability to interact with others. I have intimated above, with reference to Taylor’s argument about the modern self, and the impossibility of being alone in a world filled by God, that with the decline of religion, or more specifically the emergence of rational humanism, secularity was crucial to the modern formation of loneliness as an emotion cluster. Freud acknowledged that ‘devout, intrinsic religion’ provided something of a buffer for loneliness. It is an interesting, though underexplored, question whether the pursuit of religion in the twenty-first century is triggered by loneliness, or whether God provides a comfort to people today.45 I am not, of course, suggesting that religion has disappeared, or that modern life is irredeemably secular, though there has been a distinct shift from the seventeenth century to the present in terms of the performance of religious catechisms and homilies in everyday life. But that does not mean that people are less spiritual; merely that their spirituality becomes expressed in different ways, and in pockets of culture that aren’t necessarily connected to everyday practice. Rather, I am identifying a philosophical and civic trend by which loneliness as a social phenomenon depends on a version of the self that need not be developed in relation to a paternalistic God or an internalized belief system, but via external, secular identification with peer groups and communities that share, and outwardly perform, rituals of belonging.46 All societies have rituals. In the early modern period, these might have included compulsory attendance at church and the ceremonials of worship including the catechism; in the early twenty-first century rituals of belonging might include YouTube shopping ‘mall haul’ videos, where people share the unpacking of their bags. Whether a religious or secular activity is taking place, the repetition and reassertion of these rituals are a way for members of a society to find meaning and belonging, however temporarily.47 We might argue that some performances of identity and belonging in a fragmented climate of digital postmodernity, characterized by instability, competition, and increased consumerism, reinforce the idea of loneliness as a chronic, destabilizing force. In any case, the demands of twenty-first-century selfhood have connected new ways of putting the individual at the centre of myriad networks by which emotional performances are created and reproduced. The paradox of social media is that it produces the same isolation and loneliness that it seeks to overcome. In the same way that suicide could spread from person to person through a social contagion (as expressed in 1912 by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who used the term ‘anomie’ to explain how individual and social instability was caused by a breakdown of ideals), loneliness has been imagined as a product of the social forces of late modernity. In this context, social ties can unravel across an entire network of people, causing the societal fabric to disintegrate. In the words of the neuroscientist John Cacioppo, social networks begin to ‘fray at the edges, like a yarn that comes loose at the end of a crocheted sweater’.48 Loneliness as a Product of Historical Forces Viewing loneliness as a product of historical forces helps to explain how it has become so profound in the twenty-first century. There will always be ‘pinch-points’ of loneliness; those moments when the individual in the modern age will be aware that she or he is experiencing a rite of passage: adolescent love, the birth of a child, marriage, life-threatening illness or death, divorce, or any number of significant moments that can be experienced alongside others or alone. Amid a backdrop of collective change, individual lives are lived. The first such life that I want to explore is that of the American poet and writer Sylvia Plath. While much has been written about the work of Plath, her mental illness, and her marriage to the Yorkshire poet laureate Ted Hughes, little has been said about her loneliness, which seems to have dogged her entire life. Many themes related to loneliness—chronic versus transient emotional states, the impact of gender, and the significant moments at which loneliness might occur, including childhood and adolescence, romance, marriage, parenthood, and single parenthood— emerge through a study of Plath’s journals and letters. It is to those writings I will now turn. CHAPTER 2 A ‘DISEASE OF THE BLOOD’? The chronic loneliness of Sylvia Plath God, but life is loneliness. Sylvia Plath, Journal1 Between 2017 and 2018 two volumes of the letters of the American author Sylvia Plath were published.2 They offer unique insights into her mental health, her relationships with others—including, notably, her husband and fellow writer Ted Hughes (Figure 2)—and her state of mind when she died by suicide on 11 February 1963. While the first volume focused on Plath’s childhood and adolescence, her college years, and her meeting Hughes, the second garnered even more media attention, for it includes a dozen letters Plath sent to her psychiatrist before her death. In them, she accused Hughes of beating her and causing a miscarriage, as well as wishing her dead. Plath’s relationship with Hughes has attracted much media attention, from the defacement of Plath’s headstone to remove his name, to their surviving daughter Frieda’s impassioned defence of her father.3 Figure 2. Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, pictured in 1956. Creative Commons. It is understandable that the daughter of Plath and Hughes might feel torn by the allegations against her father, and that she might also seek ways to understand and excuse his violence by reference to the life the couple lived: chaotic, artistic, and impassioned. Frieda recognizes that these letters overshadow everything else included in the volume; that the scandal attached to Plath and Hughes is all that is discussed, save for the art. And it was the art that mattered in the end, Frieda suggests, which was throughout Plath’s letters her recurring refrain: Hughes was a ‘genius’ and she was grateful to have known him, even when she resented how much it cost her —financially, physically, emotionally. Disentangling the artist from the life is never an easy task, and it is not my intention to debate Plath’s marriage and Hughes’ violence, or to weigh in on the considerable inequalities recognized by Plath: that Hughes had intellectual and practical freedom, while she juggled childcare, domesticity, and art. I am interested in the way loneliness shadowed her recorded life. For it was not only there at the end, when she died. It dogged her from childhood, through adolescence and early adulthood; it accompanied her during her marriage to, and struggles with, Hughes, and it lingered when he left her. Loneliness was not only evident in Plath’s fictional writings, but also in the related themes of identity and psychological health that she addressed openly in her journals and letters. The chronic loneliness catalogued in her writing was different in quality and timbre to episodic loneliness (which is shorter-term and linked to life events), reminding us that time intersects with loneliness in important yet neglected ways. Emotional distress and loneliness intersect in Plath’s work, mental illness and loneliness feeding off one another, and producing profound social isolation. In reading Plath’s writing and considering her attempts at self-fashioning—how she presented herself to the world, as well as how she wished to appear—it is apparent that her experience of loneliness evolved and changed through her life, according to circumstance, the social and political demands of society, and her literary ambitions. Plath’s attempts to find a real companion—first a friend, and later a lover; someone who understood her completely and with whom she could truly be herself—were manifest in her letters to her mother, her friends, and her husband. It is also possible that Plath’s own self-fashioning as a tormented artist, with deliberate parallels with Virginia Woolf, meant that the literary loneliness that was expressed provided Plath with a much-needed sense of identity. I am not suggesting that Plath’s death was directly the result of Woolf’s suicide, though she was interested in the suicides of a number of tormented and creative women including Marilyn Monroe, whose blonde hair Plath copied, and who also died by suicide in 1962, the year before Plath.4 Most scholars who have focused on the life and works of Plath have talked about her passionate affair with Hughes and her ultimate mental illness and suicide as though this end was somehow inevitable.5 This narrative is symptomatic of the cultural need to view Plath and Hughes as star-crossed and tempestuous lovers: from Orpheus and Eurydice to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, this is a trope that has captured the public imagination. The need for a soulmate and its loss, or lack, has traditionally been one of the key themes in the articulation of loneliness among young women. It was also, sadly, apparent in Plath’s work. Plath’s letters reveal a lonely child, who struggled to make friends, and who felt something of a misfit. Born in Boston, USA in 1932, she was introverted and literary from a young age, writing poetry and publishing in magazines and newspapers. She was also an avid journal keeper and letter writer. Her father, Otto Emil Plath, was an entomologist and Professor of Biology at Boston University, who died of complications linked to diabetes when she was just eight years old. Plath’s mother, Aurelia Frances Schober, had been one of Otto’s students.6 After Otto’s death, Sylvia and her brother Warren were raised by Aurelia, who worked as a teaching substitute at a local high school. Plath studied at Smith College, a women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts. During those studies, Plath drove herself to excess, constantly in search of perfection, and worrying about wasting her time with friends (that she nevertheless was desperate to have). After Smith she won a scholarship to attend Newnham College, Cambridge. It was there that Plath met, and married, the poet Ted Hughes in 1956. The couple lived together first in the United States and then in England. They had two children, Frieda and Nicholas, before they separated in 1962. In 1963, Plath died by suicide after gassing herself in the oven. Much is hidden in the bare bones of this familiar biography, including the ways loneliness fleshed out Plath’s existence. Particular moments of crisis included the death of Plath’s father when she was a young child, Plath’s intense and problematic relationship with her mother, her college experiences and thwarted attempts to feel as though she belonged, her romantic relationships and the search for that significant ‘other’, her career challenges, and the relatively short time frame in which she experienced marriage, motherhood, and separation. The gendered language that Plath used to describe her emotional experiences is also important: the metaphors of miscarried, aborted, and mutated foetuses that depict lost creativity, the trope of suicide and its links to mental health and social pressures; the ‘bell jar’ that is placed over society and through which everything becomes distorted (the metaphor, indeed, that became synonymous with Plath’s only published novel), and the natural imagery—of water, corruption, power—that runs through Plath’s poetry. Through all of this language, and the viscerality of passion and desire, loneliness stood separate and fixed, a spectre that she could not escape. The Loneliness of Childhood The BBC Loneliness Survey of 2018 found that loneliness among the young was common.7 It was certainly central to Plath’s early existence. As a child, she felt ‘different’ from others, and she often felt excluded.8 Plath’s complex, unresolved feelings towards her late father were expressed in her poem ‘Daddy’, written soon before her death. The poem, composed of sixteen five-line stanzas, is brutal and visceral, referring to him as a ‘black shoe’ in which she can no longer fit. If Plath’s father was a ‘brute’ and ‘Marble-heavy’, then he was also a mould for the romantic and sexual relationships that Plath would experience, the love and yearning Plath felt for her father being transplanted onto other lovers, including Ted Hughes. Otto Plath seemed something of a tyrant in the home and yet someone she desperately admired; her paternal adoration led to conflict with Hughes. Plath also had a complex emotional attitude towards her mother, which she would discuss in her relationship with her therapist as an adult, and which she also explored through reading books on psychiatry and psychology, including the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Intellectualizing her feelings for her parents did not prevent her from needing them as an adult just as she had in childhood. While she lacked friends her own age, she yearned for her mother’s contact, her mother’s companionship, as well as feeling responsible for her mother’s emotional state. On 18 July 1943, when Plath was just eleven years old and away at camp, she wrote to her mother, Aurelia, telling her that she felt ‘left out’ as many of the girls were going home. She hadn’t heard from her mother and wanted to know she was alright, as she worried when there was no news.9 Plath wrote her mother letters daily and practised signing off differently —from ‘Sylvia’ to ‘Siv’, ‘Sivvy’, ‘your Sylvy’, ‘your very own Sylvia- girl’, and ‘me’. What is clear in these early letters is the evolution of a child’s maternal attachment, and the conscious self-fashioning that is common to adolescent development. What is also apparent, however, is that Plath worked hard at her studies, valuing herself in relation to her academic achievements, yet lacking a special friend with whom she might share childhood experiences. In ‘Missing Mother’ she wrote about the sense of abandonment she felt when her mother was away.10 Plath continued to write to her mother with a child-like dependency, especially when she went to college and her loneliness became more acute. ‘I AM A SMITH GIRL NOW’ In 1950, Plath started at Smith College, a private, independent women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts.11 Plath was thrilled, and excited about the possibility of making friends, as well as excelling in her studies. The importance of her material world was paramount in emotionally grounding her during those first days and weeks away from home. She wrote to Aurelia to describe the physicality of her room and surroundings, noting that ‘tangible things’ could be ‘friendly’: the maple- top desk that felt like ‘velvet’, the clock that ticked like the beat of a heart.12 For lonely people, material objects are often anthropomorphized, taking on human characteristics and providing a particular kind of comfort. Plath wrote to her mother, often more than once a day, about every single aspect of her life at Smith: her studies, romantic entanglements, clothes, friendships, mental health, weight, emotional wellbeing, and money worries (Plath was supported by a ‘promising young writers’ scholarship courtesy of the Smith alumna and writer Olive Higgins Prouty). She fretted about her ability to keep up with her academic studies, to achieve the highest grades, and to balance that achievement with a social life, a romantic life, and the ability to be creative. On 2 October 1950, when she had been at Smith for less than a month, she described herself as utterly ‘exhausted’.13 Plath’s rigorous application to her studies, and her constant worrying about whether she was performing well enough, getting enough sleep, and going to be able to publish, exacerbated her existing mental health problems. And in turn those mental health problems proved to be socially isolating; more than half of all people with diagnosed emotional problems describe themselves as lonely.14 Losing sense of what was proportionate study, or how much was enough, it was difficult for Plath to get support from other students, or to feel less lonely, since she envisaged them as competition, or obstacles in her path. Nevertheless, she wanted to be desired, and was anxious that she would never find fulfilment with a friend, or a lover. In November 1950, Plath went to see a presentation by the Professor of Philosophy Peter Bertocci on ‘The Question of Sex before Marriage’. Reporting to her mother the large turnout, and the fact that Plath was not currently infatuated with a boy (and therefore, in her view, able to regard the talk entirely logically), she saw she was compartmentalizing her life in an unsustainable way. She had thrown all her energies into her studies, but was without either boyfriend or female friends; no one to ‘pour myself into’, as she lamented.15 Pouring herself into someone, giving her all, was characteristic of Plath’s attitude towards her life. But these desires were also expected of women in the 1950s; questions of marriage, domesticity, and entertaining bumped up repeatedly against her desires to write, to be alone, to become famous. Plath’s growing awareness, and sadness, that Aurelia could no longer provide the emotional security and companionship she once had was difficult to bear. Growing up was a wrench; she wanted to remain a child, free from the responsibilities of womanhood, and even taking care of herself.16 It was only during visits home, when she was physically and emotionally cared for by her mother, that Plath seemed able to relax; this isn’t unusual for a woman her age (she was only eighteen years old when she went away to college), but it is apparent that Plath needed regular bouts of convalescence, of feeling utterly and completely cared for, in order to maintain her life at Smith. Thus, she wrote to her mother after one such episode, calling her ‘mummy’, notably, rather than her usual ‘mother’ or ‘mum’, thanking her for feeding her, buying her perfume and stockings, letting her lie in, and pampering her for a few days.17 During her time at Smith, Plath wrote letters to connect herself to the world outside, and the writing of those letters was just as important as the sending of them. In writing, one reinforces one’s connections with others through a physical act. Receiving letters is an affirmation that those relationships exist. It helps to assuage loneliness because letters are physical objects that can be read again and again. In her final correspondence, Plath would recall how letters were the only things tethering her to an external reality, though the occasional telephone call with her mother had always brought her joy.18 Besides her mother, Plath wrote to Hans Joachim-Neuport, a German pen-pal with whom she discussed the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, and Eddie Cohen, a man who began writing to her after one of her poems was published in the magazine Seventeen. In both cases she was consciously trying out identities, which offered an alternative to her day-to-day isolation at Smith. Occasionally, Plath experienced moments when she was ‘very collegiate’, when she connected with other girls and felt a sense of belonging.19 But most of the time, Plath’s experience was a lonely one, in which she worked as hard as possible and punctuated a gruelling routine with the occasional date. Her only friend at that time was Ann Davidow, with whom she discussed the pressures of study and the difficulties of depression and anxiety. Bonding with Davidow was therapeutic and made her feel less isolated. No wonder, then, that when Davidow left Smith, she felt betrayed and alone.20 Davidow left because of her worsening mental health. Plath had observed her friend’s changing mood and noticed that Davidow’s jollity seemed ‘more artificial’ than before. Plath reported to her mother that the girls had discussed depression and suicidal urges. This is one of the first times Plath raises the idea of suicide; throughout her subsequent journal entries and letters there is a recurring image of suicide—of others, particularly friends and writers—framed as a way out, an escape from the cloyingly depressing nature of existence. There was also a sense of companionship in sharing suicidal thoughts and mental illness, of bonding: like Plath, Davidow felt that the other girls were ‘very cliquey’.21 Davidow stored up razor blades and talked endlessly about suicide, according to Plath; if Aurelia were her mother, Plath wrote, she would be alright. Without the friendship of Davidow, college life became bleaker for Plath. There was nobody to confide in, and Plath was unable to skate or play bridge or do any of the things that the popular girls did.22 The spectre of being lonely while not alone is related to the fundamental difference between solitude and loneliness; it is not whether or not people are around, but the recognition that one has nothing in common with others that is so challenging. It is meaningful connections that matter. When Plath tried to connect with other girls, she wrote to Davidow, she was ‘looked at oddly’. Having thrown all her energies into her relationship with Davidow, she was now completely alone.23 Sitting in her room alone, she cried for her loss: ‘I am so lonely . . . this single room is so lonely’.24 Plath wrote to her mother to complain about Davidow leaving, lamenting she had been Plath’s only friend. There was nobody to ‘wash socks with’ besides her, a charming and, predictably, given Plath’s emotional embeddedness in the material world of her surroundings, physical reference to the everyday intimacy of friendship. These day-to-day moments of connectedness were what Plath missed most of all. She had been excited to get a single room, imagining herself studying the entire time, but actually found the lack of companionship hard to bear.25 Plath did write to, and of, other girls at Smith besides Davidow, including Marcia (Marty) Stern.26 Yet she consistently viewed herself as separate from her peers and as unable to connect. In her journals, Plath noted the visceral physicality of this feeling; loneliness disrupting the whole body as well as the mind. Loneliness, she wrote, came from a ‘vague core of the self—like a disease of the blood’ that was dispersed so fully through the self that it was impossible to know where it originated. Loneliness was like an i	539,428
A Book of Silence (Sara Maitland) (Z-Library).pdf	‘In Maitland’s hands, silence turns out to be another entire, psycho- geographical world laid alongside the one we know and hear and yack about so much. “I learned to tell when it had been snowing in the night by the quality of silence”… her book is full of such moments, articulating the common but usually ignored and unexpressed experiences in our lives’ Spectator ‘A healing book about the pleasures to be found alone and how solitude can set you free’ Red ‘Refreshing, insightful, strangely touching and bound to make you want to haul yourself off that sofa in search of a life-affirming journey’ Wanderlust ‘Extraordinary … Maitland is blazingly intelligent, and committed to rigorous, interrogative scholarship … a justified and valiant response to the widespread frenzy and mindlessness of 21st century life’ Sunday Business Post ‘[Sara Maitland] is right to think that silence is a deep need, ever less honoured in our lives’ Evening Standard ‘Fascinating … raises many interesting philosophical questions’ Sunday Times ‘An extraordinary book … in our noise-saturated culture’ Chosen by the Kew Bookshop in London in the Independent on Sunday ‘Her artful book, mixing autobiography, travel writing, meditation and essay, describes her route away from urban brouhaha towards increased solitude … Her book demands to be taken on its own terms as the vision of a highly educated contemplative who is alert to Western culture’s distrust of loners’ Independent ‘Maitland is a bold adventurer and the rest of us, doubtless ill-equipped to deal with the emotional and intellectual challenge of self-sought solitude, are lucky she can give the condition of silence such an articulate voice’ Metro ‘By the end of her brave, honest, fascinating book, one respects her choice of lifestyle, the determination it has taken to bring it about and the sacrifices it has engendered’ Scotsman ‘Offering at once personal anecdotes, cultural diagnoses and soothing antidotes, these memoirs make for a timely and nourishing read’ List ‘The pursuit [of silence] is described with fervour and intelligence that make this book full of insights and explorations, oddities and quirks – about the natural world (some dazzling descriptive passages), about silence in several cultures, about the choice of where to live, about routines, satisfactions, happiness’ Tablet ‘You can’t help warming to Sara Maitland … Maitland is a rottweiler of enthusiasm who pursues her ideas to the end, eloquently and learnedly, and nowhere more than in this, her latest work’ Irish Times ‘Her dedication to the cause is both inspiring and shocking … There are many beautiful meditative passages in her meditation on silence … [A] wonderful salutary book’ Sunday Telegraph A BOOK OF SILENCE Sara Maitland GRANTA For Janet Batsleer and John Russell for reasons best buried in silence Table of Contents Praise Title Page Dedication 1: Growing up in a Noisy World 2: Forty Days and Forty Nights 3: The Dark Side 4: Silence and the Gods 5: Silent Places 6: Desert Hermits 7: The Bliss of Solitude 8: Coming Home ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS NOTES INDEX Copyright Growing up in a Noisy World It is early morning. It is a morning of extraordinary radiance – and unusually up here there is practically no wind. It is almost perfectly silent: some small birds are chirping occasionally and a little while ago a pair of crows flapped past making their raucous cough noises. It is the first day of October so the curlew and the oystercatchers have gone down to the seashore. In a little while one particular noise will happen – the two- carriage Glasgow-to-Stranraer train will bump by on the other side of the valley; and a second one may happen – Neil may rumble past on his quad bike after seeing to his sheep on the hill above the house; if he does he will wave and I will wave back. That is more or less it. I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn’t know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obviously sensitive friend commented when she came to see my latest lunacy, ‘Only you, Sara – twenty-mile views of absolutely nothing!’ It isn’t ‘nothing’, actually – it is cloud formations, and the different ways reed, rough grass, heather and bracken move in the wind, and the changing colours, not just through the year but through the day as the sun and the clouds alternate and shift – but in another sense she is right, and it is the huge nothing that pulls me into itself. I look at it, and with fewer things to look at I see better. I listen to nothing and its silent tunes and rhythms sound harmonic. The irregular line of the hill, with the telegraph and electricity poles striding over it, holds the silence as though in a bowl and below me I can see occasional, and apparently unrelated, strips of silver, which are in fact the small river meandering down the valley. I am feeling a bit smug this morning because yesterday I got my completion certificate. When you build a new house you start out with planning permission and building warrant, and at the end of it all an inspector comes to see if you have done what you said you would do and check that your house is compliant with building regulations and standards. Mine is; it is finished, completed, certified. All done and dusted. Last night I paid off my builder, and we had a drink and ended a year-long relationship of bizarre intensity, both painful and delightful. Now I am sitting and regathering my silence, which is what I came here for in the first place. Three minutes ago – it is pure gift, something you cannot ask for or anticipate – a hen harrier came hunting down the burn, not twenty metres from the door. Not many people have a hen harrier in the garden. Hen harriers are fairly rare in the UK, with slightly over a hundred breeding couples mostly in the Scottish Highlands. They are slightly smaller and much lighter than buzzards, and inhabit desolate terrain. Male hen harriers, seen from below, look like ghosts – pure white except for their grey heads but with very distinct black wing tips. They hunt low and glide with their wings held in a shallow V; powerful hunters, beautiful, free. I do not see them very often, but the first time I came to the ruined shepherd’s house, which is now, today, my new home, there was a pair sitting on the drystone dyke. They speak to me of the great silence of the hills; they welcome me into that silence. The silent bird goes off about his own silent business, just clearing the rise to the west and vanishing as suddenly as he came. Briefly I feel that he has come this morning to welcome me and I experience a moment of fierce joy, but it rumbles gently down into a more solid contentment. There are lots of things that I ought to be getting on with, but I light a cigarette and go on sitting on my doorstep. It is surprisingly warm for October. We had the first frost last week, light-fingered on the car windscreen. I think about how beautiful it is, and how happy I am. Then I think how strange it is – how strange that I should be so happy sitting up here in the silent golden morning with nothing in my diary for the next fortnight, and no one coming and me going nowhere except perhaps into the hills or down the coast to walk, and to Mass on Sundays. I find myself trying to think through the story of how I come to be here and why I want to be here. And it is strange. I have lived a very noisy life. As a matter of fact we all live very noisy lives. ‘Noise pollution’ has settled down into the ecological agenda nearly as firmly as all the other forms of pollution that threaten our well-being and safety. But for everyone who complains about RAF low-flying training exercises, ceaseless background music in public places, intolerably loud neighbours and drunken brawling on the streets, there are hundreds who know they need a mobile phone, who choose to have incessant sound pumping into their environment, their homes and their ears, and who feel uncomfortable or scared when they have to confront real silence. ‘Communication’ (which always means talk) is the sine qua non of ‘good relationships’. ‘Alone’ and ‘lonely’ have become almost synonymous; worse, perhaps, ‘silent’ and ‘bored’ seem to be moving closer together too. Children disappear behind a wall of noise, their own TVs and computers in their own rooms; smoking carriages on trains have morphed into ‘quiet zones’ but even the people sitting in them have music plugged directly into their ears. We all imagine that we want peace and quiet, that we value privacy and that the solitary and silent person is somehow more ‘authentic’ than the same person in a social crowd, but we seldom seek opportunities to enjoy it. We romanticise silence on the one hand and on the other feel that it is terrifying, dangerous to our mental health, a threat to our liberties and something to be avoided at all costs. My life has also been noisy in a more specific way. Because of an odd conjunction of class, history and my parents’ personal choices I had an unusually noisy childhood. I was born in 1950, the second child and oldest girl in a family of six; the first five of us were born within six and a half years of each other. If you asked my mother why she had so many children, she would say it was because she loved babies, but if you asked my father he would say something rather different: ‘Two sets of tennis, two tables of bridge and a Scottish reel set in your own house.’ We grew up in London, and in an enormous early-Victorian mansion house (my father’s childhood home) in south-west Scotland. My parents adored each other. I think they adored us, though in a slightly collectivised way. They were deeply sociable and the house was constantly filled not just by all of us, but by their friends and our friends; my mother’s father lived with us for a while; there was a nanny and later an au pair girl. What was perhaps unusual for the time was that they were very directly engaged as parents; there was none of that ‘seen and not heard’ nursery life for us. We were blatantly encouraged to be highly articulate, contentious, witty, and to hold all authority except theirs in a certain degree of contempt. I am appalled now when I think back to the degree of verbal teasing that was not just permitted but participated in: simple rudeness was not encouraged, but sophisticated verbal battering, reducing people to tears, slamming doors, screaming fights and boisterous, indeed rough, play was fine. (You don’t grow out of these things – my son’s partner has since told me her first encounter with us as a group was one of the most scary experiences of her life – she could not believe that people could talk so loudly, so argumentatively and so rudely without it coming to serious fisticuffs.) We were immensely active and corporate; introspection, solitude, silence, or any withdrawal from the herd was not allowed. Within the magical space they had created for us, however, we were given an enormous amount of physical freedom – to play, to roam, to have fights and adventures. It worked best when we were all quite small. In 1968, when every newspaper in the country was bemoaning the outrageous behaviour of teenagers, my parents had five of them. I think retrospectively that they lost their nerve a bit. I am not sure what they imagined would happen. If you encourage your children to hold authority lightly, eventually they will work out that you are ‘authority’ and hold you lightly too. They were better with smaller children – we had fairly traumatic and very noisy teens. There were good moments. One thing that is hard to insert into this account is just how sophisticated and politically engaged my parents were. I remember the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, for example, with great vividness because one of my parents’ closest friends was an admiral in the US navy. He was staying with us, we went on a lovely sunny day trip to Cambridge and as we walked along the Backs, a very young man from the US Embassy appeared. He had been searching for Uncle Harry personally; he had to fly home immediately to Defend His Country against Communism. The following year I knew about the Profumo affair too, though rather lopsidedly. It was the cause of a rare fight between my parents, who usually managed to maintain perfect solidarity against their children’s activities. My father taught me a bitter little limerick about it, which he encouraged me to recite at a cocktail party of his Butlerite Conservative friends (several of them eminent) and which rather accurately reflected his own politics. There was a young girl called Christine Who shattered the Party machine. It isn’t too rude To lie in the nude But to lie in the House is obscene. The fight between my parents was not, interestingly, about the content of these lines, but about my father encouraging me to ‘show off’. A bit of me still wonders what on earth they thought would come of it, especially for their girls. You bring them up free and flamboyant, and are then totally surprised and even angry with them when they don’t magically turn into ‘ladies’. It was, for me at least, a strange mixture of upper-class convention and intellectual aspiration. There was a good, and noisy, example of my father’s confused vision a few years later. I was expelled, fairly forcibly, from the House of Commons in 1973 for disrupting a debate on the Equal Opportunities Act, then a Private Members’ Bill. I was pregnant at the time. The Times (my parents’ daily, obviously) made this a front-page item including my name. I was rather anxious about how my parents would react. My mother was appalled that I should do this while I was pregnant, but my father was entirely delighted. Not because he favoured such actions or had any particular enthusiasm for Equal Opportunities, but because the person responsible for ‘Order in the House’ was an old friend of his, whom nonetheless he found both prissy and pompous – he was much amused by the embarrassment that I would have caused this friend, having to deal with ‘one of us’, with someone he actually knew. He may also, of course, have admired my boldness, without admiring the way I had chosen to exercise it. We were inevitably sent off to boarding schools, the boys disgracefully at seven or eight and my sisters and I a little later. I am just about prepared to acknowledge that there might conceivably be children whom public school, under the old boarding system, positively suits and that there are homes so dire that boarding is a relief or even a joy, but it remains for me one of the very few institutions that is bad for both the individuals it ‘privileges’ and our society as a whole. In this context, however, all I want to do is point out that the entire ethos depended on no one ever being allowed any silence or privacy except as a punishment; and where the constant din inevitably created by over two hundred young women was amplified by bare corridors and over-large rooms. I found it a damaging, brutal experience, made worse by the fact that in my parents’ world not to enjoy your schooldays was proof that you were an inferior human being – you were supposed to be a ‘good mixer’, to ‘take the rough with the smooth’ and enjoy the team spirit. If you are feeling miserable and inferior the last thing you are going to do is tell parents who think that the way you feel is proof that you are miserable and inferior. Perhaps the stakes were too high; perhaps they were too proud of us. At home we were supposed to get into Cambridge, and wear long white gloves, a tartan silk sash and our deceased grandmother’s pearls, and dance at Highland Balls. I was expected to have my own political opinions, and have them turn out the same as my parents’. We were expected to be sociable, active and witty, and hard-working, industrious and calm. We were meant to be sociable and popular and bizarrely chaste. At school we were meant to be educated, independent, self-assured, and totally innocent. On Saturday mornings we all had to kneel down in the assembly hall so that the mistresses could walk along the rows and make sure everyone’s skirt exactly touched the ground. I am still not sure what the terror of the miniskirt was about, really. It all got pretty intolerable and very noisy. In 1968 I escaped. These were the days before the Gap Year was a well- organised middle-class rite of passage, but if you stayed on at school after A levels to do the then separate Oxbridge entrance exams, you finished school at Christmas and had an inevitable gap until the following October. My father filled this gap by packing us off to any foreign continent of our choice and leaving us to get on with it. It was probably the first time in my life that I had been on my own and responsible for myself; it should have been a time to break out. My skirts were spectacularly shorter than anyone in America had ever seen before – hippies and counterculture and the politics of protest and feminism itself may have been US imports, but the miniskirt was authentically British – and my class accent was less immediately identifiable, but I was not really up to it. It was six months of being the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong moment, just. I left Washington the day before Martin Luther King was shot and arrived in Los Angeles a week after Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. In San Francisco I did go to Haight Ashbury, but I went as a tourist. From that perspective it seemed sordid and scary, and I left at once. I do remember, though, one bright hot dawn in the Arizona desert when I stared into my first huge nothing: it was the Grand Canyon. It was red and gold and vast and silent. Perhaps I should have sat down on the rim and stayed for a while, but it was too soon. I gawped for a bit and walked down a little way, then I turned round, got back on the Greyhound bus and went on to somewhere else. Then, that autumn, I went to Oxford. I became a student at exactly and precisely the right time – for then ‘to be young was very heaven’. What more joyful and lucky thing could happen to a privileged public-school girl than to find herself a student at Oxford between 1968 and 1971? It is fashionable now to decry the astonishing, extraordinary period in the late sixties – to dismiss it, or to blame it. I refuse to go there. I am with Angela Carter: There is a tendency to underplay, even to devalue completely, the experience of the 1960s, especially for women, but towards the end of that decade there was a brief period of public philosophical awareness that occurs only very occasionally in human history; when, truly, it felt like Year One, when all that was holy was in the process of being profaned, and we were attempting to grapple with the real relations between human beings … At a very unpretentious level, we were truly asking ourselves questions about the nature of reality. Most of us may not have come up with very startling answers and some of us scared ourselves good and proper and retreated into cul-de-sacs of infantile mysticism … but even so I can date to that time and to that sense of heightened awareness of the society around me in the summer of 1968 my own questioning of the nature of my reality as a woman.1 Everything interesting and important that has happened to me since began in Oxford in the three years that I was an undergraduate. There I discovered the things that have shaped my life – the things that shape it still, however unexpectedly, as I sit on my doorstep and listen to the silence: socialism, feminism, friendship and Christianity; myself as writer, as mother and now as silence seeker. It was not instant. I arrived in Oxford more virginal in more ways than now seems credible. I felt like a cultural tourist, unable to connect directly with the hippies, with their drugs, mysticism and music; or with the politicos and their Parisian excitements, though I went like a tourist to hear Tariq Ali speak at the Student Union; or with the ‘sexual revolutionaries’ who whizzed off glamorously to London and complained about the repressive college, which expected us to be in bed, alone, by 10.30. I had to cope with the realisation that I was not the cleverest person in the world – a mistaken belief that had sustained me for years. It was culture shock; I had a strange, nagging sense that I was where I wanted to be, but I wasn’t quite getting it: an odd mixture of excitement and frustration. I wanted it. I wanted all of it. I did not know how to have it. My life could have gone horribly wrong at this point. Then, just in time and gloriously lucky, I tumbled, by chance, by grace, in with a new group of people. They were a group of American students, most of them Rhodes Scholars and all of them active against the Vietnam War. They hung out in a shambolic house in north Oxford. I am not entirely sure why they took me under their collective wing, but they did and I was saved. What they gave me was a connection point between politics and personal lives, the abundant energy that comes from self-interested righteousness, a sense that there were causes and things that could be done about them, and large dollops of collective affection. This household has become famous for something other than their sweet kindness to me – because one of the people in it was Bill Clinton, who has always, as far as I am concerned, been a loyal friend and an enormous resource; but it was not just him: it was the whole group of them. My world was transformed. The sky was bright with colour. I smoked my first joint, lost my virginity and went on my first political demonstration. I stopped attending lectures and my ears unblocked so I started to hear what was going on around me. I realised that a classical education, Whig history and compassionate liberalism were not the only values in the world. I was set suddenly and gloriously free. I made other friends, did other things – and we talked and talked and talked. A bit later this household gave me, rather unexpectedly, something every bit as important. One evening Bill asked me if I would go with him to hear Germaine Greer speak at Ruskin College, shortly before The Female Eunuch was published. He had heard she had terrific legs (she did) but very properly thought it was the sort of event that he wanted a woman to go with. Being Bill he quickly rounded up some more people and that night I met Mandy Merck and thus discovered the brand-new Women’s Liberation Movement. Once I felt secure enough to cope, it transpired that actually one thing my childhood had provided me with were the skills of collectivity. Groups suited me; quick-fire combative talk was something I had practised around the dining-room table from my earliest years. With well-trained energy I engaged in the very noisy, highly verbal student political life of the time – the noisy articulacy of the socialist left and then the emerging verbal culture of early feminism. In an odd way it was like all the good things and none of the bad ones from my own childhood. To speak out, to tell aloud, to break the silence (and, to be honest, to shout down the opposition) was not only permissible – it was virtuous, if not compulsory. In 1972 I had my first short stories published; I got married and I got pregnant. My husband was an American from upstate New York; he came to Oxford on a scholarship and stayed. By the time we got married he was a trainee Anglican vicar of the extreme Catholic persuasion – high church and high camp went together in those happier days. In the early seventies the best of the adherents of Anglo-Catholicism were all so funny, so witty and so quick, self-mocking, heavily ironic and we all loved talking. While he was training my husband invited a new friend to supper one night; the friend, nervous about dining with a heavily pregnant feminist intellectual, asked someone what we were like. ‘Don’t worry,’ said this mutual friend, ‘they all talk at the same time, very loudly; so you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.’ So then I was an Anglo-Catholic socialist feminist. Perhaps the only thing that holds these two together is that they are both very noisy things to be. I quickly extended the din range, though; I became a vicar’s wife and a mother. A vicarage is the least quiet place imaginable – a house that is never your own and never empty or silent. My daughter was born in 1973. Looking back now, I know that my first experiences of positive nourishing silence were her night feeds. My husband’s great-grandfather was a carpenter – he had made furniture and when we got married my parents-in-law had sent from America the most exquisite New England four-poster bed made of bird’s eye maple with golden candy-twist posts. In the soft darkness of the pre-dawn, propped up in this beautiful bed, with my beautiful daughter contentedly dozing, I encountered a new sort of joy. From where I am now this does not surprise me, because that relationship between mother and child is one of the oldest and most enduring images of silence in Western culture. In about 2000 BCE one of the psalmists wrote: I have set my soul in silence and in peace, As the weaned child on its mother’s breast so even is my soul.2 Four thousand years later Donald Winnicott, the child psychoanalyst, wrote, in a totally different context, almost exactly the same thing: that the capacity to be alone, to enjoy solitude in adult life, originates with the child’s experience of being alone in the presence of the mother. He postulates a state in which the child’s immediate needs – for food, warmth, contact etc. – have been satisfied, so there is no need for the baby to be looking to the mother for anything nor any need for her to be concerned with providing anything; they are together, at peace, in silence. Both the ancient poet and the contemporary analyst focus on the child here – but as a mother I would say there is a full mutuality in the moment. I remember it with an almost heartbreaking clarity. Some of it is simply physical – a full and contented baby falling asleep at the empty and contented breast. But even so I now think that those sweet dawns, when it turned from dark to pale night, and we drifted back into our own separate selves without wrench or loss, were the starting point of my journey into silence. I am a bit curious that it is the night feed, rather than any of the other times the ‘weaned child’ lies in the mother’s arms, with its wide eyes somehow joyously unfocused. There is something about the dark itself, and the quiet of the world, even in cities, at that strange time before the dawn, but also I suspect that physical tiredness enhances the sensation. More particularly, you are awake to experience it solely and only because you are experiencing it. If the feeding were not happening you would almost certainly be asleep, be absent from consciousness in a very real way. This is not true during daytime feeds, but here, in the fading night, there is nothing else to do save be present. The dark, the ‘time out of time’ and the quiet of night are fixed in my memory along with the density of that particular silent joy. At the time I did not recognise it for what it was, but I now know that it was an encounter with positive silence, in an unexpected place. For the most part the experience of having small children is not silent. Meanwhile I was in the process of becoming a writer; more words, more word games. More noise. It is easy to think of writers as living silent lives, but on the whole we don’t; when we are writing we usually work alone and usually with great concentration and intensity – but no one writes all the time. Perhaps as a relief from that intensity there is a tendency, at least among younger writers, to seek out people and activities. Anyway it was the seventies; feminist writers were engaged in demystifying our work, opening it up and talking about it. Everyone was in a Writers’ Group. I was in a wonderful Writers’ Group – with Michelene Wandor, Zoe Fairbairns, Valerie Miner and Michele Roberts. We wrote a collective book and we talked and talked and talked. I liked my noisy life. All that talking. All my life I have talked and talked. I love talking. I used to say that if I were ever in Who’s Who I would put down deipnosophy as my hobby. Deipnosophy means the ‘love of, or skill of, dinner-table conversation’ (from the Greek deipnos – dinner). I have always loved this word and I loved the thing itself. I’ve been lucky enough to know some of the great deipnosophists of my times. It is hard to think of a less silent life. It was – and this is important to me – an extremely happy life. I achieved almost all the personal ambitions I started out with. I am a published writer of the sorts of books I want to write and believe in: I have written five novels, including Daughter of Jerusalem, which, with Michèle Robert’s first novel, Piece of the Night, was credited with being the UK’s first ‘feminist novel’ and which won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1979. I have also written a range of non-fiction books and, perhaps most important to me, I have produced a long steady line of short stories. I made a living doing freelance things I liked to do. I had two extraordinary and beautiful children with whom I get on very well. I felt respected and useful and satisfied. I do not regret any of it. This does matter. When things changed and I started not just to be more silent, but also to love silence and want to understand it and hunt it down, both in practice and in theory, I did not feel I was running away from anything. On the contrary, I wanted more. I had it all and it was not enough. Silence is additional to, not a rejection of, sociability and friends and periods of deep emotional and professional satisfaction. I have been lucky, or graced; in a deep sense, as I shall describe, I feel that silence sought me out rather than the other way round. For nearly twenty years I had a marvellous life. Then, at the very end of the 1980s, for reasons I have not fully worked out yet, that well ran dry. My marriage disintegrated. Thatcherism was very ugly. It was not just the defeat of old hopes, but in the impoverished East End of London where my husband had his parish it was visibly creating fragmentation and misery. There was a real retreat from the edge, in personal relationships, in progressive movements of all kinds and in publishing. Anglo-Catholicism ceased to be fun; and became instead increasingly bitter, misogynistic and right-wing; we stopped laughing, and a religion where you cannot laugh at yourself is a joyless, destructive thing. As a writer I ran out of steam. I lost my simple conviction that stories, narrative itself, could provide a direct way forward in what felt like a cultural impasse. I also went through a curious experience – a phase of extremely vivid and florid ‘voice hearing’, or auditory hallucinations. Although such experiences are commonly held to be symptoms of psychosis, and often form a central part of a diagnosis of so-called ‘schizophrenia’, this does not seem to me to describe the experience fully. I continued to carry on with my life. I found the content of these voices more absorbing and engaging than tormenting, and they certainly never urged hideous actions upon me. They were very distinct, however, and belonged to individuals, mainly drawn from fairy stories – a ‘lost little girl’, a dwarf, a sort of cat-monster. The most threatening were a sort of collective voice which I called the Godfathers and who seemed to represent a kind of internalised patriarchy, offering rewards for ‘good’ or punishments for ‘bad’ behaviour. I am still uncertain how much they were connected to the death of my real father in 1982, just a few months after my son was born and named after my father. When they were at their most garrulous there was a genuine conflict between my normal noisy lifestyle and listening to them and attempting to explore and understand what they were saying. There was an additional problem; inasmuch as they gave me any ‘instructions’ at all, these were about not telling anyone about them. This meant the rather novel experience of having something important going on in my life that I did not talk about. The worst aspect of all this was the fear, indeed the terror, that I might be going mad. It was the normal cultural response to the voices that was the most disturbing aspect; otherwise and in retrospect they gave me a good deal of fictional material, some interesting things to think about and an awareness that there was something somewhat awry in my life. In the early years of the 1990s I began to make changes in how I lived. I became a Roman Catholic, escaping from the increasing strains of high Anglicanism without losing the sacraments, the richness of ritual and the core of faith. I bought a house in Warkton, a tiny village just outside Kettering in Northamptonshire. It was the chocolate-box dream of a cottage in the country – very old with low-beamed ceilings and a thatched roof. At that point I did not seriously think that my marriage was ending. We bought the house jointly. It seemed like a sensible thing to do. My husband’s tenure in the Church of England was looking shakier by the day and it seemed reasonable for us to have a house to live in if or when he no longer had a vicarage. Whatever the intention, the reality was very soon that I lived in the house in Kettering and he lived in the vicarage. Then something unexpected happened. My son decided that he wanted to stay at his school in London. (This did not last long, actually – when he had finished his GCSEs, he came to Kettering to do his A levels and we had an extraordinarily happy two years together there. I don’t think he has quite forgiven me yet for selling that sweet house and moving north.) Although he came to Kettering almost every weekend, I was suddenly, and without exactly planning it, living on my own for the first time in my life. Sometimes one’s subconscious plays subtle tricks on one. To be honest I went to Warkton in a bit of a sulk. It was supposed to be a noble way of supporting my husband – he needed more space, but he also needed no ‘scandal’. He was part of a group who wanted to become Roman Catholic priests despite being married. A small group of ex-Anglican clergy did in fact pull this off. But while Cardinal Hume was extending the tradition in every way he could manage on their behalf, clearly divorce, or even formal separation, was not going to be taken on board. An agreeable flat in London was not going to pass muster; a charming cottage in the country was much more acceptable. In many ways I felt that this was very thoughtful and kindly of me. I am not sure at that point I would have been up to doing it at all if I had thought how much it would change the trajectory of my life. Too much seemed to be changing too quickly. The entirely unexpected thing was that I loved it. It is quite hard in retrospect to remember which came first – the freedom of solitude or the energy of silence. If you live alone you have particular freedom: when I first moved into the cottage it needed redecorating and I found myself choosing very deep rich colours. Someone commented on how different this was from all the houses I had lived in before, and I was slightly startled to realise how much of my domestic tastes had been a compromise between my preferences and my household’s. (It amuses me still to see how different my house and my husband’s house both are from the houses that we shared.) Food was another freedom; to eat what you want, when you want it, is a significant freedom after years of catering for a busy household with all the managing, compromises, effort and responsibility. These are little daily things, but they add up. Suddenly the amount of time in the day expanded, and there was freedom and space and choice. I became less driven, more reflective and a great deal less frenetic. And into that space flowed silence: I would go out into the garden at night or in the early morning and just look and listen; there were stars, weather, seasons, growth and repetition. For the first time in my life I noticed the gradation of colours before sunrise – from indigo through apricot to a lapidary blueness. One morning very early I was outside and heard a strange noise, a sort of high-pitched series of squeaky protests. It was not a loud noise; I would not have heard it, even if it had occurred, in anything except the silence of a rural dawn. Suddenly something resembling an oversized bumblebee whirred past barely a metre from my face and crashed into the crab apple tree; then after a pause another one, and another. They were five baby blue- tits leaving their nest in the shed wall for the first time, free and flying, however clumsily, into the early sunshine. It was a privilege of solitude and a gift of silence. For me, from the beginning, silence and solitude have been very closely linked. I know that this is not true for everyone – there are people who love solitude, who spend enormous amounts of time alone, without having any sense of themselves as silent – who have, for example, music or even television on a great deal of the time and who go, in happy solitude, to social or public events – to concerts, plays, films, sporting events and to the pub. Equally there are individuals whose silence is happily communal – you sometimes see this with couples, who need and enjoy to have their partner in the house but whose relationship for long periods of time seems to need no speech to flourish. More deliberately there are the silent religious communities, both Buddhist and Christian, for whom the silence of the people around them enriches their own. But for me personally the two are inextricably entwined. I suspect this is because I am a deeply socialised person; when I am with other people I find it nearly impossible not to be aware of them, and that awareness breaks up the silence. I worry occasionally that this may have something to do with the thinness of my sense of self, which can be so easily overwhelmed by others. But for whatever reasons, I cannot properly separate the two and I have noticed that I tend to use the words almost indiscriminately, so that the phrase ‘silence and solitude’ can be almost tautological; they both refer to that space in which both the social self and the ego dissolve into a kind of hyper awareness where sound, and particularly language, gets in the way. This was space that I was coming to love. It took a little while to realise how much I loved it. It was not a sudden plunge into solitude and silence; it was a gradual shifting of gears, a gentle movement towards a new way of living that gave me an increasing deep satisfaction. I still wonder what created that profound change in me. I honestly do not think I had been suppressing a deep desire for solitude or a need for silence for a long time; I still feel it was something new. Change. The change. I think perhaps that it really does have something to do with menopause. I am by no means the first woman to shift her life in her mid forties and create a new sort of space for herself. In 1993, quite soon after I moved to Warkton, Joanna Golds-worthy asked me to contribute an essay to her forthcoming Virago collection, A Certain Age. At first I said I was too young – indeed, I did not finally stop menstruating for another ten years – but when I thought about it I became aware that there were changes going on – not just the ones I have been describing but more physical basic things. I had always enjoyed a textbook twenty-eight-day menstrual cycle; between 5 and 10 a.m. every fourth Friday I would start to bleed; I would bleed for five days and that would be it. Now that was getting bumpier, I could no longer count on the timing and instead I had backaches, bad-tempered fits and mild cramps. I, who had never shaved my legs or underarms on high feminist principle, was having to think about how I felt about the faint but real moustache that adorned my upper lip. I started to get hangovers and the occasional hot flush. There are so few clues. No one wants to talk about it. We live in a culture that is terrified of the process of ageing, and in which women are encouraged to take artificial hormones so that they do not enter into this magical condition. But it is not just a modern phenomenon. Middle-aged and menopausal women are conspicuously absent from most myths and traditional stories: first you are the princess and the mother, then you vanish and reappear as aged crone. Even psychoanalysts throw up their hands in despair; at menopause women move beyond their help and good management. Helene Deutsch gives a particularly brutal, but not atypical, analysis of her own helplessness: Successful psychotherapy in the climacterium is made difficult because usually there is little one can offer the patient as a substitute for the fantasy gratifications. There is a large element of real fear behind the neurotic anxiety, for reality has actually become poor in prospects and resignation without compensations is often the only solution.3 Probably the suggestion that such women might like to go and live alone and experiment with silence would not come comfortably to a proponent of ‘talking therapies’. Unfortunately there is such a taboo around menopause, and such a wide range of ages at which it takes place in individual women, that it is hard to tell whether a turn to silence and solitude might be connected with this life event. There is, however, an interesting group of women saints, who lived highly active lives ‘in the world’ and then in their forties took a mystical path, joining religious orders often of considerable austerity or becoming recluses. Hilda of Whitby did not become a nun until she was middle-aged; Bridget of Sweden was married, had eight children and was a lady-in- waiting to the queen before she started to experience her visions; she became a nun and founded her new community when she was in her forties. Although Teresa of Avila became a nun at twenty, she had what she called her ‘interior conversion’, which opened the way for her visionary experiences, in 1555 and in 1562 she began her reform movement, moving her order (the Carmelites) back towards greater silence. So I am tempted to believe that there is something significant in this passage for women at least. As I became more interested in silence I became intrigued by the negative silence and secrecy that has made menopause almost inaudible culturally – except occasionally, like Sarah or Elizabeth in the Bible, where the restrictions or freedoms of menopause are miraculously overcome by the direct intervention of God. Throughout the 1990s I wrote a series of short stories about menopausal women, refinding them in old tales and inventing new ones.4 A lot of these, old and new, are about women making unexpected changes in their lives, opening up their imaginations and finding a new self-sufficiency. They are also stories deeply imbued with the countryside, and the rhythms of seasons and growth. While I was researching for these stories I learned a strange and beautiful thing. Birds have hollow bones – their bones are not solid like mammals’ bones, like human bones, but are filled with air pockets, a bit like bubble- wrap only less regular. (This is why when you pick up a dead bird it feels so insubstantial in your hand, unlike, say a mouse.) This is a deft evolutionary development – archaeopteryx, the earliest winged dinosaur, had feathers but solid bones – to make flying easier for them. At menopause women’s bones thin out and fill with air pockets – in acute osteoporosis, under a microscope they are almost indistinguishable from birds’ bones: at menopause women can learn to fly as free as a bird.5 Oddly enough, in my own fiction, flying – dragons, witches, birds and angels – has often appeared as an image of women’s freedom, so this discovery was especially delightful. When I look back at those stories now I cannot help but sense that something new and happy was going on for me over these years. Perhaps not surprisingly, parallel with this I discovered the silent joy of gardening. In my childhood gardening, which meant almost entirely kitchen gardening – fruit and vegetables – had been a chore, an unending series of household tasks in which we had all been required to participate; needless to say we did this in a highly organised team spirit and it had never seemed to me like a pleasure or a source of contemplative serenity. My husband had a lovely garden at the East End vicarage, but it was always very definitely his garden; I felt no jealousy and was happy for him both to make the decisions and to do the work. The garden behind my cottage in Warkton was my garden. Everyone should have her first garden on Northamptonshire loam – it is so encouraging: you stick in a spade and it cuts into this rich, fertile, dark soil, never too dry and never boggy, with few stones and a generous well-balanced nature. Everything grows fast and strong. And of course it grows silently. In our noise-obsessed culture it is very easy to forget just how many of the major physical forces on which we depend are silent – gravity, electricity, light, tides, the unseen and unheard spinning of the whole cosmos. The earth spins, it spins fast. It spins about its own axis at about 1,700 kilometres per hour (at the Equator); it orbits the sun at 107,218 kilometres per hour. And the whole solar system spins through the spinning galaxy at speeds I hardly dare to think about. The earth’s atmosphere spins with it, which is why we do not feel it spinning. It all happens silently. Organic growth is silent too. Cells divide, sap flows, bacteria multiply, energy runs thrilling through the earth, but without a murmur. ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’6 is a silent force. Soil, that very topmost skin coating, is called earth and the planet itself is called earth. It is all alive – pounding, heaving, thrusting. Microscopic fungi spores grow, lift pavements and fell houses. We hear the crack of the pavements and the crash of the buildings – such human artefacts are inevitably noisy – but the fungus itself grows silently. Perhaps we are wise to be terrified of silence – it is the terror that destroyeth in the noontide. Gardening puts me in contact with all this silent energy; gardeners become active partners in all that silent growth. I do not make it happen, but I share in it happening. The earth works its way under my nails and into my fingerprints, and a gardener has to pay attention to the immediate now of things. In one’s own garden one must not be caught unawares – a single sprout of couch grass can grow five miles of roots in a year, while lurking silently behind the delphiniums, which are growing less extravagantly but just as determinedly in the opposite direction: up, up, upwards, and creating a magnificence of blue as though they were pulling the sky down to them. I have to pay attention to that silence. In Warkton for the first time a garden became precious to me – it became an occupation, a resource and also my first glimpse that there might be art forms that I could practise which were not made out of words. Gardening gave me a way to work with silence; not ‘in silence’ but with silence – it was a silent creativity. The garden itself, through that silent growth, put in more creative energy than I did; it grew silently but not unintelligently. I started to think about gardens; not so much about gardening, which I see as a technical skill like spelling is for writers, but about gardens themselves. This meant looking at other people’s gardens and reading about the history of gardens. To my surprise, because he is usually criticised among feminists for his rationalist philosophy and his desire to ‘manage’ and control nature, I found myself deeply in tune with the Renaissance figure Francis Bacon, who made himself three notable gardens and also wrote Of Gardens (1625), a personal and individual essay about beauty and taste, and Sylva sylvarum (published after his death in 1626) in which sections 5 and 6 are devoted to his ideas about gardening. Although actually he was a fine experimental horticulturalist, he too saw this as preliminary technique. The skill was necessary to create a garden, but the garden itself was not, in his view, simply a place to display one’s gardening skills. He said of his garden in Twickenham that he ‘found the situation of the place much convenient for the trial of my philosophical conclusions’. More important, it got me interested in how gardens might reflect ideas, thoughts and desires, just as literature or painting does. Gardens, I learned, were very central to a great many religious traditions, as places of contemplation and silence of a physical kind: Zen gardens, European monastic gardens, the Persian and Moorish water gardens. ‘Professional’ silence seekers (hermits for want of a better collective noun) have always gardened. Improbably high in the Himalayas, in northern caves and on rocky islands, in Middle Eastern deserts, there they are, digging, scrabbling, weeding, watering, growing what they can – vegetables, a little grain and flowers, unexpected beauty in the harsh silence of their lives. They are seeking silence as close to the earth, to the silent power of growth as possible, becoming, as they would say, ‘grounded’. Traditional Christian monastic life is built around two silent enclosures – the church and the cloister, which is also a garden – the secret, enclosed space, the hortus conclusus. The word paradise comes from a Persian word for garden. I discovered there were modern and secular interpretations of this tradition – gardens that reflect, illustrate and develop personal philosophies and ideas of beauty; gardens that really are a form of art: Little Sparta, the late artist Ian Hamilton’s garden in Lanarkshire; Charles Jenks’s Garden of Cosmic Speculation; the Veddw, Anne Wareham’s garden near Monmouth. These gardens are an open-ended, always changing way of exploring personal meaning and the interior world; they are lovely places that hold together nature and culture; they find meaning in very mundane processes – and these are silent. With the garden designer Peter Matthews I wrote a book, Gardens of Illusion, about such gardens.7 It was enormous fun to write. The gardens, and their gardeners, were so fabulous, so eccentric and so various. They made me think with a new part of my mind, even as I was beginning to learn how to do it myself. However, the research for Gardens of Illusion had a side effect, which was to prove every bit as important. We had to travel extensively around the country to see these gardens. Up until then my main experience of the British countryside had been of rich green places; Northamptonshire replicated in many ways the rich dairy country of coastal Galloway: a green and pleasant land of pasture and prosperity – deciduous woodland, gentle rivers, prosperous old farms and charming sheltered villages. These are places of peace and contentment. What I encountered in these long drives across the country was another ‘mood’ of landscape, the wild and desolate places that still, and perhaps surprisingly, occupy a great deal of space in our supposedly overcrowded land. The bony spine of the Pennines and Cheviots running half the length of the country; the high western ranges of the Lake District and Snowdonia; the harsh smooth sweep of the east coast, the fragmented islands strewn west; the naked heave of the Yorkshire dales and the central Southern Uplands, and the vast emptiness of the Highlands. I began to realise that it was not peace and contentment that I craved, but that awed response to certain phenomena of the ‘natural’ world in which words, and even normal emotional reactions, fail or rather step away from the experience and there is a silence that is powerful, harsh and essentially inhumane. These landscapes have been called ‘sublime’, a word that also describes an emotion and aesthetic as well as actual scenery. I discovered in myself a longing for the sublime, for an environment that, rather than soothing me, offered some raw, challenging demands in exchange for grandeur and ineffability. Another of the things I started to do during this time in Warkton was pray. Actually I did not start to pray at all – I had been praying for years; I had been a practising Christian since the early 1970s, I had already studied and written some theology and probably thought I was quite religious enough. But as my life became quieter and more solitary I found that my own prayer life was growing in interest and in the time I spent on it. It was not that my faith ‘deepened’ or indeed altered at all as far as content goes, it was that my living out of this set of convictions and practices shifted inwards. It became more silent, more interior, and I did more of it, in a more systematic and businesslike way. It also became more silent. I started to do what Buddhists normally call ‘meditation’, or in Christian terms, perhaps, ‘contemplative prayer’. This is a discipline of trying to empty one’s mind of its egotistical concerns in an attempt to align oneself with reality. For Buddhists it usually means exploring beyond the ‘illusion’ of matter and individuality; for Christians it means trying, through both the created order and particularly through the life and resurrection of Jesus, to experience and participate in the infinite love and mercy of God. Both traditions offer techniques for attempting this, as well as ‘signposts’ to discern whether you are on track or not. Thomas Merton, one of the most famous modern contemplatives, summed up the process as ‘listening to the silence of God’. Almost all serious writers on contemplative prayer, from all traditions and across history, are clear that this kind of praying can only be developed in a context that includes a great deal of silence. I find praying difficult, challenging and very hard work, but I also find it necessary, surpassingly lovely and crucially important. It began to supersede deipnosophy as my favourite thing. It became, and remains, one of the central reasons why I went hunting for silence, and why I am now sitting in the sunshine looking down a long silent valley. Of course, at this point in my adventures I did not guess that this was what was going to happen. It was simpler than that: I was on my own, I had a new sort of space and time, and one of the things I turned out to be doing with that space and time was praying. But the most important thing that happened to me in Warkton was that I got interested in silence itself. At first I was both perplexed and self-critical about this new ‘hobby’. We have reached a point in contemporary Western culture where we believe that too much silence is either ‘mad’ (depressive, escapist, weird) or ‘bad’ (selfish, antisocial) and I found I had internalised quite a lot of this way of thinking. Nor were the initial responses from many of my friends very encouraging. One of the problems with contemporary ideas about the complexity of our very identities is that if you say you are feeling neither mad nor bad, but on the contrary happy and well, this need make no real impression on one’s concerned interrogator – everyone knows that you may be ‘in denial’ or ‘repressing your real emotions’, or suffering from ‘false consciousness’. I found my efforts to explain what I was doing frustrating and, inevitably, a breach in the dam of the silence I was trying to build. In these initial efforts I learned quickly that it is extremely difficult to talk about silence. At one level this is so obvious as to be funny – even writing a book about silence has a certain kind of inbuilt irony. But there are some other difficulties that can be swallowed up in this obviousness and I began to encounter a few of them. The first problem is that the very word ‘silence’ lacks a clear definition. Everyone thinks they know what it means, but on examination it turns out that there is an enormous range of understanding. Even the dictionary definition is ambiguous. According to the OED, ‘silence’ means both an absence of all noises and an absence of speech. To fuzz the issue further, my anecdotal research has led me to believe that most people have a personal use of the word that is somewhere in between these two. ‘I was silent all evening’ can mean I was at a noisy party but did not myself speak much; it can mean ‘I stayed at home on my own and watched TV’; or it can mean that ‘it was so calm and peaceful where I was that I did not even hear the wind’. For some people, waves crashing on a seashore are ‘silent’ but the distant humming of a petrol engine is not. These, usually unexamined, differences matter quite a lot when one is trying to build ‘silence’ into one’s own life. For me personally the exact meaning of silence has grown and shifted as I practise it more, but it remains fairly literal: it is words and speech particularly that break up silence. In addition I find human noises less silent than natural phenomena like wind and water. However, as time passes I increasingly realise there is an interior dimension to silence, a sort of stillness of heart and mind which is not a void but a rich space. What became obvious to me as I thought about this is that for me there is a chasm of difference between qualities like quietness or peace and silence itself. (Although, of course, it is sometimes possible, and lovely when it happens, to have them all at once.) In my personal vocabulary the difference is similar to the one between happiness and joy. Additionally many people like John Cage, the radical composer, believe there is no such thing as real physical silence: There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot … Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.8 (I do think that Cage has been misunderstood. He was not really interested in silence, because he did not believe it existed. He was interested in forcing situations, removing ‘conventional’ sounds – like music – so that people would listen properly and become aware that there was no silence.) A different sort of ambiguity lies in what, using the radio as an analogy, I have come to call the transmitter/receptor problem. The result – silence – is identical whether you turn off the radio in your house or the broadcasting company stops transmitting. Even if both transmitter and receptor are working, static (foul-ups en route between the two) can render the communication meaningless: the speaker has been in effect silenced. If I don’t speak, there is nothing for you to hear; but if you are deaf then I can speak (orally) as loud as I want and you still won’t hear. We use the same word ‘silence’ to describe all three of these forms of interference. If I cut your tongue out you are silenced (at the transmission point); if I throw you into a dungeon you may shout and yell, but you are still silenced (no one hears you, the reception is not available); if I make your speaking worthless, ‘inaudible’, meaningless, if I create static or interference, as it were, around your speech, you are also silenced. (This is very effective and useful for your average oppressor: calling someone ‘mad’, for example, means they can say what they like but no one will hear – this was the sort of silencing that the Soviet Union went in for.) In terms of shaping a silent life this image raises some interesting questions – is the silence in the hearing or the speaking? If I keep a journal, say, with no intention of ‘transmitting’ its content to anyone ever, is that a more silent activity than writing this book in the hope that you will read it and hear what I have to say? Is writing, or even reading, which use language but not noise, ‘silent’ in any case? But most curious of all, my attempts to describe my experiences of silence, even to people who wanted to hear because they love me, forced me to feel that silence itself resists all attempts to talk about it, to try to theorise, explain or even describe it. This is not, I think, because silence is ‘without meaning’. It is ‘outwith language’. ‘Outwith’ is a wonderful Scottish word for which standard English appears to have no exact equivalent – outwith means ‘outside of’, ‘not within the circumference of something else’. ‘Without’ is necessarily negative and suggests that something is lacking.* I began to sense that all our contemporary thinking about silence sees it as an absence or a lack of speech or sound – a totally negative condition. But I was not experiencing it like that. In the growth of my garden, in my appreciation of time and the natural world, in the way I was praying, in my new sense of well-being and simple joy – all of which grew clearer the more silent I was – I did not see lack or absence, but a positive presence. Silence may be outside, or beyond the limits of, descriptive or narrative language but that does not necessarily mean that silence is lacking anything. Perhaps it is a real, separate, actual thing, an ontological category of its own: not a lack of language but other than, different from, language; not an absence of sound but the presence of something which is not sound. Nonetheless the idea that silence is an absence or lack is the commonly held position in contemporary life and especially – this is why it was painful – among the radical intellectual milieu in which I had for so long lived and flourished. Towards the end of the 1990s my friend Janet Batsleer, with whom I was discussing all this at great length, sent me a (deliberately) provocative letter: Silence is the place of death, of nothingness. In fact there is no silence without speech. There is no silence without the act of silencing, some one having been shut up, put bang to rights, gagged, told to hold their tongue, had their tongue cut out, had the cat get their tongue, lost their voice. Silence is oppression and speech, language, spoken or written, is freedom. Paolo Freire in his great founding text Pedagogy of the Oppressed – founding for so much work in the last forty years – wrote that silence was the great theme of a pedagogy of liberation. That is why literacy preoccupied him and why the paradoxical capacities of the talk of the powerful to silence the ‘coming to voice’ of the oppressed fascinated him. Call it silence on the one hand; call it false consciousness, too much chatter next. That silence comes before speech and literacy is a trivial point. After all the silence of the oppressed can only be recognised in and through a language of freedom. That silence is a place of non-being, a place of control, from which all our yearning is to escape. All the social movements of oppressed people in the second part of the twentieth century have claimed ‘coming to language’ and ‘coming to voice’ as necessary to their politics… In the beginning was the Word. … Silence is oppression. It is ‘the word’ that is the beginning of freedom. All silence is waiting to be broken.9 Janet and I have argued theoretically for years; she has not only a shining intelligence, but also an enormously wide range of reference and an enduring, courageous commitment to justice and truth. On the whole, when we argue, I have the best jokes but she has the last laugh. She is nearly always right. But this time I was sure along my pulses that she was wrong, and I decided that I wanted to prove it. People do not really change their whole lifestyle because their friends write them provocative letters. Janet’s letter clarified and gave a shape to something that had been already growing in me. I was in Warkton for nearly eight years writing my books, pottering about my garden and my prayers, finding in an increasing amount of silence both happiness and fascination. But I was coming to realise that I wanted more – not just a greater quantity of silence, but also a more intense and focused experience of it. The year 2000 was pivotal for me. It was the millennium, of course, but it was also the year I turned fifty, and the year my son finished school and left home. I was free. I could do anything I wanted. What I had learned I wanted was to forge a life with silence at the very centre of it. With this knowledge it also became clear that for me this could not happen in a sweet little West Midlands village. Oddly enough village life, although peaceful and often tranquil, is one of the least silent ways of living. You can be alone in the wild and invisible in a city; in a village or small country town you are known and seen and involved. I never seriously considered the city version of silence, although I deeply admire those who can do it. My ideas about silence had a landscape as well as an interior dimension. This is probably merely an aesthetic choice, but I was free to make that choice, and what called to me was space, wide wild space, neither spectacular mountains nor sheltered woods and fields. For me the terrain of silence is what I have since come to call the Huge Nothing of the high moorlands. I wanted to live there. I wanted to live there in silence. People asked me why. People still ask me why. Why leave the south where you have been happy for so long, where your friends and your children and your work all are, where your life is established? You are going too far; seemly ladylike retirement for rural peace and quiet, the absence of the din and bustle of the city, makes sense, but why go to such extremes? Sometimes I would just shrug my shoulders and joke, ‘It’s a tough job, but somebody has to do it,’ or, ‘Can you go too far in the right direction?’ Or say – Like Mallory10 – ‘Because it’s there.’ But in honesty I was serious. I was not very interested in ‘peace and quiet’ or in the absence of anything. I was interested in silence; in response to Janet Batsleer’s letter, which had struck a deep chord in me, I wanted not absence or lack of sound, but to explore the positive power of silence; I wanted the fullness of the experience. I was much encouraged by other individuals who had sought out extreme solitude. I found myself in profound sympathy, for instance, with Henry Thoreau, the Transcendentalist radical philosopher. He explained his motivation for going to live alone by Walden Pond thus: I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.11 A century later Richard Byrd, a US admiral and polar explorer, said something very similar about his decision to spend a winter alone in the Antarctic: I wanted to go for experience sake: one man’s desire to know that kind of experience to the full, to be by himself for a while and to taste the peace and quiet and solitude long enough to find out how good they really are … Must you go off and bury yourself in the middle of polar cold and darkness just to be alone? A stranger walking down 5th Avenue can be just as lonely as a traveller wandering in the desert? All of which I grant, but with the contention that no man can hope to be completely free who lingers within reach of familiar habits and urgencies. I wanted something more than just privacy in the geographical sense. I should be able to live exactly as I chose, obedient to no necessities but those imposed by wind and night and cold, and to no man’s laws but my own.12 The idea that extreme lifestyles deliver extreme experiences, and that these are desirable, is very ancient. The Greek gods offered the hero Achilles the choice between a long and contented life and a short blaze of glory, and he chose the latter. The desert hermits of the fourth century CE told a number of stories about the gains of going too far: Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Father, according to my strength, I keep a modest rule of prayer and fasting and meditation and quiet, and according to my strength I purge my imagination: what more must I do?’ The old man, rising, held up his hands against the sky, and his fingers became like ten torches of fire, and he said, ‘If thou wilt, thou shalt be made wholly a flame.’13 I did not want peace and quiet; I wanted to be ‘wholly a flame’. It is not chance that the words ‘whole’, ‘healthy’ and ‘holy’ are all derived from the same root. I incline to excess. At a more practical level I had at least four conscious intentions. First, I wanted to understand silence better. I wanted to demonstrate at least to myself that silence was not just a negative absence or loss, and was not necessarily waiting to be broken. But if it was not simply a lack of noise, then I needed to know what it was, what its positive content might be. I am convinced that as a whole society we are losing something precious in our increasingly silence-avoiding culture and that somehow, whatever this silence might be, it needs holding, nourishing and unpacking. I wanted to explore my own spirituality and deepen my growing sense of the reality of God, and the possibility of being connected to that reality. Within all the major religious traditions, though to differing degrees, there is a shared recognition that silence is one very effective tool for spiritual development. Of course, there are others, but I had put my hand to this particular plough and wanted to cut a deeper, straighter furrow. I also wanted to dig deeper into my own writing. I had, as I have said, reached a point where I no longer had the simple confidence in narrative, in storytelling, which had sustained a steady flow of work for over twenty years. I find this difficult to explain, again I think because of our contemporary tendency to see any deviation from the mainstream as a loss or lack. I did not feel that my imagination had ‘dried up’ or that I was being silenced by a writer’s block, but rather that there was something more. I wanted to find out what it was. I had been brought up, and indeed had profoundly internalised, the dicta of post-romanticism: ‘solitude is the school for genius’;14 creativity is the ‘still unravished bride of quietness, [a] foster child of silence and slow time’.15 I had a sense that I needed a hefty dose of the sublime, of the extreme, to counterbalance the fragmented, psychologically realist babble of so much contemporary fiction. I needed as a writer to escape the pressure to conform, to sing in harmony with what is going on rather than seek out whatever may be beyond that. This journey into silence in extreme terrains has been important for a number of creative thinkers while they prepare themselves for radical new work. Although I did not know it at the time, my motivation feels very close to Wittgenstein’s decision to leave Cambridge and its, to him, intellectual triviality, and live in extreme isolation in Skjolden, Norway. And finally I wanted more silence because I enjoyed the small amount I was getting. I enjoyed it at a great number of levels, intellectually, emotionally, physically. As well as being a silence-avoiding culture, and perhaps linked to this, we are also becoming a profoundly personalist culture, in which only relationships, feelings and psychodynamics are allowed full significance. If I had said to people, ‘I am in love with someone and we are going to live on an isolated moor,’ I doubt anyone would have said, ‘Why?’ in quite the same way. We have lost the conviction that Dorothy Sayers, the crime writer and theologian, so vigorous defended: ‘It is time to realise that a passionately held intellectual conviction is passionate.’ I was falling in love with silence. Like most people with a new love, I became increasingly obsessed by it – wanting to know more, to go further, to understand better. That was what I wanted and I was in the enviable position of being able to have what I wanted. I don’t want this to sound like a midlife crisis, because there was no crisis. It was more a question of, ‘Well, what now?’ and ‘what now’ turned out to be silence. So in the summer of 2000 I moved north to County Durham, to a house on a moor high above Weardale. I was eager and greedy. I wanted both to be silent and to think about silence. I set out to hunt silence and I have been doing so ever since. Notes – 1 Growing up in a Noisy World 1 Angela Carter in Gender and Writing, ed. Michelene Wandor (Pandora, 1985). 2 Psalm 131:2 (interestingly, most modern translation omit the word ‘weaned’, returning us to the more sentimental/pious suckling image, but my experts assure me that weaned is the intended meaning – a child who is intimately with the mother, but without needing her for anything). 3 Helene Deutsch, The Psychology of Women (Grune & Stratton, 1944), p. 477. 4 Sara Maitland, On Becoming a Fairy Godmother (Maia Press, 2003). I had the greatest difficulty getting this collection published – and even wonderful Maia Press drew the line at the original subtitle, ‘Role models for the menopausal woman’! 5 One of the stories in On Becoming a Fairy Godmother, ‘Bird Woman Learns to Fly’, explores this lovely natural phenomenon in more detail. 6 Dylan Thomas, ‘The force that through the green fuse drives the flower’, 18 Poems (Fortune Press, 1934). 7 Sara Maitland and Peter Matthews, Gardens of Illusion (Cassells, 2000). (We wanted to call the book ‘A Cunning Plot’ but the marketing people wouldn’t let us!) 8 John Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings by John Cage (Wesleyan University Press, 1961), p. 8. 9 Janet Batsleer, personal communication. 10 George Mallory became obsessed with climbing Mount Everest and in the end he died there, last seen ‘going strongly for the summit’. Legend claims that when asked why he wanted to climb it he replied, ‘Because it’s there.’ In fact, he never said this – the phrase, as an explanation of apparently senseless ambitions, appeared in a 1923 article about Mallory and other climbers, and was not even ascribed to him. However, it has become inextricably attached to Mallory. 11 Henry Thoreau, Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). 12 Richard Byrd, Alone (Putnam 1938), pp. 3–7. 13 The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Helen Waddell (Constable, 1936), p. 157. 14 Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury (London, 1898), vol V, p. 337. 15 John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1820). *An attempt to render this concept into standard English has muddled generations of children in the popular hymn ‘There is a green hill far away without a city wall’. Like many others, I wondered why any hill should have had a city wall – but what Mrs C. F. Alexander meant was ‘outwith a city wall’. Forty Days and Forty Nights The house in Weardale was wonderful. It was also slightly odd: it was perched very high, nearly 450 metres, on the summit of a bizarrely exposed ridge. It was isolated in one sense, but at the same time it was the middle house of a terrace of three cottages. When I first moved there both the other two houses were holiday homes, used only at weekends, so the neighbours created little disruption and, indeed, were immensely helpful as I struggled to learn how to live in such a cold, wind-driven location (drain your pipes before you leave home). From both the front and the back there were enormously long views. Because of the steep sides of the dale, Stanhope, three kilometres and nearly 250 metres below, was invisible; the view stretched straight over the valley to the moors the other side. At night there were pairs of sharp eyes looking at me – the headlights of cars six miles away, coming over from Teesdale, and shining clean across the valley and in through my bedroom window. But my house on the hill was not some shepherd’s cottage or ancient hermitage. It was part of a major industrial complex. From the earliest times Weardale has been a hive of industrial activity. One of the largest caches of Bronze Age artefacts in the UK was discovered beside the Heathery Burn, between my house and Stanhope. The Romans did not use the A68 (Dere Street), which still runs along the eastern edge of the Durham moors, solely to march troops up to Hadrian’s Wall, but also to take the lead and silver from the hill mines down to York. Lead, silver, feldspar, tin and coal were all mined up here, and during the Industrial Revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Weardale became a crucial source of lead and feldspar, which were mined under extraordinarily exploitative and dangerous conditions. In 1834 a railway was opened to bring lead down from the scattered hill mines to the dale itself, then out to the factories on the coastal plain. The sides of the dale were too steep for the trains to climb and a double steam winch was installed to pull them up. The winch engines needed steam twenty-four hours a day, so a line of cottages was built for the winch engineers. Farm labourers’ cottages were exquisitely cantilevered in to the landscape to provide them with as much shelter as possible, but the engineers were ruthlessly exposed to the full effect of the elements, 425 metres above sea level, on the very crest of a hill. My house was an ex- winch engineer’s cottage. The ruin of the engine house itself stood derelict a hundred yards from the cottages. There is no winch, no railway and no mining now. The cement factory at Eastgate closed while I was there and the sand quarry beside the old railway line will no doubt follow it. There are no industrial jobs in Weardale, and the machinery and social life of the miners is silenced. But the views of apparently desolate and wild hills have been carved and shaped and constructed and formed by that industrial past. This is ‘Famous Five’ country1 because for every fog there is a mysterious mine shaft and for every bog a deserted railway line. The moors are a place of adventure. At the same time the area is rich in the artefacts of the hermit tradition of northern England – Durham itself, Hexham, Lindisfarne (Holy Island) and a scattering of stones that mark erstwhile chapels and hermitages. In fact, the radical politics of the north-east drew its inspiration from the great hermit Bishop Cuthbert. At the end of the eleventh century, the inhabitants of the north-east resisted William the Conqueror’s demands for feudal dues and Norman reorganisation. Their land, they claimed, was the patrimony of St Cuthbert, unalienable, freely given and held. The habit of stubborn resistance has marked most of English history. There are not many places you can live within such a long history and still have the huge silences and beauty of it all. The dales are full of stories and the vanished silent ghosts of other lives lived very differently in the same place. The emptiness of these moors is not the desolate tragedy of the Western Highlands, where the keening of the dispossessed can still be heard in the silence that followed the Clearances. It is something more dynamic. I settled in very smoothly, once I had learned how to manage my coal- fired back boiler – my only source not merely of heat but of hot water as well. I started to walk a good deal. Moors are excellent for elementary walkers, especially those who smoke, because once you are above the valleys there are miles and miles of long views, often down on to woods and rivers, but the terrain itself is flat, without steep climbs. There is always something to see but you have to look for it. I felt increasingly pared down, lean, fit and quiet, shacked up, as it were, with the wind and the silence and the cold. I also found that the landscape worked in a kind of harmony with my prayers. The ruined signs of previous inhabitants reminded me that ‘here we have no abiding city’. But the horizon line of the hills abided. It was uncluttered by trees or houses. I could see it out of every window. Wherever I sat to meditate, there was the clear, clean line that divides earth and sky and also unites them. That line was constant. It emerged out of the dark in the first dawn light and was swallowed back into the dark at nightfall. Above the line, infinity; below the line, mortality. But the line itself was both and held them both, and the wind blew along it, fresh and free like the passage of the spirit. However, I also began to realise that Richard Byrd had been right when he speculated that ‘no man can hope to be completely free who lingers within reach of familiar habits and urgencies’.2 In the contemporary Western world it is very difficult to be silent for very long in the place where you live – people phone, they come to visit, to canvass your vote; the postman needs a signature, Jehovah’s Witnesses knock politely, someone has to read the meter; you run out of milk and have to go and buy some more, and the woman in the village shop starts to chat. In fact, it is impossible. Moreover, there are what Byrd calls ‘urgencies’ – the economic urgency of work, of making a living, and the emotional urgency of love and friendship. I was living more silently than before, but I still was only dabbling on the margins of that deep ocean I sensed was there. Fascinated by silence, drawn joyfully into the void, I wanted to experience a total version; I wanted to know what it was that I was trying to build into my life before the habits of the quotidian asserted themselves. The nearest analogy I can think of is that of a honeymoon. When this post- wedding holiday started it was in a society in which the newly wed couple had probably not spent more than a couple of hours at a time together, and even less time alone together. Rather than start immediately on the business of building a shared working life, they would spend a period of intense time together away from their normal daily concerns, where they had nothing to do but focus on and learn about each other. Similarly monks and nuns in even the most silent of religious orders take ‘retreats’, periods of time when they are separate from their community and relieved of all the burdens of work for an intense period of concentration on God. I decided that I would go away and spend some time doing nothing except being silent and thinking about and experiencing it. I decided that forty days would be a suitable amount of time. Obviously this was not a randomly chosen period – but it seemed to be possible but substantial, as well as iconic. The most straightforward way for someone like me to manage this sort of time and space would have been to spend these six weeks in a religious community where I would have been freed from all the hassles and would have had gatekeepers against any interruptions. But at this point I wanted to separate prayer from silence. My imagination is so ‘Christianised’ that I felt those sorts of ideas could have overridden other feelings in a monastic context with holy pictures (mostly bad ones!) on every wall. I did not want to go on a ‘retreat’. I wanted to explore what this profound pull towards silence might be about. I wanted to examine my conviction that silence was something positive, not just an abstraction or absence. I wanted to know what would happen. In the end I rented a self-catering holiday cottage on Skye, more because I found a house there that met my slightly off-centre requirements than for any particular engagement with the island. I needed a small house that was genuinely isolated, and had a deep freeze and no TV – and in which I could smoke. My care in checking all these details in advance was rewarded, or else I was lucky – Allt Dearg3 might have been designed for my purposes. In all events in late October, my car fully laden with books, notebooks, pens, reading matter, foul-weather gear and six weeks’ worth of food and other supplies, I left my sister’s lovely and luxurious house near St Andrew’s and drove east to west the whole way across Scotland. It was a long, tiring and stunningly beautiful drive, in and out of sunshine and rain, and all the time I had a growing sense of moving away – the roads getting narrower, the houses less frequent, the towns more like villages and the villages tiny. I had forgotten that the ferry crossing from Kyle of Lochalsh over to Skye has been replaced by the muscular sweep of the new bridge and for a moment I missed that sense of being somewhere else, in a new and different place, that the ferry provided. But once on the island the bilingual road signs, in both Gaelic and English, provided a strong sense of strangeness. In Gaelic, which about half the population speaks, the island is called An t-Eilean Sgitheanach (The Winged Isle), which refers both to its curious shape and to the wild empty freedom of its terrain. The Cuillin, the mountains of central Skye, are perhaps the toughest range in Britain, naked jagged rock rising abruptly from the sea, several soaring to some 900 metres. In the shadow and shelter of these mountains, facing west towards the mainland, was Allt Dearg, once a shepherd’s croft. It was lovely. As I drove up the quarter-mile of rough track through yet another smatter of rain, I saw in the wing mirror of my car an extremely vivid rainbow, all seven colours in wide bands. It seemed a good omen. Allt Dearg sat small, white and welcoming. Although it is nestled under the mountains there is nothing human above it, and below the land drops away to a long narrow bay with steep sides. I could not see the road or any buildings. Close beside the cottage is a burn that leaps and rushes, and makes a good deal of noise. Inside it is compact and tidy. I lived throughout the time I was there entirely on the ground floor, where a tiny bedroom opened off the kitchen-living room, so that I had a strong sense of containment inside despite the wildness outside. Outside, even in the evening light, the colours were extraordinary. Higher above me the mountains were grey; they were like teeth – craggy, broken, fierce. Behind the house is a croft field, still reasonably green, but everything else below those iron heights is gold, gold-bronze, punctuated by very white lichen on stones. In the fitful sunshine driving across I had thought the colour was sun-on- dead-grass; now I learned it was the grass itself, and dead was not a good word for it. The wind moved fast across it, flapping it like flags. When it reached darker clumps of heather or bog myrtle the rhythm of the movement changed. I kept thinking I’d seen ‘something’, something alive, moving like an animal running for cover – but no, it was just the wind somehow haunting and energising. I was exhausted by the time I had explored the house and the immediate surroundings, unpacked the car and settled in, but I also had a powerful sense of excitement and optimism, I was at the beginning of an adventure. I felt oddly foxy – I’d slipped my leash and got away. I felt open to whatever might happen and hungry for the silence. At one level Allt Dearg was never completely silent. The wind roared down from the mountains more or less incessantly throughout the whole time I was there. There was also the ‘voice of many waters’.4 When it rained, which it did a very great deal, I could hear it lashing on the roof- light windows upstairs; all the old windows of the house, hunching its back against the predominant wind, faced westwards; the modern desire for light has dominated over the older longing for protection. Even when the wind and rain paused the burn did not. Just behind the house it descended sharply in a series of small waterfalls and they sounded like distant aeroplane engines. Nearer to the house the sound of the burn was not dissimilar, in both volume and tone, to the lorries coming up the hill from Stanhope, except that it was continual. Yet my sense was that none of these noises mattered; they did not break up the silence, which I could listen for and hear behind them. I thought a lot about whether it was the constant background nature of these sounds or the fact that they were natural rather than human- made noises that meant they did not disrupt my personal sense of silence. For the first few days I wallowed in the pure pleasure of freedom: no phone calls, no emails, no neighbours. I snuggled into the private silence of the house and walked out to see the fitful sun on the grass and on the sea, to watch the sharp mountain peaks punctuated by cloud, and to let the wind blow through me. To settle into the silence and somehow lower my own expectations – to plan, scheme, rule, manage the days as little as possible. To experience, sense, live, be as much as possible. The experience of most people who voluntarily take themselves off into silence is that it takes a while to settle into it. Of course, it does not grow more silent as time passes, but you do become more attuned to the silence. Unlike sound, which crashes against your ears, silence is subtle. The more and the longer you are silent the more you hear the tiny noises within the silence, so that silence itself is always slipping away like a timid wild animal. You have to be very still and lure it. This is hard; one has only to try to quieten one’s mind or body to discover just how turbulent they are. But gradually I discovered a shape for each day and the silence took over. I was intensely curious to discover what might happen. There are a good number of published accounts of experiences of silence, which could have told me, but I decided not to read any while I was on Skye as I thought it might influence my own experiences excessively; I wanted to discover for myself. However, since then I have read extensively about other people’s accounts of it in tandem with my own journal and I have come to believe that there are indeed quite specific things that happen to people who are silent for a prolonged period of time. But it is complicated. In the first place I had chosen this silence and prepared myself for it; I wanted to do it. Moreover, I enjoyed it. Silence can be terrible and even lethal, most usually when it is enforced or imposed. This is not an absolute rule – Donald Crowhurst chose to enter the Golden Globe race in 1968, and the silence drove him mad and finally killed him. On the other hand Boethius, in the sixth century, and John Bunyan, in the seventeenth, had no choice at all about their isolation and imprisonment, and both found positive and creative resources in the silence. However, in terms of matching my Skye experiences to those of other people I have concentrated on chosen silence. Another problem I encountered is that most of the accounts that we have of chosen silence are religious. Before the mid eighteenth century I can find no detailed reports of voluntary silence whatsoever that are not directed by a religious impulse; even when Daniel Defoe wrote Robinson Crusoe, based on the real experience of Alexander Selkirk, he took a totally secular event and turned it into a religious work. All the early accounts share a set of particular expectations, rewards and goals, which are bound to slew both the experience itself and the way it is reported. There are inevitably biases. For instance, Tibetan Buddhists may not take a permanent vow of silence on the grounds that if they were to achieve enlightenment they would have an obligation to teach: finding that silence was a permanent personal need and a primary source of delight would involve admitting (however subconsciously) that one’s own silence had ‘failed’, that it had not brought you to a state of enlightenment. Specifically religious accounts are most likely to accept ineffability, to feel and say that the experience is outwith language and beyond human expression. Every attempt I have ever seen to diagnose or describe mystical experience uses ineffability as one of the tests. If you can describe what happened and what it felt like, then by definition you have not had an authentic mystical experience. This is not going to encourage mystics to struggle to express themselves. Ineffability goes with the territory. I might even say that the ‘best’ hermits of both Eastern and Western traditions are those who have least to say about it – or never bother to say it at all. The only thing Tenzin Palmo, a British Buddhist nun who spent three years high in the Himalayas in radical silence, seems ever to have said, at least publicly, about her personal experience is, ‘Well, it wasn’t boring.’5 There is – in my opinion – nothing wrong with this religious bias, but it does distort the evidence; and until recently it underpinned almost all accounts of silence. Luckily for me there are now a growing number of more secular sources to balance out the religious narratives, but they are all modern and cannot offer the cultural spread I would have liked. First there were the Romantic Movement writers like William Wordsworth and Henry Thoreau, who may have been theist in their understanding of nature but were militantly not religious and had quite other fish to fry in their accounts of silence. Since the mid nineteenth century there has been an invaluable new source of silence stories: the explorers, pioneers, prospectors and lone adventurers. At first too many of these were so stiff-upper-lip that they could not speak of their own emotions at all. ‘It was jolly frightening’ and ‘At the top I felt a certain satisfaction as I sat and admired the magnificent views’ do not really meet our contemporary desire for emotional engagement, any more than they enable me to explore the nature of silence. As late as the 1950s John Hunt, the leader of the first successful Everest expedition, apologises for the emotion expressed when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary returned to the camp after their triumphant summitting of the mountain: ‘I am ashamed to confess that there was hugging and even some tears.’6 In 1958 he wrote the foreword for Alone, Richard Byrd’s account of his solitary stay in Antarctica, and broods there on whether it is ‘healthy’ for a man to write about his interior life; or if it isn’t a bit indulgent and morbid – ‘unmanly’. In addition, a fair number of the solo adventurers have been markedly introverted. In some cases, like Leslie Stephen, Virginia Woolf ’s father, who was, inter alia, an early and dedicated solo mountaineer, this seems to have been why they took to these activities in the first place. As he wrote: ‘Life would be more tolerable if it were not for our fellow creatures. They come about us like bees, and as we cannot well destroy them, we are driven to some safe asylum. The Alps as yet remain.’7 The last thing someone like this would have wanted was to expose his emotions to any public gaze whatsoever. Although neither seems to have been neurotically misanthropic, Francis Chichester, the first solo circumnavigator of the world, and Augustine Courtauld, who spent six months in a tent alone in the Arctic (one of the most extreme modern silences I have ever come across) were both furious at the attention they received – Chichester from a protective Royal Navy flotilla as he sailed round the Horn and Courtauld by the media ‘fuss’ that seemed to him to vulgarise the purity of his polar solitude. Women explorers, like Gertrude Bell, have been more willing to give expression to their emotional response, but until recently there have not been a great many of them. Then, in 1968 the Sunday Times sponsored the first ‘Golden Globe’ race, sailing single-handed, non-stop round the world. Francis Chichester’s single-handed circumnavigation, with a stopover in Australia, had caught the public’s imagination the year before. Chichester’s success established that a non-stop voyage was at least a possibility. More important, though, it demonstrated that the British public would love to hear about such an adventure and what they wanted to hear was not meteorological science, but the gritty little details of courage, endurance and grief; what it felt like to be alone at sea. The Sunday Times’s creation of the race itself was somewhat opportunist: there were two experienced single-handed yachtsmen, Robin Knox- Johnston and Bernard Moitessier, already preparing to rise to the challenge for its own sake and who had found other sponsorship. Neither of them took any interest in the idea of a race, Moitessier announcing that the very idea of it made him ‘want to vomit’.8 It was clear that, when either of them was ready, they would set off, waiting for no race and, if successful, leave no role for the Sunday Times. In response the newspaper framed the race so that it was impossible not to enter it. There would be two prizes – first round the world, and fastest time round the world. These could be different because there was no actual starting date – entrants merely had to set out from any port north of 40°N at any time between the beginning of June and the end of October. In the end there were nine entries. But there was only one finisher – Robin Knox-Johnston. One yacht was dismasted in a gale off South Africa and one foundered barely 1,500 kilometres from home. All the other entrants, for one reason or another, ‘retired’. In each case it was not the sailing itself that proved the most significant hurdle, but the emotional response to it. No one was killed by wave or wind; their ‘will’ was warped or altered by isolation and silence. Donald Crowhurst went mad; Nigel Tetley committed suicide some months after his rescue; and Moitessier fell so ‘in love’ with silence and the sea that in the end he simply could not bring himself to return home. The reason for elaborating this little piece of history here is simple. Several of the cultural changes of the sixties came together. None of these sailors was independently wealthy, as previous adventurers had predominantly been – they needed sponsorship at the very moment when the media had learned that non-specialist readers wanted to know about extreme adventures and the interior lives of their heroes. Readers will consume every crumb of emotion, darkness, fear and triumph they can get, so the books of solitary adventure began to include feelings, emotions and inner awareness. All the survivors of this first race wrote books about it. One effect of the race (not, of course, separated from other cultural developments of the 1960s, which reshaped masculinity as much as they more famously reshaped femininity) was that it led to a new kind of ‘adventure writing’, a new sort of account of silence and solitude. For sailing, at least, the silence was short-lived – over the next three decades the public’s desire to know what was happening emotionally and physically, to ‘keep in touch’, overwhelmed the silence. Satellite navigation systems, effective radio communications and the global reach of the rescue services have made it nearly	661,529
Alone Reflections on Solitary Living (Daniel Schreiber) (Z-Library).pdf	ALONE Published by REAKTION BOOKS LTD Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London N1 7UX, UK www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2023 Copyright © Daniel Schreiber 2023 Translation from the German by Ben Fergusson 2022 Allein by Daniel Schreiber © 2021 Hanser Berlin in der Carl Hanser Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe- Institut All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library eISBN 978 1 78914 801 5 The quote on p. 7 is from The Years by Annie Ernaux. Translated from the French by Alison L. Strayer © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2008 © the English edition Fitzcarraldo Editions, London, 7th edition, 2021, p. 97. Contents Living Alone The Kindness of Strangers Conversations with Friends Never So Lonely Ambiguous Losses Days in Famara Bodywork Farewells NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS At every moment in time, next to the things it seems natural to do and say . . . are the other things that society hushes up without knowing it is doing so. Thus it condemns to lonely suffering all the people who feel but cannot name these things. Then the silence breaks, little by little, or suddenly one day, and the words burst forth, recognised at last, while underneath other silences start to form. ANNIE ERNAUX, The Years W Living Alone e sat around the back of the house on rickety folding chairs, drank coffee, enjoyed the last warm rays of the late summer sun and looked out over the overgrown plot that had once been a large allotment. Sylvia and Heiko had built the house near a lake, Liepnitzsee, in the countryside outside of Berlin. It had taken a few years to complete everything, but they had now moved in with their little daughter Lilith and had finally turned their backs on their lives in Berlin. I had mixed feelings about their move. I wasn’t sure what this new physical distance would mean for my social life and, in particular, for my long-standing friendship with Sylvia. No one had taken care of the garden in years. In front of us lay a dishevelled field of dry grasses, milkweed and stinging nettles, surrounded by huge, densely packed thuja conifers. In the middle of the garden, three great pines towered up into the sky, with a few scrawny cherry laurels and rhododendron bushes peppered in between, their branches bulky, their leaves sparse. The only plants able to hold their own were a few surprisingly drought-resistant purple rose campions, some pink cranesbill and bright amber heliopsis. On the spur of the moment, I asked Sylvia if she wanted me to help her redesign the garden. I couldn’t say exactly why this felt right in that moment. It was something to do with the hope that working in nature, with plants, might help ground me. Perhaps a part of me saw my own life mirrored in the disastrous state of that garden: disastrous despite the many touches of beauty. In the months leading up to that moment, I had increasingly been feeling as if something had gone wrong; as if, in my youth, I had succumbed to some kind of dreamy misconception about adult life. And that the effects of this misconception were only just becoming apparent. I NEVER MADE a conscious decision to live alone. On the contrary, for the longest time I had assumed that I would share my life with someone and that we would grow old together. I have always been in relationships – shorter, longer, very long; relationships that often merged into one another. I lived with two of my partners and, with one of them, spent years planning a future together. During that phase of my life, the weeks in which I was single often felt like an eternity; an eternity that I filled with affairs and one- night stands, with romantic obsessions that I only think back with reluctance. But at some point in time it all ended. Months passed, then years, in which I wasn’t in a relationship, in which I had fewer and fewer affairs. Having been unable to be alone, I suddenly found myself seeking out solitude. When I talked to my friends about this change, I explained to them that, when I was younger, I was more open-minded and more willing to take risks. Sometimes I would say that the world of gay love and desire was characterized by a mercilessness that, after a certain age, made you invisible. But I also wondered whether I was simply too psychologically overburdened to have another relationship, whether I even had room for it in my life. A life in which I had to work so hard just to keep my head above water and in which I needed so much time for my real passion: writing. This was all true, of course, but as an explanation it fell short. Because on some days I also thought that I was by myself because I lacked a kind of fundamental optimism. Ultimately, I didn’t feel as if I had a good or promising future ahead of me, a future worth sharing. This helplessness was by no means limited to my private life. The consequences of insurmountable economic inequality, the growing influence of autocratic regimes, climate change that was almost certainly irreversible – I felt that humanity had lost the will to confront the catastrophes it was facing. Instead, we seemed to be surrendering to them with an oddly cheerful fatalism. Every drought-filled summer, every tropical storm that destroyed whole swathes of land and whole island states, every forecast of another refugee crisis stoked by famine and the subsequent political collapse, every news item about the inaction of the world’s governments made me feel even more hopeless. Whenever I read about the surprising successes of political disinformation campaigns, the warnings of cyberattacks and bioterrorism, of new viruses and global epidemics about to catch us unawares, this feeling of hopelessness intensified. Perhaps what I felt could best be best described as a ‘moral injury’. The term comes from studies on war reporters suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and describes a violation of one’s inner understanding of reality. It occurs when one has to witness horrific events but one is unable to intervene.1 Although most of our lives are, of course, not comparable to the lives of those who report from the front line, they are shaped by a similar dilemma. We follow the horrors of what is happening in our world and we are largely condemned to inaction. For a long time now, it has seemed to me to be almost impossible not to experience this as a painful attack on my moral compass, on my understanding of myself and the world. I LOVE GARDENS. Even as a small child, I asked my mother – a passionate gardener – to tell me the names of plants and I would lose myself for hours playing among the huge fruit trees and feathery asparagus. I have been regularly going to Bornim near Potsdam to see the beautiful historic garden of Karl Foerster, the legendary nurseryman who bred perennial plants. In Versailles, I can walk for hours through Jean-Baptiste de la Quintinies Potager du roi. I am always blown away by Sissinghurst Castle, the country estate and sprawling gardens of Vita Sackville-West, in which plants are arranged by the colour of their flowers. In recent years, I have been particularly fascinated by the work of the Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf. His gardens are wildly beautiful. They resemble rhythmic seas of prairie plants, native perennials and grasses, in which something is always in bloom and which, due to the distinctive shapes of some of the plants, are inviting even in winter. Oudolf’s gardens spoke to me in a way that was difficult to put into words. They not only satisfied my need for sanctuary, they also gave me the feeling that something could be done about the adversities we face in the world today. They revealed to me a way to make the world, at least within the confines of a single plot of land, a little more beautiful and to lay in a small way the foundations for a better future. They seemed to reveal a possibility of living with and in a world that we struggle with. INSPIRED BY OUDOLF and his gardening philosophy, I suggested to Sylvia and Heiko that we redesign their garden around their house on a much grander scale. I got my hands on all of Oudolf’s books and worked through them methodically. The goal was to create an ecologically sustainable garden that, year on year, would require less work because the plants were so well matched that they would form a kind of mini ecosystem. A garden that only needed a minimum of watering, even during hot summers. Little by little, we set to work. I had a key to the house. Whenever I needed to travel up, or even just when I wasn’t feeling great, I would get on the local train and go up to Liepnitzsee. When I was there, I would get up early, make myself a coffee and go outside. Working with my hands also entailed a kind of psychological work; the tilling of the space of the garden was accompanied by an expansion of my mental space. Or at least that’s what it felt like to me.2 THAT AUTUMN, I often found myself thinking about Jean-François Lyotard’s famous thesis on the ‘end of grand narratives’. It was a notion that Lyotard had put forward in the late 1970s in his book The Postmodern Condition. Lyotard’s ‘grand narratives’ were not literary narratives; instead, he was describing the ways in which our society had suffered from a fundamental loss of credibility. The ‘narratives’ that he had in mind were those of politics and philosophy. In his opinion, these fields could no longer lay claim to any kind of authoritative ‘rationale’.3 I had the impression that we were only just beginning to experience, in real life, what the end of these great narratives actually meant; that we had, in fact, been able to follow it in real time for some years now. It was reflected in developments that were sometimes welcome, sometimes deeply threatening. The end of unchallenged patriarchy and rigid notions of gender, for instance. But also the apparent end of collective responsibility, of social action underpinned by science, of a shared belief in democracy. For Lyotard, the collapse of our grand narratives also called into question the ‘autonomous subject’ able to rely on self-evident certainties and to say what is right and what is wrong based on universally shared truths. Instead, he saw the emergence of an individuals who were left to cope alone, who had to navigate their own way through a multiplicity of ‘little narratives’. They became searching selves who confronted the fundamental changes of our age by living a life of lost certainties, craving new beliefs. This idea of the searching self was something I could completely identify with. Perhaps the last grand narrative to have survived these shifts is that of romantic love. Or at least its rudiments. It is true that we are slowly leaving behind the ‘divine’ and ‘natural’ order of the sexes that, for a long time, were part of this grand narrative. It is of course also true that what we conceive of as ‘love’ has fundamentally changed. Sociologists like Eva Illouz have written compellingly about how our notion of love is affected by the commercialization of our feelings, the capitalization of our bodies, the whole emotional attention economy – always searching for something more, something better.4 And yet, the idea of love has lost hardly any of its allure. It continues to be the focus of our collective fantasies. Its place in our personal horizons remains fixed. It is still what most people desire and what they hope for. It is, perhaps, the most essential component of what they understand happiness to be. For most of us, a life without the intimacy of love is incomplete, unfulfilled – a life that is fundamentally missing something. These days, our unhappiness is often understood as a result of individual failure, despite the fact that unhappiness can represent a completely appropriate reaction to the world and the society we live in. The lack of a romantic relationship is generally seen as a kind of personal failure in the same vein, as the consequence of a lack of attractiveness, a lack of professional success, a lack of physical fitness. When you live alone, you are constantly stumbling into these free-floating assumptions, not least in the faces of other people, in their pity, their projections of shame, sometimes even in their secret joy that they are better off than you. PERHAPS THIS PERCEPTION is one of the reasons why we still know so little about the everyday lives and mental health of people who live alone. As the psychotherapist Julia Samuel points out in her book This Too Shall Pass, up until now the focus of psychological research has always been on romantic partnerships, on the lives of people living in a couple. Remarkably, there is barely any research on how people cope with living alone.5 After all, now more than ever, we are encouraged to put ourselves in the centre of our own life plan. ‘Individual autonomy’ and ‘self-realization’ have become collective ideals.6 The great array of different ways of living has become so much wider; traditional family ties have loosened. Marriages and conventional romantic relationships have become shorter and more unstable than they once were. More people live alone now, in fact, than at any other time in history.7 People like me. Many of us have not found a partner, have not started a family, even if those were things that we once desired. Many of us, willingly or not, have said goodbye to the grand narrative of love – even if some of us still believe in it. Whether we are in a relationship or not, we all still have a need for a sense of intimacy that has to be fulfilled. Without being able to put it into words, I felt, when I was with Sylvia and her family at Liepnitzsee, that I was not as caught up with myself and my life alone as I normally was. Contrary to my fears when they first moved, we were in fact spending a lot of time together. At the weekends, when we devoted ourselves to the big jobs in the garden, we would sit around a fire, pleasantly exhausted, or would retreat to their large kitchen, cook, eat, try to convince Lilith to eat the odd vegetable, play cards with her. To calm the waves surging within, it helps to spend time in the company of people one knows well and whom one trusts.8 In a sense, our work together in Sylvia’s garden represented a new chapter in our friendship; the continuation of a long story that we are both still writing, a story with highs and lows, intensive phases and new beginnings. I have known Sylvia since I was twelve. We prepped for our physics and history exams together, headed out to the lakes or went out together in town. She was the first person I told that I was gay. When we were nineteen we travelled through Italy for six weeks with camping equipment strapped to our backs, smoked joints on the beaches of Calabria, had laughing fits and both flirted with the same cellist – a man who gave us a private concert in his parents’ house, surrounded by orange and lemon trees. We lived together in our first flat in Berlin. After I moved to New York, I would stay with her in Kreuzberg when I was visiting Germany. A few days after Lilith was born, I held her in my arms and, later, became her godfather. Sylvia is one of the few people who not only knows who I am, but also knows who I was ten or twenty years ago. We change, we change all the time. And we forget, forget even when we don’t want to, who we once were. We need people around us to remind us, to keep us from forgetting. WHEN YOU LIVE ALONE, it is friendships, like the one I share with Sylvia, that often form the centre of your life. The relationships that I have with many of my friends have lasted longer than my longest romantic relationships. These friendships are the source of my greatest conflicts as well as my greatest joys. Some of my friendships are based on common interests, on shared season tickets to the Berlin Philharmonic or the Berlin State Opera, on exchanging reading and exhibition tips. I’ve been friends with some of these people for so long that, when we’re asked how long we’ve known each other, we just laugh in embarrassment. Other friendships are more recent. My oldest friend is over seventy, my youngest in her mid-twenties. It is friendships that structure my life. It is friends with whom I share it. So much is written about the grand narrative of romantic love, so many films are made about it and so many theories are developed to explain it that we often disregard other narratives of closeness and intimacy, or do not afford them the importance they deserve. Even if we don’t form long-term romantic relationships, even if we don’t have kids, even if we go through life alone: we almost always have friendships. And for many of us, as the philosopher Marilyn Friedman points out, they are among the most uncontested, enduring and satisfying of all of our close, personal bonds.9 Friendships are the only relationships we have that are entirely voluntary, based on two people mutually agreeing to share ideas, spend time with each other and be there for each other, to varying degrees. Unlike family relationships, with their rituals and obligations, you are not born into friendships. And they are rarely based on the same kinds of rules of exclusivity that govern romantic relationships, nor are they beholden to the same agendas of desire. We choose our friends based on who they are, and we, in turn, are chosen on the exact same basis. NOWADAYS, friendships often have a different urgency than romantic relationships. It is something that the sociologist Sasha Roseneil has uncovered in her research. Modern friendships, she writes, are part of our ‘practices of self-repair’. They can help us ‘heal the wounds of the self’ and confront ‘mental distress, disappointment, psychological suffering and loss’. They can ensure that our lives are not completely dominated by emotional distress or the fallout of failed relationships.10 Yet, what we talk about when we talk about friendship is different for each and every one of us. In fact, when it comes to those relationships that we describe as friendships, it is striking how diverse the forms they can take are.11 According to the most recent sociological research, friendships should not, in fact, be understood as a single type of relationship, but rather as a ‘family of abstract forms of relationships’, a ‘gradiated web of related social forms’.12 These can range from short-lived acquaintances to long- term, intimate relationships. There are people with large circles of friends and those with small ones. While some people fill their lives with intense friendships, making a clear distinction between ‘real friends’ and ‘acquaintances’, others have many different types of friends and try to ‘balance’ their relationships according to their needs. Some people rely on their friends for the long haul; others change their circle of friends at each new stage of their lives.13 The secret of friendships lies in their great diversity, in the fact that they are able to encompass so much more than any one of us can imagine. Perhaps it is our difficulty in clearly defining friendships that causes us to attach less importance to them than to family relationships and romantic relationships. Only love is able to claim a grand narrative for itself. Friendships revolve around small narratives, countless small narratives unwilling to follow preordained patterns or contractual characteristics. I NEVER DREAMT of being alone. I never dreamt that friendships, rather than a relationship and a family, would be the most important spheres of intimacy for me. But I still like my life; I like the many people I am close to; I like my flat, my balcony overflowing with plants; I like the time I have to travel, to cook for people, to wander around town sometimes for hours on end. I like that there is room in my life for projects like the garden at Liepnitzsee. Even without a romantic relationship, my life often feels fulfilled. And yet, despite everything, there remains a void, a trace of longing. Every now and again, briefly, I wish I had a partner, someone to spend a relaxing weekend with, someone to wake up next to me in the morning, who asks me in the evening how my day was, someone I can tell what time I’ll be home, someone who holds me when I’m sad. I wonder whether I’m missing something fundamental but can’t admit it to myself. Whether I have become so good at living alone that I no longer notice my loneliness. Whether the fragile balance of my life is grounded in me unwittingly repressing my longing, repressing my desire. Reflecting on Joan Didion’s famous phrase, ‘We tell ourselves stories in order to live’, essayist Maggie Nelson writes that it is stories that ‘may enable us to live, but they also trap us’. ‘In their scramble to make sense of nonsensical things,’ Nelson writes, ‘they distort, codify, blame, aggrandise, restrict, omit, betray, mythologise, you name it.’14 I’m not sure how right she is. But I do believe that we have to keep returning to the stories we tell ourselves to make sure that they still ; that we sometimes have to discard them in order to be able to retell them afresh or find new stories that do fit. The reason that all of these explanations for my solitude felt wrong was the pervasive assumption of my own passivity. Again and again, I framed it as something that had ‘happened’ to me. But couldn’t it also be the case that I had sought out this life alone? Or at least a part of me had, a part that I didn’t want to acknowledge? The part of me that was afraid of the hurt that would inevitably come with a relationship, that wanted to avoid the long depressions that would follow a potential break up, that couldn’t stand the necessary compromises, the frictions of everyday life. The part, then, that didn’t let many people get close to it. Maybe I lived alone because I wanted to live alone. But can you really live a good life alone, without a romantic relationship? Can our need for intimacy be satisfied by friendships? How sustainable is a model like that? And how does one deal with those moments in which, at some point, most of one’s friends have found partners and one finds oneself even alone in living alone? In other words, how do you learn to live with being alone without it hurting, without lying to yourself ? These were the questions that I didn’t know the answers to. WE CONTINUED TO GARDEN until the onset of winter. We cut down the thuja conifers, cleared large parts of the plot, created a lawn and flower bed, raised beds for vegetables and areas for fruit trees. We cultivated the soil, planted fragrant hawthorn, lilac bushes, weigelas, snowy Mespilus, red- leaved elder, black cherry plum trees and old-fashioned mock orange along the perimeter. We put countless bulbs in the ground – wild tulips, old pheasant’s eye, striped squills, snowdrops, crocuses and winter aconites – and planted hellebores and Lenten roses, largeleaf Brunneras, grasses, ferns, wild fennel, profuse perovskias, shade-loving astilbes and many other hardy perennials. The effort felt good. People, says cultural historian Robert Harrison in his book Gardens, were not created to ponder the turmoil, the death and the endless suffering of their history. They create gardens to find refuge from the tumult of the ages. It is, in fact, Harrison argues, precisely because we are thrown into this history that we have to cultivate our own garden. So that we can discover the healing power within us, so that we can preserve our humanity.15 When you cultivate a garden, the future is uncertain. You don’t know what your plot will look like in a few months’, years’ or decades’ time, whether what you plant and sow will eventually flourish and bloom. You lay the foundations for something, you water, you fertilize, you weed, you learn to live with setbacks and to let go. Gardening is not only an expression of hope; it is also a very concrete act of hope. PERHAPS THESE ARE ultimately the reasons why we cultivate friendships too, especially in a life lived alone: so as not to lose our grip on reality, to counter the passage of time and rampant entropy, in order to create the possibility of a tomorrow. Aren’t friendships also exercises in hope, in letting go, in acceptance? Don’t they also help you to imagine exactly that future that you can no longer imagine in the face of the crushing reality of the world? Or at least allow us not to lose the sense that there can be such a future and that what we do does, in fact, matter, in the end, at least a little bit? I couldn’t say whether I believed this – or whether I just wanted to. P The Kindness of Strangers ride assumes many forms. Some are beneficial. Others can represent an almost-insurmountable obstacle in one’s life. I am rarely proud of my work, no matter how much agony it has cost me, no matter how hard I have toiled. I don’t want to read my own writing after it has been published; or at least not for a few years, until it feels like it’s been written by someone else. Until so much time has passed that, in some sense, it has, in fact, been written by someone else. I almost never manage to feel truly proud of the life I have built for myself, even though I’ve achieved some of the things I set out to achieve, even though I know how right that would be, not least as a sign of gratitude. What I am also well aware of are the negative varieties of pride, those that consist of keeping your inner life under wraps, of not showing other people how you feel. Ignoring difficulties. Keeping your chin up and pushing on through. Keeping your composure. Which helps you keep your head above water when you’re in difficult situations – or that’s what I tell myself, at least. But at some point, that composure morphs into a constricting second skin. It becomes difficult to admit to yourself how you feel; you repress things and put things away again and again. And these things that, deep down, you somehow know but don’t want to know – they begin to accumulate. So much so that the pressure of this knowledge becomes painful. Am I too proud to admit to myself that I find my life alone more difficult than I would like to imagine it was? That I struggle with it more than I admit and that I actually wish that things were different? Am I, in other words, too proud to admit that I sometimes feel lonely? Leafing through those same books that I return to time and time again, I come across sentences like this, which I have underlined: ‘Today, it seems to him, that he writes more openly . . . He says this without the infatuation which may accompany all declarations of independence, and without the pose of melancholy adopted to avow a solitude.’1 The sentences come from Roland Barthes’ autobiographical book On the Self and Writing. I must have underlined these lines a long time ago. Still, I feel like I’m reading them for the first time. As I flip through Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, her reflections on the end of a love affair and the allure of the colour blue, the following sentence awaits me, highlighted in fading neon pink: ‘I have been trying, for some time now, to find dignity in my loneliness. I have been finding this hard to do.’2 The highlighted section is followed by three exclamation marks. There must have been a time when I could identify with Nelson’s laconic lines. Do I still do so now? And finally, opening Marguerite Duras’ Writing, her essay on the loneliness of writers, I read: ‘As soon as a human being is left alone, she tips into un-reason. I believe this: I believe that a person left to her own devices is already stricken by madness, because nothing keeps her from the sudden emergence of her personal delirium.’3 When I read these lines, my heart beats a little faster. Involuntary waves of recognition under stirrings of resistance. Chin up, hold back, keep your cool. I DIDN’T REALLY FEEL like going to Switzerland. A hotel in Lucerne had invited me to take part in a three-week writers’ residency. After mulling it over for a while, I finally accepted. I needed time to write, I didn’t know the Lake Lucerne region, and there was something soothing about the idea of escaping the grey Berlin January. But now my doubts had returned. I didn’t want to see anyone, or even leave my flat, for that matter. Part of the reason that the idea of the residency had originally appealed to me was because I had read Anita Brookner’s novel Hotel du Lac a few months earlier and it had become one of my favourite books. A British friend of mine felt the same way, and in our conversations we kept coming back to that novel from the early 1980s. In it, the London-based protagonist, Edith Hope, a romance writer, is sent by her friends to an elegant, old- fashioned hotel on Lac Léman for an indefinite period of time in order to put an end to the risky and, to their mind, indecent affair she has been carrying on with a married man. At the centre of this astonishing book, which frustrates all of the classic narratives of traditional romance, is Edith having to confront her social status as a single woman about to turn forty. I couldn’t say why I, as a gay man, found this novel so wonderful. Probably because it has such a dark centre and exposes, with such subtle humour, the multi-layered ways in which a society based on the institution of marriage excludes certain people. Despite all of her proclamations of fragility, Edith is an immensely strong person. She manages to create a space for herself in a society that intends to provide only a very narrowly defined place for her. I found that inspiring. And I kept thinking about Edith’s stay in her elegant hotel, the big Swiss lake, the snow-covered mountains on the horizon. I have always liked Switzerland. I’m usually in Zurich a couple of times a year for work. I wrote parts of my second book in Geneva. I spent a summer in Lausanne with my former partner, David. Another man invited me to St Moritz a few years later, where we trudged through the snow to a dinner at the home of an art collector in whose living room hung the largest Basquiat I had ever seen. I had been to Basel to write about the art fair and in Valais to read at a literary festival. The country sometimes seemed to me like the fulfilment of everything promised by the adverts I had marvelled at on West German television as a child. Everything is so clean and progressive and all in just the right measure, radiating the well-ordered glow of prosperity. I felt this, although I was aware that I was succumbing to a completely unwarranted idealization. I USUALLY STRUGGLE at this time of year, so I should have known that it would be hard for me to get started. It had begun again a few weeks earlier, the feeling that always hits me at the end of a year. It sets in when the days become so short that I have to leave my desk no later than three o’clock so that I can still catch a little daylight on my daily walk through the park. When winter arrives, when my birthday approaches just before Christmas, when the festivities themselves begin, when one year changes to the next, when the months of darkness that follow don’t seem to end – it is at this time that I feel, most powerfully, that I live alone. The feeling is vague, when it begins. A certain kind of restlessness throughout my body, a desire that I cannot name, a yearning for something that I cannot identify. When I feel it, I work even harder, wander around town for even longer than usual, go to concerts, the ballet or the cinema more often, start reading a thick novel that I don’t finish, look for the perfect Christmas presents for my godchildren, start to make marmalade from oranges or Meyer lemons to give away as gifts, make panettone and stollen for friends and eat more of it myself than I had planned to. For a few years now, I have put up a tree at the beginning of the festive period, obsessively decorating it with glittering baubles and ornaments until it resembles one of those luxurious Parisian dresses you see in paintings by John Singer Sargent or James Tissot. Today, the Christmas decorations pile up in my storeroom. Sometimes all of this extra activity helps me, but sometimes it takes on a compulsive, manic quality and threatens to tip over into a mental state that is not yet depressive in itself, but can initiate a depression and, if I’m not careful, become so pervasive that it will dominate my life for weeks and months to come. At this stage, everything suddenly feels threadbare. Self- deceptions that have kept me afloat for most of the year begin to crumble away. The wilful oblivion on which most of our lives are based begins to fail. I can’t describe it any better than that. It feels like the loss of an important fantasy. I stop believing that this life, as I live it, as I live it alone, is a good life. This fantasy of a good life is more than just a personal fantasy of my own. It is a collective construct that many of us share, a fiction that is socially enacted and performed over and over again, by ourselves, by the people we love, by all of us. Even if you try to consciously detach yourself from it, you are confronted every day with the traces it has left behind in you. Part of this fiction consists in a complex illusion of affluence: the belief that we can make a good living based on our work, that with the necessary effort each and every one of us can achieve a certain degree of prosperity. Other aspects of this illusion include having a functioning romantic relationship, having a family of one’s own, and these aspects often carry even more weight, not least because they are less questioned, because they take up a seemingly more natural place in the genetics of our social lives. This fantasy construct of a good life represents a promise that we cling to despite the overwhelming evidence that for many of us it will never be fulfilled. According to the American philosopher Lauren Berlant, this clinging on often only puts obstacles in our way, because in the society in which we live – for many, if not most of us – it’s not possible to lead this promised kind of life. Berlant has called this phenomenon ‘cruel optimism’. For her, it is a signature of our age.4 Sometimes, she writes, our everyday life feels like some sort of survival training that no longer allows us to plan realistically for the future, but only to fantasize about it.5 This is not a pathology, she stresses, but an appropriate reaction to the world, a way of making life bearable, a life that confronts us again and again with contradictions, difficulties and ambivalence.6 The dark mood that recurs when each year comes to an end is, in large part, fed by my inner cruel optimism collapsing in the face of a frenetic celebration of the good life everywhere around me. I feel like I have failed. Because I don’t have a partner, because my life as a writer is marked by financial insecurity. Everywhere I go, I am confronted with the fact that I have to make do without the two basic components of the good life as we imagine it: prosperity and happiness in love. I realize how cruel it really is to hold on to the belief that things will one day be different. I never feel as lonely as I do at the end of the year. This loneliness has nothing to do with how I spend the holidays themselves. That year, I had also seen and spoken to friends, my parents and siblings. I spent Christmas Eve, as I often do, with Marie, one of my oldest friends; Olaf, her partner; and their son John, my godchild. On Christmas Day I was invited to a Mexican Christmas lunch at Amy and Daniel’s place, which was teeming with funny toddlers, and then I went to dinner at Karsten and Harriet’s. I spent New Year’s Eve at a party at Rabea and David’s. My feeling of loneliness has nothing to do with whether or not I am actually alone. It is a seasonal loneliness, the symptom of a time in which I fail to make myself see what I usually see: that I may not be living a conventionally good life, but it is a full life, nonetheless, an exciting life, a life full of other kinds of prosperity and love. I think a lot of people who live alone feel this way. As soon as the first Christmas lights appear on the streets, psychological dynamics are set into motion that are hard to escape. Instinctively, one feels as if one is moving through a world that belongs to other people, to lovers, to mothers and fathers, to grandparents. Roland Barthes described this feeling as a form of philosophical loneliness, a loneliness that arises because one moves outside of social systems and categories: ‘Quite simply, I have no dialogue,’ he writes in A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. ‘In return, society subjects me to a strange, public repression: I am merely suspended, a humanis, far from human things, by a tacit decree of insignificance: I belong to no repertoire, participate in no asylum.’7 DESPITE MY END-OF-YEAR MOOD, I did travel to Lake Lucerne. It took some effort to make the travel arrangements, pack my suitcase and ask Tim, my neighbour, to empty my mailbox. But maybe the stay would do me good, I thought. The hotel, called Beau Séjour, was situated directly on the lake and was even more charming than I had imagined. The two owners had done everything they could to live up to the promise of the hotel’s name. I was touched by their generosity. They had set up a small office for me and had given me a room with a view of the lake and the mountains. From my bed, I could watch the sun rise in the morning. When I sat on the balcony and smoked – I still hadn’t managed to quit, having taken it back up again four years earlier – I saw the big, white steamers sailing over the still water. I looked up at the sundrenched winter sky and the snow-covered mountains, the Pilatus, the Bürgenstock, the Rigi, and couldn’t believe how extraordinarily, how unimaginably beautiful the world could look. What solace. I don’t know why it was that I started hiking, but, to my surprise, I did. It must have been the sight of that enchanting landscape every day that made me want to go outside, right into the mountains, into the forest and the snow. But it probably also had something to do with the new, dangerous virus that had been discovered in Wuhan in China. Every day, in the news, I read about how first hundreds and then thousands of people had died from the pneumonia it caused. It still felt safe in Lucerne – only a few people there seemed to be concerned about it – but still I couldn’t quite shake my anxiety. I needed to do something to quell my fears, sooth my nerves, make me feel alive. I invested part of my stipend into buying a solid pair of hiking boots, merino wool shirts and a suitable outdoor jacket. While shopping, I met a friendly saleswoman who, in addition to the snow-covered winter hiking trails, recommended a few easy, lower-lying hiking routes where I would be able to test out my capabilities. I THINK THAT WRITERS like walking so much because it is a good remedy for the dark state of mind that catches up with you, whether you like it or not, when you are working alone at your desk. It is not uncommonly the case that the great depressives of literary history have also been the most enthusiastic hikers. The list of writers who lifted their spirits by walking in nature is long: William and Dorothy Wordsworth, Henry David Thoreau, Robert Louis Stevenson, Goethe, of course, Rousseau, Nietzsche and many others. Michel de Montaigne loved to wander aimlessly through the idyllic landscape of Périgord; he was generally wary of meeting other people. For Virginia Woolf – the most gifted of novelists, the most gifted of hikers and, tragically, the most gifted of depressives – salvation lay in the hills of Sussex and along the cliffs of Cornwall. ‘After the solitude of one’s own room’, she could only shed her ‘self’ by walking, she once explained.8 I knew what she meant. She was not concerned with self-discovery. When you hike because you are not well, you don’t want to find yourself. Or at least not at first. What you really want is to run away from yourself. As it turned out, there is nowhere better to run away from yourself than in the mountains around Lake Lucerne. To begin with, I tried out hikes that didn’t last longer than three or four hours. They were physically and mentally more challenging than I had expected. In the Alps, my northern German sense of heights transmuted, again and again, into a slightly queasy feeling. I got into some difficult situations that were so challenging from a hiking point of view that I didn’t know what to do. But, eventually, I managed to meet these challenges. Every now and again another hiker I met on the trail would explain to me how to get down steep steps carved into the rock or a narrow slope that only seemed to be held together by a few tree roots. Sometimes I simply took a break and, afterwards, was able to find my own way down. Soon, I found myself in the mountains on a regular basis, and I began to hike the easier sections of the Waldstätterweg, the trail around Lake Lucerne, that are open year-round. I would take a boat to the start of one of the hiking trails and walk for hours, always timing my return to catch the last boat back to town before dark. I had sore muscles and all kinds of aches and pains in my feet, legs, back and arms, yet, after a day or two back at my desk, I would set off again. The incredibly intense, life-affirming and liberating sunlight at higher altitudes, the ice-clear air, the snow, the cold on my face, it all made me feel euphoric in an unforeseen way, cleared my head so completely that I totally forgot about my life in Berlin. When you do nothing but put one foot in front of the other, your mind seems to seek new paths. Body, mind and world come together in a new way, open up new conversations. A very unique, rhythmic kind of thinking emerges, determined by the walking itself, by landscape and breath.9 With each hike, I had more faith in myself. Over and over again I savoured the beauty of the landscape; over and over again I reached my physical limits, coped with being alone in the vastness of nature; over and over again, I seemed, for a brief moment, to be able to see things differently, afresh. The movements of my body brought back memories of long-forgotten incidents from my past. Everything seemed to take on a larger and clearer context. Something was always at work within me. Without realizing it, I was thinking constantly about myself and my life. The mountains were so big, I was so small and so free of everything that actually determined my everyday life. I understood the enthusiasm with which people go hiking, I felt it anew each time. SOON I BEGAN TO FEEL a little better. The hiking certainly had a big part to play in this. The luxury of having a room with a view, an office just for work, and the fact that, for weeks at the hotel, I barely had to worry about the everyday trivialities of life. But the biggest influence on my mood were, surprisingly, the people who worked at the Beau Séjour. The owners had mainly employed friends or people they knew well, so that life in the hotel exuded a sense of something communal, something familiar, and after a few days it was clear to me that, without being able to say why, I liked almost all of them. There was something idiosyncratic about it; it was a spontaneous liking, a reflexive concord that came with the knowledge that we saw things in a similar way, shared certain reference points in this chaotic world, certain sympathies, certain aversions. These kinds of ‘spontaneous alliances’, as the literary critic Silvia Bovenschen once called them, are of course not really reliable. But they are beautiful, because they are so fleeting and do sometimes spark the beginning of a real friendship.10 The truth is that even relationships that we would not initially describe as being intimate or close have a significance for us and our internal sense of harmony. Not only do we live within a close circle of friends, family members and partners, but we move in much wider social circles. These ‘networks’, if you want to call them that, are often hard to grasp, but, generally speaking, they have a far greater influence on our everyday life than we think.11 The first person to study this phenomenon was the sociologist Mark S. Granovetter. In his essay ‘The Strength of Weak Ties’, written in the early 1970s, he expressed something that had previously been understood only intuitively, at best. Whether it is acquaintances, neighbours, colleagues, friends of friends, people we only meet by chance or on certain occasions, Granovetter believed that there is great strength in these ‘weak social ties’. For him, these relationships fulfil a certain ‘bridging function’ and are predestined to pass on information that cannot be passed on in any other way.12 A number of social scientists have taken up the mantle of his research and demonstrated how easily ideas, mindsets, attitudes, fashions, feelings and affects, such as confidence and fear, spread in these networks, and how much we are shaped by them, without ever realizing it.13 One facet in particular of my new little ‘network’ that did me a world of good during my time on Lake Lucerne was a fundamental and judicious kindness that I often miss in everyday life in Berlin. Kindness is something that some people are suspicious of, believing it to be either boring or insincere. There seems to be something antiquated about the idea, something stiff and anachronistic that runs counter to the neoliberal spirit of our day. When, as a matter of course, societies divide their members into winners and losers, this leads, perhaps inevitably, to people only being kind if they need to be. But, as psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and cultural historian Barbara Taylor write in their book On Kindness, though it has acquired the status of a ‘forbidden pleasure’ in recent decades, kindness is something that ‘remains essential to our emotional and mental health’. Phillips and Taylor are thinking both about what it is like to experience other people’s kindness and what it is like to be kind to other people. And they mean ordinary kindness in our everyday lives. According to their observations, it is this very kindness that is repeatedly defined as a sign of weakness, which, in turn, makes us avoid being kind and then find all sorts of justifications for doing so.14 Sometimes you’re sitting on the bus or the train and you have the impression that the flood of hateful online comments, devoid of any self- reflection, has spilled over into the real world. Most of us know how painful careless judgements, inattentiveness and microaggressions can be. Nevertheless, for a lot of people, being kind seems to represent a real challenge. In part, this stems from a form of cultural conditioning. In Germany, for instance, being ‘direct’ and able to speak ‘uncomfortable’ truths is deemed, by many, to be something positive. But one could also ask oneself, of course, whether one’s own assessment of a given situation is in fact so important that one is happy to hurt someone else in order to express it. It is not uncommon for the expression of so-called uncomfortable truths to conceal a certain kind of comfort: one’s own unwillingness to muster even a modicum of empathy. It is not difficult to be kind. Usually, it is one of the first intuitive reactions we have when we encounter other people. It is not difficult to show a little interest in someone else, to listen, not difficult to realize that we are all vulnerable, that what we say has consequences and that we are often wrong precisely in our conviction that we are right.15 I have hurt many people in my life, sometimes intentionally, but also involuntarily when I have failed to be considerate. And, of course, I have also experienced many such grievances myself. I don’t know if I always succeed in being kind, but at least I try. You never know what’s going on behind the facade that the other person presents to you, you never know what other people’s lives are like, what they have to deal with every day. From the outside, people almost always appear stronger than they feel on the inside. IT TOOK A WHILE before I really felt better again. Until I no longer felt so keenly the inherent cruelty of my optimistic fantasies about the good life. Until the things that I didn’t want to know about actually became things that I didn’t know about again, or at least things that I didn’t know that much about. Until the necessary self-deception on which life is based started to function properly again. That January was to become the first New Year in a long time that didn’t begin with me battling a depressive episode. At some point, being alone no longer hurt; at some point, I no longer felt alone. Towards the end of my stay, after a hike, I sat on the outer deck of one of the boats back to Lucerne. It was very cold, but I wrapped myself up in a big scarf and watched the play of the waves, watched the mute swans, the great crested grebes and red-crested pochards glide across the water, watched the mountains and the villages pass me by with their picturesque churches, elegant houses and grand hotels from the nineteenth century, which looked as if another era was living on inside of them. Suddenly I saw the words ‘Hotel du Lac’ on one of these magnificent buildings. My heart leapt. I took a photo and sent it to the friend I had been talking to about Anita Brookner’s novel. I knew it would make him smile. Edith Hope, I should say, decides at the end of the book to leave the man she is having an affair with and probably loves. But she also rejects the man who, with little emotion, offers her his hand in marriage – a marriage that in and of itself would represent social inclusion and recognition. She decides to live alone. Living alone presents challenges that are incomprehensible to people with partners, spouses and families. Even people in a relationship can feel lonely, but if you live alone and feel lonely, you will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Loneliness ebbs and flows; sometimes it is an acute feeling, then it is forgotten, or it is easily pushed aside until it hits you again. Regardless of whether you live alone by choice or not, regardless of how many friends you have, regardless of how well you organize your life. Loneliness is sometimes a corollary of living alone. How difficult it is to accept that. It is always easier to convince oneself that one does not feel the pain – which one hopes, out of pride, to hide from the world – than to actually look that pain in the eye and grapple with it. But all feelings, good and bad, have to be felt, accepted and lived through. Sometimes living alone hurts, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you have to find new ways of coping, or at least be open to the possibility of new ways. Sometimes you have to dare yourself to go out onto the lake and into the mountains, to hold your face up to the winter sun and hold on to all those kind people who are accompanying you for part of your journey. And to remember that there are not only different kinds of pride, but also different kinds of solitude. And yes, different kinds of loneliness. W Conversations with Friends hen I returned to Berlin, I did not yet know we were at the beginning of a period that, for many people, would mean the end of normality. This ending had, in fact, been foreseen for several years. The process had been underway for some time, but people had become so accustomed to it that its momentum was barely noticed. The virus that I had been so afraid of in Lucerne was spreading inexorably around the world. And everyone was surprised by what should not have been a surprise, given the course of the disease, the incidence rates and the number of infections reported in China. Many scientists had been warning for years that the destruction of natural habitats, factory farming and global mobility would increase the likelihood of zoonotic viral diseases. Now, these warnings had become a reality. A few days after I’d returned from Switzerland, I fell ill. What felt like a normal flu or cold that it took me a month to shake off was probably just that: a normal flu or cold. I often suffer from these kinds of infections in winter, but the general sense of uncertainty all around me and the fact that, at that time, it was not yet possible to be tested for the new virus made me cautious. I kept to my flat, hardly saw anyone, and the few times I did, it was only outdoors for short walks. I was in contact with most of the people in my life virtually or by phone. When I wasn’t working, I was reading. I HAVE SOME FRIENDS who I have known for over two decades. These friendships were forged in my first university course in Berlin, in the Department for Comparative Literature, which, back at the tail end of the nineties, was still located in a sleepy villa in the suburb of Dahlem. When I think back to the beginnings of those relationships, I realize that they almost all arose from precisely those idiosyncratic ‘spontaneous alliances’ that Silvia Bovenschen described, coupled with a degree of serendipity. For a long time, friendship seemed to me to be primarily a question of identification. A question of mutual recognition in emotional conversations, in the exchange of thoughts and ideas about the world, a shared recognition that, during long evenings spent together, would often take on an intoxicating quality. The subject of the undergraduate class that I met many of these friends on was ‘Narcissism and Doppelgangers’. The amount of reading we were allocated for the course was so intimidating that it left many of us speechless, not only due to the volume of texts we had to read but also how demanding they were. The course required us to read Ovid’s Metamorphoses, psychoanalytical essays by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Devil’s Elixirs, Jean Paul’s Siebenkäs, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, an old French drama the title of which I can’t now recollect because I never read it, nor many of the other books we were allocated. The real kicker was that the reading lists contained only texts in the original language. Naturally, one was expected to read Ovid in the original Latin and that play in Old French. Except for those people who were blessed with an unshakeable self-confidence, almost all of us were pretty much at a loss. It was an experience that welded some of us together as we searched in libraries for translations and explanatory secondary literature. We were all new to Berlin. Everything seemed exciting. It was a time of new beginnings. Despite the importance of my friends in my life, I feel reticent about the increasingly prominent celebration of friendship over the last few years, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. There seems to be some sort of collective need to engage with the topic, as evidenced by the success of often well-written, edifying books such as Dolly Alderton’s Everything I Know about Love and Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman’s Big Friendship. Popular science books, such as Lydia Denworth’s Friendship or Nicholas A. Christakis’s Blueprint, are also part of this conversation. Even classic self-help guides to friendship, like Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, continue to enjoy a surprisingly unreserved popularity. At their core, these texts always say the same thing. They are variations on a ‘celebration of friendship’, a classic topos in the history of philosophy and literature. They almost always explain how important friendship is for a good life, for our happiness and for our mental health. And they almost always describe a range of particularly moving scenes from intimate friendships. There is often something strangely saccharine about this celebration, not least because it is limited to variations on a somewhat trite ideal of friendship that reflects a ‘catalogue of highly old-fashioned virtues’, as Silvia Bovenschen puts it. ‘Loyalty, truthfulness, faithfulness’ are among them, ‘but also discretion, respect, distance, independence, tact, taste (the list goes on)’.1 Within this framework, friendships usually take the form of a kind of therapeutic deus ex machina that solves every kind of life problem – a quick and obtainable consolation prize for anyone left alone. When every other tether to love has been broken, there seem to be friendships waiting for you, your own little substitute for happiness. Why are we, as a culture, revisiting this classic topos: the celebration of friendship? At a time in which the fundamental inequalities in our society are becoming ever more apparent, a time characterized by experiences of contingency, precarious ways of living and a fear of the future, and in which interpersonal bonds seem more fragile than ever? Can this new paean not also be understood as another facet of Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism? As a form of a certain kind of magical thinking? Has friendship become one of the straws that we grasp at while the world collapses around us? MOST OF THE PUBLICATIONS touched on above represent a continuation of a long cultural history of the philosophical idealization of amicable relationships, stretching back to ancient Greece. Almost all of the great philosophers of antiquity, from Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus to Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch, left behind teachings on friendship. For these scholars, friendships were part of the true eudaemonia, of the happy life, the very project of philosophy.2 It was therefore no coincidence that ‘philosophy’ already contained the ancient Greek term for friendship: philia.3 As Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari pointed out, it was the very notion of friendship that provided the dialogic of thought. It was the foundation of philosophical competition and created the very conditions that made it possible for one to deal with the rivalry of one’s competitors.4 Books VIII and IX of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, penned in the fourth century BC, belong to those texts of human history that, when we read them, remind us of the degree to which they continue to shape our culture to this day. Aristotle not only described friendship as one of life’s greatest gifts and highest virtues, but, by and large, he also concealed the more challenging and darker aspects of this kind of relationship.5 In doing so, as the philosopher Alexander Nehamas explains, Aristotle established something of a philosophical tradition. It was Aristotle, for example, who originated the idea that friendship exists when the well-being of another person is as important to us as our own well-being and that this goodwill is based on reciprocity.6 He also introduced the idea of self-friendship or self-love as being a basic prerequisite for becoming friends with other people – a notion echoed in modern therapeutic conceptions of self-confidence, self-respect and self-worth.7 One of the pillars of Aristotelian thought on friendship is the idea of how alike friends are, an idea expressed in the occasionally jubilant way in which I identified with the friends I met on my first university course. Ever since Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, friendship has been defined as a relationship between like-minded people – between people who perceive the world in the same way, have had similar life experiences and have the same political opinions, people with a similar psychological and emotional make-up and similar personal histories. True friendship, according to Aristotle, is based on ‘equality and agreement’, on finding ourselves in the other and vice versa, on the fact that the ‘friend’ is ‘a second, separate self’.8 Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Michel de Montaigne emphatically brought this ideal of friendship into the modern age. In his essay On Friendship – to this day, one of the most widely read and cited texts on the subject – he wrestled with finding an appropriate form to write about the death of his beloved friend Étienne de La Boétie. He succeeded in doing so by liberating the idea of friendship, refashioned in the Middle Ages through Christian ideas of loving God and thy neighbour, and applying it again to a relationship between two people. Intimate friendship, and not the confessional, was for Montaigne, the space in which nothing should remain unsaid.9 In some ways, Montaigne further radicalized the egalitarian dimension of Aristotelian thinking on friendship. He regarded the friend as an alter ego, a person in whom he realized himself. It was only in Montaigne’s work that Aristotle’s unification fantasy came fully to fruition: ‘But in the friendship I speak of’, he writes, their two souls ‘mix and work themselves into one piece, with so universal a mixture, that there is no more sign of the seam by which they were first conjoined.’10 This ecstatic ideal of friendship is expressed in an almost exuberant language of love: ‘Our souls had drawn so unanimously together, they had considered each other with so ardent an affection, and with the like affection laid open the very bottom of our hearts to one another’s view’, Montaigne says of Boétie, ‘that I not only knew his as well as my own; but should certainly in any concern of mine have trusted my interest much more willingly with him, than with myself.’11 To borrow an image from the philosopher Jacques Derrida, Aristotle’s and Montaigne’s historical texts could be described as two powerful earthquakes in our understanding of friendship.12 Two earthquakes that have thrown up the terrain on which we walk today when we think about and practise friendship. Regardless of whether the ideal sketched out in these texts stretches the limits of what is actually possible in a friendship, regardless of whether it ensures that every real-life friendship seems highly deficient in comparison. How problematic this emphatic idea of sameness this ‘friend as “another oneself ”’ is in philosophical terms is outlined by Derrida in his influential book The Politics of Friendship. According to Derrida, most classical discourses on friendship focus on a person merging with another into an identical (and same-sex) double. They focus on ‘homogeneity’, ‘homophilia’ and an ‘affinity (bebaion) stemming from birth, from native community’.13 The fact that this classical understanding of friendship meant, of course, only friendships between wealthy, heterosexual and, of course, white men is not just a historical footnote. Philosophical thinking around friendship that focuses on sameness is, in the end, always an expression of what female philosophers and psychoanalysts such as Luce Irigaray, Hélène Cixous and Julia Kristeva have so aptly called ‘phallogocentrism’. In a way, you might even say that it’s one of its foundations. ‘Phallogocentrism’ is an understanding of the world based on a purely heterosexual, male perspective. For neither Aristotle nor Montaigne did friendships exist between men and women or between women and women. Both believed that only upper-class men had the intellectual capacity to maintain friendships. This belief persisted into twentieth-century philosophy and is still echoed today in ideas of male-only or female-only friendships. They should have known better. Two hundred and fifty years before Aristotle, the poet Sappho was writing poems in Mytilene on Lesbos that were not only about love but also about friendship. Four hundred years before Montaigne, the letters of the polymath Hildegard von Bingen testified to the deep friendships that developed between nuns in convents. Women in the Beguine orders of the Middle Ages and in Renaissance high society often struck up public friendships with other women. At the end of the sixteenth century, the Venetian writer Moderata Fonte composed dialogues in which she argued, among other things, that women were far more capable of forming and maintaining friendships than men.14 And this was before the eighteenth century, often considered to be the ‘century of friendship’ because of its almost cult-like veneration of the figure of the friend; before Jane Austen went on to explore complex heterosocial friendships in her novels;15 before the emergence of the phenomenon of ‘romantic friendship’, a form of friendship between women that, with its confessions of love and vows of fidelity, drew on classical notions of romantic love, but in which this romantic love was not usually consummated sexually. Reading the correspondences between Madame de Staël and Madame Récamier or Emily Dickinson and her sister-in-law Sue Gilbert would convince anyone of the power these friendships could have.16 Western intellectual history has ignored, belittled or ridiculed all friendships between people who are not upper-class white heterosexual men, an assertion of power that runs counter to all available evidence on the subject. Perhaps because it secretly recognized the threat to patriarchal domination that these friendships posed, perhaps because it intuitively recognized the explosive power of a way of thinking about friendship that was not based on equality but instead celebrated the diversity of life. THAT INTRODUCTORY COURSE on ‘Narcissism and Doppelgangers’ was, in many ways, one of the most influential classes I have ever taken. It delved into a long literary and philosophical history of self-mirroring, a history of all the wrong paths people take when they are unable to break through the limits of how they view themselves and the world, a history of the impenetrable barriers created when people only search, in other people, for what they already know. Even though I still haven’t managed to read Lacan in French, I have often returned to many of the texts discussed in that course. They informed my thinking during my studies and beyond, so much so that when I knew I wanted to undertake psychoanalysis, it was the Lacanian style of psychoanalysis that I picked. I also thought back about that course when I read a study about the friendships that arose among the students of an introductory psychology course at the University of Leipzig. The researchers of that study discovered that, contrary to what they believed, the students became friends with each other not so much because of how similar their personalities were, but simply because they were assigned to the same group. If the students sat in the same row during a given lecture, the likelihood that they would become friends greatly increased. And this was most likely to happen when they actually sat next to each other. It turned out that, when it came to making friends, accidental physical proximity trumped all other cards.17 A similar study at Utrecht University found that the archetype of the alter ego does indeed play a role in who we choose to be friends with, but in a completely different way than had been previously thought. In order to become friends, the students in Utrecht did not have to resemble each other at all. Instead, they perceived themselves as being similar even when they were not. They succumbed to their narcissistic desire for recognition and mirroring. They only felt that they had met like-minded people in whom they recognized themselves and saw themselves reflected.18 This myth of harmony between friends is occasionally perpetuated even by the natural sciences. According to one paper, pairs of friends perceive the world in a neurologically similar way and interpret it similarly. The assumption here is that these similarities are a given from the outset and are not the result of a sustained dialogue, of togetherness, a shared life. The paper even claimed that there was a certain genetic similarity found between pairs of friends, although the author himself had to admit that the results require closer examination and that the similarity in question is vanishingly small. And yet, in nearly all of the recent articles, podcasts and books on the subject of friendship that cite it, this qualification is missing.19 The promise of a seemingly simple answer to the complex question of why people are friends with other people seems to just be too tempting. Unintentionally, this research, and especially the questions underlying it, ultimately illustrate only how profoundly our current understanding of friendship is shaped by notions of self-mirroring. WHEN I LOOK BACK at the friendships I made in that literature course, I realize that this feeling of identifying with one another is rarely a good indicator of how long these friendships would last and how important they would become for me. In the long run, in our friends, it is not a wise strategy to seek out doppelgangers – on the contrary, in fact. Most friendships only survive the passing of time, the shifting phases of life, the changing locations, attitudes and personal constellations when you leave behind this narcissistic desire to recognize yourself in the person sitting in front of you. The friends from that time in my life that I am still close to today are those with whom I have succeeded in doing just that. More recently, philosophers like Alexander Nehamas have suggested that we should try to understand friendships as ‘organisms’, as something living that emerges from the interplay of interdependent organs. This is a beautiful image. Friendships can flourish, but they can also fall apart. For them to last, you have to talk to each other, have shared experiences, relate to each other emotionally, you have to rid yourself of the notion of the alter ego. If we fail to do this, we turn our friends into ‘objects of friendship’ and thus destroy the basic prerequisite of every friendship: real personal involvement, that ‘special form of togetherness’ in a friendship, its ‘being together-ness’, its ‘we-ness’, as the philosopher Klaus-Dieter Eichler calls it. It is so easy to succumb to the temptation to understand friends as part of and as an extension of oneself, to love them because of their supposed similarity to one’s own self.20 But the calculation of sameness and the narcissistic appropriation that it entails ultimately constitute a form of involuntary violence. You necessarily misjudge the other. You miss the chance to find out who this person you are close to really is. BUT WHAT MIGHT friendships look like if they were not sustained by this ideal of the like-minded friend? Philosophers such as Hannah Arendt reflected on this question, and she had many such friendships herself. For her, the power and significance of this form of relationship lay precisely in its lived pluralistic practice.21 Her friends included well-known intellectuals on two continents: Martin Heidegger, Mary McCarthy, Uwe Johnson, Alfred Kazin and Karl Jaspers. She maintained lively contact with them, in person, by letter and telephone, and regularly visited her European friends after emigrating to New York at the end of the war at considerable personal logistical and financial expense. Even when she disagreed with them politically and ideologically, she remained loyal.22 Hannah Arendt found a champion for her understanding of friendship in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as she wrote in her speech ‘On Humanity in Dark Times: Thoughts about Lessing’. In the well-known ‘ring parable’, central to his play Nathan the Wise, Lessing illustrated that all three world religions and, at the same time, none of them can lay claim to sovereignty over the truth. In the parable, a ring that renders the bearer pleasing in the eyes of God has been passed down the generations. But when a father cannot choose between his three sons, he has two replicas made. The sons learn that the only way of knowing if they had the real ring would be to live a life that honours God; as such, the authenticity of the ring would no longer matter. According to Arendt, Nathan’s wisdom, his love of humanity and his openness to the world were based, above all, on the fact that he placed friendship above truth. Lessing, according to Arendt, would, without hesitation, sacrifice truth, even if it actually existed, ‘to humanity, to the possibility of friendship and of discourse among men’. What distinguishes him is not merely the insight that there cannot be one single truth, but rather the fact that he was happy that it did not exist, because only in this way would ‘the discourse among men’ never cease.23 The pivotal point of Arendt’s lived philosophy of friendship was thus the recognition of the otherness of the other. For her, it was the differences between people, and not their sameness, that led to real friendship, to what takes place between the self and the other, to that in-betweenness in which a genuine exchange of experiences and views can take place, in which openness and mutual trust prevail, but in which, simultaneously, we are also able to experience alienation and reticence.24 As such, Arendt was anticipating the discourses of PostStructuralist philosophers such as Emmanuel Lévinas, Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou, each of whom attempted, in his own particular way, to do philosophical justice to ‘the other’. Lévinas built an entire architecture of philosophy around the eternal nature of the other, on the fact that they can never be fully recognized and understood by the self. It was precisely from the point of view of this other that he tried to understand the world. Derrida, on the other hand, struck a gentler tone. Friendship, for him, was, by definition, about granting the other a place beyond the reach of one’s own will. I often find myself reflecting on a line from Derrida’s book on friendship. ‘I renounce you, I have decided to,’ the philosopher writes, is ‘the most beautiful and the most inevitable . . . declaration of love’.25 DOESN’T THIS ALSO EXPLAIN the unease that I felt about the flood of publications in praise of the joy of friendships? I had the impression that this new emphatic celebration of friendship was the product of a cultural notion that is only realized, in our real relationships, in the briefest of flashes, and is the product of the inflated ideals of friendship that we invoke even though we secretly know that they have a tendency to evaporate whenever they are invoked. These conceptions of friendship arise from a timid view of life, a view that suppresses reality in service of a world of fantasy: the fantasy of total agreement, of self-affirmation, of relationships in which conflict is nominal. Ideas like these appear to make our lives a little easier; they give us something to hold on to. But, at heart, they reflect the totalitarian desire for the ‘one’ opinion or the ‘one’ truth – which is of course one’s own. True dialogue, as Hannah Arendt would say, the most constitutive element of our friendships, is made virtually impossible by these kinds of ideals. Friendship can only emerge when we meet each other again and again with openness and get to know each other from different sides. A friendship is ‘newly “made”, newly mixed . . . newly invented in each and every conversation’, writes Silvia Bovenschen. Precisely therein lies its precarious beauty; precisely therein lies the strength of its bonds. The joy of friendship cannot be located in its ideal. It does not materialize when the only thing being met is our own need for other people’s attention. It does not transpire when we project our feelings and our unresolved conflicts onto our friends, or simply believe that the reason we know them so well is because they are so much like ourselves. The lasting joy of friendship is a by-product of giving, of gifting our attention. It is an experience of dissolving our barriers and occurs only when we succeed in broadening our own horizons and escaping the prison of our own problems and fears that we are so often trapped in. It materializes when we recognize the person in front of us in their otherness. When we open ourselves up to their emotional reality, to their alternative view of the world. It emerges when we are there for someone else. Only the mutual recognition of each other’s otherness ensures that relationships grow, that one grows oneself and that life liberates itself from the constraints of one’s own necessarily limited fantasies. Friends help us to break through our narcissistic inner barrier and to perceive the whole reality of life. Without friends, it would be impossible to evolve, impossible to be truly human. WHEN I LOOK AROUND at the friendships in my life, they are as diverse as the people I am friends with. As beautiful and limited, as loving and cool, as exciting and boring, as eye-opening and infuriating. None of them corresponds to the ideal of sameness; none of them is harmonious without fail. The semantics of friendship and its old-fashioned ideals become insignificant in the presence of real relationships. There are simply no rules, implicit or explicit statutes, no contracts, no sanctioning authorities, no external constraints when it comes to friendships. There is only me, the other person and what happens between us. Friendships are woven into our lives as perfectly and imperfectly as only real things can be. In those weeks in which I was ill and which were spent largely alone in my flat, with books and my writing, I felt less alive. But the conversations between me and the people in my life did not stop. Conversations in which they were both distant and close to me at the same time, in which I could catch a glimpse of their view of the world. I could seek out closeness and know that there were people who had a stake in my life. To my own surprise, I did not feel lonely and, in a way, not even alone. A Never So Lonely t some point in our lives, most of us reach a moment in which we realize that all is not what we once imagined it would be. A point at which certain convictions are shattered, dark premonitions come true and the sudden understanding that we are experiencing what seems like a watershed sends waves of disbelief rippling through our bodies. When the pandemic reached its peak in Berlin, it was precisely this feeling that I was gripped by. In retrospect, I can’t say why the situation felt so unreal to me for so long; I suspect that my psyche was protecting me from genuinely comprehending what was happening around me. It wasn’t until a dinner with Jenny, a friend of mine who is a professor, that this changed. We have known each other since our student days, when, as PhD students, we shared an office and went out together in the evenings. Before we met up, we had assured each other that we were symptom-free and, initially, we talked about other things. But afterwards, as we walked through Moabit in the dark of the evening, she told me that her wife’s sister, a nurse at Berlin’s Charité hospital, was convinced that it was going to be as bad everywhere as it had been in China, and that no one in Germany was prepared for an epidemic of that magnitude. You have to be ready to go into quarantine overnight, she said, and you should definitely have enough food in your flat to last for at least two weeks. Jenny sent me a text message the next day reminding me to buy supplies. When I went to the supermarket around the corner, I was dumbfounded to find that many of the shelves were empty. There was no flour or sugar left, nor any pasta, lentils, yeast or toilet paper. I assumed that this was only temporary and, to begin with, I wasn’t worried at all. In my cupboards at home, I still had enough flour for the sourdough bread I baked for myself every week; I still had a bag of Puy lentils, a couple of boxes of good pasta and decent Italian canned tomatoes. But the longer I looked at the empty shelves, the more queasy I began to feel. It seemed to me as if a new film had begun, as if another narrative had taken over the reality of my life – the narrative of the apocalypse. The equilibrium of my social life suddenly seemed incredibly precarious. If people’s solidarity was already failing in the comparatively relaxed situation we found ourselves in and they were already buying a year’s supply of flour out from under other people’s noses, then what was going to happen if there was a real catastrophe? There, in that supermarket, of all places, I was struck by the realization that, from this moment on, I was completely on my own. It felt as if I had been dealt a heavy blow. EVEN THOUGH FEELINGS of loneliness are part of a life lived alone, that life does not necessarily have to be a lonely one. I am not afraid of being alone. Although I do sometimes struggle with it, it generally doesn’t feel like a privation, but something that I enjoy. I like being home. I have a beautiful apartment that corresponds to my aesthetic ideas. I enjoy following the seasonal changes of my daily rhythms and not having to account for them to anyone. Of course, I love spending time with the people in my life. But I also enjoy the time I have to myself. Like many things, this might stem from my childhood. I grew up in a big family in the countryside, where there was always something going on. There could be joy in that, but the greatest pleasure for me was to block out everything around me, to read or to walk alone in the forest or around the lake with our dog, lost in thought, for hours on end. The older I got, the more writing began to fill those hours. It was as if being alone distanced me a little from the world while simultaneously fashioning a new connection to it. Later, in my twenties, I would completely unlearn this ability. For a long time I couldn’t be alone without being seized by a vehement restlessness that I could only soothe by going out, by meeting people, by drinking, partying and flirting. This went on for many years, and, if I hadn’t stopped drinking, it might have gone on like that for a few more – until at some point nothing much would have been going on at all. It was only then, when I had stopped drinking, that I learned to appreciate being alone again. Today, my everyday life is generally determined by a fundamental sense of not having enough time alone to myself, having too little time for the many things I want to do, too little time for the books I want to read, the exhibitions I want to see, the concerts and operas I want to go to, the films and series I want to watch. Too little time for the recipes I want to try out, the walks I want to take, the books I want to write. But the pandemic knocked my life alone completely out of balance. The more it progressed, the more I began to feel a kind of solitude descending on me that I hadn’t experienced before, even during my worst depressive episodes. I had the impression that I had never been so lonely. LONELINESS MEANS SOMETHING different to each and every one of us. Some people are rarely haunted by it, others often are. We all feel it differently and each of us has our own way of dealing with it. Some people feel lonely after just a few evenings spent alone, others need only minimal social contact. But no one can be lonely for long periods without being damaged by it. Acute, prolonged loneliness creates, in most of us, an emotional hunger, a serious mental anguish accompanied by a marked loss of meaning and selfworth, with feelings of shame, guilt and despair. In addition to the sense of distance from other people that loneliness entails, it also entails a bewildering distance from oneself, from those sides of the self that exist only in connection with other people. Sometimes it feels as if one is experiencing a psychological breakdown. But loneliness is not a disease, it is a feeling – a complex feeling, but a feeling nevertheless. It is an important distinction.1 As the Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen demonstrates in his book A Philosophy of Loneliness, the current preoccupation with loneliness and the frequent invocation of a ‘loneliness epidemic’ is characterized by a fundamental misunderstanding: that the increasing number of people living alone in Western societies automatically means that more people must feel lonely. But ‘being alone and being lonely’, Svendsen says, ‘are logically and empirically independent from each other’.2 While there is indeed a statistical correlation between the phenomena of living alone and of loneliness, its magnitude and significance are usually overestimated. From the 1950s onwards, sociologists and journalists have been regularly trumpeting the emergence of a ‘new loneliness’, while lamenting the decline of traditional forms of social cohesion, even though there is little statistical evidence to support this beyond the fact that a growing number of people live by themselves.3 Loneliness, in other words, cannot be diagnosed on the basis of the absence of a romantic relationship; the many other social ties in our lives are also capable of satisfying our need for intimacy. I don’t mean to suggest that social isolation is not a problem for many people. It is largely undisputed that it can lead to serious physical and mental problems.4 The Harvard Grant Study, for example – a long-term sociological study that has been tracking the mental and physical health of several hundred Harvard graduates and their children since 1938 – leaves no doubt that close interpersonal relationships are one of the main predictors of a good life. People without these kinds of relationships get sick more often and usually die earlier than people with a fulfilling social life.5 So I am not for a second suggesting that it is not important to talk about loneliness. On the contrary, talking about it can alleviate the shame associated with it, can ease the pain of it and help people who feel lonely understand that they are by no means alone in this. But, often, these discussions about the ‘loneliness epidemic’ simply mask a wistful longing for the good old times, for traditional social models of marriage and family that for many of us have outlived their relevance. Often, behind these discussions, is a political agenda that fails to recognize our social realities. Significantly, each revival of the prophets of social decline fails to propose that we start fighting loneliness by tackling racism, misogyny, ableism, antisemitism, homo-, trans- and Islamophobia, by addressing the social stigmatization of people living in poverty, all the structural phenomena of exclusion that produce social isolation every day and on a vast scale. The response of those who employ these grand warnings is almost always to invoke the magical power of the nuclear family. APPEALING TO OUR nostalgic inclinations is simple. The impulse to portray loneliness as a pathological consequence of social change likely masks a certain kind of defensiveness. It is a feeling that we do not want to be responsible for, a feeling that we would rather not have anything to do with. In her groundbreaking book The Lonely City, the writer Olivia Laing describes the extensive social taboos surrounding loneliness. Loneliness, she explains, runs so contrary to the life we should be leading that most of us struggle to even admit that we feel it.6 Intuitively, we all have a sense of this taboo. In our collective image of loneliness, there is always the suggestion that the lonely deserve their fate, that they are too unattractive, shy, solitary and self-centred, too prone to self-pity and complain too much about their lot without any sense of dignity.7 No one wants to be like that. This taboo not only permeates our social lives, it is also reflected in our language, for example in the distinction between the words ‘loneliness’ and ‘solitude’ that exist in both German and English. ‘Solitude’ often comes across as the presentable, dignified version of loneliness, like a kind of social isolation with little psychological suffering. Many people almost reflexively refer to this distinction when talking about loneliness. And it is precisely this reflexivity that sometimes conceals a lingering feeling of shame. A shame that prevents people from expressing their feelings of loneliness. I am solitary, not lonely, they seem to say. I will not profess to you that I am lonely. I am not vulnerable. My solitude does not hurt, I am not suffering. And I don’t want to be exposed to your vulnerability either. It reminds me too much of my own. Please tell me this is solitude, not loneliness. Psychologists, such as Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, have researched this force field of loneliness and its unsettling effect on other people. Her essay ‘Loneliness’ from 1959, which also informed Olivia Laing’s reflections, is considered one of the very first intellectual and psychiatric investigations of loneliness. In her essay, Fromm-Reichmann makes it clear that loneliness is often such a traumatic experience for us that we are simply not capable of feeling empathy for the lonely person, even if, theoretically, we should know how it feels to be lonely. We usually so successfully compartmentalize the memory of our own experiences of loneliness that they no longer even exist for us.8 The psychologist Robert Weiss observed this same phenomenon in his patients. Many people underestimate the role that loneliness plays in their lives, he writes in his book Loneliness, and they do so to a considerable degree. Even if the repressive mechanisms at work are not consistently successful, Weiss says, they still result in our inability to remember the intensity of our own experiences of loneliness. Accordingly, we are not able to imagine how painful this experience is for other people. These avoidance strategies can even influence the psychotherapeutic process, Fromm-Reichmann noted. Loneliness, she writes, evokes a specific fear in the other person, a fear of contagion, from which even therapists cannot free themselves. The result is that many people, even if they suffer from relatively mild forms of loneliness, rarely get the chance to talk about it. Feeling lonely becomes an anxiety-ridden secret that cannot be adequately communicated.9 THE FURTHER THE YEAR progressed, the more I felt that my life alone with its occasional feelings of loneliness was now becoming a life that was fundamentally and permanently characterized by them. I wondered whether most people living alone were not also finding the developments of that year particularly challenging. The creeping anxiety about the future, the collective panic that kept breaking through, the news of illness and death that soon became part of our daily lives, and of course all of the social distancing rules and collective lockdowns – it seemed that none of us would be able to emerge unscathed. I did what I could: I informed myself, read everything there was to read about the new disease, listened to the relevant podcasts and diligently took all the recommended precautions. And I threw myself into work, partly because it was good for me, partly because I didn’t have any other option. The pandemic had also led to all of my events, readings and panel discussions being cancelled. I had been looking forward to some of them, to giving the closing lecture at a psychology congress, for example, which in previous years had been given by a number of writers whom I deeply admired. To a literary festival in the South of France, which, alongside some interesting encounters, had promised lovely weather. These cancellations also meant that I was losing money. I postponed writing the texts I wanted to write and sought out commissions for articles, editorial jobs and translations, often at a lower rate than I would usually have agreed to. I was grateful that this was something that was possible for me, but I had to work harder than I ever had in my life, and I missed the kind of writing that had made me choose this profession in the first place. It all felt like a loss of meaning that I could not adequately put into words. Whenever I wasn’t working, I was following the grim news, including from countries in which I had once lived or spent a lot of time. I saw, time and again, the incompetence of politicians costing countless lives, which in turn made Germany’s political response to the crisis seem, perhaps, slightly more reasonable than it actually was. I was worried about my friends in New York and London, and the occasional emails and phone calls didn’t make me feel any better. I felt as if life in those place that had once been so important to me was suddenly undergoing an irreversible change. As the cultural life in the city ground to a halt, so too did my social life. A depressing gap opened up in my daily routine. My parents and my sister called more often than usual. Friends that I hadn’t spoken to in years called briefly to ask how I was doing and to tell me how they were dealing with the situation. Some people I talked to again and again on Facetime and Zoom. But I often didn’t see anyone for days, sometimes weeks, not even to go for a walk, because of the legal requirements at that time and my own caution. Even my various support group meetings, which I had been going to for almost ten years now, were put on hold. Some of them moved online, which was better than nothing, but I still missed them. All of these losses still felt dramatic to me; they also entailed a loss of meaning. But what probably weighed the heaviest on me was that I was also becoming distanced from my closest friends. They were all simply preoccupied with their own problems, which made it difficult to connect with them. Sylvia and Heiko were juggling jobs that brought them into contact with a multitude of potentially sick people every day, while attempting to plan Lilith’s home-schooling after their childcare fell through. For a long time, I didn’t see them at all, and they were now also taking care of the garden on their own. Marie and Olaf also struggled to combine John’s home-schooling with the demands of their jobs and the complexity of their daily lives. Sometimes I went for walks with them and their new, very cute and very fluffy dog, but our conversations often seemed to ossify. The challenges of this new era stirred up a strong nesting instinct in many people. Without exception, every friend of mine who was in a relationship seemed to be more focused on their family life. The time we had spent together before the pandemic, all of the things that we had done together as a matter of course, receded into the background with alarming speed. Sometimes I felt as if they had never happened at all. For most people, the pandemic made the world seem smaller. But if you lived alone, this global contraction meant the almost complete disappearance of any kind of closeness to other people. In addition, many of the conversations that I was still having with my friends were generally focused on the problems they were having in their respective relationships and families, which automatically seemed to have a greater weight than the supposedly manageable problems of my life alone. My reservoir of compassion kept dwindling. Sometimes I could hardly bear to listen to these people, who were so important to me, tell me about the hardships they were going through, how deeply they were suffering under the restrictions of the pandemic and the fear that was manifest everywhere. Or how some of them tried to see the positive in everything in a kind of compulsive act of displacement, almost congratulating themselves for standing on the balcony every now and again to applaud the country’s poorly paid nursing staff for the dangerous work they were doing, despite the fact that they didn’t have any choice about doing that work in the first place. Of course, I also had many conversations and virtual encounters filled with intimacy and mutual understanding. But, during this period, I often felt pushed into the role of the patiently listening, nodding therapist. I like to listen and I also believe that you have to be generous and patient especially with the people who are close to you. When we are going through difficult times, we instinctively focus on ourselves and our ability to participate in other people’s lives inevitably diminishes. We all do it, all the time. I recognized it all too well from my own behaviour. Under normal circumstances, it eventually balances out, we rarely all feel bad at the same time. But when everyone is afraid, when everyone suffers in parallel from the same unpredictable challenges, this balance is lost. During many of these conversations, I felt myself collapsing in on myself. Day by day, I closed myself off more and more and threw myself deeper into my work. I felt increasingly lonely. And as per Frieda Fromm- Reichmann’s observations, I couldn’t really communicate that. When I did manage to express this feeling, I often felt an involuntary defensiveness from the person I was talking to. With some people, I felt an impatient hope that they would not have to talk about it; others seemed fundamentally unwilling or unable to understand what I was saying. At some point, a self- reinforcing dynamic of fear set in: the lonelier I felt, the less I could talk about it. And the less I talked about it, the lonelier I felt. Fear and isolation stop the conversation, lead only to speechlessness. And nothing is lonelier than the loneliness of not being seen, of not being known. Nothing feels like a greater loss of meaning than the silence it causes. MOST PEOPLE WHO LOOK BACK on periods of loneliness share the feeling that, at that time, they were ‘not themselves’. For many of us, Robert Weiss noted, our lonely self is an aberration of our real self. We are far more tense, more restless and much less able to concentrate than we could have ever imagined.10 Periods of loneliness can incubate other problems, too, can make once-latent predispositions manifest, cause cyclical psychological problems to erupt again. Something similar happened to me. I was no longer ‘myself’. I increasingly understood my predicament in that same light that we collectively see lonely people in: I had the feeling that I was to blame for my situation, that I had failed at something and that, somehow, I deserved everything I was going through. After a while, I began to notice that it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to leave the house. Going shopping, a walk in the park, even, suddenly required extensive preparations. Often, I would be on the street before I realized that I had to go back upstairs having forgotten my wallet or having failed to shut the skylight in the corridor. And if I didn’t go back upstairs, I felt like I had to pay the price. One time, I returned, shopping bags in hand, to a smoke-filled apartment and screaming smoke detectors. I had left the stove on with my little Bialetti espresso machine on top. Eventually I almost completely avoided leaving my flat. There were days when I barely noticed how lonely I felt. On other days, the feeling overwhelmed me. I had to remind myself that it made sense to keep going about my daily routine. Whenever I read something about how much time most people had now, how they were using the pandemic to find themselves again, to rethink their own lives, to exercise more or learn new languages, I felt a certain envy, sometimes even a quiet rage. I had become so sensitive and fragile that anything could upset me, anything could shake me. ‘Loneliness obfuscates,’ writes the neurologist Giovanni Frazzetto in his book Together, Closer. If it persists, ‘it becomes a deceiving filter through which we see ourselves, others, and the world.’ It makes us more vulnerable to rejection, increases our insecurity in social situations and makes us see danger even where t	242,181
Alonement How to be alone and absolutely own it (Francesca Specter) (Z-Library).pdf	This ebook published in 2021 by Quercus Editions Ltd Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK company Copyright © 2021 Francesca Specter The moral right of Francesca Specter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library HB ISBN 978 1 52941 261 1 TPB ISBN 978 1 52941 260 4 Ebook ISBN 978 1 52941 263 5 Illustration on p.127 © Amber Anderson Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders. However, the publishers will be glad to rectify in future editions any inadvertent omissions brought to their attention. Quercus Editions Ltd hereby exclude all liability to the extent permitted by law for any errors or omissions in this book and for any loss, damage or expense (whether direct or indirect) suffered by a third party relying on any information contained in this book. Ebook by CC Book Production www.quercusbooks.co.uk For Mum, Dad, Rachel & Zoe PREFACE I used to be terrified of being alone. Thankfully, solitude wasn’t really on the agenda. I grew up in a loving, nuclear family. I have a close-knit group of friends. Aged 24, I thought I’d found the missing piece of the puzzle: the man I believed would one day be my husband. We described ourselves as a ‘team’. We shared our social life, a Google Calendar and, on occasion, a toothbrush. When we spoke of the future, it would never be with the conditional ‘if’, but always the certain ‘when’. ‘Let me be your constant,’ he urged me. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Our relationship was meant to be the long-term solution to my fear of loneliness. Except, after the initial honeymoon stage – of about 18 months – love wasn’t quite enough. Our peers were moving in together, getting married and having children. With every engagement announcement on Facebook and every talk we had about the future, it became painfully apparent that our relationship wasn’t built to last. We stayed together for a further eight months because neither of us wanted to be single and alone , talking into the early hours as we tried to piece ‘us’ together like a logic puzzle. But a week-long argument (about the most polarising issue in the history of heterosexual relationships: throw cushions) spelled the beginning of the end. As we reached rock bottom – a shouting row in Zara Home, our words like vomited-up acid, the check-out staff genuinely scared – we decided to call time on our team of two. Reader, it wasn’t about the throw cushions. That day, we went home, empty-handed, and sat at opposite ends of the sofa, the gulf between us made up of so much more than teal upholstery: spite, resentment, recrimination. We were over; any one of our fellow customers in Zara Home could have told you that. Yet, even after Throw- Cushion Gate, ending the relationship was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Looking back, it’s baffling that we spent so long in denial; that letting all that negativity fester between us felt preferable to the spectre of lives apart. But I’ve since realised our situation wasn’t uncommon. It’s no coincidence that, as social scientists at the University of Toronto observed, the fear of being single is an all-too-reliable indicator of whether a person will stay in a failing relationship. 1 Listening to my gut instinct – even in the face of all this fear – was a desperate last resort. Being alone, back then, felt like a punishment. Alonement, the word that came to define my journey towards learning to appreciate alone time, was more like atonement for giving up my most co- dependent adult relationship in favour of – what exactly? I had no idea. The decision to end a relationship is, inevitably, a leap of faith – and, in my case, one I made when all other options were exhausted. Deciding to call time on what I once believed was the best thing that had ever happened to me felt like wilfully staying in a bad dream. In the wake of a break-up, you step, blindly, into the Great Unknown; having spent so much time focused on the magnitude of what you’re losing that you have little capacity to imagine anything else. In ending the relationship, I waved goodbye to the conventional life trajectory I thought would fortify me against loneliness: cohabiting, marriage, kids. I chose sleeping alone instead of being tucked inside the cradle of his arms; I chose cooking for one; I chose living alone; I chose having no one to wake up to and no one to say ‘Goodnight’ to. I chose myself, and it felt like insanity. At the time, alone and lonely were inextricable concepts to me. I lived alone during a period when almost all of my closest friends were in relationships, and I felt my ex-boyfriend’s absence like a hole in the chest. Time alone was a bitter pill I had to swallow – a tax bill; a dental filling – the price I had to pay for saying goodbye to the wrong version of Happily Ever After. Yet, over time, the end of one relationship made way for another which was greater still: a relationship with myself. If I could go back in time, I’d tell myself this. First of all, congratulations for making a bold decision to change your life for the better. I can’t fast- forward your pain, but I’m excited for your bright future, even if you can’t be. There is someone with strong, capable arms waiting for you on the other side, and that someone is you . This is how alonement came to be my happy ending. 1 Stephanie Spielmann et al., ‘Settling for less than out of fear of being single’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2013) 105 (6): 1049–1073. http://individual.utoronto.ca/sspielmann/Spielmann_et_al_inpress_JPSP.pdf CONTENTS Alonement Title Copyright Dedication Preface Introduction Why we need alonement Getting to know you Doing time (alone) Self-care Doing your thing Alone and proud Solo travel Making space for alonement Single and alone Alone, together Alone forever? Glossary Recommended reading Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION Your relationship with yourself is, by default, the most important one you will ever have. Like it or not, you entered into a non-negotiable, lifelong commitment to yourself in the hospital delivery room. Unlike any other relationship you have throughout your life, there is no room for manoeuvre. No moving out or trial separation. No ‘taking it slow’ or accepting you’ve grown apart. Family, friends and romantic partners may come and go, but your monogamous partnership with yourself is the only constant, unalterable relationship status you’ll ever have. I know! Deep breaths. The opposite is true of our relationships with other people – the ones we spend our whole lives forming, refining and fighting for. These are inextricably connected with the certainty of loss. Statistically, half your existing friendships have a seven-year sell-by date. 2 Around 39 per cent of cohabiting couples break up. 3 Almost half of all marriages end in divorce. Even if you have the best of romantic relationships – the most rose-tinted of pairings, the ‘we’ve been together for 70 years and now we finish each other’s—’ ‘—sentences’ type – then I hate to break it to you, but (more deep breaths) 100 per cent of people die. I don’t say any of this to scare you, but to help you realise that, for better and for worse, for richer and for poorer, you and, well, you , are in it for the long haul. Relationship status: Alone You are a single-person household within your own mind. This isn’t a radical thing to say. We’re all capable of daydreaming about the person sitting opposite us on the train without them ever knowing about it, or spending the bulk of an hour-long meeting thinking about what we want to eat for lunch. We have a perpetual choice to stay inside our own minds, or to engage with the world around us. What is radical is to actually acknowledge this essential ‘aloneness’ – that we all live, first and foremost, inside our own heads – because we typically invest a lot of time in trying to escape this home ownership, throwing out the mortgage agreement and losing the keys. Think about how you spend an average day. All those hours making small talk with your colleagues; WhatsApping your friends; swiping on dating apps; chatting to your mum on the phone; sweet-talking your Springer Spaniel; soothing your toddler; deciding what to have for dinner with your partner; calling British Gas (don’t let the bastards get you down); replying to your boss’s email out of hours; keeping up with the godforsaken Kardashians; falling asleep to an audiobook. Sound familiar? Trust me, you’re not the only one avoiding your own thoughts. As a society, we are regularly coming up with ingenious solutions to stop us looking inwards. In one well-known study conducted by Timothy Wilson, a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, a group of participants were given the option of sitting alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes or administering themselves an electric shock. The majority went for the latter option. 4 But that’s OK, you reason. People need people. We’re social animals. It’s about being connected. Nobody wants to be lonely. It’s natural . That might all be true – yet how natural is it to be so scared of being left in a room with your own thoughts that you’ll electrocute yourself, just for a distraction? As a baby, introspection comes naturally. You are born at the centre of your own universe and, even in the presence of others, you are naturally in tune with yourself. You cry when you’re hungry, tired or cold. You stare in awe at a ceiling fan for twenty minutes or laugh unrestrainedly at your dad’s peekaboo. The world is laid before you, and you see it from your own saucer-eyed point of view, never stopping to second-guess your reactions, or getting distracted by the presence of someone else. You begin life intimately acquainted with your wants, needs and curiosities. Around the age of two or three, you become aware of how other people see you – and modify accordingly (i.e. a bit less throwing food and randomly getting naked in supermarkets). It’s not that you entirely lose your ability to behave in an instinctive way or to feel that all-encompassing sense of reverie; it’s just you’ll probably only act that way when no one else is around; when you’re alone. Trouble is, from here on, opportunities to fly solo are pretty scarce. You follow an accepted pattern of life whereby you spend the bulk of it searching for meaningful connections with other people – from the family home to the playground to the nightclub to the workplace to the altar to the family home (again) to the old people’s home to the graveyard. You begin your life as part of a family unit. A good childhood is considered to be a socially connected one where your parents are around a lot and you ideally have at least one sibling, for fear of being a much-pitied only child (despite the fact that the ‘only child syndrome’ myth has been disproved time and time again). 5 You start school, where it’s expected that you will play with other children in the playground and develop social skills. Speaking up in class, working well in a group and excelling at team sports are all seen as key markers of achievement as you move through the school system. University begins with Freshers’ Week: a whole week (pandemic permitting) devoted not to academia but to meeting others at an accelerated pace, in drunken, sometimes regrettable set-ups. This continues into working life: open-plan offices; a constant stream of Slack messages; ‘morale-boosting’ mass emails from Kelly in HR; company meetings; presentations; networking evenings; Friday Happy Hour with your colleagues. Around this time, your parents take a keen interest in whether you’ve ‘met someone’, and once you hit your late twenties being romantically unattached is regarded as a problem to be solved. How’s dating going? Are you on any apps? Your coupled-up friends become well-meaning coconspirators (I have a single friend . . . ). And then – praise be! – you enter into a relationship, with the standard tick-box milestones of cohabitation, lifelong commitment and eventually creating another human or two together. Any indication that you’re spending time apart – holidaying separately or not moving in together quickly enough – is considered to be a warning sign. From this point onwards, your greatest social approval comes in the form of a ‘she said yes!’ announcement, a confetti-dotted wedding snap or a baby bump reveal. You start a family. You grow old together. But, as you become a partner, a wife, a husband, a parent and eventually a grandparent – throughout your life – you are defined by what you are to other people. At what point, during all of this, do you get back in touch with yourself? Alone: Heaven or hell? Today, we’re more surrounded than ever by other people’s voices. There are, God help us, over a million podcasts on the App Store, Twitter has 330 million monthly active users and you can download just about any book from the Great Kindle Library In The Sky. Should you wish to, you can avoid ever being ‘alone’ with your thoughts – save, perhaps, in the shower (and even then, there are waterproof Bluetooth speakers). And yet, despite all those other voices doing their utmost to distract you, the inconvenient reality remains: your #nofilter inner voice can never truly be drowned out (something I’ll discuss more in Chapter 2). It’s intriguing that so many of us run away from the opportunity to intimately know ourselves by opting out of our own company. We might like to hear the candid, confessional, no-holds-barred voices of others – exemplified by the huge sales of Tara Westover’s Educated and Michelle Obama’s Becoming , books centred around inspirational people who have gone on a journey of self-knowledge – yet we regularly pass up the unique opportunity we all have to get to know ourselves. That’s a pretty strange decision, if you think about it; like having an access-all-areas, backstage pass to Glastonbury and choosing, instead, to stay among the screaming, beer-swilling, moshing masses. In his 1956 book The Art of Loving , psychologist Erich Fromm claims that we all occupy a ‘prison of aloneness’: the terrifying reality that, yup, you’re on your own, pal, and there is no escaping it. It’s not like Fromm was against this state of aloneness. He was actually fairly pro, claiming that ‘the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love’ (more on this later, in Chapter 10). But he considered the drive to escape ‘aloneness’ the most essential part of the human experience. He writes: ‘The deepest need of man, then, is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness.’ Adding later: ‘Man – of all ages and cultures – is confronted with the solution of one and the same question: the question of how to overcome separateness, how to achieve union, how to transcend one’s own individual life and find atonement.’ Were Fromm still alive today, I’d have good news and bad news for him. The good news is, we have, as a society, come up with the best solution yet to this so-called prison of aloneness: the smartphone. I mean, you can imagine the conversation. Hey, Erich, you know that mildly invasive landline phone that occasionally interrupts your workflow? You’re going to need to sit down for this one . . . I imagine Fromm would likely have revisited his views, had he been around to witness the invention of broadband in 1992, or the first 3G-enabled smartphone – from the Japanese company NTT DoCoMo – in 2001. Aloneness, he might have written, has become more like a drop-in centre than a prison. The bad news – not just for Fromm, but for all of us? The internet may have thrown open the gate and wedged a doorstop in front of our proverbial prison cells, but as a result we attribute little value to being alone. It’s as if we got so excited during the jailbreak process that we forgot to consider what we were leaving behind. The ‘ability to be alone’ – that quality Fromm considered so inherently necessary to love another person – has become a lost art. We’ve become socially conditioned to see our phones as the solution to every challenging thought. Feeling anxious about your 10am meeting? Scroll Instagram. Putting off the gym? Text a friend. Don’t know whether to have boiled or scrambled eggs? Make a poll on Twitter! We’re able to avoid the reality of aloneness at the touch of a button, and returning to it feels, more than ever, like a prison cell. But what if we could make it a haven instead? What if we could, against all odds, learn to celebrate and relax into our aloneness, to recline into it; to exhale and feel safe, inspired; without shame or embarrassment or guilt? Alonement is the story you tell yourself There are consolations to your essential aloneness: As much as alone might feel like a scary word, it also means unique. You are alone in being you. To acknowledge aloneness is to embrace the gift of your uniqueness, your freedom, your capacity for self-knowledge. Alone is when you are at your most authentic. You reconnect with that primal ability I mentioned earlier: to respond to your needs, desires and curiosities. It may seem isolating that you are the only person capable of hearing the voice in your head, but look at it another way. Isn’t it mind-blowing that you can intimately know yourself in a way that you can never know another person – that you can read your own mind? Being alone means the freedom to act as an individual, not part of a pack. When we avoid time alone, we fail to discover and capitalise on our superpowers. The change begins once you tell yourself a different story about your aloneness, and about what being alone represents. We all know that solitude can go one of two ways. Either it’s a positive experience: pleasurable, comfortable and associated with a longer-term sense of fulfilment. Or (as we’re socially conditioned to assume) it’s a lonely, excruciating experience to be endured rather than sought out. James R. Averill, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, has concluded that an individual’s ability to enjoy solitude is based on the narrative they construct around that time. 6 Generally, we want these stories to involve a sense of choice. Averill writes: ‘What tips the balance between positive experiences of solitude and immoderate loneliness? This question can be answered in one word: Choice . What we call authentic solitude is typically based on a decision to be alone; in contrast, pseudo solitude , in which loneliness predominates, involves a sense of abandonment or unwanted isolation.’ It’s exactly the reason why spending a sunny bank holiday relaxing in your garden might feel like bliss if you’ve made a proactive decision to give yourself some downtime; or hell, if you start second-guessing your lack of barbecue invitation (don’t Sanjay and Grace normally organise something for this bank holiday Monday?) and spend your day trawling Instagram for evidence of your dwindling social status. ‘Behind every choice is a story,’ Averill writes. To choose to spend time alone – for an hour, for a day, for a week – based on the benefits you think it might bring to you is a valuable step in enjoying alonement. The author and founder of the School of Life, Alain de Botton, introduced a similar idea on my podcast, Alonement, which I launched in March 2020. Alain was the first of a brilliant line-up of thinkers, authors and media personalities I’ve interviewed about their own alonement. He said: ‘If we’re looking for how to cure or solve the problem of loneliness, what we have to start with is changing what being on your own means. In a way, at times, all of us can feel quite comfortable being on our own, but other times it’s anguishing.’ So, how do you change the narrative? Saying yes to time alone Ostensibly, there is a straightforward solution to learning how to be alone, and that’s simply (drum roll) spending time alone. Psychologist Carl Jung called the state of being alone ‘the animation of the psychic atmosphere’, 7 because it’s where our physical solitude reflects our internal aloneness: alone in body, alone in mind. This can be an invaluable time for self- discovery. We’re at one with ourselves, and our surroundings. We acknowledge and process our feelings. Our inner voices become amplified. Our ideas are most authentic. Our imaginations wander. . . . in theory, that is. These days, most of us aren’t very good at spending time alone, so it has the potential to end up being a bit of a shitshow, not to mention the perfect breeding ground for loneliness, unhealthy habits or addictive behaviours. It’s no wonder that we fear what Michael Harris, the author of Solitude , calls ‘the bogeyman of our naked self’. For most of us, learning to be alone isn’t as simple as subjecting ourselves to isolation – first, we have to tackle the scary task of coming to terms with who we actually are, which is vital groundwork for alonement. If you think this isn’t for you, I get it. I spent the best part of three decades avoiding the bogeyman, thinking silence, introspection and solitude simply weren’t compatible with who I was and how I lived. Escaping aloneness felt easy and normal; facing up to it felt immeasurably harder. But just because something’s easy and normalised doesn’t mean it’s right for you, or that you won’t have to pay for it further down the line (after all, life’s a long song, as my father’s fond of saying). I understand all too well the discomfort that comes with facing up to your aloneness. I still feel that discomfort every single day, but, to a greater extent, I feel so many more things: strength, clarity, curiosity and a deep-seated sense of calm. Spending time alone may be your greatest fear now – as it was for me – but it could also prove your profoundest source of power. As this book explores, in a world full of ways to escape ever being alone, you will set yourself apart by embracing it. However, the answer is not simply being alone. It is alonement. Alonement: What is it? Alonement is a word I coined in 2019 to fill a gap in the English language (I’ll take that money via bank transfer, Oxford English Dictionary). Broken down, it means ‘the state of being alone’ – a state we should raise up and celebrate. Reverse the syllables, and you think about alone time as an intention: ‘meant to be alone’. The way I define it, alonement is quality time spent alone; it is to value and respect the time you spend with yourself. It means to be alone and absolutely own it. The closest term, someone might butt in and suggest, is solitude; but even solitude (which, FYI, has its roots in Old French and Latin terms for ‘loneliness’) has an ambiguity to it: you have to qualify whether an experience is ‘positive solitude’, whereas alonement is, crucially, an inherently positive and valuable experience. Alonement is the direct opposite of loneliness. Think of it as a spectrum: Loneliness < Alone > Alonement As a dictionary entry, it would look a bit like this: Alonement noun 1. Quality time spent alone. I had some really good alonement this weekend. 2. The experience of joy and/or fulfilment when you are by yourself. Alonement for me is a brisk walk first thing in the morning . 3. Pleasurable solitude; also (of a solo experience) associated with a positive feeling. It’s been a hectic few months; I need an alonement holiday. 4. The value of cherishing the time you spend alone. Alonement is important for me and my boyfriend. Without the word ‘alonement’, I struggled to speak about being alone in a way that reflected how I felt about it. While ‘alone’ is ostensibly a neutral word, saying ‘I feel alone’ is tinged with negativity. We’ve all seen the Insta-cliché doing the rounds, ‘Alone doesn’t mean lonely’; but, for me, it never went far enough. If alone doesn’t have to mean the same thing as lonely – what’s the alternative? When alone is good, what is it called? Enter: alonement. Most people get what alonement – which is to say they can usually think of one time in their daily routine where alone time is pretty damn good, whether that’s the hot shower they take first thing or the satisfying ritual of chopping up peppers for dinner. Yet the importance of having an actual word to describe the positive feelings that being alone can generate cannot be understated. It’s like Ludwig Wittgenstein said: ‘The limits of my language mean the limits of my world’. If you don’t have the word to describe something, it’s hard to give it value and validity. You can’t be what you can’t see, and you can’t practise what you can’t define. New words bring to life phenomena that we may have long observed but never had the language to describe. This isn’t only the case for positive, empowering words; take, for instance, ‘gaslighting’ – in my view, one of the most important contributions to the conversation about abuse and control in relationships. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where one partner attempts to make another question their own memory, perception and judgement, typically through denial or misinformation. The term first originated in Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play Gas Light , about a woman whose husband manipulates her into thinking she’s going insane. It became part of psychological literature in the 1990s and has entered popular parlance over the last few years – most notably during an uproar when a recent Love Island contestant was accused by the charity Women’s Aid of gaslighting two of the women on the show, prompting a heated national debate and a slew of articles and op-eds. Clearly, simply having a word for something can begin a cultural shift. Alonement is my contribution to the English lexicon because I see it as embodying a necessary change in the way we acknowledge and value alone time. I’ve since trademarked it, and hope to one day get it into the dictionary. (If ‘chirpse’, ‘awesomesauce’ and ‘promposal’ all became dictionary-official last year, I like to think this isn’t an impossible goal.) Occasionally you’ll get someone who says you ‘can’t just make up words’. Of course you can (once again, see the surprisingly versatile ‘chirpse’); that’s literally how language was created. It’s designed to serve us, and we use it to navigate the vast and ever-evolving human experience. For instance, there are many words in other languages that we don’t have in English, like the Greek meraki , ‘to do something with soul, creativity, or love; when you leave a piece of yourself in your work’. Language is power, and having a word for something previously unidentified can unlock a little part of you, or your experience, that you never quite acknowledged. Alonement, in no uncertain terms, changed my life – and I have a sneaking suspicion it might change yours, too. Incidentally, I really, really like identifying new language to describe the ‘alonement’ experience. Along that principle, sprinkled throughout this book will be other terms I’ve adopted to help navigate our relationship with being alone, which I’ve listed in a glossary at the back. Among these, there’s ‘rubbernecking’ – a term to define turning one’s head to gaze at something we shouldn’t, usually associated with drivers slowing down to look at car accidents. 8 I find it an apt term to describe our tendency to look at the lives of other people when we should be focusing on our own lives, instead – like scrolling someone else’s night out on Instagram during your summer holiday. There’s also Only Me-ism – a term I invented to describe our tendency to deprive ourselves of basic comforts and considerations (a fresh cafetiere, a home-cooked meal) if it’s ‘only me’ – even though we should be our own priority. Why me? Learning to spend time alone isn’t always easy. Take it from me: as a writer, I have one of the most solitary professions possible. I also wrote a book on being alone. While living alone. As a single person. During a pandemic. Before my life became a giant social experiment of my own making, I was a highly sociable person: I used to love the regular Happy Hours that came with a busy office environment. Plonk me down at a first date or a large glitzy party where I know no one, and I’ll be absolutely fine. ‘If you’re such an extrovert, why did you decide to start a platform about spending time alone?’ asked comedian John Robins on an episode of my Alonement podcast. He had a point. The truth is, I started writing and podcasting about alonement because I didn’t want people to fall into the same trap I had. Up until the age of 27, I was too afraid to even contemplate time alone. For most of my life, I had pursued meaningful human company above all else, while alone time held next to no value for me. Learning to spend time alone began as a challenge to myself, which took the form of a New Year’s resolution: ‘learn to be alone and enjoy it’. Initially, it went against everything I had ever believed in or valued – like the thirty-six hours I once spent following the Paleo diet. It felt as natural as writing with my left hand. I’d consciously avoid making plans on a Sunday and then panic about that empty window of time as the weekend grew closer. I’d book an Odeon ticket for one, then frantically Google whether it was refundable. Meanwhile, well-meaning friends and family grew worried, assuming my uncharacteristic Greta Garbo act was simply the bravado of someone who, newly single, lacked people to hang out with when I wanted company (luckily, this was rarely the case – despite losing some couple friends in the ‘divorce’). But I persisted with my resolution, despite everything (and everyone) telling me not to, and it transformed my life. Think of me, if you like, as a recovering social addict – someone who went so far towards one extreme, in my complete avoidance of alone time, that I can now speak with authority on what happens when it’s lacking. I hope to convince anyone reading that if I – someone who couldn’t spend so much as an hour alone – can learn to enjoy my own company, then you can too. Others who have written about being alone include Sara Maitland, who wrote the fantastic How To Be Alone . She lives in a remote, rural part of Scotland and purposefully distances herself from the likes of smartphones and television. There’s also Alice Koller, who wrote The Stations of Solitude while living alone in Nantucket Island during the dead of winter, and Henry Thoreau, who decamped to the woods for two years to write Walden . Do these writers have interesting backstories? Sure. Do they know a lot about solitude? No doubt, and Maitland’s book in particular has proved important source material for my own. But how many of us can realistically drop everything to go and live in the woods? I know I can’t. This is where alonement comes in – it’s something we can all benefit from and integrate into our existing lifestyles, whatever they are. I’m telling you now because I wish I’d been able to hear it from someone who was up to their neck in a busy, socially connected city existence, rather than living a lifestyle I couldn’t really relate to and didn’t want to emulate. I hope you can be inspired by my experience to go on to create your own alonement. I’m not someone who has always instinctively spent time alone, nor do I intend to spend long periods of time alone without the mitigating influence of another person. I still consider myself an extrovert who regularly ‘powers up’ through other people – my close friends and family are among the primary blessings of my life. But, despite all this, my eyes have been opened to the very real consequences of a fear of being alone, and I can’t go back. Alonement is about moderation We don’t really ‘do’ moderation in British culture. We’re weekend warriors; we’re crash dieters; we’re intermittent fasters; we’re ‘work hard, play hard’. Media representations of being alone are typically extreme. We read about national loneliness epidemics, people getting married to themselves, and during the coronavirus lockdown, there was a particular appetite for stories of solo mountain climbers and around-the-world sailors and island hermits. Headline-grabbing, yes. Relatable? Not so much. Looking to history for solitary icons, you might think of artists or composers, like Mozart, Kafka and Wordsworth. Through romanticising the reclusive genius – obsessive, cut off from society and almost exclusively white and male – and imagining theirs as the only way to be alone, we’re left with something that’s completely removed from our everyday lives. How could we ever emulate this intense behaviour? Would we even want to? To be honest, just the word ‘solitude’ has a loftiness that I kind of resent. That’s where learning to appreciate alonement comes in: quality time alone, often for short lengths of time, like a quiet afternoon or a languid weekend. While for a select few, being alone for an extended period of time might be a failsafe recipe for an epiphany (see Taylor Swift and other geniuses – yes, the folklore album is a work of genius – who created masterpieces during lockdown), for others this might not work out so well. I was certainly challenged by the long stretch of alone time while living alone during the first coronavirus lockdown – four months without a hug is tough – even though I spent it writing a book about spending time alone. Did I mention I was essentially living in a social experiment of my own making? ‘Just eat a balanced diet’ is possibly the least marketable weight loss advice, but long term it’s the most rewarding, and this analogy equally applies to spending time alone. According to Michael Harris: ‘Solitude and connection are elements in a larger social diet. We need both – just like we need carbohydrates and fats – but we can do damage to ourselves by consuming too much of either.’ Rather than undertaking long periods of solitude, most of us benefit from a balance of regular moments of retreat from others. Social connection and alone time require a delicate balancing act, and alonement is a word that acknowledges the importance of both. As I mentioned earlier, simply being alone is rarely a magic bullet for any sort of self-growth. We all know – some more than others – how alone time can devolve into our most destructive tendencies and addictive behaviours, including everything from obsessively checking social media and the news to eating and exercise disorders, drugs and alcohol dependency. Or else, alone time can be spent in a sort of relatively harmless, hedonistic way: binge-watching box sets, mindlessly snacking, idly scrolling Instagram. You might be alone – but you sure as hell won’t be reaping any benefits typically associated with solitude. Alonement means thinking proactively about how you can turn this time into a positive experience. It’s about quality – not quantity. By focusing on alonement as a value used to inform your day-to-day life, you’ll find it easier to settle on a version that works for your situation. Because, while alonement can be a solo trip to another country, it’s more often the ten minutes before work you spend making coffee and sitting down to savour it, or the hour of phone-free time you give yourself before bed to journal or rearrange your sock drawer or simply stare into space. Taking this time may not seem like a particularly big deal, and you may question whether it’s enough to really impact your life. Bear with me. One thing you can be certain of with alonement is that you get back more than you put in. Try making a little space for it in your life, and you’ll begin to see just how powerful it can be. What counts as ‘alone’? As I write this, sitting by myself in a one-bed flat, I am alone in perhaps the most obvious way. My phone is on Airplane mode, the radio is off and – given that I live by myself – I’d be shocked if someone else walked in through the front door. The only way I could be more ‘alone’ is if you were to relocate this set-up to the Outer Hebrides. Or maybe Mars. Yet, this is far from the only way to be alone. I consider alonement to be in action when I write in the café down the road. On holiday with friends, I seek out alonement by going for a walk alone on the beach, or swimming far out into the sea and looking out into the horizon. When I worked in an open-plan office, alonement was disappearing off to a different floor and hiding in a booth, or else it was wearing noise-cancelling headphones at my desk. Sometimes alonement is when I let my mind wander, the way I used to get lost in my imagination during maths lessons. Alonement is, actually, all around (that sounds even better if you imagine Hugh Grant saying it) – and I’m going to show you how to find it and get the most from it. The multi-textured joy of being alone Alonement isn’t just about having a good time. Don’t get me wrong – it totally lends itself to joy. As you become more and more comfortable with the idea of spending time alone, alonement can simply be a comfy night in watching Friends in your flannel pyjamas, with fish and chips and a glass of rosé (now there’s a plan, I’ll be doing exactly that later on). That’s the kind of evening that can be all sorts of fun whether or not anyone else is there. Plus, there’s often a deliciousness inherent in choosing exactly what you want to do, right down to the precise volume of the television. That said, alonement offers another type of satisfaction; a more meaningful, life- affirming type of pleasure. Aristotle termed this ‘eudaimonic’ happiness: a loftier sort of satisfaction derived from living with meaning and purpose. Your pyjama-clad night in watching Friends looks more like what the ancient Greeks called ‘hedonic’ pleasure: a more straightforward, fleeting pleasure-based kind of happiness. Basically, alonement is when time alone is positive, and this might be because it’s enjoyable, or because it’s valuable, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be both. Sure, you can experience hedonic pleasure as a person alone, and often that happens in a much purer and authentically ‘you’ way than it might with another person: tucking into a meal you love, dancing like no one’s watching (because no one’s watching). But other times alonement serves as a space of regeneration and self-growth: writing in a journal, or going to bed early rather than staying up again to binge-watch Netflix with your housemates. Both are worth practising, for different reasons. When it comes to hedonic pleasure, it’s crucial for us to acknowledge to ourselves (and indeed to others) that it is valid to do things alone purely for your own pleasure (and I don’t just mean a night in with your vibrator). As an extrovert, I used to draw almost all of my hedonic pleasures from being around other people, where there’s a momentum and an energy which is harder to find in solitude. Yet, it is still possible with the right planning to have a fun (and in no way highbrow) evening alone. Some of my happiest times have been spent reading fiction or watching trashy TV. That said, while fleeting pleasures are all well and good, alonement is fertile ground for finding meaning and purpose in your life. As I’ll discuss in Chapter 5, spending time alone is not only a key ingredient for productivity and creativity, it’s also a space where you can reflect on where that meaning and purpose lies. Who is this book for? For me, living alone as a single person – latterly, during a pandemic – has been an incubation state for getting to know myself very well. But this is by no means a book aimed solely at ‘single’ people or those who live alone. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, married, or ‘not putting a label on things’ with Greg, 34, from Plenty of Fish, your relationship with yourself is the only one guaranteed to be lifelong. Certainly, being single, divorced or widowed can present opportunities for working out who you are as an individual, in a similar way to how other major life changes – career shifts, moving house, parenthood, a worldwide pandemic – force us to re-evaluate who we are. That said, having been in multiple serious relationships, I’ve established that being one half of a couple in no way immunises you from loneliness or suppresses a need for self-knowledge; in fact, it’s all too often the opposite. Learning to thrive alone – whether that’s travelling solo or simply learning to relish the nights your partner or flatmate is away from home – is something we can all work on. Being alone is how we come into the world and how we die; we will all at some point in our lives be alone. Of course, there are times when we lean on kindness from others, and interpersonal relationships will play a huge part in our lives. But alonement will fortify you in a deeper way than your relationships with others ever can. This book is for anyone who struggles to spend time alone. This book is for anyone who is naturally good at spending time alone but worries deep down that it’s a bad thing. This book is for those worried they will never meet ‘The One’. This book is for those who have met ‘The One’ and wonder why they still don’t feel happy with their lives. This book is for those whose friends have all coupled up and they’re sick with envy, secretly hoping a right-swipe on Tinder could make all the building blocks of their life fall into place. This book is for couples who struggle to maintain their independence. This book is for anyone who’s ever struggled with their identity outside of their friends, family or wider community. This book is for anyone who avoids pursuing their passions, because they can’t find someone to take along with them. This book is for everyone in a relationship with themselves. This book is for, well, everyone. How this book works It’s almost time for you to go forth and conquer your alone time; but first, a little about how I put this book together. I’m well aware – as someone who never ‘got’ alone time – why you might need a little convincing, so when writing this book, it felt important to balance the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of being alone. I wanted to give a bit of theory to debunk the way we, as a society, see alone time and shift the stigma, but also to provide plenty of practical tips for actually making alonement happen. As I’ve already mentioned, alonement isn’t just being by yourself – it’s proactive quality time that requires work, just like any relationship – so I’ve packed each chapter full of ways to harness your alonement and make it work for you. From self-care to making time for your passions and physically carving out your own space wherever you are, I want to show you how to make the world your alonement oyster. As for actually reading the book, I’d advise starting at the beginning (groundbreaking, I know) and reading the first two chapters before you skip ahead to anything else, as they are essential for understanding the concept of alonement. Ideally, from there, you’ll just keep on reading as nature (I’m nature, in this instance) intended. But if you’re looking for specific advice – say you’ve got an upcoming solo holiday or are feeling the need for some breathing space in your relationship – feel free to jump ahead to the relevant chapter (that’s Chapter 7 and Chapter 10 in those cases). A quick disclaimer: I want to stress that this book won’t change your life by itself. Yes, you did read that correctly. Think of this initial investment simply as a leaping-off point – because the work goes beyond your bookshelf. You don’t just follow @dailyselfgrowth104 on Instagram in January and, hey presto, you’re a self-actualised human having scrolled through 23 post updates. It doesn’t work like that. The only way you can discover the value of time alone is experiencing it first hand yourself, by integrating it in both little and large ways into your regular routine. There may be some discomfort and doubt along the way, but I guarantee that it will snowball into something that is truly life-affirming. Once you understand the value of alonement, it’s self-sustaining and will stay with you your whole life. Your practice will ebb and flow (in the face of relationships and work pressures, for instance) but you will regularly feel the pull to return to yourself, like a beloved friend, and make that time and space for alonement. As I say, this book won’t change your life. But you can. Lastly, whatever you do, I suggest you read this book when you’re alone: phone in a drawer and/or on mute, partner or housemate also on mute (or at least politely requested to respect your reading time) and your full attention. No social media (plenty of time to post the cover on the grid later). For now, this is your time. Welcome to alonement. 2 NWO, ‘Half of Your Friends Lost in Seven Years, Social Network Study Finds’, Science Daily , 27 May 2009. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090527111907.htm 3 Harry Benson and Steve McKay, ‘Commit or Quit: Living Together Longer?’, Marriage Foundation , May 2020. https://marriagefoundation.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/NEW- STUDY-Living-Together-Longer-Commit-or-Quit-Marriage-Week-May-2020.pdf 4 Nadia Whitehead, ‘People would rather be electrically shocked than left alone with their thoughts’, Science , 3 July 2014. https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/07/people-would-rather-be- electrically-shocked-left-alone-their-thoughts 5 ‘Only child syndrome: Proven reality or long-standing myth’, Healthline , 23 October 2019. https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/only-child-syndrome 6 James R. Averill and Louise Sundararajan, ‘Experiences of solitude: Issues of assessment, theory, and culture’. http://indigenouspsych.org/Discussion/forum/Solitude%20final.pdf 7 ‘The value of isolation, loneliness and solitude’, Jungian Center for the Spiritual Sciences . https://jungiancenter.org/the-value-of-isolation-loneliness-and-solitude 8 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rubbernecking 1 WHY WE NEED ALONEMENT For most of my life, I was my least favourite person to spend time with. OK, I’d have drawn the line at a candlelit dinner with, say, Josef Fritzl, but looking back, I am amazed at the lengths I went to just to avoid alone time. I’d jump at any opportunity to socialise. A last-minute invite to a bar in the furthest part of Peckham? I’d be straight on that bus – all 75 minutes of it. A friend of a friend’s cousin was hosting a barbecue, and asked if I wanted to join? Why not! If a Tinder date suggested meeting up on a work night in mid-November, I’d be like, yeah, sure, I love Wetherspoons – 9pm sounds perfect . Overcommitted, overstretched and overspent; my raison d’être , it seemed, was to get as far away from myself as I could. It wasn’t self- loathing as much as a deeply held belief that being around other people was what gave my life meaning. Time alone was just a drab waiting room to tolerate until real life resumed; it held so little value to me. Solitude was a chore, something I was lumbered with doing enough of already. That’s why, when deliberating between spending a night by myself or pursuing pretty much any other option, I’d so often pick the latter. Up until the age of 27, I had always lived with other people: family, flatmates, partners. I struggled with a couple of living arrangements where I lived with just one other person – meaning I would be alone some of the time. Rather than relishing the nights my flatmate was out to have a bit of ‘me-time’, I’d check our shared wall calendar and try to make plans so I was out, too. When being physically around people wasn’t possible, I’d connect with others virtually – firing off dozens of messages into a WhatsApp group or sharing my life in an Instagram Story. I couldn’t even watch a film alone without messaging throughout. I spoke to author and journalist Poorna Bell about this in an episode of my Alonement podcast. Poorna discovered her love of alonement in her thirties and, before then, she – like me – had never stopped to consciously schedule ‘alone time’. ‘Thinking about being alone or actively carving out time to be alone is something I don’t think I was even aware of [when I was younger]. In a way, you go from your family home to being at school to uni, where you’re with people all the time, and you go from uni to flat shares. I don’t think that I ever really gave it much thought. I didn’t actively say, do I need to do XYZ, do I need to make sure that I’ve got time for myself on the weekend? I would just react to whatever was going on and whoever would invite me out.’ Learning to value alone time is, without a doubt, the most radical and important lesson I’ve learnt in my life to date. So, what was it that stopped me from spending any time alone for the best part of three decades? I think it came down to three factors: 1. The fact that we live in a society where being sociable is disproportionately rewarded 2. A deep, despairing fear of time alone and all it stands for 3. Being digitally connected 24/7, courtesy of a multi-billion-dollar tech industry that feeds on this primal fear of being alone like it’s catnip Sound familiar? Society smiles on the extrovert Let’s start with reason number 1. I honestly used to think avoiding alone time was simply part of who I was. I firmed up this conviction after doing a personality test at school, which told me I am an ‘extrovert’. That seemed to make sense: I made friends easily and I was good at parties. This was all socially applauded behaviour, and no one ever told me that my attitude was unhealthy. My mother – a natural introvert – was the only person who questioned my jam-packed social life: ‘What about your time for you ?’ I’d sigh inwardly, thinking, I’m an extrovert. I don’t need alone time, Mum. For the uninitiated, the broad definition of an extrovert is someone who is more outgoing and sociable, compared with their shyer, more reserved counterparts. Think of it like a battery. While an introvert’s energy levels are charged up by spending time alone, extroverts are the opposite and time spent with others gets us all fired up and raring to go. We’re the people talking to fill the gaps in conversation; FaceTiming you out of the blue; organising social gatherings and work drinks. We give gushing, rapid-fire responses to texts; we’re the life and soul of the party; we wear our hearts on our sleeves. We’re bounding, brown-eyed Labradors to your Siamese cat. The Tigger to your Eeyore. The Lorelai to your Rory. The extrovert versus introvert theory is used to inform almost all popular personality tests, including the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator. Between half and 74 per cent of the population fall into the ‘extrovert’ category, depending on which study you believe. Some are more sceptical about labelling people as either/or, and with good reason. Nowadays, a great number of people I speak to will acknowledge a grey area: ‘I’m an extrovert who likes spending time alone’, ‘I’m a secret introvert’ or ‘I’m an extrovert but I’m really shy’. I see the value in these qualifications. Still, the extrovert/introvert distinction remains an important one and, broadly speaking, we identify with one or the other in terms of how we energise ourselves. No matter how much I have learnt to value alone time, I remain puffed up with energy after a night chatting with strangers at a Soho pub. There’s no definitive answer for what makes us an extrovert or an introvert, but it’s likely down to our genetics. So, which side won in the genetic lottery? Ostensibly, the extroverts. It’s no secret that extroverted types enjoy an unfair privilege in society. Take it from me: I am one. Back when I worked at a US tech company where socialising was strongly encouraged, I would skip into an after-work Happy Hour with the zeal of a six-year-old in a sweet shop, while my much more introverted colleague quietly confessed to me that she was only attending ‘to show willing’. Modern society is an extrovert’s playground, from those first schooldays to navigating the workplace – and this is particularly the case in major cities where people compete to be the biggest and the brightest. From the meme- generating appeal of Gemma Collins to our obsession with the flamboyant Rose family on Schitt’s Creek , as a society we’re often drawn to gregarious, social types over the quieter and more aloof. This suggests that introverts get the bum deal. In her book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking , Susan Cain bemoans what she considers a cultural bias against introverts. She cites findings that the vast majority of teachers consider the ideal student to be an extrovert, who can adapt well to the high-stimulation environment of big classrooms. The same bias is true of offices, where extroverts are 25 per cent more likely to land a top job. As a result, she argues, we socially condition children towards extroversion, praising them for ‘coming out of their shell’. The extrovert is like society’s favourite child. No matter what they do, no matter how many wine glasses they knock over at a party or people they accidentally offend, they will be smiled upon far more than the introvert. Meanwhile, introverts are told from childhood that their approach is ‘wrong’. Be more confident! Speak up! Be less stand-offish! Open up more! While introverts are conditioned to act more like extroverts in certain environments, such as at work and at parties, extroverts are waved past with a Get Out Of Jail Free card at almost every stage of life. Except, there’s a catch. Extroverts fail at being alone While introverts are encouraged to work against their natural instincts, extroverts are almost never encouraged to do the opposite: to learn to spend time alone. This means that an incapacity for positive solitude is never identified as a problem, or an area for self-development. And this, as I explain in this book, can have damaging effects, proving just as limiting as certain introverted behaviours. Often, highly sociable people are so scared to be alone that they’ll do almost anything to avoid it. And I mean anything. For context, here’s a not- at-all comprehensive list of what I, as an extrovert, have prioritised above being alone: Drinking Chardonnay into the early hours of Saturday morning with colleagues I had already spent the whole week with Participating in a 127-message-long Messenger thread about what colour knickers we should buy a hen Listening to a colleague describe, in excruciating detail, her child’s morning bowel movements in the office kitchen Staying on for a requisite second drink with a date who later sent me an unprompted list of criticisms regarding my most recently published articles Offering countless therapy sessions to my friends on WhatsApp Travelling for 80 minutes to attend a friend of a friend’s birthday, where I knew no one else, just so I wouldn’t be staying in on a Saturday night Staying up until 2am messaging someone I had only just matched with on Hinge Sharing the precious opening moments of a gig in an Instagram Story It’s true that being an extrovert has its perks, but behind closed doors, it can also translate into an instinctive neediness which sees you putting almost any social activity above time to yourself – as the list above will testify. You can imagine how that works in romantic relationships. While I struggled with some aspects of having a partner, the notion of ‘needing space’ – something that, as I discussed with John Robins on my Alonement podcast, is actually essential for a healthy relationship (more on that in Chapters 8 and 10) – seldom crossed my mind. I’d happily latch on to my ex’s social plans, if the alternative meant spending time alone. Writing a diary and reading – solitary practices I’ve done on and off all my life, and nowadays couldn’t go a day without – were cast aside because I actively chose being with him over most other things. We did everything together – even showering (in the least erotic set-up possible, one of us brushing our teeth and the other lathering up Head & Shoulders) – because it afforded us fewer moments apart. Being an extrovert was a good thing, I reasoned, and so was being in a relationship, so I took both those things to the extreme, treating my natural inclination to favour social interaction over time spent alone as a sort of inevitability. I thought that by being around others as much as possible, then I was giving myself what I needed, taking my ‘extrovert’ label to the extreme. Alone, for me, would always be lonely, because I didn’t know any other way to see it. It never occurred to me that, in devoting all my time to other people, I was missing the opportunity to get to know myself. That giving little bits of myself away to everyone meant I didn’t have enough left just for me. I was reminded of this when I interviewed author and journalist Daisy Buchanan for the podcast. Daisy is one of the most magnetic people I’ve ever met, yet she spoke passionately of her growing need to spend time alone. ‘I do find that when I’m around people I really find it very, very hard to hold myself back. I want to be pleased around them, I want to be in a good mood for them. I think I give a lot of energy; I want to bring people up,’ she said, adding, ‘but the older I get, the more I find I need that time to recharge.’ For Daisy, the value of time alone is to protect ‘a core of me that I don’t have to share’. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been through a similar process to Daisy, learning to moderate what I ‘give’ of myself socially. What’s been inherent to that process is learning to overcome a deep-seated (albeit all too common) social anxiety about what being alone says about me. The ‘Saturday Night Fear’ Some of our earliest negative experiences of being alone come from our school days. While in adulthood we may have a more comprehensive understanding of places we’re comfortable being alone (maybe at home, or in a coffee shop, but less so in a crowded restaurant at the weekend), as a young child the potential for highly visible social rejection is everywhere: from feeling left out in the playground to getting picked last for the rounders team (on a side note, PE teachers are sadists for perpetuating this practice). While an inability to catch a ball might not hinder you in later life, the aftershocks of social rejection do. According to a study of 5,000 subjects by Purdue University in the United States, the pains of ostracism can result in long-term feelings of alienation and depression. 9 Introverts and extroverts alike are haunted by what spending time alone might say about them, and it complicates our ability to pursue self-growth through alonement. This fear often rears its ugly head during our teenage or early adult years, for instance at school or university, when playground politics are eclipsed by more complicated social dynamics. On my Alonement podcast, author and illustrator Florence Given talked about her experience as a 14-year-old at high school where she was ‘ousted’ from her friendship ‘clique’. Rather than try and rejoin the group, she made a conscious decision to stay out of it, reasoning: ‘I wasn’t comfortable with the person I was becoming in this clique . . . the things I would have to do to stay in it, like being loud and disruptive in class.’ Showing wise-beyond- her-years levels of foresight, Florence opted to ‘choose myself over the validation which came from being in this group’. She adds that it was ‘the best decision I ever made’ but also ‘the hardest ever’. Long after school, social anxiety can centre around certain ‘stigma times’ associated with loneliness. I discussed this on the podcast with BBC Radio London presenter Jo Good who, despite her chatty on-air persona, identifies as a ‘private introvert’. Jo is happy to be alone: aged 65, she’s lived by herself for the past 30 years, and loves nothing more than coming home to an empty flat. Yet, she said, she can’t bear to see the New Year in by herself – ‘Even I would think that was sad,’ she admitted – and, annually at 11.45pm on 31 December, she finds herself heading from her flat to her local pub in Marylebone, just so she can raise a glass in the company of strangers. In another episode of the podcast, author and journalist Sophia Money-Coutts confessed similar feelings of shame around being alone at the weekend: ‘It’s so weird how essentially my perfect night is sitting on the sofa having a takeaway with a bottle of wine watching a box set, yet if it’s a Friday or a Saturday there’s something that feels inherently quite sad about that.’ These conversations reminded me of a long-held fear of my own. Growing up in London, Saturday night was the prime window of social opportunity at the weekend. As a result, I spent a decade plotting ways to never be home alone, my 17-year-old self panicking midweek if I hadn’t made plans or wasn’t invited to a party I knew others were going to. Recently, Glamour dubbed the ‘Saturday Scaries’ 10 – the fear that you don’t have plans on a Saturday night – the new ‘Sunday Scaries’ (which centre around anxiety about the week to come). At university, every night was ‘Saturday night’, and the social pressure felt relentless in an environment where it seemed everyone around me was socialising, all the time. People talk about the FOMO inflicted by seeing others having fun on social media, but at least that’s on an opt-in basis. There’s nothing more loneliness-inducing than hearing laughter in another room, through the too- thin walls in your halls of residence, and knowing you were not invited to whatever’s going on. Amid my fruitless attempts to gain BNOC (‘Big Name On Campus’) status, it never occurred to me that alone time was something to consider, let alone factor in. I hadn’t exactly cultivated a taste for restorative, life- affirming alonement as a teenager, and I wasn’t about to do so over £1 Jägerbombs. Time spent alone was functional: for doing coursework or exercising, and often not even then – we’d flock, en masse, to the library, or chat to one another on adjacent treadmills at the gym. I spent so much time proving – to whom, I’m not quite sure – that I was capable of finding someone to spend time with. Looking back, university was undeniably the most sociable period of my life; yet I spent most of it worrying about being alone. I’m not the only one. I have close friends who have felt a similar pressure to book out their entire social calendars, or who will avoid doing activities they would enjoy alone (visiting art exhibitions, going to the cinema) simply because they hate the idea of being seen alone in public. And, because society favours extroverted behaviour, no one tells you to act any differently. Instead, they will say: ‘You’re so popular/sociable/busy.’ My friend Hannah, 28, says: ‘If I have a quiet day at the weekend without any plans, I find myself thinking: “Why am I by myself? What does this say about me to other people?”’ Hannah grew up in a highly sociable family within the close-knit Jewish community of northwest London, and long believed that being alone wasn’t an option: ‘It wasn’t normal to not have a plan on a Saturday night, or not to be seeing groups of friends at different times throughout the week.’ It’s only in the past couple of years she’s learnt the importance of withstanding this pressure: ‘As fun as it might be at the time, you come crashing down if you don’t have regular time to yourself for emotional downtime.’ Post-university, my own Saturday Night Fear returned. Aged 27, when my ex-boyfriend and I broke up (and most of my friends were coupled up), I realised that one of the things I was most afraid of was if someone asked me what I’d done during the weekend, and I would have to admit I’d spent part of it – shock, horror – alone. I envisaged the coming years as an endless string of solitary nights on the sofa. At a time when I needed time alone to piece myself together again – to remember who I was without my ex – I instead channelled my energy into maniacally organising Saturday night plans, as if finding myself alone on any given weekend might be the measure of my failing to cope without my ex, not the very real (and normal) heartbreak I was working through. Thankfully, despite my Saturday Night Fear, I’ve never felt short of genuine connection and friendship. My social anxiety around Saturday nights – like Hannah’s – was bound up in a cultural sense of what time alone might say about me, especially in what I perceived as a vulnerable, stigmatised state of being single (more on this in Chapter 9). For me, the cure for this particular hang-up was twofold. The first part was facing my fear one weekend in February 2019, soon after making my ‘enjoy being alone’ New Year’s resolution. I’d been speaking to my cousin Sam – one of the most cultured millennials I know – about my plans for the coming weekend, and mentioned, a little embarrassed, that I was going to spend Saturday night alone (secretly hoping to make a last-minute plan). Instead, Sam reeled off a list of brilliant film recommendations and the idea of a movie night in, by myself, took shape; for the first time in my life, a Saturday night with no social plans seemed like an opportunity rather than a disaster. As I lay horizontal on my sofa under a cosy blanket that evening, credits rolling and the remnants of a Thai takeaway in front of me, I wondered what had taken me so long. In psychological terms, I administered myself some exposure treatment. On the podcast, Florence Given spoke about doing a similar exercise when she was a teenager, when she challenged herself to lie alone in a field around other students from her school, in order to conquer one of her biggest fears at the time: ‘being judged by other people and not having control over other people’s perceptions’. It was a success: ‘I thought if I can look like a weirdo and get through this, I can get through anything,’ she said. The second part of this cure? Acknowledging that – actually, in the nicest possible way – no one gave a flying fuck if I wasn’t out on a Saturday night. The fear of our own thoughts Of course, it’s not just a fear of being ‘unpopular’ that keeps us from spending time with ourselves. Often, when we avoid time alone, there’s a method to the madness: it’s to get away from the uncomfortable business of sitting down and thinking deeply. Whether it’s booking back-to-back social engagements weeks in advance, using our partners or friends as emotional crutches or simply sharing our whole lives on social media, many of us will do whatever it takes to avoid really facing up to ourselves. ‘I struggle in my own company. A lot of the time I’m not good with my own thoughts, especially if I’m not feeling 100 per cent in myself, mentally,’ says Hannah. ‘The thought of being alone and having the time to process things – it’s not good.’ Instead, she fills her time with non-stop activities: baking, seeing friends, doing puzzles. But this busy-ness (while admirable on one level) is often, she admits, a means of getting away from what might await her when she pauses. Hannah’s approach is more normal than not. So, why are we so scared of our own thoughts? When I spoke to Alain de Botton for my podcast, he (characteristically) hit the nail on the head: ‘Being on your own is, for many people, not just a bit boring, it’s positively frightening – it’s horrible because you’re in danger of stumbling upon bits of information that will require pain in one way or another. The pain of mourning, the pain of needing to take action, the pain of realising that life isn’t what you want it to be.’ In short, feelings are messy, unpleasant, and we don’t like to have to confront them, because not only can they be painful, but they could also necessitate a radical – and particularly inconvenient – rearranging of our lifestyles. Except, once we acknowledge this, the danger is apparent. Because if you’re too scared to confront and act upon your thoughts, then you’re left in a state of stagnation that might prevent you from leaving a toxic friend, abusive partner or unsuitable living situation. In this context, alone time with your thoughts is not just valuable; it’s a lifeline, empowering you to change your life for the better. The psychoanalyst Ester Schaler Buchholz, author of The Call of Solitude: Alonetime in a World of Attachment , was concerned by this fear of being alone. ‘In contrast to attachment, people view time and solitude in greater trepidation,’ she wrote back in 1995. Yet she considered time by oneself – which she termed ‘alonetime’ – to be ‘essential to human happiness and survival’ in the same way as engaging with others is. ‘Without solitude existing as a safe place, a place for long sojourns and self- discovery, we lose the important sense of being self-regulating individuals.’ And that’s just it. If we don’t have the ability to be alone, then we will always end up leaning on other people. To befriend this solitude is to gain precious autonomy over your life and bring your best self to your relationships. I = Phone Towards the end of the noughties we found the greatest solution yet to facing our ‘aloneness’: the smartphone, an all-singing, all-dancing, ever- present device that we look at, on average, once every 12 minutes (that’s 95 times a day). 11 The majority of British people (57 per cent) admit to using their phones on the toilet 12 – and, after further interrogation of some friends at the pub, it appears the remaining 43 per cent are, in fact, lying. The ‘i’ in ‘iPhone’ stands for ‘internet’, but nowadays our identities are so bound up with these devices that you’d be forgiven for interpreting it otherwise. It is very easy – ‘normal’, even – to never, ever be alone at all. ‘The largest, most powerful companies that have ever existed are devoted to producing distraction machines,’ Michael Harris tells me. ‘In the same way as McDonalds capitalises on our appetites for food, tech companies capitalise on our desires for social connection. We’ve always had the capacity to be distracted from our solitude, but now we are at an overwhelming moment in history where solitude is being elbowed out of our daily lives until we have none at all. The goal, of course, is always to parcel up as much attention as possible, and sell it to advertisers,’ he adds. Every time you scroll Instagram idly on the tube, or WhatsApp your way through your lunch break, technology companies’ bid for your attention has proved a shining success. Modern living is something of an enabler in avoiding alone time, because even if we’re not physically alone, our smartphones – which come everywhere with us – give us the impression of being sociable 24/7, ostensibly ‘connecting’ us with friends at the touch of a button. We are constantly at the behest of others, and it’s something we invite into our lives, our dinner tables, our workplaces. More than half of us (54 per cent) are affected by a legitimate phobia of being parted from our phones, known as ‘nomophobia’, which is linked to feelings of personal inadequacy and inferiority. 13 Is that because we might have time to pursue a challenging thought to completion before – DING? While you might think a night on the sofa with your iPhone counts as being alone, experts firmly disagree. Schaler Buchholz suggests phone users (nowadays, virtually all of us) are increasingly sacrificing their solitude due to the effect of technology. Of course, Schaler Buchholz was writing back in 1995, a year which saw the release of the then-revolutionary Nokia Ringo (which had an aerial and was roughly the length and weight of a brick), but she quite eerily forecasted a time when ‘portable phones, pagers and data transmission devices of every sort will keep us terminally in touch’. One can only imagine what her reaction to the almighty iPhone X, and how much it hinders our ability to value solitude, might have been. Sherry Turkle, psychologist and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other , gave a more up- to-date critique in a TED Talk in 2012. ‘The moment people are alone, even for a few seconds, they become anxious, they panic, they fidget. They reach for a device,’ she said. ‘Being alone feels like a problem that needs to be solved, and so people try to solve it by connecting. But it doesn’t solve an underlying problem.’ If we’re reaching for our phones on average every 12 minutes of our waking life, it’s no wonder that we fail to process our thoughts and feelings, believing instead that the answers to our problems are all available on our social networks, just an arm’s length away. On the one hand, it’s good to know you can reach out to and be there for friends instantaneously, but it means we’re becoming worse and worse at processing our own emotions. This leaves us messaging our friends for the most basic decisions, when a) they might be busy, and b) surely we are the best person to take control of our situation. When we outsource so many of our problems – big and small – to others, we lose the ability to check in with ourselves in the first place. ‘It’s as if we’re using [other people] as spare parts to support our fragile sense of self,’ says Turkle. Like Schaler Buchholz before her, Turkle believes passionately in the power of solitude: ‘If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely.’ But we can’t just blame technology for getting in between us and solitude. It’s here to stay and is simply a reflection (or intensification) of the society we live in, holding a mirror both to our broader societal values (extroversion) and our innermost fears (being alone). Plus, on a practical level, having an iPhone can be invaluable when you’re by yourself, to help you navigate a journey on Google Maps or reassure your friends you’re alive during a solo trip. To pursue a healthy relationship with technology, we need to make it serve us – not the other way around. But first we have to acknowledge the need for (offline) alone time in the first place. We all need alone time What I know now is that, for introverts and extroverts alike, being alone is a necessary and improving state. You might just need the occasional Saturday night in, or you might, at the other end of the spectrum, prefer to spend most of your time alone or with people you know very well – but the requirement for at least some alonement is a universal one. This was highlighted in a recent study 14 conducted by the University of California. The researchers asked a group of young students how much time they spent alone and why they chose to do it. Reasons ranged from ‘I feel energised’ and ‘I enjoy the quiet’ to ‘I feel uncomfortable around others’. Those who reported ‘maladaptive solitude’ – i.e. for negative reasons – were at greater risk of depression, whereas those who practised ‘adaptive solitude’ – i.e. choosing to be alone for personal growth reasons – faced none of these risks, leading the scientists to conclude time spent alone, in the right way, could ‘improve wellbeing’. The most interesting part of the write-up, for me, was co-author Dr Virginia Thomas’s conclusion that solitude serves exactly the same function for introverts and extroverts; ‘Introverts just need more of it.’ Alonement is also vital to proper relaxation. In 2016, 18,000 people in 134 countries completed the Rest Test – the world’s biggest survey on rest. 15 All of the top five activities cited as ‘most relaxing’ were either exclusively solitary ones or linked to solitude: Reading (58 per cent) Being in the natural environment (53.1 per cent) Being on their own (52.1 per cent) Listening to music (40.6 per cent) Doing nothing in particular (40 per cent) Meanwhile, sociable activities like seeing friends and family, or drinking alcohol in company, didn’t even feature in the top ten. And yet how often do we consciously make this link between relaxing and being alone, or spell it out to others? Neglecting to factor alone time into your lifestyle is like forever forgetting to add the all-essential ‘baking powder’ to a cake recipe. We all need alonement – as a value in and of itself – to be our best, most authentic selves, and yet we live in an extrovert-centric, tech-obsessed world designed to encourage anything but. I’m not a fan of conspiracy theories, but don’t you think it’s strange that the world conspires to keep you, and you, apart? The fear of being alone could ruin your life Does that sound dramatic? Good – because it should. You’ll likely know a number of people whose lives appear fuelled by a fear of time alone. Do any of these scenarios ring a bell? The friend whose social calendar is booked up for the next six months That couple who really need to break up The ever-present colleague at the tea station The Tinder match still texting you from last week’s date even though it was a mutual flop That Instagram user you follow who replies to DMs at breakneck speed At the heart of it, this seemingly innocuous behaviour is symptomatic of a society where phone addiction and busy-ness is standard fare. The fear associated with being alone with your thoughts is one hell of a meaty subject, and – don’t you worry – the next chapter is devoted to that very fear (and how to work on it). But first, I want to address how wholly damaging that ‘normality’ is. As Sara Maitland writes in How To Be Alone : ‘We have arrived at a cultural moment when we are terrified of something that we are not reliably, or healthily, able to evade. Solitude can happen to anyone; we are all at risk.’ She’s right to raise the alarm. The consequences of not confronting our fear of being alone are weighty, and, at some point down the line, we’re likely to suffer as a result. An essay on the School of Life website 16 deems the fear of being alone ‘one of the single greatest contributors to human misery and the driver of some of our weightiest and most unfortunate decisions’. I’m glad someone’s taking it seriously. A short list of consequences might include: Staying in the wrong relationship Tolerating toxic behaviour or emotional abuse Having children just to keep a relationship going Never quite getting round to writing that novel Ignoring your real sexuality Staying friends with people you don’t even like that much Waking up in 30 years and realising you’re married to the wrong person Waking up in 45 years and realising you never did anything on your bucket list I’ll put it this way. We may not be able to escape being alone, but we do a bloody good job of pretending otherwise. And, long term? It’s the emotional equivalent of a dental cavity. Take it from me: after spending a lifetime avoiding being alone, I finally realised that maybe it was time to start leaning into it. If my fear of being alone had perpetuated my relationship long beyond what was healthy, it was clear it had the potential to jeopardise my life. This alone time, while daunting, was a gift. And it is for you, too. Committing to yourself Committing to yourself is a prerequisite for alonement. If getting to know yourself doesn’t hold much value for you, then time alone is wasted time. Yet, I suspect you do want to get to know yourself a little better. Maybe you’re at a time in your life where you feel some part of you has been neglected and you’re not quite sure how it happened. Perhaps you live an extremely sociable life, yet you feel that, curiously, it isn’t quite enough – something, somewhat imperceptibly, is missing. Initially, my journey of self-commitment was prompted by the biggest cliché imaginable: a break-up. I’d moved out of my best friend’s flat into my own place, living alone for the first time in my life. Shortly afterwards, my relationship with my boyfriend – who had all but moved in – ended, at a time when the majority of my friends were in serious relationships. Two of my childhood best friends moved in with their respective boyfriends and then, within the same month, got engaged. My brother – who had previously guarded his love life like a government secret – met his Serious Girlfriend. I couldn’t relate when my friends gushed about having ‘someone to come home to’, and I was a fifth wheel at family dinners. Oh, and a year later, when I thought I’d finally got a handle on all this extra time alone, there was a worldwide pandemic to throw into the mix. In this strange, reconfigured world, I was literally more ‘alone’ than ever before. Nothing, and I mean nothing, tops off eight days of quarantine like a Zoom quiz where you’re the only team of one, with sixteen different households of couples or flatmates staring back at you. Being alone is all fun and games until you attempt to answer the ‘Sport’ category All By Yourself (if the answer wasn’t David Beckham, I was quite literally clueless). Before you present me with the world’s tiniest violin, let me stop you there. Through being more physically isolated than ever, I was forced to confront my fear of being alone; and to commit, more meaningfully than ever, to myself. Before I go into all that, I want to call time on the notion that break-ups are the only reason for committing to yourself. OK, sure – break-ups can be a ripe time for self-discovery (see The Holiday , Eat Pray Love , Legally Blonde and/or read up on Miley Cyrus’s relationship history for further evidence). There’s a certain logic to this; losing a partner can feel like losing a limb, and drastic action (i.e. self-discovery) can seem necessary to fill that void. Psychologists have identified the profound ‘reduced self- concept clarity’ that can come with a relationship breakdown. ‘Not only may couples come to complete each others’ sentences, they may actually come to complete each others’ selves,’ observes psychologist Erica B. Slotter. 17 But here’s a radical thought: how about treating self-commitment as more than just a fallback option? What if you don’t need a messy heartbreak in order to ‘find yourself’? What if committing to yourself could be a thing , regardless of whether or not you are in a couple? Emma Watson was right on the money with her ‘self-partnered’ status back in November 2019, prompting ridicule, masturbation jokes and, latterly, thought-provoking conversations about what it might mean to partner yourself. As she clarified, being self-partnered has nothing to do with your official romantic status. ‘For me it’s much more about your relationship with yourself and the feeling that you’re not somehow deficient, in some way, because you aren’t with someone,’ she told E! News in December 2019. 18 Yet you’re still left with the question of: when? When do you consciously make the decision to commit to yourself if there’s no clear trigger? Curiously, we live in a society preoccupied with celebrating weddings and childbirth, but there are few rituals centred around celebrating our lifelong commitment to ourselves. It’s perhaps this value system that has inspired some to turn marital commitment on its head; and marry themselves. This symbolic (i.e. not legally binding) ritual is known as sologamy. Sophie Tanner, author of Reader, I Married Me! , took the plunge in 2015 after – you guessed it – a messy break-up. She says: ‘I woke up one morning and my sense of self had come back. I had this realisation that I really liked myself, my job, and my life in Brighton. I had this sense of security where I don’t need anyone but myself to be responsible for my own happiness.’ While self-marriage is certainly not for everyone, the message of radical self-love is an inspiring one. Tanner, who has continued to date other people since tying the knot with herself five years ago, says: ‘I wanted to commit to a sense of happiness in myself. In western society we don’t have any personal development rituals to mark that.’ Stories like Tanner’s are served up on the news cycle every few years, and quite quickly become the stuff of mockery. Tanner herself says she was trolled online after photos of her special day hit the headlines. It’s not hard to see why people take issue with the idea of sologamy; some might question the need to apply the convention of marriage – historically conducted for economic and religious purposes – around a relationship with oneself. Others might think it excessive or narcissistic to have a huge ceremony just for oneself. Usually these cere- monies involve some cost, and spending this money might not seem affordable (or relatable) as a single person. Some might just deem it bonkers. Yet, putting all that aside, the process remains an intriguing one – because when else do we openly affirm our relationship with ourselves? In Sex and the City , Carrie Bradshaw, tired of perpetually celebrating other people’s life choices at wedding and baby showers, jokingly announces that she is marrying herself. She leaves her friend a voicemail: ‘It’s Carrie Bradshaw. I wanted to let you know that I’m getting married. To myself. I’m registered at Manolo Blahnik.’ And, although she does this in the name of funding her designer shoe habit (what else?), Carrie justifies her decision, saying: ‘If I don’t ever get married or have a baby? . . . Think about it: If you are single, after graduation, there isn’t one occasion where people celebrate you . . . I am talking about the single gal. Hallmark doesn’t make a “Congratulations you didn’t marry the wrong guy” card.’ 19 In the absence of meaningful ways to mark self-commitment, it’s very, very easy for it to slide down your list of priorities. More urgent, it seems, are your grandma’s weekly phone calls to ask whether you’ve ‘found a boyfriend yet’ or, if you do have a partner, the question of ‘where things are going’, and it’s tempting to file away the task of committing to yourself for a later date. And yet – even in the absence of social cues – it’s important to remember that you are a priority. You don’t need to marry yourself. You don’t even have to be going steady. But I have, instead, a modest proposal for you: factor quality time alone into your daily life. Whether that’s sitting down for a cup of tea without your phone or going for a walk, these actions demonstrate a continued commitment to yourself. You could be at a perfectly stable point in your life, or in what feels like a crisis. You could be single, or perfectly happy in your relationship. You could be living on a farm in rural Iceland, or in a house-share in Manchester. There doesn’t need to be a dramatic moment in your life that makes you acknowledge your aloneness, simply because you have always been alone; and, while you may not have recognised them, your needs, your curiosity, your deeper purpose, have always been there, waiting quietly in the wings. You are used to committing time and energy to those people you consider valuable, so make yourself one of them. Once you value your connection to yourself, you commit, first and foremost, to the notion that you are important. First stop: Alonement True commitment, as any long-term couple will know, is demonstrated by what you do in the day to day, not in grand gestures or big ceremonies. All that is really necessary in order to commit to yourself is to commit to spend time alone and to learn to do it well. I’m biased, of course, but I think buying this book is a good first step. Of course, it’s being alone well – that’s the crux of it, not simply being alone. Through actively and mindfully learning to value spending time alone, you begin a process of investing in you : your self-growth, your self- care, your inner world. You normalise it for other people, who both respect your need for alone time and begin to think more consciously about their own (because alonement is contagious in the best possible way). You’re devoting time and energy to the person you’ll spend the rest of your life with. And you know what? That’s someone worth getting to know. 9 Purdue University, ‘Pain of Ostracism Can Be Deep, Long-Lasting’, Science Daily , 6 June 2011. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110510151216.htm 10 Sara Macauley, ‘Why Saturday Scaries are WAY more real than the ones we get on a Sunday’, Glamour , 29 August 2020. https://www.glamourmagazine.co.uk/article/saturday-anxiety-is-more- than-sunday 11 ‘A decade of digital dependency’, Ofcom , 2 August 2018. https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about- ofcom/latest/media/media-releases/2018/decade-of-digital-dependency 12 Matthew Smith, ‘Most Britons use their phone on the toilet’, YouGov , 28 February 2019. https://yougov.co.uk/topics/lifestyle/articles-reports/2019/02/28/most-britons-use-their-phone-toilet 13 OnePoll, via The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10267574/Nomophobia-affects-majority-of-UK.html 14 Jennifer McNulty, ‘Teens who seek solitude may know what’s best for them, research suggests’, UC Santa Cruz Newscenter , 22 March 2019. https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/03/azmitia-solitude.html 15 Wellcome, ‘Results of world’s largest survey on rest to be announced’, press release, 27 September 2016. https://wellcome.org/press-release/results-worlds-largest-survey-rest-be-announced 16 School of Life, ‘The High Price We Pay for Our Fear of Being Alone’. https://www.theschooloflife.com/thebookoflife/the-high-price-of-the-fear-of-loneliness 17 Erica B. Slotter et al., ‘Who Am I Without You? The Influence of Romantic Breakup on the Self- Concept’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (2009). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0146167209352250 18 Cydney Contreras, ‘Emma Watson Is “So Happy” People Feel Empowered by her “Self- Partnered” Label’. E! News 10 December 2019. https://www.eonline.com/uk/news/1101124/emma- watson-is-so-happy-people-feel-empowered-by-her-self-partnered-label 19 Season 6, episode 9, Sex and the City , ‘A Woman’s Right to Shoes’, created by Darren Starr, written by Jenny Bicks, produced by HBO. 2 GETTING TO KNOW YOU In 2015, a tweet from Jason Gay (@JasonGay), a sports columnist at The Wall Street Journal , went viral: ‘There’s a guy in this coffee shop sitting at the table, not on his phone, not on a laptop. Just drinking coffee, like a psychopath.’ The tweet, which sparked a whole host of internet memes, may have been tongue-in-cheek, but it proved a sad indictment of our times. It’s become more ‘normal’ than not to be plugged into a digital world rather than mindfully enjoying the here and now. For me, it’s less relevant that the so- called Coffee Shop Psychopath was alone in a public space (Chapter 6 is devoted to the value of feeling you deserve to occupy so-called public spaces alone). I reckon the Coffee Shop Psychopath tweet is more of an ironic reflection on The Way We Live Now, where it’s more relatable to joke that someone’s a ‘psychopath’ for sitting alone with their thoughts rather than questioning the psychological shortcomings of not being able to. I know, I know, internet memes become so much funnier when you butcher them through analysis. The ability to be content in one’s own mind – even just for a short while – is a key part of learning to spend time alone. Yet it’s gained a sort of oddball (or superpower, depending on how you see it) status in modern-day western society, which offers a whole host of other alternatives. When you think about it, it shouldn’t be such an anomaly to see someone sipping coffee alone and undistracted, but it clearly unsettles us to see someone content in their own company. Maybe that’s because it reminds us, somewhat inconveniently, of what we’re just not very good at. The fear of one’s own thoughts isn’t an exclusively 21st-century phenomenon. French writer Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who published under the pseudonym Colette, wrote in 1908: ‘There are days when solitude is a heady wine that intoxicates you with freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat your head against the wall.’ The electric shock study I mentioned in the Introduction – where a majority of study participants chose to give themselves electric shocks rather than sit calmly in silence for 15 minutes – sort of drives home the point. ‘Discomfort’ is a word that comes up time and time again when people talk about being alone with their own thoughts. While the amount of discomfort varies, it’s safe to assume it outweighs, for many of us, the sensation of a small electric shock. As I write this, I’m reminded of a brilliant scene in Peep Show where Mark, played by David Mitchell, teaches his flatmate Jez, played by Robert Webb, how to concentrate on reading Wuthering Heights . Jez, who’s only ever read Mr Nice , has committed to the cause in order to impress a woman he fancies. Jez: I look at it, I read the words or think I do, but then I get distracted, and I don’t quite take it in, and I have to go back. I’ve been on the same four pages for three hours. Mark, how do you read? Can you teach me how to read? How do you concentrate? Please tell me. Mark: Well turn the telly off for a start. Start reading that long paragraph there. You probably feel like looking away from the page now, don’t you? Jez: [Shaking] Yes, yes, I do. Mark: Don’t look away. Stay with it. Jez: [Still trembling] Oh, it’s too difficult! [Slams down the book] 20 Technology gives us an easy way out of this struggle. Even in the absence of other people, we’re increasingly able to escape ourselves digitally – and perhaps this has never been quite so prevalent as it became during lockdown. As much as digital connectivity was and is a lifeline (living alone, it was my entire social life for a couple of months), it can also be a leash. Many of us found ourselves ‘doomscrolling’ – a term that describes purposefully seeking out bleak, depressing news – while others found themselves obsessively checking Twitter or swiping on dating apps (on 29 March 2020, when most of the world was in lockdown, Tinder recorded three billion swipes worldwide – an all-time record). 21 More than once, during the first days of lockdown, my iPhone screen time total was more than a contracted 9–5 working day. Pandemic or not, the temptation to escape uncomfortable thoughts is rife. I don’t just mean diagnosed phobias or trauma – it can be as simple as a minor inconvenience. Often, if I encounter a work-related issue or know I have to have an awkward conversation with someone, I’ll find myself scrolling Instagram. I’m not entirely sure why my brain makes this connection (you’d have to ask Mark Zuckerberg), but it certainly doesn’t solve any of my problems. These emotional crutches distract us from the need to take action in our lives – and they aren’t the only culprits. A golden age of distraction Not a fan of the whole introspection thing? Don’t worry; you don’t have to be. Here’s the à la carte menu of distractions: Entrées Listening to music Running Gaming Reading Going to the gym Watching TV Shopping Obsessing over romantic interest(s) Checking Twitter Doomscrolling Checking your email Main course Comfort eating £0.89 A pack of digestives with a coulis of self-loathing Alcohol £7.99 A cocktail of vodka, tonic and ill-advised behaviour Scrolling Instagram Free Flank steak of fitness model, accompanied by a side of poached ego WhatsApp £220 pp A stew of hen party politics, served piping hot Dessert Drugs Gambling Sex Smoking Choose your poison. The beauty of living in the 21st century is that you can quite conveniently opt out of feeling your feelings, and there are a number of socially acceptable ways to do it. Most of us rarely go anywhere without our phone. People overlap relationships so they’re never single, or spend every moment with their housemates, or commit almost every waking hour of the day to being ‘at work’ (either physically or virtually, via Gmail and Slack). Ever heard of eating your feelings? We can eat, smoke or drink our way through every challenging emotion. We find creative and, in many cases, perfectly inoffensive, ways to escape our thoughts. You would never think of someone as insane for checking their phone every two minutes, or working past midnight, or arranging Hinge dates every free weeknight. Socially, we look down on drug addicts or alcoholics, all the while pretending we’re not battling an addiction in a comparable (albeit more socially acceptable) way. We curse our butterfly-brains and our TikTok addiction but continue to ignore what we actually need to address. Such is the nature of modern-day life that we’re unlikely to spend much time really alone unless we actively seek it out: going for a solitary swim, staring at a wall, meditating, journalling. Or, you know, sitting in a café just drinking coffee. Like a psychopath. The entrance fee to alonement We’ve got to a place where so many of us are not on speaking terms with our innermost thoughts, and that’s a problem – not least because sitting with your own thoughts is a basic requirement for alonement. I don’t mean hour upon hour of rumination. No one’s telling you to go and sit alone on a rock in the middle of the Brecon Beacons. Hell, even I don’t want to go and sit alone on a rock in the middle of the Brecon Beacons. So here are some more achievable, everyday alternatives: Walk the 20 minutes to your nearest train station without headphones on. Spend the first hour of your day without looking at your phone. Ban yourself from snacking for a day. Disable WhatsApp during working hours. Go for a night out without drinking. Baby steps, maybe, but you may well be surprised by how uncomfortable you find following these not-so-radical suggestions, as you begin to feel your feelings instead of drowning them. Interestingly, this is something so many of us were forced to do in the depths of lockdown. With so many of our typical offline distractions, from shopping in person to socialising, holidays and clubbing, off the cards for a while, it seems that tech (after a few ill-advised eight-hour stints) did not ultimately suffice as a distraction, and we were forced to introspect – for better or for worse. The good news is that, once you start practising tuning in to your own thoughts, you open yourself up to a whole lot of fringe benefits. To take a handful, you’ll start to: Think consciously and positively about what you want to do with your alone time Maintain a sense of self outside of your relationships Reveal the creative potential of being in your own mind Experience ‘flow’ in activities you love Enjoy situations that will inevitably entail some substantial time in your own head, like going to a restaurant alone or solo travel Retreat – peacefully and comfortably – into the sanctuary of your own mind, even in busy scenarios. (On my Alonement podcast, former Blue Peter presenter and children’s author Konnie Huq said she’s able to ‘be alone’ in her own mind. If that isn’t a superpower, I don’t know what is.) Sounds compelling, doesn’t it? Now for the bad news. Sadly, the process often isn’t as clear-cut as simply being alone with your own thoughts and realising, ‘Hey, this isn’t so bad!’ Like cold-water swimming, sitting with your own thoughts often involves not just jumping in, but also thrashing around for a bit until you warm up. Psychologist Shahroo Izadi agrees with me. She describes sitting with your own thoughts as ‘the first step in reframing being alone’. Yet she acknowledges that, once you opt for the ‘own thou	406,889
Desert Solitaire (Edward Abbey) (Z-Library).pdf	Desert Solitaire A Season in the Wilderness Edward Abbey Copyright Desert Solitaire Copyright © 1968 by Edward Abbey, renewed 1996 by Clarke Abbey Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York. ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795317484 for Josh and Aaron Contents Author’s Introduction The First Morning Solitaire The Serpents of Paradise Cliffrose and Bayonets Polemic: Industrial Tourism and the National Parks Rocks Cowboys and Indians Cowboys and Indians Part II Water The Heat of Noon: Rock and Tree and Cloud The Moon-Eyed Horse Down the River Havasu The Dead Man at Grandview Point Tukuhnikivats, the Island in the Desert Episodes and Visions Terra Incognita: Into the Maze Bedrock and Paradox AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION About ten years ago I took a job as a seasonal park ranger in a place called Arches National Monument near the little town of Moab in southeast Utah. Why I went there no longer matters; what I found there is the subject of this book. My job began on the first of April and ended on the last day of September. I liked the work and the canyon country and returned the following year for a second season. I would have returned the third year too and each year thereafter but unfortunately for me the Arches, a primitive place when I first went there, was developed and improved so well that I had to leave. But after a number of years I returned anyway, traveling full circle, and stayed for a third season. In this way I was better able to appreciate the changes which had been made during my absence. Those were all good times, especially the first two seasons when the tourist business was poor and the time passed extremely slowly, as time should pass, with the days lingering and long, spacious and free as the summers of childhood. There was time enough for once to do nothing, or next to nothing, and most of the substance of this book is drawn, sometimes direct and unchanged, from the pages of the journals I kept and filled through the undivided, seamless days of those marvelous summers. The remainder of the book consists of digressions and excursions into ideas and places that border in varied ways upon that central season in the canyonlands. This is not primarily a book about the desert. In recording my impressions of the natural scene I have striven above all for accuracy, since I believe that there is a kind of poetry, even a kind of truth, in simple fact. But the desert is a vast world, an oceanic world, as deep in its way and complex and various as the sea. Language makes a mighty loose net with which to go fishing for simple facts, when facts are infinite. If a man knew enough he could write a whole book about the juniper tree. Not juniper trees in general but that one particular juniper tree which grows from a ledge of naked sandstone near the old entrance to Arches National Monument. What I have tried to do then is something a bit different. Since you cannot get the desert into a book any more than a fisherman can haul up the sea with his nets, I have tried to create a world of words in which the desert figures more as medium than as material. Not imitation but evocation has been the goal. Aside from this modest pretension the book is fairly plain and straight. Certain faults will be obvious to the general reader, of course, and for these I wish to apologize. I quite agree that much of the book will seem coarse, rude, bad-tempered, violently prejudiced, unconstructive—even frankly antisocial in its point of view. Serious critics, serious librarians, serious associate professors of English will if they read this work dislike it intensely;. at least I hope so. To others I can only say that if the book has virtues they cannot be disentangled from the faults; that there is a way of being wrong which is also sometimes necessarily right. It will be objected that the book deals too much with mere appearances, with the surface of things, and fails to engage and reveal the patterns of unifying relationships which form the true underlying reality of existence. Here I must confess that I know nothing whatever about true underlying reality, having never met any. There are many people who say they have, I know, but they’ve been luckier than I. For my own part I am pleased enough with surfaces—in fact they alone seem to me to be of much importance. Such things for example as the grasp of a child’s hand in your own, the flavor of an apple, the embrace of friend or lover, the silk of a girl’s thigh, the sunlight on rock and leaves, the feel of music, the bark of a tree, the abrasion of granite and sand, the plunge of clear water into a pool, the face of the wind—what else is there? What else do we need? Regrettably I have found it unavoidable to write some harsh words about my seasonal employer the National Park Service, Department of the Interior, United States Government. Even the Government itself has not entirely escaped censure. I wish to point out therefore that the Park Service has labored under severe pressure from powerful forces for many decades and that under the circumstances and so far it has done its work rather well. As governmental agencies go the Park Service is a good one, far superior to most. This I attribute not to the administrators of the Park Service—like administrators everywhere they are distinguished chiefly by their ineffable mediocrity—but to the actual working rangers and naturalists in the field, the majority of whom are capable, honest, dedicated men. Pre-eminent among those I have known personally is Mr. Bates Wilson of Moab, Utah, who might justly be considered the founder of Canyonlands National Park. He cannot be held responsible for any of the opinions expressed herein, but he is responsible for much of what understanding I have of a country we both love. A note on names. All of the persons and places mentioned in this book are or were real. However for the sake of their privacy I have invented fictitious names for some of the people I once knew in the Moab area and in a couple of cases relocated them in space and time. Those who read this will, I hope, understand and forgive me; the others will not mind. Finally a word of caution: Do not jump into your automobile next June and rush out to the canyon country hoping to see some of that which I have attempted to evoke in these pages. In the first place you can’t see anything from a car; you’ve got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you’ll see something, maybe. Probably not. In the second place most of what I write about in this book is already gone or going under fast. This is not a travel guide but an elegy. A memorial. You’re holding a tombstone in your hands. A bloody rock. Don’t drop it on your foot—throw it at something big and glassy. What do you have to lose? E. A. April 1967 Nelson’s Marine Bar Hoboken Give me silence, water, hope Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes —Neruda THE FIRST MORNING This is the most beautiful place on earth. There are many such places. Every man, every woman, carries in heart and mind the image of the ideal place, the right place, the one true home, known or unknown, actual or visionary. A houseboat in Kashmir, a view down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, a gray gothic farmhouse two stories high at the end of a red dog road in the Allegheny Mountains, a cabin on the shore of a blue lake in spruce and fir country, a greasy alley near the Hoboken waterfront, or even, possibly, for those of a less demanding sensibility, the world to be seen from a comfortable apartment high in the tender, velvety smog of Manhattan, Chicago, Paris, Tokyo, Rio or Rome—there’s no limit to the human capacity for the homing sentiment. Theologians, sky pilots, astronauts have even felt the appeal of home calling to them from up above, in the cold black outback of interstellar space. For myself I’ll take Moab, Utah. I don’t mean the town itself, of course, but the country which surrounds it—the canyonlands. The slickrock desert. The red dust and the burnt cliffs and the lonely sky —all that which lies beyond the end of the roads. The choice became apparent to me this morning when I stepped out of a Park Service housetrailer—my caravan—to watch for the first time in my life the sun come up over the hoodoo stone of Arches National Monument. I wasn’t able to see much of it last night. After driving all day from Albuquerque—450 miles—I reached Moab after dark in cold, windy, clouded weather. At park headquarters north of town I met the superintendent and the chief ranger, the only permanent employees, except for one maintenance man, in this particular unit of America’s national park system. After coffee they gave me a key to the housetrailer and directions on how to reach it; I am required to live and work not at headquarters but at this one-man station some twenty miles back in the interior, on my own. The way I wanted it, naturally, or I’d never have asked for the job. Leaving the headquarters area and the lights of Moab, I drove twelve miles farther north on the highway until I came to a dirt road on the right, where a small wooden sign pointed the way: Arches National Monument Eight Miles. I left the pavement, turned east into the howling wilderness. Wind roaring out of the northwest, black clouds across the stars—all I could see were clumps of brush and scattered junipers along the roadside. Then another modest signboard: WARNING: QUICKSAND DO NOT CROSS WASH WHEN WATER IS RUNNING The wash looked perfectly dry in my headlights. I drove down, across, up the other side and on into the night. Glimpses of weird humps of pale rock on either side, like petrified elephants, dinosaurs, stone-age hobgoblins. Now and then something alive scurried across the road: kangaroo mice, a jackrabbit, an animal that looked like a cross between a raccoon and a squirrel—the ringtail cat. Farther on a pair of mule deer started from the brush and bounded obliquely through the beams of my lights, raising puffs of dust which the wind, moving faster than my pickup truck, caught and carried ahead of me out of sight into the dark. The road, narrow and rocky, twisted sharply left and right, dipped in and out of tight ravines, climbing by degrees toward a summit which I would see only in the light of the coming day. Snow was swirling through the air when I crossed the unfenced line and passed the boundary marker of the park. A quarter-mile beyond I found the ranger station—a wide place in the road, an informational display under a lean-to shelter, and fifty yards away the little tin government housetrailer where I would be living for the next six months. A cold night, a cold wind, the snow falling like confetti. In the lights of the truck I unlocked the housetrailer, got out bedroll and baggage and moved in. By flashlight I found the bed, unrolled my sleeping bag, pulled off my boots and crawled in and went to sleep at once. The last I knew was the shaking of the trailer in the wind and the sound, from inside, of hungry mice scampering around with the good news that their long lean lonesome winter was over—their friend and provider had finally arrived. This morning I awake before sunrise, stick my head out of the sack, peer through a frosty window at a scene dim and vague with flowing mists, dark fantastic shapes looming beyond. An unlikely landscape. I get up, moving about in long underwear and socks, stooping carefully under the low ceiling and lower doorways of the housetrailer, a machine for living built so efficiently and compactly there’s hardly room for a man to breathe. An iron lung it is, with windows and Venetian blinds. The mice are silent, watching me from their hiding places, but the wind is still blowing and outside the ground is covered with snow. Cold as a tomb, a jail, a cave; I lie down on the dusty floor, on the cold linoleum sprinkled with mouse turds, and light the pilot on the butane heater. Once this thing gets going the place warms up fast, in a dense unhealthy way, with a layer of heat under the ceiling where my head is and nothing but frigid air from the knees down. But we’ve got all the indispensable conveniences: gas cookstove, gas refrigerator, hot water heater, sink with running water (if the pipes aren’t frozen), storage cabinets and shelves, everything within arm’s reach of everything else. The gas comes from two steel bottles in a shed outside; the water comes by gravity flow from a tank buried in a hill close by. Quite luxurious for the wilds. There’s even a shower stall and a flush toilet with a dead rat in the bowl. Pretty soft. My poor mother raised five children without any of these luxuries and might be doing without them yet if it hadn’t been for Hitler, war and general prosperity. Time to get dressed, get out and have a look at the lay of the land, fix a breakfast. I try to pull on my boots but they’re stiff as iron from the cold. I light a burner on the stove and hold the boots upside down above the flame until they are malleable enough to force my feet into. I put on a coat and step outside. Into the center of the world, God’s navel, Abbey’s country, the red wasteland. The sun is not yet in sight but signs of the advent are plain to see. Lavender clouds sail like a fleet of ships across the pale green dawn; each cloud, planed flat on the wind, has a base of fiery gold. Southeast, twenty miles by line of sight, stand the peaks of the Sierra La Sal, twelve to thirteen thousand feet above sea level, all covered with snow and rosy in the morning sunlight. The air is dry and clear as well as cold; the last fogbanks left over from last night’s storm are scudding away like ghosts, fading into nothing before the wind and the sunrise. The view is open and perfect in all directions except to the west where the ground rises and the skyline is only a few hundred yards away. Looking toward the mountains I can see the dark gorge of the Colorado River five or six miles away, carved through the sandstone mesa, though nothing of the river itself down inside the gorge. Southward, on the far side of the river, lies the Moab valley between thousand-foot walls of rock, with the town of Moab somewhere on the valley floor, too small to be seen from here. Beyond the Moab valley is more canyon and tableland stretching away to the Blue Mountains fifty miles south. On the north and northwest I see the Roan Cliffs and the Book Cliffs, the two-level face of the Uinta Plateau. Along the foot of those cliffs, maybe thirty miles off, invisible from where I stand, runs U.S. 6–50, a major east-west artery of commerce, traffic and rubbish, and the main line of the Denver-Rio Grande Railroad. To the east, under the spreading sunrise, are more mesas, more canyons, league on league of red cliff and arid tablelands, extending through purple haze over the bulging curve of the planet to the ranges of Colorado—a sea of desert. Within this vast perimeter, in the middle ground and foreground of the picture, a rather personal demesne, are the 33,000 acres of Arches National Monument of which I am now sole inhabitant, usufructuary, observer and custodian. What are the Arches? From my place in front of the housetrailer I can see several of the hundred or more of them which have been discovered in the park. These are natural arches, holes in the rock, windows in stone, no two alike, as varied in form as in dimension. They range in size from holes just big enough to walk through to openings large enough to contain the dome of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Some resemble jug handles or flying buttresses, others natural bridges but with this technical distinction: a natural bridge spans a watercourse—a natural arch does not. The arches were formed through hundreds of thousands of years by the weathering of the huge sandstone walls, or fins, in which they are found. Not the work of a cosmic hand, nor sculptured by sand- bearing winds, as many people prefer to believe, the arches came into being and continue to come into being through the modest wedging action of rainwater, melting snow, frost, and ice, aided by gravity. In color they shade from off-white through buff, pink, brown and red, tones which also change with the time of day and the moods of the light, the weather, the sky. Standing there, gaping at this monstrous and inhuman spectacle of rock and cloud and sky and space, I feel a ridiculous greed and possessiveness come over me. I want to know it all, possess it all, embrace the entire scene intimately, deeply, totally, as a man desires a beautiful woman. An insane wish? Perhaps not—at least there’s nothing else, no one human, to dispute possession with me. The snow-covered ground glimmers with a dull blue light, reflecting the sky and the approaching sunrise. Leading away from me the narrow dirt road, an alluring and primitive track into nowhere, meanders down the slope and toward the heart of the labyrinth of naked stone. Near the first group of arches, looming over a bend in the road, is a balanced rock about fifty feet high, mounted on a pedestal of equal height; it looks like a head from Easter Island, a stone god or a petrified ogre. Like a god, like an ogre? The personification of the natural is exactly the tendency I wish to suppress in myself, to eliminate for good. I am here not only to evade for a while the clamor and filth and confusion of the cultural apparatus but also to confront, immediately and directly if it’s possible, the bare bones of existence, the elemental and fundamental, the bedrock which sustains us. I want to be able to look at and into a juniper tree, a piece of quartz, a vulture, a spider, and see it as it is in itself, devoid of all humanly ascribed qualities, anti-Kantian, even the categories of scientific description. To meet God or Medusa face to face, even if it means risking everything human in myself. I dream of a hard and brutal mysticism in which the naked self merges with a nonhuman world and yet somehow survives still intact, individual, separate. Paradox and bedrock. Well—the sun will be up in a few minutes and I haven’t even begun to make coffee. I take more baggage from my pickup, the grub box and cooking gear, go back in the trailer and start breakfast. Simply breathing, in a place like this, arouses the appetite. The orange juice is frozen, the milk slushy with ice. Still chilly enough inside the trailer to turn my breath to vapor. When the first rays of the sun strike the cliffs I fill a mug with steaming coffee and sit in the doorway facing the sunrise, hungry for the warmth. Suddenly it comes, the flaming globe, blazing on the pinnacles and minarets and balanced rocks, on the canyon walls and through the windows in the sandstone fins. We greet each other, sun and I, across the black void of ninety-three million miles. The snow glitters between us, acres of diamonds almost painful to look at. Within an hour all the snow exposed to the sunlight will be gone and the rock will be damp and steaming. Within minutes, even as I watch, melting snow begins to drip from the branches of a juniper nearby; drops of water streak slowly down the side of the trailerhouse. I am not alone after all. Three ravens are wheeling near the balanced rock, squawking at each other and at the dawn. I’m sure they’re as delighted by the return of the sun as I am and I wish I knew the language. I’d sooner exchange ideas with the birds on earth than learn to carry on intergalactic communications with some obscure race of humanoids on a satellite planet from the world of Betelgeuse. First things first. The ravens cry out in husky voices, blue-black wings flapping against the golden sky. Over my shoulder comes the sizzle and smell of frying bacon. That’s the way it was this morning. SOLITAIRE Still the first day, All Fools’ Day, here at the Center. Merle McRae and Floyd Bence—the superintendent and the chief ranger—appear at noon, bringing me five hundred gallons of water in a tank truck and a Park Service pickup truck outfitted with shortwave radio, fire tools, climbing rope, shovel, tow chain, first aid kit, stretcher, axe, etc.; the pickup and its equipment they will leave with me. I am to use it in patrolling the roads within the park, for assisting tourists in trouble, and for hauling firewood to and garbage from the campgrounds. Once a week I may drive the government vehicle to headquarters and Moab for fuel and supplies. We fill the water tank buried in the slope above the housetrailer and have lunch together in the sunshine, sitting at a wooden picnic table near my doorway. Merle the super, the boss, is a slender, graceful man of about fifty years, with a fine, grave, expressive face toughened though not hardened by a life spent mostly out-of-doors. He was born and raised on a small ranch in New Mexico, went to the University of Virginia, and has made his living as a cattle rancher, dude rancher, CCC supervisor (during the Great Depression) and, since 1940, as a ranger in the National Park Service. He gives me an impression of tenderness, generosity and imperturbable good humor, but also complains, gently, of the hypothetical ulcer he expects to acquire from his years of struggle with administrative paper work. Married, he has three children; the oldest boy attends the University of Utah. Floyd Bence is a tall powerful man around thirty years old, an archeologist by training, married, with two children. Because of his interests and academic background he should be working at some place like Mesa Verde or Chaco Canyon, poking about in dusty ruins, but is happy enough with his present situation so long as he is free to spend at least part of his time outside the office; the two things he dreads most, as a Park Service career man, are promotion to a responsible high-salaried administrative position, and a transfer back East to one of the cannonball parks like Appomattox or Gettysburg or Ticonderoga. Like myself he’d rather go hungry in the West than flourish and fatten in the Siberian East. A violent prejudice, doomed to disappointment. But at the moment, in the sparkling air and brilliant sunlight of the Utah desert, bad news seems far away. “Well, Ranger Abbey,” says Merle, “how do you like it out here in the middle of nowhere?” I said it was okay by me. They smile. “Kind of lonesome?” Floyd asks. I said it was all right. After lunch we get into the cab of the government pickup, all three of us, and tour the park. Arches National Monument remains at this time what the Park Service calls an undeveloped area, although to me it appears quite adequately developed. The roads, branching out, lead to within easy walking distance of most of the principal arches, none more than two miles beyond the end of a road. The roads are not paved, true, but are easily passable to any automobile except during or immediately after a rainstorm. The trails are well marked, easy to follow; you’d have to make an effort to get lost. There are three small camp grounds, each with tables, fireplaces, garbage cans and pit toilets. (Bring your own water.) We even supply the firewood, in the form of pinyon pine logs and old fence posts of cedar, which it will be my task to find and haul to the campgrounds. We drive the dirt roads and walk out some of the trails. Everything is lovely and wild, with a virginal sweetness. The arches themselves, strange, impressive, grotesque, form but a small and inessential part of the general beauty of this country. When we think of rock we usually think of stones, broken rock, buried under soil and plant life, but here all is exposed and naked, dominated by the monolithic formations of sandstone which stand above the surface of the ground and extend for miles, sometimes level, sometimes tilted or warped by pressures from below, carved by erosion and weathering into an intricate maze of glens, grottoes, fissures, passageways, and deep narrow canyons. At first look it all seems like a geologic chaos, but there is method at work here, method of a fanatic order and perseverance: each groove in the rock leads to a natural channel of some kind, every channel to a ditch and gulch and ravine, each larger waterway to a canyon bottom or broad wash leading in turn to the Colorado River and the sea. As predicted, the snowfall has disappeared by this time and all watercourses in the park are dry except for the one spring-fed perennial stream known as Salt Creek, a glassy flow inches deep that trickles over shoals of quicksand and between mud flats covered with white crusts of alkali. Though it looks potable the water is too saline for human consumption; horses and cattle can drink it but not men. Or so I am informed by Merle and Floyd. I choose to test their belief by experiment. Squatting on the shore of the stream, I dip my cupped hands into the water and sample a little. Pretty bad, neither potable nor palatable. Perhaps, I suggest, a man could learn to drink this water by taking only a little each day, gradually increasing the dosage…? “You try that,” says Merle. “Yeah,” Floyd says, “give us a report at the end of the summer.” Late this afternoon we return to the housetrailer. Floyd lends me a park ranger shirt which he says he doesn’t need anymore and which I am to wear in lieu of a uniform, so as to give me an official sort of aspect when meeting the tourists. Then there’s this silver badge I’m supposed to pin to the shirt. The badge gives me the authority to arrest malefactors and evildoers, Floyd explains. Or anyone at all, for that matter. I place both Floyd and Merle under arrest at once, urging them to stay and have supper with me. I’ve got a big pot of pinto beans simmering on the stove. But they won’t stay, they have promises to keep and must leave, and soon they’re driving off in the water-truck over the rocky road to the highway and Moab. Climbing the rise behind the housetrailer I watch them go, the truck visible for a mile or so before the road winds deeper into the complex of sand dunes, corraded monoliths and hogback ridges to the west. Beyond the highway, about ten miles away, rise the talus slopes and vertical red walls of Dead Horse Mesa, a flat-topped uninhabited island in the sky which extends for thirty miles north and south between the convergent canyons of the Green and Colorado rivers. Public domain. Above the mesa the sun hangs behind streaks and streamers of wind-whipped clouds. More storms coming. But for the time being, around my place at least, the air is untroubled, and I become aware for the first time today of the immense silence in which I am lost. Not a silence so much as a great stillness—for there are a few sounds: the creak of some bird in a juniper tree, an eddy of wind which passes and fades like a sigh, the ticking of the watch on my wrist—slight noises which break the sensation of absolute silence but at the same time exaggerate my sense of the surrounding, overwhelming peace. A suspension of time, a continuous present. If I look at the small device strapped to my wrist the numbers, even the sweeping second hand, seem meaningless, almost ridiculous. No travelers, no campers, no wanderers have come to this part of the desert today and for a few moments I feel and realize that I am very much alone. There is nothing to do but return to the trailer, open a can of beer, eat my supper. Afterwards I put on hat and coat and go outside again, sit on the table, and watch the sky and the desert dissolve slowly into mystery under the chemistry of twilight. We need a fire. I range around the trailer, pick up some dead sticks from under the junipers and build a little squaw fire, for company. Dark clouds sailing overhead across the fields of the stars. Stars which are unusually bold and close, with an icy glitter in their light —glints of blue, emerald, gold. Out there, spread before me to the south, east, and north, the arches and cliffs and pinnacles and balanced rocks of sandstone (now entrusted to my care) have lost the rosy glow of sunset and become soft, intangible, in unnamed unnamable shades of violet, colors that seem to radiate from—not overlay—their surfaces. A yellow planet floats on the west, brightest object in the sky. Venus. I listen closely for the call of an owl, a dove, a nighthawk, but can hear only the crackle of my fire, a breath of wind. The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante’s paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn. The little fire wavers, flickers, begins to die. I break another branch of juniper over my knee and add the fragments to the heap of coals. A wisp of bluish smoke goes up and the wood, arid as the rock from which it came, blossoms out in fire. Go thou my incense upward from this hearth And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. I wait and watch, guarding the desert, the arches, the sand and barren rock, the isolated junipers and scattered clumps of sage surrounding me in stillness and simplicity under the starlight. Again the fire begins to fail. Letting it die, I take my walking stick and go for a stroll down the road into the thickening darkness. I have a flashlight with me but will not use it unless I hear some sign of animal life worthy of investigation. The flashlight, or electrical torch as the English call it, is a useful instrument in certain situations but I can see the road well enough without it. Better, in fact. There’s another disadvantage to the use of the flashlight: like many other mechanical gadgets it tends to separate a man from the world around him. If I switch it on my eyes adapt to it and I can see only the small pool of light which it makes in front of me; I am isolated. Leaving the flashlight in my pocket where it belongs, I remain a part of the environment I walk through and my vision though limited has no sharp or definite boundary. This peculiar limitation of the machine becomes doubly apparent when I return to the housetrailer. I’ve decided to write a letter (to myself) before going to bed, and rather than use a candle for light I’m going to crank up the old generator. The generator is a small four-cylinder gasoline engine mounted on a wooden block not far from the trailer. Much too close, I’d say. I open the switch, adjust the choke, engage the crank and heave it around. The engine sputters, gasps, catches fire, gains momentum, winds up into a roar, valves popping, rockers thumping, pistons hissing up and down inside their oiled jackets. Fine: power surges into the wiring, the light bulbs inside the trailer begin to glow, brighten, becoming incandescent. The lights are so bright I can’t see a thing and have to shade my eyes as I stumble toward the open door of the trailer. Nor can I hear anything but the clatter of the generator. I am shut off from the natural world and sealed up, encapsulated, in a box of artificial light and tyrannical noise. Once inside the trailer my senses adjust to the new situation and soon enough, writing the letter, I lose awareness of the lights and the whine of the motor. But I have cut myself off completely from the greater world which surrounds the man-made shell. The desert and the night are pushed back—I can no longer participate in them or observe; I have exchanged a great and unbounded world for a small, comparatively meager one. By choice, certainly; the exchange is temporarily convenient and can be reversed whenever I wish. Finishing the letter I go outside and close the switch on the generator. The light bulbs dim and disappear, the furious gnashing of pistons whimpers to a halt. Standing by the inert and helpless engine, I hear its last vibrations die like ripples on a pool somewhere far out on the tranquil sea of desert, somewhere beyond Delicate Arch, beyond the Yellow Cat badlands, beyond the shadow line. I wait. Now the night flows back, the mighty stillness embraces and includes me; I can see the stars again and the world of starlight. I am twenty miles or more from the nearest fellow human, but instead of loneliness I feel loveliness. Loveliness and a quiet exultation. THE SERPENTS OF PARADISE The April mornings are bright, clear and calm. Not until the afternoon does the wind begin to blow, raising dust and sand in funnel-shaped twisters that spin across the desert briefly, like dancers, and then collapse—whirlwinds from which issue no voice or word except the forlorn moan of the elements under stress. After the reconnoitering dust-devils comes the real the serious wind, the voice of the desert rising to a demented howl and blotting out sky and sun behind yellow clouds of dust, sand, confusion, embattled birds, last year’s scrub-oak leaves, pollen, the husks of locusts, bark of juniper.… Time of the red eye, the sore and bloody nostril, the sand-pitted windshield, if one is foolish enough to drive his car into such a storm. Time to sit indoors and continue that letter which is never finished—while the fine dust forms neat little windrows under the edge of the door and on the windowsills. Yet the springtime winds are as much a part of the canyon country as the silence and the glamorous distances; you learn, after a number of years, to love them also. The mornings therefore, as I started to say and meant to say, are all the sweeter in the knowledge of what the afternoon is likely to bring. Before beginning the morning chores I like to sit on the sill of my doorway, bare feet planted on the bare ground and a mug of hot coffee in hand, facing the sunrise. The air is gelid, not far above freezing, but the butane heater inside the trailer keeps my back warm, the rising sun warms the front, and the coffee warms the interior. Perhaps this is the loveliest hour of the day, though it’s hard to choose. Much depends on the season. In midsummer the sweetest hour begins at sundown, after the awful heat of the afternoon. But now, in April, we’ll take the opposite, that hour beginning with the sunrise. The birds, returning from wherever they go in winter, seem inclined to agree. The pinyon jays are whirling in garrulous, gregarious flocks from one stunted tree to the next and back again, erratic exuberant games without any apparent practical function. A few big ravens hang around and croak harsh clanking statements of smug satisfaction from the rimrock, lifting their greasy wings now and then to probe for lice. I can hear but seldom see the canyon wrens singing their distinctive song from somewhere up on the cliffs: a flutelike descent—never ascent—of the whole-tone scale. Staking out new nesting claims, I understand. Also invisible but invariably present at some indefinable distance are the mourning doves whose plaintive call suggests irresistibly a kind of seeking-out, the attempt by separated souls to restore a lost communion: Hello… they seem to cry, who… are… you? And the reply from a different quarter. Hello… (pause) where… are… you? No doubt this line of analogy must be rejected. It’s foolish and unfair to impute to the doves, with serious concerns of their own, an interest in questions more appropriate to their human kin. Yet their song, if not a mating call or a warning, must be what it sounds like, a brooding meditation on space, on solitude. The game. Other birds, silent, which I have not yet learned to identify, are also lurking in the vicinity, watching me. What the ornithologist terms l.g.b.’s—little gray birds—they flit about from point to point on noiseless wings, their origins obscure. As mentioned before, I share the housetrailer with a number of mice. I don’t know how many but apparently only a few, perhaps a single family. They don’t disturb me and are welcome to my crumbs and leavings. Where they came from, how they got into the trailer, how they survived before my arrival (for the trailer had been locked up for six months), these are puzzling matters I am not prepared to resolve. My only reservation concerning the mice is that they do attract rattlesnakes. I’m sitting on my doorstep early one morning, facing the sun as usual, drinking coffee, when I happen to look down and see almost between my bare feet, only a couple of inches to the rear of my heels, the very thing I had in mind. No mistaking that wedgelike head, that tip of horny segmented tail peeping out of the coils. He’s under the doorstep and in the shade where the ground and air remain very cold. In his sluggish condition he’s not likely to strike unless I rouse him by some careless move of my own. There’s a revolver inside the trailer, a huge British Webley .45, loaded, but it’s out of reach. Even if I had it in my hands I’d hesitate to blast a fellow creature at such close range, shooting between my own legs at a living target flat on solid rock thirty inches away. It would be like murder; and where would I set my coffee? My cherrywood walking stick leans against the trailerhouse wall only a few feet away but I’m afraid that in leaning over for it I might stir up the rattler or spill some hot coffee on his scales. Other considerations come to mind. Arches National Monument is meant to be among other things a sanctuary for wildlife—for all forms of wildlife. It is my duty as a park ranger to protect, preserve and defend all living things within the park boundaries, making no exceptions. Even if this were not the case I have personal convictions to uphold. Ideals, you might say. I prefer not to kill animals. I’m a humanist; I’d rather kill a man than a snake. What to do. I drink some more coffee and study the dormant reptile at my heels. It is not after all the mighty diamondback, Crotalus atrox, I’m confronted with but a smaller species known locally as the horny rattler or more precisely as the Faded Midget. An insulting name for a rattlesnake, which may explain the Faded Midget’s alleged bad temper. But the name is apt: he is small and dusty-looking, with a little knob above each eye—the horns. His bite though temporarily disabling would not likely kill a full-grown man in normal health. Even so I don’t really want him around. Am I to be compelled to put on boots or shoes every time I wish to step outside? The scorpions, tarantulas, centipedes, and black widows are nuisance enough. I finish my coffee, lean back and swing my feet up and inside the doorway of the trailer. At once there is a buzzing sound from below and the rattler lifts his head from his coils, eyes brightening, and extends his narrow black tongue to test the air. After thawing out my boots over the gas flame I pull them on and come back to the doorway. My visitor is still waiting beneath the doorstep, basking in the sun, fully alert. The trailerhouse has two doors. I leave by the other and get a long-handled spade out of the bed of the government pickup. With this tool I scoop the snake into the open. He strikes; I can hear the click of the fangs against steel, see the stain of venom. He wants to stand and fight, but I am patient; I insist on herding him well away from the trailer. On guard, head aloft—that evil slit-eyed weaving head shaped like the ace of spades—tail whirring, the rattler slithers sideways, retreating slowly before me until he reaches the shelter of a sandstone slab. He backs under it. You better stay there, cousin, I warn him; if I catch you around the trailer again I’ll chop your head off. A week later he comes back. If not him, his twin brother. I spot him one morning under the trailer near the kitchen drain, waiting for a mouse. I have to keep my promise. This won’t do. If there are midget rattlers in the area there may be diamondbacks too—five, six or seven feet long, thick as a man’s wrist, dangerous. I don’t want them camping under my home. It looks as though I’ll have to trap the mice. However, before being forced to take that step I am lucky enough to capture a gopher snake. Burning garbage one morning at the park dump, I see a long slender yellow-brown snake emerge from a mound of old tin cans and plastic picnic plates and take off down the sandy bed of a gulch. There is a burlap sack in the cab of the truck which I carry when plucking Kleenex flowers from the brush and cactus along the road; I grab that and my stick, run after the snake and corner it beneath the exposed roots of a bush. Making sure it’s a gopher snake and not something less useful, I open the neck of the sack and with a great deal of coaxing and prodding get the snake into it. The gopher snake, Drymarchon corais couperi, or bull snake, has a reputation as the enemy of rattlesnakes, destroying or driving them away whenever encountered. Hoping to domesticate this sleek, handsome and docile reptile, I release him inside the trailerhouse and keep him there for several days. Should I attempt to feed him? I decide against it—let him eat mice. What little water he may need can also be extracted from the flesh of his prey. The gopher snake and I get along nicely. During the day he curls up like a cat in the warm corner behind the heater and at night he goes about his business. The mice, singularly quiet for a change, make themselves scarce. The snake is passive, apparently contented, and makes no resistance when I pick him up with my hands and drape him over an arm or around my neck. When I take him outside into the wind and sunshine his favorite place seems to be inside my shirt, where he wraps himself around my waist and rests on my belt. In this position he sometimes sticks his head out between shirt buttons for a survey of the weather, astonishing and delighting any tourists who may happen to be with me at the time. The scales of a snake are dry and smooth, quite pleasant to the touch. Being a cold- blooded creature, of course, he takes his temperature from that of the immediate environment—in this case my body. We are compatible. From my point of view, friends. After a week of close association I turn him loose on the warm sandstone at my doorstep and leave for a patrol of the park. At noon when I return he is gone. I search everywhere beneath, nearby and inside the trailerhouse, but my companion has disappeared. Has he left the area entirely or is he hiding somewhere close by? At any rate I am troubled no more by rattlesnakes under the door. The snake story is not yet ended. In the middle of May, about a month after the gopher snake’s disappearance, in the evening of a very hot day, with all the rosy desert cooling like a griddle with the fire turned off, he reappears. This time with a mate. I’m in the stifling heat of the trailer opening a can of beer, barefooted, about to go outside and relax after a hard day watching cloud formations. I happen to glance out the little window near the refrigerator and see two gopher snakes on my verandah engaged in what seems to be a kind of ritual dance. Like a living caduceus they wind and unwind about each other in undulant, graceful, perpetual motion, moving slowly across a dome of sandstone. Invisible but tangible as music is the passion which joins them—sexual? combative? both? A shameless voyeur, I stare at the lovers, and then to get a closer view run outside and around the trailer to the back. There I get down on hands and knees and creep toward the dancing snakes, not wanting to frighten or disturb them. I crawl to within six feet of them and stop, flat on my belly, watching from the snake’s- eye level. Obsessed with their ballet, the serpents seem unaware of my presence. The two gopher snakes are nearly identical in length and coloring; I cannot be certain that either is actually my former household pet. I cannot even be sure that they are male and female, though their performance resembles so strongly a pas de deux by formal lovers. They intertwine and separate, glide side by side in perfect congruence, turn like mirror images of each other and glide back again, wind and unwind again. This is the basic pattern but there is a variation: at regular intervals the snakes elevate their heads, facing one another, as high as they can go, as if each is trying to outreach or overawe the other. Their heads and bodies rise, higher and higher, then topple together and the rite goes on. I crawl after them, determined to see the whole thing. Suddenly and simultaneously they discover me, prone on my belly a few feet away. The dance stops. After a moment’s pause the two snakes come straight toward me, still in flawless unison, straight toward my face, the forked tongues flickering, their intense wild yellow eyes staring directly into my eyes. For an instant I am paralyzed by wonder; then, stung by a fear too ancient and powerful to overcome I scramble back, rising to my knees. The snakes veer and turn and race away from me in parallel motion, their lean elegant bodies making a soft hissing noise as they slide over the sand and stone. I follow them for a short distance, still plagued by curiosity, before remembering my place and the requirements of common courtesy. For godsake let them go in peace, I tell myself. Wish them luck and (if lovers) innumerable offspring, a life of happily ever after. Not for their sake alone but for your own. In the long hot days and cool evenings to come I will not see the gopher snakes again. Nevertheless I will feel their presence watching over me like totemic deities, keeping the rattlesnakes far back in the brush where I like them best, cropping off the surplus mouse population, maintaining useful connections with the primeval. Sympathy, mutual aid, symbiosis, continuity. How can I descend to such anthropomorphism? Easily—but is it, in this case, entirely false? Perhaps not. I am not attributing human motives to my snake and bird acquaintances. I recognize that when and where they serve purposes of mine they do so for beautifully selfish reasons of their own. Which is exactly the way it should be. I suggest, however, that it’s a foolish, simple-minded rationalism which denies any form of emotion to all animals but man and his dog. This is no more justified than the Moslems are in denying souls to women. It seems to me possible, even probable, that many of the nonhuman undomesticated animals experience emotions unknown to us. What do the coyotes mean when they yodel at the moon? What are the dolphins trying so patiently to tell us? Precisely what did those two enraptured gopher snakes have in mind when they came gliding toward my eyes over the naked sandstone? If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it. They do not sweat and whine about their condition, They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins.… All men are brothers, we like to say, half-wishing sometimes in secret it were not true. But perhaps it is true. And is the evolutionary line from protozoan to Spinoza any less certain? That also may be true. We are obliged, therefore, to spread the news, painful and bitter though it may be for some to hear, that all living things on earth are kindred. CLIFFROSE AND BAYONETS May Day. A crimson sunrise streaked with gold flares out beyond Balanced Rock, beyond the arches and windows, beyond Grand Mesa in Colorado. Dawn winds are driving streamers of snow off the peaks of the Sierra La Sal and old man Tukuhnikivats, mightiest of mountains in the land of Moab, will soon be stripped bare to the granite if this wind doesn’t stop. Blue scarves of snow flying in the wind twenty miles away—you wouldn’t want to be up there now, as they say out here, 13,000 feet above the sea, with only your spurs on. In honor of the occasion I tack a scarlet bandanna to the ridgepole of the ramada, where my Chinese windbells also hang, jingling and jangling in the breeze. The red rag flutters brightly over the bells— poetry and revolution before breakfast. Afterwards I hoist the Stars and Stripes to the top of the flagpole up at the entrance station. Impartial and neutralist, taking no chances, I wish good fortune to both sides, good swill for all. Or conversely, depending on my mood of the moment, damn both houses and pox vobiscum. Swinish politics, our ball and chain. The gopher snake has deserted me, taking with him most of my mice, and the government trailerhouse is a lonely place this morning. Leaving the coffee to percolate slowly over the lowest possible flame, I take my cherrywood and go for a walk before breakfast. The wind blows sand in my teeth but also brings the scent of flowering cliffrose and a hint of mountain snow, more than adequate compensation. Time to inspect the garden. I refer to the garden which lies all around me, extending from here to the mountains, from here to the Book Cliffs, from here to Robbers’ Roost and Land’s End—an area about the size of the Negev and, excepting me and the huddled Moabites, uninhabited. Inventory. Great big yellow mule-ear sunflowers are blooming along the dirt road, where the drainage from the road provides an extra margin of water, a slight but significant difference. Growing among the sunflowers and scattered more thinly over the rest of the desert are the others: yellow borage, Indian paintbrush, scarlet penstemon, skyrocket gilia, prickly pear, hedgehog cactus, purple locoweed, the coral-red globemallow, dockweed, sand verbena. Loveliest of all, however, gay and sweet as a pretty girl, with a fragrance like that of orange blossoms, is the cliffrose, Cowania stansburiana, also known—by the anesthetic—as buckbrush or quinine bush. The cliffrose is a sturdy shrub with gnarled trunk and twisting branches, growing sometimes to twice a man’s height. When not in bloom it might not catch your eye; but after the winter snows and a trace of rain in the spring it comes on suddenly and gloriously like a swan, like a maiden, and the shaggy limbs go out of sight behind dense clusters of flowers creamy white or pale yellow, like wild roses, each with its five perfect petals and a golden center. There’s a cliffrose standing near the shed behind the trailer, shaking in the wind, a dazzling mass of blossoms, and another coming up out of solid sandstone beside the ramada, ten feet tall and clothed in a fire of flowers. If Housman were here he’d alter those lines to Loveliest of shrubs the cliffrose now Is hung with bloom along the bough… The word “shrub” presents a challenge, at least to such verse as this; but poetry is nothing if not exact. The poets lie too much, said Jeffers. Exactly. We insist on precision around here, though it bend the poesy a little out of shape. The cliffrose is practical as well as pretty. Concealed by the flowers at this time are the leaves, small, tough, wax-coated, bitter on the tongue—thus the name quinine bush—but popular just the same among the deer as browse when nothing better is available— buckbrush. The Indians too, a practical people, once used the bark of this plant for sandals, mats and rope, and the Hopi medicine man is said, even today, to mash and cook the leaves as an emetic for his patients. Because of its clouds of flowers the cliffrose is the showiest plant in the canyon country, but the most beautiful individual flower, most people would agree, is that of the cacti: the prickly pear, the hedgehog, the fishhook. Merely opinion, of course. But the various cactus flowers have earned the distinction claimed for them on the basis of their large size, their delicacy, their brilliance, and their transcience—they bloom, many of them, for one day only in each year. Is that a fair criterion of beauty? I don’t know. For myself I hold no preference among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. (Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!) The cactus flowers are all much alike, varying only in color within and among the different species. The prickly pear, for example, produces a flower that may be violet, saffron, or red. It is cup- shaped, filled with golden stamens that respond with sensitive, one might almost say sensual, tenderness to the entrance of a bee. This flower is indeed irresistibly attractive to insects; I have yet to look into one and not find a honeybee or bumblebee wallowing drunkenly inside, powdered with pollen, glutting itself on what must be a marvelous nectar. You can’t get them out of there—they won’t go home. I’ve done my best to annoy them, poking and prodding with a stem of grass, but a bee in a cactus bloom will not be provoked; it stays until the flower wilts. Until closing time. The true distinction of these flowers, I feel, is found in the contrast between the blossom and the plant which produces it. The cactus of the high desert is a small, grubby, obscure and humble vegetable associated with cattle dung and overgrazing, interesting only when you tangle with it in the wrong way. Yet from this nest of thorns, this snare of hooks and fiery spines, is born once each year a splendid flower. It is unpluckable and except to an insect almost unapproachable, yet soft, lovely, sweet, desirable, exemplifying better than the rose among thorns the unity of opposites. Stepping carefully around the straggling prickly pear I come after a few paces over bare sandstone to a plant whose defensive weaponry makes the cactus seem relatively benign. This one is formed of a cluster of bayonetlike leaves pointing up and outward, each stiff green blade tipped with a point as intense and penetrating as a needle. Out of the core of this untouchable dagger’s-nest rises a slender stalk, waist-high, gracefully curved, which supports a heavy cluster of bell-shaped, cream-colored, wax-coated, exquisitely perfumed flowers. This plant, not a cactus but a member of the lily family, is a type of yucca called Spanish bayonet. Despite its fierce defenses, or perhaps because of them, the yucca is as beautiful as it is strange, perfect in its place wherever that place may be—on the Dagger Flats of Big Bend, the high grasslands of southern New Mexico, the rim and interior of Grand Canyon or here in the Arches country, growing wide-spaced and solitaire from the red sands of Utah. The yucca is bizarre not only in appearance but in its mode of reproduction. The flowers are pollinated not by bees or hummingbirds but exclusively by a moth of the genus Pronuba with which the yucca, aided by a liberal allowance of time, has worked out a symbiotic relationship beneficial and necessary to both. The moth lays its eggs at the proper time in the ovary of the yucca flower where the larvae, as they develop, feed on the growing seeds, eating enough of them to reach maturity but leaving enough in the pod to allow the plant, assisted by the desert winds, to sow next year’s yucca crop. In return for this nursery care the moth performs an essential service for the yucca: in the process of entering the flower the moth—almost accidentally it might seem to us—transfers the flower’s pollen from anther to pistil, thus accomplishing pollination. No more; but it is sufficient. The wind will not stop. Gusts of sand swirl before me, stinging my face. But there is still too much to see and marvel at, the world very much alive in the bright light and wind, exultant with the fever of spring, the delight of morning. Strolling on, it seems to me that the strangeness and wonder of existence are emphasized here, in the desert, by the comparative sparsity of the flora and fauna: life not crowded upon life as in other places but scattered abroad in spareness and simplicity, with a generous gift of space for each herb and bush and tree, each stem of grass, so that the living organism stands out bold and brave and vivid against the lifeless sand and barren rock. The extreme clarity of the desert light is equaled by the extreme individuation of desert life-forms. Love flowers best in openness and freedom. Patterns in the sand, tracks of tiger lizards, birds, kangaroo rats, beetles. Circles and semicircles on the red dune where the wind whips the compliant stems of the wild ricegrass back and forth, halfway around and back again. On the crest of the dune is a curving cornice from which flies a constant spray of fine sand. Crescent-shaped, the dune shelters on its leeward side a growth of sunflowers and scarlet penstemon. I lie on my belly on the edge of the dune, back to the wind, and study the world of the flowers from ground level, as a snake might see it. From below the flowers of the penstemon look like flying pennants; the sunflowers shake and creak from thick green hairy stalks that look, from a snake’s viewpoint, like the trunks of trees. I get up and start back to the trailer. A smell of burning coffee on the wind. On the way I pass a large anthill, the domed city of the harvester ants. Omnivorous red devils with a vicious bite, they have denuded the ground surrounding their hill, destroying everything green and living within a radius of ten feet. I cannot resist the impulse to shove my walking stick into the bowels of their hive and rowel things up. Don’t actually care for ants. Neurotic little pismires. Compared to ants the hairy scorpion is a beast of charm, dignity and tenderness. My favorite juniper stands before me glittering shaggily in the sunrise, ragged roots clutching at the rock on which it feeds, rough dark boughs bedecked with a rash, with a shower of turquoise- colored berries. A female, this ancient grandmother of a tree may be three hundred years old; growing very slowly, the juniper seldom attains a height greater than fifteen or twenty feet even in favorable locations. My juniper, though still fruitful and full of vigor, is at the same time partly dead: one half of the divided trunk holds skyward a sapless claw, a branch without leaf or bark, baked by the sun and scoured by the wind to a silver finish, where magpies and ravens like to roost when I am not too close. I’ve had this tree under surveillance ever since my arrival at Arches, hoping to learn something from it, to discover the significance in its form, to make a connection through its life with whatever falls beyond. Have failed. The essence of the juniper continues to elude me unless, as I presently suspect, its surface is also the essence. Two living things on the same earth, respiring in a common medium, we contact one another but without direct communication. Intuition, sympathy, empathy, all fail to guide me into the heart of this being—if it has a heart. At times I am exasperated by the juniper’s static pose; something in its stylized gesture of appeal, that dead claw against the sky, suggests catalepsy. Perhaps the tree is mad. The dull, painful creaking of the branches in the wind indicates, however, an internal effort at liberation. The wind flows around us from the yellow haze in the east, a morning wind, a solar wind. We’re in for a storm today, dust and sand and filthy air. Without flowers as yet but bright and fresh, with leaves of a startling, living green in contrast to the usual desert olive drab, is a shrub known as singleleaf ash, one of the few true deciduous plants in the pinyon-juniper community. Most desert plants have only rudimentary leaves, or no leaves at all, the better to conserve moisture, and the singleleaf ash seems out of place here, anomalous, foredoomed to wither and die. (Fraxinus anomala is the botanical name.) But touch the leaves of this plant and you find them dry as paper, leathery in texture and therefore desert-resistant. The singleleaf ash in my garden stands alone along the path, a dwarf tree only three feet high but tough and enduring, clenched to the stone. Sand sage or old man sage, a lustrous windblown blend of silver and blue and aquamarine, gleams in the distance, the feathery stems flowing like hair. Purple flowers no bigger than your fingernail are half-revealed, half-concealed by the shining leaves. Purple sage: crush the leaves between thumb and finger and you release that characteristic odor, pungent and bittersweet, which means canyon country, high lonesome mesaland, the winds that blow from far away. Also worthy of praise is the local pinyon pine, growing hereabouts at isolated points, for its edible nuts that appear in good years, for its ragged raunchy piney good looks, for the superior qualities of its wood as fuel—burns clean and slow, little soot, little ash, and smells almost as good as juniper. Unfortunately, most of the pinyon pines in the area are dead or dying, victims of another kind of pine—the porcupine. This situation came about through the conscientious efforts of a federal agency known formerly as the Wildlife Service, which keeps its people busy in trapping, shooting and poisoning wildlife, particularly coyotes and mountain lions. Having nearly exterminated their natural enemies, the wildlife experts made it possible for the porcupines to multiply so fast and so far that they— the porcupines—have taken to gnawing the bark from pinyon pines in order to survive. What else? Still within sight of the housetrailer, I can see the princess plume with its tall golden racemes; the green ephedra or Mormon tea, from which Indians and pioneers extracted a medicinal drink (contains ephedrine), the obnoxious Russian thistle, better known as tumbleweed, an exotic; pepperweed, bladderweed, snakeweed, matchweed, skeleton weed—the last-named so delicately formed as to be almost invisible; the scrubby little wavyleaf oak, stabilizer of sand dunes; the Apache plume, poor cousin of the cliffrose; gray blackbrush, most ubiquitous and humble of desert plants, which will grow where all else has given up; more annuals—primrose, sourdock, yellow and purple beeplant, rockcress, wild buckwheat, grama grass, and five miles north across the floor of Salt Valley, acres and acres of the coral-colored globemallow. Not quite within eyeshot but close by, in a shady dampish secret place, the sacred datura—moonflower, moonlily, thornapple— blooms in the night, soft white trumpet-shaped flowers that open only in darkness and close with the coming of the heat. The datura is sacred (to certain cultists) because of its content of atropine, a powerful narcotic of the alkaloid group capable of inducing visionary hallucinations, as the Indians discovered long before the psychedelic craze began. How they could have made such a discovery without poisoning themselves to death nobody knows; but then nobody knows how so-called primitive man made his many other discoveries. We must concede that science is nothing new, that research, empirical logic, the courage to experiment are as old as humanity. Most of the plants I have named so far belong to what ecologists call the pinyon pine-juniper community, typical of the high, dry, sandy soils of the tablelands. Descend to the alkali flats of Salt Valley and you find an entirely different grouping: shadscale, four- winged saltbush, greasewood, spiny horsebrush, asters, milk vetch, budsage, galletagrass. Along the washes and the rare perennial streams you’ll find a third community: the Fremont poplar or Cottonwood tree, willow, tamarisk, rabbitbrush or chamisa, and a variety of sedges, tules, rushes, reeds, cattails. The fourth plant community, in the Arches area, is found by the springs and around the seeps on the canyon walls—the hanging gardens of fern, monkeyflower, death camas, columbine, helleborine orchid, bracken, panicgrass, bluestem, poison ivy, squawbush, and the endemic primrose Primula specuiola, found nowhere but in the canyonlands. So much for the inventory. After such a lengthy listing of plant life the reader may now be visualizing Arches National Monument as more a jungle than a desert. Be reassured, it is not so. I have called it a garden, and it is—a rock garden. Despite the great variety of living things to be found here, most of the surface of the land, at least three-quarters of it, is sand or sandstone, naked, monolithic, austere and unadorned as the sculpture of the moon. It is undoubtedly a desert place, clean, pure, totally useless, quite unprofitable. The sun is rising through a yellow, howling wind. Time for breakfast. Inside the trailer now, broiling bacon and frying eggs with good appetite, I hear the sand patter like rain against the metal walls and brush across the windowpanes. A fine silt accumulates beneath the door and on the window ledge. The trailer shakes in a sudden gust. All one to me—sandstorm or sunshine I am content, so long as I have something to eat, good health, the earth to take my stand on, and light behind the eyes to see by. At eight o’clock I put on badge and ranger hat and go to work, checking in at headquarters by radio and taking my post at the entrance station to greet and orient whatever tourists may appear. None show. After an hour of waiting I climb in the government pickup and begin a patrol of the park, taking lunch and coffee with me. So far as I know there’s no one camping in the park at this time, but it won’t hurt to make sure. The wind is coming from the north, much colder than before—we may have sleet or rain or snow or possibly all three before nightfall. Bad weather means that the park entrance road will be impassable; it is part of my job to inform campers and visitors of this danger so that they will have a chance to get out before it’s too late. Taking the Windows road first, I drive beneath the overhanging Balanced Rock, 3500 tons of seamless Entrada sandstone perched on a ridiculous, inadequate pedestal of the Carmel formation, soft and rotten stone eaten away by the wind, deformed by the weight above. One of these days that rock is going to fall—in ten, fifty, or five hundred years. I drive past more free-standing pinnacles, around the edge of outthrust ledges, in and out of the ravines that corrade the rolling terrain—wind-deposited, cross-bedded sand dunes laid down eons ago in the Mesozoic era and since compressed and petrified by overlying sediments. Everywhere the cliffrose is blooming, the yellow flowers shivering in the wind. The heart-shaped prints of deer are plain in the dust of the road and I wonder where the deer are now and how they’re doing and if they’ve got enough to eat. Like the porcupine the deer too become victims of human meddling with the natural scheme of things—not enough coyotes around and the mountain lions close to extinction, the deer have multiplied like rabbits and are eating themselves out of house and home, which means that many each year are condemned to a slow death by starvation. The deerslayers come by the thousands every autumn out of Salt Lake and California to harvest, as they like to say, the surplus deer. But they are not adequate for the task. The road ends at the Double Arch campground. No one here. I check the garbage can for trapped chipmunks, pick up a few bottlecaps, and inspect the “sanitary facilities,” where all appears to be in good order: roll of paper, can of lime, black widow spiders dangling in their usual strategic corners. On the inside of the door someone has written a cautionary note: Attention: Watch out for rattlesnakes, coral snakes, whip snakes, vinegaroons, centipedes, millipedes, ticks, mites, black widows, cone-nosed kissing bugs, solpugids, tarantulas, horned toads, Gila monsters, red ants, fire ants, Jerusalem crickets, chinch bugs and Giant Hairy Desert Scorpions before being seated. I walk out the foot trail to Double Arch and the Windows. The wind moans a dreary tune under the overhanging coves, among the holes in the rock, and through the dead pinyon pines. The sky is obscure and yellow but the air in this relatively sheltered place among the rocks is still clear. A few birds dart about: black-throated sparrows, the cliff swallows, squawking magpies in their handsome academic dress of black and white. In the dust and on the sand dunes I can read the passage of other creatures, from the big track of a buck to the tiny prints of birds, mice, lizards, and insects. Hopefully I look for sign of bobcat or coyote but find none. We need more predators. The sheepmen complain, it is true, that the coyotes eat some of their lambs. This is true but do they eat enough? I mean, enough lambs to keep the coyotes sleek, healthy and well fed. That is my concern. As for the sacrifice of an occasional lamb, that seems to me a small price to pay for the support of the coyote population. The lambs, accustomed by tradition to their role, do not complain; and the sheepmen, who run their hooved locusts on the public lands and are heavily subsidized, most of them as hog-rich as they are pigheaded, can easily afford these trifling losses. We need more coyotes, more mountain lions, more wolves and foxes and wildcats, more owls, hawks and eagles. The livestock interests and their hired mercenaries from the Predator Control Agency have pursued all of these animals with unremitting ferocity and astonishing cruelty for nearly a century, utilizing in this campaign of extermination everything from the gun and trap to the airplane and the most ingenious devices of chemical and biological warfare. Not content with shooting coyotes from airplanes and hunting lions with dogs, these bounty hunters, self-styled sportsmen, and government agents like to plant poisoned meat all over the landscape, distribute tons of poisoned tallow balls by air, and hide baited cyanide guns in the ground and brush—a threat to humans as well as animals. Still not satisfied, they have developed and begun to use a biochemical compound which makes sterile any animal foolish enough to take the bait. Absorbed in these thoughts, wind in my eyes, I round a corner of the cliff and there’s a doe and her fawn not ten yards away, browsing on the cliffrose. Eating flowers. While she could not have heard or scented me, the doe sees me almost at once. But since I stopped abruptly and froze, she isn’t sure that I am dangerous. Puzzled and suspicious, she and the fawn at her side, madonna and child, stare at me for several long seconds. I breathe out, making the slightest of movements, and the doe springs up and away as if bounced from a trampoline, followed by the fawn. Their sharp hooves clatter on the rock. “Come back here!” I shout. “I want to talk to you.” But they’re not talking and in another moment have vanished into the wind. I could follow if I wanted to, track them down across the dunes and through the open parks of juniper and cliffrose. But why should I disturb them further? Even if I found them and somehow succeeded in demonstrating my friendship and good will, why should I lead them to believe that anything manlike can be trusted? That is no office for a friend. I come to the North Window, a great opening fifty feet high in a wall of rock, through which I see the clouded sky and the hazy mountains and feel the funneled rush of the wind. I climb up to it, walk through—like an ant crawling through the eyesocket of a skull —and down the other side a half-mile to a little spring at the head of a seldom-visited canyon. I am out of the wind for a change, can light up my pipe and look around without getting dust in my eyes; I can hear myself think. Here I find the track of a coyote superimposed on the path of many deer. So there is at least one remaining in the area, perhaps the same coyote I heard two weeks ago wailing at the evening moon. His trail comes down off the sandstone from the west, passes over the sand under a juniper and up to the seep of dark green water in its circle of reeds. Under the juniper he has left two gray- green droppings knitted together with rabbit hair. With fingertip I write my own signature in the sand to let him know, to tip him off; I take a drink of water and leave. Down below is Salt Creek Canyon, corraded through an anticline to the bed of the Colorado. If I were lucky I might find the trail of bighorn sheep, rumored still to lurk in these rimrock hideaways. In all these years of prowling on foot through the canyons and desert mountains of the Southwest I have yet to see, free and alive in the wild, either a lion or a bighorn. In part I can blame only my ignorance and incompetence, for I know they are out there, somewhere; I have seen their scat and their tracks. As I am returning to the campground and the truck I see a young cottontail jump from the brush, scamper across the trail and freeze under a second bush. The rabbit huddles there, panting, ears back, one bright eye on me. I am taken by the notion to experiment—on the rabbit. Suppose, I say to myself, you were out here hungry, starving, no weapon but your bare hands. What would you do? What could you do? There are a few stones scattered along the trail. I pick up one that fits well in the hand, that seems to have the optimum feel and heft. I stare at the cottontail hunched in his illusory shelter under the bush. Blackbrush, I observe, the common variety, sprinkled with tightly rolled little green buds, ready to burst into bloom on short notice. Should I give the rabbit a sporting chance, that is, jump it again, try to hit it on the run? Or brain the little bastard where he is? Notice the terminology. A sportsman is one who gives his quarry a chance to escape with its life. This is known as fair play, or sportsmanship. Animals have no sense of sportsmanship. Some, like the mountain lion, are vicious—if attacked they defend themselves. Others, like the rabbit, run away, which is cowardly. Well, I’m a scientist not a sportsman and we’ve got an important experiment under way here, for which the rabbit has been volunteered. I rear back and throw the stone with all I’ve got straight at his furry head. To my amazement the stone flies true (as if guided by a Higher Power) and knocks the cottontail head over tincups, clear out from under the budding blackbush. He crumples, there’s the usual gushing of blood, etc., a brief spasm, and then no more. The wicked rabbit is dead. For a moment I am shocked by my deed; I stare at the quiet rabbit, his glazed eyes, his blood drying in the dust. Something vital is lacking. But shock is succeeded by a mild elation. Leaving my victim to the vultures and maggots, who will appreciate him more than I could—the flesh is probably infected with tularemia— I continue my walk with a new, augmented cheerfulness which is hard to understand but unmistakable. What the rabbit has lost in energy and spirit seems added, by processes too subtle to fathom, to my own soul. I try but cannot feel any sense of guilt. I examine my soul: white as snow. Check my hands: not a trace of blood. No longer do I feel so isolated from the sparse and furtive life around me, a stranger from another world. I have entered into this one. We are kindred all of us, killer and victim, predator and prey, me and the sly coyote, the soaring buzzard, the elegant gopher snake, the trembling cottontail, the foul worms that feed on our entrails, all of them, all of us. Long live diversity, long live the earth! Rejoicing in my innocence and power I stride down the trail beneath the elephantine forms of melting sandstone, past the stark shadows of Double Arch. The experiment was a complete success; it will never be necessary to perform it again. Back in the warm pickup I enjoy a well-earned sandwich and drink my coffee before driving on another six miles, through clouds of wind-driven dust and sand, to the old Turnbow Cabin and the beginning of the trail to Delicate Arch. Once there was a man named Turnbow who lived in the grimy wastelands of an eastern city which we will not mention here—the name, though familiar to all the world, is not important. This Turnbow had consumption. His doctors gave him six months. Mr. Turnbow in his despair fled to the arid wilds, to this very spot, built the cabin, lived on and on for many years and died, many years ago. The cabin stands on the banks of the unpotable waters of Salt Creek, a shallow stream on a bed of quicksand. Drinking water is available half a mile upstream at a tributary spring. Turnbow Cabin itself is a well-preserved ruin (nothing decays around here) made of juniper, pinyon and cottonwood logs, no two alike in shape or size. The crudity of the construction followed from the scarcity of wood, not lack of skill. The cracks between the unhewn logs were chinked with adobe; a few fragments still remain. The walls have a morbid greenish hue that matches the coloration of the nearby hills; this is dust from the Morrison formation, a loose friable shale containing copper oxides, agate, chert, and traces of vanadium and uranium. There is a doorway but no door, a single window and no glass. The floor consists of warped, odd-size planks. In one corner is a manger for horses, an addition made long after the death of Mr. Turnbow. Cobwebs complete with black widow spiders adorn the darker corners under the ceiling. In the center of the room is a massive post of juniper shoring up the ancient, sagging roof, which is a thatchwork affair of poles, mud and rock, very leaky. As shelter, the cabin cannot be recommended, except for its shade on a hot day. Back of the cabin are the lonesome Morrison hills, utterly lifeless piles of clay and shale and broken rock, a dismal scene. In front are the walls of Dry Mesa and Salt Creek Canyon. It is a hot, sunken, desolate place, closed in and still, lacking even a view. As Genghis Khan said of India, “The water is bad and the heat makes men sick.” A haunted place, in my opinion, haunted by the ghost of the lonely man who died here. Except for myself no one lives within thirty miles of Turnbow Cabin. With relief I turn my back on this melancholy ruin and take the golden trail up the long ledge of Navajo sandstone which leads to Delicate Arch. I cross the swinging footbridge over Salt Creek, pestered on the way by a couple of yellow cowflies (cattlemen call them deerflies). The cowfly, or deerfly if you prefer, loves blood. Human blood especially. Persistent as a mosquito, it will keep attacking until either it samples your blood or you succeed in killing it, or both. The most artful among them like to land in your hair and attach themselves to the scalp, where they will not be noticed until too late. But they are home-loving insects; once over the bridge and away from the slimy little creek you leave them behind. Many have made the climb to Delicate Arch, so many that the erosion of human feet is visible on the soft sandstone, a dim meandering path leading upward for a mile and a half into a queer region of knobs, domes, turrets and coves, all sculptured from a single solid mass of rock. What do the pilgrims see? The trail climbs and winds past isolate pinyons and solitary junipers to a vale of stone where nothing has happened for a thousand years, to judge from the quietude of the place, the sense of waiting that seems to hover in the air. From this vale you climb a second ledge blasted across the face of a cliff, round a corner at the end of the trail and Delicate Arch stands before you, a fragile ring of stone on the far side of a natural amphitheatre, set on its edge at the brink of a five hundred foot drop-off. Looking through the ring you see the rim of Dry Mesa and far beyond that the peaks of the La Sal Mountains. There are several ways of looking at Delicate Arch. Depending on your preconceptions you may see the eroded remnant of a sandstone fin, a giant engagement ring cemented in rock, a bow-legged pair of petrified cowboy chaps, a triumphal arch for a procession of angels, an illogical geologic freak, a happening—a something that happened and will never happen quite that way again, a frame more significant than its picture, a simple monolith eaten away by weather and time and soon to disintegrate into a chaos of falling rock (not surprisingly there have been some, even in the Park Service, who advocate spraying Delicate Arch with a fixative of some sort—Elmer’s Glue perhaps or Lady Clairol Spray-Net). There are the inevitable pious Midwesterners who climb a mile and a half under the desert sun to view Delicate Arch and find only God (“Gol- dangit Katherine where’s my light meter, this glare is turrible”), and the equally inevitable students of geology who look at the arch and see only Lyell and the uniformity of nature. You may therefore find proof for or against His existence. Suit yourself. You may see a symbol, a sign, a fact, a thing without meaning or a meaning which includes all things. Much the same could be said of the tamarisk down in the canyon, of the blue-black raven croaking on the cliff, of your own body. The beauty of Delicate Arch explains nothing, for each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (There is no beauty in nature, said Baudelaire. A place to throw empty beer cans on Sunday, said Mencken.) If Delicate Arch has any significance it lies, I will venture, in the power of the odd and unexpected to startle the senses and surprise the mind out of their ruts of habit, to compel us into a reawakened awareness of the wonderful—that which is full of wonder. A weird, lovely, fantastic object out of nature like Delicate Arch has the curious ability to remind us—like rock and sunlight and wind and wilderness—that out there is a different world, older and greater and deeper by far than ours, a world which surrounds and sustains the little world of men as sea and sky surround and sustain a ship. The shock of the real. For a little while we are again able to see, as the child sees, a world of marvels. For a few moments we discover that nothing can be taken for granted, for if this ring of stone is marvelous then all which shaped it is marvelous, and our journey here on earth, able to see and touch and hear in the midst of tangible and mysterious things-in-themselves, is the most strange and daring of all adventures. After Delicate Arch the others are anticlimactic but I go on to inspect them, as I’m paid to do. From Turnbow Cabin I drive northwesterly on a twisting road above Salt Valley past a labyrinth of fins and pinnacles toward the Devil’s Garden. On the way I pass Skyline Arch, a big hole in the wall where something took place a few years ago which seems to bear out the hypotheses of geology: one November night in 1940 when no one was around to watch, a big chunk of rock fell out of this arch, enlarging the opening by half again its former size. The photographs, “Before & After,” prove it. The event had doubtless been in preparation for hundreds maybe thousands of years—snow falling, melting, trickling into minute fissures, dissolving the cements which knit sandstone particles together, freezing and expanding, wedging apart the tiny cracks, undermining the base—but the cumulative result was a matter, probably, of only a few noisy and dusty minutes in which the mighty slabs cracked and grumbled, shook loose, dropped and slid and smashed upon the older slabs below, shattering the peace of ages. But none were there to see and hear except the local lizards, mice and ground squirrels, and perhaps a pair of outraged, astonished ravens. I reach the end of the road and walk the deserted trail to Landscape Arch and Double-O Arch, picking up a few candy wrappers left from the weekend, straightening a trail sign which somebody had tried to remove, noting another girdled and bleeding pinyon pine, obliterating from a sandstone wall the pathetic scratchings of some imbeciles who had attempted to write their names across the face of the Mesozoic. (Where are you now, J. Soderlund? Alva T. Sarvis? John De Bris? Bill Hoy? Malcom Brown?) The wind blows, unrelenting, and flights of little gray birds whirl up and away like handfuls of confetti tossed in the air. The temperature is still falling, presaging snow. I am glad to return, several hours later, to the shelter and warmth of the housetrailer. I have not seen a soul anywhere in Arches National Monument today. In the evening the wind stops. A low gray ceiling of clouds hangs over the desert from horizon to horizon, silent and still. One small opening remains in the west. The sun peers through as it goes down. For a few minutes the voodoo monuments burn with a golden light, then fade to rose and blue and violet as the sun winks out and drops. My private juniper stands alone, one dead claw reaching at the sky. The blossoms on the cliffrose are folding up, the scarlet penstemon and the bayonets of the yucca turn dull and vague in the twilight. Something strange in the air. I go to the weather station and check the instruments—nothing much, actually, but a rain gauge, an anemometer or wind gauge, and a set of thermometers which record the lows and highs for the day. The little cups on the wind gauge are barely turning, but this breath of air, such as it is, comes from the southwest. The temperature is fifty-five or so, after a low this morning of thirty-eight. It is not going to snow after all. Balanced on a point of equilibrium, hesitating, the world of the high desert turns toward summer. POLEMIC: INDUSTRIAL TOURISM AND THE NATIONAL PARKS I like my job. The pay is generous; I might even say munificent: $1.95 per hour, earned or not, backed solidly by the world’s most powerful Air Force, biggest national debt, and grossest national product. The fringe benefits are priceless: clean air to breathe (after the spring sandstorms); stillness, solitude and space; an unobstructed view every day and every night of sun, sky, stars, clouds, mountains, moon, cliffrock and canyons; a sense of time enough to let thought and feeling range from here to the end of the world and back; the discovery of something intimate—though impossible to name—in the remote. The work is simple and requires almost no mental effort, a good thing in more ways than one. What little thinking I do is my own and I do it on government time. Insofar as I follow a schedule it goes about like this: For me the work week begins on Thursday, which I usually spend in patrolling the roads and walking out the trails. On Friday I inspect the campgrounds, haul firewood, and distribute the toilet paper. Saturday and Sunday are my busy days as I deal with the influx of weekend visitors and campers, answering questions, pulling cars out of the sand, lowering children down off the rocks, tracking lost grandfathers and investigating picnics. My Saturday night campfire talks are brief and to the point. “Everything all right?” I say, badge and all, ambling up to what looks like a cheerful group. “Fine,” they’ll say; “how about a drink?” “Why not?” I say. By Sunday evening most everyone has gone home and the heavy duty is over. Thank God it’s Monday, I say to myself the next morning. Mondays are very nice. I empty the garbage cans, read the discarded newspapers, sweep out the outhouses and disengage the Kleenex from the clutches of cliffrose and cactus. In the afternoon I watch the clouds drift past the bald peak of Mount Tukuhnikivats. (Someone has to do it.) Tuesday and Wednesday I rest. Those are my days off and I usually set aside Wednesday evening for a trip to Moab, replenishing my supplies and establishing a little human contact more vital than that possible with the tourists I meet on the job. After a week in the desert, Moab (pop. 5500, during the great uranium boom), seems like a dazzling metropolis, a throbbing dynamo of commerce and pleasure. I walk the single main street as dazed by the noise and neon as a country boy on his first visit to Times Square. (Wow, I’m thinking, this is great.) After a visit to Miller’s Supermarket, where I stock up on pinto beans and other necessities, I am free to visit the beer joints. All of them are busy, crowded with prospectors, miners, geologists, cowboys, truckdrivers and sheepherders, and the talk is loud, vigorous, blue with blasphemy. Although differences of opinion have been known to occur, open violence is rare, for these men treat one another with courtesy and respect. The general atmosphere is free and friendly, quite unlike the sad, sour gloom of most bars I have known, where nervous men in tight collars brood over their drinks between out-of-tune TV screens and a remorseless clock. Why the difference? I have considered the question and come up with the following solution: 1. These prospectors, miners, etc. have most of them been physically active all day out-of-doors at a mile or more above sea level; they are comfortably tired and relaxed. 2. Most of them have been working alone; the presence of a jostling crowd is therefore not a familiar irritation to be borne with resignation but rather an unaccustomed pleasure to be enjoyed. 3. Most of them are making good wages and/or doing work they like to do; they are, you might say, happy. (The boom will not last, of course, but this is forgotten. And the ethical and political implications of uranium exploitation are simply unknown in these parts.) 4. The nature of their work requires a combination of skills and knowledge, good health and self-reliance, which tends to inspire self-confidence; they need not doubt their manhood. (Again, everything is subject to change.) 5. Finally, Moab is a Mormon town with funny ways. Hard booze is not sold across the bar except in the semiprivate “clubs.” Nor even standard beer. These hard-drinking fellows whom I wish to praise are trying to get drunk on three-point-two! They rise somewhat heavily from their chairs and barstools and tramp, with frequency and a squelchy, sodden noise, toward the pissoirs at the back of the room, more waterlogged than intoxicated. In the end the beer halls of Moab, like all others, become to me depressing places. After a few games of rotation pool with my friend Viviano Jacquez, a reformed sheepherder turned dude wrangler (a dubious reform), I am glad to leave the last of those smoky dens around midnight and to climb into my pickup and take the long drive north and east back to the silent rock, the unbounded space and the sweet clean air of my outpost in the Arches. Yes, it’s a good job. On the rare occasions when I peer into the future for more than a few days I can foresee myself returning here for season after season, year after year, indefinitely. And why not? What better sinecure could a man with small needs, infinite desires, and philosophic pretensions ask for? The better part of each year in the wilderness and the winters in some complementary, equally agreeable environment—Hoboken perhaps, or Tiajuana, Nogales, Juarez… one of the border towns. Maybe Tonopah, a good tough Nevada mining town with legal prostitution, or possibly Oakland or even New Orleans—some place grimy, cheap (since I’d be living on unemployment insurance), decayed, hopelessly corrupt. I idle away hours dreaming of the wonderful winter to come, of the chocolate- colored mistress I’ll have to rub my back, the journal spread open between two tall candles in massive silver candlesticks, the scrambled eggs with green chile, the crock of homebrew fermenting quietly in the corner, etc., the nights of desperate laughter with brave young comrades, burning billboards, and defacing public institutions.… Romantic dreams, romantic dreams. For there is a cloud on my horizon. A small dark cloud no bigger than my hand. Its name is Progress. The ease and relative freedom of this lovely job at Arches follow from the comparative absence of the motorized tourists, who stay away by the millions. And they stay away because of the unpaved entrance road, the unflushable toilets in the campgrounds, and the fact that most of them have never even heard of Arches National Monument. (Could there be a more genuine testimonial to its beauty and integrity?) All this must change. I’d been warned. On the very first day Merle and Floyd had mentioned something about developments, improvements, a sinister Master Plan. Thinking that they were the dreamers, I paid little heed and had soon forgotten the whole ridiculous business. But only a few days ago something happened which shook me out of my pleasant apathy. I was sitting out back on my 33,000-acre terrace, shoeless and shirtless, scratching my toes in the sand and sipping on a tall iced drink, watching the flow of evening over the desert. Prime time: the sun very low in the west, the birds coming back to life, the shadows rolling for miles over rock and sand to the very base of the brilliant mountains. I had a small fire going near the table—not for heat or light but for the fragrance of the juniper and the ritual appeal of the clear flames. For symbolic reasons. For ceremony. When I heard a faint sound over my shoulder I looked and saw a file of deer watching from fifty yards away, three does and a velvet-horned buck, all dark against the sundown sky. They began to move. I whistled and they stopped again, staring at me. “Come on over,” I said, “have a drink.” They declined, moving off with casual, unhurried grace, quiet as phantoms, and disappeared beyond the rise. Smiling, thoroughly at peace, I turned back to my drink, the little fire, the subtle transformations of the immense landscape before me. On the program: rise of the full moon. It was then I heard the discordant note, the snarling whine of a jeep in low range and four-wheel-drive, coming from an unexpected direction, from the vicinity of the old foot and horse trail that leads from Balanced Rock down toward Courthouse Wash and on to park headquarters near Moab. The jeep came in sight from beyond some bluffs, turned onto the dirt road, and came up the hill toward the entrance station. Now operating a motor vehicle of any kind on the trails of a national park is strictly forbidden, a nasty bureaucratic regulation which I heartily support. My bosom swelled with the righteous indignation of a cop: by God, I thought, I’m going to write these sons of bitches a ticket. I put down the drink and strode to the housetrailer to get my badge. Long before I could find the shirt with the badge on it, however, or the ticket book, or my shoes or my park ranger hat, the jeep turned in at my driveway and came right up to the door of the trailer. It was a gray jeep with a U.S. Government decal on the side —Bureau of Public Roads—and covered with dust. Two empty water bags flapped at the bumper. Inside were three sunburned men in twill britches and engineering boots, and a pile of equipment: transit case, tripod, survey rod, bundles of wooden stakes. (Oh no!) The men got out, dripping with dust, and the driver grinned at me, pointing to his parched open mouth and making horrible gasping noises deep in his throat. “Okay,” I said, “come on in.” It was even hotter inside the trailer than outside but I opened the refrigerator and left it open and took out a pitcher filled with ice cubes and water. As they passed the pitcher back and forth I got the full and terrible story, confirming the worst of my fears. They were a survey crew, laying out a new road into the Arches. And when would the road be built? Nobody knew for sure; perhaps in a couple of years, depending on when the Park Service would be able to get the money. The new road—to be paved, of course—would cost somewhere between half a million and one million dollars, depending on the bids, or more than fifty thousand dollars per linear mile. At least enough to pay the salaries of ten park rangers for ten years. Too much money, I suggested—they’ll never go for it back in Washington. The three men thought that was pretty funny. Don’t worry, they said, this road will be built. I’m worried, I said. Look, the party chief explained, you need this road. He was a pleasant-mannered, soft- spoken civil engineer with an unquestioning dedication to his work. A very dangerous man. Who needs it? I said; we get very few tourists in this park. That’s why you need it, the engineer explained patiently; look, he said, when this road is built you’ll get ten, twenty, thirty times as many tourists in here as you get now. His men nodded in solemn agreement, and he stared at me intently, waiting to see what possible answer I could have to that. “Have some more water,” I said. I had an answer all right but I was saving it for later. I knew that I was dealing with a madman. As I type these words, several years after the little episode of the gray jeep and the thirsty engineers, all that was foretold has come to pass. Arches National Monument has been developed. The Master Plan has been fulfilled. Where once a few adventurous people came on weekends to camp for a night or two and enjoy a taste of the primitive and remote, you will now find serpentine streams of baroque automobiles pouring in and out, all through the spring and summer, in numbers that would have seemed fantastic when I worked there: from 3,000 to 30,000 to 300,000 per year, the “visitation,” as they call it, mounts ever upward. The little campgrounds where I used to putter around reading three-day-old newspapers full of lies and watermelon seeds have now been consolidated into one master campground that looks, during the busy season, like a suburban village: elaborate housetrailers of quilted aluminum crowd upon gigantic camper-trucks of Fiberglas and molded plastic; through their windows you will see the blue glow of television and hear the studio laughter of Los Angeles; knobby-kneed oldsters in plaid Bermudas buzz up and down the quaintly curving asphalt road on motorbikes; quarrels break out between campsite neighbors while others gather around their burning charcoal briquettes (ground campfires no longer permitted —not enough wood) to compare electric toothbrushes. The Comfort Stations are there, too, all lit up with electricity, fully equipped inside, though the generator breaks down now and then and the lights go out, or the sewage backs up in the plumbing system (drain fields were laid out in sand over a solid bed of sandstone), and the water supply sometimes fails, since the 3000- foot well can only produce about 5gpm—not always enough to meet the demand. Down at the beginning of the new road, at park headquarters, is the new entrance station and visitor center, where admission fees are collected and where the rangers are going quietly nuts answering the same three basic questions five hundred times a day: (1) Where’s the john? (2) How long’s it take to see this place? (3) Where’s the Coke machine? Progress has come at last to the Arches, after a million years of neglect. Industrial Tourism has arrived. What happened to Arches Natural Money-mint is, of course, an old story in the Park Service. All the famous national parks have the same problems on a far grander scale, as everyone knows, and many other problems as yet unknown to a little subordinate unit of the system in a backward part of southeastern Utah. And the same kind of development that has so transformed Arches is under way, planned or completed in many more national parks and national monuments. I will mention only a few examples with which I am personally familiar: The newly established Canyonlands National Park. Most of the major points of interest in this park are presently accessible, over passable dirt roads, by car—Grandview Point, Upheaval Dome, part of the White Rim, Cave Spring, Squaw Spring campground and Elephant Hill. The more difficult places, such as Angel Arch or Druid Arch, can be reached by jeep, on horseback or in a one-or two-day hike. Nevertheless the Park Service had drawn up the usual Master Plan calling for modern paved highways	571,574
The Hermit (Rydahl Thomas) (Z-Library).pdf	t h e h e r m i t Nobody knows why Erhard has left his wife and child in Denmark. All they do know is that he lives in a remote house on the island of Fuerteventura and has nine fingers. Known locally as The Hermit, he spends his days driving a taxi and tuning pianos for the wealthy tourists and islanders, and for almost two decades he has felt alone and incomplete, searching for intimacy – and that tenth finger. Then one day a baby is found dead in an abandoned car. Called in by the police to assist in the investigation, Erhard is drawn into the mystery, suddenly desperate to solve a crime he believes might give meaning to his life. But why have the police asked Erhard for help? Why should he succeed when they have failed? And will his journey help him find something more than just the child’s killer? A literary noir with existential undertones, The Hermit brilliantly unpicks a savage act and in doing so, offers one man the possibility of redemption, in this acutely observed, disquieting psychological thriller that has taken the international publishing world by storm. ‌ c o n t e n t s Luisa The Little Finger The Whore The Corpse The Flat The Cargo Ship The Liar Lucifia Lily ‌ ‌l u i s a ‌31 December ‌ 1 On New Year’s Eve, under the influence of a triple Lumumba, Erhard decides to find a new girlfriend. New is probably not the right word. She doesn’t need to be new or attractive or sweet or fun. Just a warm body. Just one of those kinds of women who potters about the house. Maybe she’ll hum a song or curse at him because he’s spilled cocoa on the floor. What can he ask of her? Not much. And what does he have to offer her? Not much. But it won’t get any easier. In a few years she’ll also need to empty his piss pot and shave him and pull off his shoes after an entire day in the car – if he can still drive, that is. In a few years. The mountainside near the house is invisible; the darkness is complete. If he sits still long enough, he’ll suddenly be able to see the stars. And if he sits even longer than that, he’ll see a narrow band of shooting stars growing brighter and brighter. The silence grows, if one can put it that way. Grows like the sound of nothingness drowning out the heat of the day still whining in the rocks, and the wind’s relentless C major, and the beat of the waves lashing against the coast, and the blood that’s seeping through his body. A silence that makes him want to weep into the New Year. A silence that’s so convincing, so satiating, that it blends with the night and his wide-open eyes which feel closed. This is what he loves about living out here. Out here where no one ever comes. Just him. And Laurel and Hardy. And here come the stars. They’ve always been there, but now he can see them. First all the specks, then all the constellations and Orion’s Belt and the galaxy like an old-fashioned punch card with messages from the Big Bang. It’s been seventeen years and nine months since the last time. He smells Beatriz’s perfume, which practically clings to his shirt right where she’d touched him this afternoon as they parted. She suggested that he come along tonight. A half-hearted attempt, if even that. I’ve got plans, he’d said tartly, the way only an old man can. C’mon, she’d tried again, sweetly. No thanks, those people are too fancy for me. Which they were. She didn’t say anything to that. Instead Raúl said: You are one of the finest people I know. But nothing more was said about it, and when they began arranging the champagne flutes, he gave Beatriz a Happy New Year’s kiss and left. Raúl walked him out. Buen viaje, Erhard said, when they stood among the distinctive throng on the street. From the opposite pavement, the suitcase salesman, Silón, shouted Happy New Year! to them, though mostly to Raúl, whom everyone knows. Erhard headed to his car, feeling the same pang that struck him every New Year’s Eve. Another year gone like all the rest, another year looming. Cheers, my friend. It’s good with cognac. It burns all the way down. The night is warm. His body is tingling hot now. Maybe because he’s thinking of Beatriz, her dark place, right where her breasts part and vanish into her blouse, the very source of her aroma. Damn. He tries not to think about her. She’s not the one he should be spending his time on. The hairdresser’s daughter. He can think about her. There’s something about her. He’s never met her. He has seen her once, at a distance. He’s often seen her image on the wall in the salon. He thinks about her. He thinks about simple events. Little scenes where she walks into the salon, the bell above the door chiming. He imagines her sitting across from him at the dinner table when he eats. Or standing in the kitchen, his kitchen, preparing steaming, sizzling food on the stove. In truth she’s much too young, absorbed in things he doesn’t understand. She’s not exactly his type. What could he possibly say to impress a young woman? She probably doesn’t even cook. She’d probably rather talk to her friends on the telephone, like all young people do. Maybe she eats noodles out of a small box while staring at her computer screen. In the image at the salon she’s a teenager and the very picture of innocence, with thick curls and big, masculine glasses. Not beautiful, but unforgettable. She’s got to be at least thirty now and apparently both sweet and quick-witted, according to her mother, whom he obviously doesn’t trust. That time he’d spotted her down the street, he recognized her light, curly hair. She crossed the street with her back ramrod straight, a purse slung over her shoulder like a real woman, and she spurted forward running when a car raced towards her. She wasn’t elegant, she was even a little clumsy. He doesn’t know why he thinks about her so much. Maybe it’s just the island eating its way into him. The whistling of the wind around the rocks and corners. Like a note of loneliness continuously rising from a piano. It’s Petra’s fault. Her unnaturally high-pitched voice that pacifies her clients in the chair and rules out talk and counterarguments and reasonable thoughts as one thumbs through a magazine or reads an article about the island’s football team. She has this firmness about her. For her, love is something to be squeezed out of others. She talks non-stop about the daughter, clawing at Erhard’s scalp with her long nails as she tells him that she’s moved to an apartment, that she’s bought a little scooter, that she’s got a new client, that she’s broken things off with her boyfriend, that she – not the daughter – would like grandchildren, and so on. And then a few months ago she suddenly said: If only my daughter found someone like you. That’s what she said as she stood gazing at him in the mirror. And afterward: She’s not like most girls, but neither are you. They’d chuckled at that. Petra mostly. Erhard had been completely alarmed at the suggestion. She couldn’t just say something like that. Wave her daughter under his nose. Did that mean she wanted him to ask her daughter out? Didn’t Petra know what they called him about town? Hadn’t Petra noticed that he was missing a finger? And what about the age difference? Didn’t Petra consider that? They are separated by at least thirty years; he’s the same age as her mother, older even. But the symmetry appeals to him. Generations reaching back and pulling the next generation forward, Escher’s drawings of the artist’s hand sketching itself. Five fingers on one hand and five fingers on the other. Five + five. If only my daughter found someone like you, she’d said. Someone like him. Not him, but someone like him. What was that all about? Was she saying there were many like him out there? Carbon copies of men who’ve done the same things over and over for nearly a generation, without deviation, without asking questions, someone like him, gas from the asshole of the earth, here today and gone tomorrow with only the memory of the stench remaining. Down in the city it sounds like fireworks booming. Maybe he should just do it now? Drive over there and invite her out? Right now? Then it’d be over with. He knows it’s the Lumumba talking. He knows that his courage won’t last more than two hours. Then reality will come crawling back. It’s quarter past ten. Perhaps she’s having dinner somewhere with all sorts of young men who know all sorts of things about computers. But what if she’s sitting at home just like him – watching the terrible show they broadcast on TV every year. Her mother has told him multiple times where her flat is. It’s in one of the new buildings on Calle Palangre. Right above the children’s-wear shop. It couldn’t hurt just to see whether she’s home. Maybe he can see if there’s a light on in the flat, or if there’s a light from the television glowing in the darkness. He braces himself against the wall of his house and finds a pair of stiff trousers on the clothesline, then jams his feet through the holes. The goats run off somewhere in the darkness. ‌ 2 He drives along Alejandro’s Trail into the city. He shouldn’t drive on that track; it ruins the car. He’s already had the axles repaired twice, and each time the mechanic, Anphil, warned him. You don’t drive down the north road, do you? Or Alejandro’s Trail? The car can’t handle it. You’ll have to get a Montero or one of the new Merceros; they can handle it, not this car. But Erhard doesn’t want a Montero, and he doesn’t have the money for a new Mercedes. Even if he had the money, he would keep his Mercedes from Morocco with its yellow seats and choppy acceleration. All the same, he takes Alejandro’s Trail. Drives past Olivia’s old house where the surfers have moved in with their boards lying on the roof, and in the darkness he can see their flags: a pair of pink knickers hanging from the end of a long stick that’s jutting from the cabin. Two guys and their friends live there. Sometimes when he passes by, in the morning, they’re sitting outside, smoking tobacco from large pipes; they wave at him, laughing hysterically. Whenever he stops the car, they’re high as poisoned goats and unable to rise from their inflatable chairs. But there’s no one home now, and the lights are out. They’re probably on the beach or downtown. He approaches the bend that hugs the coast, a fantastic bend – especially with Lumumba up to his Adam’s apple and cheap cognac in every finger joint. It’s a pebbly, potholey road, and the entire car vibrates. Swerving when he reaches 70 mph, he feels a tickling sensation that makes him grin. He breaks wind, too, which isn’t as funny; he just can’t help himself. He’s had the problem the last few years. If he squeezes his stomach muscles even a little, a pocket of air lurches through his gut and into his underwear; it’s both painful and liberating. From there the trail runs downhill, and he hits the final curve. Through the headlights he sees a goat standing in the centre of the road, and he veers around it before glancing in the rearview mirror; it looks like Hardy, but it can’t be him, not here, not this far from the house. The goat has already disappeared in the darkness. He’s so preoccupied that he doesn’t see the car driving towards him until it passes on the much-too-narrow road. Mostly it’s just sound, a dry whooom. A metallic shadow along the car. The side mirror gets knocked flat against the glass. – Goddamn amateurs! he shouts, to his surprise, in Danish. He apparently hasn’t forgotten how to curse. He continues around the curve, the other car is out of sight, the red tail-lights vanished in the night. There’s no point even stopping to inspect the damage. He rolls his window down and fixes his mirror. The glass has splintered into tributaries pointing downward in eight fine lines. A black Montero. No doubt it was the gadabout Bill Haji, who lives up the road at a ranchlike villa with horses; he’s known for taking Alejandro’s Trail fast and furious, as if the sea was ablaze behind him. Erhard’s heart should be sitting in his throat right now, but instead it’s right where it’s supposed to be, numbed by the Lumumba and agitated by the prospect of meeting the hairdresser’s daughter. He drives off the trail and into Corralejo. The heat rises from the asphalt. Young people in small cars honk and sing. He heads down the Avenida towards the harbour, then parks in Calle Palangre. He dumps the car when he finds a vacant spot. He plans to walk to the hairdresser’s daughter’s place. He wants to knock on her door. He’s already red-faced and embarrassed by the look she will give him when he’s standing at her door. Good evening, he will say, and Happy New Year. He’s seen her before. I’ve seen you in the photograph at your mother’s salon. What if she’s wearing one of those summer dresses with the lazy straps that are always falling to the side? Who gives a shit if she wears glasses? He’s not picky. But when he reaches the clothing shop and glances up at the flats above, he sees that the lights are off. On every storey of the building. She’s probably watching TV. Drinking white wine and hoping someone will stop by. He needs to fortify himself with a drink. Something really strong. Just something to get his voice box going. It’ll do him no good just standing there staring like some idiotic extranjero. He walks up the street and down Via Ropia. Towards Centro Atlantico. It’s always buzzing there, mostly with tourists, people he doesn’t know. He walks into Flicks and goes directly to the bar. He orders a Rusty Nail, and even buys a round for the two gentlemen in the corner. They’re olive farmers out prowling for women and unaccustomed to city life, huddled close like mice behind a palm tree. They are practically invisible. ‌ 3 Eighteen minutes to go. On the back wall of the bar the TV’s showing images from Times Square, fireworks over Sydney Harbour, Big Ben’s long hands approaching XII. The bartender shouts Are you ready for the new year? It sounds so promising, so simple. As if one leaves behind all the old, bringing only the new into the new year. But new means nothing to him. He’s not new. He doesn’t need new. He doesn’t want new. He just wants the old to behave properly. Seventeen minutes. He can still ring the doorbell and wish her a Happy New Year. Maybe she’s wearing a negligee or whatever it’s called. She’s been sitting there drinking white wine and watching reruns of 7 Vidas, which everyone loves. Her hair is wet, she’s taken a cool bath. A crowd of people moves to exit onto the street. He’s nearly pushed off his stool. He pays with a bill and remembers why he doesn’t frequent tourist traps: it costs more than twenty euros for whisky and Drambuie. He follows the throng out and starts back towards Calle Palangre. He crosses the street and enters her building. It was built during the Franco years, and the stairwell is simple and cobalt-blue. On the first floor he reads the names on each of the three doors. Loud music is blaring inside, but there’s no Louisa or L. He walks up another flight. A couple stands kissing beneath the artificial light of the stairwell, but when he passes them they stop, shamefaced, and head down the stairs. As he stands catching his breath a moment, he looks at the nameplates, then continues to the top floor. Three floors with doors equals nine doors. On the third floor live one Federico Javier Panôs and one Sobrino. And in the centre, Luisa Muelas. The sign on her door is large and inlaid with gold, her name etched in thick, cursive letters. No doubt a gift from Petra and her husband. It’s one of those traditional items parents give their children whenever they, as thirty-year-olds, move out of their childhood home. It seems quiet behind each of the doors. He puts his ear against Luisa Muelas’s and almost wishes her not to be home. But there’s a faint noise inside – clatters, creaks, mumbles – but perhaps it’s just the TV. He straightens up and raps his good hand, the right, against the flat chunk of wood above the peephole. It’s four minutes to midnight. Maybe his knocks will fade into the raucous noise of New Year’s Eve. Suddenly he sees a face in the nameplate. The face is indistinct. A pleading, confused face dominated by two eyes wedged between a stack of wrinkles and shabby skin, topped off with a tired beard. A desperate face. In it he can see love and sorrow, he can see decades of bewilderment and alcohol, and he can see the cynical observer, appraising and judgemental. It’s an appallingly wretched face, difficult to penetrate, difficult to stomach, difficult to love. But worst of all it’s his face. As seen only from the rearview mirror of his car, or in the distorted mirrors above the chipped sinks of public toilets, or in shop windows, but preferably not at all. There’s only one thing to ask that face. What have you got to offer? In reality there’s nothing more frightening than this. The encounter. The moment in a life when one takes a risk. When one says, I want you. The moment when chance ceases, when one makes a stand and asks another to accept. The moment when two soap bubbles burst the reflection, merging into one. It doesn’t happen during a kiss, or during sex, and not even when one person loves another. It’s in the terrifying second when one dares to make a mad claim that one has something to offer another by one’s very presence. He hears sounds behind the door now. Like stockinged feet. – I’m coming, a soft voice says. It’s two minutes to twelve. He can’t do it, he just can’t. He leans over the stairwell and starts down. Down, down. He hears the door opening on the top floor. Hello? the voice says. Past the doors with loud music and outside. Onto the street. He hobbles along the wall like a rat, then cuts across the street to his car. Calle Palangre is filled with people now. There’s a group of cigar-smoking men standing beside his car, and girls astride scooters, champagne flutes in their hands. Voices call out from the flats above. He fumbles his way into his car and wriggles it free of its parking spot. Following the one-way street, he parts the throng. A group wants to catch a ride, not seeing that his sign is turned off, but he’s not interested. He pays no mind to their hands on his windscreen or their pleading eyes. Happy New Year, asshole!, a young girl wearing a silver-covered bowler shouts at him. He drives away from the city’s light and into darkness. The grey road ends and becomes a pale track. He presses down hard on the old Mercedes’ creaky gas pedal. Gravel plinks against the undercarriage. The image of the hairdresser’s daughter opening the door returns to mock him. Now in socks – hair rumpled and a little glass of whisky in her hand. A fantasy only a horny man can imagine. That’s something he hates about growing old. Going from the physicality of a youth lacking spirit to pure spirit lacking physicality. To the point where the best moments are comprised of thoughts, of conceptions of the future, of reminders from way back when. For almost eighteen years he’s imagined intimacy with a woman. Imagined it. Even when he was with Annette, he imagined it. Back then it had just had a more concrete means of expression, back then it resembled intimacy with everyone else but her, right up until he was no longer near her. His feet shift from the gas pedal to the brake. In the centre of his headlights’ bright yellow cone he sees a giant object lying in the middle of the road. ‌ ‌t h e l i t t l e f i n g e r ‌1 January–3 January ‌ 4 At first he thinks it’s a fallen satellite, then he sees that it’s a car, an overturned car. It’s a bloody Montero, a black Montero like Bill Haji’s. It is Bill Haji’s. It’s four or five hundred metres from the spot where they’d passed one another, but how long ago was that? An hour? He can’t make any sense of time. Maybe the Rusty Nail went to his head after all. He cuts his engine but leaves the headlights on, so he can see the car. He hears the ocean and the soft hum of the Montero’s motor. The dust settles. He’s about to turn on his CB radio and contact dispatch; it’s the best he can do. Then he hears some rapping sounds, as if someone’s trying to communicate or get free. He gets out of his car. He calls Bill’s name. He calls as though they know each other. Bill Haji. They hardly know each other. Everyone knows Bill Haji. A colourful, obnoxious person. Never at rest, always on his way to or fro. Erhard has driven him a few times. The first time was to the hospital. And after that – upon request: a couple of trips to the airport and home to Haji’s villa some miles away. Haji arrived from Madrid with four or five suitcases and a young man who seemed tired. They were the same suitcases both times, but not the same guy. Erhard didn’t care about the rumours, or how Haji lived his life. One shouldn’t get involved in that kind of thing. As long as the boys are over eighteen and have made their own choices. – Bill Haji, he repeats. The car is smashed up. It must have rolled a good distance. Stupid Montero. No better than Japanese cardboard. There’s a long trail of glass. Which suggests to him that the vehicle skidded along the road. He calls again as he walks around the car and peers through what might have been the windscreen, but is probably a side window. There’s no one inside. Neither Bill nor any of his boys. Erhard breathes easier. Even though he doesn’t much care for Bill Haji, he feared seeing him mashed between the steering wheel and the seat like a blood-gorged tick. The vehicle is empty; one of the doors is open, hanging from its hinge. Maybe he’s gone after help or was picked up by his sister, who’s always close by Bill Haji, whenever he sees him downtown or at La Marquesina. He bends forward and touches the car. It’s still warm. For a moment the darkness and the car fade away, and the entire sky is lit up in shades of green and cyan and magenta, and it’s as if hundreds of eyes are looking back at him. ‌ 5 The sky above explodes. Erhard stares across the vehicle. More booms follow in choppy rhythm, streaks and flashes of light. At first he thinks that they’re emergency lights from a ship. Then he remembers that it’s New Year’s Eve and he spots the stream of fireworks down in the city. When his eyes adjust to the darkness again, he sees something moving right in front of him. Sitting on top of what was once the car’s exhaust is a dog. Two dogs. They’re watching him like cute puppies heading out for a walk. They’re wild dogs. No one knows where they come from. Maybe from Corralejo seven miles away. Whether they are sitting there or running along the edges of cliffs in the moonlight, they’re handsome animals. In the daylight they appear emaciated and beaten, like old blankets. They’re a plague to anyone who raises sheep and goats, and among bored young men they’ve become something one shoots as target practice from the bed of a lorry. And yet somehow there are more of them than ever. Erhard guesses that ten or fifteen of them are out there in the darkness. Maybe Bill Haji hit one of them, maybe that’s why he crashed. One of the dogs is drooling. Erhard stares through its forelegs. Even though most of his face is gone, he can still recognize Bill Haji’s remains. There’s nothing left to save. Maybe he was dead before the dogs got to him. His famous sideburns look like rabbit fur turned inside out. Then he sees it. ‌ 6 It’s lying right behind the left front wheel, in darkness. He only sees it because it sparkles a little each time the fireworks explode in the sky. At first he’s not sure what it is. There’s heat in the reflection, an amber radiance. He guesses that it’s some copper or something embossed in gold, perhaps part of a pair of sunglasses or a cord sliced in half. For a moment he wonders if it’s a gold filling, then he sees the fingernail and the small folds around the joint. He notices that the broad ring is surrounded by flesh. It’s Bill Haji’s engagement ring. On Bill Haji’s ring finger. Ten minus one. He doesn’t want to go around the vehicle, so he reaches for it; he doesn’t even know if he can reach it. It’s only a metre or two away from him on the other side of the car. He stretches across the undercarriage, but the two dogs glance up from their dinner. One bares its teeth and repositions its front paws, ready to spring. Erhard might be able to snatch the finger, but not without having a dog stuck to his arm. He walks slowly back to his own car and snaps on the high beams. He blinks the lights on and off a few times until the dogs glower at him in irritation. Then he lays his hand against the centre of the wheel and puts all his weight into it. The car emits a few shrill honks that most wouldn’t believe belonged to a Mercedes. He presses the horn until the two dogs on the other car hop sluggishly down like junkies and slink off a few metres into the darkness. He hurries to the Montero by the glow of his high beams. As fast as he can. It has been several months, maybe years, since he last ran. Although it’s only a few metres, it feels like forever. As if the dogs have already seen him and are moving towards the vehicle again. As if his legs are unreliable and can’t carry him all the way there and back again in a single evening. He doesn’t get as close to the car as he wishes but leans across the overturned Montero to reach for the ring. A mere half-metre away. He’s splayed out just opposite what remains of Bill Haji’s head and face, gazing through a red-blue clot at open but extinguished eyes. Find the boy. The sentence emerges so loud and clear through the noise of the fireworks that, for a moment, Erhard thinks it’s coming from the radio that’s still playing. Or maybe one of the dogs, as far as he fucking knows, is suddenly talking. He stares into Bill Haji’s eyes and it’s almost as if the voice is coming from them, from the dark circles slowly glossing over in death. He’s heard the voice before. It’s a voice he recognizes. Maybe it’s Bill Haji’s. Maybe it’s just something he said out loud, for God knows what reason. He can’t even remember what he said, only that the words were pleading. Then he sees the finger again and hoists himself forward. The undercarriage is still warm. Not hot, but warm like a rock. The fireworks die out, the final salute blasting above the coast, a green network that sprays silver. Silence follows. Not quite silence. The engine groans. And the dogs’ plaintive yips have become a supersonic whine, which must be the sound they make right before they turn vicious. Something rustles just below the car. Erhard crawls forward on his belly, stretches his arm, and clutches the finger. It’s cold. Bristly. And incredible. Nine + one, he thinks. ‌ 7 Erhard runs back to his car and hurls himself into the front seat, then slams the door. Since he discovered the overturned car, he’s felt perfectly sober, almost hung-over, and now his drunkenness returns with a snap. Not only the dizzying sensation, but also a bizarre elation, a joy. It’s as if his eyes, body, and mind are doing short-circuited mathematics. With his own nine fingers and Bill Haji’s one that makes ten fingers. It stirs a pleasure all the way down in his belly, hell, down in his cock – as if having a new finger in his possession has strengthened his libido. He knows that it’s wrong, knows he’s imaging it, but even though it’s not his finger, the sum total of fingers makes him whole in a way he’s not felt in a long time. In the same way that losing his finger eighteen years before represented a repulsion, a conscious subtraction, this finger returns his balance to him. He tosses his socks and plops in bed with a buzzing head. The generator has run dry, because he forgot to turn it off when he left. Tomorrow, tomorrow he’ll have a look at it. Although the night is quiet, when the wind shifts direction it sounds like dogs snarling. If they eat him there will be nothing to bury. If there’s nothing to bury, he’s not dead. Bill Haji’s sister is one hard woman who looks like a man. She’ll have to say her goodbyes to an empty coffin. The finger on a hand, Bill Haji’s hand, which once hailed Erhard on the high street. His boyfriend was sick. Bill Haji caressed him all the way to the hospital. What Erhard recalls most of all was the scent of watermelon and the stack of 500-euro notes Bill Haji wanted to pay with. To make change, Erhard had to run inside a kiosk. The finger. Bill Haji’s hand. Bill Haji’s sideburns. The most Irish thing about the man. He fumbles in the dark of his bedroom to find the telephone. There’s been an accident. Hurry, he says. It’s like leaving a message. He gives the address, trying to alter his voice so that he sounds more Spanish. Los perros se lo han comido. The dogs have eaten him. The man on the other end of the line doesn’t quite understand. – Your name? May I ask who is calling? A long silence. Erhard wants to hang up, but he can’t find the off button in the dark. He runs his hand up the twisted cord until he locates it. – Hello, the man says. Erhard hangs up. Once again, the house is shockingly quiet. All that remains is the wind swooshing across the rocks. The new year has already come to the islands. The finger is tucked underneath his pillow like a lucky coin. ‌ 8 On Tuesday, he rises early and goes for a drive before reporting to dispatch and picking up his first fares. His first trip is always down to Alapaqa, the fisherman’s village, where the seagulls scream and you can get the best coffee on the island. Aristide and his wife Miza brew it themselves, grinding it with Miza’s father’s old Arabic grinder, which covers the length of a desk. The sweet coffee is practically purple. The island’s best. Even though he can’t say that he’s tried every place that offers coffee, he’s probably tried most of them. – You look chipper today, Erhard, Miza says. Erhard gives her cousin a terse hello. She’s staying with Miza temporarily and enters the cafe in her bare feet. She’s a motorcycle-girl with a filthy mouth. He doesn’t care for that, but he likes her hair. When she’s standing with her back to him, he can see it. Dark and long, all the way to her thighs. As Erhard drinks his coffee, the cousin talks about a bodybuilder called Stefano. Not a nice guy, Erhard would say if she asked, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t ask anything. Instead she prattles on about the bodybuilder’s chicken brain and a TV he smashed and all the money he spent on some skanky bitches at a bar in Puerto. Miza cleans the cafe while listening, giving Erhard a glance. Maybe women aren’t always worth it, her glance says. Maybe men aren’t, either. There’s also a shower at Miza’s that he uses. It’s in a small shed where the fishermen clean and dry large fish. Through the years it has become a kind of public shower for surfers, fishermen, and one particular taxi driver who doesn’t have his own. On a good day there won’t be any fish hanging in the room. Today a huge swordfish dangles from a hook jammed in its mouth. ‌ 9 He hauls in a meagre 120 euros. He falls into a good rhythm, with customers turning up just as quickly as he drops them off. He keeps the finger in his pocket, not daring to remove it. He’s tried to slide the ring off, but it’s stuck, wedged all the way to the bone. Bill Haji wasn’t fat, but his finger is either swollen or so fleshy that the ring’s now tight. He imagines a young Bill putting it on. When the finger has dried a bit, maybe he’ll be able to pry the ring free. As long as the finger doesn’t snap in two or crumble like dry clay. After siesta he heads down to Villaverde. He parks on a quiet road behind the Aritzas’ white mansion. Each year, always a few days after New Year, the Aritzas host visitors from the mainland, and their little niece Ainhoa plays Gershwin’s ‘Concerto in F’. He arrives half an hour early and tunes the piano while the women drink champagne on the terrace and the men stare into the Steinway, offering commentary. Not to Erhard, but to each other. André Aritza is a friendly man in his late forties with unusually thick glasses. Ever since Erhard blurted out that he knows nothing about computers, nor has any interest in them, André Aritza has been cool to him. The man obviously earned his fortune on computers and ships and navigation. One of the nouveau riche – of which there are more and more. Odd, spineless men with young trophy wives who maintain the household for them and their children. Today, three of those squinty-eyed inventor types are pointing into the housing at the hammers going up and down, and they refer to Erhard standing right beside them as the Piano Tuner. The brother-in-law says something about a mobile phone, how it can tune the piano. Very, very smart, the brother-in-law says. Tell me, how much do you pay the Piano Tuner? André Aritza replies: Way too much for way too little. Then get that app, the brother-in-law says, it only costs 79 cents. The men laugh. The sad sack will be unemployed soon, says the youngest of the inventor types. Erhard’s busy with the tuning fork, his head all the way inside the housing. He hears a lot of that kind of thing. Also when he drives his cab. He feels the finger in his pocket. Actually he can’t feel it, just knows it’s there. It gives him strange ideas. Like the desire to rip the strings out of this goddamn piano. Like the desire to play études with André Aritza’s head mashed onto the keys. But it also makes him want to let it go. To be calm and not waste his opportunities. Reina Aritza tries to gather the company in the dining room. There’s a suite behind some closed sliding doors. The entire house smells of overcooked lobster. Erhard takes his time finishing as the party breaks up and begins drinking champagne in front of the windows, where there’s a view of the bay and the water. He walks downstairs to the kitchen, washes his blackened fingers, and then heads to the entranceway. Just as he’s about to close the front door, he remembers the envelope containing money that’s sitting on the small worktop. That’s always where he finds it. One hundred euros. He doesn’t need the money. If he doesn’t take the envelope he can show André Aritza that he’s not doing it for the money. That he won’t be subjected to commentary for chump-change. But it would just look like he forgot the money. He didn’t speak up when they commented negatively about him, and they’d just think the poor, confused piano tuner has forgotten his money. Maybe they would laugh at him even more. Hell no. He goes back upstairs and past the dining room, where he hears Reina directing the guests around the table, placing men and women. She calls for André, but there’s no response. Erhard scoops the envelope off the counter and quickly peeks into the living room through the slit in the door, and he sees the niece leaning against the piano gazing out the window. André Aritza is standing a little too close to her, his mouth a little too close to her ear. He’s watching her as if he expects a reaction, but one of his hands is inching up her thigh and up towards the long, silvery blouse that hangs below her waist. She doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself, but she doesn’t seem ashamed or surprised either. The only mitigating circumstance here is that she’s not his real niece, just a good friend’s daughter whom they regard as a niece. And she’s not a child, she’s a young woman, close to seventeen or eighteen years old. For someone like Erhard, who doesn’t know anything about sex or seducing women, his advances seem neither sexy nor seductive. Behind him Erhard hears Reina Aritza on her way down the hallway. – Señor Jørgensen, she says, when she sees him standing there with the envelope in his hand. Thank you for your help. Happy New Year to you. Erhard turns swiftly and pushes the living-room door open. André Aritza abruptly removes his hand from his niece and stands stiff as a butler beside her, glancing at Erhard, irritated. The niece still seems indifferent. As if he’s filled her with champagne or said something to her that that preoccupies her mind. – Your beautiful wife is looking for you, Erhard says loudly. – I see, thank you, the man says, looking away. – The lobster is getting cold, Reina Aritza says into the living room. – Remember the champagne flutes. – Happy New Year to you and your niece, Erhard says to André Aritza, turning his back to them and heading down the stairs. He sees a lot of this kind of thing, but still he wonders if this will be his last visit to this house. André Aritza may become even more difficult now. On the other hand it’ll be a long time before he needs to tune the piano again. He takes care of the few assignments he has. There’s no reason to make a decision now. It’ll be another year before he sees these people again. He snaps on his sign and hopes to pick up a customer before driving home. ‌ 1 0 A man is standing at the door. Before he opens it, Erhard spies him through the tiny peephole; he counts to thirty to see if he will leave. The man, whose name is Francisco Bernal, rubs his eyes behind his sunglasses, as if he’s tired or has dust in them. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three. But the man is still there, staring at the door as if it’ll be thrust open at any moment. A handsome young man in his late thirties, he has a couple of kids and a wife who works at one of the hotels. Erhard opens the door. The policeman looks at Erhard. – Hermit, he says. – Superintendent. – I’m not a superintendent. – And my name’s not Hermit. Bernal grins. – OK, Jørgensen. How are you? – Fine. You? The kids? – The youngest one just got over measles. Erhard nods. He’s known the vice police superintendent for a few years. – Your colleague called me yesterday, Erhard says. – We’d prefer you come to the station. – I couldn’t yesterday. – Then come with me now. – But you’re here now. I don’t understand what you guys need from me. I don’t know much. I only know what I’ve told you. The policeman removes his sunglasses. He looks tired. – I can drive you in and bring you back. – Sounds like fun, but no thanks. Bernal glances at Erhard’s car. – What happened to your side mirror? – That kind of thing happens when you drive a taxi. – Jørgensen, I was sent here to pick you up. Stop making it difficult for me. – Call me Señor Againsttherules. Bernal laughs. An honest laughter. That’s what Erhard likes about him. – Why didn’t you say who you were? On the telephone? – The connection was bad, Erhard says. – You know how it is out here. – As far as I can tell, it’s gotten much better with the new cables. Erhard hadn’t heard anything about new cables. – Why didn’t you call back? Bernal continues. – It was New Year’s Eve, and I was tired. – Were you tired when you discovered the body, too? – Yes. Erhard thinks about the words which escaped from Bill Haji’s eyes, but he can no longer recall them. It’s not the kind of information that adds to one’s credibility. – When was the last time you saw a doctor? – Give it a rest, Erhard says, getting out his driver’s licence. Taxi drivers have to carry it on their person at all times, but he’s never shown it to anyone but Bernal, who checks it every time. Bernal looks at the date. October 2011. – You have no trouble seeing at night? – Of course not. – It happens sometimes. At your age. – That’s called harassment. Two other drivers are older than I am. – Actually, that’s not the case. Alberto Ramirez is sixty-eight, Luís Hernaldo Esposito is sixty-six. – Impressive, young man. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m a good driver. – I’m aware of that, but you’re also so obstinate that I could have you arrested. All at once his face takes on a strangely serious expression. – Hermit, I have to ask you something. He can’t escape that name. A few years ago it bothered him, and he tried getting people to call him Jørgensen. But it didn’t last. There’s nothing more durable than a misunderstood nickname. – Let’s hear it, he says. – There’s something about… about Bill Haji that we’d like to know. Bernal looks around. – Easy now. There’s no one here but us. And the goats. – I asked Pérez-Lúñigo to wait in the car. Erhard gazes at the police car, and only now does he notice the dark shadow sitting in the passenger’s seat and grasping the handle on the car’s ceiling. Lorenzo Pérez-Lúñigo is a doctor, a very average one at that, but he’s also the island’s only medical examiner. He’s not particularly good at his job, he’s just pompous and abnormally interested in corpses. An awful person. Erhard almost reported him to the police a few years back for abusing a corpse, but Bernal talked him out of it. – What happens in a taxi stays with the cabbie, as the saying goes. Bernal snorts. – Can we at least go inside? Erhard enters the living room, which is also the kitchen. He leans against the kitchen table and gestures for the vice police superintendent to do the same. – You still don’t have running water, Bernal says, looking at an empty bottle of cognac on the table. – Water is for turtles. – You live like a turtle, too. I’m getting a little concerned. – No need. I’ve done far worse. Bernal shrugs. – On the telephone you said that the dogs had bitten his face. – I said they’d eaten his face. – And they sat on top of the car? The dogs. And they were biting him? – Eating him. Yes, that’s what I saw. – And you’re sure of that? It was his face? – I saw his sideburns, I saw his hair. I saw his eyes. – Is it possible that you were tired? – I know what I saw. – Could it have been his back? – If he had eyes on his back. The superintendent smiles. – We can’t find his ring. It’s a very unique ring that’s worth nothing if one tried to sell it. – Who knows what those animals might have eaten? – We’ve shot everything that runs around on four legs out there. We’ve even shot a few dogs that weren’t feral. And Lorenzo has been wallowing in dog guts up to his elbows. No ring. – Then he’s in his element. But maybe they didn’t swallow it. Maybe it’s lying around somewhere. Who knows where dogs like that hide? – We would’ve found it then. We’ve searched the entire area. The problem is that everything that’s been inside the dogs for more than three or four hours is so dissolved we can’t tell what it is. Not the ring – we ought to be able to find that. And if the face was the last thing the dogs, um, ate, then we ought to have found it. – When did you get there? – We got there as fast as we could. The policeman glances down at the laminate floor, which is torn and fixed with duct tape. – They’re calling it a single-vehicle accident. He says it several times, as if it suddenly amazes him. Erhard is relieved, but afraid to show this relief to Bernal. He turns and arranges some random object on the kitchen table. – How long did it take? he says. – The man was already dead, of course. Like you said, it was New Year’s Eve. – So what’s the problem? – His family’s breathing down our necks. Love makes people unreasonable. They want something to put in the coffin. Not just rocks from Alejandro’s Trail. And the ring, the sister’s very focused on that. – Don’t try to mess with them. Especially Eleanor. Nothing good will come of that. He remembers the sister as she appears in a rearview mirror. She’s twice the man Bill Haji was. – That’s why we’re busting our asses here. A ring like that is pretty much, you know, his personality. I’d like to give the ring to his sister and tell her that he’s in the coffin. Not just what’s left of his shoes or his liver, which for some reason those devils never touched. Erhard doesn’t dare glance over at the shelf where the finger is lying inside a tin of Mokarabia 100 per cent Arabica coffee. – I can’t help you. Bernal peers around as if he wants to say more. His eyes rest for some time on the section of wall where the wallpaper is missing. The bare wood is visible there. Pale plywood marked by the carpenter’s scribbled notes. Erhard follows him to his car. Pérez-Lúñigo seems impatient. – If you hear that someone has found the ring, I’d like to know. – OK, Erhard says. If he hears that someone has found the ring, he’ll call immediately. – Did I tell you that I knew a girl from Denmark once? Back when I lived in Lanzarote. She was a wild little one, impossible to tame. He climbs into the car but keeps the door open. – She went home suddenly. That’s the problem with these islands. All the sensible people go home at some point. – Don’t know her, Erhard says. ‌ 11 He talks to the Boy-Man. Aaz is probably the only one he’s unable to read. Aaz may be the first person he’s known who is no one and everyone at the same time. Erhard likes that about him. They drive through Tindaya. Aaz says he should give it a chance. He says: You deserve it, it’ll happen someday. But Erhard isn’t sure. – It’s been eighteen years since the last time, Aaz. Fewer tourists are coming here. And many of them are passionate Arsenal fans who’re lookin’ for cheap beer and even cheaper pussy, to put it bluntly, Aaz. And the families, the families with their lazy kids who scream for McDonald’s as soon as they’re off the plane. It’s getting longer and longer between good customers, even for me. And even longer between agreeable women. May I recommend Liana or a couple other sisters? – That’s very kind of you, Aaz. Those girls aren’t really my type, or I’m not theirs. If I’m lucky, I’ll find an old, used-up, angry widow from Gornjal. The town with all the widows. They laugh. – Nah, who wants a rundown cab driver, Erhard says. – A labourer with a handicap and bad teeth and all that. You also tune pianos. – It’s just a matter of time before only idiots pay for that kind of service. Pardon me, but it can all be done with modern methods, easier, better, and cheaper. For all I know the same might apply to taxis in a few years. You’ll have robots driving you around. What about you? What will you do? Who will drive me home? – By that point I’ll be dead, Aaz. By that point you’ll be a grown man and will have forgotten all about me. By that point there will be a tunnel to Africa and you’ll be able to drive to the Sahara and ride on electric camels. Aaz doesn’t reply, just stares at the glove compartment’s latch, which can be opened with a press of the thumb. ‌ 1 2 Grown men with kites. He turns his sign off and parks out by the Dunes and watches the kite surfers. He decides how much work he wants to do and when he wants to do it. If he wants to work all day, he can. Or if he feels like taking tomorrow off. He just goes to where he’ll find customers, then drives them. That’s how it feels anyway. It’s not difficult; it doesn’t require much from him. He just knows where the customers are. It’s the same with the piano. Once he hears a few notes, he knows what he needs to work on, whether something is stuck, or whether it’s the result of moisture or simply some dust or lint. In the same way, he can see the traffic or kind of feel in the air or hear the sounds from the airport or sense the busyness on the main road. And he knows where a woman is waiting with her teenage daughter on her way back to the hotel after a shopping trip, or where a group of businessmen will soon march a few feet into the road and whistle at him so they can head to the nearest strip bar, or when a surfer with sand between his toes wants to use his dollars to get to the city, his board strapped to the roof. Many of his colleagues hate him for this ability, while some are awed by him. A couple of the Catholics make the sign of the cross when he comes to the auto workshop. Dispatch rarely gives him jobs, because they know he already has plenty of customers. Once in a while there’s a young driver who wants to know how he does it. Maybe he sees Erhard sitting at the Hotel Phenix bar, and the young man approaches him wanting to know everything, while his comrades stand there calling out in the background. C’mon now, this guy’s a legend, he shouts back at them, he’s going to tell me all his secrets. But Erhard doesn’t tell him his secrets, it’s not something he can explain. All he can say is, Keep your eye on the traffic, think about the people. Where would you want to go if the weather was so and so? Is it a heavy- travel day? And so on. Good advice, but no doubt unusable. The truth, of course, is that he doesn’t even know himself how he does it. It’s like music, he tries to tell the young drivers, who usually don’t know anything about music. The younger drivers want to learn, but the middle-aged drivers are bitter. They’ll never do anything but drive taxis, and they’ll never live well doing so. They see Erhard as a parasite, an extranjero, who not only takes their customers, but also acts as if he’s better than them. He lives alone out in Majanicho, he doesn’t talk to the other drivers, and he just sits in his old Mercedes reading books if he’s not out stealing the only customers of the day. That’s what they think, and some of them even tell him that. And they’re right too. Also about the books. In the beginning, reading was something he did to relax and to show the other drivers that he wasn’t busy finding new customers. He started driving past potential rides and parking at the back of the queue, doing everything he could to remain there all day with a good book. In the boot he keeps a box stuffed with paperbacks, which he rummages through and selects from. He likes looking at the covers and touching the raised letters the titles are printed with. Or he riffles through a book and inspects it to see how many dog-ears it has. If there are many, it’s good. He buys books, sometimes by the boxful, from a friend in Puerto. She owns a secondhand shop. A few times each month, if he’s been out to the airport, he drives past Solilla’s and purchases books and maybe some clothes. There’s nothing wrong with the books. The clothes smell a little; he washes them before he wears them. Hangs them on the line behind the house and leaves them for a week. Then the smell goes away, and is replaced by the scent of the island’s piquant soil. He can stay there all day reading. There should be something left for the others. They all have children and wives, they have to provide for others, and they don’t have the luxury of sitting around reading. He doesn’t have the same issue. The more he earns, the more he sends to Annette. Every month he transfers most of his salary to her account. Not with a friendly message, but electronically and soullessly. He doesn’t deserve anything else, and he doesn’t need anything special. He can live on coffee and tinned food that he bought many years ago and which he warms up and eats directly from the tin. It doesn’t bother him. Sometimes he goes to the island’s finest restaurants and takes a long time choosing expensive wine and cutting a good cigar. That doesn’t bother him, either. During the summer he sits in his car and reads with the window open, and during the winter he keeps a reclining chair that he arranges on the sidewalk beside the car. The other drivers, sweating inside their vehicles, hate this. When one drives through the Dunes and slowly past the quiet hotels with their gardeners and their eager water hoses, one can see the kites out over the water. Back and forth like birds hunting. He parks the car on the road and crosses the sandbanks to the water. Out here the sun is fierce. It feels that way, anyway. The beach stretches endlessly, the sea like a giant air balloon that’s suddenly lying at the end of the beige dune. There are no families walking on the beach today. The wind is too strong; the sand is drifting and stinging. Next to a container filled with surfing equipment, there’s a little shop on a couple of pallets. It offers ice cream, music, and shelter from the wind and sun. Erhard drinks a San Miguel while watching the figures being dragged around by ropes. Grown men with kites. Sometimes they’re perfectly exposed to the wind, other times it’s exactly the opposite. Frustratingly, he hears every sound emerging from the little shop. Every cough or scrape of the coffee machine. The sound of possibility. The woman in the shop is probably around twenty years younger than him, but worn down. She’s The Monk, the diligent, silent, labouring, and all-too- affectionate type. The divorced mother of four who had to get a job after her husband bolted. As a potential lover, on the one hand, she’s experienced and highly service-minded; but on the other hand, she’s scary. She stoops forward to watch the kites through the small window. – Is that one of your sons out there? he guesses. She looks at him, surprised. – Do you know my Robbi? – I know most everyone a little, he says. ‌ 1 3 At 4 p.m. he drives out to the Oleana Cemetery and parks on the opposite side of the road. He watches them walking up the street, a small procession with many flowers. Typically, the wealthiest families like to bear their dead as far as possible, while the poor spend great sums of money on expensive hearses. The Haji family balances the coffin through the cemetery gate and down one of the paths. It doesn’t look easy. Maybe they put a few rocks in the coffin after all. Eleanor’s at the back of the throng, flanked on one side by a tall young woman whose hair is falling in her eyes and, on the other, by an elderly woman – probably an aunt. The policeman is across the street; he’s wearing a nice set of clothes but seems even more tired than the last time Erhard saw him. He nods at Erhard and merges into the procession. – It’s God’s punishment, he hears a woman say. She’s sitting on a balcony a few storeys above him. – The island’s too small for a poof like that. ‌ 1 4 At night he lies in bed with one eye open, staring at the boxlike telephone and its knotted-up cord. In that stage right before sleep, he imagines himself standing and lifting the receiver. In the morning he eyes the telephone while eating his breakfast, and again he imagines it ringing. He considers placing the call himself. It’s now been eighteen years. But he can’t do it and he hustles to his car. When he goes to the supermarket, he notices the coin-operated telephone in the corner, or, if he passes an electronics store – Corralejo has plenty of these – he spots, at a distance, an answering machine inside a faded box. Ever since Annette called to curse him out he’s been this way at the start of a new year. He was unable to respond to her; she just called to vent. This was in 1997, immediately after he began sending money home. She couldn’t take it. Couldn’t stomach his goddamn money. She wanted nothing from him. Nothing. You’re dead, you’re already dead. Then she hung up. The following year she called back. This time she didn’t say anything, just cried for twenty seconds. She hasn’t called since. But this year marks the eighteenth year since he left her. He’s expecting a call. Practically wishes for it. Even if she’s just crying into the telephone. But there’s nothing. Maybe she’s forgotten his number, or him. Maybe she’s remarried. There’s nothing. He picks up every customer that comes his way, he works all afternoon and into the evening, and he works until he’s so tired that his eyelids stick together. Afterward he heads to the harbour, indiscriminately buys a bottle of wine, and sits on the pier, alone, watching young people leap into the water until the last rays of sunlight vanish from the rocky island of Isla de Lobos and the sea turns black. He staggers to the intercom at Calle el Muelle to pay Raúl and Beatriz a visit. – Come on up, old man, Raúl says, always ready. They open the door. She’s wearing a sheer yellow summer dress that shows off her long, tanned legs, and he’s wearing a shirt unbuttoned at the top. They welcome him like he’s their father: pleasant and receptive and happy. They’ve just mixed some mojitos. The three of them head up to the rooftop terrace. Beatriz sits on Raúl’s lap, and they kiss. Erhard tells them about the kite surfers and Bill Haji and Mónica, the Boy-Man’s mother. Raúl says that Erhard’s the most unbelievable man he knows, and Beatriz – after mixing more drinks for them and pouring wine for herself – passes next to him, wafting her sublime perfume as she runs her hand and its long fingernails through Erhard’s thin hair. He pretends, as always, that he doesn’t care for this, but on some nights it’s just such a hand that he fantasizes about. The nails like sharpened pencils drawing long strokes through his hair. It would be a different matter, obviously, if they really were his children, if Raúl was his son and Beatriz his daughter-in-law. But he knows they are not, and his dick knows they are not, and that’s all there is to it. He doesn’t even feel badly for Raúl. Raúl is Raúl, a real cock of the walk if ever there was one. Raúl may be his father’s son and Beatriz’s boyfriend, but no one can be sure of anything. He wants it all, but he doesn’t want to be tied down. He has it all, but he doesn’t want to own anything. Defiant and charming and always on his way into or out of a drunken stupor. In some strange way he was Erhard’s most attentive pupil. Erhard’s only pupil. At the beginning he was a foolish young man with nothing more than cheap entertainment and American porn mags on the brain, with a pronounced need to avoid additional problems with teachers, police, neighbours, angry young women – and his father. Erhard had to teach him to see the bigger picture, to get past what his father said, to get past the girls’ glances. To build a layer of contemplation and preparation in between his spontaneous eruptions and his clumsy attempts at independence. Patience, in short. Some things had rubbed off on the boy, who had since become a man. And rubbed off so well that Raúl has become calmer, less confused, less frightening, happier. Even his father has noticed his development. Still, he doesn’t believe Erhard’s friendship was the cause of this transformation so much as the many years Raúl had spent being grounded, his ears boxed, his bank account regulated. The result is a longstanding friendship, Erhard’s deepest and most alcoholic. Perhaps his only friendship. It’s a relationship in which Erhard is valued and has a voice, where he feels admired and accepted as the person he has been for the past two decades. But it’s a wrongheaded, bizarre friendship according to TaxiVentura’s managing director Pauli Barouki. Because Raúl is on their competitor’s board of directors. Rumour has it that there’s a shady side to their friendship. They say that Erhard works for Raúl, that he gives him free rides or takes care of Raúl’s problems. But by and large they’re not even involved in each other’s lives. They talk about food, alcohol, arguments at the Yellow Rooster. Erhard tells stories about people from Corralejo or Raúl talks about the rich pigs, as he calls them, and their impossible love-lives, while Beatriz laughs. Neither of them want to know what the other does in his spare time. Raúl doesn’t want to hear about life as a taxi driver; every time Erhard complains about dispatch or the new rules for drivers, Raúl waves his hand the way he learned from his father. Nor does he want to hear about the books Erhard reads. And Erhard doesn’t ask Raúl about Taxinaria or where all of Raúl’s money comes from. He figures it’s his father’s, even though Raúl repeatedly says that he wants to earn his own money. Only that one time, with Federico Molino and the suitcase, did Erhard go too far for Raúl. It was illegal, but he did it for the right reasons. That’s what Erhard now thinks about the episode they haven’t spoken of since. They gaze across the city and the beach. The water looks like marzipan. Raúl shows him a wound on his knuckle. – Had a little disagreement with a seaman down at the Yellow Rooster, he chuckles. – He said things about my girlfriend. Beatriz turns away, irritated. – I didn’t ask you to do that, she says. – Was there no another way? Erhard asks, though he believes the three or four louts who fight in Corralejo usually deserve a beating. Erhard knows them; he’s driven them all home many times. – You don’t know him, Raúl says. – But he deserved it. He’s been bothering me for months, years. But fuck that. No need to discuss it, right Bea? Salud. He drinks. They discuss the wine and the sunset and later the sunrise and the new boats anchored in the marina and Petra and her daughter, whom Raúl thinks is perfect for Erhard. To Raúl, it’s funny that Erhard has never really seen the girl, only her picture hanging on the wall of the salon. – What is it with you and these women? Beatriz asks. Raúl turns serious. – Erhard doesn’t talk about his past. – There can be many reasons for that, Beatriz says. – Watch it there, Bea, Raúl says. – Are you afraid of love? she goes on. Raúl lifts Erhard’s left hand so she can see the missing finger. – Love has many faces, but only one asshole, Erhard says. – Poetic, Raúl says. – Let’s just say: Being married is dangerous. Beatriz shoves him. – You think it’s funny? Why do you talk about it like that? – Tell Beatriz about the hairdresser’s daughter, Raúl says. – He’s almost met her five or six times, but he’s backed out every time. It was more like four times. Including New Year’s Eve. But he doesn’t want to mention that. – It was last year, I think. Or the year before that. The year when it rained the entire month of January. – The year before, Beatriz says. – I park the car, taking a break between jobs, and go down the street where Petra and her husband live. The daughter lived with them back then. The son goes to boarding school. I hear Petra through the balcony door. Have you heard Petra’s distinct Yorkshire accent? Shaking her head, Beatriz laughs. – And then her husband, he’s half-Moroccan, owns some electronic shops down in Puerto, among other things. They’re arguing about something involving their son’s school accommodation. I’m standing quietly in the doorway across the street, looking up, trying to catch a glimpse of the daughter Raúl keeps teasing me about. I probably stood there for an hour. Staring, following every little shadow moving across the ceiling, all the while figuring I’d see her on the balcony or in the big window next to it. – You’re some kind of Hamlet, Raúl grins. Beatriz shushes him. – You mean Romeo, Erhard says, and continues: – But I’m so preoccupied that I don’t even notice a person walking right past me, trailed by this sweet honeylike aroma. She crosses the street and enters the building. It’s not until the door of the flat closes and the argument abruptly stops and Petra says, Luisa, darling, her voice inflected by wine, that I realize the daughter had just walked past. – What then? What then? Beatriz sits up. – Nothing, Raúl says. – That’s what makes it so beautiful. It’s Erhard. Not a goddamn thing happens! Not a goddamn thing. – What? Beatriz says. – You didn’t go up? – I’m not meant to see her. – What? Beatriz shouts excitedly. – Tell me you don’t believe that? – I know a sign when I see one. – But how do you know it’s a sign? – I can see it. The pattern. – Salud for Louisa, Raúl says. – You can’t possibly believe that, Beatriz says, and drinks. Erhard hopes, deep down, that Luisa is a slightly older version of Beatriz, with lips like Kirsten – a woman he shagged in the backroom of a bar in Horsens, Denmark, several decades ago – and an ass like one of the beach volleyball girls he’d recently driven down to Sport Fuerte. But the truth is she’s probably a rather average and sweet girl in a floral dress, with pale English breasts like her mother. – Salud. Erhard sucks the rum and sugar from his glass and picks the mint leaves from his teeth. – It’ll become an obsession, Beatriz says. – In ten years you won’t be able to think about anything else, and you’ll talk non-stop about her. Just you wait and see. Like those fishermen who finally, at long last, hook some monster fish only to lose it. – She’s not that great, Raúl says. Beatriz gives him an elbow. – I’ve survived without a girlfriend, I think I’ll survive a little while longer. – Seventeen years, Raúl says. – That’s because you live in a cave. – It’s not as simple as you make it sound. – I know that. But what if you only sent half of what you earned home, or a quarter? Then you’d have the money to do something else. Erhard doesn’t want to discuss it. – The ex-husband in Paradise, Raúl says to Bea. – He sends his entire fortune back to Denmark. – That’s nice of you, Beatriz says. – It costs money to save yourself. Isn’t that what you told me once? Wise words, Old Man. Raúl laughs. – My point is, living out there you don’t exactly have a dynamic social life. You need to go out and meet people. – If I’m meant to meet someone, I will. – Please stop with all that karma bullshit. If you’re so tired of the nickname Hermit, then come out of your turtle shell a bit more. – His shield? – Yeah, that too. Meet someone new, meet some ladies. – Hey, I want to meet new people too. Why don’t we ever meet new people? – We do. On the boat, et cetera. – Yeah, old men with old money. I mean interesting people, like in Barcelona. Raúl thinks it’s rubbish, that she’s just pissed. She has nothing to complain about, he says, his hand slipping under her dress. Erhard sits quietly, staring ahead. His eyes wander across the roofs which appear to be shimmying down and poking their antennae in the water. To turn it all in the right direction, he closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the terrace is empty. The chairs are empty, and everything’s tidied up. He’s lying underneath a thin blanket, and a small candle burns. The sky is heavy, blue, lifeless. The city light conceals the stars. ‌ 1 5 He picks up a woman. From the harbour in Corralejo, where she stood with her hair poufed out in every direction following the trip on the ferry, to Sport Fuerte, where she can’t find the address of the apartment in which she’ll live. She’s probably close to sixty. Her fingers are long and already brown and ringless. On top of that she’s Swedish, and she’s confused and nervous about something. They can almost communicate in their native languages, even though he’s forgotten much of the Swedish he once knew. She asks him about the necklace that’s dangling from the rearview mirror: a small, verdigrised pendant made of silver. It’s so dark out here, he says, and she laughs at him. In a wonderful way. She says it’s been an interesting ride. Slowly and methodically she drops the money into his hand, and he feels her fingers. That’s the kind of thing he misses. But it won’t lead anywhere. He helps her retrieve her suitcase and she squats, puzzled, to rummage through her bag. She doesn’t give him her number – as he’d momentarily hoped she would – and she leaves his business card on the backseat along with a few papers from the ferry. He takes this as a sign. What else could it be? He’s too old and too ugly. During siesta, he drives home and eats breakfast. He lifts the finger out of his pocket. It’s light-brown and crooked; his own fingers are pink, except for his nails – they’re black. One’s nails turn black here on the island. The black dust that hangs in the air above settles onto everything and creeps underneath fingernails. He scrubs them with his shoe brush and washes them in the garden. Just not Bill Haji’s. He uses duct tape to attach the finger to his left hand. The silver- coloured tape covers the joint, so it almost appears as though it’s a complete hand. He stands before the mirror admiring himself – hand dangling at his side, hand to his chin, arms crossed, thumb hooked in his trouser pocket. It’s a minor change, but it suits him. A new little finger. He almost feels normal, and can’t help but keep it on when he leaves. A couple is standing near the roundabout outside of Puerto. He drives them to a bike-rental shop in Via Panitta. He changes gears and drums the wheel rhythmically. Neither one of them says a word to him. Neither one of them stares at his hand. They just talk about, well, something or other. Then he drives to La Oliva: A man and his dog are heading to the veterinarian. The dog, an old sheepdog, sits stock-still gasping for breath. Erhard’s afraid the dog will sniff the finger, but it seems more interested in the hollow space under the hand brake, where there’s a balled-up napkin from lunch. The man tells him the animal’s going to be put to sleep. There’s nothing that can be done, he says repeatedly. One hour later he drives them home. The dog continues to gasp for breath, but the owner is happy. We made it, he whispers to the dog. ‌ 1 6 Then comes the year’s first rainy day. Whenever it rains, he likes to be inside drinking Lumumbas. They don’t know jack about that down here, so if he’s at a hotel – he likes being at a calm, air-conditioned hotel with a bar, where the bartender stands quietly between fags – so if he’s at a hotel, he has to tell the bartender how to make a Lumumba. At the Hotel Phenix down on the beach in Corralejo, he once went behind the bar to show the new bartender how to heat up the cocoa with the same nozzle used to foam milk for a café au lait. He’s at home today, where he keeps cocoa powder, powdered milk, and cognac on the top shelf of his pantry. The rainy season usually comes in the spring, as far as he’s concerned, but there are many different opinions on the matter here. He whips up cream with a fork attached to the power drill. And then he sits, shirtless, in his chair under the tarpaulin, gazing up at the mountain. Into the rain. He put the finger in a glass of formaldehyde. The glass makes the finger appear elongated and thin. A pharaoh’s finger. A finger to make the heavens thunder. Up close, it’s just brown and twisted. The ring’s loose now; he can spin it, but it still won’t come off. It has begun to irritate him. If he can pull the ring off, the finger will seem more like his own. But he can’t let it dry out. Then it’ll break. Or fall apart. Like a crushed cinnamon stick. The drops fall so thickly it sounds as if the earth itself is grumbling. As long as it keeps raining, he can’t hear anything else. He thinks about the corrugated plastic sheet above the toilet and the kitchen, which makes everything sound much worse. For seventeen years he’s considered getting rid of it. It doesn’t match the house, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. But he doesn’t care about that, actually. It only irritates him when it bangs in the southerly wind and he lies in bed all morning cursing the wind or the roof or himself, because he didn’t replace that old plastic sheet years ago or, at the very least, lay some rocks on top of it so that it doesn’t bang as much. But when he’s outside sitting in front of his house and staring up at the mountain and the silver-coloured sky, he doesn’t think about anything. When someone says, Isn’t it lovely to live in a place where it never rains?, he says, Yes. But the truth is, those four or five rainy days a year are what he loves most. They break up the monotony of sunshine; they’re like instant holidays pouring from the heavens. The entire island comes to a standstill. Everyone looks up or runs around finding the things they’ve left lying in the driveway, in the window, or on the terrace. And he doesn’t drive his taxi on those days. There are lots of customers when it rains, but he doesn’t want to waste a good rainy day. He parks the cab and sits under his tarpaulin drinking Lumumbas, until the thermos full of warm cocoa is empty. Then he falls asleep. If he’s at a hotel and gets drunk, he loans a room. More often than not, he knows the front-desk clerk. He throws himself fully dressed onto the bed. He doesn’t get hangovers from Lumumbas. It’s the good thing about Lumumbas. ‌ 1 7 A rapping. The roof’s banging in the wind. Or maybe it’s thunder. It’s a knock at his door. – Erhard. A voice penetrates the hard, steady rain. There is also thunder, but someone’s knocking on his door. Softly. He throws the blanket aside, stands up, and walks around the house. He doesn’t care about the rain. He likes to feel the cold droplets on his skin; they lead him farther and farther out of his ruminations or his sleep, into which he’d fallen. He recognizes the convertible and the figure waiting inside the car, behind the misted glass. Raúl’s pounding on the door. – I know you’re in there. Put down that Lumumba and come out. – Dios mío, boy, you’re going to blow my house down. Raúl turns the doorknob, then holds up his hand as a shield against the rain to see Erhard. He laughs and embraces Erhard, wetting them both. – Come, he says, and tugs him to his car. – We’re going on a little excursion. Erhard has grown accustomed to this kind of thing from Raúl, so he just follows him. – Just a moment, he says. – I’m coming. He walks around the house and grabs the glass with the finger. He lays it on the top shelf between tins of food and cocoa. He studies the finger for a moment. Then, with a pair of tongs, he removes it from the glass and carefully places it inside a freezer bag before cinching the bag in a knot. It fits in the pocket of his Khaki shorts without sticking out. No one would be able to tell what it is. Beatriz crawls into the backseat, and Erhard’s nudged into the front seat. That’s how Raúl is. Beatriz hugs him from the backseat, and he can feel her curls against his neck. Either she always smells different or she never uses the same perfume. Tonight it’s vanilla and salt. Raúl backs the car all the way down to Alejandro’s Trail and spins around, spattering mud. The music is loud. It’s noise. Not really a song. – It was Bea’s idea, Raúl shouts. – I just said the lightning was beautiful. – And then you said Cotillo. – You can see them there. – That’s what I’m saying. – But why Cotillo? Erhard asks. The windscreen wipers whip back and forth at full speed. – Why not up here? – Nothing’s too good for my friends. We’re heading down to the breakers to feel the sizzle of the water. Raúl sounds as if he ordered the lightning himself. He doesn’t drive recklessly, but much faster than Erhard appreciates. All in all, Erhard has grown so used to driving that he doesn’t like being a passenger. He glances over his left shoulder each time they turn, and he reaches for the gear stick when they drive up a hill. The road glistens, and the landscape is utterly strange, as though slathered in black plastic. It’s the rain – it’s everywhere. It doesn’t go anywhere. The ground is too dry to absorb it. – You’d like to go down to the real beach, Raúl says to Beatriz. They splash through Cotillo, water spraying against the houses next to the road. It’s easy to sense Raúl’s joy. Beatriz likes it too, maybe she’s pissed, Erhard thinks. Maybe Raúl’s pissed, too. It’s possible. They leave the city behind, heading towards the car park and the flat terrain just before the slope down to the beach. The car park is filled with cars, not in orderly rows like in a drive-in theatre, but randomly chaotic. There are probably twenty or thirty of them, and even a couple of police vehicles. Behind the cars the sky is a grey canvas that lights up bright green every time the lightning strikes. – Here we are, Raúl shouts. He has opened his door and is standing in the rain, his jacket over his head. – Can’t we see it from in here? Beatriz asks. Raúl doesn’t hear her. He slams his door and runs around the car to open hers. She doesn’t repeat the question, but follows him when he offers his hand. Erhard climbs out too. He’s quickly soaked, but it doesn’t bother him. They run towards the slope. Almost as though they’re searching for the queue to that evening’s entertainment. It’s not there. Not on the slope in any case. They continue to the water, stumbling down the slope, Beatriz shrieking in excitement. Lightning cracks unremittingly across the sky. The sound is far away, almost buried by the rain. Each bolt forms a unique thread from the base to the top, or vice versa. And in the midst of everything, the sea foams and roars. Then they spot the throng standing near the beach. Dark silhouettes and a few people with torches or lamps draw attention to the scene. Messages are shouted, and some kind of machine whirls around and around. – What the hell? Raúl says. – What’s happened? – It’s probably some tourist group, Beatriz calls out. – Not in this rain, Raúl laughs. They start towards the crowd, which isn’t as dense as they’d first thought; it has formed a semi-circle around others. A blue light blinks and a man shouts, Get back, get back. But no one moves. The waves lash at their feet, and some of the people are standing up to their ankles in the foamy water. – There’s a car, Beatriz shouts. – What’s it doing here? ‌ 1 8 A policeman is trying to stretch barricade tape around the car. It’s a black Volkswagen Passat. A few tall lamps light the vehicle, but the generator can’t keep up and the lamps alternately flicker off and on, then fall over in the soft sand. They pause amid the throng and try to find out what happened. It looks like a terrible parking job or a stolen, abandoned vehicle. Erhard has seen both kinds many times. – Let’s get away from here and watch the lightning, Beatriz suggests. – We can’t do that, Raúl says. – Something awful has happened. – That’s what I mean. We can’t stand here watching. Someone was hurt. A person in front of them says, – Someone drove over the edge and rolled into the sea. – How do you roll all the way down here? You’d have to want to, another says. – Is it a suicide? – Who was here first? a policeman tries. A few people raise their hands, but lower them when they see the others. – Who called us? I can’t recall who I spoke to earlier. A man steps forward. Their conversation is silenced by the rain. The man points up the slope. The policeman tries to write something down in a notebook, but there’s so much rain that he’s forced to give up. His pen doesn’t work, either. – It must’ve been stolen. There are no licence plates, someone says. An amateur surfer in a colourful wetsuit. – They keep looking at something in the backseat, says the other. – Step back, damn it, step back. Erhard recognizes the policeman. It’s Bernal. He’s soaked, his clothes practically glistening underneath an umbrella, and he’s shining a torch into the backseat and snapping photographs with a big camera. – Hassib, Bernal shouts. – I need some help here. No one comes to his aid. His voice, enveloped in noise, disappears. The other officers can’t hear him. One is busy trying to get the lamps to stand upright, another is talking to a paramedic with a bag tucked under his arm. A crane is backing into place on the clifftop, ready to hoist the vehicle up. In the meantime, rain continues to fall. – Can’t we go? I don’t feel too well, Beatriz whispers. – Come here. Raúl pulls her close to him. – Anyone from the media here? an officer asks. No one says a word. – Not yet, boss, the officer shouts at Bernal. Bernal photographs something on the backseat. They look like papers, newspaper cuttings. A colleague arrives and helps him spread the papers on the seat. They discuss them and shuffle them around as he snaps pictures. Lightning winks across the black sky, as if responding to the camera’s flash. An acrid stench emerges from the car in gusts. At first Erhard thinks it’s coming from the bag. From the finger. He feels for it in his pocket, wondering whether the knot’s come undone. Maybe running down the slope punctured the plastic. The Lumumba has been flushed out of him. But the bag is right where he put it. At the same time, the smell from the car is more hostile and insistent. Like something that should have been stored away long ago. – It must be an accident. Did it just happen? Raúl asks the amateur surfer. – I think the car’s been here for a day. Then someone realized that it wasn’t locked, he says. The man who’d just spoken to the officer interjects. – I could tell there was something inside the box on the backseat. Something was sticking up. – What was sticking up? says the amateur surfer’s friend, who is the only one wearing a rain jacket. – It looked like… He doesn’t say anything more. The vice police superintendent walks past them, an irritated expression on his face. For a moment Bernal and Erhard look at each other. Bernal stops abruptly and returns. Raúl takes a step back. Clearly he’s not interested in speaking to a policeman. – Hermit, Bernal says. – Do you have a nose for drama, or what? Erhard doesn’t know what to say. He wants to tell him that he wasn’t seeking out another accident. – What’s happened here? the surfer asks. Bernal doesn’t respond. – I want names of everyone who saw anything. If you’re just here for the show and curious, then you need to leave this place, he says, staring at Erhard. – We came to watch the lightning, Beatriz says. Bernal just looks at her. – Then watch the lightning, Señorita. He walks up the slope, vanishing within the rain, which has become a kind of dense, black cloud. – Can we go now? Beatriz whispers. Raúl stares at the vehicle for a long time. – Of course, my angel. The water has already retreated a few yards, the waves lashing like savage animals. – You owe me a Lumumba, Erhard says to Raúl while watching Beatriz, whose dress is so drenched that it clings to her. ‌ 1 9 Once upon a time, the Boy-Man took the bus each Wednesday. It took him most of the morning to get to Tuineje, and most of the afternoon to get back to the Santa Marisa Home. A few times, he’d gotten off too early, in some tiny village, and had to be picked up by the police after he started running up and down the street hitting himself in the head. He’s at least 6’7, maybe 6’9, but his face resembles that of a 7-year-old boy, so do his gangly limbs and clothes. His eyes dart around restlessly. As though he’s trying to understand the world by reading it as a code or musical notes. In the taxi, he loves to lay his forehead against the window and watch the landscape. To follow the uninterrupted line. Every Wednesday at 10.15 a.m., including today, he stands on the pavement in front of the broad gate, waiting, his backpack all the way up to his shoulders. Aaz hasn’t uttered a word in fourteen years. One day he simply stopped speaking. He can speak, but as Mónica has explained, he doesn’t. During the first few Wednesdays, Erhard hoped that he would say something. Each time they spent more than two hours together – one hour out and one hour back. Erhard had hoped such proximity would open up the Boy-Man. That he would show Erhard trust. It became a game, a challenge, to get the boy to say something. Erhard could make him smile, he could make him turn his head. Nevertheless, Erhard was defeated every Wednesday. Finally, Erhard grew so irritated that he asked Mónica to find a new driver. He could no longer take it. The problem was that none of the other drivers wished to drive the Boy-Man. Aaz would have to take the bus again. Mónica offered to pay Erhard double to continue. You don’t need to like him. Just pretend, she’d said. Erhard gave it half a year. He didn’t want her money. And then something happened. Erhard heard Aaz speak. They arrive at their destination. He follows Aaz inside. Mónica clutches the boy’s large hand. They sit at the piano. It’s one of the things they have in common. Aaz loves music. Erhard watches them cuddle like birds. Every other month, though not today, he tunes the piano. Today he just glances around. It’s not an unhappy home like his own, even though Mónica is the same age and, like him, alone. There are fresh flowers, a fish tank, and ladies’ magazines in a rack beside the sofa, a small chest of drawers with madonnas, and an entire wall of framed portraits showing a little girl in black-and-white ballerina skirts, men in military uniforms out near Calderon Hondo, and two young women on a Vespa in front of an office building. Probably twenty photographs in all. All of them black and white, beautiful, sad. A life passed by. There’s not a single image of her son. Erhard looks around. Not even on the shelf above the TV, or on the chest of drawers beside the madonnas. She conceals the most important parts of her life, just as he does, so she doesn’t have to move forward. Mónica is cool and regal, but not snooty; she’s simply elegant with what she has. The little spoon in the sugar bowl and the flowers that match the curtains. ‌ 2 0 – What do you want? he says, without lifting his eyes from his book on the table or laying his cup down on the saucer. It’s Friday morning, and the three men in shirts are watching Erhard drink his coffee. One is vice police superintendent Bernal. Bernal slips a sheet of paper on top of Erhard’s book. It’s a newspaper cutting and impossible to tell its origins; not many of the words are legible, the ink is smudged and the paper worn. Still, Erhard spots the words ‘pengepungen’ and ‘bankpakke’. Strange words that he doesn’t instantly recognize. – What does it say? Bernal asks. – Is that Danish? – I think so. He would need the rest of the article, which is missing, to understand it, but it appears to be Danish. – Where’s it from? he asks, fearing for some reason that it has something to do with Raúl. – That’s not something you need to concern yourself with, says Bernal’s colleague, a small man with narrow eyes and an unkempt moustache. He glances around the cafe, where there is only one other person, a dishevelled young man with combed-back hair and screwed-up eyes who seems to have partied all night. – We need someone who understands Danish. – So find a tourist guide. There are plenty of those. – Not as many as there once were. Come on, Jørgensen. – Tell me what this is all about, then I might help out. – You owe me a favour after the last time. I could’ve hauled you off to the station. – Tell me what this is about, Erhard says, noticing that Bernal suddenly seems more tired-looking. Maybe he’s not sleeping enough, maybe he drinks, maybe his kid still has measles. – Forget him, Bernal, the little man says. He’s the resolute type who’d rather arm-wrestle than offer a hand. – The foreigner can’t help us. He has too many bad memories, he adds, swiftly downing his espresso, eager to go. Apparently Bernal had told him about Erhard before they arrived at the cafe. About the case with Federico Molino, whose suitcase was found out near Lajares. With his passport and socks and hair wax and tube of lubricant, which the police so smoothly managed to include in court. They ought to have been happy for Erhard’s testimony. But they always seemed to think he knew more than he was telling them. A few officers were bitter. Bernal was the only one who understood that Erhard cultivated his relations to others on the island. He told the truth, but he didn’t tell everything. He didn’t name Raúl Palabras or the former regional president, Emeraldo or Suárez. It’s been more than eight years now. – No thanks, unless you want to arrest me, Erhard says. Bernal looks at him as if he hopes he’ll change his mind. – Say hello to young Palabras, he says. The two men leave. The cafe owner is standing stiffly behind the bar, observing them in the wall mirror. He probably doesn’t have a licence to sell beer. Many of the city’s cafes don’t. Then he glances up and calls out to the young man at the back of the cafe. – Goddamn it, Pesce, don’t put your greasy hair on my table. Go home and get to bed. When Erhard walks to his car – parked at the end of the queue on High Street – he sees the officers standing on the corner near Paseo Atlántico. He climbs in his car and continues reading Stendahl’s The Red and the Black. It’s an unwieldy book, strangely incoherent. He checks the mirrors. No one’s around. He pulls the bag from his pocket, removes the finger, and tries prying off the ring. But it doesn’t budge. The finger is like a stick marinated in oil; he puts it in the empty slot next to his own ring finger. It’s too big, and it’s the wrong hand, but it resembles a little finger. The hand looks like a hand again. With a finger where it’s supposed to be. He packs it away again. Deep down in his pocket. He spots the officers saying their goodbyes to one another. Then Bernal saunters over to his taxi. He climbs in. – Puerto, he says. Erhard looks at him. – And since we’re heading that way anyway, you’ll ask me to come to the station? – Maybe, Bernal says. – It’s not my turn. You see the queue ahead of me? – Just drive. Erhard exits the queue, and one of the drivers from Taxinaria shouts at him. Luís. He’s always shouting. Big mouth with no teeth. They drive up the high street, across the city, and out onto FV-1. Neither says a word. – Does this have anything to do with Bill Haji? Erhard asks. – I’ve told you everything I know. The policeman grins. – That case is closed. It’s history. His sister wasn’t happy, to put it mildly. – And it doesn’t have anything to do with the Palabras family? – Not at all. One of Bernal’s boots, crossed over his knee, bounces to the music emerging from an old John Coltrane tape that Erhard’s had for more than twenty years. – You were out at Cotillo yourself recently. Haven’t you heard the news? Erhard hasn’t read the newspaper for several days. He shakes his head. – Don’t you do anything besides read? Haven’t you listened to the news on the radio? – Not really. – The short, and true, story is that the car was abandoned out near Cotillo. We don’t know why. It ought to have been in Lisbon, but oops, it’s here now. Someone stole it, then shipped it here. We don’t know who drove it. Since it was standing in water above the bonnet, the motor is dead now of course. The only interesting lead is a newspaper ripped into tatters. – So what do you want from me? – You’re going to examine the fragments we’ve got and tell me what they say. It’s probably nothing. Maybe they’re just pieces of a newspaper, meaningless. Right now I’m trying to understand what happened. Between you and me, I’m not getting a whole lot of support from my bosses on this one. And I’m going a little rogue with this newspaper stuff. They reach the first roundabout leading out of the city. The sun is stuck between two clouds, like an eye that’s been punched. – Tell me again why you were out on the beach the other day? Bernal asks. – My friends wanted to watch the lightning. – Your friends? Raúl Palabras and his girlfriend? – Yes. Bernal stares at Erhard, while Erhard gazes ahead at the traffic. – I haven’t read a Danish newspaper in years, Erhard says. – Just look at the fragments and tell us what they say. That’s all I ask. Both the police and the island’s inhabitants call police headquarters in Puerto ‘the Palace’, because it’s located in the ruins of a palace built for the Spanish king at the turn of the twentieth century. Apart from the impressive outer walls and beautiful arches between some smooth columns, however, not much of the royal grandeur remains. The offices, where six or seven men sit sweating behind their computers, resemble that of some building in a sleepy 1960s Copenhagen suburb. On the way in they pass some metal detectors. Erhard is afraid they’ll body-search him and find the bag with the finger in his pocket, but he ends up just following Bernal down the hallway and into a room that resembles a warehouse or a garage. Bernal closes the door behind them and rummages around on a large shelf; he returns with a big, light-brown box, then slips on rubber gloves. – Shouldn’t I wear those too? – It doesn’t matter, Bernal says, glancing momentarily at Erhard’s missing finger. He begins to gather the fragments of newspaper from the box. – The bastards left a little surprise for us on the backseat. – The bastards, Erhard says. He recognizes the box as the one found on the backseat. Even though it was night time and the only light came from a teetering police lamp. – We don’t know how the pieces connect, whether they connect at all, or even if it’s worth it for us to sit here putting the puzzle together. Can you read any of it? Erhard studies the fragments. There are photos, words, some colours. – They must’ve gotten wet. The sheets are stuck together. – Yes, Bernal says bitterly. – That’s the problem. We can’t tell if it’s just a newspaper, or if there’s a message in it somewhere. – So what am I supposed to do? – Read the headlines, the ones in bold. Can you decipher any of that? This one, for example. He points at a large section with a headline and a subhead. It’s very strange seeing so much Danish text gathered in one place. – What’s it say? – ‘More homeless will die in Copenhagen if the winter is as hard as last year’s. A man froze to death.’ – What does that mean? – I don’t know. That it’s tough being homeless in a cold country? Bernal gestures with his hands. – Go on. What about this one? This fragment is clearer, but it’s stuck to another fragment. – ‘Fathers have no success with appeals.’ – What does that mean? – I don’t know. That’s what it says. Bernal looks unhappy. – OK, study the fragments. Tell me if anything seems out of the ordinary. Erhard rummages through the papers, reading them, then stacking the ones he’s read in a pile. There’s nothing – nothing at all – that captures his attention. They are your typical, not especially interesting articles about Danes and their finances and their children and their institutions and their divorces and their TV programmes. A great deal of what he sees is about the Hell’s Angels. Although it’s been many years since he last read a Danish newspaper, he doesn’t feel it’s much different today. He doesn’t recognize some of the names, but other than that, it’s the usual. – I don’t think there’s anything, but I don’t know what I’m looking for. Bernal gets to his feet. – I don’t know what you’re looking for, either. This is a shitty case. That last bit he practically whispers. He scoops the fragments in great handfuls and tosses them into the box. A urine stench wafts through the room. From another room, behind the shelves, a small child hiccoughs or whimpers. Bernal doesn’t notice. – I can’t help you unless you tell me what I’m looking for. I need to know more. Bernal considers at length. Erhard guesses that he’s weighing his words. How much he’s allowed or wishes to say. – Come, he says. – Over here. They walk around the shelf and into a dark corner. He turns and stops Erhard, who’s right behind him. In the darkness Erhard sees only half of Bernal’s face. – You don’t have a weak stomach, do you? Erhard shakes his head. – Do you remember that girl Madeleine? – Did you find her? Bernal looks annoyed. – Do you remember her? Erhard nods. – Good. We don’t want that kind of case here. Not at all. We’ve done what we can. You need to know that. No one is working at cross purposes here. What happened in Portugal completely destroyed the tourist industry in Praia da Luz, and the police were hung out to dry in the media as a flock of fucking Thomson and Thompsons. The difference here is that no one is missing the child. No crying mothers or fathers, or cute siblings pining for their little brother. – The child? Bernal flicks on two wall lamps, then moves to the whiteboard. – The boy, he says, pointing at a photograph. It’s a large black-and-white photograph, probably a colour photo originally, and difficult to look at. But there is no colour now, only gradations of black, maybe brown or some greenish tint. Crossing through it is a big, black square marked by four light-grey cubes that provide the square with depth. In the centre of the square, as though surrounded by an invisible eggshell, is a tiny human being. One hand is up near its head as if to scratch itself, while the other hand is, almost impossibly, wrapped around its back. The child is covered in pale-grey newspaper fragments. Erhard has to turn away. His eyes slide towards the whiteboard and more photographs with the same horrible scene. Close-up images of the boy’s mouth, his eyes – which are closed, sunken in a sickened darkness. Photographs of the car, of the backseat where the box rests between seatbelts as if someone had tried to secure it. – How old is…? Erhard’s mouth is so dry he can hardly speak. – How old is he? – Three months. Thereabouts. – Someone must be missing him. – Unfortunately not. Whenever a case like this arises, it’s always worst with the babies. They don’t know anyone. They don’t have nannies or playmates. They leave behind no colleagues, ex-girlfriends, or empty flats with unpaid rent. If Mum and Dad don’t care, then there’s no one worry to worry over them. – Someone must’ve reported the child missing. On the islands or in Spain? Bernal goes on: – If you ask me, Mum went out in the waves and drowned herself like some cowardly dog. No one walks out on her child like that, unless something’s wrong with her. – What if something happened to the mother and the father? What if they went for a walk out on the beach and fell and… – What if they shagged in one of the caves? Problem is, we’ve scoured the area. With dogs. With helicopters. There’s nothing. It’s Bill Haji’s bloody ring all over again. Gone. – Someone must have seen the car arrive. What about that guy on the beach? The surfer? – We’ve spoken to him twice. He didn’t get to Cotillo until the day after the car turned up. Nobody knows anything. Nada. And the car was registered to an importer outside of Lisbon, but the car never arrived; he thought it was on some lorry in Amsterdam two months ago. – Maybe a car thief stole it with the boy inside? – Where? In Amsterdam? Erhard doesn’t have an answer. – The most bizarre thing of all is the odometer. It registered thirty-one miles. Thirty-one. – What about fingerprints? – No fingerprints on the wheel, the gearstick, or the front seat. Finding prints is not as easy as some people think. And maybe Mum was wearing gloves? Maybe someone removed all traces? We found prints on the cardboard box, but no one we recognize, and who knows who had the box before the boy was shoved inside it? Someone, in any case, secured the box tightly in the seatbelt. It appears as though it’s been shaken around quite a bit, perhaps when they drove the car off the hilltop near the car park. It was on the beach at high tide, but no water gushed in, and no one in Cotillo saw the car when it arrived. If only we’d had some dogs. They’ve got dogs on Tenerife, but it takes a day and a half to get them over here, and by then it would’ve been too late. – What if the mum and dad left the country? – We’ve searched all departures. No one has arrived with a child and left without one. The absolute worst part is the autopsy report… Bernal walks over to the photograph of the boy. He points at the region around his eyes, the blackened area. – Lorenzo estimated that the boy was starved to death, two to three days before the car was abandoned on the beach. Before… Before they left him in a cardboard box. The autopsy report also determined that he was around twelve weeks old. When we found him, we all thought he was a newborn, because he was so thin and tiny. We’ve called all the delivery rooms and doctors on the island, and all young mothers with boys ranging from one month old to five months. One hundred and eighty- seven mothers in all. All the babies were accounted for. We’ve spoken with a number of fathers, too. We got a few leads, but nothing that took us anywhere. Erhard can’t look at the photograph any more. – How can someone abandon a child? he says. Bernal looks even more tired now. – In the end, we had to bury him. Yesterday morning. East of Morro Jable, Playa del Matorral. A fucking Bobcat dug a hole the size of a microwave oven. We did it quickly to avoid media attention. We were afraid journalists would come out and see the small coffin. Do you know how creepy that is? I thought of my own 3-year- old boy. There’s something all wrong about burying children that small. – Are you still working	913,990
Walden (Thoreau, Henry David) (Z-Library).pdf	I do not propose to write an ode to dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning, standing on his roost, if only to wake my neighbors up. HENRY D. THOREAU Walden 1 5 0 TH A N N I V E R S A R Y E D I T I O N E D I T E D B Y J. L Y N D O N S H A N L E Y W I T H A N I N T R O D U C T I O N B Y J O H N U P D I K E P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S P R I N C E T O N A N D O X F O R D The Center emblem means that one of a panel of textual experts serving the Center has reviewed the text and textual apparatus of the original volume by thorough and scrupulous sampling, and has approved them for sound and consistent editorial principles employed and maximum accuracy attained. The accuracy of the text has been guarded by careful and repeated proofreading of printer’s copy according to standards set by the Center. Copyright © 1971, 2004 by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 3 Market Place, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY All Rights Reserved First edition, 1971 150th Anniversary Edition, 2004 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for ISBN-13: 978-0-691-09612-4 (pbk.) ISBN-10: 0-691-09612-0 (pbk.) British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available Printed on acid-free paper. ∞ pup.princeton.edu Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief, Elizabeth Hall Witherell Executive Committee William L. Howarth Robert N. Hudspeth Joseph J. Moldenhauer, Textual Editor William Rossi Nancy Craig Simmons The Writings Walden, J. Lyndon Shanley (1971) The Maine Woods, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1972) Reform Papers, Wendell Glick (1973) Early Essays and Miscellanies, Joseph J. Moldenhauer et al. (1975) A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, Carl F. Hovde et al. (1980) Journal 1: 1837-1844, Elizabeth Hall Witherell et al. (1981) Journal 2: 1842-1848, Robert Sattelmeyer (1984) Translations, K. P. Van Anglen (1986) Cape Cod, Joseph J. Moldenhauer (1988) Journal 3: 1848-1851, Robert Sattelmeyer, Mark R. Patterson, and William Rossi (1990) Journal 4: 1851–1852, Leonard N. Neufeldt and Nancy Craig Simmons (1992) Journal 5; 1852–1853, Patrick F. O’Connell (1997) Journal 6: 1853, William Rossi and Heather Kirk Thomas (2000) Journal 8: 1854, Sandra Harbert Petrulionis (2002) The Higher Law: Thoreau on Civil Disobedience and Reform, Wendell Glick (2004) Contents Introduction by John Updike Economy Where I Lived, and What I Lived For Reading Sounds Solitude Visitors The Bean-Field The Village The Ponds Baker Farm Higher Laws Brute Neighbors House-Warming Former Inhabitants; and Winter Visitors Winter Animals The Pond in Winter Spring Conclusion Index by Paul O. Williams Introduction A CENTURY and a half after its initial publication, Walden has become such a totem of the back-to-nature, preservationist, anti-business, civil- disobedience mind-set, and Thoreau so vivid a protester, so perfect a crank and hermit saint, that the book itself risks being as revered and unread as the Bible. Of the American classics densely arisen in the middle of the nineteenth century—Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter (1850), Melville’s Moby- Dick (1851), Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855), to which we might add Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1854) as a nation-stirring best- seller and Emerson’s essays as an indispensable preparation of the ground —Walden has contributed most to America’s present sense of itself. In a time of informational overload, of clamorously inane and ubiquitous electronic entertainment, and of a fraught, globally challenged, ever more demanding workplace, the urge to build a cabin in the woods and thus reform, simplify, and cleanse one’s life—“to front,” in Thoreau’s ringing verb, “only the essential facts of life”—remains strong. The vacation industry, so-called, thrives on it, and camper sales, and the weekend recourse to second homes in the northern forests or the western mountains, where the pollutions of industry and commerce are relatively light. “Simplify, simplify,” Walden advises, and we try, even though a twenty-first century attainment of a rustic, elemental simplicity entails considerable complications of budget and transport. Thoreau would not scorn contemporary efforts to effect his gospel and follow his example. Walden aims at conversion, and Thoreau’s polemical purpose gives it an energy and drive missing in the meanders of the sole other book he saw into publication during his short lifetime, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849). Like A Week, Walden is a farraginous memoir, and was subject to Thoreau’s habit of constant revision and expansion, going through seven known drafts, but it all forms a defense of his eccentric reclusion. A vigorous, humorous tone asserts itself at the outset: I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they did not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. The circumstances, a malaise of drudgery and petty distraction in the society around him, are described, and his general wish “to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” However, he passes over a very practical motive: he wanted to be a writer and, like many another of like ambition, needed privacy, quiet, and a “broad margin” where his mind could roam. He built a single-room cabin on his mentor Emerson’s land, more than a mile south of Concord village, in the spring of 1845, and moved in on July 4, declaring his own independence. In the next two years he completed a draft, later expanded, of A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, based on a canoe trip he and his brother John had taken in 1839, as well as composing the first draft of Walden and a long essay on Thomas Carlyle, part of which he gave as a lecture at the Concord Lyceum in 1846. In July of 1846 he refused to pay his accumulated town poll taxes, on the grounds that the national government condoned and protected slavery, and spent one night in jail, thus laying the basis for his celebrated essay “Civil Disobedience.” Later in that same year he travelled for the first time to Maine and wrote most of the essay “Ktaadn.” Thoreau was twenty-seven when he took up residence in the cabin by Walden Pond; he had graduated from Harvard nineteenth in his class, tried teaching, helped his father in the family pencil business, did local odd jobs for a dollar a day, lived with the Emersons for two years as handyman and gardener, left Long Island after a brief spell of tutoring and testing the literary market, and, despite Emerson’s sponsorship and a few poems and essays in the Transcendentalist quarterly The Dial, had made no mark. He emerged from the cabin in 1847 as essentially the Thoreau known to literary history. His appearance was sufficiently arresting to have attracted a number of descriptions. The fastidious but not unfriendly Hawthorne, a sometime resident of Concord, described him in 1842 as “a young man with much of wild original nature still remaining in him…. He is as ugly as sin, long- nosed, queer-mouthed, and with uncouth and somewhat rustic, although courteous manners…. [He] seems inclined to lead a sort of Indian life among civilized men—an Indian life, I mean, as respects the absence of any systematic effort for a livelihood.” James Kendall Hosmer recalled how an older Thoreau “stood in the doorway with hair which looked as if it had been dressed with a pine-cone, inattentive grey eyes, hazy with faraway musings, an emphatic nose and disheveled attire that bore signs of tramps in woods and swamps.” His New Bedford disciple Daniel Ricketson recalled, as phrased by Thoreau’s biographer Walter Harding, “the gentleness, humanity, and intelligence of Thoreau’s blue eyes” and noted that “though his arms were long, his legs short, his hands and feet large, and his shoulders markedly sloping, he was strong and vigorous in his walk.” His voice was impressive, even toward the end, when tuberculosis had weakened it. On his last journey, a rather desperate excursion to Minnesota for the possibly healing effects of its supposedly drier climate, the minister upon whom he called in Chicago, the Unitarian Robert Collyer, remembered: His words also were as distinct and true to the ear as those of a great singer…. He would hesitate for an instant now and then, waiting for the right word, or would pause with a pathetic patience to master the trouble in his chest, but when he was through the sentence was perfect and entire, lacking nothing, and the word was so purely one with the man that when I read his books now and then I do not hear my own voice within my reading but the voice I heard that day. How did Thoreau achieve his literary voice, which has worn better, to a modern ear, than Emerson’s more fluent, worldly, and—to be expected from a former clergyman—oratorical one? The outward sweep of Emerson’s pithy, exhortative sentences rather wearies the reader now; we feel the audience before him, basking as he beams epigrams and encouragements into their faces. The mood of Thoreau is more interior; the eye is not on an audience but on a multitudinous world of sensation, seen and named with precision. Consider these sentences from near the beginning of A Week: We glided noiselessly down the stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the covert of the pads, or a bream from her nest, and the smaller bittern now and then sailed away on sluggish wings from some recess in the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long grass at our approach, and carried its precious legs away to deposit them in a place of safety. The tortoises also rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the surface amid the willows breaking the reflections of the trees. The banks had passed the height of their beauty, and some of the brighter flowers showed by their faded tints that the season was verging towards the afternoon of the year; but this sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity, and in the still unabated heats they seemed like the mossy brink of some cool well. All is limpid observation, gliding from one bittern to another, until the startling remark that fading color enhanced the flowers’ “sincerity,” as if they have been pressing a case. The long paragraph goes on to enumerate, with the Latin names, the flowers of the Concord meadows, and ends with reminiscence of the mornings when the writer, on the water before sunrise, witnessed the sudden opening of water lilies to the touch of dawn sun, when “whole fields of white blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, like the unfolding of a banner.” This is not exactly “nature writing,” though it holds the freshness of a continent still being explored and catalogued, as by a Humboldt or an Audubon; it is a live, particularized demonstration of Emerson’s hopeful boast, set forward in its most theological form in his slim first book, Nature, that “every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact”—that Nature is at bottom Spirit, that “Spirit alters, moulds, makes it.” Emerson approvingly quoted Swedenborg’s “The visible world and the relation of its parts, is the dial plate of the invisible” and asserted, “The axioms of physics translate the laws of ethics.” Imbibing Idealism from Emerson, Thoreau soaked himself in Nature’s great metaphor, and became a scientist of sorts—“a mystic, a transcendentalist, and a natural philosopher to boot,” he later called himself—and an autobiographer. He gathered, and transferred to journals amounting in the end to two million words, rare moments and observations of increasing refinement and subtlety, harvested where he would. Emerson, like other respectable citizens of Concord, was skeptical of enterprise so personal and quizzical, confiding to his journal that “Thoreau wants a little ambition in his mixture…. Instead of being the head of American engineers, he is captain of a huckleberry party.” Thoreau’s taste for figurative huckleberry- gathering took him far afield, walking Cape Cod’s wave-beaten coast and ascending to the stony summit of Maine’s Mount Ktaadn, but he always returned to the little wilderness of Concord, a microcosm that was cosmos enough. F. O. Matthiessen, in his American Renaissance, points out how much the great writers of that renaissance owed to the English writers of the seventeenth century—Donne and Herbert, Marvell and Browne—with their belief in correspondences between the little and the large, the inner world of the self and the outer world of Nature. “The heart of man,” Donne wrote, “Is an epitome of God’s great book / Of creatures, and man need no farther look.” George Herbert put it, “Man is one world, and hath / Another to attend him,” thus extending Nature into the unseen realms of heavenly solicitude. By a great leap of kinship, the metaphysicals of the seventeenth century ignited in the spiritual descendents of seventeenth-century Puritans a blaze of introspectively charged particulars. Walden lives in its particulars. The long opening chapter, “Economy,” joyously details just how to build a house—“a tight shingled and plastered house, ten feet wide by fifteen long, and eight-feet posts, with a garret and a closet, a large window on each side, two trap doors, one door at the end, and a brick fireplace opposite”—down to a list of expenses totalling $28.11½. Briskly marketing to the world his program of austerity and self- reliance, he itemizes the few foodstuffs he paid for and the profits he obtained from his seven miles of bean rows. He tells us how to make his unleavened bread of rye and Indian meal, and “a very good molasses either of pumpkin or beets.” In another experiment, he eats a woodchuck, enjoying it “notwithstanding its musky flavor,” though he doubts it will become an item for the village butcher. He shares the details of his housekeeping with us: Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor was dirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doors on the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed water on the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, and then with a broom scrubbed it clean and white…. Further—and this is a stroke of his sensitive, pawky genius—he contemplates his momentarily displaced furniture and the nuance of enchanting strangeness: It was pleasant to see my whole household effects out on the grass, making a little pile like a gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I did not remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines and hickories…. It was worth the while to see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blow on them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look out of doors than in the house. Many things, in Thoreau’s liberated state, are worth the while to see—the feeding manners of chickadees, and the trickles of spring thaw along the railroad cut, “resembling, as you look down on them, the laciniated lobed and imbricated thalluses of some lichens.” At the same moment he is “cheered by the music of a thousand tinkling rills and rivulets whose veins are filled with the blood of winter which they are bearing off”; at other times he eavesdrops on “the faint wiry peep” of the baby woodcock being led by their mother through the swamp. In Walden’s most bravura chapter, “Sounds,” he hears not only the cries and rustles of myriad creatures but, with surprising approval, the whistle and racket of the Fitchburg Railroad train as it makes its way, a hundred rods off, along the edge of Walden Pond: Commerce is unexpectedly confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied. It is very natural in its methods withal, far more so than many fantastic enterprises and sentimental experiments…. I am refreshed and expanded when the freight train rattles past me, and I smell the stores which go dispensing their odors all the way from Long Wharf to Lake Champlain. His admiration of Nature is not selective; it includes the “iron steed” that thrusts its noisy way into his woods, earning several pages of paean capped by one of his best-known poems, beginning “What’s the railroad to me? / I never go to see / Where it ends.” The Concord of the 1840s, where, in Thoreau’s perception, men “lead lives of quiet desperation,” slave-drivers of themselves with “no time to be any thing but a machine,” was by our lights a bucolic world, the steam engine being the technological ultimate and the main labor farm labor. It is the farmer, according to Thoreau, whose “poor immortal soul” is “well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed”; it is a farmer he encounters in the middle of the night, driving his livestock to a dawn appointment in Boston, while the unencumbered hermit returns to sleep in his cozy cabin. Thoreau was a Harvard graduate and the scion of a small industrialist, John Thoreau the pencil-manufacturer. In the local social scale he was something of a gentleman, and he asserts a gentleman’s prerogative in pursuing his unprofitable hobbies. We slightly wince, on behalf of those more tightly bound to laborious necessity, when we read that “to maintain one’s self on this earth is not hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely” and that “by working about six weeks in a year, I could meet all the expenses of living.” Not everyone is offered free land to squat on for a personal experiment nor can draw so freely on the society of a nearby village. Thoreau makes light of most men’s need to work, and ignores the wave of industrial toil that is breaking upon New England. In his week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers he takes small note of the factories that made of this river the New World’s first industrial zone, whose cruel exploitations Melville sought to dramatize in his short story “The Tartarus of Maids.” Thoreau’s protest centers on the end-product of industry, the consumerism that urges us to buy its products; his proposed remedy is doing without: “A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” This includes doing without sex (“The generative energy, which, when we are loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent invigorates and inspires us”), and would carry with it, as Hawthorne sensed, an end to most of the interactions that form civilization, a return to “Indian life” and beyond—to a degree of individual independence that no human society, least of all a tribal one, could tolerate. His retreat to the cabin and the retreats to the land that his masterwork has helped inspire were luxuries, financed by the surplus that an interwoven, slave-driving economy generates. Even so staunch a Thoreauvian as ?. B. White (whose own withdrawal to the Maine coast was financed by the ad revenues of a New York magazine), in writing a tribute for Walden’s hundredth anniversary fifty years ago, admitted that “the plodding economist will … have rough going if he hopes to emerge from the book with a clear system of economic thought,” and that Thoreau sometimes wrote as if “all his readers were male, unmarried, and well- connected.” But if it cannot be swallowed as a cure-all, Walden can be relished as a condiment, a flavoring, a head-clearing spice. White, remembering how the book heartened him when he read it in his youth, saw Walden as “an invitation to life’s dance, assuring the troubled recipient that… the music is played for him, too, if he will but listen and move his feet.” “Love your life,” Thoreau wrote, “poor as it is.” Walden can be taken as an antidote to apathy and anxiety. With its high spirits and keen appeals to the senses, it fortifies. Its time of writing was a troubled time for Thoreau, young but old enough to have accomplished more, and for the nation, laboring under the cloud of the slavery issue and the coming Civil War. If Thoreau did not make much of the industrial revolution, he felt the crisis in belief whereby even the almost creedless stopgap of Unitarianism demanded too much faith. Nature studies led to naturalism, to philosophical materialism. “Darwin, the naturalist,” is cited early in Walden, as witness to those “inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego” who went “naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes”— model citizens of Thoreau’s utopia of doing without. Walter Harding’s biography, The Days of Henry Thoreau (1965), tells us that the ailing Thoreau lived to read, in 1860, Darwin’s Origin of Species, and “took six pages of notes on it in one of his commonplace books, and… liked the book very much.” But the theological furor over the book did not engage him, nor affect his own thinking. He had once experienced, Walden confides, “a slight insanity in my mood” whereby Nature seemed unfriendly, a mood quickly cancelled by a sense, in a gentle rain, of “an infinite and unaccountable friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining me”: “There can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in the midst of Nature and has his senses still.” Thoreau resembled Darwin in his patient observations and Benjamin Franklin in his inventive practicality. Unlike most Transcendentalists, he could do things—tend garden and make home repairs for Emerson, or actualize with real carpentry Bronson Alcott’s fanciful vision of a summerhouse. “I have as many trades as fingers,” he says in Walden. Between 1849 and 1861 he completed over two hundred surveys, mostly in and around Concord. He figures in Henry Petroski’s technological history of the pencil (The Pencil, 1990) as the inventor, not long after his graduation from Harvard, of a seven-foot-high grinding machine that captured only the particles of graphite fine enough to rise highest into the air; for a time, Thoreau pencils were the best—the least gritty—in America. We trust the narrator of Walden and his spiritual aspirations better because of repeated examples of his practical know-how. A call to ethereality begins with a trick of fitting an ax tight to its handle: One day, when my axe had come off and I had cut a green hickory for a wedge, driving it with a stone, and had placed the whole to soak in a pond hole in order to swell the wood, I saw a striped snake run into the water, and he lay on the bottom, apparently without inconvenience, as long as I staid there, or more than a quarter of an hour; perhaps because he had not yet fairly come out of the torpid state. It appeared to me that for a like reason men remain in their present low and primitive condition; but if they should feel the influence of the spring of springs arousing them, they would of necessity rise to a higher and more ethereal life. Surviving in the woods, he becomes a student of physical process. Water swells wood; dead leaves absorb the sun’s heat: “The elements… abetted me in making a path through the deepest snow in the woods, for when I had once gone through the wind blew the oak leaves into my tracks, where they lodged, and by absorbing the rays of the sun melted the snow, and so not only made a dry bed for my feet, but in the night their dark line was my guide.” The pond covered with winter ice moves him to especially close observation; as he had anatomized the spring thaw, so the winter freezing prompts his minute inspection of bubbles, “narrow oblong perpendicular bubbles about half an inch long, sharp cones with the apex upward.” In a warm spell, they expand and run together, “often like slivery coins poured from a bag, one overlapping another”; at the end of the passage he lifts his almost microscopic examination of “the infinite number of minute bubbles” into the resounding open: “These are the little air-guns which contribute to make the ice crack and whoop.” He veers close to the secret of microörganisms when he asks, “Why is it that a bucket of water soon becomes putrid, but frozen remains sweet forever?” The question evaporates, however, in the dry witticism, “It is commonly said that this is the difference between the affections and the intellect.” As the railroad cuts expose new geology, the commercial ice-cutting in the winter of 1846-47 gives Thoreau new opportunities for perceiving ice, remarking distinctions in tint as precisely as the contemporary landscapist Frederic Edwin Church rendered icebergs. Early in 1846, Thoreau seized the opportunity of a frozen Walden to perform the chief technical labor of his years there. “With compass and chain and sounding line,” cutting holes in straight lines in several directions, he sounds the pond, presenting the reader with a drawn map, forty rods to an inch, and a scale profile of the bottom. The pond had been long rumored to be bottomless: “It is remarkable how long men will believe in the bottomlessness of a pond without taking the trouble to sound it.” The surveyor is proud to announce, “I can assure my readers that Walden has a reasonably tight bottom at a not unreasonable, though at an unusual, depth.” Ponds are shallower than we imagine: “Most ponds, emptied, would leave a meadow no more hollow than we frequently see.” Most mysteries, by the same token, yield to the emptying action of patient scientific examination. Readers new to Walden may be surprised at the high proportion of its energy given to empirical exploration and demonstration. The Romantic Nature-celebrant wears the polished spectacles of Franklin and the philosophes. Thoreau’s purpose is to reconcile us, after centuries of hazy anthropocentricity, to Nature as it is, relentless and remorseless. We need to be called out from the shared comforts and illusions of village life. We need the tonic of wildness…. We can never have enough of Nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and Titanic features…. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander. We are cheered when we observe the vulture feeding on the carrion which disgusts and disheartens us and deriving health and strength from the repast. On the path to his little cabin, he relates, there was a dead horse, whose aroma repulsed him but heartened him with “the assurance it gave me of the strong appetite and inviolable health of Nature.” The vision of “Nature red in tooth and claw,” which desolated Tennyson and other Victorian Christians, is embraced by Thoreau: I love to see that Nature is so rife with life that myriads can be afforded to be sacrificed and suffered to prey on one another; that tender organizations can be so serenely squashed out of existence like pulp—tadpoles which herons gobble up, and tortoises and toads run over in the road; and that sometimes it has rained flesh and blood! With the liability to accident, we must see how little account is to be made of it. The impression made on a wise man is that of universal innocence…. Compassion is a very untenable ground. He sounds, as it were, the fatal bottom of our organic existence, and yet claims not merely to accept the universe, as another Transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller, put it, but to rejoice in it. He met his own death, at forty-four, of consumption, with a serenity admired by much of Concord. “One world at a time,” he famously told those seeking to prepare him for the next. He did not quite renounce personal immortality; a number of his phrases tease the possibility, and near the passages above he evokes the “wild river valley and the woods… bathed in so pure and bright a light as would have waked the dead,” concluding, “There needs no stronger proof of the immortality. All things must live in such a light.” Yet the meaning is unclear, a fillip of animal optimism after a book-length, clear-eyed exaltation of Nature as a chemical and molecular and mathematical construct—Nature seized in the tightening grip of science, and stripped of the pathetic fallacy even in the sophisticated form in which Emerson’s Neoplatonism couched it. No more Idealism, no more Platonic forms, no shimmering archetypes having an existence somehow independent of individual things. “No ideas but in things,” William Carlos Williams would say in the next century, giving modernism a motto. The poetry of Williams and Eliot and Pound demonstrated that things, assembled even as enigmatic fragments, as images without spelled- out emotional and logical connectives, give vitality to the language and immediacy to the communication between writer and reader. It is the thinginess of Thoreau’s prose that still excites us, the athleticism with which he springs from detail to detail, image to image, while still toting something of Transcendentalism’s metaphysical burden. Without that burden, which is considerably lighter in the writings posthumously collected as The Maine Woods and Cape Cod, he comes close to being merely an attentive and eloquent travel writer. Nevertheless, the chaotic, mist-swept top of Mount Ktaadn—“the raw materials of a planet dropped from an unseen quarry”—and the wrecks and wind-stunted apple trees of Cape Cod afford us the metaphysical shudder of a man confronting in implacable nature an image of something purifyingly bleak within himself. His later years, as the preachments of abolitionists and slaveholders reached their shrill adumbration of bloody war, were marked, even made notorious, by his fiery championing of John Brown, whom he had briefly met in Concord, finding him “a man of great common sense, deliberate and practical,” endowed with “tact and prudence” and the Spartan habits and spare diet of a soldier. The peaceable Thoreau extols this grim killer for a practical reason: Brown has taken action, violent action, against the sanctioned violence of the slavery-protecting state: It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him…. I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called “peace” of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Thoreau’s recognitions endeared him to the revolutionaries of the 1960s: he saw the violence behind the established order, the enslaving nature of private property, and—a trend even stronger now than forty years ago—the media’s substitution of “the news” for private reality. “Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous.” The word “reality” rings through Walden: “Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance… till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality…. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.” To the dark immensity of material Nature’s indifference we can oppose only the brief light, like a lamp in a cabin, of our consciousness; the invigorating benison of Walden is to make us feel that the contest is equal, and fair. The United States of 1850, at twenty-three millions, was small enough to be addressed as a single congregation. Though famous as the man who lived alone in the woods, as Melville was as “the man who had lived among cannibals,” Thoreau was in his gingerly fashion gregarious. Visiting his friends the Loomises in Cambridge, he was once handed, in 1856, and for an awkward moment was compelled to hold, upside down, the newborn Mabel Loomis, who was to achieve fame as the first editor of Emily Dickinson’s poetry and, in the twentieth century, as a leading instance, in Peter Gay’s social history The Tender Passion, of the sexually fulfilled and unrepressed Victorian female. In 1852 Thoreau, already acquainted with most of New England’s writers, visited Walt Whitman in Brooklyn, in the bedroom where Whitman lived in slovenly style with his feeble-minded brother. Although they differed in their estimate of the common man, so that Whitman later diagnosed the Yankee as having “a very aggravated case of superciliousness,” and Thoreau pronunced some of the New Yorker’s poems as “disagreeable to say the least, simply sensual… as if the beasts spoke,” both were left with favourable impressions. “He is a great fellow,” Thoreau wrote of Whitman in a letter, and of his book of poems, “On the whole it sounds to me very brave & American after whatever deductions. I do not believe that all the sermons so called that have been preached in this land put together are equal to it for preaching.” Leaves of Grass and Walden have emerged over time as the two great testaments of American individualism, assuring the New World, traditional reassurances failing, of the value, power, and beauty of the unfettered self. —John Updike May, 2003 Economy WHEN I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again. I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were any body else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits. I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and every where, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Brahmins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders “until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach;” or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars,—even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolas to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? They have got to live a man’s life, pushing all these things before them, and get on as well as they can. How many a poor immortal soul have I met well nigh crushed and smothered under its load, creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty, its Augean stables never cleansed, and one hundred acres of land, tillage, mowing, pasture, and wood-lot! The portionless, who struggle with no such unnecessary inherited encumbrances, find it labor enough to subdue and cultivate a few cubic feet of flesh. But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before. It is said that Deucalion and Pyrrha created men by throwing stones over their heads behind them:— Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, Et documenta damus quâ simus origine nati. Or, as Raleigh rhymes it in his sonorous way,— “From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.” So much for a blind obedience to a blundering oracle, throwing the stones over their heads behind them, and not seeing where they fell. Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can he remember well his ignorance—which his growth requires—who has so often to use his knowledge? We should feed and clothe him gratuitously sometimes, and recruit him with our cordials, before we judge of him. The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour. It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live, for my sight has been whetted by experience; always on the limits, trying to get into business and trying to get out of debt, a very ancient slough, called by the Latins, æs alienum, another’s brass, for some of their coins were made of brass; still living, and dying, and buried by this other’s brass; always promising to pay, promising to pay, to-morrow, and dying to-day, insolvent; seeking to curry favor, to get custom, by how many modes, only not state-prison offences; lying, flattering, voting, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility, or dilating into an atmosphere of thin and vaporous generosity, that you may persuade your neighbor to let you make his shoes, or his hat, or his coat, or his carriage, or import his groceries for him; making yourselves sick, that you may lay up something against a sick day, something to be tucked away in an old chest, or in a stocking behind the plastering, or, more safely, in the brick bank; no matter where, no matter how much or how little. I sometimes wonder that we can be so frivolous, I may almost say, as to attend to the gross but somewhat foreign form of servitude called Negro Slavery, there are so many keen and subtle masters that enslave both north and south. It is hard to have a southern overseer; it is worse to have a northern one; but worst of all when you are the slave-driver of yourself. Talk of a divinity in man! Look at the teamster on the highway, wending to market by day or night; does any divinity stir within him? His highest duty to fodder and water his horses! What is his destiny to him compared with the shipping interests? Does not he drive for Squire Make-a-stir? How godlike, how immortal, is he? See how he cowers and sneaks, how vaguely all the day he fears, not being immortal nor divine, but the slave and prisoner of his own opinion of himself, a fame won by his own deeds. Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion. What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate. Self-emancipation even in the West Indian provinces of the fancy and imagination,—what Wilberforce is there to bring that about? Think, also, of the ladies of the land weaving toilet cushions against the last day, not to betray too green an interest in their fates! As if you could kill time without injuring eternity. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. When we consider what, to use the words of the catechism, is the chief end of man, and what are the true necessaries and means of life, it appears as if men had deliberately chosen the common mode of living because they preferred it to any other. Yet they honestly think there is no choice left. But alert and healthy natures remember that the sun rose clear. It is never too late to give up our prejudices. No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What every body echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow, mere smoke of opinion, which some had trusted for a cloud that would sprinkle fertilizing rain on their fields. What old people say you cannot do you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new. Old people did not know enough once, perchance, to fetch fresh fuel to keep the fire a-going; new people put a little dry wood under a pot, and are whirled round the globe with the speed of birds, in a way to kill old people, as the phrase is. Age is no better, hardly so well, qualified for an instructor as youth, for it has not profited so much as it has lost. One may almost doubt if the wisest man has learned any thing of absolute value by living. Practically, the old have no very important advice to give the young, their own experience has been so partial, and their lives have been such miserable failures, for private reasons, as they must believe; and it may be that they have some faith left which belies that experience, and they are only less young than they were. I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing, to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about. One farmer says to me, “You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;” and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plough along in spite of every obstacle. Some things are really necessaries of life in some circles, the most helpless and diseased, which in others are luxuries merely, and in others still are entirely unknown. The whole ground of human life seems to some to have been gone over by their predecessors, both the heights and the valleys, and all things to have been cared for. According to Evelyn, “the wise Solomon prescribed ordinances for the very distances of trees; and the Roman prætors have decided how often you may go into your neighbor’s land to gather the acorns which fall on it without trespass, and what share belongs to that neighbor.” Hippocrates has even left directions how we should cut our nails; that is, even with the ends of the fingers, neither shorter nor longer. Undoubtedly the very tedium and ennui which presume to have exhausted the variety and the joys of life are as old as Adam. But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried. Whatever have been thy failures hitherto, “be not afflicted, my child, for who shall assign to thee what thou hast left undone?” We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant? We should live in all the ages of the world in an hour; ay, in all the worlds of the ages. History, Poetry, Mythology!—I know of no reading of another’s experience so startling and informing as this would be. The greater part of what my neighbors call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of any thing, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well? You may say the wisest thing you can old man,—you who have lived seventy years, not without honor of a kind,—I hear an irresistible voice which invites me away from all that. One generation abandons the enterprises of another like stranded vessels. I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere. Nature is as well adapted to our weakness as to our strength. The incessant anxiety and strain of some is a well nigh incurable form of disease. We are made to exaggerate the importance of what work we do; and yet how much is not done by us! or, what if we had been taken sick? How vigilant we are! determined not to live by faith if we can avoid it; all the day long on the alert, at night we unwillingly say our prayers and commit ourselves to uncertainties. So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant. Confucius said, “To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.” When one man has reduced a fact of the imagination to be a fact to his understanding, I foresee that all men will at length establish their lives on that basis. Let us consider for a moment what most of the trouble and anxiety which I have referred to is about, and how much it is necessary that we be troubled, or, at least, careful. It would be some advantage to live a primitive and frontier life, though in the midst of an outward civilization, if only to learn what are the gross necessaries of life and what methods have been taken to obtain them; or even to look over the old day-books of the merchants, to see what it was that men most commonly bought at the stores, what they stored, that is, what are the grossest groceries. For the improvements of ages have had but little influence on the essential laws of man’s existence; as our skeletons, probably, are not to be distinguished from those of our ancestors. By the words, necessary of life, I mean whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any, whether from savageness, or poverty, or philosophy, ever attempt to do without it. To many creatures there is in this sense but one necessary of life, Food. To the bison of the prairie it is a few inches of palatable grass, with water to drink; unless he seeks the Shelter of the forest or the mountain’s shadow. None of the brute creation requires more than Food and Shelter. The necessaries of life for man in this climate may, accurately enough, be distributed under the several heads of Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel; for not till we have secured these are we prepared to entertain the true problems of life with freedom and a prospect of success. Man has invented, not only houses, but clothes and cooked food; and possibly from the accidental discovery of the warmth of fire, and the consequent use of it, at first a luxury, arose the present necessity to sit by it. We observe cats and dogs acquiring the same second nature. By proper Shelter and Clothing we legitimately retain our own internal heat; but with an excess of these, or of Fuel, that is, with an external heat greater than our own internal, may not cookery properly be said to begin? Darwin, the naturalist, says of the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, that while his own party, who were well clothed and sitting close to a fire, were far from too warm, these naked savages, who were farther off, were observed, to his great surprise, “to be streaming with perspiration at undergoing such a roasting.” So, we are told, the New Hollander goes naked with impunity, while the European shivers in his clothes. Is it impossible to combine the hardiness of these savages with the intellectualness of the civilized man? According to Liebig, man’s body is a stove, and food the fuel which keeps up the internal combustion in the lungs. In cold weather we eat more, in warm less. The animal heat is the result of a slow combustion, and disease and death take place when this is too rapid; or for want of fuel, or from some defect in the draught, the fire goes out. Of course the vital heat is not to be confounded with fire; but so much for analogy. It appears, therefore, from the above list, that the expression, animal life, is nearly synonymous with the expression, animal heat; for while Food may be regarded as the Fuel which keeps up the fire within us,—and Fuel serves only to prepare that Food or to increase the warmth of our bodies by addition from without,—Shelter and Clothing also serve only to retain the heat thus generated and absorbed. The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. What pains we accordingly take, not only with our Food, and Clothing, and Shelter, but with our beds, which are our night-clothes, robbing the nests and breasts of birds to prepare this shelter within a shelter, as the mole has its bed of grass and leaves at the end of its burrow! The poor man is wont to complain that this is a cold world; and to cold, no less physical than social, we refer directly a great part of our ails. The summer, in some climates, makes possible to man a sort of Elysian life. Fuel, except to cook his Food, is then unnecessary; the sun is his fire, and many of the fruits are sufficiently cooked by its rays; while Food generally is more various, and more easily obtained, and Clothing and Shelter are wholly or half unnecessary. At the present day, and in this country, as I find by my own experience, a few implements, a knife, an axe, a spade, a wheelbarrow, &c., and for the studious, lamplight, stationery, and access to a few books, rank next to necessaries, and can all be obtained at a trifling cost. Yet some, not wise, go to the other side of the globe, to barbarous and unhealthy regions, and devote themselves to trade for ten or twenty years, in order that they may live,—that is, keep comfortably warm,—and die in New England at last. The luxuriously rich are not simply kept comfortably warm, but unnaturally hot; as I implied before, they are cooked, of course à la mode. Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple and meager life than the poor. The ancient philosophers, Chinese, Hindoo, Persian, and Greek, were a class than which none has been poorer in outward riches, none so rich in inward. We know not much about them. It is remarkable that we know so much of them as we do. The same is true of the more modern reformers and benefactors of their race. None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty. Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically. The success of great scholars and thinkers is commonly a courtier-like success, not kingly, not manly. They make shift to live merely by conformity, practically as their fathers did, and are in no sense the progenitors of a nobler race of men. But why do men degenerate ever? What makes families run out? What is the nature of the luxury which enervates and destroys nations? Are we sure that there is none of it in our own lives? The philosopher is in advance of his age even in the outward form of his life. He is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? When a man is warmed by the several modes which I have described, what does he want next? Surely not more warmth of the same kind, as more and richer food, larger and more splendid houses, finer and more abundant clothing, more numerous incessant and hotter fires, and the like. When he has obtained those things which are necessary to life, there is another alternative than to obtain the superfluities; and that is, to adventure on life now, his vacation from humbler toil having commenced. The soil, it appears, is suited to the seed, for it has sent its radicle downward, and it may now send its shoot upward also with confidence. Why has man rooted himself thus firmly in the earth, but that he may rise in the same proportion into the heavens above?-for the nobler plants are valued for the fruit they bear at last in the air and light, far from the ground, and are not treated like the humbler esculents, which, though they may be biennials, are cultivated only till they have perfected their root, and often cut down at top for this purpose, so that most would not know them in their flowering season. I do not mean to prescribe rules to strong and valiant natures, who will mind their own affairs whether in heaven or hell, and perchance build more magnificently and spend more lavishly than the richest, without ever impoverishing themselves, not knowing how they live,—if, indeed, there are any such, as has been dreamed; nor to those who find their encouragement and inspiration in precisely the present condition of things, and cherish it with the fondness and enthusiasm of lovers,—and, to some extent, I reckon myself in this number; I do not speak to those who are well employed, in whatever circumstances, and they know whether they are well employed or not;—but mainly to the mass of men who are discontented, and idly complaining of the hardness of their lot or of the times, when they might improve them. There are some who complain most energetically and in-consolably of any, because they are, as they say, doing their duty. I also have in my mind that seemingly wealthy, but most terribly impoverished class of all, who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it, or get rid of it, and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters. If I should attempt to tell how I have desired to spend my life in years past, it would probably surprise those of my readers who are somewhat acquainted with its actual history; it would certainly astonish those who know nothing about it. I will only hint at some of the enterprises which I have cherished. In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line. You will pardon some obscurities, for there are more secrets in my trade than in most men’s, and yet not voluntarily kept, but inseparable from its very nature. I would gladly tell all that I know about it, and never paint “No Admittance” on my gate. I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtle-dove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to. I have met one or two who had heard the hound, and the tramp of the horse, and even seen the dove disappear behind a cloud, and they seemed as anxious to recover them as if they had lost them themselves. To anticipate, not the sunrise and the dawn merely, but, if possible, Nature herself! How many mornings, summer and winter, before yet any neighbor was stirring about his business, have I been about mine! No doubt, many of my townsmen have met me returning from this enterprise, farmers starting for Boston in the twilight, or woodchoppers going to their work. It is true, I never assisted the sun materially in his rising, but, doubt not, it was of the last importance only to be present at it. So many autumn, ay, and winter days, spent outside the town, trying to hear what was in the wind, to hear and carry it express! I well-nigh sunk all my capital in it, and lost my own breath into the bargain, running in the face of it. If it had concerned either of the political parties, depend upon it, it would have appeared in the Gazette with the earliest intelligence. At other times watching from the observatory of some cliff or tree, to telegraph any new arrival; or waiting at evening on the hill-tops for the sky to fall, that I might catch something, though I never caught much, and that, manna-wise, would dissolve again in the sun. For a long time I was reporter to a journal, of no very wide circulation, whose editor has never yet seen fit to print the bulk of my contributions, and, as is too common with writers, I got only my labor for my pains. However, in this case my pains were their own reward. For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow storms and rain storms, and did my duty faithfully; surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seasons, where the public heel had testified to their utility. I have looked after the wild stock of the town, which give a faithful herdsman a good deal of trouble by leaping fences; and I have had an eye to the unfrequented nooks and corners of the farm; though I did not always know whether Jonas or Solomon worked in a particular field to-day; that was none of my business. I have watered the red huckleberry, the sand cherry and the nettle tree, the red pine and the black ash, the white grape and the yellow violet, which might have withered else in dry seasons. In short, I went on thus for a long time, I may say it without boasting, faithfully minding my business, till it became more and more evident that my townsmen would not after all admit me into the list of town officers, nor make my place a sinecure with a moderate allowance. My accounts, which I can swear to have kept faithfully, I have, indeed, never got audited, still less accepted, still less paid and settled. However, I have not set my heart on that. Not long since, a strolling Indian went to sell baskets at the house of a well-known lawyer in my neighborhood. “Do you wish to buy any baskets?” he asked. “No, we do not want any,” was the reply. “What!” exclaimed the Indian as he went out the gate, “do you mean to starve us?” Having seen his industrious white neighbors so well off,—that the lawyer had only to weave arguments, and by some magic wealth and standing followed, he had said to himself; I will go into business; I will weave baskets; it is a thing which I can do. Thinking that when he had made the baskets he would have done his part, and then it would be the white man’s to buy them. He had not discovered that it was necessary for him to make it worth the other’s while to buy them, or at least make him think that it was so, or to make something else which it would be worth his while to buy. I too had woven a kind of basket of a delicate texture, but I had not made it worth any one’s while to buy them. Yet not the less, in my case, did I think it worth my while to weave them, and instead of studying how to make it worth men’s while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them. The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others? Finding that my fellow-citizens were not likely to offer me any room in the court house, or any curacy or living any where else, but I must shift for myself, I turned my face more exclusively than ever to the woods, where I was better known. I determined to go into business at once, and not wait to acquire the usual capital, using such slender means as I had already got. My purpose in going to Walden Pond was not to live cheaply nor to live dearly there, but to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles; to be hindered from accomplishing which for want of a little common sense, a little enterprise and business talent, appeared not so sad as foolish. I have always endeavored to acquire strict business habits; they are indispensable to every man. If your trade is with the Celestial Empire, then some small counting house on the coast, in some Salem harbor, will be fixture enough. You will export such articles as the country affords, purely native products, much ice and pine timber and a little granite, always in native bottoms. These will be good ventures. To oversee all the details yourself in person; to be at once pilot and captain, and owner and underwriter; to buy and sell and keep the accounts; to read every letter received, and write or read every letter sent; to superintend the discharge of imports night and day; to be upon many parts of the coast almost at the same time,—often the richest freight will be discharged upon a Jersey shore;—to be your own telegraph, unweariedly sweeping the horizon, speaking all passing vessels bound coastwise; to keep up a steady despatch of commodities, for the supply of such a distant and exorbitant market; to keep yourself informed of the state of the markets, prospects of war and peace every where, and anticipate the tendencies of trade and civilization,— taking advantage of the results of all exploring expeditions, using new passages and all improvements in navigation,—charts to be studied, the position of reefs and new lights and buoys to be ascertained, and ever, and ever, the logarithmic tables to be corrected, for by the error of some calculator the vessel often splits upon a rock that should have reached a friendly pier,—there is the untold fate of La Perouse,—universal science to be kept pace with, studying the lives of all great discoverers and navigators, great adventurers and merchants, from Hanno and the Phœnicians down to our day; in fine, account of stock to be taken from time to time, to know how you stand. It is a labor to task the faculties of a man,—such problems of profit and loss, of interest, of tare and tret, and gauging of all kinds in it, as demand a universal knowledge. I have thought that Walden Pond would be a good place for business, not solely on account of the railroad and the ice trade; it offers advantages which it may not be good policy to divulge; it is a good port and a good foundation. No Neva marshes to be filled; though you must every where build on piles of your own driving. It is said that a flood-tide, with a westerly wind, and ice in the Neva, would sweep St. Petersburg from the face of the earth. As this business was to be entered into without the usual capital, it may not be easy to conjecture where those means, that will still be indispensable to every such undertaking, were to be obtained. As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty, and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility. Let him who has work to do recollect that the object of clothing is, first, to retain the vital heat, and secondly, in this state of society, to cover nakedness, and he may judge how much of any necessary or important work may be accomplished without adding to his wardrobe. Kings and queens who wear a suit but once, though made by some tailor or dress-maker to their majesties, cannot know the comfort of wearing a suit that fits. They are no better than wooden horses to hang the clean clothes on. Every day our garments become more assimilated to ourselves, receiving the impress of the wearer’s character, until we hesitate to lay them aside, without such delay and medical appliances and some such solemnity even as our bodies. No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. But even if the rent is not mended, perhaps the worst vice betrayed is improvidence. I sometimes try my acquaintances by such tests as this,—who could wear a patch, or two extra seams only, over the knee? Most behave as if they believed that their prospects for life would be ruined if they should do it. It would be easier for them to hobble to town with a broken leg than with a broken pantaloon. Often if an accident happens to a gentleman’s legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected. We know but few men, a great many coats and breeches. Dress a scarecrow in your last shift, you standing shiftless by, who would not soonest salute the scarecrow? Passing a cornfield the other day, close by a hat and coat on a stake, I recognized the owner of the farm. He was only a little more weather-beaten than when I saw him last. I have heard of a dog that barked at every stranger who approached his master’s premises with clothes on, but was easily quieted by a naked thief. It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes. Could you, in such a case, tell surely of any company of civilized men, which belonged to the most respected class? When Madam Pfeiffer, in her adventurous travels round the world, from east to west, had got so near home as Asiatic Russia, she says that she felt the necessity of wearing other than a travelling dress, when she went to meet the authorities, for she “was now in a civilized country, where —— –people are judged of by their clothes.” Even in our democratic New England towns the accidental possession of wealth, and its manifestation in dress and equipage alone, obtain for the possessor almost universal respect. But they who yield such respect, numerous as they are, are so far heathen, and need to have a missionary sent to them. Beside, clothes introduced sewing, a kind of work which you may call endless; a woman’s dress, at least, is never done. A man who has at length found something to do will not need to get a new suit to do it in; for him the old will do, that has lain dusty in the garret for an indeterminate period. Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet,—if a hero ever has a valet,—bare feet are older than shoes, and he can make them do. Only they who go to soirées and legislative halls must have new coats, coats to change as often as the man changes in them. But if my jacket and trousers, my hat and shoes, are fit to worship God in, they will do; will they not? Who ever saw his old clothes, —his old coat, actually worn out, resolved into its primitive elements, so that it was not a deed of charity to bestow it on some poor boy, by him perchance to be bestowed on some poorer still, or shall we say richer, who could do with less? I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes. All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be. Perhaps we should never procure a new suit, however ragged or dirty the old, until we have so conducted, so enterprised or sailed in some way, that we feel like new men in the old, and that to retain it would be like keeping new wine in old bottles. Our moulting season, like that of the fowls, must be a crisis in our lives. The loon retires to solitary ponds to spend it. Thus also the snake casts its slough, and the caterpillar its wormy coat, by an internal industry and expansion; for clothes are but our outmost cuticle and mortal coil. Otherwise we shall be found sailing under false colors, and be inevitably cashiered at last by our own opinion, as well as that of mankind. We don garment after garment, as if we grew like exogenous plants by addition without. Our outside and often thin and fanciful clothes are our epidermis or false skin, which partakes not of our life, and may be stripped off here and there without fatal injury; our thicker garments, constantly worn, are our cellular integument, or cortex; but our shirts are our liber or true bark, which cannot be removed without girdling and so destroying the man. I believe that all races at some seasons wear something equivalent to the shirt. It is desirable that a man be clad so simply that he can lay his hands on himself in the dark, and that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly, that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety. While one thick garment is, for most purposes, as good as three thin ones, and cheap clothing can be obtained at prices really to suit customers; while a thick coat can be bought for five dollars, which will last as many years, thick pantaloons for two dollars, cowhide boots for a dollar and a half a pair, a summer hat for a quarter of a dollar, and a winter cap for sixty-two and a half cents, or a better be made at home at a nominal cost, where is he so poor that, clad in such a suit, of his own earning, there will not be found wise men to do him reverence? When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my tailoress tells me gravely, “They do not make them so now,” not emphasizing the “They” at all, as if she quoted an authority as impersonal as the Fates, and I find it difficult to get made what I want, simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I say, that I am so rash. When I hear this oracular sentence, I am for a moment absorbed in thought, emphasizing to myself each word separately that I may come at the meaning of it, that I may find out by what degree of consanguinity They are related to me, and what authority they may have in an affair which affects me so nearly; and, finally, I am inclined to answer her with equal mystery, and without any more emphasis of the “they,”—“It is true, they did not make them so recently, but they do now.” Of what use this measuring of me if she does not measure my character, but only the breadth of my shoulders, as it were a peg to hang the coat on? We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same. I sometimes despair of getting any thing quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again, and then there would be some one in the company with a maggot in his head, hatched from an egg deposited there nobody knows when, for not even fire kills these things, and you would have lost your labor. Nevertheless, we will not forget that some Egyptian wheat is said to have been handed down to us by a mummy. On the whole, I think that it cannot be maintained that dressing has in this or any country risen to the dignity of an art. At present men make shift to wear what they can get. Like shipwrecked sailors, they put on what they can find on the beach, and at a little distance, whether of space or time, laugh at each other’s masquerade. Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new. We are amused at beholding the costume of Henry VIII., or Queen Elizabeth, as much as if it was that of the King and Queen of the Cannibal Islands. All costume off a man is pitiful or grotesque. It is only the serious eye peering from and the sincere life passed within it, which restrain laughter and consecrate the costume of any people. Let Harlequin be taken with a fit of the colic and his trappings will have to serve that mood too. When the soldier is hit by a cannon ball rags are as becoming as purple. The childish and savage taste of men and women for new patterns keeps how many shaking and squinting through kaleidoscopes that they may discover the particular figure which this generation requires to-day. The manufacturers have learned that this taste is merely whimsical. Of two patterns which differ only by a few threads more or less of a particular color, the one will be sold readily, the other lie on the shelf, though it frequently happens that after the lapse of a season the latter becomes the most fashionable. Comparatively, tattooing is not the hideous custom which it is called. It is not barbarous merely because the printing is skin-deep and unalterable. I cannot believe that our factory system is the best mode by which men may get clothing. The condition of the operatives is becoming every day more like that of the English; and it cannot be wondered at, since, as far as I have heard or observed, the principal object is, not that mankind may be well and honestly clad, but, unquestionably, that the corporations may be enriched. In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. As for a Shelter, I will not deny that this is now a necessary of life, though there are instances of men having done without it for long periods in colder countries than this. Samuel Laing says that “The Laplander in his skin dress, and in a skin bag which he puts over his head and shoulders, will sleep night after night on the snow —— in a degree of cold which would extinguish the life of one exposed to it in any woollen clothing.” He had seen them asleep thus. Yet he adds, “They are not hardier than other people.” But, probably, man did not live long on the earth without discovering the convenience which there is in a house, the domestic comforts, which phrase may have originally signified the satisfactions of the house more than of the family; though these must be extremely partial and occasional in those climates where the house is associated in our thoughts with winter or the rainy season chiefly, and two thirds of the year, except for a parasol, is unnecessary. In our climate, in the summer, it was formerly almost solely a covering at night. In the Indian gazettes a wigwam was the symbol of a day’s march, and a row of them cut or painted on the bark of a tree signified that so many times they had camped. Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world, and wall in a space such as fitted him. He was at first bare and out of doors; but though this was pleasant enough in serene and warm weather, by daylight, the rainy season and the winter, to say nothing of the torrid sun, would perhaps have nipped his race in the bud if he had not made haste to clothe himself with the shelter of a house. Adam and Eve, according to the fable, wore the bower before other clothes. Man wanted a home, a place of warmth, or comfort, first of physical warmth, then the warmth of the affections. We may imagine a time when, in the infancy of the human race, some enterprising mortal crept into a hollow in a rock for shelter. Every child begins the world again, to some extent, and loves to stay out doors, even in wet and cold. It plays house, as well as horse, having an instinct for it. Who does not remember the interest with which when young he looked at shelving rocks, or any approach to a cave? It was the natural yearning of that portion of our most primitive ancestor which still survived in us. From the cave we have advanced to roofs of palm leaves, of bark and boughs, of linen woven and stretched, of grass and straw, of boards and shingles, of stones and tiles. At last, we know not what it is to live in the open air, and our lives are domestic in more senses than we think. From the hearth to the field is a great distance. It would be well perhaps if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long. Birds do not sing in caves, nor do doves cherish their innocence in dovecots. However, if one designs to construct a dwelling house, it behooves him to exercise a little Yankee shrewdness, lest after all he find himself in a workhouse, a labyrinth without a clew, a museum, an almshouse, a prison, or a splendid mausoleum instead. Consider first how slight a shelter is absolutely necessary. I have seen Penobscot Indians, in this town, living in tents of thin cotton cloth, while the snow was nearly a foot deep around them, and I thought that they would be glad to have it deeper to keep out the wind. Formerly, when how to get my living honestly, with freedom left for my proper pursuits, was a question which vexed me even more than it does now, for unfortunately I am become somewhat callous, I used to see a large box by the railroad, six feet long by three wide, in which the laborers locked up their tools at night, and it suggested to me that every man who was hard pushed might get such a one for a dollar, and, having bored a few auger holes in it, to admit the air at least, get into it when it rained and at night, and hook down the lid, and so have freedom in his love, and in his soul be free. This did not appear the worst, nor by any means a despicable alternative. You could sit up as late as you pleased, and, whenever you got up, go abroad without any landlord or house-lord dogging you for rent. Many a man is harassed to death to pay the rent of a larger and more luxurious box who would not have frozen to death in such a box as this. I am far from jesting. Economy is a subject which admits of being treated with levity, but it cannot so be disposed of. A comfortable house for a rude and hardy race, that lived mostly out of doors, was once made here almost entirely of such materials as Nature furnished ready to their hands. Gookin, who was superintendent of the Indians subject to the Massachusetts Colony, writing in 1674, says, “The best of their houses are covered very neatly, tight and warm, with barks of trees, slipped from their bodies at those seasons when the sap is up, and made into great flakes, with pressure of weighty timber, when they are green…. The meaner sort are covered with mats which they make of a kind of bulrush, and are also indifferently tight and warm, but not so good as the former…. Some I have seen, sixty or a hundred feet long and thirty feet broad…. I have often lodged in their wigwams, and found them as warm as the best English houses.” He adds, that they were commonly carpeted and lined within with well-wrought embroidered mats, and were furnished with various utensils. The Indians had advanced so far as to regulate the effect of the wind by a mat suspended over the hole in the roof and moved by a string. Such a lodge was in the first instance constructed in a day or two at most, and taken down and put up in a few hours; and every family owned one, or its apartment in one. In the savage state every family owns a shelter as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler wants; but I think that I speak within bounds when I say that, though the birds of the air have their nests, and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in modern civilized society not more than one half the families own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable summer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams, but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. I do not mean to insist here on the disadvantage of hiring compared with owning, but it is evident that the savage owns his shelter because it costs so little, while the civilized man hires his commonly because he cannot afford to own it; nor can he, in the long run, any better afford to hire. But, answers one, by merely paying this tax the poor civilized man secures an abode which is a palace compared with the savage’s. An annual rent of from twenty-five to a hundred dollars, these are the country rates, entitles him to the benefit of the improvements of centuries, spacious apartments, clean paint and paper, Rumford fireplace, back plastering, Venetian blinds, copper pump, spring lock, a commodious cellar, and many other things. But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is so commonly a poor civilized man, while the savage, who has them not, is rich as a savage? If it is asserted that civilization is a real advance in the condition of man,—and I think that it is, though only the wise improve their advantages,—it must be shown that it has produced better dwellings without making them more costly; and the cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run. An average house in this neighborhood costs perhaps eight hundred dollars, and to lay up this sum will take from ten to fifteen years of the laborer’s life, even if he is not encumbered with a family;—estimating the pecuniary value of every man’s labor at one dollar a day, for if some receive more, others receive less;—so that he must have spent more than half his life commonly before his wigwam will be earned. If we suppose him to pay a rent instead, this is but a doubtful choice of evils. Would the savage have been wise to exchange his wigwam for a palace on these terms? It may be guessed that I reduce almost the whole advantage of holding this superfluous property as a fund in store against the future, so far as the individual is concerned, mainly to the defraying of funeral expenses. But perhaps a man is not required to bury himself. Nevertheless this points to an important distinction between the civilized man and the savage; and, no doubt, they have designs on us for our benefit, in making the life of a civilized people an institution, in which the life of the individual is to a great extent absorbed, in order to preserve and perfect that of the race. But I wish to show at what a sacrifice this advantage is at present obtained, and to suggest that we may possibly so live as to secure all the advantage without suffering any of the disadvantage. What mean ye by saying that the poor ye have always with you, or that the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge? “As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.” “Behold all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth it shall die.” When I consider my neighbors, the farmers of Concord, who are at least as well off as the other classes, I find that for the most part they have been toiling twenty, thirty, or forty years, that they may become the real owners of their farms, which commonly they have inherited with encumbrances, or else bought with hired money,—and we may regard one third of that toil as the cost of their houses,—but commonly they have not paid for them yet. It is true, the encumbrances sometimes outweigh the value of the farm, so that the farm itself becomes one great encumbrance, and still a man is found to inherit it, being well acquainted with it, as he says. On applying to the assessors, I am surprised to learn that they cannot at once name a dozen in the town who own their farms free and clear. If you would know the history of these homesteads, inquire at the bank where they are mortgaged. The man who has actually paid for his farm with labor on it is so rare that every neighbor can point to him. I doubt if there are three such men in Concord. What has been said of the merchants, that a very large majority, even ninety-seven in a hundred, are sure to fail, is equally true of the farmers. With regard to the merchants, however, one of them says pertinently that a great part of their failures are not genuine pecuniary failures, but merely failures to fulfil their engagements, because it is inconvenient; that is, it is the moral character that breaks down. But this puts an infinitely worse face on the matter, and suggests, beside, that probably not even the other three succeed in saving their souls, but are perchance bankrupt in a worse sense than they who fail honestly. Bankruptcy and repudiation are the spring- boards from which much of our civilization vaults and turns its somersets, but the savage stands on the unelastic plank of famine. Yet the Middlesex Cattle Show goes off here with éclat annually, as if all the joints of the agricultural machine were suent. The farmer is endeavoring to solve the problem of a livelihood by a formula more complicated than the problem itself. To get his shoestrings he speculates in herds of cattle. With consummate skill he has set his trap with a hair spring to catch comfort and independence, and then, as he turned away, got his own leg into it. This is the reason he is poor; and for a similar reason we are all poor in respect to a thousand savage comforts, though surrounded by luxuries. As Chapman sings,— “The false society of men— —for earthly greatness All heavenly comforts rarefies to air.” And when the farmer has got his house, he may not be the richer but the poorer for it, and it be the house that has got him. As I understand it, that was a valid objection urged by Momus against the house which Minerva made, that she “had not made it movable, by which means a bad neighborhood might be avoided;” and it may still be urged, for our houses are such unwieldy property that we are often imprisoned rather than housed in them; and the bad neighborhood to be avoided is our own scurvy selves. I know one or two families, at least, in this town, who, for nearly a generation, have been wishing to sell their houses in the outskirts and move into the village, but have not been able to accomplish it, and only death will set them free. Granted that the majority are able at last either to own or hire the modern house with all its improvements. While civilization has been improving our houses, it has not equally improved the men who are to inhabit them. It has created palaces, but it was not so easy to create noblemen and kings. And if the civilized man’s pursuits are no worthier than the savage’s, if he is employed the greater part of his life in obtaining gross necessaries and comforts merely, why should he have a better dwelling than the former? But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor”. The myriads who built the pyramids to be the tombs of the Pharaohs were fed on garlic, and it may be were not decently buried themselves. The mason who finishes the cornice of the palace returns at night perchance to a hut not so good as a wigwam. It is a mistake to suppose that, in a country where the usual evidences of civilization exist, the condition of a very large body of the inhabitants may not be as degraded as that of savages. I refer to the degraded poor, not now to the degraded rich. To know this I should not need to look farther than to the shanties which every where border our railroads, that last improvement in civilization; where I see in my daily walks human beings living in sties, and all winter with an open door, for the sake of light, without any visible, often imaginable, wood pile, and the forms of both old and young are permanently contracted by the long habit of shrinking from cold and misery, and the development of all their limbs and faculties is checked. It certainly is fair to look at that class by whose labor the works which distinguish this generation are accomplished. Such too, to a greater or less extent, is the condition of the operatives of every denomination in England, which is the great workhouse of the world. Or I could refer you to Ireland, which is marked as one of the white or enlightened spots on the map. Contrast the physical condition of the Irish with that of the North American Indian, or the South Sea Islander, or any other savage race before it was degraded by contact with the civilized man. Yet I have no doubt that that people’s rulers are as wise as the average of civilized rulers. Their condition only proves what squalidness may consist with civilization. I hardly need refer now to the laborers in our Southern States who produce the staple exports of this country, and are themselves a staple production of the South. But to confine myself to those who are said to be in moderate circumstances. Most men appear never to have considered what a house is, and are actually though needlessly poor all their lives because they think that they must have such a one as their neighbors have. As if one were to wear any sort of coat which the tailor might cut out for him, or, gradually leaving off palmleaf hat or cap of woodchuck skin, complain of hard times because he could not afford to buy him a crown! It is possible to invent a house still more convenient and luxurious than we have, which yet all would admit that man could not afford to pay for. Shall we always study to obtain more of these things, and not sometimes to be content with less? Shall the respectable citizen thus gravely teach, by precept and example, the necessity of the young man’s providing a certain number of superfluous glow-shoes, and umbrellas, and empty guest chambers for empty guests, before he dies? Why should not our furniture be as simple as the Arab’s or the Indian’s? When I think of the benefactors of the race, whom we have apotheosized as messengers from heaven, bearers of divine gifts to man, I do not see in my mind any retinue at their heels, any car-load of fashionable furniture. Or what if I were to allow—would it not be a singular allowance? —that our furniture should be more complex than the Arab’s, in proportion as we are morally and intellectually his superiors! At present our houses are cluttered and defiled with it, and a good housewife would sweep out the greater part into the dust hole, and not leave her morning’s work undone. Morning work! By the blushes of Aurora and the music of Memnon, what should be man’s morning work in this world? I had three pieces of limestone on my desk, but I was terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily, when the furniture of my mind was all undusted still, and I threw them out the window in disgust How, then, could I have a furnished house? I would rather sit in the open air, for no dust gathers on the grass, unless where man has broken ground. It is the luxurious and dissipated who set the fashions which the herd so diligently follow. The traveller who stops at the best houses, so called, soon discovers this, for the publicans presume him to be a Sardanapalus, and if he resigned himself to their tender mercies he would soon be completely emasculated. I think that in the railroad car we are inclined to spend more on luxury than on safety and convenience, and it threatens without attaining these to become no better than a modern drawing room, with its divans, and ottomans, and sunshades, and a hundred other oriental things, which we are taking west with us, invented for the ladies of the harem and the effeminate natives of the Celestial Empire, which Jonathan should be ashamed to know the names of. I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion. I would rather ride on earth in an ox cart with a free circulation, than go to heaven in the fancy car of an excursion train and breathe a malaria all the way. The very simplicity and nakedness of man’s life in the primitive ages imply this advantage at least, that they left him still but a sojourner in nature. When he was refreshed with food and sleep he contemplated his journey again. He dwelt, as it were, in a tent in this world, and was either threading the valleys, or crossing the plains, or climbing the mountain tops. But lo! men have become the tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven. We have adopted Christianity merely as an improved method of agri- culture. We have built for this world a family mansion, and for the next a family tomb. The best works of art are the expression of man’s struggle to free himself from this condition, but the effect of our art is merely to make this low state comfortable and that higher state to be forgotten. There is actually no place in this village for a work of fine art, if any had come down to us, to stand, for our lives, our houses and streets, furnish no proper pedestal for it. There is not a nail to hang a picture on, nor a shelf to receive the bust of a hero or a saint. When I consider how our houses are built and paid for, or not paid for, and their internal economy managed and sustained, I wonder that the floor does not give way under the visitor while he is admiring the gewgaws upon the mantel-piece, and let him through into the cellar, to some solid and honest though earthy foundation. I cannot but perceive that this so called rich and refined life is a thing jumped at, and I do not get on in the enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it, my attention being wholly occupied with the jump; for I remember that the greatest genuine leap, due to human muscles alone, on record, is that of certain wandering Arabs, who are said to have cleared twenty-five feet on level ground. Without factitious support, man is sure to come to earth again beyond that distance. The first question which I am tempted to put to the proprietor of such great impropriety is, Who bolsters you? Are you one of the ninety-seven who fail? or of the three who succeed? Answer me these questions, and then perhaps I may look at your bawbles and find them ornamental. The cart before the horse is neither beautiful nor useful. Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper. Old Johnson, in his “Wonder-Working Providence,” speaking of the first settlers of this town, with whom he was contemporary, tells us that “they burrow themselves in the earth for their first shelter under some hillside, and, casting the soil aloft upon timber, they make a smoky fire against the earth, at the highest side.” They did not “provide them houses,” says he, “till the earth, by the Lord’s blessing, brought forth bread to feed them,” and the first year’s crop was so light that “they were forced to cut their bread very thin for a long season.” The secretary of the Province of New Netherland, writing in Dutch, in 1650, for the information of those who wished to take up land there, states more particularly, that “those in New Netherland, and especially in New England, who have no means to build farm houses at first according to their wishes, dig a square pit in the ground, cellar fashion, six or seven feet deep, as long and as broad as they think proper, case the earth inside with wood all round the wall, and line the wood with the bark of trees or something else to prevent the caving in of the earth; floor this cellar with plank, and wainscot it overhead for a ceiling, raise a roof of spars clear up, and cover the spars with bark or green sods, so that they can live dry and warm in these houses with their entire families	636,746
Solo-Travel-Report-ENG-h9atmp.pdf	INSIGHT REPORT OCT 2019 POWERED BY: SOLO AMONG RISING TREND RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Thu Nguyen RESEARCH ANALYST: Hieu Vo EDITOR: Mai Hoang DESIGNER: Nhut Tran Website: www.outbox-consulting.com Facebook: /OutboxConsulting Email: info@outbox-consulting.com ABOUT OUTBOX CONSULTING Start with great passion for tourism industry, we aim to be the pioneer in providing quality consulting services with optimal solutions for managing and developing the tourism destination. In Outbox Consulting, we do not just create destination, but we label a destination with innovate thinking and integrity. We believe each destination has its own soul and unique feature. Our job is to explore, research, unlock the insights and exploit it in the most effective way. We believe the key to success is combined of a professional consulting service but also a whole-hearted care for all the destination development process. Research Report “SOLO TRAVEL: RISING TREND AMONG VIETNAMESE TRAVELERS” is a publication belonging to Outbox Consulting & Traveloka Vietnam. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other eletronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of Outbox Consulting & Traveloka Vietnam. Unauthorized commercial use, Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited. Báo cáo “DU LỊCH MỘT MÌNH: XU HƯỚNG MỚI NỔI TRONG CỘNG ĐỒNG DU LỊCH VIỆT NAM” là một ấn phẩm được phát hành bởi Công ty TNHH Dịch vụ Tư vấn và Quản lý điểm đến Outbox (Outbox Consulting) và Công ty Traveloka Việt Nam. Bản quyền được bảo lưu. Không được phép tải lên, gửi, tái bản, truyền hoặc phân phát bằng bất cứ hình thức nào, bất cứ thành phần nào của tài liệu này, mà không được sự đồng ý bằng văn bản của Công ty TNHH Dịch vụ Tư vấn và Quản lý điểm đến Outbox (Outbox Consulting) và Công ty Traveloka Việt Nam. Nghiêm cấm mọi hành vi sử dụng tài liệu này cho các mục đích giao dịch kinh doanh thương mại, sao chép, tái bản toàn bộ hay từng phần. GREETING FROM TRAVELOKA PREFACE KEY FINDINGS PART 1: SOLO TRAVEL TREND PART 2: WHAT VIETNAMESE THINK ABOUT TABLE OF CONTENT TRAVELLING SOLO? 04 05 06 07 11 Dear our Valued Customers, Since its inception, Traveloka has always set the goal of providing customers with an online travel platform where anyone can book flight tickets, hotel rooms and experiences easily and smoothly. With that principle, Traveloka has been constantly striving to bring more products, to help users to plan and book all necessary services for their trip with a single application. Traveloka is honored to accompany the shift of the tourism market, from traditional to online in Vietnam. According to statistics of the Vietnam Tourism Association, the online search demand for tourism information in Vietnam has increased by more than 32 times in the past 5 years. In particular, there are more than 5 million Vietnamese-language searches monthly relating to tourism products such as domestic tours, foreign tours, hotel reservations, tourism activities, and more. Now, customers have more choices and no longer have to go directly to the travel agents as before. In 2015, 82% of Vietnamese tourists booked traditional tours, but that number is now only 30%. The proportion of Vietnamese households using online tourism is 66%. Thanks to the convenience of many online travel agents and the growth of advanced technology platforms as Traveloka, solo traveling to explore the world is now much easier. Customers are also not required to have a vast knowledge about geography, culture or abundant financial capital. Now, with just a few clicks, anyone can explore new dream lands with their backpack. The world is witnessing a growing trend for solo traveling and Vietnam is no exception. In order to meet the market’s demand, while providing a comprehensive picture of Vietnamese solo traveling market, this research was published by the cooperation between Traveloka and Outbox Consulting. We hope that the survey results, combined with the perspectives given by many experts inside and outside the industry, Traveloka can thereby improve our product quality and better our customer service. We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to our millions of customers who have always chosen Traveloka for their traveling needs. With continuous improvements in products and services, Traveloka hopes to further enhance the customer experience in the online travel segment, contributing to the development and sublimation of Vietnam's tourism industry. Sincerely, Traveloka team GREETING FROM 04 Source: •“Tips for solo female travellers on booking safe accommodation plus women-only options in Asia”, Travel & Leisure, •“20 Adventure Trends to Watch in 2018”, Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), 2018. PREFACE According to a research by the Princeton Research Association in 2017, it is indicated that From January 2015 to December 2017, the number of people searching for "solo travel" on Google increased by 58% of millennials (19-37 years old) WORLDWIDE ARE WILLING TO TRAVEL ALONE compared to of older 47% generations 40%. Trend Report "Adventure Travel Trade Association 2018" shows that up to of their tourists intend to 80% travel alone worldwide, which taps into our concern of the existence of this trend in Vietnam. How this trend for solo travelers? And in the future, will traveling alone become a prominent trend in Vietnam? The research project was proposed by Outbox Consulting with the aim of understanding and assessing the phenomenon of solo travel trend in domestic and international travel (outbound) of Vietnamese people. Accordingly, the perception of Vietnamese travelers towards this trend and the potential of this type of tourism among local travelers is also one of research objectives of this report. The research involved both qualitative and quantitative studies targeted in travel and tourism service providers and Vietnamese people who have traveled in the last 12 months. The quantitative research was developed by Outbox Consulting in conjunction with Traveloka to distribute the online questionnaire link to the target sample.The quantitative online research generated 1047 completed surveys reflecting the opinions of Vietnamese people towards the trend of traveling solo. 05 1.Solo travel is unexpectedly popular among woman Unexpectedly, the number of women traveling alone is double that of men. This is concentrated mostly in two groups, women of the Millennials and Gen X. Their main travel desire, besides being proactive in planning the trip, is also to meet new friends who share similar interests. Moreover, women traveling alone pay much attention to safety and security at destinations. 2.No surprise, Facebook is the main media used by solo traveler community Facebook is still the main channel to search information when Vietnamese people travel individually. They tend to refer to shared experience and reviews from former travelers and influencers on social networks (Facebook, Zalo, Instagram) before making decisions to book services. The number of people participating in travel social groups has increased rapidly. Solo travelers can search for services at their desired prices through referrals from other members. 3.Solo travel doesn’t mean travel on budget Traveling solo does not necessarily mean being frugal or cheap. More than 50% of solo travelers have full-time jobs and abundant travel experiences. They are willing to spend money on highly individualized recreational activities and accompanying services if they are truly unique and worth their money. 4.Going solo is a big part of travel for Vietnamese Millennials They tend to take more than 4 trips in a year. Vietnamese traveling alone are quite independent, they are more inclined to entertain and relax than adventure activities. For people traveling alone, it is not likely that they will be solo for the whole trip. Small group tours led by a local guide are also attractive to solo travelers. KEY FINDINGS MORE THAN 40% of surveyed participants said that they had and will continue to have more solo travel trips in the future. Domestic destinations are in favor of Vietnamese people when they plan for their lone travel trip. Flexibility and freedom are two major attributes from solo trips that they think will significantly contribute to their travel experience and self-exploration. 06 SOLO TRAVEL TREND PART 1 Despite doubts about solo travel, as many other travel trends, will only be a temporary phenomenon. Statistics and figures from the past two years have shown a strong rise and widespread of this trend. This is not only a change in the needs and behaviors of travelers but also affects the way the tourism market operates and provides products and services. According to Abta 's latest annual Holiday Habits survey, one in nine holidaymakers reported that they took a holiday on their own in the previous 12 months - double the number compared to six years previous. Airbnb, too, has been seeing an increase in lone bookings and Ho Chi Minh City is among its fastest growing spots for solo guests. According to Klook - Hong Kong's leading travel services platform, the number of solo travelers increased from 31% (2017) to 38% (2018) in Europe and Asia. Mintel - a London-based market research company in collaboration with Just You, an international travel organizer, released the Solo Traveler 2018 report indicating that solo travel is a dynamic and rich trend, bringing unique experience opportunities for travelers. Travel businesses can expect to see only a continued rise in the demand from solo travelers, but also a significant untick in the supply of products catering to this market. Source: •“Why are so many of us now choosing to travel alone?”, The Telegraph, 2018. Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk •“6 trends in tours and activities to watch in 2019”, WIT, 2018. Link: https://www.webintravel.com •“Flying Solo: Trending Destinations & Experiences for Solo Travelers”, Airbnb, 2018. Link: https://news.airbnb.com Is solo travel really growing? THE UNSTOPPABLE TREND By all accounts, yes. P 08 Source: •“Whether for business, leisure or ‘bleisure’, travelers are going solo”, Agoda, 2018. Link: https://www.agoda.com Tour Radar - an online travel agency that specializes on multi-day tours, states that solo travel does not mean having to travel alone. Traveling solo as part of a group can seem daunting if it’s your first time but the number of people traveling solo is on the rise. Traveling independently could open up to meeting people. Trips with small group of solo travelers, couples and friends together create a very social dynamic which help participants ger to know lots of other like-minded travelers. In late 2018, Agoda launched the Solo Travel Trends 2018 report unpacking solo travel trends. Relaxation and time to unwind is the number one motivator for solo leisure travel globally (61%), followed by getting away from routine (52%) and exploring new cultures (45%), the survey shows. Solo travel is a trend of independent travel, free to decide where to go and what to do, rather improvised. Participants can meet their traveling companions. They tend to connect with indigenous people to experience the local culture authentically. A BROADER DEFINITION OF SOLO TRAVEL Alecia Thao T. Nguyen Business Development Manager of South East Asia – Kkday 09 Besides the visa policy, one of the major barriers for Vietnamese people traveling solo is the experience of how to come up with an effective and efficient solo travel plan. Ben Thanh Tourist - a travel organizer has varied their offers solo travelers by splitting each of the different services with a preferential price, instead of selling a traditional tour package. Travel itineraries are also redesigned to concentrate on the quality of a visit rather than the quantity of stops involving in a trip. SOLO TRAVEL TREND IN VIETNAM HOW TRAVEL BUSINESSES ARE REACTING In 2017, Vietnam was mentioned on Airbnb as a potential destination for solo travelers, namely Ho Chi Minh City. By 2018, according to booking data from Agoda, Ho Chi Minh City is in the top 10 top travel destinations for solo travelers in Asia. Solo travel comes with its own baggage. Even though there are a lot of individuals who manages their own planning and bookings, many others seek the safety solution from tour companies over traveling completely independently. This offers an opportunity for travel businesses if they know how to react to this emerging segment. Kkday - an E-commerce travel platform that connects tourists with Taiwan-based local activities and tours said that Vietnamese travelers traveling alone accounted for 30% in 2019. Those are in age range of 20 to 40 years old, mostly office workers. 67% of women choose to travel alone through accessing online information channels from KOLs, Travel bloggers and booking services on e-commerce travel channels instead of travel agents. A representative of Trippy.vn - an online travel booking website based in Vietnam – a member of TNK Travel shared that solo travelers alone are not necessarily frugal. Travelers today are increasingly drawn to travel as a form of self-actualization and personal transformation and growth. They want more than a simple visit to a new destination or days spent relaxing on a beach. Instead, what they’re seeking from their travel is an experience, so that they are willing to spend money to get those authentic an worth - the - money products and services during their solo trips. This is an opportunity for travel companies to diversify individual service packages to single travelers. The barrier of solo travel of Vietnamese people is gradually broken down by the emergence of many KOLs, Travel bloggers providing online information catering solo travel. Huynh Chi Cong Deputy Director of Ben Thanh Tourist's Guide Department Solo travelers desire to find new destinations on the tour. In addition to exploiting traditional tours, we also focus on opening new highly experienced tours such as Binh Lieu (North), Tra Thien (Central Highlands), Gac Keo Ong Ca Mau (Southwest) and specialised packages of services to meet the need of travelers traveling alone. 10 Nguyen Tung Lam CEO Trippy.vn – a member of TNK Travel PART 2 WHAT TRAVELLING SOLO? THINK ABOUT VIETNAMESE GOING TO MANY PLACES TO EXPERIENCE AND SELF-EXPLORE IS THE TOP MOTIVATORS BEHIND THE DECISION OF SOLO TRAVELING TRAVEL HAS BECOME AN INDISPENSABLE NEED AMONG GROWING VIETNAMESE TRAVEL COMMUNITY 47% of Vietnamese surveyed said they have participated in more than 4 trips in the past year. The travel trends are changing to short and speedy trip due to the scatter of public holidays in a year. Instead of taking a group tour, 47.1% choose to travel on their own with friends and 26.7% choose to go with family or partner. Particularly, 19.8% of Vietnamese refers traveling alone. Solo travel becomes popular among Vietnamese traveler community. Specifically, 43% of respondents said they would and will continue to take part in lone travel, 33% plan to go alone next year. TO EXPERIENCE AND DISCOVER MYSELF TO TAKE THE INITIATIVE IN EVERYTHING FOR THE TRIP TO TRY THE FEELING OF BEING ALONE TO AVOID DEPENDING ON THE COMPANION FRIENDS AND FAMILY CAN'T ARRANGE TIME TO GO WITH THEM I FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE WITH THE SCHEDULE AS A TOUR OR GROUP I WANT TO MEET LIKE-MINDED SOLO TRAVELERS I HAVE DIFFERENT INTERESTS THAN MY FRIENDS OTHER 54.80% 54.30% 38.60% 26.80% 23.70% 19.10% 15.10% 10.20% 2.30% 12 THE MOTIVATION TO TRAVEL ALONE Domestic destinations, in comparision with international destinations, are more popular among Vietnamese solo travelers (which accounts or 43.3% and 28.4%, respectively). This is not considered as important for the other 28.3% survey participants since local experience and the uniqueness of a place are their top priorities when choosing the destination. Explaining the choice of domestic destination, in addition to common barriers such as foreign languages and visas, risk perception (safety and security) affects their decision to choose foreign countries or regions for their solo trip. 51.5% said that it would be difficult for them to participate in recreational activities and experience at the destination if traveling alone, 45.2% think that traveling alone is not safe. 25.6% of survey respondents feel bored when traveling alone. In addition, the cost factor is also concerned by Vietnamese traveling alone COSTS AND RISK PERCEPTION DETERMINE THE DECISION TO TRAVEL SOLO OF VIETNAMESE PEOPLE 13 53.5% of the survey respondents said they could not share the room, train, meals with others. As the biggest social media channel used in the country, Facebook, no surprise, is the first choice of Vietnamese travelers (63.0%) when it comes to researching and sharing information of their solo trips. In fact, most of the survey respondents have been using more than one channel for their travel search, tourism websites (58.8%) and online travel community groups (48.6%) are among the most popular ones, whereas travel agents are in the lowest group (5.2%). Solo travel for Vietnamese people is quite spontaneous, they only need 1 week (29.0%) to plan or longer for 2 to 4 weeks (37.0%). Solo travelers have a rather independent style, they are more inclined to leisure and recreation (77.0%) than adventure activities (33.0%). Destinations that Vietnamese travelers traveling alone tend to be quiet and ancient (56.6%) compared to busy, modern destinations (43.4%). With the eager to explore and expose to new culture, the solo participants, when decide to travel individually, prioritized the experience (71.3%) instead of the cost (28.7%) for their trip. For those who do not choose to travel solo, they said they do not like the feeling of being alone (84.6%) and unsafe (39.6%) when traveling. Moreover, it is believed that they could participate in more diversed activities when traveling in a group (37.9%). FACEBOOK IS A DOMINANT SOURCE OF INFORMATION USED BY VIETNAMESE SOLO TRAVELERS WHERE VIETNAMESE SOLO TRAVELERS PREFER TO TRAVEL TO? LEISURE & RECREATION ADVENTURE ACTIVITIES QUITE & ANCIENT DESTINATION BUSY & MODERN DESTINATION 77.0% 33.0% 43.4% 56.6% 14 WHO ARE VIETNAMESE SOLO TRAVELERS? Vietnamese solo travelers are more in the younger generation (Gen Z and Millennials) compared to the popularity of senior solo travelers trend around the world. Vietnamese solo travelers are highly educated and have stable income. 52.3% of respondents said that they graduated from university and work full time, their main occupation is office workers. 15.5% graduated from university and worked freely. The remaining 13.1% are self-employed and 10.0% are students. 60.4 % OF VIETNAMESE TRAVELERS TRAVELING ALONE ARE WOMEN COMPARED WITH 33.8 % FOR MEN. GEN Z (people aged 15 - 20) MILLENNIALS (people 21 - 34 years old) GEN X (people from 35 - 49 years old) BABY BOOMERS (people from 50 - 64 years old) 22.7% 51.7% 16.0% 6.8% 15 Every industry has trends and innovations — the tourism industry is no exception. In a rapidly-evolving landscape, new trends are appearing and taking hold all the time. Changing demographics, advances in technology, shifting social mores: these influences and others all help give rise to important new tourism trends. Leisure travel used to be a family affair or something that couples undertook together. While that’s still the case for many, more and more people are choosing to strike out on their own. Enjoying a solo trip is no longer so unusual and tourist trends increasingly reflect this. The needs of solo travelers are diverse. Some simply want to travel without the distraction of a companion. Others are young singles looking for social activities or to find a partner. Some widowed seniors even use long-term hotel stays or cruises as a luxurious alternative to conventional elder care. These tourism trends are set to grow and grow. To keep up with the trend and exploit this new segment with highly personalized requirements, local travel related businesses are facing various challenges. Being aware of and specifically acknowledging people who are traveling on their own is important. Even though there are a lot of individuals who manage their own logistics, many others seek the safety net tour companies provide over traveling completely independently. This offers an opportunity for those companies — if they know how to reach and woo this segment of travelers. THANK YOU. 16 New Thinking. New Destination www.outbox-consulting.com 220 Tran Nao St., Dist.2, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam info@outbox-consulting.com +84 28 6275 5726 CONTACT US:	21,006
SOLO_A_Corpus_of_Tweets_for_Examining_the_State_of.pdf	See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341997917 SOLO: A Corpus of Tweets for Examining the State of Being Alone Preprint · June 2020 CITATIONS 0 READS 328 4 authors: Svetlana Kiritchenko National Research Council Canada 80 PUBLICATIONS 8,139 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Will E. Hipson Global Spatial Technology Solutions 30 PUBLICATIONS 406 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Robert J Coplan Carleton University 310 PUBLICATIONS 14,277 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE Saif M. Mohammad National Research Council Canada 135 PUBLICATIONS 13,693 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Will E. Hipson on 15 June 2020. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. SOLO: A Corpus of Tweets for Examining the State of Being Alone Svetlana Kiritchenko1, Will E. Hipson2, Robert J. Coplan2, Saif M. Mohammad1 1National Research Council Canada, 2Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada svetlana.kiritchenko@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca, williamhipson@cmail.carleton.ca, robert.coplan@carleton.ca, saif.mohammad@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca Abstract The state of being alone can have a substantial impact on our lives, though experiences with time alone diverge signiﬁcantly among individuals. Psychologists distinguish between the concept of solitude, a positive state of voluntary aloneness, and the concept of loneliness, a negative state of dissatisfaction with the quality of one’s social interactions. Here, for the ﬁrst time, we conduct a large-scale computational analysis to explore how the terms associated with the state of being alone are used in online language. We present SOLO (State of Being Alone), a corpus of over 4 million tweets collected with query terms solitude, lonely, and loneliness. We use SOLO to analyze the language and emotions associated with the state of being alone. We show that the term solitude tends to co-occur with more positive, high-dominance words (e.g., enjoy, bliss) while the terms lonely and loneliness frequently co-occur with negative, low-dominance words (e.g., scared, depressed), which conﬁrms the conceptual distinctions made in psychology. We also show that women are more likely to report on negative feelings of being lonely as compared to men, and there are more teenagers among the tweeters that use the word lonely than among the tweeters that use the word solitude. Keywords: solitude, lonely, mental health, well-being 1. Introduction We have all experienced the state of being alone one time or another: perhaps, a loved one was away, or our In- stagram post did not stir up a barrage of likes, or we enjoyed a quiet hike, or we felt disconnected from those around us. Further, older people and young adults experience loneli- ness at markedly higher rates than others (Luhmann and Hawkley, 2016; Hawkley and Capitanio, 2015). The state of being alone can have a substantial impact on our lives. On the one hand, loneliness—a negative and unwanted state of being alone—has been shown to be cor- related with increased cognitive decline, dementia, depres- sion, suicide ideation, self harm, and even death (Gerst- Emerson and Jayawardhana, 2015; Hawkley and Capitanio, 2015; Luo et al., 2012; Endo et al., 2017).1 On the other hand, solitude—a positive and self-driven state of being alone—has been shown to improve autonomy, creativity, and well-being (Long et al., 2003; Knafo, 2012; Coplan and Bowker, 2017; Coplan et al., 2019a). Loneliness and solitude have also been shown to play a role in the adaptive ﬁtness of our species (Hawkley and Capitanio, 2015; Lar- son, 1990). Thus loneliness and solitude are starting to re- ceive substantial amounts of attention from the medical and psychological research. Yet, there is no large-scale compu- tational work on analyzing the language of being alone. Here, for the ﬁrst time, we present a large corpus of tweets associated with the state of being alone. We will refer to it as the State of Being Alone corpus, or SOLO for short. SOLO includes over 4 million tweets, each of which consists of at least one of the following tokens: solitude, lonely, and loneliness. We use SOLO to analyze the language and emotions associated with the state of being alone. Speciﬁcally, we explore the following questions: 1The negative public health impacts of loneliness are so great that in 2018 the UK appointed a minister for loneliness. • When people use terms such as solitude, alone, and loneliness in tweets, how often are they referring to the state of being alone as opposed to some other sense of those words? • Do we ﬁnd evidence from the text that solitude is indeed more self-driven than loneliness (as theorized by psychologists)? • Do we ﬁnd evidence from the text that the speakers view solitude as a more positive concept than loneli- ness (as theorized by psychologists)? • Which words are associated with solitude, and which words are associated with loneliness? • Do different demographic groups (e.g., different genders, age groups, etc.) perceive solitude and loneliness differently? Most of the past studies exploring such questions come from Psychology (see next section). They involve self- reports from a small number of people. Here, for the ﬁrst time, we computationally examine millions of tweets asso- ciated with the state of being alone for the language used, and especially the emotion associations. We also make SOLO freely available for research.2 We hope that this new dataset will bring fresh attention to the relationship between the state of being alone and our well-being. 2. Related Work Time spent alone can have varying emotional effects. For instance, time alone is experienced negatively in those cases when we are unable to fulﬁll our needs for social interaction (Baumeister and Leary, 1995), but positively when we are exhausted from long periods of social interac- tion and desire time for relaxation and reﬂection (Nguyen et al., 2018; Long et al., 2003). Given that an estimated 25–33% of waking time is spent being alone 2https://svkir.com/projects/solo.html arXiv:2006.03096v1 [cs.CL] 4 Jun 2020 (Larson et al., 1982), identifying and distinguishing be- tween ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ instances of being alone has substantial implications for improving people’s well-being. Many theoretical perspectives have emerged to explain these divergent experiences of being alone. Proponents of self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 2010) postulate that time alone that is intrinsically motivated (i.e., choosing to spend time alone) is better for one’s well-being than time alone that arises for external reasons (e.g., one who is alone due to the nature of their work) (Chua and Koestner, 2008; Nguyen et al., 2018). However, the experience of being alone may also differ as a result of when this state arises. Someone who spends a lot of time alone may come to feel lonely because they perceive their social network as deﬁcient (Hawkley and Ca- cioppo, 2010), in which case subsequent moments in soli- tude are likely to diminish in pleasantness. Conversely, someone who is inundated with social activity may become dissatisﬁed with the amount of time they get to spend alone (Coplan et al., 2019a), in which case being alone would be experienced as even more pleasant than usual. As far as we know, there has been no large-scale computational work examining text associated with the state of being alone. Even though emotions are central to human experience and they have been studied for centuries, there are still many unknowns about their inner workings. Two promi- nent models of emotions are the dimensional model and the basic emotions model. As per the dimensional model (Osgood et al., 1957; Russell, 1980; Russell, 2003), emo- tions are points in a three-dimensional space of valence (positive–negative), arousal (active–passive), and domi- nance (dominant–submissive). Thus, when comparing the meanings of two words, we can compare their degrees of valence, arousal, or dominance. For example, the word party indicates more positiveness than the word crying; ter- rible indicates more arousal than conversation; and hike in- dicates more dominance than abandoned. According to the basic emotions model (aka discrete model) (Ekman, 1992; Plutchik, 1980; Frijda, 1988), some emotions, such as joy, sadness, fear, etc., are more basic than others, and these emotions are each to be treated as separate categories. We use the NRC Valence, Arousal, and Dominance (NRC VAD) lexicon (Mohammad, 2018a) and the NRC Emotion lexicon (Mohammad and Turney, 2013; Moham- mad and Turney, 2010) to determine the emotion associa- tions of the words in SOLO. These lexicons were created by manual annotation. The NRC VAD lexicon has valence, arousal, and dominance scores for over twenty thousand English terms, and it was created using a comparative an- notation technique called Best-Worst Scaling (BWS) (Lou- viere, 1991; Louviere et al., 2015; Kiritchenko and Mo- hammad, 2016). It has been shown to have high reliability (repeated annotations produce similar association scores). The NRC Emotion lexicon has binary (associated or not as- sociated) scores for about fourteen thousand English terms (a subset of terms in the VAD lexicon) with eight basic emotions (joy, sadness, fear, anger, surprise, anticipation, disgust, and trust) as well as positive and negative senti- ment. 3. Creating the SOLO Corpus We now describe how we collected tweets related to the state of being alone and created the SOLO corpus. 3.1. Query Term Selection After consulting with psychologists on our team and uti- lizing different thesauri, we created a list of words and short phrases related to the state of being alone: alone, alone time, aloneness, conﬁnement, desert, detachment, get away from it all, get away from people, hermit, iso- lation, loneliness, lonely, lonesomeness, me time, peace and quiet, privacy, quarantine, reclusiveness, retirement, seclusion, separateness, serenity, silence, solitariness, soli- tude, tranquility, undisturbed, wilderness, withdrawal. We collected tweets using these query terms for a few weeks, and then manually checked the relevance of the obtained tweets. Some query terms (e.g., solitariness, reclusive- ness, lonesomeness, aloneness, get away from it all) were rarely used on Twitter and, therefore, were discarded. Some terms (e.g., silence, privacy, retirement, desert) were often used in other senses, not related to the state of being alone. Even for the query word alone, only about half of the col- lected tweets related to the concept of being alone. In many tweets, alone was used for emphasis (e.g., “only you and you alone can thrill me like you do”, “I barely like Christ- mas music on Christmas lol, let alone in early Novem- ber”). After this manual inspection, we decided to keep three terms: solitude and loneliness (nouns), and lonely (ad- jective). 3.2. Collecting Tweets SOLO Corpus: Tweets related to the state of being alone were collected by polling the Twitter API from August 28, 2018 to July 10, 2019 with the following query terms: loneliness, lonely, and solitude. We discarded duplicate tweets, short tweets (containing less than three words), and tweets with external URLs. Further, we kept only up to three tweets per user. This minimizes the impact of proliﬁc tweeters and bots on the corpus. We refer to the combined set of the remaining tweets as the State of being Alone cor- pus, or SOLO for short. We refer to the individual sets of tweets as the loneliness sub-corpus, the lonely sub-corpus, and the solitude sub-corpus, respectively. Table 1 shows the number of tweets in each sub-corpus. In total, the SOLO Corpus contains over four million tweets. General Tweets: As a control corpus, we collected tweets by polling the Twitter API from May 16, 2019 until June 12, 2019 using English function words (e.g., is, on, they, etc.) as query terms. Again, we discarded duplicate tweets, short tweets (containing less than three words), tweets with external URLs, and kept only up to three tweets per user. We will refer to this set of tweets as the General Tweet Cor- pus. It includes over 21 million tweets. 3.3. Tweet Volume For the same time period (about a year), we were able to collect seventeen times more tweets with the word lonely and two-and-a-half times more tweets with the word loneli- ness than tweets with the word solitude. This suggests that Corpus # of tweets # of users SOLO Corpus: loneliness 489,264 408,659 lonely 3,339,166 2,443,210 solitude 191,643 158,878 All 4,020,073 3,010,747 General Tweet Corpus 21,719,409 12,096,240 Total 25,739,482 15,106,987 Table 1: The number of tweets for each query term. Corpus Percentage of relevant tweets loneliness 93% lonely 96% solitude 92% Average 94% Table 2: Percentage of relevant tweets for each query term. most users refer to the state of being alone through the use of words lonely and loneliness, and rarely using the word solitude. In a period of one year, close to three million users posted at least one tweet with the words lonely or loneliness, which reﬂects the magnitude of the loneliness problem. 4. Assessing Relevance of the SOLO Tweets to the State of Being Alone A tweet may include the term loneliness, lonely, or solitude and yet may not be relevant to the state of being alone. Thus we manually examined a small sample of SOLO to determine the percentage of relevant tweets. We considered a tweet to be relevant if it directly referred to the state of being alone. This included (but was not limited to): • a personal statement about being alone, • a statement about other people being alone, • a general statement about aspects of being alone, • a message of support (e.g., “you are not alone”), • a quote from literature about being alone. We considered tweets to be irrelevant if the query word (loneliness, lonely, solitude) was used as part of a title (of a book, song, etc.) or a name (of a place, a stadium, etc.). Tweets containing advertisements were also considered ir- relevant. For each query term, we randomly selected 100 tweets with that term and counted the percentage of relevant tweets. Table 2 shows the results. Observe that for all the query terms, over 90% of examined tweets were relevant to the state of being alone. This conﬁrms the suitability of the SOLO Corpus for studying the everyday language associ- ated with the state of being alone. Categories loneliness lonely solitude ﬁrst-hand experience 0.35 0.62 0.47 other people’s experience 0.15 0.16 0.09 general statement 0.30 0.09 0.21 literary quote 0.19 0.06 0.16 offering support 0.00 0.01 0.05 other 0.01 0.06 0.02 Table 3: Different types of SOLO tweets and their relative frequency in each sub-corpus. 5. Analyzing the Language and Emotions Associated with the State of Being Alone We examine the language of the SOLO tweets to deter- mine if the concept words loneliness, lonely, and solitude tend to be used in different emotional contexts. In par- ticular, we explore the question of whether Twitter users perceive the concept of solitude as more positive and self- driven and the concept of loneliness as more negative and externally imposed as suggested by psychology literature. For this, in Section 5.1, we manually analyze a sample of tweets for the types of contexts in which people use the words loneliness, lonely, and solitude. We also compu- tationally identify and compare words strongly associated with each of these terms. In Section 5.2, we examine the words occurring in SOLO for their emotional associations. 5.1. Language Associated with Being Alone First, we look at how people use the terms loneliness, lonely, and solitude in everyday language of tweets. Do people often describe their own feelings and experiences or offer support to other people? Do they just make general statements about different aspects of being alone? Which words are most likely to co-occur with these terms? Manual Examination of the SOLO Tweets: We manually examined randomly selected samples of 100 tweets from the loneliness, lonely, and solitude sub-corpora to identify the types of messages users are likely to post using these terms. Table 3 shows the results. In tweets with the word solitude, people often describe their own experiences and attitudes (e.g., “I fell in love with my solitude.. everything changed after that.”), provide gen- eral statements about positive or negative aspects of being alone (e.g., “Solitude can be either comforting or really painful.”), and cite relevant quotes from notable people and literary sources (e.g., “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind - Albert Einstein”). They less often discuss other people’s experiences (e.g., “It seems like they hate everything that isn’t proﬁtable - whether it’s wolves, wild horses, stunning landscapes, solitude...”) or offer support (e.g., “that is saaaaaddd, but don’t worry, solitude is a nice friend”). When people use the word lonely, they mostly report on their own feelings (e.g., “Feeling lonely and forgotten :/”) and those of other people (e.g., “Well you were clearly very lonely.”). In tweets with the word loneliness, users less often describe their own experiences (e.g., “The level of loneliness I’ve reached is at an all time high”), and more often make general statements (e.g., “we don’t know how SOLO term Words associated with the term loneliness alone, feeling, lonely, depression, pain, sadness, isolation, fear, killing, feelings, anxiety, happiness, cure, solitude, hurts, emptiness, crippling, anger, silence, ﬁll, suffering, relationships, empty, darkness, boredom lonely feel, sad, feeling, alone, friends, sometimes, single, felt, bored, feels, nights, scared, depressed, af, cold, island, christmas, empty, hearts, loneliness, miserable, surrounded, horny, asf, desperate solitude alone, enjoy, peace, silence, loneliness, fortress, quiet, hundred, lonely, enjoying, comfort, prefer, nature, isolation, comfortable, bliss, moments, sea, presence, peaceful, seek, embrace, darkness, gabriel, inner Table 4: The most frequent words strongly associated with the terms loneliness, lonely, and solitude. to appreciate loneliness”) and quote celebrities and literary sources (e.g., “If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry. -Anton Chekhov”), than in tweets with the words lonely and solitude. Notably, in 14% of tweets from the solitude sample, tweeters explicitly assert their need to spend some time alone to reﬂect, heal, or focus on important tasks (e.g., “It’s funny how the universe works...this moment of solitude was unplanned but deﬁnitely needed.”). Words Associated with Loneliness, Lonely, and Soli- tude: We identify words that are associated with the SOLO query terms, loneliness, lonely, and solitude, i.e., words that tend to appear in tweets with these query terms more often than they do in the General Tweet Corpus. For this, we cal- culate an association score of a word w with the target sub- corpus Ctarget (target ∈{loneliness, lonely, solitude}) as compared to the corpus of general tweets (the reference corpus, Creference): Score (w) = PMI (w, Ctarget) −PMI (w, Creference) (1) PMI stands for pointwise mutual information: PMI (w, Ctarget) = log2 freq (w, Ctarget) ∗N freq (w) ∗freq (Ctarget) (2) where freq (w, Ctarget) is the number of times the word w occurs in the target corpus, freq (w) is the total frequency of the word w in the two corpora (target and reference), freq (Ctarget) is the total number of words in the target cor- pus, and N is the total number of words in the two corpora. PMI (w, Creference) is calculated in a similar way. Thus, Equation 1 is simpliﬁed to: Score (w) = log2 freq (w, Ctarget) ∗freq (Creference) freq (w, Creference) ∗freq (Ctarget) (3) Since PMI is known to be a poor estimator of association for low-frequency events, we ignore terms that occur less than 25 times in total in both corpora. Association scores can range from −∞to +∞; in prac- tice, however, they usually range from around −6 to 6. A positive score indicates a greater overall association with the target corpus, that is the word appears at a higher rate (more occurrences per 100 words) in the target corpus than in the reference corpus. A negative score indicates that a word appears at a lower rate in the target corpus than in the reference corpus. The magnitude is indicative of the degree of association. Note that there exist numerous other meth- ods to estimate the degree of association of a word with a category (e.g., cross entropy, Chi-squared test, and infor- mation gain). We have chosen PMI because it is simple and robust and has been successfully applied in a number of NLP tasks (Clark et al., 2016; Kiritchenko et al., 2014). We calculate association scores with the loneliness, lonely, and solitude sub-corpora for all words in the SOLO corpus. We say that a word is strongly associated with a sub-corpus if the corresponding association score is greater than or equal to 1.5.3 Table 4 shows 25 most frequent words in the loneliness, lonely, and solitude sub-corpora that are strongly associated with them. Observe that the words strongly associated with solitude are mostly positive. Tweets in the solitude sub-corpus tend to describe peaceful, enjoyable moments, often in the natural surroundings. The presence of high-dominance words, such as enjoy, prefer, and comfort, indicate that the person most likely feels in control over a situation, that the time alone was self im- posed and desirable. Words strongly associated with lonely and loneliness, on the other hand, are mostly negative and low in dominance. These tweets often refer to the feelings of sadness, anxiety, depression, and boredom. Words like friends, relationships, and Christmas probably reﬂect the unfulﬁlled need for social interaction that is often felt more strongly during traditional family holidays like Christmas. Solitude–Loneliness Dimension of Word Association: We can use the solitude corpus to study how people talk about solitude. Similarly, we can use the lonely and loneliness corpora (jointly) to study how people talk about loneliness.4 In the sub-section above, we explored each of the query term sub-corpora in comparison with the General Tweets Corpus. Here, in order to determine the extent to which words are associated with solitude as opposed to loneliness, we calculate the solitude–loneliness association score as shown below: Score (w) = PMI (w, Csolitude) −PMI (w, Cloneliness) (4) Using this score we can place words along the solitude– loneliness dimension, where words strongly associated with solitude but not with loneliness are towards one end 3The threshold of 1.5 is somewhat arbitrary, but reasonable. 4We use the italicized term (e.g., loneliness) to refer to the query term, and the non-italicized form (e.g., loneliness) to refer to the mental/physical state. SOLO term Words associated with the term solitude enjoy, peace, silence, fortress, quiet, hundred, enjoying, prefer, nature, bliss, complete, presence, peaceful, seek, embrace, gabriel, inner, marquez, value, spiritual, noise, superman, competing, recharge, prayer lonely & feeling, im, sad, girl, ass, nights, lmao, bitch, boy, baby, scared, bored, girls, hi, cuz, somebody, depressed, loneliness hearts, sucks, broke, club, af, pls, hurts, cute Table 5: The most frequent words strongly associated with solitude as opposed to lonely and loneliness. Sentiment loneliness lonely solitude positive 0.05 0.03 0.71 negative 0.71 0.84 0.11 mixed 0.14 0.06 0.18 unclear 0.10 0.07 0 Table 6: Proportions of the SOLO tweets with different sen- timents towards the state of being alone. and words strongly associated with loneliness but not with solitude are towards the other end. Table 5 shows 25 most frequent words that are more strongly associated with solitude than with loneliness (solitude–loneliness association score ≥1.5), and 25 most frequent words that are more strongly associated with lone- liness than with solitude (solitude–loneliness association score ≤−1.5). Observe that words that are more strongly associated with solitude than with loneliness are positive and high dominance words. These are words referring to peaceful and spiritual activities of being with oneself, recharging, and enjoying the present moment. In contrast, the words more strongly associated with loneliness than with solitude refer to negative personal experiences of be- ing sad, scared, bored, hurt, and broken-hearted. 5.2. Emotions Associated with Being Alone In this section, we measure the emotional context in which the SOLO query terms, loneliness, lonely, and soli- tude, occur. In particular, we investigate whether people use these terms in different emotional contexts and whether they are associated with the qualities suggested in the psy- chology literature. We analyze a sample of the SOLO cor- pus manually and the full corpus computationally using ex- isting word–emotion association lexicons. Manual Examination of Sentiment in the SOLO Cor- pus: We randomly sampled 100 tweets each from the lone- liness, lonely, and solitude sub-corpora, and manually ex- amined each of these tweets to determine whether they ex- press positive, negative, or mixed attitudes towards the state of being alone. Table 6 shows the results. Observe that tweeters that use the term solitude mostly have a positive attitude towards being alone (e.g., “Have you ever: felt lonely? No, I love my solitude.”), yet some- times mixed (e.g., “What is the balance for those of us that love the solitude but wanna have companionship ??”) or even negative (e.g., “Some people prefer to live in solitude, but no one can withstand it”) sentiments can be expressed. On the other hand, the vast majority of tweeters that use the words lonely and loneliness have a negative attitude to- wards being alone (e.g., “i’m really lonely and really sad”). Only rarely do people include the words lonely and lone- liness when they express positive sentiments in the SOLO tweets (e.g., “Loneliness is designed to help you discover who you are ... and to stop looking outside yourself for your worth. ? Mandy Hal”). Basic Emotions Associated with Words in SOLO: Next, we look at the whole SOLO Corpus and analyze emotions associated with words occurring in the SOLO tweets. We use the NRC Word–Emotion Association Lexicon (Mo- hammad and Turney, 2013; Mohammad and Turney, 2010) which has entries for over 14,000 English common words.5 It provides labels for eight basic emotions (anger, fear, sad- ness, disgust, joy, anticipation, surprise, and trust) and two sentiments (positive and negative). The labels are binary indicating whether a word is associated with an emotion (or sentiment) or not. The lexicon was created by crowd- sourcing the annotations. We consider only those words in SOLO that appear in the lexicon, and count the percent- age of words associated with each emotion (i.e., out of ev- ery 100 words, how many are associated with sadness, joy, etc.). (The SOLO query words are excluded from the anal- ysis.) Figure 1 shows the results for the different sub-corpora of the SOLO corpus. For comparison, we also show the results for the General Tweets Corpus. For each emo- tion, the differences between the word percentages for the sub-corpora are statistically signiﬁcant (Chi-squared test, p < 0.0001). Observe that tweets in the solitude sub- corpus contain more words associated with the positive sen- timent and more words associated with the emotions of joy, anticipation, and trust than the tweets in other sub- corpora, including the general tweets. There are 25–30% more positive words in the solitude tweets than in the lonely and loneliness tweets. On the other hand, tweets with the words lonely and loneliness have more words associated with the negative sentiment and more words associated with the emotions of anger, fear, sadness, and disgust. There are 60% more negative words in the loneliness tweets than in the solitude or the general tweets. Somewhat surpris- ingly, tweets in the loneliness sub-corpus have signiﬁcantly more (20–40%) words associated with the negative senti- ment and the negative emotions of anger, fear, and sadness than tweets in the lonely sub-corpus. Valence-Arousal-Dominance of Words in SOLO: To an- alyze the SOLO corpus with regard to the dimensional theory of emotions, we use the NRC Valence, Arousal, 5http://saifmohammad.com/WebPages/NRC-Emotion- Lexicon.htm Figure 1: The percentage of words associated with eight basic emotions in different sub-corpora. and Dominance (VAD) Lexicon (Mohammad, 2018a).6 The VAD lexicon provides real-valued ratings of valence, arousal, and dominance for over 20,000 English words. The scores range from 0 to 1 along each of the three dimen- sions: valence (from maximally unpleasant to extremely pleasant), arousal (from maximally calm, sleepy to max- imally active, intense), and dominance (from maximally weak to maximally powerful). The annotations were ob- tained through crowd-sourcing. We consider words that appear in the VAD lexicon, and count the percentage of words that have high/low valence, arousal, and dominance scores. (The SOLO query words are excluded from the analysis.) For all three dimensions, we consider scores greater than or equal to 0.75 as high scores, and scores lower than or equal to 0.25 as low scores. Table 7 shows the percentage of words in the different sub-corpora with high/low valence, arousal, and dominance scores. Within each row, all the differences are statistically signiﬁcant (Chi-squared test, p < 0.0001). 6http://saifmohammad.com/WebPages/nrc-vad.html Dimension general loneliness lonely solitude Valence low 9.3 15.8 12.3 9.2 high 29.4 30.2 30.3 33.7 Arousal low 9.1 10.9 11.5 14.4 high 8.3 8.6 7.2 6.2 Dominance low 4.8 8.3 8.5 7.1 high 11.9 9.9 7.9 12.3 Table 7: The percentage of words with high/low valence, arousal, and dominance scores in the SOLO corpus. ‘gen- eral’ stands for ‘General Tweets Corpus’. The highest num- bers in each row are in bold. Within each row, all the differences are statistically signiﬁcant (Chi-squared test, p < 0.0001). We can see again that the solitude tweets have the high- est number of strongly positive words (high valence), and the lonely and loneliness tweets have the most strongly negative words (low valence). The loneliness corpus has the highest number of negative words, 72% more than the solitude corpus. The lonely and loneliness sub-corpora also have more high-arousal words than the solitude cor- pus, while the solitude corpus has the highest amount of low-arousal words. The solitude tweets tend to describe quiet and relaxing moments, in natural surroundings, with no agenda to follow. When lonely, people can feel scared and anxious, showing more arousal. Also, loneliness is as- sociated with both momentary and chronic stress, which may explain why lonely occurs among higher arousal words (Seeman, 1996). The solitude corpus has the most high- dominance words, 56% more than the lonely corpus and 24% more than the loneliness corpus. This is consistent with the conceptual deﬁnition of solitude as a positive, vol- untary state of being alone. In contrast, when feeling lonely, people usually perceive the situation as undesirable, they feel scared, depressed, miserable, and powerless. VAD Trends Along the Solitude–Loneliness Dimension of Word Association: We analyze the trends in va- lence, arousal, and dominance scores along the solitude– loneliness dimension. We use the solitude–loneliness as- sociation scores for words computed as described in Sec- tion 5.1. We order the words by their solitude–loneliness association scores from smallest to largest, bin the scores with a 0.5 step, and average the valence, arousal, and dom- inance scores for all words that fall in each bin. For exam- ple, for bin with the score of 1 we average the VAD scores of all the words whose association scores fall in the range [0.75, 1.25). The VAD scores for words are taken from the NRC VAD Lexicon. Figure 2 shows the trends in the av- erage VAD scores along the solitude–loneliness dimension. (Only bins with at least 100 words are shown.) Recall that words with positive association scores occur at a higher rate in the solitude sub-corpus and at a lower rate in the lonely and loneliness sub-corpora while the words with negative association scores occur at a higher rate in the lonely and loneliness sub-corpora and at a lower rate in the solitude Figure 2: Trends in average valence (V), arousal (A), and dominance (D) scores along the solitude–loneliness dimen- sion of association. Positive association scores indicate the word’s stronger association with solitude than with loneli- ness; negative association scores indicate stronger associa- tion with loneliness than with solitude. sub-corpus. Along all three dimensions (valence, arousal, and dominance), the trends are very consistent: the more the word is associated with solitude, the higher its valence and dominance scores are, and the lower its arousal score is. While the range of the average arousal scores is relatively small (from 0.48 to 0.55), the differences in the average va- lence and dominance scores are substantial (from 0.45 to 0.59 for valence, and from 0.43 to 0.56 for dominance). This once again supports the hypothesis that solitude is of- ten viewed as positive, intrinsically motivated state of being alone, and loneliness is viewed as negative, externally im- posed state of being alone. 6. Demographic Differences in the Language Associated with the State of Being Alone In this section, we examine the differences in the lan- guage and emotions associated with the state of being alone between genders (male vs. female) and age groups (adoles- cents vs. adults). Researchers have long been interested in exploring differences in language use between genders in different communication media and sociocultural con- texts (Park et al., 2016; Coates, 2015). Here, we continue this line of work and investigate whether men and women tend to use the SOLO concepts, loneliness, lonely, and soli- tude, in different emotional contexts. Psychologists are also interested in identifying developmental differences in the perception and experiences with the state of being alone Corpus Total tweets Tweets with inferred gender General Tweets 21,719,409 8,355,543 (38%) SOLO Corpus: loneliness 489,264 169,305 (35%) lonely 3,339,166 1,131,935 (34%) solitude 191,643 68,721 (36%) Table 8: The total number of tweets with inferred gender of the tweeter. Corpus Tweets written by Females Males General Tweets 3,730,986 (45%) 4,624,557 (55%) SOLO Corpus: loneliness 87,228 (52%) 82,077 (48%) lonely 636,388 (56%) 495,547 (44%) solitude 33,000 (48%) 35,721 (52%) Table 9: The number of tweets written by (inferred) female and male users. (Coplan et al., 2019b). Using the large amounts of tweets in the SOLO Corpus and an existing word–age association lexicon, we analyze the tendency of different age groups to describe their experiences of being alone as solitude or loneliness states. 6.1. Gender Differences in the Language Associated with the State of Being Alone To infer the gender of the tweeters, we use the US Social Security Administration database7. From the database, we select ﬁrst names that occur more than 100 times in total over the years from 1940 until 2017 and that were used for males (females) at least 95% of the times. In total, we found 19,714 female and 10,909 male such names. We split the user names of the tweeters by punctuation marks and match the ﬁrst token against the selected ﬁrst names. If the ﬁrst token matches one of the female (male) ﬁrst names, the user is considered female (male). Table 8 shows the number of tweets with inferred tweeter gender for each sub-corpora. We are able to infer gender of the tweeter in 34%–38% of the tweets. Table 9 shows the percentage of tweets written by female and male users. Notice that in the General Tweets, the majority of the tweets with inferred gender is from male users (55%). Similar percentage of male users is inferred in the solitude sub-corpora (52%). However, in the lonely and loneliness sub-corpora the majority of the inferred users are female (56% and 52%, respectively). This suggests that women have and/or report their negative experiences of being alone more often than men. 7https://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/limits.html. We ac- knowledge that users may identify their gender as non-binary, but we did not have the data to explore this. We also acknowledge that US Social Security information is not representative of the names from around the world. Thus, the gender analysis is mostly representative of US residents. Figure 3: The differences in percentages of words associ- ated with eight basic emotions in tweets written by female and male users. Positive scores (shown in red) indicate that females tend to use more words associated with this emo- tion than males do. Negative scores (shown in blue) in- dicate that males tend to use more words associated with this emotion than females do. Darker shades of red/blue highlight differences with larger absolute values. ‘general’ stands for ‘General Tweets Corpus’. To examine the differences in emotional content of tweets written by different genders, we perform analyses of basic emotions and valence, arousal, and dominance in a similar manner as described in Section 5.2. The analy- ses are performed separately on the tweets written by male users and on the tweets written by female users. Figure 3 shows the differences in percentages of words associated with eight basic emotions in tweets written by female and male users. Observe that in the General Tweets Corpus the differences are minor, most of them are below 1%. The only differences that are 1% or larger are for the emotions of joy (3% more in text written by women) and anticipa- tion (1% more in text written by women) as well as for positive sentiment (1.7% more in text written by women). We see similar trends in the solitude sub-corpus: the only differences that are larger than 1% in absolute values are for the emotions of joy, anticipation, fear, and for positive sentiment. In the lonely and loneliness sub-corpora, the differences across genders are even smaller—below 1% for all, except for the emotion of joy in the lonely sub-corpus (1.4%). The results for valence, arousal, and dominance are also similar (numbers not shown here). Overall, within tweets associated with the state of being alone, the dif- ferences in emotional content across the two genders are small. 6.2. Age Differences in the Language Associated with the State of Being Alone Since we do not have age information for the tweeters in our corpus, we use an available Word–Age Association Lexicon (Schwartz et al., 2013). This lexicon provides as- sociation scores and the corresponding p-values for com- mon words and phrases (1-grams, 2-grams, and 3-grams) with four age groups: 13 to 18 years old, 19 to 22 years old, 23 to 29 years old, and 30 and over years old. Schwartz Corpus Percentage of words associated with an age group: 13 to 18 19 to 22 23 to 29 30+ General Tweets 31.0 5.1 10.5 55.3 SOLO Corpus: loneliness 29.8 5.4 9.8 54.4 lonely 37.5 7.4 8.8 48.2 solitude 27.4 4.6 11.0 57.2 Table 10: Percentage of words associated with different age groups. Within each age group (column), all the differences are statistically signiﬁcant (Chi-squared test, p < 0.0001). et al. (2013) collected Facebook messages of 75,000 vol- unteers, along with the information on their age and gen- der. Then, they calculated the association scores by ﬁtting a linear function between the target variable (word’s relative frequency) and the dependent variable (age), adjusted for gender. The lexicon includes only those words and phrases that were used by at least 1% of all subjects. From the lex- icon, for each age group, we collect single, alpha-numeric tokens that are signiﬁcantly positively associated with the age group (p ≤0.05). Out of 8,093 single, alpha-numeric tokens in the lexicon, 1,921 were signiﬁcantly positively associated with the 13 to 18 years old group, 845 were sig- niﬁcantly positively associated with the 19 to 22 years old group, 1,130 were signiﬁcantly positively associated with the 23 to 29 years old group, and 3,055 were signiﬁcantly positively associated with the 30 and over years old group. Using the Word–Age Association Lexicon, we calculate the percentage of words associated with each age group in each sub-corpus (loneliness, lonely, solitude, and general tweets). For this, we divide the number of occurrences of words associated with a particular age group by the total number of occurrences of all the words in the lexicon. Ta- ble 10 shows the results. Within each age group, all the dif- ferences between the numbers for each sub-corpus (loneli- ness, lonely, and solitude) and the general tweets are statis- tically signiﬁcant (Chi-squared test, p < 0.0001). Observe that the lonely sub-corpus has higher percentages of words associated with the two younger groups (as compared with the general tweets) and lower percentage of words asso- ciated with the two older groups. The differences for the teenage group and the older adults (30+ years old) are par- ticularly large (21% increase for the teenage group, 13% decrease for the 30 and over group). The solitude sub- corpus shows the opposite pattern with lower percentage of words associated with the two younger groups and higher percentage of words associated with the two older groups. The differences between the numbers for the loneliness corpus and the general tweets are relatively small for all four age groups. These results suggest that there are more younger people (especially teenagers) among the tweeters that use the word lonely when talking about being alone and, therefore, have more negative experiences when alone, than among the tweeters that use the word solitude and have more positive attitudes to the state of being alone. This ﬁnd- ing does not support the psychology literature that proposes that adolescence may be a time when being alone is adap- tive and enjoyable (Coplan et al., 2019b). It is possible, however, that adolescents may use Twitter to vent or share feelings about loneliness more often than other age groups. 7. Applications In this section, we list the potential applications and the directions for future work using the resources created as part of this project: the SOLO Corpus, the lexicons of words associated with the SOLO concept terms, and the list of search terms related to the concept of being alone. SOLO Corpus: The corpus can be used to further study how people understand and experience the state of being alone, and how these vary across situations, individuals, and development. For example, the following research questions can be addressed: • How do people understand different experiences that could be considered ‘solitary’? Do people distinguish between different degrees of solitude? For example, is someone more ‘alone’ if they are away from their Smartphone? • What are the different motivations (intrinsic and ex- trinsic) for people to spend time alone? • Do people recognize some solitary experiences as be- ing more beneﬁcial or costly than others? What are the different beneﬁts that might arise from being alone (e.g., creativity, relaxation, productivity)? • Can we identify developmental differences in experi- ences and attitudes towards being alone? Words associated with the SOLO concept words: Words highly associated with the terms loneliness, lonely, and solitude can be used to identify pieces of text that do not necessarily mention either of these three words, but never- theless discuss the experiences of being alone. This can ap- ply to tweets, but also to other types of text (blogs, emails, novels, etc.). For example, texts rich in words highly as- sociated with lonely have a high probability of discussing feelings of being lonely and the related issues even if the word lonely itself is not mentioned. Search terms: We have shown that by using the search terms loneliness, lonely, and solitude we can collect vo- luminous corpora of tweets highly related to the state of being alone. Therefore, this search strategy over the Twit- ter stream can be used to monitor the positive and negative aspects of being alone and their relation to well-being over the entire population across time, geographical regions, and demographic groups. Building Other SOLO Corpora: The approach presented in this paper can also be used to create other more focused corpora pertaining to speciﬁc demographics for whom soli- tude and loneliness are particularly relevant, such as the el- derly and teenagers (Luhmann and Hawkley, 2016; Hawk- ley and Capitanio, 2015). 8. Conclusion We presented the SOLO (State of Being Alone) corpus— a large corpus of tweets associated with the state of being alone. SOLO includes over 4 million tweets collected us- ing one of the three terms loneliness, lonely, and solitude. Manual examination showed that the corpus contains over 94% of the tweets related to the concept of being alone. We used the SOLO Corpus to examine the language and emotions associated with the state of being alone. We found evidence that Twitter users tend to use the word solitude to describe more positive and self-imposed states of be- ing alone, and tend to use the words lonely and loneliness when their experiences are negative and undesirable, which is consistent with conceptual deﬁnitions proposed in psy- chology literature. Furthermore, we found that the word loneliness tends to be used in more negative contexts than the word lonely. Over the same period of time, the term lonely triggered 17 times more tweets than the term solitude. There were 12% more tweets with the word lonely written by female users than tweets written by males, even though in the Gen- eral Tweet Corpus (used as control) there were 10% more tweets written by male users. However, the emotional con- tent in the SOLO tweets written by male and female users was strikingly similar. We also found more words associ- ated with the adolescent age group (especially, teenagers) and less words associated with the adult age group in the lonely corpus as compared to the solitude corpus, which suggests a higher vulnerability of teenagers to the negative experiences of feeling lonely. We make SOLO and other resources created in this project freely available to encourage further research on health, economical, and other issues related to people’s ex- periences of being alone and how these issues affect the population’s well-being. The current study focused on English-language social media, in particular tweets. In future work, texts from other genres, such as blogs, news, poetry, and ﬁction, can be an- alyzed in a similar manner. While this study examined the percentage of basic emotion words, one can also use lex- ica such as the NRC Emotion Intensity Lexicon (Moham- mad, 2018b) to examine the use of high and low intensity emotion words in expressions of solitude.8 By compar- ing sources from different time periods, we can track how people’s perception of solitude and loneliness change over time. Furthermore, parallel studies in other languages can shed light on cultural differences in people’s attitudes to- wards and experiences with the state of being alone. Finally, we are exploring the creation of corpora similar to SOLO with a focus on text generated by speciﬁc demo- graphics such as teenagers, elderly, as well as, those coping with disabilities, stress, or other mental and physical con- ditions. We believe that a better understanding of people’s attitudes towards solitude and loneliness will help identify new ways to improve their well-being. 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VĂN HÓA GIAO TIẾP THƯƠNG MẠI -BÀI TẬP CUỐI KỲ- NHÓM II.5.pdf	ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ KHOA TIẾNG TRUNG ---------- 课程论文 Học phần: 汉语商务交际文化 VĂN HÓA GIAO TIẾP THƯƠNG MẠI TRUNG QUỐC (Nhóm II) Mã học phần: TRUF272 题目：中国商务招待客人的礼仪 Sinh viên thực hiện: Nhóm II.8 Giảng viên phụ trách: Họ và tên ( Mã số sinh viên): PGS.TS Liêu Linh Chuyên Hoàng Thị Mai Lê 20F7540070 Huế, tháng 11 năm 2023 目录前言 ....................................................................................... 1 1. 选题的意义 ....................................................................... 1 2. 研究方法 .......................................................................... 1 3. 研究范围 .......................................................................... 1 正文 ....................................................................................... 2 I. 有关中国商务招待礼仪的相关理论 ................................... 2 1.1 中国商务招待礼仪的相关原则 ................................... 2 1.2 中国商务招待礼仪的相关理论 ................................... 3 1.3 中国商务招待礼仪的相关概念 .................................... 4 II. 中国的商务招待礼仪的操作原则 ..................................... 5 2.1 准备时的礼仪 ............................................................ 5 2.2 待客时的礼仪 ............................................................ 7 2.3 餐厅待客时的礼仪 .................................................... 10 2.4 游览观光的礼仪 ....................................................... 12 III. 中国商务招待礼仪的注意事项 ..................................... 13 3.1 注意事项 .................................................................. 13 3.2 越南商务招待礼仪的文化 ......................................... 14 3.3 中越商业招待礼仪的文化对比 ................................... 15 结论 ...................................................................................... 18 参考材料 ............................................................................... 19 1 前言在当今全球化的商务环境中，了解并掌握中国的商务招待礼仪对于建立和维护国际商业关系至关重要。中国的商务文化深受其悠久的历史和独特的社会文化传统影响，其中商务招待礼仪作为一种重要的交际方式，在商业活动中占据着核心地位。本论文旨在深入探讨中国商务招待礼仪的理论与实践，特别是在中越商务关系中的应用和意义。 1. 选题的意义随着中国在国际舞台上的日益重要性，理解中国的商务文化和礼仪成为国际商务成功的关键因素之一。特别是对于与中国有着密切经贸往来的越南，深入了解中国的商务招待礼仪不仅有助于加强双方的商业合作，还能促进文化交流和相互理解。本论文的研究不仅为中越商务人士提供实用指南，也为广泛的国际商务环境中的交流提供了洞见。 2. 研究方法本论文采用多种研究方法来全面探讨中国商务招待礼仪。首先，通过文献综述，搜集并分析了大量关于中国商务礼仪的书籍、学术论文和在线资源。其次，通过案例分析，研究了中越商务交流中的具体实例，深入了解礼仪的实际应用。此外，通过访谈中国和越南的商务专家和学者，收集了宝贵的一手资料。本研究的多维度方法确保了对主题的深入和全面理解。 3. 研究范围由于研究水平与时间的限定，论文的研究范围仅限于方式、内容、形式的问候礼仪和设计、把握好中国的商务招待礼仪。 2 正文 I. 有关中国商务招待礼仪的相关理论 1.1 中国商务招待礼仪的相关原则 1.1.1 礼貌礼貌是中国商务招待礼仪中最基础且至关重要的原则之一。它体现在日常交往的每个细节中，如语言的选择、态度的展现以及行为的表现。在商务环境中，礼貌表现为对对方的尊重和关注。这包括使用礼貌用语、确保交流的平等性，以及在商务会谈中展现出的专业和谦逊。中国文化中强调“礼多人不怪”，即在礼仪上做得更多总是好的。因此，过分的礼貌在中国商务交流中并不会被视为虚伪或过度。 1.1.2 尊重尊重是中国商务文化的核心。它不仅体现在尊敬他人，也体现在尊重他人的意见、时间和文化背景。在商务招待中，尊重体现在对客人的优先考虑，比如在会议安排、座位安排以及商务宴请中优先考虑客人的舒适和便利。尊重还体现在对客户或合作伙伴的商业秘密和隐私的保护上，这是建立长期信任关系的基础。 1.1.3 和谐和谐原则强调在商务关系中寻求共赢的结果，避免冲突和对抗，创建一个双方都感到舒适和满意的商务环境。这包括在谈判中寻求平衡点，避免极端立场，以及在商务互动中维持礼貌和友好的氛围。 3 和谐还体现在努力理解和适应对方的商业习惯和文化，从而建立更加顺畅的沟通和交流。 1.1.4 面子 “面子”涉及到个人和集体的尊严以及社会地位的维护。在商务环境中，保护自己和他人的“面子”是至关重要的。这包括避免公开批评或羞辱他人，特别是在公共场合。在处理问题时，选择更为委婉和间接的方式，以避免对方感到难堪。在赞扬和表扬时，也需要注意适度，避免过分夸张，以免让对方感到不自在或压力。 1.2 中国商务招待礼仪的相关理论 1.2.1 儒家思想对礼仪的影响儒家思想是中国文化的核心之一，其中对礼仪的强调对中国商务招待礼仪产生了深远的影响。儒家思想中的“礼”不仅指仪式和规范，还包括对他人的尊重、谦逊、和谐以及遵守社会规范。这些理念在商务互动中仍然扮演着关键角色。在商务场合，儒家礼仪体现为对合作伙伴的尊重、在谈判中寻求共赢结果，以及在业务关系中维持和谐。 1.2.2 理论的现代适用性尽管儒家思想起源于古代，但其对礼仪的影响在现代商务环境中仍然显著。现代商务礼仪依然倚重于这些传统原则，但也适应了现代商业的需求和全球化的影响。例如，尊重和礼貌在全球商务交流中被普遍接受和实践，而这些原则与儒家礼仪中的教义相呼应。 4 1.2.3 理论的演变随着中国经济的全球化和现代化，商务礼仪也在逐步演变。尽管基本原则保持不变，但其表达形式和实践方式正在适应国际环境和多元文化。例如，在跨国企业和国际会议中，中国商务礼仪不仅遵循传统的礼仪规范，同时也融入了国际商业惯例，如更加注重个人隐私和平等性。通过结合《商务礼仪》的内容，以上部分提供了对相关理论的深入分析，特别是儒家思想对现代商务礼仪的影响以及这些理论在现代环境中的适用性和演变。这些理论对理解和实践中国商务招待礼仪至关重要。您可以将这些内容加入您的论文，并继续探索更多相关理论和实践。 1.3 中国商务招待礼仪的相关概念  让座：在商务场合，让座礼仪同样具有一定的重要性。尤其在会议、商务宴会、专业活动等场合。让座礼仪需要平衡地尊重地位差异、照顾特殊需求，并在不引起不适或误解的前提下展现谦逊和关切。这有助于维护商务关系中的尊重和融洽。  敬茶点：在中国等一些亚洲国家，敬茶点茶是一种传统的礼仪行为，尤其在商务场合，敬茶也被视为表达尊重和建立良好关系的一种方式。商务敬茶点茶是一种传统的社交礼仪，通过这一仪式，人们彼此表达尊重和友好，有助于加强商业关系，提高交际效果。 5  谈话：商务谈话礼仪是指在商务场合进行沟通和交流时应当遵循的一系列规范和原则。这些礼仪有助于建立良好的商业关系、确保沟通的有效性以及促进合作。商务谈话礼仪有助于在商务场合中建立专业、尊重和有效的沟通氛围，提升合作伙伴关系的质量。 II. 中国的商务招待礼仪的操作原则 2.1 准备时的礼仪 2.1.1 准时侯客准时在中国商务文化中占有极其重要的地位，它不仅是一种基本的礼节，更是专业性和尊重的体现。在商务环境中，按时到达会议或活动地点是对他人时间和安排的尊重。准时也关系到个人和公司形象的塑造。它传达了一种信息：您重视这次会面并且尊重对方。这种态度有助于建立信任和可靠性，对于长期的商务关系尤为重要。《商务礼仪》中提到，准时还意味着充分准备，这对于确保会议或活动的顺利进行至关重要。准备不足或迟到可能导致会议效率低下，影响商务合作的成功。 6 2.1.2 布置环境商务会议或活动的环境布置是提升会议效果的关键。这不仅包括选择适合的会议地点，还包括考虑会场的布局、照明、声音效果和适宜的装饰。一个专业且舒适的环境可以促进有效的沟通，使参与者感到放松并更愿意参与讨论。这样的环境设置显示了主办方的细心和对客人的尊重。根据《科学社会主义新编》，良好的环境布置还能反映社会价值观和文化，尤其在跨文化商务交往中，适宜的环境布置可以弥合文化差异，促进更好的理解和合作。 2.1.3 准备有关材料对于任何商务活动，提前准备好必要的材料，如会议议程、演示文稿、产品样本或相关报告，是至关重要的。这不仅展示了您对会议的重视，也保证了会议能够高效有序地进行。详细且准确的材料可以帮助阐明会议目标，促进讨论和决策过程。这在《商务礼仪》中被强调为专业性的关键。《科学社会主义新编》虽然主要讨论社会主义理论，但其对于系统性和组织性的重视可以被应用于会议材料的准备上。确保所有参与者都能访问和理解这些材料，有助于建立共同的理解基础，促进有效的交流和合作。 7 2.2 待客时的礼仪 2.2.1 让座当客人进门后，主人应马上放下手中的工作，并起立向来客问候致意，做自我介绍，握手、寒暄、让座等，体现出主人的热情与周到。就座时，长沙发优于单人沙发，沙发椅优于普通椅子，较高的坐椅优于较低的坐椅，距离门远的为最佳的座位。 Nguồn: FB Cô Hòn Sỏi 如果是多人来访，会见座位的安排就显得尤为重要。通常将客人安排在主人的右侧，其他人员按礼宾次序在主宾一侧就座，主方陪同人员在主人一侧就座。座位不够可以在后排加座。双方人员的次序由双方按照每个人的职务、地位、本次会见的内容等综合排定。双边会谈通常用长方形，椭圆形或圆形桌子，宾主相对而坐，以正门为准，主人坐背门一侧，客人坐面门一侧。主谈人居中，记录员可安排在后面，当会谈人员较少时，记录员也可安排在会谈桌旁就座。 8 Nguồn: Internet 2.2.2 敬茶点不知礼无以立，中国人最看重待人接物的礼仪。在接待客人的时候，泡茶、斟茶、品茶、添茶等其实都有一定的讲究，饮用好茶清香满屋之外，与同饮的人更要讲究礼节，才能真正被视为爱茶、懂茶、惜茶之人。 Nguồn: Internet 9  倒茶时切记不可满杯茶是热的，满了时茶杯很热，这就容易让客人的手被烫，有时还易致茶杯落地打破，给客人造成难堪，所以中国自古便有“倒茶不满” 之礼仪。  放置茶盅不可发出声响客人喝茶提盅时不能任意把盅脚在茶盘沿上擦，茶喝完放盅要轻手，不能让盅发出声响，否则是“强宾压主”或“有意挑衅”之意。  暗下逐客令如果主人故意不换茶叶，客人就要察觉到主人是“暗下逐客令”，抽身告辞，否则会惹主人没趣。  茶水无茶色表示待客冷淡主人待茶，茶水从浓到淡，数冲之后便要更换茶叶，如不更换茶叶会被人认为“无茶色”。“无茶色”其意有二，一是茶已无色还在冲，是对客人冷淡，不尽地主之谊;二是由于上一点引申对人不恭。 2.2.3 谈话  交谈的态度: 交谈的态度包括举止、表情，以及对待交谈对象的个人修养和基本看法。在商务交往中，态度比内容更为重要，尤其初次接触客人时更受关注。注意神态，要亲切友善，专心倾听，避免不文雅的举动。 10 控制语音，压低音量，显示尊重。谨慎使用语气，平等待人，使用谦词和礼貌用语。控制语速，保持稳定，不要过快或过慢。面对面交谈，注视对方，保持私人空间内的距离。  内容的选择: 选择格调高雅的内容，与思想境界相关。控制措辞，适当赞美对方，避免讲令人生厌的话题。对方提出的问题要有问必答，避免置之不理。谦让男女谈话，避免开玩笑，有节制地争论问题。实事求是，避免过多的客套。向对方讨教，表达敬意，不随意谈论隐私或泄露机密。避免涉及敏感话题，不批评同事、同学，不背后说长道短。与女士交谈时注意避免论及外貌等敏感话题。用肢体语言表示感谢，避免涉及令对方不快的问题。 2.3 餐厅待客时的礼仪 Nguồn: Internet 11 2.3.1 座位安排在正式的商务宴请中，座位安排是展示尊重和地位重视的关键。根据《商务礼仪》，重要客人通常被安排在靠近主人的位置，以显示他们的重要性。《科学社会主义新编》虽然聚焦于社会结构，但其对等级和地位的分析也适用于理解座位安排的文化意义。在中国，这通常意味着按照职务或年龄的高低来安排座位。《商务礼仪》也强调，考虑到宾客之间可能的关系和互动，合理的座位安排可以促进愉快的用餐氛围和有效的沟通。 2.3.2 菜式，酒水安排选择适合的菜式和酒水是体现对客人尊重和欢迎的重要方面。《商务礼仪》建议，了解客人的饮食偏好和文化背景，并据此选择菜式，可以显示出主办方的细致和考虑。《科学社会主义新编》中提到的对多样性和包容性的重视，可以指导我们在选择菜式和酒水时考虑到不同文化和口味的需求，特别是在国际商务宴请中。而《商务礼仪》中提及的，提供地方特色菜肴和名酒，不仅可以展示中国的丰富文化，也可以作为交流和分享的机会。 2.3.3 用餐礼仪商务宴会中的餐桌礼仪是维持宴会正式和愉快氛围的关键。正确使用餐具，如筷子和酒杯，以及适当的餐桌交谈，都是必要的礼仪。《商务礼仪》强调，遵循当地的餐桌礼仪不仅是对文化的尊重，也是促进交流和合作的重要部分。例如，在中国，敬酒和轮流致辞是常见的用餐礼仪。 12 《商务礼仪》中提到，在宴会中保持礼貌、关注共餐者，以及避免敏感话题，都是确保用餐体验愉快的关键因素。 2.4 游览观光的礼仪 2.4.1 选择好具体地点在安排商务客人的观光活动时，选择具有文化价值和商业相关性的地点至关重要。这不仅是向客人展示中国丰富文化和历史的机会，也是展示中国商业环境和发展的平台。根据《商务礼仪》，选择观光地点时应考虑客人的兴趣和背景。例如，对于对历史感兴趣的客人，可以安排访问历史名城或博物馆；而对商业领域感兴趣的客人，则可以考虑参观当地的商业中心或产业园区。《商务礼仪》中也提到，结合客人的商业兴趣和中国的特色，如访问著名的商业街区或技术创新中心，可以促进商业交流和合作的深化。 2.4.2 联系好交通工具为商务客人提供适宜的交通服务是展示细致关怀和专业主办能力的重要环节。选择安全、舒适且高效的交通工具对确保活动顺利进行至关重要。《商务礼仪》强调，考虑客人的需要和偏好来选择交通方式，如私人轿车、商务班车或高速列车。同时确保行程安排合理，避免客人感到疲惫或不便。在国际商务交往中，提供有经验的司机和确保车辆符合国际安全标准是体现主办方专业性和对客人安全重视的关键。 13 2.4.3 准备好讲解介绍提供知识丰富且能够流畅沟通的导游是确保观光活动成功的重要因素。导游不仅应熟悉景点的历史和文化背景，还应能够根据客人的兴趣调整讲解重点。根据《商务礼仪》，有效的导览可以增强客人的体验，同时在轻松的氛围中促进商业话题的交流。例如，在参观历史景点时，可以讲述与中国商业发展相关的故事或事迹。有效的导览还应考虑时间管理，确保活动不会影响客人的其他商务安排。同时，提供互动性和参与感的导览可以使体验更加个性化和难忘。 III. 中国商务招待礼仪的注意事项 3.1 注意事项 3.1.1 接待人员形象与行为接待人员的形象和行为在商务招待中至关重要。《商务礼仪》指出，他们不仅代表公司的形象，而且在形成客户的第一印象方面发挥着关键作用。专业的着装、礼貌的举止和良好的沟通能力是必要的。《商务礼仪》中提到，接待人员应具备适当的专业训练，包括了解文化差异、商务礼仪知识以及危机应对技巧，以确保能够妥善处理各种商务场合。 3.1.2 服饰与个人形象商务场合的着装规范反映了个人的专业性和公司的形象。《商务礼仪》建议，服装应整洁、合体、专业，同时适应具体的商务环境和文化背景。 14 《科学社会主义新编》虽聚焦社会政治理论，但其对集体形象和个人表现的分析可适用于理解商务场合中个人形象的重要性。适当的着装不仅是对自身的尊重，也是对商务伙伴的尊重。 3.1.3 接待高级客人的特殊要求高级客人的接待往往需要更细致和个性化的安排。《商务礼仪》强调，应根据客人的地位、文化背景和个人偏好来定制接待方案。在办公室接待时，应注意礼节的细节，如为高级客人提供舒适的休息区和私密的会谈空间。此外，针对重要客人的接待程序应更加周到和细致，如提供专职翻译和专车接送服务。 3.2 越南商务招待礼仪的文化在越南，商务招待客人时，礼仪至关重要。以下是一些建议，以确保您在招待客人时尊重和体现热情好客：  热情好客：越南人以热情好客而闻名，尽量表现出您的友好和热情。用心关心客人的需求，确保他们感到受到欢迎。  茶礼：在越南，茶被视为一种欢迎客人的方式。在会面开始时，您可以提供一杯越南茶。递茶时使用两只手，表示尊重。  用餐招待：如果您邀请客人用餐，确保提供足够的食物，因为越南文化中，慷慨是一个重要的价值观。等待客人开始进食，表达对他们的尊重。您可以主动为客人夹菜，这被认为是一种亲切的举止。 15  礼物：如果客人带了礼物，要用两手接受，并在客人离开后发送感谢短信或便条，表达感激之情。如果您为客人准备了礼物，也要用两手递给他们。礼物的包装要体现出尊重和关怀。  尊重长辈：在越南文化中，尊敬长者是非常重要的。确保对待客人时尊重年长者，并在交流中表示尊重。  交谈：以友好而轻松的方式进行交流。避免过于直接的问题，更偏向于一般性的、中性的话题。问候客人家庭，这被认为是一个亲切的举动。  活动策划：如果您为客人安排活动，确保提供足够的信息和指导，以便他们感到舒适。为客人提供足够的空间，同时也表达您的关切。  送别礼仪：当客人即将离开时，您可以表示感激之情，并表达希望再次见面的愿望。送别时，可以递上一张名片或小礼物，以示关怀。总的来说，越南商务招待客人的礼仪强调热情、尊重和慷慨。通过展现这些品质，您可以在商务关系中建立更加牢固的联系。 3.3 中越商业招待礼仪的文化对比 3.3.1 相同之处本部分通过对比分析，探讨中国和越南在商务招待礼仪方面的相似之处和差异，目的是增进跨文化理解和有效沟通。礼貌和尊重的强调：在中国和越南的商务文化中，礼貌和尊重是核心价值。《商务礼仪》指出，这体现在正式的会面礼节、谦逊的沟 16 通方式和对高层领导的尊敬。无论在中国还是越南，正式商务场合通常都需要保持一种庄重、正式的态度，以显示对业务的认真程度。商务宴会的共同习俗：两国在商务宴会中都有类似的习俗，如重视座位安排、敬酒和共享菜肴。《商务礼仪》中提到，这些习俗反映了东亚文化中强调集体和谐的传统。在商业场合，中越文化都有着一定的用餐礼仪，包括尊重主人、避免过于直接的商务讨论等。 3.3.2 差异中越商业招待礼仪在一定程度上反映了中越两国的文化传统和价值观。虽然中越商业招待礼仪有一些共通之处，但在细节和强调的方面存在差异，理解并尊重对方文化的差异有助于建立更加顺畅和积极的商务关系，具体表现在以下的这些方面: 宴请方式的差异：虽然中越都重视商务宴请作为建立关系的方式，但具体的实践有所不同。《商务礼仪》提及，中国的商务宴请往往更加正式和讲究礼仪，而越南可能更注重轻松愉快的氛围。中国餐桌礼仪非常注重宴会礼仪，如轮流敬酒、尊敬年长者等。在商务活动中，餐桌是展示礼仪和尊重的场所。谈话和交流通常会在餐桌上进行，餐桌上的交流被认为能增进合作关系。越南也有类似的敬酒礼仪，但可能更为简洁。他们也重视餐桌上的交流，但可能更专注于食物和商业议题，而不是宴会礼仪。谈判风格：根据《商务礼仪》，中国的商务谈判风格通常较为间接和含蓄，强调长期关系的建立；而越南的谈判可能更直接和务实，注重立即的成果和效率。 17 官方接待细节：在官方接待上，中国可能更注重形式和仪式，反映出《科学社会主义新编》中提到的等级和地位的重视；而越南可能更强调个人关系和亲密的互动。 18 结论商务招待礼仪是商业世界中通往成功的关键路径之一。它不仅仅是一种表面上的礼仪规范，更是一座桥梁，连接着不同文化、背景和信仰的商业伙伴。在这个连结的桥梁上，搭建着互信、尊重和友好关系的基石。无论我们身处何地，了解并尊重对方的文化和习俗是商务招待礼仪的核心。它不仅要求我们遵循当地的礼仪规范，更要求我们以真诚和尊重的态度面对他人。通过尊重他人的文化和习惯，我们展现了自己的开放心态和对多元文化的尊重，这是建立商业关系不可或缺的基础。此外，商务招待礼仪也是一种语言，一种超越文字和语言的沟通方式。它传达着我们对合作伙伴的重视，展现出我们愿意倾听和理解对方的诚意。这种体现尊重和友好的态度，不仅在表面上体现出来，更在潜意识中促进着互信和合作关系的发展。在当今全球商业环境中，跨文化交流和合作已成为常态。因此，学习和遵循正确的商务招待礼仪显得至关重要。它不仅仅是一种礼貌，更是搭建商业桥梁、推动合作和共赢的关键。在这个多元化的商业世界中，掌握正确的商务招待礼仪将为我们赢得更多的尊重、信任和商业机遇。因此，让我们将商务招待礼仪视作通向成功的路径之一。通过尊重、理解和友好的交往方式，我们将在全球商业舞台上取得更大的成功，建立更稳固、更有成效的商业关系。在这条桥梁上，相互尊重和理解的支持下，我们将共同开拓更广阔的商业前景，迈向共同成功的未来。 19 参考材料 [1] Dương Thu Ái (2014). Lễ Nghi Thương Mại. NXB Thanh Niên [2] Trần Thừa (1999). Kinh tế học vĩ mô. Nhà xuất bản Giáo dục, Hà Nội. [3] 曹艺，张沧丽.《商务礼仪》[M].高等教育出版社，2014，169-194. [4] 曹艺.《商务礼仪》[M].清华大学出版社，2013，79-84. [5] 夏志强，翟文明, 《礼仪常识全知道》, 华文出版社出版, 2010. [6] 芭芭拉•帕切特, 《国际商务礼仪》, 中国对外翻译出版公司，1998. [7] 蔡少惠.《中国人的礼仪规矩》[M].中国纺织出版社，出版日期 2023. [8] 《科学社会主义新编》，主要编著者，中央文献出版社 2004 年版。 20	10,677
văn-hóa-giao-tiếp-tiểu-luận-cuối-kì-1-ok-ok.pdf	顺化大学顺化外国语大学中文系商务礼仪问候礼仪 + 名片使用礼仪 Giảng viên : TS. Liêu Linh Chuyên Nhóm : I.2 Nguyễn Thị Mơ : 19F7541130 Nguyễn Thị Hoài : 19F7541080 Trần Thị Trang : 19F7541273 Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Giang: 19F7541043 顺化, 2022 年12 月目录前言 .............................................................................................................................................................. 1 1.选择意义................................................................................................................................................ 1 2.研究方法................................................................................................................................................ 1 3.研究范围................................................................................................................................................ 1 第一章：问候礼仪 ...................................................................................................................................... 2 I. 有关中国商务问候礼仪的相关理论 ....................................................................................................... 2 1. 问候礼仪的概述 ................................................................................................................................... 2 2. 问候的规矩........................................................................................................................................... 2 II. 中国的商务问候礼仪的相关论文 ......................................................................................................... 2 1. 问候的方式........................................................................................................................................... 2 1.1. 语言问候 ........................................................................................................................................ 3 1.1.1. 常用的问候语 ............................................................................................................................. 3 1.1.2. 问候中的礼貌语言 ..................................................................................................................... 4 1.2. 动作问候 ........................................................................................................................................ 4 2. 问候的内容........................................................................................................................................... 5 3. 不同形式的问候 ................................................................................................................................... 5 3.1. 亲吻 ................................................................................................................................................ 6 3.2. 拥抱 ................................................................................................................................................ 6 3.3.鞠躬 ................................................................................................................................................ 7 3.4. 点头礼 ............................................................................................................................................ 8 3.5. 举手致意与挥手道别 .................................................................................................................... 9 3.6. 合十礼 .......................................................................................................................................... 10 III. 中国商务问候礼仪的注意事项 .......................................................................................................... 10 1. 问候礼仪的注意事项 ..................................................................................................................... 10 2. 中国和越南的问候文化对比 ......................................................................................................... 11 第二章：名片使用礼仪 ............................................................................................................................ 12 I. 有关中国商务名片使用礼仪的相关理论 ............................................................................................. 12 1.商务名片的计划 .................................................................................................................................. 13 1.1. 名片的质量、语言和印刷注意事项 .......................................................................................... 13 1、规格............................................................................................................................................... 13 2、色彩............................................................................................................................................... 13 3、图案............................................................................................................................................... 13 4、字体, 语言 ..................................................................................................................................... 13 2. 名片的基本内容 ................................................................................................................................. 13 3. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 名片的作用 ................................................................................................... 14 4. 把握好出示名片的时机 ..................................................................................................................... 14 II. 中国的商务名片使用礼仪的操作原则 ........................................................................................... 15 1. 名片在商务交往中有三个不准 ......................................................................................................... 15 2. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 携带名片....................................................................................................... 16 3. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 递交名片....................................................................................................... 16 3.1. 前期准备 ..................................................................................................................................... 16 3.2.交换时间 ...................................................................................................................................... 16 3.3. 交换顺序 ...................................................................................................................................... 16 3.4. 递交姿势 ...................................................................................................................................... 17 4. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 接受名片....................................................................................................... 18 4.1. 态度谦和 ..................................................................................................................................... 18 4.2. 认真阅读 ..................................................................................................................................... 18 4.3. 精心存放 ..................................................................................................................................... 19 4.4. 有来有往 ...................................................................................................................................... 19 5. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 索要名片....................................................................................................... 19 5.1. 互换法 .......................................................................................................................................... 19 5.2. 暗示法 ......................................................................................................................................... 19 III. 中国商务名片礼仪的注意事项 .......................................................................................................... 19 1.注意事项.............................................................................................................................................. 19 1.1 名片礼仪的注意事项 ................................................................................................................... 19 1.2. 保存名片时应注意事项: ............................................................................................................. 20 参考材料 1 前言 1.选择意义礼仪是气质、风度、修养的完美展现。它是受历史传统、风俗习惯、宗教信仰、时代潮流等因素的影响而形成，是人际交往的通行证。在某种程度上，礼仪可以被解读为自律的行为，修养的体现。在商务会面中，做到职业、优雅、从容是每一位商务人士追求的目标。从企业的角度来看掌握一定的商务礼仪不仅可以塑造企业形象，提高顾客满意度和美誉度，并能最终达到提升企业的经济效益和社会效益的目的。商务礼仪是企业文化、企业精神的重要内容，是企业形象的主要附着点。从个人的角度来看掌握一定的商务礼仪有助于提高人们的自身修养、美化自身、美化生活。并能很有效的促进的社会交往，改善人际关系，还有助于净化社会风气。掌握一些商务日常见面礼仪，能给对方留下良好的第一印象。问候礼仪和名片礼仪是在商务场合常见的礼节。从它的重要意义我们就选择研究问候礼仪和名片礼仪。 2.研究方法描述法: 进行描写和分析问候礼仪的方式、内容、形式。。。以及分析名片设计法和递交名片的时间。对比方法：进行越南问候礼仪与中国问候礼仪对比，从而取得越南和中国两个国家的文化差异。 3.研究范围由于研究水平与时间的限定，论文的研究范围仅限于方式、内容、形式的问候礼仪和设计、把握好出示名片的时机、交换名片的学问、使用名牌的禁忌的名片使用礼仪。 2 第一章：问候礼仪 I. 有关中国商务问候礼仪的相关理论 1. 问候礼仪的概述人们在社会交往活动中，为了相互尊重，在仪容、仪表、仪态、仪式、言谈举止等方面约定俗成的，共同认可的行为规范。礼仪是一种用来确定人与人或者人与事物关系的一种行为方式，往往传达一种情绪，如信任，尊重，臣服，祝贺等。礼仪是人们约定俗成的，对人，对己，对鬼神，对大自然，表示尊重、敬畏和祈求等思想意识的，各种惯用形式和行为规范。在人类语言交流的任何地点、任何情况下（直接或间接），第一个交流礼仪总是以问候开始。问候是一种人与人（以及动物与动物）或群与群之间表达互相知晓、关心或者显示一种关系（通常密切）或是社会地位的交流方式。问候有时只是在开始对话或在路过时，例如在人行道上。不同文化中的问候方式不同，同一文化中不同社会地位和社会关系的人之间的问候方式也不尽相同，但是，所有已知的人类文化都存在着问候的风俗。人与人见面时的问候可以带有声音，也可以通过肢体的行为来表示，往往涉及两者的结合。本话题不包括军事和仪式上的敬礼，不过包括手势意外的其他仪式。沟通也可以以书面交流的方式表达，例如书信和电子邮件。问候语不仅具有文化性，而且表现出人的人格和品德。人们互相尊重不是为了地位或金钱，而是为了品格和道德。因此，我们应该学习一些打招呼的规则，这样才能更有自信，给别人留下好印象。 2. 问候的规矩问候礼仪可分为两种：一种是当面问候一致，又称大招呼；另一种是远方的问候。主动地向人打招呼,这是尊重他人的表示。熟人相遇,朋友相见,都离不开相互问候。如果毫无表示,或漫不经心,无意间造成无礼行为,会给双方造成不快。问候的基本规矩:一般男性应先向女性问候,年轻的应先向年老的问候,下级应先向上级问候。 II. 中国的商务问候礼仪的相关论文 1. 问候的方式 3 问候的方式有两种：一种是语言问候；另一种是动作问候 1.1. 语言问候 1.1.1. 常用的问候语问候语应根据不同场合、不同对象而灵活机动,总的原则是,越简单越好。一般熟人相见,使用频率最高的问候语首推“你好”、“好久没见,近来可好(怎么样)”等。 + 你不应该带着与对方个人生活有关的问题来打招呼，比如婚姻、家庭或薪水，或者关于胖瘦、装饰的问题。“小张，几天不见，又胖了”，对方听了心里会不太舒服。“小鹿，你今天穿这的衣服真时髦的”，对方听了不知是恭维还是讥讽，心里很别扭。 + 一些问候语在中国、越南或其他一些亚洲国家很常见，比如“你吃饭了吗”。但是，在遇到外国人时，由于文化差异，你应该考虑这种问候语。下面这个有趣的故事就是一个例子。保罗是一个外国留学生。他在中国学习汉语。他来中国才两个多月，对中国人的习惯还不太了解。有一天中午两个中国朋友跟他打招呼：“保罗，吃了吗？”他忙说：“还没吃呢”。这两个中国朋友摆了摆手，笑了笑就走了。保留觉得很奇怪，他们这样问，问完了又为什么马上就走了呢？在他自己的国家，人们一般不随便这样问了，常常是想邀请他一起去吃饭。可是这两个中国朋友究竟是什么意思呢？后来，他在一起本《中国人怎样打招呼》的书里了解到中国人打招呼的各种方式。原来问“吃了吗”也是打招呼的方式之一。保罗明白了。一天，他看见一位老人，为了表示友好，对老人说：“老大爷，您吃了吗？”老人很生气，说“你这个人有病啊？”这是怎么一回事呢？是不是因为我的发音不太好，语法有错误，老人误会了我的意思了呢？保罗不明白。看来，说话不仅要注意发音和语法，还要注意说话的对象和场合。老人刚从厕所出来，怎么能用“吃了吗？”这样的话来打招呼呢? 4 有时候我们想用一种更友好的方式打招呼，却无意中让对方对我们产生了不好的印象，就像上面的两种情况。因此，我们要巧妙地选择合适的问候语。随着的发展进步人们越来越喜欢用“你好”来表达见面时的喜悦和礼貌。 1.1.2. 问候中的礼貌语言问候,看起来很简单。但是,一个人是粗俗还是优雅,往往在一见面的短暂时间里就可略知分晓。因此,商务人员在社交问候中应多用、善用礼貌语言,它是尊人与尊己的手段,是展示个人风度与能力的必不可少的途径之一。一般来说,主要的问候语有这些: + 早上好,下午好,晚上好,你好等,这些问候语一般在一天当中使用。 + 其他问候语有: · 拜托语言,如“请多关照”、“拜托了”; · 慰问语,如“您辛苦了”、“受累了”; · 同情语,如“真难为你了”、“让你受苦了”; · 挂念语,如“你现在还好吗?生活愉快吗”; · 初次见面,说“久仰”; · 好久不见,说“久违”; · 看望别人用“拜访”; · 宾客来临说“欢迎光临”。 1.2. 动作问候动作问候有点头、微笑、握手、拥抱、吻礼、鞠躬等。与外国人见面时,视对象、场合的不同,礼节也不同。下面是世界上一些国家的一些问候仪式。 +) 对日本人等多数东方国家来说,鞠躬是最常见的。对日本人、韩国人的鞠躬礼,每次必须同样还礼。 5 +) 欧洲人则更喜欢拥抱的礼节,有时还伴以贴面和亲吻,但要注意不可吻出声音。在商务活动中,一般不行此礼。 +) 对德国客人,握手很正式,同时伴有几乎感觉不到的鞠躬。 +) 对英国客人,最好不要有身体接触。 +) 对意大利客人,握手很重要,在业务活动中表示很正式的尊敬。 +) 对美洲客人,握手和拥抱很频繁。 +) 阿拉伯等伊斯兰国家在社交场合中握手后还要在对方脸颊上亲吻,你需同样回敬。 +) 印度人双手合拢放在胸前表示欢迎客人。 +) 美洲人都很喜欢小孩子,见到孩子时都会拍拍他的头或抚摩一下作为问候。但在其他一些国家,如日本、印度,只有很亲密的人才会有这种体语。在东南亚的一些国家,如泰国、马来西亚和一些伊斯兰国家,头被认为是神圣的,是智慧和精神力量的源泉,拍头部意味着侮辱,即使拍背部也是不适宜的。 2. 问候的内容问候的内容是丰富多彩的,可因人因事有所区别。一般性问候,多为祝身体健康、生活如意、事业顺利、节日愉快等。特殊的问候应视具体对象、具体情况而具体对待,不能生搬硬套。对于朋友，我们可以随便一点，可以问一些私人的事情，或者最近发生的事情是否有利。对商业伙伴,应恭祝“生意兴隆,财源广进,事业蒸蒸日上”;对政界人士,应恭祝 “祝君节日愉快、万事如意、身体健康”; 对同辈的同学、朋友的问候,可侧重于工作、学习、事业等方面给予勉励和支持;对年老者,可偏重于身体、饮食、起居等表达关心和支持;对处于危难中的亲朋好友或亲密的商业伙伴,可给予精神安慰或物质帮助。 3. 不同形式的问候 6 问候可以用多种不同的形式表达，例如亲吻、握手、拥抱和各种手势。问候的形式取决于社交礼节以及人与人之间的关系。 3.1. 亲吻在欧洲，近世上层阶级男人对女人的问候方式是用右手握住女人伸出来的手（通常是右手），并且鞠躬亲吻手。如果亲密程度较低，则仅握住手而不亲吻。男人右膝跪在地板上的超正式风格现在仅用于求婚，是一种浪漫的姿势。亲脸颊在欧洲（主要是在南欧，但在某些中欧国家中也是如此）、加拿大部分地区（魁北克）和拉丁美洲很普遍，并且已经成为标准的问候方式。虽然在许多文化中，亲脸颊是一种普遍的问候方式，但每个国家都有其独特之处。在俄罗斯、波兰、斯洛文尼亚、塞尔维亚、马其顿、黑山、荷兰、伊朗和埃及，习惯于“两边脸颊各亲三次”。意大利人、西班牙人、加泰罗尼亚人、匈牙利人、罗马尼亚人、波斯尼亚和黑塞哥维那人通常会亲两次，而在墨西哥和比利时，只需亲一次就可以了。在加拉帕戈斯群岛，女性只在右脸颊上亲吻，而在阿曼，男性握手后在鼻子上互相亲吻并不罕见。法国文化接受多种问候方式，具体取决于所在地区。在整个法国，最常见的是亲两次，但在普罗旺斯则亲三次，在南特则亲四次。然而，在布列塔尼尖端的菲尼斯泰尔省和新亚奎丹大区的德塞夫勒省，则首选亲一次。 3.2. 拥抱在商务交往中多以握手来表示礼节，但在涉外交往中，当第二次见面时，迎接你的礼节就是拥抱。拥抱是可以表达情感的一种肢体接触，是指两个或以上的人相互用手围著对方的身体抱起来。场合和关系的不同，拥抱分为热情拥抱和礼节性拥抱。行拥抱礼时，双方身体不宜贴得太紧，拥抱时间也较短。我们要自然地接受对方的拥抱， 7 不要太抱紧，否则对方会很尴尬。 3.3.鞠躬 3.3.1. 鞠躬含义鞠躬，意思是弯身行礼。是表示对他人敬重的一种郑重礼节。此种礼节一般是下级对上级或同级之间、学生向老师、晚辈向长辈、服务人员向宾客表达由衷的敬意。鞠躬是中国、日本、韩国、朝鲜等国家传统的、普遍使用的一种礼节。鞠躬主要表达“弯身行礼，以示恭敬”的意思。如今的日本，鞠躬礼是最讲究的。所以我们在同日本人打交道时要懂得这一礼节。 A、脖子不可伸得太长，不可挺出下颏； B、耳和肩在同一高度： C、保持正确的站立姿势，两腿并拢，双目注视对方的胸部，随着身体向下弯曲，双手逐渐向下，朝膝盖方向下垂 3.3.2. 适用场合鞠躬适用于庄严肃穆、喜庆欢乐的仪式场合。鞠躬即弯身行礼，它既适合于庄严肃穆或喜庆欢乐的仪式，又适用于普通的社交和商务活动场合。常见的鞠躬礼有以下三种：一、三鞠躬三鞠躬的基本动作规范如下：（1）行礼之前应当先脱帽，摘下围巾，身体肃立，目视受礼者。（2）男士的双手自然下垂，贴放于身体两侧裤线处；女士的双手下垂搭放在腹前。（3）身体上部向前下弯约90° ，然后恢复原样，如此三次。二、深鞠躬 8 其基本动作同于三鞠躬，区别就在于深鞠躬一般只要鞠躬一次即可，但要求弯腰幅度一定要达到90° ，以示敬意。三、社交、商务鞠躬礼（1）行礼时，立正站好，保持身体端正；（2）面向受礼者，距离为两三步远；（3）以腰部为轴，整个肩部向前倾15°以上（一般是60° ，具体视行礼者对受礼者的尊敬程度而定），同时问候“您好” 、“早上好” 、“欢迎光临”等等；（4）朋友初次见面、同志之间、宾主之间、下级对上级及晚辈对长辈等等，都可以鞠躬行礼表达对对方的尊敬。行鞠躬礼时面对客人，并拢双脚，视线由对方脸上落至自己的脚前1.5 米处（15 度礼）或脚前1 米处（30 度礼）或脚前0.4 米处（60 度礼）。男性双手放在身体两侧，女性双手合起放在身体前面。 3.3.3. 注意事项鞠躬时要注意如是戴着帽子时，应将帽子摘下，因为戴帽子鞠躬既不礼貌，也容易滑落，使自己处于尴尬境地。鞠躬时目光应向下看，表示一种谦恭的态度，不要一面鞠躬，一面试图翻起眼睛看对方。 3.4. 点头礼点头礼是对商务朋友表示友好的行为。微笑点头对人表示礼貌，既适用于你已经熟识的商界朋友，也适用于你初次相遇的人。 3.4.1. 点头礼的应用点头礼的礼仪，简单实用，可以立刻拉近人与人之间的距离。因此它是你一生中必须懂得的一项商务礼仪。只要运用得当，它会让你在商务交际活动中左右逢源，建立广泛的商务人际网络，为你的成功打下坚实的基础。在商务活动中，目空一切，对谁都爱答不理，这是极其失礼的表现。在人多的商务洽谈会上，如果遇到面熟但又忘了对方姓名的商界朋友，应面带微笑，友好地点点头，以示礼貌，但遇到身份比自己高 9 的熟人，不要立即上前嘘寒问暖。商务活动中遇到相识的人，应举左手打招呼并点头致意。这时要注意的是，在忘记商务朋友姓名时，不要匆忙地上前询问。男子戴礼帽时，可施脱帽礼，既：两人相遇可摘帽点头致意，离别时再戴上帽子。如果在商务活动中与相遇者并无实际交涉的内容，只是侧身而过，从礼节上讲，也应回身说声“你好”，并将帽子掀下，微微点头。在涉外商务活动中遇见身份高的领导人，应有礼貌点头致意或表示欢迎。 3.4.2. 点头礼礼仪禁忌 ① 在涉外商务活动中遇见身分高的领导人，点头致意后，切忌上前与之握手，这是不礼貌的 ② 如果遇到身分高的熟人，切忌径直去问候。 3.5. 举手致意与挥手道别 3.5.1. 举手致意有时看见相熟的同事、朋友，而自己正在忙碌，无暇分身相迎，常会以举手致意。举手致意既可伴以相关的言词，也可代以手势表示。举手致意的正确做法是： 1. 全身直立，面带微笑，目视对方，略略点头。 2. 手臂轻缓地由下而上，向侧上方伸出，手臂可全部伸直，也可稍有弯曲。 3. 致意时伸开手掌，掌心向外对着对方，指尖指向上方。 4 手臂不要向左右两侧来回摆动。 3.5.2. 挥手道别挥手道别也是人际交往中的常规手势，采用这一手势的正确做法是： 1. 身体站直，不要摇晃和走动。 2. 目视对方，不要东张西望，眼看别处。 10 3. 可用右手，也可双手并用，不要只用左手挥动。 4. 手臂尽力向上前伸，不要伸得太低或过分弯曲。 5. 掌心向外，指尖朝上，手臂向左右挥动；用双手道别，两手同时由外侧向内侧挥动，不要上下摇动或举而不动。 3.6. 合十礼合十是佛家经常使用的问候礼节。和尚通常会合十与人打招呼、表问候。当然不只是互相问候，还有祈祷，面对尊者或者敬佛时也同样使用它。在瑜伽或一些南亚地区的传统中，也常使用此礼节。方法是将两手掌轻轻合拢、对齐并至于胸前。手指轻轻地扣在一起，指实掌虚。前臂放松，肘部向外，几乎形成一条直线。小结以上几种见礼方式，不仅卫生、礼貌，也适用于人数众多的场合，更重要的是，它们能很好的体现内心的敬意和谦恭，颇为适用于在瘟疫流行的时代。人们在行礼时可以留出「社交距离」，同时也提醒自己不忘人与人之间的真诚互敬。总之，见面打招呼，形式多种多样，总要恰如其分、恰到好处。既不应冷淡失礼，也不宜过分热情，。“不亢不卑、落落大方”，正是最好的总结。 III. 中国商务问候礼仪的注意事项 1. 问候礼仪的注意事项中国人对陌生人的第一印象好坏取决于对方打招呼的方式。问候语表明此人是否表示尊重，尤其是对年长或社会地位高的人。所以和中国人见面你应该：首先从最年长的人或地位高的人开始问候，然后是另一个人，最后是女人。握手时，按习俗要微微弯腰，双手放松，握手不宜过紧，以示尊重。介绍某人时，不要用一根手指指向对方，而是用整只手向外靠向被介绍人。 11 两人以上同行遇到熟人时，你应主动介绍一下这些人与你的关系，如这是我的同事，但没必要一一介绍，然后应向同伴们介绍一下你的这位熟人，也只要说一下他(她)与你的关系即可，如这是我的邻居。被介绍者应相互点头致意。如果男女两人一同上街，遇到女士的熟朋友，女士可以不把男伴介绍给对方，男士在她俩寒暄时，要自觉地隔开一定距离等候，待女伴说完话后继续一同走;女士对男伴的等候应表示感谢，且与人交谈的时间不可太长，不应该让同伴等很长时间。如果遇到男士的熟朋友，男士应该把女伴介绍给对方，这时女士应向对方点头致意。如果是两对夫妇或两对情侣路遇，相互致意的顺序应是:女士们首先互相致意，然后男士们分别向对方的妻子或女友致意，最后才是男士们互相致意。很多人都有这样的感受，就是在路上遇到不很熟悉的异性很觉尴尬，不打招呼显得不礼貌，打招呼又不太好意思，或怕对方误会。正确的做法应该是，一位女士偶然在路遇见不很熟悉的男士，理应点头招呼，但不要显得太热情，亦不要用冷冰冰的面孔来点头:一位男士偶然在路遇见不太相熟的女士，应首先打招呼，但表情不可过分殷勤。见到很久不见的老朋友，不要大声惊呼，也不要隔着几条马路或隔着人群就大声呼唤，如果边喊边穿马路，那就可能会有危险了。寒暄之后，如果还想多谈一会儿，应该靠边一些，避开拥挤的行人，不要站在来往人流中进行攀谈。总的来说，路上遇到熟人，谈话时间不可过长。如果有很多话要说，可以找一个交谈场所，或另约时间、地继续交谈。 2. 中国和越南的问候文化对比中国的社交见面称呼交际时，称呼对方要用尊称，现在常用的有：“您”您好、请您；“贵”贵姓、贵公司、贵方；“大”尊姓大名、大作等等。在交际场合，对任何交际对象都忌用诨号、绰号。越南人语中，打招呼和道别都只用“chào + 人称代词” 的句式。在国际会议、商务谈判等正式场合，越南语开场白应是尊敬的＋姓名＋职务＋代表团其他成员。由于中国与越南存在文化差异，为了建立良好的贸易关系，与越南人或越南商人见面时应使用越南人打超乎的习惯用语和方式来表达到最佳的交际效果。与越南商人初次见面时不能过于亲切地用手拍对方的背或肩膀。中国人常用的客套话如 “请多关照”、“请多指教”等不必和越南人说，避免越南人觉得对方过于客气甚至是虚伪。 12 第二章：名片使用礼仪 I. 有关中国商务名片使用礼仪的相关理论商务礼仪是商务活动中体现相互尊重的行为准则。名片是职场人士的随身必备物品,有没有名片。名片使用的频率高不高,能够在一定程度上反映出一个职场中人的社交面, 以及我们在社会上的影响力甚至是我们的成功度。名片是现代人的自我介绍信和社交的联谊卡。日常交往中一张名片递过去, 你姓甚名谁, 何方人士, 所居何处, 现居何位一清二楚, 彼此联系也很方便。在日常交往中, 尤其当一个人的交际圈比较大的时候, 名片是不可缺少的交际工具在商务交往中, 一个没有名片的人, 将被视为没有社会地位的人。一个不会使用名片的人是没有交际经验的人。换而言之, 商务交往中拿不出名片的人, 人家怀疑你是真是假, 有没有地位可言。而一个不随身携带名片的人, 是不尊重别人的。人们身处企业当中, 就不得不遵守职场上的礼仪,而这也是企业的要求和要,掌握恰当并合适地应用职场礼仪,会使你在企业中左右逢源,从而获得顺利的发展。名片蕴含了一个人的各方面的素养。当然,公关人员的名片,不仅代表着个人,还是其所在企业形象的缩影,因此企业越来越考究名片的特色和魅力。往往名片被喻为是左右人们第一印象的“颜面” 名片也常常作为祝贺、答谢、拜访、慰问、赠礼附言、备忘、访客留话等使用。精美的名片使人印象深刻, 但如果交换名片的时机把握不好或方式不当, 势必会引起尴尬, 甚至会影响他人对你的看法。在商业交往领域,我们必须使用名片,并且还有一定的规矩。名片是让新结识的朋友记住你的姓名、地址及电话号码的一种有效办法,也是保持日后联系的方法。若你的公司没有统一印制名片,可自己制作,印上你的姓名、地址和电话号码。在别人赠给你名片时, 以便互交换。这也是一种非常有效的自我推销手段, 是一种 “有事就打电话给我” 的表达方式。这类名片制作也应该找专业设计师来设计。 13 1.商务名片的计划名片的设计可以体现出一个人的审美情趣,品位和个性,雅秀、俊逸、脱俗、活泼、平和、张扬等个性特征,都能通过方寸之间的字体、布局颜色、材料和内容等展现出来。你的名片不仅旨在向未来的客户介绍你本人和你的公司,还代表着你的职位及职称,更代表你的形象。因此, 一定要精心设计 1.1. 名片的质量、语言和印刷注意事项 1、规格商务人士的名片是有规格的，国际的标准规格是6×10 厘米，国内商务交往的通用规格是5.5×9 厘米。 2、色彩名片的颜色,两种颜色其实是最好的,纸一种颜色,字一种颜色, 最多加上徽记,有些徽记有它特定颜色。名片颜色不要太多。色彩上，商务交往中一般色彩淡雅，要单色，不要花色，一般用选择浅白色的、浅黄色的、浅灰色的、浅蓝色的。 3、图案商务人士名片上一般可以有企业标志、单位的所处位置、本企业的标志性建筑，主打产品。特别不主张印照片。 4、字体, 语言两面用名片适合常在国外做生意的人。名片一面印英文, 另一面印所在国的文字。用标准的印刷体和楷体。还有一点要注意，名片上不要印名人警句之类的话语。 2. 名片的基本内容名片的内容可以叫做三个三, 这是做名片时是不能少的。第一个三,内容一般印在名片的左上角,是归属,就是你的所在单位,三个要点是第一,单位的全称。第二,所在的部门。第三, 企业标志。第二个三,内容一般印在名片的正中间, 这是名片最重要的内容, 是称谓, 就是想让人家怎么称呼你。三个要点是第一,姓名。第二, 职务。行政职务。第三, 学术技术职称。 14 第三个三,内容一般印在名片的右下角,是联络方式。三个要点是第一, 地址, 第二,邮政编码。第三, 办公室电话。现代商务有的时候印电子邮箱网址也可以, 但是一般提供前三项。当国际交流需要用外文时, 一般的情况, 中文和外文名片要各印一面, 不要在同一面上印, 如果纯粹是国内业务, 可以把姓名称谓之类印在一面, 另一面可以印自己单位的业务范围。 3. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 名片的作用名片用作自我介绍,是社交场合最简单的方式,也确有不少好处: 1) 建立今后联系所必须的信息 2)可以使人们在初识时就能充分利用时间交流思想感情, 无需忙于记忆 3)可人们在初识时言行更得体, 不会因要了解对方情况又顾忌触犯别人的私人领地而左右为难, 也不会要介绍自己的身份和职位而引起别人不快 4)使用名片可以不必与他人见面能与其相识。在今天这个快节奏的时代, 名片可以代替正式的拜访。 4. 把握好出示名片的时机历史中就有做事情需要天时、地利、人和的说法，可见时机的重要性，虽然交换名片并不是太重大的事情，但把每件小事做好也能得到意想不到的效果。出示名片还应把握好时机。当初次相识,自我介绍或别人为你介绍时可出示名片;当双方谈得较融洽,表示愿意建立联系时就应出示名片;当双方告辞时,可顺手取出自己的名片递给对方,以示愿结识对方并希望能再次相见,加深对方对你的印象。当你与某人第一次见面时，一般都要赠送一张名片，这是十分得体的礼仪。交换名片通常标志着初次见面的结束。出示名片，表明你有与对方继续保持联络的意向。在展销会开始时，销售经理与客户之间互换名片是一种传统，表示非正式的业务往来已经开始。同样，刚到办公室的来客也会向接待员出示名片，以便被介绍或引见给有关人员。等见到主人时他还要再递上一张名片。在这种情况下，商务名片实质起到了社交名片的作用——既表明 15 了你的身份和你的到来，还显示了你有进行业务往来的意向。在宾客较多的场合，一开始就接受名片可帮助你及早了解来客的身份。比如会议上来了许多代表，而你对他们的姓名职务都不太清楚，那么在会议开始前应向他们索要名片，然后可采用日本对人的习惯，把它们摆放在桌上当座位图使用。去拜访某人时，如果主人没有出示名片，客人可在道别前索要。如果主人的名片就放在桌上的名片盒中，应首先征求同意然后再取出一张。可以递上两张名片；一张给主人，另一张给秘书。当然你也可以索要两张名片，一张存放在你自己的名片夹里，另一张可钉在客户资料里。有事，如果本人不能亲自前往，可以送上名片来“代表”你。比如，送交材料时可附上一张便笺和一张名片；在邮寄商业信函时附上一张名片，以便日后继续联络。不要在吃饭时递上名片,等吃完了再递。不要在私人聚餐会上分发你的名片 (除非有人索要),这样社交活动时你应带上你的名片,以做会混淆商务与社交的界线。参加礼备有建立关系网的机会,但不要把仪一场花园聚会。 II. 中国的商务名片使用礼仪的操作原则 1. 名片在商务交往中有三个不准第一个不准, 名片不能随意涂改。这是你的形象意识, 并不是节约不节约的问题。如电话改号了, 联通变成移动的, 就划掉再写; 电话升位了。7 位改成8 位或者部门换过了。这种事常有, 但是在商务交往中, 强调名片整如脸面, 脸面是不改的, 递出去的名片不能是涂改过的, 否则会贻笑大方。第二个不准,名片不能提供两个以上的头衔。印一大堆喧宾夺主, 主次不分, 而且有蒙人之嫌, 影响你的社会交往, 破坏你的个人形象。如果头衔比较多可准备多种名片, 就是不同的交往对象给不同头衔的名片商务交往中遇到了好朋友没准会给家里的电话, 在中国给的是中国总公司的名片, 在德国给的是德国总公司的名片, 反正能找到你, 不会影响你的业务, 也不会给自己添麻烦。这也是名片的有效使用问题, 第三个不准,名片不提供私宅电话。商务礼仪也是讲究保护个人隐私,有教养, 有身份的人不向别人索取电话号码、私宅电话诸如此类。在商务交往中, 要注意讲公私有别,如因公跟你打交道的,那给你的电话就是办公室的电话, 手机号码不给你, 私宅电话更不给你。 16 2. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 携带名片基层公务员参加正式的交际活动之前，都应随身携带自己的名片，以备交往之用。名片的携带应注意以下三点。一是足量适用。基层公务员携带的名片一定要数量充足，确保够用。所带名片要分门别类，根据不同交往对象使用不同名片。二是完好无损。名片要保持干净整洁，切不可出现折皱、破烂、肮脏、污损、涂改的情况。三是放置到位。名片应统一置于名片夹、公文包或上衣口袋之内，在办公室时还可放于名片架或办公桌内。女士: 名片夹、手包。男士: 名片夹、公文包、上衣口袋。切不可随便放在钱包、裤袋之内。放置名片的位置要固定，以免需要名片时东找西寻，显得毫无准备。 3. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 递交名片虽然递送与接收名片只是一个小小的动作，但是它还是包含了很多重要的东西。关注细节，为自己赢得他人的关注与尊重。不过，交换名片可不是直接把名片递出去这么简单的事，很多人不知道，其实递交名片也是有自己的礼仪的. 3.1. 前期准备 1. 会面前，提前准备好充足的名片。 2. 名片一定要放置于方便取出的位置，切勿半天拿不出来。名片一般放在名片夹，没有名片夹可以直接将名片放置在外套口袋、衬衫上衣口袋、随身公文包。 3.2.交换时间发放名片不要在活动中进行，一般在活动前或者客人离开的时候发，不过最好是在刚见面的时候发，那样更显得尊重。 3.3. 交换顺序 17 一般是：“先客后主，先低后高”。当与多人交换名片时，应以职位高低顺序或由近到远，依次进行，切勿跳跃，免被误认为厚此薄彼。 3.4. 递交姿势递名片进应起身站立，走上前去，递送名片要面带微笑，双手将名片正面对着对方，递给对方。若对方是外宾，最好将名片印有英文的那一面对着对方。将名片递给他人时，应说“这是我的卡片”、“多多关照”、“常联系”等语话，或是先作一下自我介绍。 3.5.发送名片的主意。 a.不要用左手递交名片, 但如果与西方、中方、印度等外国人交换名片只用右手就可以了，与日本人交换用双手。 18 c.不要以手指夹着名片给人 4. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 接受名片接受他人名片时，主要应当作好以下几点： 4.1. 态度谦和接受他人名片时，不论有多忙，都要暂停手中一切事情，并起身站立相迎，面含微笑，双手接过名片。至少也要用右手，而不得使用左手。 4.2. 认真阅读接过名片后，先向对方致谢，然后要将其从头至尾默读一遍，遇有显示对方荣耀的职务、头衔不妨轻读出声，以示尊重和敬佩。若对方名片上的内容有所不明，可当场请教对方。 b.不要将名片背面对着对方或是颠倒着面对对方 19 4.3. 精心存放接到他人名片后，切勿将其随意乱丢乱放、乱揉乱折，而应将其谨慎地置于名片夹、公文包、办公桌或上衣口袋之内，且应与本人名片区别放置 4.4. 有来有往接到名片时记得也顺带把自己的名片递送给对方做到礼尚往来当然如果此时你恰好没有把名片带在身上的话也要及时跟对方表达你的歉意 5. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 索要名片依照惯例，通常情况下最好不要直接开口向他人索要名片。但若想主动结识对方或者有其他原因有必要索取对方到别处拜访时，可相机采取下列办法： 5.1. 互换法即以名片换名片。在主动递上自己的名片后，对方按常理会回给自己一枚他的名片。如果担心对方不回送，可在递上名片时明言此意：“能否有幸与您交换一下名片?” 5.2. 暗示法即用含蓄的语言暗示对方。例如，向尊长索要名片时可说：“请问今后如何向您请教?”向平辈或晚辈表达此意时可说：“请问今后怎样与您联络?” III. 中国商务名片礼仪的注意事项 1.注意事项 1.1 名片礼仪的注意事项 1.到别处拜访时，经上司介绍后，再递出名片。 2.如果是坐着，尽可能起身接受对方递来的名片。 3.辈份较低者，率先以右手递出个人的名片。 4.接受名片时，应以双手去接，并确定其姓名和职务。 5.接受名片后，不宜随手置于桌上。 20 6.不可递出污旧或皱折的名片。 7.名片夹或皮夹置于西装内袋，避免由裤子后方的口袋掏出。 8.尽量避免在对方的名片上书写不相关的东西。 9.不要无意识地玩弄对方的名片。 10.上司在时不要先递交名片，要等上司递上名片后才能递上自己的名片。 1.2. 保存名片时应注意事项: (1) 应将名片收好, 整齐地放在名片夹, 盒或口袋中, 以免名片毁损。破旧名片应尽早丢弃。 (2) 名片夹或皮夾置于西装内袋, 不要由裤子后方的口袋掏出。 (3) 不要在对方的名片上书写不相关的东西, 不要无意识地玩弄对方的名片。 (4) 除非对方要求, 否则不要在年长的主管面前主动出示名片。 (5) 对于陌生人或巧遇的人, 不要过早发送名片, 因为这种热情有推销自己之嫌。 (6) 不要在一群陌生人中传发自己的名片, 这会让人误以为你想推销什么物品, 反而不受重视, 在商业社交活动中要有选择地提供名片, 才不致使人以为你在替公司搞宣传､拉业务, 同时处在一群彼此不认识的人当中。最好让别人先发送名片,名片的发送可在刚见面或告别时,但如果自己即将发表意见,则在说话之前发名片给周围人,可帮助他们认识你。 2. 中越商业交往的文化对比由于中越两国的文化有很多相似之处，所以递交名片的礼仪也相差无几。但是越南人有的时候不会注意名片，而在商务交往中，中国人很讲究名片，所以和中国人交往时我们应该先准备自己的名片。名片时，双手都要带上，切记不要在别人的名片上写任何东西，除非对方自己建议。 21 参考材料 [1]曹艺(2013).商务礼仪(第二版).清华大学出版社. [2]看图说话教程(上册)(2007).北京语言大学出版社. [3] Trương Quang Huy(张光辉)(2020). “Nghệ thuật giao tiếp để thành công”. Nxb Lao Động(劳动出版社). [4] 问候. 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%97%AE%E5%80%99 [5] 名片礼仪. 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E5%90%8D%E7%89%87%E7%A4%BC%E4%BB%AA/ 5162667?fbclid=IwAR28CAtZeBxWT3Gm3y- dMHCkH208qG7MLEVgluhL1fbRh_OK4eci3UzvmM [6] 路遇问候与回应礼仪. 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 https://www.ruiwen.com/liyichangshi/1617582.html [7] 关于中国人的称呼_中国交际文化谈(一). 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/268153165.pdf [8]商务交往中交换名片的基本礼仪介绍. 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 http://www.ruiwen.com/liyichangshi/1395513.html?fbclid=IwAR2ts9BZ_S7m7WGjfMk lan2S56a-ErGt4feoq8xpTpVKDY6TcP5Qnuk0BTg [9] 递交名片的礼仪常识名片礼仪的注意事项. 引用日期2022/11/25 存于 http://m.kankanmi.com/news/wwe/018994.html?fbclid=IwAR3owCMztrT2N1IC12vMV dRx2CQkPFb0eVA_ejMUreCaiegKU3Ua1gkaWBU 22 Bảng công nhiệm vụ làm bài Nội dung Phụ trách Nội dung Phụ trách Bìa Mơ 第二章：名片使用礼仪目录 Trang I. 有关中国商务名片使用礼仪的相关理论 Mơ 选择意义 Giang II. 中国的商务名片使用礼仪的操作原则研究方法 Hoài 1.名片在商务交往中有三个不准 Mơ 研究范围 Trang 2. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 携带名片 Mơ 第一章：问候礼仪 I. 有关中国商务问候礼仪的相关理论 Hoài, Trang 3.商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 递交名片 Giang II. 中国的商务问候礼仪的相关论文 4. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 接受名片 Giang 1. 问候的方式 Hoài 5. 商务礼仪中名片礼仪: 索要名片 Giang 2. 问候的内容 Hoài 6. 使用名片的禁忌 Giang 3. 不同形式的问候 Trang III. 中国商务名片礼仪的注意事项 Giang, Mơ III. 中国商务问候礼仪的注意事项 Hoài, Trang 参考材料 Hoài 23	23,391
科学社会主义新编 (李济惠，张广凤主编) (Z-Library).pdf	[General Information] 书名=科学社会主义新编作者=李济惠，张广凤主编页数=403 SS号=13060083 DX号= 出版日期=1990.03 出版社=哈尔滨：黑龙江人民出版社书名目录绪论一、科学社会主义的研究对象和主要内容二、科学社会主义的创立三、研究社会主义社会的发展规律，是当代研究科学社会主义的重要课题第一编无产阶级夺取政权的一般规律第一章无产阶级的历史使命第一节社会主义代替资本主义的历史必然性一、资本主义生产方式的矛盾运动必然导致社会主义二、当代发达资本主义国家出现的新情况改变不了资本主义必然灭亡的命运三、社会主义代替资本主义是一个长期曲折的历史过程第二节无产阶级的特性和历史使命一、无产阶级是人类历史上最伟大的阶级二、无产阶级的历史使命是埋葬资本主义、建设社会主义、实现共产主义第三节无产阶级反对资产阶级的斗争一、无产阶级反对资产阶级的斗争是变革资本主义的直接动力二、无产阶级斗争的发展过程三、无产阶级反对资产阶级斗争的基本形式第二章无产阶级政党第一节无产阶级政党的性质和作用一、无产阶级政党的产生二、无产阶级政党的性质和指导思想三、无产阶级政党的领导是无产阶级革命事业胜利的根本保证第二节无产阶级政党的组织原则和作风一、无产阶级政党的组织原则二、无产阶级政党的优良作风第三章无产阶级革命第一节无产阶级革命的根源、条件和特点一、帝国主义时代无产阶级革命的必然性二、无产阶级革命的客观形势和主观条件三、无产阶级革命的特征第二节无产阶级革命的道路一、暴力革命是无产阶级革命的一般规律二、革命和平发展的可能性第三节无产阶级革命的同盟军一、无产阶级必须建立巩固的工农联盟二、无产阶级革命必须争取一切可以争取的同盟者三、无产阶级革命必须和被压迫民族联合起来第四章无产阶级领导的民族民主革命第一节帝国主义时代民族民主革命的地位和作用一、民族民主革命是世界无产阶级革命的一部分二、民族民主革命是摧毁帝国主义的重要力量第二节无产阶级领导的民族民主革命的性质和道路一、无产阶级领导的民族民主革命是反帝反封建的新民主主义革命二、新民主主义革命必须建立无产阶级领导的以工农联盟为基础的统一战线第三节无产阶级领导的民族民主革命的前途一、无产阶级领导的民族民主革命必然转变为社会主义革命二、中国走社会主义道路的历史必然性第五章无产阶级革命的战略和策略第一节战略策略是无产阶级解放斗争的重要武器一、战略策略的主要内容二、战略策略的重要作用三、制定战略策略的指导思想和客观依据第三节战略策略的基本原则一、当前斗争和长远目标相结合二、原则的坚定性和策略的灵活性相结合三、战略上藐视敌人，战术上重视敌人四、团结一切可以团结的力量，孤立和打击最主要的敌人第二编无产阶级建立社会主义制度的一般规律第六章无产阶级专政第一节无产阶级专政的必然性和历史任务一、阶级斗争必然导致无产阶级专政二、过渡时期的国家只能是无产阶级专政三、社会主义社会仍然必须坚持无产阶级专政四、无产阶级专政的历史任务第二节无产阶级专政是新型的国家政权一、无产阶级专政是工人阶级领导的，以工农联盟为基础的新型民主和新型专政的国家政权二、人民民主专政实质上是无产阶级专政三、无产阶级专政国家具有多种形式第七章社会主义制度的建立第一节从资本主义到社会主义的过渡时期一、从资本主义到社会主义之间必须有一个过渡时期二、过渡时期的阶级和阶级斗争三、过渡时期的历史任务第二节生产资料私有制的社会主义改造一、社会主义改造的必要性二、社会主义改造的形式和道路第三节社会主义的基本特征和优越性一、社会主义社会的基本特征二、社会主义制度的优越性第三编工人阶级建设社会主义、实现共产主义的一般规律第八章社会主义初级阶段的理论第一节社会主义初级阶段理论的形成及现实意义一、社会主义初级阶段的含义和基本特征二、社会主义初级阶段理论的提出及其现实意义第二节社会主义初级阶段的理论和党的基本路线一、我国处在社会主义初级阶段的历史必然性二、社会主义初级阶段的主要矛盾、根本任务和指导方针三、党在社会主义初级阶段的基本路线第九章社会主义经济建设第一节社会主义经济建设的必要性一、社会主义物质基础是现代化大机器工业二、经济建设是社会主义建设的中心任务第二节社会主义建设的根本指导原则一、从各国的国情出发，走自己的路二、按客观经济规律办事三、坚持自力更生，实行对外开放四、改革不适应生产力发展的经济体制第十章社会主义精神文明建设第一节社会主义精神文明的基本内容和根本特征一、社会主义精神文明的基本内容二、社会主义精神文明的根本特征第二节社会主义精神文明建设在社会主义建设中的地位和作用一、社会主义精神文明是社会主义社会的重要特征二、社会主义精神文明建设是社会主义建设的一项重要战略任务第三节建设社会主义精神文明的途径一、加强马克思主义的理论研究和宣传教育工作二、加强共产主义思想和道德建设三、大力发展教育科学文化事业四、充分发挥知识分子的作用五、加强党的领导，端正党的作风第十一章社会主义民主政治建设第一节社会主义民主是最高类型的民主一、社会主义民主的含义和特征二、社会主义民主与资本主义民主的根本区别第二节建设社会主义民主的必要性一、没有民主就没有社会主义二、社会主义民主政治建设是社会主义建设的根本任务和根本目标之一三、社会主义民主政治建设是建设社会主义物质文明和精神文明的保证第三节建设社会主义民主政治的途径一、改革国家的政治体制和领导体制，完善社会主义的基本政治制度二、把民主贯彻到政治、经济、文化和社会生活的各个方面三、加强法制建设，逐步实现民主的制度化、法律化四、彻底肃清专制主义，坚决反对无政府主义和极端民主化第十二章社会主义的改革第一节社会主义改革的依据和必要性一、社会主义改革的客观依据二、社会主义改革的理论依据三、社会主义改革的必要性第二节社会主义改革的目的和特点一、社会主义改革的目的二、社会主义改革的特点第三节社会主义改革的条件和基本经验一、改革必须坚持四项基本原则二、改革必须具备的基本条件三、社会主义国家改革的经验教训第十三章社会主义法制建设第一节社会主义法制的基本内容和特征一、社会主义法制的含义和基本特征二、社会主义法制的基本要求和主要内容第二节健全社会主义法制的意义一、健全社会主义法制是建设社会主义民主的重要途径二、健全社会主义法制是建设社会主义物质文明和精神文明的重要保证三、健全社会主义法制是维护社会秩序防止腐败的重要工具第三节健全社会主义法制的指导原则和途径一、健全社会主义法制的指导原则二、健全社会主义法制的基本途径第十四章社会主义时期执政党的建设第一节党在社会主义事业中的地位和作用一、党是社会主义事业的领导核心二、党的领导的本质和方式三、坚持党的领导是社会主义事业胜利的根本保证第二节社会主义时期执政党建设的必要性和基本要求一、社会主义时期执政党建设的必要性二、社会主义时期执政党建设的基本要求第三节社会主义时期执政党建设的主要内容和途径一、社会主义时期执政党建设的主要内容二、社会主义时期执政党建设的途径第十五章社会主义社会的科学管理第一节社会主义社会是科学管理的社会一、社会主义社会科学管理的含义和内容二、社会主义社会管理的性质和特点三、社会主义社会管理的基本职能四、社会主义社会管理的主体第二节社会主义社会科学管理的意义和基本原则一、社会主义社会必须实行科学管理二、社会主义科学管理的基本原则第十六章社会主义时期的民族问题和宗教问题第一节社会主义时期的民族问题一、社会主义民族的形成和发展趋势二、社会主义时期民族问题的实质三、社会主义时期民族问题的基本任务四、社会主义国家解决民族问题的基本原则和基本政策第二节社会主义时期的宗教问题一、宗教的产生和发展二、社会主义时期宗教存在的社会历史条件三、社会主义时期在宗教问题上的基本政策第十七章社会主义时期的基本力量和统一战线第一节社会主义时期的基本力量一、工人阶级是领导阶级二、农民阶级是工人阶级的可靠同盟军三、知识分子是工人阶级的一部分第二节社会主义时期的统一战线一、统一战线是社会主义革命和建设的法宝二、新时期统一战线的性质、任务和对象三、巩固和发展广泛的爱国统一战线四、“一国两制”是对统一战线理论的发展第十八章社会主义国家的对外政策第一节社会主义国家对外关系的基本原则一、坚持独立自主原则二、坚持和平共处五项原则三、坚持爱国主义和国际主义相结合的原则第二节社会主义国家对外关系的基本任务一、反对霸权主义，维护世界和平二、加强同第三世界的团结与合作三、发展同世界各国的关系和经济文化交流四、发展同各国共产党和工人党的关系第十九章无产阶级的最终奋斗目标是实现共产主义社会制度第一节共产主义社会是人类最美好的社会一、共产主义和社会主义是同一社会形态成熟程度不同的两个发展阶段二、共产主义社会的基本特征第二节实现共产主义社会的历史必然性一、共产主义社会是人类历史发展的必然归宿二、从社会主义向共产主义过渡是一个历史过程第三节为实现共产主义而奋斗一、实现共产主义的基本条件二、为实现共产主义而奋斗后记	6,209
1 文献综述例.pdf	文献综述（例文）通过收集与阅读文献，有关这个题目的已有研究大致包括以下两个角度：（1）关于中国饮食文化的对外传播杜莉（2011）《清代中国饮食文化西传的内容及途径》从原料与餐饮器具、饮食习俗与礼仪、中国菜点及制法三方面具体总结了清代中国饮食西传的途径与过程，文章认为清代销量巨大的茶叶和瓷器与不断发展的中餐馆是清代中后期中国饮食三个最出色的文化使者，对西方人的饮食生活及文化产生了积极而深远的影响。周素文（2020）《中国饮食的跨文化传播》对2016 年九州出版社出版的《中国食谱》进行了细致的述评。文章从跨文化传播角度分析此书的内容模式、作者风格、文化冲突和融合、传播效果和启示，为当下如何讲好中国饮食故事提供借鉴。杨振（2022）《饮食文化的对外传播分析》总结了中国饮食文化的内涵与特征，包括视觉美、味觉美、地域性、文化与情感等。文章从推动地域文化传播弘扬、彰显不同饮食观念、调动人们对中国文化的兴趣等方面讨论了饮食文化对中国文化传播的影响，并在此基础上提出饮食文化的对外传播策略：整合饮食文化传播方式、学习借鉴国外饮食文化的传播经验、提升饮食文化传播人员的涉外服务能力。文章提倡更多的饮食文化传播者走出国门宣传饮食文化，让更多的海外人士了解并喜欢中国饮食文化。李娟（2022）的书评《日语教学中中国饮食文化的融入》认为，《中国饮食文化（第3 版）》一书详细介绍了中国传统饮食文化，探索了中国饮食文化的发展历程。结合该书内容，日语教学与中国饮食文化的融合发展应通过三种方式实现，包括更新教材内容，增加饮食文化知识，特别是中日差异的部分；积极创新教学模式，开设更多的饮食文化知识选修课，同时推动线上教学；高校还要打造专业的师资队伍。岩間一宏在其2019 年的著作《中国料理と近現代日本――食と嗜好の文化交流史》中追溯史料，指出中国料理传入日本可追溯到江户时代。在当时，日本长崎，神户，大阪等地都有中国料理的身影。在现代日本，中国料理更是普遍存在，并且很多在日本的中国料理都是由正宗的中国料理改良而成。比如“肉丝汤面”，“炸酱面”等。本书中还详细记载了很多关于中国料理在各个时期的传播特征。包括由使用器具，使用餐具等的一些记载。此著作在中国料理传播史的研究中非常值得借鉴。（2）中日两国教材中的饮食文化研究以及文化对比研究姜江（2014）《中日中级汉语文化教材对比分析——以<文化全景>和<中国文化·中国事情>为例》运用比较分析法，从针对性、科学性、实用性和趣味性这四个方面对两部教材进行了系统的比较。论文认为中国文化教材目前种类繁多且编写体例自由多样，着力积极弘扬民族文化，但普遍存在教材内容厚古薄今且偏重知识文化、单向传输中华文化忽视文化差异比较等不足。相较而言，日本文化教材趣味性更强，且有多样的地方性特色教材，值得我们借鉴。王佳佳（2015）《初级汉语口语教材中饮食话题研究》运用定量分析法、文献分析法和对比分析法，对《汉语纵横》等八套对外汉语初级口语教材的饮食话题结构、内容、练习以及文化因素等方面进行了对比研究，并提出建议，认为教材中应增加饮食话题的篇幅，尽量将饮食话题安排在前面，练习设计上应结合场景等信息。田梦婕（2016）《中高级留学生阶段对外汉语饮食文化教材与教学研究》对 8 本文化教材中的饮食文化内容做了细致的梳理，从话题、饮食惯制、饮食词汇与释义、习题编写等方面加以比较，认为现有的中级文化教材中的饮食文化内容编排主要集中在浅层的饮食文化领域。高级教材中的饮食文化内容则应在中级的基础上，就饮食文化内部更为具体的食文化与食理念进行探索。论文还就教师文化素养、教材选取、跨文化教学等因素分析饮食文化在对外汉语中的教学，并结合案例提出建议。范中予等（2021）（《立足国际汉语教材出版，开展中华饮食文化精准传播》强调，国际汉语教材是中华饮食文化国际传播的重要载体。论文选取三个系列的国际汉语教材，对其中的中华饮食文化元素及主题课程加以统计分析，并总结其内容编写和知识传播特征。在此基础上，论文对提升国际汉语教材内容编写和出版质量提出建议，包括文化内容编写要把握复现频率，循序渐进地传播中华饮食文化；由点及面，以饮食文化为核心带动具有关联性的中华文化内容传播等。丁武科（2022）的硕士论文《日本初级汉语综合课教材中国形象研究》统计分析了国民、社会、文化、教育、地理、经济等多方面维度内所展示的中国形象，其中关于饮食文化的内容与我们的研究紧密相关。文章认为，教材中提到苗族有专门的银饰服装，满汉之间也有各自拿手的菜肴，东西南北口味各有不同，这体现的就是民俗的多元性。教材中“壮大な宴会（豪华的宴会）、生きるために食はもっとも重要である（为了生存，食是最最重要的事情）、一家団欒の食事をする（做阖家欢乐的美食）”等词语描绘一个中国人“以食为天”、以“食”为基、以“食”固情的饮食文化形象。小川快之（2009）《中国語教育における中国文化紹介の試み（中国语教育中关于中国文化介绍的试论）》中，详细介绍了对千叶大学选修中国语的学生的调查。从整体结果来看，对饮食文化的介绍和利用歌曲来学习汉语这两个项目对提高学生的汉语学习热情最有作用。同时，作者指出，近年来,许多研究者对大学的中国语教育内容（语法、词汇等的内容）进行研究，探讨了在日本的中文教学法所存在的不少问题，但是对于中国文化介绍的研究较少，如何使中国文化的教学与中国语（语法、词汇等的内容）的教学联动起来，是今后研究的一个大方向。阿部美惠子在其2015 年的论文，《初級レベルの日本事情クラスにおける教材紹介:日本語による食文化の講義の理解促進のために》中，以关西学院大学的中国赴日交换生为调查对象，在2013 年秋季的日语选修课中调查了学生是如何学习和理解日本饮食文化的。此科目使用的教材是《现代日本文化1》。阿部指出，班级上存在的问题是，同一班级日语水平的差异很大，特别是有一些学生出国留学的时候只有学了平假名和片假名，他们对日语了解甚少，这会影响他们对课本中文化要素的理解。馬叢慧（2020）《大学における中国語教育に見る文化的要素の考察―日本で作成された初級・初中級テキストを中心に（大学中国语教育中文化要素的考察——以日本的中国语初级/初中级为中心）》以2010 年至2020 年在日本本土出版、大学汉语教师编写的9 组初級・初中級共计18 册汉语教材为研究对象，着重考察了其中的文化元素。可以发现，教科书中包含的文化元素十分丰富，在导入形式上初级以单词和日文解释为主，大部分教材对文化话题并不进行深入的解释与引导。而初中级教科书在内容和导入形式上则丰富得多。另外也可以发现，在日本的外语教材编写中，比起强调外国文化的特征，作者更多地站在多文化共生的角度，倾向于强调外国文化与本国文化（中国文化）的比较与传承。孫潔（2022）《日本人大学生の期末レポートを通してみる中国の食文化への理解（从日本大学生的期末报告看其对中国饮食文化的理解）》以学生期末报告内容为基准，考查了学习者对中国文化的理解。结论有如下3 点：第一，对日本学生来说，比起其他文化要素，饮食文化的学习在对中国文化理解上起至关重要的作用。第二，在授课的过程中，讲师通过中日对比的方式，加深了学生对中国饮食文化的理解，也让学生拥有了一次回看本国文化的机会。第三，此论文在新冠时期完成，在关于文化课程的讲授上，线下课程的效果远高于线上课程。在教室中，学生能够就文化的问题进行激烈的讨论，这一点有助于深化学生对文化要素的理解。市川则文在其2023 年的论文《文化遺産としての「食」を学ぶ小学校歴史学習への展望一主に教科書の記載内容の分析を通して一》中，研究了教科书中与食相关的内容是如何编写的，来探讨如何学习作为文化遗产的食品。提出作为非物质文化遗产的日本料理意识往往并不受重视。此论文从过去，现在，将来的三个角度对“食文化”的学习方式进行探讨。	3,344
The Market Strategies of Apple in China.pdf	The Market Strategies of Apple in China Bingyan Lu Malvern College Chengdu *Corresponding author. Email: 1308700949@qq.com ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to find the Apple' marketing strategies in Chinese market, one of the most successful smartphone brands in the world. This paper will give the details of Apple marketing strategies in China, a marketing strategy refers to a business's overall game plan for reaching prospective consumers and turning them into customers of their products or services. A marketing strategy contains the company’s value proposition, key brand messaging, data on target customer demographics, and other high-level elements. A thorough marketing strategy covers product, price, place, and promotion. The methodology is literature review that the market strategies in China and why Apple can keep the lead in China smartphone market. Apple had use a good market strategy, whether in attracting customers or selling the product. Keywords: Apple, Market strategies, Chinese smartphone market. 1. INTRODUCTION Apple is the biggest phone producer in the world, it has companies in most countries, and this essay will discuss the market strategies in China. In China, the smartphone market has developed rapidly in recent years, whether it is domestic or foreign products. Competition in the Chinese mobile phone market is also increasing, but Apple still in the first place, so whether it is from product quality assurance or marketing strategy, Apple is still in a leading position. In April 1976, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne founded Apple. In January 1977, the company’s name was officially identified as Apple Computer, Inc. The first time Apple sale their product was On October 30, 2009, China Unicom’s iPhone 3G was officially launched on Beijing Shimao Tianjie. When Apple first entered the Chinese market in 2009, its brand awareness in China was not high. The author thinks the main reason is that the iPhone 3GS product itself does not have strong appeal. And there are no characteristics, and there are relatively backward places. One point behind is that it does not support WiFi. Because 2009 is an important stage of my country's WiFi development, after all, it is a technology that is about to be introduced, so many people are looking forward to it. The iPhone 4 was really hot. When Jobs opened the screen, the whole world was excited. It can be said that the iPhone 4 is an Apple mobile phone that makes Chinese customers crazy. This is due to the desire for the latest technology. October 28, 2021 Apple today announced the results for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2021 ending September 25, 2021. The company announced that its September quarter revenue reached a record US$83.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 29%, and its diluted earnings per share for the quarter were US$1.24. 2. PRODUCT STRATEGIES OF APPLE IN BUSINESS According to the Yang Ying’s essay on the marketing strategies of Apple iOS product for business in China, realize the marketing strategy of enterprise application product portfolio[2]. IBM and Apple reach an agreement they can provide the data calculate for company or the business, as a result we can see the most of bank, insurance and finical industries they use Apple more than other technology companies’ products. According to Baker and Hart(2007) stated that the product strategy defines what your product should achieve and how that help firms to contribute their profit[3]. The product strategy is composed of a variety of sequential process in order for the vision to be effectively achieved. The company must be clear in terms of the target market of the product in order for them to plan the activities needed in order to reach the destination and to achieve its goals. Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, volume 211 Proceedings of the 2022 7th International Conference on Financial Innovation and Economic Development (ICFIED 2022) Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Atlantis Press International B.V. This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license -http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. 1129 Wei, et al. mention about the product strategy for Apple in essay[4]. “The adhocracy firm values innovation, novelty, and creativity as well as risk taking. These traits can operate independently of market responsiveness, motivating adhocracy firms to make product strategy changes as they fit. For example, over the years Apple has introduced a range of radically innovative products that, for the most part, have succeeded and set the trend for the industry to follow” 2.1. Product Ecological Chain An ecosystem is defined as a biological community of interacting organisms. In tech terms, this means a group of devices with software to create one collaborative network. Many companies use this to create a ‘family ’ of products but no company have mastered it like Apple with the Apple Ecosystem. Third-party products are not usually compatible with Apple products and all products belonging to Apple portfolio work well with each-other. At the same time, the ecosystem of Apple is much more than just a collection of more than 1,5 billion active devices or services that work seamlessly[5]. We all know the Apple's product ecosystem is one of the best among all technology companies. iPad, iPhone, iMac, MacBook, iWatch… the user can use iClouds to save the documents on one type of products and the user can see or use it on the other products, because the iClouds is a private cloud space makes it easy for Apple users to share personal data between different devices. The consumer will consider the convenient and the quality of the technology product, most Apple user are students or office worker, so they can use the ecological chain of Apple mobile phones to quickly transfer files and data which can save the time to find the data line. For example, airdrop, Apple TV, face time, iCloud, AirPlay and other[6]. Air Drop can send the documents straight to other Apple devices of others, steps such as copying and mailing are omitted. Apple made a lot of things convenient for consumers, so consumers will be attracted by the Apple products, and consumers will become Apple fan. 3. SALES CHANNELS According to the essay ‘Research on Apple’s marketing strategy in China’ written by Wei Qingxian there are five types sales channels 1[7]. Apple store, Apple store is set up by the Apple American and in 2008 the first Apple store was set up in Beijing. Until 18/09/2021 there are 43 Apple store in China (mainland), in the Apple store there are staffs help you and introduce the products to the customer, and sometimes there will be 1 to 1 training. Those service are all free. After Apple store brought to China, the quality of service has improved a lot, and Apple could use the personalized service to attracting customer. And Apple will be training their staff. The second sales channel is online store. In recent years, online shopping APP is constantly developing and improving, the APP like Taobao and Jindong all have the apple store, customer can buy the products on the Apple official website, which save the time on choosing mobile phones in the store and the time travelling to the shop. After the release of iPhone 13, more than 3 million people booked the iPhone 13 series on Tmall, and according to the Jindong, Chinese consumers have booked more than 2 million new Apple iPhone 13 series products on JD.com, because there are too many people want to buy the iPhone 13 online, Apple's official website was unable to connect to the apple store page or stuck. The third sales channel is the agents, and those agents are the controller of T2 dealer, T2 dealer cannot book the products from the Apple, they need to book the products from those agents. The other sales channel is the three major operators, China Mobile Communications Group Co., Ltd, China Telecom, and China Unicom, Apple will provide the customize phone to the three major operators. Because these three companies, the Apple could become so popular in China, at first the Apple only cooperate with China Unicom, when Apple see the benefit, they choose to cooperate with other two operators, so Apple use the three major operators cultivated many loyal customers. 4. PRODUCT SALES According to the financial report released by Apple at the end of October last year, in fiscal year 2020, the company's revenue was 274.515 billion U.S. dollars (about 1.770 billion yuan), an increase of 5.51% from last year; net profit was 57.411 billion U.S. dollars (about 370.3 billion yuan). RMB), an increase of 3.9% year-on- year. In terms of growth rate, Apple's business growth has been slow in the past two years, and the growth rate of revenue and net profit has fallen to single digits. From the perspective of the main business, the iPhone mobile phone is still Apple ’ s largest business, accounting for 50.2%; followed by the service business, accounting for 19.6%, including advertising, AppleCare, digital content, iCloud and other businesses; again, wearable devices, The household equipment and accessories business accounted for 11.2%; the rest were businesses such as Mac and iPad. 4.1. Price Strategy The price for Apple is different from other phones companies in China in consumer markets, because the Apple can set a higher price, but because the influence of Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, volume 211 1130 Apple products, brand effect, there are still people to buy the Apple, especially the price-insensitive Apple fans. But in the enterprise market, most of phone can satisfy the needs for the customer, so the price will be elastic, as a result the cheaper smartphones are more competitive, for example, the iPad market, iPad sales have been declining, because there are Apple’s investment in the iPad is lower than that of other Apple products. As a result, the iPad’s innovation is also small, and there are more and more competitors in the tablet market. The impact of other brands such as Samsung, Microsoft and Huawei are increased. So, Apple should adopt a price strategy that can expand its market share. In 2021, at Apple's autumn conference on September 15th, the price of the iPhone 13 series was announced, which attracted many fans who watched the live broadcast to cheer. While the machine is upgraded in terms of chip and camera, the price of the iPhone 12 is also reduced by 300 yuan to 800 yuan. Generally speaking, the iPhone is a smart phone product with a higher retention rate. According to the Manmanmai report, the iPhone 12 model lost an average of 34.5% of its value in the six months after it went on the market. Compared with the iPhone 11, which lost 43.8% of its value within half a year, the value retention rate of the iPhone 12 is particularly prominent. However, after the release of iPhone13, the price of iPhone12 was cut by thousands of dollars at every turn. According to the slowly selling price comparison platform, on the evening of September 16, the prices of iPhone12 series products such as the iPhone12 Pro 128G version on JD.com and the Vipshop iPhone12 Pro Max 256G version showed "historical lows". Among them, the iPhone12 Pro 128G version of Jingdong Mall maintained the original price of 8,499 yuan from the release date to the end of February this year. Until the release of the iPhone13, the product price was still fluctuating near the original price. But on September 16, the product price fell to 6,999 yuan. From early July to September 14, the iPhone 12 in Taobao’s Apple Store’s official flagship store started at 6299 yuan, but on September 15, the lowest price on this page fell to 5199 yuan. 4.2. Other Strategy Apple will give discount to the students, student can use their student id to get a lower price, so the students become one of the most important customer population for the Apple[9]. . Hunger Marketing is the common strategy that Apple used, "Hunger marketing", applied to the commercial promotion of goods or services, refers to the fact that the supplier of goods intends to lower the output in order to control the relationship between supply and demand, create a "false appearance" that exceeds supply, maintain the image of the product and maintain a higher price and profit margin of the products[8]. When Apple want to release a new product, they will promote early, as a result the consumer will cannot wait to buy the products. Generally, Apple will only pre-sell products on its official website or on Tmall and Taobao, after the products release, it will sell out in half an hour or shorter, if this happens, the fans will wait for two or more week to purchase the new products. Maybe in some directly operated store, you can see the fans tent in front of the door, or seat in front of the door at 00:00 o’clock waiting to buy new products, Apple is the only one company who can do this. Because the Apple are doing great by using the hunger marketing, other company are following Apple, such as Xiaomi and Huawei. As we know the word of mouth is important to a company especially for those big company that sales commodities. There are now a large number of Apple fans, and they are the most excited and favorite people whenever Apple launches a new product. Because Apple has such a group of fans, Apple has never lacked a good reputation, nor is it afraid that no one will promote its products, so fans will make their friends buy Apple phones. Therefore, when new products are released, Apple is always the hot spot of public opinion and the focus of the media. In the Apple Store, people can try the real phones and other product, they can touch the product and use the product, people can try the AirPods, take a photo by iPhone, draw the picture by iPad. Apple are always tried to satisfy the consumer. In the Apple store consumer can understand Apple’s product philosophy, there will be one-to-one staff to take customers to understand and compare the differences between different models. Because of the interior decoration and the service attitude of the clerk, customers will be very satisfied with their feelings and experiences in Apple's direct-operated stores. Use new product launches to create marketing opportunities, Apple has two launch events every year. In 15th Sep 2021, Apple release iPhone 13, new iWatch and iPad[10]. All the release conference are global live broadcast, before the launch events, every media will speculate on new products, after the launch events the news and medias are all report the new products, and on Instagram, WeChat and Twitter are all have the post about new products. Promotion is a classic marketing model, in 1st January 2017, Apple launches promotional activities, if consumer purchase the MAC or the iPhone, they can get a new Beats Solo 3 for free, it’s the first time that Apple company make this decision in China market. In 2020 the Apple launched a back-to-school campaign for the university student, if students buy a designated product, they will be awarding a new AirPods and the teachers can also join the event. This is also Apple's purpose to give back to its users. Advances in Economics, Business and Management Research, volume 211 1131 5. CONCLUSION From above analyses it can be said that Apple's marketing model can be said to be a model in the industry, under Apple’s marketing model, not only its own profits have increased, but Apple has also attracted a large number of loyal customers through marketing. In the future if Apple keeps using its own marketing model, it will always be a leader in the mobile phone market. But there are also somethings that Apple could improve. 1, accelerate the speed of innovation, because nowadays most of the phone producer, they can release new phones in a short period of time. 2, They need increase the investment on iPad, because there are more and more company want to challenge Apple. Apple's marketing model is worth learning from all electronic equipment companies. REFERENCES [1] Apple. (2021, December 2). Apple announces fourth quarter results. Apple Newsroom (Mainland China)- Official website. https://www.apple.com.cn/newsroom/2021/10/appl e-reports-fourth-quarter-results/ [2] Yang Yin. (2015) Apple’s iOS product marketing strategy in China. Shanghai Jiaotong University. [3] Baker, M. J., & Hart, S. J. (2007). Product Strategy and Management (2nd ed.). Pearson College Div. [4] Wei, Y., Samiee, S., & Lee, R. P. (2013). The influence of organic organizational cultures, market responsiveness, and product strategy on firm performance in an emerging market. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(1), 49–70. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-013-0337-6 [5] Potuck, M., & Potuck, M. (2020, January 28). Apple hits 1.5 billion active devices with ~80% of recent iPhones and iPads running iOS 13. 9to5Mac. https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/28/apple-hits-1-5- billion-active-devices-with-80-of-recent-iphones- and-ipads-running-ios-13/ [6] Newsroom. (2020, December 10). The Apple Ecosystem. 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前景化理论下的手机广告语研究_赵香会.pdf	分类号： H052 单位代码： 10720 密级：公开学号：2005010204 硕士学位论文前景化理论下的手机广告语研究 A Study on the Mobile Phone Advertising Language under the Foregrounding Theory 论文作者：赵香会指导教师、职称：李丹副教授学科、专业名称：语言学及应用语言学研究方向：汉语言文字应用二○二三年六月 I 摘要广告语是广告的灵魂，旨在向广告接受者宣传产品信息或服务，在短时间内吸引广告接受者的注意力，劝说其产生购买行为。因此，广告创作者会运用多种手段对语言进行加工，使其具有新颖性和突出性，凸显于广告接受者面前，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。前景化就是一种重要的语言加工手段，它的实质是打破语言的自动化和机械化，将语言从背景中凸现出来，使其变得陌生化，其中背景是广告接受者所普遍接受的常规的语言系统，而被凸现出来的语言特征是对常规语言系统的违背或加强。本文基于前景化理论，从语音、词汇、语法等不同层面对手机广告语中存在的语言偏离和语言平行现象进行分析，探析手机广告语中前景化的语言特征，从广告创作者、广告接受者、广告语语境和广告语自身等方面对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析，进而探究前景化理论在手机广告语中的实用性，拓展该理论的应用领域，同时为手机广告语的撰写及研究提供新视角。本研究从手机官方网站和淘宝、京东等购物网站上选取2018 年-2022 年近五年来 1000 余条宣传手机的广告语作为语料，以前景化理论为基础，对手机广告语中存在的语言偏离和语言平行现象进行解析。通过对选择的语料进行分析，发现中文手机广告语中前景化的语言形式主要是通过语言偏离和语言平行两种手段实现的，其中语言偏离主要包括语音偏离、词汇偏离、语法偏离和语义偏离。广告语创作者通过对标准语言常规进行有意的违背，可以增强语言的表达效果，获得广告接受者的青睐，促使其产生购买行为。手机广告语中的语言平行主要包括语音平行、词汇平行和语法平行。广告语创作者通过对语言常规进行过度重复选择，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。前景化理论在手机广告语中的作用主要表现为赋予语言新的形式和意义，激发接受者的阅读兴趣；延长接受者的阅读时间，加深接受者对文本主题的理解；增强语言的表达效果，加深接受者的记忆；推动语言的发展，满足接受者的审美需求。因此，前景化理论中的语言偏离和语言平行可以满足广告的主要目标，吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使购买行为的发生。论文共四章。绪论部分主要交代选题背景、研究现状、研究意义及创新、语料来源及研究方法。第一章介绍了前景化理论的发展、语言偏离和语言平行两种前景化形式，对手机广告语中前景化的功能进行分析。第二章结合具体例子从语音、词汇、语法和语 II 义四个方面对收集到的手机广告语进行语言偏离方面的分析。语音偏离主要表现为谐音偏离、叠音偏离、拟声偏离和停顿偏离；词汇偏离表现为词形偏离和词义偏离；语法偏离方面主要从词法和句法两个角度进行探析；语义方面的偏离主要表现为辞格的使用，具体分析其中所涉及的比喻、夸张、拟人、通感、仿拟、双关、借代等七个辞格。第三章从语音、词汇、语法三个层面对手机广告语中的语言平行进行分析。语音上的平行主要表现为头韵和尾韵；词汇平行主要通过重复来实现；语法平行则表现为小规模平行和大规模平行。第四章从广告创作者、广告接受者、广告语语境和广告语自身等方面对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析。关键词：手机广告语；前景化理论；偏离；平行 III Abstract Advertising language are the soul of advertisements, aiming to promote product information or services to the advertising receiver, attract their attention in a short time and persuade them to make a purchase. Therefore, the creator of an advertisement will use various means to process the language to make it novel and outstanding, to highlight it in front of the advertising receiver, to stimulate the interest of the advertising receiver in reading, and to enhance the expression effect of the language. Foregrounding is an important means of language processing. Its essence is to break the automation and mechanization of language, to bring out the language from the background, and to make it unfamiliar, in which the background is the conventional language system generally accepted by the advertising receiver, and the language features brought out are the violation or strengthening of the conventional language system. Based on foregrounding theory, this paper analyzes the linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism in mobile phone advertising language from different levels such as phonology, lexicon and grammar, explores the linguistic characteristics of foregrounding in mobile phone advertising language, analyzes the factors of foregrounding language formation in mobile phone advertising language from the aspects of advertising creators, advertising receivers, advertising context and advertising language themselves, and then explores the practicality of foregrounding theory in mobile phone advertising language. This study will explore the practicality of foregrounding theory in mobile phone advertising language, expand the application area of the theory, and provide new perspectives for the writing and research of mobile phone advertising language. This study selects more than 1,000 advertising language promoting mobile phones from the official websites of mobile phones and shopping websites such as taobao and jingdong in the past five years from 2018-2022 as the linguistic data, and analyzes the linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism phenomena existing in mobile phone advertising language based on the foregrounding theory. By analyzing the selected linguistic data, it is found that the linguistic forms of foregrounding in Chinese mobile phone advertising language are mainly IV realized by two means: linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism, where linguistic deviation mainly includes phonetic deviation, lexical deviation, grammatical deviation and semantic deviation. By intentionally violating the standard language conventions, the creator of the advertising language enhances the language expression effect, gain the favor of the advertising receiver and prompt them to produce purchasing behavior. The linguistic parallelism in mobile phone advertising language mainly includes phonetic parallelism, lexical parallelism and grammatical parallelism. The creator of advertising language stimulate the reading interest of ad receivers by over-repetitive selection of linguistic conventions. The role of foregrounding theory in mobile phone advertising language is mainly manifested in giving new forms and meanings to the language and stimulating the reading interest of the receiver; prolonging the reading time of the receiver and deepening the receiver's understanding of the text theme; enhancing the expression effect of the language and deepening the receiver's memory; promoting the development of the language and meeting the aesthetic needs of the receiver. Therefore, the linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism in foregrounding theory can meet the main objectives of advertising, attract the attention of advertising receivers, and prompt them to produce purchasing behavior. The dissertation consists of four chapters. The introductory part gives an account of the background of the selected topic, the current status of the study, the significance and innovation of the study, the sources of the linguistic data and the research method. The first chapter introduces the development of foregrounding theory, two forms of foregrounding, linguistic deviation and linguistic parallelism, and analyzes the function of foregrounding in mobile phone advertising language. The second chapter analyzes the collected mobile phone advertising language in terms of linguistic deviation from four aspects: phonology, lexicon, grammar and semantics with specific examples. The phonology deviations are mainly manifested as harmonic deviations, deviations of overlapping tones, onomatopoeic deviations and deviations on the pause; the lexical deviations are manifested as word form deviations and word meaning deviations; the grammatical deviations are mainly analyzed from two perspectives: morphology and syntax; the semantic deviations are mainly manifested as figures of speech, specifically analyzing the seven figures of speech involving metaphor, V hyperbole, personification, synaesthesia, parody, pun and metonymy. Chapter 3 analyzes the linguistic parallelism in mobile phone advertising language from three levels: phonology, lexicon and grammar. The phonological parallelism is mainly manifested in initial rhyme and end rhyme; lexical parallelism is mainly realized through repetition; grammatical parallelism is manifested in small-scale parallelism and large-scale parallelism. Chapter 4 analyzes the factors of foregrounding language formation in mobile phone advertising language from the aspects of advertising creators, advertising receivers, advertising context and advertising language themselves. Key words: Mobile phone advertising language; Foregrounding theory; Deviation; Parallelism 目录绪论 ............................................................................................................. 1 一、选题背景 .......................................................................................... 1 二、研究现状 .......................................................................................... 2 三、研究意义及创新 .............................................................................. 9 四、语料来源及研究方法 .................................................................... 10 第一章前景化理论 ................................................................................ 11 第一节前景化理论概述 ...................................................................... 11 一、前景化理论的发展 ..................................................................... 11 二、语言偏离和语言平行 ................................................................. 12 第二节前景化的功能 .......................................................................... 13 一、赋予语言新的形式和意义,激发接受者的阅读兴趣 ............... 14 二、延长接受者的阅读时间,加深接受者对文本主题的理解 ....... 14 三、增强语言的表达效果,加深接受者的记忆 ............................... 15 四、推动语言的发展,满足接受者的审美需求 ............................... 16 第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 ................................ 19 第一节语音偏离 .................................................................................. 19 一、谐音偏离 ..................................................................................... 20 二、叠音偏离 ..................................................................................... 26 三、拟声偏离 ..................................................................................... 29 四、停顿偏离 ..................................................................................... 30 第二节词汇偏离 .................................................................................. 31 一、词形偏离 ..................................................................................... 31 二、词义偏离 ..................................................................................... 37 第三节语法偏离 .................................................................................. 42 一、词法偏离 ..................................................................................... 43 二、句法偏离 ..................................................................................... 48 第四节语义偏离 .................................................................................. 54 一、比喻 ............................................................................................. 54 二、夸张 ............................................................................................. 55 三、拟人 ............................................................................................. 57 四、通感 ............................................................................................. 58 五、仿拟 ............................................................................................. 60 六、双关 ............................................................................................. 60 七、借代 ............................................................................................. 62 第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行 ................................ 63 第一节语音平行 .................................................................................. 63 一、头韵 ............................................................................................. 63 二、尾韵 ............................................................................................. 64 第二节词汇平行 .................................................................................. 65 一、单音节词重复 ............................................................................. 66 二、多音节词重复 ............................................................................. 67 第三节语法平行 .................................................................................. 68 一、小规模平行 ................................................................................. 68 二、大规模平行 ................................................................................. 69 第四章手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素分析 ............................ 71 第一节广告创作者和广告接受者因素 ............................................. 71 一、广告创作者 ................................................................................. 71 二、广告接受者 ................................................................................. 71 第二节广告语语境因素 ...................................................................... 72 一、社会发展 ..................................................................................... 72 二、语言接触 ..................................................................................... 73 第三节广告语自身因素 ...................................................................... 73 一、语言的系统性 ............................................................................. 73 二、语言的经济性 ............................................................................. 74 结语 ........................................................................................................... 77 参考文献 ................................................................................................... 79 绪论 1 绪论一、选题背景在经济高速发展的信息化时代，手机俨然成为人类必不可少的工具，加之功能的日益完善，它在人类生活中发挥的作用更加明显，既有最基础的通讯功能，也有基础之上的娱乐功能。目前，大众对手机的需求量日益增多，它的网络使用率已然位居其他智能设备的首位，它已经成为大众生活中不可或缺的一部分，同时加之手机品牌中有低配、中配和旗舰级高配等产品类型来满足不同水平消费者的需求。因此，手机已经成为大众都能消费的商品，给大众的生活带来诸多便利，手机的通讯功能，使远在异地的两个人实现通话自由，拉近彼此间的距离；手机的影像功能，使大众可以时刻捕捉美好，记录精彩瞬间；手机的娱乐功能，可以改变大众的休闲方式，丰富他们的业余生活；手机的存储功能，让大众实现下载自由。基于此，手机受到了接受者的青睐，得到了蓬勃发展。然而，伴随科技的快速发展，市场竞争日趋激烈，商品自身的“硬实力”，诸如性能、质量等已不再是各企业追求的唯一目标，诸多企业开始将目光转向产品的广告设计，重视广告创意，注重产品的广告宣传，以此赢得广告接受者的青睐，促使广告接受者了解产品，产生购买行为。目前，广告语的呈现形式多种多样，有借助媒体的，比如电子媒体、印刷媒体，也有通过非媒体进行呈现的，比如公交站牌等。然而，无论借助何种方式呈现，广告的核心载体仍然是广告语，它在广告中发挥着其他载体所不可替代的作用。广告语是一种“活”语言，散布于人类生活的各个领域，它既可以宣传产品信息和服务，也可以反映社会发展变化，更可以给广告接受者带来审美上的享受。学界对广告语进行过诸多研究，他们的着眼点有所不同，有着眼于社会语言学和语用学角度的，也有着眼于语言对比角度的。作为广告语下位语体的手机广告语，它蕴含着丰富的语言特色、修辞特色、文化特色和审美特色，得到了诸多学者的关注，他们主要是从修辞学、语用学和语言对比角度进行研究的。通过对搜集到的相关文献进行阅读与梳理，发现在手机广告语研究初期，主要从辞格方面进行分析，之后曲甜甜的硕士论文分析手机广告语中的语法和辞格特征，将广告语纳入社会语言学的角度进行分析，结合社会经济、社会心理和社会文化进行探讨；2013 年葛宁对手机广告语中的形容义词语进行谱系描写；到了2016 年，金玉平的文章从语言对比角度分析广告语中的语音、词汇和辞格特点； 2017 年张姗从韩礼德的系统功能语法角度研究手机广告语中的人际意义。到目前为止，陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 2 关于手机广告语的语言特色研究方面，未能以语言各个要素为基础对其进行全面深入的语言分析，同时也没有学者以前景化理论为基础，对手机广告语进行较为全面的研究。前景化作为一个重要理论，一言以蔽之，指从背景中突出的技巧，偏离和平行是实现的两种手段。广告创作者通过对语言常规的突破，既能带给广告接受者陌生化的审美体验，也可以使广告接受者在阅读过程中发生心理上的变化，引起广告接受者对创作者意图的关注。手机广告语的目的在于向广告接受者宣传商品信息、形象信息和观念信息等，吸引广告接受者的注意力，让广告接受者在不知不觉中愉快地对其进行认同，影响广告接受者的态度、观念和行为，促使广告接受者产生购买行为，因此，广告创作者必然会借助各种修辞手段对广告语进行艺术性地锤炼与加工，然而前景化就是广告创作者制作优秀广告语的一个重要手段。广告创作者或通过偏离的方式，抑或是借助平行的手段实现广告语的前景化。经过对有关广告语的文献进行分析，发现前景化理论很少用于对中文广告语这种实用文体的分析，目前仅有岳皓洁的《中文房地产广告语言特点的前景化分析》是分析中文广告语的。黄春梅在论述前景化理论在应用中的不足之处中提到: 我们可以大胆而谨慎的态度论证前景化理论在非文学领域某些具有呼唤性和表达性的文章的适用性和指导作用。 ①基于此，文章将基于前景化理论对手机广告语进行研究，从微观角度分析前景化理论中的偏离和平行两种手段在手机广告语中的具体体现，从宏观角度对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析，说明前景化理论对广告语的效力，进而对广告创作者和广告接受者提供帮助。二、研究现状本节重在明晰国内外学者对前景化理论的相关研究，了解目前前景化理论在文学领域和非文学领域的具体应用，同时也对目前手机广告语的相关成果进行梳理，明确它的具体研究进程。（一）前景化理论的相关研究前景化最早出现在视觉绘画领域，是绘画者有意识地将画面中的部分形象置于突出的位置，而把其他部分作为背景进行呈现，以此起到传达绘画主题，突出艺术表达效果的作用。前景化理论起源于俄国形式主义学派什克洛夫斯基所提出的陌生化概念，后经布拉格结构主义学派穆卡洛夫斯基的接受及雅各布森的发展，再到英国文体学家利奇的 ①黄春梅《前景化视角的翻译研究综述:回顾与展望》，《辽宁医学院学报(社会科学版)》，2014 年第2 期，第107 页。绪论 3 细化与综合及功能主义学派韩礼德对突出和前景化的明确区分，前景化理论实现了自身的完善。伴随前景化理论的逐步发展，它既可以用于分析文学作品，也可以广泛应用于对实用文体的分析。基于此，可知前景化理论在文学领域和非文学领域都发挥着巨大作用，下面将对学界已经取得的研究成果进行缀述。 1.国外研究现状前景化概念最早由布拉格结构主义学派的穆卡洛夫斯基提出，它来源于俄国形式主义学派什克洛夫斯基所提出的陌生化理论，是对陌生化理论的系统化、学术化的继承与发展。穆卡洛夫斯基最早接受了形式主义学派所提出的陌生化思想，进而促使前景化概念的产生，但此时的前景化理论只强调语言中的偏离。在穆卡洛夫斯基研究的基础上，布拉格结构主义学派的另一位学者雅各布森受到索绪尔语言生成理论的影响，提出前景化理论的另一方面即平行。英国文体学家利奇基于形式主义学派和结构主义学派对前景化理论的研究，将前景化的两种手段“偏离”和“平行”结合起来，并在雅各布森“纵聚合”和“横组合”的启发下，提出“纵聚合前景化”和“横组合前景化”，建立了较完善的前景化理论系统。此后，韩礼德在此基础上又对“前景化”与“突出”进行区分，提出只有与主题意义相联系的语言突出才是前景化语言。可以说，穆卡洛夫斯基和雅各布森所提出的偏离和平行在利奇、肖特和韩礼德的研究下进行了整合与完善，进而形成了一个较为完善且成熟的理论，同时，其为后续前景化理论的发展奠定了基础。基于对前景化理论的梳理，发现不同学者对前景化的分类有不同的命名，但从根本上来看，前景化的语言形式是通过平行和偏离两种手段来实现的，且主要作用于文本的分析。Meniailo V.（2020）首先论述形式主义学派和结构主义学派对于“前景化”的解释，进而对阿诺德的前景化理论进行阐释，阿诺德认为实现前景化的方式主要有文本的强势立场和文本的组织方案，最后文章以具体文本材料为例证，对阿诺德提出的前景化理论进行文本应用分析，着重从关键词+强势地位、失败预期+强势位置、文体手法的融合和关键词的重复进行论述。 ①Awa J. O.（2019）先对文学、文体学和前景化理论进行阐释，进而基于前景化理论，结合具体文学文本对其进行结构平行、书写偏离、语法偏离和语义偏离方面的文体变异分析。 ②Wu Xianyou（2011）利用陌生化理论，从词汇转换和复合词两类构词角度对乔伊斯《尤利西斯》中的词汇偏离进行论述，在词汇转换方 ①Meniailo V. I. V. Arnold’s Theory of Foregrounding and Its Application to Text Analysis, Interlitteraria,2020,25(1):16. ②Awa J. O. Literary Language: A Unique Experimentation, AFRREV IJAH: An International Journal of Arts and Human- ities,2019,8(4):44. 陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 4 面，着重从动词转换和非动词转换两方面进行分析，其中前者在乔伊斯创作中比较典型，后者利于作者进行人物描写。在复合词方面，文章对其进行了名词复合词、动词复合词、形容词复合词和其他杂乱复合词的分类。事实上，乔伊斯的复合词是通过对英语或外来词进行扭曲与混合而形成的一种组合方式，这种偏离增强了语言的创造性和趣味性，同时与小说主题和内容有密切联系，并不是毫无目的突出的偏离。 ① 2.国内研究现状上世纪60 年代，国内学者开始接受“前景化”概念，这一时期学者主要对前景化的概念和理论发展进行分析研究。21 世纪以来，随着国内学者对前景化的深入研究，前景化理论被尝试应用于翻译、广告语、新闻报道、中外小说研究等领域。在前景化理论引入国内之初，学者主要是对国外前景化理论进行评析与阐述。彭晓凌（2014）对近十年来国内学者关于前景化的概念及理论意义、前景化理论和前景化应用的研究进行详细梳理。在论述前景化的概念及理论意义研究方面主要综述申丹教授、张德禄、马菊玲、吴显友等学者的观点，在论述前景化理论研究方面，既对前景化与偏离或变异、突出与前景化、偏离与平行、相关性准则、情景语境等理论概念进行综述分析，也对前景化功能、语言前景化的深层理论依据进行综合探讨，对于前景化理论的应用研究方面，目前研究领域涉及翻译、广告语、新闻报道、中外小说分析等，文章最后提出此后推进前景化研究应做的工作。 ②马菊玲（2008）从语言功能角度对前景化进行分析，指出前景化所涉及的三个层面、两种手段、一个相关性标准和两个维度，论述了前景化的认知语用功能和文化功能。 ③吴显友（2004）通过对什克洛夫斯基陌生化理论、结构主义学派的前景化理论、功能文体学派的前景化理论的系统梳理，进而发现从陌生化到前景化是一个动态发展过程，二者之间有明显的异同点，陌生化主要关注“失协突出”，前景化还关注“失衡突出”，且认为“有动因的突出”才具有前景化。 ④龚晓斌（2002）围绕与“突出”相关的突出与偏离、突出的相对性、突出与文体特征等三个关键问题，进行详细论述分析。 ⑤罗绮伦，刘琼（2002）从语言的内在话语意义、语言的 ①Wu Xianyou. The Poetics of Foregrounding: The Lexical Deviation in Ulysses, Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2011,1(9):1176. ②彭晓凌《近年来国内前景化理论的研究与应用》，《甘肃社会科学》，2014 年第2 期，第244 页。 ③马菊玲《前景化功能论》，《吉林工程技术师范学院学报》，2008 年第1 期，第47 页。 ④吴显友《他山之石:从陌生化到前景化》，《河南师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》，2004 年第1 期，第142 页。 ⑤龚晓斌《关于“突出”(foregrounding)的三个关键问题》，《江南大学学报(人文社会科学版)》，2002 年第4 期，第89 页。绪论 5 表意功能和前景化语言的内在逻辑关联三方面分析前景化语言存在的理论基础。 ①邓仁华（1999）通过对俄国形式主义学者、布拉格结构主义学者和英国文体学学者对前景化研究所做出的贡献进行分析比较，同时回顾前景化的发展历程，探讨前景化理论对文学语言的作用。 ② 其次，伴随对该理论了解与研究的深入，也有学者开始将前景化理论应用于文学文本和诗学分析中。诗歌研究方面，王超（2012）基于前景化理论，对英文诗歌中语言的前景化特征进行语音、词汇、语法等层面的偏离和平行策略的分析，同时对前景化语言进行语音、词汇和句法衔接的阐述，最后基于认知语言学中的象似性理论对前景化进行相关论述。 ③赵轮江（2008）以诗歌为研究对象，基于前景化理论，对诗歌文本中所涉及的语音、词汇、句法等方面的语言偏离和平行进行论述，同时结合美学和符号学的知识，一方面对前景化语言进行形式美和意象美的美学效果分析，另一方面对前景化语言中的符号学特征进行分析。 ④文学研究方面，邢玮（2018）以王朔小说中的语言为研究对象，基于前景化理论，既从词汇、句子、辞格、方言口语和标点符号等角度对其中所涉及的偏离现象进行分析，也对其中所涉及的语音平行、词汇平行和句子平行进行详细阐述，最后对比分析王朔和老舍小说中语言前景化在偏离和平行策略运用上的不同。 ⑤江南（2013）基于前景化从语音、词语、修辞三个层面对莫言小说中语言的平行修辞策略进行分析，进而从认知导向及美学原则角度探讨平行修辞产生的动因。 ⑥万鹏飞（2013）对莫言小说中的前景化语言进行词语意义偏离和词语平行两方面的分析，同时指出前景化语言中所存在的不足。 ⑦江南，刘宗艳（2011）对孙甘露小说语言从语形和诗歌化方面进行形式分析，从词义的非逻辑组合和矛盾组合方面分析意义层面的超常修辞。 ⑧文学翻译方面，张楚彬（2021）以余华的《活着》、《许三观卖血记》及罗子毅的译本为研究对象，基于利奇对前景化的分类，对余华小说的原文和译文进行语音、词汇、语法、语义方面的质量前景化和重复、排比、顶针、对比方面的数量前景化的分析，进而总结 ①罗绮伦、刘琼《简析语言前景化现象的深层理论依据》，《武汉科技学院学报》，2002 年第2 期，第51 页。 ②邓仁华《“前景化”概念的演变及其对文学文本解析的功用》，《华南理工大学学报(社会科学版)》，1999 年第 2 期，第118 页。 ③王超《前景化与诗歌语言的文体学研究》，黑龙江大学，硕士学位论文，2012 年。 ④赵轮江《诗歌语言的前景化现象分析》，黑龙江大学，硕士学位论文，2008 年。 ⑤邢玮《前景化视域下王朔小说修辞研究》，江苏师范大学，硕士学位论文，2018 年。 ⑥江南《莫言小说语言“前景化”修辞策略中的平行原则》，《江苏师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》，2013 年第 5 期，第55 页。 ⑦万鹏飞《试论莫言小说中的前景化语言》，《乐山师范学院学报》，2013 年第7 期，第52 页。 ⑧江南、刘宗艳《孙甘露小说超常修辞策略》，《徐州师范大学学报(哲学社会科学版)》，2011 年第5 期，第53 页。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 6 余华小说中前景化语言翻译中的对应、代偿、常规化等翻译策略。 ①黄春梅（2014）先对前景化理论进行梳理，进而从前景化与翻译批评、前景化与文学翻译及其他三方面对前景化与翻译研究进行综述，最后指出前景化视角下翻译研究取得的成就和存在的不足，进而提出相应的展望。 ②孙建光、张明兰（2013）通过分析金隄译本和萧乾、文洁若译本对《尤利西斯》在语言形式前景化和句式前景化方面的翻译，探讨译者所采取的翻译策略。 ③除此之外，还有学者，陆小玲（2010） ④、李良举（2007） ⑤等。近年来，随着广告语的发展，学者将前景化理论用于广告语分析中，比如英文化妆品广告语、中文房地产广告语等，我们以“前景化”和“广告”为篇名进行高级检索，共得文章25 篇，9 篇为硕士论文，15 篇为期刊论文，1 篇为会议论文，发现硕士论文多是对英文广告语中的前景化语言特征进行分析研究的，同时撰写者全部为外语语言学专业的学生。钱斌（2014）基于前景化理论，既从书写、词汇、语法、语义、语域偏离等层面对英文化妆品广告语中的质量前景化进行论述，也从语音、词汇、语法、语义平行等角度进行数量前景化的阐述。 ⑥康曼（2013）基于前景化理论，同时结合王希杰的偏离理论，以中文汽车广告语为研究对象，一方面从语音、书写、词汇、语法、语义、语域、语用原则的偏离等层面对语言世界的质量前景化进行分析，另一方面从物质世界、文化世界、心理世界的偏离层面对非语言世界的质量前景化进行论述，对于数量前景化则着重从语音、语法、词汇、修辞四方面进行阐述，最后分析前景化对广告语的功用。 ⑦张董可（2009）基于前景化理论，以体育新闻标题为研究对象，一方面从语音、词汇、语法等层面对其中的语言符号前景化进行分析，另一方面从汉字形式、标点符号、数学符号、特殊符号等方面对非语言符号前景化进行阐述，最后从读者、传播者和双方知识基础三方面对前景化的形成原因进行论述。 ⑧赵婧鹏（2007）以国内外广告语为研究对象，基于前景化理论，从文体学角度，既对其进行语相、词汇、语法、语域、语义等方 ①张楚彬《余华小说前景化语言俄译研究》，上海外国语大学，硕士学位论文，2021 年。 ②黄春梅《前景化视角的翻译研究综述:回顾与展望》，《辽宁医学院学报(社会科学版)》，2014 年第2 期，第105 页。 ③孙建光、张明兰《〈尤利西斯〉“前景化”语言汉译比较》，《西南交通大学学报(社会科学版)》，2013 年第1 期，第46 页。 ④陆小玲《前景语言的表现手段和修辞效应及翻译探析》，《西安建筑科技大学学报(社会科学版)》，2010 年第3 期，第86 页。 ⑤李良举《从文学文体学角度看鲁迅短篇小说的两个英译本》，《西藏大学学报(汉文版)》，2007 年第3 期，第 106 页。 ⑥钱斌《化妆品广告的前景化形式研究》，安徽大学，硕士学位论文，2014 年。 ⑦康曼《汽车广告语中的前景化现象研究》，河北大学，硕士学位论文，2013 年。 ⑧张董可《体育新闻标题语言前景化探析》，东北师范大学，硕士学位论文，2009 年。绪论 7 面的变异分析，亦从语音、词汇、语法和语义方面对其进行语言平行方面的阐述。 ① （二）手机广告语的相关研究语言是人类进行交流的桥梁，它会影响广告接受者的行为。广告语的目的在于宣传商品信息，吸引广告接受者的注意，使广告接受者产生一定的阅读兴趣，进而促使广告接受者发生购买行为。创作者运用前景化理论中的偏离和平行两种语言手段，对手机广告语进行加工，使其形式新颖、语言独特、内容简洁，进而对广告语效力起到促进作用。对手机广告语进行研究，有诸多意义，既可以给广告语创作者提供借鉴，也可以拓展前景化理论的研究范围，更可以丰富中文广告语的研究。 1.国外研究现状关于手机广告语的研究，目前国外研究相对较少。Katranjiev H.，Velinov I.，Radova K.（2016）首先遵循一种广泛的修辞手法分类将其分为修辞格手法和思维修辞手法，进而将所收集的保加利亚广告语分为9 个类别，最后分析两种修辞在每一类广告语中的运用情况，发现将近80%的广告语中包含修辞手法的运用，同时思维修辞手法的运用明显高于修辞格的运用，其中最受欢迎的是思维修辞中的隐喻、对仗和夸张等。 ②Syukri S. & Humaerah I.（2016）从社会语用学角度，对三个手机产品供应商的广告语进行言外和言后行为的分析，进而发现信息性、说服性、果断性和描述性等言语行为在广告语中频繁使用。 ③Ioannis G. T.，Christos K.，Vlasis S.（2014）提出修辞在广告中的应用可能会产生消极的作用，进而从实证研究角度出发，通过实验证实广告修辞在暴力、色情等有争议的消极广告中的作用是无效的。 ④ 2.国内研究现状国内广告语的研究兴起于二十世纪八十年代，此时的学者主要研究与广告语本体相关的语音、词汇、语法、修辞等相关知识，这一时期通过对广告语进行纯语言角度研究的目的在于分析如何使广告语更好地为产品宣传服务。伴随改革开放的深入和经济的发展，近年来广告语的研究获得了蓬勃发展，研究角度突破纯语言学的研究，向广告学、 ①赵婧鹏《广告语中前景化策略的文体学视角研究》，北京交通大学，硕士学位论文，2008 年。 ②Katranjiev H., Velinov I., Radova K. Usage of rhetorical figures in advertising slogans, Trakia Journal of Sciences, 2016,14(3):267. ③Syukri S. & Humaerah I. Speech Act in Advertising Language of 3 Provider Mobile Phone Product, Langkawi: Journal of The Association for Arabic and English,2016,2(1):1. ④Ioannis G.T., Christos K., Vlasis S. Rhetorical Maneuvers in a Controversial Tide: Assessing the Boundaries of Advertising Rhetoric, Journal of Advertising,2015,44(1):14. 陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 8 社会学、文化学、心理学等学科发展，成为语言学研究的热点。在手机广告语研究初期，学者从分析手机广告语中的语音、词汇、语法、修辞等特征入手，对其进行修辞分析。金丽萍（2019）一方面从语言学角度对手机产品广告语进行语音特征、词汇特征、修辞格特征的分析，另一方面基于语言顺应理论，从对交际语境的顺应和语言环境的顺应两方面对手机广告语的语用效果进行阐释。 ①葛宁（2013）以手机广告语为研究对象，对广告语中出现的形容义词语进行研究，进而形成手机广告语形容义词语简要谱系。 ②国玉娟（2011）以所搜集的200 余条手机广告语为语料，从辞格和语音修辞两方面对其进行修辞方面的论述。 ③吴晶（2008）对搜集的100 多条手机广告语进行仿拟、双关、比喻、拟人、异语等辞格方面的分析。 ④ 伴随广告的发展，学者从多个角度对手机广告语进行研究，比如语用学角度、语言对比角度、社会语言学角度等。语用学角度，李雪莹（2021）基于高低文化语境理论，以华为和iPhone 手机的广告语为研究对象，既探讨中西不同文化语境下广告语言中出现的差异，亦从文化传统和语言习惯两方面分析形成文化差异的原因。 ⑤张珊（2017）运用韩礼德的系统功能语法理论，基于详细的数据及实例分析，从人际意义角度对英汉手机广告语进行语气、情态和人称代词三方面的对比分析，进而探讨其在人际意义方面存在的异同点，作者发现在语气方面，陈述句在中英文手机广告语中使用频率最高，疑问句使用频率最低，在情态方面，可能性情态在中英文手机广告语中使用频率较高，在人称系统方面，第二人称代词在中英文手机广告中使用频率是最高的，但中英文手机广告语在人际意义方面亦存在诸多不同点，如英文广告语中第三人称代词的使用明显多于中文广告语。 ⑥语言对比角度，金玉平（2016）从语言对比角度，通过对所搜集的中泰手机广告语语料进行分类和语音、词语、辞格等语言特征的对比分析，探究广告语言背后所存在的文化共性和差异。 ⑦社会语言学方面，曲甜甜（2011）从社会语言学角度出发，先对广告语进行分类，继而对广告语从句类和短语内部结构关系上进行语法分析，从辞格方面进行修辞学分析，进而探讨广告语与社会的关系，最后对广告语中存在的问题、 ①金丽萍《语言学视角下的手机产品广告语探究》，《北方文学》，2019 年第21 期，第221 页。 ②葛宁《手机广告语中的形容义词语谱系研究》，广州大学，硕士学位论文，2013 年。 ③国玉娟《浅析手机广告语的修辞》，《科教导刊(中旬刊)》，2011 年第14 期，第191 页。 ④吴晶《手机广告语修辞手法一瞥》，《现代语文(语言研究版)》，2008 年第3 期，第61 页。 ⑤李雪莹《从高低语境视角中透析中西广告文化差异》，《文化产业》，2021 年第4 期，第72 页。 ⑥张珊《中英文手机广告人际意义的对比研究》，吉林大学，硕士学位论文，2017 年。 ⑦金玉平《中泰广告语言对比研究》，天津大学，硕士学位论文，2016 年。绪论 9 原因及解决策略进行分析。 ① 三、研究意义及创新（一）研究意义 1.理论意义（1）丰富手机广告语的研究，拓宽前景化理论研究的视野。目前已有学者借助前景化理论对文学领域和非文学领域的语言进行研究，比如体育新闻标题语言的前景化、小说语言的前景化、诗歌语言的前景化、化妆品语言的前景化等。目前关于手机广告语的研究相对较少，基于前景化理论对手机广告语进行的研究，更是一片空白。因此，以前景化理论为框架，从偏离和平行两个角度对手机广告语进行研究，既可以丰富广告语的研究，也可以深入把握广告语的语言特点，同时也可以从一个全新的视角充分理解手机广告语。（2）建立语料库资源。手机广告语相对于其他广告语在语音、词汇、语法、语义特征等方面存在不同点，具有一定的研究价值，同时也为语言学研究建立了语料库资源。 2.实践意义（1）指导手机广告语的创作。电子产品，尤其是手机，占据了很大的消费市场，然而铺天盖地的广告语往往是良莠不齐的，优秀的广告语可以吸引广告接受者的注意力，对产品销售产生积极作用，反之，可以使广告接受者产生反感情绪，不利于购买行为的发生。从前景化角度，对手机广告语中的语言特色进行研究，分析它在传递广告信息中的作用，将在一定程度上对创作者创造优质的广告语提供帮助。（2）帮助广告接受者理解广告语，进行合理消费，满足审美需求。社会生活中琳琅满目的广告语，让人眼花缭乱，无从分别，这在一定程度上容易混淆广告接受者的认知，诱导广告接受者进行盲目消费，使其产生过度消费的行为。因此，通过对手机广告语进行语言特色的分析，可以帮助广告接受者更好地理解广告语、辨识广告语、捕捉产品信息，使广告接受者做出正确且理智的消费。同时，社会的发展，广告接受者的审美需求也逐步提升，他们不仅期待获得产品信息，而且希望满足审美需求。因此，对手机广告语中的前景化语言进行分析，有利于创作者创作出广告接受者所热衷的广告语。（二）创新之处 ①曲甜甜《手机广告语的社会语言学分析》，暨南大学，硕士学位论文，2011 年。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 10 1.研究语料新颖语料是论文写作的关键，前期学者也基于语料进行过前景化方面的分析，比如化妆品广告语、汽车广告语等。本篇文章所用语料摘自手机官方网站、淘宝、京东等购物网站，同时时间范围为2018 年-2022 年。因为，通过对手机广告语的相关文献进行检索，发现对多种手机品牌的广告语进行研究的硕士论文，最近的一篇是2017 年张珊所发表的《中英文手机广告人际意义的对比研究》，因此本文所收集的2018 年-2022 年近五年来的语料，是比较新颖的，时效性是比较强的。 2.研究视角创新对于手机广告语的研究，前期的研究多集中于两类。一类是语言学角度，多为修辞格和语言特征的研究；第二类是语用学角度，诸如基于人际意义对比、高低语境等视角，对手机广告语进行研究。但是，以前景化理论为基础研究中文广告语的成果并不多见，学者多将该理论应用于文学文本和英文广告语的分析中，同时多数学者在语音偏离方面的研究不是很多。此外，目前还没有学者基于前景化理论研究手机广告语中的语言偏离和语言平行现象。因此，本文研究视角的创新主要体现在运用前景化理论研究中文手机广告语，从偏离和平行两个方面作出分析，增加了对语音偏离的重视，同时，从广告创作者、广告接受者、广告语语境、广告语自身等方面，对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析。四、语料来源及研究方法本文所研究的手机广告语是指通过手机官方网站、淘宝和京东等购物网站等渠道所搜集到的宣传手机的广告语。在具体的研究过程中，将采取以下研究方法：（一）文本分析法文章的研究对象为手机广告语。本文立足于前景化理论的研究成果，从偏离和平行两个方面分析手机广告语中的前景化语言。（二）归纳总结法文章通过对所收集的语料进行分析研究，进而归纳出前景化理论下手机广告语所呈现出的语言上的特点。第一章前景化理论 11 第一章前景化理论前景化理论是西方文论中的重要理论之一，从起源到发展成为一套完善的理论，先后经过多个学者的探索研究。第一节前景化理论概述前景化概念起源于俄国形式主义学派所提出的陌生化思想，后经过布拉格结构主义学派、功能文体学派等诸多学者的发展，逐渐成为一个较为完善的理论，不但前景化理论中的手段日益丰富，而且所涉及的相关概念之间的区别更加明晰。一、前景化理论的发展前景化概念起源于陌生化思想，它为前景化概念的形成起到了铺垫作用。陌生化思想的核心是创造性的变形，即诗歌或文学作品中的一切表现形式，都不是对现实的严格模仿、正确反映或再现，相反，它是一种有意识的偏离、背反甚或变形、异化。 ①该思想主要强调的是对语言的一种偏离，从而让自动化的事物变得非自动化、陌生化，让接受者摆脱机械与麻木，用充满新鲜感的眼光去看待生活中习以为常的事物。基于此，陌生化的语言形式所实现的效果有二，其一可以拉开文本与接受者之间的心理距离；其二可以让所描述的事物本质更加突出。穆卡洛夫斯基受陌生化思想的影响，将其应用于诗歌语言的前景化分析中。前景化的语言，会使广告接受者产生非自动化的认知，其程度越高，自动化程度就越低，广告接受者就需要更多的意志力对语言进行认知。穆卡洛夫斯基提出的关于前景化的论述，对学者进行后续研究提供了可资借鉴的依据。然而，不可否认，他只提出了前景化的手段之一即偏离，它是对常规语言的违背，因为他认为诗的语言的功能在于通过前景化的一贯性和系统性实现最大限度地把言辞前景化（foregrounding）。但同时，平行也是前景化的一种重要手段，关于这一方式布拉格结构主义学派的学者雅各布森在其论文《总结发言：语言学与诗学》中进行了详细的论述。他认为诗歌功能就是把对等原则由选择轴引到组合轴 ②，即是指诗句在横向的组合（构成）中，也出现了等价的（相似的或相反的、同义的或反义的）词语， ③换句话说，诗歌语言的线性结构是组合关系和聚合关 ①张冰《陌生化诗学》，北京师范大学出版社2000 年版，第8 页。 ②朱立元《当代西方文艺理论》（第二版增补版），华东师范大学出版社2005 年版，第51 页。 ③刘世生、朱瑞青《文体学概论》，北京大学出版社2006 年版，第38 页。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 12 系兼而有之的，共同发挥作用，正是这种本应出现在语言深层结构中的聚合关系干扰了表层结构中的组合关系，背离了语言常规，促使语篇中多个等价语言单位的出现，进而使语言得以前景化。基于此，我们可以发现穆卡洛夫斯基主要研究的是前景化理论中的偏离，而雅各布森进一步丰富了前景化理论，提出了语言平行。 1966 年，利奇将穆卡洛夫斯基的偏离理论和雅各布森的平行理论进行综合，形成了一个较为完善的前景化理论。他依据索绪尔语言符号的组合关系和聚合关系，将前景化分为组合前景化和聚合前景化。 ①因此，前景化可以通过偏离和平行两种手段来实现。偏离即对常规语言系统中语言的变异，平行是指两个或者更多的的结构相“平行”，也就是说它们之间在某些地方相似，未必是重复，这包括对称、并列、重复以及排比，其层次也可以体现在语音、词汇、语法结构等各个方面。 ② 1971 年，韩礼德提出只有“有动因的突出”（motivated prominence）才可被视为前景化。 ③即突出的语言特征只有与语篇的整体意义相关并对主题产生作用才可被视为前景化。二、语言偏离和语言平行前景化可以通过语言偏离和语言平行两种手段来实现，前者是出于美学目的和主题意义对常规语言进行有意识的违背而实现的，后者亦是为了同样的目的对相同的语言结构进行重复选择而形成的。它们可以使语言以新颖奇特的形式呈现于广告接受者面前，增强语言的表达效果，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发其阅读兴趣。前景化理论中的语言偏离和语言平行，诸多学者都对它进行过相关论述，但是所阐述的本质内容相差无几，因为后人的研究多是对前人的研究成果进行些微的改进。穆卡洛夫斯基在陌生化思想的影响下，通过对诗歌语言的分析，认为实现前景化修辞的手段只有语言偏离，他最早提出了前景化的手段之一，即偏离。他在《标准语言与诗歌的语言》中指出标准语言与诗歌语言二者之间的联系，对于诗歌来说，标准语是一个背景，是诗作出于美学目的借以表现其对语言构成的有意扭曲、亦即对标准语的规范的有意触犯的背景。在他看来前景化理论中的语言偏离，是以标准语言为背景，将其中违反标准语言的部分推向前景的位置而实现的。它是对常规范围以外的语言成分进行选择使用的结果，是指超出共核语言之外的那部分特殊用法。其中共核语言中大量地按照普通方式运用的基本词汇、基本句 ①刘世生、朱瑞青《文体学概论》，北京大学出版社2006 年版，第39 页。 ②同上，页40。 ③戴凡、吕黛蓉《功能文体理论研究》，外语教学与研究出版社2012 年版，第33 页。第一章前景化理论 13 式、基本表达手段的通常用法构成语言的常规，而一种文体的特殊用法则是对这种常规的偏离。 ①偏离是不符合语言的常规。 ②利奇认为偏离是指在语言的聚合轴上选择不被经常使用的语言成分。它是语言所固有的一种属性，当其出现于语言生活中时，可以使单调乏味的生活变得五彩纷呈，可以使索然无味的语言变得妙趣横生，当其出现于广告接受者视野中时，可以延长广告接受者的注视时间，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强广告接受者的审美体验，凸显语言的主旨意义。雅各布森在穆卡洛夫斯基研究的基础上，最早提出了语言平行，认为平行也是实现语言前景化的的一个手段。在他看来，语言平行是通过将等价原则从选择轴投射到组合轴而实现。也就是说，语言的表层结构关系中，是组合关系和聚合关系兼而有之的，这就使本应出现在语言深层结构中的聚合关系干扰了表层结构中的组合关系，背离了语言常规，促使语篇中多个等价语言单位的出现，进而使语言通过平行手段实现了前景化。利奇认为语言平行是指在组合轴的不同位置反复使用相同的常规语言结构。当它出现于语言中时，语法结构本身并未改变，只是其使用频率发生改变，超出广告接受者的心理预期，进而使所要表达的内容从背景中凸显出来，吸引广告接受者的注意力。语言偏离和语言平行可以发生在语言的各个层面，比如语音层、词汇层、语法层等，前者主要表现为对语言常规的违反，后者则强调对某种常规语言结构的频繁使用。第二节前景化的功能广告语存在于现代社会的每一个角落，无论是打开电视，还是翻开报纸，抑或是乘坐电梯，广告语的身影随处可见，映入眼帘，让广告接受者目不暇接。一项测评结果也显示，国内有60%的人认为购物受广告影响。 ③可见，广告语对于产品销售起着重要作用，它在商品和广告接受者之间起着纽带和桥梁的作用。对于广告主而言，它可以为其宣传商品和服务等，塑造良好的企业形象，激发广告接受者的购买动机，促进产品的销售；对广告接受者而言，它既可以帮助其更快地获取产品信息，开阔广告接受者的视野范围，增加广告接受者对此类产品的知识储备，也可以丰富广告接受者的审美体验等；此外，广告语还可通过传播积极向上的内容或美观的呈现形式对社会文化的发展产生一定的促进作用。因此，广告创作者会采取各种手段对广告语进行加工和锤炼，让广告接 ①李良举《从文学文体学角度看鲁迅短篇小说的两个英译本》，《西藏大学学报(汉文版)》，2007 年第3 期，第 106 页。 ②王佐良、丁往道《英语文体学引论》，外语教学与研究出版社1987 年版，第412 页。 ③江波《广告心理新论》，暨南大学出版社2003 年版，第7 页。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 14 受者在不知不觉中愉快地对广告语进行接受，影响广告接受者的观念和行为，最终达到劝说广告接受者发生购买行为的目的，然而前景化就是广告创作者制作优秀广告的一个重要手段，它经常运用于广告语中。广义的广告语言中包括多种信息加工手段，有纯语言手段，也有非语言手段。狭义的广告语言是专指广告传播中运用的纯语言和文字手段。 ①本文将以狭义的广告语作为研究对象，基于前景化理论，从偏离和平行两方面对搜集到的手机广告语进行分析。手机广告语中前景化的语言形式往往比较明显，体现了创作者的表达意图和审美思考，是最值得关注的部分。该理论经过不同学者的研究，获得了丰富发展，对文本解析和语言发展皆可发挥作用。我们可以从前景化理论出发，分析文本中所包含的偏离和平行手段，对它的功能进行深入挖掘。一、赋予语言新的形式和意义，激发接受者的阅读兴趣前景化的实现手段包括偏离和平行，偏离突破了语言系统的常规表达方式，平行强化了语言的常规表达，使文本语言在形式和意义上变得独特，实现前景化的效果。同时，前景化可以发生在语言的各个层面，比如语音层、词汇层、语法层等，它通过偏离和平行两种手段对语言的常规表达形式进行扭曲或频繁重复使用，吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使广告接受者产生阅读兴趣。比如荣耀V40 的广告语“曲悦掌心，精彩满屏”，创作者巧妙地将“曲悦”与“取悦”进行同音替换，意在告知广告接受者手机的曲面屏设计贴合掌心，同时曲面屏设计可以使视野延伸，让广告接受者获得更多的精彩体验。广告语中语音偏离手段的使用，赋予词语以新的形式和意义，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣。又如vivo X80 的广告语“百万跑分‘9’是强悍”，其中的“9”与“就”谐音，一方面指天玑9000 芯片，点明所要介绍的产品的名称，另一方面说明因为该芯片有超百万的跑分，因此手机的流畅度等性能是比较卓越的。创作者巧妙地将商品名暗含在广告语中，加深广告接受者对产品的记忆，同时语言结构安排合理，前句作为原因对后句的结果进行解释，增强商品特点的可信度，有利于广告接受者的理解、认同与接受。二、延长接受者的阅读时间，加深接受者对文本主题的理解前景化理论中的偏离和平行两种手段，打破了广告接受者习以为常的语言模式，使语言变得丰富且复杂，增加广告接受者理解上的难度，使广告接受者产生陌生化的认知体验，延长广告接受者的感知时间，加深广告接受者对主题意义的把握和理解。创作者巧妙地将前景化的语言模式置于突出位置，凸显主旨内容，引导广告接受者进行注意和 ①王军元《广告语言》，汉语大词典出版社2005 年版，第2 页。第一章前景化理论 15 感知，进而解读广告内涵，领会创作者的表达意图。在广告接受者把握文本主旨意图的过程中，广告接受者的思维能力也得到了进一步的发展，当广告接受者感受到文本中所突显的语言形式时，他的思维不会仅仅停留于此，而是会进一步将其与文本的整体意义相联系，达到深刻把握文本主题的目的。广告接受者对创作者表达意图的理解，要经过这样一个过程，首先是创作者构建超越常规的语言表达，其次是广告接受者对其产生注意，进而探求前景化语言背后的深层内涵，达到把握文本主题的目的。比如荣耀Play5 活力版的广告语“15 分钟，‘灌’一半电”，就需要以前景化的表达方式进行理解，其中的“灌”是动词，有三个义项，分别为浇，灌溉；倒进去或装进去（多指液体、气体或颗粒状物体）；强制别人喝。它所带的宾语一般是液体或气体，比如灌水或灌气，它是不能与“电”进行组合搭配，创作者所构造的超越常规的语言组合形式，会延长广告接受者的阅读时间，进而引导广告接受者探求前景化语言背后的意图。这则广告语运用语言偏离手段，使语言生动形象，带给广告接受者强烈的感官刺激，让广告接受者能够更直观形象地感受到手机在充电速度方面的优势，加深广告接受者的理解。又如小米Civi2 的广告语“用科技驾驭光，让光影有了情绪”，其中的“情绪”有两个义项，一是指人从事某种活动时产生的兴奋心理状态，二是指不愉快的情感。它多用于描述人，有生命的物体，这里创作者违反常规语言组合表达，将它与“光影”相组合，构成前景化的表达形式，引导广告接受者注意并思考它背后的表达意图，加深广告接受者对主题意义的理解。这则广告语意在用前景化的语言表达形式，说明手机搭载的四柔光灯，可以营造不同的氛围光效，强调手机在营造氛围人像方面的性能卓越。三、增强语言的表达效果，加深接受者的记忆创作者的主要目的在于通过各种手段对语言进行艺术加工与锤炼，用简洁的语言表达丰富的内容，增强语言的表达效果，凸显文章主题，加深广告接受者的记忆。前景化作为一个重要的语言手段，它可以通过对语言常规进行偏离，或通过在线性结构的不同位置重复使用相同语言成分的方法，来获得超越现有语言的表达力，增强语言的表达效果，加深广告接受者的记忆，使其留下深刻的印象。广告语中词的重复或头韵的使用，会在音节上呈现出循环往复、抑扬顿挫的语音模式，带给广告接受者听觉上的音乐体验，有利于广告接受者进行记忆。比如华为mate50 Pro 的广告语“见微知著，震撼人心”，其中紧密相连的三个字“知”、“著”、“震”，陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 16 它们的节首字母发音皆相同，均为“zh”。创作者巧妙地运用头韵形成的前景化的语言表达方式，不仅可以使广告接受者读起来朗朗上口，有利于广告接受者的记忆，而且此广告语巧妙地将两个成语安排其中，形式简洁，语言凝练，寥寥八字，已将手机在微距拍摄方面的功能特点展现得淋漓尽致。再如OPPO K10 的广告语“电量秒回，持久畅玩”，其中的“畅玩”是“畅快玩耍”的意思，创作者运用缩略法产生前景化的语言表达形式，使语言言简意赅，形式新颖独特，短短八字，已经使手机在充电和续航方面的优势跃然纸上。同时，这则广告语契合当下广告接受者在充电和续航方面的内心期望，容易与广告接受者产生心理共鸣，加深广告接受者的记忆。四、推动语言的发展，满足接受者的审美需求前景化概念源于艺术绘画领域，后被引入到文学领域，用于文学文本包括诗歌领域的分析，随着前景化理论研究地深入，也拓展到广告语、新闻报道、外语教学等领域。广告语言的发展演变，是外部社会文化和语言内部前景化手段共同作用的结果。在社会经济发展的不同阶段中，广告语也会呈现不同的语言特点，比如在按照需求进行生产的经济模式下，商品缺乏竞争性，该时期的广告语重在用平实的语言介绍产品相关信息。在经济高速发展的社会中，经常会出现商品的生产量大于社会的需求量的现象，促使市场竞争力的加强，此时的广告语在介绍产品信息的同时，还应该兼具新颖性和独特性，成为一种前景化语言，满足广告接受者在求新求异方面的审美需求。因此，广告语言就在这种背景化与前景化的相互转换中不断地发展，这种转换并不是对旧形式的替换，而是从中心变为边缘，从主流变为支流，从前景退到背景，从显在过渡到潜在。 ① 前景化语言模式的使用，使语言的美学效果得以凸显，带给广告接受者认知上的快感，使广告接受者摆脱审美上的疲劳，产生强烈的美学感受。比如华为mate50RS 的广告语“超光变，变幻万千”，其中“变”字的重复使用，构成一种前景化的语言模式，使广告接受者在听觉上产生节奏韵律感，在视觉上获得均衡美的体验，创作者意在说明该手机所具有的超大光圈和超光变摄像头能够轻松调节物理光圈，让影像精彩纷呈，进而突出手机在摄像方面的显著优势和特点。同时广告语中所重复使用的“变” 字，构成了顶针辞格，使得语句结构严密，语势贯通，具有连绵之美。再如vivo S15e 的广告语“旗舰级芯片，旋风级闪充”，其中的“旗舰级”和“旋风级”是创作者利 ①张冰《陌生化诗学》，北京师范大学出版社2000 年版，第294 页。第一章前景化理论 17 用派生法构成的词语偏离，旨在将前景化的语言结构以醒目的形式置于广告接受者面前，满足广告接受者求新求异的审美需求。同时创作者基于派生法构成的词语，也可以推动语言的发展，丰富广告语中的词汇。广告语中“旗舰级”和“旋风级”二者的使用，意在说明手机芯片性能卓越，充电速度快且安全。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 18 第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 19 第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离前景化经过诸多学者的研究，已发展为一个较为完善的理论体系。偏离和平行是实现前景化的两种主要手段，偏离强调对语言常规的违背，将常规语言视为为背景，把违背常规的语言置于前景，使语言变得陌生化，延长广告接受者的阅读时间，进而加强广告接受者对文本主题意义的理解与把握。此外，偏离可以发生在文学文本和非文学文本语言的各个层面，本次主要从语音、词汇、语法、语义四个层面对手机广告语中的语言偏离现象进行探析。偏离通过对常规语言中语音、词汇、语法规则等的背离，加强语言的表达效果，获得广告接受者的青睐，加深广告接受者对文本的理解。广告语体中的语言具有鼓动性、呼唤性、激励性、凝练性的特征，通过向广告接受者提供商品信息或服务，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，劝说其产生购买行为的目的。偏离正是实现这一目的的重要手段之一。广告语中偏离手段的运用，有利于广告接受者更深刻地理解广告信息，获得审美上的体验。因此，广告语创作者往往会采用各种突破常规的语言表达方式，使语言变得新颖独特，做到更大程度地向广告接受者传达商品或服务的信息，达到激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其发生购买行为的意图。本章将以人们日常交流中所使用的“共核语言” 为常规，基于前景化理论从语音、词汇、语法、语义四个层面对手机广告语中的语言偏离现象进行分析。第一节语音偏离语言符号是由形式和意义构成的，形式的第一性是声音，它在信息传递过程中的作用比较明显。人类接收的信息最先是通过听觉感知到的，因此，广告语中所呈现的语音模式首先会在广告接受者的听觉上产生一定的冲击，不同的音节模式会使广告接受者产生不一样的听觉感受，悦耳的音节模式会带给广告接受者音乐般的体验，使其在不经意间即会驻足停留并将广告信息储存于大脑中。因此，广告语创作者会运用各种方法对语音进行偏离常规的调配组合，使广告接受者既在不知不觉中接受信息，也在听觉上获得审美享受，最终达到凸显主题意义和激发广告接受者购买欲的效果。语音偏离往往以明显的形式呈现出来，体现了语言的音乐美，增强语言的节奏感，给广告接受者留下深刻印象。语音偏离通常以不同的方式进行实现，如误读、异常停顿、谐音、同音异义词、陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 20 拟声词等。 ①通过对所收集的语料进行统计分析，发现手机广告语中的语音偏离主要表现在谐音、叠音、拟声和停顿上。一、谐音偏离语言是一种音义结合的符号系统，形式和意义之间是社会约定俗成的，有一定的明确性。然而，在某种情况下，广告语创作者为了满足主题需要或展现审美价值，会有意打破声音和意义之间的明确的约定关系，使声音形式和所指意义之间的一一对应性发生偏离，达到音在此而意在彼的效果。谐音偏离是利用语音和意义之间组合的矛盾性，用语义不同而语音相同或相近的字代替本字而形成的。广告接受者通过声音的同一性，对替换后所形成的意义进行联想，进而给广告接受者留下深刻印象，让广告接受者更深入地领会创作者的表达意图。通过对所收集的语料进行整理分析，发现广告语中运用的谐音偏离多是对产品特点、用途等的突出强调。（一）汉字谐音偏离汉字谐音是通过有意打破音义之间的一一对应性，用音同字或音近字替换本字，进而产生“一词多义”现象的一种语音偏离方式。因原字有言不尽意的局限性，所以创作者巧妙地选取与之音近或音同的语词进行替换，替换后原字的语义并没有消失于语句之外，而是作为背景，帮助广告接受者对替换后所形成的语义进行理解，替换后所形成的新颖的表达方式将置于前景位置，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使广告接受者把握主旨内容的目的。广告语中汉字谐音这种偏离手段的运用，使语义产生模糊性，形式变得新颖，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强广告接受者对主题意义的把握。手机广告语中的汉字谐音偏离主要有音同谐音和音近谐音两种偏离形式。 1.音同谐音音同谐音这种偏离常规的语音调配方式在广告语中是比较常见的，表现形式为本体与替换字之间语音相同，汉字形式不同，对替换后所形成的新颖的语言表达形式的理解需要结合上下文语境，同时替换后所形成的语言表达形式被置于前景的位置，吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使广告接受者对主旨内容的理解，而本字则置于背景位置对替换后所形成的语义的理解发挥潜在作用。广告语中通过对音义间对应性的背离所形成的语音偏离方式的运用，可以将新颖的语言表达形式推向前景，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣， ①李佳《前景化理论视角下《〈呼兰河传〉英译本研究》，广西大学，硕士学位论文，2019 年。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 21 加深其对主旨内容的理解，使语言具有含蓄、隐晦的表达效果。（1）“亿”外惊喜，好戏连连。（华为nova 9SE 2022）（2）激昂青春，活力四“摄”。（荣耀play5T 活力版2021）（3）有专“芯”，当然玩过瘾。（vivo IQOO Neo5S 2021）（4）超级夜景，拍“暗”叫绝。（OPPO K10 Pro 2022）例（1）中创作者利用音与义结合的复杂性与灵活性，巧妙地将“亿”与“意”进行谐音，创造出新颖的语音组合形式，让广告接受者产生陌生化的认知，达到更大程度地吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使广告接受者领会表达主旨的目的。谐体“亿”是对本体“意”的一种谐音偏离，意在强调摄像头拥有上亿的像素，分别是一亿像素超清主摄、 800 万像素广角、200 万像素的景深和微距、1600 万像素的美颜前置，可以让照片色彩更清晰，细节更丰满，画质更精美。同时，广告语更能激发广告接受者的好奇心，促使广告接受者探索手机在摄像方面具有的优势，达到劝说广告接受者产生购买行为的目的。例（2）中创作者利用谐音偏离，打破语音组合的惯例性与常规性，创新性地将“摄” 与“射”进行谐音，呈现出独特的表达形式，延长广告接受者的注视时间，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。谐体“活力四‘摄’”是对本体“活力四射”进行谐音偏离而形成的，目的在于将前者推向广告接受者面前，达到更大程度地将手机在摄像方面的性能和优点告知广告接受者的目的。同时，广告语所选用的词语皆是与青春活力主题相关的，既契合广告接受者的心理诉求，容易与之产生共鸣，也与手机的名称后缀相照应，加强广告接受者对品牌的记忆。例（3）是vivo IQOO Neo5s 的一则广告语，创作者基于音与义之间的灵活性，打破音义之间的一一对应性，将“芯”与“心”进行谐音替换，创造出新颖的形式，达到突出重点，激发广告接受者阅读兴趣的效果。谐体“专‘芯’”与本体“专心”构成谐音偏离，意在突出芯片的性能和优点，更易让广告接受者在纷繁的广告信息中快速捕捉到产品的重点信息。同时，广告语更传达出了vivo 品牌的理念与使命，始终坚持为用户创造伟大的产品，秉持专心为用户服务的态度。例（4）中创作者利用谐体“暗”与本体“案”在语音上的复杂性所构成的谐音偏离，不仅使手机在夜景拍摄方面的性能和优势得到更大程度地突出与强调，更重要的是，它通过形式上的创新，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，让广告接受者对主旨内容获得了陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 22 深层次的理解。 2.音近谐音音近谐音是利用语音相近，字形相异的方式所构成的一种语音偏离。创作者利用语言中所包含的众多近音字词这一有利条件，打破音义之间固定的联系，有意将本字和与之在语音上相近的谐体字进行替换，使语言形式变得新颖奇特，使语义呈现复杂性，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣的目的。替换后形成的语言表达形式所传达的语义内容并不会与本体包含的意义相矛盾或相混淆，而是在本体的作用下，新意会变得易于理解，更加丰满。广告语中谐音偏离方式的使用，既可因其形式上的新颖独特性，让广告接受者的想象力得到激发，阅读兴趣得以提高，也可以因意义上的复杂性，让广告接受者对主题内涵的认知得到深化。（5）声临其境更能身临其境。（vivo IQOO Z1 2020）（6）全星大作，颜值出圈。（真我Q3s 2021）（7）让大场面，“镜”收眼底。（华为nova8 SE4G 版2021）（8）一眼即知，精彩“屏”出。（华为P50 Pocket 2022）例（5）中创作者利用近音字词这一前提条件，打破字词在音与义之间所形成的一一对应的联系，使形式变得更加陌生，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，延长广告接受者的注视时间，促使广告接受者更深入地理解主旨内涵的目的。谐体“声”与本体“身” 在语音上相近，韵尾不同，前者是后鼻音韵尾，后者为前鼻音韵尾。谐音偏离方式的运用，既将扬声器的性能和优势表现得淋漓尽致，更因形式的陌生化加强了广告接受者对表达主旨的深入挖掘。例（6）是真我Q3s 的广告语，谐体“星”与本体“新”所形成的语音偏离，既因其形式上的独特性，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣，延长广告接受者的感知时间，加深广告接受者对主旨的理解，也将手机背面满天星光的动人外观效果展现得淋漓尽致，突出了手机在外观设计上的优点，使广告接受者可以快速捕捉到重点信息。例（7）中创作者利用音义之间的灵活性，巧妙地将“镜”与“尽”构成谐音偏离，让广告接受者产生陌生化的认知，加深广告接受者对主旨的理解。这一谐音偏离方式的使用，突出了超广角摄像头的优点，告知广告接受者120 度超广角摄像头可以容纳更广阔的画面，更加调动了广告接受者阅读的积极性。例（8）是华为P50 Pocket 的广告语，谐体“屏”与本体“频”所构成的语音偏离，第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 23 一方面将折叠屏折叠后仍可透过外屏随时查看通知信息的优点展现得淋漓尽致，另一方面，更契合了广告接受者当前追求方便、快捷的心理。（二）数字谐音数字谐音是利用音同或音近的原则使数字与汉字形成谐音而构成的一种语音偏离。其中谐体数字往往是广告接受者所喜爱的，有着特定的语义内涵，并不是数字概念本身，本体汉字所代表的意义是创作者所要表达的真正含义。广告语中数字谐音的运用，既可以使语言表达更加简洁凝练，易于广告接受者记忆，也可以增强语言的趣味性，使语义含蓄委婉。通过对所收集的语料进行分析，发现手机广告语中经常出现的数字有“6”、 “8”、“9”、“10”。（9）性能“8”可一世。（vivo X80 Pro 2022）（10）这颗强“芯”脏，666。（vivo S9 2021）（11）你的光芒，随10 闪耀。（华为nova10 2022）（12）新大作，9 等了。（华为nova9 Pro 2021）（13）第十代性能旗舰，10 至，名归。（一加10 Pro 2022）例（9）中创作者巧妙地将音义之间的一一对应性进行打破，让数字“8”与汉字“不” 构成谐音偏离，将谐体置于前景的位置，使表达形式变得新颖独特，达到调动广告接受者的想象力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者领会主旨内容的目的。广告语中语音偏离手段的使用，既能更大程度地将芯片的性能和优势表现得淋漓尽致，更重要的是，它能激发广告接受者的想象力，加深对产品的记忆，促使广告接受者产生亲身体验的想法。广告语中的“8”谐音“不”，所表达的意思是骁龙8+Gen1 芯片的性能卓越超群，它在影像处理、图片处理等方面的速度皆有大幅度提升，同时“8”也是骁龙 8+Gen1 芯片的代指。这则广告语开门见山，直达主题，语言简洁直观，语义清晰明了，使广告接受者在接触广告语的瞬间即可抓住广告内涵，获悉创作者所宣传商品的特性，利于广告接受者据此做出是否购买的行为。例（10）中创作者巧妙地利用音义之间的复杂性，将音义之间的对应性进行扭曲，创造出新颖奇特的语言形式，让广告接受者产生陌生化的认知体验，延长广告接受者的注视时间，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，让广告接受者更深入地领悟主旨内涵。数字 “666”，因为形式的简练性及超常的重叠性，深受大众喜爱，它最早出现于游戏语境中，用来赞扬玩家操作技能的娴熟与卓越。谐体“666”与本体“溜溜溜”构成的谐音陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 24 偏离，意在强调天机1100 芯片的卓越性能和优势，更重要的是，它在形式上的创新性，有利于引起广告接受者的注意，便于广告接受者对广告语的记忆。此外，创作者更是为了增强广告接受者对产品优势的信任，独具匠心地将能够呈现芯片本身特点和效能的数字利用独特的形式安排进去。例（11）是华为nova 10 的广告语，该款手机在影像和外观设计方面性能卓越和优点显著，契合当下广告接受者对美的追求与向往，深受大众青睐。创作者利用音义之间的灵活性，巧妙地将数字“10”与汉字“时”构成谐音偏离，突破广告接受者惯常化的和自动化的思维认知模式，达到吸引广告接受者驻足停留，深入思考，领会深层语义的目的。这一偏离方式的使用，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强了语言的表达效果。广告语中的谐体“10”有双层含义，既可指商品名称，即华为nova 10，也可解释为副词，意在说明镜头的圆环设计，加之所运用的星耀工艺，使手机随时随地熠熠生辉，同时广告接受者也会因拥有此手机而成为万众焦点。例（12）中创作者巧妙地打破音义之间的一一对应性，将“9”与“久”进行谐音，使语言关乎表里双重内涵，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，达到吸引广告接受者注意力的目的。这一语音偏离方式的使用，既点明了商品名称，告知广告接受者“9”即华为 nova 9 pro，也使用委婉语气，向广告接受者表示歉意，获得广告接受者思想上的理解。同时，创作者为了使广告语在音节数量协调一致，构成三音节形式，有意打破常规的语法组合形式，将“新”与“大作”之间的助词进行省略，构成语法上的偏离，强调手机在各方面的创新表现，增强了语言的表达效果，丰富了语义内涵。例（13）中创作者巧妙地将“10”与“实”进行谐音替换，“10”既可指一加10pro 手机，也可作“实实在在的成就义”进行理解。前者有利于广告接受者建立起商品名与数字之间的联系，加强广告接受者对产品的记忆，后者说明手机具有实实在在的卓越功能，作为性能旗舰机是当之无愧的。此外“实至名归”多用于赞赏他人，用在这里更能增强广告接受者对商品的信赖。这则广告语，语言表达直观、形象，语义内容简洁、凝练，有利于广告接受者的阅读与记忆。（三）英文谐音英文谐音是利用汉语和英语在语音上相同或相近的特点而形成的一种语音偏离。语言的发展变化与社会经济有密切的联系，加之全球化进程的加速，各国在经济、文化等方面交融发展，外来词汇不断融入现代汉语，语言获得了快速的发展。广告语作为一种第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 25 特殊的语言表现形式，它也受社会政治、经济、文化和科技等的影响，外来词就是一个明显的体现。创作者利用汉字和外语在读音上相近或相同的特点，对语言进行一定程度的扭曲和变形，进而形成谐音偏离。广告语中谐音偏离方式的使用，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，延长广告接受者的阅读时间，让广告接受者获得审美上的享受，增强语言的表达效果。（14）高刷高采样，娱乐要有“Young”。（魅族18X 2021）（15）持久激战，cool 爽冷静。（vivo X80 Pro 2022）（16）电量足够，尽兴开show！（vivo Y30 2021）（17）立体散热，给发烫说ByeBye。（黑鲨5RS 2022）例（14）中创作者利用英语和汉语在语音上相同或相近的特点，巧妙地将“Young” 与“样”构成谐音，打破广告接受者惯常化的思维认知，让广告接受者产生陌生化的体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者领会主旨内容。广告语中谐音偏离方式的使用，使语句兼具表里两层含义，其一可以将“Young”理解为年轻、青春和活力，整句话所表达的意思是高的刷新率和采样率，让广告接受者在进行游戏、追剧等娱乐活动时可以尽情发挥实力，展现青春活力与激情；其二将“Young”谐音为“样”进行理解，意在表现年轻人追求独特、新颖的个性特点。同时，末尾字“样”与“Young”读音相近，使广告语充满韵味，让广告接受者读起来朗朗上口，有利于广告接受者的接受与记忆。例（15）中创作者巧妙地将“cool”与“酷”构成谐音，“cool”是冷静、凉爽的意思，与之后的“冷”语义重复，起到突出强调的作用，更反衬出此手机的散热速度之快，同时谐体“酷”更进一步指出年轻人追求个性和独特的心理特征。整个广告语传达的意思是，在持久的游戏竞技中，手机仍可保持时刻冷静的状态，同时玩家也能在游戏中充分展现自身独特个性。例（16）中的“show”谐音汉字“秀”，蕴含“表演、演出”等义，音译词“秀” 作为网络流行词，最早出现于电竞领域，多表某人的游戏操作非常厉害，现泛指某人或某物有超出一般的特点，值得宣扬和展示。“show”兼具双层含义，一方面传达出手机有着5000mAh 的电池容量，可时刻保持充足电量，这是值得向他人展示的，另一方面指出手机具有充足的电池容量，使广告接受者可以尽情地进行游戏娱乐，在竞技中发挥自身实力，尽情展示自己。此则广告语基于汉英谐音这种语音偏离形式，传达出丰富的陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 26 含义，一方面让广告接受者从视觉上体会到语言的简洁美，另一方面带给广告接受者听觉上的享受，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。例（17）中的“ByeBye”与汉语“拜拜”谐音，表再见义，起初用于双方告别的交际场合，现在不仅语义进行泛化，语用场合也更宽泛。广告语中“ByeBye”的使用，一方面可以使交际氛围变得轻松、幽默，拉进与广告接受者的距离，另一方面可以满足广告接受者求新求异的审美需求，同时谐体的连续重复，带给广告接受者听觉上的审美感知。这则广告语运用语音偏离的方式，使语言幽默风趣，表达含蓄委婉，语义简洁易懂，突出了手机在散热方面的显著特点。二、叠音偏离叠音偏离是创作者基于语义表达上的需求，有意偏离语素或词语的常规重叠形式而形成的一种语音偏离。常规的叠音修辞，在广告语中比较常见，是通过对同音同形的音节进行叠加而形成的，可以增强语言的节奏感，使描绘之物形象生动。然而通常情况下，常规叠音方式往往有言不尽意的局限性，因此广告语创作者会采取对常规叠音形式进行扭曲的方式，创造出新颖的表达形式。叠音偏离方式的使用，一方面可以更有力地突出商品的功能特点，使广告接受者一目了然，另一方面可以使语言在韵律上和谐优美，在形式上新颖，进而带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，获得听觉和视觉上的双重审美感受，达到激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣的目的。手机广告语中的叠音偏离主要表现在单音节词上，双音节词形成的叠音偏离相对较少。单音节词中的叠音偏离按照词性特点可以分为动词、形容词、副词叠音偏离。（一）单音节叠音偏离单音节叠音偏离是对汉语中的单音节词进行超越常规的重叠而形成的一种语音偏离形式。AA 式是单音节词的常规叠音形式，AAA 式或AAAA 式等则是对常规叠音形式的扭曲、变形，后者因形式上的新颖性，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，使语言主旨更加突出。 1.单音节动词叠音偏离动词多表示动作行为，经常用重叠式传达连续性动作的时量短抑或轻松、尝试义。 AA 式是单音节动词的常规重叠形式。不可否认，这种常规的重叠形式，会使广告接受者的认知变得自动化，不利于激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，同时，会在表义上产生一定第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 27 的局限性。因此，广告语创作者会采取叠音偏离的方式将单音节动词进行超越常规的重叠，延长音节的长度，让广告语脱颖而出，达到激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者产生购买行为的目的。（18）拍拍拍，拍什么都专业。（vivo X80 2022）（19）13 小时抖音，刷刷刷不停。（真我GT Neo2T 2021）（20）泡泡泡，泡不坏。（AGM X3 2018）（21）摔摔摔摔摔，就是不怕摔。（AGM H1 2018）例（18）中创作者将单音节动词“拍”进行了超越常规的重叠，意在说明该产品在拍照方面的独特性能和优势。同时，因形式上的超常重叠，一方面延长了音节的节奏，增强了语言的音乐美，使广告接受者获得听觉上的审美体验，另一方面，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。此外，广告语在开头连续使用的单音节动词“拍”，为整个语境奠定了急促的感情基调，促使广告接受者发生购买行为。例（19）是真我GT Neo2T 的广告语，语言简洁明了，有利于广告接受者的阅读与接受。广告语中的“刷”是浏览的意思，创作者将“刷”进行多次重叠，突破常规的语言组合，意在强调手机在蓄电方面的突出性能和优势，更重要的是增强了语言的节奏感，有利于广告接受者的理解与记忆。例（20）中创作者将“泡”进行连续重复，延长了音节的长度，增强了语言的音乐美，加强了广告接受者对产品特点的记忆，更突出了手机在防水方面的显著功能。例（21）中创作者将“摔”进行多次重复，强化了广告接受者的听觉感知，意在说明手机具有防摔的功能。同时，广告语末尾字押韵，增强了语言的整齐美与节奏美。 2.单音节形容词叠音偏离形容词在广告语中是比较常见的，经常用来描述产品的功能特点。广告语中单音节形容词叠音偏离的运用，增强了广告接受者的听觉感知，使广告接受者印象深刻，进而达到吸引广告接受者注意力的目的。（22）高冷，冷冷冷冷。（vivo X80 2022）（23）声音大大大，大到代替低音炮。（AGM H1 2018）（24）5000mAh 大大大电池，续航那叫一个长长长。（一加Ace 竞速版2022）（25）比起其他超广角，这叫超广广广广角。（一加10 Pro 2022）例（22）中创作者将“冷”重复五次，构成前景化的语言模式，意在说明手机在散陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 28 热方面功效显著。同时，广告语将用于描述人的词语“高冷”用在“手机”上，赋予手机以人的性格特点，更增强了语言的表现力。例（23）中创作者将“大”进行连续重复，意在说明手机的扬声器音量效果明显。广告语中叠音偏离手段的使用，更增强了语言的表达效果，使语义内涵更加突出。例（24）中创作者将“大”和“长”均重复三次，增强语言的节奏感，意在说明手机电池容量大，续航时间久。广告语中叠音偏离方式的使用，更增强了语言的感染力，对吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，发挥了巨大作用。例（25）中创作者将“广”进行连续重复，音节长度得以延长，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，使广告接受者留下深刻印象，意在强调手机在画面捕捉范围方面功效显著。 3.单音节副词叠音偏离副词多用来修饰和限制某事或某物，表程度或范围义等，其叠音偏离的实现是基于副词的超常重叠，它可以带给广告接受者听觉上和视觉上的陌生化感知，形成前景化的语言模式，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，增强语言表达效果的目的。（26）散热，大大大大大有能耐。（小米12 Pro 2022）（27）超超超超强散热系统。超超超超大散热面积，超超超超大VC 均热板，超超超超大散热空间。（联想拯救者Y90 电竞手机2022）（28）全场景超质感人像，自拍特特特出片。（vivo S12 Pro 2021）（29）美学结构与材质的融合，恰恰恰到好处。（魅族18S Pro 2021）例（26）中创作者将“大”重复使用，修饰限制后面的谓词性短语“能耐”，创作者的情感得到充分地展现。“能耐”是口语词，有两个义项，其一是名词，指技能，本领；其二是形容词，指有能耐。这里用来说明手机在散热方面有突出的优势。这则广告语，语言简洁明了，直接点明产品的功能特色。同时，广告语中叠音偏离的使用，使语言变得新颖独特，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强了语言的表达效果。例（27）中单音节副词“超”的重复使用，意在说明手机的散热功效显著。广告语逻辑连贯，首先指出手机有超强的散热系统，而后用事实依据具体阐明手机散热功效显著的原因，有利于增强广告接受者对产品的信赖。例（28）中创作者巧妙地运用叠音偏离的前景化模式，将“特”重复三次，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，意在说明手机具有超高像第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 29 素的主摄，在质感人像拍摄方面功能显著。例（29）中创作者将“恰”进行超越常规的重复，意在说明手机在结构、材质等方面进行了恰到好处的巧妙设计，具有一定的美学效果。广告语中叠音偏离方式的使用，增强了语言的表达效果，有利于吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使广告接受者发生购买行为。（二）双音节叠音偏离双音节叠音偏离，是将双音节词或语素进行偏离常规的重叠而形成的一种语音偏离。双音节词的常规重叠形式多为AABB 或ABAB 式，然而广告语中时常出现将无法重叠使用的双音节词进行强行重叠而形成的音节重叠现象，这是对双音节词常规重叠的一种偏离。双音节叠音偏离形式在广告语中的出现频率相对较少，不像单音节叠音偏离那么明显，但是它在吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣方面作用显著。（30）轻薄柔性直屏。轻轻柔柔，超值好屏。（小米11 青春版2021）（31）3D 弧形设计。轻轻薄薄，很高级。（红米Note11SE 2022）例（30）中创作者将“轻柔”一词的音节进行超越常规的重叠，构成前景化的语言模式，一方面增强了语言的表现力，使手机在屏幕和重量上呈现的轻柔特点得到进一步突出，另一方面，延长后的音节长度，让广告接受者获得听觉上的审美体验。例（31）是红米Note11SE 的广告语，该手机采用3D 弧形背面设计，在AG 磨砂工艺的加持下，手感更轻盈，触感更温润。广告语中的“轻轻薄薄”是对“轻薄”一词的超常重叠，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，意在说明手机可以带给广告接受者轻盈的手感体验和温润的触觉感受。三、拟声偏离拟声词是对自然界声响的模拟，反映的是一种真实客观的声音，带给广告接受者身临其境的听觉感受。当拟声词以常规的形式出现时，因形式和意义的固定性，使广告接受者产生麻木感，无法引起广告接受者的注意，很难达到表情达意的效果，因此广告创作者经常对拟声词的常规用法进行变形，对产品特点或服务进行强调说明，达到突出主旨内容的目的。这种前景化方式的使用，因形式上的新颖性，广告接受者无法直接对其意义进行准确的理解与感知，需要运用联想或通感的思维方式进行理解，延长广告接受陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 30 者的阅读时间，加深广告接受者对产品的记忆，增强语言的感染力。（32）咔嚓，一张大片。（vivo S15 2022）（33）5G 速度嗖嗖的，天线信号杠杠的。（华为畅享20 Plus 5G 2020）（34）“啪嗒”一下，闪耀全场。（华为P50 Pro 2021）（35）哒哒哒，赢麻了。（OPPO K9s 2021）（36）“刷”的一下，玩得痛快。（vivo X60 pro+ 2021）例（32）中的“咔嚓”，形容物体断裂等的声音。拍摄照片本是没有声音的，创作者基于通感联想将“咔嚓”用来描述手机拍照时的声音，语言的节奏感使广告接受者产生身临其境之感，仿佛自己正在进行拍照，这是一种超越常规的语音偏离现象。创作者运用这种偏离方式，有力地说明了手机在拍照方面的显著效果。例（33）中的“嗖嗖”形容很快通过的声音，创作者巧妙地将其用于模拟网速这种本无声的声音，表达形式新颖独特，将网速飞快的程度进行了形象且有力地刻画，使广告接受者真切地感受到网速的飞快。例（34）中的“啪嗒”多用来模拟物体掉落时的声音，创作者巧妙地将其用于模拟拍照时环闪壳迅速弹起进行补光所发出的声音，节奏感强，意在突出该手机的的环闪壳在补光方面的显著优势和特点。例（35）中的“哒哒哒”形容马蹄、机枪等的声音，此处将其用于模拟玩家触摸屏幕所感受到的声音，它可与敲击键盘的振感相媲美，带来沉浸的4D 游戏体验。创作者运用拟声偏离的方式，意在说明该手机在游戏方面的显著优势，同时，此广告语所表达的内涵与该款手机的主题相呼应。例（36）中的“刷”形容迅速擦过去的声音，创作者将其用于模拟手机屏幕刷新率所表现出的无声的状态，这是一种偏离常规的表达方式，意在说明手机屏幕的刷新速度快，画面稳定流畅。四、停顿偏离停顿是指说话或朗读时，段落之间，语句中间、后头出现的声音间歇。 ①停顿偏离是创作者出于增强语言表达效果的需要，在不应该停顿的地方连续停顿而形成的一种语音偏离形式。广告语中停顿偏离的使用，可以使主旨内容更加突出，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣。 ①黄伯荣、廖序东《现代汉语》（增订六版），高等教育出版社2017 年版，第104 页。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 31 （37）“竞！燃！如此。（vivo IQOO Neo5SE 2021）（38）好轻。好薄。一块好屏。（小米11 2020）例（37）中创作者运用前景化的方式，巧妙地将词语进行超越常规的停顿，说明玩家在手机的加持下，竞技可以燃控全场，同时也强调该手机在性能方面的显著优势和特点。例（38）中创作者运用停顿偏离的方式，意在强调该手机具有手感轻薄，屏幕观感舒适的特点。同时广告语中“好”字的重复使用，加强了广告接受者的听觉感知，有利于突出手机的特点，给广告接受者留下深刻印象，增强语言的节奏美。第二节词汇偏离词汇与社会经济发展和语言发展有着密切的联系，反映了人们对客观世界认知的深度和广度。广告语若要达到吸引广告接受者的目的，需在词汇上下功夫，对其进行艺术加工，使其偏离语言常规，更生动形象地传达语义内容，达到吸引广告接受者的兴趣，促使广告接受者产生购买行为的目的。广告语中的词汇偏离主要表现在词形偏离和词义偏离上。广告语的词形偏离主要表现在创作者通过缩略法、派生法、替换法、颠倒法和增减法对词语的固定形式进行临时性的改造，带给广告接受者陌生的感受，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。在词义偏离上，广告语中会出现理性义的偏离和色彩义的偏离。本节将主要从词形偏离和词义偏离两个方面进行论述。一、词形偏离词汇是一种语言里所有的或特定范围内的词和固定短语的总和。其中，词是语言中最小的能够独立运用的有音有义的语言单位，其组合形式具有内在的稳定性，词中间是不能够插入其他成分的，因此词形是不容易改变的。固定短语是词语之间的固定的组合，一般情况下固定短语中间无法随意进行语素的改换和增减。然而广告语创作者为使语言具有新颖性、奇特性和审美性，吸引广告接受者的注意力，使表达意图更加突出，会经常采用缩略法、派生法、替换法、颠倒法和增减法等偏离手段，对词语的常规形式进行临时性的创新改造。改造后的词语形式，因形式的新颖性，不仅会带给广告接受者陌生化的感受，也会凸显创作者的表达意图，更会让广告接受者对主题内容产生深刻的理解，使广告接受者留下深刻的印象。因此，词形偏离指创作者有意打破词语的固定形式，在词语层面形成前景化的语言表达形式，它主要通过缩略法、派生法、替换法、颠倒法和陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 32 增减法对词语的固定形式进行打破，进而使词语具有新颖性和奇特性，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。（一）缩略法缩略法是把一个结构较长的词语、词组或语段进行缩略，构成新词的方法。 ①广告语创作者为了使语言形式简洁明了，新颖独特，吸引广告接受者的注意力，会有意采取缩略法，形成词形上的偏离。缩略法在广告语中的作用显著，原因有三：其一，可以节省广告成本；其二，利用缩略法构成的词，形式简洁，有利于广告接受者的接受与记忆；其三，通过缩略方法形成的词，具有新颖性和独特性，有利于吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。（39）智芯，智领5G 时代（华为mate30RS 保时捷设计2021）（40）激发创力，享拍无限。（vivo IQOO Neo5 2021）（41）AI 时代，智享畅快。（vivo Y75s 2018）（42）全新5G 双模，畅享飞速体验。（中兴天机Axon 10s Pro 2019）（43）运存体验。运存多一点，运行快一点。（OPPO A57 2022）（44）5000mAh 大电池，畅玩不断电。（荣耀畅玩20a 2021）（45）续写传奇，领创未来。（华为mate20RS 保时捷设计2018）例（39）中的“智领”为“智慧”、“引领”的意思，意在说明该手机所承载的5G 芯片，可以用智慧引领整个5G 时代。同时其与该手机所宣扬的主题“致敬时代”相一致。例（40）中的“创力”为“创作能力”的意思，“享拍”是“享受拍照”的意思，意在说明该手机摄像功能显著，可激发拍照者的创作力，让拍照者尽情享受拍照这一过程。例（41）中的“智享”是“智慧”、“享受”的意思，意在说明该手机可基于人工智能技术让广告接受者更智能化地享受到轻松畅快的真实体验。例（42）中的“畅享” 是“畅快享受”的意思，意在说明该手机所搭载的5G 双模，可以让手机持有者畅快享受5G 飞速且稳定的网络体验。例（43）中的“运存”是“运行内存”的意思，意在说明该手机有超大的运行内存，可避免应用卡顿，使手机运行更加畅快。例（44）中的“畅玩”是“畅快玩耍”的意思，意在说明该手机电池容量大，有超强的续航能力，可实现持久畅玩，同时其亦巧妙地将该手机的名称“畅玩”隐含其中，更加深了广告接受者对该产品的认知。例（45）中的“领创”是“引领创新”的意思，意在说明手机指纹识别 ①朱瑜环《汉法构词法对比与对法汉语词汇教学研究》，南京大学，硕士学位论文，2017 年。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 33 精准，解锁畅快，说明指纹识别技术在手机领域可起到引领作用。同时“领创”二字亦与该手机的广告语“致敬时代”相吻合，正因为其在各方面皆可引领未来，因此起到向时代致敬的作用。（二）派生法派生法指的是词根加上词缀构词的方法。 ①基于派生法构成的词在广告语中广泛存在，词缀多为“级”、“式”、“感”等。下面将结合具体广告语进行分析：（46）光学级虚化，电影级实力（华为mate50 Pro 2022）（47）旗舰级性能，电竞级体验。（OPPO Find X5 Pro 天玑版2022 ）（48）潜望式超远摄，发现更多美。（vivo X30 2019）（49）游戏空间，打造沉浸式感受。（IQOO Neo 2019）（50）好手感，好有幸福感。（vivo S9 2021）（51）速度感，溢出屏幕。（OPPO k9 pro 2021）例（46）中的“光学级”和“电影级”意在说明该手机在摄像背景虚化和视频录制方面功能显著，可带给广告接受者自然逼真且色彩生动的视觉审美体验。例（47）中的 “旗舰级”和“电竞级”意在说明该手机性能卓越，拥有旗舰级的性能，可以带给广告接受者电竞般的游戏体验。例（48）中的“潜望式”意在说明该手机拥有和潜望镜相似的原理设计，变焦能力比较强，可以发现更远处的美景。例（49）中的“沉浸式”意在说明该手机在游戏竞技中功能显著，可以带给广告接受者沉浸式的游戏体验。例（50）中的“幸福感”意在说明该手机质感纤薄，手感舒适，无论广告接受者躺着或坐着玩手机都可轻松握持，使广告接受者获得舒适的手感体验，带给广告接受者满满的幸福感。例（51）中的“速度感”意在说明该手机在运行速度方面功能显著，运行畅快，性能卓越，同时其背部流线型设计，也带给广告接受者一种流畅感。广告语中派生词的使用，一方面因形式的新颖性，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，延长广告接受者的思考时间，使其留下深刻的印象。另一方面，因情感的突出性，可以增强语言的表达效果。（三）替换法语素是语言中最小的有音有义的语言单位，它可以构成词。词语具有约定俗成性， ①朱瑜环《汉法构词法对比与对法汉语词汇教学研究》，南京大学，硕士学位论文，2017 年。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 34 词形具有固定性，因此其形式是不容易发生改变的。然而当常规的词语形式无法传递创作者的表达意图时，广告语创作者会打破词语的常规形式，对其中的语素进行替换，使其更好地为主题内容服务。替换后所形成的词语，因形式上的新颖性，语义上的奇特性，会使广告接受者产生陌生化的审美感受，同时因为它对语境的依赖性比较强，理解时需要结合具体的语境。 1.替换词中的语素社会的发展，新事物不断出现，语言系统中常规的词语有时无法满足创作者的的表达需求，因此创作者会基于经济性原则，对广告接受者熟知的词语中的语素进行替换，使语言在形式上带给广告接受者既陌生又熟悉的感受，在表达上更加准确，更具吸引力。同时替换后所形成的新颖的词语，不仅会在意义上发生改变，也会在词形上带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验。然而替换后的词语因具有临时性的特点，所以需要结合具体的语境进行分析理解。（52）屏幕音质，官方认证。好有眼福，更有耳福。（vivo S9 2021）（53）这种拍摄体验，真的很中兴。（中兴天机Axon11 2020）例（52）中的“耳福”是对“大饱眼福”中“眼福”进行语素替换而形成的。广告语意在说明手机的屏幕既可以呵护双眼，也可以呈现诸多画面细节。同时该手机在音质方面效果显著，具有演唱会现场的音质氛围。例（53）中的“中兴”是对“中意”进行语素替换而形成的。广告语一方面说明手机拍摄效果显著，不仅可以进行超广角拍摄，捕捉更多风景，也可以进行微距拍摄，拍摄更多细节，更可以进行夜间拍摄，记录黑夜中的美好，同时美颜自然，可以获得更多的自然美。这种拍摄效果让广告接受者中意和认可。另一方面，“中兴”亦是对手机品牌的强调。 2.替换成语中的语素成语是一种相沿习用、含义丰富、具有书面语色彩的固定短语。 ①它的构成成分是固定的，不能进行任意的替换或增减，同时结构形式是定型的，词序不能随意改变。然而因成语是广告接受者普遍使用的，为大众所熟知，因此当其再次出现在广告接受者视野中时，会被自动化识别，不容易在广告接受者的心中留下深刻印象。基于此，广告语创作者会对成语中的语素进行替换，使成语发生偏离，进而更好地为主题表达服务，让 ①黄伯荣、廖序东《现代汉语》（增订六版），高等教育出版社2017 年版，第249 页。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 35 广告语脱颖而出，吸引广告接受者的注意力。替换之后的成语，因具有新颖的表达形式和意义，会带给广告接受者既陌生又熟悉的审美感受，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。（54）猛兽之速，淋漓尽畅。（vivo X60 Pro+ 2021）（55）万千风采，一拍倾心。（华为畅享50 2022）（56）GT 血统，全速以赴。（真我GT Neo 闪速版2021）（57）IP68，水土都服。（荣耀Magic3 至臻版2021）（58）好事成三，给你不止三倍的实力加成。（中兴Axon 30 Ultra 2021）例（54）中的“淋漓尽畅”是对“淋漓尽致”进行语素替换的结果，创作者巧妙地运用替换法所形成的词形偏离，意在带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，吸引广告接受者的注意力，突出手机在处理器和运行方面的显著优势和特点。例（55）中的“一拍倾心”是对“一见倾心”进行替换而形成的。广告语意在说明该手机的拍摄效果显著，万千风景皆可清晰拍摄。例（56）中的“全速以赴”是对“全力以赴”进行替换的结果，创作者意在通过替换法，创造出新颖奇特的语言表达形式，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，说明该手机方方面面性能卓越，运行速度更是非比寻常。例（57）中的“水土都服”是对“水土不服”进行替换而形成的。此广告语可以使广告接受者产生一种既熟悉又陌生的认知体验，加深其对广告语主旨内容的理解，突出手机在防尘抗水方面的显著效果。例（58）中的“好事成三”是对“好事成双”进行替换的结果，其意在说明该手机摄像功能显著，三个主摄像头可以带给广告接受者不止三倍的拍摄效果。（四）颠倒法汉语中的词语有固定的组合方式，是广告接受者所熟知的，广告接受者对其所产生的审美认知已趋于自动化，无法对其产生深刻的印象，同时加之语义表达的局限性。基于此，创作者会颠倒词语中的固定语序，使其在词形上发生偏离，达到吸引广告接受者阅读兴趣的效果。语素颠倒后所形成的新的词语，其形式是新颖独特的，语义是偏离常规的，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的审美感受，同时也可以使广告语在内容表达上更加准确，有利于创作者深层语义内容的传递，加深广告接受者对主题内容的理解。（59）见远，有远见。（vivo X Fold 2022）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 36 （60）酷炫灯效，炫酷过人。（vivo IQOO 2019）（61）一人千面，可盐可甜。（vivo S5 2019) 例（59）中的“见远”和“远见”二者语素颠倒，其意在说明该手机可以将远处风景清晰呈现，突出手机在拍摄方面的显著效果。例（60）中的“酷炫”和“炫酷”二者语素颠倒，其意在说明该手机背部隐藏灯带的灯效比较炫酷，开启灯效后，无论收到通知或手机充电皆可使灯效闪亮。例（61）中的“一人千面”与“千人一面”二者语素颠倒，其意在说明该手机在拍摄方面功能显著，可以实现不同拍照风格的互换。（五）增减法词语的构成有相对的稳定性，广告接受者对其固有形式产生了惯常化的认知，因此不容易吸引广告接受者的注意力，然而广告语的目的在于向广告接受者介绍商品信息，吸引其注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，最终促使其产生购买行为，因此广告语创作者会对词语中的语素进行增减，使词语的稳固性发生破坏，词语间的紧密程度弱化，形成新颖的词语形式，带给广告接受者产生陌生化的审美感受，加深广告接受者对深层语义内容的理解。这种偏离方式经常发生在商品特点上，可以加深广告接受者对商品功能和优势的熟知程度，增强其对产品功能特点的认知。（62）遥，可及。（荣耀Magic4 至臻版2022）（63）看一眼，就动心弦。（荣耀60 SE 2022）（64）让音乐更动你心。（vivo X23 幻彩版2018）（65）边玩游戏边看直播，一心也可轻松两用。（OPPO A93s 2021）（66）相见不恨“晚”。（荣耀Magic4 至臻版2022）例（62）中的“遥，可及”是对“遥不可及”进行语素缩减而形成的，其意在说明该手机的光学变焦镜头效果显著，可以轻松拍摄远距离画面。例（63）中的“动心弦”是对“动人心弦”进行语素缩减而形成。创作者将成语进行语素缩减，进而形成词形上的偏离，其意在说明该手机的曲面屏幕，有高的刷新率，上亿色显示和硬件级低蓝光，可以让视野更延伸，色彩更丰富，眼睛更舒服，同时更突出了手机在屏幕设计上所具有的显著特点。例（64）中的“动你心”是对“动心”进行语素的增加而形成的，其意在说明该手机的音效较好，可以使广告接受者获得听觉上的审美体验。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 37 例（65）中的“一心也可轻松两用”是对“一心两用”进行语素的增加而形成的，其意在说明该手机可实现分屏操作，使工作更轻松，更便捷。例（66）中的“相见不恨‘晚’”是对“相见恨晚”进行语素的增加而形成的，其意在说明该手机夜拍效果显著，暗光环境下也可以清晰还原人物细节，契合广告接受者在拍照方面的心理需求。二、词义偏离词义是词的意义，即词的内容，包括词汇义和语法义。 ①这里所要论述的词义偏离主要指词汇意义的偏离。词汇义是约定俗成的，不易改变。然而创作者为增强语言的审美性，突出语义内涵，吸引广告接受者的注意力，会采取前景化的方式改变词语的理性义或色彩义，使其发生词义上的扭曲。在广告语中采用前景化的方式使词义发生偏离，其一，可以激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，提高广告接受者对广告语的关注度；其二，更易于创作者深层主题意义的表达。（一）理性义偏离词义中同表达概念有关的意义部分叫做理性义，又叫概念义。 ②理性义是词义的主要部分，是人类社会约定俗成的，有一定的稳定性，反映了人们的共同认知。当其出现于广告语中时，因广告接受者比较熟悉，会在审美上和视觉上产生疲劳感，不易引起广告接受者的阅读兴趣。因此，创作者为使广告语能够脱颖而出，吸引广告接受者的注意力，会采取前景化的方式，打破词语音义之间的约定俗成性，使其偏离常规词义。广告语中理性义的偏离主要通过只取字面义和截取语素义的方式来实现。 1.只取字面义词语的理性义是约定俗成的，是广告接受者所普遍接受和熟知的，然而创作者在表达时或因克服言不尽意的局限性抑或是为了激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，会有意只采取词语字面上的意思，形成对理性义的偏离。这种词义偏离方式，因意义上的新颖独特性，更容易激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。（67）面面俱到，让合影中的每个人清晰又好看。（vivo X80 2022）（68）强续航，更来电。（vivo Y30 2021）（69）无微，不至。（华为mate40E 4G 2021） ①黄伯荣、廖序东《现代汉语》（增订六版），高等教育出版社2017 年版，第212 页。 ②同上，页214。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 38 （70）安全解锁，独当一“面”。（荣耀Magic3 2021）例（67）中的“面面俱到”原义指“各方面都照顾的到”，“面”的意思是“方方面面”。广告中使用其字面义，将成语中“面”的“方方面面”义还原成“人脸”义，广告语的意思就顺理成章被理解为该手机在进行拍摄时，可以将每个人的面孔都清晰地拍摄进去，从侧面反映出手机在摄像方面的显著功能。创作者巧妙地运用成语的字面义，既使广告语表义更准确，也可使广告接受者产生熟悉而陌生的心理感受，达到吸引广告接受者阅读兴趣，增强语言表达效果的目的。例（68）中的“来电”原义是“打来的电话或电报”，这里将它还原为表面义“输送电源”。创作者通过对词语理性义进行扭曲，将理性义与字面义形成反差，使广告接受者产生的陌生化的认知体验，达到吸引广告接受者注意力的目的。同时，这种偏离手段的使用，意在强调该手机在续航能力和充电速度方面的显著优势。例（69）中的“微”是“细微”的意思，“无微不至”多指“对某人或某物的照顾非常细心周到”。创作者巧妙地将成语进行拆分，引导广告接受者从字面上进行理解，此时的“微”表示“微小的景物”，广告语意在说明手机在微距摄影方面功能显著。广告语中偏离手段的使用，既可以使语义表达更加精确，也可以带给广告接受者一种熟悉又陌生的感受，有利于广告接受者的接受，同时其字面义与深层义之间的差异，可以带给广告接受者新颖感，使广告接受者对语义内容产生深刻的理解，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。例（70）中的“独当一面”指“某人在某方面比较有才能，可以独自负责一方面的工作”，这里的“面”指“一方面”。广告语中使用其字面义，将成语中的的“面”还原为“人脸”义。创作者运用词义偏离的手段，不仅激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，更强调了手机在人脸解锁方面的精准性。 2.截取语素义理性义是为大众熟知的，属于常规义，广告接受者对其所产生的认知逐渐趋于自动化，因此当其出现于广告语中时，不易吸引广告接受者的注意力，更不利于增强语言的表达效果。基于此，广告语创作者会选择截取词语内部的一个或者几个字的意义，并置其余字而不顾，从而达到使广告语言富有新意的目的，这就是截取语素义。 ①广告语中词义偏离手段的使用，可以使语言富有新意，吸引广告接受者的注意力，增强语言的表 ①李紫嫣《修辞视角下食品广告语言变异研究》，江苏师范大学，硕士学位论文，2018 年。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 39 达效果。（71）自带云台，天生稳重。（vivo X50 Pro 2020）（72）时刻保持高冷范儿。（华为nova8SE 4G 版2020）（73）直爽，势不可挡。（魅族18X 2021）（74）小R 角，大气硬朗。（vivo X Note 2022）例（71）中的“稳重”多形容“人的言语或举动沉着而有分寸，不轻浮”。广告语只截取了“稳”字的含义，即“平稳、稳固”，整个广告语的意思是该手机所搭载的微云台，可以使手机在进行拍照时减少抖动，画面更稳定。创作者巧妙地运用词义偏离的手段，对词语的常规义进行扭曲，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。例（72）中的“高冷”一般解释为“高贵冷艳”，广告语截取“冷”字的基本义“温度低，寒冷”，整个广告语的意思是该手机的散热功能显著。广告语中词义偏离手段的使用，使语义变得新颖独特，增强语言的表达效果。例（73）中的“直爽”是“坦率爽朗”的意思，广告语截取“直”字的基本义“笔直”。整个广告语的意思是手机边框线条笔直，与曲面屏设计完美契合，“爽”的内涵则被剔除。例（74）中的“硬朗”有两个义项，其一指“老人身体健壮”；其二指“坚强有力”。广告语截取“硬”字的本义“坚固”，整个广告语的意思是该手机R 形的棱角比较坚硬，在防摔方面效果显著。（二）色彩义的偏离词的色彩义，指词语概念意义之外的主要同交际环境有关的意义。 ①情感色彩意义，指由词体现出来的反映说话人对所指对象或有关现象的主观态度及各种感情意义。 ②它包括褒义、贬义和中性义三类。褒义指对事物的肯定与赞扬，贬义指对事物的否定和厌恶，中义指不包含感情色彩。词语的感情色彩是可以相互转换的，这就形成了词义的偏离，包括贬义中用和中义褒用两类。广告语中词义偏离手段的使用，可以激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。 1.贬义中用 ①邢福义、汪国胜《现代汉语》（第二版），华中师范大学出版社2011 年版，第141 页。 ②同上，页141。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 40 贬义词在广告语中是比较少见的，然而若将其进行巧妙使用，将会达到意想不到的效果。贬义中用是将具有贬义色彩的词语临时用作中性词，使词义的感情色彩发生偏离，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，加深广告接受者的印象，达到增强语言的表达效果，促使广告接受者发生购买行为的目的。（75）全面冷酷，战无拘束。（vivo IQOO Neo5s 2021）（76）野蛮性能，旗舰实力。（OPPO K10 Pro 2022）（77）新一代5G 网络。速度失控，玩出超快感。（真我Q5 2022）（78）128G 海量空间，肆意存储。（vivo Y97 2018）（79）稳帧大魔王，稳住大场面。（红魔7S Pro 2022）（80）漫画风格。摇身一变，分分钟成为“撕漫”大主角。（vivo S15 Pro 2022）（81）如此高冷，却又如此贴心。（华为nova 9SE 2022）（82）任性用，畅快玩。（OPPO Reno7 SE 2021）（83）全速回血，放肆畅玩。（真我GT Neo 闪速版2021）例（75）中的“冷酷”，表示“对人冷淡刻薄”的意思，但是当其用于修饰手机时，就显得比较巧妙，词义发生偏离，具有中义的感情色彩，给广告接受者带来陌生化的认知，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。手机在使用过程中容易出现异常发热的情况，这是广告接受者所担心的，因此创作者将“冷酷”用在此处，一方面契合了广告接受者的需求，另一方面更突出了手机在散热方面的特点。例（76）中的“野蛮”，表示“蛮横不讲理的行为”。广告语中的“野蛮”具有中义色彩，意在说明该手机在CPU 和GPU 性能等方面有显著提升。创作者巧妙地运用词义偏离的手段，对词语的常规色彩义进行扭曲，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力，增强语言表达效果的目的。例（77）中的“失控”，表示“失去控制”。广告语中的“失控“意在说明手机网速飞快，难以控制，从侧面突出了手机在网速方面的显著优势。广告语中词义偏离方式的使用，意在突出焦点信息，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。例（78）中的“肆意”，意为“不顾一切，由着自己的性子做某事”。广告语中的 “肆意”具有中性色彩，创作者有意将其进行色彩义的转移，意在说明手机存储空间充足，可以实现广告接受者随时存储的需求，同时更突出了主旨内容，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 41 例（79）中的“魔王”，表示“凶残的统治恶人”。广告语中的“魔王”意在说明手机帧率的稳定性，它可以使画面更加稳定、流畅、清晰，无卡顿。创作者将其进行感情色彩的偏离，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，延长其阅读时间，使广告接受者留下深刻的印象。例（80）中的“摇身一变”，表示“变化很快”。广告语中的“摇身一变”被临时赋予中义色彩，表示手机摄像功能丰富，其自带的漫画风格，可以瞬间满足广告接受者在拍照时对漫画主角的向往。广告语中偏离手段的使用，使语义新颖奇特，加深广告接受者的印象。例（81）中的“高冷”，意为“心高气傲，孤傲”的意思。创作者突破词语的固有色彩义，将其临时赋予中性义，意在说明该手机在散热方面功能显著，同时使语言极具特色，达到增强语言表达效果的目的。例（82）中的“任性”，意为“放纵自己的性子，不加约束”。广告语中“任性” 的贬义色彩消失，意在说明手机电池容量大，续航时间久，可以让广告接受者尽情地利用手机进行娱乐。创作者巧妙地将词语的情感色彩义进行扭曲和变形，增强了语言的感染力，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，使广告接受者留下深刻的印象。例（83）中的“放肆”，意为“放纵，任意妄为”。广告语中的“放肆”，意在说明手机具有充电速度快的特点。创作者巧妙地运用词义偏离的手段，意在突出主旨内容，增强语言的表达效果。 2.中义褒用汉语中大多数词都是不带感情色彩的，属于中性词。然而创作者为了增强语言的表达效果，吸引广告接受者的注意力，会有意采取词义偏离的手段，对词语的固有感情色彩进行扭曲，将本无褒贬色彩义的词语当作褒义词来使用。广告语中的褒义词比较常见，它所传递的信息多是对产品的赞扬，原因在于广告语旨在宣传商品，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。然而常见的褒义词因其色彩义的常用性，会使广告接受者产生认知上的麻木感，不易吸引广告接受者的注意力。因此，创作者为了激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，会巧妙地将中义词进行褒用，使广告接受者在认知上产生强烈的反差，吸引广告接受者的注意力，达到突出主旨内容的目的。（84）你要的焦点，插翅难逃。（vivo IQOO Neo5S 2021）（85）6400 万超清三摄，征服每一个小细节。（OPPO K10 2022）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 42 例（84）中的“插翅难逃”是中性词，意为“陷入困境，逃脱不了”。该成语用在此广告语中意在说明手机在拍摄时，无论人或物如何移动，镜头仍可时刻锁定焦点，获得清晰的拍摄效果，突出手机在防抖和聚焦方面的显著功能。创作者巧妙地运用词义偏离的手段，对词语的常规色彩义进行偏离，使其形成强烈的反差，达到吸引广告接受者的注意力的目的。例（85）中的“征服”，意为“用武力降服”。广告语意在说明手机在摄像方面功能显著，可将画面内的每个细节清晰地呈现。创作者将词语的情感色彩进行临时的偏离，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，使主旨内容更加突出。第三节语法偏离语法是从言语中概括出来的词语和规则的总和，作为语言三要素之一，它是人类在长久的社会生活中所形成的约定俗成的一套语法规则，不易改变，具有一定的稳固性。然而事物是发展变化的，语言如此，语法亦是如此，旧的语法规则会逐渐消失，新的语法规则也会不断产生。同时，基于语言表达的局限性，语言发出者也会对既定的语法规则进行偏离，以达到突出表达内容的目的。因广告语具有一定的宣传性和劝导性，同时会受到广告成本的限制，所以创作者会经常对语言进行创新，使其表现出新颖性、奇特性和简短性的特点，进而达到吸引广告接受者注意力的目的，最终促使其发生购买行为。语法偏离主要发生在语法单位进行组合时所依据的语法规则之间，如语素组合成词、词与词组合成短语，词和短语组合成句子所涉及的规则。广告语中语法偏离手段的使用，其一可使语言具有新颖性、奇特性，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。常规的语法结构是广告接受者熟知的，会在广告接受者的大脑中进行自动化识别，不易激发其阅读兴趣，更不会给广告接受者留下深刻的印象，因此创作者会采取偏离的手段对语言进行扭曲和变形，使其具有新颖奇特的特点；其二，利于深层语义内容或表达主题的突出。社会是不断发展的，人类的认知亦在逐渐进步，因此语言中固有的语法规则有时无法满足创作者在语义表达方面的需求，因此，创作者将会对其进行创新，进而突出表达主题；其三，可以加深广告接受者对主旨内容的理解，在广告接受者大脑中留下深刻的印象。因为常规的语法现象是广告接受者所熟知的，当其出现于广告接受者面前时，会使广告接受者产生认知上的疲劳感，不易激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，更不用说对于深层语义的理解，因此新颖的语法形式，会带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，延长其阅读时间，第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 43 加深广告接受者对主旨内涵的掌握。手机广告语中常见的语法偏离，主要包括词法偏离和句法偏离，在词法偏离方面主要对其中所涉及的词类偏离进行研究，句法偏离则从短语偏离和句式偏离两个角度进行展开。一、词法偏离词法是语法研究的重要组成部分，它既在语言发展变化中发挥着至关重要的作用，也在大众人际交往中功能显著。基于语言表达的需要，创作者会将词语进行用法和形式上的扭曲与变形，形成词法上的偏离，来克服表达中言不尽意的局限性，达到增强语言的表达效果，吸引广告接受者的注意力的目的。广告语中的词法偏离主要表现为词类偏离。词类是词的语法性质的分类，一个词会具备其所属此类的语法功能，然而本节所指的词类偏离是指在广告语中，临时改变某个词的词类归属，使其具有另一个词类的语法功能。广告语中的词类偏离是对常规词语语法规则的扭曲或变形，可以使语言表达变得新颖奇特，使广告接受者产生陌生化的心理感受，吸引其阅读兴趣，使广告接受者留下深刻的印象。广告语中的词类偏离主要包括名词偏离、动词偏离和形容词偏离三类。（一）名词偏离名词表示人、事物或时地的名称，经常作主语或宾语，多数亦可作定语。通常情况下，名词表示指称说明，然而广告语是一种宣传性语言，旨在介绍产品信息，吸引广告接受者的兴趣，劝说广告接受者进行购买，因此创作者若想使其在众多广告语中脱颖而出，吸引广告接受者的注意力，其通常不会使用名词的常规用法，而是会对其进行语法上的创新，将其偏离为动词或形容词，使其表现出动作性或特征性，获得特殊的表达效果。 1.名词偏离为动词名词偏离为动词，指名词在保留其原有意义的基础上，使其具有动作性。这种偏离手段的使用，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，延长广告接受者的思考时间，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。（86）让照片格调起来。（一加10 Pro 2022）（87）视频画面，也徕了。（小米12s Pro）（88）不费力，趣生活。（vivo IQOO Neo5 2021）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 44 （89）充满一次电，元气一整天。（vivo IQOO Z6x 2022）（90）仿生双眸，氛围人像。（小米Civi2 2022）例（86）中的“格调”指“人的风格或作品艺术特点的综合表现”。这里将名词“格调”偏离为动词，意在强调该手机自带的哈苏影调风格独特，可以让照片充满韵味。广告语中偏离手法的使用，使语言新颖独特，增强了语言的表现力，使广告接受者产生一种陌生化的感受，吸引广告接受者的注意力，促使其产生购买行为。例（87）中的“徕”指的是徕卡影像。这里把“徕”放在谓语的位置上，将名词偏离为动词，整句话的意思是该手机使视频画面也具有徕卡风格。创作者为了增强语言的表达效果，突出焦点信息，巧妙地将名词偏离为动词，使其具有动作性，给广告接受者留下深刻印象。例（88）中的“趣”指的是“趣味”。这里将“趣”偏离为动词，意在强调该手机自带的原装系统，比如仿真键盘、行为壁纸等，不仅可以使手机称手，也可以使生活充满趣味。广告语中偏离手段的使用，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。例（89）中的“元气”指“人或国家、组织的生命力”。这里将“元气”偏离为动词，意在强调手机在续航方面的显著特点和性能。创作者巧妙地将其进行词类上的偏离，使广告语富有新奇性和创新性，延长广告接受者的阅读时间，使广告接受者留下深刻的印象。例（90）中的“氛围”指“周围的气氛和情调”。这里将“氛围”偏离为动词，意在说明手机在进行拍照时会使人像更真实，更具氛围感，突出手机在拍摄方面的显著优势。 2.名词偏离为形容词名词偏离为形容词，指名词临时具有形容词的某些语法特征。这种偏离手段的使用，既可以带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，也可以达到对性质特点进行强化描述的作用，突出焦点信息，增强语言的表达效果。（91）温暖配色，比阳光更阳光。（vivo S12 2021）（92）创意大片，马上开拍。（vivo T1x 2021）（93）黄金设计·黄金手感。（OPPO K10 2022）（94）影像实力，再次精进。（华为nova 9 2021）第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 45 例（91）中的“阳光”，意为“太阳发出的光”。广告语中将第二次出现的名词“阳光”偏离为形容词，意为“温暖”。广告语中此偏离手段的使用，一方面使所描述产品的特点更加突出，强调了该手机外壳的颜色带给广告接受者的比阳光更温暖的感受，增强了语言的表达效果。另一方面，激发了广告接受者的阅读兴趣，使其留下深刻印象。例（92）中的“创意”，有两个义项，其一是名词，指有创造性的想法、构思等；其二是动词，指提出有创造性的想法、构思等。广告语中将“创意”偏离为形容词，意为“富有创造性的”。创作者巧妙地将名词偏离为形容词，突破词语常规的词类归属，意在说明手机可以拍摄出富有艺术氛围感的大片，强调手机在拍照方面的显著功能，同时亦使广告接受者产生陌生化的审美认知，延长广告接受者的阅读时间。例（93）中的“黄金”，意为“金的通称”。广告语中将名词“黄金”偏离为形容词，意在强调该手机巧妙的边框曲线设计，可以带给广告接受者舒适的手感体验。例（94）中的“影像”，有三个义项，其一是肖像、画像；其二是形象；其三是物体通过光学装置、电子装置等呈现出来的形状。广告语中将名词“影像”偏离为形容词，意为影像般的。这种偏离手段的使用，打破词语常规的词类归属，产生新颖独特的用法，意在说明该手机在摄像方面功能显著。（二）形容词偏离形容词表示性质或状态，常做定语，表示描写和修饰。广告语中形容词的使用较为频繁，原因在于广告语作为一种宣传促销类语言，旨在向广告接受者介绍产品信息，让广告接受者获得一定的认知，进而产生购买行为，因此，创作者通常会使用褒义的形容词对产品的优势特点进行介绍。然而形容词的常规用法因广告接受者对其过于熟悉，当它再次呈现于广告接受者面前时，不易引起广告接受者的注意，更不会在广告接受者心中留下深刻印象。基于此，创作者会采用语法偏离的手段，将形容词偏离为动词或名词，使其具有新颖性和奇特性，给广告接受者留下深刻的印象，增强语言的表达效果，促使购买行为的发生。 1.形容词偏离为动词形容词偏离为动词，指形容词具有了动词的语法功能，可表现出状态和程度的变化情况，将静态的描写转化为动态的变化，使语言增添了动态感。同时词类偏离手段的使用，亦可延长广告接受者的阅读时间，突出焦点信息，增强语言的表达效果。（95）精彩多面生活。（vivo S6 2020）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 46 （96）C 位色，敢出色。（真我X7 5G 2020）（97）3D 追踪，精细视频美颜。（小米Civi2 2022）（98）6.5 英寸高清护眼屏，清晰你的“视”界。（荣耀play5T 2021）（99）影音大屏，畅快观影。（华为畅享50 2022）例（95）中的“精彩”，意为“表演或文章等优美，出色”。广告语中将“精彩” 偏离为动词，意为“使……精彩”，化静为动，整个广告语意在说明该手机的前后置摄像头可以同时开始录制，使制作Vlog 更轻松，使生活更精彩，突出了手机在视频拍摄方面的显著功能。创作者巧妙地将词语的词类归属进行扭曲和变形，使其具有新奇性和独特性，进而吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣。例（96）中的“出色”，意为“特别好，超出一般”。广告语中将“出色”偏离为动词，意为“使……超出一般”，其中以“C 位色”代指具有该色彩的手机，整个广告语意在说明手机不仅敢于使外壳更具色彩感，也可以敢于让外壳的色彩超凡脱俗。例（97）中的“精细”是形容词，意为“精密细致的”。广告语中将“精细”偏离为动词，意为“使……精细”，整个广告语意在说明该手机基于3D 追踪，可以使视频美颜更加细致，强调手机在前置摄像方面的显著功能。同时该广告语亦满足了广告接受者求美的心理倾向，更能激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。例（98）中的“清晰”，意为“清楚”。广告语中将“清晰”偏离为动词，意为“使…… 清楚”，整个广告语意在说明手机可以保护双眼，减少有害蓝光，使广告接受者所看到的屏幕变得更加清晰，强调手机在屏幕方面所具有的优点。例（99）中的“畅快”，意为“舒畅快乐”。广告语中将“畅快”偏离为动词，意为“使……畅快”，整个广告语意在说明该手机屏幕较大，可以提高广告接受者的观影体验。 2.形容词偏离为名词形容词偏离为名词后其所表示的是具有该形容词特征的人或事物，可以达到突出事物性质的效果，也可以使语言表达更加生动形象，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。（100）清晰我负责，美丽你搞定。（荣耀Magic4 Pro 2022）（101）用的是舒心，送的是孝心。（中兴Blade20smart 孝心版2019）（102）请把凉快打在公屏上。（OPPO K9x 2022）第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 47 （103）6400 万超清三摄，拍出好看！（中兴远航20 Pro 2021）例（100）中的“清晰”和“美丽”都是形容词，前者意为“清楚”，后者意为“好看”。广告语中将形容词偏离为名词，意在说明该手机可以将广告接受者的面容清晰地呈现，强调其在摄像方面的显著功能。广告语中该偏离手段的使用，既使表义更加突出，更吸引了广告接受者的注意力。例（101）中的“舒心”，意为“心情舒展，适意”。广告语中将形容词偏离为名词，意在说明手机在使用过程中可以带给父母舒心的感受。同时，该广告语亦与尊老敬老的传统文化相吻合，更利于激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。例（102）中的“凉快”，意为“清凉爽快”。广告语中将形容词偏离为名词，意在说明广告接受者隔着屏幕就可感受到手机的清凉手感，突出了手机在散热方面的显著功能。例（103）中的“好看”，意为“看着舒服、美观、精彩”。广告语中将形容词偏离为名词，意在说明该手机在拍摄方面功能显著。（三）动词偏离动词多表示动作或行为，不能作主语或宾语，经常作谓语。广告语中的动词通常偏离为名词，化动为静，突出产品特点，使语言变得新颖奇特，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果，达到销售产品的目的。（104）典藏定制礼盒，开启非凡体验。（vivo X21 FIFA 世界杯非凡版2018）（105）超大存储，放肆开玩。（OPPO K10 活力版2022）（106）你的热爱，尽情装下。（华为畅享20SE 2020）（107）非凡操控，决胜方寸间。（荣耀X40 GT）（108）可靠续航，告别焦虑。（魅族18s 2021）例（104）中的“体验”，意为“亲身经历”。它作为动词不能出现在形容词“非凡”的后面做中心语，这里将其偏离为名词，意在强调用充满仪式感的礼盒，给广告接受者带来非同一般的世界杯体验，同时亦可以让广告接受者产生置身其中的畅爽体验。广告语通过偏离手段的使用，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，增强语言的表达效果。例（105）中的“存储”，意为“储存”。创作者巧妙地将其偏离为名词，意在强调该手机存储空间大，可以让广告接受者任意进行应用的切换，实现畅玩的目的。例（106）中的“热爱”，意为“对国家、事业等热烈的爱”。广告语中将其偏离陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 48 为名词，意在说明手机具有超大的存储空间，可以将广告接受者所热爱的一切都装进手机。例（107）中的“操控”，意为“操纵控制”。广告语中将其偏离为名词，意在说明手机在进行竞技时，画面流畅，操作精准，强调其在性能方面的显著优势。例（108）中的“续航”，意为“连续航行”。广告语中将其偏离为名词，意在强调该手机电池容量大，续航能力可靠。二、句法偏离一个常规的句子应该是由在句法和句义上都能搭配的词或短语构成的。然而这种符合常规的固定搭配由于经常被大众使用，因此当广告接受者再次识别常规表达时，其大脑是处于自动化状态的，不需要意志努力，因此这种语言形式不易使广告接受者留下深刻的印象，更不易激发其阅读兴趣。然而，广告语的目的在于向广告接受者宣传产品信息，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其产生购买行为，因此广告语创作者会竭力在语言上下功夫，创造出既新颖独特，又易于突出主题的广告语。突破语法上的常规组合搭配，即是一个较好的偏离手段，一方面可以在形式方面以其新颖独特性带给广告接受者陌生化的审美感知，另一方面也能在内容上加深广告接受者的理解，增强语言表达效果，使广告接受者留下深刻印象。广告语中的句法偏离包括短语偏离和句式偏离。（一）短语偏离短语偏离指语言中词语与词语之间的组合，突破常规的语法组合规则而形成的新颖的语法结构形式的短语。语言中一个词语与另一个词语能否组合，受到语法规则的制约，然而常规的语法规则是广告接受者熟知的，当其出现于广告语中时，不易吸引广告接受者的注意力。因此，创作者有意突破常规的语法规则，使广告接受者产生陌生化的认知体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。 1.偏正短语偏离偏正短语由修饰语和中心语两部分构成，可以分为定中短语和状中短语两类。偏正短语偏离是通过突破修饰语和中心语之间的常规语法组合而形成的。定中短语偏离指突破语法组合规则，将不能直接修饰中心语的词语进行超越常规的组合，比如状态形容词第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 49 省去“的”直接与中心语的组合。状中短语偏离是通过将不能直接修饰中心语的词语进行超越常规的组合而形成的一种语法偏离现象，比如副词与名词的超常组合。副词只能修饰限制动词和形容词，无法修饰名词，但是伴随社会的发展，广告接受者求新求异思想的萌发，促使副名搭配的出现与活跃。在副词和名词的搭配中，程度副词和名词的搭配最具有特色，一方面可以增强语言表达效果，使语用内涵更加丰富，另一方面也可以使索然无味的语言变得妙趣横生，增强语言的新奇性。广告语中偏正短语偏离的使用，可以带给广告接受者陌生化的审美感知，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，有利于语言表达的准确性。（109）清晰视界，想象无边界。（vivo X23 幻彩版2018）（110）轻盈手感，细腻触感。（vivo Y74S 2021）（111）清凉机身，畅快手感。（OPPO A93s 2021）（112）实力镜头，表现抢眼。（真我Q3s 2021）（113）温暖配色，比阳光更阳光。（vivo S12 2021）例（109）、例（110）、例（111）和例（112）的广告语都属于定中短语偏离，例（113）属于状中短语偏离。例（109）中的“清晰”修饰中心语“视界”，二者之间应该添加“的”。创作者巧妙地运用语法偏离手段，意在说明手机的水滴屏设计，使屏幕面积获得了增大，带给广告接受者更舒适的观感体验，突出了手机在屏幕设计上的显著优势。例（110）中的“轻盈”和“细腻”作为形容词，充当定语，分别修饰中心语“手感”和“触感”，中间应该分别加上“的”。这里创作者将修饰语直接与中心语进行组合搭配，突破了常规的语法规则，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知，意在说明手机后盖的 3D 微弧设计，加之所采用的磨砂材质，带给广告接受者轻盈、细腻的触感，突出了手机在重量和质感上的优势。例（111）中的“清凉”和“畅快”作为定语，分别修饰其后的中心语“机身”和 “手感”，二者间应该添加“的”，组合成常规的语法结构。创作者突破常规的语法规则，巧妙地运用语法偏离手段，意在说明手机所搭载的散热系统，在散热技术的加持下，带给广告接受者清凉的手感体验，突出了手机在散热方面的显著性能。例（112）中的“实力”是名词，指“军事或经济方面实在的力量”。创作者将其作为定语，修饰中心语“镜头”，形成定中短语偏离，意在说明手机具有的高清主摄、陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 50 人像镜头和微距镜头是充满实力的，突出了手机在摄像方面的显著优势。例（113）中的“阳光”是名词，去声的“更”是副词，有两个义项，其一是更加；其二是再、又。广告语中的“更”是更加的意思，创作者突破语法规则，将副词与名词进行组合，构成语法上的偏离，意在说明手机外壳颜色的配色比阳光更温暖。 2.述宾短语偏离述宾短语偏离指将本不能直接带名词或不能与特定的名词进行结合的动词进行突破常规的语法组合而形成的一种偏离现象。（114）AI 智慧拍照，也能媲美单反。（vivo X21 2018）（115）电影大师，坐享精彩成片。（vivo X50 Pro 2020）（116）致敬浪漫主义。（荣耀X40i 2022）例（114）中的“媲美”指“美好的程度差不多；比美”，它是不及物动词，其后不能直接跟宾语。创作者巧妙地将其进行语法上的偏离，意在说明该手机的拍照功能是可以与单反相机相比美的，强调其在拍摄方面的显著功能。例（115）中的“坐享”是不出力，只享受的意思，其后应该添加名词，比如坐享其成。然而它不能与“精彩成片”进行组合，创作者运用语法偏离的手段，意在说明该手机可以实现电影级的拍摄效果，强调其在拍摄方面的显著功能。例（116）中的“致敬”是不及物动词，指向人敬礼或表示敬意。创作者将“浪漫主义”作为“致敬”的宾语，突破了常规的语法规则，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，意在说明该手机背部采用的纹理工艺和镜头双环设计，带给广告接受者审美上的享受，强调了手机在外形设计上的显著优势。（二）句式偏离汉语中句子结构灵活多变，丰富多样，有常规句，也有变式句，都在语言运用中发挥显著作用。语言中使用最多的常规句式为陈述句，因表达直白，通俗易懂，符合广告接受者的逻辑思维。然而常规句式不易吸引广告接受者的注意力，同时在表达上存在言不尽意的局限性，因此广告语创作者有意将常规句式进行变形，比如省略句子成分，对句子成分进行颠倒，变陈述句为疑问句或否定句等。广告语中突破常规的句法手段的运用，可以使语言表现出前景化的效果，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发其进行思考，加深广告接受者的理解，使其留下深刻印象，产生购买行为。 1.倒装句第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 51 倒装句指调换原句句法成分的位置，这种偏离常规的句式的使用，一方面可以让索然无味的语言变得妙趣横生，吸引广告接受者的注意力，另一方面可以使主题内容更加突出，增强语言的表达效果。（1）宾语前置宾语前置指将谓语动词和宾语的位置进行颠倒，使宾语位于谓语之前，这种偏离手段的运用，有利于表达主题的突出。（117）你的隐私，只有你知。（vivo X80 2022）（118）名场面，一键拿下。（OPPO K9x 2022）（119）电影的美感，故事的魅力，每一拍都是。（一加10 Pro 2022）（120）今日份电量，我来承包。（荣耀Magic V 2022）（121）你的热爱，尽情装下。（华为畅享20SE 2020）例（117）中创作者将宾语“你的隐私”提前，置于前景的位置，意在告知广告接受者该手机在安全隐私方面的优势和特点。例（118）是OPPO K9x 的广告语，该手机拥有6400 万像素的超清三摄，可以使画质更清晰，细节更丰满。创作者打破常规的动宾语法组合形式，巧妙地将宾语置于前景位置，意在说明该手机拥有6400 万像素的超清三摄，可使画质更清晰，细节更丰满，突出手机在拍照方面所具有的性能和特点。例（119）中创作者有意将宾语置于谓语之前，使其处于前景位置，意在说明该手机搭载的哈苏XPAN 模式，可以使照片具有电影级宽画幅的比例和经典的黑白影调，让每一次创作充满仪式感和故事感，突出手机在拍摄方面的显著性能和特点。例（120）中创作者巧妙地将所要宣传的卖点置于前景的位置，意在说明此款折叠屏手机创新大电池管理系统，拥有4750mAh 大电池，同时兼具散热均匀和超级快充的特点，强调该手机在蓄电方面性能卓越。例（121）中创作者巧妙地将宾语置于前景的位置，意在说明该手机拥有128G 大存储，可以尽情进行软件下载或照片存储，突出该手机在存储空间上的特点和优势。（2）状语后置状语后置指将状语放在中心语之后，这种偏离手段的运用，有利于主题内容的突出，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。（122）重构想象，就此刻。（华为Mate 30 2019）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 52 （123）Mate 陪你，从清晨到夜晚。（华为Mate X2 4G 2021）（124）安全守护，随时随地。（华为P40 Pro 2020）（125）光影变幻，从晨曦到夜晚。（中兴远航20Pro2021）（126）大片拿捏了，稳稳的。（vivo X70t 2021）例（122）中创作者将状语置于中心语之后，意在说明该手机搭载的麒麟990 旗舰芯片，让性能得到大幅提升，同时超感光徕卡三摄，也可以使广告接受者获得超越想象的影像，突出手机在影像和性能方面的优势和特点。例（123）中创作者将巧妙地将句法成分进行换位，将其置于前景的位置，意在说明该手机拥有4750mAh 的大电池，续航能力强，充电速度快，突出手机在续航和充电速度方面的显著优势和特点。例（124）中创作者将中心语置于状语之前，意在说明该手机具有IP68 级防水防尘机身，可以时刻守护手机，无惧浸水与泼溅，突出手机在安全守护方面的优势与特点。例（125）中创作者有意调换句法成分的位置，意在说明该手机运用纳米光刻工艺，搭载满天星钻纹理，进行30 余道工序，制成了晨曦和青墨两种美学机身，突出了手机在外壳设计上的优势和特点。例（126）中创作者将句法成分进行移位，意在说明该手机的蔡司光学镜头搭载超感光大底传感器和超稳微云台，可以让画质更清晰，突出手机在拍摄方面的显著功能。 2.反问句反问句指无疑而问，把要表达的确定意思包含在问句里。广告语中反问句的使用可使语义更加突出，语气更加强烈，相较于平铺直叙的表达，更易引发广告接受者的思考，吸引广告接受者的注意力。（127）准备好，做这个夏天的主角了吗？（vivo S15 2022）（128）还需要摆拍？（vivo IQOO Neo5s 2021）（129）户外手机，不得整个户外音响？（AGM G1Pro 2021）例（127）是vivo S15 的广告语，该手机具有影棚级质感人像，夜景光斑人像和暗光运动抓拍等拍照功能，可以让入镜者轻松成为主角。创作者巧妙地运用反问句，意在说明该手机具有影棚级质感人像，夜景光斑人像和暗光运动抓拍等拍照功能，可让入镜者轻松成为主角，突出手机在拍摄方面的显著功能。例（128）中创作者用反问形式表达肯定的语气，意在说明该手机具有支持OIS 光第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 53 学防抖的4800 万像素主摄，无惧抖动，即使运动也可以轻松捕捉画面，突出手机在防抖方面所具有的显著优势和特点。例（129）是AGM G1Pro 的广告语，该手机具有超出一般的3.5w 的音响单元功率，声音响而不破。创作者巧妙地运用反问句，意在说明该手机在音响方面优势显著。 3.设问句设问句指无疑而问，自问自答。广告语中设问句的使用可以吸引广告接受者的注意力，引导其进行思考，突出产品或服务的优势特点，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣。（130）光线不足？不足为虑！（vivo S9e 2021）（131）电量焦虑？10 分钟解决。（华为nova10 Pro 2022）（132）想要长一点续航？给你，两天长陪伴。（红米Note 11SE 2022）（133）喜欢免提通话？这颗扬声器，未免太清晰。（AGM H2 2021）例（130）中创作者意在说明该手机具有强大的超级夜景技术，让美在夜晚也可以绽放出彩，突出手机在夜景拍摄方面的显著优势和特点。例（131）中创作者意在说明该手机具有4500mAh 的高能效电池和100w 的超级快充，二十分钟即可充满，突出手机在蓄电和充电速度方面的显著优势。例（132）中创作者巧妙地运用设问，意在说明该手机具有5000mAh 的大电量，可以实现长久续航，突出手机在蓄电方面的优势和特点。例（133）中创作者意在说明该手机具有2.5w 的大音腔，如同一个蓝牙小钢炮，可以听到振聋发聩的声音，突出手机的扬声器在性能方面所具有的显著优势和特点。 4.否定句广告语中的否定句使用数量较少，但是它在其中发挥的作用是比较明显的，有利于突出商品的特点。（134）关于电量的问题，都不是问题。（OPPO K9 Pro 2021）（135）让你的导演梦不是梦。（vivo X60 Pro+ 2021）（136）就现在，不等光。（荣耀Magic4 至臻版2022）（137）即刻5G，不等待。（华为畅享20Pro 2020）例（134）中创作者运用否定句，意在说明该手机具有4500mAh 的电池容量和60w 的超级闪充，同时亦有智能五芯安全防护，突出手机在蓄电方面所具有的显著性能和优势。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 54 例（135）中创作者通过对常规句法进行扭曲变形，意在说明该手机具有vivo 蔡司联合影像系统，超感光微云台主摄和一亿像素拍照模式，可以使拍摄更专业，效果更出彩，突出手机在影像方面所具有的显著优势和特点。例（136）中创作者意在说明该手机具有独立影像芯片，加之强大的AI 计算能效，可以使夜景拍摄更轻松，即使处于暗光环境也可以进行拍摄，突出手机在夜景拍摄方面所具有的显著优势和特点。例（137）是华为畅享20Pro 的广告语，该手机搭载5G 芯片，信号强劲，性能卓越。创作者巧妙地运用否定句，意在强调该手机支持5G 网络，通信流畅，可以带给广告接受者更舒适的体验。第四节语义偏离语义偏离是指语义逻辑上的不合理，即语义表面上是荒谬的，多见于形象性的语言，而比喻则是形象性语言的核心，此外还有夸张、拟人，通感，仿拟，双关和借代。语义上的偏离，可以引起广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其对语言背后的真实意图进行深入地思考。它主要是通过辞格来实现的。因为修辞就是基于特定的表达目的，从而采用超越常规的语义组合形式对语言材料进行加工的一种活动，这与前景化的目的有相通之处。基于此，以下将对手机广告语中基于比喻、夸张、拟人、通感、仿造、双关和借代等辞格形成的语义偏离现象进行分析。一、比喻比喻是用本质不同又有相似点的甲事物来描绘乙事物或用甲道理说明乙道理的辞格，它包括明喻和暗喻。创作者充分激发想象力，用超越常规的思维和表达方式将广告语进行前景化，使语言生动形象，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使广告接受者对语言进行仔细揣摩，进而使广告接受者产生购买行为。（138）细节放大，美如画。（vivo Y32t 4G 版2022）（139）画面如水，美好满溢。（华为P40Pro 2020）（140）运存体验。似行云，如流水。（荣耀X40i 2022）（141）轻触一下，再滑动一下，屏幕观感从未如此丝滑。（魅族17 2020）（142）一键将生活变成电影。（vivo S12 2021）例（138）是vivo Y32t 的广告语，该手机搭载1300 万像素的影像系统，可以将细第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 55 节清晰呈现。在这则广告语中，创作者运用明喻的辞格，说明微距摄影下的一切细节被放大后都像画作一样美。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅能最大程度地将微距摄影的特点和优势展现给广告接受者，更重要的是，其可唤起广告接受者无穷的想象力，进而打动广告接受者。例（139）中创作者采用富有张力的四曲满溢屏，屏幕向四周无限延伸，画面平铺而来如同浩瀚的大海，演绎无限美好。同时，曲面玻璃与边框实现的无缝衔接，更使广告接受者的握感更顺滑舒适。在这则广告语中，创作者运用明喻的辞格，将四曲满溢屏带给广告接受者的画面感比作杯中满水，流淌开来。这一辞格的使用，不仅能最大程度地向广告接受者展现四曲满溢屏设计的性能和优点，更重要的是，它能激发广告接受者的无穷想象，让其具有画面感，进而打动广告接受者。例（140）是荣耀X40i 的广告语，该手机采用荣耀智慧运存扩展技术，将8GB 运存扩展为13GB，带给广告接受者畅快体验。在这则广告语中，创作者运用明喻的辞格，将大运存所带来的畅快程度，比作如行云流水一般。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅更大程度地向广告接受者展现13GB 大运存的优势和特点，更重要的是，其语言生动形象，便于广告接受者理解记忆。例（141）中创作者运用比喻的辞格，说明屏幕带给广告接受者的观感体验如同丝绸一样顺滑舒适。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅能最大程度地将屏幕的特点和优势呈现给广告接受者，更重要的是，有利于吸引广告接受者的注意力。例（142）是vivo S12 的广告语，该手机具有一键拍摄功能，支持运镜转场和视频短片等，降低摄影门槛，轻松一点即可拍成电影大片。在这则广告语中，创作者运用暗喻的辞格，指出只需轻轻一点一键拍摄功能，即可轻松将生活拍成电影大片。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅能最大程度地将一键拍摄功能的效果展现得淋漓尽致，更重要的是，它可以使语言生动活泼，吸引广告接受者的阅读兴趣。二、夸张夸张指故意言过其实，对客观的人或事物作扩大或缩小或超前的描述，它通过对事物的某一方面进行合情合理地渲染，使广告接受者获得一种虽不真实却胜似真实的认知体验。在广告语中使用夸张辞格形成的语义偏离，可以使产品的特点得到合理地突出，也可以将创作者内心的情感表现得淋漓尽致。（143）广阔天地，一镜通收。（华为nova10Z 2022）陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 56 （144）无惧天旋地转，稳的非比寻常。（vivo X80 2022）（145）澎湃性能，强出天际。（真我GT2 大师探索版2022）（146）原生肌理级自拍，每一寸肌肤都好看。（OPPO Reno8 2022）（147）每一个细节，稳如泰山，你所要做的，就是拿着手机拍主角。（中兴天机 Axon 11 2020）例（143）是华为nova10Z 的广告语，该手机具有800 万像素的广角摄像头、6400 万像素的超清主摄和200 万像素的微距镜头，可以将广阔的天地拍摄其中。创作者运用夸张的辞格，说明该手机在广角拍摄下，广阔天地皆可摄入。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅可以向广告接受者展示广角拍摄的显著优势和特点，更重要的是，它可以给广告接受者留下深刻的印象。例（144）是vivo X80 的广告语，该手机运用主动回弹式防抖技术，可以让录像始终与地平线保持水平。创作者运用夸张的辞格，说明在OIS 防抖技术的加持下，无论天地如何旋转，录像仍能保持稳定。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅能最大程度地向广告接受者展现防抖技术在拍摄方面的显著优势和特点，更重要的是，它可以给广告接受者留下深刻的印象。例（145）是真我GT2 大师探索版的广告语，该手机采用高通全新进阶旗舰芯片，骁龙8+，它可以让手机性能实现大幅提升。创作者运用夸张的辞格，说明在旗舰芯片的加持下，手机在性能方面表现卓越。这一语义偏离手段的使用，意在说明该手机在性能方面的特点和优势。例（146）是OPPO Reno8 的广告语，该手机搭载超感光猫眼镜头，结合幻彩美颜算法，可以保留更多肤质细节，让肤质更自然，更清晰。创作者运用夸张的辞格，说明该手机在自拍方面不仅可以使肌理更自然，也可以将每一寸肌肤摄入其中，保留肤质细节。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅向广告接受者展示了该手机在自拍方面的显著优势和特点，也可以抓住广告接受者的求美心理，吸引广告接受者的注意力。例（147）是中兴天机Axon 11 的广告语，该手机具有强大的视频双防抖功能让动态视频的拍摄效果更清晰、更稳定。创作者运用夸张的辞格，说明手机自带的双防抖功能可以让所拍摄图片的每一个细节都如屹立的泰山一样稳定。这一语义偏离手段的使用，不仅向广告接受者展示了该手机在视频防抖方面的显著功能，更重要的是，它可以给广告接受者留下深刻的印象。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 57 三、拟人拟人是借助想象，把物当作人写，赋予物以人的言行或思想感情。广告语中拟人辞格的运用，可以将冷冰冰的、毫无温度的产品变得有温度，有情感，进而拉近广告接受者与产品之间的距离。（148）聪明又省电的屏幕。（一加10 Pro 2022）（149）好身段，伸展自如。（华为P50Pocket 2022）（150）事无巨细，让它娓娓道来。（AGM X5 纯享版2021）（151）小憩一下，疾速来电。（华为畅享20SE 2020）（152）跌倒不可怕。（荣耀Magic3 至臻版2021）（153）又瘦了，拿在手里更轻了。（vivo X60 Pro 2021）（154）如此高冷，却又如此贴心。（华为nova 9SE 2022）（155）让光听从你的美。（vivo IQOO 3 2020）例（148）是一加10 Pro 的广告语，该手机的屏幕可以根据画面内容，实现自由刷新，提高手机续航时长。创作者运用拟人的辞格，说明该手机能够灵活实现自由刷新率。这一语义偏离手段的使用，意在向广告接受者展示该手机屏幕的功能和优势，更重要的是，它可以增强语言的表达效果。例（149）是华为P50 Pocket 的广告语，该手机采用新一代水滴铰链设计，折叠时柔性屏可以闭合得紧密无缝，展开时可以平整得如同镜面，加之采用多种创新材料，提升了手机的可靠性和耐用度。创作者运用拟人的辞格，说明该折叠屏手机如人所保持的优美身段一样能够实现伸展自如。这一语义偏离手段的使用，意在告知广告接受者手机在折叠方面有显著的优势。例（150）是AGM X5 纯享版的广告语，该手机具有优质的音质传输，安全的18w 快充，更广的网络覆盖，256GB 超大的内存和5600mAh 的电池容量，可以让手机更好地服务广告接受者。创作者运用拟人的辞格，说明该手机功能全面。这一语义偏离手段的使用，意在告知广告接受者该手机在功能设置方面性能卓越，更重要的是，它可以吸引广告接受者的注意力。例（151）是华为畅享20SE 的广告语，该手机支持22.5w 华为超级快充，充电十分钟即可实现连续两小时的追剧时长，同时急速的快充模式，可以带给广告接受者更多的满足感。创作者运用拟人的辞格，说明短暂的休息，即可疾速充电。这一语义偏离手段陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 58 的使用，意在告知广告接受者该手机在快充方面的显著优势和特点。例（152）是荣耀Magic3 至臻版的广告语，该手机采用高透明、强硬度和可弯曲的微晶玻璃，融合光学级胚体铸造工艺和高温精密模压技术，可以让手机的抗跌能力显著提升。创作者采用语义偏离的手段，意在告知广告接受者该手机在屏幕抗跌方面的显著优势和特点，更重要的是，它可以激发广告接受者的兴趣。例（153）中的vivo X60 Pro 在句子中充当主语，“瘦”担当谓语，二者为主谓结构，符合常规的语法规则，但是在语义逻辑上是超越常规的。“瘦”一般是用来形容人的，是有生命特征的，而vivo X60 Pro 只是一部手机，显然是没有生命的，广告创作者巧妙地进行组合搭配，用“瘦”来形容vivo X60 Pro 的厚度，意在突出产品的特有卖点。这一偏离手段的使用，既可以使语言效果新颖有趣，也可以让语言表达形象生动，贴合产品信息，向广告接受者传达有效信息。此外，省略形式的使用，既节省广告成本，亦为突出产品的关键性信息作了铺垫。例（154）中的华为nova 9SE 在句子中充当主语，“高冷”与“贴心”担当谓语，二者是主谓结构，符合常规的语法搭配习惯，然而，它在语义和逻辑上是相违背的。“高冷”与“贴心”一般是用来形容人的，而华为nova 9SE 只是一部手机，广告创作者利用两者的超常搭配，通过“高冷”来形容手机的散热能力，用“贴心”来形容产品所带来的服务，突出了手机在散热方面的性能。例（155）是vivo IQOO 3 的广告语，它以兼语的形式呈现，“光”是“让”的宾语，又是“听从”的主语，名词“光”和动词“听从”构成主谓结构，是符合语法规范的。但是，“光”怎么能“听从”呢？能够进行听从活动的只能是具有生命特征的生物体， “光”显然是不具备生命特征的，该广告语在语义和逻辑上的组合是违反常规的。这一偏离语法常规的形式的使用，意在突出产品的特有卖点，即超级夜景算法，它可以突破光的限制，暗光和夜光下仍可进行拍摄。通过拟人辞格所形成的语义偏离，一方面使语言效果既新颖又有趣，既形象生动又贴合产品信息，另一方面更准确地向广告接受者传达了有效信息。四、通感通感指由一种感官产生的感觉转移到另一种感官上，它是基于感官把适用于某一事物的词语用于修饰另一事物。广告语中通感辞格的使用，一方面可以加深广告接受者对内容的理解，另一方面，也可以激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 59 （156）看得见的细腻光滑。（OPPO Reno7 SE 2021）（157）用眼睛，丈量温度。（AGM G1 2021）（158）屏内乾坤，听见科技。（华为P30Pro 2019）（159）留下，远方树林的味道。（vivo X60 Pro 2021）（160）看得见的安全感。（vivo Y51s 2020）例（156）是OPPO Reno7 SE 的广告语，该手机采用刷新率高的高感屏，支持多种色域，无论电影还是游戏，皆可带来绝妙的视觉享受。事物的细腻光滑程度本是广告接受者通过触觉感知到的，这里用“看得见”进行描述，运用通感的辞格，将触觉感知到的事物用视觉的方式呈现，意在说明该手机屏幕的细腻光滑，同时更增强了语言的形象性和感染力。例（157）是AGM G1 的广告语，该手机的相机支持热成像，将温度以图像的形式呈现，进而测得目标物的温度。“丈量”意为测量，指用脚步或尺子对目标物进行测量，具有一定的动作性，然而“眼睛”多是表示对已存在物体的观看，而这里用眼睛对温度进行测量，运用了通感的辞格，意在告知广告接受者该手机在热成像方面所具有的显著优势和特点。例（158）是华为P30 Pro 的广告语，该手机创新采用屏幕发声技术，率先采用磁悬振子带动屏幕发声，颠覆传统听筒设计，使听音面积更广。在介绍华为P30 发声设备时，创作者巧妙地运用通感的辞格，将声音形象化。因该手机在发音设备方面采用诸多创新技术，科技含量不言而喻。这一辞格的运用不仅告知广告接受者该手机在发音设备方面所做的各种创新，科技含量溢于言表，更重要的是，它可以给广告接受者以直观感受，吸引其来进行亲身体验。例（159）是vivo X60 Pro 的广告语，该手机具有5 倍光学超级变焦，可将远处之景轻松拍下。在介绍此手机在超级变焦方面的效果时，创作者巧妙地运用通感的辞格，将变焦效果形象化。味道本是广告接受者通过味觉感知到的，这里创作者调动人的视觉予以描述，意在告知广告接受者该手机在变焦拍摄方面所具有的显著效果和特点。例（160）是vivo Y51s 的广告语，该手机搭载18w 双引擎闪充，同时AI 节电引擎相加持，充电更快，能耗更低。在介绍该手机在闪充方面的功能特点时，创作者巧妙地运用通感的辞格，将广告接受者内心的心理感受，借用视觉进行展现，意在告知广告接受者该手机在蓄电和充电速度方面的显著优势和特点。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 60 五、仿拟仿拟，是一种有意模仿特定既存的词语、名句、名篇的结构形式而更替以全新内容来表情达意的修辞文本模式。 ①广告语中仿拟辞格的使用，因形式的熟悉化和内容的陌生化，一方面可以使语言生动活泼，增强语言的表达效果，突出主旨内容，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，另一方面更利于广告接受者的理解和记忆。（161）从此，手可拍星辰。（vivo IQOO 5 2020）（162）一张照片，两种美颜。（小米Civi1s 2022）（163）一颗是主摄，另一颗还是主摄。（OPPO Find X5 Pro 天玑版2022）（164）稍等一下，马上回来。（魅族18X 2021）例（161）是仿拟李白《夜宿山寺》中的名句“手可摘星辰”，诗句的意思是诗人站在楼上伸手就可以摘到星星，突出了寺庙的高峻和挺拔。这里创作者对“手可摘星辰” 进行仿拟，将其中的“摘”临时改为“拍”，意在说明星空模式的拍照可以使拍摄更方便，细节更清晰，突出了手机在拍摄方面的显著功能。例（162）是仿拟李清照《一剪梅》中的诗句“一种相思，两处闲愁”，表达了诗人内心的相思与愁苦。创作者巧妙地将“一种相思，两处闲愁”改为“一张照片，两种美颜”，意在说明该手机在进行拍摄时会根据性别区分男女，进而进行专属美颜，使拍摄效果更佳。例（163）中的“一颗是主摄，另一颗还是主摄。”是对鲁迅文学作品《秋夜》中的名句“一株是枣树，还有一株也是枣树”进行仿造的结果，其意在说明该手机镜头可以使画面更清晰，色彩更丰富，强调手机在拍摄方面的显著功能。例（164）中的“稍等一下，马上回来”是对广告语“休息一下，马上回来”进行仿造的结果，其意在说明该手机充电比较快，60 分钟即可充满。六、双关双关指利用语音或语义条件，有意使语句同时关顾表面和内里两种意思，言在此而意在彼，其主要包括谐音双关和语义双关两大类。谐音双关是基于音同或音近而形成的表里双层意思，语义双关是以词语或句子的多义性为前提条件而形成的，两种双关类型所蕴含的意义是含而不露的，需要广告接受者基于联想进而挖掘语言中所蕴含的深层语义。广告语中双关辞格的运用，一方面可以延长广告接受者的阅读时间，使广告接受者 ①吴礼权《现代汉语修辞学》，复旦大学出版社2006 年版，第171 页。第二章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言偏离 61 留下深刻印象，另一方面亦可引发广告接受者的联想，加深其对主题内容的理解，此外，更可以给广告接受者带来一种幽默风趣之感。（165）反手就是一块五星好屏。（vivo S9e 2021）（166）好芯，好好用芯。（荣耀Magic V 2022）（167）屏界好实力，帧帧好色彩。（vivo IQOO Neo5S 2021）（168）灵动纤薄，“薄”取你心，轻装上阵。（华为nova8 SE 4G 2020）（169）冷静上场，畅快开黑。（OPPO K10x 5G 2022）例（165）中的“屏”与“评”谐音，从而达到谐音双关。所谓“五星好评”，指的是产品在性能和服务等方面深得人心，顾客给予五颗星的点评。这当然是对该手机的实事求是的肯定和赞赏。该手机自带清晰屏幕，有较高的亮度峰值和对比度，屏显色彩丰富，细节动人，能带给广告接受者契合预想的真实体验。“屏”字兼顾两层意思，广告创作者用精炼的文字，准确地传达所要表达的含义，增强语言的幽默性，促进广告接受者与广告语之间的良性互动，从而吸引广告接受者的阅读热情，加深其记忆程度。例（166）是荣耀Magic V 的广告语，虽然只有短短6 个字，却因双关辞格的使用而内涵丰富。“芯”与“心”谐音，从而达到谐音双关。所谓“好好用心”指的是因为有好的芯片加持，手机运行会更流畅，控温更优异，通信更稳定，广告接受者进行操作时会不受外部干扰，保证效率。这当然是该手机的好处之一。“芯”字含义丰富，有两层含义，文字简洁，凸显广告主旨，增强了广告语的可读性，读起来发人深省。例（167）中的“屏”与“凭”谐音，从而达到谐音双关。“屏”既点名该广告语所要展现给广告接受者的卖点，让广告接受者一眼即可获得关键信息，亦让广告接受者产生想象，激发其进行亲身体验。例（168）中的“薄”与“博”谐音，从而达到谐音双关。所谓“博取你心”，指的是用手机轻薄灵动的质感，来获得广告接受者的喜欢和关注，进而达到促使其产生购买行为的目的。这当然是拥有该手机的好处之一。纤薄的机身设计和轻盈的握感，带给广告接受者更舒适的体验。这则广告语中的“薄”字用得比较准确，创作者意在突出产品特点，增强语言的吸引力，吸引接受者的阅读热情。例（169）是OPPO K10x 的广告语，虽然仅有8 个字，却因双关辞格的使用而主旨明确，含蓄生动。“冷静”二字，既可用于称赞某人做事能够心平气和，毫无偏见，亦可将其进行拆分理解。这款手机安装金刚石制冷散热系统，实现智能控温，核心热量散陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 62 得快，持续使用仍可保持手心清凉。因此创作者用“冷静”二字，可以准确地表达创作意图。七、借代借代指不说某人或某事物的名称，借与它密切相关的名称去替代。它是对事物之间的相关性进行巧妙利用的结果。广告语中运用借代辞格所形成的语义上的偏离，可使产品特征更加突出，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。（170）屏幕指纹，解锁科技未来。（vivo x21 屏幕指纹版2018）（171）数字很厉害，屏幕是真好。（荣耀50 2021）（172）再见！续航焦虑症。(vivo IQOO 3 2020) 例（170）是vivo x21 屏幕指纹版的广告语，该款手机采用全面屏设计，将屏幕指纹隐于屏幕之下，成就一体化外观，开启真全面屏时代。创作者巧妙地运用借代的辞格，用手机的主要功能特点代指产品本身，进而提高产品或服务的知名度，扩大其影响力，加深广告接受者的印象。例（171）是荣耀50 的广告语，该手机具有超级曲面屏设计，加之10 亿色的显示色彩和较高的智能动态刷新率，让屏幕散发更高级的视觉之美。创作者巧妙地运用借代的辞格，用手机的系列名称代指商品本身，这里的“数字”指荣耀的数字系列手机，进而提高产品的知名度。例（172）是vivo IQOO 3 的广告语，该手机采用超快闪充技术，具有55w 的超快闪充和4440mAh 的超大电池，无惧电量不足，一刻钟即可充满一半电。创作者巧妙地运用借代的辞格，用大众所普遍具有的电量方面的“焦虑症”代指大众本身，意在说明该手机可让广告接受者摆脱续航方面的焦虑症，进而告知广告接受者其在续航和充电速度方面的显著优势和特点。第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行 63 第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行偏离和平行是构成前景化的两种手段，偏离强调基于特定的表达意图对常规语言规则进行扭曲和变形，进而让大众头脑中习以为常的、自动化的语言变得新颖化、非自动化，带给广告接受者陌生化的审美感知。平行亦称为过度规则，最早是由雅各布森提出的，强调某一语言结构或成分反复出现，其出现频率超过大众的常规认知，是在广告接受者期待发生变化的位置上进行相同选择的结果，会引起广告接受者的注意，激发其阅读的兴趣。广告语中语言平行手段的运用，一方面可以使语言更加整齐匀称，自然流畅，带给广告接受者良好的审美感受，另一方面亦可吸引广告接受者的注意力，加深其对语义内容的理解。手机广告语中的语言平行，主要表现为语音平行、词汇平行和语法平行。第一节语音平行语音是语言的物质外壳，是通过声响表现出来的。广告语中的语音平行主要是以语音的音乐性为条件，使广告接受者获得循环往复、抑扬顿挫的听觉体验，进而激发广告接受者阅读兴趣，加深其对深层语义的理解。广告语中头韵和尾韵的使用不仅可以满足广告接受者在音乐上的审美需求，更重要的是利于广告接受者的阅读与记忆。在手机广告语中，头韵和尾韵出现的频率是最高的。一、头韵头韵亦可称为头字母押韵，指两个音节的节首发音的重复，通常出现在两个或两个以上的词中，同时押头韵的词不能相隔太远。 ①广告语中头韵的出现，可以增强语言的韵律美和音乐美，使语音和谐优美，使广告接受者读起来上口，且利于记忆。（173）超能续航，焕美拍摄。（vivo Y5s 2019）（174）帧帧有戏，张张快意。（华为nova8 5G 2020）（175）精密，精简，更经典。（小米12S Ultra 2022）（176）越远，悦不同。（华为Mate 40E 5G 2021）（177）砰砰粉，怦然心动。（小米Civi 2021）例（173）是vivo Y5s 的广告语，该手机搭载5000mAh 大电池，18w 双引擎闪充， 128G 的大内存和AI 智慧三摄，让手机可以续航更久，拍照更美丽。这则广告语结构整 ①刘世生、朱瑞青《文体学概论》，北京大学出版社2006 年版，第80 页。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 64 齐，韵律十足，“航”和“焕”押头韵，有序衔接，使广告接受者感受到该手机在续航和拍摄方面的显著优势和特点。例（174）是华为nova8 的广告语，该手机搭载3200 万像素高清主摄，美景自拍和生活视频都可以轻松记录。这则广告语只有8 个字，“帧帧、张张”四个字的声母都是 “zh”，同声母字的重复出现，不仅使得广告语结构整齐，具有整饬之美，而且韵律和谐，有利于广告接受者的阅读与记忆，更重要的是可以加深广告接受者的印象，促使购买行为的发生。例（175）是小米12S Ultra 的广告语，该款手机秉持专业相机的设计思路，在手机设计上始终坚持做到美观和耐用。这则广告语只有七个字，其中“精、精简、经”四个字的声母皆为“j”，同声母字的重复出现，不仅让广告语富有音乐美，易于广告接受者的理解记忆，更重要的是，它可以让广告接受者体会到该手机在设计上所秉持的精益求精的理念，契合广告接受者的内心需求。例（176）是华为Mate 40E 的广告语，该手机搭载有6400 万像素的高清主摄像头， 1600 万像素的超广角摄像头和800 万像素的长焦摄像头，可以使画质更加细腻，画面更加广阔，影像更加精彩。这则广告语只有短短5 个字，然而“越、远、悦”三个字的声母皆相同，均为“y”，同声母字的重复出现，不仅使得广告语易于记忆，使其具有力量感，更突出了产品的特点，增强了语言的表达效果。例（177）这则广告语只有七个字，然而“砰砰、怦”三个字的声母均相同，都为 “p”，同声母字的重复出现，语音上紧密的衔接性，不仅使得广告语具有韵律美，读起来朗朗上口，更凸显了产品的特点，说明该手机外壳的颜色搭配巧妙，使广告接受者即使在秋冬之际也可获得温暖的感觉。二、尾韵尾韵，指的是韵文中常在某些句子的末尾用同韵的字，即韵头不同，韵腹和韵尾相同即可。广告语中尾韵的使用，一方面利于广告接受者快速将广告语与产品相联系，另一方面，易于充分发挥广告接受者听觉器官在记忆中的作用，增强语言的音乐美，利于广告接受者对语言的记忆。（178）无论明暗，始终好看。（vivo X60 Pro 2021）（179）超能续航，无界畅享。（华为畅享50Pro 2022）（180）薄的巧，轻的妙。（小米Civi 2021）第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行 65 （181）硬核实力，战力越级。（摩托罗拉Moto Edge S30 2021）（182）你的手机，能挂东西。（AGM G1S pro 2022）例（178）是vivo X60 Pro 的广告语，该手机搭载vivo 和三星联合研发的LTM 阳光屏，使得屏幕在强光下仍然具有清晰舒适的特点。这则广告语中的“暗”和“看”押寒韵，不仅可以带给广告接受者听觉上的审美体验，更突出了该手机屏幕所具有的优势，增强语言的表达效果。例（179）是华为畅享50 Pro 的广告语，该手机拥有5000mAh 的大容量电池，5000 万像素的超清影像，40w 的超级快充，256GB 的存储空间和大英寸的无界全视屏，可以使续航更久，影像更清晰，充电更快，运行更顺畅，视野更沉浸。这则广告语中的“航” 和“享”押唐韵，不仅说明该手机在续航和大屏幕等方面的显著优势和特点，更重要的是，它可以增强广告语的音乐感和灵性之美，易于广告接受者的阅读与记忆。例（180）是小米Civi 的广告语，这款手机是针对女性研发的，其主打时尚外观设计和自拍美颜等功能。这则广告语中的“巧”和“妙”押豪韵，不仅说明该手机在外观设计等方面的巧妙之处，更使语言富有音乐美。例（181）是摩托罗拉Moto Edge S30 的广告语，该手机搭载的骁龙888Plus 性能铁三角和智能高刷电竞屏等，实现了性能的大幅提升。这则广告语中的“力”和“级”押齐韵，突出了手机卓越的性能优势。例（182）是AGM G1S pro 的广告语，这是一款三防手机，该手机搭载能够形成热成像的相机，同时其具有的专属挂绳孔，或可以防丢失或可以用来装饰。这则广告语中的“机”和“西”押齐韵，意在说明该手机专属挂绳孔的优势和特点。第二节词汇平行词汇是语言的建筑材料，在交际中发挥巨大作用，基于广告接受者求简求异的心理需求，语言中一般不会重复使用某个词语，若为了满足表达上的需要，广告创作者会尽可能地选用与其语义相近的词语进行替换，这是对广告接受者普遍具有的求简心理需求的一种满足，符合广告接受者的心理预期，属于一种常规表达。然而，通过对所搜集的语料进行分析后发现，广告语中单音节词或多音节词重复出现的例子不在少数，一则广告语中某个词语的重复出现，会造成突出，形成前景化的语言模式，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发其阅读兴趣，突出产品特点。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 66 一、单音节词重复单音节词重复是指广告语中的某一个音节重复出现的现象，它可以起到加强语气，强化情感表达，深化主题，增强语言表达效果的作用。通常我们在写文章或讲话时，为了不使人产生啰嗦拖沓之感，一句话中不会重复使用某个词语，偶尔出于表达需要，也会选择近义词进行代替，然而在手机广告语中重复出现某个词语的现象，却不在少数。某一词语的出现频率在大众的预料之内，则是一种常规，若其出现频率超出社会成员的预期，则会引人注目，造成突出，起到强化的作用，引起广告接受者的注意，成为广告接受者关注的前景。广告语中词语的超常重复，表面看来是对语言经济性原则的违背，实则是为了强调主旨内容，使其成为关注的焦点。（183）全焦段，全场景。（vivo X50 Pro 2020）（184）轻了，薄了，更好看了。（红米Note11 4G 2021）（185）迎光逆光，你都有光。（荣耀70 Pro 2022）（186）发现美，聚焦美。（华为P40 Pro 2020）（187）超窄，超薄，超前。（真我X7 Pro 5G 2020）例（183）是vivo X50 Pro 的广告语，该手机搭载防抖微云台超感光主摄、潜望式长焦镜头、定焦人像镜头和广角微距镜头，专业四摄，带来全焦段智慧影像，让广告接受者全天候、全场景皆出色。广告语中用单音节词“全”重复出现的这种前景化模式，说明该手机在影像拍摄方面的出色表现。例（184）是红米Note11 的广告语，创作者通过对单音节词“了”的三次重复，所构成的前景化，意在说明该手机在外观上的显著优势，进而达到吸引广告接受者的注意力的目的。例（185）是荣耀70 Pro 的广告语，该手机通过对前置镜头的深度优化，使广告接受者能够无惧正逆光，皆可自在拍摄，保留真实质感。广告语中用单音节词“光”重复出现的这种前景化模式，意在说明该手机在摄像方面所具有的显著优势和特点。例（186）是华为P40 Pro 的广告语，该手机具有前置3200 万像素的主摄像头和一颗景深摄像头，同时支持自动对焦，让美不错过，让画质更细腻，细节更清晰。创作者将单音节词“美”进行重复，进而形成前景化的语言模式，其意在告知广告接受者该手机在拍摄时能够时刻发现并聚焦美。例（187）是真我X7 Pro 的广告语，该手机搭载三星旗舰级柔性直屏，让机身更纤第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行 67 薄，同时先进的封装工艺让屏幕更宽广。广告语中用单音节词“超”重复出现这种前景化模式，意在说明该手机所具有的超窄边框，超薄机身和更宽广的屏占比。二、多音节词重复多音节词重复是指广告语中某两个音节构成的词语重复出现的现象，可以起到加强语气，增强语言表达效果的作用。（188）遇见美好，捕捉美好。（华为畅享20SE 2021）（189）一见心动，一直心动。（华为Mate X2 4G 2021）（190）世界尽管动，你尽管拍。（vivo X50 Pro 2020）（191）好听好听，真好听！（红米Note 11 5G 2021）（192）放大放大再放大，依旧清晰。（OPPO A55s 2022）例（188）是华为畅享20SE 的广告语，该手机搭载AI 三摄影像系统，可以轻松记录生活中的各种精彩，让世间美好不错过。创作者将双音节词语“美好”进行重复，进而构成前景化，展现了双音节词语重复这种前景化语言形式的魅力，意在说明该手机在摄像方面的显著优势和特点，极具吸引力。例（189）是华为Mate X2 的广告语，该手机采用折叠屏设计，在双旋水滴铰链的加持下，实现无缝开合，营造浑然一体的视觉效果，同时手机背部时尚的颜色设计，让广告接受者一眼即心动。广告语中用双音节词语“心动“重复出现这种前景化模式，意在说明该手机在外观设计上带给广告接受者的心理感受。例（190）是vivo X50 Pro 的广告语，该手机搭载微云台超感光主摄，同时配合定制的传感器缩短曝光时间，辅以运动检测算法和万物追踪技术，实现智能运动追焦。创作者将双音节词语“尽管”进行重复，进而构成前景化，意在说明该手机在运动拍摄方面的显著优势和特点。例（191）是红米Note 11 的广告语，该手机搭载的立体声双扬声器，让音效更沉浸，音质更震撼。广告语中用双音节词语“好听”重复出现这种前景化模式，意在说明该手机在音效方面所具有的显著特点和优势。例（192）是OPPO A55s 的广告语，该手机具有亿级像素，无惧放大，画质仍清晰。创作者将双音节词“放大”进行重复，进而构成前景化，意在说明该手机在拍摄方面功能显著。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 68 第三节语法平行语法平行包括语法结构的小规模平行和语法结构的大规模平行。当两个或两个以上的语言结构反复出现形成平行时，会吸引广告接受者的注意力，会延长广告接受者对语言的感知时长，进而获得对主旨意图的把握。平行这一前景化手段最早是由雅各布森基于对诗歌中存在的大量等价现象的分析提出的，其是通过把聚合关系中的等价原则投射到线性组合关系上而实现的，主要表现为对语言的重复选择。手机广告语中的语法平行主要表现在对某一结构的重复性选择上。一、小规模平行小规模平行是指由两个并列语言单位组成的语法结构。手机广语中小规模平行所形成的前景化语言现象是比较多的，一方面可带给广告接受者音乐般的审美感受，使其印象深刻，另一方面，可使主旨内容更加突出。（193）小手机，大实力。（多亲F22 pro 2022）（194）图个高清，图个高兴。（荣耀Magic V 2022）（195）摄天地之广，纳方寸之幽。（vivo S15 2022）（196）热力排出，战力吸入。（vivo IQOO Neo5SE 2021）（197）折叠无缝，开合有型。（华为P50 Pocket 2022）例（193）是多亲F22 pro 的广告语，它的平行的程度比较高，从语法上来看，二者皆为形容词+名词的表述，都为定中结构，属于两个并列的语言单位。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，不仅使语言具有节奏感，同时使语义截然相反，形成对比效果，意在说明该手机虽体积小，但是其运行更畅快，摄像更清晰，屏幕更大，触感更好，音质更高。例（194）是荣耀Magic V 的广告语，其平行的程度比较高，从结构上看二者都是动宾结构，属于两个并列的语言单位。同时广告语中口语词“图”的重复出现，与规范语言形成对比，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，增强语言的表现力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。创作者以极其工整的平行结构呈现，意在说明该手机摄像功能显著，可以清晰记录美好的事物，带给广告接受者审美上的享受。例（195）这则广告语，其平行程度是比较高，从语法上来看，二者皆为动宾结构，属于两个并列的语言单位。同时广告语中古语词“摄”“之”“纳”等字的使用，不仅第三章前景化理论下手机广告语中的语言平行 69 使语言具有浓厚的书面语色彩，还可以使语言简洁凝练的同时增添典雅庄重之感，与广告接受者内心的传统文化底蕴形成共鸣。创作者以极其工整的平行结构呈现，带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，吸引广告接受者的注意力，强调该手机具有6400 万像素的超清主摄和800 万像素的广角微距镜头等，可让画质更清晰，画面更广阔。例（196）是vivo IQOO Neo5SE 的广告语，其平行的程度比较高，从语法上来看，二者皆为名词+动词的表述，都为主谓结构，属于两个并列的语言单位。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，不仅增强了语言的韵律美，同时“排出”和“吸入”语义相反，形成对比效果，意在说明该手机具有强悍的散热系统，能够实现高速率散热。例（197）是华为P50 Pocket 的广告语，其平行的程度比较高，从语法上来看，二者都为主谓结构，属于两个并列的语言单位。创作者以极其工整的平行结构呈现，使“无” 和“有”形成语义上的相反，增强对比效果，意在说明该手机的折叠屏设计所具有的效果。二、大规模平行大规模平行是指由三个及三个以上并列语言单位组成的语法结构。手机广告语中大规模平行的使用，可以使语言具有节奏感，增强表达效果。（198）帧率更高，功耗更低，游戏更稳。（一加Ace 2022）（199）不同色彩，不同情绪，不同感染力。（小米12S Pro 2022）（200）字体更大了，图标更大了，音量更大了，人情味更浓了。（OPPO A56 2021）（201）全天候，全时段，全能出色。（华为P40 Pro 2020）（202）好听！大有声势。好看！久看不累。好玩！尽情酣战。（vivo Y73t 2022）例（198）是一加Ace 的广告语，三个短句并行排列，都是主谓结构，构成排比句式。这样工整的平行结构，读起来朗朗上口，节奏感强，同时，语义深入浅出，以具体描述展现稳定发挥的优势。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，意在说明该手机所搭载的游戏独显芯片具有帧率更高、画面拖影更少，同时功耗更低的特点。例（199）是小米12S Pro 的广告语，三个短句并行排列，都是定中结构，构成排比句式。这样工整的平行结构，读起来朗朗上口，同时构成联合形式，语义并列，从三个不同方面说明徕卡滤镜的效果。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，意在说明该手机的滤镜所具有的效果，它可以使图片呈现不同的色彩，传达不同的情绪，表现出不同的感染力。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 70 例（200）是OPPO A56 的广告语，四个短句并行排列，都是主谓结构，构成排比句式。这样工整的平行结构，读起来朗朗上口，同时构成联合形式，语义深入浅出，通过对具体细节的描述，说明该手机的人情味更浓了。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，通过对字体、图标、音量的描述，来说明该手机更具人情味。例（201）是华为P40 Pro 的广告语，三个短句并行排列，都是定中结构，构成排比句式。这样工整的平行结构，读起来朗朗上口，语义深入浅出，说明该手机可拍摄全时段的高清照片。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，意在说明该手机的摄像头进光量高，对焦性强，可以纯净画面，进行全时段的高清拍摄。例（202）中三个句子并行排列，每个排比句都以“好……”的形式出现，结构相似，构成排比句式，结构上显示出整饬之美，音节上具有和谐流畅之美。创作者将广告语以极其工整的平行结构呈现，从音质、屏幕清晰度、游戏性能三方面对手机具有的优势特点进行阐述，强调手机带给广告接受者的愉快体验。第四章手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素分析 71 第四章手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素分析手机广告语中前景化语言的形成是多方面因素共同作用的结果，它既受广告创作者和广告接受者的影响，亦受广告语语境的影响，更受广告语自身因素的影响。第一节广告创作者和广告接受者因素一、广告创作者广告语中前景化语言形式的出现，与广告创作者内心的表达意图有密切的联系。广告创作者在对产品进行宣传时，当常规语言形式无法表达内心意图或广告主题时，会运用前景化的语言表达方式，对语言进行扭曲与变形，形成巨大反差，将所要表达的焦点信息置于前景的位置，进而达到凸显表达意图的目的。因此，广告创作者在采用偏离和平行两种前景化手段对广告语进行创新时，其往往是为了对主旨意图进行凸显。例如华为nova 9SE 的广告语“精彩，由我摄定”，创作者巧妙地运用倒装句，将宾语置于定语之前，使其以前景化的形式呈现于广告接受者面前，意在对手机的摄像功能进行突出强调，使广告接受者印象深刻。同时，突破词语的词类归属，将形容词“精彩”偏离为名词，使语言表达更加简洁有力。又如魅族18X 的广告语，“蕴繁于简，藏巧于纯”，创作者巧妙地运用小规模平行，使语言结构工整，增强语言的节奏感，同时古语词“蕴” “藏”等的使用，也使广告语具有庄重典雅的色彩，与广告接受者内心的传统文化相契合，增强广告接受者对产品特点的信任。二、广告接受者广告语中前景化语言形式的出现，一方面与广告接受者追求新颖奇特的心理有密切的联系。求新求异的心理需求是广告接受者所普遍具有的，常规的语言形式，会使广告接受者产生麻木之感，带来视觉上的认知疲劳，不易吸引广告接受者的注意力。因此，广告创作者会迎合广告接受者追求新颖奇特的心理，采用前景化的语言形式，通过偏离和平行两种手段，对语言常规进行突破，创造一种新颖独特的语言表达形式。比如vivo X80 的广告语“百万跑分‘9’是强悍”，这则广告语巧妙地将数字夹杂进汉语中，从形式上带给广告接受者新奇的视觉体验，同时利用谐音“9”与“就”构成语音偏离，更使广告接受者在对意义的认知上获得独特的心理体验。又如vivo X60 Pro 的广告语“拾起，幸福欢乐的过往”，其中“过往”是抽象的宾语，而“拾起”则是表征具体动作的，陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 72 广告语运用语义偏离的手段，将违反常规语义组合的两个词“拾起”和“过往”进行超常规的搭配，与产品特点相联系，化抽象为具体，激发广告接受者的好奇心，延长广告接受者的思考时间，同时可以使语言变得生动形象，有利于吸引广告接受者的注意力，增强广告接受者的阅读兴趣。创作者巧妙地运用语义偏离，意在说明该手机在对老旧模糊照片进行色彩还原方面的性能和优势，进而给广告接受者留下深刻的印象。另一方面也与广告接受者追求简洁的心理密切相关。社会经济的发展，广告接受者已经步入快节奏的时代，时间概念在广告接受者的生活中显得日益重要，广告接受者对简洁的追求日益明显。因此，为了使广告语能够在短时间内吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，创作者会采取偏离和平行两种前景化手段对常规语言进行创新和改造，使其变得简洁凝练，呈现出新颖独特的特点，同时使其更富有生机和活力。比如vivo Y81 的广告语“游戏模式，畅玩更专注”，其中的“畅玩”是畅快玩耍的意思，创作者独具匠心地运用缩略词，一方面可以使语言形式具有新颖性，吸引广告接受者的注意力，另一方面，可以使表达方式简洁凝练，契合当今快时代下广告接受者的阅读心理，进而激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，获得广告接受者的青睐，促使其产生购买行为。第二节广告语语境因素一、社会发展社会发展对广告语中前景化语言形式的形成，有密切的联系。语言存在于社会中，帮助人类进行沟通交流，与社会的政治、经济、科技和文化等紧密相关，伴随社会的发展而发展变化。在改革开放之前，商品是按需进行生产的，广告语的目的在于宣传商品信息，语言平淡朴实，到改革开放时期，社会的进步，经济的快速发展，商品出现供过于求的情况，此时，常规无奇的的广告语，不能起到更好地吸引广告接受者注意力的目的，因此广告创作者会采取前景化的语言形式，通过偏离和平行两种语言手段，对广告语进行创新，使其具有新颖奇特的特点，进而在众多广告宣传中能够脱颖而出，获得广告接受者的青睐。比如vivo IQOO Neo6 SE 的广告语“围剿热量，冷静升段位”，其中 “围剿”是动词，其后的宾语一般是具体事物，比如围剿敌军，而“热量”是抽象名词，显然是不能被围剿的，意在告知广告接受者该手机在散热方面的优势和性能。创作者巧妙地将动词“围剿”和名词“热量”进行语义上的超常搭配，带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，顺应了社会市场竞争的发展趋势，使其在众多广告语中能够脱颖而出，增强第四章手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素分析 73 了产品的竞争力，促使广告接受者产生购买行为。再如魅族18X 的广告语“远近皆收，大小咸宜”，其中的“皆”和“咸”都表示“都”的意思，这里创作者巧妙地将其用不同的字进行呈现，意在给广告接受者带来一种庄重的审美体验，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其购买此产品。此广告语意在说明该手机在摄像方面功能显著，远景近景皆可拍摄，广角微距也可囊括。二、语言接触广告语中前景化语言形式的出现，与语言接触有密切的联系。社会的发展，交流的日益频繁，文化进行融合是一种必然趋势，尤其是外来词汇的涌入。广告语中的外来词汇是比较多的，它的出现，使广告语变得新颖独特，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发其阅读兴趣，增强语言的表现力和感染力。比如AGM G1S pro 的广告语“要多Pro，有多 Pro”，其中的“Pro”是“profession”的缩写，意为专业，当其出现在广告语中时，可以吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发他们的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果，突出该手机在配置或功能特色方面的卓越性能，这里主要强调该手机在测量环境温度、精准对焦等方面能够精准调节参数。同时，广告语中将“Pro”和“多”的重复使用，增强了语言的节奏感，有利于广告接受者把握产品的关键信息，增强其对广告语的记忆。再如vivo X Note 的广告语“MAX 的身材，却有Mini 的手感”，其中的“MAX”是“maximum” 的缩写，创作者巧妙地将外语缩略词安排其中，形成语言上的偏离，意在说明该手机外型大气中正，但是手感轻盈。同时，前后语句语义相反，增强了语言的对比效果，更突出了手机在外型和手感方面的显著优势。第三节广告语自身因素一、语言的系统性广告语中前景化语言形式的出现与语言的系统性有密切的联系。语言是一个由音和义结合而成的复杂的符号系统，是处于发展变化之中的，具有自我调节功能。同时，它亦具有层级性，可以分为音系层和语法层，每个层面上有大大小小不同的单位，音系层有音位、音节、音步等，语法层有语素、词、句子等。这个语言系统是依靠组合关系和聚合关系进行运转的，利用这两种关系可以造出无限多的句子，使语言具有能产性、变化性和创造性。手机广告语中前景化语言形式的形成即是对语言系统中层级性、组合关系和聚合关系的充分利用，它们可以为前景化语言形式的形成提供可能性。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 74 广告语中语义偏离这种前景化语言形式的出现，就是创作者基于语义的组合关系，创造性地将超越常规语义组合的词语进行搭配而形成的。这种前景化语言形式具有新颖奇特性，可以吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其产生购买行为。比如华为nova 8 的广告语“滑动行云流水，好戏纷呈而至”，创作者巧妙地运用比喻的辞格，将较高的屏幕刷新率和触控采样率所带来的顺滑度和流畅度，比作行云流水一般。在这则广告语中创作者基于超越常规的语义组合而产生的前景化语言形式，不仅更大程度地向广告接受者展现了该手机在屏幕刷新率和触控采样率方面的优势和特点，更重要的是，此广告语语言形象生动，有利于广告接受者的的理解，可以加深其对广告语的记忆。此外，广告语中倒装句这种偏离常规的句式的出现，也是基于组合关系而形成的，创作者有意将处于线性组合位置上的句法成分进行次序变化，进而突出主题内容，延长广告接受者的阅读时间，增强语言的表达效果。手机广告语中语法平行这种前景化语言形式的出现，是基于语言系统中的聚合关系而形成的，它可以带给广告接受者陌生化的认知体验，利于主旨内容的突出，进而促使购买行为的发生。比如华为mate 40E 的广告语“小身躯，大场面”，创作者基于聚合关系，选择能够与线性组合结构中具有相同作用的某些语言单位进行替换，同时替换后结构关系保持不变的语言符号，进而形成的前景化表达形式。这则广告语意在说明该手机虽然前置摄像头小，但是拍照效果显著，可以带给广告接受者主角般的拍摄体验。二、语言的经济性语言的经济性对广告语前景化语言形式的形成有促进作用。语言的经济性指在语言运用的过程中词语或句子的长度与语言表达所产生的效果之间的最佳的组合，它可以出现在语言的不同层面，比如语音层、词汇层、语法层等。语言的经济性通常表现在语言形式的简洁明了和短小精悍上，它可以缩减广告接受者的阅读的量，节省阅读时长，实现表达效果和时间的最佳化，进而激发广告接受者的的阅读兴趣，增强语言的表达效果。语言的经济性在手机广告语中体现的比较明显，汉字谐音偏离中的音同谐音，即是语言经济性的一种鲜明体现，它是广告语创作者利用语音和意义之间组合的矛盾性巧妙地运用同音异形词而形成的一种前景化语言形式。比如vivo X30 的广告语“芯动，与未来共鸣”，创作者基于音义结合的复杂性和灵活性，巧妙地将同音异形词“芯”与“心” 进行谐音替换，使广告语变得新颖奇特，带给广告接受者陌生化的审美认知，最重要的是，该广告语体现了语言的经济性原则，语言形式短小精悍、内容简洁明了，可以减轻第四章手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素分析 75 广告接受者在音节记忆上的负担，增强语言的表达效果。谐体“芯”与本体“心”构成谐音偏离，一方面意在说明芯片如人体的心脏一样非常重要，另一方面为了突出芯片的性能和优势，即它可以带给广告接受者高速的5G 体验，使广告接受者实现和当下5G 时代的无缝衔接。此外，基于缩略法所形成的词形偏离亦是语言经济性的鲜明体现。比如vivo IQOO Z6 的广告语“畅享娱乐，快乐上分”，其中的“畅享”是“畅快享受” 的意思，创作者巧妙地运用缩略法对其进行词形上的偏离，意在说明该手机在光学防抖、超高像素、变速高刷新率和高保真度音质的加持下，可以使拍照更清晰，眼睛更舒适，音质更悦耳，更重要的是，该广告语用较少的语言单位即可表达丰富的内涵，可以减少广告接受者的阅读数量，节省其阅读时间，吸引广告接受者的注意力。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 76 结语 77 结语广告语作为一种宣传性语言，旨在最大限度地凸显主题意义，吸引广告接受者的注意力，激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣，促使其产生购买行为，因此其中蕴含诸多前景化的语言特征。广告语创作者不仅要遵守语言常规，对常规的语言结构进行频繁的使用，还要有意识地违背语言常规，使其置于前景位置，凸显主题意义。广告语就是在这种背景与前景的相互转换中，逐渐获得发展的。文章以前景化理论为基础，从偏离和平行两个方面对手机广告语中的前景化语言特征进行分析，发现手机广告语中的语言偏离，主要表现为语音偏离、词汇偏离、语法偏离和语义偏离；手机广告语中的语言平行，主要包括语音平行、词汇平行和语法平行，进而从广告创作者、广告接受者、广告语语境和广告语自身等方面对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析。语音是语言的物质外壳，它表达固定的语义信息，然而常规的语音形式一方面无法精准地传递创作者的表达意图，另一方面因形式的常规性，无法满足广告接受者求新求异的审美需求，因此创作者会有意采用语音偏离手段对语音的能指进行违背，使其所承载的意义随能指发生变化。手机广告语中语音层面的偏离主要表现为谐音偏离、叠音偏离、拟声偏离和停顿偏离。谐音偏离是创作者有意违背语音和意义之间的一一对应性，用意义不同的音同或音近字替换本字而形成的，主要表现为汉字谐音偏离、数字谐音偏离和英文谐音偏离。叠音偏离是创作者有意对语素或词的常规重叠形式进行扭曲而形成的，可以突出产品特征，延长音节的长度，增强语言的韵律美，使广告接受者在听觉上留下深刻印象，获得丰富的审美体验，进而达到领会主旨内容的目的。拟声偏离是通过对语音和意义之间的固定联系进行扭曲而形成的，意在刺激广告接受者的听觉感受，加深广告接受者的印象，增强语言的感染力。停顿偏离是在音节不需要停顿的地方进行连续停顿而形成的。这些语音偏离手段的使用，使广告语具有音乐美、变化美，增强语言的审美效果。词汇是语言的建筑材料，与社会发展有着密切的联系。广告语要达到吸引广告接受者的目的，需要对词语进行加工，使其偏离语言常规。手机广告语中词汇层面的偏离主要表现为词形偏离和词义偏离。通过缩略法、派生法、替换法、颠倒法和增减法实现的词形偏离，可以赋予语言新的形式和意义。同时，打破音义之间的约定俗成性，对理性义和色彩义进行偏离，亦可激发广告接受者的阅读兴趣。陕西理工大学硕士学位论文 78 语法是语言的结构规律，其变化速度相对较慢，有一定的稳固性。但是伴随社会的发展和表达上的需求，创作者会对常规的语法规则进行扭曲，进而凸显主题意义。通过临时改变词语的词类归属而形成的词法偏离，可以延长广告接受者的阅读时间。同时句法层面出现的短语偏离和句式偏离，亦可增强语言的表达效果。辞格是为了增强语言的表达效果而形成的一种特定格式，它与前景化的目的有着异曲同工之妙。语义偏离是实现前景化的一种手段，手机广告语中的语义偏离多见于由比喻、夸张、拟人、通感、仿拟、双关和借代等辞格而形成的形象化的语言中。通过辞格形成的语义偏离，因语义上的荒谬性，会吸引广告接受者的注意力，延长其阅读时间。语言偏离现象在手机广告语中屡见不鲜，然而语言平行亦不在少数，它可以发生在语音层面、词汇层面和语法层面。利用平行这一前景化手段形成的语言模式，可以使广告接受者获得循环往复的听觉体验，加深其对广告语的记忆。语音层面的平行主要表现在头韵和尾韵上；词汇层面的平行，主要通过单音节词重复和多音节词重复实现的；语法层面的平行，主要表现为语法结构上的小规模平行和大规模平行。最后，从广告创作者、广告接受者、广告语语境和广告语自身等方面对手机广告语中前景化语言形成的因素进行分析。在此需要说明的是，手机广告语在其他方面也具有偏离和平行的特质，因研究能力有限，文章着重选取了前景化现象较为突出的部分进行研究。当然，鉴于自身专业知识结构欠缺，论文中留下了一些仍需完善的部分，例如，手机广告语中关于前景化特征的分析未做到面面俱到，语法平行现象仅从组合结构的小规模平行和大规模平行的角度进行了介绍，对语言中是否存在其他语法平行现象未作具体分析，这还需要在以后的学习过程中不断完善，期待得到专家们的批评指正。参考文献 79 参考文献学术专著 [1]戴凡,吕黛蓉. 功能文体理论研究[M]. 北京:外语教学与研究出版社,2012. 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广告语创译的案例分析——以“苹果”公司广告语为例_赵丽妍.pdf	149 2021 年12 月（总第297 期）语言比较研究【提要】广告是一种刺激消费、提升销量的营销手段，因此广告语是一种目的性很强的文本，故广告语的翻译也与其他文本不同。广告语翻译过程中存在大量的创译现象。本文通过对比苹果公司双语版本的广告语，分析和研究其中的创译现象，以为相似类型文本的翻译提供参考。【关键词】创译广告翻译翻译方法引言随着全球化及广告产业的发展，广告语的翻译需求在广告产业中与日俱增。英语广告语的翻译是指，将英语广告语翻译成中文广告，与重新写出中文广告有较大区别。在英语广告语的翻译过程中需要使用一定的翻译技巧，进而达到良好效果。由于广告文案在形式、功能、用词等方面与普通文本均不尽相同，因此，广告文案的翻译也需另寻出路。由此，创译法诞生了。创译是一种在翻译过程中对原文本进行改写与创造的翻译方法。虽然这种翻译方法如今得到广泛应用，但尚未有权威的定义。某国际公司认为，普通翻译与创译的区别在于，“创译是在翻译过程中真正实现语义对等的翻译方法。”本文以苹果公司的中英两版广告文案为例，对其文案翻译的创译现象进行了对比与分析，旨在找出创译法用于广告翻译的优势与劣势。一、创译案例分析苹果公司的网站广告语简单易记，且极具艺术性与张力，每一条广告语在用词、句式结构和修辞手法等方式上都有明显差别。可这些广告既体现了产品特点，又能抓住客户的心理；当它们连在一起时又形成了鲜明且独特的风格，成为了其企业文化的一部分。此外，苹果公司大陆版网站译文也时常有出彩的地方。笔者对比后发现，其原文常常出现短句、排比句和祈使句等句型，寥寥数语背后藏着巨大的信息量，并给顾客以想象的空间。其译文通常将中文语言特点及习惯放在第一位，以达到吸引目标客户的目的，故多在原文的基础上采用头韵、对偶和双关这三种修辞手法进行创译。但当其广告原文无法在中文中找到完全对应的表达时，其译文会放弃原文的语言形式，以求最完整地表达出原文的语义。（一）对仗的创译对仗是大多数广告常用的手法，也时常是苹果公司的广告出彩的地方。使用对仗手法的广告语简洁易记、朗朗上口，能很好地达到吸引顾客的效果。对于广告语中对仗的翻译，译者会尽量在保留原文意义的基础上保留其结构的工整。但当无法在保全语言意义的基础上保留语言形式时，译者会采用创译的方式，减弱、甚至是放弃对对仗结构的追求，以最大程度上还原原文的意义。（1）原文：A look inward. A leap forward. 译文：发掘内在，实力跳级。原文用“look inward”暗指了本款产品是新款 Apple Watch，同时体现出本次产品升级的力度。在语言层面，原文同时使用了对仗、头韵（A）、尾韵（-ward）和对比（“inward” 和“forward”）的修辞手法，广告语短小精悍，结构巧妙，却同时有无限内涵。在译文中，从语义层面来看，基本还原了原文想表达的“产品升级力度大”的特点，最大程度上保留了原文的语义。但从语言层面来看，译文虽然保留了原文对仗的格式，但几乎对原文进行了全部改写，其他的修辞手法都被舍弃了。这句广告语的创译体现了译者在翻译时的取舍，舍弃形式、保留意义。（2）原文：New experiences. True connections. 译文：联络起来，满是真切的新感受。原文从语义层面上看，指出了本次升级的功能是视频通话（FaceTime）。从语言层面上看，对仗工整且押尾韵，朗朗上口。而译文从语义层面上看，完全还原了原文的各种含义，但语言形式却与原文完全不同：由原文的工整的对仗变为了一个短句。虽然译文经过创译后与原文语言形式不同，但却再现了原文的意义，因此同样能达到吸引目标语顾客的效果。广告语创译的案例分析 ——以“苹果”公司广告语为例赵丽妍吴涛 DOI:10.14014/j.cnki.cn11-2597/g2.2021.s1.059 语言比较研究 150 2021 年12 月（总第297 期）（二）头韵的创译苹果公司的广告语大量采用了头韵的修辞手法，而其译文则根据其语义走向两个极端：完全跟随原文采用押韵的修辞手法，或者完全改变原文形式、对译文进行改写。（3）原文：Lots to love. Less to spend. 译文：称心称手，超值入手。原文描述了新款iPhone 的卖点：产品更新升级且价格优惠，旨在用三言两语介绍产品的特性并吸引客户、提升销量。同时，原文采用头韵的修辞手法(“lots”,“love”和“less”)，使广告语朗朗上口。而译文同样用简短的词汇描述了产品特性，并采用押尾韵的修辞手法，使译文与原文一样简洁好记。此外，为了结构工整，译文还对产品的尺寸特性进行了增译，称其“称手”，而这一特性在原文中并没有明显的体现，是译者了解产品后进行创译而增添进译文的。这句广告语的创译不但反映了原文的意义，同时保留了原文的语言特性，能很好地吸引译文目标客户。（4）原文：High powered meets“Hi everyone” 译文：各种超赞表现，向大家问好。原文从语义层面来看，“Hi everyone”一句暗含两层意义：新功能即将上线，且该功能与视频通话（FaceTime）有关；从语言层面来看，该句使用了头韵和拟人的手法，使其产品更新的特点更加生动形象地传达给顾客。译文为了表达原文产品升级的含义，将译文进行了完全的改写，突破了头韵的限制。虽然本句译文没有完全遵照原文的形式，但几乎完全体现了原文的意义，由此可再次证明，比起语言形式，创译更加重视语言的意义。（三）双关的创译虽然相比对仗、头韵等修辞手法，双关在广告语中的使用频率较低，但仍然是苹果公司广告语常用的修辞。该手法常用于描述某产品特定的功能或性能。由于源语和目的语语言习惯的差异，双关的翻译是翻译过程中较为困难的一环。然而，创译的特性之一便是跳出源语的框架与限制，因此译者可以借助创译来拓宽翻译和再创造的空间，进而创译出精彩的译文。（5）原文：Oops resistant. 译文：防溅抗水，治水逆。结合苹果公司网站的图片，顾客可以看出该广告语旨在强调新产品的防水性能。从语言层面上看， “oops”一词暗示了日常生活中的意外（在这里特指产品落入水中等类似情况），而后“resistant” 一词则体现了一个反转，旨在告诉顾客不用担心产品沾水或落入水中的情况。而译文不但直白地说明了产品“防溅抗水”的特性，同时很巧妙地使用了网络用语“水逆”一词，让顾客不用担心这种生活中的小意外，且拉近了产品与顾客之间的距离，能够有效吸引目标顾客。本句广告语中，原文和译文都各自有精妙的地方。虽然两种版本的广告语在语言形式上完全不同，但各自放在其目标语境中，都是极具巧思的广告语，能够激发顾客的购买欲望。二、结语本文通过对苹果公司广告语中英两版的对比发现，在广告语翻译过程中，创译是一种被大量使用的翻译方法。创译以目的为导向，旨在让译文读者读到文本时产生和原文读者相同或类似的感受；在广告语翻译中即是吸引顾客，激发顾客的购买欲望。创译赋予译者在翻译的同时进行创造的权利，因此留给了译者很大的创造空间。在广告语翻译过程中进行创译，甚至可能使译文比原文更能打动人心，更加出彩。但也正因为创译赋予的自由度过高，译者在翻译过程中可以根据自己的理解对原文内容的重点进行增添、取舍和再创造，故而也可能会出现信息缺失等情况。参考文献孟琳、詹晶辉 2001 《英语广告中双关语的运用技巧及翻译》，《中国翻译》第5 期。陶荣 2010 《英语广告词的修辞艺术及翻译策略》，《海外英语》第5 期。张武江 2013 《译创在游戏本地化翻译中的应用》，《现代传播》( 中国传媒大学学报) 第12 期。欧阳昱、回译 2014 《自译与创译》，《华文文学》第1 期。陈琳、曹培会 2016 《论创译的名与实》，《外语与外语教学》第6 期。李杨帆 2018 《化妆品广告词汇的创译》，《今日财富》第14 期。李稳敏、李馨 2019 《广告语翻译的修辞策略与效果》，《黑龙江工业学院学报》( 综合版) 第11 期。宋尚谕、皇甫霖 2020 《中英广告语体的修辞对比研究》，《现代交际》第1 期。束远 2021 《广告翻译研究》，《山西青年》第3 期。（通信地址： 650500 昆明理工大学外国语言文化学院）	3,602
当代越南报刊广告语修辞研究_韦丽春.pdf	当代越南报刊广告语修辞研究摘要越南当代报刊广告语中常应用的修辞有比喻、夸张、拟人、问句、排比和对偶，使广告语言更具表现力。修辞视角下越南当代报刊广告语呈现真实性、简明性、创新性、含蓄性和通俗性等特点，并具有音韵美、句式美、含蓄美等美学特征。越南报刊广告语一定程度上体现本民族心理特征和思维特征，具有独特的民族语言风格，词汇选择反映当下社会文化心理。关键词：越南；报刊广告语；修辞；应用；特点；修辞美；民族因素 THE STUDY OF RHETORIC IN ADVERTISING LANGUAGE OF NEWSPAPERS AND PERIODICALS IN CONTEMPORARY VIETNAM ABSTRACT Many kinds of rhetoric are used in advertising language of newspapers and periodicals in contemporary Vietnam, such as metaphor, exaggeration, personification, questions, parallelism and antithesis. These kinds of rhetoric can improve language expression. The advertising language of newspapers and periodicals in contemporary Vietnam possess many characteristics such as truthfulness, conciseness, innovative, implication and popularity. It also emerges aesthetic features like phonology, sentence and connotation. The advertising language of newspapers and periodicals in contemporary Vietnam embodies the psychological characteristics and thinking feature of its own nation to a certain extent. It has a special national language style. Words choosing the advertising language reflect current social and cultural psychology. KEY WORDS: Vietnam; advertising language of newspapers and periodicals; rhetoric; using; characteristic; rhetoric aesthetics；ethnic factors 目录第一章绪论 .......................................... 1 第一节研究目的与意义 .............................. 1 第二节国内外研究现状及水平 ........................ 2 一、国内研究现状及水平 ......................... 2 二、国外研究现状及研究水平 ...................... 3 第三节研究对象与主要研究方法 ...................... 4 第四节语料来源 .................................... 5 第二章修辞格在越南报刊广告语中的应用 ................. 7 第一节比喻（so sánh） ............................. 8 第二节夸张（phóng đại&thu nhỏ） .................. 9 第三节拟人（nhân hóa） ........................... 10 第四节排比和对偶（sóng đôi） ..................... 11 第五节问句 ...................................... 12 第三章越南报刊广告语中的修辞美 ...................... 14 第一节音韵修辞之美 ............................... 14 第二节语句之形式美 ............................... 16 一、重复 ...................................... 16 二、对偶 ...................................... 17 第三节表意之含蓄美 ............................... 18 第四章修辞视角下越南报刊广告语的特点 ................ 21 第一节真实性 .................................... 21 第二节简明性 .................................... 23 第三节创新性 .................................... 23 第四节语义上的含蓄性与通俗性 ..................... 24 一、含蓄性 .................................... 25 二、通俗性 .................................... 25 第五章越南当代报刊广告语言修辞中的民族因素 .......... 28 第一节地域环境与民族心理 ......................... 28 一、心理特征 .................................. 29 二、思维特征 .................................. 31 第二节语言风格之民族风格 ......................... 32 第三节词汇选择与社会文化心理 ..................... 35 结语 ................................................ 40 参考文献 ............................................ 42 后记 ................................................ 44 攻读学位期间发表的学术论文目录 ....................... 45 1 第一章绪论第一节研究目的与意义广告随商品交换而出现，广告自出现以来，已成为一种特殊的时代文明，它贯穿了人类经济生活的方方面面，在很大程度上影响了人们的社会观、价值观和人生观。越南广告也是随着本国商品经济的产生而产生。最初的广告形式是小贩的叫卖广告。越南最早出现广告的杂志大概是十九世纪末的《嘉定报》（Gia Định Bá o）和《农贾茗谈》(Nông Cổ Mín Đàm)。起初，越南的广告仅局限于登载税收、粮食价格、地方官员职位变更、招聘、求职和药品等信息。此后，20 世纪初，即1913 年以后，越南多家报纸（主要是北圻的报纸）开始大量登载广告信息。此时，由于法国的工业产品逐渐在越南得以普及，例如牛奶、香皂、香水、烟酒、服装、酒店、酒吧甚至是汽车等产品，自然丰富了报纸、杂志上的广告。当时登载广告最多的报纸当属东法报（Đông Pháp）、东方报(Đông Phương)、时报(Thời B áo)、民声报(Tiếng Dân)等。1945-1954 年9 年抗战时期，出现半公开革命报纸，这些报纸上几乎没有任何商品广告。然而当时的一些法国属地出版的公开报纸上，广告仍然得以登载并发展。1954-1975 抗美时期的情况也相似：北部没有广告，美国占领的南部地区仍得以在各种媒体上登载，这个时期南部的广告中较为独特的一个现象是：许多越语广告中穿插有法语广告。 1975 年到1986 年间，越南几乎没有广告。到1990 年以后，即越南革新开放以后，在一些新办的报纸上才出现了越南社会主义共和国成立以来真正意义的广告，即产品和服务信息的介绍，这之后的广告活动渐渐开始活跃。然而这些信息只是很含蓄地登在报纸的“经济-社会信息”版面之下。直到1993 年，越南的若干大型报纸上的“经济-社会信息”版面才得以正式更名为“广告”，在中央和地方报以及电台和电视上的广告数量屈指可数。越南如今的广告已经发展得相当快，数量相对于90 年代来说也极其庞大了。越南全国目前有500 多家报纸和杂志，基本上都登载广告。若单数某一种杂志或报纸登载的广告数量，以《新河内》（Hà Nội Mới）为例，有时候一份报纸最多可见8 页广告，而胡志明市的《青年》 (Tuổi Trẻ) 则达到32 页广告。从广告数量和信息来看，越南的广告媒介和本国各企业的广告活动已经变得越来越积极，空前繁荣。越南报刊广告语言的设计是由繁到简的一个发展过程，随着媒介的迅速发展和国际交流日益频繁，越南广告如今在各方面受到西方广告的影响，其中包括广 2 告语言的设计，一些大型企业的广告标语变得更为简洁而又有说服力。根据越南广告的发展情况，可以预见越南广告尤其是广告语的研究情况也与广告的发展相似。进入21 世纪以来，随着经济全球化进程的加快、越南革新开放的不断深入，越南的商品社会也不断发展，越南广告异军突起，越南广告成为越南社会生活中一个新鲜的文化现象，并以其独特的社会文化载体开始备受关注。在一则广告中，广告语通常被称为广告的眼睛，广告的灵魂所在，在越南广告不断发展的今天，其广告语作为独特的社会文化载体，无论从广告学角度还是从语言学角度看，都具有相当高的研究价值。尽管目前越南关于广告文案写作、广告创意的文章和著作层出不穷，而从语言角度对当代越南广告语进行研究的却凤毛麟角，尤其是修辞学角度的研究更是未有所闻。目前关于广告语言的研究主要多见于修辞格的研究、语体研究和语用研究三个方面。通过对广告语言的研究，人们普遍认识到，广告语言的问题并不单纯的只是语言的问题，广告语言的研究应该借鉴其它学科的理论资源，如心理学、社会学、美学等。本文的研究就在这样的基础上起步，主要致力于分析修辞格在越南报刊广告语言中的运用、越南报刊广告语中的修辞美、特点，并从广告语言修辞与民族因素之间的关系来进行论述。本文力图在大量占有越南报刊广告语语料的基础上，以广义修辞观为指导，运用语言学、社会学、心理学等学科的理论知识，在学科交叉中对越南报刊广告语展开修辞学分析，以达到深化越南语言修辞认识的目的。此外我们希望通过本文的研究，展现越南多样的广告语言修辞，以能够引起广大读者的兴趣，为中越语言文化交流尽以绵薄之力。第二节国内外研究现状及水平一、国内研究现状及水平在中国国内，截止目前为止，还没有一本完全以研究越南广告语为主的著作，目前能搜索到的国内有关越南广告语的研究有解放军外国语学院官春[越]所著硕士论文《言语行为理论下的越南报刊广告语言研究》（2006 年11 月）从语用学视角展开研究，对越南报刊广告语言中的言语行为进行分析。华中师范大学阮如丹玄[越]所著硕士学位论文《现代越南商业广告女性形象研究——广告女性形象偏差现象》（2010 年5 月）通过女性主义视角，以越南各知名电视台和部分杂志报纸广告为研究文本，对现代越南女性形象进行研究，分析了现代越南商业广告女性形象的偏差现象、原因及对社会的影响。国内有关汉语广告修辞的论著 3 不知凡几，我们见得较多的是：周建民《广告修辞学》全书不仅阐述了广告的特性，还归纳了其言语的特征、总结了其语体的特点和指出了其修辞规范应用的技巧，并深入地研究了心理、文化和媒体对广告修辞的影响等。作者的研究反映了汉语广告修辞现象本身的丰富多彩。张英岚在《广告语言修辞原理与赏析》中，详细例举了上百条有修辞格的广告语，不仅向我们阐释了广告语言的常态、感性、韵律，还客观的对其所传递的信息进行鉴赏分析。曾庆漩《著名广告词修辞艺术》用广告词举例说明广告的69 种辞格，其中包括一些前辈未概括完整的辞格。蒋华所著《广告语言与修辞研究》主要阐述了广告与语言、广告中词语的选择与应用、人称代词与广告、试谈艺术化的公益广告、双关在商标中的应用及其原因、禁烟广告语的分析、草坪警示语的发展变化和分析。何新祥所著《广告语言修辞艺术》归类各种广告辞格，分析各类辞格在广告语中的运用，并对各种广告辞格的类别加以说明和阐释。杨柏所著《现代广告语言艺术》着眼于从现代广告语言运用的原则入手，分别从诚信度、环境适切、情景交融和使用有效等不同角度来研究广告语言运用的规则。吴为善编著的《广告语言》突破了仅仅从修辞学角度讲述广告语创作技巧的框框，从市场运作、商业传播的视角对广告语言进行全方位的透视。陆稼祥先生的《辞格运用》全面系统地阐述了辞格运用的技巧，作者认为，辞格主要分为两类，一种是适应外部相关关系的辞格;另一种是遵循内部结构特点的辞格。以上所列举的资料虽然都是对汉语广告的汉语修辞分析，但对本论文的构思起到重要的指导和借鉴作用。二、国外研究现状及研究水平由越南语言学博士梅春辉（Mai Xuân Huy）撰写的《交际理论视角下的广告语言》（（Ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới ánh sáng của lý thuyết giao tiếp，nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội Việt Nam, 2005）是目前能找到的对越南当代广告语分析最为详细的著作，该书分别分析了交际理论下的广告语、广告语的言语行为、广告语的会话结构等特点，该书为越南迄今唯一一本从交际理论视角对越南广告语进行研究的著作。此外，由阮坚长（Nguyễn Kiên Trường）主编的《广告和广告语》（Quảng cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo， nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội Việt Nam, 2004）分两部分：第一部分概述广告和广告语言，第二部分详细介绍越南广告和广告语言，主要以胡志明市广告语为例，逐个分析越南广告语的隐喻现象和越南对广告语的一些规定等，但该书仅局限于教材式的简单介绍，书中只有一章的内容专门对广告语言的特点进行介绍和分析。 4 论文方面，梅春辉（Mai Xuân Huy）《广告及其广告中的语言特点和社会心理》（Quảng cáo và các đặc điểm ngôn ngữ và tâm lý-xã hội trong quảng cáo，Tiếng Việt trên các phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng，Hội Ngôn ngữ học TPHCM 1999）分析越南广告语言的特点和社会心理；《交际理论视角下的越南广告语言特点 ——广告语语义、语用结构研究》（Các đặc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới ánh sáng của lý thuyết giao tiếp（cấu trúc ngữ nghĩa-ngữ dụng của diển ngôn quảng cáo）， Luận án tiến sĩ viện nghiên cứu ngôn ngữ, 2001）从语义、语用结构角度对越南新世纪广告语（主要年份为2009-2001 年）特点进行分析，认为广告交际即对话交际，广告语言是一种立论性语言，广告行为是一种立论行为，是典型的引导性行为。此外还有梅氏明草(Mai Thị Minh Thảo)的本科毕业论文《现代越南语杂志广告和广告语》（Quảng cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo trên báo chí tiếng Việt hiện nay ，Khóa luận tốt nghiệp cử nhân báo chí, trường đại học KHXH&NV Thanh phố Hồ Chí Minh, 2000)，张文生(Trương Văn Sinh)《要注重广告语中的文化性质》（Cần quan tâm đến tính văn hóa trong ngôn ngữ quảng cáo 载Tiếng Việt trên các phương tiện truyền thông đại chúng）。黎国越（Lê Quốc Việt）《现代广告文化》（Văn hóa quảng cáo hiện nay，Văn hóa nghệ thuật, số 4, 2005）。对于各种修辞格在广告语中的研究，西方的研究开始得比较早，目前已逐渐系统化，并且渐渐形成自己的框架，而中国的修辞格在广告语中的研究框架尚待建构，越南广告语言的修辞框架的建构也是任重而道远。在研究的侧重点上，西方的广告修辞研究者们多数集中于广告语语言的结构框架和修辞格的运用上，这些研究对修辞格在广告语中的运用产生积极的影响，对广告语的创作起到积极的促进作用。第三节研究对象与主要研究方法在研究越南广告语修辞之前，我们有一个首先要解决的问题，那就是如何准确地定义我们的研究对象。广告，简单而通俗的说法就是“广而告之”，目前各种文献对广告的书面定义很多，其中美国市场营销协会(AMA)对广告所下的定义最常为人们所引用:“广告是由明确的广告主付费的基础上，来用非人际传播的形式对观念，商品及劳务进行介绍、宣传的活动。” ①越南2001 年颁布的《广告法》中对广告的定义是：广告是向消费者介绍经营、商品、服务（包括盈利性服务和非盈利性服务在内）的活动。（Quảng cáo là giới thiệu đến người tiêu dùng về hoạt động kinh doanh, hàng hoá, dịch vụ, bao gồm dịch vụ có mục đích ①周大力、周丽萍：《略谈商品广告语言的修辞艺术》，湖南工业职业技术学院学报，2005(3) 5 sinh lời và dịch vụ không có mục đích sinh lời.） ① 从种类上看，广告可分为广义的广告和狭义的广告两种，广义的广告包括经济广告和非经济广告，即商业广告和非商业广告，狭义的广告专指商业广告。此外，因看待问题的角度不同，广告又分很多类。若以传播媒介为标准，广告可分为电影广告、电视广告、网络广告、杂志广告、报纸广告、广播广告、包装广告、招贴广告、交通广告、POP 广告、直邮广告、门票广告、车体广告、餐盒广告等，若以内容为标准，广告可分为公益广告、产品广告、观念广告、品牌广告。广告的表现形式五花八门，可通过文字、图画、音乐等形式来表现。但任何一条广告，无论最终其选择的是何种传播媒介和表达形式，最终都要以广告文稿的形式确定下来，而广告文稿中，广告始终脱离不了语言文字，广告语言是广告的灵魂所在。上述所列广告类型中，杂志和报纸都是以印刷符号传递信息的连续性出版物，发行量大，受众面较广，文字表现力强，通过字面和图画给人以视觉冲击，便于读者反复阅读，易于理解和记忆。本文仅研究狭义的广告即商业广告，语料主要来源于越南知名度较高的报纸、杂志。鉴于报纸和杂志可合称为报刊，下文论述中凡是提及报纸杂志的，均使用报刊一词。综上所论述，我们可以给广告语作一个界定:本论文所讨论的越南广告语言指的是越南报刊杂志等媒介上直接刊出的广告文稿，越南报刊杂志广告中所运用的语言和文字，是其广告作品中用语言所表达的精华部分。此为本论文的主要研究对象。本论文主要采用综合考察与典型分析的方法对越南报刊广告语进行修辞学研究。采取两种方法相结合的研究方式。在此两种方法的指导下，我们尽可能广泛而全面地搜集资料，同时对越南报刊广告语中的修辞作总体的、全面的考察，并筛选出符合论题、具有代表性的修辞格作详细的分析。此外，在进行具体微观的研究与论述中，还用到了分类、列举、对比的方法，同时也不可避免地涉及到了语言学、美学、心理学、民族学和传播学的部分内容，以及对研究对象进行全面深刻的考察和研究，从而使读者对越南语修辞格以及越南广告语有更清晰的认识和理解。第四节语料来源鉴于研究的对象，本文所使用的语料，主要来源于近两年越南国内影响力较大、覆盖面较广、广告登载量较大的报刊杂志，如《青年报》(Báo Thanh Niên)、《先锋报》(Báo Tiên Phong)、《新河内报)》(Hà Nội Mới)、《妇女报》(Báo Phụ Nữ), ① 越南2001 年《广告法》第一章，第四条。 6 《西贡解放报》（Báo Sài Gòn giải phóng）, 《越南大学生报》(Báo Sinh viên Việt Nam)、《越南经济时报》（Thời báo kinh tế Việt Nam），《Thế giới Phụ Nữ》（女性世界）《Món ngon Việt Nam》（越南美食）、《学生花》（Hoa Học Trò）、《青年杂志》（Tạp chí Thanh niên）、《美丽杂志》（Tạp chí Đẹp）等，全部由自己收集，广告语篇力求全面和新颖。 7 第二章修辞格在越南报刊广告语中的应用语言活动离不开修辞。修辞即修饰文辞，即在语言的使用过程中利用多种手段来修饰语言从而使语言表达尽可能获得良好效果的一种语言活动，是人们有目的地组织话语的一种社会交际行为。越语修辞不仅是越南语言不可分割的一部分，也是越南文化不可分割的一部分。越南语中相当讲究修辞，在《Phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt》一书中，作者提到一个观点：“Cái làm nên sự kỳ diệu của ngôn ngữ đó chính là các phương tiện, biện pháp tu từ.” （修辞手段和修辞手法让语言变得奇妙）可见修辞在越南语言表达活动中的作用不可忽视。每一个民族都有自己语言独特的修辞方式和修辞格，越语称为các phương tiện tu từ 和 biện pháp tu từ ngữ nghĩa. 据祁广谋的观点，越语把修辞格分为两大类： phương tiện tu từ（修辞手段）和biện pháp tu từ（修辞手法），phương tiện tu từ侧重于从语义分类，分为nhóm so sánh tu từ，nhóm ẩn dụ tu từ ，nhóm hoán dụ tư từ 三个小类，而nhóm ẩn dụ tu từ 又分ẩn dụ、ẩn dụ bổ sung, nhân hóa và vật hóa,phúng dụ等类型。Biện pháp tu từ điệp ngữ, đồng nghĩa kép, liệt kê và tăng cấp, đột giáng, ngoa dụ, nói dảm, phản ngữ, phép lặng, chơi chữ, nói lái, dẫn ngữ-tập kiều 等。 ①而越南教育出版社《Phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt》（越语修辞手段和修辞手法）一书中则将phương tiện tu từ分为phương tiện tu từ từ vựng(词汇修辞), phương tiện tu từ ngữ nghĩa（语义修辞）, phương tiện tu từ cú pháp（句式修辞）, phương tiện tư từ văn bản（文本修辞）, 以及phương tiện ngữ âm của phong cách học（风格学语音修辞）. Biện pháp tu từ即修辞手法同样也包含词汇、语义、句式、文本几个内容，此外还有语音-文字修辞手法。此外，越语中还有其他多种修辞手段，如phản ngữ（反语）, khoa trương（夸张）, sóng đôi（相当于汉语中的“排比”）,điệp ngữ （相当于汉语中的“反复”）等。修辞是一种沟通艺术和交际艺术，巧妙使用修辞格可使一篇文章文采斐然，修辞格的运用对一则广告语是否成功起着举足轻重的作用。在广告语中使用修辞格，可使广告更具生动性和更富感染力，有利于广告语篇完成信息传达的任务, 达到广告的目的。我们经过对搜集到的越南报刊广告语篇进行分析、归纳，发现越南常见的修辞手法基本上都在广告语篇中得以使用，使用频率最高的，当属 so sánh（比喻）, khoa trương（夸张）, nhân hóa（拟人）, sóng đôi（排比和对偶）。 ① 祁广谋：《越语文化语言学》，解放军外语音像出版社，2006 年5 月，第318 页。 8 第一节比喻（so sánh）比喻是世界各个民族语言中最基本、最传统、最重要的一种修辞方式，它表示两种事物之间的关联，是一种事物通过另外一种与它有相同点的事物来打比方的一种修辞方式。越南语中的so sánh 通常分为四个部分：本体，喻解，喻词，喻体，常用的喻词有như, là, trở thành，这是固定的结构，有时一个比喻句的表达也会出现省略喻词等现象。比喻是越南报刊广告语中常用的一种修辞方式，广告语需要在短时间内传达完美的信息，使人印象深刻，比喻正契合了广告语的这一特性。在广告语中使用比喻修辞，可使所宣传商品更为具体形象化，浅显易懂，使广告更具有说服力和感染力。来看下面几则广告语： ①Dầu dưỡng da NNO:mềm mại như làn da của bé(MEGA NNO 养颜面霜：如婴儿肌肤般柔滑) ②Cánh cửa mở ra năm mới của bạn.(《大学生杂志》：您迈入新年之门) ③Lux mới Cho làn da mềm như lụa... mịn như nhung （力士沐浴露：让肌肤如丝绒般柔滑细腻） ④ Sữa tắm ZONE：Mỹ viện trong phòng tắm（ZONE 沐浴露：浴室里的美容院）例①运用联想把养颜霜的使用效果比喻成柔滑的婴儿肌肤，婴儿娇嫩、柔滑的肌肤是每个爱美女性都梦寐以求的，该比喻从视觉和触觉的联想中给人以温润柔美的美好印象，在心理上对所宣传商品产生好感，令想要拥有婴儿般肌肤的女士蠢蠢欲动，从而情不自禁地想要购买。例②为《大学生杂志》的征订广告，广告语是一个简短的句子，将该杂志喻成“Cánh cửa mở ra năm mới”，简洁明了，使杂志形象化具体化，引人充分发挥想象力，暗示该杂志拥有丰富的内容和广阔的视野，可以满足广大读者强烈的求知欲，给读者留下美好的印象。例③将皮肤的柔滑程度比喻成如丝般柔和，如绒般润滑，巧用比喻不仅增加了语言的美感，使语言富于诗意，更使力士沐浴露的使用效果具体化，让产品使用效果更具详实性，受众在了解所宣传产品，熟悉品牌的同时，也对产品产生美好的心理联想。爱美之心人皆有之，女士们为了美容美肤的需要，会定期上美容院做护理。例④将沐浴露比喻成浴室中的美容院，突出产品的使用效果，唤起人们追求美丽的意识，从而寄希望于通过所宣传产品获取美丽，享受生活。 9 第二节夸张（phóng đại&thu nhỏ）夸张就是人们为了表达的需要，对客观的人、事或物的特点故意做出必要的、合理的夸大描述，以强调描述对象特点。越语修辞中的夸张分为phóng đại和thu nhỏ,相当于汉语中的扩大夸张和缩小夸张，其中phóng đại又称khoa trương，thậm xưng, ngoa ngữ, cường điệu，二者都是说话者为了获得听者注意或给人留下深刻记忆而故意对所描述事物夸大其词。广告为了突出产品效果，常常运用夸张手法。越南报刊广告语中惯用夸张，能够深刻突出产品特征，揭示产品品质，从而感染受众，引起人们丰富的联想，给人以深刻的印象。 ① FIDI TOURIST：Thế giới trong tầm tay của bạn（FIDI旅游：世界就在您手中） ②Tủ lạnh side by side GR-C217 BTG LG：Tươi mát đến không ngờ（LG GR-C217 BTG电冰箱：意想不到的冰爽） ③ Kem dưỡng da EVERSOFT White：Giữ mãi nét xuân cho làn da （EVERSOFT White养颜霜：让肌肤青春永驻）世界之大我之渺小，如何能将整个世界握于手中？例①“Thế giới trong tầm tay của bạn”似乎不可能，故此为夸张之说法，突出旅游公司可带游客周游世界的服务性质，吸引游客注意。例②的冰箱广告，“Tươi mát đến không ngờ”，冰箱再好其给人的冰爽程度无外乎都差不多，还能给人怎样“意想不到”的冰爽感觉？广告主用夸张手法故意强调冰箱的制冷效果，巧妙迎合了消费者追求刺激惊喜的心理，让人印象深刻。例③为EVERSOFT美白霜，主要立意为突出产品的美容护肤效果，爱美是女人的天性，但时光易逝容颜易老，谁都想留住青春，EVERSOFT广告语“Giữ mãi nét xuân cho làn da”暗示产品能够实现广大爱美女士永葆青春的梦想，即刻间引起人们购买的冲动。岁月的流逝带来的容颜消退虽然使人难以释怀，但是，任何人都无法违背自然规律，再娇嫩的肌肤也会慢慢衰老，再好的护肤品、再好的保养都阻挡不了皱纹最终爬上一个人的眼角，这则广告语明显运用了夸张的手法。越南报刊广告语使用夸张手法，表达出超出客观事实的立意，但这种立意通常源于客观事实，夸张的内容通常和产品紧密相连，并不追求言过其实，是一种艺术的想象和语言艺术的夸张，使广告意味隽永，奇趣丛生，使得受众从中获得艺术的享受，并在心中产生共鸣。 10 第三节拟人（nhân hóa） Nhân hóa相当于汉语的“拟人”，又称“nhân cách hóa”, 是一种把通常用于描写人的词语用于描写事物，把无生命的事物描写成有生命的人类，赋予被描写事物以人的特性、思想和活动，使得被描写事物给人亲切感，说话者在言语中运用拟人修辞，能够更好地表达自己的思想感情或态度。在广告语中妙用拟人（nhân hóa）可使广告语富于生命气息，可鲜明地突出广告形象，给人亲切感。例如： ① SINGER TV：Người bạn của mọi gia đình（SINGER TV：每家每户的朋友） ② Nước khoáng Five star：Bạn đồng hành sức khoẻ của mọi gia đình（Five star 矿泉水：健康之友） ③SAMSUNG：Cùng SAMSUNG tạo dựng một sự nghiệp vững chắc（三星办公产品：与三星共铸坚固的事业） ④ Mentholatum Water Lip 系列唇膏:Môi ơi, uống nước nhé!( 曼秀雷敦 Water Lip 系列唇膏:嘴唇，喝水吧！) ⑤ Kem đánh răng COLGATE：Chăm sóc nụ cười của bạn và trẻ em Việt Nam （COLGATE牙膏：呵护您和越南孩子的笑靥） ⑥Miếng lót Huggies: Chăm sóc toàn diện da be sơ sinh（Huggies纸尿布：全面呵护婴儿肌肤） ⑦BEAUBELLE :HÃY ĐỂ BEAUBELLE CHĂM SÓC LÀN DA MỆT MỎI CỦA BẠN.( BEAUBELLE美容：请让BEAUBELL呵护您疲劳的肌肤) 例①广告产品为电视机，例②为某矿泉水，①②两例有个共同点即均将宣传产品拟人化，当成朋友看待，十分热情、真挚，给人以亲近感，让人沉浸于受朋友照顾的温馨美妙意境中，瞬间拉近了与受众的距离。例③也将广告产品拟人化，事业是人们通过双手不断努力创造出来的，广告赋予了所宣传产品人一样的创造事业的能力，含蓄的表达了产品强大的能力，给人增添信心和力量。例④将嘴唇比拟成会说话和会喝水的人，人喝水，嘴唇也喝水，喝的是曼秀雷敦唇膏这种商品。这则广告把嘴唇比拟成了人，亲切可爱，生动有趣，突出商品补水的效果。对某一事物或人的照顾，通常是由动物或人来实现，例 ⑤⑥⑦将无生命的广告产品比拟成会照顾人的有生命的事物，使产品的使用效果形象化，让人对产品展开丰富的联想，产品活灵活现的形象便在人们脑海中显现。越南报刊中运用拟人手法创作广告语，效果十分鲜明。拟人一方面可使冰冷僵硬无感情的广告产品变成有生命的天真可爱、生动活泼的形象，使语言生动形 11 象，幽默风趣，创造出一种轻松和谐的气氛，可引起人们丰富的联想，引人入胜，使受众对产品产生好感并获得感情的共鸣，从而意欲更进一步了解产品。第四节排比和对偶（sóng đôi）越语中的sóng đôi相当于汉语中的排比和对偶，汉语中的排比即用三个或三个以上结构相同或相似，内容相关，语气一致的词语、句子或段落排列起来表达一个相关内容，以增强语势、加强语义、加深情感的修辞格。 ①对偶就是成双配对的语句。 ②越语中的sóng đôi是用两个或两个以上结构相同或相似、内容相关的词语、句子或段落排列起来的句子。 ③此修辞法在越南诗歌中得以普遍运用。鉴于此，我们在此文中将越语的sóng đôi修辞当做相当于汉语修辞当中的“排比” 和“对偶”。通过搜集的语料我们发现越南报刊广告语中使用排比修辞手法比较普遍，广告语中运用排比使句式整齐，语言流畅，一气呵成，可突出广告的节奏感，增强气势，给人留下深刻印象。例如： ①Công ty cổ phần xi măng Bỉm Sơn: Diện mạo mới-sức mạnh mới（Bim Son 水泥股份公司：新面貌，新力量） ②KODAK： Chia sẻ khoảnh khắc đẹp, chia sẻ cuộc sống vui（柯达数码相机：分享美好时刻，分享快乐生活） ③c2life： Thế giới của tôi, sắc cam của tôi.（c2life香橙绿茶：我的世界，我的橙色） ④ Mì ăn liền Nhớ ACECOOK：Có những tình cảm ngày càng đằm thắm，có những hương vị không thể nào quên（ACECOOK牌思念泡面：越来越深厚的情感，无法忘怀的香味） ⑤ MORPHOSIS HALR SPA： Bạn đang bị rụng tóc? Bạn đang khó chịu vì gàu? Bạn đang thấy bực bội vì da đầu bị dầu, nhờn? Tóc bạn mảnh, dễ gãy, cần độ phồng? Hay chỉ đơn giản là tóc bạn bị khô và hư? Hãy cho chúng tôi biết...!!!（MORPHOSIS HALR SPA：您正为掉发而苦恼？ ① 卜玉平编著：《现代汉语》，南京大学出版社, 2009，第180 页。 ②冯兴炜编著：《对偶知识》，旅游教育出版社, 1990, 第1 页。 ③ Đinh Trọng Lạc：99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt. NXB Giáo Dục.1999.p184. 12 您正因头屑而难受？您正为头皮油滑而郁闷？您的头发单薄易断，需要增加饱满度？或者您的头发仅仅是干燥受损？请告诉我们！）例①②③④有个共同点就是各条广告语中句子结构相同，均为两个短句，整齐简洁，力量集中，音韵对称，文采飞扬，念起来铿锵有力，同时给人以视觉和听觉的美感，加深受众对产品的印象，激起受众对产品的强烈兴趣。例⑤为排比设问句，语气连贯，一气呵成，增强语势的同时突出产品广告主题的中心，使产品功能跃然眼前。可见排比和对偶在广告语中的效果是显而易见的。它能够充分表达广告产品的主题，表达强烈奔放的情感，有力地渲染产品的形象，句式整齐匀称，同时在视觉和听觉方面激起受众的美感意识。第五节问句问句分为一般疑问句、特殊疑问句、选择疑问句、反意疑问句，越南报刊广告语中使用问句的语篇比比皆是。问句的使用，可以在很大程度上引起受众的兴趣，激起受众的好奇心和参与热情，引发受众的深入思考，同时也是一种委婉的表达，带有社交式的礼貌和尊重。 ①SUZUKI VIVA： Một mình? Không! Luôn với Viva（SUZUKI VIVA 系列洗车：一个人？不！常和Viva 一起。） ②Viện ngôn ngữ quốc tế Việt Nam： Bạn năng động và bản lĩnh? Hãy đến với chúng tôi（越南国际语言研究院：您既活跃又能干？请加入我们！） ③ Nha khoa MINH KHAI：Mọi người đều nói tôi đẹp hẳn lên… Nhưng chỉ có nha sĩ của tôi mới biết tại sao?（MINH KHAI 牙科：大家都说我变漂亮了....但只有我的牙医才知道为什么？） ④Sữa Cô gái Hà Lan：Bạn có biết? Chất lượng tuyệt hảo nay nằm gọn trong túi tiền（荷兰女孩牛奶：您知道吗?绝好质量就在钱袋里。） ⑤ Sữa YOMOST：Ai bảo tình yêu là khó nói? Hãy để bong bóng thay bạn nói lời yêu, tại sao không?（YOMOST 牛奶：谁说爱情难以言表？就让泡泡代您表爱意，为何不?）例①以设问开头，而后回答，这里的设问看似轻松随便，但并非信口开河，设问开头设置悬念，先引起读者兴趣，接着的回答是读者意料之外的，从而引出广告产品，偏偏这种意料之外的语言又能扣人心弦，给人留下十分深刻的印象。 13 例②是越南国际语言研究院的招聘广告，也是以设问开头，将读者引入深思，这是一种心理上的诱导，在读者思考之后觉得自己确实具备问句里所问的条件时，便得到下一句话的鼓励：请加入我们！这样的语篇在让读者肯定自己的同时又表达了一种伯乐爱才的心怀，也是对读者自身判断的一种肯定和信任，深深抓住了读者的心理，获得读者深深的共鸣，同时也轻易得到读者的认可。例③先是陈述一个事实，但同时也是引人入胜的：“大家都说我变漂亮了”， “我”的变化是受公众认可的，那么是什么原因使得我变漂亮了呢？设置悬念后下一句引出另外一个人：牙医。虽是问句，但已含蓄地给出答案。例④同样是有问有答的问句，营造了一个对话环境，刺激受众采取购买行动。例⑤是一个反意疑问句，答案暗含在广告语言中，增强受众的语篇的注意力，起到加强语气的作用，而且不容置疑，有力鼓动受众毫不犹豫购买产品。吴礼权在对疑问句从心理学的角度进行分析时说：设问的修辞文本模式在语言形式上的提示(听觉上有提问重音)易于引发接受者的不随意注意。 ①越南报刊广告语言中问句的使用不胜枚举，广告语言根据消费者的需要和产品的性能来进行设问或反问，可以充分调动受众的思维活动，同时疑问句也可使广告越语读起来简明扼要，听起来轻松愉快，引人注意，更易于人们认同和接受。这种广告手法之所以有效，正是利用了人们好奇心强，爱刨根问底的心理，紧紧抓住人们的视线。 ① 王希杰：《修辞学通论》，南京大学出版社,1996 年1 月第一版，第458 页。 14 第三章越南报刊广告语中的修辞美修辞格与一个民族语言的风格息息相关，长期以来越南民族的传统文化铸就了越南民族语言风格独特的艺术美，越南民族以其对世界的认知和独特的思维表达方式折射出该民族的审美观点和审美追求，在日常交际中以情感为基础，在遣词造句上讲究韵律协调，灵活多变，这是越南民族表达思想、展现本民族语言文化的一种独特方式。爱美之心人皆有之，越南广告语篇中充满各种修辞，广告语言精美亮丽，其因修辞所传递的音韵美、语句上的形式美、表意上的含蓄美尽现本民族文化内涵和审美意境，给平凡枯燥的语言增添活力，给受众带来意蕴隽永、耐人寻味的美学享受。第一节音韵修辞之美越南语是一种典型的孤立语，在语音方面一共有6 个声调，分别为平声、锐声、玄声、问声、跌声和重声，词汇以单音节为基本形式，句子音节界限分明，是一种乐感十足、韵律十分丰富、婉转柔美的语言。在广告语言中使用适当的音韵修辞，使得广告语富有感染力和表现力，读来节奏和谐，抑扬顿挫，听觉上优美动听，珠圆玉润，并且形成一定的视觉冲击，总体而言可使广告语充满韵律美和语感美，韵味无穷。可以使广告语言凸现音韵和谐美的主要有押韵辞格。押韵(gieo vần) 是指多个语句在词首或词尾使用同一音韵的语音修辞手段，主要有头韵和尾韵。《韦氏新大学词典》把头韵定义为两个或两个以上邻近的词或音节中首辅音的重复。尾韵,又称辅韵,是对韵文尾词中最后音节重复的修辞手段。越南语中，与“头韵”“尾韵” 相对应的词语分别为―vần xuôi‖,―vần ngược‖, 词语在句子中的押韵又分为脚韵（vần chân）、腰韵(vần lưng)等,越南语中的押韵在诗歌当中使用最为普遍，然而我们发现，越南杂志广告中也常常使用押韵修辞。押韵作为一种语音修辞格，使广告语视觉上看起来醒目，还给人优美、高雅的听觉感受，在赋予语言音韵美和节奏美的同时，语篇的气氛和情感也得到渲染。例如： ① Vfresh Nha Đam mới, Vừa uống vừa nhai. Vẻ ngoài rạng rỡ.( Vfresh 饮料：新Vfresh 芦荟饮料，边喝边嚼，光彩照人) 15 ② Iphone 4S ：Máy chính hãng, mạng hàng đầu（Iphone 4S:原装正品，极速网络） ③ Tổng công ty Sông Hồng-Công ty thép Sông Hồng：Thép Sông Hồng Sức mạnh Lạc Hồng（红河钢铁公司：红河钢铁，貉鸿力量） ④ Sữa rửa mặt Hazeline :Ngừa mụn hiệu quả, trắng mịn làn da.（夏士莲洗面奶: 有效防痘，白滑肌肤） ⑤Thời trang đúng kiểu. Vui chơi đúng điệu. Chinh phục mục tiêu. Đi xe sành điệu.（某摩托车：入时装束，适当娱乐。征服目标，驾时尚车） ⑥ Hiruscar ：Sẹo mờ. Da mịn. Lấy lại tự tin.（喜辽复修护凝胶：淡化疤痕。肌肤细腻。重获自信。） ⑦ Lăn khử mùi NIVEA Trắng mịn ：7 ngày Trắng ngay, diện áo không Tay.（妮维雅润白走珠：7 天立白，秀出无袖衣）以上7 则广告中，例①是则饮料广告，此广告中三句话整齐排列，每句首 Vfresh，Vừa，Vẻ 押“V”头韵并且大写，首先给人视觉上的强烈冲击，读起来也韵味十足。例② Iphone 4S 的广告也同样押头韵，先强调产品质量，再突出产品性能，简洁明快，使人经久难忘。例③使用同音词押韵，传递了音韵美，读来朗朗上口。例④两句尾“quả”“da”押尾韵，音乐感染力强，读之带劲，听之有味，向消费者暗示夏士莲洗面奶的神奇效果。例⑤四字成句，共有四句，以诗歌的形式，kiểu，điệu，tiêu，điệu 四词押尾韵，抑扬顿挫，朗朗上口，易读易记，百读不厌，给人以音乐般的美妙感觉。例⑥同为押尾韵，错落有致，读来也十分顺口。例⑦为妮维雅走珠液广告，“ngay”“Tay”二词于句末押尾韵，且使用平声，铿锵有力，向消费者传递产品的极佳使用效果。越南广告语中适当使用押韵修辞格，不仅使广告节奏分明，加强广告语言的音乐性，还使广告富有声、韵、调的无穷韵味，抑扬顿挫，充满韵律美，此外，因杂志广告为平面广告的缘故，押韵的使用还能让广告语言对受众的视觉形成一定的冲击，从而激发受众的好奇心，在不知不觉中激起受众的购买欲望。因此总的来说，我们认为，在越南杂志广告中使用押韵修辞，使广告语兼具视觉美和听觉美，增强广告感染力，大幅提高广告语言的传播价值、审美价值和欣赏价值。 16 第二节语句之形式美广告语的创作通常追求尽可能用有限的篇幅表达尽可能多的信息，不仅要简短、明了，还要听起来生动形象，且具有穿透力和立体感。规整的字句容易形成语句的形式美，重复、对偶句，都可以凸显广告语语句的形式美。一、重复重复(又称反复) , 越南语中称为―Điệp ngữ‖,包括关键词的重复和相同句子结构的重复。重复这一修辞策略在越南广告中运用频率较高，在广告语中使用重复修辞，使语言整齐有气势，能在不同程度上突出广告产品信息，强化语义，抒发强烈感情，给受众重复刺激，加深印象。例如： ① Công ty TNHN nệm Ưu Việt ：Nệm Ư u Việt, chất lượng ưu việt（优越床垫有限公司：优越床垫，优越质量） ②AFC：Thích ngon.Thích khỏe. Thích AFC.(AFC 饼干：爱美味，爱健康，爱 AFC。) ③ Trà xanh C2：Chỉ một tình yêu chỉ một C2(C2 绿茶饮料：唯一的爱情唯一的C2) ④ Cty bất động sản Kim Oanh：Sản phẩm thật-giá trị thật (金樱房地产公司：货真价实) ⑤ Mobifone ：Mọi lúc, mọi nơi（Mobifone：无时无刻，无处不在） ⑥ Sữa Nestle ：Khởi đầu khỏe, sống vui khỏe（雀巢奶粉：健康开头，健康生活） ⑦ c2life :Thế giới của tôi, sắc cam của tôi. （c2life 香橙绿茶:我的世界，我的橙色。）重复分两种形式，分别为词汇重复和句式重复。词汇重复如例①优越牌床垫的广告词Nệm Ư u Việt, chất lượng ưu việt（优越床垫，优越品质），此句重复使用“ưu việt”一词，突出产品品牌的同时也突出产品品质，起强调、渲染作用，巧妙地向受众渗透广告内容。句式的重复，即通常所说的排比。同一句子结构的重复出现不仅能形成有规则的节奏和干净整齐的卷面形式，而且能起到强调语义的作用。起到一种看起来醒目，听起来悦耳的效果。如例②，8 个词语构成三个短句，简洁而不简单，句式整齐排比，读来朗朗上口；如例⑦，共两个短句，每句以“của tôi”为中心语，属句式的重复，使语篇衔接如行云流水，增强了感情色彩。又如例①③④⑤⑥， 17 例子较多，在此不一一赘述。二、对偶对偶，是语言活动中表达者有意以字数相等、句法相同或相似的两个语言单位成双作对地排列在一起，通过齐整和谐的视听觉美感形式实现表情达意的最佳效果的修辞文本模式。 ①在越南，对偶是经陈朝时期语文学家和诗人阮诠（Nguyễn Thuyên）从唐诗中引进后开始时盛行起来，作为一种句法修辞，除了在诗歌中使用，对偶这一修辞在越语的歌谣、俗语也得以普遍使用，其作用在于使得语言情感表达更为突出、易读易记，使文字对称和谐，音律和谐悦耳，同时也体现语言的外观美。我们发现，为了使广告语言的表达体现对称庄重的美感，越南报刊广告语中也出现较多的对偶文案。例如： ① Upsa-C ：Tăng đề kháng, giảm mệt mỏi( Upsa 维C：增强抵抗力，减少疲劳) ② Mạng điện thoại di động MOBIPHONE：Chân trời mới, tầm cao mới （MOBIPHONE 移动通信网络：新天地，新高度） ③NHÂN ÁI ：Luôn luôn quan tâm, luôn luôn chăm sóc（仁爱服务有限公司：关心常在，照顾常在） ④ VIETTEL ：Vui đón Tân Xuân Tri ân khách hàng(VIETTEL 移动通信：喜迎新春，感恩客户) ⑤ Holiday Club：Cảm nhận sự khác biệt, tô điểm phong cách sống(Holiday Club：感受与众不同，装扮生活格调) ⑥ Công ty cổ phần chứng khoán Việt ：Thấu hiểu thị trưởng vốn, sáng tạo vì khách hàng（证券股份公司：深谙资本市场，创新服务客户）例①中运用工整形式，一增（tăng）一减（giảm）的对比，突出了所宣传产品的使用效果。例②例③结构整齐，语言优美，使受众在视觉上得到满足的同时，读来也朗朗上口，和谐动听。例④ 为VIETTEL 公司迎接新春的广告，词语排列工整，语调和谐悦耳，传递了一种音乐上的喜悦美感。例⑤字斟句酌，对仗工整，韵味十足，令人赏心悦目，进而使人对Holiday Club 这个地方充满无限向往与遐想，从而对广告偏爱有加。例⑥是一则证券公司的广告，广告语言形式整齐，先是自信地向受众展示自己的能力，接着表明自己的经营理念即“sáng tạo vì khách hàng（创新服务客户）”，一方面从视觉上给人对称的美感，一方面从心理拉近了与受众的距离，较易激起受众购买消费的欲望心理。由此可见，越南广告语中使用对偶的句式修辞方法，可以使广告语言具备 ①吴礼权：《现代汉语修辞学》，复旦大学出版社, 2006 年，第105 页。 18 无可挑剔的外观美和语音上的语感美，使广告语言易读易记，较易吸引受众的目光。语言的对称和谐，给人一种和谐庄重之美感，广告创作者在广告语言中使用对偶修辞，从一定程度上可以体现其审美情怀和文化素养。祁广谋在《越语文化语言学》一书中提到，“越南人讲究中和及讲究均衡对称的文化心理无论内容和形式，在越语中都有丰富的体现”，作为一种特殊的语言形式，使用对偶修辞方法的越南广告语更能体现越南民族在儒家文化影响下追求和谐统一、成双成对的民族心理以及中和美、对称美、平衡美的审美意境。第三节表意之含蓄美广告语言是一种浓缩的说服性艺术，传递的是劝导性信息，在传递商品真实可靠的信息同时也致力于劝导消费者认同其价值取向。直接传递所宣传产品的性能，一定程度上达到直截了当、易于明白的效果，未为不可，但通常此类广告词的说服力较低，情感上又不能足够打动人。采用迂回曲折的方式委婉地传递广告信息，可达到意想不到的效果。我们看到，越南广告语中多有委婉含蓄的句子，通过富有情感表现力的语言达到曲辞达意的效果，通过语言或优美、或感人、或引发美好联想达到广告宣传目的。本文认为，越南广告语中这种含蓄的表意通常寄托于借代、隐喻、双关、讳饰、模糊等修辞手法中。例如： ①Bioré: Cám ơn những người phụ nữ đã đêm thêm hương, tô sắc cho cuộc đời. （碧柔沐浴露：感谢女人们为生活增添香气和色彩） ②TOUXIRUP：mẹ ơi, con hết ho rồi!(TOUXIRUP牌少儿止咳药：妈妈，我不咳嗽了！) ③Bột ngọt VEDAN: nêm đậm đà, thêm gắn bó(味丹味精：春卷浓香，更加亲密) ④ Công ty TNHN nệm Ưu Việt: nệm Ư u Việt, chất lượng ưu việt（优越床垫有限公司：优越床垫，优越质量） ⑤ Sữa dưỡng thể NIVEA: áo ngủ quyến rũ, tặng người yêu thương!（妮维雅润体露：魅惑睡衣，送给爱人！） ⑥ Fressi Care： Cảm giác tươi mát luôn theo bạn.（Fressi Care湿巾：清爽感觉时刻伴随您！） ⑦ Kem dưỡng trắng da cao cấp HALO: Sụ kỳ diệu của Halo thì bạn yên tâm, chuyện đó không thành vấn đề!!!(Ngăn ngừa mụn, nám và tái tạo da) （HALO高级美白润肤霜：对于HALO的神奇效果，您放心，那事儿不成问题！！！（预防痘痘、晒斑，促进肌肤再生） 19 例①不直接表达所宣传产品的效果，而是借妇女来含蓄地说明该产品给生活带来了芬芳和美丽，言辞优美，充满诗意，“Cám ơn”一词动之以情，晓之以理。例②也借小孩的口吻，一方面委婉地向受众传达所宣传产品使用效果快速明显的特征，一方面又表达孩子感冒咳嗽痊愈后的愉快心情以及母亲对孩子的关爱之情，母子之间温馨画面跃然眼前。例③味丹系列调料的广告，借越南特色菜肴——春卷之美味间接表达所宣传产品对烹调美味菜肴所起的不可或缺之作用，又加后半句“thêm gắn bó”，较好地迎合了越南民众注重人际关系和情感交流的社会心理。例④ 为Ưu Việt牌床垫广告，“Ưu Việt”既是品牌名，又有“优越”的含义，一语双关，语言表达既不浮夸也不失真，成功地传达了“Ưu Việt”产品优越品质的广告目的。例⑤将妮维雅润体露隐喻为一件魅惑的睡衣，使得广告描述更为贴切、生动形象，易于让受众接受。语言婉转贴切，充满温情，突显广告文本的含蓄美。读者在看完这则广告后会在大脑中产生无限想象，深入理解语言所传达的意境，从而从心理上接受并喜欢所宣传产品。例⑥为Fressi Care 湿巾的广告，“清爽感觉常伴您”，是什么给人以清爽之感？正是Fressi Care 湿巾，用后让您感觉清凉爽快，提神醒脑，选对湿巾清凉一夏！简单的一句广告词，使消费者从所宣传商品中得出积极的推论，延伸了广告词的内涵。例⑦为HALO面霜的广告，Sụ kỳ diệu của Halo thì bạn yên tâm, chuyện đó không thành vấn đề!!!(Ngăn ngừa mụn, nám và tái tạo da)“（HALO高级美白润肤霜：对于HALO的神奇效果，您放心，那事儿不成问题！！！（预防痘痘、晒斑，促进肌肤再生）”对于女性来说，面部肌肤所产生的种种问题通常极为令人烦恼，此广告语巧妙使用“chuyện đó”（那事儿）一词，把令人不愉快的事通过这个简单的词语巧妙地表达，找一个的讳饰手法使语言耐人寻味，增强了受众对产品的期望值。以上广告都不直截了当地表达广告语言的实际意图，而是采取迂回委婉的方式含蓄温和地传递信息，增加了广告内涵，耐人寻味，引人思考，同时增强广告语的说服力，提升产品的吸引力和竞争力，给受众留下深刻印象，从而刺激受众的消费欲望。越南言辞富有情感表现力，这是越南重情重义文化的必然产物。 ①一个民族的广告语言也同时反映这个民族的文化，与西方广告文化多个性张扬、凸显自我的气质和直率的性格相比，受儒家文化影响、处在稻作文化圈中的越南民族更为注重集体利益，倾向集体价值，人们觉得跟着集体才是有力量的，安全的， ① Trần Ngọc Thêm, Cơ sở văn hóa Việt Nam, p163,‖Đặc điểm thứ hai của ngôn từ Việt Nam là nó rất GIÀU CHẤT BIỂU CẢM—sản phẩm tất yếu của một nền văn hóa trọng tình.‖ 20 一旦过于出众或张扬，则会带来种种不顺，例如有句歌谣说―Cây cao thì gió càng lay‖ , 与汉语“树大招风”有异曲同工之妙。基于这样的文化背景，越南民族表现出的是谦虚含蓄的言语特质。通过对以上广告语的分析，我们看到，越南语修辞不仅仅是一种语言现象，而是越南独特的审美文化赋予越南语言独特的灵魂与韵味，是越南民族的文化传承，越南广告语言的含蓄表达体现出了越南民族含蓄的文化心理和语言艺术含蓄美。 21 第四章修辞视角下越南报刊广告语的特点广告为了传递信息，引导人们购买商品，在语言运用当中必然追求语言的精妙。精妙的语言造就一则好的广告，而语言的精妙往往来自恰如其分的修辞。各种修辞广告语言具有更强的表现力，能唤起受众的审美享受。越南经济的发展给人们带来更多的经济意识，在市场营销方面也逐渐注重商品广而告之的形式和修辞。我们认为，从修辞学视角来看越南报刊广告语，常见的特点有：真实性、简明性、创新性、语义表达上的含蓄性和通俗性。第一节真实性广告语言的最终目的是通过宣传、介绍商品，从而出售商品，广告语言贵在真实。一则表达真实信息的广告能让人充分感受到商家的诚意，通常都充满人情味，从而打动受众，吸引受众购买产品，此为有人情味的真实性。越南广告中十分注重通过广告语言表达产品的真实性，越南南部社科院研究员陈氏玉琅（Trần Thị Ngọc Lang）博士在其文章《各时期越文报纸的广告语言》（Ngôn ngữ quảng c áo trên báo chí Việt ngữ qua các thời kỳ）中提到，“Ngôn ngữ quảng cáo nên trung thực về các đặc trưng của sản phẩm, tính năng sản phẩm và giá cả, như David Ogilvy đã nói: Hãy nói sự thật, nhưng phải nói sao cho hấp dẫn. (广告语言应符合于产品特点、产品性能和产品价格，就如David Ogilvy 所说：请讲事实，但要描述得有吸引力。)” ①我们看到，很多好的广告，都很好地通过修辞来联通广告语言“真实” 与“情感”，大大提高了广告语言的情感表达效果。例如： ①Tã giấy người lớn Caryn-yêu thương cuộc sống Vì khoảnh khắc ngọt ngào của bố mẹ Với Caryn, cuộc sống luôn tràn đầy yêu thương（Caryn 牌老人尿不湿：为了父母甜蜜的时刻，拥有Caryn，生活常常充满爱） ② Cty bất động sản Kim Oanh： Sản phẩm thật-giá trị thật（金樱房地产公司：货真价实） ③Vang Đà Lạt Khơi nguồn vang Việt Nhật Bản có Sake. Trung Quốc có Mao Đài. ① Nguyên Kiên Thường chủ biên：Qủang cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo, nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội Việt Nam, p224. 22 Việt Nam- vinh danh Vang Đà Lạt. 21 vị nguyên thủ quốc gia, các nhà lãnh đạo thế giới như Hoa Kỳ, LB Nga, Trung Quốc, Australia, Nhật Bản...đã sử dụng vang Đà Lạt trong hội nghị APEC 14 tại Việt Nam. （大叻红酒：越南红酒的起源日本有清酒中国有茅台越南拥有荣誉品牌大叻红酒越南亚太经合组织第14 届领导人会议上美利坚共和国、俄罗斯联邦、中国、澳大利亚、日本等世界21 个国家首脑饮用酒） ④BEAUBELLE Da bạn có dấu hiệu mệt mỏi? Chảy sệ, sưng phồng, sạm thiếu nước? Bạn cảm thấy lo lắng? HÃY ĐỂ BEAUBELLE CHĂM SÓC LÀN DA MỆT MỎI CỦA BẠN. （波贝尔护肤品：您的肌肤出现疲惫迹象？松弛下垂，干燥缺水？您感到担心？请让波贝尔来呵护您疲劳的肌肤。）例①的产品为成人尿不湿。众所周知，越南受儒家思想的影响很深，家庭中也十分讲究孝道，家有老人，儿辈要对父母的养育感恩戴德，“ở nhà cho tròn đạo hiếu”(在家恪守孝道)，自然要想法设法为父母创造生活便利，一句“Với Caryn, cuộc sống luôn tràn đầy yêu thương”，虽然使用的是极其普通的语言，其广告语言从一个小生活用品上升到亲情的高度，展现越南人民生活、家庭中天伦之爱，体现了浓浓温情，引起受众共鸣。例②中，使用重复的语句修辞形式，重复使用“thật”一词，在说明本公司的商品货真价实的同时，也起到极佳的强调作用，迎合了受众对产品“真实”的诉求，体现了商家的真诚，以及商家产品品质出众，值得信赖的事实，从而达到销售目的。例③中的Vang Đà Lạt 是越南唯一的国产红酒品牌，该条广告运用越南语言中常用的比较修辞法，分别列举日本、中国两国国酒之后强调，大叻红酒即越南国酒，并且陈述大叻红酒曾被用作第14 届APEC 会议专用酒，被世界上21 个国家元首所品尝。该广告表达出大叻红酒在越南相当于Sake 清酒在日本、茅台酒在中国一样的地位，并且以第14 届APEC 会议为事实依据，突出真实的同时，又激起民众的民族自豪感，这样的产品，自然令人喜欢并受大众所推崇。例④先以设问的语境开头，提出问题，先诱发公众的兴趣，展现人文关怀，最后一句“HÃY ĐỂ BEAUBELLE CHĂM SÓC LÀN DA MỆT MỎI CỦA BẠN” 通过仿拟（nhân hoá）的修辞格，给出答案，表明了广告要传递的真实信息，让受众在为各种皮肤问题而苦恼的时候找到良方，凸显真情实意。 23 第二节简明性受众对于广告的接受是一种被动的行为，又由于篇幅的限制，报刊广告如若想在有限的空间里故弄玄虚或连篇累牍地介绍，一般会考验读者的耐心，令读者不胜其烦，因此想要通过此法获得受众好感的效果甚微。聪明的广告主深知简明胜过复杂，为了广告取得良好效果，通常采取言简意赅策略。简明的语言不仅字句简洁，其所要表达的意思也清晰明了，简明的广告语言不仅能充分展示商品的特点，也能迅速抓住受众的眼球，吸引受众注意力，给受众留下深刻印象。我们了解到，大多数越南报刊、杂志广告语言都运用了各种修辞手段以达到语言的简洁明了，目的是获取出众的宣传效果。例如： ① Sữa Nestle ：Khởi đầu khỏe, sống vui khỏe（雀巢奶粉：健康开头，健康生活） ② AFC：Thích ngon.Thích khỏe. Thích AFC.(AFC 饼干：爱美味，爱健康，爱AFC。) ③ Giấy trẻ em NuNa：Niềm tin của bé, hạnh phúc của mẹ（NuNa 儿童专用纸巾：孩子的信心，妈妈的幸福） ④Mobifone: mọi lúc, mọi nơi（Mobifone：无时无刻，无处不在） ⑤VietinBank: Nâng giá trị cuộc sống（VietinBank:提高生活品质）例①使用句尾押韵，读来朗朗上口，例②、例④使用排比句，例③也是句尾押韵，句式相同，语言内容集中表达了母亲对孩子的爱，例⑤从公众普遍追求美好生活、期待更上一层楼的愿望出发，提出本企业致力于满足公众“提高生活品质”的美好愿望，迎合的公众诉求，也一定程度上体现企业的人文关怀。以上5 例句式简单、易懂、易记、易识，读来朗朗上口，宣传效果不言而喻。第三节创新性创新是发展的灵魂，是事物不断发展的不竭动力。在经济全球化和一体化趋势不断加强、越南经济社会不断发展的背景下，异军突起的越南广告业也在不断发展，不断创新。独特新颖的广告词往往能惹人注目，出奇制胜，脱颖而出。在本文所搜集到的广告语言语料中，不乏独特的广告语言，纵观这些广告语，正是修辞的运用赋予了广告语言极强的创新性。例如： ①Collagen Uchucc：Nguồn sống thanh xuân（Collagen Uchucc 牌面霜：青春之源） 24 ②Công ty cổ phần Cơ điện Trần Phú: Hiệu quả của tư duy mới （陈富机电股份公司：新思维之效果） ③SALONSIP（SALONPAS 公司产品）: Tiếp bước thành công （撒隆适止痛贴：走向成功） Đau cơ, đau lưng, viêm khớp Bầm tím, bong gân Dán ngay SALONSIP （肌肉疼痛，腰部疼痛，关节炎淤青，抽筋马上就贴撒隆适）例①中，一般此类的广告通常强调产品具体的功效，如美白、保湿、抗衰老等，而这则广告突破了传统的护肤品的广告语言表达方式，将广告产品喻为“青春之源”，这对于任何爱美、追求年轻的女士来说，无疑有极大吸引力，其诱导作用可想而知。例②为一机电公司的广告，用到tư duy mới （新思维）一词，表明该公司注重创新，与时俱进，不断开发新思维，利用新思维创造新产品。这则广告会对受众起到这样的诱导作用：一个以不断创新为理念的公司，定能不断更新技术，使用高新科技，创造高端产品，为消费者所欢迎。我们在越南报刊杂志上所见的医药保健类产品通常是长篇大论地介绍某种产品的成分、功效、使用方法，而我们现在所看到的例③撒隆适药贴广告，则是突破了常规的思维，仅一句“Tiếp bước thành công”，或许会让人匪夷所思，不知所云，但看了下文的广告语，便使人即刻明白：这是减轻身体各种疼痛的药贴！善于思考、但凡拥有一定联想力的人便会联想到：身体是革命的本钱，无论做任何事，没有健康的身体，哪怕是身上的一处小疼痛，也会影响工作的进度，更谈何走向成功！因此，在事业走向成功的道路上，此药贴虽说不能保驾护航，但一定会给你很大帮助！创新通常建立在真实和简明的基础上，越南报刊广告语较好把握了此原则，新颖别致，给人一种出乎意料而又在情理之中的感觉，犹如黑夜里的一点星光，让人眼前一亮。第四节语义上的含蓄性与通俗性广告语是一种传递说服信息的语言，具有一定的劝说性。不同的产品有不同的消费人群，由于各个消费人群的学识和所处环境不同，广告语言也根据受众人群的不同而有针对性地创作，因而在语义上也体现不同的特点。在越南报刊广告 25 语中，普遍呈现含蓄和通俗的特点，含蓄的语言委婉曲折，通俗的语言简单明了、易于理解。一、含蓄性含蓄是东方人的性格特质之一，在东方文化圈中的越南语言文化也多含蓄，体现在广告语中的含蓄是借助广告人本身的知识、修养和情操来对广告进行理解、想象和发挥，给受众创造一种意境,将要表达的真实意图蕴含于广告语中, 曲言巧饰，委婉曲折地向受众介绍广告产品，使受众在潜移默化中轻松地接受广告讯息。 ①Vinaphone, Ring²3000 S202: 8/3-Lời yêu tặng mẹ...（Vinaphone Ring²3000 S202 系列手机：三八妇女节-献给母亲的爱语） ②Sinh Viên:Cánh cửa mở ra năm mới của bạn.( 《大学生杂志》：您迈入新年之门) ③Kotex: tự tin quyết định cuộc sống mới(高洁丝卫生巾：自信决定新生活) ④Sữa dưỡng thể NIVEA: áo ngủ quyến rũ, tặng người yêu thương（妮维雅润体露：魅惑睡衣，送给爱人！） ⑤Ford: Cảm Nhận Sự Khác Biệt （福特汽车：与众不同的感觉）例①试图让消费者通过实际行动回报母爱，借手机表达对母亲的爱，温馨且实在。例②运用比喻，将《大学生》杂志喻为青年走向新的一年的大门，含蓄地告诉读者，新的一年即将到来，《大学生》杂志将给大家呈现新的一年里全新的、更为丰富多彩的世界。例③表面看是一则励志广告语，笔者在此译为“自信决定新生活”，含而不露，实际上广告所要表达的是：广大女性朋友的自信来自于Kotex 的悉心呵护。随着社会的发展，越南女性的地位也逐渐得到提高，逐渐在社会中担任重要角色，若要想拥有更好的生活，要想在社会上立足，要想在属于自己的半边天里绘出美丽的云彩，在有了勤劳和智慧的基础上，自信是她们所要具备的最基本的素质。英语中有这样一句话：one picture is worth ten thousand words(一画抵万言)，这则广告紧紧把握住越南广大女性的心理诉求，可谓“一语抵万言”。例④从表达爱意入手，将妮维雅润体露比喻成一件魅惑的睡衣，用词浪漫，词义温馨，给人无限浪漫联想。例⑤不注重介绍汽车的配置、性能、外观，而是侧重于汽车有别于它的独特感受，这是一种含蓄，更是低调中的高调，耐人寻味。二、通俗性广告产生的首要效果是受众看得懂广告内容，通俗的广告内容就可以方便受 26 众理解和接受，从而达到良好的宣传效果。在很多越南广告文案中，我们常常会碰到一些受群众喜闻乐见的、通俗的广告语句。这些广告明白如话，易读，易懂，通常直接表述产品的特点。例如： ①Nỗi khổ tâm lớn nhất ở tuổi Teen chính là...Mụn! 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Mỗi món quà như một lời tri ân người tiêu dùng đã tin yêu và bình chọn Philips là nhãn hiệu số 1 Việt Nam suốt nhiều năm liên tiếp.（凡是购买飞利浦就有礼物！为了迎接欢乐节日和不停创造的120 周年纪念，飞利浦为广大消费者举办了特别优惠活动。您在购买飞利浦产品时将能立刻带回家一件实用的礼物。多年连续被消费者评选为越南第一品牌，每一份礼物都是对钟爱飞利浦的顾客的感恩寄语！）例①④ 使用的都是受众日常使用的词语和句式，通俗易懂，平铺直叙，直 27 接表明产品的特点，将产品功效介绍得一清二楚。例②用精简的语言，表达直观，一方面表现自己的优势，一方面又概括了本企业的经营理念，随时为顾客着想，令人读来倍感亲切温暖。例③开门见山，直接以产品的物美价廉来吸引顾客，语义明确，通俗易懂。综上所述我们知道，广告作为沟通产品生产和消费的桥梁，以宣传产品、销售产品为最终目的。广告要想达到其最终目的，就要从立意、选词、造句等方面想方设法吸引受众，刺激消费者购买欲望。修辞视角下的越南报刊广告语呈现出真实性、简明性、创新性、含蓄性和通俗性等特点，恰当的修辞能使广告语言的推销能力更上一层楼，在给受众美感的同时，也能让受众记住所宣传产品，从而达到广告的目的。 28 第五章越南当代报刊广告语言修辞中的民族因素语言是构成一个民族的重要因素，也是区别各个民族的重要因素。语言是民族文化的结晶和载体，是民族文化最典型的表现形式，它构成人们重要的文化环境，直接塑造了人的文化心理。 ①不同民族的人们具有不同的民族性格，一个民族的语言同它所属成员的社会心理、民族风俗习惯、历史文化有着紧密联系，因而一个民族的语言具有其鲜明的民族特征。我们常常看到，为了使广告能够吸引更多人的眼球，广告创作者们在广告语言修辞中恰如其分地在语体、词汇选择上从民族心理、人们的社会文化心理方面获得受众的民族认同感。第一节地域环境与民族心理 “修辞是为了较好的表达思想和感情，适应特定的语境而采取的运用语言和言语风格、方法、技巧或规律，这说明了修辞和语境的关系十分密切。” ②语境即使用语言的环境，地域环境是语境中的一方面。在我国的广告中，我们常碰到利用地域环境的广告语修辞。无论是在同一时代的不同地域中，还是在不同时代的同一地域中，广告语言的修辞都会受一定程度的制约和影响。陆稼详在《修辞与文化的关系》中说:“特殊的地理气象，也经常影响到话语的选择与生成，故说话、写作时不能忽视这一点因素。” 利用地域环境因素创作出来的广告语言，迎合广告受众的乡土观念，满足广大受众热爱祖国、热爱家乡的情感需要，获得广大消费者对所宣传产品的认同。这一点在中国做得比较成功，例如中国联通的广告：“情系中国结，联通四海心。”联通的标志是一个中国结的形象，中国结是中国民间的艺术作品，结的形态让人感觉团结、紧密、温馨，以“中国结”作为广告语主题，充满浓浓中国情，倍增亲和力。再如海尔的“海尔，中国制造。”这则广告利用中国这个地域环境来让中国人产生一种自豪感：中国也能生产自己民族品牌的产品，而不总是生产别国品牌的产品，这是属于我们本民族的东西。在越南，也不乏利用民族自豪感而创作出来的广告语篇，用另一种方式说即地域环境对于越南报刊广告语修辞积极方面的影响，其具体表现在越南报刊广告语修辞中越南民族心理特征和思维特征的反映。我们认为，什么样的地域环境，就会有什么样的文化模式，一种民族心理正是相应的某一种文化模式的反映。广告语作为一种独特的语言文化现象，既受到某种文化模 ①赵虹：《蛮野文化的追捕手·序》，学林出版社，1991 年11 月。 ②骆小所:《现代修辞学》，昆明:云南人民出版社，2000，第17 页。 29 式的影响，同时也反映了某种文化心理。一、心理特征受儒家文化影响极深的稻作文化圈当中的越南传统文化所包含的民族心理特征，表现为爱国主义、重邻里关系、注重家庭、宗族、邻里群体观念，人与人的交往中持包容、仁爱、关心人的精神。家庭群体观念表现为讲究伦理道德、尊老爱幼、重视亲情、友情等。如： ①Mong bé khỏe, bé vui mẹ càng vui. （好奇纸尿裤:孩子健康，妈妈更放心） ②8/3-Lời yêu tặng mẹ... （Vinaphone Ring²3000 S202 系列手机：三八妇女节- 献给母亲的爱语） ③Dịu nhẹ nâng niu Mịn dai chăm sóc Mịn dai và an toàn chăm sóc hoàn hảo gia đình bạn. ( Paseo Elegant 高级纸巾：细韧温柔呵护完好照顾您的家庭) ④ Kết nối bạn bè khắp nơi.（LG 手机：连通各地朋友。）例①②③均传达出重视家庭伦理亲情、讲究伦理孝道等民族心理，浓浓亲情让人亲切满怀，感动至深，好感度加分。越南有句话说“Buôn có bạn, bán có phường”，其所表达的意思与汉语中“在家靠父母，出门靠朋友”异曲同工，强调朋友的重要性。例④体现出对友情的重视。随着经济社会的发展，人们的视野越来越广阔，交际范围也在不断扩大，四海之内皆兄弟，五湖之内皆朋友，越南语中也有相应的一句话叫“Tứ hải giai huynh đệ”，朋友间重在平日里的沟通和交流，既是朋友，即使不常见面也应常关心问候。LG 抓住越南人民这个心理，强调其产品功能的同时也让人感受到友情沟通的浓浓温情。任何一个国家的人民都有自己的爱国主义情感，每当提到本民族的东西时总不免生出强烈的民族自豪感，越南报刊广告语篇中较多地利用这一因素来激起受众的爱国情感，从而促进产品的销售，以下试举例说明： ① Phở Hồng Vân: Hương vị Phở Việt（红云米粉：越南粉香） ② Mỹ Hảo: nước giặt đậm đặc, chuyên giặt tẩy vết đặc, sạch và trắng đẹp hơn hẳn Mỹ Hảo- Niềm tin của gia đình Việt.（美好洗衣液：高浓度洗衣液，专门除去顽固污迹，高效净白） ③ Bánh kẹo Tràng An: Tinh Hoa Bánh kẹo Việt!（长安糖饼：越南糖饼之精华！） ④ Vang Đà Lạt Khơi nguồn vang Việt 30 Nhật Bản có Sake. Trung Quốc có Mao Đài. Việt Nam- vinh danh Vang Đà Lạt. 21 vị nguyên thủ quốc gia, các nhà lãnh đạo thế giới như Hoa Kỳ, LB Nga, Trung Quốc, Australia, Nhật Bản...đã sử dụng vang Đà Lạt trong hội nghị APEC 14 tại Việt Nam.（大叻红酒：越南红酒的起源日本有清酒中国有茅台越南拥有荣誉品牌大叻红酒越南亚太经合组织第14 届领导人会议上美利坚共和国、俄罗斯联邦、中国、澳大利亚、日本等世界21 个国家首脑饮用酒） ⑤Tổng công ty Sông Hồng-Công ty thép Sông Hồng：Thép Sông Hồng Sức mạnh Lạc Hồng（红河钢铁公司：红河钢铁，貉鸿力量）我们看到，以上几则广告均带有“Việt”一词，即越南。例①中，米粉是越南的一道特色美食，越南米粉看似简单但十分美味，土生土长的越南人不可一日无粉，大街小巷粉味飘香的粉摊粉店随处可见，米粉是越南人民的最受欢迎的食品之一。该产品打上“越南米粉”的旗号，告诉人们所宣传的产品是越南独有的米粉，是越南米粉的鲜美味道，是越南独有的味道，这对于热爱本土饮食的越南人民来说，倍感亲切。例②是一则洗衣粉广告，“越南家庭的信心”，从“越南家庭”这个大集体入手，说明任何人使用该企业的产品，将给任何人的家庭带来信心，同时表明企业的经营理念，即为越南所有的着想，这样自然获得消费者的认同感。例③中的Tràng An 牌糖饼，其广告词是“Tinh Hoa Bánh kẹo Việt!”（越南糖饼之精华！）利用了“越南”这个国家范围内的地域环境因素，对受众有较强吸引力。例④中向消费者宣传的是与日本之清酒Sake、中国之茅台一样地位的大叻红酒，利用越南这个大的地域环境激发越南人民的民族自豪感和满足人民的民族自尊心，并在对比语境之下，含蓄而又庄重地向受众介绍：这是越南人自己的酒。很显然，在很多重要场合，大叻红酒通常被用来作为民族品牌酒招待贵宾。例⑤ 中的―Lạc Hồng‖源自―con cháu của Lạc Hồng‖，越南人民自称为―龙子仙孙‖，就是―con cháu Lạc Hồng‖，也称为―Con Rồng Cháu Tiên‖，这些称呼与越南貉龙君和瓯姬生百子的古老传说有关。越南人民为自己拥有这样的祖先感到自豪， “con cháu Lạc Hồng”在传说中的力量是无比强大的，在这个广告语篇中，“Lạc Hồng” 实际上就的越南人民的别称，暗示当今越南人民也同样拥有无比强大的力量，而所宣传产品就代表了整个越南民族的力量。承载着这样重大的民族责任和凝聚着这样深厚的民族情感，对于激起广大受众强烈的爱国情怀，效果不言而喻。越南深受中国儒家思想影响，而儒家是乡土情结的培植者，因此，在越南，乡音和乡情也总是最能打动人心，激发人们对祖国、对家乡的依恋和热爱之情。以上广告语言均是利用地域环境的广告语修辞，加入“越南”这个因素，充满了浓浓的本土风味，让受众对象感觉到这个广告、这个广告所宣传的产品是专门针 31 对自己本国人民而创作，在一定程度上拉近了广告和受众之间的距离，或令人倍感亲切，或激发人民的民族自豪感，鼓励人们爱国货、用国货，达到良好的广告效果。二、思维特征一个民族的心理决定一个民族的思维方式，思维习惯决定人们对广告的接受方式，进而有不同的广告创意。越南民族传统的思维特征表现为情重于理，越南人通常以伦理道德为人际关系的基础，乡村邻里情通常立于法理关系之上。在这种偏向于感性的思维使得越南人的思维习惯普遍表现为从众意识，中庸意识，重名人意识等几点。试举几例： ① Pampers：Các bà mẹ công nhận Pampers Mới vừa mỏng gọn hơn vừa thấm hút tốt hơn.（Pampers 纸尿布：妈妈们一致认为新Pampers 更为轻薄，更易吸收） ②Kem đánh răng SENSODYNE :―Răng bạn ê buốt khi uống nước lạnh? Đó là biểu hiện của răng nhạy cảm. Tôi khuyên dùng kem đánh răng Sensodyne.‖ ----------Nick Rote （SENSODYNE 牙膏:您的牙齿喝冷水时一阵酸痛?那是敏感牙齿的表现。建议您使用Sensodyne 牙膏 ----------Nick Rote ) ③ Starlash: Bí quyết để có làn mi dày và dài đẹp như Siêu Mẫu Vũ Thu Phương （超模 Vu Phuong Thu 拥有浓密长睫毛的秘诀）(Starlash 睫毛膏) ④ Mela Q :Bí quyết trị nám của á hậu áo dài Diễm Châu（Mela Q 祛斑霜：奥黛亚军燕州祛除色斑的秘诀）越南人有较强的从众心理，例① 纸尿布广告巧妙介绍这个受多数人（“母亲们一致认为”）欢迎的产品，迎合了越南普罗大众的普遍心理，使接触到此广告的人们在心理上获得普遍认同感，从而激起消费者的购买兴趣。例②③④反映了越南人的重名人意识，通过借用在越南社会中有较高知名度的公众人物作为广告产品的形象代表，起到示范引导作用。这类广告在越南俯拾皆是，重名人意识体现的是人们对名人成功价值和内涵的一种认同，是一种情感寄托。以上广告语体现出越南人民从众心理、重名人意识的思维特征和爱国主义、重邻里关系、注重家庭、宗族、邻里群体观念的心理特征基本符合越南民族在长期发展和历史演进中积淀的伦理道德、人生观和价值观。与西方人注重个人利益、独立与个性、注重发展自然科学的理性化民族精神相对比，东方的越南人民在民 32 族心理中体现更多的是一种较为感性的民族精神。第二节语言风格之民族风格西方有句话说“风格即人”，广告语言作品的风格通常会受创作者的个人素养、文化水平、个人经历等因素的影响，由于创作者的不同，广告语言的风格也五花八门。纵向而言，不同时代的广告语也会带上一定的时代烙印，形成一定的时代风格。从横向来看，不同国家、不同地区、不同民族当中的广告语言又有自己独有的风格。以下主要就民族风格问题谈谈越南当代报刊广告语。越南广告语言的民族风格和越南语的特点息息相关。越南语是一种孤立语，每一个音节都是可独立使用的单位，没有时态、复数、变格动词无变化，词汇中的汉语借词所占比重相当大，语法上是是主语-谓语-宾语结构，越南语的这些特点使越南语广告呈现了较强的民族风格。这一节我们主要讨论外来词的引用、名物化、汉语借词的常见词语等具有越南语独有表达特色的内容。试举以下几组广告为例： A：Pepsi: Rộn Rã Sức Xuân Khát Khao Cuộc Sống Tết đến nơi rồi, háo hức quá đi! Teen nhà mình có ý gì lạ để mừng tuổi người thân chưa? Năm nay phá cách với Pepsi Tứ Linh đi. Muốn chúc thành công? Chọn ngay Pepsi Long. Còn ước may mắn, có Pepsi Lân nè. Cầu mạnh khỏe và hạnh phúc, thì tặng Pepsi Quy-Pepsi Phụng. Tứ Linh thay lời chúc, vừa trọn vẹn và ý nghĩa! Nhất định, năm mới suôn sẻ vạn điều cho xem. （百事可乐：欢快新春希望生活春节来了，心情无比激动！咱们的青少年们准备什么新鲜的礼物来给亲人拜年没？今年与百事四灵一同打破常规吧！想要祝福成功？就选龙百事。祝福好运，有麟百事呢。祈求幸福安康，就送龟百事-凤百事。四灵代祝福，既圆满又有意义！今年一定会万事顺利。） 33 这是一则百事可乐为迎接新春而推出新产品的广告，篇幅较长，使用了设问、感叹等句式，生动有趣，恰到好处地表达所宣传产品可传达新春各种祝福的信息，通过阅读和观察我们不难发现，全篇广告语共88 个字，而汉语借词就有17 个，所占比例大约20%。中越两国历史上的密切关系使得越南语受到汉语诸多影响，在语言接触的过程中不断产生了汉语借词，并且沿用至今。汉语借词是现代越语词汇中不可缺少的组成部分，这是越南语词汇较显著的一个特点。 B：①Follow Me Oil Control ：Nỗi khổ tâm lớn nhất ở tuổi Teen chính là...Mụn!！！Mụn luôn xuất hiện vào những lúc không mong đợi. Nay đã có Follow Me Oil Control với Whitening Active E Pre-biotic, giúp hút sạch chất nhờn dư trên mặt, cân bằng độ ẩm và duy trì lượng lợi khuẩn trên da, làm se lỗ châu lông cho da sạch và sáng hơn. Sử dụng dòng sản phẩm Follow Me Oil Control 2 lần mỗi ngày, đem lại cho bạn sự tự tin hơn.（Follow Me Oil Control 曼秀雷敦控油洗面奶：青少年最苦恼的事情是...痘痘！痘痘常常在不经意间冒出。现在有了Follow Me Oil Control 系列的Whitening Active E Pre-biotic，帮助吸掉脸上多余的油脂，平衡保湿，保持脸部的营养成分，令皮肤更为光泽润滑。每日使用Follow Me Oil Control 系列产品两次，让您更添自信。从今天起就选择Follow Me Oil Control 吧！从此与痘痘、痘印告别！） ②Sữa tắm Enchanteur: Sự lôi cuốn kỳ diệu Trắng mịn màng cho chàng cảm xúc（艾诗花香沐浴露：神奇的吸引力让他感触润白肌肤） ③Công ty cổ phần Xi Măng Tiên Sơn: Sự bền vững của các công trình.（仙山水泥股份公司：各项工程的坚固力量）事物、行为和性质是三个最基本的概念范畴，它们在语言中典型的对应词类分别是名词、动词和形容词。但是，行为和性质概念也往往可以体现为抽象名词，代表“物化”的行为或性质。这一语言现象就称为“物化”。 ①“名物化”是越南语词类转换的一种特殊现象,在一些动词和形容词之前加辅助单位词，使该动词或形容词名物化。例如辅助单位词“sự”，放在动词或形容词之前表示一种事情或一种状态，“sự lôi cuốn”意即“吸引、魅力”，“sự bền vững”意即“稳固、牢固”。“nỗi”放在表示感情的形容词或表示心理活动的动词前面，使之名物化。 nỗi 通常表示消极的感情。 D： ①MOTOEM325 và MOTOEM330: DZẾ MỚI CHO NĂM MỚI ①于鑫：《俄语生成句法学》，黑龙江人民出版社, 2006.11，第237 页。 34 Giáng sinh vừa mới ghé, năm mới đã ngấp nghé ngoài thềm. Teen chúng mình đang đắm chìm trong không khí lễ hội và rục rịch mua sắm tết. ..... Món quà cho ―cặp đôi‖ Áo đôi, túi đôi...và giờ là điện thoại cặp đôi. Đó là hai sản phẩm EM325 và EM330 trong dòng music phone cảu Motorola. ...... Hai chiếc điện thoại xinh xắn này có khả năng kết nối vào thư viện MP3 và đài FM. ......Công nghệ USB 2.0 ―kéo và thả‖ cho phép thay đổi bộ sưu tập âm nhạc một cách dễ dàng và nhanh chóng, phù hợp với sự thay đổi tâm trang và sở thích ngay tại thời điểm sử dụng. ......(摘录) （摩托罗拉MOTOEM325 和 MOTOEM330 系列手机：新年新DZẾ 圣诞刚刚过，新年就已到廊下窥探。我们的青少年正沉浸在节日的气氛并蠢蠢欲动购买年货。 ....... 给情侣们的礼物情侣装，情侣包包...现在有情侣手机。那是摩托罗拉EM325 和 EM330 音乐手机系列.....这两部小巧玲珑的手机能够连接MP3 音乐库和FM 广播电台。 USB2.0 可以轻松快速更换音乐......） ②POND’S Pond’s được minh chứng Nhẹ nhàng nuôi dưỡng làn da trắng hồng với Pro-Vitamin B3+Lycopene có trong trái cây màu đỏ. Không phải ngẫu nhiên mà 100 triệu bạn gái Châu Á đã chọn Pond’s cho vẻ đẹp làn da của mình. Đó là vì Pond’s Trắng Hồng Rạng Rỡ không chỉ dưỡng trắng hiệu quả mà còn nhẹ nhàng nuôi dưỡng làn da. Với dưỡng chất Lycopene có trong trái cây màu đỏ, Pond’s sẽ làm ứng lên sắc hồng tuơi tắn, cho bạn làn da hằng mơ ước. Hãy trải nghiệm Pond’s ngay nhé!（经验证，旁氏蕴含来自红色水果的维他命原B3 和番茄红素，滋养肌肤，令肌肤白里透红。亚洲已有1 亿名女孩为自己肌肤的美丽而选择旁氏，这并非偶然。这是因为旁氏净白系列粉润白皙倍润霜不仅仅有效美白，还能温柔滋养肌肤。蕴含红色水果当中的番茄红素，旁氏可提升肌肤娇美粉嫩质感，让您拥有如梦般光洁如月的肌肤。立刻就来尝试旁氏吧！） ③ Thuốc giảm đau đầu Roche – Beroca: Chế ngự stress, làm việc tốt hơn （Roche– Beroca 头痛药：征服压力，有效工作） 35 随着经济社会的发展和人们思想观念的转变，人们的社会心理也同时受到影响。社会文化心理往往也在不同程度上使人们对语言的态度受到潜移默化的影响。尤其是在越南加入WTO 之后，与世界各国尤其是西方国家的接触越来越频繁，接收到越来越多的西方文化，生活也随之而改变。生活的变化带来的是语言的相应变化，也带来了相应的外来语。广告语言是一种文化形态，广告语可反映社会最新动态，不同国家、不同地区的广告语常常折射出当地的社会文化现象。通过搜集的报刊广告语资料，我们发现，广告语言中夹杂英语的例子比比皆是，而与汉语对外来语吸收的不同之处是，由于越南语使用的是拉丁化文字，在对英语的吸收上更容易直接使用英语词语，如例①中的“Teen”“music phone” “Motorola”“MP3” ―USB‖ ，例② 的―POND’S‖ ― Pro-Vitamin B3+Lycopene‖ ―Lycopene‖（ ―POND’S‖在国内被译为“旁氏”），例③的“stress”。这是一种流行，也是一种时髦，反映出越南社会生活的变化以及越南文化与西方文化的交流与融合，也反映当今越南民族语言当中一种独特的语言文化现象。第三节词汇选择与社会文化心理由于经济的发展、社会生活水平的不断提高、人们思想观念的不时转变, 以及由此而形成的某种社会文化心理, 常常支配着人们的行为方式。在广告语中, 这种社会文化心理也在左右着人们对语言的态度。越南革新开放特别是入世后，国内经济发展带给社会的影响是多方面的，人们的生活水平不断提高，视野变得更广阔，思想变得更开放，思维变得更活跃。“话由心生”，进而使得人们的语言表达方式也发生改变。从某种意义上说, 语言现象标志着文化的某些本质特征和进步程度。在越南广告语言的词法修辞上，我们发现，社会文化心理对广告语言中词汇的选择起到一定的影响，广告修辞中词汇的使用也折射出了越南当下的社会文化心理。例如： A ①Thế giới của tôi, sắc cam của tôi.（c2life 香橙绿茶：我的世界，我的橙色） ②Thể hiện chính mình theo phong cách riêng（National 吹风机：独有的风格亮出你自己） A 组的例①，句式简洁，句尾押韵并重复使用tôi（我）一词，“我的世界，我的橙色”，强调个人所有，是个人价值的体现。例②选用chính mình 和riêng 两个词语，向受众传达的是产品所能带给受众的独特的个性和敢于展现自我风采的自信。按照越南的观念，家庭、亲戚关系是亲属关系，邻里关系是每个人生活中直接的、亲近的社会关系，人们通常认为集体利益高于个人利益，例如有句俗 36 语说：―một con ngựa đau cả tàu bỏ cỏ‖ ―bầu ơi thương lấy bí cùng, tuy răng khác giống nhưng chung một giàn‖, 因此，在确立个人价值观点时，必先考虑不损害集体利益，甚至有时会因为集体利益而牺牲个人利益。然而越南现代社会随着经济社会的发展，人们自我价值的意识也在逐渐提升，越来越注重个人价值的实现和个性的展示，以上两条广告语言在立意和选词上抓住了人们关于实现个人价值的诉求的心理，在受众中产生共鸣。 B ①Khăn giấy Pulppy: Sành điệu với đúng Pulppy đúng lúc, đúng nơi. （Pulppy 纸巾：对的时间，对的地点，与Pulppy 共时尚） ②Panasonic ：Dáng mảnh mai Chạm sành điệu （松下数码相机：单薄外形时尚雕刻） “sành điệu”一词意为“时尚、酷”，当代越南经济文化各方面都力求与世界接轨，年轻人的打扮也不再向过去那样力求朴素，以朴实为美，而是紧跟社会潮流，年轻人追求一切新鲜的美好的失去，善于捕捉时尚信息，以时尚为美。例 ①②两则广告为吸引年轻人，选用“sành điệu”一词，让人眼前一亮，紧紧抓住受众眼球，过目不忘。 C ①CocaCola: không thử sao biết（可口可乐：不试您怎么知道！） ② mì khoai tây Omachi: Thử là mê!（Omachi 土豆泡面：一试就爱上！） ③ Vinaphone: không ngững vươn xa（Vinaphone：永无止境）在经济发展浪潮中，想要获得不断发展和成功，就需要有一颗勇于尝试、不断拼搏的心，以上①②两则广告语从表达语义上试图劝说受众尝试所宣传产品，可折射出当下越南人民在革新开放的浪潮中勇于尝试、敢于突破自己的精神，例 ③所传达的则是对事业的不断追求、无止境拼搏的精神。 D ①Nano white：Rạng ngời tự nhiên(Nano white 护肤品：自然亮白) ② Hada Labo：Trắng tự nhiên mới là trắng hoàn hảo （Hada Labo 洗面奶：自然嫩白才是完美嫩白） ③ FOLLOW ME UV Whitening： Nuôi dưỡng&Tái tạo tế bào da Cho làn da THANH KHIẾT TRẮNG HỒNG TỰ NHIÊN （FOLLOW ME UV 美白美体乳：营养肌肤，促进肌肤细胞再生，令肌肤干净清爽，让您拥有白里透红自然好肤色） 37 以上三则均是护肤品广告，三则广告词的共同点是语言简洁，用词考究，内容直接说明产品的功效，均选用“tự nhiên”（自然）一词，从某种程度上说可体现越南人对美的基本追求——自然美。不需矫揉造作，不需浓妆艳抹，自然的就是最美的。 E ①Giấy lụa cao cấp Paseo Elegant Dịu nhẹ nâng niu Mịn dai chăm sóc Mịn dai và an toàn chăm sóc hoàn hảo gia đình bạn. (倍舒柔高级纸巾：细韧温柔呵护完好照顾您的家庭) ②Kem dưỡng trắng da cao cấp HALO: Sụ kỳ diệu của Halo thì bạn yên tâm, chuyện đó không thành vấn đề!!!(Ngăn ngừa mụn, nám và tái tạo da) （HALO 高级美白润肤霜：对于HALO 的神奇效果，您放心，那事儿不成问题！！！（预防痘痘、晒斑，促进皮肤再生） ③Tã giấy cao cấp Tom&Jerry: Thoải mái chơi đùa như Tom&Jerry Tom&Jerry lúc nào cũng ―quậy tưng‖ thật đáng yêu! Bé yêu của bạn cũng sẽ luôn vui vẻ và thoải mái chơi đùa như thế với tã giấy cao cấp Tom&Jerry. Lựa chọn những tính năng ưu việt nhất, tã giấy Tom&Jerry chắc chắn là loại tã tốt nhất cho bé thoải mái chơi đùa suốt ngày và ngủ thật ngon lành một đêm. （Tom&Jerry 高级纸尿布：如Tom 和Jerry ①般尽情玩耍 Tom 和Jerry 无论何时都十分可爱地“欢闹”！您的爱子使用Tom&Jerry: 高级纸尿布，也会像它们那样常常开心愉快地玩耍。Tom&Jerry 纸尿布选择最优质的材料，一定是能让孩子整日尽情玩耍和夜里安睡的最好尿布。） ④Paseo Ultra Soft: Mềm mịn bảo vệ làn da Với tinh chất dưỡng da và 100% bột giấy nguyên chất, giấy lựa cao cấp mới Paseo Ultra Soft mang đến sự bảo vệ an toàn tuyệt đối và mềm mịn cho làn da nhạy cảm của bạn. （Paseo Ultra Soft 纸巾：柔和保护肌肤百分百的原生木浆，护肤精华，Paseo Ultra Soft 新高级纸巾安全保护您的敏感肌肤，令您的肌肤柔软光滑）随着社会的进步和国民素质的不断提升，随着人们生活水平的不断提高，人们对生活品质的追求也就越来越普遍和强烈。生活品质以经济水平为基础，人们较高的生活品质应有优越的生活环境和健康的生活方式等。以上4 例广告语在选 ① 动画片《猫和老鼠》里的角色，笔者注 38 词上所呈现的共同特点为：在产品命名或是广告文案中均选用cao cấp 一词，体现的是当下越南人民对产品的追求逐渐趋向于产品的高品质之上。因此，人们在描述一个产品的品质之时，通常会以“cao cấp”一词来体现产品的层次。 F ①Nokia 5800 XpressMusic: Tận hưởng. Chia sẻ. Cảm nhận.（诺基亚5800 XpressMusic 系列手机：尽享。分享。感受。） ②ACER ASPIRE 4830 : Chia sẻ mùa yêu thương（ACER 宏基ASPIRE 4830 系列笔记本电脑：分享爱的季节） “Chia sẻ”一词意为“分享”，据英国智库新经济基金会（New Economics Foundation）2009 年公布的快乐星球直属（HPI）报告，越南以世界第五的排名成为亚洲幸福指数最高的国家。越南虽说是亚洲经济发展速度最快的国家，但国内基础设施落后，民众受教育程度不高，是世界上少数几个需要国外ODA 援助的国家之一，为何成为亚洲最幸福国家？经济发达与社会文明程度的高低是评价人们是否幸福的标准之一，但是越南人民的幸福感似乎与这一标准并无多大干系。越南有句歌谣：“hàng xóm tối lửa, tắt đèn có nhau。”说明在稻作文化圈中的越南人重情义，重分享，有人情味。人是社会性的动物，与人分享才能获得更多快乐，“送人玫瑰，手有余香”，越南人民乐善好施的性格是他们获得幸福感的原因之一。因此我们认为，这也是“Chia sẻ”一词常能在广告语中甚至平日交际中所提及的缘故。以上广告语中均使用这一词语，我们不妨以小见大，看到越南人民注重人与人之间的情感交流，讲人情、乐善好施的性格。 G ①Pepsi: Rộn Rã Sức Xuân Khát Khao Cuộc Sống Tết đến nơi rồi, háo hức quá đi! Teen nhà mình có ý gì lạ để mừng tuổi người thân chưa? Năm nay phá cách với Pepsi Tứ Linh đi. Muốn chúc thành công? Chọn ngay Pepsi Long. Còn ước may mắn, có Pepsi Lân nè. Cầu mạnh khỏe và hạnh phúc, thì tặng Pepsi Quy-Pepsi Phụng. Tứ Linh thay lời chúc, vừa trọn vẹn và ý nghĩa! Nhất định, năm mới suôn sẻ vạn điều cho xem. （百事可乐：欢快新春希望生活春节来了，心情无比激动！咱们的青少年们准备什么新鲜的礼物来给亲人拜年没？ 39 今年与百事四灵一同打破常规吧！想要祝福成功？就选龙百事。祝福好运，有麟百事呢。祈求幸福安康，就送龟百事-凤百事。四灵代祝福，既圆满又有意义！今年一定会万事顺利。）百事可乐的这则广告首先从产品名称出发，以产品命名来吸引受众，借―Tứ Linh‖（四灵）的“Long”（龙）“ Lân”（麟） “Quy” （龟）“Phụng”（凤）来传达祝福，我们知道，四灵为我国古代道教守护神，是我国古代人民所喜爱的吉祥物，“四灵”得以在越南产品和广告中使用并宣传，分别借以当做谋求成功、幸运、幸福、安康的吉祥物，可见越南民间受中国文化影响之深，这条广告传递了浓浓的春节气息，迎合了人们对新年寄予美好愿望的心理。由此可见，文化的传承与发展可集中地体现在广告语的语言风格、特点、审美趣味中，作为经济社会发展的产物，广告是社会变迁的见证者，如实地反映了时代发展的烙印，广告语言现象可反映出一定的文化现象和人们的社会文化心态。在广告语中使用能体现人们文化心态的词语，可巧妙地抓住受众的心，引导人们对产品产生了解、购买的欲望，这同时也是广告创作者的策略之一。综上所述，广告作为一种特殊的传播文化，深受民族文化的影响，越是带有民族风格和民族因素的广告，越被人们所喜闻乐见。越南广告的发展不能脱离本民族地域环境之中的文化语境，越南报刊广告语为了赢得大众的认同，在广告创意中普遍融入了本民族文化特定的心理特征和思维模式，词汇选择普遍反映本民族当下的社会文化。 40 结语本文主要论述越南报刊广告语当中所使用的修辞手法，探讨越南报刊广告语中的修辞美以及修辞特点，和越南报刊广告语中所体现出来的民族文化因素。从修辞手法来看，越南报刊广告语在创作时惯用比喻、夸张、排比和对偶、拟人等修辞手法，使平淡的语言富有活力，越南报刊广告语的修辞手法各式各样，广告语中多种修辞手法的运用也得益于越南语言中多种多样的修辞手法，使得广告语言呈现丰富多彩的表达方式，让广告呈现出动人的魅力。运用修辞手法的广告语言具有不同寻常的效果，但并不是为了追求这种不同寻常的效果而滥用修辞，归根结底，广告的创作最终还是要以事实为基准，客观实在地描述广告产品的特点，这样消费者在购买时感觉广告与实际产品相符，才能真正“俘获人心”。广告语中善用修辞手法，使得广告呈现异彩纷呈的效果，从而达到广告所要达到的诱导目的。从修辞特点来看，越南报刊广告语中运用的修辞手法，是有其自身特点的。我们认为，从修辞学视角来看越南报刊广告语，常见的特点有：真实性、简明性、创新性、语义表达上的含蓄性和通俗性。表达真实信息的广告能让人充分感受到商家的诚意，通常都充满人情味，从而打动受众，吸引受众购买产品。简明的广告语言字句简洁，清晰明了，能迅速抓住受众的眼球，吸引受众注意，给受众留下深刻印象。广告中独特新颖的广告语言往往能惹人注目，出奇制胜，脱颖而出。语义含蓄的广告能在潜移默化中获得受众的认同，并轻松地接受广告信息。从修辞美学角度来看，越南报刊广告语体现出音韵美、语句上的形式美和表意上的含蓄美。音韵美主要体现为语句的押韵。押韵是一种语音修辞，越南报刊广告语中的押韵使得广告语言视觉上看起来醒目，听觉上给人优美和高雅的享受，也进一步地渲染了广告语篇的气氛和情感，增强广告的感染力，大幅提高广告语言的传播价值、审美价值和欣赏价值。从民族因素上看，语言是区别一个民族的重要因素，广告语言作为一种特殊的语言，其遣词造句方方面面都体现了一个民族的语言风格和民族性格。利用地域环境因素创作出来的广告语言，迎合广告受众的乡土观念，满足广大受众热爱祖国、热爱家乡的情感需要，获得广大消费者对所宣传产品的认同。越南报刊广告语在地域环境上体现出越南人民从众心理、重名人意识的思维特征和爱国主义、重邻里关系、注重家庭、宗族、邻里群体观念的心理特征基本符合越南民族在长期发展和历史演进中积淀的伦理道德、人生观和价值观。随着经济社会的发展，越南广告语的内容日益丰富多彩，语言修辞也向多样化趋势发展，传播速度和更换速度也日益加快，这是时代语言不断更新，不断发 41 展变化的需求，同时这也能体现出越南语言文化不断发展变化的特点。 42 参考文献一、中文参考资料： [1]【美】菲尔·杜森伯里.一个广告人的洞见与事件[M].上海远东出版社，2008. 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[12]Trần Ngọc Thêm, Cơ sở văn hóa Việt Nam[M], Nxb giáo dục,1999. 44 后记 “没有人是一座孤岛，可以自全。”回首走过的路，有顺境也有逆境，但对所有的一切我的心里始终充满感激，感激一路上有这么多人陪着我一起成长，帮助我成长。首先感谢我敬爱的导师黎巧萍副教授，我的论文从选题、开题到定稿，她都给予悉心指导，在我困难时给予帮助，在我迷惑时给我指点迷津，在我无助时给予我鼓励。三年的研究生学习时间，我的导师以其渊博的知识、极高的专业素养、严谨的治学态度、诲人不倦的高尚师德以及与人为善、低调的行事风格深深地影响着我，使我更加懂得做人、处事的道理。其次感谢把我带到这个五彩斑斓世界的父母亲，感谢他们把我抚养成人，并一直以自身的坚强、勇敢、乐观、勤劳、忍耐和朴实影响和支持我；感谢我的弟弟妹妹以及其他亲朋的理解、包容和一直以来默默的帮助！亲朋好友让我在爱的包围中无所畏惧！在此我还要感谢广西民族大学的老师们，尤其感谢外国语学院越语教研室的梁远教授、罗文青教授、曾瑞莲副教授、唐小诗副教授、刘志强副教授、岑新明老师、唐秀珍老师、李娜老师、梁茂华老师、韦凡州老师等，感谢老师们知识的传授。在此特别感谢黄兴球教授和范宏贵教授长时间以来对我学业上的关心和指导！感谢我身边和远方所有关心和帮助过我的朋友和同学！要感谢的人很多很多，祝愿你们在今后的工作中更加顺利，生活更加幸福快乐！毕业论文定稿之际，惊闻“暨南大学两名女研究生轻生”的消息，在我震惊之余，让人有一种“同病相怜”的酸楚。它让我陷入长时间深深的思考：作为一名即将走上工作岗位的研究生，我们应该怎样去面对生活和工作中的各种挫折？怎样面对人生？是否已经学会主动承担社会责任？面对着即将定稿的硕士毕业论文，我的心中感慨良深却无以言表。此刻的我，想到即将到来的无法逃避的伤感离别和不久之后无法预知的新生活，诚惶诚恐，不知道以怎样的姿态去迎接未来的一切。面对瞬即结束的学生生涯，我想这并不代表一个时代的完结，多年的学生生涯是生命的一个历程，从此我将从这个历程进入人生的另一个阶段，像凤凰涅槃一样地新生。我有诸多感悟和遗憾留心间，但我想，新生的我，可以缅怀曾经，但更应把握好当下，怀抱希望，心存感激，怀着宗教般的虔诚对待工作、生活。无论未来是喜是忧，是荆天棘地还是坦途一片，只要能坚持自己的信念，坦然迎接未来的挑战，就一定能心想事成！既然选择了远方,便只管风雨兼程! 45 攻读学位期间发表的学术论文目录 [1] 《河内街道命名初探》收录于《中越语言文化教学与研究国际研讨会论文集》，广东，世界图书出版社，2011 年。 [2]《越南东京义塾拉丁化文字的普及》收录于《首届中国研究生东盟论坛论文集》，广东，世界图书出版社，2012 年。	52,452
抽象还是具体？广告语言风格对广告说服的影响研究_方美晨.pdf	硕士学位论文题目：抽象还是具体？广告语言风格对广告说服的影响研究英文并列题目： Abstract or Concrete？The Influence of Advertising Linguistic Style on Persuasion 研究生：方美晨专业：工商管理研究方向：市场营销导师：吴媛媛指导小组成员：学位授予日期： 2023 年6 月答辩委员会主席：马振峰江南大学地址：无锡市蠡湖大道1800 号二○二三年六月摘要 I 摘要广告营销一直都是企业人员与营销学者重点关注的话题。其中，广告主要通过广告语向消费者传递产品信息，进而影响消费者认知。广告语言因其标准不一而没有统一的分类，从语言风格的角度来看，抽象的广告语言风格近年来逐渐引起公众的注意。不同于以往具体式广告语言强调详细明确的产品信息，抽象的广告语更加模糊，侧重于描述产品的整体特征，构建出丰富的画面感。纵观学术界有关这两类广告语的研究，一般集中于关注广告语的实用情境或与产品类型、品牌形象等结合起来探究其有效性，少有研究探索这两类广告语言影响广告说服效果的内在机制。那么，抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言会给消费者带来怎样的感受？企业又该怎样使用这两类广告语以最大化达到广告说服效果？这都是本文将要重点探讨的问题。本文根据广告语言侧重点的不同，将广告语言风格划分为抽象与具体两个维度，并以解释水平理论和加工流畅性理论为基础，通过3 个实验探究了广告语言风格类型影响广告说服的双重路径机制以及作用边界。具体而言，实验1 探索了抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言对消费者心理模拟的不同影响。数据分析结果发现，与具体的广告语言相比，抽象的广告语言更能激发消费者的结果模拟；而与抽象的广告语言相比，具体的广告语言更能激发消费者的过程模拟。实验2 和实验3 进一步关注了广告语言风格的下游影响，同时聚焦于消费者的个人特质，分析了实际营销情境下广告语言风格类型对于广告说服的影响差异。其中，实验2 探究了消费者思维模式的边界作用。结果显示对于整体思维模式的消费者，抽象的广告语言会带来更高的结果模拟，进而产生更好的广告说服效果；而对于局部思维的消费者，具体的广告语言会带来更高的过程模拟，进而产生更好的广告说服效果。实验3 继续探究另一种消费者个人特质，即消费者权力感的影响作用，对消费者权力感与广告语言风格对广告说服的交互作用进行实证研究。结果发现，对于高权力感消费者，抽象的广告语言会带来更高的结果模拟，进而产生更好的广告说服效果；而对于低权力感消费者，具体的广告语言会带来更高的过程模拟，进而产生更好的广告说服效果。本文结论，一方面在理论层面丰富了广告语领域的相关研究，拓展了广告营销的研究文献，另一方面在实践层面也为企业合理设计、构建广告语，制定有效的广告营销策略提供了一定的借鉴指导。关键词：广告语言风格；结果模拟；过程模拟；思维模式；权力感 Abstract II Abstract Advertisement marketing has always been the focus of marketers and marketing scholars. Advertisement mainly transmits product information to consumers through advertising language and therefore influences consumer cognition. There is no unified classification of advertising language because of the different standards. In recent years, abstract advertising linguistic style which in contrast to concrete advertising linguistic style that mainly emphasizing the details and providing clear information of product, is gradually attracting the attention of the public. Abstract advertising language is vaguer, focusing on describing the overall characteristics of the product, and building a rich sense of pictures. In academic field, past studies either directly compared these two kinds of advertising linguistic styles or explored their effectiveness in combination with product types and brand images. However, there is little research on the internal mechanism of these two types of advertising language affecting the effect of advertising persuasion. Then, how will the abstract advertising language and the concrete advertising language affect consumers’ feelings? And how should enterprises use these two types of advertising linguistic styles to maximize the effect of advertising persuasion? These are the main questions that this study will focus on. From the perspective of advertising linguistic style, this paper divides the types of advertising language into abstract advertising linguistic style and concrete advertising linguistic style. Then this paper explored the dual path mechanism and the boundary of advertising language style influencing advertising persuasion through 3 experiments basing on construal level theory and processing fluency theory. To be specifically, Experiment 1 explored the different effects of abstract and concrete linguistic styles on consumers’ mental simulations. The results showed that compared with concrete advertising language, abstract advertising language can stimulate consumers' outcome simulation more. However, compared with abstract advertising language, concrete advertising language can better stimulate the process simulation of consumers. Experiments 2 and 3 focused on consumers' personal characteristics and explored the downstream influence of advertising language on advertising persuasion in actual marketing situations. Among them, Experiment 2 explored the boundary effect of consumers' thinking style. The results showed that for consumers with global thinking style, abstract advertising language will stimulate outcome simulation more, and thus generating better advertising persuasion. However, for consumers with local thinking style, concrete advertising language will lead to higher process simulation, which in turn will generate better advertising persuasion. Experiment 3 continued to explore the influence of another important consumer's characteristics —— consumers’ power state, and conducted an empirical study on the interaction between the consumer's power state and the type of advertising linguistic style on advertising persuasion. Abstract III The results showed that for consumers with high power, abstract advertising language can stimulate outcome simulation more, and thus generating better advertising persuasion. For consumers with low power, concrete advertising language will lead to higher process simulation, and thus generating better advertising persuasion. On the theoretical level, this paper enriches the relevant research in the field of advertising language and expands the research literature of advertising marketing; on the practical level, it also provides certain reference and guidance for enterprises to rationally design and construct advertising language and formulate effective advertising marketing strategies. Keywords: Advertising linguistic style; Outcome simulation; Process simulation; Thinking style; Power state 目录第一章绪论............................................................................................... 1 1.1 研究背景 ........................................................................................... 1 1.1.1 现实背景 ..................................................................................... 1 1.1.2 理论背景 ..................................................................................... 1 1.2 研究意义 ........................................................................................... 2 1.2.1 理论意义 ..................................................................................... 2 1.2.2 实践意义 ..................................................................................... 3 1.3 研究方法与技术路线 ....................................................................... 3 1.3.1 研究方法 ..................................................................................... 3 1.3.2 技术路线 ..................................................................................... 4 1.4 研究创新点 ....................................................................................... 5 第二章文献综述 ...................................................................................... 6 2.1 广告语 ............................................................................................... 6 2.1.1 广告语的内涵 ............................................................................. 6 2.1.2 广告语的分类 ............................................................................. 6 2.1.3 广告语的相关研究 ..................................................................... 7 2.2 心理模拟 ........................................................................................... 8 2.2.1 心理模拟的内涵和分类 ............................................................. 8 2.2.2 心理模拟的相关研究 ................................................................. 9 2.3 思维模式 ........................................................................................... 9 2.3.1 思维模式的内涵和分类 ............................................................. 9 2.3.2 思维模式的相关研究 ............................................................... 10 2.4 权力感 ............................................................................................. 11 2.4.1 权力感的内涵 ........................................................................... 11 2.4.2 权力感的相关研究 ................................................................... 11 2.5 研究述评 ......................................................................................... 13 第三章理论基础与研究假设 ................................................................ 14 3.1 理论基础 ......................................................................................... 14 3.1.1 解释水平理论 ........................................................................... 14 3.1.2 加工流畅性理论 ....................................................................... 14 3.2 研究假设 ......................................................................................... 15 3.2.1 广告语言风格与消费者心理模拟 ........................................... 15 3.2.2 广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的影响 .......... 16 3.2.3 广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的影响 .............. 17 第四章实验设计与数据分析 ................................................................ 19 4.1 实验 1:广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响 ....................... 19 4.1.1 预测试 ....................................................................................... 19 4.1.2 实验研究过程 ........................................................................... 20 4.1.3 数据分析和结果 ....................................................................... 21 4.1.4 实验 1 讨论 ............................................................................. 22 4.2 实验 2:广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的影响 ... 22 4.2.1 预测试 ....................................................................................... 22 4.2.2 实验研究过程 ........................................................................... 23 4.2.3 数据分析和结果 ....................................................................... 25 4.2.4 实验 2 讨论 ............................................................................. 27 4.3 实验 3:广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的影响 ....... 28 4.3.1 预测试 ....................................................................................... 28 4.3.2 实验研究过程 ........................................................................... 29 4.3.3 数据分析结果 ........................................................................... 31 4.3.4 实验 3 讨论 ............................................................................. 33 第五章研究结论与展望 ........................................................................ 34 5.1 研究结论 ......................................................................................... 34 5.2 理论贡献和实践启示 ..................................................................... 34 5.2.1 理论贡献 ................................................................................... 34 5.2.2 实践启示 ................................................................................... 35 5.3 局限性及未来展望 ......................................................................... 36 参考文献 ................................................................................................... 37 附录 B:实验 1 问卷 ............................................................................... 46 附录 C:实验 2 问卷 ............................................................................... 48 附录 D:实验 3 问卷 .............................................................................. 52 第一章绪论 1 第一章绪论 1.1 研究背景 1.1.1 现实背景广告语一直是营销管理人员和营销学者们重点关注和研究的内容。作为广告三要素之一，广告语在广告营销中承担着至关重要的角色[1]。研究指出，广告语作为企业向消费者传递信息的载体，对企业具有较大的影响，甚至会影响企业的市场价值[2]。企业使用广告语的目的在于向消费者传递企业产品信息，对产品进行良好宣传以吸引购买，因此企业在设计其广告语时，一方面需要能够清晰明确地表现广告主题、展现产品功能，另一方面又要做到便于记忆、引起消费者共鸣以提高广告有效性。总体而言，选择合适的广告语对企业宣传产品，提升广告说服效果意义重大。广告语言类型由于其划分标准不一而存在多种多样的分类形式，并且很难定论孰优孰劣。过去很长一段时间内，广告商都倾向于以最直接、清晰的语言方式传递出最详细、具体的产品信息，例如甲壳虫汽车广告文案，“耗油低，不需防冻剂，能够用一套轮胎跑完40000 英里的路”，使用明确具体的语言清晰传达出了甲壳虫汽车的优势所在，引发消费者信任进而提升广告说服力。不过近年来广告语营销领域兴起了一股新风潮，例如，农夫山泉曾创造全国知名的广告语“我们不生产水，我们只是大自然的搬运工”。之后又在广告文案中描述他们的纯净水是“长白山松软雪花的味道”。广告文案不再执着于直接向消费者诉说产品为什么好和好在哪，而是选择以更加委婉、抽象的方式向消费者描述产品特征。类似的还有前不久引起热议的“东方甄选”直播间案例，新东方老师们的反常规带货说辞，不同于以往一味对产品功能属性的详细介绍，他们融卖点于场景，于诗词歌赋，句句不提产品属性特征，但又句句引人联想，让人上头，入心，下单。这类营销话语都传达出一个不同于以往广告语言力求精确的特征——抽象。广告语对消费者态度和行为的影响重要性不言而喻，上述一系列营销实践都反映了广告语言日渐抽象的新趋势，不过这类现象背后的原因以及引起的具体后果如何尚未可知，因此本文认为这值得关注和进行深入研究。 1.1.2 理论背景虽然已有研究指出具体的语言信息更容易引发消费者信任，由此带来的广告效果也更好[3, 4]。同时在一般认知中，关于产品具体特征的描述会被认为更加客观，抽象的语言则更加主观，而客观诉求有利于产生更积极的品牌态度[5]。这些研究似乎表明广告语言是越具体越好。不过近年来随着研究的不断深入，也有学者指出，具体的语言并不一定比抽象的语言更好[6]。在特定情境下，具体语言和抽象语言都会带来积极情绪的增加，且都会积极影响消费者对产品的购买意图[7]。而营销实际中抽象风格语言的广告实例增多也证明了此种风格语言的合理性。因此，本研究认为广告语言风格没有绝对的优劣之分，到底采用更加抽象的广告语言还是更加具体的广告语言，需要视具体情境、视具体江南大学硕士学位论文 2 消费者而定[8]。过去在营销实践中，企业广泛应用会引发受众进行心理模拟的广告信息[9]，以此来促进对广告和产品的积极评价。消费者在进行购买决策时会自发产生与产品使用相关的模拟，之前的学者也探究了广告中其他元素对于消费者心理模拟的影响。例如将广告海报中的产品有规律地排列会促使消费者进行心理模拟，想象自己正在体验使用产品，进而产生更好的产品评价[10]。研究指出，无论信息强度、参与度和自我感知知识呈现出什么样的水平，消费者对产品使用的想象都会正向影响品牌态度[11]，带来积极的广告效果。那么对于不同风格类型的广告语言，消费者会产生怎样的心理模拟？以及在何种情况下，抽象的和具体的广告语言会带来更好的广告说服效果？与消费者个人特质的联系如何？这些都是值得探究的问题。综上所述，本文从广告语营销实际出发，根据广告语言风格对广告语进行划分，以解释水平理论和加工流畅性理论为依据，通过将抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言进行比较，深入探究了这两种风格的广告语言对于消费者广告说服的影响机制。同时，聚焦于消费者个人特质，本文考虑了消费者信息处理模式和心理状态的影响，引入了消费者思维模式和消费者权力感，来探究其在广告语言风格对于广告说服影响中的边界作用。通过以上研究，为广告语领域的相关研究增加新的见解，并为广告营销人员提供一定的实践启示。本文的目的有以下三点：（1）探究不同风格的广告语言（抽象 vs. 具体）对消费者心理模拟（结果模拟 vs. 过程模拟）的影响差异；（2）从消费者信息处理模式角度出发，厘清何种广告语言风格有助于提升广告的说服效果。探索消费者思维模式（整体思维模式 vs. 局部思维模式）与广告语言风格对广告说服的交互影响，以及验证消费者心理模拟（结果模拟 vs. 过程模拟）的中介作用；（3）从消费者心理状态角度出发，厘清何种广告语言风格有助于提升广告的说服效果。探索消费者权力感（高 vs. 低）与广告语言风格对广告说服的交互作用，并验证消费者心理模拟（结果模拟 vs. 过程模拟）的中介作用。 1.2 研究意义 1.2.1 理论意义（1）探究了广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的不同影响，丰富和补充了广告语和心理模拟方面的研究成果。以往的研究要么关注于不同的广告语言类型对消费者的说服效果，要么关注于心理模拟对于广告营销效果的影响。关于广告语言风格影响消费者心理模拟的研究存在空白。本研究将抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言放在一起进行比较，探究它们对消费者心理模拟的不同影响。（2）从消费者信息处理模式出发，引入消费者思维模式这一个人特质，探究了消费者思维模式与广告语言风格的交互作用，丰富了思维模式在广告语领域的应用研究。以往研究主要关注营销情境、产品类型、品牌形象等在广告语说服效果中的边界作用，关于消费者个人特质的边界作用探究也多集中于消费者调节定向、消费者自我建构等的影第一章绪论 3 响。消费者思维模式是一个重要的个人特征变量，以往研究指出信息加工的方式会影响信息接收效果，但已有研究中较少将其与广告语结合起来进行实证研究。本研究探究了整体思维模式和局部思维模式的消费者对抽象和具体广告语言的感知效果及相应的广告说服效果，拓宽了思维模式研究的新视角。（3）从消费者心理状态出发，引入消费者权力感这一个人特质，探究了消费者权力感与广告语言风格的交互作用，丰富了权力感理论在广告语领域的应用研究。消费者心理状态会对信息的接收产生重要影响。本研究从这个角度引入了另一重要的消费者个人特质，即起源于社会心理学领域的权力感概念，探究广告语言风格与消费者权力感的交互对广告说服的影响，拓宽了权力感在营销领域的研究。 1.2.2 实践意义（1）帮助企业营销人员合理打造广告内容，在广告语设计的有效性方面提供可操作的建议。不同的广告语言风格，会引发消费者不同的感知和心理模拟。因此，当想要强调产品带来的功能效益，引发消费者对拥有产品后的结果模拟，应采取抽象的广告语言。当想要强调产品的功能信息，引发消费者对产品使用过程的模拟，应采取具体的广告语言。（2）指导企业营销人员在设计广告时将消费者思维模式这一概念融入进去。可以通过情境化语言操纵受众的思维模式，使之与广告中的语言风格达到匹配。当想要使用抽象广告语言时，可以在广告信息增加引导消费者思考为什么的语句，以此操纵为整体思维模式，而当想要使用具体的广告语言时，可增加引导消费者思考怎么做的语句，以操纵为局部思维模式。由此，使广告语言风格和消费者思维模式达成匹配以提升广告的说服效果。（3）指导企业营销人员在构建广告语时要关注消费者个人特质，向消费者精准推送匹配的语言风格广告。对于高权力感消费者组成的目标市场，抽象语言的广告更能激发他们的结果模拟，想象拥有产品带来的好处，产生更好的广告说服效果。对于低权力感消费者组成的目标市场，具体语言的广告更能激发他们的过程模拟，满足他们对产品具体功能信息的了解需求，进而带来更好的广告说服效果。 1.3 研究方法与技术路线 1.3.1 研究方法本文使用理论与实证相结合的方法来探究广告语言风格对广告说服效果的影响机制和作用边界。具体研究方法包括以下3 种：（1）文献研究法通过中国知网、Web of Science、EBSCO 等在线数据库查阅国内外相关文献，深入了解国内外相关研究现状，基于已有研究成果找到研究关键点，明确本文的研究目的，并寻找理论依据构建理论模型框架，为之后的实验设计、变量测量等提供理论支撑。江南大学硕士学位论文 4 （2）实验法本文主要采取实验法来展开实证研究。针对本文提出的研究假设，共设计了3 个实验进行一一验证。在不同的实验中，分别设计不同的实验刺激物以对广告语言风格进行操纵，同时对消费者思维模式和消费者权力感的操纵方法以及对心理模拟和广告说服的测量均参考已有成熟研究，并针对本文具体研究内容做适当改编或调整。（3）问卷调查法本研究通过在线问卷平台发放实验问卷来进行数据收集。实验操纵和变量测量均通过问卷的形式来完成，通过在线问卷平台Credamo 设计、发放、回收问卷，完成本研究中包含的3 个预测试和3 个正式实验的数据收集工作。使用Excel 对收回数据进行初步整理，之后采用SPSS 25.0 软件进一步进行描述性统计分析、信度分析和对本研究假设的检验分析（包括独立样本T 检验、双因素方差分析、Bootstrap 等）。 1.3.2 技术路线依据研究内容与工作计划，本文的技术路线图如图1-1 所示：首先，从实际营销现状出发，根据现实中的问题寻找大致的研究方向，同时检索国内外相关文献，了解掌握研究现状，明确研究目的和研究问题。在此基础上，对现有研究的相关成果进行进一步分析、总结，搭建本研究的理论模型和框架，即广告语言风格、消费者思维模式、消费者权力感和广告说服之间的关系。接着，采用实验法进行实证研究，对本文提出的研究假设进行一一检验。首先，进行实验1 初步探究广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响；之后，进行实验2 和实验3 探究在实际营销环境中广告语言风格的具体应用。各实验完成后，采用Excel 和SPSS 软件对实验数据进行处理和分析，以检验前文所提假设。最后，基于上述实验结果，总结本文结论并分析其理论和实践贡献，并提出本研究的局限性和未来可能的研究方向。第一章绪论 5 图1-1 技术路线图 1.4 研究创新点本研究的创新点主要在于研究理论的创新和研究视角的创新。（1）研究理论的创新。广告语营销领域内已有研究主要关注不同的广告语言类型带来的营销效果，而较少关注其内在机制。且以往研究重点关注心理模拟对消费者态度、行为等的影响，关于其前因研究，尤其将其作为解释机制的研究还比较缺乏。本研究以解释水平理论和加工流畅性理论为基础，将心理模拟引入广告语领域，探究心理模拟作为内在机制的影响作用，丰富了心理模拟相关理论的研究。（2）研究视角的创新。以往的研究重点关注广告语言类型与产品类型或品牌特征等的交互作用对广告效果的影响效应，关于消费者个人特质的边界作用也多围绕消费者调节定向、消费者自我建构等进行。针对于此，本研究引入了消费者思维模式、消费者权力感与广告语言风格交互作用对广告说服效果的影响，丰富了广告语言研究领域的现有成果。江南大学硕士学位论文 6 第二章文献综述 2.1 广告语 2.1.1 广告语的内涵语言是营销沟通最重要的工具之一[12]。广告语是广告中的文字语言，包括文字和标点符号等，属于广告三要素（广告语、广告图像、广告代言人）之一[1]。广告通过影响消费者的认知、情感和体验，对产品销售和企业形象传播产生重要影响[13]。而广告语作为广告的重要组成部分，以文字的形式最直接地传达出与产品有关的信息，进而影响消费者的态度、行为等。良好的广告语会给企业带来积极的影响，因此无论在学术界还是实践中，广告语言一直是营销领域研究的热门话题，本文围绕此研究广告语言风格对消费者感知和广告说服效果的影响。 2.1.2 广告语的分类营销实际中广告语呈现形式多种多样，学者们也基于不同的研究视角对广告语言进行了不同维度的划分。根据广告诉求的不同，广告语言可以被分为感性和理性[14]。理性诉求的广告语强调与产品相关的信息和产品给消费者带来的效用[15]，而感性诉求的广告语更擅长“动之以情”，从影响消费者态度和情感角度提高广告说服效果[15]。同时，基于刻板印象内容模型（Stereotype Content Model，SCM），个体会依据热情和能力两个主要维度形成对他人的综合判断。类似的，引入到广告领域，能力型的广告语言更强调产品的竞争力，而热情型的广告语言主要展现善意和温情[16, 17]。根据修辞手法的不同，学者们也对广告语进行了相应的细分。语言本身存在的多种修辞方式带来了广告语表达形式的多样化，主要包括比喻、双关、夸张、押韵、排比等 [12]。例如中文广告中常见由变异成语构成的谐音双关文案，如热水器广告中使用“随心所浴”（随心所欲）、蚊香广告中使用“默默无蚊”（默默无闻）等变异成语。相关的研究揭示了变异成语广告语对消费者感知的双刃剑影响，发现变异成语既可以提升趣味性感知进而导致更高的创新性；也可能降低严谨性感知进而导致更低的可靠性[18]。根据语言风格的不同，也存在相应的广告语分类方式。Fiedler 和Semin（1988）提出语言范畴理论，将人际沟通中的语言信息分为具体型和抽象型两类[19]。具体的语言表达描述了事物的情境特征，是详细的、生动的和明确的[19, 20]。相反的，抽象的语言描述了事物的内在特征，是不精确的、主观的和模糊的[19, 21]。有学者将这一理论拓展到营销领域，提出广告语言可以被分为具体的和抽象的两种类型。其中，具体的广告语是以更具体或更客观的方式描述产品特征，而抽象的广告语包含非特定或含糊不清的措辞，并以更模糊或主观的方式对产品进行描述[22, 23]。此外，吴月燕等（2019）还根据商业广告实践提出下里巴人型（通俗语言）和阳春白雪型（文雅语言）的广告语[24]。前者用词质第二章文献综述 7 朴、简单自然，类似大白话，重在通俗易懂；后者辞藻华丽，文雅艺术，充满文化气息。总体而言，由于划分标准和研究内容的不同，广告语言类型尚未有统一的分类方式。本文专注于营销实际，聚焦于当下商业广告中软性文案日益增多的现象，同时结合前人已有研究，立足于广告语言风格，将广告语言划分为抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，以进行后续探讨。 2.1.3 广告语的相关研究国内外关于广告语的研究比较丰富，主要集中于探讨不同类型广告语带来的营销效果，这与消费情境、消费者个人特质、品牌特征、产品特征等因素密切相关。首先，针对不同的营销情境。Yang 等（2015）研究了在绿色消费情境下广告语言风格和广告诉求对消费者态度和行为的交互影响。研究发现抽象的广告信息与利他诉求搭配，而具体的广告信息与利己诉求搭配时会导致更加积极的绿色消费行为。这是由于利他诉求代表着更远的心理距离，与抽象广告语象征的高解释水平达成匹配；而利己诉求意味着更近的心理距离，与具体广告语代表的低解释水平达成匹配[25]。除此之外，在旅游情境下，研究认为广告语言风格需要与旅游地形象匹配，才能达到良好的宣传效果，例如功利主义目的地强调其功能的强大多样以及给旅游者带来的实际效用，因此更适合使用认知类广告语言便于受众理解，而享乐主义目的地更注重给旅游者带来的体验，这时候使用情感类广告语言会更容易打动受众，由此带来更好的说服效果[26]。其次，对于不同特质的消费者。Ku（2021）针对不同类型自我建构的消费者，探究了他们对不同语言形式的促销信息的反应，结果发现独立型自我建构的消费者更容易被更抽象的促销信息说服，而对于相依型自我建构的消费者，他们则更容易被更具体的促销信息说服，购买不确定性在其中起到中介作用[27]。刘士雄等（2019）和孟陆等（2019）从不同方面对近些年国内流行的网络语言广告进行了研究，发现广告使用网络语言可以引起消费者对广告的注意，并且对于促进定向的消费者，网络语言广告的说服效果更好，由此可带来更高的购买意愿。同时个体对网络语言这一语言形式的态度也会起到调节作用，对网络语言持积极态度的个体对这类广告的态度也会更高，持消极态度的个体则相反[28, 29]。Yang 等（2021）研究了消费者不确定性和权力感这两个特质对其消费健康食物的态度和行为影响。具体的，相比于低不确定性消费者，对于高度不确定性的消费者，理性的广告语言会导致他们更有可能购买健康食物；而相比于低权力感消费者，对于高权力感消费者，感性的广告语言会导致他们更愿意购买放纵食物[30]。此外，虽然很多学者提出过于自信的广告语言是无效的甚至是消极的，但是Wang 和Zhang（2020）的研究发现了这与消费者的权力状态有关，对于高权力状态的消费者，自信的广告语在宣传人们想要得到的产品方面是有效的，而对于低权力消费者来说，自信的广告语则在推广应该得到的产品方面是有效的，这种效应是由消费者对广告信息和产品之间的匹配度感知所中介的[31]。此外，品牌自身特质也是一个重要影响因素。吴月燕等（2019）指出广告语言风格需要与品牌形象匹配才会带来更好的消费者态度，即对于高端形象的品牌而言，文雅风江南大学硕士学位论文 8 格的广告语言更好，而对于低端形象的品牌，通俗的广告语才会带来更好的广告效果[24]。原因在于文雅广告语辞藻华丽的特征让人感觉到更加抽象，这与高端品牌给人带来的天然的远心理距离感知相匹配，基于解释水平理论，这样的匹配效应带来更积极的消费者态度。同样的，通俗的广告语更加朴实具体，处于低解释水平，与低端品牌给人带来的近心理距离感知更加匹配，因此广告效果也更好。除此之外，广告语言的使用效果跟品牌代言人形象之间也存在联系。例如，对于成熟形象的品牌代言人，使用自信的广告语言说服效果更好；而对于可爱形象的品牌代言人，非自信广告语言则会带来更好的广告效果[32]。最后，对于不同特征的产品。研究发现，在跨国公司营销中，广告语言种类的选择跟公司经营产品类型有关。对于必需品，使用当地语言或者混合语种比只使用英语要好，因为这会提升消费者的感知归属水平，而对于奢侈品，使用英语或者混合语种比仅使用当地语言要好，这会提升消费者的感知高贵水平[33]。马晨雅等（2022）探究了对于不同类型的产品凡尔赛文学广告语给消费者带来的影响。研究发现，对于功能性产品，凡尔赛文学广告语会引发消费者更高的诚意感知进而带来更高的羡慕感，产生更好的品牌态度；而对于象征性产品，凡尔赛文学广告语会加强炫耀感知进而带来消费者厌恶感，降低消费者品牌态度[34]。产品价格也是一个需要纳入考虑的因素。Allard 和Griffin（2017）的研究发现对于绝对低成本和绝对高成本产品，相比便宜的产品，昂贵的产品与抽象的广告信息搭配会导致更积极的消费者行为。原因在于价格诱导的心理距离和解释性水平之间的概念匹配流畅[35]。 2.2 心理模拟 2.2.1 心理模拟的内涵和分类心理模拟（Mental Simulation）的概念来源于社会心理学领域，最早由Taylor 和 Schneider（1989）提出，被定义为对某个或某一系列过去、未来或假设事件功能性或过程性的模拟性表征[36]。作为一种心理性认知活动，心理模拟可以包括对未来事件的预想，对过去事件的回忆，以及对假设事件的想象。个体生活中多处都涉及到对事件的模拟，这个过程会激活个体认知，进而带来对个体行为的影响[37]。学者们对心理模拟进行划分并展开了深入研究。Pham 和Taylor（1999）将心理模拟分成了过程模拟（Process simulation）和结果模拟（Outcome simulation）[38]。这是目前学界最常见的分类方式，其中，过程模拟指的是想象完成某个事件的具体过程，结果模拟指的是想象完成某项事件的最终结果。不过也有学者从其他角度对心理模拟进行了划分，比如Dahl 和Hoeffler（2004）根据模拟过程中主体人物的不同，将其划分为“自我相关”和“他人相关”的心理模拟，分别表示在模拟的画面中是以自己为视角中心还是他人为视角中心[39]。Zhao 等（2009）根据模拟的内容来源不同将其划分为“基于记忆的”和“基于想象的”心理模拟[40]。综上，本文引入心理模拟作为内在解释机制，并根据过程模拟和结果模拟的划分进行研究。第二章文献综述 9 2.2.2 心理模拟的相关研究近年来，学者们逐渐将心理模拟的概念引入营销领域，并主要围绕其影响因素和带来的行为后果进行研究。其中，心理模拟会受到时间因素、环境因素和和个人特征的影响。研究发现对于远未来事件，个体更关注可得性，更倾向于采用结果模拟；而对于近未来事件，个体更关注可行性，因而更倾向于采用过程模拟[41]。物体的视觉表征也会影响消费者的心理模拟程度。例如，相较于凌乱排列，当物体以整齐有序的方式排列时，会激发消费者更高的心理模拟[10]。此外，Elder 和Krishna（2012）对餐具摆放位置跟消费者心理模拟之间关系的研究发现，相比朝向非惯用手，当餐具朝向被试的惯用手时，被试者进食的心理模拟程度会更高[42]。不同年龄段的人对心理模拟的偏好也不同，研究发现，年轻人更在乎追求目标的实现，因而更常采用结果模拟；而老年人则更关注个人目标实现的过程，偏向于过程模拟[43]。心理模拟会带来消费者态度和行为的差异。例如Praxmarer（2011）研究发现心理模拟可以降低信息强度对品牌态度的影响[11]。同时，消费者对广告中的产品进行想象会影响其对广告和内容的评价以及对产品的购买意愿[10, 44]。Zhao 等（2011）关注了消费者信息处理模式与心理模拟交互作用对于产品评估的影响。研究结果发现，在认知处理模式下，结果模拟促使消费者更关注产品效益，因而相比过程模拟更加有效；而在情感处理模式下，过程模拟促使消费者想象具体的产品使用步骤，而具象化内容更容易引起情感反应，因而比结果模拟更有效[45]。个体通过心理模拟想象目标实现是一种策略，以此来可视化他们达到目标的路径，并通过改善他们的个人倾向和行动准备来加强自身行为意图。例如，研究发现进行心理模拟的被试更有可能进行后续的健康锻炼行为，过程模拟使得他们更有可能监控自己的行为和提高自己的计划和理性分析能力[46]。心理模拟还会影响冲动性消费行为。对于高冲动特质的消费者，激发其进行过程模拟可以降低他们的冲动购买意向。不过对于低冲动特质消费者，引导其进行结果模拟反而会提高其冲动购买意向[47]。 2.3 思维模式 2.3.1 思维模式的内涵和分类思维模式的概念来源于Navon 在1977 年进行的字母辨别实验[48]。在该实验中研究者向被试展示一张字母图片，大字母由若干个小的字母组成（如多个小的L 组成形状 H），结果发现被试在识别结果上存在差异，有的关注组成部分（L），而其他被试则关注构成的整体（H）。Förster（2012）根据个体这种加工方式的差异，将思维模式划分为整体和局部两种类型[49]。具体来说，整体思维模式的个体关注事物整体化、抽象化的特征，在看待外界时更容易将其视为一个相互联系的整体，当外部刺激出现时，基于加工方式的惯性，也更容易从整体或抽象的视角去理解；相反的，局部思维模式的个体更关注细节，更易于从局部的视觉感知和具体的语义概念去理解外界刺激。不过，也有其他学者从不同角度对思维模式进行了划分。例如，Fujita 等（2006）从渴望性和可行性两方面江南大学硕士学位论文 10 进行分类，提出渴望性是人们想要达到的目的，具有结果导向的性质，所传递出的是抽象或偏宏观整体的信息；而可行性则是与之相反，具有过程导向的性质，更加重视过程，考虑的是具体的行动方案，所表达出的是相对更为具体化、细节化的信息[50]。Freitas 等（2008）站在理想自我和现实自我的角度，考虑了理想和现实这两种状态下个体加工信息的特征。理想自我强调个体所追求的目标，这类自我更容易从与目标联系的紧密性和影响程度来加工处理信息；而现实自我更重视当下，关注现实的具体情况，加工信息具有更偏向具体、细节的特征[51]。此外，还有学者从结果的水平和概率[52]、特质性和情境性归因[53]等角度对思维模式进行界定。综上所述，可以看出思维模式虽然划分的角度不同，但归根结底其本质仍然是考虑个体加工信息时，到底是偏向抽象还是具体。因此，本研究将其引入到广告营销实践中，探究这两种思维模式的消费者对广告语言风格的认知和效果影响。 2.3.2 思维模式的相关研究目前学术界关于思维模式的研究主要围绕其测量、实验启动范式、影响因素以及带来的行为后果几个方面展开。关于思维模式的测量，目前学界普遍参考Vallacher 和 Wegner（1989）的行为识别量表（Behavior Identification Form，BIF）[54]。该量表由25 个行为条目构成，每个行为对应两种层次的解释，这与个体的整体思维模式和局部思维模式相对应。例如罗列清单这一行为从抽象和具体的角度解释分别是“保持秩序”和“记下事情”，在实际测量中将上位行为得分记为“1”，下位行为得分记为“0”，计算得分后按照均值切分法对被试进行分组[55]。同时该量表也可以用于检验思维模式操纵的结果是否成功[56]。就思维模式的实验室启动范式而言，可以从直接操纵和间接操纵两种角度进行。直接操纵是通过改变个体的心理距离水平进行操纵，通过远心理距离启动整体思维，近心理距离启动局部思维，一般使用时间距离或社会距离来实现，例如可以通过让被试想象一年以后（远时间距离）的生活或明天（近时间距离）的生活来分别启动整体思维和局部思维。间接操纵主要是利用图片、文字等进行启动。其中，图片启动是通过让被试完成视觉知觉任务进行的，如向被试展示一张地图，让他们关注地图的整体形状或其中某个局部地区的形状，之后完成形状识别任务[57]。文字启动是让被试完成语义概念中的特定加工任务。例如Förster 和 Dannenberg（2010）提出的 “how”和“why”操纵法[58]，通过让被试回答一系列问题来进行操纵，整体思维模式组关注于“为什么”进行这一活动，而局部思维模式组关注于“怎么做”这一活动。思维模式受到个体和情境两类因素的影响。个人固有的属性如性格、家庭环境、成长经历等都会对思维模式产生影响。研究发现性格外向的个体社交能力更强，接触范围更广，因此更易采用整体加工思维模式，而内向个体则更易采取局部加工思维模式[59]。此外，个体的自我建构类型也是其影响因素。独立型个体更倾向于整体思维，而依存型个体与之相反，会更偏好局部思维，原因在于这类个体更注重具体的社会情境[60]。情境因素包括文化背景[61]、社会情境[62, 63]和营销情境[60]等。例如，集体主义文化下的个体往第二章文献综述 11 往会更倾向于整体思维模式，而个人文化下的个体更倾向于局部思维模式[61]。原因在于东方社会更强调“我们”的概念，而西方文化下更强调个体的独立性，更多关注于“我” 的概念[58]。思维模式影响个体的认知[49]、决策行为[64]等。例如相比于具体思维模式的个体，整体思维模式的个体表现出更强的风险偏好，更容易做出冒险行为[65]。Caballero 等（2022）研究发现在财务稀缺情境下依旧保持整体思维模式的消费者会具有更高的幸福感[63]。近年来越来越多的学者将思维模式的概念引入消费研究领域，主要探究其对消费者心理和行为的影响[66]。例如，思维模式的区别使得消费者在面对品牌延伸时会产生不同反应。相对于局部思维模式消费者，整体思维模式的消费者倾向于认为母品牌与延伸子品牌之间的契合度更高，对品牌延伸的态度也更好[67]。Monga 和John（2010）后来又结合品牌类型进一步研究了消费者思维模式对于品牌延伸的影响，研究发现对于功能品牌，整体思维模式对品牌远延伸的态度比局部思维模式消费者对此的态度更好，而对于声望品牌，不同思维模式消费者对品牌远延伸的态度则没有差异[68]。此外，在面对品牌危机事件时，整体思维的消费者往往会表现出更微弱的反应，对背景信息的依赖使得他们几乎不会受到负面信息的影响[69]，同时也会认为企业弥补过失的做法更值得原谅[70]。 2.4 权力感 2.4.1 权力感的内涵权力感一直以来被认为是社会制度和等级制度中的一个基本组成部分。社会心理学、传播学、家庭科学等领域学者对权力感进行了众多研究。由于权力本身的内涵以及构成维度相对复杂，学者们对其定义也存在差异。社会理论认为权力是一种影响他人的潜力 [71]。Huston（1983）认为权力是个体具有的影响或控制他人行为结果，并以此来实现自身目标的一种能力[72]。本研究参考Keltner 等（2003）[73]、Schmid 和 Schmid Mast（2013） [74]的定义，将权力感定义为在特定情况和社会关系中对有价值的资源和结果的一种不对称控制，在这个过程中个体可以影响他人同时却不被他人所影响。高权力感的个体占据社交关系中的主导地位，具有更高的影响力和控制权，而低权力感的个体则更加被动，处于被影响者地位[75]。来源于自身地位[73]、在特定领域的专业度[76]、对重要资源的掌握[77]等的权力感构成一种稳定的个人特质。不过已有研究表明，权力感也可以超越固有的社会结构转化为一种主观的心理状态，进而影响个人的态度和行为[78-80]。在这种情况下，社会权力通过其产生的权力“感”施加影响，使得个体形成一种感觉自己很强大的心理状态[81]。这表明当与他人进行不对称比较或者回忆特定情境下的角色特征时，个体可以产生相应的高权力感或低权力感心理状态。本研究便利用实验操纵的方式来控制消费者的权力感状态。 2.4.2 权力感的相关研究现有关于权力感的研究覆盖范围较广，涉及社会心理学[82, 83]、营销学[79, 84]等领域，主要围绕其测量与操纵以及影响后果展开。关于权力感的测量，目前学界主要使用江南大学硕士学位论文 12 Anderson 等（2012）开发的权力感量表[85]。关于权力感的操纵，比较常见的有两种方式。一是对个体所处阶层结构进行操纵，如让被试扮演老板（员工）的角色来达到高（低）权力感状态[86]。二是通过激活个体特定记忆进行操纵，如让被试以完成写作任务的方式回忆自己控制他人或被他人控制的经历，以此来达到高权力感或低权力感状态[87]。除此之外，Stel 等（2012）基于具身认知理论探究了说话者音高对于个人权力感的影响，研究结果发现相比提高说话的音调，降低说话的音调会使说话者产生更高的权力感[88]。这也为作为具身变量的权力感提供了新的操纵方式。最初关于权力感的影响后果研究集中在社会心理学领域，研究指出权力感会影响个体的认知、行为及他人感知。对于高权力感的个体，其思想和行为主要受内部思想和目标的控制，不容易受到外部环境影响，因此在不同的环境中更有可能坚持与他们本身目标相一致的行为。相反的，低权力个体会更容易受到外界影响，从而容易根据情境做出违背自我的行为[89]。大量研究表明权力感会带来个体更低的亲社会倾向，因为高权力感的人更容易为了自身利益实施不道德行为[90]。不过随着研究深入，学者发现个人特质和情境因素会改变这种现象。例如对于具有利他特质的个体，高权力感会促使个体更擅长识别、判断他人的表情和情感需求[91]，同时在面对他人未来收益和自身眼前利益的抉择中，他们也会愿意选择前者[92]。类似的，高权力状态的个体在特定情境下也会愿意牺牲个人利益来维护群体利益[93]。此外，权力感也会影响他人的感知。不同权力状态的个体传递出来的信息内涵不尽相同，高权力的个体往往更多传递与能力相关的信息，而低权力者则更多传递温暖的信息。相应的，高权力者也更容易被能力相关的内容说服，而低权力者更偏好温暖的信息[94]。在实际营销情境下，权力感会影响消费者的态度、偏好和行为。研究表明，高权力感的消费者对产品独特性的需求更高[95]，这与他们更关注自身不容易受到外界环境影响的特征有关。而权力感缺失会导致消费者更加有可能做出补偿性购买行为，以替代行为来弥补权力感的缺失，缓解自身不适的状态，同时低权力的消费者也会更偏好地位产品并愿意花更多的钱进行购买[96]。权力感状态也会影响消费者对不同品牌定位的偏好，低权力状态的消费者对示强定位品牌的态度更好，因为强势的品牌可以帮助他们向他人展示优势，促进其权力恢复；而高权力状态的消费者则更喜欢示弱定位的品牌，选择弱势品牌会更加促进他们自身权力的表达[97]。在广告营销中，消费者个人特质与广告诉求保持一致往往会带来更好的效果[98]。江红艳等（2022）研究了文化衍生的权力感导致的个体对不同广告诉求的偏好。结果显示，相比于社会权力感，个人权力感会导致更高程度的唤醒水平，唤醒度更高的消费者会更容易感到兴奋和刺激，进而更加偏好感性诉求的广告[99]。此外，情境因素也会影响权力感带来的后果。Liang 和Chang（2016）研究了社会排斥和权力感的交互作用对消费者独特性产品购买的影响。研究结果揭示了低权力感消费者在社会排斥情境下更会选择独特性产品来彰显自身独特性，而高权力个体则相反，他们在遭遇社会排斥时更喜欢不那么独特的产品，因为这时他们更倾向于跟他人建立社会联系，于是对独特性产品的需求降低[100]。第二章文献综述 13 2.5 研究述评广告语一直都是广告营销领域的一个重要组成部分，它会直接影响消费者的认知、态度和行为等。国内外学者对其进行了较为全面的研究，然而由于营销实践的不断更新，以往研究在某些方面还存在一些不足：（1）现有关于广告语的研究多集中于探究其价值、类型以及讨论在特定营销情境、产品类型、品牌特征等条件下对消费者态度或说服效果的影响，但是关于广告语对消费者心理感知的影响还比较缺乏。本研究将广告语言按照语言风格划分为抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，以往关于这两种风格的广告语言研究要么简单比较其说服效果，要么结合特定的情境，如购买决策的时间远近、与产品的空间距离等，较少关注这两种风格的广告语对消费者心理层面的具体影响。本研究运用实验法来探究这两种类型的广告语对消费者心理感知的影响。（2）在营销领域，现有关于心理模拟的研究主要集中于探讨其对后续变量的影响，关于其前因变量的研究比较缺乏，尤其对于心理模拟作为解释机制的研究并不十分充足。而研究指出处理信息会激发相应的心理模拟，消费者在做决策时也会自发产生心理模拟。本研究立足于广告营销实际，将心理模拟按照结果模拟和过程模拟进行划分，探究不同风格的广告语言对消费者心理模拟的影响。（3）现有关于广告语言效果的影响研究多集中于考虑营销情境、产品类型、品牌特征等因素，与消费者个人特质结合的研究多关注消费者调节定向、自我建构、认知负荷等，尤其对关于抽象和具体的广告语言研究方面还存在一定空白。因此，本研究围绕消费者个人特质，从消费者信息处理模式和心理状态两个角度出发，引入思维模式和权力感这两个个人特征。以往关于这两个个人特质的研究主要集中于心理学、行为学等领域，近年来学者逐渐开始关注其在广告语领域的影响作用，但仍存在一定空白，因此本研究便针对于此，探究其与不同风格广告语言结合带来的说服效果。江南大学硕士学位论文 14 第三章理论基础与研究假设 3.1 理论基础 3.1.1 解释水平理论解释水平理论（Construal Level Theory，CLT）隶属社会认知理论，该理论起源于 Liberman 和Trope 学者1988 年提出的时间解释理论[101]，主要是为了解释经济学领域中的时间折扣的情形，而后得到了广泛的关注和快速的发展。在社会中则是常用来解释人们对社会事件的反应情况与其对事件的心理表征之间的联系，揭示了人们认识世界、做出反应的心理表征，而且强调人们对同一事件的心理表征具有不同的抽象水平，将抽象水平和解释水平联系在一起，抽象水平的高低与解释水平的高低呈正相关关系，即低解释水平具有具体化、复杂化和情景化的特征，而高水平解释理论则是具有抽象化、简单化和去情景化的特征[102]。这种表征水平的差异主要是受心理距离的影响，人们往往对于心理距离近的事物偏好低水平的解释，对于心理距离远的事物则是更偏好高水平的解释。而这种心理距离的远近则是凭借直接经验和间接经验来区分，以自我为原点，从当前自我的直接经验出发，离自我越近、离当前的经验越近则意味着心理距离比较近，反之则远。心理距离随着研究的发展已经细化为时间距离、空间距离、社会距离和概率[103]。时间距离和空间距离主要表示个体对于时间和空间的感知；社会距离则是指社会客体与个体自我的差异程度；概率则是表示事件发生的可能性大小。对于时间靠后、空间较远、社会差异比较大而且发生概率比较小的事件，人们倾向于以高解释水平理解；反之对于时间上很快发生、空间上很紧密、社会距离比较小而且大概率会发生的事件，则更倾向于低解释水平。此外，解释水平的高低也会反过来影响着心理距离的远近，主要表现在对于概率的影响，当人们首先考虑自己对于某一事件的作为或者不作为会带来什么样的影响或是其更深远的意义时，将会影响事件发生的时间、空间、概率[104]。由于心理距离能够影响到解释水平的高低，解释水平理论认为，改变人们对于事物的心理感知距离从而改变其对事物的心理表征水平，从而影响人们的倾向、预测和行为 [105]。而且当事物表现的抽象程度与个体的心理表征的解释水平保持一致时，能够最大程度上影响着个体的决策和行为[102]。这也为通过广告影响人们的心理距离从而影响消费者对于商品进行表征的解释水平提供了理论支撑。 3.1.2 加工流畅性理论加工流畅性（Processing Fluency）是一种元认知体验，指的是个体在脑海中处理信息或内容记忆的难易程度[106]。Graf 等（2018）指出加工流畅性是“一种与任何类型的心理加工相关的轻松或困难的主观感觉，是一种显著影响人类判断的重要元认知线索”。 [107]。加工流畅性的内涵之下包含感知流畅性、概念流畅性和提取流畅性三个子概念[108]。其中，感知流畅性指的是个体对于刺激物（如产品设计或广告）的感知特征（如形式、第三章理论基础与研究假设 15 大小或视觉细节）的识别容易程度[106, 108]。概念流畅性涉及到对客体内涵和意义的解读，是个体在给刺激物赋予意义时的心理操作难易程度，例如，在一个具有预测性的环境中呈现产品，或者被一个相关的事物启动时，会产生这种概念的流畅性[109]。提取流畅性是个体从记忆存储中提取有关信息的难易程度[110]。尽管研究者会区分不同类型的加工流畅性进行针对性研究，但现有结果指出不同类型的加工流畅性给个体带来相同的体验，造成总体上的流畅感觉，并对判断产生类似的影响[107]。因此，在本研究中不探讨具体加工流畅性类型之间的机制差异。加工流畅性会受到由多种因素影响。颜色对比度[111]、押韵[112]、典型性[113]和发音[114] 等都会对加工流畅性产生影响。例如，相比于易读的字体，使用难以阅读的字体会使得阅读者的加工信息流畅性降低，执行新颖的行为也因此变得更加困难[115]。对事物的反复接触行为也会导致后续再接触时的加工流畅性得到提升[116]。加工流畅性在个体行为和消费者行为方面起到重要作用，会影响个体在偏好[117]、真实性[118]和风险[115]等多个方面的判断。人们容易对处理流畅的信息做出更加积极的评价。例如人们会认为阅读起来更容易的文字是更加真实可信的[119]，也会认为容易理解的笑话是更幽默的[120]。在实际消费情境下，加工流畅性也影响着消费者的态度和行为。人们倾向于认为处理起来流畅的信息或事件是可靠的和正确的，进而会产生更积极的态度或行为。例如，当一个目的地形象为温暖时，情感诉求的旅游广告会让受众感知更加匹配，提高处理流畅性进而带来更高的游览意愿；而对于能力形象的目的地，理性诉求的广告会让受众感到更加契合，游览意愿也因此更高[121]。本文引入加工流畅性理论，能够更好地关注和解释不同特质消费者面对不同广告语言时的认知和处理方式，以及由此对广告效果造成的影响。 3.2 研究假设 3.2.1 广告语言风格与消费者心理模拟广告语言可以根据语言风格的不同划分为抽象型和具体型。具体的广告语言是以更加具体或更客观的方式描述产品特征，而抽象的广告语言则包含非特定或含糊不清的措辞，倾向于以更模糊或主观的方式对产品进行描述[22, 23]。以往研究指出具体的广告语言会比抽象的广告语言带来更好的效果。Ogilvy（1983）认为带有具体和详细信息的广告比基于抽象信息构造的广告会让受众觉得更可信和更难忘[3]。Ford 等（1990）和Darley 和Smith（1993）也指出相比主观的广告信息，客观的广告信息带来的消费者怀疑度更低，因此更有利于产生积极的品牌态度[4, 5]。不过随着研究的深入和广告实践的发展，也有学者指出具体广告语优于抽象广告语这一结论并非是决定性的[122]。Alniacik 和Yilmaz （2012）在研究中指出没有证据表明在广告、品牌和购买意图方面，具体信息比抽象信息更有效[6]。Zhao 等（2014）研究了在不同时间框架下信息抽象程度对新产品评价的影响。结果指出，对于回溯性时间框架，详细的产品信息描述会带来更好的消费者新产品评价；而对于预期性时间框架，以抽象风格对产品信息进行描述带来的新产品评价效果更好[123]。因此本研究认为不能简单地直接比较抽象的和具体的广告语言在广告说服效江南大学硕士学位论文 16 果上的优劣，而是需要结合具体情况进行探究。在此之前，本研究首先引入了心理模拟这一概念，在这两种类型的广告语言会分别引发消费者怎样的心理感知层面进行探究。研究指出，理解语言需要对其进行心理模拟[124]。营销实践中企业也广泛应用会引发受众进行心理模拟的广告信息[9]。消费者在进行购买决策时候会自发产生对产品使用的模拟。且当消费者模拟产品使用时，信息强度会产生影响[11]。此外，Petrova 和Cialdini （2005）的研究发现，产品信息的生动性程度会影响消费者的想象流畅度，从而影响消费者心理模拟营销沟通的效果[125]。这些研究结果都表明。消费者在观看产品广告理解广告信息时，会产生相应的心理模拟过程，本研究也因此推论广告语言的类型会对消费者心理模拟产生不同影响。根据解释水平理论，抽象的广告语更加模糊，是对产品的整体概括，对应高解释水平，具体的广告语言则更加详细和聚焦于产品信息，对应低解释水平。如前所述，这会影响消费者对这两类广告语言的认知和处理。之前有学者研究了直接和间接的产品体验方式对消费者心理模拟的影响，结果发现直接体验会导致更高程度的过程模拟，而间接体验会导致更高程度的结果模拟。原因在于直接体验时消费者直接接触产品，体验到具体、底层的线索信息；而间接体验时主要是观看他人对产品的使用过程，这时消费者体验到抽象、高阶的线索信息[126]。类似的，抽象的广告语言代表更高的解释水平，描述内容倾向于产品的综合性、整体性情况，一定程度上反应的是产品带来的功能效益，这与结果模拟的模拟事件目标的特征相一致[127]。依据解释水平理论，本研究认为当消费者看到抽象的广告语言时更容易唤起更高层次的心理表征，引发其模拟使用产品之后带来的效果，即引发消费者对产品进行结果模拟。与之对应的，具体的广告语言代表更低的解释水平，更加详细和明确的产品信息描述使其更容易导致消费者模拟使用产品的过程，唤起消费者更低层次的心理表征，即引发其更多地进行对产品的过程模拟。综上所述，本研究提出如下假设： H1：广告语言风格会引起消费者不同的心理模拟。 H1a：相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会引发消费者更多的过程模拟； H1b：相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会引发消费者更多的结果模拟。 3.2.2 广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的影响消费者思维模式可以划分为整体思维模式和局部思维模式。不同思维模式倾向的个体重点关注的方向不同。简单来说，整体思维模式的消费者更关注目的，局部思维模式的消费者则更关注具体过程[128]。消费者思维模式会影响消费者认知、态度和决策。例如，在新产品采纳情境下，整体思维模式的消费者更容易关注新产品可能带来的好处，从而产生更强的采纳意愿。但是对于局部思维的消费者，他们往往更容易关注与创新采纳相关的风险，因此采纳新产品的意愿也会更低[129]。王娅等（2023）在探究广告景别呈现方式对于消费者广告态度的影响中关注了消费者思维模式的作用。研究结果表明，对于整体思维模式消费者，全景系列广告带来的广告态度更好，而当消费者处于局部思维加工模式时，近景系列广告会导致更积极的广告态度[130]。近年来，学者们也开始在广告第三章理论基础与研究假设 17 语言类型对消费者行为方面影响的研究中，引入消费者思维模式。Herter 等（2022）探究了理性和情感的广告信息类型在诱导戒烟行为方面的有效性。研究结果显示对于整体思维的被试，相比理性信息，情感信息会诱导更多的戒烟行为，而对于局部思维的被试，理性信息的诱导结果更好[131]。现有的关于消费者决策的研究表明，外部刺激符合消费者内部思维模式与否会对评估结果产生重要影响[132]。由此推论，消费者思维模式的差异会导致消费者对不同风格的广告语言产生不同的态度。研究发现，对于整体加工思维模式的消费者，他们习惯于将目标看作整体，倾向于进行整体感知或使用抽象的语义概念去描述对象[130]。Kardes 等（2006）也发现整体思维模式下的个体更加偏好以整体、主要信息呈现的产品[133]。加工流畅性理论指出，个体在处理与自身信息加工方式相匹配的信息时会更加流畅，同时信息说服的效果也会更好[134]。因此，当消费者处于整体思维模式时，相较于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言更加概括，更倾向于产品整体的描述，因此整体思维加工模式的消费者面对抽象的广告信息会感到更加契合，加工信息的过程更加流畅，更易于产生与产品相关的结果模拟进而更容易被说服。而当消费者处于局部思维模式时，他们更容易聚焦目标的细节，倾向于关注局部线索或使用更具体的语义概念去描述对象[130]。研究发现，局部思维下的消费者也更偏爱呈现信息较具体、涉及产品质量的产品[133]。因此对于局部思维模式的消费者，相较于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言聚焦于产品功能的细节描述使其更容易产生与使用过程相关的模拟，这与具体的广告语言特征相契合，由此带来更好的加工流畅性和更好的广告说服效果。综上，本研究提出如下假设： H2：广告语言风格和消费者思维模式的交互影响广告说服。 H2a：对于局部思维模式消费者，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更高的广告说服。 H2b：对于整体思维模式消费者，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更高的广告说服。 3.2.3 广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的影响权力感是心理学中的一个重要概念，它既可以是一种稳定的个人特质也可以是一种暂时性的心理状态。在将其引入营销研究领域后，学者们已经发现权力感会影响消费者的认知、态度和选择，而且权力感也会对消费者感知广告说服方面产生影响[31]。具有高权力感的个体，其控制感和自信心都会更强，更容易控制冲动性消费和做到延迟满足[50]。此外，研究还发现在低自信条件下，人们会更多地处理以具体方式构建的信息，而高自信状态下的个人更会对抽象方式构建的信息进行更多处理[135]。同时，学者也指出信息与受众权力感相匹配会带来积极效果[136]。因此，本研究推论，权力感会影响不同类型广告语言对消费者的说服效果。社会距离理论（Social Distance Theory）指出权力感会影响个体的社会距离[137]。高权力感个体在多数情况下不太会依赖他人，由此形成的不对称的依赖关系代表了一种更遥远的社会距离。而社会距离属于心理距离范畴的一种[103]，高社会距离代表更高的心江南大学硕士学位论文 18 理距离，高心理距离代表高解释水平。因此相比于低权力个体，高权力个体的解释水平程度更高，他们的心理表征更加抽象[88]，同时也有研究证明权力感的体验会促进抽象思维[138]，这些都表明了高权力感带来更高程度的解释水平。除此之外，权力感会影响信息处理策略[139]，高权力感的消费者在做决策时会更关注决策带来的更长远的结果[138]。例如Garbinsky 等（2014）的研究揭示了消费者的储蓄水平会受到个体权力感的影响，高权力感的个体自我控制水平更高，由此带来更高的储蓄水平[140]。本文推断，上述倾向会导致高权力感消费者在接触抽象广告信息时更关注产品给自己带来的实际好处或结果，因此面对抽象的广告信息时也更容易产生对拥有产品带来的结果模拟。相应的，低权力感消费者与具体的广告语言更加契合，因为他们更关注产品的实际功能，而更会愿意去了解展示这些功能本身的具体信息，同时激发他们对产品使用的过程模拟。根据加工流畅性理论，消费者在处理信息过程中感觉越顺畅，信息产生的说服力就会越高[134]。综合以上，高权力感的个体往往处于高建构水平[141]，且他们会更关注事件的结果，因此相较于具体的广告语言，在面对抽象的广告语时，他们的信息处理过程会更加流畅。而低权力感消费者更多采取具体建构水平，因此相较于抽象的广告语言，他们在处理具体的广告语言时更加顺畅。此外，研究者还发现语言风格与说话者的社会地位有关[142]。简单来说就是对于特定的受众，熟悉的语言风格会导致更积极的内容评价。在这一方面来说广告语言风格与权力感个体的表征也达到契合。所以总体来说，对于高权力感的消费者来说，抽象的广告语言会引发更高的结果模拟；对于低权力感的消费者来说，具体的广告语言会引发更高的过程模拟。加之有研究发现促进受众进行心理模拟的广告会带来更好的广告评价和产品态度[143]，因为这会让消费者想象使用或拥有产品带来的效益，进而引发积极的态度和行为。综上，本研究提出如下假设： H3：广告语言风格好消费者权力感交互影响广告说服。 H3a：对于低权力感的消费者，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更高的广告说服。 H3b：对于高权力感的消费者，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更高的广告说服。基于上述研究假设，提出本文的模型框架，如图3-1 所示：图3-1 理论模型第四章实验设计与数据分析 19 第四章实验设计与数据分析基于对已有文献的梳理，立足相关理论，本文提出了3 个研究假设，在本章节中共设计了3 个实验来对其进行一一验证。首先，实验1 探究广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响，即验证H1。实验2 引入消费者思维模式，探究其与广告语言风格的交互作用对广告说服的影响，并检验心理模拟的中介作用，即验证H2。实验3 继续探究另一消费者个人特质——消费者权力感的边界作用，同时检验心理模拟的中介作用，即验证 H3。下面将对每个实验进行详细介绍。 4.1 实验1：广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响实验1 的目的是验证H1（H1a 和H1b），即探究广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响。根据假设，抽象的广告语言更能激发消费者的结果模拟，具体的广告语言更能激发消费者的过程模拟。 4.1.1 预测试本研究首先对正式实验中的自变量广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）进行预测试，目的在于检验广告语言风格操纵的有效性。预测试通过线上平台招募了30 名被试者，将其随机分配到抽象广告语言组和具体广告语言组，观看不同语言风格的产品广告，广告语言风格的操纵设计是在参考Lee 等（2021）[144]的实验材料基础上，结合实际的产品广告改编而成。关于实验刺激物，考虑到消费者对品牌熟悉度的影响，本研究设计了一个虚构的运动鞋广告作为实验对象，具体的：抽象广告语的广告中主标题为“随心奔跑享自由”，底部描述语为“轻质如羽舒适顺滑，伴你畅享凌跃时刻”，而具体广告语的广告中主标题为“低帮竞速慢跑鞋”，底部描述语为“高效Zoomx 泡棉出色缓震，轻盈 Flyknit 鞋面动态贴合”。被试者在观看广告之后需要根据他们的理解对广告语言的抽象程度进行打分，参考Yuan 和Liu（2022）[136]的研究，包括两个问题：“你在多大程度上认为刚才的广告语言是具体的/抽象的？”、“你在多大程度上认为刚才的广告语言是细节的/概括的？”，以此来进行对广告语言风格的操作检验。此外，为了排除一些可能的干扰因素，预测试还测量了被试对于跑鞋的喜爱程度、了解程度和对广告美观度及复杂度的认知。结果表明，在抽象广告语组，被试更倾向于认为广告语言风格是抽象的和概括的；在具体广告语组，被试认为广告语是具体和细节的（M 抽象 = 6.15，SD = 0.16；M 具体 = 2.96，SD = 0.50，t = 5.946，p < 0.001）。此外，被试对于跑鞋的喜爱程度（M 抽象 = 5.44， SD = 0.32；M 具体 = 5.71，SD = 0.30，t = -0.627，p ＞ 0.1）、了解程度（M 抽象 = 5.14， SD = 0.347；M 具体 = 5.43，SD = 0.23，t = -1.146，p ＞ 0.1）、以及对于广告美观度（M 抽象 = 5.50，SD = 0.16；M 具体 = 5.71，SD = 0.29，t = -0.656，p ＞ 0.1）和复杂度（M 抽象 = 2.75，SD = 0.31；M 具体 = 3.00，SD = 0.36，t = -0.527，p ＞ 0.1）的认知没有显著区江南大学硕士学位论文 20 别。因此，对于广告语言风格的操纵成功，后续正式实验可使用这两个跑鞋广告作为实验刺激材料。 4.1.2 实验研究过程（1）实验对象实验1 通过在线问卷平台Credamo 进行数据收集工作。实验共招募120 名被试参加，剔除无效问卷17 份之后（包括未能通过注意力检测、所有问题选项均一致等），最终使用样本数量为103 份。样本中，女性被试66 人，占比较大，为64.1%，男性被试37 人，占比35.9%；被试年龄在19~53 岁区间，平均年龄为29.9 岁；受教育水平集中在本科学历，共有65 人，占比为63.1%，初中及以下学历占比最小，仅有3 人，占比2.9%；月收入分布较平均，3 千元以下、3 千~6 千元、6 千-9 千元区间分别占比22.3%、27.2% 和26.2%。（2）实验设计与过程实验1 采取了单因素（广告语言风格：抽象 vs. 具体）的组间实验设计。所有被试者进入问答界面后被随机分配到两种广告风格语言的组别中，实验刺激材料使用之前在预测试中经过检验的两个跑鞋广告。被试首先进入引导语界面，了解到该调研问卷的用途和相关要求，导语中还强调问题选项无对错之分，请被试根据实际感受回答问题。接着，随机向被试展示一则抽象语言或具体语言的广告，提醒被试注意仔细阅读广告语，后面的问题与之相关，并保证该页面至少停留10 秒以便被试理解和记忆，实验刺激物同预测试。之后，被试需要翻页回答两道关于广告语言风格的操纵检查问题，以及填写结果模拟和过程模拟的量表，同时为排除未认真答题者，本问卷还设置了筛选问题对被试进行注意力检查。最后，被试回答性别、年龄、受教育水平、月收入等基本信息。（3）变量测量操纵检验：为了检验广告语言风格的操纵是否成功，被试需要按照“1”到“7”对 “你在多大程度上认为刚才的广告语言是具体的/抽象的？”和“你在多大程度上认为刚才的广告语言是细节的/概括的？”两道问题进行打分，分数越高表明认为广告语的抽象程度越高。变量测量：结果模拟和结果模拟的测量，基于心理模拟的相关研究，主要参照改编了Edson 和Frances（2004）[145]、Escalas 和Luce（2003）[146]的研究，具体而言，结果模拟通过3 个题项来测量，包括“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了拥有这双跑鞋给你带来的好处或结果？”、“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了穿上这双跑鞋给你带来的影响？”和“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了自己穿上这双跑鞋的实际效果？”；过程模拟同样是采用3 个题项来测量，包括“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中穿着这双跑鞋跑步的情景？”、“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了自己穿着这双跑鞋时的感受？”、“在阅读该广告时，你在多大程度上想象了穿着这双跑鞋的日常场景？”。所有测量题项均使用李克特7 级量表（“1”= 一点也第四章实验设计与数据分析 21 不，“7”= 完全），要求被试根据自己的实际感受进行打分。为检验本实验中使用的心理模拟量表是否规范，对103份有效数据进行信效度检验。信度检验结果显示，结果模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为0.828，过程模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为 0.758，表明两个量表的信度良好。之后，进行KMO 和Bartlett 球形检验，结果显示， KMO = 0.739 > 0.7，Bartlett 球形检验的p 值为0.000，表明数据适合进行探索性因子分析。接着，使用主成分分析法提取到了两个公共因子，累计解释方差达到73.847%。采用最大方差旋转法得到的旋转因子载荷系数均在0.7 以上（见表4-1）。通过上述分析，表明该量表的信效度符合要求。表4-1 探索性因子分析结果维度题项因子 1 2 你在多大程度上想象了拥有这双跑鞋给你带来的好处或结果 0.834 结果模拟你在多大程度上想象了穿上这双跑鞋后给你带来的影响 0.900 你在多大程度上想象了自己穿上这双跑鞋的实际效果 0.769 你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中穿着这双跑鞋的情景 0.877 过程模拟你在多大程度上想象了自己穿着这双跑鞋时它带给你的感受 0.808 你在多大程度上能将穿着这双跑鞋奔跑的场景融入到你的日常生活中 0.904 4.1.3 数据分析和结果本研究均使用SPSS 25.0 软件来进行数据分析。由于自变量广告语言风格是分类变量，因此在数据分析前，先将不同风格的广告语言进行编码，将抽象的广告语言编码为 “1”，具体的广告语言编码为“2”。之后进行独立样本T 检验，分别比较抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言对消费者结果模拟和过程模拟的影响。（1）操纵检验为了检验广告语言风格的操纵是否成功，要求被试在看完实验刺激材料之后，回答两个关于广告语言抽象程度的问题。分析结果表明，对抽象广告语和具体广告语的操纵成功（M 抽象 = 6.15，SD = 0.76；M 具体 = 2.35，SD = 1.14，t = 19.92，p < 0.001）。（2）假设检验独立样本T 检验的结果显示，抽象广告语言组被试的结果模拟得分显著高于具体广告语言组的被试（M 抽象 = 5.84，SD = 0.66；M 具体 = 4.92，SD = 1.65，t = 3.73，p < 0.001）；具体广告语言组被试的过程模拟得分显著高于抽象广告语言组的被试（M 具体 = 5.75，SD 江南大学硕士学位论文 22 = 0.72；M 抽象 = 5.05，SD = 1.20，t = 17.20，p = 0.001）。实验结果表明，被试在阅读抽象的广告语言时产生了更高程度的结果模拟，而在阅读具体的广告语言时产生了更高程度的过程模拟。综上，H1a 和H1b 得到了验证（结果如图4-1 所示）。图4-1 实验1 广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响 4.1.4 实验1 讨论实验1 的结论验证了H1，即相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言更能激发消费者的结果模拟（H1a）；而相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言更能激发消费者的过程模拟（H1b）。不过需要进一步思考，实验1 仅关注了消费者的心理层面，而不同语言风格的广告会对消费者的行为层面，即广告的说服效果产生怎样的影响？在实际营销情境下，广告商应该如何使用这两类语言达到更好的广告说服效果？因此，实验2 和实验3 从消费者特质出发，引入消费者思维模式和消费者权力感，来深入探究广告语言风格（抽象vs. 具体）对于广告说服效果的影响。 4.2 实验2：广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的影响实验2 是在实验1 的基础上进一步探究广告语言风格对广告说服效果的影响。如前所述，消费者处理信息的模式会影响其认知[132]，于是实验2 引入消费者思维模式这个变量，探究其与广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）的交互作用对广告说服效果产生的影响，并验证消费者心理模拟在其中的中介作用，以此来检验H2（H2a 和H2b）。 4.2.1 预测试本研究遵循科学的实验步骤，首先对正式实验中的广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）和消费者思维模式（整体 vs. 局部）的操纵进行预测试。 5.84 5.05 4.92 5.75 4 5 6 7 结果模拟过程模拟心理模拟抽象具体第四章实验设计与数据分析 23 首先测试自变量操纵的有效性，在线上平台招募30 名被试，将其随机分配到抽象广告语言组和具体广告语言组，观看不同语言风格的产品广告，实验操作同实验1 的预测试。其中，抽象广告语言风格组广告的主标题为“自在随性舒适”，底部描述语为“高清真实，轻若无感，轻松拥抱阳光生活”；具体广告语言风格组广告的主标题为“新款太阳眼镜”，底部描述语为“高弹TAC 镜片，一体式鼻托，弧形镜腿，轻至15 克”。数据结果显示，对广告语言风格的操纵成功（M 抽象 = 5.57，SD = 0.42；M 具体 = 2.06，SD = 0.22，t = 7.660，p < 0.001）。此外，被试对于跑鞋的喜爱程度（M 抽象 = 4.93，SD = 0.39； M 具体 = 5.14，SD = 0.27，t = -1.078，p ＞ 0.1）、了解程度（M 抽象 = 5.14，SD = 0.37；M 具体 = 5.44，SD = 0.29，t = -1.562，p ＞ 0.1）、以及对于广告美观度（M 抽象 = 5.00，SD = 0.45；M 具体 = 5.06，SD = 0.31，t = -0.118，p ＞ 0.1）和复杂度（M 抽象 = 3.21，SD = 0.40； M 具体 = 3.00，SD = 0.44，t = -0.359，p ＞ 0.1）的认知没有显著区别。因此该刺激材料可用于正式实验。之后进行对消费者思维模式操纵的预测试，在线上平台招募30 名被试，随机将其分到整体思维模式组和局部思维模式组，本研究的消费者思维模式操纵方式参考Yuan 和Sengupta 等（2011）[56]的研究，要求被试思考 “为什么”和“怎么做”的问题。具体的，在整体思维模式组中，让被试思考“为什么我们需要坚持锻炼身体？”并用简洁的语言回答一系列“为什么”问题；而在局部思维模式组中，让被试思考“我们该怎样坚持锻炼身体？”，同样用简洁的语言回答一系列“怎么做”问题。随后，要求被试填写一份共25 题的行为识别量表（BIF）[54]，每题都需要被试在某个行为的上位目标描述和下位目标描述做出选择。例如“列清单”这一行为存在“保持有条理”（上位描述）和“把东西记下来”（下位描述）两种描述方式，被试根据他们的思维方式在其中做出相应选择即可。之后统计得分，上位描述得分记为1，下位描述得分记为0，加总计算得分，分数越高表明抽象思维的倾向越高。剔除作答不符合提问要求的样本6 名，对剩余24 名样本数据进行独立样本T 检验，结果显示，整体思维模式组的被试抽象化思考程度更高（M 整体 = 18.25，SD = 5.59；M 局部 = 11.58，SD = 5.73，t = 2.88，p = 0.009 < 0.01），说明对消费者思维模式的操纵成功。 4.2.2 实验研究过程（1）实验对象在实验2 中，仍然通过线上问卷发放平台Credamo 进行数据收集工作。共招募240 名被试者，剔除无效问卷36 份（包括未通过注意力检测、所有答案选项均一致等）最终获得有效问卷204 份。其中，男性被试者80 名，占比39.2%，女性被试者124 名，占比为60.9%；被试年龄在19 到59 岁之间，平均年龄为31.36 岁；受教育水平集中在本科，占比达到67.7%，初中及以下学历的被试最少，仅有2 人，占比为1%；月收入主要集中在6 千~9 千元区间，占比为34.3%。（2）实验设计与过程实验2 采取了2（广告语言风格：抽象vs. 具体）×2（思维模式：整体 vs. 局部）江南大学硕士学位论文 24 的组间实验设计。被试进入问答界面后被随机分配到以下四种实验情境的任意一种：1）整体思维模式，抽象广告语言组；2）整体思维模式，具体广告语言组；3）局部思维模式，抽象广告语言组；4）局部思维模式，具体广告语言组。同实验1 中的流程，被试首先进入引导语界面了解问卷用途和相关要求，导语强调选项无对错之分，请被试根据实际感受回答问题。随后，对被试进行思维模式的操纵，操纵方式和材料与预测试一致，操纵完毕要求被试填写BIF 量表。接着，向被试阐述广告语言风格的定义，保持此页面停留至少10 秒。之后随机呈现一组广告语言风格的广告，页面停留时间至少10 秒。广告语言风格的实验刺激材料设计同预测试。之后，进入下一页回答关于广告语言风格的操纵检验问题。随后填写结果模拟、过程模拟、广告说服效果的量表并进行注意力检查。最后，被试回答与实验1中一样的人口统计学信息。（3）变量测量操纵检验：广告语言风格的操纵检验方法和实验1 中保持一致，在被试阅读完刺激物材料后，让他们思考刚才的广告语言是“具体的/抽象的”，和“细节的/概括的”两个问题，并按照程度不同由“1”到“7”进行打分，分数越高表明广告语抽象程度越高。消费者思维模式的操纵检验，是让被试回答包含25 个条目的行为认知量表（BIF），被试在某一具体行为的上位描述和下位描述中做出选择，上位描述得分记为1，下位描述得分记为0，对25 个题目得分进行加总计算，得分越高表明抽象思维的倾向越高。变量测量：因变量广告说服的测量，参考了Karmarkar 和Tormala（2010）[147]和 Vashisht 和Pillai（2016）[148]的研究，包括产品评价和购买意愿两个方面，共有6 个题项，分别为“我喜欢这个墨镜”、“我觉得这款墨镜很好”、“我觉得这款墨镜会受欢迎”、 “我愿意进一步了解这款墨镜的信息”、“我愿意保存这款墨镜的信息作为购买备选”、 “在不考虑价格因素的前提下，我愿意购买这款墨镜”。被试根据自身实际感受进行打分（“1”= 非常不同意，“7”= 非常同意）。结果模拟和过程模拟的测量题项与之前实验一致。被试根据自身实际感受按照“1”到“7”进行打分（“1”= 一点也不，“7”= 完全）。对量表进行信效度检验。信度分析结果显示，结果模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为0.729，过程模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为0.765，广告说服的Cronbach’s α 值为0.914，表明量表的信度均较好。探索性因子分析的结果显示，心理模拟的KMO = 0.803 > 0.7，Bartlett 球形检验的 p 值为0.000；广告说服的KMO = 0.917 > 0.7，Bartlett 球形检验的p 值为0.000，表明问卷数据适合进行探索性因子分析。接着，使用主成分分析法进行分析，心理模拟量表提取到了两个公共因子，累计解释方差达到71.096%，采用最大方差旋转法得到的旋转因子载荷系数均在0.7 以上（见表4-2）。第四章实验设计与数据分析 25 表4-2 探索性因子分析结果（结果模拟与过程模拟）维度题项因子 1 2 你在多大程度上想象了拥有这款墨镜给你带来的好处或结果 0.836 结果模拟你在多大程度上想象了穿上这副墨镜后给你带来的影响 0.855 你在多大程度上想象了自己穿上这副墨镜的实际效果 0.775 你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中佩戴这副墨镜的情景 0.878 过程模拟你在多大程度上想象了自己佩戴这副墨镜时它带给你的感受 0.746 你在多大程度上能将佩戴这副墨镜的场景融入你的日常生活中 0.867 广告说服量表共提取到一个公共因子，累计解释方差达到71.377%，测量题项的因子载荷系数均高于0.7（见表4-3）。通过上述分析，表明量表的信效度符合要求。表4-3 探索性因子分析结果（广告说服）维度题项因子1 广告说服我觉得这款墨镜很好 0.858 0.873 0.842 0.808 0.830 0.855 我喜欢这款墨镜我觉得这款墨镜会受到欢迎我愿意进一步了解这款墨镜的信息我愿意保存这款墨镜的信息作为购买备选在不考虑价格因素的前提下，我愿意购买这款墨镜 4.2.3 数据分析和结果在数据分析中，按照实验1 中的操作对不同风格的广告语言进行编码，将抽象广告语言和具体广告语言分别编码为“1”和“2”。并对消费者思维模式进行类似编码，将整体思维模式编码为“1”，局部思维模式编码为“2”。之后进行双因素方差分析，检验广告语言风格和消费者思维模式的交互作用对广告说服效果的影响。之后再进行独立样本 T 检验，探究具体在何种情况下，哪种风格广告语言的广告说服效果会更好。最后，检验消费者心理模拟在上述效应的中介作用是否存在。（1）操纵检验按照实验1 中的方法对实验2 广告语言风格操纵是否成功进行检验，即被试在观看江南大学硕士学位论文 26 完产品广告后需要根据他们的理解对广告语言的抽象程度进行打分，包括两个问题： “你在多大程度上认为刚才的广告语言是具体的/抽象的和细节的/概括的？”分析结果表明对广告语言风格的操纵成功（M 抽象 = 5.53，SD = 1.47；M 具体 = 2.50，SD = 1.46，t = 14.77， p < 0.001）。消费者思维模式的操纵结果表明，相比于局部思维模式组，整体思维模式组的被试抽象思维倾向更高（M 整体 = 19.63，SD = 6.06；M 局部 = 15.39，SD = 6.47，t = 4.829，p < 0.001）。因此，对消费者思维模式的操纵成功。（2）假设检验广告说服。首先以广告说服为因变量，以广告语言风格、消费者思维模式和二者的交互项为自变量，进行双因素方差分析。数据分析结果显示，广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的交互作用显著（F（1，200）= 14.574，p < 0.001），但是广告语言风格对广告说服的主效应不显著（F（1，200）= 0.076，p = 0.783 > 0.1），消费者权力感对广告说服的主效应也不显著（F（1，200）= 0.029，p = 0.864 > 0.1）。之后对消费者思维模式进行分组，使用独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果表明，对于整体思维模式的被试，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更好的广告说服效果（M 抽象 = 5.84，M 具体 = 5.35，F（1，200）= 6.40，p = 0.012 < 0.05），而对于局部思维模式的被试，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更好的广告说服效果（M 具体 = 5.85，M 抽象 = 5.28，F（1，200）= 8.21，p = 0.005 < 0.01），即消费者思维模式和广告语言风格的交互作用显著影响广告说服（结果见图4-2）。图4-2 广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对广告说服的交互作用结果模拟和过程模拟。首先以结果模拟为因变量，以广告语言风格、消费者思维模式以及二者的交互项为自变量，进行双因素方差分析。数据分析结果表明，广告语言风 5.84 5.35 5.35 5.85 4 5 6 7 整体思维模式局部思维模式广告说服消费者思维模式抽象具体第四章实验设计与数据分析 27 格与消费者思维模式对结果模拟的交互作用显著（F（1，200）= 10.422，p = 0.001），广告语言风格对结果模拟的主效应显著（F（1，200）= 4.605，p = 0.033 < 0.05），而消费者思维模式对结果模拟没有显著影响（F（1，200）= 2.376，p = 0.125 > 0.1）。之后对消费者思维模式分组进行独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果表明，对于整体思维模式的被试，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更高程度的结果模拟（M 抽象 = 5.94，M 具体 = 5.24，F（1，200）= 14.732，p < 0.001），而对于局部思维模式的被试，看到抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，其结果模拟程度没有显著差异（M 抽象 = 5.32，M 具体 = 5.46， F（1，200）= 0.574，p = 0.449 > 0.1）。之后，再以过程模拟为因变量进行双因素方差分析。数据分析结果表明，广告语言风格与消费者思维模式对过程模拟的交互作用显著（F（1，200）= 8.832，p = 0.003 < 0.01），广告语言风格对过程模拟的主效应显著（F（1，200）= 4.525，p = 0.035 < 0.05），而消费者思维模式对过程模拟没有显著影响（F（1，200）= 0.699，p = 0.404 > 0.1）。之后对消费者思维模式分组进行独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果表明，对于局部思维模式的被试，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更高程度的过程模拟（M 具体 = 6.01，M 抽象 = 5.35，F（1，200）= 12.748，p < 0.001），而对于整体思维模式的被试，看到抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，其过程模拟程度没有显著差异（M 抽象 = 5.63，M 具体= 5.52，F（1，200）= 0.364，p = 0.547 > 0.1）。有调节的中介效应检验。本研究采用Hayes（2013）提出的 PROCESS Bootstrap 方法[149]，来检验结果模拟和过程模拟的中介效应。在SPSS 25.0 软件中利用Process 插件进行回归分析，选择 Model 7，设置样本量为5000，置信区间为 95%对数据进行分析。将广告语言风格作为自变量，广告说服作为因变量，结果模拟和过程模拟为中介变量，消费者思维模式为调节变量一一加入方程模型。分析结果显示，广告语言风格对广告说服的直接效应不显著（95%CI，LLCI = -0.1615，ULCI = 0.2431，包含0）。而通过中介变量结果模拟和过程模拟后，广告语言风格对广告说服的间接效应随消费者思维模式的类型变化而变化。结果模拟的中介效应显著（index = 0.3844，95%CI，LLCI = 0.1266， ULCI = 0.7201），具体的，对于整体思维模式，广告语言风格通过结果模拟对广告说服的间接效应显著（effect = -0.3200，95%CI，LLCI = -0.5587，ULCI = -0.1353，不包含0）；而对于局部思维模式，间接效应不显著（effect = 0.0644，95%CI，LLCI = -0.1047，ULCI = 0.2620，包含0）。过程模拟的中介作用显著（index = 0.3377，95%CI，LLCI = 0.1014， ULCI = 0.6656），具体的，对于局部思维模式，广告语言风格通过结果模拟对广告说服的间接效应显著（effect = 0.2897，95%CI，LLCI = 0.1214，ULCI = 0.5162，不包含0）；而对于整体思维模式，间接效应不显著（effect = -0.0480，95%CI，LLCI = -0.2276，ULCI = 0.1112，包含0）。 4.2.4 实验2 讨论实验2 关注广告语言风格在营销实际中的影响，在实验1 的基础上将研究进一步拓展，关注于消费者信息处理模式对广告说服效果的影响，引入了消费者思维模式这一变江南大学硕士学位论文 28 量，探究其与广告语言风格的交互作用对广告说服效果的影响。实验2 的数据结果支持了H2a 和H2b。当消费者处于整体思维模式时，相比具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言更能激发结果模拟，进而导致更高的广告说服。当消费者处于局部思维模式时，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言更能激发结果模拟，进而导致更高的广告说服。此外，结果模拟和过程模拟的中介作用也在实验2 中得到验证。此外，消费者对广告说服的感知，不仅仅与其处理信息的模式有关，研究指出消费者的心理状态也会影响其对信息说服力的感知。接下来的研究将关注消费者自身特质的另一个变量——消费者权力感，是否也会对消费者感知产生不同影响。即对于不同权力感状态的消费者，广告语言风格对广告说服效果的影响具体如何？实验3 将来探究这个问题。 4.3 实验3：广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的影响消费者权力感是另一个重要的消费者个人特质。如前所述，权力感作为消费者的一种心理状态影响其对外界信息的认知。基于此，本实验将其纳为影响消费者感知广告语说服的一个因素，探究广告语言风格与消费者权力感的交互作用。证明广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）和消费者权力感交互影响广告说服效果，同时验证消费者心理模拟在这一影响过程中的中介作用，以此来检验H3（H3a 和H3b）。 4.3.1 预测试本研究首先对正式实验中的广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）和消费者权力感（高 vs. 低）的操纵进行预测试。被试者在观看随机广告之后需要根据他们的理解对广告语言的抽象程度进行打分，以此来进行对广告语言风格的操作检验。预测试的刺激物设计跟之前实验中使用的类似，具体的：抽象广告语言组广告的主标题是“非凡时刻，一拍倾心”，副标题是“捕捉灵感之美，记录精彩瞬间”，底部描述语是“光影分明原生徕卡风格，紧跟主角捕捉万千情绪，清晰成像记忆跃然眼前”；具体广告语组广告的主标题是“新款手机，智能拍照”副标题是“5nm 先进制程芯片，专业算法加持”，底部描述语是“搭载三大徕卡大师镜头，前置5000 万追焦镜头，6400 万超清大底主摄”。同之前实验一样，还对被试对于手机的喜爱程度、了解程度以及对广告美观度及复杂度的认知进行了测量。数据分析结果表明，对广告语言风格的操纵成功（M 抽象 = 5.47，SD = 0.34；M 具体 = 1.97，SD = 0.29，t = 7.924， p < 0.001）。此外，被试对于手机的喜爱程度（M 抽象 = 5.20，SD = 0.34；M 具体 = 5.67， SD = 0.36，t = -0.940，p ＞ 0.1）、了解程度（M 抽象 = 4.53，SD = 0.42；M 具体 = 4.60， SD = 0.36，t = -1.120，p ＞ 0.1）、以及对于广告美观度（M 抽象 = 5.80，SD = 0.22；M 具体 = 5.93，SD = 0.42，t = -0.281，p ＞ 0.1）和复杂度（M 抽象 = 3.80，SD = 0.54；M 具体 = 3.60，SD = 0.55，t = 0.778，p ＞ 0.1）的认知没有显著区别。因此该刺激材料可用于正式实验。之后进行对消费者权力感的预测试，在线上平台招募30 名被试，随机将其分到高第四章实验设计与数据分析 29 权力和低权力组，本研究的权力感操纵方式参考Yuan 和Liu（2022）[136]的研究。具体的，在高权力感条件下，被试需要回忆他们自己曾经的一次拥有权力感的经历，在那段经历中他们可以充分决定自己的行为而不受他人影响；在低权力感条件下，被试需要回忆他们曾经的一次缺少权力感的经历，在那段经历中他们的行为会受到他人影响和控制。两种情境下都要求被试围绕时间、地点、人物、事件、感受五个关键点描述这段经历，字数不少于120 字。完成上述任务后，被试需要根据Likert 7 级量表回答3 个问题以完成对消费者权力感状态的操纵检验，分别是“此刻，我感觉自己有很大的权力”、 “此刻，我感觉占据主导权”、“此刻，我感觉自己很有影响力”（1=非常不同意，7=非常同意）。结果显示，高权力感组与低权力感组中被试的权力感知存在显著差异（M 高权力感 = 5.98， SD = 0.65；M 低权力感 = 2.36，SD = 1.77，t = 7.49，p < 0.001），说明对消费者权力感状态的操纵成功，可以在后续正式实验中应用此方法进行操纵。 4.3.2 实验研究过程（1）实验对象实验3 采取跟之前实验一样的数据收集方式，通过线上问卷平台Credamo 发放问卷 240 份，剔除无效问卷35 份（包括未通过注意力检测、所有答案选项均一致等）最终获得有效问卷205 份。其中，男性被试者96 名，占比46.8%，女性被试者109 名，占比为 53.2%；被试年龄在19 到58 岁之间，平均年龄为30.69 岁；受教育水平集中在本科，占比达到70.7%，高中学历的被试最少，仅有4 人，占比为2%；月收入主要集中在6 千 ~9 千元区间，占比为31.2%。（2）实验设计与过程本实验采取2（广告语言风格：抽象 vs. 具体）×2（权力感：高 vs. 低）的组间设计。所有的被试进入问答界面后被随机分配到以下四种实验情境下的任意一种：1）高权力感，抽象广告语言组；2）高权力感，具体广告语言组；3）低权力感，抽象广告语言组；4）低权力感，具体广告语言组。首先，在正式实验开始之前，被试进入引导语界面，了解到该调研问卷的用途和相关要求等信息。随后，对被试进行权力感的操纵，操纵方式和材料与预测试一致，采取的是回忆自己曾经的一段拥有/丧失权力感的经历，要求他们围绕时间、地点、人物、事件、感受五个关键点，以不少于120 字的字数记录下来，让被试最大可能回忆起当时经历的过程和感受。之后点击下一页进入对权力感的操纵检验，同预测试中一样，被试需要回答“此刻，我感觉自己有很大的权力”、“此刻，我感觉占据主导权”、“此刻，我感觉自己很有影响力”三个问题，根据不同程度按照“1”到“7”进行打分。接着，向被试阐述广告语言风格的定义，保持此页面停留至少10 秒。之后随机呈现一组广告语言风格的广告，页面停留时间至少10 秒。广告语言风格的实验刺激材料同预测试。之后，进入下一页回答关于广告语言风格的操纵检验问题。随后填写结果模拟、过程模拟、广告说服效果的量表并进行注意力检查。最后，被试回答同之前实验一样的人口统计学信息。江南大学硕士学位论文 30 （3）变量测量操纵检验：广告语言风格的操纵检验同实验1，在被试阅读完实验刺激材料后，让他们回答认为刚才的广告语是具体的/抽象的，和细节的/概括的两个问题，按照“1”到 “7”进行打分，分数越高表明广告语抽象程度越高。对于消费者权力感的操纵检验，在让被试回忆并写下特定的经历后，需要回答“此刻，我感觉自己有很大的权力”、“此刻，我感觉占据主导权”、“此刻，我感觉自己很有影响力”（“1”= 非常不同意，“7”= 非常同意）3 个问题。变量测量：因变量广告说服的测量同实验2，结果模拟和过程模拟的测量题项与之前实验相同。被试根据自身实际感受按照“1”到“7”进行打分（“1”= 一点也不，“7” = 完全）。对量表进行信效度检验。信度分析结果显示，结果模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为0.733，过程模拟的Cronbach’s α 值为0.725，广告说服的Cronbach’s α 值为0.912，表明量表的信度均较好。探索性因子分析的结果显示，心理模拟的KMO = 0.843 > 0.7，Bartlett 球形检验的 p 值为0.000；广告说服的KMO = 0.904，Bartlett 球形检验的p 值为0.000，表明问卷数据适合进行探索性因子分析。接着，使用主成分分析法进行分析，心理模拟量表提取了两个公共因子，累计解释方差达到69.784%，采用最大方差旋转法得到的旋转因子载荷系数均在0.7 以上（见表4-4）。表4-4 探索性因子分析结果（结果模拟与过程模拟）维度题项因子 1 2 你在多大程度上想象了拥有这款手机给你带来的好处或结果 0.896 结果模拟 .你在多大程度上想象了使用这款手机后给你带来的影响 0.766 你在多大程度上想象了自己使用这个手机拍照带来的实际效果 0.815 你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中使用这款手机拍照的情景 0.766 过程模拟你在多大程度上想象了自己使用这款手机拍照时它带给你的感受 0.820 你在多大程度上能将使用这款手机拍照的场景融入你的日常生活中 0.801 广告说服量表共提取到一个公告因子，累计解释方差达到70.613%，测量题项的因子载荷系数均高于0.7（见表4-5）。通过上述分析，表明量表的信效度符合要求。第四章实验设计与数据分析 31 表4-5 探索性因子分析结果（广告说服）维度题项因子1 广告说服我觉得这款手机很好 0.868 0.848 0.847 0.790 0.828 0.859 我喜欢这款手机我觉得这款手机会受到欢迎我愿意进一步了解这款手机的信息我愿意保存这款手机的信息作为购买备选在不考虑价格因素的前提下，我愿意购买这款手机 4.3.3 数据分析结果实验3 的数据分析采用跟之前实验一致的方法，将抽象广告语言组和具体广告语言组分别编码为“1”和“2”。同时对消费者权力感进行编码，将高权力感编码为“1”，低权力感编码为“2”。之后进行双因素方差分析，检验广告语言风格与消费者权力感的交互作用对广告说服效果的影响。之后再进行独立样本T 检验，探究具体在何种情况下，哪种风格广告语言的广告说服效果会更好。最后，检验消费者心理模拟在上述效应的中介作用是否存在。（1）操纵检验对广告语言风格的操纵检验方法与之前实验一致，分析结果表明对广告语言风格的操纵成功（M 抽象 = 5.60，SD = 1.30；M 具体 = 2.45，SD = 1.32，t = 17.20，p < 0.001）。消费者权力感的操纵结果表明，相比于低权力感组被试，高权力感被试认为此刻自己的权力感更大，更占主导地位（M 高权力感 = 5.62，SD = 0.92；M 低权力感 = 2.37，SD = 1.54， t = 18.61，p < 0.001）。因此，对消费者权力感的操纵成功。（2）假设检验广告说服。以广告说服为因变量，以广告语言风格、消费者权力感和二者的交互项为自变量，进行双因素方差分析。分析结果显示，广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的交互作用显著（F（1，201）= 27.166，p < 0.001），同时广告语言风格对广告说服的主效应不显著（F（1，201）= 0.072，p = 0.789 > 0.1），消费者权力感对广告说服的主效应也不显著（F（1，201）= 0.032，p = 0.859 > 0.1）。之后对消费者权力感进行分组，使用独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果表明，对于高权力感的被试，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更好的广告说服效果（M 抽象 = 6.00，M 具体 = 5.35，F（1，201） = 11.322，p = 0.001），而对于低权力感的被试，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更好的广告说服效果（M 具体 = 6.06，M 抽象 = 5.33，F（1，201）= 16.312，p < 0.001），即消费者权力感和广告语言风格的交互作用显著影响广告说服（结果如图4-3）。江南大学硕士学位论文 32 图4-3 广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服的交互作用结果模拟和过程模拟。首先，以结果模拟为因变量，以广告语言风格、消费者权力感和二者的交互项为自变量，进行双因素方差分析。分析结果显示，广告语言风格与消费者权力感对结果模拟的交互作用显著（F（1，201）= 8.374，p = 0.004 < 0.01），广告语言风格对结果模拟的主效应显著（F（1，201）= 5.542，p = 0.020 < 0.05），消费者权力感对结果模拟的主效应显著（F（1，201）= 6.062，p = 0.015 < 0.05）。之后对消费者权力感进行分组，使用独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果显示，对于高权力感的被试，相比于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言会导致更高程度的结果模拟（M 抽象 = 5.84，M 具体 = 5.36，F（1，201）= 12.756，p < 0.001），而对于低权力感的被试，看到抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，其结果模拟程度没有显著差异（M 抽象 = 5.35，M 具体 = 5.40，F （1，201）= 0.158，p = 0.691 > 0.1）。之后，以过程模拟为因变量，以广告语言风格、消费者权力感和二者的交互项为自变量，进行双因素方差分析。数据分析结果显示，广告语言风格与消费者权力感对过程模拟的交互作用显著（F（1，201）= 4.724，p = 0.031 < 0.05），广告语言风格对过程模拟的主效应显著（F（1，201）= 5.480，p = 0.020 < 0.05），消费者权力感对过程模拟的主效应显著（F（1，201）= 6.827，p = 0.01）。之后对消费者权力感进行分组，使用独立样本T 检验。数据分析结果显示，对于低权力感的被试，相比于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言会导致更高程度的过程模拟（M 具体 = 5.95，M 抽象 = 5.46，F（1，201）= 11.069， p = 0.001），而对于高权力感的被试，看到抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言，其进行过程模拟的程度没有显著差异（M 抽象 = 5.41，M 具体 = 5.43，F（1，201）= 0.013，p = 0.909 > 0.1）。有调节的中介检验。根据上述假设，本研究认为结果模拟和过程模拟会中介广告语言风格与消费者权力感对广告说服效果的交互影响。采用跟实验2 中一致的方法来进行中介检验。将广告语言风格作为自变量，广告说服作为因变量，结果模拟和过程模拟为中介变量，消费者权力感为调节变量一一加入方程模型。数据分析结果显示，广告语言 6.00 5.33 5.35 6.06 4 5 6 7 高权力感低权利感广告说服消费者权力感抽象具体第四章实验设计与数据分析 33 风格对广告说服的直接效应不显著（95%CI，LLCI = -0.1044，ULCI = 0.3544，包含0）。而通过结果模拟和过程模拟后，广告语言风格对广告说服的间接效应随消费者权力感的类型变化而变化。结果模拟的中介效应显著（index = 0.3328，95%CI，LLCI = 0.0903， ULCI = 0.6229），具体的，对于高权力感，广告语言风格通过结果模拟对广告说服的间接效应显著（effect = -0.3018，95%CI，LLCI = -0.5374，ULCI = -0.1034，不包含0）；而对于低权力感，间接效应不显著（effect = 0.0310，95%CI，LLCI = -0.1324，ULCI = 0.2021，包含0）。过程模拟的中介作用显著（index = 0.1647，95%CI，LLCI = 0.0141，ULCI = 0.4392）。具体的，对于低权力感，广告语言风格通过结果模拟对广告说服的间接效应显著（effect = 0.1710，95%CI，LLCI = 0.0532，ULCI = 0.3795，不包含0）；而对于高权力感，间接效应不显著（effect = 0.0063，95%CI，LLCI = -0.1292，ULCI = 0.1147，包含 0）。 4.3.4 实验3 讨论实验3 考虑了营销领域中另一个重要的个人特质，即消费者权力感，将其纳入影响消费者对不同风格广告语言感知说服的因素。实验3 的数据分析结果支持了H3a 和H3b。即对于高权力感消费者而言，抽象广告语言比具体广告语言更能激发其进行结果模拟，进而导致更好的广告说服效果。而对于低权力感消费者，具体广告语言比抽象广告语言更能激发其进行过程模拟，进而导致更好的广告说服效果。同时，结果模拟和过程模拟在其中的中介作用也得到验证。本章节进行了三个实验，对之前提出的假设进行了一一检验。下一章，本文将对上述研究得出的结论进行总结与分析，并从理论贡献和实践启示两个方面分别进行阐述，最后分析以上研究尚且存在的不足之处，为之后的相关研究提供可能的方向。江南大学硕士学位论文 34 第五章研究结论与展望 5.1 研究结论本研究以广告语言风格为研究对象，通过3 个实验比较了抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言在消费者心理感知和广告说服方面的不同影响。研究表明，抽象的广告语言和具体的广告语言会促进消费者产生不同程度的结果模拟和过程模拟。并且这种效应在与消费者思维模式和消费者权力感两个因素的交互作用下，对广告说服效果产生不同影响。第一个实验探究广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的影响。第二个实验将该效应延伸到消费者行为层面，从个体信息处理模式角度出发，探究了广告语言风格和消费者思维模式的交互作用，验证了广告语言风格和消费者思维模式交互对广告说服的影响。第三个实验继续围绕消费者个人特质的影响，关注消费者接收信息时心理状态的影响，探索了广告语言风格和消费者权力感交互对广告说服的作用机制。经过实证分析后本研究得出如下结论：第一，广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）对消费者心理模拟产生不同的促进作用。具体而言，相较于具体的广告语言，抽象的广告语言更能促进消费者的结果模拟；而相较于抽象的广告语言，具体的广告语言更能促进消费者的过程模拟。第二，广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）与消费者思维模式交互作用会影响广告说服效果。消费者对信息的加工处理模式影响着他们对信息的认知和偏好，实验2 中将消费者思维模式划分为整体思维模式和局部思维模式进行探究。实验2 的结果验证了，对于整体思维模式的消费者，相较于具体的广告语，抽象的广告语言更能激发结果模拟，进而带来更好的广告说服；对于局部思维的消费者，相较于抽象的广告语，具体的广告语言更能激发过程模拟，进而带来更好的广告说服。并验证了结果模拟和过程模拟在该效应中的中介作用。第三，广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）与消费者权力感的交互作用会影响广告说服效果。作为广告的接收者，消费者接受信息时的心理状态也会对广告有效性产生影响。实验3 的结果验证了消费者权力状态的高低会影响他们对信息风格的偏好。具体的，对于高权力感的消费者，相较于具体的广告语，抽象的广告语言更能激发其进行结果模拟，进而带来更好的广告说服；对于低权力感的消费者，相较于抽象的广告语，具体的广告语言更能激发其进行过程模拟，进而带来更好的广告说服。并验证了结果模拟和过程模拟在该效应中的中介作用。 5.2 理论贡献和实践启示 5.2.1 理论贡献（1）探究了广告语言风格对消费者心理模拟的不同影响，丰富和补充了广告语和心理模拟方面的研究成果。以往的研究要么简单比较不同的广告语类型的优劣，如第五章研究结论与展望 35 Darley 和Smith（1993）认为具体的广告语言提供了更多更详细有用的信息，因此相比抽象语言会产生更好的品牌态度[5]。要么结合不同情境进行探讨，如Yang 等（2015）关注语言风格和广告诉求的匹配，结果显示抽象语言和利他诉求更加契合，具体语言和利己诉求更加契合[25]。关于语言风格影响广告说服的内部机制研究比较缺乏。与此同时，在营销领域内关于心理模拟的研究也更多关注其对于广告营销效果的影响，比如过程模拟有助于促进消费者对新产品创新有用性的感知，而结果模拟有助于提升消费者感知产品创新的新颖性[150]，有关心理模拟的前因研究相对较少。针对于此，本研究基于解释水平理论和加工流畅性理论，将抽象的和具体的广告语言与心理模拟结合起来，将心理模拟进行细分，探究广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）对消费者结果模拟和过程模拟的影响，从新的角度帮助理解消费者在不同的语言风格类型下所做出不同反应。（2）引入消费者思维模式这一消费者个人特质，探究消费者思维模式和广告语言风格的交互作用，丰富了思维模式在广告语领域的应用研究。以往研究主要关注营销情景[25, 26]、品牌特征[24, 32]、产品类型[33, 34]等在广告语说服效果中的边界作用，关于将消费者个人特质与广告语言类型结合进行的研究也主要聚焦于消费者调节定向[29]、自我建构 [27, 151]等方面。消费者思维模式是一个重要的个人特征变量，营销学者多关注思维模式在品牌延伸情境下的作用，强调整体和局部的思维模式影响着消费者对延伸子品牌与母品牌契合程度的感知[68, 152]。研究指出个体加工信息的模式会影响对信息内容的评价结果[132]。虽然已有研究存在对消费者思维模式与特定语言类型之间关系的探究，如感性语言和整体思维模式更加匹配，理性语言与局部思维模式更加匹配[131]。但学者们尚未从广告语言风格的角度出发，关注抽象和具体的广告语言风格和消费者思维模式结合形成的广告效果。本研究探究了整体思维模式与局部思维模式的消费者对抽象的和具体的广告语言的感知说服效果，提供了思维模式在广告语研究方面的新视角，深化了广告语言领域的研究。（3）引入消费者权力感这一消费者个人特质，探究消费者权力感和广告语言风格的交互作用，丰富了权力感理论在广告语领域的应用研究。本研究引入社会心理学领域常见的权力感概念作为其中一个个人特质进行研究。以往在营销领域关于权力感的研究多集中于补偿性消费[96]、自控行为[30]等。虽然有学者研究指出信息类型与受众权力感相匹配会带来积极效果[136]，但围绕权力感对广告语言风格的影响研究还不够全面，也缺乏对内部机制的探讨。本研究便聚焦于此，探究广告语言风格（抽象 vs. 具体）与消费者权力感的交互作用对广告说服的影响。研究结论拓宽了消费者个人特质对广告语言效果的影响研究，也进一步丰富了权力感在营销领域的相关研究。 5.2.2 实践启示（1）帮助企业营销人员合理打造广告内容，在广告语构建的有效性方面提供可操作的建议。广告语是一个广告的重要组成部分，包含较多的信息量，并以最直接的文字形式向消费者传递广告主题和产品信息。良好的广告语可以给消费者留下深刻的印象进而达到更好的说服效果。本研究的结果表明，不同的广告语言风格会引发消费者不同的江南大学硕士学位论文 36 心理模拟。由此，企业营销人员可以采取更加抽象的广告语言，强调产品整体概况，以此来促进消费者对于拥有产品的结果模拟，或者使用具体的广告语言，强调产品细节，以此来促进消费者对产品使用的过程模拟。（2）广告语言对广告说服的作用受到消费者思维模式的影响，因此企业在设计广告时将消费者思维模式这一概念融入进去。可以通过情境化语言操纵受众的思维模式，使之与广告中的语言风格达到匹配。主要是整体思维模式与抽象语言搭配，局部思维模式与具体语言搭配，以此来提升广告有效性。当想要使用抽象广告语言时，可以在广告信息增加引导消费者思考“为什么”的语句，以此操纵消费者为整体思维模式，而当想要使用具体的广告语言时，可增加引导消费者思考“怎么做”的语句，以此操纵消费者为局部思维模式。由此，使广告语言风格和消费者思维模式达成匹配以提升广告的说服效果。（3）消费者权力感和广告语言风格交互影响广告说服，指导企业营销人员在构建广告语时要考虑消费者个人特质，向消费者精准推送匹配的语言风格广告。营销人员可以运用大数据挖掘等手段，得出用户画像，对消费者进行细分进行广告精准推送。具体的，对于高权力感消费者组成的目标市场，抽象语言的广告更能激发他们的结果模拟，想象拥有产品带来的好处，产生更好的广告说服效果。对于低权力感消费者组成的目标市场，具体语言的广告更能激发他们的过程模拟，满足他们对产品具体功能信息的了解需求，进而带来更好的广告说服效果。因此在进行制作广告并进行推送时，需要考虑抽象具体的语言风格和消费者权力感状态的匹配，以此提升广告有效性。 5.3 局限性及未来展望本文以广告语领域的已有研究为基础，以一个新的研究视角构建研究模型并开展相关实验，验证了本文所提出的3 个假设，拓宽了已有理论的边界并能为相关实践提供一定启示。但仍存在一些不足，需要在今后的研究中加以改进和丰富。主要有以下两点：（1）从研究内容上来看，一是本文比较了抽象和具体的广告语言风格，但营销实际中也存在二者混合使用的情况，因此未来的研究可以关注同时包含抽象广告语和具体广告语对消费者的影响。二是本研究关注的是文字信息的抽象和具体，而广告设计中图像也是一个重要的组成部分，因此之后的研究也可以结合抽象或具体的图像来进行深入研究。（2）从研究方法上来看，一是本文3 个研究使用的都是实验法，方法多样性方面有所欠缺。未来研究可以加入数据挖掘、田野实验等方法加以交叉验证，从实际的广告语营销情境中获取相关数据，从而进一步验证和丰富本研究的结论。二是实验刺激物的选择，本实验选择的均是实体类产品，未来研究可以探究对服务类产品如移动网络、虚拟游戏、酒店业等，广告语言抽象程度是否会产生类似影响。参考文献 38 参考文献 [1] Bambauer-Sachse S, Hüttl V, Gierl H. 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Journal of International Marketing, 2019, 27(2): 1-21. 附录 48 附录B：实验1问卷一、概念解释抽象的语言包含模糊措辞的广告信息，并以更抽象和非特定的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们的水源取自长白山天然矿泉水保护区，纯净清澈，带着松软雪花的味道”；具体的语言包含详细和丰富的广告信息，并以更具体的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们采用纳滤净水科技，二级反渗透过滤水中杂质，保证纯净水质”。二、实验刺激物（被试只能随机看到一种情景）请想象您现在正计划购买一双新的跑鞋，您在某购物网站时浏览了很多跑鞋产品的信息，您看中了其中一款跑鞋，广告信息如下所示，请仔细阅读以下广告，接下来的问题与这个广告有关。抽象广告语言具体广告语言三、操纵检验在观看完上述广告后，请您根据对广告语言抽象程度的感受，你认为以上广告语是：具体的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 抽象的细节的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 概括的四、变量测量我们对您看完广告后的感受感兴趣，请您回答，在阅读上述广告时， 1.你在多大程度上想象了拥有这双跑鞋给你带来的好处或结果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.你在多大程度上想象了穿上这双跑鞋后给你带来的影响一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.你在多大程度上想象了自己穿上这双跑鞋的实际效果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全附录 49 4.你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中穿着这双跑鞋的情景一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 5.你在多大程度上想象了自己穿着这双跑鞋时它带给你的感受一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 6.你在多大程度上能将穿着这双跑鞋奔跑的场景融入到你的日常生活中一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全五、基本信息 1.性别： ○男 ○女 2.年龄: _______ 3.最高受教育水平：○初中及以下 ○高中学历 ○专科学历 ○本科学历 ○硕士及以上 4.月收入：○3千元以下 ○3千~6千元 ○6千~9千元 ○9千~1.2万元 ○1.2万元及以上附录 50 附录C：实验2问卷一、消费者思维模式操纵 ⚫ 整体思维：生活中我们做任何事情都有其内在原因，比如一个人读大学，可能是为了获取知识。那为什么要获取知识，可能是为了提升自己的能力。为什么要提升能力？可能是为了有获得更好的就业机会…… 下面，请您思考您认为我们为什么需要锻炼身体？并用简洁的语言回答问题。 ⚫ 局部思维：生活中我们做任何事情都有其具体步骤，比如一个人想要找到一份好工作，那他可能需要获得一份好文凭。而要获得一份好文凭，可能需要努力学习知识。而努力学习知识，可能需要端正自己的学习态度…… 下面，请您思考您认为我们该如何锻炼身体？并用简洁的语言回答问题。坚持锻炼身体怎么做怎么做怎么做怎么做坚持锻炼身体为什么为什么为什么为什么附录 51 在以下题项中，列出了生活中的一些行为，每种行为后会有两种不同的描述方式。请您在每种行为后的两个选项中，选择一种您个人认为最合适的描述，不存在对错，请根据实际感受回答下列问题：附录 52 二、概念解释抽象的语言包含模糊措辞的广告信息，并以更抽象和非特定的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们的水源取自长白山天然矿泉水保护区，纯净清澈，带着松软雪花的味道”；具体的语言包含详细和丰富的广告信息，并以更具体的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们采用纳滤净水科技，二级反渗透过滤水中杂质，保证纯净水质”。三、实验刺激物（被试只能随机看到一种情景）请想象您现在正计划购买一双新的墨镜，您在某购物网站时浏览了很多墨镜产品的信息，您看中了其中一款墨镜，广告信息如下所示，请仔细阅读以下广告，接下来的问题与这个广告有关。抽象广告语言具体广告语言四、操纵检验在观看完上述广告后，请您根据对广告语言抽象程度的感受，你认为以上广告语是：具体的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 抽象的细节的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 概括的五、变量测量我们对您看完广告后的感受感兴趣，请您回答，在阅读上述广告时， 1.你在多大程度上想象了拥有这款墨镜给你带来的好处或结果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.你在多大程度上想象了使用这副墨镜后给你带来的影响一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.你在多大程度上想象了自己使用这款墨镜带来的实际效果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 4.你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中佩戴这副墨镜的情景一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 5.你在多大程度上想象了自己佩戴这副墨镜时它带给你的感受一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 6.你在多大程度上能将佩戴这副墨镜的场景融入你的日常生活中一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全附录 53 看完上述广告，对于该广告和产品，你的感受是： 1.我觉得这款墨镜很好一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.我喜欢这款墨镜一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.我觉得这款墨镜会受到欢迎一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 4.我愿意进一步了解这款墨镜的信息一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 5.我愿意保存这款墨镜的信息作为购买备选一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 6.在不考虑价格因素的前提下，我愿意购买这款墨镜一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全六、基本信息 1.性别： ○男 ○女 2.年龄: _______ 3.最高受教育水平：○初中及以下 ○高中学历 ○专科学历 ○本科学历 ○硕士及以上 4.月收入：○3千元以下 ○3千~6千元 ○6千~9千元 ○9千~1.2万元 ○1.2万元及以上附录 54 附录D：实验3问卷一、权力感操纵 ⚫ 高权力感请您回忆一次曾经拥有权力感的经历。在该场景下，您拥有对自己行为的控制权，可以决定想做什么就做什么，期间您的行为可以不受他人影响而保持独立。下面请您围绕这段经历中的时间、地点、人物、事件和感受，以不少于120 字在下方记录下来。 ______________________________________________________________ ⚫ 低权力感请您回忆一次你曾经缺少权力感的经历。在该场景下，您丧失对自己行为的控制权，无法决定自己想做的事，期间您的行为会受到他人影响和控制。下面请您围绕这段经历中的时间、地点、人物、事件和感受，以不少于120 字在下方记录下来。 ______________________________________________________________ 请您根据此刻的实际感受回答以下问题： 1.此刻，我感觉自己有很大的权力一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.此刻，我感觉自己占据主导权一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.此刻，我感觉自己很有影响力一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全二、概念解释抽象的语言包含模糊措辞的广告信息，并以更抽象和非特定的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们的水源取自长白山天然矿泉水保护区，纯净清澈，带着松软雪花的味道”；具体的语言包含详细和丰富的广告信息，并以更具体的方式描述产品的特征，比如“我们采用纳滤净水科技，二级反渗透过滤水中杂质，保证纯净水质”。三、实验刺激物（被试只能随机看到一种情景）现在请您想象您正考虑购买一部新手机。您在购物网站浏览了很多手机产品的信息，现在看中了其中一款手机，广告信息如下所示，请仔细阅读该广告，接下来的问题将与这个广告有关。附录 55 抽象广告语言具体广告语言四、操纵检验在观看完上述广告后，请您根据对广告语言抽象程度的感受，你认为以上广告语是：具体的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 抽象的细节的 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 概括的五、变量测量我们对您看完广告后的感受感兴趣，请您回答，在阅读上述广告时， 1.你在多大程度上想象了拥有这款手机给你带来的好处或结果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.你在多大程度上想象了使用这款手机后给你带来的影响一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.你在多大程度上想象了自己使用这个手机拍照带来的实际效果一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 4.你在多大程度上想象了日常生活中使用这款手机拍照的情景一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 5.你在多大程度上想象了自己使用这款手机拍照时它带给你的感受一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 6.你在多大程度上能将使用这款手机拍照的场景融入你的日常生活中一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全附录 56 看完上述广告，对于该广告和产品，你的感受是： 1.我觉得这款手机很好一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 2.我喜欢这款手机一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 3.我觉得这款手机会受到欢迎一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 4.我愿意进一步了解这款手机的信息一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 5.我愿意保存这款手机的信息作为购买备选一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全 6.在不考虑价格因素的前提下，我愿意购买这款手机一点也不 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 完全六、基本信息 1.性别： ○男 ○女 2.年龄: _______ 3.最高受教育水平：○初中及以下 ○高中学历 ○专科学历 ○本科学历 ○硕士及以上 4.月收入：○3千元以下 ○3千~6千元 ○6千~9千元 ○9千~1.2万元 ○1.2万元及以上	84,314
新时代品牌的6个关键词_空手.pdf	代的变迁，导致今天的商业环境、媒体环境、消费环境发生巨变。对消费者来说，他们对品牌的态度、消费观、决策方式和购买习惯发生了天翻地覆的变化；对于品牌营销人来说，他们对品牌的认知，正在发生观念性、结构性的变化。今天的品牌打法，与传统年代全然不同。俗话说，沿着旧地图，找不到新大陆。拿着旧船票，也登不上新时代的大船。新时代的品牌挑战那么，当下我们身处什么样的时代呢？首先是媒体环境的变化。信息传播的方式和载体是一个社会的基建，媒体环境直接影响品牌的打法。这是移动互联网的变革所造成的。过去我们做品牌是以电视、报纸等大众媒体为主要载体，今天则是以电商平台、社交平台、内容平台为载体。传统大众媒体，传播渠道集中，主流媒体垄断着话语权，特别是在央视一家独大的背景下，经由这个平台传播的品牌广告权威性十足，又没有其他杂音干扰，一则广告足以覆盖全国近10亿消费者。而互联网的媒体环境则是多元化、碎片化、多中心的，人们在网上形成了一个个的小圈子，时新时代品牌的6个关键词新时代品牌的6个关键词当大众传媒居统治地位时，现代品牌理论诞生了。无论哪种品牌理论，基本上以大众传媒的大规模传播为认知前提。现在进入新时代，什么是新时代?媒体环境是什么?新的品牌逻辑是什么? 文 \| 空　手专家解析让行动者思考让思考者行动 24 风向标·新营销实践穿透圈层的信息壁垒是非常高的。其次是商业环境的变化。今日的商业是线下、社群和网络的三度空间，新营销必须建立认知、交易和关系的三位一体，以立体连接打通三个商业空间。经历疫情3年，每一个从事品牌经营的人都意识到，没有线上是不行的。同时，我们也看到了团长和社群团购的重要性。特别值得一提的是，直播早年主要为娱乐性质，直播内容多为游戏电竞、唱歌跳舞等，人群较为小众。而从2020年开始，直播迅速爆发，直播带货成为一种主流的消费方式，也成为品牌营销的重要组成部分。直播已经日常化、主流化，家家户户对它都不再陌生。最后是消费环境的变化。有人描述当下的商业环境是V U C A 〔V o l a t i l i t y （易变性）、U n c e r t a i n t y （不确定性）、Complexity（复杂性）、 Ambiguity（模糊性）〕时代。 VUCA原本是一个军事术语，用于形容作战环境的高难度挑战，20世纪90年代开始被普遍使用。后来战略管理学者借用其描述商业世界格局，宝洁公司前首席运营官罗伯特·麦克唐纳更是直接宣称：“这是一个VUCA 的世界。” 网络的普及、社交媒体的发展，使得社会热点层出不穷，流行文化不断变化；新时代消费的崛起、各种亚文化的兴起，使得消费观念不断变化；供应链的成熟、商业的发达，使得创业变得容易，新品牌如雨后春笋般出现，产品越来越同质化，市场竞争越来越激烈。过去几十年，我们从高速发展的黄金时代一路走来，生活水平不断提高，消费不断升级，我们以为和平和繁荣将会伴随我们一生。然而随着 “黑天鹅”的出现，这一切都不再是确定的。对国家和企业来说，这是前所未有的大挑战。对个体来说，我们的消费观念和生活方式遭遇强烈冲击，势必改变过去那种超前消费、尽情享受生活的心态，互联网和经济繁荣让我们的生活飞上了天，现在新时代又让我们回归理性。这些媒体环境、商业环境、消费环境的变化，构成了新时代的品牌挑战。 6个关键词面对新时代的巨变，今天的品牌营销又该作出怎样的应对和变化呢？我今天这篇文章，立足点是一位文学家——意大利最富盛誉的作家之一，也是我最爱的小说家伊塔洛·卡尔维诺。卡尔维诺的代表作有《分成两半的子爵》《树上的男爵》《不存在的骑士》，在我心目中属于顶尖小说第一档。 1984年6月，哈佛大学邀请卡尔维诺前往美国主讲诺顿诗论，一个学年内在哈佛大学举办6次文学讲座。当时距离2000年还有16年时间，一个千年即将结束。在构思讲座内容时，卡尔维诺决定谈谈下一个千年文学的价值与特性，在科技与后工业化时代文学的命运如何。所以卡尔维诺给这一系列讲座取了一个名字，叫作《未来千年文学备忘录》。这6篇备忘录的主题分别是：轻逸、速度、精确、形象鲜明、内容多样、连贯。自从我看完这些备忘录，这些词汇时时萦绕在我脑海中。我认为这6个词抓住了新千年的核心特征，是新千年文学的价值所在，也是信息传递、影响人心的关键所在。故此我同样认为，这就是新的千年里，打造品牌的核心原则与思维方式。新时代的品牌如何打造，核心思维方式为何？我将基于卡尔维诺的这6 个关键词来谈。我把它们分成3组。轻和快我们先来谈一谈轻和快。这一部分，我核心要谈的是打造品牌的方式变了。 2022年1月，著名广告策划人叶茂中去世。当时，有媒体找我点评叶老师波澜壮阔的一生。我是这么说杂志订阅 WIND VANE·NEW MARKETING PRACTICES 25 风向标·新营销实践的：“时代成就了叶茂中，叶茂中成就了时代。” 在20世纪90年代这个广告的黄金年代里，企业塑造品牌的核心方式是打广告，打广告的核心载体是央视，央视的核心硬广形式是15秒广告，15 秒广告的核心信息是广告语。企业一条广告片随着高覆盖的央视投放出去，很快触达全国近10 亿人，其中的广告语随即成为众口传诵的社会流行语，成为消费者挥之不去的记忆。企业品牌的知名度随之提升，销量因而水涨船高。在这样的时代，对一句核心广告语的提炼，代表着一个广告人的创作力、商业洞察力和战略思考力。这样的时代，呼唤叶茂中这样的广告大师。叶老师也用他一句句经典永流传的广告语，为这个时代书写下了鲜明的印迹。“叶茂中+央视”，加上后起的“定位+分众”也因此成为广告业的经典商业模式。只是大众传媒一统天下的时代过去了，一句广告语包打天下的时代过去了，“代言人+电视广告+渠道铺货”作为品牌打造三板斧的时代过去了。我很怀念这个时代。这个时代背景就是我在很多公开场合总结过的传统时代快速打造品牌的方程式：请明星代言+砸电视广告+ 终端铺货。明星代言人提高品牌影响力，也给品牌提供信任背书。电视广告砸出来品牌知名度，让消费者记住。而有了品牌力之后，企业就可以迅速招商、开店、进渠道大力卖货了。曾经火遍大江南北的秦池酒、脑白金、鸿茅药酒、雅客V9、安踏、特步、七匹狼、利郎商务男装都是如此。传统时代的品牌打法，就是当年朱升给朱元璋打江山的建议：高筑墙、广积粮、缓称王。高强度的广告投放实现品牌曝光，广泛的渠道铺货触达消费者，依靠时间的积累成为大品牌，帮助企业赢得强大的竞争优势。由此可见，过去打造品牌有两个特点：一是重，非常烧钱，依赖密集的广告投放，密集的分销队伍，打人海战术，金钱成本和人力成本很高。二是慢，需要持续砸媒体，树品牌，建立知名度。当然，它的好处是一旦品牌打造成功，成为高知名度的国民大品牌，企业就可以在非常长的时间内攫取头部优势，成为消费者心目中的首选，为企业构筑强大的护城河。但是时代发生了巨变，今天的品牌打造需要轻和快。这些年经常见诸报端，被各大媒体和自媒体反复报道，被消费者经常挂在嘴边热议的新锐品牌比较多，比如小米、江小白、三只松鼠、完美日记、花西子、元气森林、喜茶、奈雪的茶、泡泡玛特、王饱饱、安克、钟薛高、三顿半、自嗨锅、蔚来、小鹏等。观察这些品牌你会发现，它们基本上不是靠超大规模的广告投放打造出来的品牌。江小白是靠瓶身文案走红；完美日记和花西子是靠直播、上李佳琦的直播间，以及小红书种草走红；喜茶、奈雪的茶是靠社交话题和口碑扩散走红；小米是玩自媒体走红以后，直到2014年才开始投放央视广告。元气森林是抓住了健康的消费趋势，靠0糖0脂0卡的标签建立了鲜明认知；三顿半和安克是抓住了传统产品的痛点，三顿半靠超即溶技术、安克靠氮化镓超快充技术走红；还有王饱饱和钟薛高是基于消费升级，用颜值更高、体验更好的产品，重新定义了消费者对麦片、雪糕的认知与想象。另外，这些品牌都不是在成长的过程中靠业绩的壮大自然成就了品牌，而是迅速走红，随后才有了消费群体的扩大。传统时代，品牌多是一种结果。销售强了，卖得好了，那么消费者自然认为你是一个大品牌。而新时代，品牌则是一种手段。只有先把品牌的影响力和美誉度做起来，增长才会到来。无品牌，不增长。总体来看，新时代的品牌有以下共同点： 1.产品上有升级，有差异。一是有新技术、新工艺的应用，二是产品设计、产品包装更精致、更好看，颜让行动者思考让思考者行动 26 风向标·新营销实践值很高，总之产品要有独特之处。同质化的产品，纯靠广告砸在今天是很难打造出品牌的。 2.品牌更加鲜明，品牌名更特别，品牌形象和个性更突出，产品设计和包装设计更有风格。 3.品牌推广更注重数据和技术的应用，社交媒体在品牌打造中发挥了巨大的作用。 4.品牌的用户参与度更高，有忠实的粉丝群体，他们更愿意为品牌发声，更愿意参与品牌活动，帮助品牌实现口碑扩散和用户裂变。同时，越来越多的新品牌强调用户经营，注重私域流量。那么为什么新时代的品牌呈现出这样的特点呢？因为消费者决策方式、购买方式的变化。构成我们消费决策基础的认知系统有两个：系统1和系统2。诺贝尔经济学奖得主丹尼尔·卡尼曼将这两个系统分别描述为直觉和理性。直觉产生快思考，理性产生慢思考。他写了一本非常著名的书《思考，快与慢》，来阐述这两套系统。这两套系统在我们大脑中同时存在，相互独立。大多数时候，主导我们思考和决策的是系统1。因为我们的大脑也会“偷懒”，也会寻找捷径。我们习惯于在直觉的帮助下，自动快速地作出常规决策。只有当系统1 的运行遇到阻碍时，系统2才会被激活，通过详细、大量收集信息，反复比对，找到最优解，作出理性的判断。今天的消费者，他们或在直播间购买，或被种草后迅速上天猫搜索购买，并且很容易被社会话题和社群圈层影响决策和购买。消费者普遍的快决策，要求更快速、更加轻量化的品牌打造方式。对于系统2来说，它需要的决策要素包括权威、声誉、信任；对于系统1来说，它需要的决策要素则是好感、印象、熟悉。今天的品牌，只要有一点地方让消费者喜欢、认同，消费者就很有可能买你，你不需要高频的媒体轰炸、大量的信息告知，去影响消费者决策。新时代的品牌，可以靠升级的产品走红，可以靠独特的品牌名、包装设计走红，可以靠内容种草，可以靠话题事件，可以靠直播带货，品牌的打造方式更加轻量化，品牌的成长也更加迅速。网络时代的到来，一切公共话语以娱乐的方式出现，短视频、直播等景观潜移默化地影响着我们的价值判断，我们的认知和思维方式变得更加肤浅、碎片化、表面化，曾经的理性、秩序和逻辑性不复存在。今天的消费者很容易花心，喜新厌旧，快速转变自己的喜好与风格。加上社会流行趋势不断变化，市场竞争日趋激烈，迎合消费者口味的新品牌、新产品也越来越多，所以品牌必须快速成长、快速迭代，跟上消费者的脚步与变化。我们今天不仅需要快公司，更需要快品牌。成名要趁早， WIND VANE·NEW MARKETING PRACTICES 27 风向标·新营销实践晚了就没机会。当然，这些品牌在成名以后，可能还是需要走回传统品牌的老路。做实产品力，注重性价比，扎扎实实铺渠道（如江小白、元气森林），大规模投广告（如小米）。但在品牌先要生存下来的阶段，品牌打造必须轻和快。精准和形象鲜明我们再来谈一谈精准和形象鲜明。这一部分，我核心要谈的是消费者对品牌的要求变了。过去大家愿意买品牌货，是因为觉得大品牌值得信赖、更放心。因为传统年代，信息不对称，消费者缺乏了解商品信息的途径，对产品和厂家一无所知，而且那时商品经济也不发达，很多产品对消费者来说都很陌生，市场监管机制不完善，假冒伪劣产品时有发生。这时消费者购买一个相对熟悉的品牌，上过央视的大品牌，从决策上来讲更低风险，更有安全感。品牌知名度起到了帮助消费者筛选好产品、好品质，降低决策风险的作用。大概2006年的时候，葛优代言神州行，有一条非常经典的电视广告。这条广告的文案，非常生动地反映了这种心态——“神州行，是吧？用的人多。这和进饭馆一样。一条街上，哪家人多我进哪家。神州行，听说将近两亿人用。我呀，还是相信群众。喂！神州行，我看行！” 用专业名词来说，这种随大流的消费观念是权威崇拜和从众消费。但是今天，消费观念正在变成出众消费。消费者对品牌的要求从国民大品牌变成了个性化品牌，从好品牌变成了好而不同的品牌。在一个消费社会，人们消费的已经不再是物的价值本身，而是物背后所代表的身份、地位、品位、阶层。人们由物的消费进入符号消费，商品的符号意义变成人们消费的主要对象。于是，大家都用的品牌，在今天反而变成了劣势，它意味着没有个性，没有自己的风格。过去的决策风险是品质风险，今天的决策风险则是形象风险。“我”必须确认，我所购买的品牌，能够代表自己的形象、态度和生活方式。典型案例如宝洁。从2015年开始，宝洁在中国的销售额连续3年下滑，宝洁旗下的三大洗发水品牌飘柔、海飞丝、潘婷曾经占据着中国洗发水市场60%以上的市场份额，但是到了2016年已降为35.8%，年轻一代消费者将它们称为“妈妈品牌”。宝洁的品牌们老了、土了、不流行了，直到对产品和品牌建设作出了一系列大刀阔斧的改革之后，宝洁在 2018年才重拾业绩增长。消费者对品牌的要求变了。过去，市场上多是知名度品牌。品牌满足的是消费者基本的功能需求和品质需求，品牌面向的人群是广谱人群，男女通吃，老少咸宜。很多品牌的目标人群画像都写着20—65 岁，男女比例均等，全国市场，各级城市都活跃着他们的身影…… 这一时期消费者对品牌的要求以知名度为中心。只要品牌请一下明星代言，在电视台投一下广告，有了知名度，就会被观众视为大品牌，然后消费者抢着购买、经销商抢着代理。保证广告声量就能带来巨额销量，相当简单粗暴。现在，消费者对品牌要求变成了以美誉度为中心。知名度不再是消费者购买的决定性因素，取而代之的是品牌形象和品牌认同。像现在出现了很多小众新锐的国潮品牌，说知名度的话，可能很多人都没有听说过，但是它们都有自己忠实甚至狂热的粉丝群体。例如，新能源领域的蔚来和小鹏，论知名度，完全无法和宝马、奔驰相提并论；论品质，很多人至今仍对电动汽车的安全性、续航、智能驾驶充满疑虑和担心，而且蔚来、小鹏作为造车新势力还缺乏品牌底蕴。但是蔚来比特斯拉、宝马、奔驰卖得更贵，还不乏一群死忠粉。他们不仅购车，还主动担任品牌大使和义务宣传员。让行动者思考让思考者行动 28 风向标·新营销实践扫码订阅杂志诚如小米前副总裁黎万强在《参与感》一书中的总结：传统行业的品牌路径，是先砸知名度，再做美誉度，最后维护忠诚度。而小米做品牌的路径，则是专注忠诚度，通过口碑传播不断强化，通过提供参与感让用户持续喜爱，成为朋友。在赢得足够的忠诚度之后，才选择通过广告投放扩大传播。今天企业打造品牌，需要先树立鲜明的品牌形象，赢得用户的认同，形成自己的粉丝群体，在他们心目中建立起强大的品牌。而要想形象鲜明，就必须人群精准。今天企业做品牌，如果一上来就瞄准所有人群，一上来就想通吃所有消费者，那么企业的产品就会丧失特色，只能满足基本的功能需求；企业的品牌形象就会模糊，失去焦点，不可能赢得消费者的爱与忠诚。在打造品牌之初，企业必须先聚焦一个精准的目标人群，为他们量身定做产品，满足他们的需求与渴望，理解他们的焦虑与顾虑。把他们变成品牌的忠实顾客群体，为品牌打好从 0到1的基础，再伺机实施品牌破圈，或通过广告投放或通过话题事件，扩大品牌影响力，放大用户群体。品牌形象不仅越来越重要，也变得越来越复杂。过去，消费者对品牌形象的认知主要是基于广告风格。比如经典的万宝路牛仔。万宝路品牌粗犷、豪迈、男子气概的形象塑造来自牛仔广告。过去要打造品牌形象，做一套VI 设计，一条品牌TVC，一系列品牌主视觉足矣。但现在品牌的传播与沟通需要直面消费者。产品包装、门店装修、天猫店设计、自媒体账号人设和内容、直播间风格和主播形象，都会影响消费者对品牌形象的感知，企业必须全面考量。 2020年4月，LV在小红书直播。作为小红书上第一个直播的奢侈品品牌，LV虽然勇气可嘉、魄力十足，但结果却是直播翻车，受到群嘲。究其原因，一是直播间布景廉价，背景仅为一面白墙，简陋的衣架上挂着几件产品；二是主播形象过于家居小清新；三是直播用语质朴过头，频率出现最高的词是“好用”“漂亮”“快来买”，奢侈品卖出了地摊打折货的感觉。 LV不缺品牌力，形象也一贯大牌奢华，为什么到了直播间会因品牌形象翻车呢？这就是因为媒体环境变了，传统媒体与消费者隔着距离，可以透过广告维持高冷、神秘的形象；而到了面对面交互的直播间，品牌形象就必须更加有戏剧性。消费者不仅在旁观你的形象，还在参与体验你的形象。 WIND VANE·NEW MARKETING PRACTICES 29 风向标·新营销实践内容多样和连贯我们最后来谈一谈内容多样和连贯。这一部分，我核心要谈的是品牌营销的产出物变了。我以前曾说过，消费者是营销的起点，也是营销的终点。一切品牌理论的出发点，都应是消费者的需求和决策方式。他们如何收集信息，触媒习惯如何？他们看重产品的哪些价值元素？对这些元素如何排序？这些决定了品牌如何打造，需要传递什么信息，产出何种内容物。传统年代，消费者行为模式是 AIDMA：注意—兴趣—欲望—记忆— 行动。消费者注意到广告信息，产生兴趣，激发欲望，记住品牌，然后等到他去购物的时候，想起来你的品牌，那么他就有很大概率买你的产品。记忆很重要。一定要让消费者记住你，因为消费者的认知和交易行为是脱节的，不在一个时空发生。连接认知和交易的唯一桥梁就是记忆。但是今天最大的变化，就是消费者的行为模式变了。今天诞生了很多新的行为模式试图去解释这种变化，不管是AISAS〔Attention（注意）、Interest（兴趣）、Search （搜索）、Action（行动）、Share （分享）〕，SIPS〔 Sympathize （共鸣）、I d e n t i f y（确认）、 Participate（参与）、Share（分享）〕，A ARRR〔Acquisition （获取）、Activation（激活）、 Re t e n t i o n（存留）、Reve n ue （收益）、Refe r（推荐）〕，5A 〔Aware （认知）、Appeal（诉求）、Ask（询问）、Act（行动）、 Advocate（倡导）〕，还是AIPL〔 Awareness（认知）、Interest（兴趣）、Purchase（购买）、Loyalty （忠诚）〕，我所看到的共通点，就是受众主体性确立。你要想卖给消费者东西，那么你得让消费者对你产生共鸣和认同，产生即时满足和即刻行动，产生参与和分享的动机。过去做品牌，核心产出物是广告，追求的是让消费者记住并理解。以广告和曝光为中心，在广告业形成了两大做品牌的套路：一是4A公司的做法——单一诉求+ 整合传播。为品牌提炼一个核心概念，围绕概念进行多维度、立体化的创意表现，并通过多种媒体组合进行整合传播。二是本土营销公司的做法——洗脑广告+媒体轰炸。为品牌提炼一句核心广告语，将广告信息浓缩成一句话，然后通过强势媒体进行反复轰炸，强迫消费者记住。现在由于海量信息的存在，消费者对信息轰炸免疫，传统广告传播不仅媒体成本高昂，而且逐渐失去效果。品牌若想打动消费者，关键不是卖力吆喝，而是在于引起用户共鸣和参与。故此，内容成为品牌的核心产出物。内容的价值，一是可以驱动流量，主动吸引用户关注，而以广告为主的商域流量则需要企业付费购买；二是创造“所见即所得”，可以直观地向消费者展示品牌效果和应用场景，激发消费者的即时行动；三是可以创造社交，社交可以创造品牌人格，建立用户关系，形成私域流量。但是做内容必须多样化，必须持续输出与用户建立连接。这一点也是广告与内容的重要区别，单一重复的广告信息很容易让消费者审美疲劳，对品牌失去新鲜感。但是如果品牌做内容，沉醉于追热点、跟流行，不同内容之间缺乏关联，风马牛不相及，那么也会导致品牌失去焦点。故而，多样化的内容还需要连贯性地表达。所以我提过一个概念，叫作内容光谱。品牌实施内容营销需要以核心标签为棱镜，将品牌信息折射成多彩的内容光谱，感染消费者。轻量化、快品牌、人群精准、形象鲜明、内容多样、主题连贯，这就是新时代的品牌法则。让行动者思考让思考者行动 30 风向标·新营销实践	8,856
汉越广告语言与文化特点对比研究_周展.pdf	分类号： H618 密级：公开硕士研究生学位论文论文题目汉越广告语言与文化特点对比研究专业亚非语言文学研究方向越南语言文化研究生周展指导教师梁远论文起止日期：2012 年 6 月至2013 年6 月汉越广告语言与文化特点对比研究摘要广告语的研究历来是语言学界研究的热点，广告语不仅在语言层面还是文化层面上都有其独特的研究价值。本文以中国和越南的广告语为语料，进行对比分析，探索两国广告语之间的相同点和不同点。全文分为五章。第一章为绪论。论述了本文的选题意义、研究现状、研究思路和方法。第二章主要简述了广告在两国的发展历史以及相关对象的分类和界定。第三章从语言层面展开两国广告语言的对比。第四章探讨了广告语背后蕴含的两国民族文化。本文主要从语言和文化两个层面展开对比研究，在语言层面上我们发现两者在语音、词汇、修辞上既有共性又有差异。而在文化层面上，同属儒家文化圈的中越两国表现出的共性要远远多于差异。关键词：汉越广告语；语言；文化；对比 THE COMPARATIVE STUDY ON THE CHARACTERISTICS OF ADVERTISING LANGUAGE AND CULTURE BETWEEN CHINESE AND VIETNAMMESE ABSTRACT The study of slogan has always been the hot research in the field of linguistics,slogan has its own unique research not only in the language level but also cultural level.This paper put the Chinese and Vietnamese slogan as example,conducting a comparative analysis,to explore the similarities and differences between the two slogans. There five chapters in this artcle.Chapter one isa brief introduction.It analyses the conditions,theory,method,purpose,meaning of this artcle,and definition of relevant concepts.Chapter two is analyze and comparise the history of advertising in China and Vietnam.Chapter three expand the comparison between Chinese and Vietnamese advertising language level.Chapter four discusses the implication behind the national culture between the two countries. Comparative analysis of Chinese and Vietnamese slogan will be taken from the two dimensions of language and culture.In the language level we found on the pronunciation,vocabulary,rhetoric has both commonness and difference.In the cultural level,as China and Vietnam,belong to Confucian cultural circle,showed the same place more than the differences. KEY WORDS: Chinese and Vietnamese slogan; language; cultural; compara 目录绪论.................................................... 1 第一节研究目的和意义................................. 1 第二节国内外研究现状综述............................. 2 一、国内研究综述................................... 2 二、国外研究综述................................... 4 第三节研究思路和方法................................. 5 第一章广告语及广告在两国的发展现状...................... 7 第一节中越两国广告发展历史及现状..................... 7 一、中国广告发展历史及现状......................... 7 二、越南广告发展历史及现状......................... 8 第二节广告的定义及分类............................... 9 一、广告的定义..................................... 9 二、广告的分类...................................... ................................................... 9 第三节研究对象的界定................................ 10 第二章汉越广告语言对比研究............................. 11 第一节汉越广告语语音对比............................ 11 一、汉越广告语语音相同点.......................... 11 二、汉越广告语语音差异............................ 13 第二节汉越广告语词汇对比............................ 15 一、汉越广告语词汇相同点.......................... 15 二、汉越广告词汇不同点............................ 17 第三节汉越广告语修辞对比............................ 20 一、汉越广告修辞共同点............................ 20 二、汉越广告语的修辞差异.......................... 23 第三章汉越广告语言文化内涵对比......................... 28 第一节广告语言与文化的关系.......................... 28 第二节汉越广告语中的民族文化共性.................... 28 一、体现相似的道德情感............................ 29 二、体现相似的民族风俗和文化心理.................. 31 三、体现相似的价值取向............................ 33 第三节汉越广告语中的民族文化差异.................... 35 一、汉越民族不同的历史文化........................ 35 二、汉越民族不同的文化心态........................ 37 三、汉越民族不同的语言文化........................ 39 结语.................................................... 42 参考文献................................................ 43 后记.................................................... 46 1 绪论第一节研究目的和意义在当今的信息时代，广告已经成为了人们日常生活中不可缺少的重要组成部分。无论你打开电脑上网，还是翻阅各种报刊杂志，或者陪家人一起观看电视节目，不管你愿意与否，广告都像空气一样无所不在。广告已经在一定程度上改变和影响了人们的生活和行为习惯。随着中越两国改革开放和市场经济的深入发展，特别是在经济全球化和加入 WTO 的背景下，广告作为一个新兴行业获得了迅猛发展。其本身独特的语言文化现象也引起了学术界的广泛重视。而语言作为广告的灵魂，是广告创作中最重要的因素。因为不管采用哪种广告媒介，诸如报纸广播、电视网络等，这些传播媒介都离不开语言文字的表达。广告大师李奥·贝纳说：“文字是我们这个行业的利器，文字在意念表达中注入热情和灵魂” ①。可见，广告语言在广告中起着举足轻重的作用。许多学者从社会语言学、对比语言学、文化语言学、语用学等不同视角出发，来揭示广告语言的特点和性质。尽管在两国都涌现出了大量的广告语言研究成果，但目前为止还没有专门的汉越广告语言对比研究，而广告语言这一特殊的文化载体不仅在经济层面还是在文化交流层面都有其重要的地位。基于这样的背景，笔者从对比语言学的视角出发，尝试对比分析汉越广告语言。语言是文化的载体，不同国家的广告语言，由于所根植的文化土壤不同，必然具有不同的特征。不同国家广告语言的差异，不仅仅是语言上的差异，更是文化差异的体现。比较汉越广告语言不但具有语言学上的意义，而且具有广告学、社会学、文化学等诸多方面的学术意义。因此，通过汉越广告语言的对比分析来解读越南民族文化，有利于我们增进对越南民族传统文化和民族心理的了解，加强中越两国之间的文化交流和合作，为架起中越友谊的桥梁贡献绵薄之力。此外，从现实层面来看，随着2010 年中国东盟自贸区如期建成，中越两国的经贸合作又迈上了一个新的台阶。“中国是越南最大的进口来源国，并连续多年成为越南最大贸易伙伴” ②。然而，现实生活中中国商品并没有进入越南的主流市场，越南民众普遍对中国商品不认可，对中国产品的认识还停留在低质价廉的印象中。为了开发有巨大潜力的越南市场提升商品附加值，中国的商家必须树立起自己的品牌形象，最直接有效的方法就是广告宣传。本研究通过对比汉越广告的异同和民族文化的差异，有利于指导中国企业进行广告设计和对外宣传，提 ① 转引自曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第3 页 ② 《越南国情报告（2012）》，社会科学文献出版社，2012 年8 月，第157 页 2 高开拓越南市场的能力。第二节国内外研究现状综述一、国内研究综述 1．国内对越南广告语的研究目前国内对越南广告语的研究还比较少，而专门对比分析汉越广告语的研究更是少之又少。相关的研究成果主要有：梁远、温日豪编著的《实用汉越互译技巧》（北京：民族出版社，2005 年8 月）。本书专门开辟一个章节分析了越语广告文本的翻译问题，并指出广告文本翻译中所要注意的一些问题。刘轶勍发表于《东方语言文化论丛》第23 卷的《越南广告的语言特点》（北京：军事谊文出版社，2004 年9 月）。文章从语体、语用和民族特点等三个方面对越语广告语言进行了全面探讨。解放军外国语学院宫春所著的硕士论文《言语行为理论下的越南杂志广告语言研究》（2006 年11 月），此文以语用学的视角展开研究，结合言语行为理论和越南广告语的固有特征，采用理论分析、举例说明和定量研究等方法，将语言理论和语言实际两方面两方面有机结合，对越南杂志广告语言中的各种言语行为进行了分析。华中师范大学阮如丹玄的硕士学位论文《现代越南商业广告女性形象研究—广告女性形象偏差现象》（2010 年5 月），通过新闻学的视角，以越南电视广告和部分杂志报纸广告为研究文本，对现代越南女性形象进行研究，分析了现代越南商业广告女性形象的偏差现象、原因及对社会的影响。广西民族大学韦丽春的硕士论文《当代越南报刊广告语修辞研究》（2011 年6 月），从修辞学的视角分析了越南报刊广告语常用的修辞格，总结出了当代越南报刊广告语所具有的简洁性、通俗性、创新性等特点及其所蕴涵的民族美学特征。 2．国内对汉语广告语的研究随着社会的进步和发展，特别是我国加入WTO 后，广告在人们的政治、经济、文化生活中扮演着越来越重要的角色，对广告语言的研究也引起了不少学者的重视。国内对广告语的研究视角多样，包括广告学、社会学、文化学、语言学、营销学等相关领域，并涌现出了许多相关著作。徐玉敏、宫日英编著的《广告语言分析》（北京：中国物资出版社，1988 年9 月）是改革开放后我国研究广告语言比较早的一本专著，该书从语言规范化的角度出发，全面系统介绍了报纸、杂志、广播、电视、户外各种广告语言的特点和组成要素，在此基础上分析了广告语言的规范化问题。吴为善所著的《广告语言》（上海：上海教育出版社，2007 年10 月）围绕“概念的提炼和创新”这一主题，从市场运作、商业传播的视角对广告 3 语言进行全方位的透视。陈月明主编的《文化广告学》（北京：国际文化出版公司，2002 年6 月）把文化广告学作为一个新兴学科来进行研究，提出了研究该学科的目的、性质和理论基础，是一部研究文化与广告关系不可多得的巨著。邵敬敏的《广告语创作透视》（北京：北京语言学院出版社，1996 年）是一部研究广告语言的力作，该书介绍了我国广告语言研究的状况，并以大量的优秀广告为例来揭示广告文案成功的诀窍，并从字形、音韵等方面入手，探讨了汉语广告的中国特色。屈哨兵的《广告语言方略》（北京：科学普及出版社，1997 年8 月）后三章从语言学的角度出发，讨论了广告语言的语句类型和语用类型，从语言的各个角度对广告语言的特点进行了描写。值得一提的是曹炜、高军编著的《广告语言学教程》（广州：暨南大学出版社，2007 年9 月）该书是不少高校广告相关专业的教学用书，内容包罗甚广主要分为两大部分：一是广告语言的本体论部分，内容涉及广告语言的界定和历史，以及广告语言的语音特征、词汇特征、句式特征等；第二部分主要是广告语言的非本体论部分，即从消费心理、审美情趣、民族文化等社会环境的角度，再次探析广告语言的特点。阮丽华的《网络广告及其影响》（2005 年）探讨分析了网络广告这种新兴的广告方式，运用市场营销、消费者文化学等理论，重点研究了网络广告的沟通特征，并由此得出了网络广告的评价方法及指标。 3．中外广告语言对比研究在经济全球化的发展洪流中，大量外国广告涌入我国，而我国企业为开拓海外市场也需要出口广告，因此中外广告语言对比研究也引起了很多学者的兴趣，相关著作层出不穷，其中研究成果最多的是汉英广告语言对比。贵州师范大学周洲的硕士论文《英语广告的语言特点及中西广告文化对比》（2005 年）一方面从语言学的角度对广告语言本身作出分析归纳，另一方面通过文化与广告语言关系的探究，以及中英文广告内涵的对比，解释了中英文广告各自特点的根源。西安科技大学陈英烨所著的硕士论文《从认知角度看英汉广告中的隐喻》（2010 年）从认知角度出发，运用概念隐喻理论和合成理论对中英文广告中的大量隐喻进行了研究，分析了中英文广告中隐喻存在的异同及其原因。吉林大学全英爱所著的《英汉广告语篇中语法衔接手段对比研究》（2007 年）以语法衔接理论为指导，对英汉广告语篇语法衔接进行对比研究，分析其中的语法衔接手段，揭示英汉广告在语法衔接上的异同，并探寻产生异同的原因。屠明忠的《功能对等翻译理论在英汉广告互译中的应用》（2011 年）以探索英汉广告翻译为目标，分析了一些英汉广告译文范例，从英汉广告语言和文化两个方面对英汉广告互译的语义、语用和文化进行了定性研究。白光所著的《中外悟性广告语经典与点评》（北京：中国经济出版社，2004 年1 月）一书，精选了中外三千多条经典广告语，从广 4 告诉求的角度把其分为拟人式广告、恭维式广告、引导式广告、忠告式广告、祝愿式广告等共13 个类别，并对其一一分析和点评。李继先的《名牌的眼睛：中外经典广告语赏析》（北京：经济管理出版社，2012 年2 月）从上万条优秀广告语中筛选出200 多条最经典的广告语，从营销学的角度进行分析，力图总结出中外广告创作的一些规律和特点。二、国外研究综述 1986 年越南革新开放后，广告业迅速崛起，对于广告的研究也得到了不少专家学者的重视，出现了不少研究成果。在专著方面，国民经济大学编著的Quảng cáo -lý thuyết và thực hành（《广告理论和实践》）和阮氏凉所著的Quảng cáo để khuyến khích tiêu thụ sản phẩm（《广告促进产品销售》），这两部作品主要强调了在市场经济中广告的重要作用，分析了广告的策略和写作。黄重主编的Quảng cáo （《广告》），在分析成功广告范例的基础上，探讨了实际应用中广告语言的标题、主体和相关语言的修饰。琼文同的Kỹ thuật quảng cáo（《广告技巧》）是一部专门研究广告设计技巧的专著。作者认为广告的设计是广告中非常重要的一部分，需要按照广告传播的规律来进行设计,同时提到了在越语广告设计和文案写作中所存在的一些问题。武琼编著的Quảng cáo và các hình thức quảng cáo hiệu quả nhất （《广告与最有效的广告方式》）该书介绍了广告的作用和广告的发展方向，站在营销学的立场上重点分析了广告项目的设计和广告战略的实施。飞文的Quảng cáo ở việt nam-một góc nhìn của người trong cuộc（《越南广告—来自局内人的视点》）分析了广告经营策略中的一些问题，特别提到了在互联网时代如何把广告做好。阮友树的Tâm lý học tuyên truyền quảng cáo（《广告宣传心理学》）作者阐述了广告心理学这一新兴的学科，分别介绍了该学科的研究对象、历史发展和研究方法等问题，并从心理学的角度分析了在广告活动中影响消费者的几个因素以及在广告活动中应该遵守的原则。梅春辉的Ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới ánh sáng của lý thuyết giao tiếp（《交际理论下的广告语言》）从行为交际理论出发分析了广告语言活动中的各种言语行为模型，强调了广告是一种人与人之间的对话交际。阮坚长主编的Quảng cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo（《广告及广告语》）该书是一部有关广告和广告语的论文集，文中收录了大量有关广告语言研究的论文，以胡志明市的广告语料为基础，涉及到广告语中的外来词使用、隐喻、戏字和文化因素等。丁氏美湾主编的Quảng cáo dưới góc độc cạnh tranh（《竞争角度下的广告》）讲述了广告的分类和在经营活动中的作用，重点研究了在市场经济条件下广告要如何开展竞争等问题，并强调广告竞争所要遵守的法律。成南的Quảng cáo và xúc tiến kinh doanh（《广告促进经营》）该书从市场营销的角度通过介绍一些成功的 5 广告案例来分析了广告对于营销的促进作用。有关本课题的论文方面，越南学者梅春辉的博士论文Các đăc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới ánh sáng của lý thuyết giao tiếp（《交际理论视角下的广告语言特点》）该文章从交际理论的角度出发分析了广告语言的言语行为和广告语言对话的结构特点等。陈定永和阮德存所著的Về đăc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo （《广告语言特点》）作者分析了杂志、报纸上的广告语言特点，并提出一些改进的意见。凤怡的Vấn đề quảng cáo（《广告问题》）以营销策略为立足点分析了广告语言的特点。阮勇Quảng cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo（《广告和广告语言》）分析了在电视频道上广告语言的使用。阮氏清香的Về một số đặc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo trên báo chí（《浅析报纸广告语言的特点》）以报纸上的广告语言为研究对象，分析其语音、词汇和写作上的特点。桂定元的Một vài nhận xét bước đầu về ngôn ngữ quảng cáo (《广告语言初探》)研究了越语广告的发展历程，并提出了广告语言的一些相关概念和特点。阮氏雪征的Ngôn ngữ biển quảng cáo (《牌匾广告语》)是对牌匾上广告语言的专门研究，主张牌匾上语言的规范化。陈氏秋贤的Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ trong quảng cáo sản phẩm dành cho trẻ em（《儿童产品的广告语言特点》）以英语和越语的广告语料为基础，从词汇、语法、文本等方面逐一分析了儿童产品广告中的语言特点。刘重俊的Cấu trúc tu từ trong ngôn ngữ quảng cáo（《广告语言中的修辞结构》）从广告中修辞的概念和分类谈起，重点分析了越语广告中的常见的四种修辞方式。武氏熟的Quảng cáo với việc dạy và học ngoại ngữ (《广告与外语教学》)作者很有创建性地把广告与外语教学结合起来，认为广告语中蕴含着丰富的民族文化内涵，是时代性、文化性和民族性的有机结合，并以俄语广告为基础分析了如何在外语教学中选取语料和使用广告语料的问题。阮氏耀芳的Đặc điểm ngôn ngữ của quảng cáo truyền hình tiếng anh và tiếng việt（《越英电视广告语言特点》）是唯一检索到的越南广告语言对比论文，但文章只从词类的角度对比了越语和英语的广告语言特点，其他层面上的对比并没有涉及，显得不够全面具体。综上所述，从目前收集到的国内外资料来看，汉越语的广告对比研究还没有人涉及，故将此作为笔者的研究生硕士论文，希望能在该方面做一些初步的探讨。第三节研究思路和方法本论文以实地调研搜集到的广告语料为基础，建立一个汉越广告语的语料库。运用定量研究的方法对语料库进行整理，主要按照广告语料的句式特点、修辞方式、词汇特征等进行分类，总结出其语言特点和规律，为对比分析打下基础。对比将从两个角度进行：一是从语法学的角度对汉越广告语的语法特征 6 进行对比，主要从词汇、句式、修辞等这几个方面进行入手；二是文化语言学、跨文化交际学等理论为指导研究汉越广告语背后蕴含的民族文化意义，主要从伦理道德、民族心理、审美情趣、民族风俗等这几个层面进行对比，深入挖掘其异同的表现，并探析背后的成因。 7 第一章广告语及广告在两国的发展现状第一节中越两国广告发展历史及现状一、中国广告发展历史及现状广告在我国的历史源远流长，随着商品经济的发展而产生。最早的广告是通过声音传递的，俗称“叫卖广告”，这是最简单最原始的广告形式。据《周易·系辞》记载：“包羲氏没，神农氏作，斫木为耜，揉木为耒，耒耨之利，以教天下，盖取诸益。日中为市，致天下之货，交易而退，各得其所。”从上面这段文字中可以看出，当时已经出现了类似于现在市场的场所，供人们互相交换货物。而出于交换的需要，而往往采用叫卖的方式来引起对方的注意，这就是最早广告的起源。 ①而我国近代意义上的真正广告是出现在1958 年英国人在通商口岸所创办的刊物《遐尔贯珍》，该刊物经营广告业务，开创了中国杂志的广告先河。19 世纪末，国人出现了自办报刊的高潮。这些报刊纷纷开辟了诸如“航船日期”、“银行市面”、“各货行情”、“各行告白”等栏目，尽管广告形式还不成熟，但却预示着商业广告的发展已经步入了一个新的发展阶段。在1985 年到1898 年的三年间，全国创办了32 种主要报纸，由于资本竞争的加剧，报纸刊数和广告版面迅速增加。到1922 年，我国的中外文报纸已达1100 多种 ②。报纸广告的出现，推动产生了专营广告制作业务的广告社和广告公司。辛亥革命后，随着民族资本主义的发展，民族企业为了与外商竞争更多地使用广告作为开拓市场的手段，广告业也日趋繁荣。20 世纪30 年代，中国的近代广告迎来了发展的顶峰。这一时期，广告的载体已经不仅仅局限在报纸上，橱窗、杂志、公交汽车、广播、霓虹灯、电影等新的广告传媒形式不断出现。并出现了带有中国民间传统美术特点的年画广告—月份牌，作为一种独特的平面广告因其观赏性和实用性俱佳而流行于全国，其广告影响力超过杂志和报纸。这表明，这段时期的中国广告已经逐渐摸索出了一些自己的风格和特点。至此，我国近代广告业已经发展成了一门新兴的行业 ③。新中国成立后，随着社会主义改造的完成，建立了社会主义计划经济体制， 1949 年至1979 年间，中国的广告发展基本陷于停顿状态。1979 年，中国迈入了改革开放的时代，同年《天津日报》上刊发了“文革”后的第一条商业广告，紧 ①曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第23 页 ②董景寰姜智彬：《广告学概论》，上海人民美术出版社，2008 年6 月，第26 页 ③汪洋：《中国广告通史》，上海交通大学出版社，2010 年1 月，第4 页 8 接着第一条外商广告、第一条广播广告、第一条电视广告也相继面世，标志着现代意义上的中国广告进入了一个恢复和快速发展的时期。改革开放30 多年来，我国广告业不断赶超跨越，发展水平逐渐与国际接轨。“有研究数据显示，按发展阶段系数（广告额占GDP 比重）计算，中国广告业1987 年到1995 年的8 年中，走过相当于美国1955—1995 年40 年的历程” ①。在广告业繁荣发展的背景下，国外的广告理论和业务知识在我国逐渐普及起来，随着时间的推移，其研究视野也逐步向多元化发展，人们纷纷从文化学、语言学、美学、传播学等角度开展对广告的研究。21 世纪以来，我国广告进入一个相对成熟的发展时期，广告活动更加活跃并日趋整体化、战略化、本土化。二、越南广告发展历史及现状与中国的情况类似，当商品经济发展起来后就产生了广告的需求，于是最原始的广告就在街头小贩们的叫卖声中诞生了。而越南现代意义上的广告是随着报纸的诞生而产生的。越南最早的国语字报纸是《嘉定报》，1893 年《嘉定报》在 “杂务”一栏刊登了一则商品价格信息，这可谓是在越南最早出现的广告。此后，随着法国殖民者对越南开发的深入以及大量外来工业品的进入，各种广告开始在杂志报纸上出现，越南迎来了广告发展的第一个高潮。在越南社会主义政权建立后，计划经济代替了市场经济，国家控制了从生产到销售的各个环节，没有了商品竞争广告自然就失去了存在的价值，因此在1954 年后的越南北方以及1975 年后的越南全国，这段时期几乎没有任何广告。直到 1986 年越共六大召开后，这种情况才得以改变。随着“革新开放”政策的实行，商品经济得以发展，一些广告以“经济信息”的形式开始在报纸上出现。1989 年，越南以法律的形式正式宣布广告为合法的商业活动，此后广告业在越南蓬勃发展起来。1992 年，越南胡志明市出现了第一个户外广告；1993 年，越南国家电视台VTV 发布了第一条电视广告；1997 年，越南互联网出现第一条电子广告。随着广告形式的不断丰富，越南广告业迎来了新一波发展浪潮。 ①胡晓云张健康：《现代广告学》，浙江大学出版社，2007 年3 月，第51 页 9 第二节广告的定义及分类一、广告的定义在研究之前，先要明确广告的定义，对此不同的学者给出了不同的界定。以下挑选了几个比较权威的定义：《辞海》中广告的定义为“通过媒体向公众介绍商品、劳务和企业信息等的一种宣传方式。一般指商业广告。从广义上来说，凡是向公众传播社会人事动态、文化娱乐、宣传观念的都属于广告范畴。”《现代汉语词典》中的广告为：“向公众介绍商品、服务内容或文娱体育节目的一种宣传方式，一般通过报刊、电视、广播、招贴等形式进行。”越南2001 年颁布的《广告法》：“Quảng cáo là giới thiệu đến người tiêu dùng về hoạt động kinh doanh,hàng hóa,dịch vụ,bao gồm dịch vụ có mục đích sinh lời và dịch vụ không có mục đích sinh lời.”（广告是向消费者介绍商品和业务的一项活动，包括以盈利为目的的业务和非盈利性业务。）《越语字典》中的定义为：“Trình bày,giới thiệu rộng rãi để cho nhiều người[thường là khách hàng] biết đến.”（宣传、介绍以便让更多的人，尤其是消费者熟知。）尽管上述各家对广告的定义不尽相同，但我们从中可以总结出一些广告的基本属性：从目的来看，是为了达到“广而告之”；从内容来看，可以包括有形商品和无形商品，比如服务等；从宣传渠道来看，必须要借助一定的媒体，根据宣传对象或方式的不同来选择适合的宣传手段。二、广告的分类广告有广义和狭义之分，广义广告包括商业广告和非商业广告。非商业广告指的是不以盈利为目的的广告，主要有政治广告，如政府的公文发布、政策法令等；公益广告，如为维护社会公众利益，弘扬社会风气而发布的宣传片等；个人广告，比如寻人启事、个人声明、招聘信息等。商业广告指的是以盈利为目的的广告，也就是我们通常意义上所称的广告，是企业为获取经济利益扩大市场的一种重要手段。本文所选取的广告均为狭义广告，即商业广告。此外根据传播媒介的不同，广告还可以分为报纸广告、杂志广告、互联网广告、电视广告、广播广告等；根据传播内容的不同，广告可以分为产品广告、品牌广告、观念广告、公益广告等；根据传播范围的不同，还可以分为地域性广告、全国性广告和国际性广告。 10 第三节研究对象的界定不管是何种类型的广告，都离不开语言文字这一最基本的宣传载体，因此广告语言是决定广告成败最重要的因素，广告语言主要包括广告标语、广告标题、广告正文这几个部分。广告标语，又叫广告语，是在广告宣传活动中长期使用、最深入人心，突出宣传主题的凝练用语。广告标题是标明广告正文内容的简短语句，是对广告正文内容的高度概括。广告正文主要是详细解释说明广告的内容，介绍产品的性能、价格、用途、特点等。本文研究的是其中的广告标语部分，下文中所提到的广告语指的就是广告标语。作为企业长期使用的一个宣传口号，在寥寥数语之中既要符合企业的品牌形象又要富有趣味性以吸引消费者注意力，因此广告标语在设计之初就充分凝聚了广告人员的心血，最能体现出广告的创意和语言的文学性、艺术性，也因此极具研究的学术价值。在日常生活中，我们常常会因为一句优秀的广告标语而记住了该品牌，比如波导的“手机中的战斗机”，中国移动的“神州行我看行”，雀巢咖啡的“味道好极了”等这些都是大众耳熟能详的广告语，广告标语可谓是广告中最精华的部分。终上所述，我们可以给研究对象做个界定，本论文研究的是汉越商业广告中的广告标语部分，即广告主一定时间内长期使用的、在社会上流传最广泛、容易为消费者所记忆的宣传口号。 11 第二章汉越广告语言对比研究第一节汉越广告语语音对比一、汉越广告语语音相同点 “语音是人类说话的声音，是语义的表达形式，或者说，是语言的物质外壳” ①。它承载着所要表达的语义，其运用直接关系到语言交际活动的成败。广告作为一种信息传播手段，采用合适的语音形式，能直接促进广告的宣传效果，而每个民族都有自己独特的语音韵律感，广告主总是希望通过使用符合本地传统的语音形式，使受众在接受广告信息的同时，产生愉悦的心理体验。因此，汉越广告语都十分注重广告的语音形式。 1．注意对押韵的使用押韵是汉语中常用的语音表达形式，俗话常说“无韵不成诗”。“把两个以上韵母相同或相近的字放在诗句的同一位置，使声音和谐悦耳，这种情况就叫做押韵（或压韵）” ②。“在广告宣传中，恰当地运用押韵能增强广告语言的节奏感和音乐美，能使音调和谐优美，朗朗上口，便于受众的记忆” ③。很多经典的汉语广告都非常注意对押韵的使用： ①快乐每一刻，我的薯片可比克。（可比克薯片） ②一品黄山，天高云淡。（黄山香烟） ③东西南北中，好酒在张弓。（张弓酒）例①韵脚“刻”、“克”押e 韵，②“山”和“淡”押an 韵，③“中”、“弓” 押ong 韵，通过押韵，使广告语变得悦耳动听，也便于消费者朗读记忆，充分发挥了听觉器官在广告记忆中的作用。越语音节丰富，在广告语中也普遍使用押韵，增添音节的节奏感： ①Sức mạnh vượt trội,giải trí tuyệt vời（英特尔酷睿2）性能超强，娱乐至上。 ②Mạnh chức năng,giá phải chăng.（惠普笔记本）功能强大，价格公道。 ③Ăn sành điệu, săn hàng hiệu.（Colano 冰淇淋）吃名牌，才够范！ ①黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》下册（增订五版），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第15 页 ②胡裕树：《现代汉语》，上海教育出版社，2001 年9 月 ③曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第45 页 12 ④Chất lượng hàng đầu, ưu đãi dài lâu.（VNN 电信运营商）质量第一，优惠多多。例①“trội”与“vời”对韵，②“năng”“chăng”押韵，③“điệu”与“hiệu” 押韵，④中“đầu”“lâu”押韵。通过这些押韵，丰富了越语广告的韵律，同时避免了单调呆板，赋予文句以灵动之美。 2．注意平仄相互协调汉语和越南语都属于有声调的语言。汉语的声调，古汉语分为平、上、去、入四声，平仄就建立在这四声的基础上；平为平声，上、去、入为仄声。在现代汉语中，四声发生了改变，入声消失，这样平声就包括了阴平、阳平，仄声就包括了上声、去声。越语声调比汉语多两个，分别为1 声（thanh ngang）、2 声（thanh huyền）、3 声（thanh hỏi）、4 声（thanh ngã）、5 声（thanh sắc）、6 声（thanh nặng）， “在6 个声调中，1、2 声为平声（thanh bằng）；3、4、5、6 声为仄声（thanh trắc）” ①。平仄是两种不同风格的调类，清朝的顾炎武在《音论》中说到：“平声轻迟，上、去、入之声重疾”，讲得就是平声轻柔和缓，仄声曲折语气较重，因此常将其搭配使用，达到铿镪顿挫的效果。 “广告语言中也经常使用平仄相互协调的手法，使得一句之中平仄相互交替出现，上下句之间平仄彼此相对出现。广告语言中恰当地使用平仄相协，能使声音抑扬顿挫，高低起伏，易于记诵，产生比平常语言更为强烈的节奏感” ②。如： ①好空调，格力造。（格力空调）仄平平，平仄仄 ②风驰天下，大运摩托。（大运摩托）平平平仄，仄仄平平。 ③中华永在我心中。（中华牙膏）平平仄仄仄平平。 ④Sẻ chia muôn lối, kết nối đam mê.（VNPT 电信运营商）仄平平仄，仄仄平平。 ⑤Ấn tượng từ đẳng cấp.（奔驰S 系列）仄仄平仄仄。 ⑥Giày sáng bóng,mặc trời mưa.（kiwi 鞋）平仄仄，仄平平。以上几组汉语和越语广告都平仄相间，音节有高有低，有强有弱，具有抑扬顿挫的音律美，不仅使广告易于上口，还加强了受众对产品的印象。广告语中 ①梁远祝仰修：《现代越南语语法》，中国出版集团，2012 年11 月，第13 页 ②曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第56 页 13 的平仄当然不像格律诗那样要求严格，但上下句中最后一个音节一般是平仄相对。二、汉越广告语语音差异 1．叠声的使用不同叠声，指的是把两个相同的音节重复叠在一起使用的语音现象。南朝的刘勰在《文心雕龙》里面说到；“诗人感物，连类不穷。流连万象之际，沈吟视听之区，写气图貌，既随物以婉转；属采附声，亦与心而徘徊。”他指出了叠音这种现象诗意浓郁，使描写的对象更加形象生动，并给人以美好的音律享受，从而达到“与心徘徊”的深远意境。叠音的使用在汉语中也有着悠久的历史，在《诗经》中就有大量的诗句运用了叠音，如“昔我往矣，杨柳依依”、“今我来思，雨雪霏霏”、“关关雎鸠，在河之洲”、“氓之蚩蚩，抱布贸丝”等等这些我们耳熟能详的诗句。“广告语言中恰当地运用叠音，不仅能增强语言的音乐美感，而且能增强语言的形象性和表现力” ①。汉语的叠音形式有多种，但在广告语中使用得最多的是AA 式叠音。如： ①晶晶亮，透心凉。（雪碧） ②福气多多，满意多多。（福满多方便面） ③声声百思特，摇摇两相知。（百斯特MP3）以上几例中，“晶晶”、“多多”、“声声”、“摇摇”都是由同一语素重叠而来，通过叠音使广告语音悦耳动听，表达更加细腻真挚。如果①改为“晶亮，透心凉”， ②改为“福气多，满意多”，整个表达效果就差了一个档次。 “汉语中词的重叠是两个相同的语素重叠在一起。越南语中词的重叠远比汉语复杂，并不是简单的语音重叠。越南语重叠词中，有的本身就是以重叠形式出现的，有的是通过语音、语调变化手段形成的。变化而来的重叠词，同重叠前的根词相比，其语义也或多或少地发生变化” ②。总的来说，越语中的叠声现象分为两类，一类是音节的完全重叠，另一类是重叠的语素不完全相同。 ①Neptune ngon,ai ai cũng thích.（Neptune 食用油） Neptune 好吃，人人都喜欢。 ②Luôn luôn lắng nghe.Luôn luôn thấu hiểu.（越南人寿保险）专注倾听，用心了解。 ③Đen sâu thăm thẳm,rực rỡ sắc màu.（松下电视） ①曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第59 页 ②梁远祝仰修：《现代越南语语法》，中国出版集团，2012 年11 月，第84 页 14 精彩画质，色彩绚丽。 ④Hơi thở thơm tho, nồng nàn the mát.（绿箭牌口香糖）持久清新，醇厚隽永。例①②属于完全重叠词，相当于汉语中的叠音词，都是由两个相同的音节重叠而成，“ai ai”由“ai”重叠，“luôn luôn”由“luôn”进行重叠。例③④属于不完全重叠，即组成的语素不完全相同，③的“thăm thẳm”前后两个音节声母、韵母重叠但声调发生了改变，④的“thơm tho”的声母、声调进行了重叠但韵母发生了改变。越语中的叠声除了起到音韵优美、突出诗意的效果之外，有时候还起到突出某些语义的作用，如①中的AA 式重叠强调的是人的数量多。 2．押韵的使用不同为了突出广告效果，汉越广告语都把押韵作为语音修饰的重要手段。从押韵的位置来看，可分为句中韵和句末韵两种。句末韵也叫脚韵，指的是两句诗中最后一个音节押韵，这种押韵方式在汉越广告语中都普遍存在。区别在于句中韵的使用，这种押韵方式在越语中出现较多，在汉语广告中却极少出现。如： ①Máy tính tạo cá tính.(惠普笔记本) 有性格的电脑。 ②Nhà hỏng ống chưa hỏng.（dekko25 塑料管）房屋坏了您家的管道也不会坏。 ③Mỹ phẩm thiên nhiên cho vẻ đẹp tự nhiên.（ORIFLAME 化妆品）专为自然之美而生的天然化妆品。 ④Thật tiện lợi cũng rất tuyệt vời.（三星MP3）上手简单，功能强大。 ⑤Nhà đẹp càng đẹp.（NATIONAL 电子设备）让你的家更漂亮。上述几例越语广告押韵的位置都出现在句中，这在汉语广告中是非常少见的，造成这种差异的原因与两国诗歌传统格律有关。与越语诗歌相比，句中韵在汉语诗歌中一直备受冷落，不仅使用较少，甚至被不少文人当作声病而加以避免。相传南朝的沈约提出了一套格律诗创作应避免的八项毛病，后人谓之“八病”，它们分别是：平头、上尾、蜂腰、鹤膝、大韵、小韵、旁钮、正钮等。其中关于大韵和小韵就提到：“大韵：大韵诗者，五言诗若以“新”为韵，上九字中，更不得安‘人、律、邻、身、陈’等字，既同其类，名犯大韵。小韵：小韵诗者，除韵以外，而有迭相犯者，名为犯小韵病也” ①。简单来说，大韵指的是五言诗两句之内不能有与韵脚同一韵部的字，小韵指的是五言诗 ①转引自：李海英：《诗格“八病”现象研究》，山东师范大学硕士学位论文，2009 年4 月 15 两句各句之间不能有同属一个韵部的字，大小韵问题就是文中所指的句中韵。沈约的“八病之说”对后世影响极大，后人作诗都力图避免“句中韵” 的出现，以免产生“声病”。而反观越语，句中韵不但在诗歌中占有重要地位，而且成为了一种固定的格律。举一越南民间广泛流传的六八体诗为例，六八体诗的押韵特点是上六字与下六字同韵，下末字又与第二句的第六字同韵，所以必然会存在句中韵。 Trăm năm trong cõi người ta Chữ tài chữ mệnh khéo là ghét nhau Trải qua một cuộc biển dâu Những điều trông thấy mà đau đớn lòng Là gì bỉ sắc tư phong 第一句句末的“ta”与下句句中的“là”押韵，第三句句末的“dâu”与第四句句中的“đau”相押韵。第二节汉越广告语词汇对比一、汉越广告语词汇相同点由于广告是一种付费的商业行为，因此广告语要在最短的时间内传达出最有效的信息。同时，为了这短暂的时间内给受众留下深刻印象，抓住观众们的注意力，在词语的选用上必须精雕细琢、深思熟虑。这一点，不管是中国的广告语还是越南的广告语都是一致的。据考察，汉越广告语在词汇上的共同点主要有以下几个方面： 1．大量使用单音节动词商业广告往往按照字数来计费，这就要求广告语言必须简洁易懂，注重经济性，尽可能做到言简意赅。而单音节动词不但简洁通俗，而且富有节奏感，是人们日常生活中使用频率最高最熟悉的一类动词。通过在广告语中大量使用单音节动词，可以使广告简洁凝练，读起来朗朗上口，加深受众对广告的印象和记忆。如： ①爱生活，爱拉芳。（拉芳洗发水） ②我的地盘听我的。（动感地带） ③不走寻常路。（美特斯邦威） ④Giữ mãi nét xuân cho làn da.(Eversoft 护肤品) 16 让皮肤青春永驻。 ⑤Gửi tiền triệu Trúng tiền tỷ.(Sacombank 银行) 存百万，中亿万。 ⑥Lấy lại “dáng xinh”sau 6 tuần sử dụng.(Vinamilk) 在六周使用后重获青春。上述几例中，使用了“爱”、“听”、“走”、“giữ”（保持）、“gửi”（存）、“lấy” （获得）等动词，这些动词都为单音节形式，节奏感较强，能给消费者一种简洁明了、易于记忆的印象，达到了广告宣传的效果。 2．多使用生动形象带有褒义色彩的形容词 “形容词常用来表示形状、性质和状态等” ①，广告语言中的形容词多用来描述产品的性质或者服务。这种描绘或说明对于受众是否接受该产品有很强的诱导性，“越语广告中就大量运用具有评价意味即带有浓厚的感情色彩的词语或是通过触发人们联想从而造成语言的具体形象性的描绘性词语”。 ②因此，在汉越广告语中都注重选用一些生动形象带有褒义色彩的形容词来体现出产品或服务的优越性，以此来吸引消费者购买。 ①新鲜佳雪新鲜人。（佳雪芦荟保湿系列） ②全心全意小天鹅。（小天鹅洗衣机） ③精美耐用，全球推崇。（精工表） ④Nơi cuộc sống trở nên tốt đẹp hơn.（安利保健品）让生活变得更美好的。 ⑤Công việc tốt hơn,cuộc sống tuyệt vời.（vietnamworks 招聘）更棒的生活，更好的工作。 ⑥Đẹp như mơ ước,trắng như mong đợi.（Rojzy Jiali 面膜）如所期待的美，如所期待的白。上述例子中，不论是汉语的“新鲜”、“全心全意”、“精美耐用”还是越语的 “tốt đẹp”（美好）、“ tuyệt vời”（绝顶）、“ trắng”（美白）都属于褒义色彩的形容词，通过使用这些词汇体现出了所要宣传产品的卓尔不群、给观众留下深刻印象，并促使消费者去购买该产品。 3．都注重对数词的使用在汉越广告语中都非常注重对数词的使用，因为数词的使用具有以下优点：首先，数词的特点是表示准确的数据，相比一般的广告语言更具有权威性和说服力，通过展示权威的数字来打动消费者，从而获得消费者对产品的信任。其次，数字词语具有高度的概括性，能够化繁为简、化抽象为具体，这种直观形象快捷 ① 黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》下册（增订五版），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第12 页 ② 刘轶倾：《越语广告的语言特点》，收录于《东方语言文化论丛》，2004 年9 月，第153 页 17 有效的宣传方式使消费者易记、易认，获得最佳宣传效果。 ①今年二十，明年十八。（百丽美容香皂） ②乐百氏纯净水—经过27 层净化。（乐百氏纯净水） ③30 年好口味，大白兔与您共成长。（大白兔奶糖） ④3 ly chụm lại,nên tầm vóc cao.(vinamilk 牛奶) 每天三杯，让您的身体快快长高。 ⑤Tiết kiệm 15% điện năng,tôi cảm thấy như đang góp phần thay đổi thế giới. （日立冰箱）节电15%，就可以改变这个世界。 ⑥Cam kết 5 ngày trắng răng nằm trong 6 hiệu quả.(Doreen 牙膏) 6 大功效，让您的牙齿5 天内变得洁白。在广告语言文字中，数字的使用是其中的亮点，因为数字具有权威性和说服力，往往比空洞的语言文字更有说服力。上述广告中，插入了不少数字，如“二十”、“27”、“30”、“15%”、“5”等，这些数字不仅使广告直观形象，富有个性，而且容易打消消费者的购买顾虑，获得消费者的认可，达到了很好的宣传效果。二、汉越广告词汇不同点越南语是越南的国语，越南人称之为国语字（chữ quốc ngữ），是17 世纪来越南传教的法国传教士亚历山大•罗德创立，这是一套拉丁文体系的书写系统，在词汇上与汉语有很大区别，这些特点也反映在了汉越广告语言中，主要体现在以下几个方面： 1．汉语广告四字格和越语广告三字格的使用总所周知，在汉语世界中存在着大量的四字格词汇。“四字格的词汇往往具有以下优点：从形式上看，结构均匀整齐；从语音上看，音韵和谐优美；从语义上看，可以使语言含蓄典雅，正式端庄” ①。为了给受众留下深刻的印象，在汉语广告中经常大量使用四字格词汇。在越语广告中，尽管四字格词汇的使用也不少，但似乎越南人更偏爱于使用三字格词汇，我们可以从以下几对广告语中得到例证： ①汉语：任何曲线，完美展现。越南语：Truyền cảm hửng,gợi đam mê.（Triumph 内衣） ②汉语：精准瞬吸，全面防漏。越南语：Thêm sắc màu,rực cá tính.（高洁丝卫生巾） ① 王天虹：《独特的汉语四字格形式发展探析》，《北京劳动保障职业学院学报》，（北京）2007 年第1 期 18 ③汉语：美妙结局，触手可及。越南语：Lau cực vui,sàn cực sạch.（联合利华家用清洁产品） ④汉语：闪耀青春，花样年华。越南语：Quên bận rộn,vui tận hưởng.（索尼超级本）上述的几对广告语都是对同一款产品的描述，我们可以看出，在汉语广告中，使用的是四字格词汇的形式，而在相对应的越语广告中清一色地使用三字格的词汇形式。 2．越语广告中汉越词的使用重视对汉越词的使用，是越语广告词汇中的一个重要特点。“汉越词是指越南语中具有词的功能的汉语借词以及完全由汉越词素构成或由汉越词素与越语固有词素构成的非汉语借词” ①。汉越词与纯越词、外来词一起构成了越语词汇，按照法国学者马伯乐（Maspero）的统计，越语词汇里有60%的词汇是汉越词。因此，汉越词是越语广告中的主要组成部分，宫春在《言语行为理论下的越南杂志广告语言研究》中也提到：“经过统计，汉越词在杂志广告语言中所占比例高达75%，这是一个值得注意的现象。” 汉越词之所以在越语广告中扮演重要角色，与其自身特点密切相关。“相对于纯越词来说，汉越词显得更加高雅、庄重、古典和概括性高，这是大家所公认的” ②。所以，汉越词一般用于比较正式的场合或者书面语体。由于广告本身属于一种交际活动，广告主为了获得消费者对其产品或者服务的认可，经常在广告语中使用正式端庄、有说服力的文体，因此汉越词在越语广告中有较高的使用频率就不难理解了。 ①Du lịch bốn phương Trúng thưởng kim cương （Vietravel）尽览各地美景，独享金钻大奖 ②Văn phòng di động Trong lòng bàn tay （诺基亚E 系列）移动办公，尽在您手中 ③Chúng tôi mang đến cho bạn Phú-Toàn-Mỹ （Prudential 保险）让我们给您带来“富、全、美”的保障。上述几例越语广告中，都普遍使用了汉越词“bốn phương” （四方）、 “di động” （移动）、“Phú-Toàn-Mỹ”（富全美）。例①②中的“bốn phương”、“di động”都可以用口语化色彩浓厚的纯越词“các nơi”、“đi ngoài”来替代，尽管句义不变，但是句子色彩却显得没有这么高雅，感染力和说服力都不如采用汉越词。 3．汉语广告中仿拟词的使用仿拟词是指根据表达的需要，模仿现成的词语，更换其中的某个语素，临时 ① 谭志词：《中越语言文化关系》，军事谊文出版社，2003 年9 月，第67 页 ② 祁广谋：《越南语文化语言学》，世界图书出版社，2011 年9 月，第233 页 19 创造出一个新词语。在汉语广告中常出现大量的新词语，仿拟作为造词法的一种，其使用的频率最高。仿拟的对象经常是一些家喻户晓、耳熟能详、简洁凝练的成语、俗语和惯用语等，其中以成语的仿拟最多。仿拟不仅仅是一种造词法，“仿拟能给人一种新鲜活泼、风趣幽默和生动明快的感觉，引起人们的回味和联想” ①。因此，广告主经常在广告语中使用仿拟词。仿拟词主要分为谐音语素替换和非谐音语素替换两种。 3.1 谐音语素替换谐音语素替换是指在广告创作中用同音或音近的词来替换熟语中的某个语素，虽然字面上发生改变，但熟语含义还是与原来基本一致。例如“ ①一箭如故一箭钟情（箭牌口香糖） ②大石化小小石化了（胆舒胶囊） ③千里音缘一线牵（中国电信长途电话）例①仿成语“一见如故”、“一见钟情”而成，通过一字之变，表明这种箭牌口香糖非常受人欢迎，一经面世即被人喜欢了。例②仿“大事化小，小事化了” 而成，以谐音“石”代替“事”，强调这种产品的功能是消除结石。例③是仿“千里姻缘一线牵”而成，原意是指有姻缘的夫妻两人不管隔多远都有月老的红线牵着，以“音”替换“姻”后，表明这种长途电话即使相隔很远也能沟通无障碍。以①为例，如果光看“一箭如故”这四个字是不知所以的，初看的话还会以为是个错别词，但是把这个品牌名结合起来的话，整个广告语的意蕴就一目了然了。 3.2 非谐音语素替换 “为了突出商品的某些特点，广告创作者在运用熟语时，有意抽掉其中的某一个或两个字眼，而用另外的与读者毫无关系，却能起到画龙点睛作用的字代替它，这种方式就是非谐音替换” ②。例如 ①书山有路读为径，学海无涯报作舟。（中华读书报） ②百闻不如一印。（佳能打印机） ③年年岁岁雪相似，岁岁年年豹不同。（雪豹羽绒服）例①仿自“书山有路勤为径，学海无涯苦作舟”，前后改动了“读”、“报” 两字，形式基本保持一致，强调了读报这个品牌。例②原句是“百闻不如一见”，这里用“印”替换了“见”，不仅突出该产品的性能特点，而且表明了产品的名声之大。例③仿拟了诗句“年年岁岁花相似，岁岁年年人不同”，将品牌名“雪豹”二字巧妙地嵌入其中，从而借助诗的意境给人留下深刻的印象。 ①曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第165 页 ②王军元：《广告语言》，汉语大词典出版社，2005 年6 月，第124 页 20 第三节汉越广告语修辞对比一、汉越广告修辞共同点 “修辞是人类的一种以语言为主要媒介的符号交际行为，是人们依据具体的语境，有意识、有目的地建构话语和理解话语以及其他文本，以取得理想的交际效果的一种社会行为” ①。广告语离不开修辞，修辞格的运用对一则广告的成功与否起着举足轻重的作用。在广告创作中，恰当地使用修辞往往能达到事半功倍的效果，能够突出产品的特点和个性，给消费者留下深刻的印象并激发其购买的欲望。汉越广告语都非常重视修辞的使用，经过对搜集到的广告语料进行整理，发现当前在汉越广告中使用频率比较高的是比喻、比拟、夸张等这几种修辞。 1．比喻修辞比喻，越语中称之为so sánh，是汉越广告语中最常见的修辞方式。“它是通过联想，将两个在本质上根本不同的事物由某一相似特点直接联系在一起，用甲事物来说明乙事物的一种修辞方式” ②。越语中的so sánh 和汉语的比喻一样，同样分为暗喻和明喻两种类型，广告中的比喻通常包括本体、喻解、喻词、喻体等这几个部分，当然出于语言简练的考虑，在广告中也经常省略喻词部分。通过使用比喻这种修辞方式，可以把艰深难懂、复杂的道理变得浅显化、具体化，从而给消费者留下深刻的印象，有利于产品的宣传，因此在汉越的广告语中都非常重视对这种修辞方式的使用。来看下面的几则广告： ①牛奶香浓，丝般感受。（德芙巧克力） ②让女人美丽如水，东洋之花，绵羊奶保湿露。（东洋之花保湿露） ③Máy chiếu trong máy quay,chia sẻ từng phút giây!（索尼摄像机）摄像机中的照相机，轻松分享每一刻！ ④Ngon như cháo mẹ nấu ấy!(Gấu Đỏ 速食粥) 像妈妈做的一样好吃！例①中巧克力的味道是比较难用语言来表达的，这里用丝般柔滑来形容巧克力那难以名状的美味，可谓是新颖别致，给消费者留下了深刻的印象。例②是一则明喻广告，把女人比作水，不仅象征了女性温婉、细腻、柔情的性格特征，也切合了“补水保湿”这一产品的最大特点，爱美之心人皆有之，这样的比喻更能激发其女性消费者的共鸣。例③摄像机与照相机本是两种功能不同的产品，为了突出摄像机中的照相功能，直接将其比喻为“摄像机中的照相机”，与那句我们 ①祁广谋：《越南语文化语言学》，世界图书出版社，2011 年9 月，第303 页 ②王军元：《广告语言》，汉语大词典出版社，2005 年6 月，第71 页 21 耳熟能详的“手机中的战斗机”是不是有异曲同工之妙？例④是越语的一则明喻广告，为了突出食品的美味，将其比喻成妈妈做出的口味，不仅形象生动，更增添了几分家庭的温情，容易让消费者对其产品产生美好的联想。 2．比拟修辞比拟，越语中称之为nhân hóa và vật hóa，nhân hóa 即是汉语中的拟人，vật hóa 就是汉语中的拟物。“nhân hóa và vật hóa 是一种改变词语的习惯性适用对象和语境，把通常用于描写人的词语用于描写物，或用通常用于描写物的词语来描写人，实行人、物适用语词互换或物物适用语词互换的修辞方式” ①。在广告中使用比拟的修辞手法，可以赋予本无生命的产品以人类的情感，让产品的广告宣传变得栩栩如生和生动形象，从而引起受众情感上的共鸣。例如： ①真诚到永远。（海尔电器） ②爱心妈妈，呵护全家。（舒肤佳日用品） ③一身正气，装点人生。（雅戈尔男装） ④Vũ khúc của nước.(AQUAFINA 矿泉水) 水之舞曲。 ⑤Chia sẻ cảm xúc,sung túc niềm vui.（LG 洗衣机）与您分享幸福每一刻。 ⑥Cá tính hơn,nổi trội hơn.（SYM 摩托车）有个性，更醒目。例①中的“真诚”本是形容一个人真实诚恳的品质，这里将其用在“海尔电器”身上，赋予海尔以人的品性，从而突出该企业真实可靠的的品牌理念。例② 将舒肤佳比拟成一位充满爱心的妈妈，因为妈妈在家庭中总是扮演照顾体贴家人的角色，通过这一比拟牢牢地树立了该产品在消费者心中的形象。例③“一身正气”是对一个男人人格品质的赞扬，在这里将雅戈尔男装拟人化，穿上雅戈尔男装就等于披上一身正气，在无形中拉近了与消费者的距离。例④是越语的一则拟人广告，水本是一种平淡无奇的商品，广告中别出心裁地将其比拟作一位会跳舞的舞者，将水的灵动活跃表现出来给人以深刻的印象。例⑤将一台洗衣机比拟为一位愿意随时与你分享生活点滴的知心朋友，显得生动有趣，给人以美的享受。例⑥“个性”、“醒目”多用来形容人在思想、性格、情感方面不同于他人的特质，在此将产品比拟为有“个性”“醒目”的人，强调产品与众不同的性能，也容易激起受众对产品的联想。 3．夸张修辞夸张，越语中为phóng đại và thu nhỏ，phóng đại 指的是汉语中的扩大夸张， ①祁广谋：《越南语文化语言学》，世界图书出版社，2011 年9 月，第314 页 22 thu nhỏ指的是缩小夸张。“夸张是指为了表达的需要故意言过其实，对客观的人或事物做扩大或缩小的描述的一种修辞格” ①。夸张在广告中是一种非常重要的修辞手法，因为广告的目的归根到底是让消费者记住该产品和服务，而夸张往往具有强大的语言冲击力，通过“夸大其词”式的宣传经常能给受众留下深刻的印象。例如： ①让一亿人先聪明起来。（巨人脑黄金） ②邦迪坚信，没有愈合不了的伤口。（邦迪创可贴） ③雅芳比女人更了解女人。（雅芳化妆品） ④Điện thoại nhân bản,chưa nói đã hiểu.(三星S3 手机) 人机交互，比你先知。 ⑤Bền bỉ với thời gian.（VEAM 摩托车）与时间一样牢靠。 ⑥Sáng rõ thỏa mọi nơi.（索尼XPERIA 手机）照亮每个角落。例①“一亿人”是个非常庞大的数量，对于保健品而言不可能覆盖到这么庞大的群体，故此为夸张的说法，目的在于引起消费者的注意。例②的说法过于绝对，显然违背了我们熟知的常识，也正是这一夸张，突出了其创可贴强大的愈合能力。例③单纯一款化妆品怎么可能比女人更了解女人呢？这里通过对其产品夸大其词的宣传，对女性消费者有着很强的感染力。例④想要突出描述的是三星手机的智能性，就好比洞悉你内心所有的想法一样，未开口已经满足了你所有的要求，所以这是一种夸张的手法。例⑤我们都知道，时间是永恒的，这则广告故意违背客观规律的说法，不仅没有削弱其表现力，反而为其添色不少。例⑥为了突出该款手机“眩耀”的特点，巧妙地作了一个“照亮每个角落”的夸张，迎合了不少年轻人追求出位个性的心理特点。 4．多种修辞格的综合使用 “辞格的综合运用，是指在一个语言片段里有两个以上的辞格互相配合使用” ②。在广告语创作中，综合运用多种修辞格，能够最大程度上提高广告语的表现力，更好地凸显产品的个性，激发消费者的购买欲望。因此，不管是汉语广告语还是越南语广告语，往往都不会只使用一种修辞格，而是把多种修辞格综合起来使用。例如： ①何以解忧？唯有杜康。（杜康酒） ②情系中国结，联通四海心。（中国联通） ①曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第142 页 ②王军元：《广告语言》，汉语大词典出版社，2005 年6 月，第97 页 23 ③Vận hành đa nhiêm,sức mạnh vô song.（三星S5830 手机）多线运行，轻松胜任。 ④Bí quyết duy nhất,truyền thống trăm năm.（河内啤酒）唯一秘诀，百年传统。例①综合使用了引用和设问这两种修辞格，首先该广告语直接引用自三国时期曹操那首脍炙人口的《短歌行》，突出其文化底蕴，开头以“何以解忧”作设问，起到吸引消费者的作用。例②接连使用了对偶和双关这两种修辞格，上下两句都是动宾结构，“情系”对“联通”，“中国结”对“四海心”，语言结构整齐韵律和谐；该句中的“联通”即作动词用，也直接象征了该品牌，起到一语双关的效果。例③采用了对偶和夸张的修辞手法，两句对仗工整富有韵味，其中的“sức mạnh vô song”（无穷力量）夸张了该手机功能的强大。例④同时使用了对偶、对比这两种修辞格，上下两句都为偏正结构，语义相对结构相同，上句的“duy nhất”（唯一）和下句的“trăm năm”（百年）形成了强烈对比，从而突出该产品悠久的历史。二、汉越广告语的修辞差异 1．越语广告中的特色修辞(nói lái 倒读法) nói lái 是越语中一种独特的修辞手法，“nói lái là một biện pháp tu từ trong đó người ta trao đổi phụ âm đầu và phần vần giữa các âm tiết để tạo nên những từ ngữ khác có nội dung mới,bất ngờ,hiểm hóc.” ①。(nói lái 是一种通过调换声母、韵母、音节的方式来表达新内容的修辞手法，常给人以意想不到的乐趣。) nói lái 有lái đôi（二字格）、lái ba（三字格）、lái tư（四字格）等多种形式，其中以lái đôi 这种形式最为常见。lái đôi 又可以分为以下几种类型： ⑴、声母位置不变，改变韵母和声调。如： mèo cái（母猫）—mái kèo（房檐） khuê các（闺阁）—khác quê（不同家乡） ⑵、声母和声调不变，对换韵母的位置。如： thi đua（比赛）—thua đi（输了） cháy chợ（火烧集市）—chớ chạy（不许跑） ⑶、声母和韵母位置改变，声调不变。如： đấu tranh（斗争）—tránh đâu（躲到哪儿） ①Đinh Trọng Lạc：99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt. NXB Giáo Dục.1999.tr180 24 đầu tiên（首先）—tiền đâu（钱在哪儿） ⑷、声调和韵母不变，对换声母位置。如： bình định（平定）—đình bịnh（停病）这种独特的修辞方式与越语的音节特点是分不开的： “âm tiết tiếng việt có hai đặc điểm quan trọng:ranh giới giữa các âm tiết rất rõ rang và hầu như phụ âm đầu nào cũng có thể kết hợp với bất kỳ phần vần nào” ①。（越语音节有两个重要特点：一是各音节之间的区分很清楚，二是几乎所有的声母都可以与任一韵母相组合）nói lái 不仅被越南民众用于平常的口语交流，在对联、谜语、民谣、诗歌等其他民间艺术形式方面都有大量的使用，是一种深受越南民众喜爱的修辞方式，因此在广告中也有出现： ①Người sáng chói mà không là người sói trán.（X-hair 生发剂）告别秃顶，让您真正光彩照人。 ②Bật mí bí mật làm đẹp tự nhiên（Unilever 护肤品）揭开自然之美的秘密。 ③Uống cho thoải mãi, ít ly thành y lít！（HUDA 啤酒）尽情畅饮，不醉不归！ ①的“sáng chói”（光彩夺目）通过调换韵母的位置变为“sói trán”（秃顶），尽管没有从正面描写该产品的特点，却通过这一正一反的对比，让消费者心领神会，含蓄地突出了该产品的特点。②的“bật mí”调换声调和韵母成“bí mật”， ③的“ít ly”调换声调和韵母为“y lít”，这些都属于nói lái 的用法。 2．汉语广告中的特色修辞（双关）双关，是指“利用语音或语义条件，有意使语句同时关顾表面和内里两种意思，言在此而意在彼” ②。双关这种修辞格在汉语广告中大量存在，虽然在越语广告中也有类似的用法但远远不如汉语广告使用得这么广泛。此外，双关修辞的使用多与汉语中的熟语结合在一起，这也是汉语广告的一大特点。这种修辞在汉越广告中的使用差异与各自语言的特点有关。双关营造出“言在此而意在彼”效果的最重要前提是需要有大量同音字或近音字的存在。按照普通话声韵母表，普通话共有21 个声母、39 个韵母和4 个声调，进行排列组合后， “普通话有意义的音节约有400 个，带有特定的声调的音节约有1300 个” ③，这 1300 个带声调的音节就是构成汉语词汇的语音材料。而汉语中汉字的数量非常多，2010 年出版的《汉语大字典》所收录的汉字就超过了6 万个。用这1300 个音节来解决6 万个汉字的发音问题显然是不够的，而解决汉语音节有限性与众多 ①Đinh Trọng Lạc：99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt. NXB Giáo Dục.1999.tr180 ②黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》（下册），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第202 页 ③黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》（下册），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第75 页 25 词汇量之间的矛盾唯一方法就是使用同音字，据学者统计，“没有同音字的汉字只有16 个，其他汉字都有同音字，其中最多的达116 个” ①。在越南语中，共有 22 个声母、155 个韵母和6 个声调，相比之下，越语的音节数量比汉语要丰富很多，据统计，越南语最多可拥有近2 万个音节，这些众多的音节有效地解决了越语词汇的发音问题，“所以越语音节潜力很大，同音几率远远小于汉语” ②。因此在越语广告中极少采用双关这种修辞手法。广告中的双关修辞主要分为谐音双关和语义双关两种。 2.1 谐音双关谐音双关，是利用汉语音同或音近的条件使词语或者句子同时包含两层或两层以上的意思。谐音双关既能保留原来词义的意思，还能加上产品名称或者要宣传的广告内容，从而将两者巧妙地结合在一起，富有视觉和听觉上的冲击力，拉近了与受众的距离。例如： ①胃，你好吗？（斯达舒胃药） ②聪明的妈妈会用锌。（三精牌葡萄糖酸锌口服液） ③穿什么就是什么。（森马服饰）上述广告都采用了语音形式相同的谐音双关。例①借助“胃”与“喂”的谐音表达出了两重意思：一是用“喂，你好吗”这样日常的招呼用语来向消费者问候，使人感到亲近，二是突出对消费者胃健康的关注，并强调其产品的主要功效。例②同样借助“锌”与“心”的谐音，一方面表达了“聪明的妈妈会用心”这一概念，另一方面也传达出用心的妈妈会用“锌”也就是该产品的含义。例③句中的第二个“什么”与“森马”谐音，表达出了年轻人爱穿什么就穿什么的随意、不受拘束，以及穿上森马就能给你带来这样的感觉，一语双关，特别符合年轻人的口味。 2.2 语义双关语义双关，是指利用词语或者句子的多重语意在特定语境中营造出表面和隐藏两层含义。语义双关与谐音双关一样在广告语中有着异曲同工的表达效果。如： ①原来生活可以更美的。（美的空调） ②祝你新年百事可乐。（百事可乐） ③做女人挺好！（婷美内衣）例①借助“美的”表达了两种意思：一是生活可以变的更加美好，二是用了美的空调后生活变得更精彩，第二种意思是广告主所要着重传达的。例②表面上看这是一句新年的祝福语，祝你万事都开心快乐，实质上将产品名称暗含在了祝福语里面，把情感元素与品牌巧妙地结合在一起，使人感到亲切又温馨。例③“挺 ①马显彬：《汉语同音现象分析》，《语文研究》2005 年第2 期 ②梁远祝仰修：《现代越南语语法》，中国出版集团，2012 年11 月，第10 页 26 好”除了其字面意思外，还含蓄地表达了产品的功效，一语双关，让消费者看了心领神会，很好地完成了广告的任务。 3.汉语广告的对偶与越语广告的“sóng đôi（成对）”修辞汉语的对偶修辞，指的是“用两个结构相同或相似、字数相等的短语或句子来表达相关的意义内容的一种修辞格” ①。中国语言历来讲究对仗工整，既包括字面含义工整，也包括结构形式工整，因此对偶成了深受中国人喜爱的修辞方式。在广告中正确地运用对偶修辞，能使广告语言流畅，读起来朗朗上口，加深消费者对产品的印象，从而达到事半功倍的宣传效果。广告中的对偶主要分为正对、反对、串对这三种。正对：从两个角度、两个侧面说明同一事理，表示相似、相关的关系，在内容上是相互补充的，以并列关系的复句为表现形式 ②。例如： ①新春新意新鲜新趣，可喜可贺可口可乐。（可口可乐） ②超越性能极限，领略精彩计算。（AMD 芯片） ③自然最健康，绿色好心情。（康师傅绿茶）例①为联合结构的对偶，上句以一串“新”字起头，下句以“可”字起头，结构语义上都一一对应，并且暗含了该产品的品牌，起到很好的宣传效果。例② 为述宾结构的对偶，“超越”与“领略”前后呼应，凸显出AMD 芯片强劲的性能。例③为主谓结构的对偶，分别从“自然”和“绿色”这两个角度叙述了该产品的特点。反对：上下联表示一般的相反关系或矛盾对立关系，借正反对照、比较以突出事物的本质 ③。例如： ①白天吃白片不瞌睡,晚上吃黑片睡得香。（白加黑感冒药） ②多一些润滑,少一些摩擦。（统一润滑油） ③别人看历史，我们看未来。（《今周刊》）例①“白天”与“晚上”、“白片”与“黑片”、“不瞌睡”与“睡得香”意义相反，成反对关系，通过这样的对比，突出了该感冒药在白天和晚上两种不同的功效。例②用“多”与“少”、“润滑”与“摩擦”这两个具有反义关系的词语，向人们揭示了和谐统一的重要性，也与其“润滑”的特点相吻合。例③用“历史” 与“未来”形成鲜明对比，指出该周刊的定位是面向未来。串对：上下联内容根据事物的发展过程或成因、条件、假设等方面的关联，连成复句，一流而下，也叫“流水对” ④。例如： ①曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第154 页 ②黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》（下册），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第211 页 ③黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》（下册），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第211 页 ④黄伯荣廖序东：《现代汉语》（下册），高等教育出版社，2011 年6 月，第212 页 27 ①人人都为礼品愁，我送北极海狗油。（北极海狗油） ②喝汇源果汁，走健康之路。（汇源果汁） ③要想皮肤好，早晚用大宝。（大宝护肤品）例①上下联为因果关系，例②③为条件关系。越语中也有类似的修辞方式，叫做sóng đôi（成对）修辞，“Sóng đôi là biện pháp tu từ cú pháp dựa trên sự cấu tạo giống nhau giữa hai hay nhiều câu hoặc hai hay nhiều bộ phận của câu.” ①。(用两个或两个以上构造相同或相似、内容相关的词语、句子排列起来的句子)运用这种修辞方法能使广告语言的表达富于节奏感，读起来朗朗上口，使消费者过目不忘，增强广告的表达效果。如： ①Sắc màu mới Tính năng mới.（雅马哈摩托）新色彩，新性能。 ②Chất lượng không khí Chất lượng sống.（REETECH 空调）空气的质量，生活的质量。 ③Xoay mạnh mẽ Lướt dịu êm Bền vượt trội （三洋摩托）运转有力，行使平稳，牢固超常。 ④Tẩy sạch vết bẩn Diệt mọi vi khuẩn.（Vim 清洁剂）去除污迹，消灭细菌。上述4 个例子中，上下句的结构相同，语义相近，首先从视觉上给人以整齐均匀、对仗工整的美感，在听觉上有节奏明快、音韵感十足的享受，视觉与听觉效果结合在一起，给人以深刻的印象。不过越语广告中的sóng đôi（成对）修辞与汉语广告的对偶修辞还是有区别的。汉语的对偶要求较为严格：除了音节要相等之外，上下联语法结构必须相同，平仄要对应，且一般以两句话为一联。而越语sóng đôi（成对）修辞并无严格规定，只要求“结构相同或相似、内容相关的词语、句子即可”。并提出“Sóng đôi có thể là đầy đủ hoặc không đầy đủ hoặc là bộ phận” ②（该修辞各部分可以完整对应也可以不完整或者部分对应）。上述广告的例②，上联为4 字句，下联为3 字句，音节数量并不相等；例③尽管音节数量相等，却有三句话，而汉语对偶只有两个短语或句子。此外，汉语广告的对偶对词语的选择很讲究，一般不会使用重复的词或词组，越语的sóng đôi（成对）修辞并无此要求，例①②句的上下联都重复使用“mới”和“chất lượng”两词。综上所述，汉语对偶和越语sóng đôi（成对）修辞在广告语言的使用中还是存在较大区别的。 ①Đinh Trọng Lạc：99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt. NXB Giáo Dục.1999.tr184 ② Đinh Trọng Lạc：99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng Việt. NXB Giáo Dục.1999.tr184 28 第三章汉越广告语言文化内涵对比第一节广告语言与文化的关系文化是一个广泛的概念，很难给它一个单一、严格的定义，按照我国《辞海》对文化概念的解释，文化可以分为广义和狭义两种：“从广义上讲，指人类社会历史实践过程中所创造的物质财富和精神财富的总和；从狭义来说，指社会的意识形态，以及与之相适应的制度和组织机构” ①。而作为人们日常沟通交流的工具，“语言是一种文化现象，是文化总体的组成部分，是自成体系的特殊文化” ②。语言与文化的关系是相辅相成、不可分割的。首先，语言反映文化。“一方面，语言是人类文化的重要组成部分，是人类文化得以建构和传承的形式和手段” ③。另一方面，语言是文化的载体，一个民族的语言是深深根植于该民族的文化土壤之中，其语言反应着该民族的哲学观念、思维模式、人生价值观等。其次，文化决定着语言。从语言产生的过程来看，正是人类的文化创造活动产生了语言。“创造性的劳动是作为“文化动物”的人的行为与一般动物行为相区别的根本点，而语言正是在这一劳动过程中产生的”。 ④因此，语言与文化是相互影响的，文化对语言有决定性的作用，反之，语言也是了解文化的一面镜子。中越两国山水相邻，两个民族在悠久的历史长河中以辛勤的劳作、聪明的智慧创造了灿烂的历史文化，汉越民族都对自己的民族文化有着强烈的认同感。广告作为文化的一部分，必然会根植于本土文化之中。“而广告语言是广告的核心内容，且作为一种语言变体，不可避免地带有民族文化的烙印，反映本民族社会文化的各个方面”。 ⑤所以，民族文化制约着广告语言的表达，而广告语言则是民族文化的载体。此外，从广告本身的性质来看，越是符合民族文化特点的广告语，就越容易被本地人所认可和接受，也更利于达到广告宣传的效果。广告主在设计创作广告语中必然会考量背后所蕴含的文化因素，这也为从广告语来透视汉越民族文化搭建了一个可靠的平台。下面将从民族文化间的共性与差异进行分析。第二节汉越广告语中的民族文化共性中国有着悠久的五千年文明，是世界古老文明的发源地之一。自汉唐起，随 ①转引自张公瑾丁石庆：《文化语言学教程》，教育科学出版社，2004 年7 月，第19 页 ②张公瑾丁石庆：《文化语言学教程》，教育科学出版社，2004 年7 月，第41 页 ③戴昭铭：《文化语言学导论》，语文出版社，1996 年12 月，第14 页 ④戴昭铭：《文化语言学导论》，语文出版社，1996 年12 月，第17 页 ⑤曹炜高军：《广告语言学教程》，暨南大学出版社，2009 年11 月，第286 页 29 着综合国力的强盛，中国开始了向周边国家积极主动传播文化的历史，并构建起了以儒家文化为中心的汉文化圈。“越南古代文化中所具有的汉文化色彩，较之于古代朝鲜、日本，都有过之而无不及”。 ①越南不仅有着长达一千年的北属历史，而且在独立后也一直深受汉文化的影响，曾有诗写到： “欲问安南事,安南风俗淳。衣冠唐制度,礼乐汉君臣。”该诗就是中国文化在越南影响力的一个写照。“中国文化对越南的影响是深远而全面的，覆盖了越南的典章制度、科技教育、文学艺术、宗教信仰和风俗习惯等各个领域。它还是一种多层次的文化输入，不仅涉及到人们日常生活中的衣食住行、言行举止，还涉及到思想意识，传统价值观等更深入的层次”。 ②这种汉越文化上的相似性，必然会在两国的广告语言上有所反映。一、体现相似的道德情感道德是一个民族在悠久的历史发展中所积淀下来的共同行为规范和生活准则，老子在《道德经》中说到：“道生之，德畜之，物形之，器成之。是以万物莫不尊道而贵德。”可见道德是一种社会意识形态，是一个民族对世界观人生观的看法，不同的民族有不同的道德观。同为汉文化圈的中越两国，都以儒家思想的“仁”作为最高的道德原则，并形成了以“仁”为核心的伦理思想结构，它包括了“忠、孝、信、第”等为内容的伦理信条，在社会生活中表现为贵贱尊卑有序，长幼有礼，重视家庭和谐，这些都构成了几千年来中越两国道德体系的基石。这些伦理规范和社会准则在两国的广告语言中多有反映。 1．尊老爱幼是共同的道德观念儒家思想认为孝乃至德要道，《孝经》中说到：“夫孝，德之本也，教之所由生也”，孝是一切高尚品德的内在依据，是追求一切美德的起点，因此对于孝道的践行体现了一个人的道德修养。除此之外，关爱幼小也是儒家思想的一个重要方面，孟子就主张要“老吾老，以及人之老；幼吾幼，以及人之幼。”不少的汉语广告语都体现出了这样的伦理道德观，如： ①世上有一种爱叫作父爱世上有一种酒它是专门献给父亲的酒椰岛鹿龟酒父亲的补酒（椰岛鹿龟酒） ②乌鸡白凤口服液，向母爱表示爱心！（同仁堂乌鸡白凤口服液）深受儒家思想影响的越南人也同样非常推崇尊老爱幼这项美德。“越南人民把孝道作为衡量一个人道德的首要标准，之所以视其为首要的标准，是因为如果一个人连自己的父母亲都不懂得珍爱，就更加不可能去热爱自己的同胞，热爱自 ① 贺圣达：《东南亚文化发展史》,云南人民出版社，2010 年12 月，第128 页 ② 聂槟：《外来文化在越南的传播与融合》.东南亚纵横，2003（12） 30 己的祖国了” ①。这在广告语上也有所反映，如： ①Mẹ chọn là nhất.（Aji-no-moto 味精）母亲的选择就是最好的。 ②Qùa tặng cho mẹ cho xương chắc khỏe mỗi ngày.（Calcium corbieve 口服液）献给妈妈的礼物，促进每天的骨骼健康。例①②通过认可母亲的选择、给妈妈送礼物传递出了一种浓浓的孝顺亲情，言外之意就是购买这些产品就是对父母尽了孝道，容易获得消费者的认可。孩子是一个家庭的希望，父母们都为孩子倾尽了心血，商家也抓住了这一共同的社会文化心理来做文章： ①Cùng Lotte Xylitol chăm sóc răng cho bé yêu.（Lotte 口香糖）与Lotte 口香糖一起关注你孩子的牙齿 ②Yêu con từ thuở phôi thai.（Insulac mom 保健品）从怀胎起就爱护宝宝。通过上述这两例广告，生动形象地刻画出了关心孩子成长的父母形象，给人以深刻的印象。 2.重视家土的观念儒学认为，构建在血缘关系上的家庭秩序是一切是社会秩序的核心。“因为古代中国是农业和宗法合二为一的社会，农业生产赖以生存的基础是家庭，宗法社会也是以血缘关系纽带维系的家庭为依托的” ②。因此，在中国的民族文化观念中，家庭观念特别浓重。反映在现实社会中就是安土重迁，即使死后也要“落叶归根”。在悠长的几千年岁月中，对家土的眷恋与热爱，已然成为了中国文化的一部分。如： ①千万里，千万里，我一定要回到我的家。我们的家啊，永生永世不能忘。孔府家酒，叫人想家！（孔府家酒） ②世界再大，不过一个家。（凤起新都房地产） ③有家的地方就有联合利华。（联合利华）这几则广告充分调动起了受众的家土情怀，取得不错的传播效果。尤其是例 ①塑造了一个历经漂泊之苦急于归国的华侨形象，让人无限同情，特别是最后一句“叫人想家”不禁让人潸然泪下，也难怪广告取得如此轰动效应。与中国一样，强烈的家土意识是越南民族文化心理的一个显著特征。“在以种植水稻为主的越南传统农业社会中，家庭是最基本的一个生产单位，自古以来就被越南人民赋予深厚的感情，记载在俗语、歌谣等文学作品中” ③。不少广告 ① Nguyễn Song Tùng. Tìm hiểu di sản văn hóa gia đình Việt Nam,Nxb chính trị quốc gia,năm 2010,tr37 ② 陈月明：《文化广告学》,国际文化出版公司出版，2002 年6 月，第212 页 ③ Nguyễn Đăng Duy:Văn hóa Việt Nam đỉnh cao Đại Việt,HN:Nxb Hà Nội,năm 2004,tr12 31 语都反映了这种心理文化现象： ①Hành phúc từ nơi Tổ ấm của bạn! （Thuduc house 酒店）幸福从这里开始，这是您温暖的家！ ②Vị của quê hương （Trung An 食用油）家乡的味道。例①②把要宣传的产品与社会文化中“恋家”的情怀联系起来，很容易引起消费者的共鸣。二、体现相似的民族风俗和文化心理 1.汉越两国相似的节日风俗节日是每个民族文化的集中展示，反应了该民族或地区在精神生活或者物质生活的不同方面，不同的民族有不同的节日风俗，所以节日是了解一个民族历史文化的平台。同时，在历史长河中形成的节日传统，具有强大的稳定性和延续性，不因社会环境的变动而改变。中国和越南有着长达千年的文化交流史，越南在各方面都深受汉文化的影响，特别是节日风俗方面，不管历史如何变迁，其发源于中国的传统节日还是顽强保存了下来。至今中越两国的传统四大节日都为春节、元宵节、中秋节、端午节。节日是两国民众热闹、欢庆的日子，也是商家重要的营销时机，不少广告语反映了汉越两国共同的节日风俗。如： ①过年回家，回家过年！过年记得把旺旺带回家！（旺旺食品） ②中国心端午情（五芳斋粽子） ③Cùng D-com mang Internet về quê ăn Tết.（D-com 3G 产品）与D-com 一起把互联网带回家过年！ ④Tết vui rộn rặng,ngập tràn thơm mát.（comfort 清新剂）新年欢乐，让清香充满新的一年！这四则广告是对汉越春节、端午节的描述，反映了汉越两个民族共同的节日风俗，尤其是例①③把产品与过年必须回家的情感结合在一起，营造出了一种团圆欢聚的气氛，容易引起受众的共鸣。 2.相似的趋吉心理趋吉心理是指人们一种追求吉庆祥瑞的心理，中国源远流长的吉祥文化是大众趋吉心理的集中展示，它凝结了汉民族的伦理情感、精神风貌和审美情趣。早在春秋时期，我国最古老的诗歌总集《诗经》中就体现出了人们的趋吉心理，如： “南山之寿，不骞不崩”、“君子万年”、“三寿作朋”等之类的吉祥语。“我国历史上的吉祥文化一直绵延不绝，而且不断丰富发展，有物体吉祥、行为吉祥、文 32 字吉祥和数字吉祥等多种表现形式，构成一幅五彩斑斓的吉祥图案，寄托着中国大众的种种趋吉心理” ①。越南在趋吉心理上与中国有很大的相似性，越南人认为“Có thờ có thiêng có kiêng có lành”（你信仰什么就会得到什么，忌讳什么就能避免什么），因此在现实生活中，越南人与中国人一样喜欢说吉祥话而避免说出不吉利的话。反映在吉祥语的内容上，主要集中在phúc（福）、lục（禄）、thỏ（寿）、 hỷ（喜）、tài（财）等这几个方面，也就是中国人所谓的“五福”。越南人将这些话整理成常用的祝福语以表达祈吉的心意，如“năm mới phát tài” （恭喜发财）、 “vạn sự như ý ”（万事如意）、“tiền của đầy nhà”（招财进宝）、“hạnh phúc an khang”（幸福安康）等等。广告商在广告中运用表达美好祝福的吉祥语，能够满足消费者的趋吉心理，这在汉越两国广告语中都有反应。如： ①喝金六福酒，好运常拥有。（金六福酒） ②福旺、财旺、大家旺！旺旺！（旺旺食品） ③ 4 mùa như ý.（sumikura 空调）四季如意。 ④Gầu thơm vừa đủ xài, Dong cho đầy hạnh phúc. Gói cho trọn lộc tài, Giữ cho mãi an khang.（vinamit 食品）肉香囤满屋，蒌叶传幸福，财碌自然来，合家都安康。 ⑤Qùa như ý,Xuân phú quý.（mobifone 电信运营商）礼物合意，新春富贵。上述广告迎合受众趋吉心理的用意十分明显，通过对消费者的人生前景寄予良好的祝愿，给人一种吉祥如意的好感，拉近了广告与消费者的距离。 3.崇尚等级的文化心理等级，是指人与人之间在社会地位上的不平等，等级观念牢牢根植于中国人的意识形态中。作为儒家思想核心主张之一的“礼”，其本质就是建立在伦理道德上的一种等级制度。关于“礼”，孔子在《论语》中说到：“君君、臣臣、父父、子子。”意思是社会的各个群体要遵守自己的等级名分，国家才能和谐安定。《礼记》中也有云：“礼者所以定亲疏，决嫌疑，别同异，明是非也。”以“礼”为代表的等级制，是儒家学说的支柱，经过几千年的文化浸润，已经成为中国人文化心理的一部分。尽管在今天，封建社会早已终结，同时我国传统文化还面临着外来思想文化的不断冲击，但等级观念依然根深蒂固，时刻影响着人们的言行举止，体现在社会生活中的各个方面。 ①陈月明：文化广告学[M],北京：国际文化出版公司，2002 年6 月，第216 页 33 同属儒家文化圈的越南，在历史上一直深受儒家文化的影响，礼文化中的等级观念始终贯穿越南的社会文化。“越南各封建朝代统治者从其统治利益出发，完全利用孔子的等级观念来整顿社会秩序，控制臣民思想。要求将等级尊卑原则贯彻到家庭、家族和国家政治当中，每个人都注定只能按照其辈分和社会地位来确定自己的行动” ①。这种等级观念在越语俗语歌谣中也多有反映，如：“quan cứ lệnh,lính cứ truyền”（上级的话大过天）“làm quan có dạng,làm dáng có hình”（做官就要有官样）。这种文化心理经常被广告主所利用，具体表现为人为制造等级差异，通过迎合消费者的等级心理来宣传产品。例如： ①本太郎，身份的象征。（本太郎电动车） ②时代的尊贵与荣耀。（时代广场） ③帝王般的享受，你我都可拥有。（帝都洁具） ④Bí quyết làm đẹp của hoàng hậu thời xưa.(queen korea 沐浴露) 女王打扮的秘诀。 ⑤Mua phong cách,nhận đẳng cấp.(PNJ 珠宝) 尊享购物，地位象征。 ⑥Phong cách xứng tầm.（ForBoss 金饰品）与您的地位相称。这几例广告出现了不少如“身份”、 “帝王”、 “尊贵”、 “đẳng cấp”、 “hoàng hậu” 等体现身份等级差异的词，广告主力图通过这些广告语传达出这样的信息：购买了该产品你就是有地位有身份的人，从而迎合人们这一文化心理。三、体现相似的价值取向 1．重视民族情感和民族自尊心中华民族是一个自尊心很强的民族，爱国主义是民族精神的核心价值观，因此在广告中适当地表现爱国情感常常会收到事半功倍的效果。我们一些民族企业往往以“国货”与“民族”为卖点，旨在唤起民众的爱国意识，赢得民众在情感上的支持并最终把这种支持转化为实际的购买行为。尤其是在加入WTO 后进口产品抢占国内市场，冲击本土企业的当下，把这种情感诉求与产品促销结合起来成为了不少商家的策略。如： ①非常可乐，中国人自己的可乐。（非常可乐） ②道不尽的强国梦，述不尽的红旗车。（红旗车） ①武士红莲：从越南的传统道德思想谈孔子思想在越南的传播与影响，北京语言文化大学，2000 年5 月 34 ③走中国路，乘一汽奥迪。（奥迪汽车）这几则广告把民族自豪感和自信心渲染得淋漓尽致，激发起广大受众的爱国主义情怀。历史上的越南饱受外族侵略，对于经历了战火所取得的国家和民族独立十分自豪，越南开国国父胡志明曾说：“Không có gì quý hơn đọc lập tự do（没有什么比独立自由更加可贵）”，可见越南民族与中华民族一样有着强烈的民族情感。试分析以下的几则广告： ① Bia đại việt Tâm hồn việt (大越啤酒) 大越啤酒大越之魂 ② Bún của người việt（顺化牛肉粉）越南人自己爱吃的粉。 ③ Sailing Boat dầu ăn Singapore Vui Tết cùng gia đình Viêt.（Sailing Boat 食用油）新加坡Sailing Boat 食用油，与越南家庭一起欢度春节。 ④ Thưởng thức món ngon Việt Nam cùng chức năng nấu món Việt tự động.（LG 微波炉）用自动煮食功能来享受越南美食。这几则越语广告都含有“Việt（越）”一词，“Việt（越）”一词是越南人对自己祖国的简称，就好比“华夏”、“九州”、“中华”对于中国人所意味的一样，对于越南民族来说是一个神圣的字眼，在很多广告语中都有出现，例①就直接把 “Việt（越）”加入到商标品牌中。通过这样的描述，表明该产品是属于越南的，让当地消费者倍感亲切。例③④是外国品牌，为了打进越南市场，更是煞费苦心地迎合了本土的文化心理。 2.集体主义的价值取向与个人主义为核心的西方文化相对，儒家文化的首要价值观是集体主义。 “儒家大一统观念强调国家、群体至上的原则。在个体与他人关系中，强调群体的认同，表现为人们愿意随大流，不愿意出众，力图同社会其他成员和谐相处” ①。在越南，家庭和宗族是社会的基本单位，国家就像扩大了的家庭，强调个人利益要服从集体的利益。陶维英在《越南文化史纲》中说到：“Ở xã hội ta,cá nhân chìm đắm ở trong gia tộc cho nên nhất thiết những luân lý đạo đức,chế độ văn vật,chính trị pháp luật, đều lấy gia tộc chủ nghĩa làm gốc.”（在我们的社会，个人要服从家族，所以一切的道德、文物制度、法律政治都要以家族主义为本）。在汉越两国，体现这种价值取向的俗语非常多，汉语常说：“独乐乐不如众乐乐”、“四海之内皆兄弟”，越语有：“Bầu ơi thương lấy bí cùng,tuy rằng khác giống nhưng chung một ① 于铭松：冲突与融合：儒家价值观与西方价值观，青海师范大学学报，2002 年第四期 35 giàn.”（葫芦啊要多照顾瓠子啊，虽不同种但也在一个架子上）。广告作为一种大众文化，必然要承载和反映民族文化的基本价值取向。体现在广告语上就是追求和维护集体的荣誉、团结合作以及强烈的从众意识。 ①大家好才是真的好。（好迪洗发水） ②万家乐，乐万家。（万家乐热水器） ③Cùng thế giới luôn sôi động.（喜力啤酒）与全世界一起舞动。 ④Gía rẻ hàng ngày,mọi người cùng bay.（捷星航空）廉价航空，让所有人都能一起飞。例①是一句流传很广的广告语，妙在用最朴实的语言表达了一个最简单的道理，充满了浓浓的集体主义温情。例②顶真的两句广告语传达了“让千家万户快乐起来”的祝愿，无形中打动了人心。例③④的“与世界一起”“所有人”体现的是集体主义下的从众意识。第三节汉越广告语中的民族文化差异尽管中越文化一脉相承，两国文化中的共性因素很多，但毕竟是不同的国家不同的民族，在历史发展过程中也表现出了某些差异。一、汉越民族不同的历史文化 1.汉民族的历史文化特色中国是有着悠久历史的文明古国，在五千年的岁月中沉淀了丰富的历史文化。而广告作为一种社会文化现象，目的在于引导消费者购买所宣传的产品，每个民族的消费者都有其特定的历史文化背景，广告行为要与该历史文化背景相符合才能达到促进销售的目的。为此，广告文化不仅要反映社会发展的时代性，更要在继承民族历史文化的基础上，汲取民族文化精华，使之符合民族的审美心理，获得消费者的共鸣。汉语广告对历史文化的继承主要通过挖掘产品本身的历史文化元素，以其历史文化元素作为卖点，赋予商品厚重的历史感，在消费者怀古追思中引发感情的共鸣，达到宣传产品的目的，如： ① 一曲凤求凰，千载文君酒。（文君酒）文君酒产自四川邛崃，是汉朝卓文君的故乡，故酒得名“文君酒”。据《史记》记载，邛崃有一富家女卓文君，才貌双全，通晓音乐。一日其家父在家中宴请四方宾客，大才子司马相如得知卓文君美貌非凡，更兼文采，于是当场弹奏了 36 一曲《凤求凰》，技惊四座。文君躲在帘后偷听，听出了曲中之意，也仰慕司马相如之才，但是两人的爱情却遭到了家父的反对。无奈两人只得趁夜私奔，结为夫妇。相如弃官后，生活一贫如洗，两人把首饰车辆卖了开了一个酒铺，文君当起了掌柜，相如则打杂洗刷酒器，不怕人讥笑，以卖酒为生。终于成就了“文君当垆，相如涤器”的经典爱情佳话。这则广告没有从正面描写酒的质量如何，却让受众在琴和酒、文君和相如的爱情传奇当中流连忘返，深刻地体会到了产品背后的历史文化价值，加深认同感。除了挖掘产品本身历史文化价值之外，还常利用一些历史典故，名人警句等，融入到广告语中，从而赋予广告丰富的文化内涵，如： ② 有容，乃悦。（宝马5 系车） ③ 心动，发动，飘柔。（飘柔洗发水） ②出自名句“有容乃大”，比喻一个人宽广的胸襟和气度，这里引申为车厢空间宽敞，给人带来愉悦的享受，把产品特点与品牌文化内涵结合起来。③源自中国历史上一个有名的佛经典故，“时有风吹幡动，一僧曰风动，一僧曰幡动，议论不已。惠能进曰，不是风动，不是幡动，仁者心动。一众骇然” ①。这则广告把“仁者心动”的典故融入其中，带给消费者以精神上的享受，获得了出其不意的宣传效果。总而言之，上述广告反映的都是汉民族所特有的民族文化，如果不对民族历史文化背景有深入的了解，是很难体会到广告背后的文化内涵。 2.越南的民族文化本色尽管中国文化对越南文化的影响是深刻和普遍的，但是越南文化对中国文化的接收并不是全盘性的，而是有选择性的接纳，并且结合政治环境、经济和文化的特点，不断创造出一种新的文化来。“Nhưng dù trải qua hai lần lột xác mạnh mẽ như thế,văn hóa Việt Nam vẫn mang trong mình những nét bản sắc chung” ②。（尽管经历了两次大规模的外来文化浪潮，但是越南文化依然很好地保持了自己的本色。）“越南非常强调其文化的民族本色，力求在全球一体化的背景下保持其民族文化本色，因为民族文化本色正是其民族的象征之一” ③。这种民族文化本色在广告语上也有所体现： ① Thép sông Hồng sức mạnh Lạc Hồng.（红河钢铁）红河钢铁，貉鸿力量。这句广告语中出现的“貉鸿”中国人可能不了解是什么，但是对于越南受众来说是再熟悉不过了。据《大越史记全书》记载，炎帝神农氏三世孙帝明，生帝宜，南巡狩至五岭，得婺仙之女，纳而归。生禄续，封禄续为泾阳王，以治南方， ① 惠能（原著）邓文宽（校注）：六组坛经[M],沈阳：辽宁教育出版社，2005 年1 月 ② Trần Ngọc Thêm:Tìm về bản sắc văn hóa việt nam[M],Nxb TP.HCM,1997,tr609 ③ 农学冠吴盛枝罗文青：中越民间文化的对话[M],南宁：广西民族出版社，2010 年3 月，第194 页 37 号为赤鬼国。又娶洞庭君龙王女，生崇览，为国君称号为貉龙君。貉龙君娶妪姬为妻，一胎生下百男。貉龙君对妪姬说：“我是龙种，水族之长；你是仙种，地上之人。水火相克，难以久居。然后两人分别，分五十子从母归山，分五十子从父归海。雄长者为主，号曰雄王，国号文郎国。越南建国即始于此。貉鸿就是源于越南貉龙君和瓯姬生百子的古老传说，越南人将貉鸿视为自己的祖先就好比华夏民族将伏羲和女娲视为始祖一样。除了历史传说外，一些具有标志性意义的，在越南民族发展史上留下自己印迹的历史事件也常融入到广告语之中，体现了越南民族的文化本色。 ② Bước chân Long Quân xuống biển Bước chân Âu Cơ lên non Bước chân Tây Sơn thần tốc Bước chân vượt dãy Trường Sơn Bước chân tiến vào thiên niên kỷ mới Bitis—Nâng niu bàn chân Việt (Bitis 鞋) 那龙君下海的足迹，瓯姬上山的脚步，那西山军神速的步伐那翻越长山的脚迹，还有迈入新世纪的脚步。Bitis-爱护你们的脚。这是一则在越南很有名的广告，里面提到的“Long Quân（龙君）”、“Âu Cơ （瓯姬）”就是指上述提到的百男传说中“貉龙君”和“瓯姬”，至于“Trường Sơn （长山）”和“Tây Sơn（西山）”如果只看表面的文字翻译估计很多人又会困惑了。“长山”又叫做“胡志明小道”，是抗美救国时期越南北方向南方输送补给物资的一条生命线，为了保护这条补给线，越南人民付出了惨重的代价并最终取得了战争的胜利。因此越南人民把这条交通线看作顽强不屈反抗外来侵略的象征，称之为“长山精神”。“西山”是18 世纪越南历史上一个重要的朝代，当时的领导者光中皇帝率领军队在红河边与外部军队打了一场著名的战役，历史上将这场战役称之为“西山神速”，因此也被看作是民族精神的象征。这些富有越南本土气息的广告语生动地反映了越南民族的历史文化特点。二、汉越民族不同的文化心态 1．汉文化尚古保守的文化心态中国人有着根深蒂固的尚古观念，古人认为“天不变，道亦不变”，这种宇宙观是说天是永恒不变的，因而按照天意建立的封建社会的“道”也是永恒不变的。因此从古代沿袭下来的所有道德准则、社会伦理规范、典章制度都应该无条件地遵守。孔子在《论语·述而》中也提到：“述而不作，信而好古。”就是要求只相信和爱好古代的东西，不要随便去改变。儒家文化对于尚古思维方式的推崇， 38 对后世产生了很大的影响。中国人在做决定的时候更喜欢以过去的经验为依据，强调办事稳妥守规则。日本学者中村元在《东方民族的思维方法》中总结道：“中国人常常重视先例，一个强调个体性和具体知觉的民族倾向于从过去的惯例和周期性发生的事实中，建立一套基准法则，即以先例作为先决模式” ①。中国文化的保守性可以从地理环境上找到解答。从地理来看，中国东临浩瀚的太平洋，北部是人迹罕至的西部利亚，西北是沙漠和隔壁，西南有世界面积最大的青藏高原和云贵高原，这种地理上的阻碍导致中国与世界形成了半开放半隔绝的状态。加上作为世界四大文明古国之一的中国，在军事、经济、文化、政治上长期领先周边诸国，并以“天朝”自居不重视与外界的交流，形成了中国文化封闭保守的特点。这种文化上尚古保守的特质在广告中可以体现在以下方面：“历史人物、历史事件、中国古代场景的再现；强调产品或生产商家的历史悠久或经验丰富，强调对传统习俗的继承等” ②。如： ①唐时宫廷酒盛世剑南春（剑南春酒） ②传统王老吉换装不换药（王老吉）例①中指出酒是唐朝的酒，唐朝是中国历史上最强盛的一个朝代，国人无不对其向往和推崇，自唐朝就有的酒更强调了酒的年代久远，迎合了受众尚古的心理。例②突出“传统”和“不换药”表现出消费者在选择产品时求稳妥的保守心态。 2．越南兼容并蓄的文化心态历史上越南除了受到中国文化的深远影响外，还在不同程度上受到印度文化和西方文化的影响，这三种文化在在越南的土地上交汇融合，最终形成了具有浓郁民族特色的本土文化。公元1 世纪，占族人在越南中南部建立了一个信仰婆罗门教的国家—占婆，中国典籍称之为林邑。古占婆在11 世纪国势达到了顶峰，其代表的印度文化对越南日后的政治、宗教、文学、艺术等产生了深远影响。西方文化是在16 世纪随着传教士、商人的到来而零星进入越南的。19 世纪中期法国发动对越南的侵略战争，将整个越南变成了其殖民地。在越南长达一百多年的殖民史中，西方文化不断渗透到了越南社会的各个方面。这三种文化通过与越南本土文化的融合，构成了今天多元化特征明显的越南文化。“越南多元文化的形成是越南民族积极吸纳世界上各民族优秀文化的结果，是越南民族在文化上交融性的体现。这种交融性也体现了其文化的开放性” ③。此外，从地理环境上来看，越南位于中南半岛东部，国土狭长，东临广阔的大海，拥有海岸线漫长港口众多的优势。且介于印度洋和太平洋、中国和印度这两个亚洲最大国家之间，独特的 ① 转引自周春兰：尚古思维对儒家文化发展的两重性[J],前沿，2008 年第二期 ② 李慧：中国广告中的“尊老尚古”[J],沧桑，2010（4） ③ 于在照梁远：试论越南民族在文化上的交融性[J].广西民族大学学报，2007（7） 39 区位更容易接触到外来文化。梁启超曾经说过：“海者也，能发人进取之雄心也。陆居者以怀土之改，而种种之系累生焉。”这或许是汉越民族对待外来文化不同态度的地理环境因素。越南这种兼容并蓄的文化心态在广告语上的体现之一就是更加积极主动地使用外来语。与汉语广告不同，除了在商标和产品名称上使用外来语之外，也常使用带描述性的外来语，并且使用的频率较汉语广告更高。 ①Môi xinh LipIce,thật style ngày hè.（LipIce 唇膏）闪耀的LipIce 唇膏，让你的夏天更有风格。 ②Smartphone 5 sao cho ngày tuyệt diệu.（诺基亚lumia 手机）五星智能手机，为了完美的一天 ③Chọn nghề“ hot” hay nghề bạn đam mê?（人才招聘网）选择热门行业还是选你所爱？例①用英语外来词“ style （风格）” 代替了“ phong cách” ，例②用 “Smartphone(智能手机)”代替越语的“điện thoại thông minh”，例③也是用英语外来词“hot（热门）”替换了“nóng”，这些外来语言的使用从某个程度上反映了越文化活跃、开放的一面。三、汉越民族不同的语言文化 1．中国诗化的广告语言中国是一个诗的国度，自《诗经》算起，诗文化已经有三千多年的历史了，这是中华民族在在使用汉语的过程中所积淀下来的语言文化。诗歌与广告语的结合在我国有着悠久的传统。“在交通不便、信息闭塞的我国封建社会里，许多名优产品、风景名胜正是通过诗歌的媒介得以广为流传、名扬四海的” ①。“兰陵美酒郁金香，玉碗盛来琥珀光。但使主人能醉客，不知何处是他乡。”李白这首《客中行》通过对兰陵酒生动的描述，从而使兰陵美酒名扬天下，这首诗成了最好的广告。“在审美趣味上中国人的传统习惯是欣赏含蓄、优雅和对称之美，追求意在言外的意境，强调主体的感悟与体验。诗体广告是广告和诗歌的结合体，它具备广告和诗歌的双重文本特征，这一类型的文案较为符合深受中国传统文化影响的目标受众的接受心理和审美情趣” ②。此外中国的诗歌讲究音韵和格律，追求均衡整齐的形式美感和语言的艺术性，借此表达丰富的想象和强烈的感情，而这些特征也正符合了现代广告的艺术要求。所以在诸多的传统语言艺术中，诗歌对广告语的影响是最大的。如： ①独揽壮阔山湖，尽享悠然人生。（山湖林海楼盘） ① 肖建春等：现代广告语与传统文化[M].成都：四川人民出版社，2002（10）第439 页 ② 梁笑梅：当代中国广告传播策略中的诗语诉求，艺术百家，2011 年01 期 40 ②钻石恒久远，一颗永留传。（戴比尔斯钻石） ③偷得浮生半日闲，享受雀巢好时光。（雀巢食品）以上广告采用了诗的表达形式，音韵对仗整齐，文情并茂，读起来朗朗上口，让人过目不忘，充分体现了汉语言文字迷人的魅力。尽管在越语广告中也存在一些诗化的广告语，不过在数量和精彩丰富性上都远远不能与汉语广告相比，这也得益于中华民族语言文化几千年的沉淀。 2．越民族独特的六八体广告语尽管越南语言文化不如中国博大精深，但是在与中国长期的文化交流中通过对汉文学吸收借鉴，并结合自身的文化特色创造出了一种独特的文学体裁—六八体诗。这种诗体由上六字下八字组为一句，上六字与下六字同韵，每两句为完整的一组，篇幅不受限制。这样的诗歌体裁在汉文诗中是没有的，它既具有中国格律诗的特点又融合了越南诗歌的特色，充分反映了越南民族的创造性。《琵琶国音新传》有序曰：“北人以文字求声音，文字变成腔调；南人以声音求文字，声音别具体裁。”这说明六八体这种诗歌体裁符合越南“以声音求文字”的语言特点，因此“别具体裁”。在喃字文学产生后，这种新颖的文学形式开始受到人们的普遍欢迎，并成为越南文学中最主要的诗歌体裁。18 世纪后出现的优秀喃字文学作品几乎都采用了“六八体”的诗歌形式，比如《金云翘传》、《宫怨吟曲》、《花笺传》等，对推动越南民间文学的繁荣乃至在世界文学之林中占有一席之地发挥了巨大的作用。时至今日，其影响依然存在，六八体诗歌仍是越南社会各阶层人民所喜爱的文学体裁。所以一些广告商借用六八体的广告形式来传达广告的内容，如： ① Con gà đứng trên đồng hồ, Là thứ thánh được trị ho tiếng đồn. Các bà mua lấy cho con, Uống trong mấy gói chẳng còn bệnh ho . （“Con gà đứng trên đồng hồ”牌咳嗽药）雄鸡站在钟表上，（品牌名）乃治咳嗽良药。大婶大姐们买给你们小孩吧，只需几服立马病除。 ② Nước da vàng mét ngực đau, Tay chơn bải hoải ăn vào khó tiêu. Ho hen bón uất đàm nhiều, Kém ăn ít ngủ thường nhiều mồ hôi. 41 Âý là gan bệnh đó rồi, Hồng Nguyên thuốc tể cứu đời như tiên. Trợ gan lọc máu diệu hiền, Uống trong ít bọc bệnh liền khỏi vương.（“Hồng Nguyên”治肝药）脸色苍白胸又痛，四肢无力消化差。又常咳嗽多痰，胃口不济失眠多。此乃肝病也，雄元肝药如再世神医。治肝通血效果立显，包你药到病除。上述两例广告语从翻译看没有什么出彩之处，但是若从越语六八体诗语音上来理解则韵味无穷。以①为例，上六字句的第二、四、六字以“平-仄-平”为格律，其中第六字“hồ”起平声韵，下八字句第二、四、六、八字以“平-仄-平- 平”为格律，其中第六字“ho”与上句第六字“hồ”押同声韵，第八字“đồn” 以平声重新起韵；下一个六字句和八字句也重复同样的平仄规律，第二个六字句末声“con”与上八字句的平声韵“đồn”互押。这种平仄交替类似汉诗的“一三五不论，二四六分明”，全诗押平声韵，脚韵与腰韵交替互押，回环反复，连绵不绝，极富韵味。 42 结语广告是现代社会经济的重要组成部分，在中国-东盟自由贸易区建成以及中越两国经贸不断发展的大背景之下，对两国的广告语进行研究具有很强的现实意义。本文的对比研究从语言和文化这两个层面进行，力求对比的全面和具体。从语言层面来看，又可以分为语音、词汇、修辞这三个方面。语音方面，汉越广告语都注重对押韵的使用，和平仄的相互协调，力求使广告语音节丰富、朗朗上口。但在语音重叠上，越语广告语比汉语要复杂得多，并不是简单的语音重叠。在押韵上，越语广告语压句中韵的情况比较常见，而这种押韵方式则在汉语广告中较少出现。词汇方面，都频繁使用单音节动词和数词，但汉语广告更习惯使用四字格而越语广告则偏爱于三字格词汇，此外越语的汉越词和汉语中的仿拟词使用都是各自语言的民族特点。修辞方面，两国的广告语为了追求生动形象，都惯用比喻、比拟、夸张以及多种辞格的综合使用。但是，两者的修辞手法也存在一些差异，如汉语的双关和越语的nói lái 修辞都是各自所独有的修辞方式，汉语的对偶和越语中的sóng đôi 也有着较大差别。从文化方面来看，广告只有符合当地的民族文化心理才能获得消费者的认可。同属儒家文化圈的中国和越南，不可避免地在广告语上体现出两国人民一些相似的道德情感、民族风俗、文化心理、价值取向等。但毕竟是两个不同的民族，其中也存在着某些差异，除了两国的民族文化特色之外，汉文化的相对保守以及越南兼容并蓄的文化心态都有反应；而越南民族独特的六八体广告语更是其所独有的语言文化。从整体来看，两国广告语之间的共性还是远远多于两者的差异。广告语的研究是个很有意义的课题，而目前国内学术界对东南亚圈广告的研究还远远不及对欧美广告语的研究，所以笔者能借鉴的资料也较少，加上学术水平有限，文中难免肤浅错漏之处，望得到各位专家的指正。 43 参考文献一、中文参考资料： [1] 白光.中外悟性广告语经典与点评[M].北京：中国经济出版社，2004. 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[44] 周洲.英语广告的语言特点及中西广告文化对比[D].贵州师范大学，2005 [45] 郑明珠.英汉广告中的双关修辞对比研究[D].延边大学，2010. 45 二、越语参考资料： [46] Đinh Thị Mỹ.Quảng cáo dưới góc độc cạnh tranh.NXB lao động xã hội,2010 [47] Đinh Trọng Lạc.99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ tiếng việt.NXB Giáo dục,1999 [48] Hoàng Trọng,Nguyễn Văn Thị.Quảng Cáo.NXB Đại Học Quốc Qia TP Hồ chí minh, 2000 [49] Hồ Sĩ Hiệp.Phương pháp viết quảng cáo hiện đại.NXB Đồng Nai,1999 [50] Huỳnh Văn Tòng. Kỹ thuật quảng cáo. NXB TP. Hồ Chí Minh, 2001 [51] Mai Xuân Huy.Các đặc điểm của ngôn ngữ quảng cáo dưới ánh sáng của lý thuyết giao tiếp,Viện ngôn ngữ học, trung tâm KHXH&NVQG, 2001. [52] Nguyễn Kiên Trường.Quảng cáo và ngôn ngữ quảng cáo. NXB khoa học xã hội, 2004 [53] Nguyễn Song Tùng.Tìm hiểu di sản văn hóa gia đình Việt Nam.NXB chính trì quốc gia,2010 [54] Nguyễn Văn Khang.Ngôn ngữ học xã hội. 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NXB TP.Hồ Chí Minh,1997 [61] Trần Đình Vĩnh,Nguyễn Đức Tồn.Về ngôn ngữ trong quảng cáo.tạp chí Ngôn Ngũ số 1/1993 46 后记 “厚德博学，和而不同”，这八字校训陪伴我度过了人生中最长的一段求学之路——七年时光。它如每一个真理格言一样，慢慢地渗透在时光的轨迹里，给人以教诲，引导，让我在这段精神成长之路上走得踏实而满足。一路走来，我有幸选择了喜爱的专业，感受到了学术和知识的力量；有幸通过这个跳板奔向人生的另一个方向；更有幸结识了尊师重道的师长、重情重义的朋友，以及相亲相爱的伴侣。所以，此时，我的心里充满了知足和感恩。本科四年，研究生三年，有一位师长一直充当着我人生的“摆渡人”、人生导师。在此，我想衷心的感谢这位亦师亦友的老师——梁远教授。同时也感谢许许多多曾经为我指点迷津，传授学问的老师们。感谢每一个集体里我相识的志同道合的朋友们，岁月让我们在年轻有梦的时候一起奋斗，并肩前行。我爱你们— 10 级亚非班的每一位同学。不久前热映的一部电影《致青春》中有一句经典的台词：故乡是用来怀念的，青春就是用来追忆的，当你怀揣着它时，它一文不值，只有将它耗尽后，再回过头看，一切才有了意义—爱过我们的人和伤害过我们的人，都是我们青春存在的意义。此刻我的校园青春即将谢幕，人生也要转向另外一个阶段，在以后的工作生活中我一定会无比地怀念这段青春的日子，这个挥洒了我七年时光的地方。最后，感谢生命中所有的美好，青春万岁！	53,627
生态翻译学视角下广告语的翻译_张兴华.pdf	15 2022年12月 (总第214期 ) 英语广场 5 结语 “良”意为“美丽的”，“渚”意为“小洲、小岛”，良与渚的组合意味着“美好的水中之洲”。“良渚IP”作为中国展示文化形象的金名片，吸引着来自世界各地的游客。他们除了能一睹良渚文化的风貌，还有机会加深对中国这一文化古国、现代大国的了解。现代博物馆突破了原有的文物收藏与考古研究作用，在国际传播、对外宣传方面更是扮演着重要角色。因此，文物翻译的重要性不言而喻。但是，优秀的文物翻译需要译者具备文物考古和新闻传播方面的专业知识，并以世界眼光和全球视野打造“中国IP”，我国文物翻译工作任重而道远。参考文献 [1] REISS K. Translation criticism：the potentials & limitations[M]. Shanghai：Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press，2004. [2] 李成静，刘芳. 马王堆汉墓文物传译策略研究[J]. 中国科技翻译，2020（3）：12-15. [3] 李芳. 中国博物馆解说词英译策略[J]. 中国翻译， 2009（3）：74-77. [4] 刘庆元. 文物翻译的“达”与“信”[J]. 中国科技翻译，2005（2）：41-43+5. [5] 国家文物局第一次全国可移动文物普查办公室. 第一次全国可移动文物普查工作手册[M]. 北京：文物出版社，2013. （责任编辑：周宇婷）生态翻译学视角下广告语的翻译 □ 张兴华姚硕本文从生态翻译学视角出发，运用三维转换理论对广告语翻译实例进行分析。本文在兼顾目的语文化背景、意识形态和语言表达等因素的同时，从语言、文化和交际三个维度，探析广告语翻译方法的侧重点，从而帮助读者更好地理解广告语内涵，并为同类文本的翻译提供参考。 [关键词] 生态翻译学视角；三维转换理论；广告语翻译 [中图分类号] H059　　[文献标识码] A　　 [文章编号] 1009-6167（2022）34-0015-05 1 研究背景翻译是以人为主体进行文化交流的过程。文化具有多元性的特点，涉及范围广，因此翻译涉及的领域众多。生态翻译学结合了生态学与翻译学，对翻译学进行了延伸。自然科学可以作为方法论指导社会科学，所以属于自然科学范围的生态学可以指导社会科学范围的翻译学，这对翻译学的发展意义重大。市场经济蓬勃发展，广告语渗入人们日常生活的方方面面。为了更好地出口商品，商家就需要得体且符合别国文化的广告语翻译。广告语翻译也成为翻译学界研讨的热门话题。笔者收集了一些广告语译例，发现它们在语言表达、修辞手法、文化传递等方面的整体效果较佳。因此，本文从生态翻译学出发，运用三维转换理论，从语言、文化、交际维度对广告语翻译实例进行分析，探析广告语翻译的侧重收稿日期：2022-10-17 DOI:10.16723/j.cnki.yygc.2022.34.017 16 esteachers@163.com Tel: 027-87158992 ENGLISH SQUARE 作者简介：张兴华，山东科技大学外国语学院教授，山东省本科教育教学指导委员会委员。研究方向：英语应用语言学、多媒体网络教学、电影艺术与鉴赏。姚硕，山东科技大学外国语学院英语笔译方向硕士研究生。点，希望帮助读者更好地理解广告语内涵，为广告语翻译提供参考，以促进贸易往来。 2 生态翻译学理论简介胡庚申（2004）提出了生态翻译学理论，从生态角度出发阐述整个翻译过程，他认为翻译主要包括译者对原文翻译生态环境的 “适应”和译者根据翻译生态环境对译文的 “选择”。“翻译生态环境”是指原文、源语和译语所呈现的世界，即语言、交际、文化、社会，以及作者、读者、委托者等互联互动的整体（胡庚申，2008）。生态翻译学理论的核心翻译方法是在适应选择原则指导下的“三维转换理论”，“三维”就是指语言维、文化维和交际维（胡庚申，2011）。生态翻译理论强调译者在考虑文化等因素的前提下，充分发挥主观能动性，适应翻译生态环境。冯全功（2021）认为，译者在翻译生态环境中的作用与地位，与人类在整个自然环境中的地位和作用是一样的，译者在以自身为主导因素的同时，还要兼顾其他因素，以创造一个和谐的翻译生态环境。随着理论的不断延伸发展，胡庚申还倡导新生态主义，其理论来源就包括“多维适应和多维选择”理论。“多维选择理论”是在三维转换理论的基础上推出的，这也证明了三维转换理论是经得起时代考验和翻译实践检验的方法论（胡庚申，2021）。此外，王宁（2021）强调在翻译过程中，多维转换是共存的。生态翻译学理论在近二十年来不断发展，运用此理论进行翻译实践的学者也不在少数，说明该理论的发展空间十分广阔。而且，运用三维转换方法指导广告语翻译是可行的。 3 广告语翻译研究广告语是商家宣传商品的语言，用幽默简洁、意义丰富的语句介绍了产品功能和特性，以促进消费者的购买欲望。总的来说，广告语具有传播信息、刺激消费的作用。广告语翻译是一种跨文化交际活动，译者在翻译时需要确保译文符合译语文化背景，能够被译文受众理解，避免因误译、错译影响广告效果。译者在发挥主导作用的同时，需结合具体翻译目的并遵守特定的要求，以三维视角为基础，进行恰当的翻译转换，使读者产生文化认同感，从而达到跨文化交际的目的（贾立平，2010）。广告语翻译在生态翻译理论提出之前就已经存在了，有不少学者从文化角度或者意识形态等方面对广告语翻译进行了独立分析（汤一昕，2015）。目前，生态翻译学发展趋于成熟，本文基于三维转换理论对广告语翻译进行分析。 4 案例分析优秀译者能够在充分了解广告语含义的基础上，再现广告语要传达的信息，从而实现交际目的。因此，为使广告语译文更为恰当、合理，本文基于三维转换理论，分别从语言、文化、交际维度探析译例的得失与侧重点。 4.1 语言维 “语言维度的适应性选择”是指译者在翻译过程中对语言形式的适应转换，这种转换是在语言方面进行的（胡庚申，2011）。译者可以从语义、语言表达以及修辞手法方面进行转换，这三方面的转换难度是递升的。例1：Obey your thirst.（雪碧）译文：服从你的渴望。 17 2022年12月 (总第214期 ) 英语广场例1是一则雪碧汽水的广告词，译者从语义角度出发进行了转换。原句在英文语境中表达的意思是“遵循和服从某人的愿望”。译文 “服从你的渴望”看似直译，但产生了语义双关的效果。一般在广告语的翻译中，语义双关语的使用旨在传达出更深一层的含义。译文中的“渴望”一词一则表现出消费者因为口渴想喝雪碧；二则将雪碧与消费者意识层面的积极渴望联系了起来。本译例选择转换的侧重点在于语言维度的语义方面。例2：Good to the last drop.（麦斯威尔咖啡）译文：滴滴香浓，意犹未尽。例2为麦斯威尔咖啡的广告词，体现出译者在语言表达形式层面的转换。思维方式决定语言表达形式，英汉两种语言因思维方式的不同在语言表达上具有不同的特点。从语言表达形式来看，原句只含有5个单词，短小精悍，表达出“直到最后一滴都是好喝的”的意思，对英语国家受众群体来说不难理解。译者将原文译为两个四字短语，虽然在形式上不是完全与原文对等，但是译文更容易让汉语受众群体理解。原文中的last drop 本意为“最后一滴”，译者将其译为“滴滴”，从侧面赞扬了产品，让消费者印象深刻。“意犹未尽”属于增译，传达出该品牌咖啡给消费者带来的味觉享受。本译例选择转换的侧重点在于语言维度的表达形式层面。译者在保证信息准确的前提下，更改语言表达形式，实现了比较好的效果。例3：Good teeth, good health.（高露洁牙膏）译文：牙齿好，身体就好。例3是高露洁牙膏的广告，反映出译者在修辞手法上的转变。原句中的两个单词teeth和 health押尾韵-th。押韵在广告语中处处可见，能使广告语读来更加朗朗上口且便于记忆。此外，两个good暗含条件关系。译文将good译成 “好”，两个“好”押韵，句式工整统一，译文还添加了一个“就”字，将“牙齿好”和 “身体好”之间的联系巧妙地体现了出来，使原句暗含的条件关系浮现在读者眼前。该广告不仅推销了产品高露洁牙膏，而且用易于接受的温和语气传达出了保护牙齿的信息，译者将转换的侧重点放在语言维度的修辞层面，使原文与译文在形式和内涵上和谐统一。 4.2 文化维文化维的适应性选择与转换，是指译者必须在翻译中注意双语内涵的传递与阐释。文化维的适应性要求译者关注源语文化与译语文化的差异，避免因片面地从单一文化背景出发而导致误译（胡庚申，2011）。因此，在广告语翻译中，译者需要考虑文化内涵的差异，在保证准确传达信息的基础上，考虑译文在受众群体中的可接受度，必要时在文化维度上做动态调整。例4：From the road ahead.（本田）译文：康庄大道。例4是本田的广告语。本田是日本汽车、摩托车的生产厂家。译者采用归化的翻译策略，将原文译为“康庄大道”。“康庄大道” 在汉语中含义为“广阔平坦的道路”，象征光明未来。译文一是说明本田在行业内处于领先地位；二是表达本田有一条光明的道路。译者从译语文化出发，在翻译中做出适应性转换，为本田制造商树立了良好的形象。例5：Where there is a way, there is a TOYOTA.（丰田）译文：车到山前必有路，有路就有丰田车。例5套用了“Where there is a way, there is a 18 esteachers@163.com Tel: 027-87158992 ENGLISH SQUARE road”。原文中，way和TOYOTA对应，说明丰田车随处可见，是许多消费者共同的选择。译者使用了汉语俗语“车到山前必有路”，译文中“路”和“丰田车”对应，两个“有路” 运用了汉语中顶针的修辞手法，更强调了丰田车被广泛接受和选择，体现出丰田对自家产品的自信。译者充分考虑了文化背景，从而实现了原文到译文的文化传递。译者需要掌握文化背景差异，关注原文要传达的信息，必要时进行动态转换。译者如果没有充分了解双语文化，译出的文本就会让人啼笑皆非。比如，一则薯片的广告语是“即购即食，实用方便”，而译文是“Open and eating immediately”。这样的译文带有一种命令的语气，自然也就降低了国外顾客的购买欲。考虑到译语读者的文化背景，该译文可以修改成“Ready to serve”，从而最大限度地进行中英文化传递，维护产品的形象。再比如，译者若将中国的“金丝小枣”译为golden-silk jujube，外国读者会理解为“缠绕着丝绸的金色枣”。译者如果从翻译广告语和宣传产品的角度出发，运用异化策略，将其译为honey- sweet jujube，就可以使翻译效果更好。 4.3 交际维交际维的适应性选择与转换要求译者将选择转换的侧重点放在交际层面，抓住原文的交际目的，且以译文达到与原文相同的宣传效果为标准（胡庚申，2011）。广告的交际意图是相当明确的。广告语翻译的目的就是让国内外消费者更好地了解广告语的含义，进而提高消费者的购买欲和品牌认可度。例6：When you have the occasion, we have the coﬀ ee. （雀巢咖啡）译文：偷得浮生半日闲，享受雀巢好时光。例6是雀巢咖啡的广告语。原句用一种温和劝说的语气，邀请消费者在闲暇之时去品尝咖啡、体验生活，体现该广告语的交际意味。同时，you have和we have相对应，增强了指向性和说服性。译者没有遵循原句形式直译为“你有时间时，我们有咖啡”，而是采用对仗的形式，化用诗句，使译文形式工整、语言流畅。“偷得浮生半日闲”是唐代诗人李涉的词句，表达了在忙碌的世事中难得有闲暇时光，该译文更好地传达了原文的交际意图，符合中国人的生活态度和方式，更易于被中国消费者接受。例7：Apple thinks diﬀ erent.（苹果电脑）译文：苹果电脑，不同凡“想”。例7是苹果品牌的宣传语，原句中将Apple 拟人化，突出苹果品牌不同的思维方式。译文四字对仗，将“不同凡响”替换为谐音的“不同凡想”，在忠实于原文的同时使读者耳目一新，更加突出了苹果的创新性。谓语动词think 被译为“想”，“想”的动作主体为人。因此，此广告语在宣传苹果产品的同时，更多的是强调人类作为主体对计算机产品的使用和控制，并且人类可以发挥能动性参与创新性的实践活动。此则广告语转换的侧重点在于交际层面，译文宣传了苹果产品的创新，也凸显了人类的创造性。 5 结语本文从生态翻译学中的三维转换理论出发，从语言、文化、交际三个维度探析广告语翻译的侧重点，希望帮助读者更好地理解广告语内涵。在翻译时，译者应从多维度考虑，深入了解译文受众的文化背景，采取合适有效的翻译方法，使译文受众产生与原文读者相同的感受，从而实现广告翻译的目的。 19 2022年12月 (总第214期 ) 英语广场参考文献 [1] 冯全功. 试论生态美学对生态翻译学的启发与拓展[J]. 外语教学，2021，42（6）：91-95. [2] 胡庚申. 翻译适应选择论[M]. 武汉：湖北教育出版，2004. [3] 胡庚申. 生态翻译学解读[J]. 中国翻译，2008（6）： 11-15. [4] 胡庚申. 生态翻译学的研究焦点与理论视角[J]. 中国翻译，2011（2）：5-9. [5] 胡庚申. 生态翻译学的理论创新与国际发展[J]. 浙江大学学报（人文社会科学版），2021，51（1）： 174-186. [6] 贾立平. 生态翻译学视角下的广告妙语翻译探析[J]. 昆明理工大学学报（社会科学版）， 2010 （10）：101-103. [7] 汤一昕. 生态翻译学视角下的广告语翻译[J]. 东南大学学报（哲学社会科学版），2015，17（S1）： 143-145. [8] 王宁. 生态翻译学：一种人文学术研究范式的兴起[J]. 外语教学，2021，42（6）：7-11. （特约编辑：刘仲轲）的英译策略 □ 黎万梅我国迅速发展的旅游业对外宣材料的英译质量提出了较高的要求。外宣材料的英译本作为一种旅游文本，是推广及介绍中国旅游资源的手段，是吸引国外游客感知中华悠久文化、激发他们来华旅游的兴趣的重要载体，也是向世人展示我国形象的重要窗口。本文结合平行文本分析策略及外宣材料的英译原则，通过对比分析图册《什刹海》中的中英文，对旅游宣传材料的英译策略进行深入的探索，以期为相关领域的译者提供一些启示。 [关键词] 旅游；《什刹海》；翻译策略 [中图分类号] H059　　[文献标识码] A　　 [文章编号] 1009-6167（2022）34-0019-05 1 背景旅游翻译属于跨文化翻译。在旅游翻译中，译者为有效传递信息，感染受众，必须顾及译文读者的阅读习惯和心理感受，在译文中尽量使用他们所熟悉的语言表达形式，尽可能地使译文获得与原文近似的读者效应。旅游翻译注重的应是原文与译文间信息内容和文体功能的对等，而不是语言形式上的对等。旅游翻译的目的就是吸引游客，最大限度地达到旅游宣传的目的，如果译者缺乏必要的文化背景知识，处理不好文化因素在旅游翻译过程中的地位和作用，很容易造成翻译的失误或不当。译者可以根据翻译的目的，选择适当的翻译策略，在不同的文化背景下，把原文的意图及内容准确得体地展现给读者，以实现传播中国文化的目的。作者简介：黎万梅，贵州大学外国语学院硕士在读。研究方向：英语笔译。浅析图册《什刹海》	6,746
苹果手机广告形象的塑造理路及启示研究_陈双.pdf	173　第1 卷第24 期　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　文化纵横一、引言广告形象属于形象学的分支，是一门专门研究广告形象的学问。它区别于一般文学形象的研究，具有社会形象研究的共性：超出文本意义的范畴，涉及文学、人类学、社会学、心理学、传播学等诸方面，具有鲜明的跨学科性；同时作为全社会对一个法人所塑造或描述的形象的想象，又具有稳定性和神话化的特点。在现代市场经济社会中，商品不仅是商品，更是某种形象的象征。从商品消费时代跨越到形象消费时代，人们买进一个商品之时，也就同时买进了一种形象或一种身份。所以，人们对商品的选择不是简单的消费活动，而成为一种对于自身的生存方式、身份地位、社会形象的选择。此时，广告形象所传递出的优越感意义便显得尤为重要。国际4A广告公司之一的创始人奥威格曾说——“广告形象唯一的正当功能就是消费”。利用对变幻莫测的形象的当下直观感受刺激受众强烈的物欲需求，利用审美化的视觉形象营造出理想生活的场景，是当代广告行业的出发点及落脚点。二、苹果公司广告的形象概述（一）苹果广告的形象起源作为企业标志的缺角苹果logo，被该公司定义为“被上帝咬了一口的苹果”，折射出其独特的经营理念——只有不完美才能促使进步去追求完美。此形象与理念也从诞生之时被一直沿用至今。（二）苹果广告的形象内涵其一，广告定位高新技术。形象塑造者必须先被塑造，也就是说，提高自身素质是塑造广告形象的前提条件。其二，广告策划注重创意。苹果公司的广告形象同其产品一样，用创意收买受众。其三，重视受众体验诉求，关注感知者的意向和需求。对广告形象的认可和推崇是品牌忠实度的直接证明。苹果广告形象把公众的感情和品牌形象融合在一起，让每一位拥有者的个性在分享中充分彰显。例如1979年的创意广告《亚当》即是一个征文活动，它开启了广告行业向受众征求反馈意见的先河。三、苹果公司广告的形象学体现（一）苹果公司平面广告的形象学解析（1）图像——少即是多。苹果公司广告形象的最鲜明特点就是“Normcore” （极简主义），冷淡的色调，简洁的构图在色彩斑斓、花样迭出的广告形象市场中显得尤为突出。在碎片化阅读时代，作为大众传播媒介的广告形象第一要义就是要在信息拥堵中迅速吸引和抓住消费受众的感官注意力，为人所知常常比知道是什么更加重要。所以，苹果广告形象将“lessismore”的理念运用的无懈可击。事实上，苹果公司广告的“极简”是因为想要表达更多内容，希望留出更多的空间； “克制”则代表着在这之下，隐藏着更深层的想象空间。所以说，苹果公司广告的“normcore”是去繁求简的高级智慧，是广告形象的精髓。（2）文案——将情感意义融入广告语。纵观考察可以得出，在苹果广告语中使用最多的是情态动词“can”，传达出说话者坚定的态度和肯定的语气，这种强者气场与苹果公司的商业自信相吻合。如“You can quote them,disagree with them,glorify or vilify them.But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.”其次，苹果广告语中主要采用了陈述语气，如初代iPhone：苹果重新定义了手机——“Ap- ple reinvents the phone”；iPhone4s：出色的iPhone，如今更出色——“The most amazing iPhone yet”；iPhone5：易惹人爱，所以得众人所爱——“The biggest thing to hap- pen to iPhone since iPhone”等等。这些广告语背后折射出来的心理就是“敢为天下人先”，并且是一直跟过往的自己较劲，不断超越自我而非与同类竞争的高人一等的态度。苹果公司广告语在给品牌形象注入了精神食粮的同时也很好地诠释了苹果品牌的核心价值。再次，在句式上，苹果广告语多采用简洁有力的短句，凝练精当而掷地有声，所以“不管你喜不喜欢它，你都有可能记住它。” 总之，不同于其他广告语突出的劝导倾向和鲜明的鼓动意图，苹果公司在拟定广告语时一反常态，用实在的着陆点和深沉意义的引力场在夸张煽情的堂皇文案中杀出一片天地。（3）意蕴——与其说苹果公司的广告形象在宣传产品，毋宁说他的广告形象在宣扬一种全新的世界观和生活方式。例如1981年的广告《家庭主妇》在当时采用了非常激进前卫的设计理念，它鼓励了数百万的家庭主妇在家使用电脑工作。所以，当同类科技产品广告还在塑造“配置优秀” “体验感一流” “最新黑科技” “互联网思维”的形象之时，苹果广告形象已先行一步，它只是传达出一个信息： “苹果就是生活的一部分，苹果让生活变得更美好”。（二）苹果公司影视广告的形象学解析（1）故事脚本形象：以小见大，余韵无穷。以《老唱片》广告为例，讲述孙女用苹果产品及其软件将奶奶年轻时的记忆呈现出来的温情故事，打破了科技产品广告一贯冷硬的形象。摘　要：我们正处于一个注重形象和追求形象的年代，许多企业和单位不啻耗费巨资来塑造自己及其产品的良好形象以提高市场竞争力。而作为市场营销最主要的形式——广告，势必走向与形象的结合，广告形象成为当今社会最具潜力和热度的研究对象。以世界上最具影响力的IT公司苹果（Apple）为例，剖析其广告形象的制作心理、制作手段、生存方式、传播方法及形象特点，反观同类广告“自我”形象。这不仅对形象学的丰富具有重要的推动意义，更能促进当代广告产业的发展。关键词：形象；广告；苹果公司；品牌塑造；审美中图分类号：F713.81　　　文献标识码：A　　　文章编号：2096-5079 （2018） 24-0173-02 苹果手机广告形象的塑造理路及启示研究陈　双（江苏大学文学院，江苏　镇江　212013）作者简介：陈双，女，汉族，江苏南京人。研究方向：影视与广告传媒。 174 文化纵横　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　第1 卷第24 期（2）广告扮演者形象：近些年来，无论是2015年风靡网络的微电影广告《老唱片》,还是2017年再次席卷全球的 iPhone X广告短片，启用的都是清新、现实、可爱的小人物担任主角。不用名人代言，既缩小了产品与消费者之间的距离，又不会出现名人风头掩盖产品的喧宾夺主的情况。（3）产品自身形象：故事为主的广告模式，必然导致产品的隐身。可是，隐身并不等于消失，在《老唱片》中，苹果产品即使作为配角，仅仅不到几秒的出场镜头依然起到了不可忽视的串联全片的关键推动作用。再比如1996年好莱坞巨星汤姆•克鲁斯主演的电影《碟中谍》中所有电脑的展位都被苹果公司买下，苹果公司的这一广告活动清晰地传达了只有通过苹果电脑，才能完成一项项极限的挑战。以上“独一无二” “无可取代”的产品形象适当地让位故事形象引起了受众的广泛好感和追捧。（4）音画形象：广告语言的推敲是塑造平面广告和影视广告形象的极其重要的因素。相较于平面广告形象二维空间的取景框选择，影视广告形象更主要靠蒙太奇手法来叙述故事，靠流动性的音乐来服务故事的叙述。苹果能把音画完美地融合在一起，真正做到了观赏性、艺术性、体验性的结合，在宣传产品的同时不会让人觉得是在浪费时间，相反的，是在欣赏艺术短片。比如AirPods+iPhone7的一分钟广告将《Down》这首单曲从冷门直接拉到美国公告牌音乐榜热门第37位，MacBook Pro广告选用的《thelittlethings》从一开始的鲜为人知到人气飙升，Big Gigantic乐队也逐渐为大众熟知。这些歌曲所表现的形象与苹果公司“新潮” “潜力” “活跃”的品牌形象不谋而合。四、苹果公司广告在形象学视角下的审美特性（一）直观展现产品形象（艺术美）广告形象塑造的重点在于塑造形象的外在。2008 《MacBook Air》的广告一经发布就引起了极为热烈的反响——这个广告展示了一个人从一个信封里拿出了MacBook Air，突出了产品的纤薄轻巧，这对于追求便携生活节奏的公众无疑具有强大的诱惑力。（二）着重突出产品性能（功能美） 2015年苹果手表《iWatch》弥补了电子产品在健身方面的空白，成为这一领域的开拓者。这种开拓者的形象让消费者在潜意识中认为苹果这一品牌是在帮助用户提出问题并解决困难，是消费者的伙伴和盟友。（三）巧借故事引发共鸣（社会美）随着人们生活水平的稳步挺高，广告形象的诉求点已从产品转向了情感；立足点也从硬推销转向了软推销。越来越多的广告形象在走向商业化目的的过程中，承载了不同程度的社会文化价值。苹果公司广告所传达出的产品优越性和技术革命不可否认，但一味地诉说产品性能不免让远离实物的消费者产生一种“模糊感”和“怀疑感”。所以，苹果广告形象的过人之处就在于侧重精神内涵的表达，让冷冰冰的科技产品散发出迷人的人情味以弹拨消费者的心弦。2013年的广告片《误解》可谓是苹果众多广告形象塑造中最成功的一则案例，描述了一个小男孩不参与家庭节日互动而是“玩手机”，最后却发现原来他在用iPhone录制家人温馨的珍贵的画面。这则广告打破了电子时代人际关系疏离的这一伪命题，让人和电子产品的联系更加紧密，突出苹果产品在实用功能之外的情感功能，具有高层次的审美效果，与作品《老唱片》如出一辙。五、苹果公司广告的形象塑造策略（一）直观展现形成品牌定位品牌形象是一个企业无形的资产，具有广泛的价值。广告形象必须能够促成品牌形象的统一，完成自身的品牌定位。这既是指同一企业生产的同类或不同类的产品有统一的规划、设计、装潢、品牌；也是指产品的包装、色调、造型都与品牌形象传达的内涵保持统一，不能产生矛盾和不协调。纵观苹果公司的广告形象，不难发现他们都保持一个主题、一种风格，给人一种统一的印象。例如2014年投放的名为“贴纸”的广告中，不停地变化以苹果logo为基础的贴纸图片，造成观众的视觉连贯性，使观众把苹果广告形象从短期记忆转入长期记忆。苹果公司的这种品牌策略优势有二：其一，用龙头产品（如iPhone）质量上的信任感带动相关产品（如 Macbook、iPod、iPad）的销售，从而形成一条完整的商业链。其二，便于总体宣传，重点宣传，节省精力费用。（二）突出性能引领时尚消费 1999年广告《Hal》是重点塑造质量优异形象的典范。 “Hal”是著名电影《太空漫游》中的大反派，此则广告借势营销，旨在说明全球都会遭受病毒攻击，除了苹果电脑。它准确找到客户的潜在恐惧，并将其放大，然后在社会上塑造出自身产品优越性的形象。 2000年的广告《iMovie》再一次紧扣时代脉搏，向人们展示了用苹果电脑和苹果软件使用简单却可以制作出专业水准的影视短片。这支广告形象的成功塑造，在消费者脑海中留下了苹果产品可以简化工作流程、提高工作质量的完美伙伴形象，在一次成功引领了消费时尚。（三）引发共鸣贴近用户心理广告形象塑造的核心在于塑造形象的灵魂。正如乔布斯所言： “苹果的基因认为，只注重技术创新和研发还远远不够，科技必须与人文精神相结合，才能真正触动人们的心灵。”广告形象与社会心理的联系紧密而不可分割，想要取得广泛的传播效果就必须照顾不同地域、时期、阶层、性别的心理特征。苹果公司的广告形象塑造虽然广受好评，但也是在吸取失败的经验上成长起来的。例如1984年的广告作品《旅鼠》由于对白领这一群体形象的描绘过于偏激且含有歧视意味而引发了大量的攻讦。相反的，2005年广告《Gimmiethat》则展示了许多不同肤色大小的手拿着iPod产品，旨在说明此产品在全球范围内备受喜爱。但是，当产品广为大众接受时，必然会引起“新兴人类”追求个性的抵触。苹果公司广告敏锐地注意到年轻人的这种心理，在2014年投放的名为“贴纸”的广告中，30秒的时长全部用来展示MacBookAir后盖上千变万化的个性平面贴，暗示即使产品一样，每本MacBook Air也可以自我定义，玩出独特的个性。六、结论苹果广告利用线上影视广告形象和线下平面广告形象对消费者的裹挟，抓住了全球文化时代形象经济的脉搏，实现了广告形象背后的象征意义与消费者精神渴求的相契合，最终形成全球范围内最具影响力和号召力的粉丝经济和形象价值。苹果广告形象“胆大妄为”的超前意识虽然屡遭诟病，但不可否认这些广告形象的经典，不可否认苹果公司利用其广告形象在推广伟大。参考文献： [1]胡清,付勇.当代广告形象与受众心理研究[J].广州大学学报（社会科学版）,2003年7月第2卷第7期第52页.	5,359
语用学视角下手机广告的语言特点及成因分析_刘仁三.pdf	第36 卷第8 期湖北科技学院学报 Vol．36，No．8 2 0 1 6 年8 月 Journal of Hubei University of Science and Technology Aug．2016 文章编号: 2095 －4654( 2016) 08 －0134 －04 语用学视角下手机广告的语言特点及成因分析刘仁三 ( 安徽工业经济职业技术学院，安徽合肥 230051) 摘要: 在当今信息社会，手机以其独特的魅力，已成为人们表达审美情趣的重要工具，契合年轻人追求新异奇特的心理。手机广告除了对手机功能进行介绍，更加注重表现手机带给人们的愉悦体验，手机广告语突显新奇时尚。语用学是研究语言运用的学科，基于语用学中有关理论，结合收集的手机广告语料，阐释了手机广告形象化、情感化、艺术化的语言特点，分析了其成因，为合理设计手机广告语，达到更好广告效应提供参考。关键词: 语用学; 手机广告; 形象化; 情感化; 艺术化中图分类号: H023 文献标识码: A 随着经济社会的日益发展，广告作为传播经济、文化、科学技术、社会信息的有力工具和手段已深入社会的各个角落。广告语也以其独有方式，成为人类语言的一个重要组成部分，是语言中最活跃、最具影响力的东西，体现时代的发展与进步。在当今信息社会，手机已不再仅仅作为现代社会的通讯工具，还具有休闲娱乐功能。手机广告不仅仅注重对手机功能作平实的介绍，更注重表现手机带给人们的愉悦体验，其语言中充满着时尚、个性与新奇，呈现出诸多鲜活的特点。笔者基于语用学视角，以从报刊、电视、网络、宣传手册上收集的100 多条手机广告语为语料，阐释了手机广告语言的形象化、情感化、艺术化特点，并分析了其成因，为优化手机广告语设计、提升手机广告传播效应提供参考。一、手机广告的语言特点分析 ( 一) 形象化 1．颜色词的形象化手机广告对颜色词的描述，具有独特的特点，采用以物状色的方法，但又不局限于利用现存的颜色词，而是独创一些富有形象色彩的新词语［1］。如“玫瑰金、琥珀金、枫叶金、蔷薇粉、樱花粉、蜜桃粉、星钻黑、雅墨黑、精灵黑、雪域白、冰川白、象牙白、香槟银、星辰银、皓月银、烟云灰、暗夜灰、峭壁灰、寰宇蓝、电光蓝、绿松蓝”，用“玫瑰、琥珀、枫叶”修饰“金色”，用“蔷薇、樱花、蜜桃”修饰“粉”，用“星钻、雅墨、精灵”修饰“黑”，用“雪域、冰川、象牙”修饰“白”，用“香槟、星辰、皓月”修饰“银”，用“烟云、暗夜、峭壁”修饰“灰”，用“寰宇、电光、绿松”修饰“蓝”等，可以使颜色的描写更加细腻形象，“利用形象命名的方式来标明红、绿、蓝、紫、黄等颜色各自细分的不同色调，以物状色，很好地解决如何在名称上使这些细分的色调既相互区别，又一一鲜活地表现出来的难题”。手机颜色词以物状色，还可以引人联想，增加美感［2］。如“璨光金、魔幻金、月莹白、钛晶白、月光银、炫丝银、夜光黑、丝光黑”，不仅有对颜色的描述，还有对光泽的描写，使颜色富有动感的特征; 再如“月光蓝、星空黑”，则令人想到皎洁迷人的月光和神秘深邃的星空，留下无限想象的空间。 2．“闪、炫、亮”等词群的使用大量地使用炫、耀、闪、亮等语素，突出手机光彩夺目的视觉效果，如“闪耀、炫耀、闪亮、显耀”等 “闪”词群和“耀”词群，以及炫舞炫律、炫魅、炫亮、炫光红、炫美、炫目、炫色耀人、炫影靓音、炫光、炫彩音乐等词语与动感图像的结合，令人目不 * 收稿日期: 2016 －06 －18 基金项目: 2016 年安徽省高校优秀中青年骨干人才国内访学研修重点项目( gxfxZD2016317) DOI:10.16751/j.cnki.hbkj.2016.08.035 暇接，眼花缭乱，造成视觉上的冲击。这些炫词亮语，色彩鲜明，创意大胆，能够直接调动人们的感官神经，展现青春活力，充分展示自我个性，非常符合青春少年追求标新立异，希望引人注意的心理。 3．文艺语体词的运用文艺语体词是指那些本身具有一定的审美特质，适应了文艺语体交际领域的需要而为其所特有常用，在其他语体中很少出现的词［3］。文艺语体把对社会认识的一切思辨和理性因素都转化为感性形式，以感性打动听读者，以形象感动听读者，让听读者通过形象认识世界［4］。“绚丽、华丽、艳丽、缤纷、莹澈、斑斓、绚烂、明艳”等诉诸于视觉，充分展示手机画面的清晰、美丽、丰富多彩。 “萦绕、悠扬、天籁”等词语，表现了手机铃声给人们带来动听悦耳的听觉享受，采用“轻盈、窈窕、伶俐”等词语，则凸显机身的小巧和外形优美的特点。 ( 二) 情感化 1．对手机的情感倾诉手机广告常常把手机看作是情感的依托，是人精神上的伴侣。如“总有人质疑这个世界上有没有一见钟情式的爱情，我想，一见钟情是这个世界上最大的因缘际会。一见钟情的速度有多快? 蓦然回首，四目交汇，电光石火，风雨欲来……都是一瞬间的姿势。一见钟情难寻，iphone6s 让你轻易感受一见钟情的速度。”这是苹果手机的广告，把手机看成是人类情感交流和科技精华共同孕育出的精灵，是专为满足情感释放需求而设计，字里行间渗透着浓浓的人性，令消费者不经意间被打动。华为手机的广告则把手机的独特功能设计与青春个性张扬融为一体，赋予手机以人的性格，把人对青春独特魅力的向往和拥有表现得淋漓尽致。“青春是一种刺，有尖锐才锋芒，刺穿一切虚伪、打破所有陈规，保持不妥协的姿态，用棱角改变世界的圆滑。” ［5］华为Ascend P7 的广告语“君子如兰———世界上没有那么多诗山乐水，理想桃源，更只在古典流芳，世俗趋同之中，遁或隐，皆不可取，内心的出入，决定你在这个世界的位置，浊流中，以优雅示人，遇纷扰，有刚毅之决，触迷局，知远见筹谋，格局方寸，掌控有度。”将手机赋予了君子的内心品质。荣耀手机“勇敢做自己”广告语赋予手机一种人的精神、态度———无论前方是光明、还是黑暗，勇敢做自己。无论前方是康庄大道、还是一路荆棘，勇敢做自己。生活无不充满了可能，走一条自己独特的道路。其“双眼看世界”的广告语十分清楚的阐述了荣耀6 Plus 双摄像头的产品特点，更赋予了人勇于探索世界的精神品质。 2．表现手机给消费者带来的欢乐随着手机功能的多样化，可以听音乐，看视频，拍照摄像等，手机广告注意突出给人们带来的娱乐享受。如“浪漫的婚礼，每一刻都是如此珍贵，你的亲人、你的朋友，一同见证你们的爱情。欢乐的场面、愉悦的笑声，华为Ascend G6 忠实记录每一个甜蜜的瞬间，分享美好，感悟幸福。”( 华为Ascend G6 手机) 再如“……支持影音摄录、播放功能，任凭你捕风、捉影、寻踪，以自由的视角纵览大千，精彩片段尽收掌中”( 摩托罗拉手机) 和 “应用与相机同步的尖端技术，W810C 让你每一个心动瞬间，每一个灵感体验，每一段难忘经历，都能化作一帧精致的影像，成为你完美的记忆”。 ( 索尼爱立信手机) 手机可以摄下风和影的踪迹，手机可以把瞬间化作永恒，充分显示了手机的拍照和摄像功能给人们带来的欢乐体验。手机的音乐效果也可以突显，如“留住最真的”( oppo real 音乐手机) ，这句广告语生动、简洁，一方面表达了手机的独特完美音质; 另一方面渲染了人与人之间的真感情。再如“我的音乐 ‘醉’爱”( 索尼爱立信手机) ，用“醉”代替“最”，既体现了消费者对手机的极端喜爱，又形象地显现了消费者陶醉其中的神态，神东形象，令人忍俊不禁。 “我的沟通最尽兴———和朋友交流，就要畅快淋漓尽情尽兴! W208 超长待机及通话时间，时时有电，时时畅聊，自然莲莲精彩，处处来电! ( 摩托罗拉手机) ”则充分显示手机超长待机功能，给人带来的畅快享受。 3．拟人化广告语展示手机人性化功能手机广告中使用拟人手法，可以使广告语更加生动鲜活，增加手机的人性化特征，满足消费者情感心理需求。拟人手法常用的包括代词法、呼告法、称谓法、直接描述法。通过梳理我们收集到的手机广告语料，代词法在手机广告语中使用频率最大。 “回头便知，我心只有你”( 爱立信T －18 手机) ，这一广告语中直接用“我”来代称爱立信T － 5 3 1 第8 期刘仁三语用学视角下手机广告的语言特点及成因分析 18，抒情化的广告语更加贴近消费者，无形中拉近了消费者与手机之间的情感距离，较好表达了这款手机的情感诉求。 “行走天下，有我鼎天”( 三星Note3 手机) ，这一广告语同样直接用“我”来代称手机，让消费者瞬间觉得拥有了三星Note3 手机，就可以畅游世界，因自我的强大而让行走天下变得不再困难，满足了消费者个性张扬的情感需要。手机广告语中运用拟人手法，直接用“我”来代称手机，让消费者与手机融为一体，展示了手机人性化的功能，不经意间已引起消费者的情感共鸣［6］。 ( 三) 艺术化 1．固定语素的变异一些固定词语，可以用同音语素替换，产生独特的效果。如“天天娱人节”( OPPOQA125 手机) 这里的“娱人节”是仿自源于西方的一个节日“愚人节”，该节规定在每年的4 月1 日，人们之间可以互相开玩笑，互相愚弄进行娱乐。这一广告语中的“娱人节”不仅成功吸引了消费者的注意，还突显了该款手机的娱乐功能［7］。再如“低音反射立体声耳机令天籁音质声声不息”( 索尼爱立信手机) ，这里用“声声不息”代替“生生不息”既表现手机的声音清晰悦耳、连续不断，又令人联想到生生不息的勃勃生机。词语的意义通常不是语素的简单相加，而是两个语素构成的整体意义，有些广告把词语的意义变成语素的简单相加，产生新奇感［8］。如“缤纷的感觉体验尽在其中，让我时尚表现更‘出色’”。 “出色”本来是一个词，是杰出、出类拔萃的意思，而这里还可以指色彩能表现的突出、鲜亮，如果用后一种意义，那么“出色”就不是词，是由词“出” 和“色”组合而成的短语。把词当成短语使用，既有似曾相识的熟悉感，又有奇怪独特的新鲜感。再如“薄·动心弦”( vivo X5Max 手机) 中“薄”通假“拨”，既指因薄而动心，又指以“拨动心弦”寓 Hi －Fi，一语双关且点中X5Max 的精髓———两个最重要的特点，堪称精彩。广告突出了vivo 手机机身超薄的技术优势是为了满足人们对手机轻薄灵动的审美需求。 2．词语的超常规搭配手机广告把两个词语意义上本来不能搭配组合在一起的而搭配组合在一起，会拉长审美时间，产生美感。“采撷美丽时光，将每一刻记忆都雕刻成永恒”( 三星手机) ，“采撷”的意义是采摘的意思，“时光”也不是有形的、具体的物，把“采撷”与 “时光”搭配，就把“时光”化抽象为具体，让消费者赶到“时光”像花儿一样美丽，可以被人们采摘、珍藏。 “左右之间成就商务娱乐两相宜”，这里“成就”支配“商务娱乐两相宜”，而“成就”是名词，一般是不能支配宾语作谓语的。这里主语、谓语、宾语分别由三个名词性成分构成，形成三个意象，通过思维的跳跃把三个意象联系起来，形成完美的意境，与马致远的“小桥流水人家”有异曲同工之妙。 “随时为我直播多彩生活”中的“直播”是广播电视行业的专业术语，而且是不及物动词，一般不支配宾语，而这里直接与“多彩生活”搭配，表达简练，并让消费者感到手机似乎具有像电视一样的播放功能，显示了手机的多种功能。二、手机广告语言特点成因分析基于语用学视角并结合大量案例分析，笔者总结了手机广告语形象化、情感化、艺术化特点，究其成因主要有以下几个方面。 ( 一) 手机与人们形影不离，成为表达审美趣味的工具感性消费不同于理性消费，相对于理性消费只对商品崇拜，感性消费则更加注重对商品形象的崇拜及其精神价值和情感意义的追求，把精神愉悦、个性满足以及优越感作为主要价值目标，渐已成为普遍的消费现象。一位美国广告学者指出: 广告本身常能以其独特的功能，成为另一种附加价值。这是一种代表使用者或消费者，在使用本产品时所增加的满足的价值［9］。在一定程度上，符号化的物质商品已成为人际交流的重要工具和社会观念的显性象征。消费者通过这种符号意义来获取物质消费以外的精神满足，借以彰显自己的个性、地位、价值和修养。消费心理学认为，人们社会身份的标示及群体从属感的获得，可以通过选择和消费特定的商品来实现。调查显示，很多人出现“手机依赖症”，这说明手机已成为人们必不可少的工具，而且随时随地可能展现在别人面前。手机造型的美丑、档次的高低、功能的强弱，已成为人们身份地位的标志和审美情趣的表现，这就对手机颜色、造型和质地有了更高的要求。手机广告通过对理想的消费环境和愉悦的消费体验进行渲染和展示，使手机成为 6 3 1 湖北科技学院学报第36 卷人们爱情、身份、地位、个性、审美情趣标志物。 ( 二) 适应年轻人追求标新立异、跟着感觉走的心理手机的目标族群是年轻人，他们追求标新立异，喜欢新奇的事物，追求个性化，渴望表现自己，不喜欢“模式化”。手机广告为了吸引他们的眼球，就会把原来常规的事物稍加改变，或者用新的表现形式，使之呈现变异的美感，满足个性化需求。如: “如此醒目，谁不相形失色?”( 索爱T618 手机) “反正自有风格”( 索爱T628 手机) “我的时尚DNA”( 三星E108 手机) “展露精彩本色”( 三星S508 手机) “‘醉’时尚: 迷恋是一种时尚态度”( 诺基亚 7200 手机) “多角色，多出色”( 诺基亚6230 手机) 年轻人更关注的是自己的感觉体验，从感觉出发，来评价事物的好坏，手机广告就会通过强化视觉、听觉等感官体验，来吸引年轻人的注意力。如: “捕捉时尚，领导潮流”( 迪比特6588C 手机) “旋拍自如，灵犀互动”( LG8390 手机) “奥斯卡，影像天下”( 康佳A08 手机) “双彩互动时尚旋律”( 三星S208 手机) “拍你所想，想你所拍”( VK500 手机) “炫彩魅力，诱惑难挡”( NEC N820 手机) “可以拍星星的手机”( nubia 手机) “至美一拍”( OPPO 手机) “C168i 的立体声收音机音质清晰，效果出众，亲临现场的感觉时刻萦绕耳边，流行声声入耳，潮流时时更新”( 摩托罗拉手机) 三、结语手机广告语作为手机品牌传播的宣传工具之一，在与消费者的沟通中起着非常重要的作用，而形象化、情感化、艺术化的手机广告则能表达出优美的意境，使之充满情感，形象生动，从而提高人们的心理接受程度，达到广告的效应［10］。基于语用学的视角，笔者研究发现，手机广告的形象化描绘，可以带来丰富的感官体验; 情感化表达则可以带来愉悦的精神享受; 而艺术化的表达则具有新奇变异的美感。这是由于手机已成为人们形影不离的工具，成为人们爱情、身份、地位、个性、审美情趣的符号，而且也适应了年轻人追求新异和重视感觉体验的心理状态。研究并运用手机广告的语言特点，可以为手机广告语的优化合理设计及手机广告传播效应的提升作参考与借鉴。参考文献: ［1］吉益民．三音节手机颜色词面面观［J］．阜阳师范学院学报( 社会科学版) ，2006，( 5) : 48 ～ 51．［2］刘锋．主观化、新颖化、形象化: 手机颜色命名的特点［J］．修辞学习，2005，( 5) : 71．［3］张礼．文艺语体与文艺语体词的界定［J］．烟台大学学报( 哲学社会科学版) ，2005，( 1) : 114 ～117．［4］郁芳．“感动中国”颁奖词的语言美［J］．湖北师范学院学报( 哲学社会科学版) ，2012，( 2) : 48 ～52．［5］黄海峰．从麦芒4“骑行”发布看华为手机快速增长秘诀［J］．通信世界，2015，( 21) : 25 ～ 26．［6］吴晶．手机广告语修辞手法一瞥［J］．现代语文( 语言研究版) ，2008，( 3) : 61 ～62．［7］国玉娟．浅析手机广告语的修辞［J］．科教导刊，2011，( 7) : 191 ～192．［8］刘舒新．汉语描写词汇学［M］．北京: 商务印书馆，2005．［9］( 美) 马克·戈贝( MarcGobe) ．情感品牌［M］．向桢，译．海口: 海南出版社，三环出版社， 2003．［10］孙颖，崔雪梅．试论语用学理论在广告语中的运用［J］．东北农业大学学报( 社会科学版) ，2013，( 4) : 48 ～51． 7 3 1 第8 期刘仁三语用学视角下手机广告的语言特点及成因分析	6,931
雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究_白阳明.pdf	第38卷第6期湖北工业大学学报 2023年12月 Vol. 38No. 6 JournalofHubeiUniversityofTechnology Dec. 2023 􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇􀪇 [收稿日期]2022 09 07 [第一作者]白阳明(1974-),女,湖北秭归人,文学博士,湖北工业大学副教授,研究方向为翻译理论与实践、英美文学与英语教学。 [通信作者]翁欣悦(1998-),女,湖北黄冈人,湖北工业大学硕士研究生,研究方向为英语语言文学。 [文章编号]1003-4684(2023)06-0068-06 雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究白阳明,翁欣悦 (湖北工业大学外国语学院,湖北武汉430068) [摘要]基于概念隐喻理论,对雀巢产品系列广告中的隐喻进行分析。研究发现,雀巢产品系列广告语中的隐喻类型有结构隐喻、实体隐喻以及方位隐喻。同时,将收集的248条雀巢广告语基于产品进行分类,根据概念隐喻类型再细分其中42条广告语,分析得出:雀巢产品广告语中的隐喻通过建立消费者与产品间的连接来帮助消费者理解广告语中的信息,从而激发消费者购买欲以达到市场流通的较好效果。 [关键词]雀巢产品广告语;概念隐喻;隐喻类型 [中图分类号]H030 [文献标识码]A 隐喻除了是一种修辞手法之外,还是人们理解和掌握事物的一种方式。学者们将隐喻研究运用到多领域[1-4],随着时代的进步和科技的发展,商业广告语中的隐喻研究备受广大学者关注[5-7],然而,有关国际饮食产品广告隐喻研究尚少。在历年隐喻研究基础上,根据概念隐喻理论,将收集的248条雀巢广告语基于产品进行分类,根据概念隐喻类型再细分其中42条广告语,解析其概念隐喻的运用,讨论以下两个问题:雀巢产品广告系列涉及哪些概念隐喻? 运用概念隐喻理论如何帮助消费者理解广告语中的信息,从而激发消费者购买欲望以达到市场流通的较好效果? 1 概念隐喻含义与类别孙凤兰在其研究中发现以认知视角来论述的概念隐喻理论最早出现在雪莱和康德等人的作品中[8]。1980年,随着Lakoff和Johnson的《我们赖以生存的隐喻》出版,隐喻研究在认知语言学界出现了历史转折点。Lakoff和Johnson认为:“我们赖以生存的思维方式是隐喻引导的结果” [9]。隐喻无论是在人类的语言使用、思维模式还是在衣食住行等日常活动中都普遍存在。因此,就其本质来说,隐喻是一种用于理解抽象概念以及事物的重要机制。概念隐喻是从源域(sourcedomain)到靶域(targetdo- main)的概念隐喻,是跨概念域映射从具体的概念域到抽象的概念域[9]。在《我们赖以生存的隐喻》中,Lakoff和Johnson主要将概念隐喻分为三类,即结构隐喻、方位隐喻以及实体隐喻[9]。姜波将结构隐喻定义为用前一概念结构映射后一概念结构[10],这样能使大众更容易认识和掌握后一概念。根据黄洁和何芬所提出的“恋情的开始是旅行的开端” [11]以及宋素红和陈艳明所提出的“抗疫即战争” [12],结构隐喻还可细分为旅行隐喻、战争隐喻等。赵艳芳对方位隐喻有独到的见解,方位隐喻也称为空间隐喻,它是参照空间位置而建构一系列相互联系的隐喻概念域[13]。如“扶摇直上”“瓜田李下”等,“上”“下”除了被理解为所处的方位状态之外,蓝纯认为“上”可以表示积极、好的感情色彩; “下”一般表示消极、坏的情感色彩[14]。除此之外, 杨冰冰在其研究中提到“上”还可以表示社会权利高、消费能力强、实现或达到、数量上的多、前进和靠近等,相反,“下”还可以表示社会权利低、消费能力低、数量上的少、后退和远离等[15]。方位隐喻除了 “上”“下”隐喻外,王金安和欧阳云静还提到了 “deep”和“深”隐喻,“deep”可以隐喻为声音洪亮、事态严重、情感强烈、知识丰富等;“深”可以隐喻为态度诚恳、道德高尚、动作幅度大、掌握信息量大和内容丰富等[16]。实体隐喻在人类的认知活动中也占有极其重要的地位。王敬媛和陈万会认为认知实体隐喻是把抽象事物找出,将抽象事物比作实体[17]。实体隐喻使抽象概念的表达通过人的认知体系转移到外在的具体实物中,如“少年儿童是祖国的花朵” 中的实体隐喻,花朵的为人们思维中广泛存在的实体,少年儿童被隐喻式的概念为另一种物质———花朵,日后可绽放光芒。 2 雀巢产品广告语中的概念隐喻石裕晶和陈寅涛将“广告”一词定义为唤起对某事物的注意,并达到一定目的所行使的特殊手段[18]。广告语隐喻的运用在商品信息传递中起着极为重要的作用。雀巢产品类别颇多,包括咖啡、奶品、糖果、饮用水、宠物食品、专业餐饮等。本文根据雀巢产品类别不同,将其分为咖啡类、巧克力类、蜂蜜类和奶品类等几种类型来具体分析雀巢产品广告语的概念隐喻。同时,根据概念隐喻类型,再将其细分,如生活的开始是旅行的开端,享用雀巢的过程是旅行的过程等。以雀巢产品系列广告语为语料,收集整理了248条英文广告语,把收集的语料按产品类别进行分类,其中,咖啡类31 条;巧克力类154 条;奶品类34条;蜂蜜类6条;水类23条。对所收集到的英文语料按概念隐喻类型进行分类,得出的数据见表1。表1 雀巢产品广告语中的概念隐喻概念隐喻分类情况数目结构隐喻旅行隐喻 5 战争隐喻 4 实体隐喻味道隐喻 8 人隐喻 5 方位隐喻 “上”“高”隐喻 8 “里”“外”隐喻 12 总共 42 2. 1 雀巢产品广告语中的结构隐喻广告语中的结构隐喻通过转换购买者不同的思维方式,展示全新视角让其充分解读并理解产品从而激发消费者的购买欲望。雀巢产品广告语中涉及的旅行隐喻和战争隐喻使产品更加直观展现在消费者面前。 2. 1. 1 雀巢产品广告语中的旅行隐喻徐知媛和章亦松认为旅行的意象图式一般涉及出发地、中途、目的地[19]。人们把这个概念结构映射到目标域“生活”上,就产生了“生活的开始是旅行的开端”和“享用雀巢的过程是旅行的过程”这两种隐喻表达。图 1为旅行隐喻的结构映射图,由图1可知:旅行涉及起点、过程、终点、旅行是否愉悦,这与生活的概念域元素包括日出、享用雀巢、日落、生活是否美好等一一对应。 !" #$%&' (" #$)* +, -./0%&' +1 2345 #$ 23 图1 旅行隐喻的结构映射 1)生活的开始是旅行的开端正如美好的一天用雀巢开始一样,美妙的旅程用愉快的心情开启。例1 ItallstartswithaNescafé.(Nescafé) 例2 Wakeuptolife.(Nescafé) 例3 Foragreatstarttotheday! (Hot Chocolate) 上述三句广告语将享受咖啡或热巧克力这一时光用另一种概念“旅行”来进行隐喻构建。例1中的 “It”表示人们生活的每一天,与旅行有一定联系, “starts”表明开启全新的一天就如开始一段从未涉足的旅程。在美好的一天开始之前喝一杯咖啡就如一段美妙的旅行开始之前做好充足的准备一样。例 2中的“wakeup”代表人们从新的一天醒来,卸下昨日疲惫,用咖啡开启充满活力的一天,就像开始一段旅行一样,准备充足。例3中的“greatstart”也是舒适的一天从一杯热巧克力开始,就如美妙的旅行用愉快的心情开启一样。 2)享用雀巢的过程是旅行的过程正如享用雀巢过程一样,旅行过程使人暂且摆脱就业和学习带来的压力,脱离城市喧嚣,尽情体验愉快时光。例4 Staycloseforthemomentsthatmatter. (NestléCoffeeGold) 例5 NestléLesRecettesdeL’Ateliertakes youonanirresistiblechocolatejourney,wherein- tensechocolatesubtlycoats wholenuts.(Nestlé LesRecettesdeL’Atelier) 例4 中的“moments”为多个片刻组成,也与 “ journey”相关联,表明生活中由多个片刻组成一段旅程。例5中的“journey”表明享受美味巧克力的过程是体验美妙旅行的过程。浓郁巧克力混合的坚果、水果和葡萄干使每一口变得独特,就如让整个旅行变得新颖独特一样,进而提升购买者对产品的认同感。 2. 1. 2 雀巢产品广告语中的战争隐喻雀巢奶粉等产品围绕当地优良健康品牌,将更积极地追求新兴的消费趋势。因此,与之相关的广告便由此产生了。例6 NANGROWisanutritiousmilkdrink forgrowingchildren(2-5years),whichcontains nutrientstohelpsupporteasydigestion,normal physicalgrowthanddevelopment,cognitivedevel- opment and immune system function.(Nestlé NANGROW) 例7 HMO helpsstrengthen and develop 9 6 第38卷第6期白阳明,等雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究 yourchild’simmunity.(NestléNANGROW) 例8 ImmunonutrientslikeVitaminsA,C, iron,zinc & selenium helpsupportnormalim- munesystemfunction.(NestléNANGROW) 例9 Strongerimmunitywith HMO.(Nestlé NANGROW) 战争隐喻是雀巢奶粉广告语中常见的隐喻。战争隐喻使大众更容易理解“免疫防御”这一概念。无论何时何地,人类会把身体健康放在十分重要的位置,正是战争隐喻提高了人们对身体健康的重视。 “免疫防御”即“战争”设置了理解免疫防御的战争框架。图2 为战争隐喻的结构映射图,由图2 可知: 战争涉及敌方或入侵者、武器或弹药、战胜、战场,这与免疫防御的概念域元素包括病毒或细菌、免疫系统、免疫力提高、人体等一一对应。 !"、$%& '(、)* +, +- ./、01 2345 23678 9: +; <= 图2 战争隐喻的结构映射上述广告描述了雀巢奶粉中的营养成分可以提高人体免疫力。例6 中的“immunesystemfunc- tion”、例7中的“developyourchild’simmunity”、例8 中的“Immunonutrients”“immune system function”以及例9 中“immunity”说明这些广告把始源域战争映射到目标域免疫防御上,达成“免疫防御是战争”的跨域映射认知机制,十分巧妙地让购买者深信雀巢奶粉是促进人体机能健康的有益产品, 进而提升大众对雀巢产品的期望值,从而达到促销效果。以上几组隐喻中,雀巢产品广告的旅行隐喻分析了生活的开始是旅行的开端和享用雀巢的过程是旅行的过程;雀巢产品广告语中的战争隐喻解析了免疫防御是战争。因此,雀巢产品广告语中的旅行隐喻和战争隐喻通过增进与消费者的共同价值基础,引领消费方向。 2. 2 雀巢产品广告语中的实体隐喻肖坤学把实体隐喻定义为将情感、活动及抽象事件用具体有形的物质或实体表达[20],以使大众更容易认识和理解抽象事物。雀巢产品广告语中涉及的味道隐喻和人隐喻借助特定的事物使人认识抽象的商品,也能使语言表达更加丰富多样。 2. 2. 1 雀巢产品广告的味道隐喻味道包括酸、甜、苦、咸四种,味道隐喻是雀巢产品广告实体隐喻的一种。雀巢产品广告的味道隐喻由“甜”“苦”两个小部分构成,每个部分的小标题都包含味道词语,如涉及概念隐喻“冰激凌、巧克力广告中的甜”和“咖啡广告中的苦”。图3为味道隐喻的跨域映射图,由图 3可知:始源域味觉的“甜”达成“生活幸福或心情愉悦是甜”的跨域映射认知机制;始源域味觉的“苦” 达成“流泪或离别是苦”的跨域映射认知机制。 !"# $ % &'()、+,-. /0、12 34# 图3 味道隐喻的跨域映射 1)冰激凌、巧克力广告中的甜味道是区别于牛奶巧克力与纯黑巧克力的重要特征,牛奶巧克力因其味道清爽、甜蜜且无油腻口感而深受大众青睐。冰激凌是冷饮中常见的甜点,雀巢冰激凌因其口味丰富多样、口感细腻而深受大众喜爱。例10 50percentofconsumerswanta mini dessertthroughouttheirday.(Nestlé’sButterfin- gerBites) 例11 Enlargedtoshowdetailfrozendessert cones.(NestléDrumstick) 例12 Victoryissweet.Tasteagreatsuperi- orqualitychocolateandsavoragreatvictoryfor chocolatelovers.(Nestlé’sMilkChocolate) “甜”很容易让人联想到生活幸福、心情愉悦。城市中的人们生活压力大、节奏快,加班加点的工作致使人们早出晚归。因此,人们渴望内心满足、心情愉悦。例10中的“dessert”、例11中的“dessert”和例12中的“sweet”说明始源域“甜”通过广告中的冰激凌和牛奶巧克力来呈现,进而在消费者思维中构建一个认知体系:雀巢冰激凌和牛奶巧克力能够满足上班族内心深处的愿望和需求,从而在情感上拉近产品与消费者之间的距离。 2)咖啡广告中的苦咖啡呈现出苦、酸、甜、香和醇等风味的原因不仅在于自身,还在于烘焙后经过化学反应形成的少许物质。例如选自土豆视频网站的雀巢暖心广告短片《我们一生会遇到多少人》: 例13 Wewillmeeteightthousandpeoplein ourlife.Ifyouhaveneverseen mecry,pleasesit down.Staycloseforthe momentsthat matter. (NestléCoffeeGold) 例14 Takeasitifwesomehowlosetouch. Doyouhavea momentnow? Forthepeople we willmeet,onlyafew becomespecialtous.Stay closeforthemomentsthatmatter.(NestléCoffee Gold) 流泪是苦,例13中的目标域“cry”说明人生难 0 7 湖北工业大学学报 2023年第6期免会遇到许多挫折,所以内心沮丧,痛苦流泪。走出难过重获开心是苦尽甘来。失去联系或离别是苦, 例14中的目标域“losetouch”说明人生难免会有离别和遗憾,所以内心悲伤难过。广告中的主人公流泪过、离别过,最后用咖啡来弥补人生中的遗憾,十分巧妙地实现与消费者的情感共鸣。 2. 2. 2 雀巢产品广告语中的人隐喻人隐喻是一种典型的实体隐喻,是将自然物体拟人化的隐喻。根据蒋冰清的论述,人隐喻把人的想法、情绪等人的属性投射到具体事物上,赋予抽象事物人的特质,来表达作者的情感[21]。例15 Greatideascomefrom greatcoffee. (Nescafé) 例16 You willfinda winningteam,the NestléCrunchNBA WorldChampionsBars,inev- eryone.(NestléCrunch) 例17 Itwillgiveyouaveryspecialchocolate feeling.(Nestlé’sChocolate) 例18 Haveabreak,haveaKitKat.(Nestlé’ sKitKat) 例19 Goodtastetellsyouitis Nestlé’s Chocolate.(Nestlé’sChocolate) 例20 Thewhitestriponthewrappertells youwhatgoesintoourchocolate.(Nestlé’sChoco- late) 例15中的“ ideas”是人特有的想法、灵感。“雀巢产品”本是无生命的抽象概念,通过“咖啡是人”拟人隐喻,赋予人的特质。“great”说明雀巢咖啡如同人一样具有好的灵感和想法,生动形象描述出雀巢咖啡品质好,正如处在良好状态的人一样,面对工作或学习,能拥有积极向上的生活态度,持续不断高效输出。例16 把“NestléCrunchBars”比作“NBA WorldChampions”和“winningteam”这两个与人相关的实体,说明“NestléCrunchBars”如篮球运动员一样在比赛中一举夺冠,是胜利的团体,成功彰显该产品的独特之处。例17中“give”说明雀巢巧克力像人一样能给人带来特别的感觉,进而满足消费者的好奇心。例18中“Haveabreak”是人具有的活动,拥有巧克力便是拥有闲暇,说明吃巧克力能够把人从紧张繁忙的状态带回轻松闲暇的状态。例19 和例20中雀巢巧克力味道及其包装样式能像人一样做出“tells”这一动作,说明该产品味道和包装独特,闻其味道,识其包装就知是雀巢产品,是其他品牌无法匹敌的。以上几组隐喻中,雀巢产品广告的味道隐喻分析了冰激凌、巧克力广告中的甜和咖啡广告中的苦; 雀巢产品广告语中的人隐喻分析了雀巢产品是人。因此,雀巢产品广告语中的味道隐喻和人隐喻的应用通过达到与购买者情感共鸣,提升其对产品的好感度,实现推广目的。 2. 3 雀巢产品广告语中的方位隐喻方位隐喻即与上下、里外等空间方位相联系的表达直观展现抽象概念。方位隐喻因各地文化差异而有所不同,所以Lakoff和Johnson总结出的方位隐喻类型并非与所有文化相匹配,需针对具体事物详细分析。 2. 3. 1 雀巢产品广告语中的“上”“高”隐喻 “上” “高”在汉语文化背景中通常是褒义,如“步步高升” “才高八斗”“扶摇直上”等。雀巢产品广告的“上” “高”隐喻由两个小部分构成,涉及概念隐喻“表示品质”和“表示生长规律”。图4为“上”“高”隐喻的跨域映射图,由图4可知:始源域“上”达成“品质好是上”的跨域映射认知机制;“高”达成“生长发育是高” 的跨域映射认知机制。 !"# $ % &'( )+, -.# 图4 “上”“高”隐喻的跨域映射 1)表示品质方位词的使用会根据不同人的需求来定位品牌,在产品的口感、条理档次、外观和功效性等特征方面进行改善以收获大众芳心。例21 OnlyNestléhasadded2new barsto thetop20brands! (NestléChocolate) 例22 Tryagreatsuperiorqualitychocolate, andsee how rewarding atastecan be.(Nestlé Chocolate) 例21中的“top”和例22中的“superior”为源域映射到雀巢产品上,即为“高”这一方位隐喻,此与 Lakoff和Johnson提出的经典例证“GOODISUP” 以及“BADISDOWN”相一致,说明雀巢产品口碑好,值得大众信赖。 2)表示生长规律赵瑛认为感知和体验外在物体的高矮是以人自身为参照点[22]。在趋向成熟时,人的身高朝上发展;在人体机能减退时,其身高有降低的趋势。例23 Nestlé NANGROW hashighquality wheyprotein,DHA,probioticsandothernutri- entswithzeroaddedsugartohelpsupportyour child’sgrowthand development.(Nestlé NAN- GROW) 例24 Lifemakesyougrowup.Easterbrings 1 7 第38卷第6期白阳明,等雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究 youback.IwantNestlé.(Nescafé) 例23中的“growthanddevelopment”即为人们常说的“长高长大”,该产品将“高”的空间方位映射到雀巢产品上,说明雀巢奶粉可以促进孩子更好地成长,进而彰显自身品牌优势。例24 中的“up”与动词搭配意为“成长”,说明人类从孩童到成年的过程中,个子长高、体重增加、心智成熟以及人体器官机能趋向鼎盛。广告语中的“我”在此期间想要的是雀巢咖啡的陪伴,进而强调其产品独特之处,赢得消费者认可。 2. 3. 2 雀巢产品广告语中的“里”“外”隐喻崔希亮指出“里”的隐喻意义有很多,“里”可以表示空间范围、时间、属性状态等[23]。周立萍在其研究总结出“外”的隐喻意义包括状态、结果、数量、社会关系等[24]。雀巢产品广告的“里”“外”隐喻涉及的隐喻意义有表示范围和表示状态两种。图5为“里”“外” 隐喻的跨域映射图,由图5可知:始源域“里”达成 “某一范围内是里”的跨域映射认知机制;“外”达成 “不处于某一状态是外”的跨域映射认知机制。 !"# $ % &'() +,-&'./ 01# 图5 “里”“外”隐喻的跨域映射例25 Yourfirstbitetellsyouitisspecially good.Extracream withafullnessofflavouris foundonlyin milkchocolatethatisreallyfresh. (NestléMilkChocolate) 例26 You willfinda winningteam,the NestléCrunchNBA WorldChampionsBars,inev- eryone.(NestléCrunch) 例27 Discoverthetastieststarsintheuni- verse! (Nestlé’sHoneyStars) 例28 Yououghttogetmorethanalullaby outofacupofcoffee! (Nescafé) 这三句广告语中的“in”表示某一范围内,例25 中的“ in”表示在雀巢牛奶这一食品范围内,该雀巢牛奶巧克力奶油丰富,味道浓郁,正是该产品的独特之处;例26中的“in”表示在大众这一范围内,此产品是大众心中认定的巧克力赢家,赢得大家喜爱;例 27将雀巢蜂蜜比作宇宙中最美味的恒星,此处的 “ in”表示在宇宙这一空间范围内,说明雀巢蜂蜜的美味程度在市场名列前茅,彰显其产品优势。例28 中的“out”表示不处于某一状态,“outofacupof coffee”指的是处于没有咖啡的这种状态,说明没有咖啡的时候,人会感到疲惫不堪,困倦不已。相反, 处于有咖啡的状态时,工作学习则事半功倍。因此, 该广告语强调咖啡在人们工作学习中扮演着极其重要的角色,满足了消费者对雀巢品牌的期待。以上几组隐喻中,雀巢产品广告中的“上”“高” 隐喻分析了巧克力广告中的方位隐喻表示品质和奶粉广告中的方位隐喻表示生长规律;雀巢产品广告语中的“里”“外”隐喻分析了巧克力广告和蜂蜜广告中的方位隐喻表示范围以及咖啡广告中的方位隐喻表示状态。广告语中的“上”“高”隐喻和“里”“外”隐喻通过彰显雀巢产品的独特之处来达到其销量增加的目标。 3 结束语以概念隐喻为理论框架,对雀巢系列产品广告语进行分析和讨论,回答了提出的两个问题。第一, 雀巢产品系列广告语涉及三种典型的概念隐喻,即结构隐喻、实体隐喻及方位隐喻,根据概念隐喻类型再将其细分,结构隐喻包括旅行隐喻中的“生活的开始是旅行的开端”和“享用雀巢的过程是旅行的过程”以及战争隐喻中的“免疫防御是战争”,实体隐喻包括味道隐喻中的“冰激凌、巧克力广告中的甜”和 “咖啡广告中的苦”以及人隐喻中的“雀巢产品是人”,方位隐喻包括“上”“高”隐喻中的“表示品质”和 “表示生长规律”以及“里”“外”隐喻中的“表示范围” 和“表示状态”。第二,广告语借助概念隐喻表达使原本难以理解的内容更通透、更易懂;建立消费者与商品互动的桥梁,促使广大购买者结合已有的情感和认知经历了解商品,从而达到情感共鸣;在消费者情感需求得到满足的同时,也能激发其购买欲望,达到市场流通的较好效果。隐喻在人类的语言使用、思维模式及衣食住行等日常活动中普遍存在。然而,雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究仅限于对其中一种隐喻类型单独分析, 或许应该结合多种隐喻类型共同分析,从而更好地传达出广告语背后的隐喻意义。 [ 参考文献 ] [1] 高婷.科技类新闻标题中的拟人隐喻研究[J].科技视界,2019(15):137-138. 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[17]王敬媛,陈万会.实体隐喻和空间概念联合表意的认知路径分析[J].外国语文,2017,33(02):73-81. [18]石裕晶,陈寅涛.汉英英汉广告写作词典[M].上海:复旦大学出版社,2000. [19]徐知媛,章亦松.汉语征婚广告语篇中的概念隐喻与婚恋认知[J].教育现代化,2019,6(07):97-99. [20]肖坤学.意向性视域下实体隐喻的翻译方法研究[J].外国语文,2012,28(06):104-107. [21]蒋冰清.基于概念隐喻理论的拟人研究[J].内蒙古农业大学学报,2007(03):334-335. [22]赵瑛.西双版纳傣语空间方位隐喻研究[J].云南民族大学学报(哲学社会科学版),2011,28(01):147-151. [23]崔希亮.北京语言大学汉语语言学集萃[M].北京:北京语言文化大学出版社,2004. [24]周立萍.汉语“里”“外”和英语“in”“out”的隐喻对比研究[D].沈阳:辽宁大学,2014. TheResearchontheConceptualMetaphorofNestlé ProductAdvertisingLanguage BAIYangming,WENGXinyue (SchoolofForeignLanguages,HubeiUniv.ofTech.,Wuhan430068,China) Abstract:TherearevarietiesofmetaphorsusedinNestlé’sproductadvertisinglanguage.Guidedbythe ConceptualMetaphorTheory,themetaphorsin Nestlé’sproductcommercialsareanalyzed.Itisfound thatthreetypesofmetaphors,thatis,structuralmetaphor,ontologicalmetaphorandorientation meta- phor,areinvolvedinNestlé’sproductadvertisinglanguage.Atthesametime,248piecesofNestlé’sad- vertisementsareclassifiedonthebasisofproductvarieties,and42ofthemarefurthersubdividedaccord- ingtothetypesofmetaphors.ItisconcludedthattheapplicationofmetaphorsinNestlé’sproductadver- tisinglanguagehelpsconsumersunderstandtheinformationincommercialsbybuildingtheconnectionbe- tweenconsumersandproducts,soastostimulateconsumers’purchasedesireandachieveabettereffectof marketingcirculation. Keywords:Nestlé’sproductadvertisinglanguage;conceptualmetaphortheory;typesofmetaphors [责任编校:张岩芳] 3 7 第38卷第6期白阳明,等雀巢产品广告语概念隐喻研究	12,934
Guide to Cross-Cultural Communication (Reynolds, SanaValentine, DeborahMunter, Mary) (Z-Library).pdf	Prentice Hall “Guide To” Series in Business Communication Guide To Cross-Cultural Communication Second Edition Sana Reynolds Baruch College, The City University of New York Deborah Valentine Goizueta Business School, Emory University Mary Munter Truck School of Business, Dartmouth College Series Editor Prentice Hall Boston Columbus Indianapolis New York San Francisco Upper Saddle River Amsterdam Cape Town Dubai London Madrid Milan Munich Paris Montreal Toronto Delhi Mexico City Sao Paulo Sydney Hong Kong Seoul Singapore Taipei Tokyo Credits and acknowledgments borrowed from other sources and reproduced, with permission, in this textbook appear on appropriate page within text (or on page 117). Copyright © 2011 Pearson Education, Inc., publishing as Prentice Hall, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America. This publication is protected by Copyright, and permission should be obtained from the publisher prior to any prohibited reproduction, storage in a retrieval system, or transmission in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or likewise. To obtain permission(s) to use material from this work, please submit a written request to Pearson Education, Inc., Permissions Department, One Lake Street, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey 07458. Many of the designations by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and the publisher was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in initial caps or all caps. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reynolds, Sana. Guide to cross-cultural communication / Sana Reynolds, Deborah Valentine. —2nd ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN-13: 978-0-13-215741-4 ISBN-10: 0-13-215741-1 1. Intercultural communication. I. Valentine, Deborah II. Title. GN345.6.R49 2010 303.48'2—dc22 2010000453 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 13: 978-0-13-215741-4 ISBN 10: 0-13-215741-1 Editorial Director: Sally Yagan Editor in Chief: Eric Svendsen Acquisitions Editor: James Heine Product Development Manager: Ashley Santora Director of Marketing: Patrice Jones Marketing Manager: Nikki Jones Marketing Assistant: Ian Gold Senior Managing Editor: Judy Leale Production Manager: Meghan DeMaio Creative Designer: Jayne Conte Cover Designer: Bruce Kenselaar Cover Image: Getty Images, Inc. Full-Service Project Management/ Composition: Sudip Sinha/Aptara®, Inc. Printer/Binder: Edwards Brothers Cover Printer: Lehigh-Phoenix Color Text Font: Times Contents PREFACE vii INTRODUCTION xv PART I UNDERSTANDING CULTURES CHAPTER I RELATIONSHIPS: INDIVIDUAL OR COLLECTIVE? 3 Characteristics of individualist cultures 5 Characteristics of collective cultures 7 Guidelines: Individualist or collective? 11 CHAPTER II SOCIAL FRAMEWORK: HIGH CONTEXT OR LOW CONTEXT? 13 High-context cultures 15 Low-context cultures 19 Guidelines: High or low context 24 iii CHAPTER III TIME: LINEAR, FLEXIBLE, OR CYCLICAL? 27 Linear time 28 Flexible time 30 Cyclical time 32 Guidelines: Attitudes toward time 36 CHAPTER IV POWER: HIERARCHICAL OR DEMOCRATIC? 39 Hierarchical cultures 41 Democratic cultures 44 Signs and symbols of power 46 Guidelines: Attitudes toward power 50 PART II COMMUNICATING ACROSS CULTURES CHAPTER V USING LANGUAGE 53 English: a language of action 55 Sino-tibetan languages: A rich contrast 56 Guidelines for using language 58 CHAPTER VI WRITING 63 Preferred channel 65 Directness 66 Immediacy 68 Clarity and conciseness 69 Guidelines for writing across cultures 71 iv Contents CHAPTER VII COMMUNICATING NONVERBALLY 75 Eye contact 77 Facial expression 81 Hand gestures 83 Space 86 Silence and the rhythm of language 89 Guidelines 90 CHAPTER VIII NEGOTIATING: PROCESS, PERSUASION, AND LAW 93 Analyzing the negotiation process 95 Enhancing your persuasiveness 101 Understanding international law 105 Guidelines for negotiation 109 CONCLUSION 110 CULTURAL QUESTIONNAIRE 113 BIBLIOGRAPHY 117 SUGGESTED READINGS 120 SUGGESTED FILMS 123 INDEX 125 Contents v This page intentionally left blank Preface W elcome to the second edition of Guide To Cross-Cultural Communication. Since our initial publication in 2004, we have been pleased with the response and feedback of our readers. In this edition, we have incorporated those suggestions for those who wish to communicate more effectively across cultures when using current technology. CHANGES TO NEW EDITION Although we have incorporated revisions throughout the book, we would like to highlight some of the most extensive changes: • Technology: Explores ways that new technology impacts cross- cultural communication • Millennial generation: Presents data on the global impact of the mil- lennial generation • Updated examples: Includes updated intercultural examples • Applications: Provides running descriptions for applications of guidelines • Audience: Targets a worldwide audience • Readings and films: Updates suggested readings and films HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP YOU The American workplace is becoming increasingly multicultural. More than 6 million Americans work for foreign-owned companies on U.S. soil. American foreign investments now exceed $3 billion. As U.S. companies become global entities, we face complex chal- lenges in cross-cultural communication. vii In addition, Americans themselves represent many cultures, with distinct preferences in communication styles: the U.S. population includes over 44 million Latinos, almost 40 million African Americans, more than 13 million Asian and Pacific Islanders, and over 18 million people from other races and ethnic groups. Unfortunately, our success rate working in this rich and de- manding environment is not as high as it might be. Many instances of failure are caused, not by inadequate management competencies or technical skills, but by lack of cultural sensitivity. Because the United States is geographically separate, Americans historically have been poor internationalists. We generally do not speak other lan- guages because historically and geographically we haven’t needed to, and we often fail to recognize that people of other cultural back- grounds may have different goals, customs, thought patterns, man- agement styles, and values. When we understand differences at all, we tend to be judgmental. Our attitude often is “if they only knew better they would do it our way.” And even if we understand and at- tempt to work well with others in a multicultural context, we may suffer from “tunnel vision” based on experience acquired in purely American organizations. It’s easy to find examples of this lack of ability to communicate interculturally; miscommunication occurs every day in the American workplace . . . • A contract deal is complete, and yet you find that it faces additional negotiation. • On-time delivery seems to have absolutely no meaning for your vendor. • An employee from a non-Western culture is habitually late for meetings. • A customer is offended by your direct approach to discussion of contract terms. • Co-workers complain that a colleague “refuses” to offer ideas in meetings. If you have been puzzled by the beliefs, behaviors, and work ethic of others; if you plan to work abroad in the future; or if you wish to be- come a more successful communicator in culturally diverse work- places both at home and abroad, this book will help by providing essential information and practical examples for these important aspects of cross-cultural communication. viii Preface WHO CAN USE THIS BOOK If you are interested in understanding and improving cross-cultural communication both inside and outside your organization, you will benefit from the information presented in this book. Many groups will find the information in Guide To Cross-Cultural Communication useful: • Managers, executives, and other business professionals who must com- municate more effectively in an increasingly multicultural workplace. • MBA students who count a third of their classmates international, who wish to improve their communication effectiveness in both acad- emic and business settings, and who want to gain an edge in entering a global workplace. • Instructors in graduate communication courses who wish to incorpo- rate knowledge of cross-cultural communication into their syllabus. • Corporate HR associates who educate workers about cross-cultural communication. WHY THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN We have taught thousands of MBA students and business profession- als at universities and corporations in the U.S. and abroad—and have been both surprised and dismayed at the lack of awareness of effec- tive intercultural communication. Even among people who have worked abroad there is ignorance and misunderstanding. For example, we have worked with managers who considered Chinese staff as uncommitted, disinterested, and unmotivated because they failed to make eye contact during performance evaluations. We have trained pharmaceutical representatives who misunderstood the unwillingness of Indian, Malaysian, and Hasidic doctors to shake hands. We have taught MBA students who were completely unaware of cultural issues, even after having worked overseas. However, these busy professionals have found other books on this subject too long or academic for their needs. That’s why Prentice Hall is publishing this series, the Prentice Hall “Guide To” Series in Business Communication—brief, practical, reader-friendly guides for people who communicate in professional contexts. • Brief: The book summarizes key ideas only. Culling from thousands of pages of text and research, we have omitted bulky cases, footnotes, Preface ix exercises, and discussion questions. Instead, we offer proverbs that capture cultural values and practical examples drawn from our busi- ness and academic experience. • Practical: This book offers clear, straightforward tools you can use. It in- cludes only information you will find helpful in a professional context. • Reader-friendly: We have tried to provide an easy-to-skim format using a direct, matter-of-fact, non-theoretical tone. HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED We begin with an introduction that defines culture, discusses the re- lationship between culture and communication, and explores the var- ious ways culture affects values, attitudes, and behavior. We intro- duce each chapter with proverbs and use them to illustrate major points throughout the book. Part I: Understanding Cultures (Chapters I–IV) Conducting business invariably means persuading people to buy your ideas or products. This section examines what motivates people from different cultures to engage in business transactions. I. Relationships: Individual or Collective? Some cultures value the group and harmony over the individual and per- sonal competitiveness and stress relationships rather than actual transactions. Knowing about these differences can help you establish successful intercultural partnerships. II. Social Framework: High-Context or Low-Context? Some cultures require explicit, content-rich, direct state- ments when communicating; others rely on an indirect, im- plicit, unspoken (but generally understood), and accepted context. Learn where particular cultures fall on the high- context/low-context continuum and how to tailor your com- munication to meet cultural needs. III. Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? The view of time it- self differs vastly among world cultures. In the U.S. business culture, time is defined as a linear and precious commodity to be used, not wasted; other cultures see time as circular, x Preface repetitive, fluid, and subordinate to people and relationships. In this chapter, you’ll discover how to recognize these dif- ferent attitudes toward time and communicate your organi- zation’s expectations as they relate to delivery schedules and other time related issues. IV. Power: Hierarchical or Democratic? Many world cultures view the organization of companies differently from the power- sharing, flat structures of most U.S. businesses. We’ll examine ways to establish effective business presence when communi- cating across hierarchical and democratic power structures. PART II: Communicating Across Cultures (Chapters V–VIII) Part II will help you apply what you’ve learned about cross-cultural persuasion by discussing how to shape written documents and how to communicate orally with sensitivity to nonverbal elements. Cultures that are relational, collective, and hierarchical may prefer personal and verbal channels of communication. Cultures that value linear time, measure credibility via expertise, and require specific agree- ments or contracts may prefer written documentation. This section also includes information about negotiation and what to expect from legal structures in different cultures. V. Using Language: Even when everyone in a meeting speaks English, misunderstandings occur because of seman- tics, differing connotations, idiomatic expressions, industry jargon, and untranslatable slang expressions. This chapter discusses how the major international cultural groups use language differently and how these differences can have a profound impact on your bottom line. VI. Writing: Because miscommunication can be especially potent and long lasting when written, we provide guidelines for developing sensitive cross-cultural writing skills. This chapter addresses the slippery issues of acceptable formats and tone especially when using current technology. VII. Communicating Nonverbally: The cultures of the world communicate by more than language. In some cultures, Preface xi nonverbal communication comprises as much as 85% of all communication. In this chapter, you’ll learn what constitutes effective eye contact, body language, personal space, and how cultures differ in their use of silence. VIII. Negotiating: Cultures vary in their interpretation of busi- ness agreements and contracts. Some value specific and de- tailed written contracts; others prefer to conduct business through verbal agreements and view legal contracts with distrust. This chapter provides guidance on how negotiating techniques and legal concepts affect communication and discusses ways to establish credibility. The book ends with a Conclusion, a Cultural Questionnaire to de- velop your personal awareness, a Bibliography listing the sources that shaped the academic and research backdrop for our discussions, and Suggested Readings and Films for your continuing growth in ef- fective intercultural communication. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not have been possible without the knowledge we acquired during the past 25 years through consulting and teaching in the United States and overseas. Special thanks to our clients, students, and colleagues at Anheuser-Busch, Avon Products, Bank Dagang Negara, Baruch College: CUNY, BellSouth, the Central Bank of Kuwait, Coach, Credit Suisse, Downstate Medical Center, Exxon, GlaxoSmithKline, Hongkong Shanghai Bank, Hutchison Whampoa, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Goizueta Business School: Emory University, IBM, LaGuardia Community College, Monmouth County Park System, Nippon Credit Bank, New York City Bureau of Child Care, New York Poison Centers, the New York Times, NYU Medical Center, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Stern School of Business: New York University, the Coca-Cola Company, the University of Hong Kong, and Winthrop University Hospital. Particular mention is due to Professor Mary Munter, our inde- fatigable reader and editor; our proofreader Emily Kader; and to our colleagues at the Association for Business Communication for their support. xii Preface We acknowledge our families for their love and encouragement throughout the writing process. This book is dedicated to Luke Reynolds and the extended Valentine family. But most of all, we acknowledge each other and our passion for our subject. We hope to share our enthusiasm and knowledge with our readers. Sana Reynolds Baruch College Cross-Cultural Communication Consultant sreynold@stern.nyu.edu Deborah Valentine Goizueta Business School Emory University deborah_valentine@bus.emory.edu Preface xiii This page intentionally left blank Introduction A closed mind is like a closed book, just a block of wood. —CHINESE PROVERB xv A s the Chinese proverb suggests, the best tool for understand- ing culture, especially cross-cultural communication, is an open mind. In this guide, we define communication as send- ing or receiving information either verbally or nonverbally (as we’ll discuss in more detail on the next few pages). Cross-cultural commu- nication refers to communication that occurs between people who have different cultural backgrounds. They may come from different countries or may live and work in the same country but still have dif- ferent cultural backgrounds. It’s a sad fact that many businesspeople interact with those from other countries or cultures without having a good understand- ing of the very meaning of culture. An international banker with three years’ experience working in China was asked to discuss some of the cultural characteristics he had encountered. He answered, “Well, they [the Chinese] tended to be shorter than I am, and their skin was darker.” This bright, well-edu- cated man had mistaken ethnicity for culture. Worse, even after re- ceiving an explanation of culture, he discovered that he had observed very little of the Chinese culture in his three years working abroad. As this example shows, the international banker could have benefited greatly from a short course designed to improve cultural awareness. The goal of this book is to serve as your short course in culture—a course that provides the foundation for cross-cultural communication in the business world. Our first step toward understanding cross-cultural communica- tion is to arrive at a clear definition of culture. We’ll also look at what experts have to say about culture and communication. Finally, we’ll review a seven-step strategic communication model that will be use- ful when you communicate across cultures. I. UNDERSTANDING CULTURES When we were children, many of us had the experience of being the new kid on the block. For the first few days, everyone wanted to meet us and play with us, but our good luck would wear off if we failed to pay attention. Those of us who were socially adept soon learned the “rules” of the new neighborhood. We quickly found a champion, a kid who would teach us the sometimes invisible protocol. We learned when to talk and when to keep quiet. We learned whom to talk to and whom to avoid—especially the neighborhood bully. We learned how games were played in the new neighborhood—were marbles played “for keeps”? Were most games played in teams? Did the new group value winning or playing fair? We learned other social rules such as the proper way to address the mothers and fathers of our new friends. Sometimes we taught our new friends games from our former neighborhood. The new group would often modify the rules of the game to better fit their ideas and even adopt some of the “cool” sayings from our old neighborhood. We never realized that what we were learning and sharing was culture. Experiencing culture on the job: We experience a similar learn- ing curve in any new job. We show up knowing very little of the cor- porate culture. We know our job description, and may have read the website, but the politics of the place is another matter. In this situation, a successful businessperson will align with someone who can reveal the corporate culture, help prevent blun- ders, and provide information on such questions as—how important are relationships in getting things done? Do teams or individuals handle most projects and clients? Would this organization be classi- fied as on time or laid-back? How direct are the lines of communi- cation upward and downward? Is there a pyramid-shaped hierarchy, or does this organization have a relatively flat structure? Is it easy to xvi Introduction get messages to the top of the company, or is it important to send them through the proper corporate channels? Are emails preferred to face-to-face meetings? How formal and direct are the written docu- ments? This process of uncovering corporate culture reveals much that is useful in the study of intercultural communication. All the questions that you might ask in a new job can help clarify the very definition of culture. Defining culture: In this book, we will differentiate between the popular definitions of culture and the definition that anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists use. The popular or common defini- tion of culture involves music, theater, and art—the things that enrich our lives. However, these popular definitions do not recognize that music, theater, and art are actually derived from a more basic, yet in- visible, structure of life. It is that structure that we will define and clarify, because businesspeople that are well informed in cultural self-knowledge will be better able to understand and communicate in increasingly diverse workplaces. Our working definition of culture involves four elements. • Culture is acquired: We learn culture from our parents and others in our community. As children, we learn not to step on the feet of others and how far from each other we should stand while speaking. We learn when to speak, when to listen, and where to direct our gaze when speaking or listening. Even as we are learning our native lan- guage, our mothers, fathers, and elders teach us proper modes of address such as Aunt, Uncle, Mr., and Mrs. We also learn idiomatic expressions and slang. If we grew up in the United States, we were probably taught that it’s important to be on time and that everything in life runs by the clock. By the time we become adults, our culture has become invisible to us. We only notice that someone has done something “wrong” when they stand too close or fail to use proper modes of address. We notice if someone is not on time, and we criticize those who have never learned the “right” way to address a person of authority. Some of us may criticize a person who grew up in a different culture by call- ing them “Yankee” or “Redneck,” for example. All the while, we have no idea that what we are observing and perhaps criticizing involves the concept of culture. • Culture is shared: Culture does not exist in a vacuum. This leads to the next element in our definition of culture—that it is shared. Introduction xvii Although we rarely take note, we expect people to think and behave in certain ways. Consider that people raised in the United States favor a cause-and- effect reasoning. “If I do X, then Y will happen.” We assume that everyone around the world reasons in the same way and that any- one using a different method of reasoning is illogical. In the same way, we may assume that someone who is habit- ually late to work and meetings is somehow deficient. We use la- bels such as “lazy” to describe a person who has a relaxed sense of time even when that person’s output is on par with everyone else. • Culture defines core values: Because we have been taught our culture and share our culture with our group, we tend to form the same core values. Just as a corporate mission statement includes values that the corporation holds dear (such as customer service, quality, or commu- nity service), groups of people form opinions about the things that are important to them. A group sharing a similar culture might agree that family holds preeminent value. Other aspects of thinking and behavior will then flow from that core value of the family. For example, believing in the core value of family might mean that colleagues have a benev- olent attitude toward a co-worker who takes time off to attend the birthday of a daughter or son. Another culture might value respect for hierarchy and, therefore, design social and business structures to reflect that value. Instead of sharing power equally, employees would expect to have a clearly defined leader to guide their work and decision making. • Cultures resist change: Based on these elements of culture—that it is taught, shared, and forms our values—we can proceed to an interest- ing, albeit rarely discussed, aspect of culture. Although culture can and does change, such change is both slow and gradual. We’ve all talked about changes in corporate culture—“This place is just not the same anymore. We used to really care about each other, but now we don’t even know each others’ names.” If corporations are microcosms of the larger culture, then the fact that they can change is evidence that the larger culture can and does change. For example, the focus on a return to family values in the U.S. reflects the concern that the culture was changing in a direction that was troubling to many. While a change in corporate culture develops slowly, the core culture may take genera- tions to change. When they do occur, such cultural changes rarely re- flect huge shifts in core values. xviii Introduction • Developing cultural awareness: In the words of an Afghan, “What you see in yourself is what you see in the world.” This tendency to project our own beliefs onto others leads to problems in business. Without training in cultural awareness, we quickly label as “wrong” the behavior of those who do things differently. We fail to realize that people from other cultures who are so important to our future in business may be behaving appropriately based on the culture they were taught. Just as we appreciated the help we received when we were the new kids on the block, we should also give adults from other cultures a chance. In doing so, not only will they learn about our way of doing things, but we will also learn from them. Cultural understanding will enrich our businesses and our lives. As you begin to sort through your personal culture, you’ll bet- ter understand how the characteristics we describe apply to your life. To do so, we recommend that you analyze your own culture by com- pleting the “Cultural Questionnaire” at the end of this book. Doing this both before and after you read each chapter will maximize your growth in cultural awareness. II. LEARNING FROM THE EXPERTS One path to effective cross-cultural communication is to review the work of scholars and researchers in the field. We’ll take a brief look at the work of Edward Hall, Geert Hofstede, and Mary Munter to see what they have to say about culture and communication. Edward Hall: In a series of books starting with The Silent Language, followed by The Hidden Dimension, Beyond Culture, The Dance of Life, and Understanding Cultural Differences, anthropolo- gist Edward Hall has contributed a great deal to our understanding of culture. Hall defined culture as a form of communication, governed by hidden rules, that involves both speech and actions. He terms cul- ture, “a vast unexplored region of human behavior that exists outside the range of people’s conscious awareness.” Culture affects everything— especially the relative importance of tasks and relationships. • High and low context: Hall used the terms “high” and “low con- text” to describe the communication patterns and preferences of a Introduction xix culture. High-context cultures rely on much understood, rather than explicit information. Low-context cultures, by contrast, encompass less understood information and tend to be more explicit and literal. These concepts are particularly useful in business communication because, among other things, they help us to know when to com- municate directly and when to be indirect. We’ll discuss the differ- ences between high- and low-context cultures in greater detail in Chapter II. • Time orientation: Hall also coined the terms “monochronic” and “polychronic” time orientation. Monochronic time patterns involve a linear view of time as a commodity to be saved, spent, or wasted. Polychronic time patterns are more circular and relaxed and reflect a view of time flowing around us. Hall and his cadre of researchers rec- ognized that time orientation helped to set a culture’s patterns of com- munication. In this book, Chapter III delves into the mystery of the time orientation of cultures. Geert Hofstede: Sociologist Geert Hofstede conducted an exten- sive study of employees in a multinational corporation. In Culture’s Consequences, Hofstede described four dimensions that provide an extremely useful way of analyzing and understanding cultures. • Individualism vs. Collectivism: Hofstede observed that some cultures emphasize the individual while others emphasize the group. Ask yourself what you were taught and what you prefer. Is your ideal the rugged individual or the member of a team? To what extent do you feel obligated to take care of others in your group? Do you believe that you should make decisions based on what’s in it for you or what’s in it for the group? We examine in depth the cultural focus on the in- dividual or the collective in Chapter I. • Power distance: Power distance is the degree to which the culture believes that institutional and organizational power should be dis- tributed unequally. Were you taught not to question the actions of authority figures? Or were you instead taught that everyone is equal and that any person should feel free to communicate with another regardless of social rank? We will examine power issues more closely in Chapter IV. • Uncertainty avoidance: Hofstede found that some cultures tend to dislike change and avoid uncertainty while other cultures welcome challenges to the status quo. To discover this dimension of your per- sonal culture, ask yourself what you were taught and what you now believe about change and uncertainty. Do you see the unknown as xx Introduction stimulating? Do you welcome the new and different? Or do you strongly prefer that things stay the same? If you prefer that things stay the same, have you set up rules and structures that ensure that things will be done in a certain way? • Masculinity vs. Femininity: Since even Hofstede himself eventually came to reject his use of the terms “masculine” and “feminine,” we encourage you to overlook his labels and think about the extent to which you value achievement and assertiveness over the nurturing of relationships. Do you value a colleague who focuses on advancement and on the bottom line? Or do you believe the most valuable colleague is someone who mentors staff and nurtures talent in others? We’ll dis- cuss relational issues in subsequent chapters. Mary Munter: Communication expert Mary Munter has con- structed a model that helps businesspeople communicate effectively across cultures. In her book, Guide to Managerial Communication (also cited in the bibliography), Munter provides a seven-step strate- gic communication model. We explain her seven steps by providing a running example for implementing the model. • Setting communication objectives: What do you want your audience to do as a result of your communication? Based on your knowledge of the other culture, are your communication objectives possible? Is your time frame realistic considering the culture’s time orientation? In early September, American small business owner, Tom Ro- griquez, planned to import patio fireplaces from Chihuahua. The purpose of his call to the vendor was to collect information about the vendor and set a date to meet with him. Because Tom under- stood the Mexican culture, he knew that he needed to avoid calling on any of the important holidays scattered throughout the year (for example, November 2, Dia de los Muertos or Day of the Dead). He also did not plan to call between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. local time be- cause his counterpart would probably be at lunch, the most impor- tant meal of the day in many Latin American and Mediterranean countries. Tom knew that his vendor would be more willing to meet if Tom’s timeframe was flexible. He also knew that importing the fireplaces would probably not be possible for the current winter season. Therefore, he adjusted his communication objective. He would try to meet with the vendor in late September and then seek to import and sell the patio fireplaces for the winter season a year later. Introduction xxi • Choosing a communication style: What is the most effective commu- nication style given the context of the other culture? Consider Hofst- ede’s dimensions of culture to understand the culture’s attitude toward authority, individual or collective focus, and preference for direct or indirect communication. Tom spoke fluent Spanish, so he knew that would help in commu- nicating with the Mexican vendor. However, he also realized that his title would be important to the vendor and, therefore, intro- duced himself as Director of Operations for Decatur Patio & Gift, Inc. Tom also observed protocol in his communication by speaking off the subject during the first part of the meeting. He asked about the weather and Mexico’s prospects in the World Cup. Because he was culturally sensitive, Tom was able to select an appropriate communication style and book the appointment. • Assessing and enhancing credibility: How does the other culture es- tablish and assess credibility? Is your rank important? Do they care about your personal goodwill toward them? Is your expertise or knowledge of the subject a critical factor? Do they value image or at- tractiveness? Is it important that you share their values and standards? (For a more complete discussion of the elements of credibility, see Chapter VIII.) Tom’s wife, Julie Rodriguez, was active in the business. However, based on the paternalistic nature of the Mexican culture, the couple agreed that Tom would take the lead in establishing the relation- ship that would lead to years of future business. Once the account was established, Julie would probably make trips to Mexico to continue the business relationship. They knew that if they were successful, the manufacturer would introduce them to other ven- dors from whom they could export. Tom knew to be courteous and polite in both the initial tele- phone call and subsequent meeting. He might occasionally use profanity when communicating within the U.S., but he would avoid doing so in Mexico’s conservative business culture. Being careful of his speech would show that Tom was respectful of Mexican values. • Selecting and motivating your audience: Who should receive your message? Think about rank and authority when you select your audi- ence. Consider what motivates your audience: fair play, material wealth, the challenge of the task, career advancement, achievement and challenge, self-worth, security, satisfaction, personal relation- ships, group relationships, or perhaps altruism. What works in your xxii Introduction own culture may work against you in a different culture. Ask yourself what your audience knows about you and your subject. Tom analyzed his audience by thinking about what might motivate his Mexican counterpart. He read about the history and landmarks of Chihuahua so that he could visit them before his meeting. He knew that establishing a personal relationship with the vendor would ensure future success. He also knew that he should show fairness in all his business negotiations and that he could expect fairness in return. Be- cause the Mexican vendor did not know him or his business practices, Tom sent a letter in Spanish and enclosed his company’s profession- ally designed brochure and catalogue by way of an introduction. • Setting a message strategy: Consider whether to write, call, or meet in person. Also think about the structure and message formats that will be most effective. Should you be direct or indirect in your communi- cation? Who should deliver your message? What is the best timing for your message? Based on his knowledge that relationships form the framework for business in Mexico, Tom knew that he should meet his vendor per- sonally. Phone calls and emails would be part of the communica- tion plan, but face-to-face meetings would be crucial. Tom planned to be more formal and indirect in his communication style and would allow more time and greater attention to the relationship than in typical U.S. business situations, even when using email. • Overcoming language difficulties: Consider the language you will use in your message. Will you use an interpreter? What difficulties might you encounter because of slang, idiomatic expressions, and jargon? Even though Tom learned the Spanish language from his parents and spoke it fluently, he knew that idiomatic expressions could be different in the various states of Mexico. Because of this, he knew to be careful and to ask polite questions if he was unsure of mean- ing. Tom would also ask for recommendations for well-respected translators, as his knowledge of written Spanish was less than pol- ished, and he would need to build a relationship with the translator as well. Tom also planned to have his business cards printed in both Spanish and English to signal his long-term commitment to the business relationship. • Using effective nonverbal behavior: Avoid simply applying your own culture’s nonverbal communication patterns to the other culture. Be aware of the types of nonverbal communication that you presently use. What type of nonverbal communication have you observed in the other culture? Personal and conversational space preferences differ Introduction xxiii widely among the cultures of the world. Think about your personal bubble, the space around you that feels comfortable when you are conversing with another person. Observe the personal space preferred by the other culture. Also consider what greeting behaviors will be most effective when communicating across cultures? Tom had learned from his parents the proper greeting behaviors to use on his initial visit to the vendor in Chihuahua, and he was com- fortable with a somewhat closer conversational distance than in the U.S. He would shake hands with each person at the meeting and would greet each one. He would not use first names and would be careful to pronounce names correctly. He would wear a suit and tie as a sign of respect. Julie knew that when she accompanied Tom on a business trip, she could expect a handshake and kiss on the cheek. If they planned to bring gifts, they would first ask the translator or consultant for advice to avoid an unforgivable faux pas such as red flowers—a sign of witchcraft in Mexico. Tom would maintain his integrity and avoid the temptation to use bribes or other shortcuts to business, knowing that the respect he earns will benefit his business for many years to come. As our running example shows, implementing Munter’s strategic com- munication model will enable you to communicate strategically both within your corporate culture and across international boundaries. III. GUIDELINES • Learn as much as possible about culture: Diverse cultures have devised a dazzling variety of values and social systems as they attempted to ensure the survival of their members and answer the existential questions of life. Educate yourself about culture—including your personal culture. As you increase your knowledge, accept that people from various cultures are different- and try to view the differences with delight and won- derment rather than dismay. • Communicate strategically: Use the seven-step strategic model to communicate across cultures. In your everyday inter- actions at the office, begin to enrich cross-cultural understand- ing by constantly questioning your assumptions about the behavior of others. xxiv Introduction • Avoid over-reliance on stereotypes: The statements we make in this book describing other cultures are generalizations sup- ported by both research and experience. These generalizations are necessary as a first step in recogniz- ing differences and acquiring knowledge. Richard Lewis, author of When Cultures Collide, writes, “We can- not exist without stereotyping—it gives us points of reference in determining our behavior towards strangers . . . it simplifies com- plex feelings and attitudes. For intercultural understanding we must learn to manage stereotypes, that is, to maximize and appre- ciate the positive values we perceive, minimize what we see as conflicting or negative.” Rather than being irritated and condemning another’s behavior, our guide will help you view those behaviors from a cultural perspective. Your ability to do this will reflect your commitment to becoming a citizen of the world—a sensitive global communicator. Your gain will be great: you will not only become a more effective businessper- son in today’s global environment, but your life will also become im- measurably richer. The frameworks constructed in this chapter will be valuable as you read Chapters I–VIII, which explore cultural variables in greater depth. Introduction xxv This page intentionally left blank Guide To Cross-Cultural Communication CHAPTER I OUTLINE I. Characteristics of individualist cultures II. Characteristics of collective cultures III. Guidelines 2 CHAPTER I Relationships: Individual or Collective? 3 He who runs alone will win the race. —U.S. PROVERB Better to be a fool with the crowd than wise by oneself. —MEXICAN PROVERB O ne of the most basic concepts that human beings grapple with is the definition of “self.” How do we identify ourselves? Do we see ourselves as independent and autonomous, responsible for our own destinies and accountable for our actions? Do we pride ourselves on being self-reliant, risk-taking, assertive, and direct? Are we motivated by personal goals, achievements, and rewards? Or do we see ourselves as interdependent, relational, part of a larger group, seek- ing harmonious interaction? Are we motivated by group-oriented goals and content to share prestige, reputation, and rewards with others? If we view ourselves as independent and self-reliant, if we prize personal recognition and achievement, we probably belong to an individualist culture. If, on the other hand, we see ourselves as interdependent, as part of a larger group, if we value closeness and harmony with others over personal goals, then we probably belong to a collective culture. 4 Chapter 1 Relationships: Individual or Collective? In his book, When Cultures Collide, Richard Lewis argues that these different self-definitions are often programmed into each one of us from a very early age by our cultures. When parents, returning from hospital, carry a baby over the thresh- old, the first decision has to be made—where to sleep. A Japanese child is invariably put in the same room as the parents, near the mother for the first couple of years. British and American children are often put in a separate room—right away or after a few weeks or months. The inferences for the child’s dependence/interdependence and problem-solving abilities are obvious. Although the individualism/collectivism dynamic provides an ex- tremely useful tool for understanding cultural differences, keep in mind the following caveats: Cultures are seldom monolithic or completely uniform. Every culture has many subcultures which may influence how individuals define themselves. For example, many African- and Caribbean- Americans live in extended family units and prize collective values. Ethnic communities may cause value variations. Within each culture, different ethnic communities may display distinctive indi- vidual and collective values. For example, Native Americans, Middle-Eastern Americans, first and second generation Asian and Latino-Americans, and Americans of Mediterranean descent often retain group-oriented values, especially those promoting the solidar- ity of the extended family. Gender may influence values. Various studies show distinct dif- ferences in how men and women adhere to individualist/collective values. Many women in individualist cultures are more relational than men. Women tend to value attachment, connection, and caring; men emphasize separation and self-empowerment. Generations may cause variance. Research shows that individu- alistic or collective attitudes may be shaped by birth generation. For example, Veterans or Traditionalists (1900–1944), Baby Boomers (1945–1964), Generation X (1965–1980) and Generation Y or NetGeners (1981–2000) often differ in the values they espouse. This is especially true of NetGeners, the first generation to have grown up completely immersed in the internet—shaped by an information-rich, interdependent, collaborative, and immediately-responsive environment. I. Characteristics of Individualist Cultures 5 I. CHARACTERISTICS OF INDIVIDUALIST CULTURES If you want something to be done well, do it yourself. —AMERICAN PROVERB In North America, most of northern and western Europe, and in countries like Australia and New Zealand, people place great impor- tance on individuality, independence, and self-reliance. Children are taught to be autonomous—to think and speak for themselves, to ask questions in class, to make choices, to assume responsibility for their decisions, and to be accountable for their actions. Core beliefs of people in individualist cultures are discussed below. The pivotal unit is the individual. The goal in most individualist cultures is to develop responsible citizens capable of assuming ac- countability for personal problems and issues. • Life decisions: Professional and career choices, selection of marriage partners, decisions about childrearing practices and are normally made by the individual with independence as the life goal. • Individual identity: Individualist cultures value individual over group identity. Therefore, individual rights and needs take precedence over group rights and needs. • Breakable contracts: Many people in individualist cultures view all relationships as contracts that can be broken whenever one party chooses; even family relationships or intimate friendships may be sev- ered if they threaten personal goals. Space and privacy are important. Because individualist cultures value personal freedom, most of them have a greater physical space and privacy requirement than that seen in collective cultures. For example, Americans value privacy so greatly that they have made it law—Amendment 4 to the Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizure. This requirement for privacy can be seen in both business and personal environments. • In the home: Individual bedrooms are considered essential, and pri- vacy is viewed as critical to peaceful family life. 6 Chapter 1 Relationships: Individual or Collective? • In the office: Private offices confer status. Closed doors signal a desire for privacy; entering without knocking is unacceptable. • In crowds: Crowding is perceived as invasive, and when it is unavoid- able—in subways or elevators—strict rules (maintaining a rigid body, avoiding eye contact, facing the exit door) govern personal behavior. Communication tends to be direct, explicit, and personal. One of the most powerful ways in which human beings express their indi- viduality is through communication. How you express your thoughts, ideas, opinions, and feelings is what makes you unique. • Direct explicit messages: Because individualist cultures value what is unique or unusual about people, they expect communication to reflect the speaker or writer and appreciate clear, direct, and explicit commu- nication that can be decoded easily. • Linear logic: Most individualist cultures have Western European roots; Western logic emphasizes a linear, cause-and-effect thought pattern. • Personal accountability: Messages are expected to capture personal opinion and express personal accountability. Thus, individuals may “sell” themselves and assert their accomplishments in resumes and interviews and assume responsibility for mistakes. Business is transactional and competitive. Results are para- mount. It is the deal that counts—and business is commonly trans- acted by scrutinizing facts (due diligence, credit reports, quarterly earnings) and technical competence (past experience, educational credentials). • Measurable results: The focus of business is on results, and success is measured by quantifying profit, productivity, or market share. • Competitiveness: The belief is that competition ensures results. Transactions can be cancelled and contracts can be broken if results don’t meet expectations. • Separation of relationships and business contracts: Businesspeople from individualist cultures tend to separate their professional and personal lives, the business deal from the relationship. The goal is the contract, the transaction, or the sale; the relationship is secondary and superficial, just cordial enough to do business. In fact, personal con- nections or relationships are often avoided; they are seen as muddying the waters, as interfering with objectivity. II. Characteristics of Collective Cultures 7 II. CHARACTERISTICS OF COLLECTIVE CULTURES Two is better than one; three, better than two; and the group is best of all. —AFGHAN PROVERB In sharp contrast to individualist cultures, the starting point for most human action and decision in collective cultures is the group. Collectivism is common in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, and the Pacific Islands. Children are taught to listen, to defer to elders, to fit in with the family or clan—the group ensures sur- vival. Proverbs and sayings from collective cultures illustrate this belief: “The nail that stands out will get hammered” (Japan), “The duck that squawks gets shot first” (China), “Behind an able man there are always other able men” (Korea), “The sheep that’s separated from the flock is eaten by the wolf” (Turkey), “There is no wisdom without the group” (Mongolia), “When spider webs unite, they can tie up a lion (Africa). Let’s examine some of the core beliefs of people in collective cultures. The pivotal unit is the group. Members of collective cultures see themselves as elements in a closely-knit network with others; they are part of a strong cohesive unit (family, clan, profession, corpora- tion, religion) that protects and supports them throughout their lives in exchange for their loyalty. • Group decisions: The individual consults others before making deci- sions, relying on the group for a broader perspective, and gives prior- ity to group over individual needs. Focusing on purely individual needs is considered selfish, egotistical, and myopic. • Collective values: The “we” is emphasized over the “I”, and group rights and needs dominate. Values cherished by collectivist cultures are harmony, personal dignity or “face,” filial piety and respect for el- ders, equitable distribution of rewards among the group, and fulfill- ment of the needs of others. In the collectivist Indian culture, the Hindi will first give you his or her caste identity, then his or her village name, and finally his or her name. In China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, the family name precedes the personal name, signaling the importance of family over personal identity. Adapted from Ting-Toomey, Communicating Across Cultures 8 Chapter 1 Relationships: Individual or Collective? Space and privacy are less important than relationships. Collective cultures generally need less space than cultures that value individualism. After all, if the group you are part of is important to you, you may well want to be physically close to its members. The Javanese traditionally lived in small bamboo-walled houses that have no interior walls or doors. Except for the bathroom, there are no private areas. Several anthropologists theorize that, because the Javanese have no physical privacy, they have developed a kind of psy- chological privacy in their everyday behaviors and communication. They speak softly, conceal their feelings, are emotionally restrained, and are indirect in their verbal and nonverbal communication. Adapted from Neuliep, Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach Tolerance for shared space in collective cultures occurs in both business and personal environments as follows: • In the home: Many members of collective cultures have homes that contain one large living area where members eat, sleep, and interact as a group. They often live together in extended family groups, tribes, or clans and seem to prize personal space less than members of individ- ualist cultures. • In the office: Private offices are far less common and are normally re- served for meetings with clients. Members of collective cultures often work together at large tables in an open plan office set-up. They spend a great deal of social time with workmates and professional col- leagues; in fact, it is often during this social time that new ideas are discussed, conflicts are resolved, and decisions are facilitated. • In crowds: The attitude of collective culture members towards crowd- ing is best illustrated by the following example: Business travelers often comment with amazement on how people sit in Chinese airplanes. The plane may be virtually empty, yet most Chinese travelers will sit very close together in a tightly knit group. Invariably, Western travelers will spread themselves out; even people traveling together and conversing during the flight will leave at least one seat between them. Communication is intuitive, complex, and impressionistic. Explicit and direct communication is less important in collective cultures. • Indirect, ambiguous messages: Meaning is often implicit, inferred, and transmitted “between the lines.” When a definite message is required (e.g., to solve a problem), it is often subtle—rendered indirectly or II. Characteristics of Collective Cultures 9 ambiguously. The underlying belief is that communication should not be used merely to deliver content; it should nurture the relationship, maintain harmony, and prevent loss of face (personal identity or dig- nity) by diffusing personal responsibility. • Circuitous logic: Because reality is considered complex, the logic that is employed is seldom linear or cause-and-effect. Situations or problems are presented holistically, within a larger context. Thus, communicators from collective cultures may seem to favor rambling or metaphorical statements. The order in which information is presented in Japanese sentences is different. In English, important information tends to be given first, with less important items tacked on the end. In Japanese, less important items are gotten out of the way first, setting the stage for the important information, which comes at the end. The Japanese hint at what has to be done, and even the hints are softened by using impersonal statements in passive constructions. Business is relational and collaborative. Most collective cultures believe that relationships, rather than deals or contracts, facilitate results. • Subordination of data: Although facts are not ignored and extensive information gathering and research are common, this hard data is not considered objective or impersonal because words and arguments are not separate from the person expressing them. • Relational interpretation of data: Collective cultures do not see facts as outside and apart from the relationship. Statistical information and analytical measurement are not as important as trust and loyalty to ex- isting relationships. Logic and reasoning by themselves may not per- suade; the context of the relationship gives them meaning and weight. • Emphasis on the long term: The focus is on the relationship, the process, growth over time, and building equity. Decisions are not hur- ried, as consensus is considered desirable. Where relationships are paramount, the consensus of the group is important; after all, the entire group will be involved in maintain- ing and growing an existing relationship. Thus, the Japanese “ringi-seido” method of obtaining consensus stresses “ne- mawashi,” a word that means carefully shaping the roots of a plant to produce the desired result. The belief is that successful imple- mentation of a decision (the plant) requires buy-in from all mem- bers in the group (the roots). Adapted from Ting-Toomey, Communicating Across Cultures 10 Chapter 1 Relationships: Individual or Collective? Key differences between individualist and collective cul- tures are summarized in the following chart: DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INDIVIDUALIST AND COLLECTIVE CULTURES Individualist Cultures Collective Cultures Transaction oriented Relationship oriented (focus on results) (focus on process) Short-term gains Long-term growth Emphasis on content (facts, Emphasis on context (experience, numbers,ratios, statistics) intuition, the relationship) Reliance on linear reasoning Reliance on circular reasoning Independent Interdependent Competitive, decision-driven Collaborative, consensual Direct, explicit communication Indirect, circuitous communication Personal accountability Protection of “face” Private offices Open office plan Linear time, impatient Flexible time, patient III. Guidelines: Individualist or Collective? 11 III. GUIDELINES: INDIVIDUALIST OR COLLECTIVE? Use the following guidelines for the two kinds of cultures: When conducting business in individualist cultures, remember to. • Focus on the transaction: Emphasize the contract or deal and support your proposal with hard data about short-term gains. • Use data and logic: Appeal to competitiveness and present facts, num- bers, statistics, benchmarks, best practices, and comparative analyses. Construct your persuasive argument using linear, cause-and-effect logic. • Communicate directly: Prefer direct, clear, and explicit messages. Remember that silence can cause discomfort and doubt. • Value time: Since businesspeople from individualist cultures tend to view time as a precious commodity, estimate the length of time required for a decision or a task, build in “wriggle room” (consider doubling your esti- mate), and give a precise date by which an answer will be forthcoming. When conducting business in collective cultures, remember to. • Allow time for relationship building: Build plenty of time to develop the relationship; remember that trust is critical to business. Emphasize collaboration, mutual benefits, and potential long-term growth. • Focus on the context of a business relationship: Pay strict attention to form, protocol, and etiquette; these are essential to preserve “face”— personal identity and dignity. Provide a historical perspective and share background so that your business partners from collective cul- tures see linkages and connections. • Make decisions consensually, contextually, and for the long term: Be prepared to allot a liberal amount of time to repeated presentation and discussion of the particulars of a deal. • Communicate indirectly: Use silence to enhance comfort level in face-to- face communication. Remember to enhance harmony, preserve face, and provide context for the message using indirect and personal messages. • Avoid direct questions: Avoid asking questions that call for responses identifying accountability. Members of collective cultures are loath to assign blame and are anxious to protect the personal dignity of all members of their group. • Be patient: Plan to spend double the time you think necessary on trips, meetings, presentations, and Q & A sessions. Collective culture members tend to view time as flexible, experiential, and plentiful. CHAPTER II OUTLINE I. High-context cultures II. Low-context cultures III. Guidelines 12 CHAPTER II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? 13 A society grows great when men plant trees under whose shade they shall never sit. —GREEK PROVERB God helps those who help themselves. —AMERICAN PROVERB C ommunication expert Edward Hall developed a way to under- stand cultures by examining their social frameworks and identifying them as “low context” or “high context.” Low- context cultures place less emphasis on the context of a communica- tion (such as implied meaning or nonverbal messages) and rely on explicit verbal messages. In contrast, high-context cultures emphasize the context in which a communication takes place and pay a great deal of attention to implicit, nonverbal messages. Let’s look at “context” as it relates to culture by examining the approach of two commercials that aired on international television as well as the internet. These commercials clearly illustrate the contrast between high- and low-context communication. Commercial #1: A background song plays, “No matter where you go, I will be with you.” A little girl says to her father, “Promise you’ll call.” The father responds, “I promise.” The commercial shows the father jetting off to do business and ends with the father calling home and the child running to the phone saying, “Daddy!” Not until the final few seconds of the commercial is the name of the company (Allianz) shown across the screen. Commercial #2: A duck is shown in various situations where some- one has been hurt on the job. The duck repeatedly squawks the name of the company (AFLAC). The text of the commercial defines supple- mental insurance as a product that pays if you are injured and unable to work and usually ends with humor. Both commercials advertise insurance companies, yet the approach is quite different. In the “high context” Allianz commer- cial, the implied messages are: (1) The company is reliable just as the father reliably calls his daughter. (2) The company is global in nature. (3) The company insures against risk. The “low context” AFLAC commercial includes the following explicit messages: (1) The name of the company, (2) The name of the specific insurance product being offered, (3) A definition of supplemental insurance. The direct message is repeated several times, as is the company name. The commercial uses physical and situational humor to maintain our interest in what would otherwise be a very plain, direct message. The preference for either implicit “reading between the lines” or for explicit and direct information varies among cultures. Asian, Arab, and Mediterranean cultures tend to fall on the “high context” end of the continuum whereas U.S., German, Swiss, and Scandinavian cultures fall on the “low context” end. Even within the larger “culture” of the United States, there are regional variations in communication preferences. Northerners and Midwesterners tend to use more literal and explicit communication whereas those from the South tend to be less explicit and direct. Moving from one region of the U.S. to another can create communication challenges, but also provide opportunities for cross-cultural understanding. Hall’s analy- sis of the social framework for messages within different cultures will be useful in helping you create powerful messages when com- municating across cultures. 14 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? I. HIGH-CONTEXT CULTURES In this section, we’ll examine nine aspects of the social framework of “high-context” cultures. A person from a high-context culture generally: Relies on implicit communication: People from high-context cul- tures have been taught from early childhood to look for implied meaning. They believe that what is implied takes precedence over what is said; they will recognize discrepancies between actual words and intended meaning. Although the phrase “to rubber stamp” means agreement in U.S. busi- ness, the expression would not translate correctly into Japanese. A Japanese report may indeed bear a stamp, but the placement and ori- entation of the stamp tells the receiver whether the report is acceptable as is, or whether it needs to be reworked and resubmitted. For a report to be approved, the rubber-stamped symbol must be perfectly aligned and not tilt to the right or left. Such subtle messages are readily no- ticed by those businesspeople who have been brought up in the high context Japanese culture. Emphasizes nonverbal communication: Although nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions, gestures and touching, conversational distance, eye contact, etc.) conveys mean- ing in every culture, people from high-context cultures rely more heavily on nonverbal communication than people from low-context cultures. The nonverbal communication provides the “context” for the conversation and, therefore, must be carefully observed for effec- tive communication to take place. Subordinates tasks to relationships: In high-context cultures, chil- dren are imbued with reverence for family relationships and friend- ship, as illustrated by the Ukrainian proverb, “Tell me who your friend is, and I’ll tell you who you are.” A friendship is a deep commitment developed over many years. Businesspeople brought up in high-context cultures carry over the importance of relationships to their transactions on the job. They may believe that a relative with less experience should be trusted over a stranger with more experience in a given job. They may award business contracts to those with whom they have forged relationships over many years rather than to the company that makes the best presentation or offers the best deal on paper. I. High-Context Cultures 15 Emphasizes collective initiative and decision making: A high- context culture values the collective as the important unit of soci- ety as exemplified by the Chinese proverb, “A single bamboo pole does not make a raft.” Businesspeople from high-context cultures are taught to arrive at decisions that benefit the group. Advancing one’s own agenda should never be the stimulus for action; rather, the group or team should initiate, develop, and carry out projects for the betterment of the company and of society. Self-aggrandizement is not only frowned on, it is also not allowed, and an individual risks losing his or her place in the group by “going it alone.” Views employer/employee relationship as humanistic: As you might suspect, the social framework of a society helps determine the relationship between employer and employee, so high-context cul- tures tend to view the employer/employee relationship in a humanis- tic rather than mechanistic way. Because these relationships are so important, high-context cultures see employees as “family” members that work for the good of the group and remain loyal to the company for many years. Job performances may vary widely without the threat of imminent dismissal. In addition, the employer will feel loyal to the employees and make decisions based on their welfare. Because trust is an important element in hiring decisions, family members would be preferred over strangers. Relies on intuition or trust rather than facts and statistics: People from high-context cultures rely on trust or intuition to guide them in decision making. This trust must be established by forming a relationship with the potential business partner and will only be peripherally influenced by the reams of data that someone from a low-context culture might offer. Intuition or “gut feeling” is a large part of doing business in high-context cultures. Decisions won’t be dictated by a plethora of written and spoken information but will be based on a sense of the context of the message. Translator Masato Abe tried to explain the importance of “reading be- tween the lines” to his international colleagues. “In English, items ob- vious from the situation or context are commonly referred to using a pronoun. In Japanese, pronouns are less often used. Rather, known items are simply deleted from the sentence, resulting in sentences 16 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? with no subject, transitive verbs with no direct object, indeed, sen- tences consisting of verbs alone.” In such a sentence, the speaker or writer relies on the receiver’s intuition and their relationship to understand the context of the message. Prefers indirect style in writing and speaking: Given the em- phasis on trust in high-context cultures, you may find that business writing and speaking need more space and time to establish rap- port. For example, businesspeople from high-context cultures may begin a letter or email entirely indirectly. Only in the second para- graph will they bring up the main point of the business communica- tion. Similarly, in business presentations, speakers will approach the subject indirectly, opening with attention to greetings and ac- knowledgments. In some, but not all, high-context cultures, it is considered rude to directly state the accomplishments, wealth, or expertise of the company. Instead, these attributes would be care- fully intimated, and the focus would remain on mutual benefits. The relative worthiness of the company will be understated. For ex- ample, a company representing 28% of the Chinese computer mar- ket began their presentation by saying, “We have some small knowledge of this market.” Favors circular or indirect reasoning: People from high-context cultures will discuss issues from a holistic viewpoint with topics aris- ing in random rather than linear order. A Puerto Rican manager, Juan Marin, was asked to give a brown-bag luncheon talk at the mortgage company where he worked in Houston. The topic for the series of discussions was cross-cultural communica- tion. As he spoke, Juan drew on the white board to illustrate the dif- ference in the preferred reasoning style of his American co-workers. “You talk from point A to point B.” Pedro drew a straight line connecting the two letters. “In my culture, it is different. We do it like this.” At this point, Juan drew circles that overlapped eventually forming the pattern of a flower. His artwork drew lots of laughs and comments and was a revelation for those from low-context cultures who sometimes were impatient with Juan’s tendency to talk ‘‘around’’ a subject. Most par- ticipants did not realize that preference for circular or indirect reason- ing is culturally influenced. I. High-Context Cultures 17 Adheres to the spirit of the law: Businesspeople who grow up in high-context cultures generally rely less on written contracts than their counterparts in low-context cultures. People in high-context cultures assume that it’s impossible to anticipate every situation that may arise, and, therefore, would feel that agreements need to be re- visited periodically in light of the new circumstances. Their attitude is not that laws were meant to be broken, but rather that laws should make sense given the surrounding events and changing circumstance (i.e., the “context” of the situation). After “beating my head against the wall,” a frustrated American ven- dor finally realized that she could save time and money by relying less on legal contracts when dealing with a family-owned agricultural sup- plier in Venezuela. “I now understand that our agreements are fluid, and I’ve adjusted to that reality.” According to the American vendor, “I had to get to know them and vice-versa. Now, we can do business on a handshake and a letter of agreement. It’s actually much easier and less expensive than hiring a lawyer to draw up the papers.” 18 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? II. LOW-CONTEXT CULTURES In contrast, this section will describe nine aspects of “low-context” culture. A person from a low-context culture usually: Relies on explicit (literal) communication: Those from low- context cultures prefer that messages be explicitly stated rather than simply “understood” by the parties involved. The following example illustrates the preference for explicit communication in the U.S. Midwest as opposed to the higher context U.S. Southeast. Susan Shofield was district manager for a national wholesale shoe company. After rising quickly through the ranks to become district manager of the Southeast U.S., she was surprised that the company wanted to transfer her to the Midwest. Susan, who had lived all her life in the South, knew that the move would be difficult and expressed her concerns to a customer who owned a chain of children’s shoe stores in Alabama. Tom Womeldorf had lived in Springfield, Illinois, most of his life and talked about the adjustment he and his family had to make when they set up shop in the South. “At first, I was too direct, but I learned by listening to my customers how they expected me to com- municate. You’re a good listener, so it won’t take you long to figure out Midwesterners. The people up there say what they mean and mean what they say.” Emphasizes verbal communication over nonverbal communication: The phrase that Susan Shofield heard in the above example (“Say what you mean and mean what you say”) is often repeated to children from low-context cultures as they are growing up. Parents place far less emphasis on communicating indirectly or nonverbally and ask their children to “speak up.” By the time they enter business, people from low-context cultures have learned to rely on words to convey exactly what they mean. This preference for verbal communication carries over to the workplace where businesspeople are expected to “spell out” what they mean as clearly and directly as possible. Separates job tasks from relationships: People from low-context cultures usually prefer to keep their job tasks separated from their re- lationships. Indeed, relationships are seen as outside the task rather than an integral part of it. Even if a key person on a project leaves the company, another person can easily take his or her place since the II. Low-Context Cultures 19 business transactions are considered to be between companies and not based on relationships between people. In a training session on cross-cultural business communication at a multinational corporation in Los Angeles, the participants were asked to draw three circles on a piece of paper. One circle represented their family relationships, the second represented job relationships, and the third represented church and community relationships. Participants were asked to draw the three circles to show the extent to which the three groups of relationships overlapped. Out of 20 participants, 12 drew three distinct circles with no overlap. All 12 were from low-con- text cultures. The participants whose circles overlapped were all from high-context cultures. Neither group had considered that the way they viewed the separation of or the combining of task and relationship was part of their culture. Emphasizes individual initiative and decision making: Those whose cultures are lower on the context continuum tend to value in- dividual initiative, decision making, and achievement. As the American proverb states, “Look out for number one.” Even when they work in groups, individuals from low-context cultures try to think of ways to distinguish themselves as individuals. In business, a group award is valuable and desired, but an individual award is usu- ally more highly prized. The individual is expected to define and solve problems with little supervision. A professional coach was working with a mid-level manager at a manufacturing plant in Chicago. The coach was from the Euro- American culture, and the manager was West African. One of the “needs” identified by the professional coach was for the manager to establish his individual accomplishments. “Put your name on all your reports, so they’ll know that you took the lead on these projects,” ad- vised the coach. The West African manager was very troubled by the instructions. It didn’t feel “right” to take credit for work done by his team to which he felt much loyalty. The thinking of the professional coach reflected his low-context culture. Views employer/employee relationship as mechanistic: In low- context cultures, the view of the employer/employee relationship tends to be more mechanistic. The term originates from the belief that a business can be run like a “well-oiled machine” with replace- able parts (i.e., employees). Indeed, employees tend to view them- selves as a marketable commodity and will make decisions to change 20 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? jobs if they can improve their circumstances. Employers can termi- nate an employee because of negative performance reviews. Likewise, employees feel justified in leaving a job for a better paying one even when they really like their managers and colleagues. Since trust is not as great a factor in hiring decisions, company policy may prohibit the hiring of relatives or even fraternization and marriage among employees. A commercial for a U.S. financial company shows a young man talk- ing to his father about a job change. The young man laments the loss of friendships at his old job. He continues by talking to his father about the opportunities in the new job and the ease with which he has rolled over his retirement plan. In response, his father offers support for his decision to leave the old job for the better opportunity even if it means leaving friends at work. He says, “The new job’s great. It’s going to be OK.” Relies on facts, statistics, and other details as supporting evidence: People from low-context cultures tend to require facts, sta- tistics, and other reliable data in a business presentation. They trust numbers over intuition (“Numbers never lie,” American proverb). They may even trust statistical data in spite of special circumstances that could explain a decline in sales, for example. Their presentations will be heavy with charts, graphs, and quotes from experts in their particular field and will be light on suppositions or intuitive remarks. They will often expect the same level of detailed statistical analysis from others. Uses direct style in writing and speaking: One hallmark of busi- nesspeople from low-context cultures is directness in their writing and speaking. They prefer to get right to the point of their message. Doing so will help them stay on their time schedule and accomplish the task. Therefore, those from low-context cultures usually state the reason for the call, letter, email, or face-to-face meeting at the begin- ning and then follow with details if asked. Even lengthy business re- ports will be prefaced with an executive summary of findings. Prefers linear reasoning: Businesspeople from low-context cul- tures usually prefer a straight line of reasoning. For example, they may start with reasons a particular account is unprofitable (causes) and follow to the outcome (effect) that the account should be reorga- nized. They also expect that those with whom they do business will follow the same linear logic. In fact, many people are surprised to II. Low-Context Cultures 21 find that there exist other kinds of logic. In low-context cultures, “He used circular reasoning to come to that conclusion,” is usually not considered a compliment. Adheres to the letter of the law: People from low-context cultures rarely do business on just a handshake. Even if they have excellent rapport with a business associate, the deal is not considered final until attorneys have written a document that is agreed to and signed by all the decision makers. Conversely, once the signatures are on the dotted line, the contract is set in stone and will be enforced by the courts when disputes arise. Because of their low-context orientation, the Jewish culture values precision when it comes to legal rulings. To prepare for a spaceflight mission, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon did more than learn about the experiments he would conduct as a payload specialist on the U.S. space shuttle Columbia. Because he planned to observe the Jewish Sabbath in space, he asked for a ruling from Jewish leaders to deter- mine exactly when he should begin and end his observance of Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath, which lasts from sundown Fridays to sundown Saturdays. A group of respected rabbis debated and discussed the ques- tion. Before the flight, Colonel Ramon received a ruling that he should observe the Sabbath on Eastern Daylight Time because that was the shuttle’s point of departure. In the low-context Jewish culture where adherence to the law is revered, such a decision would never be left to chance. The chart on the next page summarizes major differences between high- and low-context cultures. 22 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? II. Low-Context Cultures 23 SOCIAL FRAMEWORK: CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH- AND LOW-CONTEXT CULTURES High-Context Culture Low-Context Culture • Relies on implicit communication • Relies on explicit communication • Emphasizes nonverbal communication • Emphasizes verbal communication • Subordinates tasks to relationships • Separates tasks from relationships • Emphasizes collective initiative and decision making • Emphasizes individual initiative and decision making • Views employer/employee relationship as humanistic • Views employer/employee relationship as mechanistic • Relies on intuition or trust • Relies on facts and statistics • Uses indirect style in writing and speaking • Uses direct style in writing and speaking • Prefers circular or indirect reasoning • Prefers linear reasoning • Adheres to the spirit of the law • Adheres to the letter of the law Adapted from Edward Hall 24 Chapter II Social Framework: High Context or Low Context? III. GUIDELINES: HIGH OR LOW CONTEXT Once you have thought about your customers and colleagues in terms of high or low context, you can find a middle ground for effective business communication. For example, if you are from a low-context culture dealing with someone from a high-context culture, you will flex your communication style to obtain the results you desire from your business communication. Follow the suggestions below as you prepare to write or speak. When conducting business in a high-context culture: • Understand that contextual information will be important. • Be aware of the implied messages that you send and that others send to you. • Develop relationships before focusing on tasks. • Expect decision making to be collaborative and collective. • Understand that the employee/employer relationship is humanistic. • Expect a reliance on trust or intuition. • Use indirect style in writing and speaking. • Expect circular reasoning. • Accept that contracts may change. When conducting business in a low-context culture: • Remember that contextual information may be less important. • Expect a reliance on explicit and direct verbal communication. • Accept that tasks are viewed as separate from relationships. • Expect individual initiative and decision making. • Understand that the employee/employer relationship is mecha- nistic. • Support assertions with facts and statistical evidence. • Use linear reasoning. • Expect contracts to be firm. This page intentionally left blank 26 CHAPTER III OUTLINE I. Linear time II. Flexible time III. Cyclical time IV. Guidelines 27 CHAPTER III Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? Never put off to tomorrow what you can do today. —ENGLISH PROVERB Wise men are never in a hurry. —CHINESE PROVERB A ll human beings share time—live in the present, remember the past, and dream of the future—yet cultures view time dif- ferently. For example, the United States and Mexico share the same hemisphere and continent, yet they experience and use time in such a different manner that it often causes intense friction be- tween the two countries. The Swiss and German attitudes to time bear little resemblance to neighboring Italy, Spain, or Portugal. For the British, the future stretches ahead; in Madagascar, because the fu- ture is unknowable, it flows into the back of your head from behind. To illustrate these differences, we will discuss the three most common ways cultures define or measure time: cultures that follow linear (monochronic) time perform one major activity at a time; cultures that are flexible (polychronic) work on several activities simul- taneously; and cultures that view time as cyclical (circular, repetitive) allow events to unfold naturally. 28 Chapter III Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? I. LINEAR TIME If you want your dreams to come true, don’t oversleep. —YIDDISH PROVERB People in cultures that have a linear concept of time view time as a precious commodity to be used, not wasted. They prefer to concen- trate on one thing at a time and work sequentially within a clock-reg- ulated timeframe; this appears to them to be an efficient, impartial, and precise way of organizing life—especially business. Anglo- Saxon, Germanic, and Scandinavian peoples generally live and work by a linear clock; they measure time in small units, value schedules, and focus on the future. The importance of schedules: In cultures that define time in a linear fashion, schedules are critical because they permit planning and prevent uncertainty. Since these cultures adhere to a cause-and-effect under- standing of events and reality, schedules are considered sacred. People from linear-time cultures make appointments in small segments (15–30 minutes) and dislike lateness because this disrupts the schedule and impacts all subsequent appointments. They prize punctuality and consider promptness a basic courtesy. These cultures deplore interruptions and expect complete concentration on the task at hand; they perceive total commitment as ultimately saving time and view doing two things at once (taking a telephone call or instant- messaging during a meeting) as being inattentive or even rude. Walther Habers worked for many years as a commodities trader in Rotterdam. On a business trip to Milan, he waited almost two hours for his 10 a.m. appointment. When the Italian commodities buyer fi- nally came out to meet him, it was time for lunch. Two hours later, after lunch, the pair walked back to the office for the meeting. By this time, Habers was inwardly furious. He would miss his afternoon ap- pointments. Being well traveled, he understood that time was treated differently in Mediterranean cultures, but this was his first experience “in the thick of it.” Although he eventually made the sale, Habers swore he would never again “allow such a waste of time.” The buyer from Milan, however, was never aware of any problem and thought the transaction had been a great success. A focus on the future: People in linear cultures so value time that they study time management to learn to get more done every day—an occupation that’s often considered absurd by flexible, multitasking, relationship-oriented cultures and impossible by cyclical cultures. Linear cultures’ belief in the future is unshake- able—after all, the future promises greater expertise in controlling time and packing more into each time unit. These cultures also view change positively. Rana Rakesh, a native of India, moved to New York to become head of sales with an international computer company. She spoke English and three other languages fluently and was well trained in management and sales. After a few months in her new environment, however, Ms. Rakesh became extremely unhappy. “All these people do is rush about with their schedules in their hands,” she complained. Ms. Rakesh’s manager was very concerned, but for a different reason. He com- plained that she took too long on a given task. Indeed, he described her as “scattered” in her approach to the project schedules. His solu- tion was to suggest that Ms. Rakesh sign up for a time management course. Ms. Rakesh’s response was to resign. Measuring time in small units: Linear-time cultures (the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, Austria, and the Scandinavian countries) measure time in relatively short periods: minutes, hours, and days; plan for the short term; and report earnings and profits in quarters and years. Example expressions: The languages of linear-time cultures abound in expressions which capture the idea of time as a precious entity: “Time is money. Save time. Don’t waste time. Use time wisely. The early bird catches the worm.” (United States); “He who hesitates is lost. Strike while the iron is hot. A stitch in time saves nine.” (England); “Time is everything.” (advertising slogan for Swissair); “Uberpunktlich” (German expression for being on time, literally, over-punctual); “Wasting time is stealing from yourself” (Estonian proverb); “Lose an hour in the morning, chase it all day long” (Yiddish proverb). I. Linear Time 29 II. FLEXIBLE TIME Time is the master of those who have no master. —ARABIAN PROVERB In contrast to linear cultures, cultures that view time as flexible are reluctant to strictly measure or control it. Southern Europeans, the Mediterranean cultures, and the Central and South American cultures are flexible about time. Interruptions are welcome, multi-tasking or clustering is the rule, and relationships take priority over timetables. Although they observe schedules in deference to their linear business associates, most Italians, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Arabs, and Latinos ignore the passing of time if it means that conversations or human interactions will be left unfinished. The personnel files of many U.S. companies are full of stories about Latino or Caribbean employees missing work to meet family obliga- tions. The notion that business can claim priority over a child’s birth- day celebration or a brother’s visit is treated with incredulity. The pre- vailing attitude is “I can always get another job, but I only have only one brother.” Emphasis on relationships: For flexible-time cultures, schedules are less important than human feelings. When people and relationships demand attention or require nurturing, time becomes a subjective com- modity that can be manipulated or stretched. Meetings will not be rushed or cut short for the sake of an arbitrary schedule. Time is an open-ended resource; communication is not regulated by a clock. In a recent New Yorker article about Mira Nair, the director of the film Monsoon Wedding, critic John Lahr described Nair’s ability to multi- task and fuse work with family: “Nair turned the final day of shooting into a sort of extended family outing. In addition to orchestrating cast, crew, and a platoon of extras, she was happily entertaining her son Zohran, Lydia Pilcher and her seven-year-old son, and Taraporevala, visiting from Bombay with her two young children. Far from distract- ing Nair, the swarming confusion seemed to intensify her concentra- tion. ‘Her orientation to relationships is very familial. She doesn’t work one task at a time or on a purely one-to-one basis. She creates groups,’ remarked her husband.” 30 Chapter III Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? A focus on the present: People in flexible-time cultures tend to focus on the present rather than the future (linear cultures) or the past (cyclical cultures). It’s not that they don’t value the past nor believe in the future; it’s just that they tend to live very fully in the present. Nigerian-American Adofalarin Apata had many friends at the tech- nology development business where he worked in Los Angeles. “Ado keeps us centered in the moment,” a colleague commented. “We get so focused on the deadlines, that we sometimes forget to enjoy our work, but Ado reminds us to loosen up and enjoy each other and our work.” A reluctance to measure: Although adept at business, many peo- ple in flexible-time cultures find the intricate measurement of time or earnings performed by linear-time cultures tedious and unnecessary. When pressed, they will comply with the business contingencies im- posed on them by their linear business associates, but their hearts may not be in these calculations. Example expressions: The famous “mañana” attitude of the Spanish, the often repeated “In sha’a Allah” (If God wills) of the Arab, the Filipino “bahala na” (accept what comes), the Turkish proverb “What flares up fast extinguishes soon,” the Mongolian proverb “Profit always comes with a delay,” and the Italian proverb “Since the house is on fire, let us warm ourselves” are utterances that capture the subordination of the clock to human reality. An American civil engineer, Sam, learned a lot about time differences during his stay in Saudi Arabia. In the U.S. oil company where he worked, there were many Arab engineers. “I would set time sched- ules, and they would agree. Then, when the deadlines arrived, invari- ably, there would be a delay. No one seemed upset about this but me. I confronted several of my colleagues to discuss the problem, but they vigorously denied that time was an issue. They claimed there was no difference in the way they approached these projects and that the pro- jects would be finished on time, ‘Allah willing.’” II. Flexible Time 31 III. CYCLICAL TIME With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes a silk gown. —CHINESE PROVERB Although in fundamentally different ways, both linear-time cultures and flexible, multi-tasking cultures believe they manage and control time. In cyclical-time cultures, however, time manages life, and hu- mans must adjust to time. In these cultures, time is neither viewed as linear nor as event/person related, but as cyclical, circular, and repet- itive. The human being does not control time; the cycle of life con- trols people, and they must live in harmony with nature and subscribe to the cyclical patterns of life. Examples of cyclical-time cultures in- clude many Asian, African, and Native American cultures. Tatsuo Yoshida, former director of the Industrial Bank of Japan, vividly captured the disparities between linear time and cyclical time. In an in- terview reported in Nation’s Business, Yoshida-san stated that the Western business culture is like hunting, whereas in Japan, business is conducted more like rice farming. Japanese business focuses on the long -term; American businesses aim for immediate returns on investment. Understanding connections: Cultures that subscribe to cyclical time seek to understand linkages and connections. Links show the wholeness of life and allow contrasts or contradictions to exist. Cyclical cultures believe that logic is not linear (cause-and-effect) nor people-driven but captures the unity of human experience with the whole of life, nature, and existence. The Masai, a nomadic culture of Kenya, do not compartmentalize time into minutes and hours but instead schedule time by the rising and set- ting sun and the feeding of their cattle. The typical Masai day begins just before sunrise, when the cattle go to the river to drink. This period is called “the red blood period” because of the color of the sunrise. The afternoon is “when the shadows lower themselves.” The evening begins when “the cattle return from the river.” Seasons and months are deter- mined by rainfall—a particular month lasts as long as the rains continue and a new month doesn’t begin until the rains have ceased. Adapted from Neuliep, Intercultural Communication: A Contextual Approach 32 Chapter III Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? Making decisions: In cultures that subscribe to a cyclical view of time, business decisions are reached in a very different way. Decisions are neither made quickly nor in isolation, purely on their present merits with scant reference to the past; decisions have a contextual background and are made long term. Unlike linear cultures which see time passing without decision or action as “wasted,” cyclical cultures see time coming around in a circle, again and again. The same op- portunities will recur or re-present themselves when people are that many days, weeks, or months older and wiser. Many cyclical-time cultures will not tackle problems or make decisions immediately in a structured, sequential manner; they will circle round them for a suit- able period of reflection, contemplating the possible links between facts and relationships, before committing themselves. In his position as Vice President of sales in a U.S. software support company, Tom Batton was eager to offer a promotion to a promising new hire,Ying Zi. Once senior management accepted his proposal, he met with Ying to describe the responsibilities of the new position. Tom had anticipated that Ying would be flattered and excited about the new job, but instead she said nothing for many long moments and then asked if she could consider the proposal for two weeks. Flabbergasted, Tom said, “No, I need your decision on my desk within 24 hours.” Ying discussed the situation with her mentor at the company. “How can he expect me to make such an important decision in only one day? I will need time to contemplate this offer. In fact, I really wanted to ask for several months to make my decision, but I was aware that would not be possible.” The mentor intervened to ask Tom for more time and to encourage Ying to speed her decision since in the U.S. “Time is money.” Forging relationships: Although people from cyclical-time cul- tures may have a keen sense of the value of time and respect punctu- ality, this is dictated by politeness or by form and will have little impact on the actual speed with which business is done. A liberal amount of time will be allotted to the repeated consideration of the details of a transaction and to the careful nurturing of personal rela- tionships. And it is the forging of a relationship that is all-important; business is facilitated by a degree of closeness, a sense of common trust, connection, and linkage that informs both the present deal and future transactions. III. Cyclical Time 33 Focusing on the past: People in cyclical cultures pay a great deal of attention to the past because they believe they can find many links and connections there. Since their focus is on the unity of human ex- perience with the whole of life, planning is very long term indeed (decades), and earnings per share or per quarter are far less important than the building of equity. A management consultant on assignment in Hong Kong reported that the concept of planning for the short term was quite foreign to the HK business owners she worked with. “I continually heard business plans prefaced with descriptions of ‘my company in the time of my grand- children.’” Example expressions: Expressions that capture this cyclical view of time proliferate in Sino-Tibetan languages: the Chinese use “wa” (harmony), “han xu” (implicit communication), “gan qing” (a multi- dimensional set of relational emotions), and “ting” (to listen with ears, eyes, and heart); the Koreans value “nunchi” (an affective sense by which they can detect when others are pleased). Key differences in the way cultures view time are summarized in the chart on the facing page. 34 Chapter III Time: Linear, Flexible, or Cyclical? CULTURAL VIEWS OF TIME Linear Flexible Circular Attitude toward time An entity to be saved, spent, or wasted Fluid and flexible Circular and repetitive Task completion Completes tasks sequentially Works on multiple tasks simultaneously Completes tasks over a long period of contemplation and reflection Task vs. relationships Strives to complete tasks within a certain time frame Nurtures the relationships represented by the tasks Values the long term in tasks and relationships Work vs. relationships Separates work from family and social life Views work, family,and social life as one Focuses on the long term in tasks and relationships Locus of control Controls time by maintaining a rigid appointment schedule Reacts as the day’s events evolve Believes that life controls time Focuses on The future The present The past III. Cyclical Time 35 IV. GUIDELINES: ATTITUDES TOWARD TIME Despite the impact of new media technologies on our view of time (email, blogs, texting, twittering, tweeting, and streaming videos), these culturally influenced differences in time orientation continue to be critical because they can color the way people view each other. For example	265,865
Physics Book Big Ideas simply explained AND Perceptions of a Renegade Mind by David Icke (Thomas Booth) (Z-Library).pdf	THE ART BOOK THE ASTRONOMY BOOK THE BIBLE BOOK THE BUSINESS BOOK THE CLASSICAL MUSIC BOOK THE CRIME BOOK THE ECOLOGY BOOK THE ECONOMICS BOOK THE FEMINISM BOOK THE HISTORY BOOK THE LITERATURE BOOK THE MATH BOOK THE MOVIE BOOK THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK THE PHILOSOPHY BOOK THE POLITICS BOOK THE PSYCHOLOGY BOOK THE RELIGIONS BOOK THE SCIENCE BOOK THE SHAKESPEARE BOOK THE SHERLOCK HOLMES BOOK THE SOCIOLOGY BOOK BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED PHYSICS THE BOOK PHYSICS THE BOOK DK LONDON SENIOR ART EDITOR Gillian Andrews SENIOR EDITORS Camilla Hallinan, Laura Sandford EDITORS John Andrews, Jessica Cawthra, Joy Evatt, Claire Gell, Richard Gilbert, Tim Harris, Janet Mohun, Victoria Pyke, Dorothy Stannard, Rachel Warren Chadd US EDITOR Megan Douglass ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION Gillian Reid PRODUCER Nancy-Jane Maun SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR Lee Griffiths MANAGING EDITOR Gareth Jones ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler ART DIRECTOR Karen Self DESIGN DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf DK DELHI PROJECT ART EDITOR Pooja Pipil ART EDITORS Meenal Goel, Debjyoti Mukherjee ASSISTANT ART EDITOR Nobina Chakravorty SENIOR EDITOR Suefa Lee ASSISTANT EDITOR Aashirwad Jain SENIOR JACKET DESIGNER Suhita Dharamjit SENIOR DTP DESIGNER Neeraj Bhatia DTP DESIGNER Anita Yadav PROJECT PICTURE RESEARCHER Deepak Negi PICTURE RESEARCH MANAGER Taiyaba Khatoon PRE-PRODUCTION MANAGER Balwant Singh PRODUCTION MANAGER Pankaj Sharma MANAGING ART EDITOR Sudakshina Basu SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Rohan Sinha original styling by STUDIO 8 First American Edition, 2020 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 1450 Broadway, Suite 801, New York, NY 10018 Copyright © 2020 Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC 20 21 22 23 24 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–316670–Mar/2020 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978–1–4654–9102–2 DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 1450 Broadway, Suite 801, New York, NY 10018 SpecialSales@dk.com Printed in China A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com DR. BEN STILL, CONSULTANT EDITOR A prize-winning science communicator, particle physicist, and author, Ben teaches high school physics and is also a visiting research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. After a master’s degree in rocket science, a PhD in particle physics, and years of research, he stepped into the world of outreach and education in 2014. He is the author of a growing collection of popular science books and travels the world teaching particle physics using LEGO®. JOHN FARNDON John Farndon has been short-listed five times for the Royal Society’s Young People’s Science Book Prize, among other awards. A widely published author of popular books on science and nature, he has written around 1,000 books on a range of subjects, including internationally acclaimed titles such as The Oceans Atlas, Do You Think You’re Clever?, and Do Not Open, and has contributed to major books such as Science and Science Year By Year. TIM HARRIS A widely published author on science and nature for both children and adults, Tim Harris has written more than 100 mostly educational reference books and contributed to many others. These include An Illustrated History of Engineering, Physics Matters!, Great Scientists, Exploring the Solar System, and Routes of Science. HILARY LAMB Hilary Lamb studied physics at the University of Bristol and science communication at Imperial College London. She is a staff journalist at Engineering & Technology Magazine, covering science and technology, and has written for previous DK titles, including How Technology Works and Explanatorium of Science. JONATHAN O’CALLAGHAN With a background in astrophysics, Jonathan O’Callaghan has been a space and science journalist for almost a decade. His work has appeared in numerous publications including New Scientist, Wired, Scientific American, and Forbes. He has also appeared as a space expert on several radio and television shows, and is currently working on a series of educational science books for children. MUKUL PATEL Mukul Patel studied natural sciences at King’s College Cambridge and mathematics at Imperial College London. He is the author of We’ve Got Your Number, a children’s math book, and over the last 25 years has contributed to numerous other books across scientific and technological fields for a general audience. He is currently investigating ethical issues in AI. ROBERT SNEDDEN Robert Snedden has been involved in publishing for 40 years, researching and writing science and technology books for young people on topics ranging from medical ethics to space exploration, engineering, computers, and the internet. He has also contributed to histories of mathematics, engineering, biology, and evolution, and written books for an adult audience on breakthroughs in mathematics and medicine and the works of Albert Einstein. GILES SPARROW A popular science author specializing in physics and astronomy, Giles Sparrow studied astronomy at University College London and science communication at Imperial College London. He is the author of books including Physics in Minutes, Physics Squared, The Genius Test and What Shape Is Space?, as well as DK’s Spaceflight, and has contributed to bestselling DK titles including Universe and Science. JIM AL-KHALILI, FOREWORD An academic, author, and broadcaster, Jim Al-Khalili FRS holds a dual professorship in theoretical physics and the public engagement in science at the University of Surrey. He has written 12 books on popular science, translated into over 20 languages. A regular presenter on British TV, he is also the host of the Radio 4 program The Life Scientific. He is a recipient of the Royal Society Michael Faraday Medal, the Institute of Physics Kelvin Medal, and the Stephen Hawking Medal for science communication. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION MEASUREMENT AND MOTION PHYSICS AND THE EVERYDAY WORLD 18 Man is the measure of all things Measuring distance 20 A prudent question is one half of wisdom The scientific method 24 All is number The language of physics 32 Bodies suffer no resistance but from the air Free falling 36 A new machine for multiplying forces Pressure 37 Motion will persist Momentum 38 The most wonderful productions of the mechanical arts Measuring time 40 All action has a reaction Laws of motion 46 The frame of the system of the world Laws of gravity 52 Oscillation is everywhere Harmonic motion 54 There is no destruction of force Kinetic energy and potential energy 55 Energy can be neither created nor destroyed The conservation of energy 56 A new treatise on mechanics Energy and motion 58 We must look to the heavens for the measure of the Earth SI units and physical constants ENERGY AND MATTER MATERIALS AND HEAT 68 The first principles of the universe Models of matter 72 As the extension, so the force Stretching and squeezing CONTENTS 6 76 The minute parts of matter are in rapid motion Fluids 80 Searching out the fire-secret Heat and transfers 82 Elastical power in the air The gas laws 86 The energy of the universe is constant Internal energy and the first law of thermodynamics 90 Heat can be a cause of motion Heat engines 94 The entropy of the universe tends to a maximum Entropy and the second law of thermodynamics 100 The fluid and its vapor become one Changes of state and making bonds 104 Colliding billiard balls in a box The development of statistical mechanics 112 Fetching some gold from the sun Thermal radiation 7 ELECTRICITY AND MAGNETISM TWO FORCES UNITE 122 Wondrous forces Magnetism 124 The attraction of electricity Electric charge 128 Potential energy becomes palpable motion Electric potential 130 A tax on electrical energy Electric current and resistance 134 Each metal has a certain power Making magnets 136 Electricity in motion The motor effect 138 The dominion of magnetic forces Induction and the generator effect 142 Light itself is an electromagnetic disturbance Force fields and Maxwell’s equations 148 Man will imprison the power of the sun Generating electricity 152 A small step in the control of nature Electronics 156 Animal electricity Bioelectricity 157 A totally unexpected scientific discovery Storing data 158 An encyclopedia on the head of a pin Nanoelectronics 159 A single pole, either north or south Magnetic monopoles SOUND AND LIGHT THE PROPERTIES OF WAVES 164 There is geometry in the humming of the strings Music 168 Light follows the path of least time Reflection and refraction 170 A new visible world Focusing light 176 Light is a wave Lumpy and wavelike light 180 Light is never known to bend into the shadow Diffraction and interference 184 The north and south sides of the ray Polarization 188 The trumpeters and the wave train The Doppler effect and redshift 192 These mysterious waves we cannot see Electromagnetic waves 196 The language of spectra is a true music of the spheres Light from the atom 200 Seeing with sound Piezoelectricity and ultrasound 202 A large fluctuating echo Seeing beyond light THE QUANTUM WORLD OUR UNCERTAIN UNIVERSE 208 The energy of light is distributed discontinuously in space Energy quanta 212 They do not behave like anything that you have ever seen Particles and waves 216 A new idea of reality Quantum numbers 218 All is waves Matrices and waves 220 The cat is both alive and dead Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 8 222 Spooky action at a distance Quantum entanglement 224 The jewel of physics Quantum field theory 226 Collaboration between parallel universes Quantum applications NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE PHYSICS INSIDE THE ATOM 236 Matter is not infinitely divisible Atomic theory 238 A veritable transformation of matter Nuclear rays 240 The constitution of matter The nucleus 242 The bricks of which atoms are built up Subatomic particles 244 Little wisps of cloud Particles in the cloud chamber 246 Opposites can explode Antimatter 247 In search of atomic glue The strong force 248 Dreadful amounts of energy Nuclear bombs and power 252 A window on creation Particle accelerators 256 The hunt for the quark The particle zoo and quarks 258 Identical nuclear particles do not always act alike Force carriers 260 Nature is absurd Quantum electrodynamics 261 The mystery of the missing neutrinos Massive neutrinos 262 I think we have it The Higgs boson 264 Where has all the antimatter gone? Matter–antimatter asymmetry 265 Stars get born and die Nuclear fusion in stars RELATIVITY AND THE UNIVERSE OUR PLACE IN THE COSMOS 270 The windings of the heavenly bodies The heavens 272 Earth is not the center of the universe Models of the universe 274 No true times or true lengths From classical to special relativity 275 The sun as it was about eight minutes ago The speed of light 276 Does Oxford stop at this train? Special relativity 280 A union of space and time Curving spacetime 281 Gravity is equivalent to acceleration The equivalence principle 282 Why is the traveling twin younger? Paradoxes of special relativity 284 Evolution of the stars and life Mass and energy 286 Where spacetime simply ends Black holes and wormholes 290 The frontier of the known universe Discovering other galaxies 294 The future of the universe The static or expanding universe 296 The cosmic egg, exploding at the moment of creation The Big Bang 302 Visible matter alone is not enough Dark matter 306 An unknown ingredient dominates the universe Dark energy 308 Threads in a tapestry String theory 312 Ripples in spacetime Gravitational waves 316 DIRECTORY 324 GLOSSARY 328 INDEX 335 QUOTATIONS 336 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 FOREWORD I fell in love with physics as a boy when I discovered that this was the subject that best provided answers to many of the questions I had about the world around me—questions like how magnets worked, whether space went on forever, why rainbows form, and how we know what the inside of an atom or the inside of a star looks like. I also realized that by studying physics I could get a better grip on some of the more profound questions swirling around in my head, such as: What is the nature of time? What is it like to fall into a black hole? How did the universe begin and how might it end? Now, decades later, I have answers to some of my questions, but I continue to search for answers to new ones. Physics, you see, is a living subject. Although there are many things we now know with confidence about the laws of nature, and we have used this knowledge to develop technologies that have transformed our world, there is still much more we do not yet know. That is what makes physics, for me, the most exciting area of knowledge of all. In fact, I sometimes wonder why everyone isn’t as in love with physics as I am. But to bring the subject alive—to convey that sense of wonder—requires much more than collecting together a mountain of dry facts. Explaining how our world works is about telling stories; it is about acknowledging how we have come to know what we know about the universe, and it is about sharing in the joy of discovery made by the many great scientists who first unlocked nature’s secrets. How we have come to our current understanding of physics can be as important and as joyful as the knowledge itself. This is why I have always had a fascination with the history of physics. I often think it a shame that we are not taught at school about how concepts and ideas in science first developed. We are expected to simply accept them unquestioningly. But physics, and indeed the whole of science, isn’t like that. We ask questions about how the world works and we develop theories and hypotheses. At the same time, we make observations and conduct experiments, revising and improving on what we know. Often, we take wrong turns or discover after many years that a particular description or theory is wrong, or only an approximation of reality. Sometimes, new discoveries are made that shock us and force us to revise our view entirely. One beautiful example of this that has happened in my lifetime was the discovery, in 1998, that the universe is expanding at an accelerating pace, leading to the idea of so-called dark energy. Until recently, this was regarded as a complete mystery. What was this invisible field that acted to stretch space against the pull of gravity? Gradually, we are learning that this is most likely something called the vacuum energy. You might wonder how changing the name of something (from “dark energy” to “vacuum energy”) can constitute an advance in our understanding. But the concept of vacuum energy is not new. Einstein had suggested it a hundred years ago, then changed his mind when he thought he’d made a mistake, calling it his “biggest blunder.” It is stories like this that, for me, make physics so joyous. This is also why The Physics Book is so enjoyable. Each topic is made more accessible and readable with the introduction of key figures, fascinating anecdotes, and the timeline of the development of the ideas. Not only is this a more honest account of the way science progresses, it is also a more effective way of bringing the subject alive. I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do. Jim Al-Khalili INTRODU CTION W e humans have a heightened sense of our surroundings. We evolved this way to outmaneuver stronger and faster predators. To achieve this, we have had to predict the behavior of both the living and the inanimate world. Knowledge gained from our experiences was passed down through generations via an ever-evolving system of language, and our cognitive prowess and ability to use tools took our species to the top of the food chain. We spread out of Africa from around 60,000 years ago, extending our abilities to survive in inhospitable locations through sheer ingenuity. Our ancestors developed techniques to allow them to grow plentiful food for their families, and settled into communities. Experimental methods Early societies drew meaning from unrelated events, saw patterns that did not exist, and spun mythologies. They also developed new tools and methods of working, which required advanced knowledge of the inner workings of the world—be it the seasons or the annual flooding of the Nile—in order to expand resources. In some regions, there were periods of relative peace and abundance. In these civilized societies, some people were free to wonder about our place in the universe. First the Greeks, then the Romans tried to make sense of the world through patterns they observed in nature. Thales of Miletus, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and others began to reject supernatural explanations and produce rational answers in the quest to create absolute knowledge—they began to experiment. At the fall of the Roman Empire, so many of these ideas were lost to the Western world, which fell into a dark age of religious wars, but they continued to flourish in the Arab world and Asia. Scholars there continued to ask questions and conduct experiments. The language of mathematics was invented to document this new- found knowledge. Ibn al-Haytham and Ibn Sahl were just two of the Arab scholars who kept the flame of scientific knowledge alive in the 10th and 11th centuries, yet their discoveries, particularly in the fields of optics and astronomy, were ignored for centuries outside the Islamic world. A new age of ideas With global trade and exploration came the exchange of ideas. Merchants and mariners carried books, stories, and technological marvels from east to west. Ideas from this wealth of culture drew Europe out of the dark ages and into a new age of enlightenment known as the Renaissance. A revolution of our world view began as ideas from ancient civilizations became updated or outmoded, replaced by new ideas of our place in the universe. A new generation of experimenters poked and prodded nature to extract her secrets. In Poland and Italy, Copernicus and Galileo challenged ideas that had been considered sacrosanct for two millennia—and they suffered harsh persecution as a result. Then, in England in the 17th century, Isaac Newton’s laws of motion established the basis of INTRODUCTION 12 Whosoever studies works of science must … examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision. Ibn al-Haytham classical physics, which was to reign supreme for more than two centuries. Understanding motion allowed us to build new tools— machines—able to harness energy in many forms to do work. Steam engines and water mills were two of the most important of these— they ushered in the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840). The evolution of physics In the 19th century, the results of experiments were tried and tested numerous times by a new international network of scientists. They shared their findings through papers, explaining the patterns they observed in the language of mathematics. Others built models from which they attempted to explain these empirical equations of correlation. Models simplified the complexities of nature into digestible chunks, easily described by simple geometries and relationships. These models made predictions about new behaviors in nature, which were tested by a new wave of pioneering experimentalists—if the predictions were proven true, the models were deemed laws which all of nature seemed to obey. The relationship of heat and energy was explored by French physicist Sadi Carnot and others, founding the new science of thermodynamics. British physicist James Clerk Maxwell produced equations to describe the close relationship of electricity and magnetism—electromagnetism. By 1900, it seemed that there were laws to cover all the great phenomena of the physical world. Then, in the first decade of the 20th century, a series of discoveries sent shock waves through the scientific community, challenging former “truths” and giving birth to modern physics. A German, Max Planck, uncovered the world of quantum physics. Then fellow countryman Albert Einstein revealed his theory of relativity. Others discovered the structure of the atom and uncovered the role of even smaller, subatomic particles. In so doing, they launched the study of particle physics. New discoveries weren’t confined to the microscopic—more advanced telescopes opened up the study of the universe. Within a few generations, humanity went from living at the center of the universe to residing on a speck of dust on the edge of one galaxy among billions. Not only had we seen inside the heart of matter and released the energy within, we had charted the seas of space with light that had been traveling since soon after the Big Bang. Physics has evolved over the years as a science, branching out and breaching new horizons as discoveries are made. Arguably, its main areas of concern now lie at the fringes of our physical world, at scales both larger than life and smaller than atoms. Modern physics has found applications in many other fields, including new technology, chemistry, biology, and astronomy. This book presents the biggest ideas in physics, beginning with the everyday and ancient, then moving through classical physics into the tiny atomic world, and ending with the vast expanse of space. ■ INTRODUCTION 13 One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvellous structure of reality. Albert Einstein MEASURE AND MOT I physics and the everyday world MENT ON 16 O ur survival instincts have made us creatures of comparison. Our ancient struggle to survive by ensuring that we found enough food for our family or reproduced with the correct mate has been supplanted. These primal instincts have evolved with our society into modern equivalents such as wealth and power. We cannot help but measure ourselves, others, and the world around us by metrics. Some of these measures are interpretive, focusing upon personality traits that we benchmark against our own feelings. Others, such as height, weight, or age, are absolutes. For many people in the ancient and modern world alike, a measure of success was wealth. To amass fortune, adventurers traded goods across the globe. Merchants would purchase plentiful goods cheaply in one location before transporting and selling them for a higher price in another location where that commodity was scarce. As trade in goods grew to become global, local leaders began taxing trade and imposing standard prices. To enforce this, they needed standard measures of physical things to allow them to make comparisons. Language of measurement Realizing that each person’s experience is relative, the ancient Egyptians devised systems that could be communicated without bias from one person to another. They developed the first system of metrics, a standard method for measuring the world around them. The Egyptian cubit allowed engineers to plan buildings that were unrivalled for millennia and devise farming systems to feed the burgeoning population. As trade with ancient Egypt became global, the idea of a common language of measurement spread around the world. The Scientific Revolution (1543–1700) brought about a new need for these metrics. For the scientist, metrics were to be used not for trading goods but as a tool with which nature could be understood. Distrusting their instincts, scientists developed controlled environments in which they tested connections between different behaviors—they experimented. Early experiments focused on the movement of everyday objects, which had a direct effect upon daily life. Scientists discovered patterns INTRODUCTION The Egyptians use the cubit to measure distance and manage farmland. 3000 BCE The Greek philosopher Euclid writes Elements, one of the foremost texts of the time about geometry and mathematics. 3RD CENTURY BCE Aristotle develops the scientific method using inductions from observations to draw deductions about the world. 4TH CENTURY BCE Italian astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), marking the start of the Scientific Revolution. 1543 Galileo Galilei shows that balls rolling down inclined planes accelerate at the same rate regardless of their mass. 1603 1361 French philosopher Nicholas Oresme proves the mean speed theorem, which describes the distance covered by objects undergoing constant acceleration. Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens invents the pendulum clock, allowing scientists to accurately measure the motion of objects. 1656 17 Isaac Newton publishes Principia and revolutionizes our understanding of how objects move on Earth and in the cosmos. 1687 in linear, circular, and repetitive oscillating motion. These patterns became immortalized in the language of mathematics, a gift from ancient civilizations that had then been developed in the Islamic world for centuries. Mathematics offered an unambiguous way of sharing the outcomes of experiments and allowed scientists to make predictions and test these predictions with new experiments. With a common language and metrics, science marched forward. These pioneers discovered links between distance, time, and speed and set out their own repeatable and tested explanation of nature. Measuring motion Scientific theories progressed rapidly and with them the language of mathematics changed. Building on his laws of motion, English physicist Isaac Newton invented calculus, which brought a new ability to describe the change in systems over time, not just calculate single snapshots. To explain the acceleration of falling objects, and eventually the nature of heat, ideas of an unseen entity called energy began to emerge. Our world could no longer be defined by distance, time, and mass alone, and new metrics were needed to benchmark the measurement of energy. Scientists use metrics to convey the results of experiments. Metrics provide an unambiguous language that enables scientists to interpret the results of an experiment and repeat the experiment to check that their conclusions are correct. Today, scientists use the Système international (SI) collection of metrics to convey their results. The value of each of these SI metrics and their link to the world around us are defined and decided upon by an international group of scientists known as metrologists. This first chapter charts these early years of the science we today call physics, the way in which the science operates through experimentation, and how results from these tests are shared across the world. From the falling objects that Italian polymath Galileo Galilei used to study acceleration to the oscillating pendulums that paved the way to accurate timekeeping, this is the story of how scientists began to measure distance, time, energy, and motion, revolutionizing our understanding of what makes the world work. ■ MEASUREMENT AND MOTION English cleric John Wallis suggests that momentum, the product of mass and velocity, is conserved in all processes. 1668 French physicist Blaise Pascal’s law about the uniform distribution of pressure throughout a liquid in an enclosed space is published. 1663 1740 French mathematician Émilie du Châtelet discovers how to figure the kinetic energy of a moving object. Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler’s laws of motion define linear momentum and the rate of change of angular momentum. 1752 1788 French physicist Joseph-Louis Lagrange produces equations to simplify calculations about motion. British physicist James Joule conducts experiments that show that energy is neither lost nor gained when it is converted from one form to another. 1845 The units with which we benchmark our universe are redefined to depend on nature alone. 2019 French astronomer and mathematician Gabriel Mouton suggests the metric system of units using the meter, liter, and gram. 1670 18 MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS MEASURING DISTANCE W hen people began to build structures on an organized scale, they needed a way to measure height and length. The earliest measuring devices are likely to have been primitive wooden sticks scored with notches, with no accepted consistency in unit length. The first widespread unit was the “cubit,” which emerged in the 4th and 3rd millennia bce among the peoples of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Indus Valley. The term cubit derives from the Latin for elbow, cubitum, and was the distance from the elbow to the tip of the outstretched middle finger. Of course, not everyone has the same length of forearm and middle finger, so this “standard” was only approximate. Imperial measure As prodigious architects and builders of monuments on a grand scale, the ancient Egyptians needed a standard unit of distance. Fittingly, the royal cubit of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt is the first known standardized cubit measure in the world. In use since at least 2700 bce, it was 20.6–20.8 in (523–529 mm) long and was divided into 28 equal digits, each based on a finger’s breadth. Archaeological excavations of pyramids have revealed cubit rods of wood, slate, basalt, and bronze, which would have been used as measures by craftsmen and architects. The Great Pyramid at Giza, where a cubit rod was found in the King’s Chamber, was built to be 280 cubits in height, with a base of 440 cubits squared. The Egyptians further subdivided cubits into palms (4 digits), hands (5 digits), small spans (12 digits), large spans (14 digits, or half a cubit), and t’sers (16 digits or IN CONTEXT KEY CIVILIZATION Ancient Egypt BEFORE c. 4000 bce Administrators use a system of measuring field sizes in ancient Mesopotamia. c. 3100 bce Officials in ancient Egypt use knotted cords—pre- stretched ropes tied at regular intervals—to measure land and survey building foundations. AFTER 1585 In the Netherlands, Simon Stevin proposes a decimal system of numbers. 1799 The French government adopts the meter. 1875 Signed by 17 nations, the Meter Convention agrees a consistent length for the unit. 1960 The eleventh General Conference on Weights and Measures sets the metric system as the International System of Units (“SI,” from the French Système international). The Egyptian royal cubit was based on the length of the forearm, measured from the elbow to the middle fingertip. Cubits were subdivided into 28 digits (each a finger’s breadth in length) and a series of intermediary units, such as palms and hands. Cubit Palm 19 MEASUREMENT AND MOTION 4 palms). The khet (100 cubits) was used to measure field boundaries and the ater (20,000 cubits) to define larger distances. Cubits of various length were used across the Middle East. The Assyrians used cubits in c. 700 bce, while the Hebrew Bible contains plentiful references to cubits— particularly in the Book of Exodus’s account of the construction of the Tabernacle, the sacred tent that housed the Ten Commandments. The ancient Greeks developed their own 24-unit cubit, as well as the stade (plural stadia), a new unit representing 300 cubits. In the 3rd century bce, the Greek scholar Eratosthenes (c. 276 bce–c. 194 bce) estimated the circumference of Earth at 250,000 stadia, a figure he later refined to 252,000 stadia. The Romans also adopted the cubit, along with the inch—an adult male’s thumb—foot, and mile. The Roman mile was 1,000 paces, or mille passus, each of which was five Roman feet. Roman colonial expansion from the 3rd century bce to the 3rd century ce introduced these units to much of western Asia and Europe, including England, where the mile was redefined as 5,280 feet in 1593 by Queen Elizabeth I. Going metric In his 1585 pamphlet De Thiende (The Art of Tenths), Flemish physicist Simon Stevin proposed a decimal system of measurement, forecasting that, in time, it would be widely accepted. More than two centuries later, work on the metric system was begun by a committee of the French Academy of Sciences, with the meter being defined as one ten-millionth of the distance from Earth’s equator to the North Pole. France became the first nation to adopt the measurement, in 1799. International recognition was not achieved until 1960, when the Système international (SI) set the meter as the base unit for distance. It was agreed that 1 meter (m) is equal to 1,000 millimeters (mm) or 100 centimeters (cm), and 1,000 m make up 1 kilometer (km). ■ A mile shall contain eight furlongs, every furlong forty poles, and every pole shall contain sixteen foot and a half. Queen Elizabeth I See also: Free falling 32–35 ■ Measuring time 38–39 ■ SI units and physical constants 58–63 ■ Heat and transfers 80–81 Changing definitions In 1668, English clergyman John Wilkins followed Stevin’s proposal of a decimal-based unit of length with a novel definition: he suggested that 1 meter should be set as the distance of a two-second pendulum swing. Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) calculated this to be 39.26 in (997 mm). In 1889, an alloy bar of platinum (90%) and iridium (10%) was cast to represent the definitive 1-meter length, but because it expanded and contracted very slightly at different temperatures, it was accurate only at the melting point of ice. This bar is still kept at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France. When SI definitions were adopted in 1960, the meter was redefined in terms of the wavelength of electromagnetic emissions from a krypton atom. In 1983, yet another definition was adopted: the distance that light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. Cubit rods—such as this example from the 18th dynasty in ancient Egypt, c. 14th century bce—were used widely in the ancient world to achieve consistent measurements. You are to make upright frames of acacia wood for the Tabernacle. Each frame is to be ten cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. Exodus 26:15–16 The Bible 20 A PRUDENT QUESTION IS ONE HALF OF WISDOM THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD C areful observation and a questioning attitude to findings are central to the scientific method of investigation, which underpins physics and all the sciences. Since it is easy for prior knowledge and assumptions to distort the interpretation of data, the scientific method follows a set procedure. A hypothesis is drawn up on the basis of findings, and then tested experimentally. If this hypothesis fails, it can be revised and reexamined, but if it is robust, it is shared for peer review— independent evaluation by experts. People have always sought to understand the world around them, and the need to find food and IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Aristotle (c. 384–322 bce) BEFORE 585 bce Thales of Miletus, a Greek mathematician and philosopher, analyzes movements of the sun and moon to forecast a solar eclipse. AFTER 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) and Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica (On the Workings of the Human Body) rely on detailed observation, marking the beginning of the Scientific Revolution. 1620 Francis Bacon proposes the inductivist method, which involves making generalizations based on accurate observations. 21 See also: Free falling 32–35 ■ SI units and physical constants 58–63 ■ Focusing light 170–175 ■ Models of the universe 272–273 ■ Dark matter 302–305 understand changing weather were matters of life and death long before ideas were written down. In many societies, mythologies developed to explain natural phenomena; elsewhere, it was believed that everything was a gift from the gods and events were preordained. Early investigations The world’s first civilizations— ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and China—were sufficiently advanced to support “natural philosophers,” thinkers who sought to interpret the world and record their findings. One of the first to reject supernatural explanations of natural phenomena was the Greek thinker Thales of Miletus. Later, the philosophers Socrates and Plato introduced debate and argument as a method of advancing understanding, but it was Aristotle—a prolific investigator of physics, biology, and zoology— who began to develop a scientific method of inquiry, applying logical reasoning to observed phenomena. He was an empiricist, someone ❯❯ MEASUREMENT AND MOTION The starting point for the scientific method is an observation. Scientists form a hypothesis (a theory to explain the observation). An experiment is carried out to test the hypothesis. If the data supports the hypothesis, the experiment is repeated to make sure the results are correct. If the data refutes the hypothesis, the hypothesis is revised. The hypothesis is eventually accepted as fact. Data from the experiment is collected. Aristotle The son of the court physician of the Macedonian royal family, Aristotle was raised by a guardian after his parents died when he was young. At around the age of 17, he joined Plato’s Academy in Athens, the foremost center of learning in Greece. Over the next two decades, he studied and wrote about philosophy, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, and physics, as well as politics, poetry, and music. He also traveled to Lesvos, where he made ground-breaking observations of the island’s botany and zoology. In c. 343 bce, Aristotle was invited by Philip II of Macedon to tutor his son, the future Alexander the Great. He established a school at the Lyceum in Athens in 335 bce, where he wrote many of his most celebrated scientific treatises. Aristotle left Athens in 322 bce and settled on the island of Euboea, where he died at the age of about 62. Key works Metaphysics On the Heavens Physics 22 who believes that all knowledge is based on experience derived from the senses, and that reason alone is not enough to solve scientific problems—evidence is required. Traveling widely, Aristotle was the first to make detailed zoological observations, seeking evidence to group living things by behavior and anatomy. He went to sea with fishermen in order to collect and dissect fish and other marine organisms. After discovering that dolphins have lungs, he judged they should be classed with whales, not fish. He separated four-legged animals that give birth to live young (mammals) from those that lay eggs (reptiles and amphibians). However, in other fields Aristotle was still influenced by traditional ideas that lacked a grounding in good science. He did not challenge the prevailing geocentric idea that the sun and stars rotate around Earth. In the 3rd century bce, another Greek thinker, Aristarchus of Samos, argued that Earth and the known planets orbit the sun, that stars are very distant equivalents of “our” sun, and that Earth spins on its axis. Though correct, these ideas were dismissed because Aristotle and his student Ptolemy carried greater authority. In fact, the geocentric view of the universe was held to be true—due in part to its enforcement by the Catholic Church, which discouraged ideas that challenged its interpretation of the Bible—until it was superseded in the 17th century by the ideas of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Testing and observation Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham (widely known as “Alhazen”) was an early proponent of the scientific method. Working in the 10th and 11th centuries ce, he developed his own method of experimentation to prove or disprove hypotheses. His most important work was in the field of optics, but he also made important contributions to astronomy and mathematics. Al-Haytham experimented with sunlight, light reflected from artificial light sources, and refracted light. For example, he tested—and proved—the hypothesis that every point of a luminous object radiates light along every straight line and in every direction. Unfortunately, al-Haytham’s methods were not adopted beyond the Islamic world, and it would be 500 years before a similar approach emerged independently in Europe, during the Scientific Revolution. But the idea that accepted theories may be challenged, and overthrown if proof of an alternative can be produced, was not the prevailing view in 16th-century Europe. Church authorities rejected many scientific ideas, such as the work of Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. He made painstaking observations of the night sky with the naked eye, explaining the temporary retrograde (“backward”) motion of the planets, which geocentrism had never accounted for. Copernicus realized the phenomenon was due to Earth and the other planets moving around the sun on different orbits. Although Copernicus lacked the tools to prove heliocentrism, his use Anatomical drawings from 1543 reflect Vesalius’s mastery of dissection and set a new standard for study of the human body, unchanged since the Greek physician Galen (129–216 ce). THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD Copernicus’s heliocentric model, so-called because it made the sun (helios in Greek) the focus of planetary orbits, was endorsed by some scientists but outlawed by the Church. Saturn Mercury Jupiter Venus Sun Mars Moon Earth All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. Galileo Galilei 23 of rational argument to challenge accepted thinking set him apart as a true scientist. Around the same time, Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius transformed medical thinking with his multi-volume work on the human body in 1543. Just as Copernicus based his theories on detailed observation, Vesalius analyzed what he found when dissecting human body-parts. Experimental approach For Italian polymath Galileo Galilei, experimentation was central to the scientific approach. He carefully The scientific method in practice Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) was identified as the carrier of genetic information in the human body in 1944, and its chemical composition was shown to be four different molecules called nucleotides. However, it was unclear how genetic information was stored in DNA. Three scientists—Linus Pauling, Francis Crick, and James Watson—put forward the hypothesis that DNA possessed a helical structure, and realized from work done by other scientists that if that was the case, its X-ray diffraction pattern would be X-shaped. British scientist Rosalind Franklin tested this theory by performing X-ray diffraction on crystallized pure DNA, beginning in 1950. After refining the technique over a period of two years, her analysis revealed an X-shaped pattern (best seen in “Photo 51”), proving that DNA had a helical structure. The Pauling, Crick, Watson hypothesis was proven, forming the starting point for further studies on DNA. Photo 51, taken by Franklin, is a 1952 X-ray diffraction image of human DNA. The X-shape is due to DNA’s double-helix structure. recorded observations on matters as varied as the movement of the planets, the swing of pendulums, and the speed of falling bodies. He produced theories to explain them, then made more observations to test the theories. He used the new technology of telescopes to study four of the moons orbiting Jupiter, proving Copernicus’s heliocentric model—under geocentrism, all objects orbited Earth. In 1633 Galileo was tried by the Church’s Roman Inquisition, found guilty of heresy, and placed under house- arrest for the last decade of his life. He continued to publish by smuggling papers to Holland, away from the censorship of the Church. Later in the 17th century, English philosopher Francis Bacon reinforced the importance of a methodical, skeptical approach to scientific inquiry. Bacon argued that the only means of building true knowledge was to base axioms and laws on observed facts, not relying (even if only partially) on unproven deductions and conjecture. The Baconian method involves making systematic observations to establish verifiable facts; generalizing from a series MEASUREMENT AND MOTION of facts to create axioms (a process known as “inductivism”), while being careful to avoid generalizing beyond what the facts tell us; then gathering further facts to produce an increasingly complex base of knowledge. Unproven science When scientific claims cannot be verified, they are not necessarily wrong. In 1997, scientists at the Gran Sasso laboratory in Italy claimed to have detected evidence of dark matter, which is believed to make up about 27 percent of the universe. The most likely source, they said, were weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). These should be detected as tiny flashes of light (scintillations) when a particle strikes the nucleus of a “target” atom. However, despite the best efforts of other research teams to replicate the experiment, no other evidence of dark matter has been found. It is possible that there is an unidentified explanation—or the scintillations could have been produced by helium atoms, which are present in the experiment’s photomultiplier tubes. ■ If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. Francis Bacon ALL IS NUMBER THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS 26 P hysics seeks to understand the universe through observation, experiment, and building models and theories. All of these are intimately entwined with mathematics. Mathematics is the language of physics—whether used in measurement and data analysis in experimental science, or to provide rigorous expression for theories, or to describe the fundamental “frame of reference” in which all matter exists and events take place. The investigation of space, time, matter, and energy is only made possible through a prior understanding of dimension, shape, symmetry, and change. Driven by practical needs The history of mathematics is one of increasing abstraction. Early ideas about number and shape developed over time into the most general and precise language. In prehistoric times, before the advent of writing, herding animals and trading goods undoubtedly prompted the earliest attempts at tallying and counting. As complex cultures emerged in the Middle East and Mesoamerica, demands for greater precision and prediction increased. Power was tied to knowledge of astronomical cycles and seasonal patterns, such as flooding. Agriculture and architecture required accurate calendars and land surveys. The earliest place value number systems (where a digit’s position in a number indicates its value) and methods for solving equations date back more than 3,500 years to civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and (later) Mesoamerica. Adding logic and analysis The rise of ancient Greece brought about a fundamental change in focus. Number systems and Euclid Although his Elements were immensely influential, few details of Euclid’s life are known. He was born around 325 bce, in the reign of Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy I and probably died around 270 bce. He lived mostly in Alexandria, then an important center of learning, but he may also have studied at Plato’s academy in Athens. In Commentary on Euclid, written in the 5th century ce, the Greek philosopher Proclus notes that Euclid arranged the theorems of Eudoxus, an earlier Greek mathematician, and brought “irrefutable demonstration” to the loose ideas of other scholars. Thus, the theorems of the 13 books of Euclid’s Elements are not original, but for two millennia they set the standard for mathematical exposition. The earliest surviving editions of the Elements date from the 15th century. THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS Key works Elements Data Catoptrics Optics IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Euclid of Alexandria (c. 325–c. 270 bce) BEFORE 3000–300 bce Ancient Mesopotamian and Egyptian civilizations develop number systems and techniques to solve mathematical problems. 600–300 bce Greek scholars, including Pythagoras and Thales, formalize mathematics using logic and proofs. AFTER c. 630 ce Indian mathematician Brahmagupta uses zero and negative numbers in arithmetic. c. 820 ce Persian scholar al-Khwarizmi sets down the principles of algebra. c. 1670 Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton each develop calculus, the mathematical study of continuous change. Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons. Pythagoras 27 measurement were no longer simply practical tools; Greek scholars also studied them for their own sake, together with shape and change. Although they inherited much specific mathematical knowledge from earlier cultures, such as elements of Pythagoras’s theorem, the Greeks introduced the rigor of logical argument and an approach rooted in philosophy; the ancient Greek word philosophia means “love of wisdom.” The ideas of a theorem (a general statement that is true everywhere and for all time) and proof (a formal argument using the laws of logic) are first seen in the geometry of the Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus in the early 6th century bce. Around the same time, Pythagoras and his followers elevated numbers to be the building blocks of the universe. For the Pythagoreans, numbers had to be “commensurable”— measurable in terms of ratios or fractions—to preserve the link with nature. This world view was shattered with the discovery of irrational numbers (such as √2, which cannot be exactly expressed as one whole number divided by another) by the Pythagorean philosopher Hippasus; according to legend, he was murdered by scandalized colleagues. Titans of mathematics In the 5th century bce, the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea devised paradoxes about motion, such as Achilles and the tortoise. This was the idea that, in any race where the pursued has a head start, the pursuer is always catching up— eventually by an infinitesimal amount. Such puzzles, which were logical—if simple to disprove in practice—would worry generations of mathematicians. They were resolved, at least partially, in the 17th century by the development of calculus, a branch of mathematics that deals with continuously changed quantities. Central to calculus is the idea of calculating infinitesimals (infinitely small quantities), which was anticipated by Archimedes of Syracuse, who lived in the 3rd century bce. To calculate the approximate volume of a sphere, for instance, he halved it, enclosed the hemisphere in a cylinder, then imagined slicing it horizontally, from the top of the hemisphere, where the radius is infinitesimally small, downward. He knew that the thinner he made his slices, the more accurate the volume would be. Reputed to have shouted “Eureka!” on discovering that the upward buoyant force of an object immersed in water is equal to the weight of the fluid it displaces, Archimedes is notable for applying math to mechanics and other branches of physics in order to solve problems involving levers, screws, pulleys, and pumps. Archimedes studied in Alexandria, at a school established by Euclid, often known as the “Father of Geometry.” It was by ❯❯ See also: Measuring distance 18–19 ■ Measuring time 38–39 ■ Laws of motion 40–45 ■ SI units and physical constants 58–63 ■ Antimatter 246 ■ The particle zoo and quarks 256–257 ■ Curving spacetime 280 MEASUREMENT AND MOTION The dichotomy paradox is one of Zeno’s paradoxes that show motion to be logically impossible. Before walking a certain distance a person must walk half that distance, before walking half the distance he must walk a quarter of the distance, and so on. Walking any distance will therefore entail an infinite number of stages that take an infinite amount of time to complete. Greek philosophers drew in the sand when teaching geometry, as shown here. Archimedes is said to have been drawing circles in the sand when he was killed by a Roman soldier. 1⁄16 1⁄8 1⁄4 1⁄2 1 28 analyzing geometry itself that Euclid established the template for mathematical argument for the next 2,000 years. His 13-book treatise, Elements, introduced the “axiomatic method” for geometry. He defined terms, such as “point,” and outlined five axioms (also known as postulates, or self-evident truths), such as “a line segment can be drawn between any two points.” From these axioms, he used the laws of logic to deduce theorems. By today’s standards, Euclid’s axioms are lacking; there are numerous assumptions that a mathematician would now expect to be stated formally. Elements remains, however, a prodigious work, covering not only plane geometry and three- dimensional geometry, but also ratio and proportion, number theory, and the “incommensurables” that Pythagoreans had rejected. Language and symbols In ancient Greece and earlier, scholars described and solved algebraic problems (determining unknown quantities given certain known quantities and relationships) in everyday language and by using geometry. The highly-abbreviated, precise, symbolic language of modern mathematics—which is significantly more effective for analyzing problems and universally understood—is relatively recent. Around 250 ce, however, the Greek mathematician Diophantus of Alexandria introduced the partial use of symbols to solve algebraic problems in his principal work Arithmetica, which influenced the development of Arabic algebra after the fall of the Roman Empire. The study of algebra flourished in the East during the Golden Age of Islam (from the 8th century to the 14th century). Baghdad became the principal seat of learning. Here, at an academic center called the House of Wisdom, mathematicians could study translations of Greek texts on geometry and number theory or Indian works discussing the decimal place-value system. In the early 9th century, Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (from whose name comes the word “algorithm”) compiled methods for balancing and solving equations in his book al Jabr (the root of the word “algebra”). He popularized the use of Hindu numerals, which evolved into Arabic numerals, but still described his algebraic problems in words. THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS French mathematician François Viète finally pioneered the use of symbols in equations in his 1591 book, Introduction to the Analytic Arts. The language was not yet standard, but mathematicians could now write complicated expressions in a compact form, without resorting to diagrams. In 1637, French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes reunited algebra and geometry by devising the coordinate system. More abstract numbers Over millennia, in attempts to solve different problems, mathematicians have extended the number system, expanding the counting numbers 1, 2, 3 … to include fractions and irrational numbers. The addition of zero and negative numbers indicated increasing abstraction. In ancient number systems, zero had been used as a placeholder—a way to tell 10 from 100, for instance. By around the 7th century ce, Islamic scholars gather in one of Baghdad’s great libraries in this 1237 image by the painter Yahya al-Wasiti. Scholars came to the city from all points of the Islamic Empire, including Persia, Egypt, Arabia, and even Iberia (Spain). Imaginary numbers are a fine and wonderful refuge of the divine spirit … almost an amphibian between being and non-being. Gottfried Leibniz 29 negative numbers were used for representing debts. In 628 ce, the Indian mathematician Brahmagupta was the first to treat negative integers (whole numbers) just like the positive integers for arithmetic. Yet, even 1,000 years later, many European scholars still considered negative numbers unacceptable as formal solutions to equations. The 16th-century Italian polymath Gerolamo Cardano not only used negative numbers, but, in Ars Magna, introduced the idea of complex numbers (combining a real and imaginary number) to solve cubic equations (those with at least one variable to the power of three, such as x3, but no higher). Complex numbers take the form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is the imaginary unit, usually expressed as i = √-1. The unit is termed “imaginary” because when squared it is negative, and squaring any real number, whether it is positive or negative, produces a positive number. Although Cardano’s contemporary Rafael Bombelli set down the first rules for using complex and imaginary numbers, it took a further 200 years before Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler introduced the symbol i to denote the imaginary unit. Like negative numbers, complex numbers were met with resistance, right up until the 18th century. Yet they represented a significant advance in mathematics. Not only do they enable the solution of cubic equations but, unlike real numbers, they can be used to solve all higher-order polynomial equations (those involving two or more terms added together and higher powers of a variable x, such as x4 or x5). Complex numbers emerge naturally in many branches of physics, such as quantum mechanics and electromagnetism. Infinitesimal calculus From the 14th century to the 17th century, together with the increasing use of symbols, many MEASUREMENT AND MOTION new methods and techniques emerged. One of the most significant for physics, was the development of “infinitesimal” methods in order to study curves and change. The ancient Greek method of exhaustion—finding the area of a shape by filling it with smaller polygons—was refined in order to compute areas bounded by curves. It finally evolved into a branch of mathematics called integral calculus. In the 17th century, French lawyer Pierre de Fermat’s study of tangents to curves inspired the development of differential calculus—the calculation of rates of change. Around 1670, English physicist Isaac Newton and German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz independently worked out a theory that united integral and differential calculus into infinitesimal calculus. The underlying idea is of approximating a curve (a changing quantity) by ❯❯ A new, a vast, and a powerful language is developed for the future use of analysis, in which to wield its truths so that these may become of more speedy and accurate practical application for the purposes of mankind. Ada Lovelace British computer scientist Differential calculus examines the rate of change over time, shown geometrically here as the rate of change of a curve. Integral calculus examines the areas, volumes, or displacement bounded by curves. INTEGRAL CALCULUS DIFFERENTIAL CALCULUS Integrating a curve’s equation between two values of x gives the area under the curve between those values In differential calculus, the gradient (slope) of the tangent to a curve at a point shows the rate of change at that point 0 0 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 x x y y 30 considering that it is made up of many straight lines (a series of different, fixed quantities). At the theoretical limit, the curve is identical to an infinite number of infinitesimal approximations. During the 18th and 19th centuries, applications of calculus in physics exploded. Physicists could now precisely model dynamic (changing) systems, from vibrating strings to the diffusion of heat. The work of 19th-century Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell greatly influenced the development of vector calculus, which models change in phenomena that have both quantity and direction. Maxwell also pioneered the use of statistical techniques for the study of large numbers of particles. Non-Euclidean geometries The fifth axiom, or postulate, on geometry that Euclid set out in his Elements, is also known as the parallel postulate. This was controversial, even in ancient times, as it appears less self-evident than the others, although many theorems depend on it. It states that, given a line and a point that is not on that line, exactly one line can be drawn through the given point and parallel to the given line. Throughout history, various mathematicians, such as Proclus of Athens in the 5th century or the Arabic mathematician al-Haytham, have attempted in vain to show that the parallel postulate can be derived from the other postulates. In the early 1800s, Hungarian mathematician János Bolyai and Russian mathematician Nicolai Lobachevsky independently developed a version of geometry THE LANGUAGE OF PHYSICS (hyperbolic geometry) in which the fifth postulate is false and parallel lines never meet. In their geometry, the surface is not flat as in Euclid’s, but curves inward. By contrast, in elliptic geometry and spherical geometry, also described in the 19th century, there are no parallel lines; all lines intersect. German mathematician Bernhard Riemann and others formalized such non-Euclidean geometries. Einstein used Riemannian theory in his general theory of relativity—the most advanced explanation of gravity— in which mass “bends” spacetime, making it non-Euclidean, although space remains homogeneous (uniform, with the same properties at every point). Abstract algebra By the 19th century, algebra had undergone a seismic shift, to become a study of abstract symmetry. French mathematician Évariste Galois was responsible for a key development. In 1830, while investigating certain symmetries exhibited by the roots (solutions) of polynomial equations, he In Euclidean geometry, space is assumed to be “flat.” Parallel lines remain at a constant distance from one another and never meet. In hyperbolic geometry, developed by Bolyai and Lobachevsky, the surface curves like a saddle and lines on the surface curve away from each other. In elliptic geometry, the surface curves outward like a sphere and parallel lines curve toward each other, eventually intersecting. Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries Out of nothing I have created a strange new universe. All that I have sent you previously is like a house of cards in comparison with a tower. János Bolyai in a letter to his father 31 developed a theory of abstract mathematical objects, called groups, to encode different kinds of symmetries. For example, all squares exhibit the same reflectional and rotational symmetries, and so are associated with a particular group. From his research, Galois determined that, unlike for quadratic equations (with a variable to the power of two, such as x2, but no higher), there is no general formula to solve polynomial equations of degree five (with terms such as x5) or higher. This was a dramatic result; he had proved that there could be no such formula, no matter what future developments occurred in mathematics. Subsequently, algebra grew into the abstract study of groups and similar objects, and the symmetries they encoded. In the 20th century, groups and symmetry proved vital for describing natural phenomena at the deepest level. In 1915, German algebraist Emmy Noether connected symmetry in equations with conservation laws, such as the conservation of energy, in physics. MEASUREMENT AND MOTION instance, the application of 19th-century group theory to modern quantum physics. There are also many examples of mathematical structures driving insight into nature. When British physicist Paul Dirac found twice as many expressions as expected in his equations describing the behavior of electrons, consistent with relativity and quantum mechanics, he postulated the existence of an anti-electron; it was duly discovered, years later. While physicists investigate what “is” in the universe, mathematicians are divided as to whether their study is about nature, or the human mind, or the abstract manipulation of symbols. In a strange historical twist, physicists researching string theory are now suggesting revolutionary advances in pure mathematics to geometers (mathematicians who study geometry). Just exactly how this illuminates the relationship between mathematics, physics, and “reality” is yet to be seen. ■ In the 1950s and 1960s, physicists used group theory to develop the Standard Model of particle physics. Modeling reality Mathematics is the abstract study of numbers, quantities, and shapes, which physics employs to model reality, express theories, and predict future outcomes—often with astonishing accuracy. For example, the electron g-factor— a measure of its behavior in an electromagnetic field—is computed to be 2.002 319 304 361 6, while the experimentally determined value is 2.002 319 304 362 5 (differing by just one part in a trillion). Certain mathematical models have endured for centuries, requiring only minor adjustments. For example, German astronomer Johannes Kepler’s 1619 model of the solar system, with some refinements by Newton and Einstein, remains valid today. Physicists have applied ideas that mathematicians developed, sometimes much earlier, simply to investigate a pattern; for Emmy Noether was a highly creative algebraist. She taught at the University of Göttingen in Germany, but as a Jew was forced to leave in 1933. She died in the US in 1935, aged 53. Physicists’ mathematical models of nature have great predictive power. Mathematics must be a true (if partial) description of the universe. Mathematics is an abstract, concise, symbolic language of quantity, pattern, symmetry, and change. 32 BODIES SUFFER NO RESISTANCE BUT FROM THE AIR FREE FALLING W hen gravity is the only force acting on a moving object, it is said to be in “free fall.” A skydiver falling from a plane is not quite in free fall— since air resistance is acting upon him—whereas planets orbiting the sun or another star are. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle believed that the downward motion of objects dropped from a height was due to their nature—they were moving toward the center of Earth, their natural place. From Aristotle’s time until the Middle Ages, it was accepted as fact that the speed of a free-falling object was proportional to its weight, and inversely proportional to the density IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) BEFORE c. 350 bce In Physics, Aristotle explains gravity as a force that moves bodies toward their “natural place,” down toward the center of Earth. 1576 Giuseppe Moletti writes that objects of different weights free fall at the same rate. AFTER 1651 Giovanni Riccioli and Francesco Grimaldi measure the time of descent of falling bodies, enabling calculation of their rate of acceleration. 1687 In Principia, Isaac Newton expounds gravitational theory in detail. 1971 David Scott shows that a hammer and a feather fall at the same speed on the moon. 33 See also: Measuring distance 18–19 ■ Measuring time 38–39 ■ Laws of motion 40–45 ■ Laws of gravity 46–51 ■ Kinetic energy and potential energy 54 Galileo Galilei The oldest of six siblings, Galileo was born in Pisa, Italy, in 1564. He enrolled to study medicine at the University of Pisa at the age of 16, but his interests quickly broadened and he was appointed Chair of Mathematics at the University of Padua in 1592. Galileo’s contributions to physics, mathematics, astronomy, and engineering single him out as one of the key figures of the Scientific Revolution in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. He created the first thermoscope (an early thermometer), defended the Copernican idea of a heliocentric solar system, and made important discoveries about gravity. Because some of his ideas challenged Church dogma, he was called before the Roman Inquisition in 1633, declared to be a heretic, and sentenced to house arrest until his death in 1642. of the medium it was falling through. So, if two objects of different weights are dropped at the same time, the heavier will fall faster and hit the ground before the lighter object. Aristotle also understood that the object’s shape and orientation were factors in how quickly it fell, so a piece of unfolded paper would fall more slowly than the same piece of paper rolled into a ball. Falling spheres At some time between 1589 and 1592, according to his student and biographer Vincenzo Viviani, Italian polymath Galileo Galilei dropped two spheres of different weight from the Tower of Pisa to test Aristotle’s theory. Although it was more likely to have been a thought experiment than a real-life event, Galileo was reportedly excited to discover that the lighter sphere fell to the ground as quickly as the heavier one. This contradicted the Aristotelian view that a heavier free-falling body will fall more quickly than a lighter one—a view that had recently been challenged by several other scientists. In 1576, Giuseppe Moletti, Galileo’s predecessor in the Chair of Mathematics at the University of Padua, had written that objects of different weights but made of the same material fell to the ground at the same speed. He also believed that bodies of the same volume ❯❯ MEASUREMENT AND MOTION Key works 1623 The Assayer 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 1638 Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences If gravity is the only force acting on a moving object, it is in a state of free fall. Bodies suffer no resistance but from the air. Unless it moves in a vacuum, air resistance and/or friction will slow it down. In a vacuum, its speed increases at a constant rate of acceleration, regardless of its size or weight. Nature is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her. Galileo Galilei 34 but made of different materials fell at the same rate. Ten years later, Dutch scientists Simon Stevin and Jan Cornets de Groot climbed 33 ft (10 m) up a church tower in Delft to release two lead balls, one ten times bigger and heavier than the other. They witnessed them hit the ground at the same time. The age-old idea of heavier objects falling faster than lighter ones was gradually being debunked. Another of Aristotle’s beliefs— that a free-falling object descends at a constant speed—had been challenged earlier still. Around 1361, French mathematician Nicole Oresme had studied the movement of bodies. He discovered that if an object’s acceleration is increasing uniformly, its speed increases in direct proportion to time, and the distance it travels is proportional to the square of the time during which it is accelerating. It was perhaps surprising that Oresme should have challenged the established Aristotelian “truth,” which at the time was considered FREE FALLING sacrosanct by the Catholic Church, in which Oresme served as a bishop. It is not known whether Oresme’s studies influenced the later work of Galileo. Balls on ramps From 1603, Galileo set out to investigate the acceleration of free- falling objects. Unconvinced that they fell at a constant speed, he believed that they accelerated as they fell—but the problem was how to prove it. The technology to accurately record such speeds simply did not exist. Galileo’s ingenious solution was to slow down the motion to a measurable speed, by replacing a falling object with a ball rolling down a sloping ramp. He timed the experiment using both a water clock—a device that weighed the water spurting into an urn as the ball traveled— and his own pulse. If he doubled the period of time the ball rolled, he found the distance it traveled was four times as far. Leaving nothing to chance, Galileo repeated the experiment “a full hundred times” until he had achieved “an accuracy such that the deviation between two observations never exceeded one- Fall of 1 ft (0.3 m) after 1 second Fall of 4 ft (1.2 m) after 2 seconds Fall of 9 ft (2.7 m) after 3 seconds Fall of 16 ft (4.9 m) after 4 seconds Fall of 25 ft (7.6 m) after 5 seconds Galileo showed that objects of different mass accelerate at a constant rate. By timing how long a ball took to travel a particular distance down a slope, he could figure out its acceleration. The distance fallen was always proportional to the square of the time taken to fall. In this fresco by Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Galileo is shown demonstrating his rolling-ball experiment in the presence of the powerful Medici family in Florence. Lighter ball Heavier ball 35 tenth of a pulse beat.” He also changed the incline of the ramp: as it became steeper, the acceleration increased uniformly. Since Galileo’s experiments were not carried out in a vacuum, they were imperfect— the moving balls were subject to air resistance and friction from the ramp. Nevertheless, Galileo concluded that in a vacuum, all objects—regardless of weight or shape—would accelerate at a uniform rate: the square of the elapsed time of the fall is proportional to the distance fallen. Quantifying gravitational acceleration In spite of Galileo’s work, the question of the acceleration of free- falling objects was still contentious in the mid-17th century. From 1640 to 1650, Jesuit priests Giovanni Riccioli and Francesco Grimaldi conducted various investigations in Bologna. Key to their eventual success were Riccioli’s time- keeping pendulums—which were as accurate as any available at the time—and a very tall tower. The two priests and their assistants dropped heavy objects from various levels of the 321-ft (98-m) Asinelli Tower, timing their descents. The priests, who described their methodology in detail, repeated the experiments several times. Riccioli believed that free-falling objects accelerated exponentially, but the results showed him that he was wrong. A series of falling objects were timed by pendulums at the top and bottom of the tower. They fell 15 Roman feet (1 Roman foot = 11.6 in) in 1 second, 60 feet in 2 seconds, 135 feet in 3 seconds, and 240 feet in 4 seconds. The data, published in 1651, proved that the distance of descent was proportional to the square of the length of time the object was falling—confirming Galileo’s ramp experiments. And for the first time, due to relatively accurate time- keeping, it was possible to work out the value of acceleration due to gravity: 9.36 (±0.22) m/s2. This figure is only about 5 percent less than the range of figures accepted today: around 9.81 m/s2. The value of g (gravity) varies according to a number of factors: it is greater at Earth’s poles than at the equator, lower at high altitudes than at sea level, and it varies very slightly according to local geology, for example if there are particularly MEASUREMENT AND MOTION dense rocks near Earth’s surface. If the constant acceleration of an object in free fall near Earth’s surface is represented by g, the height at which it is released is z0 and time is t, then at any stage in its descent, the height of the body above the surface z = z0 – 1/2 gt2, where gt is the speed of the body and g its acceleration. A body of mass m at a height z0 above Earth’s surface possesses gravitational potential energy U, which can be calculated by the equation U = mgz0 (mass  acceleration  height above Earth’s surface). ■ In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual. Galileo Galilei When Galileo caused balls … to roll down an inclined plane, a light broke upon all students of nature. Immanuel Kant German philosopher The hammer and the feather In 1971, American astronaut David Scott—commander of the Apollo 15 moon mission— performed a famous free-fall experiment. The fourth NASA expedition to land on the moon, Apollo 15 was capable of a longer stay on the moon than previous expeditions, and its crew was the first to use a Lunar Roving Vehicle. Apollo 15 also featured a greater focus on science than earlier moon landings. At the end of the mission’s final lunar walk, Scott dropped a 3-lb geological hammer and a 1-oz falcon’s feather from a height of 5 ft. In the virtual vacuum conditions of the moon’s surface, with no air resistance, the ultralight feather fell to the ground at the same speed as the heavy hammer. The experiment was filmed, so this confirmation of Galileo’s theory that all objects accelerate at a uniform rate regardless of mass was witnessed by a television audience of millions. 36 See also: Laws of motion 40–45 ■ Stretching and squeezing 72–75 ■ Fluids 76–79 ■ The gas laws 82–85 W hile investigating hydraulics (the mechanical properties of liquids), French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal made a discovery that would eventually revolutionize many industrial processes. Pascal’s law, as it became known, states that if pressure is applied to any part of a liquid in an enclosed space, that pressure is transmitted equally to every part of the fluid, and to the container walls. The impact of Pascal Pascal’s law means that pressure exerted on a piston at one end of a fluid-filled cylinder produces an equal increase in pressure on another piston at the other end of the cylinder. More significantly, if the cross-section of the second piston is twice that of the first, the force on it will be twice as great. So, a 2.2 lb (1 kg) load on the small piston will allow the large piston to lift 4.4 lb (2 kg); the larger the ratio of the cross-sections, the more weight the large piston can raise. Pascal’s findings weren’t published until 1663, the year after his death, but they would be used by engineers to make the operation of machinery much easier. In 1796, Joseph Bramah applied the principle to construct a hydraulic press that flattened paper, cloth, and steel, doing so more efficiently and powerfully than previous wooden presses. ■ A NEW MACHINE FOR MULTIPLYING FORCES PRESSURE IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) BEFORE 1643 Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli demonstrates the existence of a vacuum using mercury in a tube; his principle is later used to invent the barometer. AFTER 1738 In Hydrodynamica, Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli argues that energy in a fluid is due to elevation, motion, and pressure. 1796 Joseph Bramah, a British inventor, uses Pascal’s law to patent the first hydraulic press. 1851 Scottish–American inventor Richard Dudgeon patents a hydraulic jack. 1906 An oil hydraulic system is installed to raise and lower the guns of the US warship Virginia. Liquids cannot be compressed and are used to transmit forces in hydraulics systems such as car jacks. A small force applied over a long distance is turned into a larger force over a small distance, which can raise a heavy load. Large force Small force Small piston Large piston 37 See also: Laws of motion 40–45 ■ Kinetic energy and potential energy 54 ■ The conservation of energy 55 ■ Energy and motion 56–57 W hen objects collide, several things happen. They change velocity and direction, and the kinetic energy of motion may be converted to heat or sound. In 1666, the Royal Society of London challenged scientists to come up with a theory to explain what happens when objects collide. Two years later, three individuals published their theories: from England, John Wallis and Christopher Wren, and from Holland, Christiaan Huygens. All moving bodies have momentum (the product of their mass and velocity). Stationary bodies have no momentum because their velocity is zero. Wallis, Wren, and Huygens agreed that in an elastic collision (any collision in which no kinetic energy is lost through the creation of heat or noise), momentum is conserved as long as there are no other external forces at work. Truly elastic collisions are rare in nature; the nudging of one billiard ball by another comes close, but there is still some loss of kinetic energy. In The Geometrical Treatment of the Mechanics of Motion, John Wallis went further, correctly arguing that momentum is also conserved in inelastic collisions, where objects become attached after they collide, causing the loss of kinetic energy. One such example is that of a comet striking a planet. Nowadays, the principles of conservation of momentum have many practical applications, such as determining the speed of vehicles after traffic accidents. ■ MEASUREMENT AND MOTION MOTION WILL PERSIST MOMENTUM IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE John Wallis (1616–1703) BEFORE 1518 French natural philosopher Jean Buridan describes “impetus,” the measure of which is later understood to be momentum. 1644 In his Principia Philosophiae (Principles of Philosophy), French scientist René Descartes describes momentum as the “amount of motion.” AFTER 1687 Isaac Newton describes his laws of motion in his three-volume work Principia. 1927 German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg argues that for a subatomic particle, such as an electron, the more precisely its position is known, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa. A body in motion is apt to continue its motion. John Wallis 38 T wo inventions in the mid 1650s heralded the start of the era of precision timekeeping. In 1656, Dutch mathematician, physicist, and inventor Christiaan Huygens built the first pendulum clock. Soon after, the anchor escapement was invented, probably by English scientist Robert Hooke. By the 1670s, the accuracy of timekeeping devices had been revolutionized. The first entirely mechanical clocks had appeared in Europe in the 13th century, replacing clocks reliant on the movement of the sun, the flow of water, or the burning of a candle. These mechanical clocks relied on a “verge escapement mechanism,” which transmitted force from a suspended weight through the timepiece’s gear train, a series of toothed wheels. Over the next three centuries, there were incremental advances in the accuracy of these clocks, but they had to be wound regularly and still weren’t very accurate. In 1637, Galileo Galilei had realized the potential for pendulums to provide more accurate clocks. He found that A pendulum takes the same time to swing in each direction because of gravity. The longer the pendulum, the more slowly it swings. The smaller the swing, the more accurately the pendulum keeps time. An escapement mechanism keeps the pendulum moving. A pendulum is a simple timekeeping device. IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) BEFORE c. 1275 The first all- mechanical clock is built. 1505 German clockmaker Peter Henlein uses the force from an uncoiling spring to make the first pocket watch. 1637 Galileo Galilei has the idea for a pendulum clock. AFTER c. 1670 The anchor escapement mechanism makes the pendulum clock more accurate. 1761 John Harrison’s fourth marine chronometer, H4, passes its sea trials. 1927 The first electronic clock, using quartz crystal, is built. 1955 British physicists Louis Essen and Jack Parry make the first atomic clock. THE MOST WONDERFUL PRODUCTIONS OF THE MECHANICAL ARTS MEASURING TIME 39 Christiaan Huygens’ pendulum clock dramatically improved the accuracy of timekeeping devices. This 17th-century woodcut shows the inner workings of his clock, including toothed gears and pendulum. See also: Free falling 32–35 ■ Harmonic motion 52–53 ■ SI units and physical constants 58–63 ■ Subatomic particles 242–243 MEASUREMENT AND MOTION a swinging pendulum was almost isochronous, meaning the time it took for the bob at its end to return to its starting point (its period) was roughly the same whatever the length of its swing. A pendulum’s swing could produce a more accurate way of keeping time than the existing mechanical clocks. However, he hadn’t managed to build one before his death in 1642. Huygens’ first pendulum clock had a swing of 80–100 degrees, which was too great for complete accuracy. The introduction of Hooke’s anchor escapement, which maintained the swing of the pendulum by giving it a small push each swing, enabled the use of a longer pendulum with a smaller swing of just 4–6 degrees, which gave much better accuracy. Before this, even the most advanced non- pendulum clocks lost 15 minutes a day; now that margin of error could be reduced to as little as 15 seconds. Quartz and atomic clocks Pendulum clocks remained the most accurate form of time measurement until the 1930s, when synchronous electric clocks became available. These counted the oscillations of alternating current coming from electric power supply; a certain number of oscillations translated into movements of the clock’s hands. The first quartz clock was built in 1927, taking advantage of the piezoelectric quality of crystalline quartz. When bent or squeezed, it generates a tiny electric voltage, or conversely, if it is subject to an electric voltage, it vibrates. A battery inside the clock emits the voltage, and the quartz chip vibrates, causing an LCD display to change or a tiny motor to move second, minute, and hour hands. The first accurate atomic clock, built in 1955, used the cesium-133 isotope. Atomic clocks measure the frequency of regular electromagnetic signals that electrons emit as they change between two different energy levels when bombarded with microwaves. Electrons in an “excited” cesium atom oscillate, or vibrate, 9,192,631,770 times per second, making a clock calibrated on the basis of these oscillations extremely accurate. ■ Harrison’s marine chronometer In the early 18th century, even the most accurate pendulum clocks didn’t work at sea—a major problem for nautical navigation. With no visible landmarks, calculating a ship’s position depended on accurate latitude and longitude readings. While it was easy to gauge latitude (by viewing the position of the sun), longitude could be determined only by knowing the time relative to a fixed point, such as the Greenwich Meridian. Without clocks that worked at sea, this was impossible. Ships were lost and many men died, so, in 1714, the British government offered a prize to encourage the invention of a marine clock. British inventor John Harrison solved the problem in 1761. His marine chronometer used a fast-beating balance wheel and a temperature- compensated spiral spring to achieve remarkably accurate timekeeping on transatlantic journeys. The device saved lives and revolutionized exploration and trade. John Harrison’s prototype chronometer, H1, underwent sea trials from Britain to Portugal in 1736, losing just a few seconds on the entire voyage. ALL ACTION HAS A REACTION LAWS OF MOTION 42 P rior to the late 16th century, there was little understanding of why moving bodies accelerated or decelerated—most people believed that some indeterminate, innate quality made objects fall to the ground or float up to the sky. But this changed at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, when scientists began to understand that several forces are responsible for changing a moving object’s velocity (a combined measure of its speed and direction), including friction, air resistance, and gravity. Early views For many centuries, the generally accepted views of motion were those of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, who classified everything in the world according to its elemental composition: earth, water, air, fire, and quintessence, a fifth element that made up the “heavens.” For Aristotle, a rock falls to the ground because it has a similar composition to the ground (“earth”). Rain falls to the ground because water’s natural place is at Earth’s surface. Smoke rises because it is largely made of air. However, the circular movement of celestial objects was not considered to be governed by the elements—rather, they were thought to be guided by the hand of a deity. Aristotle believed that bodies move only if they are pushed, and once the pushing force is removed, they come to a stop. Some questioned why an arrow unleashed from a bow continues to fly through the air long after direct contact with the bow has ceased, but Aristotle’s views went largely unchallenged for more than two millennia. In 1543, Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus published his theory that Earth was not the center of the universe, but that it and the other planets orbited the sun in a “heliocentric” system. Between 1609 and 1619, German astronomer Johannes Kepler developed his laws of planetary motion, which describe the shape and speed of the orbits of planets. Then, in the 1630s, Galileo challenged Aristotle’s views on falling objects, explained that a loosed arrow continues to fly Gottfried Leibniz Born in Leipzig (now Germany) in 1646, Leibniz was a great philosopher, mathematician, and physicist. After studying philosophy at the University of Leipzig, he met Christiaan Huygens in Paris and determined to teach himself math and physics. He became a political adviser, historian, and librarian to the royal House of Brunswick in Hanover in 1676, a role that gave him the opportunity to work on a broad range of projects, including the development of infinitesimal calculus. However, he was also accused of having seen Newton’s unpublished ideas and passing them off as his own. Although it was later generally accepted that Leibniz had arrived at his ideas independently, he never managed to shake off the scandal during his lifetime. He died in Hanover in 1716. LAWS OF MOTION Key works 1684 “Nova methodus pro maximis et minimis” (“New method for maximums and minimums”) 1687 Essay on Dynamics IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURES Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), Isaac Newton (1642–1727) BEFORE c. 330 bce In Physics, Aristotle expounds his theory that it takes force to produce motion. 1638 Galileo’s Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences is published. It is later described by Albert Einstein as anticipating the work of Leibniz and Newton. 1644 René Descartes publishes Principles in Philosophy, which includes laws of motion. AFTER 1827–1833 William Rowan Hamilton establishes that objects tend to move along the path that requires the least energy. 1907–1915 Einstein proposes his theory of general relativity. 43 because of inertia, and described the role of friction in bringing to a halt a book sliding across a table. These scientists laid the basis for French philosopher René Descartes and German polymath Gottfried Leibniz to formulate their own ideas about motion, and for English physicist Isaac Newton to draw all the threads together in Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia). A new understanding In Principles in Philosophy, Descartes proposed his three laws of motion, which rejected Aristotle’s views of motion and a divinely guided universe, and explained motion in terms of forces, momentum, and collisions. In his 1687 Essay on Dynamics, Leibniz produced a critique of Descartes’ laws of motion. Realizing that many of Descartes’ criticisms of Aristotle were justified, Leibniz went on to develop his own theories on “dynamics,” his term for motion and impact, during the 1690s. Leibniz’s work remained unfinished, and he was possibly put off after reading Newton’s See also: Free falling 32–35 ■ Laws of gravity 46–51 ■ Kinetic energy and potential energy 54 ■ Energy and motion 56–57 ■ The heavens 270–271 ■ Models of the universe 272–273 ■ From classical to special relativity 274 MEASUREMENT AND MOTION Objects move at a constant speed and direction, or remain at rest unless acted on by an external force. Unless it moves in a vacuum, an object in motion is subject to friction, which slows it down. Acceleration is proportional to an object’s mass and the force applied to it. Movement does not occur because of inherent, invisible properties possessed by an object. Forces act upon the object, causing it to move or come to rest. These forces can be calculated and predicted. Space and time are best understood as being relative between objects, and not as absolute qualities that remain constant everywhere, all the time. thorough laws of motion in Principia, which—like Dynamics— was also published in 1687. Newton respected Descartes’ rejection of Aristotelian ideas, but argued that the Cartesians (followers of Descartes) did not make enough use of the mathematical techniques of Galileo, nor the experimental methods of chemist Robert Boyle. However, Descartes’ first two laws of motion won the support of both Newton and Leibniz, and became the basis for Newton’s first law of motion. Newton’s three laws of motion (see pp.44–45) clearly explained the forces acting on all bodies, revolutionizing the understanding of the mechanics of the physical world and laying the foundations for classical mechanics (the study of the motion of bodies). Not all of Newton’s views were accepted during his lifetime—one of those who raised criticisms was Leibniz himself—but after his death they were largely unchallenged until the early 20th century, just as Aristotle’s beliefs about motion ❯❯ There is neither more nor less power in an effect than there is in its cause. Gottfried Leibniz 44 had dominated scientific thinking for the best part of 2,000 years. However, some of Leibniz’s views on motion and criticisms of Newton were far ahead of their time, and were given credence by Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity two centuries later. Law of inertia Newton’s first law of motion, which is sometimes called the law of inertia, explains that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion with the same velocity unless acted upon by an external force. For instance, if the front wheel of a bicycle being ridden at speed hits a large rock, the bike is acted upon by an external force, causing it to stop. Unfortunately for the cyclist, he or she will not have been acted upon by the same force and will continue in motion—over the handlebars. For the first time, Newton’s law enabled accurate predictions of motion to be made. Force is defined as a push or pull exerted on one object by another and is measured in Newtons (denoted N, where 1 N is the force required to give a 1 kg mass an acceleration of 1 m/s²). If the strength of all the forces on an object are known, it is possible to calculate the net external force— the combined total of the external forces—expressed as ∑ F (∑ stands for “sum of”). For example, if a ball has a force of 23 N pushing it left, and a force of 12 N pushing it right, ∑F = 11 N in a leftward direction. It is not quite as simple as this, since the downward force of gravity will also be acting on the ball, so horizontal and vertical net forces also need to be taken into account. There are other factors at play. Newton’s first law states that a moving object that is not acted upon by outside forces should continue to move in a straight line at a constant velocity. But when a ball is rolled across the floor, for LAWS OF MOTION example, why does it eventually stop? In fact, as the ball rolls it experiences an outside force: friction, which causes it to decelerate. According to Newton’s second law, an object will accelerate in the direction of the net force. Since the force of friction is opposite to the direction of travel, this acceleration causes the object to slow and eventually stop. In interstellar space, a spacecraft will continue to move at the same velocity because of an absence of friction and air resistance—unless it is accelerated by the gravitational field of a planet or star, for example. Change is proportional Newton’s second law is one of the most important in physics, and describes how much an object accelerates when a given net force is applied to it. It states that the rate of change of a body’s momentum—the product of its mass and velocity—is proportional to the force applied, and takes place in the direction of the applied force. This can be expressed as ∑F = ma, where F is the net force, a is the acceleration of the object in the direction of the net force, and m is its mass. If the force increases, so does acceleration. Also, the rate of change of momentum is inversely proportional to the mass of the Two rockets with different masses but identical engines will accelerate at different rates. The smaller rocket will accelerate more quickly due to its lower mass. High mass, low acceleration The bicycle is in motion due to the force supplied by the pedalling of the rider, until the external force of the rock acts upon it, causing it to stop. Forward motion Bicycle in motion due to force supplied by rider’s pedaling being greater than friction and drag (air resistance) Rider flies over handlebars, since he or she has not been acted on by the external force (the rock) Rock supplies external force, greater in quantity than bicycle’s forward motion, bringing bicycle to a stop Friction Low mass, high acceleration 45 object, so if the object’s mass increases, its acceleration decreases. This can be expressed as a = ∑F∕m. For example, as a rocket’s fuel propellant is burned during flight, its mass decreases and—assuming the thrust of its engines remains the same—it will accelerate at an ever-faster rate. Equal action and reaction Newton’s third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Sitting down, a pers	1,881,320
The Astronomy Book (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED GRAVITY EXPLAINS THE MOTIONS OF THE PLANETS FINALLY WE SHALL PLACE THE SUN HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE THE MOST TRUE PATH OF THE PLANET IS AN ELLIPSE AN EXACT SOLUTION TO RELATIVITY PREDICTS BLACK HOLES COSMIC EXPANSION IS ACCELERATING THE UNIVERSE IS EXPANDING IN ALL DIRECTIONS THE WAY TO THE STARS IS OPEN STARS ARE FACTORIES FOR THE CHEMICAL ELEMENTS THE SEARCH FOR EXTRATERRESTRIAL INTELLIGENCE IS A SEARCH FOR OURSELVES ASTRONOMY THE BOOK THE UNMOVING STARS GO UNIFORMLY WESTWARD RIPPLES THROUGH SPACETIME I FOUND THAT IT IS A COMET, FOR IT HAS CHANGED ITS PLACE A SLOW PROCESS OF ANNIHILATION OF MATTER DK LONDON SENIOR EDITOR Victoria Heyworth-Dunne US EDITOR Margaret Parrish SENIOR ART EDITORS Gillian Andrews, Nicola Rodway MANAGING EDITOR Gareth Jones SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR Lee Griffiths ART DIRECTOR Karen Self ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf SENIOR JACKET DESIGNER Mark Cavanagh JACKET EDITOR Claire Gell JACKETS DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT First American Edition, 2017 Published in the United States by DK Publishing, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2017 Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC 17 18 19 20 21 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001—283974—Sep/2017 All rights reserved. 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For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 SpecialSales@dk.com Printed in China A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com PRE-PRODUCTION PRODUCER Jacqueline Street-Elkayam SENIOR PRODUCER Mandy Inness DK DELHI JACKET DESIGNER Suhita Dharamjit EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Priyanka Sharma SENIOR DTP DESIGNER Harish Aggarwal MANAGING JACKETS EDITOR Saloni Singh produced for DK by TALL TREE LTD. EDITORS Rob Colson, David John DESIGN Ben Ruocco ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham original styling by STUDIO 8 JACQUELINE MITTON, CONSULTANT EDITOR Jacqueline Mitton is the author of more than 20 books on astronomy, including books for children. She has been a contributor, editor, and consultant for many other books. Becoming an astronomer was Jacqueline’s childhood ambition. She studied physics at Oxford University and then earned her Ph.D. at Cambridge, where she still lives. DAVID W. HUGHES David W. Hughes is Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is an international authority on comets, asteroids, and the history of astronomy. He has spent more than 40 years explaining the joys of astronomy and physics to his students, and has published well over 200 research papers, as well as books on the moon, the solar system, the universe, and the Star of Bethlehem. He was a co-investigator on the European Space Agency’s GIOTTO space mission to Halley's Comet and also on ESA’s Smart 1 mission to the moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees, and has been a vice president of both the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. ROBERT DINWIDDIE Robert Dinwiddie is a science writer specializing in educational illustrated books on astronomy, cosmology, earth science, and the history of science. He has written or contributed to more than 50 books, including the DK titles Universe, Space, The Stars, Science, Ocean, Earth, and Violent Earth. He lives in southwest London and enjoys travel, sailing, and stargazing. PENNY JOHNSON Penny Johnson started out as an aeronautical engineer, working on military aircraft for 10 years, before becoming a science teacher, and then a publisher producing science courses for schools. Penny has been a full-time educational writer for the last 15 years. TOM JACKSON Tom Jackson is a science writer based in Bristol, UK. He has written about 150 books and contributed to many others, covering all kinds of subjects from fish to religion. Tom writes for adults and children, mostly about science and technology, with a focus on the histories of the sciences. He has worked on several astronomy books, including collaborations with Brian May and Patrick Moore. CONTRIBUTORS 6 10 INTRODUCTION FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE 600 BCE–1550 CE 20 It is clear that Earth does not move The geocentric model 21 Earth revolves around the sun on the circumference of a circle Early heliocentric model 22 The equinoxes move over time Shifting stars 23 The moon’s brightness is produced by the radiance of the sun Theories about the moon 24 All matters useful to the theory of heavenly things Consolidating knowledge 64 A perfectly circular spot centered on the sun The transit of Venus 65 New moons around Saturn Observing Saturn’s rings 66 Gravity explains the motions of the planets Gravitational theory 74 I dare venture to foretell that the comet will return again in the year 1758 Halley’s comet 78 These discoveries are the most brilliant and useful of the century Stellar aberration 79 A catalog of the southern sky Mapping southern stars 26 The unmoving stars go uniformly westward Earth’s rotation 27 A little cloud in the night sky Mapping the galaxies 28 A new calendar for China The solar year 30 We have re-observed all of the stars in Ptolemy’s catalog Improved instruments 32 Finally we shall place the sun himself at the center of the universe The Copernican model THE TELESCOPE REVOLUTION 1550–1750 44 I noticed a new and unusual star The Tychonic model 48 Mira Ceti is a variable star A new kind of star 50 The most true path of the planet is an ellipse Elliptical orbits 56 Our own eyes show us four stars traveling around Jupiter Galileo’s telescope CONTENTS 7 URANUS TO NEPTUNE 1750–1850 84 I found that it is a comet, for it has changed its place Observing Uranus 86 The brightness of the star was altered Variable stars 87 Our Milky Way is the dwelling, the nebulae are the cities Messier objects 88 On the construction of the heavens The Milky Way 90 Rocks fall from space Asteroids and meteorites 92 The mechanism of the heavens Gravitational disturbances 94 I surmise that it could be something better than a comet The discovery of Ceres 100 A survey of the whole surface of the heavens The southern hemisphere 102 An apparent movement of the stars Stellar parallax 103 Sunspots appear in cycles The surface of the sun 104 A spiral form of arrangement was detected Examining nebulae 106 The planet whose position you have pointed out actually exists The discovery of Neptune THE RISE OF ASTROPHYSICS 1850–1915 112 Sodium is to be found in the solar atmosphere The sun’s spectrum 113 Stars can be grouped by their spectra Analyzing starlight 114 Enormous masses of luminous gas Properties of nebulae 116 The sun’s yellow prominence differs from any terrestrial flame The sun’s emissions 117 Mars is traversed by a dense network of channels Mapping Mars’s surface 118 Photographing the stars Astrophotography 120 A precise measurement of the stars The star catalog 122 Classifying the stars according to their spectra reveals their age and size The characteristics of stars 128 There are two kinds of red star Analyzing absorption lines 129 Sunspots are magnetic The properties of sunspots 130 The key to a distance scale of the universe Measuring the universe 138 Stars are giants or dwarfs Refining star classification 140 Penetrating radiation is coming from space Cosmic rays 141 A white hot star that is too faint Discovering white dwarfs 8 ATOMS, STARS, AND GALAXIES 1915–1950 146 Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter The theory of relativity 154 An exact solution to relativity predicts black holes Curves in spacetime 156 The spiral nebulae are stellar systems Spiral galaxies 162 Stars are dominated by hydrogen and helium Stellar composition 164 Our galaxy is rotating The shape of the Milky Way 166 A slow process of annihilation of matter Nuclear fusion within stars 168 A day without yesterday The birth of the universe 172 The universe is expanding in all directions Beyond the Milky Way 196 It took less than an hour to make the atomic nuclei The primeval atom 198 Stars are factories for the chemical elements Nucleosynthesis 200 Sites of star formation Dense molecular clouds NEW WINDOWS ON THE UNIVERSE 1950–1975 206 A vast cloud surrounds the solar system The Oort cloud 207 Comets are dirty snowballs The composition of comets 208 The way to the stars is open The launch of Sputnik 210 The search for interstellar communications Radio telescopes 212 Meteorites can vaporize on impact Investigating craters 213 The sun rings like a bell The sun’s vibrations 214 The data can best be explained as X-rays from sources outside the solar system Cosmic radiation 218 Brighter than a galaxy, but it looks like a star Quasars and black holes 178 White dwarfs have a maximum mass The life cycles of stars 179 The radio universe Radio astronomy 180 An explosive transition to a neutron star Supernovae 182 The source of energy in stars is nuclear fusion Energy generation 184 A reservoir of comets exists beyond the planets The Kuiper belt 185 Some galaxies have active regions at their centers Nuclei and radiation 186 The match of lunar and Earth material is too perfect The origin of the moon 188 Important new discoveries will be made with flying telescopes Space telescopes 9 268 Most of the universe is missing Dark matter 272 Negative pressures produce repulsive gravity Cosmic inflation 274 Galaxies appear to be on the surfaces of bubblelike structures Redshift surveys 276 Stars form from the inside out Inside giant molecular clouds 280 Wrinkles in time Observing the CMB 286 The Kuiper belt is real Exploring beyond Neptune 288 Most stars are orbited by planets Exoplanets 296 The most ambitious map of the universe ever A digital view of the skies 297 Our galaxy harbors a massive central black hole The heart of the Milky Way 298 Cosmic expansion is accelerating Dark energy 304 Peering back over 13.5 billion years Studying distant stars 306 Our mission is to land on a comet Understanding comets 312 The violent birth of the solar system The Nice model 314 A close-up view of an oddball of the solar system Studying Pluto 318 A laboratory on Mars Exploring Mars 326 The biggest eye on the sky Looking farther into space 328 Ripples through spacetime Gravitational waves 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 222 An ocean of whispers left over from our eruptive creations Searching for the Big Bang 228 The search for extraterrestrial intelligence is a search for ourselves Life on other planets 236 It has to be some new kind of star Quasars and pulsars 240 Galaxies change over time Understanding stellar evolution 242 We choose to go to the moon The Space Race 250 The planets formed from a disk of gas and dust The nebular hypothesis 252 Solar neutrinos can only be seen with a very large detector The Homestake experiment 254 A star that we couldn’t see Discovering black holes 255 Black holes emit radiation Hawking radiation THE TRIUMPH OF TECHNOLOGY 1975–PRESENT 260 A grand tour of the giant planets Exploring the solar system INTRODU CTION 12 T hroughout history, the aim of astronomy has been to make sense of the universe. In the ancient world, astronomers puzzled over how and why the planets moved against the backdrop of the starry sky, the meaning of the mysterious apparition of comets, and the seeming remoteness of the sun and stars. Today, the emphasis has changed to new questions concerning how the universe began, what it is made of, and how it has changed. The way in which its constituents, such as galaxies, stars, and planets, fit into the larger picture and whether there is life beyond Earth are some of the questions humans still endeavor to answer. Understanding astronomy The baffling cosmic questions of the day have always inspired big ideas to answer them. They have stimulated curious and creative minds for millennia, resulting in pioneering advances in philosophy, mathematics, technology, and observation techniques. Just when one fresh breakthrough seems to explain gravitational waves, another discovery throws up a new conundrum. For all we have learned about the universe’s familiar constituents, as seen through telescopes and detectors of various kinds, one of our biggest discoveries is what we do not understand at all: more than 95 percent of the substance of the universe is in the form of “dark matter” and “dark energy.” The origins of astronomy In many of the world’s most populated areas today, many of us are barely aware of the night sky. We cannot see it because the blaze of artificial lighting overwhelms the faint and delicate light of the stars. Light pollution on this scale has exploded since the mid-20th century. In past times, the starry patterns of the sky, the phases of the moon, and the meanderings of the planets were a familiar part of daily experience and a perpetual source of wonder. Few people fail to be moved the first time they experience a clear sky on a truly dark night, in which the magnificent sweep of the Milky Way arches across the sky. Our ancestors were driven by a mixture of curiosity and awe in their search for order and meaning in the great vault of the sky above their heads. The mystery and grandeur of the heavens were explained by the spiritual and divine. At the same time, however, the orderliness and predictability of repetitive cycles had vital practical applications in marking the passage of time. Archaeology provides abundant evidence that, even in prehistoric times, astronomical phenomena were a cultural resource for societies around the world. Where there is no written record, we can only speculate as to the knowledge and beliefs early societies held. The oldest astronomical records to survive in written form come from Mesopotamia, the region that was between and around the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in present-day Iraq and neighboring countries. Clay tablets inscribed with astronomical information date back to about INTRODUCTION Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. Galileo Galilei 13 1600 bce. Some of the constellations (groupings of stars) we know today have come from Mesopotamian mythology going back even earlier, to before 2000 bce. Astronomy and astrology The Babylonians of Mesopotamia were greatly concerned with divination. To them, planets were manifestations of the gods. The mysterious comings and goings of the planets and unusual happenings in the sky were omens from the gods. The Babylonians interpreted them by relating them to past experience. To their way of thinking, detailed records over long periods were essential to establish connections between the celestial and the terrestrial, and the practice of interpreting horoscopes began in the 6th century bce. Charts showed where the sun, moon, and planets appeared against the backdrop of the zodiac at some critical time, such as a person’s birth. For some 2,000 years, there was little distinction between astrology, which used the relative positions of celestial bodies to track the course of human lives and history, and the astronomy on which it relied. The needs of astrology, rather than pure curiosity, justified observation of the heavens. From the mid-17th century onward, however, astronomy as a scientific activity diverged from traditional astrology. Today, astronomers reject astrology, because it is unfounded in scientific evidence, but they have good reason to be grateful to the astrologers of the past for leaving an invaluable historical record. Time and tide The systematic astronomical observations once used for astrology started to become increasingly important as a means of both timekeeping and navigation. Countries had highly practical reasons—civil, as well as military — to establish national observatories, as the world industrialized and international trade grew. For many centuries, only astronomers had the skills and equipment to preside over the world’s timekeeping. This remained the case until the development of atomic clocks in the mid-20th century. Human society regulates itself around three natural astronomical clocks: Earth’s rotation, detectable by the apparent daily march of the stars around the celestial sphere to give us the day; the time our planet takes to make a circuit around the sun, otherwise known as a year; and the monthly cycle of the moon’s phases. The combined motion in space of Earth, the sun, and the moon also determines the timing and magnitudes of the oceanic tides, which are of crucial importance to coastal communities and seafarers. Astronomy played an equally important role in navigation, the stars acting as a framework of reference points visible from anywhere at sea (cloud permitting). In 1675, British King Charles II commissioned an observatory, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich, near London. The instruction to its director, the first Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, was to apply himself diligently to making the observations needed “for the perfecting of the art of navigation.” ❯❯ INTRODUCTION You have to have the imagination to recognize a discovery when you make one. Clyde Tombaugh 14 Astronomy was largely discarded as the foundation of navigation in the 1970s, and replaced by artificial satellites, which created a global positioning system. The purpose of astronomy The practical reasons for pursuing astronomy and space science may have changed, but they still exist. For example, astronomy is needed to assess the risks our planet faces from space. Nothing illustrated Earth’s apparent fragility more powerfully than the iconic images, such as “Earthrise” and “Blue Marble,” taken from space by Apollo astronauts in the 1960s. These images reminded us that Earth is a small planet adrift in space. As surface inhabitants, the protection afforded by the atmosphere and Earth’s magnetic field may make us feel secure, but in reality we are at the mercy of a harsh space environment, blasted by energetic particles and radiation, and at risk of colliding with rocks. The more we know about that environment, the better equipped we are to deal with the potential threats it presents. A universal laboratory There is another very important reason for doing astronomy. The universe is a vast laboratory in which to explore the fundamental nature of matter, and of time and space. The unimaginably grand scales of time, size, and distance, and the extremes of density, pressure, and temperature go far beyond the conditions we can readily simulate on Earth. It would be impossible to test the predicted properties of a black hole or watch what happens when a star explodes in an Earth-bound experiment. Astronomical observations have spectacularly confirmed the predictions of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. As Einstein himself pointed out, his theory explained apparent anomalies in Mercury’s orbit, where Newton’s theory of gravity failed. In 1919, Arthur Eddington took advantage of a total solar eclipse to observe how the paths of starlight deviated from a straight line when the light passed through the gravitational field of the sun, just as relativity predicted. Then, in 1979, the first example of a gravitational lens was identified, when the image of a quasar was seen to be double due to the presence of a galaxy along the line of sight, again as relativity had predicted. The most recent triumphant justification of Einstein’s theory came in 2015 with the first detection of gravitational waves, which are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, generated by the merging of two black holes. When to observe One of the main methods scientists use to test ideas and search for new phenomena is to design experiments and carry them out in controlled laboratory conditions. For the most part, however, with the exception of the solar system—which is close enough for experiments to be carried out by robots—astronomers have to settle for a role as passive collectors of the radiation and elementary particles that happen to arrive on Earth. The key skill astronomers have mastered is that of making informed choices about INTRODUCTION What a wonderful and amazing scheme have we here of the magnificent vastness of the universe. Christiaan Huygens 15 what, how, and when to observe. For instance, it was through the gathering and analysis of telescopic data that the rotation of galaxies could be measured. This, in turn, quite unexpectedly led to the discovery that invisible “dark matter” must exist. In this way, astronomy’s contribution to fundamental physics has been immense. Astronomy’s scope Up to the 19th century, astronomers could only chart the positions and movements of heavenly bodies. This led the French philosopher Auguste Comte to state in 1842 that it would never be possible to determine the compositions of planets or stars. Then, some two decades later, new techniques for the spectrum analysis of light began to open up the possibility of investigating the physical nature of stars and planets. A new word was invented to distinguish this new field from traditional astronomy: astrophysics. Astrophysics became just one of many specialisms in the study of the universe in the 20th century. Astrochemistry and astrobiology are more recent branches. They join cosmology—the study of the origin and evolution of the universe as a whole—and celestial mechanics, which is the branch of astronomy concerned with the movement of bodies, especially in the solar system. The term “planetary science” encompasses every aspect of the study of planets, including Earth. Solar physics is another important discipline. Technology and innovation With the spawning of so many branches of enquiry connected with everything in space, including Earth as a planet, the meaning of the word “astronomy” has evolved once again to become the collective name encompassing the whole of the study of the universe. However, one closely related subject does not come under astronomy: “space science.” This is the combination of technology and practical applications that blossomed with the establishment of the “space age” in the mid-20th century. Collaboration of science Every space telescope and mission to explore the worlds of the solar system makes use of space science, so sometimes it is hard to separate it from astronomy. This is just one example of how developments in other fields, especially technology and mathematics, have been crucial in propelling astronomy forward. Astronomers were quick to take advantage of the invention of telescopes, photography, novel ways of detecting radiation, and digital computing and data handling, to mention but a few technological advances. Astronomy is the epitome of “big science”—a large-scale scientific collaboration. Understanding our place in the universe goes to the heart of our understanding of ourselves: the formation of Earth as a life- supporting planet; the creation of the chemical building blocks from which the solar system formed; and the origin of the universe as a whole. Astronomy is the means by which we tackle these big ideas. ■ INTRODUCTION If astronomy teaches anything, it teaches that man is but a detail in the evolution of the universe. Percival Lowell FROM M TO SCIE 600 BCE–1550 CE YTH NCE 18 T he traditions on which modern astronomy is built began in ancient Greece and its colonies. In nearby Mesopotamia, although the Babylonians had become highly proficient at celestial forecasting using complicated arithmetic, their astronomy was rooted in mythology, and their preoccupation was with divining the future. To them, the heavens were the realm of the gods, outside the scope of rational investigation by humans. By contrast, the Greeks tried to explain what they observed happening in the sky. Thales of Miletus (c.624–c.546 bce) is regarded as the first in a line of philosophers who thought that immutable principles in nature could be revealed by logical reasoning. The theoretical ideas put forward two centuries later by Aristotle (384–322 bce) were to underpin the whole of astronomy until the 16th century. Aristotle’s beliefs Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, and both were influenced by the thinking of Pythagoras and his followers, who believed that the natural world was a “cosmos” as opposed to “chaos.” This meant that it is ordered in a rational way rather than incomprehensible. Aristotle stated that the heavenly realms are unchanging and perfect, unlike the world of human experience, but he promoted ideas that were consistent with “common sense.” Among other things, this meant Earth was stationary and at the center of the universe. Although it contained inconsistencies, his philosophy was adopted as the most acceptable overall framework of ideas for science and was later incorporated into Christian theology. Geometrical order Mathematically, much of Greek astronomy was based on geometry, particularly motion in circles, which were considered to be the most perfect shapes. Elaborate geometrical schemes were created for predicting the positions of the planets, in which circular motions were combined. In 150 ce, the Graeco–Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy, working in Alexandria, put together the ultimate compendium of Greek astronomy. However, by 500 ce, the Greek approach to astronomy had lost momentum. In effect, after Ptolemy, there were INTRODUCTION C.550 BCE C.530 BCE C.200 BCE C.150 CE 350 BCE C.220 BCE In Alexandria, Eratosthenes measures the circumference of Earth and estimates the distance to the sun. Pythagoras establishes a school in Croton, where he promotes the idea of a cosmos in which bodies move in perfect circles. In his On the Heavens, Aristotle outlines an Earth-centered model of the universe. Many of his ideas will dominate thinking for 2,000 years. Aristarchus of Samos proposes a sun-centered model of the universe, but his idea does not gain wide acceptance. Anaximander of Miletus produces one of the earliest attempts at a scientific explanation of the universe. Ptolemy writes the Almagest, which sets out an Earth-centered model of the universe that becomes widely accepted. 19 no significant new ideas in astronomy in this tradition for nearly 1,400 years. Independently, great cultures in China, India, and the Islamic world developed their own traditions through the centuries when astronomy in Europe made little progress. Chinese, Arab, and Japanese astronomers recorded the 1054 supernova in the constellation Taurus, which made the famous Crab nebula. Although it was much brighter than Venus, there is no record of its appearance being noted in Europe. The spread of learning Ultimately, Greek science returned to Europe via a roundabout route. From 740 ce, Baghdad became a great center of learning for the Islamic world. Ptolemy’s great compendium was translated into Arabic, and became known as the Almagest, from its Arabic title. In the 12th century, many texts in Arabic were translated into Latin, so the legacy of the Greek philosophers, as well as the writings of the Islamic scholars, reached Western Europe. The invention of the printing press in the mid-15th century widened access to books. Nicolaus Copernicus, who was born in 1473, collected books throughout his life, including the works of Ptolemy. To Copernicus, Ptolemy’s geometrical constructions failed to do what the original Greek philosophers saw as their objective: describe nature by finding simple underlying principles. Copernicus intuitively understood that a sun-centered method could produce a much simpler system, but in the end his reluctance to abandon circular motion meant that real success eluded him. Nevertheless, his message that physical reality should underpin astronomical thinking arrived at a pivotal moment to set the scene for the telescopic revolution. ■ FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE 499 CE 1025 C.1180 1279 1437 1543 Italian scholar Gerard of Cremona makes Arabic texts, including Ptolemy’s Almagest, accessible in Europe by translating them into Latin. Chinese astronomer Guo Shoujing produces an accurate measurement of the length of the solar year. Mongol ruler Ulugh Beg corrects many of the postions of stars found in the Almagest. Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham produces a work that criticizes the Ptolomaic model of the universe for its complexity. In the Aryabhatiya, Indian astronomer Aryabhata suggests that the stars move across the sky because Earth is rotating. Nicolaus Copernicus’s book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is published, outlining a sun-centered cosmos. It is the duty of an astronomer to compose the history of the celestial motions through careful and expert study. Nicolaus Copernicus 20 See also: Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Gravitational theory 66–73 O ne of the most influential of all Western philosophers, Aristotle, from Macedonia in northern Greece, believed that the universe was governed by physical laws. He attempted to explain these through deduction, philosophy, and logic. Aristotle observed that the positions of the stars appeared to be fixed in relation to each other, and that their brightness never changed. The constellations always stayed the same, and spun daily around Earth. The moon, sun, and planets, too, appeared to move in unchanging orbits around Earth. Their motion, he believed, was circular and their speed constant. His observations of the shadow cast by Earth on the moon’s surface during a lunar eclipse convinced him that Earth was a sphere. His conclusion was that a spherical Earth remained stationary in space, never spinning or changing its position, while the cosmos spun eternally around it. Earth was an unmoving object at the center of the universe. Aristotle believed that Earth’s atmosphere, too, was stationary. At the top of the atmosphere, friction occurred between the atmospheric gases and the rotating sky above. Episodic emanations of gases from volcanoes rose to the top of the atmosphere. Ignited by friction, these gases produced comets, and, if ignited quickly, they produced shooting stars. His reasoning remained widely accepted until the 16th century. ■ IT IS CLEAR THAT EARTH DOES NOT MOVE THE GEOCENTRIC MODEL IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Aristotle (384–322 bce) BEFORE 465 bce Greek philosopher Empedocles thinks that there are four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. Aristotle contends that the stars and planets are made of a fifth element, aether. 387 bce Plato’s student Eudoxus suggests that the planets are set in transparent rotating spheres. AFTER 355 bce Greek thinker Heraclides claims that the sky is stationary and Earth spins. 12th century Italian Catholic priest Thomas Aquinas begins teaching Aristotle’s theories. 1577 Tycho Brahe shows that the Great Comet is farther from Earth than the moon. 1687 Isaac Newton explains force in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Earth casts a circular shadow on the moon during a lunar eclipse. This convinced Aristotle that Earth was a sphere. moon Earth’s shadow Earth sun’s rays 21 See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ Stellar parallax 102 A n astronomer and mathematician from the Greek island of Samos, Aristarchus is the first person known to have proposed that the sun, not Earth, is at the center of the universe, and that Earth revolves around the sun. Aristarchus’s thoughts on this matter are mentioned in a book by another Greek mathematician, Archimedes, who states in The Sand Reckoner that Aristarchus had formulated a hypothesis that “the fixed stars and sun remain unmoved” and “Earth revolves about the sun.” Unfashionable idea Aristarchus persuaded at least one later astronomer—Seleucus of Seleucia, who lived in the second century bce—of the truth of his heliocentric (sun-centered) view of the universe, but otherwise it seems his ideas did not gain wide acceptance. By the time of Ptolemy, in about 150 ce, the prevailing view was still a geocentric (Earth- centered) one, and this remained the case until the 15th century, when the heliocentric viewpoint was revived by Nicolaus Copernicus. Aristarchus also believed that the stars were much farther away than had previously been imagined. He made estimates of the distances to the sun and moon, and their sizes relative to Earth. His estimates regarding the moon were reasonably accurate, but he underestimated the distance to the sun, mainly because of an inaccuracy in one of his measurements. ■ FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE EARTH REVOLVES AROUND THE SUN ON THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF A CIRCLE EARLY HELIOCENTRIC MODEL IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Aristarchus (310–230 bce) BEFORE 430 bce Philolalus of Craton proposes that there is a huge fire at the center of the universe, around which the sun, moon, Earth, five planets, and stars revolve. 350 bce Aristotle states that Earth is at the center of the universe and everything else moves around it. AFTER 150 ce Ptolemy publishes his Almagest, describing an Earth-centered (geocentric) model of the universe. 1453 Nicolaus Copernicus proposes a heliocentric (sun-centered) universe. 1838 German astronomer Friedrich Bessel is the first to obtain an accurate measurement of the distance to a star, using a method known as parallax. Aristarchus was the real originator of the Copernican hypothesis. Sir Thomas Heath Mathematician and classical scholar 22 See also: Gravitational theory 66–73 ■ Halley’s comet 74–77 I n about 130 bce, the Greek astronomer and mathematician Hipparchus of Nicaea noticed that a star named Spica had moved 2o east of a point on the celestial sphere, called the fall equinox point, compared to its position recorded 150 years earlier. Further research showed him that the positions of all stars had shifted. This shift became known as “precession of the equinoxes.” The celestial sphere is an imaginary sphere surrounding Earth, in which stars are found at specific points. Astronomers use exactly defined points and curves on the surface of this sphere as references for describing the positions of stars and other celestial objects. The sphere has north and south poles, and a celestial equator, which is a circle lying above Earth’s equator. The ecliptic is another important circle on the sphere, which traces the apparent path of the sun against the background of stars over the course of the year. The ecliptic intersects the celestial equator at two points: the spring and fall equinox points. These mark the positions on the celestial sphere that the sun reaches on the equinoxes in March and September. The precession of the equinoxes refers to the gradual drift of these two points relative to star positions. Hipparchus put this precession down to a “wobble” in the movement of the celestial sphere, which he believed to be real and to rotate around Earth. It is now known that the wobble is actually in the orientation of Earth’s spin axis, caused by the gravitational influence of the sun and the moon. ■ THE EOUINOXES MOVE OVER TIME SHIFTING STARS IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Hipparchus (190–120 bce) BEFORE 280 bce Greek astronomer Timocharis records that the star Spica is 8° west of the fall equinox. AFTER 4th century ce Chinese astronomer Yu Xi notices and measures precession. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus explains precession as a motion of Earth’s axis. 1687 Isaac Newton demonstrates precession to be a consequence of gravity. 1718 Edmond Halley discovers that, except for the relative motion between stars and reference points on the celestial sphere, stars have a gradual motion relative to each other. This is because they are moving in different directions and at different speeds. Industrious, and a great lover of the truth. Ptolemy describing Hipparchus 23 See also: The Copernican model 32–39 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 T he Chief Astrologer at the court of Chinese emperor An-ti, Zhang Heng was a skilled mathematician and a careful observer. He cataloged 2,500 “brightly shining” stars and estimated that there were a further 11,520 “very small” ones. Also a distinguished poet, Zhang expressed his astronomical ideas through simile and metaphor. In his treatise Ling Xian, or The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe, he placed Earth at the center of the cosmos, stating that “the sky is like a hen’s egg, and is as round as a crossbow pellet, and Earth is the yolk of the egg, lying alone at the center.” Shape but no light Zhang concluded that the moon had no light of its own, but rather reflected the sun “like water.” In this, he embraced the theories of his compatriot Jing Fang who, a century earlier, had declared that “the moon and the planets are Yin; they have shape but no light.” Zhang saw that “the side that faces the sun is fully lit, and the side that is away from it is dark.” He also described a lunar eclipse, during which the sun’s light cannot reach the moon because Earth is in the way. He recognized that the planets were similarly subject to eclipses. Zhang’s work was developed further in the 11th century by another Chinese astronomer, Shen Kuo. Shen demonstrated that the waxing and waning of the moon proved that the moon and sun were spherical. ■ FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE THE MOON’S BRIGHTNESS IS PRODUCED BY THE RADIANCE OF THE SUN THEORIES ABOUT THE MOON IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Zhang Heng (78–139 ce) BEFORE 140 bce Hipparchus discovers how to predict eclipses. 1st century bce Jing Fang advances the “radiating influence” theory, stating that the light of the moon is the reflected light of the sun. AFTER 150 ce Ptolemy produces tables for calculating the positions of celestial bodies. 11th century Shen Kuo’s Dream Pool Essays explains that heavenly bodies are round like balls rather than flat. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus’s On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres describes a heliocentric system. 1609 Johannes Kepler explains the movements of the planets as free-floating bodies, describing ellipses. The sun is like fire and the moon like water. The fire gives out light and the water reflects it. Zhang Heng 24 ALL MATTERS USEFUL TO THE THEORY OF HEAVENLY THINGS CONSOLIDATING KNOWLEDGE I n his greatest known work, the Almagest, the Graeco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy produced a summary of all the astronomical knowledge of his time. Rather than producing radical new ideas of his own, Ptolemy mostly consolidated and built upon previous knowledge, particularly the works of the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, whose star catalog formed the basis of most of the calculations in the Almagest. Ptolemy also detailed the mathematics required to calculate the future positions of the planets. His system would be used by generations of astrologers. IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Ptolemy (85–165 ce) BEFORE 12th century bce The Babylonians organize the stars into constellations. 350 bce Aristotle asserts that the stars are fixed in place and Earth is stationary. 135 bce Hipparchus produces a catalog of over 850 star positions and brightnesses. AFTER 964 ce Persian astronomer al-Sufi updates Ptolemy’s star catalog. 1252 The Alfonsine Tables are published in Toledo, Spain. These list the positions of the sun, moon, and planets based on Ptolemy’s theories. 1543 Copernicus shows that it is far easier to predict the movement of the planets if the sun is placed at the center of the cosmos rather than Earth. Ptolemy’s model of the solar system had a stationary Earth at its center, with the heavens spinning daily around it. His model required complicated additions to make it match the data and allow it to be used to calculate the positions of the planets; nonetheless, it was largely unchallenged until Copernicus placed the sun at the center of the cosmos in the 16th century. The constellations devised by Ptolemy are used in this 17th-century star map. The number of stars per constellation ranges from two (Canis Minor) to 42 (Aquarius). 25 Ptolemy describes the design of his stone plinth in the Almagest. It was a quadrant, an instrument that measures angles between 0° and 90°. See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ Shifting stars 22 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE Ptolemy produced a catalog of 1,022 star positions and listed 48 constellations in the part of the celestial sphere known to the Greeks—everything that could be seen from a northern latitude of about 32o. Ptolemy’s constellations are still used today. Many of their names can be traced even further back to the ancient Babylonians, including Gemini (twins), Cancer (crab), Leo (lion), Scorpio (scorpion), and Taurus (bull). The Babylonian constellations are named on a cuneiform tablet called the Mul Apin, which dates back to the 7th century bce, however, they are thought to have been compiled about 300 years earlier. Early quadrant To improve his measurements, Ptolemy built a plinth. One of the earliest examples of a quadrant, his plinth was a huge rectangular block of stone, one of whose vertical sides accurately aligned in the north–south plane. A horizontal bar protruded from the top of the stone, and its shadow gave a precise indication of the height of the sun at noon. Ptolemy took daily measurements to obtain accurate estimates of the time of the solstices and equinoxes, which confirmed previous measurements showing that the seasons were different lengths. He believed that the orbit of the sun around Earth was circular, but his calculations led him to the conclusion that Earth could not be at the exact center of that orbit. Ptolemy the astrologist Like most thinkers of his day, Ptolemy believed that the movements of the heavenly bodies profoundly affected events on Earth. His book on astrology, Tetrabiblos, rivaled the Almagest in popularity over the following 1,000 years. Ptolemy had not only provided a means to calculate planetary positions, but he had also produced a comprehensive interpretation of the ways those movements affected humans. ■ Claudius Ptolemy Ptolemy was a polymath and produced works on a wide range of topics, including astronomy, astrology, geography, music, optics, and mathematics. Very little is known about him, but he probably spent all his life in Alexandria, the Egyptian seaport with a reputation for scholarship and a great library, where he was taught by the renowned mathematician Theon of Smyrna. Many of his prolific writings have survived. They were translated into Arabic and Latin, disseminating his ideas across the medieval world. Geography listed the locations of most of the places in the known world, and was carried by Christopher Columbus on his voyages of discovery in the 15th century. The Almagest remained in continual use in academia until about 1643, a century after Ptolemy’s model of the universe had been challenged by Copernicus. Key works c.150 ce Geography c.150 ce Almagest c.150 ce Tetrabiblos 0o 90o Sun’s height Horizontal bar Sun’s shadow Stone plinth Sun 26 See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 F rom the 4th century bce to the 16th century ce, the prevailing view throughout the Western world was that Earth is stationary and located at the center of the universe. Suggestions that Earth might be rotating were dismissed on the grounds that this would cause objects on Earth’s surface to fly off into space. In India, however, an astronomer named Aryabhata was convinced that the movement of stars across the night sky was due not to the stars revolving in a distant sphere around Earth, but to Earth itself rotating. An illusory movement According to Aryabhata, the stars were stationary and their apparent movement toward the west was an illusion. His notion of a spinning Earth was not widely accepted until the mid-17th century—a century after Nicolaus Copernicus had endorsed the idea. Aryabhata’s achievements were considerable. His book Aryabhatiya was the most important work of astronomy in the 6th century. Essentially a compendium of the fundamentals of astronomy and relevant mathematics, it greatly influenced Arabic astronomy. Among other achievements, Aryabhata calculated the length of the sidereal day (the time it takes Earth to rotate once in relation to the stars) to a high degree of accuracy, and devised original and accurate ways of compiling astronomical tables. ■ THE UNMOVING STARS GO UNIFORMLY WESTWARD EARTH’S ROTATION IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Aryabhata (476–550 ce) BEFORE 350 bce Heraclides Ponticus, a pupil of Plato, proposes that Earth rotates once a day on its axis. The idea does not become widespread because it contradicts Aristotle, who is considered more authoritative. 4th century bce Aristotle states that Earth is stationary in space. AFTER 950 ce Iranian astronomer al-Sijzi supports the idea that Earth rotates. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus states that Earth rotates as part of his heliocentric (sun-centered) model of the universe. 1851 The first demonstration of Léon Foucault’s pendulum in Paris provides the final scientific proof that Earth is rotating. He was the father of the Indian cyclic astronomy … that determines more accurately the true positions and distances of the planets. Helaine Selin Historian of astronomy 27 See also: Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ Examining nebulae 104–05 ■ Spiral galaxies 156–61 ■ Beyond the Milky Way 172–77 A bd al-Rahman al-Sufi, once better known in the West as Azophi, was a Persian astronomer who made the first record of what are now understood to be galaxies. To al-Sufi, these fuzzy, nebulous objects looked like clouds in the night’s sky. Al-Sufi made most of his observations in Isfahan and Shiraz, in what is now central Iran, but he also consulted Arab merchants who traveled to the south and east, and who saw more of the sky. His work centered on translating Ptolemy’s Almagest into Arabic. In the process, al-Sufi tried to merge the Hellenistic constellations (which dominate star maps today) with their Arab counterparts, most of which were totally different. The fruit of this labor was Kitab suwar al-kawakib, or the Book of Fixed Stars, published in 964 ce. The work contained an illustration of “a little cloud,” which is now know to be the Andromeda Galaxy. This object was probably known to earlier Persian astronomers, but al-Sufi’s mention is the earliest record. Similarly, The Book of Fixed Stars includes the White Ox, another cloudy object. This is now named the Large Magellanic Cloud and is a small galaxy that orbits the Milky Way. Al-Sufi would not have been able to observe this object himself, but would have received reports of it from astronomers in Yemen and sailors who crossed the Arabian Sea. ■ FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE A LITTLE CLOUD IN THE NIGHT SKY MAPPING THE GALAXIES IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (903–986 ce) BEFORE 400 bce Democritus suggests that the Milky Way is made of a dense mass of stars. 150 ce Ptolemy records several nebulae (or cloudy objects) in the Almagest. AFTER 1610 Galileo sees stars in the Milky Way using a telescope, confirming Democritus’s theory. 1845 Lord Rosse makes the first clear observation of a spiral nebula, now known as the Whirlpool Galaxy. 1917 Vesto Slipher discovers that spiral nebulae are rotating independently of the Milky Way. 1929 Edwin Hubble shows that many spiral nebulae are far beyond the Milky Way and are galaxies themselves. The Large Magellanic Cloud, seen here above the ESO’s Paranal observatory in Chile, can be easily observed with the naked eye from the southern hemisphere. 28 A NEW CALENDAR FOR CHINA THE SOLAR YEAR IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Guo Shoujing (1231–1314) BEFORE 100 bce Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty establishes the Chinese calendar based on a solar year. 46 bce Julius Caesar reforms the Roman calendar using a year-length of 365 days and 6 hours, and adds a leap day every four years. AFTER 1437 The Timurid astronomer Ulugh Beg measures the solar year as 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 15 seconds using a 164-ft (50-m) gnomon (the central column of a sundial). 1582 Pope Gregory adopts the Gregorian calendar as a reform of the ancient Julian calendar by using a 365.25-day year, the same year as Guo’s Shoushi calendar. T he traditional Chinese calendar is a complex blend of lunar and solar cycles, with 12 or 13 lunar months matched up to the solar-derived seasons. It had first been formalized in the 1st century bce during the Han Dynasty, and used a solar year of 365.25 days (365 days and 6 hours). China’s calculations were ahead of the West’s: 50 years later, this same period was used by Julius Caesar to create the Roman Empire’s Julian system. By the time the Mongol leader Kublai Khan conquered most of China in 1276, a variant of the original calendar, the Daming calendar, was in use, but was centuries old and in need of correction. The khan decided to impose his authority with a new, more accurate calendar, which became known as the Shoushi (“well-ordered”) calendar. The task of creating it was entrusted to Guo Shoujing, the khan’s brilliant Chinese chief astronomer. Measuring the year Guo’s job was to measure the length of the solar year, and to this end he set up an observatory in Khanbaliq (the “City of the Khan”), a new imperial capital that would one day become known as Beijing. The observatory may have been the largest anywhere in the world at the time. Working with mathematician Wang Chun, Guo began a series of observations tracking the motion of the sun throughout the year. A trained engineer, Guo Shoujing invented a water-powered version of an armillary sphere, which is an instrument used to model the positions of celestial bodies. 29 See also: Shifting stars 22 ■ Improved instruments 30–31 ■ Zu Chongzhi (Directory) 334 FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE The two men traveled widely, setting up another 26 observatories across China. In 1279, the pair announced that there were 29.530593 days to a month, and that the true solar year was 365.2524 days long (365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds). This is just 26 seconds longer than the current accepted measurement. Again, China was ahead of the West. The same figure was not independently measured and adopted for the universal Gregorian calendar in Europe until 300 years later. Enduring calendar A great technological innovator, Guo invented several new observational devices and made enhancements to the Persian equipment that had begun to arrive in China under Kublai Khan’s rule. Most importantly, he built a giant gnomon to a height of 44 ft (13.3 m), which was five times taller than the previous Persian design and featured a horizontal crossbar marked with measurements. This allowed Guo to measure the angle of the sun with far greater accuracy. The Shoushi calendar was widely regarded as the most accurate calendar in the world at the time. As a testament to its success, it continued to be used for 363 years, making it the longest- Guo Shoujing Guo Shoujing was born into a poor family in the north of China, in the years when the Mongols were consolidating their control over the region. A child prodigy who had built a highly advanced water clock by the age of 14, Guo was taught mathematics, astronomy, and hydraulics by his grandfather. He became an engineer, working for the emperor’s chief architect Liu Bingzhong. In the late 1250s, Kublai Khan took the throne and chose the region around the town of Dadu near the Yellow River to build the new capital of Khanbaliq, now known as Beijing. Guo was tasked with building a canal to bring spring water from the mountains to the new city. In the 1290s, Guo—by now the khan’s chief science and engineering adviser—connected Khanbaliq to the ancient Grand Canal system that linked to the Yangtze and other major rivers. In addition to continuing his astronomical work, Guo oversaw similar irrigation and canal projects across China, and his theoretical and technological innovations continued to influence Chinese society for centuries after his death. To measure the length of the year, better instruments must be created. There is a need to create a new calendar that matches the solar year. The calendar has 365 days and 6 hours in the year, but does not match the motion of the sun through the year. The solar year is found to be 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds. There is a new calendar for China. serving official calendar in Chinese history. China officially adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1912, but the traditional calendar, today known as the rural or former calendar, still plays a role in Chinese culture, determining the most propitious dates to hold weddings, family celebrations, and public holidays. ■ 30 WE HAVE RE-OBSERVED ALL OF THE STARS IN PTOLEMY’S CATALOG IMPROVED INSTRUMENTS IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Ulugh Beg (1384–1449) BEFORE c.130 bce Hipparchus publishes a star catalog giving the positions of more than 850 stars. 150 ce Ptolemy publishes a star catalog in the Almagest, which builds on the work of Hipparchus and is seen as the definitive guide to astronomy for more than a millennium. 964 ce Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi adds the first references to galaxies in his star catalog. AFTER 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus places the sun as the center of the universe, not Earth. 1577 Tycho Brahe’s star catalog records a nova, showing that the “fixed stars” are not eternal and do change. F or more than 1,000 years, Ptolemy’s Almagest was the world’s standard authority on star positions. Translated into Arabic, Ptolemy’s work was also influential in the Islamic world up until the 15th century, when the Mongol ruler Ulugh Beg showed that a lot of the Almagest’s data were wrong. A grandson of the Mongol conqueror Timur, Ulugh Beg was just 16 years old when he became ruler of the family’s ancestral seat at Samarkand (in present-day Uzbekistan) in 1409. Determined to turn the city into a respected place of learning, Ulugh Beg invited scholars of many disciplines from far and wide to study at his new madrasa, an educational institution. Ulugh Beg’s own interest was in astronomy, and it may have been his discovery of serious errors in the star positions of the Almagest that inspired him to order the building of a gigantic observatory, the largest in the world at the time. Located on a hill to the north of the city, it took five years to construct and was Ulugh Beg The name Ulugh Beg means “Great Leader.” The sultan– astronomer’s birth name was Mirza Muhammad Taraghay bin Shahrukh. He was born on the move, as Timur’s army traveled through Persia. His grandfather’s death in 1405 brought the army to a halt in western China. The ensuing fight for control of his lands was eventually won by Ulugh Beg’s father, Shah Rukh. In 1409, Ulugh Beg was sent to Samarkand as his father’s regent, and by 1411, as he turned 18, his rule over the city was extended to include the surrounding province. Ulugh Beg’s flair for mathematics and astronomy was not matched by his leadership skills. When Shah Rukh died in 1447, Ulugh Beg assumed the imperial throne, but he did not command enough authority to keep it. In 1449, he was beheaded by his own son. Key work 1437 Zij-i Sultani 31 See also: Shifting stars 22 ■ Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ Mapping the galaxies 27 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE completed in 1429. It was there, with his team of astronomers and mathematicians, that he set about compiling a new star catalog. Giant instruments Ptolemy’s catalog had largely been derived from the work of Hipparchus, and many of its star positions were not based on fresh observations. To measure accurately, Ulugh Beg built the observatory on an immense scale. Its most impressive instrument was the so-called Fakhri sextant. In fact, more like a quadrant (a quarter-circle rather than a sixth), it is estimated to have had a radius of more than 130 ft (40 m) and would have been three stories high. The instrument was kept underground to protect it from earthquakes and rested in a curved trench along the north– south meridian. As the sun and the moon passed overhead, their light focused into the dark trench, and their positions could be All that remains of the Fakhri sextant is a 6½-ft (2-m) wide trench gouged in a hillside. The observatory was destroyed after Ulugh Beg’s death in 1449 and not discovered until 1908. The religions disperse, kingdoms fall apart, but works of science remain for all ages. Ulugh Beg A precisely built sextant in a protected location gives more accurate measurements. The understanding of astronomy is based on the study of the work of past scholars. With better instruments, the work of past astronomers is often found to contain errors. measured to within a few hundredths of a degree, as could the positions of the stars. In 1437, Zij-i Sultani (“The Sultan’s Catalog of Stars”) was published. Of the 1,022 stars included in the Almagest, Ulugh Beg corrected the positions of 922. Zij-i Sultani also contained new measurements for the solar year, planetary motion, and the axial tilt of Earth. These data became very important, enabling the prediction of eclipses, the time of sunrise and sunset, and the altitude of celestial bodies, which were needed to navigate. Ulugh Beg’s work remained the definitive star catalog until Tycho Brahe’s, nearly 200 years later. ■ FINALLY WE SHALL PLACE THE SUN HIMSELF AT THE CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE THE COPERNICAN MODEL 34 T o most people in mid-15th century Europe, questions about Earth’s place in the cosmos had been answered in the 2nd century by the Greco- Egyptian mathematician Ptolemy, who had modified ideas first put forward by Aristotle. These ideas placed Earth at the center of the cosmos, and they carried an official stamp of approval from the Church. Yet the first convincing challenge to this orthodoxy was to come from a figure within the Church, the Polish canon Nicolaus Copernicus. A stationary Earth According to the version of the universe described by Aristotle and Ptolemy, Earth was a stationary point at the center of the universe, with everything else circling around it, and stars were fixed in a large, invisible, distant sphere, which rotated rapidly around Earth. The sun, moon, and planets also revolved at different speeds around Earth. This idea of the universe seemed like common sense. After all, one only had to stand outside and look up at the sky, and it appeared obvious that THE COPERNICAN MODEL Earth stayed in one place, while everything else rose in the east, swung across the sky, and set in the west. Furthermore, the Bible seemed to state that the sun moves, whereas Earth does not, so anyone who contradicted this view risked being accused of heresy. Nagging doubts The Earth-centered, or geocentric, model of the universe had never convinced everyone—in fact, doubts about it had surfaced from time to time for more than 1,800 years. The most serious IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) BEFORE c.350 bce Aristotle places Earth at the center of the universe. c.270 bce Aristarchus proposes a sun-centered (heliocentric) universe, with the stars a vast distance away. c.150 ce Ptolemy publishes the Almagest. AFTER 1576 English astronomer Thomas Digges suggests modifying the Copernican system, removing its outer edge and replacing it with a star-filled unbound space. 1605 Johannes Kepler discovers that orbits are elliptical. 1610 Galileo Galilei discovers the phases of Venus, and Jupiter’s moons, strengthening the heliocentric viewpoint. Of all discoveries and opinions, none may have exerted a greater effect on the human spirit than the doctrine of Copernicus. Johann von Goethe Nicolaus Copernicus Nicolaus Copernicus was born in Torun, Poland, in 1473. From 1491 to 1495, he studied mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy at the University of Kraków, then from 1496, canon (religious) law and astronomy at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 1497, he was appointed canon of the cathedral of Frombork, Poland, a post he retained for life. From 1501 to 1505, he studied law, Greek, and medicine at the University of Padua, Italy. Subsequently, he returned to Frombork, where he spent much of the rest of his life. By 1508, he had begun developing his sun-centered model of the universe. He did not complete this work until 1530, although he did publish a summary of his ideas in 1514. Realizing that he risked being ridiculed or persecuted, Copernicus delayed publishing the full version of his theory until the last weeks of his life. Key works 1514 Commentariolus 1543 De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) 35 concern related to predicting the movements and appearances of the planets. According to the Aristotelian version of geocentrism, the planets—like all other celestial bodies—were embedded in invisible concentric spheres that revolved around Earth, each rotating at its own steady speed. But if this were true, each planet should move across the sky at a constant pace and with an unvarying brightness—and this wasn’t what was observed. Ptolemy’s fixes The most glaring anomaly was Mars, which had been carefully observed in ancient times by both the Babylonians and the Chinese. It appeared to speed up and slow down from time to time. If its movements were compared to those of the rapidly rotating outer sphere of fixed stars, Mars usually moved in a particular direction, but occasionally it reversed direction— a strange behavior described as “retrograde motion.” In addition, its brightness varied greatly over the course of a year. Similar, but less dramatic, irregularities were also observed in the other planets. To address these problems, Ptolemy modified the original Aristotelian geocentric model. In his revised model, the planets were attached not to the concentric spheres themselves, but to circles attached to the concentric spheres. He called these circles “epicycles.” These were suborbits around which the planets circled while the central pivot points of these suborbits were carried around the sun. These modifications, Ptolemy thought, sufficed to explain the anomalies observed and matched observational data. However, his model became hugely complicated, See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ Early heliocentric model 21 ■ Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 ■ Galileo’s telescope 56–63 ■ Stellar aberration 78 ■ Al-Battani (Directory) 334 FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE Ptolemy tried to fix some of the anomalies in Aristotle’s geocentric model by proposing that each planet moved in a small circle called an epicycle. Each epicycle was embedded in a sphere called a deferent. Each planet’s deferent rotated around a point slightly displaced from Earth’s position in space. This point, in turn, continuously rotated around another point called an equant. Each planet had its own equant. In so many and such important ways, then, do the planets bear witness to the Earth’s mobility. Nicolaus Copernicus as further epicycles needed to be added to keep prediction in line with observation. Alternative views From about the 4th century bce, a number of astronomers had suggested theories refuting the geocentric model. One of these ideas was that Earth spins on its own axis, which would account for a large proportion of the daily movements of celestial objects. The concept of a rotating Earth had initially been put forward by a Greek, Heraclides Ponticus, in about 350 bce and later by various ❯❯ Earth Planet Center of deferent Equant Center of epicycle E p i c y c l e D ef er en t 36 Arabic and Indian astronomers. Supporters of geocentrism rejected his idea as absurd, believing a spinning Earth would create huge winds, such that objects on Earth’s surface would simply fly off. Another idea, first proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in about 250 bce, was that Earth might move around the sun. Not only did this go against deeply ingrained Aristotelian ideas, but supporters of geocentrism had also for centuries cited what seemed a scientifically valid reason for ruling it out—the “lack of stellar parallax.” They argued that if Earth moved around the sun, it would be possible to observe some variation in the relative positions of stars. No such variation could ever be detected so, they said, Earth could not move. THE COPERNICAN MODEL In his 1660 star atlas, German mapmaker Andreas Cellarius illustrated the cosmic systems of Ptolemy, Tycho Brahe, and Copernicus (shown here). All three still had their champions. In the face of such an established philosophical tradition with little observational evidence to contradict it, and the theological arguments in favor of it, the geocentric view of the universe went unchallenged for centuries. However, in about 1545, rumors began circulating in Europe of a highly convincing challenge that had appeared in the form of a book entitled De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres), by a Polish scholar, Nicolaus Copernicus. Copernican revolution The work was extremely comprehensive, and proposed a new, detailed, mathematical, and geometrical model of how the universe works, based on years of astronomical observations. Copernicus’s theory was based on a number of basic propositions. First, Earth rotates on its axis daily, and this rotation accounts for most of the daily movements of the stars, sun, and planets across the sky. Place the sun himself at the center of the universe. Ptolemy’s Earth- centered model of the universe relies upon complex adjustments to explain observed data. Copernicus’s sun-centered model explains the same data with far fewer adjustments. Copernicus believes his model is more elegant, and thus more likely to be correct. 37 Copernicus thought it was just too unlikely that thousands of stars were spinning rapidly around Earth every 24 hours. Instead, he considered them to be fixed and immovable in their distant, outer sphere, and that their apparent movement was actually an illusion caused by Earth’s spin. To refute the idea that a spinning Earth would create huge winds, and that objects on its surface would fly off, Copernicus pointed out that Earth’s oceans and atmosphere were part of the planet and were naturally part of this spinning motion. In his own words: “We would only say that not merely the Earth and the watery element joined with it have this motion, but also no small part of the air and whatever is linked in the same way to the Earth.” Second, Copernicus proposed that it is the sun that is at the center of the universe, not Earth, which is simply one of the planets, all of which circle the sun at differing speeds. Elegant solution These two central tenets of Copernicus’s theory were of utmost importance because they explained the movements and variation in brightness of the planets without recourse to Ptolemy’s complicated adjustments. If Earth and another planet, such as Mars, both circle the sun and do so at different speeds, taking a different amount of time to complete each revolution, they will sometimes be close to each other on the same side as the sun and sometimes far from each other, on opposite sides to the sun. This, at a stroke, explained the observed variations in brightness of Mars and the other planets. The heliocentric system also elegantly explained apparent retrograde motion. In place of Ptolemy’s ❯❯ FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE In the Ptolemaic model (top), Earth is at the center and other celestial bodies go around Earth. In the Copernican system (bottom), Earth together with the moon have swapped position with the sun; the sphere of the fixed stars is much farther out. Sun Venus Mercury Moon Earth Jupiter Saturn Mars Embedded “fixed” stars Sun Venus Mercury Moon Earth Jupiter Saturn Mars Outer sphere with embedded “fixed” stars 38 complicated epicycles, Copernicus explained that such motion could be attributed to changes in perspective caused by Earth and the other planets moving at different speeds. Distant stars Another of Copernicus’s tenets was that the stars are much farther away from Earth and the sun than had previously been believed. He said: “The distance between Earth and the sun is an insignificant fraction of the distance from Earth and sun to the stars.” Earlier astronomers knew that the stars were distant, but few suspected just how far away they were, and those who did, such as Aristarchus, had not managed to convince anyone. Even Copernicus probably never realized quite how far away the stars are—it is now known that the very closest are about 260,000 times more distant than the sun. But his assertion was extremely important because THE COPERNICAN MODEL of its implications for stellar parallax. For centuries, supporters of geocentrism had argued that the absence of parallax could only be due to Earth not moving. Now, there was an alternative explanation: the parallax was not absent, but because of the great distance to the stars, it was simply too tiny to be measured with the instruments of the time. Copernicus additionally proposed that Earth is at the center of the lunar sphere. Copernicus maintained that the moon circled Earth, as it did in the geocentric model. In his heliocentric model, the moon moved with Earth as it circled the sun. In this system, the moon was the only celestial object that did not primarily move around the sun. In the Ptolemaic model (left), the occasional retrograde (backward-moving) motion of Mars was regarded as due to loops that the planet makes in space. In the Copernican model (right), retrograde motion was caused simply by changes in perspective because Earth and Mars orbit the sun at different speeds. Earth would from time to time “overtake Mars on the inside” as shown here, causing Mars to reverse its apparent direction of movement for several weeks. Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place. Nicolaus Copernicus Earth Mars’s deferent Epicycle Mars Motion of Mars Mars’s orbit Earth’s orbit Earth Mars Sun View as seen from Earth 39 Though Copernicus’s work was widely circulated, it took a century or more before its basic ideas were accepted by most other astronomers, let alone the public at large. One difficulty was that, although it resolved many of the problems of the Ptolemaic system, his model also contained faults that had to be amended by later astronomers. Many of these faults were due to the fact that, for philosophical reasons, Copernicus clung to the belief that all the movements of celestial bodies occurred with the objects embedded in invisible spheres and that these movements must be perfect circles. This therefore forced Copernicus to retain some of Ptolemy’s epicycles in his model. The work of Johannes Kepler later replaced the idea of circular orbits with that of elliptical orbits, eliminating most of the remaining faults in Copernicus’s model. It wasn’t until the 1580s and the work of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe that the idea of celestial spheres was abandoned in favor of free orbits. Banned by the Church De revolutionibus initially met with little or no resistance from the Roman Catholic Church, although some Protestants denounced it as heretical. In 1616, however, the Catholic Church condemned Copernicus’s book and it remained proscribed reading for more than 200 years. The Church’s decision coincided with a dispute it was having at the time with the astronomer Galileo Galilei. Galileo was an avid champion of the Copernican theory and had made discoveries in 1610 that strongly supported the heliocentric view. The dispute with Galileo caused the Church authorities to examine De revolutionibus with intense scrutiny, and the fact that FROM MYTH TO SCIENCE Mars’s apparent retrograde motion occurs about every 26 months and lasts for 72 days. Its orbit is on a slightly different plane from Earth’s, contributing to the apparent loop. some of its propositions went against Biblical texts probably led to the ban. Viewed somewhat ambivalently at first by astronomers, and prohibited by the Catholic Church, Copernicus’s heliocentric model therefore took considerable time to catch on. Several centuries passed before some of its basic propositions were demonstrated to be true beyond dispute: that Earth moves in relation to the stars was eventually proved conclusively by English astronomer James Bradley in 1729. Proof that Earth spins came with the first demonstration of Foucault’s pendulum in 1851. Copernicus’s theory was a serious blow to old ideas about how the world and wider universe work—many of them dating from the time of Aristotle. As such, it is often cited as ushering in the “Scientific Revolution”—a series of sweeping advances in many areas of science that occurred between the 16th and 18th centuries. ■ I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid). Galileo Galilei THE TEL REVOLU 1550–1750 ESCOPE TION 42 T he Dane Tycho Brahe was the last great astronomer of the pre-telescope era. Realizing the importance of trying to record more accurate positions, Tycho built some high-precision instruments for measuring angles. He accumulated an abundance of observations, far superior to those available to Copernicus. Magnifying the image The realm of heavenly bodies still seemed remote and inaccessible to astronomers at the time of Tycho’s death in 1601. However, the invention of the telescope around 1608 suddenly brought the distant universe into much closer proximity. Telescopes have two important advantages over eyes on their own: they have greater light-gathering power, and they can resolve finer detail. The bigger the main lens or mirror, the better the telescope on both counts. Starting in 1610, when Galileo made his first telescopic observations of the planets, the moon’s rugged surface, and the star clouds of the Milky Way, the telescope became the primary tool of astronomy, opening up unimagined vistas. Planetary dynamics After Tycho Brahe died, the records of his observations passed to his assistant Johannes Kepler, who was convinced by Copernicus’s arguments that the planets orbit the sun. Armed with Tycho’s data, Kepler applied his mathematical ability and intuition to discover that planetary orbits are elliptical, not circular. By 1619, he had formulated his three laws of planetary motion describing the geometry of how planets move. Kepler had solved the problem of how planets move, but there remained the problem of why they move as they do. The ancient Greeks had imagined INTRODUCTION 1576 1600 1619 1639 1608 1610 Johannes Kepler describes the elliptical orbits of planets with his three laws of planetary motion. Italian friar Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake as a heretic after expressing a view that the sun and Earth are not central or special in the universe. Dutch eyeglass-maker Hans Lippershey applies for a patent for a telescope with three-times magnification. Using a telescope with 33-times magnification, Galileo Galilei discovers four moons orbiting Jupiter. Tycho Brahe builds a large observatory on the island of Hveen, from where he makes observations for 20 years. English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus across the face of the sun. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Isaac Newton 43 that the planets were carried on invisible spheres, but Tycho had demonstrated that comets travel unhindered through interplanetary space, seeming to contradict this idea. Kepler thought that some influence from the sun impelled the planets, but he had no scientific means to describe it. Universal gravitation It fell to Isaac Newton to describe the force responsible for the movement of the planets, with a theory that remained unchallenged until Einstein. Newton concluded that celestial bodies pull on each other and he showed mathematically that Kepler’s laws follow as a natural consequence if the pulling force between two bodies decreases in proportion to the square of the distance between them. Writing about this force, Newton used the word gravitas, Latin for weight, from which we get the word gravity. Improving telescopes Newton not only created a new theoretical framework for astronomers with his mathematical way of describing how objects move, but he also applied his genius to practical matters. Early telescope makers found it impossible to obtain images free from colored distortion with their simple lenses, although it helped to make the telescope enormously long. Giovanni Domenico Cassini, for example, used long “aerial” telescopes without a tube to observe Saturn in the 1670s. In 1668, Newton designed and made the first working version of a reflecting telescope, which did not suffer from the color problem. Reflecting telescopes of Newton’s design were widely used in the 18th century, after English inventor John Hadley developed methods for making large curved mirrors of precisely the right shape from shiny speculum metal. James Bradley, Oxford professor and later Astronomer Royal, was one astronomer who was impressed and acquired a reflector. There were also developments in lens-making. In the early-18th century, English inventor Chester Moore Hall designed a two-part lens that greatly reduced color distortion. The optician John Dollond used this invention to build much-improved refracting telescopes. With high-quality telescopes now widely available, practical astronomy was transformed. ■ THE TELESCOPE REVOLUTION 1659 1675 1676 1687 1705 1725 Dane Ole Rømer measures the speed of light by observing eclipses of Jupiter’s moon Io. Isaac Newton publishes Principia, in which he lays out his universal law of gravitation. English astronomer Edmond Halley predicts the return of the comet that now bears his name. Giovanni Domenico Cassini spots a gap in Saturn’s rings and concludes correctly that they are not solid. Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens correctly describes the shape of Saturn’s rings for the first time. James Bradley proves that Earth is moving by demonstrating an effect called stellar aberration. 44 I NOTICED A NEW AND UNUSUAL STAR THE TYCHONIC MODEL I n the 16th century, the exact orbits of the planets were a mystery. Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe realized that accurate observations would need to be taken over an extended period of time if this problem were to be solved. The need for better data was underlined by the fact that a conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in 1562, when Tycho was 17, occurred days away from the time predicted by the best available astronomical tables. Tycho undertook to take measurements along the entirety of the planets’ visible paths. The astronomy of Tycho’s time still followed the teachings that Aristotle had laid down nearly IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) BEFORE 1503 The most accurate star positions to date are recorded by Bernhard Walther at Nuremberg. 1543 Copernicus introduces the idea of a sun-centered cosmos, improving the prediction of planetary positions. These, however, are still inaccurate. AFTER 1610 Galileo’s use of the telescope starts a revolution that eventually supersedes naked-eye astronomy. 1620 Johannes Kepler completes his laws of planetary motion. 1670s Major observatories are established in all the capitals of Europe. 45 See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ Consolidating knowledge 24–25 ■ The Copernican model 32–39 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 ■ Hevelius (Directory) 335 1,900 years earlier. Aristotle had stated that the stars in the heavenly firmament were fixed, permanent, and unchanging. In 1572, when Tycho was 26, a bright new star was seen in the sky. It was in the constellation of Cassiopeia and stayed visible for 18 months before fading from view. Influenced by the prevailing Aristotelian dogma, most observers assumed that this was an object high in the atmosphere, but below the moon. Tycho’s careful measurements of the new object convinced him that it did not move in relation to nearby stars, so he concluded that it was not an atmospheric phenomenon but a real star. The star was later discovered to be a supernova, and the remnant of this stellar explosion is still visible in the sky as Cassiopeia B. The observation of a new star was an extremely rare event. Only eight naked-eye observations of supernovae have ever been recorded. This sighting showed that the star catalogs in use at the time did not tell the whole story. Greater precision was needed, and Tycho led the way. Precision instruments To accomplish his task, Tycho set about constructing a collection of reliable instruments (quadrants and sextants (p.31), and armillary spheres) that could measure the position of a planet in the sky to an accuracy of about 0.5 arcminute (± 1⁄120º). He personally measured planetary positions over a period of around 20 years, and for this purpose THE TELESCOPE REVOLUTION Tycho used his immense wealth to design and build fine instruments, such as this armillary sphere, which was used to model the night sky as seen from Earth. Careful measurement shows that the new star is not an atmospheric phenomenon. Careful measurements are the key to accurate models of the solar system. The appearance of a new star challenges Aristotle’s insistence that the stars never change. in 1576 he oversaw the building of a large complex on the small island of Hven in the Øresund Strait, between what is now Denmark and Sweden. This was one of the first research institutes of its kind. Tycho carefully measured the positions of the stars and recorded them on brass plates on a spherical wooden globe about 5 ft 3 in (1.6 m) in diameter at his observatory on Hven. By 1595, his globe had around 1,000 stars recorded on it. It could spin around a polar axis, and a horizontal ring was used so that stars positioned above the horizon at any given time could be distinguished from those below the horizon. Tycho carried the globe with him on his travels, but it was destroyed in a fire in Copenhagen in 1728. ❯❯ Further careful measurements of the Great Comet show that it is much farther away than the moon. 46 Further evidence of a changing cosmos came from Tycho’s observation of the Great Comet in 1577. Aristotle had claimed that comets were atmospheric phenomena, and this was still generally believed to be the case in the 16th century. Tycho compared measurements of the comet’s position that he had taken on Hven with those that had been taken at the same time by Bohemian astronomer Thaddaeus Hagecius in Prague. In both instances, the comet was observed in roughly the same place, but the moon was not, suggesting that the comet was much farther away. THE TYCHONIC MODEL Tycho Brahe’s observatory complex on the island of Hven attracted scholars and students from all over Europe between its founding in 1576 and its closure in 1597. Tycho’s observations of the way the comet moved across the sky over the months also convinced him that it was traveling through the solar system. This overturned another theory that had been believed for the previous 1,500 years. The great Graeco-Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy had been convinced that the planets were embedded in real, solid, ethereal, transparent crystalline spheres, and that the spinning of these spheres moved the planets across the sky. However, Tycho observed that the comet seemed to move unhindered, and he concluded that the spheres could not exist. He therefore proposed that the planets moved unsupported through space, a daring concept at the time. No parallax Tycho was also very interested in Copernicus’s proposition that the sun, rather than Earth, was at the center of the cosmos. If Copernicus was right, the nearby stars should appear to swing from side to side as Earth traveled annually on its orbit around the sun—a phenomenon known as parallax. Tycho searched hard, but could not find any stellar parallax. There were two possible conclusions. The first was that the stars were too far away, meaning that the change in their position was too small for Tycho to measure with the instruments of the day. (It is now known that the parallax of even the closest star is about 100 times smaller than the typical accuracy of Tycho’s observations.) The second possibility was that 47 Copernicus was wrong and that Earth did not move. This was Tycho’s conclusion. The Tychonic model In reaching this conclusion, Tycho trusted his own direct experience. He did not feel Earth moving. In fact, nothing that he observed convinced him that the planet was moving. Earth appeared to be stationary and the external universe was the only thing that appeared to be in motion. This led Tycho to discard the Copernican cosmos and introduce his own. In his model of the cosmos, all the planets except Earth orbited the sun, but the sun and the moon orbited a stationary Earth. For many decades after his death in 1601, Tycho’s model was popular among astronomers who were dissatisfied with Ptolemy’s Earth- centric system but who did not wish to anger the Catholic Church by adopting the proscribed Copernican model. However, Tycho’s own insistence on observational accuracy provided the data that would lead to his idea being discredited shortly after his death. His accurate observations helped Johannes Kepler THE TELESCOPE REVOLUTION Tycho Brahe Born a nobleman in 1546 in Scania (then Denmark, but now Sweden), Tyge Ottesen Brahe (Tycho is the Latinized version of his first name) became an astronomer after sighting a predicted solar eclipse in 1560. In 1575, King Frederick II gave Tycho the island of Hven in the Øresund Strait, where he built an observatory. Tycho later fell out with Frederick’s successor, Christian IV, over the potential transfer of the island to his children and closed the observatory. In 1599, he was appointed Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolph II in Prague. There, Tycho appointed Johannes Kepler as his assistant. Tycho was famed for his distinctive metal nose, the legacy of a duel he fought as a student. He died in 1601, allegedly of a burst bladder, having refused out of politeness to take a toilet break during a long royal banquet. Key work 1588 Astronomiæ Instauratæ Progymnasmata (Introduction to the New Astronomy) to demonstrate that the planets’ orbits are ellipses and to create a model that would displace both the Tychonic and Copernican models. Tycho’s improved measurements would also allow English astronomer Edmond Halley to discover the proper motion of stars (the change in position due to the stars’ motion through space) in 1718. Halley realized that the bright stars Sirius, Arcturus, and Aldebaran had, by Tycho’s time, moved over half a degree away from the positions recorded by Hipparchus 1,850 years earlier. Not only were the stars not fixed in the sky, but the changing positions of the closer stars could also be measured. Stellar parallax was not detected until 1838. ■ The Tychonic model kept Earth at the center of the cosmos as in the Ptolemaic model, but the five known planets were now orbiting the sun. Although he was impressed by the Copernican model, Tycho believed that Earth did not move. Outer ring of stars Sun Venus Mercury Moon Earth Jupiter Saturn Mars 48 MIRA CETI IS A VARIABLE STAR A NEW KIND OF STAR IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER David Fabricius (1564–1617) BEFORE 350 bce Greek philosopher Aristotle asserts that the stars are fixed and unchanging. AFTER 1667 Italian astronomer Geminiano Montanari notes that the star Algol varies in brightness. 1784 John Goodricke discovers Delta Cephei, a star that varies in brightness over five days; English astronomer Edward Pigott discovers the variable Eta Aquilae. 19th century Different kinds of variable star are discovered, including long-period variables, cataclysmic variables, novae, and supernovae stars. 1912 Henrietta Swan Leavitt discovers a relationship between the periods and the brightness of variable stars such as Delta Cephei. B efore the work of German astronomer David Fabricius, it was thought that there were only two types of star. The first were those of constant brightness, such as the 2,500 or so that can be seen with the naked eye above the horizon on a clear dark night. The second type were the “new stars,” such as those seen by Tycho Brahe in 1572 and Johannes Kepler in 1604. The constant stars were synonymous with the fixed, permanent stars in the ancient Greek cosmos—those that mapped out the patterns in the constellations and never changed. The new stars, by contrast, would appear unexpectedly, apparently from nowhere, then fade away, never to be seen again. A third kind of star While observing the star Mira Ceti (also called Omicron Ceti), in the constellation of Cetus the whale, Fabricius realized that there was a third type of star in the sky—one that regularly varied in brightness. He made his discovery in August 1596 as he was plotting the movement of Jupiter across the sky in relation to a nearby star. Mira Ceti is a variable star. The star Mira Ceti is observed to change in brightness periodically. Some stars are variable. Aristotle was wrong when he asserted that the stars are fixed and eternal. 49 An artist’s impression shows material flowing from Mira A (right) onto the hot disk around its companion white dwarf Mira B (left). The hot gas in the system emits X-rays. See also: The geocentric model 20 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Elliptical orbits 50–55 ■ Variable stars 86 ■ Measuring the universe 130–37 THE TELESCOPE REVOLUTION To Fabricius’s amazement, a few days later, the brightness of this star had increased by a factor of about three. After a few weeks, it disappeared from view altogether, only to reappear some years later. In 1609, Fabricius confirmed that Mira Ceti was a periodic variable star, showing that, contrary to the prevailing Greek philosophy that the cosmos was unchanging, stars were not constant. Working with his son Johannes, Fabricius also used a camera obscura to look at the sun. They studied sunspots, observing that the spots moved across the sun’s disk from east to west at a constant speed. They then disappeared, only to reappear on the other side, having been out of sight for the same time that it had taken them to move across the sun’s disk. This was the first concrete evidence that the sun rotated, providing further proof of the variable nature of heavenly bodies. However, the book they published on the subject in 1611 was mostly overlooked, and the credit for describing the movement of sunspots went to Galileo, who published his results in 1613. Double-star system It is now known that Mira Ceti is a double-star system 420 light-years away. Mira A is an unstable red giant star, about 6 billion years old and in a late phase of its evolution. It pulses in and out, changing not only its size but also its temperature. During the cooler part of its cycle, it emits much of its energy as infrared radiation rather than light, so its brightness diminishes dramatically. Mira B is a white dwarf star surrounded by a disk of hot gas that is flowing from Mira A. ■ David Fabricius David Fabricius was born in 1564 in Esens, Germany, and studied at the University of Helmsted. He later became a Lutheran pastor for a group of churches in Frisia. Together with his son Johannes (1587–1615), he was fascinated by astronomy and an avid user of early telescopes, which his son had brought back with him from a trip to the Netherlands. Fabricius corresponded extensively with Johannes Kepler, with whom Fabricius pioneered the use of a camera obscura to observe the sun. Little is known of Fabricius’s life beyond his letters and publications. He died in 1617 after he was struck on the head with a shovel by a local goose thief, whom he had denounced from the pulpit. Key work 1611 Narration on Spots Observed on the Sun and their Apparent Rotation with the Sun (with his son Johannes) In short, this new star signifies peace … as well as change in the [Holy Roman] Empire for the better. David Fabricius in a letter to Johannes Kepler THE MOST TRUE PATH OF THE PLANET IS AN ELLIPSE ELLIPTICAL ORBITS 52 ELLIPTICAL ORBITS Kepler’s most productive years came in Prague under the patronage of Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (r.1576–1612). Rudolf was particularly interested in astrology and alchemy. B efore the 17th century, all astronomers were also astrologers. For many, including German astronomer Johannes Kepler, casting horoscopes was the main source of their income and influence. Knowing where the planets had been in the sky was important, but of greater significance for constructing astrological charts was the ability to predict where the planets would be over the next few decades. To make predictions, astrologers assumed that the planets moved on specific paths around a central object. Before Copernicus, in the 16th century, this central body was thought by most to be Earth. Copernicus showed how the mathematics of planetary prediction could be simplified by assuming that the central body was the sun. However, Copernicus assumed that orbits were circular, and to provide any reasonable predictive accuracy, his system still required the planets to IN CONTEXT KEY ASTRONOMER Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) BEFORE 530–400 bce The works of Plato and Pythagoras convince Kepler that the cosmos can be explained using mathematics. 1543 Copernicus’s sun- centered cosmos helps astronomers to visualize a physical solar system but still gives no indication as to the true shape of a planetary orbit. 1600 Tycho Brahe convinces Kepler of the reliability of his planetary observations. AFTER 1687 Isaac Newton realizes that an inverse square law of gravitational force explains why the planets obey Kepler’s laws. 1716 Edmond Halley uses observations of the transit of Venus to convert Kepler’s ratios of planetary distance from the sun into absolute values. Kepler was never satisfied by a moderate agreement between theory and observation. The theory had to fit exactly otherwise some new possibility had to be tried. Fred Hoyle move around a small circle, the center of which moved around a larger circle. These circular velocities were always assumed to be constant. Kepler supported the Copernican system, but the planetary tables it produced could still easily be out by a day or two. The planets, the sun, and the moon always appeared in a certain band of the sky, known as the ecliptic, but actual paths of individual planets around the sun were still a mystery, as was the mechanism that made them move. Finding the paths To improve the predictive tables, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe spent more than 20 years observing the planets. He next tried to ascertain a path of each planet 53 through space that would fit the observational data. This is where the mathematical abilities of Kepler, Brahe’s assistant, came into play. He considered specific models for the solar system and the paths of the individual planets in turn, including circular and ovoid (egg-shaped) orbits. After many calculations, Kepler determined whether or not the model led to predictions of planetary positions that fit into Tycho’s precise observations. If there was not exact agreement, he would discard the idea and start the process again. Abandoning circles In 1608, after 10 years of work, Kepler found the solution, which involved abandoning both circles and constant velocity. The planets made an ellipse—a kind of stretched-out circle for which the amount of stretching is measured by a quantity called an eccentricity (p.54). Ellipses have two foci. The distance of a point on an ellipse from one focus plus the See also: The Copernican model 32–39 ■ The Tychonic model 44–47 ■ Galileo’s telescope 56–63 ■ Gravitational	811,531
The Business Book (Dorling Kindersley, Inc.) (Z-Library).pdf	THE BOOK BUSINESS THE BOOK BUSINESS LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, MUNICH, AND DELHI DK SENIOR EDITOR Sam Atkinson PROJECT ART EDITOR Amy Child EDITORS Scarlett O’Hara, Alison Sturgeon US EDITORS Margaret Parrish, Jane Perlmutter PICTURE RESEARCHER Sumedha Chopra MANAGING EDITOR Esther Ripley MANAGING ART EDITOR Karen Self PUBLISHER Sarah Larter ART DIRECTOR Phil Ormerod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf JACKET DESIGNER Laura Brim JACKET EDITOR Manisha Majithia JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia Tampakopoulos ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION Rebecca Fallowﬁeld PRODUCER Gemma Sharpe original styling by STUDIO8 DESIGN produced for DK by COBALT ID ART EDITORS Darren Bland, Paul Reid EDITORS Richard Gilbert, Diana Loxley, Sarah Tomley, Marek Walisiewicz First American Edition, 2014 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001 - 192364 - Feb/2014 Copyright © 2014 Dorling Kindersley Limited All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-4654-1585-1 Printed and bound in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd Discover more at www.dk.com IAN MARCOUSE, CONSULTANT EDITOR Ian Marcousé lectures in business and economics education at the Institute of Education in London. He has written a host of business text books for A-level and BTEC students, including the popular A–Z Business Studies handbooks, and is the founder and director of A–Z Business Training Ltd. PHILIPPA ANDERSON Philippa Anderson is a communications consultant and business writer who has authored articles, magazine features, and books on numerous aspects of business, from market research to leadership. She also provides communications consultancy for multinational ﬁrms, including 3M, Anglo American, and Coca-Cola. ALEXANDRA BLACK Alexandra Black studied business communications before embarking on a writing career that led her to Japan and stints with ﬁnancial newspaper group Nikkei Inc. and investment bank J. P. Morgan. She later worked for a direct marketing publisher in Sydney, Australia, before moving to Cambridge, UK. She writes on a range of subjects, from business to history and fashion. DENRY MACHIN Denry Machin is an associate tutor at Keele University, UK, and is working at doctoral research on the application of business thinking within education. He also works for Harrow International Management Services as projects manager, assisting in the development of Harrow School’s presence in Asia. He is the author of several business books, journals, and magazine articles. NIGEL WATSON Nigel Watson has taught business and economics for A-Level and International Baccalaureate students for 25 years. He has authored and co-authored books and magazine articles in both subjects. CONTRIBUTORS START SMALL, THINK BIG STARTING AND GROWING THE BUSINESS 20 If you can dream it, you can do it Beating the odds at start-up 22 There’s a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? Finding a proﬁtable niche 24 You can learn all you need to know about the competition’s operation by looking in his garbage cans Study the competition 28 The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows Stand out in the market 10 INTRODUCTION 58 Without continuous growth and progress, success has no meaning The Greiner curve 62 If you believe in something, work nights and weekends—it won’t feel like work The weightless start-up LIGHTING THE FIRE LEADERSHIP AND HUMAN RESOURCES 68 Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing Leading well 70 None of us is as smart as all of us The value of teams 72 Innovation must be invasive and perpetual: everyone, everywhere, all of the time Creativity and invention 74 Dissent adds spice, spirit, and an invigorating quality Beware the yes-men 76 No great manager or leader ever fell from heaven Gods of management 32 Be ﬁrst or be better Gaining an edge 40 Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket Managing risk 42 Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get Luck (and how to get lucky) 43 Broaden your vision, and maintain stability while advancing forward Take the second step 44 Nothing great is created suddenly How fast to grow 46 The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel From entrepreneur to leader 48 Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken Keep evolving business practice 52 A corporation is a living organism; it has to continue to shed its skin Reinventing and adapting CONTENTS 78 A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way Effective leadership 80 Teamwork is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results Organizing teams and talent 86 Leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do Make the most of your talent 88 The way forward may not be to go forward Thinking outside the box 90 The more a person can do, the more you can motivate them Is money the motivator? 92 Be an enzyme—a catalyst for change Changing the game 100 The worst disease that afﬂicts executives is egotism Hubris and nemesis 104 Culture is the way in which a group of people solves problems Organizational culture 110 Emotional intelligence is the intersection of heart and head Develop emotional intelligence 112 Management is a practice where art, science, and craft meet Mintzberg’s management roles 114 A camel is a horse designed by committee Avoid groupthink 115 The art of thinking independently, together The value of diversity MAKING MONEY WORK MANAGING FINANCES 120 Do not let yourself be involved in a fraudulent business Play by the rules 124 Executive ofﬁcers must be free from avarice Proﬁt before perks 126 If wealth is placed where it bears interest, it comes back to you redoubled Investment and dividends 128 Borrow short, lend long Making money from money 130 The interests of the shareholders are our own Accountability and governance 132 Make the best quality of goods at the lowest cost, paying the highest wages possible Your workers are your customers 138 Utilize OPM—Other People’s Money Who bears the risk? 146 Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom Ignoring the herd 150 Debt is the worst poverty Leverage and excess risk 152 Cash is king Proﬁt versus cash ﬂow 154 Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked Off-balance-sheet risk 155 Return on equity is a ﬁnancial goal that can become an own goal Maximize return on equity 156 As the role of private equity has grown, so have the risks it poses The private equity model 158 Assign costs according to the resources consumed Activity-based costing WORKING WITH A VISION STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS 164 Turn every disaster into an opportunity Learning from failure 166 If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses Leading the market 170 The main thing to remember is, the main thing is the main thing Protect the core business 172 You don’t need a huge company, just a computer and a part-time person Small is beautiful 178 Don’t get caught in the middle Porter’s generic strategies 184 The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do Good and bad strategy 186 Synergy and other lies Why takeovers disappoint 188 The Chinese word “crisis” is composed of two characters: “danger” and “opportunity” Crisis management 190 You can’t grow long-term if you can’t eat short-term Balancing long- versus short-termism 192 Market Attractiveness, Business Attractiveness The MABA matrix 194 Only the paranoid survive Avoiding complacency 202 To excel, tap into people’s capacity to learn The learning organization 208 The future of business is selling less of more The long tail 210 To be an optimist ... have a contingency plan for when all hell breaks loose Contingency planning 211 Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable Scenario planning 212 The strongest competitive forces determine the proﬁtability of an industry Porter’s ﬁve forces 216 If you don’t have a competitive advantage, don’t compete The value chain 218 If you don’t know where you are, a map won’t help The capability maturity model 220 Chaos brings uneasiness, but it also allows for creativity and growth Coping with chaos 222 Always do what is right. It will gratify half of mankind and astonish the other Morality in business 223 There is no such thing as a minor lapse in integrity Collusion 224 Make it easier to do the right thing and much harder to do the wrong thing Creating an ethical culture SUCCESSFUL SELLING MARKETING MANAGEMENT 232 Marketing is far too important to leave to the marketing department The marketing model 234 Know the customer so well that the product ﬁts them and sells itself Understanding the market 242 Attention, Interest, Desire, Action The AIDA model 244 Marketing myopia Focus on the future market 250 The cash cow is the beating heart of the organization Product portfolio 256 Expanding away from your core has risks; diversiﬁcation doubles them Ansoff’s matrix 258 If you’re different, you will stand out Creating a brand 264 There is only one boss: the customer Make your customers love you 268 Whitewashing, but with a green brush Greenwash 270 People want companies to believe in something beyond maximizing proﬁts The appeal of ethics 271 Everybody likes something extra for nothing Promotions and incentives 272 In good times people want to advertise; in bad times they have to Why advertise? 274 Make your thinking as funny as possible Generating buzz 276 E-commerce is becoming mobile commerce M-commerce 278 Trying to predict the future is like driving with no lights looking out of the back window Forecasting 280 Product, Place, Price, Promotion Marketing mix DELIVERING THE GOODS PRODUCTION AND POSTPRODUCTION 288 See how much, not how little, you can give for a dollar Maximize customer beneﬁts 290 Costs do not exist to be calculated. Costs exist to be reduced Lean production 294 If the pie’s not big enough, make a bigger pie Fulﬁlling demand 296 Eliminate unnecessary steps Simplify processes 300 Every gain through the elimination of waste is gold in the mine Juran’s production ideal 302 Machines, facilities, and people should work together to add value Kaizen 310 Learning and innovation go hand in hand Applying and testing ideas 312 Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning Feedback and innovation 314 Technology is the great growling engine of change The right technology 316 Without big data, you are blind and deaf and in the middle of a highway Beneﬁtting from “big data” 318 Put the product into the customer’s hands— it will speak for itself Quality sells 324 The desire to own something a little better, a little sooner than necessary Planned obsolescence 326 Time is money Time-based management 328 A project without a critical path is like a ship without a rudder Critical path analysis 330 Taking the best from the best Benchmarking 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION F rom the time that goods and services began to be traded in early civilizations, people have been thinking about business. The emergence of specialized producers and the use of money as a means of exchange were methods by which individuals and societies could, in modern terms, gain a “business edge.” The ancient Egyptians, the Mayans, the Greeks, and the Romans all knew that wealth creation through the mechanism of commerce was fundamental to the acquisition of power, and formed the base on which civilization could prosper. The lessons of the early traders resonate even today. Specialism revealed the beneﬁts of economies of scale—that production costs fall as more items are produced. Money gave rise to the concept of “value added”—selling an item for more than it cost to produce. Even when barter was the norm, producers still knew it was advantageous to lower costs and raise the value of goods. Today’s companies may use different technologies and trade on a global scale, but the essence of business has changed little in millennia. An era of change However, the study of business as an activity in its own right emerged relatively recently. The terms “manager” and “management” did not appear in the English language until the late 16th century. In his 1977 text The Visible Hand, Dr. Alfred Chandler divided business history into two periods: pre-1850 and post-1850. Before 1850 local, family-owned ﬁrms dominated the business environment. With commerce operating on a relatively small scale, little thought was given to the wider disciplines of business. The growth of the railroads in the mid-1800s, followed by the Industrial Revolution, enabled businesses to grow beyond the immediate gaze of friends or family, and outside the immediate locale. To prosper in this new—and increasingly international— environment businesses needed different, and more rigorous, processes and structures. The geographic scope and ever-growing size of these evolving businesses required new levels of coordination and communication—in short, businesses needed management. Managing production The initial focus of the new breed of manager was on production. As manufacturing moved from individual craftsmen to machinery, and as ever-greater scale was required, theorists such as Henri Fayol examined ever-more-efﬁcient ways of operating. The theories of Scientiﬁc Management, chieﬂy formulated by Frederick Taylor, suggested that there was “one best way” to perform a task. Businesses were organized by precise routines, and the role of the worker was simply to supervise and “feed” machinery, as though they were part of it. With the advent of production lines in the early 1900s, business was characterized by standardization and mass production. While Henry Ford’s Model T car is seen as a major accomplishment of industrialization, Ford also remarked “why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, they come with INTRODUCTION 12 The art of administration is as old as the human race. Edward D. Jones US investment banker (1893–1982) a brain attached?” Output may have increased, but so too did conﬂict between management and staff. Working conditions were poor and businesses ignored the sociological context of work—productivity mattered more than people. Studying people In the 1920s a new inﬂuence on business thinking emerged—the Human Relations Movement of behavioral studies. Through the work of psychologists Elton Mayo and Abraham Maslow, businesses began to recognize the value of human relations. Workers were no longer seen as simply “cogs in the machine,” but as individuals with unique needs. Managers still focused on efﬁciency, but realized that workers were more productive when their social and emotional needs were taken care of. For the ﬁrst time, job design, workplace environments, teamwork, remuneration, and nonﬁnancial beneﬁts were all considered important to staff motivation. In the period following World War II, business practice shifted again. Wartime innovation had yielded signiﬁcant technological advances that could be applied to commerce. Managers began to utilize quantitative analysis, and were able to make use of computers to help solve operational problems. Human relations were not forgotten, but in management thinking, measurability returned to the fore. Global brands The postwar period saw the growth of multinationals and conglomerates—businesses with multiple and diverse interests across the globe. The war had made the world seem smaller, and had paved the way for the global brand. These newly emerging global brands grew as a result of a media revolution—television, magazines, and newspapers gave businesses the means to reach a mass audience. Businesses had always used advertising to inform customers about products and to persuade them to buy, but mass media provided the platform for a new, and much broader, ﬁeld— marketing. In the 1940s US advertising executive Rosser Reeves promoted the value of a Unique Selling Proposition. By the 1960s, marketing methods had shifted from simply telling customers about products to listening to what customers wanted, and adapting products and services to suit that. Initially, marketing had its critics. In the early 1960s hype about the product became more important than quality, and customers grew dissatisﬁed with empty claims. This, and competition from Japanese manufacturers, had Western companies embracing a new form of business thinking: Total Quality Management (TQM) and Zero Defects management. Guided by management theorists, such as W. Edwards Demming and Philip B. Crosby, quality was seen as the responsibility of the entire company, not just those on the production line. Combining Human Relations thinking and the customer-focused approach of marketing, many companies ❯❯ INTRODUCTION 13 Entrepreneurship is about survival, which nurtures creative thinking. Business is not ﬁnancial science, it’s about trading—buying and selling. Anita Roddick UK entrepreneur (1942–2007) adopted the Japanese philosophy of kaizen: “continuous improvement of everything, by everyone.” Staff at all levels was tasked with improving processes and products through “quality circles.” While TQM is no longer the buzzword it once was, quality remains important. The modern iteration of TQM is Six Sigma, an approach to process improvement that was developed by Motorola in 1986 and adapted by Jack Welch during his time as CEO of General Electric. Gurus and thinkers Business history itself emerged as a topic of study in the 1970s. Dr. Alfred Chandler progressed the study of business history from the purely descriptive to the analytical—his course at Harvard Business School stressed the importance of organizational capabilities, technological innovation, and continuous learning. Taking their cue from Chandler, in the 1980s and 1990s management experts—such as Michael Porter, Igor Ansoff, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Henry Mintzberg, and Peter Drucker— encouraged businesses to consider their environments, to consider the needs of people, and to remain adaptable to change. Maintaining the conditions for business growth, and the correct positioning of products within their market, were considered key to business strategy. Moreover, what distinguished these gurus from their predecessors—who had tended to focus on operational issues—was a focus on leadership itself. For example, Charles Handy’s The Empty Raincoat revealed the paradoxes of leadership, and acknowledged the vulnerabilities and fragilities of the managers themselves. Leadership in the context of business, these writers recognized, is no easy undertaking. Digital pioneering Just as television and mass media had done before, the growth of the Internet in the 1990s and early 2000s heralded a new era for business. While early hype led to the failure of many online start-ups in the dot-com bubble of 1997 to 2000, the successful e-commerce pioneers laid the foundations for a business landscape that would be dominated by innovation. From high-tech garage start-ups—such as Hewlett-Packard and Apple— to the websites, mobile apps, and social-media forums of the modern business environment, technology is increasingly vital for business. The explosion of new businesses thanks to technology also helped to expand the availability of ﬁnance. During the 1980s and 1990s ﬁnance had grown into a distinct discipline. Corporate mergers and high-proﬁle takeovers became a way for businesses to grow beyond their operational limits; leverage joined marketing and strategy as part of the management lexicon. In the late 1990s this expanded to venture capital: the funding of small companies by proﬁt-seeking investors. The risk of starting and running a business remains, but the opportunities afforded by technology and easier access to ﬁnance have made taking the ﬁrst step a little easier. With micro- ﬁnance, and the support of online INTRODUCTION 14 Business can be a source of progressive change. Jerry Greenﬁeld US businessman, co-founder of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (1951–) networks and communities of like- minded people dispensing business advice, enterprise has never been more entrepreneurial. Recent business thinking has brought diversity and social responsibility to the fore. Businesses are encouraged, and increasingly required by law, to employ people from diverse backgrounds and to act in an ethical manner, wherever they operate in the world. Businesses such Nike and Adidas require suppliers to prove that labor conditions in their factories meet required standards. Sustainability, recycling, diversity, and environmentalism have entered business thinking alongside strategic management and risk. New horizons If business thinking has shifted, so too has the nature of business itself. Where once a company was constrained by its locality, today the opportunities are truly global. Globalization does, however, mean that business is more competitive than ever. Emerging markets are creating new opportunities and new threats. They may be able to outsource production to low-cost countries, but as their economies grow, these emerging nations are breeding new competition. China, for example, may be “the world’s factory,” but its home-grown companies are also starting to represent a threat to Western businesses. As the global recession of 2007–08 and ongoing economic uncertainty have proven, business in the 21st century is increasingly more interdependent and more challenging than ever before. Starting a business might be easier, but to survive entrepreneurs need the tenacity to take an idea to market, the business acumen to turn a good plan into a proﬁtable enterprise, and the ﬁnancial skill to maintain success. Continual change For centuries social, political, and technological factors have forced companies and individuals to create new ways of generating proﬁts. Whether bartering goods with a neighboring village or seeking ways to make proﬁts from social networking, business thinking has changed, shifted, and evolved to mirror the wants and needs of the societies whose wealth it creates. Sometimes, as in the 2008 ﬁnancial crisis, business failed in its efforts. In other examples—the legacy of Apple’s game-changing products, for example—companies have been spectacularly successful. Business is a fascinating subject. It surrounds us and affects us daily. A walk down the street, a wander around a supermarket, an Internet search on almost any topic will reveal commerce in its many and varied forms. At its core business is, and always has been, about survival and surplus—about the advancement of self and of society. As the world continues to open up, and as opportunities for enterprise multiply, an interest in business has never been more relevant, or more exciting. Moreover, for those with entrepreneurial spirit, business has never been more rewarding. ■ INTRODUCTION 15 Business, more than any other occupation, is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight. Henry R. Luce US magazine publisher (1898–1967) START S THINK B STARTING AND GROWING THE BUSINESS MALL, IG A ll businesses start from the same point: an idea. It is what happens to that idea that determines business success. According to Entrepreneur magazine, nearly half of all new start-ups fail within the ﬁrst three years. Beating the odds at start-up is tough. First and foremost an idea, no matter how good, must be combined with entrepreneurial spirit, deﬁned as the willingness to take risk. Without entrepreneurial spirit a great idea might never be pursued. Not all ideas are good ones though; it would be a foolish entrepreneur who rushed a product to market without careful thought, research, and detailed planning. Risk might be inherent in business enterprise, but successful entrepreneurs are those who are not only willing to take risks, but are also able to manage risk. Realistic propositions Having an idea is the ﬁrst step— the next hurdle is ﬁnance. Some start-ups require very little capital, and a few require none at all. However, many require signiﬁcant backing, and most will need to seek funding at some stage in the growth process. An entrepreneur must be able to convince ﬁnancial backers that the concept is valid and that they have the skills and knowledge to turn the original concept into a successful business. It follows that the idea must be proﬁtable. Sometimes, an idea may look great on paper, but turn out to be uncommercial when put into practice. Determining whether an idea has potential requires a study of the competition and the relevant market. Who is competing for customers’ time and money? Are these competitors selling directly competitive products or possible substitutes? How are competitors perceived in the market? How big is the market? Most markets are increasingly global, crowded, and competitive. Few companies are lucky enough to ﬁnd a proﬁtable niche—to succeed, companies need to do something different in order to stand out in the market. The strategy for most companies is to differentiate; this means demonstrating to customers that they offer something that is not available from competitors—a Unique or Emotional Selling Proposition (USP or ESP). Such attempts to stand out are everywhere. Every business, and at every stage of production, from raw-material extraction to after- sales service, tries to distinguish its products or services from all others. Walk into any bookstore, for example, and you will see countless examples of books, often on the same topic, using design, style, and even size (large or small) to stand out from the competition. Gaining an edge often depends on one of two things: being ﬁrst into a new market niche, or being different from the competition. For example, in 1995 eBay was ﬁrst into the online auction market, and has dominated it ever since. Similarly, Volvo was ﬁrst to identify the opportunity for luxury bus sales in India, and has enjoyed healthy sales. In contrast, Facebook was by no means the ﬁrst social network, but it is the most successful; its edge was having a better product. INTRODUCTION 18 The only thing worse than starting something and failing … is not starting something. Seth Godin US entrepreneur (1960–) Once a company is established, the challenge shifts: the objective now is to maintain sales and grow in the short- and long-term. Adapting to survive Long-term business survival depends upon the company constantly reinventing and adapting itself in order to remain ahead of the competition. In dynamic markets, which are growing and evolving all the time, the idea on which the company was founded may become irrelevant over time, and rivals will almost certainly copy it. The ecosystem in which a business operates is rarely, if ever, static. Corporations exist in these ecosystems as living organisms that must adapt to survive. In their 2013 book, Reinventing Giants, Bill Fischer, Umberto Lago, and Fang Liu noted that the Chinese home appliances company Haier had reinvented itself at least three times in the past 30 years. In contrast, Kodak, a US giant of the 20th century, was slow to react to the rise of digital photography, and went bankrupt. Moreover, just as the enterprise must adapt, so too must the owner. Most businesses start small, and remain small. Few entrepreneurs are willing or know how to take the second step of employing people who are neither family nor previously known friends. This is the start of a move from entrepreneur to leader, and it requires a new set of skills, as new demands are placed on the business founders. Where once energy, ideas, and passion were enough, evolving businesses require the development of formal systems, procedures, and processes. In short, they require management. Founders must develop delegation, communication, and coordination skills, or they must employ people who have them. As Larry Greiner described in his 1972 paper, “Evolution and Revolution as Organizations Grow”, as a business grows, the demands on it change. The Greiner Curve is a graphic that shows how the initial stages of growth rely on individual initiative, and that evolving ad-hoc business practice into sustainable and successful growth can only be achieved by experienced people and rigorous systems. Professional management, as opposed to entrepreneurial spirit, becomes essential to business evolution. Some leaders, such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, for example, are able to make the transition from entrepreneurial founder to corporate leader. Many others, however, struggle to make the necessary changes; some try and fail, while others decide to remain small. Finding a balance Determining how fast to grow is, therefore, a balance of the founder’s skills and desires. But in order to survive, the idea must be unique enough to deﬁne its own niche, and the individual or group behind it must demonstrate entrepreneurial spirit. They need the ﬂexibility to adapt the idea—and themselves— as business and market pressures demand. Luck will play a part, but it is the balance of these factors that determines whether a small start-up becomes a giant. ■ START SMALL, THINK BIG 19 When you have to prove the value of your ideas by persuading other people to pay for them, it clears out an awful lot of woolly thinking. Tim O’Reilly Irish entrepreneur (1954–) 20 IF YOU CAN DREAM IT, YOU CAN DO IT BEATING THE ODDS AT START-UP T he reasons for starting a business are many. Some people dream of being their own boss—of turning their hobby into a proﬁtable enterprise, of expressing their creativity, or of being richly rewarded for their hard work. Although Walt Disney’s maxim “if you can dream it, you can do it” holds true for some, pursuing the dream is risky. Those who attempt it must have the entrepreneurial spirit to fearlessly quit a well-paid job, go it alone, and face a future ﬁlled with uncertainty. Others might need a push; often being laid off (and its associated lump-sum payment) can be a springboard. ...a good idea allied to a great business plan. ...an entrepreneurial spirit: a willingness to take risks. ...business acumen to put the plan into action. ...determination to deal with setbacks. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Business start-ups KEY DATES 18th century The term “entrepreneur” is used to describe someone who is willing to risk buying at certain prices and selling at uncertain prices. 1946 Professor Arthur Cole writes An Approach to Entrepreneurship, sparking interest in the phenomenon. 2005 The micro-ﬁnance, nonproﬁt site Kiva.com launches to make small loans to very small businesses. 2009 Crowdfunding websites, such as Kickstarter.com, allow individuals to provide funding for businesses. 2013 A study by Ross Levine and Yona Rubinstein ﬁnds that as teenagers, many successful entrepreneurs exhibited aggressive behavior, broke the rules, and got into trouble. Beating the odds at start-up requires... 21 See also: Finding a proﬁtable niche 22–23 ■ Managing risk 40–41 ■ Luck (and how to get lucky) 42 ■ Take the second step 43 ■ From entrepreneur to leader 46–47 ■ Learning from failure 164–65 ■ Small is beautiful 172–77 START SMALL, THINK BIG Younger entrepreneurs are increasingly a part of the start-up scenario. They may have gained the necessary skills for business by their early twenties, and enjoy the excitement and freedom of running their own venture. Keeping the faith While the reasons for start-up may vary, what all entrepreneurs have in common is the willingness to take risks. Few entrepreneurs get it right ﬁrst time—it takes resilience and tenacity to keep going in the face of failure, and it takes perseverance to remain positive when customers, banks, and ﬁnancial backers repeatedly say “no.” Faith in the idea is essential. While some start- ups require very little capital, most require funding during their early growth phases. A business owner must be able to convince banks, or other ﬁnancial backers, that their concept is valid and that they have the skills to turn the idea into a proﬁtable venture, even though this may take some time. It took Amazon six years to make a proﬁt. In recent years, securing ﬁnance for start-ups has become a little easier. Many governments offer loan plans or grants. Entrepreneurs with big ideas can access large funds of money and managerial support from venture capitalists, whose sole purpose is to incubate start-ups. For smaller start-ups, and for people with very little of their own capital, micro-loans and crowdfunding ﬁnance—such as that offered by Kickstarter.com— are increasingly popular. The business plan The key to securing ﬁnancing is a business plan. A good plan will outline the idea itself, detail any supporting market research, describe operational and marketing activities, and give ﬁnancial predictions. The plan should also outline a strategy for long-term growth and identify contingencies (alternative ideas or markets) if things do not go as planned. Most importantly, a good business plan will acknowledge that the biggest reason for business failure is a lack of cash. While loan capital can help for a while, eventually a business must fund its operations from revenue. A good business plan will analyze future cash ﬂows and identify any potential shortfalls. Beating the odds at start-up is deﬁned by the tenacity to take an idea to market, the ability to secure sufﬁcient ﬁnance, and the business acumen to turn a good plan into a long-term, proﬁtable enterprise. ■ “Tony” Fernandes Tan Sri Anthony “Tony” Fernandes was born in Kuala Lumpur in 1964 to an Indian father and Malaysian mother. He went to school in England and graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE) in 1987. He worked brieﬂy for Richard Branson at Virgin Records as a ﬁnancial controller before becoming Southeast Asia Vice President for Warner Music Group in 1992. In 2001, Fernandes left Warner to go it alone. He mortgaged his home to raise the ﬁnance needed to buy the struggling young airline, AirAsia. His low-cost strategy was clear in the company’s tagline: “Now everyone can ﬂy.” One year after his takeover, the airline had cleared its debts of $11 million and had broken even. Fernandes estimates that around 50 percent of its travelers are ﬁrst-time ﬂyers. The company is now widely regarded as the world’s best low-cost airline. In 2007 Fernandes founded Tune Hotels, a low-cost hotel chain that promises “Five-star beds at one-star prices.” He advises potential entrepreneurs to “dream the impossible. Never take no for an answer.” Sustaining a business is a hell of a lot of hard work, and staying hungry is half the battle. Wendy Tan White UK business executive (1970–) 22 THERE’S A GAP IN THE MARKET, BUT F inding a space in the market that is unchallenged by competition is the Holy Grail of positioning strategy. Unfortunately these spaces— known as market gaps—are often illusive, and the beneﬁts of ﬁnding one are often equally illusory. Although competition is a fact of life, it makes business difﬁcult, contributing to an ever-downward pressure on prices, ever-rising costs (such as the funding of new product development and marketing), and an incessant need to outmaneuver and outsmart rivals. In contrast, the beneﬁts of ﬁnding a market gap—a small niche segment of a market that is unfettered by competition—are obvious: greater control over prices, lower costs, and improved proﬁts. The identiﬁcation of a market gap, combined with a dose of entrepreneurial spirit, is often all that is needed to launch a new business. In 2006, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey combined short-form communication with social media, providing a service that no one else had spotted. Free to most users, revenue comes from companies who pay for promotional tweets and proﬁles: Twitter earned advertising revenues of $582 million in 2013. Many markets are crowded, with multiple sellers chasing the same customers. For these sellers, competition lowers proﬁtability. Market gaps—a new product or sector of the market—offer the enticing prospect of healthy proﬁtability. But does the gap contain enough business to generate a proﬁt? There’s a gap in the market, but is there a market in the gap? IN CONTEXT FOCUS Positioning strategy KEY DATES 1950s and 60s Markets are dominated by large companies offering mass-produced items, such as Coca-Cola. Choice is limited, but the scope for products targeted at new sectors of the market is high. 1970s and 80s Markets become more segmented as companys generate new products and market them toward narrower groups. 1990s and 2000s Companies and brands position themselves ever-more aggressively and distinctively in the overcrowded marketplace. 2010s Finding and sustaining market niches is assisted by the promotional capabilities of the Internet, which allow “one-to-one” marketing and customization of products. IS THERE A MARKET IN THE GAP? FINDING A PROFITABLE NICHE 23 See also: Stand out in the market 28–31 ■ Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ Reinventing and adapting 52–57 ■ Porter’s generic strategies 178–83 ■ Good and bad strategy 184–85 ■ The value chain 216–17 ■ Marketing mix 280–83 START SMALL, THINK BIG Not all gaps are lucrative, however. The Amphicar, for instance, was an amphibious car produced in the 1960s for US consumers who wanted to drive on roads and rivers. It was a quirky novelty, but the market was too small to be proﬁtable. This was also true for bottled water for pets— launched in the US in 1994, Thirsty Cat! and Thirsty Dog! failed to entice pet owners. A sustainable niche Snapple, the manufacturer of healthy tea and juice drinks, is a company that has successfully found a sustainable and proﬁtable niche. A glance at the beverage counter of any supermarket reveals that dozens of brands compete for sales. Many companies have failed in this ultra- competitive market: for example, Pepsi tried to capture a nonexistent market for morning cola with its short-lived, high-caffeine drink, AM. Success for Snapple came from positioning the product as a unique brand—Snapple was one of the ﬁrst companies to manufacture juices and drinks made completely from natural ingredients. Its founders ran a health store in Manhattan, and the company used the slogan: “100% Natural.” Snapple targeted students, commuters, and lunch-time ofﬁce workers with a new healthy “snack” drink, combining its Unique Selling Proposition (USP) with irreverent marketing and small bottles that were designed to be consumed in one sitting. Distribution was through small, inner-city stores where customers could “grab-and-go.” These tactics helped to secure a proﬁtable and sustainable niche, distinguishing Snapple from its rivals in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994 sales peaked at $674 million. Unoccupied market territory can present major opportunities for companies, but the challenge lies in identifying which gaps are proﬁtable and which are traps. During the 1990s, many companies became excited about the potential of the “green” market, across a whole range of goods. But this market has failed to materialize in any proﬁtable way. This marks one of the potential pitfalls in identifying market gaps based on market research: sometimes consumers have strong attitudes or opinions on trends or issues—such as ecology—that they are disinclined to consider when purchasing products, especially if they affect cost. Many market gaps, it seems, are tempting, but illusory. ■ Snapple’s positioning in the crowded US beverage marketplace was the key to its success. By focusing on a niche healthy product and marketing itself as a quirky company, Snapple was able to wrestle a large market share (indicated here by circle size) from its rivals. MAINSTREAM UNHEALTHY HEALTHY UNIQUE Arizona OceanSpray Lipton Nestea Snapple Snapple A contraction of the words “snappy” and “apple,” Snapple was launched in 1978 by Unadulterated Food Products Inc. The company was founded in 1972 by Arnold Greenberg, Leonard Marsh, and Hyman Golden in New York, US. Such was the popularity of Snapple that the company has been subject to numerous buyouts. Unadulterated was purchased by Quaker Oats for $1.7 billion in 1994 but, following differences in strategic vision that led to falling sales, was sold to Triarc in 1997 for $300 million. Triarc then sold the Snapple brand to Cadbury Schweppes for $1.45 billion in September 2000, with a further deal in May 2008 seeing Snapple become part of what is now the Dr Pepper Snapple Group. Marketed as “Made From the Best Stuff on Earth,” Snapple’s unusual blends of ready-to-drink teas, juice drinks, and waters are sold in more than 80 countries around the world. 24 24 YOU CAN LEARN ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE COMPETITION’S OPERATION BY LOOKING IN HIS GARBAGE CANS STUDY THE COMPETITION W hether a company is long established or in its start-up phase, a key strategic issue is its competitive advantage—the factor that gives it an edge over its competitors. The only way to establish, understand, and protect competitive advantage is to study the competition. Who is competing with the company for its customers’ time and money? Do they sell competitive products or potential substitutes? What are their strengths and weaknesses? How are they perceived in the market? For Ray Kroc, the US entrepreneur behind the success of fast-food chain McDonalds, this reportedly involved inspecting competitors’ IN CONTEXT FOCUS Analytical tools KEY DATES 1950s Harvard academics George Smith and C. Roland Christensen develop tools to analyze companies and competition. 1960s US management consultant Albert Humphrey leads a research project that yields SOFT analysis, the forerunner to his later SWOT analysis. 1982 US professor Heinz Weihrich develops the TOWS matrix which uses the threats to a company as the starting point for formulating strategy. 2006 Japanese academics Shinno, Yoshioka, Marpaung, and Hachiga develop computer software that combines SWOT analysis with AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process). 25 See also: Stand out in the market 28–31 ■ Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ Thinking outside the box 88–89 ■ Leading the market 166–69 ■ Porter’s generic strategies 178–83 ■ The MABA matrix 192–93 ■ Porter’s ﬁve forces 212–15 trash. But there is a range of more conventional tools to help companies to understand themselves, their markets, and their competition. SWOT analysis The most popular such tool is SWOT analysis. Created by US management consultant Albert Humphrey in 1966, it is used to identify internal strengths (S) and weaknesses (W), and to analyze external opportunities (O) and threats (T). Internal factors that can be considered as either strengths or weaknesses include: the experience and expertise of management; the skill of a work force; product quality; the company’s ﬁnancial health; and the strength of its brand. External factors that might be opportunities or threats include market growth; new technologies; barriers to entering markets; overseas sales potential; and changing customer demographics and preferences. SWOT analysis is widely used by businesses of all types, and it is a staple of business management courses. It is a creative tool that allows managers to assess a company’s current position, and to imagine possible future positions. A practical tool When well-executed, a SWOT analysis should inform strategic planning and decision-making. It allows a company to identify what it does better than rivals (or vice versa), what changes it may need to make to minimize threats, and what opportunities may give the company competitive advantage. The key to strategic ﬁt is to make sure that the company’s internal and external environments match: its internal strengths must be aligned with the external opportunities. Any internal weaknesses should be addressed so as to minimize the extent of external threat. When undertaking a SWOT analysis, the views of staff and even customers can be included— it should provide an opportunity to solicit views from all stakeholders. The greater the number of views included, the deeper the analysis and the more useful the ﬁndings. However, there are limitations. While a company may be able to judge its internal weaknesses and strengths accurately, projections about future events and trends (which will affect opportunities and threats) are always subject to error. Different stakeholders will also be privy to different levels of information about a company’s activities, and therefore its current position. Balance is key; ❯❯ START SMALL, THINK BIG If you go exactly where your competitors are, you’re dead. Thorsten Heins German-Canadian former CEO of Blackberry (1957–) SWOT analysis helps a company analyze its position by focusing on... ...key internal factors, such as: ...key external factors, such as: Strengths (S). Opportunities (O). Weaknesses (W). Threats (T). 26 senior managers may have a full view of the company, but their perspective needs to be informed by alternative views from all levels of the organization. As with all business tools, the factor that governs the success of SWOT analysis is whether or not it leads to action. Even the most comprehensive analysis is useless unless its ﬁndings are translated into well-conceived plans, new processes, and better performance. Market mapping A slightly narrower but more sophisticated tool for analyzing a company’s position and competition is “market mapping” (also known as “perceptual mapping”). Market maps are diagrams that represent a market and the placement of products within that market, providing a visual means of studying the competition. The process is useful both internally (to help an organization understand its own products) and externally (to chart how consumers perceive the brand in relation to the competition). To draw up a market map, a company identiﬁes several consumer purchase-decision factors that stand in opposition to one another. In the fashion market, an example might include “technology” vs. “fashion,” and “performance” vs. STUDY THE COMPETITION Market mapping plots opposing qualities of products along two axes. By identifying the two main oppositional factors for any product, it is easy to see gaps in the market. “leisure.” Additional factors could include the item’s price (high vs. low), quality of production (high vs. low), stylish vs. conservative, or durable vs. disposable. Two of these dimensions, or opposing pairs, are then plotted onto a horizontal or vertical axis. Based on market research or the knowledge of managers, all of the products within a particular market can be plotted onto the map. The market share of each product can be represented by the size of its corresponding image on the map, but more often, analysts choose to simply make a rough sketch of the market, ignoring market size. A company may choose to compile several market maps, each of which depicts a different set of variables, and then analyze them— individually and in combination— to gain an overall view of the company’s position in the market. Finding the gap The goal of market mapping is to identify opportunities where a company can differentiate itself from its competitors. These are areas where the company offers unique value, and they can be used to inform marketing messages. The map will also reveal overcrowded segments, which signify heightened competitive threat. For a new start-up, a market map can be used to identify a viable gap in the market—a good place to position a company when it is struggling to establish itself. Established businesses can use market mapping combined with SWOT analysis to discover opportunities and decide whether the company has the strengths to exploit one of those opportunities. The market map helps to inform the strategy (the need to reposition a product away from competitors’ LEISURE TECHNOLOGY FASHION PERFORMANCE Speedo TYR O’Neill Quicksilver Tommy Hilﬁger Ripcurl ZXU H&M Gottex Bravissimo Adidas Nike Puma Slazenger Market gap? Market gap? Billabong 27 The apparel market is a competitive sector with a host of ﬁnely delineated fashion brands. Speedo’s market positioning is built around producing high-performance, technical products. offerings, for example) and the tactics (moving from conservative to sporty, for example) that will help the company to achieve that strategic goal. Market analysis such as this may, for example, have helped luxury Singaporean tea shop TWG Tea to identify an opportunity in the market. Launched in 2008, TWG targets a slightly older, wealthier customer base than coffee shops and other “lifestyle” cafés. TWG has opened new locations across the world, based on studying the competition, identifying a market gap, and designing its products and services to ﬁll that gap. Internal focus As a company grows it might choose to draw up a map including just its own products. Analysis of the results can help identify any overlap between different products (informing decisions about which products to drop, and which to concentrate research and development and marketing spend, for example). It can also be used to ensure that the company’s marketing message stays on track, helping to avoid strategic drift. Perceived as a technical performance product, Speedo, for example, needs to ensure that its marketing reﬂects that view; a campaign that promotes Speedo as a fashionable label would risk confusing customers and could damage the brand. The key to successful market mapping is market research. While it can be useful to compare internal and external perceptions of a product, and the products of the competition, it is the customers’ views that matter most. When START SMALL, THINK BIG based on such data, even though managers may disagree, the market map cannot be “wrong”—it simply represents, for better or worse, how the brand is perceived. The challenge for management is to use the map, and knowledge of internal strengths and weaknesses, to plan the appropriate strategic response. Both SWOT analysis and market mapping allow a company to better understand itself, its market, and, most importantly, the competition. Equally, being aware of weaknesses can help avoid costly strategic mistakes, such as producing overly ambitious products or making an entry into a crowded market position. An appreciation of the opportunities and threats of the market, and the relative and shifting positions of competing products, is essential to long-term successful strategic planning. To plan where you are going, it helps to know where you are—and where your competitors are too. ■ Albert Humphrey Born in 1926, Albert Humphrey was educated at the University of Illinois, US, and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he gained a master’s degree in Chemical Engineering. He later went on to earn an MBA from Harvard University. While working with the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) between 1960 and 1970, Humphrey came up with the Stakeholder Concept, which has since been used by business leaders and politicians. He also undertook research to identify why corporate planning failed, by holding interviews with more than 5,000 executives at over 1,100 companies. As a result of the ﬁndings, he invented SOFT analysis: “what is good in the present is Satisfactory, good in the future is an Opportunity; bad in the present is a Fault, and bad in the future is a Threat.” Fault was later softened to the more acceptable Weaknesses, and Satisfactory became Strengths. The now-ubiquitous acronym SWOT was born. 28 28 THE SECRET OF BUSINESS IS TO KNOW SOMETHING THAT NOBODY ELSE KNOWS STAND OUT IN THE MARKET F ew businesses enjoy the privileges of monopoly power in their chosen ﬁelds of operation. Most markets are increasingly global, increasingly crowded and, therefore, increasingly competitive. In order to achieve commercial success companies need to do something different—as Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis recommended, they need to “know something that nobody else knows” in order to stand out from the competition. Unique Selling Propositions Faced with competition, the strategy for most companies is to differentiate. This involves offering IN CONTEXT FOCUS Differentiation KEY DATES 1933 US economist Edward Chamberlin’s Theory of Monopolistic Competition describes differentiation as a means for a company to charge more for its products or services by distinguishing them from the competition. 1940s The concept of the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is put forward by Rosser Reeves, advertising executive at New York advertising agency Ted Bates, Inc. 2003 US marketing professor Philip Kotler outlines the need for USPs to be superseded by Emotional Selling Propositions (ESPs) in his book Marketing Insights from A to Z. 29 See also: Finding a proﬁtable niche 22–23 ■ Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ Reinventing and adapting 52–57 ■ Porter’s generic strategies 178–83 ■ Good and bad strategy 184–85 ■ The value chain 216–17 customers something that the competition cannot or does not offer—a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). The concept was developed by US advertising executive Rosser Reeves in the 1940s to represent the key point of dramatic difference that makes a product salable at a price higher than rival products. Tangible USPs are hard to acquire and hard to copy, which is what makes them unique. Companies must distinguish their product or service from the competition at every stage of production—from raw material extraction to after-sales service. Products such as Nespresso coffee- makers and Crocs footwear, and service providers such as majority Asian-owned hotel group Tune Hotels, are all heavily differentiated, each having a strong USP. The primary beneﬁt of uniqueness, however it is achieved, is greater customer loyalty and increased ﬂexibility in pricing. Differentiation guards products and services from low-priced competition; it justiﬁes higher prices and protects proﬁtability; and it can give businesses the competitive advantage needed to stand out in the market. The challenge of difference By deﬁnition, not all products can be unique. Differentiation is costly, time consuming, and difﬁcult to achieve, and functional differences are quickly copied—“me-too” strategies are commonplace. Touchscreen technology was introduced to the cell-phone market as a point of differentiation for Apple’s iPhone, but is now a feature of most smartphones. Differentiation often does not remain a point of difference for long. With functional uniqueness being so elusive, marketing guru Philip Kotler suggested that companies focus instead on an Emotional Selling Proposition (ESP). In other words, that the task of marketing is to generate an emotional connection to the brand that is so strong that customers perceive difference from the competition. For example, while the design and functionality of Nike and Adidas sneakers are distinct, the differences are so small that they amount to only a marginal difference in performance. The products’ differences are, however, magniﬁed in the perception of the consumer through marketing and the power of branding—uniqueness is achieved through brand imagery, promotion, and sponsorship. Apple achieved differentiation in the ﬂedgling digital-music market by combining easy-to-use software ❯❯ START SMALL, THINK BIG Few companies enjoy the monopoly privileges afforded by market gaps. ...which requires differentiation in product, service, process, or marketing. Enduring difference can only be maintained through a Unique Selling Proposition. To achieve success, especially in its early stages of growth, a company must stand out... But difference can be easily copied by competitors. Only then will companies truly stand out in the market. There is no such thing as a commodity. All goods and services are differentiable. Theodore Levitt US economist (1925–2006) 30 with well-designed hardware and a user interface that integrated the two. The product itself—the iPod portable music device—was functionally little different than existing MP3 players, but combined with the iTunes software to create a unique customer experience. This experience is Apple’s ESP, which the company promoted with its “Think Different” advertising campaign. Standing out One company that has achieved uniqueness is the British fashion label Superdry, which has grown to include more than 300 stores in Europe, Asia, North and South America, and South Africa. Drawing a novel, international inﬂuence from Japanese graphics and vintage Americana, combined with the values of British tailoring, Superdry quickly established a strong position in the hypercompetitive clothing market from its launch in 2004. The business started life in university towns across the UK, a positioning that gave the brand a youthful appeal. Despite limited advertising and abstaining from celebrity endorsements, Superdry’s popularity rapidly grew. The company’s distinctive look quickly caught the eye of celebrities (a jacket worn by soccer player David Beckham became one of its best-selling products, and Beckham himself became an unofﬁcal talisman of the brand), providing free publicity. Superdry focused on offering clothing with a fashionably tailored ﬁt and attention to detail (even down to garment stitching). Worn by off- duty ofﬁce workers, students, sports stars, and celebrities alike, the brand was able to appeal to a broad customer base. Most differentiation strategies involve targeting one segment of the market; Superdry chose to target them all. The brand’s unique blend of fashion with ease of wear, comfort with style, and the presence of mysterious but meaningless Japanese writing, has proved a difﬁcult mix for competitors to replicate. Maintaining uniqueness As many companies discover, popularity can be the enemy of difference. While Superdry clothing has become increasingly ubiquitous around the world, its uniqueness and difference have declined. The challenge for Superdry, like all companies, is to protect its uniqueness while also STAND OUT IN THE MARKET expanding its reach—to stand out from the crowd, while welcoming those crowds into its stores. Differentiation can occur at any point in the value chain. Standing out is not limited to products or services—it can occur in any number of internal processes that translate into an improved customer experience. Swedish furniture retailer IKEA, for example, differentiates itself not only through contemporary design and low prices, but through the entire customer retail experience. The company’s low prices are achieved, in part, through its self- picking and self-assembly retail model—the customer experience involves picking products from the company’s vast showrooms and warehouses and then, once they have transported the goods home, assembling the furniture. Even the way IKEA “guides” shoppers on a one-way, deﬁned route through its showrooms is unique. While this tactic encourages spontaneous purchases, it also helps to reinforce IKEA’s points of difference—customers are exposed to predesigned rooms and furniture layouts that emphasize the brand’s contemporary style. Price is kept low since fewer store assistants are required to direct customers around the store. Different but the same Paradoxically, familiarity can also be a source of differentiation. The entire McDonald’s organization revolves around providing almost identical fast-food products, with the same service, in identical Fashion label Superdry is a young company that has successfully carved out market share. Rapid growth since its founding in 2004 is thanks in part to a highly differentiated, faux-vintage look. 31 Differentiation is not so important when a company’s products match the desires of the customer and do not overlap with the competition. Although the risks might be high, differentiation is most effective when your products are popular, but overlap with those of the competition. restaurants the world over. This familiarity differentiates McDonald’s from unknown local offerings, and from other global competitors who cannot maintain the same degree of consistency across their operating territories. In a market in which rival companies promote the uniqueness of their products in ever-louder and more complex ways, consumers have become increasingly savvy when it comes to distinguishing reality from rhetoric. While differences do not have to be tangible—the evidence shows that an Emotional Selling Proposition (ESP) is often enough—the challenge for businesses is that points of differentiation do have to be genuine and believable. Developing an emotional connection with the customer requires that the differentiation is understood and consistently delivered throughout the organization. Well-deﬁned core principles that celebrate a company’s uniqueness should inform the customer experience at every point of contact—difference has to be believable, and it is only believable if it is dependable. Sustaining differentiation Once established, uniqueness— whether functional or emotional— requires nurturing and protecting. Standing out from the crowd is a constant battle that is fought in the hearts and minds of the company’s staff, as well as customers. As legal clashes between rivals—such as Apple and Samsung—demonstrate, uniqueness might also have to be contested in the courtroom. Every industry has leaders and followers—what separates them is that the leaders are usually those with the most defensible points of differentiation. Whether in features and functionality, brand image, service, process, speed, or convenience, uniqueness must be established and communicated for a company and its offerings to stand out in the market. The key to long- lasting success is making that differentiation sustainable. ■ START SMALL, THINK BIG Rosser Reeves US advertising executive Rosser Reeves (1910–84) held the maxim that an advertisement should show off the value of a product, not the cleverness of the copywriter. After a brief spell at the University of Virginia, from where he was expelled for drunken misconduct, Reeves worked as a journalist and then copywriter before joining advertising agency Ted Bates, Inc. in New York in 1940. His exceptional talent saw him rise to become Chairman of the company in 1955. He is credited with redeﬁning television advertising and, among many others, for formulating slogans such as “It melts in your mouth, not in your hand” for chocolate confectionary brand M&Ms. Reeves’s Unique Selling Proposition, ﬁrst outlined in the 1940s, was described in his 1961 book Reality of Advertising. Such was his impact on the advertising industry that his legacy lives on long after his death—his pioneering style of leadership was the inspiration for the lead character in US television series Mad Men. High sales Low sales High scope for differentiation What your company does well What the consumer wants What your competitors do well In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different. Coco Chanel French fashion designer (1881–1971) 32 BE FIRST OR BE GAINING AN EDGE BETTER 33 34 34 business to enter the online retail market, establishing its brand name, and building a loyal customer base. Google, by contrast, was by no means ﬁrst. When Google launched in 1998, the market was already dominated by several large players; Google’s edge came from offering a superior product—not only was it faster, but it produced more accurate search results than any of its competitors. Getting into a market ﬁrst has signiﬁcant advantages, but there are also beneﬁts to being second. The key is that in order to gain a I f you need to buy a book online, which website do you visit ﬁrst? If you want to research the author of the book, which search engine do you use? The answers, most probably, are Amazon and Google, respectively. Such is the dominance of these two Internet giants that their names deﬁne their respective markets. Both organizations have a signiﬁcant edge in the markets they lead, but they achieved that dominance by different means. Amazon, launched in 1995, gained its advantage by being the ﬁrst competitive edge in the market, a business needs either to be ﬁrst, or it needs to be better. Market pioneers The beneﬁts of being ﬁrst into a market are known as “ﬁrst-mover advantage,” a term popularized in 1988 by Stanford Business School professor David Montgomery and his co-author, Marvin Lieberman. Although introduced a decade previously, Montgomery and Lieberman’s idea took particular hold during the dot-com bubble between 1997 and 2000. Spurred GAINING AN EDGE First-movers have no competition and have the potential to become market leaders... ...but unless the market is static, and technological innovation is limited, the risk of failure is high. Later entrants enter a recognized market and know what mistakes to avoid. They stand to beneﬁt most in a rapidly changing market, in which technological innovation is advanced. In order to gain an edge, either be ﬁrst, or be better. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Competitive advantage KEY DATES 1988 US scholars David Montgomery and Marvin Lieberman write “First-Mover Advantage,” outlining the competitive advantages of being ﬁrst to market. 1995 Amazon.com launches, the ﬁrst of a new breed of online retailers. 1997–2000 Adopting the “be ﬁrst” mantra, dot-com companies race to market; many fail when the promised advantages do not materialize. 1998 Montgomery and Lieberman question their original ﬁndings in their paper, “First-Mover (Dis)Advantages.” 2001 Amazon.com returns its ﬁrst proﬁt. The company’s ﬁrst-mover advantages were signiﬁcant, but a good business model mattered more. 35 35 on by the example of Amazon, businesses spent millions pitching themselves headlong into new online markets. Conventional wisdom was that being ﬁrst ensured that the company’s brand name became synonymous with that segment, and that early market dominance would create barriers to entry for subsequent competition. In the end, however, overspending, overhype, and overreaching into markets where little demand existed was the downfall of many ﬂedgling dot-coms. With notable exceptions, businesses found that promised returns were not being realized and funds quickly ran short—and for many of these ﬁrst-movers, failure followed. First-mover advantage Being ﬁrst out of the block undoubtedly has its advantages, and in the case of the dot-coms, those advantages were exaggerated to the extreme. First-movers often enjoy premium prices, capture signiﬁcant market share, and have a brand name strongly linked to the market itself. First-movers also have more time than later entrants to perfect processes and systems, and to accumulate market knowledge. They can also secure advantageous physical locations (a prime location on a main street of a city, for example), secure the employment of talented staff, or access beneﬁcial terms with key suppliers (who may also be eager to enter the new market). Additionally, ﬁrst-movers may be able to build switching costs into their product, making it expensive or inconvenient for customers to switch to a rival offering once an initial purchase has been made. Gillette, for example, having invented the safety razor in 1901, has consistently leveraged its ﬁrst-mover advantage to create new products, such as a “shaving system” that combines cheap handles with expensive razor blades. Market strategies In the case of Amazon.com, ﬁrst- mover advantage consisted of a combination of factors. In the newly emerging e-commerce market, customers were eager to try online purchasing, and Amazon was well placed to exploit this growing curiosity. Books represented a small and safe initial purchase, and Amazon’s simple web design made buying easy and enjoyable. Early sales enabled the organization to adapt and perfect its systems, and to adjust its website to match customer needs—adding, for example, its OneClick ordering system to enable purchases without entering payment details. Amazon was also able to build distribution systems that ensured quick and reliable delivery of its products. Although competitors could replicate these systems, customers already trusted Amazon, and the brand loyalty ❯❯ See also: Beating the odds at start-up 20–21 ■ Stand out in the market 28–31 ■ How fast to grow 44–45 ■ The Greiner curve 58–61 ■ Creativity and invention 72–73 ■ Changing the game 92–99 ■ Balancing long- versus short-termism 190–91 START SMALL, THINK BIG Amazon.com was a ﬁrst-mover in the online retail market. It has dominated the industry since its launch in 1995, creating strong brand recognition and a loyal customer base. First-mover advantages accrue when a company gains a ﬁrst-mover opportunity (through proﬁciency or luck) and is able to maintain an edge despite subsequent entry. David Montgomery and Marvin Lieberman 36 36 the organization enjoyed created signiﬁcant emotional switching costs; even today, Amazon enjoys the beneﬁts of this trust and loyalty, and almost a third of all US book sales are made via Amazon.com. A recent example of how important ﬁrst-mover advantage remains are the “patent wars” contested between most of the leading smartphone makers (including Apple, Samsung, and HTC). Patents help a company to defend technological advantage. In the hypercompetitive smartphone industry, being ﬁrst to market with a new technological feature offers critical, albeit short-term, advantage. In an industry in which consumers’ switching costs are high, even short-term advantages can have a signiﬁcant impact on revenue. Since the publication of Montgomery and Lieberman’s original paper in 1988, academic research has indicated that signiﬁcant advantages accrue to market pioneers, which can be directly attributable to the timing of entry. The irony is that in a retrospective paper that appeared in 1998, “First-Mover (Dis) Advantages,” Montgomery and Lieberman themselves backed off their original claims concerning the beneﬁts of being the ﬁrst to enter a market. Building on the work of, among others, US academics Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis in 1993, Montgomery and Lieberman’s 1998 paper questioned the entire notion of ﬁrst-mover advantage. In their research, Golder and Tellis had found that almost half the ﬁrst- movers in their sample of 500 brands, in 50 product categories, failed. Moreover, they found that there were few cases where later entrants had not become proﬁtable or even dominant players—in fact, their research identiﬁed that the failure rate for ﬁrst-movers was 47 percent, compared to only 8 percent for fast followers. Learning from mistakes The challenge for ﬁrst-movers is that the market is often unproven; industry pioneers leap into the dark without fully understanding customer needs or market dynamics. First-movers often launch untried products onto unsuspecting customers; and it is rare that they get it right ﬁrst time. Large companies may be able to take the losses of such early-market entry mistakes; small companies, on the other hand, may soon ﬁnd that their cash is running out and their tenuous business models are collapsing. Later entrants have the advantage of learning from the mistakes of the ﬁrst-movers, and GAINING AN EDGE from entering a proven market. They are also able to avoid costly investment in risky and potentially ﬂawed processes or technologies; ﬁrst-movers, by contrast, may have accrued signiﬁcant “sunk costs” (past investment) in old, less- efﬁcient technologies, and may be less able to adapt as the industry matures. Followers can enter at the point at which technology and processes are relatively well established, with both cost and risks being lower. Followers may have to ﬁght to overcome the ﬁrst-movers’ brand loyalty, but simply offering a superior product that better addresses customer needs is often sufﬁcient to secure a market. Brand recognition is one thing, but technical and product superiority can give that all-important competitive edge. Moreover, with investment costs being much lower, followers often have surplus cash to use on marketing, thereby offsetting the branding advantages of the ﬁrst-mover. When Google, for example, entered the Internet search business in 1998, the market was dominated by the likes of Yahoo, Lycos, and AltaVista, all of whom had established customer bases and brand recognition. However, Google was able to learn from the Good artists copy; great artists steal. Steve Jobs US former CEO of Apple (1955–2011) Gillette invented the safety razor in 1901 and later consolidated its ﬁrst-mover advantage by developing a “shaving system” that made it difﬁcult for customers to switch brands. 37 37 mistakes of these earlier entrants and, quite simply, build a better product. The organization realized that with so much information on the Internet people wanted search results that were comprehensive and relevant; the various market incumbents offered a variety of systems for ﬁltering search results, but Google was able to take the best of these systems and build its own unique algorithm that led to market dominance. First-mover failures There are numerous examples in corporate history of ﬁrst-movers that were unable to achieve or maintain a competitive advantage. Famous failures in the online sphere include Friends Reunited and MySpace. Although both companies still exist, their ﬁrst- mover advantage was not sufﬁcient to offset the might (and product superiority) of Facebook. Similarly, eToys.com, launched in 1999, was one of a new breed of online retailers, but ﬁrst-mover advantage was not enough to sustain the business and the company declared bankruptcy in 2001—by coincidence, the same year that Amazon started to sell toys. (Resurrected some years later, etoys.com is now owned by Toys R Us.) The online clothing retailer boo.com is an example of a ﬁrst- mover that had technological superiority, but was ahead of its time—the site was too resource- heavy for most consumers’ slow Internet connections. Launched in 1999, boo.com went into receivership the following year—being ﬁrst is not a guarantee of success if the basic business model is ﬂawed. Despite the evidence presented by Golder and Tellis, and examples such as Google, it remains the case that ﬁrst-mover advantage has captured corporate imagination. Mirroring the earlier dot-com gold rush, the recent boom in the market for web-based smartphone- and tablet-accessed applications (the “app” market) is fueled by a desire to be ﬁrst. Thousands of apps have launched in the hope of staking their claims on lucrative segments START SMALL, THINK BIG of this new market. But success is not guaranteed—a 2012 study revealed that on average, 65 percent of users delete apps within 90 days of installing them. Timing is everything The reason a ﬁrst-mover does not always yield its promised advantages is that much depends on timing, and therefore luck. In their 2005 paper, “The Half-Truth of First-Mover Advantage,” US business scholars Fernando Suarez and Gianvito Lanzolla identiﬁed technological innovation and the speed at which the market is developing as crucial in determining whether or not being a ﬁrst-mover is advantageous. Their ﬁndings suggest that when a market is slow-moving and technological evolution is limited, ﬁrst-mover advantage can be ❯❯ If later entrants can leapfrog pioneers, companies could be better off entering late. Peter Golder and Gerard Tellis Being the ﬁrst-mover in a new, untried market does not always result in success. Apple’s Lisa was the ﬁrst computer with a Graphical User Interface (GUI)—a version of which now forms the user interface of every computer, smartphone, and digital device—yet sales were far exceeded by later offerings from Commodore, IBM, and HP. Apple’s pioneering GUI computer was a commercial failure, with a shareholder return of -61 percent. Launched just two years later, Commodore’s “fast-follower” GUI computer yielded a shareholder return of 80 percent. SHAREHOLDER RETURN (%) 80 73 36 -61 Apple Lisa (1983) Commodore Amiga (1985) IBM Personal System/2 (1987) HP (1989) 38 38 signiﬁcant. They give the example of the market for vacuum cleaners, and, in particular, of the long-term market leader, Hoover. Until the relatively recent introduction of Dyson cleaners, the market was benign and technological advancement slow. Having been ﬁrst to market in 1908, Hoover enjoyed several decades of advantage—an advantage that was (and, in some places, still is) reﬂected in the widespread use of the company’s brand name as the verb “to hoover.” In other industries, however, where technological change or market evolution is rapid, ﬁrst- movers are often at a disadvantage. The ﬁrst search engines are examples of businesses that had too much invested in early iterations of a technology to keep up with the rapid pace of change. Early advantage quickly becomes obsolete in changeable markets. As the market evolves, later entrants are those that seem to be cutting edge, offering innovative features that build on the market-knowledge as well as learning from the mistakes of the ﬁrst-mover. The ﬁrst-mover may have enjoyed short-lived advantage but in dynamic markets such an advantage is rarely durable. Even Apple, who enjoyed signiﬁcant early-entrant advantage in the smartphone market with the iPhone, is not immune from ﬁrst- mover disadvantage. Competitors, Samsung in particular, were able to listen to customer complaints about iPhones, analyze customer needs, and produce products with features and functionality welcomed by the market. Apple, locked into previous technology iterations, took time to react and iPhone sales suffered as a result. Customer needs To gain an edge, therefore, you do not always need to be ﬁrst. Indeed, US multinational Procter & Gamble, for example, prefers only to enter those markets in which it can establish a strong number one or number two position over the long- term—rarely is this achieved in a blind rush to be ﬁrst. Procter & Gamble seeks markets that are demographically and structurally attractive, with lower capital requirements, and higher margins. But most GAINING AN EDGE The PalmPilot, launched in 1997, was a successful fast-follower product. It followed Apple’s unsuccessful Newton, which was the ﬁrst personal digital assistant (PDA) to enter the market. importantly, the organization insists on a deep understanding of customer needs in any market they enter. In other words, they would rather enter mature markets than be ﬁrst into new ones. The company values long-term relationships with its customers and suppliers; its view of innovation is different from small companies who, in attempting to capture market share, strive to gain an edge through the introduction of disruptive technology—innovative technology that seeks to destabilize the existing market. Procter & Gamble, perhaps heeding the research, considers such strategies to be short-lived. They realize that overly rapid innovation runs the risk of cannibalizing their own sales and reducing the returns on new product investment. In the market for disposable baby diapers, for example, Procter & Gamble was more than ten years behind the ﬁrst mover. The company’s now famous Pampers brand was launched in 1961, following some way behind Johnson & Johnson’s Chux brand, If you do things well, do them better. Anita Roddick UK entrepreneur (1942–2007) 39 39 which was launched in 1949. At the time, disposable diapers were a new innovation, and customers were wary of their use. Procter & Gamble waited until customers had come to accept the product before entering the market. Moreover, they spent nearly ﬁve years researching and addressing each of the major problems with Chux and developed a product that was more absorbent, had lower leakage, was more comfortable for the baby, offered two sizes, and could be produced at a signiﬁcantly lower cost. Today, Forbes magazine lists Pampers as one of the world’s most powerful brands, valued at over $8.5 billion, with the diapers being purchased by 25 million consumers in over 100 countries. By contrast, Chux was phased out by Johnson & Johnson in the 1970s due to shrinking sales. Securing a foothold In reality, then, while it is readily assumed that speed is good when entering a market, gaining an edge might depend less on timing than it does on appropriateness. Whether a company is ﬁrst, second, or last to market is important; but it is less important than the suitability of a company’s products or services to that market, and its ability to deliver on brand promises. Both these factors can have a profound impact on long-term viability and business success. Amazon may have enjoyed lasting ﬁrst-mover advantage, but that alone is insufﬁcient to account for its phenomenal success. Amazon leverages its ﬁrst-mover advantage into a sustainable competitive edge; its website is continually made easier to use, it offers a range of complimentary products, and it continues to drive down costs, enabling it to offer market-beating prices. Most notably, Amazon did not return a proﬁt until 2001—the company spent its earlier years building a better product. The foundations of success may have been laid by ﬁrst-mover advantage, but Amazon’s edge has been built on long-term good business practice. First-movers undoubtedly have a natural competitive edge. Whether it is a lasting impression on customers, strong brand recognition, high switching costs, control of scarce resources, or the advantages of experience, that edge can help to secure a strong, and long-term, START SMALL, THINK BIG foothold in the market. But as research shows, second-movers, and their followers, may sometimes be in an advantageous position. Learning from the mistakes of early entrants, they frequently offer superior products at lower prices. With the aid of skillful marketing, these beneﬁts can be leveraged to offset the advantages enjoyed by ﬁrst-movers. To become a market leader, a business needs either to be ﬁrst, and impressive, or it needs to be better. The companies we remember, the Amazons and the Googles, are those that were either ﬁrst or better—the ones we forget are those that had no edge at all. ■ Jeff Bezos Born on January 12, 1964 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US, Jeff Bezos had an early love of science and computers. He studied computer science and electrical engineering at Princeton University, and graduated summa cum laude in 1986. Bezos started his career on Wall Street, and by 1990 had become the youngest senior vice-president at the investment company D. E. Shaw. Four years later, in 1994, he quit his lucrative job to open Amazon.com, the online book retailer—he was barely 30 years old at the time. As with many Internet start- ups, Bezos, with just a handful of employees, created the new business in his garage; but as operations grew, they moved into a small house. The Amazon. com site was launched ofﬁcially on July 16, 1995. Amazon became a public limited company in 1997; the company’s ﬁrst year of proﬁt was 2001. Today, Bezos is listed by Forbes magazine as one of the wealthiest people in the US; and Amazon stands as one of the biggest global success stories in the history of the Internet. To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed. Plato Greek philosopher (429–347 BCE) 40 PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET, AND THEN WATCH THAT BASKET MANAGING RISK E ntrepreneurs are deﬁned by their willingness to bear risk—particularly the risk of business failure. This is especially true for those starting new companies, because more than half of start-ups fail within the ﬁrst ﬁve years. Lesser risks in established businesses include the possible failure of new products, or damage to the brand or a manager’s reputation. Whatever the level or type, however, risk is something that all businesses need to be aware of and manage carefully. US businessman Andrew Carnegie was pondering these issues when he suggested that in terms of IN CONTEXT FOCUS Risk management KEY DATES 1932 The American Risk and Insurance Association is established. 1963 Robert Mehr and Bob Hedges publish Risk Management in the Business Enterprise, claiming that the objective of risk management is to maximize a company’s productive efﬁciency. 1970s Inﬂation and changes to the international monetary system (the ending of the Bretton Woods agreement) increase commercial risks. 1987 Merrill Lynch becomes the ﬁrst bank to open a risk-management department. 2011 The US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission says that the 2008 ﬁnancial crisis was caused partly by ﬁnancial companies “taking on too much risk.” Risk is an inevitable part of business. But it can be quantiﬁed and action taken... ...through oversight and good management. ...and where to place the risk—on all the “eggs in the basket,” or just one? Part of this process involves deciding what level of risk is “acceptable”... Managing risk is a strategic process, balancing cost against reward. 41 See also: How fast to grow 44–45 ■ Hubris and nemesis 100–103 ■ Who bears the risk? 138–45 ■ Leverage and excess risk 150–51 ■ Off-balance-sheet risk 154 ■ Avoiding complacency 194–201 ■ Contingency planning 210 ■ Scenario planning 211 START SMALL, THINK BIG managing risk, it might be best to put all your eggs in one basket, then watch that basket. From the collapse of Lehman Brothers (2008), to BP’s Deepwater Horizon disaster (2010), events of the early 21st century fundamentally changed how organizations perceive risk. Companies now think in terms of two factors: oversight and management. “Risk oversight” is how a company’s owners govern the processes for identifying, prioritizing, and managing critical risks, and for ensuring that these processes are continually reviewed. “Risk management” refers to the detailed procedures and policies for avoiding or reducing risks. Inherent risks Risk is inherent in all business activity. Start-ups, for example, face the risk of too few customers, and therefore insufﬁcient revenue to cover costs. There is also the risk that a competitor will copy the company’s idea, and perhaps offer a better alternative. When a company has borrowed money from a bank there is a risk that interest rates will rise, and repayments will become too burdensome to afford. Start-ups that rely on overseas trade are also exposed to exchange-rate risk. Moreover, new businesses in particular may be exposed to the risk of operating in only one market. Whereas large companies often diversify their operations to spread risk, the success of small companies is often linked to the success of one idea (the original genesis for the start-up) or one geographic region, such as the local area. A decline in that market or area can lead to failure. It is essential that new businesses are mindful of market changes, and position themselves to adapt to those changes. The Instagram image-sharing social-media application, for example, started life as a location-based service called Burbn. Faced with competition, the business changed track into image-sharing. Had Instagram not reacted to the risks, and been savvy enough to diversify its offering (regularly adding new features), it may not have survived. At its heart, risk is a strategic issue. Business owners must carefully weigh the operational risk of start-up, or the risks of a new product or new project, against potential proﬁts or losses—in other words, the strategic consequences of action vs. inaction. Risk must be quantiﬁed and managed; and it poses a constant strategic challenge. Fortune favors the brave, but with people’s lives and the success of the business at stake, caution cannot simply be thrown to the wind. ■ It’s impossible that the improbable will never happen. Emil Gumbel German statistician (1891–1966) In deep water Even large and diverse organizations can ﬁnd it hard to successfully balance risk against potential ﬁnancial reward. On April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig chartered by British Petroleum (BP), exploded, killing 11 workers and spilling tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The incident was blamed on management failure to adequately quantify and manage risk; the ofﬁcial hearing cited a culture of “every dollar counts.” Analysts who examined the disaster claimed that BP had prioritized ﬁnancial return over operational risk. Chief executive Tony Hayward, who took the post in 2007, had suggested that the organization’s poor performance at the time was due to excessive caution. Coupled with increasing pressure from shareholders for better returns, the bullish approach that followed led to signiﬁcant cost cutting and, eventually, risk- management failures. BP’s Deepwater Horizon incident led to huge ﬁnes and US government monitoring of its safety practices and ethics for four years. 42 See also: Beating the odds at start-up 20–21 ■ Gaining an edge 32–39 ■ Understanding the market 234–41 ■ Forecasting 278–79 L uck is usually regarded as something over which businesses have no control. Yet, as McDonald’s CEO Ray Kroc said, “the more you sweat, the luckier you get,” suggesting that luck can be created. The reality is that both are true. As global markets become more volatile and less predictable, luck plays an inevitable part in business success. Launch a start-up at the same time as a rival and it may be luck that determines who succeeds, and who fails. Making your own luck A well-considered business plan is designed to dispense with reliance on luck. A good idea, underpinned by detailed market research and solid ﬁnancial planning, may help a start-up to ride the whims of the market. A good plan charts a course of action in turbulent markets, protects against the unknown, and prepares the company for contingencies. In addition, a well-conceived plan can ensure that a company is in a position to beneﬁt from favorable market conditions. In other words, what might seem like luck is often the result of planning. Take the famous example of 3M Post-it Notes. The invention of a reusable glue was accidental, but it was business insight that turned the lucky discovery into a commercial success. With so many variables, luck is likely to play a part in the survival of a start-up. But a good plan reduces how much luck a company needs. ■ LUCK IS A DIVIDEND OF SWEAT. THE MORE YOU SWEAT, THE LUCKIER YOU GET LUCK (AND HOW TO GET LUCKY) IN CONTEXT FOCUS Maximizing opportunity KEY DATES 1974 3M employee Art Fry uses the adhesive developed— and rejected as defective—by a colleague six years earlier to attach a bookmark in his hymnbook. This chance usage leads to the Post-it Note. 2009 A Harvard Business Review article “Are ‘Great’ Companies Just Lucky?” reports that in only half of the 287 high-performing companies surveyed could success be attributed to distinguishable practices or features of the organizations themselves. 2013 Five years’ hard work yields music group Daft Punk’s aptly titled song “Get Lucky”. A result of industry collaboration, market research, and strong marketing and publicity, the song’s commercial success demonstrates the value of business planning. The ﬁrst rule of luck in business is that you should persevere in doing the right thing. Opportunities will come your way if you do. Ronald Cohen UK venture capitalist (1945–) 43 See also: Beating the odds at start-up 20–21 ■ Managing risk 40–41 ■ The Greiner curve 58–61 ■ Who bears the risk? 138–45 ■ Small is beautiful 172–77 T he business landscape may appear to be dominated by corporate goliaths, but the reality is that small businesses outnumber large companies by a signiﬁcant margin. In fact, most businesses never grow beyond the scope of the owner—they start small and stay small. In the US, more than 99 percent of companies employ fewer than 500 people. In 2012, there were almost 5 million small businesses (with fewer than 49 employees), but only 6,000 companies employing more than 250 people. Aspiration, or its lack, is a key factor for small-scale companies. Many small-business owners are content with the lifestyle the business allows them, and have no desire for growth. But he biggest reason for a lack of growth is ﬁnance. Growth requires access to capital, which is difﬁcult and expensive to access for small companies. Moreover, unlimited liability means that an owner’s personal assets (such as the family home) are at risk if the business fails—a risk that many are unwilling to take. Entrepreneurial spirit is deﬁned as the willingness to take risks. Business owners who do aspire to growth must be willing to take the risky but important second step. For most small-business owners, this means employing the ﬁrst nonfamily member and beginning to acquire the necessary leadership and management skills to scale the business and manage the people, systems, and processes. ■ START SMALL, THINK BIG Large businesses might appear to be towering oaks, but most have acornlike beginnings. A common difference between them and companies that stay small is the willingness to take risks. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Expanding the business KEY DATES 1800 French cotton manufacturer Jean-Baptiste Say popularizes the term “entrepreneur,” which is taken from the French for the verb “to undertake.” 1999 Chinese business magnate Li Ka-shing underlines the importance of vision for business growth, stating “Broaden your vision, and maintain stability whilst advancing forward.” 2011 The Lean Startup by US technology entrepreneur Eric Ries encourages new businesses to utilize resources as efﬁciently as possible to encourage growth. 2011 The number of active entrepreneurs in mature countries grows by about 20 percent, reﬂecting job losses due to the economic downturn. BROADEN YOUR VISION, AND MAINTAIN STABILITY WHILE ADVANCING FORWARD TAKE THE SECOND STEP 44 44 NOTHING GREAT IS CREATED SUDDENLY HOW FAST TO GROW O ne reason many new businesses fail is, perhaps surprisingly, because they grow too fast. Excessively rapid growth can cause companies to overreach their ability to fund growth: they simply run out of cash to pay for day-to-day operations. A major challenge for any manager is to balance income with expenditure, ensuring that there is sufﬁcient cash to meet the rising costs of the business. In 2001, business professors Neil Churchill and John Mullins created a formula for calculating the pace at which a company can expand from internal ﬁnancing alone. Known “Grow or die” thinking can lead to overtrading and business failure. Nothing great is created suddenly. When the market is growing, a company must grow too... ...but that growth must be balanced and controlled. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Business growth KEY DATES 1970s McKinsey & Company consultants develop the MABA matrix to help conglomerates decide which divisions to grow, and how quickly. 2001 Neil Churchill—professor at INSEAD business school, France and John Mullins— professor at London Business School, UK—write How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow, introducing the self- ﬁnanceable growth rate (SFG). 2002 Toyota announces plans to be the world’s largest car producer. Eight years later, after recalling more than 8 million cars due to quality issues, it admits to growing too fast. 2012 Edward Hess writes Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses, describing growth as recurring change. 45 45 The fate of the exploding Helix Nebula resembles the decline of a company that has expanded too rapidly: after using up all its energy resources, the star collapses on itself and dies. See also: Managing risk 40–41	888,609
The Crime Book (Dorling Kindersley, Peter James, Cathy Scott) (Z-Library).pdf	CRIME the book CRIME the foreword by peter james book DK LONDON SENIOR EDITOR Helen Fewster MANAGING ART EDITOR Michael Duffy MANAGING EDITOR Angeles Gavira Guerrero ART DIRECTOR Karen Self ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf SENIOR JACKET DESIGNER Mark Cavanagh JACKET EDITOR Claire Gell JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT PRE-PRODUCTION PRODUCERS Andy Hilliard, Gillian Reid SENIOR PRODUCER Anna Vallarino ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham DK DELHI JACKET DESIGNER Dhirendra Singh EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Priyanka Sharma SENIOR DTP DESIGNER Harish Aggarwal MANAGING JACKETS EDITOR Saloni Singh TOUCAN BOOKS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Ellen Dupont SENIOR DESIGNER Nick Avery SENIOR EDITOR Nathan Joyce DESIGNER Thomas Keenes EDITORS Abigail Mitchell, Dorothy Stannard, Guy Croton, Debra Wolter EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Autumn Green, Joseph Persad ARTWORK COMMISSIONING Simon Webb ADDITIONAL GRAPHICS Dave Jones INDEXER Marie Lorimer PICTURE RESEARCH Susannah Jayes PROOFREADER Marion Dent original styling by STUDIO 8 First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Dorling Kindersley Limited, 80 Strand, London, WC2R 0RL Copyright © 2017 Dorling Kindersley Limited A Penguin Random House Company Foreword © 2016 Peter James/ Really Scary Books Ltd 2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1 001 - 305378 - Apr/2017 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-2412-9896-1 Printed and bound in Hong Kong A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com SHANNA HOGAN Shanna Hogan is an award-winning journalist and The New York Times best-selling author of three true-crime books including Picture Perfect: The Jodi Arias Story. An Arizona State University journalism graduate, Shanna has written for numerous publications, received more than 20 awards for her feature writing and investigative reporting, and has appeared on numerous shows, including The View, Dateline, 20/20, CNN, Oxygen, and Investigation Discovery. Shanna lives in Phoenix, Arizona, with her husband and two dogs. MICHAEL KERRIGAN Michael Kerrigan was educated at University College, Oxford. His many books include A History of Punishment, The War on Drugs, The American Presidency: A Dark History, The Catholic Church: A Dark History, and A Handbook of Scotland’s History. He writes regular reviews for The Times Literary Supplement and lives with his family in Edinburgh. LEE MELLOR Lee Mellor, Ph.D. (abd) is a criminologist, lecturer, musician, and the author of six books on crime. He is currently finishing his doctorate at Montreal’s Concordia University specializing in abnormal homicide and sex crimes. As the chair of the American Investigative Society of Cold Cases’ academic committee, he has consulted with police on cold cases in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Ohio, and London, Ontario. He resides in Toronto, Canada. REBECCA MORRIS Rebecca Morris is The New York Times best-selling author of A Killing in Amish Country, and If I Can’t Have You, with Gregg Olsen. An experienced journalist, she is also the author of the best-selling Ted and Ann: The Mystery of a Missing Child and Her Neighbor Ted Bundy. She lives in Seattle, Washington. CATHY SCOTT Cathy Scott, a Los Angeles Times best-selling author, is an established crime writer and investigative journalist for The New York Times and Reuters. Best known for writing The Killing of Tupac Shakur and The Murder of Biggie Smalls, she has written extensively about street gangs and organized crime, including mob daughter Susan Berman in Murder of a Mafia Daughter, and drug kingpin “Freeway” Rick Ross. She is the author of several other true crime works, including The Rough Guide to True Crime, The Millionaire’s Wife, and Death in the Desert, which was adapted into a full-length movie starring Michael Madsen in 2016. CONTRIBUTORS 6 10 INTRODUCTION BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS 18 Father of all treasons Thomas Blood 19 A civil, obliging robber John Nevison 20 Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters Edward “Blackbeard” Teach 22 Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief, Knox the boy that buys the beef Burke and Hare 24 They were brave fellows. They were true men The James-Younger Gang 26 It’s for the love of a man that I’m gonna have to die Bonnie and Clyde 30 You’ll never believe it – they’ve stolen the train The Great Train Robbery 36 Addicted to the thrill Bill Mason 37 To me it is only so much scrap gold The Theft of the World Cup 38 Miss, you’d better look at that note D.B. Cooper 44 Without weapons, nor hatred, nor violence The Société Générale Bank Heist 45 I stole from the wealthy so I could live their lifestyle John MacLean 46 Sing of my deeds, tell of my combats… forgive my failings Phoolan Devi 48 The fire becomes a mistress, a lover John Leonard Orr 54 It was the perfect crime The Antwerp Diamond Heist 56 He was an expert in alarm systems The Theft of the Cellini Salt Cellar 57 Weird and unbelievable, but it’s a very real criminal case The Russia–Estonia Vodka Pipeline 58 Old-school London criminal gents The Hatton Garden Heist CONTENTS CON ARTISTS 64 Under the influence of bad counsels… I fell a martyr The Affair of the Diamond Necklace 66 People took their hats off to such a sum The Crawford Inheritance 68 The smoothest con man that ever lived The Sale of the Eiffel Tower 70 Domela’s story rings with the high lunacy of great farce Harry Domela 74 If my work hangs in a museum long enough, it becomes real Elmyr de Hory 78 It’s not stealing because I’m only taking what they give me Doris Payne 80 They inflated the raft and left the island. After that nobody seems to know what happened Escape from Alcatraz 86 At the time, virtue was not one of my virtues Frank Abagnale 88 I was on a train of lies. I couldn’t jump off Clifford Irving 90 Originally I copied Hitler’s life out of books, but later I began to feel I was Hitler Konrad Kujau 94 If this is not a ring-in I’m not here The Fine Cotton Scandal 7 ORGANIZED CRIME 136 The most hazardous of all trades, that of the smuggler The Hawkhurst Gang 138 In Sicily there is a sect of thieves The Sicilian Mafia 146 They dare do anything The Triads 150 No more villainous, ruffianly band was ever organized The Wild Bunch 152 Prohibition has made nothing but trouble The Beer Wars 154 If the boss says a passing crow is white, you must agree The Yakuza 160 When we do right, nobody remembers. When we do wrong, nobody forgets Hells Angels 164 They were the best years of our lives The Krays and the Richardsons 166 All empires are created of blood and fire The Medellín Cartel 168 It was always about business, never about gangs “Freeway” Rick Ross KIDNAPPING AND EXTORTION 176 He valued her less than old swords The Abduction of Pocahontas 177 Marvellous real-life romance The Tichborne Claimant 178 Anne, they’ve stolen our baby! The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping 186 Since Monday I have fallen into the hands of kidnappers The Kidnapping of John Paul Getty III 188 I’m a coward. I didn’t want to die The Kidnapping of Patty Hearst 190 I still sleep with a night light. I can’t ride a subway The Chowchilla Kidnapping 196 I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house The Kidnapping of Natascha Kampusch MURDER CASES 202 An unusually clear case, like a “smoking gun” The Neanderthal Murder 203 Perpetrated with the sword of justice Jean Calas 204 Not guilty by reason of insanity Daniel M’Naghten 206 Gave Katherine warning to leave The Dripping Killer 208 Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks Lizzie Borden 212 Fingerprinting alone has proved to be both infallible and feasible The Stratton Brothers 216 Thank God it’s over. The suspense has been too great Dr Crippen 217 I was driven by a will that had taken the place of my own Madame Caillaux WHITE COLLAR CRIMES 100 Money… has often been a cause of the delusion of multitudes The Mississippi Scheme 101 Nothing is lost save honour The Black Friday Gold Scandal 102 The old game of robbing Peter to pay Paul Charles Ponzi 108 You can’t convict a million dollars The Teapot Dome Scandal 110 Citizens were dying right, left, and centre The Bhopal Disaster 114 The world’s biggest mugging The City of London Bonds Theft 116 It’s all just one big lie Bernie Madoff 122 I know in my mind that I did nothing criminal The Enron Scandal 124 He put in peril the existence of the bank Jérôme Kerviel 126 Bribery was tolerated and… rewarded The Siemens Scandal 128 Not just nerdy kids up to mischief in their parents’ basement The Spyeye Malware Data Theft 130 The irregularities… go against everything Volkswagen stands for The Volkswagen Emissions Scandal 8 218 She was very good looking with beautiful dark hair The Black Dahlia Murder 224 The artist was so well informed on chemicals… it was frightening Sadamichi Hirasawa 226 I have been a victim of many unusual and irrational thoughts The Texas Tower Massacre 230 Now is the time for Helter Skelter The Manson Family 238 A dingo’s got my baby! The Death of Azaria Chamberlain 240 I was Mr Nobody until I killed the biggest somebody on Earth The Murder of John Lennon 241 Who has sent you against me? Who has told you to do this thing? The Murder of Roberto Calvi 242 I was on death row, and I was innocent Kirk Bloodsworth 244 An act of unparalleled evil The Murder of James Bulger 246 I’m afraid this man will kill me some day O.J. Simpson 252 Foul play while in the Spy Craft store Craig Jacobsen 254 People are afraid and don’t want to talk to us The Murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls SERIAL KILLERS 262 Murdering people… for sheer sport Liu Pengli 263 The said Dame Alice had a certain demon Alice Kyteler 264 The blood of maidens will keep her young Elizabeth Báthory 266 I will send you another bit of innerds Jack the Ripper 274 They’d rather be dead than be with me Harvey Glatman 276 I just like to kill Ted Bundy 284 Calculated, cruel, cold-blooded murders Ian Brady and Myra Hindley 286 More terrible than words can express Fred and Rosemary West 288 This is the Zodiac speaking The Zodiac Killer 290 In his own eyes, he was some sort of medical god Harold Shipman 292 A mistake of nature Andrei Chikatilo 293 I was sick or evil, or both Jeffrey Dahmer 294 A danger to young women Colin Pitchfork 298 Read your ad. Let’s talk about the possibilities John Edward Robinson ASSASSINATIONS AND POLITICAL PLOTS 304 Insatiable and disgraceful lust for money The Assassination of Pertinax 305 Murdering someone by craft The Hashashin 306 Sic semper tyrannis! The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln 310 Dreyfus is innocent. I swear it! I stake my life on it – my honour! The Dreyfus Affair 312 If they shed my blood, their hands will remain soiled The Assassination of Rasputin 316 There has to be more to it The Assassination of John F. Kennedy 322 I kiss you for the last time The Abduction of Aldo Moro 324 Barbarity was all around us The Kidnapping of Ingrid Betancourt 326 Barbaric and ruthless The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko 332 DIRECTORY 344 INDEX 351 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 FOREWORD I owe my career as a writer to crime – in more ways than one. In 1982 soon after my first novel, a spy thriller, had been published, our Brighton home was burgled. A young detective, Mike Harris, came to take fingerprints, saw the book and told me if I ever needed any research help from Sussex Police to give him a call. Mike was married to a detective, Renate, and over the next few years my former wife and I became firm friends with them. Almost all of their circle of friends were also in the police force, in all fields, like Response, Homicide, Traffic, Child Protection, Antiques and Fraud. The more I talked to all of them, the more I realised that no one sees more of human life in a 30-year career than a cop. They encounter every single facet of the human condition. All investigated crime involves an inseparable trinity of perpetrator, victim and police. Even offences that disgust us, such as rape, domestic abuse, theft from charities, preying on the elderly or child abuse, hold us as much in thrall as other seemingly more “glamorous” ones. And there are some crimes which captivate us with their sheer verve, where the personality of the villains transcends the ruin, despair or even death inflicted on their victims. I’ve long held a sneaking admiration for brilliant con-man Victor Lustig who sold the Eiffel Tower to scrap dealers, and the brazen, skilfully planned, but almost Ealing Comedy nature of the Hatton Garden Jewellery Heist. Much in the same way, the 1963 Great Train Robbery captured the nation’s attention – it was at the time the most audacious, and largest robbery ever committed in England. I had lunch with the gang’s getaway driver, Roy John James, after his release from prison some years later. He was looking for finance to resume his motor racing career. A charismatic man, he ruefully told me if they had not made the mistake of coshing the train- driver, causing him permanent injury, they would all still be considered heroes today. But that of course is the problem with true crime – someone does get hurt. The glamour and vitality of the Bonnie and Clyde story grinds to a brutal and sobering halt in a relentless torrent of bullets. But that doesn’t stop our endless fascination with monsters, whether real or fictional, from Jack The Ripper, through to fiercely intelligent and charming Ted Bundy, estimated to have raped and killed over 100 young female college students. Nor with crime in general. Why are we so fascinated by crime, from both the pages of fictional detective novels, crime dramas and movies, to the utterly addictive murders in our tabloids, broadsheets and on our television news? I don’t believe there is a one-size fits all answer, but many. Top of my list is that we are programmed by our genes to try to survive. We can learn a great deal about survival through studying the fates of victims and the make-up of their perpetrators. And there is one aspect of human nature that will never change. I was chatting with former serial bank robber, Steve Tulley. As a teenager, in prison for his first robbery, Tulley met Reggie Kray, and persuaded him to let him be his pupil and teach him everything he knew. At 58, broke, Tulley is living in a bedsit in Brighton. I asked him what was the largest sum he had ever got away with. He told me it was £50k in a bank job. So what did he do with the money? He replied, excitedly that he had rented a suite in Brighton’s Metropole Hotel and, in his words, “Larged it for six months until it was all gone.” I asked Steve if he had the chance to live his life over again would he have done it differently? “No,” he replied with a gleam in his eyes. “I’d do it all again. It’s the adrenaline, you see!” Peter James Best-selling author of the Roy Grace novels INTRODU CTION 12 C rimes – the illegal actions that can be prosecuted and are punishable by law – are all around us, from comparatively petty misdemeanours to truly heinous acts of unspeakable evil. The perpetrators of these varied transgressions have long fascinated academics and the wider public, who have sought answers to questions about whether some people are more likely to commit crimes than others, and whether there are certain characteristics unique to criminals. Indeed, the Ancient Greeks were fascinated by the “science” of physiognomy – the study of how certain facial features can reveal something about a person’s character or nature. While such a thought now sounds somewhat ridiculous, physiognomy was widely accepted by the Ancient Greeks and underwent periodic revivals over the centuries, the most notable spearheaded by Swiss writer Johann Kaspar Lavater in the 1770s. What unites the crimes covered in this book is their status as “notorious” in one way or another. Whether it is because of their breathtaking ingenuity, brazen opportunism, machiavellian scheming, or abominable malevolence, these crimes stand out over the centuries. While many of the perpetrators are viewed with distaste and disgust, some have been highly romanticized over the years for their rebelliousness and contempt for obeying the rules. This is often in spite of the extremely serious nature of their crimes, such as with Bonnie and Clyde, the Great Train Robbers, and Phoolan Devi. Some cases have broken new ground, and in some instances have led to the swift passage of new laws to protect the public and deter others from committing similar crimes. Public outrage during the investigation into the highly publicized Lindbergh Baby kidnapping in 1932 prompted the US Congress to enact the Federal Kidnapping Act just one month later. Also known as the Lindbergh Law, the Act made kidnapping a federal crime punishable by death. Other cases have involved pioneering legal defence strategies, such as with the 1843 case of Daniel M’Naghten, the first of its kind in UK legal history. M’Naghten was acquitted of a high-profile murder based on a criminal- insanity defence, and remanded to a State Criminal Lunatic Asylum for the remainder of his life. Crime through the years Throughout history, pivotal moments have brought new crimes to the fore. In the late 19th century, for example, lawlessness increased with the growth of towns and cities, in part because of a lack of official police forces to rein in outlaws and bring them to justice. One of those was the Wild West’s Jesse James and his infamous James–Younger Gang, who became the first gang in the US to rob trains and banks during daylight hours. During the Prohibition period in the US, from 1920 to 1933, organized crime proliferated when outfits such as Chicago’s INTRODUCTION Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through. Jonathan Swift 13 Sheldon Gang vied to become the major illegal alcohol suppliers in the city’s southwest Irish belt. The number of offences in the US increased so much during that time span that the International Association of Chiefs of Police began to compile crime statistics. This culminated in the release of the Uniform Crime Reports – the first published in January 1930 – which were pulled together via a voluntary cooperative effort from local, county, and state law enforcement agencies. This became a vital tool to monitor the number and types of offences committed across the US. It caught on and inspired law enforcement agencies in other countries around the world to follow suit. The ultimate transgression When it comes to murder, it is invariably savage and disturbing. Whether an organized hit-for-hire, a crime of passion, or a wanton act of violence against a stranger, the act is final and tragic. History’s first homicide is believed to have taken place some 430,000 years ago. However, it was only discovered in 2015, when archaeologists working in Atapuerca, Spain, pieced together the skull of a Neanderthal and found evidence that he or she had been bludgeoned to death and thrown down a cave shaft. There is an undeniable public fascination with serial killers – especially those where the culprit has never been caught. The cases of Jack the Ripper in London and the Zodiac killer in California are both enduring sources of contemporary analysis and speculation. Some crimes are so horrifying that the name of the perpetrator becomes indelibly linked with indescribable evil. Ted Bundy, who committed the gruesome murders of dozens of young women in the 1970s in the Pacific Northwest, is a case in point. The fact that Bundy seemed a charming, respectable man heightened the shock factor: he did not conform to a stereotypical vision of a monstrous serial killer. Villains and technology The 1962 escape from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary caused an international sensation. Investigators concluded that the fugitives died trying to make their way across San Francisco Bay – but evidence unearthed in 2015 calls this into question. If such an escape were to happen today, a massive manhunt would be streamed live across the internet, making it more difficult for the criminals to get away. The technological improvements in the detection and solving of crimes, such as DNA fingerprinting, is accompanied by an increasing sophistication in the techniques criminals use to commit them and to evade capture. In 2011, Russian hacker Aleksandr Panin accessed confidential information from over 50 million computers. In February 2016, hackers stole $81 million (£64 million) from the central Bank of Bangladesh without even setting foot in the country. While criminal methods may have evolved over time, though, our fascination with crime and its perpetrators remains as strong as it ever has been. ■ INTRODUCTION He who commits injustice is ever made more wretched than he who suffers it. Plato BANDITS, ROBBERS ARSONIS , AND TS 16 T he general public has long romanticized bandits, admiring their courage, audacity, and unwillingness to live by the rules of others. Many have been regarded as daredevils rather than simply common criminals. Such was the public’s perception of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, outlaws operating in 1930s America, who travelled in a Buick sedan and hid out in boarding houses and empty barns between robberies and murders. Bonnie and Clyde’s crimes were heinous, but they captured the public imagination and attracted throngs of supporters who relished reading reports of their latest exploits. It was no different for the Great Train Robbers, a 15-member gang who targeted the Glasgow to London mail train in 1963. Wearing helmets, ski masks, and gloves, they stole 120 mailbags containing more than £2.6 million (about £49 million today) in cash and seriously injured train driver Jack Mills. Yet sections of the British public glorified the Great Train Robbers, pleased that some of them evaded justice, and ignored their violent and illegal exploits. Like other famous robberies and criminal partnerships, the stories of the Great Train Robbery and Bonnie and Clyde have been made into movies that appealed to the public’s age-old love of villains. The notion of the lovable rogue is not entirely fanciful. John Nevison, a British highwayman of the 1670s was renowned for his gentlemanly manner. Holding up stagecoaches on horseback, he apologized to his victims before taking their money. Bizarrely, it almost became an honour to be robbed by Nevison. His legendary status was cemented through his impulsive 320-km (200-mile) journey from the county of Kent to York to establish an alibi for a robbery that he committed earlier in the day—a feat that earned him the nickname “Swift Nick”. Ingenious crimes Sometimes we cannot help but admire the breathtaking audacity of certain crimes. One of the boldest robberies in modern times occurred in midair over the northwestern US in November 1971. The hijacker of a Boeing 727, who became known as D.B. Cooper, fled from the scene by parachute, taking with him a ransom of $200,000 (£158,000) in $20 bills. INTRODUCTION 1671 1676 1866–82 1930–34 1716–18 1827–28 Jesse James leads the James–Younger Gang in train and bank robberies across the American Midwest. In England, highwayman John Nevison rides 320 km (200 miles) in a single day in order to construct an alibi. Pirate Edward “Blackbeard” Teach plunders ships in the Caribbean and along the East Coast of America. Scottish graverobbers William Burke and William Hare turn to murder to make money selling corpses for dissection. Irishman Thomas Blood attempts to steal the English Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. Bonnie and Clyde go on a crime spree across several US states, kidnapping and murdering when cornered. 17 In the French town of Nice a few years later, thieves committed what was then the biggest heist in history when they drilled their way into the Société Générale bank from the city’s sewer system. In 2003, a gang of thieves showed similar ambition when they broke into a seemingly impregnable underground vault two floors beneath the Antwerp Diamond Centre, to commit what they dubbed the “perfect crime”. The gang made off with a haul worth around £60 million. The ringleader made one fatal mistake, however, leaving traces of his DNA close to the crime scene. Art heists also tend to capture the public’s imagination, because they often demonstrate brazen opportunism with little thought for the consequences. Take, for example, the 2003 case of amateur art thief Robert Mang, who climbed up the scaffolding outside a museum and squeezed through a broken window to steal a multi- million dollar work by the Italian artist Benvenuto Cellini. However, there was no market for the miniature masterpiece and he was forced to bury it in the woods. Darker acts Not all bandits and robbers inspire a grudging respect for the remarkable nerve of the offender. The case of bodysnatchers William Burke and William Hare – who, in early 19th-century Edinburgh, turned to murder to supply cadavers for Dr Robert Knox’s anatomy classes at the city’s university – is a grisly tale. The spate of arson attacks committed by fire investigator John Leonard Orr in California were especially dark and disturbing. This case was fiendishly difficult to crack, because much of the evidence was destroyed by the fire. A partial fingerprint left on an unburned part of his incendiary device led to his arrest. Unlike Bonnie and Clyde and the Great Train Robbers, who became legendary figures courtesy of the media, Orr created his own legend, and earned a reputation for being the first investigator at the scene of the crimes he secretly committed. But Orr’s fearlessness and skill as a master manipulator are what he shares with the bandits and robbers featured in this chapter. They have all entered criminal history on account of their notoriety, which in some cases extends to mythic status. ■ BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS 1963 1971 1979–83 1984–91 2003 2015 In Uttar Pradesh, India, Phoolan Devi, known as the Bandit Queen, carries out dozens of highway robberies. Professional fire investigator and secret arsonist John Leonard Orr sets a series of deadly fires in southern California. In Belgium, thieves break into the vault of the Antwerp Diamond Center, stealing diamonds worth £60 million. In Washington state, a man going by the name of D.B. Cooper hijacks a plane, extracts a £158,000 ransom, and escapes by parachute. The Great Train Robbers steal more than £2.6 million (about £49 million today) from the Glasgow to London mail train. Veteran thieves loot the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company in central London, in the largest burglary in UK history. 18 See also: The Société Générale Bank Heist 44 ■ The Antwerp Diamond Heist 54–55 ■ The Affair of the Diamond Necklace 64–65 I rish-born Thomas Blood (1618–80) fought for the Parliamentarians against Charles I’s Royalists in the English Civil War (1642–51), and the victorious Oliver Cromwell rewarded him with estates in his home country. These lands were confiscated during the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II, which Blood deemed a wrong that needed to be put right. He hatched a plan to steal the Crown Jewels, not only for financial gain but also to symbolically decapitate the king, echoing the fate of King Charles I, in 1649. Early in 1671, disguised as the fictitious clergyman Reverend “Ayloffe”, and with a female accomplice posing as his wife, Blood paid the Master of the Jewel Office, the elderly Talbot Edwards, for a tour. “Mrs Ayloffe” feigned illness during the tour, and Edwards and his wife came to her aid. A grateful Reverend Ayloffe made further visits, gaining the Edwards’s trust. On 5 May, Ayloffe persuaded Edwards to bring out the jewels, and immediately let in his waiting friends. Overpowering and beating Edwards, the gang flattened the crown and sawed the sceptre in half to make it easier to carry. They attempted to escape on horseback but were quickly caught. The king confounded his subjects by offering Blood a royal pardon. Some suggested that the king had been amused by Blood’s boldness; others that the king had recruited him as spy. Either way, Blood subsequently became a favourite around the royal court. ■ IN CONTEXT LOCATION Tower of London, UK THEME Jewel theft BEFORE 1303 Richard of Pudlicott, an impoverished English wool merchant, steals much of Edward I’s priceless treasury of gems, gold, and coins at Westminster Abbey. AFTER 11 September 1792 Thieves break into the Royal Storehouse, the Hôtel du Garde-Meuble de la Couronne, in Paris, and steal most of the French Crown Jewels; many, but not all, are later recovered. 11 August 1994 Three men make off with jewellery and precious stones worth £48 million at an exhibition at the Carlton Hotel in Cannes, France. FATHER OF ALL TREASONS THOMAS BLOOD, 1671 It was a gallant attempt, however unsuccessful! It was for a crown! Thomas Blood 19 See also: The Great Train Robbery 30–35 H ighwayman John Nevison (1639–94) was supposedly nicknamed “Swift Nick” by King Charles II after the truth was finally revealed about his most famous exploit. After robbing a traveller near Rochester, Kent, Nevison was in desperate need of an alibi, so he devised a cunning plan. He crossed the River Thames and galloped 320 km (200 miles) to York in a single day, then engaged the Lord Mayor of York in conversation and made a bet over a game of bowls. Nevison made sure that the Lord Mayor knew the time (8pm). The ruse paid off, and the Lord Mayor later acted as Nevison’s alibi during his trial. The jury could not conceive that a man was physically able to ride the distance Nevison covered in a single day, and so he was found not guilty. Nevison was a veteran of the 1658 Battle of Dunkirk and was skilful with horses and weapons. He was also courteous and elegant, which he believed put him above the rank of a common thief. The Newgate Calendar, a publication BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS IN CONTEXT LOCATION Gad’s Hill, near Rochester, Kent, UK THEME Highway robbery BEFORE 1491–1518 Humphrey Kynaston, a high-born English highwayman, robs travellers in Shropshire, allegedly giving his takings to the poor. AFTER 1710s Louis Dominique Garthausen, known as “Cartouche”, commits highway robberies in and around Paris. 1735–37 Highwayman Dick Turpin carries out a series of robberies in the Greater London area. He is captured in York in 1739 and is executed for horse theft. Nevison’s flamboyant style and courtly manners are evident in this 1680 depiction of his alleged meeting with King Charles II. A CIVIL, OBLIGING ROBBER JOHN NEVISON, 1676 that details the exploits of fabled criminals, said he was “very favourable to the female sex” on account of his courtesy and style. This elevated his standing and had the bizarre effect of making it something of an honour to have been robbed by him. ■ 20 A lthough far from the most successful pirate, Edward “Blackbeard” Teach is undoubtedly the most notorious. Originally an English privateer during Queen Anne’s War (1702– 13), he turned to piracy when the hostilities ceased. In 1716, Blackbeard travelled to the “pirate’s republic” of Nassau in the Bahamas. There, he met Captain Benjamin Hornigold who placed him in charge of a sloop. Together the pair plundered ships in the waters around Cuba and Bermuda, and along the East Coast of America. Hornigold and Teach soon encountered the Barbadian pirate “Gentleman” Stede Bonnet, who had been seriously wounded battling a Spanish man-of-war. Half of Bonnet’s crew had perished and the remaining 70 were losing faith in his leadership. The three men joined forces, with Bonnet temporarily ceding command of his sloop, the Revenge, to Blackbeard. Taking charge During a raid near Martinique in November 1717, Hornigold acquired the 200-ton frigate La Concord de Nantes. Hornigold placed Blackbeard in charge of this prized vessel. Blackbeard renamed it Queen Anne’s Revenge. In December, King George I passed the Indemnity Act, which pardoned any pirate who officially renounced his lifestyle. Hornigold – who had been replaced as captain by his and Blackbeard’s IN CONTEXT LOCATION The Caribbean and East Coast of North America THEME Piracy BEFORE 1667–83 Welsh privateer and later Royal Navy Admiral Sir Henry Morgan becomes famous for attacks on Spanish settlements in the Caribbean. 1689–96 Captain William Kidd, a renowned Scottish privateer and pirate hunter, plunders ships and islands in the Caribbean. AFTER 1717–18 Barbadian pirate “Gentleman” Stede Bonnet, nicknamed for his past as a wealthy landowner, pillages vessels in the Caribbean. 1719–22 Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts, a Welsh pirate, raids hundreds of ships in the Americas and West Africa. DAMNATION SEIZE MY SOUL IF I GIVE YOU QUARTERS EDWARD “BLACKBEARD” TEACH, 1716–18 Blackbeard’s fearsome appearance matched his reputation, but evidence suggests he only used force as a last resort. His swashbuckling was greatly romanticized after his death. 21 See also: The Hawkhurst Gang 136–37 BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS combined crews after he voted against a decision to attack any ship they wanted, including British ships – took the King’s pardon and parted ways with Blackbeard. Eventually, Bonnet’s men deserted him, choosing to serve under Blackbeard’s command. Blackbeard put a surrogate in charge of the Revenge and kept Bonnet as a “guest” on his ship. Soon after, Blackbeard sailed to North Carolina, where he blockaded the port of Charleston, capturing nine ships and ransoming a wealthy merchant and politician. Upon sailing away from Charleston, the Queen Anne’s Revenge ran aground. Anchoring their fleet at Topsail Inlet, Bonnet and Blackbeard travelled by land to Bath, North Carolina, in June 1718 where they were granted pardons by Governor Charles Eden. However, while Bonnet remained there, Blackbeard crept back to the fleet, plundered the Revenge and two other ships in the fleet and transferred the goods to his sloop, the Adventure. Having violated the conditions of his pardon, Blackbeard now had a sizable bounty on his head. On 22 November, 1718, two Royal Navy sloops commanded by Lieutenant Robert Maynard caught up with the Adventure at Ocracoke Harbor. Last stand Outmanoeuvring the Royal Navy’s ships, Blackbeard lured them onto a sandbar. Rather than escaping, he fired two broadside attacks at Maynard’s ship. When the smoke cleared, only the lieutenant and a few crew members remained on deck. Blackbeard ordered his band of 23 pirates to board the vessel. As his men clambered onto the ship, 30 armed sailors emerged from below decks. A bloody battle ensued. Maynard and Blackbeard both aimed their flintlock pistols at each other and fired. Blackbeard’s shot missed but Maynard’s struck Blackbeard in the abdomen. Blackbeard recovered, however, and broke Maynard’s sword in two with a mighty blow of his cutlass. Before he could capitalize on his brief advantage, though, one of Maynard’s men drove a pike into Blackbeard’s shoulder. Outgunned and outnumbered, Blackbeard’s crew surrendered, but he continued to fight. He finally fell dead after taking five gunshot wounds and 20 sword wounds. Maynard ordered his men to hang Blackbeard’s head from the bowsprit. Later, it was mounted on a stake near the Hampton River as a warning to other pirates. ■ “Legal” piracy Sociologists have long recognized that crime and deviance are situational – that they change over time and from one location to the next. Piracy is a good example of this phenomenon. In the mid-13th century, Henry III of England started to issue licences, called “privateering commissions”, which allowed sailors to attack and plunder foreign vessels. After 1295, these licences were known as letters of marque. Privateers became much more numerous in the 16th to 18th centuries, with some working without royal consent, including Francis Drake, who carried out raids on Spanish shipping. During Queen Anne’s War, British privateers regularly plundered French and Spanish ships. However, when hostilities between the nations ended, these same professional plunderers suddenly found themselves on the other side of the law. Clearly, what is considered criminal depends on shifting social structures, which are in turn dictated by larger political and economic realities. Privateer Sir Henry Morgan attacks and captures the town of Puerto del Principe in Cuba in this engraving from 1754. Let’s jump on board, and cut them to pieces. Edward “Blackbeard” Teach 22 A pair of Irish immigrants became unlikely grave robbers – and ultimately killers – in 19th-century Scotland when greed got the better of them. William Burke and William Hare worked as labourers in Edinburgh, where they met in 1827 after Burke and his companion, Helen McDougal, moved into a lodging house in Edinburgh run by Hare and his wife Margaret. When an elderly lodger died of natural causes and still owed rent, Burke and Hare sneaked into the cemetery, dug up his coffin, snatched his body, and carried it in a tea chest to Edinburgh University’s medical school. Dr Robert Knox, a popular anatomy lecturer who urgently needed corpses for dissection lessons, paid them £7 and 10 shillings (about £585 today) for the body. A unique business idea Inspired by their success, and delighted by such an easy stream of income, the pair repeated it again and again, robbing newly buried coffins and selling the cadavers to Knox. However, they soon tired of digging up graves in the middle of the night. So, in November 1827 when a lodger became ill, Burke expedited the man’s demise by covering his mouth and nose while restraining him – a smothering technique that became known as “burking”. That first murder was the start of the duo’s killing spree, targeting strays and prostitutes on the streets of Edinburgh. Their modus operandi involved plying a victim with drink until they fell asleep. Then, Burke smothered them using Hare (left) and Burke (right) financially exploited a shortage in the legal supply of cadavers at a time when Edinburgh was the leading European centre of anatomical research. IN CONTEXT LOCATION Edinburgh, Scotland, UK THEME Bodysnatching and multiple murder BEFORE November 1825 Thomas Tuite, a bodysnatcher, is captured by a sentry in Dublin, Ireland, in possession of five bodies and with his pockets full of sets of teeth. AFTER 7 November 1876 A gang of counterfeiters breaks into Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield, Illinois, to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body and hold it for ransom. The plot is foiled by a Secret Service agent posing as a member of the gang. BURKE’S THE BUTCHER, HARE’S THE THIEF, KNOX THE BOY THAT BUYS THE BEEF BURKE AND HARE, 1827–28 23 See also: Jack the Ripper 266–73 BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS his unique technique. They loaded the body into a tea chest and transported it at night to Dr Knox’s surgery. They received £7–10 (£550–800 today) for each body. Burke and Hare got away with murder for 11 months until the body of Irishwoman Margaret Docherty was discovered by two guests at Hare’s boarding house, Ann and James Gray. The Grays notified the police, and an inquiry led them to Dr Knox. Docherty’s body had since been moved to the university lecture hall, which had become Knox’s dissecting theatre. After a newspaper report pointed the finger at Burke and Hare, there was a public outcry for their prosecution. William Burke, William Hare, Helen McDougal, and Margaret Hare were all arrested by police shortly afterwards and charged with murder. Dr Knox was questioned by police, but was not arrested as he had not technically broken the law. Every man for himself Requiring more evidence for a conviction, the court’s Lord Advocate attempted to extract a confession from one of the four, and he chose Hare. He was offered immunity from prosecution and testified that Burke had committed the murders. Burke was subsequently convicted of three Robert Knox was a pre-eminent Scottish anatomist whose career was overshadowed by his involvement in the Burke and Hare case. Diagnosing psychopathy The Hare Psychopathy Checklist (named after Canadian psychologist Robert Hare) is a diagnostic tool used to identify a person’s psychopathic tendencies. Originally designed to assess people accused of crimes, it is a 20-item inventory of personality traits assessed primarily via an interview. The subject receives a score for each trait depending on how well each one applies to them. The traits include lack of remorse; lack of empathy; inability to accept responsibility for actions; impulsivity; and pathological lying. When psychopaths commit crimes, it is likely that their acts are purposeful. The motives of psychopathic killers often involve power or sadistic gratification. Not all violent offenders are psychopaths, but FBI investigations found that psychopathic offenders have more serious criminal histories and tend to be more chronically violent. murders and, on 28 January, 1829, hanged in front of a cheering crowd numbering up to 25,000. People were said to have paid up to £1 (about £80 today) for a good view overlooking the scaffold. Burke’s body was publicly dissected by Dr Knox’s rival, Dr Monro, at the anatomy theatre of Edinburgh University’s Old College, attracting so many spectators that a minor riot occurred. His skeleton was later donated to Edinburgh Medical School. Hare, although he confessed to being an accomplice, was freed, and fled to England. With his reputation in tatters, Knox moved to London to try to revive his medical career. In all, Burke and Hare killed 16 victims in what became known as the West Port Murders. The murders led to the passing of the Anatomy Act 1832, which increased the supply of legal cadavers by authorizing the dissection of unclaimed bodies from workhouses after 48 hours. This proved effective in reducing cases of body snatching. ■ I am sure … that in the whole history of the country – nothing has ever been exhibited that is in any respect parallel to this case. Lord Meadowbank 24 F rom February 1866 to September 1876, the James- Younger Gang robbed 12 banks, five trains, five stagecoaches, and an exposition ticket booth. Their crime spree began in the wake of the American Civil War (1861–65) when the James brothers – Jesse and Frank – joined forces with the Younger brothers – Cole, Jim, John, and Bob. They all fought as Confederate bushwhackers attacking civilian Unionists during the Civil War. After the hostilities ended, Jesse James turned the group into a bank-robbing posse. Some historians credit the gang with the first daylight armed robbery in the US when they targeted the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri, in 1866. In all their train robberies, the gang only robbed passengers twice, when their takings were especially low. They committed robberies every couple of months, hiding out in between jobs to avoid the law. They were aided by sympathizers who offered their homes as hideouts. The gang used maps and compasses, and avoided well-travelled roads, making it difficult to pursue them. The gang grew, and they drifted between Midwest states, pulling off robberies of banks, trains, and stagecoaches, in Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia. On 3 June 1871, they robbed a bank in Corydon, Iowa, but were identified as suspects. From then on, they became known as the James- Younger Gang. THEY WERE BRAVE FELLOWS. THEY WERE TRUE MEN THE JAMES-YOUNGER GANG, 1866–82 IN CONTEXT LOCATION Missouri, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia, US THEME Armed robbery BEFORE 1790–1802 Samuel “Wolfman” Mason and his band of followers prey on riverboat travellers on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, US. 1863–64 William “Bloody Bill” Anderson, a pro-Confederate guerrilla leader during the American Civil War, leads a band of outlaws against Federal soldiers in Missouri and Kansas, US. AFTER 1897 Al Jennings, a prosecuting attorney-turned- outlaw, forms the Jennings Gang, and robs trains in Oklahoma, US. Jesse James (left) posing with two of the Younger brothers. Despite Jesse’s romanticized image and comparisons to Robin Hood, there is no evidence that he gave their loot to the poor. 25 BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS Tracking them down In 1874, following a train robbery in Missouri, the Adams Express Company, which suffered the biggest loss during the robbery, enlisted the services of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to catch the gang. In March 1874, Allan Pinkerton, the agency’s founder, sent detective Joseph Whicher to pursue James, but Whicher was found dead the day after he arrived. An outraged Pinkerton sent a group of detectives to track the gang down in January 1875, but they succeeded only in killing Jesse’s eight-year-old half brother and wounding Jesse’s mother with an incendiary device during a botched raid. Condemned for this act, Pinkerton withdrew and the gang continued unabated. The James-Younger Gang dissolved in 1876 when the Younger brothers were arrested during an See also: Bonnie and Clyde 26–29 ■ The Wild Bunch 150–51 ambush while attempting to rob the Northfield First National Bank in Minnesota. The James brothers were both wounded in the legs, but escaped on horseback and kept low profiles until three years later, when Jesse formed another gang. The The posse rides into town and divides into three groups Two wait outside the bank as guards The group reunite, shoot their way out, and gallop out of town Three go into the bank The three grab the loot Two remain on the road as lookouts James Gang’s reign ended in 1882 when fellow gang member Robert Ford betrayed and shot Jesse in the back inside James’s home in St Joseph, Missouri, in order to collect the $10,000 bounty (about £189,000 today) on his head. ■ The romanticization of outlaws The exploits of Old West outlaws have been exaggerated and romanticized, despite the fact that many were killers. The captivating allure of criminals seems to be based on conflicted feelings of both attraction and repulsion, of love and hatred. Outlaws embody freedom in their refusal to obey laws, representing the boundary- crossing children that we used to be. They are also eulogized for unexpected benevolence: the courteous highwayman and figures, including Robin Hood, were popularized for their supposed altruistic motives and for “serving” the people. The public reaction to Robert Ford’s murder of Jesse James in 1882 is a case in point, as it caused a national sensation. Newspaper articles were published across the US, including in The New York Times. Such was James’s allure that people travelled from far and wide to see the body of the legendary robber. 26 IT’S FOR THE LOVE OF A MAN THAT I’M GONNA HAVE TO DIE BONNIE AND CLYDE, 1930–34 I n the late night hours of 13 April 1933, two police cars pulled up to an apartment on Oak Ridge Drive in the windswept city of Joplin, Missouri. Living inside the rented apartment were five infamous outlaws known as the Barrow Gang, including Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The gang had spent the past 12 days in hiding, after carrying out a series of armed robberies and kidnappings in Missouri and neighbouring states. As police yelled for the occupants to get out, Barrow grabbed his favourite weapon – a M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle – and opened fire through a broken IN CONTEXT LOCATION Central US THEME Gangsters BEFORE 14 July 1881 The outlaw known as “Billy the Kid” is shot dead by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. 3 February 1889 Myra Maybelle Starr, better known as Belle Starr, is gunned down near King Creek, Oklahoma. AFTER 22 July 1934 Depression-era gangster and notorious bank robber John Dillinger is killed by federal agents while fleeing from arrest. 27 November 1934 FBI agents kill George “Baby Face” Nelson, a bank robber and gangster then labelled “Public Enemy Number One”. 27 See also: The James-Younger Gang 24–25 ■ The Wild Bunch 150–51 window. His paramour Parker laid down cover fire with her own gun, the bullets splintering the surrounding trees. Amid the hail of gunfire, the gang killed two Missouri police officers, Detective Harry McGinnis and Constable J.W. Harryman. Bonnie and Clyde escaped, leaving behind possessions including an arsenal of weapons, Parker’s handwritten poems, and rolls of undeveloped film, which would turn the young lovers into folk legends and eventually lead to their downfall. In the photos, the pair playfully posed with automatic weapons, standing in front of a stolen vehicle. In one picture, Parker is clenching a BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS cigar between her teeth and holds a pistol in her hand. Soon the story of the outlaw lovers dominated the front pages of newspapers across the country. Criminal superstars Their four-year crime spree, during which they robbed banks and killed police, titillated the American public. Far from their glamorized image, however, the Barrow Gang’s crimes were punctuated by narrow escapes, bungled robberies, and fatal injuries. With the FBI still a fledgling agency without the power to combat interstate bank robberies and kidnappings, the period between 1931 and 1935 become known as the “Public Enemy Era” – a period when a number of high-profile criminals wrought significant damage across the US against the background of the Great Depression. From their first meeting in 1930, Parker and Barrow shared an instant connection and she became his loyal companion. Shortly after their romance sparked, Barrow was arrested for burglary and sent to the Eastham prison facility in ❯❯ No man but the undertaker will ever get me … I’ll take my own life. Clyde Barrow Wearing her iconic high heels, Bonnie playfully points a shotgun at Clyde in 1932. Parker later sustained serious burns to her leg in a car crash, leaving her barely able to walk. 28 BONNIE AND CLYDE The Dallas Morning News issue announcing the death of Bonnie and Clyde sold 500,000 copies. A group of Dallas newsboys later sent the largest floral tribute to Parker’s funeral. It is much better that they were both killed, rather than to have been taken alive. Blanche Barrow Texas. There he committed his first murder, using a lead pipe to beat an inmate who had assaulted him. After Parker smuggled a gun inside the prison, Barrow escaped, but was later recaptured. The spree begins In February 1932, Barrow was paroled, emerging from jail a hardened and bitter criminal seeking revenge against the prison system for the abuses he suffered behind bars. Reuniting with Parker, Barrow assembled a rotating core of associates, robbing rural petrol stations and kidnapping and killing when cornered. Between 1932 and 1934, the gang is believed to have killed several civilians and at least nine police officers. Barrow was officially accused of murder for the first time in April 1932, when he shot and killed a storeowner after a robbery. A few months later, Barrow and another gang member killed a deputy and wounded a sheriff who approached them at a country dance in Oklahoma. It was the first time a Barrow Gang member had killed an officer of the law. In April 1933, Clyde’s brother Buck was released from prison. He and his new bride, Blanche, joined the gang at the apartment in Joplin, Missouri, eventually attracting the attention of the police after 12 days of loud, alcohol- fuelled parties. The gang’s newfound notoriety after the shootout made it increasingly difficult to evade capture, hunted by the police, pursued by the press, and followed by an eager public. For the next three months, the gang moved from Texas to Minnesota and Indiana, sleeping at campgrounds. They robbed banks, kidnapped people, and stole cars, committing the crimes near the borders of states to exploit the pre- FBI “state line rule” that prevented officers from crossing state lines while in pursuit of a fugitive. Public opinion changes Eventually the killings became so cold-blooded that the public’s fascination with the duo soured. The Texas Department of Corrections commissioned former Texas Ranger Captain Frank A. Hamer with the specific task of taking down the Barrow Gang. Hamer formed a posse, comprising a unique collaboration of Texas and Louisiana police officers. It was one of the most highly publicized and intense manhunts in US history. By the summer of 1933, the gang began to fall apart. Then on 10 June, while driving near Wellington, Texas, Barrow accidentally flipped their car into a ravine, and Parker sustained third- degree burns to her right leg. Her injuries were so severe that she could hardly walk and was often carried by Barrow. A month later, during a 19 July shootout with police in Missouri, a bullet struck Buck in the head. Blanche was also wounded and blinded in one eye. Despite his terrible injuries, Buck remained conscious and he and the rest of the gang escaped. The trail ends Days later, on 24 July, Buck was shot in the back during another shootout, and he and Blanche were captured. Buck was taken to a 29 The death car became the subject of so much interest that fakes began to appear. The local sheriff tried to keep the car but was sued by the owner. It is now on display at a casino in Nevada. BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS hospital where he died on 29 July, from pneumonia after surgery, but not before doctors injected him with stimulants so that he could answer police questions. Barrow and Parker’s trail ended on a road that cut through Louisiana’s Piney Forest on State Highway 154, south of Sailes. Led by Hamer, the posse of police officers had tracked and studied the pair’s movements and discovered that the gang camped on the edges of state borders. Using a tip that the couple would be in the area, Hamer predicted their pattern and set up an ambush point along the rural Louisiana highway. At around 9:15am on 23 May 1934, six officers concealed in the bushes saw Barrow’s stolen Ford V8 approaching at high speed and sprayed the car with a total of 130 rounds. Barrow and Parker were shot dozens of times, each sustaining multiple fatal wounds. When the bullet-ridden Ford was towed to town, with the bodies still inside, a crowd of curious onlookers surrounded the car. Spectators collected souvenirs, including pieces of Parker’s bloody clothes and hair. One man even tried to cut off Barrow’s trigger finger. Items belonging to the pair, including stolen guns and a saxophone, were also kept by members of the posse and sold as souvenirs. The ambush remains highly controversial, given that there were no attempts to take the pair alive. Celebrity criminals Bonnie and Clyde emerged as the first celebrity criminals of the Depression era, partly due to the intense newspaper and radio coverage of their crimes. Outlaws like George “Baby Face” Nelson and “Pretty Boy” Floyd also became legends, with their deadly stories appearing on front pages of newspapers across the country. During this time, a disillusioned, angry public, faced with unemployment and extreme poverty, held the gangsters in high esteem, with magazines, newspapers, and radio programmes covering their daily exploits. Bonnie and Clyde’s legend intensified with the 1967, Academy Award-winning film Bonnie and Clyde, which exposed the couple’s exploits to a new generation. It was considered groundbreaking for its relaxed presentation of sex and violence. However, such a glamorized portrayal elicited troubling questions, as several couples have attempted similar sprees, claiming to have been inspired by the famous outlaws. The 1967 adaptation of the pair’s crime spree starred Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway and presented them as attractive and even chic. Prentiss Oakley, the Louisiana officer who fired the first shot, later expressed regret that the outlaws had not been offered a chance to surrender to them. The bloody end of Bonnie and Clyde was the end of the “Public Enemy Era” of the 1930s. By the summer of 1934, the federal government enacted statutes that made kidnapping and bank robbery federal offences – a legal breakthrough that finally allowed FBI agents to apprehend bandits across state lines. ■ YOU’LL NEVER BELIEVE IT THEY’VE STOLEN THE TRAIN THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY, 8 AUGUST 1963 32 A t the beginning of the 1960s, life for many Londoners was poverty- stricken and drab. The austerity of postwar rationing was a recent memory, ending only six years before. Having acquired the taste for easy money by taking advantage of his work in a sausage factory to sell black-market meat, Ronald Christopher “Buster” Edwards, was graduating to robberies with his friend Gordon Goody. Their brushes with the law brought them into contact with Brian Field, a lawyer’s clerk. His services did not stop at preparing their defences. For a cut of the proceeds Field would pass the duo details of his firm’s clients as potential targets. Early in 1963, Field introduced them to a stranger known only as “the Ulsterman”. Believed to be Belfast-born Patrick McKenna, this corrupt Manchester postal worker brought intriguing news: large cash sums were being carried on the overnight mail trains from Glasgow to London. A tempting target – if above Goody’s and Edwards’ pay- grade. They took the information to an experienced South London criminal called Bruce Richard Reynolds. In the months that followed, Reynolds started to put together an adhoc gang. Best-laid plans The plan was elegantly simple. The gang would stop the train in open countryside in Buckinghamshire at Sears Crossing, close to the village of Ledburn, where a signal could be interfered with. While this was the perfect place to stop the train, high embankments made it unsuitable for unloading the loot. For that, the train would be moved to nearby Ronnie Biggs He objected to being dismissed as the gang’s “teaboy”, but Ronnie Biggs’s role could hardly be considered crucial in the Great Train Robbery. Born in Stockwell, south London, in 1929, he was a somewhat hapless burglar and armed robber when he met Bruce Reynolds in Wandsworth Prison. The Great Train Robbery was to be his first and only major heist. His main responsibility was the recruitment of “Stan Agate”, the gang’s replacement driver, who was not actually able to move the train because he was not familiar with the type of locomotive used. Biggs’s fingerprints were found on a ketchup bottle at the gang’s hideout and he was arrested three weeks later. He escaped Wandsworth Prison using a rope ladder on 8 July 1965. He travelled to Brussels, then on to Australia before settling in Brazil in 1970, which did not then have an extradition treaty with the UK. Eventually, Biggs returned to the UK on a jet paid for by The Sun newspaper in exchange for exclusive rights to his story. Biggs was arrested minutes after landing at RAF Northolt on 7 May 2001. THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY IN CONTEXT LOCATION Ledburn, Buckinghamshire, UK THEME Train robbery BEFORE 15 May 1855 Approximately 91 kg (200 lb) of gold is stolen from safes on board a South Eastern Railway train running between London Bridge and Folkestone, UK. 12 June 1924 The Newton Gang carry out a postal train robbery near Rondout, Illinois, and steal around $3 milllion (£33 million today), making it the biggest train robbery in history at that time. AFTER 31 March 1976 A train travelling from Cork to Dublin, Ireland, is robbed near the village of Sallins by members of the Irish Republican Socialist Party. Am I one of a minority in feeling admiration for the skill and courage behind the Great Train Robbery? Graham Greene 33 Bridego Bridge. The mail train was typically long, its cars manned by up to 80 postal workers who spent the journey sorting letters and packages. The gang discovered that High-Value Packages (HVPs) were stored in the second coach from the front, so the gang planned to uncouple just the first two coaches. Once they reached Bridego Bridge, they could unload sacks of registered mail using a human chain from the high embankment to a drop-side lorry waiting on the road below. Reynolds refused to leave anything to chance, so in case the hijacked driver refused to carry out their demands, one of the gang would spend months studying locomotive manuals. Posing as a schoolteacher, he persuaded a driver on a suburban line to take him along for a ride: watching closely, he picked up certain basics. Reynolds also recruited a fully experienced driver to make sure. Field, meanwhile, negotiated the purchase of the abandoned Leatherslade Farm, roughly 50 km (30 miles) from Sears Crossing, which would be their hideout after the robbery. Signal victory Just before 7pm on Wednesday, 7 August, the train left Glasgow, with veteran driver Jack Mills at the controls and his co-driver David Whitby beside him. The HVP coach was carrying over £2.6 million (about £49 million today) in cash rather than the £300,000 or so the gang had been expecting because of the public holiday on the previous Monday, during which the banks had been closed. By the time the train reached Sears Crossing, gang members had tampered with the signal lights; they slipped a glove over the green light to blot it out and wired the red “stop” sign to a separate See also: The James–Younger Gang 24–25 ■ The Wild Bunch 150–51 BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS The train was halted just before Bridego Bridge where the gang formed a human chain down the embankment. They loaded the loot onto a lorry where the black car is in the image. battery. A surprised Mills brought the train to a halt and Whitby went to investigate. When he tried to report in from the trackside telephone, he found that the wires had been cut. As Whitby made his way back towards the train, he was hurled down the steep embankment by men in motorcycle helmets and ski masks. Meanwhile, gang members wearing masks and gloves climbed into Mills’s cab and knocked him unconscious with an iron bar; others uncoupled the coaches from the rear of the HVP coach, and overpowered and handcuffed the postal workers. It soon became clear that the replacement driver – a retiree known as “Stan Agate” to the gang – was unable to operate the state- of-the-art Class 40 diesel-electric locomotive. So, having knocked out Mills, the robbers had to revive him so he could take them up the line to Bridego Bridge. Passing the ❯❯ It is the British press that made the “legend” that you see before you, so perhaps I should ask you who I am. Ronnie Biggs 34 THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY The plan started with a tampered signal at Sears Crossing. The train stopped and two carriages were driven on to Bridego Bridge. mailbags along a human chain down the embankment, the gang quickly loaded the lorry. Warning the handcuffed postal workers in the HVP coach not to call the police for 30 minutes, the gang made their triumphant way back to the hideout at Leatherslade Farm. An inevitable slip-up It was indeed a “great train robbery”, and if it all sounds like something from a film, that is because in recent decades, such elaborately organized heists have been much more popular with movie makers than with criminals. Not only are crimes like this risky, but they are enormously labour-intensive. Up to 17 men appear to have been involved in the robbery, although to this day, a few participants remain unidentified. The gang members split the loot evenly, so as not to cause division, which would have added a potential source of danger. However, the high number of people involved in the operation carried risks, such as a gang member being indiscreet with his loot or talking about the robbery. In the end, an acquaintance of the ringleaders – in prison himself and hopeful of a deal – passed on some gossip that he had heard through the grapevine, providing a vital lead for the investigators to pursue. The plan unravels Meanwhile, in the robbers’ farmhouse, confidence had given way to tension. The plan had been to lie low for a week, but it was soon apparent that the police – systematically sweeping the surrounding countryside – were closing in. Detectives had noted the robbers’ 30-minute warning to the staff of the HVP coach, which suggested a hideout within half-an-hour’s drive. Police searched Leatherslade Farm after a neighbour reported unusual activity at the farm. The robbers had gone, but fingerprints were Obviously you are a thief because you like money, but the second thing is the excitement of it. “Buster” Edwards Mailbags loaded into truck by human chain Train halted by modified signal light Grand Union Canal Farm track Sears Crossing Bridego Bridge To Mentmore To London B448 to Tring To Leighton Buzzard First two carriages moved to Bridego Bridge Cargo taken back to Leatherslade Farm 35 Leatherslade Farm, later dubbed “Robber’s Roost” by the press, was searched by police after farmworker John Maris tipped them off, convinced that the robbers were hiding there. Three men arrested in connection with the robbery are led away by police, holding blankets over their heads. The intense media interest is evident at the top left of the image. BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS Compassionate release On 6 August 2009, after falling gravely ill with pneumonia, 80-year-old Ronnie Biggs was released on “compassionate” grounds – a rarity in the UK. Under the Prison Service Order 6000, a prisoner can only apply in the event of “tragic family circumstances” or if he or she is suffering from a terminal illness with death likely to result within a few months. Biggs survived until December 2013, but this caused little controversy. By contrast, two weeks after Biggs was released, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, was freed on compassionate grounds by the Scottish Justice Secretary, a decision condemned by the British and US press. Megrahi had been diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, but his release from hospital caused an outcry, as did the arrival of Colonel Gaddafi’s personal aircraft to repatriate him, and the hero’s welcome he received back home in Libya. found on a Monopoly game they had played – using real cash – as well as on a ketchup bottle. The conspiracy’s collapse was as abrupt and chaotic as its planning had been patient. Eleven of the robbers were quickly caught together in south London. The majority of the 11 were jailed for 30 years, a severe sentence for a crime in which nobody had been killed. However, it helped generate sympathy for the robbers. Two of them escaped prison – in August 1964, friends of gang member Charlie Wilson broke into Birmingham’s Winson Green Prison to snatch him; the next July, Ronnie Biggs climbed over the wall at Wandsworth Prison, London. Mythical status The robbery’s audacity could not be denied, but the long-term trauma inflicted upon the train crew was easier to ignore. Mills suffered from post-traumatic headaches for the rest of his life and never fully recovered from his injuries. Whitby died a few years later, at the age of 34, from a heart attack. However, these tragedies were overshadowed by an increasing romanticization of the crime, intensified by the fact that only a fraction of the £2.6 million haul was recovered. The robbery occurred at a time when brazen irreverence towards old-fashioned authority was in vogue – and at a time in which artist Andy Warhol claimed that everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Biggs recorded music with the Sex Pistols and Edwards became the subject of the film Buster (1988) – his part played by rock star Phil Collins. Just three years after the crime, The Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery was released, playing on the idea that serious crime could be comic entertainment. ■ 36 See also: John MacLean 45 ■ The Antwerp Diamond Heist 54–55 ■ Doris Payne 78–79 B ill Mason was an unexceptional property manager by day, but by night he was a notorious cat burglar. While unsuspecting owners slept he scaled walls, tiptoed across parapets, clambered onto balconies, and shimmied through barely open windows. On a wet and windy night, Mason executed a plan weeks in the making. Straining every sinew, he climbed a full 15 floors up the outside of the apartment building of oil tycoon Dr Armand Hammer, where he found the balcony door unlocked. He tossed the contents of Mrs Hammer’s jewellery box, worth several million dollars, into one of her pillowcases. Ironically, on his way out, Mason found the front door secured by an easily pickable single lock. He made his escape through an open window on the third floor and used a grappling hook to help lower himself to the ground. Mason diligently concealed his tracks at every turn; the police did not identify a single suspect. Over a 20-year period of targeting the rich and famous – including swimmer and actor Johnny “Tarzan” Weissmuller, who lost an Olympic gold medal – Mason stole approximately £120 million in jewellery. The adrenaline surge he felt during the robbery and the glamour of these furtive brushes with the stars were addictive. Mason was eventually caught in a sting operation, and later wrote the memoir Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief, published in 2003. ■ IN CONTEXT LOCATION Dr Armand Hammer’s apartment, southern Florida, US THEME Jewel theft BEFORE 1950–1998 Peter Scott, a Northern Irish cat burglar, commits some 150 burglaries before he is caught in 1952; in 1960, he steals a $260,000 (£206,000) necklace belonging to actress Sophia Loren. AFTER 2004–06 Accomplished Spanish thief Ignacio del Rio confesses to more than 1,000 burglaries committed in Los Angeles over just a two-year period, taking $2 million (£1.5 million today) in jewellery and a painting by Degas worth $10 million (£7.4 million). To the astonished occupants, it would seem as if the jewels had simply evaporated. Bill Mason ADDICTED TO THE THRILL BILL MASON, 1960s–1980s 37 See also: Thomas Blood 18 ■ The Theft of the Cellini Salt Cellar 56 F or England’s football fans, 1966 lives in the memory as the only year in which their team ever won the World Cup. The theft of the famous Jules Rimet Trophy four months before the tournament started, however, meant that England captain Bobby Moore nearly had to hold an imitation trophy in celebration. On display in Westminster’s Central Hall, London, the cup was guarded, but thieves sneaked in between patrols and forced open its glass case. Despite a full-scale investigation, the Metropolitan Police were no nearer a solution when a note arrived demanding £15,000 (£196,000 today) for the trophy’s safe return. An attempt to entrap the sender did catch a petty criminal named Edward Betchley but failed to produce the trophy. Not until Pickles, a collie dog being taken for a walk by his owner David Corbett, unearthed a parcel beneath the hedge outside his owner’s home in Upper Norwood, south London, did the missing cup come to light. The story is still striking in terms of calculating “value” when it comes to crime – and whether some items are too well-known to be worth stealing. The original trophy, melted down – the only way a gang could have disposed of it – would have been worth little in monetary terms. Its symbolic significance, however, was priceless. A replica was produced in the original’s place and fetched £254,000 at auction in 1997. ■ BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS IN CONTEXT LOCATION Central Hall, Westminster, London, UK THEME Priceless trophy theft BEFORE 9 October 1964 Jack Roland Murphy, a surfing champion, breaks into the Gems and Minerals Hall at the American Museum of Natural History and steals the J.P. Morgan jewel collection. AFTER 19 December 1983 The Jules Rimet Trophy is stolen again, this time from the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro. It has never been recovered. 4 December 2014 Sixty Formula 1 trophies are stolen by a group of seven men who drive a van through the doors of the Red Bull Racing headquarters in England. Pickles the dog netted his owner a £5,000 reward, which he used to buy a house in Surrey. Pickles was later awarded a silver medal by the National Canine Defence League. TO ME IT IS ONLY SO MUCH SCRAP GOLD THE THEFT OF THE WORLD CUP, MARCH 1966 MISS, YOU’D BETTER LOOK AT THAT NOTE D.B. COOPER, 24 NOVEMBER 1971 40 O n the afternoon of 24 November 24 1971, an unidentified man in his mid 40s, wearing a dark suit and black clip-on tie and carrying a black a briefcase, jumped into criminal folklore. The man, who later would be dubbed D.B. Cooper by the press, boarded Northwest Orient’s Flight 305 from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle, Washington. During the flight, he passed flight attendant Florence Schaffner a note telling her he had a bomb in his case. After showing her the device, he stated his demands: he wanted D.B. COOPER The Northwest Orient Boeing 727 that D.B. Cooper hijacked is shown here at Portland airport, Oregon, in 1968. Its rear stairway is situated directly underneath the tail. four parachutes, a fuel truck waiting for the plane when it landed at Seattle-Tacoma Airport, and $200,000 (£158,000) in $20 banknotes, or he would blow up the plane. What happened later that evening, though, is one of the most perplexing mysteries in US criminal history. Parachute escape When the plane landed in Seattle, Cooper allowed the passengers and two of the three flight attendants to leave. Officials handed over the money and the parachutes. Cooper ordered the pilots to fly towards Mexico City at a maximum altitude of 3,000 metres (10,000 ft) and at the minimum airspeed possible without stalling. About 45 minutes into the flight south, he sent the flight attendant to the cockpit and put on his parachute. Somewhere north of Portland he lowered the rear stairs and jumped out of the Boeing 727 and into the dark, rainy night. He left behind two of the parachutes and his tie. The FBI launched a massive manhunt and the military was called in. Helicopters and a thousand troops on foot searched the area where they guessed Cooper might have landed, conducting door-to-door searches. A military spy plane even IN CONTEXT LOCATION Between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington, US THEME Aircraft hijacking BEFORE 31 October 1969 Raffaele Minichiello, a decorated US marine, hijacks a TWA flight in Los Angeles and is apprehended in Rome, Italy. AFTER 10 November 1972 Southern Airways Flight 49 is hijacked by three men who demand $10 million (£8 million). They are eventually apprehended in Havana, Cuba. 3 June 1972 Willie Roger Holder hijacks Western Airlines Flight 701 from Los Angeles to Seattle, demanding a $500,000 (£396,000) ransom and the freedom of imprisoned black activist Angela Davis. Back in the early ’70s, late ’60s, hijackings weren’t uncommon. The philosophy of the day was ‘Cooperate, comply with his demands, and we’ll deal with it when the plane lands.’ Larry Carr 41 photographed the Boeing 727’s entire flight path. None of them found anything. All the authorities had to go on was that the unidentified man had apparently bought a ticket in the name of either Dan or Dale Cooper. When police interviewed the man who sold the plane tickets that day, they asked if any of the passengers looked suspicious. Without hesitating, he replied, “Yes, Dale Cooper.” The police subsequently told a reporter the suspect’s name was “D. Cooper”. However, the reporter, who didn’t quite catch the name, asked “D or a B?” The police officer responded, “Yes.” And thus the legend of D.B. Cooper was born. Profiling Cooper Schaffner gave police a physical description of the hijacker – in his mid 40s, between 1.7 metres (5 ft 10 inches) and and 2 metres (6 ft) tall, 77–81 kg (12–13 stone), and with close-set brown eyes. She told police that the hijacker was well- spoken, polite, and calm. He was a bourbon drinker, and paid his drinks tab, even attempting to give her the change. Schaffner also disclosed that the hijacker asked if BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS the flight crew wanted any food during the stop at Seattle. He had said that McChord Air Force Base was a 20-minute drive away from Seattle-Tacoma Airport – a detail that most civilians would not have known. His choice of plane – a 727-100 – was also ideal for a bail- out escape. These factors indicated that he may well have been an Air Force veteran. However, his lack of safety equipment, thermal clothing, or helmet, which would have afforded him little protection from the -57°C (-70°F) wind chill, seems to throw doubt on the claim he was a military man. FBI investigators at the time of the incident argued from the outset that he simply would not have survived the jump. Money discovered More than eight years later, in February 1980, eight-year-old Brian Ingram and his family were picnicking by the Columbia River close to the city of Vancouver, Washington. As the family cleared a spot for a campfire, Brian unearthed a packet of money in the sand near the river. His remarkable find, totalling $5,800 (£4,590) in $20 bills – of which he was allowed to keep $2,850 (£2,460) – matched the serial numbers of the ransom money handed over to Cooper on the tarmac in Seattle. The FBI searched the beach and dredged the river but found nothing else. Nevertheless, the search reignited the public’s interest in the legend of D.B. Cooper, and in the missing $144,200 (£114,000). The D.B. Cooper hijacking had all the ingredients of a legend – he got away with it, no one was hurt, and his fate remains a mystery. Public interest was periodically reinvigorated by news that the FBI was still looking for D.B. Cooper. ❯❯ Criminal profiling Criminal profiling is the process of identifying the most likely type of person to have committed a particular crime. Investigators look at behaviour, personality traits, and demographic variables, including age, race, and location to build up a psychological picture of a suspect. In the case of D.B. Cooper, his knowledge of the aviation industry and of the Boeing 727 suggest that he may have spent time in the Air Force, but his lack of skydiving skills suggest that he worked as an ancillary aviation worker, such as a cargo loader. It is possible that he lost his job during the economic downturn in the aviation industry in 1970–71 and this provided the financial motivation to commit the crime. The fact that the FBI could not find anyone local who disappeared from the area shortly after the crime opens up the tantalizing possibility that D.B. Cooper may have been a local man who simply returned home and did his normal job as usual on the Monday morning. The FBI produced a composite drawing of D.B. Cooper in 1972 based on recollections of the crew and his fellow passengers. I’m not so convinced that the investigation is dead or this story is over by any stretch. Geoff Gray 42 D.B. COOPER At one point they decided to treat the case as if it were a bank robbery and appealed to the public in a bid to extract any relevant information. They released previously unknown facts about the case, including that he was wearing a clip-on tie, and the D.B. Cooper frenzy started up again. Comic theory When Seattle Special Agent Larry Carr took over the FBI’s investigation in 2008, he disclosed that most of the messages he received were from people asking him not to solve the case. It seemed that D.B. Cooper had become a folk hero to some. Nevertheless, Carr went diligently about his business. He thought it was possible the hijacker took his name from a French- Canadian comic book. In the fictional series, never translated into English, Royal Canadian Air Force test pilot Dan Cooper takes part in adventures in outer space and historical events of that era. One episode, published around the date of the hijacking, features an illustration of Dan Cooper parachuting on the cover. This led Carr to suspect that the hijacker had been a member of the Air Force, but also that he had spent time overseas where he could have read the comic book. With the development of DNA profiling, FBI agents took another look at the clip-on tie Cooper left behind on the plane. They found a partial DNA sample on the tie but it did not match up with any suspects they had looked at over the years. Promising leads One intriguing suspect was Vietnam veteran L.D. (Lynn) Cooper. His niece, Marla Cooper, contacted the FBI in 2011, claiming she had been keeping a 40-year-old family secret – that her uncle Lynn Doyle Cooper was D.B. Cooper. She said she was eight years old when her uncle came home badly injured, a day or two after Thanksgiving in 1971. He claimed that he had been hurt in a car crash. She said she heard him tell the family “our money troubles are over.” Cooper, who had died by the time his niece went to the FBI, worked as an engineering surveyor, which may have given him some of the training he needed to make the successful jump and knowledge of the safest places to land in the area. Marla Cooper loaned the FBI a guitar strap she thought would contain his DNA but no DNA was found on it. She put investigators in touch with her uncle’s daughter, but the woman’s DNA did not match the sample on the clip-on tie – which may or may not have D.B. Cooper’s DNA. Still, the FBI 14:15 D.B. Cooper boards a Boeing 727 in Portland, bound for Seattle. 14:50 Shortly after takeoff, Cooper orders a bourbon and soda. 15:00 Cooper passes a note to flight attendant Florence Schaffner, which states, “I have a bomb in my briefcase.” 15:05 Cooper orders the pilots to tell air traffic control that he wants $200,000 in $20 notes and four parachutes. 17:24 Cooper is informed that his demands have been met and the plane lands at Seattle-Tacoma airport. 19:00 Cooper is given four parachutes and a bag containing $200,000. 43 Dan Cooper was the name that the unidentifed man gave to the airport cashier. Along with the clip-on tie and the money recovered in 1980, this ticket is the only proof of his existence. BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS called it “a promising lead,” but investigators were never able to definitely connect L.D. Cooper to the hijacking. At the end of the investigation, the FBI was still attempting to match a fingerprint to prints the hijacker left on the Boeing 727. Lasting legacy The D.B Cooper case prompted a spate of copycat crimes, particularly in the two years immediately after the hijacking. In 1972 alone, 15 similar skyjackings were attempted, but all of the perpetrators were captured. In total, approximately 160 planes were hijacked in American airspace between 1961 and 1973, after which security was improved markedly and both passengers and their luggage began to be screened. Whether D.B. Cooper survived the jump or not, his legacy lives on through an aircraft component that was named after him. In 1972, the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) ordered all Boeing 727s to add what was later named a “Cooper vane”, a mechanical aerodynamic wedge that prevents the rear stairway from being lowered in flight. The enigmatic D.B. Cooper case is the world’s only unsolved skyjacking. After investigating thousands of leads over 45 years, the FBI announced in July 2016 that it was ending active investigation of the case, but insisted that the file remains open. Meanwhile, the legend of D.B. Cooper lives on in music, films, documentaries, scores of books, and in the lives of thousands of armchair sleuths. ■ 19:40 The plane is refuelled and takes off again. Cooper explains his flight plan to the pilots and orders them to remain in the cockpit until they land. 20:00 A warning light alerts the pilots that the plane’s rear stairway has been opened. 20:13 The plane experiences a sudden upward movement; the pilots bring the plane back to level flight. 22:15 The plane lands safely at Reno Airport and is searched by police and military officials. The sequence of events on 24 November 1971 is clear enough through the testimony of witnesses, but the fate of D.B. Cooper after he exited the plane remains a mystery. 44 See also: The Antwerp Diamond Heist 54–55 ■ The Hatton Garden Heist 58–59 D uring the 1976 Bastille Day weekend in Nice, France, a team of 20 men, led by French photographer and former paratrooper Albert Spaggiari, broke into the Société Générale bank. They had spent two months drilling a 7.5-metre (25-ft) tunnel from the city’s sewers into the vault. Once they made it to the vault, the gang spent four days prying open over 400 safe deposit boxes, while cooking meals, drinking wine, and using antique silver tureens as toilets. The “sewer gang” escaped with $8–10 million (about £15–18.5 million today) in gold, cash, jewellery, and gems. Before fleeing, Spaggiari scrawled on the vault’s wall in French, “sans armes, ni haine, ni violence” (“without weapons, nor hatred, nor violence”), identifying himself as a higher class of criminal. Dubbed the “heist of the century” by the press, it was then the largest bank theft in history. However, by the end of October 1976, Spaggiari had been arrested and confessed to the crime. During a trial hearing, he made a daring escape by distracting the judge, jumping through a window and onto a parked car, before driving off on a waiting motorcycle. He was later convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison but remained hidden until his death in 1989. Six other men were arrested; three were acquitted and the others sentenced to between five and seven years in prison. The loot from the heist has never been recovered. ■ WITHOUT WEAPONS, NOR HATRED, NOR VIOLENCE THE SOCIÉTÉ GÉNÉRALE BANK HEIST, 16–20 JULY 1976 IN CONTEXT LOCATION Nice, France THEME Bank vault heist BEFORE January 1976 The British Bank of the Middle East in Beirut, Lebanon, is robbed by guerrillas, who make off with safe deposit boxes containing £22 million (about £140 million today). AFTER 19–20 December 2004 An armed gang steals £26.5 million in cash from the vaults of the Donegall Square branch of the Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 6 August 2005 Thieves tunnel into the vault of a branch of Brazil’s central bank in the city of Fortaleza and steal more than $65 million (£52 million) in cash. All the pleasures that come with the life of a crook do not make up for the heavy sacrifices. “Amigo”, a member of Spaggiari’s team 45 See also: Bill Mason 36 ■ Doris Payne 78–79 D ubbed the “Superthief”, John (Jack) MacLean was estimated to have committed some 2,000 burglaries during the 1970s. He targeted wealthy victims and made off with more than $100 million (£80 million) in loot. His most renowned raid was a $1 million (£80,000) jewellery theft at the mansion of a Johnson & Johnson company heiress in 1979. Although he stole only from the rich, he was far from a Robin Hood figure. He used his millions to fund a lifestyle like that of his victims, buying a helicopter, a speed boat, a sea plane, and a summer home. MacLean was finally caught in 1979 after a crystal-studded walkie- talkie linked him to the Fort Lauderdale robbery. He used the time in prison to write a memoir entitled Secrets of a Superthief, which was published in 1983. While MacLean was incarcerated, investigators noticed that a series of rapes and sexual battery cases, which detectives had attributed to a man with a talent for slipping past locks and alarms, had completely stopped. In 1981, MacLean was charged with two offences, but the cases were subsequently dismissed. However, after scientific advancements in DNA testing, MacLean was arrested in October 2012 for two of hundreds of rapes he is believed to have committed decades ago. ■ BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS I STOLE FROM THE WEALTHY SO I COULD LIVE THEIR LIFESTYLE JOHN MACLEAN, 1970s IN CONTEXT LOCATION Florida, US THEME Cat burglary BEFORE 1850s–1878 English burglar Charles Peace carries out multiple burglaries in Manchester, Hull, Doncaster, and around Blackheath, southeast London. AFTER 2006–09 A gang of thieves dubbed the Hillside Burglary Gang burgle 150 houses of wealthy residents in the area overlooking Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. 1983–2011 Accomplished Indian thief Madhukar Mohandas Prabhakar commits at least 50 burglaries in wealthy areas of Mumbai, India, amassing a fortune. The mugshot of John MacLean in 1979 after he was arrested for the Fort Lauderdale robbery. He later boasted about this crime in his memoir. 46 A s the villagers of Behmai in Uttar Pradesh, India, prepared for a wedding on Valentine’s Day 1981, 18-year-old Phoolan Devi plotted her revenge. Seven months earlier, the low- caste teenage gang member had been kidnapped by a rival, largely high-caste gang in Behmai. For three weeks, Devi was locked up and repeatedly raped. She escaped with the help of two members of her gang and a low-caste villager, before rallying the rest of her gang and returning to the village. Her gang rounded up 22 of Behmai’s male villagers, including two of her rapists, and on Devi’s orders, shot dead each one. Known as the Behmai massacre, it was then India’s largest mass execution and prompted a huge manhunt. The legend of the “Bandit Queen” was born. Phoolan Devi’s weapon of choice was a rifle, which gang leader and partner Vikram Mallah taught her to use. She eventually laid down the rifle in front of cheering supporters. IN CONTEXT LOCATION Uttar Pradesh, India THEME Banditry BEFORE 1890s The Big Swords Society, a peasant self-defence group, is formed in northern China to protect against bandits. 1868 Vigilantes break into a jail in New Albany, Indiana, killing three members of the train-robbing Reno Gang. AFTER 1980s The Sombra Negra (Black Shadow) group forms in El Salvador, murdering criminals and gang members. 2013 Self-styled “Diana, Huntress of Bus Drivers” kills two in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, as vengeance for alleged murders and rapes perpetrated by the city’s bus drivers. SING OF MY DEEDS, TELL OF MY COMBATS… FORGIVE MY FAILINGS PHOOLAN DEVI, 1979–FEBRUARY 1983 47 Bandit Queen, a film about Devi’s life, was released in 1994. It was initially banned by the Indian censor for being subversive and for its frank depiction of the brutality of rape. See also: The James–Younger Gang 24–25 ■ The Wild Bunch 150–51 BANDITS, ROBBERS, AND ARSONISTS Robin Hood figure Devi became a heroine to India’s lower caste, her crimes glorified as retribution for the oppression of women in rural India. Born on 10 August 1963, to a low-caste family in rural Uttar Pradesh, Devi grew up very poor. At 11, her parents forced her to marry a man three times her age in exchange for a cow. In 1979, after fleeing her abusive husband, she was shunned by her parents, who considered her a disgrace. At 16, with limited options for survival, she became the sole female dacoit (armed bandit) in a local gang. Devi soon rose to lead the gang, carrying out dozens of raids and highway robberies, attacking and looting upper-caste villages, and kidnapping rich people for ransom. In one of her most famous crimes, her gang captured and looted a town, then distributed the goods to the poor, further cementing her status as a Robin Hood figure. Catch and release Devi spent two years evading capture, concealed by the villagers she spent her life protecting. But in February 1983, she negotiated both her own surrender and the surrender of her gang members for considerably reduced sentences. Devi was arrested in front of thousands of cheering onlookers and later charged with 48 crimes, including 30 charges of robbery and kidnapping. She spent the next 11 years in prison awaiting trial, but remained a beacon of hope for the poor and downtrodden. Devi was released on parole in 1994, and all charges were dropped. She took up politics and was elected as a Member of Parliament (MP). However, on the afternoon of 25 July 2001, three masked men ambushed and fatally shot her. One of her killers claimed that Phoolan Devi’s assassination was carried out as revenge for the upper-caste men murdered during the Behmai massacre. ■ Crime and candidacy In some countries, criminals guilty of committing certain crimes are not permitted to run for public office. The rationale is that serious criminal conduct is inconsistent with the obligations of citizenship, and if someone is incapable of being a citizen, they should not be entitled to hold office. However, there is also evidence to suggest that voters perceive citizens who break the law for their own ends much less favourably than people who break the law for what they believe to be the public good. Nothing prevented Phoolan Devi, charged with multiple serious crimes including kidnapping and banditry, from running for office. A champion of the lower castes and a heroine to oppressed women, she had a sizable following. However, she was far from universally adored, particularly among higher castes, many of whom were outraged that she was allowed to stand as a candidate. She was elected as an MP in the 1996 Indian General Election, winning with a majority of 37,000 votes. Devi lost her seat the following year but regained it in 2001. I alone knew what I had suffered. I alone knew what it felt like to be alive but dead. Phoolan Devi THE FIRE BECOMES A MISTRESS, A LOVER JOHN LEONARD ORR, 1984–91 50 W ith its arid climate and expanses of wilderness, California is a magnet for firestarters. But none of them have come close to the level of fiery devastation wrought upon people and property by John Leonard Orr. In the early 1980s, a series of blazes began in the Los Angeles area, sometimes as many as three a day. In one incident, 65 homes were reduced to smouldering ash. But it was not until 10 October 1984, that human lives were extinguished by the flames. At 7pm, the public address system at Ole’s Home Center in South Pasadena blared an emergency warning. Noticing smoke pouring out of the hardware department, cashier Jim Obdan rushed to help customers flee the store, and was badly burned in the process. Fortunately, though, he lived to tell the tale. Co-workers Jimmy Cetina and Carolyn Kraus were not so lucky. Nor were customers Ada Deal and Matthew Troidl, a loving grandmother and her two-year-old grandson. The following morning, arson investigators searched the blackened ruins for the point of origin – where a fire first begins – to determine its cause. Unable to locate it, they concluded that it was an electrical accident. But one seasoned arson investigator – Captain Marvin Casey of the Bakersfield Fire Department – was certain the fire had been intentionally set in a stack of flammable cushions. In January 1987, a number of suspicious fires broke out north of Pasadena in the city of Bakersfield. At a craft shop, Marvin Casey discovered an incendiary device in a bin of dried flowers. It was crude but effective – three matches bound to the middle of a cigarette by a rubber band and concealed within a sleeve of yellow lined paper. After lighting the cigarette, the offender would have ample time to leave the scene before the cigarette burned down far enough to ignite the matches and start the fire. Later that same day, a second conflagration erupted in a bin containing pillows and foam rubber at Hancock Fabric store in Bakersfield. The trail of arson continued in rapid succession with JOHN LEONARD ORR IN CONTEXT LOCATION Southern California, US THEME Serial arson BEFORE 1979–80 Bruce Lee (born Peter Dinsdale) committed 11 acts of arson in and around his hometown of Hull, Yorkshire, UK. AFTER 1985–2005 Thomas Sweatt, a prolific American arsonist, set close to 400 fires, the majority of which were in the Washington, D.C. area. 1992–93 Paul Kenneth Keller, a serial arsonist from Washington state, set 76 fires in and around Seattle during a six-month spree. John Orr wanted to be a Los Angeles police officer for a long time. He applied in 1981. He passed all of the tests except one. It was the psychological test. Joseph Wambaugh Pyrophilia While the vast majority of arsonists are insurance fraudsters or attention seekers, the pyromaniac is a unique breed, fascinated by fire to the point of compulsively setting them. Even rarer than the pyromaniac is the pyrophile – Greek for “fire-lover” – a person who is sexually aroused by the flames, the smell of smoke, the	828,872
The Ecology Book (Dorling Kindersley, Inc.) (Z-Library).pdf	ECOLOGY THE BOOK BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED WE ARE LIVING ON THIS PLANET AS THOUGH WE HAD ANOTHER ONE TO GO TO THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY WE ARE PLAYING DICE WITH THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT FOOD IS THE BURNING QUESTION THE TIME HAS COME FOR SCIENCE TO BUSY ITSELF WITH THE EARTH ITSELF SOLAR ENERGY IS BOTH WITHOUT LIMIT AND WITHOUT COST GENES ARE SELFISH MOLECULES IF YOU DO NOT KNOW THE NAMES OF THINGS, THE KNOWLEDGE OF THEM IS LOST PLANTS LIVE ON A DIFFERENT TIMESCALE ALL BODILY ACTIVITY DEPENDS ON TEMPERATURE РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS FOREWORD BY TONY JUNIPER РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS DK US/LONDON SENIOR EDITORS Helen Fewster, Camilla Hallinan SENIOR ART EDITOR Duncan Turner AMERICANIZER Jill Hamilton ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham JACKET EDITOR Emma Dawson JACKET DESIGNER Surabhi Wadhwa-Gandhi JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION Andy Hilliard SENIOR PRODUCER Meskerem Berhane MANAGING EDITOR Angeles Gavira Guerrero MANAGING ART EDITOR Michael Duffy ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler ART DIRECTOR Karen Self DESIGN DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf DK DELHI SENIOR ART EDITOR Ira Sharma PROJECT ART EDITOR Vikas Sachdeva ART EDITORS Shipra Jain, Sourabh Challariya, Debjyoti Mukherjee ASSISTANT ART EDITORS Shreya Singal, Vidushi Gupta, Amrai Dua SENIOR EDITOR Janashree Singha EDITOR Aadithyan Mohan K. ASSISTANT EDITORS Rishi Bryan, Tanya Singhal, Nonita Saha JACKET DESIGNER Suhita Dharamjit SENIOR DTP DESIGNERS Harish Aggarwal, Jagtar Singh DTP DESIGNERS Mohammad Rizwan, Bimlesh Tiwary PICTURE RESEARCHER Vishal Ghavri JACKETS EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Priyanka Sharma MANAGING JACKETS EDITOR Saloni Singh PICTURE RESEARCH MANAGER Taiyaba Khatoon PRE-PRODUCTION MANAGER Balwant Singh PRODUCTION MANAGER Pankaj Sharma MANAGING EDITOR Soma B. Chowdhury SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR Arunesh Talapatra TOUCAN BOOKS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Ellen Dupont SENIOR DESIGNER Thomas Keenes SENIOR EDITOR Scarlett O’Hara EDITORS John Andrews, Alethea Doran, Sue George, Guy Croton, Cathy Meeus, Abigail Mitchell, Fiona Plowman, Dorothy Stannard, Rachel Warren Chadd ASSISTANT EDITOR Isobel Rodel INDEXER Marie Lorimer PROOFREADER Richard Beatty ADDITIONAL TEXT Shannon Webber, Marcus Weeks original styling by STUDIO 8 First American Edition, 2019 Published in the United States by DK Publishing, 1450 Broadway, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10018 Copyright © 2019 Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, a division of Penguin Random House LLC Foreword © 2019 Tony Juniper 19 20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–311040–Apr/2019 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4654-7958-7 DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 1450 Broadway, 8th Floor, New York, New York 10018 or SpecialSales@dk.com Printed and bound in Malaysia A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS CONTRIBUTORS JULIA SCHROEDER, CONSULTANT Julia Schroeder received her Ph.D. in Animal Ecology from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. From 2012 to 2017, she headed a research group at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, studying social behavioral ecology. Julia currently researches and teaches evolutionary biology at Imperial College London. CELIA COYNE Celia Coyne is a freelance writer and editor living in Christchurch, New Zealand. She is the author of Earth’s Riches and The Power of Plants and writes and edits articles on science and natural history for magazines, newspapers, journals, websites, and books in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Her aim is to make scientific subjects accessible to lay readers. JOHN FARNDON The author of hundreds of books on science and nature for both children and adults, John Farndon studied geography at Cambridge University. He has written extensively on earth sciences and the environment, focusing in particular on conservation and ecology. His books include The Oceans Atlas, The Wildlife Atlas, How the Earth Works, and The Practical Encyclopedia of Rocks and Minerals. TIM HARRIS After studying Norwegian glaciers in college, Tim Harris traveled the world in search of unusual wildlife and extraordinary landscapes. He has explored the dunes of the Namib Desert, climbed Popocatépetl in central Mexico, camped in the Sumatran rain forest, and searched the frozen Sea of Okhotsk in Russia. He is a former Deputy Editor of Birdwatch magazine in the UK and has written books about nature for adults and children. DEREK HARVEY A naturalist and teacher with a particular interest in evolutionary biology, Derek Harvey graduated in Zoology from Liverpool University in the UK. He has taught a generation of biologists and led student expeditions to Costa Rica, Madagascar, and Australasia. Derek now concentrates on writing and consulting for science and natural history books. TOM JACKSON A writer for 25 years, Tom Jackson is the author of about 200 nonfiction books for adults and children and has contributed to many more. Tom studied zoology at Bristol University, UK, and worked in zoos and as a conservationist before turning to writing about natural history and all things scientific. ALISON SINGER Alison Singer is a Ph.D. candidate in Community Sustainability at Michigan State University, US, where she studies storytelling and science communication. She has a broad educational background in writing, ecology, and the social sciences. Alison has worked as an educator for environmental charities, and for the US Environmental Protection Agency. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 12 INTRODUCTION THE STORY OF EVOLUTION 20 Time is insigniﬁcant and never a difﬁculty for nature Early theories of evolution 22 A world previous to ours, destroyed by catastrophe Extinction and change 23 No vestige of a beginning —no prospect of an end Uniformitarianism 24 The struggle for existence Evolution by natural selection 32 Human beings are ultimately nothing but carriers for genes The rules of heredity 34 We’ve discovered the secret of life The role of DNA 38 Genes are selﬁsh molecules The selfish gene ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES 44 Lessons from mathematical theory on the struggle for life Predator–prey equations 50 Existence is determined by a slender thread of circumstances Ecological niches 52 Complete competitors cannot coexist Competitive exclusion principle 54 Poor ﬁeld experiments can be worse than useless Field experiments 56 More nectar means more ants and more ants mean more nectar Mutualisms 60 Whelks are like little wolves in slow motion Keystone species CONTENTS 66 The ﬁtness of a foraging animal depends on its efﬁciency Optimal foraging theory 68 Parasites and pathogens control populations like predators Ecological epidemiology 72 Why don’t penguins’ feet freeze? Ecophysiology 74 All life is chemical Ecological stoichiometry 76 Fear itself is powerful Nonconsumptive effects of predators on their prey ORDERING THE NATURAL WORLD 82 In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous Classification of living things РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 114 Birds lay the number of eggs that produce the optimum number of offspring Clutch control 116 The bond with a true dog is as lasting as the ties of this earth can ever be Animal behavior 118 Redeﬁne “tool”, redeﬁne “man”, or accept chimpanzees as humans Using animal models to understand human behavior 126 All bodily activity depends on temperature Thermoregulation in insects ECOSYSTEMS 132 Every distinct part of nature’s works is necessary for the support of the rest The food chain 134 All organisms are potential sources of food for other organisms The ecosystem 138 Life is supported by a vast network of processes Energy flow through ecosystems 140 The world is green Trophic cascades 144 Islands are ecological systems Island biogeography 150 It is the constancy of numbers that matters Ecological resilience 152 Populations are subjected to unpredictable forces The neutral theory of biodiversity 153 Only a community of researchers has a chance of revealing the complex whole Big ecology 154 The best strategy depends on what others are doing Evolutionarily stable state 84 By the help of microscopes nothing escapes our inquiry The microbiological environment 86 If you do not know the names of things, the knowledge of them is lost A system for identifying all nature’s organisms 88 “Reproductively isolated” are the key words Biological species concept 90 Organisms clearly cluster into several primary kingdoms A modern view of diversity 92 Save the biosphere and you may save the world Human activity and biodiversity 96 We are in the opening phase of a mass extinction Biodiversity hotspots THE VARIETY OF LIFE 102 It is the microbes that will have the last word Microbiology 104 Certain tree species have a symbiosis with fungi The ubiquity of mycorrhizae 106 Food is the burning question Animal ecology РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 156 Species maintain the functioning and stability of ecosystems Biodiversity and ecosystem function ORGANISMS IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT 162 The philosophical study of nature connects the present with the past The distribution of species over space and time 164 The virtual increase of the population is limited by the fertility of the country The Verhulst equation 166 The ﬁrst requisite is a thorough knowledge of the natural order Organisms and their environment 167 Plants live on a different timescale The foundations of plant ecology 168 The causes of differences among plants Climate and vegetation THE LIVING EARTH 198 The glacier was God’s great plow Ancient ice ages 200 There is nothing on the map to mark the boundary line Biogeography 202 Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening Global warming 204 Living matter is the most powerful geological force The biosphere 206 The system of nature Biomes 210 We take nature’s services for granted because we don’t pay for them A holistic view of Earth 212 Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction Moving continents and evolution 214 Life changes Earth to its own purposes The Gaia hypothesis 170 I have great faith in a seed Ecological succession 172 The community arises, grows, matures, and dies Climax community 174 An association is not an organism but a coincidence Open community theory 176 A group of species that exploit their environment in a similar way The ecological guild 178 The citizen network depends on volunteers Citizen science 184 Population dynamics become chaotic when the rate of reproduction soars Chaotic population change 185 To visualize the big picture, take a distant view Macroecology 186 A population of populations Metapopulations 188 Organisms change and construct the world in which they live Niche construction 190 Local communities that exchange colonists Metacommunities РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 218 65 million years ago something killed half of all the life on the Earth Mass extinctions 224 Burning all fuel reserves will initiate the runaway greenhouse Environmental feedback loops THE HUMAN FACTOR 230 Environmental pollution is an incurable disease Pollution 236 God cannot save these trees from fools Endangered habitats 240 We are seeing the beginnings of a rapidly changing planet The Keeling Curve 242 The chemical barrage has been hurled against the fabric of life The legacy of pesticides 248 A long journey from discovery to political action Acid rain 250 A ﬁnite world can support only a ﬁnite population Overpopulation 252 Dark skies are now blotted out Light pollution 254 I am ﬁghting for humanity Deforestation 260 The hole in the ozone layer is a kind of skywriting Ozone depletion 262 We needed a mandate for change Depletion of natural resources 266 Bigger and bigger boats chasing smaller and fewer ﬁsh Overfishing 270 The introduction of a few rabbits could do little harm Invasive species 274 As temperatures increase, the delicately balanced system falls into disarray Spring creep 280 One of the main threats to biodiversity is infectious diseases Amphibian viruses 281 Imagine trying to build a house while someone keeps stealing your bricks Ocean acidification 282 The environmental damage of urban sprawl cannot be ignored Urban sprawl 284 Our oceans are turning into a plastic soup A plastic wasteland 286 Water is a public trust and a human right The water crisis РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS ENVIRONMENTALISM AND CONSERVATION 296 The dominion of man over nature rests only on knowledge Humankind’s dominance over nature 297 Nature is a great economist The peaceful coexistence of humankind and nature 298 In wildness is the preservation of the world Romanticism, conservation, and ecology 299 Man everywhere is a disturbing agent Human devastation of Earth 300 Solar energy is both without limit and without cost Renewable energy 306 The time has come for science to busy itself with the Earth itself Environmental ethics 308 Think globally, act locally The Green Movement 310 The consequences of today’s actions on tomorrow’s world Man and the Biosphere Programme 312 Predicting a population’s size and its chances of extinction Population viability analysis 316 Climate change is happening here. It is happening now Halting climate change 322 The capacity to sustain the world’s population Sustainable biosphere initiative 324 We are playing dice with the natural environment The economic impact of climate change 326 Monocultures and monopolies are destroying the harvest of seed Seed diversity 328 Natural ecosystems and their species help sustain and fulﬁll human life Ecosystem services 330 We are living on this planet as though we have another one to go to Waste disposal 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS FOREWORD As a small child, I was fascinated by nature—birds, butterflies, plants, reptiles, fossils, rivers, weather, and much else. My youthful passions set me on the path to being a life-long naturalist, and to working as an environmentalist, studying the natural world and promoting action for its conservation. I have worked as a field ornithologist, writer, campaigner, policy advocate, and environmental advisor. All of these diverse interests and activities have, however, been linked by a single theme: ecology. Ecology is a vast subject, embracing the many disciplines needed to understand the relationships that exist between different living things, and the physical worlds of air, water, and rock within which they are embedded. From the study of soil microorganisms to the role of pollinators, and from research into the water cycle to investigating Earth’s climate system, ecology involves many specialist areas. It also unites many strands of science, including zoology, botany, mathematics, chemistry, and physics, as well as some aspects of social science—especially economics—while at the same time raising profound philosophical and ethical questions. Because of the fundamental ways in which the human world depends on healthy natural systems, some of the most important political issues of our age are ecological ones. They include climate change, the effects of ecosystem damage, the disappearance of wildlife, and the depletion of resources, including fish stocks, freshwater, and soils. All these ecological changes have implications for people and are increasingly pressing. Considering the huge importance of ecology for our modern world, and the many threads of thought and ideas that must be woven to gain an understanding of the subject, I am delighted that Dorling Kindersley decided to produce The Ecology Book, setting out the key concepts that have helped shape our understanding of how Earth’s incredible natural systems function. In the pages that follow readers will also discover something about the history of ecological concepts, the leading thinkers, and the different perspectives from which they approached the questions they sought to answer. One thing that sets this book apart is the manner in which the rich, memorable, and attractive content is presented. A huge body of information and insight is effectively conveyed by clear layout, graphics, illustrations, and quotes, enabling readers to quickly achieve an understanding of many important ecological ideas and the people behind them: James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, Norman Myers’s warnings about impending mass extinction, and Rachel Carson’s work to expose the effects of toxic pesticides among them. The diverse body of information found in the pages that follow could not be more important. For while the headlines and popular debate suggest it is politics, technology, and economics that are the vital forces shaping our common future, it is in the end ecology that is the most important context determining societies’ prospects, and indeed the future of civilization itself. I hope you find The Ecology Book to be an enlightening overview of what is not only the most important subject, but also the most interesting. Tony Juniper CBE Environmentalist РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS INTRODU РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS CTION РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS F or the earliest humans, a rudimentary knowledge of ecology—how organisms relate to one another—was a matter of life and death. Without having a basic understanding of why animals grazed in a certain place and fruit-bearing plants grew in another, our ancestors would not have survived and evolved. How living animals and plants interact with each other, and with the nonliving environment interested the ancient Greeks. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle and his student Theophrastus developed theories of animal metabolism and heat regulation, dissected birds’ eggs to discover how they grew, and described an 11-level “ladder of life,” the first attempt at classifying organisms. Aristotle also explained how some animals consume others—the first description of a food chain. In the Middle Ages (476–1500), the Catholic Church discouraged new scientific thought, and human understanding of ecology advanced very slowly. By the 16th century, however, maritime exploration, coupled with great technological advances, such as the invention of the microscope, led to the discovery of amazing life forms and a thirst for knowledge about them. Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus developed a classification system, Systema Naturae, the first scientific attempt to name species and group them according to relatedness. Throughout this time, essentialism—the idea that each species had unalterable characteristics—continued to dominate Western thought. Great breakthroughs Geological discoveries in the late 17th and early 18th centuries began to challenge the idea of essentialism. Geologists noted that some fossil species suddenly disappeared from the geological record and were replaced by others, suggesting that organisms change over time, and even become extinct. The Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed the first cohesive theory of evolution—the transmutation of species by the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in 1809. However, some 50 years later it was Charles Darwin—influenced by his experiences on the epic expedition of HMS Beagle—and Alfred Russel Wallace, who developed the concept of evolution by means of natural selection, the theory that organisms evolve over the course of generations to adapt better to their environment. Darwin and Wallace did not understand the mechanism by which this happened, but Gregor Mendel’s experiments on peas pointed at the role of hereditary factors later known as genes, representing another giant leap in evolutionary theory. Making connections The relationships between organisms and their environment, and between species, dominated ecological study in the early 20th century. The concepts of food chains and food webs (who eats what in a particular habitat) and ecological niches (the role an organism has in its environment) developed, and in 1935, Arthur INTRODUCTION There are some 4 million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive. David Attenborough 14 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS Tansley introduced the concept of the ecosystem—the interactive relationship between living organisms and the environment in which they live. Later ecologists developed mathematical models to forecast population dynamics within ecosystems. Evolutionary theories also advanced with the discovery of the structure of DNA, and the evolutionary “vehicle” provided by mutation as DNA is replicated. New frontiers Improved technology opened up new possibilities for ecology. An electron microscope can now make images to half the width of a hydrogen atom, and computer programs can analyze the sounds made by bats and whales, which are higher or lower than can be heard by the human ear. Camera traps and infrared detectors photograph and film nocturnal creatures, and tiny satellite devices fitted to birds can track their movements. In the laboratory, analysis of the DNA of feces, fur, or feathers indicates which species an animal belongs to, and throws light on the relationship between different organisms. It is now easier than ever for ecologists to collect data, helped by a growing army of citizen scientists. New concerns Early ecology was driven by a desire for knowledge. Later, it was used to find better ways to exploit the natural world for human needs. As time went on, the consequences of this exploitation became increasingly evident. Deforestation was highlighted as a problem as early as the 18th century, and the problems of air and water pollution became obvious in industrialized nations in the 19th century. In 1962, Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring alerted the world to the dangers of pesticides, and six years later Gene Likens demonstrated the link between power station emissions, acid rain, and fish deaths. In 1985, a team of Antarctic scientists discovered the dramatic depletion of atmospheric ozone over Antarctica. The link between greenhouse gases and a warming of Earth’s lower atmosphere had been made as early as 1947 by G. Evelyn Hutchinson, but it was decades before there was a scientific consensus on the man-made causes of climate change. The future Modern ecology has come a long way since the science was first recognized. It now draws on many disciplines. In addition to zoology, botany, and their microdisciplines, it relies on geology, geomorphology, climatology, chemistry, physics, genetics, sociology, and more. Ecology influences local and national government decisions about urbanization, transportation, industry, and economic growth. The challenges posed by climate change, rising sea levels, habitat destruction, the extinction of species, plastic and other forms of pollution, and a looming water crisis pose serious threats to human civilization. They demand radical policy responses based on sound science. Ecology will provide the answers. It is up to governments to apply them. ■ INTRODUCTION Even in the vast and mysterious reaches of the sea we are brought back to the fundamental truth that nothing lives to itself. Rachel Carson 15 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS THE STO OF EVOL РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS RY UTION РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS A ncient myths, religions, and philosophies all reflect an enduring fascination with how the world began and man’s place in the story of life on Earth. In the West, Christianity held that all animals and plants were the result of a perfect creation. On the chain or ladder of being, no species could ever move from one position to another. Species were immutable, an idea called essentialism. The 18th-century Age of Enlightenment began to challenge orthodox Christian beliefs. French zoologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck rejected the prevailing Bible-based notion of Earth being only a few thousand years old. He argued that organisms must have changed from simple life forms to more complex ones over millions of years, and that the “transmutation” of species was the driving force behind this change. He speculated that characteristics acquired by animals during their lifetime were inherited by the next generation: giraffes, for example, became slightly longer- necked by stretching up to reach higher leaves, and passed this trait to their offspring; over many generations, giraffes grew longer and longer necks. Fossil evidence of extinct life forms with features that resembled modern descendants, found by pioneering geologists such as Georges Cuvier, also suggested Earth had more ancient origins. Meanwhile James Hutton and Charles Lyell argued that geological features could be accounted for by the constant, ongoing processes of erosion, and deposition—a view called uniformitarianism. Because these processes take place slowly, Earth’s history had to be much longer than was previously thought. Natural selection In 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace delivered a paper that would change biology forever. Darwin’s observations on the epic voyage of the Beagle (1831–36), his correspondence with other naturalists, and the influence of Thomas Malthus’s writings inspired Darwin’s insight that evolution came about by what he called natural selection. He spent 20 years gathering supporting data, but when Wallace wrote to him with the same idea, Darwin realized it was time to go public. His subsequent book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, provoked outrage. INTRODUCTION 1785 James Hutton presents his theory that Earth is much older than was previously believed, and that Earth’s crust is continuously changing. 1813 In his Essay on the Theory of the Earth, Georges Cuvier suggests that fossils are the remains of extinct creatures wiped out by periodic “catastrophic” events. 1831 HMS Beagle sets sail on a circumnavigation of the world, with Charles Darwin serving as the voyage’s naturalist. The trip provides Darwin with the information that inspired his theory of evolution by natural selection. 1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck publishes Philosophie Zoologique, where he argues that animals acquire characteristics as a consequence of use or nonuse of different body parts, triggering mutations over generations. 1823 Amateur fossil hunter Mary Anning uncovers the first intact plesiosaurus skeleton. 18 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 1859 Darwin elaborates on his theories of evolution in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, which is an instant sellout. Although the idea of evolution became widely accepted, the mechanism that made natural selection possible was not yet known. In 1866, an Austrian monk called Gregor Mendel made a huge contribution to genetics when he published his ﬁndings on heredity in pea plants. Mendel described how dominant and recessive traits pass from one generation to the next, by means of invisible “factors” that we now call genes. The rediscovery of Mendel’s work in 1900 initially sparked sharp debate between his supporters and many Darwinians. At the time, evolution was believed to be based on the selection of small, blending variations, but Mendel’s variations clearly did not blend. Three decades later, geneticist Ronald Fisher and others argued that the two schools of thought were complementary, rather than contradictory. In 1942, Julian Huxley articulated the synthesis between Mendel’s genetics and Darwin’s theory of natural selection in his book Evolution: The Modern Synthesis. The double helix Advances in technology such as X-ray crystallography led to more discoveries in the 1940s and ’50s, and the foundation of the new discipline of molecular biology. In 1944, chemist Oswald Avery identiﬁed deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) as the agent for heredity. Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling photographed strands of the DNA molecule in 1952, and James Watson and Francis Crick conﬁrmed its double helix structure the following year. Crick then showed that genetic information is “written” on DNA molecules. The errors that occur when DNA copies itself create mutations—the raw materials for evolution. By the 1980s it was possible to map and manipulate the genes of individuals and species. In the 1990s, the mapping the human genome paved the way for medical research into gene therapy. Ecologists also want to establish whether genes inﬂuence behavior. Back in 1964, William D. Hamilton popularized the concept of genetic relatedness (“kin selection”) to explain altruistic behavior in animals. In The Selﬁsh Gene (1976), Richard Dawkins further advanced the gene-centered approach. It is clear that aspects of evolutionary biology will still spark debate as long as ecologists continue to develop Darwin’s theory. ■ THE STORY OF EVOLUTION 1866 Gregor Mendel’s paper “Experiments with Plant Hybrids” outlines ﬁndings from his pea plant experiments, laying the foundations for the ﬁeld of genetics. 1976 The Selﬁsh Gene by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins offers a new perspective on evolution, looking at the gene, as opposed to the species or group. 1953 In The Eagle pub in Cambridge, UK, Crick and Watson announce that they have discovered the structure of DNA. 2003 The Human Genome Project produces the ﬁrst genetic blueprint of Homo sapiens. 19 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 20 B efore the 18th century, most people believed that plant and animal species stayed unchanged throughout time—a view now known as essentialism. This idea came under challenge as a result of two developments: the intellectual movement known as the Enlightenment (c. 1715–1800), and the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840). The Enlightenment was marked by scientiﬁc progress and increased questioning of religious orthodoxy, such as the claim that God created Earth and all living things in seven days. Then, as the Industrial Revolution gathered pace, canals, railroads, mines, and quarries cut through rock strata and revealed thousands of fossils, mostly of animal and plant species that no longer existed and had never been seen before. These suggested that life began long before the widely accepted creation date of 4400 BCE, deduced from biblical sources. Animal adaptation In the late 1700s, French scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, upset church authorities by asserting that Earth was much older than the Bible suggested. He believed it was formed from molten material, struck off the Sun by a comet, that had taken 70,000 years to cool (a huge underestimate, in fact). As Earth cooled, species had appeared, died off, and were ﬁnally replaced by ancestors of those known today. Noting similarities among animals such as lions, tigers, and cats, Buffon deduced that 200 species of quadrupeds had evolved from just 38 ancestors. He also believed that changes in body shape and size in related species had occurred in response to living in different environments. In 1800, French naturalist Jean- Baptiste Lamarck went further. In a lecture at the Museum of Natural IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURES The Comte de Buffon (1707–88), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) BEFORE 1735 Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus publishes Systema Naturae, a system of biological classiﬁcation that later helped to determine species’ ancestry. 1751 In “Système de la nature” French philosopher Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis introduces the idea that features can be inherited. AFTER 1831 Etienne Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire writes that sudden environmental change can cause a new species to develop from an existing organism. 1844 In Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, Scottish geologist Robert Chambers argues—anonymously—that simple creatures have evolved into more complex species. TIME IS INSIGNIFICANT, AND NEVER A DIFFICULTY FOR NATURE EARLY THEORIES OF EVOLUTION Nature is the system of laws established by the Creator for the existence of things and for the succession of creatures. The Comte de Buffon РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 21 Fossil ﬁnds changed ideas about how life began. The ﬁrst example of an articulated plesiosaur—Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus—was discovered in 1823 by Mary Anning in Dorset, England. See also: Extinction and change 22 ■ Uniformitarianism 23 ■ Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ The rules of heredity 32–33 THE STORY OF EVOLUTION History in Paris, he argued that traits acquired by a creature during its lifetime could be inherited by its offspring—and that a buildup of such changes over many generations could radically alter an animal’s anatomy. Lamarck wrote several books in which he developed this idea of transmutation. He argued, for instance, that the use or nonuse of body parts eventually resulted in such features becoming stronger, weaker, bigger, or smaller in a species. For example, the ancestors of moles probably had good eyesight, but over generations this deteriorated because moles did not require vision as they burrowed underground. Similarly, giraffes gradually developed longer necks to enable them to reach leaves growing high up in trees. Drivers of evolution Larmarck’s ideas about inherited acquired traits were part of a wider early theory of evolution. He also believed that the earliest, simplest forms of life had emerged directly from nonliving matter. Lamarck identiﬁed two main “life forces” driving evolutionary change. One, he believed, made organisms develop from simple to more complex forms in a “ladder” of progress. The other, via the inheritance of acquired traits, helped them adapt better to their environment. When Charles Darwin developed his theory of evolution by means of natural selection, he would reject many of Lamarck’s ideas, but both men shared the belief that complex life evolved over an immense period of time. ■ Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Born in 1744, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck attended a Jesuit college before joining the French army. Forced by an injury to resign, he studied medicine and then pursued his passion for plants, working at the Jardin du Roi (Royal Garden) in Paris. Supported by the Comte de Buffon, Lamarck was elected to the Academy of Sciences in 1779. When the Jardin’s main building became the new National Museum of Natural History during the French Revolution (1789–99), Lamarck was placed in charge of the study of insects, worms, and microscopic organisms. He coined the biological term “invertebrate” and often used the relatively simpler forms of such species to illustrate his “ladder” of evolutionary progress. However, Lamarck’s work was controversial and he died in poverty in 1829. Key works 1802 Research on the Organization of Living Bodies 1809 Zoological Philosophy 1815–22 Natural History of Invertebrate Animals …continuous use of any organ gradually strengthens, develops and enlarges that organ. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 22 I n the early days of studying fossils, many people denied they could be extinct species. They failed to see why God would create and destroy creatures before humans ever appeared, arguing that unfamiliar fossil species might still be living somewhere on Earth. In the late 18th century, French zoologist Georges Cuvier looked into this by exploring the anatomy of living and fossil elephants. He proved that fossil forms such as mammoths and mastodons were anatomically distinct from living elephants, so they must represent extinct species. (It was highly unlikely that they still lived on Earth without being noticed.) Cuvier believed that Earth had experienced a series of distinct ages, each of which ended with a “revolution” that destroyed existing flora and fauna. He did not, though, believe that the evidence of fossil remains supported a theory of evolution. Nevertheless, Cuvier’s central views have continued to win support, and modern evidence points to at least five catastrophic mass extinction events in Earth’s past, including the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. Unlike Cuvier, however, today’s scientists know that life is not recreated out of nothing after a catastrophe. Rather, when a mass extinction event kills off many species, those left will evolve and multiply—sometimes relatively quickly—to fill vacant ecological niches, as the mammals did after the age of the dinosaurs. ■ A WORLD PREVIOUS TO OURS, DESTROYED BY CATASTROPHE EXTINCTION AND CHANGE IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Georges Cuvier (1769–1832) BEFORE Late 1400s Leonardo da Vinci argues that fossils are the remains of living creatures, not just shapes spontaneously formed in the earth. 1660s English scientist Robert Hooke suggests that fossils are extinct creatures, since no similar forms can be found on Earth today. AFTER 1841 English anatomist Richard Owen calls huge reptile fossils “dinosaurs.” 1859 Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species explains how evolution can occur through “natural selection.” 1980 US scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez present evidence that an asteroid hit Earth at the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Cuvier coined the name “mastodon” for its Greek meaning of “breast tooth,” referring to the nipplelike patterns on the creature’s teeth, which were unlike those of any living elephants. See also: Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ Ecological niches 50–51 ■ An ancient ice age 198–199 ■ Mass extinctions 218–223 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 23 U niformitarianism is the theory that geological processes, such as the laying down of sediment, erosion, and volcanic activity, occur at the same rate now as they did in the past. The idea emerged in the late 18th century, as mining, quarrying, and increased travel brought ever more geological features to light, including unusual rock strata and previously unknown fossils, whose origins were then widely debated. The generally accepted view that Earth was only a few thousand years old had been challenged by the Comte de Buffon, and in 1785 Scottish geologist James Hutton also argued for Earth’s far greater antiquity. Hutton’s ideas were formed during expeditions around Scotland to examine layers of rock. He believed that Earth’s crust was constantly changing, albeit mostly slowly, and could see no reason to suggest that the complex geological actions of layering, erosion, and uplifting took place faster in the distant past than they did in the present. Hutton also understood that most geological processes happen so gradually that the features he was discovering must be astronomically old. Uniformitarianism was not generally accepted at once, not least because it challenged a literal interpretation of the creation stories of the Old Testament. However, a new generation of geologists, such as John Playfair and Charles Lyell, threw their intellectual weight behind Hutton’s ideas, which also inspired a young Charles Darwin. ■ THE STORY OF EVOLUTION NO VESTIGE OF A BEGINNING, NO PROSPECT OF AN END UNIFORMITARIANISM IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE James Hutton (1726–97) BEFORE 1778 The Comte de Buffon, a French naturalist, suggests that Earth is at least 75,000 years old—far older than most people believed at the time. 1787 German geologist Abraham Werner proposes that Earth’s layers of rock formed from a great ocean that once covered the entire planet. His followers became known as Neptunists. AFTER 1802 James Hutton’s theory of uniformitarianism reaches a wider audience when Scottish geologist John Playfair publishes Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory of the Earth. 1830–33 Principles of Geology, by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell, supports and builds on the uniformitarian ideas of James Hutton. … from what has actually been, we have data for concluding [what] is to happen thereafter. James Hutton See also: Early theories of evolution 20–21 ■ Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ Moving continents and evolution 212–213 ■ Mass extinctions 218–223 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 26 N atural selection, a concept developed by British naturalist Charles Darwin and set out in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), is the key mechanism of evolution in organisms, resulting in different survival rates and reproductive abilities. Those organisms that have higher breeding success pass on their genes to more of the next generation, so individuals with these characteristics become more common. To the Galapagos The young Charles Darwin ﬁrst began to consider evolution during his pioneering scientiﬁc expedition around the world aboard HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836. As a young man, Darwin accepted the orthodox interpretation of the Bible, that Earth was only a few thousand years old. However, while he was on board the Beagle, Darwin read Scottish geologist Charles Lyell’s recently published Principles of Geology, in which Lyell demonstrated that rocks bore traces of tiny, gradual, and cumulative change over vast time periods—millions, rather than thousands of years. As Darwin looked at landscapes around the world that had been affected by processes of erosion, deposition, and volcanism, he began to speculate about animal species changing over very long time periods, and the reasons for such changes. By examining fossils and observing living animals, Darwin identiﬁed patterns; he noticed, for example, that extinct species had often been replaced by similar, but distinct, modern ones. Darwin’s ﬁeld work on the islands of the Galapagos archipelago off South America in the fall EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Charles Darwin (1809–82) BEFORE 1788 In France, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, completes his 36-volume Histoire Naturelle, outlining early ideas about evolution. 1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposes that creatures evolve by inheriting acquired traits. AFTER 1869 Friedrich Miescher, a Swiss doctor, discovers DNA, although its genetic role is not yet understood. 1900 The laws of inheritance based on the pea plant experiments of Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel in the mid-1800s are rediscovered. 1942 British biologist Julian Huxley coins the term “modern synthesis” for the mechanisms thought to produce evolution. Charles Darwin Born in Shropshire, UK, in 1809, Darwin was fascinated by natural history from a young age. While at Cambridge University, he became friendly with several inﬂuential naturalists, including John Stevens Henslow. As a result, Darwin was invited to join the HMS Beagle expedition around the world. Henslow helped Darwin catalog and publicize his ﬁnds. Darwin’s research brought him fame and recognition—the Royal Society’s Royal Medal in 1853, nd fellowship of the Linnean Society in 1854. In 1859, his book On the Origin of Species sold out instantly. Despite continuing ill-health, Darwin fathered 10 children and never stopped studying and developing new theories. He died in 1882. Key works 1839 Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Beagle 1859 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection 1868 The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication 1872 The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals Natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations. Charles Darwin РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 27 of 1835 provided especially strong evidence for his later theory of evolution by natural selection. Here, he observed that the shape of the carapaces (shells) of giant tortoises varied slightly from island to island. Darwin was also intrigued to ﬁnd that there were four broadly similar, yet clearly distinct, varieties of mockingbirds, but that no single island had more than one species of the bird. He saw small birds, too, that looked alike but had a range of beak sizes and shapes. Darwin deduced that each group possessed a common ancestor but had developed diverse traits in different environments. Darwin’s conclusions On Darwin’s return to England, the differing beaks of the small birds he had found on the Galapagos, usually called “ﬁnches” although they are not in the true ﬁnch family, set him thinking. He knew that a bird’s beak is its key tool for feeding, so its length and shape offer clues to its diet. Later research revealed that there are 14 different ﬁnch species on the Galapagos islands. The differences in their beaks are marked and signiﬁcant. For example, cactus ﬁnches have long, pointed beaks that are ideal for picking seeds out of cactus fruits, while ground ﬁnches have shorter, stouter beaks that are better suited for eating large seeds on the ground. Warbler ﬁnches have slender, sharp beaks, which are ideal for catching ﬂying insects. Darwin speculated that the ﬁnches were descended from a common ancestral ﬁnch that had reached the archipelago from the mainland of South America. He concluded that a variety of ﬁnch THE STORY OF EVOLUTION See also: Early theories of evolution 20–21 ■ The rules of heredity 32–33 ■ The role of DNA 34–37 ■ The selﬁsh gene 38–39 ■ The food chain 132–133 ■ Mass extinctions 218–223 ■ Population viability analysis 312–315 populations had evolved in different Galapagos habitats, each group adapted for a more or less specialist diet by a process that he would later call “natural selection.” Over time, the ﬁnch populations had become distinct species. In the early 21st century, researchers at Harvard University uncovered new evidence of how this happens at a genetic level. Their ﬁndings, published in 2006, showed that a molecule called calmodulin regulates the genes involved in shaping birds’ beaks, and is found at higher levels in longer-beaked cactus ﬁnches than in shorter-beaked ground ﬁnches. Reﬁning the theory Darwin was inﬂuenced by Thomas Malthus’s An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), in which Malthus predicted that population growth would eventually outstrip food production. This idea matched the evidence Darwin had observed of ongoing competition between individual animals and species for resources. This competitive aspect formed the backbone of Darwin’s coalescing theory of evolution. By 1839, Darwin had developed an idea of evolution by natural selection. He was, though, reluctant to publish because he understood that the theory would unleash a storm of controversy from those who would view it as an attack on religion and the Church. When, in 1857, he began receiving communications from fellow British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, who had independently arrived at very similar conclusions, Darwin realized he had to publish his ❯❯ Comparison of Galapagos ﬁnch bill structure Geospiza magnirostris The short, sharp bill of the Large Ground Finch, the biggest of Darwin’s ﬁnches, enables it to crack nuts. Geospiza fortis The bill of the Medium Ground Finch is variable, evolving rapidly to adapt to whatever size seeds are available. Geospiza parvula The stubby bill of the Small Tree Finch, which forages in foliage, suits its diet of seeds, fruits, and insects. Certhidea olivacea The slender, probing bill of the Green Warbler-ﬁnch helps it catch small insects and spiders. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 28 EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION helped an individual organism live longer and reproduce more successfully would be passed on to more offspring, while those that made the organism less successful would be lost. Darwin called this “natural selection”—a process that, over generations, enabled a population of any given species to adapt better and thrive in its chosen habitat. Sexual selection Darwin also developed a theory of sexual selection. First outlined in On the Origin of Species, this was developed further in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). This theory was distinct from natural selection, as Darwin recognized that animals select mates based on characteristics that do not simply favor survival. For example, when Darwin considered the spectacular but cumbersome tails of male peafowl (peacocks), he could not imagine the tail playing any role in helping the individual bird to survive. He concluded that they were designed to boost an individual’s chance of reproductive success. Peahens choose males with the brightest tails, so the genetic material of these showy males is passed to the next generation. Bright tail feathers indicate that the bird is healthy, so choosing a mate with a bright tail is a good strategy for the peahen. However, Darwin’s idea that females choose a mate came under ﬁre; 19th-century society could accept that males competed to reproduce (intrasexual selection), but intersexual selection, where one sex (usually the female) makes the choice, was ridiculed. Reproductive success is clearly essential for the future of a species. Natural selection is often described as “survival of the ﬁttest,” but longevity alone is not particularly Natural selection There is variation in traits. For example, some beetles are pale and others dark. There is differential reproduction. No environment can support unlimited population growth, so some individuals lose out. Here, birds eat the pale beetles, so fewer of them reproduce. There is heredity. The dark beetles have more dark offspring because this trait has a genetic basis. End result: If darkness is the winning trait, producing more offspring, in time, all beetles will be dark. ideas. Papers by Darwin and Wallace were jointly presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London in July 1858, under the title “On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.. The following year, Darwin published the theory in On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. It offended some scientists because it differed from Lamarck’s ideas of transmutation, and also upset creationists who argued that it undermined a literal interpretation of the Bible. Others felt that the theory did not account for the huge range of characteristics in species and called it “unguided” and “nonprogressive.” Darwin was conﬁdent. He knew that all individual organisms in a species show a degree of natural variation; some have longer whiskers, or shorter legs, or brighter colors, for instance. Because members of all species compete for limited resources, he deduced that those whose traits are best suited to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. He also argued that characteristics that I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious views of anyone. Charles Darwin РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 29 helpful. If individual A lives 10 times as long as individual B, but the latter produces twice as many offspring that then also breed, B will pass on more genes to the next generation than the longer-lived A. Building on the theory Many of Darwin’s and Wallace’s ideas have proved remarkably accurate, despite the fact that the workings of genetics were not understood at the time. Although Darwin himself had used the term “genetic” as an adjective to describe the as-yet-unknown mechanism of inheritance, it was British biologist William Bateson, in the early 20th century, who ﬁrst used the term “genetics” in a THE STORY OF EVOLUTION description of the scientiﬁc process. In 1930, British geneticist Ronald Fisher wrote The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, which combined Darwin’s theory of natural selection with the ideas of heredity that the 19th-century Austrian scientist Gregor Mendel had developed. In 1937, Ukrainian– American geneticist Theodosius ❯❯ Kin selection The term “kin selection” was ﬁrst used by British biologist John Maynard Smith in 1964. It is the evolutionary strategy that favors the reproductive success of an organism’s relatives, prioritizing them above the individual’s own survival and reproduction. It occurs when an organism engages in self-sacriﬁcial behavior that beneﬁts its relatives. Charles Darwin was the ﬁrst to discuss the concept when he wrote about the apparent paradox represented by altruistic nonbreeding social insects, such as worker honeybees, which leave reproduction to their mothers. British evolutionary biologist William Donald Hamilton proposed that bees, for example, behave in an altruistic manner—assisting others in reproduction—when the genetic closeness of the two bees and the beneﬁt to the recipient outweigh the cost of altruism to the giver. This is called Hamilton’s Rule. In honeybee colonies, female worker bees look after the queen bee. They build the honeycomb, gather nectar and pollen, and feed larvae, but they do not breed. The peacock with the most splendid tail will attract the most peahens. Its bright tail will be passed on to its male offspring, which will ﬁnd it similarly easy to attract mates. Why do some die and some live?… the answer was clearly, that on the whole the best ﬁtted live. Alfred Russel Wallace РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 30 EVOLUTION BY NATURAL SELECTION Dobzhansky put forward the idea that regularly occurring genetic mutations are sufficient to provide the genetic diversity—and therefore different traits—that makes natural selection possible. He wrote that evolution was a change in the frequency of an “allele” in the gene pool, an allele being one of the alternative forms of a gene that arise by mutation. A mutation is a permanent alteration in the sequence of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), the molecule that makes up a gene in one individual, resulting in a sequence that differs from that of other members of the species. Mutations may occur as the result of the miscopying of DNA during cell division, or they may be caused by environmental factors, such as damage resulting from the sun’s ultraviolet radiation. One mutation might affect only the individual organism carrying it, whereas another might affect all its offspring and future generations. Inherited mutations may or may not alter an individual’s phenotype – its physical traits and behavior. If mutations do affect the phenotype, they may be to its advantage or disadvantage, helping or hindering an organism’s ability to survive and reproduce successfully. If they hinder, they are likely to disappear from the population; if they help an organism adapt better to its environment, they become more common over the course of generations. Over time, they may produce large enough divergences from the parent population for a new species to evolve—a process called speciation. Mutation rates are usually very low, but the process is ever-present. The changes may be beneficial, neutral, or harmful. They do not occur in response to an organism’s needs, and are, in that respect, random. However, some types of mutations occur more frequently than others. Scientists now know, for example, that evolution can take place very rapidly in bacteria because of their frequent mutations. Different rates of evolution The ancestors of all life on Earth were very simple organisms. Recent scientific research suggest that the earliest “biogenic” rocks— derived from early life forms—date back nearly four billion years. In that time, highly complex life forms have evolved, and later fossils of species that look more similar to those of today reveal what has Albinism, as in this albino leopard gecko, is a mutation causing a lack of pigment. This mutation hinders the gecko’s chances of survival, making it lighter colored and sensitive to light. The vast majority of large mutations are deleterious; small mutations are both far more frequent and more likely to be useful. Ronald Fisher РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 31 THE STORY OF EVOLUTION occurred. For example, a fossil record stretches back 60 million years for ancestors of the horse. The earliest of these were dog- sized forest-dwelling animals with several toes on each foot. Evolution produced much larger horses with just a single hoof on each foot, adapted for life on open grasslands where they would often have had to outrun predators. Peppered moths (biston betularia) reveal change over a shorter period. The moth is usually pale, providing camouflage against the bark of birch trees, but a mutation produces some black moths. Before the 19th century, most peppered moths were pale. During the Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), however, smoky air left deposits of soot on trees and buildings in British cities, and the black form became much commoner. By 1895, 95 percent of peppered moths in Britain’s cities were black, as paler moths were eaten by birds because their coloring provided no camouflage. This phenomenon continues to act as an example of Darwin’s theory in action today, as the pale moth becomes common once more due to the declining soot concentrations in Britain’s cities. ■ Evolution in real time Richard Lenski, a professor at Michigan State University, established the Long-term Experimental Evolution project in 1988. For more than 25 years, he studied 59,000 generations of the E. coli bacterium. During this time, he observed that the species used the glucose solution it lived in more efﬁciently, increasing in size but also growing faster. Also, a new species had evolved that was able to use a compound in the solution called citrate, which the parent bacterium could not. Evolving bacteria can pose a potential threat to humans. Increasing antibiotic use destroys many disease- causing bacteria, but not those with mutations that make them resistant to the drugs. As the non-resistant bacteria are killed off, the resistant strains become more dominant, multiplying and passing on their mutations to future generations. That is natural selection at work. Two peppered moths exhibit evolution at work, the lower one an example of industrial melanism. The dark variety began to appear in British cities in the early 1800s. Escherichia (E.) coli bacteria can cause serious gut and other infections that will be increasingly difficult to treat as drug-resistant strains of E. coli multiply. Seen in the light of evolution, biology is, perhaps, intellectually the most satisfying and inspiring science. Theodosius Dobzhansky Individuals within a species have a variety of forms of a characteristic. The individuals with the characteristic best suited to the environment are more likely to survive and breed. These characteristics are passed on to the next generation. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 32 L ong before scientists cracked the genetic code, in 1866 an Austrian monk named Gregor Mendel was the ﬁrst to show how traits are transferred through the generations. By means of much painstaking research, Mendel accurately predicted the basic laws of inheritance. When Mendel began his experiments, scientists believed that the various traits seen in plants and animals were handed down through a “blending” process. However, Mendel noticed that this was not the case when he was working in his monastery garden. When he crossed a plant that always produced green peas with one that always produced yellow peas, the result was not yellowish- green peas—instead, all the peas were yellow. Mendel’s labors During the course of his research (1856–63), Mendel grew nearly 30,000 pea plants over several generations and carefully recorded the results. He focused on traits IN CONTEXT KEY ECOLOGIST Gregor Mendel (1822–84) BEFORE 1802 French biologist Jean- Baptiste Lamarck suggests that traits acquired during the lifetime of an organism are transmitted to its offspring. 1859 Charles Darwin proposes his theory of evolution and natural selection in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. AFTER 1869 Swiss chemist Friedrich Miescher identiﬁes DNA, which he terms “nuclein.” 1953 Molecular biologists— including Briton Francis Crick and American James Watson—discover the structure of DNA. 2000s Researchers in the ﬁeld of epigenetics describe inheritance by mechanisms other than through the DNA sequence of genes. HUMAN BEINGS ARE ULTIMATELY NOTHING BUT CARRIERS FOR GENES THE RULES OF HEREDITY F1 GENERATION all yellow PARENT GENERATION 1 yellow 1 green Mendel’s pea experiment Mendel’s experiment with growing peas proved that the gene carrying the yellow coloration was dominant while the gene for green was recessive. F2 GENERATION 1 green 3 yellows РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 33 Pea plants provided the raw data that Mendel used to develop his theories explaining the transmission of traits from one generation to the next. See also: Early theories of evolution 20–21 ■ Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ The role of DNA 34–37 ■ The selfish gene 38–39 THE STORY OF EVOLUTION (phenotypes) that had only two distinct forms—for example, white or purple flowers. When examining the trait of yellow or green peas, Mendel took green pea plants and cross-pollinated them with yellow pea plants. The peas produced from this parent generation were all yellow and Mendel named them the F1 generation. He then cross-pollinated pea plants from the F1 generation with each other to produce the F2 generation. He found that some peas produced were yellow and some were green. The F1 generation showed only one trait (yellow), which Mendel called “dominant.” However, in the F2 generation 75 percent had the dominant yellow trait and 25 percent displayed the nondominant —or “recessive”—green trait. Laws of inheritance Mendel theorized that every pea plant has two factors controlling each trait. When plants are cross- pollinated, one factor is inherited from each plant. A factor can be dominant or recessive. When both inherited factors are dominant, the resulting plant will show the dominant trait. With a pair of recessive factors, the plant will show the recessive trait. However, if one dominant and one recessive factor are present, the plant will show the dominant trait. Pioneering geneticist Mendel published his paper in 1866, but no one took much notice until 1900, when the botanists Hugo de Vries, Carl Erich Correns, and Erich Tschermak von Seysenegg discovered his work. Scientists then began proving Mendel’s theories more widely. Within just ten years, scientists named the pairs of factors “genes” and showed that they are linked on chromosomes. It is now known that inheritance is far more complex than Mendel recognized, but his meticulous research continues to form the basis for modern studies. ■ Gregor Johann Mendel Born Johann Mendel in 1822 on a farm in Silesia—then part of the Austrian Empire and now in the Czech Republic— Mendel studied philosophy and physics at the University of Olomouc (1840–43). At this time, he became interested in the work of Johann Karl Nestler, who was researching hereditary traits in plants and animals. In 1847 Mendel entered a monastery, where he was given the name Gregor. He then went on to study science further at Vienna University (1851–53). When Mendel returned to his monastery in 1853, the abbot Cyril Napp gave him permission to use the gardens for his research into hybridization. Mendel himself became an abbot in 1868 and no longer had time for his experiments. Although he never received credit for his discoveries during his lifetime, he is widely regarded as the founder of modern genetics. Key works 1866 “Experiments with Plant Hybrids,” Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brünn Heredity provides for the modification of its own machinery. James Mark Baldwin American psychologist РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 34 WE’VE DISCOVERED THE SECRET OF LIFE THE ROLE OF DNA T he discovery of the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in 1953 is one of the most important scientiﬁc breakthroughs to date. It offered the key to understanding the very building blocks of life and explained how genetic information is stored and transferred. Englishman Francis Crick and American James Watson famously celebrated their joint discovery in a low-key fashion at their local pub in Cambridge, followed by a letter published in the journal Nature. Their discovery had enormous potential for scientiﬁc advances and had an important impact on many ﬁelds of research, from medicine to forensic science, taxonomy, and agriculture. The ramiﬁcations of their work still reverberate today, as methods of IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURES Francis Crick (1916–2004), Rosalind Franklin (1920– 58), James Watson (1928–), Maurice Wilkins (1916–2004) BEFORE 1910–29 US biochemist Phoebus Levene describes the chemical components of DNA. 1944 US researchers Oswald Avery, Colin Macleod, and Maclyn McCarty show that DNA determines inheritance. AFTER 1990 British researchers, led by embryologist Ian Wilmut, successfully clone an adult mammal—a sheep named Dolly. 2003 Scientists complete the mapping of the entire human genome. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 35 See also: Early theories of evolution 20–21 ■ Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ The rules of heredity 32–33 ■ The selﬁsh gene 38–39 ■ A system for identifying all nature’s organisms 86–87 ■ Biological species concept 88–89 handling genetic material advance and we learn more about how individual genes operate. Crick and Watson’s breakthrough was the culmination of decades of research by numerous scientists, including Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins. While Crick and Watson worked with 3-D models to ﬁgure out how the components of DNA ﬁtted together, at King’s College, London, Franklin and Wilkins were developing methods of X-raying DNA to view its structure. Watson had seen examples of Franklin’s work that hinted at DNA’s helical shape shortly before he and Crick announced their breakthrough. In 1962 Crick, Watson, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. Franklin, who died in 1958, never received recognition for her part in the discovery during her lifetime, although Crick and Watson openly acknowledged that her work was essential to their success. Double helix structure DNA is a molecule featuring two long, thin strands that coil around each other to resemble a twisted ladder, in a shape known as a double helix. Using the ladder analogy, the sides of the ladder are made up of deoxyribose (a sugar) and phosphate, while the rungs of the ladder consist of paired nitrogenous bases, adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C), and thymine (T). A always pairs up THE STORY OF EVOLUTION Genetic engineering Understanding the structure of DNA has enabled scientists to change or “engineer” the genetic material in cells. It is possible to cut out a gene from one organism (the donor) and place it into the DNA of another organism. When this practice was ﬁrst attempted in the 1970s it was both difﬁcult and time- consuming, but technological advances—such as Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR, which has been particularly useful—have greatly simpliﬁed and accelerated the process. In theory, geneticists can now splice any gene with any other. They have attempted some intriguing combinations, such as the insertion of the gene for producing spider silk into goat DNA so that goats produce milk rich in proteins. Other substances that can be produced by modifying genes are hormones and vaccines. In gene therapy, a genetically modiﬁed vector (often a virus) is used to carry a gene into the DNA of an organism to replace a faulty or unwanted gene. A scientist analyzes a sample of DNA. Genetic manipulation in medicine is standard practice and DNA proﬁling is a vital forensic tool. with T to form base pair AT, and G always pairs with C to form base pair GC. DNA is the blueprint for life. Sequences of bases along the DNA strand constitute the genes that provide the information that determines the complete form and physiology of an organism. A triplet of bases is known as a codon, and each codon speciﬁes the production of one of 20 amino acids; the order in which the amino acids join together in a chain determines ❯❯ Molecular biologists James Watson (left) and Francis Crick (right), pictured in 1953 with their double helix model of DNA. Watson called DNA “the most interesting molecule in all nature.” DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created. Bill Gates РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 36 THE ROLE OF DNA the ladder down the middle to produce two single strands. These act as templates for the production of a second complementary DNA strand on each of them by matching up the appropriate base pairs. The process results in two strands of whole DNA that are exactly the same as the original. Since DNA remains in the nucleus of the cell, a related molecule called messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) copies segments of DNA coding sequence and carries the information to the regions of the cell where new proteins are made. RNA is chemically related to DNA, but the thymine base (T) is replaced by the base uracil (U), which is less stable but requires less energy to make. Stable living organisms beneﬁt from having DNA genomes, but RNA makes up genomes of some viruses, where stability can be less advantageous. DNA is found in all living things on Earth, from amoebae to insects, to trees, tigers, and humans. Of course, the sequence of base pairs varies, and this difference allows geneticists to trace relationships between different species. Good and bad errors DNA is a highly stable molecule, but sometimes mistakes, known as mutations, occur. These can be in the form of an error, duplication, or omission in the order of the nucleotides A, C, G, and T. Mutation can be spontaneous—the result of errors that occur when the DNA is copied—or may be induced by external inﬂuences such as exposure to radiation or cancer- causing chemicals. Some mutations have no effect, but others may change what the gene produces or inhibit the functioning of a gene. This can lead to problems in the organism as a whole. Examples Genetically modiﬁed food In agriculture, crops may be engineered to enhance them in some way. A genetically altered crop is known as a genetically modiﬁed organism (GMO). Companies that operate in this sector may modify a plant’s DNA so that it produces more of a certain nutrient or a toxin speciﬁc to a particular insect pest. The DNA of a plant may also be altered to become resistant to a particular herbicide, so that use of the chemical kills only the weeds and not the crop. Some ecologists argue that there is a risk of genetically unmodiﬁed plants becoming contaminated by GMOs. They also point out that the long- term effects of eating such foods are as yet not properly understood. Another concern is that in the future large agrochemical companies could control the world’s food supply by patenting the GMOs that they produce, to the detriment of poorer nations. New kinds of rice are being developed through genetic modiﬁcation. This may improve the nutritional value of the crop or its resistance to disease. the type of protein they go on to make. For example, the combination GGA is the codon for glycine. Sixty-four possible triplets can be made from the four base pairs, and 61 of them code for a particular amino acid. The other three act as signals such as “start” and ”stop,” which govern how information is read by the cellular machinery. DNA is also organized into separate chromosomes, of which there are 23 pairs in the human cell. Copying the code When cells divide, DNA needs to be copied. This is achieved by the splitting of base pairs, which cuts A DNA molecule consists of a double helix formed by two strands, made up of sugars and phosphates, linked by paired base nucleotides: adenine and thymine or cytosine and guanine. The structure of DNA thymine adenine guanine cytosine РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 37 Mutated blood cells occur in sickle-cell disease—a genetic disorder passed on when both parents carry the faulty gene. It can be painful and increases the risk of serious infections. of disorders caused by gene mutations include cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell disease. Although many mutations are harmful, occasionally a mutation will confer an advantage on an individual, enabling it to survive in its environment better than others of the same species. This type of mutation may end up being passed on through the process of natural selection. Over many generations, mutation is a mechanism for diversification, survival of the fittest, and ultimately evolution. The human genome On April 14, 2003, scientists completed the lengthy task of mapping (sequencing) the entire human genome. Geneticists worked out the precise position of all the base pairs in a chain of some three billion of the base nucleotides comprising an estimated 30,000 individual genes. This has allowed geneticists to identify new genes and the role they play in organisms. Armed with this knowledge, an individual can find out if they have inherited a faulty gene from a THE STORY OF EVOLUTION parent. Additionally, with access to such data it is possible to screen embryos for known genetic disorders before implantation in the womb. By March 2018, the DNA of around 15,000 organisms had been sequenced. Such information can help show how animals are related in the evolutionary line and how they have diversified. While the discovery of the composition and structure of DNA has revolutionized the science of heredity, it is worth noting that the regions of DNA used for coding proteins account for just 2 percent of the entire human genome. The nature of the other 98 percent is not yet fully understood by geneticists, but it is believed that at least some of these regions involve the regulation of the way genes are expressed, or activated. It seems that many more discoveries await future geneticists. ■ DNA barcoding The idea of DNA barcoding was ﬁrst raised in 2003 when a team at the University of Guelph, Canada, suggested that it would be possible to identify species by analyzing a common section of their DNA. Led by Dr. Paul Hebert, researchers chose a region in the gene known as cytochrome c oxidase 1 (“CO1”), made up of 648 base pairs. This region is quick to analyze, but the sequence is still long enough to differentiate between and within animal species. Different gene segments can be used for other forms of life. The ﬁrst part of the barcoding system involves cataloguing samples of known species. The DNA is extracted and organized into a sequence of base pairs, a process known as “sequencing.” The sequence is then stored in a computer database, so that when a DNA sample from an unknown species is sequenced and entered into the database, the computer will match it with existing records. The barcoding technique has proved useful for taxonomy, helping classify animals and plants. With genetic engineering, we will be able … to improve the human race. Stephen Hawking РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 38 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Richard Dawkins (1941–) BEFORE 1963 British biologist William Donald Hamilton writes about the “selﬁsh interests” of the gene in The Evolution of Altruistic Behaviur. 1966 American biologist George C. Williams proposes in his book Adaptation and Natural Selection that altruism is a result of selection taking place at the level of the gene. AFTER 1982 Richard Dawkins argues in The Extended Phenotype that the study of an organism should include analysis of how its genes affect the surrounding environment. 2002 Stephen Jay Gould critiques Dawkins’ theory in The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, which revisits and reﬁnes the ideas of classical Darwinism. T he concept of the “selﬁsh gene” was popularized by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book of that name. It states that evolution is fundamentally based upon the survival of different forms of a particular gene at the expense of others. The forms that survive are those that are responsible for the bodily types and behaviors (phenotypic traits) that successfully promote their own propagation. Supporters of the theory argue that because heritable information is passed through the generations by the genetic material of DNA, both natural selection and evolution are best considered from the perspective of genes. GENES ARE SELFISH MOLECULES THE SELFISH GENE Natural selection works toward the survival of the gene, not the individual. Animals that warn others of approaching predators sacriﬁce themselves at the expense of the wider group. Male black widow spiders mate even though the females eat them immediately after. Nonbreeding bees in bee colonies serve to help the community survive. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 39 A male black widow spider gingerly approaches a huge female to mate. This genetically driven act will reproduce his genes but will lead to his death. See also: Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ The rules of heredity 32–33 ■ The role of DNA 34–37 ■ Mutualisms 56–59 THE STORY OF EVOLUTION Dawkins was strongly influenced by the work of William Donald Hamilton on the nature of altruism and closely examined the biology of selfishness and altruism in The Selﬁsh Gene. He argued that organisms were simply vehicles that supported their genes, or “replicators.” Genes that help an organism survive and reproduce tend also to improve those genes’ own chances of being replicated. Successful genes often provide a benefit to the host organism. For example, a gene that protects an animal or plant against disease thereby helps that particular gene to spread. However, the interests of the replicator and the vehicle may sometimes seem to be in conflict. Genes drive the male black widow spider to mate despite the risk of being eaten by her. However, the male’s sacrifice nourishes the female and improves the prospect of his genes being passed on. Selﬁshness and altruism Gene selfishness usually gives rise to selfishness in the behavior of an individual organism, but there are circumstances in which the gene can achieve its own selfish goals by fostering apparent altruism in the organism. One example is kin selection, the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an individual organism’s relatives, even at the cost of the individual’s own reproduction or survival. An extreme example of genetically based altruism is eusociality. Honey bees are a eusocial species. They live in colonies which include breeding and non-breeding individuals. By helping the colony survive, the many thousands of non-breeding worker bees ensure the reproduction of the genes they have in common with the sole breeding individual, the queen. Critics of Dawkins’ theory argue that since individual genes do not control behaviour, they cannot be said to be acting selfishly. Dawkins has maintained that he never meant to suggest that genes had their own conscious will. He later wrote that “the immortal gene” might have been a better title for both his concept and the book. ■ Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins was born in Kenya to British parents. After the family returned to the UK, he developed a strong interest in the natural world and studied zoology at Oxford University. While there, he was tutored by Nobel Prize- winner Niko Tinbergen, who was a pioneer of animal behavior studies. After a brief period at the University of California at Berkeley, Dawkins returned to Oxford to lecture in zoology. Richard Dawkins is best known for his book The Selﬁsh Gene, in which he argues that the gene is the principle unit of selection in evolution. His theory later triggered a series of ﬁerce debates with Stephen Jay Gould and other evolutionary biologists. Dawkins is also known as a strong advocate of atheism and feminism. Key works 1976 The Selﬁsh Gene 1982 The Extended Phenotype 1986 The Blind Watchmaker 2006 The God Delusion 2009 The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution The theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the Earth goes around the Sun. Richard Dawkins РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS ECOLOGI PROCESS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS CAL ES РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS I n the 5th century BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus described watching crocodiles open their jaws for plovers to pick food from their teeth. He may have been the ﬁrst to write about an ecological process—in this case a mutualistic relationship between reptiles and birds. Aristotle and Theophrastus observed many more interactions between animals and their environment in the 4th century BCE. Over the next two millennia, countless other observations of the natural world were made, but a deep understanding of how organisms interacted with each other and the world around them was hampered by the inability to observe very small things, those that were active at night, or those living underwater. Additionally, few people with an interest in nature experienced much beyond their own local area. As technology improved and people began to travel the world, scientists such as Robert Hooke, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Carl Linnaeus, Alexander von Humboldt, Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin, and Johannes Warming became increasingly aware of ecological processes and laid the foundations of the science of ecology, even if they didn’t use that word. Mathematical models It had long been understood that one of the most basic ecological processes is the struggle for survival: for herbivores to ﬁnd food, predators to ﬁnd prey, and prey to avoid being eaten. Predators do everything they can to hunt and eat prey, and the latter do all they can to avoid being eaten. In 1910, Alfred Lotka introduced one of the ﬁrst mathematical models ever applied to ecology. Now known as the Lotka-Volterra model, its predator–prey equations help predict the population ﬂuctuations of these two groups. In the early years of the 20th century, Joseph Grinnell conducted extensive research into animals’ habitat needs in the western United States. He observed that species had different “niches” within a habitat—and that if two species have approximately the same food requirements, one will “crowd out” the other. Darwin had observed this on his travels aboard HMS Beagle, but Grinnell’s axiom developed the idea further, as did subsequent research. In 1934, Georgy Gause demonstrated what he called the competitive exclusion principle in INTRODUCTION 1917 Joseph Grinnell publishes his research on the California Thrasher, establishing the basis for the theory of ecological niches. 1957 Robert MacArthur’s research on North American warblers shows how different species can avoid directly competing with each other in order to coexist. 1965 Dan Janzen observes the interdependence of acacia trees and the ants that reside on them, and concludes that the species evolved in a mutualistic manner. 1925–26 The Lotka-Volterra model uses a mathematical equation to describe the interactions between predator and prey. 1961 Joseph Connell reveals that different types of barnacle thrive in different tidal zones, although they could, in theory, live in any of them. 1969 Robert Paine coins the term “keystone species” to describe species that play a crucial role in ecosystem functions. 42 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS laboratory projects. As William E. Odum put it in 1959, “the ecological niche of an organism depends not only on where it lives, but also on what it does.” From ﬁeld to lab Laboratory experiments and ﬁeld observations are the main methods of providing data for the study of ecological processes, but ﬁeld experiments—in which a local environment is manipulated to test a hypothesis—were not conducted with scientiﬁc rigor until Joe Connell’s work with barnacles in Scotland. His experiments—the results of which were published in 1961—were meticulously planned and observed, and were repeatable. Connell set the “gold standard” for ﬁeldwork, but experiments in laboratories still have a vital role to play, too—as Earl Werner demonstrated 30 years later. His work revealed the non-consumptive impact of predatory dragonﬂy larvae on the behavior and physical development of their tadpole prey. Since the mid-20th century, many new ideas on ecological processes have emerged. Work by Robert MacArthur and others on competition between species led to the development of optimal foraging theory, which seeks to explain why animals choose to eat some food items and not others. Mutualistic relationships became better understood through the research of biologists such as Daniel Janzen. Robert Paine’s work with starﬁsh and mussels also highlighted the concept of keystone species— those that have a disproportionate inﬂuence on their ecosystems. New technology Technological advances—including sophisticated chemical sampling techniques, satellites with remote sensing equipment, and computers capable of rapidly processing huge quantities of data—have opened up new areas of study. Ecological stoichiometry, for example, studies the ﬂow of energy and chemical elements throughout food webs and ecosystems, from the molecular level up. Like so many ideas in ecology, its origins can be traced back many years, but only took hold with Robert Sterner and James Elser’s 2003 book Ecological stoichiometry: The biology of elements from molecules to the biosphere. New techniques such as this will undoubtedly continue to deepen our understanding of processes in ecology. ■ ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES 1977 Research published by Ronald Pulliam, Eric Charnov, and Graham Pyke expands on the optimal foraging theory that animals try to gather resources while wasting as little energy as possible. 1970s Roy Anderson and Robert May demonstrate how epidemics affect animal population growth rates. 2002 Robert Sterner and James Elser pioneer the study of ecological stoichiometry—how ratios of different chemicals within living organisms change with certain reactions. 1972 Knut Schmidt-Nielsen publishes How Animals Work. The book hugely inﬂuences the ﬁeld of ecophysiology. 1991 Earl Werner publishes his ﬁndings about nonconsumptive effects of predators on prey. 43 РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS LESSONS FROM MATHEMATICAL THEORY ON THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE PREDATOR–PREY EQUATIONS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 46 T he predator–prey equations are an early example of the application of mathematics to biology. Formulated in the 1920s by American mathematician Alfred J. Lotka and Italian mathematician and physicist Vito Volterra, the two equations—also known as the Lotka–Volterra equations— describe the way in which the population of a predator species and that of its prey fluctuate in relation to each other. Lotka proposed the equations in 1910, as a way of understanding the rates of autocatalytic chemical reactions—chemical processes that regulate themselves. In the following decade, he applied the equations to the population dynamics of wild animals. In 1926, Vito Volterra arrived at the same conclusions. He had become interested in the subject after meeting Italian marine biologist Umberto D’Ancona. D’Ancona told Volterra how the percentage of predatory fish caught in nets in the Adriatic Sea had greatly increased during World War I. This change was clearly linked to the drastic reduction in fishing during the PREDATOR–PREY EQUATIONS IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURES Alfred J. Lotka (1880–1949), Vito Volterra (1860–1940) BEFORE 1798 British economist Thomas Malthus shows that the rate at which the population changes increases as the size of the population grows. 1871 In Lewis Carroll’s novel Through the Looking Glass, the Red Queen tells Alice, “you have to run just to stay in the same place.” AFTER 1973 American biologist Leigh Van Valen proposes the Red Queen effect, which describes the constant “arms race” between predators and prey. 1989 The Arditi–Ginzburg equations offer another model of predator–prey dynamics by including the impact of the ratio between predator and prey. Vito Volterra Born in 1860 in Ancona, Italy, the son of a Jewish cloth merchant, Vito Volterra grew up in poverty. Despite this, in 1883, aged just 23, he secured a position as professor of mechanics at the University of Pisa and began a career as a mathematician. Further professorships at the universities of Turin and Rome followed. In 1900, Volterra married, fathering six children, although only four survived to adulthood. He was made a senator of the Kingdom of Italy in 1905 and worked on the development of military airships during World War I. In 1931, Volterra refused to swear loyalty to Italy’s fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and was dismissed from the University of Rome. Forced to work abroad, he only returned to Italy for a short time before his death in 1940. Key works 1926 “Fluctuations in the Abundance of a Species Considered Mathematically,” Nature 1935 Les associations biologiques au point de vue mathématique The prey has access to food and its population growth is exponential. When prey animals meet a predator, they are eaten. Eating prey results in more predators. More predators results in less prey, reducing the number of predators. Populations of two species, one predator, the other prey, interact. РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 47 A cheetah pursues a Thomson’s gazelle. The predator–prey equations are able to model the way populations of both species will change in response to the activities of the other. See also: Evolution by natural selection 24–31 ■ The selﬁsh gene 38–39 ■ Ecological niches 50–51 ■ Competitive exclusion principle 52–53 ■ Mutualisms 56–59 ■ Keystone species 60–65 ■ Optimal foraging theory 66–67 ECOLOGICAL PROCESSES war years, but D’Ancona could not explain why less ﬁshing did not produce more ﬁsh of all kinds in the nets. Using the same equations as Lotka, Volterra eventually explained the ﬂuctuations in both the predator and the prey species. Population principles At the time Lotka and Volterra made their calculations, the science of population dynamics was still in its infancy, having barely moved on since the population studies of British economist Thomas Malthus in the late 18th century. According to Malthus’s theory, a population grows or declines rapidly as long as the environmental factors for survival are constant, and the rate at which that population changes increases as the population grows. From this theory, Malthus predicted a catastrophic future for humanity. The number of humans was growing much more quickly than the amount of food that could be produced by the world’s farmlands. Eventually, Malthus argued, a point would be reached when the human population would succumb to global famine and decline. Malthus’s bleak vision did not happen, thanks to technological advances in agriculture and the development of artiﬁcial fertilizers, but his population model became applicable to species populations within ecosystems. Every habitat, and the niche occupied by a species within its community of organisms, has a carrying capacity—the maximum population that can be supported by the resources available, such as water, space, food, and light. Any rise in population above this level is likely to be reduced by naturally occurring factors. As a result, wild populations should in theory be more or less static, ﬂuctuating only around the carrying capacity, assuming the random impacts of catastrophic events are ignored. However, this relative equilibrium did not always match up with observations—as in ❯❯ The food species cannot, therefore, be exterminated by the predatory species, under the conditions to which our equations refer. Alfred J. Lotka РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 48 D’Ancona’s account of a sudden increase in the population of predatory sea ﬁsh. One theory to explain this discrepancy started from the premise that the population of predators is related to the size of the population of their food supply, such as prey species. The relationship suggests that when a lot of food is available, there will be a large predator population. The growing predator population should then begin to reduce the amount of prey, which will in turn lead to a drop in the number of predators. The size of both populations will rise and fall, but the ratio of predators to prey will remain stable. Such a balanced theory was still at odds with species observations. Through mathematical modeling, Volterra was able to show that the average sizes of predator and prey populations do indeed oscillate but the rate at which each population is growing or declining is always changing and almost never matches the changes experienced by the other population. To eliminate variables, Volterra made a series of assumptions: ﬁrst, that the prey and predator species have no reproduction limits and the rate of change in a population is proportional to its size; second, that the prey population—presumed to be a herbivore—is always able to ﬁnd enough food to survive. Next, they assumed that the prey population is the predators’ only source of nourishment, and that the predators never become full and never stop hunting. Finally, they assumed that environmental conditions, such as weather or natural disasters, had no impact on the process. The effect of the genetic diversity of the predators and prey animals on their ability to survive was not taken into account. When plotted on a graph, the predator population trails the rise and fall of the prey population, and is still rising as the prey population starts to decline. This explained D’Ancona’s observation of the larger proportion of predators after the prey population had been allowed to boom by a reduction in ﬁshing. The relative ﬂuctuations of the populations depends on the relative reproductive rates of the two PREDATOR–PREY EQUATIONS species and the predation rate. For example, oscillations in the size of an ant population and that of an anteater are barely noticeable because they reproduce at such different rates. The oscillations in the populations of species that breed at similar rates, such as the Iberian lynx and rabbit, are much more pronounced. Nature’s arms race The predator–prey equations revealed that species are locked together in a never-ending struggle, swinging from near disaster and extinction to times of abundance and fertility. In this biological “arms race,” the evolutionary pressure on the prey species is to escape predation and survive, so as to have more offspring. Meanwhile, the predator is under pressure to have a higher predation rate in order to provide food for more offspring. However, neither species is superior, responding instead to the adaptations of the other. The predator–prey relationship between even-toed hoofed mammals—such Predator–prey population cycles The predator and prey populations rise and fall over time in regular cycles. Although the degree to which they change varies, the cycle follows a broadly similar pattern. POPULATION TIME Prey Predator KEY Mathematics without natural history is sterile, but natural history without mathematics is muddled. John Maynard Smith British mathematician and evolutionist РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS 49 The parasitoid wasp lays its eggs in aphids (the smaller, yellow insects shown above). It is called a parasitoid because the wasp’s larvae later eat the aphids as they grow. as antelopes and deer—and mammalian carnivores, like the big cats and wolves, is an example of this evolutionary arms race. The hoofed animals have long legs, extended by w	871,079
The Economics Book [hardcover] (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	DK LONDON PROJECT ART EDITORS Anna Hall, Duncan Turner SENIOR EDITORS Janet Mohun, Rebecca Warren EDITOR Lizzie Munsey US EDITOR Kate Johnsen MANAGING ART EDITOR Michelle Baxter MANAGING EDITOR Camilla Hallinan PUBLISHER Sarah Larter ART DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham PICTURE RESEARCH Louise Thomas PRODUCTION EDITOR Ben Marcus PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Sophie Argyris original styling by STUDIO8 DESIGN DK DELHI SENIOR ART EDITOR Ivy Roy ART EDITOR Arijit Ganguly ASSISTANT ART EDITORS Sanjay Chauhan, Kanika Mittal CONSULTANT ART DIRECTOR Shefali Upadhyay SENIOR EDITOR Anita Kakar EDITORS Rupa Rao, Priyaneet Singh DEPUTY MANAGING EDITOR Alka Thakur EDITORIAL MANAGER Rohan Sinha DTP MANAGER Balwant Singh DTP DESIGNERS Vishal Bhatia, Bimlesh Tiwary produced for DK by TALLTREE LTD MANAGING EDITOR David John COMMISSIONING EDITOR Sarah Tomley SENIOR DESIGNER Ben Ruocco SENIOR EDITORS Rob Colson, Deirdre Headon First American Edition, 2012 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 07 08 09 10 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001 - 186345 - Sep/2012 Copyright © 2012 Dorling Kindersley Limited All rights reserved. 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Printed and bound in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd Discover more at www.dk.com LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, MUNICH, AND DELHI NIALL KISHTAINY, CONSULTANT EDITOR Niall Kishtainy teaches at the London School of Economics and specializes in economic history and development. He has worked for the World Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. GEORGE ABBOT George Abbot is an economist who worked in 2012 on Barack Obama’s presidential reelection campaign. He previously worked with Compass, the inﬂuential UK think tank, on strategic documents such as Plan B: A New Economy for a New Society. JOHN FARNDON John Farndon is the author of many books on contemporary issues and the history of ideas, including overviews of the booming economies of China and India. FRANK KENNEDY Frank Kennedy worked for over 25 years in investment banking in the City of London as a top-ranked investment analyst and as a managing director in capital markets, where he led a European team advising ﬁnancial institutions. He studied economic history at the London School of Economics. JAMES MEADWAY Economist James Meadway works at the New Economics Foundation, an independent British think tank. He has also worked as a policy adviser for the UK Treasury. CHRISTOPHER WALLACE Christopher Wallace is Head of Economics at the UK’s prestigious Colchester Royal Grammar School. He has been teaching economics for more than 25 years. MARCUS WEEKS Marcus Weeks studied philosophy and worked as a teacher before embarking on a career as an author. He has contributed to many books on the arts and popular sciences. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION LET THE TRADING BEGIN 400 BCE–1770 CE 20 Property should be private Property rights 22 What is a just price? Markets and morality 24 You don’t need to barter when you have coins The function of money 26 Make money from money Financial services 30 Money causes inﬂation The quantity theory of money 34 Protect us from foreign goods Protectionism and trade 36 The economy can be counted Measuring wealth 38 Let ﬁrms be traded Public companies 39 Wealth comes from the land Agriculture in the economy 40 Money and goods ﬂow between producers and consumers The circular ﬂow of the economy 46 Private individuals never pay for street lights Provision of public goods and services THE AGE OF REASON 1770–1820 52 Man is a cold, rational calculator Economic man 54 The invisible hand of the market brings order Free market economics 62 The last worker adds less to output than the ﬁrst Diminishing returns 63 Why do diamonds cost more than water? The paradox of value 64 Make taxes fair and efﬁcient The tax burden 66 Divide up pin production, and you get more pins The division of labor 68 Population growth keeps us poor Demographics and economics 70 Meetings of merchants end in conspiracies to raise prices Cartels and collusion 74 Supply creates its own demand Gluts in markets 76 Borrow now, tax later Borrowing and debt 78 The economy is a yo-yo Boom and bust 80 Trade is beneﬁcial for all Comparative advantage CONTENTS INDUSTRIAL AND ECONOMIC REVOULTIONS 1820–1929 90 How much should I produce, given the competition? Effects of limited competition 92 Phone calls cost more without competition Monopolies 98 Crowds breed collective insanity Economic bubbles 100 Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution Marxist economics 106 The value of a product comes from the effort needed to make it The labor theory of value 108 Prices come from supply and demand Supply and demand 114 You enjoy the last chocolate less than the ﬁrst Utility and satisfaction 116 When the price goes up, some people buy more Spending paradoxes 118 A system of free markets is stable Economic equilibrium 124 If you get a pay raise, buy caviar not bread Elasticity of demand 126 Companies are price takers not price makers The competitive market 130 Make one person better off without hurting the others Efﬁciency and fairness 132 The bigger the factory, the lower the cost Economies of scale 133 The cost of going to the movies is the fun you’d have had at an ice rink Opportunity cost 134 Workers must improve their lot together Collective bargaining 136 People consume to be noticed Conspicuous consumption 137 Make the polluter pay External costs 138 Protestantism has made us rich Religion and the economy 140 The poor are unlucky, not bad The poverty problem 142 Socialism is the abolition of rational economy Central planning 148 Capitalism destroys the old and creates the new Creative destruction WAR AND DEPRESSIONS 1929–1945 154 Unemployment is not a choice Depressions and unemployment 162 Some people love risk, others avoid it Risk and uncertainty 164 Government spending boosts the economy by more than what is spent The Keynesian multiplier 166 Economies are embedded in culture Economics and tradition 168 Managers go for perks, not their company’s proﬁts Corporate governance 170 The economy is a predictable machine Testing economic theories 171 Economics is the science of scarce resources Deﬁnitions of economics 172 We wish to preserve a free society Economic liberalism 178 Industrialization creates sustained growth The emergence of modern economies 180 Different prices to different people Price discrimination CONTEMPORARY ECONOMICS 1970–PRESENT 262 It is possible to invest without risk Financial engineering 266 People are not 100 percent rational Behavioral economics 270 Tax cuts can increase the tax take Taxation and economic incentives 272 Prices tell you everything Efﬁcient markets 273 Over time, even the selﬁsh cooperate with others Competition and cooperation 274 Most cars traded will be lemons Market uncertainty 276 The government’s promises are incredible Independent central banks POST-WAR ECONOMICS 1945–1970 186 In the wake of war and depression, nations must cooperate International trade and Bretton Woods 188 All poor countries need is a big push Development economics 194 People are inﬂuenced by irrelevant alternatives Irrational decision making 196 Governments should do nothing but control the money supply Monetarist policy 202 The more people at work, the higher their bills Inﬂation and unemployment 204 People smooth consumption over their life spans Saving to spend 206 Institutions matter Institutions in economics 208 People will avoid work if they can Market information and incentives 210 Theories about market efﬁciency require many assumptions Markets and social outcomes 214 There is no perfect voting system Social choice theory 216 The aim is to maximize happiness, not income The economics of happiness 220 Policies to correct markets can make things worse The theory of the second best 222 Make markets fair The social market economy 224 Over time, all countries will be rich Economic growth theories 226 Globalization is not inevitable Market integration 232 Socialism leads to empty shops Shortages in planned economies 234 What does the other man think I am going to do? Game theory 242 Rich countries impoverish the poor Dependency theory 244 You can’t fool the people Rational expectations 248 People don’t care about probability when they choose Paradoxes in decision making 250 Similar economies can beneﬁt from a single currency Exchange rates and currencies 256 Famine can happen in good harvests Entitlement theory 278 The economy is chaotic even when individuals are not Complexity and chaos 280 Social networks are a kind of capital Social capital 281 Education is only a signal of ability Signaling and screening 282 The East Asian state governs the market Asian Tiger economies 288 Beliefs can trigger currency crises Speculation and currency devaluation 294 Auction winners pay over the odds The winner’s curse 296 Stable economies contain the seeds of instability Financial crises 302 Businesses pay more than the market wage Incentives and wages 303 Real wages rise during a recession Sticky wages 304 Finding a job is like ﬁnding a partner or a house Searching and matching 306 The biggest challenge for collective action is climate change Economics and the environment 310 GDP ignores women Gender and economics 312 Comparative advantage is an accident Trade and geography 313 Like steam, computers have revolutionized economies Technological leaps 314 We can kick-start poor economies by writing off debt International debt relief 316 Pessimism can destroy healthy banks Bank runs 322 Savings gluts abroad fuel speculation at home Global savings imbalances 326 More equal societies grow faster Inequality and growth 328 Even beneﬁcial economic reforms can fail Resisting economic change 330 The housing market mirrors boom and bust Housing and the economic cycle 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION 12 F ew people would claim to know very much about economics, perhaps seeing it as a complex and esoteric subject with little relevance to their everyday lives. It has been generally felt to be the preserve of professionals in business, ﬁnance, and government. Yet most of us are becoming more aware of its inﬂuence on our wealth and well- being, and we may also have opinions—often quite strong ones—about the rising cost of living, taxes, government spending, and so on. Sometimes these opinions are based on an instant reaction to an item in the news, but they are also frequently the subject of discussions in the workplace or over the dinner table. So to some extent, we do all take an interest in economics. The arguments we use to justify our opinions are generally the same as those used by economists, so a better knowledge of their theories can give us a better understanding of the economic principles that are at play in our lives. Economics in the news Today, with the world in apparent economic turmoil, it seems more important than ever to learn something about economics. Far from occupying a separate section of our newspaper or making up a small part of the television news, economic news now regularly makes the headlines. As early as 1997, the US Republican political campaign strategist Robert Teeter noted its dominance, saying, “Look at the declining television coverage [of politics]. Look at the declining voting rate. Economics and economic news is what moves the country now, not politics.” Yet how much do we really understand when we hear about rising unemployment, inﬂation, stock market crises, and trading deﬁcits? When we’re asked to tighten our belts or pay more taxes, do we know why? And when we seem to be at the mercy of risk-taking banks and big corporations, do we know how they came to be so powerful or understand the reasons for their original and continued existence? The discipline of economics is at the heart of questions such as these. The study of management Despite the importance and centrality of economics to many issues that affect us all, economics as a discipline is often viewed with suspicion. A popular conception is that it is dry and academic, due to its reliance on statistics, graphs, and formulas. The 19th-century Scottish historian Thomas Carlyle described economics as the “dismal science” that is “dreary, desolate, and, indeed, quite abject and distressing.” Another common misconception is that it is “all about money,” and while this has a grain of truth, it is by no means the whole picture. So, what is economics all about? The word is derived from the Greek word Oikonomia, meaning “household management,” and it has come to mean the study of the way we manage our resources, and more speciﬁcally, the production and exchange of goods and services. Of course, the business INTRODUCTION In economics, hope and faith coexist with great scientiﬁc pretension and also a deep desire for respectability. John Kenneth Galbraith Canadian-US economist (1908–2006) 13 of producing goods and providing services is as old as civilization, but the study of how the process works in practice is comparatively new. It evolved only gradually; philosophers and politicians have expressed their opinions on economic matters since the time of the ancient Greeks, but the ﬁrst true economists to make a study of the subject did not appear until the end of the 18th century. At that time the study was known as “political economy,” and had emerged as a branch of political philosophy. However, those studying its theories increasingly felt that it should be distinguished as a subject in its own right and began to refer to it as “economic science.” This later became popularized in the shorter form of “economics.” A softer science Is economics a science? The 19th-century economists certainly liked to think so, and although Carlyle thought it dismal, even he digniﬁed it with the label of science. Much economic theory was modeled on mathematics and even physics (perhaps the “-ics” ending of “economics” helped to lend it scientiﬁc respectability), and it sought to determine the laws that govern how the economy behaves, in the same way that scientists had discovered the physical laws underlying natural phenomena. Economies, however, are man-made and are dependent on the rational or irrational behavior of the humans that act within them, so economics as a science has more in common with the “soft sciences” of psychology, sociology, and politics. Economics was perhaps best deﬁned by British economist Lionel Robbins. In 1932, he described it in his Essay on the Nature and Signiﬁcance of Economic Science as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” This broad deﬁnition remains the most popular one in use today. The most important difference between economics and other sciences, however, is that the systems it examines are ﬂuid. As well as describing and explaining economies and how they function, economists can also suggest how they ought to be constructed or can be improved. The ﬁrst economists Modern economics emerged as a distinct discipline in the 18th century, in particular with the publication in 1776 of The Wealth of Nations, written by the great Scottish thinker Adam Smith. However, what prompted interest in the subject was not so much the writings of economists as the enormous changes in the economy itself with the advent of the Industrial Revolution. Previous thinkers had commented on the management of goods and services within societies, treating questions that arose as problems for moral or political philosophy. But with the arrival of factories and mass producers of goods came a new ❯❯ INTRODUCTION The ﬁrst lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The ﬁrst lesson of politics is to disregard the ﬁrst lesson of economics. Thomas Sowell US economist (1930– ) 14 era of economic organization that looked at the bigger picture. This was the beginning of the so-called market economy. Smith’s analysis of the new system set the standard with a comprehensive explanation of the competitive market. Smith suggested that the market is guided by an “invisible hand,” where the rational actions of self-interested individuals ultimately give the wider society exactly what it needs. Smith was a philosopher, and the subject of his book was “political economy” —it stretched beyond economics to include politics, history, philosophy, and anthropology. After Smith a new breed of economic thinkers emerged who chose to concentrate entirely on the economy. Each of these built upon our understanding of the economy—how it works and how it should be managed—and laid the foundations for the various branches of economics. As the discipline evolved, economists identiﬁed speciﬁc areas to examine. One approach was to look at the economy as a whole, either at a national or international level, which became known as “macroeconomics.” This area of economics takes in topics such as growth and development, measurement of a country’s wealth in terms of output and income, and its policies for international trade, taxation, and controlling inﬂation and unemployment. In contrast, what we now call “microeconomics” looks at the interactions of individual people and ﬁrms within the economy: the business of supply and demand, buyers and sellers, markets and competition. New schools of thought Naturally, there were differences of opinion among economists, and various schools of thought evolved. Many welcomed the prosperity that the modern industrial economy brought and advocated a “hands-off” or laissez-faire approach to allow the competitive market to create wealth and stimulate technological innovation. Others were more cautious in their estimation of the market’s ability to beneﬁt society and identiﬁed failings of the system. They thought these could be overcome by state intervention and argued for a role for governments in providing certain goods and services and in curbing the power of the producers. In the analysis of some, notably the German philosopher Karl Marx, a capitalist economy was fatally ﬂawed and would not survive. The ideas of the early “classical” economists such as Smith were increasingly subjected to rigorous examination. By the late 19th century economists educated in science were approaching the subject through the disciplines of mathematics, engineering, and physics. These “neoclassical” economists described the economy in graphs and formulas, and proposed laws that governed the workings of the markets and justiﬁed their approach. By the end of the 19th century economics was beginning to develop national characteristics: centers of economic thinking had INTRODUCTION Economics is, at root, the study of incentives: how people get what they want, or need, especially when other people want or need the same thing. Steven D. Levitt Stephen J. Dubner US economists (1967– and 1963– ) 15 grown as university departments were established, and there were distinguishable differences between the major schools in Austria, Britain, and Switzerland, particularly on the desirability of some degree of state intervention in the economy. These differences became even more apparent in the 20th century, when revolutions in Russia and China brought almost a third of the world under communist rule, with planned economies rather than competitive markets. The rest of the world, however, was concerned with asking whether the markets alone could be trusted to provide prosperity. While continental Europe and Britain argued about degrees of government intervention, the real battle of ideas was fought in the US during the Great Depression after the Wall Street Crash of 1929. In the second half of the 20th century the center of economic thought shifted from Europe to the US, which had become the dominant economic superpower and was adopting ever more laissez-faire policies. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, it seemed that the free market economy was indeed the route to economic success, as Smith had predicted. Not everyone agreed. Although the majority of economists had faith in the stability, efﬁciency, and rationality of the markets, there were some who had doubts, and new approaches arose. Alternative approaches In the late 20th century new areas of economics incorporated ideas from disciplines such as psychology and sociology into their theories, as well as new advances in mathematics and physics, such as game theory and chaos theory. These theorists also warned of weaknesses in the capitalist system. The increasingly severe and frequent ﬁnancial crises that took place at the beginning of the 21st century reinforced the feeling that there was something fundamentally wrong in the system; at the same time scientists concluded that our ever-increasing economic wealth came at a cost to the environment in the form of potentially disastrous climate change. As Europe and the US begin to deal with perhaps the most serious economic problems they have ever faced, new economies have emerged, especially in Southeast Asia and the so-called BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). Economic power is once again shifting, and no doubt new economic thinking will evolve to help manage our scarce resources. One prominent casualty of the recent economic crises is Greece, where the history of economics started, and where the word “economics” comes from. In 2012, protesters in Athens pointed out that democracy also comes from the Greeks but is in danger of being sacriﬁced in the search for a solution to a debt crisis. It remains to be seen how the world economy will resolve its problems, but, armed with the principles of economics outlined in this book, you will see how we got into the present situation, and perhaps begin to see a way out. ■ INTRODUCTION The purpose of studying economics is …to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists. Joan Robinson UK economist (1903–83 ) LET TRA BEGIN 400 BCE–1770 CE DING 18 A s civilizations evolved in the ancient world, so too did systems for providing goods and services to populations. These early economic systems emerged naturally as various trades and crafts produced goods that could be exchanged. People began to trade, ﬁrst by bartering and later with coins of precious metal, and trade became a central part of life. The business of buying and selling goods operated for centuries before it occurred to anyone to examine how the system worked. The ancient Greek philosophers were among the ﬁrst to write about the topics that came to be known collectively as “economics.” In The Republic, Plato described the political and social makeup of an ideal state, which he said would function economically, with specialty producers providing products for the common good. However, his pupil Aristotle defended the concept of private property, which could be traded in the market. These are arguments that have continued to the present day. As philosophers Plato and Aristotle thought of economics as a matter of moral philosophy: rather than analyzing how an economic system worked, they came up with ideas for how it should work. This kind of approach is said to be “normative”—it is subjective and looks at “what ought to be” the case. The normative approach to economics continued into the Christian era, as medieval philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas (p.23) attempted to deﬁne the ethics of private property and trading in the marketplace. Aquinas considered the morality of prices, arguing for the importance of “just” prices, where no excessive proﬁt was made by the merchant. The ancients lived in societies where labor was composed largely of slaves, and medieval Europe ran on a feudal system—where peasants were protected by local lords in exchange for labor or military service. So the moral arguments of these philosophers were somewhat academic. Rise of the city-states A major change occurred in the 15th century, as city-states developed in Europe and became wealthy through international trade. A new, prosperous class of merchants replaced the feudal landowners as the important players in the economy, and they worked hand-in- INTRODUCTION C.380 BCE C.350 BCE C.1400 1492 1265–74 CE 1397 1599 C.1630 Bills of exchange become a standard method of payment in European trade, redeemable by merchant banks. Aristotle argues in favor of private property but against accumulating money for its own sake. Thomas Aquinas argues that the price of a product is “just” only if proﬁt is not excessive and there is no deception involved in the sale. Thomas Mun advocates a mercantilist policy, using foreign exports as a way of increasing a nation’s wealth. The Medici Bank is founded in Florence, Italy—one of the ﬁrst of the ﬁnancial institutions built on international trade. Plato describes his ideal state, where property is owned by all and labor is specialized. The British East India Company, an international trading company and the world’s ﬁrst global brand, is established. Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas; soon gold is ﬂowing into Europe, increasing the money supply. 19 hand with dynasties of bankers, who ﬁnanced their trading and voyages of discovery. New trading nations replaced small-scale feudal economies, and economic thinking began to focus on how best to control the exchange of goods and money from one country to another. The dominating approach of the time, known as mercantilism, was concerned with the balance of payments—the difference between what a country spends on imports and what it earns from exports. Selling goods abroad was seen as good because it brought money into the country; importing goods was seen as damaging because money ﬂowed out. To prevent a trade deﬁcit and protect domestic producers against foreign competition, mercantilists advocated the taxing of imports. As trade increased, it moved beyond the hands of individual merchants and their backers. Partnerships and companies were set up, often with government backing, to oversee large trading operations. These ﬁrms began to be split into “shares” so they could be ﬁnanced by many investors. Interest in buying shares grew rapidly in the late 17th century, leading to the establishment of many joint-stock companies and stock exchanges, where the shares could be bought and sold. A new science The huge increase in trading also prompted a renewed interest in the working of the economy and led to the beginnings of the discipline of economics. Emerging at the beginning of the 18th century, the so-called Age of Enlightenment, which prized rationality above all, took a scientiﬁc approach to “political economy.” Economists attempted to measure economic activity and described the working of the system, rather than looking only at moral implications. In France a group of thinkers known as the physiocrats analyzed the ﬂow of money around the economy and effectively produced the ﬁrst macroeconomic (whole- economy) model. They placed agriculture rather than trade or ﬁnance at the heart of the economy. Meanwhile, political philosophers in Britain shifted the emphasis away from mercantilist ideas of trade, and toward producers, consumers, and the value and utility of goods. The framework for the modern study of economics was beginning to emerge. ■ LET TRADING BEGIN 1637 1668 1682 1697 1756 1689 1752 1758 A speculative bubble in the Dutch market for tulips bursts, leaving thousands of investors ruined. Josiah Child describes free trade—he advocates increasing imports as well as exports. William Petty shows how the economy can be measured in Quantulumcunque Concerning Money. Gregory King compiles a statistical summary of the trade of England in the 17th century. François Quesnay and his followers, the physiocrats, argue that land and agriculture are the only sources of economic prosperity. John Locke argues that wealth is derived not from trade, but from labor. David Hume argues that public goods should be paid for by governments. Quesnay produces his Economic Table, the ﬁrst analysis for the workings of a whole economy—the “macroeconomy.” 20 PROPERTY SHOULD BE PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS W e learn about ownership and personal property from our earliest childhood tussles over toys. This concept is often taken for granted, yet there is nothing inevitable about the idea. Private property is fundamental to capitalism. Karl Marx (p.105) noted that the wealth generated by capitalism presents societies with “an immense collection of commodities” that are privately owned and may be traded for proﬁt. Businesses are also privately owned and operated for proﬁt in a free market. Without the idea of private property, there is no potential for personal gain—there is no reason even to enter the market. There is, in effect, no market. Types of property “Property” encompasses a wide range of things, from material goods to intellectual property (such as patents or written text). It has entered realms that even free market economists would not defend, such as slavery—where people were viewed as commodities. Historically, material property has been organized three different ways. First, everything can be held in common and used by everyone as they wish, on the basis of mutual trust and custom. This was the case in tribal economies, and it is still practiced by the Huaorani people of the Amazon. Second, property can be held and used collectively; this is the essence of the communist system. Third, property can be held in private, with each person free to do with it as they choose. This is the concept at the heart of capitalism. Modern economists tend to justify private property on pragmatic grounds, arguing that the market simply can’t operate without some division of resources. Earlier thinkers made more of a moral case Defending private ownership is important in capitalist countries. This house in Warsaw, Poland, is the most secure home ever built; it turns into a steel cube at the touch of a button. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Society and the economy KEY THINKER Aristotle (384–322 BCE) BEFORE 423–347 BCE Plato argues in The Republic that rulers should hold property collectively for the common good. AFTER 1–250 CE In classical Roman law the sum of rights and powers a person has over a thing is called dominium. 1265–74 Thomas Aquinas argues that owning property is natural and good, but private property is less important than the public good. 1689 John Locke states that what you create by your own labor is yours by right. 1848 Karl Marx writes the Communist Manifesto, advocating the complete abolition of private property. 21 See also: Markets and morality 22–23 ■ Provision of public goods and services 46–47 ■ Marxist economics 100–05 ■ Deﬁnitions of economics 171 LET TRADING BEGIN for private property. The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that “property should be private.” He pointed out that when property is held in common, no one takes responsibility to maintain and improve it. Moreover, people can only become generous if they have something to give away. A right to property In the 17th century all land and housing in Europe was effectively owned by monarchs. The English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), however, spoke out for individual rights, saying that as God gave us dominion over our own bodies, we also have dominion over the things we make. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) later argued that private property is a legitimate expression of the self. Another German philosopher, however, rejected the notion of private property entirely. Karl Marx insisted that the concept of private property is nothing but a device by which the capitalist expropriates the labor of the proletarian, keeps him in slavery, and excludes him. The proletariat is effectively locked out of the select group that controls all wealth and power. ■ How private? In every modern society some things are shared as collective property, such as streets and parks. Others, such as cars, are private property. Property rights, or legal ownership, normally confers on the owner exclusive rights over a particular resource, but this is not always the case. The owner of a house in a historic district, for instance, might not be allowed to knock it down and replace it with a skyscraper or a factory, or even change the use of the current building. The governments of every country in the world reserve the right to override private ownership when this is deemed necessary, for reasons varying from the needs of infrastructure to national safety issues. Even in the US, a staunchly capitalist nation, the government may force a property owner to relinquish his or her rights. However, the 14th amendment to the Constitution softens this blow by stating that the owner must be compensated with the market price. When property is held in common… Property should be private. … no one maintains it (everyone will act self-interestedly and assume someone else will do the work). … it provides little incentive for individuals to trade and invest. … it prevents people from acting benevolently (people cannot be generous if they don’t have anything to give away). It is clearly better that property should be private, but the use of it common; and the special business of the legislator is to create in men this benevolent disposition. Aristotle 22 M any people know what it is like to be exploited or “ripped off” by a vendor, such as when buying overpriced ice-creams at a tourist venue. Yet according to prevailing economic theory, there is no such thing as a rip-off. The price of anything is simply the market price—the price people are prepared to pay. For market economists there is no moral dimension to price at all— pricing is simply an automatic function of supply and demand. Merchants who appear to be overcharging are simply pushing the price to its limits. If they push their price further than people are IN CONTEXT FOCUS Society and the economy KEY THINKER Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) BEFORE C.350 BCE In Politics, Aristotle says that all goods must be measured in value by one thing—“need.” 529–534 CE Roman courts protect landowners from being forced to sell land below the just price, at “great loss.” AFTER 1544 The Spanish economist Luis Saravia de la Calle argues that price must be set by “common estimation” founded on quality and abundance. 1890 Alfred Marshall proposes that prices are automatically set by supply and demand. 1920 Ludwig von Mises argues that socialism cannot work because prices are the only way to establish need. WHAT IS A JUST PRICE? MARKETS AND MORALITY The market needs goods. What is a just price? Traders will only supply goods if there is a reward (a proﬁt). But there is a moral dimension too. To avoid prices being “unjust”… … proﬁt should not be excessive, because avarice is a sin. … no deception can be involved in setting the value of the goods. … the buyer must freely accept the price. 23 Medieval communities felt strongly about the prices merchants charged. In 1321, William le Bole of London was punished for selling underweight bread by being dragged through the streets. See also: Property rights 20–21 ■ Free market economics 54–61 ■ Supply and demand 108–13 ■ Economics and tradition 166–67 prepared to pay, people stop buying, so the merchants are forced to bring down their prices. Market economists consider the marketplace to be the only way to establish price, as nothing—not even gold— has an intrinsic value. A price freely accepted The idea that the marketplace should set prices seems to contrast sharply with the view expressed by Sicilian scholar Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, one of the ﬁrst studies of the marketplace. For Aquinas, a scholar monk, price was a deeply moral issue. Aquinas recognized avarice as a deadly sin, but at the same time he saw that if a merchant is deprived of the proﬁt incentive, he would cease to trade, and the community would be deprived of goods it needed. Aquinas concluded that a merchant may charge a “just price,” which includes a decent proﬁt, but excludes excessive proﬁteering, which is sinful. This just price is simply the price the buyer freely agrees to pay, given honest information. The vendor is not obliged to make the buyer aware of facts that might lower the price in the future, such as the shiploads of cheap spice due to dock shortly. The issues of price and morality are very much alive today, since both economists and the public discuss “the just price” of a CEO’s bonus or the minimum wage. Free market economists, who reject interference in the market, and those who advocate government intervention—whether for moral or economic reasons—continue to argue about the rights and wrongs of imposing restrictions on pricing. ■ Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas Aquinas was one of the greatest scholars of the Middle Ages. He was born in Aquino, Sicily, in 1225, to an aristocratic family, and began his education at the age of ﬁve. At the age of 17 he decided to leave worldly wealth behind and join an order of poor Dominican monks. His family was so shocked that they kidnapped him on his way to join the order and held him captive for two years. His determination, however, remained unbroken, and eventually the family gave in, letting him go to Paris, where he came under the tutelage of the scholar monk Albert the Great (1206–80). Aquinas studied and taught in France and Italy, and in 1272, founded a studium generale (a type of university) in Naples, Italy. His many philosophical works were hugely inﬂuential in paving the way to the modern world. Key works 1256–59 Disputed Questions on Truth 1261–63 Summa contra Gentiles 1265–73 Summa Theologica LET TRADING BEGIN No man should sell a thing to another man for more than its worth. Thomas Aquinas 24 YOU DON’T NEED TO BARTER WHEN YOU HAVE COINS THE FUNCTION OF MONEY I n many parts of the world people are increasingly moving towards a cashless society in which goods are bought with credit cards, electronic transfers, and mobile-phone chips. But dispensing with cash does not mean that money is not used. Money remains at the heart of all our transactions. The disturbing effects of money are well known, inciting everything from miserliness to crime and warfare. Money has been used as a tribute (sign of respect), in religious rites, and for ornamentation. “Blood money” is paid as recompense for murder; brides are bought with “bride money” or given away with dowries to enrich their husbands. Money lends status and power to individuals, families, and nations. A barter economy Without money, people could only barter. Many of us barter to a small extent, when we return favors. A man might offer to mend his neighbor’s broken door in return for a few hours of babysitting, for instance. Yet it is hard to imagine these personal exchanges working on a larger scale. What would happen if you wanted a loaf of bread and all you had to trade was your new car? Barter depends on the double coincidence of wants, where not only does the other person happen to have what I want, but I also have what he wants. Money solves all these problems. There is no need to ﬁnd someone who wants what you have to trade; you simply pay for your goods with money. The seller can then take the money and buy from someone else. The Tiwa tribal people of Assam, India, exchange goods through barter during the Jonbeel Mela, an age-old festival to preserve harmony and brotherhood between tribes. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Banking and ﬁnance KEY EVENT Kublai Khan adopts ﬁat money in the Mongol Empire during the 13th century. BEFORE 3000 BCE In Mesopotamia the shekel is used as a unit of currency: a unit of barley of a certain weight equals a certain value of gold or silver. 700 BCE The oldest known coins are made on the Greek island of Aegina. AFTER 13th century Marco Polo brings promissory notes from China to Europe, where they are used by Italian bankers. 1696 The Bank of Scotland is the ﬁrst commercial operation to issue bank notes. 1971 President Nixon cancels the convertibility of the US dollar to gold. 25 See also: Financial services 26–29 ■ The quantity theory of money 30–33 ■ The paradox of value 63 LET TRADING BEGIN Money is transferable and deferrable —the seller can hold on to it and buy when the time is right. Many argue that complex civilizations could never have arisen without the ﬂexibility of exchange that money allows. Money also gives a yardstick for deciding the value of things. If all goods have a monetary value, we can know and compare every cost. Different kinds of money There are two kinds of money: commodity and ﬁat. Commodity money has intrinsic value besides its speciﬁed worth, for example when gold coins are used as currency. Fiat money, ﬁrst used in China in the 10th century, is money that is simply a token of exchange with no value other than that assigned to it by the government. A paper bank note is ﬁat money. Many paper currencies were initially “promises to pay” against gold held in reserve. In theory dollars issued by the US Federal Reserve could be exchanged for their gold value. Since 1971, the value of a dollar has no longer been convertible to gold and is set entirely by the US Treasury, without reference to its gold reserves. Such ﬁat currencies rely on people’s conﬁdence in a country’s economic stability, which is not always assured. ■ Money helps us measure the value of things. With money a seller can sell to anyone who wants what the seller has. Money can be held until the time is right to buy. With money an individual can buy from anyone who is willing to sell. With barter a person can only exchange with someone who wants what he or she has to offer. Shelling out Wampum were strings of white and black shell beads treasured by the indigenous North Americans of the Eastern Woodland tribes. Before the European settlers arrived in the 15th century, wampum was used mainly for ceremonial purposes. People might exchange wampum to record an agreement or to pay tribute. Its value came from the immense skill involved in making it, and in its ceremonial associations. When Europeans arrived, their tools revolutionized wampum making, and Dutch colonizers mass-produced the beads by the million. Soon, they were using wampum to trade and buy things from the native peoples, who had no interest in coins, but valued wampum. Wampum soon became a currency with an accepted exchange rate. In New York eight white or four black wampum equaled one stuiver (a Dutch coin of the time). The use and value of wampum diminished in the 1670s. But you don’t need to barter if you have coins. This Shawnee shoulder bag is decorated with wampum beads, which developed into a currency for some North American tribes. 26 MAKE MONEY FROM MONEY FINANCIAL SERVICES H umans have long engaged in borrowing and lending. There is evidence that these activities took place 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia (present- day Iraq) at the very dawn of civilization. But modern banking systems did not emerge until the 14th century in northern Italy. The word “bank” comes from the Italian word for the “bench” on which the bankers sat to conduct business. In the 14th century the Italian peninsula was a land of city- states that beneﬁted from the inﬂuence and revenue of the papacy in Rome. The peninsula was ideally located for trade between Asia, Africa, and the emerging nations IN CONTEXT FOCUS Banking and ﬁnance KEY THINKERS The Medici family (1397–1494) BEFORE 13th century Scholastic writers condemn usury. AFTER 1873 British journalist Walter Bagehot urges the Bank of England to act as “lender of last resort” to the banking system. 1930 The Bank for International Settlements is founded in Basel, Switzerland, leading to international rules of banking regulation. 1992 US economist Hyman Minsky publishes The Financial Instability Hypothesis, which has proved useful in explaining the 2007–08 ﬁnancial crisis. 27 See also: Public companies 38 ■ Financial engineering 262–65 ■ Market uncertainty 274–75 ■ Financial crises 296–301 ■ Bank runs 316–21 of Europe. Wealth began to accumulate, especially in Venice and Florence. Venice relied on sea power: institutions were created there to ﬁnance and insure voyages. Florence focused on manufacturing and trade with northern Europe, and here merchants and ﬁnanciers came together at the Medici Bank. Florence was already home to other banking families, such as the Peruzzi and the Bardi, and to different types of ﬁnancial bodies— from pawnbrokers, who lent money secured by personal belongings, to local banks that dealt in foreign currencies, accepted deposits, and lent to local businesses. The bank founded by Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici in 1397 was different. The Medici Bank ﬁnanced long- distance trade in commodities such as wool. It differed from existing banks in three ways. First, it grew to a great size. In its heyday under the founder’s son, Cosimo, it ran branches in 11 cities, including London, Bruges, and Geneva. Second, its network was decentralized. Branches were managed not by an employee but by a local junior partner, who shared in the proﬁts. The Medici family in Florence were the senior partners, watching over the network, earning most of the proﬁt, and retaining the family trademark, which symbolized the bank’s sound reputation. Third, branches took in large deposits from wealthy savers, multiplying the lending that could be given out for a modest amount of initial capital, and so multiplying the bank’s proﬁts. Economics of banking These elements of the Medici success story correspond to three economic concepts highly relevant to banking today. The ﬁrst is “economies of scale.” It is expensive for an individual to draw up a single legal loan contract, but a bank can draw up 1,000 such contracts at a fraction of the “per-contract” cost. Dealings in money (cash investments) are suitable for economies of scale. The second is “diversiﬁcation of risk.” The Medicis lowered the risk of bad lending by spreading their lending geographically. Moreover, because the junior partners shared in proﬁts and losses, they needed to lend wisely—in effect they took on some of the Medici risks. The third concept is “asset transformation.” Merchants might want to deposit earnings or borrow money. One ❯❯ LET TRADING BEGIN Lend wisely, and monitor your loans. Gather deposits and keep enough cash to cover withdrawals. As the bank grows, average costs fall and proﬁts multiply. Spread your risks across different investments. Make money from money. Use your wealth to found a bank. Merchant bankers of the late 14th century arranged deposits and loans but also converted foreign currencies and watched over the circulation for signs of forged or forbidden coins. 28 merchant might want a safe place to store his gold, from where he can withdraw it quickly if necessary. Another might want a loan—which is riskier for the bank and may tie up money for a longer time. So the bank came to stand between the two needs: “borrowing short, and lending long.” This suited everybody —the depositor, the borrower, and of course the bank, which used customer deposits as borrowed money (“leverage”), to multiply proﬁts and make a high return on its owners’ invested capital. However, this practice also makes the bank vulnerable—if a large number of depositors demand their money back at the same time (in “a run on the bank”), the bank may be unable to provide it because it will have used the depositors’ money to make long- term loans, and it retains only a small fraction of depositors’ money in ready cash. This risk is a calculated one, and the advantage of the system is that it usefully connects savers and borrowers. Financing long-distance trade was a high-risk business in 14th-century Europe. It involved time and distance, so it suffered from what has been called the “fundamental problem of exchange” —the danger that someone will run off with the goods or the money after a deal has been struck. To solve this problem, the “bill of exchange” was developed. This was a piece of paper witnessing a buyer’s promise to pay for goods in a speciﬁc currency when the goods arrived. The seller of the goods could also sell the bill immediately to raise money. Italian merchant banks became particularly skilled at dealing in these bills, creating an international market for money. By buying the bill of exchange, a bank was taking on the risk that the buyer of the goods would not pay up. It was therefore essential for the bank to know who was likely to pay up and who was not. Lending—indeed ﬁnance in general—requires specialized, skilled knowledge, because a lack of information (known as “information asymmetry”) can result in serious problems. The borrowers least likely to repay are the ones most likely to ask for loans; and once they have received a loan, there are temptations not to repay. A bank’s most important function FINANCIAL SERVICES is its ability to lend wisely, and then to monitor borrowers to deter “moral hazard”—when people succumb to the temptation not to repay and default on the loan. Geographical clusters Banks often cluster together in the same place to maximize information and skill. This explains Bills of exchange, such as this one from 1713, later developed into the common bank check. All types promise to pay the bearer a speciﬁc amount of money on a certain date. A 21st-century banking crisis The global ﬁnancial crisis, which began in 2007, has led to rethinking about the nature of banking. Leverage, or borrowed money, lay at the heart of the crisis. In 1900, about three-quarters of the assets of a bank might be ﬁnanced by borrowed money. In 2007, the proportion was often 95–99 percent. The banks’ enthusiasm for placing ﬁnancial bets on future movements in the market, known as derivatives, magniﬁed this leverage and the risks it carried. Signiﬁcantly, the crisis followed a period of banking deregulation. A variety of ﬁnancial innovations seemed lucrative in a rising market. However, they led to poor lending standards by two groups: those providing housing loans to poor US families, and bond investors overly reliant on the advice of credit rating agencies. These are the issues faced by all banks since the Medicis: poor information, ﬁnancial incentives, and risk. Granting mortgages to “subprime” borrowers (people unable to repay) led to a wave of house repossessions and the ﬁnancial crisis of 2007–08. 29 the development of ﬁnancial districts in large cities. Economists call this phenomenon “network externalities,” which refers to the fact that, as a cluster starts to form, all the banks beneﬁt from the network of deepening skills and information. Florence was one such cluster. The City of London, with its goldsmiths and shipping experts, became another. In the early 1800s the remote northern inland province of Shanxi became China’s leading ﬁnancial center. Today, the internet creates new ways of clustering online. The beneﬁt of specialization explains why there are so many different types of banks—covering savings, mortgages, car loans, and so on. The form a bank takes can also address information problems. Mutual societies and credit unions, for instance, which are effectively owned by their customers, ﬁrst arose in the 19th century to increase trust between the bank and its customers at a time of social change. Because the members of these organizations checked up on each other, and the managers had good local knowledge, they could provide the long-term loans that their customers needed. In some countries, such as Germany, they thrived. The Dutch bank Rabobank is an example of a cooperative model, as is India’s “micro-ﬁnance” Grameen Bank, which makes many loans of small amounts. However, clustering can also lead to risky competition and crowdlike behavior. It is especially important for banks to have a good reputation because they have an asset transformation role—they transform deposits into loans—and their loan-assets are riskier, longer, and less easy to turn into cash (less “liquid”) than their deposit-liabilities. Bad news can lead to panics. Bank failures can have severe consequences for other banks, and for government and society, as witnessed in the failure of Creditanstalt Bank in Austria in 1931, which led to a run on the German mark, UK sterling, and then the US dollar, triggering further bank runs and contributing to the Great LET TRADING BEGIN Depression. As a result banks need to be regulated, and most countries have strict rules about who can form a bank, the information they must disclose, and the scope of their business activities. Finance broadly Banking is just the largest part of ﬁnance, but all ﬁnance is about connecting people who have more money than they need with people who need more money than they have—and will use it productively. Stock exchanges connect these needs directly, through equities (shares conferring ownership of a company), bonds (lending that can be traded), or other instruments. These exchanges are either physical places, such as the New York Stock Exchange, or regulated markets where trading takes place through phone calls and computers, like the international bond market. The clustering created by exchanges makes these long-term investments more liquid: they can easily be sold and turned into money. Savings can also be pooled to lower transaction costs and diversify risks. Mutual funds, pension funds, and insurance companies all perform this role. ■ The City of London is home to a dense cluster of banks built over medieval streets. Today it is the world’s largest center for foreign-exchange trading and cross-border bank lending. A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain. Mark Twain US author (1835–1910) 30 MONEY CAUSES INFLATION THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEY I n 16th-century Europe prices were rising inexplicably. Some said that rulers were using an old practice of “debasing” currencies by minting coins with ever-smaller amounts of gold or silver in them. This was true. However, Jean Bodin, a French lawyer, argued that something much more signiﬁcant was also happening. In 1568, Bodin published his Response to the Paradoxes of Malestroit. The French economist Jean de Malestroit (?–1578) had blamed the price inﬂation solely on currency debasement, but Bodin showed that prices were rising sharply even when measured in pure silver. He argued that an IN CONTEXT FOCUS The macroeconomy KEY THINKER Jean Bodin (1530–96) BEFORE 1492 Christopher Columbus arrives in the Americas. Silver and gold ﬂow into Spain. AFTER 1752 David Hume states that the money supply has a direct relationship to the price level. 1911 Irving Fisher develops a mathematical formula to explain the quantity theory of money. 1936 John Maynard Keynes says that the velocity of money in circulation is unstable. 1956 Milton Friedman argues that a change in the amount of money in the economy can have a predictable effect on people’s incomes. 31 See also: The function of money 24–25 ■ The Keynesian multiplier 164–65 ■ Monetarist policy 196–201 ■ Inﬂation and unemployment 202–03 Jean Bodin The son of a master tailor, Jean Bodin was born in 1530 in Angers, France. He was educated in Paris, and went on to study at the University of Toulouse. In 1560, he became a king’s advocate in Paris. Bodin’s scholarship (he read law, history, politics, philosophy, economics, and religion) attracted royal favor, and between 1571 and 1584, he served as aide to the powerful Duke of Alençon. In 1576, he married Françoise Trouilliart and succeeded his brother-in-law as the king’s procurator in Laon, northern France. In 1589, King Henry III was assassinated, and religious civil war broke out. Bodin believed in tolerance, but in Laon was forced to declare for the Catholic cause, until the victorious Protestant King, Henry IV, took control of the city. Bodin died of the plague, aged 66, in 1596. Key works 1566 Method for the Easy Comprehension of History 1568 Response to the Paradoxes of Malestroit 1576 Six Books of a Commonwealth abundance of silver and gold was to blame. These precious metals were entering Spain from its new colonies in the Americas and then spreading throughout Europe. Bodin’s calculations of the increase in coinage were remarkably accurate. Later economists concluded that prices in Europe quadrupled during the 16th century, at the same time as the amount of physical silver and gold circulating in the system tripled; Bodin had estimated the increase in precious metals at more than 2.5 times. He also highlighted other factors behind the inﬂation: a demand for luxuries; a scarcity of goods for sale due to exports and waste; greedy merchants able to restrict the supply of goods through monopolies; and, of course, the rulers adulterating the coins. The money supply Bodin was not the ﬁrst to point to the new inﬂuence of American treasure and the effect of the abundance or scarcity of money on price levels. In 1556, a Spanish theologian named Martín de Azpilcueta (better known as Navarrus) had come to the same conclusion. However, Bodin’s essay also discussed the demand for and the supply of money, the operation of these two sides of an economy, and how disturbances to the ❯❯ LET TRADING BEGIN This results in too much money chasing too few goods… … leading to price rises. If more money is put into the system… … people have more money in their pockets and wish to buy more goods and services. Money causes inﬂation. Money circulates at a constant speed. 32 supply of money led to inﬂation. His thorough study is considered the ﬁrst important statement of the quantity theory of money. The reasoning behind this theory is partly based on common sense. Why is the price of a cup of coffee in a rich part of town so much higher than in a poor area? The answer is that customers in the rich part have more money to spend. If we consider the population of a whole country and double the money in people’s pockets, it is natural that they will want to use their increased spending power to buy more goods and services. But goods and services are always in limited supply, so there will be too much money chasing too few goods, and prices will rise. This chain of events shows the important relationship between the quantity of money in an economy and the general price level. The quantity theory of money states that a doubling of the supply of money will result in a doubling in the value of transactions (or income or expenditure). In the theory’s more extreme form, a doubling of money will lead to a doubling of prices, but not real value. Money will be neutral in its effect on the real, relative value of goods and services—for example, on how many jackets can be bought for the price of a computer. Real price, nominal price After Bodin, many economists developed his idea further. They came to recognize that there is a distinct separation between the real side of the economy and the nominal, or money, side. Nominal prices are simply money prices, which can change with inﬂation. This is why economists focus on real prices—on what quantity of a thing (jackets, computers, or time spent working) has to be given up in return for another kind of thing, no matter what the nominal price is. In the extreme quantity theory, changes in the money supply may inﬂuence prices, but it has no effect on the real economic variables, such as output and unemployment. What is more, economists realized that money is itself a “good” that people want to own for its spending power. THE QUANTITY THEORY OF MONEY Irving Fisher used the analogy of a scale to illustrate the quantity theory of money. If there is an increase in the amount of money in circulation, the bag gets heavier, and the price of goods rises and moves to the right, balancing the scale. However, the money they want is not nominal money, but “real money”—money that can buy more. Fisher’s equation The fullest statement of the quantity theory of money was made by the US economist Irving Fisher (1867–1947), who used the mathematical formula MV = PT. Here “P” is the general level of prices, and “T” is the transactions that take place in a year, so PT (Prices × The abundance of gold and silver… is greater in this kingdom today than it has been in the last 400 years. Jean Bodin Money circulation Price level 20 25 5 5 10 10 15 15 25 20 33 This painting by Dutch master Pieter Bruegel (1559) shows vagrants rubbing shoulders with the rich during Lent. Steep price rises in the 15th century led to much hardship among the poor, a rise in vagrancy, and peasant revolts. Transactions) is the total value of transactions occurring annually. “M” is the supply of money. But because PT is a total ﬂow of goods, while M represents a stock of money that can be used over and over again, the equation needs something to represent the circulation of money. This circular ﬂow, which causes money to rotate through the economy—like the spinning drum of a washing machine—is “V”, the velocity of money. This equation becomes a theory when we make assumptions about the relationships between the letters, which economists do in three ways. First, V, the velocity of money, is assumed to be constant, since the way in which we use money is part of habit and custom and does not change much from year to year (our washing machine drum spins at a steady rate). This is the key assumption behind the quantity theory of money. Second, it is assumed that T, the quantity of transactions in an economy, is driven solely by consumers’ demand and producers’ technology, which together determine prices. Third, we allow that there can be one-time changes to M (the supply of money), such as the ﬂow of New World treasure into Europe. With V (velocity) and T (transactions) ﬁxed, it follows that a doubling of money will lead to a doubling of prices. Combined with the difference between nominal and real, the quantity theory of money has led to the notion that money is neutral in its effect on the economy. Challenge and restatement But is money really neutral? Few believe that it is neutral in the short run. The immediate effect of more money in the pocket is for it to be spent on real goods and services. John Maynard Keynes (p.161) said it was probably neutral in the long run, but in the short run it would affect real variables such as output and unemployment. Evidence also suggests that money velocity (V) is not constant. It seems to rise in booms when inﬂation is high and falls in recessions when inﬂation is low. Keynes had other ideas that challenged the quantity theory of money. He proposed that money LET TRADING BEGIN is used, not just as a medium of exchange, but also as a “store of value”—something you can keep, either for buying goods, for security in case of hard times in the future, or for future investments. Keynesian economists argue that these motives are affected less by income or transactions (PT in the formula) than by interest rates. A rise in the interest rate will lead to a rise in the velocity of money. In 1956, US economist Milton Friedman (p.199) defended the quantity theory of money, arguing that an individual’s demand for real money balances (where money buys more) depends on wealth. He claimed that it is people’s incomes that drive this demand. Today, central banks print money electronically and use it to buy government debt in a process known as quantitative easing. Their aim has been to prevent a feared fall in the money supply. So far, the most visible effect has been to reduce interest rates on government debt. ■ Inﬂation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. Milton Friedman 34 F or the last half century many economists have championed free trade. They argue that only by removing restrictions on trade (such as tariffs) can goods and money ﬂow freely around the world and global markets develop without inhibition. Some disagree, arguing that where there is a huge imbalance of trade between two countries, it can impact jobs and wealth. A mercantilist view The argument over free trade dates back to the mercantilist era, which began in Europe in the 16th century and continued until the late 18th century. With the rise of Dutch and English seaborne trade, wealth began to shift from southern Europe toward the north. This was also the age when nation-states began to emerge, along with the idea of the wealth of the nation, which was measured by the amount of “treasure” (gold and silver) it possessed. Mercantilists believed that the world drew from a “limited pot,” so the wealth of each nation depended on ensuring a favorable “balance of trade,” in which more gold ﬂows into the nation than out. If an excess of gold IN CONTEXT FOCUS Global economy KEY THINKER Thomas Mun (1571–1641) BEFORE c.1620 Gerard de Malynes argues that England should regulate foreign exchange to stop the nation’s gold and silver from going abroad. AFTER 1691 English merchant Dudley North argues that the main spur to increased national wealth is consumption. 1791 US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton argues for protection of young industries. 1817 British economist David Ricardo argues that foreign trade can beneﬁt all nations. 1970s US economist Milton Friedman insists that free trade helps developing countries. PROTECT US FROM FOREIGN GOODS PROTECTIONISM AND TRADE A country’s wealth is its gold. Imports of foreign goods cause gold to be lost. Exports bring in gold. A country should preserve its stock of gold by restricting imports. Protect us from foreign goods. 35 French farmers demonstrated on tractors in Paris, 2010, to denounce a sharp fall in grain prices after import quotas were liberalized. See also: Comparative advantage 80–85 ■ International trade and Bretton Woods 186–87 ■ Market integration 226–31 ■ Dependency theory 242–43 ■ Global savings imbalances 322–25 LET TRADING BEGIN ﬂows out, the nation’s prosperity declines, wages fall, and jobs are lost. England sought to cut the outﬂow of gold by imposing sumptuary laws, which aimed to limit the consumption of foreign goods. For instance, laws were passed restricting the types of fabric that could be used for clothes, reducing the demand for ﬁne foreign cotton and silk. Malynes and Mun Gerard de Malynes (1586–1641), an English expert on foreign exchange, believed that the outﬂow of gold should be restricted. If too much ﬂowed out, he argued, the value of English currency would fall. However, the century’s greatest mercantilist theorist, Englishman Thomas Mun, insisted that what matters is not the fact that payments are made abroad, but how trade and payments ﬁnally balance out. Mun wanted to boost exports and cut imports through more frugal consumption of domestic produce. However, he saw no problem in spending gold abroad if it was used to acquire goods that were then reexported for a larger sum, ultimately returning more gold to the country than had initially been spent. This would boost trade, provide work for the shipping industry, and increase England’s treasure. Free trade agreements In the 18th century Adam Smith (p.61) was to disagree with this view. What matters, he insisted in The Wealth of Nations, is not the wealth of individual nations but the wealth of all nations. Nor is the pot ﬁxed; it can grow over time—but only if trade between nations is unrestricted. If left free, Smith insisted, the market would always grow to enrich all countries eventually. For the last half century Smith’s view has dominated, because most Western economists argue that restrictions on trade between nations hobble their economies. Today, free trade areas such as the EU (European Union), ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), and NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) are the norm, while global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) urge countries to reduce tariffs and other trade barriers to allow foreign ﬁrms to enter their domestic markets. The creation of barriers to foreign trade is criticized now as protectionism. However, some economists are concerned that exposure to large global businesses has the potential to damage developing countries who are unable to nurture infant industries behind protective barriers, as the US, Britain, Japan, and South Korea did before they became economically powerful. China, meanwhile, pursues a trade policy that in many ways echoes Mun’s thinking by running large trade surpluses and building up a huge reserve of foreign exchange. ■ Thomas Mun Born in 1571, Thomas Mun grew up in a family of wealthy London merchants. His father died when he was three, and his mother married Thomas Cordell, who became a director of the East India Company, Britain’s largest trading company. Mun began trading as a merchant in the Mediterranean. In 1615, he became a director of the East India Company. His ideas were developed originally to defend the company’s export of large amounts of silver, on the grounds that this generated reexport trade. In 1628, the company appealed to the British government to protect their trade against Dutch competition. Mun represented their case to Parliament. He had amassed a considerable fortune by the time he died in 1641. Key works 1621 A Discourse of Trade c.1630 England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade 36 THE ECONOMY CAN BE COUNTED MEASURING WEALTH T oday we take it for granted that the economy can be measured, and its expansions and contractions accurately quantiﬁed. But this was not always the case. The idea of measuring the economy dates back to the 1670s and the pioneering work of English scientist William Petty. His insight was to apply the new empirical methods of science to ﬁnancial and political affairs—to use real world data rather than relying on logical reasoning. He decided to express himself only “in terms of number, weight, or IN CONTEXT FOCUS Economic methods KEY THINKER William Petty (1623–87) BEFORE 1620 English scientist Francis Bacon argues for a new approach to science based on the collection of facts. AFTER 1696 English statistician Gregory King writes his great statistical survey of England’s population. 1930s Australian economist Colin Clark invents the idea of gross national product (GNP). 1934 Russian-US economist Simon Kuznets develops modern national income accounting methods. 1950s British economist Richard Stone introduces balanced, double-entry national accounting. Wealth includes people as well as property. Both population and a typical person’s average expenditure can be estimated. Multiplying average expenditure by the population gives the national income. Deducting an estimated amount for rents and proﬁts leaves a sum for the total worth of labor. The economy can be counted. 37 See also: The circular ﬂow of the economy 40–45 ■ Testing economic theories 170 ■ The economics of happiness 216–19 ■ Gender and economics 310–11 LET TRADING BEGIN measure.” This approach helped form the basis of the discipline that would become known as economics. In his 1690 book Political Arithmetick, Petty used real data to show that, contrary to popular belief, England was wealthier than ever. One of his groundbreaking decisions was to include the value of labor as well as land and capital. Although Petty’s ﬁgures are open to dispute, there is no doubting the effectiveness of his basic idea. His calculations included population size, personal spending, wages per person, the value of rents, and others. He then multiplied these ﬁgures to give a total ﬁgure for the nation’s total wealth, creating accounts for an entire nation. Similar methods were developed in France by Pierre de Boisguilbert (p.334) and Sébastien le Prestre (1633–1707). In England Gregory King (1648–1712) analyzed William Petty Born in 1623 to a humble family in Hampshire, England, William Petty lived through the English Civil War and rose to high positions in both the Commonwealth government and then the restored monarchy. As a young man he worked for the English political economist Thomas Hobbes in Holland. After returning to England, he taught anatomy at Oxford University. A great believer in the new science, he found universities uninspiring, so left for Ireland, where he made a monumental land survey of the entire country. In the 1660s he returned to England and began the work on economics for which he is now known. For the remainder of his life he moved between Ireland and England, both physically and in the focus of his work. Petty is regarded as one of the ﬁrst great political economists. He died in 1687, aged 64. Key works 1662 Treatise of Taxes and Contributions 1690 Political Arithmetick 1695 Quantulumcunque Concerning Money The Battle of La Hogue was fought in 1692 during the Nine Years’ War. English statistician Gregory King calculated how long each country involved could afford to ﬁght. the economies and populations of England, Holland, and France. He calculated that none had the ﬁnances to continue the war they were then engaged in—the Nine Years’ War—beyond 1698. His ﬁgures might have been correct, because the war ended in 1697. Measures of progress Statistics are now at the heart of economics. Today, economists generally measure gross domestic product (GDP)—the total value of all the goods and services exchanged for money within a country in a particular period (usually a year). However, there is still no deﬁnitive way of calculating national accounts, although efforts have been made to standardize methods. Economists have now begun to broaden the measurement of prosperity. They have formulated new measures such as the genuine progress indicator (GPI), which includes adjustments for income distribution, crime, pollution, and the happy planet index (HPI), a measure of human well-being and environmental impact. ■ 38 See also: Economic equilibrium 118–23 ■ Corporate governance 168–69 ■ Institutions in economics 206–07 M erchant ships have always raised funds for voyages by promising a share of proﬁts. In the 1500s the rewards could be huge, but these high-risk ventures tied up money for years before a proﬁt was realized. The answer was to share the risk, and so joint-stock companies were formed, where investors injected money into a company in return for becoming joint holders of its trading stock, and a right to a proportional share of the proﬁts. East India Company An early joint-stock company, formed in 1599, was the East India Company (EIC), launched to develop trade between Britain and the East Indies. Its rights to free trade were so ably defended by the “father of mercantilists,” London merchant Josiah Child, that it became a global phenomenon. By the time of his death the company had about 3,000 shareholders, subscribed to a stock of more than $14 million, and was borrowing a further $28 million on bonds. Its annual sales raised up to $10 million. The idea of the public limited company—in which shareholders are protected from liability beyond their investment—developed from joint-stock companies. The selling of shares is an important way of raising funds. Some argue that shareholders’ power to sell shares leads to a lack of commitment, but the joint-stock company remains at the heart of capitalism. ■ LET FIRMS BE TRADED PUBLIC COMPANIES The high-risk, high-reward potential of merchant shipping was shared by joint-stock companies. Vessels such as the John Wood, seen here in Bombay in the 1850s, brought home the goods. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Markets and ﬁrms KEY THINKER Josiah Child (1630–99) BEFORE 1500s Governments grant merchants the monopoly of trade within speciﬁc regions. 1552–71 The Bourse in Antwerp and Royal Exchange in London are set up for shareholders to buy and sell stock in joint-stock companies. AFTER 1680 London stock “brokers” meet in Jonathan’s Coffee House to arrange share deals. 1844 The Joint Stock Companies Act in the UK allows ﬁrms to be incorporated more quickly and easily. 1855 The idea of limited liability protects investors in joint-stock companies from scams such as the South Sea Bubble of 1720 (p.98). 39 See also: Demographics and economics 68–69 ■ The labor theory of value 106–07 ■ The emergence of modern economies 178–79 ■ Development economics 188–93 I n recent years bankers have sometimes been characterized as parasites, living off wealth created by the labor of others. François Quesnay (p.45), a French farmworker’s son and one of the great minds of the 18th century, might recognize this description. Quesnay argued that wealth lies not in gold and silver, but springs from production—the output of the farmer or manufacturer. He argued that agriculture is so valuable because it works with nature— which multiplies the farmer’s effort and resources—to produce a net surplus. Manufacturing, on the other hand, is “sterile” because the value of its output is equal to the value of the input. However, later theorists showed that manufacturing can also produce a surplus. The natural order Quesnay’s championing of the value of agriculture was inﬂuential, leading to the development of the French school of physiocrat thinkers who believed in the primacy of the “natural order” in the economy. Many economists, including Theodore Schultz, have argued that agricultural development is the foundation for progress in poor countries. In 2008, the World Bank reported that growth in the agricultural sector contributes more to poverty reduction than growth in any other sector. But economists today also recognize that diversiﬁcation into industry and services, including ﬁnance, is vital for long-term development. ■ LET TRADING BEGIN WEALTH COMES FROM THE LAND AGRICULTURE IN THE ECONOMY IN CONTEXT FOCUS Growth and development KEY THINKER François Quesnay (1694–1774) BEFORE 1654–56 English economist William Petty conducts a major land survey of Ireland to calculate its productive potential for the English army. AFTER 1766 Adam Smith states that labor, not land, is the greatest source of value. 1879 US economist Henry George argues that land should be held in common by society, and that only land should be taxed—not productive labor. 1950s US economist Theodore Schultz’s “efﬁcient farmer” hypothesis places agriculture at the heart of economic development. If we knew the economics of agriculture, we would know much of the economics of being poor. Theodore Schultz US economist (1902–98) MONEY AND GOODS FLOW BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS THE CIRCULAR FLOW OF THE ECONOMY 42 I n economics one can think small—microeconomics—or one can think as large as the entire system: this is the study of macroeconomics. In 18th-century France a group known as the physiocrats tried to think big—they wanted to understand and explain the whole economy as a system. Their ideas form the foundation of modern macroeconomics. The physiocrats Physiocracy is an ancient Greek word meaning “power over nature.” The physiocrats believed that nations gained their economic rights, and low government debt. Where the mercantilists said that wealth came from treasure, Quesnay and his followers viewed it as being rooted in what modern economists call the “real” economy —those sectors that create real goods and services. They believed that agriculture was the most productive of these sectors. The physiocrats were inﬂuenced by the thinking of an earlier French landowner, Pierre de Boisguilbert. He said that agriculture is superior to manufacturing, and consumables are more valuable than gold. He said the more goods consumed, the more money moves in the system, making consumption the driving force in the economy. He also said that a little money in the hands of the poor (who spend it) is worth far more to the economy than in the hands of the rich (who hoard it). The movement, or circulation, of money is all-important. The Economic Table The physiocratic system of circulation was set out in Quesnay’s Economic Table, which was published and revised several times between 1758 and 1767. This is a diagram that illustrates, through a series of crossing and connecting lines, the ﬂow of money and goods between three groups in society: landowners, farmers, and artisans. The goods are agricultural and manufactured products (produced by the farmers and artisans). Although Quesnay used corn as his example of an agricultural product, he said that this category could include anything produced from the land, including mining products. Quesnay’s model is best understood through an example. Imagine each of the three groups starts with $2 million. The THE CIRCULAR FLOW OF THE ECONOMY IN CONTEXT FOCUS The macroeconomy KEY THINKER François Quesnay (1694–1774) BEFORE 1664–76 English economist William Petty introduces the concepts of national income and expenditure. 1755 Irish merchant banker Richard Cantillon’s Essay, ﬁrst published in France, discusses the circulation of money from the city to the countryside. AFTER 1885 Karl Marx’s Capital describes the circulation of capital using a model inspired by Quesnay. 1930s Russian-American economist Simon Kuznets develops modern national income accounting. Madame de Pompadour (the mistress of Louis XV) installed Quesnay at Versailles as her physician. To him her lifestyle must have epitomized the lavish surplus of landowners’ wealth. wealth from nature, through their agricultural sector. Their leader, François Quesnay, was surgeon and physician to King Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour. His complicated model of the economy was thought by some to reﬂect the circulation of blood in a human body. The mercantilist approach (pp.34–35) dominated economic thinking at the time. Mercantilists thought the state should behave like a merchant, growing business, acquiring gold, and actively interfering with the economy through taxes, subsidies, controls, and monopoly privileges. The physiocrats took the opposite view: they argued that the economy was naturally self-regulating and needed only to be protected from bad inﬂuences. They favored free trade, low taxes, secure property 43 landowners produce nothing. They spend their $2 million equally between farming and artisan products, and consume all of them. They receive $2 million in rent from the farmers—which the farmers can just afford, since they are the only group to produce a surplus—and so the landowners end up back where they started. The farmers are the productive group. From a starting point of $2 million they produce $5 million worth of agricultural products, over and above what they consume themselves. Of this $1 million worth is sold to landowners for their consumption. They sell $2 million worth to artisans, half for consumption and half as raw materials for the goods the artisans will produce. This leaves $2 million worth to be used toward next year’s growing season. In terms of production they are back where they started. However, they also have $3 million from sales, of which they spend $2 million on rent and $1 million on artisan goods (tools, agricultural implements, and so on). Quesnay referred to any group outside the land-based farmers and landowners as “sterile,” because he believed that they could not produce a net surplus. The artisans, in this instance, use their starting amount of $2 million to produce $2 million worth of manufactured goods over and above what they consume themselves. These are sold equally to landowners and farmers. But See also: Measuring wealth 36–37 ■ Agriculture in the economy 39 ■ Free market economics 54–61 ■ Marxist economics 100–05 ■ Economic equilibrium 118–23 ■ The Keynesian multiplier 164–65 LET TRADING BEGIN Those farmers and artisans then use the money to buy goods from yet more farmers and artisans. Money and goods ﬂow between producers and consumers. Farmers use this money to buy goods from artisans and other farmers. Landowners collect rent from farmers and buy goods from farmers and artisans. Artisans use this money to buy goods from farmers and other artisans. This multi-level buying and selling activity happens continuously. Quesnay’s Economic Table shows the zigzag ﬂow of wealth between farmers, landowners, and artisans. It was the ﬁrst attempt to explain the workings of a national economy. they spend their entire revenue on agricultural products: $1 million for their own consumption, and $1 million on raw materials. They have consumed everything they have. Quesnay’s model does more than present end-of-year results— it also shows how money and goods circulate through the year and demonstrates why this is so important. The sale of products between the various groups continues to generate revenue, which is then used to buy more products, which produces yet more revenue. A “multiplier effect” occurs (in Quesnay’s diagram it appeared as a zigzag series of lines), similar to that presented ❯❯ 44 THE CIRCULAR FLOW OF THE ECONOMY by John Maynard Keynes (p.161) in the 1930s, when he pointed out the beneﬁcial effects of a government spending money in a depressed economy. Analyzing the economy The kinds of questions Quesnay asked, and the way he went about answering them, anticipated modern economics. He was one of the ﬁrst to attempt to uncover general abstract laws that govern economies, which he did by breaking economies down into their constituent parts and then rigorously analyzing the relationships between the parts. His model included inputs, outputs, and the interdependencies of different sectors. Quesnay suggested that these might exist in a state of equilibrium, an idea that was later developed by Léon Walras (p.120), becoming one of the foundations of economic theorizing. Quesnay’s approach to quantifying economic laws makes his Economic Table possibly the ﬁrst empirical macroeconomic model. The numbers in his Table were the result of a close study of the French economic system, giving them a ﬁrm empirical basis. This study indicated that farming technology was sufﬁcient for farmers to generate a net surplus of at least 100 percent. In our example this is what they achieve —starting with $2 million of corn, they receive this back plus a net surplus of $2 million, which is then paid in rent. Modern economists use these kinds of empirical results to think about the impact of policy changes, and Quesnay used his Table for a similar purpose. He argued that if farmers had to pay too much tax, either directly or indirectly, they would cut back their capital investment in farming technology, and production would fall below the level needed for the economy to thrive. This led the physiocrats to argue that there should be only one tax: on the rental value of land. Based on his empirical ﬁndings, Quesnay made a host of other policy recommendations, including investment in agriculture, the spending of all revenue, no hoarding, low taxes, and free trade. He thought capital was especially important because his entrepreneur-farmers needed to borrow cheaply in order to pay for land improvements. Classical ideas Quesnay’s idea of sectors being productive or unproductive has reappeared throughout the history of economic thought as economists consider industry versus services, and the private sector versus the government. His sole focus on agriculture may look narrow to modern eyes, since it is now understood that wealth generation from industry and services is vital to an economy’s growth. However, his emphasis on the “real” side of the economy was an important step towards modern economic thinking. He most obviously anticipated modern national income accounting, which is used to assess nations’ macroeconomic performance. This income accounting is based on the circular ﬂow of income and expenditure Let the sum total of the revenues be annually returned into and along the entire course of circulation. François Quesnay According to the physiocrats, investment in agriculture was key to ensuring the national wealth of France. Free export was a way of sustaining demand and restricting merchant power. 45 LET TRADING BEGIN The interdependence of consumers and producers was ﬁrst illustrated by Quesnay. Consumers rely on producers for goods and services, who in turn rely on the consumers for sales and labor. François Quesnay Born near Paris, France, in 1694, François Quesnay was the son of a plowman and the eighth of 13 children. At the age of 17 he began an apprenticeship in engraving, but then transferred to the university, graduating from the college of surgeons in 1717. He made his name as a surgeon and specialized in treating the nobility; in 1749, he moved to the royal palace at Versailles, near Paris, as physician to Madame de Pompadour. In 1752, he saved the king’s son from smallpox and was awarded a title and enough money to buy an estate for his own son. His interest in economics began in the early 1750s, and in 1757 he met the Marquis de Mirabeau, with whom he formed les Economistes—the physiocrats. He died in 1774. Key works 1758 Economic Table 1763 Rural Philosophy (with Marquis de Mirabeau) 1766 Analysis of the Arithmetic Formula for the Economic Table This system… is, perhaps, the nearest approximation to truth that has yet been published on the subject of political economy. Adam Smith Goods and services Consumer expenditure Wages, rent, dividends Households Firms Labor around the economy. The value of the total product of an economy is equal to the total income earned —a notion that was an important part of Quesnay’s theory. In the 20th century much of the analysis of macroeconomies has revolved around the Keynesian multiplier (pp.164–65). Keynes showed how government spending could stimulate further spending in a “multiplier effect.” This idea has obvious links to Quesnay’s circular ﬂow, with its susceptibility to expansion and stagnation. Perhaps most importantly, Quesnay’s concepts of surplus and capital became key to the way that the classical economists analyzed economic growth. A typical classical model focuses on three factors of production: land, labor, and capital. Landowners receive rent and spend wastefully on luxuries; laborers accept a low wage, and if it rises, they produce more children. However, entrepreneurs earn proﬁt and re-invest it productively in industry. So proﬁt drives growth, and economic performance depends on sectors of the economy generating surpluses. Thus, Quesnay anticipated later ideas about the growth of economies and inspired Karl Marx (p.105), who produced his own version of the Economic Table in 1885. Marx said of Quesnay that “never before had thinking in political economy reached such heights of genius.” ■ 46 PRIVATE INDIVIDUALS NEVER PAY FOR STREET LIGHTS PROVISION OF PUBLIC GOODS AND SERVICES E ven within a well-functioning market economy, there are areas in which markets fail. One important example of market failure is in the provision of public goods—goods that are to become freely available to all, or where it would be difﬁcult to prevent their use by non-payers. These goods, which include things such as national defense, are difﬁcult for a private ﬁrm or individual to IN CONTEXT FOCUS Decision making KEY THINKER David Hume (1711–76) BEFORE c.500 BCE In Athens indirect taxes are used to ﬁnance city festivals, temples, and walls. Occasional direct taxes are levied at times of war. 1421 The ﬁrst patent is granted to Italian engineer Filippo Brunelleschi to protect his invention of hoisting gear for barges. AFTER 1848 The Communist Manifesto advocates collective ownership of the means of production by the workers. 19th century Public street lighting is introduced in Europe and America. 1954 US economist Paul Samuelson develops a modern theory of public goods. … private individuals never pay for street lights. Street lights are an example of a public good because… … one person’s use of street lighting does not diminish another’s enjoyment of it. … it is difﬁcult to stop people from beneﬁting from street lighting. Private ﬁrms do not provide street lights since they can't stop non-payers from using them. Essential public goods are usually provided by the government, because… 47 Lighthouses are a public good from which it is hard to exclude non-payers, and which many people can use at the same time. They are invariably provided collectively. See also: Free market economics 54–61 ■ External costs 137 ■ Markets and social outcomes 210–13 LET TRADING BEGIN supply proﬁtably. This problem, known as “free-riding” (where consumers enjoy the goods without paying for them) means that there is no proﬁt incentive. However, there is a demand for these goods, and because private markets may not be able to satisfy this demand, public goods are usually provided by governments and funded through taxation. A failure of the market to provide these goods was recognized by the philosopher David Hume in the 18th century. Inﬂuenced by Hume, Adam Smith (p.61), an ardent advocate of the free market, conceded that a government’s role was to provide those public goods that it would not be proﬁtable for individuals or ﬁrms to produce. There are two distinguishing characteristics of public goods that cause them to be undersupplied by the markets: non-excludability, meaning that it is difﬁcult to prevent people who don’t pay for the goods from using them; and non-rivalry, meaning that one person’s consumption of the good does not diminish the ability of others to consume it. A classic example is street lighting; it would be almost impossible to exclude non-payers from enjoying its beneﬁts, and no individual’s use of it detracts from that beneﬁt to other users. As industrial economies developed in the 19th century, countries had to overcome the problem of free-riding in areas such as intellectual property. Intangible goods, such as new knowledge and discoveries, have the attributes of non-excludability and non-rivalry, and so are at risk of being undersupplied by the market. This could discourage the development of new technologies unless they can be protected in some way. To do this, countries developed laws granting patents, copyright, and trademarks to protect the returns from new knowledge and inventions. Most economists acknowledge that government has a responsibility to provide public goods, but debate continues about the extent of that responsibility. ■ David Hume The epitome of the “Scottish Enlightenment,” David Hume was one of the most inﬂuential British philosophers of the 18th century. He was born in Edinburgh in 1711, and from an early age showed signs of a brilliant mind: he entered Edinburgh University at the age of 12, studying ﬁrst law and then philosophy. In 1734, Hume moved to France, where he set out his major philosophical ideas in A Treatise of Human Nature. He then devoted much of his time to writing essays on literary and political subjects and struck up a friendship with the young Adam Smith, who had been inspired by his writings. In 1763, Hume was given a diplomatic role in Paris, where he befriended the revolutionary French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He settled in Edinburgh again in 1768, where he lived until his death in 1776, aged 65 years. Key works 1739 A Treatise of Human Nature 1748 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding 1752 Political Disco	851,215
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Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4654-4510-0 DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fundraising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 SpecialSales@dk.com Printed and bound in Hong Kong A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com REG GRANT, CONSULTANT EDITOR R. G. Grant has written extensively in the ﬁelds of military history, general history, current affairs, and biography. His publications have included the DK books Flight: 100 Years of Aviation, Battle at Sea, and World War I: The Deﬁnitive Visual Guide. FIONA COWARD Dr. Fiona Coward is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology and Anthropology at Bournemouth University, UK. Her research focuses on the changes in human society, from the very small social groups of our prehistory to the global social networks that characterize people’s lives today. THOMAS CUSSANS Thomas Cussans, writer and historian, has contributed to numerous historical works. They include DK’s Timelines of World History, History Year by Year, and History: The Ultimate Visual Guide. He was previously the publisher of The Times History of the World and The Times Atlas of European History. His most recent published work is The Holocaust. JOEL LEVY Joel Levy is a writer specializing in history and the history of science. He is the author of more than 20 books, including Lost Cities, History’s Greatest Discoveries, and 50 Weapons that Changed the World. PHILIP PARKER Philip Parker is a historian specializing in the classical and medieval world. He is the author of the DK Companion Guide to World History, The Empire Stops Here: A Journey Around the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, The Northmen’s Fury: A History of the Viking World, and general editor of The Great Trade Routes: A History of Cargoes and Commerce Over Land and Sea. He was a contributor to DK History Year by Year and DK History of the World in 1000 Objects. He previously worked as a diplomat and a publisher of historical atlases. SALLY REGAN Sally Regan has contributed to over a dozen DK titles including History, World War II, and Science. She is also an award-winning documentary maker for Channel Four and the BBC in the UK. PHILIP WILKINSON Philip Wilkinson has written many books on historical subjects, heritage, architectural history, and the arts. As well as bestsellers such as What The Romans Did For Us and widely-praised titles such as The Shock of the Old and Great Buildings, he has contributed to numerous encyclopaedias and popular reference books. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION HUMAN ORIGINS 200,000 YEARS AGO–3500 BCE 20 At least as important as Columbus’s journey to America or the Apollo 11 expedition The ﬁrst humans arrive in Australia 22 Everything was so beautiful, so fresh Cave paintings at Altamira 28 The foundations of today’s Europe were forged in the events of the late Ice Age The Big Freeze 30 A great civilization arose on the Anatolian plain The settlement at Çatalhöyük 32 Further events ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 6000 BCE–500 CE 36 To bring about the rule of righteousness in the land The Law Code of Hammurabi 38 All the lands have fallen prostrate beneath his sandals for eternity The temples of Abu Simbel 66 By this sign conquer The Battle of Milvian Bridge 68 The city which had taken the whole world was itself taken The Sack of Rome 70 Further events THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 500–1492 76 Seek to enlarge the empire and make it more glorious Belisarius retakes Rome 78 Truth has come and falsehood has vanished Muhammad receives the divine revelation 82 A leader in whose shadow the Christian nation is at peace The crowning of Charlemagne 84 The ruler is wealthy but the state is destroyed The An Lushan revolt 86 A surge in spirit and an awakening in intelligence The founding of Baghdad 94 Never before has such a terror appeared in Britain The Viking raid on Lindisfarne 96 The Roman church has never erred The Investiture Controversy 40 Attachment is the root of suffering Siddartha Gautama preaches Buddhism 42 A clue to the existence of a system of picture- writing in the Greek lands The palace at Knossos 44 In times of peace, sons bury their fathers, but in war it is the fathers who bury their sons The Persian Wars 46 Administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few Athenian democracy 52 There is nothing impossible to he who will try The conquests of Alexander the Great 54 If the Qin should ever get his way with the world, then the whole world will end up his prisoner The First Emperor uniﬁes China 58 Thus perish all tyrants The assassination of Julius Caesar CONTENTS 6 98 A man destined to become master of the state Minamoto Yoritomo becomes Shogun 100 That men in our kingdom shall have and keep all these liberties, rights, and concessions The signing of the Magna Carta 102 The most potent man, as regards forces and lands and treasure, that exists in the world Kublai Khan conquers the Song 104 I did not tell half of what I saw, for I knew I would not be believed Marco Polo reaches Shangdu 106 Those who until now have been mercenaries for a few coins achieve eternal rewards The fall of Jerusalem 108 The work of giants The construction of Angkor Wat 110 He left no court emir nor royal ofﬁce holder without the gift of a load of gold Mansa Musa’s hajj to Mecca 112 Give the sun the blood of enemies to drink The foundation of Tenochtitlan 118 Scarce the tenth person of any sort was left alive The outbreak of the Black Death in Europe 120 I have worked to discharge heaven’s will Hongwu founds the Ming dynasty 128 Cast down the adversaries of my Christian people The fall of Granada 130 I have newly devised 28 letters King Sejong introduces a new script 132 Further events THE EARLY MODERN ERA 1420–1795 138 As my city falls, I shall fall with it The fall of Constantinople 142 Following the light of the sun we left the Old World Christopher Columbus reaches America 148 This line shall be considered as a perpetual mark and bound The Treaty of Tordesillas 152 The ancients never raised their buildings so high The beginning of the Italian Renaissance 156 War has become very different The Battle of Castillon 158 As different from ours as day and night The Columbian Exchange 160 My conscience is captive to the Word of God Martin Luther’s 95 theses 164 He began war in Bohemia, which he subjugated and forced into his religion The Defenestration of Prague 170 Royalty is a remedy for the spirit of rebellion The conquests of Akbar the Great 172 They cherished a great hope and inward zeal The voyage of the Mayﬂower 174 We will cut off his head with the crown upon it The execution of Charles I 176 The very being of the plantations depends upon the supply of Negro servants The formation of the Royal African Company 180 There is no corner where one does not of talk shares The opening of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange 184 After victory, tighten the cords of your helmet The Battle of Sekigahara 186 Use barbarians to control barbarians The Revolt of the Three Feudatories 7 188 I have in this treatise cultivated mathematics so far as it regards philosophy Newton publishes Principia 189 As far as I think it possible for man to go The voyages of Captain Cook 190 I am the state Louis XIV begins personal rule of France 191 Don’t forget your great guns, the most respectable arguments of the rights of kings The Battle of Quebec 192 Assemble all the knowledge scattered on the surface of the earth Diderot publishes the Encyclopédie 196 I built St. Petersburg as a window to let in the light of Europe The founding of St. Petersburg 198 Further events CHANGING SOCIETIES 1776–1914 204 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal The signing of the Declaration of Independence 208 Sire, it’s a revolution The storming of the Bastille 214 I must make of all the peoples of Europe one people, and of Paris the capital of the world The Battle of Waterloo 216 Let us lay the cornerstone of American freedom without fear. To hesitate is to perish Bolívar establishes Gran Colombia 220 Life without industry is guilt Stephenson’s Rocket enters service 226 You may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know The Slave Trade Abolition Act 228 Society was cut in two The 1848 revolutions 230 This enterprise will return immense rewards The construction of the Suez Canal 236 Endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species 238 Let us arm. Let us ﬁght for our brothers The Expedition of the Thousand 242 These sad scenes of death and sorrow, when are they to come to an end? The Siege of Lucknow 243 Better to abolish serfdom from above, than to wait for it to abolish itself from below Russia emancipates the serfs 244 Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth The Gettysburg Address 248 Our manifest destiny is to overspread the continent The California Gold Rush 250 America is God’s crucible, the greatest melting pot The opening of Ellis Island 252 Enrich the country, strengthen the military The Meiji Restoration 254 In my hand I wield the universe and the power to attack and kill The Second Opium War 256 I ought to be jealous of the Eiffel Tower. She is more famous than I am The opening of the Eiffel Tower 258 If I could, I would annex other planets The Berlin Conference 260 My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth, and the teachings of science The Young Turk Revolution 262 Deeds not words The death of Emily Davison 264 Further events 8 THE MODERN WORLD 1914–PRESENT 270 You often wish you were dead The Battle of Passchendaele 276 History will not forgive us if we do not assume power now The October Revolution 280 This is not peace. This is an armistice for 20 years The Treaty of Versailles 281 Death is the solution to all problems. No man— no problem Stalin assumes power 282 Any lack of conﬁdence in the economic future of the United States is foolish The Wall Street Crash 284 The truth is that men are tired of liberty The Reichstag Fire 286 In starting and waging a war, it is not right that matters but victory Nazi invasion of Poland 294 The Final Solution of the Jewish Question The Wannsee Conference 296 All we did was ﬂy and sleep The Berlin Airlift 298 At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom Indian independence and partition 302 The name of our state shall be Israel The establishment of Israel 304 The Long March is a manifesto, a propaganda force, a seeding-machine The Long March 306 Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever Nkrumah wins Ghanaian independence 308 We’re eyeball to eyeball, and I think the other fellow just blinked The Cuban Missile Crisis 310 People of the whole world are pointing to the satellite The launch of Sputnik 311 I have a dream The March on Washington 312 I am not going to lose Vietnam The Gulf of Tonkin Incident 314 A revolution is not a bed of roses The Bay of Pigs invasion 316 Scatter the old world, build the new The Cultural Revolution 318 We shall defend it with our blood and strength, and we shall meet aggression with aggression and evil with evil The Suez Crisis 322 The Iron Curtain is swept aside The fall of the Berlin Wall 324 All power to the people The 1968 protests 325 Never, never, and never again The release of Nelson Mandela 326 Create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life The Siege of Sarajevo 327 Today, our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom came under attack The 9/11 attacks 328 You affect the world by what you browse The launch of the ﬁrst website 330 A crisis that began in the mortgage markets of America has brought the world’s ﬁnancial system close to collapse The global ﬁnancial crisis 334 This is a day about our entire human family Global population exceeds 7 billion 340 Futher events 342 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 INTRODU CTION 12 T he ultimate aim of history is human self-knowledge. In the words of 20th-century historian R. G. Collingwood: “The value of history is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.” We cannot hope to understand our lives without it. History itself has a history. From earliest times, all societies—literate or pre-literate—told stories about their origins or their past, usually imaginative tales centering around the acts of gods and heroes. The ﬁrst literate civilizations also kept records of the actions of their rulers, inscribed on clay tablets or on the walls of palaces and temples. But at ﬁrst these ancient societies made no attempt at a systematic inquiry into the truth of the past; they did not differentiate between what had really happened and the events manifest in myth and legend. Ancient historical narrative It was the Ancient Greek writers Herodotus and Thucydides in the 5th century BCE who ﬁrst explored questions about the past through the collection and interpretation of evidence—the word “history,” ﬁrst used by Herodotus, means “inquiry” in Greek. Herodotus’s work still contained a considerable mixture of myth, but Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War satisﬁes most criteria of modern historical study. It was based on interviews with eyewitnesses of the conﬂict and attributed events to human agency rather than the intervention and actions of the gods. Thucydides had invented one of the most durable forms of history: the detailed narrative of war and political conﬂict, diplomacy, and decision-making. The subsequent rise of Rome to dominance of the Mediterranean world encouraged historians to develop another genre of broader scope: the account of “how we got to where we are today.” The Hellenic historian Polybius (200–118 BCE) and the Roman historian Livy (59 BCE–17 CE) both sought to create a narrative of the rise of Rome—a “big picture” that would help to make sense of events on a large timescale. Although restricted to the Roman world, this was the beginning of what is sometimes called “universal history,” which attempts to describe progress from earliest origins to the present as a story with a goal, giving the past apparent purpose and direction. At the same period in China, historian Sima Qian (c.145–86 BCE) was similarly tracing Chinese history over thousands of years, from the legendary Yellow Emperor (c.2697 BCE) to the Han dynasty under Emperor Wu (c.109 BCE). Moral lessons As well as making sense of events through narratives, historians in the ancient world established the tradition of history as a source of moral lessons and reﬂections. The history writing of Livy or Tacitus (56–117 CE), for instance, was in part designed to examine the behavior of heroes and villains, meditating on the strengths and weaknesses in the characters of emperors and generals, providing exemplars for the virtuous to imitate or shun. This continues to be one of the functions of history. French chronicler Jean Froissart (1337–1405) said he had INTRODUCTION Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. George Santayana The Life of Reason (1905) 13 written his accounts of chivalrous knights ﬁghting in the Hundred Years’ War “so that brave men should be inspired thereby to follow such examples.” Today, historical studies of Lincoln, Churchill, Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. perform the same function. The “Dark Ages” The rise of Christianity in the late Roman Empire fundamentally changed the concept of history in Europe. Historical events came to be viewed by Christians as divine providence, or the working out of God’s will. Skeptical inquiry into what actually happened was usually neglected, and accounts of miracles and martyrdoms were generally accepted as true without question. The Muslim world, in this as in other ways, was frequently more sophisticated than Christendom in Medieval times, with the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) railing against the blind, uncritical acceptance of fanciful accounts of events that could not be veriﬁed. Neither Christian nor Muslim historians produced a work on the scale of the chronicle of Chinese history published under the Song dynasty in 1085, which recorded Chinese history spanning almost 1,400 years and ﬁlled 294 volumes. Renaissance Humanism Whatever the undoubted merits of other civilizations’ traditions of history writing, it was in Western Europe that modern historiography evolved. The Renaissance—which began in Italy in the 15th century, then spread throughout Europe lasting until the end of the 16th century in some areas—centered upon the rediscovery of the past. Renaissance thinkers found a fertile source of inspiration in classical antiquity, in areas as diverse as architecture, philosophy, politics, and military tactics. The humanist scholars of the Renaissance period declared history one of the principal subjects in their new educational curriculum, and the antiquary became a familiar ﬁgure in elite circles, rummaging among ancient ruins and building up collections of old coins and inscriptions. At the same time, the spread of printing made history available to a much wider audience than ever before. The Enlightenment By the 18th century in Europe, the methodology of history—which consisted of ascertaining facts by criticizing and comparing historical sources—had reached a fair level of sophistication. European thinkers had reached general agreement on the division of the past into three main periods: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern. This periodization was at root a value judgment, with the Medieval period, dominated by the Church, viewed as a time of irrationality and barbarism and separating the digniﬁed world of the ancient civilizations from the newly emerging, rational universe of modern Europe. Enlightenment philosophers wrote histories that ridiculed the follies of the past. The Romantic spirit In stark contrast, the Romantic movement that swept across Europe from the late 18th century found an intrinsic value in the difference between the past and the present. ❯❯ INTRODUCTION To live with men of an earlier age is like travelling in foreign lands. René Descartes Discourse on Method (1637) 14 The Romantics drew inspiration from the Middle Ages, and instead of seeing the past as a preparation for the modern world, as had previously been the case, Romantic historians tried the imaginative exercise of entering into the spirit of past ages. Much of this was associated with nationalism. The German Romantic thinker Johann Gottfried Herder (1774–1803) burrowed into the past in search of roots of national identity and an authentic “German spirit.” As nationalism triumphed in Europe in the 19th century, much of history became a celebration of national characteristics and national heroes, often veering into myth-making. Every country wanted to have its sacred heroic history, just as it had its flag and its national anthem. The “Grand Narrative” In the 19th century, history became increasingly important and took on the quality of destiny. Arrogantly, European civilization saw itself as the goal to which all history had been progressing and constructed narratives that made sense of the past in those terms. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) articulated a grand scheme of history as a logical development, which culminated in the end point of the Prussian state. Philosopher and social revolutionary Karl Marx (1818–83) later adapted Hegel’s scheme into his own theory (“historical materialism”), in which he claimed that economic progress, which caused conflict between the social classes, would inevitably one day result in the proletariat seizing power from the bourgeoisie, while the capitalist world order collapsed under its own inner contradictions. Arguably, Marxism was to prove the most influential and durable of all historical “grand narratives.” Like other areas of knowledge, in the 19th century history under- went professionalization and it became an academic discipline. Academic history aspired to the status of a science, and the accumulation of “facts” was its avowed purpose. A gap opened up between “serious” history—often heavy on economic statistics— and the colorful literary works of popular historians, such as Jules Michelet (1798–1874) and Thomas Macaulay (1800–59). The rise of social history In the 20th century, the subject matter of history—which had always focused on kings, queens, prime ministers, presidents, and generals—increasingly expanded to embrace the common people, whose role in historical events became accessible through more in-depth research. Some historians (initially those in France) chose to disregard the “history of events” altogether, preferring instead to study social structures and the patterns of everyday life, beliefs, and ways of thinking (“mentalités”) of ordinary people in different historical periods. A Eurocentric approach Broadly speaking, until the second half of the 20th century, most world history was written as the story of the triumph of Western civilization. This approach was as implicit in Marxist versions of history as in those histories that celebrated the INTRODUCTION History is little more than the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. Edward Gibbon The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776) 15 progress of technology, enterprise, and liberal democracy. It did not necessarily imply optimism—there were numerous prophets of decline and doom. But it did suggest that essentially history had been made, and was still being made, by Europe and European offshoots further aﬁeld. For instance, it was deemed acceptable for respected European historians to maintain that black Africa had no signiﬁcant history at all, having failed to contribute to the onward march of humanity. Postcolonial revisionism In the course of the second half of the 20th century, the notion of a single, purposeful, historical “grand narrative” collapsed, taking Euro- centrism with it. The postcolonial, postmodernist world was seen as requiring a multiplicity of histories told from the point of view of many different social identities. There was a surge of interest in the study of black history, women’s history, and gay history, as well as histories narrated from an Asian, African, or American Indian standpoint. The marginal and oppressed in society were reassessed as “agents” of history rather than passive victims. A riot of revisionism upturned much of the history of the world as commonly known to educated people in the West, although often without putting any satisfactory alternative version in place of the old. For example, the puzzlement that resulted can be seen in the response to the 500th anniversary in 1992 of Christopher Columbus’s ﬁrst voyage to the Americas. It would once have been expected to excite widespread celebration in the United States, but was in practice acknowledged with some embarrassment, if at all. People are no longer sure what to think about traditional history, its Great Men, and its epoch-making events. A 21st-century perspective The content of The History Book reﬂects this abandonment of “grand narratives” of human progress. It aims to present a general reader with an overview of world history through speciﬁc moments, or events, which can act as windows upon selected areas of the past. In line with contemporary concerns, this book also reﬂects the long-term importance of key factors such as population growth, climate, and the environment throughout human history. At the same time, it gives an account of matters of traditional popular historical interest, such as the Magna Carta, the Black Death, and the American Civil War. The book begins with the origins of humans and “pre-history” and then progresses through different historical ages to the present day. In reality of course there were no such clear breaks between epochs, and where there is an overlap on dates, entries are included in the most appropriate ideological era. As this book illustrates, history is a process rather than a series of unconnected events. We can only speculate on how the events we experience today will shape the history of tomorrow. No one in the early 21st century can possibly claim to make sense of history, but it remains the fundamental discipline for anyone who believes, as the poet Alexander Pope did, that “the proper study of Mankind is Man.” ■ INTRODUCTION We are not makers of history. We are made by history. Martin Luther King, Jr. Strength to Love (1963) HUMAN O 200,000 YEARS RIGINS AGO–3500 BCE 18 I t is widely believed that the origins of the human race lie in Africa. By the usual processes of biological evolution and natural selection, the genus Homo evolved in East Africa over millions of years alongside the chimpanzees, its near relatives. By the same biological processes, Homo sapiens—modern humans—evolved alongside other hominins (the relatives of humans, including Neanderthals, who died out 40,000 years ago). About 100,000 years ago or so, the scattered bands of hunting and foraging humans would have been almost indistinguishable from the other great apes. But at some point (precisely when is hard to deﬁne) humans began to change in a new way, not by the process of biological evolution but by cultural evolution. They developed the ability to alter their way of life through the creation of tools, languages, beliefs, social customs, and art. By the time they were painting exquisite pictures of animals on the walls of caves and carving or sculpting ﬁgurines out of stone or bone, they had marked themselves out uniquely from other animals. Their transformation was slow in the early years, but it was set to gather incredible momentum over millennia. Humans had become the only animals with a history. Discovering history The early development of human cultures and societies presents a particular problem to historians. The ﬁrst writing was not invented until quite late in the human story— about 5,000 years ago. Traditionally, the period before writing tended to be dismissed as “pre-history,” since it left no documents for historians to study. However, in recent years a wide range of new scientiﬁc methods—including the study of genetic material and radiocarbon dating of organic remains—have been added to the long-established techniques of archaeology, enabling scholars to shine at least a ﬂickering light upon the pre-literate era. The narrative of the distant human past is under constant revision as new discoveries and research—its ﬁndings frequently disputed—create radical shifts in perspective. The fresh investigation of a single cave, a burial site, or a human skull can still throw large areas of accepted knowledge into question. However, in the 21st century much of the history of early humans can be described with a reasonable degree of conﬁdence. INTRODUCTION C.200,000 YEARS AGO C.45,000 YEARS AGO C.23,000 YEARS AGO C.15,000 YEARS AGO C.40,000 YEARS AGO C.35,000 YEARS AGO C.9000 BCE A period of intense cold, known as the “Big Freeze,” occurs. People and animals in northern regions die out or migrate southward. Humans have spread across the globe and inhabit most of Eurasia and Australia, which they have reached by boat from Southeast Asia. Paleolithic people start to create art (sculptures of animals and cave paintings) and artifacts (jewelry and decorative tools and weapons). A settlement at Çatalhöyük, central Turkey, is established; evidence of complex rituals indicates social cohesion. The ﬁrst examples of human ﬁgurines emerge, usually representing women and carved or sculpted from bone, ivory, terracotta, or stone. The ﬁrst humans (Homo sapiens) emerge in East Africa; Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) are living in Europe and West Asia. Jericho (in the modern-day West Bank) is settled; to this day it remains one of the oldest continuously inhabited towns in the world. Humans start to arrive in North America, either across the land bridge connecting Asia and North America (now the Bering Strait) or by sea. C.7500 BCE 19 Nomadic hunter-gatherers All historians agree that until about 12,000 years ago humans were hunter-gatherers, using stone tools and living in small, mobile groups. This period is referred to as the Paleolithic Era (or Old Stone Age). Humans were a successful species, expanding their numbers to perhaps 10 million and spreading to most parts of the Earth. Generally, they adapted well to the major natural climate changes that occurred over tens of thousands of years, although they were temporarily driven out of northerly areas, such as Britain and Scandinavia, during the coldest phase of what is popularly known as the Ice Age. Humans existed in an intimate relationship with their natural environment, but their effect on that environment even at this early stage was not necessarily benign. There is a disturbing coincidence between the spread of human hunters across the planet and the extinction of megafauna such as woolly mammoths and mastodons. Although human hunting is far from being identiﬁed as the sole cause of these extinctions—natural climate change may well have been a contributing factor—from our modern perspective they can seem to set a troubling precedent. The farming revolution The hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which can reasonably be described as “natural” to human beings, appears to have had much to recommend it. Examination of human remains from early hunter-gatherer societies has suggested that our ancestors usually enjoyed abundant food, obtainable without excessive effort, and suffered very few diseases. If this is true, it is not clear what then motivated so many human beings all over the world to settle in permanent villages and develop agriculture, growing crops and domesticating animals: cultivating ﬁelds was grindingly hard work, and it was in farming villages that epidemic diseases ﬁrst took root. Whatever its immediate effect on the quality of life for humans, the development of settlements and agriculture indisputably led to a high increase in population density. Sometimes known as the Neolithic Revolution (or New Stone Age), this period was a major turning point in human development, opening the way to the growth of the ﬁrst towns and cities, and eventually leading to settled “civilizations.” ■ HUMAN ORIGINS C.5000 BCE C.4000 BCE C.3300 BCE C.3000 BCE C.2500 BCE C.3100 BCE C.2700 BCE C.1800 BCE There is evidence of copper smelting in Serbia and the wheel is invented in the Near East, probably for the production of pottery rather than for transport. Civilizations develop in Mesopotamia, in the Tigris–Euphrates valley (modern-day Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait), where irrigated agriculture is established. The Bronze Age begins in the Near East, and the Indus Valley Civilization emerges on the Indian subcontinent. Cuneiform script, one of the world’s oldest writing system, is invented in Sumer, in southern Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq). Stones are raised at Britain’s Stonehenge, at the center of an earthwork enclosure constructed 500 years previously; the stones are later rearranged. Narmer uniﬁes Upper and Lower Egypt, becoming king of the First Dynasty; Egyptian hieroglyphs are prevalent. The ﬁrst stone pyramids are constructed as monumental tombs in Egypt; the Great Pyramid of Giza is built two centuries later. Alphabetic writing (Proto-Sinaitic script, based on hieroglyphs) emerges in Egypt; it is the ancestor of most modern alphabets. 20 AT LEAST AS IMPORTANT AS COLUMBUS’S JOURNEY TO AMERICA OR THE APOLLO 11 EXPEDITION THE FIRST HUMANS ARRIVE IN AUSTRALIA (C.60,000–45,000 YEARS AGO) M odern humans are the only truly global mammal species. Since evolving in Africa around 200,000 years ago, Homo sapiens has rapidly expanded across the world—testament to our species’ curiosity in exploring its surroundings and creativity in adapting to different habitats. In particular, many researchers think that humans’ ability to exploit coastal environments was key to their rapid spread along the southern coasts of Asia. Even the radically different flora and fauna of Australia proved no barrier; humans may have arrived on the continent as early as 60,000 IN CONTEXT FOCUS Migration BEFORE c.200,000 years ago Homo sapiens (modern human) evolves in Africa. c.125,000–45,000 years ago Groups of Homo sapiens expand out of Africa. AFTER c.50,000–30,000 years ago Denisovan hominins are present in south-central Russia. 45,000 years ago Homo sapiens arrives in Europe. c.40,000 years ago The Neanderthals die out. Their last known sites are on the Iberian peninsula. c.18,000 years ago Homo ﬂoresiensis fossils date from this time. c.13,000 years ago Humans are present near Clovis, New Mexico, but may not be the continent’s first humans. Homo sapiens spreads into the Near East but retreats to Africa, only later reaching Europe and western Asia. All hominin species except Homo sapiens die out. Homo sapiens evolves in Africa. After moving into southern Asia, Homo sapiens groups follow the coastline to Southeast Asia. Homo sapiens arrives in Australia. In western Eurasia, Homo sapiens encounters other hominin species, the Neanderthals and Denisovans. 21 Remains of Homo ﬂoresiensis were found on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003. Some studies suggest that its small size was due to disease rather than indicating a new species. See also: Cave paintings at Altamira 22–27 ■ The Big Freeze 28–29 ■ The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 HUMAN ORIGINS years ago, although the earliest dates are controversial. Small groups may have visited much earlier, but the bulk of the evidence suggests widespread colonization of Australia only around 45,000 years ago, at much the same time as Homo sapiens arrived in Europe. Other hominin species Homo sapiens was the ﬁrst hominin to arrive in Australia. However, in parts of Eurasia, humans did face competition. By the time humans reached Europe, Neanderthals had already been there for around 250,000 years, having evolved from an ancestor they shared with modern humans, Homo heidelbergensis, and they were well adapted to life in the region. Further east, at Denisova Cave in Russia’s Altai Mountains, there is evidence of a mysterious species— the Denisovans—known only from their DNA. And on the island of Flores in Southeast Asia, fossils of another possible species—the short, small-brained Homo ﬂoresiensis— date from just 18,000 years ago, although some researchers believe these were simply modern humans afﬂicted with some form of disease. Of all these species, Homo sapiens is the only one to have survived and gone on to colonize the New World. Beringia, a land- bridge between Russia and Alaska, exposed when sea levels dropped as a result of the Ice Age, allowed humans to reach the Americas from northeast Asia. The exact date remains controversial: stone tools from the c.13,000-year-old “Clovis culture” were once thought to have belonged to the earliest humans in the New World. Older sites are now known, but many of the earlier dates, particularly in South America, remain highly contentious. The social network Until more evidence is found, the fates of the Denisovans and Homo ﬂoresiensis remain unknown, while the most recent research suggests Neanderthals died out around 40,000 years ago. Many researchers believe the resourcefulness of Homo sapiens was crucial to its success in other species’ home territories in the face of climate change around the time of the Last Glacial Maximum. In particular, it is thought that they could also rely on more extensive social networks than those other species—an asset that would have proved crucial both to survival in lean times and to helping them colonize the unfamiliar environments they encountered as they expanded across the globe, perhaps following animal herds. ■ Homo sapiens: the only remaining hominin There is no evidence of violence between humans and other species. Indeed, modern human DNA shows small traces of Neanderthal and Denisovan genes, suggesting that a few individuals from each species interbred, albeit rarely. Although Neanderthals were skilled manufacturers of stone tools and excellent hunters, modern humans may have been quicker to adapt, and therefore better able to cope with the rapid climatic changes occurring as the Ice Age progressed. They developed new stone tools, as well as techniques that made use of resources such as bone and antler. They also established extensive networks of support, enabling various groups to pool resources across large distances, enhancing their chances of survival. This cultural adaptability may have been what allowed humans to outcompete their cousins for access to increasingly unpredictable resources. The human blitzkrieg across America testiﬁes to the incomparable ingenuity and the unsurpassed adaptability of Homo sapiens. Yuval Noah Harari Sapiens (2011) EVERYTHING WAS SO BEAUTIFUL SO FRESH CAVE PAINTINGS AT ALTAMIRA (c.40,000 YEARS AGO) 24 T he Altamira cave complex, near Santander on the northern coast of Spain, comprises a series of passages and chambers extending for nearly 984ft (300m) that boast some of the best examples of Stone Age, or Paleolithic, cave art yet discovered. So impressive are the paintings that when the cave was discovered in 1880, they were widely considered fakes and took nearly 20 years to be accepted as the genuine creations of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Some of the early artistic activity here may date from more than 35,000 years ago, although most of the famous paintings were probably created much later, around 22,000 years ago. These include the images in the famous Bison Chamber: here the low ceiling is covered in representations of animals including multicolored, lifelike images of bison, expertly painted across the natural undulations of the rock in such a way as to make them appear almost three-dimensional. The artistic impetus Other stunning displays of cave art are also known, concentrated in southwest France and northern Spain. They include not only ﬁnely detailed images of animals, but also engraved and painted signs, symbols, and handprints. Archaeologists remain divided over the meaning and function of Stone Age art. One explanation is simply that these people appreciated the aesthetic qualities of art—just as their descendants do today. Others suggest that the incredible detail of some of the images—the sex of the animal or the season in which it was observed can still be determined, for example—may mean the paintings were a means of conveying vital survival information, such as which animals to hunt, and when and how they could be found and targeted. Hunting rituals Alternatively, cave art might be linked to the world views or religions of Paleolithic people. Even today, many societies still living mainly by hunting and gathering share animistic beliefs, meaning they believe entities such as animals, plants, and parts of the landscape have spirits with which humans interact during their daily life. Many such societies’ religious specialists, or shamans, believe CAVE PAINTINGS AT ALTAMIRA Foraging lifestyles rely on the hunting and gathering of natural resources. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Paleolithic culture BEFORE c.45,000 years ago Modern humans arrive in Europe. c.40,000 years ago The earliest currently known examples of art in Europe are made, such as the sculpture of the Lion Man of Hohlenstein- Stadel, Germany. AFTER c.26,000 years ago A triple burial is carried out at Dolní Veˇstonice, in the Czech Republic. c.23,500 years ago The Arene Candide “prince” is buried in Italy, richly adorned with dentalium shell jewelry. c.18,000 years ago The last Ice Age reaches its height. Humans develop an intimate knowledge of animal and plant species and their environment. Beliefs and practices emphasizing connectedness and communication start to develop. The ﬁrst examples of art, such as the cave paintings at Altamira, appear. The need to exchange information with other groups grows stronger. 25 The undulating structure of the rock cave at Altamira enhances, rather than detracts from, the art, with the animals in the Bison Chamber acquiring an almost three-dimensional quality. Handprints in the cave of Fuente del Salín, in Spain’s Cantabria region, were probably left by youngsters, suggesting that venturing underground might have been a coming-of-age ritual. they are able to communicate with these spirits to help sick or injured people, and historically, rock art has been created by shamans during states of altered consciousness, or trances, as part of this communication, leading some researchers to suggest that Paleolithic societies may have had similar beliefs. Shamans are also often thought to be able to transform themselves into animals to encourage them to give themselves up to the hunter, which could also explain depictions combining human and animal characteristics, such as the Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel, in Germany, or the Sorcerer of Les Trois Frères Cave in France, a human-like ﬁgure with antlers. Creating images of animals may have also been part of “magic” rituals designed to improve the chances of success during hunting. For societies dependent on animal resources for a signiﬁcant part of their diet, the importance of such rituals cannot be overstated. Initiation ceremonies Other researchers have noted that many of the handprints and footprints found beside the art in the caves seem to belong to quite young individuals. Traveling down into dark, damp, and potentially dangerous caves with only a lamp ﬁlled with animal fat might have been a form of initiation test for young people— one that would have required a great deal of courage to endure. Burials and the afterlife More evidence of human beings engaging in religious or ritual practices at this time comes from burials. At the site of Dolní Veˇstonice, in the Czech Republic, for example, three bodies were buried together in a sexually suggestive pose, with one of the male individuals ﬂanking a female skeleton reaching toward her pelvis, and the male on the other side buried face down. A red pigment known as ochre had been sprinkled across their heads and across the female’s pelvis. Interestingly, all three individuals ❯❯ See also: The ﬁrst humans arrive in Australia 20–21 ■ The Big Freeze 28–29 ■ The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 HUMAN ORIGINS People everywhere and throughout time have shared the basic instinct to represent themselves and their world through images and symbols. Jill Cook Ice Age Art (2013) 26 share the same rare skeletal deformities and may therefore have been related. Although the reasons why these bodies were arranged this way will probably always be a mystery, it is clear that there was more to this burial than just the functional disposal of remains. At other sites, some individuals were buried with many “grave goods”—for example, the complex jewelry made from dentalium shells at Arene Candide, in Italy, and the striking spears fashioned from mammoth ivory at the burial site of two young children in Sunghir, in Russia. Some researchers have suggested that these richly adorned individuals—especially the young ones, who would not have had time in their short life to establish a reputation that might account for special treatment in death— imply that hierarchies and status distinctions were beginning to develop in some groups. However, they do not appear to have become widespread until much later. It is clear, however, that for the ﬁrst time, people were now increasingly concerned with what happened after death, and about how the dead should enter into the afterlife. Marking territory Other researchers note that most “classic” Paleolithic cave art is concentrated in southwest France and northern Spain. This region would have been a relatively favorable place to live: even at the height of the Last Glacial Maximum, more southerly, warmer climates and hence more productive habitats attracted dense herds of animals. As a result, people may have lived here in fairly large numbers, packed closely together, leading to greater social tensions among groups vying for territory and resources. Just as human groups today— whether it be football supporters or nation states—use symbols such as ﬂags, costumes, and markings of CAVE PAINTINGS AT ALTAMIRA borders, territories, and group identities, so European Paleolithic groups may have decorated caves for similar reasons at a time when there was the potential for intense competition for resources. Cooperation to survive Such complex social interactions may help explain how Homo sapiens was able to survive in the harsh environments of Ice Age Europe. Hunter-gatherers probably lived in small groups scattered at relatively low densities across the landscape. Most archaeological sites from this time do not demonstrate any evidence of complex buildings or structures, suggesting that people moved around a lot, according to the weather and the local environment, often following large herds of animals like reindeer as they migrated with the seasons. Homo sapiens’ ability to forge new relationships readily allowed groups of hunters to combine as and when necessary. When resources were plentiful, they would hunt together—for example, intercepting migrating herds of reindeer at places in the landscape where they were most vulnerable, such as in People thought of themselves as part of a living world, where animals, plants, and even landmarks and inanimate objects had lives of their own. Brian Fagan Cro-Magnon (2010) Historians are still unsure whether or not there are precise meanings behind the majority of cave art. Their best guesses are that they may relate to any one or more of several possibilities: art for art’s sake; spirituality; initiation rites; the marking of territory; and a method of imparting valuable information about hunting. Spirituality Hunting information Marking territory Initiation rites Art for art’s sake 27 narrow valleys or at river crossings. In leaner times, these groups would split up again and range far across the landscape to ﬁnd enough wild resources to sustain themselves. Early technologies These hunter-gatherers expended considerable effort on hunting technology, since it could spell the difference between life and death. They hafted elaborately worked stone tips on to spears that were then launched at the target using atlatls, or spear-throwers, designed to increase the distance over which a spear could travel and the force with which it hit its target. These tools were crucial to hunting success, so it is no surprise that some of these atlatls were beautifully carved and decorated, often with representations of the animals being hunted. Similarly, they also painstakingly carved complex barbed harpoons from bone and antler for ﬁshing. First seeds of a society Delicately worked bone awls and needles suggest Stone Age humans also made warm clothes out of HUMAN ORIGINS animal skin and fur with much more care than their predecessors, and they made many other items—from jewelry ﬁnely crafted from animal teeth and shell, to ﬁgurines carved from stone or sculpted from clay. Many of these may also have been traded, gifted, or exchanged with individuals from other groups as part of large-scale social networks. The unpredictable environments of Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum meant sharing resources with other groups in times of plenty could pay off signiﬁcantly at a later date: if a group struggled to ﬁnd resources in one area, others elsewhere who had previously beneﬁted from their generosity would be more inclined to return the favor. These kinds of exchange relationships probably linked even very far-ﬂung groups together into complex networks of individual and group relationships that were fundamental to survival in such a tough environment. ■ Venus ﬁgurines Figurines of women carved or sculpted from stone, ivory, or clay are a type of Paleolithic art found widely across Europe. These ﬁgurines share many striking similarities. While details such as facial features and feet are largely ignored, feminine sexual characteristics (breasts, belly, hips, thighs, and vulva) are often exaggerated. The focus on features related to sexuality and fertility, and the round body shapes depicted (during the Ice Age fat would have been a precious commodity) suggest that the ﬁgurines may have played a symbolic role as a charm relating to childbirth or, more generally, fertility. Some researchers believe that the ﬁgures represent a “mother goddess,” but there is no real evidence for such an interpretation. Others have focused instead on the fact that the ﬁgurines demonstrate widely shared cultural ideas and symbols. These would have been crucial to social interactions and exchanges of resources, information, and potential marriage partners in the Ice Age world. Hunting tools, such as this spear- thrower, were often carved in the shape of the animals they were used to kill, probably as a sort of “magic ritual” to improve chances of success in the hunt. 28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF TODAY’S EUROPE WERE FORGED IN THE EVENTS OF THE LATE ICE AGE THE BIG FREEZE (C.21000 BCE) S cientists have only recently begun to appreciate how the two-way relationship that exists between humans and our environments has affected the development of our societies. Humans evolved during the last Ice Age, living through periodic shifts between very cold climatic conditions (glacials) and warmer periods more like those of today (interglacials). However, toward the end of the Ice Age, these shifts became more pronounced and occurred at shorter intervals, culminating around 21000 BCE in a “Big Freeze,” a period of intense cold known as the Last Glacial Maximum. People and animals living in northern regions died out or retreated south as ice caps expanded to reach southern IN CONTEXT FOCUS Climate change BEFORE c.2.58 million years ago The Pleistocene, or Ice Age, begins. c.200,000 years ago Homo sapiens emerges as a species. AFTER c.9700 BCE The Pleistocene ends, marking the beginning of today’s relatively warm and stable climates—the Holocene. c.9000–8000 BCE Agriculture becomes established in the Near East. c.5000 BCE Sea level reaches near-modern levels; low-lying land is submerged. c.2000 BCE The last mammoths are thought to have died out, on Wrangel Island, Russia. The Big Freeze expands ice caps, lowering sea levels. Animals and humans colonize newly exposed low-lying land, only to be isolated when sea levels rise again. Climate change results from shifts in the earth’s position and orientation relative to the sun. Habitats change, and plant and animal species’ ranges alter for survival. Human groups are faced with new opportunities and constraints. 29 An entire mammoth was unearthed in Siberia, Russia, in 1900—the ﬁrst complete example ever found. A cast of it is on display in St. Petersburg’s Natural History Museum. See also: The ﬁrst humans arrive in Australia 20–21 ■ Cave paintings at Altamira 22–27 ■ The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 ■ The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 HUMAN ORIGINS England. Such huge amounts of sea water froze that sea levels dropped, exposing low-lying land such as Beringia, the continental shelf that connects North America and Asia—and the route by which humans ﬁrst reached the Americas. Rising temperatures Temperatures eventually rose again, and today’s relatively warm and stable climate had become established by around 7000 BCE. The ice caps melted, and rising sea levels separated Eurasia from the Americas, turned Southeast Asia into an archipelago, and made islands out of peninsulas such as Japan and Britain, thereby isolating many human groups. The impact on ecosystems was particularly severe for the large animals known as megafauna—mammoths, for example. The open glacial steppe grasslands in which megafauna thrived were replaced by expanding forests, and across the globe the combination of environmental change and human hunting drove many species to extinction. The forests and wetlands of the new post-glacial world offered humans many new opportunities. They hunted large forest animals such as red deer and wild boar, as well as smaller mammals like rabbits, and they foraged for a range of aquatic and coastal food sources. Migratory ﬁsh like salmon, sea mammals such as seals, and shellﬁsh, seasonal wildfowl, and a range of fruits, tubers, nuts, and seeds all became important dietary staples. Changing lifestyles In areas that were particularly rich in natural resources, human groups may not have settled in one place, sending small bands on forays further aﬁeld to target speciﬁc resources. The Natuﬁan communities of the Eastern Mediterranean, for example, were able to exploit abundant stands of wild cereals in the Near East. Some groups began to manipulate their environments, burning vegetation and cutting down trees to encourage their preferred plant and animal species to thrive. They started to select and care for productive plant species and sowed the seeds of favored strains, while managing and controlling certain animals. This manipulation led to these species becoming ever more reliant on human input—and to the development of agriculture, a radical change in the human way of life that has since resulted in even more dramatic human impact on the environment. ■ Ice cores and past environments Paleoclimatologists study the elemental composition of the sediments laid down over time on ocean ﬂoors to understand how climates have changed in the past. Tiny sea creatures known as foraminifera absorb two different forms of oxygen, 16O and 18O, from sea water. Because 16O is the lighter of the two, it evaporates into the air more easily, but during warmer periods it falls as rain and drains back to the sea. So 16O and 18O exist in sea water and appear in the shells of foraminifera, in roughly equal ratios. However, in cold conditions most of the evaporated 16O does not return to the ocean but freezes as ice, so sea water contains more 18O than 16O. When foraminifera die, their shells sink to the ocean ﬂoor, building up over time. Paleoclimatologists drill into the ocean ﬂoor to extract cores of sediment and study the changing proportions of 16O and 18O in different layers to see how climates have changed over time. Few humans have ever lived in a world of such extreme climatic and environmental change. Brian Fagan Expert in human prehistory 30 A GREAT CIVILIZATION AROSE ON THE ANATOLIAN PLAIN THE SETTLEMENT AT ÇATALHÖYÜK (10,000 YEARS AGO) T he Neolithic town of Çatalhöyük on the Konya Plain in Turkey was discovered by James Mellaart in the 1960s. It has become one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world due to its size, density of settlement, spectacular wall paintings, and evidence of complex religious and ritual behavior. Since its discovery, several other large settlements across West Asia have been found that attest to the growing scale of human communities during the shift from foraging to agricultural lifestyles, or “Neolithic revolution,” that occurred between around 10000 BCE and 7000 BCE. Whether rising populations forced people to find IN CONTEXT FOCUS Neolithic revolution BEFORE 11000–10000 BCE There is evidence of cultivation of crops and domestication of animals in West Asia. c.9000 BCE Maize farming begins in Mesoamerica. c.8800 BCE Farming lifestyles are well established across West Asia. AFTER 8000 BCE Cultivation and domestication begin in East Asia. 7400–6000 BCE The town of Çatalhöyük is established. 7000–6500 BCE Agriculture spreads west into Europe via Cyprus, Greece, and the Balkans. 3500 BCE The earliest cities are built in Mesopotamia. The climate and environment stabilize after the Ice Age. Human populations begin to grow. People build larger settlements, such as the one at Çatalhöyük. Hunter-gatherers interact closely with animal and plant species. Humans start to manage and control some animals and plants, domesticating them. The cultivation of land and crops and the stockpiling of harvests reduce mobility. 31 This illustration shows the way in which humans lived and worked close to each other at the Çatalhöyük site, with their domesticated animals also kept nearby. See also: The ﬁrst humans arrive in Australia 20–21 ■ Cave paintings at Altamira 22–27 ■ The Big Freeze 28–29 ■ The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 HUMAN ORIGINS more stable means of subsistence or farming allowed people to have more children, the sizes of many settlements increased substantially and became more permanent. New ways had to be found to resolve social stresses such as disputes between neighbors. Early villagers invested time and effort in planting and cultivating crops, then in storing the harvest to last the year, so they could no longer simply move as foragers had. Community cohesion It is thought that the development of more formal religious organization and group ritual practices may have helped community cohesion. At many sites, buildings were set aside for such purposes; these were larger than domestic structures, with unusual features such as lime plaster benches and more evidence of symbolic and representational art: Çatalhöyük boasts murals and ﬁgurines of a range of subjects including wild animals such as bulls, leopards, and vultures. At many sites, some inhabitants remained in the community even when they died; they were buried under the ﬂoors of the houses. Sometimes they were later dug up and their skulls removed; facial features were molded on some in plaster and painted with ochre for display. At sites like Ain Ghazal in Jordan, large statues made of lime plaster have been found, and there are many examples of clay ﬁgurines of animals and (mainly female) humans. It is not clear whether these decorated skulls, statues, and ﬁgurines represent speciﬁc individuals or heads of households or lineages, or perhaps mythical ancestors or gods, but they may have been part of the communal ideologies, rituals, and social practices that helped smooth over tensions between individuals and broader regional groups, who were establishing more formal links with one another for long-distance trade and exchange of goods. Some of the success of Çatalhöyük may have been due to its role as a center for the large-scale trade of items made from the obsidian, or volcanic glass, of Hasan Dagˇ. The many dramatic social and economic changes that came with the Neolithic revolution have helped shape both human history and the world’s ecosystems ever since. ■ Farming and health The adoption of farming established a plentiful and stable long-term source of food, allowing for population growth. However, there were negative consequences, too. Farmers may have had to work harder at times than hunter-gatherers did, and their more limited diets—focused on just a few crops and animal species—led to nutritional deﬁciencies. The health of early farmers also suffered in other ways. Living at close quarters with animals meant that some animal diseases spread to humans—for example, smallpox, anthrax, tuberculosis, and the ﬂu. Larger communities living at higher densities allowed for such diseases to be more easily passed around. It also caused problems in disposing of human and animal waste and thus a rise in intestinal complaints and waterborne diseases such as cholera and typhoid, while irrigation created breeding grounds for mosquitoes and parasites, infecting humans with diseases like malaria. ANCIENT CIVILIZAT 6000 BCE–500 IONS CE 34 A bout 5,000 years ago, humans began to form societies of unprecedented complexity. These “civilizations” typically had state structures and social hierarchies, they built cities and monuments such as temples, palaces, and pyramids, and used some form of writing. The basis for the development of civilizations was progress in agriculture. When only part of the population was required to work in the ﬁelds to produce food, the rest could inhabit towns and palaces, performing a range of specialty functions as bureaucrats, traders, scribes, and priests. The invention of civilization undoubtedly raised human life to a new level in many ways—in technology, the arts, astronomy, the measurement of time, literature, and philosophy— but also established inequality and exploitation as the basis of society, leading to larger-scale warfare as states expanded into empires. Emerging civilizations The earliest civilizations developed in areas where it was possible to practice intensive agriculture, usually involving use of irrigation systems—for instance, along the rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), the Nile in Egypt, the Indus in northern India and Pakistan, and the Yangtze and Yellow rivers in China. Although these civilizations of Eurasia and North Africa seem to have been founded independently of one another, they developed multiple contacts over time, sharing ideas, technology, and even diseases. All followed a pattern in which stone tools (the Stone Age) were replaced by bronze (the Bronze Age) and then predominantly iron (the Iron Age). In the Americas, where the Olmec and Maya developed the civilizations of Mesoamerica, the use of stone tools persisted and most of the epidemic diseases that plagued Eurasia were unknown. Writing and philosophy From around 1000 BCE, Eurasian civilizations found an innovative momentum. The use of writing evolved from practical record- keeping to the creation of sacred books and classic literary texts that embodied the founding myths and beliefs of different societies, from the Homeric tales in Greece to the Five Classics of Confucianism in China and the Hindu Vedas in India. Forms of writing using an alphabet developed in the eastern INTRODUCTION 1780 BCE 1700 BCE 507 BCE C.500 BCE 1264 BCE 650 BCE 490 BCE Democracy is introduced in Athens by Cleisthenes. All Athenian citizens are allowed to vote directly on Athenian policy. Knossos palace is built on Crete by the Minoans— the ﬁrst civilization in Europe to produce a system of writing (known as the Linear A syllabary). Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II builds two vast temples at Abu Simbel to glorify the pharaohs and assert dominance in Nubia. Macedonian king Alexander the Great invades Asia Minor and creates a vast empire; Greek culture spreads eastward. The high point of a Celtic culture, which developed around Halstatt, Austria, and spread to France, Romania, Bohemia, and Slovakia. Hammurabi, one of the great kings of Mesopotamia, writes a law code—the earliest known written legal system in history. The start of the Persian Wars between Greece and the Persian Empire; military successes inﬂuence the development of classical Greek identity. Siddartha Gautama (known as Buddha) rejects material life to seek enlightenment and preach Buddhism in India. C.334 BCE 35 Mediterranean region and were spread by the Phoenicians—a race of traders and sailors. The Greek city-states became a test-bed for new forms of political organization, including democracy, and the source of new ideas in the arts and philosophy. The influence of Greek culture spread as far as northern India, while India itself was the birthplace of Buddhism— the first “world religion,” winning converts beyond its society of origin. Growing populations The ancient world reached the peak of its classical period around 2,000 years ago. The world’s population had grown from around 20 million at the time of the first civilizations to an estimated 200 million. About 50 million of these lived in a united Han China, while about the same number were under the governance of the Roman Empire, which had extended its rule to the shores of the Atlantic and the borders of Persia. In large part, the empires were successful because of efficient communications by land and water, and the ruthless deployment of military power. Long-distance trade routes linked Europe to India and China, and cities had expanded to a great degree—Rome’s population was estimated at over 1 million. Civilizations in decline The causes of the decline of these powerful classical empires from the 3rd century CE have long been disputed among historians. Bred in overcrowded cities and transmitted along trade routes, epidemic diseases certainly played a part. Internal power struggles were also a major factor, leading to political fragmentation and a decline in the quality of government. But perhaps most crucial was the geographical limitation of the civilized areas of Eurasia. Both the Roman and Han empires built walls to mark and defend the borders of their empires, beyond which lived mostly nomadic or semi-nomadic “barbarian” tribes. The civilized societies had little or no military advantage over these peoples, who increasingly raided or settled within their territories. The eastern part of the Christianized Roman Empire survived until 1453, and Chinese civilization revived to full vigor under the Tang dynasty from 618, but Western Europe would take centuries to recover the levels of population and organization that it had known under the rule of Rome. ■ ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS 221 BCE 218 BCE 44 BCE 250 CE 410 CE 43 CE 312 CE 486 CE Qin Shi Huangdi unites China, previously a region of warring states, and begins major projects, including building the Terracotta Army. Military commander Hannibal, from Carthage (north Africa), crosses the Alps to invade Italy. Unable to capture Rome, he returns to Africa. Julius Caesar is assassinated in Rome by senators who believe he is becoming increasingly power-hungry. The Maya Classical Period begins; many cities, temples, and monuments are built throughout Mexico and Guatemala. Rome falls to the Visigoths; the Roman Empire shrinks and much of Europe is invaded by Barbarian tribes. A Roman army led by General Aulus Plautius invades southern England; later, Roman rule extends to Wales and the Scottish border. Roman emperor Constantine adopts Christianity after victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge; Christianity rapidly gains popularity. Clovis, leader of the Salian Franks, defeats the Romans in Gaul and unites France north of the Loire under his dynasty. 36 TO BRING ABOUT THE RULE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS IN THE LAND THE LAW CODE OF HAMMURABI (c.1780 BCE) I n 1901, a six-foot-tall slab of black stone was found in the ruins of the city of Susa. Carved onto its face were 280 “judgments,” or laws, constituting the earliest known written legal code in history. The slab had originally been erected in Babylon, in around 1750 BCE, by Hammurabi, one of the greatest kings of ancient Mesopotamia. Bronze Age Revolution Mesopotamia, which means “between two rivers,” lies between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and it is considered to be the ﬁrst human civilization ever. Its writing, math, and astronomy were also the ﬁrst known, and its cities arguably the world’s ﬁrst true examples. Growth of its population and wealth led to IN CONTEXT FOCUS Origins of civilizations BEFORE c.5000 BCE Copper and gold smelting is common in Mesopotamia and beyond. c.4500 BCE Uruk in Mesopotamia is the ﬁrst settlement large enough to be called a city. c.3800 BCE Upper and Lower Kingdoms of Egypt established along the Nile Valley. c.3500 BCE Development of the Indus Valley civilizations. c.3350 BCE Stone circles erected in west and north Europe. c.2000 BCE Shang dynasty builds the ﬁrst cities in China. AFTER c.1500 BCE Rise of Olmec culture in Mesoamerica. c.600 CE Emergence of the Mayan civilization. Hammurabi writes a new code of law to cement his control over the region. Agriculture, population, and urbanization increase. Need grows for tools of governance: laws, permanent records, and judiciary. Local networks break down and mechanisms for dispute resolution weaken. Cylinder seals (to control transactions), writing, judicial institutions, and written laws develop. 37 See also: The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 ■ The temples of Abu Simbel 38–39 ■ The palace at Knossos 42–43 ■ The conquests of Alexander the Great 52–53 ■ The founding of Baghdad 86–93 ■ The foundation of Tenochtitlan 112–17 ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS the emergence of a hierarchy in society, led by rulers, courtiers, and priests at the top, through merchants and artisans, to servants and laborers at the bottom. This is often referred to as “specialization”: members of society having different tasks, rather than all producing food as had been the case in previous subsistence societies. Mesopotamian communities coordinated manpower to build large structures such as defensive walls and huge temples, and to mobilize armies. They utilized hydrological engineering to divert river water and irrigate the alluvial floodplains. Administrative needs such as bookkeeping led to the development of cuneiform writing, the first known script, and of complex mathematical concepts such as fractions, equations, and geometry. Sophisticated astronomy developed for calendric purposes. Sometimes called the Bronze Age Revolution, this great step forward can be seen as the most important change in the human world before the Industrial Revolution. Mesopotamian uniﬁcation For much of the 4th to the 2nd millennia BCE, Mesopotamia was a mosaic of competing kingdoms and city-states such as Uruk, Isin, Lagash, Ur, Nippur, and Larsa. Hammurabi, the Amorite king of Babylon, unified the region through a combination of guile, diplomacy, opportunism, military might, and longevity. As was traditional with conquering kings, Hammurabi used previous edicts as the basis for his laws, but these laws were distinguished by the reach of his empire, and by the fact that they were inscribed on stelae (stone slabs), and so recorded in perpetuity. Hammurabi’s laws and their detailed prelude reveal much about life in what is known as the Old Babylonian Period. They contain judgments on matters ranging from property disputes and violence against the person, to runaway slaves and witchcraft. Hammurabi’s legacy Although Hammurabi’s laws seem to have carried little weight and were rarely followed at the time, and despite the fact that his empire disintegrated soon after his death, his reign was a turning point for southern Mesopotamia. He firmly established the ideal of a unified state, centered in Babylon, and his laws were copied by Mesopotamian scribes until at least the 6th century BCE. They show many points of similarity with, and may have influenced, laws of the Hebrew Bible, which in turn influence laws in many societies today. ■ Hammurabi the Law-Giver In around 2000 BCE, the Amorites (Westerners), a semi-nomadic people from Syria, swept across Mesopotamia, replacing local rulers with Amorite sheikh dynasties in many of the city- states. By the early 18th century BCE, the three most powerful Amorite kings were pre-eminent Shamshi-Adad in the north, Rim-Sin in Larsa in the south, and Hammurabi in Babylon in the center. Over the course of his long reign, Hammurabi consolidated all of southern Mesopotamia into his kingdom and eventually extended his power as far up the Tigris as Nineveh, and as far up the Euphrates as Tuttul, on the junction with the river Balikh. He personally supervised the construction of many temples and other buildings. The prelude to his code, a tribute to Hammurabi, and a long historical record of his conquests, boasts that his leadership was divinely sanctioned by the gods who passed control of humanity to Marduk (deity of Babylon), and so to its king. It also reveals he saw his role as the guarantor of a just and orderly society. When Marduk sent me to rule over men... [I] brought about the well-being of the oppressed. Hammurabi 38 ALL THE LANDS HAVE FALLEN PROSTRATE BENEATH HIS SANDALS FOR ETERNITY THE TEMPLES OF ABU SIMBEL (C.1264 BCE) A round 1264 BCE, the Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II (c.1278–1237 BCE) had two mighty temples hewn out of the cliffs on the west bank of the Nile in southern Egypt. The entrance was guarded by four vast statues of the pharaoh, seated in glory and wearing the symbols of divine kingship, including the double crown that signiﬁed his authority over Upper and Lower Egypt. The temples were designed to signify and embody the unique status, ambition, and power of the ancient Egyptian pharaohs. The pharaonic tradition Ramesses II inherited a tradition that was already very ancient: about 1,800 years earlier, King Narmer (called Menes by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus) ﬁrst uniﬁed the kingdoms of the Upper (southern) and Lower (northern) Nile. Narmer’s deeds were recorded on a stone palette, which was recovered from a temple at Hierakonpolis in the 19th century and provides one of the earliest known depictions of an Egyptian king. The palette is inscribed with many of the symbols and traditions that would come to typify the pharaohs for the next three millennia. For instance, Narmer is shown holding an enemy by the hair, about to smite him, and Ramesses II was often depicted in the same way—military might and supernatural strength were hallmarks of Egyptian kingship. The pharaoh, like the gods, was frequently shown much larger than ordinary mortals. The geographical situation of Egypt—with its stark contrasts between the fertile Nile Valley and its delta, which empties in the The magniﬁcent temple complex at Abu Simbel was, remarkably, moved 656 ft (200 m) inland and 213 ft (65 m) higher up in 1964–68 to rescue it from the rising waters of the Nile during the construction of the High Aswan Dam. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Pharaonic Egypt BEFORE c.3050 BCE Narmer uniﬁes the kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt. c.2680 BCE Khufu begins construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza— it is the largest pyramid in history. c.1480 BCE Thutmose III conquers Syria, extending his empire as far as the Euphrates. AFTER c.1160 BCE Ramesses III ﬁghts off invasions of Egypt by Libyans and raiding tribes known as the Sea People. c.1085 BCE Collapse of the New Kingdom; Egypt is divided with Libyan rulers in the north and Theban priest- kings ruling in the south. 7th century BCE Egypt is invaded by Assyrians and then Persians. 39 See also: The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 ■ The palace at Knossos 42–43 ■ The conquests of Alexander the Great 52–53 ■ The assassination of Julius Caesar 58–65 ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS north into the Mediterranean Sea, and the surrounding expanses of uninhabitable desert—gave rise to the kingdom’s unique culture and civilization. The pharaoh was viewed as a living god who could control the order of the cosmos, including the annual flooding of the Nile, which brought fertilizing silt to replenish the soil. Pharaohs were also often depicted as farmers in agricultural scenes, representing their role as guardians of the land. The Old Kingdom The Old Kingdom that followed Narmer was ruled by a succession of dynasties that were led by powerful pharaohs, who channeled the bureaucratic and economic might of the unified kingdom into monumental building projects, such as the construction of the pyramids. These, in turn, stimulated scientific, technological, and economic development, increasing trade with other kingdoms in the Near East and the Mediterranean. In the Old Kingdom the predominant gods were Ra, the sun god; Osiris, the god of the dead; and Ptah, the creator. In the Middle and New Kingdoms that followed, which were ruled by families from Thebes, Amon became the main deity. As supreme ruler, the pharaoh was closely associated with the gods, and was believed to be the living incarnation of certain deities. The New Kingdom In the 23rd century BCE, the Old Kingdom collapsed. After what is known as the Intermediate Period, the Middle Kingdom dynasties restored unified control of Egypt from 2134 BCE until around 1750 BCE, When they were invaded by the Hyksos (probably Semites from Syria). The Hyksos, in turn, were expelled from Egypt in about The Nile Valley is bordered by inhospitable desert, but is highly fertile because the longest river in the world flows through it and irrigates it. A sophisticated, coherent, and uniﬁed civilization develops over a vast stretch of terrain. Vast monuments, such as the Abu Simbel temple complex, are constructed, reﬂecting Egypt’s power, wealth, and belief systems. Trade and conquest boost the economy and population levels. A large, prosperous kingdom emerges. 1550 BCE, with the XVIII dynasty— arguably the greatest and most important—coming to power and establishing the New Kingdom. By this time, immortality was believed to be available not just to the pharaoh, but to priests, scribes, and others who could afford offerings, spells, and mummification, and many tombs were dug into the Valley of the Kings to be filled with extraordinarily rich grave goods. Under expansionist pharaohs, such as Thutmose III and Ramesses II, Egyptian control was extended into Asia as far as the Euphrates River, and up the Nile into Nubia. It was no coincidence that Ramesses built Abu Simbel in Nubia: as well as representing the divine glory of Egypt’s pharaohs generally, the temple was a symbol of Ramesses’ control over the recently conquered territory. ■ I, [the creator], give you Ramesses II, constant harvests... [your] sheaves are as plentiful as the sand, your granaries approach heaven and your grain heaps are like mountains. Inscription in temple at Abu Simbel, c.1264 BCE 40 ATTACHMENT IS THE ROOT OF SUFFERING SIDDARTHA GAUTAMA PREACHES BUDDHISM (C.500 BCE) S iddartha Gautama, better known as the Buddha, was born at the end of the Vedic Age (1800–600 BCE) into a South Asia in transition. In the country’s caste system, the priestly Brahmins and the warrior-elite Kshatriyas ranked highest, and it was into this latter group that Siddartha Gautama was born. India was then a ferment of sects and new ideologies, some of which espoused a philosophy renouncing the material world. Siddartha developed a similar philosophy based on mystical Hinduism, but he also rejected the increasingly rigid strictures of Vedic ritual and the inherited piety of the Brahmins. Renouncing material possessions, he sought and eventually found enlightenment, and became the Buddha. He preached in northeast India and founded the Sangha—the monastic order of Buddhism—to continue his ministry. IN CONTEXT FOCUS The spread of Buddhism BEFORE 1200 BCE Vedic (aka Aryan) culture extends across northern and central India. 1200–800 BCE Oral Vedic traditions are written down in Sanskrit as the Vedas. c.600 BCE The Mahajanapadas, the 16 competing kingdoms of Vedic India, emerge. AFTER 322 BCE Chandragupta Maurya founds the Mauryan Empire. 3rd century BCE Sri Lanka converts to Buddhism. 185 BCE The Mauryan Empire collapses. 1st century CE Buddhism arrives in China and Japan. 7th century Buddhist missionaries are invited to establish a monastery in Tibet. After the collapse of the Mauryan Empire, Buddhism declines in India. Siddartha rejects material life and preaches Buddhist philosophy. Ashoka makes Buddhism the state religion and spreads it across South and East Asia. Buddhism ﬂourishes in Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, China, Japan, Tibet, and Central Asia. Ashoka the Great conquers India and uniﬁes the empire. 41 Stone reliefs depicting the life of Buddha decorate gateways of The Great Stupa at Sanchi, commissioned by the emperor Ashoka in the 3rd century BCE. See also: The conquests of Alexander the Great 52–53 ■ The Indus Valley Civilization collapses ■ The construction of Angkor Wat 108–09 ■ The conquests of Akbar the Great 170–71 ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS For the next two to three centuries, Buddhism remained one among several minor sects but, under the Mauryan emperor Ashoka the Great (304–232 BCE), it became India’s state religion. Ashoka’s reign had proceeded initially through bloody conquest, but in around 261 BCE he had a change of heart. From then he embraced a new model of kingship and religious philosophy based on a creed of tolerance and non-violence. He extended Mauryan control and, his Buddhism proving a powerful unifying force, succeeded in joining all of India, except the southern tip, into an empire of 30 million people. A world religion Having established Buddhism as the state religion, Ashoka founded monasteries, and sponsored scholarship. He sent Buddhist missionaries to every corner of the subcontinent and abroad as far as Greece, Syria, and Egypt. His missions established Buddhism initially as an elite pursuit, but the religion went on to take root at all levels of society in Sri Lanka, Southeast Asia, along the Silk Road in the Indo–Greek kingdoms (in modern-day Pakistan and Afghanistan), and later in China, Japan, and Tibet. In India—its birthplace—Buddhism started to decline after Ashoka’s death in 232 BCE, affected by a resurgence of Hinduism and then the arrival of Islam. Outside India, however, its tradition and scholarship flourished, evolving into multiple strands including Zen Buddhism, Theravada or Hinayana Buddhism, Mahayana Buddhism, and Varayana Buddhism. The first religion to have spread widely beyond the society in which it originated—so the first “world religion”—Buddhism is also one of the oldest, having been practiced since the 6th century BCE. ■ The Buddha The life history of Siddartha Gautama is obscured by the myth and legend that has grown up around him. Different traditions give different chronologies for his birth and death, but many agree on 563–483 BCE. Said to have been born miraculously through the side of his mother, Siddartha was raised in luxury in the palace of his father, King Suddhodana Tharu, leader of the Shakya clan. Aged 29, Siddartha rejected this luxurious life and left his wife and child, renouncing material things to seek enlightenment through asceticism. Having spent six years wandering and meditating, he achieved enlightenment and became the Buddha, but instead of ascending to nirvana, the transcendent state that is the goal of Buddhism, he chose to remain and preach his new message, the dharma. Gathering followers who formed the Sangha, a monastic order, the Buddha pursued his ministry until he died, at age 80. He urged his disciples to follow the dharma, instructing them: “All individual things pass away. Strive on, untiringly.” Given that separation is certain in this world, is it not better to separate oneself voluntarily for the sake of religion? Siddartha Gautama 42 A CLUE TO THE EXISTENCE OF A SYSTEM OF PICTURE-WRITING IN THE GREEK LANDS THE PALACE AT KNOSSOS (C.1700 BCE) I n the 1890s, British historian Arthur Evans came across some ancient clay seals for sale in Athens. They originated from the relatively unexplored Mediterranean island of Crete, and for Evans they offered a tantalizing hint at the existence of the ﬁrst writing system in Europe. Following the seals to their Cretan source, Evans decided to excavate a promising parcel of land at Knossos, in the north of the island, where he uncovered a vast palace complex. The iconography of the palace centered on a bull-cult, including frescoes that depicted the sport of bull-leaping. Evans named the civilization “Minoan” after the mythical Cretan King Minos, who— according to Greek legend—built a labyrinth to contain the Minotaur: a fearsome half-man, half-bull creature. In the process, Evans discovered that the Minoans had indeed invented an early type of alphabet, which he called Linear A. The Palatial Period The Minoans were a people of unknown origin (possibly from Anatolia), who settled on Crete in the Neolithic era, in about 7000 BCE. They farmed crops, herded sheep, IN CONTEXT FOCUS Minoan Crete BEFORE c.7000 BCE Initial colonization of Crete. c.3500 BCE Beginning of the Bronze Age in Crete. AFTER c.1640 BCE Massive eruption of volcano Thera devastates Minoan colonies and coastline. c.1500 BCE Deeper stratiﬁcation of Minoan culture; local administration is devolved to large villas. c.1450 BCE The Mycenaean invasion of Crete. c.1100 BCE The Sea Peoples terrorize the Mediterranean world, leading to the ﬁnal decline of Minoan civilization. 1900 CE Arthur Evans begins the excavation of Knossos. 1908 Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier discovers the Phaistos disc. Minoan society becomes highly prosperous through agriculture and trade. Social stratiﬁcation develops, with a wealthy elite controlling trade. Elaborate palace complexes are built to store commodities for redistribution. The need for record- keeping gives rise to “writing” in the form of hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs evolve into Linear A syllabary at Knossos. 43 This bull-leaping fresco in the palace at Knossos in Crete is the most completely restored of several taureador stucco panels. Bull-handling was a common theme in art at this time. See also: The settlement at Çatalhöyük 30–31 ■ The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 ■ The Persian Wars 44–45 ■ Athenian democracy 46–51 ■ King Sejong introduces a new script 130–31 ■ The fall of Constantinople 138–41 ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS and worshipped in caves, on top of mountains, and at springs, but by 2400 BCE they had begun to build large palace complexes. By 1900 BCE, in what is known as the Palatial Period of the Minoan civilization, palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Chania had been constructed in broadly similar forms, with the one at Knossos being the largest. It was destroyed, possibly by ﬁre or perhaps a tsunami, around 1700 BCE, but it was rebuilt soon after on the same site. At its peak, in about 1500 BCE, Knossos palace and the city that grew up around it covered 185 acres (75 hectares) and had a population of up to 12,000. The Minoan palaces all had large central courts, ﬂanked by many- chambered buildings, and were highly decorated with frescoes of ﬂora and fauna. In the extensive magazines (storehouses), the rulers— who may have served dual roles as priest-kings or priest-queens— gathered many commodities for redistribution. Minoan rulers also controlled trade with other Bronze Age civilizations around the Mediterranean, such as Byblos in Phoenicia (now Lebanon), Ugarit in Syria, pharaonic Egypt, and Mycenaean Greek settlements in the Cyclades and further aﬁeld. Linear A script The Minoans developed their own script, probably initially for record- keeping and administration purposes. It began as hieroglyphic picture-writing, but later evolved into the Linear A syllabary, in which symbols denote syllables (rather than letters, as is the case with the alphabet). The Minoan language as recorded in Linear A script remains undeciphered to this day, but in around 1450 BCE the Minoans were invaded by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece, who adapted the Minoan script into Linear B, which was used to write archaic Greek. Not long after the Mycenaeans invaded Crete, Minoan civilization collapsed completely. However, the legacy of Minoan writing lives on through its connection with the Phoenician alphabet, which in turn would come to form the basis of the Latin alphabet that is used in many parts of the world today. ■ The Phaistos disc Found in 1908 in the ruins of the Minoan palace at Phaistos, southern Crete, the Phaistos disc (shown above), made from ﬁred clay and about 6in (15cm) across, is printed with symbols in an unknown script. Although dated to 1700 BCE, it was made using the technique of woodblock printing, which was not thought to have been invented for another 2,000 years or so (in China), making the disc one of the great archaeological mysteries. The symbols, many of which are recognizable as everyday objects, are arranged in a spiral and divided into words by vertical lines. Some scholars have drawn parallels between certain symbols in Cretan hieroglyphics and Linear A, suggesting that the writing on the disc may be an elaborated form of an existing Minoan script. There are many theories about the disc’s signiﬁcance— some consider the inscription is a hymn to a goddess, others that it tells a story, or that the disc is a calendar or a game. Some experts even believe the disc to be a clever fake. 44 IN TIMES OF PEACE SONS BURY THEIR FATHERS BUT IN WAR IT IS THE FATHERS WHO BURY THEIR SONS THE PERSIAN WARS (490–449 BCE) L eonidas of Sparta stood before his band of 300 warriors facing the mightiest army the world had ever seen. The envoy of his enemy demanded that he lay down his arms at the feet of the Persian god-king. “Come and take them” was Leonidas’s laconic reply. The Persian Wars (490–449 BCE), also known as the Greco–Persian Wars, pitted a vast and cosmopolitan empire against a small band of city-states in the south of Greece. The conflict profoundly influenced the development of Classical Greek identity and culture, leaving a vivid trail in Western literature and myth. By contrast, the story of the Persian Achaemenid Empire remains comparatively neglected, belying the significance of that great Middle Eastern civilization. The Achaemenids The first Persian Empire, ruled by the dynasty known as the Achaemenids, grew rapidly. At its height it may have ruled over half the world’s population. It began in around 550 BCE, when the Persian king Cyrus the Great overthrew the ruling Medes, going on to conquer Babylonia, and Lydia (now in Turkey), which brought the Ionian Greeks under Persian rule. Cyrus’s successors Cambyses II and Darius extended the empire into Egypt and the Balkans, where Thrace and Macedon gave the Persians a foothold in Europe. The Achaemenids established Persian rule as a model for later empires. Despite its vast size, the state embraced a degree of multi- culturalism, allowing conquered peoples to keep liberty of religion, language, and culture. There was investment in infrastructure—like A hoplite—or Greek citizen-solider— vanquishes his Persian adversary in this decoration inside a 460 BCE wine cup. The winged horse Pegasus adorns the victor’s shield. IN CONTEXT FOCUS The Persian Empire BEFORE 7th century BCE The Medes establish a powerful kingdom in modern-day Iran. c.550 BCE Cyrus the Great rebels against Median rule and founds the Achaemenid Persian Empire. c.499 BCE Greek city-states rebel against Persian control, but their revolt fails. AFTER 431 BCE Athens and Sparta clash for supremacy in Greece in the Peloponnesian War. 404 BCE Artaxerxes II becomes ruler of the Achaemenid Empire. 331 BCE Alexander the Great defeats Darius III and conquers the Persian Empire. 312 BCE Persia becomes part of the Seleucid Empire, founded by one of Alexander’s generals. 45 See also: The Law Code of Hammurabi 36–37 ■ Athenian democracy 46–51 ■ The conquests of Alexander the Great 52–53 ■ The Peloponnesian Wars 70 ■ Muhammad receives the divine revelation 78–81 ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS the Romans, the Persians built a network of roads to hold their empire together—and the military, and devolution of administration to local provinces. Under the Achaemenids, the Middle East was united under a single umbrella culture for the ﬁrst time. Conﬂict with the independent Greeks arose after the city-states of Athens and Eretrea supported an unsuccessful revolt by the Ionians against Persian rule in 499 BCE. Darius responded by invading mainland Greece, but was defeated by the Athenians and their allies at Marathon in 490 BCE. He planned an even larger invasion, but it was only after his death that his son Xerxes began mustering a huge army to execute the plan. Father of Lies The main source for the Greco– Persian Wars is the ancient Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus, known as both the Father of History and the Father of Lies. Herodotus estimated that Xerxes’ land army was made up Cyrus the Great The founder of the Achaemenid Empire was Cyrus II, later known as “the Great.” In around 557 BCE, he became king of Anshan, a vassal of the Median king. According to legend, he won the Persian army’s support by making them spend one day clearing thorn bushes, and the next banqueting, then asking why they remained slaves to the Medes when, by backing his revolt, they could live in luxury. Some ten years later he had conquered Media, and Sardis and Lydia in Asia Minor. He conquered Babylon seven years after that by diverting the Euphrates and marching his army along the dry riverbed into the great city. This victory brought him the lands of the neo-Babylonian Empire, including Assyria, Syria, and Palestine. He liberated the Jews from their Babylonian bondage and allowed them to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. The Greek writer Xenophon saw him as an example of the ideal ruler. Cyrus died in 530 BCE while on campaign in Central Asia. He was buried in a great tomb inside the royal palace he had built at Pasargadae in Persia. of 1,700,000 men—but modern historians believe the maximum ﬁgure to be closer to 200,000. The second Persian invasion, in 480 BCE, was held up by the heroic defense of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, and by Greek naval resistance at Artemisium. Later the Athenian navy lured the Persian ﬂeet into a trap at Salamis. Xerxes returned to Persia, leaving a large force to carry on the ﬁght, but at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE the Greeks, led by the Spartans, crushed the Persians, who also lost to the Spartans at Mycale. Greek success can probably be ascribed to Xerxes’ difﬁculties in keeping his vast army supplied and supported after naval defeat, although Herodotus ascribed it to the moral superiority of their cause. The Delian League The Greeks now began to go on the offensive, forming the Delian League to oppose Persia. In 449 BCE, the Persians ﬁnally concluded peace, conceding the independence of the Ionian states. The Persian War had reinforced Greek identity and bolstered cultural and military conﬁdence, most signiﬁcantly in Athens. The country’s rising power sparked conﬂict with Sparta, leading to the Peloponnesian War of 431–404 BCE. The Persian Empire had reached the limits of its expansion, but remained strong until defe	932,621
The Math Book (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	3 CONTENTS HOW TO USE THIS EBOOK INTRODUCTION ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL PERIODS 6000 BCE–500 CE Numerals take their places • Positional numbers The square as the highest power • Quadratic equations The accurate reckoning for inquiring into all things • The Rhind papyrus The sum is the same in every direction • Magic squares Number is the cause of gods and daemons • Pythagoras A real number that is not rational • Irrational numbers The quickest runner can never overtake the slowest • Zeno’s paradoxes of motion Their combinations give rise to endless complexities • The Platonic solids Demonstrative knowledge must rest on necessary basic truths • Syllogistic logic The whole is greater than the part • Euclid’s Elements Counting without numbers • The abacus Exploring pi is like exploring the Universe • Calculating pi We separate the numbers as if by some sieve • Eratosthenes’ sieve A geometrical tour de force • Conic sections The art of measuring triangles • Trigonometry Numbers can be less than nothing • Negative numbers The very flower of arithmetic • Diophantine equations An incomparable star in the firmament of wisdom • Hypatia The closest approximation of pi for a millennium • Zu Chongzhi THE MIDDLE AGES 500–1500 A fortune subtracted from zero is a debt • Zero Algebra is a scientific art • Algebra Freeing algebra from the constraints of geometry • The binomial theorem Fourteen forms with all their branches and cases • Cubic equations The ubiquitous music of the spheres • The Fibonacci sequence 4 The power of doubling • Wheat on a chessboard THE RENAISSANCE 1500–1680 The geometry of art and life • The golden ratio Like a large diamond • Mersenne primes Sailing on a rhumb • Rhumb lines A pair of equal-length lines • The equals sign and other symbology Plus of minus times plus of minus makes minus • Imaginary and complex numbers The art of tenths • Decimals Transforming multiplication into addition • Logarithms Nature uses as little as possible of anything • The problem of maxima The fly on the ceiling • Coordinates A device of marvelous invention • The area under a cycloid Three dimensions made by two • Projective geometry Symmetry is what we see at a glance • Pascal’s triangle Chance is bridled and governed by law • Probability The sum of the distance equals the altitude • Viviani’s triangle theorem The swing of a pendulum • Huygens’s tautochrone curve With calculus I can predict the future • Calculus The perfection of the science of numbers • Binary numbers THE ENLIGHTENMENT 1680–1800 To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction • Newton’s laws of motion Empirical and expected results are the same • The law of large numbers One of those strange numbers that are creatures of their own • Euler’s number Random variation makes a pattern • Normal distribution The seven bridges of Königsberg • Graph theory Every even integer is the sum of two primes • The Goldbach conjecture The most beautiful equation • Euler’s identity No theory is perfect • Bayes’ theorem Simply a question of algebra • The algebraic resolution of equations Let us gather facts • Buffon’s needle experiment Algebra often gives more than is asked of her • The fundamental theorem of algebra 5 THE 19TH CENTURY 1800–1900 Complex numbers are coordinates on a plane • The complex plane Nature is the most fertile source of mathematical discoveries • Fourier analysis The imp that knows the positions of every particle in the Universe • Laplace’s demon What are the chances? • The Poisson distribution An indispensable tool in applied mathematics • Bessel functions It will guide the future course of science • The mechanical computer A new kind of function • Elliptic functions I have created another world out of nothing • Non-Euclidean geometries Algebraic structures have symmetries • Group theory Just like a pocket map • Quaternions Powers of natural numbers are almost never consecutive • Catalan’s conjecture The matrix is everywhere • Matrices An investigation into the laws of thought • Boolean algebra A shape with just one side • The Möbius strip The music of the primes • The Riemann hypothesis Some infinities are bigger than others • Transfinite numbers A diagrammatic representation of reasonings • Venn diagrams The tower will fall and the world will end • The Tower of Hanoi Size and shape do not matter, only connections • Topology Lost in that silent, measured space • The prime number theorem MODERN MATHEMATICS 1900–PRESENT The veil behind which the future lies hidden • 23 problems for the 20th century Statistics is the grammar of science • The birth of modern statistics A freer logic emancipates us • The logic of mathematics The Universe is four-dimensional • Minkowski space Rather a dull number • Taxicab numbers A million monkeys banging on a million typewriters • The infinite monkey theorem She changed the face of algebra • Emmy Noether and abstract algebra Structures are the weapons of the mathematician • The Bourbaki group A single machine to compute any computable sequence • The Turing machine 6 Small things are more numerous than large things • Benford’s law A blueprint for the digital age • Information theory We are all just six steps away from each other • Six degrees of separation A small positive vibration can change the entire cosmos • The butterfly effect Logically things can only partly be true • Fuzzy logic A grand unifying theory of mathematics • The Langlands Program Another roof, another proof • Social mathematics Pentagons are just nice to look at • The Penrose tile Endless variety and unlimited complication • Fractals Four colors but no more • The four-color theorem Securing data with a one-way calculation • Cryptography Jewels strung on an as-yet invisible thread • Finite simple groups A truly marvelous proof • Proving Fermat’s last theorem No other recognition is needed • Proving the Poincaré conjecture DIRECTORY GLOSSARY CONTRIBUTORS QUOTATIONS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COPYRIGHT 7 How to use this eBook Preferred application settings For the best reading experience, the following application settings are recommended: Color theme: White background Font size: At the smallest point size Orientation: Landscape (for screen sizes over 9”/23cm), Portrait (for screen sizes below 9”/23cm) Scrolling view: [OFF] Text alignment: Auto-justification [OFF] (if the eBook reader has this feature) Auto-hyphenation: [OFF] (if the eBook reader has this feature) Font style: Publisher default setting [ON] (if the eBook reader has this feature) Images: Double tap on the images to see them in full screen and be able to zoom in on them 8 FOREWORD Summarizing all of mathematics in one book is a daunting and indeed impossible task. Humankind has been exploring and discovering mathematics for millennia. Practically, we have relied on math to advance our species, with early arithmetic and geometry providing the foundations for the first cities and civilizations. And philosophically, we have used mathematics as an exercise in pure thought to explore patterns and logic. As a subject, mathematics is surprisingly hard to pin down with one catch-all definition. “Mathematics” is not simply, as many people think, “stuff to do with numbers.” That would exclude a huge range of mathematical topics, including much of the geometry and topology covered in this book. Of course, numbers are still very useful tools to understand even the most esoteric areas of mathematics, but the point is that they are not the most interesting aspect of it. Focusing just on numbers misses the forest for the threes. For the record, my own definition of math as “the sort of things that mathematicians enjoy doing,” while delightfully circular, is largely unhelpful. Big Ideas Simply Explained is actually not a bad definition. Mathematics could be seen as the attempt to find the simplest explanations for the biggest ideas. It is the endeavor of finding and summarizing patterns. Some of those patterns involve the practical triangles required to build pyramids and divide land; other patterns attempt to classify all of the 26 sporadic groups of abstract algebra. These are very different problems in terms of both usefulness and complexity, but both types of pattern have become the obsession of mathematicians throughout the ages. There is no definitive way to organize all of mathematics, but looking at it chronologically is not a bad way to go. This book uses the historical journey of humans discovering math as a way to classify it and wrangle it into a linear progression, which is a valiant but difficult effort. Our current mathematical body of knowledge has been built up by a haphazard and diverse group of people across time and cultures. So something like the short section on magic squares covers thousands of years and the span of the globe. Magic squares—arrangements of numbers where the sum in each row, column, and diagonal is always the same—are one of the oldest 9 areas of recreational mathematics. Starting in the 9th century BCE in China, the story then bounces around via Indian texts from 100 CE, Arab scholars in the Middle Ages, Europe during the Renaissance, and finally modern Sudoku-style puzzles. Across a mere two pages this book has to cover 3,000 years of history ending with geomagic squares in 2001. And even in this small niche of mathematics, there are many magic square developments that there was simply not enough room to include. The whole book should be viewed as a curated tour of mathematical highlights. Studying even just a sample of mathematics is a great reminder of how much humans have achieved. But it also highlights where mathematics could do better; things like the glaring omission of women from the history of mathematics cannot be ignored. A lot of talent has been squandered over the centuries, and a lot of credit has not been appropriately given. But I hope that we are now improving the diversity of mathematicians and encouraging all humans to discover and learn about mathematics. Because going forward, the body of mathematics will continue to grow. Had this book been written a century earlier it would have been much the same up until about page 280. And then it would have ended. No ring theory from Emmy Noether, no computing from Alan Turing, and no six degrees of separation from Kevin Bacon. And no doubt that will be true again 100 years from now. The edition printed a century from now will carry on past page 325, covering patterns totally alien to us. And because anyone can do math, there is no telling who will discover this new math, and where or when. To make the biggest advancement in mathematics during the 21st century, we need to include all people. I hope this book helps inspire everyone to get involved. Matt Parker 10 11 INTRODUCTION The history of mathematics reaches back to prehistory, when early humans found ways to count and quantify things. In doing so, they began to identify certain patterns and rules in the concepts of numbers, sizes, and shapes. They discovered the basic principles of addition and subtraction—for example, that two things (whether pebbles, berries, or mammoths) when added to another two invariably resulted in four things. While such ideas may seem obvious to us today, they were profound insights for their time. They also demonstrate that the history of mathematics is above all a story of discovery rather than invention. Although it was human curiosity and intuition that recognized the underlying principles of mathematics, and human ingenuity that later provided various means of recording and notating them, those principles themselves are not a human invention. The fact that 2 + 2 = 4 is true, independent of human existence; the rules of mathematics, like the laws of physics, are universal, eternal, and unchanging. When mathematicians first showed that the angles of any triangle in a flat plane when added together come to 180°, a straight line, this was not their invention: they had simply discovered a fact that had always been (and will always be) true. Early applications The process of mathematical discovery began in prehistoric times, with the development of ways of counting things people needed to quantify. At its simplest, this was done by cutting tally marks in a bone or stick, a rudimentary but reliable means of recording numbers of things. In time, words and symbols were assigned to the numbers and the first systems of numerals began to evolve, a 12 means of expressing operations such as acquisition of additional items, or depletion of a stock, the basic operations of arithmetic. As hunter-gatherers turned to trade and farming, and societies became more sophisticated, arithmetical operations and a numeral system became essential tools in all kinds of transactions. To enable trade, stocktaking, and taxes in uncountable goods such as oil, flour, or plots of land, systems of measurement were developed, putting a numerical value on dimensions such as weight and length. Calculations also became more complex, developing the concepts of multiplication and division from addition and subtraction—allowing the area of land to be calculated, for example. In the early civilizations, these new discoveries in mathematics, and specifically the measurement of objects in space, became the foundation of the field of geometry, knowledge that could be used in building and toolmaking. In using these measurements for practical purposes, people found that certain patterns were emerging, which could in turn prove useful. A simple but accurate carpenter’s square can be made from a triangle with sides of three, four, and five units. Without that accurate tool and knowledge, the roads, canals, ziggurats, and pyramids of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt could not have been built. As new applications for these mathematical discoveries were found—in astronomy, navigation, engineering, bookkeeping, taxation, and so on—further patterns and ideas emerged. The ancient civilizations each established the foundations of mathematics through this interdependent process of application and discovery, but also developed a fascination with mathematics for its own sake, so-called pure mathematics. From the middle of the first millennium BCE, the first pure mathematicians began to appear in Greece, and slightly later in India and China, building on the legacy of the practical pioneers of the subject—the engineers, astronomers, and explorers of earlier civilizations. Although these early mathematicians were not so concerned with the practical applications of their discoveries, they did not restrict their studies to mathematics alone. In their exploration of the properties of numbers, shapes, and processes, they discovered universal rules and patterns that raised metaphysical questions about the nature of the cosmos, and even suggested that these patterns had mystical properties. Often mathematics was therefore seen as a complementary discipline to philosophy—many of the greatest mathematicians through the ages 13 have also been philosophers, and vice versa—and the links between the two subjects have persisted to the present day. It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet of the soul. Sofya Kovalevskaya Russian mathematician Arithmetic and algebra So began the history of mathematics as we understand it today—the discoveries, conjectures, and insights of mathematicians that form the bulk of this book. As well as the individual thinkers and their ideas, it is a story of societies and cultures, a continuously developing thread of thought from the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, through Greece, China, India, and the Islamic empire to Renaissance Europe and into the modern world. As it evolved, mathematics was also seen to comprise several distinct but interconnected fields of study. The first field to emerge, and in many ways the most fundamental, is the study of numbers and quantities, which we now call arithmetic, from the Greek word arithmos (“number”). At its most basic, it is concerned with counting and assigning numerical values to things, but also the operations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, that can be applied to numbers. From the simple concept of a system of numbers comes the study of the properties of numbers, and even the study of the very concept itself. Certain numbers—such as the constants π, e, or the prime and irrational numbers—hold a special fascination and have become the subject of considerable study. 14 Another major field in mathematics is algebra, which is the study of structure, the way that mathematics is organized, and therefore has some relevance in every other field. What marks algebra from arithmetic is the use of symbols, such as letters, to represent variables (unknown numbers). In its basic form, algebra is the study of the underlying rules of how those symbols are used in mathematics—in equations, for example. Methods of solving equations, even quite complex quadratic equations, had been discovered as early as the ancient Babylonians, but it was medieval mathematicians of the Islamic Golden Age who pioneered the use of symbols to simplify the process, giving us the word “algebra,” which is derived from the Arabic al-jabr. More recent developments in algebra have extended the idea of abstraction into the study of algebraic structure, known as abstract algebra. Geometry is knowledge of the eternally existent. Pythagoras Ancient Greek mathematician Geometry and calculus A third major field of mathematics, geometry, is concerned with the concept of space, and the relationships of objects in space: the study of the shape, size, and position of figures. It evolved from the very practical business of describing the physical dimensions of things, in engineering and construction projects, measuring and apportioning plots of land, and astronomical observations for navigation and compiling calendars. A particular branch of geometry, trigonometry (the study of the properties of triangles), proved to be especially useful in these pursuits. Perhaps because of its very concrete nature, for many ancient civilizations, geometry was the cornerstone of mathematics, and provided a means of problem-solving and proof in other fields. This was particularly true of ancient Greece, where geometry and mathematics were virtually synonymous. The legacy of great mathematical philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle was consolidated by Euclid, whose principles of mathematics based on a combination of geometry and logic were accepted as the subject’s foundation for some 2,000 years. In the 1800s, however, alternatives to classical Euclidean geometry were proposed, opening up new areas of study, including topology, which examines the nature and properties not only of objects in space, but of space itself. 15 Since the Classical period, mathematics had been concerned with static situations, or how things are at any given moment. It failed to offer a means of measuring or calculating continuous change. Calculus, developed independently by Gottfried Leibniz and Isaac Newton in the 1600s, provided an answer to this problem. The two branches of calculus, integral and differential, offered a method of analyzing such things as the slope of curves on a graph and the area beneath them as a way of describing and calculating change. The discovery of calculus opened up a field of analysis that later became particularly relevant to, for example, the theories of quantum mechanics and chaos theory in the 1900s. Revisiting logic The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the emergence of another field of mathematics—the foundations of mathematics. This revived the link between philosophy and mathematics. Just as Euclid had done in the 3rd century BCE, scholars including Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell sought to discover the logical foundations on which mathematical principles are based. Their work inspired a re-examination of the nature of mathematics itself, how it works, and what its limits are. This study of basic mathematical concepts is perhaps the most abstract field, a sort of meta-mathematics, yet an essential adjunct to every other field of modern mathematics. In mathematics, the art of asking questions is more valuable than solving problems. Georg Cantor German mathematician 16 New technology, new ideas The various fields of mathematics—arithmetic, algebra, geometry, calculus, and foundations—are worthy of study for their own sake, and the popular image of academic mathematics is that of an almost incomprehensible abstraction. But applications for mathematical discoveries have usually been found, and advances in science and technology have driven innovations in mathematical thinking. A prime example is the symbiotic relationship between mathematics and computers. Originally developed as a mechanical means of doing the “donkey work” of calculation to provide tables for mathematicians, astronomers and so on, the actual construction of computers required new mathematical thinking. It was mathematicians, as much as engineers, who provided the means of building mechanical, and then electronic computing devices, which in turn could be used as tools in the discovery of new mathematical ideas. No doubt, new applications for mathematical theorems will be found in the future too—and with numerous problems still unsolved, it seems that there is no end to the mathematical discoveries to be made. The story of mathematics is one of exploration of these different fields, and the discovery of new ones. But it is also the story of the explorers, the mathematicians who set out with a definite aim in mind, to find answers to unsolved problems, or to travel into unknown territory in search of new ideas— and those who simply stumbled upon an idea in the course of their mathematical journey, and were inspired to see where it would lead. Sometimes the discovery would come as a game-changing revelation, providing a way into unexplored fields; at other times it was a case of “standing on the shoulders of giants,” 17 developing the ideas of previous thinkers, or finding practical applications for them. This book presents many of the “big ideas” in mathematics, from the earliest discoveries to the present day, explaining them in layperson’s language, where they came from, who discovered them, and what makes them significant. Some may be familiar, others less so. With an understanding of these ideas, and an insight into the people and societies in which they were discovered, we can gain an appreciation of not only the ubiquity and usefulness of mathematics, but also the elegance and beauty that mathematicians find in the subject. Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty. Bertrand Russell British philosopher and mathematician 18 19 INTRODUCTION As early as 40,000 years ago, humans were making tally marks on wood and bone as a means of counting. They undoubtedly had a rudimentary sense of number and arithmetic, but the history of mathematics only properly began with the development of numerical systems in early civilizations. The first of these emerged in the sixth millennium BCE, in Mesopotamia, western Asia, home to the world’s earliest agriculture and cities. Here, the Sumerians elaborated on the concept of tally marks, using different symbols to denote different quantities, which the Babylonians then developed into a sophisticated numerical system of cuneiform (wedge-shaped) characters. From about 4000 BCE, the Babylonians used elementary geometry and algebra to solve practical problems—such as building, engineering, and calculating land divisions—alongside the arithmetical skills they used to conduct commerce and levy taxes. A similar story emerges in the slightly later civilization of the ancient Egyptians. Their trade and taxation required a sophisticated numerical system, and their building and engineering works relied on both a means of measurement and some knowledge of geometry and algebra. The Egyptians were also able to use their mathematical skills in conjunction with observations of the heavens to calculate and predict astronomical and seasonal cycles and construct calendars for the religious and agricultural year. They established the study of the principles of arithmetic and geometry as early as 2000 BCE. Greek rigor The 6th century BCE onward saw a rapid rise in the influence of ancient Greece across the eastern Mediterranean. Greek scholars quickly assimilated the mathematical ideas of the Babylonians and Egyptians. The Greeks used a numerical system of base-10 (with ten symbols) derived from the Egyptians. 20 Geometry in particular chimed with Greek culture, which idolized beauty of form and symmetry. Mathematics became a cornerstone of Classical Greek thinking, reflected in its art, architecture, and even philosophy. The almost mystical qualities of geometry and numbers inspired Pythagoras and his followers to establish a cultlike community, dedicated to studying the mathematical principles they believed were the foundations of the Universe and everything in it. Centuries before Pythagoras, the Egyptians had used a triangle with sides of 3, 4, and 5 units as a building tool to ensure corners were square. They had come across this idea by observation, and then applied it as a rule of thumb, whereas the Pythagoreans set about rigorously showing the principle, offering a proof that it is true for all right-angled triangles. It is this notion of proof and rigor that is the Greeks’ greatest contribution to mathematics. Plato’s Academy in Athens was dedicated to the study of philosophy and mathematics, and Plato himself described the five Platonic solids (the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron). Other philosophers, notably Zeno of Elea, applied logic to the foundations of mathematics, exposing the problems of infinity and change. They even explored the strange phenomenon of irrational numbers. Plato’s pupil Aristotle, with his methodical analysis of logical forms, identified the difference between inductive reasoning (such as inferring a rule of thumb from observations) and deductive reasoning (using logical steps to reach a certain conclusion from established premises, or axioms). From this basis, Euclid laid out the principles of mathematical proof from axiomatic truths in his Elements, a treatise that was the foundation of mathematics for the next two millennia. With similar rigor, Diophantus pioneered the use of symbols to represent unknown numbers in his equations; this was the first step toward the symbolic notation of algebra. A new dawn in the East Greek dominance was eventually eclipsed by the rise of the Roman Empire. The Romans regarded mathematics as a practical tool rather than worthy of study. At the same time, the ancient civilizations of India and China independently developed their own numerical systems. Chinese mathematics in particular flourished between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, thanks largely to the work of Liu Hui in revising and expanding the classic texts of Chinese mathematics. 21 IN CONTEXT KEY CIVILIZATION Babylonians FIELD Arithmetic BEFORE 40,000 years ago Stone Age people in Europe and Africa count using tally marks on wood or bone. 6000–5000 BCE Sumerians develop early calculation systems to measure land and to study the night sky. 4000–3000 BCE Babylonians use a small clay cone for 1 and a large cone for 60, along with a clay ball for 10, as their base-60 system evolves. AFTER 2nd century CE The Chinese use an abacus in their base-10 positional number system. 7th century In India, Brahmagupta establishes zero as a number in its own right and not just as a placeholder. It is given to us to calculate, to weigh, to measure, to observe; this is natural philosophy. Voltaire French philosopher 22 The first people known to have used an advanced numeration system were the Sumerians of Mesopotamia, an ancient civilization living between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is present-day Iraq. Sumerian clay tablets from as early as the 6th millennium BCE include symbols denoting different quantities. The Sumerians, followed by the Babylonians, needed efficient mathematical tools in order to administer their empires. What distinguished the Babylonians from neighbors such as Egypt was their use of a positional (place value) number system. In such systems, the value of a number is indicated both by its symbol and its position. Today, for instance, in the decimal system, the position of a digit in a number indicates whether its value is in ones (less than 10), tens, hundreds, or more. Such systems make calculation more efficient because a small set of symbols can represent a huge range of values. By contrast, the ancient Egyptians used separate symbols for ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and above, and had no place value system. Representing larger numbers could require 50 or more hieroglyphs. Using different bases The Hindu–Arabic numeration that is employed today is a base-10 (decimal) system. It requires only 10 symbols—nine digits (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and a zero as a placeholder. As in the Babylonian system, the position of a digit indicates its value, and the smallest value digit is always to the right. In a base-10 23 system, a two-digit number, such as 22, indicates (2 × 101) + 2; the value of the 2 on the left is ten times that of the 2 on the right. Placing digits after the number 22 will create hundreds, thousands, and larger powers of 10. A symbol after a whole number (the standard notation now is a decimal point) can also separate it from its fractional parts, each representing a tenth of the place value of the preceding figure. The Babylonians worked with a more complex sexagesimal (base-60) number system that was probably inherited from the earlier Sumerians and is still used across the world today for measuring time, degrees in a circle (360° = 6 × 60), and geographic coordinates. Why they used 60 as a number base is still not known for sure. It may have been chosen because it can be divided by many other numbers—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. The Babylonians also based their calendar year on the solar year (365.24 days); the number of days in a year was 360 (6 × 60) with additional days for festivals. In the Babylonian sexagesimal system, a single symbol was used alone and repeated up to nine times to represent symbols for 1 to 9. For 10, a different symbol was used, placed to the left of the one symbol, and repeated two to five times in numbers up to 59. At 60 (60 × 1), the original symbol for one was reused but placed further to the left than the symbol for 1. Because it was a base-60 system, two such symbols signified 61, while three such symbols indicated 3,661, that is, 60 × 60 (602) + 60 + 1. The base-60 system had obvious drawbacks. It necessarily requires many more symbols than a base-10 system. For centuries, the sexagesimal system also had no place value holders, and nothing to separate whole numbers from fractional parts. By around 300 BCE, however, the Babylonians used two wedges to indicate no value, much as we use a placeholder zero today; this was possibly the earliest use of zero. 24 The Babylonian sun-god Shamash awards a rod and a coiled rope, ancient measuring devices, to newly trained surveyors, on a clay tablet dating from around 1000 BCE. Other counting systems In Mesoamerica, on the other side of the world, the Mayan civilization developed its own advanced numeration system in the 1st millennium BCE—apparently in complete isolation. Theirs was a base-20 (vigesimal) number system, which probably evolved from a simple counting method using fingers and toes. In fact, base-20 number systems were used across the world, in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Language often contains remnants of this system. For example, in French, 80 is expressed as quatre-vingt (4 × 20); Welsh and Irish also express some numbers as multiples of 20, while in English a score is 20. In the Bible, for instance, Psalm 90 talks of a human lifespan being “threescore years and ten” or as great as “fourscore years.” From around 500 BCE until the 16th century when Hindu–Arabic numbers were officially adopted in China, the Chinese used rod numerals to represent numbers. This was the first decimal place value system. By alternating quantities of vertical rods with horizontal rods, this system could indicate ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, and more powers of 10, much as the decimal system does today. For 25 Cuneiform, a word derived from the Latin cuneus (“wedge”) to describe the shape of the symbols, was inscribed into wet clay, stone, or metal. example, 45 was written with four horizontal bars representing 4 × 101 (40) and five vertical bars for 5 × 1 (5). However, four vertical rods followed by five vertical rods indicated 405 (4 × 100, or 102) + 5 × 1—the absence of horizontal rods meant there were no tens in the number. Calculations were carried out by manipulating the rods on a counting board. Positive and negative numbers were represented by red and black rods respectively or different cross sections (triangular and rectangular). Rod numerals are still used occasionally in China, just as Roman numerals are sometimes used in Western society. The Chinese place value system is reflected in the Chinese abacus (suanpan). Dating back to at least 200 BCE, it is one of the oldest bead-counting devices, although the Romans used something similar. The Chinese version, which is still used today, has a central bar and a varying number of vertical wires to separate ones from tens, hundreds, or more. In each column, there are two beads above the bar worth five each and five beads below the bar worth one each. The Japanese adopted the Chinese abacus in the 14th century and developed their own abacus, the soroban, which has one bead worth five above the central bar and four beads each worth one below the bar in each column. Japan still uses the soroban today: there are even contests in which young people demonstrate their ability to perform soroban calculations mentally, a skill known as anzan. Cuneiform In the late 1800s, academics deciphered the “cuneiform” (wedge-shaped) markings on clay tablets recovered from Babylonian sites in and around Iraq. Such marks, denoting letters and words as well as an advanced number system, were etched in wet clay with either end of a stylus. Like the Egyptians, the Babylonians needed scribes to administer their complex society, and many of the tablets bearing mathematical records are thought to be from training schools for scribes. A great deal has now been discovered about Babylonian mathematics, which extended to multiplication, division, geometry, fractions, square roots, cube roots, equations, and other forms, 26 because—unlike Egyptian papyrus scrolls—the clay tablets have survived well. Several thousand, mostly dating from between 1800 and 1600 BCE, are housed in museums around the world. The Babylonian base-60 number system was built from two symbols—the single unit symbol, used alone and combined for numbers 1 to 9, and the 10 symbol, repeated for 20, 30, 40, and 50. The Babylonian and Assyrian civilizations have perished…yet Babylonian mathematics is still interesting, and the Babylonian scale of 60 is still used in astronomy. G. H. Hardy British mathematician Modern numeration The Hindu–Arabic decimal system used throughout the world today has its origins in India. In the 1st to 4th centuries CE, the use of nine symbols along with zero was developed to allow any number to be written efficiently, through the use of place value. The system was adopted and refined by Arab mathematicians in the 9th century. They introduced the decimal point, so that the system could also express fractions of whole numbers. 27 Three centuries later, Leonardo of Pisa (Fibonacci) popularized the use of Hindu–Arabic numerals in Europe through his book Liber Abaci (1202). Yet the debate about whether to use the new system rather than Roman numerals and traditional counting methods lasted for several hundred years, before its adoption paved the way for modern mathematical advances. With the advent of electronic computers, other number bases became important —particularly binary, a number system with base 2. Unlike the base-10 system with its 10 symbols, binary has just two: 1 and 0. It is a positional system, but instead of multiplying by 10, each column is multiplied by 2, also expressed as 21, 22, 23 and upward. In binary, the number 111 means 1 × 22 + 1 × 21 + 1 × 20, that is 4 + 2 + 1, or 7 in our decimal number system. In binary, as in all modern number systems whatever their base, the principles of place value are always the same. Place value—the Babylonian legacy—remains a powerful, easily understood, and efficient way to represent large numbers. The fact that we work in 10s as opposed to any other number is purely a consequence of our anatomy. We use our ten fingers to count. Marcus du Sautoy British mathematician 28 The Dresden Codex, the oldest surviving Mayan book, dating from the 13th or 14th century, illustrates Ebisu, the Japanese god of fishermen and one of the seven gods of fortune, uses a soroban to calculate his profits in The Red Snapper’s Dream by Utagawa Toyohiro. Mayan numeral system The Mayans, who lived in Central America from around 2000 BCE, used a base-20 (vigesimal) number system from around 1000 BCE to perform astronomical and calendar calculations. Like the Babylonians, they used a calendar of 360 days plus festivals, to make 365.24 days based on the solar year; their calendars helped them work out the growing cycles of crops. The Mayan system employed symbols: a dot representing one and a bar representing five. By using combinations of dots over bars they could 29 Mayan number symbols and glyphs. generate numerals up to 19. Numbers larger than 19 were written vertically, with the lowest numbers at the bottom, and there is evidence of Mayan calculations up to hundreds of millions. An inscription from 36 BCE shows that they used a shell-shaped symbol to denote zero, which was widely used by the 4th century. The Mayans’ number system was in use in Central America until the Spanish conquests in the 16th century. Its influence, however, never spread further. See also: The Rhind papyrus • The abacus • Negative numbers • Zero • The Fibonacci sequence • Decimals 30 IN CONTEXT KEY CIVILIZATIONS Egyptians (c. 2000 BCE), Babylonians (c. 1600 BCE) FIELD Algebra BEFORE c. 2000 BCE The Berlin papyrus records a quadratic equation solved in ancient Egypt. AFTER 7th century CE The Indian mathematician Brahmagupta solves quadratic equations using only positive integers. 10th century CE Egyptian scholar Abu Kamil Shuja ibn Aslam uses negative and irrational numbers to solve quadratic equations. 1545 Italian mathematician Gerolamo Cardano publishes his Ars Magna, setting out the rules of algebra. Quadratic equations are those involving unknown numbers to the power of 2 but not to a higher power; they contain x2 but not x3, x4, and so on. One of the main rudiments of mathematics is the ability to use equations to work out solutions to real-world problems. Where those problems involve areas or paths of curves such as parabolas, quadratic equations become very useful, and describe physical phenomena, such as the flight of a ball or a rocket. 31 Ancient roots The history of quadratic equations extends across the world. It is likely that these equations first arose from the need to subdivide land for inheritance purposes, or to solve problems involving addition and multiplication. One of the oldest surviving examples of a quadratic equation comes from the ancient Egyptian text known as the Berlin papyrus (c. 2000 BCE). The problem contains the following information: the area of a square of 100 cubits is equal to that of two smaller squares. The side of one of the smaller squares is equal to one half plus a quarter of the side of the other. In modern notation, this translates into two simultaneous equations: x2 + y2 = 100 and x = (1⁄2 + 1⁄4)y = 3⁄4 y. These can be simplified to the quadratic equation (3⁄4 y)2 + y2 = 100 to find the length of a side on each square. The Egyptians used a method called “false position” to determine the solution. In this method, the mathematician selects a convenient number that is usually easy to calculate, then works out what the solution to the equation would be using that 32 number. The result shows how to adjust the number to give the correct solution the equation. For example, in the Berlin papyrus problem, the simplest length to use for the larger of the two small squares is 4, because the problem deals with quarters. For the side of the smallest square, 3 is used because this length is 3⁄4 of the side of the other small square. Two squares created using these false position numbers would have areas of 16 and 9 respectively, which when added together give a total area of 25. This is only 1⁄4 of 100, so the areas must be quadrupled to match the Berlin papyrus equation. The lengths therefore must be doubled from the false positions of 4 and 3 to reach the solutions: 8 and 6. Other early records of quadratic equations are found in Babylonian clay tablets, where the diagonal of a square is given to five decimal places. The Babylonian tablet YBC 7289 (c. 1800–1600 BCE) shows a method of working out the quadratic equation x2 = 2 by drawing rectangles and trimming them down into squares. In the 7th century CE, Indian mathematician Brahmagupta wrote a formula for solving quadratic equations that could be applied to equations in the form ax2 + bx = c. Mathematicians at the time did not use letters or symbols, so he wrote his solution in words, but it was similar to the modern formula shown above. In the 8th century, Persian mathematician al-Khwarizmi employed a geometric solution for quadratic equations known as completing the square. Until the 10th century, geometric methods were were often used, as quadratic equations were used to solve real-world problems involving land rather than abstract algebraic challenges. 33 The Berlin papyrus was copied and published by German Egyptologist Hans Schack- Schackenburg in 1900. It contains two mathematical problems, one of which is a quadratic equation. Negative solutions Indian, Persian, and Arab scholars thus far had used only positive numbers. When solving the equation x2 + 10x = 39, they gave the solution as 3. However, this is one of two correct solutions to the problem; -13 is the other. If x is -13, x2 = 169 and 10x = -130. Adding a negative number gives the same result as subtracting its equivalent positive number, so 169 + -130 = 169 - 130 = 39. In the 10th century, Egyptian scholar Abu Kamil Shuja ibn Aslam made use of negative numbers and algebraic irrational numbers (such as the square root of 2) 34 as both solutions and coefficients (numbers multiplying an unknown quantity). By the 1500s, most mathematicians accepted negative solutions and were comfortable with surds (irrational roots – those that cannot be expressed exactly as a decimal). They had also started using numbers and symbols, rather than writing equations in words. Mathematicians now utilized the plus or minus symbol, ±, in solving quadratic equations. With the equation x2 = 2, the solution is not just x = but x = ± . The plus or minus symbol is included because two negative numbers multiplied together make a positive number. While × = 2, it is also true that - ×- = 2. In 1545, Italian scholar Gerolamo Cardano published his Ars Magna (The Great Art, or the Rules of Algebra) in which he explored the problem: “What pair of numbers have a sum of ten and product of 40?” He found that the problem led to a quadratic equation which, when he completed the square, gave . No numbers available to mathematicians at the time gave a negative number when multiplied by themselves, but Cardano suggested suspending belief and working with the square root of negative 15 to find the equation’s two solutions. Numbers such as would later be known as “imaginary” numbers. The quadratic formula is a way to solve quadratic equations. By modern convention, quadratic equations include a number, a, multiplied by x2; a number, b, multiplied by x; and a number, c, on its own. The illustration above shows how the formula uses a, b, and c to find the value of x. Quadratic equations often equal 0, because this makes them easy to work out on a graph; the x solutions are the points where the curve crosses the x axis. Politics is for the present, but an equation is for eternity. Albert Einstein 35 Structure of equations Modern quadratic equations usually look like ax2 + bx + c = 0. The letters a, b, and c represent known numbers, while x represents the unknown number. Equations contain variables (symbols for numbers that are unknown), coefficients, constants (those that do not multiply variables), and operators (symbols such as the plus and equals sign). Terms are the parts separated by operators; they can be a number or variable, or a combination of both. The modern quadratic equation has four terms: ax2, bx, c, and 0. A graph of the quadratic function y = ax2 + bx + c creates a U-shaped curve called a parabola. This graph plots the points (in black) of the quadratic function where a = 1, b = 3, 36 and c = 2. This expresses the quadratic equation x2 + 3x + 2 = 0. The solutions for x are where y = 0 and the curve crosses the x axis. These are -2 and -1. Parabolas A function is a group of terms that defines a relationship between variables (often x and y). The quadratic function is generally written as y = ax2 + bx + c, which, on a graph, produces a curve called a parabola. When real (not imaginary) solutions to ax2 + bx + c = 0 exist, they will be the roots—the points where the parabola crosses the x axis. Not all parabolas cut the x axis in two places. If the parabola touches the x axis only once, this means that there are coincident roots (the solutions are equal to each other). The simplest equation of this form is y = x2. If the parabola does not touch or cross the x axis, there are no real roots. Parabolas prove useful in the real world because of their reflective. properties. Satellite dishes are parabolic for this reason. Signals received by the dish will reflect off the parabola and be directed to one single point—the receiver. Parabolic objects have special reflective properties. With a parabolic mirror, any ray of light parallel to its line of symmetry will reflect off the surface to the same fixed point (A). Practical applications 37 Quadratic equations are used by military specialists to model the trajectory of projectiles fired by artillery—such as this MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile, commonly used by the US Army. Although they were initially used for working out geometric problems, today quadratic equations are important in many aspects of mathematics, science, and technology. Projectile flight, for example, can be modeled with quadratic equations. An object thrown up into the air will fall back down again as a result of gravity. The quadratic function can predict projectile motion—the height of the object over time. Quadratic equations are used to model the relationship between time, speed, and distance, and in calculations with parabolic objects such as lenses. They can also be used to forecast profits and loss in the world of business. Profit is based on total revenue minus production cost; companies create a quadratic equation known as the profit function with these variables to work out the optimal sale prices to maximize profits. See also: Irrational numbers • Negative numbers • Diophantine equations • Zero • Algebra • The binomial theorem • Cubic equations • Imaginary and complex numbers 38 IN CONTEXT KEY CIVILIZATION Ancient Egyptians (c. 1650 BCE) FIELD Arithmetic BEFORE c. 2480 BCE Stone carvings record flood levels on the River Nile, measured in cubits—about 201⁄2 in (52 cm)—and palms—about 3 in (7.5 cm). c. 1800 BCE The Moscow papyrus provides solutions to 25 mathematical problems, including the calculation of the surface area of a hemisphere and the volume of a pyramid. AFTER c. 1300 BCE The Berlin papyrus is produced. It shows that the ancient Egyptians used quadratic equations. 6th century BCE The Greek scientist Thales travels to Egypt and studies its mathematical theories. The Rhind papyrus in the British Museum in London provides an intriguing account of mathematics in ancient Egypt. Named after Scottish antiquarian Alexander Henry Rhind, who purchased the papyrus in Egypt in 1858, it was copied from earlier documents by a scribe, Ahmose, more than 3,500 years ago. It measures 121⁄2 in (32 cm) by 781⁄2 in (200 cm) and includes 84 problems concerned with arithmetic, algebra, geometry, and measurement. The problems, 39 recorded in this and other ancient Egyptian artifacts such as the earlier Moscow papyrus, illustrated techniques for working out areas, proportions, and volumes. The Eye of Horus, an Egyptian god, was a symbol of power and protection. Parts of it were also used to denote fractions whose denominators were powers of 2. The eyeball, for example, represents 1⁄4, while the eyebrow is 1⁄8. Representing concepts The Egyptian number system was the first decimal system. It used strokes for single digits and a different symbol for each power of 10. The symbols were then repeated to create other numbers. A fraction was shown as a number with a dot above it. The Egyptian concept of a fraction was closest to a unit fraction—that is, 1⁄n, where n is a whole number. When a fraction was doubled, it had to be rewritten as one unit fraction added to another unit fraction; for example, 2⁄3 in modern notation would be 1⁄2 + 1⁄6 in Egyptian notation (not 1⁄3 + 1⁄3 because the Egyptians did not allow repeats of the same fraction). The 84 problems in the Rhind papyrus illustrate the mathematical methods in common use in ancient Egypt. Problem 24, for example, asks what quantity, if added to its seventh part, becomes 19. This translates as x + x⁄7 = 19. The approach applied to problem 24 is known as “false position.” This technique— used well into the Middle Ages—is based on trial and improvement, choosing the simplest, or “false,” value for a variable and adjusting the value using a scaling factor (the required quantity divided by the result). 40 In the workings for problem 24, one-seventh is easiest to find for the number 7, so 7 is used first as a “false” value for the variable. The result of the calculation— 7 plus 7⁄7 (or 1)—is 8, not 19, so a scaling factor is needed. To find how far the guess of 7 is from the required quantity, 19 is divided by 8 (the “false” answer). This produces a result of 2 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄8 (not 23⁄8, as Egyptian multiplication was based on doubling and halving fractions), which is the scaling factor that should be applied. So 7 (the original “false” value) is multiplied by 2 + 1⁄4 + 1⁄8 (the scaling factor) to give the quantity 16 + 1⁄2 + 1⁄8 (or 165⁄8). Many problems in the papyrus deal with working out shares of commodities or land. Problem 41 asks for the volume of a cylindrical store with a diameter of 9 cubits and a height of 10 cubits. The method finds the area of a square whose side length is 8⁄9 of the diameter, then multiplies this by the height. The figure of 8⁄9 is used as an approximation for the proportion of the area of a square that would be taken up by a circle if it were drawn within the square. This method is used in problem 50 to find the area of a circle: subtract 1⁄9 from the diameter of the circle, and find the area of the square with the resulting side length. Ancient Egyptians used vertical lines to denote the numbers 1 to 9. Powers of 10, particularly those inscribed on stone, were depicted as hieroglyphs—picture symbols. Level of accuracy Since the Ancient Greeks, the area of a circle has been found by multiplying the square of its radius (r2) with the number pi (π), written as πr2. The ancient Egyptians had no concept of pi, but the calculations in the Rhind papyrus show that they were close to its value. Their circle area calculation—with the circle 41 The Rhind papyrus scribe used the hieratic system of writing numerals. This cursive style was more compact and practical than drawing complex hieroglyphs. diameter as twice the radius (2r)—can be expressed as (8⁄9 × 2r)2, which, simplified, is 256⁄81 r2, giving an equivalent for pi of 256⁄81. As a decimal, this is about 0.6 percent greater than the true value of pi. Instruction books The Rhind and Moscow papyri are the most complete mathematical documents to survive from the height of the ancient Egyptian civilization. They were painstakingly copied by scribes well versed in arithmetic, geometry, and mensuration (the study of measurements) and are likely to have been used for training of other scribes. Although they captured probably the most advanced mathematical knowledge of the time, they were not seen as works of scholarship. Instead, they were instruction manuals for use in trade, accounting, construction, and other activities that involved measurement and calculation. Egyptian engineers, for example, used mathematics in the building of pyramids. The Rhind papyrus includes a calculation for the slope of a pyramid using the seked— a measure for the horizontal distance traveled by a slope for each drop of 1 cubit. The steeper the side of a pyramid, the fewer the sekeds. See also: Positional numbers • Pythagoras • Calculating pi • Algebra • Decimals 42 IN CONTEXT KEY CIVILIZATION Ancient Chinese FIELD Number theory BEFORE 9th century BCE The Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes) lays out trigrams and hexagrams of numbers for use in divination. AFTER 1782 Leonhard Euler writes about Latin squares in his Recherches sur une nouvelle espèce de carrés magiques (Investigations on a new type of magic square). 1979 The first Sudoku-style puzzle is published by Dell Magazines in New York. 2001 British electronics engineer Lee Sallows invents magic squares called “geomagic squares,” which contain geometric shapes rather than numbers. There are thousands of ways in which to arrange the numbers 1 to 9 in a three-by- three grid. Only eight of these produce a magic square, where the sum of the numbers in each row, column, and diagonal—the magic total—is the same. The sum of the numbers 1 to 9 is 45, as is the sum of all three rows or columns. The magic total, therefore, is 1⁄3 of 45, or 15. In fact, there is really just one combination of numbers in a magic square. The other seven are rotations of this combination. 43 Ancient origins Magic squares are probably the earliest example of “recreational mathematics.” Their exact origin is unknown, but the first known reference, in the Chinese legend of Lo Shu (Scroll of the river Lo), dates from 650 BCE. In the legend, a turtle appears to the great King Yu as he faces a devastating flood. The markings on the turtle’s back form a magic square, with numbers from 1 to 9 represented by circular dots. Because of this legend, the arrangement of odd and even numbers (even numbers are always in the corners of the square) were believed to have magical properties and was used as a good luck talisman through the ages. As ideas from China spread along trade routes such as the Silk Road, other cultures became interested in magic squares. Magic squares are discussed in Indian texts dating from 100 CE, and Brihat-Samhita (c. 550 CE), a book of divination, includes the first recorded magic square in India, used to measure out quantities of perfume. Arab scholars, who created a vital link between the learning of ancient civilizations and the European Renaissance, introduced magic squares to Europe in the 14th century. 44 An order-four magic square appears beneath the bell in Melencolia I by the German artist Albrecht Dürer and wittily includes the engraving’s date of 1514. Different-sized squares The number of rows and columns in a magic square is called its order. For example, a three-by-three magic square is said to have an order of three. An order-two magic square does not exist because it would only work if all the numbers were identical. As the orders increase, so do the quantities of magic squares. Order four produces 880 magic squares—with a magic total of 34. There are hundreds of millions of order-five magic squares, while the quantity of order- six magic squares has not yet been calculated. Magic squares have been an enduring source of fascination for mathematicians. The 15th-century Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli, author of De viribus 45 quantitatis (On the Power of Numbers), collected magic squares. In 18th-century Switzerland, Leonhard Euler also became interested in them, and devised a form that he named Latin squares. The rows and columns in a Latin square contain figures or symbols that appear only once in each row and column. One derivation of the Latin square—Sudoku—has become a popular puzzle. Devised in the US in the 1970s (where it was called Number Place), Sudoku took off in Japan in the 1980s, acquiring its now-familiar name, which means “single digits.” A Sudoku puzzle is a nine-by-nine Latin square with the added restriction that subdivisions of the square must also contain all nine numbers. The most magically magical of any magic square ever made by a magician. Benjamin Franklin Talking about a magic square that he discovered 46 Once you have one magic square, you can add the same quantity to every number in the square and still end up with a magic square. Similarly, if you multiply all the numbers by the same quantity, you still have a magic square. See also: Irrational numbers • Eratosthenes’ sieve • Negative numbers • The Fibonacci sequence • The golden ratio • Mersenne primes • Pascal’s triangle 47 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE–495 BCE) FIELD Applied geometry BEFORE c. 1800 BCE The columns of cuneiform numbers on the Plimpton 322 clay tablet from Babylon include some numbers related to Pythagorean triples. 6th century BCE Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus proposes a non- mythological explanation of the Universe— pioneering the idea that nature can be interpreted by reason. AFTER c. 380 BCE In the tenth book of his Republic, Plato espouses Pythagoras’s theory of the transmigration of souls. c. 300 BCE Euclid produces a formula to find sets of primitive Pythagorean triples. The 6th-century BCE Greek philosopher Pythagoras is also antiquity’s most famous mathematician. Whether or not he was responsible for all the many achievements attributed to him in math, science, astronomy, music, and medicine, there is no doubt that he founded an exclusive community that lived for the pursuit of mathematics and philosophy, and regarded numbers as the sacred building blocks of the Universe. 48 Thales of Miletus, one of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece, possibly inspired the younger Pythagoras with his geometrical and scientific ideas. They may have met in Egypt. Angles and symmetry The Pythagoreans were masters of geometry and knew that the sum of the three angles of a triangle (180°) is equal to the sum of two right angles (90° + 90°), a fact which two centuries later was described by Euclid as the triangle postulate. Pythagoras’s followers were also aware of some of the regular polyhedra; these are the perfectly symmetrical three-dimensional shapes (such as the cube) that were later known as the Platonic solids. Pythagoras himself is primarily associated with the formula that describes the relationship between the sides of a right-angled triangle. Widely known as Pythagoras’s theorem, it states that a2 + b2 = c2, where c is the longest side of the 49 The smallest, or most primitive, of the Pythagorean triples is a triangle with side lengths 3, 4, and 5. As this graphic shows, 9 plus 16 equals 25. triangle (the hypotenuse), and a and b represent the other two, shorter sides that are adjacent to the right angle. For example, a right-angled triangle with two shorter sides of lengths 3in and 4in will have a hypotenuse of length 5in. The length of this hypotenuse is found because 32 + 42 = 52 (9 + 16 = 25). Such sets of whole-number solutions to the equation a2 + b2 = c2 are known as Pythagorean triples. Multiplying the triple 3, 4, and 5 by 2 produces another Pythagorean triple: 6, 8, and 10 (36 + 64 = 100). The set 3, 4, 5 is called a “primitive” Pythagorean triple because its components share no common divisor larger than 1. The set 6, 8, 10 is not primitive as its components share the common divisor 2. There is good evidence that the Babylonians and the Chinese were well aware of the mathematical relationship between sides of a right-angled triangle centuries before Pythagoras’s birth. However, Pythagoras is believed to have been the first to prove the truth of the formula that states this relationship, and its validity for all right-angled triangles, which is why the theorem takes his name. Pythagorean triples The sets of three integers that solve the equation a2 + b2 = c2 are known as Pythagorean triples, although their existence was known long before Pythagoras. Around 1800 BCE, the Babylonians recorded sets of Pythagorean numbers on the Plimpton 322 clay tablet; these show that triples become more spread out as the number line progresses. The Pythagoreans developed methods for finding sets of triples, and also proved that there are an infinite number of such sets. After many of Pythagoras’s schools were destroyed in a 6th-century BCE political purge, Pythagoreans emigrated to other parts of southern Italy, spreading their knowledge of triples across the ancient world. Two centuries later, Euclid developed a formula to generate triples: a = m2 - n2, b = 2mn, c = m2 + n2. With certain exceptions, m and n can be any two integers, such as 7 and 4, which produce the triple 33, 56, 65 (332 + 562 = 652). The formula dramatically sped up the process of finding new Pythagorean triples. 50 The graphic above demonstrates why the Pythagorean equation (a²+ b²= c²) works. Within a large square there are four right-angled triangles of equal size (sides labeled a, b, and c). They are arranged so that a tilted square is formed in the middle, by the hypotenuses (c sides) of the four triangles. Journeys of discovery Pythagoras was well-traveled, and the ideas he absorbed from other countries undoubtedly fueled his mathematical inspiration. Hailing from Samos, which was not far from Miletus in western Anatolia (present-day Turkey), he may have studied at the school of Thales of Miletus under the philosopher Anaximander. He embarked on his travels at the age of 20, and spent many years away. He is thought to have visited Phoenicia, Persia, Babylon, and Egypt, and may also have reached India. The Egyptians knew that a triangle with sides of 3, 4, and 5 (the first Pythagorean triple) would produce a right angle, so their surveyors used ropes of these lengths to construct perfect right angles for their building projects. Observing this method firsthand may have encouraged Pythagoras to study and prove the underlying mathematical theorem. In Egypt, Pythagoras may also have met Thales of Miletus, a keen geometrician, who calculated the heights of pyramids and applied deductive reasoning to geometry. Reason is immortal, all else is mortal. Pythagoras 51 A Pythagorean community After 20 years of traveling, Pythagoras eventually settled in Croton (now Crotone), southern Italy, a city with a large Greek population. There, he established the Pythagorean brotherhood— a community to whom he could teach both his mathematical and philosophical beliefs. Women were welcome in the brotherhood, and formed a significant part of its 600 members. When they joined, members were obliged to give all their possessions and wealth to the brotherhood, and also swore to keep its mathematical discoveries secret. Under Pythagoras’s leadership, the community gained considerable political influence. As well as his theorem, Pythagoras and his close-knit community made numerous other advances in mathematics, but carefully guarded that knowledge. Among their discoveries were polygonal numbers: these, when represented by dots, can form the shapes of regular polygons. For example, 4 is a polygonal number as 4 dots can form a square, and 10 is a polygonal number as 10 dots can form a triangle with 4 dots at the base, 3 dots on the next row, 2 on the next, and 1 dot at the top of the triangle (4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 10). Two millennia after Pythagoras, in 1638, Pierre de Fermat enlarged on this idea when he asserted that any number could be written as the sum of up to k k-gonal numbers; in other words, every single number is the sum of up to 3 triangular numbers, up to 4 square numbers, or up to 5 pentagonal numbers, and so on. For example, 19 can be written as the sum of three triangular numbers: 1 + 3 + 15 = 19. Fermat could not prove this conjecture; it was only in 1813 that French mathematician Augustin-Louis Cauchy completed the proof. Strength of mind rests in sobriety; for this keeps your reason unclouded by passion. Pythagoras 52 Fascinated by numbers Another type of number that excited Pythagoras was the perfect number. It was so called because it is the exact sum of all the divisors less than itself. The first perfect number is 6, as its divisors 1, 2, and 3 add up to 6. The second is 28 (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28), the third 496, and the fourth 8,128. There was no practical value in identifying such numbers, but their quirkiness and the beauty of their patterns fascinated Pythagoras and his brotherhood. By contrast, Pythagoras was said to have an overwhelming fear and disbelief of irrational numbers, numbers that cannot be expressed as fractions of two integers, the most famous example being π. Such numbers had no place among the well- ordered integers and fractions by which Pythagoras claimed the Universe was governed. One story suggests that his fear of irrational numbers drove his followers to drown a fellow Pythagorean—Hippasus— for revealing their existence when attempting to find . Pythagoras’s reputation for ruthlessness is also highlighted in a story about a member of the brotherhood who was executed for publicly disclosing that the Pythagoreans had discovered a new regular polyhedron. The new shape was formed from 12 regular pentagons, and known as the dodecahedron—one of the five Platonic solids. Pythagoreans revered the pentagon, and their symbol was the pentagram, a five-pointed star with a pentagon at its center. Breaking the brotherhood’s rule of secrecy by revealing their knowledge of the dodecahedron would therefore have been an especially heinous crime, punishable by death. The finest type of man gives himself up to discovering the meaning and purpose of life itself… this is the man I call a philosopher. Pythagoras 53 In The School of Athens, painted by Raphael in 1509–11 for the Vatican in Rome, Pythagoras is shown with a book, surrounded by scholars eager to learn from him. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret magick of numbers. Sir Thomas Browne English polymath An integrated philosophy In ancient Greece, mathematics and philosophy were considered complementary subjects and were studied together. Pythagoras is credited with coining the term “philosopher,” from the Greek philos (“love”) and sophos (“wisdom”). For Pythagoras and his successors, the duty of a philosopher was the pursuit of wisdom. 54 Pythagoras’s own brand of philosophy integrated spiritual ideas with mathematics, science, and reasoning. Among his beliefs was the idea of metempsychosis, which he may have encountered on his travels in Egypt or elsewhere in the Middle East. This held that souls are immortal and at death transmigrate to occupy a new body. In Athens two centuries later, Plato was entranced by the idea and included it in many of his dialogues. Later, Christianity, too, embraced the idea of a division between body and soul; and Pythagoras’s ideas would become a core part of Western thought. Importantly for mathematics, Pythagoras also believed that everything in the Universe related to numbers and obeyed mathematical rules. Certain numbers were endowed with characteristics and spiritual significance in what amounted to a kind of number worship, and Pythagoras and his followers sought mathematical patterns in everything around them. Numbers in harmony Music was of great importance to Pythagoras. He is said to have considered it a holy science, rather than something simply to be used for entertainment. It was a unifying element in his concept of Harmonia, the joining together of the cosmos and the psyche. This may be why he is credited with discovering the link between mathematical ratios and harmony. It is said that, while walking past a 55 blacksmith’s forge, he noticed that different notes were produced when hammers of unequal weight were struck against equal lengths of metal. If the weights of the hammers were in exact and particular proportions, their resulting notes were harmonic. The hammers in the forge had individual weights of 6, 8, 9, and 12 units. Those weighing 6 and 12 units sounded the same notes at different pitches; in today’s music terminology they would be said to be an octave apart. The frequency of the note produced by the hammer of weight 6 was double that of the hammer weighing 12, which corresponds with the ratio of their weights. The hammers of weights 12 and 9 produced a harmonious sound—a perfect fourth—as their weights were in the ratio 4:3. The notes made by the hammers of weights 12 and 8 were also harmonious—a perfect fifth—as their weights were in the ratio 3:2. In contrast, the hammers of weights 9 and 8 were dissonant, as 9:8 is not a simple mathematical ratio. By noticing that harmonious musical notes were connected to numerical ratios, Pythagoras was the first to uncover the relationship between mathematics and music. Pythagoras was reputedly an excellent lyre player. This drawing of ancient Greek musicians illustrates two members of the lyre family— the trigonon (left) and the cithara. Creating a musical scale 56 Although scholars have questioned the story of the forge, Pythagoras is also widely credited with another musical discovery. He is said to have experimented with notes produced by lyre strings of different lengths. He found that while a vibrating string produces a note with frequency f, halving the length of the string produces a note an octave higher, with frequency 2f. When Pythagoras used the same ratios that produced harmoniously sounding hammers, and applied them to vibrating strings, he similarly produced notes in harmony with one another. Pythagoras then constructed a musical scale, starting with one note and the note an octave above it, filling in the notes between using perfect fifths. This scale was used until the 1500s, when it was replaced by the even-tempered scale, in which the notes between the two octaves are more evenly spaced. Although the Pythagorean scale worked well for music lying within one octave, it was not suited for more modern music, which was written in different keys and extended across several octaves. While there have been many different types of musical scales in use by different cultures, the long tradition of Western music dates back to the Pythagoreans and their quest to understand the relationship between music and mathematical proportions. The numerology of the Divine Comedy by Dante (1265–1331)—pictured here in a fresco from the Duomo in Florence, Italy—reflects the influence of Pythagoras, whom Dante mentions several times in his writings. 57 The legacy of Pythagoras Pythagoras’s status as the most famous mathematician from antiquity is justified by his contributions to geometry, number theory, and music. His ideas were not always original, but the rigor with which he and his followers developed them, using axioms and logic to build a system of mathematics, was a fine legacy for those who succeeded him. There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras PYTHAGORAS Pythagoras was born around 570 BCE on the Greek island of Samos in the eastern Aegean Sea. His ideas have influenced many of the greatest scholars in history, from Plato to Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton. Pythagoras is thought to have traveled widely, assimilating ideas from scholars in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East before establishing his community of around 600 people in Croton, southern Italy, around 518 BCE. This ascetic brotherhood required its members to live for intellectual pursuits, while following strict rules of diet and clothing. It is from this time onward that his theorem and other discoveries were probably set down, although no records remain. At the age of 60, Pythagoras is said to have married a young member of the community, Theano, and perhaps had two or three children. Political upheaval in Croton led to a revolt against the Pythagoreans. Pythagoras may have been killed when his school was set on fire, or shortly afterward. He is said to have died around 495 BCE. See also: Irrational numbers • The Platonic solids • Syllogistic logic • Calculating pi • Trigonometry • The golden ratio • Projective geometry 58 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Hippasus (5th century BCE) FIELD Number systems BEFORE 19th century BCE Cuneiform inscriptions show that the Babylonians constructed right-angled triangles and understood their properties. 6th century BCE In Greece, the relationship between the side lengths of a right- angled triangle is discovered, and is later attributed to Pythagoras. AFTER 400 BCE Theodorus of Cyrene proves the irrationality of the square roots of the nonsquare numbers between 3 and 17. 4th century BCE The Greek mathematician Eudoxus of Cnidus establishes a strong mathematical foundation for irrational numbers. Any number that can be expressed as a ratio of two integers—a fraction, a decimal that either ends or repeats in a recurring pattern, or a percentage—is said to be a rational number. All whole numbers are rational as they can be shown as fractions divided by 1. Irrational numbers, however, cannot be expressed as a ratio of two numbers Hippasus, a Greek scholar, is believed to have first identified irrational numbers in the 5th century BCE, as he worked on geometrical problems. He was familiar with Pythagoras’s theorem, which states that the square of the hypotenuse in a 59 right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. He applied the theorem to a right-angled triangle that has both shorter sides equal to 1. As 12 + 12 = 2, the length of the hypotenuse is the square root of 2. Hippasus realized, however, that the square root of 2 could not be expressed as the ratio of two whole numbers—that is, it could not be written as a fraction, as there is no rational number that can be multiplied by itself to produce precisely 2. This makes the square root of 2 an irrational number, and 2 itself is termed nonsquare or square-free. The numbers 3, 5, 7, and many others are similarly nonsquare and in each case, their square root is irrational. By contrast, numbers such as 4 (22), 9 (32), and 16 (42) are square numbers, with square roots that are also whole numbers and therefore rational. The concept of irrational numbers was not readily accepted, although later Greek and Indian mathematicians explored their properties. In the 9th century, Arab scholars used them in algebra. Hippasus may have encountered irrational numbers while exploring the relationship between the length of the side of a pentagon and one side of a pentagram formed inside it. He found that it was impossible to express it as a ratio between two whole numbers. In decimal terms 60 The positional decimal system of Hindu–Arabic numeration allowed further study of irrational numbers, which can be shown as an infinite series of digits after the decimal point with no recurring pattern. For example, 0.1010010001… with an extra zero between each successive pair of 1s, continuing indefinitely, is an irrational number. Pi (π), which is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter, is irrational. This was proved in 1761 by Johann Heinrich Lambert— earlier estimations of π had been 3 or 22⁄7. Between any two rational numbers, another rational number can always be found. The average of the two numbers will also be rational, as will the average of that number and either of the original numbers. Irrational numbers can also be found between any two rational numbers. One method is to change a digit in a recurring sequence. For example, an irrational number can be found between the recurring numbers 0.124124… and 0.125125… by changing 1 to 3 in the second cycle of 124, to give 0.124324…, and doing so again at the fifth, then ninth cycle, increasing the gap between the replacement 3s by one cycle each time. One of the great challenges of modern number theory has been establishing whether there are more rational or irrational numbers. Set theory strongly indicates that there are many more irrational numbers than rational numbers, even though there are infinite numbers of each. 61 HIPPASUS Details of Hippasus’s early life are sketchy, but it is thought that he was born in Metapontum, in Magna Graecia (now southern Italy), around 500 BCE. According to the philosopher Iamblichus, who wrote a biography of Pythagoras, Hippasus was a founder of a Pythagorean sect called the Mathematici, which fervently believed that all numbers were rational. Hippasus is usually credited with discovering irrational numbers, an idea that would have been considered heresy by the sect. According to one story, Hippasus drowned when his fellow Pythagoreans threw him over the side of a boat in disgust. Another story suggests that a fellow Pythagorean discovered irrational numbers, but Hippasus was punished for telling the outside world about them. The year of Hippasus’s death is not known but is likely to have been in the 5th century BCE. Key work 5th century BCE Mystic Discourse See also: Positional numbers • Quadratic equations • Pythagoras • Imaginary and complex numbers • Euler’s number 62 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Zeno of Elea (c. 495–430 BCE) FIELD Logic BEFORE Early 5th century BCE The Greek philosopher Parmenides founds the Eleatic school of philosophy in Elea, a Greek colony in southern Italy. AFTER 350 BCE Aristotle produces his treatise Physics, in which he draws on the concept of relative motion to refute Zeno’s paradoxes. 1914 British philosopher Bertrand Russell, who described Zeno’s paradoxes as immeasurably subtle, states that motion is a function of position with respect to time. 63 Zeno of Elea belonged to the Eleatic school of philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece in the 5th century BCE. In contrast to the pluralists, who believed that the Universe could be divided into its constituent atoms, Eleatics believed in the indivisibility of all things. Zeno wrote 40 paradoxes to show the absurdity of the pluralist view. Four of these—the dichotomy paradox, Achilles and the tortoise, the arrow paradox, and the stadium paradox—address motion. The dichotomy paradox shows the absurdity of the pluralist view that motion can be divided. A body moving a certain distance, it says, would have to reach the halfway point before it arrived at the end, and in order to reach that halfway mark, it would first have to reach the quarter-way mark, and so on ad infinitum. Because the body has to pass through an infinite number of points, it would never reach its goal. In the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, Achilles, who is 100 times faster than the tortoise, gives the creature a head start of 100 meters in a race. At the sound of the starting signal, Achilles runs 100 meters to reach the tortoise’s starting point, while the tortoise runs 1 meter, giving it a 1 meter lead. Undeterred, Achilles runs another meter; however, in the same time, the tortoise runs one-hundredth of a meter, so it is still in the lead. This continues, and Achilles never catches up. The stadium paradox concerns three columns of people, each containing an equal number of people; one group is at rest, while the other two run past each other at the same speed in opposite directions. According to the paradox, a person in one 64 moving group can pass two people in the other moving group in a fixed time, but only one person in the stationary group. The paradoxical conclusion is that half a given time is equivalent to double that time. Over the centuries, many mathematicians have refuted the paradoxes. The development of calculus allowed mathematicians to deal with infinitesimal quantities without resulting in contradiction. The paradox of Achilles and the tortoise maintains that a fast object, such as Achilles, will never catch up with a slow one, such as a tortoise. Achilles will get closer to the tortoise, but never actually overtake it. ZENO OF ELEA Zeno of Elea was born around 495 BCE in the Greek city of Elea (now Velia, in southern Italy). At a young age, he was adopted by the philosopher Parmenides, and was said to have been “beloved” by him. Zeno was inducted into the school of Eleatic thought, founded by Parmenides. At the age of around 40, Zeno 65 traveled to Athens, where he met Socrates. Zeno introduced the Socratic philosophers to Eleatic ideas. Zeno was renowned for his paradoxes, which contributed to the development of mathematical rigor. Aristotle later described him as the inventor of the dialectical method (a method starting from two opposing viewpoints) of logical argument. Zeno collected his arguments in a book, but this did not survive. The paradoxes are known from Aristotle’s treatise Physics, which lists nine of them. Although little is known of Zeno’s life, the ancient Greek biographer Diogenes claimed he was beaten to death for trying to overthrow the tyrant Nearchus. In a clash with Nearchus, Zeno is reported to have bitten off the man’s ear. See also: Pythagoras • Syllogistic logic • Calculus • Transfinite numbers • The logic of mathematics • The infinite monkey theorem 66 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Plato (c. 428–348 BCE) FIELD Geometry BEFORE 6th century BCE Pythagoras identifies the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron. 4th century BCE Theaetetus, an Athenian contemporary of Plato, discusses the octahedron and icosahedron. AFTER c. 300 BCE Euclid’s Elements fully describes the five regular convex polyhedra. 1596 German astronomer Johannes Kepler proposes a model of the Solar System, explaining it geometrically in terms of Platonic solids. 1735 Leonhard Euler devises a formula that links the faces, vertices, and edges of polyhedra. 67 68 The perfect symmetry of the five Platonic solids was probably known to scholars long before the Greek philosopher Plato popularized the forms in his dialogue Timaeus, written in c. 360 BCE. Each of the five regular convex polyhedra—3-D shapes with flat faces and straight edges—has its own set of identical polygonal faces, the same number of faces meeting at each vertex, as well as equilateral sides, and same-sized angles. Theorizing on the nature of the world, Plato assigned four of the shapes to the classical elements: the cube (also known as a regular hexahedron) was associated with earth; the icosahedron with water; the octahedron with air; and the tetrahedron with fire. The 12-faced dodecahedron was associated with the heavens and its constellations. Composed of polygons Only five regular polyhedra are possible—each one created either from identical equilateral triangles, squares, or regular pentagons, as Euclid explained in Book XIII of his Elements. To create a Platonic solid, a minimum of three identical polygons must meet at a vertex, so the simplest is a tetrahedron— a pyramid made up of four equilateral triangles. Octahedra and icosahedra are also formed with equilateral triangles, while cubes are created from squares, and dodecahedra are constructed with regular pentagons. Platonic solids also display duality: the vertices of one polyhedron correspond to the faces of another. For example, a cube, which has six faces and eight vertices, and an octahedron (eight faces and six vertices) form a dual pair. A dodecahedron (12 faces and 20 vertices), and an icosahedron (20 faces and 12 vertices) form another dual pair. Tetrahedra, which have four faces and four vertices, are said to be self-dual. Shapes in the Universe? 69 Like Plato, later scholars sought Platonic solids in nature and the Universe. In 1596, Johannes Kepler reasoned that the positions of the six planets then known (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) could be explained in terms of the Platonic solids. Kepler later acknowledged he was wrong, but his calculations led him to discover that planets have elliptical orbits. In 1735, Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler noted a further property of Platonic solids, later shown to be true for all polyhedra. The sum of the vertices (V) minus the number of edges (E) plus the number of faces (F) always equals 2, that is, V ˗ E + F = 2. It is also now known that Platonic solids are indeed found in nature—in certain crystals, viruses, gases, and the clustering of galaxies. PLATO Born around 428 BCE to wealthy Athenian parents, Plato was a student of Socrates, who was also a family friend. Socrates’ execution in 399 BCE deeply affected Plato and he left Greece to travel. During this period his discovery of the work of Pythagoras inspired a love of mathematics. Returning to Athens, in 387 BCE he founded the Academy, inscribing over its entrance the words “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.” Teaching mathematics as a branch of philosophy, Plato emphasized the importance of geometry, believing that its forms—especially the five regular convex polyhedra—could explain the properties of the Universe. Plato found perfection in mathematical objects, believing they were the key to understanding the differences between the real and the abstract. He died in Athens around 348 BCE. Key works c. 375 BCE The Republic c. 360 BCE Philebus c. 360 BCE Timaeus See also: Pythagoras • Euclid’s Elements • Conic sections • Trigonometry • Non- Euclidean geometries • Topology • The Penrose tile 70 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Aristotle (384–322 BCE) FIELD Logic BEFORE 6th century BCE Pythagoras and his followers develop a systematic method of proof for geometric theorems. AFTER c. 300 BCE Euclid’s Elements describes geometry in terms of logical deduction from axioms. 1677 Gottfried Leibniz suggests a form of symbolic notation for logic, anticipating the development of mathematical logic. 1854 George Boole publishes The Laws of Thought, his second book on algebraic logic. 1884 The Foundations of Arithmetic by German mathematician Gottlob Frege examines the logical principles underpinning mathematics. 71 In the Square of Opposition, S is a subject, such as “sugar,” and P a predicate, such as “sweet.” A and O are contradictory, as are E and I (if one is true, the other is false, and vice versa). A and E are contrary (both cannot be true but both can be false); I and O are subcontrary: both can be true but both cannot be false. I is a subaltern of A and O is a subaltern of E. In syllogistic logic, this means that if A is true, I must be true, but that if I is false, A must be false as well. In Classical Greece, there was no clear distinction between mathematics and philosophy; the two were considered interdependent. For philosophers, one important principle was the formulation of cogent arguments that followed a logical progression of ideas. The principle was based on Socrates’ dialectal method of questioning assumptions to expose inconsistencies and contradictions. Aristotle, however, did not find this model entirely satisfactory, so he set about determining a systematic structure for logical argument. First, he identified the different kinds of proposition that can be used in logical arguments, and how they can be combined to reach a logical conclusion. In Prior Analytics, he describes the propositions as being of broadly four types, in the form of “all S are P,” “no S are P,” “some S are P,” and “some S are not P,” where S is a subject, such as sugar, and P the predicate—a quality, such as sweet. From just two such propositions an argument can be constructed and a conclusion deduced. This is, in essence, the logical form known as the syllogism: two premises leading to a conclusion. Aristotle identified the structure of syllogisms that are logically valid, those where the conclusion follows from the premises, and those that are not, where the conclusion does not follow from the premises, providing a method for both constructing and analyzing logical arguments. 72 Seeking a rigorous proof Implicit in his discussion of valid syllogistic logic is the process of deduction, working from a general rule in the major premise, such as “All men are mortal,” and a particular case in the minor premise, such as “Aristotle is a man,” to reach a conclusion that necessarily follows—in this case, “Aristotle is mortal.” This form of deductive reasoning is the foundation of mathematical proofs. Aristotle notes in Posterior Analytics that, even in a valid syllogistic argument, a conclusion cannot be true unless it is based on premises accepted as true, such as self-evident truths or axioms. With this idea, he established the principle of axiomatic truths as the basis for a logical progression of ideas—the model for mathematical theorems from Euclid onward. ARISTOTLE The son of a physician at the Macedonian court, Aristotle was born in 384 BCE, in Stagira, Chalkidiki. At the age of about 17, he left to study at Plato’s Academy in Athens, where he excelled. Soon after Plato’s death, anti- Macedonian prejudice forced him to leave Athens. He continued his academic 73 work in Assos (now in Turkey). In 343 BCE, Philip II recalled him to Macedonia to head the school at the court; one of his students was Philip’s son, later known as Alexander the Great. In 335 BCE, Aristotle returned to Athens and founded the Lyceum, a rival institution to the Academy. In 323 BCE, after Alexander’s death, Athens again became fiercely anti-Macedonian, and Aristotle retired to his family estate in Chalcis, on Euboea. He died there in 322 BCE. Key works c. 350 BCE Prior Analytics c. 350 BCE Posterior Analytics c. 350 BCE On Interpretation 335–323 BCE Nichomachean Ethics 335–323 BCE Politics See also: Pythagoras • Zeno’s paradoxes of motion • Euclid’s Elements • Boolean algebra • The logic of mathematics 74 IN CONTEXT KEY FIGURE Euclid (c. 300 BCE) FIELD Geometry BEFORE c. 600 BCE The Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer Thales of Miletus deduces that the angle inscribed inside a semicircle is a right angle. This becomes Proposition 31 of Euclid’s Elements. c. 440 BCE The Greek mathematician Hippocrates of Chios writes the first systematically organized geometry textbook, Elements. AFTER c. 1820 Mathematicians such as Carl Friedrich Gauss, János Bolyai, and Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky begin to move toward hyperbolic non-Euclidean geometry. Euclid’s Elements has a strong claim for being the most influential mathematical work of all time. It dominated human conceptions of space and number for more than 2,000 years and was the standard geometrical textbook until the start of the 1900s. Euclid lived in Alexandria, Egypt, in around 300 BCE, when the city was part of the culturally rich Greek-speaking Hellenistic world that flourished around the Mediterranean Sea. He would have written on papyrus, which is not very durable; 75 all that remains of his work are the copies, translations, and commentaries made by later scholars. There is no royal road to geometry. Euclid Collection of works The Elements is a collection of 13 books that range widely in subject matter. Books I to IV tackle plane geometry—the study of flat surfaces. Book V addresses the idea of ratio and proportion, inspired by the thinking of the Greek mathematician and astronomer Eudoxus of Cnidus. Book VI contains more advanced plane geometry. Books VII to IX are devoted to number theory and discuss the properties and relationships of numbers. The long and difficult Book X deals with incommensurables. Now known as irrational numbers, these numbers cannot be expressed as a ratio of integers. Books XI to XIII examine three-dimensional solid geometry. Book XIII of the Elements is actually attributed to another author—Athenian mathematician and disciple of Plato, Theaetetus, who died in 369 BCE. It covers the five regular convex solids—the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron, which are often called the Platonic solids—and is the first recorded example of a classification theorem (one that itemizes all possible figures given certain limitations). Euclid is known to have written an account of conic sections, but this work has not survived. Conic sections are figures formed from the intersection of a plane and a cone and they may be circular, elliptical, or parabolic in shape. EUCLID Details of Euclid’s date and place of birth are unknown and knowledge of his life is scant. It is thought that he studied at the Academy in Athens, which had been founded by Plato. In the 5th century CE, the Greek philosopher Proclus wrote in his history of mathematicians that Euclid taught at Alexandria during the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (323–285 BCE). 76 Euclid’s work covers two areas: elementary geometry and general mathematics. In addition to the Elements, he wrote about perspective, conic sections, spherical geometry, mathematical astronomy, number theory, and the importance of mathematical rigor. Several of the works attributed to Euclid have been lost, but at least five have survived to the 21st century. It is thought that Euclid died between the mid-4th century and the mid-3rd century BCE. Key works Elements Conics Catoptrics Phaenomena Optics World of proof The title of Euclid’s work has a particular meaning that reflects his mathematical approach. In the 1900s, British mathematician John Fauvel maintained that the meaning of the Greek word for “element,” stoicheia, changed over time, from “a constituent of a line,” such as an olive tree in a line of trees, to “a proposition used to prove another,” and eventually evolved to mean “a starting point for many other theorems.” This is the sense in which Euclid used it. In the 5th century CE, the philosopher Proclus talked of an element as “a letter of an alphabet,” with 77 combinations of letters creating words in the same way that combinations of axioms—statements that are self-evidently true—create propositions. This opening page of Euclid’s Elements shows illuminated Latin text with diagrams and comes from the first printed edition, produced in Venice in 1482. Logical deductions Euclid was not writing in a vacuum; he built upon foundations laid by a number of influential Greek mathematicians who came before him. Thales of Miletus, Hippocrates, and Plato (among others) had all begun to move toward the mathematical mindset that Euclid so brilliantly formalized: the world of proof. It is this that makes Euclid unique; his writings are the earliest surviving example of fully axiomatized mathematics. He identified certain basic facts and progressed from there to statements that were sound logical deductions (propositions). Euclid also managed to assemble all the mathematical knowledge of his day, and organize it into a mathematical structure where the logical relationships between the various propositions were carefully explained. 78 Euclid faced a Herculean task when he attempted to systematize the mathematics that lay before him. In devising his axiomatic system, he began with 23 definitions for terms such as point, line, surface, circle, and diameter. He then put forward five postulates: any two points can be joined with a straight line segment; any straight line segment can be extended to infinity; given any straight line segment, a circle can be drawn having the segment as its radius and one endpoint as its center; all right angles are equal to one another; and a postulate about parallel lines (see Euclid’s five postulates). He then went on to add five axioms, or common notions; if A = B and B = C, then A = C; if A = B and C = D, A + C = B + D; if A = B and C = D, then A - C = B - D; if A coincides with B, then A and B are equal; and the whole of A is greater than part of A. To prove Proposition 1, Euclid drew a line with endpoints labeled A and B. Taking each endpoint as a center, he then drew two intersecting circles, so that each had the radius AB. This used his third postulate. Where the circles met, he called that point C, and he could draw two more lines AC and BC, calling on his first postulate. The radius of the two circles is the same, so AC = AB and BC = AB; this means that AC = BC, which is Euclid’s first axiom (things that are equal to the same thing are also equal to one another). It follows that AB = BC = CA, meaning that he had drawn an equilateral triangle on AB. In Latin translations of Elements, deductions end with the letters QEF (quod erat faciendum, meaning “which was to be [and has been] done.” Logical proofs end with QED (quod erat demonstrandum, meaning “which was to be [and has been] demonstrated”). The equilateral triangle construction is a good example of Euclid’s method. Each step has to be justified by reference to the definitions, the postulates, and the axioms. Nothing else can be taken as obvious, and intuition is regarded as potentially suspect. Euclid’s very first proposition was criticized by later writers. They noted, for instance, that Euclid did not justify or explain the existence of C, the point of intersection of the two circles. Although apparent, it is not mentioned in his preliminary assumptions. Postulate 5 talks about a point of intersection, but that is between two lines, and not two circles. Similarly, one of the definitions describes a triangle as a plane figure bounded by three lines, which all lie in that plane. 79 However, it seems that Euclid did not explicitly show that the lines AB, BC, and CA lie in the same plane. Postulate 5 is also known as the “parallel postulate” because it can be used to prove properties of parallel lines. It says that if a straight line crossing two straight lines (A, B) creates interior angles on one side that total less than two right angles (180°), lines A and B will eventually cross on that side, if extended indefinitely. Euclid did not use it until Proposition 29, in which he stated that one condition for a straight line crossing two parallel lines was that the interior angles on the same side were equal to two right angles. The fifth postulate is more elaborate than the other four, and Euclid himself seems to have been wary of it. A vital part of any axiomatic system is to have enough axioms, and postulates in the case of Euclid, to derive every true proposition, but to avoid superfluous axioms that can be derived from others. Some asked whether the parallel postulate could be proved as a proposition using Euclid’s common notions, definitions, and the other four postulates; if it could, the fifth was unnecessary. Euclid’s contemporaries and later scholars made unsuccessful attempts to construct such a proof. Finally, in the 1800s, the fifth postulate was ruled both necessary for Euclid’s geometry and independent of his other four postulates. 80 To construct an equilateral triangle, for Proposition 1, Euclid drew a line and centered a circle on its endpoints, here A and B. By drawing a line from each endpoint to C,	748,247
The Medicine Book Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED THE MATHS BOOK THE MEDICINE BOOK THE MOVIE BOOK THE MYTHOLOGY BOOK THE PHILOSOPHY BOOK THE PHYSICS BOOK THE POLITICS BOOK THE PSYCHOLOGY BOOK THE RELIGIONS BOOK THE SCIENCE BOOK THE SHAKESPEARE BOOK THE SHERLOCK HOLMES BOOK THE SOCIOLOGY BOOK THE ART BOOK THE ASTRONOMY BOOK THE BIBLE BOOK THE BUSINESS BOOK THE CLASSICAL MUSIC BOOK THE CRIME BOOK THE ECOLOGY BOOK THE ECONOMICS BOOK THE FEMINISM BOOK THE HISTORY BOOK THE ISLAM BOOK THE LAW BOOK THE LITERATURE BOOK MEDICINE THE BOOK DK LONDON SENIOR ART EDITOR Helen Spencer SENIOR EDITORS Camilla Hallinan, Kathryn Hennessy, Laura Sandford EDITORS Anna Cheifetz, Lydia Halliday, Joanna Micklem, Victoria Pyke, Dorothy Stannard, Rachel Warren Chadd ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT PRODUCTION EDITOR George Nimmo PRODUCER Nancy-Jane Maun SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR Lee Griffiths MANAGING EDITOR Gareth Jones ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler ART DIRECTOR Karen Self DESIGN DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf DK DELHI SENIOR ART EDITORS Ira Sharma, Vikas Sachdeva, Vinita Venugopal PROJECT ART EDITOR Sourabh Challariya ART EDITORS Shipra Jain, Noopur Dalal, Anukriti Arora ASSISTANT ART EDITORS Ankita Das, Bandana Paul, Adhithi Priya SENIOR EDITOR Janashree Singha EDITORS Nandini D. Tripathy, Rishi Bryan, Avanika MANAGING EDITOR Soma B. Chowdhury SENIOR MANAGING ART EDITOR Arunesh Talapatra SENIOR JACKET DESIGNER Suhita Dharamjit DTP DESIGNERS Ashok Kumar, Mrinmoy Mazumdar PICTURE RESEARCH COORDINATOR Sumita Khatwani ASSISTANT PICTURE RESEARCHER Sneha Murchavade PICTURE RESEARCH MANAGER Taiyaba Khatoon PRE-PRODUCTION MANAGER Balwant Singh PRODUCTION MANAGER Pankaj Sharma original styling by STUDIO 8 First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, One Embassy Gardens, 8 Viaduct Gardens, London, SW11 7BW Copyright © 2021 Dorling Kindersley Limited A Penguin Random House Company 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–322083–Mar/2021 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-0-2414-7125-8 Printed in China www.dk.com This book was made with Forest Stewardship Council ™ certified paper – one small step in DK’s commitment to a sustainable future. For more information go to www.dk.com/our-green-pledge BEN HUBBARD Ben Hubbard is an accomplished non-fiction author of books for children and adults. He has more than 120 titles to his name and has written on everything from space, the samurai, and sharks, to poison, pets, and the Plantagenets. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and can be found in libraries around the world. PHILIP PARKER Philip Parker is a critically acclaimed author, award-winning editor, and historian specializing in the classical and medieval world. He is author of the DK Companion Guide to World History, The Empire Stops Here: A Journey around the Frontiers of the Roman Empire, and A History of Britain in Maps, and he was a contributor to DK’s Medicine. He was previously a diplomat working on the UK’s relations with Greece and Cyprus and holds a diploma in international relations from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. ROBERT SNEDDEN Robert Snedden has been involved in publishing for over 40 years, researching and writing science and technology books for young people on topics ranging from medical ethics, autism, cell biology, nutrition, and the human body to space exploration, engineering, computers, and the internet. He has also contributed to histories of mathematics, engineering, biology, and evolution, and written books for an adult audience on breakthroughs in mathematics and medicine and the works of Albert Einstein. CONTRIBUTORS STEVE PARKER, CONSULTANT EDITOR Steve Parker is a writer and editor of more than 300 information books specializing in science, particularly biology and medicine, and allied life sciences. He holds a BSc in Zoology, is a senior scientific fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and has authored titles for a range of ages and publishers. Among Steve’s recent accolades is the British Medical Association’s Award for the Public Understanding of Science for Kill or Cure: An Illustrated History of Medicine. JOHN FARNDON John Farndon is a science writer, whose books have been shortlisted for the Royal Society’s Young People’s Science Book Prize five times, including for The Complete Book of the Brain and Project Body. A widely published author, he has written or contributed to around 1,000 books on a range of subjects, including the history of medicine, and has contributed to major books such as Science and Science Year By Year and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine website. TIM HARRIS Tim Harris is a widely published author on science and nature for both children and adults. He has written more than 100 mostly educational reference books and contributed to many others, including Knowledge Encyclopedia Human Body!, An Illustrated History of Engineering, Physics Matters, Great Scientists, Exploring the Solar System, and Routes of Science. 6 10 INTRODUCTION ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE PREHISTORY TO 1600 18 A shaman to combat disease and death Prehistoric medicine 20 A healer of one disease and no more Ancient Egyptian medicine 22 The balance of the doshas is freedom from disease Ayurvedic medicine 26 We rebuild what fortune has taken away Plastic surgery 28 First, do no harm Greek medicine 30 A body in balance Traditional Chinese medicine 76 Hope of a good, speedy deliverance Midwifery 78 The harvest of diseases reaped by workers Occupational medicine 80 The peculiar circumstances of the patient Case history 82 To restore the sick to health as speedily as possible Hospitals 84 Great and unknown virtue in this fruit Preventing scurvy 86 The bark of a tree is very efficacious Aspirin 88 Surgery has become a science Scientific surgery 36 Nature itself is the best physician Herbal medicine 38 To diagnose, one must observe and reason Roman medicine 44 Know the causes of sickness and health Islamic medicine 50 Learned, expert, ingenious, and able to adapt Medieval medical schools and surgery 52 The vampire of medicine Bloodletting and leeches 53 Wars have furthered the progress of the healing art Battlefield medicine 54 The art of prescribing lies in nature Pharmacy 60 Teach not from books but from dissections Anatomy THE SCIENTIFIC BODY 1600–1820 68 The blood is driven into a round Blood circulation 74 A disease known is half cured Nosology CONTENTS 7 154 Defence against intruders The immune system 162 A single mosquito bite is all it takes Malaria VACCINES, SERUMS, AND ANTIBIOTICS 1890 –1945 168 Solving the puzzle of cancer Cancer therapy 176 The darker shadow of the bones X-rays 177 Viruses are alpha predators Virology 178 Dreams are the royal road to the unconscious Psychoanalysis 90 The dangerously wounded must be tended first Triage 91 A peculiarity in my vision Colour vision deficiency 92 No longer feared, but understood Humane mental health care 94 Training the immune system Vaccination 102 Like cures like Homeopathy 103 To hear the beating of the heart The stethoscope CELLS AND MICROBES 1820 –1890 108 Let healthy blood leap into the sick man Blood transfusion and blood groups 112 Soothing, quieting, and delightful beyond measure Anaesthesia 118 Wash your hands Hygiene 120 Medicine needs men and women Women in medicine 122 All cells come from cells Histology 124 They mistook the smoke for the fire Epidemiology 128 A hospital should do the sick no harm Nursing and sanitation 134 Disturbances at the cellular level Cellular pathology 136 Make yourselves masters of anatomy Gray’s Anatomy 137 One must replace the scarring tissue Skin grafts 138 Life is at the mercy of these minute bodies Germ theory 146 A genetic misprint Inheritance and hereditary conditions 148 It is from particles that all the mischief arises Antiseptics in surgery 152 The field of vital phenomena Physiology 8 184 It must be a chemical reflex Hormones and endocrinology 188 The action currents of the heart Electrocardiography 190 Strings of flashing and travelling sparks The nervous system 196 A peculiar disease of the cerebral cortex Alzheimer’s disease 198 Magic bullets Targeted drug delivery 200 Unknown substances essential for life Vitamins and diet 204 An invisible, antagonistic microbe Bacteriophages and phage therapy 206 A weakened form of the germ Attenuated vaccines 210 To imitate the action of the pancreas Diabetes and its treatment 214 No woman is free who does not own her body Birth control 216 Marvellous mould that saves lives Antibiotics 224 New windows into the brain Electroencephalography 226 Silent disease can be found early Cancer screening GLOBAL HEALTH 1945 –1970 232 We defend everyone’s right to health The World Health Organization 234 The artificial kidney can save a life Dialysis 236 Nature’s dramatic antidote Steroids and cortisone 240 The quietening effect Lithium and bipolar disorder 241 A psychic penicillin Chlorpromazine and antipsychotics 242 Changing the way you think Behavioural and cognitive therapy 244 A new diagnostic dimension Ultrasound 245 All the cells had 47 chromosomes Chromosomes and Down syndrome 246 Death becomes life Transplant surgery 254 A promising but unruly molecule Interferon 255 A sensation for the patient Pacemakers 256 The centre of our immune response Lymphocytes and lymphatics 258 The power to decide Hormonal contraception 9 259 Asking for proof of safety The FDA and thalidomide 260 A return to function Orthopaedic surgery 266 Smoking kills Tobacco and lung cancer 268 Help to live until you die Palliative care GENES AND TECHNOLOGY 1970 ONWARDS 276 Randomize till it hurts Evidence-based medicine 278 Seeing inside the body MRI and medical scanning 282 Antibodies on demand Monoclonal antibodies 284 Nature could not, so we did In vitro fertilization 286 Victory over smallpox Global eradication of disease 288 Our fate lies in our genes Genetics and medicine 294 This is everybody’s problem HIV and autoimmune diseases 298 A revolution through the keyhole Minimally invasive surgery 299 The first glimpse of our own instruction book The Human Genome Project 300 Fixing a broken gene Gene therapy 301 The power of light Laser eye surgery 302 Hope for new therapies Stem cell research 304 Smaller is better Nanomedicine 305 The barriers of space and distance have collapsed Robotics and telesurgery 306 Public health enemy number one Pandemics 314 To reprogram a cell Regenerative medicine 315 This is my new face Face transplants 316 DIRECTORY 324 GLOSSARY 328 INDEX 335 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS 336 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION I llness and disease have always been with us, and the need to find ways to prevent and treat them can often be literally a matter of life and death. Over time, many new techniques have been tried, and a number of key discoveries, such as vaccines and antibiotics, have made a lasting impact, saved countless lives, or restored many people to health. Early practice In prehistoric times, people relied on traditional knowledge, healers, and even magic when they fell ill. More systematic approaches gradually evolved, with Ayurvedic healing emerging in ancient India around 3,000 BCE. It still has many adherents, as does the ancient Chinese system of medicine, which includes acupuncture. While these medical practices have endured, the ideas that led to today’s science- based medicine developed in ancient Greece. In the late 5th century BCE, the Greek physician Hippocrates insisted that illness has natural causes, and so might also have natural cures. This has been the guiding principle of medicine ever since. Hippocrates also founded a school of medicine where students undertook to act with a duty of care to patients. This ideal, enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath, continues to inform medical ethics and practice. The Greeks had few cures and, because dissecting bodies was taboo, knew little anatomy, but the Romans’ military campaigns helped physicians to develop new surgical skills. The celebrated Roman physician Claudius Galen greatly advanced anatomical knowledge by learning from animal dissections, and from gladiators’ wounds. Galen’s medical approach was detailed and thorough, and he wrote the first great manuals of medicine. However, his theories were based on the mistaken idea, originating in ancient Greece, that illnesses are caused by an imbalance between four body fluids called humours – blood, yellow bile, phlegm, and black bile. This idea persisted in Europe even into the 19th century. Scientific investigation When the Roman Empire fell, the teachings of Galen were kept alive in the Islamic world by a succession of scholar–physicians who developed new surgical skills and introduced many innovative medicines. Al-Razi pioneered chemical drug treatments and Ibn Sina wrote the definitive work The Canon of Medicine. In the later medieval period, medical ideas from Islam and Galen filtered back into Europe. Dedicated medical schools, based on Galenic and Islamic practices, were set up alongside universities in cities such as Salerno and Padua. Medicine was recognized for the first time as a legitimate subject of academic study, and the Renaissance that followed ushered in a new age of discovery based on inquiry and first-hand observations. In the mid-16th century, the detailed dissections conducted by Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius began to build an accurate picture of human anatomy. Physicians also started to learn about physiology – the science of how the body works. A major breakthrough was the demonstration by English physician INTRODUCTION 12 Cure sometimes, treat often, comfort always. Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 375 bce) William Harvey in 1628 that the heart is a pump that circulates blood around the body. Progress in treating disease was slow. In the 16th century, the Swiss physician and alchemist Paracelsus pioneered the idea of the body as a chemical system that could be treated with chemical cures. While his use of mercury for syphilis was a standard treatment for nearly 400 years, it took until the 20th century for his chemical approach to be applied in modern drug therapies. Tackling disease The fight against disease received a major boost in 1796 when British physician Edward Jenner developed a vaccination for smallpox. In 1881, French chemist Louis Pasteur showed that vaccination could work for other diseases too, and the search for vaccines is now a major area of medical research. Pasteur, with German physician Robert Koch, also led the way to an understanding of what disease is. They ended belief in the humours by proving germ theory – the idea that infectious diseases are caused by microscopic organisms such as bacteria. Their discovery generated a new field of research, as scientists hunted for the germ responsible for each disease. Koch’s isolation of the bacteria that causes tuberculosis inspired Russian scientist Élie Metchnikoff to identify cells in the body that fight against germs. The gradual revelation of the body’s intricate immune system over the last century has been one of medicine’s most remarkable stories. In the early 20th century, new approaches in microbiology and chemistry transformed ideas about how to treat disease. Identifying tiny immune particles in the body called antibodies, German scientist Paul Ehrlich developed the idea of targeted drugs, which hit germs but leave the body unharmed. His success in developing Salvarsan, the first effective drug for syphilis, in 1910 marked the beginning of a global pharmaceutical industry. Modern medicine Scottish bacteriologist Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1928 marked a new era of medicine. For the first time, physicians had an effective treatment for a range of previously life-threatening diseases. Antibiotics also facilitated one of the miracles of modern surgery, organ transplants, which had often failed as a result of infection. Since the 1950s, advances such as the deciphering of genetic code have shed new light on how diseases develop, and fuelled new methods to fight them. The field of biomedical engineering has also produced solutions in all areas of healthcare, from noninvasive imaging to robotic surgery and implantable medical devices such as pacemakers and replacement joints. Whether a flash of individual insight or the result of several years of research and testing by large teams of people, new ideas in medicine have saved millions from suffering and death. Yet the innovations of medical science are also tempered by more caution and regulation than many other disciplines – after all, human lives are at stake. ■ INTRODUCTION 13 Advances in medicine and agriculture have saved vastly more lives than have been lost in all the wars in history. Carl Sagan American scientist (1934–96) A N CIEN T A ND ME D ME DI CIN PREHISTORY TO IE VAL E 1600 16 INTRODUCTION P rehistoric evidence such as skeletons, tools, and rock art indicate that humans were practising medicine more than 40,000 years ago. Early humans were aware that certain minerals, herbs, and parts of animals had health-giving properties. People who possessed such knowledge were sought-after specialists, whose ability to heal was often associated with myths, magic, and the worship of supernatural powers. Many regions – North and South America, Africa, and large parts of Asia and Australasia – cultivated spiritual practices in which individuals believed to have access to supernatural beings entered a trance-like state in order to contact and even join with those spirits. Practitioners channelled the healing powers of the spirits or bargained with them for the relief of illness and disease. Such practices still exist in some Indigenous societies. Medical systems Each of the ancient civilizations developed medical practices, many of them linked to religious rituals. In Egypt, in the 4th millennium BCE, serious disease was regarded as the work of the gods – probably as a punishment for a misdemeanour in the current or past life. Temple priests administered herbal medications, carried out healing rituals, and placated the gods with offerings. By the 2nd millennium BCE, there were Egyptian doctors who specialized in disorders of the eyes, digestion, joints, and teeth, and in surgery that was informed by many centuries of experience in mummification and embalming. In India, Ayurvedic medicine developed from around 800 BCE. Still practised by some physicians today, its central premise is that illness is caused by an imbalance between the body’s three elemental doshas: vata (wind), pitta (bile), and kapha (phlegm). The task of the vaidya, the Ayurvedic physician, is to detect imbalances and correct them using herbal and mineral remedies, bloodletting, laxatives, enemas, emetics, and massage. Ancient China developed a theory of health based on balance within the body between the oppositions of yin and yang, the five elements of fire, water, earth, wood, and metal, and the life-sustaining energy of qi flowing along the body’s many meridians (channels). Chinese medicine included some remedies that were common to other ancient 6TH MILLENNIUM BCE 27TH CENTURY BCE C. 440 BCE C. 300 BCE C. 17TH CENTURY BCE C. 500 BCE C. 70 CE Hippocrates, a physician in ancient Greece, embarks on his medical career. He and his followers develop an ethical code for doctors, later known as the Hippocratic Oath. In ancient Egypt, the architect, high priest, vizier, and physician Imhotep rises to fame. Centuries later, he is deified as the god-on-Earth of medical practices. Egypt’s Edwin Smith papyrus, one of the earliest surviving medical documents, describes 48 cases of trauma to the body. In India, the physician Sushruta begins compiling the Sushruta Samhita, a compendium of Ayurvedic surgical methods that include reconstructive procedures. Human skulls found in Europe have holes chipped or drilled into them, a practice called trepanning, possibly to treat pain or let out “evil spirits”. Roman soldier–physician Pedanius Dioscorides compiles his De Materia Medica (On Medicinal Substances), listing hundreds of herbal, and other, medications. In China, the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine) sets out the principles and methods of traditional Chinese medicine. 17 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE civilizations, such as herbs, diets, and massage, but it also developed its own practices. It placed great emphasis on the pulse for diagnosis, and on acupuncture – the insertion of needles along the meridians – to correct imbalances in the body. New insights Medicine flourished in ancient Greece in the 1st millennium BCE. Its many celebrated physicians included Hippocrates of Cos, whose caring attitude towards patients and rational approach to diagnosis and treatment still influence medicine today. The Romans made strides in many areas of medicine, especially surgery. They too believed that good health depended on balance – in this case, four bodily fluids, or humours: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. In the 2nd century CE, physician Claudius Galen became hugely respected, especially for anatomy, and physicians consulted his works until well into the 16th century. As the Roman Empire declined and eventually fell in 476 CE, Europe entered a period of fragmentation. Much medical knowledge was lost, and for most of the medieval era (c. 500–1400), medical care was the preserve of monasteries. However, with the spread of Islam, the Arabic world made significant advances in many areas of science, including medicine. During Islam’s Golden Age (c. 750–1258), scholars at the Abbasid court in Baghdad translated and studied the medical texts of the ancient world, and physicians such as al-Razi and Ibn Sina added influential works of their own, which were later translated into Latin by scholars in Europe. In the 14th century, the European Renaissance (“rebirth”) arose in Italy, inspired by the rediscovery of Greco–Roman culture and learning. It spread across Europe, with an explosion of new ideas in the arts, education, politics, religion, science, and medicine. Scientists and physicians now turned to first-hand observation, experimentation, and rational analysis rather than relying solely on the pronouncements of ancient texts such as Galen’s. Two towering figures of the period were the Swiss physician Paracelsus, who founded pharmacology, and Flemish anatomist Andreas Vesalius, whose masterwork De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body) transformed the medical profession’s understanding of the human body. ■ 162 CE 9TH–11TH CENTURY 1180 1363 1543 1347 1530S Medicine develops in the Islamic world, led by the physician al-Razi in Baghdad and later by Ibn Sina in Persia. In Italy, Rogerius, a teacher at the Schola Medica Salernitana, Europe’s first medical school, writes Practica Chirurgiae (Practice of Surgery). French physician and surgeon Guy de Chauliac completes his influential treatise Chirurgia Magna (Great Surgery). Andreas Vesalius revolutionizes medicine with his book De Humani Corporis Fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body). Physician Claudius Galen moves to Rome and champions the theory of four humours and the importance of first-hand observation, experiment, and anatomical knowledge. The Black Death reaches Genoa, Italy. Ending in 1353, it kills up to 200 million people in Asia, Europe, and North Africa. Paracelsus prepares and uses chemical remedies to treat disease, founding pharmacology – the science of drugs. Islamic physician Ibn al-Nafis rightly asserts that there are no pores between the ventricles of the heart and discovers pulmonary circulation. 1242 18 A SHAMAN TO COMBAT DISEASE AND DEATH PREHISTORIC MEDICINE E arly humans faced with injuries and disease began to self-medicate with herbs and clays, a behaviour similar to that of chimpanzees or apes. They also turned to the supernatural to explain misfortune, blaming injuries and ill health on the operation of malevolent spirits. Magical healing Around 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, a new f igure emerged in the prehistoric world. Part healer and part magician, this shape-shifter was believed to be able to access and even enter the spirit world to inf luence the forces there, and bring peace and healing to the suffering and sick. Prehistoric rock art in Africa and cave paintings in Europe are thought to represent ancient ritual practices, including the healer’s transformation into a creature form. The burial of what may be a female spiritual healer at Hilazon Tachtit in Israel, from around 11,000 bce, contains the wings of a golden eagle, a leopard pelvis, and a severed human foot – artefacts believed to suggest the healer’s ability to IN CONTEXT BEFORE 47000 bce Evidence from the teeth of Neanderthal skeletons found at El Sidrón, a cave in northern Spain, suggests the early use of medicinal plants. AFTER 7000–5000 bce Cave art in Tassili n’Ajjer, Algeria, depicts shaman-like f igures carrying or covered in Psilocybe mairei mushrooms, known for their psychedelic effects. c. 3300 bce Studies of the body of Ötzi the Iceman, found in the Ötztal Alps on the Austrian- Italian border in 1991, indicate that he took medicinal herbs. c. 1000 ce Spiritual healers in southwest Bolivia use psychoactive drugs, including cocaine; chemical traces of the drugs were found in Lípez Altiplano in 2010. 2000 Chuonnasuan, one of the last practising shamans in Siberia, dies. People suffer, and blame evil spirits for their misfortune. Their magical healers can communicate with spirits. The healers persuade evil spirits to leave the body, restoring health. When disorders are fatal, the healers transport the soul out of the body. 19 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE The Bird Man from the Lascaux caves in France, created c. 15000 bce, may depict a shaman. His head, four-f ingered hands, and the bird beside him suggest he can take an avian form. See also: Ancient Egyptian medicine 20–21 ■ Ayurvedic medicine 22–25 ■ Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Traditional Chinese medicine 30–35 ■ Herbal medicine 36–37 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 transform and transcend the normal human state. Such spiritual healers may well have developed practical healing skills, too, as archaeologists have found ample evidence not only of the use of medicinal plants, but also of surgical procedures such as trepanning and attempts to reset broken bones. Meeting a need Belief in supernatural healing gave way to other spiritual and medical practices, but never died out. In the 17th century, European travellers rediscovered the Siberian spiritual healers called “shamans” – from the word šaman (“one who knows”) in their Tungusic language – and the term shamanism was often applied to spiritual practices elsewhere. In Siberia, a dwindling number of shamans still use hallucinogens, drumming, and chants to promote a trance state in which they receive a vision of the spirit world. The most powerful healers are thought to project themselves (often guided by a spirit animal) into the other world to persuade the evil spirit causing the disease to release the sick person and restore their health. Where healing is not possible, a shaman conducts a similar ritual to lead the soul of the dying person safely into the afterlife. Today, varying forms of spiritual healing continue in East Asia, Africa, and among Indigenous peoples in Australia, the Arctic, and the Americas. For millennia, these beliefs have answered a primal need to explain why disease occurs and why – where the spirits prove too strong or intractable – it cannot be cured. If less widespread as populations of Indigenous people decline, the beliefs still live on. ■ Prehistoric trepanning Archaeologists have unearthed thousands of skulls with a small hole drilled or sawn into them – a practice called trepanning dating from around 8000 bce. Probably performed by community healers, trepanning was possibly a ritual to drive out evil spirits; the bone removed was sometimes worn as an amulet. As these skulls often show signs of earlier injuries or disease, it also seems likely that healers used the procedure to repair injuries, relieve head pain, and treat neurological diseases. One of the earliest examples, a 7,000-year-old skull of a man unearthed at Ensisheim in France in the 1990s, had been trepanned twice. Here and elsewhere, new bone growth shows that trepanned patients often survived for some years. Healers and physicians practised trepanning in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, China, and South America. Later, in Europe and the US, surgeons used it to treat concussion, brain inf lammation, and to clean head wounds (as in the American Civil War). An 11th-century skull discovered below the Market Square in Krakow, Poland, indicates the therapeutic use of trepanning in the medieval era. 20 A HEALER OF ONE DISEASE AND NO MORE ANCIENT EGYPTIAN MEDICINE T he prevailing view in the earliest societies was that disease was caused by supernatural influence. As a result, in many cultures healing was the domain of shamans or priests. In ancient Mesopotamia, a person afflicted by venereal disease was said to be struck “by the hand of Lilith”, a storm demon, while the first Egyptian doctors were based in areas of temples known as Per- Ankh, or houses of healing. In ancient Egypt, the first physician whose name survives was Imhotep, vizier to the pharaoh Djoser in the 27th century bce. Little is known of his medical views, yet he is believed to have been a skilful practitioner, and was later deified as a god of medicine. Egyptian specialization Imhotep started a tradition of medicine that implemented practical measures to preserve patients’ lives, and marked the divergence between priests and doctors. In the 5th century bce, the Greek historian Surgical instruments on a wall carving in the Kom Ombo Temple near Aswan show the significance of surgery in ancient Egyptian culture. IN CONTEXT BEFORE c. 3500 bce Trepanning (drilling or sawing holes in the skull) is used to relieve cranial pressure in Egypt. c. 2700 bce Egyptians begin the mummification of royal corpses, giving the embalmers knowledge of internal organs. AFTER c. 2600 bce Death of the first known dentist, Hesy-Re, revered as “chief of the ivory cutters”. c. 17th century bce The Edwin Smith papyrus (named after the dealer who bought it in 1862) shows a knowledge of surgery to treat wounds, fractures, and other trauma. c. 440 bce Herodotus notes the high level of specialization among Egyptian doctors. 1805 ce The Moorfields Eye Hospital, one of the first modern specialist hospitals, opens in London, UK. 21 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE See also: Prehistoric medicine 18–19 ■ Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Hospitals 82–83 ■ Orthopaedic surgery 260–65 Herodotus wrote that Egyptian medicine was notable for the existence of specialist practitioners in various disciplines, such as dentistry, the stomach, and “hidden diseases”. Egyptian documents of the time support Herodotus’s view, and the tomb of Hesy-Re (an Egyptian official and contemporary of Imhotep) reveals his title “chief of dentists”. Further records mention swnw (who practised general medicine), others who specialized in eye or intestinal disorders, and female physicians, such as Merit- Ptah, who lived around 2700 bce, as well as midwives and surgeons. Egyptian surgery Surgery was among the most developed specialisms in Egypt, at least for external operations (operating on internal organs invariably risked fatal infections). The oldest surviving Egyptian surgical text, the Edwin Smith papyrus written c. 17th century bce, describes trauma surgery, detailing 48 case studies with instructions given for fractures, wounds, and dislocations. The practical approach suggests that it was composed for use by a military doctor, unlike documents such as the Ebers papyrus (c. 1550 bce), which proposes folk remedies and healing magic for the treatment of infectious diseases. Although they were considered specialists, Egyptian physicians’ understanding of internal anatomy was rudimentary. They appreciated that the heart played a central role in the healthy workings of the body, but believed that veins, arteries, and nerves operated as part of 46 “channels” allowing energy to pass through the body. However, it was their innovative specializing in medical fields that had the most lasting impact, passing from Egyptian to Roman physicians and later into Arabic and medieval European medicine. This differentiation accelerated during the 19th century with the founding of many specialist hospitals, such as London’s Moorfields Eye Hospital in 1805 – by the 1860s, London had more than 60 specialist centres. ■ This becomes the first known example of specialization within medicine. The Egyptian concept of medical specialization is the foundation of the specialisms recognized in modern medicine today. Physicians in ancient Egypt begin to diversify and treat specific ailments and body parts. Imhotep Much biographical information about Imhotep dates from more than 1,000 years after his death, and few details are known for certain. His name appears on a statue of the Old Kingdom pharaoh Djoser, held in the Cairo Museum. Born in the 27th century bce, he was a commoner who rose in the service of Djoser and became his vizier (chancellor). He was believed to have been the architect of the step-pyramid at Saqqara, a style of tomb that prefigured the pyramids built at Giza a century later. He was also the high priest of Ra at Heliopolis. Imhotep’s reputation as a physician has led to attempts to identify him as either the author of the Edwin Smith papyrus or as the source of the surgical techniques it contains. However, there is no direct evidence to support this, and he was not associated with medicine until the 4th century bce. After his death, Imhotep was revered as a god of medicine and as the son of Sekhmet, a healing goddess. He was sometimes associated with Asclepios, the Greek god of medicine, and also became identified with Thoth, the god of architecture and wisdom. 22 THE BALANCE OF THE DOSHAS IS FREEDOM FROM DISEASE AYURVEDIC MEDICINE A preventive and curative medical system infused with a strong philosophy emerged in India between 800 and 600 bce. Called Ayurveda from the Sanskrit words for life (ayur) and knowledge (veda), it was based on the theory that disease is caused by an imbalance in the elements that make up the human body. Interventions and therapies aimed to restore and maintain the body’s equilibrium, and were adapted to patients’ personal physical, mental, and spiritual requirements. The roots of Ayurveda lie in the Atharvaveda, one of four sacred texts – the Vedas – which enshrine IN CONTEXT BEFORE c. 3000 bce In legend, the rishis (seers) of India are gifted Ayurveda by Dhanvantari, the physician of the gods. c. 1000 bce The Atharvaveda is the f irst major Indian text to contain medical guidance. AFTER 13th century ce The Dhanvantari Nighantu, a comprehensive lexicon of herbal and mineral Ayurvedic remedies, is compiled. 1971 The Central Council of Indian Medicine is established to oversee training at recognized institutions and to develop good practice. 1980s Ayurvedic practitioners Dr Vasant Lad and Dr Robert Svoboda and American Vedic scholar David Frawley spread the teachings of Ayurveda throughout the US. 23 the core beliefs of the civilization that emerged in India in the second millennium bce. Providing formulae and rituals for everyday living, the Atharvaveda contains a number of magico-religious prescriptions for treating disease, such as the exorcism of evil spirits, but also features less mystical cures, such as the use of herbal remedies. Two later treatises, the Sushruta Samhita and the Charaka Samhita, further developed the key tenets of Ayurvedic medical theory and practice. The Sushruta Samhita – attributed to the physician Sushruta, who practised around 500 bce in Varanasi, northern India – is a compendium of shalya chikitsa or Ayurvedic surgical methods. It includes guidance on such complex procedures as cataract removal, hernia repair, and setting broken bones, alongside hundreds of herbal remedies. The Charaka Samhita, compiled around 300 bce and attributed to Charaka, a court physician, takes a more theoretical approach. Dealing with kaya chikitsa or “internal medicine”, it focuses on the origins of disease. In the 5th century ce, the body of Ayurvedic knowledge was increased by the creation of three more scholarly works: the Ashtanga Sangraha and the Ashtanga ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE The treatment restores balance in the doshas, curing the disorder. An imbalance in the body causes a disorder. After diagnosing the disorder, the vaidya prescribes an Ayurvedic treatment tailored to the patient, such as internal purif ication or a herbal remedy. The vaidya identif ies the imbalance in the body’s three doshas – vata (wind), pitta (bile), and kapha (phlegm) – that govern different physiological activities. To make a diagnosis, the vaidya (practitioner) observes, examines, and questions the patient. According to Hindu tradition, Ayurveda was communicated to Dhanvantari by the creator god Brahma. In India, Dhanvantari’s birthday is celebrated as National Ayurveda Day. Hridayam, both written by Vagbhata, a disciple of Charaka, and the Bower manuscript, named after Hamilton Bower, the British off icer who acquired it in 1890. Together, all six texts constitute the Ayurvedic medical tradition that has f lourished for centuries in Asia and more recently in the West. The elements and doshas At the heart of Ayurvedic medicine is the notion of harmony and balance between all components of the human body. It is the primary role of the vaidya, or Ayurvedic physician, to diagnose and correct any imbalances. The body (like the material world) is said to be made up of f ive elements: akash (space), vayu (air), jala (water), prithvi (earth), and teja (f ire). In the body, certain combinations of these elements manifest themselves as three doshas (roughly analogous ❯❯ See also: Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Traditional Chinese medicine 30–35 ■ Herbal medicine 36–37 ■ Roman medicine 38–43 ■ Islamic medicine 44–49 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 24 to the humours of the ancient Greek and Roman medical traditions). These tridosha are vata (wind), pitta (bile), and kapha (phlegm). A state of good health and wellbeing occurs when all three doshas are well balanced, but the ideal proportions may vary from person to person. Disease and damaging metabolic conditions occur when the doshas are not in balance. An excess of vata, for example, can cause problems such as indigestion and f latulence, while a surfeit of kapha may bring on lung disorders or breathing problems. In Ayurvedic medicine, the body is viewed as a dynamic system rather than a static one, and the way energies f low through the body is as important as its anatomy. Each dosha is associated with a particular form of energy: vata with movement, governing the action of muscles, the f low of breath, and the heartbeat; pitta with the metabolic system, digestion, and nutrition; and kapha with the structure of the body, including the bones. The doshas f low from one part of the body to another along porous channels known as srotas. There are 16 main srotas, three of which bring nourishment into the body in the form of breath, food, and water; three allow for the elimination of metabolic waste products; two carry breast milk and menses; one is the conduit for thought; and seven link directly with the body’s AYURVEDIC MEDICINE tissues – the dhatus. The dhatus are rasa (f luids including plasma and lymph), rakta (blood), mamsa (muscle), meda (fat), asthi (bones), majja (marrow and nerve tissue), and shukra (reproductive tissue). The internal balance of the body is also controlled by agni (“biological f ire”), the energy that fuels the body’s metabolic processes. The most important aspect of agni is jatharagni, or “digestive f ire”, which ensures the elimination of waste products. If this is too low, urine, faeces, and sweat will build up, causing issues such as urinary tract infections. Diagnosis and treatment Practitioners of Ayurvedic medicine evaluate the signs of disease by directly observing and questioning the patient in order to devise an appropriate treatment. The main methods of physical diagnosis are measuring the pulse; analysing the urine and stools; inspecting the tongue; checking the voice and speech; examining the skin and eyes; and assessing the patient’s overall appearance. The physician may also examine the marma points on a patient’s body. These 108 points are where The seven dhatus, or body tissues, function sequentially. This means if one dhatu is affected by a disorder (caused by an imbalance in one of the three doshas – vata, pitta, or kapha), it will directly affect the nutritional support and function of the next dhatu. Rasa (f luids) Rakta (blood tissue) Mamsa (muscle tissue) Meda (fat) Asthi (bone tissue) Majja (bone marrow, nerve tissue) Shukra (reproductive tissue) When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need. Ancient Ayurvedic proverb Kapha Pitta Vata 25 Ayurvedic medicines are widely available across India in shops and pharmacies. Over 3,000 years, around 1,500 medicinal plants have become part of Ayurveda’s pharmacopoeia. body tissues (veins, muscles, joints, ligaments, tendons, and bones) intersect. They are also junctions between the physical body itself, consciousness, and the energy that f lows in the body. Following a diagnosis, Ayurvedic practitioners select from a number of therapies aimed at correcting imbalances between the doshas or other elements in the Ayurvedic physiological systems. Among these are panchakarma, a multistep purif ication process that employs steam treatment, massage therapy, virechana (the use of laxatives), vamana (induced vomiting), raktamokshana (bloodletting), basti (enemas), and nasya (a nasal treatment) to eliminate excess waste products. Also prescribed are herbal remedies, which act in a more direct way on the doshas. Of the numerous plant, animal, and mineral ingredients used in these, garlic is considered especially potent. It is used to treat a wide range of conditions, including colds, coughs, and digestive disorders, and as an emollient for sores, bites, and stings. Foodstuffs, including spices, play a major role in Ayurvedic practice by supporting the body’s healing processes. Vaidya may prescribe dietary changes as part of their holistic (whole-person) approach to restoring a balance between the body, mind, spirit, and the environment. Dietary regulation considers the patient’s physical and emotional makeup and their dominant dosha, and practitioners draw on six principal “tastes” as the basis for their recommended regimens: astringent, sour, sweet, salty, pungent, and bitter. ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE The 11th-century arrival of Islamic medicine (incorporating earlier Greco-Roman concepts) introduced a new approach, as did the founding of scientif ic medical schools and modern hospitals in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet Ayurvedic practitioners remained the primary healthcare providers in India. Today they cater for around 500 million patients in India alone, who use Ayurveda exclusively or along with conventional Western medicine. Safety concerns In the West, Ayurveda is used as a complementary therapy alongside conventional medical care. A few studies and trials have suggested that its approaches are effective, but there are concerns about the safety of Ayurvedic medicines. Sold largely as food supplements, the presence of metals in some makes them potentially harmful. A 2004 study found that 20 per cent of 70 Ayurvedic medicines produced by 27 South Asian manufacturers contained toxic levels of lead, mercury, and arsenic. They have also been shown to work against the effects of Western medicines, so their use should always be supervised by a trained Ayurvedic practitioner. ■ Other Indian medical traditions Ayurveda is not the only traditional Indian medical system. The practice of Siddha medicine (its name derives from the Tamil siddhi, which means “attaining perfection”) is particularly strong in South India. While also seeking to restore balance in the body, it espouses a duality of matter and energy in the Universe that needs to be kept in harmony. Siddha’s treatment system has three branches: Bala vahatam (paediatrics), Nanjunool (toxicology), and Nayan vidhi (ophthalmology). Unani medicine (from a Hindi word meaning “Greek”) is a descendant of ancient Greek and Islamic medical practices. It aims to keep the humours (blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile) in balance. Unani also places great value on the examination of the patient, but regards measurement of the pulse as particularly important. It is more important to prevent the occurrence of disease than to seek a cure. Charaka Samhita 26 WE REBUILD WHAT FORTUNE HAS TAKEN AWAY PLASTIC SURGERY F or most of human history, doctors could do little for patients who suffered disf iguring accidents, disease, or congenital conditions. Minor blemishes could be concealed with cosmetics, and prostheses were used to replace missing limbs, but those more severely affected suffered social ostracism. The medical culture that arose in India in the 1st millennium bce gave rise to techniques that offered hope to such patients. Ayurvedic surgery Early references to operations – alleged to have restored severed heads – feature in the Vedas, the ancient religious texts that form the basis of Hindu religion and philosophy. However, the f irst clear evidence of reconstructive surgery comes from the Sushruta Samhita, (Sushruta’s Compendium), written around 500 bce. Belonging to a tradition of Shalya, or Ayurvedic surgery, this Sanskrit text is believed to be the work of Sushruta, a physician from Varanasi, northern India. Sushruta’s medical approach was advanced for his time; he urged students to gain a knowledge of internal anatomy IN CONTEXT BEFORE c. 17th century bce The Egyptian Edwin Smith papyrus shows how to treat wounds to reduce scarring. c. 950 bce An artif icial wooden toe in an Egyptian tomb is the f irst known prosthesis. AFTER c. 40 ce In his De Medicina, Celsus refers to operations to repair damaged earlobes. 1460 Heinrich von Pfolspeundt describes an operation to rebuild a nose (rhinoplasty). 1814 The f irst rhinoplasty operation using Sushruta’s techniques is carried out in Western Europe. 1914–18 During World War I, New Zealand-born surgeon Harold Gillies specializes in performing facial repairs. 2008 French surgeon Laurent Lantieri claims to have carried out the first full face transplant. In accidents, torture, and times of war, countless individuals receive disf iguring injuries. A disf iguring injury can have damaging psychological effects. Innovative, compassionate surgeons devise new reconstructive procedures. Successful plastic surgery conceals or rebuilds damaged facial and other features. These procedures help heal physical and psychological wounds, boost confidence, and transform lives. 27 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE The Sushruta Samhita has strikingly modern ideas about surgical training, instruments, and procedures. This 12th- or 13th-century version was found in Nepal. See also: Ayurvedic medicine 22–25 ■ Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Battlef ield medicine 53 ■ Anatomy 60–63 ■ Gray’s Anatomy 136 ■ Skin grafts 137 ■ Face transplants 315 through dissecting dead bodies. His key innovation lies in his descriptions of reconstructive procedures, and he is often referred to as the “father of plastic surgery”. Among 300 surgical operations described in the Sushruta Samhita are instructions for nasa sandhan (rhinoplasty – rebuilding the nose) and ostha sandhan (otoplasty – reconstruction of the ear). Sushruta explains how a f lap of skin should be excised from the cheek and then turned backwards to cover the nose while still attached to the cheek – a technique later modif ied using skin from the forehead. At the time, the mutilation of the nose was a common punishment, so these operations were in great demand. Sushruta also recommended the use of wine as an anaesthetic for such painful operations. Spread of plastic surgery Indian plastic surgery remained more advanced than anything in Europe for more than two millennia. In the 1st century ce, the Roman physician Aulus Celsus outlined how otoplasty corrected earlobes damaged by heavy earrings. In the 15th century, German surgeon Heinrich von Pfolspeundt described how to reconstruct a nose “which is off entirely”. It was only when Europeans colonized India in the 17th and 18th centuries that they encountered sophisticated Indian rhinoplasty techniques. British surgeon Joseph Carpue was the first to adopt them, in 1814. Plastic surgery progressed swiftly in the West; by 1827, the f irst operation to correct a cleft palate had been carried out in the US. The demands of treating severe wounds during two World Wars led The surgeon should … treat the patient as his own son. Sushruta Sushruta Samhita, 6th century bce Plastic surgery and World War II New Zealand-born plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe became chief plastic surgery consultant to Britain’s Royal Air Force in 1938. When World War II broke out in 1939, he was called to treat aircrew with severe burns. Most burn treatments at the time used tannic jelly, resulting in severe contraction of the wound tissue as well as permanent scarring. McIndoe devised new techniques, including saline burn baths and f lap reconstruction to repair the faces and hands of injured airmen. McIndoe also understood the importance of post-operative rehabilitation, and he set up the Guinea Pig Club, a support network made up of more than 600 service personnel who had undergone operations at McIndoe’s burns unit at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead. to the development of skin grafts. Plastic surgery techniques to fix accidental and congenital defects became increasingly sophisticated during the 1900s. Cosmetic surgery also became widespread. The f irst facelift was performed in 1901, and by the end of the 1900s, a range of facial and body enhancements were available. Plastic surgeons performed more than 10 million aesthetic surgical procedures in 2018. The same year, a 64-year-old Canadian Maurice Desjardins, who had suffered a shot wound to the face, became the oldest person ever to have a full facial transplant. ■ 28 FIRST, DO NO HARM GREEK MEDICINE A ncient medical practice was largely rooted in the belief that disease was caused by malign spirits or inf licted as a punishment by the gods. Most attempts to heal an illness usually involved ritual and prayer rather than any real attempt at medicinal cure. Although drug recipes, using various plants, had been concocted by Egyptian and Sumerian healers, their eff icacy was questionable. An early attempt to regulate medical practice was set out by the Babylonian king Hammurabi around 1750 bce. His wide-ranging law code included a scale of fees that doctors could charge – such as ten shekels for excising a tumour from a nobleman. It also laid down harsh punishments for botched operations – a surgeon could lose his hands for causing the death of a patient. Yet Babylonian medicine IN CONTEXT BEFORE c. 1750 bce Hammurabi’s Code stipulates payments for physicians, and penalties for their failures. c. 500 bce Alcmaeon of Croton identif ies the brain as the seat of intelligence. AFTER 4th century bce The great philosoper Aristotle expands on the humours theory, but sees the heart as the seat of vitality, intellect, and feeling. c. 260 bce Herophilus of Alexandria establishes the science of anatomy, describing nerves, arteries, and veins. c. 70 bce Asclepiades of Bithynia states the body is composed of molecules, and disease occurs if their pattern is disrupted. c. 70 ce Dioscorides writes De Materia Medica, which remains the core text for plant-based medicine for 16 centuries. In ancient Greece, disease is widely considered to have a supernatural basis, and is seen as punishment from the gods. Hippocrates rejects superstition, emphasizes disease as a natural phenomenon, and seeks to f ind its causes. Hippocrates applies a rational approach to medicine, using powers of logic and observation to assess disease. This lays the foundation for a new, holistic style of medicine, with an emphasis on prognosis and treatment. 29 See also: Ancient Egyptian medicine 20–21 ■ Herbal medicine 36–37 ■ Roman medicine 38–43 ■ Pharmacy 54–59 ■ Anatomy 60–63 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE still employed exorcists to chase away disease-causing spirits, and it was not until the ancient Greeks began to try to explain the nature of the Universe in philosophical rather than divine terms that medical practice began to change. Philosophy and medicine Among the f irst to adopt a more rational approach to medicine was the philosopher–scientist Alcmaeon of Croton. In the 5th century bce, he identif ied the brain as the seat of intelligence, and also conducted scientif ic experiments, such as dissecting an eye to establish the structure of the optic nerve. He believed the body was governed by opposing inf luences (dry/hot or sweet/bitter) that must be balanced. Empedocles, another 5th-century Greek philosopher, believed that the human body was ruled by the four elements – earth, air, f ire, and water. These two theories were then synthesized by Hippocrates (c. 460 bce–c. 375 bce), the greatest physician in the ancient Greek world, in order to produce an all- encompassing theory of human physiology. He had founded a medical school on his native Cos, where he developed and taught the theory of the four humours (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile), whose equilibrium in the body was necessary for good health. Unlike rival medical schools such as the Cnidian school, he saw the body as a single system, not a collection of isolated parts, and insisted on observation of symptoms of disease to inform diagnosis and treatment. A rational approach The Hippocratic Corpus is a body of more than 60 works (including Epidemics and On Fractures and Joints) attributed to Hippocrates and his followers. Along with detailed case studies, it includes neatly def ined disease categories that are still used today, such as epidemic, chronic, and acute. Hippocrates promoted holistic treatment of his patients, with as much emphasis placed on diet, exercise, massage, and hygiene as on drugs. This professional approach was ref lected in his school’s later insistence that its students take an oath promising to avoid doing patients harm and to respect patient conf identiality. Hippocrates’ rationalism laid the foundations for later physicians such as Galen and Dioscorides to establish medicine as a respected and vitally important profession. Its key advances would stem from science rather than the shady practices and old superstitions of itinerant healers and exorcists. ■ Hippocrates, the founding father of Western medicine, is depicted with a copy of his works in this 14th-century portrait. Widely translated, his theories greatly inf luenced medieval learning. The Hippocratic Oath Traditionally attributed to Hippocrates and named after him, the oath required new physicians to swear to uphold a code of ethics. As a revered teacher and physician who had travelled widely, Hippocrates had great inf luence. The oath set a high standard of expertise and etiquette, and established medicine as a profession that ordinary people could trust. It separated physicians from other “healers” and included a promise not to poison patients, and to protect conf identiality. Hippocrates himself insisted that physicians be of a good appearance, as patients could not trust a doctor who did not look capable of taking care of himself. According to the oath, the physician must be calm, honest, and understanding. The oath became a basis for medical ethics in the Western world and many of its clauses are still relevant today, such as patient conf identiality and respect for patients. A medieval Greek copy of the Hippocratic Oath. The original was probably written by a follower of Hippocrates, c. 400 bce or later. A BODY IN BALANCE TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE 32 TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE T he foundational text of traditional Chinese medicine is the Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine). It was written around 300 bce, during the Warring States period before China was unified under a single emperor, but it includes earlier ideas, such as the diagnostic methods of legendary physician Bian Qiao, described in his Nanjing (Classic of Difficulties). The core principles of traditional Chinese medicine are far older. They are attributed to three mythical emperors. Emperor Fuxi created the bagua, eight symbols that represent the fundamental components of reality (Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Thunder, Mountain, and Lake). Each symbol is made up of three lines that are either broken (yin) or unbroken (yang). Shennong, the Red Emperor, discovered which plants had medicinal uses and which were toxic. Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, invented acupuncture and was taught by the gods how to mix magical healing powders and use the pulse for diagnosis. Whatever their origins, yin and yang (the universal concept on which Chinese medical philosophy is based), examination and diagnosis IN CONTEXT BEFORE 2697 bce As legend has it, Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, begins his reign and founds traditional Chinese medicine. 1700–1100 bce Oracle bones from the Shang dynasty describe diseases, wine as a medicine, and surgical knives and needles. c. 1600 bce Shang official Yi Yin invents decoction (boiling ingredients in water or spirits to create a purified, concentrated medicine). AFTER 113 ce Four gold and f ive silver acupuncture needles – the oldest known – are buried in the tomb of Prince Liu Sheng, which is rediscovered in 1968. 2nd century Hua Tuo pioneers an early anaesthetic, new surgical techniques, and exercises based on the movements of the tiger, deer, bear, ape, and crane. 1929 As Western influence increases, China’s ministry of health tries to ban acupuncture and other forms of traditional Chinese medicine. 1950s Chairman Mao Zedong promotes traditional Chinese medicine and establishes acupuncture research institutes across China. 2018 The World Health Organization (WHO) includes traditional Chinese medicine in its 11th International Classif ication of Diseases. An imbalance of the two complementary forces yin and yang, which inf luence the body’s organs, causes a disease or disorder. Prescribed treatments such as acupuncture, medicines, diet, or exercise restore balance. After assessing the symptoms, the physician uses eight principles to diagnose the cause of the imbalance. Each organ is aligned with one of the f ive elements, or phases – f ire, water, wood, metal, and earth. Six excesses associated with the elements provoke symptoms. For example, an excess of huo (f ire) causes a fever. 33 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE (the procedure for healing), and acupuncture and herbs (the means of healing), are the essence of traditional Chinese medicine, brought together in the Huangdi Neijing. Its text takes the form of discussions between the Yellow Emperor and his ministers. Huangdi asks questions about medical problems, and his advisers reply, setting out the core tenets of Chinese medical knowledge. The key principles The Huangdi Neijing describes the oppositions of yin and yang, the f ive elements (fire, water, wood, metal, and earth), and qi – the energy that flows along channels (meridians) of the body, sustaining life. The text also sets out diagnostic procedures, such as taking the pulse or looking at the patient’s tongue, as well as treatments, including acupuncture, the prescription of herbs, massage, diets, and physical exercise. The concept of balance between yin and yang is key; they are seen as opposed yet complementary forces that govern different aspects of the body and manifest their inf luences in different ways. Yin is cool, dark, passive, feminine, and most akin to water, while yang is hot, bright, active, and masculine, with a kinship to f ire. An imbalance between them causes disease. Each of the major internal organs is inf luenced either by yin or yang. The yin organs – the heart, spleen, lungs, kidney, liver, and pericardium (a thin sac around the heart) – are seen as solid, with functions that include regulating and storing key substances such as blood and qi. The yang organs – the small intestine, large intestine, gallbladder, stomach, and urinary bladder – are considered hollow; their function is to digest nutrients and eliminate waste. The f ive elements, interacting in a system termed wu-xing, each correspond to a yin and yang organ – fire to the heart/small intestine, water to the kidney/bladder, wood to the liver/gallbladder, metal to the lungs/large intestine, and earth to the spleen/stomach. Interactions between the elements create a dynamic, self-adjusting cycle of sheng (generating or nurturing), ke (controlling), cheng (overacting), and wu (rebelling). The vital force qi passes through the meridians, animating the organs. Taking in food and air replenishes qi. Without it, the body will die, and where it is def icient, the body will sicken. Diagnosing disease Traditional Chinese medicine aims to identify and correct imbalances in the body’s yin and yang, wu-xing, and qi. A def icit of yin, for example, might appear as insomnia, night sweats, or a rapid pulse, while a lack of yang could cause cold limbs, a pale tongue, or a sluggish pulse. At a basic level, eight diagnostic principles help identify the complex patterns of disharmony. The first two principles are yin and yang, which help define the six other principles – deficiency, cold, interior, excess, heat, and exterior. A physician can further diagnose the cause of external disorders according to six excesses (wind, ❯❯ See also: Ayurvedic medicine 22–25 ■ Roman medicine 38–43 ■ Islamic medicine 44–49 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 ■ Pharmacy 54–59 ■ Anaesthesia 112–17 ■ Vitamins and diet 200–03 Traditional Chinese medicine uses eight principles to define disorders during diagnosis. They are yin and yang, and the six principles they govern: the yin principles are def iciency, cold, and interior; the opposite yang principles are excess, heat, and exterior. Excess (such as acute pain or an aggressive pathogen) Def iciency (weak resistance or immunity) Heat (such as a fever or a headache) Cold (such as pallor, nausea, or slow pulse) Exterior (for instance, affecting the skin, hair, or meridians) Interior (problems of the blood or internal organs) Yang Yin If the authentic qi f lows easily … how could illness arise? Huangdi Neijing 34 TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE coldness, summer heat, dampness, dryness, and fire) that are allied to the elements. Internal problems are related to seven emotions (anger, happiness, thoughtfulness, sadness, fear, surprise, and anxiety). In the 4th century bce, Bian Qiao’s Nanjing set out four key stages of diagnosis: observing a patient (especially the face and tongue); listening to the voice and internal sounds (and smelling the breath and body odours); asking the patient about symptoms; and taking the pulse. In the late 3rd century ce, Wang Shuhe wrote the Maijing (Pulse Classic), explaining where the pulse should be taken on the wrist – at the cun (close to the hand), the guan (slightly higher on the arm), or the chi (furthest up the arm). Taking a reading on the right wrist, he advised, was best for measuring yin, and on the left for yang. To gauge the health of different organs, he recommended taking two pulse measurements – first by pressing lightly, then more heavily – at each pulse point. In traditional Chinese medicine, every diagnosis is tailored to the individual patient, as ref lected in the saying yin bing tong zhi; tong bin yi zhi, or “different diseases, the same treatment; the same disease, different treatments”. In other words, Chinese physicians prescribed many exercises to help restore the body’s balance. This image is part of a silk manuscript from the 2nd century bce, found in a tomb in south central China. people with different symptoms may require the same treatment, while treatments for those with similar symptoms may differ. A cure by needles The aim of acupuncture is to correct the body’s imbalances by inserting needles into the skin at key points to redirect the f low of qi along the body’s 12 principal meridians and a host of minor ones. These points may be at some distance from the area where the problem appears; to remedy pain Bian Qiao Born in the 5th century bce, Bian Qiao is the f irst Chinese physician of whom anything is known – largely thanks to a biography written some 300 years after his death by historian Sima Qian. The story goes that a mysterious figure gave the young Qiao a book of medical secrets and a bunch of herbs, and then disappeared. After taking the herbs in a solution for 30 days, Bian Qiao could see through the human body to diagnose disease. As Bian Qiao travelled across the country, treating disorders and performing surgery, his fame as a gifted healer grew. Among the many near-miraculous cures was that of Zhao Jianzi, chief minister of the kingdom of Jin, whom Ban Qiao revived by using acupuncture after he had fallen into a coma and was believed dead. In 310 ce, Bian Qiao was assassinated by a rival – Li Mi, a royal medical officer. Key works Nanjing (Classic of Difficulties) Bian Qiao Neijing (Bian Qiao’s Classic of Internal Medicine) The skipping pulse is a pulse coming and going with occasional interruption. Wang Shuhe 35 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE in the lower back, for instance, the acupuncture points are located on the hand. The first key text, listing 349 points, was the Systematic Classic of Acupuncture and Moxibustion, written around 260 ce by Huangfu Mi and revised around 630 ce by Zhen Quan. By 1030, there were 657 points, as set out by Wang Weiyi, a renowned acupuncturist who made life-sized bronze models to illustrate the location of the points. Moxibustion and more A further key component of Chinese medicine is moxibustion – burning the herb mugwort (moxa) on or very near the surface of the skin to stimulate qi. As with acupuncture, herbal medicine, dietary rules, and other treatments were all ref ined during the f irst millennium ce. Leading Han dynasty physician Zhang Zhongjing (150–219 ce) wrote about diet and typhoid, but is best known for Shang han za bing lun (Treatise on Fevers and Other Diseases). His contemporary Hua Tuo is considered to be China’s f irst anaesthetist; he used a powder called mafeisan (thought to have contained opium, cannabis, and small quantities of toxic herbs), which was dissolved in water and given to patients before surgery. The qi life force flows through 12 major meridians (divided into yin and yang groups), which supply health and vitality to the major organs. Any disruption of this flow causes disease. During acupuncture, needles are inserted in points along the basic 12 and other specialized meridians to release blockages. With the advent of European medicine, introduced by Jesuit missionaries in the late 16th century, imperial China increasingly viewed acupuncture as mere superstition, and herbal treatments became the chief therapeutic tool of Chinese doctors. Physician Li Shizhen’s 53-volume Bencao Gengmu (Compendium of Materia Medica) of 1576 lists 1,892 herbs and more than 11,000 combinations of herbs to prescribe for specif ic diseases. Walking on two legs As Western influence increased from the mid-19th century, traditional Chinese medicine was criticized for its perceived lack of scientif ic basis. It underwent a revival after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949, partly because the new Communist government pledged to provide wider healthcare to a population of over 500 million, for whom there were only 15,000 physicians trained in Western medicine. The combination of modern and traditional medicine became known as the “walking-on- two-legs policy”. While scientists still point out the lack of clinical evidence for its efficacy, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is thriving today. Acupuncture is widely used to treat pain, and the inclusion of TCM in a 2018 World Health Organization diagnostic compendium looks set to further boost its inf luence. ■ Needling and moxa … cure the corpse that is numb [unconscious]. Bian Qiao Lung meridian Heart meridian Pericardium meridian Spleen meridian Liver meridian Kidney meridian Urinary bladder meridian Stomach meridian Gallbladder meridian Colon meridian Small intestine meridian Triple warmer meridian (energy regulator) Front Back Yin meridian Yang meridian Key: 36 NATURE ITSELF IS THE BEST PHYSICIAN HERBAL MEDICINE M any ancient societies employed herbs in medicinal treatment and recorded their uses. The Egyptian Ebers papyrus, a collection of medical texts compiled around 1550 bce, cites 700 plant species to be used as herbal remedies and applications. In ancient Greek culture, Homer’s epic poems the Iliad and Odyssey, both composed around 800 bce, mention more than 60 plants with medicinal uses. However, it was only with the advent of a more scientif ic approach to medicine, initiated by the work of Hippocrates in the 5th century bce, that a more consistent method of classifying plants according to their therapeutic action was taken. IN CONTEXT BEFORE c. 2400 bce A Sumerian cuneiform tablet records 12 recipes for drugs including plant sources. c. 1550 bce The Ebers papyrus includes more than 700 plant species used by the ancient Egyptians to create medicines. c. 300 bce In ancient Greece, Theophrastus’s Historia Plantarum classif ies over 500 medicinal plants. AFTER 512 ce The oldest surviving copy of De Materia Medica is produced for the daughter of the Roman emperor Olybrius. c. 1012 The Canon of Medicine by Islamic physician Ibn Sina compiles material from many sources including Dioscorides. 1554 Italian botanist and physician Pier Andrea Mattioli writes a lengthy commentary on De Materia Medica. De Materia Medica gives rise to the practice of traditional herbal medicine. Dioscorides’ work establishes the modern practice of using plants as a source of drugs. Ancient societies make regular use of plants for treatments. Dioscorides compiles De Materia Medica, the f irst comprehensive classif ication system of plants and their medicinal properties. 37 De Materia Medica became the foundation text for herbal medicine and pharmacology for 16 centuries. These hand-drawn sweet violets are from a 15th-century illustrated edition. See also: Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Roman medicine 38–43 ■ Islamic medicine 44–49 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 ■ Pharmacy 54–59 ■ Aspirin 86–87 ■ Homeopathy 102 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE Pioneering botanist Theophrastus of Lesbos (a pupil of Aristotle) ref ined classif ication systems in the late 4th century bce. In his Historia Plantarum (Enquiry into Plants), he devised a method for categorizing 500 medicinal plants according to detailed groupings such as physical features, habitats, and practical use. De Materia Medica The full development of herbal medicine came with the work of the Roman soldier–physician Dioscorides in the 1st century ce. His seminal text De Materia Medica (On Medicinal Substances), assimilated his knowledge of plants based on years of observing their medicinal uses. Dioscorides’ key insight was to arrange the work according to the physiological effect each drug had on the body, such as a diuretic effect (increased production of urine) or an emetic effect (causing vomiting). He recorded 944 drugs, of which more than 650 have a plant origin, and detailed their physical properties as well as how they should be prepared, their medicinal effect, and the diseases against which they were effective. Many of these plants, such as willow and camomile, treated a range of conditions, and became the mainstays of medieval herbals. The rise of herbals De Materia Medica was inf luential during Roman times, and even after the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century it remained a key text. When Rome fell and its libraries were destroyed, many other medical works were lost, yet De Materia Medica survived thanks to copies that were made by scholars in the Byzantine and then Islamic empires. Dioscorides’ work was widely translated and became the prime means by which classical medical knowledge was transmitted. During the medieval period, De Materia Medica inspired a new genre of herbals – extensive compilations of medically useful plants. In the Renaissance, it had a further revival with the publication of lavish printed editions, including commentaries by scholars. De Materia Medica established the modern scientif ic appreciation of plants as a crucial source of new drugs (leading, for example, to the extraction of medicinal quinine in 1820). It also bolstered the continuing practice of traditional herbal medicine, using plants and plant preparations directly for their therapeutic value. ■ Pedanius Dioscorides Born in Anazarbus (modern-day Turkey) around 40 ce, Dioscorides served as a surgeon in the Roman army during the reign of Emperor Nero. This enabled him to travel extensively throughout the eastern Mediterranean, and to collect information on medically useful plants that grew in the region. By about 70 ce, he had used this knowledge to produce his De Materia Medica, a comprehensive five-volume textbook on herbal medicine. Written in his native Greek, it was organized according to the therapeutic properties of the plants as well as the other substances he included. When it was later translated into Latin and Arabic, its neat organization was obscured by the editors’ habit of alphabetizing his original lists of drugs. In illustrated form, it became a favourite of medieval manuscript copyists, and of publishers of early printed books during the late Renaissance. Dioscorides died around 90 ce. Key work c. 70 ce De Materia Medica (On Medicinal Substances) TO DIAGNOSE, ONE MUST OBSERVE AND REASON ROMAN MEDICINE 40 T he Roman Empire, at its peak under the emperor Trajan in the 2nd century ce, stretched 5 million sq km (1.9 million sq miles) across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and western Asia. Its citizens took pride in their bath houses and aqueducts, but in reality streets were insanitary and disease common. Yet Rome made strides in hygiene, and its contributions to medicine have had a lasting impact. Greek roots Roman medicine arose out of a synthesis of traditional practices, such as herbal healing, and the more or military hospitals, and he popularized Greek medical theories. The most important of these was the theory of the humours, developed by the Greek physician Hippocrates in the 5th century bce. It proposed that the body was composed of four vital f luids – blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm – and that an excess or lack of any of these was a sign of illness. The physician’s role was to identify an imbalance and restore the patient to balance, which would ensure their continued health. Schools of thought As Greek medical tradition became accepted into Roman culture, Greek doctors came to Rome in increasing numbers. However, they met with varying levels of hostility. Historian and senator Cato the Elder, writing ROMAN MEDICINE IN CONTEXT BEFORE 753 bce Rome is founded. Later rulers will conquer Greek territories and build one of the greatest empires in history. 219 bce Archagathus of Sparta becomes the f irst Greek doctor to practise in Rome. 2nd century bce Rome builds its f irst public baths, where people f lock to wash and socialize, but disease is rife. AFTER c. 390 ce The f irst general hospital is built in Rome. c. 400 Oribasius, personal physician to Emperor Julian, compiles the Medical Collections, one of the last great Roman medical works. c. 900 Al-Razi writes the Doubts about Galen. c. 1150 Burgundio of Pisa produces the f irst Latin translations of Galen’s works. theoretical and scientif ic approaches that had evolved in Greece since the 5th century bce. At f irst, the principal borrowings from the Greek medical world were religious, in particular the adoption of the Greek deity Asclepios as the Roman god of healing. Then in 219 bce, the Spartan doctor Archagathus arrived in Rome, marking the start of a change in the Roman attitude towards medicine. Archagathus was renowned for his ability to cure skin ailments and to heal wounds received in battle – a valuable skill at a time when the Romans knew little of surgery but were becoming embroiled in the Second Punic War against Carthage. Although some in Rome called Archagathus “the Butcher”, his treatment centres for soldiers paved the way for Rome’s valetudinaria, In ancient Rome, three competing approaches to medicine hinder treatment. Galen’s approach largely rejects the Methodist school and combines clinical observations (Empiricist method) with the need to understand causes of illness (Rationalist method). This synthesis leads to a better understanding of disease and to new medical theories. For Methodists, medicine is a matter of physics and rules, not observing each patient. Empiricists believe that experience and observation matter more than theories. For Dogmatists, or Rationalists, theories on the cause of disease matter more than observation. 41 When serving as physician for a gladiatorial school, Galen gained f irst-hand experience of the internal human anatomy through treating the wounded and examining the dead. in the 2nd century bce, rejected Greek innovations in favour of more traditional remedies, such as the use of cabbage: he recommended it for ailments ranging from stomach disorders to deafness. Despite its opponents, Greek medicine became well established in Rome. Its results were clearly too effective to ignore. Over time, however, its followers fractured into a number of competing schools. The Methodists, founded by the Greek physician Asclepiades in 50 bce, applied a philosophical approach. This was based on the work of the philosopher Democritus, who had theorized that the Universe was made of atoms. Methodists believed the body was simply a physical construct and that with good hygiene, diet, and drugs, it could be easily put back into order. They decried the medical profession, believing that the basics of medicine could be learnt in a few months. By contrast, the Empiricists – founded by the Greek physician Philinus of Cos in c. 250 bce – believed medical knowledge could be advanced by observing patients and identifying the visible signs of disease. However, they also believed that nature was fundamentally incomprehensible, and that speculation on the causes of illness was pointless, so they had little interest in exploring the internal human anatomy. A third medical school, the Rationalists or Dogmatists, placed greatest importance in physicians devising an underlying theory to guide their treatment of a disease. This was valued above examining the patient’s particular symptoms. The Rationalists were more able than the Empiricists to devise general principles in dealing with diseases, but did not promote any close clinical observation of specif ic cases. If a theory proved incorrect, it could lead to disastrous results. Combined theories It took a physician of rare ability to create a synthesis from these competing schools of thought. Claudius Galen, a Roman physician from Pergamum (in modern-day Turkey), was such a man. By drawing on specif ic aspects of each school that aligned with his own theories, he created a medical approach that would remain orthodoxy for over a thousand years. Galen absorbed Greek philosophy and medical theories in his native Pergamum, but after he had moved to Rome in 162 ce, he developed them further. Like Hippocrates, he saw the human body as one complete system that should not be treated as a collection of isolated organs that yielded disparate sets of symptoms. To understand disease and to treat patients, Galen believed the physician must closely observe both inside and outside the human body. Only then could he apply a theoretical framework, based on ❯❯ See also: Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Islamic medicine 44–49 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 ■ Pharmacy 54–59 ■ Anatomy 60–63 ■ Blood circulation 68–73 ■ Nosology 74–75 ■ Case history 80–81 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE It is impossible for anyone to f ind the correct function of a part unless he is perfectly acquainted with the action of the whole instrument. Claudius Galen De Usu Partium Corporis Humani, c. 165–75 ce 42 ROMAN MEDICINE Galen linked each of the four humours to a season, an element (such as air), and a temperament (such as sanguine). Ideally, humours remained balanced; an excess or lack of one could result in illness. “Sanguine” temperament; inf luenced by heat and wet; associated with optimism. “Choleric” temperament; inf luenced by heat and dry; associated with anger. “Melancholic” temperament; inf luenced by cold and dry; associated with sadness. “Phlegmatic” temperament; inf luenced by cold and wet; associated with apathy. Temperament Air Fire Water Earth Hot Dry Cold Wet Winter Phlegm Phlegmatic Autumn Black bile Melancholic Spring Blood Sanguine Summer Yellow bile Choleric the humours of Hippocrates, when proposing cures. With this approach, Galen combined Rationalist and Empiricist thought – but he remained sceptical of the Methodist school. Clinical observation Galen believed an understanding of anatomy together with direct observation and experiment were fundamental medical requirements. During his time as chief physician to a Pergamum gladiatorial school, he had observed elements of the musculature and internal organs exposed by wounds. Yet, human dissection was forbidden by Roman law, so he was conf ined to the dissection of animals. Galen’s experiments on barbary apes, cattle, and pigs enabled him to make certain advances such as understanding that the arteries contained blood. During one experiment, he severed the laryngeal nerve of a live pig, which continued to struggle but was no longer able to squeal. This conf irmed Galen’s own hypothesis concerning the nerve’s role in vocalization. Galen’s emphasis on observation extended to the clinical examination of patients’ external symptoms as a means to diagnose and to prescribe correct cures. During the Antonine Plague, which erupted in 165 ce, Galen recorded symptoms of patients he examined. In all cases he saw vomiting, upset stomachs, and foul breath, but the patients whose bodies became covered in black scabs that fell off after a few days tended to survive. In contrast, patients who excreted dark black stools would usually die. Galen did not understand the cause of this Claudius Galen Born in Pergamum (in modern- day Turkey) in 129 ce, Galen decided to become a doctor after the healing god Asclepios appeared to his father in a dream. He studied at Pergamum, Smyrna, and then Alexandria, where he had access to medical texts in the Great Library. After f ive years as chief physician to the gladiatorial school in Pergamum, Galen moved to Rome in 162 ce. There, his growing medical reputation and abrasive personality won him enemies. Forced to leave in 166, he was brought back by Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 169 to serve as imperial physician – a post he also held under Commodus and Septimius Severus. Galen died in c. 216. A prolif ic writer, he left around 300 works, including books on linguistics, logic, and philosophy, as well as medicine, but only about half of these have survived. Key work c. 165–75 ce De Usu Partium Corporis Humani (On the Usefulness of the Parts of the Human Body) 43 disease, which may have been smallpox, and little could be done other than to make the patients comfortable. However, his detailed recording of the symptoms is a testament to his commitment to understanding the signs of disease. Galen’s medical ideas were rooted in his development of Hippocrates’ theory of humours. He expanded Hippocrates’ idea on the variables of hot and cold, and wet and dry – each of which played a role in the equilibrium of the body. A person who has a tendency to coldness and dryness, Galen believed, would have a soft constitution and be slim. He also considered that the relative combinations of these factors affected temperament. The person with high levels of cold and dry, for example, would most likely be melancholic. Galen also claimed that high levels of yellow bile would contribute to intelligence. Lasting fame Although Galen was Rome’s most famous physician, there were others who carried out groundbreaking work. The mid-1st century ce saw Aulus Celsus, who dealt with diet and surgery, and identif ied many skin disorders. Soranus of Ephesus in the early 2nd century was a pioneer of obstetrics and gynaecology. Yet it was Galen’s work that survived the fall of Rome in 476, in books that were translated and transmitted via Islamic physicians from the 7th century, to become the basis of medieval European medicine. Ironically, despite his emphasis on practical experimentation and clinical observation, it was Galen’s elevation to the status of ultimate medical authority that impeded progress in both areas. He had carried out most of his anatomical research on animals, and many of his results were invalid for humans. Yet Galen’s authority meant later practitioners were so certain of his work that for centuries those performing dissections simply rejected any contradictory evidence before them. As more physicians attempted to replicate Galen’s experiments, the f laws in his theories appeared. With the work of Flemish physician Andreas Vesalius in 1543, Galen’s authority as an anatomist collapsed. Despite this fall from grace, Galen’s contribution to medicine was immense. The Islamic physician al-Razi (854–925), who wrote Doubts about Galen, was still supportive of his methods rather than his f indings. Modern physicians work on the basis that an accurate knowledge of human anatomy combined with close clinical observation of symptoms is essential to treating disease. As such, Galen continues to be a towering inf luence on the practice of medicine. ■ ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE Although separated by centuries, Galen and Hippocrates are portrayed together in this 13th-century Byzantine fresco in Italy as the most signif icant physicians of the ancient world. In the course of a single dissection … Galen has departed on two hundred or more occasions from the true description of the harmony, function, and action of the human parts. Andreas Vesalius De Humani Corporis Fabrica, 1543 KNOW THE CAUSES OF SICKNESS AND HEALTH ISLAMIC MEDICINE 46 T he fall of the western Roman Empire in the late 5th century ce led to a steep decline in the level of medical knowledge and practice in Europe, but Hellenistic (Greek) culture had survived in the empire’s eastern provinces, conquered by the armies of a new religion – Islam – in the 7th century. There, the medical theories from ancient Greece and ancient Rome were transmitted to early Islamic physicians by Nestorian (Eastern) Christians who become a renowned centre of medical treatment and learning. Islam’s f irst documented general hospital – or bimaristan (Persian for “place of the sick”) – was founded around 805 by caliph al-Rashid in Baghdad and quickly achieved fame. Within a century, another f ive had been built and more were later established around the Middle East. Medical schools had close links to such hospitals, and students could observe patients being treated by qualif ied doctors. Some hospitals had separate wards for infectious diseases, gastrointestinal problems, eye ailments, and mental illnesses. As a result of such f irst-hand clinical experience, early Islamic physicians made important advances in identifying disorders and devising effective cures. Clinical expertise In the 9th century, al-Razi, the chief physician to the caliph in Baghdad, wrote more than 200 texts and commentaries developing the principles of earlier Greek, Roman, Syrian, Islamic, and Indian medical ISLAMIC MEDICINE Al-Razi examines a patient and holds up a matula, a vessel for collecting urine, in a French image from the 13th century. Al-Razi pioneered a scientif ic approach to uroscopy, the study of urine. IN CONTEXT BEFORE 4th–6th century ce The world’s f irst medical centre develops at Gondeshapur under the patronage of Sassanian kings from Shapur I. 627 The f irst mobile hospital is a tent for the Muslim wounded, set up during the Ghazwah Khandaq (Battle of the Ditch). c. 770 Caliph al-Mansur founds the Bayt-al Hikma (House of Wisdom), where many ancient medical texts are translated into Arabic. AFTER 12th–13th century In Spain, the f irst Latin translation of Ibn Sina’s Al-Qanun f i al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine) appears. 1362 After the Black Death ravages Europe, Ibn al-Khatib of Granada writes a treatise on contagious infections. 1697 Ibn Sina’s Qanun is still on the curriculum at the medical school in Padua, Italy. worked in the medical centre at Gondeshapur in Iran under the Persian Sasanian emperors. This interest continued under the Islamic caliphs, particularly the Abbasids, whose capital Baghdad (founded in 762) became a vibrant economic, cultural, and scientif ic centre. In the late 8th century, caliph al-Mansur established the Bayt al-Hikma, or House of Wisdom, which became a base for the translation of ancient texts into Arabic. Men such as Ibn Ishaq (808–73), the court physician who translated the works of Hippocrates and Galen, ensured that Islamic physicians had access to the medical theories of the Greek and Roman world. A new era of Islamic medicine developed, fuelled by luminaries such as al-Razi (854–925) and Ibn Sina (980–1037), known in the West as Rhazes and Avicenna respectively. Early Islamic hospitals From the f irst, Islamic medicine embraced the practicalities of treatment as well as medical theory. In the 7th century, Islam’s f irst mobile hospital had treated battlef ield injuries, and the academy at Gondeshapur had Truth in medicine is an unattainable goal, and the art as described in books is far beneath the knowledge of an experienced and thoughtful physician. Al-Razi 47 theorists. He emphasized the need to develop diagnoses by examining patients and interviewing them, and to administer treatments based on past experience of their eff icacy. In his Kitab al-Hawi f i al-Tibb (The Comprehensive Book of Medicine), he recorded the symptoms of a huge range of diseases and became one of the f irst doctors to distinguish between smallpox and measles, which doctors had previously considered to be the same infection. Insistence on close observation also led him to identify gout as a single condition (and not a variety of conditions, as the Greeks had supposed), and he concluded from his clinical experience that many diseases did not follow the course that Galen, the great Roman physician, had suggested. Among al-Razi’s many insights were his views on mental illness and the connection between mind and body. He championed the idea that mental disorders should be treated in the same way as physical diseases, and prescribed therapies involving diet, medicines, and even music and aromatherapy. He also urged that patients should be encouraged to believe in the possibility of improvement and the eff icacy of a treatment, as this was likely to produce better outcomes. Licensed to practise Al-Razi was revered as not only a model practitioner but also as a teacher. Not everyone matched his high standards, however, and in 931, caliph al-Muqtadir ordered the licensing of all physicians when he heard that an error had caused a patient’s death. When medical students passed their examinations, they took the Hippocratic Oath and received a licence from a muhtasib (inspector general). A great medical manual The idea that medicine should be based on a comprehensive system of observation, experimentation, ❯❯ See also: Greek medicine 28–29 ■ Herbal medicine 36–37 ■ Roman medicine 38–43 ■ Medieval medical schools and surgery 50–51 ■ Pharmacy 54–59 ■ Hospitals 82–83 ■ Hygiene 118–19 ■ Women in medicine 120–21 ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL MEDICINE Physician-scholars set down new f indings and ref ine earlier principles. Medicine progresses. At the start of the Islamic Golden Age, newly translated Greek, Roman, and ancient Indian texts reveal a wealth of medical principles and remedies. Islamic physicians study the theories and gain practical experience from examining patients in hospitals. By recording and comparing patients’ symptoms, physicians make more accurate diagnoses. Treatments become more effective as physicians observe how patients respond to drugs and other therapies. The physician … must always make the patient believe that he will recover, for the state of the body is linked to the state of the mind. Kitab al-Hawi f i al-Tibb, c. 900 48 and testing in order to establish diagnoses and devise the best treatment reached its most developed form in the work of Ibn Sina. His Al-Qanun f i al-Tibb (The Canon of Medicine), published around 1012, gathered knowledge from Greek, Roman, Persian, and Arabic works and combined it with his own clinical observations to create the most comprehensive medical manual of the medieval era. In the 12th century, it was translated into Latin and became an essential part of the training for medical students in Europe for some 400 years. The Qanun ran to more than a million words in f ive volumes. The f irst book dealt with the origins of diseases. Drawing much from the Hippocratic and Galenic theory of humours, Ibn Sina classif ied the possible causes of disease, both extrinsic (such as the climate of the region) and intrinsic (such as whether the patient has excessive sleep/rest or excessive movement/ activity), alongside other causes (such as the habits and constitution ISLAMIC MEDICINE A pharmacist weighs out a medicine for a patient suffering from smallpox in this illustration from Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine. Islamic pharmacists – like doctors – were trained and licensed. doses at f irst to observe the effect. In the third and fourth books, Ibn Sina covers disorders of specif ic parts of the body, from head to toe, including tuberculosis affecting the lungs (correctly identif ied as contagious) and cataracts of the eye, and those that affect the whole body or several different parts, such as fevers, ulcers, fractures, and skin conditions. The f ifth and f inal book describes a number of complex preparations and treatments, and a collection of preventive measures, including diet and exercise. Ibn Sina’s recognition that prevention is better than cure set him several centuries ahead of medieval European physicians. Built on earlier advances Before Ibn Sina, a constellation of Islamic physicians had contributed to the advancement of medical science. In the late 8th century, Jabir Ibn Hayyan (known in Europe as Geber), who was the court physician to caliph al-Rashid, formalized the study of pharmacology. Although many of the 500 works attributed to him were probably written by his later followers, Jabir himself brought experimental rigour to the traditional practice of alchemy, which sought of the person). Ibn Sina believed that the four humours interacted with the “elements” (earth, air, f ire, and water) and the patient’s anatomy to cause disease. An excess of moisture, for example, might cause tiredness or digestive disorders, while elevated heat could induce thirst or a racing pulse. Like Galen and Hippocrates, he considered that direct observation of a patient could determine which factor was out of balance. Drugs, diseases, and cures The second book of the Qanun catalogued about 800 remedies and medicines from plant, animal, and mineral sources, toget	882,191
The Mythology Book Big Ideas Simply Explained (Dorling Kindersley) (Z-Library).pdf	THE BOOK MYTHOLOGY THE BOOK MYTHOLOGY DK US/LONDON AMERICANIZER Nathalie Mornu US EDITOR Kayla Dugger US EXECUTIVE EDITOR Lori Hand PROJECT ART EDITOR Duncan Turner ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham JACKET EDITOR Claire Gell SENIOR JACKET DESIGNER Mark Cavanagh JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION Andy Hilliard PRODUCER Alex Bell MANAGING EDITOR Angeles Gavira MANAGING ART EDITOR Michael Duffy ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler ART DIRECTOR Karen Self DESIGN DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf DK DELHI SENIOR ART EDITOR Mahua Sharma ART EDITORS Rupanki Kaushik, Debjyoti Mukherjee ASSISTANT ART EDITOR Mridushmita Bose SENIOR EDITOR Anita Kakar ASSISTANT EDITORS Rishi Bryan, Aishvarya Misra JACKET DESIGNERS Suhita Dharamjit, Juhi Sheth SENIOR DTP DESIGNERS Harish Aggarwal, Shanker Prasad DTP DESIGNER Vikram Singh PICTURE RESEARCHER Aditya Katyal JACKETS EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Priyanka Sharma MANAGING JACKETS EDITOR Saloni Singh PICTURE RESEARCH MANAGER Taiyaba Khatoon PRE-PRODUCTION MANAGER Balwant Singh PRODUCTION MANAGER Pankaj Sharma SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Rohan Sinha MANAGING ART EDITOR Sudakshina Basu original styling by STUDIO 8 TOUCAN BOOKS EDITORIAL DIRECTOR Ellen Dupont SENIOR DESIGNER Thomas Keenes SENIOR EDITOR Abigail Mitchell EDITORS John Andrews, Guy Croton, Sue George, Larry Porges, Anna Southgate, Dorothy Stannard, Rachel Warren Chadd EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Michael Clark INDEXER Marie Lorimer PICTURE RESEARCHER Sharon Southren PROOFREADER Marion Dent ADDITIONAL TEXT Andrea Jovanovic, Cynthia O’Brien, Joan Strasbaugh First American Edition, 2018 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2018 Dorling Kindersley Limited DK, a Division of Penguin Random House LLC 18 19 20 21 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–305931–May/2018 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-1-4654-7337-0 DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 SpecialSales@dk.com Printed and bound in China A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com PHILIP WILKINSON, CONSULTANT Philip Wilkinson has written more than 50 books on history, religions, the arts, and mythology. His titles include Mythology and Religions in Dorling Kindersley’s Eyewitness Companions series, Myths and Legends, and A Celebration of Customs and Rituals of the World, which was endorsed and adopted by the United Nations. GEORGIE CARROLL Georgie Carroll is a PhD candidate at SOAS University of London working on eco-aesthetics in Indian literature. She is author of Mouse (Animal) (2015), and a fiction writer. DR. MARK FAULKNER Dr. Mark Faulkner lived and worked in Africa for 17 years before returning to academia and gaining his PhD, which focused on the Boni hunter-gatherer community. He now lectures in Religions of Africa at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies), University of London. DR. JACOB F. FIELD Dr. Jacob F. Field is a historian who is currently a research associate at the University of Cambridge. His academic work focuses on the Great Fire of London and British social and economic history. He has also written five books for a popular audience. DR. JOHN HAYWOOD Dr. John Haywood studied medieval history at the universities of Lancaster, Cambridge, and Copenhagen. He is the author of over 20 books, including Viking: the Norse Warrior’s Unofficial Manual (2013) and Northmen: the Viking Saga 793-1241 (2015). MICHAEL KERRIGAN Michael Kerrigan contributed to the Chambers Dictionary of Beliefs and Religion (1993) and The Times World Religions (2002). His books include BBC Ancient Civilizations: Greece (2001) and Ancient Rome (2002); The Ancients in their Own Words (2009); and Celtic Legends (2016). NEIL PHILIP Neil Philip is the author of numerous books on folklore and mythology, including Mythology of the World; The Great Mystery: Myths of Native America; and Dorling Kindersley’s Eyewitness Companions: Mythology. DR. NICHOLAUS PUMPHREY Dr. Nicholaus Pumphrey is the Assistant Professor of Religious Studies and Curator of the Quayle Bible Collection at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas. He specializes in Biblical Studies, Ancient Near Eastern History and Literature, and Islamic Studies. Currently, he is a senior staff member on the Tel Akko Total Archaeology project in Akko, Israel. JULIETTE TOCINO-SMITH Juliette Tocino-Smith is a postgraduate student at University College, London. During her undergraduate studies, she spent a semester in South Korea, where she became fascinated by the way in which fiction and mythology had come together in shaping contemporary Korean society. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION ANCIENT GREECE 18 Gaia first gave birth to her equal, Ouranos Origin of the universe 24 Rhea swaddled up a stone and passed it to Kronos to swallow The birth of Zeus 32 Zeus in his first youth battered the earthborn Titans The war of the gods and Titans 34 No wind beats roughly here, no snow nor rain Mount Olympus 36 He bound cunning Prometheus in inescapable fetters Prometheus helps mankind 40 Her impluse introduced sorrow and mischief to the lives of men Pandora’s box 64 This pair of tyrants. They murdered my father Orestes avenges Agamemnon 66 Tell me oh muse, the hero’s story The quest of Odysseus 72 After the labors had been accomplished, he would be immortal The labors of Herakles 76 He had the face of a bull, but the rest of him was human Theseus and the Minotaur 78 Disdaining his father’s warnings, the exhilarated Icarus soared ever higher Daedalus and Icarus 82 Watching the Gorgon’s head in the polished shield, he beheaded her Perseus and Medusa 84 Hate is a bottomless cup, I will pour and pour Jason and Medea 86 Unfortunate Oedipus— of all men, least to be envied! The fate of Oedipus 42 Zeus had many women, both mortal and immortal The many affairs of Zeus 48 Mighty Hades who dwells in houses beneath the earth Hades and the Underworld 50 He slipped a pomegranate, sweet as honey, into her hand The abduction of Persephone 52 The raving ladies streamed out of their homes The cult of Dionysus 53 Turning ’round, he caught a glimpse of his wife and she had to return below Orpheus and Eurydice 54 A bringer of dreams Hermes’s first day 56 Athena presents the olive tree, Poseidon the wave The founding of Athens 58 I will give infallible counsel to all who seek it Apollo and the Oracle of Delphi 60 One loved; the other fled the name of love Apollo and Daphne 62 Life and death are balanced on the edge of a razor The Trojan War CONTENTS NORTHERN EUROPE 130 From Ymir’s flesh the earth was made Creation of the universe 134 The ash of Yggdrasil is the noblest of trees Odin and the World Tree 140 The first war in the world War of the gods 142 They mixed honey with the blood and it turned into mead The Mead of Poetry 144 Thor might smite as hard as he desired and the hammer would not fail The treasures of the gods 146 Am I wrong in thinking that this little fellow is Thor? The adventures of Thor and Loki in Jötunheim 148 The unluckiest deed ever done among gods and men The death of Baldur 150 Brother will fight brother and be his slayer The twilight of the gods 158 When the worm comes to the water, smite him in the heart Sigurd the dragon slayer 160 Wonderful the magic sampo, plenty does it bring to northland The Kalevala 88 She wants Adonis more than she does heaven itself Aphrodite and Adonis 90 Whatever I touch, may it be transformed into tawny gold King Midas 91 In a single day and night the island of Atlantis disappeared beneath the waves The legend of Atlantis ANCIENT ROME 96 I sing of arms and the man Aeneas, founder of Rome 102 A desire seized Romulus and Remus to build a city The founding of Rome 106 The father of gods spurts red flames through the clouds Numa outwits Jupiter 108 Conceive of Vesta as naught but the living flame Vesta and Priapus 110 The fates will leave me my voice, and by my voice I shall be known The sibyl of Cumae 112 I love you as I love my own soul Cupid and Psyche 114 I am on fire with love for my own self Narcissus and Echo 115 She yet spins her thread, as a spider Arachne and Minerva 116 I pay the due penalty in blood Cybele and Attis 118 Mithras is the Lord of generation Mithras and the bull 120 He carved a statue out of snow-white ivory Pygmalion 121 For lying with me, take control of the hinge Carna and Janus 122 No wood nymph could tend a garden more skilfuly than she Pomona and Vertumnus 124 Even death shall not part us Pyramus and Thisbe 125 Those whom the gods care for are gods Philemon and Baucis 164 The Dagda was eighty years in the kingship of Ireland A complex god 165 As soon as he touched the earth, he was a heap of ashes The voyage of Bran 166 One will be long forgetting Cúchulainn The cattle raid of Cooley 168 He has the name of being the strongest and bravest man in Ireland Finn MacCool and the Giant’s Causeway 170 So they took the blossoms and produced from them a maiden Blodeuwedd 172 Who so pulleth out this sword is the rightwise king born of all England The legend of King Arthur ASIA 182 From the great heaven the goddess set her mind on the great below The descent of Inanna 188 Command and bring about annihilation and re-creation Marduk and Tiamat 190 Who can rival his kingly standing? The epic of Gilgamesh 198 Two spirits, one good, the other evil, in thought, word, and deed Ahura Mazda and Ahriman 200 Brahma opened his eyes and realized he was alone Brahma creates the cosmos 201 Siva placed the elephant’s head on the torso and revived the boy The birth of Ganesha 202 O king, it is wrong to gamble oneself! The game of dice 204 Rama is virtuous and the foremost among all righteous men The Ramayana 210 I am the lady, ruler of the worlds Durga slays the buffalo demon 211 O! Meenakshi! Fish-eyed goddess! Grant me bliss! The fish-eyed goddess finds a husband 212 You are to be the king over all the world The origins of the Baiga 214 Yang became the heavens, Yin became the earth Pangu and the creation of the world 216 The 10 suns all rose at once, scorching the sheaves of grain Yi shoots the sun 218 I’ll roam the corners of the oceans and go to the edge of the sky The adventures of the Monkey King 220 Having finished making the lands, they went on to make its spirits Izanagi and Izanami 222 All manner of calamities arose everywhere Susanoo and Amaterasu 226 Your rice of the Skyworld is good Fire and rice 228 There was a man called Dan’gun Wanggeom who created a city and founded a nation The legendary foundation of Korea 230 Hae Mosu made the sun shine and its rays caressed Yuwha’s body Jumong THE AMERICAS 236 The Earth is a giant island floating in a sea of water Cherokee creation 238 It will not be well if they omit it Spider Woman 240 Begin a Deerskin Dance for it because everything will come out well from that The Woge settle a dispute 242 She was the shade of the whale The raven and the whale 244 And the sun belongs to one and the moon to the other The Hero Twins 248 So then the sun went into the sky The legend of the five suns 256 In the beginning, and before this world was created, there was a being called Viracocha Viracocha the Creator 258 The canoe was a wonder The first canoe 260 The creator of the world has always existed The sky makes the sun and earth ANCIENT EGYPT AND AFRICA 266 I was alone with the Primeval Ocean The creation and the first gods 272 Hail to you, Ra, perfect each day! The night barque of Ra 274 Isis lived in the form of a woman, who had the knowledge of words of power Ra’s secret name 276 He will not die! Osiris will live a life forever Osiris and the underworld 284 If they built fires, evil would come San creation myth 285 I will give you something called cattle En-kai and the cattle 286 Tie the calabash behind you and then you will be able to climb the tree Ananse the spider 288 The life-force of the earth is water The Dogon cosmos 294 The queen wants to kill you Eshu the trickster OCEANIA 302 Come and hear our stories, see our land The Dreaming 308 Spear me slowly. I still have more to teach you The killing of Luma-Luma 310 The world of myth is never far off The Déma 316 Master of everything that is Ta’aroa gives birth to the gods 318 Death obtained power over mankind Tane and Hine-titama 320 But the redoubtable Maui was not to be discouraged Maui of a thousand tricks 324 What would you say to our driving the birds to Easter Island? Makemake and Haua 326 When I utter his name, he hears in the heavens Mapusia and the Work of the Gods 332 I do not forget the guiding stars Aluluei and the art of navigation 334 DIRECTORY 344 INDEX 351 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION W ith rare exceptions— such as a recently discovered Amazonian tribe, the Pirahãs—every human culture has developed its own mythology to explain its origins and make sense of the phenomena observed in the natural world. The word “mythology” comes from the Greek muthos, meaning “story,” and logia, “knowledge.” Myths tell of the creation of the world or predict its end; they explain how animals were made and the land formed; they bridge the world of humans and the world of the spirits or gods; they try to impose order on a terrifying chaos, and to confront the mysteries of death. Crucially, myths are also the foundation of religions: they define cultures and codify their values. Ancient civilizations The mythologies of the ancient world take up much of this book. In ancient Mesopotamia—in the crucible of civilization of the 4th millennium BCE, when humankind first learned to live in cities—the Sumerians developed the first recorded pantheon of deities. It was preserved in statues, carvings, and ancient texts, such as The Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the eponymous hero searches for immortality. Such a quest was repeated in myths the world over. Subsequent Mesopotamian civilizations developed, demoted, or culled the Sumerian gods and the myths associated with them. The powerful goddess Inanna, for example, became Ishtar in the Babylonian pantheon and later the Phoenician goddess Astarte. Like other civilizations, ancient Mesopotamia was shaped by the narratives it used to explain the cosmos. Its rulers were guided by the gods, whose capricious will was interpreted by priests. The gods had to be continually praised and placated. During the Akitu, a 12-day festival held in the great temple of Marduk, people chanted the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian myth of Creation, with the force of a magical incantation in their ritual reenergizing of the cosmos. Great cultures Myths had a great influence on the societal fabric of history’s greatest civilizations. The rich and complex mythology of ancient Egypt emphasized the creation of order out of chaos. Such stories validated the governance of society and legitimized a status quo in which the pharaoh himself was viewed as divine and therefore worthy of being served. The Egyptians also saw time as cyclical; events that happened in their society were merely repeating what had happened before and had been recorded in their myths. In ancient Greece and Rome, the foundation myths of city-states were fundamental to the concepts of citizenship; they bound ideas of patriotism and common interest with divine authority. In Greece, which consisted of more than 1,000 city-states, each had a founding myth and a protective deity, which led to a highly complex set of myths that was often contradictory. It took the poets Homer and Hesiod to create a comprehensive, pan- Hellenic record of Greek mythology. INTRODUCTION 12 Myth is the facts of the mind made manifest in a fiction of matter. Maya Deren Anthropologist Homer’s epic stories—the Iliad and Odyssey—and Hesiod’s Theogony comprised the first and most authoritative attempts to weave the disparate Greek myths into one narrative thread. In ancient Rome, the local myths of Italic peoples, such as the Latins and the Etruscans, blended with the Greek myths that had gone before them. The poet Virgil composed a foundation myth for Rome, the Aeneid, consciously modeled on the epics of Homer, while Ovid retold many Greek myths in his narrative poem Metamorphoses, and recorded the myths of a number of purely Roman deities in his poem on the religious year, Fasti. The Romans enriched the mix by adding deities from Phrygia (such as the Great Mother Cybele), Egypt (the goddess Isis), and Syria (Elagabal, or Sol Invictus, briefly the chief god of Rome). Preserving myths The line between literature, myth, and folktale is blurry; many myths have been preserved as literary works. The popular tales of King Arthur are rooted in Celtic myth, while the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the great works of Hindu mythology, are celebrated masterpieces of epic poetry. In preliterate societies, myths were recited and passed along orally. The written recording of a myth depended on luck, which probably led to the disappearance of a great many mythologies. Even in literate societies, such as the Viking-Age Norse, some myths survived through only a single source. Had the manuscripts of the mythological poems known as the Edda—and of Snorri Sturluson’s later Prose Edda—been destroyed, we would know as little about Norse mythology as we do about the myths of the ancient Britons. Living religions Many tribal peoples—including the Dogon of Mali, the Baiga of central India, the Tikopia of the Solomon Islands, and the Ifugaos of the Philippines—still live in a world suffused by what outsiders might call myths. Oral tradition in these societies is remarkably enduring: as proven by the abundant myths or Dreamings of the Aboriginal Australians, the myths of the déma (creation spirits) among the Marind-Anim people of New Guinea, or the eloquent Chantways of the Navajo in North America. Many myths from these peoples, however, have not reached the outside world because they are secret, or they have not been collected or translated, or they have been lost as exposure to outsiders has attacked and destroyed indigenous cultures. Mythology is the territory of poetic imagination, and the stories individual cultures tell are a profound expression of the creative impulse. Yet myths are more than simply stories; they are the stories cultures tell themselves about the great mysteries that perplex and intrigue us all: questions of birth and death and everything in between. Even now, myths remain the bearers of tradition and the spiritual and moral guide of peoples all across the globe. ■ INTRODUCTION 13 Myth … takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance hidden by the veil of familiarity. C. S. Lewis Writer, scholar, and author of The Chronicles of Narnia ANCIENT GREECE T he ancient Greeks first entered the territory now associated with them in about 2000 BCE, when Egypt was still a great power and the Minoans of Crete were evolving into a highly sophisticated society. The first migrants, who probably came from Russia and central Asia, settled in the mountainous north and the Peloponnese to the south, where the city of Mycenae was founded ca. 1600 BCE. Described by Homer as “rich in gold,” the Mycenaean civilization prospered thanks to trade networks across the Aegean and Mediterranean seas. With the Bronze Age collapse of palace culture and the end of Mycenaean civilization ca. 1100 BCE, Greece entered its Dark Age. By the 8th century BCE, poleis (“city-states”) began to emerge as agricultural and trading hubs. Greece became a collection of separate city-states—such as Athens, Sparta, and Corinth— united by a shared language and the worship of common gods. However, Greek religion was not standardized; there was no book of doctrines to tell people how they should worship. Their mythology borrowed from their ancestors — the myth of the Minotaur came from the Minoans in Crete, and the Mycenaean era was the setting for the Trojan War, immortalized in Homer’s Iliad. Athenian dominance The Classical era in Greece began with the fall of the powerful Persian empire in 479 BCE. Having defeated the Persians, the city-states of Athens and Sparta fought each other for dominion over Greece. As the preeminent power, Athens was the setting for many Greek myths, from its origins under the care of its patron goddess, Athena, to tales such as Jason and Medea. Many of the surviving Greek myths come to us via Athenian dramatists: from the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in the 5th century BCE to the comedies of Aristophanes (ca.446–c.386 BCE) and Menander (ca.342–c.291 BCE). These works told stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology and inspired later writers such as Shakespeare, whose A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Romeo and Juliet borrow from Greek myth. The era of Athenian dominance ended in the 4th century BCE, when the Macedonian ruler Alexander INTRODUCTION CA. 1200 BCE CA. 800 BCE CA. 600 BCE 432 BCE CA. 450–400 BCE CA. 700 BCE CA. 500 BCE CA. 458–430 BCE In the Bronze Age collapse of Aegean and Mediterranean kingdoms, Troy is destroyed by war. Homer’s epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, are among the oldest surviving works in Western literature. The Homeric Hymns, written anonymously, are devoted to the praise of 33 gods. In On Nature, Heraclitus discourses on ethics, theology, and the universe. The Parthenon temple is dedicated to the goddess Athena, and marks the zenith of Classical Greece. Hesiod’s Theogony tracks the origins and genealogies of a wide array of Greek deities. Aeschylus stages the Oresteia, a trilogy that retells a blood-soaked cycle of myths. In Oedipus Rex, Sophocles contrasts fate and free will in a sinister tale of murder and incest. 16 Euripides’s The Bacchae explores the dual nature of man—the rational versus the instinctual. Xenophon’s Anabasis contains the story of King Midas and his golden touch. Apollonius of Rhodes depicts the adventures of Jason and his band of men in the Argonautica. Greece is defeated in battle and faces Roman rule, leading to the integration of the two cultures. Diodorus Siculus includes the myth of Icarus and Daedalus in his 40-book Historical Library. Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias introduce the idea of the legendary city of Atlantis. The Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus documents a variety of Greek myths and legends. Pausanias explores famous sites and Greek identity in Description of Greece. the Great built his empire. Thanks to Alexander’s conquests, Greek culture and mythology were exported as far as Asia Minor, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and India. The major deities It was the poets Homer and Hesiod who imposed order upon the myriad gods and beliefs inherited from earlier times. Homer set down his poetry from oral tradition around 800 BCE, after the migrations that followed the collapse of the Mycenaean culture. His two epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, gave the Greeks a history, a pantheon, and guidelines for how to live their lives. As the Olympian family of 12 principal gods dwelling on Mount Olympus gradually replaced older beliefs, Homer and Hesiod gave them distinct characters and appearances. Because Homer’s epic poems were set in an aristocratic and feudal society—which preceded the birth of democracy in Athens in the 5th century BCE—his gods behaved like chieftains, motivated solely by their own desires. Like other ancient agrarian peoples, the Greeks were local in their focus. They ordered their religious life around local places, identifying different hills, streams, and plains with different deities. This mythic lore invested every corner of the land with spiritual significance. The Earth was the source of existence: divine power originated in its depths, as did the crops. Myths sought to explain aspects of agrarian life. The tale of Persephone—daughter of the harvest goddess Demeter—and her imprisonment in the Underworld by Hades was a way of accounting for the changing cycles of the agricultural year. The rise of the cult At the end of the 5th century BCE, various mystery cults arose in the Greek-speaking world. Chief among these were the Eleusinian mysteries, an ancient agrarian cult honoring Demeter and Persephone and promising paradise for the dead. The Dionysian cult, which originated in Asia, worshipped Dionysus and involved wild dancing, drinking, and ecstasy. Unlike the public worship of the gods, which was well documented, these mystery cults consisted of secret rites and doctrines that remain enigmatic to this day, but would go on to influence the beliefs and myths of ancient Rome. ■ ANCIENT GREECE 408–405 BCE CA. 370 BCE CA. 250 BCE CA. 30 BCE CA. 150 CE CA. 360 BCE 146 BCE CA. 100 CE 17 GAIA FIRST GAVE BIRTH TO HER EQUAL, OURANOS ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE 20 ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE I n the beginning was Chaos, an open chasm of emptiness— infinitely deep, dark, and silent. In his vision of the universe’s origin, set down in Theogony, the Greek poet Hesiod saw creation as the imposition of a positive reality on this negativity and absence. Key to that reality was the capacity for change. The nothingness of Chaos could have continued, eternally unaltered, but existence, once created, brought with it endless cycles—the comings and goings of the seasons, generations of humans, birth, and death. These cycles were set in motion by the making of the original division between night and day; time was now measurable and meaningful. Earth mother The first Greek goddess, Gaia, was the earth in its mineral form—its rocks and soils, its mountains and its plains. From its solid and seemingly inert state, it became vibrant with the potential for new life. The first manifestation of that new vitality was Ouranos, god of the sky, spontaneously conceived within the womb of the great Earth Mother Gaia, with whom he would subsequently father children. Though he was Gaia’s son, Ouranos was her equal. Hesiod wrote that she bore him specifically so that he could “cover her.” While this was a statement of fact—the sky lies above the earth—it adds more than a hint of sexuality to the relationship between the earth and heaven. The Greeks were as horrified at the idea of incest as we are. Its function in their mythology appears to have been to show that all the different aspects of existence are intensely conflicted, yet intimately linked. The sky was not simply positioned above the earth; it conjoined with it dynamically and, ultimately, creatively, just as night does with day, darkness with light, and death with life. Kinship and conflict While creative, these conjunctions inevitably cast opposing principles into a never-ending struggle for supremacy. Hesiod’s portrayal of primal sexual relations was essentially violent: male and female forces as complementary but also competing. It was far from an idealized world view, and the depiction of Ouranos was even more extreme; the despotic patriarch would brook no rival— not even his own children. Ouranos’s jealousy of his sons and daughters was such that, at each birth, he took them away and stowed each one in some hidden recess of the earth—which was actually his wife’s body. He did this to establish his ownership of Gaia. IN BRIEF THEME Creation by Mother Earth SOURCES Theogony, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce; Argonautica, Apollonius of Rhodes, ca. 250 bce; Natural History, Pliny the Elder, 79 ce; Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus, ca. 100 ce. SETTING Chaos—a vast and infinitely dark void at the origin of the universe. KEY FIGURES Gaia The primordial earth- mother goddess, and personification of the solid world. Ouranos The sky god, Gaia’s spontaneously conceived son; later father of the Titans, the Hecatoncheires, the Kyklopes, the Erinyes, Aphrodite, and many other gods and goddesses. Kronos A Titan who castrated his father, Ouranos; also associated with the harvest. Gaia, the Earth Mother, sits with her two godly progeny at her side in an ancient Greek stone relief. It was said that an oath sworn by Gaia would prove irrevocable. Out of the Chasm came Night, and from Night in turn came Day. Theogony 21 ANCIENT GREECE Her sexual attentions had to be entirely and eternally available to him, so their offspring could not be allowed to see the light of day. Successive infants were consigned to subterranean depths. First came the 12 Titans—the sisters Theia, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Themis, Tethys, and Rhea, and their brothers Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Kronos. Each in his or her turn was rammed into some convenient crack or crevice of the earth and left there, trapped. After the Titans came three giant brothers, the Kyklopes, each of whom had a single eye at the center of his forehead. Like their siblings, they were consigned at birth to be buried in the heart of the earth. Then came three more giants of even greater strength—the Hecatoncheires, whose name ❯❯ See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ The war of gods and Titans 32–33 ■ The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 ■ The fate of Oedipus 86–87 The sky god Ouranos is depicted as a benign father with offspring draped around him in a wood engraving after a fresco by the Prussian artist Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841). Hesiod and his Theogony The ancient Greek poet Hesiod may well be a myth in his own right, for there is no evidence that any such person actually existed. The works attributed to him— assorted poetry from the 8th and 7th centuries bce—may simply have been conveniently bundled together. They include a miscellany of poems, from brief narratives to genealogies that record the heroic ancestries of important families. The importance of these works in tracing back traditions and uncovering origins is undeniable. The genealogical poems discuss human beginnings, while the Theogony, Hesiod’s most famous work, focuses on the birth of the gods and is the source for much of what we know about Greek myth. Hesiod was not the only available authority; other more mystic-minded thinkers and writers promoted an alternative “Orphic” tradition, built around the myth of Orpheus, the bard and musician. For the most part, however—and for well over 2,000 years now—it has been the version of mythical events attributed to Hesiod that has held sway. 22 means “hundred-handed” in Greek. Each was also said to have 50 heads, making them formidable—they, too, were incarcerated by Ouranos deep inside the earth. The upstart son As for Gaia, the Earth Mother felt both physically burdened by the number of infant bodies literally forced back inside her and also deeply upset by the attempted suppression of her children. Finally, she rebelled and appealed to her sons for help. She secretly made a sickle out of adamant—by legend an unbreakable mineral—and gave it to Kronos. The next time Ouranos spread himself over her, attempting to force her into intercourse, Kronos leapt out from his hiding place to aid his mother. Wielding his sickle, and with one fell swoop, he sliced off his father’s genitals. It was the ultimate patriarchal nightmare—the father not just supplanted by his son but castrated by him, with the connivance of his wife. Even now, however, Ouranos’s potency was not quite spent. The splashes of blood and semen that flew from his wound sowed spirit life wherever they landed, bringing into being a vast assortment of new-born nymphs and giants, good and bad. The Erinyes, three baleful sisters better known to us now as the Furies, were angry and avenging spirits. Aphrodite was a deity of a very different kind. Where Ouranos’s wound-spatter landed in the ocean, this most beautiful of goddesses was born. She stepped from the waves, bringing with her all the delights of erotic love. Titans of all trades When Kronos had finally freed his brothers and sisters from captivity in the earth, the Titans were to serve a twofold mythic function. First, they were living, breathing, loving, and fighting personalities. Each of them symbolized a different aspect of existence, so that collectively they represented a way of ordering and enriching the world. The eldest daughter, Mnemosyne, for instance, stood for the faculty of memory and all it brought with it in terms of history, culture, and heritage. Later, having lain with her nephew Zeus, she would give birth to the nine Muses—divine patronesses of scientific study, historical study, poetry, and the performing arts. Tethys, who married her brother Oceanus, went on to bear him 3,000 sons—all river gods—and as Beautiful Aphrodite emerges from the ocean, where the seed of her brutal father had fallen. The Birth of Venus (her name in Roman mythology) was painted by Peter Paul Rubens (ca. 1637). ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE A white foam arose where the immortal skin touched water: amidst the waves, a beautiful maiden took form. Theogony 23 many daughters, the Oceanids, who were nymphs of springs, rivers, lakes, and seas. Her younger sister Theia, too, took a brother, Hyperion, for her husband; she bore him Helios, the sun, and his sister Eos, goddess of dawn. Helios and Eos had a sister, Selene, who was a goddess of the moon, though her aunt Phoebe—sister to Tethys, Mnemosyne, and Theia—also had lunar associations. Themis, the youngest female Titan, was associated with reason, justice, and the orderly conduct of existence in the universe. Like her sister Mnemosyne, she would for a time become consort to her nephew Zeus. Of their children, the Horae (“Hours”) would oversee the measurement and passage of the seasons and of time. Another daughter, Nemesis, took her mother’s association with justice to violent extremes; as her name suggests, she became notorious as the personification of punishment and divine retribution. The name of the youngest male Titan, Iapetus, comes from iapto, a Greek word meaning “wound” or “pierce.” The implications of this translation have long been debated. Ancient poets seem to have been unsure whether he was given this name because he sustained an injury or because he made the weapon that inflicted it. Meanwhile, in classical literature, Iapetus appears both as a deity of mortality and of skill in crafts. Patricidal patriarch Artists in ancient Greece almost invariably represented Kronos carrying a sickle—an emblem of his attack upon his father. The sickle also has more mundane and practical associations. Kronos came to be seen as the godly guarantor of a successful harvest. The connection between these two functions—the idea that one generation had effectively to be destroyed for its successor to survive and thrive, took an early hold on the Greek consciousness. Kronos, having killed his father, now replaced him as the head of the household. He then married his sister Rhea and began to produce children of his own. Much like his father, Kronos would soon confront the idea that human life can only advance through intergenerational struggle. This theme runs through the Greek mythological tradition, and is most notoriously associated with the story of King Oedipus. ■ Gaia Ouranos Coeus Demeter Mnemosyne Poseidon Tethys Iapetus Crius Hera Phoebe Zeus Themis Kronos Oceanus Hestia Theia Hades Hyperion Thousands of Greek deities, unanimously descended from Gaia and Ouranos, all embodied the values, virtues, and vices of humans, vividly dramatized in the colorful mythology of ancient Greece. Rhea ANCIENT GREECE RHEA SWADDLED UP A STONE AND PASSED IT TO KRONOS TO SWALLOW THE OLYMPIAN GODS 26 K ronos, Titan son of the earth goddess Gaia and the sky god Ouranos, proved every bit as possessive a patriarch as his father had been. After just one generation, a dismal pattern of godly conduct was emerging; just as Ouranos had dominated Gaia, Kronos required his wife and sister Rhea to be exclusively and endlessly available to him in order to meet his sexual needs. No one else, least of all his children, would be allowed to compete for her attention. Having deposed his own father to become king of the Titans, Kronos knew how dangerous it was to let a child grow in envy and rage. Determined that no one should pose such a threat to him, Kronos ensured that the children Rhea bore him were destroyed just as quickly as they were conceived. As soon as she gave birth to a new baby, he would swallow it whole. Hestia, the first child that Rhea bore, was gone in a single gulp, before her mother could even cradle her in her arms. Another daughter, Demeter, soon followed: she, too, was swallowed promptly. Hera, the third daughter, went the same way, and Kronos’s sons fared no better. First came Hades—swallowed down before he could utter his first helpless cry, swiftly followed by the next son, Poseidon, who met the same fate. The despairing Rhea finally turned to her mother, the elderly Gaia, and her neutered father, THE OLYMPIAN GODS Kronos, known as Saturn by the Romans, as depicted in Saturn Devouring His Son, Francisco Goya, (1821–1823). The work is part of the artist's “Black Paintings” series. IN BRIEF THEME Origin of the Olympian gods SOURCES Theogony, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce; Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus, ca. 100 ce. SETTING Crete. KEY FIGURES Kronos King of the Titans; son of Gaia and Ouranos. Rhea Sister and wife of Kronos. Hestia Goddess of the hearth. Demeter Goddess of the harvest. Hera Queen of the Olympian gods. Hades Lord of the Underworld. Poseidon God of the seas. Zeus King of the Olympian gods; killer of Kronos. Tricked by Rhea, he misses Zeus, who comes back to kill him. Kronos becomes a cruel father in turn. Kronos eats his children to prevent them from supplanting him. Kronos castrates and kills his cruel father, Ouranos. Both Earth and Sky foretold him that he would be dethroned by his own son. Library 27 Ouranos, for help. Together they hatched a devious plan to save their daughter’s next child. Switched with a stone Rhea followed her parents’ advice. As soon as she had given birth to Zeus, the last of her sons, and before his father, Kronos, had had a chance to see him, she hid the baby away. Then she wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and handed it to her unsuspecting husband in place of the infant. Kronos, in his rapacious greed, did not even look at the bundle before he tipped back his head, opened his mouth wide, and dropped it in. The “baby” tumbled straight down into his stomach, ready to join the jostling crowd of children already there. Unknown to Kronos, they had all survived in the deep darkness of his belly. There they grew in size and resentment. Brought up in safety Meanwhile, Rhea, on the recommendation of the child's grandmother, Gaia, spirited the infant Zeus away, carrying him across the sea to the fertile island of Crete. There, in a concealed cave on the thickly wooded slopes of Mount Ida (now known as Psiloritis, the highest mountain on Crete), Rhea left her son in the care of a warlike tribe called the Kouretes. They, in turn, gave the baby to a nymph named Adamanthea (Amalthea in some sources), who nursed Zeus in secret. According to Hesiod, the nymph was frightened that Kronos— thanks to his universal authority over the earth, sea, and sky—would be able to see where his son was being hidden. To prevent Kronos from finding him, she hung Zeus from a rope that dangled between the earth and the heavens but was in neither one realm nor the other. Adamanthea cared for Zeus and nursed him with milk from a herd of goats that grazed nearby. Whenever the baby gurgled, squealed, or cried, the Kouretes danced and chanted to disguise the sound. As a result, Kronos was completely unaware that his youngest son was still alive. Zeus seeks his father In no time at all, it seemed, Zeus grew to manhood. He was hungry for revenge against his cruel father. Yet if Zeus was ever to emerge from hiding, some sort of showdown between them would ❯❯ See also: Origin of the universe 18–23 ■ The war of the gods and Titans 32–33 ■ Mount Olympus 34–35 ■ The founding of Athens 56–57 ■ The sybil of Cumae 110–11 ANCIENT GREECE Zeus is protected from all-seeing Kronos by his attentive nymph carers and the noise of the Kouretes, as shown in this 17th-century painting, The Childhood of Zeus on Mount Ida. 28 be inevitable. Kronos could not afford to let a potential usurper live. If he became aware of Zeus’s existence, he would view his son only as a threat to his power. Kronos’s fear of being usurped was fully justified. When he finally met his son, whom he believed to be dead, he was forced to yield to Zeus in the most brutal way: Zeus simply turned up one day and, with the help of his grandmother, Gaia, ambushed his father. He kicked Kronos violently in the stomach and forced his father to vomit up the contents of his stomach. First to emerge was the stone Kronos had swallowed, believing it to be the infant Zeus. The young god took this stone and set it upright in the earth as a monument to Kronos’s cruelty, and a symbol of his triumph over the wicked god. Zeus placed the stone at the omphalos, or “navel,” of the Greek ancient world—at Delphi, in the very center of Greece. In future ages, the stone would become a shrine, renowned for its oracle. Pilgrims would visit it to seek the guidance of the priestess, or Sibyl, regarding their personal problems, and the Sibyl would provide them messages of wisdom that were said to come directly from the gods. Great deities disgorged After vomiting up the stone, Kronos began to disgorge his offspring. One by one, Zeus’s older brothers and sisters came out of their father’s mouth—no longer babies now, but fully grown. Once reborn, they became the Olympian gods and were revered for their powers. Soon after their rebirth, the sons and daughters of Kronos went to war with the mighty Titans for control of the cosmos. After their THE OLYMPIAN GODS victory, the gods set up their seat of power on Mount Olympus and drew lots to decide who would take which role in ruling the universe. The three sons of Kronos divided the cosmos up between them; one would take control of the sky, another would have the sea, and the third would preside over the Underworld. Zeus, whose weapon of choice was the thunderbolt, became ruler of the sky and leader of all the Olympian gods. Hades, the first son to be born and the last to be regurgitated, became lord of the Underworld. His name came to stand for both the deity and his unseen realm, where souls go after death. Hades was not happy to have been allocated this dismal domain, but there was nothing he could do about it. Meanwhile, Poseidon, who had been the tiniest baby, became the almighty “Earth- Shaker,” the god of the sea in all its awesome power. Disparate goddesses The three female children of Kronos also had important roles to play. Hestia, goddess of the hearth, ruled over people's domestic lives. As Hestia Kronos and Rhea’s eldest child, Hestia ("hearth"), was the first to be swallowed by her father— and the last to reappear when Zeus forced him to vomit up his offspring. Given that she was both the oldest and youngest of the children, she was widely referred to as “Hestia, First and Last.” Like the later Roman god Janus, Hestia was seen as the embodiment of all of life’s ambiguities and ambivalences. Like Janus, too, she quickly came to be associated with the home, with domesticity and all its blessings. In particular, her realm was that of the hearth—the fire that was a household’s warm and hospitable center. The hearth was also the site of the altar where sacrifices were offered to any domestic gods; she presided over these rituals, too. Though herself a sworn virgin, having refused all proposals of marriage, Hestia was considered the protector of the family. The metaphorical family of the state was also part of her realm, and she would look after the public altar or hearth within a city. First he vomited up the stone, which he had swallowed last. Zeus set it up to be a sign … a wonder to mortal men. Theogony 29 Zeus and Hera become man and wife in a scene from a decorative marble-and-limestone frieze that was part of a temple in Selinunte, Sicily, dating from the 5th century bce. Aphrodite had an illicit affair with another Olympian—Ares, the god of war. They were caught in bed by her husband, Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, who threw a net over the pair. goddess of the harvest, Demeter was a life-giver to the worshippers who relied on her annual bounty. She proved a fickle protector, however, ready not just to cross swords with her siblings but to withhold favors from humankind at any perceived slight. Hera’s role was more prominent than that of her sisters, and she became the foremost female deity following her marriage to her brother Zeus. To her great dismay, however, Hera never quite received the recognition and honors she expected as the queen of the gods. As the goddess of women and marriage, Hera was supposed to represent the archetypal wedded state, but she became known for her marital troubles. Nor was Hera the goddess who inspired men’s passions. While Hera was portrayed as a wifely figure, Aphrodite was the goddess associated with feminine beauty, sexuality, and erotic pleasures. The Greeks had these two different deities for what, in ancient times, were considered two separate spheres of affection. One deity represented marital love, the other romantic and erotic love. While this distinction may now be alien to many people, in most cultures and at most times in history, the majority of marriages were arranged—as transactions for the management and transmission of property and land. The idea of “companionate” marriage—in which the love between a husband and wife is the driving factor—is a relatively modern convention. The Dodekatheon Aphrodite was the only member of this first generation of Olympians who was not a child of Kronos and Rhea; some accounts suggest she was the daughter of Zeus, but Hesiod, Pausanius, and Ovid all ANCIENT GREECE described her as Kronos's sister, who was born from sea foam after the castration of Ouranos. Despite being of the same generation as Kronos and Rhea, she was always considered an Olympian, rather than a Titan, and one of the gods and goddesses who eventually made up the Dodekatheon—the 12 most important Olympians in the Greek pantheon. The Dodekatheon included Zeus, Demeter, Hera, Poseidon, and Aphrodite from the first generation of Olympians. The hearth goddess Hestia was not among them, as she later chose to live on Earth to avoid her siblings’ squabbles. Hades, similarly, was not included because he resided permanently in the Underworld. After the war between the gods and the Titans established the Olympians as rulers of the cosmos, the first generation of gods went on to have many children. Many of the gods and other figures in Greek mythology were children of Zeus. ❯❯ 30 Of the second generation of gods, several joined the Dodekatheon, and were powerful deities in their own right. The gods Apollo, Ares, Dionysus, Hephaestus, and Hermes all joined the ranks of Zeus and his siblings on Mount Olympus, as did the goddesses Artemis and Athena. The Dodekatheon met as a council to discuss matters in their ruling of the cosmos; Dionysus, god of wine, attained his seat at the table only after Hestia left Olympus to reside on Earth. Human personalities The Olympian gods were all too human in their personalities, and often lacked the lofty transcendence of the supreme beings in later religions. In a dramatic soap opera of fierce rivalries and petty spats, their actions were influenced not by a desire to work for the good of humankind, but by their own selfish desires and whims. The Greeks therefore did not worship THE OLYMPIAN GODS Athena and her uncle Poseidon battled over Athens—a family squabble that the goddess won. The struggle is illustrated in this Venetian fresco by Giambattista Mengardi (1787). Marble sculptures from the Parthenon temple on the Acropolis in Athens show the gods—from left to right: Dionysus, Demeter, Persephone, and Artemis— reacting to the birth of Athena. the gods by attempting to emulate them, instead treating them as they might a powerful human ruler by offering sacrifices and celebrating the deities at regular festivals. At its core, this was a system of exchange: people offered gifts to the gods in the hope that the gods would give them what they asked for. The gods often rewarded mortals who treated them well and showed them the appropriate deference and respect. Zeus and his siblings could be needlessly cruel and were often subject to jealousies and petty fights. His brothers Poseidon and Hades often used humans as pawns in these squabbles, which usually stemmed from a reluctance to accept the supreme god's authority as unquestionable. Still more reluctant was his sister Demeter, a strong-willed deity in her own right. After she was pursued and raped by Poseidon, and Hades abducted her daughter Persephone, Demeter wreaked havoc across the world. 31 Infidelity, too, was a major theme in all Greek myths—not just in the affairs (and assaults) committed by Zeus that riled the jealous Hera. Between gods and mortals Despite their power, in many ways Greek deities appear to have had an intermediate status, hovering somewhere between the spiritual and the real. Their attributes reflect the countless aspects of Greek everyday life in which the gods played an implicit part. All the gods had specific areas of influence, such as Zeus and Athena, who were among the theoi agoraioi (gods of the agora—the marketplace and people’s assembly). Both Zeus and the goddess Hestia were also gods of the home (theoi ktesioi). Hestia, Dionysius, and Aphrodite were among the theoi daitioi, who presided over feasts and banquets. The gods themselves also needed sustenance. According to Greek tradition, they lived on a diet of nectar and ambrosia, carried to Mount Olympus by doves. To later belief systems, the notion that deities needed material sustenance seems at odds with their divinity. Ancient Greek authorities, however, agreed on the importance of this nourishment for the gods to empower and sustain them. ■ ANCIENT GREECE Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, was often shown with a scepter, myrtle, and dove. Apollo was an archer, but also played the lyre, while the laurel symbolized his love for Daphne. Ares was the bloodthirsty god of war. His love of arms was usually represented by a spear. Artemis, the hunting goddess and Apollo’s twin, was shown with a bow and her sacred deer. Demeter, the scepter-wielding harvest goddess, carried a torch in a bid to find her daughter. Hera, Zeus’s queen, carried a scepter and wore a regal crown. Her bird was the peacock. Poseidon, the sea god, wielded a trident to shake the earth. Bulls and horses were sacred to him. Athena, goddess of wisdom, bore the Aegis shield; her bird was the owl, her tree the olive. Hephaestus was the god of smiths, craftsmen, and fire. His axe was never far from his side. Dionysus, god of wine, was crowned with ivy and bore a thyrsos—a symbol of pleasure. Hermes, the gods’ messenger, wore winged boots and carried a caduceus, a magical staff. Zeus, the supreme god, tossed thunderbolts at foes. The eagle was his bird, the oak his tree. The 12 Olympians Symbols of the gods Scepter Dove Spear Scepter Myrtle Laurel Lyre Bow Bow Deer Aegis Owl Olive Grain Torch Ivy Grapevine Thyrsos Axe Scepter Diadem Peacock Winged boots Caduceus Trident Bull Horse Thunderbolt Eagle Oak Description Demeter was wroth with the gods and quitted heaven. Library 32 Z eus slipped easily into a position of authority over his brothers and sisters: though the youngest, he had been in the world by far the longest. His siblings supported him as he strove to overthrow his father and assert his primacy across the cosmos. So began the Titanomachy—the War of the Gods and Titans. Zeus, with the support of his siblings, launched a concerted and determined attack against the Titan gods. The siblings were joined by some of Ouranos’s cast- out sons. The three Kyklopes—the one-eyed giants Brontes, Steropes, and Arges—sided with Zeus after he freed them from the Underworld. They were skilled craftstmen who made weapons for the gods: a mighty thunderbolt for Zeus, a cloak of invisibility for Hades, and a trident for Poseidon. The Hecatoncheires—Briareos, Kottos, and Gyges—also fought for the gods. Each of these terrifying giants had 50 heads and 100 hands, and howled as they rampaged across the battlefield. Total war The war was fought on the lower slopes of Mount Olympus and across the open plains of Thessaly, but the earth-shattering conflict encompassed the entire world. Huge rocks were hurled around; Zeus, leader of the gods, stands beside an eagle in this 4th-century statue. The eagle, Zeus’s messenger, remained a symbol of power from ancient Rome to Nazi Germany. IN BRIEF THEME Olympians take power SOURCES Iliad, Homer, 8th century bce; Theogony, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce; Library, Pseudo-Apollodorus, ca. 100 ce. SETTING The slopes of Mount Olympus and the plains of Thessaly, northern Greece. KEY FIGURES Olympians The gods Zeus, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. Titans Oceanus, Hyperion, Coeus, Tethys, Phoebe, Rhea, Mnemosyne, Themis, Theia, Crius, Kronos, and Iapetus. Kyklopes The one-eyed giants Brontes, Steropes, and Arges; sons of Ouranos. Hecatoncheires The giants Briareos, Kottos, and Gyges; sons of Ouranos and Gaia. ZEUS IN HIS FIRST YOUTH BATTERED THE EARTHBORN TITANS THE WAR OF THE GODS AND TITANS 33 ANCIENT GREECE The Fall of the Titans by Giulio Romano (1532–1535). Depicting the war of the Titans, this continuous fresco covers the walls and ceiling of the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo Te, Italy. See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ War of the gods 140–41 ■ A complex god 164 ■ The game of dice 202–03 entire mountaintops were ripped up and sent flying back and forth as projectiles; bolts of lightning flashed like javelins across the sky. Flames rose up to the farthest heights of heaven; the thud of marching feet caused quakes in the most remote reaches of the Underworld; swirling dust clouds darkened the sky, and the din of the conflict was deafening. According to Hesiod, the intensity of the fighting “pained the soul.” The advantage tipped back and forth without any real interval for a full 10 years. Neither side would yield, so finally Zeus rallied his cohorts. He refreshed the Hecatoncheires with nectar and ambrosia—the divine and exclusive sustenance of the gods, which conferred immortality on any mortal who consumed it. This may not have been the effect it had on the Hecatoncheires, but according to Hesiod, “the heroic spirits grew in all their hearts” after Zeus gave it to the giants. Ultimate triumph Reinvigorated, the Hecatoncheires were the tipping point. With such formidable allies and weapons, the gods were at last able to defeat the Titans. They banished them to Tartarus, the lowest pit of the Underworld, where the Titans were imprisoned for all eternity under the watch of the Hecatoncheires. Zeus and his siblings now had full control over the cosmos. They set up their imperial seat on the top of Mount Olympus, from where they ruled the universe. ■ Warfare in ancient Greece After the rise of the city-states of Athens, Sparta, and beyond, warfare became a way of life for the people of ancient Greece. The states fought each other for territory, trade, and power in highly ritualized wars—both sides would consult with oracles and sing hymns to the gods before meeting for set-piece battles. Scholars use the term “limited warfare” to describe the ancient Greek model, in which cities were destroyed but the victors were honorable, fighting within a set of rules of conduct. Some city-states, such as Sparta, became very militaristic. This perhaps explains the recurrence of the idea of a war in heaven. Such stories dramatized real-life shifts in theological and spiritual thinking in ancient societies. For example, the Titanomachy could explain the shift from an earth cult, centered around deities who lived in the Underworld, to the more sky-based theology found in ancient Greece. Zeus’s bolts flew thick and fast from his mighty hands, with flash and thunder and flame. Theogony 34 34 NO WIND BEATS ROUGHLY HERE, NO SNOW NOR RAIN MOUNT OLYMPUS O riginally, the dwellings of the ancient Greek deities were not in the heavens but in the heart of the earth. Once Zeus and his siblings defeated the Titans, however, the Greeks turned their eyes heavenward to worship the new generation of gods and goddesses. Hephaestus, god of fire and the forge, built them palaces in the sheltered ravines of Mount Olympus. Hesiod described the mountain as “many-folded,” a phrase suggestive of a sky-high stronghold full of secrets. The palaces were built of stone on bronze foundations. They were both gigantic and luxurious, their floors inlaid with gold and precious stones. Zeus set up his throne at the top of the peak of Stefani. From there, he hurled his thunderbolts at those who displeased him in the world below. Life on Olympus The council of the gods typically met in Zeus’s golden courtyard to discuss their rule of the cosmos, and gathered in Zeus’s hall to while away the evenings with feasting. Apollo sang to them, accompanying himself upon his lyre. Sometimes the Muses came up from their home at the foot of Olympus to sing, dance, and tell stories. IN BRIEF THEME Home of the gods SOURCES Theogony, Hesiod, ca.700 bce; Illiad and Odyssey, Homer, ca.800 bce; Description of Greece, Pausanias, ca.150 ce. SETTING Mount Olympus, northeastern Greece. KEY FIGURES Zeus King of the Greek gods. Hera Wife and sister of Zeus; queen of the gods. Hephaestus The blacksmith god; son of Hera. The Muses Children of Zeus. The Horai Three sisters; goddesses of time and the seasons. The Moirae Three sisters; goddesses of fate. Mount Olympus, home of the Greek gods, rises from the Plain of Thessaly. Thessaly was the site of the decade-long war the Titans fought against Zeus and his siblings. 35 ANCIENT GREECE See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ The war of the gods and Titans 32–33 ■ Cupid and Psyche 112–13 ■ Pangu and the creation of the world 214–15 ■ The legendary foundation of Korea 228–29 There were separate stables for the creatures that drew the gods’ chariots—most famously, those that pulled the blazing chariot of Apollo, the sun god. Zeus had one drawn by the four Anemoi, gods of the winds—Boreas (north), Euros (east), Notos (south), and Zephyros (west). Poseidon’s chariot was pulled along by fishtailed horses of the sea, while Aphrodite’s was drawn by a team of doves. The Horai—the sisters Eirene, Eunomia, and Dike—guarded the gates to Olympus and saw to the orderly passage of time and the seasons. Another trio of goddesses, the Moirae (Fates), sat at the foot of Zeus’s throne and watched over the lives of mortals. Physical and symbolic What we refer to today as “Mount” Olympus is actually a massif, with over 50 distinct peaks almost 9,850 feet (3,000 m) above sea level. Much of the time, its upper slopes are wreathed in snow or dense cloud, cutting off the summit from the view of mortals down below. It is no wonder that the ancient Greeks held this to be the royal seat of their reigning dynasty of gods. The idea of the sacred mountain existed long before the Greeks began to worship the Olympians, and is found in many other cultures. Mount Meru, for example, towered at the cosmological center of Indian religions; Mount Fuji dominated the Japanese religious scheme; and Inca priests in Peru offered sacrifice high up on the Andean summits. In mythology, the mountain peak has often seemed to occupy a separate physical space from the Earth. Homer underlined this by showing Mount Olympus from different perspectives. Viewed from Earth, it was described as “snow- topped” or “cloud-enveloped”; for the gods, however, their home was a place of permanent sunshine and clear blue sky. ■ The council of the gods meets among the clouds on Olympus in this fresco by Italian Renaissance master Raphael (1518), which shows Zeus conferring immortality on Psyche. Changing gods Anthropologists use the term “syncretism” to describe the merging of strands from different religious systems. Ancient Greece had many examples of this. The sanctuary of Dodona, in northwestern Greece, lay in a valley surrounded by a grove of oak trees. The site seems to have been sacred to a matriarchal earth goddess since at least the 2nd millennium bce—before the idea of Zeus took root. After the ascendancy of the Olympians, the earth goddess was supplanted and one of Zeus’s many wives, Dione, was worshipped at Dodona. Isthmia—on the narrow land connecting the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of Greece—was the obvious site for a shrine to Poseidon, god of the sea, beset on the narrow strip of land by roaring waves on either side. Yet archaeologists have found remains at Isthmia dating back long before the era of the Olympians, dedicated to a deity or deities unknown. The gods pressed far-seeing Zeus of Olympus to reign over them. Theogony 36 36 Z eus’s victory in the war with the Titans had been hard won but decisive. He and his brothers held unchallenged sway over the heavens, Earth, and sea. The usurper of a usurper, he had seized supremacy by dethroning Kronos, who had himself toppled the tyrant Ouranos. No ruler could afford to become complacent, however seemingly unassailable their position—and a challenge to the authority of Zeus was fast approaching. Spirit of rebellion Prometheus, a young Titan and therefore a survivor of the old regime, was the son of Iapetus and IN BRIEF THEME Origin of humanity SOURCES Theogony and Works and Days, Hesiod, ca.700 bce; Library, Apollodorus, ca.100 ce SETTING Greece, the Aegean, and the Caucasus Mountains, Western Asia. KEY FIGURES Zeus King of the gods. Iapetus The youngest Titan, son of Ouranos and Gaia. Klymene A sea nymph, daughter of the Titan Oceanus. Prometheus Son of Iapetus and Klymene. Deukalion Human son of Prometheus. Pyrrha Wife of Deukalion. Hephaestus The blacksmith god. HE BOUND CUNNING PROMETHEUS IN INESCAPABLE FETTERS PROMETHEUS HELPS MANKIND 37 ANCIENT GREECE Zeus and his subjects. Despite this, all sources regard him as a central part of the conflict. Self-confident in his cleverness, Prometheus was independent- minded, irreverent, and defiant. His contempt for Zeus’s authority was all too clear. Worse still, he appeared to pass on this rebellious spirit to Zeus’s human subjects. From clay to stone According to Apollodorus’s Library, Prometheus was the creator of humanity, shaping the first man and woman from moist clay. This first race of humans walked the Earth for only a single generation before being swept away by an angry Zeus in a worldwide flood. Prometheus’s human son, Deukalion, and his wife, Pyrrha, were the only survivors. Typically, Prometheus had outmaneuvered Zeus, prompting his son and his See also: Origin of the universe 18–23 ■ The war of the gods and Titans 32–33 ■ Pandora’s box 40–41 ■ The many affairs of Zeus 42–47 daughter-in-law to save themselves by building a floating wooden chest in which to ride out the deluge. Deukalion survived the great flood and its aftermath by showing more tact than his father. He thanked Zeus for letting him and Pyrrha live, built an altar, and offered sacrifice. Zeus was so pleased to see this submissive spirit that he not only allowed Deukalion and Pyrrha to go on living but told Deukalion how he could re-create humanity. He and his wife were told to ❯❯ Prometheus Carrying Fire, by the Flemish painter Jan Cossiers (1671), shows the young Titan stealing the precious resource for mankind. Klymene’s children According to Hesiod’s Theogony, “Iapetus took Klymene, Oceanus’s elegant-ankled daughter to his bed.” Other ancient authors, however, referred to her as “Asia.” With Iapetus, Klymene bore four sons, each of whom was, ultimately, fated for misery. During the war of the Titans, Zeus killed Klymene’s prideful son, Menoetius, by hurling him into the underworld with a lightning bolt. Following the victory of the Olympian gods, another of Klymene’s sons, Atlas, was made to suffer for his role in leading the Titan forces. He was sentenced by Zeus to carry the heavens on his shoulders as punishment for resisting the Olympian ascendancy. Epimetheus, Klymene’s third son, was every bit as foolish as Prometheus was cunning. Against his brother’s advice, he was duped into accepting Pandora as a gift and marrying her. He had no idea that she had been created to be both beautiful and deceitful, and was sent by Zeus to bring all manner of sorrows into the world. Klymene, celebrated for quick intelligence, dexterity, and skill. Prometheus’s very name meant “Thinking Ahead”: he was an inventor and a strategist. Different sources disagree on the precise part Prometheus played in the continuing struggle between Atlas carries the heavens on his shoulders. Although commonly mistaken for an Earth globe, the round structure weighing on Atlas represents the celestial sphere. Prometheus shaped men out of water and clay. Library 38 PROMETHEUS HELPS MANKIND pick up stones and throw them backward over their heads. They did so and wherever Deukalion’s stones landed, the bodies of living men immediately took form; where Pyrrha’s came to rest, women sprang up out of the ground. A trick backfires Unlike Appolodorus, Hesiod’s genealogy incorporated mortal humans almost from the beginning, though he said little about their origins. They were mentioned as existing during the reign of Kronos, but only incidentally, emerging into the foreground only in the age of the Olympian gods. When Zeus summoned humans for a meeting on the sort of sacrifices they would have to offer him, Prometheus intervened on their behalf. Wrapping some choice beef inside an ugly oxhide, and a bundle of bones inside some of the most delicious meat, he offered Zeus the choice of which sacrifices should be made to him thenceforth. Zeus appeared to have fallen for the trick, asking for the outwardly appealing bag of bones—though Hesiod hints the king of the gods may have chosen this deliberately, to have an excuse for hating humans. Either way, Zeus was enraged. Far from easing people’s plight as he had intended, Prometheus’s cunning made them victims of Zeus’s rage. The angry god hid the secret of fire from his human subjects. This not only deprived them of warmth and comfort but also hindered human progress. Out in the cold Without fire or the technologies it makes possible, mortals existed in a miserable state of subsistence. They foraged for food in darkness, damp, and cold, with only animal skins for clothes, surviving on raw roots, berries, and fruits (when they were in season) and uncooked carrion. They used twigs as The Five Ages Kronos’s reign may have been unpleasant for the Titan’s children but was, says Hesiod, a “Golden Age” for mortal humans. Sickness, war, and discord were unknown; men and women lived for centuries, while trees and fields yielded their produce freely through an endless spring. The rise of Zeus saw an immediate decline in human fortunes. The men and women of this “Silver Age” lived only a hundred years, most of it spent in an extended childhood; when they finally grew up, they were foolish and quarrelsome. An “Age of Bronze” came next: its men were warriors, who spent their short lives squabbling and fighting. The “Heroic Age” which followed was an improvement on the Bronze Age in the sense that its perennial wars took on a noble and epic character. This was the age of Homer’s Trojan War, and very different from Hesiod’s “Iron Age” in which he himself lived—and in which we all live now—in fearfulness, scarcity, misery, and toil. Mortal men and women sprung up fully formed from the stones thrown by Deukalion and Pyrrha and repopulated the Earth, as shown in Peter Paul Rubens’s 1636 painting. The stones which Deucalion threw became men; the stones which Pyrrha threw became women. Library 39 ANCIENT GREECE Prometheus was punished by the gods for giving humans fire. He was chained to Mount Caucasus to endure constant torture, as depicted by Jacob Jordaens (1640). Prometheus fashions the first man from clay … … saves his son from Zeus’s flood … … and steals fire from the gods. … tricks Zeus with false sacrifices … Prometheus is punished for his defiance. rudimentary tools and old bones for weaponry, in what could scarcely qualify even as a “primitive” existence. As they fought a daily battle to stave off starvation, any possibility of shaping their wider destiny was unthinkable. Stolen fire Prometheus came to humanity’s rescue. He took some glowing embers from a blaze built by the gods high up on Mount Olympus and, secreting this fire inside a hollow fennel stalk, he carried it down to the little encampments where mortal men and women shivered on the plains below. Soon, “visible from afar,” fires twinkled across the length and breadth of the peopled world. In that moment, human life was instantly and permanently transformed. Heat, warmth, light, and safety from predatory beasts was just the start. In no time at all, humankind began to thrive—smelting metal, fashioning fine jewelry and strong tools, and blacksmithing all kinds of weapons, from hoes and hammers to spears and swords. Each new innovation opened the way to others—suddenly, humanity was progressing at a breakneck pace. Harsh punishment Zeus was enraged by Prometheus’s theft of fire. Not only had he been defied in the most public way, but his power over humanity had been significantly weakened. Zeus decided that Prometheus deserved an eternal and painful punishment. He had the thief seized by his henchmen, Bia (“Violence”) and Kratos (“Power”), and carried to a high mountain peak. Here, with the help of Hephaestus, the blacksmith god, they chained Prometheus to a rock. An eagle flew down, tore at his abdomen, then pulled out the living, pulsing liver, and gorged on it. Despite the agony of this torture, it was no more than a beginning for the rebellious Titan. Each night his internal organs and his skin grew back, ready to be attacked afresh by the eagle the next day. For centuries, Prometheus was tied to the rock. He was finally rescued from his torments by Herakles, who found him while hunting for the elusive apples of the Hesperides. Prometheus would only give Herakles the apples’ location after he killed the eagle and set Prometheus free. Prometheus was not the only one punished for stealing fire from the gods. Zeus also inflicted his rage upon humankind, instructing Hephaestus to create the woman Pandora to punish the humans by bringing them hardship, war, and death. ■ It stung anew Zeus, high thunderer in his spirit, and he raged in his heart when he saw among men the far-seen beam of fire. Theogony 40 HER IMPULSE INTRODUCED SORROW AND MISCHIEF TO THE LIVES OF MEN PANDORA’S BOX I n Hesiod’s account of humanity’s mythic origins, Works and Days, man was first created alone, with no female mate to accompany him on his journey through the world. Woman would make her first appearance not as man’s helpmate and partner, but as his punishment. A jealous god When the Titan Prometheus stole fire from the gods, he did much to empower humanity, at high personal cost. In an existence that had been largely trouble-free, humanity, to whom he gave the gift of fire, continued to thrive and prosper. As punishment, however, Prometheus would be held captive and tortured eternally at the hands of Zeus, who was a jealous and grudging deity. Far from rejoicing in man’s improving fortunes, the god felt threatened by humanity’s growing confidence. Zeus concluded that in order to correct the balance between divine and human power, some great calamity in the world was required. That calamity was woman. On Zeus’s orders, the blacksmith and fire god Hephaestus set to work, shaping soft clay into a female mate for man. Gilding the lily The other Olympians then added their own contributions to the woman’s make-up: Aphrodite gave her beauty and attractiveness; Athena gave her skill in sewing; Hera gave her curiosity; and so on. Hermes, the gods’ messenger, gave woman the power of speech to help her communicate—but he also gave her the dangerous gift of guile. This new woman was enchanting in her beauty, seductive in her softness, inspiring in her smile, and soothing in her gentleness. In light of these traits, IN BRIEF THEME Origins of evil SOURCE Works and Days, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce. SETTING The foot of Mount Olympus, Greece. KEY FIGURES Prometheus Titan brother of Epimetheus; creator of humanity—and its greatest benefactor. Zeus King of the gods of Mount Olympus. Hephaestus Olympian blacksmith god and creator of the first woman. Pandora The first woman; created on Zeus’s instruction. Epimetheus Titan brother of Prometheus. The glorious lame god molded clay into the shape of a demure and decorous young maiden. Works and Days 41 Pandora, as depicted by the British Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882). She is holding the infamous box from which all the troubles of the world poured forth. See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ Prometheus helps mankind 36–39 ■ The Mead of Poetry 142–43 ■ Nanga Baiga 212–13 ANCIENT GREECE she was given the name Pandora (literally meaning “all gifts”). Her name alone would have caused Prometheus concern. He had previously warned his brother Epimetheus not to accept any offering from Zeus, in case it unleashed “some evil thing for mortal men.” However, due to the punishment of Prometheus, Epimetheus had been left in charge in the world of men. Whereas Prometheus’s name meant “Thinking Ahead” or “Foresight,” Epimetheus’s meant “Thinking After.” He was gullible and did not stop to think when Zeus’s messenger Hermes presented him with Pandora as a goodwill present to humanity from Zeus. Nor did he give a second glance to the present that she herself brought with her, a pithos or ceramic jar (usually reimagined as a richly ornamented box in modern retellings). The all- gifted girl was both gift and giver. Fatal curiosity There was nothing inherently evil about Pandora. Although she had been warned against opening the pithon, it was her innocent curiosity —a characteristic given by Hera—that led to her downfall. When she could not resist peeping inside the jar, she pulled back the lid, and all the ills and misfortunes of the world flew out: Hunger, Sickness, Loss, Loneliness, and Death. Horrified, Pandora hastily pushed the lid back on—just in time to prevent Hope from escaping. With hope, the world could still persevere, despite the adversity that the jealous Zeus had inflicted on mankind. ■ Hephaestus At least one source states that Hephaestus was ugly and squat from birth, which explains why he was thrown from the top of Mount Olympus by his disgusted mother, Hera. Landing further down the mountain with a crash, he was then rendered lame as well. The unprepossessing appearance of this first divine artisan was in sharp and highly symbolic contrast to the beauty of the many things that he created. He was often aided by attendants, such as Cedalion, who helped with his creations. Hephaestus is widely known as the Greek “blacksmith god” and presided over manufacture in its broadest sense—perfecting his craft in everything from metalwork and the manufacture of weapons to fine jewelry and intricate items of clothing. Of all his many creations, Pandora is certainly the most wonderful—and the most flawed. According to Hesiod, it was Hephaestus who created the first woman, thereby enabling each generation of humanity to repeatedly replicate itself. In this sense, the craft of Hephaestus gave birth to humanity’s future. Prometheus had warned him never to accept a gift from Zeus. Works and Days ZEUS HAD MANY WOMEN, BOTH MORTAL AND IMMORTAL THE MANY AFFAIRS OF ZEUS 44 THE MANY AFFAIRS OF ZEUS T he sexual adventures of Zeus, the king of the gods, made up a significant strand of ancient Greek mythology. Without Zeus’s many infidelities, the myths suggest that knowledge and artistic expression of any kind—poetry, music, drama, or works of art—would not exist. One of Zeus’s first affairs was with Mnemosyne, the Titan goddess of memory. After he slept with her on nine consecutive nights, nine daughters were born. Collectively known as the Muses, each of these daughters became responsible for inspiring mortals in a particular area of artistic endeavor: Calliope inspired epic poetry; Clio, history; Euterpe, lyric poetry and song; Erato, love poetry; and Polyhymnia, sacred poetry. Melpomene became responsible for inspiring tragic drama; Thalia took charge of comedy and pastoral poetry; Terpsichore inspired dance; and Urania, astronomy. All through the classical period, musicians and poets called on the Muses for assistance as they worked. “Blessed is he whom the Muses love,” said the Greek poet Hesiod after invoking their help in Theogony, his poem about the genealogy of the gods. With the inspiration of the Muses, Hesiod said, musicians and poets could relieve a suffering mind of its cares. Hera and the cuckoo Zeus’s instinct for trickery was an integral part of his character and informed all of his erotic exploits. He had assumed the form of a mortal—a handsome shepherd—to seduce Mnemosyne, and many of his other love affairs involved similar sorts of shape-shifting. Hera, Zeus’s wife, had also been won this way. The notoriously formidable goddess had dismissed Zeus disdainfully when he had first approached her, forcing him to take deceptive measures to win her affections. First, he summoned a thunderstorm, then he stood outside her window and took on the form of a fledgling cuckoo, its The nine Muses lived on Mount Helicon, central Greece. In this scene by Jacques Stella (ca. 1640) they are visited by Minerva (Athena), goddess of wisdom and patron of the arts. IN BRIEF THEME Lovers of the gods SOURCES Iliad, Homer, 8th century bce; Theogony, Works and Days, The Shield of Heracles, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce; Library, Pseudo- Apollodorus, ca. 100 ce. SETTING Greece and the Aegean. KEY FIGURES Zeus Father of the gods. Hera Zeus's wife; queen of the gods. Mnemosyne Goddess of memory. Europa Phoenician princess. Antiope Daughter of the river god Asopos. Leda A Spartan princess. Metis Daughter of Oceanus. Athena Daughter of Metis. The Muses gladden the great spirit of their father Zeus in Olympus with their songs, telling of things that shall be. Theogony 45 ANCIENT GREECE expression helpless and its feathers ruffled up as if chilled and battered by the wind-blown hail. Hera could not bear to see this tiny creature suffering. She cupped the cuckoo in her hand and placed it inside her dress against her bosom, so that it could get warm. At this point, Zeus assumed his normal quasi-human form and seduced her. The conquest of Hera was not the only time Zeus took the form of a bird. Zeus took on the shape of a swan in order to seduce the Spartan princess Leda. As with Hera, he took advantage of his victim’s compassion. Apparently fleeing from an attacking eagle, he See also: The birth of Zeus 20–23 ■ The war of the gods and Titans 32–33 ■ The Olympian gods 24–31 fell into her arms, but when she cradled him protectively, Zeus raped her. In the case of the Theban princess Semele, his choice of species—a raptor—clearly signaled his predatory intentions. Taking the form of an eagle, his royal emblem, he visited Semele and made her pregnant. Dionysus, god of wine and festivity, was the result of their union. Ruined innocence Zeus’s conquest of Alcmene—a mortal princess with whom he fathered Herakles—was more sinister. Alcmene was a paragon of beauty, charm, and wisdom. She ❯❯ Hera As the daughter of the Titans Kronos and Rhea, and wife and sister of the mighty Zeus, it might seem odd that Hera was commonly associated with cattle. She was often pictured with a sacred cow and in the Iliad is described as “cow-faced” or “ox-eyed.” Such imagery was probably more flattering than it sounds. To the ancient Greeks, the cow was an emblem of motherhood and prosperity; wealth was often measured in the number of livestock owned. While Hera was clearly no sex symbol—a role more associated with the goddess of beauty, Aphrodite—she did exemplify the importance of women in everyday life in Greece. She was celebrated as a goddess of both marriage and virginity. At Kanathos, in the Peloponnese, she was worshipped as Hera Parthenos (“Virgin”) and was said to renew her virginity by bathing in the spring every year. The Heraion of Argos—possibly the first of many temples dedicated to Hera—honored her as Zeus’s consort and queen. Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, according to Homer, were the cities she loved best. A shepherd to seduce Mnemosyne. A cuckoo to seduce Hera. A bull to seduce Europa. A satyr to seduce Antiope. A swan to seduce Leda. A shower of gold to seduce Danaë. An eagle to seduce Semele. A cloud to seduce Io. Zeus in disguise 46 THE MANY AFFAIRS OF ZEUS was betrothed to Amphitryon, the son of a Theban general. Zeus assumed his guise to approach Alcmene while her fiancé was away avenging the deaths of her brothers. King Acrisius of Argos was particularly anxious to keep his only daughter Danaë chaste. He had been warned by an oracle that she was destined to bear a son who would one day slay him. To avoid this fate, he placed her in a cell so that no one could come near her. However, Zeus took the form of a shower of gold to pour himself through her prison skylight. The child of the encounter, Perseus, would later unwittingly cause her father’s death. Zeus as beast Despite her name, Europa was a child of Asia, a princess from Phoenicia, a region covering parts of Israel, Syria, and Lebanon. Smitten by her charms, Zeus took on the form of a fine, white bull and mingled among her father’s cattle. Picking flowers, Europa noticed the new bull and was struck by its beauty and its seeming gentleness. When she drew near to pet it, the bull lay down and she climbed onto its back. Suddenly, the bull leapt up and sped away across the fields and over the sea while the terrified girl clung on for dear life. The bull only stopped when it reached the island of Crete, where Zeus at last revealed himself and bedded his young victim. Zeus rewarded Europa by making her Crete’s first queen. In time, she gave birth to Minos, the island’s first king. Scholars think the story of Europa may have originated in Crete, where the cult of the bull also produced the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. For his assault on Antiope, the daughter of Asopos, a river god from Attica in central Greece, A fearful Europa rides the waves, clinging to Zeus, who took the form of a bull to abduct her. This powerful image was painted in 1910 by the Russian artist Valentin Serov. Zeus took the shape of a satyr—a half-man, half-goat who roamed the wild woods. Usually associated with the idea of lechery, satyrs were often depicted with erections in ancient art; Zeus had disguised his identity, not his lust. Hiding from Hera In some stories, it was Zeus’s quarry who had to take a different shape. In the case of Io—the daughter of the king of Argos, and a priestess in the temple of Zeus’s wife, Hera—Zeus transformed himself into a cloud to make his approach and conceal it from the watchful Hera. Once he had raped Io, he turned her into a beautiful white heifer, to hide her from his wife. Hera saw through the trick and asked if she could have the heifer as a gift. Zeus had no option but to agree. Hera consigned Io to the care of the hundred-eyed giant Argus to watch over. Maddened with frustration, Zeus sent his son Hermes to slay the all-seeing herdsman; the divine messenger blinded Argus with a Suddenly, the bull, possessed of his desire, jumped up and galloped off towards the sea. Europa 47 ANCIENT GREECE touch from his kerykeion, or staff. As the giant lay there dead, Hermes collected up his hundred eyes and set them in a peacock’s tail: the bird was sacred to Hera from that time on. If Zeus thought the way was now clear for him to pursue Io, he was wrong. Hera sent a fly to attack her. Buzzing about, and biting her again and again, the insect put Io to flight and chased her across the Earth. Io was never to find rest. The birth of Athena Metis, Zeus’s cousin—and in some accounts, his first wife—wrought her own transformation in a bid to shake off Zeus’s pursuit. Metis assumed a series of different forms to avoid him, but Zeus eventually succeeded in catching her and making her pregnant. Nevertheless, Zeus was worried: Metis was renowned for her sharp intellect and wiliness, and an oracle had told him that Metis was destined to bear a child who matched her strength and cunning. Zeus—a usurper who had overthrown his own father—was on his guard against this child. Just before Metis was due to give birth, Zeus challenged her to a shape-shifting match. She was vain enough to agree. When Zeus told her that he did not believe she could transform herself into a tiny fly, she promptly did—and was swallowed by a triumphant Zeus. It was a clever trick, but it did not succeed. When Zeus developed an unbearable headache, the Titan god Prometheus swung an axe at his head, splitting it wide open. Out from the wound sprang Athena, the goddess of war and wisdom, in a full suit of armor. She became one of the most important deities on Olympus and the patron goddess of the powerful city state of Athens. Both transformed In some stories, both predator and prey underwent changes. Zeus again disguised himself as an eagle to pursue Asteria, the Titan goddess of shooting stars. She transformed herself into another bird—the timid quail—in a desperate bid to escape and finally dove into the sea. There she changed her shape again and was preserved forever as an island, later variously identified as Delos or Sicily. It was on this island that Asteria’s younger sister Leto was to find sanctuary some years later, after she, too, caught the lecherous eye of Zeus. Here she gave birth to twins: Apollo, the god of the sun and of poetry, prophecy, and healing; and the divine huntress Artemis, goddess of the moon. Mythology relates scores of Zeus’s exploits, highlighting a sexual appetite that apparently drew little censure in ancient Greece. Despite his countless acts of rape, deception, and infidelity, the king of the gods was not seen as a villain. In his dialogue Euthyphro, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato declared, “Do not men regard Zeus as the best and most righteous of the gods?” ■ Athena springs from a gash in Zeus's head, in a scene decorating an amphora (ca.500 bce) from Attica, Greece. Behind Zeus, Prometheus holds the axe that made the wound. Asteria in the form of a quail flew across the sea, with Zeus in pursuit. Library 48 MIGHTY HADES WHO DWELLS IN HOUSES BENEATH THE EARTH HADES AND THE UNDERWORLD W hile Zeus ruled over the skies and Poseidon over the seas, their brother Hades guarded his subject-souls in the Underworld—the kingdom that bore his name, where mortal humans went when they died. Five dark rivers marked the boundaries of Hades’s kingdom. Acheron was the river of sadness, Cocytus that of mourning. Lethe was the river of forgetfulness, and Phlegethon an impassable river of fire. The River Styx marked the main border between Earth and the Underworld. The dead queued on one side of the river and paid the ferryman, Charon, with a coin to grant them passage into Hades. Because of this belief, the ancient Greeks were sometimes buried with a coin in their mouth, known as “Charon’s obol.” On the other side of the river lay a dark and dismal realm. There, the new arrivals had to go through a large gate, guarded by the three- headed, snake-tailed monster, Hades and his abducted bride, Persephone, watch over the tortured souls of the dead in François de Nomé’s 17th-century depiction of the Underworld. IN BRIEF THEME The Underworld SOURCES Iliad and Odyssey, Homer, 8th century bce; Theogony, Hesiod ca. 700 bce. SETTING The Underworld. KEY FIGURES Hades Brother of Zeus; god of the Underworld. Charon Ferryman of the River Styx. Cerberus Three-headed guardian of the Underworld; son of the serpentine Typhon and Echidna. Tantalus A Phrygian king held captive by Hades. Sisyphus King of Corinth, who tricked Hades into letting him go free. Hecate Goddess of witchcraft and necromancy. 49 See also: The war of the gods and the Titans 26–27 ■ The abduction of Persephone 50–51 ■ The quest of Odysseus 64–69 ■ The Sibyl of Cumae 108–09 ANCIENT GREECE Cerberus. Though loosely described as a dog, this creature was born of the union between the giant snake- man, Typhon, and the man-eating serpent-maiden, Echidna. Cerberus turned this same ferocity on those who attempted to escape. Charon and Cerberus were not the only nonhuman residents of Hades. Nyx, the goddess of night, lived there, as did Eurynomos, a flesh-eating demon, and the goddess Hecate. The Furies served Hades as his torturers, while Tartarus was both a deity and the pit where Titans were punished. Hellish punishments Some souls faced hideous torments in Hades. The crimes of Tantalus, a Phrygian ruler, were twofold: to test the gods, he had cooked and served up his son at a banquet he was hosting for them; and, as a guest at Zeus’s table, he had tried to steal nectar and ambrosia, which would make him immortal, to take back with him to Earth. For this, he was imprisoned in Hades, wracked with thirst and hunger, surrounded by a pool of water, and with fruit- laden branches that dangled inches from his face. When he leaned over to taste either the water or the fruit, they withdrew from his reach, driving him into a frenzy. Sisyphus, King of Corinth, had tricked Hades into thinking that he had been taken to the Underworld prematurely, and managed to get himself returned to Earth. As punishment, he was sentenced to push an enormous boulder up a hill. Each time he got to the top, the stone rolled back down to the bottom and he had to start all over again—and again, and again, for the rest of all time. The Greek afterlife Hades was not the only realm for the dead. According to the ancient writers, fallen heroes and the most virtuous were sent to the Elysian Fields—paradisiacal islands where they could live in bliss. Neither Hades nor Elysium, however, were representative of the ancient Greek view of the afterlife. Stories about Elysium, or the punishment of Sisyphus, were isolated tales. There is no sense that the ancient Greeks, as a whole, believed in a systematic judgment of the dead. ■ Hecate Despite Zeus’s victory over Kronos and his Titans, and his otherwise unchallenged authority over the universe, Hesiod’s Theogony tells us that the goddess Hecate, associated with darkness, was honored “above all others.” Darkness and death were seen as powerful, immutable elements. Hecate was conventionally depicted with three heads, representing the full moon, the crescent moon, and the empty dead-black sky. She was often identified with crossroads, especially those where three different paths met. Associated with liminal spaces and transitions, she was often worshipped by those wishing loved ones a safe crossing into the realm of the dead. Hecate was invited to stay in the Underworld as a companion to Hades’s wife, Persephone, but was allowed to come and go as she wished. In myth, Persephone is often seen as the maiden and Demeter the mother; Hecate is the crone to complete the trio. Once Death has caught hold of a man, he never lets him go. Theogony Round the pit from every side the crowd thronged, with strange cries, and I turned pale with fear. Odyssey 50 HE SLIPPED A POMEGRANATE, SWEET AS HONEY, INTO HER HAND THE ABDUCTION OF PERSEPHONE O ne of classical Greece’s Homeric Hymns refers to Demeter as the “sacred goddess with the glorious hair”— her thick and lustrous golden tresses were emblematic of the abundance of the harvest. Demeter was the goddess of the harvest, charged with ensuring that the fields were rich and fertile. Before tragedy struck, there was no winter, cold, or decay. Demeter’s despair One day, Demeter’s beloved daughter Persephone was out with some nymphs in one of Sicily’s prettiest vales, picking flowers. Persephone marveled at the “roses, crocuses, lovely violets … irises, hyacinths, and narcissi,” exulting in the beautiful colors and heady fragrances of the scene. When Persephone pulled a narcissus from the ground, the earth split and opened up beneath her. A huge chariot thundered forth, drawn by sable-black horses. As her companions fled, Persephone stood transfixed. A tall, shadowy figure leaned down from the chariot and scooped her up. Persephone’s uncle, Hades, had come up from the Underworld to take her as his bride. Hades kidnaps Persephone in a field of daffodils in British artist Walter Crane’s The Fate of Persephone (1877). The horses rear up between a sunlit world and ominous darkness. IN BRIEF THEME Life, death, and the seasons SOURCES Theogony, Hesiod, ca. 700 bce; Hymn to Demeter, Homer, ca. 600 bce; Description of Greece, Pausanias, ca. 150 ce. SETTING Sicily; the Underworld. KEY FIGURES Demeter Goddess of the harvest, sister of Zeus and Hades. Persephone Demeter’s daughter, who became the queen of the Underworld. Hades God of the Underworld and Demeter’s brother. 51 See also: The Olympian gods 24–31 ■ Hades and the Underworld 48–49 ■ Cupid and Psyche 112–13 ANCIENT GREECE Persephone struggled and wept, crying out for her father, Zeus. But her pleas went unanswered. Some versions of the myth suggest that Zeus himself had played a part in the abduction by conspiring with his brother. Hades took Persephone with him down into the gloomy Underworld. He promised that she would be queen of his subterranean kingdom, revered and beloved by all—but she was inconsolable. Demeter’s despair Persephone’s mother, Demeter, was equally distraught. Frantically combing the forests, fields, and hills in search of her daughter, she called out Persephone’s name over and over again—but received no reply. In her grief, Demeter blighted the countryside, causing the crops to die and all the leaves to turn brown. It seemed as if the entire earth had died. Eventually, the sun god, Helios, told Demeter that her brother Hades had snatched her daughter and spirited her off to his dismal realm. At this news, Demeter was filled with rage, and wrought yet more destruction upon the earth. Hades’s abduction of Persephone had set all of creation askew. At last, Zeus was forced to intervene in the quarrel between his siblings. He ruled that, so long as Persephone had not taken food or drink since she arrived in the Underworld, Hades must agree to release her. A seasonal solution Unfortunately, Persephone had eaten something in the Underworld. Hades had given her a pomegranate, the fruit of the dead, and she had consumed several of the sweet seeds. This resulted in a fresh judgment from Zeus, who decided that Persephone could return to the world above—but she would have to go back down to the Underworld and reside with Hades for three months of every year. Persephone’s sentence explained why, with the onset of winter, the world appears to fade and die, as Demeter mourns her daughter’s absence. Then, as spring approaches and Persephone returns to the surface of the earth, its fields and forests once again come into bloom. ■ Eleusian mysteries Priests at the shrine of Eleusis, a settlement near Athens in the region of Attica, developed an elaborate set of ceremonies based on the story of the abduction of Persephone. The “Eleusinian Mysteries” are among the oldest and best known of the secret religious rites of the ancient Greeks. By the Greek classical period (5th–4th century bce), the Eleusinian Mysteries were already ancient. The cult spread to Athens soon after the annexation of Eleusis in 600 bce. As with similar rituals in other early societies, the Eleusinian cult strove to assert a sense of control over the growing cycle and the seasons. The highpoint of the Eleusinian calendar came t	801,839
The Philosophy Book (Will Buckingham, Douglas Burnham, Peter J. King etc.) (Z-Library).pdf	MAN WAS BORN FREE, YET EVERYWHERE HE IS IN CHAINS THE UNIVERSE HAS NOT ALWAYS EXISTED WE ONLY THINK WHEN WE ARE CONFRONTED WITH PROBLEMS MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS I THINK THEREFORE I AM MAN IS A MACHINE TO BE IS TO BE PERCEIVED IMAGINATION DECIDES EVERYTHING MIND HAS NO GENDER MAN IS AN ANIMAL THAT MAKES BARGAINS THERE IS NOTHING OUTSIDE OF THE TEXT LIFE WILL BE LIVED ALL THE BETTER IF IT HAS NO MEANING ACT AS IF WHAT YOU DO MAKES A DIFFERENCE OVER HIS OWN BODY AND MIND , THE INDIVIDUAL IS SOVEREIGN MAN IS AN INVENTION OF RECENT DATE THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS HAPPY IS HE WHO HAS OVERCOME HIS EGO THE PHILOSOPHY BOOK BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED BOOK THE PHILOSOPHY BOOK THE PHILOSOPHY DK LONDON PROJECT ART EDITOR Anna Hall SENIOR EDITOR Sam Atkinson EDITORS Cecile Landau, Andrew Szudek, Sarah Tomley EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Manisha Majithia US EDITORS Liza Kaplan, Rebecca Warren MANAGING ART EDITOR Karen Self MANAGING EDITOR Camilla Hallinan ART DIRECTOR Philip Ormerod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Liz Wheeler PUBLISHER Jonathan Metcalf ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham PICTURE RESEARCH Ria Jones, Myriam Megharbi PRODUCTION EDITOR Luca Frassinetti PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Sophie Argyris DK DELHI PROJECT ART EDITOR Neerja Rawat ART EDITOR Shriya Parameswaran ASSISTANT ART EDITORS Showmik Chakraborty, Devan Das, Niyati Gosain, Neha Sharma MANAGING ART EDITOR Arunesh Talapatra PRODUCTION MANAGER Pankaj Sharma DTP MANAGER/CTS Balwant Singh DTP DESIGNERS Bimlesh Tiwary, Mohammad Usman DTP OPERATOR Neeraj Bhatia styling by STUDIO8 DESIGN DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 or SpecialSales@dk.com. First American Edition 2011 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001–176426–Feb/2011 Copyright © 2011 Dorling Kindersley Limited All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-7566-6861-7 Printed and bound in Singapore by Star Standard Discover more at www.dk.com LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, MUNICH, AND DELHI WILL BUCKINGHAM A philosopher, novelist, and lecturer, Will Buckingham is particularly interested in the interplay of philosophy and narrative. He currently teaches at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK, and has written several books, including Finding our Sea-Legs: Ethics, Experience and the Ocean of Stories. DOUGLAS BURNHAM A professor of philosophy at Staffordshire University, UK, Douglas Burnham is the author of many books and articles on modern and European philosophy. CLIVE HILL A lecturer in political theory and British history, Clive Hill has a particular interest in the role of the intellectual in the modern world. PETER J. KING A doctor of philosophy who lectures at Pembroke College, University of Oxford, UK, Peter J. King is the author of the recent book One Hundred Philosophers: A Guide to the World’s Greatest Thinkers. JOHN MARENBON A Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, UK, John Marenbon studies and writes on medieval philosophy. His books include Early Medieval Philosophy 480–1150: An Introduction. MARCUS WEEKS A writer and musician, Marcus Weeks studied philosophy and worked as a teacher before embarking on a career as an author. He has contributed to many books on the arts and popular sciences. OTHER CONTRIBUTORS The publishers would also like to thank Richard Osborne, lecturer of philosophy and critical theory at Camberwell College of Arts, UK, for his enthusiasm and assistance in planning this book, and Stephanie Chilman for her help putting the Directory together. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION THE ANCIENT WORLD 700 BCE–250 CE 22 Everything is made of water Thales of Miletus 24 The Dao that can be told is not the eternal Dao Laozi 26 Number is the ruler of forms and ideas Pythagoras 30 Happy is he who has overcome his ego Siddhartha Gautama 34 Hold faithfulness and sincerity as ﬁrst principles Confucius 40 Everything is ﬂux Heraclitus 41 All is one Parmenides 42 Man is the measure of all things Protagoras 44 When one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum Mozi 45 Nothing exists except atoms and empty space Democritus and Leucippus THE MEDIEVAL WORLD 250–1500 72 God is not the parent of evils St. Augustine of Hippo 74 God foresees our free thoughts and actions Boethius 76 The soul is distinct from the body Avicenna 80 Just by thinking about God we can know he exists St. Anselm 82 Philosophy and religion are not incompatible Averroes 84 God has no attributes Moses Maimonides 86 Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi 88 The universe has not always existed Thomas Aquinas 96 God is the not-other Nikolaus von Kues 97 To know nothing is the happiest life Desiderius Erasmus 46 The life which is unexamined is not worth living Socrates 50 Earthly knowledge is but shadow Plato 56 Truth resides in the world around us Aristotle 64 Death is nothing to us Epicurus 66 He has the most who is most content with the least Diogenes of Sinope 67 The goal of life is living in agreement with nature Zeno of Citium CONTENTS RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF REASON 1500–1750 102 The end justiﬁes the means Niccolò Machiavelli 108 Fame and tranquillity can never be bedfellows Michel de Montaigne 110 Knowledge is power Francis Bacon 112 Man is a machine Thomas Hobbes 116 I think therefore I am René Descartes 124 Imagination decides everything Blaise Pascal 126 God is the cause of all things, which are in him Benedictus Spinoza 130 No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience John Locke 134 There are two kinds of truths: truths of reasoning and truths of fact Gottfried Leibniz 138 To be is to be perceived George Berkeley THE AGE OF REVOLUTION 1750–1900 146 Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd Voltaire 148 Custom is the great guide of human life David Hume 154 Man was born free yet everywhere he is in chains Jean-Jacques Rousseau 160 Man is an animal that makes bargains Adam Smith 164 There are two worlds: our bodies and the external world Immanuel Kant 172 Society is indeed a contract Edmund Burke 174 The greatest happiness for the greatest number Jeremy Bentham 175 Mind has no gender Mary Wollstonecraft 176 What sort of philosophy one chooses depends on what sort of person one is Johann Gottlieb Fichte 177 About no subject is there less philosophizing than about philosophy Friedrich Schlegel 178 Reality is a historical process Georg Hegel 186 Every man takes the limits of his own ﬁeld of vision for the limits of the world Arthur Schopenhauer 189 Theology is anthropology Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach 190 Over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign John Stuart Mill 194 Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom Søren Kierkegaard 196 The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles Karl Marx 204 Must the citizen ever resign his conscience to the legislator? Henry David Thoreau 205 Consider what effects things have Charles Sanders Peirce 206 Act as if what you do makes a difference William James THE MODERN WORLD 1900–1950 214 Man is something to be surpassed Friedrich Nietzsche 222 Men with self-conﬁdence come and see and conquer Ahad Ha’am 223 Every message is made of signs Ferdinand de Saussure 224 Experience by itself is not science Edmund Husserl 226 Intuition goes in the very direction of life Henri Bergson 228 We only think when we are confronted with problems John Dewey 232 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it George Santayana 233 It is only suffering that makes us persons Miguel de Unamuno 234 Believe in life William du Bois 236 The road to happiness lies in an organized diminution of work Bertrand Russell 240 Love is a bridge from poorer to richer knowledge Max Scheler 241 Only as an individual can man become a philosopher Karl Jaspers 242 Life is a series of collisions with the future José Ortega y Gasset 244 To philosophize, ﬁrst one must confess Hajime Tanabe 246 The limits of my language are the limits of my world Ludwig Wittgenstein 252 We are ourselves the entities to be analyzed Martin Heidegger 256 The individual’s only true moral choice is through self-sacriﬁce for the community Tetsuro Watsuji 257 Logic is the last scientiﬁc ingredient of philosophy Rudolf Carnap 258 The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope Walter Benjamin 259 That which is cannot be true Herbert Marcuse 260 History does not belong to us but we belong to it Hans-Georg Gadamer 262 In so far as a scientiﬁc statement speaks about reality, it must be falsiﬁable Karl Popper 266 Intelligence is a moral category Theodor Adorno 268 Existence precedes essence Jean-Paul Sartre 272 The banality of evil Hannah Arendt 273 Reason lives in language Emmanuel Levinas 274 In order to see the world we must break with our familiar acceptance of it Maurice Merleau-Ponty 276 Man is deﬁned as a human being and woman as a female Simone de Beauvoir 278 Language is a social art Willard Van Orman Quine 280 The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains Isaiah Berlin 282 Think like a mountain Arne Naess 284 Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning Albert Camus CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY 1950–PRESENT 290 Language is a skin Roland Barthes 292 How would we manage without a culture? Mary Midgley 293 Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory Thomas Kuhn 294 The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance John Rawls 296 Art is a form of life Richard Wollheim 297 Anything goes Paul Feyerabend 298 Knowledge is produced to be sold Jean-François Lyotard 300 For the black man, there is only one destiny and it is white Frantz Fanon 302 Man is an invention of recent date Michel Foucault 304 If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion Noam Chomsky 306 Society is dependent upon a criticism of its own traditions Jürgen Habermas 308 There is nothing outside of the text Jacques Derrida 314 There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves Richard Rorty 320 Every desire has a relation to madness Luce Irigaray 321 Every empire tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires Edward Said 322 Thought has always worked by opposition Hélène Cixous 323 Who plays God in present- day feminism? Julia Kristeva 324 Philosophy is not only a written enterprise Henry Odera Oruka 325 In suffering, the animals are our equals Peter Singer 326 All the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure Slavoj Žižek 330 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION 12 P hilosophy is not just the preserve of brilliant but eccentric thinkers that it is popularly supposed to be. It is what everyone does when they’re not busy dealing with their everyday business and get a chance simply to wonder what life and the universe are all about. We human beings are naturally inquisitive creatures, and can’t help wondering about the world around us and our place in it. We’re also equipped with a powerful intellectual capability, which allows us to reason as well as just wonder. Although we may not realize it, whenever we reason, we’re thinking philosophically. Philosophy is not so much about coming up with the answers to fundamental questions as it is about the process of trying to ﬁnd these answers, using reasoning rather than accepting without question conventional views or traditional authority. The very ﬁrst philosophers, in ancient Greece and China, were thinkers who were not satisﬁed with the established explanations provided by religion and custom, and sought answers which had rational justiﬁcations. And, just as we might share our views with friends and colleagues, they discussed their ideas with one another, and even set up “schools” to teach not just the conclusions they had come to, but the way they had come to them. They encouraged their students to disagree and criticize ideas as a means of reﬁning them and coming up with new and different ones. A popular misconception is that of the solitary philosopher arriving at his conclusions in isolation, but this is actually seldom the case. New ideas emerge through discussion and the examination, analysis, and criticism of other people’s ideas. Debate and dialogue The archetypical philosopher in this respect was Socrates. He didn’t leave any writings, or even any big ideas as the conclusions of his thinking. Indeed, he prided himself on being the wisest of men because he knew he didn’t know anything. His legacy lay in the tradition he established of debate and discussion, of questioning the assumptions of other people to gain deeper understanding and elicit fundamental truths. The writings of Socrates’ pupil, Plato, are almost invariably in the form of dialogues, with Socrates as a major character. Many later philosophers also adopted the device of dialogues to present their ideas, giving arguments and counterarguments rather than a simple statement of their reasoning and conclusions. The philosopher who presents his ideas to the world is liable to be met with comments beginning “Yes, but ...” or “What if ...” rather than wholehearted acceptance. In fact, philosophers have ﬁercely disagreed with one another about almost every aspect of philosophy. Plato and his pupil Aristotle, for example, held diametrically opposed views on fundamental philosophical questions, and their different approaches have divided opinions among philosophers ever since. This has, in turn, provoked more discussion and prompted yet more fresh ideas. INTRODUCTION Wonder is very much the affection of a philosopher; for there is no other beginning of philosophy than this. Plato 13 But how can it be that these philosophical questions are still being discussed and debated? Why haven’t thinkers come up with deﬁnitive answers? What are these “fundamental questions” that philosophers through the ages have wrestled with? Existence and knowledge When the ﬁrst true philosophers appeared in ancient Greece some 2,500 years ago, it was the world around them that inspired their sense of wonder. They saw the Earth and all the different forms of life inhabiting it; the sun, moon, planets, and stars; and natural phenomena such as the weather, earthquakes, and eclipses. They sought explanations for all these things—not the traditional myths and legends about the gods, but something that would satisfy their curiosity and their intellect. The ﬁrst question that occupied these early philosophers was “What is the universe made of?”, which was soon expanded to become the wider question of “What is the nature of whatever it is that exists?” This is the branch of philosophy we now call metaphysics. Although much of the original question has since been explained by modern science, related questions of metaphysics such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” are not so simply answered. Because we, too, exist as a part of the universe, metaphysics also considers the nature of human existence and what it means to be a conscious being. How do we perceive the world around us, and do things exist independently of our perception? What is the relationship between our mind and body, and is there such a thing as an immortal soul? The area of metaphysics concerned with questions of existence, ontology, is a huge one and forms the basis for much of Western philosophy. Once philosophers had started to put received wisdom to the test of rational examination, another fundamental question became obvious: “How can we know?” The study of the nature and limits of knowledge forms a second main branch of philosophy, epistemology. At its heart is the question of how we acquire knowledge, how we come to know what we know; is some (or even all) knowledge innate, or do we learn everything from experience? Can we know something from reasoning alone? These questions are vital to philosophical thinking, as we need to be able to rely on our knowledge in order to reason correctly. We also need to determine the scope and limits of our knowledge. Otherwise we cannot be sure that we actually do know what we think we know, and haven’t somehow been “tricked” into believing it by our senses. Logic and language Reasoning relies on establishing the truth of statements, which can then be used to build up a train of thought leading to a conclusion. This might seem obvious to us now, but the idea of constructing a rational argument distinguished philosophy from the superstitious and religious explanations that had existed before the first philosophers. These thinkers had to devise a way of ensuring their ideas had validity. ❯❯ INTRODUCTION Superstition sets the whole world in ﬂames; philosophy quenches them. Voltaire 14 What emerged from their thinking was logic, a technique of reasoning that was gradually reﬁned over time. At ﬁrst simply a useful tool for analyzing whether an argument held water, logic developed rules and conventions, and soon became a ﬁeld of study in its own right, another branch of the expanding subject of philosophy. Like so much of philosophy, logic has intimate connections with science, and mathematics in particular. The basic structure of a logical argument, starting from a premise and working through a series of steps to a conclusion, is the same as that of a mathematical proof. It’s not surprising then that philosophers have often turned to mathematics for examples of self- evident, incontrovertible truths, nor that many of the greatest thinkers, from Pythagoras to René Descartes and Gottfried Leibniz, were also accomplished mathematicians. Although logic might seem to be the most exact and “scientiﬁc” branch of philosophy, a ﬁeld where things are either right or wrong, a closer look at the subject shows that it is not so simple. Advances in mathematics in the 19th century called into question the rules of logic that had been laid down by Aristotle, but even in ancient times Zeno of Elea’s famous paradoxes reached absurd conclusions from apparently faultless arguments. A large part of the problem is that philosophical logic, unlike mathematics, is expressed in words rather than numbers or symbols, and is subject to all the ambiguities and subtleties inherent in language. Constructing a reasoned argument involves using language carefully and accurately, examining our statements and arguments to make sure they mean what we think they mean; and when we study other people’s arguments, we have to analyze not only the logical steps they take, but also the language they use, to see if their conclusions hold water. Out of this process came yet another ﬁeld of philosophy that ﬂourished in the 20th century, the philosophy of language, which examined terms and their meanings. Morality, art, and politics Because our language is imprecise, philosophers have attempted to clarify meanings in their search for answers to philosophical questions. The sort of questions that Socrates asked the citizens of Athens tried to get to the bottom of what they actually believed certain concepts to be. He would ask seemingly simple questions such as “What is justice?” or “What is beauty?” not only to elicit meanings, but also to explore the concepts themselves. In discussions of this sort, Socrates challenged assumptions about the way we live our lives and the things we consider to be important. The examination of what it means to lead a “good” life, what concepts such as justice and happiness actually mean and how we can achieve them, and how we should behave, forms the basis for the branch of philosophy known as ethics (or moral philosophy); and the related branch stemming from the question of what constitutes beauty and art is known as aesthetics. INTRODUCTION O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Cicero 15 From considering ethical questions about our individual lives, it is a natural step to start thinking about the sort of society we would like to live in—how it should be governed, the rights and responsibilities of its citizens, and so on. Political philosophy, the last of the major branches of philosophy, deals with these ideas, and philosophers have come up with models of how they believe society should be organized, ranging from Plato’s Republic to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. Religion: East and West The various branches of philosophy are not only interlinked, but overlap considerably, and it is sometimes difﬁcult to say in which area a particular idea falls. Philosophy also encroaches on many completely different subjects, including the sciences, history, and the arts. With its beginnings in questioning the dogmas of religion and superstition, philosophy also examines religion itself, speciﬁcally asking questions such as “Does god exist?” and “Do we have an immortal soul?” These are questions that have their roots in metaphysics, but they have implications in ethics too. For example, some philosophers have asked whether our morality comes from god or whether it is a purely human construct—and this in turn has raised the whole debate as to what extent humanity has free will. In the Eastern philosophies that evolved in China and India (particularly Daoism and Buddhism) the lines between philosophy and religion are less clear, at least to Western ways of thinking. This marks one of the major differences between Western and Eastern philosophies. Although Eastern philosophies are not generally a result of divine revelation or religious dogma, they are often intricately linked with what we would consider matters of faith. Even though philosophical reasoning is frequently used to justify faith in the Judeo-Christian and Islamic world, faith and belief form an integral part of Eastern philosophy that has no parallel in the West. Eastern and Western philosophy also differ in their starting points. Where the ancient Greeks posed metaphysical questions, the ﬁrst Chinese philosophers considered these adequately dealt with by religion, and instead concerned themselves with moral and political philosophy. Following the reasoning Philosophy has provided us with some of the most important and inﬂuential ideas in history. What this book presents is a collection of ideas from the best-known philosophers, encapsulated in well known quotes and pithy summaries of their ideas. Perhaps the best- known quotation in philosophy is Descartes’ “cogito, ergo sum” (often translated from the Latin as “I think, therefore I am”). It ranks as one of the most important ideas in the history of philosophy, and is widely considered a turning point in thinking, leading us into the modern era. On its own however, the quotation doesn’t mean much. It is the conclusion of a line of argument about the nature of certainty, and only when we examine the reasoning leading to it does the idea begin to make sense. And ❯❯ INTRODUCTION There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. William Shakespeare 16 it’s only when we see where Descartes took the idea—what the consequences of that conclusion are—that we see its importance. Many of the ideas in this book may seem puzzling at ﬁrst glance. Some may appear self-evident, others paradoxical or ﬂying in the face of common sense. They might even appear to prove Bertrand Russell’s ﬂippant remark that “the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.” So why are these ideas important? Systems of thought Sometimes the theories presented in this book were the ﬁrst of their kind to appear in the history of thought. While their conclusions may seem obvious to us now, in hindsight, they were startlingly new in their time, and despite their apparent simplicity, they may make us reexamine things that we take for granted. The theories presented here that seem to be paradoxes and counter-intuitive statements are the ideas that really call into question our assumptions about ourselves and the world—and they also make us think in new ways about how we see things. There are many ideas here that raise issues that philosophers still puzzle over. Some ideas may relate to other thoughts and theories in different ﬁelds of the same philosopher’s thinking, or have come from an analysis or criticism of another philosopher’s work. These latter ideas form part of a line of reasoning that may extend over several generations or even centuries, or be the central idea of a particular “school” of philosophy. Many of the great philosophers formed integrated “systems” of philosophy with interconnecting ideas. For example, their opinions about how we acquire knowledge led to a particular metaphysical view of the universe and man’s soul. This in turn has implications for what kind of life the philosopher believes we should lead and what type of society would be ideal. And in turn, this entire system of ideas has been the starting point for subsequent philosophers. We must remember too that these ideas never quite become outdated. They still have much to tell us, even when their conclusions have been proved wrong by subsequent philosophers and scientists. In fact, many ideas that had been dismissed for centuries were later to be proved startlingly prescient—the theories of the ancient Greek atomists for example. More importantly, these thinkers established the processes of philosophy, ways of thinking and organizing our thoughts. We must remember that these ideas are only a small part of a philosopher’s thinking—usually the conclusion to a longer line of reasoning. Science and society These ideas spread their inﬂuence beyond philosophy too. Some have spawned mainstream scientiﬁc, political, or artistic movements. Often the relationship between science and philosophy is a back- and-forth affair, with ideas from one informing the other. Indeed, there is a whole branch of philosophy that studies the thinking behind INTRODUCTION Scepticism is the ﬁrst step towards truth. Denis Diderot 17 scientiﬁc methods and practices. The development of logical thinking affected how math evolved and became the basis for the scientiﬁc method, which relies on systematic observation to explain the world. Ideas about the nature of the self and consciousness have developed into the science of psychology. The same is true of philosophy’s relationship with society. Ethics of all sorts found adherents in political leaders throughout history, shaping the societies we live in today, and even prompting revolutions. The ethical decisions made in all kinds of professions have moral dimensions that are informed by the ideas of the great thinkers of philosophy. Behind the ideas The ideas in this book have come from people living in societies and cultures which have shaped those ideas. As we examine the ideas, we get a picture of certain national and regional characteristics, as well as a ﬂavor of the times they lived in. The philosophers presented here emerge as distinct personalities— some thinkers are optimistic, others pessimistic; some are meticulous and painstaking, others think in broad sweeps; some express themselves in clear, precise language, others in a poetic way, and still more in dense, abstract language that takes time to unpick. If you read these ideas in the original texts, you will not only agree or disagree with the what they say, and follow the reasoning by which they reached their conclusions, but also get a feeling of what kind of person is behind it. You might, for example, warm to the witty and charming Hume, appreciating his beautifully clear prose, while not altogether feeling at home with what he has to say; or ﬁnd Schopenhauer both persuasive and a delight to read, while getting the distinct feeling that he was not a particularly likeable man. Above all these thinkers were (and still are) interesting and stimulating. The best were also great writers too, and reading their original writings can be as rewarding as reading literature; we can appreciate not just their literary style, but also their philosophical style, the way they present their arguments. As well as being thought-provoking, it can be as uplifting as great art, as elegant as a mathematical proof, and as witty as an after-dinner speaker. Philosophy is not simply about ideas—it’s a way of thinking. There are frequently no right or wrong answers, and different philosophers often come to radically different conclusions in their investigations into questions that science cannot —and religion does not—explain. Enjoying philosophy If wonder and curiosity are human attributes, so too are the thrill of exploration and the joy of discovery. We can gain the same sort of “buzz” from philosophy that we might get from physical activity, and the same pleasure that we enjoy from an appreciating the arts. Above all, we gain the satisfaction of arriving at beliefs and ideas that are not handed down or forced upon us by society, teachers, religion, or even philosophers, but through our own individual reasoning. ■ INTRODUCTION The beginning of thought is in disagreement—not only with others but also with ourselves. Eric Hoffer THE ANC WORLD 700 BCE–250 CE IENT 20 F rom the beginning of human history, people have asked questions about the world and their place within it. For early societies, the answers to the most fundamental questions were found in religion: the actions of the gods explained the workings of the universe, and provided a framework for human civilizations. Some people, however, found the traditional religious explanations inadequate, and they began to search for answers based on reason rather than convention or religion. This shift marked the birth of philosophy, and the ﬁrst of the great thinkers that we know of was Thales of Miletus—Miletus was a Greek settlement in modern-day Turkey. Thales used reason to inquire into the nature of the universe, and encouraged others to do likewise. He passed on to his followers not only his answers, but the process of thinking rationally, together with an idea of what kind of explanations could be considered satisfactory. For this reason Thales is generally regarded as the ﬁrst philosopher. The main concern of the early philosophers centered around Thales’ basic question: “What is the world made of?” Their answers form the foundations of scientiﬁc thought, and forged a relationship between science and philosophy that still exists today. The work of Pythagoras marked a key turning point, as he sought to explain the world not in terms of primal matter, but in terms of mathematics. He and his followers described the structure of the cosmos in numbers and geometry. Although some of these mathematical relationships acquired mystical signiﬁcance for Pythagoras and his followers, their numerical explanation of the cosmos had a profound inﬂuence on the beginnings of scientiﬁc thought. Classical Greek philosophy As the Greek city-states grew in stature, philosophy spread across the Greek world from Ionia, and in particular to Athens, which was rapidly becoming the cultural center of Greece. It was here that philosophers broadened the scope of philosophy to include new questions, such as “How do we know what we know?” and “How should we live our lives?” It was an Athenian, Socrates, who ushered in the short but hugely inﬂuential period of Classical Greek philosophy. Although he left no writings, his ideas were so important that they steered the INTRODUCTION 624–546 BCE 569 BCE 480 BCE 469 BCE 551 BCE 508 BCE Death of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, founder of the religion and philosophy of Buddhism. Birth of Pythagoras, the Greek thinker who combined philosophy and mathematics. Traditional date of birth of Kong Fuzi (Confucius), whose philosophy is centered on respect and tradition. The powerful Greek city-state of Athens adopts a democratic constitution. Thales of Miletus, the ﬁrst known Greek philosopher, seeks rational answers to questions about the world we live in. Birth of Socrates, whose methods of questioning in Athens formed the basis for much of later Western philosophy. C.460 BCE 404 BCE Defeat in the Peloponnesian War leads to the decline of Athens’ political power. Empedocles proposes his theory of the four Classical elements; he is the last Greek philosopher to record his ideas in verse. 21 future course of philosophy, and all philosophers before him became known as the pre-socratics. His pupil Plato founded a philosophical school in Athens called the Academy (from which the word “academic” derives) where he taught and developed his master’s ideas, passing them on to students such as Aristotle, who was a pupil and teacher there for 20 years. The contrasting ideas and methods of these great thinkers—Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle—form the basis of Western philosophy as we know it today, and their differences of opinion have continued to divide philosophers throughout history. The Classical period of ancient Greece effectively came to an end with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE. This great leader had uniﬁed Greece, and Greek city- states that had worked together once again became rivals. Following the death of Aristotle in 322 BCE, philosophy also divided into very different schools of thought, as the cynics, sceptics, epicureans, and stoics argued their positions. Over the next couple of centuries, Greek culture waned as the Roman Empire grew. The Romans had little time for Greek philosophy apart from stoicism, but Greek ideas persisted, mainly because they were preserved in the manuscripts and translations of the Arab world. They resurfaced later, during medieval times, with the rise of Christianity and Islam. Eastern philosophies Thinkers throughout Asia were also questioning conventional wisdom. Political upheaval in China from 771 to 481 BCE led to a collection of philosophies that were less concerned with the nature of the universe than with how best to organize a just society and provide moral guidelines for the individuals within it; in the process examining what constitutes a “good” life. The so-called “Hundred Schools of Thought” ﬂourished in this period, and the most signiﬁcant of these were Confucianism and Daoism, both of which continued to dominate Chinese philosophy until the 20th century. To the south of China an equally inﬂuential philosopher appeared: Siddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha. From his teaching in northern India around 500 BCE, his philosophy spread across the subcontinent and over most of southern Asia, where it is still widely practiced. ■ THE ANCIENT WORLD C.385 BCE 335 BCE C.332–265 BCE C.100–178 CE C.150 BCE 323 BCE 122 CE 220 CE Plato founds his hugely inﬂuential Academy in Athens. Aristotle, Plato’s student, opens his own school in Athens—the Lyceum. Zeno of Citium formulates his stoic philosophy, which goes on to ﬁnd favor in the Roman Empire. Ptolemy, a Roman citizen of Egypt, proposes the idea that Earth is at the center of the universe and does not move. Galen of Pergamum produces extraordinary medical research that remains unsurpassed until the work of Vesalius in 1543. The death of Alexander the Great signals the end of the cultural and political dominance of Greece in the ancient world. Construction begins on Hadrian’s Wall in Britain, marking the northernmost border of the Roman Empire. The collapse of the Han Dynasty marks the end of a uniﬁed China. The Period of Disunity begins. 22 EVERYTHING IS MADE OF WATER THALES OF MILETUS (C.624–546 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Metaphysics APPROACH Monism BEFORE 2500–900 BCE The Minoan civilization in Crete and the later Mycenaean civilization in Greece rely on religion to explain physical phenomena. c.1100 BCE The Babylonian creation myth, Enûma Eliš, describes the primal state of the world as a watery mass. c.700 BCE Theogony by the Greek poet Hesiod relates how the gods created the universe. AFTER Early 5th century BCE Empedocles proposes the four basic elements of the cosmos: earth, water, air, and ﬁre. c.400 BCE Leucippus and Democritus conclude that the cosmos is made up solely of atoms and empty space. From observation, Thales deduced that speciﬁc weather conditions, not appeals to the gods, led to a good harvest. Predicting a high yield of olives one year, he is said to have bought up all the local olive presses, then proﬁted by renting them out to meet increased demand. have predicted the total eclipse of the sun in 585 BCE. This practical turn of mind led him to believe that events in the world were not due to supernatural intervention, but had natural causes that reason and observation would reveal. Fundamental substance Thales needed to establish a ﬁrst principle from which to work, so he posed the question, “What is the basic material of the cosmos?” The idea that everything in the universe can be ultimately reduced to a single substance is the theory of monism, and Thales and his followers were the ﬁrst to propose it within Western philosophy. Thales reasons that the fundamental D uring the Archaic period (mid-8th–6th century BCE), the peoples of the Greek peninsula gradually settled into a group of city-states. They developed an alphabetical system of writing, as well as the beginnings of what is now recognized as Western philosophy. Previous civilizations had relied on religion to explain phenomena in the world around them; now a new breed of thinkers emerged, who attempted to ﬁnd natural, rational explanations. The ﬁrst of these new scientiﬁc thinkers that we are aware of was Thales of Miletus. Nothing survives of his writings, but we know that he had a good grasp of geometry and astronomy, and is reputed to 23 See also: Anaximander 330 ■ Anaximenes of Miletus 330 ■ Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Empedocles 330 ■ Democritus and Leucippus 45 ■ Aristotle 56–63 THE ANCIENT WORLD material of the universe had to be something out of which everything else could be formed, as well as being essential to life, and capable of motion and therefore of change. He observes that water is clearly necessary to sustain all forms of life, and that it moves and changes, assuming different forms – from liquid to solid ice and vaporous mist. So Thales concludes that all matter, regardless of its apparent properties, must be water in some stage of transformation. Thales also notes that every landmass appears to come to an end at the water’s edge. From this he deduces that the whole of the earth must be ﬂoating on a bed of water, from which it has emerged. When anything occurs to cause ripples or tremors in this water, Thales states, we experience them as earthquakes. However, as interesting as the details of Thales’ theories are, they are not the main reason why he is considered a major ﬁgure in the history of philosophy. His true importance lies in the fact that he was the ﬁrst known thinker to seek naturalistic, rational answers to fundamental questions, rather than to ascribe objects and events to the whims of capricious gods. By doing so, he and the later philosophers of the Milesian School laid the foundations for future scientiﬁc and philosophical thought across the Western world. ■ Thales of Miletus Although we know that Thales was born and lived in Miletus, on the coast of what is now Turkey, we know very little about his life. None of his writings, if indeed he left any, have survived. However, his reputation as one of the key early Greek thinkers seems deserved, and he is referred to in some detail by both Aristotle and Diogenes Laertius, the 3rd-century biographer of the ancient Greek philosophers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that as well as being a philosopher, Thales was actively involved in politics and was a very successful businessman. He is thought to have traveled widely around the eastern Mediterranean, and while visiting Egypt, to have learned the practical geometry that was to become the basis of his deductive reasoning. However, Thales was above all a teacher, the ﬁrst of the so-called Milesian School of philosophers. Anaximander, his pupil, expanded his scientiﬁc theories, and in turn became a mentor to Anaximenes, who is believed to have taught the young mathematician Pythagoras. What is the basic material of the cosmos? It must be… …something from which everything can be formed. …essential to life. …capable of motion. …capable of change. Everything is made of water. 24 THE DAO THAT CAN BE TOLD IS NOT THE ETERNAL DAO LAOZI (C.6TH CENTURY BCE) IN CONTEXT TRADITION Chinese philosophy APPROACH Daoism BEFORE 1600–1046 BCE During the Shang Dynasty, people believe fate is controlled by deities and practice ancestor worship. 1045–256 BCE Under the Zhou Dynasty, the Mandate of Heaven (god-given authority) justiﬁes political decisions. AFTER 5th century BCE Confucius (Kong Fuzi) sets out his rules for personal development and for ethical government. 4th century BCE Philosopher Zhuangzi moves the focus of Daoist teaching more toward the actions of the individual, rather than those of the state. 3rd century CE Scholars Wang Bi and Guo Xiang create a Neo-Daoist school. I n the 6th century BCE, China moved toward a state of internal warfare as the ruling Zhou Dynasty disintegrated. This change bred a new social class of administrators and magistrates within the courts, who occupied themselves with the business of devising strategies for ruling more effectively. The large body of ideas that was produced by these ofﬁcials became known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. All this coincided with the emergence of philosophy in Greece, and shared some of its concerns, such as seeking stability in a constantly changing world, and alternatives to what had previously been prescribed by religion. But The source of all existence. Dao (the Way)… The root of all things, seen and unseen. Acting thoughtfully, not impulsively. …is achieved through… A solitary life of meditation and reﬂection. Living in peace, simplicity, and tranquility. …wu wei (non-action). Acting in harmony with nature. 25 Living in harmony with nature is one path the Daode jing prescribes for a well-balanced life. For this man that could mean respecting the ecological balance of the lake and not over-ﬁshing. See also: Siddhartha Gautama 30–33 ■ Confucius 34–39 ■ Mozi 44 ■ Wang Bi 331 ■ Hajime Tanabe 244–45 THE ANCIENT WORLD Chinese philosophy evolved from practical politics and was therefore concerned with morality and ethics rather than the nature of the cosmos. One of the most important ideas to appear at this time came from the Daode jing (The Way and its Power), which has been attributed to Laozi (Lao Tzu). It was one of the ﬁrst attempts to propose a theory of just rule, based on de (virtue), which could be found by following dao (the Way), and forms the basis of the philosophy known as Daoism. Cycles of change In order to understand the concept of dao, it is necessary to know how the ancient Chinese viewed the ever-changing world. For them, the changes are cyclical, continually moving from one state to another, such as from night to day, summer to winter, and so on. They saw the different states not as opposites, but as related, one arising from the other. These states also possess complementary properties that together make up a whole. The process of change is seen as an expression of dao, and leads to the 10,000 manifestations that make up the world. Laozi, in the Daode jing, says that humans are merely one of these 10,000 manifestations and have no special status. But because of our desire and free will, we can stray from the dao, and disturb the world’s harmonious balance. To live a virtuous life means acting in accordance with the dao. Following the dao, however, is not a simple matter, as the Daode jing acknowledges. Philosophizing about dao is pointless, as it is beyond anything that humans can conceive of. It is characterized by wu (“not-being”), so we can only live according to the dao by wu wei, literally “non-action.” By this Laozi does not mean “not doing”, but acting in accordance with nature—spontaneously and intuitively. That in turn entails acting without desire, ambition, or recourse to social conventions. ■ Laozi So little is known for certain about the author of the Daode jing, who is traditionally assumed to be Laozi (Lao Tzu). He has become an almost mythical ﬁgure; it has even been suggested that the book was not by Laozi, but is in fact a compilation of sayings by a number of scholars. What we do know is that there was a scholar born in the state of Chu, with the name Li Er or Lao Tan, during the Zhou dynasty, who became known as Laozi (the Old Master). Several texts indicate that he was an archivist at the Zhou court, and that Confucius consulted him on rituals and ceremonies. Legend states that Laozi left the court as the Zhou dynasty declined, and journeyed west in search of solitude. As he was about to cross the border, one of the guards recognized him and asked for a record of his wisdom. Laozi wrote the Daode jing for him, and then continued on his way, never to be seen again. Key works c.6th century BCE Daode jing (also known as the Laozi) Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Laozi 26 NUMBER IS THE RULER OF FORMS AND IDEAS PYTHAGORAS (C.570–495 BCE) W estern philosophy was in its infancy when Pythagoras was born. In Miletus, Greece, a group of philosophers known collectively as the Milesian School had started to seek rational explanations for natural phenomena only a generation or so earlier, marking the beginning of the Western philosophical tradition. Pythagoras spent his childhood not far from Miletus, so it is very likely that he knew of them, and may even have studied in their academy. Like Thales, the founder of the Milesian School, Pythagoras is said to have learnt the rudiments of geometry during a trip to Egypt. With this background, it is not IN CONTEXT BRANCH Metaphysics APPROACH Pythagoreanism BEFORE 6th century BCE Thales proposes a non-religious explanation of the cosmos. AFTER c.535–c.475 BCE Heraclitus dismisses Pythagoreanism and says that the cosmos is governed by change. c.428 BCE Plato introduces his concept of perfect Forms, which are revealed to the intellect and not the senses. c.300 BCE Euclid, a Greek mathematician, establishes the principles of geometry. 1619 German mathematician Johannes Kepler describes the relationship between geometry and physical phenomena. 27 See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Siddhartha Gautama 30–33 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ René Descartes 116–23 surprising that he should approach philosophical thinking in a scientiﬁc and mathematical way. The Pythagorean academy Pythagoras was also, however, a deeply religious and superstitious man. He believed in reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and he established a religious cult, with himself cast as a virtual messiah, in Croton, southern Italy. His disciples lived in a collective commune, following strict behavioral and dietary rules, while studying his religious and philosophical theories. The Pythagoreans, as his disciples were known, saw his ideas as mystical revelations, to the extent that some of the discoveries attributed to him as “revelations” may in fact have come from others in the community. His ideas were recorded by his students, who included his wife, Theano of Crotona, and daughters. The two sides of THE ANCIENT WORLD Pythagoras Little is known about Pythagoras’s life. He left no writings himself, and unfortunately, as the Greek philosopher Porphyry noted in his Vita Pythagorae, “No one knows for certain what Pythagoras told his associates, since they observed an unusual silence.” However, modern scholars believe that Pythagoras was probably born on the island of Samos, off the coast of modern-day Turkey. As a young man, he travelled widely, perhaps studying at the Milesian School, and probably visiting Egypt, which was a centrer of learning. At the age of about 40, he set up a community of around 300 people in Croton, southern Italy. Its members studied a mixture of mystical and academic studies, and despite its collective nature, Pythagoras was clearly the community’s leader. At the age of 60, he is said to have married a young girl, Theano of Crotona. Growing hostility toward the Pythagorean cult eventually forced him to leave Croton, and he ﬂed to Metapontum, also in southern Italy, where he died soon after. His community had virtually disappeared by the end of the 4th century BCE. Pythagoras’s beliefs—the mystical and the scientiﬁc—seem to be irreconcilable, but Pythagoras himself does not see them as contradictory. For him, the goal of life is freedom from the cycle of reincarnation, which can be gained by adhering to a strict set of behavioral rules, and by contemplation, or what we would call objective scientiﬁc thinking. In geometry and mathematics he found truths that he regarded ❯❯ Number is the ruler of forms. Number is the ruler of ideas. So if we understand number and mathematical relationships... ...we come to understand the structure of the cosmos. Mathematics is the key model for philosophical thought. Everything in the universe conforms to mathematical rules and ratios. 28 as self-evident, as if god-given, and worked out mathematical proofs that had the impact of divine revelation. Because these mathematical discoveries were a product of pure reasoning, Pythagoras believes they are more valuable than mere observations. For example, the Egyptians had discovered that a triangle whose sides have ratios of 3:4:5 always has a right angle, and this was useful in practice, such as in architecture. But Pythagoras uncovered the underlying principle behind all right-angled triangles (that the square of the hypotenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides) and found it to be universally true. This discovery was so extraordinary, and held such potential, that the Pythagoreans took it to be divine revelation. Pythagoras concludes that the whole cosmos must be governed by mathematical rules. He says PYTHAGORAS Pythagoras’s Theorem showed that shapes and ratios are governed by principles that can be discovered. This suggested that it might be possible, in time, to work out the structure of the entire cosmos. that number (numerical ratios and mathematical axioms) can be used to explain the very structure of the cosmos. He does not totally dismiss the Milesian idea that the universe is made up of one fundamental substance, but he shifts the enquiry from substance to form. This was such a profound change in the way of looking at the world, that we should probably forgive Pythagoras and his disciples for getting somewhat carried away, and giving numbers a mystical signiﬁcance. Through exploring the relationship between numbers and geometry, they discoved the square numbers and cube numbers that we speak of today, but they also attributed characteristics to them, such as “good” to the even numbers and “evil” to the odd ones, and even speciﬁcs such as “justice” to the number four, and so on. The number ten, in the form of the tetractys (a triangular shape made up of rows of dots) had a particular signiﬁcance in Pythagorean ritual. Less contentiously, they saw the number one as a single point, a unity, from which other things could be derived. The number two, in this way of thinking, was a line, number three a surface or plane, and four a solid; the correspondence with our modern concept of dimensions is obvious. The Pythagorean explanation of the creation of the universe followed a mathematical pattern: on the Unlimited (the inﬁnite that existed before the universe), God imposed a Limit, so that all that exists came to have an actual size. In this way God created a measurable unity from which everything else was formed. Numerical harmonies Pythagoras’s most important discovery was the relationships between numbers: the ratios and proportions. This was reinforced by his investigations into music, and in particular into the relationships between notes that sounded pleasant together. The story goes that he ﬁrst stumbled onto this idea when listening to blacksmiths at work. One had an anvil half the size of the other, and the sounds they made when There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres. Pythagoras a2 b2 c2 a2 a b2 b c c2 = + 29 Classical architecture follows Pythagorean mathematical ratios. Harmonious shapes and ratios are used throughout, scaled down in the smaller parts, and up for the overall structure. hit with a hammer were exactly an octave (eight notes) apart. While this may be true, it was probably by experimenting with a plucked string that Pythagoras determined the ratios of the consonant intervals (the number of notes between two notes that determines whether they will sound harmonious if struck together). What he discovered was that these intervals were harmonious because the relationship between them was a precise and simple mathematical ratio. This series, which we now know as the harmonic series, conﬁrmed for him that the elegance of the mathematics he had found in abstract geometry also existed in the natural world. The stars and elements Pythagoras had now proved not only that the structure of the universe can be explained in mathemathical terms—“number is the ruler of forms”—but also that acoustics is an exact science, and number governs harmonious proportions. He then started to apply his theories to the whole cosmos, demonstrating the harmonic relationship of the stars, planets, and elements. His idea of harmonic relationships between the stars was eagerly taken up by medieval and Renaissance astronomers, who developed whole theories around the idea of the music of the spheres, and his suggestion that the elements were arranged harmoniously was revisited over 2,000 years after his death. In 1865 English chemist John Newlands discovered that when the chemical elements are arranged according to THE ANCIENT WORLD atomic weight, those with similar properties occur at every eighth element, like notes of music. This discovery became known as the Law of Octaves, and it helped lead to the development of the Periodic Law of chemical elements still used today. Pythagoras also established the principle of deductive reasoning, which is the step-by-step process of starting with self-evident axioms (such as “2 + 2 = 4”) to build toward a new conclusion or fact. Deductive reasoning was later reﬁned by Euclid, and it formed the basis of mathematical thinking into medieval times and beyond. One of Pythagoras’s most important contributions to the development of philosophy was the idea that abstract thinking is superior to the evidence of the senses. This was taken up by Plato in his theory of Forms, and resurfaced in the philosophical method of the rationalists in the 17th century. The Pythagorean attempt to combine the rational with the religious was the ﬁrst Reason is immortal, all else mortal. Pythagoras attempt to grapple with a problem that has dogged philosophy and religion in some ways ever since. Almost everything we know about Pythagoras comes to us from others; even the bare facts of his life are largely conjecture. Yet he has achieved a near-legendary status (which he apparently encouraged) for the ideas attributed to him. Whether or not he was in fact the originator of these ideas does not really matter; what is important is their profound effect on philosophical thought. ■ 30 HAPPY IS HE WHO HAS OVERCOME HIS EGO SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA (C.563–483 BCE) IN CONTEXT TRADITION Eastern philosophy APPROACH Buddhism BEFORE c.1500 BCE Vedism reaches the Indian subcontinent. c.10th–5th centuries BCE Brahmanism replaces Vedic beliefs. AFTER 3rd century BCE Buddhism spreads from the Ganges valley westward across India. 1st century BCE The teachings of Siddhartha Gautama are written down for the ﬁrst time. 1st century CE Buddhism starts to spread to China and Southeast Asia. Different schools of Buddhism begin to evolve in different areas. S iddhartha Gautama, later known as the Buddha, “the enlightened one”, lived in India during a period when religious and mythological accounts of the world were being questioned. In Greece, thinkers such as Pythagoras were examining the cosmos using reason, and in China, Laozi and Confucius were detaching ethics from religious dogma. Brahmanism, a religion that had evolved from Vedism—an ancient belief based on the sacred Veda texts—was the dominant faith in the Indian subcontinent in the 6th century BCE, and Siddhartha Gautama was the ﬁrst to challenge its teachings with philosophical reasoning. 31 See also: Laozi 24–25 ■ Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Confucius 34–39 ■ David Hume 148–53 ■ Arthur Schopenhauer 186–188 ■ Hajime Tanabe 244–45 Siddhartha Gautama Almost all we know of Siddhartha Gautama’s life comes from biographies written by his followers centuries after his death, and which differ widely in many details. What is certain is that he was born in Lumbini, modern-day Nepal, some time around 560 BCE. His father was an ofﬁcial, possibly the leader of a clan, and Siddhartha led a privileged life of luxury and high status. Dissatisﬁed with this, Siddhartha left his wife and son to ﬁnd a spiritual path, and discovered the “middle way” between sensual indulgence and asceticism. He experienced enlightenment while thinking in the shade of a bodhi tree, and devoted the rest of his life to traveling throughout India, preaching. After his death, his teachings were passed down orally for some 400 years before being written down in the Tipitaka (Three Baskets). Key works 1st century CE Tipitaka (recounted by his followers), comprising: Vinaya-pitaka, Sutta-pitaka, Abhidhamma-pitaka Gautama, although revered by Buddhists for his wisdom, was neither a messiah nor a prophet, and he did not act as a medium between God and Man. His ideas were arrived at through reasoning, not divine revelation, and it is this that marks Buddhism out as a philosophy as much as (perhaps even more than) a religion. His quest was philosophical—to discover truths—and he maintained that these truths are available to all of us through the power of reason. Like most Eastern philosophers, he was not interested in the unanswerable questions of metaphysics that preoccupied the Greeks. Dealing with entities beyond our experience, this kind of enquiry was senseless speculation. Instead, he concerned himself with the question of the goal of life, which in turn involved examining the concepts of happiness, virtue, and the “good” life. The middle way In his early life, Gautama enjoyed luxury and, we are told, all the sensual pleasures. However, he realized that these were not enough on their own to bring him true happiness. He was acutely aware of the suffering in the world, and saw that it was largely due to sickness, old age, and death, and the fact that people lack what ❯❯ THE ANCIENT WORLD inherent part of existence from birth, through sickness and old age, to death. The truth of suffering (Dukkha) The cause of suffering is desire: craving for sensual pleasures and attachment to worldly possessions and power. Suffering can be ended by detaching oneself from craving and attachment. The Eightfold Path is the means to eliminate desire and overcome the ego. The truth of the origin of suffering (Samudaya) The truth of the ending of suffering (Nirodha) The truth of the path to the ending of suffering (Magga) The Four Noble Truths 32 they need. He also recognized that the sensual pleasure we indulge in to relieve suffering is rarely satisfying, and that when it is, the effects are transitory. He found the experience of extreme asceticism (austerity and abstinence) equally dissatisfying, bringing him no nearer to an understanding of how to achieve happiness. Gautama came to the conclusion that there must be a “middle way” between self-indulgence and self- mortiﬁcation. This middle way, he believed, should lead to true happiness, or “enlightenment”, and to ﬁnd it he applied reason to his own experiences. Suffering, he realized, is universal. It is an integral part of existence, and the root cause of our suffering is the frustration of our desires and expectations. These desires he calls “attachments”, and they include not only our sensual desires and worldly ambitions, but our most basic instinct for self-preservation. Satisfying these attachments, he argues, may bring short-term gratiﬁcation, but not happiness in the sense of contentment and peace of mind. The “not-self” The next step in Gautama’s reasoning is that the elimination of attachments will prevent any disappointment, and so avoid suffering. To achieve this, he suggests a root cause of our attachments—our selﬁshness, and by selﬁshness he means more than just our tendency to seek gratiﬁcation. For Gautama, selﬁshness is self-centeredness and self-attachment—the domain of what today we would call the “ego.” So, to free ourselves from attachments that cause us pain, it is not enough merely to renounce the things we desire—we must overcome our attachment to that which desires—the “self.” But how can this be done? Desire, ambition, and expectation are part of our nature, and for most of us constitute our very reasons for living. The answer, for Gautama, is that the ego’s world is illusory—as he shows, again, by a process of reasoning. He argues that nothing in the universe is self-caused, for everything is the result of some previous action, and each of us is only a transitory part of this eternal process—ultimately impermanent and without substance. So, in reality, there is no “self” that is not part of the greater whole—or the “not-self”—and suffering results from our failure to recognize this. This does not mean that we should deny our existence or personal identity, rather that we should understand them for what they are—transient and insubstantial. Grasping the concept of being a constituent part of an eternal “not- self”, rather than clinging to the SIDDHARTHA GAUTAMA The Buddha cut off his hair as part of his renunciation of the material world. According to Buddhist teaching, the temptations of the world are the source of all suffering, and must be resisted. notion of being a unique “self”, is the key to losing that attachment, and ﬁnding a release from suffering. The Eightfold Path Gautama’s reasoning from the causes of suffering to the way to achieve happiness is codiﬁed in Buddhist teachings in the Four Noble Truths: that suffering is universal; that desire is the cause of suffering; that suffering can be avoided by eliminating desire; that following the Eightfold Path will eliminate desire. This last Truth refers to what amounts to a practical guide to the “middle way” that Gautama laid out for his followers to achieve enlightenment. Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without. Siddhartha Gautama Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, unless it agrees with your own reason. Siddhartha Gautama 33 The Eightfold Path (right action, right intention, right livelihood, right effort, right concentration, right speech, right understanding, and right mindfulness) is in effect a code of ethics—a prescription for a good life and the happiness that Gautama ﬁrst set out to ﬁnd. Nirvana Gautama sees the ultimate goal of life on Earth to be the ending of the cycle of suffering (birth, death, and rebirth) into which we are born. By following the Eightfold Path, a man can overcome his ego and live a life free from suffering, and through his enlightenment he can avoid the pain of rebirth into another life of suffering. He has realized his place in the “not-self”, and become at one with the eternal. He has attained the state of Nirvana—which is variously translated as “non- attachment”, “not-being”, or literally “blowing out” (as of a candle). In the Brahmanism of Gautama’s time, and the Hindu religion that followed, Nirvana was seen as becoming one with god, but Gautama carefully avoids any mention of a deity or of an ultimate purpose to life. He merely describes Nirvana as “unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, and unformed”, and transcending any sensory experience. It is an eternal and unchanging state of not-being, and so the ultimate freedom from the suffering of existence. Gautama spent many years after his enlightenment traveling around India, preaching and teaching. During his lifetime, he gained a considerable following, and Buddhism became established as a major religion as well as a philosophy. His teachings were passed down orally from generation to generation by his followers, until the 1st century CE, when they were written down for the ﬁrst time. Various schools began to appear as Buddhism spread across India, and later spread eastward into China and Southeast Asia, where it rivalled Confucianism and Daoism in its popularity. THE ANCIENT WORLD The mind is everything. What you think, you become. Siddhartha Gautama The dharma wheel, one of the oldest Buddhist symbols, represents the Eightfold Path to Nirvana. In Buddhism, the word “dharma” refers to the teachings of the Buddha. Gautama’s teachings spread as far as the Greek empire by the 3rd century BCE, but had little inﬂuence on Western philosophy. However, there were similarities between Gautama’s approach to philosophy and that of the Greeks, not least Gautama’s emphasis on reasoning as a means of ﬁnding happiness, and his disciples’ use of philosophical dialogues to elucidate his teachings. His thoughts also ﬁnd echoes in the ideas of later Western philosophers, such as in Hume’s concept of the self and Schopenhauer’s view of the human condition. But it was not until the 20th century that Buddhism was to have any direct inﬂuence on Western thinking. Since then, more and more Westerners have turned to it for guidance on how to live. ■ Right Intention Right Speech Right Action Right Livelihood Right Concentration Right Understanding Right Effort The Eightfold Path Right Mindfulness HOLD FAITHFULNESS AND SINCERITY AS FIRST PRINCIPLES CONFUCIUS (551–479 BCE) 36 F rom 770 to 220 BCE, China enjoyed an era of great cultural development, and the philosophies that emerged at this time were known as the Hundred Schools of Thought. By the 6th century BCE, the Zhou Dynasty was in decline—moving from the stability of the Spring and Autumn Period to the aptly named Warring States Period— and it was during this time that Kong Fuzi, the Master Kong, or Confucius, was born. Like other philosophers of the age—such as Thales, Pythagoras, and Heraclitus of Greece—Confucius sought constants in a world of change, and for him this meant a search for moral values that could enable rulers to govern justly. The Analects Unlike many of the early Chinese philosophers, Confucius looked to the past for his inspiration. He was conservative by nature, and had a great respect for ritual and ancestor worship—both of which were maintained by the Zhou Dynasty, whose rulers received authority from the gods via the so-called Heavenly Mandate. A rigid social hierarchy existed in China, but Confucius was part of a new class of scholars who acted as advisors to the courts—in effect a class of civil servants—and they achieved their status not through inheritance, but by merit. It was Confucius’s integration of the old ideals with the emerging meritocracy that produced his unique new moral philosophy. The main source we have for the teachings of Confucius is the Analects, a collection of fragments of his writings and sayings compiled by his disciples. It is primarily a political treatise, made up of Confucius According to tradition, Confucius was born in 551 BCE in Qufu, in the state of Lu, China. His name was originally Kong Qiu, and only later did he earn the title Kong Fuzi, or “Master Kong.” Little is known about his life, except that he was from a well-to-do family, and that as a young man he worked as a servant to support his family after his father died. He nevertheless managed to ﬁnd time to study, and became an administrator in the Zhou court, but when his suggestions to the rulers were ignored he left to concentrate on teaching. As a teacher he traveled throughout the empire, and at the end of his life he returned to Qufu, where he died in 479 BCE. His teaching survives in fragments and sayings passed down orally to his disciples, and collected in the Analects and anthologies compiled by Confucian scholars. Key works 5th century BCE Analects Doctrine of the Mean Great Learning IN CONTEXT TRADITION Chinese philosophy APPROACH Confucianism BEFORE 7th century BCE The Hundred Schools of Thought emerge. 6th century BCE Laozi proposes acting in accordance with the dao (the Way). AFTER c.470–c.380 BCE Chinese philosopher Mozi argues against Confucian ideas. 372–289 BCE Chinese thinker Meng Zi revives Confucianism. 221–202 BCE Confucianism is suppressed by the Qin Dynasty. 136 BCE The Han Dynasty introduces civil service examinations modelled on Confucian texts. 9th century CE Confucianism is reborn as Neo-Confucianism. CONFUCIUS The superior man does what is proper to the station in which he is; he does not desire to go beyond this. Confucius 37 aphorisms and anecdotes that form a sort of rule book for good government—but his use of the word junzi (literally “gentleman”) to denote a superior, virtuous man, indicates that his concerns were as much social as political. Indeed, many passages of the Analects read like a book of etiquette. But to see the Analects as merely a social or political treatise is to miss its central point. At its heart lies a comprehensive ethical system. The virtuous life Before the appearance of the Hundred Schools of Thought, the world had been explained by mythology and religion, and power and moral authority were generally accepted to be god-given. Confucius is pointedly silent about the gods, but he often refers to tian, or See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Laozi 24–25 ■ Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Siddhartha Gautama 30–33 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Hajime Tanabe 244–45 THE ANCIENT WORLD Heaven, as the source of moral order. According to the Analects, we humans are the agents that Heaven has chosen to embody its will and to unite the world with the moral order—an idea that was in line with traditional Chinese thinking. What breaks with tradition, however, is Confucius’s belief that de—virtue—is not something Heaven-sent for the ruling classes, but something that can be cultivated—and cultivated by anyone. Having himself risen to be a minister of the Zhou court, he believed that it was a duty of the middle classes, as well as the rulers, to strive to act with virtue and benevolence (ren) to achieve a just and stable society. To reconcile the fact that society was a rigid class system with his belief that all men can receive the blessing of the Heavenly Mandate, Confucius argues that the virtuous man is not simply one who stands at the top of the social hierarchy, but one who understands his place within that hierarchy and embraces it to the full. And to deﬁne the various means of acting in accordance with de—virtue—he turns to traditional Chinese values: zhong, loyalty; xiao, ﬁlial piety; li, ritual propriety; and shu, reciprocity. The person who sincerely observes these values Confucius called junzi, the gentleman or superior man, by which he means a man of virtue, learning, and good manners. The values of de had evolved within the ruling classes but had become little more than empty gestures in the disintegrating world of the Zhou Dynasty. Confucius is attempting to ❯❯ Virtue can then be seen by others. Faithfulness and sincerity... Virtue is then made manifest in the world. Others are transformed by virtue. Faithfulness and sincerity hold the power of transformation. ...are shown in traditional rituals and ceremonies. These qualities in these settings allow virtue to become visible. 38 persuade the rulers to return to these ideals and to restore a just government, but he also believes in the power of benevolence—arguing that ruling by example rather than by fear would inspire the people to follow a similarly virtuous life. The same principle, he believes, should govern personal relationships. Loyalty and ritual In his analysis of relationships, Confucius uses zhong—the virtue of loyalty—as a guiding principle. To begin with, he stresses the importance of the loyalty of a minister to his sovereign, then shows that a similar relation holds between father and son, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and between friends. The order in which he arranges these is signiﬁcant—political loyalty ﬁrst, then family and clan loyalties, then loyalties to friends and strangers. For Confucius, this hierarchy reﬂects the fact that each person should know his station in society as a whole, as well his place in the family and the clan. This aspect of “knowing one’s station” is exempliﬁed by xiao— ﬁlial piety—which for Confucius was much more than just respect for one’s parents or elders. In fact, this is the closest he gets to religious ideas in the Analects, for xiao is connected to the traditional practice of ancestor worship. Above all, xiao reinforced the relationship of inferior to superior, which was central to his thinking. It is in his insistence on li— ritual propriety—that Confucius is at his most conservative. Li did not simply refer to rituals such as ancestor worship, but also to the social norms that underpinned every aspect of contemporary Chinese life. These ranged from ceremonies such as marriages, funerals, and sacriﬁces to the etiquette of receiving guests, presenting gifts, and the simple, everyday gestures of politeness, such as bowing and using the correct mode of address. These are, according to Confucius, the outward signs of an inner de—but only when they are performed with sincerity, which he considers to be the way of Heaven. Through the outward show of loyalty with inner sincerity, the superior man can transform society. Sincerity For Confucius, society can be changed by example. As he writes: “Sincerity becomes apparent. From being apparent, it becomes manifest. From being manifest, it becomes brilliant. Brilliant, it affects others. Affecting others, they are changed by it. Changed by it, they are transformed. Only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under Heaven, can transform.” Here, Confucius is at his least conservative, and he explains that the process of transformation can work both ways. The concept of zhong (faithfulness) also has an CONFUCIUS Ritual and tradition, for Confucius, are vital for binding an individual to his community. By knowing his place in society, the individual is free to become junzi, a man of virtue. The Five Constant Relationships Father—Son A parent is to be loving, a child obedient. Elder Br B othe h r— Younger Brother An elder sibling is to be gentle, and younger siblings respectful. Sovereign—Subject Rulers should be benevolent, and subjects loyal. Husband—Wife Husbands are to be good and fair, and wives understanding. Friend—Friend Older friends are to be considerate, younger friends reverential. 39 Confucius’s devotion to the idea of establishing a humane society led him to travel the Chinese empire for 12 years, teaching the virtues of faithfulness and sincerity. implication of “regard for others.” He took the view that one can learn to become a superior man by ﬁrst recognizing what one does not know (an idea echoed a century later by the Greek philosopher Socrates, who claimed that his wisdom lay in accepting that he knew nothing), and then by watching other people: if they show virtue, try to become their equal; if they are inferior, be their guide. Self-reﬂection This notion of zhong as a regard for others is also tied to the last of the Confucian values of de: shu, reciprocity, or “self-reﬂection”, which should govern our actions toward others. The so-called Golden Rule, “do as you would be done by”, appears in Confucianism as a negative: “what you do not desire for yourself, do not do to others.” The difference is subtle but crucial: Confucius does not prescribe what to do, only what not to do, emphasizing restraint rather than THE ANCIENT WORLD What you know, you know; what you don’t know, you don’t know. This is true wisdom. Confucius action. This implies modesty and humility—values traditionally held in high regard in Chinese society, and which for Confucius express our true nature. Fostering these values is a form of loyalty to oneself, and another kind of sincerity. Confucianism Confucius had little success in persuading contemporary rulers to adopt his ideas in government, and turned his attention to teaching. His disciples, including Meng Zi (Mencius), continued to anthologize and expand on his writings, which survived the repressive Qin Dynasty, and inspired a revival of Confucianism in the Han Dynasty of the early Common Era. From then on, the impact of Confucius’s ideas was profound, inspiring almost every aspect of Chinese society, from administration to politics and philosophy. The major religions of Daoism and Buddhism had also been ﬂourishing in Confucius’s time, replacing traditional beliefs, and although Confucius offered no opinion on them, remaining silent about the gods, he nevertheless inﬂuenced aspects of both new faiths. A Neo-Confucian school revitalized the movement in the 9th century, and reached its peak in the 12th century, when its inﬂuence was felt across Southeast Asia into Korea and Japan. Although Jesuit missionaries brought back Kong Fuzi’s ideas to Europe (and Latinized his name to Confucius) in the 16th century, Confucianism was alien to European thought and had limited inﬂuence until translations of his work appeared in the late 17th century. Despite the fall of imperial China in 1911, Confucian ideas continued to form the basis of many Chinese moral and social conventions, even if they were ofﬁcially frowned upon. In recent years the People’s Republic of China has shown a renewed interest in Confucius, integrating his ideas with both modern Chinese thought and Western philosophy, creating a hybrid philosophy known as “New Confucianism.” ■ 40 See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Anaximenes of Miletus 330 ■ Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Parmenides 41 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ Georg Hegel 178–85 W here other early Greek philosophers seek to uncover scientiﬁc explanations for the physical nature of the cosmos, Heraclitus sees it as being governed by a divine logos. Sometimes interpreted to mean “reason” or “argument”, Heraclitus considers the logos to be a universal, cosmic law, according to which all things come into being, and by which all the material elements of the universe are held in balance. It is the balancing of opposites, such as day and night and hot and cold, which Heraclitus believes leads to the unity of the universe, or the idea everything is part of a single fundamental process or substance—the central tenet of monism. But he also states that tension is constantly generated between these pairs of opposites, and he therefore concludes that everything must be in a permanent state of ﬂux, or change. Day, for instance, changes into night, which in turn changes back again to day. Heraclitus offers the example of a river to illustrate his theory: “You can never step into the same river twice.” By this, he means that at the very moment you step into a river, fresh waters will immediately replace those into which you initially placed your foot, and yet the river itself is always described as one ﬁxed and unchanging thing. Heraclitus’s belief that every object in the universe is in a state of constant ﬂux runs counter to the thinking of the philosophers of the Milesian school, such as Thales and Anaximenes, who deﬁne all things by their quintessentially unchanging essence. ■ IN CONTEXT BRANCH Metaphysics APPROACH Monism BEFORE 6th century BCE The Milesian philosophers claim that the cosmos is made up of a single speciﬁc substance. 6th century BCE Pythagoras states that the universe has an underlying structure that can be deﬁned mathematically. AFTER Early 5th century BCE Parmenides uses logical deduction to prove change is impossible. Late 4th century BCE Plato describes the world as being in a state of ﬂux, but dismisses Heraclitus as contradictory. Early 19th century Georg Hegel bases his dialectic system of philosophy on the integration of opposites. EVERYTHING IS FLUX HERACLITUS (C.535–475 BCE) The road up and the road down are one and the same. Heraclitus 41 See also: Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Democritus and Leucippus 45 ■ Zeno of Elea 331 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ Martin Heidegger 252–255 T he ideas put forward by Parmenides mark a key turning point in Greek philosophy. Inﬂuenced by the logical, scientiﬁc thinking of Pythagoras, Parmenides employs deductive reasoning in an attempt to uncover the true physical nature of the world. His investigations lead him to take the opposite view to that of Heraclitus. From the premise that something exists (“It is”), Parmenides deduces that it cannot also not exist (“It is not”), as this would involve a logical contradiction. It follows therefore that a state of nothing existing is impossible—there can be no void. Something cannot then come from nothing, and so must always have existed in some form. This permanent form cannot change, because something that is permanent cannot change into something else without it ceasing to be permanent. Fundamental change is therefore impossible. Parmenides concludes from this pattern of thought that everything that is real must be eternal and unchanging, and must have an indivisible unity—“all is one.” More importantly for subsequent philosophers, Parmenides shows by his process of reasoning that our perception of the world is faulty and full of contradictions. We seem to experience change, and yet our reason tells us that change is impossible. The only conclusion we can come to is that we can never rely on the experience that is delivered to us by our senses. ■ THE ANCIENT WORLD IN CONTEXT BRANCH Metaphysics APPROACH Monism BEFORE 6th century BCE Pythagoras sees mathematical structure, rather than a substance, as the foundation of the cosmos. c.500 BCE Heraclitus says that everything is in a state of ﬂux. AFTER Late 5th century BCE Zeno of Elea presents his paradoxes to demonstrate the illusory nature of our experience. c.400 BCE Democritus and Leucippus say the cosmos is composed of atoms in a void. Late 4th century BCE Plato presents his theory of Forms, claiming that abstract ideas are the highest form of reality. 1927 Martin Heidegger writes Being and Time, reviving the question of the sense of being. ALL IS ONE PARMENIDES (C.515–445 BCE) Understanding the cosmos is one of the oldest philosophical quests. In the 20th century, evidence from quantum physics emerged to support ideas that Parmenides reached by reason alone. 42 MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS PROTAGORAS (C.490–420 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Ethics APPROACH Relativism BEFORE Early 5th century BCE Parmenides argues that we can rely more on reason than the evidence of our senses. AFTER Early 4th century BCE Plato’s theory of Forms states that there are “absolutes” or ideal forms of everything. 1580 French writer Michel de Montaigne espouses a form of relativism to describe human behavior in his Essays. 1967–72 Jacques Derrida uses his technique of deconstruction to show that any text contains irreconcilable contradictions. 2005 Benedict XVI warns “we are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism” in his ﬁrst public address as pope. D uring the 5th century BCE, Athens evolved into an important and prosperous city-state, and under the leadership of Pericles (445–429 BCE) it entered a “Golden Age” of scholarship and culture. This attracted people from all parts of Greece, and for those who knew and could interpret the law, there were rich pickings to be had. The city was run on broadly democratic principles, with an established legal system. Anyone taken to court was required to plead his own case; there were no advocates, but a recognized class of advisors soon evolved. Among this group was Protagoras. Everything is relative Protagoras lectured in law and rhetoric to anybody who could afford him. His teachings were essentially about practical matters, arguing to win a civil case rather than to prove a point, but he could It is a spring day in Athens. Both people are speaking the truth. The truth depends on perspective and is therefore relative. A visitor from Sweden says the weather is warm. A visitor from Egypt says the weather is cold. Man is the measure of all things. 43 According to Protagoras, any “truth” uncovered by these two philosophers, depicted on a 5th-century BCE Greek drinking vessel, will depend on their use of rhetoric and their debating skill. See also: Parmenides 41 ■ Socrates 46–49 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ Michel de Montaigne 108–09 ■ Jacques Derrida 308–13 THE ANCIENT WORLD see the philosophical implications of what he taught. For Protagoras, every argument has two sides, and both may be equally valid. He claims that he can “make the worse case the better”, proving not the worth of the argument, but the persuasiveness of its proponent. In this way, he recognizes that belief is subjective, and it is the man holding the view or opinion that is the measure of its worth. This style of reasoning, common in law and politics at that time, was new to philosophy. By placing human beings at its center, it continued a tradition of taking religion out of philosophical argument, and it also shifted the focus of philosophy away from an understanding of the nature of the universe to an examination of human behavior. Protagoras is mainly interested in practical questions. Philosophical speculations on the substance of the cosmos or about the existence of the gods seem pointless to him, as he considers such things to be ultimately unknowable. The main implication of “man is the measure of all things” is that belief is subjective and relative. This leads Protagoras to reject the existence of absolute deﬁnitions of truth, justice, or virtue. What is true for one person may be false for another, he claims. This relativism also applies to moral values, such as what is right and what is wrong. To Protagoras, nothing is inherently good in itself. Something is ethical, or right, only because a person or society judges it to be so. Protagoras Protagoras was born in Abdera, in northeast Greece, but traveled widely as an itinerant teacher. At some stage, he moved to Athens, where he became advisor to the ruler of the city-state, Pericles, who commissioned him to write the constitution for the colony of Thurii in 444 BCE. Protagoras was a proponent of agnosticism, and legend has it that he was later tried for impiety, and that his books were publicly burned. Only fragments of his writings survive, although Plato discusses the views of Protagoras at length in his dialogues. Protagoras is believed to have lived to the age of 70, but his exact date and place of death are unknown. Key works 5th century BCE On the Gods Truth On Being The Art of Controversy On Mathematics On the State On Ambition On Virtues On the Original State of Things Protagoras was the most inﬂuential of a group of itinerant teachers of law and rhetoric that became known as the Sophists (from the Greek sophia, meaning wisdom). Socrates and Plato derided the Sophists as mere rhetoricians, but with Protagoras there was a signiﬁcant step in ethics toward the view that there are no absolutes and that all judgements, including moral judgements, are subjective. ■ Many things prevent knowledge, including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life. Protagoras 44 See also: Laozi 24–25 ■ Siddhartha Gautama 30–33 ■ Confucius 34–39 ■ Wang Bi 331 ■ Jeremy Bentham 174 ■ Hajime Tanabe 244–45 B orn in 479 BCE, shortly after the death of Confucius, Mozi had a traditional Chinese education based on the classic texts. Later, however, he came to dislike the emphasis on clan relationships that runs through Confucianism, and this led him to set up his own school of thought, advocating universal love or jian ai. By jian ai, Mozi means that we should care for all people equally, regardless of their status or their relationship to us. He regards this philosophy, which became known as Mohism and which “nourishes and sustains all life”, as being fundamentally benevolent and in accordance with the way of heaven. Mozi believes that there is always reciprocity in our actions. By treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves, we will receive similar treatment in return. This is the meaning behind “when one throws to me a peach, I return to him a plum.” When this principle of caring for everyone impartially is applied by rulers, Mozi states that it avoids conﬂict and war; when the same principle is practiced by everyone, it leads to a more harmonious and therefore more productive society. This idea is similar in spirit to that of the Utilitarianism proposed by Western philosophers of the 19th century. ■ IN CONTEXT TRADITION Chinese philosophy APPROACH Mohism BEFORE 6th century BCE Laozi states that to live according to the dao means acting intuitively and in accordance with nature. Late 6th century BCE Confucius’s moral philosophy stresses the importance of family ties and traditions. AFTER Mid-4th century BCE The Confucian philosophy of Mencius stresses man’s innate goodness. Mid-4th century BCE Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi criticizes Confucianism and Mohism. 3rd century BCE Legalism is adopted by the Qin dynasty. It opposes Mohism, advocating strong laws to keep man’s essentially evil nature in check. WHEN ONE THROWS TO ME A PEACH, I RETURN TO HIM A PLUM MOZI (C.470–391 BCE) Mao Zedong regarded Mozi as the true philosopher of the people, because of his humble origins. Mozi’s view that everyone should be treated equally has been encouraged in modern China. 45 See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Epicurus 64–65 F rom the 6th century BCE onward, philosophers began to consider whether the universe was made from a single fundamental substance. During the 5th century BCE, two philosophers from Abderra in Greece, named Democritus and Leucippus, suggested that everything was made up of tiny, indivisible, and unchangeable particles, which they called atoms (atomos is Greek for uncuttable). First atomic theory Democritus and Leucippus also claim that a void or empty space separates atoms, allowing them to move around freely. As the atoms move, they may collide with each other to form new arrangements of atoms, so that objects in the world will appear to change. The two thinkers consider that there are an inﬁnite number of these eternal atoms, but that the number of different combinations they can arrange themselves into is ﬁnite. This explains the apparent ﬁxed number of different substances that exist. The atoms that make up our bodies, for example, do not decay and disappear when we die, but are dispersed and can be reconstituted. Known as atomism, the theory that Democritus and Leucippus devised offered the ﬁrst complete mechanistic view of the universe, without any recourse to the notion of a god or gods. It also identiﬁed fundamental properties of matter that have proved critical to the development of the physical sciences, particularly from the 17th century onward, right up to the atomic theories that revolutionized science in the 20th century.■ THE ANCIENT WORLD IN CONTEXT BRANCH Metaphysics APPROACH Atomism BEFORE Early 6th century BCE Thales says that the cosmos is made of one fundamental substance. c.500 BCE Heraclitus declares that everything is in a state of constant ﬂux, or change. AFTER c.300 BCE The Epicurians conclude that there is no afterlife, as the body’s atoms disperse after death. 1805 British chemist John Dalton proposes that all pure substances contain atoms of a single type that combine to form compounds. 1897 The British physicist J.J. Thomson discovers that atoms can be divided into even smaller particles. NOTHING EXISTS EXCEPT ATOMS AND EMPTY SPACE DEMOCRITUS (C. 460–371 BCE) AND LEUCIPPUS (EARLY 5TH CENTURY BCE) Man is a microcosm of the universe. Democritus 46 THE LIFE WHICH IS UNEXAMINED IS NOT WORTH LIVING SOCRATES (469–399 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Epistemology APPROACH Dialectical method BEFORE c.600–450 BCE Pre-Socratic philosophers in Ionia and Italy attempt to explain the nature of the cosmos. Early 5th century BCE Parmenides states that we can only understand the universe through reasoning. c.450 BCE Protagoras and the Sophists apply rhetoric to philosophical questions. AFTER c.399–355 BCE Plato portrays the character of Socrates in the Apology and numerous other dialogues. 4th century BCE Aristotle acknowledges his debt to Socrates’ method. S ocrates is often referred to as one of the founders of Western philosophy, and yet he wrote nothing, established no school, and held no particular theories of his own. What he did do, however, was persistently ask the questions that interested him, and in doing so evolved a new way of thinking, or a new way of examining what we think. This has been called the Socratic, or dialectical, method (“dialectical” because it proceeds as a dialogue between opposing views), and it earned him many enemies in Athens, where he lived. He was viliﬁed as a Sophist (someone who argues for the sake of deception), and was sentenced to 47 See also: Thales of Miletus 22–23 ■ Pythagoras 26–29 ■ Heraclitus 40 ■ Parmenides 41 ■ Protagoras 42–43 ■ Plato 50–55 ■ Aristotle 56–63 Socrates Born in Athens in 469 BCE, Socrates was the son of a stonemason and a midwife. It is likely that he pursued his father’s profession, and had the opportunity to study philosophy, before he was called up for military service. After distinguishing himself during the Peloponnesian War, he returned to Athens, and for a while involved himself in politics. However, when his father died he inherited enough money to live with his wife Xanthippe without having to work. From then on, Socrates became a familiar sight around Athens, involving himself in philosophical discussions with fellow citizens and gaining a following of young students. He was eventually accused of corrupting the minds of young Athenians, and was sentenced to death. Although he was offered the choice of exile, he accepted the guilty verdict and was given a fatal dose of hemlock in 399 BCE. Key works 4th–3rd century BCE Plato’s record of Socrates’ life and philosophy in the Apology and numerous dialogues. death on charges of corrupting the young with ideas that undermined tradition. But he also had many followers, and among them was Plato, who recorded Socrates’ ideas in a series of written works, called dialogues, in which Socrates sets about examining various ideas. It is largely thanks to these dialogues— which include the Apology, Phaedo, and the Symposium—that Socrates’ thought survived at all, and that it went on to guide the course of Western philosophy. The purpose of life Socrates lived in Athens in the second half of the 5th century BCE. As a young man he is believed to have studied natural philosophy, looking at the various explanations of the nature of the universe, but then became involved in the politics of the city-state and concerned with more down-to-earth ethical issues, such as the nature of justice. However, he was not interested in winning arguments, or arguing for the sake of making money—a charge that was leveled at many of his contemporaries. Nor was he seeking answers or explanations— he was simply examining the basis of the concepts we apply to	856,636
The Politics Book Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	CONTENTS INTRODUCTION ANCIENT POLITICAL THOUGHT 800 BCE–30 CE If your desire is for good, the people will be good • Confucius The art of war is of vital importance to the state • Sun Tzu Plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned • Mozi Until philosophers are kings, cities will never have rest from their evils • Plato Man is by nature a political animal • Aristotle A single wheel does not move • Chanakya If evil ministers enjoy safety and profit, this is the beginning of downfall • Han Fei Tzu The government is bandied about like a ball • Cicero MEDIEVAL POLITICS 30 CE–1515 CE If justice be taken away, what are governments but great bands of robbers? • Augustine of Hippo Fighting has been enjoined upon you while it is hateful to you • Muhammad The people refuse the rule of virtuous men • Al-Farabi No free man shall be imprisoned, except by the law of the land • Barons of King John For war to be just, there is required a just cause • Thomas Aquinas To live politically means living in accordance with good laws • Giles of Rome The Church should devote itself to imitating Christ and give up its secular power • Marsilius of Padua Government prevents injustice, other than such as it commits itself • Ibn Khaldun A prudent ruler cannot, and must not, honour his word • Niccolò Machiavelli RATIONALITY AND ENLIGHTENMENT 1515–1770 In the beginning, everything was common to all • Francisco de Vitoria Sovereignty is the absolute and perpetual power of a commonwealth • Jean Bodin The natural law is the foundation of human law • Francisco Suárez Politics is the art of associating men • Johannes Althusius Liberty is the power that we have over ourselves • Hugo Grotius The condition of man is a condition of war • Thomas Hobbes The end of law is to preserve and enlarge freedom • John Locke When legislative and executive powers are united in the same body, there can be no liberty • Montesquieu Independent entrepreneurs make good citizens • Benjamin Franklin REVOLUTIONARY THOUGHTS 1770–1848 To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man • Jean-Jacques Rousseau No generally valid principle of legislation can be based on happiness • Immanuel Kant The passions of individuals should be subjected • Edmund Burke Rights dependent on property are the most precarious • Thomas Paine All men are created equal • Thomas Jefferson Each nationality contains its centre of happiness within itself • Johann Gottfried Herder Government has but a choice of evils • Jeremy Bentham The people have a right to keep and bear arms • James Madison The most respectable women are the most oppressed • Mary Wollstonecraft The slave feels self-existence to be something external • Georg Hegel War is the continuation of Politik by other means • Carl von Clausewitz Abolition and the Union cannot co-exist • John C. Calhoun A state too extensive in itself ultimately falls into decay • Simón Bolívar An educated and wise government recognizes the developmental needs of its society • José María Luis Mora The tendency to attack “the family” is a symptom of social chaos • Auguste Comte THE RISE OF THE MASSES 1848–1910 Socialism is a new system of serfdom • Alexis de Tocqueville Say not I, but we • Giuseppe Mazzini That so few dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time • John Stuart Mill No man is good enough to govern another man, without that other’s consent • Abraham Lincoln Property is theft • Pierre-Joseph Proudhon The privileged man is a man depraved in intellect and heart • Mikhail Bakunin That government is best which governs not at all • Henry David Thoreau Communism is the riddle of history solved • Karl Marx The men who proclaimed the republic became the assassins of freedom • Alexander Herzen We must look for a central axis for our nation • Ito Hirobumi The will to power • Friedrich Nietzsche It is the myth that is alone important • Georges Sorel We have to take working men as they are • Eduard Bernstein The disdain of our formidable neighbour is the greatest danger for Latin America • José Martí It is necessary to dare in order to succeed • Peter Kropotkin Either women are to be killed, or women are to have the vote • Emmeline Pankhurst It is ridiculous to deny the existence of a Jewish nation • Theodor Herzl Nothing will avail to save a nation whose workers have decayed • Beatrice Webb Protective legislation in America is shamefully inadequate • Jane Addams Land to the tillers! • Sun Yat-Sen The individual is a single cog in an ever-moving mechanism • Max Weber THE CLASH OF IDEOLOGIES 1910–1945 Non-violence is the first article of my faith • Mahatma Gandhi Politics begin where the masses are • Vladimir Lenin The mass strike results from social conditions with historical inevitability • Rosa Luxemburg An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last • Winston Churchill The Fascist conception of the state is all-embracing • Giovanni Gentile The wealthy farmers must be deprived of the sources of their existence • Joseph Stalin If the end justifies the means, what justifies the end? • Leon Trotsky We will unite Mexicans by giving guarantees to the peasant and the businessman • Emiliano Zapata War is a racket • Smedley D. Butler Sovereignty is not given, it is taken • Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Europe has been left without a moral code • José Ortega y Gasset We are 400 million people asking for liberty • Marcus Garvey India cannot really be free unless separated from the British empire • Manabendra Nath Roy Sovereign is he who decides on the exception • Carl Schmitt Communism is as bad as imperialism • Jomo Kenyatta The state must be conceived of as an “educator” • Antonio Gramsci Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun • Mao Zedong POST-WAR POLITICS 1945–PRESENT The chief evil is unlimited government • Friedrich Hayek Parliamentary government and rationalist politics do not belong to the same system • Michael Oakeshott The objective of the Islamic jihad is to eliminate the rule of an un- Islamic system • Abul Ala Maududi There is nothing to take a man’s freedom away from him, save other men • Ayn Rand Every known and established fact can be denied • Hannah Arendt What is a woman? • Simone de Beauvoir No natural object is solely a resource • Arne Naess We are not anti-white, we are against white supremacy • Nelson Mandela Only the weak-minded believe that politics is a place of collaboration • Gianfranco Miglio During the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed tend to become oppressors • Paulo Freire Justice is the first virtue of social institutions • John Rawls Colonialism is violence in its natural state • Frantz Fanon The ballot or the bullet • Malcolm X We need to “cut off the king’s head” • Michel Foucault Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves • Che Guevara Everybody has to make sure that the rich folk are happy • Noam Chomsky Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance • Martin Luther King Perestroika unites socialism with democracy • Mikhail Gorbachev The intellectuals erroneously fought Islam • Ali Shariati The hellishness of war drives us to break with every restraint • Michael Walzer No state more extensive than the minimal state can be justified • Robert Nozick No Islamic law says violate women’s rights • Shirin Ebadi Suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation • Robert Pape DIRECTORY GLOSSARY CONTRIBUTORS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS COPYRIGHT INTRODUCTION If everyone could have everything they wanted whenever they wanted, there would be no such thing as politics. Whatever the precise meaning of the complex activity known as politics might be – and, as this book illustrates, it has been understood in many different ways – it is clear that human experience never provides us with everything we want. Instead, we have to compete, struggle, compromise, and sometimes fight for things. In so doing, we develop a language to explain and justify our claims and to challenge, contradict, or answer the claims of others. This might be a language of interests, whether of individuals or groups, or it might be a language of values, such as rights and liberties or fair shares and justice. But central to the activity of politics, from its very beginnings, is the development of political ideas and concepts. These ideas help us to make our claims and to defend our interests. But this picture of politics and the place of political ideas is not the whole story. It suggests that politics can be reduced to the question of who gets what, where, when, and how. Political life is undoubtedly in part a necessary response to the challenges of everyday life and the recognition that collective action is often better than individual action. But another tradition of political thinking is associated with the ancient Greek thinker Aristotle, who said that politics was not merely about the struggle to meet material needs in conditions of scarcity. Once complex societies emerge, different questions arise. Who should rule? What powers should political rulers have, and how do the claims to legitimacy of political rulers compare to other sources of authority, such as that of the family, or the claims of religious authority? "Political society exists for the sake of noble actions, and not of mere companionship." Aristotle Aristotle said that it is natural for man to live politically, and this is not simply the observation that man is better off in a complex society than abandoned and isolated. It is also the claim that there is something fittingly human about having views on how matters of public concern should be decided. Politics is a noble activity in which men decide the rules they will live by and the goals they will collectively pursue. Political moralism Aristotle did not think that all human beings should be allowed to engage in political activity: in his system, women, slaves, and foreigners were explicitly excluded from the right to rule themselves and others. Nevertheless, his basic idea that politics is a unique collective activity that is directed at certain common goals and ends still resonates today. But which ends? Many thinkers and political figures since the ancient world have developed different ideas about the goals that politics can or should achieve. This approach is known as political moralism. "For forms of Government let fools contest. Whate’er is best administered is best." Alexander Pope For moralists, political life is a branch of ethics – or moral philosophy – so it is unsurprising that there are many philosophers in the group of moralistic political thinkers. Political moralists argue that politics should be directed towards achieving substantial goals, or that political arrangements should be organized to protect certain things. Among these things are political values such as justice, equality, liberty, happiness, fraternity, or national self- determination. At its most radical, moralism produces descriptions of ideal political societies known as Utopias, named after English statesman and philosopher Thomas More’s book Utopia, published in 1516, which imagined an ideal nation. Utopian political thinking dates back to the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s book the Republic, but it is still used by modern thinkers such as Robert Nozick to explore ideas. Some theorists consider Utopian political thinking to be a dangerous undertaking, as it has led in the past to justifications of totalitarian violence. However, at its best, Utopian thinking is part of a process of striving towards a better society, and many of the thinkers discussed in this book use it to suggest values to be pursued or protected. Political realism Another major tradition of political thinking rejects the idea that politics exists to deliver a moral or ethical value such as happiness or freedom. Instead, they argue that politics is about power. Power is the means by which ends are achieved, enemies are defeated, and compromises sustained. Without the ability to acquire and exercise power, values – however noble they may be – are useless. The group of thinkers who focus on power as opposed to morality are described as realists. Realists focus their attention on power, conflict, and war, and are often cynical about human motivations. Perhaps the two greatest theorists of power were Italian Niccolò Machiavelli and Englishman Thomas Hobbes, both of whom lived through periods of civil war and disorder, in the 16th and 17th centuries respectively. Machiavelli’s view of human nature emphasizes that men are “ungrateful liars” and neither noble nor virtuous. He warns of the dangers of political motives that go beyond concerns with the exercise of power. For Hobbes, the lawless “state of nature” is one of a war of all men against each other. Through a “social contract” with his subjects, a sovereign exercises absolute power to save society from this brutish state. But the concern with power is not unique to early modern Europe. Much 20th-century political thought is concerned with the sources and exercise of power. Wise counsel Realism and moralism are grand political visions that try to make sense of the whole of political experience and its relationship with other features of the human condition. Yet not all political thinkers have taken such a wide perspective on events. Alongside the political philosophers, there is an equally ancient tradition that is pragmatic and concerned merely with delivering the best possible outcomes. The problems of war and conflict may never be eradicated, and arguments about the relationship between political values such as freedom and equality may also never be resolved, but perhaps we can make progress in constitutional design and policy making, or in ensuring that government officials are as able as possible. Some of the earliest thinking about politics, such as that of Chinese philosopher Confucius, is associated with the skills and virtues of the wise counsellor. Rise of ideology One further type of political thinking is often described as ideological. An important strand of ideological thinking emphasizes the ways in which ideas are peculiar to different historical periods. The origins of ideological thinking can be found in the historical philosophies of German philosophers Georg Hegel and Karl Marx. They explain how the ideas of each political epoch differ because the institutions and practices of the societies differ, and the significance of ideas changes across history. "The philosophers have only interpreted the world… the point is to change it." Karl Marx Plato and Aristotle thought of democracy as a dangerous and corrupt system, whereas most people in the modern world see it as the best form of government. Contemporary authoritarian regimes are encouraged to democratize. Similarly, slavery was once thought of as a natural condition that excluded many from any kind of rights, and until the 20th century, most women were not considered citizens. This raises the question of what causes some ideas to become important, such as equality, and others to fall out of favour, such as slavery or the divine right of kings. Marx accounts for this historical change by arguing that ideas are attached to the interests of social classes such as the workers or the capitalists. These class interests gave rise to the great “isms” of ideological politics, from communism and socialism to conservatism and fascism. The social classes of Marx are not the only source of ideological politics. Many recent political ideas have also emerged from developments within liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and nationalism. Ideological political thinking has also been the subject of hostility and criticism. If ideas are merely a reflection of historical processes, critics argue, that must mean that the individuals caught up in those processes are playing an essentially passive role, and that rational deliberation and argument have limited value. Ideological struggle is rather like the competition between football teams. Passion, as opposed to reason, matters in supporting one’s team, and winning is ultimately all that counts. Many worry that ideological politics results in the worst excesses of realism, in which the ends are seen to justify brutal or unjust means. Ideological politics appears to be a perpetual struggle or war between rival and irreconcilable camps. Marx’s solution to this problem was the revolutionary triumph of the working class and the technological overcoming of scarcity, which would solve the problem of political conflict. In light of the 20th century, this approach to politics seems to many to be highly over-optimistic, as revolutionary change has been seen to have replaced one kind of tyranny with another. In this view, Marxism and other ideologies are merely the latest forms of unrealistic Utopian moralism. A disputed future According to Georg Hegel, political ideas are an abstraction from the political life of a society, state, culture, or political movement. To make sense of those ideas, and the institutions or movements they explain, involves examining their history and development. That history is always a story of how we got to where we are now. What we cannot do is look forward to see where history is going. In Roman mythology, the Owl of Minerva was a symbol of wisdom. For Hegel, the Owl only “takes flight at twilight”. By this, he means that understanding can only come retrospectively. Hegel is warning against optimism about developing ideas for where to go next. He is also issuing a subtle warning against his other famous claim that the rise of the modern state is the end of history. It is very easy to see ourselves as the most progressive, enlightened, and rational age ever – after all we believe in democracy, human rights, open economies, and constitutional government. But as we shall see in this book, these are by no means simple ideas, and they are not shared by all societies and peoples even today. The last 80 years of world history have seen the rise of new nation-states as a result of imperial retreat and decolonization. Federations such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia have fragmented into new states, as has the former USSR. The desire for national sovereignty is also strong in places such as Quebec, Catalonia, Kurdistan, and Kashmir. Yet, while peoples have struggled for statehood, states have sought complex federations and political union. The last three decades have seen the rise of the European Union, which aspires to closer political integration, as well as the North American Free Trade area and many other organizations for regional cooperation. Old ideas of state sovereignty have an awkward role in the new political world of pooled sovereignty, economic cooperation, and globalization. Hegel’s point seems very pertinent here – we cannot predict how we will appear to those in the future, nor whether what seems common sense to us will be seen as persuasive by our descendants. "Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians." Charles de Gaulle Making sense of the present requires an understanding of the variety of political ideas and theories conceived throughout history. These ideas serve as an explanation of the possibilities of the present, as well as a warning against overconfidence in our own political values, and they remind us that the demands of organizing and governing the collective life of society change in ways that we cannot fully predict. As new possibilities for the exercise of power arise, so will new demands for its control and accountability, and with these will come new political ideas and theories. Politics concerns all of us, so we should all be involved in that debate. INTRODUCTION Political theory can trace its beginnings to the civilizations of ancient China and Greece. In both places, thinkers emerged who questioned and analysed the world around them in a way we now call philosophy. From around 600 BCE, some of them turned their attention to the way we organize societies. At first, both in China and Greece, these questions were considered part of moral philosophy or ethics. Philosophers examined how society should be structured to ensure not only the happiness and security of the people, but to enable people to live a “good life”. Political thought in China From around 770 BCE, China experienced a time of prosperity known as the Spring and Autumn period, as various dynasties ruled over the separate states relatively peaceably. Scholarship was highly valued in this period, resulting in the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought. By far the most influential of the philosophers to emerge was Confucius, who combined moral and political philosophy in his proposals for upholding traditional Chinese moral values in a state led by a virtuous ruler, and advised by a class of administrators. This idea was further refined by Mozi and Mencius to prevent corruption and despotic rule, but as conflict between the states increased in the 3rd century BCE, the Spring and Autumn period came to a close, replaced by the Warring States period and the struggle for control of a unified Chinese empire. It was in this atmosphere that thinkers such as Han Fei Tzu and the Legalist school advocated discipline as the guiding principle of the state, and the military leader Sun Tzu applied the tactics of warfare to ideas of foreign policy and domestic government. These more authoritarian political philosophies brought stability to the new empire, which later reverted to a form of Confucianism. Greek democracy At much the same time as these developments in China, Greek civilization was flourishing. Like China, Greece was not a single nation, but a collection of separate city-states under various systems of government. Most were ruled by a monarch or an aristocracy, but Athens had established a form of democracy under a constitution introduced by the statesman Solon in 594 BCE. The city became the cultural centre of Greece, and provided an intellectual space in which philosophers could speculate on what constituted the ideal state, what its purpose was, and how it should be governed. Here, Plato advocated rule by an elite of “philosopher kings”, while his pupil Aristotle compared the various possible forms of government. Their theories would form the basis for Western political philosophy. After Aristotle, the “golden age” of classical Greek philosophy drew to a close, as Alexander the Great embarked on a series of campaigns to extend his empire from Macedon into northern Africa and across Asia as far as the Himalayas. But in India, he met with resistance from an organized opposition. The Indian subcontinent was composed of various separate states, but the emergence of an innovative political theorist, Chanakya, helped to transform it into a unified empire under the rule of his protégé, Chandragupta Maurya. Chanakya believed in a pragmatic approach to political thinking advocating strict discipline, with the aim of securing economic and material security for the state rather than the moral welfare of the people. His realism helped to protect the Mauryan empire from attack, and brought most of India into a unified state that lasted for more than 100 years. The rise of Rome Meanwhile, another power was rising in Europe. The Roman Republic had been founded in about 510 BCE with the overthrow of a tyrannical monarchy. A form of representative democracy similar to the Athenian model was established. A constitution evolved, with government led by two consuls elected by the citizens annually, and a senate of representatives to advise them. Under this system, the Republic grew in strength, occupying provinces in most of mainland Europe. However, in the 1st century BCE, civil conflict spread in the Republic as various factions vied for power. Julius Caesar seized control in 48 BCE and effectively became emperor, bringing the Republic to an end. Rome had once again come under a monarchical, dynastic rule, and the new Roman empire was to dominate most of Europe for the next 500 years. IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Confucianism FOCUS Paternalist BEFORE 1045 BCE Under the Zhou dynasty of China, political decisions are justified by the Mandate of Heaven. 8th century BCE The Spring and Autumn period begins, and the “Hundred Schools of Thought” emerge. AFTER 5th century BCE Mozi proposes an alternative to the potential nepotism and cronyism of Confucianism. 4th century BCE The philosopher Mencius popularizes Confucian ideas. 3rd century BCE The more authoritarian principles of Legalism come to dominate the system of government. Kong Fuzi (“Master Kong”), who later became known in the West by the Latinized name of Confucius, lived during a turning point in China’s political history. He lived at the end of China’s Spring and Autumn period – around 300 years of prosperity and stability during which there was a flowering of art, literature, and in particular, philosophy. This gave rise to the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought, in which a wide range of ideas was freely discussed. In the process, a new class of thinkers and scholars emerged, most of them based in the courts of noble families where they were valued advisors. The influence of these scholars’ new ideas inspired a shake-up of the structure of Chinese society. The scholars were appointed on merit rather than due to family connections, and this new meritocratic class of scholars was a challenge to the hereditary rulers, who had previously governed with what they believed was a mandate from Heaven. This caused a series of conflicts as various rulers vied for control over China. During this era, which became known as the Warring States period, it became increasingly clear that a strong system of government was necessary. The superior man Like most educated, middle-class young men, Confucius pursued a career as an administrator, and it was in this role that he developed his ideas about the organization of government. Seeing first-hand the relationships between the ruler and his ministers and subjects, and keenly aware of the fragility of the political situation of the time, he set about formulating a framework that would enable rulers to govern justly, based on his own system of moral philosophy. Confucius’s moral standpoint was firmly rooted in Chinese convention, and had at its heart the traditional virtues of loyalty, duty, and respect. These values were personified in the junzi: the “gentleman” or “superior man”, whose virtue would act as an example to others. Every member of society would be encouraged to aspire to the junzi’s virtues. In Confucius’s view, human nature is not perfect, but it is capable of being changed by the example of sincere virtue. Similarly, society can be transformed by the example of fair and benevolent government. The notion of reciprocity – the idea that just and generous treatment will be met with a just and generous response – underpins Confucius’s moral philosophy, and it is also a cornerstone of his political thinking. For a society to be good, its ruler must be the embodiment of the virtues he wishes to see in his subjects; in turn, the people will be inspired through loyalty and respect to emulate those virtues. In the collection of his teachings and sayings known as the Analects, Confucius advises: “If your desire is for good, the people will be good. The moral character of the ruler is the wind; the moral character of those beneath him is the grass. When the wind blows, the grass bends.” In order for this idea to work effectively, however, a new structure for society had to be established, creating a hierarchy that took account of the new meritocratic administrative class while respecting the traditional rule of the noble families. In his proposal for how this might be achieved, Confucius again relied very much on traditional values, modelling society on relationships within the family. For Confucius, the benevolence of the sovereign and the loyalty of his subject mirror the loving father and obedient son relationship (a relationship considered by the Chinese to be of the utmost importance). Confucius considers that there are five “constant relationships”: sovereign/subject, father/son, husband/wife, elder brother/younger brother, and friend/friend. In these relationships, he emphasizes not only the rank of each person according to generation, age, and gender, but the fact that there are duties on both sides, and that the responsibility of the superior to the inferior in any relationship is just as important as that of the junior to the senior. Extending these relationships to the wider society, their reciprocal rights and responsibilities give society its cohesion, creating an atmosphere of loyalty and respect from each social stratum towards the next. Confucius believed that a wise and just sovereign had a benign effect on the character of his subjects. Justifying hereditary rule At the top of Confucius’s hierarchy was the sovereign, who would unquestionably have inherited this status, and in this respect Confucius shows the conservative nature of his political thinking. Just as the family provided a model for the relationships within society, the traditional respect shown to parents (especially fathers) extended also to ancestors, and this justified the hereditary principle. Just as a father was considered the head of the family, the state should naturally be ruled over by a paterfamilias figure – the sovereign. Nevertheless, the sovereign’s position was not unassailable in Confucius’s thinking, and an unjust or unwise ruler deserved to be opposed or even removed. However, it was in the next layer of society that Confucius was at his most innovative, advocating a class of scholars to act as ministers, advisors, and administrators to the ruler. Their position between the sovereign and his subjects was crucial, as they had a duty of loyalty both to their ruler and the people. They carried a high degree of responsibility, so it was essential that they be recruited from the most able and educated candidates, and that anybody serving in public office should be of the highest moral character – a junzi. These ministers were to be appointed by the sovereign in Confucius’s system, so much depended upon the sovereign’s own good character. Confucius said: “The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler’s own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading of those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.” "Good government consists in the ruler being a ruler, the minister being a minister, the father being a father, and the son being a son." Confucius The role of these public servants was mainly advisory, and ministers were not only expected to be well-versed in the administration and structure of Chinese society, but also to have a thorough knowledge of history, politics, and diplomacy. This was necessary to advise the ruler on matters such as alliances and wars with neighbouring states. However, this new class of civil servants also served an equally important function in preventing the ruler from becoming despotic, because they showed loyalty to their superior, but also benevolence to their inferiors. Like their ruler, they too had to lead by example, inspiring both the sovereign and his subjects by their virtue. The importance of ritual Many parts of Confucius’s writings read like a handbook of etiquette and protocol, detailing the proper conduct for the junzi in various situations, but he also stressed that this should not merely be empty show. The rituals he outlined were not mere social niceties, but served a much deeper purpose, and it was important that the participants behaved with sincerity for the rituals to have any meaning. Public servants not only had to fulfil their duties virtuously, they also had to be seen to be acting virtuously. For this reason, Confucius laid great emphasis on ceremonies and rituals. These also worked to underline the positions of the various members within a society, and Confucius’s approval of this illustrates his tendency to conservatism. The ceremonies and rituals allowed people to manifest their devotion to those above them in the hierarchy and their consideration towards those below them. According to Confucius, these rituals were to permeate the whole of society, from formal royal and state ceremonies right down to everyday social interactions, with participants meticulously observing their respective roles. Only when virtue was sincerely and honestly manifested in this way could the idea of leading by example succeed. For this reason, Confucius held sincerity and honesty to be the most important of virtues, next only to loyalty. Many of these rituals and ceremonies had their basis in religious rites, but this aspect was not important to Confucius. His moral philosophy was not founded on religion, and the political system he derived from it simply acknowledged that there was a place for religion in society. In fact, he seldom referred to the gods in his writings, except in terms of a hope that society could be organized and governed in accordance with the Mandate of Heaven, which would help to unify the states vying for power. Although he firmly believed in rule by a hereditary sovereign, he did not feel the need to justify it as a divine right. "The superior man governs men according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops." Confucius This implicit dismissal of the divine right, combined with a class system based on merit rather than inheritance, showed Confucius at his most radical. While he advocated a hierarchy reinforced by strict rules of etiquette and protocol, so that everybody was very aware of their place in society, this did not mean there should be no social mobility. Those with ability (and good character) could rise through the ranks to the highest levels of government, whatever their family background; and those in positions of power could be removed from office if they failed to show the necessary qualities, no matter how noble the family they were born into. This principle extended even to the sovereign himself. Confucius saw the assassination of a despotic ruler as the necessary removal of a tyrant rather than the murder of a legitimate ruler. He argued that the flexibility of this hierarchy engendered more real respect for it, and that this in turn engendered political consent – a necessary basis for strong and stable government. Actors performing a Confucian ritual in Shandong Province, China, convey the importance of restraint and respect to modern visitors unversed in their highly formalized tradition. Crime and punishment The principles of Confucius’s moral philosophy also extended into the fields of law and punishment. Previously, the legal system had been based on the codes of conduct prescribed by religion, but he advocated a more humanistic approach to replace the divinely ordained laws. As with his social structure, he proposed a system based on reciprocity: if you are treated with respect, you will act with respect. His version of the Golden Rule (“do as you would be done by”) was in the negative: “what you do not desire for yourself, do not do to others”, moving the emphasis from specific crimes to avoidance of bad behaviour. Once again, this could best be achieved by example as, in his words, “When you meet someone better than yourself, turn your thoughts to becoming his equal. When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self.” "He who governs by means of his virtue is… like the Pole Star: it remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage to it." Confucius Rather than imposing rigid laws and stern punishments, Confucius felt that the best way to deal with crime lay in instilling a sense of shame for bad behaviour. Although people may avoid committing crime if guided by laws and subdued by punishment, they do not learn a real sense of right and wrong, whereas if they are guided by example and subdued by respect, they develop a sense of shame for any misdemeanours and learn to become truly good. The Chinese emperor presides over the civil service examinations in this Song dynasty painting. The exams were introduced during Confucius’s lifetime and were based on his ideas. Unpopular ideas Confucius’s moral and political philosophy combined ideas about the innate goodness and sociability of human nature with the rigid, formal structure of traditional Chinese society. Unsurprisingly, given his position as a court administrator, he found an important place for the new meritocratic class of scholars. However, his ideas were met with suspicion and were not adopted during his lifetime. Members of the royal and noble ruling families were unhappy with his implied dismissal of their divine right to rule, and felt threatened by the power he proposed for their ministers and advisors. The administrators might have enjoyed more control to rein in potentially despotic rulers, but they doubted the idea that the people could be governed by example, and were unwilling to give up their right to exercise power through laws and punishment. "What you know, you know; what you don’t know, you don’t know. This is true wisdom." Confucius Later political and philosophical thinkers also had their criticisms of Confucianism. Mozi, a Chinese philosopher born shortly after Confucius’s death, agreed with his more modern ideas of meritocracy and leading by example, but felt that his emphasis on family relationships would lead to nepotism and cronyism. Around the same time, military thinkers such as Sun Tzu had little time for the moral philosophy underlying Confucius’s political theory, and instead took a more practical approach to matters of government, advocating an authoritarian and even ruthless system to ensure the defence of the state. Nevertheless, elements of Confucianism were gradually incorporated into Chinese society in the two centuries following his death. Championed by Mencius (372–289 BCE), they gained some popularity in the 4th century BCE. Religious functions were absorbed into Confucianism when it became the official philosophy of China. Confucian temples such as this one in Nanjing sprang up throughout the country. The state philosophy Confucianism may have been adequate to govern in peacetime, but it was felt by many not to be robust enough for the ensuing Warring States period and the struggle to form a unified Chinese empire. During this period, a pragmatic and authoritarian system of government known as Legalism supplanted Confucius’s ideas, and continued as the emperor asserted his authority over the new empire. By the 2nd century BCE, however, peace had returned to China, and Confucianism was adopted as the official philosophy of the state under the Han dynasty. It continued to dominate the structure of Chinese society from then on, particularly in the practice of recruiting the most able scholars to the administrative class. The civil service exams introduced in 605 CE were based on classic Confucian texts, and this practice continued into the 20th century and the formation of the Chinese Republic. Confucianism has not entirely disappeared under China’s communist regime, and it had a subtle influence on the structure of society right up to the Cultural Revolution. Today, elements of Confucian thinking, such as those that deal with societal relationships and the notion of filial loyalty, are still deeply ingrained in the Chinese way of life. Confucian ideas are once again being taken seriously as the country shifts from Maoist communism to a Chinese version of a mixed economy. See also: Sun Tzu • Mozi • Han Fei Tzu • Sun Yat-Sen • Mao Zedong CONFUCIUS Despite his importance in Chinese history, little is known of Confucius’s life. He is traditionally believed to have been born in 551 BCE, in Qufu in the state of Lu, China. His name was originally Kong Qiu (he earned the honorific title “Kong Fuzi” much later), and his family was both respected and comfortably well off. Nevertheless, as a young man he worked as a servant after his father died in order to support his family, and studied in his spare time to join the civil service. He became an administrator in the Zhou court, where he developed his ideas of how a state should be governed, but his advice was ignored and he resigned from the position. He spent the rest of his life travelling throughout the Chinese empire, teaching his philosophy and theories of government. He eventually returned to Qufu, where he died in 479 BCE. Key works Analects Doctrine of the Mean The Great Learning (All assembled during the 12th century by Chinese scholars.) IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Realism FOCUS Diplomacy and war BEFORE 8th century BCE A “golden age” of Chinese philosophy begins, which produces the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought. 6th century BCE Confucius proposes a framework for civil society based on traditional values. AFTER 4th century BCE Chanakya’s advice to Chandragupta Maurya helps to establish the Mauryan empire in India. 1532 Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince is published, five years after his death. 1937 Mao Zedong writes On Guerrilla Warfare. In the late 6th century BCE, China was reaching the end of an era of peaceful prosperity – the so-called Spring and Autumn period – in which philosophers had flourished. Much of the thinking had focused on moral philosophy or ethics, and the political philosophy that followed from this concentrated on the morally correct way that the state should organize its internal affairs. The culmination of this came with Confucius’s integration of traditional virtues into a hierarchy led by a sovereign and administered by a bureaucracy of scholars. Towards the end of the Spring and Autumn period, however, the political stability of the various states of China became fragile, and tensions between them increased as the population grew. Rulers of the states not only had to manage their internal affairs, but also to defend themselves against attack from neighbouring states. Military strategy In this atmosphere, military advisors became as important as the civil bureaucrats, and military strategy began to inform political thinking. The most influential work on the subject was The Art of War, believed to have been written by Sun Tzu, a general in the army of the King of Wu. The opening passage reads: “The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.” This marked a distinct break from the political philosophy of the time, and Sun Tzu’s work was perhaps the first explicit statement that war and military intelligence are critical elements of the business of the state. The Art of War deals with the practicalities of protecting and maintaining the prosperity of the state. Where previous thinkers had concentrated on the structure of civil society, this treatise focuses on international politics, discussing public administration only in connection with the business of planning and waging wars, or the economics of maintaining military and intelligence services. Sun Tzu’s detailed description of the art of war has been seen as providing a framework for political organization of any sort. He gives a list of the “principles of war” that are to be considered when planning a campaign. In addition to practical matters such as weather and terrain, the list includes the moral influence of the ruler, the ability and qualities of the general, and the organization and discipline of the men. Implicit in these principles of war is a hierarchical structure with a sovereign at its head, taking advice from and giving commands to his generals, who lead and organize their troops. For Sun Tzu, the role of the sovereign is to provide moral leadership. The people must be convinced that their cause is just before they will give their support, and a ruler should lead by example; this was an idea that Sun Tzu shared with Confucius. Like the bureaucrat of civil society, the general acts as both advisor to the ruler and administrator of his commands. Unsurprisingly, Sun Tzu places great emphasis on the qualities of the general, describing him as the “bulwark of the state”. His training and experience inform the counsel he gives the sovereign, effectively determining policy, but are also vital to the organization of the army. At the head of the chain of command, he controls the logistics, and especially the training and discipline of the men. The Art of War recommends that discipline be rigorously enforced with harsh penalties for disobedience, but that this should be tempered by a consistent application of rewards and punishments. A terracotta army was built to line the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, showing the importance of the military to him. Qin lived 200 years after Sun Tzu, but would have read his works closely. Knowing when to fight While this description of a military hierarchy mirrored the structure of Chinese society, The Art of War was much more innovative in its recommendations for international politics. Like many generals before and since, Sun Tzu believed that the purpose of the military was to protect the state and ensure its welfare, and that war should always be a last resort. A good general should know when to fight and when not to fight, remembering that an enemy’s resistance can often be broken without armed conflict. A general should first try to thwart the enemy’s plans; failing that, he should defend against attack; only failing that should he launch an offensive. "If you know both yourself and your enemy, you can win a hundred battles without jeopardy." Sun Tzu To avoid the necessity for war, Sun Tzu advocated maintaining a strong defence and forming alliances with neighbouring states. As a costly war is harmful to both sides, it often makes sense to come to a peaceful settlement. Prolonged campaigns, especially tactics such as laying siege to an enemy’s city, are such a drain on resources that their cost often outweighs the benefits of victory. The sacrifices that have to be made by the people put a strain on their loyalty to the moral justness of the cause. Military intelligence The key to stable international relationships, argues Sun Tzu, is intelligence, which was then the responsibility of the military. Spies provide vital information on a potential enemy’s intentions and capabilities, allowing the generals who command the spies to advise the ruler on the likelihood of victory in the event of conflict. Along the same lines, Sun Tzu goes on to explain that the next most important element in this information warfare is deception. By feeding misinformation to the enemy about defences, for example, war can often be averted. He also advised against what he saw as the folly of attempting to destroy an enemy in battle, as this decreased the rewards that could be gained from the victory – both the goodwill of any defeated soldiers and the wealth of any territory gained. "A leader leads by example not by force." Sun Tzu Underlying the very practical advice in The Art of War is a traditional cultural foundation based on moral values of justice, appropriateness, and moderation. It states that military tactics, international politics, and war exist to uphold these values and should be conducted in accordance with them. The state exercises its military capability to punish those that harm or threaten it from outside, just as it uses the law to punish criminals within it. When done in a morally justifiable way, the state is rewarded by happier people and the acquisition of territory and wealth. The Art of War became an influential text among the rulers, generals, and ministers of the various states in the struggle for a unified Chinese empire. It was later an important influence on the tactics of revolutionaries, including Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh. It is now required reading at many military academies, and is often included as a set text in courses on politics, business, and economics. The Great Wall of China, begun in the 7th century BCE, acted to fence off newly conquered territories. For Sun Tzu, such defensive measures were as important as attacking force. See also: Chanakya • Han Fei Tzu • Niccolò Machiavelli • Mao Zedong • Che Guevara SUN TZU Traditionally believed to be the author of the legendary treatise The Art of War, Sun Wu (later known as Sun Tzu, “the Master Sun”) was probably born in the State of Qi or Wu in China in around 544 BCE. Nothing is known of his early life, but he rose to fame as a general serving the State of Wu in many successful campaigns against the neighbouring State of Chu. He became an indispensable advisor (equivalent to a contracted military consultant today) to King Helü of Wu on matters of military strategy, writing his famous treatise to be used as a handbook by the ruler. A concise book, made up of 13 short chapters, it was widely read after his death in c.496 BCE, both by state leaders fighting for control of the Chinese empire, and military thinkers in Japan and Korea. It was first translated into a European language, French, in 1782, and may have influenced Napoleon. Key work 6th century BCE The Art of War IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Mohism FOCUS Meritocracy BEFORE 6th century BCE Chinese philosopher Laozi advocates Daoism – acting in accordance with the Way (dao). 5th century BCE Confucius proposes a government system based on traditional values enacted by a class of scholars. AFTER 4th century BCE The authoritarian ideas of Shang Yang and Han Fei Tzu are adopted in the state of Qin as the doctrine of Legalism. 372–289 BCE The philosopher Mencius advocates a return to a form of Confucianism. 20th century Mozi’s ideas influence both Sun Yat-Sen’s Republic and the communist People’s Republic of China. Towards the end of the “golden age” of Chinese philosophy that produced the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought between the 8th and the 3rd centuries BCE, thinkers began to apply their ideas of moral philosophy to the practical business of social and political organization. Foremost among these was Confucius, who proposed a hierarchy based on traditional family relationships, reinforced with ceremony and ritual. Within this hierarchy, however, he recognized the importance of an administrative class to aid and advise the ruler, an idea that was later developed by Mozi. Both Confucius and Mozi believed that the wellbeing of the state relied on the competence and dependability of the bureaucratic class, but they differed over the way that administrators should be chosen. To Mozi, Confucius adhered too closely to the conventions of the noble families, which did not necessarily produce the virtue and ability essential to a successful bureaucracy. Mozi felt that the qualities and skills for high office resulted from aptitude and study, regardless of background. For Mozi, skilled workers such as carpenters could – with training and aptitude – be made into able administrators in government. A unifying code “Elevating the worthy”, as Mozi described his meritocratic idea, forms the cornerstone of Mohist political thinking, but it is also linked to other aspects of Mozi’s moral philosophy. He believed in the inherent goodness of people, and felt that they should live in an atmosphere of “universal love”. At the same time, he recognized the human tendency to act in self-interest. This, he believed, often happened in situations of conflict, which arose not from a lack of morality, but from differing ideas of what is morally correct. It was therefore the task of political leaders to unite the people with a coherent moral code that was enforced by a strong and ethical system of government. This code would be based on what was necessary for the greatest good of society, and formulating it required knowledge and wisdom that was only available to the learned. "Exaltation of the virtuous is the root of government." Mozi Mozi’s preference for a ministerial class chosen on merit and ability no doubt stemmed from his own experience of working his way up to high office from humble beginnings. He saw the potential for nepotism and cronyism when the nobility appointed ministers. He also believed that government needed to be run in such a way that it would cultivate the prosperity of the state for the welfare of the people as a whole. Although Mozi attracted a large group of followers, he was regarded as an idealist and Mohism was not adopted by the Chinese rulers of the time. However, elements of his political thinking were incorporated into later political systems. For example, his emphasis on enforcing a unified moral code was a significant influence on the authoritarian Legalist regimes that arose in the 4th century BCE. In the 20th century, Mozi’s notions of equality of opportunity were rediscovered by Chinese leaders Sun Yat-Sen and Mao Zedong. See also: Confucius • Plato • Han Fei Tzu • Sun Yat-Sen • Mao Zedong MOZI It is believed that Mozi was born around the time of Confucius’s death, in Tengzhou, Shandong Province, China, into a family of artisans or possibly slaves. Named Mo Di, he was a woodworker and engineer, and worked at the courts of noble families, rising through the civil service to establish a school for officials and advisors. His philosophical and political views gained him a following and the title Mozi (“Master Mo”). Mohists, as his followers were known, lived according to Mozi’s principles of simplicity and pacifism during the Warring States period, until the Qin dynasty established its Legalist regime. After his death, Mozi’s teachings were collected in The Mozi. Mohism disappeared after the unification of China in 221 BCE, but were rediscovered in the early 20th century. Key work 5th century BCE The Mozi IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Rationalism FOCUS Philosopher kings BEFORE 594 BCE The Athenian lawmaker Solon lays down laws that act as the foundation for Greek democracy. c.450 BCE Greek philosopher Protagoras says that political justice is an imposition of human ideas, not a reflection of natural justice. AFTER 335–323 BCE Aristotle suggests that polity (constitutional government) is the most practical of the better ways to run a state. 54–51 BCE Cicero writes De republica, advocating a more democratic form of government than suggested by Plato’s Republic. At the end of the 6th century BCE, a cultural “golden age” began in Greece which was to last for 200 years. Now referred to as the Classical period, it saw the flowering of literature, architecture, science, and above all, philosophy, all of which profoundly influenced the development of Western civilization. At the very beginning of the Classical period, the people of the city-state of Athens overthrew their tyrannical leader and instituted a form of democracy. Under this system, government officials were chosen by a lottery from among the citizens, and decisions were taken by a democratic assembly. All the citizens could speak and vote at the assembly – they did not elect representatives to do this on their behalf. It should be noted, however, that the “citizens” were a minority of the population; they were free men aged over 30 whose parents were Athenians. Women, slaves, children, younger men, and foreigners or first-generation settlers, were excluded from the democratic process. This political environment quickly made Athens a major cultural centre, attracting some of the foremost thinkers of the time. One of the greatest of these was an Athenian named Socrates, whose philosophical questioning of the generally accepted notions of justice and virtue gained him a following of young disciples. Unfortunately, it also attracted unwanted attention from the authorities, who persuaded the democratic assembly to issue Socrates with a death sentence, on charges of corrupting the young. One of Socrates’ young followers was Plato, who shared his teacher’s inquisitive nature and sceptical attitude. Plato was to become disillusioned with the Athenian system after what he saw as its unfair treatment of his teacher. "Democracy passes into despotism." Plato Plato went on to become as influential a philosopher as Socrates, and towards the end of his career he turned his considerable intellect to the business of politics, most famously in the Republic. Unsurprisingly, given that he had seen Socrates condemned and was himself from a noble family, Plato had little sympathy for democracy. But neither did he find much to commend in any other existing form of government, all of which he believed led the state into “evils”. The good life To understand what Plato meant by “evils” in this context, it is important to bear in mind the concept of eudaimonia, the “good life”, which for ancient Greeks was a vital aim. “Living well” was not a question of achieving material wellbeing, honour, or mere pleasure, but rather living according to fundamental virtues such as wisdom, piety, and above all, justice. The purpose of the state, Plato believed, was to promote these virtues so that its citizens could lead this good life. Issues such as protection of property, liberty, and stability were only important in so far as they created conditions that allowed citizens to live well. In his opinion, however, no political system had yet existed that fulfilled this objective – and the defects within them encouraged what he saw as “evils”, or the opposite of these virtues. The reason for this, Plato maintained, is that rulers, whether in a monarchy, oligarchy (rule of the few), or democracy, tend to rule in their own interests rather than for the good of the state and its people. Plato explains that this is due to a general ignorance of the virtues that constitute the good life, which in turn leads people to desire the wrong things, especially the transitory pleasures of honour and wealth. These prizes come with political power, and the problem is intensified in the political arena. The desire to rule, for what Plato saw as the wrong reasons, leads to conflict among citizens. With everyone seeking increased power, this ultimately undermines the stability and unity of the state. Whoever emerges victorious from the power struggle deprives his opponents of the power to achieve their desires, which leads to injustice – an evil that is exactly contrary to the cornerstone of Plato’s notion of the good life. In contrast, Plato argued, there is a class of people who understand the meaning of the good life: philosophers. They alone recognize the worth of virtues above the pleasures of honour and money, and they have devoted their lives to the pursuit of the good life. Because of this, they do not lust after fame and fortune, and so have no desire for political power – paradoxically this is what qualifies them as ideal rulers. On face value, Plato’s argument would seem to be simply that “philosophers know best”, and (coming from a philosopher) might appear to contradict his assertion that they have no desire to rule, but behind it he gives a much richer and more subtle reasoning. Ideal Forms From Socrates, Plato had learned that virtue is not innate, but dependent on knowledge and wisdom, and in order to lead a virtuous life it is necessary first to understand the essential nature of virtue. Plato developed his mentor’s ideas, showing that while we might recognize individual instances of qualities such as justice, goodness, or beauty, this does not allow us to understand what gives them their essential nature. We might imitate them – acting in a way that we think is just, for example – but this is mere mimicry rather than truly behaving according to those virtues. "The chief penalty is to be governed by someone worse if a man will not himself hold office and rule." Plato In his Theory of Forms, Plato suggested the existence of ideal archetypes of these virtues (and of everything that exists) that consist of the essence of their true nature; this means that what we see as instances of these virtues are only examples of these Forms, and may show only a part of their nature. They are like inadequate reflections or shadows of the real Forms. These ideal Forms, or Ideas, as Plato called them, exist in a realm outside the world we live in, accessible only via philosophical reasoning and enquiry. It is this that makes philosophers uniquely qualified to define what constitutes the good life, and of leading a truly virtuous life, rather than simply imitating individual examples of virtue. Plato had already demonstrated that to be good, the state has to be ruled by the virtuous, and while others value money or honour above all, only philosophers value knowledge and wisdom, and therefore virtue. It follows then that only the interests of philosophers benefit the state, and therefore “philosophers must become kings”. Plato goes as far as to suggest that they should be compelled to take positions of power, in order to avoid the conflict and injustice inherent in other forms of government. Socrates chose to drink poison rather than renounce his views. The trial and conviction of Socrates caused Plato to doubt the virtues of the democratic political system of Athens. Educating kings Plato recognizes that this is a utopian stance, and goes on to say, “…or those now called kings must genuinely and adequately philosophize”, suggesting the education of a potential ruling class as a more practical proposition. In his later dialogues Statesman and Laws, he describes a model for a state in which this can be achieved, teaching the philosophical skills necessary to understanding the good life, in the same way as any other skills that can be of use to society. However, he points out that not every citizen has the aptitude and intellectual ability to learn these skills. He suggests that where this education is appropriate – for a small, intellectual elite – it should be enforced rather than offered. Those chosen for power because of their “natural talents” should be separated from their families and reared in communes, so that their loyalties are to the state. Plato’s political writings were influential in the ancient world, in particular in the Roman empire, and echoed the notions of virtue and education in the political philosophy of Chinese scholars such as Confucius and Mozi. It is even possible that they influenced Chanakya in India when he wrote his treatise on training potential rulers. In medieval times, Plato’s influence spread to the Islamic empire, and to Christian Europe, where Augustine incorporated them into the teachings of the Church. Later, Plato’s ideas were overshadowed by those of Aristotle, whose advocacy of democracy chimed better with the political philosophers of the Renaissance. "Democracy… is full of variety and disorder, dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike." Plato Plato’s political notions have been seen as unacceptably authoritarian and elitist by later thinkers, and they fell out of favour with many in the modern world while it struggled to establish democracy. He has been criticized as advocating a totalitarian, or at best paternalistic, system of government run by an elite that claims to know what is best for everyone else. Recently, however, his central notion of a political elite of “philosopher kings” has been reappraised by political thinkers. Plato used the metaphor of the ship of state to explain why philosophers should be kings. Though he does not seek power, the navigator is the only one who can steer a proper course – much as the philosopher is the only one with the knowledge to rule justly. Emperor Nero is said to have stood by and done nothing to help while a fire raged in the city of Rome. Plato’s ideal of a philosopher king has been blamed by some for the rise of such tyrants. See also: Confucius • Mozi • Aristotle • Chanakya • Cicero • Augustine of Hippo • Al-Farabi PLATO Born around 427 BCE, Plato was originally called Aristocles, later acquiring the nickname Plato (meaning “broad”) because of his muscular physique. From a noble Athenian family, he was probably expected to follow a career in politics, but instead became a disciple of the philosopher Socrates and was present when his mentor chose to die rather than renounce his views. Plato travelled widely around the Mediterranean before returning to Athens, where he established a school of philosophy, the Academy, which numbered among its students the young Aristotle. While teaching, he wrote a number of books in the form of dialogues, generally featuring his teacher Socrates, exploring ideas of philosophy and politics. He is believed to have carried on teaching and writing well into his later years, and died at about the age of 80 in 348/347 BCE. Key works c.399–387 BCE Crito c.380–360 BCE Republic c.355–347 BCE Statesman, Laws IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Democracy FOCUS Political virtue BEFORE 431 BCE Athenian statesman Pericles states that democracy provides equal justice for all. c.380–360 BCE In the Republic, Plato advocates rule by “philosopher kings” who possess wisdom. AFTER 13th century Thomas Aquinas incorporates Aristotle’s ideas into Christian doctrine. c.1300 Giles of Rome stresses the importance of the rule of law to living in a civil society. 1651 Thomas Hobbes proposes a social contract to prevent man from living in a “brutish” state of nature. Ancient Greece was not a unified nation-state as we would recognize one today, but a collection of independent regional states with cities at their centre. Each city-state, or polis, had its own constitutional organization: some, such as Macedon, were ruled by a monarch, while others, most notably Athens, had a form of democracy in which at least some of the citizens could participate in their government. Aristotle, who was brought up in Macedon and studied in Athens, was well acquainted with the concept of the polis and its various interpretations, and his analytical turn of mind made him well qualified to examine the merits of the city-state. He also spent some time in Ionia classifying animals and plants according to their characteristics. He was later to apply these skills of categorization to ethics and politics, which he saw as both natural and practical sciences. Unlike his mentor, Plato, Aristotle believed that knowledge was acquired through observation rather than intellectual reasoning, and that the science of politics should be based on empirical data, organized in the same way as the taxonomy of the natural world. Naturally social Aristotle observed that humans have a natural tendency to form social units: individuals come together to form households, households to form villages, and villages to form cities. Just as some animals – such as bees or cattle – are distinguished by their disposition to live in colonies or herds, humans are by nature social. Just as he might define a wolf by saying it is by nature a pack animal, Aristotle says that “Man is by nature a political animal”. By this, Aristotle means simply that Man is an animal whose nature it is to live socially in a polis; he is not implying a natural tendency towards political activity in the modern sense of the word. The idea that we have a tendency to live in large civil communities might seem relatively unenlightening today, but it is important to recognize that Aristotle is explicitly stating that the polis is just as much a creation of nature as an ants’ nest. For him, it is inconceivable that humans can live in any other way. This contrasts markedly with ideas of civil society as an artificial construct that has taken us out of an uncivilized “state of nature” – something Aristotle would not have understood. Anyone living outside a polis, he believed, was not human – he must be either superior to men (that is, a god) or inferior to them (that is, a beast). The good life This idea of the polis as a natural phenomenon rather than a man-made one underpins Aristotle’s ideas about ethics and the politics of the city-state. From his study of the natural world, he gained a notion that everything that exists has an aim or a purpose, and he decided that for humans, this is to lead a “good life”. Aristotle takes this to mean the pursuit of virtues, such as justice, goodness, and beauty. The purpose of the polis, then, is to enable us to live according to these virtues. The ancient Greeks saw the structure of the state – which enables people to live together and protects the property and liberty of its citizens – as a means to the end of virtue. "Law is order, and good law is good order." Aristotle Aristotle identified various “species” and “sub-species” within the polis. He found that what distinguishes Man from the other animals is his innate powers of reason and the faculty of speech, which give him a unique ability to form social groups and set up communities and partnerships. Within the community of a polis, the citizens develop an organization that ensures the security, economic stability, and justice of the state; not by imposing any form of social contract, but because it is in their nature to do so. For Aristotle, the different ways of organizing the life of the polis exist not so that people can live together (as they do this by their very nature), but so that they can live well. How well they succeed in achieving this goal, he observes, depends on the type of government they choose. In ancient Athens, citizens debated political affairs at a stone dais called the Pnyx. To Aristotle, the active participation of citizens in government was essential for a healthy society. Species of rule An inveterate classifier of data, Aristotle devised a comprehensive taxonomy of the natural world, and in his later works, especially Politics, he set about applying the same methodical skills to systems of government. While Plato had reasoned theoretically about the ideal form of government, Aristotle chose to examine existing regimes to analyse their strengths and weaknesses. To do this, he asked two simple questions: who rules, and on whose behalf do they rule? In answer to the first question, Aristotle observes that there are basically three types of rule: by a single person, by a select few, or by many. And in answer to the second question, the rule could be either on behalf of the population as a whole, which he considered true or good government, or in the self-interest of the ruler or ruling class, a defective form of government. In all, he identified six “species” of rule, which came in pairs. Monarchy is rule by an individual on behalf of all; rule by an individual in his own interests, or tyranny, is corrupted monarchy. Rule by aristocracy (which to the Greeks meant rule by the best, rather than rule by hereditary noble families) is rule by a few for the good of all; rule by a self-interested few, or oligarchy, is its corrupted form. Finally, polity is rule by the many for the benefit of all. Aristotle saw democracy as the corrupted form of this last form of rule, as in practice it entails ruling on behalf of the many, rather than every single individual. "The basis of a democratic state is liberty." Aristotle Aristotle argues that the self-interest inherent in the defective forms of government leads to inequality and injustice. This translates into instability, which threatens the role of the state and its ability to encourage virtuous living. In practice, however, the city-states he studied did not all fall neatly into just one category, but exhibited characteristics from the various types. Although Aristotle had a tendency to view the polis as a single “organism”, of which the citizens are merely a part, he did also examine the role of the individual within the city-state. Again, he stresses Man’s natural inclination to social interaction, and defines the citizen as one who shares in the structure of the civil community, not merely by electing representatives, but through active participation. When this participation is within a “good” form of government (monarchy, aristocracy, or polity), it fosters the ability of the citizen to lead a virtuous life. Under a “defective” regime (tyranny, oligarchy, or democracy), the citizen becomes involved with the self-interested pursuits of the ruler or ruling class – the tyrant’s pursuit of power, the oligarchs’ thirst for wealth, or the democrats’ search for freedom. Of all the possible regimes, Aristotle concludes, polity provides the best opportunity to lead a good life. Although Aristotle categorizes democracy as a “defective” form of regime, he argues that it is only second best to polity, and better than the “good” aristocracy or monarchy. While the individual citizen may not have the wisdom and virtue of a good ruler, collectively “the many” may prove to be better rulers than “the one”. The detailed description and analysis of the Classical Greek polis seems on the face of it to have little relevance to the nation-states that followed, but Aristotle’s ideas had a growing influence on European political thought throughout the Middle Ages. Despite being criticised for his often authoritarian standpoint (and his defence of slavery and the inferior status of women), his arguments in favour of constitutional government anticipate ideas that emerged in the Enlightenment. See also: Plato • Cicero • Thomas Aquinas • Giles of Rome • Thomas Hobbes • Jean-Jacques Rousseau ARISTOTLE The son of a physician to the royal family of Macedon, Aristotle was born in Stagira, Chalcidice, in the north-east of modern Greece. He was sent to Athens aged 17 to study with Plato at the Academy, and remained there until Plato’s death 20 years later. Surprisingly, Aristotle was not appointed Plato’s successor to lead the Academy. He moved to Ionia, where he made a study of the wildlife, until he was invited by Philip of Macedon to be tutor to the young Alexander the Great. Aristotle returned to Athens in 335 BCE to establish a rival school to the Academy, at the Lyceum. While teaching there he formalized his ideas on the sciences, philosophy, and politics, compiling a large volume of writings, of which few have survived. After the death of Alexander in 323 BCE, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens prompted him to leave the city for Euboea, where he died the following year. Key works c.350 BCE Nicomachean Ethics Politics Rhetoric IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Realism FOCUS Utilitarian BEFORE 6th century BCE The Chinese general Sun Tzu writes his treatise The Art of War, bringing an analytical approach to statecraft. 424 BCE Mahapadma Nanda establishes the Nanda dynasty, and relies on his generals for tactical advice. AFTER c.65 BCE The Mauryan empire, which Chanakya helped to found, reaches its height and rules over all but the southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. 1904 Texts of Chanakya’s treatises are rediscovered and, in 1915, are translated into English. During the 5th and 4th centuries BCE, the Nanda dynasty slowly gained control over the northern half of the Indian subcontinent, defeating its rivals one by one and holding off the threat of invasion by the Greeks and Persians from the West. The rulers of this expanding empire relied on generals for tactical advice in battle, but they also began to recognize the value of ministers to advise on matters of policy and government. Scholars, especially those from Takshashila, a university established c.600 BCE in Rawalpindi, now part of Pakistan, frequently became these ministers. Many important thinkers developed their ideas at Takshashila, but perhaps the most significant was Chanakya (also known as Kautilya and Vishnugupta). He wrote a treatise on statecraft titled Arthashastra, meaning “the science of material gain” or “the art of government”. It combined the accumulated wisdom of the art of politics with Chanakya’s own ideas, and was remarkable in its dispassionate, and at times ruthless, analysis of the business of politics. The lion capital of Ashoka stood on top of a pillar in Sarnath at the centre of the Mauryan empire. Chanakya helped to found this powerful empire, which came to rule almost the whole of India. Advising the sovereign Although sections of the treatise dealt with the moral qualities desirable in the leader of a state, the emphasis was on the practical, describing in forthright terms how power could be gained and maintained, and for the first time in India, it explicitly described a civil structure in which ministers and advisors played a key role in the running of the state. A commitment to the prosperity of the state lies at the heart of Chanakya’s political thought, and he makes repeated references to the welfare of the people as the ultimate goal of government. This, he believed, was the responsibility of a sovereign who would ensure his people’s wellbeing and security by administering order and justice, and leading his country to victory over rival states. The power to carry out his duties to his country and its people is dependent on several different factors, which Chanakya describes in Arthashastra: the personal qualities of the ruler, the abilities of his advisors, his territory and towns, his wealth, his army, and his allies. The sovereign, as head of state, has the central role in this system of government. Chanakya emphasizes the importance of finding a ruler with the appropriate qualities, but then goes on to say that personal qualities of leadership are not sufficient on their own: the sovereign must also be trained for the job. He must learn the various skills of statecraft, such as military tactics and strategy, law, administration, and the arts of diplomacy and politics, but in addition he should be taught the skills of self-discipline and ethics in order to develop the moral authority necessary to command the loyalty and obedience of his people. Before taking office, the sovereign needs assistance from experienced and knowledgeable teachers. Once instated, a wise sovereign does not rely solely on his own wisdom, but can turn to trusted ministers and advisors for counsel. In Chanakya’s view, such individuals are as important as the sovereign in governing the state. In Arthashastra, Chanakya states: “Governance is possible only with assistance – a single wheel does not move.” This is a warning to the sovereign not to be autocratic, but to arrive at decisions of state after consulting his ministers. "All things begin with counsel." Chanakya The appointment of ministers with the necessary qualifications is therefore just as important as the people’s choice of leader. The ministers can provide a range of knowledge and skills. They must be utterly trustworthy, not only so that the sovereign can rely on their advice, but also to ensure that decisions are made in the interests of the state and its people – if necessary, preventing a corrupt ruler from acting in his own interests. In Chanakya’s analogy, the state is like a chariot with the sovereign forming one wheel and his ministers making up the other; in order to move and be steered in the right direction, the chariot needs both wheels. The end justifies the means It was this recognition of the realities of human nature that distinguished Chanakya from other Indian political philosophers of the time. Arthashastra is not a work of moral philosophy, but a practical guide to governance, and in ensuring the welfare and security of the state it often advocates using whatever means are necessary. Although Arthashastra advocates a regime of learning and self-discipline for an ideal ruler, and mentions certain moral qualities, it doesn’t flinch from describing how to use underhand methods to gain and maintain power. Chanakya was a shrewd observer of human weaknesses as well as strengths, and he was not above exploiting these to increase the sovereign’s power and undermine that of the sovereign’s enemies. "Through ministerial eyes others’ weaknesses are seen." Chanakya This is particularly noticeable in his advice on defending and acquiring territory. Here he recommends that the ruler and his ministers should carefully assess the strength of their enemies before deciding on a strategy to undermine them. They can then choose from a number of different tactics, ranging from conciliation, encouraging dissent in the enemy’s ranks, and forming alliances of convenience with other rulers, to the simple use of military force. In deploying these tactics, the ruler should be ruthless, using trickery, bribery, and any other inducements deemed necessary. Although this seems contradictory to the moral authority Chanakya advocates in a leader, he stipulates that after victory has been achieved, the ruler should “substitute his virtues for the defeated enemy’s vices, and where the enemy was good he shall be twice as good”. Intelligence and espionage Arthashastra reminds rulers that military advisors are also needed, and the gathering of information is important for decision-making. A network of spies is vital in assessing the threat posed by neighbouring states or to judge the feasibility of acquiring territory; but Chanakya goes further, suggesting that espionage within the state is also a necessary evil in order to ensure social stability. At home and in international relations, morality is of secondary importance to the protection of the state. The state’s welfare is used as justification for clandestine operations, including political assassination should this be necessary, aimed at reducing the threat of opposition. This amoral approach to taking and holding on to power, and the advocacy of a strict enforcement of law and order, can be seen either as shrewd political awareness or as ruthlessness, and has earned Arthashastra comparison with Machiavelli’s The Prince, written around 2,000 years later. However, the central doctrine, of rule by a sovereign and ministers, has more in common with Confucius and Mozi, or Plato and Aristotle, whose ideas Chanakya may have come across as a student in Takshashila. Elephants played a big role in Indian warfare, often terrifying enemies so much that they would withdraw rather than fight. Chanakya developed new strategies for warfare with elephants. A proven philosophy The advice contained in the pages of Arthashastra soon proved its usefulness when adopted by Chanakya’s protegé Chandragupta Maurya, who successfully defeated King Nanda to establish the Maurya empire in around 321 BCE. This became the first empire to cover the majority of the Indian subcontinent, and Maurya also successfully held off the threat from Greek invaders led by Alexander the Great. Chanakya’s ideas were to influence government and policy-making for several centuries, until India eventually succumbed to Islamic and Mughal rule in the Middle Ages. The text of Arthashastra was rediscovered in the early 20th century, and regained some of its importance in Indian political thinking, gaining iconic status after India won independence from Britain in 1948. Despite its central place in Indian political history, it was little known in the West, and it is only recently that Chanakya has been recognized outside India as a significant political thinker. See also: Confucius • Sun Tzu • Mozi • Plato • Aristotle • Niccolò Machiavelli CHANAKYA The birthplace of Indian scholar Chanakya is not certain. It is known that he studied and taught in Takshashila (modern Taxila, Pakistan). Leaving Takshashila to become involved in government, he travelled to Pataliputra, where he became an advisor to King Dhana Nanda. There are many conflicting accounts, but all agree that he left the Nanda court after a dispute, and in revenge groomed the young Chandragupta Maurya to be Nanda’s rival. Chandragupta overthrew Dhana Nanda and founded the Mauryan empire, which governed all modern-day India except the very south. Chanakya was Chandragupta’s chief advisor, but is said to have starved himself to death after being falsely accused by Chandragupta’s son, Bindusara, of poisoning his mother. Key works 4th century BCE Arthashastra Neetishastra IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Legalism FOCUS State laws BEFORE 5th century BCE Confucius advocates a hierarchy based on traditional family relationships, with the sovereign and his ministers ruling by example. 4th century BCE Mozi proposes a purely meritocratic class of ministers and advisors chosen for their virtue and ability. AFTER 2nd century BCE After the Warring States period ends, China’s Han dynasty rejects Legalism and adopts Confucianism. 589–618 CE Legalist principles are revived during the Sui dynasty in an attempt to unify the Chinese empire. During China’s Warring States period, between the 5th and 3rd centuries BCE, rulers were vying for power over a unified Chinese empire, and a new political philosophy emerged to suit these turbulent times. Thinkers such as Shang Yang (390–338 BCE), Shen Dao (c. 350–275 BCE), and Shen Buhai (died 337 BCE) advocated a much more authoritarian approach to government, which became known as Legalism. Formalized and put into practice by Han Fei Tzu, Legalism rejected the Confucian idea of leading by See also: Confucius • Sun Tzu • Mozi • Thomas Hobbes • Mao Zedong example and Mozi’s belief in the innate goodness of human nature, and instead took the more cynical view that people naturally acted to avoid punishment and achieve personal gain. The only way that this could be controlled, the Legalists argued, was by a system that emphasized the wellbeing of the state over the rights of the individual, with strict laws to punish undesirable behaviour. "To govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong." Han Fei Tzu Administration of these laws was handled by the ruler’s ministers, who in turn were subject to laws that held them accountable, with punishments and favours given by the ruler. In this way, the hierarchy with the ruler at the top could be maintained, and corruption and intrigue among the bureaucracy could be controlled. It was vitally important to the safety of the state in times of war that the ruler could rely on his ministers and that they should be acting in the interests of the state rather than for their own personal advancement. IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Republicanism FOCUS Mixed constitution BEFORE c.380 BCE Plato writes the Republic, outlining his ideas for an ideal city- state. 2nd century BCE Greek historian Polybius’s The Histories describes the rise of the Roman Republic and its constitution with a separation of powers. 48 BCE Julius Caesar is given unprecedented powers, and his dictatorship marks the end of the Roman Republic. AFTER 27 BCE Octavian is proclaimed Augustus, effectively the first emperor of Rome. 1734 Montesquieu writes Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline. The Roman Republic was founded in around 510 BCE along similar lines to the city-states of Greece. With only minor changes, it ruled for almost 500 years. This system of government combined elements of three different forms of regime – monarchy (replaced by the Consuls), aristocracy (the Senate), and democracy (the popular assembly) – each with distinct areas of power that balanced one another out. Known as a mixed constitution, it was considered by most Romans to be an ideal form of government that provided stability and prevented tyranny. Checks and balances Roman politician Cicero was a staunch defender of the system, particularly when it was threatened by the granting of dictatorial powers to Julius Caesar. He warned that a break-up of the Republic would prompt a return to a destructive cycle of governments. He said that from a monarchy, power can be passed to a tyrant; from the tyrant, it is taken by the aristocracy or the people; and from the people it will be seized by oligarchs or tyrants. Without the checks and balances of a mixed constitution, the government, he believed, would be “bandied about like a ball”. True to Cicero’s predictions, Rome came under the control of an emperor, Augustus, shortly after Caesar’s death, and power was passed from him to a succession of despotic rulers. See also: Plato • Aristotle • Montesquieu • Benjamin Franklin • Thomas Jefferson • James Madison The Roman standard carried the legend SPQR (the Senate and the People of Rome), celebrating the central institutions of the mixed constitution. INTRODUCTION From its beginnings in the 1st century BCE, the Roman empire grew in strength, extending its reign over Europe, Mediterranean Africa, and the Middle East. By the 2nd century CE, it was at the height of its power, and Roman imperial culture, with its emphasis on prosperity and stability, threatened to replace the values of scholarship and philosophy associated with the republics of Athens and Rome. At the same time, a new religion was taking root within the empire: Christianity. For the next millennium, political thinking was dominated by the Church in Europe, and political theory during the Middle Ages was shaped by Christian theology. In the 7th century, another powerful religion, Islam, emerged. It spread from Arabia into Asia and Africa, and also influenced political thinking in Christian Europe. The impact of Christianity Roman philosophers such as Plotinus returned to the ideas of Plato, and the “neo-Platonist” movement influenced early Christian thinkers. Augustine of Hippo interpreted Plato’s ideas in the light of Christian faith to examine questions such as the difference between divine and human law, and whether there could be such a thing as a just war. The pagan Roman empire had simply had little time for philosophy and theory, but in early Christian Europe, political thinking was subordinated to religious dogma, and the ideas of ancient Greece and Rome were largely neglected. A major factor in this subordination of ideas was the rise to political power of the Church and the papacy. Medieval Europe was effectively ruled by the Church, a situation that was formalized in 800 by the creation of the Holy Roman empire under Charlemagne. Islamic influence Meanwhile, in Arabia, Muhammad established Islam as a religion with an imperialist agenda, and it rapidly established itself as a major political as well as religious power. Unlike Christianity, Islam was open to secular political thinking and encouraged wide scholarship and the study of non- Muslim thinkers. Libraries were set up in cities throughout the Islamic empire to preserve classical texts, and scholars integrated the ideas of Plato and Aristotle into Islamic theology. Cities such as Baghdad became centres of learning, and scholars such as Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Rushd (Averroes), and Ibn Khaldun emerged as political theorists. Meanwhile, in Europe, scholarship had become the preserve of the clergy, and the structure of society was prescribed by the Church, leaving little room for dissent. It would take Islamic influence to bring fresh ideas to medieval Europe, as scholars rediscovered the classical texts. In the 12th century, the texts that Islamic scholars had preserved and translated began to come to the notice of Christian scholars, particularly in Spain, where the two faiths co-existed. News of the rediscovery spread across the Christian world, and despite the suspicion of the Church authorities, there was a rush to find and translate not only the texts, but also their Islamic commentaries. Difficult questions A new generation of Christian philosophers became acquainted with classical thinking. Thomas Aquinas tried to integrate the ideas of Aristotle into Christian theology. This posed questions that had previously been avoided, on subjects such as the divine right of kings, and revived debate about secular versus divine law. The introduction of secular thinking into intellectual life had a profound effect within the Holy Roman empire. Separate nation-states were asserting their independence and rulers came into conflict with the papacy. The authority of the Church in civil affairs was brought into question, and philosophers such as Giles of Rome and Marsilius of Padua had to come down on one side or the other. As the Middle Ages drew to an end, new nations challenged the authority of the Church, but people were also beginning to question the power of their monarchs. In England, King John was forced by his barons to concede some of his powers. In Italy, dynastic tyrants were replaced by republics such as Florence, where the Renaissance began. It was in Florence that Niccolò Machiavelli, a potent symbol of Renaissance thought, shocked the world by producing a political philosophy that was entirely pragmatic in its morality. IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Christianity FOCUS Just government BEFORE 4th century BCE In the Republic and Laws, Plato stresses the importance of justice in an ideal state. 1st century BCE Cicero opposes the overthrow of the Roman Republic and its replacement with an emperor. 306 CE Constantine I becomes the first Christian emperor of the Roman empire. AFTER 13th century Thomas Aquinas uses Augustine’s arguments to define a just war. 14th century Ibn Khaldun says that government’s role is to prevent injustice. c.1600 Francisco Suárez and the School of Salamanca create a philosophy of natural law. In 380 CE, Christianity was effectively adopted as the official religion of the Roman empire, and as the Church’s power and influence grew, its relationship with the state became a disputed issue. One of the first political philosophers to address this question was Augustine of Hippo, a scholar and teacher who became a convert to Christianity. In his attempt to integrate classical philosophy into the religion, he was greatly influenced by his study of Plato, which also formed the basis for his political thinking. As a Roman citizen, Augustine believed in the tradition of a state bound by the rule of law, but as a scholar, he agreed with Aristotle and Plato that the goal of the state was to enable its people to lead the good and virtuous life. For a Christian, this meant living by the divine laws prescribed by the Church. However, Augustine believed that, in practice, few men lived according to divine laws, and the vast majority lived in a state of sin. He distinguished between two kingdoms: the civitas Dei (city of God) and the civitas terrea (city of Earth). In the latter kingdom, sin predominates. Augustine sees the influence of the Church on the state as the only means to ensure that the laws of the land are made with reference to divine laws, allowing people to live in the civitas Dei. The presence of such just laws distinguishes a state from a band of robbers. Robbers and pirates join together under a leader to steal from their neighbours. The robbers may have rules, but they are not just rules. However, Augustine further points out that even in a sinful civitas terrea, the authority of the state can ensure order through the rule of law, and that order is something we all have a reason to want. Just war Augustine’s emphasis on justice, with its roots in Christian doctrine, also applied to the business of war. While he believed all war to be evil, and that to attack and plunder other states was unjust, he conceded that a “just war” fought for a just cause, such as defending the state against aggression, or to restore peace, did exist, though it should be embarked upon with regret and only as a last resort. "Without justice an association of men in the bond of law cannot possibly continue." Augustine This conflict between secular and divine law, and the attempt to reconcile the two, began the power struggle between Church and state that ran through the Middle Ages. Augustine’s vision of a state living according to Christian principles was outlined in his work City of God, in which he described the relationship between the Roman empire and God’s law. See also: Plato • Cicero • Thomas Aquinas • Francisco Suárez • Thomas Hobbes AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Aurelius Augustine was born in Thagaste (now Souk-Ahras, Algeria) in Roman North Africa, to a pagan father and a Christian mother. He studied Latin literature in Madaurus and rhetoric in Carthage, where he came across the Persian Manichean religion, and became interested in philosophy through the works of Cicero. He taught in Thagaste and Carthage until 373, when he moved to Rome and Milan, and there was inspired by theologian Bishop Ambrose to explore Plato’s philosophy, and later to become a Christian. He was baptised in 387, and was ordained a priest in Thagaste in 391. He finally settled in Hippo (now Bone, Algeria), establishing a religious community and becoming its bishop in 396. As well as his autobiographical Confessions, he wrote a number of works on theology and philosophy. He died during a siege of Hippo by the Vandals in 430. Key works 387–395 On Free Will 397–401 Confessions 413–425 City of God IN CONTEXT IDEOLOGY Islam FOCUS Just war BEFORE 6th century BCE In The Art of War, Sun Tzu argues that the military is essential to the state. c. 413 Augustine describes a government without justice as no better than a band of robbers. AFTER 13th century Thomas Aquinas defines the conditions for a just war. 1095 Christians launch the First Crusade to wrest control of Jerusalem and the Holy Land from the Muslims. 1932 In Towards Understanding Islam, Abul Ala Maududi insists that Islam embraces all aspects of human life, including politics. Revered by Muslims as the prophet of the Islamic faith, Muhammad also laid the foundations for an Islamic empire; he was its political and military leader as much as its spiritual guide. Exiled from Mecca because of his faith, in 622 he travelled to Yathrib (on a journey that became known as the Hijra), where he gained huge numbers of followers, and ultimately organized the city into a unified Islamic city-state. The city was renamed Medina (“city of the Prophet”), and it became the world’s first Islamic state. Muhammad created a constitution for the state – the Constitution of Medina – which formed the basis of an Islamic political tradition. The constitution addressed the rights and duties of every group within the community, the rule of law, and the issue of war. It recognized the Jewish community of Medina as separate, and agreed reciprocal obligations with them. Among its edicts, it obliged the whole community – members of all the religions in Medina – to fight as one if the community came under threat. The key aims were peace within the Islamic state of Medina and the construction of a political structure that would help Muhammad gather followers and soldiers for his conquest of the Arabian peninsula. The authority of the constitution was both spiritual and secular, stating, “Whenever you differ about a matter it must be referred to God and Muhammad.” Since God spoke through Muhammad, his word carried unquestionable authority. Peaceful but not pacifist The constitution confirms much of the Islamic holy book known as the Quran, which it predates. However, the Quran is more detailed on religious duties than political practicalities. In the Quran, Islam is described as a peace-loving religion, but not a pacifist religion. Muhammad repeatedly stresses that Islam should be defended from unbelievers, and implies that this may in some cases mean taking pre-emptive action. Although violence should be abhorrent to a believer in Islam, it can be a necessary evil to protect and advance the religion, and Muhammad states that it is the moral obligation of all Muslims to defend the faith. This duty is encapsulated in the Islamic idea of jihad (literally “struggle”, or “striving”), which was originally directed	718,326
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ISBN:978-0-7566-8970-4 Printed and bound in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd Discover more at www.dk.com LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, MUNICH, AND DELHI CATHERINE COLLIN A clinical psychologist, our consultant Catherine Collin is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer in Psychological Therapies) at the University of Plymouth in England. Catherine’s interests lie in primary care mental health and cognitive behavior therapy. NIGEL BENSON A lecturer in philosophy and psychology, Nigel Benson has written several bestselling books on the subject of psychology, including Psychology for Beginners and Introducing Psychiatry. JOANNAH GINSBURG A clinical psychologist and journalist, Joannah Ginsburg works in community treatment centers in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and Dallas, and regularly contributes to psychology publications. She is joint author of This Book has Issues: Adventures in Popular Psychology. VOULA GRAND As a business psychologist, Voula Grand consults for international corporations on leadership and executive performance. Her ﬁrst novel is Honor’s Shadow. She is currently writing the sequel, Honor’s Ghost. MERRIN LAZYAN A writer, editor, and classical singer, Merrin Lazyan studied psychology at Harvard University and has worked on several ﬁction and nonﬁction books, spanning a broad range of topics. MARCUS WEEKS A writer and musician, Marcus Weeks studied philosophy and worked as a teacher before embarking on a career as an author. He has contributed to many books on the arts and popular sciences. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS PSYCHOLOGY IN THE MAKING 18 The four temperaments of personality Galen 20 There is a reasoning soul in this machine Descartes 22 Dormez! Abbé Faria 24 Concepts become forces when they resist one another Johann Friedrich Herbart 26 Be that self which one truly is Søren Kierkegaard 28 Personality is composed of nature and nurture Francis Galton 30 The laws of hysteria are universal Jean-Martin Charcot 31 A peculiar destruction of the internal connections of the psyche Emil Kraepelin 32 The beginnings of the mental life date from the beginnings of life Wilhelm Wundt BEHAVIORISM RESPONDING TO OUR ENVIRONMENT 60 The sight of tasty food makes a hungry man’s mouth water Ivan Pavlov 62 Proﬁtless acts are stamped out Edward Thorndike 66 Anyone, regardless of their nature, can be trained to be anything John B. Watson 72 That great God-given maze which is our human world Edward Tolman 74 Once a rat has visited our grain sack we can plan on its return Edwin Guthrie 75 Nothing is more natural than for the cat to “love” the rat Zing-Yang Kuo 76 Learning is just not possible Karl Lashley 77 Imprinting cannot be forgotten! Konrad Lorenz 78 Behavior is shaped by positive and negative reinforcement B.F. Skinner 86 Stop imagining the scene and relax Joseph Wolpe 38 We know the meaning of “consciousness” so long as no one asks us to deﬁne it William James 46 Adolescence is a new birth G. Stanley Hall 48 24 hours after learning something, we forget two-thirds of it Hermann Ebbinghaus 50 The intelligence of an individual is not a ﬁxed quantity Alfred Binet 54 The unconscious sees the men behind the curtains Pierre Janet CONTENTS PSYCHOTHERAPY THE UNCONSCIOUS DETERMIINES BEHAVIOR 92 The unconscious is the true psychical reality Sigmund Freud 100 The neurotic carries a feeling of inferiority with him constantly Alfred Adler 102 The collective unconscious is made up of archetypes Carl Jung 108 The struggle between the life and death instincts persists throughout life Melanie Klein 110 The tyranny of the “shoulds” Karen Horney 111 The superego becomes clear only when it confronts the ego with hostility Anna Freud 112 Truth can be tolerated only if you discover it yourself Fritz Perls 118 It is notoriously inadequate to take an adopted child into one’s home and love him Donald Winnicott 122 The unconscious is the discourse of the Other Jacques Lacan 124 Man’s main task is to give birth to himself Erich Fromm COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY THE CALCULATING BRAIN 160 Instinct is a dynamic pattern Wolfgang Köhler 162 Interruption of a task greatly improves its chances of being remembered Bluma Zeigarnik 163 When a baby hears footsteps, an assembly is excited Donald Hebb 164 Knowing is a process not a product Jerome Bruner 166 A man with conviction is a hard man to change Leon Festinger 168 The magical number 7, plus or minus 2 George Armitage Miller 174 There’s more to the surface than meets the eye Aaron Beck 178 We can listen to only one voice at once Donald Broadbent 186 Time’s arrow is bent into a loop Endel Tulving 192 Perception is externally guided hallucination Roger N. Shepard 130 The good life is a process not a state of being Carl Rogers 138 What a man can be, he must be Abraham Maslow 140 Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it ﬁnds a meaning Viktor Frankl 141 One does not become fully human painlessly Rollo May 142 Rational beliefs create healthy emotional consequences Albert Ellis 146 The family is the “factory” where people are made Virginia Satir 148 Turn on, tune in, drop out Timothy Leary 149 Insight may cause blindness Paul Watzlawick 150 Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through R.D. Laing 152 Our history does not determine our destiny Boris Cyrulnik 154 Only good people get depressed Dorothy Rowe 155 Fathers are subject to a rule of silence Guy Corneau SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BEING IN A WORLD OF OTHERS 218 You cannot understand a system until you try to change it Kurt Lewin 224 How strong is the urge toward social conformity? Solomon Asch 228 Life is a dramatically enacted thing Erving Goffman 230 The more you see it, the more you like it Robert Zajonc 236 Who likes competent women? Janet Taylor Spence 237 Flashbulb memories are ﬁred by events of high emotionality Roger Brown 238 The goal is not to advance knowledge, but to be in the know Serge Moscovici 240 We are, by nature, social beings William Glasser 242 We believe people get what they deserve Melvin Lerner 244 People who do crazy things are not necessarily crazy Elliot Aronson 246 People do what they are told to do Stanley Milgram 254 What happens when you put good people in an evil place? Philip Zimbardo 256 Trauma must be understood in terms of the relationship between the individual and society Ignacio Martín-Baró 193 We are constantly on the lookout for causal connections Daniel Kahneman 194 Events and emotion are stored in memory together Gordon H. Bower 196 Emotions are a runaway train Paul Ekman 198 Ecstasy is a step into an alternative reality Mihály Csíkszentmihályi 200 Happy people are extremely social Martin Seligman 202 What we believe with all our hearts is not necessarily the truth Elizabeth Loftus 208 The seven sins of memory Daniel Schacter 210 One is not one’s thoughts Jon Kabat-Zinn 211 The fear is that biology will debunk all that we hold sacred Steven Pinker 212 Compulsive behavior rituals are attempts to control intrusive thoughts Paul Salkovskis DEVELOPMENTAL PHILOSOPHY FROM INFANT TO ADULT 262 The goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things Jean Piaget 270 We become ourselves through others Lev Vygotsky 271 A child is not beholden to any particular parent Bruno Bettelheim 272 Anything that grows has a ground plan Erik Erikson 274 Early emotional bonds are an integral part of human nature John Bowlby 278 Contact comfort is overwhelmingly important Harry Harlow 279 We prepare children for a life about whose course we know nothing Françoise Dolto 280 A sensitive mother creates a secure attachment Mary Ainsworth 282 Who teaches a child to hate and fear a member of another race? Kenneth Clark 284 Girls get better grades than boys Eleanor E. Maccoby 286 Most human behavior is learned through modeling Albert Bandura 292 Morality develops in six stages Lawrence Kohlberg 294 The language organ grows like any other body organ Noam Chomsky 298 Autism is an extreme form of the male brain Simon Baron-Cohen PSYCHOLOGY OF DIFFERENCE PERSONALITY AND INTELLIGENCE 304 Name as many uses as you can think of for a toothpick J.P. Guilford 306 Did Robinson Crusoe lack personality traits before the advent of Friday? Gordon Allport 314 General intelligence consists of both ﬂuid and crystallized intelligence Raymond Cattell 316 There is an association between insanity and genius Hans J. Eysenck 322 Three key motivations drive performance David C. McClelland 324 Emotion is an essentially unconscious process Nico Frijda 326 Behavior without environmental cues would be absurdly chaotic Walter Mischel 328 We cannot distinguish the sane from the insane in psychiatric hospitals David Rosenhan 330 The three faces of Eve Thigpen & Cleckley 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 10 A mong all the sciences, psychology is perhaps the most mysterious to the general public, and the most prone to misconceptions. Even though its language and ideas have inﬁltrated everyday culture, most people have only a hazy idea of what the subject is about, and what psychologists actually do. For some, psychology conjures up images of people in white coats, either stafﬁng an institution for mental disorders or conducting laboratory experiments on rats. Others may imagine a man with a middle-European accent psychoanalyzing a patient on a couch or, if ﬁlm scripts are to be believed, plotting to exercise some form of mind control. Although these stereotypes are an exaggeration, some truth lies beneath them. It is perhaps the huge range of subjects that fall under the umbrella of psychology (and the bewildering array of terms beginning with the preﬁx “psych-”) that creates confusion over what psychology entails; psychologists themselves are unlikely to agree on a single deﬁnition of the word. “Psychology” comes from the ancient Greek psyche, meaning “soul” or “mind,” and logia, a “study” or “account,” which seems to sum up the broad scope of the subject, but today the word most accurately describes “the science of mind and behavior.” The new science Psychology can also be seen as a bridge between philosophy and physiology. Where physiology describes and explains the physical make-up of the brain and nervous system, psychology examines the mental processes that take place within them and how these are manifested in our thoughts, speech, and behavior. Where philosophy is concerned with thoughts and ideas, psychology studies how we come to have them and what they tell us about the workings of our minds. All the sciences evolved from philosophy, by applying scientiﬁc methods to philosophical questions, but the intangible nature of subjects such as consciousness, perception, and memory meant that psychology was slow in making the transition from philosophical speculation to scientiﬁc practice. In some universities, particularly in the US, psychology departments started out as branches of the philosophy department, while in others, notably those in Germany, they were established in the science faculties. But it was not until the late 19th century that psychology became established as a scientiﬁc discipline in its own right. The founding of the world’s ﬁrst laboratory of experimental psychology by Wilhelm Wundt at the University of Leipzig in 1879 marked the recognition of psychology as a truly scientiﬁc subject, and as one that was breaking new ground in previously unexplored areas of research. In the course of the 20th century, psychology blossomed; all of its major branches and movements evolved. As with all sciences, its history is built upon the theories and discoveries of successive generations, with many of the older theories remaining relevant to contemporary psychologists. Some areas of research have been the subject of study from psychology’s INTRODUCTION Psychology has a long past, but only a short history. Hermann Ebbinghaus 11 earliest days, undergoing different interpretations by the various schools of thought, while others have fallen in and out of favor, but each time they have exerted a signiﬁcant inﬂuence on subsequent thinking, and have occasionally spawned completely new ﬁelds for exploration. The simplest way to approach the vast subject of psychology for the ﬁrst time is to take a look at some of its main movements, as we do in this book. These occurred in roughly chronological order, from its roots in philosophy, through behaviorism, psychotherapy, and the study of cognitive, social, and developmental psychology, to the psychology of difference. Two approaches Even in its earliest days, psychology meant different things to different people. In the US, its roots lay in philosophy, so the approach taken was speculative and theoretical, dealing with concepts such as consciousness and the self. In Europe, the study was rooted in the sciences, so the emphasis was on examining mental processes such as sensory perception and memory under controlled laboratory conditions. However, even the research of these more scientiﬁcally oriented psychologists was limited by the introspective nature of their methods: pioneers such as Hermann Ebbinghaus became the subject of their own investigations, effectively restricting the range of topics to those that could be observed in themselves. Although they used scientiﬁc methods and their theories laid the foundations for the new science, many in the next generation of psychologists found their processes too subjective, and began to look for a more objective methodology. In the 1890s, the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov conducted experiments that were to prove critical to the development of psychology in both Europe and the US. He proved that animals could be conditioned to produce a response, an idea that developed into a new movement known as behaviorism. The behaviorists felt that it was impossible to study mental processes objectively, but found it relatively easy to observe and measure behavior: a manifestation of those processes. They began to design experiments that could be conducted under controlled conditions, at ﬁrst on animals, to gain an insight into human psychology, and later on humans. The behaviorists’ studies concentrated almost exclusively on how behavior is shaped by interaction with the environment; this “stimulus–response” theory became well known through the work of John Watson. New learning theories began to spring up in Europe and the US, and attracted the interest of the general public. However, at much the same time as behaviorism began to emerge in the US, a young neurologist in Vienna started to develop a theory of mind that was to overturn contemporary thinking and inspire a very different approach. Based on observation of patients and case histories rather than laboratory experiments, Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory marked ❯❯ INTRODUCTION The ﬁrst fact for us then, as psychologists, is that thinking of some sort goes on. William James 12 a return to the study of subjective experience. He was interested in memories, childhood development, and interpersonal relationships, and emphasized the importance of the unconscious in determining behavior. Although his ideas were revolutionary at the time, they were quickly and widely adopted, and the notion of a “talking cure” continues within the various forms of psychotherapy today. New ﬁelds of study In the mid-20th century, both behaviorism and psychoanalysis fell out of favor, with a return to the scientiﬁc study of mental processes. This marked the beginning of cognitive psychology, a movement with its roots in the holistic approach of the Gestalt psychologists, who were interested in studying perception. Their work began to emerge in the US in the years following World War II; by the late 1950s, cognitive psychology had become the predominant approach. The rapidly growing ﬁelds of communications and computer science provided psychologists with a useful analogy; they used the model of information processing to develop theories to explain our methods of attention, perception, memory and forgetting, language and language acquisition, problem-solving and decision-making, and motivation. Even psychotherapy, which mushroomed in myriad forms from the original “talking cure,” was inﬂuenced by the cognitive approach. Cognitive therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy emerged as alternatives to psychoanalysis, leading to movements such as humanist psychology, which focused on the qualities unique to human life. These therapists turned their attention from healing the sick to guiding healthy people toward living more meaningful lives. While psychology in its early stages had concentrated largely on the mind and behavior of individuals, there was now an increasing interest in the way we interact with our environment and other people; this became the ﬁeld of social psychology. Like cognitive psychology, it owed much to the Gestalt psychologists, especially Kurt Lewin, who had ﬂed from Nazi Germany to the US in the 1930s. Social psychology gathered pace during the latter half of the 20th century, when research revealed intriguing new facts about our attitudes and prejudices, our tendencies toward obedience and conformity, and our reasons for aggression or altruism, all of which were increasingly relevant in the modern world of urban life and ever-improving communications. Freud’s continuing inﬂuence was felt mainly through the new ﬁeld of developmental psychology. Initially concerned only with childhood development, study in this area expanded to include change throughout life, from infancy to old age. Researchers charted methods of social, cultural, and moral learning, and the ways in which we form attachments. The contribution of developmental psychology to education and training has been signiﬁcant but, less obviously, it has inﬂuenced INTRODUCTION If the 19th century was the age of the editorial chair, ours is the century of the psychiatrist’s couch. Marshall McLuhan 13 thinking about the relationship between childhood development and attitudes to race and gender. Almost every psychological school has touched upon the subject of human uniqueness, but in the late 20th century this area was recognized as a ﬁeld in its own right in the psychology of difference. As well as attempting to identify and measure personality traits and the various factors that make up intelligence, psychologists in this growing ﬁeld examine deﬁnitions and measures of normality and abnormality, and look at how much our individual differences are a product of our environment or the result of genetic inheritance. An inﬂuential science The many branches of psychology that exist today cover the whole spectrum of mental life and human and animal behavior. The overall scope has extended to overlap with many other disciplines, including medicine, physiology, neuroscience, computer science, education, sociology, anthropology, and even politics, economics, and the law. Psychology has become perhaps the most diverse of sciences. Psychology continues to inﬂuence and be inﬂuenced by the other sciences, especially in areas such as neuroscience and genetics. In particular, the nature versus nurture argument that dates back to Francis Galton’s ideas of the 1920s continues to this day; recently, evolutionary psychology has contributed to the debate by exploring psychological traits as innate and biological phenomena, which are subject to the laws of genetics and natural selection. Psychology is a huge subject, and its ﬁndings concern every one of us. In one form or another it informs many decisions made in government, business and industry, advertising, and the mass media. It affects us as groups and as individuals, contributing as much to public debate about the ways our societies are or might be structured as it does to diagnosing and treating mental disorders. The ideas and theories of psychologists have become part of our everyday culture, to the extent that many of their ﬁndings about behavior and mental processes are now viewed simply as “common sense.” However, while some of the ideas explored in psychology conﬁrm our instinctive feelings, just as many make us think again; psychologists have often shocked and outraged the public when their ﬁndings have shaken conventional, long-standing beliefs. In its short history, psychology has given us many ideas that have changed our ways of thinking, and that have also helped us to understand ourselves, other people, and the world we live in. It has questioned deeply held beliefs, unearthed unsettling truths, and provided startling insights and solutions to complex questions. Its increasing popularity as a university course is a sign not only of psychology’s relevance in the modern world, but also of the enjoyment and stimulation that can be had from exploring the richness and diversity of a subject that continues to examine the mysterious world of the human mind. INTRODUCTION The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best. Paul Valéry PHILOSO ROOTS PSYCHOLOGY IN THE MAKING PHICAL 16 M any of the issues that are examined in modern psychology had been the subject of philosophical debate long before the development of science as we know it today. The very earliest philosophers of ancient Greece sought answers to questions about the world around us, and the way we think and behave. Since then we have wrestled with ideas of consciousness and self, mind and body, knowledge and perception, how to structure society, and how to live a “good life.” The various branches of science evolved from philosophy, gaining momentum from the 16th century onward, until ﬁnally exploding into a “scientiﬁc revolution,” which ushered in the Age of Reason in the 18th century. While these advances in scientiﬁc knowledge answered many of the questions about the world we live in, they were still not capable of explaining the workings of our minds. Science and technology did, however, provide models from which we could start asking the right questions, and begin to test theories through the collection of relevant data. Separating mind and body One of the key ﬁgures in the scientiﬁc revolution of the 17th century, the philosopher and mathematician René Descartes, outlined a distinction between mind and body that was to prove critical to the development of psychology. He claimed that all human beings have a dualistic existence—with a separate machinelike body and a nonmaterial, thinking mind, or soul. Later psychological thinkers, among them Johann Friedrich Herbart, were to extend the machine analogy to include the brain as well, describing the processes of the mind as the working of the brain-machine. The degree to which mind and body are separate became a topic for debate. Scientists wondered how much the mind is formed by physical factors, and how much is shaped by our environment. The “nature versus nurture” debate, fueled by British naturalist Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and taken up by Francis Galton, brought subjects such as free will, personality, development, and learning to the fore. These areas had not yet been fully described by philosophical inquiry, and were now ripe for scientiﬁc study. INTRODUCTION 1869 Francis Galton’s research suggests that nurture is more important than nature, in Hereditary Genius. 1819 Abbé Faria investigates hypnosis in his book On the Cause of Lucid Sleep. 1859 Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of the Species, proposing that all our traits are inherited. 1649 René Descartes publishes The Passions of the Soul, claiming that the body and soul are separate. 1816 Johann Friedrich Herbart describes a dynamic mind with a conscious and an unconscious in A Text-book in Psychology. 1849 Søren Kierkegaard’s book The Sickness Unto Death marks the beginning of existentialism. 1861 Neurosurgeon Pierre Paul Broca discovers that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have separate functions. 1874 Carl Wernicke provides evidence that damage to a speciﬁc area of the brain causes the loss of speciﬁc skills. 17 Meanwhile, the mysterious nature of the mind was popularized by the discovery of hypnosis, prompting more serious scientists to consider that there was more to the mental life than immediately apparent conscious thought. These scientists set out to examine the nature of the “unconscious,” and its inﬂuence on our thinking and behavior. The birth of psychology Against this background, the modern science of psychology emerged. In 1879, Wilhelm Wundt founded the very ﬁrst laboratory of experimental psychology at Leipzig University in Germany, and departments of psychology also began to appear in universities across Europe and the US. Just as philosophy had taken on certain regional characteristics, psychology developed in distinct ways in the different centers: in Germany, psychologists such as Wundt, Hermann Ebbinghaus, and Emil Kraepelin took a strictly scientiﬁc and experimental approach to the subject; while in the US, William James and his followers at Harvard adopted a more theoretical and philosophical approach. Alongside these areas of study, an inﬂuential school of thought was growing in Paris around the work of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot, who had used hypnosis on sufferers of hysteria. The school attracted psychologists such as Pierre Janet, whose ideas of the unconscious anticipated Freud’s psychoanalytic theories. The ﬁnal two decades of the 19th century saw a rapid rise in the importance of the new science of psychology, as well as the establishment of a scientiﬁc methodology for studying the mind, in much the same way that physiology and related disciplines studied the body. For the ﬁrst time, the scientiﬁc method was applied to questions concerning perception, consciousness, memory, learning, and intelligence, and its practices of observation and experimentation produced a wealth of new theories. Although these ideas often came from the introspective study of the mind by the researcher, or from highly subjective accounts by the subjects of their studies, the foundations were laid for the next generation of psychologists at the turn of the century to develop a truly objective study of mind and behavior, and to apply their own new theories to the treatment of mental disorders. ■ PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS 1879 1885 1887 1890 Hermann Ebbinghaus details his experiments learning nonsense syllables in his book Memory. G. Stanley Hall publishes the ﬁrst edition of the American Journal of Psychology. William James, the “father of psychology” publishes Principles of Psychology. Wilhelm Wundt founds the ﬁrst laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig, Germany. 1883 Emil Kraepelin publishes the Textbook of Psychiatry. 1877 Jean-Martin Charcot produces Lectures on the Diseases of the Nervous System. 1895 Alfred Binet opens the ﬁrst laboratory of psychodiagnosis. 1889 Pierre Janet suggests that hysteria involves dissociation and splitting of the personality. 18 THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS OF PERSONALITY GALEN (C.129–C.201 CE) T he Roman philosopher and physician Claudius Galen formulated a concept of personality types based on the ancient Greek theory of humorism, which attempted to explain the workings of the human body. The roots of humorism go back to Empedocles (c.495–435 BCE), a Greek philosopher who suggested that different qualities of the four basic elements—earth (cold and dry), air (warm and wet), ﬁre (warm and dry), and water (cold and wet)—could explain the existence of all known substances. Hippocrates (460–370 BCE), the “Father of Medicine,” developed a medical model based on these elements, attributing their qualities to four ﬂuids within the body. These ﬂuids were called “humors” (from the Latin umor, meaning body ﬂuid). Two hundred years later, Galen expanded the theory of humorism into one of personality; he saw a direct connection between the levels of the humors in the body and emotional and behavioral inclinations—or “temperaments”. Galen’s four temperaments— sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric, and melancholic—are based on the balance of humors in the body. All things are combinations of four basic elements: earth, air, ﬁre, and water. The qualities of these elements can be found in four corresponding humors (ﬂuids) that affect the functioning of our bodies. These humors also affect our emotions and behavior—our “temperaments.” Temperamental problems are caused by an imbalance in our humors… …so by restoring the balance of our humors a physician can cure our emotional and behavioral problems. IN CONTEXT APPROACH Humorism BEFORE c.400 BCE Greek physician Hippocrates says that the qualities of the four elements are reﬂected in body ﬂuids. c.325 BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle names four sources of happiness: sensual (hedone), material (propraietari), ethical (ethikos), and logical (dialogike). AFTER 1543 Anatomist Andreas Vesalius publishes On the Fabric of the Human Body in Italy. It illustrates Galen’s errors and he is accused of heresy. 1879 Wilhelm Wundt says that temperaments develop in different proportions along two axes: “changeability” and “emotionality.” 1947 In Dimensions of Personality, Hans Eysenck suggests personality is based on two dimensions. 19 See also: ■ René Descartes 20–21 ■ Gordon Allport 306–09 ■ Hans J. Eysenck 316–21 Walter Mischel 326–27 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS If one of the humors develops excessively, the corresponding personality type begins to dominate. A sanguine person has too much blood (sanguis in Latin) and is warm-hearted, cheerful, optimistic, and conﬁdent, but can be selﬁsh. A phlegmatic person, suffering from excess phlegm (phlegmatikós in Greek), is quiet, kind, cool, rational, and consistent, but can be slow and shy. The choleric (from the Greek kholé, meaning bile) personality is ﬁery, suffering from excess yellow bile. Lastly, the melancholic (from the Greek melas kholé), who suffers from an excess of black bile, is recognized by poetic and artistic leanings, which are often also accompanied by sadness and fear. Imbalance in the humors According to Galen, some people are born predisposed to certain temperaments. However, since temperamental problems are caused by imbalances of the humors, he claimed they can be cured by diet and exercise. In more extreme cases, cures may include purging and blood-letting. For example, a person acting selﬁshly is overly sanguine, and has too much blood; this is remedied by cutting down on meat, or by making small cuts into the veins to release blood. Galen’s doctrines dominated medicine until the Renaissance, when they began to decline in the light of better research. In 1543, the physician Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), practicing in Italy, found more than 200 errors in Galen’s descriptions of anatomy, but although Galen’s medical ideas were discredited, he later inﬂuenced 20th-century psychologists. In 1947, Hans Eysenck concluded that temperament is biologically based, and noted that the two personality traits he identiﬁed—neuroticism and extraversion—echoed the ancient temperaments. Although humorism is no longer part of psychology, Galen’s idea that many physical and mental illnesses are connected forms the basis of some modern therapies. ■ Galen Claudius Galenus, better known as “Galen of Pergamon” (now Bergama in Turkey) was a Roman physician, surgeon, and philosopher. His father, Aelius Nicon, was a wealthy Greek architect who provided him with a good education and opportunities to travel. Galen settled in Rome and served emperors, including Marcus Aurelius, as principal physician. He learned about trauma care while treating professional gladiators, and wrote more than 500 books on medicine. He believed the best way to learn was through dissecting animals and studying anatomy. However, although Galen discovered the functions of many internal organs, he made mistakes because he assumed that the bodies of animals (such as monkeys and pigs) were exactly like those of humans. There is debate over the date of his death, but Galen was at least 70 when he died. Key works c.190 CE The Temperaments c.190 CE The Natural Faculties c.190 CE Three Treatises on the Nature of Science Imbalances in the humors determine personality type as well as inclinations toward certain illnesses. Melancholic: sad, fearful, depressed, poetic, and artistic. Choleric: ﬁery, energetic, and passionate. Phlegmatic: slow, quiet, shy, rational, and consistent. Sanguine: warm-hearted, cheerful, optimistic, and conﬁdent. 20 seated in the brain’s pineal gland doing the thinking, while the body is like a machine that operates by “animal spirits,” or ﬂuids, ﬂowing through the nervous system to cause movement. This idea had been popularized in the 2nd century by Galen, who attached it to his theory of the humors; but Descartes was the ﬁrst to describe it in detail, and to emphasize the separation of mind and body. T he idea that the mind and body are separate and different dates back to Plato and the ancient Greeks, but it was the 17th-century philosopher René Descartes who ﬁrst described in detail the mind-body relationship. Descartes wrote De Homine (“Man”), his ﬁrst philosophical book, in 1633, in which he describes the dualism of mind and body: the nonmaterial mind, or “soul,” Descartes says, is The mind and the body are separate. The mind (or “soul”) is immaterial, but seated in the pineal gland of the brain. The body is a material, mechanical machine. The mind can control the physical body by causing “animal spirits” to ﬂow through the nervous system. IN CONTEXT APPROACH Mind/body dualism BEFORE 4th century BCE Greek philosopher Plato claims that the body is from the material world, but the soul, or mind, is from the immortal world of ideas. 4th century BCE Greek philosopher Aristotle says that the soul and body are inseparable: the soul is the actuality of the body. AFTER 1710 In A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Anglo-Irish philosopher George Berkeley claims that the body is merely the perception of the mind. 1904 In Does Consciousness Exist? William James asserts that consciousness is not a separate entity but a function of particular experiences. THERE IS A REASONING SOUL IN THIS MACHINE RENE DESCARTES (1596–1650) 21 See also: Galen 18–19 ■ William James 38–45 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 In a letter to the French philosopher Marin Mersenne, Descartes explains that the pineal gland is the “seat of thought,” and so must be the home of the soul, “because the one cannot be separated from the other.” This was important, because otherwise the soul would not be connected to any solid part of the body, he said, but only to the psychic spirits. Descartes imagined the mind and body interacting through an awareness of the animal spirits that were said to ﬂow through the body. The mind, or soul, residing in the pineal gland, located deep within the brain, was thought to sometimes become aware of the moving spirits, which then caused conscious sensation. In this way, the body could affect the mind. Likewise, the mind could affect the body by causing an outﬂow of animal spirits to a particular region of the body, initiating action. There is a great difference between mind and body. René Descartes An analogy for the mind Taking his inspiration from the French formal gardens of Versailles, with their hydraulic systems that supply water to the gardens and their elaborate fountains, Descartes describes the spirits of the body operating the nerves and muscles like the force of water, and “by this means to cause motion in all the parts.” The fountains were controlled by a fountaineer, and here Descartes found an analogy for the mind. He explained: “There is a reasoning soul in this machine; it has its principal site in the brain, where it is like the fountaineer who must be at the reservoir, whither all the pipes of the machine are extended, when he wishes to start, stop, or in some way alter their actions.” While philosophers still argue as to whether the mind and brain are somehow different entities, most psychologists equate the mind with the workings of the brain. However, in practical terms, the distinction between mental and physical health is a complex one: the two being closely linked when mental stress is said to cause physical illness, or when chemical imbalances affect the brain. ■ René Descartes René Descartes was born in La Haye en Touraine (now called Descartes), France. He contracted tuberculosis from his mother, who died a few days after he was born, and remained weak his entire life. From the age of eight, he was educated at the Jesuit college of La Flèche, Anjou, where he began the habit of spending each morning in bed, due to his poor health, doing “systematic meditation”— about philosophy, science, and mathematics. From 1612 to 1628, he contemplated, traveled, and wrote. In 1649, he was invited to teach Queen Christina of Sweden, but her early-morning demands on his time, combined with a harsh climate, worsened his health; he died on February 11, 1650. Ofﬁcially, the cause of death was pneumonia, but some historians believe that he was poisoned to stop the Protestant Christina converting to Catholicism. Key works 1637 Discourse on the Method 1662 De Homine (written 1633) 1647 The Description of the Human Body 1649 The Passions of the Soul Descartes illustrated the pineal gland, a single organ in the brain ideally placed to unite the sights and sounds of the two eyes and the two ears into one impression. PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS 22 DORMEZ! ABBE FARIA (1756–1819) T he practice of inducing trance states to promote healing is not new. Several ancient cultures, including those of Egypt and Greece, saw nothing strange about taking their sick to “sleep temples” so they could be cured, while in a sleeplike state, by suggestions from specially trained priests. In 1027, the Persian physician Avicenna documented the characteristics of the trance state, but its use as a healing therapy was largely abandoned until the German doctor Franz Mesmer reintroduced it in the 18th century. Mesmer’s treatment involved manipulating the body’s natural, or “animal,” magnetism, through the use of magnets and suggestion. After being “mesmerized,” or “magnetized,” some people suffered a convulsion, after which they claimed to feel better. In this state the subject becomes more susceptible to the power of suggestion. …to induce a state of “lucid sleep” (hypnotic trance). …combines with the highly concentrated mind of a subject… A gentle request or commanding order… IN CONTEXT APPROACH Hypnosis BEFORE 1027 Persian philosopher and physician Avicenna (Ibn Sina) writes about trances in The Book of Healing. 1779 German physician Franz Mesmer publishes A Memoir on the Discovery of Animal Magnetism. AFTER 1843 Scottish surgeon James Braid coins the term “neuro- hypnotism” in Neurypnology. 1880S French psychologist Emile Coué discovers the placebo effect and publishes Self-Mastery Through Conscious Autosuggestion. 1880S Sigmund Freud investigates hypnosis and its apparent power to control unconscious symptoms. 23 A few years later, Abbé Faria, a Portugese-Goan monk, studied Mesmer’s work and concluded that it was “entirely absurd” to think that magnets were a vital part of the process. The truth was even more extraordinary: the power to fall into trance or “lucid sleep” lay entirely with the individuals concerned. No special forces were necessary, because the phenomena relied only upon the power of suggestion. Lucid sleep Faria saw his role as a “concentrator,” helping his subject get into the right state of mind. In On The Cause of Lucid Sleep, he describes his method: “After selecting subjects with the right aptitude, I ask them to relax in a chair, shut their eyes, concentrate their attention, and think about sleep. As they quietly await further instructions, I gently or commandingly say: ‘Dormez!’ (Sleep!) and they fall into lucid sleep”. It was from Faria’s lucid sleep that the term “hypnosis” was coined in 1843 by the Scottish surgeon James Braid, from the Greek hypnos, meaning “sleep” and osis meaning “condition.” Braid concluded that hypnosis is not a type of sleep but a concentration on a single idea, resulting in heightened suggestibility. After his death, interest in hypnosis largely waned until the French neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot began to use hypnotism systematically in the treatment of traumatic hysteria. This brought hypnosis to the attention of Josef Breuer and Sigmund Freud, who were to question the drive behind the hypnotic self, and discover the power of the unconscious. ■ PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS Nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination. Abbé Faria See also: Jean-Martin Charcot 30 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 ■ Carl Jung 102–07 ■ Milton Erickson 336 Abbé Faria Born in Portuguese Goa, José Custódio de Faria was the son of a wealthy heiress, but his parents separated when he was 15. Armed with introductions to the Portuguese court, Faria and his father traveled to Portugal where both trained as priests. On one occasion, the young Faria was asked by the queen to preach in her private chapel. During the sermon, he panicked, but his father whispered, “They are all men of straw—cut the straw!” Faria immediately lost his fear and preached ﬂuently; he later wondered how a simple phrase could so quickly alter his state of mind. He moved to France, where he played a prominent part in the French Revolution and reﬁned his techniques of self-suggestion while imprisoned. Faria became a professor of philosophy, but his theater shows demonstrating “lucid sleep” undercut his reputation; when he died of a stroke in 1819 he was buried in an unmarked grave in Montmartre, Paris. Key work 1819 On the Cause of Lucid Sleep Franz Mesmer induced trance through the application of magnets, often to the stomach. These were said to bring the body’s “animal” magnetism back into a harmonious state. 24 CONCEPTS BECOME FORCES WHEN THEY RESIST ONE ANOTHER JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART (1776–1841) J ohann Herbart was a German philosopher who wanted to investigate how the mind works—in particular, how it manages ideas or concepts. Given that we each have a huge number of ideas over the course of our lifetime, how do we not become increasingly confused? It seemed to Herbart that the mind must use some kind of system for differentiating and storing ideas. He also wanted to account for the fact that although ideas exist forever (Herbart thought them incapable of being destroyed), some seem to exist beyond our conscious awareness. The 18th- century German philosopher IN CONTEXT APPROACH Structuralism BEFORE 1704 German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz discusses petites perceptions (perceptions without consciousness) in his New Essays on Human Understanding. 1869 German philosopher Eduard von Hartmann publishes his widely read Philosophy of the Unconscious. AFTER 1895 Sigmund Freud and Josef Breuer publish Studies on Hysteria, introducing psychoanalysis and its theories of the unconscious. 1912 Carl Jung writes The Psychology of the Unconscious, suggesting that all people have a culturally speciﬁc collective unconscious. Experiences and sensations combine to form ideas. One idea is forced to become favored over another. The favored idea stays in consciousness. Similar ideas can coexist or combine. The unfavored idea leaves consciousness; it becomes an unconscious idea. Dissimilar ideas resist one another and become forces in conﬂict. 25 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS Thoughts and feelings contain energy, according to Herbart, acting on each other like magnets to attract or repel like or unlike ideas. Two ideas that cannot coexist comfortably repel each other... ...and one of them may even be pushed out of consciousness. Ideas that do not contradict each other are drawn together and can coexist in consciousness. – + – + – + – + Johann Friedrich Herbart Johann Herbart was born in Oldenburg, Germany. He was tutored at home by his mother until he was 12, after which he attended the local school before entering the University of Jena to study philosophy. He spent three years as a private tutor before gaining a doctorate at Göttingen University, where he lectured in philosophy. In 1806, Napoleon defeated Prussia, and in 1809, Herbart was offered Immanuel Kant’s chair of philosophy at Königsberg, where the Prussian king and his court were exiled. While moving within these aristocratic circles, Herbart met and married Mary Drake, an English woman half his age. In 1833, he returned to Göttingen University, following disputes with the Prussian government, and remained there as Professor of Philosophy until his death from a stroke, aged 65. Key works 1808 General Practical Philosophy 1816 A Text-book in Psychology 1824 Psychology as Science See also: Wilhelm Wundt 32–37 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 ■ Carl Jung 102–07 ■ Anna Freud 111 ■ Leon Festinger 166–67 However, if two ideas are unalike, they may continue to exist without association. This causes them to weaken over time, so that they eventually sink below the “threshold of consciousness.” Should two ideas directly contradict one another, “resistance occurs” and “concepts become forces when they resist one another.” They repel one another with an energy that propels one of them beyond consciousness, into a place that Herbart referred to as “a state of tendency;” and we now know as “the unconscious.” Herbart saw the unconscious as simply a kind of storage place for weak or opposed ideas. In positing a two-part consciousness, split by a distinct threshold, he was attempting to deliver a structural solution for the management of ideas in a healthy mind. But Sigmund Freud was to see it as a much more complex and revealing mechanism. He combined Herbart’s concepts with his own theories of unconscious drives to form the basis of the 20th-century’s most important therapeutic approach: psychoanalysis. ■ Gottfried Leibniz was the ﬁrst to explore the existence of ideas beyond awareness, calling them petite (“small”) perceptions. As an example, he pointed out that we often recall having perceived something—such as the detail in a scene—even though we are not aware of noticing it at the time. This means that we perceive things and store a memory of them despite the fact that we are unaware of doing so. Dynamic ideas According to Herbart, ideas form as information from the senses combines. The term he used for ideas—Vorsfellung—encompasses thoughts, mental images, and even emotional states. These make up the entire content of the mind, and Herbart saw them not as static but dynamic elements, able to move and interact with one another. Ideas, he said, can attract and combine with other ideas or feelings, or repulse them, rather like magnets. Similar ideas, such as a color and tone, attract each other and combine to form a more complex idea. 26 T he fundamental question, “Who am I?” has been studied since the time of the ancient Greeks. Socrates (470–399 BCE) believed the main purpose of philosophy is to increase happiness through analyzing and understanding oneself, famously saying: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Søren Kierkegaard’s book The Sickness Unto Death (1849) offers self-analysis as a means to understanding the problem of “despair,” which he IN CONTEXT APPROACH Existentialism BEFORE 5th century BCE Socrates states the key to happiness is discovering the “true self.” AFTER 1879 Wilhelm Wundt uses self-analysis as an approach to psychological research. 1913 John B. Watson denounces self-analysis in psychology, stating that “introspection forms no essential part of its methods.” 1951 Carl Rogers publishes Client-centered Therapy, and in 1961 On Becoming a Person. 1960 R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self redeﬁnes “madness,” offering existential analysis of inner conﬂict as therapy. 1996 Rollo May bases his book, The Meaning of Anxiety, on Kierkegaard’s The Concept of Anxiety. To be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair. So I try to make myself into someone different. I wish to be other than I am: to have a different self. I fail and despise myself for failing. Either way, I despair of my true self. I succeed and abandon my true self. To escape despair I must accept my true self. BE THAT SELF WHICH ONE TRULY IS SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813–1855) 27 Napoleon’s overreaching ambition for power, as depicted in this painting of him as a student, led him to lose sight of his true self and all-too-human limitations, and ultimately to despair. See also: Wilhelm Wundt 32–37 ■ William James 38–45 ■ Carl Rogers 130–37 ■ Rollo May 141 ■ R.D. Laing 150–51 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS considered to stem not from depression, but rather from the alienation of the self. Kierkegaard described several levels of despair. The lowest, and most common, stems from ignorance: a person has the wrong idea about what “self” is, and is unaware of the existence or nature of his potential self. Such ignorance is close to bliss, and so inconsequential that Kierkegaard was not even sure it could be counted as despair. Real desperation arises, he suggested, with growing self-awareness, and the deeper levels of despair stem Søren Kierkegaard Søren Kierkegaard was born to an afﬂuent Danish family, and raised as a strict Lutheran. He studied theology and philosophy at Copenhagen University. When he came into a sizeable inheritance, he decided to devote his life to philosophy, but ultimately this left him dissatisﬁed. “What I really need to do,” he said, “is to get clear about what I am to do, not what I must know.” In 1840, he became engaged to Regine Olsen, but broke off the engagement, saying that he was unsuited to marriage. His general state of melancholy had a profound effect on his life. A solitary ﬁgure, his main recreational activities included walking the streets to chat with strangers, and taking long carriage rides alone into the countryside. Kierkegaard collapsed in the street on October 2, 1855, and died on November 11 in Friedrich’s Hospital, Copenhagen. Key works 1843 Fear and Trembling 1843 Either/Or 1844 The Concept of Anxiety 1849 The Sickness Unto Death from an acute consciousness of the self, coupled with a profound dislike of it. When something goes wrong, such as failing an exam to qualify as a doctor, a person may seem to be despairing over something that has been lost. But on closer inspection, according to Kierkegaard, it becomes obvious that the man is not really despairing of the thing (failing an exam) but of himself. The self that failed to achieve a goal has become intolerable. The man wanted to become a different self (a doctor), but he is now stuck with a failed self and in despair. Abandoning the real self Kierkegaard took the example of a man who wanted to become an emperor, and pointed out that ironically, even if this man did somehow achieve his aim, he would have effectively abandoned his old self. In both his desire and accomplishment, he wants to “be rid of” his self. This disavowal of the self is painful: despair is overwhelming when a man wants to shun himself—when he “does not possess himself; he is not himself.” However, Kierkegaard did offer a solution. He concluded that a man can ﬁnd peace and inner harmony by ﬁnding the courage to be his true self, rather than wanting to be someone else. “To will to be that self which one truly is, is indeed the opposite of despair,” he said. He believed that despair evaporates when we stop denying who we really are and attempt to uncover and accept our true nature. Kierkegaard’s emphasis on individual responsibility, and the need to ﬁnd one’s true essence and purpose in life, is frequently regarded as the beginning of existentialist philosophy. His ideas led directly to R.D. Laing’s use of existential therapy, and have inﬂuenced the humanistic therapies practiced by clinical psychologists such as Carl Rogers. ■ 28 PERSONALITY IS COMPOSED OF NATURE AND NURTURE FRANCIS GALTON (1822–1911) to identify “nature” and “nurture” as two separate inﬂuences whose effects could be measured and compared, maintaining that these two elements alone were responsible for determining personality. In 1869, he used his own family tree, as well as those of “judges, statesmen, F rancis Galton counted many gifted individuals among his relatives, including the evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. So it’s not surprising that Galton was interested in the extent to which abilities are either inborn or learned. He was the ﬁrst person IN CONTEXT APPROACH Bio-psychology BEFORE 1690 British philosopher John Locke proposes that the mind of every child is a tabula rasa, or blank slate, and hence we are all born equal. 1859 Biologist Charles Darwin suggests that all human development is the result of adaptation to the environment. 1890 William James claims that people have genetically inherited individual tendencies, or “instincts.” AFTER 1925 Behaviorist John B. Watson says there is “no such thing as inheritance of capacity, talent, temperament, or mental constitution”. 1940s Nazi Germany seeks to create a “master Aryan race” through eugenics. Personality is composed of elements from two different sources. We can improve our skills and abilities through training and learning, but… Nature and nurture both play a part, but nature is the determining factor. Nurture is that which is experienced from birth onward. …nature sets the limits to how far we can develop our talents. Nature is that which is inborn and inherited, and… 29 See also: John B. Watson 66–71 ■ Zing-Yang Kuo 75 ■ G. Stanley Hall 46–47 ■ Eleanor E. Maccoby 284–85 ■ Raymond Cattell 314–15 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS commanders, scientists, literary men… diviners, oarsmen, and wrestlers,” to research inherited traits for his book Hereditary Genius. As predicted, he found more highly talented individuals in certain families than among the general population. However, he could not safely attribute this to nature alone, as there were also conferred beneﬁts from growing up in a privileged home environment. Galton himself grew up in a wealthy household with access to unusually good educational resources. A necessary balance Galton proposed a number of other studies, including the ﬁrst large survey by questionnaire, which was sent out to members of the Royal Society to inquire about their interests and afﬁliations. Publishing his results in English Men of Science, he claimed that where nature and nurture are forced to compete, nature triumphs. External inﬂuences can make an impression, he says, but nothing can “efface the deeper marks of individual character.” However, he insists that both nature and nurture are essential in forming personality, since even the highest natural endowments may be “starved by defective nurture.” Intelligence, he says, is inherited, but must be fostered through education. In 1875, Galton undertook a study of 159 pairs of twins. He found that they did not follow the “normal” distribution of similarity between siblings, in which they are moderately alike, but were always extremely similar or extremely dissimilar. What really surprised him was that the degree of similarity never changed over time. He had anticipated that a shared upbringing would lessen dissimilarity between twins as they grew up, but found that this was not the case. Nurture seemed to play no role at all. The “nature–nurture debate” continues to this day. Some people have favored Galton’s theories, including his notion—now known as eugenics—that people could be “bred” like horses to promote certain characteristics. Others have preferred to believe that every baby is a tabula rasa, or “blank slate,” and we are all born equal. Most psychologists today recognize that nature and nurture are both crucially important in human development, and interact in complex ways. ■ Francis Galton Sir Francis Galton was a polymath who wrote proliﬁcally on many subjects, including anthropology, criminology (classifying ﬁngerprints), geography, meteorology, biology, and psychology. Born in Birmingham, England, into a wealthy Quaker family, he was a child prodigy, able to read from the age of two. He studied medicine in London and Birmingham, then mathematics at Cambridge, but his study was cut short by a mental breakdown, worsened by his father’s death in 1844. Galton turned to traveling and inventing. His marriage in 1853 to Louisa Jane Butler lasted 43 years, but was childless. He devoted his life to measuring physical and psychological characteristics, devising mental tests, and writing. He received many awards and honors in recognition of his numerous achievements, including several honorary degrees and a knighthood. Key works 1869 Hereditary Genius 1874 English Men of Science: Their Nature and Nurture 1875 The History of Twins Galton’s study of twins looked for resemblances in many ways, including height, weight, hair and eye color, and disposition. Handwriting was the only aspect in which twins always differed. Characteristics cling to families. Francis Galton 30 See also: Alfred Binet 50–53 ■ Pierre Janet 54–55 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 K nown as the founder of modern neurology, French physician Jean-Martin Charcot was interested in the relationship between psychology and physiology. During the 1860s and 1870s, he studied “hysteria,” a term then used to describe extreme emotional behavior in women, thought to be caused by problems with the uterus (hystera in Greek). Symptoms included excessive laughing or crying, wild bodily movements and contortions, fainting, paralysis, convulsions, and temporary blindness and deafness. From observing thousands of cases of hysteria at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, Charcot deﬁned “The Laws of Hysteria,” believing that he understood the disease completely. He claimed that hysteria was a lifelong, inherited condition and its symptoms were triggered by shock. In 1882, Charcot stated: “In the [hysterical] ﬁt… everything unfolds according to the rules, which are always the same; they are valid for all countries, for all epochs, for all races, and are, in short, universal.” Charcot suggested that hysteria’s similarity to a physical disease warranted a search for a biological cause, but his contemporaries dismissed his ideas. Some even believed that Charcot’s “hysterics” were merely acting out behavior that Charcot had suggested to them. But one student of Charcot, Sigmund Freud, was convinced of hysteria’s status as a physical illness, and was intrigued by it. It is the ﬁrst disease Freud describes in his theory of psychoanalysis. ■ THE LAWS OF HYSTERIA ARE UNIVERSAL JEAN-MARTIN CHARCOT (1825–1893) Charcot gave lectures on hysteria at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. He believed hysteria always followed ordered, clearly structured phases, and could be cured by hypnotism. IN CONTEXT APPROACH Neurological science BEFORE 1900 BCE The Egyptian Kahun Papyrus recounts behaviorial disturbances in women caused by a “wandering uterus.” c.400 BCE Greek physician Hippocrates invents the term “hysteria” for certain women’s illnesses in his book, On the Diseases of Women. 1662 English physician Thomas Willis performs autopsies on “hysterical” women, and ﬁnds no sign of uterine pathology. AFTER 1883 Alfred Binet joins Charcot at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris, and later writes about Charcot’s use of hypnotism to treat hysteria. 1895 Sigmund Freud, a former student of Charcot, publishes Studies on Hysteria. 31 See also: Wilhelm Wundt 32–37 ■ R.D. Laing 150–51 G erman physician Emil Kraepelin believed that the origins of most mental illnesses are biological, and he is often regarded as the founder of modern medical psychiatry. In his Textbook of Psychiatry, published in 1883, Kraepelin offered a detailed classiﬁcation of mental illnesses, including “dementia praecox,” meaning “early dementia,” to distinguish it from late-onset dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. Schizophrenia In 1893, Kraepelin described dementia praecox, now called schizophrenia, as consisting “of a series of clinical states which hold as their common a peculiar destruction of the internal connections of the psychic personality.” He observed that the illness, characterized by confusion and antisocial behavior, often starts in the late teens or early adulthood. Kraepelin later divided it into four subcategories. The ﬁrst, “simple” dementia, is marked by slow decline and withdrawal. The second, paranoia, manifests in patients as a state of fear and persecution; they report being “spied upon” or “talked about.” The third, hebephrenia, is marked by incoherent speech, and often by inappropriate emotional reactions and behavior, such as laughing loudly at a sad situation. The fourth category, catatonia, is marked by extremely limited movement and expression, often in the form of either rigidness, such as sitting in the same position for hours, or excessive activity, such as rocking backward and forward repeatedly. Kraepelin’s classiﬁcation still forms the basis of schizophrenia diagnosis. In addition, postmortem investigations have shown that there are biochemical and structural brain abnormalities, as well as impairments of brain function, in schizophrenia sufferers. Kraepelin’s belief that a great number of mental illnesses are strictly biological in origin exerted a lasting inﬂuence on the ﬁeld of psychiatry, and many mental disorders are still managed with medication today. ■ PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS A PECULIAR DESTRUCTION OF THE INTERNAL CONNECTIONS OF THE PSYCHE EMIL KRAEPELIN (1856–1926) IN CONTEXT APPROACH Medical psychiatry BEFORE C.50 BCE Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius uses the term “dementia” to mean “being out of one’s mind.” 1874 Wilhelm Wundt, Kraepelin’s tutor, publishes Principles of Physiological Psychology. AFTER 1908 Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler coins the term “schizophrenia,” from the Greek words skhizein (to split) and phren (the mind). 1948 The World Health Authority (WHO) includes Kraepelin’s classiﬁcations of mental illnesses in its International Classiﬁcation of Diseases (ICD). 1950s Chlorpromazine, the ﬁrst antipsychotic drug, is used to treat schizophrenia. THE BEGINNINGS OF THE MENTAL LIFE DATE FROM THE BEGINNINGS OF LIFE WILHELM WUNDT (1832–1920) 34 T he idea that nonhuman animals have minds and are capable of some form of thought dates back to the ancient Greek philosophers. Aristotle believed that there are three kinds of mind: plant, animal, and human. The plant mind is concerned only with nutrition and growth. The animal mind has these functions, but can also experience sensations, such as pain, pleasure, and desire, as well as initiating motion. The human mind can do all this and reason; Aristotle claims that only humans have self-awareness and are capable of higher-level cognition. The similarity of humans to animals was a critical issue for philosophers, but even more so for psychologists. In the 15th century, the French philosopher René Descartes claimed that animals are no more than reﬂex-driven, complex machines. If Descartes was correct, observing animals could tell us nothing about our own behavior. However, when Charles Darwin asserted some 200 years later that humans are linked to other animals genetically, and that consciousness operates from the creatures at the very lowest end of the evolutionary scale to ourselves, it became clear that experiments IN CONTEXT APPROACH Experimental psychology BEFORE 5th century Ancient Greek philosophers Aristotle and Plato claim that animals have a low level, distinctly nonhuman consciousness. 1630s René Descartes says that animals are automata without feeling. 1859 British biologist Charles Darwin links humans to animal ancestors. AFTER 1949 Konrad Lorenz changes the way people see animals by showing their similarities to humans in King Solomon’s Ring. 2001 American zoologist Donald Grifﬁn argues in Animal Minds that animals have a sense of the future, complex memory, and perhaps consciousness itself. on animals might be revealing. This was the position held by the German physician, philosopher, and psychologist Wilhelm Wundt, who described a continuum of life from even the smallest animals to ourselves. In his book Principles of Physiological Psychology, he claimed that consciousness is a universal possession of all living organisms, and has been since the evolutionary process began. To Wundt, the very deﬁnition of life includes having some kind of mind. He declared: “From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable WILHELM WUNDT Consciousness is “inner experience.” So all psychology must begin with self-observation… Every living being has this inner experience. …recorded through experimentation designed to expose involuntary reactions. Every living being must always have had this inner experience. This yields quantitative data about consciousness. Psychology is the scientiﬁc study of the mental life. The beginnings of the mental life date from the beginnings of life. 35 hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large. The question of the origin of mental development thus resolves itself into the question of the origin of life.” Wundt went on to say that even simple organisms such as protozoa have some form of mind. This last claim is surprising today, when few people would expect a single-celled animal to demonstrate even simple mental abilities, but it was even more surprising when ﬁrst stated more than 100 years ago. Wundt was keen to test out his theories, and he is often called “the father of experimental psychology” because he set up the world’s ﬁrst formal laboratory of experimental psychology in Leipzig University, Germany, in 1879. He wanted to carry out systematic research on the mind and behavior of humans, initially through subjecting the basic sensory processes to close examination. His laboratory inspired other universities in the US and Europe to set up psychology departments, many See also: René Descartes 20–21 ■ William James 38–45 ■ Edward Thorndike 62–65 ■ John B. Watson 66–71 ■ B.F. Skinner 78–85 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS of which were modeled on his original laboratory and were led by pupils such as Edward Titchener and James Cattell. Observing behavior Wundt believed that “the exact description of consciousness is the sole aim of experimental psychology.” Although he understood consciousness as an “inner experience,” he was only interested in the “immediately real” or apparent form of this experience. This ultimately led him to the study of behavior, which could be studied and quantiﬁed by “direct observation.” Wundt said that there are two types of observation: external and internal. External observation is used to record events that are visible in the external world, and is useful in assessing relationships such as cause and effect on physical bodies—for example, in stimulus and response experiments. If a nerve ﬁber in a dead frog is given a small electric shock, the connecting muscles twitch, causing the legs to move. The fact that this happens even in a dead animal illustrates that such movements can occur without any consciousness. In living creatures, such actions are the basis of the automatic behavior that we call “reﬂexes,” such as immediately moving your hand when you touch something hot. Wundt’s second type of observation, termed “introspection” or “self-observation,” is internal observation. This involves noticing and recording internal events such as thoughts and feelings. It is crucial in research because it provides information about how the mind is working. Wundt was interested in the relationship between the inner and outer worlds, which he did not see as mutually exclusive, but as interactive, describing it as ❯❯ Even single-celled organisms have some form of consciousness, according to Wundt. He suggested the amoeba’s ability to devour food items indicates a continuity of mental processes. Wundt’s laboratory set the style for psychology departments around the world. His experiments moved psychology out of the domain of philosophy and into science. The beginnings of a differentiation of mental function can be found even in the protozoa. Wilhelm Wundt 36 WILHELM WUNDT “physical and psychical.” He began to concentrate on the study of human sensations, such as the visual sensation of light, because these are the agencies that link the external physical world and the internal mental world. In one experiment, Wundt asked individuals to report on their sensations when shown a light signal—which was standardized to a speciﬁc color and a certain level of brightness, and shone for a ﬁxed length of time. This ensured that each participant experienced exactly the same stimulus, enabling responses of different participants to be compared and the experiment to be repeated at a later date, if required. In insisting upon this possibility for replication, Wundt set the standard for all future psychological experiments. In his sensory experiments, Wundt set out to explore human consciousness in a measurable way. He refused to see it as an unknowable, subjective experience that is unique to each individual. In the light-response experiments, he was particularly interested in the amount of time between a person receiving some form of stimulus and making a voluntary reaction to it (rather than an involuntary one), and he used various instruments to measure this response exactly. He was also just as interested to hear what his participants reported in common as he was in apparent individual differences. Pure sensations, Wundt suggested, have three components: quality, intensity, and “feeling-tone.” For example, a certain perfume may have a sweet odor (quality) that is distinct but faint (intensity) and is pleasant to smell (feeling-tone), while a dead rat might give off a nauseating (quality), strong (intensity) stench (feeling-tone). All consciousness originates in sensations, he said, but these are not internalized as “pure” sensory data; they are perceived as already collected or compounded into representations, such as a dead rat. Wundt called these “images of an object or of a process in the external world.” So, for example, if we see a face with certain features—mouth shape, eye color, nose size, and so on—we may recognize the face as a person we know. Categories of consciousness Based on his sensory experiments, Wundt claimed that consciousness consists of three major categories Our sensations provide details of shape, size, color, smell, and texture, but when these are internalized, Wundt says, they are compounded into complex representations, such as a face. of actions—representation, willing, and feeling—which together form an impression of a unitary ﬂow of events. Representations are either “perceptions,” if they represent an image in the mind of an object perceived in the external world (such as a tree within eyesight), or “intuitions” if they represent a subjective activity (such as remembering a tree, or imagining a unicorn). He named the process through which a perception or intuition becomes clear in consciousness “apperception.” So, for example, you may perceive a sudden loud noise and then apperceive that it is a warning sign, meaning that you are about to be hit by a car if you don’t get out of the way quickly enough. The willing category of consciousness is characterized by the way it intervenes in the external world; it expresses our volition, or “will,” from raising an arm to choosing to wear red. This form of consciousness is beyond experimental control or measurement. However, Wundt found that the third category of consciousness, feeling, could be measured through subjective reports from experimental The exact description of consciousness is the sole aim of experimental psychology. Wilhelm Wundt 37 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS participants, or through measuring levels of behavior such as tension and relaxation or excitement. Cultural psychology For Wundt, the psychological development of a person is determined not only by sensations but also by complex social and cultural inﬂuences, which cannot be replicated or controlled in an experimental situation. He included religion, language, myths, history, art, laws, and customs among these inﬂuences, discussing them in a ten-volume work, Cultural Psychology, which he wrote during the last 20 years of his life. Wundt saw language as an especially important part of culture’s contribution to consciousness. Any verbal communication begins with a “general impression,” or uniﬁed idea of something we wish to say. Having “apperceived” this general starting point, we then choose words and sentences to express it. While speaking, we monitor the accuracy of the intended meaning. We might say, “No, that’s not right, I mean…,” and then choose a different word or phrase to express ourselves better. Whoever is listening has to understand the meaning that the speaker is trying to convey, but the actual words may not be as important as the general impression, especially if strong emotions are involved. As evidence of the fact that we use this process, Wundt points out that we often remember the general meaning of what a person has said long after we’ve forgotten the speciﬁc words that were used. The ability to use true language, as opposed to just exchanging limited signs and signals, is today Wilhelm Wundt Born in Baden (now Mannheim) Germany, Wilhelm Wundt was the fourth child in a family with a long history of intellectual achievement. His father was a Lutheran minister. The young Wundt was allowed little time for play, as he was pushed through a rigorous educational regime, attending a strict Catholic school from the age of 13. He went on to study at the universities of Berlin, Tübingen, and Heidelberg, graduating in medicine in 1856. Two years later, Wundt became assistant to the physician Hermann von Helmholtz, who was famous for his work on visual perception. While at Heidelberg, Wundt started teaching the world’s ﬁrst course in experimental psychology, and in 1879 opened the ﬁrst psychology laboratory. Wundt wrote over 490 works and was probably the world’s most proliﬁc scientiﬁc writer. Key works 1863 Lectures on the Mind of Humans and Animals 1896 Outline of Psychology 1873 Principles of Physiological Psychology considered by many psychologists to be a key difference between human beings and the rest of the animal kingdom. There may be a few exceptions, including nonhuman primates such as chimpanzees, but language is generally considered to be a human ability that is very important in consciousness. Consciousness and species The deﬁnition of consciousness continues to be debated, but it has not fundamentally changed since Wundt. The level of consciousness within animals has not yet been established, and this has led to the formation of special Codes of Ethics for animal experiments, intensive farming, and blood sports such as fox hunting and bull ﬁghting. Of particular concern is whether animals experience discomfort, fear, and pain in ways that resemble the form in which we feel them ourselves. The fundamental question of which animals have self-awareness or consciousness remains unanswered, although few psychologists today would assume, as Wundt did, that it applies even to the microscopic protozoa. ■ In the course of normal speaking… the will is continuously directed to bringing the course of ideas and the articulatory movements into harmony with each other. Wilhelm Wundt WE KNOW THE MEANING OF “CONSCIOUSNESS” SO LONG AS NO ONE ASKS US TO DEFINE IT WILLIAM JAMES (1842–1910) 40 IN CONTEXT APPROACH Analysis of consciousness BEFORE 1641 René Descartes deﬁnes consciousness of self in terms of the ability to think. 1690 English philosopher and physician John Locke deﬁnes consciousness as “the perception of what passes in a man’s own mind.” 1781 German philosopher Immanuel Kant states that simultaneous events are experienced as a “unity of consciousness.” AFTER 1923 Max Wertheimer in Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms shows how the mind actively interprets images. 1925 John B. Watson dismisses consciousness as “neither a deﬁnite nor a usable concept.” WILLIAM JAMES naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness….” James’s famous description of the “stream... of consciousness” is one that almost everyone can identify with, because we all experience it. Yet, at the same time, James points out that it is very hard to actually deﬁne: “When I say every thought is part of a personal consciousness, ‘personal consciousness’ is one of the terms in question… to give an accurate account of it is the most difﬁcult of philosophic tasks.” T he term “consciousness” is generally used to refer to an individual’s awareness of his or her own thoughts, including sensations, feelings, and memories. We usually take this awareness for granted, except when we are having difﬁculties—such as trying to do something when we are very tired. But if you focus your thoughts on your consciousness, you soon become aware that your conscious experiences are constantly changing. While reading this book, for example, you may be reminded of past experiences or present discomforts that interrupt your concentration; plans for the future may spontaneously spring to mind. Thinking about your conscious experiences makes you realize just how much your thoughts are changing, and yet they seem to come together, merging and carrying on smoothly as a whole. American psychologist William James compared these everyday experiences of consciousness to a stream that continuously ﬂows, despite the odd interruption and change of direction. He declared: “A ‘river’ or a ‘stream’ are the metaphors by which it is most William James William James was born in 1842 to a wealthy and inﬂuential New York family, and traveled widely as a child, attending schools in both Europe and the US. James showed early artistic ability and initially pursued a career as a painter, but his growing interest in science eventually led to him to enrol at Harvard University in 1861. By 1864, he had moved to Harvard Medical School, although his studies were interrupted by bouts of physical illness and depression. He ﬁnally qualiﬁed as a physician in 1869, but never practiced medicine. In 1873, James returned to Harvard, where he became a professor of both philosophy and psychology. He set up the ﬁrst experimental psychology courses in the US, playing a key role in establishing psychology as a truly scientiﬁc discipline. He retired in 1907, and died peacefully at his home in New Hampshire in 1910. Key works 1890 The Principles of Psychology 1892 Psychology 1897 The Will to Believe Consciousness… does not appear to itself chopped up in bits… It is nothing jointed; it ﬂows. William James 41 This “most difﬁcult of philosophic tasks” has a long history. The ancient Greeks discussed the mind, but did not use the term “consciousness” or any equivalent. However, there was debate as to whether something separate from the body exists at all. In the fourth century BCE, Plato made a distinction between the soul and body, but Aristotle argued that even if there is a distinction, the two cannot be separated. Early deﬁnitions René Descartes, in the mid-17th century, was one of the ﬁrst philosophers to attempt to describe consciousness, proposing that it resides in an immaterial domain he called “the realm of thought,” in contrast to the physical domain of material things, which he called “the realm of extension.” However, the ﬁrst person accredited with the modern concept of consciousness as an ongoing passage of individual perceptions is the 17th-century English philosopher John Locke. James was drawn to Locke’s idea of passing perceptions and also to the work of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant was impressed by the way our experiences come together, noting that if we hear a noise and feel pain at the same time, we typically experience these as one event. He called this the “unity of consciousness,” a concept that inﬂuenced many later philosophers, including William James. James felt the most important point about consciousness is that it is not a “thing” but a process—it is what the brain does to “steer a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself.” It allows us to ❯❯ See also: René Descartes 20–21 ■ Wilhelm Wundt 32–37 ■ John B. Watson 66–71 ■ Sigmund Freud 92–99 ■ Fritz Perls 112–17 ■ Wolfgang Köhler 160–61 ■ Max Wertheimer 335 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS Consciousness seems to be a stream of thoughts. These pulses jolt us from one conclusion (or “resting place”) to another... …and yet somehow they combine to give us a sense of uniﬁed consciousness. This is because thoughts that enter our awareness at the same time form a “pulse” within the stream of consciousness. We know the meaning of “consciousness” so long as no one asks us to deﬁne it. ...but continue to stream onward. These thoughts are entirely separate from each other… Our consciousness is constantly evolving. Each thought follows one after another… 42 WILLIAM JAMES words, take twelve men, and to each give one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence.” If consciousness is a stream of distinct thoughts, James struggled to see how these combine. As he said, “The idea of a plus the idea of b is not identical with the idea of (a + b).” Two thoughts added together cannot be made into one idea. They are more likely to form an entirely new idea. For example, if thought a is “it’s nine o’clock,” and thought b is “the train leaves at 9:02,” thought c—“I’m going to miss my train!”—might follow. Combining thoughts James concluded that the simplest way to understand how thoughts within the stream of consciousness might combine to make sense is to suppose “that things that are known together are known in single pulses of that stream.” Some reﬂect upon the past, present, and future, to plan and adapt to circumstances and so fulﬁll what he believed was the prime purpose of consciousness—to stay alive. But James found it hard to imagine the structure of a uniﬁed consciousness. He likened it to a group of 12 men: “Take a dozen thoughts, or sensations, he believed, are unavoidably connected, like Kant’s example of hearing a noise and feeling pain at precisely the same time, because any thoughts that enter our awareness during the same moment of time combine to form a pulse, or current, within the stream. We may have many of these currents ﬂowing through our consciousness, some fast and some slow. James stated that there are even resting points, where we pause to form pictures in our minds, which can be held and contemplated at length. He called the resting places “substantive parts,” and the moving currents the “transitive parts,” claiming that our thinking is constantly being dislodged from one substantive part toward another, propelled by the transitive parts, or current. We are, therefore, effectively “bumped” from one conclusion to another by the constant stream of thoughts, whose purpose is to pull us ever forward in this way. There is no The 12-word sentence problem was used by James to illustrate his difﬁculty in grasping how a uniﬁed consciousness stems from separate thoughts. If each man is aware of just one word, how can there be a consciousness of the whole sentence? I can only think of one word but not the whole sentence No-one ever had a simple sensation by itself: consciousness… is of a teeming multiplicity of objects and relations. William James 43 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS ﬁnal conclusion; consciousness is not a thing but a process, which is constantly evolving. James also drew attention to the personal nature of consciousness, stating that thoughts do not exist independently of a thinker—they are your thoughts or mine. Each one is “owned” by someone, and never “comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own.” And it is these thoughts “connected as we feel them to be connected” that form the self. As thoughts cannot be divided from the self, James said that investigating this self should be the starting point of psychology. Experimental psychologists did not agree, because “the self” cannot be offered up for experimentation, but James thought it was enough to work with our understanding of a self that does certain things and feels in certain ways. He called this the “empirical self,” which manifests itself through its behavior, and suggested that it consists of several parts—the material self, spiritual self, and social self—each of which can be studied through introspection. Theory of emotion In the early stages of his research into consciousness, James realized that the emotions play an important role in our daily lives, and went on to develop, with his colleague Carl Lange, a theory about how they relate to our actions and behavior. What was to become known as the James–Lange Theory of Emotion states that emotions arise from your conscious mind’s perception of your physiological condition. To illustrate this theory, James used the example of seeing a bear, then running away. It is not the case that you see the bear, feel afraid, and then run away because of the fear. What is really happening is that you see the bear and run away, and the conscious feeling of fear is caused by the action of running. This contradicts what most people might think, but James’s view was that the mind’s perception of the physical effects of running—rapid breathing, increased heartbeat, and perspiring heavily— is translated into the emotion of fear. Another example, according to his theory, would be that you feel happy because you are conscious that you are smiling; it is not that you feel happy ﬁrst, and then smile. Pragmatism Related to James’s theories about consciousness is his approach to the way we believe things to be true or not. He stated that “truths emerge from facts... but... the ‘facts’ themselves are not true; they simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.” ❯❯ Dots of pure color make up this work by the French Post-Impressionist painter Georges Seurat. Yet our brain combines these separate elements so that what we see is a human ﬁgure. 44 WILLIAM JAMES James deﬁned “true beliefs” as those that the believer ﬁnds useful. This emphasis on the usefulness of beliefs lies at the heart of the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, which was central to James’s thinking. In the course of our lives, James claimed that we are continually testing “truths” against each other, and our conscious beliefs keep changing, as “old truths” are modiﬁed, and sometimes replaced by “new truths.” This theory is particularly relevant to the way that all scientiﬁc research, including psychology, progresses. James cited the discovery of the radioactive element radium by Pierre and Marie Curie in 1902 as an example. In the course of their investigations, the Curies found that radium appeared to give off unlimited amounts of energy, which “seemed for a moment to contradict our ideas of the whole order of nature.” However, after conscious consideration of this revelation, they concluded that “although it extends our old ideas of energy, it causes a minimum of alteration in their nature.” In this instance, the Curies’ scientiﬁc knowledge had been questioned and modiﬁed, but its core truths remained intact. Further studies The period following James’s death saw the rise of the behaviorist movement, and a decline of interest in consciousness. Consequently, little theorizing on the subject happened from around the start of the 1920s up until the 1950s. One important exception was the German-based Gestalt movement, which emphasized that the brain operates in a holistic way, taking account of whole conscious experiences, rather than separate events—just as when we look at a picture, we see not just separate dots, lines, and shapes, but a meaningful whole. This concept is behind the now famous Gestalt phrase: “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Since the 1980s, however, psychologists and neuroscientists have developed a new ﬁeld of research called “consciousness studies,” focusing on two main areas of interest: the content of consciousness, as reported by people who are considered to be normal and healthy; and the consciousness of people whose state of awareness has been impaired in some way. The latter group includes cases, such as when the subject is in a “persistent vegetative state” (PVS)—in which patients in a coma are awake and breathing independently, but have apparently lost all higher brain functions. The goal with both paths of research is to try to ﬁnd ways of Pierre and Marie Curie’s research, like most scientiﬁc work, modiﬁed, rather than totally contradicted, earlier theories. New “truths,” James claimed, constantly modify our basic beliefs in a similar way. assessing consciousness as objectively as possible, and to understand its underlying mechanisms—both physical and psychological. Modern neuroscience has demonstrated that there are mechanisms of consciousness. By the closing years of the 20th century, the British molecular biologist and biophysicist Francis Crick was claiming that consciousness is related to a speciﬁc part of the brain—the prefrontal cortex area, which is involved in thought processes such as planning, problem-solving, and the control of behavior. Research carried out by the Colombian neuroscientist Rodolfo Linas links consciousness to the activities of the thalamus in conjunction with the cerebral cortex. The thalamus, a structure embedded deep in the center of the brain, is responsible for regulating vibrations inside the brain at certain frequencies; if these regular rhythms are disrupted—by an infection or genetic causes—then an individual may experience neurological disorders, such as epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease, as well as psychological conditions, such as depression. There is but one indefectibly certain truth… the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists. William James 45 PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS MRI scans of the brain have helped to identify structures such as the thalamus, seen in the center of this scan, that appear to have links to consciousness. But when it comes to deﬁnitions of consciousness, modern attempts still remain vague and difﬁcult to apply. For example, the American neuroscientist Antonio Damasio calls consciousness “the feeling of what happens,” and deﬁnes it as “an organism’s awareness of its own self and its surroundings.” As William James suggested, more than 100 years earlier, consciousness is hard to deﬁne. Lasting legacy An edited version of James’s 1890 book, The Principles of Psychology, is still in print, and his ideas have been a major inﬂuence on many psychologists, as well as other scientists and thinkers. The application of his pragmatic philosophy to facts—concentrating not on what is “true” but on what it is “useful to believe”—has helped psychology move on from the question of whether the mind and body are separate or not to a more useful study of mental processes, such as attention, memory, reasoning, imagination, and intention. James claimed his approach helped to move philosophers and psychologists “away from abstraction, ﬁxed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins, towards facts, action, and power.” His insistence on focusing on the wholeness of events, including the effects of different environments on our actions—in contrast to the introspective, structuralist approach of breaking down our experiences into small details—has also shaped our understanding of behavior. Before James started teaching the subject at Harvard in 1875, there were no independent psychology courses available in any American university. But within 20 years, around 24 colleges and universities in the US had recognized psychology as a distinct academic discipline, and were offering degrees in the subject. Three specialist psychology journals were also founded in that time, and a professional organization— the American Psychological Association—was formed. James introduced experimental psychology to America, despite claiming to “hate experimental work.” He did so because he had come to realize that it was the best way to prove or disprove a theory. But he continued to value the use of introspection as a tool of discovery, especially of mental processes. The shift in the perception of psychology and its concerns from being considered, “a nasty little subject” (in James’s words) into a vastly beneﬁcial discipline owes much to his work. In 1977, in a speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of the formation of the American Psychological Association, David Krech, then Professor Emeritus in psychology at the University of California at Berkeley, referred to James as the “father of psychology.” ■ All these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream. William James 46 IN CONTEXT APPROACH Human development BEFORE 1905 Sigmund Freud, in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, claims the teenage years are the “genital stage.” AFTER 1928 American anthropologist Margaret Mead, in Coming of Age in Samoa, declares that adolescence is only recognized as a distinct stage of human development in Western society. 1950 Erik Erikson, in Childhood and Society, describes adolescence as the stage of “Identity vs. Role Confusion,” coining the term “identity crisis.” 1983 In Margaret Mead and Samoa, New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman disputes Mead’s claim that adolescence is merely a socially constructed concept. ADOLESCENCE IS A NEW BIRTH G. STANLEY HALL (1844–1924) Human development is determined by nature: it is a repetition of our “ancestral record.” A child has animallike dispositions and goes through several growth	872,905
The Religions Book Big Ideas Simply Explained (DK Big Ideas) (DK) (Z-Library).pdf	RELIGIONS BOOK THE RELIGIONS BOOK THE LONDON, NEW YORK, MELBOURNE, MUNICH, AND DELHI DK LONDON SENIOR EDITORS Gareth Jones, Georgina Palffy PROJECT ART EDITOR Katie Cavanagh US SENIOR EDITOR Rebecca Warren US EDITOR Kate Johnsen JACKET DESIGNER Laura Brim JACKET EDITOR Manisha Majithia JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia MTT MANAGING ART EDITOR Lee Grifﬁths MANAGING EDITOR Stephanie Farrow ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham PRODUCTION EDITOR Lucy Sims PRODUCTION CONTROLLER Mandy Inness original styling by STUDIO8 DESIGN produced for DK by COBALT ID ART EDITORS Darren Bland, Paul Reid EDITORS Louise Abbott, Diana Loxley, Alison Sturgeon, Sarah Tomley, Marek Walisiewicz DK DELHI MANAGING EDITOR Pakshalika Jayaprakash SENIOR EDITOR Monica Saigal EDITOR Tanya Desai MANAGING ART EDITOR Arunesh Talapatra SENIOR ART EDITOR Anis Sayyed ART EDITOR Neha Wahi ASSISTANT ART EDITORS Astha Singh, Namita Bansal, Gazal Roongta, Ankita Mukherjee PICTURE RESEARCHER Surya Sankash Sarangi DTP MANAGER/CTS Balwant Singh DTP DESIGNERS Bimlesh Tiwary, Rajesh Singh First American Edition, 2013 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 375 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001 - 192329 - Aug/2013 Copyright © 2013 Dorling Kindersley Limited All rights reserved Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-4654-0843-3 Printed and bound in Hong Kong by Hung Hing Discover more at www.dk.com SHULAMIT AMBALU Rabbi Shulamit Ambalu MA studied at Leo Baeck College, London, where she was ordained in 2004 and now lectures in Pastoral Care and Rabbinic Literature. MICHAEL COOGAN One of the leading biblical scholars in the United States, Michael Coogan is Director of Publications for the Harvard Semitic Museum and Lecturer on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible at Harvard Divinity School. Among his many works are The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction and The Illustrated Guide to World Religions. EVE LEVAVI FEINSTEIN Dr. Eve Levavi Feinstein is a writer, editor, and tutor in Palo Alto, California. She holds a PhD on the Hebrew Bible from Harvard University, and is the author of Sexual Pollution in the Hebrew Bible as well as articles for Jewish Ideas Daily and other publications. PAUL FREEDMAN Rabbi Paul Freedman studied Physics at Bristol University and Education at Cambridge. Following a career in teaching, he gained rabbinic ordination and an MA in Hebrew and Jewish studies at Leo Baeck College, London. NEIL PHILIP Neil Philip is the author of numerous books on mythology and folklore, including the Dorling Kindersley Companion Guide to Mythology (with Philip Wilkinson), The Great Mystery: Myths of Native America, and the Penguin Book of English Folktales. Dr. Philip studied at the universities of Oxford and London, and is currently an independent writer and scholar. ANDREW STOBART The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stobart is a Methodist minister. He studied Christian theology to the doctoral level at the London School of Theology and Durham and Aberdeen universities, and has taught and written in the areas of theology, church history, and the Bible, contributing to Dorling Kindersley’s The Illustrated Bible. MEL THOMPSON Dr. Mel Thompson BD, M.Phil, PhD, AKC was formerly a teacher, lecturer, and examiner in Religious Studies, and now writes on philosophy, religion, and ethics. Author of more than 30 books, including Understand Eastern Philosophy, he blogs on issues of religious belief, and runs the “Philosophy and Ethics” website at www.philosophyandethics.com. CHARLES TIESZEN Dr. Charles Tieszen completed his doctorate at the University of Birmingham, where he focused on medieval encounters between Muslims and Christians. He is currently a researcher and adjunct professor of Islamic studies, specializing in topics related to Islam, Christian–Muslim relations, and religious freedom. MARCUS WEEKS A writer and musician, Marcus Weeks studied philosophy and worked as a teacher before embarking on a career as an author. He has contributed to many books on the arts, popular sciences, and ideas, including the Dorling Kindersley title The Philosophy Book. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION PRIMAL BELIEFS FROM PREHISTORY 20 Unseen forces are at work Making sense of the world 24 Even a rock has a spirit Animism in early societies 26 Special people can visit other worlds The power of the shaman 32 Why are we here? Created for a purpose 33 Why do we die? The origin of death 34 Eternity is now The Dreaming 60 The triumph of good over evil depends on humankind The battle between good and evil 66 Accept the way of the universe Aligning the self with the dao 68 The Five Great Vows Self-denial leads to spiritual liberation 72 Virtue is not sent from heaven Wisdom lies with the superior man 78 A divine child is born The assimilation of myth 79 The oracles reveal the will of the gods Divining the future 80 The gods are just like us Beliefs that mirror society 82 Ritual links us to our past Living the Way of the Gods 86 The gods will die The end of the world as we know it 36 Our ancestors will guide us The spirits of the dead live on 38 We should be good Living in harmony 39 Everything is connected A lifelong bond with the gods 40 The gods desire blood Sacriﬁce and blood offerings 46 We can build a sacred space Symbolism made real 48 We are in rhythm with the universe Man and the cosmos 50 We exist to serve the gods The burden of observance 51 Our rituals sustain the world Renewing life through ritual ANCIENT AND CLASSICAL BELIEFS FROM 3000 BCE 56 There is a hierarchy of gods and men Beliefs for new societies 58 The good live forever in the kingdom of Osiris Preparing for the afterlife CONTENTS HINDUISM FROM 1700 BCE 92 Through sacriﬁce we maintain the order of the universe A rational world 100 The divine has a female aspect The power of the great goddess 101 Sit up close to your guru Higher levels of teaching 102 Brahman is my self within the heart The ultimate reality 106 We learn, we live, we withdraw, we detach The four stages of life 110 It may be your duty to kill Selﬂess action 112 The practice of yoga leads to spiritual liberation Physical and mental discipline 114 We speak to the gods through daily rituals Devotion through puja 116 The world is an illusion Seeing with pure consciousness 122 So many faiths, so many paths God-consciousness 124 Nonviolence is the weapon of the strong Hinduism in the political age BUDDHISM FROM 6TH CENTURY BCE 130 Finding the Middle Way The enlightenment of Buddha 136 There can be an end to suffering Escape from the eternal cycle 144 Test Buddha’s words as one would the quality of gold The personal quest for truth 145 Religious discipline is necessary The purpose of monastic vows 146 Renounce killing and good will follow Let kindness and compassion rule 148 We cannot say what a person is The self as constantly changing 152 Enlightenment has many faces Buddhas and bodhisattvas 158 Act out your beliefs The performance of ritual and repetition 160 Discover your Buddha nature Zen insights that go beyond words JUDAISM FROM 2000 BCE 168 I will take you as my people, and I will be your God God’s covenant with Israel 176 Beside me there is no other God From monolatry to monotheism 178 The Messiah will redeem Israel The promise of a new age 182 Religious law can be applied to daily life Writing the Oral Law 184 God is incorporeal, indivisible, and unique Deﬁning the indeﬁnable 186 God and humankind are in cosmic exile Mysticism and the kabbalah 188 The holy spark dwells in everyone Man as a manifestation of God 189 Judaism is a religion, not a nationality Faith and the state 190 Draw from the past, live in the present, work for the future Progressive Judaism 196 If you will it, it is no dream The origins of modern political Zionism 198 Where was God during the Holocaust? A challenge to the covenant 199 Women can be rabbis Gender and the covenant CHRISTIANITY FROM 1ST CENTURY CE 204 Jesus is the beginning of the end Jesus’s message to the world 208 God has sent us his Son Jesus’s divine identity 209 The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church Dying for the message 210 The body may die but the soul will live on Immortality in Christianity 212 God is three and God is one A divine trinity 220 God’s grace never fails Augustine and free will 222 In the world, but not of the world Serving God on behalf of others 224 There is no salvation outside the Church Entering into the faith 228 This is my body, this is my blood The mystery of the Eucharist 230 God’s word needs no go-betweens The Protestant Reformation 238 God is hidden in the heart Mystical experience in Christianity 239 The body needs saving as well as the soul Social holiness and evangelicalism 240 Scientiﬁc advances do not disprove the Bible The challenge of modernity 246 We can inﬂuence God Why prayer works ISLAM FROM 610 CE 252 Muhammad is God’s ﬁnal messenger The Prophet and the origins of Islam 254 The Qur’an was sent down from heaven God reveals his word and his will 262 The Five Pillars of Islam The central professions of faith 270 The imam is God’s chosen leader The emergence of Shi‘a Islam 272 God guides us with shari‘a The pathway to harmonious living 276 We can think about God, but we cannot comprehend him Theological speculation in Islam 278 Jihad is our religious duty Striving in the way of God 279 The world is one stage of the journey to God The ultimate reward for the righteous 280 God is unequaled The unity of divinity is necessary 282 Arab, water pot, and angels are all ourselves Suﬁsm and the mystic tradition 284 The latter days have brought forth a new prophet The origins of Ahmadiyya 286 Islam must shed the inﬂuence of the West The rise of Islamic revivalism 291 Islam can be a modern religion The compatibility of faith MODERN RELIGIONS FROM 15TH CENTURY 296 We must live as saint-soldiers The Sikh code of conduct 302 All may enter our gateway to God Class systems and faith 304 Messages to and from home The African roots of Santeria 306 Ask yourself: “What would Jesus do?” Following the example of Christ 308 We shall know him through his messengers The revelation of Baha’i 310 Brush away the dust of sin Tenrikyo and the Joyous Life 311 These gifts must be meant for us Cargo cults of the Paciﬁc islands 312 The end of the world is nigh Awaiting the Day of Judgment 314 The lion of Judah has arisen Ras Tafari is our savior 316 All religions are equal Cao Ðài aims to unify all faiths 317 We have forgotten our true nature Clearing the mind with Scientology 318 Find a sinless world through marriage Purging sin in the Uniﬁcation Church 319 Spirits rest between lives in Summerland Wicca and the Otherworld 320 Negative thoughts are just raindrops in an ocean of bliss Finding inner peace through meditation 321 What’s true for me is the truth A faith open to all beliefs 322 Chanting Hare Krishna cleanses the heart Devotion to the Sweet Lord 323 Through qigong we access cosmic energy Life-energy cultivation in Falun Dafa 324 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION 12 T here is no simple deﬁnition of the concept of religion that fully articulates all its dimensions. Encompassing spiritual, personal, and social elements, this phenomenon is however, ubiquitous, appearing in every culture from prehistory to the modern day—as evidenced in the cave paintings and elaborate burial customs of our distant ancestors and the continuing quest for a spiritual goal to life. For Palaeolithic people—and indeed for much of human history —religion provided a way of understanding and inﬂuencing powerful natural phenomena. Weather and the seasons, creation, life, death and the afterlife, and the structure of the cosmos were all subject to religious explanations that invoked controlling gods, or a realm outside the visible inhabited by deities and mythical creatures. Religion provided a means to communicate with these gods, through ritual and prayer, and these practices—when shared by members of a community—helped to cement social groups, enforce hierarchies, and provide a deep sense of collective identity. As societies became more complex, their belief systems grew with them and religion was increasingly deployed as a political tool. Military conquests were often followed by the assimilation of the pantheon of the defeated people by the victors; and kingdoms and empires were often supported by their deities and priestly classes. A personal god Religion met many of the needs of early people and provided templates by which they could organize their lives—through rites, rituals, and taboos. It also gave them a means by which they could visualize their place in the cosmos. Could religion therefore be explained as a purely social artifact? Many would argue that it is much more. Over the centuries, people have deﬁed opposition to their faiths, suffering persecution or death to defend their right to worship their God or gods. And even today, when the world is arguably more materialistic than ever before, more than three- quarters of its population consider themselves to hold some form of religious belief. Religion would seem to be a necessary part of human existence, as important to life as the ability to use language. Whether it is a matter of intense personal experience—an inner awareness of the divine—or a way of ﬁnding signiﬁcance and meaning, and providing a starting point for all of life’s endeavors, it appears to be fundamental at a personal as well as a social level. Beginnings We know about the religions of the earliest societies from the relics they left behind and from the stories of later civilizations. In addition, isolated tribes in remote places, such as the Amazonian forest in South America, the Indonesian islands, and parts of Africa, still practice religions that are thought to have remained largely unchanged for millennia. These primal religions often feature a belief in a unity between nature and the spirit, linking people inextricably with the environment. INTRODUCTION All men have need of the gods. Homer 13 As the early religions evolved, their ceremonies and cosmologies became increasingly sophisticated. Primal religions of the nomadic and seminomadic peoples of prehistory gave way to the religions of the ancient and, in turn, of the classical civilizations. Their beliefs are now often dismissed as mythology, but many elements of these ancient narrative traditions persist in today’s faiths. Religions continued to adapt, old beliefs were absorbed into the religions of the society that succeeded them, and new faiths emerged with different observances and rituals. Ancient to modern It is hard to pinpoint the time when many religions began, not least because their roots lie in prehistory and the sources that describe their origins may date from a much later time. However, it is thought that the oldest surviving religion today is Hinduism, which has its roots in the folk religions of the Indian subcontinent, brought together in the writing of the Vedas as early as the 13th century BCE. From this Vedic tradition came not only the pluralistic religion we now know as Hinduism, but also Jainism, Buddhism, and, later, Sikhism, which emerged in the 15th century. Other belief systems were developing in the east. From the 17th century BCE, the Chinese dynasties established their nation states and empires. There emerged traditional folk religions and ancestor worship that were later incorporated into the more philosophical belief systems of Daoism and Confucianism. In the eastern Mediterranean, ancient Egyptian and Babylonian religions were still being practiced when the emerging city-states of Greece and Rome developed their own mythologies and pantheons of gods. Further east, Zoroastrianism—the ﬁrst major known monotheistic religion—had already been established in Persia, and Judaism had emerged as the ﬁrst of the Abrahamic religions, followed by Christianity and Islam. Many religions recognized the particular signiﬁcance of one or more individuals as founders of the faith: they may have been embodiments of god, such as Jesus or Krishna, or recipients of special divine revelation, such as Moses and Muhammad. The religions of the modern world continued to evolve with advances in society, sometimes reluctantly, and often by dividing into branches. Some apparently new religions began to appear, especially in the 19th and 20th centuries, but these invariably bore the traces of the faiths that had come before. Elements of religion Human history has seen the rise and fall of countless religions, each with its own distinct beliefs, rituals, and mythology. Although some are similar and considered to be branches of a larger tradition, there are many contrasting and contradictory belief systems. Some religions, for example, have a number of gods, while others, especially the more modern major faiths, are monotheistic; INTRODUCTION There is no use disguising the fact, our religious needs are the deepest. There is no peace until they are satisﬁed and contented. Isaac Hecker, Roman Catholic priest 14 and there are major differences of opinion between religions on such matters as the afterlife. We can, however, identify certain elements common to almost all religions in order to examine the similarities and differences between them. These aspects—the ways in which the beliefs and practices of a religion are manifested—are what the British writer and philosopher of religion Ninian Smart called the “dimensions of religion.” Perhaps the most obvious elements we can use to identify and compare religions are the observances of a faith. These includes such activities as prayer, pilgrimage, meditation, feasting and fasting, dress, and of course ceremonies and rituals. Also evident are the physical aspects of a religion: the artifacts, relics, places of worship, and holy places. Less apparent is the subjective element of the religion—its mystical and emotional aspects, and how a believer experiences the religion in achieving ecstasy, enlightenment, or inner peace, for example, or establishing a personal relationship with the divine. Another aspect of most religions is the mythology, or narrative, that accompanies it. This can be a simple oral tradition of stories, or a more sophisticated set of scriptures, but often includes a creation story and a history of the gods, saints, or prophets, with parables that illustrate and reinforce the beliefs of the religion. Every existing faith has a collection of sacred texts that articulates its central ideals and narrates the history of the tradition. These texts, which in many cases are considered to be have been passed directly from the deity, are used in worship and education. In many religions, alongside this narrative, is a more sophisticated and systematic element, which explains the philosophy and doctrine of the religion, and lays out its distinctive theology. Some of these ancillary texts have themselves acquired canonical status. There is also often an ethical element, with rules of conduct and taboos, and a social element that deﬁnes the institutions of the religion and of the society it is associated with. Such rules are typically concise— the Ten Commandments of Judaism and Christianity, or the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism, for example. Religion and morality The idea of good and evil is also fundamental to many faiths, and religion often has a function of offering moral guidance to society. The major religions differ in their deﬁnitions of what constitutes a good life—and the line between moral philosophy and religion is far from clear in belief systems such as Confucianism and Buddhism— but certain basic moral codes have emerged that are almost universal. Religious taboos, commandments and so on not only ensure that the will of the God or gods is obeyed, but also form a framework for society and its laws to enable people to live peaceably together. The spiritual leadership that in many religions was given by prophets with divine guidance was passed on to a priesthood. This became an INTRODUCTION What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. George Santayana, Spanish philosopher 15 essential part of many communities, and in some religions has wielded considerable political power. Death and the afterlife Most religions address the central human concern of death with the promise of some kind of continued existence, or afterlife. In eastern traditions, such as Hinduism, the soul is believed to be reincarnated after death in a new physical form, while other faiths hold that the soul is judged after death and resides in a nonphysical heaven or hell. The goal of achieving freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth, or achieving immortality encourages believers to follow the rules of their faith. Conﬂict and history Just as religions have created cohesion within societies, they have often been the source—or the banner—of conﬂict between them. Although all the major traditions hold peace as an essential virtue, they may also make provision for the use of force in certain circumstances, for example, to defend their faith or to extend their reach. Religion has provided an excuse for hostility between powers throughout history. While tolerance is also considered a virtue, heretics and inﬁdels have often been persecuted for their beliefs, and religion has been the pretext for attempted genocides such as the Holocaust. Challenges to faith Faced with the negative aspects of religious belief and equipped with the tools of humanist philosophy and science, a number of thinkers have questioned the very validity of religion. There were, they argued, logical and consistent cosmologies based on reason rather than faith— in effect, religions had become irrelevant in the modern world. New philosophies, such as Marxism-Leninism considered religions to be a negative force on human development, and as a result there arose communist states that were explicitly atheistic and antireligious. New directions Responding to societal change and scientiﬁc advances, some of the older religions have adapted or divided into several branches. Others have steadfastly rejected what they see as a heretical progress in an increasingly rational, materialistic, and godless world; fundamentalist movements in Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have gained many followers who reject the liberal values of the modern world. At the same time, many people recognize a lack of spirituality in modern society, and have turned to charismatic denominations of the major religions, or to the many new religious movements that have appeared in the past 200 years. Others, inﬂuenced by the New Age movement of the late 20th century, have rediscovered ancient beliefs, or sought the exoticism of traditional religions with no connection to the modern world. Nevertheless, the major religions of the world continue to grow and even today very few countries in the world can be seen as truly secular societies. INTRODUCTION All religions, arts, and sciences are branches of the same tree. Albert Einstein PRIMAL BELIEFS FROM PREHISTORY 18 O ur early hunter-gatherer ancestors considered the natural world to have a supernatural quality. For some, this was expressed in a belief that animals, plants, objects, and forces of nature possess a spirit, in the same way that people do. In this animistic view of the world, humans are seen as a part of nature, not separate from it, and to live in harmony with it, must show respect to the spirits. Many early peoples sought to explain the world in terms of deities associated with particular natural phenomena. The rising of the sun each day, for example, might be seen as a release from the darkness of the night, controlled by a sun god; similarly, natural cycles such as the phases of the moon and the seasons—vital to these people’s way of life—were assigned their own deities. As well as creating a cosmology to account for the workings of the universe, most cultures also incorporated some form of creation story into their belief system. Often this was in the form of an analogy with human reproduction, in which a mother goddess gave birth to the world, which was in some cases fathered by another god. Sometimes these parental deities were personiﬁed as animals, or natural feature, such as rivers or the sea, or in the form of mother earth and father sky. Rites and rituals The belief systems of most primal religions incorporated some form of afterlife, one that was typically related to the existence of a realm separate from the physical world —a place of gods and mythical creatures—to which the spirits INTRODUCTION For the Dogon people, every thing contains the universe in microcosm. The Aztecs and Mayans offered human sacriﬁces to satisfy their gods’ desire for blood. Rituals to renew life and sustain the world were a central part of the religion of the Hupa. By building miniature versions of the cosmos, the Pawnee created sacred places. Through their bond with the gods, the Warao believe that everything is connected. The Quechua and Aymara believed the spirits of their dead ancestors lived on to guide them. Primal religions—so-called because they came ﬁrst—were practiced by people throughout the world and are key to the development of all modern religions. Some are still active today. 19 of the dead would travel. In some religions, it was thought possible to communicate with this other realm and contact the ancestral spirits for guidance. A particular class of holy person—the shaman or medicine man—was able to journey there and derive mystical healing powers from contact with, and sometimes possession by, the spirits. Early peoples also marked life’s rites of passage; these, along with the changing of the seasons, developed into rituals associated with the spirits and the deities. The idea of pleasing the gods to ensure good fortune in hunting or farming inspired rituals of worship, and, in some cultures, sacriﬁces to offer life to the gods in return for the life they had given to humans. Symbolism also played a key role in the religious practices of early cultures. Masks, charms, idols, and amulets were used in ceremonies, and spirits were believed to occupy them. Certain areas were thought to have religious signiﬁcance, and some communities set aside holy places and sacred burial grounds, while others made buildings or villages in the image of the cosmos. A few of these primal religions survive to the present day among dwindling numbers of tribespeople around the world untouched by Western civilization. Some attempts have been made to revive them by indigenous peoples who are trying to reestablish lost cultures. Although their belief systems may seem at ﬁrst glance to be primitive to modern eyes, traces of them can still be seen in the major religions that have evolved in the modern world, or in the New Age search for spirituality. ■ PRIMAL BELIEFS The natural and supernatural worlds are intertwined in the religion of the San bushmen. In the Dreaming, Aboriginal Australians see the creation as ever-present. In the ritual Work of the Gods, the Tikopians fulﬁlled their obligation to serve the gods. The Chewong believe that our purpose is to lead good lives and live in harmony. The Maori and Polynesian people explain the origin of death. The Sami people believed their shamans had the power to visit other worlds. According to the Baiga, the gods created us to act as guardians of the earth. For the Ainu, everything, even a rock, has a spirit. 20 UNSEEN FORCES ARE AT WORK MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD T he question of why human beings ﬁrst develop the idea of a world beyond the visible one in which we live is complex. Motivated by an urge to make sense of the world around them—particularly the dangers and misfortunes they faced, and how the necessities of life were provided—people in early societies sought explanations in a realm that was invisible to them, but had an inﬂuence over their lives. The idea of a spirit world is also associated with notions of sleep and death, and the interface between these and consciousness, which can be likened to the natural phenomenon of night and day. IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS /Xam San WHEN AND WHERE From prehistory, sub-Saharan Africa AFTER 44,000 BCE Tools almost identical to those used by modern San are abandoned in a cave in KwaZulu–Natal. 19th century German linguist Wilhelm Bleek sets down many of the ancestral stories of the San. 20th century Government- sponsored programs are set up to encourage San peoples to switch from hunter- gathering to settled farming. 1994 San leader and healer Dawid Kruiper takes the growing campaign for San rights and land claims to the United Nations. 21 See also: Animism in early societies 24–25 ■ The power of the shaman 26–31 ■ Created for a purpose 32 ■ Living the Way of the Gods 82–85 ■ A rational world 92–99 In this twilight zone between sleep and waking, life and death, light and dark, lie the dreams, hallucinations, and states of altered consciousness that suggest that the visible, tangible world is not the only one, and that another, supernatural world also exists— and has a connection with our own. It is easy to imagine how the inhabitants of this other world were thought to inﬂuence not only our own minds and actions, but also to inhabit the bodies of animals and even inanimate objects, and to cause the natural phenomena affecting our lives. A meeting of worlds The ﬁgures of humans, animals, and human-animal hybrids in Palaeolithic cave paintings are often decorated with patterns that are now thought to represent the involuntary back-of-the-retina patterns known as entoptic phenomena—visual effects such as dots, grids, zigzags, and wavy lines, which appear between waking and sleep, or between vision and hallucination. The paintings themselves represent a permeable veil between the physical and the spirit worlds. It is impossible to ask the Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers of Europe about the beliefs and rituals that lie behind their cave paintings, but in the 19th century it was still possible to record the cultural and religious beliefs of the /Xam of southern Africa, a now-extinct clan of San hunter-gatherers who made cave paintings reminiscent of those of the Stone Age, for similar reasons. The spiritual life of the /Xam San offered a living parallel to the religious ideas archaeologists have attributed to early modern humans. Even the clicks of the /Xam San language (represented ❯❯ PRIMAL BELIEFS Unseen forces are at work. Natural phenomena such as the weather and the seasons are out of our control. Our food supply, the plants and animals, is sometimes plentiful, sometimes scarce. There is danger around us that causes sickness and death. Spirits seem to appear to us in the sky, the earth, the animals, or the ﬁre. Since prehistoric times, the San have renewed their rock paintings, transmitting the stories and ideas they depict down the generations. The Storm Bird blows his wind into the chests of man and beast, and without this wind we would not be able to breathe. African fable 22 by marks such as /, indicating a dental click rather like a tut of disapproval), are thought to survive from humankind’s earliest speech. Levels of the cosmos The mythology of all San peoples is modeled closely on their local environment and on the idea that there are both natural and supernatural realms that are deeply intertwined. In their three-tiered world, spirit realms lie both above and below the middle, or natural, world in which humans live; each is accessible to the other, and whatever happens in one directly affects what happens in the other. Humans with special powers could visit the upper or sky realm, and travel underwater and underground in the lower spirit realm. For the /Xam San, the world above was inhabited by the creator and trickster deity /Kaggen (also known as Mantis) and his family. They shared this world with an abundance of game animals, and with the spirits of the dead, including the spirits of the Early Race—a community of hybrid animal-humans, with powers to shape, transform, and create. The /Xam believed that these beings were the ﬁrst to inhabit the earth. Elemental forces In /Xam myth, elements of the natural environment were given supernatural signiﬁcance or personiﬁed as spirits. Supernatural ﬁgures could take the form of the animals they shared their lands with, such as the eland (a type of antelope), the meerkat, and the praying mantis. The creator /Kaggen, who dreamed the world into being, usually took human form but could transform into almost anything, most often a praying mantis or an eland. While he was the protector of game animals, he would sometimes transform himself into one in order to be killed and feed the people. The people of the Early Race were regarded with awe and respect, but not worshipped. Not even /Kaggen the Mantis was prayed to, although a San shaman such as //Kabbo (see box, facing page) might hope to intercede with /Kaggen to ensure a successful hunt. Because /Kaggen is a MAKING SENSE OF THE WORLD Natural phenomena such as eclipses, possibly never before seen by any living member of the San, might be explained through tales passed down in their rich oral tradition. trickster, many of the myths surrounding him and his family are comic rather than reverent; even the key myth of the creation of the ﬁrst eland includes a scene in which an ineffectual /Kaggen is beaten up by a family of meerkats. Important elemental forces and celestial bodies also became characters in stories that explained how they came to be, and why they behave in the way that they do. The children of the Early Race, for example, threw the sleeping sun up into the sky, so that the light that shone from his armpit would illuminate the world. It was a girl from the Early Race who made the stars by throwing the ashes of a ﬁre into the sky of the Milky Way. Rain was not thought of as a natural phenomenon, but as a large animal. A ﬁerce thunderstorm was a rain-bull, and a gentle rain was a rain-cow. Special people who had the power to summon the rain, such as //Kabbo, would make a supernatural journey to a full My mother told me that the girl [of the Early Race] put her hands in the wood ash and threw it into the sky, to become the Milky Way. African fable 23 Ascribing human traits to animals —for example, the inquisitiveness of the meerkat—is a mainstay of early myth, around which stories are woven about how the world came to be as it is. waterhole to summon a rain-cow, and then bring it back through the sky to the place in need of water. There he would kill the rain-cow so that its blood and milk fell down as rain on the earth. Rain was a vital necessity in the arid desert landscape in which the /Xam lived. It was essential to replenish the widely scattered waterholes that they moved between, and which were linked to each other by a complex web of story and myth, known as kukummi and similar to the Dreamings of the Australian Aborigines (pp.34–35). Entering other worlds Many aspects of the natural world described in /Xam stories feature the interaction of the supernatural beings with humans—how they have an interest in this world, and how humans can, in turn, act to inﬂuence and please them. All San peoples believe that the spirit realms are accessible, in altered states of consciousness, to those who have a supernatural potency, known as !gi, imparted to humans and animals by their creator. The trance dance is the key religious ritual in which the San can use this power to access the spirit world, via trance, and launch their essential selves up through the top of their heads and into the spirit world. There, they may plead for the lives of the sick, and return with healing power so that they can drive out the arrows of disease ﬁred by the dead from the other world. The /Xam offered prayers to the moon and stars to give them access to spiritual power, as well as good luck in hunting. When /Xam people entered a state of altered consciousness, it was believed that they were temporarily dead, and that their hearts had become stars. Humans and the stars were so intimately linked that when a person actually died, “the star feels that our heart falls over [and] the star falls down on account of it. For the stars know the time at which we die.” After death, the links in /Xam belief between the worlds of human experience, of spirits, and of natural phenomena become even more apparent. The hair of a deceased person was believed to transform into clouds, which then shelter PRIMAL BELIEFS humans from the heat of the sun. Death was described in elemental terms: the wind that exists inside every human being was said to blow away their footprints when they died, making the transition between the world of the living and the world of the dead a decisive one. If the footprints remained, “it would seem as if we still lived.” ■ Kabbo’s dream-life Much of the information we have about /Xam San beliefs comes from a man named //Kabbo, who in the 1870s was one of several /Xam San released from prison into the custody of Dr. Wilhelm Bleek, who wished to learn their language and study their culture. They had been jailed for crimes such as stealing a sheep to feed their starving families. //Kabbo spoke of his waterholes, between which his family would move in the arid desert of the central Cape Colony, camping some way from the water so as not to frighten off the animals that came to drink the brackish water. Wilhelm Bleek said of him: “This gentle old soul appeared lost in a dream life of his own,” and in fact the name //Kabbo means “dream.” The god /Kaggen was said to have dreamed the world into being, and //Kabbo had a special relationship with him; as a /Kaggen-ka !kwi, a “mantis’s man” he was able to enter a dream state to exercise powers such as rainmaking, healing, and hunting magic. A long time ago, the baboons were little men just like us, but more mischievous and quarrelsome. African fable 24 EVEN A ROCK HAS A SPIRIT ANIMISM IN EARLY SOCIETIES T he word Ainu means “human being,” and refers to the indigenous population of Japan, now living mainly on the island of Hokkaido. The Ainu have close cultural ties with other inhabitants of the north Paciﬁc Rim—Siberian peoples (such as the Chukchi, Koryak, and Yupik) and the Inuit of Canada and Alaska. These peoples share, in particular, an animistic view of the world, in which every being and object that exists has a spirit that can act, speak, and walk by itself. They also believe that the spiritual and physical worlds are separated by only a thin, permeable membrane. The Ainu consider the body to be simply a container for the spirit; after death, the spirit passes out of the mouth and nostrils, and arrives in the next world to be reborn as a kamuy, a word meaning both god and spirit. When the kamuy dies in the next world, it is reborn in this one. It will always reincarnate in the same species and gender—a man will always be a man, for example. Kamuy can be animals, plants, minerals, geographical or natural phenomena, or even tools and utensils produced by humans. Because all spirits, even those of IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Ainu WHERE Hokkaido, Japan BEFORE 10,000–300 BCE Neolithic Jomon people—remote ancestors of the Ainu— live in Hokkaido, probably worshipping clan deities. 600–1000 CE Okhotsk hunter- gatherer people occupy coastal Hokkaido. Some of their ritual practices, such as bear worship, are seen later in the Ainu. 700–1200 Okhotsk culture blends with that of the Satsumon to create the Ainu. AFTER 1899–1997 The Ainu are forced to assimilate into Japanese culture; many Ainu religious practices are banned. 2008 The Ainu are ofﬁcially recognized as an indigenous people with a distinct culture. Even human beings are simply containers for a spirit. Spirits are immortal. The most important spirits are the gods. If we treat the gods well, they will provide us with food. Ceremonies, songs, and offerings give the gods status in the other world. Everything in the world has a spirit. 25 An Ainu chief performs a ceremony to honor the spirit of a slaughtered bear as it returns to the divine world, in a photograph taken in 1946. See also: Living the Way of the Gods 82–85 ■ Devotion through puja 114–15 PRIMAL BELIEFS inanimate objects, are considered immortal, after death a person’s house may be burned to ensure that his or her kamuy will have a home in the other world; their tools and implements may also be broken (to release the spirits inside) and buried with the body, for use again in the next world. The power of words Some kamuy have roles in both the supernatural and human worlds. Kotan-kor-kamuy, for example, is the creator god, but he is also the god of the village, and may manifest himself on earth as a long-eared owl. Humans and kamuy have a close relationship—so close that kamuy have been described as “gods you can argue with.” The kamuy can be prayed to, using special carved prayer sticks, but the ritual relationship is based more on mutual respect and correct behavior than on worship. If someone has angered a god by carelessness or disrespect, they must conduct a ceremony to express their remorse. If, however, a person has treated a god with due respect and performed all the appropriate rituals, yet still receives bad luck, the Ainu can ask the ﬁre goddess, Fuchi, to compel that god to apologize and make recompense. In Ainu belief, even words are spirits, and the use of words is one of the gifts that humans have that Spirit-sending rituals Hunting rituals were central to traditional Ainu life and were used to appease the gods who visited earth disguised as animals. In return for offerings and rituals, the gods left behind the gift of their animal bodies. After killing and eating a bear, the Ainu would perform the iyomante spirit-sending ritual. The spirit of the bear— revered as the mountain bear god Kimun-kamuy—was entertained with food, wine, dance, and song. Arrows were ﬁred into the air to aid Kimun- kamuy’s return to the divine world, where he would invite other gods to share the gifts of sake, salmon, and sacred carved willow sticks with which he had been honored on earth. An iwakte spirit-sending ceremony was also held for broken tools and objects that had come to the end of their use. I also continue forever to hover behind the humans and always watch over the land of the humans. Song of the Owl God gods and things do not. Words can be used to make bargains with both gods and things, and also to give pleasure to the gods. For example, the Ainu epic songs known as kamuy yukar, or “songs of the gods,” are sung in the ﬁrst person, from the perspective of kamuy rather than humans, and it is said the kamuy take delight in watching humans dance and sing the songs of the gods. ■ SPECIAL PEOPLE CAN VISIT OTHER WORLDS THE POWER OF THE SHAMAN 28 S hamanism describes one of humankind’s oldest and most widespread religious practices, based on a belief in spirits who can be inﬂuenced by shamans. These shamans, men or women, are believed to be special people who possess great power and knowledge. After entering an altered state of consciousness, or trance, they are able to travel to other worlds and interact with the spirits who live there. Bargaining with the powerful spirits who control these other worlds is often a key aspect of the shaman’s activities. For example, the shaman often requests the release of game animals (essential in some traditional societies) from the spirit world into this world, to gain insight into the future, or for remedies to cure the sick. In return, the spirits may ask humans (via the shaman, who acts as an intermediary) to make offerings to them or to observe certain rules and codes of conduct. Shamans play an important role as healers of the sick; this role emphasizes that their journeys are not simply personal and private, but are undertaken primarily to alleviate suffering and hardship in the community. This function is reﬂected in some of the (now largely obsolete) terms that have been used to describe shamans, such as witchdoctors in sub- Saharan Africa and medicine men in North America. In Europe, shamanism was a dominant feature of many societies from around 45,000 years ago up until the modern era. The Vikings, practiced a form of shamanic divination known as seiðr between THE POWER OF THE SHAMAN IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Sami WHEN AND WHERE From prehistory, Sápmi (formerly Lapland) AFTER 10,000 BCE Ancestors of the Sami make rock carvings in the European Arctic. c.98 CE The Roman historian Tacitus makes the ﬁrst record of the Sami (as the Fenni). 13th century CE Catholic missionaries introduce Christianity, but traditional shamanism persists. c.1720 CE Thomas von Westen, Apostle of the Sami, forcefully converts Sami to Christianity, destroying shamanic drums and sacred sites. 21st century Most Sami follow the Christian faith, but recent times have seen a revival of Sami shamanism. We believe in dreams, and we believe that people can live a life apart from real life, a life they can go through in their sleep. Nâlungiaq, a Netsilik woman In worlds we cannot see, powerful supernatural beings control the supply of game and the weather. These other worlds are full of spirits, too, as both humans and animals have undying souls. There are some special people who can visit the worlds in which these spirits live. These people can enlist the help of the spirits to ask for game or good weather for us, or cure us when we are ill. 29 The Sami shaman’s drum was used to make contact with the spirit world. Some of these drums survive, although many were burned by Christian missionaries. the 8th and 11th centuries; and shamanic elements appear in the medieval myths of the Norse god Odin, who hanged himself in an initiation sacriﬁce on the World Tree (“the axis of the universe”). In the 16th and 17th centuries, shamanic traces were evident in the Benandanti spirit-battlers (an agrarian fertility cult) of Friuli, Italy, and in the night-ﬂying seely wights (fairylike nature spirits) of Scotland. In more recent times, the mazzeri dream-hunters of Corsica show clear shamanic inﬂuence. Sami shamans The longest recorded history of shamanism in Europe, however, is in northern Scandinavia, in the area now known as Sápmi (formerly Lapland). Here the Sami people, semi-nomadic reindeer herders and coastal ﬁshers, maintained a fully shamanic religion into the early 18th century, which has been partially revived in recent decades. Their religion can be reconstructed from historical sources as well as from close comparison with related cultures in North Asia and the American Arctic. Sami shamans, or noaidi, could inherit their calling or be chosen directly by the spirits. In some other cultures, those chosen to be shamans often experienced a period of intense illness and stress, as well as visionary episodes in which they might be killed and then brought back to life. Sami shamans had helping spirits in the form of animals, such as wolves, bears, reindeer, or ﬁsh, whom they imitated when entering a trance. Shamans are often said to become the animal they imitate; this occurs through a process of interior transformation rather than by visible, exterior change. Three things helped the Sami shaman enter a trance. The ﬁrst was intense physical deprivation, often achieved by working naked in the freezing Arctic temperatures. The second was the rhythmic beat of the sacred rune drum (among similar peoples, such as the Yakut and Buryat, the drum is called the shaman’s horse); the drum was decorated with images of the world of the gods above, the world of the dead below, and the world inhabited by humans (the earth)— the three realms connected by the World Tree. The third way the shaman was helped to enter a trance was through the ingestion of the psychotropic (mind-altering) ﬂy agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria). After taking the mushroom, the shaman would fall into a trance and become rigid and immobile, as if dead. During this process, male Sami guarded the shaman, while the women sang songs about the tasks to be performed in the upper or lower realms, and songs to help the shaman ﬁnd his or her way home. Stories are told of Sami shamans who never returned from the other world, often ❯❯ See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Animism in early societies 24–25 ■ Divining the future 79 PRIMAL BELIEFS Mankind does not end its existence because sickness or some other accident kills its animal spirit down here on earth. We live on. Nâlungiaq, a Netsilik woman 30 because those responsible for waking them with a spell had forgotten the magic words. One shaman was said to have been lost for three years, until the person acting as his guardian remembered that his soul needed to be recalled from “the coil of the pike’s intestine, in the third dark corner.” When the relevant words were spoken, the shaman’s legs trembled, and he awoke, cursing his guardian. Communicating with the spirits Sami shamans were believed to ﬂy to a mountain at the center of the world (the cosmic axis) before entering the spirit world, either above or below the mountain. They might typically ride on a ﬁsh spirit, be guided by a bird spirit, and protected by a reindeer spirit. A journey to the upper world of Saivo would be undertaken in order to plead for game or for help of some other kind; a journey to the underworld of Jabmeaymo would be made to fetch back the soul of a sick person. This could only be done after the mistress of the underworld had been placated with offerings. The shamans were able to communicate with the spirits in the upper and lower worlds because their shamanic training involved learning the secret language of the spirits. The Netsilingmiut (Netsilik Inuit) shamans—an Arctic culture, from present-day Canada (west of Hudson Bay)—had similar religious THE POWER OF THE SHAMAN beliefs to the Sami. As well as subduing storms and acting as healers, they also mediated between the human world and the spirits of the earth, air, and sea. A shamanic seance was always held in subdued light, in a snow hut or a tent. The shaman would summon his helping spirits by singing special songs. After falling into a trance, he would speak in a voice that was not his own—most often in a deep, resonant bass, but sometimes in a shrill falsetto. While in this trance state, the shaman could send his soul up into the sky to visit Tatqiq, the moon man, who was thought to bring fertility to women and good luck in hunting. If he was pleased with the offerings the shamans made to him, he would reward them with animals. When the moon was not visible in the sky, the Netsilik believed that he had gone hunting for animals to feed the dead. Into the sky, under the sea According to one Netsilik account, one day the great shaman Kukiaq was trying to catch seals from a breathing hole in the ice. He gazed In some Arctic cultures, animals are believed to have spirit guardians who protect them and ensure their well-being. Shamans have the power to negotiate with these guardians, on behalf of human beings, for the release of animals from the spirit world into the human world for hunting and ﬁshing. Everything comes from Nuliayuk—food and clothes, hunger and bad hunting, abundance or lack of caribou, seals, meat, and blubber. Nâlungiaq, a Netsilik woman 31 Some Inuit in Gojahaven, northern Canada, have maintained a belief in shamans, who are thought to have a special relationship with the landscape and with the spirits who control it. upward and realized that the moon was gradually moving toward him. It hovered above his head and transformed into a whalebone sledge. The driver, Tatqiq, gestured to Kukiaq to join him, and whisked him off to his house in the sky. The entrance of the house moved like a chewing mouth, and in one of the rooms the sun was nursing a baby. Although the moon asked Kukiaq to stay, he was anxious he would not be able to ﬁnd his way home. So he slid back to earth on a moonbeam, landing safely at the very same breathing hole he had left from. Sometimes, however, the Netsilik shamans would send their souls down to visit Nuliayuk (also known as Sedna), the mistress of sea and land animals, at the bottom of the ocean. Nuliayuk possessed the power to either withhold or release the seals on which the Netsilik depended for food and clothing. She therefore had great inﬂuence over them. When the Netsilik broke any of her strict taboos, she would imprison the seals. However, if the shamans ventured down to her watery underworld to braid her hair, she was usually appeased and would release the seals into the open sea. The shamanic tradition of the Netsiliks lasted into the 1930s and 1940s. Within the Netsilik community, only the shamans (or angatkut)—who were protected by their own guardian spirits— were unafraid of the dangerous and malevolent spirits that ﬁlled the world. A Netsilik shaman might have several helping spirits. For example, the spirits of the shaman Unarâluk were his dead mother and father, the sun, a dog, and a sea scorpion. These spirits informed Unarâluk about what existed on, and beneath, the earth, and in the sea and sky. ■ PRIMAL BELIEFS Au’s mysterious shamanic illumination The following account of shamanic illumination was given to the Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen by Au, an Iglulik Inuit shaman. Au recalled a period in his life when he sought solitude, was deeply melancholic, and would sometimes weep uncontrollably. Then, one day, a feeling of immense, inexplicable joy overcame him. He explained that in the middle of this ﬁt of pure delight, “I became a shaman, not knowing myself how it came about. But I was a shaman.” Thereafter, Au could see and hear in a completely different way: “I had gained my quamaneq, my enlightenment...it was not only I who could see through the darkness of life, but the same light also shone out from me, imperceptible to human beings, but visible to all the spirits of earth and sky and sea, and these now came to me and became my helping spirits.” Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) spent many years documenting the culture of Arctic peoples during his journeys of exploration. 32 See also: The Dreaming 34–35 ■ A lifelong bond with the gods 39 ■ Renewing life through ritual 51 T he Baiga are one of the indigenous tribal peoples of central India, collectively known as the Adivasis. The Baigas, who call themselves the sons and daughters of Dharti Mata, Mother Earth, believe that they were created to be the guardians of the forest—a task they have carried out since the beginning of time. In their belief, Bhagavan, the creator, spread the world out ﬂat like a chapati, but it ﬂapped about and would not stay still. The ﬁrst man, Nanga Baiga, and the ﬁrst woman, Nanga Baigin, who were born in the forest from Mother Earth, took four great nails and drove them into the four corners of the earth to steady it. Bhagavan told them that they should take care of the earth to keep the nails in place, promising them a simple but contented life in return. The Baiga followed the example of Nanga Baiga, hunting freely in the forest and considering themselves lords of the animals. Believing it wrong to tear the body of Mother Earth with a plow, they practiced a form of slash-and- burn agriculture known as bewar (although always leaving the stump of a saj tree for the gods to dwell in), moving every three years to a new patch of forest. However, 19th-century British ofﬁcials opposed the Baiga’s methods, forcing them to abandon their traditional axe-and-hoe cultivation and take up the hated plow. They were permitted to practice bewar only in the reservation of Baiga Chak in the Mandla Hills. ■ IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Baiga WHEN AND WHERE From 3000 BCE, Mandla Hills, southeastern Madhya Pradesh, central India BEFORE From prehistory The Baiga are thought to share a common ancestry with the Australian Aborigines. AFTER Mid-19th century British forest ofﬁcials restrict sacred bewar agriculture. Food shortages follow; the Baigas say that the Kali Yuga, the age of darkness, has begun. 1890 A reserve that surrounds eight Baiga villages is demarcated where bewar is permitted. 1978 A Baiga development agency is established. 1990s More than 300,000 Baiga live in central India. You are made of the earth and are lord of the earth, and shall never forsake it. You must guard the earth. Bhagavan the Creator WHY ARE WE HERE? CREATED FOR A PURPOSE 33 See also: Preparing for the afterlife 58–59 ■ Living the Way of the Gods 82–85 A ccording to Maori belief, death did not exist at the beginning of the world but was brought into being following an act of incest. In one version of the Maori myth, the forest god Tane grew up between and separated his parents—Rangi, the sky god, and Papa, the earth goddess—because they forced him to live in darkness. He then asked his mother to marry him, but when Papa explained that this could not be, Tane shaped a woman from mud and mated with her. The result of this union was a beautiful child—Hine-titama. She became Tane’s wife, unaware that he was also her father. One day, however, she discovered the terrible truth, and descended in shame to the darkness of Po, the underworld; it was from this moment that humankind’s descent to the realm of death began. When Tane visited his wife, she told him, “Stay in the world of light, and foster our offspring. Let me stay in the world of darkness, and drag our offspring down.” She then became known as Hine-nui-te-po, the goddess of darkness and death. In an attempt to overturn the course of events and regain immortality on behalf of human beings, the trickster hero Maui raped Hine-nui-te-po as she slept, believing that after this act she would die, and that death would also cease to exist. But Hine-nui- te-po awoke during the attack and squeezed Maui to death with her thighs, thereby ensuring that mortality would remain in the world forever. ■ PRIMAL BELIEFS The trees, plants, and creatures of the forest were believed by the Maori to be offspring of Tane, the forest god. Before felling a tree they therefore made an offering to the spirits. IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Maori WHEN AND WHERE From prehistory, New Zealand BEFORE 2nd and 3rd millennia BCE Ancestors of the Polynesian people spread across the Paciﬁc Ocean, possibly from origins in Asia. Their ritual practices and mythology develop independently but retain parallels across this vast region. Before 1300 CE The Maori people settle in New Zealand. AFTER Early 19th century European settlement begins. Some Maori convert to Christianity. 1840 The Treaty of Waitangi formalizes relations between whites and Maori. Today Around 620,000 Maori are resident in New Zealand. WHY DO WE DIE? THE ORIGIN OF DEATH 34 I n the Australian Aboriginal tradition, the time of the creation was once called the Dreamtime, but is now referred to as the Dreaming. This term better captures the crucial element of Aboriginal faith—that the creation is continuous and ongoing, existing in the real, eternal present, as opposed to the remote past. It also accords ETERNITY IS NOW THE DREAMING IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Australian Aborigines WHEN AND WHERE From prehistory, Australia AFTER 8000 BCE The date ascribed to certain changes to the Australian landscape in Aboriginal oral tradition; this has been supported by geological evidence. 4000–2000 BCE Aboriginal rock art depicts the ancestral beings of the Dreaming; some experts estimate the earliest portrayals of the Rainbow Serpent to be even older, dating them to some 8,000 years ago. 1872 Uluru is ﬁrst seen by a non-Aborigine, Ernest Giles, who called it “the remarkable pebble.” European settlers give it the name Ayers Rock in 1873. 1985 The ownership of Uluru is returned to the Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara peoples. In the Dreaming, the ancestral beings shaped the land. We can access that power and enter the eternal Now. The power of the Dreaming is eternal and ever-present. The land is alive with this power. They embedded their spiritual power within the land. with the Aboriginal belief that the Dreaming can be accessed through acts of ritual, song, dance, and storytelling, and through physical things such as sacred objects, or paintings on sand, rock, bark, the human body, and even canvas. Myths of the Dreaming, called Dreamings, tell of the ancestral beings, who are known as the 35 See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Created for a purpose 32 ■ The spirits of the dead live on 36–37 ■ Living the Way of the Gods 82–85 PRIMAL BELIEFS Uluru holds great spiritual power, according to Aboriginal tradition. It is said to be the heart of the ancestral beings’ Songlines, whose signs may still be seen in the great rock’s features. The origin of Uluru According to one legend, before the Uluru rock existed, the Kunia, or carpet-snake people, lived there. To the west lived the Windulka, or mulga- seed men, who invited the Kunia to a ceremony. The Kunia men set out, but, after stopping at the Uluru waterhole, they met some Metalungana, or sleepy-lizard women, and forgot about the invitation. The Windulka sent the bell bird Panpanpalana to ﬁnd the Kunia. The Kunia men told the bird they could no longer attend since they had just gotten married. Affronted, the Windulka asked their friends the Liru, the poisonous-snake people, to attack the Kunia. During a furious battle, the Liru overcame the Kunia, who surrounded their dying leader, Ungata, and sang themselves to death. During the battle, Uluru was formed. Three rock holes high on Uluru mark the place Ungata bled to death, and the water that spills from them is Ungata’s blood. It ﬂows down to ﬁll the pool of the Rainbow Serpent, Wanambi. We say djang… That secret place… Dreaming there. Gagudju elder Big Bill Neidjie First People or “the eternal ones of the dream,” and their role in creation. Aboriginal tradition tells how these beings awake in a primal world that is still malleable and in a state of becoming. They journey across the land, leaving sacred paths known as Songlines, or Dreaming tracks, in their wake. As they go, they shape human beings, animals, plants, and the landscape, establishing rituals, deﬁning the relationships between things, and changing shape back and forth from animal to human forms. Finally they transform themselves into features of the environment including stars, rocks, watering holes, and trees. The living land Dreamings are thus intimately tied to natural features such as hills, rocks, and creeks, as well as the Songlines themselves. Aboriginal peoples revere the topography of Australia as sacred because it offers evidence both of their spiritual ancestors’ wanderings, and of their bodies. The Gunwinggu tribe describes the land as being infused with the ancestral beings’ djang (spiritual power): it is this that gives it its life and its holy power. This sacred topography converges on Uluru, a sandstone rock formation in the Northern Territory, the center from which all the Songlines are said to radiate. Uluru is venerated as a great storehouse of djang, the navel of the living body of Australia. Aborigines consider the land to be both their inheritance and responsibility, and so they nurture it, and the Dreamings accordingly. While they may be mortal, the djang of their ancestral beings lives forever, and is forever in the now. ■ 36 T he religion of the Andean highlands can be said to be, in essence, a cult of the dead. This tradition of reverence for the ancestors stretches back to long before the short-lived empire of the Incas—the culture for which the region is best known—and has lasted to the present day. Just one of many Quechua- speaking Andean peoples, the Incas rose to dominate much of modern-day Peru, Ecuador, and Chile, and parts of Bolivia and Argentina in the 13th century. As they extended their empire, they imposed a culture that in many ways resembled that of the Aztecs of Mesoamerica (pp.40–45), who were their contemporaries. It revolved around worship of their own supreme deity, the sun god. However, beyond the Inca capital of Cuzco, with its priests, rituals, and golden artifacts, the common people, whom the Incas called the Hatun Runa, persisted with a cult of ancestor worship and earth worship that dated back to prehistoric times. This survived the mighty Inca Empire when, in the 16th century, it was utterly destroyed by Spanish conquistadors led by Francisco Pizarro. IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Quechua Indians WHEN AND WHERE From prehistory, central Andes, South America AFTER From 6000 BCE Ayllu, or extended communities, develop in the Andes. 3800 BCE Corpses are mummiﬁed and revered as sacred objects. c.1200 CE The Inca Empire is established. 1438 The Inca Empire expands across the central Andes, reaching its peak in 1532. 1534 The Empire collapses after the Spanish Conquest. 21st century Catholicism has been institutionalized across this region since the colonial era; however, most present-day Quechua blend elements of Christianity with their traditional beliefs. We inherited the land from our ancestors. The spirits of the ancestors are enshrined in the land. If we do this, the land will feed us and the ancestors will guide us. Both the ancestors and the land must be fed with blood and fat. OUR ANCESTORS WILL GUIDE US THE SPIRITS OF THE DEAD LIVE ON 37 See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Created for a purpose 32 ■ Sacriﬁce and blood offerings 40–45 ■ Devotion through puja 114–15 PRIMAL BELIEFS People of the mountains Since before recorded time, Andean peoples have organized themselves into ayllus, extended family groups or clans, each attached to a speciﬁc territory. Within these groups, they worked the land, shared resources, and worshipped at their huacas, or animistic earth shrines. The focus of worship was to pray to the earth to feed them—vital assistance in a mountainous region where farming was a harsh and laborious process. Running parallel to their entreaties to the earth was a belief that, just as the land had nurtured their ancestors, it would, with the intercession of those departed spirits, continue to nourish them. Each ayllu mummiﬁed and worshipped the bodies of its dead, believing that the ancestors would help maintain the cosmic order and ensure the fertility of the land and the animals. The bodies were wrapped in weavings and placed in rock mummy shrines (chullpa machulas) facing the mountaintop. Once desiccated by the freezing, dry air, the mummies would be paraded around the ﬁelds during rituals to make the crops grow. Meanwhile, priests or diviners at the huacas and grave shrines offered up coca leaves, blood, and fat, believing that if the spirits of the land and the ancestors were fed, they would in turn feed the people. An enduring power In the 17th century, Christian missionaries burned many Andean mummies to quash what they saw as pagan beliefs. However, some mummies have survived, and the modern Quechua believe them to be the ﬁrst beings or ancient ones. The chullpa machulas, now just niches in the rocks, remain sacred shrines at which contemporary diviners still sprinkle blood and fat, believing this to infuse the sites with life and energy. Some groups, such as the Qollahuayos Indians (see box, below) may burn coca leaves there, wrapped in bundles of llama wool. The graves are believed to retain their power, even without the mummies that once occupied them. The Feast of the Dead, on November 2—marking the end of the dry season and the beginning of the rains, when crops can be planted—remains a focus of the Andean year, when the dead are ritually invited to revisit the living, and to take a share of the harvest. ■ An Inca mummy of a girl who died ﬁve hundred years ago is still preserved; the ancestors are revered and have a central role among Andean peoples. A mountain and a god The Kaata of modern Bolivia, who live northeast of Lake Titicaca, form one of nine ayllus of the Qollahuayas Indians. The Kaata have a historic reputation as fortune-telling soothsayers; in the 15th century, Kaatan diviners carried the chair of the Inca emperor, an honored task. The power of these Qollahuaya ritualists was thought to derive from the graves of their ancestors on Mount Kaata. In addition to the ancestral graves on the mountain, Mount Kaata itself is venerated as if it were a human being—a kind of super- ancestor—and is also ascribed physical human attributes. The highlands are regarded as the head, with grasses as hair, a cave for a mouth, and lakes for eyes; the middle region is the torso, with heart and bowels identiﬁed; and a pair of ridges on the lowest reaches are the legs. The mountain is a living being that gives the Kaata both sustenance and guidance. The dead visit us and assist us in our work. They provide many blessings. Marcelino, Kaatan elder 38 See also: Created for a purpose 32 ■ The burden of observance 50 ■ The Five Great Vows 68–71 M ost societies have developed a system of morality based on an appeal to notions of human goodness, reinforced by sanctions from religious and social authorites. Very few cultures have existed where ideas such as crime and warfare are unknown, but the few that have been found have been tribal peoples eking out a hunter- gatherer existence in the rainforest. One such tribe is the Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia, whose ﬁrst contact with Europeans was in the 1930s. They now number around 350 people. The Chewong are nonviolent and noncompetitive; their language has no words for war, ﬁght, crime, or punishment. They believe the ﬁrst human beings were taught the right way to live by their culture hero Yinlugen Bud —a forest spirit who existed before the ﬁrst humans. Yinlugen Bud gave the Chewong their most important rule, maro, which speciﬁes that food must always be shared. To eat alone is regarded as both dangerous and wrong. Only by looking after the entire population in a spirit of fairness and sharing can the group hope to survive. The Chewong believe that violation of their moral code— by not sharing food, by showing anger at misfortune, by expressing anticipation of pleasure, or by nursing ungratiﬁed desires—will have supernatural repercussions such as illness, or physical or psychic attack, either by a tiger, snake, or poisonous millipede, or the ruwai or soul of the animal. ■ IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Chewong WHEN AND WHERE From 3000 BCE, Peninsular Malaysia BEFORE From prehistory The Chewong are one of the 18 indigenous tribes of Peninsular Malaysia collectively known as the Orang Asli—the “original people”. Each tribe has its own language and culture. AFTER 1930s Europeans ﬁrst encounter the Chewong; contact with Chinese and other Malay ethnic groups is also very restricted until this time because of the tribe’s remote forest location. From 1950s Chewong come under pressure to assimilate themselves into mainstream Malay society and convert to Islam; many choose to retain their traditional practices. Human beings should never eat alone. You must always share with others. Yinlugen Bud WE SHOULD BE GOOD LIVING IN HARMONY 39 See also: The Dreaming 34–35 ■ The spirits of the dead live on 36–37 ■ Symbolism made real 46–47 ■ Man and the cosmos 48–49 L iving in the environment of the Orinoco Delta, where the land is divided into countless islands by a network of waterways, the Warao tribe see the world as ﬂat—the earth is just a narrow crust between water and sky. They believe that Hahuba, the Snake of Being—the grandmother of all living things—is coiled around the earth, and that her breathing is the motion of the tides. Their various gods, known as the Ancient Ones, live on sacred mountains at the four corners of the earth, with the Warao living at its very center. In villages under the particular protection of one of the gods, the temple hut also contains a sacred rock in which the god dwells. Divine dependence The Warao gods depend on humans to nourish them with offerings, especially tobacco smoke; in return, the Warao depend on the gods for health and life. This lifelong bond with the gods is established as soon as a baby is born. The child’s ﬁrst cry is said to carry across the world to the mountain of Ariawara, the God of Origin, in the east; in return, the god sends back a cry of welcome. Soon after a baby is born, Hahuba, the Snake of Being, sends a balmy breeze to the village, to embrace the new arrival. From that point on, the baby becomes part of the complex balance between natural and supernatural that forms the web of Warao daily life. ■ PRIMAL BELIEFS In Warao myth, the Bird of Beautiful Plumage is believed to provide supernatural protection to children. A child that dies is said to be claimed as food by spirits of the underworld. IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Warao WHEN AND WHERE From 6000 BCE, the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela BEFORE From prehistory The Warao are one of the largest indigenous groups in the Latin American lowland. AFTER 16th century Europeans ﬁrst encounter the Warao and compare their settlements with similar structures in Venice, giving Venezuela (“little Venice” in Spanish) its name. From 1960s Environmental degredation in the region affects local ﬁsheries and displaces tribespeople to the cities; some are converted to Catholicism. 2001 More than 36,000 Warao people are registered as living in the Orinoco Delta area. EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED A LIFELONG BOND WITH THE GODS THE GODS DESIRE BLOOD SACRIFICE AND BLOOD OFFERINGS T he sacriﬁce of animals and humans has been a feature of many religious traditions around the world, but the idea of ritual sacriﬁce was particularly important to societies in the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica, notably the Mayans and the Aztecs. The Mesoamerican peoples inhabited the area from present- day central Mexico through to Nicaragua. The Mayan civilization (which peaked c.250 CE–900 CE) preceded and then coincided with the Aztec civilization, which reached its height around 1300 –1400 CE. Aztec culture drew on the Mayan tradition, and the two peoples had several deities in common; they went by different names but shared characteristics. A reciprocal gift of blood The Mesoamerican cultures believed that blood sacriﬁce to their gods was essential to ensure the survival of their worlds, in a tradition of ritual bloodletting that dated back to the ﬁrst major civilization in Mexico—that of the Olmecs, which ﬂourished between 1500 and 400 BCE. In legends, the gods themselves had made tremendous sacriﬁces in forming the world, which included shedding their own blood to create humankind; therefore they desired similar sacriﬁces of blood from humanity in return. Sacriﬁce and creation The power of blood and the necessity of sacriﬁce are central to the Aztec creation myth. The Aztecs believed that the gods had created and destroyed four earlier eras, or suns, and that after the destruction of the fourth sun by ﬂood, the god of the wind, Quetzalcoatl, and his trickster brother, Tezcatlipoca, tore the goddess (or god in some versions) Tlaltecuhtli in half to make a new heaven and earth. From her body grew everything necessary for the life of humankind—trees, ﬂowers, grass, fountains, wells, valleys, and mountains. All this caused the goddess terrible agony, and she howled through the night demanding the sacriﬁce of human hearts to sustain her. Further cosmic acts of creation followed, all requiring sacriﬁce or blood offerings. One relief shows SACRIFICE AND BLOOD OFFERINGS IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Aztec, Mayan, and other Mesoamerican peoples WHEN AND WHERE 3rd–15th century CE, Mexico BEFORE From 1000 BCE The Mayan civilization begins its slow rise, reaching its peak—the Classic Mayan period—between the 3rd and 10th century CE. From 12th century CE The Aztec empire is established. AFTER 1519 CE The Aztecs, whose population numbers 20–25 million, are overthrown by Spanish forces under the conquistador Hernán Cortés. 1600 CE Forced conversion to Catholicism and exposure to European diseases destroy the Aztec civilization and reduce the population to around one million. 42 To create us, the gods shed their blood. Without blood and sun there can be no life. To create the sun, the gods sacriﬁced their hearts. We owe the gods a debt of blood. The gods call out for blood. If we give it to them, they will not allow this world to be destroyed. 43 See also: Created for a purpose 32 ■ A lifelong bond with the gods 39 ■ The burden of observance 50 ■ Renewing life through ritual 51 ■ Beliefs for new societies 56–57 the ﬁrst stars being born from blood ﬂowing from Quetzalcoatl’s tongue after he had pierced it. Most notably, the creation of the ﬁfth sun required one of the gods to cast himself into a funeral pyre. Two gods, Tecuciztecatl and Nanahuatzin, vied for the honor, both immolating themselves; Nanahuatzin became the sun and Tecuciztecatl the moon. The other gods then offered their hearts in order to make the new sun move across the sky (the offering of hearts is a recurring theme in Mesoamerican myth and ritual). Humanity’s gruesome debt Both the Mayans and the Aztecs were bound to their gods by a blood debt from these acts of creation that could never be repaid. After Quetzalcoatl descended to the underworld and retrieved the bones of former humans (remains from the four previous eras), the gods ground them into a ﬁne meal ﬂour. They let their own blood drip onto the ﬂour to animate it and created a new race of people—people whose hearts could in turn satisfy the gods’ own need for blood. In Mesoamerican myth, each period of 52 years was seen as a cycle, the end of which could spell the end of the world. Human sacriﬁce could be used to appease the gods and persuade them not to bring an end to the present age—that of the ﬁfth sun. The Mayans believed that blood sacriﬁce was necessary for the sun to rise in the sky every morning. The Aztecs’ sun god, Huitzilopochtli, was locked in an ongoing struggle with darkness PRIMAL BELIEFS and needed to be fortiﬁed by blood in order for the sun to continue in its cycle. Thus the continued existence of the Mesoamerican world was seen as extremely tenuous, and in need of constant support through acts of sacriﬁce. Bloodletting for the gods took two forms: autosacriﬁce (self-inﬂicted bloodletting) and human sacriﬁce. Both Mayans and Aztecs took part in autosacriﬁce. Mesoamerican nobles had what was seen as the privilege and responsibility to shed their own blood for the gods. This involved piercing their ﬂesh with stingray spines, obsidian knives, and, most often, with the sharp spines of the maguey (agave) plant. Blood was drawn from the ear, shin, knee, elbow, tongue, or foreskin. Autosacriﬁce ❯❯ You have yet to take care of bleeding your ears and passing a cord through your elbows. You must worship. This is your way of giving thanks before your god. Tohil, Maya god Victims of Aztec human sacriﬁce were typically prisoners of war, and, when in combat, Aztec warriors sought to capture rather than kill in order to ensure plentiful offerings for the gods. 44 dates back to the Olmec people and continued after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico in 1519. Both men and women of the Mayan nobility took part—the men drawing blood from their foreskins, women from their tongues. They collected their offerings on strips of bark paper, which were then burned; through the smoke from these offerings, they communicated with their ancestors and the gods. Sacriﬁcial rites Human sacriﬁce was far more common among the Aztec than the Mayans, who performed it only in special circumstances, such as the consecration of a new temple. Aztec sacriﬁce usually involved cutting the victim’s heart from his body. The heart was believed to be a fragment of the sun’s energy—so removing the heart was a means of returning the energy to its source. The victim was typically held by four priests over a stone slab in the temple, while a ﬁfth cut the heart from the body with an obsidian knife, and offered it, still beating, to the gods in a vessel called a cuauhxicalli, an eagle gourd. After the removal of the heart, the body was rolled down the stairs of the pyramid-shaped temple to the stone terrace at the base. The victim’s head was removed and the arms and legs might also be cut off. Skulls were displayed on a skull rack. Depending on the particular god being honored in the sacriﬁce, victims might be slain in ritual combat, drowned, shot with arrows, or ﬂayed. The scale of sacriﬁce sometimes reached immense proportions: for example, at the rededication of the Aztec temple of Huitzilopochtli, at Tenochtitlan, in 1487, around 80,400 victims were said to have been sacriﬁced to the god, their clotted blood forming great pools in the temple precinct. Even if a more modest estimate of 20,000 victims is accepted, this was still slaughter on a vast scale. The Aztec ritual year was marked by sacriﬁces to various gods and goddesses. Although the gods could also be propitiated with SACRIFICE AND BLOOD OFFERINGS smoke from incense and tobacco, and with food and precious objects, blood was what they really craved. Rituals and the calendar The Mesoamerican year lasted 260 days, a calendar observed by both the Mayans and the Aztecs. At the end of each year in Aztec society, a man representing Mictlantecuhtli, the god of the underworld, was sacriﬁced in the temple named Tlalxicco, “the navel of the world.” It is thought that the victim was then eaten by the priests. Just as human ﬂesh sustained the gods, so by consuming a god (embodied in the sacriﬁcial victim) a form of communion could be enacted. Less high-ranking celebrants ate ﬁgures made from dough, into which sacriﬁcial blood was mixed. To break apart and consume these dough ﬁgures, known as tzoalli, was also to commune with the gods. Such reenactment of the myths of the gods was a feature of Aztec belief and of annual rituals. During the main festival of Xipe And this goddess cried many times in the night desiring the hearts of men to eat. Saying of Aztec goddess Tlaltecuhtli And when his festival was celebrated, captives were slain, washed slaves were slain. Aztec hymn to Huitzilopochtli Descendants of the Mayans, the Tzotzil people were put to work on the Spanish colonists’ estates, and fused their own beliefs with Christian forms of worship in a syncretic religion. 45 Totec, the ﬂayed deity, a priest impersonating the god donned the ﬂayed skin of a sacriﬁced captive. As the skin tightened and tore away, the impersonator emerged like a fresh shoot growing from the rotting husk of a seed, representing growth and renewal. Other Aztec sacriﬁces honor the importance of corn, their staple food. Every year, a young girl representing Chicomecoatl, the maize goddess, was sacriﬁced at harvest time. She was decapitated, her blood poured over a statue of the goddess, and her skin worn by a priest. Conquest and absorption When Spanish invader Hernán Cortés and his conquistadors landed in Mexico in 1519, the Aztecs are believed to have mistaken him for the returning god Quetzalcoatl, partly because Cortés’ hat resembled the god’s distinctive headgear. They sent the Spaniard corn cakes soaked in human blood, but their offering failed to appease the “god,” and the Aztec civilization, just four centuries old when Cortés landed, was destroyed by the Spanish. In contrast, the Mayan culture did not suffer the same annihilation, possibly because the Mayans were more widely dispersed. In southern Mexico, even today the Tzotzil people, descendants of the Mayans, retain many elements of the old culture and religion, including the 260-day calendar. The Tzotzil religion is a blend of Catholicism and traditional Mayan beliefs. The people’s homeland, in the highlands of Chiapas in southern Mexico, is dotted with wooden crosses. These do not just reference the Christian cruciﬁx, but are thought to be channels of communication with Yajval Balamil, the lord of the earth, a powerful god who must be placated before any work can be done on the land. In their adaptation of the ancient beliefs, the Tzotzil people associate the sun with the Christian God and the moon with the Virgin Mary, and also worship carvings of Christian saints. ■ PRIMAL BELIEFS Tzotzil souls The Tzotzil religion blends Catholicism with some non-Christian beliefs. The Tzotzil people maintain that everyone has two souls, a wayjel and a ch’ulel. The ch’ulel is an inner soul that is situated in the heart and blood. It is placed in the unborn embryo by the gods. At death, this soul travels to Katibak, the land of the dead at the center of the earth. It stays in Katibak for as long as the deceased person had lived; but it lives its life in reverse, gradually returning to infancy, until it can be assigned to a new baby of the opposite sex. The second soul, the wayjel, is an animal spirit companion that is shared with a wild animal, or chanul, and kept in an enclosure by the ancestral Tzotzil gods. The human and the animal spirit have a shared fate—so whatever befalls the human is replicated in the animal spirit and vice-versa. The animal spirits include jaguars, ocelots, coyotes, squirrels, and opossums. This Aztec stone sun calendar places a depiction of the sun within a ring of glyphs representing measures of time, reﬂecting the Aztec preoccupation with the sun. At this feast [to Xipe Totec] they killed all the prisoners, men, women, and children. Bernadino de Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain 46 T he ﬁrst sacred spaces of early religions were naturally occurring ones— groves, springs, and caves. However, as worship became more ritualized, the need to deﬁne holy places arose, and buildings designed for worship encoded the essential features of each religion. On the other hand, buildings used for everyday activities often took on cosmic signiﬁcance in cultures in which religious and daily life were intertwined. This was true of the earth lodges, or ceremonial centers, of the Pawnee, one of the Native American nations of the Great Plains. The Pawnee earth lodge had a sacred architecture, making each lodge a miniature cosmos as Tirawahat, the creator god and chief of all the gods, had prescribed at the beginning of time, after he had made the heavens and earth and brought the ﬁrst humans into being (see box, facing page). Four posts held up each earth lodge, one at each corner. These represented four gods, the Stars of the Four Directions, who hold up the heavens in the northeast, northwest, southwest, and southeast. The Pawnee believed that stars had The world and we ourselves were created by Tirawahat, the expanse of the heavens. He told us the earth is our mother, the sky is our father. If we make our lodges to encircle the earth and encompass the sky, we invite our mother and father to live with us. If we open our lodges to the east, Tirawahat can enter with the dawning sun. Our lodges are a miniature version of the cosmos. IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Pawnee WHEN AND WHERE From c.1250 CE, Great Plains, US AFTER 1875 The Pawnee are relocated from their lands in Nebraska to a new reservation in Oklahoma. 1891–92 Many Pawnee adopt the new Ghost Dance religion, which promises resurrection for their ancestors. 1900 The US census records a Pawnee population of just 633; over the next four decades, traditional Pawnee religious practices dwindle and die out. 20th century The Pawnee Nation is mainly Christian, its people belonging to the Indian Methodist, Indian Baptist, or Full Gospel Church. Some Pawnee are members of the Native American Church. WE CAN BUILD A SACRED SPACE SYMBOLISM MADE REAL 47 See also: Making sense of the world 20–23 ■ Man and the cosmos 48–49 ■ Living the Way of the Gods 82–85 PRIMAL BELIEFS helped Tirawahat create them, and that at the world’s end, the Pawnee would become stars. The entrance to the earth lodge would be in the east, allowing the light of the dawn to enter. A hearth would be positioned in the center of the lodge, and a small altar of mounded earth in the back (the west). A buffalo skull would be displayed on the altar, which the spirit of Tirawahat was said to occupy when the ﬁrst rays of sun shone on it in the morning. Through this skull, Tirawahat was said to live and communicate with the people. Sacred star bundles containing objects used for rituals, such as charts of the night sky, hung from a rafter above the skull. These were said to give each village its identity and power. A world within a world In winter, a domed sweat lodge would often be constructed inside the earth lodge, creating a second mini-cosmos. These sweat lodges, or steam huts, used for spiritual and healing purposes, were also sacred spaces. The heated stones used inside them were said to be ancestral “grandfathers,” and were treated with great reverence. The hot stones were doused in water, and the steam produced was believed to be the breath of the grandfathers. The ﬁrst sweat lodge was, according to legend, made by the son of a bundle-keeper, as part of a ritual taught to him by guardian animals. As he performed the ritual he said, “Now we are sitting in darkness as did Tirawahat when he created all things and placed meteors in the heavens for our beneﬁt. The poles that shelter us represent them… When I blow this root upon them, you will see a blue ﬂame rise from the stones. This will be a signal for us to pray to Tirawahat and the grandfathers.” ■ The earth lodge was a mini-cosmos in the Pawnee tradition, and was constructed accordingly. This Pawnee family stands at an earth lodge entrance at Loup, Nebraska in 1873. The legend of Tirawahat In Pawnee myth, after the creator god, Tirawahat, had made the sun, moon, stars, heavens, earth, and all things on earth, he spoke. At the sound of his voice a woman appeared. Tirawahat created a man and sent him to the woman. Then he said: “I give you the earth. You shall call the earth ‘mother.’ The heavens you shall call ‘father’… I will now show you how to build a lodge, so that you will not be cold or get wet from the rain.” After a time Tirawahat spoke again and asked the man if he knew what the lodge represented. The man did not know. Tirawahat said: “I told you to call the earth ‘mother.’ The lodge represents her breast. The smoke that escapes from the opening is like the milk that ﬂows from her breast… When you eat the things that are cooked [in the ﬁreplace], it is like sucking a breast, because you eat and grow strong.” Our people were made by the stars. When the time comes for all things to end, our people will turn into small stars. Young Bull 48 T he Dogon people live in the Bandiagara plateau in Mali, West Africa, where they practice a traditional animist religion: for them, all things are endowed with spiritual power. Fundamental to Dogon religious belief is that humankind is the seed of the universe, and that the human form echoes both the ﬁrst moment of creation and the entire created universe. Every Dogon village is therefore laid out in the shape of a human body, and is regarded as a living person. Sacred and symbolic space A Dogon village is arranged lying north to south, with the blacksmith, or forge, at its head and shrines at its feet. This layout reﬂects the belief that the creator god, Amma, made the world from clay in the form of a woman lying in this position. Everything in the village has an anthropomorphic, or human, equivalent. The women’s menstrual huts, to the east and west, are the hands. The family homesteads are the chest. Each of these big homesteads is, in turn, laid out in the plan of a male body, with the kitchen as the head, the large central room as the belly, the arms IN CONTEXT KEY BELIEVERS Dogon WHEN AND WHERE From 15th century CE, Mali, West Africa BEFORE From 1500 BCE Similarities in oral myths and knowledge of astronomy suggest that the Dogon’s ancestral tribes may have originated in ancient Egypt before migrating to the region of present-day Libya, then Burkina Faso or Guinea. From 10th century CE Dogon identity evolves in West Africa from a mixture of peoples of earlier tribes, many of whom have ﬂed Islamic persecution. AFTER Today The Dogon people number between 400,000 and 800,000. The majority still practice their traditional religion, but signiﬁcant minorities have converted to Islam and Christianity. as two lines of storerooms, the chest as two jars of water, and the penis as the entrance passage. The building reﬂects the creative power of the male–female twin ancestral beings, the Nommo (see facing page). The hut of the hogon, the Dogon’s spiritual leader, is a model of the universe. Every element of the hut’s WE ARE IN RHYTHM WITH THE UNIVERSE MAN AND THE COSMOS Masked dancers perform the dama, or funeral ritual. This traditional Dogon religious ceremony is designed to guide the souls of the deceased safely into the afterlife. 49 The form of man was preﬁgured in the egg, and is also echoed in the form of the universe. Everything, from the smallest seed to the expanse of the cosmos, reﬂects and expresses everything. A village, or a homestead, or a hat, or a seed, can contain the whole universe. The whole universe was originally contained in an egg or seed. Everything that exists began as a vibration in this egg. See also: Symbolism made real 46–47 ■ The ultimate reality 102–105 PRIMAL BELIEFS decoration and furnishing is laden with symbolism. The hogon’s movements are attuned to the rhythms of the universe. At dawn he sits facing east, toward the rising sun; he then walks through the homestead following the order of the four cardinal points; and ﬁnally at dusk he sits facing west. His pouch is described as “the pouch of the world”; his staff is “the axis of the world.” Cosmic meaning Even the hogon’s clothing represents the world in miniature. His cylindrical headdress, for example, is a woven image of the seven spiral vibrations that shook the cosmic “egg of the world” (see right). During a crisis, the chiefs gather around the headdress; the hogon speaks into it and upends it on the ground, as if the world itself has been turned upside down, ready to be restored to order by the god Amma. The complex cosmic symbolism of the Dogon reﬂects outward from the cosmos, and then back in again to the headdress of the hogon, the shell of the world egg. Religion, society, cosmology, mythology, cultivation, daily life—all are intermeshed in every detail, and reﬂected in every action. ■ For [the Dogon], social life represents the workings of the universe. Marcel Griaule, anthropologist The Nommo The Nommo are ancestral beings worshipped by the Dogon. They are often described as amphibious, hermaphroditic, ﬁshlike creatures who, acccording to myth, were fathered by the god Amma, when he created the cosmic egg. This egg was said to resemble both the smallest seed cultivated by the Dogon, and the sister star to Sirius—the brightest star in the night sky. Within the egg lay the germ of all things. In one version of the myth, two sets of male–female twins, the Nommo, were inside the egg waiting to be born so that they could bring order to the world. But the egg was	844,954
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Steve has received numerous awards, most recently the 2013 UK School Library Association Information Book Award for Science Crazy. GILES SPARROW Giles Sparrow studied astronomy at University College London and Science Communication at Imperial College, London, and is a best-selling science and astronomy author. His books include Cosmos, Spaceﬂight, The Universe in 100 Key Discoveries, and Physics in Minutes, as well as contributions to DK books such as Universe and Space. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE 600 BCE–1400 CE 20 Eclipses of the Sun can be predicted Thales of Miletus 21 Now hear the fourfold roots of everything Empedocles 22 Measuring the circumference of Earth Eratosthenes 23 The human is related to the lower beings Al-Tusi 24 A ﬂoating object displaces its own volume in liquid Archimedes 26 The Sun is like ﬁre, the Moon is like water Zhang Heng 28 Light travels in straight lines into our eyes Alhazen SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 1400–1700 34 At the center of everything is the Sun Nicolaus Copernicus 40 The orbit of every planet is an ellipse Johannes Kepler 42 A falling body accelerates uniformly Galileo Galilei 44 The globe of the Earth is a magnet William Gilbert 45 Not by arguing, but by trying Francis Bacon 46 Touching the spring of the air Robert Boyle 50 Is light a particle or a wave? Christiaan Huygens 52 The ﬁrst observation of a transit of Venus Jeremiah Horrocks 53 Organisms develop in a series of steps Jan Swammerdam 54 All living things are composed of cells Robert Hooke CONTENTS 55 Layers of rock form on top of one another Nicolas Steno 56 Microscopic observations of animalcules Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 58 Measuring the speed of light Ole Rømer 60 One species never springs from the seed of another John Ray 62 Gravity affects everything in the universe Isaac Newton EXPANDING HORIZONS 1700–1800 74 Nature does not proceed by leaps and bounds Carl Linnaeus 76 The heat that disappears in the conversion of water into vapor is not lost Joseph Black 78 Inﬂammable air Henry Cavendish 80 Winds, as they come nearer the equator, become more easterly George Hadley 81 A strong current comes out of the Gulf of Florida Benjamin Franklin 82 Dephlogisticated air Joseph Priestley 84 In nature, nothing is created, nothing is lost, everything changes Antoine Lavoisier 85 The mass of a plant comes from the air Jan Ingenhousz 86 Discovering new planets William Herschel 88 The diminution of the velocity of light John Michell 90 Setting the electric ﬂuid in motion Alessandro Volta 96 No vestige of a beginning and no prospect of an end James Hutton 102 The attraction of mountains Nevil Maskelyne 104 The mystery of nature in the structure and fertilization of ﬂowers Christian Sprengel 105 Elements always combine the same way Joseph Proust A CENTURY OF PROGRESS 1800–1900 110 The experiments may be repeated with great ease when the Sun shines Thomas Young 112 Ascertaining the relative weights of ultimate particles John Dalton 114 The chemical effects produced by electricity Humphry Davy 115 Mapping the rocks of a nation William Smith 116 She knows to what tribe the bones belong Mary Anning 118 The inheritance of acquired characteristics Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 119 Every chemical compound has two parts Jöns Jakob Berzelius 120 The electric conﬂict is not restricted to the conducting wire Hans Christian Ørsted 121 One day, sir, you may tax it Michael Faraday 122 Heat penetrates every substance in the universe Joseph Fourier 124 The artiﬁcial production of organic substances from inorganic substances Friedrich Wöhler 126 Winds never blow in a straight line Gaspard-Gustave de Coriolis 127 On the colored light of the binary stars Christian Doppler 128 The glacier was God’s great plough Louis Agassiz 130 Nature can be represented as one great whole Alexander von Humboldt 136 Light travels more slowly in water than in air Léon Foucault 138 Living force may be converted into heat James Joule 139 Statistical analysis of molecular movement Ludwig Boltzmann 140 Plastic is not what I meant to invent Leo Baekeland 142 I have called this principle natural selection Charles Darwin 150 Forecasting the weather Robert FitzRoy 156 Omne vivum ex vivo— all life from life Louis Pasteur 160 One of the snakes grabbed its own tail August Kekulé 166 The deﬁnitely expressed average proportion of three to one Gregor Mendel 172 An evolutionary link between birds and dinosaurs Thomas Henry Huxley 174 An apparent periodicity of properties Dmitri Mendeleev 180 Light and magnetism are affectations of the same substance James Clerk Maxwell 186 Rays were coming from the tube Wilhelm Röntgen 188 Seeing into the Earth Richard Dixon Oldham 190 Radiation is an atomic property of the elements Marie Curie 196 A contagious living ﬂuid Martinus Beijerinck A PARADIGM SHIFT 1900–1945 202 Quanta are discrete packets of energy Max Planck 206 Now I know what the atom looks like Ernest Rutherford 214 Gravity is a distortion in the space-time continuum Albert Einstein 222 Earth’s drifting continents are giant pieces in an ever-changing jigsaw Alfred Wegener 224 Chromosomes play a role in heredity Thomas Hunt Morgan 226 Particles have wavelike properties Erwin Schrödinger 234 Uncertainty is inevitable Werner Heisenberg 236 The universe is big… and getting bigger Edwin Hubble 242 The radius of space began at zero Georges Lemaître 246 Every particle of matter has an antimatter counterpart Paul Dirac 248 There is an upper limit beyond which a collapsing stellar core becomes unstable Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar 249 Life itself is a process of obtaining knowledge Konrad Lorenz 250 95 percent of the universe is missing Fritz Zwicky 252 A universal computing machine Alan Turing 254 The nature of the chemical bond Linus Pauling 260 An awesome power is locked inside the nucleus of an atom J. Robert Oppenheimer FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCKS 1945–PRESENT 270 We are made of stardust Fred Hoyle 271 Jumping genes Barbara McClintock 272 The strange theory of light and matter Richard Feynman 274 Life is not a miracle Harold Urey and Stanley Miller 276 We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (DNA) James Watson and Francis Crick 284 Everything that can happen happens Hugh Everett III 286 A perfect game of tic-tac-toe Donald Michie 292 The unity of fundamental forces Sheldon Glashow 294 We are the cause of global warming Charles Keeling 296 The butterﬂy effect Edward Lorenz 298 A vacuum is not exactly nothing Peter Higgs 300 Symbiosis is everywhere Lynn Margulis 302 Quarks come in threes Murray Gell-Mann 308 A theory of everything? Gabriele Veneziano 314 Black holes evaporate Stephen Hawking 315 Earth and all its life forms make up a single living organism called Gaia James Lovelock 316 A cloud is made of billows upon billows Benoît Mandelbrot 317 A quantum model of computing Yuri Manin 318 Genes can move from species to species Michael Syvanen 320 The soccer ball can withstand a lot of pressure Harry Kroto 322 Insert genes into humans to cure disease William French Anderson 324 Designing new life forms on a computer screen Craig Venter 326 A new law of nature Ian Wilmut 327 Worlds beyond the solar system Geoffrey Marcy 328 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODU CTION 12 S cience is an ongoing search for truth—a perpetual struggle to discover how the universe works that goes back to the earliest civilizations. Driven by human curiosity, it has relied on reasoning, observation, and experiment. The best known of the ancient Greek philosophers, Aristotle, wrote widely on scientiﬁc subjects and laid foundations for much of the work that has followed. He was a good observer of nature, but he relied entirely on thought and argument, and did no experiments. As a result, he got a number of things wrong. He asserted that big objects fall faster than little ones, for example, and that if one object had twice the weight of another, it would fall twice as fast. Although this is mistaken, no one doubted it until the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei disproved the idea in 1590. While it may seem obvious today that a good scientist must rely on empirical evidence, this was not always apparent. The scientiﬁc method A logical system for the scientiﬁc process was ﬁrst put forward by the English philosopher Francis Bacon in the early 17th century. Building on the work of the Arab scientist Alhazen 600 years earlier, and soon to be reinforced by the French philosopher René Descartes, Bacon’s scientiﬁc method requires scientists to make observations, form a theory to explain what is going on, and then conduct an experiment to see whether the theory works. If it seems to be true, then the results may be sent out for peer review, in which people working in the same or a similar ﬁeld are invited to pick holes in the argument, and so falsify the theory, or to repeat the experiment to make sure that the results are correct. Making a testable hypothesis or a prediction is always useful. English astronomer Edmond Halley, observing the comet of 1682, realized that it was similar to comets reported in 1531 and 1607, and suggested that all three were the same object, in orbit around the Sun. He predicted that it would return in 1758, and he was right, though only just—it was spotted on December 25. Today, the comet is known as Halley’s Comet. Since astronomers are rarely able to perform experiments, evidence can come only from observation. Experiments may test a theory, or be purely speculative. When the New Zealand-born physicist Ernest Rutherford watched his students ﬁre alpha particles at gold leaf in a search for small deﬂections, he suggested putting the detector beside the source, and to their astonishment some of the alpha particles bounced back off the paper-thin foil. Rutherford said it was as though an artillery shell had bounced back off tissue paper— and this led him to a new idea about the structure of the atom. An experiment is all the more compelling if the scientist, while proposing a new mechanism or theory, can make a prediction about the outcome. If the experiment produces the predicted result, the scientist then has supporting evidence for the theory. Even so, science can never prove that a theory is correct; as the INTRODUCTION All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. Galileo Galilei 13 20th-century philosopher of science Karl Popper pointed out, it can only disprove things. Every experiment that gives predicted answers is supporting evidence, but one experiment that fails may bring an entire theory crashing down. Over the centuries, long-held concepts such as a geocentric universe, the four bodily humors, the ﬁre-element phlogiston, and a mysterious medium called ether have all been disproved and replaced with new theories. These in turn are only theories, and may yet be disproved, although in many cases this is unlikely given the evidence in their support. Progression of ideas Science rarely proceeds in simple, logical steps. Discoveries may be made simultaneously by scientists working independently, but almost every advance depends in some measure on previous work and theories. One reason for building the vast apparatus known as the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, was to search for the Higgs particle, whose existence was predicted 40 years earlier, in 1964. That prediction rested on decades of theoretical work on the structure of the atom, going back to Rutherford and the work of Danish physicist Niels Bohr in the 1920s, which depended on the discovery of the electron in 1897, which in turn depended on the discovery of cathode rays in 1869. Those could not have been found without the vacuum pump and, in 1799, the invention of the battery—and so the chain goes back through decades and centuries. The great English physicist Isaac Newton famously said, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” He meant primarily Galileo, but he had probably also seen a copy of Alhazen’s Optics. The ﬁrst scientists The ﬁrst philosophers with a scientiﬁc outlook were active in the ancient Greek world during the 6th and 5th centuries BCE. Thales of Miletus predicted an eclipse of the Sun in 585 BCE; Pythagoras set up a mathematical school in what is now southern Italy 50 years later, and Xenophanes, after ﬁnding seashells on a mountain, reasoned that the whole Earth must at one time have been covered by sea. In Sicily in the 4th century BCE, Empedocles asserted that earth, air, ﬁre, and water are the “fourfold roots of everything.” He also took his followers up to the volcanic crater of Mt. Etna and jumped in, apparently to show he was immortal—and as a result we remember him to this day. Stargazers Meanwhile, in India, China, and the Mediterranean, people tried to make sense of the movements of the heavenly bodies. They made star maps—partly as navigational aids—and named stars and groups of stars. They also noted that a few traced irregular paths when viewed against the “ﬁxed stars.” The Greeks called these wandering stars “planets.” The Chinese spotted Halley’s comet in 240 BCE and, in 1054, a supernova that is now known as the Crab Nebula. ❯❯ INTRODUCTION If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. René Descartes 14 House of Wisdom In the late 8th century CE, the Abbasid caliphate set up the House of Wisdom, a magniﬁcent library, in its new capital, Baghdad. This inspired rapid advances in Islamic science and technology. Many ingenious mechanical devices were invented, along with the astrolabe, a navigational device that used the positions of the stars. Alchemy ﬂourished, and techniques such as distillation appeared. Scholars at the library collected all the most important books from Greece and from India, and translated them into Arabic, which is how the West later rediscovered the works of the ancients, and learned of the “Arabic” numerals, including zero, that were imported from India. Birth of modern science As the monopoly of the Church over scientiﬁc truth began to weaken in the Western world, the year 1543 saw the publication of two ground- breaking books. Belgian anatomist Andreas Vesalius produced De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which described his dissections of human corpses with exquisite illustrations. In the same year, Polish physician Nicolaus Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, which stated ﬁrmly that the Sun is the center of the universe, overturning the Earth-centered model ﬁgured out by Ptolemy of Alexandria a millennium earlier. In 1600, English physician William Gilbert published De Magnete in which he explained that compass needles point north because Earth itself is a magnet. He even argued that Earth’s core is made of iron. In 1623, another English physician, William Harvey, described for the ﬁrst time how the heart acts as a pump and drives blood around the body, thereby quashing forever earlier theories that dated back 1,400 years to the Greco-Roman physician Galen. In the 1660s, Anglo-Irish chemist Robert Boyle produced a string of books, including The Sceptical Chymist, in which he deﬁned a chemical element. This marked the birth of chemistry as a science, as distinct from the mystical alchemy from which it arose. Robert Hooke, who worked for a time as Boyle’s assistant, produced the ﬁrst scientiﬁc best seller, Micrographia, in 1665. His superb fold-out illustrations of subjects such as a ﬂea and the eye of a ﬂy opened up a microscopic world no one had seen before. Then in 1687 came what many view as the most important science book of all time, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, commonly known as the Principia. His laws of motion and principle of universal gravity form the basis for classical physics. Elements, atoms, evolution In the 18th century, French chemist Antoine Lavoisier discovered the role of oxygen in combustion, discrediting the old theory of phlogiston. Soon a host of new gases and their properties were being investigated. Thinking about the gases in the atmosphere led British meteorologist John Dalton to INTRODUCTION I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then ﬁnding a smoother pebble…whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton 15 suggest that each element consisted of unique atoms, and propose the idea of atomic weights. Then German chemist August Kekulé developed the basis of molecular structure, while Russian inventor Dmitri Mendeleev laid out the ﬁrst generally accepted periodic table of the elements. The invention of the electric battery by Alessandro Volta in Italy in 1799 opened up new ﬁelds of science, into which marched Danish physicist Hans Christian Ørsted and British contemporary Michael Faraday, discovering new elements and electromagnetism, which led to the invention of the electric motor. Meanwhile, the ideas of classical physics were applied to the atmosphere, the stars, the speed of light, and the nature of heat, which developed into the science of thermodynamics. Geologists studying rock strata began to reconstruct Earth’s past. Paleontology became fashionable as the remains of extinct creatures began to turn up. Mary Anning, an untutored British girl, became a world-famous assembler of fossil remains. With the dinosaurs came ideas of evolution, most famously from British naturalist Charles Darwin, and new theories on the origins and ecology of life. Uncertainty and inﬁnity At the turn of the 20th century, a young German named Albert Einstein proposed his theory of relativity, shaking classical physics and ending the idea of an absolute time and space. New models of the atom were proposed; light was shown to act as both a particle and a wave; and another German, Werner Heisenberg, demonstrated that the universe was uncertain. What has been most impressive about the last century, however, is how technical advances have enabled science to advance faster than ever before, leap-frogging ideas with increasing precision. Ever more powerful particle colliders revealed new fundamental units of matter. Stronger telescopes showed that the universe is expanding, and started with a Big Bang. The idea of black holes began to take root. Dark matter and dark energy, whatever they were, seemed to ﬁll the universe, and astronomers began to discover new worlds—planets in orbit around distant stars, some of which may even harbor life. British mathematician Alan Turing thought of the universal computing machine, and within 50 years we had personal computers, the worldwide web, and smartphones. Secrets of life In biology, chromosomes were shown to be the basis of inheritance and the chemical structure of DNA was decoded. Just 40 years later this led to the human genome project, which seemed a daunting task in prospect, and yet, aided by computing, got faster and faster as it progressed. DNA sequencing is now an almost routine laboratory operation, gene therapy has moved from a hope into reality, and the ﬁrst mammal has been cloned. As today’s scientists build on these and other achievements, the relentless search for the truth continues. It seems likely that there will always be more questions than answers, but future discoveries will surely continue to amaze. ■ INTRODUCTION Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. Albert Einstein THE BEG OF SCIE 600 BCE –14O0 CE INNING NCE 18 T he scientiﬁc study of the world has its roots in Mesopotamia. Following the invention of agriculture and writing, people had the time to devote to study and the means to pass the results of those studies on to the next generation. Early science was inspired by the wonder of the night sky. From the fourth millennium BCE, Sumerian priests studied the stars, recording their results on clay tablets. They did not leave records of their methods, but a tablet dating from 1800 BCE shows knowledge of the properties of right-angled triangles. Ancient Greece The ancient Greeks did not see science as a separate subject from philosophy, but the ﬁrst ﬁgure whose work is recognizably scientiﬁc is probably Thales of Miletus, of whom Plato said that he spent so much time dreaming and looking at the stars that he once fell into a well. Possibly using data from earlier Babylonians, in 585 BCE, Thales predicted a solar eclipse, demonstrating the power of a scientiﬁc approach. Ancient Greece was not a single country, but rather a loose collection of city states. Miletus (now in Turkey) was the birthplace of several noted philosophers. Many other early Greek philosophers studied in Athens. Here, Aristotle was an astute observer, but he did not conduct experiments; he believed that, if he could bring together enough intelligent men, the truth would emerge. The engineer Archimedes, who lived at Syracuse on the island of Sicily, explored the properties of ﬂuids. A new center of learning developed at Alexandria, founded at the mouth of the Nile by Alexander the Great in 331 BCE. Here Eratosthenes measured the size of Earth, Ctesibius made accurate clocks, and Hero invented the steam engine. Meanwhile, the librarians in Alexandria collected the best books they could ﬁnd to build the best library in the world, which was burned down when Romans and Christians took over the city. Science in Asia Science ﬂourished independently in China. The Chinese invented gunpowder—and with it ﬁreworks, rockets, and guns—and made bellows for working metal. They invented the ﬁrst seismograph and the ﬁrst compass. In 1054 CE, INTRODUCTION 585 BCE C.530 BCE C.325 BCE C.300 BCE C.500 BCE C.450 BCE C.250 BCE Aristotle writes a string of books on subjects including physics, biology, and zoology. Pythagoras founds a mathematical school at Croton in what is now southern Italy. Xenophanes ﬁnds seashells on mountains, and concludes that the whole Earth was once covered with water. Archimedes discovers that a king’s crown is not pure gold by measuring the upthrust of displaced water. Empedocles suggests that everything on Earth is made from combinations of earth, air, ﬁre, and water. Thales of Miletus predicts the eclipse of the Sun that brings the Battle of Halys to an end. Aristarchus of Samos suggests that the Sun, rather than Earth, is the center of the universe. Theophrastus writes Enquiry into plants and The causes of plants, founding the discipline of botany. C.240 BCE 19 Chinese astronomers observed a supernova, which was identiﬁed as the Crab Nebula in 1731. Some of the most advanced technology in the ﬁrst millennium CE, including the spinning wheel, was developed in India, and Chinese missions were sent to study Indian farming techniques. Indian mathematicians developed what we now call the “Arabic” number system, including negative numbers and zero, and gave deﬁnitions of the trigonometric functions sine and cosine. The Golden Age of Islam In the middle of the 8th century, the Islamic Abbasid Caliphate moved the capital of its empire from Damascus to Baghdad. Guided by the Quranic slogan “The ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr,” Caliph Harun al-Rashid founded the House of Wisdom in his new capital, intending it to be a library and center for research. Scholars collected books from the old Greek city states and India and translated them into Arabic. This is how many of the ancient texts would eventually reach the West, where they were largely unknown in the Middle Ages. By the middle of the 9th century, the library in Baghdad had grown to become a ﬁne successor to the library at Alexandria. Among those who were inspired by the House of Wisdom were several astronomers, notably al-Suﬁ, who built on the work of Hipparchus and Ptolemy. Astronomy was of practical use to Arab nomads for navigation, since they steered their camels across the desert at night. Alhazen, born in Basra and educated in Baghdad, was one of the ﬁrst experimental scientists, and his book on optics has been likened in importance to the work of Isaac Newton. Arab alchemists devised distillation and other new techniques, and coined words such as alkali, aldehyde, and alcohol. Physician al-Razi introduced soap, distinguished for the ﬁrst time between smallpox and measles, and wrote in one of his many books “The doctor’s aim is to do good, even to our enemies.” Al-Khwarizmi and other mathematicians invented algebra and algorithms; and engineer al-Jazari invented the crank-connecting rod system, which is still used in bicycles and cars. It would take several centuries for European scientists to catch up with these developments. ■ THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE C.240 BCE C.230 BCE C.130 BCE C.150 CE 964 C.120 CE 628 1021 Eratosthenes, a friend of Archimedes, calculates the circumference of Earth from the shadows of the Sun at midday on midsummer day. Ctesibius builds clepsydras—water clocks—that remain for centuries the most accurate timepieces in the world. Hipparchus discovers the precession of Earth’s orbit and compiles the Western world’s ﬁrst star catalogue. Claudius Ptolemy’s Almagest becomes the authoritative text on astronomy in the West, even though it contains many errors. Persian astronomer, Abd al-Rahman al-Suﬁ updates the Almagest, and gives many stars the Arabic names used today. In China, Zhang Heng discusses the nature of eclipses, and compiles a catalogue of 2,500 stars. Indian mathematician Brahmagupta outlines the ﬁrst rules to use the number zero. Alhazen, one of the ﬁrst experimental scientists, conducts original research on vision and optics. 20 B orn in a Greek colony in Asia Minor, Thales of Miletus is often viewed as the founder of Western philosophy, but he was also a key ﬁgure in the early development of science. He was recognized in his lifetime for his thinking on mathematics, physics, and astronomy. Perhaps Thales’s most famous achievement is also his most controversial. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing more than a century after the event, Thales is said to have predicted a solar eclipse, now dated to May 28, 585 BCE, which famously brought a battle between the warring Lydians and Medes to a halt. Contested history Thales’s achievement was not to be repeated for several centuries, and historians of science have long argued about how, and even if, he achieved it. Some argue that Herodotus’s account is inaccurate and vague, but Thales’s feat seems to have been widely known and was taken as fact by later writers, who knew to treat Herodotus’s word with caution. Assuming it is true, it is likely that Thales had discovered an 18-year cycle in the movements of the Sun and Moon, known as the Saros cycle, which was used by later Greek astronomers to predict eclipses. Whatever method Thales used, his prediction had a dramatic effect on the battle at the river Halys, in modern-day Turkey. The eclipse ended not only the battle, but also a 15-year war between the Medes and the Lydians. ■ ECLIPSES OF THE SUN CAN BE PREDICTED THALES OF MILETUS (624–546 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Astronomy BEFORE c.2000 BCE European monuments such as Stonehenge may have been used to calculate eclipses. c.1800 BCE In ancient Babylon, astronomers produce the ﬁrst recorded mathematical description of the movement of heavenly bodies. 2nd millennium BCE Babylonian astronomers develop methods for predicting eclipses, but these are based on observations of the Moon, not mathematical cycles. AFTER c.140 BCE Greek astronomer Hipparchus develops a system to predict eclipses using the Saros cycle of movements of the Sun and Moon. …day became night, and this change of the day Thales the Milesian had foretold… Herodotus See also: Zhang Heng 26–27 ■ Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Johannes Kepler 40–41 ■ Jeremiah Horrocks 52 21 T he nature of matter concerned many ancient Greek thinkers. Having seen liquid water, solid ice, and gaseous mist, Thales of Miletus believed that everything must be made of water. Aristotle suggested that “nourishment of all things is moist and even the hot is created from the wet and lives by it.” Writing two generations after Thales, Anaximenes suggested that the world is made of air, reasoning that when air condenses it produces mist, and then rain, and eventually stones. Born at Agrigentum on the island of Sicily, the physician and poet Empedocles devised a more complex theory: that everything is made of four roots—he did not use the word elements—namely earth, air, ﬁre, and water. Combining these roots would produce qualities such as heat and wetness to make earth, stone, and all plants and animals. Originally, the four roots formed a perfect sphere, held together by love, the centripetal force. But gradually strife, the centrifugal force, began to pull them apart. For Empedocles, love and strife are the two forces that shape the universe. In this world, strife tends to predominate, which is why life is so difﬁcult. This relatively simple theory dominated European thought— which referred to the “four humors”—with little reﬁnement until the development of modern chemistry in the 17th century. ■ THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE NOW HEAR THE FOURFOLD ROOTS OF EVERYTHING EMPEDOCLES (490–430 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Chemistry BEFORE c.585 BCE Thales suggests the whole world is made of water. c.535 BCE Anaximenes thinks that everything is made from air, from which water and then stones are made. AFTER c.400 BCE The Greek thinker Democritus proposes that the world is ultimately made of tiny indivisible particles—atoms. 1661 In his work Sceptical Chymist, Robert Boyle provides a deﬁnition of elements. 1808 John Dalton’s atomic theory states that each element has atoms of different masses. 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev proposes a periodic table, arranging the elements in groups according to their shared properties. Empedocles saw the four roots of matter as two pairs of opposites: ﬁre/water and air/earth, which combine to produce everything we see. Fire Earth Cold Dry Water Wet Hot Air See also: Robert Boyle 46–49 ■ John Dalton 112–13 ■ Dmitri Mendeleev 174–79 22 T he Greek astronomer and mathematician Eratosthenes is best remembered as the ﬁrst person to measure the size of Earth, but he is also regarded as the founder of geography—not only coining the word, but also establishing many of the basic principles used to measure locations on our planet. Born at Cyrene (in modern-day Libya), Eratosthenes traveled widely in the Greek world, studying in Athens and Alexandria, and eventually becoming the librarian of Alexandria’s Great Library. It was in Alexandria that Eratosthenes heard a report that at the town of Swenet, south of Alexandria, the Sun passed directly overhead on the summer solstice (the longest day of the year, when the Sun rises highest in the sky). Assuming the Sun was so distant that its rays were almost parallel to each other when they hit Earth, he used a vertical rod, or “gnomon,” to project the Sun’s shadow at the same moment in Alexandria. Here, he determined, the Sun was MEASURING THE CIRCUMFERENCE OF EARTH ERATOSTHENES (276–194 BCE) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Geography BEFORE 6th century BCE Greek mathematician Pythagoras suggests Earth may be spherical, not ﬂat. 3rd century BCE Aristarchus of Samos is the ﬁrst to place the Sun at the center of the known universe and uses a trigonometric method to estimate the relative sizes of the Sun and the Moon and their distances from Earth. Late 3rd century BCE Eratosthenes introduces the concepts of parallels and meridians to his maps (equivalent to modern longitude and latitude). AFTER 18th century The true circumference and shape of Earth is found through enormous efforts by French and Spanish scientists. Sunlight reached Swenet at right angles, but cast a shadow at Alexandria. The angle of the shadow cast by the gnomon allowed Eratosthenes to calculate Earth’s circumference. Alexandria Swenet Earth 7.2° south of the zenith—which is 1/50th of the circumference of a circle. Therefore, he reasoned, the separation of the two cities along a north–south meridian must be 1/50th of Earth’s circumference. This allowed him to ﬁgure out the size of our planet at 230,000 stadia, or 24,662 miles (39,690 km)—an error of less than 2 percent. ■ 7.2˚ Sunrays 7.2˚ Gnomon See also: Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Johannes Kepler 40–41 23 A Persian scholar born in Baghdad in 1201, during the Golden Age of Islam, Nazir al-Din al-Tusi was a poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, and one of the ﬁrst to propose a system of evolution. He suggested that the universe had once comprised identical elements that had gradually drifted apart, with some becoming minerals and others, changing more quickly, developing into plants and animals. In Akhlaq-i-Nasri, al-Tusi’s work on ethics, he set out a hierarchy of life forms, in which animals were higher than plants and humans were higher than other animals. He regarded the conscious will of animals as a step toward the consciousness of humans. Animals are able to move consciously to search for food, and can learn new things. In this ability to learn, al-Tusi saw an ability to reason: “The trained horse or hunting falcon is at a higher point of development in the animal world,” he said, adding, “The ﬁrst steps of human perfection begin from here.” Al-Tusi believed that organisms changed over time, seeing in that change a progression toward perfection. He thought of humans as being on a “middle step of the evolutionary stairway,” potentially able by means of their will to reach a higher developmental level. He was the ﬁrst to suggest that not only do organisms change over time, but that the whole range of life has evolved from a time when there was no life at all. ■ THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE THE HUMAN IS RELATED TO THE LOWER BEINGS AL-TUSI (1201–1274) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Biology BEFORE c.550 BCE Anaximander of Miletus proposes that animal life began in the water, and evolved from there. c.340 BCE Plato’s theory of forms argues that species are unchangeable. c.300 BCE Epicurus says that many other species have been created in the past, but only the most successful survive to have offspring. AFTER 1377 Ibn Khaldun writes in Muqaddimah that humans developed from monkeys. 1809 Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposes a theory of evolution of species. 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin suggest a theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The organisms that can gain the new features faster are more variable. As a result, they gain advantages over other creatures. al-Tusi See also: Carl Linnaeus 74–75 ■ Jean-Baptiste Lamarck 118 ■ Charles Darwin 142–49 ■ Barbara McClintock 271 24 A FLOATING OBJECT DISPLACES ITS OWN VOLUME IN LIQUID ARCHIMEDES (287–212 BCE) T he Roman author Vitruvius, writing in the 1st century BCE, recounts the possibly apocryphal story of an incident that happened two centuries earlier. Hieron II, the King of Sicily, had ordered a new gold crown. When the crown was delivered, Hieron suspected that the crown maker IN CONTEXT BRANCH Physics BEFORE 3rd millennium BCE Metalworkers discover that melting metals and mixing them together produces an alloy that is stronger than either of the original metals. 600 BCE In ancient Greece, coins are made from an alloy of gold and silver called electrum. AFTER 1687 In his Principia Mathematica, Isaac Newton outlines his theory of gravity, explaining how there is a force that pulls everything toward the center of Earth—and vice versa. 1738 Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli develops his kinetic theory of ﬂuids, explaining how ﬂuids exert pressure on objects by the random movement of molecules in the ﬂuid. had substituted silver for some of the gold, melting the silver with the remaining gold so that the color looked the same as pure gold. The king asked his chief scientist, Archimedes, to investigate. Archimedes puzzled over the problem. The new crown was precious, and must not be damaged The difference in upthrust between the two is small, but it can be detected if you hang them on a balance in water. The displaced water causes an upthrust. The partly silver crown experiences a greater upthrust than the gold. Silver is less dense than gold, so a lump of silver will have a greater volume than a lump of gold of the same weight. A crown made partly of silver will have greater volume and displace more water than a lump of pure gold of the same weight as the crown. Eureka! 25 See also: Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE in any way. He went to the public baths in Syracuse to ponder the problem. The bath was full to the brim, and when he climbed in, he noticed two things: the water level rose, making some water slop over the side, and he felt weightless. He shouted “Eureka!” (I have found the answer!) and ran home stark naked. Measuring volume Archimedes had realized that if he lowered the crown into a bucket ﬁlled to the brim with water, it would displace some water— exactly the same amount as its own volume—and he could measure how much water spilled out. This would tell him the volume of the crown. Silver is less dense than gold, so a silver crown of the same weight would be bigger than a gold crown, and would displace more water. Therefore, an adulterated crown would displace more water than a pure gold crown—and more than a lump of gold of the same weight. In practice, the effect would have been small and difﬁcult to measure. But Archimedes had also realized that any object immersed in a liquid experiences an upthrust (upward force) equal to the weight of the liquid it has displaced. Archimedes probably solved the puzzle by hanging the crown and an equal weight of pure gold on opposite ends of a stick, which he then suspended by its center so that the two weights balanced. Then he lowered the whole thing into a bath of water. If the crown was pure gold, it and the lump of gold would experience an equal upthrust, and the stick would stay horizontal. If the crown contained some silver, however, the volume of the crown would be greater than the volume of the lump of gold—the crown would displace more water, and the stick would tilt sharply. Archimedes’ idea became known as Archimedes’ principle, which states that the upthrust on an object in a ﬂuid is equal to the weight of the ﬂuid the object displaces. This principle explains how objects made of dense material can still ﬂoat on water. A steel ship that weighs one ton will sink until A solid heavier than a ﬂuid will, if placed in it, descend to the bottom of the ﬂuid, and the solid will, when weighed in the ﬂuid, be lighter than its true weight by the weight of the ﬂuid displaced. Archimedes it has displaced one ton of water, but then will sink no further. Its deep, hollow hull has a greater volume and displaces more water than a lump of steel of the same weight, and is therefore buoyed up by a greater upthrust. Vitruvius tells us that Hieron’s crown was indeed found to contain some silver, and that the crown maker was duly punished. ■ Archimedes Archimedes was possibly the greatest mathematician in the ancient world. Born around 287 BCE, he was killed by a soldier when his home town Syracuse was taken by the Romans in 212 BCE. He had devised several fearsome weapons to keep at bay the Roman warships that attacked Syracuse—a catapult, a crane to lift the bows of a ship out of the water, and a death array of mirrors to focus the Sun’s rays and set ﬁre to a ship. He probably invented the Archimedes screw, still used today for irrigation, during a stay in Egypt. Archimedes also calculated an approximation for pi (the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter), and wrote down the laws of levers and pulleys. The achievement Archimedes was most proud of was a mathematical proof that the smallest cylinder that any given sphere can ﬁt into has exactly 1.5 times the sphere’s volume. A sphere and a cylinder are carved into Archimedes’ tombstone. Key work c.250 BCE On Floating Bodies 26 THE SUN IS LIKE FIRE, THE MOON IS LIKE WATER ZHANG HENG (78–139 CE) I n about 140 BCE, the Greek astronomer Hipparchus, probably the ﬁnest astronomer of the ancient world, compiled a catalogue of some 850 stars. He also explained how to predict the movements of the Sun and Moon and the dates of eclipses. In his work Almagest of about 150 CE, Ptolemy of Alexandria listed 1,000 stars and 48 constellations. Most of this work was effectively an updated version of what Hipparchus had written, but in a more practical form. In the West, the Almagest became the standard astronomy text throughout the Middle Ages. Its tables included all the information needed to calculate the future positions of the Sun and Moon, the planets and the major stars, and also eclipses of the Sun and Moon. In 120 CE, the Chinese polymath Zhang Heng produced a work entitled Ling Xian, or The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe. In it, he wrote that “the sky is like a hen’s egg, and is as round as a crossbow pellet, and Earth is like the yolk of the egg, lying alone at the center. The sky is large and the Earth small.” This was, following Hipparchus and Ptolemy, a universe IN CONTEXT BRANCH Physics BEFORE 140 BCE Hipparchus ﬁgures out how to predict eclipses. 150 CE Ptolemy improves on Hipparchus’s work, and produces practical tables for calculating the future positions of the celestial bodies. AFTER 11th century Shen Kuo writes the Dream Pool Essays, in which he uses the waxing and waning of the Moon to demonstrate that all heavenly bodies (though not Earth) are spherical. 1543 Nicolaus Copernicus publishes On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres, in which he describes a heliocentric system. 1609 Johannes Kepler explains the movements of the planets as free-ﬂoating bodies describing ellipses. The Moon must be bright because of sunlight. During the day Earth is bright, with shadows, because of sunlight. The Moon is sometimes bright, with shadows. Therefore the Sun is like ﬁre, the Moon like water. 27 See also: Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Johannes Kepler 40–41 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE with Earth at its center. Zhang catalogued 2,500 “brightly shining” stars and 124 constellations, and added that “of the very small stars there are 11,520.” Eclipses of the Moon and planets Zhang was fascinated by eclipses. He wrote, “The Sun is like ﬁre and the Moon like water. The ﬁre gives out light and the water reﬂects it. Thus the Moon’s brightness is produced from the radiance of the Sun, and the Moon’s darkness is due to the light of the Sun being obstructed. The side that faces the Sun is fully lit, and the side that is away from it is dark.” Zhang also described a lunar eclipse, where the Sun’s light cannot reach the Moon because Earth is in the way. He recognized that the planets were also “like water,” reﬂecting light, and so were also subject to eclipses: “When [a similar effect] happens with a planet, we call it an occultation; when the Moon passes across the Sun’s path then there is a solar eclipse.” In the 11th century, another Chinese astronomer, Shen Kuo, expanded on Zhang’s work in one signiﬁcant respect. He showed that observations of the waxing and waning of the Moon proved that the celestial bodies were spherical. ■ The Moon and the planets are Yin; they have shape but no light. Jing Fang Zhang Heng Zhang Heng was born in 78 CE in the town of Xi’e, in what is now Henan Province, in Han Dynasty China. At 17, he left home to study literature and train to be a writer. By his late 20s, Zhang had become a skilled mathematician and was called to the court of Emperor An-ti, who, in 115 CE, made him Chief Astrologer. Zhang lived at a time of rapid advances in science. In addition to his astronomical work, he devised a water- powered armillary sphere (a model of the celestial objects) and invented the world’s ﬁrst seismometer, which was ridiculed until, in 138 CE, it successfully recorded an earthquake 250 miles (400 km) away. He also invented the ﬁrst odometer to measure distances traveled in vehicles, and a nonmagnetic, south- pointing compass in the form of a chariot. Zhang was a distinguished poet, whose works give us vivid insights into the cultural life of his day. Key works c.120 CE The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe c.120 CE The Map of the Ling Xian The crescent outline of Venus is about to be occulted by the Moon. Zhang’s observations led him to conclude that, like the Moon, the planets did not produce their own light. 28 LIGHT TRAVELS IN STRAIGHT LINES INTO OUR EYES ALHAZEN (c.965–1040) T he Arab astronomer and mathematician Alhazen, who lived in Baghdad, in present-day Iraq, during the Golden Age of Islamic civilization, was arguably the world’s ﬁrst experimental scientist. While earlier Greek and Persian thinkers had explained the natural world in various ways, they had arrived at their conclusions through abstract reasoning, not through physical experiments. Alhazen, working in a thriving Islamic culture of curiosity and inquiry, was the ﬁrst to use what we now call the scientiﬁc method: setting up hypotheses and IN CONTEXT BRANCH Physics BEFORE 350 BCE Aristotle argues that vision derives from physical forms entering the eye from an object. 300 BCE Euclid argues that the eye sends out beams that are bounced back to the eye. 980s Ibn Sahl investigates refraction of light and deduces the laws of refraction. AFTER 1240 English bishop Robert Grosseteste uses geometry in his experiments with optics and accurately describes the nature of color. 1604 Johannes Kepler’s theory of the retinal image is based directly on Alhazen’s work. 1620s Alhazen’s ideas inﬂuence Francis Bacon, who advocates a scientiﬁc method based on experiment. The light of the Sun bounces off objects. To see, we need to do nothing but open our eyes. The light bounces off in straight lines. Light travels in straight lines into our eyes. methodically testing them with experiments. As he observed: “The seeker after truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and…puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration.” Understanding vision Alhazen is remembered today as a founder of the science of optics. His most important works were studies of the structure of the eye and the process of vision. The 29 THE BEGINNING OF SCIENCE Greek scholars Euclid and, later, Ptolemy believed that vision derived from “rays” that beamed out of the eye and bounced back from whatever a person was looking at. Alhazen showed, through the observation of shadows and reﬂection, that light bounces off objects and travels in straight lines into our eyes. Vision was a passive, rather than an active, phenomenon, at least until it reached the retina. He noted that, “from each point of every colored body, illuminated by any light, issue light and color along every straight line that can be drawn from that point.” In order to see things, we have only to open our eyes to let in the light. There is no need for the eye to send out rays, even if it could. Alhazen also found, through his experiments with bulls’ eyes, that light enters a small hole (the pupil) The duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads. Alhazen Alhazen Abu Ali al-Hassan ibn al- Haytham (known in the West as Alhazen) was born in Basra, in present-day Iraq, and educated in Baghdad. As a young man he was given a government job in Basra, but soon became bored. One story has it that, on hearing about the problems resulting from the annual ﬂooding of the Nile in Egypt, he wrote to Caliph al-Hakim offering to build a dam to regulate the deluge, and was received with honor in Cairo. However, when he traveled south of the city, and saw the sheer size of the river— which is almost 1 mile (1.6 km) wide at Aswan—he realized the task was impossible with the technology then available. To avoid the caliph’s retribution he feigned insanity and remained under house arrest for 12 years. In that time he did his most important work. Key works 1011–21 Book of Optics c.1030 A Discourse on Light c.1030 On the Light of the Moon See also: Johannes Kepler 40–41 ■ Francis Bacon 45 ■ Christiaan Huygens 50–51 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 and is focused by a lens onto a sensitive surface (the retina) at the back of the eye. However, even though he recognized the eye as a lens, he did not explain how the eye or the brain forms an image. Experiments with light Alhazen’s monumental, seven- volume Book of Optics set out his theory of light and his theory of vision. It remained the main authority on the subject until Newton’s Principia was published 650 years later. The book explores the interaction of light with lenses, and describes the phenomenon of refraction (change in the direction) of light—700 years before Dutch scientist Willebrord van Roijen Snell’s law of refraction. It also examines the refraction of light by the atmosphere, and describes shadows, rainbows, and eclipses. Optics greatly inﬂuenced later Western scientists, including Francis Bacon, one of the scientists responsible for reviving Alhazen’s scientiﬁc method during the Renaissance in Europe. ■ Alhazen provided the ﬁrst scientiﬁc description of a camera obscura, an optical device that projects an upside-down image on a screen. Object Light rays travel from the object Pinhole Image is upside down and back to front SCIENTI REVOLU 1400 –1700 FIC TION 32 T he Islamic Golden Age was a great ﬂowering of the sciences and arts that began in the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, Baghdad, in the mid-8th century and lasted for about 500 years. It laid the foundations for experimentation and the modern scientiﬁc method. In the same period in Europe, however, several hundred years were to pass before scientiﬁc thought was to overcome the restrictions of religious dogma. Dangerous thinking For centuries, the Catholic Church’s view of the universe was based on Aristotle’s idea that Earth was at the orbital center of all celestial bodies. Then, in about 1532, after years of struggling with its complex mathematics, Polish physician Nicolaus Copernicus completed his heretical model of the universe that had the Sun at its center. Aware of the heresy, he was careful to state that it was only a mathematical model, and he waited until he was on the point of death before publishing, but the Copernican model quickly won many advocates. German astrologer Johannes Kepler reﬁned Copernicus’s theory using observations by his Danish mentor Tycho Brahe, and calculated that the orbits of Mars and, by inference, the other planets were ellipses. Improved telescopes allowed Italian polymath Galileo Galilei to identify four moons of Jupiter in 1610. The new cosmology’s explanatory power was becoming undeniable. Galileo also demonstrated the power of scientiﬁc experiment, investigating the physics of falling objects and devising the pendulum as an effective timekeeper, which Dutchman Christiaan Huygens used to build the ﬁrst pendulum clock in 1657. English philosopher Francis Bacon wrote two books laying out his ideas for a scientiﬁc method, and the theoretical groundwork for modern science, based on experiment, observation, and measurement, was developed. New discoveries followed thick and fast. Robert Boyle used an air pump to investigate the properties of air, while Huygens and English physicist Isaac Newton came up with opposing theories of how light travels, establishing the science of optics. Danish astronomer Ole Rømer noted discrepancies in the timetable of eclipses of the moons of Jupiter, and used these to calculate an approximate value INTRODUCTION 1543 1600 1620S 1639 1609 1610 1643 Francis Bacon publishes Novum Organum Scientarum and The New Atlantis, outlining the scientiﬁc method. Astronomer William Gilbert publishes De Magnete, a treatise on magnetism, and suggests that Earth is a magnet. Johannes Kepler suggests that Mars has an elliptical orbit. Robert Boyle publishes New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects, investigating air pressure. Galileo observes the moons of Jupiter and experiments with balls rolling down slopes. Nicolaus Copernicus publishes De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, outlining a heliocentric universe. Evangelista Torricelli invents the barometer. Jeremiah Horrocks observes the transit of Venus. 1660S 33 for the speed of light. Rømer’s compatriot, Bishop Nicolas Steno, was sceptical of much ancient wisdom, and developed his own ideas in both anatomy and geology. He laid down the principles of stratigraphy (the study of rock layers), establishing a new scientiﬁc basis for geology. Microworlds Throughout the 17th century, developments in technology drove scientiﬁc discovery at the smallest scale. In the early 1600s, Dutch eyeglasses-makers developed the ﬁrst microscopes, and, later that century, Robert Hooke built his own and made beautiful drawings of his ﬁndings, revealing the intricate structure of tiny bugs such as ﬂeas for the ﬁrst time. Dutch fabric-store owner Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, perhaps inspired by Hooke’s drawings, made hundreds of his own microscopes and found tiny life forms in places where no one had thought of looking before, such as water. Leeuwenhoek had discovered single-celled life forms such as protists and bacteria, which he called “animalcules.” When he reported his ﬁndings to the British Royal Society, they sent three priests to certify that he had really seen such things. Dutch microscopist Jan Swammerdam showed that egg, larva, pupa, and adult are all stages in the development of an insect, and not separate animals created by God. Old ideas dating back to Aristotle were swept away by these new discoveries. Meanwhile, English biologist John Ray compiled an enormous encyclopedia of plants, which marked the ﬁrst serious attempt at systematic classiﬁcation. Mathematical analysis Heralding the Enlightenment, these discoveries laid the groundwork for the modern scientiﬁc disciplines of astronomy, chemistry, geology, physics, and biology. The century’s crowning achievement came with Newton’s treatise Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, which laid out his laws of motion and gravity. Newtonian physics was to remain the best description of the physical world for more than two centuries, and together with the analytical techniques of calculus developed independently by Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, it would provide a powerful tool for future scientiﬁc study. ■ SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 1665 1669 1669 1676 1686 1670S 1678 1687 In Micrographia, Robert Hooke introduces the world to the anatomy of ﬂeas, bees, and cork. Nicolas Steno writes about solids (fossils and crystals) contained within solids. Jan Swammerdam describes how insects develop in stages in Historia Insectorum Generalis. Ole Rømer uses the moons of Jupiter to show that light has a ﬁnite speed. John Ray publishes Historia Plantarum, an encyclopedia of the plant kingdom. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek observes single-celled organisms, sperm, and even bacteria with simple microscopes. Christiaan Huygens ﬁrst announces his wave theory of light, which will later contrast with Isaac Newton’s idea of light as corpuscular. Isaac Newton outlines his laws of motion in Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. AT THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING IS THE SUN NICOLAUS COPERNICUS (1473 –1543) 36 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS T hroughout its early history, Western thought was shaped by an idea of the universe that placed Earth at the center of everything. This “geocentric model” seemed at ﬁrst to be rooted in everyday observations and common sense— we do not feel any motion of the ground on which we stand, and superﬁcially there seems to be no observational evidence that our planet is in motion either. Surely the simplest explanation was that the Sun, Moon, planets and stars were all spinning around Earth at different rates? This system appears to have been widely accepted in the ancient world, and became entrenched in classical philosophy through the works of Plato and Aristotle in the 4th century BCE. However, when the ancient Greeks measured the movements of the planets, it became clear that the geocentric system had problems. The orbits of the known planets—ﬁve wandering lights in the sky—followed complex paths. Mercury and Venus were always seen in the morning and evening skies, describing tight loops around IN CONTEXT BRANCH Astronomy BEFORE 3rd century BCE In a work called The Sand Reckoner, Archimedes reports the ideas of Aristarchus of Samos, who proposed that the universe was much larger than commonly believed, and that the Sun was at its center. 150 CE Ptolemy of Alexandria uses mathematics to describe a geocentric (Earth-centered) model of the universe. AFTER 1609 Johannes Kepler resolves the outstanding conﬂicts in the heliocentric (Sun-centered) model of the solar system by proposing elliptical orbits. 1610 After observing the moons of Jupiter, Galileo becomes convinced that Copernicus was right. If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking on creation thus, I should have recommended something simpler. Alfonso X King of Castile the Sun. Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, meanwhile, took 780 days, 12 years, and 30 years respectively to circle against the background stars, their motion complicated by “retrograde” loops in which they slowed and temporarily reversed the general direction of their motion. Ptolemaic system To explain these complications, Greek astronomers introduced the idea of epicycles—“sub-orbits” around which the planets circled as the central “pivot” points of the At the center of everything is the Sun. Earth appears to be stationary, with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars orbiting it. However, a model of the universe with Earth at its center cannot describe the movement of the planets without using a very complicated system. Placing the Sun at the center produces a far more elegant model, with Earth and the planets orbiting the Sun, and the stars a huge distance away. 37 SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION sub-orbits were carried around the Sun. This system was best reﬁned by the great Greco-Roman astronomer and geographer Ptolemy of Alexandria in the 2nd century CE. Even in the classical world, however, there were differences of opinion—the Greek thinker Aristarchus of Samos, for instance, used ingenious trigonometric measurements to calculate the relative distances of the Sun and Moon in the 3rd century BCE. He found that the Sun was huge, and this inspired him to suggest that the Sun was a more likely pivot point for the motion of the cosmos. However, the Ptolemaic system ultimately won out over rival theories, with far-reaching implications. While the Roman Empire dwindled in subsequent centuries, the Christian Church inherited many of its assumptions. The idea that Earth was the center of everything, and that man was the pinnacle of God’s creation, with dominion over Earth, became a central tenet of Christianity and held sway in Europe until the 16th century. However, this does not mean that astronomy stagnated for a millennium and a half after Ptolemy. The ability to accurately predict the movements of the planets was not only a scientiﬁc and philosophical puzzle, but also had supposed practical purposes thanks to the superstitions of astrology. Stargazers of all persuasions had good reason See also: Zhang Heng 26–27 ■ Johannes Kepler 40–41 ■ Galileo Galilei 42–43 ■ William Herschel 86–87 ■ Edwin Hubble 236–41 Ptolemy’s model of the universe has Earth unmoving at the center, with the Sun, Moon, and the ﬁve known planets following circular orbits around it. To make their orbits agree with observations, Ptolemy added smaller epicycles to each planet’s movement. to attempt ever more accurate measurements of the motions of the planets. Arabic scholarship The later centuries of the ﬁrst millennium corresponded with the ﬁrst great ﬂowering of Arabic science. The rapid spread of Islam across the Middle East and North Africa from the 7th century brought Arab thinkers into contact with classical texts, including the astronomical writings of Ptolemy and others. The practice of “positional astronomy”—calculating the positions of heavenly bodies— reached its apogee in Spain, which had become a dynamic melting pot of Islamic, Jewish, and Christian thought. In the late 13th century, King Alfonso X of Castile sponsored the compilation of the Alfonsine Tables, which combined new observations with centuries of Islamic records to bring new precision to the Ptolemaic system and provide the data that would be used to calculate planetary positions until the early 17th century. Questioning Ptolemy However, by this point the Ptolemaic model was becoming absurdly complicated, with yet more epicycles added to keep prediction in line with observation. In 1377, French philosopher Nicole Oresme, Bishop of Lisieux, addressed this problem head-on in the work Livre du Ciel et du Monde (Book of the Heavens and the Earth). He demonstrated the lack of observational proof that Earth was static, and argued that there was no reason to suppose that it ❯❯ Saturn Jupiter Mars Earth Moon Mercury Venus Sun 38 NICOLAUS COPERNICUS was not in motion. Yet, despite his demolition of the evidence for the Ptolemaic system, Oresme concluded that he did not himself believe in a moving Earth. By the beginning of the 16th century, the situation had become very different. The twin forces of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation saw many old religious dogmas opened up to question. It was in this context that Nicolaus Copernicus, a Polish Catholic canon from the province of Warmia, put forward the ﬁrst modern heliocentric theory, shifting the center of the universe from Earth to the Sun. Copernicus ﬁrst published his ideas in a short pamphlet known as the Commentariolus, circulated among friends from around 1514. His theory was similar in essence to the system proposed by Aristarchus, and while it overcame many of the earlier model’s failings, it remained deeply attached to certain pillars of Ptolemaic thought—most signiﬁcantly the idea that the orbits of celestial objects were mounted on crystalline spheres that rotated in perfect circular motion. As a result, Copernicus had to introduce “epicycles” of his own in order to regulate the speed of planetary motions on certain parts of their orbits. One important implication of his model was that it vastly increased the size of the universe. If Earth was moving around the Sun, then this should give itself away through parallax effects caused by our changing point of view: the stars should appear to shift back and forth across the sky throughout the year. Because they do not do so, they must be very far away indeed. The Copernican model soon proved itself far more accurate than any reﬁnement of the old Ptolemaic system, and word spread among intellectual circles across Europe. Notice even reached Rome, where, contrary to popular belief, the model was at ﬁrst welcomed in some Catholic circles. The new model caused enough of a stir for German mathematician Georg Joachim Rheticus to travel to Warmia and become Copernicus’s pupil and assistant from 1539. This 17th-century illustration of the Copernican system shows the planets in circular orbits around the Sun. Copernicus believed that the planets were attached to heavenly spheres. It was Rheticus who published the ﬁrst widely circulated account of the Copernican system, known as the Narratio Prima, in 1540. Rheticus urged the aging priest to publish his own work in full— something that Copernicus had contemplated for many years, but only conceded to in 1543 as he lay on his deathbed. Mathematical tool Published posthumously, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) was not initially greeted with outrage, even though any suggestion that Earth was in motion directly contradicted several passages of Scripture and was Since the Sun remains stationary, whatever appears as a motion of the Sun is due to the motion of the Earth. Nicolaus Copernicus 39 SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION therefore regarded as heretical by both Catholic and Protestant theologians. To sidestep the issue, a preface had been inserted that explained the heliocentric model as purely a mathematical tool for prediction, not a description of the physical universe. In his life, however, Copernicus himself had shown no such reservations. Despite its heretical implications, the Copernican model was used for the calculations involved in the great calendar reform introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. However, new problems with the model’s predictive accuracy soon began to emerge, thanks to the meticulous observations of the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), which showed that the Copernican model did not adequately describe planetary motions. Brahe attempted to resolve these contradictions with a model of his own in which the planets went around the Sun but the Sun and Moon remained in orbit around Earth. The real solution—that of elliptical orbits— would only be found by his pupil Johannes Kepler. It would be six decades before Copernicanism became truly emblematic of the split caused in Europe by the Reformation of the Church, thanks largely to the controversy surrounding Italian scientist Galileo Galilei. Galileo’s 1610 observations of the phases displayed by Venus and the presence of moons orbiting Jupiter convinced him that the heliocentric theory was correct, and his ardent support for it, from the heart of Catholic Italy, was ultimately expressed in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632). This led Galileo into conﬂict with the papacy, one result of which was the retrospective censorship of controversial passages in De Revolutionibus in 1616. This prohibition would not be lifted for more than two centuries. ■ Nicolaus Copernicus Born in the Polish city of Torun in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus was the youngest of four children of a wealthy merchant. His father died when Nicolaus was 10. An uncle took him under his wing and oversaw his education at the University of Krakow. He spent several years in Italy studying medicine and law, returning in 1503 to Poland, where he joined the canonry under his uncle, who was now Prince-Bishop of Warmia. Copernicus was a master of both languages and mathematics, translating several important works and developing ideas about economics, as well as working on his astronomical theories. The theory he outlined in De Revolutionibus was daunting in its mathematical complexity, so while many recognized its signiﬁcance, it was not widely adopted by astronomers for practical everyday use. Key works 1514 Commentariolus 1543 De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) As Earth moves around the Sun, the apparent position of stars at different distances changes due to an effect called parallax. Since the stars are so far away, the effect is small and can only be detected using telescopes. As though seated on a royal throne, the Sun governs the family of planets revolving around it. Nicolaus Copernicus Earth in January Sun Near star Distant stars Earth in July Apparent position 40 THE ORBIT OF EVERY PLANET IS AN ELLIPSE JOHANNES KEPLER (1571–1630) W hile the work of Nicolaus Copernicus on celestial orbits, published in 1543, made a convincing case for a heliocentric (Sun-centered) model of the universe, his system suffered from signiﬁcant problems. Unable to break free from ancient ideas that heavenly bodies were mounted on crystal spheres, Copernicus had IN CONTEXT BRANCH Astronomy BEFORE 150 CE Ptolemy of Alexandria publishes the Algamest, a model of the universe built on the assumption that Earth lies at its center and the Sun, Moon, planets and stars revolve around it in circular orbits on ﬁxed celestial spheres. 16th century The idea of a Sun-centered cosmology begins to gain followers through the ideas of Nicolaus Copernicus. AFTER 1639 Jeremiah Horrocks uses Kepler’s ideas to predict and view a transit of Venus across the face of the Sun. 1687 Isaac Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation reveal the physical principles that give rise to Kepler’s laws. This suggests that heavenly bodies are not attached to ﬁxed celestial spheres. The orbit of every planet is an ellipse. The birth of a new star in a constellation shows that the heavens beyond the planets are not unchanging. Observations of comets show that they move among the planets, crossing their orbits. If the planets are not ﬁxed onto spheres, an elliptical orbit around the Sun best explains their observed motion. stated that the planets orbited the Sun on perfect circular paths, and was forced to introduce a variety of complications to his model to account for their irregularities. Supernova and comets In the latter half of the 16th century, Danish nobleman Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) made observations that 41 See also: Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Jeremiah Horrocks 52 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION would prove vital to resolving the problems. A bright supernova explosion seen in the constellation of Cassiopeia in 1572 undermined the Copernican idea that the universe beyond the planets was unchanging. In 1577, Brahe plotted the motion of a comet. Comets had been thought of as local phenomena, closer than the Moon, but Brahe’s observations showed that the comet must lie well beyond the Moon, and was in fact moving among the planets. In one stroke, this evidence demolished the idea of “heavenly spheres.” However, Brahe remained wedded to the idea of circular orbits in his geocentric (Earth-centered) model. In 1597, Brahe was invited to Prague, where he spent his last years as Imperial Mathematician to Emperor Rudolph II. Here he was joined by German astrologer Johannes Kepler, who continued Brahe’s work after his death. Breaking with circles Kepler had already begun to calculate a new orbit for Mars from Brahe’s observations, and around this time concluded that its orbit must be ovoid (egg-shaped) rather than truly circular. Kepler formulated a heliocentric model with ovoid orbits, but this still did not match the observational data. In 1605, he concluded that Mars must instead orbit the Sun in an ellipse—a “stretched circle” with the Sun as one of two focus points. In his Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) of 1609, he outlined two laws of planetary motion. The ﬁrst law stated that the orbit of every planet is an ellipse. The second law stated that a line joining a planet to the Sun sweeps across equal areas during equal periods of time. This means that the speed of the planets increases the closer they are to the Sun. A third law, in 1619, described the relationship of a planet’s year to its distance from the Sun: the square of a planet’s orbital period (year) is proportional to the cube of its distance from the Sun. So a planet that is twice the distance from the Sun than another planet will have a year that is almost three times as long. The nature of the force keeping the planets in orbit was unknown. Kepler believed it was magnetic, but it would be 1687 before Newton showed that it was gravity. ■ Johannes Kepler Born in the city of Weil der Stadt near Stuttgart, southern Germany, in 1571, Johannes Kepler witnessed the Great Comet of 1577 as a small child, marking the start of his fascination with the heavens. While studying at the University of Tübingen, he developed a reputation as a brilliant mathematician and astrologer. He corresponded with various leading astronomers of the time, including Tycho Brahe, ultimately moving to Prague in 1600 to become Brahe’s student and academic heir. Following Brahe’s death in 1601, Kepler took on the post of Imperial Mathematician, with a royal commission to complete Brahe’s work on the so-called Rudolphine Tables for predicting the movements of the planets. He completed this work in Linz, Austria, where he worked from 1612 until his death in 1630. Key works 1596 The Cosmic Mystery 1609 Astronomia Nova (New Astronomy) 1619 The Harmony of the World 1627 Rudolphine Tables Kepler’s laws state that planets follow elliptical orbits with the Sun as one of the two foci of the ellipse. In any given time, t, a line joining the planets to the Sun sweeps across equal areas (A) in the ellipse. t t t Sun A A A Planet Focus Focus 42 A FALLING BODY ACCELERATES UNIFORMLY GALILEO GALILEI (1564–1642) F or 2,000 years, few people challenged Aristotle’s assertion that an external force keeps things moving and that heavy objects fall faster than lighter ones. Only in the 17th century did the Italian astronomer and mathematician Galileo Galilei insist that the ideas had to be tested. He devised experiments to test how and why objects move and stop moving, and was the ﬁrst to ﬁgure out the principle of inertia—that objects resist a change in motion and need a force to start moving, speed up, or slow down. By timing objects falling, Galileo showed that the rate of fall is the same for all objects, and came to realize the part played by friction in slowing them down. IN CONTEXT BRANCH Physics BEFORE 4th century BCE Aristotle develops ideas about forces and motion, but does not test them experimentally. 1020 Persian scholar Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes that moving objects have innate “impetus,” slowed only by external factors such as air resistance. 1586 Flemish engineer Simon Stevin drops two lead balls of unequal weight from a church tower in Delft to show that they fall at the same speed. AFTER 1687 Isaac Newton’s Principia formulates his laws of motion. 1971 US astronaut Dave Scott demonstrates Galileo’s ideas about falling bodies by showing that a hammer and a feather fall at the same rate on the Moon, which has almost no atmosphere to cause drag. With the equipment available during the 1630s, Galileo could not directly measure the speed or acceleration of freely falling objects. By rolling balls down one ramp and up another, he showed that the speed of a ball at the bottom of the ramp depended on its starting height, not on the steepness of the ramp, and that a ball would always roll up to the same height it had started from, no matter how steep or shallow the inclines were. Galileo carried out his remaining experiments with a ramp 16 ft (5 m) long, lined with a smooth material to reduce friction. For timing, he used a large container of water with a small pipe in the bottom. He collected the water during the interval he was measuring, and weighed the water Galileo demonstrated that the speed a ball reaches at the bottom of a ramp depends only on its starting height, not the steepness of the ramp. Here, balls dropped from points A and B will reach the bottom of the ramp at the same speed. A B 43 See also: Nicolaus Copernicus 34–39 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION collected. By letting the ball go at different points on the ramp, he showed that the distance traveled depended on the square of the time taken—in other words, the ball accelerated down the ramp. The law of falling bodies Galileo’s conclusion was that bodies all fall at the same speed in a vacuum, an idea later developed further by Isaac Newton. There is a greater force from gravity on a larger mass, but the larger mass also needs a bigger force to make it accelerate. The two effects cancel each other out, so in the absence of any other forces, all falling objects will accelerate at the same rate. We see things falling at different rates in everyday life because of the effect of air resistance, which slows objects down at different rates depending on their size and shape. A beach ball and a bowling ball of the same size will initially accelerate at the same rate. Once they are moving, the same amount of air resistance will act on them, but the size of this force will be a much greater proportion of the downward force on the beach ball than the bowling ball, and so the beach ball will slow down more. Galileo’s insistence on testing theories with careful observation and measurable experiments marks him, like Alhazen, as one of the founders of modern science. His ideas on forces and motion paved the way for Newton’s laws of motion 50 years later and underpin our understanding of movement in the universe, from atoms to galaxies. ■ Objects of different masses appear to fall at different rates. Without air resistance, all objects would fall at the same rate. All moving objects are affected by air resistance. A falling body accelerates uniformly. Count what is countable, measure what is measurable, and what is not measurable, make it measurable. Galileo Galilei Galileo Galilei Galileo was born in Pisa, but later moved with his family to Florence. In 1581, he enrolled in the University of Pisa to study medicine, then switched to mathematics and natural philosophy. He investigated many areas of science, and is perhaps most famous for his discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter (still called the Galilean moons). Galileo’s observations led him to support the Sun-centered model of the solar system, which at the time was in opposition to the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1633, he was tried and made to recant this and other ideas. He was sentenced to house arrest, which lasted the rest of his life. During his conﬁnement, he wrote a book summarizing his work on kinematics (the science of movement). Key works 1623 The Assayer 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems 1638 Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences 44 See also: Thales of Miletus 20 ■ Johannes Kepler 40–41 ■ Galileo Galilei 42–43 ■ Hans Christian Ørsted 120 ■ James Clerk Maxwell 180–85 B y the late 1500s, ships’ captains already relied on magnetic compasses to maintain their course across the oceans. Yet no one knew how they worked. Some thought the compass needle was attracted to the North Star, others that it was drawn to magnetic mountains in the Arctic. It was English physician William Gilbert who discovered that Earth itself is magnetic. Gilbert’s breakthrough came not from a ﬂash of inspiration, but from 17 years of meticulous experiment. He learned all he could from ships’ captains and compass makers, and then he made a model globe, or “terrella,” out of the magnetic rock lodestone and tested compass needles against it. The needles reacted around the terrella just as ships’ compasses did on a larger scale—showing the same patterns of declination (pointing slightly away from true north at the geographic pole, which differs from magnetic north) and inclination (tilting down from the horizontal toward the globe). Gilbert concluded, rightly, that the entire planet is a magnet and has a core of iron. He published his ideas in the book De Magnete (On the Magnet) in 1600, causing a sensation. Johannes Kepler and Galileo, in particular, were inspired by his suggestion that Earth is not ﬁxed to rotating celestial spheres, as most people still thought, but is made to spin by the invisible force of its own magnetism. ■ THE GLOBE OF THE EARTH IS A MAGNET WILLIAM GILBERT (1544–1603) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Geology BEFORE 6th century BCE The Greek thinker Thales of Miletus notes magnetic rocks, or lodestones. 1st century CE Chinese diviners make primitive compasses with iron ladles that swivel to point south. 1269 French scholar Pierre de Maricourt sets out the basic laws of magnetic attraction, repulsion, and poles. AFTER 1824 French mathematician Siméon Poisson models the forces in a magnetic ﬁeld. 1940s American physicist Walter Maurice Elsasser attributes Earth’s magnetic ﬁeld to iron swirling in its outer core as the planet rotates. 1958 Explorer 1 space mission shows Earth’s magnetic ﬁeld extending far out into space. Stronger reasons are obtained from sure experiments and demonstrated arguments than from probable conjectures and the opinions of philosophical speculators. William Gilbert 45 See also: Alhazen 28–29 ■ Galileo Galilei 42–43 ■ William Gilbert 44 ■ Robert Hooke 54 ■ Isaac Newton 62–69 T he English philosopher, statesman, and scientist Francis Bacon was not the ﬁrst to conduct experiments— Alhazen and other Arab scientists conducted them 600 years earlier— but he was the ﬁrst to explain the methods of inductive reasoning and set out the scientiﬁc method. He also saw science as a “spring of a progeny of inventions, which shall overcome, to some extent, and subdue our needs and miseries.” Evidence from experiment According to the Greek philosopher Plato, truth was found by authority and argument—if enough intelligent men discussed something for long enough, the truth would result. His student, Aristotle, saw no need for experiments. Bacon parodied such “authorities” as spiders, spinning webs from their own substance. He insisted on evidence from the real world, particularly from experiment. Two key works by Bacon laid out the future of scientiﬁc inquiry. In Novum Organum (1620), he sets out his three fundamentals for the scientiﬁc method: observation, deduction to formulate a theory that might explain what has been observed, and experiment to test whether the theory is correct. In The New Atlantis (1623), Bacon describes a ﬁctitious island and its House of Salomon—a research institution where scholars conduct pure research centered on experiment and make inventions. Sharing those goals, the Royal Society was founded in 1660 in London, with Robert Hooke as its ﬁrst Curator of Experiments. ■ SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION NOT BY ARGUING, BUT BY TRYING FRANCIS BACON (1561–1626) IN CONTEXT BRANCH Experimental science BEFORE 4th century BCE Aristotle deduces, argues, and writes, but does not test with experiments—his methods persist for the next millennium. c.750–1250 CE Arab scientists conduct experiments during the Golden Age of Islam. AFTER 1630s Galileo experiments with falling bodies. 1637 French philosopher René Descartes insists on rigorous scepticism and inquiry in his Discourse on Method. 1665 Isaac Newton uses a prism to investigate light. 1963 In Conjectures and Refutations, the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper insists that a theory may be tested and proved false, but cannot conclusively be proved correct. Whether or no anything can be known, can be settled not by arguing, but by trying. Francis Bacon 46 TOUCHING THE SPRING OF THE AIR ROBERT BOYLE (1627–1691) I n the 17th century, several scientists across Europe investigated the properties of air, and their work was to lead Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle to produce his mathematical laws describing pressure in a gas. This work was tied in to a wider debate about the nature of the space between stars and planets. The “atomists” held that there was empty space between celestial bodies, whereas the Cartesians (followers of the French philosopher René Descartes) held that the space between particles was ﬁlled with an unknown substance called the ether, and that it was impossible to produce a vacuum. IN CONTEXT BRANCH Physics BEFORE 1643 Evangelista Torricelli invents the barometer using a tube of mercury. 1648 Blaise Pascal and his brother-in-law demonstrate that air pressure decreases with altitude. 1650 Otto von Guericke performs experiments on air and vacuums, ﬁrst published in 1657. AFTER 1738 Swiss physicist Daniel Bernoulli publishes Hydrodynamica, describing a kinetic theory of gases. 1827 Scottish botanist Robert Brown explains the motion of pollen in water as a result of collisions with water molecules moving in random directions. 47 See also: Isaac Newton 62–69 ■ John Dalton 112–13 ■ Robert FitzRoy 150–55 Barometers In Italy, the mathematician Gasparo Berti performed experiments designed to ﬁgure out why a suction pump could not raise water more than 33 ft (10 m) high. Berti took a long tube, sealed it at one end and ﬁlled it with water. He then inverted the tube with its mouth in a tub of water. The level of water in the tube fell until the column was about 30 ft (10 m) high. In 1642, fellow Italian Evangelista Torricelli, hearing of Berti’s work, constructed a similar apparatus but used mercury instead of water. Mercury is more than 13 times denser than water, so his column of liquid was only about 30 in (76 cm) high. Torricelli’s explanation for this was that the weight of the air above the mercury in the dish was pressing down on it, and that this balanced the weight of the mercury inside the column. He said that the space in the tube above the mercury was a vacuum. This is explained today in terms of pressure (force on a certain area), but the basic idea is the same. Torricelli had invented the ﬁrst mercury barometer. French scientist Blaise Pascal heard of Torricelli’s barometer in 1646, prompting him to start some experiments of his own. One of these, performed by his brother-in-law Florin Périer, was SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION Blaise Pascal’s experiments with barometers showed how air pressure varied with altitude. In addition to physics, Pascal also made signiﬁcant contributions to mathematics. We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of the element air, that by unquestioned experiments is known to have weight. Evangelista Torricelli to demonstrate that air pressure changed depending on altitude. One barometer was set up on the grounds of a monastery in Clermont, and observed by a monk during the day. Périer carried the other to the top of Puy de Dôme, about 3,200 ft (1,000 m) above the town. The column of mercury was more than 3 in (8 cm) shorter at the top of the mountain than in the monastery garden. Since there is less air above a mountain than there is above the valley below it, this showed that it was indeed the weight of the air that held the liquid in the tubes of mercury or water. For this, and other work, the modern unit of pressure is named after Pascal. Air pumps The next important breakthrough was made by Prussian scientist Otto von Guericke, who made a pump that was capable of pumping some of the air out of a container. He performed his most famous ❯❯ The barometer invented by Evangelista Torricelli used a column of mercury to measure air pressure. Torricelli correctly reasoned that it was the air pressing down on the mercury in the cistern that balanced the column of mercury in the tube. Mercury Pressure of mercury column Scale Cistern (dish) Pressure of atmosphere Torricellian vaccum Tube 48 demonstration in 1654, when he put two metal hemispheres together with an airtight seal between them and pumped the air out of them— two teams of horses were unable to pull the hemispheres apart. Before the air was pumped out, the air pressure inside the sealed hemispheres was the same as the air pressure outside. Without the air inside, pressure from the outside air held the hemispheres together. Robert Boyle learned of von Guericke’s experiments when they were published in 1657. To do experiments of his own, Boyle commissioned Robert Hooke (p.54) to design and build an air pump. Hooke’s air pump consisted of a glass “receiver” (container) whose diameter was nearly 16 in (40 cm), a cylinder with a piston below it, and an arrangement of plugs and valves between them. Successive movements of the piston drew more and more air out of the receiver. Due to slow leaks in the seals of the equipment, the near-vacuum inside the receiver could only be maintained for a short time. Nevertheless, the machine was a great improvement on anything made previously, an example of the importance of technology to the furthering of scientiﬁc investigation. Experimental results Boyle performed a number of different experiments with the air pump, which he described in his 1660 book New Experiments Physico-Mechanical. In the book, ROBERT BOYLE Otto von Guericke built the ﬁrst air pump. His experiments with the pump provided evidence against Aristotle’s idea that “Nature abhors a vacuum.” he was intent on pointing out that the results described are all from experiments, since at the time even such noted experimentalists as Galileo often also reported the results of “thought experiments.” Many of Boyle’s experiments were directly connected to air pressure. The receiver could be modiﬁed to hold a Torricelli barometer, with the tube sticking Men are so accustomed to judge of things by their senses that, because the air is indivisible, they ascribe but little to it, and think it but one remove from nothing. Robert Boyle Robert Boyle Robert Boyle was born in Ireland, the 14th child of the Earl of Cork. He was tutored at home before attending Eton College in England and then touring Europe. His father died in 1643, leaving him enough money to indulge his interest in science full time. Boyle moved back to Ireland for a couple of years, but lived in Oxford from 1654 to 1668 so that he could do his work more easily, and then moved to London. Boyle was part of a group of men studying scientiﬁc subjects called the “Invisible College,” who met in London and Oxford to discuss their ideas. This group became the Royal Society in 1663, and Boyle was one of the ﬁrst council members. In addition to his interests in science, Boyle performed experiments in alchemy and wrote about theology and the origin of different human races. Key works 1660 New Experiments Physico-Mechanical: Touching the Spring of the Air and their Effects 1661 The Sceptical Chymist 49 out of the top of the receiver and sealed in place with cement. As the pressure in the receiver was reduced, the level of the mercury fell. He also performed the opposite experiment, and found that raising the pressure inside the receiver made the level of the mercury rise. This conﬁrmed the previous ﬁndings of Torricelli and Pascal. Boyle noted that it became harder and harder to pump air out of the receiver as the amount of air left decreased, and also showed that a half-inﬂated bladder in the receiver increased in volume as the air surrounding it was removed. A similar effect on the bladder could be achieved by holding it in front of a ﬁre. He gave two possible explanations for the “spring” of the air that caused these effects: each particle of the air was compressible like a spring and the whole mass of air resembled ﬂeece, or the air consisted of particles moving randomly. This was similar to the view of the Cartesians, although Boyle did not agree with the idea of the ether, but suggested that the “corpuscles” were moving in empty space. His explanation is remarkably similar to the modern kinetic theory, which describes the properties of matter in terms of moving particles. Some of Boyle’s experiments were physiological, investigating the effects on birds and mice of reducing the pressure of the air, and speculating on how air is moved in and out of lungs. Boyle’s law Boyle’s law states that the pressure of a gas multiplied by its volume is a constant, as long as the amount of gas and the temperature are kept the same. In other words, if you decrease the volume of a gas, its pressure increases. It is this increased pressure that produces the spring of the air. You can feel this effect using a bicycle pump by covering the end with a ﬁnger and pushing the handle in. Although it bears his name, this law was ﬁrst proposed not by Boyle, but by English scientists Richard Towneley and Henry SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION If the height of the mercury column is less on the top of a mountain than at the foot of it, it follows that the weight of the air must be the sole cause of the phenomenon. Blaise Pascal Power, who performed a series of experiments with a Torricelli barometer and published their results in 1663. Boyle saw an early draft of the book and discussed the results with Towneley. He conﬁrmed them by	848,370
The Sociology Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (Sarah Tomley, Mitchell Hobbes) (Z-Library).pdf	BIG IDEAS SIMPLY EXPLAINED SOCIOLOGY THE BOOK A SENSE OF ONE’S PLACE THE MARRIAGE CONTRACT IS A WORK CONTRACT LOCAL PERSPECTIVES SCIENCE CAN BE USED TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD SOME COMMIT CRIMES BECAUSE THEY ARE RESPONDING TO A SOCIAL SITUATION MODERN IDENTITIES ARE BEING DECENTERED GENDER IS AN IMITATION FOR WHICH THERE IS NO ORIGINAL TECHNOLOGY, LIKE ART, IS A SOARING EXERCISE OF THE HUMAN IMAGINATION W B ABANDON ALL HOPE OF TOTALITY, YOU WHO ENTER THE WORLD OF FLUID MODERNITY RELIGION IS THE SIGH OF THE OPPRESSED CREATURE OBAL CITIES STRATEGIC SITES NEW TYPES OF PERATIONS CONSUMPTION OF VALUABLE GOODS IS A MEANS OF REPUTABILITY TO THE GENTLEMAN SOCIOLOGY THE BOOK SOCIOLOGY THE BOOK DK LONDON SENIOR EDITOR Sam Atkinson SENIOR ART EDITOR Amy Child EDITORS Alexandra Beeden Miezan van Zyl US EDITORS Christy Lusiak and Margaret Parrish MANAGING EDITOR Esther Ripley MANAGING ART EDITOR Karen Self PUBLISHER Liz Wheeler ART DIRECTOR Phil Ormerod ASSOCIATE PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Liz Wheeler PUBLISHING DIRECTOR Jonathan Metcalf JACKET DESIGNER Laura Brim JACKET EDITOR Claire Gell JACKET DESIGN DEVELOPMENT MANAGER Sophia Tampakopoulos SENIOR PRODUCER, PRE-PRODUCTION Luca Frassinetti SENIOR PRODUCER Gemma Sharpe ILLUSTRATIONS James Graham DK DELHI JACKET DESIGNER Dhirendra Singh SENIOR DTP DESIGNER Harish Aggarwal MANAGING JACKETS EDITOR Saloni Singh original styling by STUDIO8 DESIGN produced for DK by COBALT ID ART EDITORS Darren Bland, Paul Reid EDITORS Diana Loxley, Marek Walisiewicz, Christopher Westhorp First American Edition, 2015 Published in the United States by DK Publishing 345 Hudson Street New York, New York 10014 Copyright © 2015 Dorling Kindersley Limited A Penguin Random House Company 15 16 17 18 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 001—282934—July/2015 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under the copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Published in Great Britain by Dorling Kindersley Limited. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-1-4654-3650-4 DK books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. For details, contact: DK Publishing Special Markets, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 SpecialSales@dk.com Printed and bound in China by Leo Paper Products Ltd. A WORLD OF IDEAS: SEE ALL THERE IS TO KNOW www.dk.com CHRISTOPHER THORPE, CONSULTANT EDITOR Our co-consultant and contributor Christopher Thorpe is a sociologist with an interest in social theory, cultural sociology, and British representations of Italy. He has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, and is coeditor of the journal Cultural Sociology, author of several academic articles, and coauthor of An Invitation to Social Theory (2012). CHRIS YUILL, CONSULTANT EDITOR Our co-consultant and contributor Chris Yuill is a sociologist and lecturer at Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland. His interests include the social dimensions of health, both in the community and the workplace, and what makes for a successful urban space. He is a former committee member of The British Sociological Association and has written several books, including Understanding the Sociology of Health: An Introduction (2011) MITCHELL HOBBS A lecturer in the department of media and communications at the University of Sydney, Australia, Mitchell Hobbs has a doctorate in media sociology from the University of Newcastle, Australia. He is coauthor of Communication, New Media and Everyday Life (2011); author of several national and international studies on global media, cultural ﬂows, and political communication; and has worked in a communications role for former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard. MEGAN TODD A senior lecturer in social science at the University of Central Lancashire, England, Megan Todd has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Newcastle, England. Her research interests include gender, sexuality, and violence. She has contributed chapters on intimacies and violence in various publications and is currently writing a textbook on sexualities. SARAH TOMLEY A writer, editor, and psychotherapist, Sarah Tomley has contributed to many books on the social sciences, including The Philosophy Book (2011) and The Psychology Book (2012) in DK’s Big Ideas series. MARCUS WEEKS A writer and musician, Marcus Weeks studied philosophy and worked as a teacher before embarking on a career as an author. He has contributed to many books on the arts and popular sciences, including various titles in DK’s Big Ideas series. CONTRIBUTORS 10 INTRODUCTION FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 20 A physical defeat has never marked the end of a nation Ibn Khaldun 21 Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarreled, in troops and companies Adam Ferguson 22 Science can be used to build a better world Auguste Comte 26 The Declaration of Independence bears no relation to half the human race Harriet Martineau 28 The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable Karl Marx SOCIAL INEQUALITIES 66 I broadly accuse the bourgeoisie of social murder Friedrich Engels 68 The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line W.E.B. DuBois 74 The poor are excluded from the ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities of life Peter Townsend 75 There ain’t no black in the Union Jack Paul Gilroy 76 A sense of one’s place Pierre Bourdieu 80 The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is conﬁned Edward Said 82 The ghetto is where the black people live Elijah Anderson 84 The tools of freedom become the sources of indignity Richard Sennett 88 Men’s interest in patriarchy is condensed in hegemonic masculinity R.W. Connell 32 Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft Ferdinand Tönnies 34 Society, like the human body, has interrelated parts, needs, and functions Émile Durkheim 38 The iron cage of rationality Max Weber 46 Many personal troubles must be understood in terms of public issues Charles Wright Mills 50 Pay to the most commonplace activities the attention accorded extraordinary events Harold Garﬁnkel 52 Where there is power there is resistance Michel Foucault 56 Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original Judith Butler CONTENTS 6 90 White women have been complicit in this imperialist, white- supremacist capitalist patriarchy bell hooks 96 The concept of “patriarchy” is indispensable for an analysis of gender inequality Sylvia Walby MODERN LIVING 104 Strangers are not really conceived as individuals, but as strangers of a particular type Georg Simmel 106 The freedom to remake our cities and ourselves Henri Lefebvre 108 There must be eyes on the street Jane Jacobs 110 Only communication can communicate Niklas Luhmann 112 Society should articulate what is good Amitai Etzioni 120 McDonaldization affects virtually every aspect of society George Ritzer 124 The bonds of our communities have withered Robert D. Putnam 126 Disneyization replaces mundane blandness with spectacular experiences Alan Bryman 128 Living in a loft is like living in a showcase Sharon Zukin LIVING IN A GLOBAL WORLD 136 Abandon all hope of totality, you who enter the world of ﬂuid modernity Zygmunt Bauman 144 The modern world- system Immanuel Wallerstein 146 Global issues, local perspectives Roland Robertson 148 Climate change is a back-of-the-mind issue Anthony Giddens 150 No social justice without global cognitive justice Boaventura de Sousa Santos 152 The unleashing of productive capacity by the power of the mind Manuel Castells 156 We are living in a world that is beyond controllability Ulrich Beck 162 It sometimes seems as if the whole world is on the move John Urry 163 Nations can be imagined and constructed with relatively little historical straw David McCrone 164 Global cities are strategic sites for new types of operations Saskia Sassen 166 Different societies appropriate the materials of modernity differently Arjun Appadurai 170 Processes of change have altered the relations between peoples and communities David Held 7 CULTURE AND IDENTITY 176 The “I” and the “me” G.H. Mead 178 The challenge of modernity is to live without illusions and without becoming disillusioned Antonio Gramsci 180 The civilizing process is constantly moving “forward” Norbert Elias 182 Mass culture reinforces political repression Herbert Marcuse 188 The danger of the future is that men may become robots Erich Fromm 189 Culture is ordinary Raymond Williams 190 Stigma refers to an attribute that is deeply discrediting Erving Goffman 232 Automation increases the worker’s control over his work process Robert Blauner 234 The Romantic ethic promotes the spirit of consumerism Colin Campbell 236 In processing people, the product is a state of mind Arlie Russell Hochschild 244 Spontaneous consent combines with coercion Michael Burawoy 246 Things make us just as much as we make things Daniel Miller 248 Feminization has had only a modest impact on reducing gender inequalities Teri Lynn Caraway 196 We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning Jean Baudrillard 200 Modern identities are being decentered Stuart Hall 202 All communities are imagined Benedict Anderson 204 Throughout the world, culture has been doggedly pushing itself center stage Jeffrey Alexander WORK AND CONSUMERISM 214 Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure Thorstein Veblen 220 The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so Max Weber 224 Technology, like art, is a soaring exercise of the human imagination Daniel Bell 226 The more sophisticated machines become, the less skill the worker has Harry Braverman 8 THE ROLE OF INSTITUTIONS 254 Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature Karl Marx 260 The iron law of oligarchy Robert Michels 261 Healthy people need no bureaucracy to mate, give birth, and die Ivan Illich 262 Some commit crimes because they are responding to a social situation Robert K. Merton 264 Total institutions strip people of their support systems and their sense of self Erving Goffman 270 Government is the right disposition of things Michel Foucault 278 Religion has lost its plausibility and social signiﬁcance Bryan Wilson 280 Our identity and behavior are determined by how we are described and classiﬁed Howard S. Becker 286 Economic crisis is immediately transformed into social crisis Jürgen Habermas 288 Schooling has been at once something done to the poor and for the poor Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis 290 Societies are subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic Stanley Cohen 291 The time of the tribes Michel Maffesoli 292 How working-class kids get working-class jobs Paul Willis FAMILIES AND INTIMACIES 298 Differences between the sexes are cultural creations Margaret Mead 300 Families are factories that produce human personalities Talcott Parsons 302 Western man has become a confessing animal Michel Foucault 304 Heterosexuality must be recognized and studied as an institution Adrienne Rich 310 Western family arrangements are diverse, ﬂuid, and unresolved Judith Stacey 312 The marriage contract is a work contract Christine Delphy 318 Housework is directly opposed to self- actualization Ann Oakley 320 When love ﬁnally wins it has to face all kinds of defeat Ulrich Beck and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim 324 Sexuality is as much about beliefs and ideologies as about the physical body Jeffrey Weeks 326 Queer theory questions the very grounds of identity Steven Seidman 332 DIRECTORY 340 GLOSSARY 344 INDEX 351 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 9 INTRODU CTION H umans are social creatures. Throughout our evolution, from our days of foraging and hunting animals, we have tended to live and work in social groups, which have become progressively larger and more complex. These groups have ranged from simple family units, through clans and tribes, villages and towns, to cities and nation states. Our natural inclination to live and work together has led to the formation of civil societies, which have been shaped by the increasing breadth of our knowledge and sophistication of our technology. In turn, the nature of the society we live in inﬂuences our social behavior, affecting virtually every aspect of our lives. Sociology is the study of how individuals behave in groups and how their behavior is shaped by these groups. This includes: how groups are formed; the dynamics that animate them; and how these dynamics maintain and alter the group or bring about social change. Today, sociology’s scope ranges from the theoretical study of social processes, structures, and systems, to the application of these theories as part of social policy. And, because societies consist of a collection of individual people, there is an inevitable connection between the structures of society as a whole and the behavior of its individual members. Sociologists may therefore focus on the institutions and organization of society, the various social groupings and stratiﬁcations within it, or the interactions and experiences of individuals. Perhaps surprisingly, sociology is a comparatively modern discipline. Although philosophers in ancient China and ancient Greece recognized the existence of civil society and the beneﬁts of social order, their concern was more political than sociological— how society should be organized and governed, rather than a study of society itself. But, just as political philosophy emerged from these civilizations, sociology appeared as a result of profound changes in Western society during the Age of Enlightenment. There were several aspects to these changes. Most noticeably, technological advances had provided the machinery that brought about the Industrial Revolution, radically changing methods of production and creating prosperous industrial cities. The traditional certainties based on religious belief were called into question by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. It was not only the authority of the Church that was undermined by this so-called Age of Reason: the old order of monarchies and aristocracies was under threat, with demands for more representative government leading to revolutions in America and France. Society and modernity A new, modern society was created from the Age of Enlightenment. Sociology began to emerge at the end of the 18th century as a response to this transformation, as philosophers and thinkers attempted to understand the nature of modernity and its effects on society. Inevitably, some simply INTRODUCTION 12 Sociology was born of the modern ardor to improve society. Albion W. Small US scholar (1854–1926) bemoaned the erosion of traditional forms of social cohesion, such as the family ties and community spirit found within small, rural societies, and the shared values and beliefs offered by a common religion. But others recognized that there were new social forces at work, bringing about social change with a potential for both social order and disorder. In keeping with the spirit of the Enlightenment, these early social thinkers sought to make their study of society objective, and create a scientiﬁc discipline that was distinct from philosophy, history, and politics. The natural sciences (physics, chemistry, astronomy, and biology) were well established, and the time was ripe for the study of humans and their behavior. Because of the nature of the Industrial Revolution and the capitalism that it fostered, the ﬁrst of the new “social sciences” to emerge was economics, pioneered by Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, better known as The Wealth of Nations, in 1776. However, at the same time, the foundations of sociology were also being laid, by philosophers and theorists such as Adam Ferguson and Henri de Saint-Simon, and in the early part of the following century by Auguste Comte, whose scientiﬁc approach to the study of society ﬁrmly established sociology as a distinct discipline. Following in Comte’s footsteps came three ground-breaking sociologists, whose different approaches to the analysis and interpretation of social behavior set the agenda for the subject of sociology in the 20th century and beyond: Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, and Max Weber. Each identiﬁed a different aspect of modernity as the major factor in creating social order, disorder, and change. Marx, a materialist philosopher and economist, focused on the growth of capitalism and the subsequent class struggle; Durkheim on the division of labor brought about by industrialization; and Weber on the secularization and rationalization of modern society. All three have had an enthusiastic following, inﬂuencing sociology’s major schools of thought to the present day. A social science Sociology was a product of the Age of Reason, when science and rational thinking began to reign supreme. Early sociologists were therefore anxious that, for their discipline to be taken seriously, their methods should be seen to be rigorously scientiﬁc—no mean feat, given the nature of their subject: human social behavior. Comte laid the ground rules for the new “science” of sociology, based on empirical evidence in the same way as the natural sciences. Marx, too, insisted on approaching the subject scientiﬁcally, and Durkheim was perhaps the ﬁrst to gain acceptance for sociology as a social science in the academic world. To be scientiﬁc, any research method must be quantitative—that is to say, have measurable results. Marx and Durkheim could point to facts, ﬁgures, and statistics to back up their theories, but others ❯❯ INTRODUCTION 13 Human nature is... unbelievably malleable... responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural traditions. Margaret Mead maintained that social research should be more qualitative. Weber especially advocated an interpretive approach, examining what it is like to live in modern society, and the social interactions and relationships that are necessary for social cohesion. Although this viewpoint was initially dismissed by many as unscientiﬁc, sociology has become increasingly interpretive in the latter half of the 20th century, with a methodology that includes a combination of quantitative and qualitative research techniques. Social reform For many sociologists, sociology is more than simply the objective study of society, and the quest to analyze and describe social structures and systems. Sociological theories, like theories in the natural sciences, have practical applications, and can be used to improve the society in which we live. In the 19th century, Comte and Marx saw sociology as a way of understanding the workings of society in order to bring about social change. Marx famously said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it,” and his many followers (sociologists as well as political activists) have taken this to heart. Durkheim, who was nowhere near as politically radical as Marx, made great efforts to have sociology accepted as an academic discipline. To gain the approval of the authorities, he had to demonstrate not only the subject’s scientiﬁc credentials, but also its objectivity, especially in light of the political unrest that had existed in Europe for more than a century following the French Revolution. This somewhat “ivory tower” approach, divorced from the real world, dominated sociology for the ﬁrst part of the 20th century, but as sociologists gradually adopted a more interpretive stance, they also advocated sociology as a tool of social reform. This was particularly noticeable among sociologists with a Marxian perspective and others with a left- wing political agenda. After World War II, sociologists, including Charles Wright Mills and Michel Foucault, examined the nature of power in society and its effects on the individual—the ways in which society shapes our lives, rather than the way we shape society, and how we can resist these forces. Even in more mainstream sociology, the mood was changing, and the scope of the subject broadened from the academic study of society as it is, to include practical applications informing public policy and driving social change. In 1972, Howard Becker, a respected US sociological theorist, wrote: “Good sociology... produces meaningful descriptions of organizations and events, valid explanations of how they come about and persist, and realistic proposals for their improvement or removal.” Institutions and individuals As a reﬂection of the increased emphasis on the relevance of sociology, the subject gained greater acceptance, and even INTRODUCTION 14 The function of sociology, as of every science, is to reveal that which is hidden. Pierre Bourdieu popular interest, in the second half of the 20th century, and as more thinkers turned their attention to social issues, so the scope of sociology broadened. Evolving from the traditional study of the structures and systems of modern society and the forces of social cohesion and causes of social disorder, it began to examine the connections between these areas and the interactions of individuals and social groups. A century or so ago, sociologists were divided into those who approached the subject on a macro level (looking at society as a whole and the institutions that it is constituted of), and those who approached it on the micro level— focusing on the individual’s experience of living within a society. While this distinction still exists to an extent, sociologists now recognize that the two are closely connected and many concentrate their work on groups that fall between these two approaches—social classes; ethnic, religious, or cultural groups; families; or groups that are deﬁned by gender or sexual orientation. Sociology has also responded to the accelerating pace of change. Since World War II, many social conventions have been challenged, and new social norms have taken their place. In the Western world, the civil rights and women’s movements have done much to address racial and gender inequalities, and sociological theories have also helped change attitudes to sexuality and family life. Here, as Zygmunt Bauman advises, “The task for sociology is to come to the help of the individual. We have to be in service of freedom.” The global age Technological innovations have arguably brought about social changes comparable to—or more far-reaching than—those wrought by the Industrial Revolution. Increased automation and computerization, the rise of the service industries, and the growth of consumer society have all contributed to the shape of society many of us live in today. While some sociologists see this as a continuation of the process of modernity, others believe we are now entering a postmodern, post-industrial age. Advances in communication and mobility have also made the world a smaller place. Sociologists have recently turned their attention to the importance of cultural and national identity and to the effects of globalization, especially on local communities. With new forms of communication—particularly the Internet and fast international travel—have come entirely new social networks. These do not depend on face-to-face contact, but bring together individuals and groups in ways that were unimaginable even 50 years ago. Modern technology has also provided sociology with a sophisticated means of researching and analyzing the evolution of these new social structures. ■ INTRODUCTION 15 The real political task in a society such as ours is to criticize the workings of institutions that appear to be... both neutral and independent... to criticize and attack them... so that one can ﬁght against them. Michel Foucault FOUNDA OF SOCI TIONS OLOGY S ociology did not establish its credentials as a discipline until the 20th century, but its many strands of thought, approaches, and ﬁelds of study had evolved from centuries of work by historians and philosophers. Although the ﬁrst recognizably sociological study was made by Ibn Khaldun in the 14th century, the pioneers of sociology as we know it today only began to emerge from the late 18th century, when society underwent a sea-change in Western Europe: Enlightenment ideas were replacing traditional beliefs, and the Industrial Revolution was transforming the way that people lived and worked. These observers identiﬁed social change being driven by forces that became known as “modernity,” which included the effects of industrialization and the growth of capitalism, and the less tangible (but no less signiﬁcant) effects of secularization and rationality. A social science Modern society was the product of the Age of Reason: the application of rational thought and scientiﬁc discoveries. In keeping with this mood, the pioneers of sociology, such as French philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon and his protégé Auguste Comte, sought to provide veriﬁable evidence to support theories. Comte believed that not only could the forces of social order be explained by rules similar to the laws of physics and chemistry, but that applied sociology could bring about social reform in the same way that applied sciences had led to technological advances. Like Comte, Karl Marx believed that the purpose of studying society is not simply to describe or explain it, but also to improve it. He was just as keen to be scientiﬁc, but chose as his model the new science of economics, identifying capitalism as the major factor of modernity driving social change. Almost a century before Marx, the Scottish philosopher Adam Ferguson had warned of the threat to traditional social cohesion posed by the self-interest of capitalism, and both Harriet Martineau and Marx’s colleague Friedrich Engels described the social injustices of industrialized capitalist society in the mid-19th century. Another pioneer sociologist, Ferdinand Tönnies, echoed Ferguson’s ideas with his description of two very different forms of social cohesion in INTRODUCTION C.1377 1767 1837 1867 1887 1874–85 1848 1813 1830–42 In Theory and Practice of Society in America, Harriet Martineau describes the social inequalities in the oppressive treatment of slaves, women, and the working class. Karl Marx produces the ﬁrst volume of his comprehensive analysis of capitalism, Das Kapital. Ferdinand Tönnies differentiates between traditional community and modern society in Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft. Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society explains the importance of civic spirit to counteract the destructive inﬂuence of capitalism in society. Henri de Saint-Simon proposes a science of society in Essay on the Science of Man. Auguste Comte’s Course in Positive Philosophy details the evolution of sociology as a science. In his Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun describes asabiyyah, the Arabian concept of “solidarity” or social cohesion. Herbert Spencer’s multi-volume System of Synthetic Philosophy argues that societies evolve like life forms, and only the strongest survive. In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels predict social change as a result of a proletarian revolution. 18 traditional and modern societies— a concept variously interpreted by many subsequent sociologists. Toward the end of the 19th century, sociology proved itself as a ﬁeld of study distinct from history, philosophy, politics, and economics, largely thanks to Émile Durkheim. Adopting Comte’s idea of applying scientiﬁc methodology to the study of society, he took biology as his model. Like Herbert Spencer before him, Durkheim saw society as an “organism” with different “organs,” each with a particular function. An interpretive approach While Durkheim’s objective rigor won him academic acceptance, not all sociologists agreed that it was possible to examine social issues with scientiﬁc methods, nor that there are “laws” of society to be discovered. Max Weber advocated a more subjective—“interpretive”— approach. Whereas Marx named capitalism, and Durkheim industrialization, as the major force of modernity, Weber’s focus was on the effects on individuals of rationalization and secularization. A strictly scientiﬁc discipline was gradually supplanted by a sociology that was a study of qualitative ideas: immeasurable notions such as culture, identity, and power. By the mid-20th century sociologists had shifted from a macro view of society to the micro view of individual experience. Charles Wright Mills urged sociologists to make the connection between the institutions of society (especially what he called the “power elite”) and how they affect the lives of ordinary people. After World War II, others took a similar stance: Harold Garﬁnkel advocated a complete change of sociological methods, to examine social order through the everyday actions of ordinary people; while Michel Foucault analyzed the way power relations force individuals to conform to social norms, especially sexual norms—an idea taken further in Judith Butler’s study of gender and sexuality. By the end of the century, a balance had been found between the objective study of society as a whole and the interpretive study of individual experience. The agenda had been set by a handful of ground-breaking sociologists, and their various methods are now being applied to the study of society in an increasingly globalized late-modern world. ■ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY 1895 1893 1946 1904–05 1959 1975 1967 1990 Charles Wright Mills and Hans Heinrich Gerth introduce Weber’s ideas to the English-speaking public in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Max Weber, in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, offers a novel explanation of how modern society evolved. In The Sociological Imagination, Charles Wright Mills argues sociologists should suggest the means of improving society. Michel Foucault begins his study of the nature of power in society in Discipline and Punish. Harold Garﬁnkel presents a new methodology for sociology, observing the everyday actions that foster social order, in Studies in Ethnomethodology. Judith Butler questions traditional ideas of gender and sexuality in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. In The Division of Labor in Society, Émile Durkheim describes the organic solidarity of interdependent individuals. Émile Durkheim founds the ﬁrst European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux, and publishes The Rules of Sociological Method. 19 20 See also: Ferdinand Tönnies 32–33 ■ Robert D. Putnam 124–25 ■ Arjun Appadurai 166–69 ■ David Held 170–71 ■ Michel Maffesoli 291 T he group dynamics of how some societies come to ﬂourish and take over others fascinated Ibn Khaldun, the Arab philosopher and historian. He is best known for his ambitious multivolume history of the world, the Kitab al-‘Ibar, especially the ﬁrst part called the Muqaddimah. The Kitab is seen as a precursor of sociology because of its analyses of Berber and Arabic societies. Central to Ibn Khaldun’s explanation of the success of a society is the Arabic concept of asabiyyah, or social solidarity. Originally, asabiyyah referred to the family bonds found in clans and nomadic tribes, but as civilizations grew it came to mean a sense of belonging, usually translated today as “solidarity.” According to Ibn Khaldun, asabiyyah exists in societies as small as clans and as large as empires, but the sense of a shared purpose and destiny wanes as a society grows and ages, and the civilization weakens. Ultimately, such a civilization will be taken over by a smaller or younger one with a stronger sense of solidarity: a nation may experience—but will never be brought down by—a physical defeat but when it “becomes the victim of a psychological defeat... that marks the end of a nation.” This concept of the importance of solidarity and social cohesion in society anticipated many ideas of community and civic spirit in modern sociology, including Robert Putnam’s theory that contemporary society is suffering from a collapse of participation in the community. ■ A PHYSICAL DEFEAT HAS NEVER MARKED THE END OF A NATION IBN KHALDUN (1332–1406) The desert Bedouin tribes were cited by Ibn Khaldun in his theory of group dynamics, in which social and psychological factors contribute to the rise and fall of civilizations. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Solidarity KEY DATES c.622 The ﬁrst Islamic state is established in Medina. c.1377 Ibn Khaldun completes Muqaddimah (or Prolegomena), the introduction to his history of the world. 1835 Volume 1 of Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America describes how the association of individuals for mutual purpose beneﬁts political and civil society. 1887 Ferdinand Tönnies writes Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (Community and Society). 1995 Robert Putnam explains the concept of social capital in his article “Bowling Alone,” expanded into a book in 2000. 1996 Michel Maffesoli’s Du Nomadisme continues his study of neotribalism. 21 See also: Ferdinand Tönnies 32–33 ■ Karl Marx 28–31 ■ Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Amitai Etzioni 112–19 ■ Norbert Elias 180–81 ■ Max Weber 220–23 P rogress is both inevitable and desirable, but we must always be aware of the social costs that might be exacted as progress is made. Such was the warning of the philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson, who was one of the “Select Society” of Edinburgh intellectuals of the Scottish Enlightenment, a group that included the philosopher David Hume and economist Adam Smith. Ferguson believed, as did Smith, that commercial growth is driven by self-interest, but unlike Smith he analyzed the effects of this development and felt it was happening at the expense of traditional values of cooperation and “fellow-feeling.” In the past, societies had been based on families or communities, and community spirit was fostered by ideas of honor and loyalty. But the self-interest demanded by capitalism weakens these values, and ultimately leads to social collapse. To prevent commercial capitalism from sowing the seeds of its own destruction, Ferguson advocated promoting a sense of civic spirit, encouraging people to act in the interest of society rather than in self-interest. Ferguson’s criticism of capitalism and commercialism meant that his theories were rejected by mainstream thinkers such as Hume and Smith, but they later inﬂuenced the political ideas of Hegel and Marx. And because he viewed the subject from a social rather than political or economic angle, his work helped to lay the foundations of modern sociology. ■ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY MANKIND HAVE ALWAYS WANDERED OR SETTLED, AGREED OR QUARRELED, IN TROOPS AND COMPANIES ADAM FERGUSON (1723–1816) IN CONTEXT FOCUS Civic spirit KEY DATES 1748 Montesquieu publishes The Spirit of the Laws, arguing that political institutions should derive from the social mores of a community. 1767 Adam Ferguson outlines his views in his book Essay on the History of Civil Society. 1776 With The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith pioneers modern economics. 1867 Karl Marx analyzes capitalism in the ﬁrst volume of Das Kapital. 1893 Émile Durkheim examines the importance of beliefs and values in holding society together in The Division of Labor in Society. 1993 Amitai Etzioni founds The Communitarian Network to strengthen the moral and social foundations of society. Man is born in civil society... and there he remains. Montesquieu French philosopher (1689–1755) 22 SCIENCE CAN BE USED TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD AUGUSTE COMTE (1798–1857) B y the end of the 18th century, increased industrialization had brought about radical changes to traditional society in Europe. At the same time, France was struggling to establish a new social order in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Some thinkers, such as Adam Smith, had sought to explain the rapidly changing face of society in economic terms; others, such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, did so in terms of political philosophy. Adam Ferguson had described the social effects of modernization, but no one had yet offered an explanation of social progress to match the political and economic theories. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Positivism and the study of society KEY DATES 1813 French theorist Henri de Saint-Simon suggests the idea of a science of society. 1840s Karl Marx argues that economic issues are at the root of historical change. 1853 Harriet Martineau’s abridged translation The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte introduces Comte’s ideas to a wider public. 1865 British philosopher John Stuart Mill refers to Comte’s early sociological and later political ideas as “good Comte” and “bad Comte.” 1895 In The Rules of Sociological Method, Émile Durkheim seeks to establish a systematic sociology. 23 See also: Harriet Martineau 26–27 ■ Karl Marx 28–31; 254–59 ■ Ferdinand Tönnies 32–33 ■ Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Max Weber 38–45; 220–23 Auguste Comte Auguste Comte was born in Montpellier, France. His parents were Catholics and monarchists, but Auguste rejected religion and adopted republicanism. In 1817 he became an assistant to Henri de Saint-Simon, who greatly inﬂuenced his ideas of a scientiﬁc study of society. After disagreements, Comte left Saint-Simon in 1824, and began his Course in Positive Philosophy, supported by John Stuart Mill, among others. Comte suffered during this time from mental disorders, and his marriage to Caroline Massin ended in divorce. He then fell madly in love with Clotilde de Vaux (who was separated from her husband), but their relationship was unconsummated; she died in 1846. Comte then devoted himself to writing and establishing a positivist “Religion of Humanity.” He died in Paris in 1857. Key works 1830–42 Course in Positive Philosophy (six volumes) 1848 A General View of Positivism 1851–54 System of Positive Polity (four volumes) Against the background of social uncertainty in France, however, the socialist philosopher Henri de Saint-Simon attempted to analyze the causes of social change, and how social order can be achieved. He suggested that there is a pattern to social progress, and that society goes through a number of different stages. But it was his protégé Auguste Comte who developed this idea into a comprehensive approach to the study of society on scientiﬁc principles, which he initially called “social physics” but later described as “sociology.” Understand and transform Comte was a child of the Enlightenment, and his thinking was rooted in the ideals of the Age of Reason, with its rational, objective focus. The emergence of scientiﬁc method during the Enlightenment inﬂuenced Comte’s approach to philosophy. He made a detailed analysis of the natural sciences and their methodology, then proposed that all branches of knowledge should adopt scientiﬁc principles and base theory on observation. The central argument of Comte’s “positivism” philosophy is that valid knowledge of anything can only be derived from positive, scientiﬁc inquiry. He had seen the power of science to transform: scientiﬁc discoveries had provided the technological advances that brought about the Industrial Revolution and created the modern world he lived in. The time had come, he said, for a social science that would not only give us an understanding of the mechanisms of social order and social change, but also provide us with the means of transforming society, in the same way that the physical sciences had helped to modify our physical environment. ❯❯ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY Science can be used to build a better world. Scientiﬁc understanding of these laws can bring about change. Knowledge of society can only be acquired through scientiﬁc investigation... ...and by observing the laws that govern social stability and social change. 24 He considered the study of human society, or sociology, to be the most challenging and complex, therefore it was the “Queen of sciences.” Comte’s argument that the scientiﬁc study of society was the culmination of progress in our quest for knowledge was inﬂuenced by an idea proposed by Henri de Saint-Simon and is set out as the “law of three stages.” This states that our understanding of phenomena passes through three phases: a theological stage, in which a god or gods are cited as the cause of things; a metaphysical stage, in which explanation is in terms of abstract entities; and a positive stage, in which knowledge is veriﬁed by scientiﬁc methods. Comte’s grand theory of social evolution became an analysis of social progress too—an alternative to the merely descriptive accounts of societal stages of hunter- gatherer, nomadic, agricultural, and industrial-commercial. Society in France, Comte suggested, was rooted in the theological stage until the Enlightenment, and social order was based on rules that were ultimately religious. Following the revolution in 1789, French society entered a metaphysical stage, becoming ordered according to secular principles and ideals, especially the rights to liberty and equality. Comte believed that, recognizing the shortcomings of postrevolutionary society, it now had the possibility of entering the positive stage, in which social order could be determined scientiﬁcally. A science of society Comte proposed a framework for the new science of sociology, based on the existing “hard” sciences. He organized a hierarchy of sciences, arranged logically so that each science contributes to those following it but not to those preceding it. Beginning with mathematics, the hierarchy ranged through astronomy, physics, and chemistry to biology. The apex of this ascending order of “positivity” was sociology. For this reason, Comte felt it was necessary to have a thorough grasp of the other sciences and their methods before attempting to apply these to the study of society. Paramount was the principle of veriﬁability from observation: theories supported by the evidence of facts. But Comte also recognized that it is necessary to have a hypothesis to guide the direction of scientiﬁc inquiry, and to determine the scope of observation. He AUGUSTE COMTE divided sociology into two broad ﬁelds of study: “social statics,” the forces that determine social order and hold societies together; and “social dynamics,” the forces that determine social change. A scientiﬁc understanding of these forces provides the tools to take society into its ultimate, positive stage of social evolution. Although Comte was not the ﬁrst to attempt an analysis of human society, he was a pioneer in establishing that it is capable of being studied scientiﬁcally. In addition, his positivist philosophy offered both an explanation of secular industrial society and the means of achieving social reform. He believed that just as the Sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and autonomous science. Émile Durkheim Comte identiﬁed three stages of progress in human understanding of the world. The theological stage came to an end with the Enlightenment at the end of the 18th century. Focus then shifted from the divine to the human in a metaphysical stage of rational thought, from which evolved a ﬁnal stage in which science provides the explanations. From science comes prediction; from prediction comes action. Auguste Comte Theological stage Metaphysical stage Scientiﬁc stage 1820 1790 1830 1800 1810 Early human society Present day 25 The 1830 revolution in France coincided with the publication of Comte’s book on positivism and seemed to usher in an age of social progress that he had been hoping for. sciences have solved real-world problems, sociology—as the ﬁnal science and uniﬁer of the other sciences—can be applied to social problems to create a better society. From theory to practice Comte formed his ideas during the chaos that followed the French Revolution, and set them out in his six-volume Course in Positive Philosophy, the ﬁrst volume of which appeared in the same year that France experienced a second revolution in July 1830. After the overthrow and restoration of monarchy, opinion in France was divided between those who wanted order and those who demanded progress. Comte believed his positivism offered a third way, a rational rather than ideological course of action based on an objective study of society. His theories gained him as many critics as admirers among his contemporaries in France. Some of his greatest supporters were in Britain, including liberal intellectual John Stuart Mill, who provided him with ﬁnancial support to enable him to continue with his project, and Harriet Martineau, who translated an edited version of his work into English. Unfortunately, the reputation Comte had built up was tarnished by his later work, in which he described how positivism could be applied in a political system. An unhappy personal life (a marriage break-up, depression, and a tragic affair) is often cited as causing a change in his thinking: from an objective scientiﬁc approach that examines society to a subjective and quasi-religious exposition of how it should be. The shift in Comte’s work from theory to how it could be put into practice lost him many followers. Mill and other British thinkers saw his prescriptive application of positivism as almost dictatorial, and the system of government he advocated as infringing liberty. By this time, an alternative approach to the scientiﬁc study of society had emerged. Against the same backdrop of social turmoil, Karl Marx offered an analysis of social progress based on the science of economics, and a model for change based on political action rather than rationalism. It is not difﬁcult to see why, in a Europe riven by revolutions, Comte’s positivist sociology became eclipsed by the competing claims of socialism and capitalism. Nevertheless, it was Comte, and to a lesser extent his mentor Saint- Simon, who ﬁrst proposed the idea of sociology as a discipline based on scientiﬁc principles rather than FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY mere theorizing. In particular he established a methodology of observation and theory for the social sciences that was taken directly from the physical sciences. While later sociologists, notably Émile Durkheim, disagreed with the detail of his positivism and his application of it, Comte provided them with a solid foundation to work from. Although today Comte’s dream of sociology as the “Queen of sciences” may seem naive, the objectivity he advocated remains a guiding principle. ■ The philosophers have only interpreted the world... the point is to change it. Karl Marx 26 THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE BEARS NO RELATION TO HALF THE HUMAN RACE HARRIET MARTINEAU (1802–1876) and 1836, Harriet Martineau traveled around the US and recorded a very different picture of society. What she saw was a marked discrepancy between the ideals of equality and democracy, and the reality of life in the US. Before her visit, Martineau had made her name as a journalist writing on political economy and I n 1776, the Declaration of Independence proclaimed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” More than 50 years later, between 1834 IN CONTEXT FOCUS Feminism and social injustice KEY DATES 1791 French playwright and political activist Olympe de Gouges publishes the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen in response to the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” of 1789. 1807–34 Slavery is abolished in the British Empire. 1869 Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill coauthor the essay “The Subjection of Women.” 1949 Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex lays the foundations for “second-wave” feminism of the 1960s–1980s. 1981 The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is ratiﬁed by 188 states. ...yet these rights are granted to men only... ...and women are treated as second-class citizens. The United States is established on the principle of equal rights... The Declaration of Independence bears no relation to half the human race. 27 The Continental Congress adopted its highly moral plan for government on July 4, 1776. But Martineau questioned whether social virtues were possible in a society characterized by injustice. See also: Judith Butler 56–61 ■ R.W. Connell 88–89 ■ Sylvia Walby 96–99 ■ Teri Caraway 248–49 ■ Christine Delphy 312–17 ■ Ann Oakley 318–19 FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY social issues, so on her travels she set down in book form her impressions of US society. Her Theory and Practice of Society in America went beyond mere description, however, for it analyzed the forms of social injustice she came across there. Social emancipator For Martineau, the degree to which a society can be thought of as civilized is judged by the conditions in which its people live. Theoretical ideals are no measure of how civilized a society is if they do not apply to everybody. The supposed ideals of US society, notably the cherished notion of freedom, were “made a mockery” by the continued practice of slavery, which Martineau identiﬁed as the prime example of one section of society having domination over another. Throughout her life, Martineau campaigned for an end to slavery, but she also applied her principles of what constitutes a civilized society to identify and oppose other forms of exploitation and social oppression, such as the unjust treatment of the working class in industrial Britain and the subjugation of women in the Western world. Martineau highlighted the hypocrisy of a society that prided itself on liberty, yet continued to oppress women. This treatment was a particular affront because, as she pointed out, women were half the human race: “If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.” Unlike many of her contemporaries, however, Martineau did not merely campaign for women’s rights to education or the vote, but described the ways in which society restricted women’s liberty in both domestic and public life. Martineau was well known in her lifetime, but her contribution to the development of sociology was not recognized until recently. Today, however, she is regarded as not only the ﬁrst woman to make a methodical study of society, but also the ﬁrst to formulate a feminist sociological perspective. ■ Harriet Martineau Harriet Martineau was born in Norwich, England, the daughter of progressive parents who ensured she had a good education. She showed an early interest in politics and economics, and after the death of her father in 1825, made a living as a journalist. Her success as a writer enabled her to move to London, and in 1834–36 to travel around the US. On her return to England, she published a three-volume sociological critique of the US. Her experiences there conﬁrmed her commitment to campaigning for the abolition of slavery and for the emancipation of women. Although profoundly deaf since her teenage years, Martineau continued working and campaigning until the 1860s. She had by this time moved to the Lake District, where, housebound by ill health, she died in 1876. Key works 1832–34 Illustrations of Political Economy 1837 Theory and Practice of Society in America 1837–38 How to Observe Morals and Manners 28 THE FALL OF THE BOURGEOISIE AND THE VICTORY OF THE PROLETARIAT ARE EQUALLY INEVITABLE KARL MARX (1818–1883) I n the mid-19th century, Europe was characterized by political instability that had begun with the French Revolution. The insurrectionary spirit spread across the continent, and there were attempts to overthrow and replace the old order of monarchies and aristocracy with democratic republics. At the same time, much of Europe was still coming to terms with the changes in society created by industrialization. Some philosophers had explained the problems of the modern industrial world in political terms and offered political solutions, and others such as Adam Smith looked to economics as both the cause of the IN CONTEXT FOCUS Class conﬂict KEY DATES 1755 Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau identiﬁes private property as the source of all inequality. 1819 French social theorist Henri de Saint-Simon launches the magazine L’Organisateur to promote his socialist ideas. 1807 Georg Hegel interprets historical progress in The Phenomenology of Spirit. 1845 In The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, Friedrich Engels describes the division of capitalist society into two social classes. 1923 The Institute for Social Research is founded and attracts Marxist scholars to the University of Frankfurt. 29 See also: Auguste Comte 22–25 ■ Max Weber 38–45 ■ Michel Foucault 52–55 ■ Friedrich Engels 66–67 ■ Richard Sennett 84–87 ■ Herbert Marcuse 182–87 ■ Robert Blauner 232–33 ■ Christine Delphy 312–17 problems and the answer to them, but there had been little research into the social structure of society. Between 1830 and 1842, the French philosopher Auguste Comte had suggested that it was possible, and even necessary, to make a scientiﬁc study of society. Karl Marx agreed that an objective, methodical approach was overdue and was among the ﬁrst to tackle the subject. Marx did not set out, however, to make a speciﬁcally sociological study, but rather to explain modern society in historical and economic terms, using observation and analysis to identify the causes of social inequality. And where Comte saw science as the means of achieving social change, Marx pointed to the inevitability of political action. Historical progress In Marx’s time, the conventional explanation of the development of society was of an evolution in stages, from hunting and gathering, through nomadic, pastoral, and agricultural communities to modern commercial society. As a philosopher, Marx was well aware of this idea of social progress and the economic origins of industrial society, but developed his own interpretation of this process. His primary inﬂuence was the German philosopher Georg Hegel, who had proposed a dialectic view of history: that change comes about through a synthesis of opposing forces in which the tension between contradictory ideas is resolved. Marx, however, viewed history as the progression of material circumstances rather than ideas, and took from Hegel the dialectical framework, while dismissing much of his philosophy. He was also inﬂuenced by French socialist thinkers, such as Jean- Jacques Rousseau, who laid the blame for inequality in civil society on the emergence of the notion of private property. Marx offered a new approach to the study of historical progress. It is the material conditions in which people live that determine the organization of society, he said, and changes in the means of production (the tools and machinery used to create wealth) bring about socio- economic change. “Historical materialism,” as this approach to historical development came to be known, provided an explanation for the transition from feudal to modern capitalist society, brought about by new methods of economic production. Under feudalism, the nobles had controlled the means of agricultural production, as owners of the land that the peasants or serfs worked. With the machine age a new class, the bourgeoisie, emerged as owners of a new means of production. As technology ❯❯ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY Modern society has two great classes: the industry-owning bourgeoisie and the proletariat (workers). The fall of the bourgeoisie and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable. Controlling the means of production enriches the bourgeoisie and enables it to dominate private property. The majority proletariat owns little and sells its labor to the bourgeoisie yet stays poor because of exploitation. Self-interest mitigates against solidarity among the bourgeoisie, while unceasing competition fuels regular economic crises. This dehumanizing status leads to alienation and a group consciousness that seeks its own class’s collective good. 30 became more prevalent, the bourgeoisie challenged the nobles and brought about a change to the economic structure of society. The opposing elements of feudal society contained the seeds of the capitalist society that replaced it. Marx maintained that, as he and Friedrich Engels put it in The Communist Manifesto, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Whereas feudalism had been characterized by the two classes of nobles or aristocracy and peasants or serfs, modern industrial society had created a bourgeoisie class of capitalists, which owned the means of production, and a proletariat class, which worked in the new industries. Class conﬂict Tension and conﬂict between the classes in society was inevitable, according to Marx. Therefore, just as feudalism had been replaced, so too would capitalist society and the dominant bourgeoisie. He believed that the proletariat would one day control society, having overthrown the system that had brought it into existence. It is the method of production of material necessities, Marx argued, that determines the social structure of capitalist society: the KARL MARX Karl Marx’s prediction of a communist revolution became a reality in 1917—it did not, however, take place in an advanced industrial nation as he had anticipated, but in Tsarist Russia. Five historical epochs were identiﬁed by Marx. Each corresponds to an era in which people were clearly deﬁned by their labor. According to Marx, the determining force of history is the dominant mode of production, which shapes the classes in society. The epochs progress from early human history, when people held things in common, to capitalism in Marx’s day, with its two great social classes. In the future lies the classless society of communism. classes of capital and labor. Capitalists obtain their wealth from the surplus value of goods produced, in the factories they own, by the labor of the workers. The proletariat, on the other hand, own almost nothing, and in order to survive have to sell their labor to the bourgeoisie. The relationship between the classes is exploitative, enriching the owners of capital and keeping the working class poor. In addition, the unskilled nature of the work in factories and mills contributes to a feeling of dehumanization and alienation from the process of production, which is aggravated by the threat of unemployment when production exceeds demand. Over time, however, oppression fosters a class-consciousness in the proletariat—a realization that together the working class can organize a movement for its collective good. The inherent self- interest of capitalism tends to prevent such a development among the bourgeoisie, and constant competition leads to more and EARLY HUMAN HISTORY THE ANCIENT WORLD FEUDALISM CAPITALISM THE END OF HISTORY CLASSLESS SOCIETY (Primitive communism) SOCIAL ELITE SLAVES PEASANTS (Farmers and agricultural laborers with limited rights) PROLETARIAT (Workers who do not own the means of production) ARISTOCRATIC ELITE BOURGEOISIE (Ruling class in capitalist society) Control of the means of production Majority of the population Collective ownership and control CLASSLESS SOCIETY (Communism— a dictatorship of the proletariat; class conﬂict resolved and the means of production held in common) 31 more frequent economic crises. The increasing solidarity of the working class, and weakening of the bourgeoisie, will in time allow the proletariat to take over control of the means of production and bring about a classless society. A key contribution Marx’s analysis of how capitalism had created socioeconomic classes in the industrial world was based on more than mere theorizing, and as such was one of the ﬁrst “scientiﬁc” studies of society, offering a comprehensive economic, political, and social explanation of modern society. In the process, he introduced several concepts that became central to later sociological thinking, particularly in the area of social class, such as class conﬂict and consciousness, and the notions of exploitation and alienation. His ideas inspired numerous revolutionaries, and at one stage in the 20th century, around a third of the world’s population lived under a government espousing Marxist principles. But not everyone agreed with the Marxian division of society into classes deﬁned by their economic status, nor the idea that social change is the inevitable result of class conﬂict. In the generation following Marx, both Émile Durkheim and Max Weber, who along with Marx are often cited as the “founding fathers” of modern sociology, offered alternative views in reaction to his. Durkheim acknowledged that industry had shaped modern society, but argued that it was industrialization itself, rather than capitalism, that was at the root of social problems. Weber, on the other hand, accepted Marx’s argument that there are economic reasons behind class conﬂict, but felt that Marx’s division of society into bourgeoisie and proletariat on purely economic grounds was too simple. He believed that there were cultural and religious as well as economic causes for the growth of capitalism, and these were reﬂected in classes based on prestige and power as well as economic status. Although Marx’s inﬂuence on sociology in the Western world waned during the ﬁrst half of the 20th century, the members of the so-called “Frankfurt School” of sociologists and philosophers (including Jürgen Habermas, Erich Fromm, and Herbert Marcuse) remained notable adherents to his principles. After World War II, with the advent of the Cold War, opinion became even more divided. In the US in particular, Marxist theory of any type was largely discredited, while in Europe, especially France, a number of philosophers and sociologists further developed Marx’s social ideas. Today, as new technology is once again transforming our world, and at the same time people are becoming conscious of a growing economic inequality, some of Marx’s basic ideas have begun to be revisited by social, economic, and political thinkers. ■ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY Karl Marx Regarded as one of the “founding fathers” of social science, Karl Marx was also an inﬂuential economist, political philosopher, and historian. He was born in Trier, Germany, and at his lawyer father’s insistence, he studied law, rather than the philosophy and literature he was interested in, at the University of Bonn, and later at Berlin. There he developed his interest in Hegel, and went on to gain a doctorate from the University of Jena in 1841. After becoming a journalist in Cologne, Marx moved to Paris, where he developed his economic, social, and political theory, collaborating with Friedrich Engels. In 1845 the pair cowrote The Communist Manifesto. Following the failure of the revolutions in Europe in 1848, Marx moved to London. After the death of his wife in 1881, his health deteriorated, and he died two years later at 64. Key works 1848 The Communist Manifesto 1859 A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy 1867 Das Kapital, Volume 1 [Marx is] the true father of modern sociology, in so far as anyone can claim the title. Isaiah Berlin Russo-British philosopher (1909–1997) 32 GEMEINSCHAFT AND GESELLSCHAFT FERDINAND TÖNNIES (1855–1936) T oward the end of the 19th century, a number of thinkers turned their attention to the social implications of modernity, and in particular the growth of capitalist industrial society. Among them were Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Ferdinand Tönnies, widely regarded as founding fathers of sociology. Tönnies’ major contribution to the discipline was his analysis of contrasting types of social groupings in his inﬂuential Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, published in 1887. There are two kinds of motivation for our social actions: a natural will to act cooperatively... ...which characterizes the interactions of a traditional community (Gemeinschaft). a rational will to act for a speciﬁc end... ...which characterizes the interactions of a modern society (Gesellschaft). IN CONTEXT FOCUS Community and society KEY DATES 1651 English philosopher Thomas Hobbes describes the relationship between man’s nature and the structure of society in Leviathan. 1848 In The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels lay out the effects of capitalism on society. 1893 Sociologist Émile Durkheim outlines the idea of social order maintained by organic and mechanical solidarity in The Division of Labor in Society. 1904–05 Max Weber publishes The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. 2000 Zygmunt Bauman introduces the idea of “liquid modernity” in an increasingly globalized society. 33 See also: Adam Ferguson 21 ■ Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Max Weber 38–45 ■ Amitai Etzioni 112–19 ■ Zygmunt Bauman 136–43 ■ Karl Marx 254–59 ■ Bryan Wilson 278–79 ■ Michel Maffesoli 291 FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY In this book, his magnum opus, Tönnies points out what he sees as the distinction between traditional rural communities and modern industrialized society. The former, he argues, are characterized by Gemeinschaft, community that is based on the bonds of family and social groups such as the church. Small-scale communities tend to have common goals and beliefs, and interactions within them are based on trust and cooperation. Triumph of “will” In large-scale societies such as modern cities, the division of labor and mobility of the workforce have eroded traditional bonds. In place of Gemeinschaft there is Gesellschaft, association or society. Relationships in such societies are more impersonal and superﬁcial, and based on individual self-interest rather than mutual aid. The two extremes of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft exist to a greater or lesser extent in every social grouping, but Tönnies argued that the ethos of capitalism and competition had led to a predominance of mere association in the industrial society in which he lived. At the root of Tönnies’ theory was his idea of “will”—what motivates people to action. He distinguished between what he called Wesenwille, “natural will,” and Kürwille, “rational will.” Wesenwille, he said, is the instinctive will to do something for its own sake, or out of habit or custom, or moral obligation. This is the motivation that underlies the social order of Gemeinschaft, the will to do things for and as a part of the community. On the other hand, Kürwille motivates us to act in a purely rational way to achieve a speciﬁc goal, and is the type of will behind decisions made in large organizations, and particularly businesses. It is Kürwille that characterizes the Gesellschaft of capitalist urban society. Despite his Left-leaning politics, Tönnies was seen as an essentially conservative ﬁgure, lamenting modernity’s loss of Gemeinschaft, rather than advocating social change. Although he had gained the respect of fellow sociologists, his ideas had little inﬂuence until many years later. Tönnies’ theory, along with his work on methodology, paved the way for 20th-century sociology. Weber further developed Tönnies’ notions of will and motivation to social action, and Durkheim’s idea of mechanical and organic solidarity echoed the contrast between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. ■ Ferdinand Tönnies Ferdinand Tönnies was born in North Frisia, Schleswig (now Nordfriesland, Schleswig- Holstein, Germany). After studying at the universities of Strassburg, Jena, Bonn, and Leipzig, he was awarded his doctorate at Tübingen in 1877. In his postdoctoral studies in Berlin and London, Tönnies’ interest shifted from philosophy to political and social issues. He became a private tutor at the University of Kiel in 1881, but an inheritance allowed him to focus on his own work. He was also a cofounder of the German Sociological Society. Because of his outspoken political views, he was not offered a professorship at Kiel until 1913. His Social Democratic sympathies and a public denunciation of Nazism led to his removal from the university in 1931, three years before his death at age 80. Key works 1887 Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft 1926 Progress and Social Development 1931 Introduction to Sociology Gemeinschaft by its very essence is of an earlier origin than its subject or members. Ferdinand Tönnies 34 SOCIETY, LIKE THE HUMAN BODY, HAS INTERRELATED PARTS, NEEDS, AND FUNCTIONS ÉMILE DURKHEIM (1858–1917) S ociology was only gradually accepted as a distinct discipline, a social science separate from philosophy, in the latter half of the 19th century. The intellectual atmosphere of the time meant that for sociology to be recognized as a ﬁeld of study, it had to establish scientiﬁc credentials. Among those who had studied philosophy but been drawn to the new branch of knowledge was Émile Durkheim, who believed that sociology should be less of a grand theory and more of a method that could be applied in diverse ways to understanding the development of modern society. Now regarded as one of the principal founders of IN CONTEXT FOCUS Functionalism KEY DATES 1830–42 Auguste Comte advocates a scientiﬁc approach to the study of society in his Course in Positive Philosophy. 1874–77 Herbert Spencer says society is an evolving “social organism” in the ﬁrst volume of The Principles of Sociology. 1937 In The Structure of Social Action, Talcott Parsons revives the functionalist approach in his action theory. 1949 Robert K. Merton develops Durkheim’s idea of anomie to examine social dysfunction in Social Theory and Social Structure. 1976 Anthony Giddens offers an alternative to structural functionalism in New Rules of Sociological Method. 35 See also: Auguste Comte 22–25 ■ Karl Marx 28–31 ■ Max Weber 38–45 ■ Jeffrey Alexander 204–09 ■ Robert K. Merton 262–63 ■ Herbert Spencer 334 Émile Durkheim Born in Épinal in eastern France, Émile Durkheim broke with family tradition and left rabbinical school to follow a secular career. He studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, graduating in philosophy in 1882, but was already interested in social science after reading Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Durkheim moved to Germany to study sociology. In 1887 he returned to France, teaching the country’s ﬁrst sociology courses at the University of Bordeaux, and later founded the ﬁrst social science journal in France. He was appointed to the Sorbonne in 1902 and stayed there for the rest of his life, becoming a full professor in 1906. He felt increasingly marginalized by the rise of right-wing nationalist politics during World War I, and after his son André was killed in 1916, his health deteriorated and he died of a stroke in 1917. Key works 1893 The Division of Labor in Society 1895 The Rules of Sociological Method 1897 Suicide sociology, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, Durkheim was not the ﬁrst scholar to attempt to establish the subject as a science; the earlier work of other thinkers inevitably inﬂuenced his own ideas. Forging a scientiﬁc model Auguste Comte had laid the foundations with his theory that the study of human society is the pinnacle of a hierarchy of natural sciences. And, because society is a collection of human animals, the idea grew that of all the natural sciences, biology was the closest model for the social sciences. Not everyone agreed: Marx, for example, based his sociological ideas on the new science of economics rather than biology. But the appearance of Charles Darwin’s theory of the origin of species provoked a radical rethink of many conventionally held ideas. This was especially true in Britain, where Darwin’s work provided a model of organic evolution that could be applied to many other disciplines. Among those inspired by Darwin was Herbert Spencer, a philosopher and biologist who likened the development of modern society to an evolving organism, with different parts serving different functions. His writing established the idea of an “organic” model for the social sciences. ❯❯ FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY Humankind has evolved from gathering in small, homogeneous communities to forming large, complex societies. In traditional society, religion and culture created a collective consciousness that provided solidarity. In modern society, the division of labor has brought about increased specialization and the focus is more on the individual than the collective... ...and solidarity now comes from the interdependence of individuals with specialized functions. Society, like the human body, has interrelated parts, needs, and functions. 36 Durkheim upheld Spencer’s functional idea of separate parts serving a purpose and the notion that society was greater than the sum of its individual elements. And Auguste Comte’s “positivism” (his belief that only scientiﬁc inquiry yields true knowledge) helped to shape the scientiﬁc methodology that Durkheim felt would reveal how modern society functions. Durkheim focused on society as a whole and its institutions, rather than the motivations and actions of individuals within society; above all, he was interested in the things that hold society together and maintain social order. He argued that the basis for sociological study should be what he called “social facts,” or “realities external to the individual” that can be veriﬁed empirically. Like the other pioneering sociologists, Durkheim tried to understand and explain the factors that had shaped modern society, the various forces known as “modernity.” But where Marx had associated them with capitalism, and Weber with rationalization, Durkheim connected the development of modern society with industrialization, and in particular the division of labor that came with it. A functional organism What differentiates modern society from traditional ones, according to Durkheim, is a fundamental change in the form of social cohesion; the advent of industrialization has evolved a new form of solidarity. Durkheim outlined his theory of the different types of social solidarity in his doctoral thesis, “The Division of Social Labor.” In primitive societies, such as hunter-gatherer groups, individuals do much the same jobs, and although each could be self- sufﬁcient, society is held together by a sense of a common purpose and experience, and commonly held beliefs and values. The similarity of individuals in such ÉMILE DURKHEIM Durkheim argued that religions, especially long-established faiths such as Judaism, are fundamentally social institutions that give people a strong sense of collective consciousness. a society fosters what Durkheim called “collective consciousness,” which is the basis of its solidarity. But as societies grew in size and complexity, people began to develop more specialized skills, replacing self-reliance with interdependence. The farmer, for example, relies on the blacksmith to shoe his horses, while the blacksmith relies on the farmer to provide his food. The mechanical solidarity, as Durkheim refers to it, of traditional society becomes replaced by an organic solidarity based not on the similarity of its individual members, but their complementary differences. This division of labor reaches its peak with industrialization, when society has evolved to become a complex “organism” in which individual elements perform specialized functions, each of which is essential to the well-being of the whole. The idea that society is structured like a biological organism composed of distinct parts with specialized functions became a signiﬁcant approach to sociology, known as functionalism. Is it our duty to seek to become a... complete human being, one quite sufﬁcient unto himself; or... to be only a part of a whole, the organ of an organism? Émile Durkheim 37 A beehive is created by the division of labor of industrious insects. As well as producing a functioning whole, the bees maintain a symbiotic relationship with the ﬂora of their environment. The “social fact”—by which he meant a thing that exists without being subject to any individual will upon it—that Durkheim identiﬁes as driving this evolution from mechanical to organic solidarity is the increase in “dynamic density,” or population growth and concentration. The competition for resources becomes more intense, but with the increased population density comes the possibility of greater social interaction within the population itself, triggering a division of labor to more efﬁciently deal with its demands. In modern society, the organic interdependence of individuals is the basis for social cohesion. But Durkheim realized that the division of labor that came with rapid industrialization also brought social problems. Precisely because it is built on the complementary differences between people, organic solidarity shifts the focus from the community to the individual, replacing the collective consciousness of a society—the shared beliefs and values that provide cohesiveness. Without that framework of norms of behavior, people become disoriented and society unstable. Organic solidarity can only work if elements of mechanical solidarity are retained, and members of society have a sense of common purpose. The speed of industrialization, according to Durkheim, had forced a division of labor so quickly on modern society that social interaction had not developed sufﬁciently to become a substitute for the decreasing collective consciousness. Individuals felt increasingly unconnected with society, and especially the sort of moral guidance that mechanical solidarity had previously given them. Durkheim used the word anomie to describe this loss of collective standards and values, and its consequent sapping of individual morale. In a study of patterns of suicide in different areas, he showed the importance of anomie in the despair that leads someone to take their own life. In communities where collective beliefs were strong, such as among Catholics, the suicide rate was lower than elsewhere, which conﬁrmed for Durkheim the value of solidarity to the health of a society. An academic discipline Durkheim based his ideas on thorough research of empirical evidence, such as case studies and statistics. His major legacy was the establishment of sociology as an academic discipline in the tradition of the positivist doctrine of Comte—that social science is subject to the same investigative methods as the natural sciences. Durkheim’s positivist approach was met with skepticism, however. Sociological thinkers from Marx onward rejected the idea that something as complex and unpredictable as human society is FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY consistent with scientiﬁc research. Durkheim also went against the intellectual mood of the time by looking at society as a whole rather than at the experience of the individual, which was the basis of the approach adopted by Max Weber. His concept of “social facts” with a reality of their own, separate from the individual, was dismissed, and his objective approach was also criticized for explaining the basis of social order but not making any suggestions to change it. But Durkheim’s analysis of society as composed of different but interrelated parts, each with its own particular function, helped to establish functionalism as an important approach to sociology, inﬂuencing among others Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton. Durkheim’s explanations of solidarity were an alternative to the theories of Marx and Weber, but the heyday of functionalism lasted only until the 1960s. Although Durkheim’s positivism has since fallen out of favor, concepts introduced by him, such as anomie and collective consciousness (in the guise of “culture”), continue to ﬁgure in contemporary sociology. ■ Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a speciﬁc reality which has its own characteristics. Émile Durkheim THE IRON OF RATIONALITY MAX WEBER (1864–1920) CAGE 40 U ntil the latter half of the 19th century, the economic growth of the German states was based on trade rather than production. But when they made the shift to large-scale manufacturing industry, of the sort that had urbanized Britain and France, the change was rapid and dramatic. This was especially noticeable in Prussia, where the combination of natural resources and a tradition of military organization helped to establish an efﬁcient industrial society in a very short time. Germany’s unfamiliarity with the effects of modernity meant it had not yet developed a tradition of sociological thought. Karl Marx was German by birth, but he based his sociological and economic ideas on his experiences of industrialized society elsewhere. However, toward the end of the century, a number of German thinkers turned their attention to the study of Germany’s emergent modern society. Among them was Max Weber, who was to become perhaps the most inﬂuential of the “founding fathers” of sociology. Weber was not concerned with establishing sociology as a discipline in the same way as Auguste Comte and Émile Durkheim in France, who sought universal “scientiﬁc laws” for society (in the belief, known as “positivism," that science could build a better world). While Weber accepted that any study of society should be rigorous, he argued that it could not be truly objective, because it is the study not so much of social behavior but of social action, meaning the ways in which individuals in society MAX WEBER Bureaucratic efﬁciency has stiﬂed traditional interactions, trapping us in an “iron cage of rationality." Modern industrial society brought technological and economic advances. But this was accompanied by increased rationalization and a bureaucratic structure... ...that imposed new controls, restricted individual freedoms, and eroded community and kinship ties. IN CONTEXT FOCUS Rational modernity KEY DATES 1845 Karl Marx notes down 11 “Theses on Feuerbach” and introduces the idea of historical materialism—that economics, rather than ideas, drive social change. 1903 German sociologist Georg Simmel examines the effects of modern city life on the individual in The Metropolis and Mental Life. 1937 In The Structure of Social Action, Talcott Parsons puts forward his action theory, which attempts to integrate the contrasting (subjective– objective) approaches of Weber and Durkheim. 1956 In The Power Elite, Charles Wright Mills describes the emergence of a military- industrial ruling class as the result of rationalization. 41 The 1936 ﬁlm Modern Times depicts actor Charlie Chaplin as an assembly line worker subject to the dehumanizing effects of modernity and rationalization. interact. This action is necessarily subjective, and needs to be interpreted by focusing on the subjective values that individuals associate with their actions. This interpretive approach, also called verstehen (“understanding”), was almost the antithesis of the objective study of society. Whereas Durkheim’s approach examined the structure of society as a whole, and the “organic” nature of its many interdependent parts, Weber sought to study the experience of the individual. Weber was heavily inﬂuenced by Marx’s theories, especially the idea that modern capitalist society is depersonalizing and alienating. He disagreed, however, with Marx’s materialist approach and its emphasis on economics rather than culture and ideas, and with Marx’s belief in the inevitability of proletarian revolution. Instead, Weber synthesized ideas from both Marx and Durkheim to develop his own distinctive sociological analysis, examining the effects of what he saw as the most pervasive aspect of modernity: rationalization. An “iron cage” In arguably his best-known work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–05), Weber describes the evolution of the West from a society governed by tribal custom or religious obligations to an increasingly secular organization based on the goal of economic gain. Industrialization had been achieved through advances in science and engineering, and the capitalism that accompanied it called for purely rational decisions based on efﬁciency and cost-beneﬁt analysis (assessing the beneﬁts and costs of projects). While the rise of capitalism had brought many material beneﬁts, it also had numerous social drawbacks; traditional cultural and spiritual values had been supplanted by rationalization, which brought with it a sense of what Weber called “disenchantment” as the ❯❯ See also: Auguste Comte 22–25 ■ Émile Durkheim 34–37 ■ Charles Wright Mills 46–49 ■ Georg Simmel 104–05 ■ George Ritzer 120–23 ■ Max Weber 220–23 ■ Karl Marx 254–59 ■ Jürgen Habermas 286–87 ■ Talcott Parsons 300–01 FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY ...the world could one day be ﬁlled with nothing but those little cogs, little men clinging to little jobs and striving toward bigger ones. Max Weber The fate of our times is characterized... above all... by the disenchantment of the world. Max Weber 42 intangible, mystical side of many people’s day-to-day lives was replaced by cold calculation. Weber recognized the positive changes brought about by increased knowledge, and the prosperity that resulted from logical decision-making rather than the dictates of outdated religious authorities. But rationalization was also changing the administration of society by increasing the level of bureaucracy in all kinds of organizations. Having been brought up in Prussia, where well- established military efﬁciency became the model for the newly industrialized state, this development would have been especially noticeable to Weber. Bureaucracy, Weber believed, was both inevitable and necessary in modern industrial society. Its machinelike effectiveness and efﬁciency is what enables society to prosper economically, which meant its growth in scope and power was apparently unstoppable. However, whereas the eclipse of religion meant that people were liberated from irrational social norms, a bureaucratic structure imposed a new form of control and threatened to stiﬂe the very individualism that had led people to reject dogmatic religious authority. Many members of modern society now felt trapped by the rigid rules of bureaucracy, as if in an “iron cage” of rationalization. Moreover, bureaucracies tend to produce hierarchical organizations that are impersonal, and with standardized procedures that overrule individualism. Dehumanization Weber was concerned with these effects on the individual “cogs in the machine." Capitalism, which had promised a technological utopia with the individual at its heart, had instead created a society dominated by work and money, MAX WEBER overseen by an uncompromising bureaucracy. A rigid, rule-based society not only tends to restrict the individual, but also has a dehumanizing effect, making people feel as though they are at the mercy of a logical but godless system. The power and authority of a rational bureaucracy also affects the relationships and interactions of individuals—their social actions. These actions are no longer based on ties of family or community, nor traditional values and beliefs, but are geared toward efﬁciency and the achievement of speciﬁc goals. Because the primary goal of rationalization is to get things done efﬁciently, the desires of the individual are subservient to the goals of the organization, leading to a loss of individual autonomy. Although there is a greater degree of interdependence between people as jobs become more and more specialized, individuals feel that The German Chancellery in Berlin is the headquarters of the German government. The civil servants who work there are a bureaucracy tasked with implementing government policy. The fully developed bureaucratic apparatus compares with other organizations exactly as does the machine with the non-mechanical modes of production. Max Weber 43 Increased bureaucracy is, says Weber, a product of rationalization, providing society with a machinelike organization that promotes efﬁciency. However, to work within an administrative apparatus can lead to individual disenchantment: with little scope for personal initiative and creativity, a bureaucrat can feel their lot is one of monotonous and repetitive paperwork. their worth in society is determined by others rather than by their own skills or craftsmanship. The desire for self-improvement is replaced with an obsessive ambition to acquire a better job, more money, or a higher social status, and creativity is valued less than productivity. In Weber’s view, this disenchantment is the price modern society pays for the material gains achieved by bureaucratic rationalization. The social changes it causes are profound, affecting not only our system of morality but also our psychological and cultural makeup. The erosion of spiritual values means our social actions are instead based on calculations of cost and beneﬁt, and become a matter more of administration than moral or social guidance. Social actions and class While Weber often despaired of the soulless side of modern society, he was not completely pessimistic. Bureaucracies may be difﬁcult to destroy, but because they are created by society he believed they can also be changed by society. Where Marx had predicted that the exploitation and alienation of the proletariat by capitalism would inevitably lead to revolution, Weber felt communism led to even greater bureaucratic control than capitalism. Instead, he advocated that within a liberal democracy, bureaucracy should only have as much authority as members of society are prepared to allow it. This is, he said, determined by the social actions of individuals as they try to improve their lives and their “life chances” (or opportunities). Just as society had progressed from the “charismatic” authority of kinship ties and religion, through the patriarchal authority of feudal society, to the modern authority of rationalization and bureaucracy, so too individual behavior had evolved from emotional, traditional, and value-based social actions to “instrumental action”—action FOUNDATIONS OF SOCIOLOGY based on the assessment of costs and consequences, which Weber considered the culmination of rational conduct. In addition, he identiﬁed three elements of social stratiﬁcation in which these social actions could be taken, affecting different aspects of a person’s “life chances." As well as the economically determined social class, there is also status class based on less tangible attributes such as honor and prestige, and party class based on political afﬁliations. Together these help the individual to establish a distinct position in society. A gradual acceptance Weber’s innovative perspective formed the foundation of one of the major approaches to sociology in the 20th century. By introducing the idea of a subjective, interpretive ❯❯ ...what can we oppose to this machinery... to keep a portion of mankind free from this... supreme mastery of the bureaucratic way of life. Max Weber 44 examination of individuals’ social actions, he offered an alternative to Durkheim’s positivism by pointing out that the methodology of the natural sciences is not appropriate to the study of the social sciences, and to Marx’s materialist determinism by stressing the importance of ideas and culture over economic considerations. Although Weber's ideas were highly inﬂuential among his contemporaries in Germany, such as Werner Sombart and Georg Simmel, they were not widely accepted. He was regarded in his lifetime as a historian and economist rather than a sociologist, and it was not until much later that his work received the attention it deserved. Many of his works were only published posthumously, and few were translated until well after his death. Sociologists at the beginning of the 20th century felt antipathy toward Weber's approach because they were anxious to establish the credentials of sociology as a science; his notion of subjective verstehen and his examination of individual experience rather than of society as a whole was seen as lacking the necessary rigor and objectivity. And some critics, especially those steeped in the ideas of Marxian economic determinism, disputed Weber’s account of the evolution of Western capitalism. Nevertheless, Weber’s ideas gradually became accepted, as the inﬂuence of Durkheim’s positivism began to wane. Weber was, for example, an inﬂuence on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, centered around Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. These thinkers held that traditional Marxist theory could not fully account for the path taken by Western capitalist societies, and so sought to draw on Weber's anti- positivist sociological approach and analysis of rationalization. Escaping the rise of Nazism, members of the Frankfurt School took these ideas to the US, where Weber's insights were enthusiastically received, and where his inﬂuence was strongest in the period following World War II. In particular, American sociologist Talcott Parsons MAX WEBER Franz Kafka, a contemporary of Weber, wrote stories depicting a dystopian bureaucracy. His work engages with Weberian themes such as dehumanization and anonymity. attempted to reconcile Weber’s ideas with the then dominant positivist tradition in sociology established by Durkheim, and to incorporate them into his own theories. Parsons also did much to popularize Weber and his ideas within US sociology, but it was Charles Wright Mills who, with Hans Heinrich Gerth, brought the most important of Weber’s writings to the attention of the English- speaking world with their translation and commentary in 1946. Wright Mills was especially inﬂuenced by Weber’s theory of the “iron cage” of rationality, and developed this theme in his own analysis of social structures, in which he showed that Weber’s ideas had more signiﬁcant implications than had previously been thought. The rational gone global By the 1960s, Weber had become mainstream, and his interpretive approach had all but replaced the positivism that had dominated sociology since Durkheim. In the last decades of the 20th century, Weber’s emphasis on the social actions of individuals, and their relationship to the power exerted by a rationalized modern society, provided a framework for contemporary sociology. More recently, sociologists such as British theorist Anthony Giddens have focused on the contrast between Durkheim’s approach to society as a whole, and Weber’s concentration on the individual as the unit of study. Giddens points out that neither approach is completely right or wrong, but instead exempliﬁes one of two different perspectives—the macro and micro. Another aspect of Weber’s work—that of culture and ideas shaping our social structures No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether... there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals... Max Weber 45 more than economic conditions— has been adopted by a British school of thought that has given rise to the ﬁeld of cultural studies. Weber and Marx In many ways, Weber’s analysis proved more prescient than Marx’s. Despite his dismissal of Marx’s interpretation of the inevitability of historical change, Weber predicted the endurance, and global triumph, of the capitalist economy over traditional models as a result of rationalization. He also foresaw that a modern technological society would rely upon an efﬁcient bureaucracy, and that any problems would not be of structure but management and competence: too rigid a bureaucracy would paradoxically decrease rather than increase efﬁciency. More signiﬁcantly, Weber realized that materialism and rationalization created a soulless “iron cage," and if unchecked would lead to tyranny. Where Marx had a visio	868,536
Beauty and Art 1750-2000 (Oxford History of Art) (Elizabeth Prettejohn) (Z-Library).pdf	Beauty and Art 1750–2000 Oxford History ofArt Elizabeth Prettejohn is Professor of Modern Art at the University of Plymouth, and was formerly Curator of Paintings and Sculpture at Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery. She is co-author of the exhibition catalogues Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Sir Lawrence Alma- Tadema, and Imagining Rome: British Artists and Rome in the Nineteenth Century; author of The Art of the Pre-Raphaelites, Interpreting Sargent, and Rossetti and His Circle; and editor of After the Pre-Raphaelites: Art and Aestheticism in Victorian England and (with Tim Barringer) Frederic Leighton: Antiquity, Renaissance, Modernity. WESTERN ART Archaic and Classical Greek Art Robin Osborne Classical Art From Greece to Rome Mary Beard & John Henderson Imperial Rome and Christian Triumph Jas Elsner Early Medieval Art Lawrence Nees Medieval Art Veronica Sekules Art in Renaissance Italy Evelyn Welch Northern European Art Susie Nash Early Modern Art Nigel Llewellyn Art in Europe1700–1830 Matthew Craske Modern Art 1851–1929 Richard Brettell After Modern Art 1945–2000 David Hopkins Contemporary Art WESTERN ARCHITECTURE Greek Architecture David Small Roman Architecture Janet Delaine Early Medieval Architecture Roger Stalley Medieval Architecture Nicola Coldstream Renaissance Architecture Christy Anderson Baroque and Rococo Architecture Hilary Ballon European Architecture 1750–1890 Barry Bergdoll Modern Architecture Alan Colquhoun Contemporary Architecture Anthony Vidler Architecture in the United States Dell Upton WORLD ART Aegean Art and Architecture Donald Preziosi & Louise Hitchcock Early Art and Architecture of Africa Peter Garlake African Art John Picton Contemporary African Art Olu Oguibe African-American Art Sharon F. Patton Nineteenth-Century American Art Barbara Groseclose Twentieth-Century American Art Erika Doss Australian Art Andrew Sayers Byzantine Art Robin Cormack Art in China Craig Clunas East European Art Jeremy Howard Ancient Egyptian Art Marianne Eaton-Krauss Indian Art Partha Mitter Islamic Art Irene Bierman Japanese Art Karen Brock Melanesian Art Michael O’Hanlon Mesoamerican Art Cecelia Klein Native North American Art Janet Berlo & Ruth Phillips Polynesian and Micronesian Art Adrienne Kaeppler South-East Asian Art John Guy Latin American Art WESTERN DESIGN Twentieth-Century Design Jonathan Woodham Design in the USA Jeffrey L. Meikle Nineteenth-Century Design Gillian Naylor Fashion Christopher Breward PHOTOGRAPHY The Photograph Graham Clarke American Photography Miles Orvell Contemporary Photography WESTERN SCULPTURE Sculpture 1900–1945 Penelope Curtis Sculpture Since 1945 Andrew Causey THEMES AND GENRES Landscape and Western Art Malcolm Andrews Portraiture Shearer West Eroticism and Art Alyce Mahon Beauty and Art Elizabeth Prettejohn Women in Art REFERENCE BOOKS The Art of Art History: A Critical Anthology Donald Preziosi (ed.) Oxford History of Art Titles in the Oxford History of Art series are up-to-date, fully illustrated introductions to a wide variety of subjects written by leading experts in their ﬁeld. They will appear regularly, building into an interlocking and comprehensive series. In the list below, published titles appear in bold. Oxford History ofArt 1 Oxford History ofArt Beauty and Art 1750–2000 Elizabeth Prettejohn 1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Elizabeth Prettejohn 2005 First published 2005 by Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the proper permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. 0‒19‒280160‒0 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Prettejohn, Elizabeth Beauty and art 1750‒2000 / Elizabeth Prettejohn. p. cm. — (Oxford history of art) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Art—Philosophy. 2. Aesthetics. I. Title. II. Series. n66.p74 2005 701'.17'0903‒dc22 2004061707 isbn 0‒19‒280160‒0 Picture research by Elisabeth Agate Copy-editing, typesetting, and production management by The Running Head Limited, Cambridge, www.therunninghead.com Printed in Hong Kong on acid-free paper by C&C Offset Printing Co. Ltd Contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 Chapter 1 Eighteenth-century Germany: Winckelmann and Kant 15 Chapter 2 Nineteenth-century France: From Staël to Baudelaire 65 Chapter 3 Victorian England: Ruskin, Swinburne, Pater 111 Chapter 4 Modernism: Fry and Greenberg 157 Afterword 193 Notes 205 Further Reading 211 List of Illustrations 215 Index 219 5 This page intentionally left blank I should like to thank the anonymous reviewers for Oxford University Press, Stephen Bann, Tim Barringer, Colin Cruise, Joan Esch, Chris Green, Shelley Hales, John House, Sally Huxtable, Katy Macleod, Anna Gruetzner Robins, Debbie Robinson, and most of all Charles Martindale, the best of critics and most devoted lover of beauty. Elisa- beth Agate has been a creative and resourceful picture researcher, and I should like to thank my editors, Katharine Reeve, Penny Isaac, and Matthew Cotton, as well as David Williams at The Running Head, whose work has improved the book in countless respects. This book is dedicated to the members of the Art History Research Seminar group at the University of Plymouth, who prove that disinterested intellec- tual enquiry may still be possible even in the instrumentalist world we now inhabit. 7 Acknowledgements Since the eighteenth century philosophers have explored the human faculty of taking pleasure in the beautiful. During the same period the historical study of works of art has grown steadily in range and sophis- tication. Surprisingly, these two areas of enquiry have remained largely separate. Philosophical aesthetics has concentrated on the human subject’s experience of the beautiful in general terms: what do we mean when we call something in nature or art ‘beautiful’? Art history, on the other hand, has attended to the particular class of objects that societies, past and present, have designated ‘art’: what are the characteristics of the historical artefacts that have been valued aesthetically? This book brings together human subjects and crafted objects. It aims to juxta- pose the abstract question of beauty, as it has been posed since the beginning of modern philosophical aesthetics in eighteenth-century Germany, with the concrete objects that have been made or enjoyed in the same period. How have artists responded to speculations on the beautiful? Which works of art have been called beautiful, and why? What are we saying about these works when we call them beautiful, rather than ﬁnding them useful or informative, morally edifying or politically progressive? These questions mark a signiﬁcant departure from the recent con- cerns of academic art history, which since the 1970s has focused pre- dominantly on questions of historical, social, and political context. During the past thirty years the beauty of the work of art has seemed secondary to the work’s ideological functions in negotiations of class and power, gender and politics. The love of beauty has seemed at best an evasion or escape from the problems of social reality, at worst a way of shoring up the status of the rich and powerful. Judgements of aesthetic value have been seen as tainted by association with the art market, or with the self-interest of the wealthy and patrician. In the same period, many practising artists have felt themselves under pres- sure to choose between aesthetic pleasure and political engagement. To choose the former was effectively to court a reputation as a reactionary; thus many artists have felt that, in practice, there was no choice at all. As we shall see in the Afterword, the late-twentieth-century view of beauty as irrevocably opposed to any form of responsible politics has 9 Detail of 31 Introduction 10 introduction itself come under attack. Thus a number of artists, critics, and curators have begun to call for a new attention to beauty as a signiﬁcant issue in both contemporary life and contemporary art, and one purpose of this book is to support such calls. As the scholar Wendy Steiner (b. 1949) puts it, in her inﬂuential book of 2001, The Trouble with Beauty, ‘Invoking beauty has become a way of registering the end of modern- ism and the opening of a new period in culture.’1 Yet there is a danger that a new fashion for beauty in contemporary art will merely reverse the late-twentieth-century prejudice against beauty, without reconﬁg- uring the debate in more nuanced terms. The premise of this book is that we can learn more complex and sophisticated ways of thinking about questions of beauty from the many philosophers, art theorists, critics, and artists who have engaged seriously with these questions since 1750. There might be an argument for taking a longer or wider view of the question of beauty, which has been under debate in western thought at least since the ancient Greek philosophers, Plato (c.427–c.347 bce) and Aristotle (384–322 bce), and in non-western contexts ranging from ancient China to modern India.2 Indeed, it is not possible wholly to isolate current thinking on beauty from these longer and wider tradi- tions, and future studies will no doubt expand the range of enquiry. However, this book aims at depth rather than breadth, and concen- trates on four particular moments from the relatively recent past, each of which demonstrates with special clarity problems and issues in aes- thetics that remain profoundly relevant to today’s worlds of art practice and art history. Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the concerns of the book as a whole, by examining in detail the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who may be called the founders of the modern disciplines of, respec- tively, art history and philosophical aesthetics. Chapter 2 explores a range of debates on aesthetic questions in early nineteenth-century France, from Madame de Staël (1766–1817), who introduced German aesthetic thought to the rest of Europe, to Charles Baudelaire (1821–67), whose writings have had the greatest possible impact on subsequent art theory and practice. Chapter 3 looks at Aestheticism in Victorian England; still, perhaps, the most controversial of the modern period’s explorations of beauty. Chapter 4 traces the vexed fortunes of beauty in twentieth-century modernism, concentrating on two leading critics, Roger Fry (1866–1934) and Clement Greenberg (1909–94). The After- word brings the discussion up to the present day, and asks how debates about beauty may continue to inform both art practice and the hist- orical study of art in the future. Throughout the book, theoretical questions about beauty are considered in relation to the practices of artmaking and art appreciation in the periods under consideration. Implicitly, then, the book argues that speculation about beauty cannot introduction 11 and should not be separated from the concrete practices of making, studying, and enjoying particular works of art. A premise of the book is that the questions about beauty raised in late-eighteenth-century Germany, and discussed in Chapter 1, remain vital and urgent throughout subsequent debates, up to and including the present. However, it should be stressed that the book does not amount to a comprehensive history of the dissemination of German aesthetics; that remains a project for the future, and for a much longer book. A number of important thinkers on aesthetics, such as the German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) or the American pragmatist John Dewey (1859–1952), are mentioned only in passing; similarly, many artistic practices that explored aesthetic ques- tions in distinctive ways, such as Surrealism or Conceptual Art, are omitted. These and many other omissions, in one way regrettable, may in another reinforce a crucial argument of the book: what is distinctive about beauty, in the philosophical tradition explored here, is its capac- ity to stimulate fresh thinking and fresh debate. Thus a book about beauty can never claim to have exhausted its enquiry or to have reached a point of closure. Even if its primary focus is historical, as in the case of this book, it succeeds precisely to the extent that it opens possibili- ties for future exploration. The following chapters will address, in more detail, the reasons why beauty has been conﬁgured, in the philosophical tradition, as a ques- tion that is open-ended rather than closural. However, the idea may seem surprising in the light of recent attempts to relegate beauty to the past, to declare it a dead issue. It is hoped that readers will ﬁnd many such surprises in the following chapters. Indeed, it may be worth calling attention at the outset to a few of the limitations that have been most often, and most unwarrantably, imposed on the aesthetic in recent years. Baudelaire directed particular scorn at what he called ‘the heresy of The Didactic’, the tendency of his own contemporaries to limit art by imposing moral or educational strictures on it.3 For many artists of today, who wish to rebel against the perceived need to preach a narrow political lesson, this heresy remains a live issue. However, we may also note some other ‘heresies’ of our own day, which may impede our enquiries unless they are dispelled from the start. First, there is what might be called the heresy of hierarchy. It is often assumed that a commitment to the aesthetic, or to the beautiful, entails making relative judgements of quality or value, to privilege some objects above others. It is true that we may take delight in the superb technical quality of something like a ﬁne Iznik pot [1], and that our perception of its superiority in this respect may be important to a decision to describe it as ‘beautiful’. But as we shall see countless times in the following chapters, estimates of relative quality, or hierarchical rankings, are irrelevant to the judgement of beauty on the pot. That we 12 introduction have called the Iznik pot beautiful has no bearing, one way or the other, on whether we call another pot beautiful. The second pot might be a clumsier production, for example by a modern artist relatively untrained in ceramic techniques [2], yet we may wish to call it beautiful on quite other grounds, for example its imaginative incorporation of a human face into the ceramic shape, or its lustrous, irregular glazing. To establish a hierarchy, based on technical quality or any other measure, is potentially to prevent us from valuing some new object with charac- teristics we have not anticipated. Modern art has, on the contrary, been much concerned (some would say obsessed) with inventing character- istics as different as possible from what has been admired in the past. An aesthetic theory that could not accommodate modernist innova- tion would be impotent, in our world. Second, there is the heresy of formalism. Chapter 4 will examine in detail the problems of reconciling particular, twentieth-century theories of formalism with the aesthetic in its broader sense. At the beginning of the twenty-ﬁrst century, though, we have become accus- tomed to thinking of formalism as identical to the aesthetic. But this, again, is to impose unnecessary limits. Baudelaire called drawings beautiful that anatomized the social classes of modern Paris [60]; Winckelmann called ancient sculptures beautiful that inspired him with ideas of heroism [11]; even Roger Fry, before he became a thoroughgoing formalist, was prepared to call a painting beautiful for representing a signiﬁcant religious event [99]. There is no reason to consider a judgement of ‘pure form’ as in any way more valid, aestheti- cally, than these. Finally, there is the heresy of ‘art’ itself. Many recent critics of the aesthetic have assumed that beauty is a quality ascribed, uniquely, to ‘art’, more especially to ‘ﬁne art’ or ‘high art’, the privileged products of the art world. They have objected that inclusion in the category ‘art’ 1 Anonymous (Anatolian— Iznik) Bowl, c.1550–5 2 Paul Gauguin Pot Decorated with a Woman’s Head, c.1887–8 introduction 13 reﬂects the ideological agendas of institutions such as museums, uni- versities, the press, and the art market. For these critics this invalidates the aesthetic altogether, since the value ascribed to art objects can be seen to be motivated by non-aesthetic considerations such as com- mercial gain, political correctness, career advantage, or institutional self-promotion (the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it can be argued, has a stake in claiming that the art represented in its collections is the ‘highest’ art of the modern period). This argument is circular; it would make no sense to object to the non-aesthetic valuation of art objects unless we can suppose there is such a thing as ‘aesthetic value’ in the ﬁrst place. But such an argument is in any case beside the point. If we cannot prescribe an aesthetic hierarchy, then for the same reasons we cannot make a distinction between ‘art’ and ‘non-art’ in purely aesthetic terms. We can of course distinguish a painting by Picasso [107] from the view of a starry sky at night on perfectly rational grounds: the Picasso is a crafted artefact, and one on which our society confers high value of various kinds (ﬁnancial, institutional, historical), while the starry sky is a natural phenomenon. But that distinction is not relevant to whether we call either one beautiful or not. As we shall see, the question of the beautiful has been exceptionally important in artmaking of the modern period. But it has been equally important to preserve a clear distinction between the beautiful (as a human response to objects, whether they are art objects or not) and ‘art’ as a socially constituted product or commodity. Chapter 4 will show that all of these heresies were powerfully, and often deliberately, reinforced in the modernist art criticism of the twentieth century. This helps to explain why they have become such conspicuous targets for attack from the late-twentieth-century genera- tion that has rejected modernism. As we shall see, the modernist critics had cogent reasons, within their twentieth-century historical circum- stances, for subscribing to all three heresies. Nonetheless, the heresies are reductive; the critics of the modernists are right to see them as out- moded by the later twentieth century. The contention of this book, however, is that the same critics are wrong to confuse the aesthetic with modernism, and gravely wrong to dispense with the former in their eagerness to reject the latter. It is important, then, to look seriously at the tradition of thinking about beauty within which modernism is only an episode, and no longer the most recent one. But how has it happened, that, whilst well-grounded elementary treatises on all other departments of knowledge exist, the principles of art and of beauty have been so little investigated? Johann Joachim Winckelmann, History of Ancient Art1 Imagine a time, two thousand years from now, when the world as we now know it will have vanished. After countless wars, revolutions, environmental disasters, the National Galleries of London and Wash- ington, the Louvre, the Hermitage, and all other art collections will have been destroyed. Perhaps one or two of the artworks now famous will survive in a ruined state, but the archaeologists and historians of this future age will study principally the scanty records preserved by chance in electronic media. Digital archives, amazingly primitive by the technological standards of the years after 4000, will provide scat- tered but intriguing clues to a lost world of visual art, the beauty of which will have to be taken on trust. This scenario may seem fanciful, or too distant in the future to be worth worrying about today. But it is an exact parallel to the situation in which Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68, 4, 5), the so-called ‘father of art history’, found himself when he travelled to Rome in 1755 to study the art of classical antiquity. The written records left by ancient travellers and historians proved that, two millennia earlier, the cities of the ancient world had been lavishly stocked with innumerable thousands of statues and paintings: ‘we must be astonished’, Winckel- mann wrote, at the ‘inexhaustible wealth in works of art’ of the ancient world.2 Yet by Winckelmann’s time the overwhelming majority of these works had long since been destroyed. Moreover, the tiny propor- tion that survived, in fragmentary or ruined form, was negligible in quality compared with the great works that had once existed. Few enough of the ancient literary texts that described works of art were still extant; of these the only one with any pretension to comprehen- siveness was that of Pliny the Elder (23–79 ce). Pliny listed hundreds of artists and works from the preceding six centuries—but with only a tiny handful of exceptions, the ancient works of art that survived in Winckelmann’s day did not correspond to the ones mentioned in Pliny. 15 1 3 Laocoön, prior to twentieth- century restoration, perhaps ﬁrst century CE Eighteenth-century Germany: Winckel- mann and Kant 16 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 4 Anton Raphael Mengs Johann Joachim Winckelmann, c.1758 5 Angelica Kauffman Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 1764 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 17 The great artists of ancient Greece were well known by repute: ancient writers such as Cicero (106–43 bce) and Quintilian (c.35–c.100 ce) cited the names of Phidias and Polyclitus (ﬁfth century bce), Apelles and Praxiteles (fourth century bce) as bywords for excellence. But there was no ﬁrm evidence to connect any of these great artists with works of art that actually survived. At best, a few surviving artefacts could plau- sibly be considered later copies, made in Roman workshops, of the celebrated masterpieces of earlier Greek artists—the ancient equiva- lent of our photographic or digital reproductions. For Winckelmann to write a History of Ancient Art (1764) under these circumstances was exactly as if a historian of the ﬁfth millennium were to write a history of Renaissance art without having seen a single original work by Michelangelo (1475–1564), Leonardo (1452–1519), Raphael (1483–1520), Titian (c.1485–1576), or any of the other artists whose names we revere. The feat Winckelmann accomplished, by integrating the disparate scraps of evidence into a vast, compelling, and continuous story of the rise, culmination, and decline of ancient art, has been rightly recog- nized as inventing a new scholarly discipline: the history of art. He had no choice but to reproduce Pliny’s chronology substantially without alteration. But Pliny’s account is little more than a list of names and works. To shape this raw material into a story, Winckelmann wove it together with another history, a political and social history of the ancient world. For Winckelmann the development of the arts is inti- mately linked with the political freedom of the people that made them. This was not an uncommon view in eighteenth-century writing on art, but never before had a writer elaborated the notion into a compre- hensive history that traced the connections between art and society systematically through centuries of development. If it now seems commonplace—or even obligatory—for an art historian to link the works of art under discussion to the political and social circumstances in which they were made, that again demonstrates Winckelmann’s claim to the title ‘father of art history’; his History might even be described as a pioneer of what we now call the social history of art. But there is a third element to Winckelmann’s project, one that has attracted less subsequent comment but which for Winckelmann himself was the key to his entire enterprise: the demonstration of the beauty of the art of antiquity, and particularly that of ancient Greece. Moreover—and this may be the most original aspect of Winckelmann’s work—beauty for him was something that was not deﬁnable in general or abstract terms, but could only be discovered through profound and sustained observation of particular works. This posed formidable prac- tical problems, for, as we have seen, the particular works available for direct observation were undocumented in the ancient sources Winck- elmann used. But the mismatch between beauty and history went deeper, for in an important sense beauty, as Winckelmann conceived it, 18 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant did not belong to the ancient past at all: it was located in the present day and in the experience of the modern observer—Winckelmann himself and his readers, among whom he was particularly concerned to include practising artists. Necessarily, then, much of Winckelmann’s discussion of Greek art takes place outside any historical framework. First, he dwells on beau- ties he has observed in (undated) representations of each of the Greek gods—the ‘delicate, round limbs’ characteristic of statues of Bacchus,3 the ‘liquid’ eyes seen in statues of Venus, with the lower lid elevated to give a ‘love-exciting and languishing look’ [6].4 Then he analyses each part of the body: the ﬁngers that taper ‘like ﬁnely shaped columns’,5 or the knees of youthful ﬁgures, in which ‘the space from the thigh to the leg forms a gentle and ﬂowing elevation, unbroken by depressions or prominences’.6 Even in the historical section of his account (which does not occur until the last four books of the twelve that make up the History), Winckelmann interrupts the smooth chronological ﬂow at intervals to introduce a striking description of an existing work of ancient art, or more precisely a dramatic account of his own experience of such a work. Abruptly, at these points, the perspective shifts away 6 Anonymous (Graeco- Roman) Crouching Venus, date unknown eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 19 7 Anonymous (Graeco- Roman) Belvedere Torso, date unknown from scholarship, from history, from the past tense, from third-person narrative. Suddenly the emphasis is on the visual, on the present, on the singularity of the work rather than its position in a historical sequence, on the way ‘I’ (Winckelmann) experience it rather than on its objective properties. These vivid moments are integrated into the narrative ingeniously, but also provisionally—for, as Winckelmann freely admits, there is no way to assign secure dates to the extant objects, and therefore no ﬁrm grounds for inserting them into the chronology at any particular moment. Thus he places one of his most compelling descriptions, that of the Apollo Belvedere [11], in a chapter on the reign of the Roman Emperor Nero (37–68 ce), on the plausible (but unsubstantiated) hypothesis that this might have been one of the statues Nero was said to have plundered from Greece. Another favourite work, the Belvedere Torso [7] is assigned to the period just after the reign of Alexander the Great (356–323 bce), because Winckelmann thinks it too ﬁne to be 20 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 8 (Graeco-Roman) Farnese Hercules, date unknown eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 21 later (he accepted the opinion of ancient writers that Greek art had declined after Alexander’s reign). After presenting reasons for consid- ering the Torso a representation of Hercules, he proceeds by association of ideas to discuss another famous statue of the same hero, the Farnese Hercules [8]. Elsewhere he apologizes for such interpolations: ‘I have been obliged to seek out such digressions in order to communicate instruction, because no monuments quite so remarkable . . . have come down to us from the times of which properly we treat’.7 This acknow- ledges the double bind of the historian of ancient art. On the one hand, documented artefacts from the periods under consideration were lacking; on the other, the artefacts that were available, and whose beauty Winckelmann wished to emphasize, were undatable and therefore had no ﬁxed location within the chronological story-line. Winckelmann therefore ﬁlls the gaps left by the disappearance of documented works with compelling accounts, instead, of works he has himself seen. In effect Winckelmann was adding a third strand to his other two narratives: to the Plinian chronology of artists and the sociopolitical history of antiquity he added a third narrative about the direct experi- ence of extant works. The historicity of this third strand was dubious, as Winckelmann freely acknowledged. But if it stretches a point to call this strand a history of art, the other two strands can scarcely claim to constitute a history of art. The third is the only one to involve the visual. Moreover, it is the only one that can make good Winckelmann’s most cherished claim, that his writing will prove the beauty of Greek art. It would be wrong to attribute Winckelmann’s dilemma to the special circumstances of the eighteenth-century historian of ancient art. Since Winckelmann’s time, many important works of ancient art have been unearthed; moreover, art historians have turned their atten- tion to other periods, such as the Italian Renaissance or nineteenth- century France, for which much more historical data are available. It may seem, then, that the increase of scholarly knowledge has gone a long way towards solving the structural problem of Winckelmann’s history. But we still face Winckelmann’s dilemma: how can we recon- cile the historical study of art with its visual impact on us in the present—in short, its beauty? Even if we were to leave aside evalua- tions of beauty, as some recent art historians have claimed to do, we should still face the dilemma as long as we continued to include the visual characteristics of actual works in our discussions: while we can know a great deal about the past history of a work of art, we can see it only in the present, and only insofar as it is we who see it. Winckel- mann can perhaps be said to have concealed the gaps in his historical narrative behind vivid evocations of the beauty of particular works. We, on the other hand, may often conceal the beauty of the works behind the richness of the history we are able to write. 22 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant But what did Winckelmann mean when he called a work beautiful? In an extended theoretical chapter he reviews a number of aesthetic issues, including the perennial problem of why one person’s taste may differ from another’s, but he ﬁnally discounts the possibility of deﬁning beauty with logical precision: ‘We cannot proceed here . . . after the mode used in geometry, which advances and concludes from generals to particulars and individuals, and from the nature of things to their properties, but we must satisfy ourselves with drawing probable conclusions merely from single pieces.’8 This emphasis on singular aesthetic observations, as we shall see later in this chapter, is not incom- patible with new ways of thinking about beauty in the emerging discipline of philosophical aesthetics. More importantly, it is consistent with Winckelmann’s method of studying a work of art. Beauty for Winckelmann is not something that the work of art simply displays of its own accord. Rather, it emerges in the course of prolonged contem- plation and reﬂection on the part of the observer: ‘The ﬁrst view of beautiful statues is . . . like the ﬁrst glance over the open sea; we gaze on it bewildered, and with undistinguishing eyes, but after we have con- templated it repeatedly the soul becomes more tranquil and the eye more quiet, and capable of separating the whole into its particulars.’9 Winckelmann notes that he has ‘imposed upon myself the rule of not turning back until I had discovered some beauty’.10 He advises students to approach works of Greek art ‘favorably prepossessed . . . for, being fully assured of ﬁnding much that is beautiful, they will seek for it, and a portion of it will be made visible to them’.11 Beauty, then, is not the precondition but rather the result of aesthetic contemplation, of a kind of collaboration between the viewer and the work. It would therefore be nonsensical to deﬁne it in advance of, or apart from, an actual aesthetic experience. In order to learn more about Winckelmann’s insights into beauty, then, we shall have to explore his responses to particular works of art. Laocoön Of all the works of ancient art above ground in Winckelmann’s time, only a single one corresponded closely to a work documented in an ancient source: the Laocoön [3], unearthed in 1506 and instantly con- nected to a passage in Pliny that described a magniﬁcent marble sculpture of the Trojan priest Laocoön, with his children, entwined in the coils of gigantic serpents (Laocoön’s punishment for warning the Trojans against the wooden horse left by the Greeks). Even in this case, there were certain difﬁculties in identifying the actual artefact as the same one that Pliny had seen; for instance, Pliny had insisted that the work was made from a single block of marble, which the surviving sculpture was not (Winckelmann argued ingeniously that the joins eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 23 9 Peter Paul Rubens Laocoön, 1601–2 must have opened up more visibly since Pliny’s time). Nonetheless, the Laocoön had the best claim of any extant sculpture to be considered one of the documented great works of antiquity, which, together with the exceptionally high quality of the carving, made it one of the world’s most celebrated works of art from the Renaissance onwards. Winckelmann was fascinated by the Laocoön even before he went to Rome. Although he could have known it only through reproductions, he made it the occasion for the ﬁrst of his compelling descriptions, in the essay of 1755 that established his scholarly reputation, Reﬂections on the Imitation of Greek Works in Painting and Sculpture. The passage begins with a phrase that became famous: Greek art, wrote Winckel- mann, was distinguished above all by ‘a noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’. The phrase announces a striking reinterpretation of the Laocoön. Earlier observers, for example Michelangelo and Rubens (1577–1640, 9), had valued the sculpture for its extreme drama and expressiveness. But now Winckelmann asks his readers to see beyond the struggling limbs and anguished facial expressions, to sense the underlying dignity of the ﬁgures, evident in the balanced disposition of the bodily forms. Winckelmann continues with the earliest example of what would become a trademark of his writing, a comparison between sculptural form and the ﬂowing waters of the sea: ‘Just as the depths of 24 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant the sea always remain calm however much the surface may rage, so does the expression of the ﬁgures of the Greeks reveal a great and com- posed soul even in the midst of passion.’ For a simple description of the Laocoön as demonstrating one emotion pushed to its limit, Winckel- mann substitutes a more complex account based on a magical equilib- rium between two seemingly opposite characters: ‘The physical pain and the nobility of soul are distributed with equal strength over the entire body and are, as it were, held in balance with one another.’ Already Winckelmann is beginning to emphasize the observer’s involvement in the aesthetic response, so intense that it is felt corpore- ally: ‘The pain is revealed in all the muscles and sinews of [Laocoön’s] body, and we ourselves can almost feel it as we observe the painful con- traction of the abdomen’. But as the observer responds to the sense of physical pain, the sculpture preserves its nobility; there is ‘no sign of rage in his face or in his entire bearing’. Through empathetic response the viewer is inspired with respect or awe: ‘his pain touches our very souls, but we wish that we could bear misery like this great man’.12 Thus the double emotion, poised between pain and nobility, shifts in the process of contemplation from being a property of the sculpture to characterizing the viewer’s response. By the time Winckelmann published his History of Ancient Art, in 1764, he had been in Rome for nearly a decade, but the study of a wide range of surviving antiquities had done nothing to lessen his enthusiasm for the Laocoön. Indeed, his increasing knowledge made the Laocoön more important than ever, as the sole demonstrable link between the beauty that could be directly experienced and the glorious but lost world of art described in the ancient texts. Winckelmann emphasized this in the dramatic placement of the Laocoön within the History. Winckelmann presented the reign of Alexander the Great as the ﬁnal culmination of Greek art, but he had to admit that no trace remained of the works Pliny had assigned to this period. ‘Of the works of Lysippus not one probably has been preserved’, he notes of one of the most famous names of the period; ‘[t]he loss of the works of this artist is an indescribable one’.13 This is one of the most melancholy moments in the History, when the loss of ancient beauty is most poignant. Suddenly, though, the mood changes: But the kind fate which still continued to watch over the arts, even during their destruction, has preserved for the admiration of the whole world, after the loss of countless works executed at this time when art was in its highest bloom, the most precious monument, the statue of the Laocoön, as a proof of the truth of the accounts which describe the splendor of so many masterpieces that have perished. . . .14 The coup de théâtre is brilliantly effective, even though as a responsible scholar Winckelmann is obliged to add a disclaimer: ‘we say at this eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 25 Detail of 3 time, on the supposition that the artists of [the Laocoön] lived in the reign of Alexander the Great, which cannot be proved’. By now Winckelmann can offer a much more nuanced description of the sculpture. He dwells, for instance, on the ﬁnal ﬁnish given with the chisel, to reﬁne and vary the smooth polish of the marble: Though the outer skin of this statue when compared with a smooth and pol- ished surface appears somewhat rough, rough as a soft velvet contrasted with a lustrous satin, yet it is, as it were, like the skin of the ancient Greeks, which had neither been relaxed by the constant use of warm baths . . . nor rubbed smooth by a scraper, but on which lay a healthy moisture, resembling the ﬁrst appearance of down upon the chin.15 This evokes the experience of touching the marble surface, which in the viewer’s imagination takes on the character of human skin. The sense of sensuous or even erotic pleasure is strong here. The face, too, is closely observed [see detail of 3 above]: The struggle between the pain and the suppression of the feelings is rendered with great knowledge as concentrated in one point below the forehead; for whilst the pain elevates the eyebrows, resistance to it presses the ﬂeshy parts 26 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant above the eyes downward and towards the upper eyelid, so that it is almost entirely covered by the overhanging skin. Winckelmann’s experience of the actual sculpture has not, then, altered his ﬁrst insight about the balance between pain and nobility: . . . in the parts where the greatest pain is placed he shows us the greatest beauty. The left side, into which the serpent with furious bite discharges its poison, appears to suffer the most violently from its greater sensibility in con- sequence of its vicinity to the heart; and this part of the body may be termed a miracle of art.16 Winckelmann’s writing never makes the statue into an inert or dis- tanced object; he dramatizes actions, such as the movement of the eyebrows or the injection of the poison, as if they were occurring before our eyes. Among the multitude of writers who responded to Winckelmann’s 10 Laocoön, after twentieth- century restoration, perhaps ﬁrst century CE eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 27 accounts of the Laocoön were the dramatist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), whose Laocoön, or On the Limits of Painting and Poetry (1766) explored the differences between the visual and verbal arts, and the great German author Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), whose essay ‘Observations on the Laocoön’ was published in 1798. In a passage on the left side of the ﬁgure Goethe emulates the way Winck- elmann translates visual into corporeal experience: ‘The serpent inﬂicts a wound on the unhappy Laocoön, precisely in the part in which man is very sensible to every irritation, and even where the slightest tickling causes that motion which we see produced here by the wound; the body ﬂies towards the opposite side. . . .’ Goethe even recommends a physical exercise, which seems to make the sculpture come alive: if we stand far enough from the sculpture to see it whole, then open and shut our eyes, ‘we shall see all the marble in motion; we shall be afraid to ﬁnd the group changed when we open our eyes again’. He goes on to use images much in Winckelmann’s style: ‘I would readily say, as the group is now exposed, it is a ﬂash of lightning ﬁxed, a wave petriﬁed at the instant when it is approaching the shore’.17 In a restoration of the late 1950s the extended right arm of Laocoön (missing from the sculpture unearthed in 1506 and conjecturally recon- structed) was exchanged for an antique arm, in a bent position, that had been subsequently unearthed [10]. The new version of the sculpture may have some claim to greater authenticity, despite the discrepancy in size between the two arms of the ﬁgure; it is debatable, though, whether the new-ancient bent arm is as beautiful as the previous restoration, ﬁne enough to have led some observers to suppose it the work of the great sculptor Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). However this may be, the statue Winckelmann knew has become a lost work of art, although a plaster copy of it has been installed in the Vatican Museum, next to the marble. Apollo Belvedere and Venus de’Medici During Winckelmann’s time in Rome another sculpture came to rival —or even to surpass—the Laocoön in his esteem; indeed, he frequently mentions the Apollo Belvedere [11] alongside the Laocoön as contrasting but equally compelling examples of beauty. While the Laocoön has retained its high reputation, the Apollo has fallen from favour. In The Nude (1956), one of the most widely read books on art of the twentieth century, the art historian Kenneth Clark (1903–83) confessed himself mystiﬁed that so learned a connoisseur as Winckelmann could admire the Apollo, which for Clark displayed ‘weak structure and slack surfaces which, to the aesthetic of pure sensibility, annul its other qualities’; in no other famous work, Clark thought, ‘are idea and execution more distressingly divorced’.18 In fact Winckelmann himself freely conceded 28 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant the executive weakness of the Apollo: the sculptor of the Laocoön must, Winckelmann insisted, ‘have been a far more skilful and complete artist than it was requisite for the sculptor of the Apollo to be’.19 As we have seen, he emphasized the virtuosic technique used for the surface ﬁnish of the Laocoön, but like Clark in the twentieth century he did not ﬁnd the texture and detail of the Apollo equally ﬁne. But for Winckelmann beauty is not synonymous with the material characteristics of the object, as it often became in the modernist criti- cism of the twentieth century—which we shall explore in Chapter 4. Indeed, Winckelmann’s descriptions of the Apollo tend to dematerial- ize it, to leave behind its physical existence and to contemplate what Clark calls the sculpture’s ‘idea’ (as distinct from its ‘execution’). More- over he invites us to follow him: 11 Anonymous (Graeco- Roman) Apollo Belvedere, prior to twentieth-century restoration, date unknown eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 29 Let thy spirit penetrate into the kingdom of incorporeal beauties, and strive to become a creator of a heavenly nature, in order that thy mind may be ﬁlled with beauties that are elevated above nature; for there is nothing mortal here. . . . Neither blood-vessels nor sinews heat and stir this body, but a heav- enly essence, diffusing itself like a gentle stream, seems to ﬁll the whole contour of the ﬁgure. Winckelmann has been faithful to his own rule, not turning back until he has found beauty. Where Clark would stop at the slick, mechanical character of the copyist’s execution, Winckelmann sees beyond the immediate surface texture. And as he looks, he responds corporeally: ‘In the presence of this miracle of art I forget all else, and I myself take a lofty position for the purpose of looking upon it in a worthy manner.’ The moral effect of the Laocoön had been to make Winckelmann con- scious of his own weakness and thus desirous of self-improvement (‘we wish that we could bear misery like this great man’). The Apollo pro- duces a headier exaltation, so that the viewer’s very body seems to expand in emulation of the statue. As he goes on looking, Winckel- mann becomes in imagination one of the ancient oracles or priestesses, inspired by the god Apollo: My breast seems to enlarge and swell with reverence, like the breasts of those who were ﬁlled with the spirit of prophecy, and I feel myself transported to Delos and into the Lycaean groves—places which Apollo honored by his pres- ence,—for my image seems to receive life and motion, like the beautiful creation of Pygmalion.20 The ﬁnal reference is to another ancient myth—that of the sculptor who made a statue so beautiful that he fell in love with it; by the grace of Venus (goddess of both beauty and love) Pygmalion’s statue was brought to life (see 86). The aesthetic encounter as Winckelmann imagines it is reciprocal, making the marble statue seem to come alive at the same time as it increases the viewer’s sense of vitality. Such expe- riences as the latter are commonly described in clichés—powerful works of art are said to make the pulse race, the heart beat faster, the hairs of the neck tingle. What Winckelmann describes is like this, but far from being conventionalized it is adapted to the particular experi- ence of contemplating the Apollo. Winckelmann’s corporeal response can also be read as an erotic experience; the Apollo conjures feelings of tumescence and of rising excitement or exhilaration. This is a homoerotic encounter, one in which similarity between the viewer-lover and the beloved statue is crucial; in the consummation of the aesthetic encounter viewer and statue become identiﬁed with one another (the description may also imply the possibility of shifting genders, when Winckelmann imag- ines himself as one of Apollo’s prophetesses and invokes the female statue of Pygmalion). In an essay of 1805, Goethe speaks frankly of 30 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant Winckelmann’s passionate friendships with men, which he sees as crucial to the older writer’s aesthetic sensibility.21 Subsequently Winck- elmann’s homosexuality has become inseparable from his fame, for instance in the frequent assumption that the strange event of his murder, in Trieste in 1768, must have had a homosexual or homophobic motive (although there is no evidence that the murder was anything more than a robbery that turned tragically to violence). Recent scholars have dwelt more positively on the homoerotic resonances of Winckel- mann’s writing, and rightly so: Winckelmann initiated a practice of homoerotic art criticism of superb quality in its own right, and which was inspirational for later critics such as Walter Pater, who will be dis- cussed in Chapter 3. Nonetheless, there is a danger in assuming that Winckelmann’s response to the beautiful can be explained away as the effect of his homosexuality. The sensual element in Winckelmann’s response to the beautiful cannot be reduced to an expression of desire for the sculp- tured male body. Rather, it permeates his descriptions, for instance of the texture of chiselled marble, of the fall of sculptured draperies, and even of female ﬁgures. He writes of the Venus de’Medici [12], then the most famous ancient female nude: The Medicean Venus . . . resembles a rose which, after a lovely dawn, unfolds its leaves to the rising sun; resembles one who is passing from an age which is hard and somewhat harsh—like fruits before their perfect ripeness—into another, in which all the vessels of the animal system are beginning to dilate, and the breasts to enlarge, as her bosom indicates. . . . The attitude brings before my imagination that Laïs who instructed Apelles in love. Methinks I see her, as when, for the ﬁrst time, she stood naked before the artist’s eyes.22 Even without the ﬁnal reference to Laïs, a famous courtesan of an- tiquity, the passage clearly involves fantasies of sexual awakening, expressed for instance in the image of the opening rose; the ﬂower— the rose in particular—would soon and lastingly become the most common and efﬁcient single symbol for pure beauty. Thus the rose, like the sea images Winckelmann used more frequently in descriptions of male ﬁgures, may be read either as a sexual image or as an aesthetic one—indeed, the two cannot easily be distinguished. Passages such as that on the Venus de’Medici, as well as that on the Apollo Belvedere, raise urgent questions about the relationship between the beautiful and the erotic—questions which, as we shall see, have remained central to both aesthetic thought and art practice ever since. It would be easy enough to resolve them by collapsing the beautiful into the erotic. Thus in Winckelmann’s case it is tempting to avoid difﬁculties by seeing his love of the beautiful simply as a disguised or sublimated form of erotic attraction to young men. Yet that would not only reinforce the stereotype, ingrained in modern western societies, eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 31 12 Anonymous (Graeco- Roman) Venus de’Medici, date unknown that presumes some innate afﬁnity between homosexual desire and love of art; it would also reduce the theoretical question of the beautiful to mere personal preference, something about which people of differ- ent genders or sexualities would be unable to share ideas or opinions. Winckelmann’s writings, however powerful their homoerotic reso- nances, cannot be dismissed as merely the fantasies of an eighteenth- century white European homosexual. Winckelmann and contemporary art The only way for us to become great or, if this be possible, inimitable, is to imitate the ancients.23 This paradoxical formulation, from the opening pages of Winckel- mann’s Reﬂections, seems to be asking modern artists to attempt the 32 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant impossible—not merely to imitate the art of the ancients, in Winckel- mann’s view the greatest art ever made, but to surpass the very terms of that project, to become ‘inimitable’. A drawing by the Swiss-born artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), The Artist in Despair over the Magnitude of Ancient Fragments [13], can be taken to represent visually something of the modern artist’s plight. Not only are the pieces of ancient sculpture vast in scale compared to the tiny artist; they are the merest fragments of a human body, the grandeur of which can only be imagined. The living artist might indeed ﬂinch, as much before the radical unfath- omability of ancient art as before the enormous task of trying to rival it. Yet that was exactly what Winckelmann demanded, in writings that frequently addressed artists directly. For Winckelmann the discovery of the beauty of Greek art was not of merely antiquarian interest: it was of vital importance to the creation of new beauty in the present and future. The visual art of the second half of the eighteenth century appears to respond dramatically to Winckelmann’s challenge. In the develop- ment that art historians have called ‘neoclassicism’, artists began to reject Baroque complexity and Rococo frivolity in favour of artistic practices more akin, although in diverse ways, to the ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ of the antique, in Winckelmann’s famous words. However, this is no simple matter of cause and effect; rather, the links between Winckelmann’s ideas and contemporary art practice were rec- iprocal. Winckelmann acknowledged his debt to the artists, ﬁrst in Dresden, then in Rome, who taught him to look closely at ancient art. When, in the Preface to the History, he asks: ‘What writer has looked at beauty with an artist’s eyes?’,24 he implies that scholars and connois- 13 Henry Fuseli The Artist in Despair over the Magnitude of Ancient Fragments, c.1778 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 33 seurs need to learn from practitioners’ visual skills. On the other hand, Winckelmann also expected his research and writing to make a much more direct impact on art practice than most art historians have even dreamed possible. We have seen that for Winckelmann the beauty of ancient art was not immured in the past, but comes alive only in the present, in the observer’s encounter with a particular work. Winckelmann’s own writ- ings can be seen as one way of making the beauty of ancient art vivid and communicable in the present day—in this sense they ‘imitate’ the ancient artists in words. But visual artists may be able to do something similar through the creation of new works. Throughout his writings Winckelmann keeps modern art (that is, European art since the Renaissance, as well as the art of his contemporaries) constantly in view. Already in the Reﬂections, the Renaissance artist Raphael is a key point of reference; he is the ﬁrst to ‘feel and to discover in modern times the true character of the ancients’.25 Winckelmann writes of Raphael’s Sistine Madonna [14] as a modern realization of the ‘noble simplicity and quiet grandeur’ of ancient art: ‘Behold this Madonna, her face ﬁlled with innocence and extraordinary greatness, in a posture of blissful serenity! It is the same serenity with which the ancients imbued the depictions of their deities.’26Raphael’s ‘imitation’ of ancient art is not, then, a matter of copying. Rather it involves the fresh cre- ation of a beauty that corresponds to that of ancient art. Winckelmann never wavered in his belief that such beauty was pos- sible for modern art, even though much art since Raphael’s day seemed to him to have veered towards extravagance and over-emotionalism. In the History Winckelmann welcomed experiments in neoclassicism among contemporary sculptors, but he reserved his greatest praise for a German painter and close friend, Anton Raphael Mengs (1728–79, named after the Renaissance master): All the beauties here described, in the ﬁgures of the ancients, are embraced in the immortal works of Antonio Raphael Mengs, . . . the greatest artist of his own, and probably of the coming age also. He arose, as it were, like a phoenix new-born, out of the ashes of the ﬁrst Raphael to teach the world what beauty is contained in art. . . .27 In retrospect Winckelmann’s enthusiasm may seem excessive, for Mengs’s scholarly neoclassical experiments were soon eclipsed by the more daring practices of artists such as Jacques-Louis David [26, 40]. Perhaps, though, Mengs’s work can be seen as a form of preliminary research into what a new attentiveness to ancient sculpture might mean for modern art. Winckelmann and Mengs studied ancient sculp- ture together from 1755 to 1761 when both were in Rome; Mengs’s sensitive portrait of Winckelmann [4] concentrates on the unusually large, wide-open eyes and level gaze, as if to acknowledge the scholar’s 34 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant receptiveness to visual experience. Although the treatise they planned to write together never materialized, the results of their joint researches may be as evident in Mengs’s paintings as in Winckelmann’s History. In a painting of 1771, Noli me tangere [15], Mengs gives neoclassical serenity to a potentially dramatic moment from scripture, Mary Mag- dalene’s encounter with the risen Christ. Where a Rubens or a Bernini might have introduced extravagant gestures and complex poses, Mengs presents the two ﬁgures as simply as possible. The outstretched hands of both ﬁgures, relieved in sculptural whiteness against the rich colours of draperies and background, economically convey the import of the story, Mary’s astonishment at seeing the Saviour and his gentle rebuke (‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father’, John 20:17). The voluminous draperies and the clarity of the ﬁgures against the background, as well as the ﬁgure type of the Magdalene, are reminis- 14 Raphael Sistine Madonna, c.1512–14 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 35 15 Anton Raphael Mengs Noli me tangere, 1771 cent of Raphael (compare 14). Perhaps Mengs also took a cue from Winckelmann when he gave Christ the beautiful body of a Greek statue. Winckelmann had written: ‘Modern artists ought to have formed their ﬁgures of the Saviour conformably to the ideas which the ancients entertained of the beauty of their heroes, and thus made him correspond to the prophetic declaration, which announces him as the most beautiful of the children of men.’28 36 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant The Swiss painter Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) also learned from Winckelmann to study ancient art intensively (see 5). Perhaps Kauff- man also made use of Winckelmann’s chapters on the characteristic beauties of parts of the body, when designing the ﬁgures for a remark- able series of paintings that celebrated the deeds of female characters from ancient history and mythology. For Venus Showing Aeneas and Achates the Way to Carthage [16], Kauffman chose an unusual subject from Virgil’s Aeneid, one in which the female ﬁgure takes the leading role. Venus is instantly recognizable by her ‘liquid eyes’ (compare 6), and the draperies fall away to reveal the rounded thigh that Winckel- mann considered the most seductive of female attributes. Her low forehead, with her ﬂaxen hair curving over the temples, and her straight nose and rounded chin also correspond to the forms that Winckelmann identiﬁed in the most beautiful Greek heads (often, of course, male). Kauffman’s procedure for constructing an ideally beauti- ful ﬁgure follows that attributed to the ancient artist Zeuxis and represented in another of her paintings [17]. According to legend, Zeuxis imitated the most beautiful features of numerous individual women to form a composite ﬁgure of perfect beauty. Kauffman, with the help of Winckelmann’s researches, selected the most beautiful fea- tures of ancient statues, rather than living models, to form her own ﬁgures. In her work the visual beauty of the female ﬁgure signiﬁes the nobility of the ﬁgure’s character. As if by magic, a type close to Kauffman’s ideal female ﬁgure seemed to come alive in a young Englishwoman, Emma Hart (1765–1815). 16 Angelica Kauffman Venus Showing Aeneas and Achates the Way to Carthage, 1768 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 37 17 Angelica Kauffman Zeuxis Selecting Models for His Painting of Helen of Troy, c.1778 Drawings and paintings show Hart with the low forehead, deep-set eyes, straight-line proﬁle, and rounded chin of the Kauffman female type [18]. Her beauty appeared compellingly reminiscent of ancient sculpture to Sir William Hamilton (1730–1803), British diplomatic envoy to Naples and an avid collector of classical antiquities. After joining Hamilton in Naples, Hart (Lady Hamilton after their marriage 18 Thomas Lawrence Portrait of Emma Hart, 1791 38 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant in 1791) developed a new art form based on her ‘classical’ appearance. Indeed, she might be called the ﬁrst performance artist, for she used her own body to create a continuously changing series of images, many of which were imitated from ancient sculpture. These performed images became famous as the ‘attitudes of Lady Hamilton’ [19]. The attitudes are, of course, lost works of art, but Goethe’s vivid aesthetic response gives an idea of what they were like: Dressed in [Greek drapery], she lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures, expressions, etc., that the specta- tor can hardly believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realized before him in movements and surprising transforma- tions—standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break. . . . In her, [Hamilton] has found all the antiquities . . . even the Apollo Belvedere.29 Hart’s performances have been remembered mainly as embellishments to her sexual attractiveness; she became famous to posterity as the mis- tress of Lord Nelson (1758–1805). But the way she ‘imitated’ ancient art—making the poses of sculptures come alive in movement, and real- izing them corporeally, in her own body—can be described as a startlingly original way of responding to Winckelmann’s exhortation to modern artists. Hart’s attitudes, Kauffman’s female ﬁgures, and Mengs’s Raphael- esque neoclassicism demonstrate only a few of the approaches artists developed for imitating the antique. For these artists, as for Winckel- mann, the beauty of ancient sculpture was not locked in the past, but was something to be perpetually reinvented in modern aesthetic experience. The Laocoön may survive as a physical artefact from the remote past, but there is no guarantee that a new generation will call it beautiful. Its beauty can, however, be freshly invented, for example in 19 Pietro Antonio Novelli Attitudes of Lady Hamilton, 1791 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 39 20 Charles-Clément Balvay (known as Bervic) Laocoön (engraving after a drawing by Pierre Bouillon of the Vatican sculpture group, 3), 1809 Winckelmann’s novel interpretation of it, or in an engraving of 1809 by Charles-Clément Balvay, known as Bervic [20]. Bervic faithfully ‘imitates’ the antique. But his work is also original. This is overtly a representation, not of Laocoön and his sons, but of the celebrated sculpture of the Laocoön, presented in its museum setting. Through an almost unimaginable variation in the density of weave of the engraved lines, the tonal range, from velvety shadow to brilliant light, is pushed to its utmost, creating a new drama from the contrast between convex sculptural volumes and the shadowy concave niche. The composition of the sculpture group is reproduced with only the slightest of varia- tions, but the suppleness and plasticity of the forms seems inexplicably enhanced, so that the eye ranges endlessly around the circling rhythms. All signs of wear or damage are smoothed away. Perhaps Bervic can be said to have reimagined the ancient statue as it appeared when newly made. But he has also made a modern work of art with a new range of connotations. 40 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant Kant’s Critique of Judgement While Winckelmann was conducting his empirical researches into the beauty of ancient art in Rome, the philosophical question of beauty was attracting increasing attention—and controversy—in his native Germany. Indeed, Winckelmann may have been exposed to the earli- est stages of this debate in his student days at the University of Halle, where Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714–62) was a charismatic lecturer in philosophy. In his Master’s dissertation of 1735, Baumgarten introduced the term ‘aesthetic’ (which he devised from a Greek word for ‘things perceived by the senses’, as opposed to ‘things known by the mind’), and called for the establishment of a science of aesthetics—a science that would deal with human perception, something different from the well-established science that dealt with logical knowledge. Unlike previous philosophers who considered sensory perception to be nothing but undigested raw material, Baumgarten introduced the pos- sibility that perception might have its own excellence—that a vivid sensory experience (say the sight of the starry sky at midnight) might offer something special that would not be improved by analysing it rationally (say by calculating the exact distances of each of the stars from earth). The something special—what perception offers that logical thought does not—can be called the beautiful. The structure of Winckelmann’s History reﬂects some such distinction between logical knowledge (the systematic presentation of data about ancient art) and sensory experience, demonstrated each time Winckelmann interrupts the narrative to introduce a compelling description of his experience of a work of art. However, Winckelmann doubted the possibility of a scientiﬁc account of the beautiful, one that would be able to specify general criteria for judging whether objects are beautiful or not; for Winckel- mann, as we have seen, beauty emerges only from a direct encounter with a particular object. This conviction may reﬂect Winckelmann’s temperament and habits of close observation rather than a rigorous theoretical position; nonetheless it anticipates, informally, a crucial element in the aesthetic theory of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804, 21). By 1790, when Kant published his major discussion of aesthetics in The Critique of Judgement, the enquiry into the beautiful adumbrated in Baumgarten’s dissertation had become a recognized branch of philoso- phy. This was despite ﬁerce opposition, on the grounds that placing a high value on sensory experience was mere hedonism, and thus irre- sponsible, or indeed positively immoral. Such complaints, as we shall see throughout the following chapters, recur again and again in the history of aesthetics, and persist even in the present day. Among Baumgarten’s students were several young poets who celebrated the life of the senses in their verses, much to the horror of their more moralis- tic elders. Aesthetics in its earliest stages as a philosophical discipline eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 41 21 Hans Veit Schnorr von Carolsfeld Immanuel Kant, 1789 was radical and oppositional, closely associated with the Enlighten- ment political ideals of liberty and equality, and resolutely opposed to aristocratic cultural traditions that prescribed rules and precepts for the arts. But in an atmosphere of growing intellectual freedom the new discipline began to ﬂourish in the German universities. By the late eighteenth century, then, aesthetics was an area of study inasmuch as it was taught in universities. Nonetheless, Kant insisted that it could not be a science, in the way that logic (or in Winckel- mann’s example, geometry) was a science: according to Kant, the judgement that something is beautiful can never be proved. In the very ﬁrst paragraph of the Critique of Judgement Kant demolishes any sug- gestion that such a judgement could be ‘objective’, that it could involve veriﬁably true or false statements about the object under observation.30 Rather, it is entirely subjective; it refers to the feeling of delight experi- enced by the subject—the viewer or observer—when contemplating an object, and not to anything about the object itself. To call an object beautiful, Kant argues, provides no knowledge whatsoever of that object. Thus it is completely different from saying that the object is ﬂat, or that it is made of canvas and pigment, or that it is three hundred years old—all of those statements can potentially be proved true or false, therefore they are logical and not aesthetic. Calling an object beautiful does not even involve knowing what kind of thing the object is (whether it is a work of art, for instance), nor does it depend on whether the object really exists or not (thus we may call a dream or a 42 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 43 22 Édouard Manet White Peonies, c.1864 ﬁction or an imaginary landscape beautiful). Nor does it imply that the object is good, either in the sense of being good for something (that is, useful in any way) or in that of being good in itself, that is morally good. Kant’s theory utterly contradicts some commonly held assump- tions, most obviously the notion that beauty is somehow ‘in’ the object. For Kant beauty is not essential or inherent to the object; it is not a property or a feature of the object. What, then, is going on when we declare that something is beautiful? Are we deceiving ourselves, in attributing to the object something that it cannot possibly possess? Many critics have thought so. It has been claimed, for example, that when we call something beautiful we really mean that it is a symbol of social belonging or class status—thus if I say that a piece of music by Bach is beautiful, I am proclaiming my membership of a cultured elite in western society.31 Another common view is that when we call some- thing beautiful we are betraying our submission to an authoritarian ideology, which provides us with sensuous pleasures in order to prevent us from rebelling against political or social injustices; thus when I call a Hollywood ﬁlm beautiful I am simply accepting my powerlessness against the American culture industry, or when I call an English landscape beautiful I am allowing myself to be distracted from the hardships of the rural poor. Yet another view has it that when we call something beautiful we simply mean that it gives us some kind of per- sonal gratiﬁcation; thus I may call a diamond tiara beautiful because I like to imagine myself rich enough to own it, or Winckelmann calls the Apollo Belvedere beautiful because it gives him an erotic frisson. Kant would not disagree with any of these lines of argument. How- ever, he would ask us to distinguish rigorously among them; he would think that we were using the word ‘beautiful’ in a different way in each case, and that it would be clearer to use different words. For example, when we simply mean that something gratiﬁes us or satisﬁes an appetite, Kant would prefer us to call it ‘agreeable’ rather than beautiful. But Kant would also insist that there is another kind of judgement, one that is different from all of the ones just considered in the crucial respect that it is reﬂective or contemplative. When we make such a judgement we do not expect to gain anything from it—neither trivial gratiﬁcation, nor the furtherance of our self-interest, nor even the satis- faction of having beneﬁted other people or worthy causes. Therefore it makes no difference to us whether the object we are judging really exists or not; we can contemplate it just as well in imagination, so long as we do not expect to derive any beneﬁt, for ourselves or others, from it. Kant calls this state of indifference to the real existence of the object disinterest. This is not the same as being uninterested in the object. We may be very absorbed—fascinated or delighted—in contemplating a landscape or in listening attentively to a piece of music. But our judge- ment that the landscape or the music is beautiful may nonetheless be 23 Vincent van Gogh Sunﬂowers, 1887 44 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant disinterested so long as we do not wish to beneﬁt from its real existence (to own the land, for instance, or to play the music to factory-workers in order to increase their productivity). It is only this disinterested kind of judgement that Kant calls a ‘judgement of taste’, and for Kant only objects that are judged in this way can be called ‘beautiful’. But why should we want to make this strangely restricted kind of judgement, one that pays no regard either to our self-interest or to ethical considerations, and that can therefore do no good either to us or to anyone else? On most occasions, probably, we should not wish to do so, and on many we ought not to do so. For example we should be foolish if we ignored the sensuous gratiﬁcation that a delicious wine or a lovely naked body can give us, and we should be despicable if we delighted in the gorgeousness of a raging ﬁre without regard to the real 24 Muhammad Zaman Blue Iris, 1663–4 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 45 suffering of its victims, as the Emperor Nero supposedly did by playing the lyre while Rome burned. Yet Kant is determined to preserve the possibility that human beings can do this paradoxical thing, and evalu- ate an object without reference to the interests or purposes it may serve. In all other kinds of thought and judgement we are under some kind of compulsion—either the compulsion of our appetites (hunger, greed, sexual desire, and so forth) or the compulsion of our moral principles (philanthropy, duty, political conviction, and so forth). Even in purely logical judgements we are constrained by the requirements of proof, or by the limits of our objective knowledge. Only in the estimation of the beautiful are we utterly free.32 Kant explains the delight we feel, in the contemplation of the beau- tiful, as arising from the feeling that our mental faculties are in free play; they are not impeded or curtailed by the limits of our knowledge, the needs of our physical bodies, or the demands of our consciences. For Kant it is crucial that this free play involves both our intellectual faculties and our faculties of sense perception; only in the interaction of these faculties do we feel delight in what it is to be a human being, capable of both sensation and thought, and only in the freedom of their interaction is this delight unconstrained and undirected to a ﬁnite outcome.33 This produces a feeling of liveliness or expansiveness that has no logical or practical limits—something we can get from no other kind of experience, for in every other case there is some deﬁnite goal, or some practical limitation, that stops the free play of the mind from ranging further. We might compare Winckelmann’s descriptions of his own responses to works of art, in which he often dwells on feelings of intensiﬁed life. For Kant the experience of freedom is unequivocally positive. But it is not difﬁcult to see how his theory could be controversial, not only in the period of the French Revolution (which erupted in 1789, just the year before the Critique of Judgement was published), but also in later periods up to and including our own. If the judgement of taste is indif- ferent to personal prejudices and biases, it is equally indifferent to noble or altruistic motives. If it is not directed to an end or purpose, it cannot oppress or manipulate, but neither can it beneﬁt anyone or accomplish any good deed. To the earliest critics of Kant’s work this radical freedom of mind could seem terrifyingly amoral; more recently it has been accused of escapism or political irresponsibility. Yet it is also possible to interpret Kant’s aesthetics as politically emancipatory. Such ideas are developed in the Aesthetic Letters (1795) of Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805), the dramatist and close friend of Goethe. To think beyond the limits of existing knowledge, morality, or politics, Schiller believes we need the radical freedom of the Kantian aesthetic. He reconﬁgures Kantian disinterest into a new notion of ‘aesthetic determinability’, a state brought about by the experience of beauty, in 46 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant which the mind is open to all possibilities. It is a state of nothingness, in one sense; yet it is also a state of inﬁnite potentiality, and therefore can allow the invention of the truly new.34 Another aspect of Kant’s theory has proved even more contro- versial: that is, his insistence that the judgement of taste is universal.35 For Kant, this follows rigorously from the notion of disinterest. If I sincerely believe that my judgement is unaffected by any interests per- sonal to me, or special to a social group to which I belong, then I have no reason to suppose that anyone else with different interests will make a judgement different from mine—that is, I must believe that my judgement will be shared universally, by everyone. The notion of uni- versality has seemed suspect in recent years, when there has been an overwhelming tendency to emphasize the differences among social groups. By claiming universality, it is argued, Kant simply imposes the taste of the white European male on everyone else. But this is a crude misreading of the Critique of Judgement. If a judgement differs accord- ing to whether the speaker is a man or a woman, white or black, 25 Georgia O’Keeffe Abstraction, White Rose II, 1927 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 47 healthy or disabled, gay or straight, then in Kantian terms it cannot be a judgement of taste in the ﬁrst place, for it is not disinterested. We may reasonably argue that in practice no one ever makes a judgement that is wholly independent of personal interests. But it may still be worth preserving the possibility that we might aspire to do something of the kind. If we can all agree that a rose is beautiful, that may perhaps be trivial; it may even be a disgraceful evasion of our responsibility to attend to more important political, social, or moral matters. But if the alternative is to accept that there is nothing about which universal agreement may ever be possible, then perhaps there is something to be said for the beauty of the rose. Kant and art The privileging of art as a specially important form of aesthetic experi- ence is not a feature of Kant’s philosophy, and it is easy to see why: in the Kantian judgement of taste, properties of the object, such as whether it belongs to the conceptual category ‘art’ or not, are alto- gether irrelevant. Nonetheless, it is obvious that Kant’s ideas had the potential to cause a revolution in art criticism, previously concerned with establishing general rules or standards against which particular objects could be measured. Even Winckelmann never abandoned the habit of enumerating rules of thumb for the beautiful—thus the straight-line proﬁle is to be preferred to one with a depressed nose, ﬂaxen to dark hair, ﬂowing lines to abrupt transitions, and so forth. But in the Kantian judgement of taste there can be no such rules or criteria—if there were, the critic would simply need to determine whether the particular object conformed to the general rule, which would be a logical and not an aesthetic judgement. No comparisons or generalizations are possible, for it would be necessary to point to prop- erties that the objects shared in order to relate them to one another. In a favourite example of Kant’s, the statement ‘the rose I see before me is beautiful’ is a judgement of taste, but the statement ‘roses in general are beautiful’ is no longer purely aesthetic; although the latter state- ment may draw on aesthetic judgements about particular roses, knowledge or logic would be required to group them together into a general statement. For Kant the judgement of taste is always singular: ‘I must present the object immediately to my feeling of pleasure or dis- pleasure, and that, too, without the aid of concepts’.36 Thus the beautiful can have nothing to do with rules or precepts, comparisons or classiﬁcations, canons or hierarchies of taste—in short, with all of the traditional tools of the art critic. This opens the poss- ibility of a radical break with past criteria for critical judgement. In most art theories since the Renaissance, there are cogent reasons for preferring a major painting of an important historical subject, such as 48 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant The Oath of the Horatii by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825, 26), to a small picture of everyday objects, such as Glass of Water and Coffee Pot by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779, 27). The David pre- sents an inspiring deed of heroism in which the actors voluntarily sacriﬁce their private interests to the public good (the three brothers are swearing an oath to engage their enemies in single combat); nor does it neglect the human dimension, expressed in the group of griev- ing women. It is a vast composition, demonstrating both the painter’s intellect and his exceptional technical skill. The Chardin is far less 26 Jacques-Louis David The Oath of the Horatii, 1785 27 Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin Glass of Water and Coffee Pot, 1760 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 49 ambitious in technical range and can be enjoyed without reference to moral or political considerations; it presents an assemblage of ordinary household objects, within limited dimensions. Both paintings are skil- fully crafted. Nonetheless it is perfectly reasonable to prefer the David as an example of history painting, the highest category in the tradi- tional hierarchy of pictorial types, to the Chardin as an example of the lowest type, still life. But Kant’s theory eliminates such distinctions. In the Kantian judgement of taste there is no reason for preferring a history painting to a still life, and the critic must consider each object in its uniqueness, without reference to any category to which it might belong. A conspic- uous aspect of the history of modern art since Kant has been the rejection of traditional hierarchies of pictorial types. After Kant’s Cri- tique of Judgement, there are no limits or strictures on what kind of thing the beautiful object might be, or what properties it might display. It can be anything at all—for instance an assemblage of horizontal and vertical lines on a canvas [109], or a porcelain urinal on its back [111]. Indeed, there is no reason to prefer works of art to other kinds of objects; it can be argued that Duchamp’s notorious presentation of the urinal as an aesthetic object, in 1917, was fully theorized more than a century before the fact in Kant’s Critique of Judgement (see below, pp. 178–80). Perhaps, then, we can see Kant’s theory as clearing the way, at least, for modern art. Few will complain about the licence Kant’s theory offers for placing a high aesthetic value on Chardin’s painting. But where does that leave our estimate of the David? We may, of course, experience delight in the immediate encounter with David’s painting. The sheer size of the painting makes it a powerful visual experience, and there is much scope for the free play of our minds as we scan the measured intervals of the architectural space in counterpoint with the diagonals and curves of the ﬁgure groups, or contemplate the brilliant lighting of ﬂesh and metal against the deep background shadows. We need not exclude the resonances of the subject-matter from our reﬂections; the unanimity of the men’s gestures may arouse thoughts of friendship and solidarity, or of fanaticism and militancy. Arguably, though, the didactic character of the work imposes certain limits to the free play of the observer’s response; we must either accept or reject the picture’s clear intention to strike us with awe for its masculine and military heroics. We could try to forget what we know about the picture’s key role in the history of French neoclassical art, not to mention its iconic status for more recent generations as a major canonical work of the period leading up to the French Revolution. But why should we wish to forgo such ediﬁcation, or to evade the moral issues that the picture raises? Is it possible to make a pure aesthetic judgement on this work, and if so, is it desirable? If it is not possible, or very difﬁcult, to respond freely to the work, does 50 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant that mark a deﬁciency of the work, or does it perhaps point to the limi- tations of the judgement of taste itself? There are two different ways of approaching such questions, both of which Kant entertains at various points in the Critique of Judgement. On the strictest interpretation, it is possible to make the judgement of taste about any object, so long as we divest ourselves ruthlessly of any interests of our own, and so long as we leave out of consideration any ends or purposes the object serves. To make a pure judgement of taste on David’s Oath of the Horatii, we should need ﬁrst of all to convince ourselves that we had set aside our personal commitments; we should need, for instance, to make sure that our left-wing sympathies did not bias us in favour of David as a courageous actor in the French Revolu- tion, or in favour of the picture as a demonstration of political ideals of that period. We should also need to ensure that our judgement was uninﬂuenced by any of the purposes or ends proposed in the picture, such as its manifest ambition to make an impact at public exhibition, its promotion of an austere neoclassical idiom, or its celebration of male heroism. But if we felt conﬁdent that we had purged away all of our interests, and all thought of the work’s purposes, then we should truly be entitled to call it beautiful in a pure judgement of taste. This would be exceptionally difﬁcult, however; moreover, we would have to ignore many of the most salient or intriguing aspects of the work. Such considerations suggest another possible approach, also enter- tained by Kant: we may need to distinguish between objects amenable to the judgement of taste in the strictest sense and others, such as the David, which are likely to involve non-aesthetic considerations. In the ﬁrst case the judgement will be one of free beauty, altogether indepen- dent of interests or ends; in the second it will be one of dependent beauty, in which our response to the object is inﬂuenced by considera- tions other than the mere delight we experience in contemplating it.37 The distinction proves paradoxical. The judgement of free beauty is more rigorous and pure, and it is altogether unaffected by prejudice or bias; here there is no constraint whatsoever on the free play of mind. Yet the objects amenable to this kind of judgement turn out to be strangely haphazard, if not trivial. ‘Flowers are free beauties of nature’, Kant writes: ‘Many birds (the parrot, the humming-bird, the bird of paradise), and a number of crustacea, are self-subsisting beauties which are not appurtenant to any object deﬁned with respect to its end, but please freely and on their own account.’38 It is possible to imagine great works of art that might elicit a judgement of free beauty, such as the delicate paper cutouts of Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810, 28). The intricacy of the silhouetted forms encourages the viewer to linger and to range freely over the complicated patterns, while the blankness of the white paper against its dark background removes any temptation to speculate on the ‘real’ existence of the plant forms. But this is a rare eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 51 28 Philipp Otto Runge Spray of Leaves with Orange- Lily, c.1808 case. Indeed, Runge’s cutouts are only comparatively free beauties in Kantian terms, for Runge must have had some kind of purpose in making them (we shall explore this point further in the next section); few objects—and fewer (if any) works of art—are likely to qualify as free beauties if the term is taken strictly. Thus free beauty, although it is the purer kind of beauty in theoretical terms, seems almost bizarrely restricted in practice. Dependent beauty, on the other hand, is impure or hybrid; here the beautiful is no longer sufﬁcient in itself, but is mixed with non- aesthetic considerations. Yet many, perhaps most, of the objects we value most highly fall inevitably into this category. Indeed, anything judged to be ideal or perfect is a dependent, not a free beauty, since a concept of what the thing is meant to be like is required in order to determine whether or not it is a perfect example of its kind. Once 52 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant again, Kant confounds commonly held assumptions—for him, perfec- tion is incompatible with free beauty, and statements such as ‘she has a perfect ﬁgure’ or ‘the Parthenon is a perfect example of a Greek temple’ are not pure judgements of taste. More startlingly still, Kant declares that anything involving the human ﬁgure can only be a dependent beauty. At a stroke this overturns the most cherished assumption of all art theories since the Renaissance, one that remains basic for Winckel- mann: that the human ﬁgure demonstrates the highest beauty of which we can have experience. Kant’s position is shocking, in relation to previous ideas about taste; yet it has considerable cogency. As Kant suggests, when we contem- plate a human ﬁgure we are bound to respond to it as a man, woman, or child; we can scarcely set aside our own gendered identities in the 29 Anne-Louis Girodet- Trioson Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley, 1797 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 53 30 Joseph Wright of Derby The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching the Arms of Her Deceased Husband, 1785 process.39 Kant was also aware of the difﬁculties about race and ethnic- ity that have preoccupied recent cultural critics. As he points out, people who have lived among Africans, Asians, or Europeans have had different experiences of the visual appearance of human beings, which are bound to inﬂuence their judgements.40 Moreover, in the circum- stances of the modern world it would be not only impossible but often morally wrong to exclude political or social considerations from the contemplation of human ﬁgures of different races, ethnic or cultural backgrounds. The black sitter in Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley [29], by Anne-Louis Girodet-Trioson (1767–1824), is a tour de force of beauti- ful painting, but this is surely enhanced by the knowledge of Belley’s political importance as the delegate to the French National Assembly who successfully argued for the abolition of slavery and for black citi- zenship.41 The juxtaposition of Belley’s black features with the white sculptured bust of another colonial reformer, Abbé Raynal, makes a political point in visual terms, vividly demonstrating equality between the political achievements of the two men; it would be not only practi- cally impossible but morally questionable to separate this message from the picture’s beauty. In The Widow of an Indian Chief Watching the Arms of Her Deceased Husband [30], Joseph Wright of Derby (1734–97) pre- sents the ﬁgure of a Native American woman in dramatic silhouette against a stormy landscape, to emphasize the nobility of her conduct. It may be argued that both Girodet and Wright are idealizing or rom- anticizing the image of the non-western ﬁgure. Whether we consider this laudable or misguided, it clearly introduces a political or moral purpose into the works. However beautiful we may ﬁnd either picture, we should miss an important dimension if we were to ignore the racial 54 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant speciﬁcity of the ﬁgure, and the political messages that entails, in order to make a pure judgement of taste. Thus works of this kind involve dependent, not free beauty. Kant makes it clear that the same considerations necessarily apply to the representation of European ﬁgures, including the most cele- brated Greek sculptures such as the Apollo Belvedere.42 Startlingly, given traditional views of Greek sculpture as models of perfect human beauty, Kant declares that such ﬁgures cannot represent free beauty at all. The Greek ideal of human beauty is too inextricably intertwined with the European cultural heritage to be amenable to a wholly free judgement of taste. Moreover, for Kant the normative ideas involved in declaring the Greek sculptures to represent an ‘ideal’ or a perfect human form cannot be aesthetic, since they depend on a concept of what the human form ought to be like. Kant seems, then, to vacillate between two different ways of think- ing about beauty. On the one hand, he maintains that it is possible in theory to make a pure judgement of taste about any object whatsoever, provided we rid our minds of all personal interests and all thought of the ends the object might serve. On the other, he asserts that such a judgement will be extremely problematical in relation to many if not most of the objects we might wish to call beautiful. Moreover, he notes that there may be considerable advantages to combining a logical or moral element with the purely aesthetic in judgements of such objects.43 We may, then, cite David’s Oath of the Horatii or Girodet’s Portrait of Belley as superb examples of dependent beauty, and even consider their moral and political resonances to add to their merit. The notion of dependent beauty may seem attractive, since it allows us to take moral, political, and social considerations into account. But something has been lost. Impure or hybrid judgements of dependent beauty inevitably fall short of the complete freedom that characterizes the aesthetic in its most rigorous formulation. The most exciting possi- bilities of the aesthetic—the way it may allow us to leap beyond the limits of what we can currently know, prove, or justify—are curtailed in cases of dependent beauty. Perhaps Kant himself drew back in alarm at the most extreme implications of his own theory. But his Critique nonetheless opened up the possibility of an aesthetic experience that is genuinely free. For better or worse, that possibility has remained central both to artmaking and to debates about art throughout the suc- ceeding two centuries, and up to the present day. Genius and originality In the work of Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) we repeatedly encounter a ﬁgure seen from behind—the Rückenﬁgur, engaged in con- templation of a view. This is the simplest of devices for representing eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 55 31 Caspar David Friedrich Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, c.1818 aesthetic experience in the new, Kantian sense, centred quite literally on the observing subject. In Wanderer above the Sea of Fog [31], the Rückenﬁgur’s head is at the horizontal centre of the canvas, and his waist exactly bisects its vertical dimension. Moreover, the view is bal- anced with uncanny symmetry around the ﬁgure. Indeed, the space is 56 eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant not measurable in the ordinary terms of post-Renaissance perspective, but only in relation to the ﬁgure itself. The rising fog makes unfath- omable the spaces between the foreground crag, the rocks in the middleground, and the distant peaks. When we make out the trees on the rock to the right of the ﬁgure’s elbow they seem unexpectedly tiny; then the distant peaks seem to spring away to a vast distance. As we scan the picture our efforts to comprehend the scale relationships are constantly tested or deﬁed. Although this is not a particularly large picture, it gives a strong sense of the kind of aesthetic experience Kant called sublime, in which we strain to perceive something limitless or inﬁnite. We are thwarted in the attempt to realize this perception fully, both by the magnitude of the view and by the scudding patches of fog, yet this failure to comprehend produces a feeling of awe or wonder that is the counterpart, in the experience of the sublime, to the free play of mind in response to the beautiful. It is not, then, the landscape itself, but rather the viewer’s aesthetic experience, that can be called sublime in the Kantian sense.44 The Rückenﬁgur is unlike any previous ﬁgure in the history of art in one crucial respect: he (or she, as in 32) is not just a represented object in the picture, but also the embodied subject of the aesthetic experience of the picture—we look with, rather than merely at, the Rückenﬁgur. Moreover, there is no way to distinguish our view of the landscape from that of the Rückenﬁgur. Unlike more traditional representations of landscape, this painting does not pretend to present us with a natural scene as it exists in its own right, but makes us conscious instead that we are seeing a human perception of nature. Friedrich has, then, found a way to present a scene that corresponds to the Kantian aesthetic experience. Moreover, the painting is not merely an anecdotal repre- sentation of a ﬁgure engaged in the experience of the sublime, it also provides us viewers with an aesthetic experience analogous to that of the Rückenﬁgur herself. This is not to claim that Friedrich had the speciﬁc intention of demonstrating Kantian aesthetic philosophy. Had this been his aim, it would threaten the aesthetic credentials of the painting, which would then be tantamount to a logical treatise in visual form; it would be directed towards a speciﬁc end, that of demonstrating the Kantian theory of the sublime. This points to a serious difﬁculty that occurs when Kant moves from his theory of aesthetic experience, in the early sections of the Critique of Judgement, to a discussion of artmaking. While we can easily imagine that Friedrich may not have intended the painting to be a visual treatise on aesthetics, it is scarcely conceivable that he made it without any intentions at all. The very decision to make a work of art in the ﬁrst place gives the work an end or purpose; the processes of designing and executing it require the planful applica- tion of speciﬁc skills and technical procedures. In other words, the eighteenth-century germany: winckelmann and kant 57 32 Caspar David Friedrich Woman at the Window, 1822 activity of making an artwork is fundamentally incompatible with beauty in any free or pure form. Paradoxically, the ‘beautiful’ work of art is unmakeable. This problem dominates Kant’s discussion of art and artists: [T]here is still no ﬁne art in which something mechanical, capable of being at once comprehended and followed in obedience to rules . . . does not constitute the essential condition of the art. For the thought of something as end must be present, or else its product would not be ascribed to an art at all, but would be a mere product of chance.45 We are moving in circles: to make something, it is necessary to carry out a deﬁnite procedure for making that thing; but deﬁnite procedures are incompatible with free beauty; thus ﬁne art, insofar as it is inten- tionally made by the artist, cannot be judged beautiful in a pure judgement of taste. It might be argued that Kant was simply mistaken in attempting to derive a theory of artmaking from one about aesthetic experience, and that we should make	441,959
Buddhist Funeral Cultures of Southeast Asia and China (Paul S. Williams Patrice Ladwig) (Z-Library).pdf	BUDDHIST FUNERAL CULTURES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA AND CHINA The centrality of death rituals has rarely been documented in anthro- pologically informed studies of Buddhism. Bringing together a range of perspectives including ethnographic, textual, historical and theo- retically informed accounts, this edited volume presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. While the contributions show that the ideas and ritual prac- tices related to death are continuously transformed in local contexts through political and social changes, they also highlight the continu- ities of funeral cultures. The studies are based on long-term ﬁeldwork and cover material on Theravāda Buddhism in Burma, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and various regions of Chinese Buddhism, both on the mainland and in the Southeast Asian diasporas. Topics such as bad death, the feeding of ghosts, pollution through death and the ritual regeneration of life show how Buddhist cultures deal with death as a universal phenomenon of human culture. paul williams is Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy and founding co-Director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol. He is author of Mahāyāna Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (2nd edition 2009); The Reﬂexive Nature of Awareness: A Tibetan Madhyamaka Defence (1998); Altruism and Reality: Studies in the Philosophy of Bodhicaryāvatāra (1998); The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholicism (2001); and Songs of Love, Poems of Sadness: The Erotic Verse of the Sixth Dalai Lama (2004). He is co-author, with Anthony Tribe and Alexander Wynne, of Buddhist Thought: A Complete Introduction to the Indian Tradition (2nd edition 2012), and was sole editor of the eight- volume series Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (2005). patrice ladwig is Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany) where he works in a research group focusing on historical anthropology. He has published articles in the ﬁelds of Anthropology, Asian Studies and Buddhist Studies. He is currently ﬁnalising a monograph entitled Revolutionaries and Reformers in Lao Buddhism and working on an edited volume on Buddhist socialism. BUDDHIST FUNERAL CULTURES OF SOUTHEAST ASIA AND CHINA edited by PAUL WILLIAMS and PATRICE LADWIG cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 8ru, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107003880 © Cambridge University Press 2012 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2012 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data Buddhist funeral cultures of Southeast Asia and China / edited by Paul Williams and Patrice Ladwig. pages cm ISBN 978-1-107-00388-0 (hardback) 1. Buddhist funeral rites and ceremonies – Southeast Asia. 2. Buddhist funeral rites and ceremonies – China. I. Williams, Paul, 1950– II. Ladwig, Patrice. bq5020.b83 2012 294.3043880959–dc23 2012000080 isbn 978-1-107-00388-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents List of ﬁgures page vii List of tables viii List of contributors ix Preface xiii 1 Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures patrice ladwig and paul williams 1 2 Chanting as ‘bricolage technique’: a comparison of South and Southeast Asian funeral recitation rita langer 21 3 Weaving life out of death: the craft of the rag robe in Cambodian ritual technology erik w. davis 59 4 Corpses and cloth: illustrations of the pam˙ sukūla ceremony in Thai manuscripts m. l. pattaratorn chirapravati 79 5 Good death, bad death and ritual restructurings: the New Year ceremonies of the Phunoy in northern Laos vanina boute´ 99 6 Feeding the dead: ghosts, materiality and merit in a Lao Buddhist festival for the deceased patrice ladwig 119 7 Funeral rituals, bad death and the protection of social space among the Arakanese (Burma) alexandra de mersan 142 v 8 Theatre of death and rebirth: monks’ funerals in Burma franc¸ ois robinne 165 9 From bones to ashes: the Teochiu management of bad death in China and overseas bernard formoso 192 10 For Buddhas, families and ghosts: the transformation of the Ghost Festival into a Dharma Assembly in southeast China ingmar heise 217 11 Xianghua foshi 香花佛事(incense and ﬂower Buddhist rites): a local Buddhist funeral ritual tradition in southeastern China yik fai tam 238 12 Buddhist passports to the other world: a study of modern and early medieval Chinese Buddhist mortuary documents frederick shih-chung chen 261 Index 287 vi Contents Figures 4.1 Phra Malai takes the pam˙ sukūla cloth from a corpse. Phra Malai Manuscript, reproduced with permission of The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. page 92 4.2 The practice of meditation on a corpse (Pali: asubha- kammat.t.hāna). The corpse is devoured by birds (right side). Phra Malai Manuscript, reproduced with permission of The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 93 4.3 Two lay cremation assistants maintaining the ﬁre over the cofﬁn. Phra Malai Manuscript, reproduced with permission of The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. 94 4.4 Monk pulling pam˙ sukūla cloth from a cofﬁn. Detail from Phra Malai Manuscript, reproduced with permission of the Spencer Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 95 8.1 Process of separation and aggregation. 186 vii Tables 2.1 Chart of chanting sequences page 42 2.2 Index of verses and phrases 44 11.1 Ritual processes of the Quanzhai 246 11.2 Titles of Ten Enlightened Kings 253 viii Contributors vanina boute´ is a lecturer at the University of Picardie Jules Verne (France) and a member of the Centre Asie du Sud-Est, Centre National de la Recherche Scientiﬁque (CNRS, France). She completed her PhD in Anthropology at the École Pratique de Hautes Études (Paris, France) in 2005. Her dissertation, entitled ‘Mirroring the power: the Phounoy of northern Laos – ethnogenesis and dynamics of integration’, concentrates on the social changes among a highland border-guard group in northern Laos, from the colonial context to the post-colonial period. Her current research is focused on migration and the dynamic of change among ethnic groups in the borders of northern Laos. She is currently conducting anthropological research on ethnicity in contemporary Laos. frederick shih-chung chen is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. His current post-doctoral project aims at the further development of his DPhil thesis at the University of Oxford which surveys the early formation of the Buddhist otherworld bureaucracy in early Medieval China. He has previously been awarded two MA degrees, in Study of Religions and in Cultural History of Medicine, from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. m. l. pattaratorn chirapravati is Associate Professor of Art History and Director of the Asian Studies Program at California State University, Sacramento. She holds a PhD in Southeast Asian Art History from Cornell University. She is the author of Votive Tablets in Thailand: Origin, Styles, and Uses (1997), Divination au royaume de Siam: Le corps, la guerre, le destin (2011) and many scholarly articles on the arts of Thailand. She was co-curator of the Asian Art Museum’s 2005 exhibition ‘The Kingdom of Siam: the Art of Central Thailand 1350–1800’ and the 2009 exhibition ‘Emerald Cities: Arts of Siam and Burma 1775–1950’. ix erik w. davis is Assistant Professor of Asian Religions at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He holds a PhD from the University of Chicago. His dissertation, ‘Treasures of the Buddha: Imagining Death and Life in Contemporary Cambodia’, was based on three years of ﬁeldwork on contemporary Cambodian funerary practices. alexandra de mersan has a PhD in Social Anthropology and Ethnology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris). She is the author of several articles on local social and religious practices of Buddhist societies. Her research in Burma has covered such subjects as religion, ritual, territory, migration and socio-religious dynamics, ethnicity and nation-building. She is an associate member of the Centre Asie du Sud-Est (CASE-CNRS, Paris), and is currently a researcher within a Franco-German team on a research programme entitled ‘Local Traditions and World Religions: the Appropriation of “Religion” in Southeast Asia and Beyond’. She is also a lecturer in anthropology at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO, Paris). bernard formoso is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Paris Ouest – Nanterre – La Défense. He holds a PhD from the EHESS (1984) and an HDR from Paris Ouest University (1996). He has published several books on Thai society. His current research works focus on ethnicity and religious syncretism. His latest book on these topics is De Jiao: a Religious Movement in Contemporary China and Overseas (2010). patrice ladwig studied Social Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Muenster, the University of Edinburgh and the EHESS, Paris. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2007). In 2007–9 he was a research assistant at the University of Bristol and worked on the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project on Buddhist death rituals. He is currently a member of the historical anthropology research group at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle, Germany. His research interests include the anthropology of Buddhism (particularly in Laos and Thailand), the anthropology of the state, religious conversion, political theologies and the interaction of Marxism and Theravāda Buddhism in the post-colonial period. rita langer was educated at Hamburg University (MA, PhD in Indology) and Kelaniya University (Diploma in Buddhist Studies). She joined the Centre for Buddhist Studies at Bristol University as full time x Contributors member of staff in January 2007 (research associate) and was appointed Lecturer in Buddhist Studies in August 2007. Her research focuses on two different but complementary areas of Buddhism: (1) theory of consciousness in the early Pāli sources and (2) Buddhist ritual and its origin (in South and Southeast Asia, particularly Sri Lanka). Her approach is interdisciplinary and combines textual studies with ﬁeldwork. She is the author of Buddhist Rituals of Death and Rebirth: A Study of Contemporary Sri Lankan Practice and its Origins (2007). ingmar heise studied modern, classical Sinology and Asian history in Freiburg, Heidelberg and Leiden. He obtained an MA in Chinese Studies from Leiden University in 2005. Currently he is undertaking a PhD at the Centre for Buddhist Studies, University of Bristol on ‘Buddhist Death Rituals in Fujian’ as part of the Bristol AHRC-funded project ‘Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China’. franc¸ ois robinne holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the École des hautes études en sciences sociales Paris (1985), and is a senior researcher at the Institute of Research on Southeast Asia (IRSEA-CNRS). He has published Fils et Maîtres du Lac. Relations Interethniques dans l’Etat Shan de Birmanie (2000) and Prêtres et Chamanes. Métamorphoses (2007). yik fai tam received his PhD from the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California in 2005. His research interests focus on Chinese folk Buddhism and rituals. He is author of The Xianghua Foshi Ritual Tradition and Xianghua Heshang of East Guangdong Province, in Minjian Fojia Yanjiu (Studies on Folk Buddhism), edited by Wai Lun Tam (2007); ‘The religious and cultural signiﬁcances of Xianghua foshi and Xianghua heshang’, Guangxi Minzu Daxue Xuebao (Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities); special edition on Kejia Minjian Xinyang Yanjiu (Studies on Folk Beliefs in the Hakka societies); ‘Religion in ethnic minority communities’; and a chapter in Religion and Public Life in the Chinese World, co-authored with Philip Wickeri. paul williams is Emeritus Professor of Indian and Tibetan Philosophy and founding co-director of the Centre for Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol. A former president of the UK Association for Buddhist Studies, he was director (PI) of the University of Bristol’s AHRC project on Buddhist Funeral Rites in Southeast Asia and China. He was sole editor of the eight-volume series for Routledge entitled Buddhism: Critical Concepts in Religious Studies (2005), and is the author of six books in Buddhist studies. Contributors xi Preface The centrality of death rituals has in anthropologically informed studies of Buddhism been little documented. The current volume brings together a range of perspectives on Buddhist death rituals including ethnographic, textual, historical and theoretically informed accounts, and presents the diversity of the Buddhist funeral cultures of mainland Southeast Asia and China. It arises out of the University of Bristol’s Centre for Buddhist Studies research project Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China, funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). This project involved extensive new research in Thailand, Laos and China. Other items from that project included several public exhibi- tions, extensive stills photographs and several video ﬁlms. The project team produced two 30-minute ﬁlms on the Ghost Festival in Laos and China, one on urban funerals in Chiang Mai (Thailand) and several shorter clips dealing with funeral cultures in Laos, Thailand and China. Most of this material (and an extensive bibliography on the topic) is available free of charge from the project website located at the webpage of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies (Centre for Buddhist Studies) at the University of Bristol. It gives us great pleasure to thank the AHRC for the funding that made this project possible. We also want to thank all those who contributed in different ways to its success, including those who took part in making and appearing in the ﬁlms, all the contributors to this book and, in particular, the three research fellows/assistants who were involved during the lifetime of the project: Rita Langer, who originally conceived the project and saw its birth as well as undertaking some of the research involved; Patrice Ladwig, who was the research fellow throughout the body of the project and under- took a great deal of the research and organisation involved; and Ailsa Laxton, whose wonderfully efﬁcient organisation and also expertise in putting on exhibitions came at just the right time. Thank you all so much not only for your impeccable efﬁciency but also for the sense of humour that xiii made working on this project so much fun. We should thank, too, Ingmar Heise, who held the AHRC PhD research bursary for the project, and his supervisor, our colleague John Kieschnick. We would also like to thank John Kieschnick for preparing the Index. Thanks as well to our other colleague, Rupert Gethin, for all his encouragement, support and help, and to the University of Bristol for providing such an agreeable base for the project. The project would have been impossible without all the people in Laos, Thailand and China who welcomed us into their homes and temples and allowed us to participate in their lives. In Laos we would like to express our gratitude to all the families and temples in Vientiane and Luang Prabang that aided us in our research, especially Duang Lattana Suphantong and Gregory Kourilsky, Khongma Pathoummy, and Michel Lorrillard and Achan Keo Sirivongsa of École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO) Vientiane. Thanks also to the Section of Religion of the Lao National Front for Reconstruction in Vientiane and Huaphan province. In Chiang Mai we would like to thank Apinya Fuengfusakul, Nawin Sopapum and Suebsakun Kidnukorn for excellent hosting and research assistance. On the Chinese side we would like to express our gratitude to Zhang Han, Professor Xu Jinding of Quanzhou’s Huaqiao University, Mao Wei and his friends and the monastics, monasteries and laypeople of Quanzhou. Thank you Laura Morris and all those involved at Cambridge University Press for accepting this book and also for its production. Funeral rites may not be a laugh a minute, but we hope the results – the ‘outputs’, as we are nowadays expected to call them – will still be informa- tive, stimulating of further scholarly research, and perhaps even entertaining. patrice ladwig and paul williams xiv Preface chapter 1 Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures Patrice Ladwig and Paul Williams death at the centre of buddhist culture The statement that ‘death is the origin and the center of culture’ (Assmann 2005: 1) might at ﬁrst sight seem like a simple generalisation that misses out on many other aspects of culture. However, when the study of death is not simply reduced to a rite of passage, we believe that approaching Buddhist cultures through their ideas, imaginaries and practices related to death can help us to understand crucial facts that reach beyond the domain of death and dying. First, death offers a unique departure for understanding the relations between people, monks, ritual experts and other entities that are commonly labelled as ‘the dead’, but can in fact comprise a multitude of entities of various ontological statuses. Second, death reaches out into such diverse domains as agricultural fertility, human reproduction, political cults and the economy and therefore constitutes a total social fact (Mauss 1990). Jan Assmann’s statement also has a particular relevance for the history of Buddhism. Death indeed was and is at the centre of Buddhist culture and has on a ritual, ideological and even economic level played a crucial role in its development and spread. Death was from its beginning an event that was seen as particularly central to Buddhist interests. Throughout Asia it has always been recognised that Buddhists are specialists in death. One of the things that attracted Chinese (and Tibetans, for that matter) to Buddhism was its clarity about what happens at death, the processes needed to ensure a successful death – the welfare of the dead person and his or her mourners – and its clarity about what happens after death and its links with the whole way someone has lived their life. No other rival religion in Asia had at that time such clarity. It was a major factor in the successful transmission of Buddhism from its original Indian cultural context. Why was Buddhism so successful in explaining death? Death was written into Buddhism from the beginning. It is universally accepted in the various hagiographies of Siddhārtha Gautama (died c. 400 bce), the wealthy aristocrat 1 who was to become the so-called ‘historical Buddha’, known as Śākyamuni, that one of the things which ﬁrst gave him the existential crisis that led to his spiritual search was the sight of a dead man. This came as a shock, but much more was the shock when he applied the lesson to himself. He too would one day be as this man was – dead. The breakdown which resulted took from him all taste for the pleasures of life. Aware that there were others in north India who felt like he did, and who sought a state of being in which death would have ceased to be a problem for them, he renounced his life of luxury (and his wife and child) and joined them, a ‘drop-out’. After many years in the forest, a homeless ascetic who lived on alms and practised physical austerities and deep meditation, he came to understand that if he could see in the deepest, most life-transforming way things the way they really are then death would no longer be anything to him. Seeing things that way, Buddhists hold, made Siddhārtha Gautama the Awakened One, the Buddha. This is a matter of the mind, understanding reality as it is, not physical asceticism but mental comprehension brought about through deep meditation. And that awakening was accompanied, so Buddhist tradition holds, by a triumph over Māra, the Buddhist ‘tempter’, whose very name suggests etymologically a personiﬁcation of death. So the Buddhist path from the beginning lay in a confrontation with death, at least for the spiritual virtuosi who could manage it. Doctrinally and philosophically speaking, there is also an intimate link between the notion of impermanence (Pali: anicca) and death. Things naturally arise and fall in accordance with impersonal causal processes. We suffer, we suffer all the time – including the unbearable but inevitable suffering of death – because we try to ﬁx the processes of change, and we crave changeable things which in their cessation are bound to cause the one who craves them to be miserable. Applied to our lives, we are naturally bound to die, just as throughout life we were really inexorably dying all the time, from moment to moment, or even split moment to split moment. Our craving for our own permanence – something which is quite impossible – is one of the crucial factors that entail our deep existential suffering and misery. We are bound to die, and release comes when we let go in the deepest possible way and cease at even a subliminal level from resisting our inevitable impermanence. For, the Buddhist tradition argues, there is nothing about us unenlightened and hence inevitably suffering folk that could ever stand ﬁrm against the inexorable process of dissolution. In this view, death is overcome through its deep acceptance, and its acceptance involves seeing that it is constantly occurring, from moment to moment to moment. Buddhist philosophy elaborated in great detail the 2 patrice ladwig and paul williams different types of impermanence, and the complex causal connections between impermanent events. Impermanence and death are of the very essence of Buddhism. And it is this centrality of impermanence and death in Buddhism, reﬂected in the Buddhist doctrinal emphasis on change and absence of enduring identity – for death is a constant occurrence, we are really in many ways dead even while we are alive – when expressed in living cultures where close reciprocal relationships with the dead ancestors are essential to social identity and cohesion, that we shall see reﬂected in the studies contained in this book. the dead between ‘doctrinal absence’ and ‘anthropological presence’ As many contributions in the present volume show, the dead continue to play a role in the life of the living; not only in the form of memory, but as ‘active’ members of a family or a community. They can live on in the form of other entities, as ancestors, spirits, ghosts. Therefore, what counts as dead, as being and agency has to be explored in very speciﬁc contexts. As Holt (2007) puts it for Sri Lankan Buddhism,the dead are ‘gone, but not departed’. As classicaland recent anthropological studies of death (Hertz 1960; Metcalf and Huntington 1991) have shown, in many societies death is usually conceived as a process of transformation, and less as the end of the agency of a deceased person, as is very often assumed in biological, ‘Western’-inspired understandings. And yet the idea of ‘the dead’ as active members of the community, while undoubtedly very much present in the cultures covered by this book, provides an obvious paradox for anyone whose exposure to the study of Buddhism has been entirely or primarily its doctrine. For from the beginning, we have been taught, Buddhism holds that the dead have been reborn (or reincarnated – the attempt sometimes made to suggest some sort of difference between the two in ‘Buddhist English’ has little to recommend it). Whether the dead are reborn immediately after death,asisthedoctrinalpositionoftheTheravādaBuddhism ofSoutheastAsia, or there exists a short period of up to forty-nine days before rebirth, as is common in the Buddhism of e.g. Tibet or China, makes little difference. The fact is that soon after death the dead have gone beyond recall, reborn perhaps as happy beings known as ‘gods’ (deva), or as warlike ‘anti-gods’ forever jealous of the gods, or perhaps once more as humans, or non-human creatures such as animals, ﬁsh, cockroaches or wiggly worms, or hungry ghosts, or worst of all reborn in one of the many terrible hells of Buddhism in accordance with the moral quality of their past deeds while alive (‘karma’). Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 3 Of course, it is perfectly possible that one’s dead family members have been reborn close to their living descendants, and hence are still capable one way or another of being in a dependence relationship with the living. But once more the majority doctrinal position of Buddhism has been to deny that these beings could be seen as actually still being our former family members who have passed on and to whom we hence preserve our familial duties of former times. This is because (we are told in so many introductory books on Buddhism) the Buddha did not hold that the reborn being is literally in all respects the same as the being who died. The reborn being is certainly not in any meaningful sense the same person as the one who died, and this point is recognised quite explicitly in several inﬂuential Buddhist philosophical traditions (Williams 1998: Chs. 3, 5). A cockroach cannot be the same person as one’s grandfather. The link between the ‘reborn being’ and the ‘being that died’ is explained in terms of causal dependence, where karmic causation is held to be a central factor in holding the whole process together. And it is essential to Buddhist doctrine that with causation there is absolutely no need for some sort of permanent, unchanging, enduring self-identical bearer of personal identity – a ‘Self’ – to link the one who dies and their rebirth (Collins 1982). All that happens is that at death the psychophysical bundle, made up out of a stream of physical events, sensations, conceptual activities, various other mental events including crucially one’s intentions, and that awareness which is necessary to any conscious experience (i.e. the ﬁve classes of psychophysical events known as the ‘aggregates’) reconﬁgures. Doctrinally speaking, a living being is nothing more than a temporarily structured conﬁguration of physical events, sensations, events of conceptualisation, various mental events such as intentions, and awareness, without any enduring Self (Pali: attā; Sanskrit: ātman) to glue him or her all together. Even when alive these aggregates (Pali: khandha; Sanskrit: skandha) form a ﬂow, a stream, with no stability save that provided temporarily by the structuring causal force of previous actions. At death one conﬁguration breaks down and another conﬁguration takes place. Thus the person is reducible to a temporary bundle of events where all constituent events are radically impermanent, temporarily held together through causal relationships. Thus even if one’s family members have been reborn in close relationship to their grieving family, this doctrinal position would entail that the rebirth cannot in any meaningful sense preserve enough identity to entail the normal social relationships and duties incumbent upon close or even fairly distant family members. The dead may be all around us, but they are no longer our dead. 4 patrice ladwig and paul williams And yet, as we shall see in the collection of papers published in this book, anthropological work in cultures where Buddhism plays a major part shows that the doctrinal scenario represented here must obviously be transformed and reinterpreted where reciprocal relationships with the dead ancestors is an essential part of living as a member of the group and its own social identity and cohesion. These dead ancestors are frequently felt to be present and still to be themselves for sometimes a considerable, if not indeﬁnite, time after death, certainly more than forty-nine days. They continue to be present, albeit as transformed entities. Because Buddhism is in a society it necessarily performs a social role, and that role (a role of all religions) is one of caring and coping for the needs of society. As society also includes the dead, Buddhist funeral cultures comprise a multitude of ritual and other activities focusing on those who remain alive in some sense despite being considered dead. The deceased have to be cared for, they have to be fed, to be appeased or simply to be remembered as the duties to and relationships with the dead are essential to the ﬂourishing of many, perhaps all, societies. imagining death and the ritual process With the expression ‘Buddhist funeral cultures’ we do not strictly limit our- selves to the domain of ritual or text, or an original idea of death in early Indian Buddhism. We understand the term in the sense of an imaginary, the latter term here denoting not something false or fantastic, but – similar to Steven Collins’ notion of the ‘Pali imaginaire’ (1998: 72ff.) – as a concept referring to a capacity or faculty of the mind dealing with death andthe dead. This imaginary is also created and expressed in ritual and everyday practices. Farrer (2006) has used the term ‘deathscapes’ in a very similar sense. On the one hand this can refer to concrete spaces of death like cemeteries, crematoria, monuments or, in general, material aspects of death (Sidaway and Maddrell 2010). On the other hand, this can deal with the complex conglomerate of abstract discursive and subjective spaces which death ‘inhabits’: texts, stories, emotions, but also rites and social practices are just a few examples. These stand in constant dialogue with the concrete spaces of death mentioned before. Due to these multiple links of death to various ﬁelds and domains, it cannot be understood as a timeless and universal idea or concept. Because ‘society is not only made up of the living but also includes the dead’ (De Coppet 1981: 198), death reﬂects the larger changes in society and history. Rituals, death imaginaries and deathscapes are open to transformations caused, for example, by political changes, sectarian divisions or religious puriﬁcations. In the chapters dealing with death and spirits in Laos (Bouté and Ladwig: Chapters 5 and 6) and Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 5 Heise on the Chinese ghost festival (Chapter 10) we see how socialist revolutions have led to certain rationalisations or even ritual restructurings that still have an inﬂuence in the present. Another example of the change of funerals is how the civil war in Sri Lanka has also left its traces in the preachings performed at funerals (Kent 2010). Robinne’s chapter on theatre plays staged at a monk’s funeral in Burma (Chapter 8) show that these performances are also commentaries on the present state of affairs. Besides dramatising the emotions of loss and mourning, imposed government propaganda (including the caricaturing of Westerners, for example) has been integrated into these plays. However, also a subversive and subtle critique of the Burmese junta can be aired in these performances. What one encounters in the ﬁeld, especially when dealing with local Buddhist funeral experts, is the claim that the rites – as prescribed and normative forms of behaviour – have changed little. Although Langer in her contribution (Chapter 2) proposes for the Sri Lankan case that ‘death rituals appear to be quite resilient to change’, closer inspection through a historical perspective often reveals a different picture. As in Chirapravati’s contribu- tion (Chapter 4), this might be expressed through a change in the role of objects in funerals, but might also be visible through deeper ritual restruc- turings. However, taking our informants seriously in that matter also means acknowledging that the imaginary of continuity, or the non-change of certain elements of these rites, is crucial for them. In the sense of Langer’s quote above, death is considered a serious issue that demands regulation and the weight of a continuous tradition to be dealt with. Death is a total social fact that cannot be cut out and analysed as a single- standing social event; it is rather a starting point of a long transformative process and an initiation into an afterlife (van Gennep 1960) of various deathscapes. Many studies of the volume therefore focus on the collective experience of death and how it is dealt with ritually. Death, as a disruption, the occurring of a sudden absence and non-presence, poses a threat to the social and cosmic order. Rites can be understood as instant and prophylactic measures to handle this exceptional situation and regain order. This process is most clearly expressed in Robert Hertz’s classical study on the collective representations of death: The brute fact of physical death is not enough to consummate death in people’s minds: the image of the recently deceased is still part of the system of things of this world, and looses itself from them only gradually by a series of internal partings. [. . .] Thus, if a certain period is necessary to banish the deceased from the land of the living, it is because society, disturbed by the shock, must gradually regain its balance. (Hertz 1960: 81–2). 6 patrice ladwig and paul williams This shock, or state of exception caused by death, is a confrontation that calls for ritual explication, but also a ritual smoothing of the transition. As Faure (1991: 184) has attested for Chan Buddhism, ritual is a form of mediation that ‘simultaneously hides and reveals death: it marks its apoth- eosis, but also diffuses or defers its suddenness by turning the corpse or its substitutes into signiﬁers’. Ritual in that sense structures the space and time necessary for the movements and transformations of the corpse (Parkin 1992). This transformation of the corpse involves a number of stages such as the preparation and laying out of the corpse, recitation of texts, procession, and the ﬁnal transformation of the corpse through incineration or burial. This process is accompanied by a ‘care for the dead’ by the living by providing food, merit, prayer and so forth. Obviously, there are large variations to this pattern. Even in one culturally relatively homogenous community differences caused through status distinctions can be huge: a monk has a very different funeral from a well-off layperson, and again this one is differentiated from the poor peasant. Langer’s contribution starts with the (rhetorical) question ‘Is there such a thing as Theravāda Buddhist funeral?’, to which Tam in his contribution on Southeastern Chinese funeral rites (Chapter 11) gives us an indirect answer. For him, ‘in the end deﬁning a “standard” Chinese Buddhist death ritual is not a particularly useful project’ (a similar point made for Tibet in Gouin 2010). It is not about the search for an original, historical blueprint of these rites, nor about deﬁning a standard. So does the search for common patterns or a compar- ison between larger categories make sense at all? comparisons, categories and differences Large-scale comparisons are, since the theoretical decline of grand narratives and the inﬂuence of deconstruction, a bit out of fashion. Recent research on the basic categories of Buddhist studies such as ‘Theravāda’ or ‘Mahāyāna’ have been critically scrutinised (Skilling and Carbine 2011). However, Williams argues that despite doctrinal diversity one can with appropriate caution speak of Buddhism and Mahāyāna as categories. Buddhism in that sense has ‘doctrinal diversity and (relative) moral unity’ (Williams 2009: 1). Although we cannot offer in this volume a systematic comparison between mainland Southeast Asian Theravāda Buddhist funeral cultures and Chinese cases, we believe the outcome of such an endeavour depends on the framework and scope of comparison. There is a whole spectrum between deconstructing categories such as Theravāda through, for example, the study of in-depth micro-histories, and the reﬂexive conceptualisation of Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 7 categories that can serve as a basis for systematised and general comparisons. Neither the contributions in the volume nor this introduction deliver a systematic comparison, but we suggest that it is worth paying attention to several potential ﬁelds of comparison. First, there is a certain historical and regional afﬁnity. Mainland Southeast Asia, especially the mountainous border regions of Yunnan, Laos and Burma, are a meeting place of both regions (Evans et al. 2000). Laos, for example, represents the eastern limit of Theravāda’s expansion into Southeast Asia. In relation to funeral cul- tures, Gregory Kourilsky (2012) has, for example, suggested that certain elements found in the Lao Ghost Festival have clear parallels in the Chinese and Vietnamese festivals. Ladwig’s and Heise’s chapters deal with these festivals in their respective contexts and can serve as comparative examples. Here, the textual sources such as the story of Mulian in China and the Theravāda Moggallāna point to common origins that are ritually inter- preted in different ways. Kapstein (2007) has also looked at the trans- formations of this narrative in the Tibetan-Chinese context. A second example for the potential of comparison in the domain of funeral cultures can be advanced with regard to the importance of ancestor cults. Bouté’s contribution on the Phunoy – a Tibeto-Burman minority living in the borderlands of Laos and China – suggests that their ancestor cult at least bears some resemblance to Chinese practices. The same can be said for the descriptions of bad or ‘green’ death, which also contains a comparative potential (see further below). We do not want to suggest that mainland Southeast Asian Buddhism is simply a mixture of Chinese and Indian inﬂuences, but that some partial connections exist and are worth following up in future research. Peter van der Veer’s (2009) comparison between India and China as civilisations can here serve as a model. Another level of comparison inside the Theravāda tradition is advanced by Langer. Looking at funerals and chants in Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand and Burma, her comparative examination looks for ‘core elements’ of these rites and their variation. Langer gives us an overview of these elements: the presenta- tion of a rag-robe (pam˙ sukūla),the givingof merit,the asking forforgivenessand religious wishes. She then discusses the ‘optional elements’ like Abhidhamma chanting and the use of protective parittas. With reference to Lévi-Strauss’s idea of bricolage, Langer understands the performed rites and the chanted texts as a toolbox from which certain elements can be drawn. Although religious special- ists might point to the coherence of chants and their genealogy from the Pali canon, variation and individual appropriation is rather the norm than the exception. Here, the canon (for the Theravāda case) and the chants used in funeral rites, are less a ﬁxed compendium of texts, but rather an ‘idea’ that is 8 patrice ladwig and paul williams efﬁcacious through its imagined homogeneity and continuity (Collins 1995). Despite these variations, Langer – through a meticulous analysis of funeral chants – succeeds in uncovering common patterns across a vast temporal and spatial spectrum perhaps also based in the long tradition of regular exchanges between Southeast Asian and Sri Lankan Buddhism. Langer concludes her contribution with the statement, ‘On the whole, Theravāda monks from Thailand would ﬁnd little difﬁculty in joining into a chant of monks from Sri Lanka.’ Comparison, however, is also based on markers of difference. In contrast to the chapters dealing with Theravāda in mainland Southeast Asia, the two contributions by Tam and Chen (Chapters 11 and 12) both refer to the ‘imperial metaphor’ (Feuchtwang 1991) that becomes visible, for example, in the passport-like documents that the deceased need in order to cross the boundary to the afterlife. This is completely absent in the instance of Theravāda and the Chinese cases are marked by a different idea of ortho- praxy. For Feuchtwang (2009: 103), China has ‘a civilization of the govern- ment of conduct, its correction, exemplary performance and enforcement’. Although Ladwig has found similar ideas of the bureaucracy of hell in Laos that could be related to the imperial metaphor, the difference between them is still large. There is no bank of hell among Theravāda Buddhists and no burning of spirit money or houses can be observed. The sacriﬁcial economy connecting the world of the living and the dead follows a different logic. The latter point is also visible in the different roles of monks. Whereas in China expert laypeople or half-ofﬁcial monks can also ofﬁciate at funerals (see the xianghua heshang in Tam’s chapter), the Theravāda san˙gha seems to have a much more clearly deﬁned position in death rituals. Without them, the contact to the dead is difﬁcult whereas in China burning money or paper replicas of offerings can be done without the intermediary role of monks. On the whole, our volume has more contributions regarding main- land Southeast Asia, but the excellent volumes edited by Cuevas and Stone (2007), and Watson and Rawski (1988) present more information on East Asian funeral cultures. The material presented there can be contrasted and compared with the Theravāda cases presented here. the localisation of buddhist funeral cultures The majority of contributions look at Buddhism as being very much ‘of a place’, as all Buddhism really is and to which all study of Buddhism needs constantly to return. In cultures where Buddhism has been predominant, the relationship between Buddhist doctrine and social behaviour is a very Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 9 complex one indeed (see, for example, Gombrich 1971). But it would be quite wrong to approach Buddhism as it occurs ‘in a place’ (and when does it not occur in a place?) with some sort of legislative model of what should happen or what Buddhists must do. Given the large variety of what has been called ‘Buddhisms’ (Ling 1993), we do not intend to reconstruct an original death ritual and then look at the local variations that have evolved. Instead, we want to examine the creative local appropriations that in a manner of a bricolage make use of certain elements already apparent, for example, in early Buddhism. The Mahāparinibbāna Sutta, recounting the last days, death and the funeral of the Buddha (cf. Strong 2007), could in this light be seen as a textual toolbox out of which certain elements are appropriated and are then translated into ritual practices constituted by partially prescribed, but also improvised actions accommodated to a local context. Given the centrality of funeral rites in the development and spread of Buddhism, many of the contributions give us a detailed image of the local- isation of Buddhism in the ﬁeld of funeral culture. The interaction with pre-Buddhist ideas and cosmologies of the dead are, for example, exempliﬁed in the multiplicity of concepts of what constitutes a person and how this entity, substance or conscience is transformed in the course of death. Conceptualising this interaction of Buddhist concepts and their transformation on the local level in a speciﬁc setting has a long history in anthropology and Buddhist studies. Discussions on the interaction of ‘great and little tradition’ (Obeyesekere 1963), the structural division of labour of Buddhism and spirit cults (Tambiah 1970), or more generally speaking notions of syncretism, have all examined the transformation of Buddhism on the local level. These discussions can also be applied to Buddhist funeral cultures. However, like the concept of comparison discussed above, most of these discussions are currently somewhat out of fashion through the inﬂuence of a ﬂexible hybridism model of culture. Shaw and Stewart (1995: 7), for example, propose that seeing a ritual or religion as syncretic ‘gets us practi- cally nowhere, since all religions have composite origins and are continually reconstructed through ongoing processes of synthesis and erasure’. Historical studies of Buddhism have proposed a less radical, but still similar, view. Buddhism was from its very beginning linked to a variety of local cults and entities that have been subsumed under the category of spirits or ancestors, as for example DeCaroli (2004) has shown. Through this ﬂexible approach to funeral culture we can understand that there were also speciﬁc openings in Buddhist cosmology that allowed for an easy integration of indigenous cults. Reynolds (1976: 207) suggests that ‘one of the reasons Buddhist cosmography ﬁtted so well into mainland Southeast Asian 10 patrice ladwig and paul williams societies is that it included a place for the creatures of animism’. Given the complex switches of ethnic and religious afﬁliation in mainland Southeast Asia (Leach 1954), this openness has probably contributed to Buddhism’s successful spread. Despite the widespread scepticism about concepts that try to understand the relationship of Buddhism and indigenous culture, the problem does not disappear. Just imagine a ‘ﬁrst contact situation’ in the case of funerals. How did monks accommodate to a local situation? How did they enter into the local funeral traditions and what roles could be appropriated? In his con- tribution, Chen employs a historical perspective and through archaeological evidence reconstructs the meeting of Chinese Buddhist funeral culture with local burial customs. Like Schopen (1997), Chen argues that in order to avoid social censure, monks had a tendency to adjust their practice to local values. Chen also looks at current burial practices, in which monks, com- pared to the Theravāda cases we have discussed before, have a rather limited role. Moreover, he proposes that we have to look at a triangular relation that besides laity and san˙gha also includes funeral specialists, which in contem- porary Taiwan still play a major role. An interesting case that moves outside the division of ‘great and little tradition’ is described in Formoso’s contri- bution. He analyses the activities of Chinese funeral associations in Thailand and Malaysia that collect the bones of the victims of bad death. The activities and rites give rise to a very exceptional case of interethnic funeral cooperation. Although there are also differences and interethnic problems associated with the rite, Formoso thinks that ‘Buddhism whatever the doctrinal differences between Theravāda and Mahāyāna traditions, is a key factor to bridge the differences between the groups in contact’. We see here again how Buddhism delivers a ﬂexible template that can operate in various contexts and lives on its multiplicity of concepts. Coming back to syncretism, we ﬁnd in David Gellner’s anthropology of Buddhism a line of argument that recovers some value in the concept of syncretism, namely as deﬁning a certain hierarchy and interpretational sovereignty. Concerning the interaction of Buddhism and local traditions, he states that ‘in order to ﬁnd cohabitation acceptable, Buddhist specialists require that these other systems acknowledge Buddhism as the supreme overarching system, and as a path to salvation, and that their practices do not conﬂict too blatantly with Buddhism’s own teachings’ (Gellner 1997: 323). Applying Gellner’s insight to funeral cultures results in what could be called an ‘ordered multiplicity of concepts’ instead of a random cultural hybridity. A good example for this ordered multiplicity can be found with reference to the immaterial components of a deceased person that features Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 11 in many of the contributions. Although references to viññān˙ a (Pali: ‘consciousness’) or its equivalent are to be found in most Buddhist funeral cultures, there are substantial overlaps with pre-Buddhist and indigenous concepts of soul, spirits and ancestor to be found. In contributions by de Mersan (Chapter 7) and Bouté (Chapter 5) we see multiple concepts of ‘soul’ (a term Buddhologists always try to avoid), or what survives death at work in funeral cultures. These concepts do not contradict each other, but open a space of interpretation. This complex amalgam of various concepts is well documented in Robinne’s chapter. The theatrical performances that accompany the funerals of monks are a way of rewriting the Buddhist canon or ﬁlling the gaps, but only ‘when the text’s ambiguity leaves open this space’. In the sense of an ordered multiplicity this interpretative freedom is not random, and in his view ‘these amalgams and confusions cannot be simply attributed to ignorance’. So it is not only that there is in many of the cases described in the volume a survival of certain aspects of a deceased person – a feature that was already present in early Indian Buddhism (Gellner 1997: 214; see also Gethin 1998: 159f.) – but, moreover, there is a multitude of ways to conceptualise this aspect of death. What is crucial when looking at these multilayered concepts is that their inter- action is not necessarily random, but can be systemic. In many cases this syncretic multiplicity might afﬁrm Buddhism’s hegemony in the funeral business. However, there might also be cases when Buddhist concepts are pushed into the background, as in the case of the Tibeto-Burman Phunoy where there is neither a Buddhist concept of the ‘soul’ nor an idea of reincarnation predominant. bad deaths, ghosts and pollution The fate of the immaterial components of a person is of crucial importance in Buddhist funeral practices. Besides the fact that someone died, it is also important to look at who died in which way. The pollution and danger- ousness caused by a normal death is multiplied in the case of a bad death. Chanting and the ‘magical power of words’ (Tambiah 1968) are often considered an indispensable part of a funeral rite and battle the potential pollution caused by death. Schopen (1997: 219) points out that death and pollution have always been central to Hinduism and that certain elements were appropriated by early Buddhism in order to ﬁt into the cultural landscape of Hinduism and avoid criticism and opposition. Although the overarching importance of notions of purity and pollution, for example as proposed in the heavily criticised account of Hinduism by Dumont (1980), 12 patrice ladwig and paul williams is not observable in Southeast Asia and China, the domain of funerals is to a certain extent always marked by pollution. As Davis states in his contribu- tion on Khmer funeral culture (Chapter 3), monks are considered to be socially dead and are therefore equipped to deal with death as an exceptional situation, but the laity is still exposed to the dangers of death. Pollution, according to Mary Douglas’ (2002) study Purity and Danger, is a result of the contact or presence of an anomaly, a break in the ﬂow of things that resists classiﬁcation and endangers the community. Although death is in some sense completely natural, it at the beginning ‘resists’ integration and is shocking, especially in the case of bad death; a notion widely spread in Asia and understood as an untimely, premature or violent death (Baptandier 2001; Feuchtwang 2010: 135f.). Douglas states that pollution has to be understood as the ‘interplay between form and formlessness’ (2002: 150). Ritual can be seen as the struggle to give bad death a form, work it through and combat pollution. Several contributions in this volume deal with the case of bad death, but the two cases of ‘ethnic minority Buddhism’ – by De Mersan on the Arakhanese in Burma and Bouté on the Phunoy in Laos – are perhaps most exemplary. De Mersan’s chapter contains an impressive description of a rite called ‘to introduce the word action’ intended to drive out evil forces and spirits in case of bad death. Among the Arakhanese, bad deaths ‘give rise to an immaterial component of a person in search of a base, which therefore endangers the living’. Here the ritual actions redeﬁne the social space and boundaries of the village and the chants purify it and expel evil spirits. Another example of how death threatens the social cohesion and purity of the village is given in Bouté’s contribution. Here, the yearly rites for the ancestors have the main goal of securing the purity of the village and regenerating its potential for fertility of humans and the land. The idea of reincarnation – in popular imaginary perhaps the sine qua non of Buddhist funeral cultures – according to Bouté remains quite foreign to the Phunoy. Ancestor cults are far more important for them due to their protective qualities. Heise’s and Ladwig’s contributions on China and Laos respectively connect the themes of bad death and ghosts. Ghosts are from a doctrinal perspective often the outcome of bad karma or negative deeds towards one of the members of the san˙gha, but in practice they are often associated with bad death. Ghosts can point to unresolved conﬂicts, trauma and bad death; to a life that through violence and untimeliness has not had a proper ending and has yet to be ﬁnalised. Persons who have died a bad death are denied the passage and are caught inbetween the worlds. Nevertheless, ghosts are social Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 13 beings that are addressed and play a role in the lives of the living, or indeed can be seen, heard or spoken to in speciﬁc contexts and have speciﬁc desires. Therefore, one should not approach ghosts as remnants of a ‘primitive belief’, but as important ﬁgures of the social fabric. Morris (2008: 31) suggests that ‘ghostliness in Southeast Asia offers itself as an idiom with which to address issues about the difﬁcult delineation of a boundary between the living and the dead’. This is especially exempliﬁed in cases where political violence, war or rapid and forced social change has happened (Kwon 2008; Mueggler 2001). Here, the line between the living and the dead is blurred through hauntings, and ghosts in that sense stand in deﬁance of binary oppositions such as presence and absence, body and spirit, past and present, life and death (Derrida 1994). The ambiguity exempliﬁed by ghosts calls for ritual action either as part of the ritual cycle (as described by Heise and Ladwig), or demanding even greater ritual action in order to appease, for example, the abandoned souls of soldiers who have never found peace due to their bad death on the battleﬁeld (Kwon 2008). the materiality of funeral cultures But not only ritual actions, words and beliefs are topics of research when dealing with Buddhist funeral cultures. Gregory Schopen (1991) can be con- sidered one of the ﬁrst who seriously took into account the study of certain material evidence in early Indian Buddhism and in recent studies, the materi- ality of religion has been highlighted as a long-neglected ﬁeld of inquiry. Things and objects also have a social life (Appadurai 1986) that can be important for funeral cultures. Objects dealing with the dead are crucial for performing rituals, but also for recalling the presence of the dead. Hallam and Hockey (2001: 7) propose that ‘in the absence suggested by death we ﬁnd potent cultural materials and strategies including objects, visual images and texts that constitute systems of recall’. The objects dealt with in funeral rites – may they be quotidian things or ritual objects – have a lot to say about how death is imagined and dealt with. It is important what people and texts tell us, but we must not forget that ritual actions are carried out with the objects that often play a crucial role in these performances. Davis, Langer and Chirapravati deal with a speciﬁc material aspect of Buddhist funeral culture, namely with the pam˙ sukūla robe. By looking at depictions of funerals in Thai murals in a historical perspective, Chirapravati is able to detect important changes in Thai funeral culture. Here, the shift from pam˙ sukūla as rag-robe taken from the dead to an offering of a new robe at Thai funerals attests the transformation of monks from scavengers to recipients of gifts (Schopen 2006: 337). Davis 14 patrice ladwig and paul williams explores the meanings of the pam˙ sukūla in the Khmer context and proposes that ‘the ritual actions of the pam˙ sukūla are mirrored in ritual and technical actions performed in other contexts, in which non-Buddhist spirits are con- trolled and made useful by Buddhist monks’. Langer examines the, at ﬁrst sight, contradictory modern image of the pam˙ sukūla with its sources in Buddhist history by looking at the chants associated with it. The topic of the materiality of funeral cultures is also a topic dealt with by Patrice Ladwig. He focuses on the post-mortem fate of victims of bad death, who among the ethnic Lao become phiphed, a liminal ghost being sharing many characteristics with the peta of the Petavatthu, but also exposing speciﬁcities of the local cosmology. Although the ritual discussed by Ladwig has its textual references in Pali Buddhism, he proposes that certain Buddhist key concepts linked to the funeral culture such as the widely discussed transfer of merit are relevant, but can only be understood in relation to Lao notions of food and corporality. The materiality of the offerings given to ghosts has nourishing qualities that largely derive from a local cosmology, but is ritually integrated into the transfer of merit. death and the regeneration of life The role of beings labelled ‘dead’ also becomes important in relation to fertility and the regenerative potential that death contains. Death is, almost on a universal level, a ritual separation from the living, but also a celebration and reproduction of fertility not only in the human domain. In that sense, the ‘rebirth which occurs at death is not only a denial of individual extinction but also a reassertion of society and a renewal of life and creative power’ (Bloch and Parry 1982: 5). Death is always a signiﬁer of the potential breakdown of fertility through ﬁnitude and decay and demands ritual action aiming at reestablishing order and reproduction. Hertz already noted in his comparative study on death that, ‘In establishing a society of the dead, the society of the living regularly recreates itself’ (Hertz 1960: 72). Many of the funeral cultures discussed in the book are still predominately situated in societies that make their living out of or from agriculture. Here, the fertility of the land is intimately linked to the dead as protective spirits or ancestors. Paul Mus (1975) already proposed this link of Buddhism with Southeast Asian ‘cadastral cults’. Indian religions took root in Southeast Asia by establishing a link to chthonic forces and fertility. In his contribution on Khmer funeral culture, Davis conceptualises the monk as a master and farmer of the dead who is capable of controlling and containing the worlds of spirits. With reference to the pam˙ sukūla robe and its role in ritual practice and the imaginary of death, Introduction: Buddhist funeral cultures 15 Davis proposes that the rites involving the pam˙ sukūla and other objects aim at binding indeterminate vitality unleashed by death into a useful form. These ‘ritual technologies’ link death practices to agricultural fertility. Human fertility and sexual symbolism is also a theme often encountered in funeral rites. Robinne’s contribution also refers to sexual symbolism in Burmese funerals. Death and the regeneration of human life are crucial themes of the Burmese theatre plays performed. Erect phalli are paraded around during the funeral thereby performatively acting out the relationship between concep- tion, death and rebirth. But what is exactly reproduced in the case of death might differ signiﬁ- cantly in Buddhist funeral cultures. Bloch and Parry (1982: 7) argue that, ‘In most cases what would seem to be revitalised in funerary practices is that resource which is culturally conceived to be the most essential to the reproduction of the social order.’ Whereas in many Theravāda Buddhist societies and also in the Chinese case described by Yik Fai Tam we can identify merit (Pali: puñña; Sanskrit: pun˙ ya) as a crucial resource to repro- duce social order, the link between fertility and death looks different among the Tibeto-Burman Phunoy. For the Phunoy, the dead are not receivers of merit, as commonly found among most groups in the region like the ethnic Lao described by Ladwig. For the Phunoy, the reactivation of fertility and protection through transforming the dead into protective ancestors is more crucial than transferring merit. future research prospects Although the single contributions also refer at times to the modernisation of Buddhist funeral cultures (the inﬂuence of political changes, for example), the scope of most of these essays is rather ‘traditional’ and remains focused on the collective representations of Buddhist funeral cultures. This might be explained by several factors: First, the data collected by our contributors often derive from ﬁeld-sites and timeframes that have only to a certain extent been exposed to ‘modernity’. Second, for the sake of the coherence of the volume we have limited ourselves to such cases and decided not to include studies that deal, for example, with urban funeral associations, new ways of dying or new cosmologies of the afterlife. We believe that before embarking on such studies, more groundwork has to be covered. Therefore, our own volume and that of Cuevas and Stone (2007) also leave many questions open that will hopefully be addressed in future research. A lot remains to be said about the transformations that have and will occur in Buddhist funeral cultures through increasing urbanisation, the use of new 16 patrice ladwig and paul williams medical technologies or the economy of funeral businesses. The ﬁeld is wide open and here we only want to mention some examples that could be seen as widening the scope of this volume. A good example for expanding the research in Buddhist funeral cultures is Suzuki’s study (2001) of the changes of Japanese funeral culture. Here, the professionalisation of the funeral business through modernisation and new divisions of labour has led to profound changes. His project clearly reﬂects how death becomes modernised and is connected to wider social and economic changes in Japanese society. Another ﬁne example for widening the study of death in a Buddhist context is the project of Felicity Aulino, who is currently completing a PhD at Harvard focusing on the contemporary palliative care movement and hospices in contemporary northern Thailand. We would also like to mention Gregory Delaplace’s (2008) excellent work L’Invention des Morts. Sépultures, Fantômes et Photographies en Mongolie Contemporaine. His study deals with the transformations of Mongolian Buddhist funeral culture. Here, the everyday relations with the spirits of the dead and the use of photo- graphs for remembering and visualising the dead are dealt with in innovative ways. Finally, we would like to mention that Buddhist funeral cultures have already reached cyberspace. One can now practise Buddhist death and afterlife in a computer game. The ‘Religion in Virtual Worlds Study Group’ at Front Range Community College in Colorado tested out the ‘Second Life Bardo Game’ created by the company EduPunx. The game ‘[...] virtually creates the in-between state of the dead person as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, challenging the player to ﬁnd her way to enlightenment’ (Davies-Stofka 2009: n.p.). Reading this book might not lead to enlightenment, but we ask our readers and other researchers to continue the ‘game’. Please press Enter. bibliography Appadurai, A. (1986), ‘Introduction: commodities and the politics of value’, in ed. A. Appadurai, The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective, New York: Cambridge University Press. Assmann, J. (2005), Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Baptandier, B. 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(2009), Mahāyāna Buddhism: the Doctrinal Foundations, 2nd edn, London: Routledge. 20 patrice ladwig and paul williams chapter 2 Chanting as ‘bricolage technique’: a comparison of South and Southeast Asian funeral recitation Rita Langer introduction There is no ancient prescriptive text outlining in detail how a Theravāda funeral is to be conducted. Nevertheless, contemporary Theravāda funerals seem to follow a recognisable pattern. Some information on funerals in the countries of South and Southeast Asia is available in regional studies and anthropological surveys, but these contain very little on the Pāli chants, which form an integral part of the ceremonies. Considering that Pāli is the sacred language shared by the Theravāda countries, these texts might provide a clue to a better understanding of how a Theravāda funeral is constructed. In the ﬁrst part of this chapter funeral chanting is approached in terms of a ‘bricolage’ – a patchwork of heterogeneous elements with the monk as ‘bricoleur’, the skilled craftsman. The main part of the chapter is based on a number of ritual ‘snapshots’ – recordings of ceremonies in Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. The chanting sequences of these ceremonies are analysed one by one and their composition is investigated. A chart of chanting sequences (Table 2.1) and a verse index (Table 2.2) are added to facilitate comparison and to provide a complete record and reference. The ﬁnal part of the chapter offers some tentative suggestions as to why, against all odds, the pattern of Theravāda funeral chants is not more varied than it is, along with open questions and possible avenues of further inquiries concluding the study. chanting as a bricolage technique Anyone interested in ancient Indian funeral rites has a host of prescriptive literature from which to choose as a starting point for research. The Vedic sūtras contain a wealth of details on how the cremation is to be performed, depending on the status of the deceased and the chief mourner.1 The 1 Caland (1896) records the variations in the prescribed ritual of the various Vedic schools. 21 situation is very different when we look at Theravāda Buddhism.2 The countries of South and Southeast Asia, which understand themselves to belong to the Theravāda tradition of Buddhism (Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and Laos) share a reliance on the Buddhist canon (and its commentaries) composed in Pāli, the sacred and ritual language of the Theravādins. However, there are no ancient, prescriptive Pāli texts (canonical or post-canonical) outlining how to conduct a Theravāda Buddhist funeral. Considering this lack of prescriptive literature one might expect to ﬁnd differences between the various Theravāda countries as well as regional and sectarian differences.3 The question is just how substantial are these differences? Is it possible that the common sacred language brings with it a shared ritual heritage?4 Or, to phrase it differently, is there such a thing as a Theravāda Buddhist funeral? In order to explore these questions I compared a number of funeral ceremonies from Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar with regard to the Pāli chants utilised.5 As this is not an ethnographic study, research for the present paper did not require doing interviews, reading pamphlets in the vernacular languages and, strictly speaking, not even my presence in the ﬁeld.6 My intention was to create a record and reference (by way of a chart and verse and phrase index) of a number of real chanting events and analyse them. I concentrate on the Pāli chanting rather than the chanting in the vernacular, because it is a common denominator (there are others, to be sure) of Theravāda ritual and it might even be said that it deﬁnes a ritual as Theravāda. It should be understood, however, that any observations I make are merely on the basis of these ritual snapshots and not meant as general conclusions about Buddhism in Sri Lanka, Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. 2 The complex question of what constitutes Theravāda was the topic of a panel at the International Association of Buddhist Studies (IABS) in Atlanta 2008 and a volume on the topic (edited by Peter Skilling) is forthcoming. 3 Among the people who increased my understanding of Theravāda and its regional forms are: Rupert Gethin, Hiroko Kawanami, Gregory Kourilsky, Patrice Ladwig, Mudagamuwe Maitrimurthi and Justin McDaniel. It goes without saying that any mistakes and misconstructions in this paper are entirely my own responsibility. 4 See also Collins (1998: 40–89) on the concept of ‘Pāli imaginaire’. 5 I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the families who let me share the funerals of their loved ones and the many members of the san˙gha who assisted me in my research. They shall remain unnamed for reasons of privacy. 6 While I observed most of the ceremonies myself, it is also entirely possible to extract the chanting sequences from good ﬁlm footage, such as the one provided by my colleague, Patrice Ladwig, for Laos 2 and Thai 2. 22 rita langer Bricolage The picture that emerged from my research is a patchwork of different elements, drawn, however, from a somewhat conﬁned pool: in other words, a bricolage.7 The French term bricolage was in the early sixties applied to the ﬁeld of religion (more speciﬁcally myths and rites) by Lévi- Strauss (1966: 17ff.) who deﬁned the bricoleur as: adept at performing a large number of diverse tasks; but, unlike the engineer, he does not subordinate each of them to the availability of raw materials and tools conceived and procured for the purpose of the project. His universe of instruments is closed and the rules of his game are always to make do with ‘whatever is at hand’, that is to say with a set of tools and materials which is always ﬁnite and is also heterogeneous because what it contains bears no relation to the current project, or indeed to any particular project, but is the contingent result of all the occasions there have been to renew or enrich the stock or to maintain it with the remains of previous constructions or destructions. Lévi-Strauss discusses this in relation to myths, but the concept – or rather process – of bricolage seems to be quite suited to explain the dynamics of Theravāda Buddhist funeral chanting as well. To begin with we shall examine the materials and sets of tools, which are used in the funeral chanting, and then the bricolage itself and the Buddhist monk as ‘bricoleur’. The toolbox of the performer: canonical and non-canonical chants There might not be one authoritative text prescribing how to conduct a Theravāda funeral, but there are numerous handbooks for novices, con- taining the basic chants for all kinds of occasions. The handbooks are probably the ﬁrst contact a young novice has with Pāli chants and most monks have their own copy of some edition of a chanting handbook.8 They might draw on a variety of other resources or people for their knowledge and inspiration, but as far as funeral chants are concerned, the handbook is for all intents and purposes the ‘closed tool box’.9 But while the handbooks contain all the chants – the building blocks – from which Theravāda ceremonies are constructed, there is still need for an experienced 7 I am grateful to Patrice Ladwig who drew my attention to the concept of bricolage. Other ways to describe the dynamic of a ritual are ‘ritual syntax’ (see Staal 1996) or jazz composition (Ladwig, personal communication). 8 Some examples of handbooks for novices: (1975) Book of Chants (for Thailand); Liambounrueang (2003), Wannaphoupa (2001) for Laos and (1995) Sāman˙ era Ban˙ a Daham Pota (for Sri Lanka). 9 See also Samuel (2004) who discusses the novices’ way of learning in Sri Lanka. Chanting as ‘ bricolage technique’ 23 instructor to explain to novices on what occasion, in which order, etc. the chants are used. The handbooks themselves have a long recorded history as one such, the Khuddakapāt.ha, made it into the Tipitaka as the ﬁrst of the ﬁfteen books that constitute the Khuddaka Nikāya.10 Geiger and Ghosh (1943: 19) states that it is ‘clearly a prayer book for daily use’ and Norman (1983: 58) speculates that ‘the whole work was probably compiled as an extract from the canon to serve as a handbook for novices’. Schalk (1972: 97), comparing it to one such contemporary Sri Lankan paritta chanting book, observes that seven of the nine texts of the Khuddakapāt.ha are found in the contemporary handbook and, with one exception, even the order of texts is kept. Blackburn (1999a: 355) distinguishes between ‘formal’ and ‘practical’ canon: By formal canon I mean the Pāli canon as the ultimate locus of interpretive authority in the Theravāda. Practical canon refers to the collection of texts used in a particular time and place. The practical canon may include portions of the tipit.aka with their commentaries as well as texts understood by their authors and audience consistent with, but perhaps not explicitly related to, the tipit.aka and its commentaries.11 The practical canon, and in particular the handbook, is for an ordinary monk or novice what the Pāli canon is for the tradition as a whole – a comprehensive collection.12 Handbooks over the centuries have grown considerably in size: new chants, transcriptions, explanations and translations have been added. And just as historically there were attempts to standardise the formal canon by way of councils, there was also an attempt to standardise the practical canon. McDaniel (2006: 129) relates King Mongkut’s attempts in the mid-nineteenth century to create a universal sense of Theravāda iden- tity. He invited foreign Theravāda monks to Thailand, designed a universal script for Pāli (Ariyaka) to be used by all Theravādins and also tried to create ‘a standard Pāli liturgy for the Theravāda Buddhist world’ containing only the basic chants shared by all countries, but no vernacular instructions. Later these attempts were given up and the bewildering number of different handbooks in contemporary Thailand alone seems to show that far from 10 The texts that make up the extremely short Khuddakapāt.ha are (in order): Saran˙attaya; Dasasikkhāpada; Dvattim˙ sākāra; Kumārapañha; Man˙galasutta; Ratanasutta; Tirokud˙d˙asutta; Nidhikan˙d˙asutta; Karan˙īyamettasutta. 11 See Collins (1995) and McDaniel (2008: 191). 12 While the latter is an ‘exclusive, closed list’ (Collins 1995: 91), the former is ‘ﬂuid and open’ (McDaniel 2006: 122). 24 rita langer unifying Theravāda on an international level, it failed even to establish conformity on a national level.13 The toolbox of the researcher: the ﬁeld data The rituals connected with death are very complex, can extend over several days and include very diverse practices such as chanting, preaching, confusing the spirit of the deceased, gambling, inviting gods, giving merit to the dead and feeding the spirit of the deceased. Of course, not all of these involve monks’ participation, or the use of Pāli texts, but even when concentrating on the monks’ involvement there are a number of different events. A monk or monks are invited after the death to chant Abhidhamma (in Thailand and Laos) or to preach for an hour (in Sri Lanka). Then there is usually an alms giving on behalf of the dead, which is done on the day of the cremation (in Thailand and Laos) or on the seventh day after the death (in Sri Lanka) and at regular intervals after that. There are also ceremonies (e.g. chanting and ritual near the cofﬁn) that take place on the day of the cremation or burial at home, at the temple or even at the cremation ground. And ﬁnally there is a ceremony performed over a ﬁgurine made of the bones in Thailand and Laos. The focus of this chapter is on the chanting and ritual that is performed on the funeral day itself, which for convenience I will refer to as ‘funeral’. Apart from the great complexity of the death rites, there is also the issue of geography and history to take into account. The area covered or touched by Theravāda is vast, incorporating diverse ethnic and sectarian groups, and spans over 2000 years of history.14 Obviously a comprehensive study of all the relevant material is not possible, but a pilot study, concentrating on selected locations in order to create a number of ‘snapshots’, remains practical. In this chapter I will closely examine the chanting sequences of eight funeral ceremonies: a simple laywoman’s burial (sl1) and an elaborate monk’s crema- tion (sl2) from Sri Lanka;15 a simple burial in Sagaing (Myanmar 1);16 a simple 13 These handbooks are not exclusively for novices and monks. There are a great number of these widely available in print or online now, some of them produced by temples for their supporters. To name but a few examples: Nārada (2008); (2008) Samatha Chanting Book; (2000–10) A Chanting Guide; (2007) Morning Chanting Guide. 14 The modern state boundaries do not reﬂect the distribution of different ethnic and sectarian groups. 15 Detailed descriptions of the two funerals can be found in Langer (2007). The ﬁeldwork in Sri Lanka was funded by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst. 16 I am very grateful to Hiroko Kawanami, U San, Ven. Ashin Dhammapiya and the Sagaing Funeral Society for their support. The ﬁeld trip to Myanmar (2009) as well as the ﬁeld trips to Laos (2007) and Thailand (2008) were in part funded by the University of Bristol Research Fund. Chanting as ‘ bricolage technique’ 25 cremation in Luang Prabang (Laos 1); an elaborate cremation of a government ofﬁcial in Vientiane in three parts and locations: at his home, at the cremation ground, near the incinerator (Laos 2.a-c);17 a simple cremation conducted by Thai monks in a crematorium in the UK (Thai 1); an elaborate cremation in Chiang Mai in three parts and locations: at his home, at the cremation ground, near the incinerator (Thai 2.a-c); and a medium-sized cremation (Thai 3).18 In addition I included ﬁve other ceremonies for comparison: an alms giving from Sri Lanka (sl 3); an alms giving from Myanmar (Myanmar 2); a ‘bone collection ceremony’ from Laos performed over a ﬁgurine (Laos 3); and from Thailand an ‘Abhidhamma evening chant’ (Thai 4) and a ‘cofﬁn ritual’ (Thai 5), which is essentially a healing ritual involving the client lying in a cofﬁn while monks conduct ‘funeral rites’. I have entered the chanting sequences of the ceremonies into a chart (see Table 2.1), where every row (comprising four lines) represents one ceremony or distinct part of a ceremony. Each line contains the ﬁrst word of a Pāli verse or phrase or the name of a sutta, which can be looked up in the verse/phrase index (Table 2.2).19 My intention was to create a record and reference of a body of funeral and funeral-related ceremonies in South and Southeast Asia. Of course, condensing complex ceremonies into a single chart leaves out the performance aspects, some of which will be discussed below, but it allows one to identify the different elements as well as highlight ‘gaps’. I will ﬁrst introduce the elements one by one before looking at the bigger picture. the elements of the bricolage The data will be analysed in two parts: ﬁrst, the basic framework which is found in all the funeral ceremonies (and represented in the short, Sri Lankan, sequence), and second, some further elements as found in Southeast Asia. The core of a funeral ceremony Preliminaries and honouring of the Triple Gem Under this category I subsume ﬁrst the verses of honouring the Buddha and the Triple Gem (namo tassa . . . and iti pi so bhagavā) as well as the invitation to the gods to come and listen to the Dhamma (sagge kāme ca 17 My brief ﬁeld trips to Laos and Thailand were timed to coincide with Patrice Ladwig’s longer research stays and I am grateful to him and Nicole Reichert for their support. For an overview of Lao funerary rites see Ladwig (2003) and Zago (1972: 237–55). 18 For an overview of Thai funerary rites see Wells (1960: 211–28) and Terwiel (1979). 19 Any Pāli words or phrases in brackets refer to verses and passages, which can be found in the index. 26 rita langer rūpe . . . ).20 In Sri Lanka, however, the verse is shortened to the simple statement ‘It is time to listen to the Dhamma’ (dhammassavana-kālo) until the seventh day after the death, when the home of the dead person ceases to be regarded as the ‘house of the deceased’.21 Next comes the formal request for the precepts or preaching (mayam˙ bhante .. . ), which is in essence a re-enactment of the Dhammacakkappavattanasutta (s v 420), when Brahma asks the Buddha to teach, and is very common in Thailand, Laos and Myanmar, but less so in Sri Lanka. All the above verses and phrases are usually chanted by a layman, an upāsaka, who is familiar with the Pāli verses. The monks then lead the chanting of the three refuges (buddham˙ saran˙ am˙ .. . ) and the Five Precepts (pān˙ ātipātā . .. ), which are canonical (Khp 1).22 As these preliminaries are not speciﬁc to funerals I have omitted them from the chart. The offering of the ‘refuse rag’ (Pansukul) Next comes the chanting of a verse (aniccā vata sam˙ khārā . . .) and the offering of a white piece of cloth or robes. The verse was famously uttered by the god Sakka in the Mahāparinibbāna sutta (d ii 157) after the Buddha’s passing away: Impermanent are conditioned things! It is their nature to arise and fall. Having arisen, they cease. Their stilling is happy.23 This verse is, at least in Sri Lanka, very well known by laypeople and so closely associated with funerals and death that one might suspect it would be virtually impossible to use it in any other context. The chanting of this verse is nearly always accompanied by the offering of a new piece of cloth/ robes to the monks. This cloth is commonly referred to either as a ‘refuse rag’ (pam˙ sukūla) or in Sri Lanka sometimes also as a ‘cloth of the dead/ remembrance’ (matakavastra).24 This former term links back to an ancient ascetic practice of only wearing robes made from refuse rags (pam˙ sukūla) 20 On iti pi so . . . see also Harrison (1992) and on inviting the gods see Skilling (2002). 21 I was told in Sri Lanka that gods do not like funeral houses, and passages such as Khp-a 117 seem to conﬁrm the gods’ dislike of smelly humans: ‘For when deities come for any purpose to the human world, they do so like a man of clean habits coming to a privy. In fact, the human world is naturally repulsive to them even at a hundred leagues’ distance owing to its stench, and they ﬁnd no delight in it.’ Ñān˙amoli (1960b: 127). 22 Ñān˙amoli (1960b: 5; of The Illustrator of Ultimate Meaning). Khp-a 14. See also Ñān˙amoli (1960a). 23 Gethin (2008: 90). 24 The etymology of the Pāli word pam˙ sukūla (also used in Sinhala), is not very clear, but the term and concept is widely known in South and Southeast Asia as pansukul and seems to be used not just for a cloth, but also for the ritual sequence of chanting and offering of the cloth (and it is in this sense that I use the word in the chart) or even just for the chant that accompanies the offering (see also Chapter 3 by Davis). Chanting as ‘ bricolage technique’ 27 found in unclean places, one of thirteen ascetic practices described in the Visuddhimagga, a post-canonical work (ﬁfth century ce). Most Buddhists in South and Southeast Asia are not only familiar with the term and concept of the pam˙ sukūla, but seem to be rather fond of it despite, or may be precisely due to, the fact that more often than not the reality of monastic life is far from that of a ‘refuse-rag wearer’.25 The link between the verse (aniccā vata .. .) and the offering of cloth/robes to the monks is so commonly known that in Thai chanting books the verse itself is referred to as ‘pansukul ’, even though the actual wording does not hint at the practice at all. The verse sometimes ‘attracts’ other, similar verses such as ‘Soon this body will lie on the ground . . .’ (aciram˙ vat . .. ) or ‘In the present every being dies . . .’ (sabbe sattā maranti . . . ), which are fairly well known and go well with the theme of impermanence and death.26 In the ceremonies I observed in Laos and Thailand, it is also closely connected with the next element (see below), the giving of merit symbolized by pouring water and sometimes even com- bined with a brief paritta chant. In Sri Lanka the verse is usually chanted by itself and constitutes something of a climax in the proceedings while the giving of merit is performed at the very end. Interestingly at Myanmar 1 the canonical verse was chanted at the very end of the ceremony and turned into a triplet (aniccā vata sam˙ khārā ... dukkhā vata sam˙ khārā ... anattā vata sam˙ khārā). It is impossible to tell when the chanting of the verse and offering of the cloth became linked, but they are not only a feature of nearly every Theravāda Buddhist funeral in South and Southeast Asia, but constitute, in fact, the core and only funeral-speciﬁc aspect. The giving of merit The giving of merit to the deceased is marked by the chanting of Pāli verses, which are found in two canonical works: the Petavatthu (Tirokud˙d˙apetavatthu, Pv 5) and the Khuddakapāt.ha (Tirokud˙d˙asutta, Khp 7).27 The latter has already been mentioned above, but the former needs a word of introduction. The Petavatthu is a collection of ‘ghost stories’, which deal with the themes of karma and retribution and follow a ﬁxed pattern: a miserable creature approaches a human being, reveals him/ 25 I have argued elsewhere (Langer 2007: 84) that the offering of a new cloth at funerals might have originated in the Vedic ritual and been given a new, Buddhist interpretation. For other interpreta- tions see also Schopen (2007) and contributions by Davis (Chapter 3) and Chirapravati (Chapter 4) in this volume. 26 The latter (sabbe sattā . . . ) is most commonly chanted by the Thammayut monks (Ven. Bhatsakorn Piyobhaso, personal communication). 27 In the Myanmar ceremonies the giving of merit was accompanied by pouring water and chanting in Burmese. 28 rita langer herself as a hungry ghost (peta/petī) and asks for help. The intent of beneﬁting the dead is usually understood as giving of merit, even though the canonical verses of the Tirokud˙d˙apetavatthu do not mention merit. The giving of merit is, doctrinally, not unproblematic as it seems to run counter to the accountability of the individual. The Abhidhamma solves the dilemma by proposing a two-way process: the giver can only ‘offer’ merit (pattidāna) and the receiver can only ‘rejoice’ in the merit offered (pattānumodanā).28 Both these acts are themselves meritorious acts and both the giver and the receiver are better off karmically.29 The Tirokud˙d˙apetavatthu (Pv 4f) is very topical (ﬁlial duty) and its popularity as a funeral chant is not surprising. Individual verses, couplets or quadruplets are chanted at various points in the proceedings, but two of its verses became associated with the giving of merit: As water rained on the uplands ﬂows down to the low land, even so does what is given here beneﬁt the petas. (unname udakam˙ . . .) Just as swollen streams swell the ocean, even so does what is given here beneﬁt the petas. (yathā vārivahā . . .)30 The chanting is always accompanied by the ritual pouring of water from a cup or jug into a bowl as a solemn act, possibly indicating a promise or vow. Here there is a clear link between the wording of the chant and the ritual act of pouring water. Interestingly the order of the two verses is often reversed (yathā vārivahā . . . and unname udakam˙ . . .) when compared to the two canonical versions. This raises the question of whether there was possibly another version of the Sutta in circulation or whether the ritual tradition simply chose this order for rhythmic or musical reasons. Whatever the case, the fact that the Tirokud˙d˙asutta also occurs in the canonical handbook, the Khuddakapāt.ha, might be an indication that its ritual use might be as old as that of the parittasuttas in the same collection. Asking for forgiveness and religious wishes I group these two together (under the heading of ‘wishes’ in the chart) as, in my view, they represent two sides of the same coin: the asking for forgive- ness by the laypeople in order to remove obstacles and the subsequent 28 See Abhidhammatthasan˙gaha 25. 29 For a more detailed discussion of merit see Langer (2007: 156–85). 30 Dhammapāla (1980: 26, Pv 5). Chanting as ‘ bricolage technique’ 29 ‘granting’ of a wish by the monks to further improve one’s lot.31 In Southeast Asia a short chant of three verses asking the Triple Gem for forgiveness for wrong deeds of body, speech and mind (kāyena vācāya vā cetasā vā . . . ) was recited at some of the ceremonies in Laos and Thailand immediately before the giving of merit.32 The verses are not canonical, but the motif of asking for forgiveness from a Buddha is. In the Sāmaññaphalasutta King Ajātasattu addresses the Buddha: Sir, foolish, deluded, and weak man that I am, I have done something wrong. In pursuit of power, I have taken the life of my father, the righteous and lawful king. Let the Blessed One accept this confession of my wrongdoing and in the future there will be restraint.33 Interestingly, Ajātasattu does not ask for his karmic slate to be wiped clean, but that he may be more restrained and better equipped to avoid such deeds in the future.34 Asking for forgiveness – like giving of merit – is at ﬁrst glance at odds with the responsibility of karma and doctrinally confession merely serves to aid a more wholesome state of mind in the future. It is, however, likely that on an affective level people perceive the act of confession as freeing them from past bad deeds. The religious wishes (icchitam˙ patthitam˙ . . . ) are, again, part of nearly every ceremony and immediately follow the giving of merit. Here the collectively generated merit is the basis of a wish that is ‘granted’ by the monks to everyone present. The content of the wish is personal, but in Sri Lanka it is quite common for the monk to preformulate the wish to be reborn under the future Buddha and attain Nibbāna. The oldest source for the verses that I have found is Vedeha’s Rasavāhinī, which is usually dated to the thirteenth century, but goes back to older Sinhala works. Its stories illustrate the workings of karma and the virtue of generosity and it is similar in style to the Jātaka and Apadāna literature. Bretfeld (2001: xli) points out that the great number of existing manuscripts indicate its extremes popular- ity in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The story in which the verses occur (Rv I 38) is rather long and rambling, but the immediate context is that a honey merchant gives a pot of honey to a solitary buddha (paccekabuddha). 31 Indeed these two aspects seem to be combined in the Burmese formula of asking permission (Okāsa), which is uttered at the beginning of ceremonies. 32 The asking for forgiveness is also common in Sri Lanka in connection with offerings to the Buddha statue or relic (Maithrimurthi, personal communication). 33 Gethin (2008: 35; D I 85). The similarity in phrasing between the verse and the passage in D I 85 is interesting. 34 Killing a parent is, of course, classed as ‘weighty kamma’ (garuka kamma), which bears fruit in the immediate next existence. Vism xix, 15 (Warren), Buddhagosa (1991: 620). 30 rita langer While doing so, he remembers a story from the Mahāvam˙ sa (chapter V, verse 57) which also involves a honey merchant pouring honey for a paccekabuddha until the vessel overﬂows and making a wish to become ruler of Jambudīpa. The ﬁrst honey merchant tells this story to the pacce- kabuddha who then utters the verses (icchitam˙ patthitam˙ . . .; see Norman 1910). Interesting here are two things: the image of t	800,067
Chinese Sexual Astrology Eastern Secrets to Mind-Blowing Sex (Shelly Wu) (Z-Library).pdf	CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY Eastern Secrets to Mind-Blowing Sex By SHELLY WU NEW PAGE BOOKS A division of The Career Press, Inc. Franklin Lakes, NJ Copyright © 2007 by Shelly Wu All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press. CHINESE HINESE HINESE HINESE HINESE S S S S SEXUAL EXUAL EXUAL EXUAL EXUAL A A A A ASTROLOGY STROLOGY STROLOGY STROLOGY STROLOGY EDITED BY KIRSTEN DALLEY TYPESET BY KRISTEN PARKES Cover design by Lu Rossman/Digi Dog Design NYC Printed in the U.S.A. by Book-mart Press Illustrations in Appendix A by Sheridah Davis To order this title, please call toll-free 1-800-CAREER-1 (NJ and Canada: 201-848-0310) to order using VISA or MasterCard, or for further information on books from Career Press. The Career Press, Inc., 3 Tice Road, PO Box 687, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 www.careerpress.com www.careerpress.com www.careerpress.com www.careerpress.com www.careerpress.com www.newpagebooks.com www.newpagebooks.com www.newpagebooks.com www.newpagebooks.com www.newpagebooks.com Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wu, Shelly, 1959- Chinese sexual astrology : eastern secrets to mind-blowing sex / by Shelly Wu. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN-13: 978-1-56414-921-3 ISBN-10: 1-56414-921-8 1. Sex instruction. 2. Astrology, Chinese. I. Title. HQ31.W965 2007 613.9’6--dc22 2006025974 To the many friends, colleagues, and students who have been so supportive, asked the great questions, and inspired me daily. And as always, a special thank you to Aristotle— my husband, best friend, and lover: “Here’s to old Dogs learning new tricks.” This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Introduction 9 PART I SPIRIT CONNECTIONS Chapter 1 Chinese Love Signs—Karmic Connections 17 Chapter 2 Yin/Yang—Stillness and Movement 21 Chapter 3 Love Written in the Stars— 25 Soul Mate Connections Chapter 4 Love Trinities—Lovers in Trine 29 Chapter 5 Lovers in Kind 35 Chapter 6 Lovers Resolving Karma 39 Chapter 7 Lovers in Opposition 43 Chapter 8 Lovers Locked in Karmic Combat 47 Chapter 9 The Elements of Connection— 53 Are You Elementally Compatible? PART II MIND CONNECTIONS Chapter 10 Readying the Mind for Extraordinary Sex 79 Chapter 11 Resolving Blocks to Intimacy 81 Chapter 12 The Superior Lover 97 Chapter 13 Seduction and Romance, Atmosphere 99 and Ambiance: Setting the Mood PART III BODY CONNECTIONS Chapter 14 “Ching Qi”—Channeling Raw 115 Sexual Energy Chapter 15 Sizzling Sex in the Taoist Tradition 125 Chapter 16 Sexual Styles: The Tame, the Tawdry, 131 and—Sometimes—the Taboo Chapter 17 Randy Rat 137 Chapter 18 Oral Ox 145 Chapter 19 Titillating Tiger 153 Chapter 20 Receptive Rabbit 159 Chapter 21 Dragon Debauchery 167 Chapter 22 Sexy Snake 175 Chapter 23 Horse Hottie 181 Chapter 24 Go-Go Goat 189 Chapter 25 Marathon Monkey 195 Chapter 26 Rough-and-Ready Rooster 201 Chapter 27 Dog-gie Style 209 Chapter 28 Perfectly Perverted Pig 217 Chapter 29 “A Thousand Loving Thrusts”: 223 The Chinese Art of Penile Thrusting Appendix A Taoist Sexual Positions for 227 Enlightened Lovers Appendix B Find Your Chinese Birth Sign 237 Bibliography 243 Index 245 About the Author 253 This page intentionally left blank INTRODUCTION 9 Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses. —Lao Tzu (Laozi) Whether a mind-blowing quickie or an orgasmic marathon, few things can equal the intense pleasure of love and sex. The heart-pounding thrill of romantic love is a universal human pursuit; we have all loved and lost and loved and won, but mostly we have just loved. Indeed, love is the universal language and the very essence of our being. Therefore, there comes a time when most of us are faced with the pivotal decision of choosing a partner. This is a decision that will affect our chance for relationship happiness and future sexual satisfaction. From the earliest Chinese records, the sex act between a man and a woman was seen as a powerful and essential force that controlled the uni- verse. According to the Tao Te Ching, sexual energy is the force in nature that keeps the “earth circling the heavens.” The merging of man and woman—yang and yin—was thought to be of the highest spiritual realms and a reflection of an organized and sacred universe. Therefore, the importance of making love was highly emphasized, not only for physical well-being and longevity, but for emotional and spiritual cultivation as well. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 10 Thousands of years ago, the ancient Chinese understood the need for sex education. They had “pillow books,” popular wedding gifts for young couples containing everything from astrological compatibility to erotic sug- gestions for igniting passion. These erotic and exquisitely detailed books were meant to be tucked under the pillow of a young bride; they com- pleted her trousseau and were meant for her and her lover’s education and excitement. These books taught couples to be generous with each other— not merely for enjoyment, but to fulfill the man’s essential need for the woman’s yin energy and the woman’s concurrent need for the man’s yang essence. Introduction 11 In contrast to the misogynistic sexual repression of women common in many other ancient (and modern) cultures, Taoist masters encouraged the complete satisfaction of a woman sexually. Young men were taught that to ensure their own satisfaction, and for the balance of yin and yang to occur, they must seek to satisfy their lover completely. This attitude of sexual wholesomeness stood in stark contrast to some of the Western views of sex. In the East, sex was a health issue and not a moral one. Eastern sages and medical doctors extolled the sexual act for health and happiness, while their Western equivalents imbued sex with the oppressive and repressive rhetoric of caveats, restrictions, and taboos. The Chinese obsession with, and celebration of, the erotic is graphi- cally demonstrated in Chinese art, archaeological records, and ancient lit- erary sources. From the erotic imagery of 200 B.C. tomb decorations to the 10th century crystal penis on display at the Museum of Ancient Chinese Sexual Culture in Tongli, the extraordinary role that sexuality played in the daily lives of the Chinese people is explicitly evident. While the art of love in ancient China appeared to be phallic-oriented, it was widely believed that sexual intercourse enhanced one’s internal spiritual practice and uni- fied the physical with the spiritual—something that would be of benefit to both sexes. Moreover, misogyny against women was virtually unheard of in China until much later in the country’s history. The Chinese have a long and rich history of celebrating their sexuality in a positive and healthy way. The art of sexuality was practiced with the goal of transforming the mundane into a higher spiritual plane—the ultimate intent being oneness with each other and with the natural world. Recently in the West, there has been an ever-increasing awareness of the importance of fusing our spiritual, mental, and physical energies in order to achieve complete satisfaction. This awareness has yielded an explosion of renewed interest in ancient erotic manuals, such as the Se- crets of the Jade Bed Chamber from China, the Kama Sutra from India, and the Ishimpo from Japan. In a quest to reconnect with passion and enrich their sexual experience, many couples are exploring Taoist, Tantric, and astrological compatibilities regarding sexuality. Love and Sex Written in the Stars For many of us, the burning question remains: Why do some singe their wings on love’s flames, while others glide through romance unscathed? In order to answer this, we can look to the time-tested wisdom of Chinese astrology and apply it to our relationships and sexuality. Chinese astrology CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 12 is based on 12 archetypal temperaments, and provides enlightenment for, and insight into, our most intimate relationships. The Chinese astrological system reveals attributes, driving forces, and possibilities. It is an interpre- tive art built upon the foundations of principle, order, and the spiritual laws of synchronicity, an art that will help us map out the journey of our spirit through the physical dimensions of personality and purpose. In ancient China, the leaders of the time were responsible for maintaining the spiritual, mental, and physical health of the people. After many centuries of recording philosophical, behavioral, and natural earth phenomena, theories concerning human sexuality also began to form. Many of the ancient sexual practices were secretive and arcane in nature, and only passed along orally from teacher to student. The Eastern Zodiac is the oldest known astrological system in the world. Ancient writings have been dated as early as the 4th millennium B.C., and can be found in the monasteries of Tibet, China, and Southeast Asia. Multitudes have consulted this timeless system, and it remains as pertinent today as it was many centuries ago. The phrase “lucky in love” is a rather ambiguous expression. Most of us know what love is and are acutely aware if it’s “working” or not. Although this “love luck” cannot be seen, it is profoundly evident in our daily lives. In Eastern philosophy, there are three types of luck: “Heav- enly love luck” is our romantic fate, that unseen network of compatibility connections and the spiritual love map of our life. “Human love luck” represents the paths and partners we choose using our free will. (It’s important to remember that the universe will never thwart our choices even if this means certain disaster.) Finally, “earthly love luck” consists of manipulating romance by the arrangement of our environment and external influences, using tools such as feng shui, talismans, colors, and scents, as well as auditory and visual arousal. Physicists tell us that “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” The laws of earthly physics func- tion in a similar fashion throughout the spiritual world, so one might say that Chinese sexual astrology is a form of “romantic quantum physics.” Just as gravity causes an object to plummet to the ground, so the laws of romantic physics dictate that for every act, there is a logical consequence. In this way we make or break our relationships, not just through random “luck,” but also through our behavior. According to ancient Chinese wisdom, there are two facets that make up personality. The first is “temperament”—our predisposition. The sec- ond is “character”—the actual disposition we acquire after we are born. Spiritual temperament plus earthly character equals personality. Truly, our Introduction 13 character reflects the intent of our heart. Character traits that we would view as positive—fidelity, passion, attachment—reflect the alignment of our body with our spirit (qi). Traits we would view as negative—selfish- ness, sadism, neglect—reflect a significant separation between our per- sonality and our spiritual essence. We have all known those individuals whose personalities seem completely divorced from their spiritual selves. In love and in life, the greater the gulf between one’s spirit and personality, the darker the character. Each Chinese astrological sign or archetype is a balanced mixture of positive and negative sexual attributes. For example, the Snake’s legendary sexual prowess and breathless eroticism can also manifest as philandering or a wandering eye; the Ox’s marathon lovemaking and slow hand can also become undemonstrative or passionless; and the Pig’s all-encompassing sensuality can also be expressed as fetishism or bawdy behavior. The Asian Zodiac uses calculations of yearly or lunar-year periods, rather than months, to order and arrange the signs. Each of the 12 animal signs lasts for an entire year, beginning on various dates between mid- January through mid-February. Some of the sub-specialties of Chinese astrology—such as the Four Pillars of Destiny (Ba Zi)—use the first day of spring (Li Chun, which falls on February 4 or 5 each year) as a beginning date for certain calculations. Each sign repeats every 12th year, but the specific combination of animal sign and element occurs only once every 60 years. Our Chinese astrological signature offers an intimate look into our most private sexual world. Each of the 12 Chinese astrological signs has its own unique sexual style, preferred pleasurable sensations, and turn-ons. (If you do not know what your Chinese birth sign is, please consult Appendix B). In Part I of this book, we will explore the unseen chemistry that long- lasting relationships are made of. In Part II, we will examine the role that our mind, intellect, and attitude play in preparing to make memorable love. And in Part III, we will delve into the secret sexual world of each of the 12 animal archetypes, and peek into the deliciously naughty, the tame, the tawdry, and sometimes even the taboo physical side of our karmic love connections. (I had initially considered omitting some practices which could be considered controversial or might seem shocking to some. After con- sideration, I decided to stay as close as possible to traditional Taoist sexual cultivation and let you, the reader, decide what is valuable.) CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 14 While any relationship can work, passion, romance, and attachment flow more smoothly when we are in tune with the natural laws of the uni- verse. Chinese sexual astrology contains tried-and-true advice that com- bines spiritual compatibility with physical pleasures. From your first conversation with your partner to orgasmic euphoria, I hope this book will become your friend and erotic adviser on your path to love. Welcome to a new world of thinking and possibilities—love and sex written in the stars! Wishing you a satisfied spirit, mind, and body, SHELLY WU Author’s Note The two most popular romanization styles of Chinese characters and words are pinyin and Wade-Giles. Pinyin has largely sup- planted the older Wade-Giles system, and thus has become the standard system for romanizing the Chinese language. For sake of clarity and ease of pronunciation, pinyin will be used through- out this text. (In instances in which readers would more familiar with the Wade-Giles spelling, this version will be given as well.) Some comparative conversions from Wade-Giles to pinyin: Wade-Giles Pinyin ch’i qi tao dao chi ji t’ai tai t’ien tian t’ao tao P A R A R A R A R A R T I I I I I SPIRIT CONNECTIONS To love deeply gives you strength. Being loved deeply gives you courage. —Laozi This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 1 CHINESE LOVE SIGNS— KARMIC CONNECTIONS 17 I BELIEVE IN ONLY MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES. The time that our spir- its choose to enter this physical world is both significant and informative. When we first encounter someone, our eyes meet and we see their hair color, eyes, and smile, but we also “see,” or sense, their spirit energy or qi (chi). Physical appearance, professional aspirations, or social circumstances cannot explain the intense attraction that exists between certain souls. This attraction is not based on sexual chemistry alone (although that element is often present); rather, it is a “spiritual rendezvous” between kindred or familiar spirits. It has been said that there is a special someone for all of us. Actually, there are many “special someones” with whom we could be very happy. However, there comes a time when most of us yearn to unite with one kindred spirit. While any relationship is possible, given enough under- standing and maturity, Eastern sages have known for millennia that certain souls seek out each other and become powerfully attached. In Eastern culture, the spirit or soul is of utmost importance, and it is through the ongoing process of love relationships that we become whole. Therefore, it is important to cultivate these spiritual connections in order to harmoni- ously merge our minds, and subsequently our sexual energies, with another person. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 18 The following relationship guidelines are time-tested and true through thousands of years of experience. What Is a Karmic Connection? A karmic connection is a powerful psychic connection and a tangible chemistry between two people. It is the successful reuniting of spirit, mind, and body with a matching/kindred/familiar soul, and an ongoing relation- ship that our spirit picks up time and again and in various guises and places. While it is sometimes true that opposites attract each other, more often than not, like attracts like. Kindred or familiar souls always gravitate toward each other and seek to reunite once again. These relationships can occur between spouses, between parents and children, between best friends, be- tween work colleagues, and even between ourselves and a beloved pet. However, those that occur within the context of a sexual or love relationship are extraordinarily profound. Where Will I Find My Soul Mate? Significant people come into our lives at appointed times. As we are presented with many choices throughout our lives, there are also many individuals who will, in their own way, take us down a certain life path. Each potential partner carries their own unique combination of spirit- improving or spirit-destroying potentials. Is searching for one’s soul mate a gamble of sorts? Definitely. But by using the universal principles of Chinese astrology we can make more-informed decisions about who might be a better bet for us to further our spiritual, mental, and physical happiness. As we are spiritual creatures contained within a mutable, physical body, our ultimate purpose in this earthly existence is spiritual or soul develop- ment. Love, enticement, and affection all originate at a soul level. The closest experience we can have with our Creator is through the experience of loving others; indeed, it is through the selfless act of giving with no thought of getting anything in return that we can glimpse the very essence of our Creator and nurture the very best of ourselves. A true soul mate can be identified as one who walks alongside of us in support and agreement of purpose. Soul mates share a life goal and steadfastly work together to achieve it. On the darker side, potential, joy, and one’s higher purpose can all be destroyed by uniting with the wrong individual. Chinese Love Signs—Karmic Connections 19 A spiritual connection is the first and most crucial support for a suc- cessful mental and physical relationship. In order to have a fulfilling physical union and a lasting friendship, this critical first step in the spirit, mind, and body connection cannot be skipped or ignored. All superior and truly ful- filling sexual relationships are built upon this cornerstone. However, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between infatuation, lust, and love. Therefore, one must ask the critical questions: Will a certain romantic alli- ance make me a better person? Is this a “balanced” relationship of give and take? Or does this attachment elicit only discouragement, continually bringing out the worst in me? Hopefully, the guidelines in this book will assist you in determining whether the people you encounter are potential long-term relationship material, or merely passing attractions that enable you to work through some unfinished business. We need not look far to find significant connections in our lives. Most of the relationships that we would consider important today can find their origin in past associations. The reality is that there is no need to go searching for our soul mates, as twin souls have an ongoing connection that neither time nor mortality can separate. Whether we identify them in the moment or in retrospect, these karmic relationships will inevitably unfold before us—we have only to recognize them. These kinds of spiritual and soul mate relationships can occur between same-sex persons as well as in male-female relationships, but both have one thing in common: They are unions in which each couple is brought together to achieve a common goal, and each person contributes to the personal growth of the other. This doesn’t mean that two soul mates won’t experience friction, however. At times, each may feel that the other person is the source of, rather than the remedy for, their pain. This feeling is due to the fact that the soul mate “mirrors” the other and thus spiritually empowers their partner to develop their strengths and confront their weaknesses. In essence, the soul mate enables their partner to emerge as the whole and fulfilled human being they were meant to be. Fresh insights, new sets of choices, and new arenas in which to make these choices are the gifts given to us as we identify and pursue our life’s pur- pose and seek spiritual enlightenment. Destiny will assist us and steer that familiar soul into our path, but our fate will be determined by what we do with these opportunities, as well as by the natural consequences of our choices. Whether you long for a soul mate who will assist you in spiritual growth, or a twin soul who joins with you to complete an important work or pur- pose, let’s continue on and see if any of these connections are occurring in your life right now! This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 2 YIN/YANG— STILLNESS AND MOVEMENT 21 THE ANCIENT CHINESE ATTRIBUTED THE SOURCE OF ALL LIFE to the balance between heaven and earth, the yin and the yang. The yin rep- resents the negative, passive night force—female, water, and receiving. The yang represents the positive, aggressive, day force—male, fire, and giving. These two halves, the yin and the yang, are represented in the familiar Chinese symbol for the tai ji. The two semi-circles of light and dark that make up the complete tai ji merge into each other and move in harmony. One yin and one yang are called Tao (pronounced “dow”). Meaning “the way,” Tao is the ancient Chinese term for the ordering principle that makes harmony possible. In the ancient text of the Tao Te Ching, the Chinese philosopher Laozi formulated a philosophi- cal system that introduced the concept of health and prosperity through awareness of the natural cosmic cycles. This awareness of life, he suggested, was the path to finding balance and achieving a “satisfied mind.” According to this principle, the Tao gives birth to one perfect whole that carries yin on its back and embraces yang in its arms. This blending of qi then becomes balanced and harmonious. Yin and yang are the Tao of heaven and earth, and the principle and root beginning of life and death, of mother and father, and of spiritual enlightenment. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 22 Contained within the light or yang half of the yin/yang symbol is a small circle of dark yin, representing the feminine within the masculine. Similarly, within the dark or yin half of this symbol is a circle of light yang, representing the masculine within the feminine. The yang seeks to find the yin, which in turn is powerfully magnetized toward its other half. Finding out your birth-year polarity (whether you are yin or yang) will reveal which side of the karmic coin you represent. You can discover whether you are, in essence, an ardent front-line yang lover or a dreamy backseat yin lover. Yang Lovers (+ Movement): Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey, Dog Yang lovers take the lead in life and in the bedroom. Their sexual energy builds rapidly and originates in the genitals. This energy needs to be brought out gradually toward the other parts of the body. In love, yang lovers can be quick out of the gate and possess a potent and passionate soul. This positive polarity represents: giving, movement, masculine energy, fire, the sun, daylight, heat, dryness, quickness, assertiveness, angular shapes, the intellect, and the heavens. Yin Lovers (- Stillness): Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster, Pig Yin lovers are receptive, passive lovers who are sensitive, sensual, and feeling-oriented. Their sexual energy originates in the outer areas of the body and needs to be brought in toward the genitals. Yin lovers like to take their time and enjoy the build-up preliminaries in love. This negative polarity represents: receiving, stillness, female energy, the moon, night- time, coolness, moisture, slowness, passivity, receptiveness, round smooth shapes, intuition, and the earth. Our spirits know no gender, and are much more than the amorphous human expression of masculinity or femininity. According to ancient Chinese wisdom, it is yin or yang essence, and not physical gender, that will influence your sensibilities and inclinations. In this sense, any one of us has the capacity to be either the giver or the receiver. For instance, yin males, such as Rabbits, Goats, or Pigs, possess a yin soul and are able to express their “feminine face” more readily than other men. Yang females, such as Tigers, Horses, and Dogs, possess a yang soul and are able to express their assertive “masculine face” more readily than other women. Yin/Yang—Stillness and Movement 23 After determining whether you are yin or yang, it’s time to see where your birth-year animal sign (earthly branch) is placed within the eight major relationship power patterns or energies. In these groupings, notice that some relationships are set up for drama. Those signs with a double whammy of, say, peach blossom and combatant, personify the love/hate relationship. Others, such as the double blessing of being a soul mate and lover in kind, bring harmony and happiness. Familiarize yourself with your sign’s unique network of connections and refer back to this section frequently for reference. Relationship Energies Rat (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Ox In trine with—Monkey, Dragon In opposition to—Horse Combatant to—Goat In kind with—Ox Resolving karma with—Rabbit Steed—Tiger Peach blossom—Rooster Ox (- Yin): Soul mate to—Rat In trine with—Snake, Rooster In opposition to—Goat Combatant to—Horse In kind with—Rat Resolving karma with—Dragon Steed—Pig Peach blossom—Horse Tiger (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Pig In trine with—Horse, Dog In opposition to—Monkey Combatant to—Snake In kind with—Rabbit Resolving karma with—Snake Steed—Monkey Peach blossom—Rabbit Rabbit (- Yin): Soul mate to—Dog In trine with—Goat, Pig In opposition to—Rooster Combatant to—Dragon In kind with—Tiger Resolving karma with—Horse Steed—Snake Peach blossom—Rat Dragon (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Rooster In trine with—Rat, Monkey In opposition to—Dog Combatant to—Rabbit In kind with—Snake Resolving karma with—Goat Steed—Tiger Peach blossom—Rooster CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 24 Snake (-Yin): Soul mate to—Monkey In trine with—Ox, Rooster In opposition to—Pig Combatant to—Tiger In kind with—Dragon Resolving karma with—Monkey Steed—Pig Peach blossom—Horse Horse (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Goat In trine with—Tiger, Dog In opposition to—Rat Combatant to—Ox In kind with—Goat Resolving karma with—Rooster Steed—Monkey Peach blossom—Rabbit Goat (-Yin): Soul mate to—Horse In trine with—Rabbit, Pig In opposition to—Ox Combatant to—Rat In kind with—Horse Resolving karma with—Dog Steed—Snake Peach blossom—Rat Monkey (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Snake In trine with—Rat, Dragon In opposition to—Tiger Combatant to—Pig In kind with—Rooster Resolving karma with—Pig Steed—Tiger Peach blossom—Rooster Rooster (-Yin): Soul mate to—Dragon In trine with—Ox, Snake In opposition to—Rabbit Combatant to—Dog In kind with—Monkey Resolving karma with—Rat Steed—Pig Peach blossom—Horse Dog (+ Yang): Soul mate to—Rabbit In trine with—Tiger, Horse In opposition to—Dragon Combatant to—Rooster In kind with—Pig Resolving karma with—Ox Steed—Monkey Peach blossom—Rabbit Pig (- Yin): Soul mate to—Tiger In trine with—Horse, Dog In opposition to—Snake Combatant to—Monkey In kind with—Dog Resolving karma with—Tiger Steed—Snake Peach blossom—Rat CHAPTER 3 LOVE WRITTEN IN THE STARS— SOUL MATE CONNECTIONS 25 IF DESIRE, ATTRACTION, AND LOVE ORIGINATE at a soul level, how can we determine if a relationship has long-term potential or is just a passing flame? While some relationships are simply ones of convenience or duty, others are truly karmic in nature. In the relationship energies chart (see Chapter 2), you will find a rapport road map of sorts. Find your sign and see what the karmic connection is. Soul Mates The idea of soul mates has existed from time immemorial. Soul mates are the kindred spirits and true spiritual helpmates of the Eastern Zodiac. The soul mate connection is the most potent of the compatibility connec- tions and is comprised of familiar souls attached spiritually from previous associations. They are drawn together in the present because of their asso- ciation in the past. Within this unforgettable connection we will find our karmic cohorts, our twin souls, and those who will be best suited to assist us in our spiritual development. The attraction between two soul mates is a powerful one, and if separation ensues, neither may fully recover. These are the most complimentary couples of the Zodiac, and each will be an invaluable asset in, and catalyst to, the other’s spiritual growth. Whether you desire a soul mate, who will encourage your spiritual growth, CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 26 or a “twin flame,” who will work side by side with you in a united purpose, it is not necessary to actively search for these relationships, as they tend to unfold before our eyes. When the spirit, mind, and body are ready, the soul mate will appear. Rat—Ox Those born into Rat and Ox years are sentimental and vulnerable to each other. These two signs form a mutual admiration society and compli- ment each other in many ways. Both souls are family- and security-oriented and are drawn together in life and in love. The stable Ox provides consis- tency and practicality to the Rat’s clever ideas and projects. Because they are opposite sides of the same coin, they allow each other to revel in strengths and face weaknesses in a safe emotional environment. While no relationship is perfect, this one promises to be pretty close to ideal for each partner. Growth occurs and problems are overcome, even when the other seems to be the source of the problem. Tiger—Pig The deepest of bonds and connections are found between the affec- tionate Pig and the forthright Tiger. The Pig is never threatened by the Tiger’s grand accomplishments and truly enjoys the Tiger’s success as if it were their own. In friendship and in love, this relationship is a keeper. These two soul mates can work through nearly any difficulty and walk side by side spiritually, mentally, and physically. Each “reflects” the other, thus allowing deep insight into the inner self. The Tiger’s need for change Love Written in the Stars 27 and outside interests combined with the Pig’s need for affection and physi- cal comforts makes for a perfect yin/yang communion. Not only can the Tiger and Pig live and love together successfully, but they can also work arm-in-arm as a team in vocational efforts. Rabbit—Dog These two souls recognize each other immediately, as most have spiri- tual links from other times and places. There tends to be an ongoing connec- tion between these two signs that is picked up again and again and in various times and places. A true love connection can be recognized by the “giving” quality of its love, and this kind of selflessness is commonly seen in this karmic connection. Each has the “personal growth curriculum” of the other in the forefront of their heart and mind. If the “attached” Dog and the “detached” Rabbit can overcome their fears and their trust issues, this is a match made in heaven. Dragon—Rooster These two soul mates form a life-line for each other. The Dragon’s Earth element supports and enables the Rooster’s Metal element, thus cre- ating a perfect circuit and a harmonious love match. Both retain their own outside interests independent of the other, yet they form an amicable team and can live in domestic harmony. On the path to love harmony, the Rooster and Dragon may cross paths with each other several times before recogni- tion occurs. The intensity of the connection leaves no doubt that each has indeed found their other half. The Rooster has the spunk and enterprise to hold the interest of the dramatic Dragon, and together they make a handsome and lively couple. Snake—Monkey These soul mates seldom tire of their intense physical attraction toward one another. Equally matched in both guile and allure, the Snake and the Monkey must be cautious of infidelities. This is the Richard Burton/ Elizabeth Taylor love connection, one that has been known to be a rela- tionship of many seasons and incarnations. Break-ups and reunions abound, but in the end these two can’t live without each other. Their spiritual link will reaffirm itself time and time again. This combination is happiest when they identify what their united purpose is, and work hand-in-hand to accomplish that goal or life mission. These two can be identified by their CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 28 similar outlooks on life and their respective intimate contributions, with each using their own unique gifts and perspectives. These two have the potential to celebrate a golden wedding anniversary. Horse—Goat These two soul mates believe in each other and compliment each other perfectly. The Horse is the personification of the yang, masculine day- force, and the Goat is the very essence of the yin, feminine night-force. The Horse, whether male or female, will embody the yang essence that is the initiating forceful impulse which delineates and defines. The Goat, whether male or female, will embody the yin essence that is the responsive nurturing impulse which responds and reunites. The Horse’s decisive mental activity and the Goat’s poetic inner life are in true yin/yang communion. Together, these two will share many fulfilling moments when they connect. CHAPTER 4 LOVE TRINITIES— LOVERS IN TRINE 29 THESE COMPATIBILITY GROUPINGS ARE KNOWN for their affection toward each other and their like-mindedness. They walk hand in hand through the realm of the heart. While soul mates work toward the goal of spiritual development, those signs found in harmonious trine could be described as “twin flames” or “twin souls,” who are brought together to achieve a common goal or purpose in this life. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 30 Horse, Tiger, Dog (Decisiveness, Nobility, Watchfulness) These high-spirited lovers comprise the compatibility trine of “pur- pose.” These three signs seek one another’s company and are like-minded in their pursuit of humanitarian causes. Each excels in verbal communica- tion and is a gifted orator. Relationships and personal connections are their highest priority, and each one seeks their intimate soul mate in this life. Idealistic, decisive, and noble, these three are passionate and earthy lovers ruled by the assertive, positive yang energy. Tiger—Horse These two kindred souls are natural friends and lovers. Like-minded in their pursuit of new challenges, the Tiger and Horse speak the same lan- guage of action, idealism, and improving the human condition. Each sup- ports the other in their mutual pursuit of making this world a better place. Both are physically active, athletic, and in forward “yang” motion. Horse—Dog The Dog and the Horse comprise a remarkable couple. These two effusive souls adore one another and speak the same language of human- ity, freedom, and fairness. The vanquishing vigilante meets Robin Hood when these natural-born rebels unite. They may very well find themselves in the limelight or even in the middle of a revolt. Dog—Tiger If ever there were a karmic love affair, it would be between these two souls. The Tiger and the Dog are naturally drawn toward one another and interact with encouragement and generosity. The Tiger is the emperor and the Dog, the prime minister. These two have the highest respect for one another and each will run to the aid of the other. Together, they make a determined team that is destined to succeed. Rat, Dragon, Monkey (Concealment, Unpredictability, Irrepressibility) These achievement-oriented and visionary signs comprise the second compatible trinity. They are intense and enthusiastic lovers. In life and in Love Trinities—Lovers in Trine 31 love, these three tend to lean toward restlessness and a single-mindedness of purpose. Impetuous and easily frustrated, these three soul mates are irrepressible, unpredictable, and possess potent, positive yang energy. Rat—Dragon When these two are married, emotional security reins supreme. The Dragon and the Rat work well as a team; this is a creative union able to put ideas and plans into practice. The Rat is an organizational genius, while the Dragon is a conjurer of crowds and big projects. They recognize each other’s taste for variety and share a love of socializing. This is a close-to-perfect relationship for both. Dragon—Monkey These two compatible lovers will “click” immediately as they speak a similar language of excitement and unpredictability. They flow together naturally—the Monkey full of fun and the Dragon full of “presence.” As kindred sprits, each brings spontaneity and energy to the union. In love and in life, these two have an excellent chance for a stimulating and enduring relationship. Monkey—Rat Sexuality is a gift, a pleasure, and an art between Rats and Monkeys. These two love each other and are not hesitant about showing it. Exhausting nights of love intertwined with intellectual conversations await this pair. These two are a natural hit. Ox, Snake, Rooster (Endurance, Accumulation, Application) These conservative and consistent signs comprise the third harmoni- ous trinity. These three soul mates conquer life through endurance, appli- cation, and a slow accumulation of energy. Although each sign is fixed and rigid in opinions and views, they are geniuses in the art of meticulous planning, and understand the wisdom of deferred gratification. Each one is a stable and long-lasting love partner ruled by deep, dark yin energy. Ox—Snake This combination is exemplified by a cozy fireside relationship between two karmic best friends. Each has a deep understanding of the other. There CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 32 is excellent compatibility in friendship and in marriage for these two like- minded souls, and they tend to form unions of long duration. Slow and steady is how this couple approaches love and life. Snake—Rooster This is a winning combination of wisdom and work. The philosophical Snake and the industrious Rooster speak a common language of emotion, method, and fine physical appearance. Both are controlled, calculating, and industrious; however, the Rooster is busier, more efficient, and more aggressive than the contemplative Snake. Also, the Rooster is an early riser, while the Snake prefers to languish until noon. Rooster—Ox The Ox and the Rooster are the best of friends, and each enjoys the company of the other. Whether it’s an Ox woman keeping the home fires burning for her sergeant major Rooster husband, or a male Ox enjoying his “little firecracker” of a wife efficiently running their home, this is a match destined to last. Mutual support and dedication to a cause or goal keep these two harmoniously in sync. Rabbit, Goat, Pig (Detachment, Propriety, Resignation) These peaceful, empathetic signs comprise the fourth harmonious trinity. These three signs are artistic, refined, and well-mannered, and they share their quest for beauty in this life. They desire the preliminaries in romance and are the fine artists of lovemaking. Possessing more placid temperaments than the other nine signs, each one recoils and detaches from strife and ugliness. Their receptive, reflective yin energy seeks a gentle yet dominant lover. Rabbit—Goat The Rabbit and the Goat form a melodious union and exist in a world of aesthetics, culture, and refinement. These two best friends speak a simi- lar language of art and creativity, and walk hand in hand in their quest to find and create beauty. Delicate and brittle emotionally, the Rabbit appre- ciates the Goat’s awesome talent and world of fantasy. Both Rabbits and Goats start to become alive once the sun sets. The Goat is always late but worth the wait. Love Trinities—Lovers in Trine 33 Goat—Pig A loving relationship of courtesy and respect exists between these two gentle souls. The Goat teaches the Pig about romance, and in turn learns temperance from the Pig. Both are good Samaritans and casually take life as it comes. Living a serene and happy life is their goal, and both are deeply rooted in home and family. Pig—Rabbit This is a sweet relationship between two gentle souls. Both are well- mannered and genuinely virtuous. The diplomatic and socially adept Rab- bit aids and befriends the shy Pig, to the benefit of both. These two are extremely good partners, share similar interests, and offer each other a quiet companionship and joy. A stimulating and satisfying partnership. This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 5 LOVERS IN KIND 35 “LOVERS IN KIND” ARE TWO LOVERS who team up to complete one of the six life “palaces,” and form unions that have a specific purpose and strong friendship component. Similar to the soul mates and trines, these combinations come together to complete an important task or project within the realm of the palace they occupy. Each sign is coupled together with the sign found directly after it. The six in kind palaces are: * Creativity—Rat/Ox * Accomplishment—Tiger/Rabbit * Esoteric pursuit—Dragon/Snake * Sexuality—Horse/Goat * Trade/profession—Monkey/Rooster * Family—Dog/Pig Palace #1 Creative Expression— Rat (Begins), Ox (Completes) Not only are the Rat and the Ox soul mates, but they also make up the life palace of creativity and artistic expression. These two souls are reverse sides of the same coin and form a mutual admiration society. The Rat and CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 36 Ox create together, and both are family- and security-oriented. They work together in love and in life, and each can remain devoted to the other for life. The Rat is so sentimental, and so vulnerable in love, that they can sacrifice everything on love’s altar. Nothing is too good or costly for their beloved Ox. Palace #2 Accomplishment/Forward Progress— Tiger (Force), Rabbit (Persuasion) The Tiger’s energy level and verve tends to overwhelm the Rabbit. The Tiger is boisterous, while the Rabbit is understated and artistic. The Tiger is as fearless as the Rabbit is timorous, and while there are much better matches for each of these two, they are brought together to grow and progress. Rabbits make their way in life by means of negotiation, diplomacy, and tact, while Tigers push past life’s obstacles with sheer will and brute force. Both share the Wood element of expansion and rapid growth. Palace #3 Esoteric Pursuit/Spirituality— Dragon (Illusionist, Magician) Snake (Sage) The Dragon and the Snake make up the life palace of spirituality. The magic Dragon and mystic Snake are brought together to develop their “otherworldly” side. The relationship has the potential for happiness if the possessive Snake will allow the autonomous Dragon to leave the lair from time to time. However, if the Snake constricts the Dragon’s movements, there could be friction. Infidelity can also become an issue between these two. However, together they learn to rise above the mundane and soar to new esoteric heights. Palace #4 Sexuality/Reproduction— Horse (Yang Masculine) Goat (Yin Feminine) Not only are the Horse and the Goat soul mates, but they are also lovers in kind. Together they comprise the life palace of sexuality. These two are opposite sides of the same coin and form a powerful combination of male and female essence. They compliment each other perfectly, with the Horse being the personification of the positive, yang day-force, and the Goat representing the absolute essence of the negative, yin night-force. Together these two make one perfect whole. Lovers in Kind 37 Palace #5 Trade/Profession— Monkey (Versatility) Rooster (Efficiency) The Monkey and the Rooster are lovers in kind, and make up the life palace of career and profession. Monkeys advance their position through dexterity, while Roosters promote their interests via competence. Both share the Metal element of rigidity and structure hidden within their animal branches. This is a pairing that can bring rewards to both sides, especially in the realm of business. These two can become very successful together, either for the short term or for a lifetime. Palace #6 Family/Home and Hearth— Dog (Creates) Pig (Finishes) While they are not found in the traditional triangles of compatibility, the Dog and Pig are lovers in kind—like kind, that is. Together they make up the life palace of home and family, and they are brought together to develop their family side. With this team, one builds and the other furnishes—the earnest Dog lays the foundation and the affectionate Pig puts on the roof (so to speak). This pairing makes a loyal and romantic allegiance that is able to stand the test of time. Dogs and Pigs often cel- ebrate golden wedding anniversaries. This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 6 LOVERS RESOLVING KARMA 39 RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS ARE DESTINED to be repeated until they are finally healed or “made right.” “Lovers resolving karma” are two souls who meet up once again, this time in a new arena, in order to learn, reverse roles, and/or generally resolve past issues. These often tumultuous couplings can be identified by two animal signs (or years) between the individuals’ birthdates. These particular connections are often of the “love-hate” vari- ety and can make the partners feel like captives in their own arena. Lovers resolving karma look good on paper, but something doesn’t feel quite right to the lovers themselves. When two lovers find themselves in this pattern, it is a good bet that there are issues to resolve. Balance through tension is prevalent in these particular connections. Parent-child relationships, as well as in-law and relative connections, can also be found within this relationship energy. Lovers resolving karma are: * Rat—Rabbit * Ox—Dragon * Tiger—Snake * Rabbit—Horse CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 40 * Dragon—Goat * Snake—Monkey * Horse—Rooster * Goat—Dog * Monkey—Pig * Rooster—Rat * Dog—Ox * Pig—Tiger Here are a few examples: * Rabbit male with Rat mother chooses a series of Rat females totally unsuited for him. * Snake male with Tiger mother chooses stormy relationships with Tiger lovers in order to finally come to terms with his past. * Pig female with philandering Monkey father chooses flirtatious Monkey man as husband. Same issues abound. Rat—Rabbit A Rat soul cannot live without intimate conversation, and the private Rabbit can leave the Rat feeling locked out and afloat. The Rabbit is not as invested in the relationship as her Rat partner, who wants to merge with the Rabbit completely. The Rabbit is also perceived as emotionally unavail- able to the hypersensitive Rat, who in turn tends to view the Rabbit as a trophy or an acquisition of sorts. Being meticulous and at times overly concerned with her own health, the Rabbit finds the Rat’s penchant for hypochondria and excesses in various health vices exasperating. In this situation, the Rat is not above feigning illness or fragility in order to get needed attention. Both share a love of the fine arts and socializing; however, due to their divergent dispositions, this pairing makes better friends than lovers. Ox—Dragon A clash of wills could derail this relationship, which makes well- defined roles for both parties critical. The key to a warm and enduring union is the Dragon spending more time at home. Both the Dragon and Ox need admiration, but it may not be forthcoming from either. The most Lovers Resolving Karma 41 serious obstacle facing this couple is the Dragon’s penchant for love affairs. Infidelity in any form is unforgivable to the grounded Ox. When the choleric Ox becomes green with jealousy she sees only red, and nei- ther matador nor musician can sooth this savage beast. The Dragon is an ethereal creature who rules the cosmos, but can easily feel trapped with little room to maneuver by the earthbound and dispassionate Ox. Tiger—Snake The action-oriented Tiger quickly becomes exasperated with the Snake’s slow deliberations in life. Tigers move fast, think fast, and intend to cross life’s finish line first. The Snake likes to calculate and ponder the meaning of life, which annoys the Tiger to no end. Because of this, the Snake often feels pushed and prodded, while the Tiger feels frustrated. The Snake care- fully takes his time in everything he does, but the brusque Tiger perceives this trait as laziness. In relationships, these two may eventually go their separate ways or live autonomous lives. The Snake is the deliberating philosophizer who chafes against the Tiger’s active lifestyle. The Tiger is of the opinion that the Snake “thinks too much” and should have more tangible projects to attend to. There are control issues here that will need to be resolved. Horse—Rooster This can be a difficult pairing of energies as the Rooster’s fussiness can leave the Horse feeling tense and nervous. The Horse admires the Rooster, but in order to deal with the Rooster’s verbal barbs and criticism he must learn to set limits and boundaries. Sparks can fly in any verbal battle that breaks out between them, and unfortunately neither partner feels a strong enough bond to make any sacrifices for the other. The superficial nature of this relationship means that the Horse and the Rooster make a better public than private couple. Attitude seems to be the primary issue between these two souls. This is a partnership that is either enchanting or totally unbearable. Goat—Dog A karmic power struggle if there ever was one! This double dose of cynicism does neither the pessimistic Dog nor the melancholy Goat any good. Both souls tend to look on the negative side of life and are prone to expect the worst. There are authority and control issues to be resolved CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 42 here—and the sooner the better. The Dog herds the Goat into places he has no desire to be, thus bringing out his horns in defiance. Mutual expectations lead to disappointments, and more often than not it is the Dog who feels let down in this relationship. The Goat may feel compelled to live up to the Dog’s unrealistic standards, while the Goat’s attraction to drama stresses the Dog. Monkey—Pig Given the regularity with which these two souls come together, the natural assumption is that they are compatible. Unfortunately, they are only familiar, not compatible. Not only does this pair fall into the resolving karma, “we-have-issues” category, but the Monkey and the Pig are in a “karmic combatant” relationship with each other as well. Arguments due to different priorities regarding home and hearth can be troublesome. The Monkey has his own agenda, which may or may not include the Pig. Infi- delities and indiscretions on the Monkey’s part threaten to topple the Pollyanna Pig’s world. The tricky Monkey just can’t resist misleading the naive Pig, who stands to get hurt in this union. CHAPTER 7 LOVERS IN OPPOSITION 43 WHILE FASCINATED BY AND INITIALLY ATTRACTED TO EACH OTHER, those signs in direct opposition eventually repel one another due to clashes in essential disposition. It is interesting to note that each of these opposi- tions is said to “open the money vault” for the other. Oppositional signs can be auspicious in business, each bringing to the table what the other lacks. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 44 Rat—Horse Interestingly, despite their opposition, these two souls meet up with each other frequently. Rat-year souls have a dual nature, exhibiting a need for security along with a need for independence. Rats need an understanding ear who will listen to their ideas, but the Horse is too preoccupied with his own dreams and ambitions. Love relationships in opposition seem initially to be “made in heaven” but can end in disappointment or bitterness. The Rat and the Horse are two out of the four “peach blossom” or love flower signs. Each is an incorrigible flirt and has a taste for sexual variety. The generous Horse can’t abide the Rat’s penny-pinching ways, and asking the Horse to sign a prenuptial agreement is akin to treason. This is a karmic opposition that makes better friends than lovers. Ox—Goat If one says black, the other says white. These two polarized opposites can make sparks fly with their radically different temperaments and opin- ions. Oxen are predictable and responsible, while Goats are artistic and completely unconcerned with time limits and tedious obligations. The Goat often experiences the Ox’s sense of responsibility as overbearing and even tyrannical. In general, the Ox acts and the Goat reacts to life. This is a case of the motorcycle cop with the quota to meet versus the low-key, small- town sheriff who wants no confrontation. Oxen are regulated, organized, and controlled, while Goats are “loose cannons” that capriciously act and react in life. This is not an auspicious romantic combination, but other kinds of relationships such as siblings, business partners, and so on can be beneficial to both. Tiger—Monkey There can be a trust issue between these two polarized souls. The Tiger knows that the Monkey is capable of playing tricks and gaining confi- dences and this makes him nervous. The Tiger has no patience for the Monkey’s schemes, tricks, or double-talk, and finds it difficult to tolerate the Monkey’s “know-it-all” attitude. Then there’s the matter of who is upstaging whom. There can only be one king or queen of the jungle, and the Tiger is it! Another problem between them is that the independent Tiger spends a lot of time away from home, which gives the Monkey too many opportunities to become involved in an affair. This pairing makes better accomplices in war, danger, or intrigue than it does in the lover’s nest. Lovers in Opposition 45 Rabbit—Rooster No matter how hard these two try, compatibility seems beyond their reach. The brash Rooster’s caustic criticism sets the Rabbit’s nerves on edge. The Rooster considers the Rabbit the “weaker vessel,” too delicate and easily hurt. If the Rabbit is a sexual submissive, the dominating Rooster may fit the bill, at least sexually. Outside of the bedroom, however, this is not an auspicious relationship. While relationships between all signs are possible, the combination of the aloof Rabbit and the cocky Rooster very rarely results in a long-term affair. At the relationship’s best, the talented Rabbit can use the resourceful Rooster to help further or advance his career. At its worst, it can end with the Rabbit breaking things off to escape commitment, leaving the angry Rooster to stew in her own juice. Dragon—Dog This is an interesting relationship to say the least. Being polarized opposites, the Dragon and the Dog are as different as night and day. Because the traditional Dog clashes with the nontraditional Dragon, their relationship path is often filled with bumps and quagmires. The worst of these occur when the Dragon’s brutally outspoken tendencies meet up with the Dog’s thin emotional skin. Ouch! Another hurdle for this couple to overcome is the fact that the dutiful Dog does what is necessary while the Dragon does as he pleases. However, each possesses traits that the other would do well to learn. The Earth element that they share binds them somewhat, but they remain better colleagues than lovers. Possibly good business associates, but a difficult and complicated love union. Snake—Pig While both are agreeable and deeply feeling souls, the Snake and Pig are in direct opposition. They try to please each other but can’t quite seem to make the connection. The honest Pig judges the Snake as having an “elastic,” less-than-scrupulous conscience, which drives a wedge of tension between the two. In addition, the Pig has difficulty adhering to the Snake’s penny-pinching ways, while the Snake is irritated by the Pig’s over-indulgence in various material pleasures. One spends and the other saves, then abruptly, the Snake will turn extravagant while the Pig is financially circumspect. They just can’t seem to get in sync with each other. For them to have any kind of a successful relationship, communica- tion will be the key. This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER 8 LOVERS LOCKED IN KARMIC COMBAT 47 “LOVERS LOCKED IN KARMIC COMBAT” are any two signs that are embroiled in unseen combat with one another. Amongst the couples suffering from this nasty karma are found previous enemies, rivals, and antagonists—the jailed meet their jailer, the duped meet their trickster, and each is wiser and experienced enough to do some reciprocal damage. These are the worst of the worst love combinations, so each is advised to steer psychically clear of the other. (Note: Those brave souls who strive to make amends and “fix” this cycle are functioning at a high spiritual level and are subconsciously balancing their karmic score card.) Choose your battles wisely here, as they could come back to haunt you. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 48 Sometimes we place ourselves (or are placed) in these difficult energy patterns for personal spiritual growth. In the combatant vibration we can choose to conquer the animosity once and for all, or deal with it another time. Rat—Goat This relationship is a comedy of errors. The first obstacle they find is that the Rat is an early riser and the Goat is not. By the time the leisurely Goat wakes up to face the world, the energetic Rat has almost completed her day. In this pairing hyperactivity meets sloth, and the results can be inharmonious to say the least. The Rat is a thrifty and neat perfectionist while the Goat is a profuse shopper and less than tidy. These two have interests in common, but each views the world in such a radically different way that this pairing makes for difficult friendships, associates, and especially lovers. Ox—Horse The Horse would rather be any place except home. This is nothing less than treason to the Ox, who holds the family circle in such reverence. The Horse interprets the Ox’s stability as dispassion. Neither sign has the foggiest idea of how the other thinks or feels. In Chinese folklore, it is said that the Horse and Ox can never share a stable. The Horse also doesn’t appreciate being bossed around by the Ox, for whom taking charge comes naturally. Oxen prefer to spend their leisure time beautifying and improving their home, while Horses would rather be off at a concert, a play, a social event, or a sports activity. This disconnect makes for rivalries, poor romantic prospects, and difficult associations in general. Tiger—Snake Here we have a “double whammy” of karmic combatants, as well as two souls resolving karma (see Chapter 6). The Tiger and Snake have major differences of opinion on just about everything. In this relationship, the Snake feels pushed to go faster than he is comfortable with, while the Tiger tires of waiting for the Snake to make up his mind. The Tiger is externally focused while the Snake remains internally centered. The Snake’s slow deliberations and endless pondering irritate the Tiger and make her impa- tient. Tigers move fast, think fast, and intend to cross life’s finish line first. Lovers Locked in Karmic Combat 49 The Snake takes his time in everything he does, and unfortunately the crass Tiger may label this trait as laziness. Rabbit—Dragon According to a Chinese proverb, “When the Rabbit comes, the Dragon’s fortune goes.” Thus there is a strong caution against this relationship. Unfortunately, the Rabbit and the Dragon are only one sign (and some- times less than one year) apart, and therefore are often thrown together as classmates, colleagues, and spouses. The Rabbit is refined and mannerly, while the Dragon is crass and outspoken. This has the effect of creating many tensions. The Dragon overwhelms the Rabbit with her force of will and overbearing conduct. The Rabbit is discreet and courteous while the Dragon is direct and blunt, often revealing the Rabbit’s secrets and caus- ing him embarrassment. These two have such radically different tempera- ments that this pairing makes for almost insurmountable difficulties in friendships, family relations, and especially love relationships. Monkey—Pig Here we have another “double whammy” of two karmic combatants, as well as two souls resolving karma (see Chapter 6). The Monkey and Pig have major differences of opinion on just about everything. Considering the surprising regularity with which these two souls come together, the natural assumption would be that they are compatible. This is rarely the case, however. The Monkey has his own agenda, which may or may not include the Pig. The tricky Monkey just can’t resist misleading the naive Pig, and the Pig is generally the last to find out about this. Unfortunately it is the Pig who stands to get hurt in this union. Dog—Rooster This combination is akin to a psychic blood fest. When the egotistic and sadistic Rooster teams up with the masochistic and insecure Dog, any- thing can happen. Each sign antagonizes the other, and the relationship is likely to bring out the worst in both personalities. This is a difficult com- bination of energies, as the thin-skinned Dog is not equipped to be the recipient of the Rooster’s caustic verbal barbs. Should a full-fledged airing of grievances break out between these two, take cover! These two have such radically different temperaments and needs that this pairing makes CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 50 for insurmountable difficulties between family members, work colleagues, and spouses. The Steed and the Peach Blossom In addition to the six major relationship energies covered previously, there are two more patterns that complete the eight karmic connections. These additional relationship energy patterns—the “steed” and the “peach blossom”—are challenging in a different way. Monkey Rat Dragon Steed - Snake (-) Peach - Rat (+) Steed - Monkey (+) Peach - Rabbit (-) Steed - Pig (-) Peach - Horse (+) Steed - Tiger (+) Peach - Rooster (-) Ox Tiger Dog Horse Rooster Snake Pig Goat Rabbit Each of the four compatibility trines or triangles—Rat/Dragon/ Monkey, Ox/Snake/Rooster, Tiger/Horse/Dog, and Rabbit/Goat/Pig—have both a “steed” sign and a “peach blossom” sign in common. There are four “steed” signs: the Monkey, the Tiger, the Snake, and the Pig. They are also known as the four “Pegasus’” or “winged horses.” These are the ener- gies of movement, change, travel, and reevaluation. This movement can either be by choice (to walk in) or by force (to be pulled in). Each of the four steed signs will pull the three signs connected to them into various kinds of activities. Sometimes these activities represent things that the partners have no desire to do (or no business doing). Examples of this dynamic would be a Monkey insistently demanding that their Tiger spouse take them home five minutes after arriving somewhere, or a Snake prodding a Goat colleague to invest in the latest “hot stock” financial scheme. As you can well imagine, the steed sign connections can be exhausting, draining, and depleting. Lovers Locked in Karmic Combat 51 These connections can be positive if they urge resolution or usher in beneficial change. However, more often than not they are negative, espe- cially if the sign connected to the steed feels coerced, overwhelmed, trapped, or otherwise pressured into unwanted action or change. Each of the four compatibility groups shares a steed sign, and this sign will reveal where movement and change will occur. Expect things to shake up when: * The Tiger/Horse/Dog pairs up with the Monkey. * The Rabbit/Goat/Pig pairs up with the Snake. * The Rat/Dragon/Monkey pairs up with the Tiger. * The Ox/Snake/Rooster pairs up with the Pig. The “peach blossom” signs are the Rat, Rabbit, Horse, and Rooster. These rascals are responsible for torrid love affairs and some memorable scenes. Everything from soul mates and twin flames to obsessions and fatal attractions are found in the peach blossom connections. If love drama is what you seek, look no further! The peach blossoms are also known as the “love plums,” “cherry blos- soms,” or simply “the flowers of love.” These are the scandalous energies of which novels are written. In addition, these intense romance sparks can be the source either of celebration or of self-destruction: the choice lies entirely with the individuals involved. If you’ve ever obsessively won- dered why you couldn’t seem to disconnect from a distressing love affair, or why you were attracted to someone utterly unsuited for you, a peach blossom connection might have been the culprit. Each of the four compatibility groups (triangles/trines) shares a peach blossom sign: * The Rabbit is the peach to the Tiger/Horse/Dog. * The Rat is the peach to the Rabbit/Goat/Pig. * The Rooster is the peach to the Rat/Dragon/Monkey. * The Horse is the peach to the Ox/Snake/Rooster. An example of this ironic and tangled romantic mess might include a Dog who, against his better judgment, throws caution, good sense, and his present relationship to the wind for a Rabbit (the Dog’s peach blossom), who in turn abandons said Dog for her own peach blossom—a Rat. The plot thickens as this same Rat becomes obsessed with a Rooster (the Rat’s peach blossom) colleague at work, despite the possibility of jeopardizing his CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 52 job. As you can see, the peach blossom connections have the potential of causing many sleepless nights, and are the relationships of which soap operas are made. These connections can be even more complicated, as several of the peach blossom combinations also contain signs that fall into other catego- ries. For example, two of the peach blossom connections fall into the “soul mate” vibration as well (see Chapter 3), such as the Dog with the Rabbit and the Dragon with the Rooster. Because they are both peach blossoms and soul mates to each other, they are at extremely high risk for obsessive love. Each can take the other to the top of life’s mountain, or slay them face down in the valley of heartbreak. Usually, the peach blossoms only cause some drama and memories for the rocking chair, but when peach blossoms/soul mates (Rabbit/Dog and Dragon/Rooster) part ways, the damage could be extensive, and neither may fully recover. Because of this double connection, these pairings carry the highest potential of becoming love-hate relationships. Two more peach blossom connections fall into the double category, but this time the peach blossom is also the worst-of-the-worst “combatant.” This occurs between the Rat and the Goat and between the Horse and the Ox. Because they are both peach blossoms they are easily attracted to each other, but as combatants they are at extremely high risk of broken love relationships that end on a sour note. Infatuated one minute, over it the next. When two peach blossoms/combatants separate (the Goat and the Rat or the Ox and the Horse), each breaths a sigh of relief and is glad to be free of the other. Other peach blossom combinations, such as the Horse with the Rooster or the Snake, the Rat with the Rabbit or the Pig, the Rooster with the Rat or the Monkey, and the Rabbit with the Horse or the Tiger, can go their separate ways and leave on friendly terms. CHAPTER 9 THE ELEMENTS OF CONNECTION— ARE YOU ELEMENTALLY COMPATIBLE? 53 IF YOU PLAYED THE CHILDHOOD GAME of “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” you are already acquainted with the controlling/assisting cycles of the five Chinese Elements. The five Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water) both assist and control one another, thus preserving perfect balance in our universe. Indeed, the moment our souls entered our physical bodies at birth, they became in tune and in sync with the universal physics of matter. Not only do these basic Elemental influences shade and flavor our personalities, but they can be used as a potent compatibility meter, allowing us to have a glimpse into our connectedness. Do you and your partner help or hinder each other? Use the time-tested Elemental principles to see if you compli- ment or conflict with your lover. Do you bring happiness, wealth, and contentment to each other, or control, unwanted change, or even misfortune? First, determine which Element ruled the year you were born from the following “earthly branches and heavenly stems” table. Next, ask yourself whether your birth-year animal branch is yin or yang. Remember, when the Wood Element is paired with a yin (-) sign (Ox, Rabbit, Snake, Goat, Rooster, Pig), it will always be “yin Wood” or “Yi.” If the Wood Element is paired with a yang (+) sign (Rat, Tiger, Dragon, Horse, Monkey, Dog) it becomes “yang Wood” or “Jia.” In this way, the five Elements become the 10 “heavenly stems.” CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 54 If you are a Fire Tiger, you are “yang Fire” or “Bing” because the Fire Element is paired with a yang branch animal sign. Similarly, if you are a Fire Ox, you are “yin Fire” or “Ding,” as the Fire Element is paired with a yin branch animal sign. Here is an example: Mei Li was born on May 20, 1953—a Water Snake or “Gui Si” year—so she is yin (-) Water. Her part- ner, Li Chun, was born on October 5, 1956—a Fire Monkey or “Bing Shen” year—so he is yang (+) Fire. As her Water conquers and controls his Fire, he represents “entitled or earned wealth” for her. From his vantage point, her Water brings “beneficial change” to his life. Earthly Branches and Heavenly Stems Rat 1900 Jan 31 to Feb 18, 1901: + yang Metal Rat on the fence 1912 Feb 18 to Feb 5, 1913: + yang Water Rat on the mountain 1924 Feb 5 to Jan 24, 1925: + yang Wood Rat on the roof 1936 Jan 24 to Feb 10, 1937: + yang Fire Rat of the field 1948 Feb 10 to Jan 28, 1949: + yang Earth Rat of the granary 1960 Jan 28 to Feb 14, 1961: + yang Metal Rat on the crossbeams 1972 Feb 15 to Feb 2, 1973: + yang Water Rat on the hilltop 1984 Feb 2 to Feb 19, 1985: + yang Wood Rat of the mulberry tree 1996 Feb 19 to Feb 6, 1997: + yang Fire Rat of the grasslands 2008 Feb 7 to Jan 25, 2009 + yang Earth Rat of the granary The Elements of Connection 55 Ox 1901 Feb 19 to Feb 7, 1902: - yin Metal Ox on the road path 1913 Feb 6 to Jan 25, 1914: - yin Water Ox by the pond 1925 Jan 25 to Feb 12, 1926: - yin Wood Ox of the golden sea 1937 Feb 11 to Jan 30, 1938: - yin Fire Ox of the little Stream 1949 Jan 29 to Feb 16, 1950: - yin Earth Ox of the shelter 1961 Feb 15 to Feb 4, 1962: - yin Metal Ox on the road 1973 Feb 3 to Jan 22, 1974: - yin Water Ox of the little stream 1985 Feb 20 to Feb 8, 1986: - yin Wood Ox of the golden sea 1997 Feb 7 to Jan 27, 1998: - yin Fire Ox of the little stream 2009 Jan 26 to Feb 13, 2010: - yin Earth Ox of the shelter Tiger 1902 Feb 8 to Jan 28, 1903: + yang Water Tiger of the stream 1914 Jan 26 to Feb 13, 1915: + yang Wood Tiger of forest 1926 Feb 13 to Feb 1, 1927: + yang Fire Tiger of the furnace 1938 Jan 31 to Feb 18, 1939: + yang Earth Tiger climbing mountain 1950 Feb 17 to Feb 5, 1951: + yang Metal Tiger of mountain pines 1962 Feb 5 to Jan 24, 1963: + yang Water Tiger of the stream 1974 Jan 23 to Feb 10, 1975: + yang Wood Tiger of the forest 1986 Feb 9 to Jan 28, 1987: + yang Fire Tiger of the furnace 1998 Jan 28 to Feb 15, 1999: + yang Earth Tiger climbing mountain 2010 Feb 14 to Feb 2, 2011: + yang Metal Tiger of mountain pines Rabbit 1903 Jan 29 to Feb 15, 1904: - yin Water Rabbit of the forest pond 1915 Feb 14 to Feb 2, 1916: - yin Wood Rabbit of enlightenment 1927 Feb 2 to Jan 22, 1928: - yin Fire Rabbit dreaming of moon 1939 Feb 19 to Feb 7, 1940: - yin Earth Rabbit of pine mountains 1951 Feb 6 to Jan 26, 1952: - yin Metal Rabbit of the burrow 1963 Jan 25 to Feb 12, 1964: - yin Water Rabbit of the forest pond 1975 Feb 11 to Jan 30, 1976: - yin Wood Rabbit of enlightenment 1987 Jan 29 to Feb 16, 1988: - yin Fire Rabbit dreaming of moon 1999 Feb 16 to Feb 4, 2000: - yin Earth Rabbit of pine mountains 2011 Feb 3 to Jan 22, 2012: - yin Metal Rabbit of the burrow CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 56 Dragon 1904 Feb 16 to Feb 3, 1905: + yang Wood Dragon of the whirlpool 1916 Feb 3 to Jan 22, 1917: + yang Fire Dragon of the sky 1928 Jan 23 to Feb 9, 1929: + yang Earth Dragon of virtue 1940 Feb 8 to Jan 26, 1941: + yang Metal Dragon of patience 1952 Jan 27 to Feb 13, 1953: + yang Water Dragon of the rain 1964 Feb 13 to Feb 1, 1965: + yang Wood Dragon of the whirlpool 1976 Jan 31 to Feb 17, 1977: + yang Fire Dragon of the sky 1988 Feb 17 to Feb 5, 1989: + yang Earth Dragon of virtue 2000 Feb 5 to Jan 23, 2001: + yang Metal Dragon of patience 2012 Jan 23 to Feb 9, 2013: + yang Water Dragon of the rain Snake 1905 Feb 4 to Jan 24, 1906: - yin Wood Snake of the forest trees 1917 Jan 23 to Feb 10, 1918: -yin Fire Snake of lamps 1929 Feb 10 to Jan 29, 1930: - yin Earth Snake of desert sands 1941 Jan 27 to Feb 14, 1942: - yin Metal Snake of molded bronze 1953 Feb 14 to Feb 2, 1954: - yin Water Snake of the wetlands 1965 Feb 2 to Jan 20, 1966: - yin Wood Snake of the forest trees 1977 Feb 18 to Feb 6, 1978: - yin Fire Snake of lamps 1989 Feb 6 to Jan 26, 1990: - yin Earth Snake of desert sands 2001 Jan 24 to Feb 11, 2002 - yin Metal Snake of molded bronze 2013 Feb 10 to Jan 30, 2014: - yin Water Snake of the wetlands Horse 1906 Jan 25 to Feb 12, 1907: + yang Fire Horse of the celestial river (stars) 1918 Feb 11 to Jan 31, 1919: + yang Earth Horse of the stable 1930 Jan 30 to Feb 16, 1931: + yang Metal Horse of the palace 1942 Feb 15 to Feb 4, 1943: + yang Water Horse of battlefield 1954 Feb 3 to Jan 23, 1955: + yang Wood Horse of the clouds 1966 Jan 21 to Feb 8, 1967: + yang Fire Horse of the celestial river (stars) 1978 Feb 7 to Jan 27, 1979: + yang Earth Horse of the stable 1990 Jan 27 to Feb 14, 1991: + yang Metal Horse of the palace 2002 Feb 12 to Jan 31, 2003: + yang Water Horse of the battlefield 2014 Jan 31 to Feb 18, 2015: + yang Wood Horse of the clouds The Elements of Connection 57 Goat 1907 Feb 13 to Feb 1, 1908: - yin Fire Goat of the lost sheep 1919 Feb 1 to Feb 19, 1920: - yin Earth Goat of the pasture 1931 Feb 17 to Feb 5, 1932: - yin Metal Goat of the mines (fortune) 1943 Feb 5 to Jan 24, 1944: - yin Water Goat of the gathering flock 1955 Jan 24 to Feb 11, 1956: - yin Wood Goat of dedication 1967 Feb 9 to Jan 29, 1968: - yin Fire Goat of the lost sheep 1979 Jan 28 to Feb 15, 1980: - yin Earth Goat of the pasture 1991 Feb 15 to Feb 3, 1992: - yin Metal Goat of the mines (fortune) 2003 Feb 1 to Jan 21, 2004: - yin Water Goat of the gathering flock 2015 Feb 19 to Feb 7, 2016: - yin Wood Goat of dedication Monkey 1908 Feb 2 to Jan 21, 1909: + yang Earth Monkey of independence 1920 Feb 20 to Feb 7, 1921: + yang Metal Monkey eating pomegranate 1932 Feb 6 to Jan 25, 1933: + yang Water Monkey of elegance 1944 Jan 25 to Feb 12, 1945: + yang Wood Monkey of the trees 1956 Feb 12 to Jan 30, 1957: + yang Fire Monkey of the foothills 1968 Jan 30 to Feb 16, 1969: + yang Earth Monkey of independence 1980 Feb 16 to Feb 4, 1981: + yang Metal Monkey eating pomegranate 1992 Feb 4 to Jan 22, 1993: + yang Water Monkey of elegance 2004 Jan 22 to Feb 8, 2005: + yang Wood Monkey of the trees 2016 Feb 8 to Jan 27, 2017: + yang Fire Monkey of the foothills Rooster 1909 Jan 22 to Feb 9, 1910: - yin Earth Rooster of foraging 1921 Feb 8 to Jan 27, 1922: - yin Metal Rooster of steel cages 1933 Jan 26 to Feb 13, 1934: - yin Water Rooster of barnyard pond 1945 Feb 13 to Feb 1, 1946: - yin Wood Rooster crowing at dawn 1957 Jan 31 to Feb 17, 1958: - yin Fire Rooster of seclusion 1969 Feb 17 to Feb 5, 1970: - yin Earth Rooster of foraging 1981 Feb 5 to Jan 24, 1982: - yin Metal Rooster of steel cages 1993 Jan 23 to Feb 9, 1994: - yin Water Rooster of barnyard pond 2005 Feb 9 to Jan 28, 2006: - yin Wood Rooster crowing at dawn 2017 Jan 28 to Feb 15, 2018: - yin Fire Rooster of seclusion CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 58 Dog 1910 Feb 10 to Jan 29, 1911: + yang Metal Dog of gold bracelets 1922 Jan 28 to Feb 15, 1923: + yang Water Dog of deep oceans 1934 Feb 14 to Feb 3, 1935: + yang Wood Dog on guard 1946 Feb 2 to Jan 21, 1947: + yang Fire Dog of dreams (sleep) 1958 Feb 18 to Feb 7, 1959: + yang Earth Dog of the mountain 1970 Feb 6 to Jan 26, 1971: + yang Metal Dog of gold bracelets 1982 Jan 25 to Feb 12, 1983: + yang Water Dog of deep oceans 1994 Feb 10 to Jan 30, 1995: + yang Wood Dog on guard 2006 Jan 29 to Feb 17, 2007: + yang Fire Dog of dreams (sleep) 2018 Feb 16 to Feb 4, 2019: + yang Earth Dog of the mountain Pig 1911 Jan 30 to Feb 17, 1912: - yin Metal Pig of jewelry 1923 Feb 16 to Feb 4, 1924: - yin Water Pig of the wide sea 1935 Feb 4 to Jan 23, 1936: - yin Wood Pig of travel and journeys 1947 Jan 22 to Feb 9, 1948: - yin Fire Pig cresting the mountain 1959 Feb 8 to Jan 27, 1960: - yin Earth Pig of the monastery 1971 Jan 27 to Jan 15, 1972: - yin Metal Pig of jewelry 1983 Feb 13 to Feb 1, 1984: - yin Water Pig of the wide sea 1995 Jan 31 to Feb 18, 1996: - yin Wood Pig of travel and journeys 2007 Feb 18 to Feb 6, 2008: - yin Fire Pig cresting the mountain 2019 Feb 5 to Jan 24, 2020: - yin Earth Pig of the monastery Now, find your birth Element, and then look to that Element’s description to see how it will influence your relationships. Wood The Wood Element expresses imagination, creativity, simplicity, ideal- ism, and compassion. It also represents the family and artistic theory. Similar to the great Sequoia tree, the nature of Wood is to move upward toward the light, to spread outward and expand. Its creative nature is natu- rally drawn to the arts, to aesthetic pursuits, and to beauty in general. Wood Element people have high-minded values and believe in the dignity of every human being. The Wood Element also brings cooperation, so people born under this element understand the value of teamwork and The Elements of Connection 59 excel in organizing large projects. They are also progressive thinkers and far-sighted in their goals and ventures. The Wood Element endows each sign with a natural presence and sense of propriety; however, Wood is also incendiary and capable of producing a combustible temper. If you were born into a Wood year: * Your sexual style is experimental and casual. * Your predominant sense is touch. * You assist/help partners born into Fire years. * You are assisted by partners born into Water years. * Your traits are kindness, generosity, and expansion, but also anger, frustration, and depression. If you are yang Wood “Jia” (Wood Rat, Wood Tiger, Wood Dragon, Wood Horse, Wood Monkey, or Wood Dog): * Sudden wealth—yang Earth Wu * Entitled wealth—yin Earth Ji * Resources/contentment—yin Water Gui * Controller/positive change—yin Metal Xin * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yang Metal Geng If you are yin Wood “Yi” (Wood Ox, Wood Rabbit, Wood Snake, Wood Goat, Wood Rooster, or Wood Pig): * Sudden wealth—yin Earth Ji * Entitled wealth—yang Earth Wu * Resources/contentment—yang Water Ren * Controller/positive change—yang Metal Geng * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yin Metal Xin Wood Element Combinations The Wood Rat is diligent, successful, and blessed with a curious and inquisitive mind. The youthful, forward-moving Rat loves to find out how things work. This is a social and friendly soul, but the Wood Rat may have trouble with intimacy and experience a tumultuous love life. Agreeable and thoughtful of others, they seek acknowledgment and approval. Wood Rats seek security and will always plan for their future. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 60 The Wood Ox possesses authority and natural presence. Their relent- less determination assures them of success in life. This is the most artistic of the Oxen, and is oftentimes blessed with profound mechanical aptitude. Music, creative writing, and poetry all come naturally to the Wood Ox. A natural leader and authority, this soul may encounter rivalries and jealousies from less talented individuals. The Wood Tiger is a more sedate personality who isn’t as impetuous as other Tigers, preferring instead to look before she leaps. Impartial and a good judge of character, Wood Tigers are intellectual and understand the importance of a team effort. Group efforts bring them great popularity. Wood Tigers will have a diverse selection of friends, some from unusual or eccentric lifestyles. Moving ever upward, the Wood Tiger outgrows positions and changes professions frequently. The Wood Rabbit possesses poetic gifts and is attracted to the fine arts. Gardening and landscaping will please their sense of beauty and har- mony while fulfilling their need for space and freedom. The Wood Rabbit is an outwardly shy, highly intuitive, and deep-feeling soul. This is the gentle seducer who avoids restraints and obligations. Wood Rabbits are collectors of art, antiques, and other objects of beauty. The Wood Dragon is imaginative and talented, and able to improvise when faced with chaotic and unexpected events. This Dragon possesses the gift of creative invention and is attracted to nature and symbols of beauty. Dynamic and courageous, yet seductive and seeking to please, the Wood Dragon has a duel nature. More practical and moderate than their other Dragon counterparts, Wood Dragons have their feet firmly planted on the ground, and they are much less prone to have a heated temper. The Wood Snake craves quiet, stability, and plenty of privacy. This is a sympathetic and earnest Snake, who shares philosophical ideas with all who care to listen. This Snake has a strong need for independence and can successfully take on large projects. The aesthetic nature of Wood blesses this Snake with a love of culture and the fine arts. Wood Snakes are possessive and are very protective of their home and family. The Wood Horse has a quick and disciplined mind, and is a cheerful and cooperative team player. As progressive and modern thinkers, changes and new innovations capture their vivid imagination. The most social of all the Horse Element combinations, Wood Horses are amusing and adept conversationalists, and tend to be attracted to the theater and public speaking, as well as to sports and athletics. The Elements of Connection 61 The Wood Goat tends to worry more than other Goats. On the upside, they are romantic, acquiescing, generous, and well-liked. This is a courte- ous Goat with a good sense of humor. The Wood Goats are the most senti- mental of the Goat Element combination, and are eager to please the ones they love. This is a nurturing Goat who has a soft heart toward stray animals and compassion for friends down on their luck. Wood Goats can always be found giving freely of their resources. The Wood Monkey is resourceful and enthusiastic but may have trouble slowing down or pacing him/her self. This Monkey maintains high stan- dards for themselves as well as others. They are gregarious, socially adept, and possess a quick-witted sense of humor. Personal expression is essen- tial to the Wood Monkey, and because of this they are active participants in life. Their curious mind excels at solving difficult problems and they are never without resources. The Wood Rooster is more thoughtful and tactful than the other Rooster Element combinations. They are open-minded, ambitious, and happiest amongst a social group sharing lively conversation. Wood Roosters are also passionate—just as Wood can incinerate, they are susceptible to excesses at times. They must use their clear-sightedness to avoid getting carried away or pushed to excessive anger. The Wood Rooster gains equilibrium and self-assurance closer to midlife. The Wood Dog is affectionate and youthful, and known for having strong convictions. This is the “team player” of the Dog Element combina- tions. Idealistic and eager to learn, the Wood Dog is popular and forms intimate bonds with others. This is a charming, personable soul who defends his/her values with tenacity and tact. Watchful and nurturing, Wood Dogs can organize major projects and manage large groups of people with ease. The Wood Pig is a well-balanced and charming soul who loves to be close to nature, the woods, and the earth. The Wood Element plays the role of “muse” for this Pig, who may very well express themselves through the arts. Possessing uncanny intuition and influence, the Wood Pig is passion- ate, bawdy, and cannot live without physical love. The Wood Element may also incline this Pig to commit excesses with both food and drink. Fire The Fire Element expresses dynamic passion, energy, aggression, and leadership. The nature of Fire is to arouse, change, convert, consume, resolve, and bring about an outcome. The Fire Element will tend to multiply each CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 62 sign’s inborn talents and energies. Fire Element people have the gifts of leadership, passion, and assertiveness. Decisive and masterful, those born into the Fire Element rarely have trouble making decisions, and they attract others with their strong and radiant personalities. Fire Element souls have an abundance of energy that produces impatience. The movement of Fire is rapid and can consume one’s energies if it is not balanced with relaxation and moderation. The Fire Element represents the ability to be decisive, to lead, and to act spontaneously without forethought. Fire punctuates each sign with an exclamation mark! If you were born into a Fire year: * Your sexual style is dominant and/or sadistic. * Your predominant sense is sight. * You assist/help partners born into Earth years. * You are assisted by partners born into Wood years. * Your dominant traits include joy, leadership, sincerity, and respect, but also impatience, arrogance, and haste. If you are yang Fire “Bing” (Fire Rat, Fire Tiger, Fire Dragon, Fire Horse, Fire Monkey, or Fire Dog): * Sudden wealth—yang Metal Geng * Entitled wealth—yin Metal Xin * Resources/contentment—yin Wood Yi * Controller/positive change—yin Water Gui * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yang Water Ren If you are yin Fire “Ding” (Fire Ox, Fire Rabbit, Fire Snake, Fire Goat, Fire Rooster, or Fire Pig): * Sudden wealth—yin Metal Xin * Entitled wealth—yang Metal Geng * Resources/contentment—yang Wood Jia * Controller/positive change—yang Water Ren * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yin Water Gui Fire Element Combinations The Fire Rat is determined and self-disciplined, and more aggressive by nature than the other Rat Element combinations. They are enthusiastic The Elements of Connection 63 regarding their projects and must guard against overwork. This is a soul of strong moral principles and high-minded thinking. This eternal student absorbs knowledge like a sponge and is well-versed in a wide variety of subjects. A lover of travel and fashionable clothes, the Fire Rat is the most generous of the Rats and, interestingly, the most capable of leadership. The Fire Ox is talented with his hands and highly creative. The Fire Ox has tremendous energy, which can make him impatient to reach his goals. This Ox must respect his body’s limits and guard against exhaus- tion. The Fire Ox is a conqueror and may be drawn to politics or perhaps even the military. Despite this, they remain fiercely individualistic. Fire Oxen are very family-oriented and are always king or queen of their castle. The Fire Tiger has been blessed with extraordinary leadership apti- tude. Fire Tigers are volatile and passionate in life and in love. Patience isn’t their strong point, so the Fire Tiger may find it hard to delay gratifica- tion. Always up for a new adventure, the Fire Tiger is action-oriented, extravagant, and expressive. Rather nomadic by nature, Fire Tigers enjoy frequent changes of environment and are rarely content staying anywhere for too long. These are the most independent members of the Tiger’s pride. The Fire Rabbit is more high-spirited and stubborn than other Rabbit Element combinations. They personify the Rabbit essence of “detachment.” The Fire Rabbit will have a tendency to keep her distance, especially when feeling rejected or excluded. The Fire Element releases a boldness that will overcome the Rabbit’s natural reticence. More outspoken than other Rabbit Element combinations, the Fire Rabbit has an inner flame that strengthens her courage and adds aggression. The Fire Dragon is more ambitious than other Dragon Element com- binations. Articulate in speech and blessed with a tremendous desire to succeed, Fire Dragons are hard workers, natural thespians, and born leaders. The Fire Dragon is admired for her integrity and forthright manner. The most strong-willed of the Dragons, they tend to rely on their own judgment without taking into account others’ views. Always in search of admiration, the Fire Dragon finds it difficult to embrace humility. The Fire Snake is more decisive and self-assured than other Snake Element combinations. They are natural leaders—healthy, vital, ambitious, and confident. They are also tough enough to get the job done. The Fire Snake tends to be more forceful, outgoing, and energetic than some of the other Snakes, but remains compassionate and deep thinking. This Snake wins respect and support with his firm and persistent manner. They possess an excellent sense of humor and have a wide circle of friends. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 64 The Fire Horse will make her mark early in life and exhibit her various talents in astonishing ways. The soul born under this influence will be endowed with superior wisdom, but perseverance may be difficult. Fire Horses display above-average qualities of leadership and draw others to their warmth and brilliance. Both the positive and negative characteristics of the Fire Horse will be multiplied tenfold, as this is the most ardent and impetuous of Horse Element combinations. The Fire Goat is a strong personality. Blessed with extraordinary artistic talents, this Goat is a natural writer, poet, and artisan, and is generally much more expressive than other Goat Element combinations. Generous and charismatic, the Fire Goat inspires others and is one of the only Goats aggressive enough to be a leader. They are extroverted and charming, but they are also self-indulgent and manipulative. The Fire Monkey is competitive and popular. Having wide and diverse interests, this energetic and animated Monkey is a problem solver and a self-starter. Fire Monkeys are creative, resourceful, and highly competitive. The Fire Element imparts great vitality and good health, but could also consume much of their energy. Their fertile imagination produces an ingenious, albeit suspicious, personality. The Fire Rooster is intense, energetic, and a natural leader. This lively Rooster has difficulty staying on one subject and thus can have many projects in the works. The Fire Rooster is self-assured and determined, as well as expressive and brutally candid with their observations. The Fire Element imparts great vitality and a highly competitive nature. Mercurial, zealous, and suspicious of others’ motives, this is the most strong-willed of the Rooster Element combinations. The Fire Dog is dynamic and connects easily with others. They are opinionated, dynamic, and radiant with energy. Highly animated and out- spoken, Fire Dogs have no problem expressing themselves, and many choose to go into politics or the entertainment industry. The Fire Dog has an alluring and friendly personality that conceals a self-effacing and anx- ious spirit. Possessing great charm, the Fire Dog stands her ground and is fierce only when diplomacy has failed. The Fire Pig is decisive and more self-assured than other Pig Element combinations. This is an alluring soul—opinionated, adventuresome, and radiant with energy. The Fire Pig is most fortunate financially, due to his com- bination of ambition and purity of heart. Fire bestows leadership abilities and bravery to this soul, and the Fire Pig often chooses to be a “first-responder” by profession. Many are firemen, police officers, and emergency workers. The Elements of Connection 65 Earth The Earth Element expresses stability, reliability, practicality, and com- mon sense. The nature of Earth is to “ground,” to keep whole, and to preserve. The Earth Element is symbolic of the mother’s protected womb of peace and safety. Those born under the Earth Element are both practical and industrious. They have exceptional powers of organization and are competent masterminds and executives. Honest, serious, and conservative, Earth Element people are capable of making wise decisions. If you were born under the Earth Element: * Your sexual style is self-indulgent and excessive. * Your predominant sense is smell. * You assist/help partners born into Metal years. * You are assisted by partners born into Fire years. * Your dominant traits are fairness, sympathy, and centeredness, but also obsession and worry. If you are yang Earth “Wu” (Earth Rat, Earth Tiger, Earth Dragon, Earth Horse, Earth Monkey, or Earth Dog): * Sudden wealth—yang Water Ren * Entitled wealth—yin Water Gui * Resources/contentment—yin Fire Ding * Controller/positive change—yin Wood Yi * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yang Wood Jia If you are Yin Earth “Ji” (Earth Ox, Earth Rabbit, Earth Snake, Earth Goat, Earth Rooster, Earth Pig): * Sudden wealth—yin Water Gui * Entitled wealth—yang Water Ren * Resources/contentment—yang Fire Bing * Controller/positive change—yang Wood Jia * Controller/unfavorable conflict—yin Wood Yi Earth Element Combinations The Earth Rat is sensible and alert. He has remarkable willpower but also has a tendency to worry about security and finances. The Earth Element tempers the high-strung Rat personality and provides a nurturing, down-to- earth temperament. The Earth Element also makes this Rat prudent, crafty, CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 66 and subtle. Earth Rats need constant activity to keep them from dwelling on or becoming mired in their own problems. The Earth Ox is the most loyal and steadfast of the Ox family. Stoic on the outside yet vulnerable on the inside, the Earth Ox is a deep thinker and tends to be a loner. Food and the earth itself serve as a refuge that entices the Earth Ox to close the door on the human race and pursue meditation, relaxation, and solitude. Enduring and persistent, this is the slowest but surest of all the Oxen. The Earth Tiger looks for practicality in everything she undertakes. The Earth Tiger is not as hot-headed as other Tigers, and possesses a more mature temperament. The Earth Tiger nurtures small helpless things like babies, stray animals, and sad friends down on their luck. They are deeply conscientious and humanitarian in spirit. A fair-minded leader, the Earth Tiger makes an excellent counselor and judge. The Earth Rabbit has excellent deductive powers and prefers solid and reliable pursuits. The Earth Element endows her with more foresight and capacity for organization. This is the most conservative of the Rabbit element combinations. Earth Rabbits are wise and sensible with financial matters. They are also quiet, critical, serious, introverted, and respected. This is the consummate diplomat and peacemaker. The Earth Dragon is more realistic than other Dragons but does enjoy speculation and the accumulation of wealth. A conscientious and hard worker, the Earth Dragon takes on chores and problems which others find impossible to conquer. Prudent yet suspicious, the Earth Dragon has eyes in the back of his head and misses nothing. This is the most nurturing soul of the Dragon family—always willing to help out in a crisis and fiercely protective of family and loved ones. The Earth Snake is a secure and cozy Snake who loves elegance and the material comforts in life. With an ability to turn inward and retreat from the outside world, the Earth Snake is relaxed and at times lethargic. They are prone to “hibernation,” with many choosing a reclusive life of spiritu- ality and contemplation. The dreamy, stay-at-home Snake is often sought out for her wise council. The Earth Horse is careful, capable, and sensible. Horses born under this influence are methodical in manner, excellent managers, and reinforce solid foundations in all that they do. Conservative by nature, the Earth Horse is a realist who knows how to advance prudently and skeptically. This is a less ambitious yet more meticulous Horse who has a tendency to be possessive and very security conscious. The Elements of Connection 67 The Earth Goat is sympathetic, honest, and well-liked. Financially fortunate, the Earth Goat has a taste for luxury and the finer things in life. The most suspicious and mistrustful Goat Element combination, the Earth Goat exhibits unpredictable moods and mental processes. The Earth Goat isn’t as outgoing as the other Goats, and friendships must stand the test of time. This artistic and deep thinking soul of the Goat family lives in a world of dreams and fantasy. The Earth Monkey is well-informed, benevolent, and kind. They can be cursed with perfectionist ways and are more pragmatic and realistic than other Monkeys. Most of their enterprises are motivated by their acquisitive nature and a desire for increasing possessions. This Monkey likes activities that will bear fruit, and tends to be attracted to speculation, sales, and real estate. Although they can be fearful about the future, Earth Monkeys are blessed with financial intuition and good monetary instincts. The Earth Rooster has a profound perspective on life and is the most persistent and persevering of the Rooster Element combinations. This Rooster does not like to take risks and has the ability to build upon the previous work of others. Success, security, and appearance are important elements in the life of the Earth Rooster. Earth Roosters are realistic, prag- matic, and shrewd, and tend to bury their treasures safely away. The Earth Dog possesses a powerful need for recognition and appre- ciation. Independent and gifted, they are capable of devoting themselves totally to a cause or to achieving social ambitions. The Earth Dog is long- suffering in love, and can easily be taken advantage of due to his overly generous nature. Earth Dogs jealously protect their home and loved ones. They are fiercely proud, but can always be counted on to be fair and impartial mediators. The Earth Pig is shrewd and imaginative, but perfectly realistic and materialistic. Earth Pigs are strong and self-confident, and enjoy socializing with their inner circle of trusted friends. This artistic Pig may express her creativity via practical and pragmatic avenues such as computers and logic systems. This combination of sign and Element creates a soul who appears to be submissive, but who is in fact completely in control from behind the scenes. Metal The Metal Element expresses structure, fixed values, strength of will, and fluency of speech. The nature of Metal is to define and to strengthen. CHINESE SEXUAL ASTROLOGY 68 The Metal Element symbolizes clear thinking, sincerity, and accuracy. Metal Element people have the gift of structure and the ability to interface easily with the outside world. Those born into the Metal Element set and follow their own goals with fervor and passion. Metal is determined and fixed, holding each sign in a position of strength by serving	382,587
Colonizing Sex Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan (Colonialisms) (Sabine Frühstück) (Z-Library).pdf	Colonizing Sex COLONIALISMS Jennifer Robertson, General Editor I. Doctors within Borders: Profession~ Ethnicity~ and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan~ by Ming-cheng Lo 2. A Different Shade of Colonialism: Egypt~ Great Britain~ and the Mastery of the Sudan~ by Eve M. Troutt Powell 3. Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan~ by Heather Sharkey 4. Colonizing Sex: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan~ by Sabine F riihstiick Colonizing Sex Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan Sabine Friihstiick UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2003 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Friihstiick, Sabine-. Colonizing sex : sexology and social control in mod- ern Japan I Sabine Friihstiick. p. cm. - (Colonialisms ; 4) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-23547-9 (doth: alk. paper)- ISBN 0-520-23548-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Sexology-Japan. 2. Sex role-Japan. 3. Sex customs-Japan. 4. Sex in popular culture-Japan. 5. Body, Human-Social aspects-Japan. 6. Social control-Japan. 7. Japan -Social life and customs. 8. Japan-Foreign relations~ 9. Japan-Politics and government. I. Title. II. Series. HQI8·J3 F78 2003 306.7'0952-dc2I 2003002461 Manufactured in the United States of America 12 II 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum re- quirements of ANSIINISO z39.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). @ Contents List of Illustrations Vll Acknowledgments IX Introduction I I. Erecting a Modern Health Regime I7 2. Debating Sex Education 55 3· Sexology for the Masses 83 4· Claiming the Fetus 116 5· Breeding the Japanese "Race" 15 2 Epilogue 185 Notes 199 Bibliography 2I7 Index 259 Illustrations I. Idealized sketch of a conscript and his examiner in a health examination office, 1899 29 2. Twenty-year-old Manshii men undergoing a health examination before being drafted, 194 I 30 3· The physical examination of conscripts was explained to readers of illustrated children's books, 1940 31 4· Popular Medicine chose venereal diseases as a cover theme for its November 1926 issue 45 5· One of many children's books that emphasized the importance of proper hygiene, 1940 53 6. The first issue of the journal I-lumankind: Der Mensch, 1905 57 7· The spring 1920 issue of Akiyama Yoshio's journal Sexuality dealt almost exclusively with "female sexual desire" 101 8. Sexual Theory (April 1928) distinguished itself from the beginning with its entertaining spoofs of other sexological magazines 108 9· Advertisements for birth control devices in a popular magazine, 193 5 117 10. Advertisement boards at the entrance of a Tokyo pharmacy, 1937 146 II. Advertisement featuring a man on Tokkapin tablets from the January 1927 issue of Popular Medicine 171 Vll Vill 12. Advertisement for Androstin (Andorosuchin), a potency-enhancing drug, I 9 37 13· Advertisement for Chireorupin from the December 1933 issue of Popular Medicine I4. Advertisement for Bunpireshon from the April 1937 issue of Popular Medicine 15. April 1949 issue of Marital Sex Life Illustrations 173 174 175 182 Acknowledgments I began research for this project with my dissertation (completed in 1996), under the guidance of Sepp Linhart and Helga Nowotny, then both at the University of Vienna. Sepp taught me to be an intrepid ad- venturer and to examine the road maps, that is, all sources, as carefully as possible before embarking on my scholarly journey. Helga helped me muster the courage it takes to think things through and the boldness it takes to write them down. I will always be grateful to them both. I run every new idea and any little discovery by Thomas Ludwig first. I thank him for his continued enthusiasm and critical support, without which this book would not have been nearly as pleasurable and gratify- ing to research and write. I also owe heartfelt thanks to Jennifer Robert- son, who has read numerous drafts of this book. Her interest in my work has encouraged me tremendously over the years. I regard it a great honor to have my book included in her Colonialisms series. I also feel indebted to colleagues and friends, several of whom have read drafts of the entire manuscript or individual chapters, for their cri- tiques, expertise, and the opportunities to exchange ideas: my thanks to Akagawa Manabu, Jim Bartholomew, Kasia Cwiertka, Elise Edwards, Tak Fujitani, Furukawa Makoto, Shel Garon, Allan Grapard, Ann Her- ring, Inoue Shoichi, Bill Johnston, Kawai Yii, Kawamura Kunimitsu, Tom Laqueur, Stewart Lone, Morris Low, Regine Mathias-Pauer, Matsu- bara Yoko, Muta Kazue, Nagai Yoshikazu, Nakajima Hideto, Sumiko IX x Acknowledgments Otsubo, Greg Pflugfelder, Don Roden, Saito Hikaru, Miriam Silverberg, Brigitte Steger, Takahashi Ichiro, and Ueno Chizuko. Laurie Monahan has helped me see images, including those in this book, in new ways. The development of this book was greatly facilitated by the hospital- ity of Tominaga Shigeki and Yokoyama Toshio at the Institute of Re- search in Humanities, Kyoto University (1992-1994), Hirowatari Seigo at the Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo (1998-1999 and 2001), Andrew Barshay at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of California at Berkeley (2001-2002), and Jean Oi at the Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University (2001-2002). I thank them for pro- viding me with the opportunity to pursue the research and writing for this book in their midst. I am also indebted to my colleagues at the De- partment for East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the Univer- sity of California at Santa Barbara; they have been supportive in many ways, including graciously allowing me time to complete this book. I also am grateful to Lisa Rosenblatt and Patricia Marby Harrison, who edited and polished the text before it met any reviewer's critical eye. Three anonymous readers for the University of California Press have made invaluable suggestions. At the press, lowe special thanks to my editor Sheila Levine for her encouragement and patience and to Jan Spauschus for meticulous copy editing. I am also grateful to Mary Severance, who has expertly ushered the book through the publication process. My research and writing in Austria, Japan, and the United States were generously supported by the following institutions, fellowships, and grants: the Japanese Ministry of Education Postgraduate Fellowship (1992-1994); the Tamaki Foundation research grant (1995); the Japan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship (1998 - 1999); a postdoctoral grant from the Faculty of the Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Vi- enna (1999); and the University of California President's Fellowship in the Humanities (2001-2002). Introduction Modernity is an endeavour: the discovery and appropriation of desire. Henri Lefebvre, Introduction to Modernity Sexuality is not the most intractable element in power rela- tions, but rather one of those endowed with the greatest instrumentality: useful for the greatest number of maneuvers and capable of serving as a point of support, as a linchpin, for the most varied strategies. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality This book is a history of sexual knowledge in modern Japan and the uses made of that knowledge. It examines radical changes in the perception and description as well as the colonization of sex and sexuality. It fol- lows the close and complicated exchanges about sexual behavior among governmental agencies, scholars and other intellectuals, social reform- ers, the media, and the wider public in order to reconstruct the processes of normalization, medicalization, and pedagogization. In addition, the book traces the countless modifications in the modes by which sexual knowledge was circulated, valorized, attributed, and appropriated. The underlying structure of this book is informed by various sites and the connections among them-sites where normative ideas about sex were created, examined, weighed, transformed, and translated into cultural practices in an effort to "colonize" the sex and sexuality of the Japanese populace. As with other instances of colonization (Osterhammel I999 [I995]: 4 I), the colonization I describe here was not carried out via swift attacks on unsuspecting victims but came about gradually. It began with what a geographer or military man would call the reconnaissance of the un- I 2 Introduction known terrain, including the discovery by military surgeons of a high rate of venereal disease among members of the imperial army in the I880s and the recognition by pediatricians of infantile sexual desire around 1900. Through several phases, the colonization of sex shifted toward the development of what a colonialist would consider a complete colonial ruling apparatus. For example, sex for soldiers was eventually provided within and restricted to "comfort stations~' under military control; par- ents, school and factory physicians, teachers, and, later, officials in the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare became entrusted with the informed guidance of children's sexuality; and ordinary women and men were expected to consult eugenic mar- riage offices in order to ensure that their sexual union would result in de- sirable offspring or birth control advice offices to prevent the birth of un- desired children. Perhaps the colonization of sex has never reached a state of complete- ness. At certain moments in the modern history of Japan, however, it seems as if the boundaries and the control of the new terrain of knowl- edge about sex and sexuality were firmly set, while places within this ter- rain were (re)named, once and for all. My analysis centers on the strategies employed in the colonization of sex in Japan. I am interested in the techniques at work in the conflicts and negotiations that aimed at the creation of a normative Japanese sex- uality. This sexuality was viewed as existing primarily between women and men, and it was documented in military data that reflected soldiers' health, in moral police registers that tracked prostitutes and their dis- eases, in sex education for youth, and in pronatalist and expansionist propaganda that sought to reduce frigidity in women and impotence in men. This normative sexuality was declared vital to the health, improve- ment, and future of the Japanese empire. The colonization of sex in Japan involved complicated power rela- tions marked by two distinct technologies, those of bodily discipline and mass regulation. Power, as Michel Foucault noted, works on the entire surface of the social field via a system of relays, connections, and trans- missions; it is never monolithic. Every moment of negotiation over the understanding of sexuality in modern Japan reveals power functioning in myriad small ways-in the various conflicts between scientific and popular knowledge, the political uses of science, and the interactions between Japan's and other national cultures' knowledge in the field of sexology. Power relations formed the various threads-some tightly knotted, Introduction 3 some loosely woven-that carne to constitute a complex texture of de- bates on numerous issues: the necessity of sex education in the broadest sense, to improve the physical and mental health of the populace on the one hand and to "liberate sex" on the other hand; the prevention of venereal diseases; the problem of masturbation (which was often col- lapsed into the new category of homosexuality) and its alleged conse- quences (including mental illnesses, venereal diseases, and tuberculosis); the legalization of birth control and other objectives of Japan's nascent women's movement; the fight against prostitution (which was most of- ten a fight against prostitutes, rarely against pimps, and hardly ever against clients); the emergence of "positive" and "negative" eugenics; and eventually, the implementation of "racial hygiene" policies at the expense of sex research and education. These debates were carried out in a heterogeneous, changing forum. I analyze shifts in the cultural meanings of sex and sexuality between various debates about sex and identify the main actors-scientific ex- perts, administrators and politicians, media, and the wider public as rep- resented by various social reform groups-involved in the construction and normalization of Japanese sexuality. Government agencies, schol- ars, and social reformers differed in their aims as well as their methods, but they were connected by a common desire to understand, document, and guide the sexual practices and attitudes of the Japanese populace. Even specialists' efforts to encourage members of the public to reveal de- tails about their sex lives in order to gain data, legitimacy, and status for their goal of launching a "radical sex education" program (kyushinteki seikyoiku) were grounded in arguments about "scientific expertise." Their expert status was contested, however, and was constantly being renegotiated. Closely connected to the colonialist strategies I examine are the prac- tices of medicalization and pedagogization that depicted the individual body as a miniature of the social, the national, and the imperial body. Throughout the late nineteenth century, the primary emphasis of these efforts was on the male body, thus designing the national body as deci- sively, if implicitly, male. The normalization of sex drew into its web all-male conscripts and soldiers who came to be considered constituent of the national condition, the consolidation of the nation, modernity, and progress-in short, who came to embody the Japanese nation to be achieved. From the I9IOS onward, these efforts seem to have been comple- mented or even superseded by a significantly increased medical and ped- 4 Introduction agogical interest in the female body. Curiously, when politico-economic activities decisively shifted toward imperialist actions in East and South- east Asia, the expansive qualities of the (fertile) female physique ap- peared in the foreground of the discourse of sex, revealing a preoccupa- tion with the womb, the uterus, fertility, and race. This singling out of the uterus as the most important organ of the female body and of the race may have had to do with obstetricians' anxiety about their status within the medical profession (Gallagher and Laqueur I987:X-xi), but it also fed into efforts to elevate the value of women's reproductive or- gans for empire building. Accordingly, the colonization of sex occasionally foreshadowed, or coincided and overlapped with, the Japanese imperialist penetration of East and Southeast Asia. In contrast to these external activities, efforts at national unity and imperial prosperity in the realm of sex and sexu- ality primarily produced processes and practices of "internal coloniza- tion," or battles against enemies within Japan. These battles were driven by a historically specific, multifold rhetoric that consisted of cries for defense and security and for liberation and truth, thus emphasizing in every historical moment how the sexual body has been (and is) part of a much broader current in po-litical and cultural life. The first pair of powerful rhetorical figures, defense and security, re- ferred not only to military operations or planning but also to a general state of mind. Defense, once classified by Henri Lefebvre (I995 [1962]: I 90) as the key element of the modern notion of well-being, represented a political and intellectual commitment to the protection of Japan against Western colonial po\vers, disease, and moral degeneration. By the I890S, military surgeons and administrators had begun to plead for the defense of soldiers' health against prostitutes' venereal diseases. Around 1900, pedagogues set out to secure children from their own (subcon- scious) desires and the (sexual) dangers of a modern society. During the I920S and 1930S, some sexologists took it upon themselves to defend what they perceived as sexual normalcy against perversion. And during the occupation era, officials called for the protection of impoverished girls from (sexual) seduction by the occupation forces-even while ag- gressively recruiting women to serve the nation as prostitutes (Kanzaki I954a, 1954b, 1955). The rhetoric of defense and security was applied to and connected with perceptions of the national body, public health, and sexuality. It also tied in with the language of liberation and that of its counterpart, oppression. While Foucault (1990 [1978]) and subsequent historians of sex and Introduction 5 sexuality have questioned the assumption that repression was an evil re- ality and that a historical transition could be traced leading to eman- cipation, my study highlights the frequent recurrence-each time in a slightly different guise and at the hands of different actors-of the re- pression and liberation of sex throughout Japan's modern history. At the beginning of the twentieth century, medical doctors, pedagogues, and sex educators invoked the (necessity of) the liberation of sex in order to shed oppressive traditional beliefs and to unburden sex of mystification. Immediately after the end of World War II, officials in the ministries of education and health and welfare again declared sex and sexuality in need of liberation, this time from the militarist and fascist regulations of the wartime regime. For its proponents during the 1920S and 19305, the liberation of sex implied the liberation of women from involuntary motherhood and from social inequity in general. In the minds of reform- ers of that era, a liberated sexuality would catapult the working class out of poverty. Very few of thenl imagined sexual liberation as a component or consequence of revolution; most insisted that its central tool was sex- ual knowledge based on scientific facts, or simply the truth about sex. While most historiographical accounts of sexuality in Japan focus on analyzing notions of gender and the erotic (Silverberg 1998), gender am- bivalence and ambiguity (Roden 1990; Robertson 1989, 1992, 1998, 1999), homosexuality (Pflugfelder 1999; Robertson 1999), and other aspects of the eroticization of gender and sexuality (Muta 1992; Ueno 1990), I explore the obsession with the "truth about sex" and the use of the phrase as a discursive tool. As much as negotiations over a modern understanding of sexuality in Japan intersected with concepts of nation and empire building and over- lapped with debates about the nature of Japanese culture and the proj- ect of modernity, they also functioned to increase the premium placed on scientific-mindedness. On the one hand, scientific knowledge gained ground compared to other forms of knowledge claims. With respect to sexual practices, Yamamoto Senji, for example, forcefully proclaimed "seeking the truth" (shinfitsu no tsuikyft) as his goal (see Odagiri 1979a). On the other hand, knowledge about sex in modern Japan was perceived as dangerous to produce, possess, and spread. This book traces the specific activities and practices that complicated and diversified the discourse of sex by addressing questions of who was talking about sex, what they felt was at stake, and which state and private-sector institu- tions collected, documented, and disseminated material about sex and sexology. 6 Introduction One central idea was shared not only by the sexologists but by all par- ticipants in the modern and scientific-minded discourse of sex-an idea that would continue to inform ongoing arguments for and against sex education. Proponents and opponents of sex education were convinced that accurate knowledge would lead to "correct" behavior, and that the correctness of the latter could be measured by its social· consequences. Advocates of divergent aims-such as individualization of birth control choices, improvement in the living standards of and liberation of un- derprivileged groups, and state enforcement of "racial hygiene)' pro- grams--could all successfully invoke science and the value of scientific- mindedness. Thus they contributed in very different ways to drawing more and more issues formerly not thought of as sexual under the um- brella of the science of sex. The formation of the Japanese nation-state in the I870S brought about new concepts of the populace as a social organism to be pro- tected, nurtured, and improved by a public health system borrowed pri- marily from Prussia and other European countries. By the I 880s, the state had developed powerful instruments with which to investigate, manage, and control the health (more precisely, the sexual health) of the populace in order to build a modern health regime-the subject of chap- ter I. Statistics and other forms of mapping the Japanese population seemed to playa modest supporting role for administrative mechanisms and military purposes. However, in Japan as in other countries, they also created new categories of people. The new technologies of categorization and representation in so- cial scientific terms created a national body that had not existed before. As Ian Hacking has suggested, its components were not "real') entities that awaited scientific discovery. However, once certain distinctions had been made, new realities effectively came into being. Far from creating a prioritized interest in a binary, dichotomous distinction between het- erosexual and homosexual, the processes of "making up people" (Hack- ing I999 [I986]:I6I-I63) produced a great variety of sexual types- the syphilitic soldier, the masturbating child, the homosexual youth, the infertile (or frigid) woman, the neurasthenic white-collar worker, and the sexually and militarily impotent warrior. Between the late I870S and the early I94os, debates on what had come to be known in Japan as the "sexual question" were as multifac- eted as their participants were diverse. During that seventy-year period, a new system was established that enabled officials to undertake a de- tailed observation of the Japanese people in the name of public health. Introduction 7 The year 1872 marked one beginning of this new health regime, which was based on a new medical system and a strong emphasis on public hy- giene and preventive medicine. Ann Bowman Jannetta (1987,1997) has shown the enormous importance of this medical system in the preven- tion of epidemics in early modern Japan. I am interested in how the med- ical system contributed to the concern of the state and its agencies about matters of sexual practice. The year 1872 also marked the introduction of compulsory ele- mentary education for both sexes and compulsory military service for twenty-year-old men in Japan. Initially, soldiers and prostitutes were the main targets of investigation by the police and military authorities. They also were examined and observed by physicians and surveyed and doc- umented by government public health agencies. Although only a small portion of the twenty-year-old male population was drafted for military service during peacetime, virtually all men of that age underwent a thor- ough medical examination and were categorized according to a four-tier system of physical fitness. Prostitutes were considered a necessary evil, mere instruments for keeping soldiers' and other men's sexual needs in check. They were regarded as primary carriers of venereal disease far into the twentieth century and were put under increasingly restrictive regulations in the name of the health and welfare of the population in general and soldiers and mothers and children in particular, all of whom were presumed "innocent." In addition to conscripts and prostitutes, children were identified from the turn of the twentieth century onward as crucial to the health and future of the Japanese body politic. Their anatonlical features were measured, their mental and physical conditions diagnosed, and their de- velopment closely monitored. Kathleen Uno (1991, 1999) has charted how social reformers at the beginning of the twentieth century widely pronl0ted concepts of institutional child welfare. My approach allows me to examine how the newly developed academic fields of pediat- rics and pedagogy identified children as sexual beings whose sexual de- sire (seiyoku) was recognized and repeatedly confirmed through hith- erto unprecedented and regular examinations by a network of school physicians. It was the new theories of child development that prompted discus- sions about the necessity of instructing children and youth on their sex- uality and the obligation to help parents, teachers, and other social ac- tors guide children's sexual development and maturation. In adults, an excessive sex life was perceived as a precursor to mental illness, tuber- 8 Introduction culosis, and venereal disease. In children, nervous exhaustion (shinkei karo) and masturbation were attributed to misdirected sexual desire. Hence, the sex education of children moved to center stage in the dis- course on the improvement of the national body, a discourse that con- tinued through the twentieth century. In chapter 2, I analyze in depth the first debate on sex education printed in September and October 1908 in Japan's third-largest nation- ally distributed newspaper, the Yomiuri Shinbun. In this published de- bate, pedagogues and medical doctors presented their views on whether and how children should be educated about sexual desire. The confes- sions of children, ideas on masturbation and venereal disease, debates about normalcy and deviance, the responsibility of teachers and parents, the authority of experts, and the international character of sexual knowl- edge generated a discursive configuration that characterized the coloni- zation of sex in children. Infantile sexuality was put under surveillance, became a "center of knowledge" (Stoler 1999 [1995]:142), was labeled both endangered and dangerous, and was exploited as a locus of defense: to defend the child came to mean to defend the nation. Infantile sexual- ity was of crucial importance because the child's body impersonated the empire's future. Notions that connected the infantile body with the Japanese na- tional/imperial body informed discussions and texts about sex through- out the first half of the twentieth century. By the second decade of the twentieth century, sexual issues previously discussed only within the boundaries of specialized journals of medicine, pediatrics, and psychia- try were capable of reaching the entire reading public of Japan, due to the introduction of universal education and the expansion of the print media market. The publication in 1908 of a series on the "sexual ques- tion" in the Yomiuri Shinbun was intended to provoke a sense of urgency among parents, teachers, scientists, and bureaucrats. It also effectively anchored the sexual issue in the public consciousness, as sex education became a perennial theme in general-interest papers and magazines, popular medical journals, and women's magazines. The series of articles on sex education both broadened and deepened during the 1920S and 1930S. Self-appointed experts from the academic fields of zoology, biology, and medicine, as well as from education and the arts, attempted to create a new science of sex (seikagaku or seigaku). These sexologists (seigakusha or seikagakusha) are the protagonists of chapter 3. They were a mixed bunch of men and a few women at the margins of academia who set out to push for the creation and popular- Introduction 9 ization of sexual knowledge, the education of "the masses" about "cor- rect" and "normal" sexual behavior, and the establishment of sexology as a field of knowledge. Since James Bartholome\v's (1989) path-breaking investigation into the formation of science, a number of scholars have studied the devel- opment of scholarly disciplines and scientific ideas in modern Japan, tracing histories of the social sciences (Kawai T. 1989, 1991, 1994), eth- nography (Silverberg 1992), history (S. Tanaka 1993; Conrad 1999), and eugenics and racial hygiene (Doak 1997; Otsubo and Bartholome,,' 1998; Morris-Suzuki 1998; Otsubo 1999; Robertson 2001). Compared to many of the leading characters in these stories, sexologists were mar- ginal to the academic world. But at the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, sexologists shared-along with representatives of the younger gen- eration of ethnographers, historians, and social scientists-the \vill to establish a new field of knowledge and change society in general. Sexol- ogists were less interested in the formulation of a theory of sex or the de- sign of a sexual paradigm than in a comprehensive sexual reform cen- tered on what some of them tried to establish as purely scientific sexual knowledge. In order to mobilize allies from diverse groups in pursuit of this goal, they created a new discursive space in which to generate public controversy about sexual questions. The success of their efforts hinged on connecting various scientific groups and their allies with the "vider educated public and with more specific audiences. Moreover, they had to \vin over powerful elites and institutions and to lobby continu- ally to ensure their own legitimacy as experts and control over the pro- duction of sexual knowledge. This heterogeneous group did not produce the "truth about sex" in a singular, esoteric way but rather pursued goals that were articulated differently by each player at different historical moments. Statisticians of the Japanese Bureau of Hygiene who documented venereal disease among prostitutes in the 1890S clearly had different goals in mind than did the editors of sexological journals who in the 1920S published graphic images to illustrate a set of detailed instructions on the insertion and function of intrauterine devices, or the censors from special units of the Special Higher Police (Tokubetsu K6t6 Keisatsu) who confiscated sexological journals but let advertisements for potency-enhancing prod- ucts slip through their otherwise tight-knit network of social control. The statistics produced by Japanese government agencies after the I 870s are different in nature from the results of surveys conducted in the 1920S by sexologists: the former were large, homogenous samples fo- 10 Introduction cusing on disease, while the latter were small, heterogeneous samples fo- cusing on a broad range of questions on sexual behavior and designed to explore the whole range of sexual practice and-in some cases- to eventually draw a line between "normal" and "abnormal" sexual be- havior. Similarly, knowledge about sex was transformed considerably through the disputes on sexual questions that were engaged in by a va- riety of actors throughout the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. What began as a controversy over sex education re ... suIted in highly diversified debates on masturbation, venereal disease, birth control, and prostitution. Central to the discussion in chapter 3 are sexologists' attempts to professionalize sexology through such measures as conducting an em- pirical survey of sexual practices (roughly two decades before Alfred C. Kinsey's famous first report), founding sexological journals, and build- ing alliances with other social reformers. Editors and contributing authors repeatedly emphasized the importance of a "truly scientific" knowledge of sex based on findings from the Japanese population rather than results of sex research conducted in Germany, Austria, England, France, or the United States. At the same time, they insisted that direct interaction and exchange with the general populace would ensure that sexual knowledge was adapted and disseminated to those who needed it most. The publication goals of each journal were spelled out in prefatory editorials .. For example, the editor's note in the journal Sexuality (Sei) promised to guide young people's sexual development so as to ensure that adultery, wild marriages, and abortions would disappear from so- ciety. Certain that critics would question the seriousness of the journal, the publishers of Sexuality addressed mothers specifically, declaring that they should at least have a look at the journal before dismissing it, es- pecially as it had been approved as a professional journal by the au- thorities~ "Sexuality," the editor concluded, "represents the view that it is necessary to know about humans and to research them" (Sei Novem- ber I927: editorial). Sexologists positioned themselves according to the needs and charac- teristics of their immediate audience, which was far from diffuse, undif- ferentiated, or passive. The audiences they reached were the educated public, various professionals, secondary school and university students, and business groups. These audiences were of course historically specific. In the I8808, a typical seventeen-year-old girl from Tokyo most likely had no formal secondary education. By 1925, however, she had a Introduction II good chance of attending one of 618 girls' high schools and of read- ing one of the books or journals on sexual questions that flourished at that time. Anticipating their audience's social makeup, sexologists posed as experts on sexual questions when criticizing sociopolitical policies for the prevention of venereal disease and as confidantes when asked by members of the literate public for advice on sexual problems. They pre- sented themselves as defenders of scientific freedom when criticizing censorship of their publications and as progressive reformers when they railed against the unscientific, superstitious nature of traditional prac- tices and those promoted by the new religions (i.e., Omotokyo, Ten- rikyo, and Hitonomichi Kyodan). Japanese tradition was denounced as uncivilized, and the authority of Western culture in general and of West- ern science in particular was emphasized to establish and ensure expert status for these first self-trained Japanese sexologists. Sexologists pursued the appropriation and popularization of their special science with just as much enthusiasm as they engaged in actual empirical research. Chapter 4 sheds light on the problems involved in the popularization of sexological ideas within the politically, scientifically, and socially controversial conditions of the production, collection, and dissemination of sexual knowledge during the early twentieth century. The boundaries between "pure" scientific knowledge and "unscientific" popular knowledge were purposefully blurred; the popularization of sexual knowledge thus was not a straightforward, top-down process that disseminated preestablished scientific ideas to a less educated, anony- mous public. Rather, in the case of sexology, it consisted of a set of strat- egies designed and deployed to further the development of a "science of sex" outside the universities. These strategies included public lectures followed by question-and- answer sessions with local audiences, radio interviews with sexologists, publication of articles in a wide array of media targeting different levels of literacy and education, and extensive use of advice columns for sex- ual problems. The popularization of their ideas was crucial for sex re- formers and researchers, who perceived the population as a whole to be their laboratory. Their science was not to be developed within the boundaries of academic institutions. It would flourish only if it grew out of interactions with a wider public and only if it were based on al- liances with other social reformers who would make the search for the "truth about sex," along with the legalization of birth control and the liberation of prostitutes and of the working class more generally, one of 12 Introduction their aims. Certainly these alliances brought about the mechanisms of social management Sheldon Garon (1997) has discussed with respect to religious groups, the women's movement, and the anti-prostitution movement. Simultaneously, Japanese government officials continued to gather statistical data on physical and mental health as well as on venereal dis- eases; scientists adopted the vocabulary and content of Western science and tested them in Japanese contexts; and social movements made the reform of sexual habits and behavior their main agenda. Each of these three actors-government officials, scientists, and social reformers-as- sumed several roles. Government officials supported and relied on the work of some scientific and medical experts even as they hindered or rejected the research of others. Scientists doubled as social activists, founders of political parties, and party functionaries. Doctors treated neurasthenia and venereal diseases and also wrote novels and journalis- tic accounts about sex. Politicians founded movements to abolish pros- titution. Women's rights activists translated works by Western sex re- searchers and circulated petitions to repeal abortion laws, among other legislation. Invoking the rhetoric of scientific authority, sexologists insisted that sexology was a science and defended it agains-t criticism from the more established academic disciplines. Treading a fine line between collusion with and distance from government institutions, Japanese sexologists countered repressive state measures with arguments based on public health and population policy. They found allies among members of women's rights groups who were working to introduce new ideas about and techniques of birth control. Their attempts to propagate sex educa- tion were supported by representatives of the anti-prostitution move- ment. Meanwhile, the reading public was won over both by informative articles about sex and by erotic-pornographic stories published in sexo- logical journals as well as in general-interest magazines and newspapers. The late 1930S and early 1940S were marked by an increasing mili- tarism that left little space for individual decisions in terms of sexuality and other realms of life, and which was accompanied by a pronatalist ideology best illustrated by the slogan "procreate and multiply." A new discourse of eugenics and racial hygiene-borrowed mainly from na- tional-socialist Germany-brought about laws that enabled physicians to legally perform abortions and sterilizations of people with venereal disease, alcoholism, epilepsy, and other diseases that were defined as "hereditary." The sex reformers' program of creation and dissemination Introduction 13 of accurate knowledge about sex-which was directed toward the de- crease of poverty, the promotion of lasting worldwide peace, the im- provement of maternal health, the elimination of illegal abortions, and the improvement of the Japanese race-was hampered by the state's program of population growth, the object of analysis in chapter 5. Albeit never completely out of sight, interest in the history of eugen- ics has been refueled by recent debates about euthanasia, scandals about forced sterilization of the mentally ill in some Western countries until very recently, and concerns about the reintroduction of the national- socialist concept of the "unfit." Matsubara Yoko's intriguing study and Sumiko Otsubo's ongoing work on the subject in Japan highlight crucial actors at the center of the crossroads of academe and the state between the late nineteenth century and the 19 50S (Matsubara 1997, 1998, 2000; Otsubo and Bartholomew 1998; Otsubo 1999). In this book, I explore what the rise of eugenics and racial hygienic thought did to the sexological project when, from the 1920S onward, sexologists were lumped together with pacifists, socialists, communists, and anarchists and regarded as a nuisance or even a danger to the imper- ialist state. While some of the more outspoken sexologists were silenced through house arrest, imprisonment, or, in at least one case, murder, others were won over by an ideology that was directed at the multipli- cation of healthy citizens through all possible means. Yamamoto Senji was fatally stabbed in 1929 when he spoke out against Japan's aggres- sive policy toward China. Abe Isoo, on the other hand, the founder of Japan's first socialist party and a leading crusader for what he called the "liberation of prostitutes," ,vas celebrated for his prolTIotion, in the late 193 os, of early marriages as an expedient means of increasing the pop- ulation. Kato Shizue, eulogized today as the "grande dame of birth con- trol" in Japan, did not speak publicly on birth control from 1937 to the end of World War II and, during the 1950S and 1960s, opposed the le- galization of the contraceptive pill. Debates about sex overlapped at times vvith eugenics, the science of "improving" the human race by controlling heredity. For example, in a reflection of an argument that was eugenic at its core, all participants be- lieved that the spread of knowledge about sex would improve individual and social life and secure the future of the Japanese populace. However, sexology was a potentially explosive subject for two reasons, one con- cerning the nature of sexual knowledge itself, the other concerning the various publics that were supposedly in need of sex education. Like other intellectuals who advocated empirical research on Japan's social prob- Introduction lems, sex researchers worked toward social reform and thus were often suspected-in some cases, rightly so-of sympathizing with socialist and revolutionary causes. In their eyes, the dissemination of sexual knowledge would help liberate the working class from its misery and women from their roles as "childbearing machines." Anticipating this view, some government officials translated the sex reformers' vision of a better society into a scenario of social unrest and disorder. They feared not only that women would turn the gendered order of society (as re- flected in Japan's Civil Code of 1889) upside down if given the means to control family size, but also that the middle and upper classes, which were considered intellectually and morally superior, would contribute less to population growth than would the lower classes. Beginning in the mid-1920'S, the government implemented increas- ingly restrictive censorship regulations in order to shield the public from reformers' dangerous thoughts. In 1925, universal male suffrage was in- troduced but was simultaneously tempered by the Peace Preservation Law, which was based on a very broad definition of what constituted a violation of peace and social order. The law was aimed at the more ex- treme left-wing movements, but the vagueness of its wording and the possibility of loose interpretation meant that thousands of people, in- cluding many liberals and some sexologists, were arrested in its name. 1 Thus, the sexologists' task was not an easy one. Negotiations about what kinds of sexual knowledge should be created and with whom this knowledge should be shared were undertaken on three main fronts. Representatives of established academic disciplines denounced the sex- ologists' knowledge as "obscene." Social reformist groups such as parts of the women's movement shared some of the goals of sex education but disagreed with others. And the influence of the state was felt most painfully in the form of censorship of sexological publications and the imprisonment and house arrest of sexologists. Yamamoto Senji's career is a good case in point, as it exemplifies the sexologists' antagonistic re- lationship to the various agencies -of the state. Originally trained as a zo- ologist at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Yamamoto began to lecture publicly on human sexual development and practice. In 1922, he went on a lecture tour from Osaka to Kobe, Nagoya, and other small cities throughout Japan. In Tottori, police observers interrupted his talk sev- eral times before they pulled him off the stage. The police report noted that Yamamoto had used technical terms but nevertheless had encour- aged masturbation, approved of abortion, and talked about "other ob- Introduction IS scenities" (see chapter 3). As a consequence of the scandal he was fired from his positions at both Doshisha and Kyoto universities. Publications that dealt with sexual desire, theories of pregnancy, neo-Malthusian assertions, women's liberation, and critiques of the marital institution were viewed as a threat to social order and the edu- cated middle and upper classes' willingness to reproduce and thus were subject to censorship.2 Until censorship policies brought (explicitly) sex- ological publications to a halt in the late I9 3 as, the readers of that lit- erature also played a role in decisions that involved the execution of cen- sorship regulations. Journals directed at an academic readership faced less restraint than did those with a broader audience. During the late 1920S and early 1930S, sexological journals, termed seiyoku zasshi (lit- erally, journals of sexual desire) by the authorities, were the journals most often censored or confiscated. Despite the significant ruptures of decolonization and democratiza- tion after I 945, previous configurations of sexuality persisted and sev- eral alliances of important colonialist players remained intact. Many of the actors who had dealt with sexual issues before World War II, and in some cases during the war, resurfaced in the tense political arena of the immediate postwar years, when Japan was still under the control of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP). The restrictive censorship policy of the early 1940S was not abolished at the end of World War II; rather, it continued in the form of neglect of sexology and sexologists in the immediate postwar period. The "purely scientific sex education" (junkagakuteki seikyoiku) as propagated by sexologists in the I920S 'vas rigorously replaced with "purity education" (junketsu kyoiku), which was advocated by officials in the Ministry of Education, representatives of the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and members of newly founded sexological organizations. The end of the empire brought other important shifts as well. Perhaps the most significant was that the prewar and wartime obsession with the uterus and female fertility was replaced by a new emphasis on the mu- tual sexual satisfaction of both partners. This shift once again focused on the female body-more specifically, on the clitoris and the vagina- and on female orgasm. Wilhelm Reich (I974 [I936]) had optimistically framed this shift as the "liberation of the female sex," while Henri Le- febvre concluded that "women's road to freedom was via frigidity, or worse: faked passion" (1995 [1962]:192). Foucault, in contrast, dis- missed Reich's claims and simply noted that this shift was "nothing I6 Introduction more, but nothing less ... than a tactical shift and reversal in the great deployment of sexuality" (Foucault 1990 [1978]:131). The Japanese sexologists of the 1950S stuck to the older generations' rhetoric of lib- eration, as I will demonstrate in chapter 5 and the epilogue. Some of the details of my study may seem bizarre or even comical. As I argue in the epilogue, however, some of the debates over sexuality in Japan-specifically those over the approval of the anti-impotence drug Viagra and the subsequent legalization of the low-dose pill in 1999, sex education and its relevance for the prevention of HIV and AIDS, sex re- search, and child prostitution-are again framed by the paradigmatic structure developed in pre-World War II Japan. Sexuality is discussed as a set of problems related to the necessity of defending and protecting girls and women from men, the populace from certain diseases, and the normal from the pathological. The liberation of sex is promoted to pro- vide teenagers with more explicit sex education that includes informa- tion on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. Some participants in these debates even demand the truth about the variety of sexual be- haviors actually practiced, not just what the majority admits to engag- ing in. The year 1992 was declared the First Year of Sex Education in Ja- pan, by which time a media-generated AIDS panic had eased slightly. Subsequently, the Japan Association for Sex Education moved from sup- P9rting schoolteachers with advice and material on "purity education" to providing more concrete instruction on HIV and AIDS prevention to middle and high school students. Recently, child prostitution, euphe- mistically termed "compensated dating" (enjokosai), has emerged as an issue demanding urgent address. While it was initially portrayed as de- viant behavior by a few female juvenile delinquents, the Japanese media quickly suggested that thousands of "ordinary" female (and male) teen- agers were willing to provide sexual services in exchange for expensive presents. Once again the discourse of sex, fueled by the media, edu- cators, and the state, not only revolves around the questionable moral- ity of present-day youth, but ventures to suggest that their disturbing behavior may reflect larger social problems occasioned by a modernity gone sour. CHAPTER I Erecting a Modern Health Regime The military physician began to treat him with Salvarsan. Syphilis was a severe illness in civil society, but particularly so in the military. We nurses would whisper to one another, "This one has the clap," or "That one has syphilis. Be care- ful. Don't get too close." ... It was ironic that at the front some soldiers suffered and eventually died from syphilis, here where soldiers were severely injured and killed on the battle- field every day .... The reason was that the military adminis- tration had installed field brothels where comfort women were available. So it was hard to think poorly of them. The comfort women were treated at the military hospital just like the soldiers. I could not blame soldiers for visiting the broth- els in their free time. Anzai Sadako, Yasen kangofu Anzai Sadako's journal, a memoir of her experiences as a field nurse on the Chinese front, contains many entries about disease and death among the soldiers she treated. The frequently emotional descriptions of her everyday experiences and impressions reflect broader concerns that had helped to create concepts of the "national body" from the formation of the Japanese nation-state in the I 870S onward. Calling upon an increas- ingly complex configuration of bureaucrats, military officials, police, physicians, pedagogues, and other men and women in public office, these concepts focused on a populace to be regulated, protected, nur- tured, and improved in order to establish what I will call a modern "health regime." This modern health regime was based on several sets of material and imaginary physical entities. It tied individual bodies to the social body I7 18 Erecting a Modern Health Regime that during the late nineteenth century was mostly referred to as the "na- tional body" and had been transformed, by the early 1940s, into the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In this chapter I argue that the first engineers of this health regime were most concerned with the "hy- giene" of three groups-soldiers, prostitutes, and children-· in various attempts to protect and to improve the physical and mental condition primarily of male subjects. Only during the late 1920S and early 1930S did their attention shift to include other women and the population at large. These engineers of "public hygiene" especially targeted sexual de- sires, sexual development, and sexual practices, as well as what they identified as the consequences thereof. The condition of the "Japanese nation's body and soul" (Nippon kokumin no nikutaimen to seishinmen) seemed critical in relation to both the defense of Japan against Western colonial powers and the handling of East Asia (see Lone 1994; Ogi, Kumakura, and Ueno 1990; Matsu- bara 1993; Saito H. 1993). The notion of the national body appeared in several guises. Whereas some theorists leaned toward social reform (sha- kai kairyoron)" others intended to find more direct means for the "im- provement of the race" (finshu kairyoron) in order to bring forth a civ- ilized, modern, and above all, healthy population. These two approaches to the establishment of a modern health regime, however, were not mu- tually exclusive. In most treatises and public utterances, visions of social reform overlapped with ideas of "racial improvement" and education. The role of education in more or less systematic attempts at nation building was debated widely among Enlightenment thinkers. In his fa- mous work Encouragement of Learning (Gakumonno susume:J 1872), Fukuzawa Yukichi, Japan's most prominent educator and philosopher of the Enlightenment, made a strong case for education as an effective means of achieving national progress. Roughly twenty years later Fuku- zawa's position had become somewhat less optimistic and more remi- niscent of the Lamarckian belief in the inheritability of acquired charac- teristics. In a speech to a mixed group of teachers and students he said, "If we endeavor to develop our good points and transmit these to our descendants, who in turn cultivate them even more and pass them on to their descendants, then there is no doubt that the descendents of even the most ignorant will become heroes in the long run." However, he added that one "cannot alter what a man has been endowed with by nature" (quoted in Oxford 1973: 174). In another of his works, The Improve- ment of the Race (Jinrui no kairyo:J 1896), Fukuzawa proclaimed that Erecting a Modern Health Regime 19 good fathers and good mothers were crucial for the production of good children. 1 When enthusiastically promoting the improvement of the national body, some theorists singled out children, as Fukuzawa frequently did, while others approached the same goal by focusing on women, or, more specifically, mothers. Mori Arinori recast Fukuzawa's notion of good mothers in exclusively physical terms when he urged mothers to preserve their bodily strength. If they were weak, he argued, they would be un- able to properly raise and protect their children, who were completely dependent on them (reprinted in Braisted 1976:252-253). Although Mori was perhaps the first and one of the most powerful educators of the early Meiji period to emphasize the importance of healthy female bodies in particular, other scholars and bureaucrats soon followed suit. Taking up Mori's notion of physically healthy and strong women, Na- gai Hisomu voiced his concerns about the improvement of the race in slightly different and increasingly radical terms. An influential professor of physiology at the Imperial University of Tokyo, Nagai first presented his ideas on what he termed the "beautiful body" in 1907, in an article printed in a scientific journal, and then more extensively in 1916 in a 400-page treatise entitled On Humankind (Jinseiron).2 A review of the theories and methods of racial hygiene filled about a third of the book. According to Nagai and many other scholars of the time, the "struggle of existence among the races" (minzoku to minzoku to no seizon kyoso) was two-sided. One side concerned the size of the popu- lation, the other its nature (Nagai 1916: 265). Although customs, edu- cation, marriage practices, and reproduction rates were all important, the improvement of the "quality of mothers' bodies" was most crucial for the development of the Japanese race (Nagai 1916:288). About twenty years later, Nagai became a key player in drafting racial hygiene laws as a leader of the Japanese Association of Racial Hygiene, to which I shall turn in chapter 5. Here I wish to point out the variety of ideas about achieving the national body that existed during the late nineteenth century. Still other Japanese intellectuals emphasized the racial component of physical differences that distinguished Japanese and non-Japanese peoples and agreed that humankind was divided into yellow, white, and black races. Accepting the view common among Western colonial powers, they considered" blacks" inferior to "yellows" and "yellows" in- ferior to "whites" (see Braisted 1976:439-446). Besides skin color, the 20 Erecting a Modern Health Regime brain seemed to offer further clues to racial difference. Respected phi- losophers such as Inoue Tetsujiro maintained that Western advantages in skull and brain size would translate into a competitive edge over the Japanese (see Gluck 1985:136). Physiologists who engaged in the cre- ation of a "biochemical race index" claimed that the brain weight of Asians-then considered an indicator of intelligence-was lower than the brain weight of Caucasians but emphasized that Japanese men's and women's brains were weightier than those of Chinese, Koreans, and Formosans (Nagai 1928a:508 -509). Claims of racial difference that po- sitioned the Japanese below Caucasians prompted debates about how improvement would be possible. One theorist suggested that racial im- provement was attainable through mass weddings between "whites" and "yellows" (hakko or shiroki zakkonron) or blood transfusions to enlarge the body (Takahashi Yoshio, quoted in Saito H. 1993: 132; see also Ota 1976:143).3 Takahashi Yoshio's treatise The Improvement of the Japanese Race (Nihon jinshu kairy6ron, 1884) was perhaps the most radical on the subject of racial improvement. Takahashi, a protege of Fu- kuzawa Yukichi, argued that blood and learning determine and influence one another.4 He also emphasized the importance of both character building and physical exercise and pointed out the advantages of mixed marriages between Japanese men and white women. While debates about the improvement of the race were common throughout the Meiji period, mixed marriages were not. Hence, Takahashi's suggestion pro- voked intense criticism by contemporaries who doubted that mixing races would result in an improvement of the Japanese race, arguing that even if it did, it would take a very long time (see Ota 1976:49-50; Saito H.1993: 132). Takahashi's suggestion was not taken up by the authorities, but the concern about the condition of the national body voiced by him and other commentators governed the bureaucracy's immoderate interest in controlling people's lives in general and their sexual behavior in partic- ular and in accumulating and disseminating scientific data on both.5 This interest eventually brought about the development of several pow- erful instruments for channeling data into a state pool. Government in- stitutions increasingly employed scientific knowledge to guide policies aimed at producing well-regulated human bodies that would consti- tute a better and more modern nation. Prompting the rise of statistical thinking and of practices of quantification, Japanese bureaucrats, phi- losophers, and scholars-and later, practitioners of medicine, psychia- try, pedagogy, psychology, and sexology-developed a more complex Erecting a Modern Health Regime 21 understanding of achieving the national body. The founding of the first government Association for Statistics (Tokei Kyokai) in 1880 vividly re- flected this development, as did the creation of various bureaucratic units that began to carry out surveys and bring forth increasingly de- tailed quantifications and classifications of Japanese society (Kawai T. 1989; Takeuchi H. 1989). Nationwide surveys, conducted from the early Meiji period on and motivated by efforts to build a powerful army and strengthen the econ- omy, centered on what was perceived as beneficial and necessary for the nation-state's development. This systematic documentation covered agricultural production, population, topography, industrial production and work, welfare and hygiene, education, and the poor (Kawai T. 1989: 13). Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the Meiji govern- ment began to recognize the necessity of gathering data stemming from statistical surveys and other social research on both the population and resources in order to achieve nationalist and imperialist goals and, to a lesser extent, to solve social problems. Social research institutes whose main agenda was the investigation of social problems were created more than thirty years after the Association for Statistics was founded, the Ohara Research Institute for Social Problems (Ohara Shakai Mondai Kenkyusho) being the most important among them. Their researchers targeted particular social problems, surveying city life, Japan's colonies in East and Southeast Asia, social classes and social mobility, women's status, professions and work patterns, education, leisure and entertain- ment, consumption, housing, poverty, and crime (Kawai T. 1989: 16). The quantification and classification of the population's physical con- dition was considered one of the most important tasks in establishing a modern nation whose main characteristics were declared to be a pros- perous economy and a potent military. As Stewart Lone has remarked, the Japanese government, at least during the late nineteenth century, was clearly more inclined toward a strong army than a rich nation (Lone 1994). Hence, the new methods of statistical research were first and most extensively applied to matters that were considered relevant for the establishment of potent armed forces, which in turn emerged as the pro- totypical site and agent of the building of a modern Japanese health re- gime. The army medical inspector general (rikugun gun~i sokan) inves- tigated and closely monitored the condition of conscripts and soldiers in more general terms. In civil society, the Central Sanitary Bureau be- gan to gather data nationwide on health-related matters in general and, more specifically, venereal diseases among prostitutes. A school hygiene 22 Erecting a Modern Health Regime system provided schools all over Japan with the personnel and expertise to examine and document the condition of Japan's youngest generation. Until far into the twentieth century, data accumulated by these three institutions-the Central Sanitary Bureau (later renamed the Bureau of Hygiene), the office of the army medical inspector general, and the school hygiene system-formed the foundation of administrative, med- ical, and pedagogical concepts of the physical constitution of the Japa- nese population and its future prospects. The average conscript served as the prototype for the establishment of a "biochemical race index" of the Japanese population and as a basis for prognoses regarding its po- tential for improvement. Prostitutes, regarded as both despicable and indispensable, emerged as the main carriers of venereal diseases (Mat- suura 1912, 1926a-b, 1927, 1928, 1929; Nagai 1928b). Children ap- peared as vulnerable and manipulable symbols of the future in terms of hygiene and health, physical strength and national power. For many, their "body building" resembled the larger task of empire building. As formulated perhaps most influentially by Goto Shinpei (1857- I927) in I889, the vision of a modern health regime adopted by the Meiji state reflected a national body that resembled a human organism and claimed an empire that was to be nourished, equipped, and nursed like one. In his treatise Principles of National Hygiene (Kokka eisei genri, I889), Goto emphasized the connection between a state's military power and the health of its populace. Goto's vision of a healthy and mil- itarily powerful nation was clearly influenced by Rudolf Virchow's con- cept of "social medicine" (Soziaimedizin), Otto von Bismarck's model of "social policy" (Soziaipoiitik), and Herbert Spencer's theory of the nation as a "social organism." Goto argued that human beings were not simply individual bodies but parts of a collective, which he termed "a state as human body." He explained that just as animals use claws and fangs to defend themselves, the national body should be equipped with weapons. It also should have a public health system, just as other liv- ing beings use their own means to take care of their well-being. Fur- thermore, it should have the economic means to secure its mainten- ance, just as other living beings have the ability to feed themselves (Goto 1978 [I889])· When Goto's book was published, he had been affiliated with the Central Sanitary Bureau for fifteen years-an institution he declared to be the heart of the administration of hygiene in the Meiji government (Tsurumi I937:298, 351). The Central Sanitary Bureau (Eiseikyoku) was established in I873 as part of the Ministry of Education. Its founder Erecting a Modern Health Regime 23 and first director was Nagayo Sensai (1838-1902), another powerful engineer of the social and administrative aspects of Japan's modern health regime. He had studied medicine and had familiarized himself with theories and models of public health administration in Europe. Na- gayo coined the term eisei-a translation of the German term Gesund- heitspflege or Hygiene-after a visit to Prussia in 1872 (Marui 1980: 99). Accepted as a member of the Monbush6 delegation to the Iwakura mission in 1871, Nagayo left Japan in November of that year. After a visit to Washington in January 1872, he reported that "the professors of medical schools and hospitals treated [us] like children and [we] were very angry" (quoted in Jannetta 1997: 159). He and several others left the delegation, and Nagayo spent a month in England and then moved on to Paris and Berlin. It was in Berlin that he first became conscious of the sanitation or public health movement in Europe. Nagayo and other leading hygienists realized that "public health" referred not only to the protection of citizens' health, but to the entire administrative system that was being organized to ensure that protection. This system reached far beyond the traditional practice of medicine, with its focus on the re- lationship between individual doctor and patient. Instead, it was a state campaign aimed at society in the mass. It reached into the realm of pub- lic works, which were the responsibility of the state. It relied not only on medicine but also on physics, meteorology, and statistics, and it oper- ated through the state administration to eliminate threats to life and to improve the nation's well-being. For health officials in Europe, and, from the 1870S on, in Japan, im- provement and maintenance of public health meant draining swamps and providing proper sewage disposal and clean water systems. It also meant educating the public about hygiene and keeping records to docu- ment the incidence of infectious diseases and the number of vaccina- tions. It involved the surveillance not only of physicians but also of local governments, which necessitated the collaboration of police de- partments. This vision of building a healthy and strong Japan through the offices of the state appealed enormously to Nagayo. Upon his return to Japan he wrote a medical code that covered education, medical prac- tice, and sanitation regulations. The Meiji government accepted the code. The activities that Nagayo suggested administering centrally, how- ever, were soon separated. Medical education remained within the Min- istry of Education. Public health policies became the responsibility of the Home Department and were administered by the Central Sanitary Bu- reau (Jannetta 1997:158-160). 24 Erecting a Modern Health Regime In 1874, the Central Sanitary Bureau was renamed the Bureau of Hy- giene (Naimusho Eiseikyoku) and incorporated into the Home Depart- ment, where it became the most powerful of seven departments. One- third of the Home Department's budget was allocated to the bureau (Tsurumi 1937: 303).6 However, according to Nagayo, the amount was hardly sufficient to cover the costs of four divisions and a host of tasks. The bureau distributed the regulations for doctors' exams in the prefec- tures, was responsible for granting permission to open pharmacies, is- sued the regulations for health examinations of prostitutes for venereal diseases, and was responsible for various other hygiene matters (Tsu- rumi 1937: 3 12). The Office of Statistics (Tokeika) was an important part of the Bureau of Hygiene. There, for the first time in Japanese history, the bureau's public health administrators began to collect data on the constitution of the Japanese national body. The careful inspection, measurement, and documentation of public health (koshu eisei) was rooted in the hope of finding explanations for the high infant mortality rate, the high number of tuberculosis patients, and the spread of infectious diseases (Tsurumi 1937:303; Iwanaga 1994:79-118). The Bureau of Hygiene published its data in lengthy reports every two years and later also in English trans- lations (Naimusho eiseikyoku 1893-1894). Between the 1880s and the 1920S, the bureau documented a steady increase in mortality rates for infants less than one year of age. Public health officials ascribed this alarming development to chronic infectious diseases and what some of them perceived as the general deterioration of social life, which was, in Japan and elsewhere, associated with urban- ization and industrialization. During the second half of the 18 80S, the average mortality rate of infants less than one year of age per 1,000 nor- mal births was 117. By the early I890s, the number had increased to 147 per 1,000 normal births, and it reached 159 during the early 1920S (SBHD 1929:98-100). In comparison with eighteen European coun- tries and New Zealand, Japan ranked fourth lowest in the latter half of the 18 80S. Ten years later, the rise in its rate put Japan in tenth place; by 1910 it ranked fifteenth. By I920, only Austria had a higher infant mor- tality rate, and by 1924 Japan had the highest infant mortality rate among these countries (SBHD 1929: IOI-I02). A high tuberculosis death rate was similarly worrisome to public health authorities. During the period under consideration, various forms of tuberculosis remained by far one of the most common causes of death, along with diarrhea and enteritis (SBHD 1929: I04; Lebzelter 1926: Erecting a Modern Health Regime 25 823). When the spread of acute infectious diseases slowed by the turn of the century, public health administrators shifted their focus toward chronic diseases such as leprosy, venereal diseases, and mental illness. Although less demanding of urgent attention-the mortality rate of syphilis patients, for example, was generally about 10 percent of the tu- berculosis mortality rate and never increased to more than 20 percent (SBHD 1929:44-45)-chronic diseases were considered potentially disruptive to social stability due to their impact on the family, which in- creasingly became a central concern of Japan's bureaucracy. The propagation of hygiene soon reached far beyond the boundaries and authority of the bureau. This was due to the cholera epidemic of 1878 and 1879, spread by soldiers returning from the battlefields of the Satsuma rebellion in 1877; to the founding of several hygiene institu- tions in the Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto prefectures; and, later, to the in- creasing number of publications on hygiene (Tsurumi 1937:3 11, 319). The definition of "hygiene" likewise expanded. For bureaucrats, mili- tary officials, physicians, and pedagogues alike, hygiene became a con- cept that not only linked but intrinsically intertwined rules of cleanliness with those of morality, the health of the body with that of the mind, the individual with society, and Japan with other modern nations (Imai T. 1906 : 243 -245; Koide M. 1932: 18). For sanitation personnel in the military, hygiene included no less than knowledge of the importance of clean water, air, ground, and housing. Appropriate care of sick and injured soldiers was another inlportant el- ement. The discovery of the source and the prevention of "military dis- eases" (gunbyo)-a euphemism for venereal diseases in the military- made up an additional core element; a healthy diet and the correct main- tenance of clothing, as well as a number of other factors that affected military life, were considered equally crucial (Mori 1886, 1888, 1889, 1886-1891,1911). For educators, hygiene came to cover all aspects of a child's devel- opment. They described hygiene as proper "care and maintenance of the body" (shintai no yoga) that went beyond the bare "survival in- stinct" (seizonyoku; probably a translation of the German term Ober- lebenstrieb). Proper care and maintenance was declared the basis of a "moral person"; in fact, the care and tnaintenance of the whole self was to be recognized as both "a virtue and a duty" (Imai T. 1906: 824). Explanations of hygiene were integrated first into the manuals of mil- itary doctors and the textbooks of military academies and later into books for factory doctors and textbooks of ordinary secondary schools. 26 Erecting a Modern Health Regime Under the banner of hygiene, cadets, soldiers, workers, and students learned to keep their bodies and clothes clean, store food properly, mon- itor their health, and make sure that enough fresh air and sunlight got into their barracks, schools, factories, and homes (Koide M. 1932; Ya- mai and Kinoshita 1982:376-378). Even booklets aimed mainly at in- stilling patriotism and loyalty to the emperor contained chapters on health and hygiene for adults and youth that were to be taken to heart (Mori 1907; Goto I926:90-96).7 Numerous sites of the enactment of the new concept of hygiene emerged during the Meiji era. In the remainder of this chapter, I will dis- cuss three groups-soldiers, prostitutes, and children-that were par- ticularly important because they strongly connected concerns about health, sexual practice, and national security. Systematic examinations in the Imperial Army and Navy enabled physicians to identify recruits as a social group with a high rate of venereal disease infection, a matter that eventually brought about the establishment of restricted-use broth- els-mentioned in the epigraph to this chapter-that were controlled and administered by the military. Similarly, the Bureau of Hygiene be- gan a survey of venereal diseases among prostitutes in order to try to jus- tify their segregation from the rest of society. Finally, the introduction of a school hygiene system allowed school physicians to "discover" that children suffered from all kinds of ailments, many of which, they in- sisted, were caused by masturbation. HYGIENE IN THE EMPEROR'S MILITARY One of the most public manifestations of modern society has been the ability to mobilize armies on a national scale. However, as I will argue in the following pages, the modern national military was also one of the core organizations for the development of hygienic thought and prac- tice. The Imperial Army and Navy was the first institution to attempt the administration and control of its members' sexual practices. The ad- ministration of soldiers' access to commercial sex was guided predomi- nantly by concerns about their physical and mental health. Except for the women classified as "licensed prostitutes," whom I shall discuss in the next section, no other group was as thoroughly monitored. Large- scale survey data on the physiques of soldiers were used far into the twentieth century to assess the "physical constitution of the Japanese." Venereal diseases were first researched systematically in military hospi- tals. Antibiotics for the treatment of these diseases (Salvarsan) as well as Erecting a Modern Health Regime 27 devices for their prevention (condoms) were first introduced in the mil- itary (Chuo Shinbun 1913; Hochi Shinbun 1916a; Tohoku Shinbun 1916; Nagai 1928a), and it "vas the authors of hygiene manuals for the army and the navy who claimed that a combination of condoms and drugs-e.g., creanlS that had to be applied to the genitals before and af- ter sexual intercourse (Odajima 1943[1938]:381)-were the most effec- tive methods of disease prevention. The Conscription Decree (Ch6heirei sh6sho), promulgated on 28 No- vember 1872 as an imperial edict, laid the cornerstone for Japan's abil- ity to mobilize its forces on a national scale. According to the decree, sol- diers were to be drafted from all over the country to form the Imperial Army (Teikoku Rikugun), whereas the Imperial Navy (Teikoku Kaigun) depended on volunteers. Their primary task was declared to be the "pro- tection of the nation." 8 The conscription system was long disputed among bureaucrats and ideologues, both before and after its introduc- tion at the insistence of Yamagata Aritomo (1838-1922), then executive head of the armed forces and future commander of the First Army in the war against China. 9 Universal conscription was a revolutionary rather than an evolutionary act, insofar as it dispossessed the samurai of their arms monopoly and with it their status as a closed elite. Given that the samurai never comprised more than about 7 percent of the population and that their cultural norms relied on the outdated weapons of sword and bow, they were inappropriate in both numbers and methods for the kind of military organization required in modern war (Lone 1994: 17- 19 ). There was another logic behind the conscription system: In times of war, conscription provided a larger number of soldiers who could be swiftly drafted. During times of peace, men with military training who had returned to civilian life did not burden the military budget because they were not paid. Some comlnentators insisted that a military of volunteers was prefer- able to one of draftees, and the many reforms of the conscription sys- tem, due in large part to the high number of young men avoiding the draft, hint at military officials' discontent with the organization. How- ever, critics who doubted the value of the conscription system typically voiced their criticism in order to strengthen the military, rather than to reorganize it. In 1882 Fukuzawa Yukichi thundered in his critique On the Military (Heiron) that ten years after the introduction of conscrip- tion, no more than 740,000 men were serving in the military at any given time. Fukuzawa insisted that the Meiji government needed to invest more money in the development of the military (see Kat6 Y. 1996: 20). Erecting a Modern Health Regime Fukuzawa and other critics of the conscription system accurately pointed out the relatively low number of soldiers compared to the num- ber of young men classified as fit for service at the beginning of the Meiji period. In the first half of the Meiji era, only about one in thirty twenty- year-old men was drafted. Thus the number of soldiers first increased by less than 10,000 and later by about 20,000 per year. An increase in the disputed military budget, however, soon provided for a considerable in- crease in recruits. During the years from 1876 to 1880, the combined budget of the Imperial Army and Navy reached nearly 10.4 million yen, or 18 percent of the national budget (Kato Y. 1996:21). The number of conscripts examined between 1873 and 1900 went from 2,300 to 53,000, and in the course of the following seventy years, the Imperial Army and Navy grew to 5.9 million personnel, including officers and troops (Drea 1998:75). Recruiting districts served as the administrative areas for managing the conscription process. The army medical inspector general was in- stalled as the central authority for the physical examination of conscripts (chohei kensa), a move that marked the rather direct connection made by military personnel between the physical fitness of individual men and the national goal of building a strong imperial military. Each year, all twenty-year-old Japanese men had to report for this physical examina- tion (see figure I). The military administration learned each conscript's age, height, chest circumference, lung capacity, and weight from the ex- aminations (which were held twice a year), and classified each of them in one of five classes according to fitness for service (Rikugunsho 1894: 190-194). Classes A, B, and C were considered different degrees of fit- ness for service. In class D were the "physically or mentally deficient," or those regarded as unsuitable for becoming soldiers, including crimi- nals and dwarfs (Shimizu 1989). Young men in this class typically suf- fered from what the examiners termed "thin and weak bones" or an "in- sufficient development of the entire body." The examiners also noted that industrial workers (particularly coal miners, glass workers, and shoe factory and knitting mill workers) were in significantly worse phys- ical shape than white-collar workers (Rikugunsho 1917: 5 I I; Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1917; Yomiuri Shinbun 1917). Class E men were ill at the time of the annual physical examination and had to report for reexam- ination and reclassification later that year or the following year (Drea 1998 :78-79). The first systematic physical examination after the introduction of conscription was carried out in Nagano prefecture. In December of Erecting a Modern Health Regime Figure I. Kurushima Takehiko's Everyday Use Encyclopedia 40: Indispensable Army Handbook for the People (Nichiyo hyakka zensho dai yonjuhen: Koku- nlin hikkei rikugun ippan) contained this idealized sketch of a conscript and his examiner in a health examination office (Kurushima 1899: inside front cover). 1874, data from the first examination were made available to military administrators, and in 1876 the first nationwide data were published, documenting 2.9 million conscripts, almost 18 percent of ,~hom were classified as class A or B (Kato Y. 1996: 65 ).10 After 1902, Japanese con- scripts in Taiwan, and later, those in Karafuto, Manchukuo, and Korea were examined and drafted as well (see figure 2) (Kato Y. 1996: 15 5). 30 Erecting a Modern Health Regime Figure 2. Men in the colonies had to travel to "mainland Japan" (Nihon no naichi) in order to be examined~ Only when more and more people objected to this procedure because of the high cost of travel were conscripts examined and recruited in the colonies. After 1902, conscripts in Taiwan formed the Taiwan Reserve Force, those in Karafuto the Karafuto Reserve Force, and so forth (Kato Y. 1996: I5 5). According to a military law of I94I, twenty-year- old Manshii men also had to undergo a health examination before they were drafted to fight in Japan's imperialist war in East Asia. Photograph from Asahi Gurafu S6kan: Warera ga Hyakunen (Asahi graph summary issue: One hun- dred years of our history), 25 September I968: 120. Used with the kind per- mission of the Asahi Shinbun. During peacetime, only class A men-those taller than 1.55 meters and in top physical condition-were eligible for conscription. Of these, an average of 20 to 30 percent were actually drafted to do 120 days of ba- sic training and not more than 35 days of additional service per year thereafter (Drea 1998: 78) .. Recruitment officers and health examiners helped create the reputa- tion of the male population in entire prefectures by documenting both their willingness to join the military and their physical capability to do so. They registered the conscripts' "character" (seishitsu) as simple and naIve, took note of stubbornness and bigotry, and were quick to describe as "lazy" and "effeminate" those who seemed to resent the military. In V'~ ~ ~ " ... 1=t 7- ~ :t It: .... Ail :; ~ '7 .st- .! ~:; 0 7 7- .::. '? A :l: x T ;y 0 )v 7 ;' ~~ 7- It .Iv !JJ~ }- il~ ?" A l- T =TY::r ~ 11 Figure 3· The physical examination of conscripts and numerous other military scenarios were explained to the young readers of illustrated books and maga- zines for children. This one is from the publisher Kodansha, Kodansha no ehon: Nippon no rikugun (Kodansha storybook: Japan's army), I940: 52. Erecting a Modern Health Regime justifying their unfavorable evaluations of the conscript pool, recruit- ment officers also noted when the number of draft dodgers or men who "hated the military" was particularly high (Rikugunsho 1876: 83-88).11 While these evaluations of the conscripts' character served as a means to probe their willingness to serve, "physical quality" was really what ex- amination officers were looking for. Upon entering the physical examination office, conscripts learned the rules of the physical examination for conscripts. They were instructed on proper bodily hygiene, cleanliness of their clothes, and proper main- tenance of equipment received on the day of their recruitment, and were warned not to attempt to escape recruitment. In addition to instruc- tional pamphlets and posters providing warnings in recruitment offices, nationwide campaigns appealed to the public to report persons who il- legally attempted to escape military service or who neglected to register, and reminded everyone that draft dodgers shamed the region (Kato Y. 1996 :159). Many potential soldiers awaited the physical examination with mixed feelings, and long after its introduction, draft evasion remained com- monplace. After all, conscription had several worrisome implications for the recruit and his family, some of which were similar to the impli- cations of universal compulsory education-most obviously, the loss of labor at home. When compulsory education was introduced in 1872, many Japanese families perceived schools to be detrimental to their in- terests because schooling robbed them of the use of older children's la- bor during prime daylight hours for a period of four to six years. Fami- lies were reluctant to enroll children in schools. Resistance took an active form in some areas during the early Meiji years as protestors razed and set fire to schools (Kosaka 1958:84; see also Uno 1999:40). Similarly, for the families of the young men, recruitment implied a loss of labor in times of peace as well as the risk of complete loss of their sons in times of war.12 Moreover, neither martial spirit nor patriotism came naturally. To many men and their families, to die for the emperor and the nation seemed a strange idea, and resistance, at times violent, occurred all over provincial Japan (Kato Y. 1996:46-47). This lack of patriotism in the wider population and the lack of com- mitment to the military service among recruits prompted military offi- cials to take further steps. They tightened the regulations of the con- scription system in 1883 and 1889 so that the categories of exemption became increasingly limited. Yamagata also drafted the "Imperial Pre- cepts to Soldiers" ("Gunjin chokuyu"), which was introduced in 1882 in Erecting a Modern Health Regime 33 order to "instill virtues of loyalty to the emperor and love of the coun- try." The Imperial Rescript was a long (2,70o-character) document dis- tinguished by the use of such obscure Chinese characters that it was dif- ficult even for a college graduate to read. The entire text was read to the troops on special occasions, such as National Foundation Day (I I Feb- ruary) or Army Day (IO March). Recruits also had to memorize and recite on command a shorter version of the rescript, "Five Principles of the Soldier" (Kurushima I899: inside front cover; see also Drea 1998: 8I-82). Despite the threats by the military that were posted in recruitment offices, and despite village announcement boards and attempts at indoc- trination, young men employed several strategies to escape the military's call, some of which centered on the physical health examination. Ac- cording to Ohama Tetsuya, guidebooks on how to escape military ser- vice were popular up to the eve of the Sino-Japanese war. The official history of Tokyo explains that young students moving to the capital reg- istered in certain wards where doctors would certify them as physically unfit. In the far north of central Japan, there were even some who mi- grated to the undeveloped island of Hokkaido to escape (see Lone I994: I7-I8). Although it was a criminal offense if it was detected, some men starved themselves in order to be underweight at the time of the exami- nation. Others pretended that they could not see or hear well or even injured themselves to escape the draft. Still others drank unhealthy amounts of soy sauce to produce symptoms of heart trouble, and some young men bought other people's birth certificates (Yomiuri Shinbun I9I7). Recruitment officers of course were not ignorant of these illegal practices. Quite the contrary, in their evaluations of the conscripts in their districts they noted explicitly when young "unpatriotic men" (hiko- kumin) attempted to "avoid the draft by using various illnesses as an ex- cuse" (Rikugunsho I876: 87). Those who were drafted were not always disappointed with military life. Many realized that after the initial hardships of basic training, work in the army had its advantages over farm work. Soldiers received rela- tively good food, and those in their second year enjoyed a considerable amount of free time. Furthermore, the army accepted only the men who were the most physically healthy. Being drafted as a class A soldier was considered a mark of status and an acknowledgement of top phys- ical condition. Once drafted, military doctors kept close track of the soldiers' physical development (Iizuka I968: 9 5; see also Drea I99 8 : 79, 89)· 34 Erecting a Modern Health Regime MONITORING SOLDIERS' HEALTH The health examinations of conscripts and other health matters in the military were administered by the Army Hygiene Council (Rikugun Ei- sei Kaigi), which was directly responsible to the Army Ministry (Kuru- shima I899: I7-I8). During the late nineteenth century, it found that even class A conscripts were far from satisfactory to the military au- thorities. Among others, Chief Military Physician Dr. Mori Rintar6 (I862-I922) set out to engineer the improvement of military hygiene in both word and deed. In several ways, Mori's career was similar to those of the leading architects of Japan's modern health regime such as Nagayo Sensai and Goto Shinpei. All three had studied medicine (Mori in the Medical De- partment of the University of Tokyo) and were sent to Europe to further their training (Mori was sent to Germany by the Army Ministry to study military hygiene). Like Goto, Mori served in the army as a military phy- sician and held a number of prestigious posts during his thirty-five years of military service. For four years, he was instructed by Germany's top hygienists, university professors Franz Hoffmann and Max von Pet- tenkofer, and university professors and military physicians W. A. Roth and Robert Koch, the founder of modern bacteriology. Mori served as a military physician in the wars against China (I894-I895) and Russia (I 904 - I 90 5) and remained in the service of the emperor's army until I9I6 (Maruyama I984:vii-viii}.13 Mori's Army Hygiene Manual (Rikugun eisei ky6tei, I889) was pub- lished by the Army Medical Academy (Rikugun Gun'i Gakko) exclu- sively for military physicians and other military instructors, but his New Book of Hygiene (Eisei shinhen, I897) addressed hygienists more gen- erally. Both served as textbooks for military education. Mori wrote the Army Hygiene Manual only one year after he had become an instructor at the Army Medical Academy. The concept of hygiene, Mori explained, included all practices that affected a person's health and aimed at health preservation and improvement and the prevention of disease. He urged military instructors and administrators to instruct soldiers on these ideas because the military was an important state organization (Mori I889; see also Maruyama I984:42, 85). New concepts of military hygiene targeted not only the health ex- amination procedures for recruits, cadets at military academies, and soldiers on active duty but also the hygiene conditions in military bar- racks.14 In order to avoid the recruitment of sick men, examination Erecting a Modern Health Regime 35 officers were reminded frequently to check conscripts' physical condi- tion carefully, particularly for lung diseases, which had been epidemic since the early Meiji years, and for skin diseases caused by cotton uni- forms. By 1900, physical examination charts began to circulate in mili- tary academies, cadets received special lectures on hygiene, and their physical development was examined annually (Kaigunsho 1907: 150). Newspapers began to report that due to the successful establishment of hygienic thought and practices, the physical constitution of conscripts improved steadily (Hochi Shinbun 1916a; Tokyo Asahi Shinbun 1917). The Imperial Army and Navy's annual reports also proudly noted that cadets were particularly heavy, well-built and well-fed compared to other men in the same age cohort-conscripts were on average 1.65 me- ters tall and weighed 58.6 kilograms (Rikugunsho 1917:577; Yamai and Kinoshita 1982: 376 -378). By the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, the hygiene section of the armed forces' annual reports had ex- panded to several hundred pages that meticulously listed the physical condition of conscripts and soldiers serving in all parts of the Japanese elnpire and included data on about fifty different diseases and types of injuries (see, e.g., Rikugunsho 1917: 364-499). SYPHILITIC SOLDIERS In addition to the health examinations of conscripts and the annual ex- aminations of cadets and other soldiers, medical personnel in military hospitals and academies also carried out smaller-scale health examina- tions. These studies confirmed that one in ten recruits, or several thou- sand men, suffered from at least one of several kinds of venereal diseases (karyubyo) (Fujikawa Y. 1908a:29; see also Rikugunsho 1894, 1897, 1917:505; Kaigunsho 1906:185,19°7:211,19°9:140).15 The most common ones were gonorrhea, chancroid, and syphilis. Until effective medication was developed, the diseases were treated with various baths, painful injections, and treatments with special grasses and tinctures (Kariya 1993:22-23). However, venereal diseases often remained un- treated and had severely damaging consequences. Gonorrhea and chan- croid were not life threatening, but syphilis was. Up until the end of World War II, when effective medication became more widely available, syphilis attacked every organ in the body. It caused repeated skin erup- tions and ulcers, brought about hair loss and deterioration of the nose, and in the final stages attacked the brain, turning the sufferer into a crip- ple (Sone 1999:178). As the former field nurse Anzai Sadako reported, Erecting a Modern Health Regime patients eventually suffered loss of control over motor nerves, spinal cord phthisis, or progressive paralysis, as well as nervous and mental ill- nesses. Several entries in her memoir illustrated the lot of syphilis pa- tients at the front. One of her stories read as follows: There was this erotomaniac patient with cerebral syphilis in the field hos- pital. He was quite a handsome man who had been in the war for six years. He frequented the field brothels all the time and had contracted acute cere- bral syphilis. He was already seriously ill when he came to the hospital. Once he called out in a loud voice, "Come here, nurse. Come here!" I thought that something had happened. When I went over to him he said, "Your underpants look as if they may fall down any minute. Look, they are falling. Come quick. Show it to me. If you don't show it to me your but- tocks will turn black. Please, show it to me!" He began to cry. Then he stopped all of a sudden. He wanted to tease us. Then he made a serious face and began to sing an obscene song. When he stopped he began to un- dress and do a striptease. (Anzai 1953 : 161) In 1924, an average of 6 in I,OOO deaths in the population were as- cribed to syphilis, with a wide range between regions-e.g., from eleven in Akita and Nagasaki to one in Shiga and Fukui. This mortality rate was comparable to those of other diseases such as dysentery (KRB 1927: I28 -129), and effective treatment was available only decades af- ter 1909, when Paul Ehrlich and his laboratory assistant Hata Sahachiro developed Salvarsan 606. 16 Salvarsan was a poisonous yellowish pow- der consisting of an organic compound containing a small amount of ar- senic and used in a dilute solution as a treatment for syphilis. At least in military hospitals, Salvarsan injections became routine treatment by the 1940S.17 The mass production of the more effective penicillin, discov- ered by the bacteriologist Alexander Fleming in 1928, became possible only at the end of World War II. The military health administration was interested in several charac- teristics of venereal diseases in the army and navy. Among these were the time of infection (before or after recruitment), the source of infection (classified either as several "kinds" of women or as "other"), the mor- tality rate of infected soldiers, and the cost of treatment. 18 Long-term documentation of venereal disease cases in military hospitals reveals that the rate of carriers of venereal diseases in the military increased per 1,000 soldiers examined from 21.9 in 1912 to 31.1 in 1926 (KRB 1927: I). The army responded to the increase in venereal disease pa- tients by ordering weekly medical examinations of thousands of men and severely punishing those who were found diseased or seen entering Erecting a Modern Health Regime 37 a brothel. During the first Sino-Japanese war, the medical staff issued warnings that the Chinese were a promiscuous race and the country was rife with syphilis (Kaigunsho imukyoku I900; see also Lone I994: 149-150). The Siberian expedition from 1918 to 1920 provided an- other lesson for the Japanese army about the risk of venereal disease. During those two years, I,387 men were killed in battle and 2,066 were wounded, but venereal disease casualties reached 2,0 12 (Allen I9 84 : 594). Soldiers' diaries from the Russo-Japanese war ten years later, how- ever, indicate that the army eventually authorized certain brothels and even built others particularly for Japanese soldiers, in an attempt to con- trol the sexual activities of soldiers and subjugate both soldiers and prostitutes under the authority of military physicians. Thus, prostitution within and outside of the military was geared toward the functionality of male sexuality through the use of female bodies in order to secure the power system within the military and over the empire. This practice was no secret in civilian society and was hardly a bone of contention there. Only occasionally did social reformers, most notably the Purity Society (Kakuseikai) and some women's groups that o	702,282
Daoist Magical Incantations, Hand Seals, and Star Stepping The Secret Teaching of Esoteric Daoist Magic (Jerry Alan Johnson) (Z-Library).pdf	DAOIST MAGICAL INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS, AND STAR STEPPING THE SECRET TEACHING OF ESOTERIC DAOIST MAGIC WRI'TEN BY PROFESSOR JERRY ALAN JOHNSON, PH.D., D.T.C.M SENIOR ABBOT (ZHUCHI) OF THE TEMPLE OF THE CELESTIAL CLOUD THE TEMPLE OF THE CELESTIAL CLOUD WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM Table of Contents Secret Trainings of Daoist Magical Incantations 7 Introduction to Training Daoist Magic 7 The History of Daoist Magic 7 The Magical Teachings of Huangdi 8 The Huang-Lao Daoists 9 Two Main Schools of Daoist Magic 10 The Zhang Yi Daoist Sect 11 The Quan Zhen Daoist Sect 12 Main Categorizations of Daoist Instruction 13 Daoist Rank and Progression of Post 14 The Four Pillars of Daoist Magic 15 Magical Initiation 15 3 Bodies , 3 Breaths and 3 Minds 15 Mind, Speech, and Body Secret 17 Training the Mind Secret 17 Yin and Yang Divisions of the Mind 18 The Prenatal and Postnatal Mind 18 Interactions of Yuan Shen and Shen Zhi 19 The Four Secret Powers of the Mind 19 Four Ways To Avoid Losing Magical Power 21 Training the Speech Secret 23 The Three Levels of Breath 23 The Energy of The Breath (Wind) 23 Chinese Characters for Wind 24 The Wind's Effects on Matter 24 Exhaling Color, Sound, and Breath 24 Consonants and Vowels 25 Three Types of Projected Sounds 25 Projecting Sound Vibration 25 Training Sound Projection 26 Sound Projection Exercise #1 26 Sound Projection Exercise #2 26 Sound Projection Exercise #3 27 Sound Projection Exercise #4 28 Words and Magic 31 Magical Names, Words, and Phrases 32 Three Types of Words 33 The Power of Words 33 Understanding the Influence of Language 35 Normal and Magical Conversations 35 The Manifestations of Speech 36 Rhyme and Rhythm 36 Four Levels of Speech 37 Qi Activation of Names, Words, Phrases 38 Magical Incantations The S'ook of Thunder Incantations 40 Sound Resonance and Incantations 40 The Structure of a Spell or Incantation 41 Five Elemental Correspondences to Spells and Incantation 42 Three Main Components of an Incantation 43 Five Disciplines for Incantation Training 44 Breath Incantations 44 Introduction to Breath Incantations 45 Incantations in Religious Daoism 45 Characteristics of Daoist Incantations 46 Four Types of Magical Incantations 47 Magic Incantations 48 Incantations for Purification 48 Incantations for Removing Filth 49 Incantations for the Altar 51 Incantations for Magic Tools 54 Incantations for Talismans 60 Incantations for Opening the Heavenly Eye 61 Incantations and Hymns for Praise 62 The Hymn for Opening the Holy Scriptures 62 Incantations for Offering a Report 70 Incantations for Protection 72 Incantations for Inviting The 3 Pure Ones to the Altar Space 76 Incantations for Inviting or Summoning The Celestial Immortals 77 Incantation to Counter Evil Spells 84 Incantations for Bidding Farewell to the Celestial Immortals 86 Incantations for Inviting Help in Relationships 87 Incantations for Inviting Increasing Finances 88 Incantations for Pacifying the Spirits of Earth 89 The Incantation of the Soil Agency 90 Four Types of Breath Incantation 91 Audible (Jing) Incantations 91 Sub-Audible (Qi) Incantations 91 Inaudible (Shen) Incantations 91 Transcended (Wuji) Incantations 92 Breath Incantation Techniques 92 Using Breath Incantations for Protection 94 Single Sound Breath Incantation 94 Multiple Sound Breath Incantation 96 Imprinting with Incantations 97 3 WW.DAOJSTMAGIC.COM Four Functional Properties of Energy 97 Creating, Feeling, Imprinting, and Activating Qi Meditation 98 Thoughts, Feelings & Energetic Imprinting 99 Materializing Energetic Matter 99 3 Types of Creative Energetic Materialization 101 Enchantment 102 Trance Induction 102 Audible Suggestive Influence 103 Thought Suggestive Influence 105 Projecting Hypnotic Suggestions 106 Induce Hypnotic Thought Suggestion 1 07 Four Stages Used to Induce Trance 108 Trance Induction to Trance Possession 111 Training the Body Secret 113 The Three Types of Posture 113 Daoist Magical Hand Seal Training The History ofHand Seals 114 Daoist Hand Seals 115 Types of Hand Seals 116 Specific Functions of the Hand Seals 117 Palm Directions in Hand Seal Formations 118 Combining Hand Seals and Incantations 118 Esoteric Study and Training 119 Hand Seal Preparation 120 Buddhist Greeting Hand Seal 121 Heaven and Earth Hand Seal 122 Methods of Activating Hand Seals 123 Double Handed Seals 127 Forming the Ba Gua Hand Seals 127 Eight Trigram Double-Hand Seals used for Yi-Jing Divination 127 Eight Trigram Double-Hand Seals used for Gathering Power 130 Advanced Bagua Double Hand Seal 133 Three Dantian Double Hand Seals 134 Stimulating the Lower Dantian: 134 Stimulating the Middle Dantian: 134 Stimulating the Upper Dantian: 134 Hand Seals and Rituals 135 Hand Seals Related to the Perfected Immortals of Anterior Heaven 135 Animal Hand Seals 136 Magical Instrument Hand Seals 137 Hand Seals and the Martial Generals 138 4 Daoist Esoteric Double-Hand Seals 140 Hand Seals Used For Worship 140 Hand Seals Used For Summoning 152 Hand Seals Used For Attacking and Defending 157 Protection 157 Obstruction 158 Attacking 160 Binding 166 Imprisoning 168 Sealing 168 Single Hand Seals 170 Daoist Single-Hand Seals 170 Daoist Three Dantians Single Hand Seals 171 Five Element Organ Pattern 173 Five Element Energy Pattern 174 Combining the Five Element Patterns 175 Bagua Single Hand Seals 176 The Prenatal Bagua Magical Pattern 176 The Postnatal Bagua Magical Pattern 177 Magic Square and Divination 178 The Ten Heavenly Stems Hand Seal 180 The 10 Heavenly Stems 181 The 12 Earthly Branches 181 Magical Application of the 10 Heavenly Stems and 12 Earthly Branches 182 The Twelve Earthly Branches Hand Seals 183 Secret Incantations of the 12 Earthly Branches 183 12 Earthly Branches and the Human Body 184 The "13 Thunder Gods" Hand Seal 186 Daoist Taiji Hand Seal Greeting 187 Mao Shan Hand Seals for Healing or Protection 187 7 Stars of the Big Dipper #1 Single Hand Seals 189 7 Stars of the Big Dipper #2 Single Hand Seals 189 Seven Stars Pattern of the Northern Dipper Single Hand Seals #1 190 Seven Stars Pattern of the Northern Dipper Single Hand Seals #2 190 The "Five Thunders Explode" Hand Seal 191 The "Five Sacred Sounds" Hand Seal 191 "Golden Wheel to Control Demons" Hand Seal 192 The "Middle - Piercing Ghost Heart and Below - Crushing Ghost Belly" Hand Seal 193 28 Star Constellation Secret Hand Seal 194 The 28 Star Constellation Formation 195 Daoist Esoteric Single Hand Seals 197 Single Hand Seals Used For Worship 197 Single Hand Seals Used For Summoning 201 Hand Seals Used For Attacking & Defending 206 Protection 206 Obstruction 207 Attacking 208 Catching 210 Sealing 211 Breaking the Prison Hand Seal and Magic Incantation Ritual 212 Thunder Trigram Hand Seal 214 Fire Trigram Hand Seal 215 Lake Trigram Hand Seal 216 Water Trigram Hand Seal 217 Mountain Trigram Hand Seal 218 Wind Trigram Hand Seal 219 Earth Trigram Hand Seal 220 Heaven Trigram Hand Seal 221 Heaven and Earth Trigram Hand Seal 222 The Jade Crease Hand Seal 223 Daoist Magical Star Stepping Cycles of the Stars 224 History of Daoist Star Stepping 225 The Gate of Heaven 225 The Three Gods of the Gate of Heaven 226 Incantation Used for Causing the Spirit to Leave the Physical Body 226 Incantation Used for Returning the Spirit Back into the Physical Body 226 The Steps of Yu 227 Ancient Star Stepping Rituals 229 Ancient Stepping Patterns 231 Introduction to the Big Dipper 231 The Various Domains Controlled by the Stars of the Northern Dipper 233 Angle of the Big Dipper 233 Spiritual Power of the Big Dipper 233 The Magic Stars of the Big Dipper 236 Daoist Names of the Big Dipper Stars 236 Magic Talismans of the Big Dipper Stars 238 The Chart of the Authentic Man's Original Destiny Guiding Star #1 241 The Chart of the Authentic Man's Original Destiny Guiding Star #2 242 INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Using the Dipper Stars for Protection 242 The Nine Dark Stars of the Big Dipper 244 The Pole Star and the Big Dipper 244 Big Dipper Stepping Patterns 245 Big Dipper Star Stepping Incantation 245 Pacing the Big Dipper and Hand Seals 246 Seven Star Stepping Patterns 24 7 "Big 34 Star Stepping" 24 7 Seven Star Stepping #1: "Summoning the Immortal Ne Zha" Stepping 248 Seven Star Stepping #2: "Removing The Evils" Stepping Pattern 249 Seven Star Stepping #3: "Summoning the Magical Officers" (#1) 250 Seven Star Stepping #4: "Summoning the Magical Officers" (#2) 250 Seven Star Stepping #5: "Summoning Marshal Yin" Stepping 251 Seven Star Stepping #6: "North Star" Stepping 253 Seven Star Stepping #7: "Escorting and Ascending" Stepping 254 Seven Star Stepping #8: Summoning the Magic Tiger Stepping 254 Seven Star Stepping #9: Summoning the 7 Heavenly Immortals 256 Seven Star Stepping #1 0: Yu Star Stepping 257 Seven Star Stepping #11: Northern Star Stepping 258 Seven Star Stepping #12: Six Yang Dipper Star Stepping 259 Seven Star Stepping #13: Six Yin Dipper Star Stepping 259 Seven Star Stepping #14: "Northern Magic Dipper Star Stepping 260 Seven Star Stepping #15: "White Yi Star Stepping 260 Southern Magic Dipper 6 Star Stepping 261 Nine Traces of the Big Dipper 262 The Nine Palaces of Heaven 263 Incantations For The 9 Palaces of Heaven 264 Offering Incense with "The Dipper of Bright Stars and Pearls" Incantation 265 Nine Palace Stepping Patterns 265 Nine Palace Stepping Pattern #1: "Magic Square Stepping" 266 Nine Palace Stepping Pattern #2: "Hero Stepping (Nine Purple Stepping)" 267 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM Nine Palace Stepping Pattern #3: "Sending the Report" 267 Nine Palace Bagua Stepping Pattern 268 Postnatal Bagua Gang Magical Star Stepping 269 Twenty-Eight Star Constellations 270 Stars of the Twenty-Eight Constellations 271 Gathering Energy from the Twenty-Eight Star Constellations 273 "Pacing the 28 Star Constellations" 275 "Dippers of the 28 Star Constellations" 276 Bagua: Eight Trigrams 278 Prenatal and Postnatal Trigrams 279 Incantation to Cultivate the Magical Powers of the Pre-Heaven Bagua Qi 280 Incantation to Cultivate the Magical Powers of the Post-Heaven Bagua Qi 283 Ba Gua Stepping Patterns 286 Bagua Stepping #1: "The Ancient River Chart" 286 Bagua Stepping #2: "The Yi-Jing - Wu Xing Stepping" 287 Bagua Stepping #3: "Ba Gua - Yi Jing Stepping" 287 Bagua Stepping #4: "Prenatal Ba Gua Stepping" 288 Bagua Stepping #5: "Prenatal Bagua Stepping" 288 Bagua Stepping #6: "Prenatal Bagua Stepping" 289 Bagua Stepping #7: "Reverse Gua Stepping" 289 Bagua Stepping #8: "Postnatal Bagua Stepping" 289 Bagua Stepping #9: "Postnatal Bagua Stepping" 290 Bagua Stepping #10: "Postnatal Bagua Stepping" 290 The Wu Xing: Five Elements 291 Five Element Stepping #1: "Five Element Power Stepping" 291 The Five Element Stepping #2: "Five Element Power Stepping" 292 The Five Element Stepping #3: "Five Element Virtues Stepping" 292 The Five Element Stepping #4: "Five Star Stepping" 293 The Five Element Stepping #5: "Five Sounds Stepping" 293 6 Three Star Stepping Patterns 294 Three Star Stepping Pattern #1: "Fa Yi Stepping (Wind and Fire Steppingr 294 Three Star Stepping Pattern #2: 'Three Altar Stepping" 294 Facing Qian 3 Star Step Positions 295 "San Tai Gong"- 3 Tai Stepping 297 Summoning the Spirits of the Dead 298 "Gathering the Hun Stepping" 299 "Gathering and Hiding the Hun Stepping" 299 Magical Esoteric Star Stepping Patterns 300 Summoning the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern #1 300 Summoning the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern #2 300 Summoning the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern #3 301 Summoning the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern #4 301 Summoning the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern #5 301 Invoking the Celestial Immortals Star Stepping Pattern 302 "Nine Wind Stepping" 302 "Celestial Master Zhang Stepping" 302 "Hehe (Harmonize and Unite) Stepping" 303 "The Intertwining Fence Stepping" 303 "The 36 Star Stepping" 304 "The Second Star of the Dipper Protects the Body" Star Stepping Pattern 304 "The Nine Phoenix Star Stepping" 305 "The Sealing the Altar Star Stepping" 307 "The 8 Trigram Constellation Star Stepping" 309 General Star Stepping Incantation Ritual 310 4 Directions, 28 Stars, Big Dipper Stepping 311 6 Southern Magic Dipper Star Stepping 312 7 Northern Magic Dipper Star Stepping 313 The 3 Pairs of Canopy Stars Stepping 314 Pattern For Removing Evil 314 Pattern For Saving Souls 315 Five Element Star Stepping 316 Nine Spirits Star Stepping 317 Facing Qian 3 Star Step Positions 318 About the Author 319 THE SECRET TRAININGS OF DAOIST MAGICAL INCANTATIONS INTRODUCTION TO TRAINING DAOIST MAGIC Born from ancient Chinese shamanism, Dao ist alchemy gradually evolved to encompass all !eve Is of human experience, the mastery of which is commonly known today as Daoist Magic. Be cause magic links spirit with matter, the Daoists have always used magic as part of their tradition in all cultivation, alchemy, and healing practices. Thus, it is through the understanding and appli cation of magical practices that the Daoist priests embraced the three realms of matter, energy, and spirit, seeking to unite with the Dao by gathering and manipulating the subtle energies of nature. Through the use of magic (i.e., spirit travel, dream interpretation, controlling the weather, divination, healing, and conjuring or removing spirit entities), the ancient Daoist priests were able This form of magic originated from shamans and priests who had entered ancient China from its Northern and Southern borders. These powerful priests, known as "Wu" (magician or wizard) later gathered in the Northeastern coastal regions and eventually taught the Yellow Emperor. Yang Branch of Daoist Magic Yin Branch of Daoist Magic This form of magic originated from ancient knowledge that was gathered by sages who withdrew into the wilderness, forests, and mountains in order to meditate upon the Dao of nature and observe its infinite manifestations. to train the body 's life-force to sense, manipulate, and control the energetic manifestations that gov ern within the physical world. According to ancient Daoist teachings, the Dao ("Road" or "Way") is conceived as the infinite space out of which all reality emerges. It is so vast, that it cannot be described in words. It is beyond all time and space, and has been described as the magical structure of life- that underlies the universe. THE HISTORY OF DAOIST MAGIC The Daoist Magic commonly taught today in Chi na, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. originally developed from two separate branches of Chinese mysticism (Figure 1.1). The Yin Branch of Daoist Magic, originated from ancient knowledge that was gathered and eventually written down by the philosophers of the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.). These individuals with drew into the wilderness, forests, and mountains in Daoist Folk Magic The Fusion of Both Magical Branches, and the Birth of Orthodox Daoist Religion Buddhist & Daoist Magic Combine, and the Quan Zhen Daoist School is Formed ¢ :-c:- £ I.Jl-1 I I I I 1-1 I ¤¥ I :I}.: L - - .. - .I r--- .. I J.. I 111 I 1:;:. I gr • 0' I I : .. - - - .. Figure 1.1. Origin of Daoist Magic 7 WW.DAOJSTMAGIC.COM Figure 1.2. Ancient Daoist Wu-Sorcerer order to meditate upon the Dao of nature and observe its infinite manifestations. Disciples of these Daoists practices sought after a more Yin, feminine, receptive energetic knowledge, which could only arise as the fruit of a passive and yielding attitude, developed through the observation and study of nature. The Yang Branch of Daoist Magic, originated from shamans and priests who had entered ancient China from its Northern and Southern borders. These individuals later gathered together and were con centrated within the Northeastern coastal regions of ancient China (especially within the states of Chi and Yen). These priests were eventually given the name of "Wu" (magician or wizard) and were believed to have eventually taught the Yellow Emperor. In ancient China, the Wu, sometimes referred to as a Fangshi (Necromancer) traditionally wore a long robe with a tall hat. When performing magic rituals, the Wu carried a ceremonial staff (known as a "Jie Zhang") in his left hand and a medicine bag in his right (Figure 1.2). Eventually, the two different elements of na ture study and Wu sorcery combined in order to form the Daoist "religion" of later times. The Wu sorcery that was not incorporated into religious Daoism eventually became associated with the most ancient practices of Chinese Folk Magic, which centered around the worship of the various powers of Heaven and Shang Di (the God Above). 8 Figure 1.3. Li Er, (Lao Zi) (The Keeper of the Archives of the Zhou Court) THE MAGICAL TEACHINGS OF HUANGDI According to ancient Chinese belief, the founder of Daoism was not Laozi (whose original name was Li Er), the keeper of the archives in the Zhou Court (Figure 1.3), but the Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) himself, who was believed to live in China as early as 3,000 B.C. It is known by many ancient historians that the Yellow Emperor's magi cal practices were legendary. At the time ofLaozi' s birth (in the state of Chu) during the Qin Dynasty (221-206 B.C.), the reign ing Emperor Qin Shi Huang was already a strong devotee of Daoist shamanistic magic, which incor porated much of the Yellow Emperor's magical teachings. Years after Laozi had passed, many of the ancient energetic practices passed down from the Yellow Emperor became commingled with Laozi' s spiritual teachings (known as Huang-Lao Daoism). Historically, the originator of Daoist Magic, Qigong, and Acupuncture has always been linked to Huang Di (the Yellow Emperor), who ruled over a confederation of tribal dans in Northern China from around 2,696-2,598 B.C. (Figure 1.4). The Yellow Emperor is said to have practiced Qigong breathing exercises and meditations, cultivating internal alchemy through sexual practices with his harem of 1,200 women. Possessing great magical powers, he lived to the age of 111 years old and attained immortality. According to the Biographies Figure 1.4. Huang Di (The Yellow Emperor) Founder of Daoist Magic and Chinese Medicine of the Immortals, written in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), the Yellow Emperor had the magi cal powers to summon and control various deities and spirit entities, through the use of magical talismans and other esoteric magical tools. There are a number of esoteric texts attributed to the magical teachings of the Yellow Emperor. These magical books are entitled: • The Yellow Emperor's Old Willow Divination by Dreams • The Yellow Emperor's Inner Classics • The Dietary Proscriptions of the Divine Agricul turist (Shen Nong) the Yellow Emperor • Wondrous Mushrooms of the Yellow Emperor and His Various Disciples • The Yellow Emperor's Classics of the Golden Bookcase and fade Scales • The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine • The Yellow Emperor's and Three King's Techniques for Nourishing Yang The belief that the original school of Magical Daoism is founded by the Yellow Emperor was actually common knowledge in China until the Chinese government moved to embrace Western Medicine, and sought to squelch any metaphysi cal knowledge or Daoist Magic pertaining to the root or origin of modern Traditional Chinese Medicine. It was Huang Di's discourses on health and longevity with his chief medical advisors Qi Bo and Lei Gong, that were eventually compiled INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING and recorded in twelve scrolls during the Warring States period. This work is known as the Huang Di Nei ]ing (Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine), and is hailed as the foundation of all Chinese Medicine. THE HUANG·LAO DAOISTS In the term "Huang-Lao/' the word "Huang" refers to Huangdi (the "Yellow Emperor") and the word "Lao," refers to Laozi (the "Old Master"). The esoteric magical tradition of the "Huang Lao" Masters, originated in the Eastern coastal region of ancient China, alongside the powerful magical traditions of the ancient Wu shamans. These powerful priests and sorcerers were devo tees of the ancient magical practices passed down from the legendary Yellow Emperor (Huangdi), combined with the esoteric teachings of Laozi. According to ancient historians, "Philosophi cal Daoism" (i.e., the philosophy of Laozi and Zhuangzi), began around 500 B.C., and was the dominant form of Daoism for several hundred years. The technicians of Daoist Folk Magic (i.e., the exorcists, alchemists, herbalists, fortune tellers, astrologers, and medical practitioners) and Huang-Lao Daoists of the Han, saw Laozi as an inspired leader. The Huang-Lao magical tradition originally flourished after the "Magic and Immortality" tradition had been popularized in ancient China. Therefore, the philosophy of Huang-Lao also in corporated into its magical teachings the ancient practices of the "lmmortalist." Because the esoteric teachings of the "Magic and Immortality" tradi tion constitutes an important component of the alchemical teaching contained within Religious Daoism, it was later integrated into all Daoist Magical practices. Historically, the term "Huang-Lao" first ap peared in the Shiji ("Records of the Grand Histo rian"), written during the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.- 8 A.D.). The ancient text was originally started by historian Sima Tan. Sima Tan originally s . tudied under a Huang-Lao Masteை whose magical hneage dated all the way back to the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), from the Jixia Academy, at the Court of Qi (now located in modern Shandong). 9 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM The "Records of the Grand Historian" was later completed by Sima Tan's son, Sima Qian.lt is said that the information on the life of Laozi written by Sima Qian was originally gathered directly from the ancient Huang-Lao teaching. This was because the Huang-Lao priests traditionally respected Laozi as an enlightened sage. They believed that the deep insights and advance philosophies contained within his book, the Daodejing, described the per fect art of living a harmonious existence. Even the reign of the Yellow Emperor, described within the opening historical pages of the ancient Slziji text, was depicted as a "Golden Age," attributing the success of harmonious living. By the early Han Dynasty, the mainstream of Huang-Lao philosophy was centered around the "Art of Government," "Yin-Yang Theory," and "Immortalism." During the reign of the Han Emperor Wu, the Court Magicians reinterpreted the Yellow Emperor's teachings, to the point of completely merging them with Immortalist thought, so that the Immortalist Tradition came to be associated with the Yellow Emperor. Later in China's great history, the Huang-Lao Daoist philosophy found favor at the Western Han (206 B.C.-8 A.D.) courts of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing. This was years before Emperor Wu (141- 87 B.C.) established Confucianism as the state philosophy. During the Eastern Han Period (25 B.C.-220 A.D.), the Huang-Lao magical tradition again regained court favor, when Empress Dou ruled as Dowager between the reigns of her husband Emperor Zhang and her son Emperor He. In the "Story of Wang Huan," described in "The His tory of the Later Han," it was recorded that Em peror Huan (reigned AD 158-167) patronized the Huang-Lao Tradition, and ordered the destruction of the old sacrificial halls. After emperor Huan openly recognized the Huang-Lao Tradition, he sent officials twice a year to Laozi's ancestral shrine at Ku Xian, and to the Yellow Emperor's Guanlong Hall, marking the final stage of the formation of the Huang-Lao Tradition. 10 TWO MAIN SCHOOLS OF DAOIST MAGIC The next major stage is Daoist evolution (i.e., from Daoist Folk Magic to Daoist Religion), began in the second century A.D., with the "Revelation of the Dao'' from Laozi to Zhang Daoling, who eventually became the first Celestial Master {i.e., The Official Celestial Representative of the Dao on Earth). This was the advent of organized Daoist Religion. Zhang Daoling's magical tradition con tained specific doctrines, rituals, altars, tools, offer ings, and both celestial and terrestrial deities. The ultimate goal of the priest was to heal the masses and obtain immortality through cultivation. This empowered the priest with the ability to ascend to the celestial realm of the immortals at will. Today, Daoism is traditionally divided into two main branches of esoteric training: Northern Daoism and Southern Daoism. Within each of these branches, the esoteric training can further be divided into Re ligious Daoism, known as "Dao Jiao," and Magical Daoism, known as "Dao Wu." Religious Daoism is known for its elaborate, colorful ceremonies, while Magical Daoism is known for its esoteric alchemical training and occult mysticism. Both Northern and Southern schools of Daoism combine aspects of re ligious and magical training, and both systems have unique blueprints for creating magical talismans. The Northern Branch of Daoism is tradition ally called the "Quan Zhen" (meaning "Complete Reality" or "Ultimate Truth") sect. A disciple of Quan Zhen is taught Buddhist, Daoist, and Con fucianist schools of spiritual thought and training, hence its name "complete" reality. The disciples of the Quan Zhen Daoist sect are traditionally monastic, celibate, vegetarian, and are more Bud dhist in nature. The Southern Branch of Daoism is tradition ally called the "Zheng Yi" (meaning the "True One" or Orthodox One") sect. This discipline is rooted in ancient shamanistic Daoism and esoteric mysticism. A disciple of Zheng Yi holds fast to the "original" magical training as established by the Yellow Emperor, hence its name "True One." The disciples of the Zheng Yi Daoist sect may prac tice sexual cultivation, drink wine, eat meat, can marry, and live in homes outside the monastery. THE ZHANG Yl DAOIST SECT Zhengyi ("Orthodox One"} Daoism distin guishes its self by practicing magical exorcism and healing through various talisman construction. Among its esoteric practices include Daoist Sex Magic and living a non-monastic lifestyle. According to ancient historians, Zhengyi Dao ism was the first organized sect ofDaoist Religion, under the authority of Zhang Daoling (Figure 1.5}. It is said that before its founding, there was no existence of a Chinese born organized religious system. The head of Zhengyi Daoism is given the titled "Celestial Master." This special tittle is passed down only to family members, and has a direct lineage to Zhang Daoling himself. For example, the 65th Celestial Master, Zhang Mei Liang, lived in Taiwan, until he passed. In Taiwan, he was renown for his magical ability, and continued the ancient traditions of the Celestial Masters, teach ing the Dao, performing healings, and exorcisms. Originating from ancient Chinese shaman ism, the esoteric teachings of the original Zhengyi Daoist system are believed to represent a 2,000 year old magical lineage. As a school of magic, Zhangyi Daoism was formally established at the end of Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.), with the emergence of Taiping Dao (The Way of Great Peace) sect and the Wudoumi Dao (Five Bushels of Rice) sect as two of its primary branches. Both of these branches employed magical rituals in order to influence the weather, exorcise demons and evil spirits, avoid disasters, cure illnesses, and bring harmony to families in distress. Apart from these two original branches, other Zhengyi Daoist sects, such as the Shangqing (Up per Clarity) of Maoshan and the Lingbao (Magi cal Treasure) sect of Ge Zao Shan, also appeared during the Jin Dynasty (265-420 A.D.), and the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-581 A.D.) as well. It is important to note that, it was during the 3rd century A.D., that Zhang Daoling was named "Celestial Master," thereby beginning the Tianshi (Celestial Masters) Daoist tradition. This official title was awarded to Master Zhang 100 years after INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Figure 1 .5. Zhang Daoling, the first Celestial Master of the Zheng Yi Daoist Sect he had died. In the year 1304, the Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty granted the 38th Celestial Master Zhang Yucai the tittle "Zhengyi Lord" (Orthodox Unity Lord) and ordered him to command all Daoist sects in China. Since then, the Southern and Northern Celestial Masters Sects, the Shangqing Sect, and the Lingbao Sect, have been classified under Zhengyi Taoism. In order to keep the ancient magical teach ings "pure," the Southern monasteries formed a special alliance, under the heading of the Zheng Yi School. The ancient Zheng Yi branch was com posed of three main Daoist sects, united in what was traditionally known as the "Three Mountains Drop of Blood Alliance." These three Daoist sects are described as follows: 11 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM • Celestial Master Daoism (Tian Shi Sect), from Long Hu Shan { Dragon Tiger Mountain) in Jiangxi Province, known for its ability in healing, exorcism, and dispelling demons, evil spirits, and ghosts. • Upper Oarity Daoism (Shang Qing Sect), from Mao Shan (Mao Mountain) in Jiangsu Province, known for its ability in exorcism and conjuring spirits. • Magical Treasure Daoism (Ling Bao Sect), from Ge Zao Shan in Jiangxi Province, known for its ability in medicine, magical talismans, and magical training. The main goal of these three original schools of ancient Zheng Yi Daoism are primarily orien tated toward the cultivation of an individual's magical accomplishments, rather than their spiritual salvation brought about through the institution of controlled rituals. The combination of the sacred writings from the Ling Bao Scriptures, Shang Qing Scriptures, and the Tian Shi Scriptures comprised the first Dao ist Canon. This important Canon ofDaoist alchemy and esoteric magical training has been preserved to this date, presented to future disciples for the construction of Magical Talismans, Breath Incanta tions, Star Stepping, Magical Hand Seals, etc. Zhengyi Daoism remains today as one of two main denominations of Religious Daoism, the other Daoist sect being Quanzhen Daoism. THE QUAN ZHEN DAOIST SECT Quanzhen (Complete Reality) Daoism is distinguished by its magical practice of Internal Alchemy, which traditionally requires the priest to live a monastic lifestyle. As a magical practice, its core teachings include the combined spiritual techniques derived from ancient Buddhism, Con fucianism and Daoism (Figure 1.6). Its historical lineage is traditionally traced back to Master Wang Chongyang (Figure 1.7), who founded Quanzhen Daoism in 1167 (in the 7th year of Dading reign of Emperor Jin Shizong), in "Quanzhen Hut," in Ninghai County, located in the Shandong Province. Wang Chongyang' s seven students, known as the North True Seven. These seven great disciples 12 Figure 1.6. The three teachings of Confucius, Buddha, and Laozi are the core doctrines of the Qian Zhen Daoist Sect Figure 1 . 7. Wang Chong Yang (The Founder of the Quan Zhen Daoist Sect) were: Ma Yu, Tan Chuduan, Liu Chuxuan, Qiu Chuji, Wang Chuyi, Hao Datong, and Sun Bu'er. Each of the seven disciples founded his or her own Sect, described as follows: (Figure 1.8) • Ma Yu, founded the Yuxian Pai (Meeting Im mortals Sect) • Tan Chuduan, founded the Nanwu Pai (Southern Void Sect) • Liu Chuxuan, founded the Suishan Pai (Sui Mountain Sect) INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Figure 1.8. Wang Chong Yang and his Seven Disciples (The Founders of the Seven Original Quan Zhen Daoist Sects) • Qiu Chuji founded the Longmen Pai (Dragon Gate Sect) • Wang Chuyi, founded the Yushan Pai (Yu Mountain Sect) • Hao Datong founded the Huashan Pai (Hua Mountain Sect) • Sun Bu'er, founded the Qingjing Pai (Clarity and Stillness Sect) Among the most famous branches of Quan zhen Daoism include: The Wuzu (Five Ancestors) Sect, and the Ziyang (Purple Sun) sect of South Wuzu sects. In the North, the Baiyun (White Cloud) Mon astery in Beijing is the ancestral home for Long men (Dragon Gate) sect of Quanzhen Daoism. THE THREE MAIN CATEGORIZATIONS OF DAOIST MAGICAL INSTRUCTION According to many scholars, the magical schools of Daoism actually encapsulate the vari ous elements from three Chinese terms: Daojia (Daoist Schools), Daojiao (Daoist Traditions), and Daoshu (Daoist Arts), described as follows: • Daojia (Oaoist Schools): Daojia is considered by many to be the oldest of the three terms, and was originally used as a classification for such ancient works as the Yijing (The Classic of Changes), and the Daode Jing (Scripture of the Way and Its Virtue). • Oaojiao (Daoist Traditions): Daojiao refers to the transmission of ancient Daoist magical teachings, mainly passed on within an insti tutionalized religious setting, where priests and nuns of a particular sect are trained and Ordained as priests. • Daoshu (Daoist Arts): Daoshu encompasses such magical teachings as meditation prac tices, breathing exercises, and energy move ments. These speci al magi cal skills may originate from the various Daoist Martial Arts, Daoist Medicine, and Daoist Religious/Folk magical practices, taught either in a formal context, under the careful instruction of a Daoist organization, or through independent study. 13 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM DAOIST RANK AND PROGRESSION OF POST According to the ancient Daoist teaching of the Zheng Yi Sect, those who study the Dao are tradi tionally divided into the following categorizations: 1 4 • Daoyou ("Friend of the Dao") : This is some one who is considered to be a "tourist." They may practice some form of Daoist arts (medi tation, taiji, bagua, qigong, neigong, etc.), or may be very devoted to a temple, observing sacred days and participating in magical rituals, but they currently have no "formal" commitment, and have not taken any "Vow of Dedication and Obligation" (also known as the "Oath of Acceptance and Responsibility"). • Dizi ("Disciple"): This is someone who has taken a "Vow of Dedication and Obligation," and has become a true disciple of a lineage or temple. However, they are currently not under any form of spiritual leadership and have no "formal" teacher. When a Disciple of the Dao is accepted into the Daoist sect, he is given his official Yellow Paper certificate. The Yellow Paper certificate includes the disciple's Reg istration Number, Daoist Lineage Name and Number, Celestial Guiding Star, and Original Destiny Gate of Life information. The rank of Dizi is traditionally given to acolytes (assistants), scholars, and novices who study Daoist liturgy, music, sacred dances, and monastic asceticism. They are usually given the title of "Incense Master" and "Procession Leader." • Tudi ("Apprentice"): This is someone who has taken a "Vow of Dedication and Commitment, and has become a true disciple (Dizi) of a lineage or temple, and has additionally been "formally'' accepted by a Shifu (Master) as an Apprentice. • Daoshi ("Daoist Priest"): This is a Tudi (Apprentice) who has trained hard, gained an understanding of the basic skills used in Daoist magical teaching, and earned the title of Daoshi (Daoist Priest). A Daoshi possess the knowledge of "The 3 - 5 Surveyor of Merit" Register and Canons, including the various knowledge of other Daoist secret man uals. Through oral instruction, he has mastered the magical tools needed for performing the "Jiao Liturgy of Renewal" and "The Rites of Burial." Usually after becoming a Daoist Priest (First Lu Ordination), the Daoshi must work to or ganize all of the information into a consistent, coherent religious practice. At this time, the priest receives his Ranking in the Celestial Court, Place of Service, Altar Name, Meditation Room, Spiritual Province, Celestial Master, Pri mary Heart Seal, Emergency Heart Seal, Spirit Helpers, Magical Seals, Thunder Command Block, Seven Star Binding Evil Sword, Heavenly Law Ruler, Gathering Thunder Command Flag, Ghost Beating Stick, and the specific name of the Martial General who is in command of all of the priests magical tools. At this stage in his magical training, the new Daoshi (Daoist Priest) may teach or preach general information about the Dao, but is not allowed to have formal students. • Shifu ("Master"): This is a Daoshi (Daoist Priest) who has "mastered" advanced magical teachings (i.e., the knowledge of "'nle 24 Zheng Yi Meng Wei Jing Lu" register, used to sum mon, command, dispatch or destroy demons and spirit entities), and has developed a deep understanding of the secret esoteric skills used in Daoist Magical Teaching or Daoist Religious Teachings. At this stage in his magical training, the new Shifu (Master) is given permission to formally accept and train Tudi (Apprentices), and to assist and teach other Daoshi (Daoist Priests), officially acting as a "Bishop." • Daozhang ("Head of the Dao" or "Abbot"): This is a Shifu (Master) who has committed to teach Daoist magical skills at a physical location (Temple), and works as an Abbot (Bishop) to oversee the Daoshi (Daoist Priests). If an Abbot ever chooses to give up his post at the temple, he will no longer be called a "Daozhang," but will again be called a "Shifu" (Master). • Zhuchi (Senior Abbot): This is a Daozhang (Head of the Dao) who is currently acting as the "Senior Abbot'' at a Daoist Temple, orchestrating the needs of the various Abbots and Priests. I (Dr. Johnson) am currently the Zhuchi at the Tian Yun Gong. However, when visiting the Celestial Masters Mansion at the Longhu Shan Monastery, in Jiangxi Province in China, I am known and received as the "Daozhang of Tianyun Gong." THE FOUR PILLARS OF DAOIST MAGIC Since ancient times, much of the Daoist esoteric magical training was secretly passed down from master to disciple. Therefore, even today, there is much dispute among certain priests as to what train ing is orthodox and what training is unconventional . There are commonly regional, doctrinal, and lineal differences, including many additional personal preferences and methodologies added by the senior priest to the various Daoist magical teachings . Aside from their various differences, when boiled down to its basic foundation and structure, the esoteric teachings of all Daoist Magic can be categorized into four main energetic practices, known as the Four Pillars (Figure 1.9). A Master of the Four Pillars referred to an in dividual who had mastered the physical, energetic, and spiritual components of the esoteric alchemical practices of: Martial Arts (Jing to Qi), Medicine (Qi to Shen), Music (Shen to Wuji), and Magic (Wuji to Dao). The study of each of these specific disciplines fom1ed the Four Pillars of ancient Daoist sorcery, enabling the priest to enter into ever deeper and more subtle spiritual realms of enlightenment. It is important to understand that, in its early formative stages, both science and magic were originally indistinguishable. Even the early "royal society" found it difficult to distinguish between science and what we now call magic. For example, up until the 16th Century, science was commonly called "Natural Magic." MAGICAL INITIATION In order to become a "true" Daoist, an individ ual must be initiated into a Daoist Magical Lineage. Once an individual has been initiated (or consecrat ed) into a Daoist Magical Lineage and spiritual line, certain things begin to happen to them. Because the disciple's oath is spoken in magic ritual, the Celes tial Realm will traditionally receive and accept the new recruit. Immediately, the spirit guardians and teachers of the magical lineage will begin to teach, refine, and utilize the disciple's various talents, for the promotion and expansion of the Divine. The disciple now becomes a "worker" in the eyes of the Celestial Court, and will be given many new responsibilities according to his specific abili- INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING 1e1 11 1 I I - - - - - - Figure 1 .9. The Four Pillars of ancient Daoist Magic --------- ties. During this time period, the new initiate will experience many spiritual "awakenings," and new understandings about himself, the celestial realm, and the world he lives in. Once connected to the magical power of the internal current flowing within the Daoist sect, the new initiate will have access to certain magical skills developed by the sects various masters throughout many generations, contained within that lineage. Access to these esoteric powers depends on the disciples commitment to the lineage, and how seri ously he walks the magical/ spiritual path. 3 BODIES, 3 BREATHS AND 3 M INDS In order to avoid the risk of losing any form of cultivated magical power or jeopardizing their ability to energetically manifest, the ancient Daoist priests were taught to discipline their Three Bodies (i.e., the Physical Body, Energy Body and Spirit Body). This magical training included mastering the supernatu ral powers and manifestations that stemmed from the energetic and spiritual bodies surrounding their core-self (located deep inside their Taiji Pole). This disciplined practice enabled the priests to control their Three Bodies and fuse them with their Three Breaths. This physical, energetic, and spiritual fusion then become powerfully directed by their Three Minds (Figure 1.10). 1 5 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM The Creative Superconscious Mind: Responsible for ), l- 3. Spiritual Mind the "knowing without knowing" spiritual insights and perceptions of the Eternal Soul (Shen Xian) The Subconscious Mind: Responsible for intuitive, The Three Ŀ Minds I 2. Energetic Mind empathic, and kinesthetic perceptions received through the body's three Dantians and energetic fields The Conscious Mind: Responsible for investigating, 1 . Physical Mind Ľ interpreting, and evaluating data received through the body's five senses The ebb and flow of spiritual light waves, particle 3. Spiritual Breath ľ vibrations, and Divine "messages" absorbed into the body through the natural state of quiescent relaxation, via prayer, meditation, or sleep The Three The ebb and flow of Five Element Qi absorbed I 2. Energetic Breath Ń into the body's tissues from the universal and Breaths I environmental energetic fields, considered "subtle" breathing The inhalation and exhalation of air into the body's 1 . Physical Breath ļ tissues via the respiratory system, considered "natural" breathing The spiritual structure connecting the Eternal Soul: ĺ Responsible for the interactions of the human soul, 3. Spiritual Body Destiny and Karma, which affect the energetic blueprint that supports and maintains the body's internal and external tissue formations and functions The Three The energetic structure connecting spirit into I 2. Energetic Body ŀ matter: Responsible for the energetic blueprint Bodies * that supports and maintains the body's internal and external tissue formations and functions 1 . Physical Body Ļ The physical structure of the body's tissue mass: Responsible for proper function, alignment and support of both i nternal and external tissue formations and functions Figure 1 . 1 0. The Ancient Daoist Understanding of Internal Harmony 16 INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING I Incantation ł Directed by the Three Minds (Physical, Energetic, and Spiritual Mind) Fused with the Three Breaths 1- (Physical, Energetic, and Spiritual Breath) I Hand Seal& L Activated through the Three Bodies in order to create true magical power Star Stepping (Physical, Energetic, and Spiritual Body) Figure 1 . 1 1 . The Three Minds and Three Bodies fuse with the Three Breaths in order to create true magical power Then, when the Daoist priest spoke a magical incantation, it was directed by the Three Minds (i.e., Physical, Energetic, and Spiritual Mind), and initi ated through magical Hand Seals and I or Star Step ping patterns, which were then activated through I the priest's Three Bodies (i.e., Physical, Energetic, and Spiritual Body). The energetic combination of Training the Physical Mind Training the Energetic Mind Focus on cognitive reasoning and acquiring data Focus on strengthening psychic and energetic perception in order to perceive thoughts, feelings, images, and pattems all Thre Minds and all Three Bodies was then fused with the energetic combination of all Three Breaths F d · 11 I Training the ocus on surren enng a (i.e., Physical, Enero-etic, and Spiritual Breath) in thoughts Geelings and images 0 Spiritual Mind ' •' ' · order to create true magical power (Figure 1.11). L...-------' and dissolving into the Wuji MIND, SPEECH, AND BODY SECRET Figure 1 .1 2. Training The Three Types of Posture In ancient China, Daoist magical practices were always initiated through the combined use of three secret training known as the Mind Secret (used to train the priest's Imagination, Sensation, Intention, and Attention), the Speech Secret (used to train Breath Incantations), and the Body Secret (used to train magical Hand Seals and Star Stepping). The mastery of these three disciplines gave the Daoist priests the ability to enter the Three Realms (Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld) and obtain knowledge and experience that could assist them in their goal of obtaining immortality. The three secret magical practices are described as follows: TRAINING THE MIND SECRET Without inner access to the magical powers of the internal energetic current flowing within the Daoist sect, most magical work is pointless. With out this important internal connection, the disciple remains disconnected from the esoteric magical skills developed and contained within that lineage. In Daoist magic, all external rituals must contain an internal mirror that reflects the disciples inner connection, through which the magical power, spiritual contact, and energetic action flows. Once the initiate passes into the iner spiritual realms, his attachments to and understandings of the external world of existence fades away, and he slowly awakens to a spiritual state of true dis covery through access to the Divine Mind. Once awaken to the true constructs of the Divine Mind, the disciple of magic is forever hooked. Magical incantations were sometimes used in order to transcend the mind's limiting beliefs that restrict a disciple's true potential. In the province of the mind there are no limits. What is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits based on experience. The ancient Daoists believed that these limits were further beliefs that could be transcended. The mind functions on thre different planes, simultaneously orienting within the physical, ener getic, and spiritual worlds. Together, these three men tal planes make up the mind of an individual. In this way the three layers of mind encase the individual's Eternal Soul in physical, energetic and spiritual ma trices. Therefore, in ancient China, training the mind was divided into three stages, training the physical mind, training the energetic mind and training the spiritual mind, described as follows (Figure 1.12): 1 7 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM • Training the Physical Mind: This type of mind training is based on training the sen sory input, thoughts, and analytical patterns that direct the actions and movements of the body's physical tissues. Focus is placed on cognitive reasoning and on acquiring data. • Training the Energetic Mind: This type of mind training is based on training to respond to the energetic perceptions received from the vibra tional patterns which are themselves respon sible for directing and influencing the Physical Mind. Focus is placed on strengthening psychic and energetic perception in order to perceive thoughts, feelings, images, and patterns. • Training the Spiritual Mind: This type of mind training is based on perceiving spiritual inter actions connected to the divine, affecting the Original Soul's primary life purpose. Focus is placed on surrendering all thoughts, feelings, and images and dissolving into the Wuji. YIN AND YANG DIVISIONS OF THE MIND There are two divisions of the mind (Yin and Yang), each consisting of three different levels. The Ym part of the mind belongs to the energy of the Earth and is a more body-oriented type of mind. The Yang part of the mind belongs to the energy of Heaven and is a more consciousness-oriented type of mind . The three levels of the mind are described as follows (Figure 1.13). 1. The most superficial level of the mind exists within the individual's Will (Zhi) and Inten· tion (Yi), and represents the mind's everyday functions (i.e., cognitive thinking). The Zhi is considered the "thinking body," while the Yi is considered the "thinking mind." 2. The middle level of the mind exists within the emotional and spiritual influences of the Seven Corporeal Souls (Po) and Three Ethereal Souls {Hun), and represents the moving and active aspects of the mind (e.g., body movements, reflexes, instincts, drives, and spirit projection - when accompanied by the Yuan Shen). 3. The deepest level of the mind exists within the Prenatal foundation of the Kidney's Jing and the Heart's Shen, and represents the original and primordial energetic and spiritual form of the "Original Mind" (Yuan Shen). The "Original 18 Energetic Yin Yang Divisions of Qi Psychophysical Di (Earth) Tian (Heaven) Body Consciousness Divisions Orientation Orientation Superficial Level Zhi (Will) Yi (Intention) of the Mind Kidneys Spleen (Zhi and Yi) Thinking Body Thinking Mind Middle Level Po Hun of the Mind Lungs Liver (Hun and Po) Corporeal Soul Ethereal Soul Deepest Level Jing (Essence) Shen (Spirit) of the Mind Kidneys Heart (Yuan Shen) Water Qi Fire Qi F1gure 1 . 1 3. Mental and Emotional Transitional States of the Mind Shen - Mind - Spirit (Thoughts, Feelings, and Perceptions) Congenital Spirit Prenatal Mind (Yuan Shen) Acquired Spirit Postnatal Mind (Shen Zhi) Figure 1 .14. The Prenatal and Postnatal Mind Mind" is manifested throughout the body via the Yin and Yang energetic natures contained within the original Prenatal Elements of Fire and Water. These different levels of energies create the body, as well as activate the mental, emotional and spiritual transitional states of the mind. All three lev els of the mind are interactive and interdependent. THE PRENATAL AND POSTNATAL MIND The ancient Daoists considered the Heart the Emperor of all internal organs because it stores the individual's Shen (Spirit). The Shen was further divided into two components: the Prenatal Mind known as the Yuan Shen (the intuitive congenital spirit), and the Postnatal Mind known as the Shen Zhi (the analytical acquired spirit). These two aspects of the mind are described as follows (Figure 1.14): • The Prenatal Mind (Yuan Shen): This congeni tal aspect of the mind is inherited from the Jing, Qi, and Shen of both parents and dominates the vital activities of all the major viscera, as well as the active functioning of the body's entire energetic organism and spiritual matrix. • The Postnatal Mind (Shen Zhi): This acquired aspect of the mind is developed through inter actions with people and the environment after birth. It dominates thought and interaction, and it engages in unlimited mental activity. INTERACTIONS OF YUAN SHEN AND SHEN ZHI The Yuan Shen (Original Mind) and Shen Zhi (Acquired Mind) are interactive and interdepen dent. If the Shen Zhi is active and chattering (some times called the "monkey mind"), it is difficult for the Yuan Shen to convey its intuitive information. According to ancient Daoist texts on energetic alchemy, the Shen Zhi is meant to be a servant of the Yuan Shen. However, it is the nature of the un enlightened mind to allow the Shen Zhi t becom _ e extremely stubborn, developing a chrome, sspt cious demeanor. If the activity of the Shen Zht be comes too self-involved, it can become completely independent. As the Shen Zhi strives for contrl it inhibits the development of the Yuan Shen, causmg disbelief and suspicion to dominate the individual's mind and override most intuitive perceptions. Regulating the Mind is therefore needed to bring harmony between the analĻtical (Zhi) d intuitive (Yuan} aspects of the mmd. In anoent Daoism there is a saying, "the mind must be led by a master; the Yuan Shen must be that master and must lead the Heart's Shen Zhi as One Mind." THE FOUR SECRET POWERS OF THE MIND Any seasoned Daoist priest, who has devel oped a deep connection with the inner realms of magic for an extended period of time, will eventu ally become powerfully connected to the extensive collective powers and consciousness flowing within his magical sect and lineage. Therefore, when a Daoist priest performs any type of physical action with magical intent, all of the powers of the collective energy flowing through his lineage are manifested through this action. If the priest's con nection to this inner collective energy is not there (or has not been established strongly enough), then the physical actions performed during any type of magical ritual will have true magical effect. In Daoist Magic, the magical imprinting of all ritual INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Heaven Dragon ( Imagination) Hun (Green Mist Yang Qi Fire Phoenix ( I ntention) Shen (Red Mist) Yang Qi Water Turtle/Snake (Attention) Zhi (Black Mist) Yin Qi Earth Tiger (Sensation) Po (White Mist) Yin Qi Figure 1 . 1 5. The 4 Celestial Animals and their powers tools, talismans, sigils, and charms can only be en ergetically empowered through this secret method. "Training the Mind," in Daoist Magic, refers to cultivating and releasing the magical power that can be harnessed through the proper application and fusion of four secret powers. 1hese four secret powers are represented through the image of For Celestial Animals: the Green Dragon, the Whtte Tiger, the Red Phoenix, and the Black Turtle I Snake (Figure 1.15). In training the Mind Secret, the Four Celestial Animals are attributed to different magi cal powers and states of consciousness: • The Green Dragon (Yang): This Celestial Ani mal represents the powers of Heaven, the Hun, Imagination, and Yang Qi. In Daoist Magi, it energetically manifests as the power of creation, developed through forming mental images. • The White Tiger (Yin): 1his Celestial Animal represents the powers of Earth, the Po, Sensa tion, and Yin Qi. In Daoist Magic, it energeti cally manifests as the various levels of intuitive awareness, created through feeling sensations. • The Red Phoenix (Yang): This Celestial Animal represents the powers of Fire, the Shen, Inteļtion, and Yang Qi. In Daoist Magic, it energehcally manifests as purpose, aim, and determination. • The Black Turtle/Snake or Dark Warrior (Yin): This Celestial Animal represents the powers of Water, the Zhi, Attention, and Yin Qi. In Daoist Magic, it energetically manifests 1 9 WW.DAOJSTMAGJC.COM Heaven (Hun) Earth (Po) Green Dragon White Tiger I Energy r- Imagination Sensation 1 Body Yang Qi Yin Qi " Magical / Power Fire (Shen) Water (Zhi) Red Phoenix Black Warrior I Spirit r- Intention Attention I Body Yang Qi Yin Qi Figure 1 . 1 6. The secret powers of the Four Celestial Animals are needed to create the power of true magic as the focused concentration of the mind, ap plied towards something. In Daoist magic, the fusion of all Four Celestial Animal powers is a pre-requisite for creating the true magical power of manifestation. The magi cal energies of the Green Dragon and White Tiger must be combined in order to create and sustain the priest's Energy Body. The magical energies of the Red Phoenix and Black Turtle I Snake must be combined in order to create and sustain the priest's Spirit Body. The energies of both the Energy Body and Spirit Body must combine and fuse as one in order to create true magical power (Figure 1.16). The Four Celestial Animals are manifestations of the divine energy radiating from the priest's "Most Secret Name" (i.e., the priest's spiritual name of power). The power of the priest's Most Secret Name is used as a magical bridge in order to connect together the two realms of spirit and mat ter. It is imagined and kept as a Luminous Jewel, located deep inside the core center of the priest's Lower Dantian, and it is utilized whenever he or she performs Breath Incantations, Magical Hand Seals, or Star Stepping patterns. Language, Mythology and Energetic Geometry The training of the Four Celestial Animals of the Mind Secret also involves three important magical disciplines: Language, Mythology, and En ergetic Geometry. Through these three important disciplines, the Daoist priest learns the secret "trig ger'' mechanisms needed in order to release and control powerful magic. In the context of magic, power is defined as the ability to produce a result (i.e., how long it takes to manifest something). These three important magical disciplines are used to help focus the priest's Will (Zhi). By 20 gathering them together with Intention (Yi), the priest is creating a magical universe that he or she can use to energetically effect the three realms. The disciplines of Language, Mythology and Energetic Geometry are defined as follows: • Language: This skill encompasses the use of magical words, their pronunciations, and the methods of combining them. This discipline is externally trained through the skill of speech (verbal expression) and internally trained thought processing. It is expressed and mani fested into the external world via the priest's Magical Incantations. • Mythology: This skill encompasses the use of the myths and legends that deal with gods, demigods, heroes, and villains surrounding people, places, and things. This discipline is energetically trained through culture and tradition. Its effect is experienced within the world of matter externally through images (energetic symbols and icons) and internally through dreams (Archetypes, Dream Travel, and visionary work). Although some mytho☁ logical correspondences will remain consis tent, certain energetic aspects will greatly vary depending on the priest's magical tradition. • Energetic Geometry: This skill encompasses the use of the sacred mathematical formulas that deals with the relative properties and measurements of solids, surfaces, lines, points, and angles. This discipline is ener΢ getically trained through vision (external sight) and is released into the world of matter externally through magical forms (i.e., Body Postures, Hand Seals, and Star Stepping) and internally through images (energetic shapes). Each of the Four Celestial Animals corre sponds to one of the Four Directions. Each of the Four Directions acts as a secret door that opens onto a vast hallway of interconnected meanings (i.e., each direction corresponds to a certain time, season, polarity, planet, shape, color, sound, herb, stone, Element, number, etc.). In ancient Daoism, masters of Feng Shui and Divination were extremely skilled at recognizing the magical correspondences of Energetic Geometry. FOUR WAYS To AVOID LOSING MAGICAL POWER When training esoteric magic, the ancient Daoists described four primary ways that a priest could lose his or her power and weaken the ability to mentally manifest. These four ways are described as follows: Leaking Magical Power Through the Mouth, Leaking Magical Power Through Vision, Leaking Magical Power Through Geometry, and Leaking Magical Power Through Sex. Because the priest's magical power can be lost through one or several of these four methods, it reveals two important things about their mental training: • First, pertaining to each of these four methods, the priest's magical power can be cultivated and conserved by certain disciplined means of magical training. • Second, the skill of intentionally creating specific manifestations can be consciously expressed through each of these four methods. Leaking Magical Power Through the Mouth Magical power can leak out through the mouth via undisciplined external talking and internal thought. There are Three Filters used by priests in order to build the energetic power of speech and not lose the power of words. These three filters entail three specific questions that the priest asks him or herself before speaking, described as follows: • Is it necessary to say this, or should I remain silent? • Is it truthful (authentic), and will it create energy in the direction of where I want to go? • Is it kind to the listener and will it help them spiritually heal and grow, or will it close their spirit and harden their heart? INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING These three questions are designed to trans form the priest's conditioned programmed mind and alter the reactive habits of the sub-personali ties working within the unconscious mind. Over time, the practice of these questions dismantles the priest's masks and defense mechanisms, which are designed to mislead and deceive others for the sake of the priest's ego identity. The priest then has access to the infinite power of his or her divine self. As the priest's Acquired Mind (Shen Zhi) eventu ally quiets its excessive chattering, the Original Spirit (Yuan Shen) begins to automatically take over as a spiritual observer, "truly listening to what the priest is listening to." Through mastering the Three Filters, eventu ally the power of the priest's words become so powerful that when he or she speaks any form of magical Incantation, Spell, or Mantra, the power of the words are automatically brought into mani festation. This magical power eventually transfers over to nonverbal communication and becomes evident in the manifestations of the Magical Hand Seals and Star Stepping patterns. Leaking Magical Power Through Vision Magical power can leak out through vision via undisciplined external sight and internal dreams. One important technique used to assist the priest in avoiding the loss of magical power through vision is to train in the skill of Visualization. Visu alization is simply seeing or experiencing images within your mind. By using visualization to form a mental image, you can increase your energetic potential by a factor of ten. This type of mental training builds neuromuscular connections that allows you to develop a spiritual and energetic foundation from which to progress. There are three steps in achieving a successful visualization practice: Deep Relaxation through Qigong Meditations, Clarity of Visualization, and Physical Movement and Visualization (Figure 1.17). When practicing visualization skills, it is important to keep the following points in mind: • Begin External, Then Progress Internal: Keep the image or symbol external during the initial phases of training. Then, as your perceptions become more refined, utilize the more subtle image of an internal psychic symbol. 2 1 WW.DAOISTMAGJC.COM Mental Visualization Training Deep relaxation through Qigong Meditations Generate specific images using all five senses with clarity and control The combination of physical movement and visualization while in a deeply relaxed yet concentrated state Figure 1 .1 7. The Three Steps in Mental Visualization • Choose a Familiar Symbol: The image or symbol that you choose for visualization practice should be easily identified by your mind (i.e., it should easily attract and hold your mind's attention). • Do Not Change Your Symbol: Training every day using the same visualized symbol allows the mind to create a faster energetic patterning. • Picture the Image With Your Eyes Closed: Oearly visualizing your symbol with your eyes closed allows the mind to create a faster ener getic re-patterning. In order to obtain clarity of visualization and generate specific images using all five senses with clarity and control, visualize internally with your senses. When using your imagination, it is important to see, feel, hear, taste, and smell the experience that you are creating. This should be performed to the degree that you are actually experiencing what your imagination is conjuring. Be persistent and work towards a fullness of this internal experience. Generally, the mind will progress through five transitional stages when the priest's clarity of visualization is being mastered. These five stages are described as follows: 22 1. Unstable: The mind's attention and focus constantly changes; it is unstable and waver ing in both thought and feeling. 2. Inattentive: The mind's attenti9n and focus becomes confused, unobservant, and inatten tive to the original thought-intention. 3. Occasionally Focused: The mind's attention and focus begins to direct its attention, becom ing occasionally focused. 4. Focused: The mind's attention and focus begins to gather into one spot; its attention is becoming clear and focused. 5. Mastered: The mind's attention and focus is completely controlled and clarity of visualiza tion is mastered. The priest can also choose to use a combina tion of physical movements and visualization while in a deeply relaxed yet concentrated state. This can be accomplished by external visualiza tion. One method of training is to imagine see ing yourself on your own mental movie screen, while analyzing and correcting your performance (movements and actions) towards a successful and powerful outcome. Visualize different types of movement patterns and interactions. During this type of active visualization training, if you detect an error in movement or action, mentally rewind and replay the event until the action or movement occurs perfectly. Leaking Magical Power Through Geometry Magical power can leak out through Energetic Geometry via exposure to external forms (pos tures) and internal images (shapes). Leaking Magical Power Through Sex Magical power can leak out through undis ciplined sexuality via the loss of Essence Oing), Energy (Qi) and Spirit (Shen). TRAINING THE SPEECH SECRET The ancient Chinese believed and taught that everything in the universe was made of sound. Sound waves not only affect matter, but also af fect the consciousness as well; this is the purpose of using an Incantation in meditation or chanting. Therefore, Incantations were also used to develop such psycho-kinetic feats as weather control, tele portation, and levitation, and were also continu ously chanted in order to create magical amulets or talismans used for protection against illness and evil. In Daoist magic, Training the Speech refers to cultivating and releasing the magical power that can be harnessed through the proper application or breath and sound. When the spoken sound is released through Breath via magical incantations, a powerful spiritual interaction and energetic fusion involving the Brain (Kidney Water) and Heart (Heart Fire) occurs. It is therefore important for the priest's Shen to consciously guide and direct the spoken sound, as the projected voice is a direct manifestation of the priest's spirit and life-force energy. THE THREE LEVELS OF BREATH Through proper breath and mind control, a Daoist priest is able to store Qi and Shen, similar to the way a battery stores and contains electric ity. Many of the powers attributed to advanced Qigong and Shengong practice are largely due to the hidden knowledge and esoteric understanding of how to utilize conserved Qi and Shen and later use it for specific purposes. The ancient Daoists understood that certain forms of breathing could enable him or her the ability to energize, empower, and increase latent psychic abilities. In order to obtain the ultimate control and utilization of stored Qi and Shen, these ancient Chinese masters of esoteric knowledge divided the skill of breath into three levels: Training the Physical Breath, Training the Energetic Breath, and Training the Spiritual Breath. These three levels Ⴊre described as follows (Figure 1.18): • Training the Physical Breath: This type of breathing is based on training the physical motion of the body's respiratory patterns. Fo- INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Training Focusing on the physical the motion of the body's Physical respiratory patterns Breath Focusing on the energetic Training respiratory motion of the ingesting and releasing Energetic the vibrational patterns Breath of the Five Element sounds and colors Focusing on the spiritual Training the respiratory motion of Spiritual ingesting and releasing Divine light vibrating Breath within the Wuji Figure 1 . 1 8. Training The Three Types of Breath cus is placed on the interaction of the Lungs, diaphragm, and abdomen. • Training the Energetic Breath: This type of breathing is based on training the energetic respiratory motion for ingesting and releasing the vibrational patterns of the Five Element sounds and colors. • Training the Spiritual Breath: This type of breathing is based on training the spiritual respiratory motion for ingesting and releasing Divine light vibrating within the Wuji. THE ENERGY OF THE BREATH (WIND) The ancient Daoists considered the Wind (Feng) to be the first and primary element in commanding the influences of Nature upon the Earth. In nature, the energy of the moving Wind can be so gentle that it can cause subtle penetration of the body's tissues and cells. The energetic currents of the Wind flow like water, moving across the body's surface, circulating, and sometimes collecting into energetic pockets and then unpredictably moving on. In Daoist magic, the energetic flow of the Hu man Wind (breath) establishes the foundation of the internal environmental climate. The energy of "Human Wind" is created by the combination of the priest's Yi (Intention), Shen (Spirit), and Qi 23 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM (Energy). The speed and direction of the energetic flow of the Human Wind is determined by the air flow created from high (Heart Fire) and low (Kidney Water) pressure regions. CHINESE CHARACTERS FOR WIND The Chinese ideograph depicting the char acter for Wind, "Feng," is described as follows (Figure 1.19): • The Chinese character that depicts the ideo gram for "Feng" is composed of two images: The character on the outside, "Fan," represents Wind. The character on the inside, "Chong," represents worms or insects that are being car ried off by the wind. Together, both characters are used to depict the power and sudden, or violent impulses of the Wind's potential to carry something into extreme behavior. THE WIND'S EFFECTS ON MATTER The ancient Daoists considered the human body to be like that of an empty stalk or "reed," capable of vibrational resonance through energetic stimulation via the body's own internal emotional "Winds," as well as the breath (Figure 1.20). When the Wind blows hard (i.e., the priest's projected Qi and Shen are strong), the intended individual's body will resonate and vibrate like a reed, express ing one or several of the seven various internal emotions through the seven external orifices. In the Daoist Magic, the penetrating property of the priest's breath is used like the Wind, acting as the medium to carry the specific "Messages" and sound resonances of Breath Incantations throughout the individual's tissues. This is the foundational theory of Breath Incantations used in ancient China to invoke healing, treat disease, summon and dispatch spirit entities, and remove evil states from people, places, and things. As the projected sound and breath penetrates a person, place, or thing, it carries with it the en ergetic "Messages" of the priest's thoughts and intentions (Figure 1.21). The infinite space con tained within the energetic matrix of the intended person, place, or thing will begin to vibrate like a reed, responding to the wind of the breath as it carries specific sounds into and through the physical structure. 24 Chong (Insect) Fan (Wind) Figure 1 . 1 9. Chinese Characters for Wind "Feng" 1 Vibrational I :Resonance: 1 caused 1 from .- Internal Emotions 1 -1----.;._r - - - - - , The 1 Physical 1 Body as a Reed .. _ _ _ _ _ .. Figure 1 .20. The ancient Daoists considered the human body to be like that of an empty stalk or "reed." Incantation Phrase or Sound 1 --1-+- (Used to vibrate 1 1 the Infinite Space within Matter) Figure 1 .21 . Each exhaled sound and breath acts as the Wind, carrying the priest's projected thoughts and images into an individual's tissues and cells" EXHALING COLOR, SOUND, AND BREATH In order to maximize power, the Daoist priest can also use color in combination with Breath Incantations. When directed into the tissues of an individual's body, the projected Breath Incantation will cause the internal organ's cells to vibrate. This vibration creates more space, allowing the Qi of the exhaled color to immediately fill the energetic field surrounding the cells. CONSONANTS AND VOWELS Both consonants and vowels are necessary to form words of power. However, the vowels are the vitality of the words, whereas the consonants mere ly act as a tempJate to limit and shape the Qi into a unique pattern. According to Daoist magic, vowels are Yang and represent the masculine creative force of the Dao, which embodies everything, but is itself without form. Consonants are Yin and represent the formative feminine force of the Dao, which has no inherent creativity, but enables all creation. Consonants are considered to be Yin and cor respond to matter (which is energy that has been constrained and congealed). For the most part, consonants do not have power and cannot be extended or elongated with the voice without the support of a vowel. Even those consonants that are sustainable (i.e., F, L, M, N, R, S, V, and Z) involve either compressing the lips, pressing the tongue against the teeth or palate, or tightening the throat. Only vowels (which are considered to be Yang and correspond to spirit) have power, and can be voiced with a fully opened throat, allowing the individual to vibrate unobstructed "like a reed . " Vowel sounds (which is energy that is unrestricted) can be projected with considerable power, because the column of Qi released into the environment can be energetically roted into the Lower Dantian and spiritually directed through the Yellow Court. THREE TYPES OF PROJECTED SOUNDS In ancient China, the physical body was consid ered the crucible in which the eternal elixir of life could be cultivated. It contains the life giving energy and acts like a capacitor storing and releasing differ ent vibrational frequencies. These frequencies can be accessed and modulated through the use of Mantras. There are three main types of Mantras used to initiate cellular vibration: Descriptive Sound, Meaningless Sound, and Seed Sound, described as follows (Figure 1.22): • Descriptive Sound: This type of Incantation is used for achieving specific desired goals . They can be utilized for healing or spiritual growth. • Meaningless Sound: This type of Incantation is used for stimulating and awakening specific energy centers in the individual's body. It is INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Descriptive Sound Mantras Incantations and Mantras Seed Sound Mantras Figure 1 .22. The Three Main Types of Mantras ----· -- generally a collection of sound phrases and can be utilized for healing or spiritual growth. For example, the specific Incantations com monly used in Qigong exercises are types of meaningless sound incantations. When "Descriptive" and "Meaningless" In cantations are employed, the body 's energy will continue to accumulate until the energy is used or otherwise discharged. • Seed Sound: This type of Incantation is used for stimulating, awakening, and creating a perma nent "standing wave" of energy within the tissue cells of the body, or within a specific energy center in the brain. Seed Sound Incantations are sound phrases used for creating a continuous type of specific energetic effect, which eventually will become a coherent and accessible type of energy. PROJECTING SOUND VIBRATION When resonant sound penetrates an individ ual's body, it causes massive chaotic vibrational patterns that disrupt the body's normal energetic flow. This energetic disruption can be used in or der to soften and liquefy stagnant Qi, and this is the primary reason why patients are given healing sound therapy in Medical Qigong clinics. Since thoughts and emotions are strongly af fected by sound, the body defends itself against outside vibrational signals by anticipating and setting up signals which cancel out external sound vibrations . Our ability to filter out these recogniz able sounds, while allowing us to maintain our own thoughts and emotions can become a major barrier to the effects of surface vibrational pat terns . As soon as the thoughts and emotions begin to intrude on the dominant beliefs or established emotional patterns in an individual's tissues, his or her body automatically identifies the invading signal and filters it out. 25 WW.DAOISTMAGJC.COM I I Figure 1 .23. Training Sound Resonation Projection to Ring Different Bells While the body can defend itself against rhythmic signals, the suppressed attitudes and emotions are defenseless against the random sounds of a chaotic resonance emitted from a Dao ist priest because it is unpredictable. The projected sound resonance simply goes past the individual's vibrational defenses and softens all thoughts and emotions in the target frequency range. TRAINING SOUND PROJECTION When projecting sound, it is important for the priest to visualize the sound waves penetrating and rippling through the focused item (water, solid mat ter, tissues, cells, etc.). This focused visualization, combined with a long exhalation during the released tone, allows for deeper penetration of the sound 's resonance and is used to disperse stagnations . The following are two popular training exercises used by Daoist priests for mastering the sound projection skill. SOUND PROJECTION ExERCISE # 1 In ancient China, Daoist priests would some times train sound projection skill by directing the sound onto the surface of different size bells (Fig ure 1.23). Each projected sound would stimulate and ring a different metal bell, causing a different tone to be released from the surface of the bell, depending on the particular tone and pitch used {high, medium, or low). 26 SOUND PROJECTION ExERCISE #2 In ancient China, before being taught Breath In cantations, the Daoist priests trained sound projection skills by focusing the projected breath and sound into a bowel of water (Figure 1.24). Each projected sound would be carried along with the priest's projected in tention and breath, and would create different energetic patterns on the surface of the water, depending on the particular tone and pitch used (high, medium or low). 1. Begin by gathering the Qi of Divine Healing Light and Sound into the Lower Dantian. 2. Allow the Qi of Divine Healing Light and Sound to overflow the Lower Dantian and enter into the Middle Dantian, filling the chest area completely. 3. Direct the Qi of Divine Healing Light and Sound to overflow the Middle Dantian and enter into the throat area. 4. From the back of the throat, release the Qi of Divine Healing Light and Sound into the water, projecting it like a beam of condensed light. Simultaneously, imagine the body melt ing into the Earth to increase the depth of the tone projection. 5. Alternate from a pattern of straight exhaled tone projection to a chaotic pattern of ex haled tone projection. This chaotic, staccato (4) Release Sound Like a Beam of Light (3) Fill the Throat --- (2) Fill the Middle Dantian (1 ) Fill the Lower Dantian INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Figure 1 .24. Training Sound and Breath Projection into a Bowl of Water resonance is a dynamic approach used for breaking-up and dispersing chronic or dif ficult Qi, Blood, and Body Fluid stagnations. SOUND PROJECTION ExERCISE #3 In ancient China, after a Daoist priest had per fected the skills acquired from training the previ ous exercise, he or she would then begin to train in advanced sound projection skills. These advanced projection skills allowed the priest the ability to focus the specific projected sound into the tissues or inter nal organ systems of the body. Each projected sound would stimulate and vibrate a diferent type of tissue and organ system, causing it to resonate throughout the entire body. This allowed the Daoist priest the abil ity to simultaneously project conscious intent into the cells and tissues of matter, affecting the individual's internal organ systems, channels, and tissues. For example, one exercise used to practice this type of energetic sound projection was to focus on the specific tissues of the hand. To begin with, the priest would focus his or her attention onto the left hand and begin to project sound, vibrating the specific tissues related to that particular internal organ. This particular Sound Projection exercise is described as follows (Figure 1.25): • The Skin: Focus your attention on the skin tissue wrapping the external structure of the left hand . Using focused imagination and intention, as well as breath and Qi projection, exhale the "Shang" • ·shang" into the Skin "Gong" into the Muscles "Guo" into the Tendons ._to-l-L-- "Zheng" into the Blood Vessels Figure 1 .25. The advanced projection skills allowed the Daoist master the ability to focus the specific projected sound into the tissue systems of the body (Inspired from the original artwork of Wyn n Kapit). 27 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM sound into the left hand and feel all of the exter nal structures of the left hand's skin vibrate. - - - / ' I \ • The Muscles: Focus your attention on the I I muscle tissue existing underneath the tissue Divine Eye of the skin of the left hand. Imagine and feel I r. \ 1 IOI 1 \ ..., I the various muscles wrapping the internal structure of the bones and connecting to the skin of the left hand. Using focused imagina tion and intention, as well as breath and Qi projection, exhale the "Gong" sound into the left hand and feel all of the internal structure of the left hand's muscles vibrate. • The Tendons and Ligaments: Focus your at tention on the tendons, ligaments and inner fascia tissues existing within the various layers of skin, muscles, and bones of the left hand. Imagine and feel the various tendons, liga ments, and inner fascia tissues wrapping and extending throughout the internal structure of the bones and skin tissues of the left hand. Us ing focused imagination and intention, as well as breath and Qi projection, exhale the "Guo" sound into the left hand and feel all of the internal structures of the left hand's tendons, ligaments and inner fascia tissues vibrate. • The Blood Vessels: Focus your attention on the structures of blood vessels existing within the various layers of skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments and inner fascia of the left hand. Imagine and feel the various tubular structures of the veins and arteries wrapping and extend ing throughout the internal structure of the skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and inner fascia of the left hand. Using focused imagi nation and intention, as well as breath and Qi projection, exhale the "Zheng" sound into the left hand and feel all of the internal structures of the left hand's blood vessels vibrate. • The Bones: Focus your attention on the struc tures of bones existing underneath the various layers of skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, iner fascia, and blood vessels of the left hand. Imagine and feel the various structures of the bones being wrapped by the internal structure of the skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, inner fascia and blood vessels of the left hand. Using focused imagination and intention, as wen as 28 \ I Figure 1 .26. a powerful mist gathers and begins to form a magical Divine Eye within the priest's Heavenly Transpersonal Point breath and Qi projection, exhale the "Yu" sound into the left hand and feel all of the internal structures of the left hand's bones vibrate. SOUND PROJECTION EXERCISE #4 When projecting a magical incantation via audible sound, the priest can increase the intensity of the effect of the emitted sound vibration on the individual's internal organs by utilizing focused visualization. The following exercise is designed to teach the priest how to utilize breath incanta tion, sound projection, and imagery in order to stimulate an individual's internal organ tissues. 1. After performing the "One Through Ten Meditation" and "Three Invocations," the priest will begin to focus his or her intention on the divine light (i.e., the white light energy and sound vibration) that has gathered within his or her Lower Dantian. 2. First, the priest will imagine the divine energy ascending upward from his or her Lower Dantian, along the center core Taiji Pole. This white light energy will leave the priest's body via the Baihui point located on top of his or her head. As this divine energy swirls out of the top of the head, a powerful mist gathers and begins to form a magical Divine Eye within the priest's Heavenly Transpersonal Point (Figure 1.26). This Divine Eye represents the priest's own personal spiritual connection and INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING Figure 1 .27. After the Five Lights escort the human soul into the world of matter, the Eternal Soul's De (virtue) rises upward, to later become the spiritual energy of the Five Agents, rooted within the five Yin organs, and manifesting in the body as the five colored vapors. energetic interaction with the infinite Dao. 3. As the Divine Eye opens to observe the secret world of the various magical realms. It also en ergetically opens the priest's Third Eye (Yin tang point, located above and between the eyebrows) and allows him or her the ability to see into the various energetic and spiritual realms. In ancient Daoism, this magical power, initiated through the priest's imagination, is considered to be "the Observation of the Celestial Dragon," and it is deemed to be a manifestation of the priest's Ling Shen. 4. Next, the priest again focuses his or her inten tion onto the divine energy stored within his or her Lower Dantian. This time the priest imag ines and feels the divine white light energy ascending upward along the center core of his or her body and entering into the Yellow Court (located within the center of the solar plexus). As the divine energy enters into the Yel low Court, it combines with the five colored vapors of the priest's Wu Jing Shen (Figure 1.27). These five colored vapors are the five energetic and spiritual emanations that extend from the priest's Five Yin and Yang Organs, and they move like vaporous mists circulat ing throughout the interior and exterior of the priest's physical body. The five colored vapors are described as follows: • Liver: The Gren Vapor of the Hun (Ethereal Soul) • Heart: The Red Vapor of the Yuan Shen (Origi nal Spirit) • Spleen: The Golden Yellow Vapor of the Yi (Intention) • Lungs: The White Vapor of the Po (Corporeal Soul) • Kidneys: The Purple/Black Vapor of the Zhi (Will-power) 5. The priest combines the energy of the five col ored vapors with the Qi of the Lower Dantian and blends them together inside his or her Yellow Court. 6. Next, the priest sinks and roots the energy of the Upper Dantian into his or her Yellow Court, blending all of these energies and powers to gether. The combining of these various energies and spiritual powers creates within the priest's Yellow Court what was known in ancient China as the internal "Breath of the Dao." 7. The priest will now begin to project his or her 29 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM sensory intuitions into the patient's body in order to energetically "see" the patient's inter nal organs. This type of "internal viewing" is initiated and empowered through the magi cal influence of the Divine Eye (still located above the priest's head). This divine internal observation allows the priest to perceive the true physical, energetic, and spiritual matrix of any specifically targeted internal organ. When observing a specific internal organ (i.e. the liver), it is important that the priest extend his or her sensory intuition deep into the patient's tissues (Figure 1.28). 8. Next, the priest imagines and feels his or her hands energetically extending and dipping into the patient's body. As the priests hands energetically enter into the patient's tissues, he or she physically, energetically, and spiri tually embraces the targeted internal organ's energetic matrix. At this time in the exercise, it is important that the priest fully envelop the internal organ with both hands, energetically feeling and experiencing the internal organ's entire physical, energetic, and spiritual fields. 9. While holding the targeted internal organ, the priest exhales from his or her Yellow Court, and emits the internal "Breath of the Dao'' into its energetic matrix. As the divine breath is released from the priest's body, it is also combined with the priest's own pro jected thoughts and emotions. These projected thoughts and emotions are to be imprinted into the patient's tissues via the exhalation of a particular vibrational sound. Each sound is used to stimulate and reso nate a particular magical Element, alive and active within the human body. Each Element is responsible for energetically controlling a specific internal organ and organ system. This is the nature of a true Breath Incantation. It intrinsically acts as the magical technique that can be used by a Daoist priest in order to imprint thoughts and intentions into an individual's energetic field and effect his or her internal organs and organ systems. 10. As the projected sound penetrates deep into the center core of the targeted internal organ, 30 The Observation of the Celestial Dragon Figure 1.28. Use focused imagery to increase the resonance of the projected sound it is important that the priest feel the internal organ vibrating. This resonance should vi brate from three distinct areas: • From deep inside the center of the organ's tissues • From deep inside the energetic space that ex ists between the cells of the tissues • From deep inside the spiritual matrix existing in-between the energetic matrix that creates and maintains the form of the tissues. In ancient Daoism, this magical power, initi ated through the priest's imagination, breath, and tissues is considered to be "the Activation of the Terrestrial Tiger," and it is a manifesta tion of the priest's Ling Jing and Ling Qi. 11. As the priest projects the "Breath of the Dao" into the patient's targeted internal organ, it is important that he or she imagine and feel the magical power of the Divine Eye purifying, cleansing, forgiving, and healing all imprinted thoughts and emotions trapped deep inside the patient's internal organ tissues and cells. This divine energetic projection will cause any stagnation located within the patient's internal organs and tissues to dissolve and disperse. 12. After emitting several sounds, the priest will immediately disconnect from the patient's energetic field and get feedback as to their various experience of the exercise. WORDS AND MAGIC A word is the center of an idea, just as an idea is the center of a mental image. The mind subcon sciously molds itself around the prevailing mental image or attitude, and then proceeds to draw from the outer world for material from which to build in accordance to the belief. Therefore in magic, words are considered to be living beings. A word's meaning is its spirit, and its sound is its body. If you ignore either, you weaken its innate power. The ancient Chinese worshiped the magical power of language, and the spoken word quickly became a powerful and influential part of early Daoist sorcery. The art of speaking "magic words" was once taken seriously in ancient China. The misuse of speech in general was regarded as an unfavorable display or misuse of one's mind. Spoken words are invocations of ideas, and they represent and express the formulation of specific concepts, plans, and actions. They are symbols of ideas, to be imagined, pictured, and compre hended within the mind. The ancient Chinese believed that it was the energy inherent in spiritual words of power that established the foundations of all creation (spiritual, energetic, and physical). The energetic manifestations of the spoken word can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, or an energetic reality when spoken with true conviction and intention. In the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. - 220 A.D.), Invo cations and Incantations (recited words or phrases of power) were usually performed in conjunction with secret Hand Seals (also called Mudras), magical rituals (e.g., Star Stepping and Big Dipper Pacing), or the use of Healing Talismans. All of these magical skills were used in order to increase the priest's confidence in overcoming disease or combating Evil Spirits. The goal of mastering Mantras, Words of Pow er or Incantations is to restore the spoken word to a state in which the name no longer evokes the image of an object, but rather its influential power (manifesting on the physical, energetic, and spiri tual realms). In this energetic and spiritual state, the word no longer represents a specific noise spoken by the priest, but rather represents the resonating voice or "living sound" of the thing INCANTATIONS, HAND SEALS AND STAR STEPPING itself. This living sound has a powerful affect on all people, no matter what language they speak. The proper use of words (or names) was considered extremely important to the Daoist priest. In Daoist magic, a name or word is very significant. When correctly vibrated by the tongue (the Shen, or spiritual Fire of the Heart) and com bined with the Will of the Kidneys, the vocalized Qi comes alive. The spoken word or name then embodies the identity, the very being, of what it signifies; and a resonance is established between the living name and the thing itself. By manipu lating the name, the potential of the named thing is released upon the world, both in spiritual and energetic form. This spiritual and energetic form acts as a blueprint upon which the entire universe of space and time, energy, and matter is based. When audibly initiating a form of suggestive influence over an individual and voicing a name or phrase out-loud (i.e., "heal"), the priest's spirit (Shen) imitates the initial creative act of the Di vine through the utilization of sound and breath (Qi) through intention (Yi) and will (Zhi). This is sometimes known as a "declaration." A declara tion is speaking something into being that was not previously there and for which there is often little or no agreement in the surrounding environment. The power of a declaration is directly related to the integrity of the priest that speaks it into being. The ancient Daoists believed that the energy of an individual's name was intrinsically con nected to the energy of the individual's body, breath, mind, life-force, and soul. Therefore, an individual's "proper name" or "fate name," was generally replaced by using a "designation name" or "tribe-name" in order to improve, increase, and promote the obvious talents and virtues of the individual. Even within the spirit realm, it was commonly taught that knowing the names of various spirits allowed the priest to conjure powerful entities during spells and enhance the effectiveness of the magical incantations. Therefore, in ancient Daoist magic, priests were taught that by speaking the proper name and magically summoning words, they could cause a spirit or deity to come forth. When used skillfully, names and words of power 31 WW.DAOISTMAGIC.COM Internally Spoken Words External Spoken Speaking a Name, Word, or Phrase silently in thoughts or dreams Vocalizing a Name, Word, or Phrase externally using sound and breath Figure 1 .29. The Internally Spoken Name and the Externally Spoken Name can summon or dispatch, attract or disperse, heal or destroy. In ancient China, powerful incantations were known to invoke the presence of supreme deities, and were used to cure the deaf and blind, give speech back to the mute, give movement back to the paralyzed, revive the dead, save lives, or banish demons. Because of the energetic nature of the words, the intonation and rhythm of an incantation was extremely important. The proper sound and pronunciation that must be recited in the incanta tion were often well guarded secrets, kept by the ancient Daoist. Incantations were sometimes also used as a form of hypnotic patterning, wherein the Daoist priest used language and tones low ered into a slow, melodic rhythm, in order to induce trance. The most common linguistic pat tern used in this type of trance incantation was sometimes called "verbal pacing." Verbal pacing is sometimes combined with audibly stating sen sory experiences (i.e., "relax," -pause- "and allow your body to sink into a quiescent state of bliss," -pause- "now feel energetic waves carrying your consciousness deeper" -pause- etc.) in order to induce altered states. MAGICAL NAMES, WORDS, AND PHRASES There exist certain Words of Power that are able to alter the internal and external realities of those uttering them, and the power may rest in the very sounds of the words as much as their mean ings. Many of such words are names, though the meanings may have been lost or forgotten. Many magical tools require words to be inscribed upon them and I or said over them during their construc tion and I or use. Knowing the complete and true name of an ob ject, being, or process gives a	804,546
Forbidden Asia (Hans-Jürgen Döpp) (Z-Library).pdf	Forbidden Asia Forbidden Asia Layout: Baseline Co Ltd 61A-63A Vo Van Tan 4th Floor District 3, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam © Confidential Concepts, worldwide, USA © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA Image-Bar www.image-bar.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or adapted without the permission of the copyright holder, throughout the world. Unless otherwise specified, copyright on the works reproduced lies with the respective photographers, artists, heirs or estates. Despite intensive research, it has not always been possible to establish copyright ownership. Where this is the case, we would appreciate notification. ISBN: 978-1-78042-721-8 2 3 “She dusts the pillow, perfumes her red hairnet, Swivels the lamp and slips off her clothes. Her maids know the night will be long But no call means they may go home.” — Dai Hao, 6 th century 4 5 Anonymous Master of the Kangxi Period 11, 15 Eisen, Keisai 239 Eisho, Chokosai 165 Harunobu, Suzuki 133, 135 Hokusai, Katsushika 139, 195, 207 Koryusai, Isoda 127, 137 Main Artists 7 Kunisada, Utagawa 237 Mei, Xu 13 Morohira, Hishikawa 145 Pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi 243 Shun’ei, Katsukawa 161 Utamaro, Kitagawa 149 8 Illustrations from Qinglou Duoying, published as ‘Selected Scenes from Verduous Towers’ Colour woodcuts from an album, late Ming period (first half of the 17th century), 26 x 25 cm The Muban Foundation Collection ‘Verduous Towers’ is the veiled Ming term for a brothel BOUND HAPPINESS - CHINESE EROTICISM T he aim of Taoist art and culture was to reach a state of harmony that would lead Man, confronted by a chaotic universe, towards a new serenity. In this spiritual context, love represented for the Chinese a force which was supposed to unite 9 10 sky and earth in balance and maintain the reproductive cycle of nature. Eroticism thus became an art of living and formed an integral part of religion (to the extent that such western notions can be applied to philosophical thought of this kind). Taoist religion assumes that pleasure and love are pure. ‘In order to gain some Anonymous Master of the Kangxi period (1662-1722) Painting on silk from an 8-page album, 39.5 x 55.5 cm 11 12 understanding of Chinese eroticism,’ writes Etiemble, a great connoisseur of Chinese art, ‘we need to distance ourselves from the notion of sin and the duality between the corrupt body and the holy spirit.’ This ideology lies at the very base of Christianity. Erotic Chinese art reflects the extent to which we are ‘morally corrupt’ and ‘full of prejudices’. Painting on Silk from an 8-page album, Kangxi period Xu Mei, (1662-1722) Silk, 42.5 x 74.5 cm Courtesy: Collection Guy & Myriam Ullens Foundation, Switzerland 13 14 The Yin-Yang pairing introduces us directly into the world of Chinese eroticism: The ‘path of Yin and Yang’ signifies nothing less than the sexual act itself. One of the best-known sayings of ancient Chinese philosophy, ‘Yi yin yi yang cheh we tao’ (‘On the one side yin, on the other yang, this is the essence of Tao’) Anonymous Master of the Kangxi period (1662-1722) Painting on silk from an 8-page album, 39.5 x 55.5 cm 15 16 indicates the fact that sex between a man and a woman expresses the same harmony as the changes between day and night, or summer and winter. Sex symbolises the order of the world, the moral order, while our culture stigmatises it as evil. In this sense, master Tung-huan wrote in his Art of Love, ‘Man is the most sublime creature Scene from Rouputuan, ‘The Prayer Mat of Flesh’ 18th century Painting on paper, 37.5 x 37.5 cm 17 18 under the skies. Nothing which he enjoys can be compared to the act of sexual union. Formulated according to the harmony between the sky and the earth, it rules Yin and dominates Yang. Those who understand the sense of these words can preserve their essence and prolong their life. Those who do Chinese Wedding Tablet 18th century Painting on silk and appliqué relief mosaic pictures made from different coloured jade, mother-of-pearl, and ivory They serve to instruct newly married couples 19 20 not grasp their true significance are heading towards their doom.’ The split in the Universe between Yin and Yang is all the more important because these two inseparable principles mutually influence each other. We know of a great many Chinese manuals whose purpose was to provide an Painting on Porcelain Vase (detail) 18th century, 11.3 x 13 cm 21 22 education in the art of love-making for young couples; this education would cover desire, morality, and religion. In these texts, the sexual act is always referred to metaphorically, with terms such as ‘the war of flowers’, ‘lighting the great candle’, or ‘games of cloud and rain’. Painting on Silk 18th century, 31.5 x 34 cm 23 24 They are also full of images referring to various sexual positions: - unfurling silk - the curled-up dragon - the union of kingfishers - fluttering butterflies - bamboo stalks at the altar - the pair of dancing phoenixes - the galloping tournament horse - the leap of the white tiger - cat and mouse in the same hole Box Featuring Erotic Images Painted on glass 25 26 In Chinese aesthetics, nothing is ever named directly and without beating about the bush. Instead, things are referred to obliquely, and any transgression of this tradition is considered vulgar. Even the European notion of ‘eroticism’ would be too direct. They would prefer to substitute the term ‘the idea of spring’. Chinese Porcelain Tile 19th century 27 28 Physical love is praised without pretence but also without vulgarity in the verses of a popular Chinese song: The window open in the light of an autumn moon, The candle snuffed out, the silk tunic undone, Her body swims in the scent of the tuberoses. Mural displayed in sections 29 30 In the erotic images of paintings on silk or porcelain, wood engravings or illustrations, sexuality is never shown in its crude state or in a pornographic manner, but always in a context of beauty and harmony. Symbolic, meaningful details enrich these illustrations, Mural displayed in sections 31 32 evoking the tenderness which occupies a favoured place in Chinese iconography. Nevertheless, these details are difficult for Europeans to decipher: the cold and impassive faces of the lovers are a long way from our idea of a blaze of passion. Mural displayed in sections 33 34 Thus it is that one of the most fertile and ancient cultures in the world invites us, through its religious practices, to make love. Taoist manuals advocate the technique of holding back from ejaculation, a truly prodigious invention which allows the man to satisfy the woman. Mural displayed in sections 35 36 By doing this, a subtle alchemy is achieved: the man receives Yin from the woman, who obtains from him the pure essence of Yang. For this reason, coitus reservatus is considered in Taoism and Tantrism to be the most subtle form of sexual union, because it allows the crossing of the divide between masculine Mural displayed in sections 37 38 and feminine energy. The creation of a new life is not the principal aim of the sexual act. It is more to do with an identification with cosmic forces than with the forces of life. The ‘theory of juices’ holds that sperm passes through the spinal column directly to Mural displayed in sections 39 40 the brain. During the 17 th and 18 th century, European medicine laboured under the same misapprehension. How painful it must have been to be a young boy masturbating and believing that doing so would lead to a degeneration of the spinal chord and a drying-out of the brain! Mural displayed in sections 41 42 Whilst ejaculation provides a mere instant of pleasure which is very swiftly lost and finishes in the relaxation of the entire body, a buzzing in the ears, tiredness of the eyes, and a dry throat, coitus reservatus or coitus interruptus provokes a growth in vitality and an improvement in all the senses. Mural displayed in sections 43 44 Among the best-known manuals are those of Sou Nu King and Sou Nu Fang, which, among other things, recount how the legendary Yellow Emperor, Huang-ti (2697-2599 BCE, according to traditional historical reckoning) used experienced women to teach him about the art of love-making. In The Treaties of the Mural displayed in sections 45 46 Bedroom there is a conversation between the Emperor and one of his mistresses, a simple young girl: The Yellow Emperor asks the simple young girl, ‘My spirit is listless and lacking in substance; I live constantly in fear and my heart is full of sadness. What can I do to cure myself?’ Mural displayed in sections 47 48 The young girl replies quite simply, ‘All human weaknesses come from an unhappy union of bodies during the sexual act. As water wins in the fight against fire, so woman gains in the fight against man. Those who are skilled in pleasure are like good cooks who know which five spices to add to a soup. Mural displayed in sections 49 50 Those who understand the art of Yin and Yang can unite the five modes of pleasure; those who do not know this die before reaching the age of maturity and without having had the slightest pleasure from sex. Should one not forestall this danger?’ And in another lesson in the same work, Huang-ti asked, ‘What does one gain from Painting from a 12-page album 19th century Paper, 27 x 32 cm 51 52 practising sex according to the path of Yin and Yang?’ ‘For man, sex makes his energies surge – for woman, it serves as protection against sickness. Those who do not know the right path think that the sexual act can be harmful to health. In truth, the sexual act has only one purpose: physical pleasure and joy, but also Family-Rose Porcelain Tile Early 19th century 29.5 x 22 cm 53 54 peace in the heart and strength of the will. The person feels neither sated nor hungry, he is neither hot nor cold; the body is satisfied and the spirit likewise. Energy ebbs and flows majestically, and no desire troubles this harmony. This is the result of a well- accomplished union. If one follows this rule, Painting from a 12-page album 19th century Paper, 26.8 x 32.1 cm 55 56 women will achieve full pleasure and men will always remain healthy,’ answered Sunu. All of these manuals advocate making love as often as possible and even at an advanced age, ‘Whatever his age, man would not be happy living without a woman. If he is without a woman, his concentration suffers because of it. Painting from a scroll of 12 designs 19th century Paper, 26.6 x 40.6 cm 57 58 If his concentration suffers, the forces of his mind grow weaker; if the forces of his mind weaken, the span of his life grows shorter...’ The bibliography of works of the Han era, which is the era directly pre-dating the birth of Christ, includes eight books that are entirely Reverse Glass Painting 19th century Diameter: 12 cm 59 60 devoted to the art of love-making. During that era the following maxim was adopted: the art of having sexual relations with a woman consists of remaining master of oneself and preventing ejaculation in order to allow the sperm to return to the brain.’ From that Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book The “marriage-books” of the 18th and 19th centuries were delicate and expensive volumes illustrating the different basic positions for love-making. Such a book was presented to daughters of the richest Chinese families on the day before their wedding as a means of last-minute sexual education 61 62 moment on, every educated Chinese man felt obliged to be familiar with the technique of reinforcing masculine power named ‘drinking at the jade fountain’: the man had to remain inside the woman while she had her orgasm and only leave her when it was over, Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 63 64 without releasing any sperm in the process. The treatises teach that it was even possible to make love several times in one night with different women if one followed this technique. Taoist wisdom emphasises the positive aspects of this for the man’s health: Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 65 66 ‘Those who are capable of making love several times a day without spilling their sperm will be cured of all illnesses and will reach a ripe old age. If sexual relations are not limited to one woman, the success of this method will only be enhanced. The best option is to make Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 67 68 love with ten women or more during the course of one night.’ Sex, medicine, and religion are thus closely linked in Taoism because of the large number of energy channels that flow through the body. There is a link between the exterior world in Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 69 70 which man lives and the individual interior of every human being. Sexuality is thus called upon to play a central role in everyone’s life. This explains why men thought of satisfying several women sexually as a duty. And the aim was to do it without exhausting all their energy. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 71 72 So, men were supposed to learn different erotic techniques for giving several women multiple orgasms without, however, experiencing their own. Taoist education, from the simplest effort right up to the most elevated spiritual heights, was founded on the control of sexual energies. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 73 74 Tantrism, influenced by Buddhism, was largely similar to Taoism in its teachings and intentions. The greatest development in erotic art was principally concentrated in the rich commercial cities in the south of China, during the early part of the period that is considered the beginning of the modern era in Asia. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 75 76 From the 10 th century onwards, cities as famous as Suzhou, Hanzhou, or Quanzhou were among the most flourishing in the entire world. Businessmen frequented luxurious brothels, wine houses, and other places of pleasure such as tea houses or the baths. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 77 78 They formed a sub-culture which today is largely documented by writings and novels from that period. The culture of courtesans was a part of this. The golden age of Chinese erotic art dates from around the end of the Ming period (1368-1644), which was characterised by Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 80 relatively great amounts of liberty and the flourishing of all kinds of arts and science. The prudery of Confucianism was the cause of the destruction of a great number of erotic paintings which illustrated the ancient Taoist manuals. Confucianism denied eroticism and advocated the separation of the sexes Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 81 82 as well as the subordination of personal passions to the laws of family and the state. Later on, Christianity played a negative role in favouring these iconoclastic practices. What had survived all of these eras was finally destroyed during the Maoist Cultural Revolution. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 83 84 These philosophical detours can no doubt go some way to explain the delicacy of Chinese eroticism. Like a mantra, these pieces of information are repeated again and again in books about China. And yet, Asian eroticism still remains very enigmatic to western understanding. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 85 86 As Westerners, we cannot help but wonder how sexual ecstasy can be combined with a technique that is so precisely worked out and that is controlled by such a myriad of instructions and recommendations. Does it not lead to a loss of spontaneity in one’s feelings and passions? Is this whole culture of delicacy, Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 87 88 of the small and the pure, perhaps obeying a process of distancing things from reality and idealisation? Is what is actually happening a change in the opposite direction? Does this oh-so-subtle control of natural impulses perhaps indicate repressed anguish, hidden by the official and ideological explanation of love? Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 89 90 For a man to avoid having an orgasm is clearly, in this day and age, a very reasonable method of birth control: but when this practice is advocated because of the loss of vital energies, one suspects quite another motivation. Is there not here a fear of orgasm, in the form of a fear of the oneiric dilution of one’s self? Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 91 92 Orgasm, indeed, means ‘little death’, because during an orgasm for a moment the barriers of the individual are broken down. To flee death: would that not mean, in this male-centred sexuality, fleeing union with woman? Does the fear of death really mean a fear of women’s power? Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 93 94 Chastity can only be dangerous; but seeing the loss of sperm as the loss of the very substance of life is no less so. If a young man neglects his sexual life, he will be haunted by phantoms which will rear up in his dreams in the form of seductive young women. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 95 96 If he gives in to them, they will suck out his vital energy. It is exactly on this point that Chinese and European traditions meet. In this dream, it is the unconscious which is reclaiming its rights. Thus, regular sexual relations are recommended. Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 97 98 Sharing the human condition as we all do, that is, having all been born from a mother and a father who, in one way or another, have to come to terms with the Oedipus complex, sexuality can only consist, even in China, of a mixture of pleasure and pain. It is exactly these elements that one must seek behind these endless affirmations of eternal harmony. Wedding Book 19th century 99 100 What, for example, is the significance of the fact that, in hundreds and hundreds of depictions of the sexual act, which claim to offer a complete guide to all conceivable sexual positions, I have only found two or three images of cunnilingus? Was this position forbidden? In 1,000 erotic images, only three represent this theme. Isn’t that strange? Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 18th and 19th centuries 101 102 Likewise, another theme can give us an insight into repressed fears: In all the images that we have seen, women wear their shoes, even if they are naked. Unshod feet are never shown. For the Chinese, these feet, enclosed in their embroidered shoes, represented the most sublime erotic quality, and small feet exerted a very specific Wedding Book 19th century 103 104 charm over men which we find difficult to understand today. During the Ming period, the custom of foot-binding developed rapidly. Concubines, courtesans, and also simple, maidenly peasant women had their feet broken in childhood and then had them bound for the rest of their lives. Any refusal of this custom was considered shameful. Wedding Book 19th century 105 106 When, in 1644, an attempt was made to abolish the custom, the women of Manchuria practically revolted. Indeed, this sign of nobility was held particularly dear among the poorest elements of the population. The bound foot represented at the same time the most powerful taboo: Painting on Paper, from a 12-page album Mid-19th century 23 x 29.5 cm 107 108 if a woman allowed her foot to be touched without resisting too strongly, one could hope for anything from her. This custom was finally abolished by Mao Tse-tung in 1949. Some authors have posited the theory that this ‘walk of the golden lotuses’ tightened the vaginal muscles, but there is no medical proof to sustain the idea. Painting on Paper, from a 12-page album Mid-19th century 23 x 29.5 cm 109 110 Etiemble suggests that the bound feet of Chinese women ‘has nothing to do with whatwas and still is the essence of Chinese eroticism: the theory of Yin and Yang, the coitus reservatus, the respect for the partner’s orgasm, and the naturalness of feelings.’ But perhaps we are seeking to separate things that are in fact connected. If one thinks Pendant Pair of Reverse Glass Paintings Mid-19th century 39.5 x 30 cm 111 112 about it – a clubfoot acquired through appalling pain, flattened ankles which sink into stockings filled with painful ulcers: this has nothing to do with Chinese eroticism. Is it not a symbolic castration of woman? A castration which found redress only in the woman’s toe, the phallic significance of which was swiftly identified? Gouache on Pith Paper Mid-19th century 23.4 x 18 cm 113 114 And what about the treatment of the female body during the 19 th century? Does trussing women up in wired corsets not have some connection with European eroticism? The female body, sadistically laced up and suffocated by handcuffs and belts: is that not a fundamental indication of man’s primal fear of woman? Painting on Silk, Detail of a Horizontal Scroll Second half of the 19th century, 17 x 137 cm 115 116 It is clear that there persists a kind of ideology which glamourises Chinese sexuality but which is, however, nothing more than a misplaced sense of conscience. As Bougainville wrote in 1771 in his Voyage around the World, as well as in other exotic accounts of the 18 th century, people often remark that Painting on Silk Late 19th century, 51 x 84.5 cm 117 118 Chinese sexuality criticises our ‘fallen and decadent state’ while hiding their own sexual conservatism and outdated morality. Perhaps I, too, am nothing more than a desperately decadent European who will never be able to find the path to the noble art that is love. Reverse Glass Painting Late 19th century, 34.5 x 23.2 cm 119 120 BETWEEN THE SUBLIME AND THE GROTESQUE – JAPANESE EROTIC ENGRAVINGS I n contrast with classical Japanese art, books of Ukiyo-e woodcarvings show ‘images of a changing, ephemeral and perishable world’. We know them under the name shunga, which means ‘spring picture’. Erotic Scene (detail) c. 1600 Handscroll painting, ink, colour, gold and silver on paper, height: 27 cm 121 122 The term shunga originally came from Buddhism and is associated with the idea of the painful vanity of all earthly things. Soon, however, its meaning changed as it gradually came to signify the joyful, carefree delights of Scene of Love-Making (detail) Late 17th century Handscroll painting, ink on paper, 29 x 412 cm 123 124 everyday life, and a playful and unconcerned manner of abandoning oneself to the pleasures of the moment, of letting oneself go with the flow ‘like a pumpkin in the currents of a river’. Thus, for the most part the Ukiyo-e Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 125 126 illustrate scenes between courtesans and actors and are set in a world full of pleasure. The shungas allow us a glimpse into a universe where the greedy enjoyment of life is paramount and the pleasures of carnal love play an important role. Shunga, Erotic Print: Lovers Being Observed by a Maid from Behind a Screen Isoda Kory-usai Colour woodblock print Private collection 127 128 Japanese woodcarving developed over a period of two centuries, between approximately 1670 and 1870. Utamaro, the undisputed master of colour woodcarving, was active for only three decades of this period, between 1770 and 1800. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 129 130 This also happened to be the golden age of the Ukiyo-e. In his book on Utamaro, Edmond de Goncourt explains the fascination of erotic woodcarving, ‘It is really worth studying the erotic paintings of the Japanese, if only because of the amazing pleasure to be Husband Cuckolded During a Thunderstorm Style of Suzuki Harunobu, 1769-1770 Colour woodblock print, 18.7 x 24.8 cm 131 132 had from their drawing, the impetuosity, the natural power of these sexual unions, or because of that uncontrollable desire to make love and push through the paper walls of the next room to do so. What a confusion of Fashionable Lusty Mane’emon (F-ury-u enshoku Mane’mon), no 9 Suzuki Harunobu, 1770 Colour woodblock print, 20.6 x 28.5 cm 133 134 bodies, some entangled, some united, what greedy vigour in the arms which both attract and repulse the partner. Feet with curled toes fly through the air, long, deep embraces are exchanged. Eyes closed, eyelids downcast, Fashionable Lusty Mane’emon (F-ury-u enshoku Mane’mon), no 4 Suzuki Harunobu, 1770 Colour woodblock print, 20.6 x 28.5 cm 135 136 their faces turned towards the ground, the women look almost as if they have fainted. And finally, look at the force and power with which the man’s penis is drawn!’ Often, these books and scrolls would form part of a marriage dowry and were supposed Lovers Behind a Screen Attributed to Isoda Kory-usai, 1772-1773 Colour woodblock print, 18.8 x 24.8 cm 137 138 to serve as an introduction to the art of love- making. In the form of printed or painted scrolls, the shungas thus became family heirlooms. In noble families, they formed part of the sexual education of the young daughter Shunga, Erotic Print: Drawing of a Couple in Love Katsushika Hokusai, c. 1780 Colour woodblock print, 24.9 x 37.4 cm Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu 139 140 who was destined to become an insatiable lover. They were therefore intended to awaken her sexual imagination but also to bring a particular visual pleasure to the person who contemplated them. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 141 142 Many of these books were destined for Yoshiwara, the pleasure district in the flourishing city of Edo, in the 17 th century. During the Tokugawa period (1600-1853), the rich bourgeois of the big cities who had, Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 143 144 during a long period of peace, managed to enrich themselves still further, were enjoying a period of extraordinarily hedonistic pleasure. Districts full of sleazy hotels grew at an astonishing rate until they became the centre Scenes of Love-Making (detail) Hishikawa Morohira, 1788 Handscroll painting, ink, colour and gold on silk height: 32.6 cm 145 146 of community life. Guides to these ‘houses of ill repute’ were written, describing in minute detail the charms and defects of the most famous courtesans, not omitting to mention the girls’ prices, of course. Lovers in the Private Second-Floor Room of a Tea-House, from the album Poem of the Pillow (Utamakura) 1788 Illustrated erotic book, volume one, nishiki-e, 25.5 x 37 cm Victoria & Albert Museum, London 147 148 These ‘love guides’ also contained information concerning the women’s characters: which of the concubines was particularly clever and innovative, who was loyal and who was sincere. Other books gave lists of intimate Poem of the Pillow (Utamakura) Kitagawa Utamaro, 1788 Colour woodblock-printed album, each sheet approximatively 25.5 x 37 cm 149 150 details, with advice about how to behave with the women and explaining the sexual practices that were specific to each one. For connoisseurs, there was even information about where one could find rare and unusual pleasures. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 151 152 The collector and businessman Hayashi Tadamasa (1851-1906), who was one of the first to bring these precious Japanese woodcarvings to Paris, owned no less than two hundred ‘guides to the houses of pleasure’, describing the life of the courtesans of Yoshiwara. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 153 154 Utamaro (1753-1806), the absolute master of coloured woodcuts, divided his life between his art and the Yoshiwara district. Goncourt, who wrote his biography, wrote that, ‘he spent his days with his editor or in his studio and his nights in Yoshiwara.’ Woman Discovering a Letter Hidden in the Robe of her Young Lover, from the album Poem of the Pillow (Utamakura) 1788 Illustrated erotic book, one volume, nishiki-e, 25.5 x 37 cm Victoria & Albert Museum, London 155 156 Since his publisher’s office was situated right at the entrance to the infamous district, the path between his studio and the houses of pleasure was undoubtedly a short one. Perhaps we could consider him a Japanese Toulouse-Lautrec? Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 157 158 There were 50 houses of ill-repute listed at that time, with nearly 6,000 girls, of whom at least 2,500 were courtesans offering various pleasures. Edo, which is now the city of Tokyo, numbered at the time over a million inhabitants. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 159 160 The greatest courtesans of the period owed the brilliance of their existence not only to the wealthy city bourgeoisie, but also, and especially, to the large number of provincial aristocrats who had ended up in the capital. Ten Erotic Scenes (detail) Katsukawa Shun’ei, 1792-1795 Handcsroll painting, ink and colour on paper, height: 28 cm 161 162 These were men with no occupation and nothing to do, and the hours they spent enjoying the pleasures of the Yoshiwara district, made it easy for the police to keep them constantly under surveillance. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 163 164 Just as European absolutism had declined in influence, so Japanese warrior ideology lost an important part of its influence in Japan. Thus love and sexuality came to replace the more bellicose activities of nobility. Clean Draft of a Letter (Fumi no kiyogaki) Ch-ok-osai Eish-o, 1793-1801 Colour woodblock-printed album, 25 x 35.9 cm 165 166 So when the noblemen moved around the capital with their numerous suites, they travelled regularly by horse to the Yoshiwara district or were carried there by litter. The state police had, therefore, not hesitated in granting Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 167 168 a license to the pleasure district; it made their task of surveillance much easier to have this group of individuals all in one place. Yoshiwara was founded around 1600 on marshy land – then known as ‘rush land’ – and was situated behind the imperial palace. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 169 170 In 1657, after the great city fire, it had to move to the area near the Merciful Temple of Asakusa, but its name remained unchanged. The district was then surrounded by walls and ditches and divided into nine separate areas. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 171 172 Entering this ‘town of perpetual daylight which glitters resplendent like a peacock’s tail’, the first thing one would have encountered was the main street with its 50 tea houses which really did serve tea and nothing more. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 173 174 In a way, they acted as the antechambers to the brothels and as places where clients and prostitutes could meet and agree terms. Parties took place there and everything was so incredible and splendid ‘one began to doubt whether one was still on earth’. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 175 176 The ‘library’ of these ‘houses of ill-repute’ usually consisted of erotic books. As clients waited their turn, they would pass the time drinking tea and flicking through these albums with their risqué pictures and amusing stories. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 177 178 As for the Greeks, physical love also signified an elevated state of being for the Japanese. Like the Greek hetaera, the courtesans of Yoshiwara were proficient in different arts. They wore beautiful and costly garments, just like real princesses. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 179 180 Jippensha Ikku, a friend of Utamaro, once said of the women of Yoshiwara, ‘They are educated like princesses. From a very early age they are given a full education. They know how to read and write, they learn all the arts, music, Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 181 182 as well as the tea ceremony, ikebana or the best way to arrange a bunch of incense.’ At the beginning, the courtesans used to use an old-fashioned poetic language, as had been the custom in the imperial palaces over a Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 183 184 thousand years earlier, but which no longer bore any resemblance to everyday Japanese. So, is the geisha a robot-like creature created solely for man’s satisfaction? She is, as Theo Lesoualc’h has remarked, the product of Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 185 186 a long transformation wrought by the Japanese to the image of woman: the flawless form in which all elements of ‘femininity’ can be found condensed. Nothing in a geisha’s behaviour is left to chance. In the eyes of man, Act Seven from Chushingura (Chushingura Shichi-damme), from the series “Chushingura” 1801-1802 Oban, nishiki-e, 36.4 x 25.1 cm The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago 187 188 she is the symbol of perfection, from her refined and artistic hairstyle, or her way of wearing make-up and wooden-soled sandals, right down to the perfectly-judged manner of her behaviour, which clearly dictated how she Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 189 190 should position her body, what her conversation should be and how she should express her feelings. The geisha is the archetype of woman. She is the erotic fetish of feminine grace, although codified and reduced,’ wrote Lesoualc’h. Man Seducing a Young Woman (Otoko to musume) 1801-1804 Ink and colour on silk, 70 x 55 cm Tokushu Paper Mfg. Co., Ltd. 191 192 A Westerner looking at shungas will first of all notice the cold and detached expressions on the faces of the couples making love. Both sexes consummate the sexual act with a stoic impassivity, as if they were only partially Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 193 194 involved in the act. Only their stretched-out and curled toes and the cloth which the woman bites with all her might to contain her excitement betray the extent of their ecstasy. Nothing which could possibly move the Shunga: Erotic Scene, from the series Forms of Embracing (tsui no hinagata) Katsushika Hokusai Colour woodblock print, 25.1 x 36.6 cm Musée national des Arts asiatiques – Guimet, Paris 195 196 observer is expressed here, following the traditional rules of art. One might also notice the extremely exaggerated, almost caricature-like dimensions of the male organ. Could it be a fear of impotence that lies behind these over-inflated penises? Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 197 198 Or is it the product of a fantasy which itself hides man’s fear of woman’s untamed nature? Nevertheless, what we also find in these over-sized penises are reflections of the ancient phallic cult of the Shinto religion. Page from the album “Collection of Beauties” (Komachi Biki) 1802 Oban, nishiki-e, 28 x 38.5 cm Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris 199 200 Shintoism, which is the indigenous religion of Japan and a cult entirely devoid of all metaphysical dogmas, is an astonishing mixture of the most varied rituals in honour of over 800 polymorphic gods. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 201 202 Thus the phallus quite naturally became a god to whom temples or private altars at home were dedicated. It was even invoked in prayer some evenings in the pleasure districts during the 17 th and 18 th centuries. Even today, one Page from the album “Collection of Beauties” (Komachi Biki) 1802 _ Oban, nishiki-e, 28 x 38.5 cm Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris 203 204 can still come across ancient phallic steles on the edges of fields, placed there as a symbol of fertility. Festivals in honour of the phallus were a regular event and were the occasion for exuberant processions. An account dating Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 205 206 from the end of the 19 th century describes one of these processions in Tokyo, ‘A phallus several metres high, all covered in gleaming varnish, was placed on a sort of portable casket and carried by a group of young men Young Pine Saplings (Kinoe no komatsu) Katsushika Hokusai, 1814 Colour woodblock-printed book, 22 x 15.5 cm (covers) Ritsumeikan ARC Database 207 208 who were shouting or laughing at the tops of their voices. They zig-zagged along the streets and made sudden, unexpected charges in all directions. Real baccanalian rites!’ Thus the cult of the phallus was the backbone of the Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 209 210 Shinto religion. In the temples, wooden, porcelain, stone, or metal phallic figures were sold as good-luck charms. Japan never suppressed sensuality as such; if there were laws and limitations, they were always socially based but never religious. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 211 212 To seek physical pleasure was considered a natural desire, even if it consisted of unusual practices. Thus, sodomy figured among the normal pleasures of the body. The word ‘sin’, it seems, was never uttered. Even when we are Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 213 214 shown ‘natural love’ in its many varied forms in the woodcarvings, they always involve massive priapic fantasies. Almost all masters of woodcarving produced erotic images, sometimes even in such precious materials as gold, silver, or mother-of-pearl. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 215 216 And yet the shunga studios were, for the most part, clandestine. Artists did not sign their work, or else used a pseudonym. The number of copies made was always limited and most often sold on the black market. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 217 218 Purity of line became a rule that could not be broken for woodcarving; the artist had to carve out the lines in the wood with extreme care. Parallel perspective was mainly dominant: lines that were parallel in nature Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 219 220 were also parallel in the wood. Central perspective, which was a European invention, was only introduced in the 19 th century. Likewise, the Japanese were not familiar with the effects of shadow and light which are so Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 221 222 much a part of European art. The initial technique was to print onto paper from one sole block and then to colour them by hand, which considerably restricted the numbers in which they could be produced because of the time involved. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 223 224 For this reason, in the 18 th century, they started using several blocks. Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1848) is the last great figure of the Ukiyo-e. After him, woodcarving began to decline, giving way to Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 225 226 vulgar copies produced in large numbers and designed to cater to the tastes of the masses. By the second quarter of the 19 th century, it had for all intents and purposes become a popular art. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 227 228 For a long time, Europe ignored Ukiyo-e on the grounds that its content went beyond the boundaries of good taste. It was not until the Universal Exhibitions in Paris of 1867, 1878, and 1889 that a western audience had Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 229 230 the opportunity to rediscover an art form that had hitherto been despised. After that, none would dare deny the major influence of Japanese woodcarving on the entire Impressionist movement. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 231 232 The English artist Aubrey Beardsley probably possessed the finest collection of Ukiyo-e and shunga. His work, which is so characteristic of the late 19 th century, is a perfect illustration of the influence of Japanese woodcarving on western art. Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 233 234 Toulouse-Lautrec also possessed a remarkable collection, a few photographs of which remain. These prints, with their images of cruel and violent ghosts, seem to have particularly affected him, Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 235 236 especially the scenes where women are embraced by animals, monkeys, foxes, badgers, or vampires. By contrast, in Japan throughout the 19 th century, these prints were hidden and forbidden. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter: Prospects for the Four Seasons (Shunka sh-ut-o: Shiki no nagama), vol. 1 (detail) Utagawa Kunisada, 1827 Colour woodblock-printed book, 25.5 x 18.5 cm (covers) 237 238 As the land of the rising sun became more industrialised, it also became more open to western influences and the Ukiyo-e disappeared into people’s desk drawers. In effect, from the moment when the _ Oiso Station, from the series Beauties along the T-okaid-o Keisai Eisen, 1830-1844 Brocade print, 38 x 25.5 cm 239 240 Meiji emperors seized power in 1868, Japan started flirting with the idea of assimilating with Europe. For this reason, any over-obvious signs of fertility cults or their symbols, especially images of the phallus, were Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 18th and 19th centuries 241 242 suppressed as they were considered unworthy of a modern nation. The American occupation after the Second World War dealt the final blow to Shintoism. Today, most of the classical shungas which are offered for sale An Album of Fashionable Patterns (T-osei komonch-o) Attributed to the Pupil of Utagawa Kuniyoshi, c. 1885 Colour woodblock-printed book, 23 x 15.8 cm (covers) Private collection, Ritsumeikan ARC Database 243 244 in the West are bought by Japanese collectors who, in this way, are returning them to their home country. However, it was not until a massive exhibition of Japanese woodcarvings took Japanese Watercolour c. 1900 245 246 place in 1973 in London, at the Victoria and Albert Museum, that the majority of art lovers were given the opportunity of relearning how to appreciate the true value of these erotic works. Japanese Watercolour c. 1900 247 248 Perhaps today we need to look at these works with new eyes, forgetting that over almost 150 years ago they served as the languorous representations of our desire for a simple sexuality that rises above all notion of ‘sin’. Japanese Watercolour c. 1900 249 250 A Act Seven from Chushingura 187 An Album of Fashionable Patterns 243 B Box Featuring Erotic Images 25 C Chinese Porcelain Tile 27 Chinese Wedding Tablet 19 Clean Draft of a Letter 165 E Erotic Scene (detail) 121 F Family-Rose Porcelain Tile 53 Fashionable Lusty Mane’emon 133, 135 Index 251 252 G, H Gouache on Pith Paper 113 Husband Cuckolded During a Thunderstorm 131 I, J Illustrations from Qinglou Duoying 9 Japanese Shunga (“Images of Springtime”) 125, 129, 141 143, 151, 153 157, 159, 163 167, 169, 171 173, 175, 177 179, 181, 183 185, 189, 193 197, 201, 205 209, 211, 213 215, 217, 219 221, 223, 225 227, 229, 231 233, 235, 241 Japanese Watercolour 245, 247, 249 L Lovers Behind a Screen 137 Lovers in the Private Second-Floor Room of a Tea-House 147 M, O Man Seducing a Young Woman 191 Mural displayed in sections 29, 31, 33 35, 37, 39 41, 43, 45 47, 49 Oiso Station 239 P Page from the album “Collection of Beauties” 199, 203 Painting 51, 55, 57 Painting on Paper 107, 109 Painting on Porcelain Vase (detail) 21 Painting on Silk 11, 13, 15 23, 115, 117 253 Painting on Silk from a Marriage-Book 61, 63, 65 67, 69, 71 73, 75, 77 79, 81, 83 85, 87, 89 91, 93, 95 97, 101 Pendant Pair of Reverse Glass Paintings 111 Poem of the Pillow 149 R Reverse Glass Painting 59, 119 S Scene from Rouputuan, ‘The Prayer Mat of Flesh’ 17 Scene of Love-Making (detail) 123, 145 Shunga, Erotic Print: Drawing of a Couple in Love 139 Shunga, Erotic Print: Lovers being Observed by a Maid from Behind a Screen 127 Shunga: Erotic Scene 195 Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter: Prospects for the Four Seasons 237 T Ten Erotic Scenes (detail) 161 W Wedding Book 99, 103, 105 Woman Discovering a Letter Hidden in the Robe of her Young Lover 155 Y Young Pine Saplings 207 255	44,688
Renaissance Art (Victoria Charles) (Z-Library).pdf	Renaissance Art Renaissance Art Victoria Charles 2 Author: Victoria Charles Translation: Marlena Metcalf Layout: Baseline Co Ltd 127-129A Nguyen Hue Fiditourist 3rd Floor District 1, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam © Parkstone Press International, New York, USA © Confidential Concepts, Worldwide, USA All rights reserved worldwide. If not otherwise noted, the copyright of the work belongs to the individual photographers. Despite of intensive research, it was not possible in every case to establish the right of ownership. If necessary, please inform us. ISBN : 978-1-78042-792-8 Renaissance Art - Contents - Introduction 7 I. Art in Italy 9 II. Art in Germany and the Rest of Northern Europe 69 III. Art in the Netherlands, France, England and Spain 83 Major Artists 103 Bibliography 194 Index 196 6 7 I n the middle of the fourteenth century a cultural transformation took place, a transformation that was initiated in Italy and was called Rinascimento there, and was subsequently known as Renaissance in France. It separated the Middle Ages from the Modern Age and was accompanied by Humanism and the Reformation. This development was a return to the classical arts of Greek and Roman Antiquity. It led to intensive studies of the long forgotten poets, to an enthusiasm for sculpture and for the numerous remains of architecture, even if they only existed as ruins. Equally important for this development was the development of technology and sciences, which began in today’s Scandinavia, as well as the Netherlands and later in Germany. In Italy, it was initially architecture which fell back on classical ideals and, a little later, it was sculpture which sought a closer bond with nature. When the architect and sculptor, Filippo Brunelleschi (1377 to 1466), went to Rome to excavate, study and measure the remains of antique buildings, he was accompanied by the goldsmith and sculptor Donatello (around 1386 to 1466). The sculptures found during that time and during later excavations fired the enthusiasm of the sculptors, which, at the end of the fifteenth century was powerful enough to lead Michelangelo to bury one of his pieces of work in the ground, so that shortly afterwards it could be dug up as being “genuinely antique”. The Italian Renaissance lasted for approximately two hundred years. The early Renaissance is classed as belonging to the years between 1420 and 1500 (the Quattrocento), the heyday of the Renaissance ended about 1520, and the late Renaissance, which turned into Mannerism, came to a close in around 1600 (the Cinquecento). Baroque art (roughly translated as “quirky, eccentric”) developed as an imperceptible transition from the late Renaissance as a further development in Italy and in some other countries and was occasionally seen as a deviant and decadent, but now and again as a higher form of development, dominating until the end of the seventeenth century. After the Renaissance crossed the Alps into Germany, France and the Netherlands, it took a similar course and is classified the same way as in Italy. Introduction Michelangelo Buonarroti, David, 1501-1504. Marble, h: 410 cm. Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence. 8 9 The Italian Early Renaissance The earliest traces of the Renaissance are found in Florence. In the fourteenth century, the town already had 120,000 inhabitants and was the leading power in middle Italy. The most famous artists of this time lived here – at least at times – Giotto (probably 1266 to 1336), Donatello (1386 to 1466), Masaccio (1401 to 1429), Michelangelo (1475 to 1564), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 to 1455). Brunelleschi secured a tender in 1420 to reconstruct the Florentine Cathedral, which was to receive a dome as a proud landmark. The foundation of his design was the dome of the Pantheon, originating in the Roman Empire. He deviated from the model by designing an elliptical dome resting on an octagonal foundation (the tambour). In his other buildings, he followed the forms of columns, beams and chapters of the Greek- Roman master builders. However, owing to the lack of new ideas, only the crowning dome motif was adopted in the central construction, in the form of the Greek cross or in the basilica in the form of the Latin cross. Instead, the embellishments taken from the Roman ruins were further developed according to classical patterns. The master builders of the Renaissance fully understood the richness and delicateness, as well as the power of size in Roman buildings, and complemented it with a light splendour. Brunelleschi, in particular, demonstrated this in the chapel erected in the monastery yard of Santa Croce for the Pazzi Family, with its portico born by Corinthian columns, in the inside of the Medici Church San Lorenzo and the sacristy belonging to it. These buildings have never been surpassed by any later, similar building in so far as the harmony of their individual parts is in proportion to the entire building. Leon Battista Alberti (1404 to 1472), who like Brunelleschi was not only a master builder, but at the same time also a significant art historian with his writings About Painting (1435) and About Architecture (1451), was probably the first to articulate this quest for harmony. He compared architecture to music. For him, harmony was the ideal of beauty, because for him beauty meant “…nothing other than the harmony of the individual limbs and parts, so that nothing can be added or taken away without damaging it”. This principle of the science of beauty has remained unchanged since then. Alberti developed a second type of Florentine palace for the Palazzo Rucellai, for which the facade was structured by flat pilasters arranged between the windows throughout all storeys. Lorenzo Ghiberti, Door of Eden, 1425-1452. Gilded bronze, 506 x 287 cm. Baptistery, Florence. Donatello, David, c. 1440-1443. Bronze, h: 153 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. I. Art in Italy 10 11 12 In Rome, however, there was an architect of the same standard as the Florentine master builders: Luciano da Laurana (1420/1425 to 1479), who had been working in Urbano until then, erecting parts of the ducal palace there. He imparted his feeling for monumental design, for relations as well as planning and execution of even the smallest details to his most important pupil, the painter and master builder Donato Bramante (1444 to 1514), who became the founder of Italian architecture during the High Renaissance. Bramante had been in Milan since 1472, where he had not only built the first post-Roman coffer dome onto the church of Santa Maria presso S. Satiro and had also erected the church Santa Maria delle Grazie and several palaces, but had also worked there as a master builder of fortresses before moving to Pavia and in 1499 to Rome. As was common in the Lombardy at that time, he built the Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie as a brick building, focusing on the sub-structure. Using ornamentation covering to cover all parts of buildings had been a feature of the Lombards’ style since the early Middle Ages. This type of design, with incrustations succeeding medieval mosaics, was very quickly adopted by the Venetians, who had always attached much greater value to an artistic element rather than an architectonic structural feature. Excellent examples of these facade designs are the churches of San Zaccaria and Santa Maria di Miracoli, looking like true gems and demonstrating the love of glory and splendour of the rich Venetian merchants. The Venetian master builder Pietro Lombardo (about 1435 to 1515) showed that a strong architectonic feeling was also very much present here with one of the most beautiful palaces in Venice at that time, the three-storey Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi. The architect Brunelleschi had succeeded in implementing a new and modern method of construction. But gradually a sensitivity toward nature, defined as one of the foundations in Renaissance, becomes transparent in some sculptural work of the young goldsmith Ghiberti, which can be found almost at the same time in the Dutch painter brothers Jan (around 1390 to 1441) and Hubert (around 1370 to 1426) Van Eyck, who began the Ghent Altar. During this twenty year period, Ghiberti worked on the bronze northern door of the baptistery and the sense of beauty of the Italians continued to develop. Giotto had further developed the laws of central perspective, discovered by mathematicians, for painting – later Alberti and Brunelleschi continued his work. Florentine painters eagerly took up the results, subsequently engaging sculptors with their enthusiasm. Ghiberti perfected the artistic elements in the relief sculpture. With this, he counterbalanced the certainly more versatile Donatello, who, after all, had dominated Italian sculpture for a whole century. Donatello had succeeded in doing what Brunelleschi was trying to do: to realise the expression of liveliness in every material, in wood, clay and stone, independent of reality. Andrea della Robbia, The Madonna of the Stonemasons, 1475-1480. Glazed terracotta, 134 x 96 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Donatello, Virgin and Child, 1440. Terracotta, h: 158.2 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. After a project of Donato Bramante, Santa Maria della Consolazione, 1508. Todi. 14 The figures’ terrible experiences of poverty, pain and misery are reflected in his reproduction of them. In his portrayals of women and men, he was able to express everything that constituted their personalities. Additionally, none of his contemporaries were superior to him in their decorations of pulpits, altars and tombs, and these include his stone relief of Annunciation of the Virgin in Santa Croce or the marble reliefs of the dancing children on the organ ledge in the Florentine Cathedral. His St George, created in 1416 for Or San Michele, was the first still figure in a classical sense and was followed by a bronze statue of David, the first free standing plastic nude portrayal around 1430, and in 1432 the first worldly bust, with Bust of Niccolo da Uzzano. Finally, in 1447, he completed the first equestrian monument of Renaissance plastic with the bronze Equestrian Monument of Gattamelata, the Venetian mercenary leader, (around 1370 to 1443), which he created for Padua. Donatello’s rank and fame was only achieved by one other person, the sculptor Luca della Robbia (1400 to 1482), who not only created the singer’s pulpit in Florence School of Piero della Francesca (Laurana or Giuliano da Sangallo?), Ideal City, c. 1460. Oil on wood panel, 60 x 200 cm. Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino. 15 Cathedral (1431/1438), but also the bronze reliefs (1464/1469) at the northern sacristy of the Cathedral. His most important achievement, however, is his painted and glazed clay work. The works, which were initially made as round or half-round reliefs, were intended as ornamentation for architectonic rooms. But they found a role elsewhere - the Madonna with Child accompanied by Two Angels, surrounded by flower festoons and fruit wreaths in the lunette of Via d’Angelo is a rather splendid result of his creations. As Donatello’s skills culminated in his portraits of men, Robbia’s mastery is demonstrated in his graceful portrays of childlike and feminine figures – there was nothing more beautiful in Italian sculpture in the fifteenth century. The demands on the design of these products rose to the extent with which the skills in manufacturing glazed clay work in Italy increased. In the end, not only altars and individual figures but also entire groups of figures were made using this technique, which left the artist complete freedom with regard to the design. Luca della Robbia passed his skills and his experience on to his nephew Andrea della Robbia (1435 to 1525). Pisanello (Antonio Puccio), Portrait of a Princess, c. 1435-1440. Oil on wood panel, 43 x 30 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Domenico Veneziano, Portrait of a Young Woman, c. 1465. Oil on wood panel, 51 x 35 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. 16 He in turn, and his sons Giovanni (1469 until after 1529) and Girolamo (1488 to1566) developed the technique of glazed terracotta even further and together with them created the famous round reliefs of the Foundling Children on the frieze above the hall of the Florence orphanage during the years from 1463 to 1466. The fact that the production of the workshop of the della Robbia Family can still be admired nowadays in many places on Northern Italy demonstrates that the terracotta was not only to the taste of the general Italian public but also to that of the Europeans generally, and that the style was gaining more and more lovers. At the same time we should not forget that no other century was as favourably inclined towards sculptural design as the fifteenth century. Thus Donatello’s seeds bore splendid fruit. His two most important students, the sculptor Desiderio da Settignano (approximately 1428 to 1464) and the painter, sculptor, goldsmith and bronze caster Andrea del Verrocchio (1435/1436-1488), continued to run his school in his way of thinking. Especially the latter not only created a number of altarpieces, but also became the most important sculptor in Florence. He cast the statue of David, for instance, (around 1475) and the Equestrian Statue (1479) of the mercenary leader Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400 to 1475) in Venice. Verrocchio’s style prepared the transition to the High Renaissance. Settignano has left considerably fewer pieces of art than Verrocchio and mainly occupied himself with marble Madonna reliefs, figures of children and busts of young girls. He passed his skills and knowledge on to his most important student, Antonio Rosselino (1427 to 1479), whose main piece of work is the tomb of the Cardinal of Portugal in San Miniato al Monte in Florence. Among Rosselino’s students was Mino da Fiesole (1431 to 1484), who, while originally a stonemason, became the best marble technician of his time and created gravestones in the form of monumental wall graves, and Benedetto da Maiano. Fiesole’s art mainly lived on imitating nature, and was thus too limited to lend variety to his large production. The second half of the fifteenth century shows the gradual transition from popular marble processing to the more austere bronze casting, and the two David statues are examples of this. Donatello’s work shows a rather thoughtful David, the other, by 17 Verrocchio, in complete contrast, created in the ideal form of naturalism, a self-confident youth, who is smiling, satisfied with his successful battle, Goliath’s head chopped off at his feet. This smile, which has frequently, but to no avail, been copied by stonemasons has become a trade mark of Verocchio’s school. Only one artist really succeeded in conjuring this smile onto some of his own work: Leonardo da Vinci, also a student of Verrocchio. The sculptor Verrocchio has to share his fame with the painter Verrocchio, who has only left few paintings behind. Among them are The Madonna (1470/1475), Tobias and the Angel, also (1470/75), as well as the Baptism of Christ, painted in tempera colours (1474). As the painter, master builder and art writer Giorgio Vasari (1511 to 1574) recorded convincingly, Leonardo da Vinci painted the angel kneeling in the foreground in this picture. Later, he possibly painted over this picture in oil after Verrocchio had moved away to Venice. Apart from the statue of the young David, another sculpture belonging to his masterpieces is surely Christ and St Thomas in a niche in the Church of Or San Michele and the Equestrian Statue of Colleoni, which he did not live to see completed. In Rome, the painter and goldsmith Antonio del Pollaiuolo (around 1430 to 1498) operated in a workshop, creating the first small sculptures there. His pen-and-ink-drawing, possibly a draft for a relief, Fighting Naked Men (approximately 1470/1475) and the copperplate engraving Battle of the Ten Naked Men (around 1470) were to break new ground in nude art. His most important works of art however, are the bronze tombs of the popes Sixtus V (1521 to 1590) and Innocent VIII (1432 to 1492) in St Peter’s. The development in the field of painting in Florence took place at about the same time as that in the field of sculpture, and raised it to a rich and splendid standard. Initially, the representatives of these two directions were irreconcilably opposed to each other, each stubbornly insisting on their own points of view. Finally, approximately in the middle of the fifteenth century, a certain fusion took place, the monumental always remaining a basic theme in Florentine art, which now found its expression in the monumental fresco-painting led by Masaccio and the Dominican monk Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, called Fra Angelico (1387 to 1455). 18 19 Fra Angelico, who first worked in Florence and later in Rome, combined Gothic influences with naturalism in his work, which was exclusively religious, distinguishing itself with its blissful depth of feeling. His artistic roots lay in his devout disposition, which was reflected in his numerous figures of the Virgin Mary and angels. His skilful work with colours is shown to their best advantage both in his numerous frescoes, which have mostly been well preserved, as well as in his panel paintings. The most important frescoes (around 1436/1446) can be found in the chapter house, the cloister and some cells in the former Dominican monastery San Marco. The Coronation of the Virgin is seen by many experts as outstanding amongst all other frescoes. Fra Angelico took up this subject several times. One of Fra Angelico’s most well-known successors is the Florentine Fra Filippo Lippi (around 1406 to 1469), who lived as a Carmelite monk for approximately five decades and was ordained priest in Padua in 1434, but later left the order. He took on Masaccio’s school of thought and sense of beauty with his softly modelled line-work and splendid colours. He gave the female element a significant role – not only in his life but also in his frescoes and his numerous panel paintings. In his figures of angels, he uses girls from his surroundings as models and shows a sense and understanding for the fashion of that time. In his frescoes he achieved monumental greatness and left his most beautiful creations in his panel paintings. Similar to Fra Angelico, the Coronation of the Virgin (1441/1447) was also an important subject for him. Contrary to Fra Angelico however, he pushed the actual coronation somewhat to the background, and clearly put a lot more emphasis on the figures of the clergymen kneeling in the foreground as well as the women and children he portrayed. This tendency towards portraying and therefore honouring the individual is mainly demonstrated in his Madonna pictures, expressing significant religious feelings. This becomes increasingly apparent in his painting Madonna with Two Angels (mid-fifteenth century). In comparison, he created a lively background to the Madonna, who sits at the front with the portrayal of the confinement of St Anna on the round picture Madonna and Child (around 1452). This childbed served later artists as a welcome model. Fra Filippo Lippi’s most important student was without doubt Sandro Botticelli (around 1445 to 1510). But the headstrong Sandro, his Adoration of the Magi contains a self-portrait on the right side, insisted on becoming a painter, thus finally ending up at Fra Filippo Lippi’s as an apprentice. Later on, he was close to the circle of humanists around the chief councillor Lorenzo de Medici (The Magnificent; 1449 to 1492). Botticelli was one of the first to become deeply involved in the subjects of antique mythology, for instance in the most famous of his paintings, the Birth of Venus (around 1482/1483), and he liked to include antique buildings in the background of his work. Above all, he created allegorical and religious work, and during his activities in Rome between 1481 and 1483 Fra Angelico (Fra Giovanni da Fiesole), The Deposition of the Cross (Pala di Santa Trinità), 1437-1440. Tempera on wood panel, 176 x 185 cm. Museo di San Marco, Florence. 20 also frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in cooperation with others. Another of his pictures is Spring (1485/1487), in which the merry and festive life in Florence is reflected. In many of his pieces of work there is a lavish abundance of flowers and fruit, into which he places his slender girls and women with their fluttering, flowing gowns, as well as the Madonna’s, surrounded by serious saints. In some Madonna portrayals we can feel the influence of the repentance-preacher and Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola (1452 to 1498), of whom Botticelli remained an ardent follower, even after his violent death. He also repeatedly painted the Adoration of the Magi, once also commissioned by Fra Filippo Lippi, Madonna with the Child and Two Angels, 1465. Tempera on wood, 95 x 62 cm. Galleria degi Uffizi, Florence. 21 Lorenzo de’ Medici, and in this painting we do not only see the members of this family but also their immediate circle of friends and his followers. His individual portraits such as Portrait of a Young Man in a Red Cap (around 1474), Giuliano de’ Medici (around 1478) and Portrait of a Young Woman (around 1480/1485) prove that he was also a brilliant portraitist. From his time in Rome he also left one of his most mysterious paintings: The Outcast (1495), with the crying or desperate figure of a woman on the steps in front of the fortress-like wall with the closed gate. Botticelli, who had been wrongly forgotten for a long time, is now regarded as one of the greatest masters of the Renaissance. Sandro Botticelli (Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi), Madonna of the Book, c. 1483. Tempera on wood panel, 58 x 39.5 cm. Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan. 22 His most significant student was doubtlessly Filippino Lippi (around 1457 to 1504), the son of Fra Filippo Lippi. Initially strongly influenced by Botticelli, he later freed himself from him and created several significant pieces of work in his own right. Among these are an Adoration of the Magi, commissioned by the Medici, and following its interruption due to Masaccio’s death, the completion of the painting of the Brancacci Chapel showing a fresco cycle with Scenes from the Life of St Peter (1481/1482), a Coronation of the Virgin and a Madonna. In spite of these indisputable performances, his reputation and awareness level do not measure up to those of his contemporary Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449 to 1494). Like Botticelli, Ghirlandaio also first completed an apprenticeship as a goldsmith, and was already unquestionably successful when he dedicated himself entirely to painting. In 1480 and 1481 he created monumental and beautifully designed frescoes in the Sistine Chapel and in 1482/83 to 1485 in the Florentine Santa Trinità, among which The Last Supper in the Church of Ognissanti stands out in particular, and can be considered a forerunner to Leonardo’s. Ghirlandaio included life around him into his work and did not hesitate at all to arrange biblical stories as scenes of contemporary Florentine good living, in order to give the viewer a better understanding of its deeper meaning. This is especially apparent in the frescoes he painted in the choir of Santa Maria Novella (1490). Among the absolute masters of Italian painting outside of Florence is Piero della Francesca (1416 to 1492), who should be regarded as one of the most brilliant painters of the Early Renaissance and was particularly outstanding due to his excellent knowledge of anatomy and perspective. Piero della Francesca created a style that combines monumental size with the transparent beauty of colour and light, and therefore influenced the entire northern and middle Italian painting of the Quattrocento. His main work is the cycle of frescoes from the Legend of the True Cross in the choir of San Francesco in Arezzo (1451/1466) and a Baptism of Christ (1448/1450). One of Piero della Francesca’s most important students was Luca Signorelli (1440/1450 to 1523). His harshly modelled nudes, in movement and the adoption of ancient subjects, made him one of Michelangelo’s role models. What kind of mastery he had already achieved in the portrayal of the human body as a young man is depicted in a mythological picture, rich in figures and probably commissioned by Lorenzo de’ Medici. Michelangelo paid Signorelli his respects, when he adopted the woman riding on the Devil’s back in one of his pieces of work, without any changes. But we can also still find Signorelli’s frescoes and altarpieces in other large and small villages and towns in southern Tuscany and in Umbria. From their relatively good condition in relation to the colours, we may conclude that he made use of the new Piero di Cosimo, Portrait of Simonetta Vespucci, c. 1485. Oil on panel, 57 x 42 cm. Musée Condé, Chantilly. 25 technique with oil-paint that originated in the Netherlands. Signorelli also worked in Rome for some years, where in 1481/1482 he painted the fresco with The Testament and Death of Moses in the Sistine Chapel. In Venice, Jacopo Bellini, the father of the famous Gentile Bellini became his student. Among Jacopo’s main work is the altar with the Adoration of the Magi (1423) as well as frescoes, of which only one Madonna (1425) has been preserved in the Orvieto Cathedral. Another Umbrian painter was Lehrzeit Perugino (around 1448 to 1524). Although he was one of the most important masters of Umbrian style and thus held in high esteem by his contemporaries, he achieved greater significance as a teacher of Raphael, whose first stage of development he had a crucial influence on, than as an artist in his own right. Perugino later also had close contact with the Florentine circle around Verrocchio. However he, only initially and very hesitantly, adopted the view of naturalism prevailing there, and preferred to remain true to his softer, successful style. This was because his contemporaries always demanded sensitive devotional pictures, which nobody except he knew how to paint with such a beautiful lustre of colours. In his paintings St Sebastian and Madonna and Child enthroned with St John the Baptist this becomes quite clear. The disadvantage of the popularity of his paintings was, of course, that it led to a mass production, during which even the expression of the greatest heavenly rapture became a cliché. But the series of frescoes he painted in the Sistine Chapel from 1480 with, among others, Christ gives Peter the Key to the Kingdom of Heaven or the altar with Adoration of the Child (1491), or the Vision of St Bernhard (around 1493), which was probably painted for the Cistercian church del Castello in Florence, belong to the absolute masterpieces of religious paintings. But he also became familiar with ancient art. However, in these classical portrayals his student Bernadino Pinturicchio (1455 to 1513) was far superior to him. In 1481 to 1483 he worked together with Perugino in the Sistine Chapel on frescoes with subjects from the Old and New Testament, but he also created his own frescoes, whose meticulous execution was reminiscent of miniature painting, in the Vatican Hall of Saints. This earned him the approval and goodwill of his clients, as well as did his well-developed sense for fitting out a large room in a unified, decorative style. This talent made him the founder of Renaissance decoration. Apart from the Umbrian school, there were also schools in Padua, Bologna and Venice, which were of significance in the second half of the fifteenth century. From the artists of these schools, Andrea Mantegna (1431 to 1506) is doubtlessly to be regarded as one of the greatest. Mantegna’s greatness lies in the depiction of important characters that he mainly found in classical works of art. This enthusiasm for classical art, which he wanted to match, dominated Mantegna’s life. He had been working in Mantua for the margrave Ludovico Gonzaga since 1460 and provided the Domenico Ghirlandaio, An Old Man with his Grandson, 1488. Tempera on panel, 62 x 46 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. 26 spouses’ room with wall and ceiling decorations in their Castello di Corte in 1473 and 1474. In this work he proved his skills in perspective foreshortening in vault frescoes, and by far surpassed his professional colleagues in Florence regarding power and greatness of the characteristics. For a series of paintings destined for a room in the margrave’s palace, he also proved his change of direction to the classics. More than once Mantegna demonstrates a certain sympathy for the “underdogs”. One of the examples for this attitude is his dignified portrayal of the lower classes in religious pictures and the illustration of the prisoners in Triumph of Caesar (1488/1492). His art always remained directed towards the great and serious, and he only seldom moderated his harsh forms through pleasing gracefulness. Examples for this are among others the Madonna della Vittoria and John the Baptist (1496) in which the kneeling Duke Francesco Gonzaga is being blessed, as well as the tempera painting the Parnassus (1497) with Mars and Venus on a fanciful rock throne with the muses dancing in front and Apollo’s string playing. Mantegna’s revival of classical antiquity was so convincing that it even cast its spell over Raphael. Whilst Gentile Bellini is more of an art historian, Giovanni continued the artistic lines of his father and brother-in-law Mantegna. Giovanni Bellini’s favourite subject was without doubt the Madonna, portrayed alone, with child or sitting enthroned as a Madonna surrounded by saints. In these figures, as well as old and young or male and female figures he created types of beauty, which have not been surpassed in their rapturous emotional state of mind. In the composition of the colouring there is always a harmony reminiscent of music, and this element of life, indispensable to Venetians, is not missing on any of the Bellini altarpieces. In contrast, many devotional pictures of the Florentines and Paduans originating from this time seem austere and stern, and those of the Umbrian painters detached and tearful. They were all much less likely to evoke devotion than the paintings of the Venetians. In the colourful art of the Early Renaissance, represented by Bellini, we can already feel the transition to the High Renaissance approaching that was then actually made by his students, and in his mythological paintings he had already thrown open the door to the High Renaissance. The Italian High Renaissance In Italy, art flourished and reached its highest peak with the three unsurpassable masters Leonardo (1452 to 1519), Michelangelo (1475 to 1564) and Raphael (1483 to 1520). They have left an inestimable treasure for future generations. Once again, Florence was indeed a starting-point, but not the only scene for this development. Leonard soon left for Milan and Michelangelo and Raphael worked in Rome. Perugino (Pietro di Cristoforo Vannucci), St Sebastian, c. 1490-1500. Oil on wood, 176 x 116 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Andrea Mantegna, St Sebastian, c. 1455-1460. Tempera on wood, 68 x 30 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Andrea Mantegna, Mars and Venus, c. 1497-1502. Tempera on canvas, 150 x 192 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. 27 28 29 30 31 Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo started his apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio in approximately 1469, and was accepted into the master guild in Florence in 1472. How soon he was his master’s equal can be recognised in the Baptism of Christ (around 1475), with the angels and parts of the landscape he painted into the picture. Even at that time, his view of nature differed, due to the size of the structure of the form and his characteristic of the performances, which were seen as the peak of Florentine art. But the large picture handed over to him after he had completed his apprenticeship, an Adoration of the Magi, intended for a monastery church, was not finished. He really wanted to surpass all reputable Florentine artists with this painting; his plan never went further than the first undercoat of paint, despite many thorough preliminary studies. Even if his tendency as a painter and sculptor dominated, he also worked as an art theoretician and left behind many significant objects as an inventor and naturalist, as an architect, master builder of fortresses and a designer of engines of war. In the end, Leonardo’s creative power was no match for this universality, so later in his life, the completion of his pieces of work that had been prepared with a great deal of time, was occasionally at risk. Florence quickly became too constrictive for him, so that very soon he took an appointment to Milan to the court of Ludovico Sforza (1452 to 1508). His absolute masterpiece, The Last Supper (1495/1497) had to be restored for the first time as early as the sixteenth century, as it was subject to extensive decay, partly due to his appetite for experimenting, partly to climatic influence and wilful destruction. The gestures of his apostles, scenically arranged and summarised in a billowing movement, stand for his demand to depict “the intention of the soul” through movement. The end of Ludovico Sforza’s reign was a catastrophe for Leonardo. He managed to save himself in time, and spent the years from 1499 to 1506 alternating between Florence and Venice and some other towns of the Romagna. He worked three years on his other absolute masterpiece, the picture of the genteel Florentine lady (Madonna) Mona Lisa (1503/1505), the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, and when they finally took it away from him, he explained that he had not finished it yet. Here, the atmosphere nestles around all forms, taking away any hardness and dissolving the sharp sculpture into a gentle blending together of all contrasts of colours and forms. This is where the great revolution, which broke new ground for painting, took place. In 1506, Leonardo travelled to Milan again and, apart from short interruptions, stayed there for ten years. During this time, Leonardo dedicated himself to his students and, increasingly, to his scientific studies and research. It is hard to comprehend the number of subjects in the various technical fields across which Leonardo occupied himself. Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin of the Rocks, 1483-1486. Oil on panel, 199 x 122 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, The Baptism of Christ, 1470-1476. Oil and tempera on wood panel, 177 x 151 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 32 Leonardo da Vinci, The Annunciation, 1472-1475. Oil on wood panel, 98 x 217 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 33 34 Among the drawings he left – the Codex Atlanticus alone contains 1,119 – there are ideas for a rope producing machine or float to walk on water, a suggestion for a bridge that could be put up quickly, for a canon on a gun-carriage, for a parachute, for a (wind up) automobile, which, as experts found out, really works, and many more other indescribable things. The approximately 1000 sheets of the three- part Codex Forster contain drawings for hydraulic machines, theories on proportions and mechanics, notes on architecture and urban studies. A third Codex, the Codex Arundel, comprises in more than 280 sheets of drawings, of tanks and projectiles. Then there is a book on the human body, one on flights of birds, and, in the Codex Madrid with its 140 sheets, Leonardo deals with subjects such as painting, architecture, maps of Tuscany, as well as problems in geometry and mathematics and other things. And, regarding his 780 drawings on anatomy, it is quite appropriate that a British heart surgeon adopted these notes in 2005 and changed his operating technique accordingly. This listing is by no means complete and can only convey an approximate idea of Leonardo’s incredible spectrum of interests and skills. During his years in Milan, the only painting that was finished was a youthful John the Baptist. In his studies of male and female heads he paid tribute, at least with the female heads, to the smile and often also beauty, and captured the range of expressions from grace and beguiling charm to proud dignity and arrogance. For the male heads, however, he captured more of the individual characteristics, which he then even sometimes exaggerated as caricatures. Such caricatures, with hideous, distorted features, found unusual approval and even turned up as copper engravings. Perhaps Leonardo had grown tired of his homeland despite all of his success, perhaps he simply wanted to avoid further confrontation with the younger Michelangelo – whatever the reason, he accepted the invitation and at the beginning of 1516 followed the king, who provided him with a flat in the Palace of Cloux near Amboise. There, no longer creative, but only giving advice in artistic matters, he spent the last years of his life and died on 2 May 1519. Leonardo da Vinci, Drapery Study for a Sitting Figure, c. 1470. Pen, grey tempera and white highlights, 26.6 x 23.3 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Leonardo da Vinci, The Virgin and Child with St Anne, c. 1510. Oil on wood, 168 x 130 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. 35 37 Michelangelo Buonarroti The universal artistic talent of Michelangelo, the other Grand Master of Italian Renaissance, is equal to that of Leonardo. Although he cannot measure up to Leonardo, particularly in the field of natural history, he far surpassed him as a poet and philosopher. Michelangelo’s life also includes tragic complications, which have left their traces in his work. Just as Leonardo, who was born to paint but also nursed an ambition to create great sculptural work, Michelangelo, the greatest sculptor since Phidias, was convinced that he could do great things as a painter and architect. As an architect and master builder, his greatest piece of work was the dome in St Peter’s, as a painter he left examples of art, which even today require the utmost admiration, especially when taking into account that his moods, arbitrariness and impetuous temperament now and then spoilt the boldest drafts. His life was just as restless as that of Leonardo’s. He went to Bologna in 1494, after having provided the first samples of his artistic talents with the high relief of a centaur fight and a Madonna in front of a staircase. There he created a kneeling angel carrying a candelabrum and a statuette of St Petronius for the Basilica of San Domenico. But then, in 1496, he returned via Florence to Rome. For a merchant, he made a life-size statue of Bacchus (1496/1498), who, obviously already merry on wine, raises the wine cup with his right hand, whilst his left hand takes hold of the grapes, offered him by a small satyr, standing behind him. In his second great piece of work in Rome, the Pietà (1499/1500), found in St Peter’s, the classical influence completely disappeared, both as far as Christ’s body and his facial expression are concerned, and in the composure of the Mother of God, conquering her pain. Michelangelo moved back to Florence in 1501, in order to start his, so far, greatest task. The chairmen of the Cathedral had provided a marble block for the execution of a large statue, and Michelangelo decided to depict the young David (1501/1504), as he takes the sling from his left shoulder, whilst the right hand already has the stone ready. None of Michelangelo’s other pieces of work achieved this kind of popularity. With his first significant painting the tondo The Holy Family (1501), he wanted to demonstrate his firm determination to break with traditional composition and the previous portrayal of the figures. Furthermore, he wanted to show that and how movement could be included in a small sized picture. Pope Julius II (1443 to 1513) summoned Michelangelo to Rome in 1505, entrusting him with the design for his tomb. A different commission from Julius II was completed during his lifetime: decorating the ceiling (1508/1512) of the Sistine Chapel with a number of pictures, which in rigorous structuring and grouping, through a painted architectonic frame, depict the creation of the world and mankind as well as the Fall Michelangelo Buonarroti, The Last Judgment, 1536-1541. Fresco, 12.2 x 13.7 m. Sistine Chapel, Vatican. 38 39 40 of Man and its consequences. After the manifold fates of the Israelites, The Fall of Man was to be followed by the redemption, and the redeemer even come from its midst. The powerful figures of the prophets and the sibyls prepare for this, which surround the mirror of the ceiling vault and the transition between it and the vault pendentives on all sides. These paintings are perhaps only comprehensible to the individual when he reduces them to their parts and looks at each picture in itself, only then will the abundance of beauty which may find its best expression in the Creation of Eve (around 1508) be fully revealed. The ceiling paintings were completed with The Last Judgment (1536/1541). This painting is doubtlessly the greatest piece of work of the Italian High Renaissance, which, through its superabundance of figures and the guidance of their movement, prepares for those exaggerations which developed in the Late Renaissance and in the Baroque period. In all these figures Michelangelo made one thing clear: to reveal his uncompromising will; his absolute control of the anatomy of the human body in such a way that no other artist before or after him could counter with anything. With the contempt for humanity, which became second nature to him in his late years, he wanted to force all artists around him, friends as well as opponents, to look to him in admiration. That is why in Michelangelo’s work the human being can never be separated from his work. He thus considered himself the measure of all artistic matters. Among his work are also the marble Medici tombs in the Florentine Chapel near the church of San Lorenzo. Originally planned as the tomb of the entire Medici Family, only a small, laborious and frequently interrupted part of this great project by Michelangelo, who also created the architectonic design of the chapel (1519/1534), was realised. Only the two statues of the dukes Giuliano Lorenzino, who was murdered in 1547, were finished by Michelangelo, so that they could be put up in the quadrilateral chapel in 1563. Fate did not look upon Michelangelo the master builder very favourably either, though he was awarded the greatest task commissioned in Rome at that time: the construction of St Peter’s Cathedral. Pope Julius II had had the old basilica demolished, in order to erect an imposing new building in its place. Donato Bramante, who had been commissioned with the design and execution, intended a ground-plan in the shape of a Greek cross and a mighty dome above the crossing. When he died in 1514, only the four dome pillars with their connecting arches had been completed. Michelangelo reached old age. He died at the age of 89, on 18 February 1564 in Rome. But the Florentines demanded his body and he was entombed in the Pantheon of their illustrious men, in the Basilica of Santa Croce. Like Leonardo, Michelangelo also surrounded himself with numerous students and passed his knowledge on to them. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Holy Family (Tondo Doni), c. 1504. Tempera on wood, diameter: 120 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Virgin with Child and St John the Baptist as a Child (Tondo Pitti), 1504-1505. Marble, 85 x 82.5 cm. Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence. Michelangelo and Giacomo della Porta, St Peter’s Basilica, Drum of the Cupola (North-West view), 1546-1590. St Peter’s Basilica, Rome. 42 43 Among the sculptors who were not under Michelangelo’s influence, it is primarily Andrea Sansovino (around 1460 to 1529) and Benvenuto Cellini who stand out. The former was trained by Antonio del Pollaiuolo in Florence, but also worked in Portugal, Rome and in Loreto as a master builder for churches, where he was occupied with decorating the Casa Santa from 1514 to 1527. Among his work is the marble group above the main portal of the baptistery The Baptism of Christ in Florence, the Group of St Anna Selbdritt in Rome’s San Agostino, and the two tombs of the cardinals Basso and Sforza Visconti in Santa Maria del Popolo. The goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini (1500 to 1571) worked for the popes in Rome, for the Medici in Florence and for King Francis I in France, for whom he created the famous Saliera, the rather unwieldy Salt Cellar (1540/1543). Another piece of work proves that Cellini was also an excellent sculptor is the bronze figure of Perseus (1545/1554), who is holding up the decapitated head of Medusa, which is standing in the Loggia dei Lanzi. Raphael The third in the series of Grand Masters of the Italian High Renaissance, Raffaello Sanzio, who was born between 1483 and 1520, the son of an Umbrian painter and who was a man with universal talents. In Rome, he gained the favour of Pope Leo X (1475 to 1521), a fact which also brought him the highest regard. He did not only work as a painter, but also as an architect and sculptor, and wrote, similar to Michelangelo, some sonnets. As an architect, Raphael developed plans for several palaces and villas, such as for the Palazzo Pandolfini in Florence, the Villa Madama near Rome or the Villa Farnesina, whose execution, however, was left to other master builders. As the architect of St Peter’s Cathedral, Raphael did indeed submit a plan. The sculptural work allocated to him only materialised into preliminary work using clay outlines, and it was subsequently executed by marble sculptors. The focus of his early work is portrayals of the Madonna. The political uncertainties in Florence resulting in a lack of commissions, forced Raphael, like Leonardo, Michelangelo and many other Florentine artists, to leave the town. He began with the first papal apartment, in which the Pope carried out his governmental acts, and in which the highest court of the Holy See, the Segnatura Gratiae et Iustitiae, had its sessions. It contains the wall frescoes the Disputà (1509/1510) with the portrayal of a meeting of the Fathers of the Church discussing supernatural truths, The School of Athens (1510/1511), depicting a meeting of Greek scholars and philosophers, and the Parnassus (around 1517/1520) with Apollo, playing the violin, surrounded by the nine muses. The frescoes in the vault complement the wall frescoes Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Sistine Madonna, 1512-1513. Oil on canvas, 269.5 x 201 cm. Gemäldegalerie, Dresden. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), The Madonna of the Goldfinch, 1506. Oil on wood panel, 107 x 77.2 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Portrait of a Young Girl also called The Lady with a Unicorn, 1506. Oil on wood panel, transferred to canvas, 65 x 51 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Florence. 46 and show the Law, Poetry, Theology and Philosophy, which are each embodied through female figures surrounded by two angels. Julius II died on 21 February 1513. His successor, Leo X, who loved splendour and magnificence, continued the tradition, making great demands on Raphael, who was now not “only” a painter, but was also appointed master builder of St Peter’s Cathedral, in 1514. As a painter, Raphael covered the entire field of his art and performed great work. This also applies to his portrait-painting, where he gave calm and objective, psychologically captivating and historically valuable documentation, thereby painting a picture of his time. He was not a flatterer, or else he would not have painted such lifelike portrays of the ungainly Leo X or the squinting prelate, Inghirami. As a drawer, Raphael was no less diligent than Leonardo or Michelangelo. He painted because he wanted to gain absolute confidence with each posture and movement of the human body, each figure – even his Madonnas were based on a nude model, before they were provided with clothes. The Sistine Madonna (1513) also depicts the beauty of an absolutely normal person heightened to the extreme – perhaps even of a woman close to him. He left us her image with La Donna Velata, the woman with the veil (around 1512/1513). In contrast, La Fornarina (1518), the baker, originating from Raphael’s workshop, was probably his lover. However, St Cecilia (1514) is of the same standard as the Sistine Madonna. Painting in Middle and Upper Italy While there was a decline in the quality of Roman painting, Venetian painting had reached its peak. Further, artists were also working in Parma, Siena, Florence and Ferrara producing work close to those three Grand Masters. In Florence, there was one primary person in our field of interest: Andrea d’Agnolo, who, owing to his father’s tailoring trade, was renamed Andrea del Sarto (1486 to 1531). He made his way from early on and developed into the greatest colourist in sixteenth century Italy. Andrea del Sarto proved that painting could also produce those powerful effects that so far had been reserved for drawings and the composition of figures. These great colouring skills, which had the effect of a revelation in Florence, were combined with a seriousness and greatness of composition were reminiscent of Fra Bartolommeo as far as the architectonic structure was concerned, of Michelangelo regarding the movement of the figures as well as the arrangements of the folds, but at the same time were something completely new, given the magic of the beguiling colouring. This becomes especially apparent in the portrayals of the famous Madonna of the Harpies (1517), enthroned between saints. How soon del Sarto had detached himself from his teachers and role models, can be seen from the Annunciation (1513). Although he loved Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Madonna of the Chair, 1514-1515. Oil on panel, Tondo, diameter : 71 cm. Palazzo Pitti, Florence. 47 49 the women’s pride in his pictures, he did not heighten it to arrogance. This can also be recognised from his frescoes, with which he decorated the portico of the Annunziata and the cloister of the monastery dello Scalzo with ten pictures from the Life of John the Baptist (1511/1526). In at least two of his major pieces of work, the Madonna del Sacco (Madonna with the Sack, 1525), which has its name from Joseph leaning on a sack and the Last Supper in the refectory of the monks in the monastery of San Salvi, he not only came close to the Grand Masters in terms of colour but also in the monumental effect of his frescoes. However, next to the three Grand Masters of the Italian High Renaissance a fourth should be named: il Correggio, whose name was actually Antonio Allegri (around 1489 to 1534), but who became famous and popular as Correggio. He brought the holy figures close to the people like no other Italian painter, for his figures invite the devout with friendly gestures to join them. This approach to the people is also the basis of the magic in Adoration of the Shepherds (The Holy Night, 1529/1530). His greatest achievement, however, lies within his sense of reality, in the way he visualises the people in the picture, so that they really seem to be moving. He adopted what he heard of this style from Leonardo, Mantegna and perhaps also from or about Titian. He adopted this new learning so fast that in his main piece of work Madonna with St Francis (1515), he can be found as an artist with a personal style. In 1518, Correggio moved to Parma and worked there for almost twelve years. During this time he dissolved the strict symmetry of the traditional compositional patterns into light and movement, the divine majesty becomes the fair giver of mercy, surrounded by rejoicing angels and saints. The Madonna with St Jerome (The Day, 1527/1528), the pendant to Adoration of the Shepherds (The Holy Night), and the Madonna with St Sebastian, as well as the Madonna with St George illustrate the main stages of this development. The progress of his art becomes even more apparent in his frescoes. Thus, the dome painting in San Giovanni (1520/1521), showing Christ ascending to heaven, the apostles sitting below him, is already a genuine Correggio. What Corregio had managed to do excellently was to further intensify the decoration of the dome, by his depiction of Mary in the Assumption of the Virgin, encircled by rejoicing heavenly hosts with the Archangel Gabriel coming to meet her. This picture is full of movement, full of entwinements and correct foreshortenings. Correggio revealed a joyful world, and the urge for beauty revealed itself in full splendour in his mythological paintings. In his masterpiece Danae (1531/1532), he went exactly up to this borderline. The artistic skills revealed here also ennoble Leda and the Swan (1531), a rather voluptuous painting, Io (around 1531) according to the taste of that time and Jupiter and Antiope (1528). Andrea del Sarto, Madonna of the Harpies, 1517. Tempera on wood, 208 x 178 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Assumption of the Virgin, 1526-1530. Fresco, 1093 x 1195 cm. Cathedral of Parma. Correggio (Antonio Allegri), Vision of St John the Evangelist on Patmos, 1520. Fresco. San Giovanni Evangelista, Parma. 52 Painting in Venice In the last years of his life, Giovanni Bellini was able to witness how his students were leading Venetian painting to new heights. From what we know nowadays however, Bellini had already been surpassed by Palma il Vecchio, Titian and Giorgione, even if their performances had not yet been recognised by the general public due to their relative youth. These three are often regarded as the Grand Masters of Venetian painting, although at least Paolo Veronese and Jacopo Tintoretto should be included in this group. Giorgione (around 1478 to 1510) must have reached Venice quite early on, and made such incredibly speedy progress during his apprenticeship with Bellini that he became a role model for his peers as a young man. One of his paintings completed under Bellini’s influence is The Three Philosophers (1507/1508), which depicts three scholars in antique-style clothes in front of a hilly background and the entrance to a cave. In Castelfranco, Giorgione already made a commission from the commander Tuzio Costanzo into a masterpiece, The Castelfranco Madonna, an enthroned Madonna with the two saints, Liberalis of Treviso and Francis (around 1504/1505). This painting, with its two strange saints and his delicate colouring, marks the farewell from traditional Venetian art. It is painted with tiny, interrupted brush-strokes. This created the “magic” light and helped him to achieve his fame. Together with Palma’s St Barbara, Titian’s Assumption of the Virgin (1516/1519) and his Madonna with Saints and Members of the Pesaro Family (1519/1526), this piece of work is a highlight of Venetian painting. In the field of female nudes, Giorgione was among those who led the way, and here Titian is also one of his competitors. Titian, together with Correggio, completed what Giorgione had begun. His Sleeping Venus (around 1508/1510), which was never finished, is lying on a white sheet in a heavenly landscape. Originally there was a Cupid at her feet, painted by Titian but then later painted over. This Venus is surely the classical model for similar portrayals by Palma, Titian and other Venetian artists. Jacopo Negretti (1480 to 1528), called Palma “il vecchio” (the Old One), also came to Venice at a very young age and there became Giovanni Bellini’s student. At times he must have worked very closely together with Titian and Giorgione, as the influence on him by the two of them is unmistakable. Palma was at his best when he could paint holy families or Venetian beauties in idyllic landscapes. The second in this group was Titiano Vecellio (1488 to 1576), called Titian, who already came to Venice as a ten-year-old, starting an apprenticeship with Giovanni Bellini. Although he underwent several transformations in his long life, he ultimately became the principal master of the Venetian High Renaissance, one Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco), The Tempest, c. 1507. Oil on canvas, 82 x 73 cm. Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice. 54 whose entire work was not equalled by anyone. He was a painting psychologist or a psychological painter. This becomes the most apparent in his major piece of work belonging to the first creative period, approximately 1510 to 1520, in Der Zinsgroschen (around 1515). Among his few frescoes is the Scenes from the Life of St Anthony of Padua (1511), in which he demonstrates his feeling for the monumental. In his second major piece of work from this period, in Sacred and Profane Love (1515) he has not yet surpassed the ideal of beauty, which links him to Palma and Giorgione. These portrayals include Venus of Urbino (1538), Venus with a Mirror (around 1555) and also Venus and Adonis (1553), commissioned by Philip II (1527 to 1598) of Spain. Titian’s speedy rise between 1500 and 1520 can be followed with the help of two Madonna paintings. The first is the Gypsy Madonna (1512), a plain, dark-haired woman belonging to the Venetian people; the second one is the Cherry Madonna (1516/1518) surrounded by a small John and by Joseph and Zacharias. The milestones of his greatest development of energy are three large altarpieces: the painting The Virgin’s Assumption, frequently called Assunta in short (1516/1518), The Madonna of the Pesaro Family (1519/1526), and finally the Death of St Peter Martyr. Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco), The Pastoral Concert, c. 1508. Oil on canvas, 109 x 137 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. 55 However, Titian also painted princes’ portraits, and gave them missing intellectual and distinguished appearances, and whose open or secret apartments he decorated with his paintings under a mythological pretext, a genuine reflection of that time. In 1522/1523 he illustrated the classical mythology of doings amongst the followers of Bacchus in a cycle of pictures, using all his imagination for colours in Bacchus and Ariadne for his royal commissioner, the Duke Alfonso I d’Este in Ferrara. His artistic power to surround such work with the sensual appeal of colour did not fade in his later years either. This beauty cult had grown from the studies of numerous individual people. Thus, Flora (around 1515) or the Penitent Mary Magdalene (around 1533), surrounded by her long flowing hair, are excellent examples of Titian’s art of idealisation, which is only countered by La Bella (around 1536), the famous portrait of Isabella d’Este (or Eleonora Gonzaga?). Titian portrayed the Emperor Charles V (1500 to 1558) on horseback, in full armour with a spear, galloping towards the battlefield. With this, he painted one of the most beautiful equestrian pictures in art history, which, as a result of the combination of the rural atmosphere and the character portrayed, who is pursuing his goal with fierce resolution, is at the same time a masterpiece in painting. Over the course of his life, Titian, in the end, dominated the entire Venetian world of painting. Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco), The Three Philosophers, 1507-1508. Oil on canvas, 123.5 x 144.5 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Palma il Vecchio (Jacopo Negretti), The Holy Family with Mary Magdalen and the Infant Saint John the Baptist, c. 1520. Oil on wood, 87 x 117 cm. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence. 56 57 58 59 Even a restless painter, who was easily susceptible to foreign influences, such as Lorenzo Lotto (around 1480 to 1556), one of the most imaginative painters of that time, used Titian as a role model. He was one of Giovanni Bellini’s students and gained crucial impressions from both he and Giorgione. Lotto tried again and again to combine the splendour of Venetian colouring, Correggio’s chiaroscuro, and the movement of his figures with his ambition for foreshortenings. But he did not succeed until he moved back to Venice in 1526 and competed there with Titian. In some altarpieces, Lotto came quite close to his model Titian, for instance, with the figure of St Sebastian, emerged in flowing movement and an almost golden light. Once, Lotto, who was said to have been an ascetic and unworldly man, even made an attempt at nude painting with Triumph of Chastity, showing a demurely clothed young woman putting the naked Venus and a frightened Cupid to flight with an imperious gesture. The movement and treatment of the naked female body testify to the fact that Lotto could have matched Titian in this field, if his extreme devoutness had not estranged him to the world. The influence of Venetian painting stretched beyond the borders of Venice, and could be found especially in Verona. Paolo Caliari, who came from the region, and who was later given the epithet Veronese (1528 to 1588) had already created independent work before coming to Venice in 1555 but did not reach final maturity until he had studied Titian’s work and that of the other great painters. In some of these cycles of paintings and in the allegorical and mythological frescoes in the Villa Barbaro (1566/1568) near Treviso he created masterpieces of unified, decorative painting. He was so keen on creating the greatest possible splendour that he could not restrain himself when portraying Christian martyrdoms. Thus, his paintings of martyrs being led to their places of execution quite often reflect the extravagance and the crowds of people as if they were at public festivals. The biblical subject was only an excuse for the classical monument of the Venetian contemporary pictures of life, The Wedding at Cana (1563) or the inordinately large Dinner in the House of the Pharisee (1573) to gather a splendid banquet with strapping men and beautiful women of Venetian society around Christ, including the contingent of servants, musicians and actors, usual for that time. Veronese also liked to portray stories from the Old Testament if they provided an excuse to show women and girls in aesthetic poses or graceful movements. As, for instance, with the Story of Esther (1556) or the Finding of Moses (1580), subjects which he treated with the same devotion as the Greek mythologies of the gods, among which The Rape of Europe (1580) is one of his absolute masterpieces. In Venice’s doge palace, Veronese created the most beautiful works his art had to offer when it changed from the cheerful, decorative style to the monumental. His work was absolutely in line with his quiet, modest life style, in complete contrast with the distinguished, worldly Titian, the favourite of emperors, kings and princes. Titian (Vecellio Tiziano), Assumption of the Virgin, 1516-1518. Oil on panel, 690 x 360 cm. Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, Venice. 60 The temperamental Venetian Jacopo Robusti (1518 to 1594), better known by his nickname Tintoretto (the little dyer), was of a totally different type than Veronese. He tried to include in his paintings that which had perhaps been missing from Venetian painting until then, dramatic life intensified to passionate emotionalism. He owes the colouring, and especially the golden colour that can be found in his early work, to his short apprenticeship with Titian. This golden colour can be found in his mythological portrayals, as for instance, in Venus, Vulcan and Mars or Adam and Eve or also in his series of paintings Miracle of St Mark (1548), which belonged to the symbols of Venetian art. Tintoretto’s basic focus in his art was naturalism. He included this naturalistic principle in Venetian painting by imitating Michelangelo. He was what we would call a “workaholic” today – creating more paintings than Titian and Veronese put together. An artist like Tintoretto, who could do anything and wanted everything, also painted portraits, of course performing excellent work, but without matching the soul-searching skills that Leonardo, Raphael and Titian demonstrated. But the doges, princes, commanders and dignitaries he painted in a solemn, representative manner bear incomparable historical testimonies. Lorenzo Lotto, Portrait of a Lady Inspired by Lucretia, 1530-1532. Oil on canvas, 96.5 x 110.6 cm. The National Gallery, London. Titian (Vecellio Tiziano), Man with a Glove, c. 1525. Oil on canvas, 100 x 89 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. 62 63 64 Architecture in Northern Italy Roman architecture was, like the art of the sculptors, for a long time under the influence of the Florentine artists that had emigrated and built mainly town palaces. One of the last buildings of the Florentine-Roman style was the papal office, the Cancellaria, whose facade had already been completed when Bramante arrived in Rome. With him, the endeavour for a perfect imitation of the classical building structures adopted by Raphael, Baldassarre Peruzzi (1481 to 1536) and Antonio da Sangallo (around 1483 to 1546), was shown to its best advantage. A different master builder, who drew attention to himself with his writing, was Giacomo Vignola (1507 to 1573), Michelangelo’s successor in supervising the construction work on St Peter’s. As an architect he followed his own textbook. Jacopo Sansovino (1486 to 1570), who had a similar influence on architecture in Florence as Titian on painting, also came from the school of Bramante. Sansovino’s heyday began when he came to Venice in 1527 and was appointed master builder of the Republic. Among his best works are the mythological reliefs on a plinth, the four bronze statues (Peace, Apollo, Mercury and Pallas Athene) and the gilded group in burnt clay Madonna and the Infant John in the inside of the hall in front of the bell tower of San Marco, as well as Mars and Neptune, the two giants on the steps of the doge palace (around 1554). The actual master builder of churches in Venice in the second half of the sixteenth century was the stonemason and architectural theoretician Andrea di Pietro, called Andrea Palladio (1508 to 1580). He had been working as an architect since 1540, first in Vicenza, then in Venice. His main work in Venice, the desire for palaces, had already been covered by the native architects, so that Palladio worked there as a church builder and realised his magnificent ideas for construction in the two churches San Giorgio Maggiore on the island opposite and Il Redentore on the Giudecca. From about 1530, Genoa, with its natural harbour, had become a powerful competitor to the Republic of Venice. But only when Genoa had seized part of the foreign trade, were the riches that had been gradually accumulated used for building magnificent palaces. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, these buildings enthused a young Flemish artist in such a way that he collected drawings of these palaces and later had them engraved in copper to help the native building trade on their way. Peter Paul Rubens (1577 to 1640), who had travelled to Rome, Mantua and Venice, recognised that these Genuese palaces already constituted a further stage of development compared to the Venetian palaces, as they did not only know how to build magnificent facades, but transferred the rooms for representation into the interior of the building, even taking certain human living requirements into account. Veronese (Paolo Caliari), The Feast in the House of Levi, 1573. Oil on canvas, 555 x 1310 cm. Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice. Tintoretto (Jacopo Robusti), Crucifixion (detail), 1565. Oil on canvas, 536 x 1224 cm. Scuola di San Rocco, Venice. 66 Vignole (Giacomo (or Jacopo) Barozzi da Vignola), Fountain of the Villa Farnese, with River Gods, c. 1560. Villa Farnese, Caprarola. 67 69 T he peculiarities, characteristic of art in the Italian Renaissance, only exist to a limited extent in German art of the sixteenth century, so that the term Renaissance is rather inadequate for its characteristic. The renewal of German art in the fifteenth century had completely different roots and causes than Italian art. In Germany, modelled on the Netherlands, nature was the starting-point for the new direction. The Grand Masters in Germany, such as Dürer, Holbein and Cranach, did not entirely reject the new ideas coming from across the Alps, but limited their application either to ornamental accessories or designed the work that was stimulated by the humanists according to Greek-Roman mythology and history in connection with the partly fantastic medieval ideas, in a rather independent way. Albrecht Dürer With Dürer (1471 to 1528), art in Germany of that time had reached a peak in its steady development that had been underway since the Middle Ages. As a result of his travels, his creative period is almost compellingly divided into three gently merging periods. He created oil paintings and murals, he worked with distemper and water colours, he did copper engravings, drew for woodcutting and, lastly, produced drawings, which were considered independent works of art. Thus, he mastered all techniques that were known at the time. His early creative period is still under the impression of his role models. And if he already then ventured to attempt such an enormous task as the series of pictures on the Revelation of John, he would have had to struggle in particular with the difficulties the clear arrangement and grouping of such numerous figures were causing him. In his altarpieces from these years, the influence of the Nuremberg and Colmar Schools are still perceptible. This applies especially to Mary’s Altar (around 1496), Lamentation for Christ (around 1498) and the Paumgartner Altar (around 1503). But in Adoration of the Magi (approximately 1504) he had already completely detached himself from his models. Other important pieces of work from this creative period are Green Passion, a series of eleven pen-and-ink drawings in black (1504) on green-tinted paper II. Art in Germany and the Rest of Northern Europe Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve, 1507. Oil on canvas, 20.9 x 8.2 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Venus and Cupid, 1509. Oil on canvas transferred from wood panel, 213 x 102 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg. 70 produced in chiaroscuro style, and as proof for his skills and constantly growing self- confidence a Self-Portrait (1500). The immediate reason for Dürer’s second trip to Venice was a commission from one of the German merchants there, who wanted to order an altarpiece for their Church of San Bartholomew. He already started this work at the beginning of 1506, but because of the multitude of figures that had to be accommodated and his usual care, it was not completed until the autumn. The picture, known under the name The Rosary Celebration, was later purchased by Rudolf II (1552 to 1612) and taken to his residence in Prague. In his pictures created after his return to Nuremberg, he clearly kept the heartfelt, soul-felt characteristic of his heads, but adopted the Venetian colouring. His taste had also been considerably reformed, both in the development of nude bodies as well as the treatment of robes, whose folding differed more and more from the crumpled fussiness of Gothic art. This transformation can best be followed by means of the paintings created during the years 1507 to 1511. Among those are primarily the two larger than life-size panels of Adam and Eve (1507). As for instance in the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508), in the Heller Altar (around 1508) with the Assumption of the Madonna in the middle and the donor couple on the two side panels, as well as with All Saints Day (1511). In the following years he had to earn his living by producing copper engravings, drawings for wood cuttings and minor work. In this time of extensive work we also place those three copper engravings, which for a long time could not be interpreted: Knight, riding fearlessly with Death and Devil, St Jerome in his Study and finally Melancholia, that massive winged woman surrounded by scientific instruments, who abandons herself to examining contemplation. It is likely that Dürer was setting down his experiences and some conclusions to his thoughts on the enigma of mankind. He continuously had to struggle with forgers and swindlers, who copied his woodcuttings and engravings despite the protection through an imperial privilege and – of all the cheek – even offered them for sale in Nuremberg. In Nuremberg he also created two of his masterpieces as a portrait painter: the portrait of Jacob Muffel (1526) and that of Hieronymus Holzschuher (1526). The latter was a follower of the reformation efforts, which Dürer was also, possibly, favourably inclined towards. His idea to portray the four apostles probably also developed from this consideration: the most magnificent masterpiece of his art. This is not only a portrayal of the four apostles who were the most effective for Christ’s teachings – on the one panel Peter and John, on the other Mark and Paul - but the four temperaments are described at the same time, which, according to the psychological knowledge of that time, describe the human character: the phlegmatic and melancholic in Peter and John, the choleric and sanguine temperament in Mark and Paul. Albrecht Dürer, Portrait of a Young Woman, 1505. Oil on wood panel, 26 x 35 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. 73 Hans Holbein the Younger Apart from Albrecht Dürer, the indisputable second Grand Master of the sixteenth century in Germany is Hans Holbein the younger (1497 to 1543). In contrast to Dürer, Holbein, because he knew how to liberate himself from the medieval tradition and ultimately achieved the absolutely objective imitation of nature, is the actual master of the German Renaissance. In Basle, where from 1515 he initially worked as a drawer for word cuttings, familiarising himself with classical ancient times, he created his first early piece of art, a double portrait of Jacob Meyer zum Hasen and his second wife Dorothea Kannengießer (1516). This portrait was, for a long time, an unsurpassed example of that genre of portraits, where the painter assumes a total subordinate role to the personality he is portraying. The objectivity in reproducing all appearances is combined with a psychological perspicacity, which turns the inside of a person to the outside. This ability, which Holbein obviously had to an unlimited extent, makes him stand out from all other portrait painters of his time. He can certainly be considered a painting psychologist, and how good he was becomes apparent in his portrait of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1523). Among his early work is the Passion Altarpiece (around 1523). The outer left panel contains The Mocking of Christ and Christ on the Mount of Olives, the inner panel The Carrying of the Cross and The Kiss of Judas. The outer right panel shows the Castigation and the Entombment of Christ, the inner right panel Christ in front of Pilate and the Crucifixion. Holbein owes a further commission to the Mayor of Basle, The Darmstadt Madonna (1526/1530), an altarpiece for his private chapel that shows Jacob Meyer, his son, his wife and his daughters. According to the custom of that time, the mayor, married for the second time, had his late wife painted next to the living one on the right side. Holbein was so enthusiastic about classical art that he saw a greater ideal of beauty in it which he tried to follow. For this reason he walked across the Alps to Northern Italy. In his work, the influences of the Italian Renaissance become perceptible, revealing themselves in particular in the Solothurn Madonna (1522). In its structure and composition, it is the German counterpart to Giorgione’s Madonna of Castelfranco. The enthroned Madonna is surrounded by two saints, the Bishop Ursus and the Roman warrior Martinus, clad in contemporary knight’s armour. With a capacity for work which can only be explained with the indefatigability of youthful enthusiasm, Holbein produced an abundance of paintings and drawings, both before and after his travels, until 1526, that can hardly be ignored. Prior to his trip to England in 1526, he created the drawings for the large series of paintings. Among those are the forty-five illustrations on the Old Testament and the famous pictures from the Dance of Death. His basic idea in these pictures was that Death knows no class distinctions and mows down the pope, as well as the emperor, the princes, peasants, citizens and beggars with the same merciless scythe. Hans Holbein the Younger, Portrait of Nicolas Kratzer, 1528. Tempera on wood, 83 x 67 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Lucas Cranach the Elder, Fountain of Youth, 1546. Oil on lime panel, 122.5 x 186.5 cm. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Berlin. 74 Lucas Cranach the Elder The third Grand Master among the painters of the German Renaissance is Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472 to 1553), who quickly achieved a high reputation, and, as a result of his incredible amount of work produced under his name and painting symbol, the winged snake, also became rich. Among this work are large and small altarpieces, allegorical, historical and mythological portrayals, genre scenes, numerous wood cuttings and above all portraits of the Saxon princes and their families, as well as the portraits of the Reformers Luther, Melanchthon and Bugenhagen. As a purely artistic painting, Rest on the Flight to Egypt from 1504 is unsurpassed among Cranach’s work. It was only in his last years of life, when his best artistic work was said to be his Self-Portrait at seventy-seven years of age (1550), and the middle painting of the winged altar in the Weimar town church (1552/1553), that he developed a similar artistic energy. All the same, in the first twenty years of his work in Wittenberg, he created a series of oil paintings, which come quite close to the Rest on the Flight, and must be referred to if we want to get a genuine picture of Cranach’s art. Among his wonderful depictions of the Madonna are the Virgin and Child under an Apple Tree (1520/1526) and the Madonna and Child with Grapes (1534). The intensity and depth of his devoutness can also be perceived in the depiction of Christ on the Column. Nevertheless, he also served the reformers with his art. At first he spread Martin Luther’s wood cutting, and a little later also one of the young nobleman Jörg, working on the translation of the Bible at the Eisenach Wartburg, with the result that these wood cuttings found ever larger markets whilst the reformation was progressing, and finally ended up as mass production, carried out from his workshop. Due to many other commitments, he was not left with much time for his artistic work, so that he was only able to monitor his workshop which was bombarded with commissions, but could no longer give out any stimuli. The numerous great altarpieces are therefore overwhelmingly performances carried out by his workshop, and he only lent a hand with work - doing his best and applying all colourful splendour - when he wanted to secure the favour of his royal patrons and satisfy them. Cranach the elder died on 16 October 1553. 75 76 Tilman Riemenschneider Tilman Riemenschneider (around 1460 to 1531) could compete with the Nuremberg masters regarding both the volume of his work as well as the artistic significance. Riemenschneider went to Würzburg in 1483, received his title of master craftsman there, established a workshop that in its best days employed up to eighteen apprentices, and from there supplied the churches of Würzburg and its surroundings with carved altars and stone work, as well as carrying out his engagements as the mayor of the town. Apart from some altars, his main work comprises the tomb of Emperor Henry II (973 to 1024) and his spouse Kunigunde (died in 1033) in the Bamberg Cathedral, and the stone figures of Adam and Eve at the portal of St Mary’s Church in Würzburg. These two figures became equally important as studies on living models as the figures of the same name on the Ghent Altar. Riemenschneider frequently did his wood carvings without painting, preferring to take advantage of the play of light and shadows. Tilman Riemenschneider, Supper, Holy Blood Altar (detail), 1501-1502. Lime. Church of Sankt Jakob, Rothenburg. 77 Veit Stoss Apart from twenty years that the painter, sculptor and copper engraver Veit Stoss (c. 1450-1533) spent in Cracow, where he created the colourfully framed high altar for the church of St Mary, as well as a short stay in Breslau (1485), Stoss mainly worked in Nuremberg. The Cracow High Altar is the earliest work that can be attributed to him. At this time the Gothic influence is still clearly visible, especially with the figures Death and Assumption of the Madonna and the six reliefs from Mary’s life on the altar wings. His sense of beauty was expressed in the figures of the Madonna. He probably created his best in the portrayal of the Annunciation hanging from the middle of the choir vault, the Angelic Greeting (in German: Englische Gruß, which, deceptively, has nothing to do with England), which was created, framed by a rosary almost 4 metres high and 3 metres wide and surrounded by medallions with the seven joys of Mary and by apostles and prophets. His last piece of work, the Bamberg Altar (1520/1523), radiates the peace and harmony that he had been lacking during a large part of his life. Veit Stoss, Tobias and the Angel, c. 1516. Wood. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg. 78 79 Architecture During the German Renaissance Like the painters, the architects in the beginning of the period also only adopted the new ornamental forms from the Italian Renaissance, without departing from their acquired traditional constructive method of building. The first deviations can be found on the portals of some palaces, which had probably been carried out by immigrant Italians. In the next step they made an attempt with smaller buildings, for instance, public fountains, among which the market fountain in Mainz (1526) is perhaps one of the first structures executed in pure Renaissance forms. In the early 1630s, this “classical antique” style spread across all trading towns in Germany. The newly rich merchants decorated their medieval gable houses with new facades, providing adequate work for the native stonemasons. Although they did not achieve Italian elegance, as much was both massive and chunky, it was exactly this that gave them a national character. The newly built town houses kept the narrow gable front and they only filled the corners of the stepped and staggered gables with volutes and embellished work or trimmed them with sharply pointed spires; for public buildings, such as palaces or town halls, the medieval complex in the inner arrangement of the rooms remained the focal point. The layout of the churches, newly built or renovated during the Renaissance period, also remained untouched by the new ideas of the Italian master builders in their medieval tradition. In spite of the destruction that many wars in Germany have left behind, already started with the Thirty Years’ War, the impious destructive rage of ruthless building speculators, a mostly unjustifiable urge for modernisation, and in many cases a negligence due to a lack of financial means, so many palaces, town halls and residential buildings have been preserved that the relevant literature is almost extreme. A number of smaller towns have even preserved part of the fabric in their centres, which in the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century people were so keen to build, have left behind, and which nowadays turns them into magnets for tourists. And the town councillors and mayors, who had emerged from the midst of the well-to-do citizens, acted just like them. They tried to gradually decorate the old town halls with the newfangled ornaments until one thing always brought something else with it, and the old building was slowly covered with all the new additions. In the South of Germany, however, architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth century followed the Italian requirements much more eagerly. Elias Holl erected the “Ottheinrichsbau”, the Renaissance wing of the Heidelberg Castle, built by Elector Ottheinrich, 1556-1559. Heidelberg, Germany. 80 armoury (1602/1607) as the town’s master builder, and the town hall (1615/1620) in Augsburg, which was considered the most beautiful secular building north of the Alps. However, the most important classical monument in Renaissance architecture is the Heidelberg Palace, although it also owes its national colouring to the Dutch sculptors, who had been trained in Italy. The Frauenzimmerbau, commenced under Ludwig V, of which only the ground floor has been preserved, originates from the sixteenth century. Two buildings must be pointed out in particular: on the one hand, the Ottheinrichsbau (1556/1559), erected by the Palatinate Elector Ottheinrich, whose courtyard front is one of the splendid specimens of architectural and creative art of the sixteenth century, the facade is owed to the Dutchman Alexander Colin. On the other hand stands the Friedrichsbau, named after the Elector Friedrich IV, where the facade facing the courtyard contains statues of his ancestors. Some Italians may say that the Dutchman misunderstood classical art and made everything only massive and plump, and failed to demonstrate any elegance whatsoever. But Colin was visualising the people of his time and shaped the gods and heroes of the ancient world accordingly. Another important piece of this artist is the tomb of Maximilian I in Innsbruck. It is the reflection of art that has not been exhausted by the heritage of a rich past, but is also rampant with the treasures gained from Italy, without achieving a balance between old and new. The Italian influence also dominated in Munich, which was conveyed by a different Dutchman trained in Italy. Pieter de Witte, better known under his Italian name Candido, rebuilt the old residence of the Bavarian princes, expanded it and equipped it with such beautiful courtyards as the Grottenhof. Church building in the German Renaissance was dominated by a similar discrepancy as that which effected secular architecture, which was intensified by religious contrasts. In South Germany, where the Catholic Church maintained its dominate position, the Jesuits, for who their mother church (il Gesù) was the great model, mainly built the new churches according to Roman patterns. As a rule, however, the Roman architectural style had to make do with Gothic forms of construction, even in those countries in which the Roman Church maintained its undiminished recognition. In Cologne as well as in Würzburg, churches were built, whose Gothic foundations were only hidden outwardly by Italian ornaments. This applies to a far greater extent to two churches, which were built for the Protestant cult right from the beginning. One is St Mary’s Church in Wolfenbüttel (1608) built by Paul Francke as the first large Protestant church construction, erected in Gothic construction as a hall building, with a nave and two aisles. The other one is the town church in Bückeburg (1613), for whose main front the element of gable construction and Gothic high windows could be harmonised with the Italian love for splendour. Alexander Colin, The Siege of Kufstein by Imperial Troops, under the Command of Emperor Maximilian I in 1504. Marble relief from the tomb of Emperor Maximilian I. Hofkirche, Innsbruck. 81 82 83 The Netherlands In the Netherlands, painting as the leading form of art developed a similar basis and went through the same transformations as it did Germany. The difference lies in the achievement of a national direction compared to the Italian influences, which led to a heyday, unique in the history of art, making the country the focus of European art in the seventeenth century, despite her political-religious split. The beginnings of this split go back to the end of the fifteenth century, a time during which a new generation of artists appeared on the scene, who had already found the forms applied by the founders of Dutch realism, the brothers Van Eyck and Rogiers Van der Weyden, too narrow and clumsy, and who strived for livelier reproduction. The brothers Van Eyck, Hubert (1366-1426), and Jan (around 1390 to 1441), came from near Maastricht. Jan probably moved to the economic centre of Flanders, to Bruges, in 1432, where he lived until the end of his life. Judging on the work he left behind, he carried out a number of pieces for court officials and patricians during this time and later was even able to afford to threaten the court with terminating his work, when, due to a shortage of money, he received no payments. The Ghent Altar, a two-storey winged altar, consists of twelve movable panels painted on both sides, depicting the adoration of the mystic lamb, according to St John’s revelation. The adoration takes up the lower half of the middle picture. In the upper half, God is enthroned between Mary and John. The holy was separated from the worldly by the arrangement of the scenes and figures on the wings. The lower half of the middle picture with the adoration of the lamb is bordered by two pairs of wings. From the left side Christ’s fighters are approaching with the fair- minded judges and from the right side the holy hermits with Paul and Anthony, as well as the pilgrims, led by the gigantic Christopher, so that they can take part in the adoration of the lamb. When the wings are closed, Mary’s Annunciation can be seen in the upper half in a Gothic room with arched windows through which the houses of a town are recognisable, and in the lower part four figures. In the middle are the figures of John the Baptist and John the Evangelist painted in stone colour and treated like statues, and on III. Art in the Netherlands, France, England and Spain Rogier Van der Weyden, The Decent from the Cross, c. 1435. Oil on panel, 220 x 262 cm. Museo del Prado, Madrid. Hans Memling, Portrait of a Man at Prayer before a Landscape, c. 1480. Oil on panel, 30 x 22 cm. Mauritshuis, The Hague. 84 85 86 the left and right we recognise the kneeling figures of the altar donor Jodocus Vyd and his wife Isabella, who have an expression on their faces of a severe urge for reality, which is however, softened and transfigured by a reverent expression. Old Dutch art sustained itself on this masterpiece of painting for almost a century, but also developed and intensified it further. After this complex piece of work Jan Van Eyck mainly occupied himself with individual portraits in his last years of life. Among these is also the oil painting The Virgin of Chancellor Rolin (1435). Jan Van Eyck’s devotional pictures have surely later been surpassed by other artists in their characteristic of the Madonna, but his portraits, such as Portrait of Cardinal Albergati (1431/1432), the Portrait Jan de Leeuw (around 1435) or the Portrait of Margaretha Van Eyck (1439) can hardly be surpassed in their energy and liveliness of their portrayal. Dutch painting was, however, primarily developed further by Rogier Van der Weyden (around 1400 to 1464). He mainly worked in Brussels and Löwen, where he founded the Brabant School of Painting, which produced some important artists. Already in his early work, for instance, Birth of Christ (1435/1438) and St Lucas Paints the Holy Virgin (1440), the direction of his art becomes quite clear. A number of significant pieces of art are attributed to him. Around this time, and this becomes quite apparent in St Lucas Paints the Holy Virgin, which through a window opening allows an extensive view of a picturesque river landscape, he obviously also gained an understanding of landscape. Deposition from the Cross (around 1443), with its life-size figures painted in warm colours on a golden background, is totally different in comparison. Every painful sensation that could be expressed is put into these figures. One of Van der Weyden’s most important and most productive students was Hans Memling (1433/1440 to 1494), who devoted himself not as much to the soul as he did to beauty. One of his main pieces of art is the St Ursula Shrine (1489), a reliquary in the form of a Gothic church, showing three portrayals each on the two long sides from the life of St Ursula. Memling’s other major pieces of work are the triptych Last Judgment (1466/1473), the triptych The Mystic Marriage of St Catherine of Alexandria (1479), Cologne, Part of the Rhine from the Bayernturm to Groß-St-Martin (1489) and the altarpiece triptych of Lübeck St Mary’s Church (1491). In the northern provinces of the Netherlands there existed a much more serious and austere spirit during the sixteenth century, which did not allow for the more humorous movements and a lively public feeling. The most important representative of this matter-of-fact direction was the painter, drawer and copper engraver Lucas Van Leyden (1494 to 1534), who was frequently compared to Albrecht Dürer, as he dealt with similar subjects. His realistic, down-to-earth mind dominated both his numerous copper engravings as well as his relatively few paintings, among which Chess Players (around 1508) or the Healing of the Blind Man of Jericho (1532) and some portraits Jan Van Eyck, Adoration of the Lamb (triptych), 1432. Oil on panel, 350 x 461 cm (wings open); 350 x 223 cm (wings closed). Cathedral of St Bavo, Ghent. Lucas Van Leyden, The Engagement, 1527. Oil on panel, 30 x 32 cm. Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp. Hieronymus Bosch, Haywain (triptych), 1500-1502. Oil on panel, 140 x 100 cm. San Lorenzo Monastery, El Escorial. 87 88 89 90 stand out in particular. He also tended to depict biblical portrayals as a reflection of the time or as a public festival or amusement of the higher social classes. Only Hieronymus Bosch (around 1450 to 1516), who represented the burlesque element of Dutch painting with Van Leyden had equal influence. Bosch liked to portray the punishment of those rejected by the Last Judgment with exuberant imagination and brought to life horrifying ghostly and diabolical figures - he let the damned boil in cauldrons and be tormented with all kinds of red-hot instruments of torture, and converted the threats made by the repentance-preachers of that time against the spreading heresy into fantastic presentations. These interpretations were made into copper engravings and in this way quickly caught on in great numbers. One of the Bruegel sons, Pieter Brueghel the younger, had specialised in the portrayals of these torments of hell and so was given the nickname “Hell-Brueghel”. France In contrast to the Netherlands, sculptures and architecture were the leading art forms in France, architecture having gone through a similar development than in Italy, but with a beginning in around 1500 slightly staggered in time. However, in France the individual changes in style were not named according to art historical divisions but after their kings, who, together with their aristocracy, had a greater influence on the development of architecture than the middle class. The first half of the reign of Francis I (1494 to 1547) roughly corresponds to the time of the Italian Early Renaissance. Its love of splendour did not go beyond the building of large palaces which were decorated quite extravagantly by painters and sculptors on the inside and outside. As a transition from medieval castles, an ‘in-between’ type initially emerged, with a quadrangle, a court of honour, as a feature and focus point. With its three wings, it was open to the front, to ensure the entrance of the owner and his guests to be as imposing as possible. All later palaces of kings and princes were developed from these ideas. The sometimes open stair towers with a spiral staircase, in front of the facades, as well as the bay windows and balconies, and the rising total structure with the steep roofs and the great number of high chimneys are typical for France. The most beautiful and certainly most famous examples for this are the stair tower of the otherwise medieval Castle of Blois, with which Francis I began his building activities. Entirely in the style of the French Early Renaissance and the best example of this ‘in-between’ style is Chambord Castle (1519/1541), surrounded by a wall of more than thirty kilometres. In the centre of the castle is a double spiral staircase, designed by Leonardo da Vinci. All Loire castles were surpassed by the palace of Fontainebleau, which, with its outer, somewhat monotonous looking facade, was also started by Francis I, with Francesco Primaticcio, The Room of the Duchesse d’Etampes now known as the Escalier du Roi, 1541-1544. Musée national du Château, Fontainebleau. Jean Clouet, Portrait of Francis I, King of France, c. 1530. Oil on wood panel, 96 x 74 cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Castle of Chambord. Loir-et-Cher, France. 95 Italian artists or artists working in the Italian style. The palace has five courtyards and a chapel as well as numerous magnificent rooms. For the decorations of the numerous large and small rooms, among which the gallery Francis I with its unified artistic effect leaves the most splendid impression, Francis I and Henry II (1519 to 1559) sent for Italian painters and sculptors, who very soon developed a new style of decorating in France. Some other buildings from the Early Renaissance are artistically more attractive than this palace, for instance, the Bishop’s Palace in Sens or the town halls in Orleans and Beaugency. Approximately in the middle of the sixteenth century native architects took over not only the leadership in French architecture, but also the connection to the classics from the Italians. The most important among these architects was the master builder Pierre Lescot (active from 1540 to 1563), who was appointed to build the Louvre in 1546, the then residence of the French kings in Paris. Originally laid out as a courtyard enclosed by four wings, the building was extended by approximately four times as much during the course of the centuries. Lescot’s work is about half of the present south and west wing, whose facades are among the most beautiful creations of the High Renaissance. Individually, it was probably influenced by Italian models, but in its structure, mainly of the Louvre roofs, definitely of French characteristic. A further leading architect of that time and of approximately the same age as Lescot, was Philibert de l’Orme (around 1515 to 1570), who was born in Lyon, and had already worked for Pope Paul III in Rome. His major work in France is the Palace of Anet (1544/1555) erected by Henry II near Evreux for his mistress Diana von Poitiers (1499 to 1566), and the Palace of Catherine de’ Medici (1564), which burnt down during the rule of the Paris Commune in 1871. This Italian style probably reached its total breakthrough under the influence of the School of Fontainebleau in about the middle of the sixteenth century. However, the French sculptors only adopted the elegance of the new language of forms, without taking on the mannerism. Thus, something lively was created, which the master builder and sculptor Jean Goujon (around 1510 to 1564/1569), the major representative of pure Renaissance in French sculpture has expressed in the most beautiful way. But among his excellent pieces of art are also reliefs for the Louvre and other palaces, as well as portrayals rich in figures for churches. His slightly younger contemporary, the sculptor and medallion maker Germain Pilon (c. 1525 to 1590) was less independent. His most well-known work is that of the marble statues of the three Graces, carrying on their heads an urn that used to contain the heart of Henry II. But his most important piece of work was certainly the tomb of Henry II and his wife, Catherine de’ Medici (1519 to 1589), on which the marble figures of the deceased are indeed naked but are no longer portrayed in	184,867

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